This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Thanks for listening to the Heard podcast. Be sure to catch us live every weekday on Fox Sports Radio in noon to three Eastern, 9 a.m. to noon Pacific. Find your local station for the herd at foxsportradi.com or stream us live every day on the I Heart Radio app by searching Fox Sports Radio or FSR. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Now let's get this party started. You're listening to Fox Sports Radio. Here we go. It's hour two. It is a Monday. We are live. The always entertaining Brian Scalabrini is going to be joining us. It is great to be here. You know, we do it every Monday. Sometimes I have big opinions and they fall completely flat. So we're not going to waste any time where Colin was right, where Colin was wrong on a Monday. Where Colin was right? Oh, what a shocker. The Steelers have backed themselves into a corner because they have no urgency at quarterback. The GM admitting, yeah, we know Aaron's in town, but we have no idea where he is. Listen, Aaron did it in Green Bay. He did it with the Jets. He's doing it with the Steelers. His personality is, he's not going to be the highest paid quarterback to the best quarterback, but his ego, his pride, his lever is, I'm going to make you uncomfortable and I'm going to control the time and the place of my off seasons. So this is just on brand for Aaron Rodgers. Where Colin was wrong. No, I did not think the Knicks would score 80 plus points in the, in a half twice on the road in the playoffs. I think they're playing great offensive basketball. It's a very complimentary roster and it's very difficult to figure out how much of this sticks against like an OKC or San Antonio, but it doesn't matter for now. They've been absolutely great. I am shocked that they swept the sixers cause I think Philadelphia with Embiid and Maxi had two of the best players in the series. I'll take an L on this one. Where Colin was right. Yeah, you conspiracy nerds. If you were ever going to rig a draft, it would have been this one. The most generational draft in a decade, you could have given Dallas a greater pick, make the Bulls number one in big city Chicago, Golden State with Steph Curt, no. Number one, Washington, number two, Utah, a bunch of unwatchable bad teams got all the best picks. So, you know, small market Memphis, small market Salt Lake city, the dreadful wizards, and the Clippers even got one. Well, I don't buy, I don't buy rigged. It's a way to validate, you know, your happiness when your team is poorly run. The best GMs are running this league and most of those teams at the top, except maybe Utah don't have them. Where Colin was wrong. Well, Tom Pelicero reporting that J.J. McCarthy and Kyler Murray, it is a true competition between the two. I think it's Kyler's job. I think you have to massage this based on the lack of confidence J.J. McCarthy has had. But I also think that when you give up draft picks to move up to get J.J. McCarthy, if he has a great camp, you have to reward him. But Pelicero saying in Minnesota, they view this as a coin flip, a 50-50 position with Kyler and J.J. Where Colin was right. Joel Embiid, swept. Joel Embiid, not 100% healthy in another playoff series. Joel Embiid can't win a second playoff series. I acknowledge when he's healthy, he's remarkable. But he's the only MVP to never make a conference final and he's now gonna be owed $188 million guaranteed. That's a bad contract. I thought, you know, that the thing with Embiid is when a big guy is hurt early in his career, he'll be hurt often and he missed his first two years in this league with injuries, that would have been a massive red flag to me. But talent is hard for a lot of GMs to ignore. And when he's healthy, you saw it in the previous series against Boston, he was dominating. But he was eventually what he's been since he arrived. Where Colin was right. Well, Austin Reeves, second straight playoffs, not 100% healthy, second straight playoffs, not a very good plus minus. In fact, the lowest of all the Lakers, second straight playoffs, a team is hunting them. T-Wolves did last year, OKC did this year. Again, I can like a player, undrafted, scrappy, the headband guy, but this is what I've been saying. What are your standards? Oklahoma City is going out of their way to hunt him in the series. And you know people do that with Luca. So now your second star is gonna get hunted. That's not championship level basketball. You can have a flaw or a weakness, but who are you gonna protect him with? 42 year old LeBron, Luca, it's turning out again. I know, regular season Austin is terrific. Post-season Austin to me is not worth 240 million. Where Colin was wrong. Steve Kerr, gonna run it back, ride or die. I mean, it's a very old roster, very little flexibility, not a lot of great draft picks. I don't think it's gonna be terribly competitive because the best rosters in the West, Minnesota, OKC, San Antonio, I would say Houston, they're all ascending, they're all gonna be better. So the West is about young ascending talent. The East outside of Detroit, you know, you got some old teams, Nick's got some veterans, Cabs got some veterans. So I'm actually surprised Steve Kerr didn't take a year off, retire or go to broadcasting. Where Colin was right. Well, the athletic using an analytical projection model ranked rosters and Buffalo was third. Right after the Seahawks and Rams. I keep saying this. I know Billy Bean is low hanging fruit as a general manager. Look at their offense. Star quarterback, star left tackle, star running back, star tight end, excellent wide receiver, DJ Moore comes to town. Brandon Bean gets beat up and I understand Josh Allen's great. Hasn't been to a Super Bowl, I understand. But my takeaway is guys, the bills roster is not lampoonable. It's very good. Where Colin was right. The Dodgers are not ruining baseball. Here are your American League division leaders. Cleveland, Tampa and the A's. Meanwhile, the New York Mets are unwatchable. Meanwhile, the Pirates, Reds and Brewers are all outstanding and would be playoff teams. Yes, the Dodgers who can't hit this year are stacked. But it's baseball. The Reds, the Pirates, the A's, Tampa, the Guardians, the Brewers, you know who stinks? The Mets and the Phillies are struggling. The Nationals in Big Market DC, once again, not very good. Stop with the little guy can't compete. Little guy struggles to compete in college basketball. Little guy Milwaukee when well run is competing just fine in Major League Baseball. Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd weekdays in Newnister, 9 a.m. Pacific on Fox Sports Radio, FS1 and the I Hard Radio app. Hey, this is Jason McIntyre. Join me every weekday morning on my podcast, Straight Fire with Jason McIntyre. This isn't your typical sports pod, pushing the same tired narratives down your throat every day. Straight Fire gives you honest opinions on all the biggest sports headlines, accurate stats to help you win big at the sports book and all the best guests. Do yourself a favor and listen to Straight Fire with Jason McIntyre. On the I Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Maybe your story arcs don't connect in the middle a little, but if you start well, you end well. Usual suspects probably gonna end up being a really good movie. And I said with Sam Darnold, it is hard to unsee the jets. But there's three things to me that matter for a quarterback. Because the league changes year to year. I'm not gonna punish it too much if you've struggled in the playoffs. It's hard to win playoff games. So look at Bill Parcell's playoff record. It's hard to win in the playoffs. First thing I look at is production. I need touchdowns. I need yards. I need mobility. I need you to be at least at some level elevate others. Can you get the ball to your stars at minimum? Production. Second thing, durability. You gotta be available to play. The third thing, and this is really a key to me, what is your current momentum? Are you an ascending player? CJ Stroud is not. Are you a leader? You are loved in a locker room. You are respected. You are ascending. You are a winning player. You are going in a direction. So production, durability, and what is your current momentum? Age matters, but Matt Stafford just won the MVP at 37. I'm not saying who I'm gonna build around for five years. I am saying right now, production, durability, and where is your momentum? That is your top 10 quarterbacks. So I'm gonna give you a few quickly who did not make the cut, but I think are very, very good. But we got 32 teams, and we've never had more talented quarterbacks. Okay, this is the golden age of quarterbacks. So here's a couple that won't make it. A deck press gots very good. He falls just outside of the top 10. He doesn't have a lot of career momentum. He's had now two major injuries, lower body injuries, seven, nine, and one last season. Never been a great playoff quarterback, not the end of the world. He's close, but he won't make it. Shaden Daniels, oh, what a great rookie year. Well, he got hurt last year, and that's always been his reputation. He got banged up his first year. He missed 10 games last year, and he wasn't good before the injury. His passer rating was in the 80s. So I think he's super talented, but he's not gonna make my top 10. This one's gonna hurt, Jalen hurts. No career momentum. Cannot get the ball to AJ Brown. Cannot see over the middle of the field. They scored fewer points than the New York Giants last year. That had a worse total offense than the Saints. He had fewer passing yards than Jacobi Brassette, and he had four more starts with a stacked roster. I'm sorry, folks, the momentum is not good. Another Jordan Love. I like Jordan Love a lot. He is all over the map. He gets hot, but he's been injured in back-to-back years, not for a long time, but banged up, and I got like eight games over 100 passer rating and six games under 90. He's too inconsistent. I also am not gonna have Trevor Lawrence on the list for the same reason. Trevor just turns the ball over too much, and he's very streaky. He wasn't very good to start last year. He was red hot to end it. Then he goes home, playoff game against Buffalo, and there's nothing. I don't know what I get week to week. Liam Cohen essentially saved his career, and I was the world's biggest Trevor Lawrence fan. Another guy that's close but won't make it is Baker Mayfield. Again, very good. Three and eight, his last 11 games last year, way too many turnovers, leads the NFL in pecs since 2018. So again, Jordan, these are good quarterbacks, but they miss the cut. There's either injuries, there's inconsistencies, there's turnovers. Again, my standard is production, durability, and current momentum. So here's how I would rate currently the top 10 quarterbacks in the NFL. Number one is Josh Allen. And you can say what you want about the GM. You can say what you want, they don't have a Super Bowl. I'm not gonna punish him. He's been very good in the playoffs. He's won 70% of his games with a defensive head coach that most of you didn't like. Seven straight years with 10 plus wins. I'm sorry, folks. He's been better than Mahomes, two straight years. Patrick Mahomes would be number two, despite his injury, it's the first injury of note in his career and reportedly he's gonna be back in September. Each of his first seven years led the Chiefs to a division title and the AFC championship. That's very LeBron in the East. Sorry, don't get recency bias, he's amazing. Number three, Caleb Williams. Do you notice numbers are the first two years? 47 touchdowns, 13 picks, never hurt. Never hurt in high school, never hurt in college, never hurt in the pros, got hit more than any quarterback in the league rookie year, not missing a snap. Unbelievably durable, makes throws that only Josh Allen can make. He's number three. Number four, again, not great in the playoffs, Justin Herbert, worst offensive line in the NFL, made the playoffs. That is insane. He is beloved in the locker room. He is the most, you could argue, he and Lamar Jackson are the most loved players in the NFL in their prospective locker rooms. Missed only six starts in his career, which is confounding, because he's never had a good old line, Justin Herbert. Number five, Matt Stafford. I mean, listen, I know he's old, I know he's not mobile. He just won the MVP. What do you want me to say? They're favored doing the Super Bowl. I mean, he's taken a bunch of mid-round guys, Pukinacua fifth round, made him a star. So I'm not building this for five years. He is a top five quarterback in the NFL today. Number six, and I think he's honestly, on any given Sunday, the best player in the league, Joe Burrow. Burrow's durability is a big problem, and you want him to win more, but I will say it again. I'm not sure on a fourth and seven, trailing by four in a Super Bowl, if there's a guy I want at quarterback more than Joe Burrow. I think he is one of the great all-time talents. He got saddled with a cheap owner and a minimalist front office. Highest completion percentage and third highest passer rating, all time with terrible O-lines. He's an insane all-time talent. You have to contextualize his career. So I'll put him at six. If he had the right, if he had Stan Cronkey and Andy Reed, he'd be number one. Number seven, Lamar Jackson. First time he already got hurt. I love him. He doesn't play like anybody. He doesn't move like anybody. Second, he has the highest passer rating, two MVP's, highest passer rating in NFL history. And everybody's like, I don't know if he's a great pocket passer. I don't know. The analytics guys like him. Highest win percentage by any quarterback in league history, not to make a Super Bowl. Again, I'm not going to crush guys because they don't win enough playoff games. I'll elevate you if you do. I'm not going to crush you if you don't. Number eight, Drake May. Battle line, hit and miss, run game. Got to a Super Bowl. Finally going to get AJ Brown, a number one wide receiver. That's what's being reported. I think that, I think you'll see how special he is. Led the NFL in completion percentage, yards per attempt and passer rating at 23 in, with a battle line in front of it. Number nine, the most disrespected player in the league, Jared Goff. All he does is win. He's the only quarterback in the league, the only one, four straight seasons with 4,000 plus passing yards. And strangely, never misses a start. He and Caleb Williams, they don't get hurt. Ever, high school, college, pros, they don't get hurt. I've seen him get ragdolled in college and the pros. He done missed starts. Dad was a pro baseball player, got some good genetics. Dude just takes shots and has never hurt. And number 10, 35 and 10 in his last 45 starts, Sam Donald. Highest win percentage by any quarterback last two years in the league. Big athletic, risk taking, no turnovers when it mattered in the playoffs. Still 28, five different teams, one a disaster. But if you go, remember he was benched in Carolina, came back, went four and two. If you take his career starting then, winning his quarterback in the NFL with the second highest pass rate. So again, I think there's five or six other guys, Dak Prescott's one of them, Baker Mayfield, another one, Jordan Lough, who are very good players. But if you're talking about production, durability and current momentum, and I know a lot of you were saying, well, Burroughs, not Durbo, Burroughs, absolutely the prettiest, best clutch quarterback. I mean, I feel like it's like MJ before Pippen and Phil Jackson, you're like watching history and he just can't get the right components around him. So people will say I have Burrough rated too high. I think I have him too low. Be sure to catch live editions of the herd weekdays in New Nester, 9 a.m. Pacific. Here we go. Our number two on a Friday, our friend Albert Breer, senior NFL reporter, Monday morning quarterback will be joining us in a few minutes. NFL schedule release, NFL sometimes I sort of got going online last night. You jump through hoops sometimes, just get all the schedules out. I had to go team by team by team. But I thought last year, remember the Patriots had the easiest schedule and I do think it matters. I've always been a believer in that. At one point they were on a 10 game winning streak and the furthest west they went was New Orleans. Look at what they did to the Patriots this year. They start at Seattle, two weeks later at Jacksonville, month later at Chicago. Oh, there's the Munich game at the Chargers. Like listen, we know the Jets are dysfunctional in most years and Miami this year especially is bad. If you take out the Jets and Dolphins games in division, I'm just gonna read you the schedule for the Patriots. If you took out the Jets and the Dolphins, at Seahawks, Steelers, at Jags, Bills, Raiders, at Bears, Packers, at Lions, at Chargers, Bills, at Chiefs, Broncos. I mean, the Patriots have never been more thankful. They're in a division with the Jets and the Dolphins. That is a rough schedule. Rarely do you see a team that's in the Super Bowl and then you see their schedule come up and go, yeah, they started 0-4 at Seattle, at Jacksonville, at Buffalo. That is rough. That is rough. Albert Brear is joining us and I've been saying this about the schedule today is, for instance, people said Chicago had the roughest schedule. But if you look at it, it starts soft, they get the Lions Packers at home late, and then in the middle, a dome and a warm weather team as the weather turns in Chicago. An old journalist told me there's two ways to write the same story. There are a lot of different ways to take tough games, how you parse them out. Denver, brutal. Chicago, there's no, the toughest two game stretches at the very end of the season. They get warm weather dome teams coming into Chicago and the weather stinks. You, during the break, you brought up something about San Francisco that I think is fascinating. I, the NFL, so there's a Chicago schedule on the screen. So I mean, look at this now. Here's my take on this, is that, yeah, all those home games to start, I mean, that is, they want Chicago to be good in the news. They did not front load the schedule. They made it very negotiable. You had a thought on what, but the NFL does punish those. It's not a ping pong lottery. What did they do to the Niners that you noticed? Yeah, so like, and this is something a couple of people have pointed out to me was like how when you're coming back from Australia, that game's on Thursday, but it's actually a Friday game over there. And now you're traveling back 18 hours or whatever the trip is to get back to San Francisco. You've got to reacclimate, you've got to reset. And on the other side of that, they gave the Rams an extra day where the Rams are gonna play the following Monday night. The Niners are playing that Sunday afternoon, which is an interesting twist. And you hear a little bit about some of the things that were going back and forth. And you go back to the owner's meeting and Kyle Shanahan was vocal and his criticism of the league with this and that they're putting us in Australia and they're already taking a home game away of ours and taking that home game away and putting us in Mexico City. And so I think half jokingly, he suggested, well, why don't you put the Rams with us in Mexico City then to even it out? So not only did they not do that, they gave the Rams the extra day of rest on the back end of the Australian trip. Yep. And oh, by the way, within a month after the Australia trip, the Niners also have their first game with the Seahawks and a game with the Broncos. So they got a little lippy. Well, I know this, that international thing is a big deal for the owners. The owners really care about that. So I do think there's a little bit of an element of not wanting people complaining about having to go overseas. And it sucks for the players. It sucks for the coaches. Like for the executives, it's great. They go over there, they'll have three or four dinners. They'll get to meet people, they'll see things, all that different stuff. Like if you're in it, if you're a player or a coach, you're basically just going over there to play a football game the same way you would be if you were going to Cincinnati or Nashville or Tampa or wherever else. It's just a longer trip and there's all kinds of logistical hoops you have to jump through. You wouldn't have to jump through otherwise. And of course for all of those guys, the mindset is how is this going to affect the bigger picture of our entire season? Listen, you speak of international games, there's nine. And some of these games would be the best game of the weekend. And I think your point is well taken is that the owners really care about this and owners are ultimately commissioners, bosses. I actually looked at the Christmas games and the Thanksgiving games, easily the best slate in my lifetime. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. And first of all, the Christmas stuff is a direct hit at the NBA, that's obvious. But I will tell you this, that as well run as the NFL is and as intentional as they are, I don't think in my opinion, they've necessarily done a great job on Thanksgiving for through the years. They've, a lot of times the day after Thanksgiving, there's more good college football games I like. I thought Thanksgiving and Christmas were insane this year. So here's what they're looking to do, right? Like, and I had Ani Bose tell me this last year as their VP of broadcasting, I talked to Hans Schroeder about this yesterday. And I think like part of what they're doing is this a shift philosophically. It used to be that like, you take like the four o'clock Dallas window on Thanksgiving and you would say, well, we don't need to put a big brand name team in there because that's gonna get a huge rating other way. So like, let's just throw whoever in there and that game will be propped up by the window. Last year that shifted. Last year they said, let's swing for the fences. Let's try to break records. So if you look in the opener, they put the Cowboys opposite the Eagles. And then on Thanksgiving, they put Mahomes and the Chiefs opposite the Cowboys. And so the mentality had shifted a little bit instead of using the window to prop up the game, let's use the game to prop up the window and really try to break records and all of that different stuff. And so I think you see that all over the schedule here. You've got the Super Bowl rematch, obviously in the kickoff game. And then like you said, Christmas is unbelievable. Thanksgiving is unbelievable. Here's the other thing is these are all gonna be packages that they're gonna be looking to sell when they get back to the negotiating table with the broadcast networks and with the streamers. And you already see it with what they're doing with Netflix, right? Netflix has got like what do you call it, quote unquote, this special events package, week one, week 18, Thanksgiving, even the two games on Christmas, a five game package. That's really the idea here is like, how can we create something that's valuable for the networks, for the streamers to bid on? And obviously this has been sliced up different ways. I think we're winds up hurting you a little bit, because remember this is a zero sum game. Go and look at week 16 on Sunday. That's that Christmas weekend. Right now, and look, a couple of games are gonna fall out of the Saturday window, so this'll change, but right now the one o'clock window is two Fox games, two CBS games, and that is it. And then the late afternoon window is one Fox game, one CBS game. Now one of those games is Niners Chiefs. That's a huge game obviously. But that's six games total on Sunday afternoon, two more coming. It's really light. Sorry Scott Hansen, but it's really light in there. So that's where all of this is, I think incurring a cost, and they're gonna have to figure out how to navigate that, but that's why they wanna go to 18 games, because they want more inventory to deal with this sort of thing. Okay, so the NFL bailed on something I think they should have bailed on, that you don't have to put everybody on prime time once. And I think teams that are poorly run year after year, poorly owned shouldn't be on TV. And the NFL's bailed on that. I was a little surprised, maybe because of Brady's ownership, Fernando Mendoza, the Raiders feel bigger. I also think John Spitek, I think Spitek had a great draft in off season. Linda, I think they went and found six starters. Even Naylor, the receiver from Minnesota, I think said, I love Naylor, I mean, the Kobe Dean, Kway Walker, yeah, good off season. I mean, they went and found six good starters. I was shocked that the Raiders didn't have a prime time. I mean, I look at this schedule. I mean, the Fox, I mean, again, Raiders rams on Fox, but there's some games here that I think are, I'm interested in. Yeah, and I always think the rookie quarterbacks are interesting and I think you're right. Like I probably would have looked at that and said, like we get to November, December, Mendoza, I mean, at least history tells us Mendoza will probably be starting. Yes. And that's going to be of interest to people. So you could take a Raiders game in November or December and maybe throw it on a Thursday night, right? Like I thought that would have made some sense, but I mean, like they're one of five teams. That's a crazy number. One of five teams to not get any prime time games. And again, I think this is like leaning back into that whole thing. Like, and this is a bigger, you know, conversation about television and the way the contracts work and the fact that everybody is spending so much for the contracts and it isn't tiered as much as it used to be where Monday night football costs less than Sunday night football, so you're okay. Giving maybe a little less to ESPN in that scenario. They feel like they've got to give a really good product to everyone, to all the different broadcast partners. And so, you know, it's interesting. We talked about the give and take a second to go, right? So you know what the give and take is for this? And this is, is that certain Premier teams now are feeling the brunt of it and having to play all the mid-week games. The Rams, and I've got this up now, like right in front of me, the Rams schedule. So they play that Thursday, which is a Friday in Australia, then Monday. Then they've got another Monday game four weeks after that. So that's two short weeks in the first six weeks of the season. Then they don't actually have a buy because they don't have a full buy because they've got that Wednesday game, which was a buy in front of it. A Thursday after that, then they play on Friday again on Christmas. And so when you are taking teams, again, the five teams, the Jets, the Titans, the Raiders, the Cardinals, and the Dolphins out of the mix, that means you're putting more weight. You're putting a heavier burden on the Premier teams. And there are eight teams that have six or seven prime-time games, which is an incredible number. But that's a burden that all those teams have to take on. So I have had a player and an executive in the NFL in the last five or six weeks. Question Omar Khan and really what's happening with the Steelers, they got worked in the draft on Mackay Lemon, very embarrassing. This Aaron Rodgers situation is weird. He's in Pittsburgh. They don't know where he's at. That's not good to get out. Now, in fairness to the Steelers, they are old school. They still spend more money than anybody on defense. I mean, they've been toned after years. I mean, they went offence, but it's Mike McCarthy. We all said that's a safe hire. But I look at the Aaron Rodgers situation, and I know Aaron, this is his personality. He gains, he likes control. He's gonna do things on his watch. Now he gets surprised when the Packers and the Jets move off him, but this feels weird. What is going, I mean, by Aaron's standards, it feels weird. What's going on? I think there are two things. I think the first thing is, like, I don't think ownership there wants to sink to the bottom of the league, which has colored a lot of the decision making there. And I think like a lot of football people would tell you that this is probably the point to rip the band-aid off. In fact, you could have made an argument for that a year ago. They were an older team a year ago, but they bring in Rodgers to take the last swing at it. It didn't quite work out to the level that they had hoped. So, okay, like now in 2020, and 60 year rip the band-aid off. And this would have been the year where it's like, okay, like maybe we hire a Chris Shule to be our head coach, go with a 30-something guy like we've always done, and we hit the reset button on the roster. Instead, they go the other way, which I think telegraph, they don't want to sink to the bottom of the league. So that meant bringing TJ Watt, Jaylen Ramsey, and Cam Hayward back. And if you look at what they did in acquiring veteran players, Michael Pittman, almost 30 years old, Jamel Dean, almost 30 years old, Rico Dowdell, running back going into his eighth year, like those were their big-time additions. So they've almost leaned further into what's an older roster that isn't built for Will Howard or Mason Rudolph. So now they're leveraged in, like you said, on trying to win now with this group here. And Aaron Rodgers has quite a bit of leverage in this situation, looking at like, where everyone is at. Maybe he doesn't want to play for $10 or $15 million next year. Maybe he wants a little bit more than that. Does that make things awkward? I still think that piece of it has to be worked out. I think the likelihood is that he's there, but I mean, you already came for a cut rate last year. I think it was $12.5 million. You came for a lot less than what you're worth last year. Are you willing to do that again? Was there an expectation you would do that again? And if you want more, how much more? Like, I think all of that plays into how this is gonna play out over the course of the next couple of weeks before they get to their veteran mandatory mini camp. So it used to be, you'd give a quarterback three years, maybe four, and then the Mannings, Peyton Manning famously had like a year four where a lot of interceptions. And Eli was a little bit of a slow starter. That's not the league now. Usually by the second season. So you look at the draft, Caleb Williams hit, Drake may hit, Jayden Daniels one healthy hit, Bo Nix hit. I think Michael Penex is on the clock this year. Two is there. They'll go to two very quick. By bringing in Kyler Murray, and that we've seen this in the league, Sam Darnold's a great example, Baker Mayfield, Geno Smith in Seattle, we've seen quarterbacks were talented, go to places that have dysfunction upstairs, and then they go to a well run operation. I view the Vikings as smart, well run operation. They gotta get the GM. But I mean, to me, the signal is, the JJ McCarthy thing publicly will say this, but it's over. Do you think it's a real competition? I do, but I think the context of it's a lot different. I think what is lost here to some degree is that they did want to create competition for him last year. And because Daniel Jones had a better opportunity in Indianapolis, and because Sam Darnold had a better opportunity in Seattle, they weren't able to get either of those guys back, but they wanted one or the other back. They wanted one or the other back in the room with JJ to compete with him. Now, when that didn't work out, they went all in. They said, we're giving you all the reps, we're giving you all the work with your teammates, we're giving you a chance to build the confidence of everyone around you, and we know how that worked out. Right? So now I think they're doing what they intended to do last year, which is we're gonna put the heat on you. You are off scholarship, and we're gonna see how you react. And I think that it's probably a way of accelerating the process of evaluating him, right? In that like, now he knows he's on the clock. And now he knows that if he can't, and this is not one of those situations where it's just like, we're bringing in somebody to push them, no, Kyler's coming to win the job. And so, yes, it's a competition, but the context of the competition is different than it would have been last year. If they hadn't successfully worked that out last year where Darnold or Jones had come back, I think the idea would have been like, let's let JJ beat him out. I don't think that's what it is this year. I think this year it's let the best man win. We've got some veteran players on our roster and a really good core. We're not gonna throw this year overboard in the name of quarterback development. We're just gonna put the best guy out there. And if the best guy is JJ McCarthy, God bless he becomes the quarterback. But there is no, like, there's no more like, oh yeah, we spent the 10th pick in the draft in him. So Ty goes to him. I like, I don't think that that's what it is at all anymore. All right, Albert Brear, Monday morning quarterback. That stuff on the Niners that you brought out is funny. And I think it's accurate is, listen, I'll give you one last night. I just said this last hour is the NFL told teams we're not going to edit your social media. We trust your judgment, right? And some teams did really funny stuff. I did not, but they do not like friendly fire. I thought the Charger social media team had taken a shot at Vrable. They don't like that. You know, there, there, there's, I saw little tweets last night about, and I thought, I don't think that's smart. I don't love it. The Chargers have a history with it though. They took shots at Harrison Bucker. They took a shot at Deshaun Watson. They took shot at Ty Rekill. Those are all sensitive situations, right? Yeah, I don't know. I'll tell you which one was good. The Titans one was awesome. Oh, it was great. It was great. Yeah. No, I think, listen, social media is funny. I always say you can get fired for a post. You're not going to get a job promotion for a post. I'd be very careful. We've seen companies go sideways and, but I just, when I saw those, I thought, I don't know if the league loves that, but maybe. Yeah, I will say this though, for the Chargers, it was subtle. And I do think to some degree, now the Vikings had a little reference in there if you looked for it, like, and I'm not talking about the fake reference. There was the see the comments, like, like thing on the, on, on, on, on, on their reference to the Patriots. I, like, I, I do think, like, if no one had touched it, then the story would have been that no one touched it. And so I think in that way, the Chargers kind of bailed everybody else out because now the league doesn't have to answer that question. You're one step ahead of me, Albert, as always. That's funny. Good to see you, bud. Good to see you, Kyle. Yeah. Yeah. Kyle Shanahan goes to the league meetings. He's complaining about the trip and the Rams get an extra day off and they have to play an early game on Sunday. Like that, that, listen, some, you got, sometimes you got to, you just got to zip it. Not, not every meal should be shown on social media, not every opinion, not every mood we need to see on social media. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.
