Hour 1: The Meat and Cheese Delivery Service (feat. Jason Benetti)

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He is one of the best play-by-play announcers anywhere in sports. You can hear him on Fox calling college football, basketball, and NFL games.

He's also the television voice of the Detroit Tigers, who are up 1-0 because Scoobel is an animal. But Jason Benetti, among the sports that you do, baseball is your favorite to do.

Which is the hardest, I would imagine I'm answering for you, but which is the hardest to do?

So I would say the hardest to do is the sport that I did like five times and I've never done since, and it's hockey.

The hockey announcers do the games from like the ninth floor. They have no spotter.
People are jumping on the ice in the middle of play as though there's no security.

And like the lines change two minutes before the game. I have no idea how they do it.

Did you notice, and I don't know if you were working at the time, did you notice that Jim Nance didn't know the names of some of the Baltimore Ravens players on Sunday? I did not see that.

Did that happen? That was a thing? I mean, it's not his fault. It's because the Ravens were playing defenders that no one knew.

That's an exciting time for a spotter.

You know, all of us football announcers have somebody that gets paid to stand next to us, hold a pointer and point directly at the board as to who's on the field.

So there's always somebody standing there going, this is the running back, right? Just in case, because there's a lot of stuff going on and we're all really bad at life. So

the spotter, I can't even imagine the panic for the spotter. at that point.

Like just pointing at walls in the booth, like pointing at the Cheetos bag that's half empty i don't know i don't know who it is what do we do if the spotter points to the wrong person is it just a glare yeah uh we we fling the spotter out the window i think is really what what happens generally no you you kind of try to pump them back up and be like we got the next one like let's go here we go it's uh no it's it's actually a really awful job my spotter texts me routinely during the Super Bowl and says, please don't ever do the Super Bowl because he's nervous watching the Super Bowl that pointing at something wrong would be the end of his life.

You are a kind and decent man. What would you do if you were in my position and a producer ran in in a hurry with a piece of paper for you to read and it was totally blank?

It didn't have anything on it. He gave you no instruction.
It was just a piece of paper that had printed poorly.

So I, so funny enough, I had a stage manager at a basketball game, the person who hands you the cards, hand me a card that had my name on it and my partner's name on it.

So I just turned to the camera. When we came on camera, I said, This is us.

Thanks for joining us. So, you know, you just, I think you just take it and you go, I've been handed this note.

We've had multiple problems with Bonetti and his Wi-Fi.

No, that was, that was a moment. That was a win.
That's what I knew. It was a win.
So sure. It's a great joke.
I'm sorry. Let it sit.

Hold for applause.

Jason, you're available to go to Saudi Arabia for a set? What?

That is not a question I thought that I was going to receive, but sure. Okay.
You know what? You guys take it from here.

I'm going to get it.

Minor penalty, two minutes, asshole.

Wow.

Jason,

is the sample just too small on these expanded wild cards? Because there seems to be something to these games not even making it to a third game since the expansion of the wild card round.

Yeah, it's four of them since they've done it. I think part of it is baseball really is a momentum sport, and then you have to go back and you do it tomorrow again.
And especially, like,

if you lose game one and you had to burn more of your bullpen in losing game one than you ever would want to have burned, I think sometimes that will pop up in game two.

I also just generally think like you end up with teams that are bad matchups for another team for whatever reason, right? So I think that's part of the forlorn Dan is very hilarious, by the way.

No eye contact Dan is a pretty,

honestly, if

hockey players had to look forlorn after they were thrown in the penalty box, that would be an amazing benefit to the hockey viewing audience.

Like not only do you not get to go on the ice for two minutes, but you have to look really sad while you do it. Yeah, if we don't believe you, you have to stay in that box.

Convince me you're upset. Right.
Has anything changed in your behavior? Is what they should ask people as they come back from a hooking penalty.

Jason, we all saw the Tigers, I mean, collapse when it comes to division late in the season. They won yesterday.

Like, does it matter at all once you get to the playoffs that they didn't win the division? I think it matters to the fan psyche more than it does to anything else.

Like those were two weeks that you just felt everybody in Detroit being like, man, what is going on? I mean, we, after the Wednesday loss in Cleveland, which was five in a row to Cleveland,

Andy Dirks, my broadcast partner, and I were talking about just in between breaks, ordering a really big pizza and watching AF versus the Astros. Like we were, we were reduced to rooting for AF,

is what we were. So I went went and DoorDash Taco Bell.

I hit the button

to order a big bag of Taco Bell for us and watch AF.

And I think this is officially rock bottom because I looked at the app and the dasher was on a bike.

Like bike delivery Taco Bell after your team lost again in the playoff race, I think is pretty close to the crater.

What's your go-to Taco Bell order? Cheesy gritty to crunch, crunch wrap. What are we doing? It's all all the same.
It's all a meat and cheese delivery device.

I like it sliced in fours, so I go with the quesadillas because there is a food court in college that had a Taco Bell. And like, I just crushed quesadillas.
Like, is this the steak one?

Is this the chicken one? I have no idea, but it's really good and makes me feel good.

So, Jason, is it fair to second-guess managers when they take out their ace pitcher who's pitching a shout out and then the bullpen blows up, such as Aaron Boone, to use a random example.

It's a random example. I like that.
It's nice to see random wheels of example.

I think it is fair.

I think it is fair, especially considering

the way

pitchers, especially in a wildcard round, like your ace pitcher is your best bullet for sure. And I'm coming from the Tarek Schubal angle.
So like

I want A.J. Hinch to leave him in as long as possible because he is the number one guy on your roster to do damage to the other team.
So I do get it.

Like they spent a lot of resources on that bullpen, the Yankees did.

But if a guy like that, who is extra special beyond the level of really, really good,

I just... I think it's a choice you make as a manager, but I do think baseball is leaning a little bit more toward leaving your stars out there.

But I, you know, David Cohn said it during the broadcast, and I do think you have to weigh this. If they're going to go anywhere, he's going to have to throw seven times or so.

So, you know, I do think that is a factor there, but you got to get there. You have to get there.
Put it on the poll, please. Do you crush quesadillas? Do you crush quesadillas?

And also put on the poll, is Taco Bell just a meat and cheese delivery service?

Can you tell me the last time that you were at the center of something in baseball that felt as bad to you as Scoobel losing, flipping the ball through his legs, over the first baseman's head,

hitting Fry in the face, and just what seemed like a total epic collapse on something that was a hopeful season for you?

Like, when was the last time you felt exactly that in something you cared about in baseball? Because it looked like a total disintegration. You know who I worked for before the Tigers, right?

That didn't happen. The White Sox didn't have hope, though.
Like, it wasn't like that. No, no, no.
I do. I do.
I did.

2021, the White Sox made the playoffs. And they started really strong.
The second half was not great. They ended up going to the playoffs.
They lost to the Astros in kind of epic fashion.

Carlos Rodin tried to gut out a start, and the Astros won that fourth game, it was. And then the next year, everything kind of fell off.
The wheels fell off. Tony LaRussi got replaced.

There was a lot of hope in eloy jimenez johan moncada some of the young positions like andrew vaughan some really good young position players and you kind of watch it evolve into a corkscrew into the ground that was slower motion this i believe in substantially like the tigers i think really do know what they're doing but they have young talent that is just kind of volatile not kind of volatile like they're pretty volatile offensively especially like you go on these runs and and there's great numbers and then suddenly everybody's really pitchable.

And I think the last calendar year is a perfect example of what really young teams that are growing into whatever they are can do. And it's just they rip at your heartstrings over and over again.

But I still, I do think there's a lot of talent on this team. And Tarek Skubel, like you said, he's an absolute beast.
Like he is one of those guys that's just like, I'm going to do this.

And you know what? Like in the middle of all that that happened, I think he went between the legs because he felt like, if I don't do it, nobody's going to do it right now. Like this has to be me.

And that was so out of character, but I think it's the beautiful psychology of baseball that your star in the middle of all this, like no run support, blah, blah, blah. He's like, you know what?

If I don't get this out, we're going to lose. And it's, it's a window into the mindset of the team at that point.

Can you tell me how rare it is or isn't that Scoobel would drive himself to the hospital to go see Fry after he's hit him in the face? Like, how, how rare or not rare is that? In baseball.

Yeah, I think, I think like, I don't think everybody's going to do that. I think everybody's going to send a text message.

But Tarek Scoobel, in my experience, in a bunch of different ways, is like the most empathetic on-the-field monster you could possibly imagine. That dude is a legit, good human being.

He's done a ton for the Detroit community, but also just like small things that I don't even want to share, but like I've seen him like will be going over to somebody to say hello or whatever, and he'll ask me a specific question about that person that he knows about that human being without even needing to have any idea who this person is.

Like he, he's a really thoughtful guy. And that makes a lot of sense.
And I think, I think the best ones are the ones who have the switch that takes them all the way to the extreme on the field.

And the reason they can do that is the emotional understanding of how they got to be great at what they are. I want to play this sound from earlier of Nick Tuturo, and I want to get your honest.

Okay, I'm going to give you a minute to process this so I don't blindside you.

I want to know your honest rooting interest when the Yankees had three on, nobody out in the bottom of the ninth, because I enjoy when Yankee fans and New York fans suffer.

And so this is exactly what I was rooting to happen.

How do you not score?

How could you not score? Three singles in a row.

Fing unbelievable. That same shit.

Every

year. And then you take out a guy, pitch it up, shut out.

It's the most magical thing that happened at the end of that Yankee game. Were you rooting for it?

So I will start by saying Andy Dirks and I were doing a bit in the booth before a game the other day about the overuse of the phrase as they say by New Yorkers. Like, it's a grid system, as they say.

Like, why did you use that phrase? Like, there's no need to add that. I love the New York accent in general.
So anything that causes it to go to 11 is something I am absolutely rooting for.

I also happen to really like Alex Cora as a guy. Like, I've done games with him, and I kind of like the Red Sox this year.

So I, you know, I, I, those two things combined, had I, had I like, had that been cognizable for me at the moment, I would have rooted for that absolutely.

And I think somewhere down deep, I just wanted to see the carnage because I like the accent when it's on tilt so much. So, yes, I think the answer is yes, that was the desired result.

I actually saw Nick Toturo after the game on the street right next to Yankee Stadium yelling into someone else's phone just like that, who would just walk up and put the selfie video in front of him, and he just started yelling like that.

And Dan, if you didn't know, Nick Totoro actually named after front man of the Jonas Brothers, Nick Jonas. Why would I know that? Wow, interesting.
It's not possible. Where did you sleep last night?

Where did you sleep last night? The Double Tree Hilton by myself. Leave me alone.

I'm doing too many of the AI jokes. Are the cookies?

Bonetti, you like to post a picture of a ballpark on socials and ask people the first person they think of. So I want to do this with you, play this game with you.

You give us the first person you think of. when I say bat flip.
Tim Anderson. When I say over Batista, when I say underrated.
Underrated Taco Belquesadillas. It's a great answer.

When I say Fenway Park.

David Ortiz. Tigers.
Tarek Skubel right now. Leadoff hitter.
Overrated.

Shortstop. Derek Jeter.
Overrated.

Leadoff hitter.

Dan Lebetard's comedic awareness after today's segment. Manager.

Manager. That's so generic.
Terry Bevington. That's so generic.
Yeah, that's it. Terry Bevington is the first.

That's the first person. My mind is broken.

He is one of the best play-by-play announcers you will find anywhere in sports. Thank you for playing along, Jason.
I hope you go deep into the postseason, sir. Thank you, guys.

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It's the holiday season. Fantasy football probably not going your way like most of America.
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Don Lebatard. Quiet man.
Yes. You know, I'm a married man.
I don't cheat on my wife, despite that gratuitous line in back in the Euro. stugats.
I wish you were here, my wife. I really miss her.

No, I don't. That's the thing about being married.
You know, you're not allowed to say, I don't miss my wife. I've been gone two days.
I haven't been gone long enough to miss my wife. I'm sorry.

I call her, I'm on the phone with her for 30 seconds.

You know, what am I? Hello, all right. All right, we'll see you.
All right. And then, you know, I'm going to see her in two days.
How's Jumping, Charlie? Good.

This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugats.

We didn't do any impersonations that time. That is my failure, as was recognizing that he was going for a joke there.

He did sit there for a long time.

I'm glad it was you. Really?

I thought the same thing. A few seconds in, I was like, I think he's doing a bit.
I knew. I was able to tell.
It's his fault. He sucks, not you.
He's very funny.

Thank you, Billy, for the support there.

I have to be positive.

That was yesterday. Oh, okay, good.

Oh, you do have to. Wait a minute.
I didn't even... Where's your mustache? Where's your Ted Lasso? That was an extra.
That was an extra.

If you were serving the punishment the way that you were supposed to today, and you still owe us one. No, look, I could say this.
I went above and beyond, as we discussed.

I planted the extra trees also. So

I'm four in the green right now.

But also, I will say, Jeremy just kind of sauntered in here midway through a show and claims he's paying paying off a punishment, assuming that this is going to count as a full payoff for a punishment when he missed half of the show.

So if this counts for him, yesterday counted for me. Wow.

I don't know what I'm supposed to say to that outside of the fact that I'm here wearing a costume, doing a punishment, and spewing out facts, such as Jason Bonetti,

you know, named after Jason Dominguez. I don't know.

I'm done with these people.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
Wait, no one understands.

Well, that's the bit. It's supposed to happen.
I try hard. Either do it or don't do it.
Like what you just did there. Like, just, I mean, 27-year-old Jeremy.
Minor penalty, two minutes for boring.

I mean,

lag asleep. Make the joker.

Why lag asleep?

I've got a shameful admission from baseball, and I can't believe I'm making this, and I can't believe it happened to me, because

I am legitimately embarrassed by this. Now, I know who Hunter Green is because the ace of the Reds has been throwing 100 miles an hour for two seasons now.
He is a pitcher who I have been following.

I did not learn until yesterday that he was black. I assumed Hunter Green was white because I've only been following him through box scores and I have not watched him pitch in a game for the Reds.

I'm only following him through box scores, but I've been following him since the beginning of last season. And yesterday is when I discovered during the Dodger game that he was black.

I love this game. It is a great game.
I love this game.

We've got to play Shameful Admission more regularly around here because I was embarrassed. I'm embarrassed to say it now.
I was embarrassed to feel it yesterday

because I'm literally learning this, I don't know, 18 months ago. And the last time it happened to me was with Padre shortstop Khalil Green.

Did you watch the whole game between the Reds and the Dodgers? I did not. I just watched the beginning of it.
Oh, what do you think Shohei was?

Bella. Great at baseball.
Do you know who's Japanese? Hunter Green had an SI cover. Oh, yeah.
He was a prodigy. He was being compared to LeBron and Lee Jenkins.
Did the story. Is SI still a thing?

Like, I don't understand. Well, this was several years ago.
I don't get SI and I don't get Deadspin. They're still working, right? But there's no one working for them.

Do they still put on a magazine? They still have employees. They just do things in the case of Sports Illustrated, like also sell supplements.
They're no longer what they used to be.

They license their name a lot.

A rarity in Major League Baseball today, it's happened a handful of times, actually, fairly recently, but a player for the Guardians is making his Major League Baseball debut in the postseason. Wow.

I made the mistake here of watching the Guardians yesterday and learning that they had three hitters, and I don't think I've seen this in a playoff team before, three hitters hitting under 200.

They, for the season, have allowed more runs than they've scored. Do you know how rare that is for a baseball team to be in the postseason with a minus six run differential?

Could have been so much worse. Yeah, imagine how many of them have lisps.
We were worried about that setup. You said you saw three hitters.
We were like, uh-oh, here we go.

Mountain down the hatch has been one of those days at the Hunter Green Path. Thank you.
Societal shift. Pilots.
Under 200.

Cody had a lot of thoughts on what Nick Wright had to say, speaking of societal shifts that now protect Lamar Jackson instead of criticize Lamar Jackson.

Cody didn't get any of those shots off while Nick Wright was here.

Who's on the Greg Cody?

Wrap it on. The last one was a watch.
We're under warning now.

We're under warning. Don't worry, man.

I am very tired of. Oh, boy.
It's okay, guys. The government's shut down.
Nothing can happen.

I'm very tired about the criticism of Lamar Jackson. Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen, two great quarterbacks.
Not pretty good, but great.

But all you think of is, well, they never reached a Super Bowl. Called one a Super Bowl, so how good can they be? That is BS of the highest order.

When you say that Lamar Jackson chokes, and that's what he was saying, it's still a small sample. He's 28 years old.
He's got plenty of time to win a Super Bowl.

Lamar Jackson is coming off the best year of his career last year. 41 touchdown passes, four interceptions.
He's having a better year this year. He's scoring 33 points a game.

If his defense is even average and they're 3-1 or 4-0, nobody's talking, Nick Wright's not on recycling his old bromides about how Lamar Jackson is a choker.

Yeah, but you can't do small sample size and then give us three plus games of what Lamar Jackson is doing this year. That's what I'm saying.
Oh, oh, well, what he's doing this year?

What are you saying? How about all last year? What about it? He had a great season. Oh, yeah, no, he should have been the MVP.

No, but we're far past the point, though, at Lamar Jackson, where whatever he does in the regular season doesn't matter. Yeah, I think Josh Allen was a worthy MVP.

And let's just say they had an MVP elimination game, and Josh Allen won it. The problem with Lamar Jackson is he doesn't get over the hump to have an opportunity to get over the other hump.

Where Josh Allen is labeled with guy that can't get over the hump, and there might be some macro Buffalo Bills stuff, too, attached to Josh Allen, but it does seem like Lamar Jackson does avoid some of the same scrutiny.

Like, he's not even held to the same standard that Dak Prescott is. And I thought...
I think that's coming to an end, though. Like, I think it's starting to turn away.
Perhaps.

I mean, look, the optics of being ruled out of a game in which he's not actively getting treatment for a soft tissue injury, the optics of that were pretty weird.

And I do think that the tide is turning a little bit because this guy has to do something. Again, at no level of football has he won a championship.

But I thought, Nick, I found Nick's conversation, especially on the front end, a little illuminating because I felt it.

There's two players in the history of this show that play that position, which if I criticize them, now I don't know what real engagement is on social media, but I do get like the tinge of you racist.

It's been Cam Newton and Lamar Jackson, wildly popular players. Now, I don't necessarily understand the Cam Newton one, especially when I was criticizing him at a time that it was worth criticizing.

Falling the ball, it's right in front of you. But the Lamar Jackson stuff, I think I understand it better now because

we were introduced to Lamar Jackson with a racial discussion, Bill Pollyan, which, I mean, you can't ignore the race there. And I do think that there's been an over-correction.

And also, as Nick has pointed out in Invoking Mina, and there are honestly others in the media spaces, I don't think they want to align themselves with people on perhaps the other side.

So they'll stay away from that because they can't necessarily see themselves agreeing with other people that are just doing like sports that may not necessarily have, well, they may not just be doing sports is what I'm trying to get at.

There may actually be more to it for some of these people that are making those Lamar Jackson arguments, but I've always found it weird that we're so far removed from the Bill Pollyan thing.

I'm just trying to talk about this guy as a multiple-time MVP that it's fair to say we're just doing sports. Sports commentating is about like, hey, why hasn't this guy won a championship?

Yeah, but you know, and you're alluding to it and Nick talked about it, like when we're talking negatively about such a high-profile player like Lamar Jackson, it is in the back of some people's minds where if they want to criticize him, it's like, oh, are people going to say that I'm being too harsh because he's a black quarterback?

I mean, that's 1,000% real. Well, one of the reasons I lump Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson is that I don't think it's black and white here.

I think that those two are victims of us being in the middle of the Kansas City Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes era, just like a handful of really great quarterbacks were trampled by Tom Brady in New England during their dynasty.

I think that it's unfair to find shortcomings in Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson because they haven't been in a Super Bowl yet when Patrick Mahomes clearly is dominating his era.

Well, but what do you make of, like Nick brought up the point? Yes, Allen keeps losing to Mahomes. Jackson's only lost him once.

And Greg, to your point, yeah, Brady, Manning, unbelievable quarterbacks, probably the greatest era in quarterbacking history. Brady got his, certainly.
Manning even got his. Drew Brees even got his.

Aaron Rodgers got his.

We're talking about. Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen.
They've yet to even get to the game to have an opportunity to get theirs. Right, and they're both in their prime, though.
Like,

we're consigning them to the something's wrong shortcomings choke category prematurely. Peyton Springer took a while to win a.
All the other guys did it when they were in their prime.

All the other guys did it when they were in their prime. Hell, Rothesberger did it as a very young person.
Is Lamar Jackson a lobo?

He used to be. Yeah,

he's an all-time great lobo, to be honest with you. See, that's good job.

But he's not that. That's good journalism right there.

That's why you're buying some of the jobs.

The point is, if Lamar Jackson's available in the first, second round of my fantasy draft, I'm going to grab him without hesitation.

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Don Lebatard. Surely, every time you're watching this, you recognize that your wife is laughing that

she married Larry David.

I do, yeah.

One of the great characters in the history of television, in my humble opinion. And to my credit, my personality.
In my humble opinion, followed by, to my credit,

my personality. It's just amazing.
Pre-date, curb your enthusiasm. Stugats.
Oh, wow. I'm not going to say Larry David patterned himself.

All right, put it on the poll, please, Jude. You did Greg Cody copyright being an asshole long before Larry David.
This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugats.

One of the things that you've heard me be exasperated about for a long time, because we all have our opinions and we think we know football and we know ball and we don't know ball because ball knower when

Brockameyer for the Hurricanes gets a bunch of penalties as the center and then Mike comes out and says, well, he graded very well.

One of the things that we do that is lazy and it's ignorant is we made Peyton Manning a choker.

He won a championship one year when he had nine touchdowns and 17 interceptions. It's the worst version of Peyton Manning they've ever had, and that's the year that he won a championship.

There are a lot of things that go into winning, but it's not escapable that Zaz is correct when he says Lamar Jackson can't prove anything during the regular season other than we'll make the last game the big game because he had a bad one.

If he'd had a good one, it wouldn't have mattered. It's a bad one.
So we say that's a big game. That's what we're going to do to him until he starts.

playing in the Super Bowl. Like it's not even, he can have, I'm sure he's had a good playoff game that no one remembers because it doesn't matter.

He's got to get to the Super Bowl because when you're the quarterback and you're the MVP, that's where the line gets in.

He was solid in that Bills game, right? I know he made, I think he made a mistake there, but that one's kind of remembered for Mark Andrews not making the catch.

How many points did they score in that game? That was probably the most

that they've had in terms of like they've

16.

I'll look it up right now. But that game is

remembered for Mark Andrews botching it. Right, but the point I'm trying to make is he couldn't couldn't have had that great a game if they're scoring 17 in a playoff.

But the standard, listen to what Mike just said there, just so that we have an accurate appraisal after you saw what happened to Tyreek Hill's leg. Lamar made a mistake there.

Look at all the plays in the game. Well, the Bills forced three turnovers.

And if he's got a turnover, that turnover is going to stick to him because he's not a player who turns the ball over in all the other games that we're saying aren't big games.

I think that was the first time in a playoff loss that his team scored over 20 points. So it wasn't as bad.

And again, like it fell on, he did have an interception in that game, but that game is remembered for Mark Andrews not making a catch the way that Dalton Kincaid didn't make a play for Josh Allen in the following game.

Dan Marino never won a Super Bowl. Trent Dilfer won a Super Bowl.

A generation later, we continue, and Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen are now the victims of this, we continue to put too much emphasis on did he win a Super Bowl or didn't he?

Is Aaron Rodgers an all-time great? Because he only won won one Super Bowl. How about we judge

by something beside that? He's an all-time great, but as a four-time MVP, everyone listening to this would say that Aaron Rodgers is a winner underachieved.

Two-point, that was a two-point game, 27-25. Lamar Jackson had two turnovers, an interception and a fumble loss.
Man, it's not good.

And the part that I would push back with Allen and Lamar Jackson, both of whom, of course, have not won,

when Jackson is losing... losing these games, their offense is not great and he does not play well.
When Josh Allen is losing these games, he ends up being outdueled by the other quarterback.

Like, Allen is still having a monster game and just, oh, yeah, he wasn't as good as Mahomes. Yeah, when he loses to Mahomes, it's like you left 13 seconds on the clock.
How dare you?

You didn't get an opportunity to get the ball back or Dalton Kincaid doesn't matter. He's performing.

You get the throw off in the game against the Ravens while Lamar Jackson has two pivotal turnovers. Josh Allen has none, and that's the difference.

Right. And

I would agree that relative to their greatness, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson have both underachieved to this point.

I'm also not ready to write off Lamar Jackson and consign him to the choker failure category because he's 28 years old and he's

literally in his prime. It is curious, though, because there is an empirical drop in performance from the MVP in the league, of the league, that will...

have questions surrounding him until he wins a Super Bowl. It's not even going to be getting to a Super Bowl.

He's placed the bar in an impossible place for a guy who was thought to not be a quarterback when he came out of Louisville. Is it fair to say that I am now satisfied with the level of Lamar Jackson?

Hasn't been able to do it discourse because I've been waiting to just have this show. Hey, let's talk about it.
Let's talk about the racial aspects.

And I think like now he's in a position that John Elway found himself in. At least John Elway got to the game, though.
Lamar has got to get to the game. That's fair.

I want to play some sound here that we made fun of a while ago when Ron Washington appeared at an introductory press conference for the Angels and I want to have a conversation afterward.

Ron Washington has been let go by the Angels. Bruce Boce, a champion, has been let go by the multitime champion, has been let go by the Rangers.
But here's what Ron Washington had to say.

And we made fun of this press conference when he came in all gangbusters talking a big game. And then, of course, the Angels end up going as they always do, 70 and 92.

I've always been a part of winning. I don't know anything else but winning.
We're going to be about it. We're not going to talk about it.
Our whole focus is going to be to run the West down.

And you can take that to the bank and deposit it.

So it didn't last very long with the Angels. And the thing I wanted to ask you, because they're talking about Albert Pujols as the next manager, possibly of the Angels.

We just got in basketball to doing this, where we give unqualified people who we thought were smart players the top job with Steve Kerr, Derek Fisher. We just started doing that in basketball.

Baseball's got a long history of it. Baldelli was managing the Twins, and baseball does it all the time.
Football doesn't do it, right? You're not allowed to go straight to the top spot.

Dion was the guy. Well, but Dion, people laughed at the idea of Dion being an NFL head coach without any training.
They're doing it at HB

CUs. CUs.
Sorry. Wow, No wonder they question you on Lamar.
Racist. Yeah, really.
Lisp. What? By invoking the fact that these are the schools that are so-don't get defensive.

You're the one who struggled with HBCU.

Okay, but Deshaun Jackson, Michael Vick, Deion Sanders, as you outlined before, they're giving the opportunities to players that haven't had head coaching experience and just getting them right to that top position to hopefully launch pad them to get that top position.

Because a lot of the guys, they don't want to be, they don't want to do the Jason Taylor thing, which is toil away as a position coach.

A lot of these guys who have had borderline Hall of Fame careers, they want to go right to the big job. So what's the difference there, though? Why is it? I don't feel like people question.

Like I say Albert Pujol's manager of the Angels and everybody's like, okay, fine. We do that all the time in baseball.

I was surprised when Derek Fisher and Steve Kerr were immediately offered five-year, $25 million contracts.

And I'm like, wait a minute, you're going to make that person the head coach of your team when he's got no experience in coaching?

I think there's a split difference where basketball kind of finds itself in the middle where it can be surprising or not J.J. Reddick almost put his credentials on display.
J.J.

Reddick just got an extension after one year. Well,

they ran a pretty good offense under J.J. Reddick.

And with baseball, I think the reason you see it more often is it's not like playing one individual position necessarily changes what the schematic side of the game is, right?

So if you were a random NFL quarterback, even what's to say you know how to coach the defensive side of the ball and run a full system, where if you were a Major League Baseball catcher, you know everything that there is to know about the scheme going into the game, and you have your position coaches who are working with these guys individually.

There's not as many things, there's not plays that you're running outside of, hey, lay down a bun or put on a hit and run, which also don't happen.

Oh, but as complicated as football is, I believe that most of the people analyzing basketball don't have any idea what they're actually watching in terms of how much is going in to the scheming of everything that they're doing.

It's not as complicated as football, but I am confused. Baseball, you got it.

I happen to feel like, and I've Boog Shambi has disagreed with me on this, but I believe Boog could manage

a major league baseball team. I think he has enough knowledge of the metrics and the strategy that I believe that he would be a good manager strategy wise.

But I don't assume that because Derek Fisher and Steve Kerr were good, smart players, that they can be a good head coach for a basketball team.

But everyone seems to be in agreement that if I made your football coach right now, somebody who is the head coach of the team, even though I believe that person could be a delegator, I believe I could make Deion Sanders my game day coach of an NFL team with no experience and let him delegate to the offensive and defensive coordinator and all of his line coaches and everything else

the game day stuff so that he could be

a face and a voice for a team without having to be anything other than the guy roaming the sideline, sort of making fourth-down decisions.

But is football that much more complicated than basketball that you guys just say simply, I would not allow an Albert Pujoltz to go straight to the front of the line, head coach of my team with no training.

I would not trust that. I think it's clearly with basketball, the player, he's on the floor.
He sees everything that went on during his career. There wasn't anything happening that he wasn't aware of.

When with football, outside of your position, there's definitely so much happening that you are not aware of.

And we've seen some recent examples of former players who were elevated rather quickly and it didn't work out.

I mean, heck, you can go back, it was a while ago, Mike Singletary, disaster with the 49ers. But even more recently, Antonio Pierce with the Raiders, one and done, done, really bad.

And last year, Grod Mayo with the Patriots, one and done. Jeff Saturday, really bad.
Jeff Saturday was a joke.

People consider that a joke. And yeah, you don't have the example of it working.
So the more high-profile examples like you lay out right there. I think Singletary had some experience.

He was coaching on staffs.

It wasn't quite like that, but you're only scaring more people away from taking that chance in the NFL.

And also, the scrutiny and the attention that comes with the NFL is sport in which more than any of the other sport, the people on their couch think they know what they're talking about because it's king sport here.

I can be an OC. Jack Del Rio, how much coaching did he do, assistant coaching did he do before he got

a good job?

It is curious to me that people would think that Albert Pujos would be good at that job, even understanding as much about baseball as Albert Pujos did.

I mean, if you're a bilingual player that already has the credentials in a clubhouse that you do by just simply being Albert Pujos.

If you're willing and able to be a communicator with the rest of your teammates and you're someone who hit 1,698 home runs in your career, then that's the perfect spot for you as Major League Manager already.

And you can take that to the bank and deposit it.

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