00:00:00
Speaker 1: We've got a loaded one to get to today. There's a ton to unpack. A lot to discuss. A lot to reflect upon. For example, what happened last night in what was a fabulous Monday Night Football game. And we'll get more into this later. It has nothing to do with Indianapolis sports. And I realize that our job is to talk about Indianapolis sports. But last night, to me.
00:00:27
Speaker 1: Confirmed what I have thought for quite some time. And I guess Dan Fouts would be the outlier here of what I'm about to say. But there are certain quarterbacks that when you watch them, you say to yourself, there is just no way they're not going to eventually get a Super Bowl. And Josh Allen is that player. Josh Allen is.
00:00:51
Speaker 1: I think and I admit that I took for granted I'm here to admit it right now. I covered Peyton Manning's era in Indianapolis for the totality of it. And for that matter, Andrew Lux as well. But Peyton Manning in particular, I took it for granted. The consistent greatness that I saw from game in to game out, because like all of us here, it just became a fait accompli and an automatic. Now they're going to win 13 games, 14 games. And you knew in any game that you had a chance to win the game because Peyton Manning was your quarterback. Now, in the early years, there were a lot of years where you're like, oh man, they're going to turn it over because Peyton Manning's a quarterback. But Josh Allen last night, he just looks so, and I know this isn't the case, but he looks so effortless. But it just goes to show how critically important that position is and how, and Buffalo has good players, don't get me wrong, but how when you have that position nailed down, You can interchange. Remember when, you know, there are guys they've lost and it was like, oh man, it's going to be huge for Buffalo. That's a big loss for them. And not really because they have the guy under center that makes everything run. And I want to get into that a little bit today. And I want to get into, you know, Eddie's got on his, why not Indiana t-shirt, which is awesome. Pacers in action tonight, back in Oklahoma city. And, you know, I want to get into the Pacers, a little college discussion as well. And tomorrow, a reminder, I will be at Rally House on Southport Road doing the show from 10 until 1. Look forward to seeing all of you out there. Again, this time slot is one that I don't get out a lot in terms of doing remotes and that sort of a thing. And I understand that. So I don't get the chance to interact with a lot of you the way that in other time slots that I've done have facilitated. And I really look forward to it tomorrow. We'll have, again, your chance for a $ 50 gift card from Rally House. I mean, no matter what team you're rooting for locally, they've got merchandise there. They've got t-shirts. They've got key chains. You name it. They have everything at Rally House. It's great. So I look forward to being there tomorrow in Southport. But I want to begin the show today with something that I did not think I would begin the show today with. And I understand that it involves someone in the world of sport that many of you may not be overly familiar with. And it involves a sport that many of you may not be overly familiar with. But I'll begin by telling it with just a little anecdote. In the time that I have been doing auto racing play-by-play, it's kind of happened by happenstance. I don't need to go into the details of it, but I think that a lot of people assume that because I have done, it's been now 20 years, IndyCar racing broadcasting, that that means that I grew up going to dirt tracks and being around racing my entire childhood. Not totally the case, the Indy 500 for certain. But I began in 2007 calling races for the radio network. And in that capacity, a lot of people may not realize, not only do we call every race for the IndyCar series, but we also call every practice, every session for IndyNext, formerly known as Indy Lights. which is essentially the AAA, the final ladder, the final rung, if you will, of the road to Indy ladder. And in that, again, capacity, I've seen a number of drivers that have come through, some of which made it to IndyCar, some of which never got there, some of which then went to Europe or elsewhere. And you always see the pattern of what allows a driver to get to the top. Sometimes they're so talented, there's no question that it's going to happen. Pata O'Ward would come to mind in that regard. Certainly Colton Hurta was pretty dominant coming up through the ranks, and there was no doubt what was going to happen. Other drivers have a mix of the personality, the skill, and the determination. I remember, and I don't remember the exact year, But Jack Harvey had been in Indy Lights for a couple of years, I think two seasons. And he had opportunity to run in the IndyCar series. And actually, it was Michael Schenck that gave him his first full-time opportunity with Meyers Schenck. He was kind of their guy to help Meyers Schenck Racing get their feet wet and get in, going from like seven races in a year to like a half season and then a full season. But I recall one time being at Mid-Ohio for an IndyCar race, and I'm up there on the Keyhole Hill, just up there with all the campers and everything else, to call the action. And standing next to me was Jack Harvey, who at that point had already had IndyCar starts and was involved in the IndyCar series and was still trying to find his footing full-time in the series. And, you know, hey, man, what's going on? And so we're standing there talking, and I'd gotten to know him, obviously, being around him and covering him. And he didn't have, at that time, anything full-time going within IndyCar, so he was doing what he could by spotting for drivers in the Indy Lights Series. He was going to racetracks and putting on headsets and coaching and guiding younger drivers in the final rung of the IndyCar Series ladder to keep his name and face around to stay in the mix. And a super personable guy, a very nice looking guy. I'll even say it. I mean, he has two of the most naturally like mesmerizing eyes I've ever seen. Like the guy's a good looking guy. Okay. All of that is irrelevant except for to say that he had this combination that would lead him obviously to become a personality and ultimately on television with Fox within the IndyCar series. But I think that moment of being up on the hill, showed not just a humility from Jack Harvey, but also just a desire to do what needed to be done. And the guy clearly has no ego, but was like, you know what? This is what I've got to do in this moment. Jack Harvey announced earlier today, of course, he is a television commentator for Fox on IndyCar. He also is scheduled to run the upcoming Indianapolis 500 mile race once again. And he announced earlier today, that he has been diagnosed with cancer. Now, I don't know what form. I don't know what stage. I don't know the relevance of those two things at this point. I know that as a young, healthy, and vibrant guy, person in general, I can only imagine what that does to one psychologically. And I know that the natural, and there's no wrong reaction here. I'm not condemning anybody. There's no wrong reaction. But, and I'm going to speak not necessarily directly to Jack Harvey here, but rather just the way that I've always felt about this to any of you that are going through a medical journey. I saw a lot of responses from people that were like, cancer's got no chance. It picked the wrong guy. You got this. Boy, I believe in how strong you can fight. And I understand all of those things come from the right place. I get it. But I remember, and it wasn't instantaneous, but I remember when I had my own health scare, and it was not a long-term thing, obviously. But I remember once in a private moment, sitting there and all of a sudden feeling this overwhelming sentiment of vulnerability. And I remember thinking to myself, the devastation of knowing that no longer could I check the box on a medical application that says, I have no ailments. I no longer could say to the doctor, like, yeah, listen, trust me, I've never had any medical issue at all. I could no longer say that. And that was a both humbling and terrifying experience. And it took me a long time to grapple with that. That was the hardest thing for me. Maybe that's ego, but I think more so it's comfort. Because I realized that my comfort zone had been interrupted. The reason I say that is because when you hear about, and again, I'm not speaking directly to Jack Harvey here, but for any of you, any of you that are going through, which is the vast majority of us in some way, right? some sort of a medical battle. You do you. You do what's best for you. You fight at the pace that you want to fight. You fight with the vigor that you want to fight. And on the days when your body or your mind tell you that they need to take the day off, You're not letting people down because they told you you got this. In those moments and with that vulnerability, it is impossible to know how one reacts to it. There is no more personal journey and personal battle that one goes through than that of their own health and the challenges that comes that way of it. And it becomes a very personal thing, but the last thing that I think anyone should feel or want, and I'm not speaking to Jack Harvey, but to rather any of you going through this, just my own personal thought, is the pressure of feeling like in fact you would be letting someone down if there are days where you feel like in fact you don't got this. That's the reality of it. It's like anything else in life. Some days you have great qualifying runs, and some days for whatever reason, the car just doesn't respond. It doesn't change the ability of the driver. It doesn't change the acumen of the driver, nor does it change the desire of the driver to win. So no matter what your ailment, I would simply say to you as I would to Jack Harvey, you do you. Know that there are a legion of people that are pulling for you, that are supporting you, that would in all means and aspects have the hope, aspiration, and wish for you for everything to turn out well. But at the same time, there are going to be understanding of the fact that on the days when you're not fighting as hard, that's okay too. And it does not in any way, shape, or form change you or change us. And that's what I've always felt about that. In the case of Jack Harvey, I think that moment on the hill shows that he is someone that is always willing to do what it takes to get where he wants to be. And like those people on the hill that surrounded that landscape that day, there are tons of people around that are cheering and that are hoping, but at the same time will be there regardless of whether that ride opens up an IndyCar or you are working as a spotter on the hill. You're still the same dude. And that's my feeling on that. I certainly hope and wish the best for Jack Harvey and any of you. Eddie, last night, did you get a chance to watch The game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Buffalo Bills.
00:12:51
Speaker 4: I sure did.
00:12:55
Speaker 1: As I was watching that, I couldn't help but think this. That was a great game. It was a fabulous football game. And it is easy to forget, and there's really no point in dwelling on the fact that there were reports, not concrete reports, not himself saying it outright, but there was word or insinuation that Matthew Stafford, when he was in Detroit, and it was apparently inevitable that his relationship was coming to an end with the Detroit Lions, that Matthew Stafford had interest in Indianapolis. And if you recall... And I don't want to falsely attribute, in case I have this incorrect, so I will not say the name, but there was one person within the local market that we know very well that covers the Colts that I think either had reported or insinuated that at that time Chris Ballard was not keen on Matthew Stafford because Stafford had been in Detroit and they hadn't won anything. And when Stafford was a possibility, now you had to trade for him and give up a lot, don't get me wrong, but if Indianapolis was supposedly five years ago a franchise in which Stafford had interest, and you didn't do everything you could to push in and acquire him, and maybe the Colts did. We don't know. Maybe they did, and they didn't have enough pieces. That's possible. But it does make you wonder, because watching that game last night, what you saw were two teams that are evidence to the fact that the, and we say this all the time, clearly, But the most important position in professional sports is the quarterback of an NFL team. Being an ace pitcher is fabulous. Being a top shooting guard is fabulous. Those are very important things. A 3 and D guy in the NBA now is a very important piece. But there is no more important position than the quarterback of a National Football League team. And when you have one that moves with the fluidity, the effortless, and I know it's not effortless, but it certainly looks that way. the vision, and the overall abilities of Josh Allen and Matthew Stafford. But Stafford's obviously a little longer in the tooth now. Josh Allen right now is absolutely undoubtedly in his prime. And that is a joy to watch. His ability, the proper touch on the football. Now, he tests his arm strength a little much and puts them in bad positions with turnovers from time to time. No questions. but his ability to run. I mean, he is a gazelle in the open field. To extend plays. They won that game last night. Josh Allen willed them to win last night because his talent was such, as I always say, sometimes there are athletes that are so great that the moments find them. The moments find them. You look back and you say, boy... Didn't it just stand to reason that when all of a sudden that game was on the line, it was Reggie Miller that hit the big, it was Tyrese Halliburton that hit the big, it was Peyton Manning that made the big drive. It was the great moments find the great players. And that's because great players don't shy away from it when everybody else might tense a little bit. What you are seeing right now in Buffalo is a guy that the great moments are finding him because he is in a comfort level with his style of play and the way that he can do things and operate things and audible and run and do all of those things. that he has found a comfort level when everyone else kind of tenses up, and that allows his game to then shine that extra 2%. And 2% is more than just milk. Sometimes it's the difference in a game. The Colts right now, Eddie, we need to have the discussion. And I'm not hedging on it because I said three weeks ago my big declaration. And I think Daniel Jones has a skill set that he, I like his skill set. I think he has, I think he's a good player. And I think that he, when I say it this way, and sometimes, sometimes this, I get victimized by this. We all do. Where I'll say something on this show, and if you just snip it, the wrong, I'm not saying you, Eddie, I'm saying in general, a person snippets the wrong thing and doesn't let the entire soundbite play out, you don't get the other half of the story, and that's kind of true of a lot of media stuff in general, right? And you're like, well, wait, so what I'm about to say, if you just take the little snippet of it, it's going to be like, this guy in Indianapolis is an absolute idiot. There are a lot of reasons for that, but this is not it. If I were to say to you, Daniel Jones can be Josh Allen-like, Now, if I just say it that way, people are like, what in the world is this guy talking about? For example, Diet Dr. Pepper tastes exactly like Dr. Pepper. Have you noticed this?
00:18:03
Speaker 4: You know what I should do, Jake? I should just take that clip of you just now saying that and see what it does on social media.
00:18:08
Speaker 1: No, because people are going to think it's serious and I don't want to go there.
00:18:13
Speaker 4: But you and I and the listeners of this radio program know that it's not serious.
00:18:16
Speaker 1: Okay, what I'm saying is this. Diet Dr. Pepper is the diet soft drink that tastes the most like that that it's the diet version of, right? Thank you. There are other diet soft drinks that don't really taste a lot like what their parent version is. Diet Pepsi doesn't taste a lot like Pepsi, in my opinion, right? But when you drink it, you know that you're getting somewhat supposedly what Pepsi is. Daniel Jones is not Diet Dr. Pepper to Josh Allen. That's not what I'm saying. But his skill set does resemble what it is out of a quarterback like Allen that you're looking for just on a smaller scale. But that's assuming he is healthy. I think we can say now, and I don't know how long it takes to come back if it does, but what I think we can now safely say and assume is that Josh Allen and everything that he does, there are very few things he does that Daniel Jones doesn't have the capability of doing in doses. And that's why a year ago I really liked him. Because when he was rolling and he was in groove, he had two things that made him very viable and successful a year ago prior to when Pitt got him rattled he could throw the ball in space and in tight windows he had pretty good timing with that and he could run he could run I'm not saying by design run, but the play breaks down, he could get out of the pocket, he could get around the corner, and he could make space and run. Since the injury, and two things came into play. Number one, Pittsburgh threw the kitchen sink at him a year ago, and it did have his head on a swivel, and for the first time, the the fumble Ruski or the bad decision-making that had plagued him in New York came about, but we were, we mentioned it, but we were overshadowed. We forgot about it because we had the immediate excuse of, well, but he got hurt. He got hurt. And that injury may have prevented us from seeing the real Daniel Jones. And that's my concern. is what we saw when they were 8-2, was that the smoke and mirrors? And the real one is what we're seeing now. And in addition to that, can he not or will he not be able to get back to the full form of what his arsenal is based on the Achilles injury, and does he not have that burst? We've seen him run a little bit when the plays are breaking down, but it doesn't seem like he has the stride or just the speed within the stride like he had a year ago prior to the injury. And I don't know, by science it would say, and by precedent medically speaking, I'm not a doctor, it would say that he still is not past the window or out of the window of when that Achilles is still strengthening itself. But if this is, if the governor is now on the accelerator and this is the most you get, then I think we have to basically come to accept that Daniel Jones and part of his arsenal is taken away. And if it is very best, he was a potential Josh Allen light. And by that, I mean an 80% version thereof. But if that was his ceiling, now all of a sudden you've got to reprogram the way you're operating because you have a huge portion of his game and his threat that is taken away, and now you're basically looking at a pocket passer with a little bit of side-to-side flexibility, but not necessarily what he had when they were off to an 8-2 start. And when you said that you just wanted to basically hit the pause button on the movie from a year ago when he was hurt and now unpause it, there are just too many plot holes that have yet to be addressed. And that's my concern. And Eddie, I don't know. I mean, maybe part of it is he is still rounding form in terms of his health. And maybe part of it is that we were fooled. I don't know which it is. But we're probably going to find out here. And then you get into what do you do if this season progresses where it is right now, what do you do moving forward with him because you have him under contract for next year for a pretty big ticket, right?
00:23:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm just trying to think, Jake, trying to make a comparison here. Like, who would you say, at least currently, is like a serviceable point guard.
00:23:23
Speaker 1: In the NBA?
00:23:25
Speaker 4: A guy that you're like, yeah, okay, yeah, he's a solid starter.
00:23:31
Speaker 1: Boy, that's good. In terms of in his prime or older?
00:23:38
Speaker 4: Any time in his career. He's a solid point guard.
00:23:42
Speaker 1: Jeff Teague. Okay, Darius Garland.
00:23:44
Speaker 4: Darius Garland, sure, yeah. Darius Garland, solid point guard. You know, there's a night or two where he can carry the load and get you a win.
00:23:51
Speaker 1: And you had to determine at one point is the Clippers right now are having to determine, right? Right. Do they– is this you build around guy or is this transitional? Right.
00:24:01
Speaker 4: But he's not, you know, Cade Cunningham, Luka Doncic. And, like, to make the– James Harden. And to compare it to Daniel Jones, I think people are just wanting to see him, especially with no Alec Pearce. try to elevate his game into the category of being a Jamal Murray, a Stefan Castle, a guy that, you know, can rise up whenever there's an opportunity to do so. but instead he is just the same old Jeff Teague or Darius Garland type of player, and it's okay. You just have to have the right pieces and the right system around you, and with the current way that the Colts have to play and with their current roster construction, they can't win the way that they should be. And that's solid defense, being able to run the football. And because there's no Alec Pierce, you have to kind of have these long drives where it's eight to 12 plays. You're not getting any explosive plays out of them right now. And so it's just a bad recipe until they can get Alec Pierce back because there's no answer to finding someone who can win downfield or threaten the defense down the field.
00:25:15
Speaker 1: And, and, Here's the other thing, Eddie. The roster may just not be that great. You know, if you have a quarterback that is not at 100%, you can offset that sometimes. If you have, you can mask it with a great roster. I hope I'm wrong in this, and I want to be wrong in this, and I may well be wrong in this. But I am beginning to think That a year ago, we were all fooled. I think Carly Ursa Gordon might have been fooled. I think Chris Ballard might have been fooled. I think Shane Steichen might have been fooled. And that doesn't make them fools. Because I think we might have been fooled right with them. And there were just, everything was going their way. And now all of a sudden that it's not, it's a tough thing to get the blueprints out there. And I don't know how you get out of that. But that's one of the things that we will continue to discuss. When we come back, I will take a bit of a pause on the Colts conversation, by the way. Stephen Holder is going to join us coming up at 1130. We'll get plenty more into it coming up at the top of the 11 o'clock hour. And it is our Game Day Men's Health Games of the Week. So you get your pen and paper right now. You can write it down. And I'm laying it out for you when every game is going to air this week that you want to watch in all of the sports for the calendar of the week. We'll do that coming up. in just under 20 minutes. But when we come back, there is a question I've had regarding Indiana basketball that I've fought forever. I've fought forever. But I think the time is now.
00:26:54
Speaker 3: We'll explain.
00:26:57
Speaker 1: So over the weekend, I was at Hinkle Fieldhouse to watch Butler in Indiana. And open disclaimer, although I think most know this, I grew up, a diehard Indiana fan. Diehard Indiana fan. There's a picture of me in the Eastwood Middle School yearbook in 1985 wearing a Purdue t-shirt as part of a prank for like Spirit Week because I was known as the Purdue hater and the IU guy. Like 90% of people that hate IU that I grew up with hate them because of me. I was that guy. And one of the things that, and by the way, I really enjoy Purdue now. And when I covered them, when I began working at channel six and I was on the beat and it was basically Katie and Tiller, I found them to just be fabulous people and a great department. And I've always enjoyed going up there and covering Purdue now, but I can still recall Eddie, if you could please give me a year off the top of your head, like from somewhere in the eighties, just to, Top.
00:28:04
Speaker 4: Of your head.
00:28:06
Speaker 1: A year in the 80s?
00:28:08
Speaker 3: Yeah. 87.
00:28:09
Speaker 1: 1987. 1987's senior class for Indiana would have been Steve Alford, Daryl Thomas, and Todd Meyer. Their freshman class included Tony Freeman, who was a point guard from St. Joseph's High School in Westchester, Illinois, and David Miner, who was a small forward from Withrow High School in Cincinnati, which is where Ricky Calloway had played. And those two players... you had anticipation, right, of what's going to happen. And next year, Jay Edwards and Lyndon Jones are going to be here, and we'll see if Michael Boykin ever makes his way from junior college and on and on and on. And Mark Robinson and Chucky White, his junior college transfer is coming next year. And in 87, they had, of course, the junior college transfers of Keith Smart and Dean Garrett. But no matter what team you polled for, no matter who you followed, You knew back in those days, back in my day, the way we used to do it is the kids stayed around for four years. And so you knew Antoine Joubert was entering his sixth year and you knew, gosh, you know, how good is Illinois going to be once Ephraim Winters and Doug Altenberger are upperclassmen? And man, Scott Skiles is a really good player. And One of the Vincent brothers was just there too, and they were so good to watch for four years. And Granville Waiters, man, he looked like he was 30 when he was 18, but he turned into a nice player for Ohio State. And that's just how it was. And the one thing about Indiana, when I was an Indiana fan, was Indiana was different. Indiana basketball was different. And I don't mean just because they won three national championships in an 11-year span. I don't mean because they had a coach that was the most polarizing, colorful, and without question famous sport coach, let alone basketball coach, in the United States during his pinnacle years in Indiana. I don't mean that that's what made them different. I mean there was a simplicity to it. Notre Dame, when I first went to a game in South Bend, I had an appreciation for the fact that when I went there, I could witness and see the simplicity of Notre Dame. Not a lot of glitz and glamour, fairly basic field, the hash marks in the end zone that signify the year in which Notre Dame began as a university, and the helmets that represent the Dome. That's about it. And when I would watch Indiana games as a kid, I remember two things. Obviously, Martha the Mop Lady, but the WTTV banner, and the CBS Sports banner when you were really good and it was exciting because they were on national television. And that was it. And I remember the thing about Indiana that made it different was for Indiana, the program itself, the legacy and the style of play itself, the banners and the trophies and the accomplishments themselves is what sold you. They didn't need fancy music during warm-ups. They didn't need signage and advertising all over the place. They didn't need a big, fancy video board with lights and all kinds of strobing lights with the lights go down during introductions. They didn't need that. And they didn't need a big, bellowing, boisterous, hip, DJ, they simply needed at Forward for Indiana, he's a 6'6 sophomore from Cincinnati, Ohio, number 20, Ricky Calloway. That was it, Chuck Crabb. There was a simplicity to Indiana that made it different because Indiana didn't need all of the bells and whistles. They didn't need all the options on the car because they had the one that ran on the interstate better than anybody else says it was. That's all gone now. It's all gone. Indiana now, after 20 plus years of futility by Indiana standards, has become for an entire generation just another program. It's no longer unique. It's no longer different. There's nothing wrong with that. That's the evolution of time. I understand it. But during a time when Indiana could hang its hat on being unique and being different because the ends justified the means and the hardware made up for the glistenware or lack thereof. None of that's applicable anymore. And the one thing about Indiana, the one thing about Indiana that made it unique and still to this day does, They're not the only one with this case. But they always kind of followed the Herb Brooks mantra in 1980 of the U.S. Olympic hockey team. When you pull on that jersey, you represent yourself and your teammates.
00:33:37
Speaker 2: And a name on the front is a hell of a lot more important than the one on the back.
00:33:41
Speaker 1: Get that through your head. That's how it's been in Indiana forever. And I liked it. I'm down for it. Candy striped pants and no names on the back of the jersey. But you know what? I went to that game at Hinkle Fieldhouse, and I saw Indiana warming up, and they had on the candy stripes, and it felt nostalgic to me. And I thought, here we go. And Darren DeVries, I think, is a good coach. Is he an elite coach? I don't know that yet. I think he's a good coach. And they have good players, and I think they're going to be good this year. I think they're going to have a good team, and I think it's going to be one that people can enjoy and watch, and I'm here for it. And Matt Painter has done a remarkable job at Purdue of taking kind of the Indiana mold of the way that Bob Knight built programs of knowing David Miner and Tony Freeman and knowing that those guys and building it year by year and piece by piece. But Purdue has been able to sustain that and carry on that mold and that model because they're winning. And so their ends justify the means. And there is somewhat a simplicity at Purdue. Don't kid yourself, though. They still have big NIL money. Braden Smith got a lot of money there, et cetera. But in Indiana, the last remaining thing from yesteryear, the last piece of simplicity, is the fact that they never had names on the back of the jerseys. But as I watched them and I realized that we are now in the transfer portal NIL era, I'm watching these guys and I literally felt like the grounds crew in Major League watching the Cleveland then Indians warm up by saying, who are these guys? And they're good players. They're names that you're probably going to want to know because I think they're going to be good players that can help get Indiana to turn the corner. And for that reason, In Kentucky, they had that group that got knocked out of the tournament by Christian Layton on the unbelievable shot. I believe they called them the Unforgettables. I can't remember the exact, which is weird that I wouldn't remember the name if it's called Unforgettables, but in Kentucky, they certainly know the nickname for that group with Sean Woods and... Darren Feldhaus and John Pelfrey and Richie Farmer, because that group took Kentucky from when they were down and out and rose it from the ashes and turned that grass back into bluegrass and got Kentucky back to where they needed to be. And I do think that Indiana, we don't want to admit it, we don't talk about it at cocktail parties around this great state, but Indiana basketball has been dormant and on life support for two-plus decades, and they've been trying and grasping and reaching everywhere, and they've been holding on to the one thing, which is we're different. but you're not. And so now the one way to latch onto and embrace the fact that we're moving in a new direction. We have everything else that I talked about. Now we got signage. We got giveaways during timeouts. We got a big fancy board with boom and music. We got all of those things now. So why not go ahead and adapt to the times? Number one, because it helps you get players there because they're all about individual branding.
00:36:39
Speaker 3: Sure.
00:36:39
Speaker 1: You can turn them into what the name on the front of the But you also still, from a financial standpoint, you're the brand on the back of the jersey. And at Indiana University, we're going to let you do both. And the best part about it, it's an automatic directory for you fans that are looking at going, who are these guys? Because you're getting other names here midway through the year. But you might as well start now. And the easiest way to do it would be when they turn around after hitting a shot, you can look at it and go, oh, that's Garrison. He's a good player. Boy, he's got a big head. We'll come back. Game Day Men's Health Games of the Week next. It is Tuesday and we are three quarters the way through the 10 o'clock hour. That means it is time for a Game Day Men's Health Games of the Week. We do this each and every Tuesday where we just kind of spell out for you what we're keeping an eye on and where you can see and or hear the big upcoming games. Of course, all this brought to you by Game Day Men's Health. Hello to those of you who may be watching on YouTube inside the the game day men's house up in Carmel or Fishers, for example. Six Indy area locations, Fishers, Carmel, Indianapolis, Northside at 75th and Shadeland. Also Avon right off of Rockville Road, Bargersville off State Road 135 and in Greenwood. And you hear me mention this all the time, is we are discussing, for example, the Colts and the Titans. You know, there are certain areas with the Titans probably it's, you can probably pick any area, but When you go into a game for your favorite team, you want them to have a game plan that's designed for the opponent and change it from one opponent to the next on what needs to be done to win that particular game. The same thing is true when it comes to guys your health. You want to make sure that when you are going in somewhere that you are getting a game plan designed for you. And in addition to that, with just a relaxed atmosphere with people that want to sit down and say, hey, let's just look over all the options of what it is that are your goals. trying to get back in shape, trying to lose weight, maybe just trying to get a little bit more energy, any number of things. Any of you guys, if you want to just get back to your younger self and just feeling a little bit more vibrant, feeling a little better recovery after a workout. Game Day Men's Health is there for you. Peptide therapies, testosterone replacement therapy, you name it, weight management. Game Day Men's Health. GameDayMensHealth.com is the website. Eddie, did you watch last night any of the NLCS with Milwaukee now up two games, none on the Dodgers?
00:39:08
Speaker 4: See, Jake, I would have watched some of that game, but that game started at 5 o'clock.
00:39:14
Speaker 1: What are we doing? You sound angry.
00:39:17
Speaker 4: Yes.
00:39:18
Speaker 1: It went long. It was a long game.
00:39:20
Speaker 4: What are we doing at 5 o'clock in the afternoon? Like, oh, yes.
00:39:24
Speaker 1: Were you new to postseason baseball? In the national window, yes.
00:39:27
Speaker 4: Let's put the Cleveland Guardians and the Tampa Bay Ravens.
00:39:30
Speaker 1: Are you new to this? Do you not know the legacy and the heritage and the history in Brooklyn of running home from the trolleys in order to listen to your radio and see what the Dodgers are doing?
00:39:41
Speaker 4: Come on, man. Let's start a major league championship playoff series today. In the hometown of one of the local teams.
00:39:50
Speaker 1: So fine. At 2 in the afternoon. If it makes you feel better. Well, yes.
00:39:56
Speaker 4: That's 4 o'clock in Milwaukee.
00:39:58
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:39:59
Speaker 4: What are we doing here?
00:40:00
Speaker 1: It's 4 o'clock in Milwaukee at 4.30, Eddie. If it makes you feel any better tonight, 8 o'clock. You can watch the game on TBS. It is the American League Championship Series getting underway between the Cleveland Guardians and the Tampa Rays. 8 o'clock tonight. That game on TBS now. You can watch that game while listening on this radio station, pregame meeting at 7.30. The Pacers are back in Oklahoma City tonight. It is a preseason game, obviously, but question is, Eddie, do we see tonight the preseason return of injury to the ankle of Tyrese Halliburton in the place where House of Horrors in terms of one memory in Oklahoma City, right?
00:40:38
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a fair question. Like, do you want your return for Tyrese Halliburton to the floor in Oklahoma City to be a preseason game? When the Pacers played out there last year, He did not go in the arena because he said that the next time that he wanted to be in Oklahoma City was the next time he could play in Oklahoma City. So does he want his grand return to Oklahoma City be a preseason game? I would say yes, because you need the time on task with Avica Zubats. But tonight we'll find out.
00:41:07
Speaker 1: In terms of football, here's your schedule. Friday coming up. Washington and Purdue at 8 o'clock at night on Friday evening. That'll be a big one. It's going to be on Fox. Honestly, that's big for Purdue because going for their third straight. And Washington is a team that I think is more susceptible than we would have guessed when the schedule came out. And it's always fun to watch games on national television under the lights in Ross-Ade. Again, that's going to be on Fox coming up on Friday at 8 o'clock. Saturday, the big one nationally and locally. It goes without saying. Also on Fox at noon. It is Indiana and Ohio State. That is noon on Saturday.
00:41:44
Speaker 4: And on this radio station, pregame with Don Fisher, John Herrick, and Buck Seward starting at 11 a.m. 11 a.m.
00:41:51
Speaker 1: On Saturday, right?
00:41:51
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:41:52
Speaker 1: And then on Sunday, you can also hear it right here on this radio station. It is the Colts and Tennessee Titans coming up 1 o'clock on Sunday. So Friday through Sunday, it is football. Baseball, really, until then, obviously you've got the Thursday night NFL game as well. What is the NFL game this week for the Thursday night football?
00:42:07
Speaker 4: Also for the night cap on Saturday, Jake, it's another top ten matchup. You've got BYU, the Fighting Mormons, against Marcus Freeman and his hair-dyed Bad hairline Notre Dame fighting Irish.
00:42:21
Speaker 1: The fighting Mormons, you're calling. That's Eddie Garrison who's calling them that.
00:42:24
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:42:24
Speaker 3: Uh-huh.
00:42:25
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly. You got LSU, Mississippi State also on Saturday. The NFL schedule, Jake, in terms of your primetime matchups for week number six starting on Thursday night. It is the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks, that game in Denver.
00:42:41
Speaker 3: Good game.
00:42:42
Speaker 4: Sunday night football, the Green Bay Packers at home against the Dallas Cowboys at Lambeau Field. And then Monday night football, the Washington Commanders are flying out west to take on the San Francisco 49ers.
00:42:53
Speaker 1: That'll be ugly, right?
00:42:55
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:42:56
Speaker 1: The Commanders have no chance of winning that game. Never say never, Jake. When the commanders go out west.
00:43:04
Speaker 4: Did you think the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would beat the Dallas Cowboys Thursday night?
00:43:09
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a good point. That was in Dallas, too, wasn't it?
00:43:12
Speaker 4: Yes, it was.
00:43:12
Speaker 1: Dak Prescott got into it with the guy in the tunnel, right?
00:43:15
Speaker 4: Yes, so a staffer saying to Dak, very loudly, embarrassing.
00:43:21
Speaker 1: Tonight, Pacers, 7.30 pregame here, right here on this radio station, and also ALCS tonight at 8 o'clock. As Eddie mentioned, on Thursday, obviously you've got the Thursday NFL game going. Friday, Washington, Purdue at 8 o'clock. Saturday, Ohio State, Indiana, noon. That's also on Fox. You can hear it on this radio station. And Sunday, Colts and Tennessee. That is your schedule. Game day, men's health. We come back, back into it, talking about the Colts. And we can also discuss one thing for the Pacers that raised an eyebrow for me yesterday. Eddie's been calming my nerves. We'll get into it. Gorgeous day outside on a Tuesday. Jay Query here along with Eddie Garrison. Query and Company is the name of the program. Eddie, I'm trying to log into the text line here. Because I am curious. And people can text at 239-1070. I guess call the program as well. But before we get back into both the Colts and the Pacers, I'm curious people's thought on whether or not. feels like almost low-hanging fruit, if you will, when it comes to discussing things sports-wise in Indiana. But I'm being serious. I'm curious what people think about Indiana putting names on the back of the jerseys. Like, is it time? Am I off base here? Would that ruffle people's feathers? Like, what are people's thoughts on that? And I know that If you're of a certain age, you're probably like, why is this guy? That was a big thing for a long time. A big thing for a long time. But you're a younger guy, Eddie. Would you even think anything of it? Have you even noticed that Indiana does not do names on the back of the jerseys?
00:45:22
Speaker 4: I wouldn't think anything of it, no. I think it would just be adapting more or less to the times of today. and trying to help your fan base understand who's.
00:45:31
Speaker 1: On the floor. It's a good thing. I want to bring up the text line here, Eddie. Are you looking at the text message from the 316 number?
00:45:43
Speaker 3: No.
00:45:44
Speaker 1: This is good stuff here. Let's see. Quarry should stick to racing. That was at 10 o'clock this morning. Then at 10.02. Honestly, he isn't even good at that. Then at 10.02. And he always says he's good-looking. He's ugly as blank. What the blank does this tangent have to do with anything? All capital letters. That was when I was talking, by the way, about Jack Harvey's cancer journey. And then lastly, blank Jake Query. That also using the four-letter big one. So that's cool.
00:46:17
Speaker 4: It's been a month since the last text from him or her.
00:46:21
Speaker 1: And that one was... That was about Kevin. Apparently, I've deflected away from Kevin, right? Let me write down this number. I'll have to call that guy when we get off the air. They don't seem to be a fan, right?
00:46:35
Speaker 4: It does not appear so.
00:46:41
Speaker 1: See, the weird thing about that, I guarantee you, And I don't mean this in a bad way. It's cool. I actually appreciate it. But I guarantee that's the guy that like, did I ever tell you one time Shannon and I were at dinner and a guy walks up to the table and is like, hey, I enjoy it. And I'm always appreciative of that. I never know how people recognize me because it's radio, but I'm always appreciative of it. But I had a guy once sit down at the table He pulled up a chair and sat down at the table. And then when we got done, he stayed for the entire meal and then followed me to the car talking to me. It was fine. It was cool. But I'm like, but I knew who the guy was. And I'm like, this guy, once he said who he was, I'm like, this guy's done nothing but troll me on Twitter for like five years. Then in public, it's like, hey, I just want to spend the evening with you.
00:47:30
Speaker 4: You know what I mean? Someone just said, yeah, that guy is right. Screw you, bud.
00:47:36
Speaker 1: I mean, you know. Well, like what did I do? And here's the thing. Listen, don't hate me because I'm beautiful. I mean, I get up in the morning and I put on, because I know we're on the YouTube, I make sure that I look presentable and we've had good results.
00:47:51
Speaker 4: We all love Jake and Eddie, especially Eddie.
00:47:54
Speaker 1: Okay. And you said your mom does listen to the program, right?
00:48:00
Speaker 4: No, she does not.
00:48:02
Speaker 1: Colts getting set, by the way, for the Tennessee Titans. And one would assume that this is the best possible medicine. The best possible medicine for any NFL team is Tennessee coming into town. And there are so many areas that it feels like the Colts need to get right. And I do think that there is an element of truth to this. And that is that the Colts, from the scheduling standpoint, it may be so that they're going to continue to lure us in and then push us away and lure us in and push us away. It almost is like dating a narcissist. So you, well, I mean, I love me some meat, but they say, now I have fortunately not been in this situation, but if you read the self-help books, it'll tell you that like, if you're in a relationship with someone that's a narcissist, like part of the part of narcissistic disorder is, is a narcissist realizes when they're finally losing grip on something that they deem to be their possession. And so they throw on the charm and we've seen this in sport. There are athletes or coaches that you folks here in Indiana have seen that they can throw on the charm like nobody's business, but then also the other side comes out. And just when you get tired of it, then the charm comes back out, and it's like, oh, here we go again. And it does feel like the Colts, to an extent, have that element of this relationship for all of us where they just keep luring us back in each time that we're basically at that point done, right? Let me give you an example. This is a perfect synopsis of all of it from Sam from the UK. Sam sends an email that says, UK Colts fan. Now, should I read the whole thing in my British accent, Eddie, or just standard? since Sam is from the UK.
00:50:13
Speaker 4: You got to read it in your British accent. Come on now.
00:50:18
Speaker 1: Now that's hard to do on command though, because I've got the old British guy.
00:50:23
Speaker 5: And then, do you like the Beatles? But it's hard for me to read this as if I'm British all the way through. As a football soccer fan, it's fascinating watching the NFL because of everything that goes on. If you had a bad season, it's set up for you to be righteous and good once again.
00:50:40
Speaker 1: I'm not going to read the whole thing like that. And he says, however, that is not the case if your GM is Chris Ballard. In the category of most likely to succeed as a corporate middle manager, Chris Ballard would sweep the floor. Not bad enough to be fired, not good enough to ever succeed. He's the Jeff Fisher of general managers. The heathen chemistry of Oasis albums. A cloudy afternoon on a Tuesday, a tepid low-pressure shower, a plain cheese sandwich. If he had an ounce of integrity over the next few weeks, as things continued to head towards a 7-8 win season, he would resign and release all of us from this mundane fever dream of the last decade. Thanks for letting me rant. That from Sam in the UK. To which I naturally responded, do you want to go with me to the Nebworth concert in September of 27? And Sam said, no, I'm boycotting Oasis until they admit that their team cheated in soccer. That's Manchester City, by the way.
00:51:34
Speaker 3: But.
00:51:36
Speaker 1: He's not wrong when it comes to the Colts. It is a tough lot to be in. They are just good enough to keep us interested and just bad enough to push us away when we start to believe. And it just comes down to the fact that fundamentally speaking, in terms of their roster buildup and setup, they just have too many flaws. And I think we all talked ourselves into, I'm guilty of it as well, thinking that this year they could get by and be what we saw a year ago. But when you watch last night, and the Rams, what's the Rams? Do they have three losses? Are the Rams like three and three?
00:52:27
Speaker 4: Two and three.
00:52:28
Speaker 1: Two and three? The Rams, I mean, look at the Rams in general, and you're like, how in the world is that team two and three? Because the Rams feel like one of the best teams in the league, but obviously they're not. But if you look at Buffalo and the way that they were able to last night when things weren't going well and then just flip a switch and literally they start, it's like a tsunami. There's nothing you can do about it when that offense starts clicking. And it all starts with Josh Allen. Now when you have a quarterback that's that elite, that offsets a lot of things. But the Colts just don't seem to have any one area of overwhelming strength. What is it? Even bad teams, sometimes you can say, yeah, but they have this. I mean, the Colts have Jonathan Taylor.
00:53:20
Speaker 6: Fine.
00:53:21
Speaker 1: But without Alec Pierce out there to stretch out a defense, you can load the box and keep him corralled. Okay, then you counter it with Tyler Warren and you get him going a little bit. Okay. But Tyler Warren's great for eight yards. You need 10. And that's the area, it just feels like there is not one area with them that you can push all in and say, this is what they're going to ride behind to get out of the funk. Tennessee helps, but I know that I'm belaboring this point, but it's a critical area that needs to be examined for the Colts, and that is they already have Three losses. And all three of them, essentially, every loss in your conference is a loss and a half. So they have four and a half losses, really. Because when it comes down to it, we'll do it this way in an exercise, Eddie Garrison.
00:54:25
Speaker 4: Okay, Jake Query.
00:54:25
Speaker 1: I'm going to name the division, and I want you to tell me.
00:54:28
Speaker 4: Did I say your last name correctly? Query?
00:54:30
Speaker 1: You did. I'm going to name the division. I want you to tell me who you see as the divisional winner.
00:54:35
Speaker 4: Okay. The AFC East. The AFC East? That is the Buffalo Bills. Okay.
00:54:45
Speaker 1: Do you see a team out of the AFC East that is a viable wildcard contender?
00:54:50
Speaker 4: The New England Patriots.
00:54:51
Speaker 1: Okay. The AFC North.
00:54:55
Speaker 3: Oh, brother.
00:54:58
Speaker 4: Got to go Baltimore.
00:54:58
Speaker 3: Okay. Okay.
00:55:00
Speaker 1: Do you see a team out of the AFC North that you consider a viable wildcard contender?
00:55:06
Speaker 4: Just because of cannibalism, I don't think all three obviously can be a wildcard contender. Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.
00:55:17
Speaker 1: Okay. But I agree with you that there's going to be some cannibalizing there. Okay. The AFC West.
00:55:27
Speaker 4: Two.
00:55:28
Speaker 1: Well, who do you see winning the division? The Chiefs. Okay. Do you see a viable wild card out of the AFC West? Yeah, Denver. Okay. The AFC South. One. That being the division winner. You think the Jags win the division?
00:55:45
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:55:46
Speaker 1: Okay. Now, the problem is this. If the Colts play themselves into contention for the wild card, you already have right there New England, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Denver. Okay? You have three conference losses already. That's the first tiebreaker. Now, we obviously know what happens in a tiebreaker situation with Pittsburgh, right? So there you're in trouble again. I mean, we know what happens if you're in a situation, if it's Baltimore that gets to the wild card, what happens on the second tiebreaker there, you're in trouble again. This is the problem they run into is they're already, and I hate saying that through five games, but it just, I don't know where, Eddie, what am I missing in terms of an area of optimism to think they can turn this around?
00:56:48
Speaker 4: I don't know how to answer that for you, Jake. Last week when we did the exercise of, you know, what, through four weeks, we were a quarter way through the season, and you had me go through and do win-loss, win-loss for the rest of the year. I had them at 7-10, and that does not change after the loss with Pittsburgh. I don't know where you can find optimism because– two weeks ago or three weeks ago, Ralph Reif came on this very program and he expressed concern about just Alec Pierce returning this season. And if Alec Pierce isn't returning this season, then this is the offense that they're going to have all season long.
00:57:26
Speaker 1: So my buddy Glenn just asked me the question, what happens with Alec Pierce and is this another situation where the Colts are not up front about an injury? Now, I'm not here, and it would be irresponsible of me to say that the Colts are intentionally vague when it comes to injuries. I mean, that's irresponsible of me to say that they're being disingenuous. But I think the reality is this. I don't know this. I do not know this, but I'm telling you what it feels like. And until we hear differently, it almost feels safe to say this. I don't think the Colts know. I don't think the Colts know when Alec Pierce is going to be back. You notice that, and Ralph Reif, when we played it, do we have that audio by chance, Eddie, of Ralph talking about when Alec Pierce went into a boot and into a cast? Because Ralph Reif, when I asked him, and we had him on, I think it was a week ago, maybe two weeks ago, and I just asked him at the end of the interview, I just happened to say, by the way, out of curiosity, What do you make of the latest on just timetables of a potential Alec Pierce return? And Ralph, who has been, and again, Ralph was very clear, and I want to make very clear for protection of both of us, that Ralph is not the trainer on record for Alec Pierce. He has not worked on Alec Pierce. He has not seen Alec Pierce's injury. But he basically came right out and said, if he is in a cast with that injury, then that would mean or indicate or forecast the possibility that this is a longer-term injury than just a couple of weeks. And very shortly thereafter, I talked with another doctor in that, again, who is not the doctor on record, but that doctor said, you know what? The reality is, This could be something with the bone of his heel as opposed to just like a nerve, you know, whatever else, and that can become complicated. And that can be a long-term thing. And if Alec Pierce is, in fact, out for an extended period of time or the rest of the year, that greatly debilitates their offense. it greatly debilitates their offense because they have no other deep ball threat. And I'm not saying that, you know, Alec Pierce is a unique player and a special player, and that's why he's the guy that you gave a big contract to. They don't grow on trees. I get that. But there seemingly was zero backup plan there. Zero. And if you look at the wide receiver room for the Colts, If I'm Carly Ursae Gordon, the big question mark I'm having as I'm assessing and analyzing everything is, wait a minute. You had me give this player this amount of money, and then we find out that it was after that that he had surgery, and you knew he needed to have that done? I get that you had to have him. Don't get me wrong. But that would be question mark number one. But question mark number two would be, at that point, did you have any... It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark. It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark. And this is another example of a franchise that, of late, feels like they are never looking around the corner. That's the thing that's frustrating. is it feels like they're never looking around the corner. And in the case of the wide receiver position and a deep ball stretch the defense threat, it seems as though they should have been looking around the corner and figuring out what in fact was going to be the plan if he was not able to go because of the surgery. And then remember, all the way through camp, and this is what's become frustrating for me, all the way through camp, each time that we saw or asked, like, is he good? No, yeah, he's fine. He's fine. And then he goes out and plays and then immediately goes into the cast. And then Ralph Reif, we said we do have it, Eddie. Here's Ralph from about 10 days ago, I think it was, explaining from a training standpoint. Again, not specific to the case of Alec Pierce, but two weeks ago today. Two weeks ago today, and that's important. Because keep in mind, we've heard nothing since. It's been two weeks now, we've heard nothing. This is Ralph Reif talking about his concern over the optics of the injury.
01:02:09
Speaker 7: They put him in a cast.
01:02:13
Speaker 3: Okay.
01:02:14
Speaker 7: So immobilization, put him in a cast. Um, there's a lot of, there's a lot of behind the scenes. There's a lot of chatter in the medical world, sports medicine world. Everybody's trying to guess what's going on. And, um, you know, if you remember September 1st, I think it was Joel Erickson had a, um, an interview in the Indianapolis star with, um, with Pierce and Pierce says, hey, they found out there was something going on with the bone and so they got rid of it. My sense is they, he had some type of growth on, now I'm getting into the anatomy here, but remember the lever, the calcaneus, the heel, and sitting on top of that out in front towards your midfoot is the talus. And I'm starting to think that that talus bone had some defect to it, and they put it in a cast to try to give it the best opportunity to really settle down.
01:03:24
Speaker 1: Okay, that was two weeks ago, and we've heard nothing since. No update. I don't know. I mean, I'm obviously, because I'm practicing usually while we're on the air, so I've not been out there. I don't know that we've seen Pierce, right? And it's interesting to me how much we as media and fans just almost like forget about it because it's like we've just written it off. Well, he's not going to play. And then you get into the other area of it, which is, okay, when do you cross the threshold of, well, at this point, there's no sense in bringing him out and further complicating it anyway because the year's awash. Again, irresponsible of me to say definitively that's where we are at week five, but man, I mean, now, they're going to be, after this Sunday, they're going to be 3-3. Monday, we're going to be doing the show, they're going to be 3-3, and the sun's going to be out, and everybody's like, this is the greatest thing ever, they're on their way to the playoffs. That's what the mentality's going to be. And then, probably they get a reality check. But I just.
01:04:36
Speaker 1: I have grown frustrated for five years over seemingly there never being a look around the corner. Like, when you go to, this is haunted house season. This is haunted house season. Hannah haunted acres and Scream in the Dark, if that's still around, and Nightmare on Edgewood and the Indie Scream Park up in Anderson, which I love. But it must be something to go through that with the Colts front office because you go through one of those haunted houses and you round the corner into the room where the high school actors lay in there like a mental patient on a table and there's hard rock music playing or whatever else. And they got to be going through there literally like they're walking around with clown shoes and a minefield on because they have zero expectation of what's around the corner. They have no anticipation at all of, okay, brace yourself, let's go slow here because I got a feeling something's going to jump out right over there. They got zero, zero. They got to be the easiest group in the world. If they ever do some sort of an exercise, a team-building experience, and they take the front office of the Colts through one of those things, let alone an escape room, don't even get me started there, but if they go through a haunted house, they got to be the easiest group in the world to scare because they ain't never had any idea what's coming around the corner.
01:05:58
Speaker 3: None.
01:06:00
Speaker 1: And that's why they are where they are. And I don't want that to be the case. And I don't personally dislike any of them. I want them to do well. I know what it means to this town. I know what it means to the fan base here. I know what it means for this radio station. All of it. I hope they can get it turned around. But I think there are a lot of you that are looking at it and saying, hey, you know what? Pacer season is here, which it is tonight, Oklahoma City. We still don't know whether or not Tyrese Halliburton is going to play. They basically just said that he tweaked his ankle, and that's why he did not play against Atlanta. It was just out of precaution. That's all, Jake. But it was different than the Achilles.
01:06:38
Speaker 4: Very small tweak.
01:06:39
Speaker 1: But it was not related to the Achilles.
01:06:41
Speaker 4: Zero relation.
01:06:43
Speaker 1: The one thing, I'm just speaking candidly. One thing where I was curious was for a while, and this is probably me overthinking it, but I was curious if for a while we will be in a window of wondering Halliburton for a couple of weeks maybe, maybe the first month of the year, if there aren't going to be little ankle tweaks or little issues like that. because of his range of motion being compromised somewhat subconsciously until he is fully psychologically comfortable with the Achilles. And that's probably me overthinking it, but we have seen that, obviously, with other athletes at other times. That's the one thing that becomes tricky. But Oklahoma City tonight, 7.30 pregame. You can hear it right here on this radio station, and then the game tipping itself at 8 o'clock Pacers and Thunder. And I do like what I saw, and I know they didn't beat Atlanta, but what I saw, the biggest thing that I noticed when I watched that game against Atlanta was that ball was moving around. They were playing, didn't matter who was on the floor. Their pacing, Kelly Oubre talked about it. Look, I want to run, like this is fast. And they, for a team that we wondered how fast they were going to be able to play after they turned the NBA on their ear, the collective ear of the NBA a year ago or, well, a year and a half ago, whatever you want to say, two seasons ago, They looked like that right out of the box. And that's what I was encouraged to see. And I thought they looked very comfortable. No matter what combination Rick Carlisle put out there, they looked very comfortable with one another. Even Kelly Oubre, who's new to the equation, right? When he was out there, I thought it looked like he also instinctively just knew where everyone was going to be. And that's what made them so good for so long was just the symbiotic nature and the flow in which they were able to move knowing and anticipating where everybody had to be on the floor, when they had to be there, and et cetera. But tonight, Oklahoma City, that game, 7.30 pregame. You can hear it right here. Stephen Holder with ESPN. We'll get back into the conversation. I'm going to ask him that exact question about Alec Pierce. When's the last time he saw him? Stephen can give us an update on that. We'll do it next. By the way, this on the text line, it's a great day for the text messages. Hey, since we're all bagging on Jake, my wife commented how much he looks like he could star in a Lego movie. I don't know. You know, I've told you that Daniel Jones looks like that one Lego-looking thing from the Kroger commercials. You know what I'm talking about?
01:09:30
Speaker 3: No.
01:09:30
Speaker 1: There's like an animated fella in the Kroger commercials. Daniel Jones looks like him. Maybe it's one of those, if you know, you know, and if not, I have no idea how to even explain what I'm talking about. Also, somebody points out, I listen to Jake because I dislike him. I've kind of learned to enjoy that. He sucks, two stars, but I still listen. Well, that's cool. Josh, I'm cool with that. You know, I'm cool with that. But that one fella that keeps dropping the F-bombs on me, he seems to not be a fan. Not unlike Stephen Holder, who joins us now on the Game Day Men's Health Guest Line, and I'm sure thrilled to be doing so based on that introduction. ESPN.com, where you can read and see his work. Stephen, I'm going to begin with this question right off the top. We were just discussing it. What is the latest on Alec Pierce? It almost feels like we've forgotten about it, like we've gotten so caught up in other such stuff that it's like, wait a minute, when have we last seen or heard from Alec Pierce?
01:10:31
Speaker 3: Well, Jake, he's doing so well that the Colts tried to trade for Marvin Harrison Jr. Do you believe that tells you everything?
01:10:41
Speaker 1: Do you believe they did try to trade for him?
01:10:44
Speaker 3: They absolutely talked to the Cardinals, 1,000%. I'm telling you that as a fact. In fact, they not only talked to them, they discussed what it would cost. And the Colts decided it was too much. In fact, I was told Saturday morning that Before the news came down of what the compensation was going to be, I was told by a cult source that it was going to be a second round pick and something else. And that is exactly what it ended up being in terms of the compensation from the Houston Texans. And so I lay that out because I think it confirms they had that conversation.
01:11:26
Speaker 1: They did.
01:11:27
Speaker 3: And I can also tell you that had they.
01:11:32
Speaker 3: Had the compensation been more reasonable, they would have been inclined to look at it pretty hard. Okay. So I think, and I'm extrapolating a little bit here, I can't spell that word, but I think I'm using it right. I'm extrapolating that to say something at least about Alec Pierce and his status. Like if Alec Pierce was going to be back in a couple of weeks, you're probably not really making that phone call, wouldn't you think? So I think it at least says that there's not a lot of optimism about a return for Alec Pierce in the short term.
01:12:11
Speaker 1: Steven, do you believe.
01:12:14
Speaker 1: I know this is going to sound like a dumb question. Do you believe the Colts would have had that level of inquiry about Marvin Harrison Jr. if his name was Marvin Holder and he had played collegiately at Texas and his dad was a television repairman from Ridgemont High? In other words, how much of that is the sentimentality of it?
01:12:36
Speaker 3: I actually don't think it played a big role. I don't think it played a big role. Here's what... Here's what plays a role in stuff like this. I mean, again, it's not a dumb question. It's not. But I think here, I think you look at the Colts and you look at their situation and And I am not telling you that Marvin Harrison would fix it, right? Because, I mean, their wide receiver situation, it's very bad. But I think you can't look at that situation and not think that they would be looking at possible solutions. So here's a guy who, when he was coming out of college, I'm sure scouted and had three years of scouting on at Ohio State. and had, I assume, pretty high grades on, you should be intrigued by that, right? You should at least look into that. So I think they were doing their due diligence. And honestly, if they didn't consider it, it would probably be a little bit reckless to just ignore it, to be completely honest with you. So look, Would his name have helped it go down a little easier once you have to trade those picks? Probably, but I really think this was about the football, to be completely honest with you. I mean, they're in a bad spot, that wide receiver right now.
01:13:55
Speaker 1: And Steven, look, if you can see me right now, I'm rubbing my temples, right? Because I know what I'm about to say is something that I have been saying so much as I say, you know, I'm not even beating a dead horse here. It is now literally the glue holding together the studio table. But this is something that we all talked about. Did we not going into the season of where is their receiver depth? Where is their receiver depth? And we kept being told we like our guys. At what point do we quit believing them when they say we like our guys or saying then your ability to determine what you like and don't like is not good enough in the National Football League? Am I too harsh here?
01:14:39
Speaker 3: I will say the same thing. I mean, we ask the question every day when Alec Pierce was standing over there on the sideline. And granted, I think they expected him to come back and no one expected him to the last two weeks. But the point is, you know, even with him coming back, it was still like, all right, When they got Keenan Allen, you felt a little better about it, but you still had Alec Pierce just getting back into the lineup. Even if he would have been healthy, he was just getting back into the lineup. Keenan Allen is almost as old as I am. Okay, not quite, but he's not exactly a spring chicken. And frankly, let's talk about Keenan Allen real quick. He's been underwhelming. I would agree. Yeah. Isn't that fair, right? Like, I mean, do you look at Keenan Allen and say, all right, well, they need to play. You know, obviously they're going to Keenan Allen here. I mean, that hasn't really been the case. And it should be, you know?
01:15:40
Speaker 1: Listen, you ever shop at TJ Maxx?
01:15:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, actually hidden gems, lots of hidden gems at TJ Maxx.
01:15:48
Speaker 1: And when you're in the checkout line at TJ Maxx, they got this whole thing lined up and it's like, oh my gosh, like Ghirardelli chocolates, a whole box of them here for two bucks and dah, dah, dah. And all of it, you're like, this is unbelievable. I mean, I saw this, literally, I saw this exact same thing yesterday at a major department store. It was like 18 bucks. It's two bucks now. So you buy it. Then you get home and you open it up and you're like, oh, wait a minute. This expires in six weeks.
01:16:12
Speaker 3: Exactly.
01:16:13
Speaker 1: Keenan Allen. Keenan Allen, there's a reason he was available in the TJ Maxx checkout line, right? I'm not saying that he's not good, but his expiration date is rapidly approaching if it hasn't already happened, right?
01:16:27
Speaker 3: Right. Well, and think about it. His role coming into this was supposed to be like, all right, we probably need you for like half the snaps. Right. OK, we'll just you know, we'll you're like the second or third option on every play. You know what I mean? Like that's that was supposed to be his role. Well, now without Alec Pierce out there and with the defense saying, OK, if we can just take away Josh Downs, they don't have anything. And I know that's it sounds like I'm ignoring Tyler Warren. I'm not. It's just that I think he's not. he's a different tight end than say like the Travis Kelsey's of the world. Like Travis Kelsey is a natural receiver who you can go throw him out there. He runs routes. He he's a much quicker, faster sort of player, at least in his prime. Tyler Warren is, is more of a, a physical tight end. Right. And you get him the ball. Like that's why he's good on those screens. For example, that's why he's good after the catch, for example. Right. I think when you ask him to go out there and to be a guy who beats people with his route running, that's harder for him. And we are seeing that now. He is, in the past, he was sort of the beneficiary of other guys, you know, stressing the defense. And then he can make plays in the middle of the field and exploit, you know, what open spaces were left there. And so now it's different. Now it's like, where's Tyler Warren? Okay, we got him. And you're not you're also not playing. You're also not letting them have. Well, there's nobody testing the defense in terms of like deeper routes. So they're sitting on things, you know. So that works to the detriment of Tyler Warren. So none of that is a slight to Tyler Warren. These are just facts. OK, these are just facts. And defensive coordinators around the league have obviously figured this out.
01:18:28
Speaker 1: By the way, Stephen, you grew up in southern Florida, Miami area, right? So you are familiar with hurricanes, right? Not the Miami hurricanes. I mean, the storm hurricanes, right? They start out as a tropical storm, right?
01:18:43
Speaker 3: Been through many of them. Right.
01:18:45
Speaker 1: Tropical storm and then Category 1, and obviously at Category 5 is the worst storm you can have, right?
01:18:50
Speaker 3: Sure.
01:18:51
Speaker 1: When it comes to Daniel Jones and his inability to get footing here, his inability to protect the football, he was better in Pittsburgh, don't get me wrong, but coming off of the injury combined with the past history of Daniel Jones, if Daniel Jones... As a New York Giant being released in the middle of the year as a Category 5 problem, where are we right now? Are we at a tropical storm where something's developing and we don't know when it's going to make landfall? Are we at Category 1, Category 2, or is it simply there's just kind of some cool mist over the waters? How concerning is this?
01:19:29
Speaker 3: Probably somewhere between a category one and two. And I don't want to sound like I'm downplaying it. What I'm saying by characterizing it that way is.
01:19:42
Speaker 3: I think our expectations, well, not ours, but maybe the Colts, the Colts' expectations might have been unfair, to be completely honest with you. I think that's what I'm seeing. So it probably depends on what your expectations were, right, in terms of how you grade the situation currently. I think in retrospect, and we can all learn something from this. It's a reminder for all of us. You know, guys get hurt. They come back. And we, in our minds, are like, oh, he's back. That ain't how it works. And we're seeing it now. He is definitely encumbered by this injury. Yes. It is 1,000%. I saw it week one. I saw it. And I talked about it in my post-game video, in fact, wrap-up. And I said, you know, I'm not sure he's all the way back. And I thought I saw some signs of it then. And then he played in Kansas City. And I was like, well, that was actually pretty good. Maybe he's fine. I think in every other game we have seen it. And I thought Sunday was as great an illustration as any that he looked like a guy coming off an Achilles. Look at him when he's in the pocket. I think his nervousness in the pocket in recent weeks is a direct result of him not trusting his ability to escape. That is one. I think some of his inaccuracy could be a factor, could be, because accuracy starts with your feet. We've talked about this with Anthony Richardson for years. All the torque and all that that goes into every throw, do we assume that that has no bearing after coming off an Achilles tendon? It probably does. I wouldn't know, but one can surmise. And then just when he scrambles, watch him scramble now And then pull up video of him scrambling last year. It's like two different guys. He doesn't have the same explosiveness. So he is a compromised player right now, as you would expect. I think the last thing I would say, training camp, yes. Every day you heard us talk about, look, he looks good. He looks good. What I always reminded people was, look, it's a controlled environment. No one's hitting you. No one's going to hit you. There's no threat of being hit. There's no threat of even being bumped into like happened in London, right? So the situation is not the same, and the quarterback is not stressed to the same degree as they are in the regular season.
01:22:10
Speaker 1: What are they going to do at linebacker?
01:22:11
Speaker 3: I don't know. Are you available? I mean, they might as well play you or me. I'm not joking. It's so bad. Look at Bryce Boettcher, for example. I like Bryce Boettcher. I think he's got a future. But that early touchdown on the throw into the flat to Warren, Jalen Warren, from all indications, that's Bryce Betcher's responsibility. He's late to get there. And boom, touchdown. And so that's the thing with that position is like, first of all, I think all you have to do is look at the fact that they are mixing and matching lineups at linebacker. You've been around the NFL a long time, as have I. I don't ever remember seeing teams do that. You don't rotate linebackers. Right. That's not a thing. It's not a thing. It's like rotating corners. Have you ever seen a team rotate corners? We're going to rotate corners. Why? Who does that? You rotate your defensive line. On defense, generally speaking, everything else is mostly static except maybe like the extra defensive back, that fifth defensive back. Will you have a third linebacker? Those kinds of things.
01:23:24
Speaker 1: The rest of it, come on. Under Bill Pullian, the one thing the Colts did, Bill Pullian was masterful at this. And that is, He knew from a salary cap standpoint that he had elite players that he had to pay, and then they found areas to mask where their bargains were, right? And they hid those. That was the kid they put in right field in Little League. And linebacker, maybe in this form of the NFL, can be that position.
01:23:51
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:23:52
Speaker 1: But that's assuming that you have elite players elsewhere to carry you. And this franchise simply right now does not. And I wish I was not saying that. And I'm not trying to be a hater as the kids say in saying it, it just feels to me to be a fact, but am I off base?
01:24:09
Speaker 3: No, I think that is exactly what Bill Polian did. And he, historically, yes, linebacker is a position you can, for lack of a better word, kind of hide, if you will. But you still have to, when you get into these matchups where they're trying to exploit your weakness, you still have to be able to stand up and handle your business. And they are not right now. And Teams know it. OK, Aaron Rodgers been around the block a couple of times, man. OK, look, for all for all the fun we make of him being 42 or whatever. I mean, and look, he's not the same guy, clearly. But I mean, the one thing he isn't is stupid. OK, he watches the film. He watches a lot of film. OK, and I guarantee you he saw it right away. You noticed that. Did you see Sauce Gardner have to make any plays this week? No, because Aaron Rodgers probably in that offense, they said to themselves, you know what? We don't need to test sauce. Right. We don't even need to throw it to DK.
01:25:14
Speaker 1: Three targets.
01:25:15
Speaker 3: You go over there. Yeah. You go over there and we'll call you if we need you. You know what I mean? Because they had a matchup, and they exploited it all day long. And so, to your point, they don't have the edge rush. They don't have the other guys.
01:25:29
Speaker 1: I don't need to worry about the construction and traffic on Michigan Avenue if Meridian and Keystone are wide open all day long.
01:25:37
Speaker 3: Right? Absolutely.
01:25:38
Speaker 1: Stephen Holder, ESPN.com. We will continue to follow the coverage and interesting stuff on Marvin Harrison Jr. Appreciate it. Certainly talk to you soon, all right? All right. Steven Holder joining us from ESPN.com on the Game Day Men's Health Guest Line. Certainly interesting stuff. All right, Scott Agnes going to join us coming up just about 40 minutes from now. Pacers and Thunder in action tonight. That's in Oak City, 8 o'clock, 7.30 pregame. You can hear it right here. Hey there, how are you? My name is Jake Query, Eddie Garrison, the other voice here on this program. Query and Company on 93.5 and 107.5. The Fan?
01:26:12
Speaker 3: The Fan.
01:26:17
Speaker 1: Eddie, I sent the picture to you. Your thoughts? I see it. The Kroger, what would we call it? Just the Kroger animation shopper?
01:26:26
Speaker 4: The Kroger, yeah. Personal shopper, I guess.
01:26:31
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. Is it the eyes?
01:26:33
Speaker 4: I think it's the combination of the hair and the eyes, yeah.
01:26:39
Speaker 1: Maybe I should just post that out on the X-Post Twitter and just say, am I the only one that thinks this looks like Daniel Jones?
01:26:43
Speaker 4: Maybe you should ask your friend to Do like a side-by-side comparison.
01:26:50
Speaker 1: Somebody else, by the way, says he looks like Briscoe County Junior. I don't know what that is. Hopefully that's not like derogatory since I just read it. Somebody texted that in. Pacers in action tonight. We'll get to that coming up bottom of the hour. We've been talking plenty of Colts today. And I mentioned earlier, and somebody said it would still ruffle feathers, that the time might be here now for Indiana to put names on the back of their jerseys. I'm going to begin this lunch hour as I began the show today. And my apologies for the redundancy of it, but I do think that it is of note. And I will tell the same story that I told earlier. Just as I was on my way in this morning, probably about 20 minutes before we went on the air, this news came about. And And we have, by the way, news in terms of our breaking news sounder that we'll get to later in the program. But I mentioned earlier, and I certainly understand, that on this radio show, you tune in primarily to listen to the Colts or to listen to Pacers coverage, Indiana and Purdue, you know, predominantly that. I am well aware of the fact that racing, in particular the IndyCar series, is... of relevance in Indianapolis more so than any other market, but more so in the month of May and not as much in the other months. But let me, maybe in more abbreviated version than earlier, but let me recount again what I mentioned off the top of the show. I began calling IndyCar races in 2007. As a matter of fact, I was bored on a flight recently and tallied up that I, from an IndyCar standpoint, I've done just over 300 races now. And I think a lot of people probably assume that that means that I grew up going to dirt track racing and racing under lights and all of that growing up. I really did not. I was a huge fan of the Indianapolis 500. And then, through luck and timing, I ended up getting a job with the radio network for IndyCar. And I have been doing so for, I just completed my 20th season. And in that capacity, not only do we do every race for IndyCar, but we also do every race and practice and qualifying session for IndyNext, which was formerly known as IndyLights. And in that time, I have seen some drivers that came through and absolutely dominated. Joseph Newgarden would be one that comes to mind. I've seen other drivers that dominated and we didn't hear from them much after that. Esteban Garrieri comes to mind. There are a lot of different paths that one can take after Indy Lights or now known as Indy Next, which is the final, it's the AAA. It's the final rung of the ladder of the road to Indy. But one of the things that has always inspired me, and there's a lesson to be learned here, I think, even beyond sport, is when you see a driver that has all of the it factors, they are a safe driver, they race clean, they win races, they have a good personality that sponsors like, they're not afraid to promote brands, or they are.
01:30:22
Speaker 1: Good camera guys, or gals, look good on camera. All of those things can factor in. And several years ago, there was a driver like that in Indy Lights that was very competitive and just for whatever reason, every time this driver tried to unlock a door towards a full-time ride in IndyCar, the door just seemed to be locked or jammed or whatever else. And Jack Harvey is one guy that kind of had that path Meyers Schenck Racing, when they decided to get full-time in the IndyCar Series, hired Jack Harvey to be the guy that would help them get their feet wet and go and start out in half-season, doing nine races and kind of incrementally increase each year. And he was the guy that they trusted to be able to do that for them and to drive for them. And he has run the Indy 500. He's told me before that his biggest honor in his career was just qualifying for the Indy 500. He had a, you know, based on a fuel strategy, a year where he was right there running with Steph Wilson 1-2 late in the Indy 500. But the story that I always go back to is when he was still trying to get full-time in IndyCar, and I was at Mid-Ohio in my broadcast position on top of a hill in the keyhole of Mid-Ohio. And all these fans are around and tents and everything else, and I'm up there to broadcast, and I look next to me, and there stands Jack Harvey. who had blazed a path through Indy Lights and won races and been successful and had chances to get full-time in the IndyCar Series, but it had yet to really stick for him.
01:31:59
Speaker 4: Nice job going two for two on Keyhole.
01:32:02
Speaker 1: And thank you. Yeah, that was a challenge this year, right? And I turned around and Jack Harvey was spotting for an Indy Lights driver. He was taking a job that weekend to get in the ear of an Indy Lights driver and just simply tell him, inside, inside, clear, clear, Because that's what he needed to do, to keep himself in the paddock, to keep his name out there, to keep his skill set out there, and to simply let people know, I'm still here. Jack Harvey, who had had success, had the humility, the understanding, the perseverance, the determination to do what he needed to do. Ultimately, he would end up in IndyCar, and now, of course, not only runs the Indianapolis 500-mile race, but he also is one of the chief broadcasters for the Fox television broadcast for IndyCar. Just before we went on today, Jack Harvey posted on social media that he has been diagnosed with cancer. I don't know, nor is it necessarily any of my business, what form of cancer is what stage of cancer, those things are, for the most part, irrelevant. And I wanted simply to take the time, and maybe it's during the most valuable real estate of this program, and if for that fact I'm stepping out of the sport arena to address this in the most coveted time slot, I apologize if that disappoints you. But I thought it was important to, again, just share my thought on this. I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying it's, and it's certainly not a lecture, but just my thought. I saw a lot of people that commented to Jack Harvey and I understand it and I respect it. The natural assumption for people to say, and I'm not saying it's wrong. You got this. You got this. Cancer picked the wrong battle. Can't wait to celebrate your victory. You know, cancer has no idea the strength of who they're facing. You always see those sorts of reactions. And I totally understand it. And it comes from the right place and the right heart for everybody. And I'm not saying it's wrong. And I'm not even necessarily speaking directly to Jack Harvey here. Indirectly. But also to all of you. And maybe myself included. Because we all reach a point in life where we have our own journeys, our own battles. And I think sometimes it's important to simply say, you do you. Do what's best for you. Because you just got levied with a terrifying turn of event in your life. You're not going to let me down. if there are days where you just don't have strength. You're not going to let me down if there are moments in your journey where the cancer looks to be ahead. It's not going to let me down. You're not losing, and no less are you, you got this. You're not going to be not getting it. The reality is this. Certainly, I had a health scare, but it was one that fortunately was like 48 hours. It was not 48 months, not multiple years, none of those things. But the one thing that I learned in that moment was for the first time in my life, I tasted my own vulnerability. I was humbled and scared, and it was in a private moment. that I realized, and it sounds arrogant, but it was rather about comfort. The thing that most upset me was not the razor-thin margin that I managed to, by the grace of God, escape, but it was rather the fact that no longer could I put down on a box in the doctor's office no previous ailment. No longer could I answer something with, nah, I mean, yeah, I've never had any issue at all. I cut my knee when I was in fourth grade, but that's it. I couldn't say that anymore. My body was vulnerable. And my body was, at that point, recovering. And that was a very hard thing for me to grasp. And so I've always felt like when people first find out that their health journey has taken an unexpected turn, that their own insecurity, their own grappling with the reality of a diagnosis I think sometimes can be compounded with the you got this because for me my thought in the back of my mind was but what if I don't what if I don't and I think that when we look at people and they get that news and I'm saying this not to Jack Harvey But to any of you listening that may be going through that sort of a journey or know someone going through that sort of a journey, and I'm not saying what I'm saying is right. Maybe I'm wrong. But it's just my belief that you need to understand and you need to be reassured that the people that love you are not going to love you any less. The people that support you are not going to support you any less if on certain days you don't got this. That's a totally personal thing. for you and only you to emotionally grasp and move forward with. And whatever means, whatever fashion, whatever pace, whatever timing you decide to go about it, you do you. And just simply know that the avenue that you choose is supported. But the vigor in which you go about it is not mandated. That's entirely up to you. And just simply know, and I'm not simply speaking to Jack Harvey, although I am, and I know and like Jack Harvey a great deal. But to any of you, just simply know that there is a community of people and a human nature surrounding you that of course hopes the best for you. And rely on those people to be able to help you through it. But at the same time, rely on them to help you through it at the pace that is best for you. And I certainly wish the best for Jack Harvey. The Pacers in action tonight. The Colts we have discussed a lot. And in talking to Stephen Holder, one thing that I found interesting was that Stephen Holder confirming, at least based on his, and maybe we knew this, but that the Colts did make inquiry about Marvin Harrison Jr., And I thought Stephen made a very interesting point by saying that tells us perhaps even more about where the Colts feel that they are with Alec Pierce. And the question mark of the health status of Alec Pierce. And we haven't talked about it. Literally, I mean, since Alec Pierce... Went on, and he's not on IR. He did go on IR, did he not? I can't remember because I remember there was like a week there, like five days, and then he went on the IR. But he went into the boot. And as we talked about two weeks ago today with Ralph Reif, I thought it was really interesting when we had this epiphany earlier when I was discussing it and the fact that Ralph Reif had basically come on here. We were asking him about, I think, Jaden Daniels or something else. And at the end of the conversation, I said to Ralph Reif, Hey, Ralph, by the way, Alec Pierce is now in a walking boot. What do we know? What do we think? And Ralph Reif was incredibly, without hesitation, vociferous about his concern. Now, again, I want to go back to, for the transparency, Ralph Reif is not the trainer on record for Alec Pierce and has not examined Alec Pierce's injury. But Ralph Reif is one of the foremost leading athletic trainers in the last 40 years in central Indiana, nationwide for that matter, but based in central Indiana. And so he was saying, look, I don't know the specifics on this case, but my expertise, my time would tell me that this is how it appears. The optics would mean this. And what he was saying is the optics would appear. that his injury is a still ongoing recovery that is an unknown timeline. Shortly after Ralph came on with us, I talked to another doctor who's a podiatrist that said, look, Ralph was not kidding when he said there are a lot of people amongst the athletic training community that are wondering what's going on. And that's the Colts' prerogative and Alec Pierce's prerogative. I get that. But considering it had been two weeks ago that we had that conversation and those questions were, you know, presented, it then dawned on me, you know what? We haven't heard from Alec Pierce or anything about it or any update. It's almost like it's gone out of sight, out of mind. You know, it's kind of like in Wolf of Wall Street, Matthew McConaughey, like, it's a fairy dust, right? The knowledge of his foot is just fairy dust. You know? Like, Alec Pierce is literally the discussion of when he's going to come back in Shawshank. He just up and vanished.
01:42:13
Speaker 3: Right?
01:42:15
Speaker 1: We haven't discussed it, and now I'm like, wait a minute. It doesn't even seem at this point, of course I expect that they are working on getting him back, but we don't even hear it mentioned. And then you find out that they're making overtures for Marvin Harrison Jr.? And yes, Marvin Harrison Jr., now that he's going to be in Houston, maybe he does find a new lease on life and C.J. Stroud and the Texans are able to wake him up. But it would almost appear more to me, in Marvin Harrison Jr. 's case... that Marvin Harrison Jr., and I don't think it's the case with Jeremiah Smith, but Marvin Harrison Jr. at Ohio State was so dominant that I think just his natural physical attribute, his size, his strength, I think that caused him, and it's ironic considering his father is Marvin Harrison, But I think it caused him to not get in the habit of precise route running and getting himself open. Because in college, he didn't have to get himself open. He just naturally was open. That's an adjustment. He's not the first wide receiver to fall victim to this.
01:43:30
Speaker 4: Jake, I thought he was a much better route runner in college than I think you're giving him credit for. I just think one of the main differences, like if you look at his frame itself... Look at his frame from when he was at Ohio State compared to now when he got to the Arizona Cardinals and specifically from that senior year of college to his sophomore year. Yes, you expect some added muscle and muscle mass, but like he added what looked like 20 pounds. And so that I think it's negatively affected him. It has negatively affected him in the aspect of his athleticism and his ability to break off routes and get open. So now he's trying to fall back on his 50-50 catch ability.
01:44:10
Speaker 1: So what I'm saying here, Eddie, is this. When you talk about breaking off routes and getting open, I don't know in college that he had to do that because he just was naturally open. He could have been blanketed and he was going to make catches because he was bigger and stronger than whoever was guarding him. And I think in the professional rank, if you were to go back and really look at when he came out of the draft, that was the one thing about him was, is he going to be able to do exactly that through just break out out of route and get himself up? So maybe that's what I mean more with route running. But I think he never had to worry about that at the collegiate level. But either way, we'll see what happens with him in Houston and whether I don't think personally... that he's going to suddenly recapture what we expected of him in being a top five pick. He might be a serviceable player now.
01:45:03
Speaker 4: I think there's a potential somewhere in the between because there's Nico Collins there in Houston to take a little bit of pressure off of him. He's going to a situation where he wasn't drafted to be the first, you know, a fourth overall pick and be the guy that saves a franchise, you know, and sparks an offense like that. He's going there to rejuvenate, revitalize his career. I think the other part we haven't really talked about, and I wonder if this was in the minds of the Colts of just Marvin Harrison Jr., the name, the lore of trying to follow up your dad. It's a prime example of what we've seen with Jizzle James and what Ampere said when we talked to him about that situation a few weeks ago. How much of pressure and stress... has gone onto Marvin Harrison Jr. 's shoulders of trying to follow up in his father's footsteps.
01:45:57
Speaker 1: But I do think, again, and the other question that I had about it, if the Colts, in fact, had inquired about him, and I guess you do your due diligence of inquiring about him, right? But how much of that was the sentimentality of everybody falling in love with the fact of like, we're getting the band back together. You know what I mean? if it was the exact same player, exact same pedigree, exact same statistics, but his father had been a former Cleveland Brown, would they have had the same level of desire or intrigue about him? I don't know the answer to that. But I agree with Stephen in the fact that if, in fact, the Colts had made the overture about him, and I applaud them for not overspending for it. We already have on the defensive side somebody they did it for.
01:46:41
Speaker 3: But if.
01:46:43
Speaker 1: If they staved the temptation, I commend them for it. And maybe you just do your due diligence in general, but I think it is a fair assumption, as Stephen had said, to think that that was motivated by the uncertainty of the availability of Alec Pierce, which is concerning. And especially with this offense and the way they were able to get Tyler Warren going a little bit. And that's good because that can soften up that middle zone of a defense. But teams are basically now just saying, you know what, we're just going to look. Just like Stephen talked about with Sauce Gardner of Aaron Rodgers being able to look at it and say, okay, they might have a shutdown corner over there, but it doesn't matter. Because I can just throw right here towards their linebackers or on the right side and wreak havoc all day long. As I mentioned earlier, if Michigan Avenue, and I don't know if you've driven lately, by the way, on the northwest side of Indianapolis, but what a complete disaster. Like over by Riverside Park and 30th Street. I mean, the orange barrels galore, right? and don't even get me started down by like Lenhurst and all that, but nonetheless, if that quadrant of Indianapolis is shut down due to orange barrels, it doesn't matter if Meridian and Keystone are wide open all day long in Fall Creek. And that's what the Colts' defense looks like, right? Okay, sure. We shut down one lane. Great. Other four, wide open for business. It's the Audubon, baby. And then on the offensive side of things, without that out there for an Alec Pierce, I think defenses are able to just say, well, look, I mean, we can shut down all the lanes because we don't have to worry about anything getting behind us and they don't have anything so far to stretch that out. Speaking of stretch, not a stretch by any stretch, but maybe, pardon the pun there, a tweak of the ankle for Tyrese Halliburton? But he didn't play against Atlanta. It looks like he's good to go tonight in Oklahoma City, but will he play? That's one of the things that we'll discuss. And also just previewing the Pacers and still kind of put a tie on things with the Fever as well with Scott Agnes next. Man, on the text line, you guys are so butthurt over the Colts, you're starting to sound like JMV. Butthurt? Come on, that from Greg.
01:49:01
Speaker 4: Butthurt about what?
01:49:04
Speaker 1: I mean, what is there to be gumdrops and lollipops about? You know what I mean?
01:49:11
Speaker 6: Nothing.
01:49:14
Speaker 1: You lose. This, by the way, before we get to Scott Agnes from Nick, Mr. Garrison. Now, who calls you Mr. Garrison? Is that your dad they're sending this to?
01:49:23
Speaker 4: I guess so.
01:49:25
Speaker 1: I guess so. I consider myself relatively educated, but certainly not in a Jim Irsay upper quartile way. Yet, I've graduated from college well over a decade ago. I've never heard the word vociferous until our friend Jake Query regularly uses it. What say you?
01:49:38
Speaker 4: Vociferous yes i would also agree uh naivete another one.
01:49:45
Speaker 1: Should i replace vociferous with gregarious or loquacious loquacious would perhaps be better but vociferous i think means a little more demonstrative.
01:49:53
Speaker 4: That's how i describe myself loquacious yes okay.
01:49:58
Speaker 1: I i would describe you simply as um let's see uh chubbly and bubbly Okay.
01:50:05
Speaker 4: Here we go again.
01:50:06
Speaker 1: How's that? You're the one that said you're insulated, right?
01:50:09
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no.
01:50:10
Speaker 1: No, you did.
01:50:11
Speaker 3: No, no, no.
01:50:12
Speaker 4: A couple of years ago, we.
01:50:13
Speaker 1: Were doing the show, and I came in, and I said, it is freezing outside. And you said, I wouldn't know. I'm well insulated.
01:50:18
Speaker 4: No, I didn't say that. I said, it was getting chilly outside. And Olivia goes, I'm freezing. I said, oh, no, I think it feels great. She goes, well, you're insulated. That's where that came from.
01:50:29
Speaker 1: So Olivia called you insulated. Yes.
01:50:31
Speaker 3: Yes.
01:50:32
Speaker 1: Would you say it's fair to say that she probably sees you with, say, less clothing than the average person does? Oh, okay, that's enough. So she would have a general idea. That's enough there. Joining us now, and I'm sure thrilled to be doing so based on that introduction, he is with Fieldhouse Files. He's on the Game Day Men's Health guest line. Scott Agnes joining us. Pacers in action tonight in Oklahoma City. Scott, I'm going to get right to this coming off the game with Atlanta. I want you to assess for me your thoughts on kind of the assimilation within this offense of Kelly Oubre, who was kind of a late signing, and I thought kind of a value signing, but I think might have significant role for them. Your assessment early of what you've seen.
01:51:13
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think so.
01:51:14
Speaker 8: I totally agree with all your assessment there in terms of they got Oubre at a value. Look, this was a starter for the Philadelphia 76ers the last couple of years. And obviously he comes here to Indy with the thought of probably being that sixth man and the guy that can fill in in the starting lineup as needed with players being out like we saw in that second round. Preseason game. I love his first of all, just his body attributes, right? Has the size, the strength ability to knock down the outside shot, but also get to the basket helps fill some of that void left behind by Benedict Matherin in many departments. I think he's very grounded and mature now, much different player than when he was here. 10 years ago for his pre-draft workout and really stood out for all the wrong reasons. I think he's going to be a likable guy. And he's a curious and interesting guy in what he likes and what he talks about. That makes for a good quote as well.
01:52:05
Speaker 1: Okay, so elaborate on that. We've seen, I like curious, right? I like people that have interest beyond just what it is that we know about them. So what have you gotten to know about him?
01:52:17
Speaker 8: Yeah, so I mean, just coming in, let's go back first at the beginning, what stood out 10 years ago. It was his arrogance, his cockiness, but he was the youngest guy in the draft field. But he was talking about, I should be a top pick. Everybody should want me. Now, since he's had a family, since he's a dad, all those different things, and he's matured within the league and understands his role, I think that's gone a long ways. But just even whether it's his fashion or I think his calm demeanor, but also how quickly he's He's been appreciated, I think it seems like, by that locker room are a couple things that have stood out to me.
01:52:52
Speaker 1: Scott Agnes is the guest Game Day Men's Health guest line. Game Day Men's Health with six central Indiana locations. Scott, I was very impressed in the game against Atlanta and encouraged. by the pace in which they were still able to play. For a group that hasn't been together for a while and adding some new wrinkles, I thought even with Oubre out there, for example, and I think Oubre even said, like, man, just the ball movement pace in moving it around. Do you believe that that is going to be their mainstay go-to offense? Or as we've talked about with Zubat's in there now, do they kind of hybrid it a little bit?
01:53:34
Speaker 8: I think for the most part, it'll continue to be that with some implementations or maybe specific place in my mind to get Zubats going. Because how often do we saw? We saw this in the past with Miles Turner. You feed him, you get him a couple of shots, and then it translates at both ends. I think it's more incumbent, though, on Zubats to adapt to what has worked here. We know the blueprint for a Tyrese Halliburton-led team and what works and how they move the ball. I love the fact, Jake, They've had 30 plus assists in both of these games. They've moved it well. They played at the pace, even though even in his first game back, Tyrese is like, yeah, I was huffing and puffing out there. And fans need to know that's going to take some time. This is not like a one week thing and he's good. That'll probably take at least a month for many of these guys, but especially Tyrese, who has been out. But no, I think more than anything, they're going to try to keep it. playing at that pace while also acknowledging, hey, let's find some ways to engage Zubats and get him going early in games.
01:54:35
Speaker 1: I also think, for a Halliburton standpoint, Scott, and we've talked a lot about this with Daniel Jones, for example, and that is, even though he looks very good and even though he was given a lot more recovery time than, say, Tatum or other players... There is just naturally going to be the body compensatory movement of just in the back of your mind still waiting out that Achilles, right? And to me, I would think you probably go until Christmas before we can truly understand the pace and the gel that they're going to have. Am I being too cautious? No, I think you are spot on.
01:55:13
Speaker 8: Yeah, Christmas, right at New Year's, I think those are good measurements, milestones for him because he's going to have a lot of checkpoints along the way. Now, what does seem good is the mental aspect is gone in a good way. I got to imagine coming back from this, every step you were thinking about, every cut, you're looking to fall to see how you react. But in turn, Tyrese was joking afterwards that actually it was other players that were checking in on him. Hey, are you good? How'd that feel? Rather than him like, yeah, guys, I'm good. So more than anything, I think it's those physical limitations and him trying to reassert himself within the flow of things without breaking things up. And I'm very curious to that point, what Nembhard's... I think Nembhard could have some more of a hybrid role in that, look, he can shoulder a lot of the load, but also he can go back to playing that off-guard spot. So I'm really intrigued with that and maybe Nembhard in that second unit as well.
01:56:09
Speaker 1: Who do you think is the Pacers' most versatile player?
01:56:15
Speaker 6: First instinct is Siakam.
01:56:16
Speaker 1: Okay. Nembhard's got to be in the discussion, right? Because you can put him in different places.
01:56:22
Speaker 6: Especially his defense, right? Toppin?
01:56:26
Speaker 1: I mean... I guess when I say versatile, I mean that you can put at, like, it's positionless basketball, Scott, I realize. But if you go typically one, two, three, four, five, the guy that you can put in in the most different position, Toppin, you kind of can put anywhere, right?
01:56:40
Speaker 8: Probably, to me, it's Siakam, Nembhard, and Jairus Walker, right? They can defend different positions. They have the size.
01:56:46
Speaker 6: Yes, they can handle it.
01:56:47
Speaker 8: Like, Jairus Walker was a point guard way back in the day. He can handle the ball. Now, you have better players that can handle it. But Nembhard's right there, too.
01:56:54
Speaker 6: That's a good one.
01:56:55
Speaker 1: Walker is one that I'm just fascinated. We said it last year was a big year for him. But now is the bigger, bigger year. You know what I mean? But before we let you go, Scott, I do want to touch on the fever. I mean, now that the dust has kind of settled, we've seen all of the exit interviews. We've seen Kaitlyn Clark for the first time really come out and just kind of say, guys, I get it. There's a lot of noise here. And I think she recognized that it was becoming a distraction for her teammates. Where did the fever go from here in terms of, for example, is Sophie Cunningham back? Do we have a better understanding as to how they may look next year? Kelsey Mitchell as well.
01:57:35
Speaker 6: I don't think so.
01:57:36
Speaker 8: I think right now we're just sitting back and waiting as the front office and ownership reassesses this situation, right? Like the fact that things did not go well. You didn't win a playoff series. You mostly had good health for the top heavy players, which matters. I think the number one thing Looking forward to next year that I'm also interested in is what does Aaliyah Boston decide on that knee?
01:57:58
Speaker 6: It bothered her all season. Does she need it scoped? Does she time off?
01:58:02
Speaker 8: Whatever it is, that needs to be addressed so that it is no issue going into next season. But outside of that, you're really several months... away from addressing the roster and figuring out what you have. And are you going to have a chance to retain Kelsey Mitchell? My thing with her, I totally understand her position.
01:58:21
Speaker 4: Right.
01:58:22
Speaker 6: She's the she's the high school kid.
01:58:24
Speaker 8: Or excuse me, maybe the college kid that can go back and enjoy recruitment once again. Free agent could choose for the first time now to go somewhere else, though she doesn't have to.
01:58:34
Speaker 6: They're obviously going to make a competitive offer.
01:58:37
Speaker 8: That has been made clear by Kaitlyn Clark as well as Amber Cox. With Sophie Cunningham, there's a lot of good reasons to keep her back. I just wonder, from a coaching and front office standpoint, if with her being outspoken and willing to share her mind, did that have too much of a distraction, in their opinion, to bring her back? From a basketball standpoint, if we're strictly talking that, Jake, I think it's a no-brainer. She's close with several key players. She's one of the most vocal players on the court, and I think that's really important. Keeps everyone aligned and engaged. It's just that noise, was it too much off the court?
01:59:12
Speaker 1: That noise will absolutely be discussed. I can assure you of that. Now, whether that becomes... That tips the scales, I don't know, but it will absolutely be discussed.
01:59:22
Speaker 6: Scott, who's winning the WNBA finals?
01:59:23
Speaker 8: The other thing I want to say on Sophie, sorry, Eddie, is she mentioned and emphasized before this past season she really wants a stable situation in terms of contract. So maybe the Fever are willing to do a one-year contract hypothetically, but she could get a two- or three-year deal somewhere else. I think that sounds like something she's prioritizing.
01:59:41
Speaker 4: Scott, the WNBA finals start on Saturday. Who you got, Valkyries or the Atlanta Dreams?
01:59:48
Speaker 8: To me, I want to say the Valkyries, but I think the Dream just have way more talent, way more athleticism, way more overall talent that will get it done. The Valkyries, to me, are a curious case. Just year two, right, Eddie? But at the same time, here they are in the finals, and they're the more fundamentally united team in all this. But I think talent wins out for the Dream.
02:00:08
Speaker 3: What about you?
02:00:10
Speaker 4: I go with Valkyries. I think the defense gets it done.
02:00:13
Speaker 3: I go with the.
02:00:13
Speaker 1: Valkyries just because they've been the better team all season, right? I mean, have they not been the best team all year?
02:00:19
Speaker 4: I also don't see Atlanta going into Golden State and stealing a game.
02:00:22
Speaker 1: Then again, the Dodgers have been– well, the Brewers have been better probably. The Dodgers have been the best team for a while, and they're down 2-0, which is cool with me, but different sports.
02:00:29
Speaker 8: The Valkyries have the greatest home court right now, the largest attendance. I think they've sold out every game that they've played. So you're exactly right, Jake. It is not easy to go there into Golden State.
02:00:38
Speaker 1: Scott Agnes, Fieldhouse Files. We'll have all of the Pacers and Fever coverage for you at FieldhouseFiles.com. Scott, appreciate the time as always.
02:00:45
Speaker 6: You got it.
02:00:45
Speaker 4: Thanks, guys.
02:00:46
Speaker 1: Scott Agnes joining us. By the way, Eddie, this just in, do you happen to have the Breaking News Sounder? For the first time in show history, the Breaking News Sounder now has a sponsor. It is the Gandalf Financial Services Breaking News Sounder. Gandalf Financial Services began in June of 1997, serving Central Indiana for 30 years, an independent LPL investment advisor representative since 2009. Folks, whatever it is that you're talking about, whether you're doing retirement planning, estate planning, life insurance, college funding, all of it, Gandalf Financial Services is there for you, helping businesses establish and maintain employee-sponsored retirement plan visits to employee retention. A personal touch on all of it. Look forward to telling you all about Gandalf over the course of the season here with each time that we do the Breaking News Sounder. Like, just for example... Eddie, I want you to name for me off the top of your head a sport. Name any sport.
02:01:48
Speaker 6: Golf.
02:01:49
Speaker 1: Golf. Okay. Here we go. Funny you mention. Do you happen to have the breaking news sounder? This just in from the world of golf in the Gandalf Financial Services breaking news sounder. Gandalf Financial Services, by the way, FINRA slash SIPC. I've got to figure out how we say those acronyms. Securities offered through LPL Financial. Yesterday in golf, I golfed with my high school principal and with Scott Agnes had him as well.
02:02:20
Speaker 3: Dr.
02:02:20
Speaker 4: Eugene White.
02:02:21
Speaker 1: What's that?
02:02:21
Speaker 3: Dr.
02:02:21
Speaker 1: Eugene White.
02:02:22
Speaker 2: Dr.
02:02:22
Speaker 1: Eugene White. And then Rob Hendricks, who taught me in radio and television at WJEL, both of my golf with them. And look, laugh at me all you want, folks. I don't care. I've only been golfing for three years, not even that totally. My third summer of golf, and I shot a 91. And I'm the class of 91 from those guys. Yesterday, I shot a 91 and 18 with them. I was pleased with that. But anyway, very, very happy to have and appreciative of Gandalf Financial Services for being the breaking news sounder sponsor. JMV, we will check in with him and find out what he's got cooking for his program. Part of, of course, the crossover from Love Heating and Air, love-hvac.com. We'll do it next. JMV has arrived. Crossover brought to you by the good guys at Love Heating and Air. Man, it is perfect outside right now. Perfect, buddy, perfect. But tomorrow you might have to... It's going to be wet tomorrow, I think. But nonetheless. I saw Friday, 57.
02:03:12
Speaker 2: Is it going to get down to 38 on the weekend, too?
02:03:16
Speaker 1: Do you remember back in the day, this used to always be the weekend, that even when Indiana football was terrible, they would always get an ABC game because they would do the aerials. Oh, yeah.
02:03:27
Speaker 2: It was always a good time down there, even when they were getting their ass whooped.
02:03:30
Speaker 1: Which was most of the time, right?
02:03:33
Speaker 4: It would be a picture game for IU on Saturday normally, right?
02:03:37
Speaker 2: How many Ohio State-IU games have you attended in your existence?
02:03:41
Speaker 1: If I had to guess, I would say 10. Three for me, I think.
02:03:45
Speaker 3: Three.
02:03:46
Speaker 2: There was one time I was in the elevator with John Cooper's daughter who was absolutely smokedified. A little nervous for you? I could barely function afterwards. I mean, smokedified. His daughter was smoke. Dave Wanstead's daughter, once upon a time, he was there. Yeah, she looked good, too. But, man, John Cooper's lobe.
02:04:08
Speaker 1: Tom Green's daughter's attractive.
02:04:10
Speaker 3: Yep.
02:04:11
Speaker 1: But what else?
02:04:12
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
02:04:13
Speaker 2: I go back to, I think, 87 is when it was. Jim Carzados was quarterback. Chris Carter was the wide receiver.
02:04:19
Speaker 1: Was that the darkest day in Ohio State history?
02:04:22
Speaker 3: No.
02:04:22
Speaker 1: Then it was after that. Maybe it was 86. Because they were in Columbus, right? It was 86.
02:04:27
Speaker 2: Well, I know Chris Carter caught a touchdown pass and did the Pee Wee Herman in the end zone. and spiked it, and it came over to me because they used to have that chain-link fence.
02:04:36
Speaker 1: That's right.
02:04:37
Speaker 2: And I was on the other side of the chain-link fence, and it bounced over.
02:04:40
Speaker 1: Did you get to keep it? I did not. I had to give it back. Of course, nobody's keeping anything. They had to give it back.
02:04:45
Speaker 2: But we had a hellaciously awesome party down in Greene County later on that night, too.
02:04:49
Speaker 1: Just based on the fact you got the football.
02:04:50
Speaker 6: I remember all that. I was getting out on it.
02:04:52
Speaker 1: Chris Carter probably would have showed up for the party, actually. He probably would have, too.
02:04:55
Speaker 2: But, yeah, Jim Carzados was the quarterback, and Eric, remember Eric Kummerow, who was the linebacker, highly touted, never really– Keith Byers had been on that team? He might have been on that team. Keith Byers may have been. They were pretty stacked.
02:05:12
Speaker 1: What's on the big program today?
02:05:14
Speaker 2: Mark Kerman's going to join us. We'll talk both Boilermakers and Colts with Mark. I know Greg's going to be here. Hell, I don't know what else we're doing.
02:05:23
Speaker 1: John, I'm telling you, don't look now. I'm not saying that they're– but I think Purdue's kind of turning a corner here. I hope so.
02:05:31
Speaker 2: You seem like you have a pretty decent relationship with Barry O.
02:05:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's been cool, right?
02:05:35
Speaker 3: Hopefully, yeah.
02:05:36
Speaker 2: I mean, he understands what goes on. And then one of these days, if he goes big, he'll ignore us like everybody else does.
02:05:43
Speaker 1: You ever notice?
02:05:44
Speaker 6: That's how that goes.
02:05:45
Speaker 1: That's right.
02:05:45
Speaker 2: Except we always have to give credit to Matt Conte. Matt Conte, when lose or draw, is always right there. And Matt Painter, too. Matt Painter will come on. But yeah, everybody else can kind of... Stick it up the rear as far as I'm concerned.
02:05:58
Speaker 3: All right.
02:05:59
Speaker 1: John's up at three. Thanks for listening to Aquarian Company.
Speaker 1: We've got a loaded one to get to today. There's a ton to unpack. A lot to discuss. A lot to reflect upon. For example, what happened last night in what was a fabulous Monday Night Football game. And we'll get more into this later. It has nothing to do with Indianapolis sports. And I realize that our job is to talk about Indianapolis sports. But last night, to me.
00:00:27
Speaker 1: Confirmed what I have thought for quite some time. And I guess Dan Fouts would be the outlier here of what I'm about to say. But there are certain quarterbacks that when you watch them, you say to yourself, there is just no way they're not going to eventually get a Super Bowl. And Josh Allen is that player. Josh Allen is.
00:00:51
Speaker 1: I think and I admit that I took for granted I'm here to admit it right now. I covered Peyton Manning's era in Indianapolis for the totality of it. And for that matter, Andrew Lux as well. But Peyton Manning in particular, I took it for granted. The consistent greatness that I saw from game in to game out, because like all of us here, it just became a fait accompli and an automatic. Now they're going to win 13 games, 14 games. And you knew in any game that you had a chance to win the game because Peyton Manning was your quarterback. Now, in the early years, there were a lot of years where you're like, oh man, they're going to turn it over because Peyton Manning's a quarterback. But Josh Allen last night, he just looks so, and I know this isn't the case, but he looks so effortless. But it just goes to show how critically important that position is and how, and Buffalo has good players, don't get me wrong, but how when you have that position nailed down, You can interchange. Remember when, you know, there are guys they've lost and it was like, oh man, it's going to be huge for Buffalo. That's a big loss for them. And not really because they have the guy under center that makes everything run. And I want to get into that a little bit today. And I want to get into, you know, Eddie's got on his, why not Indiana t-shirt, which is awesome. Pacers in action tonight, back in Oklahoma city. And, you know, I want to get into the Pacers, a little college discussion as well. And tomorrow, a reminder, I will be at Rally House on Southport Road doing the show from 10 until 1. Look forward to seeing all of you out there. Again, this time slot is one that I don't get out a lot in terms of doing remotes and that sort of a thing. And I understand that. So I don't get the chance to interact with a lot of you the way that in other time slots that I've done have facilitated. And I really look forward to it tomorrow. We'll have, again, your chance for a $ 50 gift card from Rally House. I mean, no matter what team you're rooting for locally, they've got merchandise there. They've got t-shirts. They've got key chains. You name it. They have everything at Rally House. It's great. So I look forward to being there tomorrow in Southport. But I want to begin the show today with something that I did not think I would begin the show today with. And I understand that it involves someone in the world of sport that many of you may not be overly familiar with. And it involves a sport that many of you may not be overly familiar with. But I'll begin by telling it with just a little anecdote. In the time that I have been doing auto racing play-by-play, it's kind of happened by happenstance. I don't need to go into the details of it, but I think that a lot of people assume that because I have done, it's been now 20 years, IndyCar racing broadcasting, that that means that I grew up going to dirt tracks and being around racing my entire childhood. Not totally the case, the Indy 500 for certain. But I began in 2007 calling races for the radio network. And in that capacity, a lot of people may not realize, not only do we call every race for the IndyCar series, but we also call every practice, every session for IndyNext, formerly known as Indy Lights. which is essentially the AAA, the final ladder, the final rung, if you will, of the road to Indy ladder. And in that, again, capacity, I've seen a number of drivers that have come through, some of which made it to IndyCar, some of which never got there, some of which then went to Europe or elsewhere. And you always see the pattern of what allows a driver to get to the top. Sometimes they're so talented, there's no question that it's going to happen. Pata O'Ward would come to mind in that regard. Certainly Colton Hurta was pretty dominant coming up through the ranks, and there was no doubt what was going to happen. Other drivers have a mix of the personality, the skill, and the determination. I remember, and I don't remember the exact year, But Jack Harvey had been in Indy Lights for a couple of years, I think two seasons. And he had opportunity to run in the IndyCar series. And actually, it was Michael Schenck that gave him his first full-time opportunity with Meyers Schenck. He was kind of their guy to help Meyers Schenck Racing get their feet wet and get in, going from like seven races in a year to like a half season and then a full season. But I recall one time being at Mid-Ohio for an IndyCar race, and I'm up there on the Keyhole Hill, just up there with all the campers and everything else, to call the action. And standing next to me was Jack Harvey, who at that point had already had IndyCar starts and was involved in the IndyCar series and was still trying to find his footing full-time in the series. And, you know, hey, man, what's going on? And so we're standing there talking, and I'd gotten to know him, obviously, being around him and covering him. And he didn't have, at that time, anything full-time going within IndyCar, so he was doing what he could by spotting for drivers in the Indy Lights Series. He was going to racetracks and putting on headsets and coaching and guiding younger drivers in the final rung of the IndyCar Series ladder to keep his name and face around to stay in the mix. And a super personable guy, a very nice looking guy. I'll even say it. I mean, he has two of the most naturally like mesmerizing eyes I've ever seen. Like the guy's a good looking guy. Okay. All of that is irrelevant except for to say that he had this combination that would lead him obviously to become a personality and ultimately on television with Fox within the IndyCar series. But I think that moment of being up on the hill, showed not just a humility from Jack Harvey, but also just a desire to do what needed to be done. And the guy clearly has no ego, but was like, you know what? This is what I've got to do in this moment. Jack Harvey announced earlier today, of course, he is a television commentator for Fox on IndyCar. He also is scheduled to run the upcoming Indianapolis 500 mile race once again. And he announced earlier today, that he has been diagnosed with cancer. Now, I don't know what form. I don't know what stage. I don't know the relevance of those two things at this point. I know that as a young, healthy, and vibrant guy, person in general, I can only imagine what that does to one psychologically. And I know that the natural, and there's no wrong reaction here. I'm not condemning anybody. There's no wrong reaction. But, and I'm going to speak not necessarily directly to Jack Harvey here, but rather just the way that I've always felt about this to any of you that are going through a medical journey. I saw a lot of responses from people that were like, cancer's got no chance. It picked the wrong guy. You got this. Boy, I believe in how strong you can fight. And I understand all of those things come from the right place. I get it. But I remember, and it wasn't instantaneous, but I remember when I had my own health scare, and it was not a long-term thing, obviously. But I remember once in a private moment, sitting there and all of a sudden feeling this overwhelming sentiment of vulnerability. And I remember thinking to myself, the devastation of knowing that no longer could I check the box on a medical application that says, I have no ailments. I no longer could say to the doctor, like, yeah, listen, trust me, I've never had any medical issue at all. I could no longer say that. And that was a both humbling and terrifying experience. And it took me a long time to grapple with that. That was the hardest thing for me. Maybe that's ego, but I think more so it's comfort. Because I realized that my comfort zone had been interrupted. The reason I say that is because when you hear about, and again, I'm not speaking directly to Jack Harvey here, but for any of you, any of you that are going through, which is the vast majority of us in some way, right? some sort of a medical battle. You do you. You do what's best for you. You fight at the pace that you want to fight. You fight with the vigor that you want to fight. And on the days when your body or your mind tell you that they need to take the day off, You're not letting people down because they told you you got this. In those moments and with that vulnerability, it is impossible to know how one reacts to it. There is no more personal journey and personal battle that one goes through than that of their own health and the challenges that comes that way of it. And it becomes a very personal thing, but the last thing that I think anyone should feel or want, and I'm not speaking to Jack Harvey, but to rather any of you going through this, just my own personal thought, is the pressure of feeling like in fact you would be letting someone down if there are days where you feel like in fact you don't got this. That's the reality of it. It's like anything else in life. Some days you have great qualifying runs, and some days for whatever reason, the car just doesn't respond. It doesn't change the ability of the driver. It doesn't change the acumen of the driver, nor does it change the desire of the driver to win. So no matter what your ailment, I would simply say to you as I would to Jack Harvey, you do you. Know that there are a legion of people that are pulling for you, that are supporting you, that would in all means and aspects have the hope, aspiration, and wish for you for everything to turn out well. But at the same time, there are going to be understanding of the fact that on the days when you're not fighting as hard, that's okay too. And it does not in any way, shape, or form change you or change us. And that's what I've always felt about that. In the case of Jack Harvey, I think that moment on the hill shows that he is someone that is always willing to do what it takes to get where he wants to be. And like those people on the hill that surrounded that landscape that day, there are tons of people around that are cheering and that are hoping, but at the same time will be there regardless of whether that ride opens up an IndyCar or you are working as a spotter on the hill. You're still the same dude. And that's my feeling on that. I certainly hope and wish the best for Jack Harvey and any of you. Eddie, last night, did you get a chance to watch The game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Buffalo Bills.
00:12:51
Speaker 4: I sure did.
00:12:55
Speaker 1: As I was watching that, I couldn't help but think this. That was a great game. It was a fabulous football game. And it is easy to forget, and there's really no point in dwelling on the fact that there were reports, not concrete reports, not himself saying it outright, but there was word or insinuation that Matthew Stafford, when he was in Detroit, and it was apparently inevitable that his relationship was coming to an end with the Detroit Lions, that Matthew Stafford had interest in Indianapolis. And if you recall... And I don't want to falsely attribute, in case I have this incorrect, so I will not say the name, but there was one person within the local market that we know very well that covers the Colts that I think either had reported or insinuated that at that time Chris Ballard was not keen on Matthew Stafford because Stafford had been in Detroit and they hadn't won anything. And when Stafford was a possibility, now you had to trade for him and give up a lot, don't get me wrong, but if Indianapolis was supposedly five years ago a franchise in which Stafford had interest, and you didn't do everything you could to push in and acquire him, and maybe the Colts did. We don't know. Maybe they did, and they didn't have enough pieces. That's possible. But it does make you wonder, because watching that game last night, what you saw were two teams that are evidence to the fact that the, and we say this all the time, clearly, But the most important position in professional sports is the quarterback of an NFL team. Being an ace pitcher is fabulous. Being a top shooting guard is fabulous. Those are very important things. A 3 and D guy in the NBA now is a very important piece. But there is no more important position than the quarterback of a National Football League team. And when you have one that moves with the fluidity, the effortless, and I know it's not effortless, but it certainly looks that way. the vision, and the overall abilities of Josh Allen and Matthew Stafford. But Stafford's obviously a little longer in the tooth now. Josh Allen right now is absolutely undoubtedly in his prime. And that is a joy to watch. His ability, the proper touch on the football. Now, he tests his arm strength a little much and puts them in bad positions with turnovers from time to time. No questions. but his ability to run. I mean, he is a gazelle in the open field. To extend plays. They won that game last night. Josh Allen willed them to win last night because his talent was such, as I always say, sometimes there are athletes that are so great that the moments find them. The moments find them. You look back and you say, boy... Didn't it just stand to reason that when all of a sudden that game was on the line, it was Reggie Miller that hit the big, it was Tyrese Halliburton that hit the big, it was Peyton Manning that made the big drive. It was the great moments find the great players. And that's because great players don't shy away from it when everybody else might tense a little bit. What you are seeing right now in Buffalo is a guy that the great moments are finding him because he is in a comfort level with his style of play and the way that he can do things and operate things and audible and run and do all of those things. that he has found a comfort level when everyone else kind of tenses up, and that allows his game to then shine that extra 2%. And 2% is more than just milk. Sometimes it's the difference in a game. The Colts right now, Eddie, we need to have the discussion. And I'm not hedging on it because I said three weeks ago my big declaration. And I think Daniel Jones has a skill set that he, I like his skill set. I think he has, I think he's a good player. And I think that he, when I say it this way, and sometimes, sometimes this, I get victimized by this. We all do. Where I'll say something on this show, and if you just snip it, the wrong, I'm not saying you, Eddie, I'm saying in general, a person snippets the wrong thing and doesn't let the entire soundbite play out, you don't get the other half of the story, and that's kind of true of a lot of media stuff in general, right? And you're like, well, wait, so what I'm about to say, if you just take the little snippet of it, it's going to be like, this guy in Indianapolis is an absolute idiot. There are a lot of reasons for that, but this is not it. If I were to say to you, Daniel Jones can be Josh Allen-like, Now, if I just say it that way, people are like, what in the world is this guy talking about? For example, Diet Dr. Pepper tastes exactly like Dr. Pepper. Have you noticed this?
00:18:03
Speaker 4: You know what I should do, Jake? I should just take that clip of you just now saying that and see what it does on social media.
00:18:08
Speaker 1: No, because people are going to think it's serious and I don't want to go there.
00:18:13
Speaker 4: But you and I and the listeners of this radio program know that it's not serious.
00:18:16
Speaker 1: Okay, what I'm saying is this. Diet Dr. Pepper is the diet soft drink that tastes the most like that that it's the diet version of, right? Thank you. There are other diet soft drinks that don't really taste a lot like what their parent version is. Diet Pepsi doesn't taste a lot like Pepsi, in my opinion, right? But when you drink it, you know that you're getting somewhat supposedly what Pepsi is. Daniel Jones is not Diet Dr. Pepper to Josh Allen. That's not what I'm saying. But his skill set does resemble what it is out of a quarterback like Allen that you're looking for just on a smaller scale. But that's assuming he is healthy. I think we can say now, and I don't know how long it takes to come back if it does, but what I think we can now safely say and assume is that Josh Allen and everything that he does, there are very few things he does that Daniel Jones doesn't have the capability of doing in doses. And that's why a year ago I really liked him. Because when he was rolling and he was in groove, he had two things that made him very viable and successful a year ago prior to when Pitt got him rattled he could throw the ball in space and in tight windows he had pretty good timing with that and he could run he could run I'm not saying by design run, but the play breaks down, he could get out of the pocket, he could get around the corner, and he could make space and run. Since the injury, and two things came into play. Number one, Pittsburgh threw the kitchen sink at him a year ago, and it did have his head on a swivel, and for the first time, the the fumble Ruski or the bad decision-making that had plagued him in New York came about, but we were, we mentioned it, but we were overshadowed. We forgot about it because we had the immediate excuse of, well, but he got hurt. He got hurt. And that injury may have prevented us from seeing the real Daniel Jones. And that's my concern. is what we saw when they were 8-2, was that the smoke and mirrors? And the real one is what we're seeing now. And in addition to that, can he not or will he not be able to get back to the full form of what his arsenal is based on the Achilles injury, and does he not have that burst? We've seen him run a little bit when the plays are breaking down, but it doesn't seem like he has the stride or just the speed within the stride like he had a year ago prior to the injury. And I don't know, by science it would say, and by precedent medically speaking, I'm not a doctor, it would say that he still is not past the window or out of the window of when that Achilles is still strengthening itself. But if this is, if the governor is now on the accelerator and this is the most you get, then I think we have to basically come to accept that Daniel Jones and part of his arsenal is taken away. And if it is very best, he was a potential Josh Allen light. And by that, I mean an 80% version thereof. But if that was his ceiling, now all of a sudden you've got to reprogram the way you're operating because you have a huge portion of his game and his threat that is taken away, and now you're basically looking at a pocket passer with a little bit of side-to-side flexibility, but not necessarily what he had when they were off to an 8-2 start. And when you said that you just wanted to basically hit the pause button on the movie from a year ago when he was hurt and now unpause it, there are just too many plot holes that have yet to be addressed. And that's my concern. And Eddie, I don't know. I mean, maybe part of it is he is still rounding form in terms of his health. And maybe part of it is that we were fooled. I don't know which it is. But we're probably going to find out here. And then you get into what do you do if this season progresses where it is right now, what do you do moving forward with him because you have him under contract for next year for a pretty big ticket, right?
00:23:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm just trying to think, Jake, trying to make a comparison here. Like, who would you say, at least currently, is like a serviceable point guard.
00:23:23
Speaker 1: In the NBA?
00:23:25
Speaker 4: A guy that you're like, yeah, okay, yeah, he's a solid starter.
00:23:31
Speaker 1: Boy, that's good. In terms of in his prime or older?
00:23:38
Speaker 4: Any time in his career. He's a solid point guard.
00:23:42
Speaker 1: Jeff Teague. Okay, Darius Garland.
00:23:44
Speaker 4: Darius Garland, sure, yeah. Darius Garland, solid point guard. You know, there's a night or two where he can carry the load and get you a win.
00:23:51
Speaker 1: And you had to determine at one point is the Clippers right now are having to determine, right? Right. Do they– is this you build around guy or is this transitional? Right.
00:24:01
Speaker 4: But he's not, you know, Cade Cunningham, Luka Doncic. And, like, to make the– James Harden. And to compare it to Daniel Jones, I think people are just wanting to see him, especially with no Alec Pearce. try to elevate his game into the category of being a Jamal Murray, a Stefan Castle, a guy that, you know, can rise up whenever there's an opportunity to do so. but instead he is just the same old Jeff Teague or Darius Garland type of player, and it's okay. You just have to have the right pieces and the right system around you, and with the current way that the Colts have to play and with their current roster construction, they can't win the way that they should be. And that's solid defense, being able to run the football. And because there's no Alec Pierce, you have to kind of have these long drives where it's eight to 12 plays. You're not getting any explosive plays out of them right now. And so it's just a bad recipe until they can get Alec Pierce back because there's no answer to finding someone who can win downfield or threaten the defense down the field.
00:25:15
Speaker 1: And, and, Here's the other thing, Eddie. The roster may just not be that great. You know, if you have a quarterback that is not at 100%, you can offset that sometimes. If you have, you can mask it with a great roster. I hope I'm wrong in this, and I want to be wrong in this, and I may well be wrong in this. But I am beginning to think That a year ago, we were all fooled. I think Carly Ursa Gordon might have been fooled. I think Chris Ballard might have been fooled. I think Shane Steichen might have been fooled. And that doesn't make them fools. Because I think we might have been fooled right with them. And there were just, everything was going their way. And now all of a sudden that it's not, it's a tough thing to get the blueprints out there. And I don't know how you get out of that. But that's one of the things that we will continue to discuss. When we come back, I will take a bit of a pause on the Colts conversation, by the way. Stephen Holder is going to join us coming up at 1130. We'll get plenty more into it coming up at the top of the 11 o'clock hour. And it is our Game Day Men's Health Games of the Week. So you get your pen and paper right now. You can write it down. And I'm laying it out for you when every game is going to air this week that you want to watch in all of the sports for the calendar of the week. We'll do that coming up. in just under 20 minutes. But when we come back, there is a question I've had regarding Indiana basketball that I've fought forever. I've fought forever. But I think the time is now.
00:26:54
Speaker 3: We'll explain.
00:26:57
Speaker 1: So over the weekend, I was at Hinkle Fieldhouse to watch Butler in Indiana. And open disclaimer, although I think most know this, I grew up, a diehard Indiana fan. Diehard Indiana fan. There's a picture of me in the Eastwood Middle School yearbook in 1985 wearing a Purdue t-shirt as part of a prank for like Spirit Week because I was known as the Purdue hater and the IU guy. Like 90% of people that hate IU that I grew up with hate them because of me. I was that guy. And one of the things that, and by the way, I really enjoy Purdue now. And when I covered them, when I began working at channel six and I was on the beat and it was basically Katie and Tiller, I found them to just be fabulous people and a great department. And I've always enjoyed going up there and covering Purdue now, but I can still recall Eddie, if you could please give me a year off the top of your head, like from somewhere in the eighties, just to, Top.
00:28:04
Speaker 4: Of your head.
00:28:06
Speaker 1: A year in the 80s?
00:28:08
Speaker 3: Yeah. 87.
00:28:09
Speaker 1: 1987. 1987's senior class for Indiana would have been Steve Alford, Daryl Thomas, and Todd Meyer. Their freshman class included Tony Freeman, who was a point guard from St. Joseph's High School in Westchester, Illinois, and David Miner, who was a small forward from Withrow High School in Cincinnati, which is where Ricky Calloway had played. And those two players... you had anticipation, right, of what's going to happen. And next year, Jay Edwards and Lyndon Jones are going to be here, and we'll see if Michael Boykin ever makes his way from junior college and on and on and on. And Mark Robinson and Chucky White, his junior college transfer is coming next year. And in 87, they had, of course, the junior college transfers of Keith Smart and Dean Garrett. But no matter what team you polled for, no matter who you followed, You knew back in those days, back in my day, the way we used to do it is the kids stayed around for four years. And so you knew Antoine Joubert was entering his sixth year and you knew, gosh, you know, how good is Illinois going to be once Ephraim Winters and Doug Altenberger are upperclassmen? And man, Scott Skiles is a really good player. And One of the Vincent brothers was just there too, and they were so good to watch for four years. And Granville Waiters, man, he looked like he was 30 when he was 18, but he turned into a nice player for Ohio State. And that's just how it was. And the one thing about Indiana, when I was an Indiana fan, was Indiana was different. Indiana basketball was different. And I don't mean just because they won three national championships in an 11-year span. I don't mean because they had a coach that was the most polarizing, colorful, and without question famous sport coach, let alone basketball coach, in the United States during his pinnacle years in Indiana. I don't mean that that's what made them different. I mean there was a simplicity to it. Notre Dame, when I first went to a game in South Bend, I had an appreciation for the fact that when I went there, I could witness and see the simplicity of Notre Dame. Not a lot of glitz and glamour, fairly basic field, the hash marks in the end zone that signify the year in which Notre Dame began as a university, and the helmets that represent the Dome. That's about it. And when I would watch Indiana games as a kid, I remember two things. Obviously, Martha the Mop Lady, but the WTTV banner, and the CBS Sports banner when you were really good and it was exciting because they were on national television. And that was it. And I remember the thing about Indiana that made it different was for Indiana, the program itself, the legacy and the style of play itself, the banners and the trophies and the accomplishments themselves is what sold you. They didn't need fancy music during warm-ups. They didn't need signage and advertising all over the place. They didn't need a big, fancy video board with lights and all kinds of strobing lights with the lights go down during introductions. They didn't need that. And they didn't need a big, bellowing, boisterous, hip, DJ, they simply needed at Forward for Indiana, he's a 6'6 sophomore from Cincinnati, Ohio, number 20, Ricky Calloway. That was it, Chuck Crabb. There was a simplicity to Indiana that made it different because Indiana didn't need all of the bells and whistles. They didn't need all the options on the car because they had the one that ran on the interstate better than anybody else says it was. That's all gone now. It's all gone. Indiana now, after 20 plus years of futility by Indiana standards, has become for an entire generation just another program. It's no longer unique. It's no longer different. There's nothing wrong with that. That's the evolution of time. I understand it. But during a time when Indiana could hang its hat on being unique and being different because the ends justified the means and the hardware made up for the glistenware or lack thereof. None of that's applicable anymore. And the one thing about Indiana, the one thing about Indiana that made it unique and still to this day does, They're not the only one with this case. But they always kind of followed the Herb Brooks mantra in 1980 of the U.S. Olympic hockey team. When you pull on that jersey, you represent yourself and your teammates.
00:33:37
Speaker 2: And a name on the front is a hell of a lot more important than the one on the back.
00:33:41
Speaker 1: Get that through your head. That's how it's been in Indiana forever. And I liked it. I'm down for it. Candy striped pants and no names on the back of the jersey. But you know what? I went to that game at Hinkle Fieldhouse, and I saw Indiana warming up, and they had on the candy stripes, and it felt nostalgic to me. And I thought, here we go. And Darren DeVries, I think, is a good coach. Is he an elite coach? I don't know that yet. I think he's a good coach. And they have good players, and I think they're going to be good this year. I think they're going to have a good team, and I think it's going to be one that people can enjoy and watch, and I'm here for it. And Matt Painter has done a remarkable job at Purdue of taking kind of the Indiana mold of the way that Bob Knight built programs of knowing David Miner and Tony Freeman and knowing that those guys and building it year by year and piece by piece. But Purdue has been able to sustain that and carry on that mold and that model because they're winning. And so their ends justify the means. And there is somewhat a simplicity at Purdue. Don't kid yourself, though. They still have big NIL money. Braden Smith got a lot of money there, et cetera. But in Indiana, the last remaining thing from yesteryear, the last piece of simplicity, is the fact that they never had names on the back of the jerseys. But as I watched them and I realized that we are now in the transfer portal NIL era, I'm watching these guys and I literally felt like the grounds crew in Major League watching the Cleveland then Indians warm up by saying, who are these guys? And they're good players. They're names that you're probably going to want to know because I think they're going to be good players that can help get Indiana to turn the corner. And for that reason, In Kentucky, they had that group that got knocked out of the tournament by Christian Layton on the unbelievable shot. I believe they called them the Unforgettables. I can't remember the exact, which is weird that I wouldn't remember the name if it's called Unforgettables, but in Kentucky, they certainly know the nickname for that group with Sean Woods and... Darren Feldhaus and John Pelfrey and Richie Farmer, because that group took Kentucky from when they were down and out and rose it from the ashes and turned that grass back into bluegrass and got Kentucky back to where they needed to be. And I do think that Indiana, we don't want to admit it, we don't talk about it at cocktail parties around this great state, but Indiana basketball has been dormant and on life support for two-plus decades, and they've been trying and grasping and reaching everywhere, and they've been holding on to the one thing, which is we're different. but you're not. And so now the one way to latch onto and embrace the fact that we're moving in a new direction. We have everything else that I talked about. Now we got signage. We got giveaways during timeouts. We got a big fancy board with boom and music. We got all of those things now. So why not go ahead and adapt to the times? Number one, because it helps you get players there because they're all about individual branding.
00:36:39
Speaker 3: Sure.
00:36:39
Speaker 1: You can turn them into what the name on the front of the But you also still, from a financial standpoint, you're the brand on the back of the jersey. And at Indiana University, we're going to let you do both. And the best part about it, it's an automatic directory for you fans that are looking at going, who are these guys? Because you're getting other names here midway through the year. But you might as well start now. And the easiest way to do it would be when they turn around after hitting a shot, you can look at it and go, oh, that's Garrison. He's a good player. Boy, he's got a big head. We'll come back. Game Day Men's Health Games of the Week next. It is Tuesday and we are three quarters the way through the 10 o'clock hour. That means it is time for a Game Day Men's Health Games of the Week. We do this each and every Tuesday where we just kind of spell out for you what we're keeping an eye on and where you can see and or hear the big upcoming games. Of course, all this brought to you by Game Day Men's Health. Hello to those of you who may be watching on YouTube inside the the game day men's house up in Carmel or Fishers, for example. Six Indy area locations, Fishers, Carmel, Indianapolis, Northside at 75th and Shadeland. Also Avon right off of Rockville Road, Bargersville off State Road 135 and in Greenwood. And you hear me mention this all the time, is we are discussing, for example, the Colts and the Titans. You know, there are certain areas with the Titans probably it's, you can probably pick any area, but When you go into a game for your favorite team, you want them to have a game plan that's designed for the opponent and change it from one opponent to the next on what needs to be done to win that particular game. The same thing is true when it comes to guys your health. You want to make sure that when you are going in somewhere that you are getting a game plan designed for you. And in addition to that, with just a relaxed atmosphere with people that want to sit down and say, hey, let's just look over all the options of what it is that are your goals. trying to get back in shape, trying to lose weight, maybe just trying to get a little bit more energy, any number of things. Any of you guys, if you want to just get back to your younger self and just feeling a little bit more vibrant, feeling a little better recovery after a workout. Game Day Men's Health is there for you. Peptide therapies, testosterone replacement therapy, you name it, weight management. Game Day Men's Health. GameDayMensHealth.com is the website. Eddie, did you watch last night any of the NLCS with Milwaukee now up two games, none on the Dodgers?
00:39:08
Speaker 4: See, Jake, I would have watched some of that game, but that game started at 5 o'clock.
00:39:14
Speaker 1: What are we doing? You sound angry.
00:39:17
Speaker 4: Yes.
00:39:18
Speaker 1: It went long. It was a long game.
00:39:20
Speaker 4: What are we doing at 5 o'clock in the afternoon? Like, oh, yes.
00:39:24
Speaker 1: Were you new to postseason baseball? In the national window, yes.
00:39:27
Speaker 4: Let's put the Cleveland Guardians and the Tampa Bay Ravens.
00:39:30
Speaker 1: Are you new to this? Do you not know the legacy and the heritage and the history in Brooklyn of running home from the trolleys in order to listen to your radio and see what the Dodgers are doing?
00:39:41
Speaker 4: Come on, man. Let's start a major league championship playoff series today. In the hometown of one of the local teams.
00:39:50
Speaker 1: So fine. At 2 in the afternoon. If it makes you feel better. Well, yes.
00:39:56
Speaker 4: That's 4 o'clock in Milwaukee.
00:39:58
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:39:59
Speaker 4: What are we doing here?
00:40:00
Speaker 1: It's 4 o'clock in Milwaukee at 4.30, Eddie. If it makes you feel any better tonight, 8 o'clock. You can watch the game on TBS. It is the American League Championship Series getting underway between the Cleveland Guardians and the Tampa Rays. 8 o'clock tonight. That game on TBS now. You can watch that game while listening on this radio station, pregame meeting at 7.30. The Pacers are back in Oklahoma City tonight. It is a preseason game, obviously, but question is, Eddie, do we see tonight the preseason return of injury to the ankle of Tyrese Halliburton in the place where House of Horrors in terms of one memory in Oklahoma City, right?
00:40:38
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a fair question. Like, do you want your return for Tyrese Halliburton to the floor in Oklahoma City to be a preseason game? When the Pacers played out there last year, He did not go in the arena because he said that the next time that he wanted to be in Oklahoma City was the next time he could play in Oklahoma City. So does he want his grand return to Oklahoma City be a preseason game? I would say yes, because you need the time on task with Avica Zubats. But tonight we'll find out.
00:41:07
Speaker 1: In terms of football, here's your schedule. Friday coming up. Washington and Purdue at 8 o'clock at night on Friday evening. That'll be a big one. It's going to be on Fox. Honestly, that's big for Purdue because going for their third straight. And Washington is a team that I think is more susceptible than we would have guessed when the schedule came out. And it's always fun to watch games on national television under the lights in Ross-Ade. Again, that's going to be on Fox coming up on Friday at 8 o'clock. Saturday, the big one nationally and locally. It goes without saying. Also on Fox at noon. It is Indiana and Ohio State. That is noon on Saturday.
00:41:44
Speaker 4: And on this radio station, pregame with Don Fisher, John Herrick, and Buck Seward starting at 11 a.m. 11 a.m.
00:41:51
Speaker 1: On Saturday, right?
00:41:51
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:41:52
Speaker 1: And then on Sunday, you can also hear it right here on this radio station. It is the Colts and Tennessee Titans coming up 1 o'clock on Sunday. So Friday through Sunday, it is football. Baseball, really, until then, obviously you've got the Thursday night NFL game as well. What is the NFL game this week for the Thursday night football?
00:42:07
Speaker 4: Also for the night cap on Saturday, Jake, it's another top ten matchup. You've got BYU, the Fighting Mormons, against Marcus Freeman and his hair-dyed Bad hairline Notre Dame fighting Irish.
00:42:21
Speaker 1: The fighting Mormons, you're calling. That's Eddie Garrison who's calling them that.
00:42:24
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:42:24
Speaker 3: Uh-huh.
00:42:25
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly. You got LSU, Mississippi State also on Saturday. The NFL schedule, Jake, in terms of your primetime matchups for week number six starting on Thursday night. It is the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks, that game in Denver.
00:42:41
Speaker 3: Good game.
00:42:42
Speaker 4: Sunday night football, the Green Bay Packers at home against the Dallas Cowboys at Lambeau Field. And then Monday night football, the Washington Commanders are flying out west to take on the San Francisco 49ers.
00:42:53
Speaker 1: That'll be ugly, right?
00:42:55
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:42:56
Speaker 1: The Commanders have no chance of winning that game. Never say never, Jake. When the commanders go out west.
00:43:04
Speaker 4: Did you think the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would beat the Dallas Cowboys Thursday night?
00:43:09
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a good point. That was in Dallas, too, wasn't it?
00:43:12
Speaker 4: Yes, it was.
00:43:12
Speaker 1: Dak Prescott got into it with the guy in the tunnel, right?
00:43:15
Speaker 4: Yes, so a staffer saying to Dak, very loudly, embarrassing.
00:43:21
Speaker 1: Tonight, Pacers, 7.30 pregame here, right here on this radio station, and also ALCS tonight at 8 o'clock. As Eddie mentioned, on Thursday, obviously you've got the Thursday NFL game going. Friday, Washington, Purdue at 8 o'clock. Saturday, Ohio State, Indiana, noon. That's also on Fox. You can hear it on this radio station. And Sunday, Colts and Tennessee. That is your schedule. Game day, men's health. We come back, back into it, talking about the Colts. And we can also discuss one thing for the Pacers that raised an eyebrow for me yesterday. Eddie's been calming my nerves. We'll get into it. Gorgeous day outside on a Tuesday. Jay Query here along with Eddie Garrison. Query and Company is the name of the program. Eddie, I'm trying to log into the text line here. Because I am curious. And people can text at 239-1070. I guess call the program as well. But before we get back into both the Colts and the Pacers, I'm curious people's thought on whether or not. feels like almost low-hanging fruit, if you will, when it comes to discussing things sports-wise in Indiana. But I'm being serious. I'm curious what people think about Indiana putting names on the back of the jerseys. Like, is it time? Am I off base here? Would that ruffle people's feathers? Like, what are people's thoughts on that? And I know that If you're of a certain age, you're probably like, why is this guy? That was a big thing for a long time. A big thing for a long time. But you're a younger guy, Eddie. Would you even think anything of it? Have you even noticed that Indiana does not do names on the back of the jerseys?
00:45:22
Speaker 4: I wouldn't think anything of it, no. I think it would just be adapting more or less to the times of today. and trying to help your fan base understand who's.
00:45:31
Speaker 1: On the floor. It's a good thing. I want to bring up the text line here, Eddie. Are you looking at the text message from the 316 number?
00:45:43
Speaker 3: No.
00:45:44
Speaker 1: This is good stuff here. Let's see. Quarry should stick to racing. That was at 10 o'clock this morning. Then at 10.02. Honestly, he isn't even good at that. Then at 10.02. And he always says he's good-looking. He's ugly as blank. What the blank does this tangent have to do with anything? All capital letters. That was when I was talking, by the way, about Jack Harvey's cancer journey. And then lastly, blank Jake Query. That also using the four-letter big one. So that's cool.
00:46:17
Speaker 4: It's been a month since the last text from him or her.
00:46:21
Speaker 1: And that one was... That was about Kevin. Apparently, I've deflected away from Kevin, right? Let me write down this number. I'll have to call that guy when we get off the air. They don't seem to be a fan, right?
00:46:35
Speaker 4: It does not appear so.
00:46:41
Speaker 1: See, the weird thing about that, I guarantee you, And I don't mean this in a bad way. It's cool. I actually appreciate it. But I guarantee that's the guy that like, did I ever tell you one time Shannon and I were at dinner and a guy walks up to the table and is like, hey, I enjoy it. And I'm always appreciative of that. I never know how people recognize me because it's radio, but I'm always appreciative of it. But I had a guy once sit down at the table He pulled up a chair and sat down at the table. And then when we got done, he stayed for the entire meal and then followed me to the car talking to me. It was fine. It was cool. But I'm like, but I knew who the guy was. And I'm like, this guy, once he said who he was, I'm like, this guy's done nothing but troll me on Twitter for like five years. Then in public, it's like, hey, I just want to spend the evening with you.
00:47:30
Speaker 4: You know what I mean? Someone just said, yeah, that guy is right. Screw you, bud.
00:47:36
Speaker 1: I mean, you know. Well, like what did I do? And here's the thing. Listen, don't hate me because I'm beautiful. I mean, I get up in the morning and I put on, because I know we're on the YouTube, I make sure that I look presentable and we've had good results.
00:47:51
Speaker 4: We all love Jake and Eddie, especially Eddie.
00:47:54
Speaker 1: Okay. And you said your mom does listen to the program, right?
00:48:00
Speaker 4: No, she does not.
00:48:02
Speaker 1: Colts getting set, by the way, for the Tennessee Titans. And one would assume that this is the best possible medicine. The best possible medicine for any NFL team is Tennessee coming into town. And there are so many areas that it feels like the Colts need to get right. And I do think that there is an element of truth to this. And that is that the Colts, from the scheduling standpoint, it may be so that they're going to continue to lure us in and then push us away and lure us in and push us away. It almost is like dating a narcissist. So you, well, I mean, I love me some meat, but they say, now I have fortunately not been in this situation, but if you read the self-help books, it'll tell you that like, if you're in a relationship with someone that's a narcissist, like part of the part of narcissistic disorder is, is a narcissist realizes when they're finally losing grip on something that they deem to be their possession. And so they throw on the charm and we've seen this in sport. There are athletes or coaches that you folks here in Indiana have seen that they can throw on the charm like nobody's business, but then also the other side comes out. And just when you get tired of it, then the charm comes back out, and it's like, oh, here we go again. And it does feel like the Colts, to an extent, have that element of this relationship for all of us where they just keep luring us back in each time that we're basically at that point done, right? Let me give you an example. This is a perfect synopsis of all of it from Sam from the UK. Sam sends an email that says, UK Colts fan. Now, should I read the whole thing in my British accent, Eddie, or just standard? since Sam is from the UK.
00:50:13
Speaker 4: You got to read it in your British accent. Come on now.
00:50:18
Speaker 1: Now that's hard to do on command though, because I've got the old British guy.
00:50:23
Speaker 5: And then, do you like the Beatles? But it's hard for me to read this as if I'm British all the way through. As a football soccer fan, it's fascinating watching the NFL because of everything that goes on. If you had a bad season, it's set up for you to be righteous and good once again.
00:50:40
Speaker 1: I'm not going to read the whole thing like that. And he says, however, that is not the case if your GM is Chris Ballard. In the category of most likely to succeed as a corporate middle manager, Chris Ballard would sweep the floor. Not bad enough to be fired, not good enough to ever succeed. He's the Jeff Fisher of general managers. The heathen chemistry of Oasis albums. A cloudy afternoon on a Tuesday, a tepid low-pressure shower, a plain cheese sandwich. If he had an ounce of integrity over the next few weeks, as things continued to head towards a 7-8 win season, he would resign and release all of us from this mundane fever dream of the last decade. Thanks for letting me rant. That from Sam in the UK. To which I naturally responded, do you want to go with me to the Nebworth concert in September of 27? And Sam said, no, I'm boycotting Oasis until they admit that their team cheated in soccer. That's Manchester City, by the way.
00:51:34
Speaker 3: But.
00:51:36
Speaker 1: He's not wrong when it comes to the Colts. It is a tough lot to be in. They are just good enough to keep us interested and just bad enough to push us away when we start to believe. And it just comes down to the fact that fundamentally speaking, in terms of their roster buildup and setup, they just have too many flaws. And I think we all talked ourselves into, I'm guilty of it as well, thinking that this year they could get by and be what we saw a year ago. But when you watch last night, and the Rams, what's the Rams? Do they have three losses? Are the Rams like three and three?
00:52:27
Speaker 4: Two and three.
00:52:28
Speaker 1: Two and three? The Rams, I mean, look at the Rams in general, and you're like, how in the world is that team two and three? Because the Rams feel like one of the best teams in the league, but obviously they're not. But if you look at Buffalo and the way that they were able to last night when things weren't going well and then just flip a switch and literally they start, it's like a tsunami. There's nothing you can do about it when that offense starts clicking. And it all starts with Josh Allen. Now when you have a quarterback that's that elite, that offsets a lot of things. But the Colts just don't seem to have any one area of overwhelming strength. What is it? Even bad teams, sometimes you can say, yeah, but they have this. I mean, the Colts have Jonathan Taylor.
00:53:20
Speaker 6: Fine.
00:53:21
Speaker 1: But without Alec Pierce out there to stretch out a defense, you can load the box and keep him corralled. Okay, then you counter it with Tyler Warren and you get him going a little bit. Okay. But Tyler Warren's great for eight yards. You need 10. And that's the area, it just feels like there is not one area with them that you can push all in and say, this is what they're going to ride behind to get out of the funk. Tennessee helps, but I know that I'm belaboring this point, but it's a critical area that needs to be examined for the Colts, and that is they already have Three losses. And all three of them, essentially, every loss in your conference is a loss and a half. So they have four and a half losses, really. Because when it comes down to it, we'll do it this way in an exercise, Eddie Garrison.
00:54:25
Speaker 4: Okay, Jake Query.
00:54:25
Speaker 1: I'm going to name the division, and I want you to tell me.
00:54:28
Speaker 4: Did I say your last name correctly? Query?
00:54:30
Speaker 1: You did. I'm going to name the division. I want you to tell me who you see as the divisional winner.
00:54:35
Speaker 4: Okay. The AFC East. The AFC East? That is the Buffalo Bills. Okay.
00:54:45
Speaker 1: Do you see a team out of the AFC East that is a viable wildcard contender?
00:54:50
Speaker 4: The New England Patriots.
00:54:51
Speaker 1: Okay. The AFC North.
00:54:55
Speaker 3: Oh, brother.
00:54:58
Speaker 4: Got to go Baltimore.
00:54:58
Speaker 3: Okay. Okay.
00:55:00
Speaker 1: Do you see a team out of the AFC North that you consider a viable wildcard contender?
00:55:06
Speaker 4: Just because of cannibalism, I don't think all three obviously can be a wildcard contender. Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.
00:55:17
Speaker 1: Okay. But I agree with you that there's going to be some cannibalizing there. Okay. The AFC West.
00:55:27
Speaker 4: Two.
00:55:28
Speaker 1: Well, who do you see winning the division? The Chiefs. Okay. Do you see a viable wild card out of the AFC West? Yeah, Denver. Okay. The AFC South. One. That being the division winner. You think the Jags win the division?
00:55:45
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:55:46
Speaker 1: Okay. Now, the problem is this. If the Colts play themselves into contention for the wild card, you already have right there New England, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Denver. Okay? You have three conference losses already. That's the first tiebreaker. Now, we obviously know what happens in a tiebreaker situation with Pittsburgh, right? So there you're in trouble again. I mean, we know what happens if you're in a situation, if it's Baltimore that gets to the wild card, what happens on the second tiebreaker there, you're in trouble again. This is the problem they run into is they're already, and I hate saying that through five games, but it just, I don't know where, Eddie, what am I missing in terms of an area of optimism to think they can turn this around?
00:56:48
Speaker 4: I don't know how to answer that for you, Jake. Last week when we did the exercise of, you know, what, through four weeks, we were a quarter way through the season, and you had me go through and do win-loss, win-loss for the rest of the year. I had them at 7-10, and that does not change after the loss with Pittsburgh. I don't know where you can find optimism because– two weeks ago or three weeks ago, Ralph Reif came on this very program and he expressed concern about just Alec Pierce returning this season. And if Alec Pierce isn't returning this season, then this is the offense that they're going to have all season long.
00:57:26
Speaker 1: So my buddy Glenn just asked me the question, what happens with Alec Pierce and is this another situation where the Colts are not up front about an injury? Now, I'm not here, and it would be irresponsible of me to say that the Colts are intentionally vague when it comes to injuries. I mean, that's irresponsible of me to say that they're being disingenuous. But I think the reality is this. I don't know this. I do not know this, but I'm telling you what it feels like. And until we hear differently, it almost feels safe to say this. I don't think the Colts know. I don't think the Colts know when Alec Pierce is going to be back. You notice that, and Ralph Reif, when we played it, do we have that audio by chance, Eddie, of Ralph talking about when Alec Pierce went into a boot and into a cast? Because Ralph Reif, when I asked him, and we had him on, I think it was a week ago, maybe two weeks ago, and I just asked him at the end of the interview, I just happened to say, by the way, out of curiosity, What do you make of the latest on just timetables of a potential Alec Pierce return? And Ralph, who has been, and again, Ralph was very clear, and I want to make very clear for protection of both of us, that Ralph is not the trainer on record for Alec Pierce. He has not worked on Alec Pierce. He has not seen Alec Pierce's injury. But he basically came right out and said, if he is in a cast with that injury, then that would mean or indicate or forecast the possibility that this is a longer-term injury than just a couple of weeks. And very shortly thereafter, I talked with another doctor in that, again, who is not the doctor on record, but that doctor said, you know what? The reality is, This could be something with the bone of his heel as opposed to just like a nerve, you know, whatever else, and that can become complicated. And that can be a long-term thing. And if Alec Pierce is, in fact, out for an extended period of time or the rest of the year, that greatly debilitates their offense. it greatly debilitates their offense because they have no other deep ball threat. And I'm not saying that, you know, Alec Pierce is a unique player and a special player, and that's why he's the guy that you gave a big contract to. They don't grow on trees. I get that. But there seemingly was zero backup plan there. Zero. And if you look at the wide receiver room for the Colts, If I'm Carly Ursae Gordon, the big question mark I'm having as I'm assessing and analyzing everything is, wait a minute. You had me give this player this amount of money, and then we find out that it was after that that he had surgery, and you knew he needed to have that done? I get that you had to have him. Don't get me wrong. But that would be question mark number one. But question mark number two would be, at that point, did you have any... It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark. It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark. And this is another example of a franchise that, of late, feels like they are never looking around the corner. That's the thing that's frustrating. is it feels like they're never looking around the corner. And in the case of the wide receiver position and a deep ball stretch the defense threat, it seems as though they should have been looking around the corner and figuring out what in fact was going to be the plan if he was not able to go because of the surgery. And then remember, all the way through camp, and this is what's become frustrating for me, all the way through camp, each time that we saw or asked, like, is he good? No, yeah, he's fine. He's fine. And then he goes out and plays and then immediately goes into the cast. And then Ralph Reif, we said we do have it, Eddie. Here's Ralph from about 10 days ago, I think it was, explaining from a training standpoint. Again, not specific to the case of Alec Pierce, but two weeks ago today. Two weeks ago today, and that's important. Because keep in mind, we've heard nothing since. It's been two weeks now, we've heard nothing. This is Ralph Reif talking about his concern over the optics of the injury.
01:02:09
Speaker 7: They put him in a cast.
01:02:13
Speaker 3: Okay.
01:02:14
Speaker 7: So immobilization, put him in a cast. Um, there's a lot of, there's a lot of behind the scenes. There's a lot of chatter in the medical world, sports medicine world. Everybody's trying to guess what's going on. And, um, you know, if you remember September 1st, I think it was Joel Erickson had a, um, an interview in the Indianapolis star with, um, with Pierce and Pierce says, hey, they found out there was something going on with the bone and so they got rid of it. My sense is they, he had some type of growth on, now I'm getting into the anatomy here, but remember the lever, the calcaneus, the heel, and sitting on top of that out in front towards your midfoot is the talus. And I'm starting to think that that talus bone had some defect to it, and they put it in a cast to try to give it the best opportunity to really settle down.
01:03:24
Speaker 1: Okay, that was two weeks ago, and we've heard nothing since. No update. I don't know. I mean, I'm obviously, because I'm practicing usually while we're on the air, so I've not been out there. I don't know that we've seen Pierce, right? And it's interesting to me how much we as media and fans just almost like forget about it because it's like we've just written it off. Well, he's not going to play. And then you get into the other area of it, which is, okay, when do you cross the threshold of, well, at this point, there's no sense in bringing him out and further complicating it anyway because the year's awash. Again, irresponsible of me to say definitively that's where we are at week five, but man, I mean, now, they're going to be, after this Sunday, they're going to be 3-3. Monday, we're going to be doing the show, they're going to be 3-3, and the sun's going to be out, and everybody's like, this is the greatest thing ever, they're on their way to the playoffs. That's what the mentality's going to be. And then, probably they get a reality check. But I just.
01:04:36
Speaker 1: I have grown frustrated for five years over seemingly there never being a look around the corner. Like, when you go to, this is haunted house season. This is haunted house season. Hannah haunted acres and Scream in the Dark, if that's still around, and Nightmare on Edgewood and the Indie Scream Park up in Anderson, which I love. But it must be something to go through that with the Colts front office because you go through one of those haunted houses and you round the corner into the room where the high school actors lay in there like a mental patient on a table and there's hard rock music playing or whatever else. And they got to be going through there literally like they're walking around with clown shoes and a minefield on because they have zero expectation of what's around the corner. They have no anticipation at all of, okay, brace yourself, let's go slow here because I got a feeling something's going to jump out right over there. They got zero, zero. They got to be the easiest group in the world. If they ever do some sort of an exercise, a team-building experience, and they take the front office of the Colts through one of those things, let alone an escape room, don't even get me started there, but if they go through a haunted house, they got to be the easiest group in the world to scare because they ain't never had any idea what's coming around the corner.
01:05:58
Speaker 3: None.
01:06:00
Speaker 1: And that's why they are where they are. And I don't want that to be the case. And I don't personally dislike any of them. I want them to do well. I know what it means to this town. I know what it means to the fan base here. I know what it means for this radio station. All of it. I hope they can get it turned around. But I think there are a lot of you that are looking at it and saying, hey, you know what? Pacer season is here, which it is tonight, Oklahoma City. We still don't know whether or not Tyrese Halliburton is going to play. They basically just said that he tweaked his ankle, and that's why he did not play against Atlanta. It was just out of precaution. That's all, Jake. But it was different than the Achilles.
01:06:38
Speaker 4: Very small tweak.
01:06:39
Speaker 1: But it was not related to the Achilles.
01:06:41
Speaker 4: Zero relation.
01:06:43
Speaker 1: The one thing, I'm just speaking candidly. One thing where I was curious was for a while, and this is probably me overthinking it, but I was curious if for a while we will be in a window of wondering Halliburton for a couple of weeks maybe, maybe the first month of the year, if there aren't going to be little ankle tweaks or little issues like that. because of his range of motion being compromised somewhat subconsciously until he is fully psychologically comfortable with the Achilles. And that's probably me overthinking it, but we have seen that, obviously, with other athletes at other times. That's the one thing that becomes tricky. But Oklahoma City tonight, 7.30 pregame. You can hear it right here on this radio station, and then the game tipping itself at 8 o'clock Pacers and Thunder. And I do like what I saw, and I know they didn't beat Atlanta, but what I saw, the biggest thing that I noticed when I watched that game against Atlanta was that ball was moving around. They were playing, didn't matter who was on the floor. Their pacing, Kelly Oubre talked about it. Look, I want to run, like this is fast. And they, for a team that we wondered how fast they were going to be able to play after they turned the NBA on their ear, the collective ear of the NBA a year ago or, well, a year and a half ago, whatever you want to say, two seasons ago, They looked like that right out of the box. And that's what I was encouraged to see. And I thought they looked very comfortable. No matter what combination Rick Carlisle put out there, they looked very comfortable with one another. Even Kelly Oubre, who's new to the equation, right? When he was out there, I thought it looked like he also instinctively just knew where everyone was going to be. And that's what made them so good for so long was just the symbiotic nature and the flow in which they were able to move knowing and anticipating where everybody had to be on the floor, when they had to be there, and et cetera. But tonight, Oklahoma City, that game, 7.30 pregame. You can hear it right here. Stephen Holder with ESPN. We'll get back into the conversation. I'm going to ask him that exact question about Alec Pierce. When's the last time he saw him? Stephen can give us an update on that. We'll do it next. By the way, this on the text line, it's a great day for the text messages. Hey, since we're all bagging on Jake, my wife commented how much he looks like he could star in a Lego movie. I don't know. You know, I've told you that Daniel Jones looks like that one Lego-looking thing from the Kroger commercials. You know what I'm talking about?
01:09:30
Speaker 3: No.
01:09:30
Speaker 1: There's like an animated fella in the Kroger commercials. Daniel Jones looks like him. Maybe it's one of those, if you know, you know, and if not, I have no idea how to even explain what I'm talking about. Also, somebody points out, I listen to Jake because I dislike him. I've kind of learned to enjoy that. He sucks, two stars, but I still listen. Well, that's cool. Josh, I'm cool with that. You know, I'm cool with that. But that one fella that keeps dropping the F-bombs on me, he seems to not be a fan. Not unlike Stephen Holder, who joins us now on the Game Day Men's Health Guest Line, and I'm sure thrilled to be doing so based on that introduction. ESPN.com, where you can read and see his work. Stephen, I'm going to begin with this question right off the top. We were just discussing it. What is the latest on Alec Pierce? It almost feels like we've forgotten about it, like we've gotten so caught up in other such stuff that it's like, wait a minute, when have we last seen or heard from Alec Pierce?
01:10:31
Speaker 3: Well, Jake, he's doing so well that the Colts tried to trade for Marvin Harrison Jr. Do you believe that tells you everything?
01:10:41
Speaker 1: Do you believe they did try to trade for him?
01:10:44
Speaker 3: They absolutely talked to the Cardinals, 1,000%. I'm telling you that as a fact. In fact, they not only talked to them, they discussed what it would cost. And the Colts decided it was too much. In fact, I was told Saturday morning that Before the news came down of what the compensation was going to be, I was told by a cult source that it was going to be a second round pick and something else. And that is exactly what it ended up being in terms of the compensation from the Houston Texans. And so I lay that out because I think it confirms they had that conversation.
01:11:26
Speaker 1: They did.
01:11:27
Speaker 3: And I can also tell you that had they.
01:11:32
Speaker 3: Had the compensation been more reasonable, they would have been inclined to look at it pretty hard. Okay. So I think, and I'm extrapolating a little bit here, I can't spell that word, but I think I'm using it right. I'm extrapolating that to say something at least about Alec Pierce and his status. Like if Alec Pierce was going to be back in a couple of weeks, you're probably not really making that phone call, wouldn't you think? So I think it at least says that there's not a lot of optimism about a return for Alec Pierce in the short term.
01:12:11
Speaker 1: Steven, do you believe.
01:12:14
Speaker 1: I know this is going to sound like a dumb question. Do you believe the Colts would have had that level of inquiry about Marvin Harrison Jr. if his name was Marvin Holder and he had played collegiately at Texas and his dad was a television repairman from Ridgemont High? In other words, how much of that is the sentimentality of it?
01:12:36
Speaker 3: I actually don't think it played a big role. I don't think it played a big role. Here's what... Here's what plays a role in stuff like this. I mean, again, it's not a dumb question. It's not. But I think here, I think you look at the Colts and you look at their situation and And I am not telling you that Marvin Harrison would fix it, right? Because, I mean, their wide receiver situation, it's very bad. But I think you can't look at that situation and not think that they would be looking at possible solutions. So here's a guy who, when he was coming out of college, I'm sure scouted and had three years of scouting on at Ohio State. and had, I assume, pretty high grades on, you should be intrigued by that, right? You should at least look into that. So I think they were doing their due diligence. And honestly, if they didn't consider it, it would probably be a little bit reckless to just ignore it, to be completely honest with you. So look, Would his name have helped it go down a little easier once you have to trade those picks? Probably, but I really think this was about the football, to be completely honest with you. I mean, they're in a bad spot, that wide receiver right now.
01:13:55
Speaker 1: And Steven, look, if you can see me right now, I'm rubbing my temples, right? Because I know what I'm about to say is something that I have been saying so much as I say, you know, I'm not even beating a dead horse here. It is now literally the glue holding together the studio table. But this is something that we all talked about. Did we not going into the season of where is their receiver depth? Where is their receiver depth? And we kept being told we like our guys. At what point do we quit believing them when they say we like our guys or saying then your ability to determine what you like and don't like is not good enough in the National Football League? Am I too harsh here?
01:14:39
Speaker 3: I will say the same thing. I mean, we ask the question every day when Alec Pierce was standing over there on the sideline. And granted, I think they expected him to come back and no one expected him to the last two weeks. But the point is, you know, even with him coming back, it was still like, all right, When they got Keenan Allen, you felt a little better about it, but you still had Alec Pierce just getting back into the lineup. Even if he would have been healthy, he was just getting back into the lineup. Keenan Allen is almost as old as I am. Okay, not quite, but he's not exactly a spring chicken. And frankly, let's talk about Keenan Allen real quick. He's been underwhelming. I would agree. Yeah. Isn't that fair, right? Like, I mean, do you look at Keenan Allen and say, all right, well, they need to play. You know, obviously they're going to Keenan Allen here. I mean, that hasn't really been the case. And it should be, you know?
01:15:40
Speaker 1: Listen, you ever shop at TJ Maxx?
01:15:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, actually hidden gems, lots of hidden gems at TJ Maxx.
01:15:48
Speaker 1: And when you're in the checkout line at TJ Maxx, they got this whole thing lined up and it's like, oh my gosh, like Ghirardelli chocolates, a whole box of them here for two bucks and dah, dah, dah. And all of it, you're like, this is unbelievable. I mean, I saw this, literally, I saw this exact same thing yesterday at a major department store. It was like 18 bucks. It's two bucks now. So you buy it. Then you get home and you open it up and you're like, oh, wait a minute. This expires in six weeks.
01:16:12
Speaker 3: Exactly.
01:16:13
Speaker 1: Keenan Allen. Keenan Allen, there's a reason he was available in the TJ Maxx checkout line, right? I'm not saying that he's not good, but his expiration date is rapidly approaching if it hasn't already happened, right?
01:16:27
Speaker 3: Right. Well, and think about it. His role coming into this was supposed to be like, all right, we probably need you for like half the snaps. Right. OK, we'll just you know, we'll you're like the second or third option on every play. You know what I mean? Like that's that was supposed to be his role. Well, now without Alec Pierce out there and with the defense saying, OK, if we can just take away Josh Downs, they don't have anything. And I know that's it sounds like I'm ignoring Tyler Warren. I'm not. It's just that I think he's not. he's a different tight end than say like the Travis Kelsey's of the world. Like Travis Kelsey is a natural receiver who you can go throw him out there. He runs routes. He he's a much quicker, faster sort of player, at least in his prime. Tyler Warren is, is more of a, a physical tight end. Right. And you get him the ball. Like that's why he's good on those screens. For example, that's why he's good after the catch, for example. Right. I think when you ask him to go out there and to be a guy who beats people with his route running, that's harder for him. And we are seeing that now. He is, in the past, he was sort of the beneficiary of other guys, you know, stressing the defense. And then he can make plays in the middle of the field and exploit, you know, what open spaces were left there. And so now it's different. Now it's like, where's Tyler Warren? Okay, we got him. And you're not you're also not playing. You're also not letting them have. Well, there's nobody testing the defense in terms of like deeper routes. So they're sitting on things, you know. So that works to the detriment of Tyler Warren. So none of that is a slight to Tyler Warren. These are just facts. OK, these are just facts. And defensive coordinators around the league have obviously figured this out.
01:18:28
Speaker 1: By the way, Stephen, you grew up in southern Florida, Miami area, right? So you are familiar with hurricanes, right? Not the Miami hurricanes. I mean, the storm hurricanes, right? They start out as a tropical storm, right?
01:18:43
Speaker 3: Been through many of them. Right.
01:18:45
Speaker 1: Tropical storm and then Category 1, and obviously at Category 5 is the worst storm you can have, right?
01:18:50
Speaker 3: Sure.
01:18:51
Speaker 1: When it comes to Daniel Jones and his inability to get footing here, his inability to protect the football, he was better in Pittsburgh, don't get me wrong, but coming off of the injury combined with the past history of Daniel Jones, if Daniel Jones... As a New York Giant being released in the middle of the year as a Category 5 problem, where are we right now? Are we at a tropical storm where something's developing and we don't know when it's going to make landfall? Are we at Category 1, Category 2, or is it simply there's just kind of some cool mist over the waters? How concerning is this?
01:19:29
Speaker 3: Probably somewhere between a category one and two. And I don't want to sound like I'm downplaying it. What I'm saying by characterizing it that way is.
01:19:42
Speaker 3: I think our expectations, well, not ours, but maybe the Colts, the Colts' expectations might have been unfair, to be completely honest with you. I think that's what I'm seeing. So it probably depends on what your expectations were, right, in terms of how you grade the situation currently. I think in retrospect, and we can all learn something from this. It's a reminder for all of us. You know, guys get hurt. They come back. And we, in our minds, are like, oh, he's back. That ain't how it works. And we're seeing it now. He is definitely encumbered by this injury. Yes. It is 1,000%. I saw it week one. I saw it. And I talked about it in my post-game video, in fact, wrap-up. And I said, you know, I'm not sure he's all the way back. And I thought I saw some signs of it then. And then he played in Kansas City. And I was like, well, that was actually pretty good. Maybe he's fine. I think in every other game we have seen it. And I thought Sunday was as great an illustration as any that he looked like a guy coming off an Achilles. Look at him when he's in the pocket. I think his nervousness in the pocket in recent weeks is a direct result of him not trusting his ability to escape. That is one. I think some of his inaccuracy could be a factor, could be, because accuracy starts with your feet. We've talked about this with Anthony Richardson for years. All the torque and all that that goes into every throw, do we assume that that has no bearing after coming off an Achilles tendon? It probably does. I wouldn't know, but one can surmise. And then just when he scrambles, watch him scramble now And then pull up video of him scrambling last year. It's like two different guys. He doesn't have the same explosiveness. So he is a compromised player right now, as you would expect. I think the last thing I would say, training camp, yes. Every day you heard us talk about, look, he looks good. He looks good. What I always reminded people was, look, it's a controlled environment. No one's hitting you. No one's going to hit you. There's no threat of being hit. There's no threat of even being bumped into like happened in London, right? So the situation is not the same, and the quarterback is not stressed to the same degree as they are in the regular season.
01:22:10
Speaker 1: What are they going to do at linebacker?
01:22:11
Speaker 3: I don't know. Are you available? I mean, they might as well play you or me. I'm not joking. It's so bad. Look at Bryce Boettcher, for example. I like Bryce Boettcher. I think he's got a future. But that early touchdown on the throw into the flat to Warren, Jalen Warren, from all indications, that's Bryce Betcher's responsibility. He's late to get there. And boom, touchdown. And so that's the thing with that position is like, first of all, I think all you have to do is look at the fact that they are mixing and matching lineups at linebacker. You've been around the NFL a long time, as have I. I don't ever remember seeing teams do that. You don't rotate linebackers. Right. That's not a thing. It's not a thing. It's like rotating corners. Have you ever seen a team rotate corners? We're going to rotate corners. Why? Who does that? You rotate your defensive line. On defense, generally speaking, everything else is mostly static except maybe like the extra defensive back, that fifth defensive back. Will you have a third linebacker? Those kinds of things.
01:23:24
Speaker 1: The rest of it, come on. Under Bill Pullian, the one thing the Colts did, Bill Pullian was masterful at this. And that is, He knew from a salary cap standpoint that he had elite players that he had to pay, and then they found areas to mask where their bargains were, right? And they hid those. That was the kid they put in right field in Little League. And linebacker, maybe in this form of the NFL, can be that position.
01:23:51
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:23:52
Speaker 1: But that's assuming that you have elite players elsewhere to carry you. And this franchise simply right now does not. And I wish I was not saying that. And I'm not trying to be a hater as the kids say in saying it, it just feels to me to be a fact, but am I off base?
01:24:09
Speaker 3: No, I think that is exactly what Bill Polian did. And he, historically, yes, linebacker is a position you can, for lack of a better word, kind of hide, if you will. But you still have to, when you get into these matchups where they're trying to exploit your weakness, you still have to be able to stand up and handle your business. And they are not right now. And Teams know it. OK, Aaron Rodgers been around the block a couple of times, man. OK, look, for all for all the fun we make of him being 42 or whatever. I mean, and look, he's not the same guy, clearly. But I mean, the one thing he isn't is stupid. OK, he watches the film. He watches a lot of film. OK, and I guarantee you he saw it right away. You noticed that. Did you see Sauce Gardner have to make any plays this week? No, because Aaron Rodgers probably in that offense, they said to themselves, you know what? We don't need to test sauce. Right. We don't even need to throw it to DK.
01:25:14
Speaker 1: Three targets.
01:25:15
Speaker 3: You go over there. Yeah. You go over there and we'll call you if we need you. You know what I mean? Because they had a matchup, and they exploited it all day long. And so, to your point, they don't have the edge rush. They don't have the other guys.
01:25:29
Speaker 1: I don't need to worry about the construction and traffic on Michigan Avenue if Meridian and Keystone are wide open all day long.
01:25:37
Speaker 3: Right? Absolutely.
01:25:38
Speaker 1: Stephen Holder, ESPN.com. We will continue to follow the coverage and interesting stuff on Marvin Harrison Jr. Appreciate it. Certainly talk to you soon, all right? All right. Steven Holder joining us from ESPN.com on the Game Day Men's Health Guest Line. Certainly interesting stuff. All right, Scott Agnes going to join us coming up just about 40 minutes from now. Pacers and Thunder in action tonight. That's in Oak City, 8 o'clock, 7.30 pregame. You can hear it right here. Hey there, how are you? My name is Jake Query, Eddie Garrison, the other voice here on this program. Query and Company on 93.5 and 107.5. The Fan?
01:26:12
Speaker 3: The Fan.
01:26:17
Speaker 1: Eddie, I sent the picture to you. Your thoughts? I see it. The Kroger, what would we call it? Just the Kroger animation shopper?
01:26:26
Speaker 4: The Kroger, yeah. Personal shopper, I guess.
01:26:31
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. Is it the eyes?
01:26:33
Speaker 4: I think it's the combination of the hair and the eyes, yeah.
01:26:39
Speaker 1: Maybe I should just post that out on the X-Post Twitter and just say, am I the only one that thinks this looks like Daniel Jones?
01:26:43
Speaker 4: Maybe you should ask your friend to Do like a side-by-side comparison.
01:26:50
Speaker 1: Somebody else, by the way, says he looks like Briscoe County Junior. I don't know what that is. Hopefully that's not like derogatory since I just read it. Somebody texted that in. Pacers in action tonight. We'll get to that coming up bottom of the hour. We've been talking plenty of Colts today. And I mentioned earlier, and somebody said it would still ruffle feathers, that the time might be here now for Indiana to put names on the back of their jerseys. I'm going to begin this lunch hour as I began the show today. And my apologies for the redundancy of it, but I do think that it is of note. And I will tell the same story that I told earlier. Just as I was on my way in this morning, probably about 20 minutes before we went on the air, this news came about. And And we have, by the way, news in terms of our breaking news sounder that we'll get to later in the program. But I mentioned earlier, and I certainly understand, that on this radio show, you tune in primarily to listen to the Colts or to listen to Pacers coverage, Indiana and Purdue, you know, predominantly that. I am well aware of the fact that racing, in particular the IndyCar series, is... of relevance in Indianapolis more so than any other market, but more so in the month of May and not as much in the other months. But let me, maybe in more abbreviated version than earlier, but let me recount again what I mentioned off the top of the show. I began calling IndyCar races in 2007. As a matter of fact, I was bored on a flight recently and tallied up that I, from an IndyCar standpoint, I've done just over 300 races now. And I think a lot of people probably assume that that means that I grew up going to dirt track racing and racing under lights and all of that growing up. I really did not. I was a huge fan of the Indianapolis 500. And then, through luck and timing, I ended up getting a job with the radio network for IndyCar. And I have been doing so for, I just completed my 20th season. And in that capacity, not only do we do every race for IndyCar, but we also do every race and practice and qualifying session for IndyNext, which was formerly known as IndyLights. And in that time, I have seen some drivers that came through and absolutely dominated. Joseph Newgarden would be one that comes to mind. I've seen other drivers that dominated and we didn't hear from them much after that. Esteban Garrieri comes to mind. There are a lot of different paths that one can take after Indy Lights or now known as Indy Next, which is the final, it's the AAA. It's the final rung of the ladder of the road to Indy. But one of the things that has always inspired me, and there's a lesson to be learned here, I think, even beyond sport, is when you see a driver that has all of the it factors, they are a safe driver, they race clean, they win races, they have a good personality that sponsors like, they're not afraid to promote brands, or they are.
01:30:22
Speaker 1: Good camera guys, or gals, look good on camera. All of those things can factor in. And several years ago, there was a driver like that in Indy Lights that was very competitive and just for whatever reason, every time this driver tried to unlock a door towards a full-time ride in IndyCar, the door just seemed to be locked or jammed or whatever else. And Jack Harvey is one guy that kind of had that path Meyers Schenck Racing, when they decided to get full-time in the IndyCar Series, hired Jack Harvey to be the guy that would help them get their feet wet and go and start out in half-season, doing nine races and kind of incrementally increase each year. And he was the guy that they trusted to be able to do that for them and to drive for them. And he has run the Indy 500. He's told me before that his biggest honor in his career was just qualifying for the Indy 500. He had a, you know, based on a fuel strategy, a year where he was right there running with Steph Wilson 1-2 late in the Indy 500. But the story that I always go back to is when he was still trying to get full-time in IndyCar, and I was at Mid-Ohio in my broadcast position on top of a hill in the keyhole of Mid-Ohio. And all these fans are around and tents and everything else, and I'm up there to broadcast, and I look next to me, and there stands Jack Harvey. who had blazed a path through Indy Lights and won races and been successful and had chances to get full-time in the IndyCar Series, but it had yet to really stick for him.
01:31:59
Speaker 4: Nice job going two for two on Keyhole.
01:32:02
Speaker 1: And thank you. Yeah, that was a challenge this year, right? And I turned around and Jack Harvey was spotting for an Indy Lights driver. He was taking a job that weekend to get in the ear of an Indy Lights driver and just simply tell him, inside, inside, clear, clear, Because that's what he needed to do, to keep himself in the paddock, to keep his name out there, to keep his skill set out there, and to simply let people know, I'm still here. Jack Harvey, who had had success, had the humility, the understanding, the perseverance, the determination to do what he needed to do. Ultimately, he would end up in IndyCar, and now, of course, not only runs the Indianapolis 500-mile race, but he also is one of the chief broadcasters for the Fox television broadcast for IndyCar. Just before we went on today, Jack Harvey posted on social media that he has been diagnosed with cancer. I don't know, nor is it necessarily any of my business, what form of cancer is what stage of cancer, those things are, for the most part, irrelevant. And I wanted simply to take the time, and maybe it's during the most valuable real estate of this program, and if for that fact I'm stepping out of the sport arena to address this in the most coveted time slot, I apologize if that disappoints you. But I thought it was important to, again, just share my thought on this. I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying it's, and it's certainly not a lecture, but just my thought. I saw a lot of people that commented to Jack Harvey and I understand it and I respect it. The natural assumption for people to say, and I'm not saying it's wrong. You got this. You got this. Cancer picked the wrong battle. Can't wait to celebrate your victory. You know, cancer has no idea the strength of who they're facing. You always see those sorts of reactions. And I totally understand it. And it comes from the right place and the right heart for everybody. And I'm not saying it's wrong. And I'm not even necessarily speaking directly to Jack Harvey here. Indirectly. But also to all of you. And maybe myself included. Because we all reach a point in life where we have our own journeys, our own battles. And I think sometimes it's important to simply say, you do you. Do what's best for you. Because you just got levied with a terrifying turn of event in your life. You're not going to let me down. if there are days where you just don't have strength. You're not going to let me down if there are moments in your journey where the cancer looks to be ahead. It's not going to let me down. You're not losing, and no less are you, you got this. You're not going to be not getting it. The reality is this. Certainly, I had a health scare, but it was one that fortunately was like 48 hours. It was not 48 months, not multiple years, none of those things. But the one thing that I learned in that moment was for the first time in my life, I tasted my own vulnerability. I was humbled and scared, and it was in a private moment. that I realized, and it sounds arrogant, but it was rather about comfort. The thing that most upset me was not the razor-thin margin that I managed to, by the grace of God, escape, but it was rather the fact that no longer could I put down on a box in the doctor's office no previous ailment. No longer could I answer something with, nah, I mean, yeah, I've never had any issue at all. I cut my knee when I was in fourth grade, but that's it. I couldn't say that anymore. My body was vulnerable. And my body was, at that point, recovering. And that was a very hard thing for me to grasp. And so I've always felt like when people first find out that their health journey has taken an unexpected turn, that their own insecurity, their own grappling with the reality of a diagnosis I think sometimes can be compounded with the you got this because for me my thought in the back of my mind was but what if I don't what if I don't and I think that when we look at people and they get that news and I'm saying this not to Jack Harvey But to any of you listening that may be going through that sort of a journey or know someone going through that sort of a journey, and I'm not saying what I'm saying is right. Maybe I'm wrong. But it's just my belief that you need to understand and you need to be reassured that the people that love you are not going to love you any less. The people that support you are not going to support you any less if on certain days you don't got this. That's a totally personal thing. for you and only you to emotionally grasp and move forward with. And whatever means, whatever fashion, whatever pace, whatever timing you decide to go about it, you do you. And just simply know that the avenue that you choose is supported. But the vigor in which you go about it is not mandated. That's entirely up to you. And just simply know, and I'm not simply speaking to Jack Harvey, although I am, and I know and like Jack Harvey a great deal. But to any of you, just simply know that there is a community of people and a human nature surrounding you that of course hopes the best for you. And rely on those people to be able to help you through it. But at the same time, rely on them to help you through it at the pace that is best for you. And I certainly wish the best for Jack Harvey. The Pacers in action tonight. The Colts we have discussed a lot. And in talking to Stephen Holder, one thing that I found interesting was that Stephen Holder confirming, at least based on his, and maybe we knew this, but that the Colts did make inquiry about Marvin Harrison Jr., And I thought Stephen made a very interesting point by saying that tells us perhaps even more about where the Colts feel that they are with Alec Pierce. And the question mark of the health status of Alec Pierce. And we haven't talked about it. Literally, I mean, since Alec Pierce... Went on, and he's not on IR. He did go on IR, did he not? I can't remember because I remember there was like a week there, like five days, and then he went on the IR. But he went into the boot. And as we talked about two weeks ago today with Ralph Reif, I thought it was really interesting when we had this epiphany earlier when I was discussing it and the fact that Ralph Reif had basically come on here. We were asking him about, I think, Jaden Daniels or something else. And at the end of the conversation, I said to Ralph Reif, Hey, Ralph, by the way, Alec Pierce is now in a walking boot. What do we know? What do we think? And Ralph Reif was incredibly, without hesitation, vociferous about his concern. Now, again, I want to go back to, for the transparency, Ralph Reif is not the trainer on record for Alec Pierce and has not examined Alec Pierce's injury. But Ralph Reif is one of the foremost leading athletic trainers in the last 40 years in central Indiana, nationwide for that matter, but based in central Indiana. And so he was saying, look, I don't know the specifics on this case, but my expertise, my time would tell me that this is how it appears. The optics would mean this. And what he was saying is the optics would appear. that his injury is a still ongoing recovery that is an unknown timeline. Shortly after Ralph came on with us, I talked to another doctor who's a podiatrist that said, look, Ralph was not kidding when he said there are a lot of people amongst the athletic training community that are wondering what's going on. And that's the Colts' prerogative and Alec Pierce's prerogative. I get that. But considering it had been two weeks ago that we had that conversation and those questions were, you know, presented, it then dawned on me, you know what? We haven't heard from Alec Pierce or anything about it or any update. It's almost like it's gone out of sight, out of mind. You know, it's kind of like in Wolf of Wall Street, Matthew McConaughey, like, it's a fairy dust, right? The knowledge of his foot is just fairy dust. You know? Like, Alec Pierce is literally the discussion of when he's going to come back in Shawshank. He just up and vanished.
01:42:13
Speaker 3: Right?
01:42:15
Speaker 1: We haven't discussed it, and now I'm like, wait a minute. It doesn't even seem at this point, of course I expect that they are working on getting him back, but we don't even hear it mentioned. And then you find out that they're making overtures for Marvin Harrison Jr.? And yes, Marvin Harrison Jr., now that he's going to be in Houston, maybe he does find a new lease on life and C.J. Stroud and the Texans are able to wake him up. But it would almost appear more to me, in Marvin Harrison Jr. 's case... that Marvin Harrison Jr., and I don't think it's the case with Jeremiah Smith, but Marvin Harrison Jr. at Ohio State was so dominant that I think just his natural physical attribute, his size, his strength, I think that caused him, and it's ironic considering his father is Marvin Harrison, But I think it caused him to not get in the habit of precise route running and getting himself open. Because in college, he didn't have to get himself open. He just naturally was open. That's an adjustment. He's not the first wide receiver to fall victim to this.
01:43:30
Speaker 4: Jake, I thought he was a much better route runner in college than I think you're giving him credit for. I just think one of the main differences, like if you look at his frame itself... Look at his frame from when he was at Ohio State compared to now when he got to the Arizona Cardinals and specifically from that senior year of college to his sophomore year. Yes, you expect some added muscle and muscle mass, but like he added what looked like 20 pounds. And so that I think it's negatively affected him. It has negatively affected him in the aspect of his athleticism and his ability to break off routes and get open. So now he's trying to fall back on his 50-50 catch ability.
01:44:10
Speaker 1: So what I'm saying here, Eddie, is this. When you talk about breaking off routes and getting open, I don't know in college that he had to do that because he just was naturally open. He could have been blanketed and he was going to make catches because he was bigger and stronger than whoever was guarding him. And I think in the professional rank, if you were to go back and really look at when he came out of the draft, that was the one thing about him was, is he going to be able to do exactly that through just break out out of route and get himself up? So maybe that's what I mean more with route running. But I think he never had to worry about that at the collegiate level. But either way, we'll see what happens with him in Houston and whether I don't think personally... that he's going to suddenly recapture what we expected of him in being a top five pick. He might be a serviceable player now.
01:45:03
Speaker 4: I think there's a potential somewhere in the between because there's Nico Collins there in Houston to take a little bit of pressure off of him. He's going to a situation where he wasn't drafted to be the first, you know, a fourth overall pick and be the guy that saves a franchise, you know, and sparks an offense like that. He's going there to rejuvenate, revitalize his career. I think the other part we haven't really talked about, and I wonder if this was in the minds of the Colts of just Marvin Harrison Jr., the name, the lore of trying to follow up your dad. It's a prime example of what we've seen with Jizzle James and what Ampere said when we talked to him about that situation a few weeks ago. How much of pressure and stress... has gone onto Marvin Harrison Jr. 's shoulders of trying to follow up in his father's footsteps.
01:45:57
Speaker 1: But I do think, again, and the other question that I had about it, if the Colts, in fact, had inquired about him, and I guess you do your due diligence of inquiring about him, right? But how much of that was the sentimentality of everybody falling in love with the fact of like, we're getting the band back together. You know what I mean? if it was the exact same player, exact same pedigree, exact same statistics, but his father had been a former Cleveland Brown, would they have had the same level of desire or intrigue about him? I don't know the answer to that. But I agree with Stephen in the fact that if, in fact, the Colts had made the overture about him, and I applaud them for not overspending for it. We already have on the defensive side somebody they did it for.
01:46:41
Speaker 3: But if.
01:46:43
Speaker 1: If they staved the temptation, I commend them for it. And maybe you just do your due diligence in general, but I think it is a fair assumption, as Stephen had said, to think that that was motivated by the uncertainty of the availability of Alec Pierce, which is concerning. And especially with this offense and the way they were able to get Tyler Warren going a little bit. And that's good because that can soften up that middle zone of a defense. But teams are basically now just saying, you know what, we're just going to look. Just like Stephen talked about with Sauce Gardner of Aaron Rodgers being able to look at it and say, okay, they might have a shutdown corner over there, but it doesn't matter. Because I can just throw right here towards their linebackers or on the right side and wreak havoc all day long. As I mentioned earlier, if Michigan Avenue, and I don't know if you've driven lately, by the way, on the northwest side of Indianapolis, but what a complete disaster. Like over by Riverside Park and 30th Street. I mean, the orange barrels galore, right? and don't even get me started down by like Lenhurst and all that, but nonetheless, if that quadrant of Indianapolis is shut down due to orange barrels, it doesn't matter if Meridian and Keystone are wide open all day long in Fall Creek. And that's what the Colts' defense looks like, right? Okay, sure. We shut down one lane. Great. Other four, wide open for business. It's the Audubon, baby. And then on the offensive side of things, without that out there for an Alec Pierce, I think defenses are able to just say, well, look, I mean, we can shut down all the lanes because we don't have to worry about anything getting behind us and they don't have anything so far to stretch that out. Speaking of stretch, not a stretch by any stretch, but maybe, pardon the pun there, a tweak of the ankle for Tyrese Halliburton? But he didn't play against Atlanta. It looks like he's good to go tonight in Oklahoma City, but will he play? That's one of the things that we'll discuss. And also just previewing the Pacers and still kind of put a tie on things with the Fever as well with Scott Agnes next. Man, on the text line, you guys are so butthurt over the Colts, you're starting to sound like JMV. Butthurt? Come on, that from Greg.
01:49:01
Speaker 4: Butthurt about what?
01:49:04
Speaker 1: I mean, what is there to be gumdrops and lollipops about? You know what I mean?
01:49:11
Speaker 6: Nothing.
01:49:14
Speaker 1: You lose. This, by the way, before we get to Scott Agnes from Nick, Mr. Garrison. Now, who calls you Mr. Garrison? Is that your dad they're sending this to?
01:49:23
Speaker 4: I guess so.
01:49:25
Speaker 1: I guess so. I consider myself relatively educated, but certainly not in a Jim Irsay upper quartile way. Yet, I've graduated from college well over a decade ago. I've never heard the word vociferous until our friend Jake Query regularly uses it. What say you?
01:49:38
Speaker 4: Vociferous yes i would also agree uh naivete another one.
01:49:45
Speaker 1: Should i replace vociferous with gregarious or loquacious loquacious would perhaps be better but vociferous i think means a little more demonstrative.
01:49:53
Speaker 4: That's how i describe myself loquacious yes okay.
01:49:58
Speaker 1: I i would describe you simply as um let's see uh chubbly and bubbly Okay.
01:50:05
Speaker 4: Here we go again.
01:50:06
Speaker 1: How's that? You're the one that said you're insulated, right?
01:50:09
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no.
01:50:10
Speaker 1: No, you did.
01:50:11
Speaker 3: No, no, no.
01:50:12
Speaker 4: A couple of years ago, we.
01:50:13
Speaker 1: Were doing the show, and I came in, and I said, it is freezing outside. And you said, I wouldn't know. I'm well insulated.
01:50:18
Speaker 4: No, I didn't say that. I said, it was getting chilly outside. And Olivia goes, I'm freezing. I said, oh, no, I think it feels great. She goes, well, you're insulated. That's where that came from.
01:50:29
Speaker 1: So Olivia called you insulated. Yes.
01:50:31
Speaker 3: Yes.
01:50:32
Speaker 1: Would you say it's fair to say that she probably sees you with, say, less clothing than the average person does? Oh, okay, that's enough. So she would have a general idea. That's enough there. Joining us now, and I'm sure thrilled to be doing so based on that introduction, he is with Fieldhouse Files. He's on the Game Day Men's Health guest line. Scott Agnes joining us. Pacers in action tonight in Oklahoma City. Scott, I'm going to get right to this coming off the game with Atlanta. I want you to assess for me your thoughts on kind of the assimilation within this offense of Kelly Oubre, who was kind of a late signing, and I thought kind of a value signing, but I think might have significant role for them. Your assessment early of what you've seen.
01:51:13
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think so.
01:51:14
Speaker 8: I totally agree with all your assessment there in terms of they got Oubre at a value. Look, this was a starter for the Philadelphia 76ers the last couple of years. And obviously he comes here to Indy with the thought of probably being that sixth man and the guy that can fill in in the starting lineup as needed with players being out like we saw in that second round. Preseason game. I love his first of all, just his body attributes, right? Has the size, the strength ability to knock down the outside shot, but also get to the basket helps fill some of that void left behind by Benedict Matherin in many departments. I think he's very grounded and mature now, much different player than when he was here. 10 years ago for his pre-draft workout and really stood out for all the wrong reasons. I think he's going to be a likable guy. And he's a curious and interesting guy in what he likes and what he talks about. That makes for a good quote as well.
01:52:05
Speaker 1: Okay, so elaborate on that. We've seen, I like curious, right? I like people that have interest beyond just what it is that we know about them. So what have you gotten to know about him?
01:52:17
Speaker 8: Yeah, so I mean, just coming in, let's go back first at the beginning, what stood out 10 years ago. It was his arrogance, his cockiness, but he was the youngest guy in the draft field. But he was talking about, I should be a top pick. Everybody should want me. Now, since he's had a family, since he's a dad, all those different things, and he's matured within the league and understands his role, I think that's gone a long ways. But just even whether it's his fashion or I think his calm demeanor, but also how quickly he's He's been appreciated, I think it seems like, by that locker room are a couple things that have stood out to me.
01:52:52
Speaker 1: Scott Agnes is the guest Game Day Men's Health guest line. Game Day Men's Health with six central Indiana locations. Scott, I was very impressed in the game against Atlanta and encouraged. by the pace in which they were still able to play. For a group that hasn't been together for a while and adding some new wrinkles, I thought even with Oubre out there, for example, and I think Oubre even said, like, man, just the ball movement pace in moving it around. Do you believe that that is going to be their mainstay go-to offense? Or as we've talked about with Zubat's in there now, do they kind of hybrid it a little bit?
01:53:34
Speaker 8: I think for the most part, it'll continue to be that with some implementations or maybe specific place in my mind to get Zubats going. Because how often do we saw? We saw this in the past with Miles Turner. You feed him, you get him a couple of shots, and then it translates at both ends. I think it's more incumbent, though, on Zubats to adapt to what has worked here. We know the blueprint for a Tyrese Halliburton-led team and what works and how they move the ball. I love the fact, Jake, They've had 30 plus assists in both of these games. They've moved it well. They played at the pace, even though even in his first game back, Tyrese is like, yeah, I was huffing and puffing out there. And fans need to know that's going to take some time. This is not like a one week thing and he's good. That'll probably take at least a month for many of these guys, but especially Tyrese, who has been out. But no, I think more than anything, they're going to try to keep it. playing at that pace while also acknowledging, hey, let's find some ways to engage Zubats and get him going early in games.
01:54:35
Speaker 1: I also think, for a Halliburton standpoint, Scott, and we've talked a lot about this with Daniel Jones, for example, and that is, even though he looks very good and even though he was given a lot more recovery time than, say, Tatum or other players... There is just naturally going to be the body compensatory movement of just in the back of your mind still waiting out that Achilles, right? And to me, I would think you probably go until Christmas before we can truly understand the pace and the gel that they're going to have. Am I being too cautious? No, I think you are spot on.
01:55:13
Speaker 8: Yeah, Christmas, right at New Year's, I think those are good measurements, milestones for him because he's going to have a lot of checkpoints along the way. Now, what does seem good is the mental aspect is gone in a good way. I got to imagine coming back from this, every step you were thinking about, every cut, you're looking to fall to see how you react. But in turn, Tyrese was joking afterwards that actually it was other players that were checking in on him. Hey, are you good? How'd that feel? Rather than him like, yeah, guys, I'm good. So more than anything, I think it's those physical limitations and him trying to reassert himself within the flow of things without breaking things up. And I'm very curious to that point, what Nembhard's... I think Nembhard could have some more of a hybrid role in that, look, he can shoulder a lot of the load, but also he can go back to playing that off-guard spot. So I'm really intrigued with that and maybe Nembhard in that second unit as well.
01:56:09
Speaker 1: Who do you think is the Pacers' most versatile player?
01:56:15
Speaker 6: First instinct is Siakam.
01:56:16
Speaker 1: Okay. Nembhard's got to be in the discussion, right? Because you can put him in different places.
01:56:22
Speaker 6: Especially his defense, right? Toppin?
01:56:26
Speaker 1: I mean... I guess when I say versatile, I mean that you can put at, like, it's positionless basketball, Scott, I realize. But if you go typically one, two, three, four, five, the guy that you can put in in the most different position, Toppin, you kind of can put anywhere, right?
01:56:40
Speaker 8: Probably, to me, it's Siakam, Nembhard, and Jairus Walker, right? They can defend different positions. They have the size.
01:56:46
Speaker 6: Yes, they can handle it.
01:56:47
Speaker 8: Like, Jairus Walker was a point guard way back in the day. He can handle the ball. Now, you have better players that can handle it. But Nembhard's right there, too.
01:56:54
Speaker 6: That's a good one.
01:56:55
Speaker 1: Walker is one that I'm just fascinated. We said it last year was a big year for him. But now is the bigger, bigger year. You know what I mean? But before we let you go, Scott, I do want to touch on the fever. I mean, now that the dust has kind of settled, we've seen all of the exit interviews. We've seen Kaitlyn Clark for the first time really come out and just kind of say, guys, I get it. There's a lot of noise here. And I think she recognized that it was becoming a distraction for her teammates. Where did the fever go from here in terms of, for example, is Sophie Cunningham back? Do we have a better understanding as to how they may look next year? Kelsey Mitchell as well.
01:57:35
Speaker 6: I don't think so.
01:57:36
Speaker 8: I think right now we're just sitting back and waiting as the front office and ownership reassesses this situation, right? Like the fact that things did not go well. You didn't win a playoff series. You mostly had good health for the top heavy players, which matters. I think the number one thing Looking forward to next year that I'm also interested in is what does Aaliyah Boston decide on that knee?
01:57:58
Speaker 6: It bothered her all season. Does she need it scoped? Does she time off?
01:58:02
Speaker 8: Whatever it is, that needs to be addressed so that it is no issue going into next season. But outside of that, you're really several months... away from addressing the roster and figuring out what you have. And are you going to have a chance to retain Kelsey Mitchell? My thing with her, I totally understand her position.
01:58:21
Speaker 4: Right.
01:58:22
Speaker 6: She's the she's the high school kid.
01:58:24
Speaker 8: Or excuse me, maybe the college kid that can go back and enjoy recruitment once again. Free agent could choose for the first time now to go somewhere else, though she doesn't have to.
01:58:34
Speaker 6: They're obviously going to make a competitive offer.
01:58:37
Speaker 8: That has been made clear by Kaitlyn Clark as well as Amber Cox. With Sophie Cunningham, there's a lot of good reasons to keep her back. I just wonder, from a coaching and front office standpoint, if with her being outspoken and willing to share her mind, did that have too much of a distraction, in their opinion, to bring her back? From a basketball standpoint, if we're strictly talking that, Jake, I think it's a no-brainer. She's close with several key players. She's one of the most vocal players on the court, and I think that's really important. Keeps everyone aligned and engaged. It's just that noise, was it too much off the court?
01:59:12
Speaker 1: That noise will absolutely be discussed. I can assure you of that. Now, whether that becomes... That tips the scales, I don't know, but it will absolutely be discussed.
01:59:22
Speaker 6: Scott, who's winning the WNBA finals?
01:59:23
Speaker 8: The other thing I want to say on Sophie, sorry, Eddie, is she mentioned and emphasized before this past season she really wants a stable situation in terms of contract. So maybe the Fever are willing to do a one-year contract hypothetically, but she could get a two- or three-year deal somewhere else. I think that sounds like something she's prioritizing.
01:59:41
Speaker 4: Scott, the WNBA finals start on Saturday. Who you got, Valkyries or the Atlanta Dreams?
01:59:48
Speaker 8: To me, I want to say the Valkyries, but I think the Dream just have way more talent, way more athleticism, way more overall talent that will get it done. The Valkyries, to me, are a curious case. Just year two, right, Eddie? But at the same time, here they are in the finals, and they're the more fundamentally united team in all this. But I think talent wins out for the Dream.
02:00:08
Speaker 3: What about you?
02:00:10
Speaker 4: I go with Valkyries. I think the defense gets it done.
02:00:13
Speaker 3: I go with the.
02:00:13
Speaker 1: Valkyries just because they've been the better team all season, right? I mean, have they not been the best team all year?
02:00:19
Speaker 4: I also don't see Atlanta going into Golden State and stealing a game.
02:00:22
Speaker 1: Then again, the Dodgers have been– well, the Brewers have been better probably. The Dodgers have been the best team for a while, and they're down 2-0, which is cool with me, but different sports.
02:00:29
Speaker 8: The Valkyries have the greatest home court right now, the largest attendance. I think they've sold out every game that they've played. So you're exactly right, Jake. It is not easy to go there into Golden State.
02:00:38
Speaker 1: Scott Agnes, Fieldhouse Files. We'll have all of the Pacers and Fever coverage for you at FieldhouseFiles.com. Scott, appreciate the time as always.
02:00:45
Speaker 6: You got it.
02:00:45
Speaker 4: Thanks, guys.
02:00:46
Speaker 1: Scott Agnes joining us. By the way, Eddie, this just in, do you happen to have the Breaking News Sounder? For the first time in show history, the Breaking News Sounder now has a sponsor. It is the Gandalf Financial Services Breaking News Sounder. Gandalf Financial Services began in June of 1997, serving Central Indiana for 30 years, an independent LPL investment advisor representative since 2009. Folks, whatever it is that you're talking about, whether you're doing retirement planning, estate planning, life insurance, college funding, all of it, Gandalf Financial Services is there for you, helping businesses establish and maintain employee-sponsored retirement plan visits to employee retention. A personal touch on all of it. Look forward to telling you all about Gandalf over the course of the season here with each time that we do the Breaking News Sounder. Like, just for example... Eddie, I want you to name for me off the top of your head a sport. Name any sport.
02:01:48
Speaker 6: Golf.
02:01:49
Speaker 1: Golf. Okay. Here we go. Funny you mention. Do you happen to have the breaking news sounder? This just in from the world of golf in the Gandalf Financial Services breaking news sounder. Gandalf Financial Services, by the way, FINRA slash SIPC. I've got to figure out how we say those acronyms. Securities offered through LPL Financial. Yesterday in golf, I golfed with my high school principal and with Scott Agnes had him as well.
02:02:20
Speaker 3: Dr.
02:02:20
Speaker 4: Eugene White.
02:02:21
Speaker 1: What's that?
02:02:21
Speaker 3: Dr.
02:02:21
Speaker 1: Eugene White.
02:02:22
Speaker 2: Dr.
02:02:22
Speaker 1: Eugene White. And then Rob Hendricks, who taught me in radio and television at WJEL, both of my golf with them. And look, laugh at me all you want, folks. I don't care. I've only been golfing for three years, not even that totally. My third summer of golf, and I shot a 91. And I'm the class of 91 from those guys. Yesterday, I shot a 91 and 18 with them. I was pleased with that. But anyway, very, very happy to have and appreciative of Gandalf Financial Services for being the breaking news sounder sponsor. JMV, we will check in with him and find out what he's got cooking for his program. Part of, of course, the crossover from Love Heating and Air, love-hvac.com. We'll do it next. JMV has arrived. Crossover brought to you by the good guys at Love Heating and Air. Man, it is perfect outside right now. Perfect, buddy, perfect. But tomorrow you might have to... It's going to be wet tomorrow, I think. But nonetheless. I saw Friday, 57.
02:03:12
Speaker 2: Is it going to get down to 38 on the weekend, too?
02:03:16
Speaker 1: Do you remember back in the day, this used to always be the weekend, that even when Indiana football was terrible, they would always get an ABC game because they would do the aerials. Oh, yeah.
02:03:27
Speaker 2: It was always a good time down there, even when they were getting their ass whooped.
02:03:30
Speaker 1: Which was most of the time, right?
02:03:33
Speaker 4: It would be a picture game for IU on Saturday normally, right?
02:03:37
Speaker 2: How many Ohio State-IU games have you attended in your existence?
02:03:41
Speaker 1: If I had to guess, I would say 10. Three for me, I think.
02:03:45
Speaker 3: Three.
02:03:46
Speaker 2: There was one time I was in the elevator with John Cooper's daughter who was absolutely smokedified. A little nervous for you? I could barely function afterwards. I mean, smokedified. His daughter was smoke. Dave Wanstead's daughter, once upon a time, he was there. Yeah, she looked good, too. But, man, John Cooper's lobe.
02:04:08
Speaker 1: Tom Green's daughter's attractive.
02:04:10
Speaker 3: Yep.
02:04:11
Speaker 1: But what else?
02:04:12
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
02:04:13
Speaker 2: I go back to, I think, 87 is when it was. Jim Carzados was quarterback. Chris Carter was the wide receiver.
02:04:19
Speaker 1: Was that the darkest day in Ohio State history?
02:04:22
Speaker 3: No.
02:04:22
Speaker 1: Then it was after that. Maybe it was 86. Because they were in Columbus, right? It was 86.
02:04:27
Speaker 2: Well, I know Chris Carter caught a touchdown pass and did the Pee Wee Herman in the end zone. and spiked it, and it came over to me because they used to have that chain-link fence.
02:04:36
Speaker 1: That's right.
02:04:37
Speaker 2: And I was on the other side of the chain-link fence, and it bounced over.
02:04:40
Speaker 1: Did you get to keep it? I did not. I had to give it back. Of course, nobody's keeping anything. They had to give it back.
02:04:45
Speaker 2: But we had a hellaciously awesome party down in Greene County later on that night, too.
02:04:49
Speaker 1: Just based on the fact you got the football.
02:04:50
Speaker 6: I remember all that. I was getting out on it.
02:04:52
Speaker 1: Chris Carter probably would have showed up for the party, actually. He probably would have, too.
02:04:55
Speaker 2: But, yeah, Jim Carzados was the quarterback, and Eric, remember Eric Kummerow, who was the linebacker, highly touted, never really– Keith Byers had been on that team? He might have been on that team. Keith Byers may have been. They were pretty stacked.
02:05:12
Speaker 1: What's on the big program today?
02:05:14
Speaker 2: Mark Kerman's going to join us. We'll talk both Boilermakers and Colts with Mark. I know Greg's going to be here. Hell, I don't know what else we're doing.
02:05:23
Speaker 1: John, I'm telling you, don't look now. I'm not saying that they're– but I think Purdue's kind of turning a corner here. I hope so.
02:05:31
Speaker 2: You seem like you have a pretty decent relationship with Barry O.
02:05:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's been cool, right?
02:05:35
Speaker 3: Hopefully, yeah.
02:05:36
Speaker 2: I mean, he understands what goes on. And then one of these days, if he goes big, he'll ignore us like everybody else does.
02:05:43
Speaker 1: You ever notice?
02:05:44
Speaker 6: That's how that goes.
02:05:45
Speaker 1: That's right.
02:05:45
Speaker 2: Except we always have to give credit to Matt Conte. Matt Conte, when lose or draw, is always right there. And Matt Painter, too. Matt Painter will come on. But yeah, everybody else can kind of... Stick it up the rear as far as I'm concerned.
02:05:58
Speaker 3: All right.
02:05:59
Speaker 1: John's up at three. Thanks for listening to Aquarian Company.
