Indiana Rolls Alabama & the SEC’s Rough Bowl Season, Plus Mendoza’s Draft Stock and More w/ Daniel Jeremiah

Hey, we're still a listeners. You can find every episode on Apple podcast and Spotify. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon music. Thy ticket, Lady Jennifer of Coolidge. Well, many thanks. Good sir. Here is my discover card. They accept discover at Renaissance fairs? Yeah, they do here. Discover is accepted at the places I love to shop. Get it? With the times. With the times? You're playing the lute. Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right? Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. The Ryan Rosillo show presented by DraftKings. We're going to run through a lot of football today. We'll recap all of the playoff games. What it means for the buy teams. Big 10 SEC has the belt officially transferred. D'AngiGeramia is going to talk about all the college football stuff. He's going to have a lot on Mendoza. And then we're going to do a ton on Crossroads teams in the NFL. Him handicapping the AFC, including the one team. He hears from most teams in the NFL who they don't want to play on the AFC side of the bracket. Got a little recap of the holiday and life advice. The stage is set. The college football playoffs are here. Every snap, every drive, every touchdown, DraftKings sportsbook, the number one sportsbook for live betting puts you right at the center of the action. As I'll say in my open, I don't know how anyone's going to pick against Indiana. Now, you want to take the points, go ahead, the rematch. Oregon's already played them. Maybe you're going with that part of it. But if you've watched all of this stuff, and look, this is the fun part of it, it's like, Hey, maybe I'll just pick an upset. So I don't know if I'll work myself there in the next week or so. But after getting done with those first four games, you're like, why would anyone actually want to pick anyone against Indiana from what we saw in the open? From real time wagers to season ending thrillers, DraftKings keeps you in the game from kickoff to the final whistle. New customers bet just $5. And if your bet wins, you'll get $200 in bonus bets instantly. Download the DraftKings sportsbook app. Use the code Ryan, R-Y-E-N. That's code Ryan, R-Y-E-N to turn $5 into $200 in bonus bets. If your bet wins in partnership with DraftKings, the crown is yours. I could talk about that sugar bowl all day, all weekend. I'm not going to do that to you. That was an incredible game to close out. The playoff games late last night. But I think we all need to start in Indiana. Not the Rose Bowl, where Indiana humiliated Alabama. But what we're looking at here with this team, it's funny for all the energy that I had that was very negative towards Indiana last year, I think after that Oregon game, if you've listened to this podcast, it's probably not even the same. I don't know that I love when people say like, you're going to have that same energy for a terrible point being made. But however I felt about them not being real, I felt after that Oregon game about this team being real. And you want the all-time exclamation point. And look, there's still a lot of work to do here. And I sit here and go like, what if this team is 16-0? Are they going to go 16-0? Because that's the way it feels right now, right? That's the way this team feels. I have a hard time seeing a scenario where I talk myself back into picking anyone against them. We could talk the rematch and Oregon, they'll be more comfortable with them. That's the part of it that sort of sucks for Indiana and Oregon and the Big Ten on top of everything else, but whatever. I mean, this is a bracket, right? Just like when I picked Indiana to be Duke and the O2 bracket, people laughed at me. So there's actually, I don't know if I'm going to buy the candy stripe pants today, because I know what I said in 24, so I probably shouldn't order those pants. But I cannot say, like I could just say it over and over again, the amount of respect that I have for Indiana's football program is off the fucking charts. Because here's the other thing for this. We could say, oh, well, it's NIL and this is this and all that stuff. It's like, yeah, but still the composite rankings of this talent coming out of high school, this roster is ranked behind Boston College, even in 25. And a lot can be fixed with a guy like Mendoza who might be the number one overall pick. But there's an argument to be made that Signetti doesn't even really have this thing rolling yet. We talk about pounds that that corner that just blasted Simpson, the guy who played in high school with Jeremiah Smith, he's like five, nine, one, seven years, something like that. Pons is like, wow, you know, there's some other places that offered me, but Signetti was the only one that gave me a chance. So I left you and me and I came over here and you're like, this isn't, this isn't the five star guy decided to get me the hell out of Auburn. So this roster, like, yeah, it's, it's impressive and they're well coached, but it's still not even like a fully formed. And matter of fact, they went into national championship and what the hell this guy's going to be able to do from a talent standpoint. And it's funny too, because last year, like I've been paying attention to the stuff that Signetti said after these big wins after the Ohio State win, after the just demolition of Alabama. And I think last year it was almost if he was having more fun, just going like, I don't even know if we're really this good. And then we found out that they weren't. And it's like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna do a bunch of this stuff. And look, I know some people defend it and go like, hey, it's just like Lane Kiffin. And well, when Lane Kiffin was doing in Tennessee, I didn't like it either. Because I don't like when it's just not true when you're making some of these arguments. And now he doesn't even do anything because the truth is out on the football field. So I don't know if he's enjoying the moment or he's realizing like, hey, this goes from like upstart upsetting the the the national media, like who gives a shit? It's 24, like Indiana football is in the playoffs and we lost in the redeem. Like it's not that big of a deal. Like what a what a great story. Now it's like I'm too in sway from winning a national championship. So it feels like he's actually because when I was watching him in 24, I'm like, he's going to be the worst if they actually start winning. And they are winning. And they're taking out the blue bloods. And it actually feels like he's a bit more reserved or if he's enjoying or realizing like how big of a deal this whole thing is. And then you've got Mendoza, who look, I just want to run through three throws, the third and two, you see the end zone shot, there's pressure to his right, he gets away from the pressure, then he has to throw it back inside to the left to Sarat. And there's all sorts of traffic all over the place. I know it's only for a few yards, but it moves the sticks. They were going to be punting from the 11. Great throw, the third and eighth throw on the Blitz to Becker for the touchdown. A third and eight, where he had a 38 yard hit to Cooper, then put them up 38 three, it doesn't matter. I think the best thing about Mendoza isn't just those throws is like, we're sort of like examining the personalities and who some of these top picks are. If Mendoza were to DM and only fans girl on Instagram, he may just be asking her if she wants this life. So I think that's safe. Bama, we'll get to them. Miami, they both beat up Ohio State, and if you want to get cute with the scoring of it, which I'm known to do from time to time, you're like, all right, well, it's 14, nothing. Ohio State seems to settle down. They come out of the halftime, it's 14, seven, you're like, you know, they missed a field goal. They gave them six on the pick six, which was one of the best reads of a bubble screen I've ever seen in college football, where the Miami defender just absolutely is like, you guys want to sit here and pretend you're going to get set and block me? Like I'm just jumping on this thing and reading it. The physical nature of what happened to the O-line and D-line stuff, like it was both an ass kicking and then there was a score element of it where I'm like, God, this feels just like the Indiana game where Ohio State's in this, if they kick that field goal, they tie it up, right? In the Big Ten Championship game, yet just like the Indiana game, the entire time of watching it, I'm like, Indiana's better, right? Same as the Indiana win against Oregon. You're like, all right, it's 2020, Indiana's better, or at least they've been better on this day. And even though it's a one-score game, you know, like Miami's just better than them. The crazy thing about Miami throughout this two-game run and why I know I wouldn't have been picking them to win the whole thing is because of Carson Beck. And yeah, I know, like I've heard the arguments about how it's been a little bit better, but he hasn't even had to do anything. It's the punt return and the end around from Tony in the A&M game. He had Beck had, you know, you want to get cute with it and kind of play the results, be like, oh, there's a throw here, there's a throw here. Honestly, Beck's two big runs in the Ohio State game might have been more important, maybe that one run more important than any single throw that he had the entire day. His two games, he's thrown for 301 yards combined. They haven't even, I don't know what's scary that the bad Beck part is coming or that they haven't even had to have like the great Beck and now they're in the national semi-final. So I think there's a part of us too, seeing Miami in the final four where you're like, I know it sucks your Notre Dame, but I'm kind of glad this team got invited to the dance. Oregon, who I would have had third if I were on the playoff committee, I would have had him third. I know you can't do that. You want to spread around the love a little bit geographically, but I thought they were the third best team, which means I thought the three best teams coming out of the regular season of the conference championship games were all Beck 10 teams. They dominated Texas Tech and they also didn't dominate Texas Tech. Tech had 88 yards in the first half. 50 of those yards were in a broken run play where it looked like he was going to be tackled for a loss twice and then broken 50 yards. So that means everything else, everything else detected in the first half added up to 38 yards. Not great, Bob. Oregon was two of 11 on first down in the first half. They were four of 19 for the entire game. So both dominated and didn't dominate and they got the late touchdown there as landing, I guess, wanted to send a message. You could also just argue the clock like, hey, we're not supposed to kick the field goal in this spot. So Texas Tech can't do anything on offense the entire time despite having this defense, where I can't wait to talk to Daniel Jeremiah about David Bailey and his day, because this was like one of those, it'll be a lost thing. They lost the game. Nobody's going to care about Texas Tech moving forward. But what that defense did, what that front did was special. But when you can't throw the football, you can't run the football and you give it away four times. That's how you lose 23 zip. The sugar bowl, the three Trinidad Chambles plays the drive that I may remind the audience once a year about this drive, because what he did as, you know, nice early old miss, kicking some field goals. Georgia responds, Ole Miss responds, and then it's like a fumble and you're like, all right, we're going to the half. Georgia has settled things down. I did not think Georgia was going to lose this football game. I just didn't think if you looked at the defensive rankings and what's happened throughout the entire year, like there was all these different groupings that I would do with the playoff teams and be like, let's look at all these different teams and like, who are the standouts in a bad way? Who are the outliers? Like, hey, these are the teams that kind of run the football pretty well, even though Miami's statistically on the season is like way behind the other three teams that are in the final four. I ran through that stuff with Danny Cannell opposing yards per play and you're like, dude, Ole Miss is so much worse than all the other teams. So again, I am shocked, but this drive by Chambles, like when if this stuff's going to happen, you're going to chase with some football games. Second and 11 is the play where it looks like he's going to get destroyed and blindsided. He's running away from one pressure and turning back into some other pressure somehow gets out of that and then just flips it like a guy throwing a towel into a bin at the gym, except Chambles hits this one. That's the Lacey. It's short. It's only for four yards because it looked like Lacey ran for the first. So we still have a third and seven. He rolls all the way back to basically the goal line. I think he's right in front of it if you want to get technical with me here. He clears all of this pressure where you're thinking like, hey, he's going to get sacked. It's going to be fourth in a minute. Like this is it. This might be the game right here. Right. And that's what it felt like three plays in a row where like, hey, this might be the game. He hits Lacey again. It's a huge buddy pass. Bolden hits him so hard that's actually shy of the sticks. Lacey's so big. He's such a physical presence. How strong is that guy to not crumble on that hit? And Bolden actually gets hurt on his shoulder, which is like the second guy. Georgia had lost the secondary. I don't know how much that had to do with the outcome of this game. And so now that ends up being a first down because he still has to fight for the first town, despite it looking like he may be in his own end zone on trying to escape all of this pressure. Like Fran Tarkin was like chill out a little bit. Right. The next play he escapes again. The right guard gets absolutely destroyed on this play. He rolls out to his right, but he's in such a rhythm now he hits Wallace for 44 yards. Those three plays are like Ole Miss fans are going to remember those three plays the rest of their lives. So the crazy thing about those plays though is they end up getting the touchdown and then Kirby smart had his decision to make where he's at his own 33 on fourth and two. And there was really only one drive where I felt like Georgia's offensive line was establishing itself in a way where you're like, okay, this is starting to look like Georgia football. Like I don't trust Stockton a ton. He's going to make some throws. He's going to miss some other reads. He had a couple of reads where I'm like, he's just, he's just not going to see the field as well as maybe you would need him to, to, you know, get through this game. Clearly not because they lost it, right? Even if they tied it up late. But this decision on fourth and two at your own 33 and you're like, okay, what's going into this decision? Because part of me is thinking like, why are you going for a fourth and two? Chamble has just had to do all of this ridiculous stuff just to keep that possession alive. Like you're okay. There's still a lot of time left. You're okay. Or does Kirby smart go that fucking guys on the other side of the field? Like I don't want him getting the ball again because now it doesn't even really matter. Even if our past rushes winning some of their individual matchups, we're not closing. We're winning the, you know, we're getting through the trench part of it, but we're actually not taking the castle here because this guy is just on an absolute heater. Receivers all over the place. I mean, look, it could have been even better for Chambers. He had two huge drops in this game. So look, this decision I understood way more than DeBoer's decision where it's like, you're down three nothing and you're earning a go for it and you decide to come out and pump formation. You decide to try to get cute with the whole thing. You know, you can't run right at anybody, even having to do it all year long. So now you're going to have to do some end around things. So if you go to the edges against Indiana, like good luck. And then it's like, oh, now Indiana has a short field. I understood the Kirby one more, even if I didn't like that one. But maybe he was just so scared of Chambers. He's like, I don't want to do this. So 20 points in the fourth quarter for Ole Miss, which I thought was very interesting considering when Ole Miss blew the game in Athens during the regular season. It was a 17-0 run against Georgia. A Georgia team that scored every single time that they had the football did not punt that regular season matchup. An Ole Miss through all of the nonsense that they've had to deal with. That is not of their own doing with the lane kiffing part of this kind of win where I think if you're just a neutral fan at home, you're probably rooting for Ole Miss. So what does this all mean? Let's start to summarize where we're at right now with four teams left in college football. Bama, frauds, Ohio State, frauds, tech frauds. It's not my favorite exercise. We do it every year. We'll never stop doing it. The irony of this being a pro Notre Dame argument somehow that these other teams, I mean, clearly tech in Ohio State, we're going to be in no matter what. Bama, everybody hates Bama. If you don't like Bama, you hate Bama. So I understand the conversation around it. It is kind of funny, though, that it's kind of baked into this Notre Dame casserole where it's like you do realize when it was a 14 playoff in Notre Dame, got in a couple of times after they get their ass kicked, everybody's like, well, they should have been in it either. We're going to do it forever. There's no point me wasting any time on this. Ohio State won. They won. They were 12-0 before they lost to Indiana. And yeah, look the same as it did against Indiana, as it did against Miami. And whatever my issues are with some of those stretches in the Big 10 scheduling, give me a break. Same thing with the Big 12 and tech. They should have been in this. I don't know. Maybe it's just a lot of people watching it for the first time, and maybe it's the recency bias of all of this stuff. The drop off post-save, and we knew it was going to happen because you were asking to maintain the greatest run in the history of college football. But it does... For Indiana to do it against Bama is like, is this this changing of the guard thing? Right? You have Miami, almost what, 23 years later against Ohio State. If that pass interference call, you have Ole Miss, which is probably my least favorite of the top four supposed SEC contenders. And now they're the only team left standing without their head coach. Now, there's also a conversation around the buys. What do the buys mean in this new system with 12 teams? Going into the Indiana game early, early over here on the West Coast, the buy teams were 0 and 5. Right? And as soon as I started hearing that thing thrown around a little bit more and more, because Ohio State got run over by Miami, you're like, is this something? Right? Because what I say all the time, not everything is something. I thought it was really interesting during the broadcast last night when they were talking about Kirby Smart and they were talking about Georgia and McElroy, who's awesome. I went on his pod, love the guy. But he said, you look at Georgia, over 90% of the rosters from high school, there's a culture here. They get it. Wouldn't think Davos at home watching the game being like, yeah, because Georgia wins up until last night. An incredible run here by Kirby Smart, 117 and 20 now, 117 and 21. It's like, yeah, you know, we just, we don't want to do all that portal stuff because, you know, we want the guys that, and like when you win, that's something that works. And then if you're losing, it's like, how come you're not dipping your toes into the portal? Right? So when I looked at the record, the first thing I thought of when I heard the record being thrown around, I was like, okay, but my Texas was a 13 and a half point favorite against Arizona State, the by team last year. Ohio State was actually a favorite in the rematch against Oregon when they just ran them. You want to talk about an ask it. Penn State was a 12 and a half point favorite against Boise State and Notre Dame was actually one and a half point favorite against Georgia in that game. That one swung that one, that number kind of swung a little bit. So last year, the by teams that all lost were all dogs in 24. But I never, I like, I was listening to it going, why this isn't that hard. Why is no one talking about that part of it? So then Indiana wins and then you're back to the Texas Tech, Oregon line, which, all right, text the by team, Oregon was favored throughout. It did apparently flip at a lot of places where it ended up being tech one and a half. So does it hurt my record argument? No, I think a regional person goes, hey, that was kind of a coin toss deal there. And I think a lot of us actually still like to work in better than Texas Tech going into that game. And then you have last night, we're all missed. I think I don't know if it closed at six, but it was six for much of the week. Georgia was favored by six. So maybe we have something because you've got two teams here where it's Indiana winning, whatever you want to do with the Texas Tech part of this. And then the rest of them are the by week losers. I know if you ask the coaches who lose, they're going to tell you the by week is a huge problem because that's what coaches do. We're going to tell you the fucking portal sucks. They're going to tell you the NIL sucks unless it helps them tell you signing days on the wrong day. So if you talk to the losing coaches, I think in this case, the losing coaches would be the worst possible source on any of this stuff. And it's like, Hey, let's give it a little bit more time before we just start deciding that the buy is this massive, massive disadvantage, because basically all the 24 data tells you, Yeah, those teams, like two of them, that's 26 points were the spreads in two of those games. All right, final thought, the SEC has had a disastrous bull season. They actually had a terrible heads up bull season with the Big 10 last year. I know I'm Mr. Stubborn guy, and I know I've been banging the drum in the SEC thing here forever. When Michigan won the first Big 10 title in over 10 years, and we start talking about like conferences and the hierarchy of this whole thing, you're like, Well, if you just won your first one in 10 years, give me a fucking break, like now you get the belt. But there's just so much anti SEC stuff out there from so many other different corners that I was like, I didn't even care if it's true or not, I just want to say it, because screw those guys, which again, I totally understand. That's kind of what everybody's doing here. But I didn't like any of the contenders. When the season closed, I did love the depth of the conference, which I beat you over the head with on and on and on again. There's part of me that wonders like going into 26, if I'll look at different schedules and I'll look at some of the rosters, I'd be like, Look, I still think that that's a different challenge. Like this Big 10 team is going to have like these four or five games. Like I just don't think that's necessarily the same. But going on the overall standard, the standard that I always held the SEC to was like, if you're telling me that four teams won seven straight titles, like what other conference, why are we even talking about this shit? Well, the Big 10 is on the doorstep of doing this. Not seven straight years, but my whole argument of like, could you get to four teams in the Big 10? Now granted, they expand, so you throw an SC in their history and I don't want to just count every team that's ever won a national championship. Because prior to the expansion of the Big 10, I think you could do Ohio State, you could do Michigan, I guess you're supposed to do Penn State, that feels like a bit of a reach. Michigan State was probably a better option, considering what they were doing a few years ago. But now you have however you want to categorize those teams, Washington being in a national championship final SC and then obviously the Oregon part of this is very real as they played in two title games and they've been on like a 15 year stretch of really, really high end football without the national championship. If it's Indiana or Oregon and it's three different teams in three straight years, on top of what the Big 10 did to the SEC in the heads up matchups last year, I will tell you I am rattled by the Tennessee Illinois result, right? I guess maybe Tennessee wasn't as good as I thought they were going to be. We can get an opt-outs and all that kind of stuff. I don't know, Illinois had a couple, I guess Tennessee had six, but Vandy loses their game, Missouri loses their game. It's a bad bowl record. It's a bad bowl record. The Big 10 bowl record has been terrific here. And that's why you could say, hey, welcome to what everybody else was saying this entire time, which I totally understand. But I also think the motivation of some of the people that were saying it's like, you know, look, I love Danny, but he came on and I was like, so basically you're saying everything that didn't matter for 10 years, you're now saying is like the thing that matters. Like I guess I just never, I'd rather be wrong than full of shit is what I'm telling you. And in this case, the standard again, the standard that I hold any of this to, and no one's going to care about the Power Four head to head record during the regular season, because the bulls kind of stand out a little bit more. And I'm telling you right now too, like I'll bring it up in standard Jeremiah, if Texas had lost that game in Michigan, I'm like, you know, because of all the games that I was looking at, I was like, all right, well, the SEC will win that game, they'll win this game. And this is like two years now with this stuff. And it isn't just about opt-outs and any of this stuff. So yeah, whether it's the changing of the guard in the Ohio State, Miami, the Ole Miss, Georgia, and certainly what Indiana did to Alabama, like we're right there where it's going to be really hard for any of us that are so pro SEC, like you, we're going to have to keep our private chats private, right? Because there's just no, there's no way with the evidence of the last year plus now on top of following what Michigan did. There's just, it's going to be a really hard argument to make. You're going to have the least amount of evidence that you've ever had when you're arguing favor the SEC. 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And the gift you can give yourself because you know yourself better than anyone else is a cheeseburger once you make it to that finish line. If you've been waiting to see what all the hype's about today's the day, go to Shake Shack and order the Big Shack. Sounds familiar, made different. Let's keep talking some football. One of our favorites, Daniel Jeremiah, NFL Network Analyst, the host of the Move the Sticks podcast along with Bucky Brooks available wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're going to start gearing up. It's his time. So we'll do some NFL in the back game, but I want to start with the bowl games and kind of where we're at with college football. But I think we have to start with Indiana. It's where I started the show today. This is somebody was trying to figure out like any kind of comp and I thought it's not my original thought, but somebody pointing out Calhoun and Stores where you could argue Stores makes Bloomington look like Beverly Hills. But you know, here we are year two where last year was kind of like fun, but I'm like, I don't know that there are any good. And to see what they've done now to close out against Ohio State humiliate Alabama. What do you see when you watch them play? Well, it took a longer period of time. But if you would ask anybody like the pre-harboss Stanford stuff and said like Stanford would ever be relevant, much less like winning rose bowls and you know, a powerhouse program, nobody would have believed it because it was that was they were so far away from there. I took them a couple years to get there. So that's why this one I got, I have no comp. I mean, I know people have talked about different sports and trying to find things, but to immediately do this, you know, it's success at last year. And then this year I've got, I've got nothing for it. And it's not even like as much as I love like the the Boise teams, it felt like, okay, they punched up and it was the Statue of Liberty and it was okay, they got some good front seven players, NFL players. But it was like they were just out scheming teams and Coach Pete was kind of ahead of his head of the curve there. This is like that we're going to do what you guys have always done is the blue bloods and we're going to come here, we're around the ball 50 times and just push you off the line of scrimmage and completely dominate you, no frills. There was nothing schematically that was, you know, you're watching the game like, oh my gosh, this innovative thing that they're doing, they went and beat them at their own game and just physically dominated them. So I have no comparison for it. But the takeaway that I have when I was watching it was and I posted this, it was from some of these other games to Miami especially, was I think that one of the things that we don't discuss, it doesn't show up in box scores is like the physicality of the tackling from Indiana and Miami in those two games. Like there's a difference between just rapping and dragging a guy and getting them on the ground versus just like violent, violent collision after violent collision after violent collision. Like they were playing at a different physicality, those two teams. Yeah, Miami especially, like just an O line D line showcase. And, you know, they were saying like, hey, you know, that's the whole point. It was the whole point of all those great SEC teams. It's like, you know, you might have like one or two guys, but like, we're expecting to have and like Miami, you can argue, not even rotating as many guys in as maybe some of the other schools, Indiana's down a guy on top, everything else. So I just would like to listen to that. And I think that's what we're going to do. We're going to have a lot of people listening and even for myself, like when you see great coaching, you know, we can talk about the fourth down discipline when DeBoer decided to go for that early where he's like, okay, when we know we can't run it at you. So we're going to line up and then there's going to be a time out and then we're actually going to have Simpson come out with a punt team. But that means we're actually going for this whole thing. So like we could point to that. And I think that's what you do on TV where there's a team, like they didn't fall for any of that stuff. Is there a greater understanding of like when you were evaluating or you're doing it now, we're like, these are these indicators of how how special a job a coach is doing with how his team executes on a Saturday. I would just say that the poise, there was no, when you're watching on TV, obviously, you don't have the mics can hear everything, but they just know there's no panic, there's no poise, there's a very comfortable ease with which they're playing. And it could be on the offensive side of the ball where they're giving you an exotic look. And even in mid look, the first series, Alabama kind of, they confused them a little bit with how aggressive that they were. And they very calmly just kind of adjusted to that, sorted that out, picked it up. But there was no frantic behavior. There wasn't anything defensively where they saw a look and you saw just this frantic communication. It was just very, very calm under control. They knew they knew what what they were looking for. They played their keys and they just played their scheme. And it was nothing. They didn't have to do anything special. They keep using this phrase. I've heard of several of their guys use it like kind of the 111th, hey, we just got to do 111th of the job here, kind of the Patriots way of do your job. But that's what it looks like. Everybody's just kind of locked in focused in their own little world and their own little assignment. And they're all executing at a crazy high level. The other thing with them is, Ryan, when you watch them, like every single Indiana run or catch, like it didn't matter if it was a receiver running back tight end, like every time they're going forward, how many times you watch in these games over this last weekend and you're seeing so many teams trying to get East and West with the ball, like everything with Indiana, as soon as they get the ball in their hands, everything, they're getting those, those, those extra yards, just get North and South. They're always falling forward. That was one of the little takeaways I had when I was watching it was like, there's not a lot of East and West with that team. Let's talk about Mendoza because, you know, there was a few throws that jumped out beyond his Heisman season. So it's not like this is news, but second possession, third and two, he's backed up. They're going to be punting from the 11 and there's all sorts of traffic. And to see the end zone shot of that, to see how athletic that throw was for only a few yards, but it moves the sticks, the Becker touchdown where you could argue, well, hey, that's an easy throw because the safety's cleared out on the underneath route, but he still is facing pressure and he has to like know there's one thing that I'm looking for on the Cooper route underneath. And if I get that clearing, then I know I can rip this ball, but the pressure doesn't rattle him whatsoever. And then there's the third and eighth throw later on in the game and the game's over, but there are, there are throws with him. And I think the mental toughness and the, and the lack of being rattled is something you see all year long. I thought the throw against Iowa to win that game was just such a huge spot because it was kind of like a letdown game and everything. The Oregon response after the pick six, what he had to do on that last drive against Penn State, um, taking the shot against Ohio State. I mean, these are things that we've all talked about, but there was just a few throws through the course of the game where it never felt like a high leverage throw because the score is so one sided, but I wonder when you watch him, if it's about getting excited about the best options for 26, or if this is about Mendoza being special in comparison to some of the other guys that are in the argument for a number one pick historically. No, I think he's really good. And the, the comp that I've come back to is just to kind of the Matt Ryan comp of if you were just to evaluate all of his individual skills, they might not blow you away, but the combination of the, the toughness, the accuracy, the ability to make plays in the clutch, late in games felt a lot like what you saw with Matt Ryan come out of college. And then you knew he was incredibly smart. Um, he was prepared like all that stuff. He checks all those boxes. So I was comfortable before even that game of saying like he's, he's worthy of being the number one overall pick. And I think he's, he's, he's ready to go. He can come in and hit the ground running and be a up and running functional starting quarterback. Now I didn't think he's going to be a top five quarterback in the NFL. Like maybe you could say about some of these other guys you could dream on, you know, Caleb came out, you could say that, um, you know, bro with what you saw from him, you're like, okay, this is elite elite stuff. But I think this guy's plenty capable of being a top third in the league NFL quarterback. And then this game was kind of a, you know, just a highlight of all those things. I, I like to go back and watch all the third and seven plus throws because with him, when you're watching a lot of stuff during the regular season, you'll see a ton of RPOs, a lot of first read throws. But when you cut through that and you go to the third and seven plus reel and you watch those, you know, 60 ish throws and you see everything you need to see with his ability to, you know, sort coverage, his ability to get up and down with rows in the middle of the field, his ability to drive the ball into smaller windows. It's all in there, man. If you watch all of his stuff before this game, you can see everything. Well, I liked your third and seventh thing so much because that's basically been my thing. I retweeted it. I saw it yesterday, a couple people hit me up and I'm like, yeah, this is, this is really what it is. Like we could watch all day on Saturday, but then once you're outside of the system and all of the things that are kind of constructed for a lot of these quarterbacks to put up huge numbers, big touchdowns, you know, some of the best programs in college football, whether you're watching, I'd be like, I don't know, I don't know if that's a pro quarterback, you know, and I struggle with it all the time. What do you see when you rip up just the edits of the third and long guys? Like, is there somebody that maybe would surprise people like, you know who I actually really like is this guy? Not, you know, I've only done it. I've only done that full work up on him and more at this point time. Yeah, once we get, because this at this point in time, right, my first thing I've got to do is come up with a top 50 and like, I think I have like 17, 18 days and I got to pump out a top 50. So I call around every team, you know, all my buddies with teams, give me top 50 candidates, we'll go through all the positions. And literally, I have not had one other quarterback in this class that's been mentioned as a top 50 pick. So I mean, that's not more, no, the, well, yeah, him and more. So even more, even more. So I've done those two guys. The third one that came up with everybody was Swarsby. But it's, you know, it sounds like he's, he's portal shopping and he's gonna stay in school. So that was the only other one that was mentioned to me as someone that was even a consideration as a top 50 pick. Now, maybe somebody will emerge and who knows what Shambles is doing, coming down the stretch, even though he's undersized, if that, you know, obviously, I'll get to him and do all these guys before we get to the combine. But, you know, as of, as of this moment in time, you know, talking to guys around the league, that was not the expectation. So I'm trying to prioritize who I watched during this part of the, part of the process. So those are the two QB's I've given kind of the full work up to. I want to talk a little SEC Big 10. I, as I point out in the open, I'm like, okay, well, when you have this many teams that could all win national championships, and now we're on the doorstep of potentially a third straight Big 10 team winning a championship. And then, you know, the defaults kind of like the draft stuff. And you're like, well, okay, you know, and I think I'd probably still be a little stubborn, even going into the next fall, looking at some of the schedules being like, Hey, I just think, but I'll admit, like there's times maybe I am falling in love with the jersey a little bit. The bowl records have been disastrous for the SEC the last couple of years, especially in those Big 10 matchups. From a talent standpoint, like, let me, let me run something at you here. Because I know you haven't, and I want the listeners and I, I don't want to put you on the spot of something where you basically just started doing the real work where you have to start listing all this stuff. I'm going to give you a little exercise here. How many, how many SEC players do you think are in Mel Kipers top 25? Oh gosh. My guess, SEC players top 25. I'm going to say it's not as high as you think. So I'll, I'll say top 25. There's I'll go eight. Five. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Just watch the games. Like just even if you don't rank, even if they're living in the draft space, you would, you can see that. The rankings are insane. The highest ranked guy is, is Tennessee McCoy. Yeah. 13, 13, 16, 22, 23, 25. But they've got some underclassmen now. Like there's some freak show underclassmen. The 27 draft is going to like, if anybody wants to just run away with that narrative, just wait a year and then look at what's coming in 27 and it all flip back. Right. Which, which is also like part of the point too is like those guys are also playing in games at 25. But look, man, I mean, all the standards, the standards that I have for like which conference is the best, the Big 10 is looking, some people's eyes, they'd say that the shift has already happened. Where are you with that? I would say if you look at just this playoff specifically, and I told you, just watch the games. What, what, tell me, look at the defensive lines. Let's first Georgia, Alabama, Ole Miss, that like you're, you're watching these games and you're going, I hope they can bad a pass. Like hopefully they can bad a pass. They can't get there. They're never going to get home. So maybe they can get a finger on the ball, bat a ball down. Then you turn around, you watch Miami's front, Texas Tech. I thought Texas Tech's front was the most impressive, even more impressive than Miami's even, and they lost that game. Oregon's front, like these, the, the defensive line, which used to be so dominant in the SEC and it was waves and just think about Georgia a few years ago, like you're getting guys rotating in their elite, elite players. That to me is the biggest difference is the Big 10 has better D line play right now. And you can make a case that Miami, the ACC's elite, elite and, and Tech out of the ACC was elite, elite. Didn't have that this year. I mean, Auburn's group was really, really good. You know, it's a good defensive line, but team went any good. But that to me is the biggest difference is that those defensive linemen who used to all be in the SEC have now spread out over college football. And I think the top of the Big 10 is clearly better than the top of the SEC and has been for a few years. And the argument has been, well, yeah, but the depth, you know, every week in the SEC, you got to play somebody. I'm like, wow, that hasn't really shown itself out when these teams end up running into each other. And then on top of that, I'm looking at when you look at Matt Campbell going to Penn State, who I think is going to win there, Fitzgerald going to Michigan State, they're going to be better. And then Kyle Whittingham, who's a certified, you know, stud going to Michigan, they're going to be physical and good. Like, I don't know if that depth argument is going to hold up as we go forward either. Yeah, I think all of that stuff's really fair because this run through the bowl season, like the Tennessee Illinois game rattled me a bit because I was always big on like, well, you know, at Tennessee's got those four losses, but let's go through the losses, let's go through all the different situations. Although Vandy running away from them should have been maybe the wake up call. It's like, Hey, man, maybe you should get off this whole Aguilar receiver depth thing and then running back that it's just not good enough to carry them. And I know they had the opt-outs, but, you know, look, I, there's, you know, some people say, Hey, it's already happened in your late. It's just hard for me to be like, after they win the first one with Michigan, after a 10 year gap, that it's like, okay, well, here you go. It is now yours. The quarter, you could get into like the quarterback play of like two years ago, but I'm with you at least on the title contenders this year. Like I thought the top three teams in the country, even ahead of tech, were all big 10 teams. But then I was like, you know, the rest of it though, I'm just not quite that sure. Look, if Michigan had beaten Texas, I would have just given up. My whole open of the show today would have been like, I can't like, if Michigan had won that game, I would have said, all right, you just had a bad, you had a rough 25 or so low, like just if Biff, Biff pulls that thing out, you are, you don't know how you get over that one, huh? I'm watching the game. I mean, there's that underwood throw that he has to the tight end where he's rolling out to the left side and the tight end is literally like touching them. And I'm like, what? Cause I, again, I was not a huge, I think it's the tight end. Cause like, yeah, cause then the tight end goes down and he's look, he's on the sideline being like, what were you trying? Do you hate me? I gotta, I gotta find that cut up. I'm gonna send it to you. I'm glad you brought up Texas Tech's front because you know, whether it's people like in Mestador or Bane or that combination, what David Bailey did, and I'll admit too, like, I didn't even want to say it to Joey Maguire when we had him on, but like the push for Jacob Rodriguez to be a Heisman finalist, because there was a lot of stats in there. The fumble stuff was, was nuts. And he always felt like he was making these big plays. It was a good story for tech. And I can't ask the head coach to be like, Hey, do you think it's kind of funny inside the building that Rodriguez has all the Heisman love and Bailey's like twice the player? Because what Bailey did yesterday and what that front did, like that's the kind of performance. Again, we've seen it all year with this group, but they do it up against Oregon to try to keep them in the game somehow. I know you have a ton of work to do, but like, do you actually see yourself having a defensive player ranked ahead of him? So I had Reese over him, just grade wise, coming into, you know, I finished both those guys maybe three weeks ago. And I was, I was having a conversation with an assistant GM. And I was like, you know, I don't know how like, I know, you know, look, you gotta take the whole thing into account. But I'm like, I can't unsee what I've seen from him there. And then with Reese with kind of the minimal impact, I know he had some tackles and he, you know, he was firm in that game against Miami, but you didn't feel him in that game. You didn't feel him in the Indiana game. Now he's all there. And I don't know that I love the usage with Reese. I think they could, I'd rather have him just put them on the edge full time and cut them loose. I think you'd see more impact, but I don't know how it's just like at the end of the day, like it is about how you play in the impact you make on the game. And Bailey out there with his, you know, with his shorts on and no gloves out there, like they, I mean, they stood out like a sore thumb. It was every single play. And my thing with him was he wins so much with speed and he wins right off the ball, which I'm huge on getoff. I'll look at all the getoff numbers as we go through it. He's got to be at the top when it comes to that. But to me, I didn't see as much speed to power with him. I thought Reese played with a little more power. And then I watched, I'm like, well, forget that. I mean, you see, you saw him stabbing guys in the chest and walking them back. You saw him snatching and throwing dudes. I'm like, Oh, that's all in there. This is not just someone who's an elite athlete with elite speed. Like he played really, really violent in that game. So I think he's got a strong case to be the top defensive guy. What did you think of more? I know you have a lot of work to do there. But, you know, he's, there'll probably be, I don't know if it'll be like a media creation thing, or maybe it's a straight up like evaluation deal with it, but it'll feel like there's probably some more momentum. And who knows, like these next couple of games to, depending on how all plays out, if it ends up being like Oregon winning a national championship and the bump that you get from all that kind of stuff. I mean, look, you can tell me what you think personally, the gap is, but I know the work isn't necessarily done either. Yeah. I mean, when I go through and look at my notes, and I'll pull up some of them here, but he, everything he does, like if you're going to go on the positive side of him in the conversation versus Mendoza, everything he does is a little smoother, a little more fluid, where Mendoza can be a little bit rigid. You know, you'll see variety with more, he can do the arm angle thing, you know, some off platform stuff. And, but then I'm like, well, that's also what makes Mendoza so good is that he's always grounded, he's always on base and he's, that to me is why he's tremendously accurate. With more, I thought, you'll, he, you know, we saw it with Shadour a little bit, obviously with an extreme case of someone who drifts, you'll see more drift around, float around the pocket a little bit. I'd like to see him just be a little bit more precise, get your cleats in the ground. And I think that'll help him drive the ball more and be a little bit more consistent from that regard. There's not a lot of weight transfer. So it's just some mechanical stuff that he has there. And then, you know, look, he likes to throw the ball underneath, get the ball out and he's, he's good at all that stuff. He throws under the sticks a lot, which to me, if you're a, if you're real confident in what you see and what you get picture wise at the college level, you're not going to do that quite as much. You can attack a little bit more. I didn't see that quite as much from him. I think there's a gap there. I just think he needs to play, you know, he didn't have the same number of starts. I think that was like his 18th start, maybe the other day, 18th or 19th. So I've been an advocate for him saying, I like him. I think he's a really good player. I just feel like Mendoza's way further along in the journey. And to me, that would be a classic case of, hey, I'm sure Oregon could unload the Brinks truck to bring you back and give you a huge chunk of money. I think for the long-term development of him, that'd be the right decision. Vegas has a game up on the giants, but just say like hypothetical world, if you were the giants, you're the number one pick and you've got Dart. I mean, we can talk about the trade, but would there be any conversation about, hey, we think Mendoza's just a little bit cleaner than this Dart experiment? I would stick with Dart. I think he's shown enough there. And I think you could, you know, if you had that pick, you could, the way Mendoza's coming down the home stretch, you could probably auction it off for a nice price there. But I think they're kind of down the Dart road here. And I think with his, you know, his athleticism, he can do some things Mendoza can't do from that standpoint. So yeah, Mendoza's a cleaner in the pocket quarterback at this point in time. But I think there's enough with Dart, you've seen enough there once he has, you know, his guys back neighbors, especially that I think you keep rolling on that track. Basketball season is here, which means the excitement of being in the stands before tip off is here too. The game time app gives the advantage back to the fans. It's the hack for unlocking amazing tickets and experiences in a few taps. It's incredibly easy to use. And the game time guarantee means you can trust you'll get 100% authentic tickets on time. And at the best price plus fees are always included. So what you see is what you pay. I was scrolling through the app. I'm seeing Celtics Clippers tickets for tonight starting at $76. You know what I was doing the other day? I went to Pistons Lakers. I treated myself, was walking around and asked for a free ticket. I said, Hey, let me get on the old app. Let me find seat for one. Great deal. Right before tip off. Take the guesswork out of buying NBA tickets with game time, download the game time app, create an account, use the code RECILLO for $20 off your first purchase, terms apply again, create an account and redeem the code RUSSILLO for $20 off. Download the game time app today. Let's do some NFL here. I'll probably just ask you what I ask everybody to start and he like, Hey, good to see you. What do you think of the AFC? Last week was probably the first time like I'll have an issue with bonex. And the fact that that defense now is not the defense that normally is what you expect from Denver. I don't know if it's real or not, but this has been a longer stretch here. We were like, Okay, normally like great O-line, great defense, same corner, maybe best defensive player of the Miles Garrett and the entire league. I actually like the receivers a lot. I know that's some injuries just running back, but they will like salvage that. Like there's so many things about that team that you're like, what an incredible roster. I just don't know if like, Nick might feel like a coin toss guy. He has the all-timer game against the Packers. And I was like, Okay, well, but I, but look, that's the thing that I think will always hold me back on them. I think there's an overall talent thing with New England. I also think it's arguably like one of the easiest schedules we've seen in 25 years, depending on what you want to look up. So I was talking about like, Hey, I think I like Houston and that defense and where Stroud's been. I don't know if the Trevor Lawrence resurgence is real, but that defense feels real. Like I feel better about those two teams in the AFC than I do what could be the one and two seeds. Your thoughts on that theory, I think it's everything is matchups in the AFC because it's so, you know, I would say average, you know, they're without the standout team. So I go off of when I talk to these teams of who they want to see and who they don't want to see. And the number one team that teams don't want to see in the AFC is Houston. Except for like, you know, the Jacksonville thing, they're comfortable. I think it's just the familiarity there that there's no, there's not the fear there that some of these other teams have, but everybody would like to, would like to avoid Houston. The only one that, and then you talk about from Houston standpoint, who does Houston not want to play and everything you kind of get from this, not directly from the building there, but everybody's like, yeah, just Houston doesn't want to play Baltimore. Like that's the only team like is that they can nullify that, that rush a little bit, just hand the ball off to Henry. And I know they hammered Baltimore earlier this year when Baltimore didn't have Lamar. Who was starting a quarterback? It was, what's the name from the Cowboys? The old Cowboys backup. Cooper Rush. Cooper Rush, I think started that game and threw some picks. But so to me, it's all like the matchups and nobody's, you know, everybody's, you talked a lot of folks around the league. And I think I'm in that boat with, with the Broncos like, okay, it's a great defense, but it's a speed defense. There's a feeling like it's not the most physical, you know, violent group there. So you can, you can run the ball on them a little bit when you get in the postseason. Bonix doesn't, I feel like you can, you can shrink everything on him a little bit, make him have to play over the top of you and take away that stuff. And they feel like you can match up with them from that standpoint. And then with New England, it's just, okay, the quarterback's unbelievable. He's going to likely win the MVP, but he's just never been in this situation before. And the supporting cast, whether there's some pieces there, it's not, you know, it's not an elite elite group. So the feeling is that you could catch them too. So everybody's just like, get in, just get in, just get in, just get in, just get in, take your shot, see if you can get hot and go. Yeah, that's right. Like what is anybody, what should everyone be doing exactly that? Like it should feel good no matter who you are in a way, because maybe it is a match up you like, but we used to bracket watch though, like I just, as someone who calls charger games, and you'd be looking at it going like, okay, well, how long till we have to play Kansas City, you know, or even in a year when Borough, like how long can you avoid Cincinnati before you got to run into Joe Borough? Like there's not nobody, I don't really get the sense. There's a whole lot of that right now. It's just like, Hey, we'll go play whoever we got to play, like we'll be okay, what a shot. Yeah, that's how it feels. I mean, even with the Josh Allen factor of all of it, or the easiest thing, I think there's just going to be a lot of people that will be like, you know, give me him. Yeah. It's like, really, you know, that defense is coming with him too, right? And would you compare that defense even to a diminished Denver one, you know, who knows who's going to be out there and healthy available for New England. But you know, the Houston defense, Jacksonville defense, like that would make sense. The Houston offense, I think is an interesting conversation because like if you go through Stroud and you just blow up on the scene, the 23-5 split on touchdown interception ratio, but the rest of the numbers for this year, this, there's an argument statistically, this is the best year of his career. And if you really dig into it and go post that money night game against Seattle, like he wasn't great against KC, I know he's had the two picks and the Chargers matchup where they were kind of up, but you know, he's been really good now for a while. Like there's some, there's some terrific games in there. And the overall offensive stats, if you look at yards per play for Houston, they're 25th in the NFL, I mean, they're behind Pittsburgh by a decent margin here, but it feels like so much of that is being dragged down statistically by like the first half. So I'm wondering if they're a little bit more balanced and if there should be a little bit more faith in Stroud going into this tournament than maybe there feels like there is. You know, I've been in the building in the playoffs when I saw him elevate to and played a really high level. So I saw that in the Charger game where I think there was a lot of confidence on the Charger side of things going into that. And then he played great and he uses legs more. That to me is the key. I think when he, when he will, you know, he's a little bit of a reluctant runner, when he adds that element, I think it gives him kind of that little missing piece that they need to kind of fill in around their offense. But honestly, I don't, I don't know if anybody has a lower bar than he does going into the playoffs, like just make it, make teams travel the distance, make them travel the distance against their defense. Like they can win a lot of playoff games, you know, 17 to 13, if they make teams travel, you know, the Charger game being there for that one, you can't give short fields. That was that they kept the Chargers in the game with those, with those two decisions. So to me, uses legs more in the postseason as a big part of the formula. And, you know, take, take your shots when you get them over the top. They've got now with Higgins, especially coming on Noel, they got two young, fast, athletic guys to add into the mix with Nico Collins, drawing so much coverage. Yeah, take your, take a couple shots here and there outside of that, play a little more conservative, let him run the ball and just, I mean, the defense is the, it's the most physical, violent defense that I've seen. I was going back to when, I remember when the Niners had Alden Smith, Justin Smith, Bowman, Willis, and it was like every single tackle was a car crash on the field. Like that's what it feels like when you're, when you're studying that defense. Why do you think Jacksonville has turned this around? Like what he's like, is this the draft picks all, because I was going through it the other day when I was watching one of the games and it's, it's funny, you know, right? Cause like when a team starts turning things around and there's a bunch of first to second rounders, you're like, well, look at all the draft picks and you're like, well, if that were the case, then I mean, this would be a lot easier job for everybody here. So we could talk about Trevor's last month and Liam Cohen, but anything else that you talk to other people about when you discuss Jacksonville's like a scent here? Well, I think on the psychology side of it, I just think he's, he's fixed the confidence issue with Trevor who was completely lost that. So I think that's the most important component. It's not anything you see on the, on the, on the film from that standpoint, but just talking to people around that building that that's, that he's a different guy because he's just infused him with so much confidence. Seeing the way they do things, I, they mess with your eyes defensively. I saw it when he was with the Bucks last year as well. There's a physicality. And then when you add the physicality with some of the misdirection stuff and the way they kind of mess with your eyes at the second level of the defense, they get guys playing on their heels. And then they're, they're, they're finishing and moving guys with their group upfront. So that, that to me has been the most impressive thing you seen on that side of the ball. And then defensively, they have a lot of traitsy guys, like there's a lot of, you know, I have, you know, not necessarily the biggest names all the way across the board, but they're all real long. They're all real twitched up explosive. And they've, you know, they've kind of just playing really well together. I definitely think it's a sum is greater than the individual parts when you look at it there. But man, they, I was there, they beat the stuffing out of the chargers when I was in the building there and kind of turn around their whole season. Caleb year two. What do you think? I think it's been fun, man. It's like my, it's one of my favorite things on a Monday's that's, you know, I have all the, the stuff I need to watch to get ready to do shows. And it's like, okay, I know we're going to talk about this other game more, but like the first game I want to watch is the Bears because I want to see how they're using him and what he's doing and to see those handful of plays he's going to make, which are just insane and ridiculous. And he's, he's continued to, you know, kind of maximize those, you know, where you're seeing a few more of those special plays. And then he's minimizing some of the gross misses. He still has, he still has two of those a game where you're like, wow, man, that's where that come from, but it's not putting the ball in harm's way. So I think it's, I think it's ahead of schedule with where they are. And I think when you look around, if you looked around with like nucleus, like young nucleus on offense, not only do I think it's by far the best young nucleus on offense in the NFL, you can make a case. It's maybe the best young nucleus we've seen. And the, the lions where Ben Johns was previously would have, you know, would be in that conversation. With La Porta and Gibbs and Amara St. Brown, but in terms of the sheer number of guys they've got, it's the best. I've seen it a long time watching this group kind of grow together as we go forward. Can you see development from him on like, you know, I, when it's great, it's great, right? But when it's bad, I think all of us can tell when it's bad, it's like a lack of confidence to rip and it's probably something where the guys upstairs in the box are like, come on. Yeah, it's there. Right. Like it was, it was there. Is that something? I think it's always like one of these conversations, like I was talking to an NBA scout the other day, we were talking about a player and, you know, the default. And I think it's probably the same thing with you guys in your sport is that I'd rather have to tell somebody to calm down than have to rev them up. Right? Yeah. Oh yeah. Because if the person is just not up for it, then it's like, well, that's a really tough thing to fix. I'd rather you be a little chaotic or whatever. Quarterback maybe is a little bit more different. But do you think, do you think that there's something to, like, hey, if I have to fix that, I'd rather have to fix getting him into year, you know, end of year two, whatever happens here in the playoffs into year three, I'd rather have to fix that part of it where it's like, hey, you know, this first look is there a little bit more than you realize as opposed to like the other limitations, other quarterbacks that we spend like, you know, look, I watched Bryce Young, it's a hell of a nice story. Great for the Panthers. I can't fathom him being a long-term starter in the NFL and it's been three years. So I'd rather fix the Caleb stuff if I had to have something that I had to fix. Yeah, two things that we would always use to phrase, which was you'd rather reel in a thoroughbred than have to kick a donkey in the butt. Like that's, it's your way rather do that. And do you remember the debate and the discussion when it was, do we stick with Justin Fields and go for what Justin Fields or do we go with this Caleb Williams kid, you know, and I think you can look at it now and that's the clear example of what you're just referencing of how do we do we, can we make Justin Fields more of an attack player? Can we get him to play more aggressive? Can we get him to push the ball, not hold the ball, not take sacks? And with Caleb, you're like, okay, yeah, like he's, he's raw, but man, like he, he's, we're winning all these games, late in games because he can make all these incredible throws. So all that stuff's all in there. We need to clean some stuff up. Like you said, there's some, there's some stuff, just take the layup there. Take the easy wins that are provided for you. That's a lot to me, I'd much rather deal with that and try and clean that stuff up because I think you're going to win a lot more games. There's a both developmental paths. I think you're going to win a lot more games on the path they're on with the way Caleb plays. Do you have something that you've like evolved with like prioritizing? Like I, I'll just give you an example here. So it's a better way to set up kind of the discussion here, not so much a question, but you know, different times like, Hey, I think an NFL team, if I could have like the most important thing besides the quarterbacks, like I want this and then it's like, well, maybe, maybe I don't want corners as much because of the way the game is called. And then it's like, well, maybe that means I actually do want, you know what I mean? Like there's just different things that I think about in the years that I've talked about this sport, where then I was like everybody else was like, Hey, you got to pass on first down. You have to attack. That should be an attack down. You can't do run, run, pass anymore. You know, it's just too predictable. There's all sorts of numbers that tell you like, Hey, first down, first down, first down. I don't know if it's the college game and watching Indiana run the football, watching Oregon run the football, watching Lacey last night for Ole Miss, you know, feeling like Georgia, you know, a Georgia team that normally can just line up and push you around when they need to. And it felt like there was really only one drive last night from Georgia where the offensive line felt like that they were really cooking. And then, you know, even though we were talking about some of the pass rush guys, there was consistent disruption, even if it wasn't necessarily leading to sacks for Stockton. So I thought that the O line D line matchup surprisingly, Ole Miss hung in the fight the entire time. I think I'm back to like running the football guy now. And even the Miami numbers are a little weird in the college game, although flexors come along here. I don't know if that means that now I'm going to just start going through this whole thing. Because I think sometimes it's a little overstated too, especially with the way the stadiums are built now. It's like, Hey, you know, late in the playoffs, you're going to have to run the football, you're going to have to do all this stuff. Like the weather factor is just not the same. It's not the same as when we grew up. And you thought that that was the default thing that you always had to do. But I would say maybe college is influencing my overall football thought, but I'm starting to come back. I guess the statement is it's felt like a decade plus, but I'm starting to respect running the football again now in a way that I got away from it. I got away from it and I'm embarrassed to admit it. Yeah. I mean, it looks like if you close your eyes, it's kind of 90s football. It looks like those old like cowboy teams. And that's what's winning not just at the NFL level, but at the college level. And I think there's also the complimentary component to it, which is you want your defense to play with the hair on fire and to get up the field and dominate the line of scrimmage. Well, you take some of those snaps off their hands. That sure helps. Again, I kind of referenced just the charters a lot in this conversation because I've been around it, but I mean, their tackles go down and they're having some struggles and the defense is okay. And then they just say, we're going to play with the extra offensive lineman. We're going to put the 300 pound fullback in there. We're going to run even just more about attempts than yards. And now the defense isn't out there as much. The defense is playing at an elite high level. You're not having to play your backup, you know, your edge rushers as much because Khalil Max Fresh and Tui Palotu's Fresh. So I think all that stuff kind of complements each other from one side to the next. And you can't watch these games, especially these college playoff games and just look at it. It's all line of scrimmage. Like it's whoever's winning along the line of scrimmage. And then if you look at the receivers, you know, it's much as we get infatuated with speed and separation. It feels like every guy making the catch is just, you know, it's a physical tough receiver. Maybe you're going to be in more traffic in big games in the NFL, especially in the post season. Like you got to be able to play through contact down the field. You know, to me, the physicality and the toughness of the receiver position, you can go through a lot of these teams that have won Super Bowls over the last 15 years. You'll see that guys who are real, real strong physical on the outside because the windows are not going to be as big as they are in the regular season. The extra offensive lineman thing I kind of love now. It's fun. Where it's like you're giving us what you're going to do. And I think, you know, the cyclical nature of all of sports is that if you were staying outdated with your base defense, you know, this all the stuff that we used to talk about like, Oh, three, four, all right, cool. If you want to go to a base defense and you don't want a nickel corner out there, like no shit, we're going to throw it all over you guys because you're just not going to be able to hang in any of the crossers. You know, our slot guys probably going to beat you up all the time. Like go ahead and now base, like everybody's base is the extra defensive back, which doesn't even sound like it's all that enlightening. But I wonder if that's like we're now on the cusp of, Hey, the defense just went different personnel all the time. So if you're going to play small to play the past and the past happy world for 15 years of the sport, like fine, now we'll line up, we'll prioritize drafting tight ends that we hope can do both things. And then maybe we bring in that six offensive lineman. And now if you're sitting out there and Nicola dime, go ahead and we'll get back to what the sport was. If you want to look at like the talent, deficiency positions in the NFL, I might put off the ball linebacker number one, like there's, there are not a lot of really good off the ball linebackers. And if you think about it, it's because the college game, everybody's been doing this forever where you got one, maybe two out there at all times. So you've got your and Nicola dime and you're, you're playing with smaller guys because you're going to be able to run to get out to the perimeter. So now you look up and you're like, okay, we're supposed to put three out there on a to match your personnel group. Like we don't have three quality off the ball linebackers to, to roster to put out there to match that personnel grouping. So everything kind of goes in cycles, but that's what I see when I'm watching right now. And I think a lot of the great defenses have those guys in place. I think Houston, we were talking about like the way those guys, I'll shy years, a really good player toe to toe has been awesome this year. Like that's the underrated component of that defense. You know about the corners, you know about the edge rushers, Bullock at safety, Petrie at the nickel, like they're stacked there. But to me, those off the ball linebackers have been a big part of it too. Let's talk crossroads here. I don't know if it's Pittsburgh, you know, and I don't even know what the result means this weekend. And the, the title of like, wow, you know, we won the division and, you know, Tomlin keeps it rolling. We know what this team is. It's been an average football team for a long time, but then you have like higher stakes crossroads, like Baltimore with Lamar. So if we just stay, I mean, hell, we could stay in the division and talk about Cincinnati on top everything else. Can you run through like what you think those off seasons will be like for those teams? Well, Pittsburgh, you know, I think they've done a good job of building up their offensive lines over the last couple of years. So I think from a roster standpoint, they're in a decent spot there. To me, it's like you could make a case a lot of times when you switch out the coach, it's when you switch out the quarterback. I think if, if Rogers and who knows how long he'll take to make his decision, I'm already dreading like how long that could take. But if you were probably be pretty chill and think about others. Yeah, I just, to me, I wonder if that would be the impetus for a, for a, okay, this is time, like maybe, you know, Coach Tomlin would decide, you know, they got to go through a new quarterback and get that whole process going here. If, if, if Rogers was going to come back, I think he's played solid and the way they have their offense and defensive lines set up, they need to go out and upgrade their, their skill positions, which shouldn't be the hardest, you know, thing to accomplish in the off season. I think you could make a strong case like, Hey, let's give this thing another shot. Maybe we can bust out of this average, you know, offense that we've been stuck behind here. So that, that to me, I think Rogers is kind of a key part of whether or not that's, that's it there. And then with Baltimore, but real quick though, would you want him back if you were Pittsburgh? Rogers? Yeah. I think where they're positioned like, draft wise and all those things. I mean, gosh, I don't know, I guess you could make a case if I could get Malik Willis, who I'm kind of all of a sudden excited about again, like that. I would be excited. I would be excited about that. But I'd want to probably have a bird in the hand and feel pretty good about getting that accomplished before I would, before I would go somewhere else. But here's, here's an interesting one for you. If, if, if one of these two coaches say whoever loses this game, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, we had this conversation the other day, we were just talking with some buddies and we were talking about college coaches that could coach in the NFL, because we're kind of going through the candidates and it feels like a lot of defensive guys and who are the offensive guys and it's kind of led this long discussion of these head coaching candidates. If there, is there a college coach you think would make good sense for one of those two teams, if whoever lost the coach decided to leave? So you want an offensive coach? No, no, no, no, no, no, we, we started the discussion there and we branched off. And so we were talking about all the different candidates that are out there about just who would be a good fit with that, with one of those, because I think they're very similar. I think Baltimore and, and Pittsburgh, you know, kind of what they, what the identity of their great teams has been. Whittingham, just mess up Michigan's whole thing. That'd be fun. That'd be fun. That one wasn't, wasn't the one. I'll give you, I'll give you one or two more guesses here. Well, I mean, we let in the signetti train, just run off the tracks here entirely so that he goes from James Madison to the Steelers in two years. I would, I would, I would love that. I would absolutely love it. I got asked somebody was like, do you think he'd work in the NFL? I'm like, yeah, I do. I actually think he would work. I think most of these guys, by the way, would, would, like, I don't know why that's surprising to anybody. Yeah. I think recruiting is such a mess for so many of these guys that they kind of just hate it now and that they'd love to get the NFL. And I think if, I mean, look, this is an old speech, but even guys that probably shouldn't go from college to the NFL still want to go to the NFL because it's the NFL and they want to see if their stuff works here. So it's an active coach. He's an active, active head coach in college. Go ahead. Mario Cristobal. Don't you think Mario Cristobal and the toughness and the, just his whole vibe makes sense, like in a Baltimore or in a Pittsburgh, like that's, that's their identity of their, when they've been great, is they're just physical, tough line of scrimmage teams. And I'm like, gosh, I don't know if anybody, I mean, you met, you two great options that you just mentioned with Signetti. I was trying to figure out what was funny. That's that ethos. Those, those guys kind of share that same ethos. I don't know if he, you know, let's just say Miami goes and wins a national championship. He kind of checks that box. What's the next challenge? I think it would be, I, you know, I think it'd be kind of fun. It's just wild too though, to think about how Cristobal was thought of not, Oh, just because the Georgia Tech, the Georgia Tech game from a couple years ago. Well, there's that, but I mean, even, you know, the general feeling about Miami is that they'll figure out some way to screw this whole thing up. There was even a timeout in that Ohio State game that I was kind of like, was that, you know, but I don't want to turn this the guys in the semi-final, like I don't, I don't like, I'll have an argument with one of my friends who just doesn't like Shane at hand because of some challenges. And I'd be like, this is one of the greatest coaching seasons we've ever seen from a head coach, but you're pissed off about a challenge. My friend will know exactly who it is as he hears me talking about. I'm just not going to give him a shout out on that. What about Baltimore though, because the Baltimore season, if you want to run through and say like, what's the single most disappointing season in the NFL this year? There's a lot of candidates, right? But there'd be candidates for different reasons, at least with Baltimore, you could go, okay, Lamar went down. And there's probably an internal discussion of like, who is Lamar the rest of the way? Like the rushing stuff from him this year is somewhat alarming because this is where this goes for any dual threat quarterback. And for him to not have like probably the best thing or the scariest thing since Vic, I think that's how special Lamar is in that part of it. And then he fixed out, I think he fixed a lot of the pocket stuff. So we're not sitting here like after a couple of MPPs debating the whole thing with Lamar. But I know if you wanted to be really positive about 25 and say, Hey, it was a weird year. We had injuries all over the place. We'd like so much of the personnel, especially on defense. Like we come back into 26, we look the exact same way. That's the best option for us as far as like, did you guys really want to do a reset year? I could understand anyone in Baltimore going like, let's just turn the page on what was a disappointing year, especially if they don't win the division. I want to look up this stat because I was just thinking about this with them. Hold on one sec here. I just feel like when I, I know the defense has gotten better. I know a lowy Gilman's helped, you know, kind of tie some things together on the back end. But let's, yeah, dude, Travis Jones leads a team of four sacks like they can't rush the quarterback. So I mean, that's, you know, their needs actually marry up well with this draft. I mean, that's, they should go heavy in that regard, if not in the free agency side of things. But Lamar losing his juice and losing his explosiveness. Yeah, that's alarming, but I just don't, I don't see how they're going to navigate their way through a tournament if they can't rush the quarterback at all. But they traded always got seven sacks since they traded them. It's zero in Baltimore. So, you know, I don't know, you know, from a, if they're going to adjust what they're doing schematically or what, but that's alarming to me. Like that's a major, major problem. So that to me, when I watch their stuff every week, I just don't see them get to the quarterback at all. That, that scares me as much or more than all this drama that's going on with whether Lamar is staying awake in meetings or not. It's a great point, but it is funny too, because when they had a good record and they probably, that was maybe the worst unit, the past rush would be like, oh, you know, like it's, it's the sum of the parts, you know, it was like, it's just that, you know, it's hard to win the tournament. You remember those? Can't do that. Yeah. I was like, no, no, I was like, not, there's not one standout. It's just, you know, we've got, and it's like, well, actually, you have like, nasty linebackers and secondary, which probably covered for some of that talent, drop off. All right. Last thing here. Is it the Rams for you in the NFC? Well, I've been Seattle for the whole year. And then it's one of those deals where you just kind of look up and like, oh man, really you have to go, you have to win at Sanford. This all comes down to winning at San Francisco. Like can Sam get the, one of these finishing games at home, please? So they can have a home field advantage. It's a tough place to go. I'm going to stick with it. I'm going to stick with Seattle because I love their defense so much. I love the completeness of their defense. Yeah, I'm going to stick there. Raheem Sheed made a massive difference for them. That was an incredible pickup. If they, nobody has more on the line this week. Everybody talk about, you know, winning in and, you know, seeding and all that. In San Francisco to me, if they had to go on the road with Kyle, I think nobody's still going to want to play him. Seattle to me feels like, you get Seattle at home. I think that's, they're in a great shot. Home field advantage all the way through. I think they, I think they come out of the NFC. If they have to go on the road, I'm not, not feeling quite as good about that. I think they have more on the line this week in any of these teams. Great way to end it. You can check out more and all of Danny's Jeremiah's work recapping and prepping you for the draft as well. The move, the sticks pod with Bucky Brooks. He is part of the NFL network and we appreciate any time he has a chance to visit with us. Thanks, man. Thanks, buddy. Tasty trade has a suite of probability tools so you can make smarter picks for your portfolio, though it can't help you fill out your NCAA bracket. You can trade stocks, options, futures, and more all in one platform. Tasty trade offers low commissions, including zero commission on stocks, so you can keep more of what you earn. The platform is packed with trading features like back testing, which lets you simulate your trading strategies using 10 plus years of data so you can test your ideas about potential Cinderella stocks. Active traders can use features like ladder trading mode, one click trading and smart order tracking to manage their positions during crunch time. If you want to learn to trade or discover new strategies, Tasty trade has dozens of educational courses you can access for free with your account. Get live stellar support from Tasty trades deep bench of experience trade desk reps during trading hours. Visit TastyTrade.com forward slash barstool today. Tasty trade Inc is a registered broker dealer and a member of FINRA, NFA, and SIPC. Before we get to live advice, the Alliance marches on. Saruti and Kyle with us here. I'll tell you just before we get into this, I set a personal record for thinking yesterday was Sunday and today was Monday. I can't, I mean, if set the over under on that, like 15, you should take the over. I think I'll probably do it two more times today. Yeah, this is the classic time of year where I don't know what day it is. Kids are often daycare. It's just been chaos. So we're just surviving. I've been on it. I gotta say, I've been on really a daycare. Oh my God. Oh my God. You're right. Should have somebody look into that. I asked Chad, G.B.T. explain that to me. Maybe I won't do that in this segment, but yeah, cool. I can explain it. Yeah. Yeah. Kids do go to their daycare. So that's good. Real attendance. I've checked that bend in there. Doing the real boots on the ground reporting. All right. Well, what do we got? Draft King's gonna love this. Draft King. Draft King. Draft King. Draft King. We're back. As we discussed, I ruined Christmas. I was the only one wrong. My bad. I went for, I went Steph Curry. He did not get the points rebounds. I'm gonna go to another Steph this time. Steph Castle. No Wemby tonight against the Pacers. I'm going Steph Castle 20 or more points. Okay. I told you I thought Cleveland was gonna be in a bit of a run, even better if Denver doesn't have any of their players. So I'm not going to touch the Cleveland odds on this one. They're minus 13 and a half, but give me Mobley, a double double. Dublae, dublae. I've been enjoying the mix. Yeah, you just got a nice cadence sometimes, which gets me. I'm going to stay with the mix. This is a little Big East bias. I love Tyler Colick. For a while, you couldn't even find Tyler Colick. Props, Draft King's finally gotten on board. So we are taking Tyler Colick for or more assists tonight. All right. That pays five and a half to one plus five 53. Let's go. All right. This is the week. Check out all the latest odds on Draft King's. You had something there, Saruri. No, this is the week. This is it. Again, good records are good. I'll read them off to you. Ryan, four and four, Kyle, five and three. I'm four, two and two. So, you know, one of these weeks. It's about the process, about the results. Yeah, no, we love that. We love that part of it. That's what we tell our kids all the time. You want details? Bye. I drive a Ferrari 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine. And best of all kids, I am liquid. So now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Life advice. Life advice, rrgmail.com. Before we get to that, anyone have any New Year's stories? Anything worth sharing? I saw some like smokey eyes, Saruri and his wife. Yeah, I actually looked at his story through the camera. I saw that you looked at the story. They were looking through the camera, dude. Yeah, that was good. We went out to this like cool chef's tasting thing. Shout out to the Foundry in Hartford, Hartbeat, Hartford has it. New spot. It was good. Yeah, we had like a chef tasting. A lot of things. Yeah, still, it's still rising. You know, one of these days it'll be up there. But we had a good time. Ate some food. I wouldn't have normally eaten. Took some cool photographs home by 930. Perfect. Perfect dinner. Is Hartford 21 still the spot? Is that where the cool guys in the city live? Wouldn't know. Not cool anymore. I don't know. I don't know what angle that was with you and your wife on that picture. People like the sweater. It was a nice little J crew number. Cable knit, you know, kind of like off white sweater. It was cold. Reminded me of the movie, The Lighthouse. That's kind of the vibe I was going for. Yeah. Wow. Everyone's on the same page. Amazing. Hatson. Yeah. What a disturbing film. I loved it. I always think I'm going to rewatch it and then I'm like, I don't think I'm going to spend them. I actually don't want to do that right now, but I like the idea of rewatching it. What's The Lighthouse one with Gerard Butler? That one's good. That's a good movie. The Lighthouse. I'm not familiar with the genre as a whole. I just like think, maybe I'll check it out. It's not Greenland. The Lighthouse movies are tough to write. The Vanishing. All right. What's it called? It's called The Vanishing. Never heard of it. The Vanishing is a good movie. I am. Do you guys have trained dreams yet with Edgerton? So, uh-oh. Is it good if you've seen it? No, no, no. I'm just kicking around. You know what's funny is there's a few movies that I just like in life have not seen and my buddies and I have been kind of kicking around in the group chat. And one of them is Kingdom of Heaven. Oh my God. Amazing. And so I think I'm going to watch that today. Maybe later today. Amazing. I'm not faking it. But I've been told I have to watch the extended edition. It's just one of those ones that just slipped through the cracks of life because I know I'd like it. So that might be it. A new respect for our boy Orlando if you don't already have. I hold him in high regard obviously. It's a Ridley Scott movie. Yeah. I don't know how I haven't seen it. Who else could be Legolas? But I mean really, really takes it to another level in Kingdom of Heaven. All right. Good. Good 25 minutes from the movie. Which kingdom of heaven is for you, Kyle? Top 10 all the time. Honestly, I don't want to say yes because I feel like you're making fun of me, but yes, I am. Great. I have a buddy who is in your camp and is incredible. Incredible music. Not a lot of films from that time. It's not ancient time, but it's kind of, you know, it's like we're talking like 1100s, right? I mean, not a lot of movies from that time. 1100s never get brought up. Yeah, really. Yeah. It's true. I get to say that. It's in the North Century. Bullshit. It's what it is. It's not done yet. And if we're just still talking New Year's, I would. Yeah. What's going on with you? You look bad. Yeah. I know. I actually changed my vest because I was like, I put this nice little curtain up because sometimes people are walking around behind me and I just like, I want to keep everything cool here. Oh, you're in the same spot? Yeah. I thought you were in the spot. Yeah. I was going to make a joke because I felt like a little hostage situation going on. So I was going to make a joke where I went out and bought a newspaper today. And then Ryan was like, honestly, you look so bad. I didn't even want to comment on any of it. So I went out and changed my vest just because I wanted to switch something up. So I did throw up early in the morning, but it's because I was sick. I don't think it's because I overdid it. Did that yesterday, popped a bunch of blood vessels up here. So not really the way I wanted to debut this whole situation. But yeah, Ryan really just calling it out right off the bat before we got on there. Really, I was stewing in that for about an hour. For you? You're like, I was like, hold on. I was going to start talking old records right now. It felt a little harsh, but I liked it. I liked it. We're close enough that we can just say that to each other right before we hit record. It was a little harsh right before we hit record, but I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what was going on. I looked at your eyes. It looked like you'd been punched in the face a couple of times. So I was like, all right, well, I'm just going to let this go. And then you, before we even hit record, were like, nothing to say, nothing to say about the new setup over here. I'm like, all right, I got plenty to say if you actually want. So I got the invite in, but I didn't think like you actually had been assaulted. I was like looking at you and you look rough. I am really rough. I'm sick right now. And you're sick and you threw up and you broke blood vessels in your eyes. So I just, so once you, once you were like, hey, nothing to say here. I was like, I have plenty to say. Well, this in my head was going to look way cooler. And it just, this like white off white background. Yeah. This looks like I was like, is Vikram in the other cubby next to you? Yeah. Anyway, we can just move on. I was going to say I broke my non prefix New Year's Eve menu rule and I still regret it. I don't think it was very good and I overpaid and I think I'm done with prefix for prefix for foreseeable future. Another way was it? It was just like the deal. It was just like, you know, get one of, one of these appetite, like one of six, you can choose these. The crab cake was like, you know, not all the way warmed. And then the steak was like burned on the outside, a little bit charred. And it was just like, you know, it was the prefix. You get what you get. They're pumping stuff out. I know the deal with prefix, you know, the ponderosa is usually pretty good with crab cakes. Don't talk about shadows on the Hudson like that. Anyway, I'm just, I thought it had been a while and I was like, I remember why I didn't do this anymore. So I, not that there's anything wrong with shadows. It's just the prefix stuff is just better off without anything. They have a salad bar still though, right? Let's get to some emails. How does it do salad bars? Wow. Honestly, post COVID salad bars. Ever heard of Salmonelle dude? I don't know. I heard of the windjammer bro. Although I have heard of the windjammer. Wait, remember the salad bar is speaking of salad. We're just off topic now. The Ruby Tuesday salad bar though back in like 2004. To right at the, it was an end cap in the gallery of mall. That's how big it was. That was the, it was one of the end stores. They used to have that fancy burger. It was like supposedly filet in it or whatever. And it was like twice the price of their normal burger. It's crispy onions on it. That was me living large. Like I get down with pickup hoops. I'd be in water town and I would go, you know what, you deserve it. You had it. You had, you know, you had a couple of nice buckets today, buddy. And then I'd pull down the knee brace and I'd just go, Hey, salad bar. I'm going to do the prime burger. Prime. Whatever. Yeah. It was like 20 bucks. Pre-release. Four burgers were even expensive. Yeah. It was a real premium blend, which probably means it was, I don't know. It tasted great, man. It tasted great. That's all the burgers. You could go to the salad bar as much as you want. And I, even if I didn't want it or need it, I would go a second time just because the, then's the rules and heavy pour ranch. Some eggs. Although you're not a ranch guy, I would imagine. No. Yeah. I was going to say, you're more of a vinaigrette type guy. It really is where I would be adventurous with salads. I would never be adventurous with salads at home like that. So really I think a salad bar for me, that was like, I'm going to step outside my comfort zone a little bit. And if I don't like this, I'm going to get a different one. Cool. That's the way you're going to side. End of the table. Come on. Yeah. Come on. This spang on the table. Gorgonzola what? All right. I think the three of us get it when we go to San Francisco for the Super Bowl. I think the three of us go to Ruby Tuesday and we do it right. Yep. Are they still around? There's a couple. There's more Ruby Tuesdays and blockbusters left, I think. But I don't know how much more. Come on. There's got to be. I don't know how much time. Fries are great too. They had all sorts of treats. Is that your favorite of those spots? Mine? Like the vast casual. Because I mean, chilies, by the way, still rips to this day. Love chilies. And you can get like a nine-dollar margarita, and you get like three pours of it. It's pretty good. The Presidente, I think it's called. It's legit. Last time I went to Chili's, though, a fire alarm went off. Middle of dinner. Two-year-old did not love that. Do you guys have Bugaboo Creeks? Because I was going to say, I probably like, adolescene me was like Friday. Coldwater Creek. TGI Fridays was my jam. But Bugaboo Creeks was like, I think more of a regional thing. But there was a bunch of them. But yeah, I think TGI Fridays, which, you know, if I was, if I was my age now, I would probably be Ruby Tuesdays. But certainly like, my youth was like, can we please go to TGI Fridays? Potato skins, load them up. Yep. I would agree. You crackabare-al got it? Alfredo. Never been. Never been. My dad went once and he told me it was like the slowest service he ever had. And then I didn't realize they were like highway restaurants until this whole thing with Uncle Ernest or whatever his name is. But my dad was just like, I'll never go there. So I was like, all right, dad says never go there. Most calories I think I've ever eaten in one sitting was at a crackabare-al. And yeah, it was good. You know, it is what it is. Like, I don't go there expecting like a, you know, Michelin star situation. It's fun. I have no comment on the new logo change, but I think that's good. Yeah. Ruby Tuesday, the one in Mass is not there anymore. The one in Mass? There's one in Maine. I mean, these are, they're littered over the Atlantic. And yeah, there's like a lot of ACC, SEC, but then nothing really west of the Mississippi. Missouri's got a few right around the Mark Twain National Forest. And then you start going further west. You got one in, I don't know, Des Moines, Lincoln, Sioux Falls, Fargo still has one, Bismarck, Aberdeen, Rapid City. Looks like there's one in Wyoming. Oh, that's not in New York here. Spearfish. Oh, it looks like there's one maybe in the city. Oh, that's Elizabeth, New Jersey. It looks like Lex Cruces is the furthest one west. So it looks like I'm not going to be going to one today. No. There it is. Shout out. That's better than a read right there. I think so. Jetsies. All right. All right. So how are we reading email? Sounds good. 13 minutes in. I'm ready. Wait, Ryan, what's your name for New Year's? Oh, yeah. You mean? Turn down a couple of invites. Went to bed early. Nice. There was a picture floating around, and people were wondering if, where you were, did you see the Taylor Swift, Travis Kelsey, with a couple of your friends situation? Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't get invited to those. That was not one of the invites I turned down. I didn't know if that was the one you turned down. Yeah. Okay. Just making sure. Yeah, we could have left that a mystery. That would have been a little cooler than what he actually did. No. I, yeah, I don't think I'm going to get invited to that kind of stuff. Okay. It's never been discussed. I think it's pretty much understood that it's just I'm not at that level. You know, maybe the bottle pickup. Yeah. So we'll see. I also think when you don't have like a wife or a fiance, you know, it can kind of start going like, how many singles are we inviting to this thing? Right. I don't think single guys get invited to that kind of stuff, but I also just think that there's a buffer. You're going to everybody run. Yeah. I just, yeah, I just think there's a buffer. I mean, obviously I know I would kill it. You might get invited as like an offset, right? Maybe to offset somebody else's single something. I really like Steve. So I think, I think there'd be a back door in there, but I think Charisma might be like, you're not allowed because this is like the other friend group. I don't know. It hasn't really been discussed. I think you just sort of have to accept your lot in life. Like there's a lot of shit that's really worked out for me. And I feel pretty good about myself in social settings, but I think there might be some concern of like, would he start like, hey, what do you do for work? Like fucking with her or something like that. You know, so I wouldn't do that. I like the Kelsey's. I'm happy for everybody. Yeah. Love the new year. You know, yeah. All right. Let's talk about lice. Was not going to tell us the kid just had lice. Jim Statz, athletic and fit, nothing special. Like Roger Federer minus the athletic ability and accomplishments, a pretty face, a likable dude. Always was something positive to say. So here's the timeline. Partners friend only told us their kid house had lice three days ago because she asked if anyone in the house was recently sick. This happened to my partner over the holidays. We figured out a solution, but I'm curious how you guys would handle the situation. Each year we go to my partner's home town in the Midwest to have Christmas with her family. While she is there, as you catch us up with two of her best friends, college roommates, their twins and one lives a few streets over from my partner's parents. We're all in the mid, we're all in our mid thirties. The twins have young children, 18 months, one year, four years old. My partner, I do not have kids as parents of young children in their house is a cesspool of sickness. Every time she visits her friend, she gets sick. This spring when visiting her grandfather, this spring when visiting her grandfather's funeral, she contracted the flu from her friend's three year old to make matters worse. She was around her elderly grandmother after the visit, but before symptoms presented themselves. This time before hanging out with her friend, she asked if anyone in the household had been sick recently. One of their husbands was at urgent care the previous day for a sinus infection. The same three year old had liced the previous week. Turns out that meant two days ago, but the house was sanitized, deliced and whatever else people do for lice. But her friends still invited her over. They only told her about the lice after they were asked. There was a back and forth that resulted in with young children, we'll probably always have some infection if you want to see us. That is something you have to deal with. Wow, that seems stern. I don't know. It seems like this email writer is this how you're coming off outwardly because it's you sound like a bit of a stick in the mud. I understand. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's my reading. Keep going here though. Dude, your kid just had lice and I almost gave my grandmother the flu. It's a funeral for her husband. Your husband is a doctor and you're a nurse. What the fuck? How would you handle the situation? Thanks for everything. Love the pod. How it was handled. This is very like this is like formatic. Not having kids were out of touch with how sick those houses can be. She decided to get her friends away from the kids. So they went to the bar for a drink. The beef was squashed and no one else got sick. Sounds like you solved your own problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I mean, you guys tell me what would you do? I mean, as the one guy who has kids, yeah, like it's the last year or so. I always say that my daughter's three. I've been sick more in the three years of her life than I was in my entire life, leading up to that point. I thought I had a good immune system. Turns out it doesn't matter. Like I'm just perpetually something is wrong. And it's kind of a dick thing to say, but they're right. Like if you want to see us, like this is kind of our assistance. I've told my parents that like, yeah, like we're all just kind of carrying something at all times. My parents are like, luckily not super old and healthy. So it's not like a huge deal, but that's just kind of how it is when you got kids. Like these parents, I mean, you said one of them is a doctor. They're probably fighting for their lives. Like they're busy. The kids are sick. They want to hang out with their friends. Like I think you as the person without kids, like cut them some freaking slack, dude. It's also like they delice their house. It seems it sounds like they did all the things that they were supposed to do. They were like reckless about it. Yeah. 48 72 hour window of lice though. I'm not a lice expert. So I don't know, but like it sounds like they did what they were supposed to do. At least like, you know, the things that you're supposed to do when you have people over. So yeah, I guess they could have given you more of a heads up, but I don't know. They did a teacher lice all the time. Are you serious? I mean, all the time is aggressive. I think it would happen like three times the first year. That was like the scariest day for me. Did you have to shave your head? School. For me, I wasn't, I mean, she was dating me. So it was like I was over there all the time. That was the like the scariest day for me in school was like, fuck, am I going to have lice today? I never did have lice, but you know, there was always somebody that kind of surprising. I'm kind of surprised. I didn't have lice. You give a lice vibe. I used like lice vibes. No, I mean, but every day, every time that we would have that and we'd all line up and they do the comb thing, I was like, I just know today's the day. I just fucking know it and I never had it. But lice for dudes like who cares? Just buzz your head and you're fine. You can't. I know. But I'm just saying, we all knew it's like, dude, Sean fucking went home. I always got lice. Because he had lice. Bro, what that could do to you? You're holding like dude, fourth grade. I mean, we didn't have much else to talk about, you know? So it was like, dude, what do you think is going on at elementary school? Like, you didn't really, dude's like, what? Dude, they brought in some outside people to come check this. Like this, we got to keep this under control. When you're nine, you don't know, you know, you're just all. Dude, your life is over. I'll never kiss a girl. Lice did seem like a bigger deal then. That's what I'm saying. Lice is everywhere. Yeah. That's what I was my point. You know, it was everywhere. Quick sand. Oh, absolutely. That is probably cartoons. It was definitely cartoons. Yeah. It's like, have you ever encountered quick sand? Nope. Is there even real quick sand? I don't think it's as quick as it is. I think it's a lot slower. It's a lot slower. But I think the same principles you struggle, you know, you might be in trouble. By the way, I know there's quick sand. I've watched the videos of the zebras. But it's more like just sort of, you know, there was like a Star Wars template that you could. And there was like the foam thing and Luke was always going into it. You're like, God, dudes are just freaked out about quick sand. Great, great call. Quick sand and light. The last thing I would say on this actually email is that, you know, when I had bed bugs, I was not in a hurry to tell. I told people who needed to know, you know, people who were inviting me over to the house. I'm like, yeah, I don't think I'm going to call right now. I'm still working through this. And I wasn't necessarily inviting people over to my house right after the window where I was supposedly clear from the bed bugs. My roommate brought it in, by the way. I wasn't telling people unnecessarily. Like I wasn't like once once I cleared the threshold, I wasn't like, you know, two weeks ago did have bed bugs here. I want to keep your shoes on. Like there was, I didn't, I didn't do any of that. So, you know, again, if they think that they made it past the threshold of telling people about something that maybe you could be a little embarrassed, even though you could just be like, hey, it was the kids, you know, I'm not super upset. If, if, if medically they're cleared or whatever, like, you don't just keep telling people, hey, you could, you could think of us as being dirty people if you want. Like, you don't just keep bringing it up. I just, I will say, I have thought, it's, it's, it's my life. I've really thought like, I thought things pre kids that I've just like, you are an idiot post kids, you know, and a couple examples. Do you want time to prep this? This could be your own little breakout thing. Think about the t-shirt stuff. One of the things was I remember working at ESPN, there'd be guys with kids and they'd be like, Oh, do you see the new, you know, whatever movie? And they're like, nah, man, I'll have time to like watch movies and stuff. I'm like, what do you mean you have time to watch movies? Like, it's just to watch a movie. It's not that hard. And I just don't watch as much shit as I used to watch. And I'm like, I, now I feel like an idiot for like, you know, you're talking about coming back in the day. 15 years late. Like, 15 years late. Like, yeah, like I really want to see Margie Supreme. I got to find a babysitter. Like everyone's getting sick all over the place. Why can't you go by yourself? Because Maddy wants to see it too. And I, you know, I did see one battle after another though. I didn't see it in the movie theaters or saw it the other night. How about the road scene? You know what scene you guys were talking about? That must be awesome. What a great road scene. I had FOMO just thinking about you guys watching that in theater. But no, I just, I just, it's hard to, it's hard to do stuff. And I, I, I felt like an idiot because I'm like, wow, that guy was right. And I was just that like 25 year old idiot. Because there was a kid I used to work with, um, back at the old gig who, I remember when I had my first kid and he was like, oh, no, not Ray, no, no, no. This is the Spotify person. Won't name any names. But I had the kid and we were senator to daycare. And he's like, oh, like you work from home. Why does she have to go to daycare? I'm like, dude, you could not be dumber. Like that. You think that I'm just gonna with a six month old. I'm, I could just like do my full-time job with a six month old. Like sitting next to me all day. I would get nothing done all day. I did have that problem. Glad I didn't say anything. It only gets. Yeah. Like one day you'll figure it out. Kyle. It's just like it's not. You don't get anything done. I wouldn't be able to do my job. job. Also your sanity, you know, just to be a little, okay, I'm a better parent if I, at the end of the day, see my kid and have three, four hours of that kind of time with her. But it's just, there's little things that a 25 year old Steve would have, would have just been like, that's dumb. Like, why wouldn't you just be able to like have your kid at home while you're working? Another example. Right. Set up some sort of water station and just, Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is there a salt lick for humans? Did we just invent something? All right. Golden handcuffs, 27, six foot one, 180 bench, 320. Wow. 180 bench 320. Yes, two and a half. I was pushing myself. Hey, look, I just don't like when two and a half are in the way. I used one and a half during COVID to see how, how far I could go. Spotted the bar, touched the bar effectively, ended our friendship. Oh, so technically, oh, give it to you. I'll put that. D one baseball player, torn UCLA, wait, UCLA, UCL. Nice. Kept me from making the league, pioneer league. So I think that's some self deportation. That was good. It's good. This guy's off to a hot start here. Slow pitch, player comp, prime, bury bonds when our team is out of home runs and I absolutely can't hit a home run. I always do. I know. I'll never forget the first time I experienced that. All right. I'm not going to tell this to everybody. Here's the problem. I'm having a life crisis. I left college after I got hurt and immediately took a job selling timeshare. I don't know what timeshare really, I didn't even know what timeshare really was when I started. I just needed a job, but I settled in quickly. Glad he knows now. Here's the thing about timeshare. I know what they are. Became one of the top reps in the industry, started making really good money for my age for reference 200,000 plus a year. Wait, he made 200K plus year one, two and three made 400K this last year. Pulling down some duckets, son. That was a massive shift for me. I grew up with a blind widowed mother. We had no money. I couldn't chase dream jobs because I was terrified of going back to eating ketchup and crackers and checking my bank account before going to Shake Shack. So what's the issue? On paper, things are good. I'm making money of accomplished real things. I bought a house. I got a decent 401K. I became a dad. I even won the Heisman NCAA 26. Hell yeah. But timeshare is nasty, man. It's nasty. The things you do to people, the manipulation, the half-truths, the straight up scams, it's awful. And I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be, I don't want my gravestone to say timeshare salesman. I can't live with that. Morality aside, it's also unstable. Nobody keeps a timeshare job for more than five years. I don't want to spend my life scrambling, bouncing around, uprooting my family every time the music stops. So why does a young man with a mortgage, so what does a young man with a mortgage or family do? I've thought about law school. I like negotiating. I like arguments. I like structure. It fits my skill set, but that's three years of school just to hopefully make the floor of what I already make now. If I look for another job in sales, I'm basically looking at 80K a year. It's just not feasible for me in my mortgage. I don't need to be rich. I don't need to live lavishly except for my 2022 Rolex sub. I just want to pay my mortgage and not have to tell my son, no, all the time as he grows up. I'm not adverse to hard work in long hours. I just want to be able to watch my son play sports and keep my family secure and not stress about money like I was growing up. Please help. Why can't you sell, why can't you sell Mercedes, dude? You're not going to just make 80 grand a year if you sell a Mercedes. I understand. I understand. Direct route from timeshare guy to Mercedes dealership. If you could sell this, why can't you sell those? I mean, you could at least have these guys like, you're just seeing pictures of these timeshares, right? They're in a room and you're giving them toasters or golf clubs, right? Isn't that what you're doing? Isn't that how it works? I've never done it, but I want to have a party where I brought a timeshare guy to the party. Like a Tupperware party, but it's a timeshare party. No, I wanted to do it to my friends where I was going to have a party and then bring a timeshare guy in to fuck with them to make it seem like I was trying to get everybody to invest in it. I think it's all the timeshare guy to fucking beat it. But now I gave it away because a couple of them listened to now they'll know that it wasn't true. Kyle, I just want to stay on that point. Not well, but I want to get back to it. I think you kind of nailed it when I read it. Like that's the whole, if you're doing this well with this, doesn't that mean that you're going to be able to do this commercial for like, you don't see commercials for timeshares. You see commercials for help me get out of my timeshare.com. That's the only thing you'll see some. Okay. Well, the only thing that I've ever seen over the airwaves about timeshares is I'm a lawyer that can help get you out of your timeshare. It's the only thing I've ever seen. You know, why don't you sell a product that more people are excited to have? I still don't even know what timeshare like actually is. I'm not even joking. Like what you, so you buy, what do you even buy? You buy like a week a year and these specific times and that's what you buy. It's like instead of, they basically the pitch is like, look at how much hotel rates are right now. Look at how much they've gone up in the last 10 years. If you lock this in right now, you can go to this place. Kyle, you're selling me a timeshare. I might sign right now. Dude, look at the red line going up. So you own like one 50 second of a piece of property for a specific time of year? Pretty much, yeah. That sounds horrible. Or if you can't afford a vacation, I have a couple of friends that have a couple that actually have sworn by it. And then you try, I know you like trade them too, right? You could like trade with other people for things and places and times a year, right? I don't, yeah. OK. And this is cheaper than just like getting an Airbnb. Depends on how you sell it. No, the idea is that it appreciates everybody's in on sharing the appreciation of a desirable vacation. Right. Yeah. 50 something times if it's, you know, a weekly thing. The pitch is you own something, right? But you don't. Do you though? The number of emails that we're going to get from people arguing, this is going to turn as you see Big 10 all over again. I love that you said that thing about the look, because I'm like doing guitar lessons like all it is is like, are you diabetic? I'm like, I'm just trying to figure out fucking mountain jam here by doing all. All right. You just leave me alone. I think the core of like what this guy is about is really admirable. I mean, the emails, you know, there's a lot in there. But like if you went through that growing up and then money's important to you, but not so important that it's like driving you, then I think you've kind of answered your whole thing here. Like if you can make another 400 grand in another year doing this, right? And hopefully you save your money. But if you saved enough, you should be able to handle some lean years. And then you already said you don't need like endless, you're not driven solely by money. So are you, are you afraid of what it's going to feel like to be making 200 grand a year instead of 400? Like you just said to us that you didn't really matter. So isn't that kind of your answer? So stockpile this money, be psyched about what you did. I think it's great that your morality is in a place where like, I don't really want to have to do this. Like there's certain things that I've come across in 20 plus years of being in this business where I'll just be like, wait, so for me to have like done that, I would have had to have done this, this or this, like I got to fuck people over. I got to lie to people. I got to mislead people. You know, if I have to run a business, I've got to fuck with all these people. Like, I don't know. I don't know that I want to do that. You know, Logan Roy was like, why are they selling us something that we want for a price that's fair, right? And then it's like, you screw them out. Go up to the elevator off from four nine off from four nine. You make them hurt. You know, that's cool. And everybody wants to act like they can kind of be that guy. But if you're doing it to your friends, you're doing it to people, you know, it's not just a group of local TV stations, like it is in this TV show. I mean, maybe you could argue, hey, I don't really know any of these people anyway. But, you know, and do you want to be the guy that they're going like, oh, that fucking guy, because I guarantee you there's all sorts of stuff that you're just like, oh, that's what happens. HOA times what divided by carry the six. Like this doesn't seem to make a ton of sense here. So it sounds like if you had written in and said, hey, I love this and I love fucking people over, but I'm worried about long term, then that's a much bigger problem. If you just started living in heaven and I'm concerned. If you said, like, I care about my I want to make a million dollars a year, then I'd be like, well, maybe you don't get to hit the reset button. You're younger. You went through something that's very, very specific and super challenging on top. Everything else is probably grounded you in a way that makes you somebody like I would guess if your mother and you lost the dad and the mom's blind and you didn't have any money, you're probably going to end up being a better person. Because because of the way you would see the world through a much more challenging upbringing than most of us ever would. But I do think you kind of answered like if money isn't the driving force in your life, then what do you care about leaving something that's making you feel bad about it at such a young age? Usually you're going to be a little bit older to go, Hey, you know what? Maybe this isn't the coolest thing ever. They run those ads with those guys in those fucking suits and they all have subs, by the way, but then it's like, how much did you make this week? Tyler? Oh, well, you know, 200 K my first year. And then they tell me to do 770 in business this year. It's like, fuck you guys. The guys with they always have those fucking suits is the most accurate way to describe exactly what you're talking about. It's like, why, why, why do you have this? I said this week I meant to share. It's like, yeah, what did you sell? Ankles are showing, but here's the thing. No, it's always. How are you ankle cleavage? It's just like, all right, we get it. That probably double breasted, you know, there's some sort of inscription on the inside of it. Who knows? What was I going to say? OK, but there's still a big like his. I feel like we didn't solve the problem. Like his issue is like he sounds like he has expenses for what his money intake is right now and like is it easy to just become a Mercedes car dealer or car salesman? There's so many things you can tell. No, I have a buddy that only sells solariums. That's his whole market. He just sells solariums. I mean, you just got to find a really well. I mean, it's a little bit leaner this time of year, but you know, that's why you you really really you really reel it in in the spring and summer. People are ready to go in spring, you know, trying to get this thing done by. I would think if you're doing this well, I don't know how like other like you can't do. You can't do sales somewhere else. Like can't can't you then go to everybody and be like, I don't know. I don't know how the sales market would look at this guy. I'd be like, this dude's a fucking badass. This guy's selling time shares. He's doing four hundred K a year in income. Like he can come in and sell our product or does the other place go like you have some time share stank on you and we don't want that. I don't know. I don't imagine if you're this good at this, then you're going to get another sales job somewhere else. Unless you don't want to do sales whatsoever. Maybe it's fun to look like Zillow like for houses, but like just what can you sell? Like what about like industry level tractors, like big tractors? Not you can't even find these ones where they sell regular tractors. Just tires. These ones are yeah, the tires themselves cost 50 grand. You know what I mean? You're like what? Cat stock last couple years. Right. Yeah, maybe you should just spend some time looking at things that you could sell. It sounds like you're a born salesman, man. So you should you should feel a little happy about what you're doing. It's feel a lot happy. Making it through that. Because that probably wasn't super easy, man. But I think your head's in the right place. All right, that'll do it for us. Thanks to Saruti. Thanks to Kyle. I guess we, I don't know. We've always had to say thanks on the ringer pods. So then I could not say thanks to anyone. But then when I've been doing it, I feel like Tom and Kevin have been super left out and I think there's like a divide. So if those guys, if those guys are in San Francisco for the Super Bowl, let's go. Well, let's figure out a really good burger salad bar place in San Francisco. We'll do a fucking right. Hell yeah. Okay. Maybe we'll all wear jackets. Hmm. Love it. All right. Thanks everybody. Happy new year. Thank you to the listeners. And I don't have anything else. I mean, what else do you need to say? I think that's pretty much it. Thanks pretty much it. Ryan Rossellow show. Arsenal sports.