9/15/26 -- The Mo Egger Show: The Reds Sent a Message to an Exhausted Fan Base.

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Speaker 1: Bengals!
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Speaker 2: The Bengals travel to Texas to take on Houston in a Lone Star Showdown, which raises an important question. What style of chili do I prefer? Hmm, I'm not sure, but they both make me gassy. Can the orange and black handle Houston, or will the Texans defend their home turf? Coverage begins Sunday morning at 9 a.m. Stream for free on the new and improved iHeartRadio app. Or on ESPN 1530, the official home of the Cincinnati Bengals. It's the Bengals and Texans.
00:00:38
Speaker 1: Bengals and Texans on Sunday.
00:00:39
Speaker 3: What's up?
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Speaker 1: Good afternoon. Mo Egger, ESPN 1530. Thank you for listening. Hope you're having an unbelievable Tuesday afternoon. I use the word unbelievable. When I talk about and mention the place that we are at today, we are at the Mercantile Immersive, which is one of the Delightmore venues, event venues. This place is unbelievable. I have, you know, I've not been to the Sphere in Vegas, but I certainly know what the Sphere in Vegas can be. I can't wait to go one day. I would describe the place we are at right now, which is on 4th Street downtown. as Cincinnati's version of the Sphere. This place can be whatever you want it to be. I cannot encourage you enough to go to mercantileimmersive.com where they will have a watch party for the Bengals-Steelers game a week from Sunday, and that is going to be awesome. And we'll dive into that as the afternoon unfolds. But I can't tell you enough how awesome this place is for any sort of private event, a wedding, a corporate event, a party, or even if you just want to sit somewhere and do a radio show. MercantileImmersive.com. Paul Daner Jr. is here from the Athletic and the Growler podcast.
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Speaker 3: I have been to a wedding here.
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Speaker 1: Have you?
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Speaker 3: It's awesome.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. It's phenomenal.
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Speaker 3: It's been a while. I think maybe 10 years ago.
00:01:56
Speaker 1: Well, that was before that was the current venue that it is now.
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Speaker 4: Yeah.
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Speaker 5: But I've always enjoyed it here. I had a great time at that wedding, from what I've been told.
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Speaker 1: You're told you had a good time. I've been told I had a great time. I've been at a few of those kind of events.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. I had fun.
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Speaker 1: Oh, you had fun. Yeah.
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Speaker 5: I did hear you talking with Austin earlier about how you're not a dancer.
00:02:14
Speaker 1: I am a wedding dancer.
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Speaker 3: You are? Well, at least I was before.
00:02:18
Speaker 5: Back surgeries and knee stuff, and now no one gets married anymore, like my age.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. We don't get invited to a lot of weddings because I'm in my 40s.
00:02:28
Speaker 3: Right. So it doesn't really go that way.
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Speaker 1: I'm in like the sweet spot where I'm not going to a lot of funerals yet, knock on wood, but I've kind of done all my weddings.
00:02:36
Speaker 3: I get really excited if I get a wedding invite now. I'm like, yes!
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Speaker 5: And people probably should take that into consideration for inviting me just how excited I would be to get to go to a wedding again because it's been a while.
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Speaker 1: Actually, where we are in life, I've been invited to a lot of second weddings. I've had my second wedding, and those tend to be a little bit more toned down. But you can have your second wedding here as well.
00:02:57
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
00:02:58
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think what I want to do here now. I want to do something. Yeah. Well, right now you're doing a radio show. I'm excited about that, too. There's a lot to talk about. There is a lot to talk about, and it's good, and it's fun, and there's a lot of meat on the bone, and it's just, I'm in such a better place coming out of the first game of the season than I've been really at any point since 2021. As you should be.
00:03:20
Speaker 5: I mean, the question going into this weekend, and I was sort of thinking of it as I was walking into the game on Sunday, was it's the perfect opportunity to learn if this year and this team really is different because Tampa wasn't some super powerful first week opponent, but they were quality. You, you had a couple of certainly really good aspects to their team in terms of their, their trenches being really good. And that was going to be a good test on both sides and the clunkiness that we'd seen in the past, the success that Tampa and Todd Bowles had had early in their first game of the season, specifically, you know, Baker had been really good, won three straight openers. There were so many easy traditional pitfalls that they could have fallen into there. And then they came out and it looked different. It looked different in the way that the defense played. It looked different in the way that the defensive line just wrecked the game. It looked the way that they hoped that it would look. It's hard not to come away from that and feel any way other than to say that was a different experience in a good way.
00:04:28
Speaker 1: You got A lot of good. You got some stuff they got to work on. But even the game itself, you had those moments where you're like, you know what? This is where it goes sideways. The burrow pick. The weirdness of them not, you know, going for the kill up 30 to 20 and Joe Flacco for some reason is out there and the crowd's getting unreasonably excited, which we'll get to here in a bit. And they kick a field goal and they allow a touchdown. Like there were these moments where I'm like, okay, if this team is different, they finish the game. If this team is different, they end and put an end to whatever– amount of anxiety I'm feeling right now. And they did. And that's not something we've seen a lot of in recent years. Finishing is different because we've seen a lot.
00:05:08
Speaker 5: And they have spent, quite notably, if you've listened to anything that we've talked about or listened to any of the press conferences and the players, they have spent an inordinate amount of time on trying to be better at finishing and what they did with their personnel acquisitions and what they did with their drills, how they trained, what they did in the joint.
00:05:27
Speaker 3: Practice and in camp.
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Speaker 5: Like, so much of it, everything you heard about was it was always about being better finishers. And that means guys like Mafe, who finished as part of getting the last sack fumble, adding Dexter, all the players they had on the defensive line are guys designed to help you finish games when you're up. And then everything that they did to have that last drive, you heard Zach Taylor say, you can probably hear how proud I am in the postgame when I was asking him about finishing. It's because this has been his idea the whole time. It's like, we have to do everything we can when we get in these situations to be able to do this. Mo, we've talked about this a lot.
00:06:08
Speaker 3: In recent years.
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Speaker 5: And even when they were really good, it didn't feel like there were enough times when the offense finished. They kept having to hand it over to the defense. And it was very notable when the defense was bad. And we've seen all those things turn into train wrecks. There just needed to be more games that ended with the offense being the one to feed. They should be the one to feed. That's your strength. They should be the ones to throw your haymakers, and that includes T. Higgins levitating in the air to essentially end the game. That is the type of way that your stars should be finishing games more often, and I think that was a huge deal, probably the biggest deal.
00:06:47
Speaker 1: To come out of opening day. In writing about Barrett Carter and Demetrius Knight, you point out the Bengals as a team had 14 missed tackles. They averaged 9.6 last year. I'm going to say something pretty stupid. Not the first time. They had 14 missed tackles. Didn't feel like it.
00:07:02
Speaker 5: No, because I think a lot of the missed tackles came in scrambles.
00:07:08
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
00:07:09
Speaker 5: In scramble zone where you had the quarterback acting frenetically. I'm willing to allow missed tackles when a quarterback's running for his life. You're just forcing him into somebody else. It didn't feel like it because they weren't as, well, they didn't look like the ones we saw the last couple of years that are in open space and they lead to an extra 20, 30 yards or an explosive or whatever. We just saw those over and over again.
00:07:34
Speaker 3: So many of.
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Speaker 5: The tacklers just weren't really put in those situations that were really hard and disastrous in recent years, and I think that goes a long way.
00:07:45
Speaker 1: The spots where they were happening were a lot different.
00:07:48
Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:07:49
Speaker 1: You wrote about the aftermath of the game for Demetrius Knight and Barrett Carter, and I want folks to read it. I just, and I know I mentioned this on your podcast this morning, I'm just happy for those guys.
00:08:01
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:08:01
Speaker 1: And happy for those guys from the perspective of a skeptic. Like, I, you know, back in March, remember going like, hello, did you watch these two players last year? Pick a linebacker off this sheet of paper. There's like a dozen of them out there. And sign one of them. Sign one of them just to help those guys. And they didn't. And I don't know, man. We'll see how the season unfolds. As is pointed out in your piece, they were far from perfect. But I was happy for those guys because I felt like they took the right amount of ownership for their first season struggles. I think they were willing to sort of let people know what they were going through, but didn't necessarily try to make any excuses. They know they're under their microscope, and they were far from perfect. But I was thrilled that we got to talk about a defense and mention how it looked like Barrett Carter was all over the place. Demetrius Knight scores the first touchdown of the season. I just, on a human level, I was happy for those two dudes.
00:08:59
Speaker 3: They've been through it, and they had the right attitude. They didn't let it get to them.
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Speaker 5: They arrived at this year with a ton of confidence and understanding.
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Speaker 1: That, fine, it was bad, but we're going to show.
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Speaker 3: Everybody who we really are.
00:09:16
Speaker 5: And just being about the work that way, which I really appreciated about them, and it wasn't blustery. Like, even after the game, Barrett Carter kept saying, you know, I want to say this with all the humility and be very humble about this, but these are the plays that we should be making, not beating his chest even in that moment where he had an opportunity to take even a small victory lap of sorts on some stuff. He did not really choosing to do that. And, you know, we had Mike Hodges on our rewatch show yesterday, the linebackers coach, and he talked about how he stopped the meeting to make sure because he kept critiquing everything because the expectations of being perfect on every play is what they're trying to build to remind them, like, I'm really proud of you guys.
00:09:59
Speaker 3: I want to make sure you guys know that.
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Speaker 5: And he's like, the best part of them is they looked back at me and said, yeah, we know. We can elevate this thing if we keep on it like this. We can't let this moment mean that we've arrived or done anything.
00:10:14
Speaker 3: And I think them having that attitude.
00:10:17
Speaker 5: Whether it be through last year's adversity or or for the first little breath of success here this year, I think does tell you a lot about them and why the Bengals bet on them. Most people don't see it. We see what's on the field. What Zach Taylor and Al Golden and the personnel department saw was the guys that they felt like were made of the right stuff to handle it and come out the other side being better players and not let it destroy their careers.
00:10:50
Speaker 3: It would have destroyed a lot of careers.
00:10:51
Speaker 5: I think that was why they made that bet, and I think you saw that start to pay off a little bit on Sunday. Still, like you said, not perfect. Still a long way to go, but they looked very much in place. They made the plays that were available to them and a few more.
00:11:08
Speaker 1: It was nice to put those guys on the list of standouts on defense on Sunday, and it was nice to have a list of guys who stood out on defense, which there just haven't been many of those.
00:11:24
Speaker 3: No.
00:11:24
Speaker 5: And yeah, I mean, you could go down the line and I know after the game, I was sort of trying to tick off all the boxes.
00:11:32
Speaker 3: Like I think every addition had a big moment.
00:11:35
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:11:35
Speaker 5: I mean, almost really every single guy on that defense from all the free agents. I mean, Mafe, obviously huge with the sack and Brian cook with the recovery and the force fumble, uh, By the way, your guy, Geno Stone, what are the odds that Geno makes that play?
00:11:54
Speaker 7: None.
00:11:55
Speaker 5: I mean, when I went back and I kept re-watching it, and just the violence and the aggression that Brian Cook came at that tackle to get his helmet right on the football is just... It was almost like watching a different sport compared to what we'd seen happening coming downhill from the back end last year. But all of those guys, all the way down to obviously Lawrence and Jonathan Allen with the sack and Cassius Howe with the holding call that forces the pressure. On down the line, everybody had something. And that's the design. That is the way it was supposed to go.
00:12:30
Speaker 1: I moved to a different seat location.
00:12:32
Speaker 3: For this season.
00:12:33
Speaker 1: And there's, you know, there's always some apprehension because you're kind of like, it's like moving into a new neighborhood. It's like being, you know, a new student the first day of school at a different school. It's like, all right, I got to get used to these people who are the regulars who's here for one week. Like, what's the vibe here? Uh, is there anybody that like is going to tolerate my jokes? Is there anybody who's going to be a liability? And as that play is unfolding, I heard like three people near me just mentioned Geno Stone. And I'm like, I'm going to be fine. I'm going to be. These are my people. I'm going to be at home here. Now, there was a little unreasonable anger being directed at somebody who didn't wear orange. Like I, you know, like I get it. It was open and orange. This guy had his black Jamar Chase jersey on and. Number one, the sun's beating down on you. It's questionable. But it's like, all right, he didn't participate. Let's let it go. But we were... Like, I heard the Geno Stone references, and I just thought, like, I think I'm going to be okay here.
00:13:24
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:13:25
Speaker 1: This is going to be fine. I have.
00:13:27
Speaker 5: I had kind of some weird respect for the people who just said, you're not going to tell me what to wear.
00:13:32
Speaker 1: Oh, I have respect for that. Yeah.
00:13:34
Speaker 5: You could see the smattering of the white jerseys and the black.
00:13:39
Speaker 3: I'm just thinking... All right.
00:13:40
Speaker 5: I like someone who's just like, you're not going to make me, I'm not going to be a conformist. You're not going to force me to wear what you want me to wear.
00:13:46
Speaker 1: So I feel both ways about this. I think when everybody wears the same color, it looks awesome.
00:13:51
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:13:52
Speaker 1: I also don't like somebody telling me what to do. Yes. And so like if, especially like if you buy a jersey, I don't wear a jersey. If you buy a jersey, it's an expensive item, a real jersey. Like, hey, it's a white jersey. I paid a lot for this. I'm wearing it. I don't care if it's not the right color. Like, leave that person alone. Not everybody's got a whole closet full of Bengals stuff, but I do like the aesthetic of everybody wearing orange.
00:14:15
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I like the togetherness nature of it. Like, we're all in this thing together. It does look very cool, but then there's a part of me that just says.
00:14:23
Speaker 3: You know what? You do you, man.
00:14:25
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:14:27
Speaker 3: You were in orange.
00:14:28
Speaker 1: I was in orange, but I have donned the wrong color before, and people have attempted to shame me, and I go like... really care that much yeah I do really the whiteout game last year I wore a white UC hoodie I got yelled at what's not Bengals like man it doesn't say whiteout has to it's white I'm wearing a white hoodie it says Cincinnati on it yes are we can I is this acceptable am I allowed to enjoy the game am I going to be shunned the entire three hours I actually know.
00:14:59
Speaker 5: I always more appreciate those types of things when they have the t-shirts on the seats and or something like that. I think there is a nature of appreciation to that. You can't always do that.
00:15:11
Speaker 3: All the time.
00:15:12
Speaker 5: I like those games when they happen that way, but it did look cool. The fact that Cincinnati Bengals are going to hand out 65,000 shirts. I didn't say that I thought it was going to happen. I said I appreciate it when that is the type of thing that happens to create some kind of color effect.
00:15:28
Speaker 1: I went to a Knicks-Pacers playoff game last year, and there's the yellow Pacers t-shirt. And the guy behind me says, are you going to wear that? And I'm like, my guy ain't happening. And then, you know, give me the shirt. Like, no. I want the shirt. I want the shirt. I'm just not ready for it right now. I ended up giving it to a listener who heard that story and sent a nice note. And I said, fine, I'll send it to you. But no, I'm not putting the Pacers shirt on. What are you doing here at 21 after 3 o'clock? Paul Daner Jr., latest episode of The Growler, out. It's been out. Is it out there? It is out, yes. Very good. Also, after Bengals games, make sure you listen to the walkout. Yes. And, of course, theathletic.com. And the live show is up if you want to watch that as well from Thursday night. There's a lot of content. A lot of content. I'm trying to work it all in, man. You got the rewatch. We had the rewatch yesterday. We went through the tape.
00:16:22
Speaker 5: Charlie G and I went through the tape on rewatch and had my codges on.
00:16:25
Speaker 3: It was great.
00:16:26
Speaker 1: Yep. It's 22 minutes after 3 o'clock. Paul Daner, Jr., we are broadcasting from the Mercantile Immersive. This is an unbelievable event venue downtown Cincinnati. We thank them for having us. I'm here until 6. Paul is here until 4. This is ESPN 1530 Cincinnati Sports Station.
00:16:44
Speaker 8: Cincinnati's ESPN 1530.
00:16:48
Speaker 1: Traffic.
00:16:49
Speaker 9: From the UCHealth Traffic Center, UCHealth offers multiple sclerosis infusion therapy at nine locations, making expert care easier to access. Learn more at uchealth.com. Broadway's so far so good around town this afternoon. Not seeing any accidents or other.
00:17:08
Speaker 1: It's 27 after 3 o'clock. This is ESPN 1530. Mo Egger with Paul Daner Jr. from The Growler. And The Athletic, we're broadcasting from the Mercantile Immersive. This is one of the exclusive venues run by Delightmore. These places make events feel effortless. There's full-service catering. There's signature hospitality behind every single moment. You've got The View in Mount Adams. You've got The Trancep downtown. You've got Carnegie Hall in Newport. The Phoenix in downtown is going to be coming back this winter. And Mercantile Immersive here on 4th Street downtown. is absolutely fantastic. So is Paul Daner Jr., who is here on the Bengals. How would you encapsulate the overall performance of the offense on Sunday?
00:17:59
Speaker 3: I think they were solid. I mean, I.
00:18:02
Speaker 5: Was expecting more clunkiness, to be honest. I just felt like Tampa's a good defense. Todd Bowles is going to be aggressive. There's going to be lots of exotic blitzes. I think that's a big part of the reason they've had success in Week 1 is you get these offensive lines that are playing together often for the first time or first time in a new season, and they.
00:18:24
Speaker 1: Can really exploit that. I think the Bucs have had success that way.
00:18:27
Speaker 5: I think the top offensive takeaway has to be how well the offensive line played in handling that. They end up leading the NFL in in pressure rate, at least via PFF's numbers, and 21%, best in the league. But to me, more importantly than that, it came against Todd Bowles, who was second highest in blitz rate. Todd Bowles was dedicated, the Bucs were dedicated, with some real dudes now, to getting after Joe Burrow, and they couldn't do it. And that goes a long way to telling you, I think, where this offensive line is at and picking up where.
00:19:02
Speaker 1: They left off last year. and how well Amarius.
00:19:04
Speaker 5: Mims played amongst others. All of that really saved the day for them because it allowed them to be able to stay consistent, move the ball. Once they got those three scores off of turnovers, the two offensive drives back-to-back, then you're playing a very different type of ball game that outside of Burroughs' pick six, they really executed fairly well.
00:19:28
Speaker 1: My Amarius Mims all-pro bold prediction is Big day for that one. Big day for that one. And then so was yesterday. Yeah.
00:19:35
Speaker 5: Whatever the viral clip ends up going out of someone just trying to, I guess, trying to clown Reuben Bain and then everyone coming in and being like, no, Amarius is going to do this to everybody this year.
00:19:44
Speaker 1: Can they just announce now they'll pick up the fifth-year option for Amarius Mims? I mean, sure.
00:19:49
Speaker 6: You can.
00:19:49
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't see why not. I'm not an expert on offensive line play, and I don't watch football games focusing on offensive linemen, but I did on Sunday. Dude, he's awesome.
00:20:01
Speaker 3: He's awesome.
00:20:02
Speaker 5: He's so athletic and so long and so powerful. And maybe it's slightly accentuated against somebody like Bane who does deal with the limitations of his arms. And I think that's part of what the video is about. But that's not really what it is. He's like that against everyone. He can work you around the edge so easily just by getting out there and just throwing you down. His anchor is so strong. anybody that tries to go and bowl through him is just not moving him. I mean, you just, you never see him get put, get pushed back when we've, when we've talked about all the Dexter Lawrence highlights and things you watch Dexter do to everybody in camp, or he just runs the guard right back into the lap. Um, you never see a Marius do that. It doesn't happen to him and you can't go around him. And he's got, his technique has gotten so strong, uh, that he's able to get the one punch that just stops the guy. And, I remember Dan Pitcher talking about why he likes big, long tackles specifically, and then he turned it towards Mims, is that it just demoralizes guys. They just know that they can't move him, and it's so hard to get all the way around him that they're just so beat down by the time they get to the third and fourth quarter, they almost kind of quit.
00:21:24
Speaker 3: He's like, you'll.
00:21:25
Speaker 5: See guys just quit because it's just not happening, and Amarius, I think, has a way of doing that to people. I am fascinated to watch him this weekend. When we were talking about Daniel Hunter, if you, they end up being Will Anderson situation, wherever you end up with those guys, he called him the, the a hundred million dollar defensive.
00:21:45
Speaker 3: Yesterday.
00:21:46
Speaker 5: And he was very excited to go prove his worth. And it's very helpful for his value. Something he was very well aware of what.
00:21:53
Speaker 3: That can mean.
00:21:54
Speaker 5: And, uh, uh, I, yeah, he looks, he looks outstanding and certainly feels like somebody that, Those that do watch and the voices you do listen to, the Duke Many Weathers, the Brandon Thorns, Nate Tices that do pay attention very closely to that stuff have been saying the same things that we've been saying. Amarius was this guy last year, and now I think the rest of the people that are tuning in are starting to catch up.
00:22:22
Speaker 1: All pro.
00:22:24
Speaker 3: It's happening. I mean, look.
00:22:26
Speaker 1: It's happening.
00:22:26
Speaker 3: I'll tell you this. If he.
00:22:29
Speaker 5: If this line is good, that's going to be such a storyline that's going to be beating people over the head. The Bengals line is finally good for Joe. Joe's been staying clean all year. He's healthy. He's only been hit X, Y, Z times, pressure rates. And then every single time they say that, they'll go, and the star of the line, Amarius Mims, has a clean sheet or X number of pressures. That is going to be the conversation so often on those shows if Burrow is being kept upright, and the line as a whole is working. The momentum is there where you can see it. And Mims was like, the other thing is, it's not a guy kind of coming from off the radar. The way people talked about him before the draft, it's making everybody remember, oh yeah, he was the guy who was like the biggest athletic freak we'd ever seen in that draft. And now people are remembering, oh, here he is and he's coming into his own. I think there's enough combination of all of that to make him be able to do that this year which is hard to do for a guy this young in a league that tends to just keep giving those slots to.
00:23:34
Speaker 1: Well and he got drafted short on experience but I remember like folks who got to know him you guys who cover the team coaches would talk about like it's so trite like about the right things but it's like look he's short on experience he's not short on willingness to learn he's not short on understanding like I have raw physical gifts that's not going to be enough and so It has been fun watching him grow into, and he's still maybe not quite there yet, but it's been fun watching him grow into a guy that now you talk about the kind of money he's going to make down the road, the sort of individual accolades he may get, and most importantly, the ability to anchor an offensive line, which for years has been a weakness and now may be a strength.
00:24:17
Speaker 5: Let's give Scott Peters some credit here. He's done a great job with everybody. But I think he has done a really good job helping Amarius take the next step. We talked more about it last year. It was building up his toughness a little bit more. Playing through stuff. Trying to be more dominant and unleash that inner part of him. He really did. That was really the big thing that clicked over last year. And you just see him really embracing that now. And that's why it ends up being demoralizing for some of these guys.
00:24:50
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about the most puzzling moment. From Sunday's game.
00:24:54
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:24:55
Speaker 1: When we come back. Paul Daner Jr. with us from The Athletic and The Growler Podcast. 25 minutes away from 4 o'clock. We're broadcasting today from the Mercantile Immersive Event Venue downtown Cincinnati on 4th Street. Sports headlines are coming up as well on ESPN 1530 Cincinnati Sports Station.
00:25:14
Speaker 10: Not just talk. This is sports with soul, sweat, and swagger. Tony Pike Cincy 360. Tomorrow at 12 noon on ESPN 1530. Cincinnati's ESPN 1530.
00:25:26
Speaker 4: Traffic.
00:25:27
Speaker 8: ESPN 1530. Cincinnati Sports Station.
00:25:34
Speaker 1: Sports headlines, a service to Kelsey Chevrolet, home of Lifetime, powertrain protection, and guaranteed credit approval from their family to yours for life. KelseyChev.com. Any Bengals news today? Anything of significance?
00:25:50
Speaker 5: No, nothing of significance. No major injuries, according to Zach Taylor, coming out of yesterday. No moves yet, so.
00:26:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty.
00:26:02
Speaker 5: They have been very lucky and very healthy to this point. I know everybody's knocking on wood at that thought, but they're in.
00:26:09
Speaker 3: A good spot right now.
00:26:09
Speaker 11: All right.
00:26:10
Speaker 1: Well, meanwhile, the Cincinnati Reds season continues, though they are mathematically eliminated from postseason contention.
00:26:17
Speaker 3: I thought the run was coming.
00:26:19
Speaker 11: Yeah.
00:26:19
Speaker 1: Well, the run may come. It's just going to be a run to no better than seventh place. And chances are. going to finish well below that. Nonetheless, they have a game tonight, 640 first pitch, final 3-2-1 Tuesday night of the year. Yoshi Yamamoto and Rhett Lauder on the hill, 640 tonight on 700 WLW.
00:26:39
Speaker 3: The U.S.
00:26:39
Speaker 1: Men's soccer team is going to play at the soccer venue on the west end of Cincinnati. They're going to host the home leg of the CONCACAF Champions Nations League quarterfinal in November. I totally butchered that. I don't care. Justin Vive, Mr. Cincinnati Cyclone. He retires after like a thousand pro seasons. I didn't jot down the sports headlines. You could tell.
00:27:02
Speaker 3: Been busy.
00:27:02
Speaker 1: I thought you did a great job. I got the basic gist of it.
00:27:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody knows what's going on now.
00:27:06
Speaker 1: We're not doing deep dive journalism. It's like if AI did the sports headlines, that's what they would sound like. It might be in like a week now at this point. Might be by the end of this show. We're at Mercantile Immersive, downtown Cincinnati, which will host... A Bengals watch party where they will have stuff like Skyline and Montgomery Inn. You talk about immersive. There's not just televisions here. You'll feel like you're at the game. That is a week from Sunday. Learn more at mercantileimmersive.com. Paul Daner, Jr. from The Athletic and The Growler Podcast. Can I give you my one nitpick of the game on Sunday?
00:27:42
Speaker 4: 30-20.
00:27:43
Speaker 1: They're on the 7-yard line. If they score a touchdown... Ball game. It's fourth and two. Joe Burrow exits the game. Joe Flacco comes out onto the field. Fans cheer at an unreasonable level. Now, I love Joe Flacco. I've become a big fan. We're cheering Joe Burrow leaving the football game and a guy who's not as good coming in. First of all, misplaced priorities. Secondly, they do this weird thing where Joe Flacco's going to try to draw him off sides, which I detest that play less than I detest the shovel pass, but I don't like it. Why just score the damn touchdown?
00:28:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think.
00:28:22
Speaker 1: Go for it.
00:28:23
Speaker 3: In the game.
00:28:25
Speaker 1: No.
00:28:25
Speaker 5: If you don't get it, you're up 10. I have opposite thoughts here on both these points. One, I think getting to 13 is important there. You're probably looking at some sort of a late scramble to try to kick a field. You could see a 60 yard. How many of these do we see where a field goal can be very important? Getting up by two touchdowns, I think. really changes the entire dynamic of the game. Second of all, I like the Flacco move as a way to... If you're going to do what you call the old no-brainer freeze to the throwback fans that remember the Saints getting Pat Simms to do this in.
00:28:58
Speaker 1: 2010... Hold your water! Hold your water!
00:29:02
Speaker 5: Sean Payton called that play no-brainer freeze, and I've never forgotten that. Whenever you know you're doing that, how can you make it feel different? How can you make them think, oh, maybe they're not trying.
00:29:14
Speaker 3: And.
00:29:15
Speaker 5: Quite famously, I mean, it was on quarterback and everything, that Flacco had come out and done a QB sneak. So it maybe makes them think, oh, they're bringing Flacco in to do the QB sneak. It gets you thinking that that could be what happens here. And so I like the idea, if you know you're doing that, if you know all you're not going to run a play, all you're going to try to do is draw.
00:29:36
Speaker 1: Them off sides, how can you dress it up?
00:29:40
Speaker 5: To make it not feel like, oh, they're clearly just trying to draw us off sides. Bring in Flacco. Everybody's doing their thing. You're thinking, oh, that's right, they did him for QB Sneaks. They talked about this in the meeting on Thursday, about how they brought him in.
00:29:53
Speaker 1: For QB Sneaks before. Look out for that.
00:29:55
Speaker 3: Be ready for it.
00:29:55
Speaker 5: And maybe that shakes up, and I hear a different cadence. Now you're hearing a different voice. I kind of like the idea. I kind of like the idea of trying to throw him off a little bit, if that is the decision that you're making. And I didn't mind that decision. I think that field goal was very important, especially with the way you can see these long field goals get kicked anymore. Just getting at the two touchdowns, I think, meant a lot there.
00:30:18
Speaker 1: Counterpoint.
00:30:19
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:30:20
Speaker 1: 17-point lead, better than 13-point lead.
00:30:23
Speaker 9: Yeah.
00:30:23
Speaker 4: Sure.
00:30:24
Speaker 3: Sure.
00:30:25
Speaker 1: 10-point lead leaves open the door to disaster a little bit more. That's all I'm saying. It changes the dynamic a lot. 17-point lead, three-score game. And you could still get the first down and not score a touchdown.
00:30:40
Speaker 4: Right?
00:30:41
Speaker 1: Yeah. Were they at the two or were they at the seven? The delay of the game went back to the seven. So I'm wrong about that. But I am right about how 17 is greater than 10 or 13. It is.
00:30:52
Speaker 3: I just, I'm okay with it. I'm okay with it.
00:30:54
Speaker 1: I could have, I enjoyed it. It was a little cute.
00:30:59
Speaker 3: It's a very nitpicky thing.
00:31:01
Speaker 1: It is. No, trust me. Trust me. Like of, of all the things, like if, if, well, if they lose the game as a result of that, then that would have been three hours today and yesterday. But yeah, look, I, I walked away from Sunday's game elated. Part of it is the recent standard set-by-season openers is so low. You just didn't want it to make you think that the season was ruined. I saw a swarming defense. I saw an offense that looked prepared. By his Game 1 standards, Joe Burrow played well. Yes, there was the pick six, but I got to nitpick something. Yeah, that's fair.
00:31:39
Speaker 5: I think they switched in their mind the way they were going to play that game to just focus everything on just how to best salt it away, as you should once you go up 21-3. I think that was all part of all those decisions.
00:31:56
Speaker 1: By the way, Pat Sims played 10 NFL seasons. Hell yeah, he did. He played 98 games as a member of the Cincinnati Bengals. And when you say his name, the first play that comes up is him jumping the gun in 2010 against the Saints.
00:32:12
Speaker 5: Do you remember there was a photo that I think a player ended up tweeting out after a game of Pat Sims in a cowboy hat and his boxers. Do you remember this coming out? That's the other thing I think of every day. I don't think you want to remember. I just remember that. I remember Mike Zimmer saying, offhand in the locker room one time. If this guy ever gets off vacation as he was walking by to all of us in the locker room one time, I think he was a little frustrated with Pat Sims nursing whatever injury he had at one point, taking shots at him. I have a number of Pat Sims memories. He was a very jovial guy.
00:32:52
Speaker 3: I liked Pat.
00:32:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had a good career. Played for a long time, was on some really good teams, and yet when you say his name, No brainer freeze.
00:33:00
Speaker 3: I'm yes.
00:33:00
Speaker 1: No brainer for you. Sean Payton, December game against the saints. We'll never forget.
00:33:04
Speaker 5: I mean, it was one of like 17 moments like that in the 2010 season.
00:33:09
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:33:10
Speaker 5: That season was the most remarkable set of dumb things happening for a team to just lose over and over again that you'll ever see.
00:33:17
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:33:18
Speaker 1: Well, in four years, you'll have the 20th anniversary. You could do, you could do an oral history or something. You could do a, it actually would be pretty good. It actually, it actually would be pretty good. Um, How about the game against, was it the game against Tampa? Because it was the same day as the Reds' playoff game.
00:33:35
Speaker 4: Game three, yeah.
00:33:36
Speaker 5: And they're throwing the ball. Remember, Carson gets picked off at the end twice.
00:33:40
Speaker 1: I think they're up 26-17.
00:33:42
Speaker 5: Yes, throwing the ball, getting picked off.
00:33:48
Speaker 1: As the meltdown unfolds, they announce that Carson had reached a certain milestone and the crowd booed.
00:33:55
Speaker 6: Booed, yeah.
00:33:56
Speaker 1: And they lost. And then we all went over to Great American Ballpark and watched the Reds get two hits against Cole Hamels.
00:34:02
Speaker 4: Fun.
00:34:02
Speaker 1: Fun just Cincinnati sports weekend. How did you think the under center stuff went on Sunday? Good.
00:34:08
Speaker 3: I thought it was okay.
00:34:08
Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean, I think it wasn't close to being a lot more. There were a couple of runs that were close. And obviously the ball to tee. I think that's the one. When we talked about you know, you're going to try to get more out of the under center run game in the early, early down plays.
00:34:30
Speaker 3: And then occasionally try to pop them on one.
00:34:33
Speaker 1: They did that.
00:34:33
Speaker 5: Like they, they ran it out of under center early. They were trying to move the sticks that way. And then all of a sudden play action T on the deep post just didn't connect it, but it was there. I, I, they got the explosive. They got a 16 yarder to Jamar on the sale off the under center play action. Like, I think that you saw how it can become what they want it to be and how they want to use it. It could have been a little better. It was close to being a little bit better. Obviously, the biggest thing is they'd like to get more explosive runs out of it.
00:35:08
Speaker 1: But it was fine. It wasn't getting blown up in the backfield.
00:35:12
Speaker 5: They weren't getting where Joe turns the corner on a boot and he's got a guy in his face. They were efficient with it. And I think set a nice starting point for where they want to.
00:35:24
Speaker 3: Go with it.
00:35:25
Speaker 1: Two more things really quick. I think, did we answer the question about what role Dante Myers is going to have? Trying to seal the game, first play, 33-27. Anxiety is starting to creep in, and they throw it to him for 18. And he makes a massive play. Yeah.
00:35:41
Speaker 5: I think, really, it's the same trust, you know, that they showed in him by having Keyshawn Williams inactive.
00:35:50
Speaker 10: Mm-hmm.
00:35:51
Speaker 3: You know, this guy, Dante Myers, is making his NFL debut. Yeah.
00:35:55
Speaker 5: He's also not really done a ton of returning. Almost all the things he did in the CFL, he actually didn't.
00:36:00
Speaker 3: Return a ton.
00:36:01
Speaker 6: Right.
00:36:02
Speaker 5: In pregame, by the way, and this is a side note, the sun was awful, and him and Andre, Yosvoss, are back there, and neither, like, Andre couldn't field a punt.
00:36:13
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:36:14
Speaker 5: He was just looking directly up into the sun, and I talked to Dante about it yesterday, and he's like, I said, what are you thinking? It is your debut, and they've told you you're going to be the punt and kick returner. And every time you look up, all you see is the sun, and you can't see the ball over.
00:36:27
Speaker 1: And over again. They needed Dan Myers to come over and try to catch it for him.
00:36:32
Speaker 5: And he was like, yeah, I was freaking out, but they kind of assured. But the point being, they had so much trust in him to go out there and make the right decisions and know what he's doing. They didn't even need to know that he had done it a ton. And the same thing came from Joe in that moment. There's Dante.
00:36:48
Speaker 3: Full trust to throw it to him, and he made good on it.
00:36:51
Speaker 5: This dude at every single mile post along the way has made a play to warrant more.
00:37:01
Speaker 3: Like, every single time.
00:37:03
Speaker 5: He has never let it down, whether it was from the offseason to the mandatory minicamp to training camp to the preseason games to now in the regular season game.
00:37:11
Speaker 3: Why wouldn't you?
00:37:12
Speaker 1: And I thought Zach Taylor put it really well yesterday.
00:37:15
Speaker 5: Like, in our offense, if you're not Jamar or Tee, We just got to know that you're going to make the plays when they do come to you. And that's exactly what Dante did on the jet sweep and on that ball. Made a play, made a guy miss in both opportunities. That will get you more trust from Joe, more balls from Joe. And if you have the trust of Joe Burrow, you can hang around here for a long time.
00:37:37
Speaker 3: As we've seen.
00:37:38
Speaker 1: I only have about a minute, but I have one more thing. I think this should be at least a team rule. If you went to Navy and for your game you show up wearing the formal Navy uniform... You should not be inactive.
00:37:50
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:37:51
Speaker 1: I know, like, Chris Jenkins had a sack. Like, lower on the depth chart, guys did good things. Landon's going to get his opportunity at some point. But you wear that fit. Come on. You're active. You're up.
00:38:03
Speaker 3: We're feeling it. It was great. I love everything about it. Yeah, it was awesome. But I wish.
00:38:07
Speaker 1: You now have to wear that every game. I'm assuming that's.
00:38:11
Speaker 3: His plan, is to wear that every game. That's just how he dresses for games. I don't know. I haven't talked to him about it yet, but I would.
00:38:19
Speaker 1: Assume that's where he's going. So, like, when he goes out to dinner? I just, oh, I'm going to the game. We're in a wedding venue right now. I went to a wedding once, and a gentleman who had, I did not know the guy, but had gone to the Naval Academy, shows up as a single man, and at the time I was a single man, no shot. Like, you're like, all right, well, I'm wasting my time. I'll say congratulations to the bride and groom and get out of here. My guy, I got a suit that I bought at Joseph A. Bank, and this guy's wearing, he's wearing that? No chance. We're done. I'm out. So, yeah, good for Landon Robinson.
00:38:56
Speaker 3: It's tough for everybody to compete with.
00:38:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, like Joe Burrow, like, loves his pregame outfits. How do you compete with that?
00:39:02
Speaker 3: He's trying. His was more expensive, but I don't know if it got more respect.
00:39:05
Speaker 1: It wasn't as cool.
00:39:06
Speaker 3: No, not at all.
00:39:07
Speaker 1: Thank you, as always. Yeah. Theathletic.com, The Growler Podcast. Follow Paul Daner Jr. at PaulDanerJr6. Away from 4 o'clock, broadcasting from the mercantile, immersive downtown Cincinnati. This is ESPN 1530 Cincinnati Sports Station.
00:39:24
Speaker 8: Cincinnati's ESPN 1530. Traffic.
00:39:29
Speaker 9: From the UC. Health.
00:39:32
Speaker 12: What's up?
00:39:32
Speaker 1: Good afternoon. I'm Mo Egger. This is ESPN 1530. Thank you for listening today and watching on YouTube and on Twitter. By the way, if you missed yesterday's Tony and Mo football show, it is available. You can go listen to it on the iHeartRadio app. It was awesome yesterday. Look, man, they were not perfect. And you can dwell on what they didn't do well. I don't think we've done that. You can talk about some of the things they have to do better. There's a lot they have to do better. They've got to be better at tackling. They've got to be better at, you know, I don't want to say finishing games or putting teams away because they actually did a pretty good job of that. But there will be better games that Joe Burrow plays because I think he's the best quarterback in the NFL. but you can't have a pick six in a game like that. The number of offsides, penalties on the interior, the defensive line, there's a lot there that has to be cleaned up. But if you look at yesterday through the lens of what other season openers have looked like, good God, sign me up for what they did on Sunday. That defense I watched on Sunday will win a lot of games for this football team. They were not perfect. The tackling was obviously not perfect. Baker Mayfield, when he did have time to throw, was pretty efficient, pretty effective. The Bucs moved the ball. Daner and I did talk about this on his podcast this morning. They made it clear what they were trying to do in that game, which is they're going to target Jalen Davis. They will not be the last team to try to do that. And so there was some stuff that's got to be worked on. There's some stuff that I'm sure the coaches are dwelling on with the players, but holy crap, I mean.
00:41:16
Speaker 1: Relative to the way we talk about other season openers, last year after they beat the Browns, let's be honest, it didn't feel like a win. It didn't feel like a win because of just the overall performance of the offense. They frankly should have lost the football game. I didn't feel that way after Sunday. Relative to what they usually look like and relative to the results that we have often seen, obviously they did win the football game last year, but relative to some of the recent Game 1 results, Signed me the hell up for the way they played and obviously the result they achieved on Sunday. Bengals and Texans this coming Sunday live on ESPN 1530. We've got Brenneman and Jones on baseball coming up in just about 45 minutes. We are broadcasting today from the Mercantile Stadium.
00:42:06
Speaker 3: Immersive.
00:42:07
Speaker 1: This is a venue on 4th Street, downtown Cincinnati that is perfect for any event. And we've talked about parties you can have here, weddings, stuff like that. They also are going to have periodically Bengals watch parties with food stations, full bar, an immersive viewing experience. You've got to check this place out for one of the watch parties they have. They'll post about it at mercantileimmersive.com. You've got to check this place out at some point. I've been here before. earlier this summer, did some videos for Around the World Cup. We thank them for hosting us. They've got a series of venues, Delightmore does, around the greater Cincinnati area. This place is the newest one, and it is absolutely awesome. You know what I'm doing right now, beyond doing a radio show? I'm crafting a tweet for this hour. So will you sort of indulge me here and let me finish the tweet? Our sports legal expert, Stuart W. Penrose, on three sports legal stories today. Now on ESPN 1530, listen, we're going to have our guy Jeff Carr on as well in about an hour. Reds sent a message. You know, teams send messages. People send messages. Companies send messages. Bengals sent a message this offseason. Like whether or not you thought the price was too heavy to pay for Dexter Lawrence, whether or not you believed that Dexter Lawrence still had a lot of really good football left in him, You cannot deny that there was a message sent this offseason, and the message was, we're going for it. We're going for it right now. We think we have a team. We think this is a season where with this team, we can do something special. We are going for it. It's all about the here and now. Like you hear Joe Burrow talk about, like, it's time to stop talking about next year. It's time to go for it. You hear him speak with urgency. It's a great tone to be set by the quarterback, but the tone was set by the front office. When you trade away the 10th overall pick for an established player, when you trade away cheap long-term labor for more short-term expensive labor, the message is we are going all in on 2026, which, by the way, if it doesn't work, comes with fallout. It does, as much as a lot of us don't want to entertain that. But the message was sent. We're going for it. We think we have a team that can win. We're going to do what we can to win this year. even if it comes at the expense of something down the road. It energized the fan base. It seems to have energized the quarterback. It was the message sent. The Reds sent a message this weekend. Reds were officially eliminated from contention last night, let's be honest. They were realistically eliminated from contention sometime between Father's Day and the Fourth of July. Let's be painfully honest about that. None of us spent the summer looking at this team as, serious contenders but they were mathematically eliminated last night in the middle of a road trip that included getting just destroyed by the dodgers and then getting creamed by the brewers in the first two games of the series before winning the uh series uh finale on uh sunday in the middle of all that nick crawl comes out and says effectively i'm coming back and the reds have an issue to statement or a press release or anything like that but nick crawl um I think speaking with the blessing of ownership talked about good conversations that he and ownership have had, and he's made it, I think, pretty clear, he's coming back. And Terry Francona has talked about coming back. And so the message being sent is not good enough is good enough. And on top of all that, coaches coming back, and the news coming from Milwaukee, which is where the Reds were this weekend, was effectively, we're running it back. Running it back, not so much with the same roster. God help them if they do that. But we're running it back with the same guy in charge of baseball operations, the same manager, same staff, same organizational structure. We're running it back. The message sent, I'm sure, is not the message intended, but the message sent is not good enough is fine. Status quo is fine. The results we achieved are fine.
00:46:21
Speaker 3: I'm sure.
00:46:22
Speaker 1: the folks at GABP would, would bristle at that. I'm sure they would. No, that's not what we're saying. Sometimes what you're saying, ain't what you're trying to say. What they are saying is not good enough is fine. Now, Nick crawl to his credit has, you know, taken ownership for the way this season has gone down. He's pointed the finger at himself. He's acknowledged. I'm in charge of baseball ops. When we have bad seasons, when our plan isn't working, it's on me. That's cool. I appreciate the accountability, but, But I wonder, the Reds have, for years, we've talked about their messaging. And they care about their messaging. I can assure you of that. They care about their messaging. They care about how they're being perceived. They certainly care about how the perception of them, of the organization, affects its bottom line. I wonder how you sell this. Now, I understand, whatever you're trying to sell about 2027, is going to be accompanied by the uncertainty as to whether or not we're going to have baseball in 2027 because of the labor issue. But I just, I don't know how you sell this. And it's not just like Reds had a bad year and fans are angry. It's Reds had a bad year. And I think this is one of the most disappointing seasons in recent, maybe even not so recent Reds history. It's we've had a bad year. We haven't won in forever. Our fans are insanely, and by the way, I'll add justifiably, impatient. We already are going to ask fans to wait a little bit longer when we have spent decades asking them to wait without any payoff. And now we're going to tell them the same people, the same people in charge of 2026, the same people in charge of executing a plan that began to be unfurled in 2020, the same president of baseball operations, the same folks in the baseball department, the same manager. We're bringing them all back. Bringing back the same people that oversaw the disaster that has been the 2026 season. The unrealized promise of early in 2023 when Ellie Dela Cruz got here. The same people who have failed to capitalize on Ellie Dela Cruz, who, by the way, hit a ball to Kentucky last night. The same people who have failed to capitalize on this small core of guys who are going to be in charge of fixing it and achieving better results in 2027. I have no idea how you get people to accept that message and be okay with it. No idea. And again, it's not just asking an angry fan base to hang with us, have some faith, be cool with what we're doing, trust us. It is a fan base that has been waiting forever. Forever. We have been waiting over three decades for the Reds to really matter again, to advance in the postseason. We have been waiting 14 years for them to win a division title. 14 years! The Dodgers are probably going to celebrate on the GABP field this week an NL West title. Since the last time the Reds celebrated winning a division on their field, two teams will have celebrated winning a division on theirs. The Mets in 2015, the Dodgers probably this week. We have been waiting for them to finish above third place. They haven't done so since 2012. We've been waiting for them to advance in the postseason. They haven't done so since I was 18 years old. I don't know how you do it. I don't know, and this is less about the nuts and bolts of Nick Kroll's job, and God knows we could pick apart what he has and hasn't done. I don't know how you do it. I do not know how you look at an exhausted fan base. I don't know how the Reds could look at you and look at me after they have spent decades telling us, wait just a little bit longer, and tell us to continue to wait a little bit longer, but also tell us, hey, these same folks who have been in charge are going to continue to be in charge. I know how you do it. I don't know how you do it and expect anybody, me, you, or anybody with a remotely vested interest in this franchise and its fortunes, I don't know how you could expect anybody to buy what the Reds are selling. It's not the message they're intending to send, but it is the message they have sent. And I'm guessing it's not going to be met with that much enthusiasm I know how you do it. 513-749-1530 is my phone number. I know we're heavy on the Bengals today, but this is probably the last real Reds topic for the 2026 season because it's the only one that has really mattered as this year has careened out of control. And let's make sure there's no mistake in this. This isn't just, well, the Reds had a year where they lost more than they won. This was supposed to be the payoff. This was supposed to be the payoff. 2025, 2026, maybe 2027, when they sunk to the bottom, bottomed out as a franchise and lost 100 games, when they started in 2023 to enjoy a revival, bringing up McClain and Ellie Della Cruz and Andrew Abbott, and they had Hunter Green, Nicola Dolo, et cetera. By now, they were supposed to be contending for something meaningful. Last year, they kind of did. Last year felt like a first, though necessary, step on the way to true contention. This year feels like about 15 steps backwards. It's not just a bad year. It's a bad year when the expectations were higher. And in this window where they were supposed to be delivering on a payoff for decades of patience. How do you expect people to keep waiting? How do you expect people to keep waiting when you don't make any structural changes? You know, the Milwaukee Brewers clinched a postseason berth this week. It is astounding to me, astounding to me, that they won't look at that organization or Tampa Bay's organization or how Cleveland, if you want to look up I-71, the Guardians are always pretty decent. It is astounding to me. that there isn't an attempt to mine those organizations for people who they could hire here in a higher capacity, bigger job title, or to maybe even run the baseball operations. It's astounding. And so they're going to get whatever they deserve. And like, I get it, man. Like, I don't know. I don't know how you ask people to keep waiting while telling them we're not going to make any changes. Those things are separate, but they're the same. It's astounding to me. It's astounding to me. And so I guess my question for you, and I do have some room today, 513-749-1530, you've been told to wait by this franchise for years.
00:53:17
Speaker 4: Years.
00:53:19
Speaker 1: You've been asked for your patience for years. You have somebody running the baseball operations department, and you can make excuses for Nick Kroll if you want to talk about ownership. Look, he took the job understanding the parameters set forth. The results aren't there. He and they have failed. At the beginning of the 2023 season, if I would have said when Ellie Dela Cruz got here, when the Reds spent the majority of the summer in first place in 2023, if I would have said that by the end of the 2026 season, we will still be waiting for the Reds to win one playoff game, you would have said there's no way. Then this will have not worked. Well, guess what? That's where we are. This hasn't worked. And yet the people who have overseen the work not getting done the results being what they are, are apparently going to continue to oversee things moving forward. How on earth can you expect anybody whose patience is exhausted to be on board with that? At Mo Egger on Twitter, thanks to Delta Dental. Delta Dental is building healthy, smart, vibrant communities for all. Go to deltadentaloh.com. We'd love to hear from you at 513-749-1530. Brenneman and Jones on baseball is coming up in about 30 minutes. Our sports legal expert Stuart W. Penrose on three stories. One is NFL related and I think is really sort of interesting. It's about a player whose legal situation has been rectified or not rectified. It has been solved. It's been finalized. I think that's the right word. And yet the NFL continues to have him on the exempt list. We'll get to that coming up in just about 15 minutes. I'm Mo Egger. 21 minutes after 4 o'clock, 513-749-1530 is our phone number. We're broadcasting from the Mercantile Immersive today on ESPN 1530 Cincinnati Sports Station.
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Speaker 7: This is Football in the Natty, brought to you by Modern Office Methods on ESPN 1530, the official home of the Cincinnati Bengals.
00:55:38
Speaker 1: 27 after 4 o'clock, this is ESPN 1530. Football in the Natty this weekend includes Bengals and Texans in Houston. Also, the battle for the victory bell at the soccer venue on the West End on Saturday. Scott Satterfield talked earlier today. We'll have some of that audio for you. In the 5 o'clock hour, Bengals and Texans live on ESPN 1530 Sunday at 1 o'clock. And looking forward to the Bengals' first road game of the season, taking on a desperate Houston team that, you know, to me the big takeaway from that game was not so much what the Texans didn't do defensively, it's how the Texans played offensively. And C.J. Stroud looked more like the guy, not totally, but more like the guy that a lot of us thought was on the verge of superstardom at the end of his rookie season. I got folks waiting, and I want to get to as many as we can. By the way, we're broadcasting from the Mercantile Immersive Bengals Steelers watch party a week from Sunday. And an awesome place to have any kind of party. Could be a watch party, could be just you and your buddy celebrating something. Could be a wedding, could be anything. MercantileImmersive.com. Zach, you're on ESPN 1530. Zach, good afternoon. How are you?
00:56:53
Speaker 4: I'm doing well.
00:56:54
Speaker 11: Thanks for taking my call, Mo. You're welcome. I'd like to start by saying I am 28 years old, so I've known just about three decades of Cincinnati sports mediocrity between both the Bengals and the Reds. There's been a lot of parity between those two teams, but kind of what you said there, the Bengals have finally shown that they are willing to go for it, whereas the Reds, it's the same song and dance. Every year, we sign a few relievers that really are just straight chips at the deadline. We sign a veteran on a minimum. We bring a guy that had some success but had some bumps in the road at another organization, and we just do the same thing over and over. It's gone to the point that I'm telling my wife, I don't want to go to the Reds game, even though she wants to, because it's so frustrating that they keep doing the same old things every single year, and it's the same results.
00:57:57
Speaker 1: It's a hamster wheel. It's just the treadmill or hamster wheel of mediocrity. Look, they bottomed out in 2022 and lost 100 games. This decade, that has basically been the outlier. Everything else has been 83 wins, 77 wins, 83 wins. However many they finish with this year, probably something in the 74-win range. I keep coming back to the organizational identity from a baseball perspective. I'm not talking about the ballpark experience or the community fund or the Hall of Fame or any of that stuff, which the Reds are awesome at. From a baseball perspective, what are they good at? Is it player development? Is it executing trades for younger players by flipping older guys for dudes who you can build around? Is it international development? Is it drafting? Is it finding hidden gems in the middle to later rounds? What are they good at? And I don't have an answer. I'm not sure you have an answer. Maybe you do. I don't think anybody does. And I think that's the frustrating thing, right, among many is, there's nothing organizationally to hang your hat on where you go, you know what? The farm system's continually churning out good players that if they have a bump in the road at the big league level, there's help on the way. That doesn't happen consistently enough. Or, you know, Nick Kroll in the front office is really good at taking guys who are on expiring contracts and flipping them for guys that are going to be really useful for the next three, four, five, six years. They're not great at that. or they kill it on the international market. Elie Delacruz aside, not really the case. They're awesome at getting players in the draft beyond the first round. Not so much. Like, what are they good at?
00:59:41
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, it feels like they keep trying to say it's the draft and the development. I mean, it was almost 10 years ago with Nick Senzel that, oh, we have this exciting new crop. We're ready to make the push. And they give it two or three years. nothing happens. Their farm system's now bottom 20 in the league because they didn't replenish it. They didn't do what they kind of claimed they were good at by getting it top 10 after a while. And then it's that recycle, rinse, repeat.
01:00:14
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:00:15
Speaker 1: You are, unfortunately, you are exactly right. Zach, enjoy the rest of your afternoon, man. Thanks so much.
01:00:21
Speaker 4: You too, Mo.
01:00:21
Speaker 6: Thanks.
01:00:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, like Nick, and Nick Rall is an extraordinarily nice guy. I think his His rise to the system is a cool story, but in your current capacity, this is year six. This is year six. And by the way, at no point has anybody said, like, Nick Kroll needs to win a World Series or the Reds need to get back-to-back like league championship series. Can you get to the postseason occasionally more than once and when you're there actually matter? I don't know when you say, here are the results we have achieved. Here's who's been in charge as we have achieved them. And we're going to keep status quo. I don't know how you could expect that message to be taken any other way than not good enough is good enough. Sports headlines are coming up. We'll get to Jim. We'll get to Mike.
01:01:19
Speaker 3: Get to you.
01:01:19
Speaker 1: 513-749-1530. More on the Bengals coming up. as well. And we'll get to the battle of the victory bell as well on ESPN, 1530 Cincinnati sports station.
01:01:31
Speaker 7: You've been listening to football in the natty brought to you by red key express on ESPN, 1530, the official home of the Cincinnati Bengals.
01:01:43
Speaker 6: Need to get.
01:01:44
Speaker 7: This is ESPN, 1530 Cincinnati sports station.
01:01:51
Speaker 1: Tonight at 8 o'clock on ESPN 1530, it's the Scott Satterfield Radio Show from the original Montgomery. And the battle for the victory bell is Saturday. You see coming off their blowout win over Western Carolina. I know Stuart W. Penrose, our sports legal expert attorney, Stuart W. Penrose from the Manila Law Group. He enjoyed that. He enjoyed Michigan's upset win at home over Oklahoma even more. Only needed 60 minutes this week, Stuart. How we doing?
01:02:18
Speaker 12: It was a great day up in Ann Arbor on Saturday, Mo. I fully enjoyed it. I'm doing fantastic.
01:02:23
Speaker 6: How about yourself?
01:02:25
Speaker 1: Doing well. It looked fun. Stuart is our sports legal analyst from the Manila Law Group. I want to start with Saturday because I'm watching College Game Day, and for the second consecutive week, they're talking about the Protect College Sports Act, which is proposed legislation that you and I have talked about, which is an attempt to to at least provide some guardrails, some regulations for college sports. I know we have folks who maybe saw that segment or are listening to this show who don't necessarily understand what the act is supposed to accomplish and what opponents of it don't like about it. So from a legal perspective, can you explain?
01:03:05
Speaker 4: Sure.
01:03:06
Speaker 12: First and foremost, as we talk about every week on this segment, Mo, college sports are in an awful place where there's nobody in charge. There's no king overseeing everything and setting the rules that actually stick. The NCAA tries, but they're held up with 50 state court systems saying different things. The schools want to get involved in making rules. The conferences want to get involved in making rules. And what we have is just a patchwork of everything piled together in.
01:03:35
Speaker 4: And nobody available to make sense of it. So that's what.
01:03:38
Speaker 12: Congress is trying to do here. If not fully resolving that, at least trying to reduce that as much and give the NCAA some backbone to get things.
01:03:48
Speaker 3: Back in order here.
01:03:51
Speaker 1: The White House says this bill is neutral on whether student-athletes are considered employees. Legally, what will determine whether or not they are eventually considered school employees?
01:04:03
Speaker 12: Well, right now it is considered neutral. I mean, certainly some state law would come into play with that. I mean, we need to see, you know, if this passes, Mo, you know, do they say anything about that in this Safe College Sports Act? Do they create, you know, something that carves out that students are, you know, are not going to be employees that would preempt state law? It's too soon to say that. But, you know, otherwise we could be running into issues on that on a state-by-state basis.
01:04:30
Speaker 1: Different states have different rules about collective bargaining. And many have said, like, the real solution for what ails college sports is collective bargaining. When you have 50 states with different rules about collective bargaining, how does that happen?
01:04:46
Speaker 12: I don't see how it happens unless everybody's considered an employee. You know, if they're all considered employees under labor laws, then yeah, collective bargaining becomes much more realistic. But right now, you know, they're not employees. And, you know, who's even the employer? You know, is it the NCAA?
01:05:02
Speaker 4: Is it their conferences? Is it the schools?
01:05:05
Speaker 12: Who bargains for the athletes? You know, who represents the schools? There's just too much to... you know, there's too many unknowns, and there's no structure in which collective bargaining could actually take place right now, unless everybody's deemed an employee all through all 50 states.
01:05:23
Speaker 1: Attorney Stuart W. Penrose from the Manila Law Group is with us. I want to ask you about this case involving Josh Jacobs, the Green Bay Packers running back, who is currently on the commissioner's exempt list. Now, that obviously means that he can't play. He has been involved in an alleged domestic violence dispute. From a criminal perspective, that case has reached a conclusion. The NFL, though, is trying to obtain video of the altercation in question before determining a punishment. Problem is, in court, a judge sealed the video. There's also looming over this how the league handled the Ray Rice situation 12 years ago, and so What I have read has suggested that the NFL is going to explore any potential legal maneuver to basically circumvent a judge's order and get their hands on the video. Realistically, can a private sports league do that?
01:06:20
Speaker 12: Well, they can't override a court order, Mo. I mean, the NFL is a private sports league. It's not a law enforcement agency. They don't have subpoena power here. You know, the criminal case belongs to the court and its parties. You know, they can certainly try and ask the court if they can unseal the video or grant it access if the law permits, but that would be up to the court. up to the judge at the end of the day, what they can do, in my understanding, what they are doing is they're putting a lot of pressure on Jacobs to, you know, and Jacobs' attorney to get them the video. And they can certainly do that. You know, if Jacobs decides to share it with him, that's certainly his right to do so. And they can certainly, you know, dangle a suspension above him and, you know, keep him from playing without showing it. So I understand how they're going about it. And that's Probably the only legal way they can do it is just put pressure on Jacobs.
01:07:10
Speaker 1: From a legal perspective, is the no contest plea enough for them to warrant a punishment? Do they need the video?
01:07:19
Speaker 12: To warrant a punishment, yes. But, I mean, you know, the plea answers the criminal case. You know, it tells you that something clearly happened, but it doesn't show you exactly what happened. And, you know, what the NFL doesn't want to happen here, Mo, is a repeat of the Ray Rice situation. You know, they went out and they suspended Ray Rice for two games. And then, you know, we see a video later on showing exactly what happened. And they have to backtrack and all that. And they had egg on their face, though.
01:07:45
Speaker 11: They don't want a repeat of that.
01:07:47
Speaker 12: And, you know, in this day and age, you know, just assume that everything is going to leak. So, yeah, they want to know exactly what happened.
01:07:55
Speaker 3: So they do.
01:07:56
Speaker 4: So they make the right punishment the first time.
01:07:59
Speaker 1: We have talked about the Clippers case, the salary cap circumvention case involving Kawhi Leonard. The owner of the Clippers, Steve Ballmer, has basically said, look, we'll take the punishment. I'm not going to challenge it. But we're now reading that the Department of Justice is investigating the L.A. Clippers and that the SEC, not the College Football Conference, but the Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into one of the company's role in this scandal. Let me start with the federal government getting involved. What specific federal laws are prosecutors looking into maybe the Clippers violating here?
01:08:35
Speaker 4: Sure.
01:08:35
Speaker 12: I mean, obviously, they're trying to see if criminal conduct was used to accomplish what they did. You know, they'll look into wire fraud. You know, was there conspiracy? Were there false records or statements as part of this? Was money laundered? Are there tax issues? They'll look into all those different circumstances. And, certainly they'll have wide subpoena power and.
01:09:01
Speaker 6: Be able to collect whatever's needed.
01:09:03
Speaker 1: Does Kawhi Leonard himself face any possible criminal liabilities?
01:09:12
Speaker 12: I would be very reluctant to say so right now based upon the evidence that we know. I mean, just being the beneficiary of this and receiving money doesn't automatically make him liable, Mo. You know, it's going to come down to knowledge and intent. You know, if he believed that these were legitimate sponsorship agreements, you know, it's a very different situation. And, you know, while he may be in breach of NBA rules, it doesn't necessarily make him criminally liable. But if they uncover evidence that shows that he normally participated in, you know, creating sham sponsorships to circumvent the cap, well, then he could be looking at some exposure here, certainly. So we'll have to see what comes out.
01:09:52
Speaker 1: What is the possible role of the SEC in all this?
01:09:57
Speaker 12: Well, Daktronics is a publicly traded company. They couldn't care less about the NBA salary cap concerns. They want to know if that company accurately recorded and disclosed its transactions. Did the record show that the money was being spent for the stated corporate purpose? Were the executives truthful in company records? Were investors given, you know, accurate financial information? You know, that's what they're going to look into and whether there's a, you know, a security, you know, fraud issue here. So, yeah, that's going to be it's going to be very interesting to see how this all plays out.
01:10:33
Speaker 1: Attorney Stewart, W. Penrose from the Manillo Law Group. If somebody needs a legal expert on their side, Stewart, how do they get a hold of you?
01:10:42
Speaker 12: We want them to call us at the Manila Law Group at 513-723-1600. Mo, there's a lot of bad drivers out there on the road.
01:10:51
Speaker 4: I saw several this morning.
01:10:52
Speaker 12: You've got to be real careful out there. And if somebody hits you, I want you to call me at the Manila Law Group, 513-723-1600. When it's their fault, it's our fight.
01:11:03
Speaker 1: That was just me trying to get your attention on the highway. Well, we'll talk next week, man. Thanks so much.
01:11:14
Speaker 4: Thank you, Mo.
01:11:14
Speaker 12: Take care, man.
01:11:15
Speaker 1: I got him to laugh. A genuine laughter from Attorney Stewart W. Penrose, 513-723-1600. We are broadcasting from the Mercantile Immersive. This is an unbelievable venue, and we are grateful to be here. We have another hour to go. We have folks waiting on hold. We have Jeff Carr to talk to. We have more Bengal stuff to get to. We have Scott Satterfield. We've got the future of the battle for the victory, but there's a lot going on. But right now, it's time for Brenneman and Jones on baseball.
01:11:46
Speaker 9: From the UC Health Traffic Center.
01:11:49
Speaker 1: Down! Bengals!
01:11:50
Speaker 2: The Bengals travel to Texas to take on Houston in a Lone Star Showdown. Which raises an important question. What style of chili do I prefer?
01:12:01
Speaker 4: Hmm.
01:12:02
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, but they both make me gassy. Can the orange and black handle Houston? Or will the Texans defend their home turf? Coverage begins Sunday morning at 9 a.m. Stream for free on the new and improved iHeartRadio app or on ESPN 1530, the official home of the Cincinnati Bengals.
01:12:22
Speaker 6: It's the Bengals and Texans.
01:12:25
Speaker 1: Sure is. 505 ESPN 1530. Mo Egger, thank you for listening. Hope you're having an awesome Tuesday afternoon. We want to thank the folks at Delightmore for hosting us here at the Mercantile Immersive, an awesome venue here, downtown Cincinnati. The folks at Delightmore, over 70 years of combined knowledge in the catering and hospitality business. They serve weddings, corporate and social events all year long. This venue here, the Mercantile Immersive, On 4th Street downtown, awesome for any kind of party, any kind of an event. Bengals watch party with Cincinnati taking on the Pittsburgh Steelers a week from Sunday. They'll have food stations. They'll have a full bar. It is going to be absolutely awesome. You can learn more at mercantileimmersive.com. We have obviously been pretty heavy on the Bengals, and for good reason. Paul Daner Jr. in the first hour of this show. If you missed it, we'll podcast it on the iHeartRadio app. We will kind of put a bow on the Reds' season because they played their last meaningful game last night, and it was sort of the season, and maybe this franchise in a nutshell, where Eli De La Cruz does something awesome, hits the ball halfway to Tennessee, but the Reds lose. Their magic number going into last night, or tragic number, was two.
01:13:41
Speaker 3: They lose.
01:13:42
Speaker 1: San Diego wins. Reds officially eliminated from contention. All of this occurring against the backdrop of The news reported by Nick Kroll himself that pretty much everybody's coming back. And so here with thoughts on that is our friend from the Locked on Reds podcast, our buddy, Jeff Carr. Hi, Jeff.
01:14:03
Speaker 6: Hey, Mo.
01:14:03
Speaker 14: Yeah, I don't know that I can give too much fault for Nick Kroll. I think if somebody were to ask me if I was going to stay in my job, I think I'd probably say yes.
01:14:12
Speaker 9: So.
01:14:13
Speaker 14: I think it's the crazy thing that he feels that comfortable after having talked to his bosses, the context of that that is so jarring.
01:14:22
Speaker 1: We're going to focus on that. If I would have said to you back in March that you and I would be talking with 12 games to go in the season about a team that has already been eliminated from postseason contention, what would you have said?
01:14:36
Speaker 14: I would have said that changes need to be made because it is inexcusable at this point in– what I'm calling the Ellie era, his fourth season of major league baseball, that there are so many questions unanswered by this roster. We still don't know who is going to be the leadoff man moving forward. We still don't know who's going to play center field moving forward, let alone the other two corner outfield positions. And I know they've penciled in JJ Bleda to left field, but ever since June 1st, JJ Bleda has been pretty bad.
01:15:07
Speaker 6: So I think that there's.
01:15:08
Speaker 14: A lot about this team that remains unanswered and yet for some reason they seem completely okay with that.
01:15:16
Speaker 1: The message to me is not good enough is good enough. Is that how you take it?
01:15:23
Speaker 4: 100%.
01:15:23
Speaker 14: I mean, we took a deep dive in on this and we've recorded a little bit later this afternoon because sometimes when you talk to a guy who lives in Hawaii, times can get mixed up a little bit. But We talked about this from a holistic standpoint, the facts of the Nick Kroll era. The Reds are 457 and 503. They've lost almost 50 more games than they've won in his tenure. Since 2023, they've had the 24th most war as far as position players go. Their pitchers have been 17th in ERA. Defensive runs saved 28th. Outs above average 24th. There's not been an era of the team... that has been good. Everything is either bottom half or bottom of the league total. And so for me, I got to ask how on earth is the guy that made this, the guy that's going to bring them out of this, he's made so many bad moves. And yet we continue to see him get more and more chances because I think he is evaluated on a totally different system than what you and I would want him to be evaluated on. His bosses see profit and loss as opposed to wins and losses. And that is where.
01:16:33
Speaker 6: The discrepancy lies, and that's why we are all so frustrated with this.
01:16:37
Speaker 1: What would you say to someone who says, look, you're pointing the finger at the wrong person. Nick Kroll is merely working within the parameters that are set forth by ownership, and those parameters aren't conducive to anybody having success.
01:16:52
Speaker 14: I'd certainly acknowledge that, but then I'd ask them what they think about the Milwaukee Brewers, the Tampa Bay Rays, even the Cleveland Guardians. The Cleveland Guardians, I know, have not had the best of season, but they're still in contention for their division right now. And it looks like they've got a shot to overtake the Chicago White Sox, who have owned the AL Central for much of this season. And they have a payroll that is just about half as much as what the Cincinnati Reds have had. So it's not simply... they don't spend enough money. It's that they don't spend their money. Well, they don't have organizational systems in place that can compete with the brewers. I mean, when they play the Milwaukee brewers this past couple of weeks in what felt like 24 games over the course of 10 days, it felt like I was watching a Mac team go up against Ohio state. And yet this is professional sports that should not ever be the case.
01:17:46
Speaker 1: Is there a decision or a move that you believe represents Nick Kroll's biggest misstep?
01:17:54
Speaker 6: Key Brian Hayes.
01:17:56
Speaker 14: They owe him $ 29 million from today until the end of his contract, whether they pay that to him now or they pay that to him in, I think it's four years. I think whenever the Pittsburgh Pirates sign that deal today, they thought they were getting a guy like the Reds thought they were getting a guy, and both teams have been duped by this now, in that he just doesn't hit enough. You cannot be a glove-first third baseman. You can't do that in this day and age, especially when the Reds already had a guy who looked like he was a pretty good third baseman coming up through the system in Sal Stewart. If anybody were to be the defining move Of the Nick Kroll era, it's the key Brian Hayes move. When the Reds needed power, they needed hitting, they needed outfield help, he went and he got a glove first third baseman. That costs far too much money. Even his buyout for his option year is still $ 6 million. And I think a lot of people would even say that's too much for what he has given the Reds, let alone the fact that he still owed three other years before that.
01:19:01
Speaker 1: How culpable do you find Terry Francona in this season in particular, in this season's failures?
01:19:09
Speaker 14: I think that Terry Francona has fallen into the David Bell grouping of managers, at least when it comes to the Cincinnati Reds, in that he is not the problem. He is also not the solution. Because I thought when he was coming in, he was going to be a manager that rises above an inefficient roster and takes that inefficient roster to the next level and helps them overachieve, makes the whole better than the sum of its parts. But that's not what's happened. We've just continued to see the same team over and over and over again. If you were to have sat someone down in 2023, had them watch this team, then put them into a coma and wake them up this year, I think they would still think that David Bell is the manager. And that for me has been the biggest issue with Terry Francona. No, he's not the problem, but he's also not the solution.
01:20:03
Speaker 1: In terms of the team's construction, by the way, Jeff Carr, Locked on Reds podcast, I agree with you that, like, over the last few years, the teams have felt the same. But if you go back to the end of last year, we all said they've got to hit more home runs. The weird thing about this year is they've hit home runs. They don't do anything else offensively. And so, like, is it doable in one offseason to build the sort of team that offensively is capable of hitting the ball out of the ballpark, but also scoring using, you know, stolen bases, contact hitting, playing small ball, getting guys on base. I feel like sometimes it gets framed as either or. I felt like that was the case last year when they didn't hit home runs. I feel like it's the case this year when they do hit home runs.
01:20:50
Speaker 14: It should be, but even kind of grading the lineup on the Nick Kroll scale, where we've constantly heard him say time and time again, he wants contact first, guys that hit line drives, and take the ball to all fields, ideally the opposite way.
01:21:05
Speaker 6: During his tenure, at least over the L.E.
01:21:07
Speaker 14: Era, they are top 10 in line drive percentage, but they are bottom 10 in contact rate, bottom five in opposite field hitting rate. They don't do what he says. So if they don't do what he says, they don't have the identity that they're looking for, so they're constantly searching. And that's why you ended up with a guy like Eugenio Suarez, whose career has shown, yes, he's going to come in and hit home runs, but if you expect him to hit better than league average, then you're going to be disappointed. And I just don't think this team was ever built even to what he said. He wanted to build it like much less what we know a good lineup looks like. And so that's why you're seeing all this inconsistency and the fact that it's such a high percentage of their runs are being scored on long balls. I think it's annoying to feel like you have to choose one or the other. You should be able to build a lineup that can do both, but it certainly has to have good quality of contact as much as it has just contact at all.
01:22:07
Speaker 1: Can they win within the Ellie window? Yes.
01:22:13
Speaker 14: Um, the issue is going to be, can they make the necessary moves over the next two off seasons? And now I'm almost looking at this as a two off season plan for them to do this because it feels like they need too much while they have some nice pieces in Ellie de la Cruz and Sal Stewart in the lineup. And they have some nice pieces in the pitching staff like chase Burns and well, Hunter green in 2028. Um, I feel like there's still so much that they need to prove. And yet we know what's going to happen with this scene because they've done it every year in Nick Kroll's tenure. And that is, what is our shopping list?
01:22:49
Speaker 4: Cool.
01:22:50
Speaker 14: Erase like half that. And we're just not going to address half of that. And we're going to address the other half. And we don't really know if that's the most important half or not. So it feels like it's going to take two off seasons, and they're going to need to figure out what Milwaukee does to take guys like Jake Bowers and Andrew Vaughn, who never succeeded anywhere else, and they succeed here.
01:23:14
Speaker 6: Because they haven't done that yet.
01:23:15
Speaker 14: I haven't seen that with anybody that's really come in here and played.
01:23:18
Speaker 4: Like, J.J.
01:23:19
Speaker 14: Bledet had a nice month, but we're not going to give him credit for May if the rest of the year is mediocre.
01:23:25
Speaker 6: They've got to figure out how to unlock these guys for 162 games.
01:23:29
Speaker 1: How shaky is what is supposed to be this team's foundation, the starting pitching, beyond Chase Burns?
01:23:37
Speaker 6: I don't like it, man. I don't.
01:23:40
Speaker 14: It kind of feels like Andrew Abbott is better than Rhett Lauder and Nick Lodolo, but Andrew Abbott also hasn't had the best end to his season either. So if you want to kind of fight me on that, I'm not going to fight super hard tooth and nail. Nick Lodolo has fallen from ace 1B into … Yeah, sure, he's going to pitch, but I'm not sure what you're getting from him because he's reinventing himself. He's reinventing the most important part of his game, and I don't know how successful that's going to be. His last start looked okay, but that's been the best of what's been a very unimpressive performance ever since he's come back from the most recent blister issue. And Rhett Lowder joins these three guys in Abbott and Singer. and that they are all three in the bottom ten of ERA for pitchers since August 1st. Like, they've all been really, really bad since the trade deadline, and I just don't know what we're going to get from him moving forward. The expectation when he was drafted is that he would be toward the top of the rotation by now.
01:24:45
Speaker 6: And he's anything but.
01:24:48
Speaker 1: Beyond Sal Stewart and Eli De La Cruz, positionally, Guys who are on the team right now, and I'll add Spencer Steer because I think he has value. Beyond that, do I want any of these guys back?
01:25:01
Speaker 14: I want to see more from Hector Rodriguez. I like his approach at the plate. I feel like he's an aggressive hitter that still manages to make a lot of contact. It's hard for me to say that I'm going to figure out what I need to know about Juan Brito before the end of this season. So, speculatively, I'd like to see him back, but I'm not saying I know who he is. You're going to get JJ Bladet back because he's the best outfielder of the bunch. But I mean, that's like not really impressive. I think that ultimately this team needs to approach, I'd say two thirds of its positions in the lineup as open competition. And, and ideally you go and you improve that through trades and through signings and things like that. But I just don't know, especially if the Reds are going to tie up a third of their budget into a man in Brady Singer who has had one of the worst ERAs in the second half of the season. I just, I don't know how much room they're going to have to work with.
01:26:04
Speaker 1: I like Brady Singer. I'm good on him not being here for whatever it is, $ 22 million. Do you believe they will offer him the qualifying offer? Should they?
01:26:16
Speaker 14: That was an inclusion in Gordon Whitmire's article in the Inquirer, along with calling out people for not being at the ballgames.
01:26:22
Speaker 6: Which, by the way, I'm heading down there here in a few minutes. I don't know.
01:26:28
Speaker 14: I feel like they would just be silly to do so.
01:26:30
Speaker 6: Because that is them.
01:26:34
Speaker 14: Exercising something that they feel like they have to do this. This feels like the reds are backed into a corner and they absolutely have to give him the qualifying offer or else they risk losing him. And they don't know that they can replace him. Now I'll tell you this. There's a lot of guys who I have seen who could be on the open market that have very similar performances this last year and would cost a whole lot less than 23 million. But I cannot believe that a team so financially strapped is okay. With just hamstringing its budget so much and a guy whose main admirable quality is his durability. And that's fantastic. But give me his second best quality. I can't name that. And that for me is where the 23 million hang up stands.
01:27:20
Speaker 1: How much does the labor uncertainty screw all this up?
01:27:26
Speaker 14: I think that the Reds are playing it safe and a little scared. by saying that they're going to keep the front office intact because of the labor uncertainty. I think that they don't want to go into a brand new version of baseball with a brand new version.
01:27:46
Speaker 6: Of the front office.
01:27:47
Speaker 14: And so they think, okay, if we do this the first time and it fails with our current regime, then we can just reset. But we know what we're looking for. As of right now, we don't know what we're looking for. And to which I would argue, you're looking for better. But I think that there's a lot about this that just screams continuity in the face of necessary creativity. Something we've seen them do time and time and time again. This trade deadline, last trade deadline, the trade deadline before that. Every time we think they need to get creative and make a change, they say, you know what? If we don't do anything, maybe that'll work. And that's where they are right now again.
01:28:28
Speaker 1: I guess I just don't understand how you don't comb through Milwaukee's organization, Tampa Bay's organization, Cleveland's organization, just those three. And I'm sure there are others. And try to find people who are working in lower-level roles but are a part of an organization that is doing what the Reds should be doing better. And finding those folks and bring them here to elevate them. I don't understand why that's why that's not what they're doing. And look, man, I, you know, Nick has had things that I've given him credit for, but, but the results aren't there. And to me, it's like, if, if ever it was crystallized, you know, that you should be looking at those organizations. It's the weekend where Milwaukee and Tampa Bay clinch playoff bursts Milwaukee for the eighth time in nine years, uh, Tampa Bay, you know, the ultimate franchise at exploiting market inefficiencies. I just, I don't understand why you don't go, look, yeah, man, this is an opportunity for us to sort of reinvent ourselves, maybe as baseball reinvents itself. And yeah, man, that might mean for some hard times, but I think that's easier to swallow than, well, it's just continuity for the sake of continuity because there might be a bunch of change around us.
01:29:45
Speaker 12: Right.
01:29:45
Speaker 14: And I think it's interesting to note, too, didn't the Dodgers do that? The Dodgers went and got Andrew Friedman from Tampa Bay.
01:29:52
Speaker 10: Yes.
01:29:53
Speaker 4: Yes.
01:29:53
Speaker 14: And that dude is awesome. He knows how to run a ball club and run it well, albeit he has an unlimited budget, but still he does it well. And we see that unlimited budgets don't necessarily mean wins. If you look at the New York Mets, I think for me, Mo, if I really think about it, I still think they are scared of Kyle Bodie. because Dick Williams brought in Kyle Bodie to revolutionize the development department of this franchise. And he brought in a lot of new ideas that they weren't ready for. A lot of analytics and metrics that they had not embraced previously. And they saw themselves become a version of themselves that they didn't know. And it scared them. And they said, from now on, we are going with what we feel like is comfortable as opposed to what could work. And so they're prioritizing this feeling of comfort and, as opposed to innovation that could transform them into something greater. Cause I thought they were going somewhere with Kyle Bodie. And then they said, well, let's, let's rein it back a bit. And honestly, I don't think they've stopped reining it back. I think they're still trying to work themselves back from where Dick Williams had started to take them.
01:31:04
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's a really good point. I just, I bring this up often. I've brought it up to you. Like, There's no organizational identity. I don't know what they're really good at. I could study the Tampa Bay Rays and not all that critically and tell you what they're good at. I could do the same with the Milwaukee Brewers. The Reds, is it development? Is it drafting beyond the top round? Is it turning over stones and finding hidden gems? Is it, for lack of a better way of putting it, winning trades? The answers are no across the board. What are they good at? And if you're running a baseball operations department and six years in, it's hard for someone who follows the team closely to identify what you're good at. I don't know that there's an argument that the status quo should be maintained.
01:32:02
Speaker 6: No, because I can't tell you what that is either. As much as I.
01:32:07
Speaker 14: Inherently and a bit early proclaim that they were starting to become a pitching factory last season. That's been wrong because name a pitcher who's come up this season that you're excited about. I think there's a little bit of Luis May in there, but also I like Luis May.
01:32:24
Speaker 10: Yeah.
01:32:25
Speaker 6: Yeah.
01:32:25
Speaker 3: I like Luis May.
01:32:26
Speaker 14: I think that his ERA is totally not indicative of who he is. He's got some other stats that point to him being much better, but Outside of that, you're not really that enthused about a lot of guys.
01:32:38
Speaker 6: And so.
01:32:40
Speaker 14: I feel as though there were some things that I saw forward progress in that somehow halted. And that just takes me back to the idea that it's possible they are still tinkering with their development process. And while they aren't moving forward, they're also just not doing what we want them to do in that they're not copying Milwaukee. They're not copying Tampa Bay. They're not taking... from the best of this league and making it their own. They're trying to do their own thing. And that's just, it's just never worked for them. As ironically as I'm wearing this October t-shirts from last season, because we're about to go watch the Dodgers and the Reds.
01:33:20
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, well, you might see the Dodgers clinch. Um, it's so frustrating to me. Yeah. Yeah. It's so frustrating to me that we're doing this in September, and I know we didn't do it last year, but this is frustratingly the norm, man. I'm stoked that the Bengals have started and football's here and all that stuff, but in an ideal world as a Cincinnati sports fan, the local baseball team at least matters in mid-September, and they haven't mattered like early July. I can't say that I was surprised to see this weekend's news, but It's still sobering and it's frustrating. I know you've got to get ready to go to the ballpark. I can't thank you enough. We'll talk soon, man. Thanks so much.
01:34:07
Speaker 6: Thanks, Mo. Go Reds.
01:34:09
Speaker 1: Locked on Reds podcast, Jeff Carr. We are way late, 27 after 5 o'clock. We're at Mercantile Immersive on ESPN 1530 Cincinnati Sports Station.
01:34:18
Speaker 8: Cincinnati's ESPN 1530.
01:34:21
Speaker 7: Traffic from the uc ball in the natty brought to you in part by skyline chili on espn 1530 the official home of the cincinnati bangles.
01:34:34
Speaker 1: The golex by the way i listened to a mike golic call a an nfl game the cowboys and giants on a sunday night as a long car drive he's awesome We've got poll questions on this show. Thanks to United Heartland Insurance. Whatever you're paying for insurance, I bet you United Heartland Insurance can help you pay a lot less. Go to uhins.com. Simple question. Do you approve, I should say, of the job that Nick Kroll is doing? Vote now at Moeger. We are at Mercantile Immersive, an unbelievable venue. They are going to have a Bengals watch party, and they're going to have a few of these throughout the course of the year. 1 o'clock game. Doors are going to open at 12 o'clock. Bar open at noon. Food stations available from 1230 through halftime. Dessert station. And this is, it's not just, you know, posting up, watching on television. You're basically, like, enveloped by the game. Mercantileimmersive.com. We thank them for having us. 26 from 6 o'clock. We'll squeeze in a few phone calls if we have time. And I think we will. We'll do sports headlines. Maybe hear from Scott Satterfield. on ESPN 1530 Cincinnati Sports Station.
01:35:45
Speaker 7: You've been listening to Football in the Natty on ESPN 1530, the official home of the Cincinnati Bengals.
01:35:55
Speaker 1: Head to Skyline to get an excursion. You're not being pulled over right now. Don't worry about it. By the way, a very quick announcement to make. There are still tickets available to go see Pitbull tonight. Lawn tickets are sold out, but there are pavilion seats, a handful that still remain, for Pitbull tonight at Riverbend. Gates open at 6 o'clock. Show begins at 8 p.m. Pitbull tonight at Riverbend. Sports headlines. I have some things I've got to do. I'm very busy. We've got soccer practice tonight. Otherwise, you know I'd be there. You know I'd be there. Sports headlines are a service of Kelsey Chevrolet, home of Lifetime Powertrain Protection, and a guaranteed credit approval from their family to yours for life, KelseyChev.com. Not like an elite sports headline day, which that's not awful. Reds do play tonight against the Dodgers. Louder and Yamamoto are the pitchers. 640 tonight on 700 WLW. And it's John Sadak's birthday. Happy birthday to... To John Sadak. Here's the beautiful thing about John Sadak. Reds are mathematically eliminated, but if they, like, win the night, John Sadak will make it sound like they have just won a World Series game. That's what I love about him. Happy birthday. I have no idea how old he is. He looks like my mom's third husband, but happy birthday to John Sadak.
01:37:18
Speaker 5: U.S.
01:37:18
Speaker 1: Men's national team is going to play in a CONCACAF event here this fall at the soccer venue on the west end of Cincinnati, and I would have that information in front of me, but I had to reboot my computer. Speaking of the soccer stadium on the west end of Cincinnati, that's where UC and Miami are going to be on Saturday. I'm excited for this. I think it's a better venue for this event than the venue originally known as Paul Brown Stadium because UC and Miami can draw 40,000 people and it's still two-thirds empty. This is better. The Bearcats are 2-0. Miami is obviously 1-1. This is the last scheduled game in this series. I don't know when or if UC and Miami are going to play Anytime soon. I am a proponent of playing the game because from a Bearcat fan perspective, if they don't play it, it's not like they're replacing Miami with a power for school. Their M.O. scheduling wise has been to play an FCS school, a group of five school. And a power four school, that's exactly what they've been doing this year. Replacing Miami with another Mac school does less for me than playing Miami. So I'm in favor of continuing the series. They did not play last year.
01:38:30
Speaker 4: Year.
01:38:30
Speaker 1: UC does have a one-game edge in the series, 330 on a Saturday. Scott Satterfield talked earlier today, as he does every single Tuesday, with the assembled college football media. And here is the head coach of the Bearcats talking about the excitement of playing in the soccer venue on the West end of Cincinnati.
01:38:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, I am.
01:38:55
Speaker 13: I think when they first pitched the idea about potentially playing there, I was like, man, you know what?
01:38:59
Speaker 6: I think that'll be cool.
01:39:00
Speaker 13: You know, because, you know, if you go to pay core, there's a lot of empty seats there. You know, obviously we love to play at Nippert, but if they're going to play at a neutral site, I think when they said that, I was like, oh man, that could be really neat because of how, how circular and how the stadium and the seats are on top of you. I think that'll be cool. And, you know, it's a smaller venue, so you've got more people that are going to be in there. It's going to look more crowded. And I think it will be loud in there, too, I mean, because it's got the roof around the seats.
01:39:27
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I think it's going to be really neat.
01:39:31
Speaker 13: You know, the configuration in the stadium is going to be a little bit different. I mean, the goalposts are going to be right on the edge of the seats right there. So almost if you're running a route in the end zone, I mean, almost like an arena league, you're going to be right in the seats, you know. Now, the width is wide for a soccer field, so you've got plenty of room for the players on both sidelines, but I think the end zones are going to be tight. This is something we'll check out pre-game. Obviously, when you get out there, you kind of get a feel for it. I was laying last night in bed thinking about, man, how's this stadium actually going to fit and feel once we get out there?
01:40:04
Speaker 6: I'm looking forward to it. I think it's going to be really neat.
01:40:07
Speaker 1: It's a cool venue. It's going to be a fun setting. I don't know what the crowd distribution is going to be. I have no idea, but It's a neat venue for soccer. I went to the Who concert there in 2022, I think that was. It was fun for that. Kenny Chesney a couple of years ago. It's obviously been awesome for FC Cincinnati games. It does get really loud. I'm looking forward to just experiencing that. And I was asked to rank. I talked about how cool TQL Stadium was last week. And I was asked to rank that. all the Cincinnati sports venues, and I refuse to do that. There's two things I will not do on this show. I will not tell my Chris Hammond story that I've been asked to tell, and I will not rank the local sports venues because the one that I put in last place, then it just makes people mad at me. I don't feel like doing that. Enough people in my life mad at me. Taren, how are we on time?
01:40:59
Speaker 11: We have about five minutes left in the show.
01:41:03
Speaker 1: Got about five minutes?
01:41:04
Speaker 6: All right.
01:41:06
Speaker 1: Mike, go ahead. You're on ESPN 1530.
01:41:10
Speaker 4: Thank you, you busy guy, you, House Crosley, and your wife.
01:41:15
Speaker 3: Wonderful.
01:41:15
Speaker 1: They're both great, and they both send their regards.
01:41:18
Speaker 4: I haven't talked to you in a long time. No. Yeah, when it comes to the Reds, I think they need to call the Rays and offer Eric Neander, who's going to, if they win the division, which they're going to, is going to get the executive of the year, and if he doesn't, it's an outrage. And offering as much money as he needs. and get rid of dude and bring Eric Neander in, who actually stole this Victor Mesa Jr. guy in the offseason for a bag of donuts, and he was the AL Player of the Week last week with an OPS over 1,200 or whatever the hell it was, a slugging percentage on me. So the guy is a genius. They got Chandler Simpson down there. He's hitting. 305, one of the six hitters in baseball overall. And they're just an amazing franchise, Mo. It is amazing. At $ 107 million.
01:42:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, you typically don't associate the Rays with homers. Obviously, Junior Caminero is having a great year. They have guys who can hit the ball out of the ballpark. I think they have seven guys with double-digit home runs, three of them over 20. They have guys who could steal bags. They have four players with 15 or more stolen bases, including, you mentioned, Chandler Simpson. They have guys who are really good at getting on base. They're always competitive. They're usually in the postseason hunt, and they're often in the postseason. And I'm with you, man. Whether it's the Rays or the Brewers, and I know folks are going to say, well, neither team has won the World Series. Dude, if you told me right now the Reds could be in the playoffs in eight of the next nine years, but I'm not going to guarantee that they get to the World Series, I'd say, where do I sign? And so I don't know how you don't look at those organizations and try to find people working for them and go, let's see if they can bring some of what they're doing there here.
01:43:16
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, they've got the top closer in baseball, Brian Baker. Who in the hell is Brian Baker? He's got the highest save percentage. He leads the majors in saves. He's got a 1.40 ERA. I mean, I don't know where they get these guys. It's just incredible, Mo. It's really incredible. Eric Neal, Executive Director.
01:43:36
Speaker 1: And you know who's, like, leading their staff, their starting staff?
01:43:42
Speaker 4: Nick Martinez. He's the star.
01:43:43
Speaker 1: Our old friend Nick, who I liked in 2024, had a really nice year. But our old buddy Nick Martinez.
01:43:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they got Drew Rasmussen, who's actually the ace. He and Nick. And then they got McClanahan, who gets hurt off and on. Hopefully he'll be back. And then they got Baker. Just an incredible team. Their top three hitters, Yandy and Aranda and Caminero, I defy you to find a better top three. And then they stole Liam Hicks from Miami. And the first time he came up to bat, when he came over to Tampa, he hit a grand slam.
01:44:18
Speaker 6: Unbelievable.
01:44:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, and doing it in a division where you have the Red Sox and Yankees, and you're right, they're up three and a half with a week and a half to go. They're going to win that division. And, again, like, you know, you hear people make excuses all the time for, well, you know, in a smaller market you can't compete. They do in Tampa. They do in Milwaukee. They do in Cleveland. The Guardians aren't as good as those other two teams.
01:44:43
Speaker 3: They don't hear.
01:44:45
Speaker 1: And it's frustrating beyond belief.
01:44:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Reds are better than Tampa. for real. And that's actually a pretty cool stadium from what I gather since the hurricane, they really did it up nice. But now they got a new stadium coming in Tampa in a couple of years. So they're actually going to be where they're supposed to be instead of St.
01:45:01
Speaker 1: Pete. You know, what's, what's, what's interesting about the, what's interesting about the raises. So the, the, the dome is in St. Petersburg. They put it in the wrong part of town. Their, their television and radio ratings for games are great. Like there's interest in the team. People just don't want to go to St. Pete to watch baseball.
01:45:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, because of traffic. Last time I was down there, they don't have enough freeways, and they've had just such an influx of people. Hey, when it comes to the Bengals, you probably already know this, but PFF had them third in pass block efficiency last week. I am so amazed, Mo, that that Tampa defense, or O-line, which was ranked somewhere between the third and fifth best in football, and the Bengals just outperformed them. I was so proud of those guys, Mo, I can't even tell you.
01:45:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, Mike, thank you. Always nice to hear from you. We talked about Tampa Bay's pass rush going into the game. We haven't talked about it much coming out of it. The overall performance of the offensive line was fine. I mean, and again, like, I don't pretend to be an expert on offensive line play. And I'd be lying to you if I told you that I go to a lot of football games and, like, lock in on an offensive lineman. But I did so with the Marius Mims just because, like, I feel like he has a chance to be an all-pro, and he is so good. And I, you know, not to name-drop, we had Anthony Munoz on our show last week, and on air and off, he's like, from a technique perspective, from an effort perspective, we know the physical build. He's like, dude, he's going to be an all-pro caliber player. And I felt even better about my opinion, which was the same when Anthony validated it. Great minds. Great venue, Mercantile Immersive. Have your wedding here. Have your anniversary party here. Have your retirement party here. Have a party here. And come watch the Bengals play the Steelers here a week from Sunday. MercantileImmersive.com. My thanks to Mike Mills for producing on site. Of course, Taren back in Kenwood. We are back in studio tomorrow at 3.05. Have a great night. Thank you for listening on ESPN 1530 Cincinnati Sports Station.
01:47:19
Speaker 8: Cincinnati's ESPN 1530.
01:47:21
Speaker 10: Traffic.