Local Hour: Burn The Tape

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Speaker 1 This is the Don Levatar Show with the Stoogats Podcast.

Speaker 1 All right, we're back to the Dan Labatar show. Sans, Dan's, me, and your boy Hawk in the building.
We had a couple changes to the shipping container. Jessica's not here today.
Roy's not here today.

Speaker 1 But for game two,

Speaker 1 we're bringing a big dog in. We need it.
One of everyone's favorites. Look at him locked in with the glasses on.
There you go. Chest pal from Billy.
Gil. What up, Billy? Welcome to the show

Speaker 1 with his own intro music. Hey, guys.
Yeah, we got a flush. We got a flush.
We 24-hour rule. We flushed game one.
We're on the game two. We came to get a split.
Let's get a split.

Speaker 1 We need big dog Billy in the building to get the split. How is game one? Because I just said, oh, I saw you guys had keynotes.
We got a flush. We got a flush game one.
We got a flush.

Speaker 1 We got to review the flush. So 24 hours.
We already reviewed it. I reviewed the film last night.
Technically, 24 hours is like 21, right? But just the 24-hour rule is what it's called.

Speaker 1 Even though it's not 24.

Speaker 1 i mean we could go through it if you want to i reviewed the tape i think billy needs context so that he knows what to bring to game two so first of all before we get to that at some point we're gonna get into some draft stuff today we're gonna refresh the uber ratings because we got some the rig tees we got a means rating guys get ready so we're gonna update that at some point i got a story for you guys about my racist cat all this is gonna happen we're also going to discuss the um

Speaker 1 uh the tournament and the tush push rule but before we do that this is the last, we do the little film session right now. This is the last time we talk about it.

Speaker 1 If you want to go into it, my assessment of yesterday's show was we got off to a good start. We were great.
We got a big lead. Great start.
We were feeling good.

Speaker 1 And then they brought out a different, a defense that I wasn't ready for. And as the point guard, I got flustered by the defense.
It's like, what are we doing? Guess? Uh-oh.

Speaker 1 Like, turnover, turnover, turnover. To back guess.
They were ugly turnovers. We didn't take a timeout.
We didn't regroup. We didn't like huddle up.
Nothing.

Speaker 1 It was, if you can't stop the opposition from scoring, take the time out, coach. That is like coaching one-on-one.
You don't just let it continue.

Speaker 1 As we discussed yesterday on the Dominique Fox Road show, me and Charlie have a thing where we say accountability plays and you have to be very accountable when you mess up.

Speaker 1 And I accept that yesterday, I was full of myself. I parachuted in and we got off to a great start.
I thought Chris was balling. We did the intros.
We had some good topics. We was laughing.

Speaker 1 We had that thread of Leroy. It was.

Speaker 1 You hooked us up with that we was going i was like man i'm in this this is easy hit it to my man in the corner hit a wide open three fast break oh great defense rebound and then they started throwing guests at me and i was like oh no what's happening steve williams could you beat pro golfer

Speaker 1 oh wait hey that was a little too

Speaker 1 which one could you beat could you beat his ass though

Speaker 1 could you beat his ass that was good it was it got could you beat up tiger woods it got crazy it got crazy for a second bill the only three things that I heard about yesterday was that you asked the caddy who could be in the PJ tour.

Speaker 1 You started the Keenan interview with who did Morgan Wallen call the N-word?

Speaker 1 And then Keenan was with us on behalf of Gerd.

Speaker 1 And then Mike made fun of him for you. Mike made fun of him.
He made fun of him for him.

Speaker 1 Misread the room. He didn't like me.

Speaker 1 He said, why am I standing?

Speaker 1 I never thought about it. he said that at that I never questioned why Mike is the only one who ever stands until Keenan Thompson

Speaker 1 I I only stand because Tony stands so I'm not gonna get alpha that way

Speaker 1 and then we were finally getting Steve Williams best answer and we heard

Speaker 1 in the middle of it

Speaker 1 hold on one second in Mike's defense I thought we burned the tape in Mike's we got to do it we got to bury it we got to bury it like Rex Ryan did back in the day when he buried the ball um in Mike's defense I was the point guard and I clearly couldn't point guard anymore so Mike was trying to Chris what do you got

Speaker 1 that was another thing he kept doing Chris, you have a question for the guest? Mike definitely tried to bring the ball up to court. Chris, it is now your turn to ask a question of our guests.

Speaker 1 Please, sir. I refuse to use

Speaker 1 the backroom communications. I wanted it on air.
Mike was definitely an old, like a 90s five.

Speaker 1 Not like a today's, like not like a Jokic. And Mike was like, you know what? I'm putting it on my shoulder.
He was like, he brought the ball up to court and pulled.

Speaker 1 from the logo and then it went way over the backboard. But hand up, I got to know my teammate.
Terrible entry pass. I brought up Jim Laranega.
Mistake. I just derailed the show right there.

Speaker 1 You got to get it to Mike in his spot. Just feed Michael Sweetney right there in the post, man.
Don't take every shot. He's still going at it, this guy.
He was so short about that play call.

Speaker 1 No, I'm sorry. For the love of God, everything but that.

Speaker 1 Now, look, I will say that what they always say, yes, 24-hour rule, but they also say the tape is never as good as you think, and it's never as bad as you think.

Speaker 1 And I don't think the game film was as bad as we thought it to be when we left the game because

Speaker 1 somebody asked Keenan Thompson that question yesterday, and he answered it somewhere, and it ended up on variety.com.

Speaker 1 So maybe we shouldn't have came out the gate with that play. Yeah.
Hand up, hand up. But you weren't wrong to seeing that opportunity in the defense.

Speaker 1 That's why he was wrong, because he asked it in such an aggressive way that

Speaker 1 he was off the top. Before he said hello.
It was, I mean, but

Speaker 1 we learned from our mistakes. He went for comedy instead of for journalism.
Yeah, that's, which I'm okay with that move with the comedian. It was a decision.
It was a choice. A poor one.

Speaker 1 But I think his response was, this is what happens when Dan's not here.

Speaker 1 For sure. Which is like his biggest mistake, thinking that it would be less awkward with Dan in there.

Speaker 1 But, you know,

Speaker 1 when you're starting a series on the road, you really just want to take away home court advantage.

Speaker 1 I mean, we all had our down. No, no, no, no, no.
So, like, if we take game two,

Speaker 1 we got home court coming back for game three. So, let's, let's focus on one game at a time.
Game two is right there in front of us. We know where we went wrong.
And,

Speaker 1 I mean, even though the vine, the Jim Laranega vine is right there, we're not going to take it. It's rare in the first quarter of this game two.
We're like, can you guys believe that game one?

Speaker 1 That shit was crazy. No, we have, I was trying to start game two, and you guys wanted to do an assessment.
And one thing I'm not going to walk away from is some good open criticism of me.

Speaker 1 Let's dive into it. So we good? Is it all out on the table?

Speaker 1 I did say two up, too down to keep it.

Speaker 1 I feel like we glossed over that. You forgot about that.
And I also want to, I want to raise my hand with accountability. There you go.

Speaker 1 Especially as one of the only two blacks in game two that say I am ashamed of myself. I will be better today.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, two black people is not enough. We got to get another black person.

Speaker 1 Hey, Carl, find me a black person to join the show today. Literally.
Not too up, too down.

Speaker 1 What we are today. All right.
All right, so we're good. I'm good.
That was the the third time I tried to put the show behind us, and then someone else jumped back in.

Speaker 1 There was one positive that we can learn from game one, and you mentioned the hot start, which was you guys were just calling fullback dive.

Speaker 1 We had pig skin as America's pastime, and we talked football to start, and that was a good start that we had. So should we replicate that? I think we should.
I think we should. Perfectly done.

Speaker 1 Tush push. Get that crap up out of the league.
Am I right? Should we? Oh, you're not one of these guys.

Speaker 1 I'm just playing devil's advocate here because

Speaker 1 I don't feel great about punishing somebody for doing something better than everyone else. Because that is the name of sports.

Speaker 1 And it does, like we talked about, tie into the legal corked bat situation going on in New York.

Speaker 1 They're not corked. You guys,

Speaker 1 it is also framing matters. They're just a little misshapen, I guess.
It's a design. It's not, because when you say it's a corked bat, it's suggested they're cheating.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It feels like it. They just, what I don't understand, if we're moving over to basketball, I mean, to baseball, what I don't understand is why everyone doesn't have a torpedo bat right now.

Speaker 1 Like, what are you doing? L.A. De La Cruz busted that torpedo bat yesterday.
Two home runs. Seven RBIs, two home runs.
See?

Speaker 1 I think that I need a torpedo bat just to hold while I do the show. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It'll help us in game two for sure.

Speaker 1 So look, the tush-push, what happens, the only reason why I kind of agree is what happened in the Super Bowl when the rest were like, we're going to give them a touchdown.

Speaker 1 And that's that's like, well, in a conference championship game.

Speaker 1 Which I thought that was compelling. I thought the commanders were really going out of their way and were effective outside of that one time where they jumped offside like seven consecutive times.

Speaker 1 They let up 55 points. That's a commander's statement.
It is not effective. But I mean,

Speaker 1 they were showing that

Speaker 1 there is a path. And like Hawk alluded to, this play is available to all 32 teams in the league.
Two teams do it exceptionally well.

Speaker 1 And we're going to stop it because one team is a Super Bowl champion and really does it exceptionally well. No one else does it as good.

Speaker 1 So this is the what happened in the Commanders game was on the goal line the Eagles were trying to do the tush push and the commanders were completely comfortable with jumping off sides in order to stop the tush push because

Speaker 1 half the distance to the goal is nothing and six points is a lot. So eventually the refs suggested that you do it again.
We're just going to give them six points. Which is, come on, man.

Speaker 1 We should have made a bigger deal about that that as a society. What the hell are we doing? Who gives you the right?

Speaker 1 Who gave you the authority to award touchdowns for plays that aren't touchdowns in the conference championship game? Wow. Thank you, Tush Push.
We had no idea that a ref could do this. What?

Speaker 1 I mean, it was such an exciting, captivating moment that we found out that the ref can do that.

Speaker 1 To answer your question, the NFL bylaws and rule book give you the right to do it? There's no way that's legal. It is legal.
I've never heard of that ever in my history of life.

Speaker 1 So, I mean, I guess you have to take it out to the most extreme is if they just continue to jump off sides the game would never end so the ref has to have some sort of power at that point because no time runs off the clock the ball moves a smaller fraction of an inch every play like if we're talking about ending this game and having a game if you're in that situation the refs have to have some sort of recourse right no I don't believe that.

Speaker 1 No, so you want, you want that Bill Belichick to be like, you know what? We're going to jump off sides until tomorrow. We're going to have a war of attrition.
It's the only song.

Speaker 1 See who gets hungry soon enough.

Speaker 1 Who loses more in commercials

Speaker 1 by continuing to keep this play going? Was it not the most effective we've ever seen against the tush push? It was, but it's in that two minutes.

Speaker 1 It's a quarterback sneak. Like, I don't understand.

Speaker 1 Like, just because it looks a little different than your conventional quarterback sneak, we're going to outlaw it and then outlaw the quarterback sneak.

Speaker 1 And the argument is it doesn't look like football. It looks exactly like football to to me.
It looks a little like rugby. Yeah, it looks a lot more like rubbing.
It looks a lot like football.

Speaker 1 Today was like, it's not because they're good at it. It just doesn't feel like football.

Speaker 1 All right, there's a couple of different things. I think that there's a couple of different reasons why I think it should be banned.
And it's not because of how effective it is.

Speaker 1 The idea that it's not against the rules is kind of murky because like you can read the rules a different way to suggest that you're not allowed to help pull or push any player in the league.

Speaker 1 It's always been against the rules to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 Recently, they kind of de-emphasized it i guess because it's still technically in the rule book isn't it that you can't aid and assist someone in that situation the reason why i don't like it is not because it's effective i think people want to make it like oh you can't stop it get it out the game it's because it's the responsibility of the league to create the best product and i think Oftentimes we think about rule changes as it relates to health and safety, which sometimes is true.

Speaker 1 But the rules changes, as we've learned in baseball recently, you got to tweak them.

Speaker 1 And the NFL and even the NBA has been comfortable with tweaking rules in order to keep the entertainment quality there. And I think Mike is right.

Speaker 1 At this point, the tush push doesn't bother me as far as like entertainment quality. There is some suspense to it.
But I do think that it encourages us to a version of football that we don't like.

Speaker 1 Because if the rules aren't going to make it so you can't do it anymore, then the coaches and general managers have to design plays and draft players in order to stop it.

Speaker 1 And I think that sends us in a path that's less fun to watch. It's getting stopped.
I mentioned that there are two teams that are really good at it. The other one's the Buffalo Bills.

Speaker 1 Famously, in their conference championship game, they got stopped.

Speaker 1 Now, it might have been a controversial call, but it wasn't the only time in that game in a short-yarded situation, Buffalo lined up and Casey was ready for it.

Speaker 1 I think teams just got to get better at it. And I did think towards the tail end of the season, you started seeing teams find ways around this.

Speaker 1 Ironically, one of the best teams at it is the Arizona Cardinals with tiny Kyler Murray.

Speaker 1 So it's like we talked, there's all the, like every single discussion is like, will Jalen Hurts squat 600 pounds? Yeah. Nah.
Five foot nine quarter recognition.

Speaker 1 I mean, I've seen Kyler Murray run the ball. I'm not sure that he doesn't also squat 600.
I don't know how much

Speaker 1 that dude's got. He's probably

Speaker 1 all thighs, actually. But it goes to people make the argument, like, if you don't like it, you stop it.
Like, it's a manly thing.

Speaker 1 Like, my pushback from the defensive perspective is, why y'all got to push?

Speaker 1 If we want to do a quarterback sneak sneak and you want to go mono and mono your centers and guards against our d-tackles and linebackers, then do it.

Speaker 1 Tell Saquon to get his big quad ass out of there and stop pushing. I want, it's not as if Makai Bechton ain't big enough.
Like, I want to see that.

Speaker 1 That to me feels like a fairer matchup and a more interesting and a less lopsided play.

Speaker 1 Should a team draft Desmond Watson, the 464-pound defensive tackle from Florida, one of the NFC's teams, just for tush-push situations. Yes, and so we can just run a jet sweep on his ass

Speaker 1 every time he's on the field just to say, hey, we took away. It's 10 on 11.
Let's go far left.

Speaker 1 Job finished by Desmond Watson. Good job, buddy.
Desmond Watson is not like a great college football player. He's just 460 pounds.
464. Yeah.
And he wore number 21, which is funny. Perfect.
Perfect.

Speaker 1 I know it's like an old

Speaker 1 running boy. He can't run, though.
He can't get them knees up. 464.

Speaker 1 That guy sucks.

Speaker 1 It's like a 7'9 college basketball recruit that's like

Speaker 1 outside the top 100. What's going on here? How is that? Didn't you walk on?

Speaker 1 How are you 7'9

Speaker 1 and not one of the top 100 high school basketball? That's kind of crazy. Florida is a 7-foot-nine guy, too, Olivier Rue.
I thought we were talking about that. That's exactly what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 Hand up, bye back. It's all right.

Speaker 1 We'll bounce back from that. I know it's an old fogie take, but there were people that were doing this for forward passes.
Wow. You know, it's just,

Speaker 1 it's,

Speaker 1 I don't understand it. There's, it's available to everyone.
So first of all, like, everybody could do it. What if they just tush-push all the way down the field? What if they're

Speaker 1 three yards a clip and they just say, you know what? We're just going to tush-push this entire drive. I'd love to see that.
You're acting like there isn't other unfair things in the sport.

Speaker 1 I think Patrick Mahomes is pretty unfair. Let's outlaw him.

Speaker 1 See, this is

Speaker 1 amazing, Mike. Your two takes.

Speaker 1 NFL executives agree. This is an anonymous NFL executive said that if a, if these guys were around during Johnny United this year, they'd be banning the forward pass.

Speaker 1 And Mike Frabel literally said, well, I guess Lamar Jackson's unfair. That is.

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Speaker 1 Don Lebatard. Cheaters never prosper.
Stugats. I ain't cheating.
This is the Don Lebatar show with the Stugats.

Speaker 1 Nick Siriani should start next season if they don't ban it the first drive of the first game while the entire country's watching.

Speaker 1 No, not no, the first drive should just be tush-push the entire drive to see how far they can go. That will just the tush-push.
That's what'll get him.

Speaker 1 He has nothing to lose. He won the Super Bowl.
I think his fan base, who hates him, would love him for doing that. His fan base.

Speaker 1 He won him a Super Bowl, and they still don't like him. That's good.
So

Speaker 1 Desmond Watson looks like Big X the plug while he is jumping and running. By the way, did it not? Yeah.
He did look like Big X. And he also played college football.
Yeah, he did. Did he? Yeah, he did.

Speaker 1 He wasn't any good, obviously. I think he went to a D2 school or D3 school.
I've seen Big X on stage. I'm pretty sure he don't look all that athletic.
He don't be moving like he could.

Speaker 1 He don't got a lot of

Speaker 1 that outside zone. zone would have given Big X hell.
Push, push, push, though. Oh, Big X would have plugged.
Might have been the plug for the commanders.

Speaker 1 So the thing I would push back against you, Mike, what you're saying, and I think it's fair. All the things that you're saying is fair.
However, it doesn't address the point that I was making.

Speaker 1 Like, my point isn't about it's not fair. You know why you don't outlaw the forward pass? This is awesome.
You know why you don't outlaw Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson? This is awesome.

Speaker 1 Like this end, it encourages people people to get faster, more athletic, more fun to watch people onto the field in order to

Speaker 1 compensate for Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes and also the forward pass. You got to get a more aerial, more fun game.

Speaker 1 And I feel like some of the rules changes in football were partially about moving us away from a more physical game in the 90s, but also encouraging passing because it's more fun to watch.

Speaker 1 And that is my argument for why I don't love the tush push, because you end up in a situation where you start to increase the value of players like Desmond Watson, which no case.

Speaker 1 I'm okay with that, honestly.

Speaker 1 I'm serious. I know you are.
Like the big guy.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't mind, like, I don't want it all the way down the field, but I don't mind a package where it's like, okay, you got your tush push where they're bringing in their two 400-pound guys.

Speaker 1 I like specialists, and there's something to be said for it. They leaned into their identity.
They built an entire roster for those situations, and it kind of got all boiled down to that one play.

Speaker 1 It took every single guy on that side of the ball to basically buy in and execute that play better than everybody.

Speaker 1 And now you're going to change the rule and you have to look at your roster and try to figure things out. I don't think it's fair.
Right.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, Hallie Roseman's roster construction strategy is something that Charlie loves because it's pretty plain and simple.

Speaker 1 Him big, him fast, him strong. Him an eagle.
Him an eagle, right? Him Georgia Bulldog. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Because I believe Kirby Smart also has the same strategy as like, hey, get the biggest, fastest, strongest guys. And so I don't think the two.
To drive really fast. Yeah.

Speaker 1 They got to drive super fast, man. Can we talk for this is a small detour.
Georgia had a receiver named Nitro Tuggle driving 107 miles an hour. No point intended to

Speaker 1 rules. He should not get a ticket if your name is Nitro Tuggle.
He's going to make a great eagle.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I think what I have a, I'm having a hard time with is when I present my

Speaker 1 reasoning, no one refutes the reasoning that I'm suggesting. Like, you keep twisting it back to something else that I don't think

Speaker 1 matters. I will refute it.
I like watching a team try to stop an unstoppable play.

Speaker 1 And I think that there was high drama in those conference championship games because Washington did make Philadelphia think about it. Philadelphia was hopping off sides.

Speaker 1 Philadelphia was trying to do different things out of it because Washington was providing an issue.

Speaker 1 And in the AFC championship game, against a team that is second most famous for doing this, there was a play that decided the game by Kansas City stopping it. So I think it's high drama.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry, Graham. I was going to say, I don't think you think there was drama in the NFC championship game or the Super Bowl.

Speaker 1 The second Saquon Barkley took that first run to the house,

Speaker 1 the Super Bowl was over

Speaker 1 in five minutes. Well, what I'll remember forever is the seven straight plays that my guy from the Commanders hopped over the line and scrimmage.
Frankie losing

Speaker 1 the official to say, hey, you keep doing this. I'm just going to give him the touchdown.
That was amazing.

Speaker 1 That was crazy talk, talk, man. I still don't think, I don't understand where that ref

Speaker 1 I'm pissed about that.

Speaker 1 Does every ref have a different number? Okay, mine's six. Then I'm giving it to you.
For me, it's 10. I'll wait for 10.

Speaker 1 I think the refs should have names on the back of their jerseys, and they should get on the podium after the game and go through the game tape like we had to do today.

Speaker 1 There's no accountability for you just to say, hey, I'm all of a sudden the touchdowns are, and I'm just going to decide you get a touchdown and you get a pick over there because I like the way that you've been paying attention attention this game.

Speaker 1 No, that's not how this works.

Speaker 1 I was with you until we handed out interceptions. I would say, where does it stop?

Speaker 1 I'm on board with handing out picks, so I'll take a couple more. I'm pretty sure Charlie has the answer for this, but what makes a tush push the tush push?

Speaker 1 Having like a big running back push your quarterback sneak, so that's specifically what you outlaw because you're not going to outlaw the quarterback sneak, right?

Speaker 1 Because a white guy was really good at it in Tom Brady. So we're not going to do that.
It's the scrum formation too. It's even some of the linemen get pushed.

Speaker 1 So you can get like a bigger push forward from inline tight ends and fullbacks. But I'm just saying, like, how do you legislate it?

Speaker 1 How do you... No, you can't.
You cannot.

Speaker 1 I think it's already in the rule books. You cannot help a runner.
You can't push from behind. You can even add to it that you can't push a guard from behind.
But linemen do that a lot.

Speaker 1 I love when there's a lot of movements. I love when a pile moves like 9-0.
Like a guard come flying up and it pushes it across the first down. It's a great play.
Yeah, I want that still.

Speaker 1 That's in the course of the game. I don't mind that as much.
And I think that when it's an obvious thing that's like clearly bad for the game, the decision is easy.

Speaker 1 In the the course of a game, all of this is

Speaker 1 also in the course of a game. He's saying that it's in the course of a play, a normal play.
It's like a slot receiver catches an out and the guard just hauls ass downfield to help out.

Speaker 1 That's different than a lining up.

Speaker 1 That's different from lining up as well. It's not a different play than they're all football players.
I get what he's saying. I do, but like they say, but

Speaker 1 that explanation is tough. I'm trying to...

Speaker 1 I know exactly.

Speaker 1 Everyone gets it.

Speaker 1 Will they still have that? What we were just talking about, if they ban the tush push, will the linemen still be able to do that?

Speaker 1 I would prefer them not to, but I'll make the concession that they can. Like, get out of here.

Speaker 1 The guy has the ball. Let him run and tackle.
You flying downfield, throwing your fat-ass body into a group of football players feels stupid and unnecessary.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like, get out of here. Stop it.
Your job is to block. Somebody put it.
Then block. But whatever.
What I don't like is the

Speaker 1 tush push formation. And I think that it's easy when there's a rule that is obviously bad for the game.

Speaker 1 I think it's hard when you have to project how it will impact the game going forward, which is why I agree with you, Mike.

Speaker 1 Last year, the tush push, it's overpowered, but it doesn't bother me near as much as I guess, and this is my fault, what I'm projecting it will do.

Speaker 1 Because people, if you don't outlaw it, and I know you said some people found a way to stop it, it's overwhelmingly unstoppable.

Speaker 1 If you don't do something about that, then the teams have to do something about that, which I think pushes us in a direction that I thought we were staring away from.

Speaker 1 And we love the way football is played now.

Speaker 1 I like your point about like the formation. What if you have to declare that you're going to tush push and then the defense gets their team ready for the...

Speaker 1 Because the real fear is that you can't commit too much to the tush push because they'll throw it deep.

Speaker 1 But if you want to do the tush push, you declare, you get your tush-push team ready, we get our tush-push team ready, and we just.

Speaker 1 The head coach, the head coach hits his butt to signal it. Yeah, and it's like, yo, tush-push-team.
It becomes a special team. We're going to make it look less like football.

Speaker 1 How about it's just four guys on the line?

Speaker 1 I'll tell you what. Trent Richardson would have had a 10-year NFL career as a tush-push specialist.
Yeah. Coming under center for one play.
That's really what it is. It's special teams.

Speaker 1 That's where we're missing it. We just cracked the code.
It's not a play. It's a special teams play that doesn't fit within the other course of plays, much like all the other special teams plays.

Speaker 1 I would say that one thing about the tush push that I like is it encourages more aggression from coaches on fourth down.

Speaker 1 It does somehow, though, discourage aggression on third down, which is like we don't take that to account.

Speaker 1 Also, when it's third and six, one of the great beauties about being on defense, third and six, we know you're throwing, here comes our best blitz, here comes our nickel and dime package.

Speaker 1 Now it's like third and six. Y'all gonna run it again? And I get, I get what you're saying.
That's whack. What do you mean it's whack? Wow, you're making defense harder.

Speaker 1 Like, come on. That's not the argument.
That's a game of football. That's not the argument I'm making, Mike.

Speaker 1 Of course, you like his thing. I don't know if you guys have anything.
Is this an offense defense then? I don't know if it's like, oh, how hard.

Speaker 1 It's already really difficult to stop these offenses, and now we're going to change obvious passing situations just because they're good at running. That's a furrow.

Speaker 1 That's actually the best probably take for in

Speaker 1 what am I saying?

Speaker 1 You're trying to agree with me. Let's try.
You're trying to agree. Let's try.
Let's regroup.

Speaker 1 I got a rebuttal. Because here's my thing, really quick.
I've been flip-flopping back and forth, arguing both sides of the take. Nobody's noticed.

Speaker 1 no no no what's your what's your take i i can't i forgot which take i was arguing for in that moment i know you said that i was that i was exactly right the entire conversation

Speaker 1 so you you what you got to understand is i think that you came in today thinking like hey i got my man i'm gonna be everything for my guy today because i'll but don't worry i'm doing a lot of jobs right now don't worry i gotta get back into my system i got this hosting thing under control you do i got it under control maybe we get rid of motion too that's hard to cover see now you're being sarcastic, I feel like.

Speaker 1 You like declaring plays. I hate that.
Like, I hate that they have to declare on-site kicks now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't like that portion, but I do like the idea to even the playing field because there's no way you can stop the tush push in a way where it seems fair for both sides.

Speaker 1 And the argument Mike was making that... Well, he was saying it in jest, but in sarcasm, but it's true.
All the rules do benefit the offense, so now you give them another one.

Speaker 1 I can't, when is the last defensive rule

Speaker 1 passed? Oh, you know what it is?

Speaker 1 Is they re-emphasized the illegal man downfield is they had like a whole season of RPOs where the offensive lineman would be four yards downfield and the quarterback would pull it and throw a slant.

Speaker 1 And defenses, like you may think that we look to see if the ball is handed off. We get our run pass keys from the offensive lineman.

Speaker 1 So like it was really unfair to be like, hey, we're running the ball. Look at this tackle who's three yards downfield.
Psychiatrine. So they also made, did they take away cut blocks?

Speaker 1 Yeah, they took, that was a health and safety thing. Not completely, but you can't cut block from the outside in anymore where you used to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 They also took away the defender's ability to cut. So as a cornerback, they will run screen passes.

Speaker 1 That plays into this as well because in the tush push, if I'm on the D-line, can I just dive at the offensive line's legs? You can. Okay, so they didn't take that away.

Speaker 1 All right, well, I got nothing for you, Unique. I wish we were like an evolution of the tush push, right?

Speaker 1 Like, I'm looking at the formation here, and I feel like if we had like a wildcat come come out of the tush push, right?

Speaker 1 Where like Jalen's down there, they hike it to Jalen, and then he just like passes it between his legs to someone else who just like pitches it out to Dallas Goddard, who's like wide open because everyone's just expecting the tush push.

Speaker 1 The problem is it's so effective that they don't need to change the play, right?

Speaker 1 Like if they were blocking it, you could start experimenting and stuff like that, but they don't even need to because they just get the first down and they get four more downs.

Speaker 1 They've had a couple plays off of it that they just do just because.

Speaker 1 But to Mike's point, if I were to switch sides of the argument, my position would be someone should stop it because then it would lead to something else. But what do you think about it?

Speaker 1 My thing is, Mike, you're a noted non-NBA ball watcher because the game has gotten boring and redundant and homogeneous.

Speaker 1 You're asking them to do that into the NFL, just make it a more boring game.

Speaker 1 I don't think that that play happens that often. Where it's every time down the court, they're looking for threes.
Every play, every snap, they're not looking for a tush push.

Speaker 1 So I understand the point and I understand why people are fearful, but it's been around for three years now. And so like one team's doing it all the time.
They're famous for it.

Speaker 1 None of the other teams are doing it as well. So they're in my division now.

Speaker 1 That's a problem.

Speaker 1 So my point, and maybe I'm wrong, but I think that's an excellent analogy that you bring up, the three-point, like the three-point line, when it was introduced, it took decades before it became a homogeneous part of the game.

Speaker 1 My point is we keep getting back to why this matters in competition and saying, whoa, defense is just being soft.

Speaker 1 My point is, and it's a hard thing to do in professional sports, it's a business with two goals. It's one to win and well, actually, it's probably one to make money and two to win.

Speaker 1 And I agree wholeheartedly, if we're focusing on the winning part of it, yeah, that's fine.

Speaker 1 But if you're talking about the make money part of it, I do believe that this is a step in a direction that I could be completely wrong.

Speaker 1 Maybe if we allow this to keep going, it does not go down a path that makes the game less entertaining or less interesting. But to the point about three-pointers, let's add three-pointers.

Speaker 1 They're fun. This is cool.
This is different. Now we're in a place in modern basketball where the three-point shot has taken over to the point where some people complain about it.
Okay.

Speaker 1 No, I'll listen to that NBA point because it's a good one. Look, the Phoenix Suns were really exciting because they kind of saw the inefficiencies out there, DeAntoni, then Daryl Morey.
And then after

Speaker 1 Phoenix had their success with it, it took a couple of years, but then every team in the NBA started playing like the Phoenix Suns and having more possessions.

Speaker 1 Literally in every level of football, one team's doing this to this level. You're not really seeing it in college football.
You're seeing, well, high school football, who knows?

Speaker 1 You get all sorts of kooky offenses there. But in terms of football top down, it's the Philadelphia Eagles.

Speaker 1 We haven't gotten to the point where it's been oversaturated and every team in the league is doing it and ruining the game the way that.

Speaker 1 the Phoenix Suns revolutionized the NBA and to a degree, kind of ruined it to the point that I'm here saying that we got to back up the, we got to make the courts bigger.

Speaker 1 We got to back up the three-point line because they've mastered this. They've cracked the code.
Baseball, they cracked the code and then baseball had to come in and correct it.

Speaker 1 I don't think we're at that tipping point. It's one thing to be fearful of a tipping point, but when one team is doing it that much better than everybody else, it kind of feels like sore loser dumb.

Speaker 1 Let's not get to the tipping point. To me, is my point.
But can we, are you think you're capable of switching sides of the argument?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, if every team is doing the tush-push and it becomes like,

Speaker 1 man, this is so boring.

Speaker 1 Every play, like, this is so predictable like i'll i'll come around on i use a lot threes and i'm not asking if i can convince you to i'm asking that if i decided that you are a lawyer and it just so happens that your firm decided that you're gonna argue argue the other side would you be capable of doing that i wouldn't take the case this year i wouldn't i wouldn't recommend it it was a tough it was a tough go-round for me this morning i was trying to go back and like hey i'm all opposition i think it's great for football and it just i only take cases i can win confusing i do so that i was gonna try to do that in order to put me on the other side of argument but because i i wanted to make the point that i think

Speaker 1 what i am the trap that i could be falling into is i could be trying to protect against something that uh

Speaker 1 is not going to happen so like if the element of the tush push stayed the way it was this season, I don't have a problem with that. I agree with you.
It's entertaining.

Speaker 1 My concern is what it then leads to from an entertainment standpoint.

Speaker 1 And a lot of the reason why the NFL has not found itself at this tipping point for so many different issues is because you know what happened?

Speaker 1 When things happen that impact the entertainment value of the game, NFL address it.

Speaker 1 When Tom Brady gets his knee hit at the beginning of the season, I'm in the league as a defensive player, like, that's terrible. Well, you're doing everything.
You make it so hard.

Speaker 1 Where can we hit him? Hit him between here and here. It's not good.

Speaker 1 But when we have Tom Brady's career extended and we have quarterbacks healthier longer, I recognize that that is better for the health and the interest of the game.

Speaker 1 And they didn't wait until four quarterbacks got their knees torn up. And that's just the point that I'm making is you stay ahead of these things.

Speaker 1 This would fall into category for me of them staying ahead of these things. And the reason why

Speaker 1 the trade-off for me is all decisions are about trade-offs.

Speaker 1 And so if I see this and if we're willing to understand that the tush push has a 10%, 15%, 30% chance of metastasizing into a version of football that we don't like, Is that worth it to save the tush push?

Speaker 1 I would say the tush push is not fun or interesting or exciting enough for me to keep keep in the game if i'm willing to accept that where it could go in the future is somewhere that makes football less like the football that we enjoy that's a great damn good that's a damn good argument i i would i would just say like let's wait till it gets to that point like i yeah like let's let's have it actually test so that's that's but what is it what is it in place of the tush push um conventional sneaks or a punt

Speaker 1 it's more fun than a punt it is but and if it extends an offensive drive which

Speaker 1 You said an offensive drive. Isn't it technically making it more entertaining? You said it's more fun than a punt because you scared to return punts.
No, I'm a gunner.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm also scared to return punts. Punts are fun.
But so it's more aggressive offenses and knowing that you have four downs to play with. Fair catches.

Speaker 1 I would go to the bathroom on punts.

Speaker 1 By all means.

Speaker 1 You are right. But I don't think that that's what would happen.

Speaker 1 In this version of the NFL where coaches are being a lot more aggressive on fourth downs, you're saying that now on fourth and one, if we take the tush push away all these hyper aggressive coaches who are going for it on fourth and three in their own territory are gonna all of a sudden say oh well we can't push guys well we can't push that one yard is so scary now like i don't think that's gonna happen they're gonna do an actual football play they're gonna hand it to saquan barkley and i'm gonna be like hey this is fun that might go for 60.

Speaker 1 this is cool When Bill Goldberg was in WCW and he started out his career with this undeniable streak,

Speaker 1 we didn't just outlaw the spear and the jackhammer. No.
Kevin Nash got a taser and did what he had to do to end this streak. So

Speaker 1 that's how you stop a football play with a taser. Well, what I'm saying is, can I see someone stop it?

Speaker 1 I think it's going to be high drama when a team, and the day is going to come in a big moment where a team finally has an answer for this, and that'll stand the test of time. I like it.

Speaker 1 Especially if it's in a game of import. Like, that's going to be a moment in time.
I like that take. I love that take.
That's a good thing. If you could promise me,

Speaker 1 if you could guarantee me that that is how the tush push ends, I would sign up for it. But what you're saying.

Speaker 1 Let's have a loser leaves town, Matt.

Speaker 1 However,

Speaker 1 the point I'm making is maybe that's not how it ends up. Maybe no one figures out how to stop the tush push.

Speaker 1 And then maybe every other team in the league starts to draft in order to run their own tush push and to stop the tush push.

Speaker 1 And then we end up with a league where one Tony saragusa awesome we end up with a league where everybody got three tony saragusas and we like why they don't throw the ball no more

Speaker 1 domain i'm conceding that i don't want to see that either and you're saying wait until wait until we start seeing it i'm okay because i i like now there's another entertainment factor the smallest guy yes in football is now like i want more of them big dudes i want more physical nature on the field, man.

Speaker 1 I miss it. It's the one thing you don't get in corporate America.
There is no 40 under 40 that can give, you know,

Speaker 1 hit that.

Speaker 1 I miss it, man. All right.
So I need it in my football. But I do like the entertainment version of it.
Yes, the game, entertainment in and of itself.

Speaker 1 But I think the thing that we a lot of times miss is like the character arc of football. Meaning like we go through the draft.
What did this guy run in the 40 or how did this guy perform in college?

Speaker 1 When he transferred here and there, he's a five-star recruit. Does he perform? And over time, you learn the characters.

Speaker 1 And with the Lamar Jackson, we've been covering this story from the beginning and it's a documentary or a movie playing out right in front of us and as you look at football and to Mike's point there's also an arc of like the game of like okay here's something new that someone can't stop or Lamar Jackson comes onto the scene how will they stop him Winby is like this kind of athlete we've never seen how does this develop over time

Speaker 1 Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't to your point, but I do think that is entertaining of itself to see the teams try to stop it over the next couple of seasons.

Speaker 1 We do have some breaking news on the rule change front in the NFL. Now, both teams can possess the ball in overtime,

Speaker 1 but amended to 10 minutes. In the regular season, because that was the case in the play.
Yeah, yeah, in the regular season. And expanded replay assist has also passed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I didn't like that.

Speaker 1 The changes to the overtime rules. Never loved it for another time conversation, I guess, argument.
I think your point is perfect, though, about the evolution of the game.

Speaker 1 Understanding that we also, while we're viewers of the game, the factors that cause the game to evolve, they have influence on it also.

Speaker 1 So we need to accept that they also have influence on it and take responsibility for your influence and don't just wait for the game to change. And that's the final point.

Speaker 1 We should probably wrap up here for a second, in a second, but that's the final point that I would make to you, Mike, is that you would argue that they want, wait until it gets to that point before we do something.

Speaker 1 And I would point to these other sports and say, once you get there, it's too late.

Speaker 1 I mean, they were so hesitant to change. Major League Baseball was famous for trying to, and the NBA struggled with this.
The NFL has been pretty on top of it.

Speaker 1 When they hit rough patches, they change rules. When the Seattle Seahawks are doing their thing at the line of scrimmage with their cornerbacks, the NFL is pretty quick to change things.

Speaker 1 When Josh Allen doesn't get the ball

Speaker 1 in the playoffs against the Kansas City Chiefs, what did the NFL do? They changed it immediately. So the league is pretty good about that.
And I think we should give them some credit there.

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