Hour 1: Tony's Hard Out (feat. Spice Adams)
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This is the Dan Labatar Show with the Stu Gats Podcast.
We needed to get an expert on to talk about the question that plagued plagued us for 24 hours from yesterday, which is if a piece of pizza walked, would it walk, if it walked upright, not slithered across the floor on all fours, but if it walked on two legs, would the crust be at the bottom?
or the top? So we went to get Spice Adams, who is here on behalf of Red Baron Pizza, so that we can get some expertise on this subject. And we now welcome in the former NFL player.
He's a comedian, He's a host. He's an entertainer.
And we ask him the question, what is your vote here? Thank you for joining us, Spice. What is your vote on how a piece of pizza walks? Is the crust at the top or at the bottom? How it walks?
If it had two legs. That's a good question.
We're painting an odd picture. It is a good question for you to ask.
I appreciate that you interrogate me that way, but yes, that is the question I am asking you. If it walked on ostensibly two legs like a human being.
It has to be the weirdest question he's ever had to start an interview. Upright.
you think?
Which,
but it's why we're having him on. On behalf of Red Baron Pizza, he is here as an expert.
It's the reason we're having him. So answer the damn question, Spice.
On the bottom.
Everybody knows that.
But what do you consider the bottom? The crust or the pointy end? The crust goes on the bottom, you saying.
The pointy end. Yeah, thank you.
Okay. All right, so it's settled.
Cool. I'm sorry that we frustrated you.
I mean,
that's how I would picture it, walking.
yeah although humans slender point is at the top we didn't discuss it you know what put it on the poll well you know he don't he don't he don't really do leg day uh put it on the poll at levitard show is the bottom of the pizza the pointy end or the crust because i thought the crust was the bottom end of the pizza that's how i was thinking
backwards uh no but i was i was just pointing to the pizza i was just i get what you're saying but i never considered it before this moment do you even eat pizza dance y'all must argue all the time it's an important conversation it is got to I'm glad we're having it.
I also wanted to talk some football with him, but before I do that, I wanted to talk a little bit about your ascent into entertainment. How did you get involved with Jaquille O'Neal?
Where and when did you know that you wanted to be something in entertainment beyond being a football player? Well,
this entertainment has kind of been what I've been doing my whole life.
You know, I don't have any brothers and sisters, so I always wanted to entertain people, so they always wanted to come back over to my house.
And then by the time I turned 14, I've been this same size and height since I was 12. When I was 12, I was 290 pounds.
And so I looked like a grown man.
My mom took me to a little league practice, and they thought I was one of the coaches. They said, you know what,
just for fun, have them get on the scale. And then I was 290 at 12.
So I've been, right, right. So when I turned 14, my mom made me play football.
And I've been playing football ever since.
But when I retired, I felt like, man, what am I going to do now? And I just kind of gravitated towards entertainment because that's all I've been doing my whole life. So
everything all worked out. And
it's been a great ride, man. I had a lot of fun, but I'd like to shout out all my teammates, man, who dared me into doing it, man.
They was like, man, go out there, man.
We see how funny you are in the locker room. But nobody else really gets a chance to do it.
So shout out to Earl Bennett. Shout out to Chris Harris because they were the main ones.
They were like, man, you need to get on this social social media stuff. You built for it.
But all I wanted to do was play football and have my fingers look like this.
Yeah, I was just noticing his fingers, Dan. How that happened?
No, no, no, wait a minute. I'm throwing up the west side and I ain't even really doing this.
Like, I'm not, like, this is just how my fingers are.
I can't put my fingers on a flat surface. They all just pop right up from grabbing all these years.
You say, you say, how did that happen, Zaz?
That is something that football players just laugh about right the dislocated finger the idea that you would catch your finger between helmets you guys are built differently than the rest of us right you can't you can't pull change out of a place what are some of the things you can't do because of what football has hand done to your hands like get out of bed maybe
well your hands just I was just
I wasn't talking about the entirety of your body I'm just talking about your your hands because people don't understand what it takes to do what it is you do and what the sacrifice is.
Yeah, this is just kind of what you signed up for, man. Like, that's how you can tell if somebody plays defensive line or not.
You can just look at their fingers.
But this is, this is, this is what you signed up for, man. And, you know, sometimes it's hard to put on gloves because all your fingers are, they're like, have you seen Tori Holt's fingers? Yeah.
Like, his fingers
look like they're going to mine of their own. Like, all his fingers look like they're getting lost.
They can't be Brian Baldwin. They look like they're just doing like this.
Like they're all going different. I don't know how he put gloves on.
His job is to catch footballs, and his pinky finger is a 90-degree angle. It's insane.
It looks like Anthony Muno's fingers, just like this. I thought this.
Oh, I thought Baldinger was the standard there in terms of weird fingers. I didn't think that wide receivers had that problem, though.
I thought it was interior linemen more than wide receivers.
Catching balls from Kurt Warner, Dano?
That's how you know he catches his hands. Those are Torrey Holt's hands.
We're showing the audience Torrey Holt's hands right now. No, fingers are ridiculous.
I'm telling you, they all look like they're getting lost.
I want to ask you a handful of football questions about what you presently see happening in the league.
When you see Ben Roethlisberger throwing out the idea that Mike Tomlin should leave the Steelers to go coach Penn State, your alma mater, your alma mater is in disarray because James Franklin has left and took the recruiting class with him.
Yeah.
Wow, I didn't. Rollesberger said that? Yep.
That's it. You know, as much as I would love to see that.
I love Terry Smith. I think they should just hire Terry Smith.
I mean, he's played there. His dad played there.
He's a legacy. And he understands everything there is to know about Penn State football.
He's passionate about it. And he's took a team that was,
they didn't know where they were going to go next. They were lost.
He took a team that...
had someone take their leader from them and he got them to get to a bowl game. He got them to get that fire again.
He's speaking to these kids' parents to let them know like, hey, they're still in good hands even though we fired Coach Franklin, but I'm here.
So he has these players like in his corner and they love him and he has these guys on fire right now. So why not hire from within and hire someone who's who understands Penn State tradition?
So I say keep Terry Smith. Spice, you're a very famous meme where you're in the yellow jacket rubbing your hands together, you know, cooking fingers, behind the tree.
When did you realize, whoa, like, this is a really famous meme now?
I knew it was famous when I saw what I was looking at. I was looking at a red beer and pizza.
This red beer and pizza. This guy gets right in the pizza.
You've been asking this bullshit in the story. This is bullshit.
This is his segue into promoting the pizza. This red beer pizza.
That's not true in any way. He's totally lying right now.
now. And guess what?
If y'all into fantasy football league, y'all can get this humble pie. Y'all can get this humble pie at redberry.com forward slash humble pie between now and December 15th.
If you lose in fantasy football league, you ain't got to worry about sprinting a marathon or doing all that crazy stuff. Just eat you some humble pie, man.
Got the Red Berry Carolina Reaper sauce on there. Got the spicy mozzarella ghost pepper cheese.
It got cayenne peppers on the pepperoni, habanero, jalapeno, and habanero flakes all over over the pizza. That's what I was looking at behind the tree like this.
Seamless.
Spikes, that is nonsense. What you just did.
You just turned on the promotional. The entertainer again.
You turned on the promotion. I didn't even notice.
What do you do? The promotional.
I was just answering y'all questions. That was what I was talking about.
I'm going to get a humble pie. I don't even think that pizza was invented.
Go to redbarry.com/slash humble pie.
Now in December 15th, you can do that. Get out of here.
That pizza was not invented when you did that. Get out of here, Spikes.
I don't believe you.
And when I say get out of here, I don't mean it sort of figuratively. I'm telling you,
you have to get out of here. You have to rap, Tony.
Go, get out of here. Everyone, you, that lady, that person.
Tony, we got to go. Get out of here.
Who is that person talking to me, yelling?
We got to go. We got to go, Tony.
It's a heart out, Tony. Tony, Tony and Tony.
Your real name is Tony.
Take a bite of the pizza. Did you see what Spice just did to me? Spice just.
I'm going to bring the whole thing down. That pizza does look good.
Spice, we got to wrap.
We heard you the first three times. The first three times for you.
We got a rap.
We got a rap.
there's an accuracy
get out of here and zoom and the zoom spice has to go get tony out of here everybody out of here tony out of here rap rap rap they call him the rapper that was total
unequivocal bullshit what just happened at the end there
lady get on our appointed to ask him about the great american banking show jeremy wanted some advice on how to be a game show host
he had to get his his plug-in he knew he had a heart out i didn't know he had a heart out tony didn't know he had a heart out
you really messed that one up tony that woman just started screaming oh no it's a shame i could have talked to that guy forever our chemistry was incredible
how is it that that person ended up live on air with i thought it was david sampson like a drop of david samson say we got a wrap tony i was like we're on the zoom listening and then they mic themselves i'm that's it that used used to happen when we were on the radio.
I used to get a phone call on the other guest line. Like, yeah,
I'm trying to get a lot of money. Sometimes it would be on the air.
Sometimes on the air, sometimes, yeah, yeah.
But how is it? It's the first time on Zoom. Okay, let me explain something to Red Baron and that lady.
I don't like that lady.
Your time constraints cannot be so 10 minutes that you're yelling at me in the middle of what it is we're talking about out here and saying, we got to wrap Tony in the middle of the program that we're doing.
Dan, stop trying to break up with me. We broke up with you first.
The tie goes to Dan. He said, get out of here well before they said we got to wrap Tony.
And the reason I said,
I know who Tony is. I figured it out.
Spice Adams' name is Anthony. Yes.
Oh. Oh, my God.
I mean, I cracked that code. Seymour and also.
His name's Tony, Dan. Got by me.
Thought you were talking to him.
I'm still angry about what Tony did to us there,
where Zaz asked a legitimate question about the meme, and he went straight into his promotion because he knew he had a minute left before Tony had a heart out, and that woman started yelling at everyone in our audience, including Tony.
Specifically me. I was like, I didn't even say anything.
What do you want me to do? She wasn't talking to her. His name is Tony.
A couple of Tony's cutting it up. We need to make sure that we talk to the good people at Red Baron and never let them do that again to us.
I like Red Baron, Dan. I like Red Baron a lot.
It's a good frozen pie. Yeah.
I don't know about that. The humble pie on the bottom.
The roast pepper sauce. That may be true.
That was good for Red Baron, though.
You were saying, Tony, that you like Red Baron, at least in part, because
as it relates to pizza that's easy to make for yourself, it's extra doughy. That you've got some, that it's not flimsy with its doughiness.
You like it. No, but sometimes the Red Baron, they got the thin cut.
No, I like the thick. Oh, you like the thick?
I like like the thin cut it's like a very like not cracker but very like very tough very crispy i like that i like a thick with two c's we have to rap
how does that not sound like david sampson we have to rap well it does sound like david sampson i thought it was him
i also thought it was an old woman though i'm we have to rap
I feel good about that. Well, do you feel good about it being an old woman or an old man? We have to rap.
Yeah, to me, that sounds like a woman. I think it's a man.
We have to rap. Yeah, I think it's a man.
It's an aggressive. I think we should stay in these waters.
It's an aggressive. Well, look, it already got to awkward.
We might as well stay here. It's a specialty of ours.
I've got some random person yelling at Tony that we didn't know was his name.
I've been referring to him as Spice the entire time. I didn't know he was Tony.
I thought she was
yelling at Kaladiud. And I didn't know where the voice came from.
I also didn't know, as an added bonus, whether it was just in my ear or everybody was hearing it.
That's the thought. Because I've got a bit of air traffic traffic control system in my ear, where I've got 17 different voices, and then you know what my reaction is?
It should never happen on our show. My reactions are: who the hell is that? You almost screamed at Lewis.
I saw it.
It felt like a Lewis mistake. I'm not gonna lie, when it was happening, I didn't know whether it was private, whether it was public.
I didn't know whether it was this Tony.
I didn't know that Spice was named Tony. I didn't know we were out of time.
I didn't know there were time limits with Spice Adams. Nobody informed me of anything.
What is the great urgency with Spice that he's got to get out of here?
after exactly nine minutes
with such urgency that he crams in his promotion and furthermore, and I don't like this part either, turns on the energy the moment it is time to just chill pizza.
And I'll pull back the curtain. He was early.
Yeah.
He was 10 minutes early. This was a 1030 Eastern hit.
You have to rap. You have to rap for who? Us?
I would like to have a conversation with the people who gave us Spice Adams in which I explained to them, and I'm going to try and keep my hostility down.
You didn't let me ask about the Great American Baking Show. You didn't tell me that I had a limit on my time.
You got him out after nine minutes, and the only thing that he did at the end that had energy was shill pizza. And that's bullshit.
Penn State answer, though. He was surprised by that.
I was breaking news. The interim was three and three.
That's why.
We have to wrap. Really rallied those troops i feel good that that's an old woman you're sure because i'm i'm not
and and put it on the poll as well does david sampson sound like an old woman because
it it does sound like david sampson i can't dispute
we have to rap i thought it was in my headset we have to rap tony and i'm listening i'm like okay like what do you want me to do about it like dan's doing the interview dan seems like he's pretty well on his way to kicking him out I hear him.
I don't know.
If I was listening to that interview right there, I would think that Tony was the point person.
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Stugats.
Happy Cupcake. And Epwha.
This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugats.
I want to backtrack here for a second on something that we were talking about as it related to Chris Paul because there's been some sound I've been wanting to get to since Monday that I have not been able to get to, which is since Pablo Torre ruined the Clippers.
There is not a whole lot of interesting going on around the Clippers that is positive. It's mostly negative.
And we have sound here of Clippers announcers during a game, okay?
They do not talk about the game. You guys tell me if you know what it is that's going on in the game.
Their job is to talk about the action in the game, but I think they are in this Lou Riddick
Chuckle fuck situation where the Pittsburgh, Miami game was so bad that they end up at the end just doing Mike Ryan's propaganda because the game wasn't close and they just had to talk about other things.
And a fine thing to talk about would be the debate, the sports debate around the University of Miami. These guys, these Clippers broadcasters, just get into some debate about some trivia question.
We don't even have the trivia question. They're reacting to some previous trivia question, and they go about three minutes hardly even referencing the game at all.
So I go back to that trivia question that you sprung on me. Ambushed is a better word.
The trios of the NBA. I didn't ambush.
What was it ambushed? So the whole premise of the question was way off. No, it was not.
Verbatum. No, no, no, hey.
You tell me. No, I'm not telling you.
You tell me exactly what I asked you. What was the first trio of family members.
I didn't say what was the first.
I didn't say that. The last.
I didn't say that. Go ahead, then give me the question.
Nope.
Because I'll tell you where it's off.
Okay.
Would it be Mr.
Maine?
That was his nickname. Get it? No, you don't.
I do get it. Why?
Well, you could go one of two ways. Boxing had a main event.
Also, a little thing called the WWF. There are players running back and forth that they're not the tankers.
But that's what I'm saying.
I just asked you. So give me the question.
I might get to it. That's what I'm waiting for.
Give me the question. I forgot it.
Because your bonus is inaccurate, and that's the whole reason that it threw off my equilibrium. So you just can't say you didn't know, you were wrong.
Ask me the question.
I don't know how I asked it. Just give me the
title.
It was named.
It was a trio of
trio
right family members
at the age. Yeah.
Three. I said three.
And that's why the whole thing is erroneous. What?
What's the move?
Uber flag controls. No, I'm going to let you marinate in this for just a moment.
So you said trio.
And you kept going duo. You kept going duo.
Well, no, no, you kept. You kept.
I said, I see. You said duo.
Because the answer isn't the berries.
You have Rick Berry,
John Berry, our favorite Berry, Brent Berry, and then
the youngest brother, Drew Berry. That's it, same team.
That's why I would call that. Oh, yeah, so that's why it was demanded.
That's why it's completely different. No, no, no.
You didn't miss the team.
No, no. You didn't miss it.
I said they played for the same team. Christy in the corner for three.
That's the first game actually missed. That's Christie for the team.
You see what I'm saying? That's what threw you off. Because you had duo, but you didn't have trio for the same team.
Just admit it, man. It's okay.
So, I'm going to put a button on this.
You were going to say the four bears that played in the league, right?
I asked you specifically
for the same team or franchise.
I mean, maybe we got the tape. Maybe you did.
We're not going to roll it.
So, remember that when one of your boys has something
and they use it.
Why do we put a button on things? Why is there a button put on it? I don't think we do. We put a bow on it.
Put a pin in it?
Is it a pin? So he said, but he did say, I'm going to put a button on this.
Maybe just a button. You put a bow when you're done with it.
You put a pin if you're not done yet. You got to go back to it.
A pin is, I want to continue. That's also when you send someone your location.
He meant bow.
So a pin is like a bookmark.
Putting a pin in it is something you come back to. Putting a bow on it is something that's finished.
But what happens when you put a button on it? He meant bow. Okay.
Close it?
But is there not a button put on it? There's not, it's just, he might have meant bow.
I don't know what he meant because they described no part of the game. I'm hoping that that was radio.
I think there were like nine three-pointers made while they were hard on TV.
To put a button on it comes from the theater world, where it means to add a final touch to a scene or provide closure, a sense of completion. It's been used since at least the 1930s.
I don't believe it. Okay, but that doesn't really explain.
Like, while I know what it means to put a button on something, and he did use it correctly. So on brand for Jeremy, with that correction.
Well, it was a correction. He was trying to add, but all he did was explain something I already knew.
I want to know why
the button was put on it. So is the button the last thing that gets put on a costume?
Is it the final. I'm on it.
Yeah, I just was curious about that. Thank you.
I appreciate you moving us off of that. We got a wrap.
We got a wrap, Dan. We got to wrap.
We were going to stay on that sound longer than they bickered.
We got to wrap, Tony. We got a wrap.
What the hell did I do? I am going to. We have to wrap.
I want you guys.
I want you guys to get for me, okay,
everyone involved with marketing at Red Bear and Pizza so that I can have a conversation with them after the show to explain to me how it is that they thought that that was the way to handle it.
How do you think that's right?
We have to wrap. It's a live show.
Let me just go on the intercom here and tell someone named tony which we learned was spice it's time to wrap i hate bothers me i hate that
uh we are getting to the bucket here uh the dentech bucket i will remind everybody to put their mouthpieces in and i will remind everybody listening to this that if you have uh any headaches in the morning if you do not know that you're grinding your teeth while you sleep at night uh dentech is a way to alleviate that.
I know this because it was happening to me and I was able to get some headaches out of my life that I didn't even know were happening because I was grinding my teeth. That's right, Dan.
The bucket is presented by Dentech's Ultimate Fantasy Football Punishment. Learn more and sign your league up at dentech.com.
Jeremy, what did you pick there?
So I never thought that I would have a team playing the Cleveland Browns that I want to put back.
But this is the Titans, so I'm putting it back. We have to wrap it.
They are four and a half-point underdog at Cleveland. By the way,
one of the helmets or some of the helmets that you'd like, Carolina, the Giants, New England, and San Francisco are on a bye.
You pick the Colts, the Colts are
a two and a half point favorite at the Jags. Jags are first you, Dan.
The Jigs. Colts favorite on the road.
The money does not believe in the Jags because they continue to be underdogs in games at home, even though they've got an 8-4 record. You know, the Colts haven't won in Jacksonville since 2014.
I did not know that. You know who the quarterbacks were? Andrew Luck and Chad Henney.
I know Spear Or Didesh was there for it. We have to wrap.
New York Giants. That sounds bad.
I think they're on a bye.
Yeah, Daniel said they're on a bye. The Giants got a bye.
Congratulations. You just put that back.
No one is happy for you. Here we go.
Here we go. Let's see what I got here.
I got the Dallas Cowboys tonight in a game where there was
a
live or die game on Thursday night football. It's a do or die game.
I don't know. They are a three and a half point dog against Detroit.
Look at their schedule, by the way.
This is their last hard game, and furthermore, they have the potential to win out and not make the playoffs.
Yeah, the thing is, if Detroit loses, I think they're on a similar path where they're out of the playoffs, too. So it's like, can Dallas win and maybe get some help to go to the playoffs?
Or is Detroit going to lose and get out of the playoffs? I'm going to put that one back.
Two higher stakes. A three and a half point dog.
Yeah, two highest stakes in that game. I got him again.
So does the matter.
We got to wrap. We gotta wrap.
I don't think that we're supposed to. This has happened to me a couple of times.
I think we're supposed to take that helmet out and keep it out.
I don't think that's supposed to be. That's why you put it back to that possibility.
We've only done this for 10 years. I got the Eagles.
They are
at
the Chargers, and they're a three and a half point favorite at the Chargers. Justin Herbert got surgery on his non-throwing hand.
He's going to fight on the Eagles right now.
Why are you doing this Steph Curry mouth guard? I don't know why I did that shit in your mouth. Packers.
The Packers are
big game against the Bears, Dan. Oh, that is a big game.
Okay, bigger favorite. I'll take it.
So the Packers and the Bears play a meaningful game. Man, it's been a long time
since both of these teams were good at the same time.
Six and a half points are a big line. Maybe since Smoke and Jack.
So the Bears are. And the Cardinals.
I don't even want to look. I'm throwing that shit back.
Okay, you're not looking even. And the Cardinals are at home against the Rams, and they're an eight and a half points.
I got the Rams. And the Rams, that's much better.
Remember that Caleb Haney playoff game?
I do not remember that.
Packers Bears. Caleb Haney came in.
The Titans, I know I don't want that.
At the Browns.
The Panthers have a bye. Yeah,
they're playing good ball, too, Dan. Their season is over.
I've been saying that since they beat the Dolphins. They beat the Dolphins, and I proclaimed their season over.
And the Carolina Panthers are now seven and six. They have a chance to win the division.
That's the only way to do it, right? They're not going to get into the playoffs.
The disparity between the AFC and the NFC is something to behold. The 49ers are what right now at 9-4? They are a five-seed or a six-seed?
Where are they?
They're third in their own division. Holidays, fun.
Holidays as a dad? Tough. Travel, gifts, matching pajamas.
Don't get me started on matching pajamas. It's hot in Miami.
My wife says, why don't you want to do this with us? My daughter's crying.
Anyways, school parties, hosting a family. Next thing I know, I basically put Christmas on my credit card and have no idea what I spent where.
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Don Lebatard. No one else here is willing to do a Trump or a Biden.
That's not true, Dan.
Okay, Tony, you can catch it. I have a thousand impersonations.
That's not bad, man.
Finally. Terrible.
Pretty good.
Stugats. Yours is terrible.
You just got to get a little redder. A little pinker.
You're right there, man.
Yours is not. You're Biden.
What do you mean? Oh, his is good. That's actually not bad.
That's not terrible. That's not terrible.
We got to come together.
A little Southern
George Bush in that one. This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugats.
The 49ers are 9-4. They have done what they always do, no matter how injured they are.
They're the seventh seed. They're hanging on.
Okay, so they're the seventh seed at nine and four, while the Bengals at four and eight have a chance to get in the playoffs in the AFC if they win their division.
The only way for Carolina actually make the playoffs, and the reason I keep saying their season is over, is because that team does not have a legitimate chance to do anything if they get into the playoffs.
No team from that division does, including the Bucs.
But why?
Where are we on the idea of the Carolina Panthers chasing down the Bucs? I see a lot of people on television these days looking at schedules. The Colts schedule is an apocalypse the rest of the way.
They've got too many difficult games. Panthers beat the Rams last week.
The best team in football. They beat the best team in football last week.
All right, look. Yes, they did.
And they've played well at home, and they beat the Falcons 30-0 at home.
They beat the Rams, though, because the Rams had three turnovers, and that's not a team that ever turns the ball over.
You hadn't had Matthew Stafford throw an interception in 10 weeks. So no credit to them for forcing them to look like that.
They forced turnovers. I believe that turnovers are largely lucky.
There are some instances.
For example, the Jets have been bad this year, at least in part, because before last week, I think they'd caused one turnover. But
I don't actually think the causing of turnovers is an ability.
You go ahead and look at, for example, go ahead and help me this year with the randomness of football turnovers, given that I thought that the Jets and the Steelers were going to have good defenses this year because they had good defenses last year.
But I don't actually believe that unless you have a pass rush, like unless you have what they have in Denver, I don't believe that turnovers are a recreatable thing.
For example, that Chiefs Dallas game,
the Chiefs Chiefs-Dallas game that got decided with the Cowboys winning, you tell me whether you think the turnover, the fumble at the end of the game, that the Cowboys did not actually lose.
You think that that's an ability? What Turpin did there? Well,
Carolina's top 10 in turnovers, but yes, I think that you force turnovers. I think you prepare.
for weeks on end for an opponent. You see something in film and you execute a game plan.
I do think, yeah, there's sometimes a ball slips out of a hand, but that's not what happened against the L.A. Rams.
They forced those turnovers. They played really well.
Or you're playing against that lamb, man. You know about that lamb, man? Yo, stop asking me if I know about that lamb, man.
So let's examine this for a second because I do believe there is a large element of luck with forced turnovers everywhere except where it regards pass rush.
Because if you have pass rush that you can get, that is a disruption that
is something that can be forced upon the other team. It can also make your secondary a great deal better because if you have pass rush, we all know what that is.
But I am not that impressed with Carolina's pass rush. They were good against the Rams.
I thought Stafford had a bad game. And I don't think that Carolina forced that upon him.
And the Rams still scored 28 points in the game. The thing is about NFL, like, it's a weird game.
The ball is weird. Weird things happen.
It was just one of those games for the Rams, like, things didn't click and they had all their pieces there and it just didn't happen. I mean, it is what it is.
You're kind of in a roundabout way talking about what's happening with a college football playoff.
You're just projecting assumptions and macro data points when they played a game on the field and their pass rush was effective and they forced turnovers in that game.
And that's why we have competitive athletics. They also won at Green Bay.
So when you talk about like only being good at home, they did win on the road at a team that's going to be pretty high up in the playoffs.
And the thing that you bank on if you're the Panthers is the same thing that you're banking on actually if you're the bears which is we have not one but two different running backs we can go to the reason they beat the rams is because they ran the ball what they ran the ball 40 times five times with bryce young but 17 carries for chuba hubbard 18 carries for rico dowdell and when you can control the possessions that way and not turn the ball over you have a chance to turn out on the other side of the turnover market on the other side of the coin though they lost the bills 40 to 9 and they lost the patriots 42 13.
where are you in the hierarchy of are you a good team, are you a bad team?
If you create turnovers and you can run the ball, okay, you're a little bit better, but then when you have a team that plays really good offense, you got to suck. They're an execution team, and
they're lining up against these teams with a talent disparity. And yes, it's about limiting the opponent's possessions because the more possessions they get, the more likely they are to score points.
So you try to control the game and you stick to a game plan. Again, this is why we play the games.
They have a couple of games against the Bucs in the last five games that will end up deciding that division.
But I do think when we talk about the analysis around some of this, I'd like to explore this with you guys, okay?
Small samples, right? 13 games played, you're seven and six. We all know that all the football games are closed.
Go look at Arizona's schedule and how many games they've lost by one, two, three, or four points. Just go look at Arizona.
And if you think one score winning is an ability, you explain to me why the Chiefs were great at it last year and are terrible at it this year when we all know that the Chiefs are great.
We've seen over the last few years they are consistently great so i believe that part of the problem that happens with football analysis is you get small samples you get a whole lot of randomness and you get what i'm talking about with forced turnovers which are not recreatable like i don't think if a team causes 16 turnovers this year returns all its starters on defense next year that they then can create 16 turnovers again next year it was dallas a couple years ago where they had this incredible defense and had like 30 different turnovers throughout the season the next year they returned basically all of their starters except maybe a couple, and then were a laughingstock defense.
Cardinals have lost seven games by four points or less.
I don't disagree with what Dan is saying about one-score games and them being a trade. But if you look at the teams that they've lost one-score games to, they're all excellent teams.
And late-game execution usually comes down to who can execute better, who's more talented.
And if you compare that to last year, the problem why everyone was saying, look out for these Cheese, they might be inflated, is they were doing those one-score games and getting those dubs against teams that were inferior to them.
This year, not the case. You're right in a way, but when you say late game execution matters, there's no team in the sport that I trust more with late game execution right now than the Rams.
Than the Rams. And what happened at the end of that game is, oh, look, Stafford's fumbling because he didn't see that coming
from the blind side. And that never happens to them.
Yeah, it's a great sport. It's also a random sport.
Yeah, there's some randomness to it. We've talked about how the ball isn't round.
Like, sometimes there is randomness.
Sometimes there's a bad call, but there's also days and weeks and months of preparation for an opponent on how do you strategize to stop somebody. It's awesome.
It is awesome, and you can increase some probabilities, but turnovers are super random.
And if you don't think that defense is recreatable from one year to the next, if you return all your starters, I don't know how you would think that turnovers are recreatable from one year to the next when you need guys to fumble.
Yet, like,
you need to punch the ball correctly in order to get a fumble. You can prepare, you can try, but you are ignoring that the other team is also preparing to not fumble.
Forced turnovers,
historically, not something that carries over year after year. Teams can get hot.
There is randomness at play, but I'm not in the headquarters of the Carolina Panthers, but I'd imagine.
The majority of those forced turnovers were the byproduct of preparation and execution.
So you say this, and I know we want to talk about preparation and execution, but Michael Jackson, the guy who had the pick six, is also the guy who allowed the Puka Nakua catch.
How do you prepare for that Puka Nakua catch? You can't.
But
how do you prepare for, I'm going to throw it at Puka's right wrist and he's going to catch it with the back of his right wrist? Like,
what are you preparing for? I mean,
he executed. It's just Puka executed better.
I mean, it was great. Great D, Better O, Dan.
You know that saying? Great D, Better O.
Yes, I know that saying, but I am simply maintaining that I don't believe that in many instances that turnovers are a thing that you can prepare for and execute unless you're playing against Max Brossmer or Bromer or whatever his name is.
Brosmer, whatever his name is. Whatever his name is.
May we never speak it again.
So Seattle prepared for Brossmer panicking, getting caught by the arm, and simply flipping it straight to a Seattle Seahawk.
No, but they prepared for a first-start quarterback and, hey, let's throw hell
at him and see how he reacts. And that's how he reacted.
Poorly. Not a good reaction.
You're dead set on believing that there is some outfit out there that can create a great many fumbles.
Outside of pass rush. Outside of pass rush, which is quarterback strip sacks and all that stuff where you're just getting to the quarterback, you believe there's another scenario where.
You're not going to discount it as all random. No, I think that there are teams that are coached this.
I'm not discounting it as all random, but I think there's a lot of random in it.
You have to wrap Tawny.