10 Summer NFL Stories That Have Our Attention!

welcome to the ringer nfl show i'm your host shiel kapadia there's training camp there's pre-season there's so much going on around the nfl but it's hard to keep up with all of it so you know what i did as a public service i picked out 10 storylines that have my attention and we're going to talk about those with our friend billy gill from the ringer we play a little game we jump from topic to topic but we cover a lot of stuff including tony romo including the state of the cleveland browns including what's going on with the raiders and kurt cousins and max crosby and fernando mendoza we go all over the place it is a very fun conversation so let's take a break we'll come right back with billy gill this episode of the ringer nfl show is presented by orgain orgain creatine helps improve muscle size strength and power when combined with a regular weight loss program exercise and weight training routine plus it's certified with informed choice which means it's tested for prohibited substances in sports upgrade your performance with orgain creatine available at amazon costco walmart and whole foods these statements have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration this product is not intended to diagnose treat cure or prevent any disease this episode is brought to you by google chrome you think you know a browser but gemini and chrome it's new it can help you with practically anything on the web like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks gemini and chrome is here for it ready to make anything online make sense there's no place like chrome check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college that's why she shops at bj's wholesale club saving up to 25 off grocery store prices beef jerky microwave meals laundry pods even they can't screw up have you met my kids and with bj's gas she gets there for less they call me the road warrior this is your home road warrior mom home of the save join for just 20 at bj's.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months open soon limited time offer new members only bj's home of the save you all right we are back here on the ringer nfl show joined by my friend from the ringer billy gill billy it's been a while my friend hey shiel how are you happy uh fall i guess what are we buying now is it fall yet it's still the latter part of summer yeah no not fall but there are pre-season games going on this weekend so we're getting there we're getting close to you know hoodie season and pumpkin spice season and all that stuff but summer's not over yet we still have august and you know what august means billy we're getting close to you know hoody season and we got wall-to-wall training camp coverage nfl coverage everywhere i look there's a new story and i didn't want to make you have to read about like every single thing that's happening oh in camp so here's what i did i picked out 10 storylines okay that may or may not matter i mean you might you might think some of these are stupid but they have my attention at least i thought they would be fun to talk about and so here's the exercise it's very simple i numbered them one through ten okay i didn't tell you what headlines what number your gonna pick a number we're gonna go to that topic we're gonna discuss it and then we're gonna move on to the next one what do you think we can follow those instructions right well i i think so it seems simple enough but like i i can't look hands up i get distracted sometimes and i try to derail not intentionally it just happens naturally but i promise you i will try to be on my best behavior today i will stick to the topic at hand i will try not to veer off and get distracted by other things happening i won't make small talk with you we'll just get straight down to business because i could ask you like i thought i saw pictures of you at training camp for the eagles last week out there with the shores taking things in firsthand doing some reporting possibly boots on the ground i was gonna ask you how that went it's gonna ask you how summer's going you mentioned pumpkin spice lattes i was gonna ask you if you're a pumpkin guy if you kind of dabble with any pumpkin beverages as the season goes on but we're not going to do that straight to the point today well nobody wants that you know nobody wants that i know nobody wants that so we will veer i have to do that right now i'm gonna ask you how summer's going you mentioned pumpkin spice lattes i have a feeling we'll veer off topic for the record i do like pumpkin flavored things really and i and i was at eagles training camp for a couple days so there you go see i already we already covered both those things and summer's going great so there we go do you do just like pumpkin or do you indulge in other seasonal drinks as well well i don't i wouldn't say the pumpkin drink is my favorite but like a pumpkin bread a pumpkin muffin you know i do like those things coffee i generally am just sticking to black coffee uh or iced black coffee really too i'll do an you know an oat milk latte from time to time if i'm feeling a little dangerous and as the calendar rolls on do you get into like the peppermints and all of those too or no no not for me i'm not gonna ask you about that now because we need something to talk about in november and december yeah and i don't want to run out of topic so when's your birthday sheil february groundhog's day is it actually groundhog's day it is there you go really was that was that something that you enjoyed or didn't like as you grew up it's fine it's not just like you know oh shit did you see your shadow like it gets old a little bit but you know what we power through billy for 43 years yeah i'm telling you my age we have power through the groundhog's day jokes and here we are ready to talk nfl all right give me a number one through ten what do you got what's your favorite number i you know i like three because alan iverson was like my favorite player so yeah that was always okay up there for me but you don't have to pick that let's go with six double your favorite number okay dr j that one works i don't know as well all right number six billy okay so we're going with you know i feel like every nfl podcaster should be sending mike sandow something oh a gift maybe a gift card for a pumpkin spice latte maybe just a thank you no why you know whatever because mike sandow of the athletic my friend mike sandow does the quarterback tiers and has been doing them for a very long time where he pulls 50 coaches and execs and he lays out exactly who these people are what their roles are in the nfl and he does tiers and he ranks them and every nfl podcast every tv show everyone gets content out of this great idea by mike sandow billy so have you did you check out mike sandow's quarterback tiers on the athletic okay i will tell you this i saw that it was out there i perused a little bit i didn't do deep dives i didn't do like great studies a lot of information i saw that he had a panel of people that he went and that's how this works out i think he asked what like 50 people 50 for his panel and it's who is it that's down you're not on the panel right you're just his friend i don't know that i've ever been on the panel have you ever been on a panel well that's probably not true but you know i would like to be asked to be on more panels i have certain things that i would like to do that i haven't yet and i'm thinking some of them as i get older i'm not going to right so for example a panel of any kind i would love to be part of a panel i don't even need my name out there just me knowing i'm part of the panel would be fine so like if it's an anonymous panel of whatever good enough for me i'll do that maybe like voters also like for like the heisman yeah i've never got to vote on anything either yeah i'd love i mean in the elections right but aside from that i would like sports voting privileges to be perfectly honest with you like honestly i would probably treasure that more than my civic duty just because and this sounds bad and privileged obviously but that was something that i was born with so i didn't have to earn it you know what i mean as bad as that sounds so and i'll probably have to apologize for that because it may seem insensitive but i'd like to earn the right to vote for like post-season award just like you know what else i've always wanted to be part of which i think it's too late now just because i'm getting older um and i'll say my age i'm 39 you said you're 43 before i don't care i'll say i think i think the two of us are probably too old for like the up-and-comers list that like the media sites will put out at some point i can't make a 40 under 40 billy this is my last year this is your year it's not looking good i don't think 40 under 40 is going to happen for me anywhere and you know once you have 40 i don't think you can hit like the awful announcing up-and-comers people to watch this or something there's no 50 under 50 no it's done just we look at us two unaccomplished guys well i disagree because this is going to be such a great podcast and you're you're going to kill it in this question specifically okay i think it's going to start the rise and the campaign for billy gill 40 under 40 so here's what i want to do billy you peruse the list i went through the list and some people might want to argue the top 10 who's the goat all that i went to the bottom and i looked at not all the way at the bottom i don't want to give any hints away but i looked for the meanest things that the exec said about quarterbacks and so we're going to do a little game i'm going to read you a quote about something mean that an exec said about a quarterback and you're going to try to guess the quarterback i like this game yes now for those playing along at home it's all quarterbacks who played last year so there's no rookies involved in this and you might ask well is it all starters it was all guys who at least started games last season or could start games this season that's the criteria if you're trying to narrow it down here okay so the first one i'd sleep like a baby if i got to play him every week one defensive coordinator said very mean i'd sleep like a baby if i got to play If I got to play him every week, Billy, who do you think you'd say? They're a quarterback where you say, huh, I bet sub-defensive coordinator said that about this guy. Well, you know, as you mentioned, it's not going to be any of the top quarterbacks. This is the bottom of the list. Where it gets tricky is that they started last year. They have a chance to start this year because then, I mean, Tua could be in play. He started last year. I saw that he's starting for the Falcons this preseason game this week after they had kind of like a mess at the quarterback situation where everyone was injured, released, or recently signed. They had a Division II guy that was going out there for a little bit, was going to be their starter. It could be a, oh, you know who I'm going to guess just because I want to feel, I don't want to drag this on too long. You know who I'm going to guess just because I like to say his name? Tyler Shuck. Tyler Shuck. All right, good guess there, Billy. It is not Tyler Shuck. It is Shador Sanders. Oh, no. I don't want to give anything away, so we don't have to get into a big Shador conversation right now because we might be talking a little Browns later in the podcast. All right, that was the first one. Yeah, I think. All right, so the next one here. Wow. So Shador's now off the board. We're not going to go with multiple answers. Shador's off the board. I'm not going to do the same guy twice. No. All right, next guy. Football looks hard for him, an offensive coach said. Football looks hard for him. Is there a quarterback where you say, ah, I could see a coach saying, all right, yeah, football actually. Does look kind of hard for this guy. I got to be honest with you. I think that's more insulting than the last one was. The last one was I wouldn't lose sleep over facing him. Right. And this one is football looks hard for him. That seems a lot meaner. I think this is the meanest one. I think you're right. Even the other ones I'm going to read. I think that is a mean thing to say to someone who's made it to the NFL. You know, football looks hard for him. Tyler Shuck is still on the board, but we're not going to guess him every time. Let's see. I don't think it's Jackson Dart. He's. He's a rookie, but he had a good season last year. It's kind of scanning. I'm going through a list of divisions. It's probably no one in the AFC East because Gino's done good enough that they wouldn't say that. Could it be Bryce Young? Not Bryce Young. But good guess. J.J. McCarthy. Oh, I looked right past him. How did that happen? You said NFC North. Now you did say every division. But and we might be talking about J.J. McCarthy later in the pot. So were these in a nice tease to set up? The rest of the show here, I think, I think, I think that was a trick question. I think that was a trick question because I was looking at present starters and there may have been already an assignment of a starter on that team and he was not on the list I was looking at. So I'm going to, you know, it's still unfortunate for JJ McCarthy. I feel bad for him. And it was an offensive coach. I guess it's possible. This was Kevin O'Connell who said football looks hard for him, but I don't know who he hates him. Right? I think we'll get into it. Yeah. It doesn't seem like he's his biggest fan. All right. Last one here, Billy. Okay. For this one. Mm hmm. He is what he is physically. He looks like a high school kid out there. Sheesh. Somebody said about this quarterback, he is what he is physically. What do you think? This one last time, I feel like you went through every division. This one that you just spent, bam, first name comes to mind. I think the problem is the first thing that comes to mind right off the top. I think it's too good to be on this list, which is Jaden Daniels because he's a smaller guy. Also possibly a high schooler, but a freaky athletic high schooler, Kyler Murray, but just the JJ. So it's not going to be Kyler, I would think, or I'm overthinking this and then there's also, if I don't want to double guess, Bryce is there too. Could this one be Bryce? Cause I feel like Bryce, even though he had a decent season last year, he's still ripe for being criticized. Yeah. Two is also a small guy, but I think that people are just leaving him alone. They kind of know two is done in this situation. All right, we need an answer. I'm going to say Jaden, even though he's too good because I just guessed Bryce in the last one, but it's down to those two for me. I'm going to say Jaden Daniels. Bryce Young. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. I just slammed my pen on the floor. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, you were close to it. Bryce Young. All right. So those were some of the meaner things that voters said. And Mike Sandoz QB tears column on The Athletic, which everyone can check out. Can I ask you a question? Let's say you were on this panel, right? And we're going to give you a cloak of anonymity. So no one's going to know that you were to say this. Yeah. Who would be the person that you would put on the bottom of the list of Shields tears? The worst quarterback in the NFL? Yeah. If you were ranking them. Oh, man, that's tough. I think. JJ McCarthy would probably, you know, JJ McCarthy would be down there. Okay. Shador Sanders. Oh. Would be down there. I can tell you, you know, who would have been, I would have had the quote because he talks to 50 people. So not everyone gets their quote in there. I think I would have gotten a quote in on Daniel Jones or I would have, where I would have been like, seems like a nice guy. He played eight good games and those bozos in Indy paid him $50 million coming off an Achilles. I, you know, I would love to have the job security. So I would have some spicy like that where it'd be like, Whoa, someone's coming after Chris Bally and the Indianapolis Colts. I feel like land the plane, Billy, but it would have been meaner. I feel, I was going to say, I feel like on the level of like hot sauces, like that was still like somewhere to the mild to medium. And I'm wondering, and this is a good thing for you. I'm wondering if you're capable even under a cloak of anonymity to actually be mean and talk badly about someone. Oh yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. Okay. Say something bad about Deshaun Watson. No, don't do that. We'll move on. I mean, that would be an easy, I think that would be an easy one, Billy, but you didn't want to get in trouble earlier for the voting thing. I don't want to get in trouble here. So I suggest we just move on to the next number. Let's do your favorite number. Three. Three. Oh, wow. It's like you have a copy of my Google doc, which you don't, but this is like you did Billy, because this is the newsiest item I think on the list and it's a great jumping-off point. You're going to get the last conversation because here's the headline Vikings named Kyler Murray starting QB over JJ McCarthy. This is from Alec Lewis of the athletic reporting that Kevin O'Connell met with both quarterbacks, announced his decision. Kyler Murray spoke to the media. He's going to be the starter, which I got to say, this feels very early to call a quarterback competition. If you're a team, I feel like it was almost like Kevin O'Connell is like, I don't want to be dealing with this. I don't want to be dealing with this anymore. In case Kyler Murray has like three bad days of practice and JJ McCarthy has a couple of good passes. And then people are writing, Hey, there's a real close quarterback competition. He's like, I just want to end this now so we can move on. But what was your take on Kyler Murray being named the starter in Minnesota? I think it's similar to yours, right? Which is kind of like, why now? Why are we doing this so early? Unless this was always what he wanted. Right? Like this almost seems like this is. An inside job. And we talked about it in the last topic. It seems like Kevin O'Connell is not the biggest JJ McCarthy fan. And we kind of, you know, if you go back to like last season, we saw there was somewhat of a power struggle between him and the former GM Kwesi Adolfo Mensah. And he was a very big, like JJ McCarthy guy, honestly, to the very end. And it's probably what got him fired that along with, I guess, taking paternity or whatever that story was, which was weird that he disappeared. And he loved his family. He loved his family too much. And like, this guy doesn't care enough about football. He's got to get out of here. But yeah, this is a weird thing. His reputation as of late for the past couple of seasons has been, I can make something out of a mid-level veteran quarterback and then I can get them the big contract and then I'll bring in another mid-level, you know, in terms of like salary quarterback and I can always make it work with them. He did it with Kirk Cousins a couple of years ago. Kirk Cousins then goes on and he signs a massive four year, like $180 million contract or something like that. Right. Then he does it with Sam Darnold and Sam Darnold. Everybody was like, Whoa, what's going on here? And then we got into that power struggle where it was time for Sam Darnold to get paid. And the former GM said, you know what? I would rather kind of do this on the cheap. And I think there's value in the young quarterbacks. Like let's do that. I think for both those guys, Billy, I would say Kevin O'Connell probably wanted to keep Kirk Cousins and then probably wanted to keep Sam Darnold and wasn't able to do either. Or at least it feels like that's the messaging he's getting out there. You know? It feels like to me. Wow. That's a good job by him. Cause then he's like never in the wrong, especially with Sam Darnold. Right. Cause Sam Darnold, I think what ended up obviously doing the GM in is like, well, he won the super bowl. So you were totally wrong about that. And JJ McCarthy was a disaster. So I feel like I hope that they do find the quarterback. I don't think that it's Kyler Murray longterm, right. But Kyler Murray seems to kind of be. This blueprint. Right. Which is bringing a proven guy. That's good enough in the league. He's not going to be very expensive. The reason he's not expensive is because the Cardinals basically told him like, get outta here. So the Vikings are only gonna pay him like one point something million dollars for the year. But again, he's a free agent after this season. And if I believe that he has something in his contract where he can't get, uh, he can't get tagged. So he's going to be a free agent no matter what. And if he does do what he's hoping to do and rebuild his career. The Vikings again, are unwilling to give him the money. Now there's different leadership in place. So maybe they will give them the money if it works out, but this could be a situation. where now we're running into the J.J. McCarthy question again next year, right? Is do we give him another chance? And the crazy thing about J.J. McCarthy, I was looking this up. J.J. McCarthy's been in the league. He was drafted in 2024. He had a season-ending injury. He hasn't really played all the many games, right? Like they brought him in and he hasn't really shown himself all that much. But J.J. McCarthy is still younger than three quarterbacks who were drafted in this year's draft alone. He's younger than Ty Simpson. He's younger than Carson Beck. And he's younger than your guy, Cole Payton, who was drafted by the Eagles, like a fifth rounder or whatever. So that one, we won't pay that much attention to. I was very curious about who my guy was going to be there. Yeah, Cole Payton. You're not a big Cole Payton guy in North Dakota State. It's fine. Go ahead. Yeah, nice lefty. I like a lefty. Well, I just, it's a weird situation because of NIL and the way that college sports are going now, right? Where J.J. wins a national championship. He was brought in. I think there was questions by everyone as to whether or not he would actually be like an NFL caliber starting quarterback. And now after basically one year, because he missed his first year, he's been totally written off. Well, there's people entering the league who are still older than him, but we've kind of just decided like J.J. doesn't have it. And maybe that's fair and maybe it's not. Yeah, we'll see if he remains with the Vikings or gets traded. But I think to your point about KOC maybe being done with J.J. McCarthy, this was in that athletic article. It said, it is well known around the league, J.J. McCarthy's play in 2025, war on California, Evan O'Connell and the offensive staff. That as much as anything else contributed to months long projections of Kyler Murray as the starter. So I do think there's some politicking going on with KOC, some messaging going on because you even mentioned it. I think KOC, maybe his greatest strength is he's able to work with Brian Flores. That's really been, their defense has been good every year. That's really carried them. Even last year, they go nine and eight because their defense is really good. If you look at it statistically, their offense has never been top 10 with any of these quarterbacks, even when they were winning a lot of games with Kirk Cousins and Sam Darnold. And then KOC had that quote, I don't know if you remember this, a few years ago where he's like, quarterbacks don't fail organizations. Organizations fail quarterbacks. And everyone's like, oh baby, this guy knows ball. It's all about, do you put them in a good situation? And now it's like, well, okay, go prove it. So I'm putting KOC on fraud watch where I'm not doing anything. I'm not saying he's a fraud. Coach of the year, former coach of the year. I think it's potentially, he potentially could be a fraud. I want to see how this year plays out because I actually think Kyler Murray, he sets a floor, you know, he's, I'm not like, oh, I love Kyler Murray. He's great. You guys don't understand. He's underrated, but I'm kind of like, he gives you the floor of like the 20th best quarterback in the NFL, which actually could be enough given Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison and the offensive line and Brian Flores. Like if KOC, he is a good coach. I actually think this should work and they should at least be a playoff team this year. Can I give you a way too early juicy prediction or juicy thing to look out for? Let me get ready. First big prediction on the Ringer NFL show 2026. All right, what do you got? Hit me. Okay, this is unfortunate. Kyler Murray isn't going to be the long-term solution. He's either going to flop or he's going to sign elsewhere. Someone's going to be dumb. Someone's going to say, you know what? We're going to give him the thing. That's not the prediction. The prediction involves Kyler no longer being in the picture. Whether it's good or bad, I'm not entirely certain. I'm leaning more towards bad than good, but he's not going to be in the picture. But you know who might enter that picture? Strolling in next year, someone who's a quarterback that's proven, but last week news came out that he was maybe not too happy with the situation. I think KOC might find his guy in Baker Mayfield next year. I like that. Next offseason. I could see it. I like that. That's a good one. Baker Mayfield goes to KOC. I'm trying to remember if they crossed over at all with the Rams. Ah, they always cross past. And everybody knows everybody. I mean, come on. It's a small, small circle. They're all going to the same resorts in Cabo, golfing at the same places in Florida. Yeah, they know what they're doing. Okay, I like that. Billy calling a shot. Baker Mayfield, Minnesota Viking, 2027. Now, last thing on this story, Billy. Yes. This is a game. This is a game called Should We Get Him or Should We Leave Him Alone? Ooh, I like this game. How does it work? So I'm going to read you. There's a media insider who tweeted about J.J. McCarthy who apparently upset a lot of people. So I need you to tell me it's warranted. You can go get him or you can say everybody settle down. It's not that big of a deal. So this is Michigan alum Adam Schefter. Uh-oh. When he tweeted the news, he said, and this made it to awful announcing. That's how I saw it. Awful announcing was like, oh, he's serious. They're like, he's carrying water for J.J. McCarthy. So here's what he tweeted. J.J. McCarthy missed his entire rookie season due to injury and started just 10 games last year with Minnesota winning six of them. Now, the still only 23-year-old will be forced to be a backup. Do you have issue with that tweet, Billy? Or are you saying everybody just get offline, go touch grass, and let's not make a. I think that it was important when you said at the beginning, Michigan alum, because then we kind of got maybe your thoughts as to why he was tweeting that situation out there. I mean, I think in the grand scheme of things, it's not really a big deal. Like, who cares? Well, we can't say that, Billy, because in the grand scheme of things, nothing we talk about really matters. Well, that's true too, but we can't say that part out loud. That part we need to kind of keep to ourselves. I feel like Adam Schefter has his tweets, scrutinized in the sports world more than, like, necessarily so. You know what I mean? And, like, very, like, infrequently, is it actually an opinion, which this clearly was. For the most part, it's like, here's news. And this guy steps out and, like, here's an opinion. And everyone's like, get out of here. Shut up, man. You're just making excuses for J.J. McCarthy. Shiel, you want to know a fun fact before we move on? Please. One time, I was on a cruise with Adam Schefter's mom. It was, like, two years ago. I didn't know what was going on. I was in an elevator. I was wearing an ESPN LA hat that was, like, one of those things that they just kind of, like, give out, like, a swag-type thing. And I was going up. We forgot something in our room. We were at a, you know, at a pier, a dock, whatever. I had to run back in to go get my daughter's floaties. We had forgotten it. So I get in the elevator. I'm staying on, like, the fifth floor or something. So it's a very short ride, five floors up. And I'm wearing this ESPN hat. And this lovely woman says to me, oh, do you. Like, do you work at ESPN? Which is, like, a weird thing to ask because ESPN's a big brand. And I was, like, well, I used to, you know. I got this hat, whatever. She's, like, oh, my son works at ESPN. Maybe you know him. And I was, like, oh, like, you know, I wasn't in Bristol that much, you know. Like, I crossed paths, like. You thought some production assistant or something. Yes, because she said something. She's, like, he's in the football department. I was, like, oh, like, okay, like, who's, like, whatever. She's, like, his name's Adam. I'm, like, oh, which Adam? I don't know if I crossed. Like, Adam Schefter. I'm, like, you're Adam Schefter's mom? Like, why did you set this up this way? And then as she says, Adam Schefter's mom, the door opens, she's, like, okay, I gotta go, like, to bingo or whatever. She's, like, okay, I gotta go. And I was, like, wait, what just happened in my life right now? So, sure enough, Adam Schefter's mom confirmed with him she was on a cruise that weekend. She seems lovely. She was great. And so everyone leave him alone, I think, is our conclusion there. All right, let's take a break. We come back. We got through two of these. Now, do we have to pick up the pace a little bit? Maybe. But you know what? We're having such a good time that we'll see. So let's take a break. We'll come back on the Ringer NFL Show. All the ways to bet on the season before it even begins. Get your football futures bets in today on FanDuel. Visit fanduel.com slash Ringer NFL to get started. 21 plus select states or 18 plus DC or Wyoming. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini, and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration blog, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses, setup required, compatibility and availability varies 18 plus. All right, we are back here with Billy Gell. I think we've gotten through two of these, Billy, at the first break here. So we might have to pick up the pace. Hyper focus here. We have it. We haven't talked in a while. We have a lot of catching up to do, so it's not our fault. If we go a little longer, we go a little longer. What's the next number? All right, number, we've done three and six. Let's do five. Five, okay. We're scrolling down. No more true stories, Shiel. Listen, if you got a good one, I want to hear it, okay? Okay. This is, now this is an interesting one. I actually, I'm really curious to hear your take on this because the headline is, bills respond to criticism over poor sightlines new Highmark Stadium. This is from the athletic, the Bills unveiled their $2.2 billion stadium, which as the article points out, $850 million of taxpayer money, Billy, for this stadium. They have an open practice for the Bills. And all of a sudden, people are posting on social media, my sight lines are blocked by railings or cable wires or stair landings. They're saying, I was promised these views when I signed up for season tickets and got my personal seat license. They showed me a picture of what my view was going to be like. Then I get to the stadium. It looks like something different. Then people are complaining about the scoreboards. They're saying, this is poor audio that's being piped in here. They're saying, I paid for seats that are under a canopy. And guess what? It's pouring during this practice and they're getting drenched. And so there's all these complaints about what's happening at the stadium. Bills respond to it in the media. And they're like, oh, that was less than 1% of the stadium. And they're like, oh, that was less than 1% of the people who had complaints. And actually, everything went great and we'll address any issues that are not great. So what do you think here? This is a social media story where the word was spreading and good job by the reporters trying to follow up on it. What do you think? I feel like this happens every time they open new stadiums, but I totally get the outrage if you have to buy a PSL for your seat and then all of a sudden, this is not what I was told. And I'm a. I'm assuming that what they did because obviously all that stuff is sold before the stadium and I doubt that they're struggling to sell those seats in this new stadium. So they probably had one of those online virtual this is what your seat view would look like. And I would imagine that whoever was coming up with that program didn't have any obstructed view seating. Everything was perfect. Wow, this seat's supposed to be in an end zone, but here it looks like I'm on the 50-yard line. I'm like, yeah, it's crazy. Every seat looks like you're on the 50-yard line. That's just how things are at the new Highmark Stadium. It was one practice, right? I guess these things are figured out. You can't move railings, though. So that situation probably won't be resolved. I don't know how you fix the railing situation or if there's an overhang or a column. Those things are pretty solid and are not going to be moving. So I don't know if you like. What do you do? You move their seat? Do you credit them in some way? I don't think that the Bills mafia also would be like, okay, you know what? I'm just going to choose not to go. In fact, as we're talking this out, I got to tell you something. I don't like this one bit from Bills mafia. Bills mafia is supposed to be this rough and rugged group. They jump through tables. They pour ketchup and mustard all over themselves. They light things on fire. What are these complaints about it was raining on me under a canopy? I thought that this is a bunch that took pride in being out in blizzards without shirts on and they were so rugged and tough and now rain is bothering them. I'm like, I don't like this shield. The scoreboard like, okay, fine. The column, I feel like, you know what? Let's make this part of our character. Did you see that in that stadium? They built like fake broken tables as part of like the aesthetic. So they have mock like tables that are broken because they jumped through broken tables built into parts of the stadium. So it looks like it, but it's just like art installations. That's the Bills mafia that we need to be hearing from. Not the ones that are complaining about. About the fact that I wasn't under a canopy. Tough luck. Tough luck that you're not under a canopy. This is not the Bills way. What are they complaining about, Shield? I've turned on this. I was on their side. Also, I would say $850 million of public money seems like a lot, but in like modern sports, public stadium financing deals, like sounds like that's only like a third of it, which seems like that's a big contribution from the team, right? All right. So Billy just, you know, sticking up for the man, you know, billionaires. That's not fair. You should pay for their stadiums. No, not fair. Who cares if you can't see? No. They're building, you know, they're building a stadium for you. You should suck it up. No. While they're sitting on their thrones. I don't like how you're presenting this. People are feeding them grapes. And you know what? That's your problem because we live in a capitalistic society and you're not working hard enough to make enough money to be those owners. And you know what? That's on you. That's not on them. It's, listen, I didn't think that was going to, I feel like I know him relatively well. Not exactly what I said. It's an interesting zag. I don't agree with that. I personally think that if you pay thousands of dollars and you funded the stadium and you show up and you can't see that you have a valid reason to, you know, speak up about it. But some people want people like you silenced and think, you know what? It's not their problem. So we don't have to agree on everything. Billy? It's okay. You're right, I guess. We're just not going to see eye to eye on this one. But I think, you know what? I will say this. Don't come around in the playoffs and start talking about this great home field advantage and how tough and rowdy this crowd is when we're complaining about rain. Please get out of here. What I actually think here is I agree with what you said initially, which is like, they just opened the stadium. There's probably going to be some unforeseen issues when you build a thing that big. Oh, oh, oh. Shield sliding with the man now. As long as they don't, now I don't like that they said, the thing about, oh, this was less than 1% of the people. It's like, who cares? If there's, you know, even if it was like three people, there's still three people who paid that much money. I will give them some patience. Let's wait. If it's week one of the regular season and these are still issues, then I'm going to come on here and really crush them. But I will give them a short amount of time to remedy the situation. I did see this scrolling through Twitter this week because I had seen that there had been complaints. And I saw that, I guess the head of whatever, whoever the spokesperson was that they were asking about this was basically like, there's 1.6 million square feet. Like, what are we going to do? He's like, listen, there's over 27,000 actionable items here. We're going to handle them one at a time. It's like 27,000 after one game? Like, how is that the case? That's way too many. Yeah. He's basically like, it's a big building. What do you want me to do about it? It's not like we're building a little tent on the front lawn. It's like, all right, but I think you probably need to respond a little better to that. A little better, yeah. I read the same quote and was like, all right, that seems like a weird way to attract people. All right, so we're going to keep our eye on this. We're not going to let them get away with this, Bills fans. If there's still issues when you go preseason games. Tweet at Shield. He's going to handle this for you. Tweet at me and then me and Billy will have a nice debate about it. I'll read it. I'll laugh about it. I'll say, ha, ha, ha. I better see you next time. Yeah, all right. What do you have? What's next here? Ooh, let's do number, all right, we've done three, five, and six. Man, we're flying now. Let's do number nine. Number nine, all right. We're scrolling down here to number nine. Oh, baby, this is, this is right down your alley, Billy. I hope you check this one out before the pot. This is a story in ESPN with the headline Inside Dan Quinn's Master Plan to Revive the Commander. So this is a summer storyline. Washington Commanders, Dan Quinn's on the hot seat. They're not, I feel like they're not a team that's getting a lot of buzz this summer. You know, no one's like, they're going to suck. No one's like, they're going to be good. They're just kind of in that middle team tier of NFL team where they're not getting a lot of NFL attention. So you know what Dan Quinn did, Billy? He looked at last year and he said, we got to be sharper. We need to be hungrier and we need to focus more on the detail. So he's doing all these. Did you see all the things he's doing? Yeah. This was a long article. What stood out to you? And then I can give you my cliff notes. I saw that he has decided to focus on team building and fun and like, let's not make things boring. So he's started implementing, like spelling bees and basketball shooting contests between players and coaches and table tennis and friendship quizzes, whatever that is. And he's doing trivia and he's having contests where they finish the songs. And to me, it's kind of like, Dan, I feel like you might be off your rocker, bud. I feel like we may be losing it here. And I feel like this is the approach we're taking. The writing might be on the wall. You got rid of your OC and your DC last year and you're like, I can't be stagnant. We need to make changes. So we're bringing an OC and a new DC and it's kind of like, that's great. But you also kind of got to get back to the NFC championship game situation and focus a little less on the spelling bees and the trivia of friendship quizzes and all of that stuff. You know, it's fun. I'm glad that he's reached this point in his life where like, you know, he's probably wearing Hawaiian shirts outside of work and stuff like that. But a little more focus on the X's and O's, you know, and less on the friendship. You know what? I think that like everything the commanders have done this off, this off season distracts from the fact that their roster isn't very good. You know, it's like the GM, I feel like, is just, Adam Peters is skating along and it's like Dan Quinn's just like, he's basically like, I have to try everything I can to save my job. I'm firing coordinators left and right. I'm hiring new guys who have never done the job before. We're playing ping pong. We're doing spelling bees. We got, they have this video leaderboard, Billy, in the facility, which it's like, all right, other teams have that. You know, you track stuff that happens on field, but it's not just stuff that happens on field. It tracks, you get points for stuff like preparation and engagement in the meeting rooms. Like, what is this? Seventh grade, where it's like, oh, all right, this guy gets a E for participation because he raised his hand in the meeting. So there's, you weren't joking. People might think you're joking about the friendship quizzes. The friendship quizzes is an actual thing where it was described in the article as two sets of two players must answer questions about how well they know each other, which I'll be honest, this type of story, if it's, It's like a team that's really good. and you think has its stuff together, you're like, oh, that's cool. You know, they're building a connection. When it's a team that kind of stunk last year and no one has high expectations for, you're sort of like, what in the world are they doing? Can I tell you what this has written all over it? This has first year Mike McDaniel head coach written all over it, where it's like, oh, it's this kooky guy and he's coming in and he's the fun coach with the pants and the sunglasses and the sneakers with the tags on it. And you're like, wow, he's so inventive. He sees things differently, which like Dan Quinn and Mike McDaniel look like on the opposite spectrum of like cool and like how they would like handle things, right? Like Dan Quinn is closer to like biker gang, I think, than like Mike McDaniel is. I agree with that. I got to see him like, you know, in the off season, he goes on his hog, his son. But like a nice guy in a biker gang. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like he's not dangerous. No, no, he's welcoming, but he has the leather vest. It has the name of the biker gang on it. Ed is a little bit red because he doesn't put the sunscreen on. He has the sunglasses sunburn around his eyes. But he's like a fun biker gang. But like he's part of it. He likes to go out on the weekend, ride his motorcycle. This is that where you're like, it was the same with McDaniel. He's like, wow, this guy's like, he's so fun, man. He's young. He has all these offensive, inventive ideas and all this stuff. And then like by year four, it's like, oh, he had absolutely no control of the team at the end, like whatsoever. Like players and captains were just picking and choosing when they wanted to participate. And then like, oh, he had absolutely no control of the team at the end, like whatsoever. He didn't show up at meetings. And like, this is like not exactly how you succeed. And I wonder now, like Dan Quinn, because in the article, it's kind of like, yeah, you know, in Atlanta, he didn't really like, you know, focus on these things. It almost felt like this is like Dan's thinking like, ah, this is towards the end of like my, you know, run here as like a head coach. Like, let's go out having fun. And it's like, but also you can go out by not getting fired because you're just doing these things that are not necessarily going to impact how your team is playing. Yeah, it just seems like a strange area to, now listen, it might not, I'm not saying he's spending his all day on this. It just feels like I look at their roster and I'm like, they were injured last year. Jaden Daniels was injured last year and there should be a better roster around him, you know, at this point in his career after what he did as a rookie and there's not. And so I would look more at the GM and be like, all right, you can play your games. And I like, I don't think their issue last year was that they weren't hungry enough and they weren't sharp enough. I was, it was like they injured, they were injured. And the players weren't good enough was really the issue. And we don't know if that's going to be fixed this year or not. The GM, I would imagine, is like on his way in. He's like going to target. He's like, oh, guess what? Guess what, Dan? I got you Parcheesi and I got you Yahtzee, whatever. And it's like, let, like, let me just like have this guy do all these weird games. So no one's paying attention to my faulty roster construction. 100%. Here, take a look. Oh, we got you. We got Cooties or whatever the game is called. Like, look at all these, the guys are going to have so much fun. Leadership book. That was like, oh, you know, you got to lighten up the mood. Now, I did want to ask you this. I'm putting you on the spot here because in the article, they did mention some of the words in the spelling competition. Yeah. And I'm going to give you one of them. You ready for this? Are you a good speller? I hope it's not the one I'm thinking. I was a better speller when I was a child than I am now where I don't have to actually spell things correctly because it just fixes it itself. All right. This was one of the words in the commander spelling competition. Don't do it. Miscellaneous. Really? Oh, okay, good. I thought you were going to go with et cetera. No, that one seemed weird. Yeah, I don't like that. You just do ETC period. Miscellaneous. Miscellaneous. Can you use it in a sentence? We are doing a podcast with a bunch of miscellaneous topics on the NFL. Can you, country of origin? Latin. Don't fact check that. I don't know if it's right or not. All right. I wrote down how I think it's spelled, but I'm probably going to be wrong. So miscellaneous. Ready? Yeah. M-I-S-C-E-L-L-A-N-E-O-U-S. Miscellaneous. Is that right? Let's go. All right. Wow. That's what I'm talking about. It's the three or four, it's the three vowels in a row that I'm like, do I get that order correct? Double L, single L. I take back. I take back everything I said about Dan Quinn. That was exhilarating. The juices are flowing. Look at us. I might pick the commanders to win the NFC. That was fantastic. All right, Billy. What do you got? Nice job out of you. Coming off the high of the spelling bee win right there. I feel like I can't be stopped now. Yeah. Ooh, let's go with number nine. Let's go with number eight. Number eight. Okay. Here's the headline. Here's the topic. Kirk Cousins, Max Crosby held out of practice following fight. This was in the athletic. So it's Kirk Cousins. They're at practice. Max Crosby is getting a little too close to Kirk Cousins on a couple of his dropbacks. We all know quarterbacks can't get hit during these practices and he deflects a couple passes. But according to the athletic, he might've kind of hit Cousins hand on one of them. And we've seen those injuries before, you know, defender hits quarterback's hand and all of a sudden it's a broken hand. It's a broken finger. So Kirk Cousins gets fired up about this. And it's kind of like, you know, John with him, they go at it and Clint Kubiak comes in and says, there's a new sheriff in town. You know, this is my team. I have rules. You guys violated them. And so guess what? You're both out of the next practice and really lays down the law right there. Your thoughts on Clint Kubiak asserting his sort of, alpha-ness here in his first year. I'm sure those two vets having to miss a practice really showed them and they were really probably upset that they couldn't participate in practice in the preseason. Is Max Crosby trying to get himself traded again? Like, is he just like, you know what? I wasn't happy with how that played out and then I was ready to go. I left. Then I, you know, they sent me back and I'm here again. Like, I don't really want to be here. Like, let me just act out until they move me again. It really, you know, as I was reading this, I'm like, it really is so stupid that he's still on their team. Like, they literally tried to trade him. He wanted to be traded. The trade fell through and then everyone's like, okay, he's not going to be traded now. What? There are other teams. Detroit, Chicago, Dallas. Can we make a call and get Max Crosby on a team that's going to win some games and is relevant here? So yeah, I'm with you there. And my favorite story about this, Billy, when I was covering the Chip Kelly Eagles back in the day, they had a cornerback by the name of Kerry Williams. Okay. He had played with the Ravens. He signs with the Eagles, gets a nice deal, cashed in. He doesn't show up to some, I think it was, you know, spring practices and reporters asked him like, why weren't you there? And he said he was picking out sconces with his wife, which I didn't know what a sconce was for a long time. It's like a light fixture thing. So he says that. So then they have these joint practices with the Patriots, right? And Bill Belichick's in town. It's really exciting. Chip Kelly, Bill Belichick. And both coaches are like, we have a rule. You know, they're being asked, all right, well, if there's fights, because there's often fights in these joint practices, what are you going to do? And they're like, anyone who fights gets thrown out of practice. I swear. Five minutes in, Kerry Williams just goes after a wide receiver, gets in a scuffle, gets kicked out of practice, doesn't have to practice. And I'm like, that was the most obvious thing I've ever seen. He did. Of course he didn't want to practice. He's been in the league for how many years? You think he wants to be out here? It's like so hot. He's actually got to try because it's the other team. And so, you know, Max Crosby seems like the kind of guy who just probably always might want to practice, but I'm sure he could still get a workout in. But yeah, I do think that happens with veteran players there. So can I introduce a new segment here? Yeah, of course. This is called I'm Just a Guy Asking Questions. Oh, okay. How does this one work? It's exactly what it sounds like. I'm just a guy asking questions. Is there any chance, Billy, that Clint Kubiak just wanted to see a little Fernando Mendoza with the first team? And so he's like, I can't actually just give him first team reps or all of a sudden it's a big story. It's on the front page of ESPN.com. Everyone's talking about, oh, they said they're going to not start throw Mendoza in right away. But now he's getting first team reps. So he's like, oh, this is kind of an easy way. And by the way, I don't have to worry about Max Crosby like obliterating him. So I can throw both those guys out of practice. Mendoza takes the first team reps. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think it's deeper than that? Where like he talked to Max Crosby. He's like, hey, why don't you go bump into Kirk a couple of times? And look, I know you don't want to be here. If it were up to me, I'd send you wherever you wanted to go, but I don't call the shots here. So I can't do that. Like, I'll give you the day off. Just kind of irritate Kirk a little bit. Two of you will be out. And then we'll see what this Fernando kid's all about. You know? Yeah. Is that possible? You think that's going on? Of course it's possible. Yeah, I like that. You're right. I think that that very well could be a part of it. So we'll see how it goes. I think Mendoza's going to play in the preseason this weekend. We'll see how that goes. But Clint Kubiak putting his foot down. All right. Let's take one more break here on the Ringer NFL show. We'll come back. We will get to the rest of the questions. I even might have one more game for Billy with one of these questions. We'll do all that when we. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practice. You can find practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration blog, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Check responses, setup required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. Hank joined BJ's Wholesale Club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football. Now, Coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices, 30 pounds of pasta, 3 cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. And that's just pregame. He knows teamwork, and BJ's knows savings. This is your home, Coach. Home of the Save. Join for just $20 at BJ's.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for 6 months. Open soon. Limited time offer, new members only. BJ's. Home of the Save. Come back. All right, back here on the Ringer NFL Show. Billy, you're keeping track. You're keeping track, right? I am. What numbers you picked? Okay, thank you. We've done 3, 5, 6, 8, and 9. Let's go with number 1. All right, number 1 on this list, Billy. Oh, I mean, this one's got some juice. CBS, colon, no timetable on Tony Romo's future after arrest. This is via ESPN.com. I would argue of all the topics we're talking about, this is the one that actually impacts the viewing experience for the rest of the show. The majority of our audience, right? Because they're going to be sitting down on a Sunday afternoon. Who's calling the game for CBS? So, the Cliff Notes version here, I think most people know, but just in case, Tony Romo arrested for operating while intoxicated in Milwaukee has been suspended indefinitely by CBS. J.J. Watt's going to be the number 1 guy with Jim Nance. Ross Tucker, congratulations to Ross Tucker, is going to be on the number 2 team with Ian Eagle. And now you have CBS Sports president. David Burson saying it's an evolving situation and we are still assessing. There is no timetable or final decision at this time. So, he's saying that on the record. Meanwhile, you have Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reporting that CBS would actually love to get out of the Tony Romo business. And they've been wanting to get out of that contract. They've had no way to get out of that contract. He's still got 4 years, 72 months. He's still got $1 million left. And so, now the question becomes, does Tony Romo ever get his top job back with CBS? Does he ever work for CBS again? Maybe he's doing it on another team or in the studio. Or is his career with CBS over? Does he ever broadcast for somebody else again, Billy? So, Tony Romo, a guy who's been in our lives as this broadcaster for several years now, all of a sudden, we don't know what's going to happen. What do you make of this Romo situation and how it's going to play out? And so, we're going to have to wait and see. We're going to have to wait and see. Two weeks and months ahead. It's been kind of a crazy story since the beginning, right? Because the way that it started, it was just a headline came kind of like across the wire. It's like, Tony Romo got arrested for, you know, OWI, Operating While Intoxicated, you know, in the DUI family of things, where you're like, this obviously is, you know, not great. But also, as bad as it sounds in society, this happens with celebrities more often than it should because you think about, like, all the means that they have. It's like, why would this ever happen? Seriously. But it happened. It happens with celebrities. And, you know, you almost have become desensitized to the seriousness of the situation just because of how often it happens. Like, okay, well, this happens and, you know, he'll get a slap on the wrist and whatever. And then the mugshot comes out and you're like, oh, he looks okay. I can kind of see how they arrived at that, you know, without doing the blood and alcohol test. I can kind of see how they arrived at this opinion that he may have been operating while intoxicated. And then the video comes out and then things get really weird. And again, like, let's preface this by saying this is a serious thing. And we're lucky that no one else got hurt. And we're lucky that Tony didn't get hurt and he didn't hurt himself. And no one else involved got hurt and they pulled him over and, you know, he was arrested and whatever. But, and this is like, was a weird one. When that video came out, somehow, some people liked him more. They saw the video and they're like, this guy is so likable. And it's like, I don't think this is supposed to be. The takeaway from this video that came out and then they showed him and he was very polite the entire time. And he's telling us how he's going to visit his grandparents. And he came from a golf course and we later find out none of his grandparents are with us any longer. So that was kind of like a weird thing that happened. It could have been his kids' grandparents. Yeah, you don't know. I'm just saying. Who knows? Yeah, grandma and grandpa. Who knows where he was at? Maybe he calls people grandma. I don't know. Then they take him in. There's like a cut from like the side of the expressway. They cuff him. And then they take him in. They take him into like a garage or something where they're going to administer the test. And then he becomes like weirdly obsessed with stretching. And you're like, this is kind of, this is very odd behavior, but okay. And then, you know, they do the test and he doesn't do well. And he asked the officer, hey, how'd I do? And they're like, can you turn around and put your hands behind your back? He's like, oh, not well, I guess. And it's like, okay. Like people like chuckle at this and multiple people reach out. They're like, I kind of like Tony Romano. I'm like, oh, I don't know, Jim. Settle down. Exactly. This is a bad situation here. Like, let's not make too much light of the situation, but like people liked him more. And, and then you're kind of like, I don't, whatever. He's still not going to lose his job. And then a couple of days later, it was like, well, that, you know, the police report comes out and it's like, oh, he was driving with an open container. It's like, okay. Like now this is, while it was always a serious situation, I think the more facts and information that came out, the more the picture was being painted. It's like, this is serious. And we shouldn't really be laughing at it. And also while it is serious, this could be CBS just looking for a way out of this deal because they have had conversations with him leading back a couple of seasons where when he started, he was like the new broadcasting darling. And I was like, wow, this guy knows the plays before they're going to happen. This is crazy. Then like the last two years, the general public has been very critical of his game calls, which is like fair or unfair. Like if you're watching the game, I mean, I'll watch games. I don't know how you feel. I don't know how you feel about it. Like it doesn't really matter to me who the broadcaster is. And like, is Tony Romo grunting over and over again, going to drive me crazy? Like, no, I kind of just look at him like, ah, that's just Tony being Tony. Like whatever. It's not ruining the experience for me. I'm going to watch the AFC championship game, whether Tony's on it or not, you know? So it wasn't a big deal. Um, but CBS wasn't happy with him. There's reports about his work ethic and he's not prepared and they had to sit him down and basically tell him like, take this more seriously. And then this happens. And at the beginning, he's like, I don't know. I don't know. At the beginning, the reporting was like, yeah, this isn't good, but obviously he's not going to lose his job over it. And then as it's gone on, it's like, well, guess what? JJ Watts is going to be calling the opening game. And then it's like, okay, well then reports came out and it's like, well, maybe, you know, Tony's going to get the number two thing and he'll do it with Ian Eagle. And Ian Eagle has, you know, a rep of like uplifting the people that call the games with him. So maybe this will be a good spot for him as he kind of like rehabs his image. And they're like, well, Ross Tucker is going to be doing the games with Ian Eagle. So as this is playing out, there was even, there was even a conversation like, you know what, maybe this is a way that CBS can reach out and get Greg Olson who lost his number one gig to Tom Brady. This could be an opportunity here. And the longer this drags out, it seems like he may not be back with CBS where I don't think a week ago, that was like my feeling two weeks ago. It definitely wasn't my feeling, but the longer this drags out, even while the president is not saying anything, I think like he's not saying anything because they're trying to find an out and whether their morality. Clause in his contract can get them off the hook of the 72 million that they owe him. But it does seem. And again, I didn't even think this a week ago that he would lose his job as a result of this. And Tony also, and I'm sure that this is the advice of his lawyers or whatever, like we haven't heard from him at all. So like, he hasn't even been able to come out and be like, you know what, I'm sorry about this. Cause I guess then he's, you know, like admitting fault, admitting guilt. Yeah, exactly. This is still an ongoing situation, but like, you know, there's not been really any acknowledgement of it. And as a result, it's kind of gotten away from him to the point that he may be out at CBS. And then you start looking around and it's like, well, what do you do? Do you take a year off? Like, do you, you're not going to end up at Fox. They have Tom Brady. Do they then go to like a, you know, like a Netflix or like an Amazon or maybe do like some of these special like YouTube games or something like NFL network and ESPN merge. Like they don't really have those games anymore. So you start wondering like, where are the opportunities for Tony Romo, which is crazy. Do you still want to do it? I mean, he's made a lot. He's made, he's made a lot of money. Is it just like, all right, that was a fun thing I did kind of in my post playing career, but it was, you know, I made a lot of money and now we've reached some kind of buyout with CBS for these last four years and I can just go play golf. And if I have a few beers now, I can, you know, I can call us in this trouble here. This time. Yeah. Well, he can call, you know, now it's like, all right, let's just call the, uh, you know, black car service that, you know, uh, celebrities or famous people can call that we don't have access to. And let's just go live that life. I don't know. It didn't seem like when you're at a spot where in like your third year, it's like, he doesn't work hard. And the president of the, you know, broadcasting company has to talk to him about preparation. It's like, do you really like, is this really worth it for you? Like, I'm sure there are other ways you can make money, um, without doing a whole lot of work. There's $18 million a year. Not that much, but by the way, if I was him, like, that's the dream, right? You're getting paid this crazy amount of money. Like you're saying, like, does he really want to go through it? It's like, what does he? Actually doing, you know, like he's calling the game, which he might otherwise be watching. Anyways, he gets to be there in person, like travels probably not great. And he has to work. holidays and stuff like that. I'm sure the travel's pretty nice when you're at that level. Yeah. His, his travel is probably a lot different than your travel or my travel in this situation. You know, I'm surprised that we talked about how he hasn't had a press conference, but like we saw just this off season, we had a coach that was embattled in controversy and he went out and, you know, he, is he going to face the music? Is he going to go, we're talking about Mike Rabel. What is he going to do? How's he going to handle the situation around him with the, you know, obviously the scandal that was going on with the infidelities in his marriage, and you know, what did he do? He came on and he, he did what anyone would do in that situation. He came out and he faced the media holding a puppy. And he was like, you know what? I'm here to answer your questions while I'm holding this wonderful puppy. And we're going to get to the bottom of that. And then by day two, he said, you know, I don't know, Mike, if the puppy situation, he said, you know what, let's get the reporters to bring their kids. And I'm going to field questions from some of the children here. And then he field questions from children. And they were like, Hey, what'd you think about the Taylor Swift wedding? And he's like, Oh, you know what? I'm going to field questions from some of the children here. And they were like, Hey, whatever you said. And like, sure enough, football's going to start and no one's going to care about the Mike Davis situation anymore. All right, Romo, let's figure out the contract thing. Get some puppies, Romo. Find a puppy, you know, contact some kids of reporters and it'll be fine. So we'll see. I don't think he's going to be back with CBS. It feels like they were just kind of, you know, they can just be like, it's over. And no one's going to be like, how could you do that to Tony Romo? They're going to be like, Oh, okay. We kind of understand it. So that's where I think it'll go, but we'll see. I think the Ross Tucker announcement, which by the way, Ross is great. And like, like he's awesome. So this isn't like a thing, any criticism of Ross whatsoever, but like the Ross Tucker announcement, I think was the indication, like this is done for Tony Romo at CBS because there's not even a number two role. And why would they go and announce JJ Watt? Like the JJ Watt is like, okay, we have to figure out a plan for the beginning of the season. When they announced Ross is the number two team. I doubt they're going to undo that week two week three week. Five. And then even at that point, you're going to bring in Tony week six. Like what's the point of that? What did that accomplish really? So I'm with you. All right. We'll see how it plays out with Tony Romo. All right, Billy, what do you got? Let's do number we have two, four, seven, and 10. Let's do seven. Seven. Okay. We are scrolling down to number seven on my list. Oh, another good one. I enjoyed in the athletic today behind the scenes for a day with bears coach, Ben. Johnson, which was Dan Pompey from the athletic spent the day with Ben Johnson. And there's a lot in here, Billy. I don't know if this was a peruse for you, if you want me to give you some. All right. So I'm going to give you some of the details here. Okay. Number one, he generally sleep gets five hours of sleep every night. He can function on four hours of sleep. He sets his alarm at four 30. Okay. So that that's one, if you're just wondering about like, you know, his NFL coach bona fides, he's got that. I thought that was interesting. You know, when we, we'd had a conversation about John Harbaugh in the off season, how he would get to the facility and like the strength coach would have to work him out. We got a similar thing happening here where the strength coach of the bears is in the weight room with Ben Johnson at 5 45 AM. So before this guy's doing anything with the players, whatever, I'm sure he's got a long day. He's there with the head coach, spotting him, bench presses, squats, all of that. And then the third nugget I found interesting by December, Billy, he will be up to six cups of coffee and a cold brew daily. That will be his daily caffeine intake by December. Now there's other stuff that got headlines elsewhere that we can get to, but those were the personal nuggets that I found most interesting. What do you think? Do you want to know something funny, and I guess that this is a result of us, you know, working together more last season, building this relationship. Yeah. I read the entire article. It was a lengthy article. There was a lot of stuff in it. Things that I wrote down from this article, Ben Johnson wants to have the highest scoring offense ever is one of his goals for this season in terms of points per game. The highest ever is a 2013 Denver Broncos with 37.9 points per game. He wants to surpass that. That's he knew that by heart. It said to what that average was. Yeah. So that a very lofty goal, but you know, why not? Why not reach for the stars? That was the first thing that I wrote down. Next thing that I wrote down coaches, workout routine, 5:30 AM, 15 minute intervals, 30 minute weight training. And I, it, maybe it's because we could have talked about this with Harbaugh in the past, but man, isn't that the dream? Like just showing up to your job when you're on the clock and having someone who it's not really their job to train you, but you're going to abuse your power and say like, I know you're here for the team. They're not going to say, no, they can't say no to you. They literally can't say no to you. So like you have a free personal trainer. I don't know about you and your gym experience. Do you frequent the gym at all? I don't know if go to the gym, you know, you gotta, you gotta wait. What, yeah. What happens now? You don't know this cause you're still eligible for 40 under 40. Yeah. Um, once that passes your whole algorithm will be 40 plus year olds telling you to, uh, lift weights and get your steps in and walk basically. And you'll live to be 110 with no health. issues. I don't, I, I, this might be a morbid, I don't want to live to be 110. That seems so old. The possibility, you know, the, the no health issues is more quality of life. You know, what has come up for me? It's not just the walking, but walking at an incline. Oh yeah. That's all the secret. 30 minutes on 10 incline 3.0 speed. I mean, you're unstoppable. The challenge that I've found with working out in the gym is not finding a good gym partner, which is really what if you find a good gym partner, man, you're like invincible. Cause you go there and you like, you know, you shoot the breeze, you talk while you're working out, but you focus, you have someone pushing you like, oh, one more, one more. And you're like, oh, like one more, one more. If you go by yourself, I've found that's really where it's hard to like find the, the consistent motivation. If you're just there on your own. Cause like that's when you start cutting corners. That's when you're like, I don't think I can really do this one on my own. Let me go a little bit lighter here. I'll do more reps, less weight. And then you start slowly falling off. And then, you know, everything unravels. You don't live to be a hundred to 10. So I wrote that down. And then the last thing that I wrote down in my notes, again, from this very lengthy article, um, about Ben Johnson, who was out there and he says, this is the best job I've ever had. I'm treating this like this is gonna be my last job. I thought I was in the top of the world. And then in 2019, they got rid of all the coaching staff in Miami. And I found myself without work for the first time. This is before he ended up going and he started, you know, coaching in Detroit. And by the way, here's like a fun little fact that I can tell you in that like gap year that he had, because he got laid off, didn't find work. You know what he was doing. And they what's that they've removed this from his Wikipedia because of all the success that he's now had in Detroit and the success that he has now had in Chicago. So I guess someone went through the Wikipedia and they were like, this is irrelevant. Let's remove this situation in that year when he was looking for work. He didn't spend it doing nothing. He was down here in Miami cuz he had been on the dolphin staff. And he reached out to an old, you know, like mentor, friend, colleague, whatever you wanna call him, Butch Davis. And he was at none other than Florida International University as a volunteer offensive coach where he was breaking down film, which now looking back, it's like, how did my school have like the hottest coaching prospect out there, like five years in advance as a volunteer breaking down film for Butch Davis? Kind of crazy. You just gave a Bears beat reporter a great story idea. You know, Ben Johnson's lost year at Florida International. Yeah. Those are the kind of stories when you're a beat writer, you're always looking for that little, all right, what's something I could write about that no one else has. So listen, I hope there are some Chicago beat writers who listen to this pod and now you're gonna have a little scoop on your hands there. Mike, if you're listening, Pompeii, if you heard that, go, go out there. That's Dan. Yeah. Dan, yeah, Dan, Dan Pompeo. You know where I was getting caught up? I wasn't sure if it was Pompeii or Pompeo. So I wanted to make sure to get the last name right. And then I botched the first name. But if you're out there, Dan, and you wanna talk about something, I would say, you know, that could have been the formative year where he found himself and then started this trajectory. Next story. Yeah, that can be his next story. Okay. So my third note that I wrote down, pre-season, three coffees and a cold brew. During season, six coffees and a cold brew. So we had the same exact takeaways, which was, this is, three coffees and a cold brew is already a lot for a day. It's crazy. Six and a cold brew. We're bordering on, how are you not shaking from how much caffeine you're taking? And like, what is this actually doing to your body? 'Cause this can't be good for you. It can't be good. I do, you know, I like one cup of coffee in the morning. Uh-huh. And then in the afternoon, I'll either do a little espresso, I'll maybe do a little iced coffee. Uh, or, you know, if I'm feeling, you know, I'm feeling good, maybe do a little iced oat milk latte, you know, something like that, if I want to treat myself. That's when you're being, when you were a good boy that day. Yeah, I was a good boy, you know, treat myself. You only live once, I might make 50 under 50. So, so what do you do? Do you like, you have like a coffee machine at home and you hit the coffee machine when it, when you wake up? So I have one at home, but here's a little tip for you. Yeah. One of life's great joys is taking a walk to go get a cup of coffee, you know. Okay. You take a nice walk, hopefully 20 minutes there, 20 minutes back, you get some steps in, you pop in the, the AirPods, you listen to a podcast, you get the coffee, you come back and now you're just ready to go. So I do like to do that when the weather, weather permitting and life permitting, when I am able to do that. Any hills, any inclines, your natural nature's inclines that you're taking? There's a couple nature inclines, but none of them are matching that kind of 10.0 you would get on a treadmill. How about you? You like an espresso, I think you told me before. I have an espresso machine. It's very easy to do, but I have been known to at times, my wife likes Starbucks, I'll go get a mocha frappuccino with no whipped cream from time to time. I had a friend recommend to me a Dunkin Donuts, a new peanut buttered Dunkachino. I tried that the other day. It was good, not my favorite, but it was good enough. I like a cold, I mix it up. I was going to say I like a cold coffee, but I'm like you, I'll mix it up depending on what kind of boy I've been that day. Now those are dessert items, Billy, the things you just described. Is that so? Yeah, you got to be- You don't get up to those coffees. You can do that when you're under 40. You can do that when you're under 40, but you only have a year left of being able to do those. Then I got to get rid of them? Yeah, we'll talk next year at this time, but for now, enjoy them. There you go. Where are we on? Just give me a general. I found that I've been a big Ben Johnson supporter. I like him. I feel like he's a modern. The new era, Sean Payton is how I describe him, where if you're going against him, you're like, "I can't stand this guy. He's so arrogant," but if he's your guy, you're like, "Man, we're in good hands." I do think he's a good coach. This was the first time I looked at him and I said, "Huh." Really? What was it? He's one of these guys where he thinks, "Oh, you can't. God forbid you get six hours of sleep as an NFL head coach. There's just so much to do." I prescribe to the Bruce Arians thing, if you're only getting four hours of sleep, it's diminishing returns. You're probably not making the most of that time. Then the coffee intake made me a little nervous that he can be in this thing for the long-haul. Six cups in a cold brew. Well, I mean, that's crazy. We kind of knew that he was a little bit of a crazy person. That's true. With his whole like Matt LaFleur interactions, right? That I loved. Yeah, but that you're kind of like, all right, guy, like calm down a little bit. Like, what are we doing here? This is a little intense here. Yeah. Okay. We'll see. We'll keep an eye. We'll do a little Ben Johnson tracker all season long. Did you like that he's a man of the people just attending concerts with his friends on bachelor parties? Oh my gosh. No one even recognized him. Oh my gosh. Can I tell you, I didn't know who Morgan Wallen was until like three weeks ago. He's quite popular. Yeah. Then I saw him, you know, he did a concert in Philly and it's just like, oh, there's a lot of people who like this guy. I've literally never heard of him before in my life. But you know what? That probably says more, maybe more about me than anyone else. I'm about to join your club of 40 over 40. And I couldn't name a song. I probably get killed for this. I'm sure you might get killed for two. I couldn't name a song of his. I'm sure I've heard them. I just. No, he has these concerts at football stadiums. They're very largely attended, sold out things. And he always has like a celebrity that walks him out. Correct. And it's like a big thing. Like who's a celebrity that he got to do this with him? Ryan Howard and Cooper DeGene in Philadelphia. Oh, okay. Nice. So there you go. All right, Billy. That's Ben Johnson. Watch. All right. What do we have? What's next here? All right. We have two, four and 10. Do you have any preferences here? No. You tell me. Let's go with four. Four. Okay. This is courtesy of ESPN. So exotic pets, family houses, and Legos, colon. What rookies have spent their first paychecks on? Now, first of all, give that editor a raise. Yeah. You're looking at that headline. Of course, you're going to click in. So, you know, ESPN, I used to have to do these when I was in Seattle. I thought it was a great idea. It's you have a reporter in every city if you're ESPN. And so it's like everybody finds that everybody asks a question or finds an answer to the same topic. And now all of a sudden you have this, you know, this article with. I already do two different takes on the same topic. So that's kind of what happened here. All the reporters ask the rookies that they cover what they spent their first big paycheck on or what they're going to spend their first big paycheck on. Now, how do you feel about that kind of question that inquiry in general, Billy? Is this, you know, are we like, oh, that's a good idea? Are we like, come on, that's a little weird. Don't be asking people how they're spending their money type thing. Do you like this? Is this article topic or not? It's somewhat invasive, but you do get kind of, you know, some fun answers, particularly like in the first round, right? Where it's guys are getting like insane money. It's like, OK, where if it's like a fifth or sixth round guy, it's like he's just probably trying to pay off debt at this point. Like he's just trying to kind of make sure everything's good. He can take care of whoever he can take care of. Maybe he had some college debt that he had to pay off. I mean, realistically, it was not like college loans that the guy is getting drafted or paying off. But maybe, you know, if it was like a division two school. Like, I'm more OK with it with like the higher round guys, especially if they have like some crazy answers, you know? OK, so this was the funniest part to me is that it was broken down into categories. You know, they tried to group them together. And so first category, savings and investing. OK, I could understand that. There were guys who were like, I'm not spending anything. I'm going to save my money. You know, it's a good idea. OK, sounds good. Boring, but OK. A little boring, but OK. Fiscally responsible. You're doing the right thing. Yeah, but not good for content. Maybe good for your life. Yeah, OK. I get that. Then there was homes and household goods, which I get that. Yeah, I'm going to buy a new house. I'm going to get my parents a house. Sconces, stuff like that. Yeah, sconces. Those were family support. Again, same kind of thing there. Apparel, which I can't really remember what was in apparel. That's a weird one. That's a weird one. And then, but then there was travel and vehicles, which I don't know, do those go together? Like travel is you're taking a trip. Vehicle, you're buying a car. But here, and then it got to this, which was, I thought, hilarious. There was a whole category, Billy, OK, for how do you spend your first paycheck as a rookie? And the category was sports equipment. Oh. And I thought, what? That's supplied for you. What are we talking about here? Yeah. It was one guy, Caleb Lomu of the New England Patriots offensive tackle golf clubs. He was getting, he said, I'm not really a guy who spends too much money. But one of the first things I got was a new golf set. Lomu said, I'm big into golf. I love playing some golf. I had to get some longer ones. I kind of outgrew my old set. Does that pass the sniff test here, Billy? Like this guy, I mean, he was playing with like shorty golf clubs and he couldn't afford them. And he, he grew a lot. He's like 22 years old. And all of a sudden he was like David Robinson. He had a big growth spurt. And in his early twenties, I, I found that went to, I'm a little, I'm questioning that pick more so than I did at the time with that answer. It's a little odd to think that you've hit a growth spurt at like 22, 23, that you now need new golf clubs. Honestly, when you said sporting equipment, I'm like, I hope that this guy doesn't think he needs to buy his own helmets and shoulder pads and stuff like that. Cause like we're just wasting money. But luckily I guess it's golf clubs. And I, I, I think he just wanted golf clubs. It's just perfectly fine. Just say I wanted a news. I wanted to treat myself to golf clubs, you know? There you go. Okay. So you had that Carnell Tate said, star Wars, Lego, ultimate collector series set, which I don't know anything about. So I'm not a star Wars guy. Billy, are you? I'm not, but I know that star Wars Legos are very collectible. They have like the, uh, whatever the big circle thing is. Wow. I'm going to, I, I'm going to get fried. There's a death star. Is that what it's called? I don't know. Well, here's the thing. I don't know. I don't know about you. I would think that it's similar to my experience. As a child, I feel like Legos were like a very big part of like your childhood. And I was like, look at all the things that you can make with Legos. It really like enhances your imagination. You can do this now, whatever. Right now it's all like Lego sets that are ridiculously priced. Oh my God. The price. They're no longer, they're no longer a toy, an affordable toy for children. These are now become like specialty things for collectors like this. We're like, I have the star Wars one. I have the Harry Potter. One, I have a special Pokemon, whatever it is. Right. And then even if you want to get, cause like we have, you know, a little nephew, we have two daughters now, but before that we had like a little nephew that came before them. And it's like, I remember like having Legos and connects and tinker toys and all these things that I could build with. Right. Let's get them like some Legos. Let's not get them a set. Let's just get them like a tub of Legos and he could make whatever his heart desires, whatever he can imagine. Right. And it was like $60 or something just for minimum, just for like 80. cubes of like varying like sizes and colors. It's like, who, who can afford these? This is ridiculous. And then it's just going to be on the floor. You step on it and that's like a death sentence. Like, no, it was, it was ridiculous. So, you know, although counterpoint, I have envied the people who have a lot of time on their hands and say, you know what I'm going to do? Like, it's a relaxing thing. I'm going to make this Lego set. And then they just have all this room in their houses. Cause once you make the set, you can't really take it apart. So you need to display it somewhere. So I guess Cardinal Tate is just going to have displays of Legos around his house after he builds these, if he has the time to build them. Yeah, I guess so. I don't know, but you know what? There are worse things he could be spending his money on. Like you said, he's a top 10 pick. So he's getting a nice, that'd be bad if it was crack. Yeah, that wouldn't be good. I've always said, Billy, two things. If I had, if, if I were a rookie in the NFL and someone asked me this, remember we had our fun time with Ashton Gentry at the Superbowl. Yeah. And you remember what he said? He's got a personal chef, Billy. You got the pen there. I still have my ashen shanty pen here. Yeah. So I've always said I would definitely get a personal chef if I had that kind of money. And then I always said I would get someone to stretch me out. Now, they don't necessarily need that because they're going to the facility. But if it was just me, I would want the chef. And then I want someone to kind of just stretch me out, loosen up the hammies, loosen up the back. And long-time listeners of mine will know we call this fruits and glutes is what we would want. If we had a big amount of money. Have you thought about it? How you would have answered this question? Or you're not sure? I haven't really thought about it. I was looking at some of the answers. I saw one answer that was in the home and home goods section where Jacob Rodriguez said that he bought a Tempur-Pedic mattress. And I was like, okay, sure. Mattresses can be expensive. And his whole thing was like, I used to room with my brother. At one point, I was sleeping on the floor. And the mattresses in the dorms were very good. I wanted to get a nice mattress. Like, okay, that's it. Invincible. Short of winning the lottery, I don't think I'm going to just come across a large sum of money out of the blue at this stage in my life. You know? So I don't think that I need to figure it out. Another thing that I will say based on this article that was somewhat disappointing, and it was more disappointing in like the first section, which was investments. This used to be fun because it was like, oh my God, he bought a tiger with his signing bonus. Like, of course he bought a tiger with his signing bonus. They're like, oh, but three, three Lamborghinis because he wanted one in each color for different days a week. Like, sure, why not? That's of course what you would do, right? With like the fiscally responsible guys, this is a trend that I don't think that we thought about. But a lot of the guys are like, yeah, like I have a $50 million signing bonus, but I'm just going to live off my endorsement money because I made $600,000 last year in college. So like, I'm already rich. And it's like, I didn't even think about the fact that like, guys are now coming into the league and they already know not to waste the money because they already probably wasted the first year of like NIL money. And then it kept coming and like, I need to be a lot more responsible. And they have money already because they made millions of dollars in college. It's a crazy kind of shift in this new like rookie wage situation. It could be a great side effect. Yeah, you're right. It's like, it's not all of a sudden they're overwhelmed by all this stuff because I'm making a lot of money for the first time. It's kind of gradual. Like they're not making, you know, $15 million, but they get, like you said, the guy's like, I made $600,000. It's like, all right, well, you know, you have to decide how are you going to use that $600,000? Now, when you get to the NFL, you have a better idea. So yeah, that definitely stood out to me there. A lot of the guys in that article said the same thing about, well, this isn't like totally new for me. I did. And I had money from NIL before. All right. I think we're headed to the point where extinct are going to be the podcast interviews where you have former athletes saying, $200 million isn't really what you think it is. And it's like, oh, okay. Former athlete. I think $200 million taxes and all still a lot of money. Like let's not, you know, Carmelo or whoever it was like, let's not make excuses of how we burned through. Like this crop of quarterbacks and this crop of like, you know, drafted, you know, players is saying like, I could live basically like I could live off the interest. And it's like, yeah, yeah, you can. Good for you. Good job. Five generations taken care of by this contract. Like it's awesome. Good for them. And that was five. Financial minute with Billy Gill and Shiel Kapadia. There will be more of that in future episodes. All right, Billy, what do we got? What's up? Two and 10. We didn't talk about Caleb Banks who bought snakes. Well, when you said tiger, I thought you were going to go there. Yeah. Caleb Banks of the Vikings likes to, you know, what was that show on that? The thing about the tiger and the, you know, the one on Netflix. Yeah. Joe Exotic. Yeah. Tiger King. Yeah. Okay. But he bought a tarantula and three snakes. He already had snakes and a chameleon. So there you go. This started because of his obsession with koalas. And when I was reading, I was like, how did he get a koala? Where did he get a koala? That's what I thought it was going to lead to too. How are we going to get to this koala? Still hasn't, unfortunately. One day. Maybe his second contract. Yeah. Keep dreaming, Caleb. All right. All right. What do we got, Billy? Two and 10? Two and 10. Okay. Let's do two. Okay. Two. All right. Here. This from ESPN. Can cowboys achieve goatee? Goatee status, Billy. Have you ever heard goatee? Not the facial hair. This is G-O-T-I. This is Dak Prescott's new saying, and it stands for greatest offense there is. So Dak Prescott's going around saying, we want to be goatee. And now Brian Schottenheimer's being asked about it, saying, this is part of goatee. And they're saying, we want to be the greatest offense there is. So the Bears, Ben Johnson says, we want to be the highest scoring offense of all. And now the Cowboys are coming in saying, we want to be the goatee greatest offense. It doesn't really roll off the tongue. No, it doesn't. And it's G-O-T-I is goatee, gaudy. There's a missing A for goatee there. Like, there is a, yeah, this is a, this is a, I don't like it. It's weird. Let's call it. It's one of the worst team mantras I've ever heard. And this is, I'm someone who thinks the Cowboys offense is going to be really good. But goatee. Is I think unequivocally dumb. Well, okay. You think they're going to be very good. Do you think they're going to be the greatest offense there is? Because last year, I think they were second in yards per game, seventh in points per game. So they weren't even the best last year, much less all time. I think in Cowboys team history, last year's was the fourth best in yards and 10th. But I mean, they're not even close to the best Cowboys offense ever. Do you, is it realistic to believe that? They're going to be the greatest offense there is? I don't think so. I mean, they could be the best offense in the NFL this year. I'm not predicting that, but like, I don't, I think I have them top five. So I don't think it's crazy. I, you know, they returned pretty much everyone from last year. Whenever Dak Prescott's healthy, the offense is pretty good. They've got CD lamb. They've got George Pickens. O-line's a bit of a question, but it's, it's not bad. That scheme, the play calling is all good. But yeah, that was a weird one. Go, you know, I think they need to go back and workshop that one. A little bit. They, uh, they've had a weird training. Yeah. Right. Between goatee and then like beekeepers helmets that they were playing. Right. The kind of increase the vision, like, ah, what's going on with these cowboys here? It's always something. And Jerry's just like, we might trade for someone big, like he says every summer. But you know, I was going to say, typically Jerry's the one doing and saying things. You're like, what's, uh, what's, what's going on there. But, uh, it's not good when the team is not giving Jerry the room to be the crazy one. Yeah. Jerry can't get into the headlines because they're doing goatee and sort of, if you haven't seen it, the sort of beekeeper mass to, to try to practice for seeing the sun, you know, at their home stadium, because they don't want to fix that issue. It's a whole thing. I actually don't want to get into that. These coaches honestly just sit down like in the off season board and like, what, what can we do? What's a weird thing we could do? How do we fix this? And then like, they're like looking on Amazon or whatever, like, oh, like that could really help. Right. Or they're like, what do you think that it's that, that they're really have bad ideas or do you think that it's like. Man, training camp is so boring. Like, let's see what ridiculous things we can kind of put in there. Like friendship quizzes and spelling bees, just to get people talking about us, you know, and kind of essentially pass the time because what are we going to do? Just watch film every day. Like, let's figure something out. It's almost like their algorithms are catered to them and they see these bad ideas and they're, you know, like we do, like we are, I am going to buy this thing unnecessarily. And then it just kind of sits in the corner for months. Uh, it's kind of like that, except they have to implement them and then they're being asked about them by reporters. And then they're like, oh, okay, maybe that was a bad idea. That's what it feels like. Do you remember the magazine East Bay? Of course. Oh my God. Loved it. One, I miss catalogs. Let's just get right out in front and say, I miss catalogs. Catalogs were the best, far superior to online shopping in terms of ease of ordering and receiving products. Online shopping is so much better. You know what my mom would let me do, Billy, before the school year, I could buy a little sweatsuit from the JC. Penny cattle, pick any sports team, you know, and I would just pick random ones. It wasn't like at all Philly ones, random ones, and you get the sweatshirt and the sweatpants and your boy's ready for picture day. Wow. Did you have the, I feel like you had the Hornets. Did you have the Hornets? Oh my God. I had an amazing Hornet sweatshirt that I probably wore every other day. Teal and purple. Yeah. Starter. Oh, fantastic. You know, I saw starter jackets the other day at target. I couldn't believe that they made some sort of targets got a weird thing. Going on where they have like brands come in and have like little pop-ups in their store. Like they did, they did it not too long ago with the store Hollister, where there was like Hollister branded clothes in target. And then like, I'll go in on like Sunday and like Sunday mornings, I'll go out to try to do, I like to do my grocery shopping and my purchases in the morning. Cause usually there's less people involved. I can go in and out, get out of the house, get my steps in, in the air conditioning, avoid the oppressive heat. But like, that's when they have like these brand launch drops and there's like all these people that know about this brand or whatever it is. I have no clue. And it's like, they're buying binders with like special prints on them and they're hoarding them to go sell online. And it's kind of like insanity. And it's like, yeah, we don't need to get into it. It's just ridiculous. This feels like a brain for the listeners. This isn't a branded segment. If you're wondering, we're not seeing anything. We're, I don't know. You know, we're, we're naming too many names, but you did ask me about East bay. So I don't know if that was going somewhere. That's a good point. Thank you for getting me back on track. That led to the JCPenney that I was seeing. the sears catalog obviously toys r us catalogs are great too but east bay because we were talking about like weird things that show up in your algorithm i'm sure you saw these and i'm sure you did not fall for because i'm one of the few people i think on earth that actually purchased them i bought those shoes that were like the platform on the front oh yeah that is hovering in the back that are supposed to they're supposed to be for basketball increase your vertical jump dunk yeah that's what that's what they tell you you could dunk so i bought a pair of those shoes and i would wear the shoes and when you buy the shoes it would give you like drills and exercises that you would do so i would get them i would go to a park near my house and i did this because my thought process was i'm not a basketball player but i'm a pole vaulter and i still need like a nice vertical leap so if it's good enough for a basketball player it's good enough for me and i would be you know i'm not a basketball player but i'm a pole vaulter and i still need like a nice vertical running on the grass through the park like a crazy person on these platform shoes with just the front of it where your soul is lifting and i have to tell you i i did a fairly like regular regiment of this i i didn't dunk as a result of it there was a time in my younger years where i could dunk like holding the small ball because like my my palm wasn't big enough for like the you know well you're a deceivingly taller guy too that's what people tell me sometimes so i was able to do that like you know first year out of high school whatever like peak like physical form i could do that but as a result of these shoes i have no idea if they actually made me jump taller or not i tried to stop dunking at a certain point because i was like i'm afraid of it's not the going up it's the coming down that i'm worried about with my ankles and my knees and all kinds of stuff so like i stopped trying after a certain point right but yeah i was the guy i was the sucker that bought these shoes on east bay and you could have driven around tropical park down here in florida and seen me running around up and down doing calisthenics with these shoes on well listen it led to a college career as an athlete with ben johnson it led to this and it led to this moment right here which brings us to number 10 billy had i not worn those shoes who knows if i ever would have met adam schefter's mom on a cruise you know i don't i don't i'm pretty sure you wouldn't have no way everything happens for a reason all right all right number number 10 we finished with this the state of the browns here's what i'm gonna do bill oh no we're finishing with a game okay i'm gonna read you three headlines two of these are real you have to you have to pick the one that is not real you have a fake headline yeah this is just giving the audience a sense of the state of the cleveland browns in mid-august as they prepare for the this is very dan quinn of you chill okay well there was yeah uh number one owner jimmy haslam says browns aren't punting on 2020 26 colon take the over so there you go take the over this owner jimmy haslam it's early august that's a weird one but okay number two squirrel issue delay start of brown's training camp practice okay squirrel issue delays start of brown's training camp practice that's number two and number three jerry judy clarifies viral video says he talked to brown's qb's jerry judy clarifies viral video says he talked to brown's qb's those are three headlines billy two of them are actual headlines about the cleveland browns one of them is fake which one do you think is fake i want to believe the squirrels i want to i want to believe that jerry judy somehow found himself in some sort of video issue that the internet ran with and he has to some explaining to do and probably is going up to quarterbacks that don't even know what he's talking about so i'm gonna say that the jimmy haslam thing seems given that it's only august saying don't put on the season seems very that's like a october headline not an august headline so i'm gonna say jimmy haslam incorrect billy really that was a real headline the squirrel issue was not a real headline i'm i had to work you know my the creative part of my brain there to come up with that so this is via the athletic jim jimmy haslam the browns owner said you know he's trying to convince reporters that hey don't you know don't count us out i know we traded miles garrett and they're stockpiling picks and are going with these shadour sanders and sean watson at quarterback but we're not and he says quote i think the odds on the season win total are for us to win five and a half games i take the over i mean here's the thing it's august billy and he thinks he's popping his chest out by saying they're gonna win six games he like he's giving this like i'm down have a take here then i need to get off my chest and it's like you're you know you had a strong one with the baker mayfield minnesota vikings in 2027 this is his version of that and it's that the football team that i own is not going to be one of like the worst four teams in the nfl and you can put that in the newspaper and he's feeling good about it you want to know the funny thing about that is if he's right and he takes a victory lap on this the other headlines that have come out of the browns so far this offseason is basically we don't know who our quarterback is might be deshaun watson again it's like wait how are we in this position again with deshaun watson because i'm pretty sure jimmy himself last year said like that was a swing and a miss we that one that one that one didn't pan out but now he might be the starter again and then coming into this i think they've already said like well deshaun's gonna start one preseason game and shadur is gonna start one preseason game which if i'm dylan gabriel i'm like what's going on like what do i have to do here if i can't beat either one of these two guys right but if jimmy's right and they win six games they're probably not gonna win much more than six games no they're probably still not gonna know where their winning six games they're also not gonna get another quarterback that's going to turn around their franchise so winning six games might be the worst thing that could happen to them six might be okay if there are enough good quarterbacks but you're right if you know it could not fall your way and all of a sudden the team's in front of you in the draft all need quarterbacks so yeah that might not be great um but i was looking at jimmy haslam's pro football reference page he's owned the team for 14 seasons and in seven of those seasons they've gone under five and a half years and they've gone under five and a half years and they've gone under five and a half wins which is like how is that i mean in a in a in a league where you're trying to bring everyone you know parody and salary cap and the draft it's like that is actually almost impressive that in half your seasons you won five or fewer games so that was a real headline and then this jerry judy story i honestly don't understand this was like i'm too old for this moment for me because i read this on espn.com and it was like there was a tiktok live stream where you know jerry judy was asked who he thinks the quarterback should be and he held up the number four which is the sean watson's number so everyone's like oh jerry judy wants to sean watson and he's like no my daughter's four years old which i don't know what what that like i don't know what the live stream was about it's just all very confusing to me but to your point they don't have a quarterback they haven't named a quarterback and if you read the browns coverage it is just so sad when you're reading these daily quarterback updates it's like neither guy really looked good todd munkin was the quarterback and he was the quarterback and he was the quarterback and he was non-committal but jimmy haslam gave us this quote today didn't todd munkin if i'm remembering correctly didn't todd munkin also try to get doer to the to the ravens like they spoke beforehand and he was like we should go after him and then something happened where they decided not to so when he came back over or when he came over it was like i told you we were gonna work together and it's like oh okay todd like calm down he wasn't very good he was a pro bowl last year but it wasn't actually really a pro bowler last year you know oh my gosh i guess what i got a pro bowl quarterback it's like well sort of technically yes you do tough situation for the cleveland brown you know a sad one to end on but we could at least we got to make fun of jimmy haslam yeah a little bit there all right billy did you like the exercise i did like the exercise you know what i was thinking just going back to the hot take and the prediction from last year yeah you know it would never happen because of the way things ended but man the browns could get baker after that after this season he just would never go back there because of how poorly that all fell apart and now that's what they said about gino smith at one time billy he's back with the new york jets so if you pay enough money i guess you don't have other options maybe you would do that so there you go billy's calling it that baker mayfield is either a cleveland brown or a minnesota viking in 2027 there you go or a buck there you go or a buck also maybe their season goes well and they just pay him all right that was fun we went over a bunch of miscellaneous topics around the nfl i think we hit on all of them with my friend billy gill from the ringer thank you to christopher sutton for producing thank you to stefano sanchez for video production and additional production supervision from connor nevins and arjuna ramgopal i'm shiel kapadi enjoy all the pre-season action this weekend we'll be back next week on the ringer nfl show ♪ 21 plus and present in select States for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas star casino or 18 plus and present in DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming gambling problem. 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