Hour 1 - More Late Night Mariners Texts, Philip Rivers

Get in the freaking auto! From the Quantum Fiber Studio, this is Brock and Salk on Seattle Sports. Brock Eward is my hero. James Hewter just punched me in the kidney. I was gonna use you to a man. That way, Sherm, this is a show that has my name on it. It's kinda tough, though. Now, here are your hosts, Brock Eward and Mike Salk. Hello! Hello! Alright, hello. Good morning. Hi, everybody. Brock and Salk shows, Seattle Sports on 710, SeattleSports.com, Seattle Sports app, podcast platforms, 973HD2 and YouTube. It's been good on YouTube this week. We had Robert Murray yesterday. He was pretty good. Lyle, I know you didn't bother to tell us that you guys were friends, but he was good. Really enjoyed him. Somebody that I would like to have back. Add him into our baseball rotation as somebody that can provide a little extra analysis. So that's good. If you missed any of Philip Rivers, we're gonna play that at 630 Man. It hurt me to really enjoy Philip Rivers like that. I've never been a Philip Rivers fan as a player, just kinda who we played for. I don't know. I just never liked him. He was pretty good. He was pretty likable, even, and that was surprising. So he was great. There's a lot of really good Seahawks information since he played against them last year. He was funny. He was insightful. Stick around. You'll hear that coming up at 630. I told you that I want to start doing these late night Mariners texts, and I hit a pitman yesterday, so we're gonna have a little open coming for it. I don't know if we'll do them every day, because not every day is gonna have late night Mariners texts. But when it seems relevant here, just after six o'clock to start the show, I thought it'd be fun to just read you guys more Mariners texts. They don't have to be unhinged, but some of them are. I like this. This is from the 425. And I just, it's mostly that I like the three texts in a row. These are the last three texts from the 425. Man, it is so good to have baseball back. I'll say it again. CB Buckner is a disgrace to baseball. Get this idiot control freak out of the game. And then third, Salk's gray area strike zone take is one of his dumbest takes ever. Give it up, bro. I like that combination. CB Buckner, a disgrace to baseball. Yes. Yeah, he's bad. He's a really bad umpire. He really is. And he is an idiot control freak. I think that's the thing that's so frustrating. It's not so much that he's so bad. I mean, he is, but when you add the control freak idiocy to it, it really, it really is disgraceful. I'm with you there 425. You may not like my take on the gray area, but I'm with you on the CB Buckner thing. And then he got hit in the face. We were just talking about whether or not he was gonna like leave baseball, right? Because he keeps getting embarrassed. Gino showed him up, at least in his mind. And then the the Reds, was it the Reds? No, the Brewers showed him up too by daring to challenge the fact that he was not even looking at first base when he called the guy out for missing the bag, even though he's stepped not just on the base, like directly in the middle of the base. Like it's impossible to know what he was even thinking in saying that he hadn't touched the bag other than that he wasn't watching. Just bizarre. That was weird, but my gray area strikes don't take as great. So how dare you? I like this one. Uh, where'd it go? 570. This one was a 243 AM. I thought this lineup was supposed to be good. Cal stinks. Julio stinks. Nailer stinks. But let me guess, that's just baseball, right? Salk? Yeah, it's literally just baseball. That's like the definition of it. I mean, kind of anyway. But yeah, do you actually think Cal stinks? Do you actually think Julio stinks? Do you actually think Nailer stinks? If you do, all right. I mean, I guess we can have a talk, but at that point it's really more like, I feel like counseling or perhaps a conversation about, I don't know, institutionalizing, but like those guys aren't, they're not bad. They're just not hitting. And they certainly did not hit in the first week of the season. I actually think the fact that they scored as many runs as they did without those guys hitting is probably a positive sign. They don't stink. It is just baseball. It does have ups and downs, but I could also understand if you came down from Mars and only watched seven games, you would be like, wow, those three guys are not good. This person's texting from Pennsylvania, not Mars. So I have to assume there's a little bit more context in your life and that maybe you should know that they don't stink. It's just baseball and it's kind of a long season. Now this one's a little bit more measured. I like this four, two, five, Salk. The strikeouts from Cal and Julio have been brutal. Brennan Donovan leadoff double followed by two strikeouts on fastballs down the middle. Can we play some small ball? Easier said than done, but it would have gladly taken a Cal ground out to second to get Donovan to third followed by a Julio sack fly. All this to say, I'm concerned about the inability of our stars to at the very least put the ball in play in moments like these where we have runners in scoring position. It's early, but this matters. Lyle, should they be playing more small ball with Cal and Julio? Yeah, should Cal and Julio be playing more small ball? No, why not? They should not. Why shouldn't Cal and Julio play small ball? Well, because I can't even believe I have to spell this out. Um, they're paid a lot of money to do damage, not to play small ball. Okay. How dare you? How dare you suggest that? How dare you? Yeah, you're gonna have to miss me with that. Well, yeah, I mean, look, obviously you're right. And I guess what I would just say yesterday about that is. Okay. So if Cal and Julio score one run in that game yesterday, is that the difference in the game there? Probably not. Right. I mean, like the reason the Yankees won that game is Paul Goldschmidt did damage in a three run home run. Got a couple guys on base and absolutely pummeled one. There's your home run three run shot. Essentially difference in the game. I've been rice hit one later, but yeah, that's the difference three run shot. That's the big blow in the game. You're looking for that from Cal and from Julio. I'm not saying that there aren't moments where you do want to take a different approach. There are, but looking at it in general and saying, okay, we got to lead off double. The thing to do here now is just find a way to get the guy in. I don't, I don't know that I look at that. Not from Cal and Julio want those guys. I understand there's risk factor associated and it's not always going to work if you're swinging for the fences, but trust me, the, the, the benefit is pretty high. Yeah. I mean, Cal had a two run single to get him back in the game yesterday. I know that's not leaving the yard damage, but that's damage. You're not boning. You're not putting one on the ground to the right side to try to advance the runner. No, he's swinging away. Yeah. And down for nothing. It's exactly what he should be a gosh, if he's playing small ball down for nothing in the, what was that seventh or eighth? God help us. You got a much bigger problem. It's just baseball does not apply to a team that was stuck in mediocrity for 20 years as a means to explain away a team missing the playoffs. Well, sometimes it does. Actually, sometimes it does because baseball has some ups and downs and guys don't always do what you expect them to do. That's sort of how the game is. They're building something and it sure looks to be built right now. You know, maybe a better response on that 206 to the it's just baseball thing is patience is the shortcut and the Mariners seem to be developing their own plan. And that's really the thing I've come to focus on. And I think it took all of us, myself included some time to really understand what this plan looked like. But the plan is, is for a sustainable winning product built on drafting, developing, trading and retaining their own players. And I'm going to keep saying that it's going to be a broken record. Just just understand that. I'm going to say that throughout the year. But that's what they've done. And they're going to be frustrating moments because they don't go out and sign the world's biggest free agent every off season because that's not their plan. That's not their philosophy. It's not their model. Not that model has some upside. It's not their model because they're not going to spend like the Dodgers and they're not going to spend like the Yankees and Mets. They're going to spend somewhere similar to the Rangers and the Rangers tried that model. It did work for a year and then they had to blow it up again. And the Mariners don't want to do that. They want to be sustainably good year after year and they want to continue to get better incrementally. And that's why they did a step back. That's why they did a rebuild. It took too long. I totally agree. It's frustrating at times. There were moments of absolute frustration. And I don't know that it's going to work this year. Nobody does. It's baseball means that you can draw something up on paper, but it doesn't mean those guys are going to hit their batting averages or home run totals or their projections year after year because it's played by real people and there's a lot of luck in this game. There really is. There's a lot of timing. There's a lot of reasons why the game is played over a plate out over 162 because what you do in one moment in April or May or June is not necessarily the same as how you'll handle it in July, August or September. Just the way the game is. But I do think they've got a good plan in place. Of course I do. I like the way I really do appreciate the attempt to try their own thing for a team that's going to be in the middle payroll wise and the signing of Emerson Hancock this week or is Emerson Hancock of Colt Emerson is yet another, you know, I think feather in their cap in terms of them. Sticking with their model sticking with their model, but I get it. It's a week. There's three and four, four, two, five says how long before you get concerned. I'll be with Passon. I'll say probably May 1st, maybe June 1st to be honest, two, five, three, if Callan Julio, where'd the other one go? Three, six, oh, rather the Yankees. It's just it's just baseball looks a whole lot better so far. That's what's frustrating. Yeah, the Yankees definitely look better in the first six games of the year. There's no doubt. They're six and oh, like I get it. They have absolutely looked better and quite frankly could have swept the Mariners. I guess they're what five and one excuse me. Yeah, that's true. They look better this weekend. Let's see what happens in another couple weeks and another couple weeks after that and another couple weeks after that. I do think the Yankees look good. It's funny. It's not really because of their hitting. It's because of their pitching pitching looks dynamic. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. All right. Quick break. Come back with everything you need to know, including crazy story developing in LA, Brock and Salk sales sports on 710. Highlights don't win games. The full box score does. I'm Brock cured and most business leaders aren't short on data. They're short on clarity. Numbers are scattered across ERP, CRMs and spreadsheets, making decisions reactive instead of confident. And that's not how great businesses are built. Marky IQ brings all your data together into one clear view, even if it lives in disconnected systems or offline so you can see what's really happening and act faster. Stop running your business on highlights. Get the full picture. Visit data. The wins.com to see what Marky IQ can do when you're running the hurry up and don't have time for your favorite Seattle sports shows. Listen to the podcast on demand. Unbelievable. What a thought. Every hour, every interview, every look behind the scenes. He is your new Seahawks head coach, Mike McDonald. We want to play a certain way and you're just going to chisel away at it every day. Find us on Seattle Sports dot com, the Seattle Sports app, or wherever you get podcasts. All signs continue to point to it being the right hire. Never a misadvented of Seattle Sports, the home of the Seahawks. Here's Lake Washington windows dot com today. He was really, really good yesterday and the Mariners couldn't do much with him. They did muster a couple runs late against the shaky pen, but it wasn't enough. They fall five to three. Give Cal some credit. He drove in a couple runs here and the right-handers to one on the way to Cal swinging a line drive right field line, fair ball into the corner. Canzone will score. Young Ronnie third will score. Judge up of the ball. The third of second cut off by Chisholm Cal Raleigh with a two out two run single. The Mariners finally get on the board here in the bottom of the eighth. It's now the Yankees four and the Mariners two. Cal Raleigh comes through in the clutch. He did, but then they gave up a home run and Canzone got one back in the bottom of the ninth. That's all they could do. George Kirby was pretty good. He went six, but ended up allowing four. The problem, the three run home run. One one from George. Swung on, hit high, deep, left field. A Rosarena back. He said the track looking up. It is gone. Yeah. Goldschmidt should have tried to go the other way and just hit a little single. You should have played small ball there. Then maybe the Mariners would have won. What's Goldschmidt doing swinging for the fences? Take it the other way. Just hit a little ground ball to second and move the runners over. Anyway, they finished the homestand three and four. Dan Wilson. Yeah. He knows what he saw yesterday. Tough one today. I thought, you know, we couple days in a row now, we faced some pretty good starters over there. A couple of good outings, you know, with freed yesterday and then Schlittler today. I thought had had good stuff again and made it tough on us offensively. Yeah, no kidding. They finished the homestand and they guys have three and four day off tomorrow. They'll start their first road trip through Anaheim and Texas. Day off is today. Sorry. Tomorrow they start their road trip. No chance for JP to get into another rehab game last night. Tacoma got rained out. So I've got to imagine he's still going to need a few more before he can join the team on the road trip if he's able to join them on this trip. Here's the second thing you need to know. Thank you to see ox.com for putting up some sound and video from Mike McDonald's breakfast press conference here at the owner's meetings with some of the reporters. I've been thinking a lot about the loss of boy in Mafia. I know nobody else has, but I keep saying that it felt like the biggest loss so far this off season. Mike addressed it. I had the right life. There was a right opportunity. You probably would have done it. It's just like it had the right like matchup. Like hasn't happened yet, you know, so it's kind of one of those things like don't press it and maybe there'll be another like either through the draft or maybe after the draft free agency or, you know, something through training camp or our guys to, you know, our guys rock in a roll and they play great and roll the guys we have. Yeah. So again, trying to trying to project some comfort with what they've got at the edge position while at the same time saying, yeah, we would like to do more. We would like to replace the production loss when boy and Mafia walked out the door. Good question as a follow up. Could Riley Mills be a part of that? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it depends on what's the sweet spot. Wait, why is it like this right now? I think we're working through that on like where we want them to be. But like sometimes we do like a bigger guy on the edge and I think probably could do that. Yeah. So again, probably more like what red Bryant used to do on the edge. I know it's not quite the same size, but I like the idea. Do you lose don't want them to lose too much weight and, you know, get too quick because then it'll lose some of that size that has been pretty helpful for them. So good stuff for Mike. Here's the third day you need to know. Yeah. I think the time is going to tell if this is a real deal or whether it's just PR, but Pukinaku apparently is checked into a rehab clinic in Malibu. I will admit hearing in Malibu definitely puts a little doubt or at least skepticism in there. Like, I was telling you off the air. Like, I feel like that's the first place my brain always goes to. It's like, especially because it usually is where the celebrities go right after something public happens. It seems luxurious, but I don't know if you're rich. Well, he's not as rich as Tiger. Tiger's heading out of the country to go do his rehab. Steve Wysh with a little bit more information. This is according to his attorney Levi McAther who provided me. I'm going to read it part of a statement that Pukinaku is taking responsibility for his well-being and is focused on improving his performance during the off season. Pukinaku voluntarily entered a private facility to focus on his health, personal growth and overall development. He is committed to using this time constructively so he can return to the best possible position, both personally and professionally. He will complete the program in time to fully participate in all of the Rams OTAs and Pukinaku is deeply grateful for the support he's received from his family, friends, coach Sean McVeigh and teammates. Hmm. His own health, huh? I don't know, Maura. I don't know that there's a way to know whether or not this is real or not, but uh, improve his overall behavior in every aspect of life. Another thing I didn't like from his layer when he was talking to the California Post and they asked if it was, had to do with this most recent lawsuit this woman filed against him and he said, no, but the combination of stories you all have run is certainly contributing factor. Like it's the media's fault. Yeah, he had to check in rehab because the media wrote too many stories. Well, okay, then it's PR. If this is a response to the media, then it's PR. I would like to know what led to it. I would like to know what kind of rehab it is. I'd like to know how seriously he's taking it. I would also like to know if this was some sort of a requirement that the Rams gave him before paying him the big bucks. Like, hey, we'll pay you, but you better do this first. Kraken host the mammoth tonight. Three points out also seventh worst record in the league. They're closer to the fifth worst than they are to the playoff. So yeah, they better win a few games here if they want to move forward and breaking news. Few minutes ago, Kirk Cousins is a raider. He's going to head to Las Vegas. That is everything you need to know. Quarter past every hour here on the Brock and Salkshire. I think Kirk Cousins is on Brock's list of quarterbacks that faced the Seahawks last year, whose number he has that he wants to try to get on here might have to wait a little bit as Kirk has probably busy moving his family to Las Vegas. Yeah, you mentioned him yesterday as all these guys that aren't with the team currently are the easiest. Yeah. Whoops. He just ended up going to a team. So maybe we waited too long. Good thing we got Phillip Rivers before somebody else signed him this off season. Pretty entertaining and also pretty informative. It's next on Brock and Salk. Highlights don't win games. The full box score does. I'm Brock cured and most business leaders aren't short on data. They're short on clarity. Numbers are scattered across ERP, CRMs and spreadsheets, making decisions reactive instead of confident. And that's not how great businesses are built. Marquis IQ brings all your data together into one clear view. Even if it lives in disconnected systems or offline so you can see what's really happening and act faster. Stop running your business on highlights. Get the full picture. Visit data that wins.com to see what Marquis IQ can do. We are Seattle Sports 7 10 a.m. on your radio streaming through the Seattle Sports app. Get new videos, podcasts and articles on the Seahawks and Mariners from your favorite Seattle Sports personality daily. You know this community and they know what it takes to protect it. That's why they listen shop around and tailor coverage for your home car or business. Call 877-4-LEVIT. Levitt Group Northwest insurance you can count on season after season 877-4-LEVIT. From the Quantum Fiber Studio. This is Brock and Salk weekday 6 to 10 on Seattle Sports and 97 3 fm HD 2. No this isn't an April Fool's joke. A lot of text thinking this is just an April Fool's joke. It's not April Fool's. We actually have Philip Rivers on the show. It's not messed up. We wouldn't do that to you guys. We don't do April Fool's jokes on the show. No, Philip Rivers is with us right now. Good morning, Philip. How are you? Hey guys morning. No, that is really me. Was that a 206 of text? I had to be a 206 of text of that in. That's just awful. Some of these folks out there, Philip, you know, they're just very cynical at times. They don't know that we bumped into each other. What a week and a half ago or so through our sons and everything else. And then as I was driving through Alabama through Florida on a wonderful vacation, I thought, you know what, I think it'd be kind of fun as much as we talk about these Seahawks and analysts talk about it. How about some of these guys that actually played against them? So thank you for doing this the first and hopefully a bunch of other fellas over the next few weeks and months leading up to the season that can speak to what you saw last week. And before we get to the football of it, Philip, can you take us back to the first text, the first phone call, the first something that came from the 317 and Indy that said, Hey man, I got a thought for you. Yeah, no, I think it's a heck of an idea to get to get to get some of these guys that played against that heck of a Seahawks defense and obviously Super Bowl champ. So I think it's a good idea to hear from the guys that were in between the lines. Yeah, no, it was one of them. I have a great relationship with Shane Steich and he coached me in San Diego, LA. And you know, kind of the offense we ran in my latter years were what I also ran in Indy with Frank Reich. I mean, obviously it all evolves and changes year to year, but so I had a great relationship with those guys. I would check in with Shane every so often throughout the year. You obviously end up pulling for your old teammates and you pull for your old coaches, you know, as you've been out of the league. Shane just said, Hey, you think you can do it? And I was like, I got to take a deep breath, you know, kind of move my shoulder a little bit. And I was like, Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, I think I can, but hold on now. Now I got to take a deep breath and we, you know, visit Monday morning and I said, I need to get up there and throw and let y'all see if you think I can do it. You know, it's one thing for me to, for me to just start having some, you know, get the blood flowing a little bit and the competitors and then go, Yeah, I can do it. And I said, you always just get me up there. And if y'all tell me, no, no way, then I'll fly back home. But let me get up there in front of you. And then we kind of got that done Monday night and went from there. I'm just surprised he didn't say something like, No, no, we know you can throw once we want to see what you look like the next day. Like we know you can run around and for a day. Sure. I run around. All right. Well, yeah, easy. Sorry about that. Yeah. But what does it look like after you take a couple hits? What was it like waking up that next Monday morning after the first game? Yeah, well, I'll be honest. I mean, I doly noted and there's really nowhere to hide in a football uniform. I was a little heavier than I was. And, you know, when I last walked off the field in Buffalo, however, I'd probably been about three months in to actually train him pretty hard, not training to play football, but just physically resistant stuff, you know, weight stuff. And so I actually felt strong and I felt good. Certainly wasn't training to move away from Leonard Williams and Jenna and those guys. But I felt strong physically. So I wasn't as much worried about taking a hit and those sorts of things as I was about having to step over the pocket real fast or, you know, move up in the pocket and all of a sudden pop a calf or something. I was more worried about that. So I didn't feel awful. I was worried about feeling awful Monday morning. I didn't feel awful that Monday morning. And actually the first hit I took in the early in the game in Seattle actually was refreshing in a sense. It wasn't a bad hit, but it was one of those I got knocked to the ground and I was like, oh, all right. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, I almost kind of locked me into the game. So, but it was a it was a blast to say the least to be out there for those three weeks and be a part of it again for four weeks and obviously disappointed we didn't win some ball games and getting the playoffs, but it was an absolute blast. It was kind of a bonus gift. I got a football that I certainly thought was long gone. I fill up this. I should probably ask this at the end of it, but the audience knows I'll at times ask offensive questions because it's just what left hand and middle child third string quarterbacks do my buddy John Kittner got called back to the Cowboys, not quite as old as you were and not a grandpa yet, but got called back and he was like, oh yeah, just give me my old pants and everything and the pants didn't fit. You know, he needed a bigger size and everything else. It was a little bigger. If you were to have stepped on a scale, it's it's a lumen field heading out to that game compared to what you were at the end as you mentioned the Buffalo Bills. What did you play at 230? Were you 235 guy at the end of your career? Yeah, I hovered. I hovered between 28 and 34 probably, you know, throughout the course of a whole season and certainly later in my career. If I got on a scale as I entered the stadium there, I was probably 244. That's probably 10 pounds heavier. And just not quite in the obviously in the in the in the shape cardio wise, you know, you start putting it in different places when you get in 40s, you know, funny you say that about one year old pair of pants and everything. So yeah, I was like, all right, I got to get my bring them all short, my old stuff, you know, should I bring my old shoulder pads on? But I get in there. I get in there with the equipment guys and they said, Hey, we got your same jersey from from, you know, when you're here in 20, you want the same you want the same cut. I said, No, no, no, boys. We got to let a little out. Let's go with the relaxed. Yeah. Was that frog is still in the equipment room? Is frog still there? Oh yeah, frog is still still running the show. Unbelievable. That whole that's great. So for me going back there, it there was a sense of I've been here before, you know, obviously I because I had been but when you have the whole same equipment room staff, the whole training room staff, you know, DT still with a player, you know, relations and the whole deal. And then, you know, I had 14 former teammates, 14 teammates from that 2020 team. So it felt I'd been in the huddle with Clinton Nelson and Pittman and Jonathan Taylor and those and Moe Alley Cox. I've been in there with them. So it felt like, oh yeah, you know, it didn't feel like I was a guest quarterback. It felt like, yeah, I've been, I've been, I've been in it with these guys before. Brock, I thought you were going to reference that big detackle at the weight who they had to weigh on the freight scale here. No, no, no. That was like 600 pounds. It's about 490 pounds. All right, so let's get to why we wanted to talk to you. Phillip Rivers with us. You played against the Seahawks this year. What was it like to play against that defense? Well, obviously it goes without saying it's well noted and I've seen the tape and obviously the run they went on going into that game. You know, that for me and I watch every Sunday and I didn't really get away from the game in the last, you know, five seasons. So I watched fairly closely, not as I would if I was preparing, but I watched fairly closely. So I get in there that week, you know, and it's like putting your eyes on this defense and like, you know, you're going to be under center. You know, you're watching them a little different than you did when you're sitting on the couch at the house. But so as that week, you know, as you're preparing throughout that week and kind of getting yourself back wired with your own stuff, you know, you know, Brock, right? I mean, you're early in the week and you're worried about yourself and your own game plan. And there for me, it was a crash course of that, which I was familiar with, but still different when you actually have to do it. And then it's like, all right, man, I got where's this thinking? Nicole, I gotta make sure I know where three is that's in the game like a linebacker all the time. And then here's there's witherspoon that obviously is the heck of a blitzer as well and a great DB. And then there's defensive front and wherever you how do we want to handle Leonard Williams and what about Lawrence and China and these guys rushing on the outside. So as you're going through the week and really felt like the box was their strength and you and you felt like three was kind of the star. He'd be the kind of guy that I was star and say, look out, he'll wreck this game and he can play. He's as fast as anybody on the field, but he's also as physical as any linebacker and any guy in the box. And obviously that linebacker core, I just thought as a whole, you know, there with Ernest and Drake Thomas and and and then you throw in, you consider, you know, and more as a linebacker, even though I know it's a safety. So it was a safety, nickel kind of body, but they were really solid. You know, I think I think the biggest thing is and you see this with the best defenses, I think, and yes, they're good at disguising. Yes, they have some good pressures and yes, they got they got, you know, coach, you know, Mike's unbelievable there. It doesn't look great job. But when they're when you're really good and you got really good players and good coaches, you don't have to do a whole lot. You know, and so I felt like you get as you as I dove into it and then you play them in the game. It's like, well, they didn't do a bunch. It's not like they just were just had you like what in the world is coming next. They're pretty. They're really sound and they're and they don't have to do a ton, but they do it all off of the same look. You know, they really like to start in that shell defense and then they have some some pressures from there. Some of those what what nowadays being called those simulated pressures, you know, where they're really not bringing before and they're dropping it in, but it's eating up a back or it's, you know, they got some great disguise behind it. And so it was it was a challenge. Obviously, you know, we hung in there to say the least, but you look up and you go, well, yeah, we threw for 130 yards and rush for whatever. It wasn't like we lit them up by any means, but gave ourselves a chance needed one more one more score. We felt like we could get one more touchdown. Obviously, we had to touch down the downs early in the game. But if we could have scored one more time with the way our defense was playing, we felt like we'd won the game. And then and then really the last drive, if we could have got one more first down, we would have been kicking the walk off as opposed to Myers kicking the walk off, you know, 40 something seconds later. Okay, so take me back to that touchdown. So you got it. We'll play the highlight. This was the touchdown. And I'm curious from both a football and a human being element. Here's what it sounded like. Rivers from the shotgun on third down and three a slot to the left side. Rivers wants to throw stops over the middle touchdown colds. Point is to make it look easy and just running right away from Josh Joe. He was in coverage that time. A seven yard touchdown reception and the colds now stretch their lead to 12 to three to a stunned crowd here at Lumen Field. All right, Phillip, two things. Give me the football perspective of that play. How you kind of took apart the defense and won that one. And then the human being element is you're running off the field. And as you told me, some of your younger kids getting a chance to watch dad do something that they didn't get to see because you were done playing by the time they were around. Give me both of those elements if you wouldn't mind. Yeah, well, well, goosebumps as you play the play the replay. Obviously, you feel like you can go right back to it. We felt like, you know, they played some man covers down in the down in the low red area. And so we thought there was a chance to get down running away as we did. We had a corner out there to down to side that we're kind of peeking, you know, and and and they ended up walking up in pressure there at the last second and the office of line did a great job of picking that up and downs was able to just escape quickly with the kind of get. Interference with the. Or to receiver there and get across the field with some speed, so I want to get the ball in his hands as quick as I could and let him go score with it. There's a little bit on his back. Yeah, if I was really being a critical myself, but he, uh, thankfully was open enough. He was able to get in the end zone. And then you had the human L. It was just, I mean, it was an emotional week. Shoot, I can get emotional right now. It was emotional week, but and then to be out there and warm up and just look around and go, Whoa, these folks, I'm standing here right now. I was kind of, it was surreal to just be back back in the back in on the field. And and so for us to score there, it was kind of one of those deals. You know, you weren't playing with a lot of pressure by any means. The expectations were low. I certainly didn't have them. I didn't go for myself, but I was like, Yeah, I mean, what anybody really going to battle and winning? No. So, you know, let's go go cut it loose. And what if you throw three picks? People are going to say, Yeah, I told you so, you know, I mean, so it was one of those deals. I played free. I played. I played. I played conservative in the sense just because I wanted to play within myself and say, Hey, let's not you carried away. I can't just throw it all over the place like I could. I've come off four days of practice in the last five years. But so the human element when we score was just, yeah, as you saw it, you spied that every now and then you go back to that 10 year old boy, which I kind of played that way my whole career. But just just excitement. Obviously, yeah, and you mentioned younger kids were obviously back home. My brother and my oldest son flew out for the game and son in law and the D coordinator at the high school, they flew out for the game. And so they were there and going crazy. But back home. I mean, yeah, they were excited. My seven year old girl, my 10 year old daughter, they don't, they don't really remember dad playing. They've seen the clips. But, you know, so to actually be like, wow, dad's out there playing and my older girls now, my older girls were kind of like, you know, the emoji with the brain, you know, kind of going crazy. You know, your brain kind of crushing their cow. Like, we don't really know what's going on. Like this is a little bit for us going, they were going back to their childhood, you know, like what is happening? This is what you did when we were 12. Now, now I have, I have your grandson. You know, I've had a son already. So anyway, lots of emotions. Is it like the Heard House where you show them film every Friday night to remind them what you once were? Whoa, whoa, whoa, rock show in the U Dub film and back at Puyallup High School. Hey, so Phillip Rivers with us. You were one of the rare quarterbacks to have some success against the Legion of Boom. Beat them in 2014. For whatever reason, you see again, I think in 2018, if I remember correctly, when they were still pretty darn good, you had some success against a really, really good defense. What was the difference playing that defense versus the Mike McDonald defense? How were they similar or different? Good question. Well, yeah, I think similar in this, similar in this way. They're very, they're very sure of who they are and they're very on task, you know, with their assignments and how to play what they play. And those, you know, you mentioned the 14 and 18 team and the team won the Super Bowl by a large margin in years past to beat the Broncos that year. They didn't do a whole lot. They didn't do a lot, but they did it very well and they knew, they almost knew their defense so well that they could just play what they're seeing and play the Tinnesees of the offense. And I feel like that's the similarity. It's a different scheme. Kind of comes from out of a different look, but they know what they're doing so well and they're playing in such sync together that it allows them to play with that speed and obviously that they have from a talent standpoint, but play with the speed from what they're seeing. You know, we kind of call that accelerated vision. You know, they have that accelerated vision of what's coming. They almost still step ahead of you. So I would say that would be something that's similar. And then the speed, I mean, which every team's fast, but these guys can run now. I mean, I mentioned three. I like calling by their jersey number. I know they all have last names, but the threes, the threes unbelievable. And the guy that stood out in our game, and I'm not just saying this because he's an NC State guy, but Drake Thomas in our game to me was like, God, Lee, he's everywhere. You know, he's everywhere. And the list goes on with just how cohesive those guys play together. But it was a heck of a game and a heck of a challenge. And you know, obviously there's no, there's no consolation prize and there's no, you know, trying to put a feather in my cap. But I would, I will say with you guys as candid as I can, it didn't feel all bad to see the Seahawks win the Super Bowl and go, God, we had them on the rope. You know, it didn't feel terrible to please be able to say that we had to leave with 42 seconds. That's because Drake may is a Tar Heel guy. Yeah, that's things never, you never forget those. They weren't even competitive. It took a Jason Myers last second to beat me. No, I get it. Hey, last football thing, one of my last questions for you and Phillip Rivers here, super kind to take a bunch of time with us. There's a baseball guy called Pitchy Ninja, Phillip. And what this guy does is he kind of super imposes these elite pitchers and how when the ball comes out of their hand and even halfway to the plate, it looks exactly the same, right? Paul Skeen's fastball to slider and when you got to make that decision, that accelerated vision you talk about. We hear about the Seahawks in just how hard their disguise is their speed with what they play and then just how hard Kirk Cousins one in a great detail about it as well. How it's like, man, I don't even know, like I'm supposed to look for safety's rotation, but they show this and then they do this and they run across like it's man and then they bust that tendency. Like how difficult was it with their speed and with their disguise to play the position you played for nearly two decades? Well, that's a great question. I think the one thing people said, how different is it? People say the game's changed. How much has it changed since you were out in 2020? And so in some ways I go, I didn't feel a whole lot of change. You know what I mean? Shoot, it's the same. There's 11 guys out there. How many covers can you play? But here's where I thought Seahawks defense, a handful of these teams have really improved. The Jaguars I thought were this way as well is, you know, when there's one guy disguising or there's a guy that's like, oh, he's jacking with you and all that, but the other guys aren't in sync. It's kind of like, hey man, I know you're not coming because this dude over here already told me what the covers was. You know what I mean? And so, but the Seahawks defense, the Jaguars, and I say the Jaguars again, they were really good, but because I played them, I got to see them up close. You know, in that week six, week 17 game, but they were in sync and doing it together and it's like, man, these guys are on it. Like, yeah, it did look like man and everybody made it look like man, not just two guys, you know, or these guys, but I thought they were, it wasn't just witherspoon given to the disguise, they were all giving it. Can you tell me, hold on, I don't mean to cut you off, but can you explain to somebody like me who's never played the game at any sort of a high level what that means and like how you, like, you give me an example of looking at two or three different players and seeing them do different things? Yeah, well, I just, just picture a nickel over a number two receiver, right over the flat receiver out there and he's kind of, he's kind of doing his like starting to creep like he's going to, he's going to blitz, you know, and he's, and he's jacking with you. But yet the backside safety is already so, you know, hunkered in and it looks in the stone cold cover two over there, right, or the Will Limebacker is in the B gap when he should have been in the A gap, you know, it's kind of like, hey, well, he's just jacking with me. You know, I know he's jacking with it, but when it's kind of like, well, he's jacking with me and that safety is starting to creep to the middle and the backers just like, man, maybe it is real. You know, maybe it is real. So it's that it's those kind of things. And then like the Seahawks, you mentioned Kirk Cousins talking about man his own, they did a great job of playing kind of what we call the, you know, the no show man, you know, not the corners travel or the linebackers go with the running back. And so we had a few things we did in that game. One particular third down that we ended up hitting the bullet, the bullet route to the tailback is we had a motion and formation in the boundary and all these things trying to get the tail of it being man. And I mean, nobody moved. No, nobody moves. We motion, we did this or did that and they were all just kind of standing there staring at me kind of like, well, we're not telling you anything. Well, so something told me it was man, you know, that feeling you've got to get that feeling and look and I don't know something about their demeanor told me is mad. So we we left the man play on and it was man and we hit them. We hit the pass to the tailback for, you know, first down and I remember coming off the sideline. If this isn't me saying, oh, look what I did, but coming off the sideline and then asking me how did and really the next morning. Hey, how the heck did you know it was man? I was like, just felt it. You just feel it and I was wrong. I mean, there's been there were times in those three, three games I played that was certainly wrong and in that feeling. But that's what they cause you to do. It's like, okay, here's your systematic way of knowing man or zone. It's kind of like, well, none of those worked. So what did you, what do you do? Well, you go with what you feel, you know, and it's like, and so there's that element of that. That is a young player. That, ah, yes, but not as well. That's where I was going to say that's where that's where 250 games comes in as opposed to 15 games. You know, it would just said, well, nobody ran with an emotion. It must be zone. You know what I mean? It's that simple when you're a second year quarterback as opposed to, you know, 44 years old, you see a little different and you have those feelings. You know, there was another time where they didn't pressure. They didn't. They did pressure and they, but it was like, ah, but you hear you hear, I heard, I heard Drake and Ernest. And Ernest, I couldn't hear them audibly, but you see them communicating like, Hey, we got to go. You know, I see Ernest tell Drake, we got to go. And it was like, Oh, must mean this nickel's coming. Yep. He is. You know what I mean? It's stuff like that. So that's why I was asking. I was thinking of someone like, I was thinking of someone like Sam Drake, May and the Super Bowl. Yeah. Well, no, I was actually thinking of someone like Sam Darnold or before him, Geno Smith or this whole new conversation that we're having about these quote unquote, Reclamation Project quarterbacks and how just there just no substitute for experience. And maybe it's not that big a surprise that these guys are finding their way back to it, given that they were always talented first or in some case, second round picks who, who weren't in the right spot or didn't get it early and then eventually figured it out later in their career. Yeah. No, I do. I think there's something about experience though. You mentioned, you mentioned Geno and I got to be a teammate with Geno. You know, I see after the Jets and then it came to us in LA and then obviously has gone into a lot of good things. And now he's right back with the Jets, you know, and really has had a nice career after what, you know, is tough. You mentioned Sam Darnold being third Daniel Jones is in Indy Baker may film, you know, some of these guys, the path they've been on everybody has their own journey. And it's really those guys that have been through and been hardened, you know, they've been hardened as kind of like what can phase them now? A bad game or somebody saying they're not very good like that ain't gonna bother those guys. They've already been, they've already been through it all. So it's kind of cool seeing those guys kind of go through those, those hard, those hardships and kind of come out on the other side of it. But there's the game within the game, you know, and he's. Yes, there is. And that was Phillip Rivers who joined us yesterday. I got to say he pretty much blew me away. There was a ton in there to react to. And I will say that after listening to him again and thinking about it last night, I kind of ended up with two questions that I want to ask Brock. We'll do that next. It's Brock and Sal Ciel Sports on 710. And of course the Seattle Sports app.