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Speaker 1: Via Around the NFL Podcast, Still Isn't throwing in practice? Welcome back to another edition of the Around the NFL Podcast, presented by a new era. My name is Dan Hansas and I'm joined and room filled with some heroes for now anyway, Mark Sessler, Chris Westling, what is up? Boys? Hey Dan? Hey? Yeah, we were We thought it was going to be the three of us and Gregg made a round of phone calls about twenty minutes before the show started to say that he would be heading north from Chargers Camp, and after completing a call with Greg where we sort of said I, I said, why don't you just roll him when you can, because we've got a definitive star time, which is rare for this show guests coming up. So I hung up with him. I thought, very productive call. Productive call with Greg, went on about my business, and then two seconds later my phone rang again and Greg was face timing me. I thought this must be extremely important, but Greg had mistakenly face timing and could hear him speaking to some random person at Chargers Camp While my face was up on the screen, his was not, So I said, forget it. It's a typical Greg's done this on the phone before, So I just hung up on Greg ten minutes to go by again, and Greg calls me again and then simply hangs up, so that you know, I don't know. He's got a lot to answer to. He also, and we can maybe talk to him about this when he's in here. It feels fair. But he made some bold statements about his driving ability uh in and around Rams Camp where we were obviously on Thursday, And then there was some eyewitness accounts, first person eye witnessed accounts that spoke uh really to the contrary of his statements that he is indeed a good driver. Maybe we'll get to that uh today, but we have a lot to get to. So, yes, it was nice being at Rams Camp on Thursday, that's what you heard on Friday's show. But better to be back in the studio. I'm happy to be here. This is where we belong. Safe, safe space. It's not it's not like hot, it's not strangers everywhere. I don't have to shake people's hands back. Oh, thanks so much for you know, helping us with it. You know, No, I just want to be in here and my little cocoon. This thinking thing is on your radar, haven't noticed so we're back in the studio and uh West we are how many days away from week one? Probably thirty some thirty something days away from week one. A lot of news to get to and it's coming in hot and heavy now. Um, so we're gonna get to all that. Also, the Hall of Fame ceremony inductions were in Canton this weekend, so as we do every year, we will check in on the highs and lows from that particular affair. And that has been a while. Our good friend uh formerly of NFL dot com and now a hot shot over at the Monday morning quarterback slash say dot com, s I dot com realm Connor or are you kidding me? But actually instead of playing a game with Connor, we're gonna talk about a recent feature piece he wrote about Uh Jon Gruden End of the Raiders would toned down or segment? Yeah, a little toned down. We'll get to that because I think yet to be seen if it's toned down. Yeah, we'll find out where he's out emotionally. So so much to get to and Greg at some point, uh loose Cannon once again behind the glass. Hey guys, thanks for all your hard work. You're welcome. You're very welcome. Let's that's what I'm still kissing you in the mouth? Yeah, I kiss all monkey is in the mouth. Don't stay with him. I don't know, I know, I know. The best moment of the entire weekend and Canton was after ray Lewis and it was the background there was that he was saying he didn't have a relationship with his own father. Uh, and he didn't have someone that although he had a great relationship with his mother, he didn't have someone to tell him when he was young that that he was loved and kissed him. So it was sweet that he kisses the children. But then to show the ESPN showed a long like um pan across each of the children dying of embarrassment, which is kind of fun to um. All right, let's do some news and uh uh the Ravens used to be the Browns. Is that for a transition? Cessler? Well, the Browns were scouting ray Lewis before they became the Ravens. So right, so why don't we hop in wonderful two decades it's been When when do we hop into the dog pound to get going? Today? And um, once again, the Cleveland Browns are parting ways with a former draft pick that was supposed to transform the franchise. This time it's wide receiver Corey Coleman, who was their first round pick in the sixteen draft. Uh what what pick? Overall? Wasn't Mark about overall? Um suffered a pair of hand injuries and back to back seasons to start his career, and then you heard whispers and Mark this is this was something on your radar for some time that Coleman was maybe not a good fit, uh, in terms of personality or vibe with the new new, new new Browns. So they trade him to the Bills. And the Bills obviously we just talked about this last week in the podcast West they had a need at wide receiver. They get Corey Coleman for the price of a seventh round pick in the draft, which is Christian Hackenberg type compensation. Uh. Just the boondoggle by the Browns and they're moving on. This is the close closest you can get to releasing a player without releasing him a seventh round pick, not even in the next draft, the draft after that. It's basically saying we don't want the we don't want to cut the first draft pick of the Hugh Jackson era. Well, and I would say that if you're the Browns, if you if you look at how long front offices last in Cleveland, when you decide to net a draft pick two years from now, good luck. If you're the front office making that pick. It's basically to me, I when I saw this number one, it's bad optics for Cleveland obviously on multiple levels. I think we get that because because if you're Buffalo, you desperately need a wide receiver. Corey Coleman's about twenty four years old, and let's say he let's say he matures and he's still I thought there was a game against the Ravens actually where Corey Coleman scored two touchdowns and looked incredible, and then it never happened again. I mean, you never know what you're gonna get. So the trade is mysterious to me on that level, where why would you allow a seventh round pick to be the compensation? But what stuck out to me is there must be another shoe that drops here on some level, whether it's they know something about Corey Coleman that the Bills do not know. He used to pass a physical and all that business too. But secondly, are they planning to make a signing or a trade of their own to bring someone else in. He was listed number one on their depth chart yesterday, which basically tells me they're trying to sell them because they don't believe that. I didn't believe that. And that's when the Dez Bryant talks will again pick up, which again does not well they have picked up because any of said that interest is still there. Feels like a strange fit. Dez in Cleveland will see. But West, it seems like also this wasn't a guy that had some type of catastrophic lower body injury. Um it was two broken hands, and maybe that's a chronic thing that will haunt his career. But this seems like there is more behind the scenes. You know, Mark Sparrows have been in his ear. That's why you've been bringing up Corey a lot, trying to get him out of town. There there had to be more to this story, Like Mark said, well, I think what Mark Sparrows have probably said is some combination of he's a knucklehead in the locker room off the field, and when he came into the league, the knock was he came from a Baylor offense where you don't run anywhere close to a full route tree. Will he ever become an NFL level route runner? And I would say those are the two questions he's carrying with him to Buffalo. Yeah. I mean, the people who have been at Brown's camp say that rookie Antonio Callaway is already a cleaner route runner than than than basically Corey Coleman has ever been. So I this is a guy from a purely physical standpoint. You wrote articles, other people wrote articles comparing him to Steve Smith as he entered the league. Right, but there's a d NA chip miss missing their big time to make him Steve Smith. So far um and there is that is a wild stat I think every Brown's pick first round picks since two thousand eleven, there's no one on the team. Well what I Well, I think there's a lot of price involved in that too. Number one bad picks. But it's new front offices and you we're seeing it with John Dorsey's coming and he's burning down the entire house that he inherited. And there there have been five or six front offices or iterations of some I feel like I heard this that the same thing. It's not. It's just ridiculous. So you know, you you have to have one of these and hopefully it's this one. But who knows stick around for ten years and have a shared philosophy over the course of a decade. It should be noted that this pick was made after they traded out of the opportunity to pick Carson went Well, it goes down if if you want to cook it up a certain way, you could say almost that they got they gave away Carson Wentz for this rounder and a few other pets. It is one stretch in the end. Well, in the end, it is one of the worst trades of all time because they got very little in the end. Um And just to make sure I have that's that right. Cleveland had eleven first round picks in the eight draft between twenty nine and sixteen. None are on the team, So uh, Cory Colvin, UH Sionara moving on. Obviously, UH, good teams have stability at the top. The Browns have not been able to do what the Eagles have and UH we saw that uh this weekend. The Eagles on Sunday announced head coach Doug Peterson, an executive vice president of football Operations, Howie Roseman have signed contract extensions. Uh, no details, but this is as a no brainers. It comes in Atlanta. They did something last week locking up their brain trut bain trupt brain trust. This is equally a no brainer because Doug Peterson is the perfect guy to leave that team and Roseman Uh survived. He went through the five football fields of s smelling foulness, made it out clean on the other side, and he is more powerful, powerful than ever in that organization. This is this is their time, this is their glory days, their housey on days. Doug Peterson and Howie Roseman to me, salad days, salad days. They were the story of two thousand seventeen season. The way they've built this team, combining analytics with old school scouting new school philosophy to develop a team that the owner can be proud of on the field as well as off the field. This had to have been one of the most no brainer even with so many years left on their contracts. These guys are the story in the NFL right now. I believe salad days refers to when you're young, barely getting by and eating something more no more than yeah, it means you're like a naive. So I wouldn't salad days meant like these are the good times? I know, but would you think that, hey, these are the days that Dan Hanzas says salad salads are good? Though. I think I will check it out, but I don't. I think the Eagles are post salad days. I got jump post salad days, right, Uh? Okay, moving on. UH. So we knew this was going to be a situation where we had a feeling, uh, even when we were at the talent summit. Uh. Which is kind of an obnoxious thing to say, but I was of the Talent Summit for NFL media um last month and they had al River n explained the new rules, including the new helmet rule, and lo and behold. In the first preseason game this year, the Hall of Fame Game, what happens the flags are flying? I believe there were multiple uh penalties for leading with the helmet. Afterwards, players were perplexed, Players were upset, confused, and frankly, I would imagine worried that this is the new reality in the NFL and we're not gonna be able to play more than six snaps without a personal foul for going helmet to not just helmet the helmet, now mark helmet to any part of the body. So they start, yeah, well, we came home from RAMS camp and that Hall of Fame game was, you know, midway through or so, and Twitter was a glow with the helmet the first thing I saw. Look, it was what happened next? Non stout helmet rule issues. I think a couple of people, especially some foreign players, made a good point though that whenever they sheet a new rule, because back when there was hands to fit hands to the face was a rule a couple of years ago. Jeff Schwartz, the former lineman, point out that they called it endlessly in the preseason to get it into everyone's mind, and then when Week one came, they got they re galvanized how often was getting called, how annoying would be, how invasive, and they chilled on it a little bit. But it's really to set the tone that, you know, let's not find out in a week four that this is a hot issue. Find out in week one of the preseason. And that's why I don't want to get too worked up about it in the preseason, because we go not to ask, we don't know how it's gonna be called in the season. We don't know if it's gonna be a minor annoyance or a major storyline every week. Moving on Calvin Benjamin, who is now in Buffalo. He was a former first round pick of the Panthers. Wait a second, look, who's rolling. It's trying to get airtime here. There he comes the man. Oh, he's wearing shorts. First time anyone's ever worn shorts in the podcast. That's true. I used to wear shorts in here quite often until a shadow league figure informed me that I was to stop showing up with shorts on. I've never seen Greg's been on the road that that's a short out there. You shorts is the normal type out there. It was ninety degrees and made Irvine like cool. I've never noticed watched you guys from that side of the lasta. It looks very professional, like really good operation. We've got going. Well, that's good and uh, you were at Chargers camp. It was good. Yeah, you know, better or worse than being at Rams camp with us. Being at Rams camp with you guys, it was more fun. This was just then you got a Chargers kid, You get to like pale around with like DJ and stuff. I feel like that Tom Tolesco. It also was over at noon to that. That wasn't you know a nice thing? And that schedule. So anyway, we're gonna keep going here. Greg, you want to just jump in, that's the plan. Yeh, let's stomp in. We're talking about Calvin Benjamin, who was the first round pick of the Panthers. Started out pretty well actually his first year, and then things kind of went south. He is now on the Bills, and an interview with the Athletics Tim Graham, the Bills receiver Um talked about his four years of the Panthers. Uh. This is what he had to say on his time in Carolina. I mean, I felt like I would have been even more successful if ellipses. Looking back on it, I should have just been drafted by somebody else. I should have never went to Carolina. Truly. I just think Carolina was bad for me. It was a bad fit from the get go. He went on to say this, if you would have put me with any quarterback, Let's be real, you know what I'm saying, interesting any other He didn't say interesting, I did any other accurate quarterback like Aaron Rodgers, or Eli Manning who shot across West and Greg's bow, or Big Ben anybody quarterbacks with knowledge, they know how to place the ball and give you a better chance to catch the ball. It just felt like I wasn't in that position West your thoughts. I sort of hated this story came out because Cam is such a polarizing figure as it is that people want to reduce the discussion to him of whether he sucks or he's awesome. There's never any room for He's a terribly inconsistent passer because his mechanics are screwy and they will always be screwy. When he's playing hot and his mechanics are all right, he's an m v P. All the other times, when he's not playing hot and his mechanics are off, he's one of the worst passes in the league, and yet and maintains plenty of value because he does so so many other things. Well, that said, Kelvin, Benjamin wasn't lying, Paul. Placement issues are a major problem with Cam Newton. At the same time, though, I put this on under the category of why why do this? Why say this? And by the way, the second question is you're on a buffalo team with three quarterbacks who we aren't sure we can trust any one of them. So your situation, it's not like suddenly you're with Aaron Rodgers and you can sit in your pretty seat and say the past was rough and rugged for me. No, it's gonna get worse. Now you're gonna find out you're gonna appreciate Cam Newton potentially by week three or four. I I totally agree with everything both of you said, But the first thing that stuck out to me was, well, this is why they traded Kelvin Benjamin part right, sure, you can go find all and Will Brentson did in this tweet all these insane quotes that Calvin Benjamin had during his time in Carolina, some of which which were very dismissive of Cam or the coaching staff or whoever, and like, that's that's one of the reasons they wanted to get rid of it. But except that a former Panthers coach and former Panthers front office individual traded for him and then just now had to sit down and have a talk with him about how they want him to anyone. Let's take a quick break from news to check in with our sponsor. Is your home and a d T home. In fact, it is gentlemen, my home is protected by a d T which helps protect against break ins, fire and carbon monoxide for a limited time. Get a d T S lowest rate starting at just a month from the most trusted name and home security. 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Meanwhile, on the throne of Sleeves, the Patriots will be without their rookie running back Sonny Michelle wonder when a minor procedure to drain fluid from his knee, rap She reported Saturday V a source and formed of the situation, is expected to be back in time Week one, the matchup against the Texans, But obviously not a good start for a rookie. Any rookie doesn't want to be behind the eight ball here. Rex Burkhead greg at the top of the depth chart in New England, and Sony's got to make his way up. It already sounded like Rex Burkhead was the leader in the clubhouse for touches and that Michelle was having his struggles, maybe because of this knee injury, which Michael Lombardi reported back in April was a bone on bone condition in his knee. Yet the Patriots still drafted him in the first round. They do this a lot. They tend to take a lot of injury risks, and then every once in a while it turns into Rob Gronkowski. But for the most part, it's just drafted a lot of injured players that Mike Lombardi though deep inside the Patriots organization scaring other teams off for is that? But that was what I thought at the time, But now it's not working out too well. Rap Sheet said about two weeks is how long he should be out. But to me, that's two weeks off the field and then to be eased back in because you're dealing with a knee situation, you have I wonder whether he's going to even be on the field in week one. Uh. And another Patriots news and in more knee issues, Malcolm Mitchell has been waived by the Patriots, a former fourth round pick who, if you recall, had a really nice game in the Super Bowl win over the Falcons, but he's had knee issues that are kept on the sideline and um, they are deciding New England out to move on again. Another head to the depth chart there, and you wonder if Mitchell's issues are even more serious than we are aware of, because he probably could be a useful player one healthy mark. Yeah. I mean this team is crumbling from the inside out, That's all I have to say. There's no way a team that needs wide receivers is releasing this guy if he's healthy. You know. And just as a Patriots fan, man, I was ready to just be a huge Malcolm Mitchell fan, and I am a huge Literally the last time he was on the field, he caught five passes in five targets for sixty three yards in the Super Bowl, and they were all these insane timing routes that took so much precision. Was some of Tom Brady's most memorable throws. I think of his entire career that Mitchell's catching. I'm thinking, all right, we got a decade with this guy. Well, now you have to show a lot that was it. Now you shift your affections to known malcontent Kenny Britt. This is Kenny Bridge. Just keeps on. I mean, I don't mind. He got him a ring. They would not have won a Super Bowl without Malcolm Mitchell's. This has become the wide receiver equivalent of Sam Bradford's Week one game against the last year. I'm blowing it up. It's true that Uh don't forget about Geno Smith's closer to lightning in a bottle the sper Bowl, though. UM moving on the Raiders surprise kicking move. You know I love kicker talk. Uh. Georgiovechio. Uh the second year kicker who replaced Sea Bass last year when Sea Bass went down with his injury, and Uh really thrived, especially in the early part of the season, allowing him to stick around well John Gruden obviously didn't see enough of him to say we want you here in a long term capacity, so too was cut loose and signed as Mike Nugent, who I believe has now been on every team in the league twice. I mean, I guess we're gonna talk a little Raiders later. But is this Scruden just saying I'd much rather have someone who's thirty six than now? The kicker is supposed to be Eddie Panero, who's in the undrafted rookies? Who who they? And Mike Nugent is they're competing in the building. It sounds like it's Pinero's job. And by the way, Dan, I do want to mention when I was at Chargers camp, I scooted over to the second field where the special special team out there hanging out, and uh, I saw your buddies over there. They were just Roberto Aguaio. Of course. I mean this has been kind of under the radar. I would think Aguayo's back and I'm big time compact against Caleb Sturgis. Uh he's the underdog Aguayo. But you know the reports are they're both kicking pretty well. Yeah, I should dig in on this they were just kind of sitting around though there wasn't much to see. I always went on up. Did they feel guilty about that? They were just kind of like hanging aroun down. What is the bio's hair situation? Right? Because he's going bangs at times, he's done a little bit of a he's v thing in the middle, had a helmet on, just trying to figure things out. How do you feel about Greg being on your corner? I actually appreciate it because he was their boots on the ground. I was hoping you're gonna I didn't really have actual but then I did ask someone and they were like, oh, they're both kicking. Well too close the call. I think Dan doesn't matter to the game. Start. You need to get back down in the lamb. Dan and did a little Eddie Panero film study. I think you're right. Had you heard of Eddie Pineiro before? Of course, I know every kicker that comes into the league. It's just I hold back from talking about all of them because I know not everyone shares the past I do about that position. And meanwhile, by the way, another special team's news involving the Raiders Marquette King, who Gruden said, get the hell out of here. Bro he goes and he's he's fighting with some like radio station guy. Uh over Brandon Stokely. Brandon Stokle is a part of a radio team that interviewed Marquette King and and now there's like a war of words. That guy seems annoying a little bit, not snow King. Maybe Stokely's annoying, I don't know. Uh. Moving on some sad news, former Philadelphia Eagles and Cleveland Browns general manager Tom Heckert passed away at the age of fifty one, the Broncos announced Monday. Most recently, he was a personnel executive with the Broncos. From seen, he had stepped away from the team following last season. He was ill. Uh. We had not heard a lot about how sick heckerd was, but obviously it was a very serious situation. And he is gone at the age of fifty one. You know, we just talked about all of Cleveland's intense draft misses. But if you look at Tom Heckert when he was there under Mike Holmgren, and that's largely seen as an unsuccessful stint because of the Brandon Weed and Trent Richardson scenario. But these are the names that he brought in, Joe Hayden, t j Ward, Jabal Shared, Jordan Cameron, Buster Screen, Mitchell Schwartz, and Travis Benjamin. Each one of those players, outside of Jordan Cameron remained largely and t j Ward to some degree, largely productive and have had productive careers. I mean, imagine had he stuck around, he went on to Denver and was sort of hidden away in Denver. But this is sad news. A lot of people he hired in Philadelphia we're still there and we're part of that Super Bowl, you know last year. I mean, he was back there in the early two thousands, and a lot of people like Cowie Roseman worked underneath him. The disease he had is mean Amelloyd doses, which is what Matt Millen has. So best wishes to Matt Millan. This seems like it's gonna be quite the battle. Uh. In other news, the Arizona Cardinals are down a starting center uh a Q Shipley has been diagnosed with the torn right a c L. He has done for the season. It now falls on third rounder Mason Cole, who will be a starter most likely. Shipley now heads into free agency at age thirty two off of torn a c also a bad situation for him. Yeah. To me, what sticks up about this is Steve Wilkes has really emphasized all offseason everything starts up front. That's his new mantra. And one of the most bizarre opinions I've heard from a head coach this this year is Steve wilkes opinion that the strength of the Cardinals is the offensive line. This was an offensive line that was one of the biggest weaknesses in the league last year. They added Justin Peugh, they added Andre Smith, who was in and out at Cincinnati over the years, and they didn't do much else adding there. Uh So I think to me, like, Okay, the potential may have been the strength of the team, but that's neglecting to point out that the almost every position on on this offensive line comes with a huge question mark. The Falcons have agreed to a three year extension worth UH close to twenty million with defensive back Ricardo Allen. The free safety had been in talks with the team uh for some time, and they get a deal done. So add another piece again, Mark good franchises have stability. He's a solid player, have been really act they extended matt Ryan, Jake Matthews, paid, Julio Jones. I guess Brady Jarrett maybe the last name on the list here one of the Yeah, I think he should be next, and he's maybe the best player of all those guys. Ricardo Allen was one of the only memorable parts of a pretty quiet Hard Knocks season. He came out of nowhere Hard Knocks season. At the time, he was just trying to make the team. So this this does show you like you can remake your career if you land in the right place. I didn't watch that Hard Knocks, but one of my few ever takeaways from Super Bowl media night was during the Falcons Patriots Super Bowl and that week leading up to it, Ricardo Allen I looked at as kind of a fringe player who was lucky to be a starter, And you could tell just after that media night he was one of the leaders of that defense. And now another edition of Keeping Yes It is Maurice bow Ringer, former draft pick in the Minnesota Vikings, Germany product trying to make his way in the NFL didn't work out with the Vikings. Uh so he caught on with who Mark Well with the Cincinnati BEng and what is new with Mobo? What's new is he largely I would I wouldn't say flamed out, just did not materialize as a wide receiver. And they have he added on some towns. And our boy Henry Hodgson Hansen or Hank, who was very apparently very invested in close friends with Moe Berenger noted that he added on, tacked on some weight, has now become a tight end for the Bengals everyone and that was another additiontive keeping up. I think that's my favorite sound drop sneaky, one of my favorite moments of the show. I just enjoy that to the podcast with Eric Jensen. Check it out. I retweeted it last week. What's your favorite bit on the show? Know those mobile updates? Really I had more too, but we can we can leave it right there. Henry short and sweet handsome Hanks in Brazil right now. Uh and uh. Finally in the news, Johnny Manzel made his CFL CFL debut on Friday night. It could not have gone worse. It went Nate Peterman bad, four interceptions and one half. Uh. The Montreal outlet's embarrassed by the team that uh Manzel was on before his trade that got him in the starting lineup, he got benched. I don't know what when he gets in the lineup. I think this is the moment West where we could probably detach from Johnny until there's any reason. In fact, you could have made the argument, I'm sure about judging by your body language, West, we could have done it today. But it should be noted that Manzel imploded and that's where we're gonna leave him for now. Well, in my notes for the show was one thing on Johnny Manziel, just when are we gonna have a moratorium on Johnny Manzela more like boorratorium. He is a front office killer because they gave up two first round picks and players for him to get a guy that a week later or two weeks later, throwing four picks in one game. I'm just happy for I wanted to imagine the guy they benched from Vernon Adams. So he's he was, he was must have been loving it on the sideline, he literally said after he said, he said, I don't want any Montreal fans basically to ever talk to him again. He will never forgive them for like booing him and saying they want Johnny and he must have just been enjoying this, and I figured, like the Montreal general manager not probably not maybe not long for the league? Where do you go after the CFL? That doesn't go like Iceland? I mean, Eric was recently attached to a football league and saw a Super Bowl? What about that league? I think it's for women only? But the general are the general managers all women? I don't think. Do you know the internal schematics? Unfortunately don't have all the info on that. Um but but but shout out to the Boston Breakers won the title. It's the old Thanksgiving Day game with your boys. That's his next league? Well Montreal l LXGM getting a drive by here to close out the news. That's what's happening in the news. Hey Dan, did you get your passport? No? Yeah, you'd better get on that. You better get on that, well ordered, it just hasn't. You can't travel without You can't travel to London without a pass what better get your passport? You're not going to London without a past past sport? Are you dumb? You don't have it yet, hasn't arrived yet. You don't just screw yourself. You screw all of us. If you don't get a passport. By the way, exactly where's yours? West, Oh, I've had mine, Greg would have lost money thinking on the paperwork, chump here. I have faith you. You put it all in there. You know what I put out there, the government. Put your faith in the US government right now feels solid to make Band's distaste for other countries coming back to haunt him in getting popped here right now. And I'm a little bit nervous. Thank you, of course to the great iconic Sydney Carlson. All right, let's get into a little Hall of fame talk was like three Sydney Carlson's she there are no limits to her abilities. Uh, let's move on and talking about the Hall of Fame two thousand eighteen inductions, Uh Ray Lewis, Randy Moss, uh, Brian or Locker, Terrell Owens, Jerry Kramer, Robert Brazil, Brian Dawkins, Bobby Bethard, nice class um and a lot of a lot of stuff cooking with it. Mark, I know you were super plugged in what was like kind of your the biggest takeaway for you. Greg watched this closely too. I watched it yesterday on repeat, so I could fast forward through all the Well, no, I mean, because I can't tolerate. I don't need it to be a five hour long show. Get to the meat of it. But I was kind of peaked by something that ray Lewis brought up. I believe we have the sound for that. If we could play that, it was all. It was a wonderful ceremony. But this, this was an odd moment that got on my radar. Let's play oh did we hold did we hold that? Lombard? And they tried to turn the lights out on us? No, no, now, let's let's be honest. Let's be honest. If you grew up what me and my mama grew up in the project, you'll like Mike get turns off favorite frid But Beyonce had just before, so something had to happen. They just go out, They go out. But that's the way you're in the Korean Okay. So the child hood comments are fine, and I respect a lot where he's come from, but but it's it's it's sandwiched by two comments about the lights going out during the Super Bowl against the Niners, where ray Lewis is clinging to this theory. Uh, and this is what the ottust moment of the night and an otherwise very nice night in Canton, clinging to a theory that the NFL intentionally, because the Ravens were blowing the Niners out, turned the lights out in the super Dome in New Orleans to blow up the whole mood in that stadium and regalvanized the game to get the Niners back in and make it close. Now, I think that's called an intense scarecrow. I mean he ray Lewis entire speech was madness. Yeah, that was like the that was like the tenth least like most crazy thing he said over the weekend. No doubt martyrs, he said when I when I played Crime, what was lower in Baltimore? It's like no one needed to be mad. Everyone just wanted to be happy and celebrate. Dan found something too, didn't you. A little humble brag from ray Lewis. Oh, one of my favorite humble breggs that has ever happened. And this is this is strange. ESPN had a scroll. Was this new? Yes? I only watched it on NFL Network, so that was new then. Yeah, So ESPN has a scroll that allows the players, uh, the inductees to just to thank you. It's a way to get in names that maybe you otherwise aren't able to get to in the speech, and near the end of Ray Lewis's scroll underneath his speech, thank you to the President President of Tanzania for allowing me to bring water wells to your people. That is the that is the first ballot of le and Mark and Greg's right. Mark's uh quote that he pulled probably wasn't even like close here here, come on, though, you tell me that's not an insane thing. That's an insane thing to say that the whole thing was crazy persons. He also talked about that he would run fifteen to twenty miles to practice every day high school football and wrestling. But his he had a tape of Phil Collins is in the air tonight and he would just rewind it and listen to that song over and over. And then he concludes that story by going, I felt this coming in the air for a long time. What about I was like, what what about the numerology at the top of the top of the speech or he's saying how everything five and two and seven and it all connected to God? Just as like an exercise mark. I thought, what if we took that quote we pulled and just added something underneath it, because there was this man of crazed almost dangerous energy to raise speech. Let me just try this. Did we hold did we hold that a little more? And they tried to turn the lights out on us? Now, let's let's be onest. Let's be honest. If you grew up, what made my mama grew up in the protest? You'll like my d turns off favorite fry. So something has happened. I have the utmost respect for him as a player, and I hope no one ever sticks a microphone in front of his face. Again. Yeah, he was. He was sweating through. That was impressive too. I'm a sweater as well. Like he had not only swept through the dress shirt, he swept through the entire jacket, which I don't I've never seen that happen. No, that's tough to do. But anyway, so thirty three minute long speech, Am I am? I worried about that. That's a lot there needs to be for the sake of modern television in the viewership and where our habits are going. No speech, that's thirty three minute that's what my my big takeaway. Best speech of the night easy was Robert Brazil, who's not going to get a lot of like publicity for on it, but like a writer, he sort of had a narrative device that carried him through the sphere. It was eight or nine minutes long, It had plenty of energy, it had a couple of good jokes, and he was happy to be there. It was delightful. So just congratulations for the best speech. I think they suggest fifteen minutes and Ray Ray used to your people just blow Lewis. I think Louis said before the speech that um, he was going way past that, so he let people know. And that's a lot of yelling and huffing and puffing. Also, you're taking away from the other speakers when you're dn or not that not that everyone felt this way, but when you're taking up that much speaking time, it's just to me, it's like, can you can you stop yourself at the door just a little bit please, Which is taking nothing away from a brilliant career that he's had, but it was the football place. He was on brand at this speech. Uh Randy Moss of course got inducted and Bill Belichick and this made news. Bill Belichick, uh, and Robert Kraft showed up, and I guess it was a surprise. I think we have sound related to that as well. Last, but not least, I'm not gonna forget about you, Bill Belichick. I'm not don't forget about you. I want to thank you for being a friend when it wasn't always about football. You've showed me how much I love the game. You challenged me every day to go out here and be great. You challenged me to be great coach. And I'm sorry we did not bring it home. I picked this one, and Greg, we didn't know you're gonna be here, so we would have had you picked some sound by two. So let me ask you your thoughts on this, because if you were, do you remember watching this point on television Bill Belichick's eyes. I think Bill Belichick is the ultimate football historian, and he's in Canton, and I honestly felt for him a little bit because you have this these knuckleheads in the crowd booing Bill be Eli chick that this is one place where he I'm just I'm gonna jump in rights notorious and famous that I get that, but I honestly saw a little bit of hurt in his eyes, like like I thought that rapport was broken with him. I I totally disagree with you, Dan that he I do think he felt something here and I think that was just it's something about it. I get that you're Eagles fans or what you're you're some jabronies out there that route for another team. Something about it did not fly with me. Well, that's an interesting take, and I should watch it again. But the thing, if it was breaking anything, it was uh an intense sort of from within happiness that you normally don't see from Bill Belichick. I was. I was surprised that Bill Beltick was the last person that Randy Moss mentioned. And you could tell how much Randy Moss and Bill Belichick love and respect each other. The fact that he showed up there after a Patriots practice for a guy that was only there for a few years, and the fact that Ran Moss brought up last, and when he was saying those words to Belchick, you could just tell the smile on his face, like how much that meant to hear from from another person he considers, you know, one of the greatest of all and our guy ben Levinberg took an amazing photo of Craft and Belichick and Moss together, And do you remember that moment in the Belichick NFL never especially where mosses in his office saying kind of goating him on to come to that Halloween party. That was kind of the relationship they had. So it's it's interesting to think back on that. I think Belichick changed not just the Patriots run that they had, but Belichick changed the way people thought about Randy Moss because within a few months of him getting there, he said, this might be the smartest football player I've ever coached. And a lot of people are pretty down on Randy Moss in general. And to hear that respect and even when they traded Randy Moss, they were so like, so much respect coming both ways. I think it helped change, uh, some of the appreciation for Moss that everyone has now that they just didn't have during his play. Still remember exactly where I was on the Upper West Side of Manhattan when I found out the Patriots traded for Moss and death. It was so obvious what was going to happen next, that even though he had fallen off a little bit in Oakland, that with Brady and Belichick. That's something crazy was gonna go down. And uh, to say the least that happened, he had arguably you could maybe throw in Jerry Rice and what was or whatever, but the greatest season ever by a wide receiver, and that is I thought that was a little bit appointment, a poignant I'm sorry we couldn't bring it home, of course, a reference to Super Bowl and eighteen and one, and he would have had the game winning touchdown catch had not, uh, if not for the late heroics by Eli and Plexico. So Belitic didn't just change the way people thought of Moss, he changed the way writers covered him. Writers gave him more respect after that. Terrell Owens did his ceremony in Chattanooga. We we already know what's behind it, but he did confirm it was a His reaction to not be in Canton was because the writers, he felt punished him for not being uh well liked individual or being someone that was uh not seen as playing the game the right way and all that stuff, rather than basing it on what the Hall of Fame is supposed to base your eligibility on, which is just what you do on the field, and and and so that's why he did that West he wrote about that. I don't know if you had anything to add, well, it was sort of it was a speech that had its high points in low points. To me, like he made some really good points. And I do believe he wasn't a first ballot Hall of Famer because voters didn't do their job. Voters took into account things other than what happened on the field. They were wrong. He called him on that. On the other hand, this is an intention starved narcissist who was unwilling to address the self afflicted nature of his own wounds. And you know, I think it was Charles Robinson from YAH who said he's a first ballot blamer, and he absolutely is a first ballot blamer. There were a lot of great moments in the speech, though, and I think the sound bites that ended up going on Sports Center or NFL Network that night we're about the writers and how they didn't let him in. But he had a lot of great moments where he gave credit to a lot of people. You could and everyone that's played with him has said no one questioned his work ethic like that. He loved I don't think anyone. He loved the game of football, and if he did end this speech, I thought was interesting kind of saying what he thought the speech was for or for people that were outcasts and that had been picked on and bullied and and that just didn't kind of get along with the rest of society. And that's how he sees himself, and certainly his childhood if you, if you know about it, had some some rough times. And I do think the way he ended it was poignant and it meant a lot to him, you know, and I think it meant But he also can't you can't blame the media or anybody else for focusing in on those soundbites about because that's what he made his entire Hall of Fame and the induction about being snubbed and about his issues with the voters, so that he made it that it took. That's though. The thing that I didn't like was people saying he's missing out on all this they know better, Like you know, even Steven are utually in our air was kind of almost saying like I feel sorry for him because he's missing out on that, and like that's not really being a friend, Like if you really are a friend, of t o someone that has a relationship, just support and support him in what he wanted to do. That's what you want to do. It was certainly wasn't easy to do that and just let him be one little nugget about him. Hours after this speech, he's trying out for the CFL Saskatchewan rough Riders. How many NFL Hall of Famers have wound up plane in the CFL after being announced in Canton. It sounds like a bit of a stunt, but apparently as a four or four forti speeds still. I don't know if I buy that either, but that's just what's being floated. I just asked that we stopped with the martyr stuff, like he's not a martyr, and and it really bothers me that he's attempting to rewrite who he was as a player. You were the one who hopped on the exercise bike with the sunglasses and and the Lance Armstrong uniform and asked for the attention. You were the one who sat in the driveway and did sit ups and knew you were making a circus. You're the one who threw Donovan Mab under the bus and a bad teammate, So don't tell me all this stuff didn't happen to you, and you brought that on that very unsavory, unfair things about Jeff garcon uh, you know, like overblow the coverage he he started off. That was a mutually beneficial relationship. I remember until it was NFL network every every day during that whole out, that's the greatest hold out of all time the Eagle, because there was like daily updates where something crazy would happen. Wouldn't they cover the same way today? Oh yeah, it would be even more sure and it's entertaining, but it doesn't make you a good teammate anything else. From the Hall of Fame Mark Mark Jerry Kramer, I thought Kramer was well, you know what. First of all, when I saw Kramer up there, I thought, I thought Kramer was in the Hall of Fame, like twenty five years ago. That was my first thought. It's like I've been hearing about Jerry Kramer since I was ten years old. So, but his speech was unbelievable, and I thought it was a good bit of for all the players today complaining about salaries. He talked about signing on with the Packers. First of all, when he got drafted, he had no idea where Green Bay was and had to look at a map with his relatives, where is Cream Bay? And then they he had some someone in his camp say, what is it I'm supposed to ask for? Is a salary? The guy said, yes, right, thousand dollars And he went to the packers and they said, all right, one year contract. What do you want? He said eight thousand. He said absolutely. It's like he knew right then he had been taken for a ride. And then he asked and they said, you got a signing bonus too, and he said two fifty bucks. They said fine, And it wasn't a bonus, It just came out of his first page check. So I thought it was a look back at a completely different time. And that part of the show where they talked about Vince Lombardi, I thought, that's what. It brought a whole pause to the entire proceedings. And you can say it's a little precious, but it was a nice moment for the packers. In a lot of a lot of listeners tweet asking for book recommendations, Jerry Kramer wrote the first real football behind the Scenes book with a player. He and Dick Shapp wrote instant replay in one of the best football books ever and holds up really well. Now. Check out also one more July from Bill Curry and George Plinton, also about the same era of the Packers in Vince Lombardi. Both great football books. And getting drafted and then having to look up where you're gonna play on a map is one of my favorite Like heroes, journey tropes just love that, alright. It's like Steve Francis. Believe no, I'm not saying he made it up, but it does pop up every once in a while. It's just a fun little trope. Hey, one second, guys, it's been a long offseason without football, but fan Duel has spent it getting into the best shape of their lives. That means that fan Duel is ready for more, more ways to play, more ways to challenge your friends, and most importantly, more ways to win. If you're not a fantasy expert, we are, but that such then Fan Duel is clearly the best chance place to play. They have all kinds of contests just for casual fans, in particular, Beat the Score contests are great because they pay out everyone who hits a certain score, so all you have to do is finishing the money to split an equal share of some money. Where's our boy, Joey Watts? Whats uh? Greg's like itching right now? His arms like? Sounds so good anyway. FanDuel also has new options for playing with your friends right now. You can get a ten dollar bonus when you make your first deposit on fan Duel. Greg, where are you going? Just sign up at FanDuel dot com Slash around the NFL. That's FanDuel dot com Slash Around the NFL. Age and state restriction restrictions apply, all right before we go. Yes, we teased it at the top of the show. It's been a while since we heard from one of our great friends, one of the great satellites of the Around the NFL podcast. I don't know if he's at his haunted mansion in New Jersey right now, but let's hope that he is. Connor or what's up about it? Yo? Yeah, Hey, Nanny God, I miss your voice. If you guys, what is going on? Connor? What's do you know? The Living Light Heart? You know, is it still haunted? Like you got um the mortgage and everything. Everything is the same right now? I know you have a different job. So I don't know if anything else has changed in your life since we last spoke. I would say the only major change is that at the at the peak of summer heat, my air conditioners exploded. So that's really that's really about it. And then you also you also have a daughter, you had a child. Yeah, oh yeah, that's and there ain't no there ain't no landlord to call about that a cu and it is there is there, Connor. No, you just kinda you know, you go out there with like a wrench and you pretend that you know you're doing and then you come back in ten minutes later and you're like, ah, you know, couldn't couldn't fix it, but you don't even touch it because you don't know checks. So how's the lake house? That's it? Yeah, that's it? Good? Um so Connor, Um, I wasn't aware you had a lake house. But he lives in a it's essentially a lake house. So there's a lake in town right close by, it's in my backyard. Yeah, but it's haunted. Let's stick to the haunt. We let's stick to the idea there was a body of water. And now that I know that, you definitely have like the The Lady in eighteen hundreds, like White Gown apparition above the Lake at midnight. Everything. It's definitely going on anyway, all right, So Connor, usually when you come on, we you know, we get wacky, we get a reverend, we do maybe or you're kidding me segment uh or you know whatever. But you're doing really good work over at s I. Uh. Peter King said, I'm out of here, bro piece, but you're still there and um and and you have continued to grind. It's grind thirty for you at s I. You wrote a really good piece about a week ago about the Oakland Raiders and specifically John Gruden, UM about how things It's one of the great polarizing debates, both in this room and in the NFL. The subplot is how will John Gruden take in the NFL? Anden and you spoke Connor with a lot of players from his Tampa Bay days and it wasn't all sunshine and roses. Well, I thought like it was. It was one of my favorite conversations because I was talking to Chris Simms and he's like, yeah, you know, I love issues. Is that guy? Because eight months after I almost died on the field. He tried to cut me, and then like three three minutes later he's like, but he's an all right guy, you know, I mean, like everything okay, But so it kind of represents this like really strange like Stockholm syndrome that all of his players had under under him. Yeah, I think it it hit on a great point. It is a great piece to Bucks piece because the talking about you know, talking to the former Bucks players and kind of like, how is that gonna fly? Is he going to adjust that approach, because I think it burned him in Tampa people, the players I think eventually stopped kind of believing what he was selling because they could be, as he wrote about, really well so nice to their face and then cut him or kill him in front of the media, and it was just seemed to like be a lack of trust. And now maybe you're seeing that a little bit in Oakland too. For sure. Yeah, I mean we've already you know the right away, um, you know, to get rid of Marquette King, to quote at an example, and then to see that Khleil mc the defense wasn't even good when they had him, and then uh, you know, like he's been calling out like a steady stream of players. But what's weird about his approaches. He loves veteran guys because they're easier a coach and you can get hit the ground running faster. But he also loves talking crap about players players, and that's the one thing that veterans hate, Like they want to come in, take care of their business, and leave the facility and go home and not have their coach like you you wrote, and like a bullet of what it like kind of like his greatest hits and tools, he uses the media as a tool to pressure and motivate, and that's exactly what to do with Martavis Bryant in the news right now. He's a guy that's getting tweaked big time. Uh. And I think that something that I like that you wrote and what makes him kind of interesting and maybe hard to pin down. You wrote he's neither cold and distant enough to be Bell Checky, and nor warm and engaging enough to be Pete Carroll. So he's kind of a man without a country or what he was by the end of his Tampa Bay tenure. It's about what I guess, whether he learned or not during that time of way the right temperature with the team. Yeah, And I just don't think, at least now, like it doesn't strike me that it's very different, right, Like it's like, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna go to Hooters and eat wings and like say terrible things about everybody and run the fullback offense. And like it's almost like like Trumpy in the way that he's like, We're going to do all this stuff we did twenty years ago, and and everyone's like cool. But I don't think anyone's thinking practically, like like, not a lot of this is gonna work out. I mean, one thing, make the Raiders great again. Like Connor when he when he came to the to Tampa Bay obviously inherited a very good team, one that was on the cusp of, you know, going to the Super Bowl with a lot of pieces in place, and he was able to carry that the distance. And then to Greg's point, I think the Tampa Bay sort of fell apart from there, and the thing that we thought that Gruden was so great at, which was developing quarterbacks, really never happened after the Super Bowl, And it was almost that his stint with Money Night Football in the media almost rehabbed the image of John Gruden and made him this alluring, you know, distant prospect that you'd want to bring in as a coach. But did you talk to any players that said, yes, he has all these character traits that are impossible to deal with, but almost like with a Belichick, he's really he's not the most fun guy, but there's this football acumen and this thing that the team can lean on that will save us every time. Do you get a sense that people feel like Gruden the football coach beyond the person is something that's such that is worth a ten year contract at this incredible amount of money. Well, it's interesting at first, like all the players that I talked to or the players that I talked to, all thought that the media thing was a rehab tour. They said, like, he was not well liked by fellow coaches, by players, and this is a great way for him to sort of reshape his image, which you can do on TV. Mean, we've all seen that and it's entirely possible. The one thing that I will say that that a lot of people have said about him, though, is that schematically he is that smart. He is able to do things, you know, Jeff Garcia told me they would implement something and then three weeks later see another team running it. It made their lives better, It made their lives easier. The only problem was when it came to the game. He would always sort of regress a little bit and play more small ball because he had a great defense. And Oakland is going to be very different now because this is a team that needs to score forty points a game to win. Hey, Connor, after researching and writing this and then hearing sort of his comments throughout the offseason and the moves they've made to bring in some guys and get rid of others, do you have a dramatically changed opinion on what you expect from the Raiders this year after doing this well a little bit, and it's not good. It's just, you know, it seems like he came in immediately and the the his his kind of m oh was always he was gonna cut, you know, the guys that he didn't want to deal with. He was going to bring in older veteran players, um that could pick up the system. And you know that's exactly what he did. I mean, Jordy Nelson's in his thirties, you know, he got rid of Michael Crabtree, and uh, you know, he's playing with the full back again, and it's like, you know, I think that maybe conceivably this could work at some point. I think the only thing to his favor is that he has shortened his play calls um which a couple of players have told me used to be gargante in like thirty word play calls now very short, very concise. So maybe he's adapting a little bit to the times. But still this is a young man's game, and he's really kind of loading up on older veteran guys like that was his whole stick on ESPN, going through the play calls and all the all the nonsense. And now he gets he hits the scene and decides to truncate that. Where do you think Reggie mackenzie, the general managers and all this, because it feels like he had a powerful voice in that organization and Bruden comes in and sort of trumps everything that was built there and just is making these decisions to reshape in his image. I don't know, I'd be pretty you know, I mean, every every relationship right when you first get there, Like, you know, it reminds me of and Rex Ryan got to her. You know, when John got to the Jets and everyone's like, oh, these guys looking along fine him and Rex Ryan and like nothing bad is could possibly happened. But it's true. I mean, John and Reggie are very different people. I'm sure they see um their team in a very different way. And uh, you know, it's going to be interesting to see how this fills out. I don't think you know, no one's rooting for this to work more than than us. I think that having Gruden be successful in this league would be good, but I think that it's, uh, it's healthy to be a little skeptical of how this is going to happen. Uh. Finally, Connor, Um, are you happy? I'm very happy? Like one to ten? Where are you at? What's that? One to ten? Like ten? You couldn't be happier? One? Yeah, poop in your pants? I would say, if it wasn't for the air conditioning, I'd be in the left through the roof. But I'm probably liking in eight right now. It's good. I I don't feel I do. I texted you I think a couple of weeks ago for an or you kidding me? Uh? And I would like to remain in that capacity, but there's a lot less pressure when you know, I I don't have to come on and scream about something. You know, in general, just feels like a really like Connor War at peace. And maybe it's because we're not making you do it or you kidding me, but I feel like you're in a good place. He's got the house, he's got the lake. You know, he's got it all. He clearly likes the job better than the one he had at the NFL. You know, it sounds like a much better old old Peter King isn't swinging his elbows around, so he's gone. You know, you still hate Seinfeld though, Is that clear? You still cannot stand the concept of the Seinfeld franchise. Yeah, it's funny you said that. I texted one of my friends and the Seinfeld super fan the other day and there was a marathon on and I said, I'm gonna watch five episodes. I'm gonna text you many how many times I laugh once once watching it? Yeah, that's I love five. Though. You weren't just dipping in for five or ten minutes five episodes? What made you laugh? Just out of curiosity? I think after a while like, you know, the thirtieth time that Kramer just like blasting the door and does that same old like shaky thing where he's like it it looks like an alcoholic. That that that got me like the prettiest time. I was like, okay, people couldn't even give him that. Jerry doesn't need anything else either. He's happier than all of us. But all right, Connor, you are, You're a great man. You could be followed on Twitter at connor Or that is one end and two rs uh. And he once upon the time went through all of our bios to see how funny they were on Twitter. Yours Reid's. Connor Or is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated in the mm QB. He might he might have elbowed out, Uh, Peter King, I like to think that's what happened. Um. And who knows who's in his way next? Who's in his way next? We'll have some bus tracks overs back. You've exposed my marcom hilly and all right, Connor, good talking to anybody by guys, miss that guy. All right, We're out of here. We'll be back on Wednesday with another show, including our first Hard Knocks recap. How exciting is dan Janzas signing off for a quiet storm. The Mailman, the old Boss, and the loose cannon behind the glass til Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Via Around the NFL Podcast, Still Isn't throwing in practice? Welcome back to another edition of the Around the NFL Podcast, presented by a new era. My name is Dan Hansas and I'm joined and room filled with some heroes for now anyway, Mark Sessler, Chris Westling, what is up? Boys? Hey Dan? Hey? Yeah, we were We thought it was going to be the three of us and Gregg made a round of phone calls about twenty minutes before the show started to say that he would be heading north from Chargers Camp, and after completing a call with Greg where we sort of said I, I said, why don't you just roll him when you can, because we've got a definitive star time, which is rare for this show guests coming up. So I hung up with him. I thought, very productive call. Productive call with Greg, went on about my business, and then two seconds later my phone rang again and Greg was face timing me. I thought this must be extremely important, but Greg had mistakenly face timing and could hear him speaking to some random person at Chargers Camp While my face was up on the screen, his was not, So I said, forget it. It's a typical Greg's done this on the phone before, So I just hung up on Greg ten minutes to go by again, and Greg calls me again and then simply hangs up, so that you know, I don't know. He's got a lot to answer to. He also, and we can maybe talk to him about this when he's in here. It feels fair. But he made some bold statements about his driving ability uh in and around Rams Camp where we were obviously on Thursday, And then there was some eyewitness accounts, first person eye witnessed accounts that spoke uh really to the contrary of his statements that he is indeed a good driver. Maybe we'll get to that uh today, but we have a lot to get to. So, yes, it was nice being at Rams Camp on Thursday, that's what you heard on Friday's show. But better to be back in the studio. I'm happy to be here. This is where we belong. Safe, safe space. It's not it's not like hot, it's not strangers everywhere. I don't have to shake people's hands back. Oh, thanks so much for you know, helping us with it. You know, No, I just want to be in here and my little cocoon. This thinking thing is on your radar, haven't noticed so we're back in the studio and uh West we are how many days away from week one? Probably thirty some thirty something days away from week one. A lot of news to get to and it's coming in hot and heavy now. Um, so we're gonna get to all that. Also, the Hall of Fame ceremony inductions were in Canton this weekend, so as we do every year, we will check in on the highs and lows from that particular affair. And that has been a while. Our good friend uh formerly of NFL dot com and now a hot shot over at the Monday morning quarterback slash say dot com, s I dot com realm Connor or are you kidding me? But actually instead of playing a game with Connor, we're gonna talk about a recent feature piece he wrote about Uh Jon Gruden End of the Raiders would toned down or segment? Yeah, a little toned down. We'll get to that because I think yet to be seen if it's toned down. Yeah, we'll find out where he's out emotionally. So so much to get to and Greg at some point, uh loose Cannon once again behind the glass. Hey guys, thanks for all your hard work. You're welcome. You're very welcome. Let's that's what I'm still kissing you in the mouth? Yeah, I kiss all monkey is in the mouth. Don't stay with him. I don't know, I know, I know. The best moment of the entire weekend and Canton was after ray Lewis and it was the background there was that he was saying he didn't have a relationship with his own father. Uh, and he didn't have someone that although he had a great relationship with his mother, he didn't have someone to tell him when he was young that that he was loved and kissed him. So it was sweet that he kisses the children. But then to show the ESPN showed a long like um pan across each of the children dying of embarrassment, which is kind of fun to um. All right, let's do some news and uh uh the Ravens used to be the Browns. Is that for a transition? Cessler? Well, the Browns were scouting ray Lewis before they became the Ravens. So right, so why don't we hop in wonderful two decades it's been When when do we hop into the dog pound to get going? Today? And um, once again, the Cleveland Browns are parting ways with a former draft pick that was supposed to transform the franchise. This time it's wide receiver Corey Coleman, who was their first round pick in the sixteen draft. Uh what what pick? Overall? Wasn't Mark about overall? Um suffered a pair of hand injuries and back to back seasons to start his career, and then you heard whispers and Mark this is this was something on your radar for some time that Coleman was maybe not a good fit, uh, in terms of personality or vibe with the new new, new new Browns. So they trade him to the Bills. And the Bills obviously we just talked about this last week in the podcast West they had a need at wide receiver. They get Corey Coleman for the price of a seventh round pick in the draft, which is Christian Hackenberg type compensation. Uh. Just the boondoggle by the Browns and they're moving on. This is the close closest you can get to releasing a player without releasing him a seventh round pick, not even in the next draft, the draft after that. It's basically saying we don't want the we don't want to cut the first draft pick of the Hugh Jackson era. Well, and I would say that if you're the Browns, if you if you look at how long front offices last in Cleveland, when you decide to net a draft pick two years from now, good luck. If you're the front office making that pick. It's basically to me, I when I saw this number one, it's bad optics for Cleveland obviously on multiple levels. I think we get that because because if you're Buffalo, you desperately need a wide receiver. Corey Coleman's about twenty four years old, and let's say he let's say he matures and he's still I thought there was a game against the Ravens actually where Corey Coleman scored two touchdowns and looked incredible, and then it never happened again. I mean, you never know what you're gonna get. So the trade is mysterious to me on that level, where why would you allow a seventh round pick to be the compensation? But what stuck out to me is there must be another shoe that drops here on some level, whether it's they know something about Corey Coleman that the Bills do not know. He used to pass a physical and all that business too. But secondly, are they planning to make a signing or a trade of their own to bring someone else in. He was listed number one on their depth chart yesterday, which basically tells me they're trying to sell them because they don't believe that. I didn't believe that. And that's when the Dez Bryant talks will again pick up, which again does not well they have picked up because any of said that interest is still there. Feels like a strange fit. Dez in Cleveland will see. But West, it seems like also this wasn't a guy that had some type of catastrophic lower body injury. Um it was two broken hands, and maybe that's a chronic thing that will haunt his career. But this seems like there is more behind the scenes. You know, Mark Sparrows have been in his ear. That's why you've been bringing up Corey a lot, trying to get him out of town. There there had to be more to this story, Like Mark said, well, I think what Mark Sparrows have probably said is some combination of he's a knucklehead in the locker room off the field, and when he came into the league, the knock was he came from a Baylor offense where you don't run anywhere close to a full route tree. Will he ever become an NFL level route runner? And I would say those are the two questions he's carrying with him to Buffalo. Yeah. I mean, the people who have been at Brown's camp say that rookie Antonio Callaway is already a cleaner route runner than than than basically Corey Coleman has ever been. So I this is a guy from a purely physical standpoint. You wrote articles, other people wrote articles comparing him to Steve Smith as he entered the league. Right, but there's a d NA chip miss missing their big time to make him Steve Smith. So far um and there is that is a wild stat I think every Brown's pick first round picks since two thousand eleven, there's no one on the team. Well what I Well, I think there's a lot of price involved in that too. Number one bad picks. But it's new front offices and you we're seeing it with John Dorsey's coming and he's burning down the entire house that he inherited. And there there have been five or six front offices or iterations of some I feel like I heard this that the same thing. It's not. It's just ridiculous. So you know, you you have to have one of these and hopefully it's this one. But who knows stick around for ten years and have a shared philosophy over the course of a decade. It should be noted that this pick was made after they traded out of the opportunity to pick Carson went Well, it goes down if if you want to cook it up a certain way, you could say almost that they got they gave away Carson Wentz for this rounder and a few other pets. It is one stretch in the end. Well, in the end, it is one of the worst trades of all time because they got very little in the end. Um And just to make sure I have that's that right. Cleveland had eleven first round picks in the eight draft between twenty nine and sixteen. None are on the team, So uh, Cory Colvin, UH Sionara moving on. Obviously, UH, good teams have stability at the top. The Browns have not been able to do what the Eagles have and UH we saw that uh this weekend. The Eagles on Sunday announced head coach Doug Peterson, an executive vice president of football Operations, Howie Roseman have signed contract extensions. Uh, no details, but this is as a no brainers. It comes in Atlanta. They did something last week locking up their brain trut bain trupt brain trust. This is equally a no brainer because Doug Peterson is the perfect guy to leave that team and Roseman Uh survived. He went through the five football fields of s smelling foulness, made it out clean on the other side, and he is more powerful, powerful than ever in that organization. This is this is their time, this is their glory days, their housey on days. Doug Peterson and Howie Roseman to me, salad days, salad days. They were the story of two thousand seventeen season. The way they've built this team, combining analytics with old school scouting new school philosophy to develop a team that the owner can be proud of on the field as well as off the field. This had to have been one of the most no brainer even with so many years left on their contracts. These guys are the story in the NFL right now. I believe salad days refers to when you're young, barely getting by and eating something more no more than yeah, it means you're like a naive. So I wouldn't salad days meant like these are the good times? I know, but would you think that, hey, these are the days that Dan Hanzas says salad salads are good? Though. I think I will check it out, but I don't. I think the Eagles are post salad days. I got jump post salad days, right, Uh? Okay, moving on. UH. So we knew this was going to be a situation where we had a feeling, uh, even when we were at the talent summit. Uh. Which is kind of an obnoxious thing to say, but I was of the Talent Summit for NFL media um last month and they had al River n explained the new rules, including the new helmet rule, and lo and behold. In the first preseason game this year, the Hall of Fame Game, what happens the flags are flying? I believe there were multiple uh penalties for leading with the helmet. Afterwards, players were perplexed, Players were upset, confused, and frankly, I would imagine worried that this is the new reality in the NFL and we're not gonna be able to play more than six snaps without a personal foul for going helmet to not just helmet the helmet, now mark helmet to any part of the body. So they start, yeah, well, we came home from RAMS camp and that Hall of Fame game was, you know, midway through or so, and Twitter was a glow with the helmet the first thing I saw. Look, it was what happened next? Non stout helmet rule issues. I think a couple of people, especially some foreign players, made a good point though that whenever they sheet a new rule, because back when there was hands to fit hands to the face was a rule a couple of years ago. Jeff Schwartz, the former lineman, point out that they called it endlessly in the preseason to get it into everyone's mind, and then when Week one came, they got they re galvanized how often was getting called, how annoying would be, how invasive, and they chilled on it a little bit. But it's really to set the tone that, you know, let's not find out in a week four that this is a hot issue. Find out in week one of the preseason. And that's why I don't want to get too worked up about it in the preseason, because we go not to ask, we don't know how it's gonna be called in the season. We don't know if it's gonna be a minor annoyance or a major storyline every week. Moving on Calvin Benjamin, who is now in Buffalo. He was a former first round pick of the Panthers. Wait a second, look, who's rolling. It's trying to get airtime here. There he comes the man. Oh, he's wearing shorts. First time anyone's ever worn shorts in the podcast. That's true. I used to wear shorts in here quite often until a shadow league figure informed me that I was to stop showing up with shorts on. I've never seen Greg's been on the road that that's a short out there. You shorts is the normal type out there. It was ninety degrees and made Irvine like cool. I've never noticed watched you guys from that side of the lasta. It looks very professional, like really good operation. We've got going. Well, that's good and uh, you were at Chargers camp. It was good. Yeah, you know, better or worse than being at Rams camp with us. Being at Rams camp with you guys, it was more fun. This was just then you got a Chargers kid, You get to like pale around with like DJ and stuff. I feel like that Tom Tolesco. It also was over at noon to that. That wasn't you know a nice thing? And that schedule. So anyway, we're gonna keep going here. Greg, you want to just jump in, that's the plan. Yeh, let's stomp in. We're talking about Calvin Benjamin, who was the first round pick of the Panthers. Started out pretty well actually his first year, and then things kind of went south. He is now on the Bills, and an interview with the Athletics Tim Graham, the Bills receiver Um talked about his four years of the Panthers. Uh. This is what he had to say on his time in Carolina. I mean, I felt like I would have been even more successful if ellipses. Looking back on it, I should have just been drafted by somebody else. I should have never went to Carolina. Truly. I just think Carolina was bad for me. It was a bad fit from the get go. He went on to say this, if you would have put me with any quarterback, Let's be real, you know what I'm saying, interesting any other He didn't say interesting, I did any other accurate quarterback like Aaron Rodgers, or Eli Manning who shot across West and Greg's bow, or Big Ben anybody quarterbacks with knowledge, they know how to place the ball and give you a better chance to catch the ball. It just felt like I wasn't in that position West your thoughts. I sort of hated this story came out because Cam is such a polarizing figure as it is that people want to reduce the discussion to him of whether he sucks or he's awesome. There's never any room for He's a terribly inconsistent passer because his mechanics are screwy and they will always be screwy. When he's playing hot and his mechanics are all right, he's an m v P. All the other times, when he's not playing hot and his mechanics are off, he's one of the worst passes in the league, and yet and maintains plenty of value because he does so so many other things. Well, that said, Kelvin, Benjamin wasn't lying, Paul. Placement issues are a major problem with Cam Newton. At the same time, though, I put this on under the category of why why do this? Why say this? And by the way, the second question is you're on a buffalo team with three quarterbacks who we aren't sure we can trust any one of them. So your situation, it's not like suddenly you're with Aaron Rodgers and you can sit in your pretty seat and say the past was rough and rugged for me. No, it's gonna get worse. Now you're gonna find out you're gonna appreciate Cam Newton potentially by week three or four. I I totally agree with everything both of you said, But the first thing that stuck out to me was, well, this is why they traded Kelvin Benjamin part right, sure, you can go find all and Will Brentson did in this tweet all these insane quotes that Calvin Benjamin had during his time in Carolina, some of which which were very dismissive of Cam or the coaching staff or whoever, and like, that's that's one of the reasons they wanted to get rid of it. But except that a former Panthers coach and former Panthers front office individual traded for him and then just now had to sit down and have a talk with him about how they want him to anyone. Let's take a quick break from news to check in with our sponsor. Is your home and a d T home. In fact, it is gentlemen, my home is protected by a d T which helps protect against break ins, fire and carbon monoxide for a limited time. Get a d T S lowest rate starting at just a month from the most trusted name and home security. 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Meanwhile, on the throne of Sleeves, the Patriots will be without their rookie running back Sonny Michelle wonder when a minor procedure to drain fluid from his knee, rap She reported Saturday V a source and formed of the situation, is expected to be back in time Week one, the matchup against the Texans, But obviously not a good start for a rookie. Any rookie doesn't want to be behind the eight ball here. Rex Burkhead greg at the top of the depth chart in New England, and Sony's got to make his way up. It already sounded like Rex Burkhead was the leader in the clubhouse for touches and that Michelle was having his struggles, maybe because of this knee injury, which Michael Lombardi reported back in April was a bone on bone condition in his knee. Yet the Patriots still drafted him in the first round. They do this a lot. They tend to take a lot of injury risks, and then every once in a while it turns into Rob Gronkowski. But for the most part, it's just drafted a lot of injured players that Mike Lombardi though deep inside the Patriots organization scaring other teams off for is that? But that was what I thought at the time, But now it's not working out too well. Rap Sheet said about two weeks is how long he should be out. But to me, that's two weeks off the field and then to be eased back in because you're dealing with a knee situation, you have I wonder whether he's going to even be on the field in week one. Uh. And another Patriots news and in more knee issues, Malcolm Mitchell has been waived by the Patriots, a former fourth round pick who, if you recall, had a really nice game in the Super Bowl win over the Falcons, but he's had knee issues that are kept on the sideline and um, they are deciding New England out to move on again. Another head to the depth chart there, and you wonder if Mitchell's issues are even more serious than we are aware of, because he probably could be a useful player one healthy mark. Yeah. I mean this team is crumbling from the inside out, That's all I have to say. There's no way a team that needs wide receivers is releasing this guy if he's healthy. You know. And just as a Patriots fan, man, I was ready to just be a huge Malcolm Mitchell fan, and I am a huge Literally the last time he was on the field, he caught five passes in five targets for sixty three yards in the Super Bowl, and they were all these insane timing routes that took so much precision. Was some of Tom Brady's most memorable throws. I think of his entire career that Mitchell's catching. I'm thinking, all right, we got a decade with this guy. Well, now you have to show a lot that was it. Now you shift your affections to known malcontent Kenny Britt. This is Kenny Bridge. Just keeps on. I mean, I don't mind. He got him a ring. They would not have won a Super Bowl without Malcolm Mitchell's. This has become the wide receiver equivalent of Sam Bradford's Week one game against the last year. I'm blowing it up. It's true that Uh don't forget about Geno Smith's closer to lightning in a bottle the sper Bowl, though. UM moving on the Raiders surprise kicking move. You know I love kicker talk. Uh. Georgiovechio. Uh the second year kicker who replaced Sea Bass last year when Sea Bass went down with his injury, and Uh really thrived, especially in the early part of the season, allowing him to stick around well John Gruden obviously didn't see enough of him to say we want you here in a long term capacity, so too was cut loose and signed as Mike Nugent, who I believe has now been on every team in the league twice. I mean, I guess we're gonna talk a little Raiders later. But is this Scruden just saying I'd much rather have someone who's thirty six than now? The kicker is supposed to be Eddie Panero, who's in the undrafted rookies? Who who they? And Mike Nugent is they're competing in the building. It sounds like it's Pinero's job. And by the way, Dan, I do want to mention when I was at Chargers camp, I scooted over to the second field where the special special team out there hanging out, and uh, I saw your buddies over there. They were just Roberto Aguaio. Of course. I mean this has been kind of under the radar. I would think Aguayo's back and I'm big time compact against Caleb Sturgis. Uh he's the underdog Aguayo. But you know the reports are they're both kicking pretty well. Yeah, I should dig in on this they were just kind of sitting around though there wasn't much to see. I always went on up. Did they feel guilty about that? They were just kind of like hanging aroun down. What is the bio's hair situation? Right? Because he's going bangs at times, he's done a little bit of a he's v thing in the middle, had a helmet on, just trying to figure things out. How do you feel about Greg being on your corner? I actually appreciate it because he was their boots on the ground. I was hoping you're gonna I didn't really have actual but then I did ask someone and they were like, oh, they're both kicking. Well too close the call. I think Dan doesn't matter to the game. Start. You need to get back down in the lamb. Dan and did a little Eddie Panero film study. I think you're right. Had you heard of Eddie Pineiro before? Of course, I know every kicker that comes into the league. It's just I hold back from talking about all of them because I know not everyone shares the past I do about that position. And meanwhile, by the way, another special team's news involving the Raiders Marquette King, who Gruden said, get the hell out of here. Bro he goes and he's he's fighting with some like radio station guy. Uh over Brandon Stokely. Brandon Stokle is a part of a radio team that interviewed Marquette King and and now there's like a war of words. That guy seems annoying a little bit, not snow King. Maybe Stokely's annoying, I don't know. Uh. Moving on some sad news, former Philadelphia Eagles and Cleveland Browns general manager Tom Heckert passed away at the age of fifty one, the Broncos announced Monday. Most recently, he was a personnel executive with the Broncos. From seen, he had stepped away from the team following last season. He was ill. Uh. We had not heard a lot about how sick heckerd was, but obviously it was a very serious situation. And he is gone at the age of fifty one. You know, we just talked about all of Cleveland's intense draft misses. But if you look at Tom Heckert when he was there under Mike Holmgren, and that's largely seen as an unsuccessful stint because of the Brandon Weed and Trent Richardson scenario. But these are the names that he brought in, Joe Hayden, t j Ward, Jabal Shared, Jordan Cameron, Buster Screen, Mitchell Schwartz, and Travis Benjamin. Each one of those players, outside of Jordan Cameron remained largely and t j Ward to some degree, largely productive and have had productive careers. I mean, imagine had he stuck around, he went on to Denver and was sort of hidden away in Denver. But this is sad news. A lot of people he hired in Philadelphia we're still there and we're part of that Super Bowl, you know last year. I mean, he was back there in the early two thousands, and a lot of people like Cowie Roseman worked underneath him. The disease he had is mean Amelloyd doses, which is what Matt Millen has. So best wishes to Matt Millan. This seems like it's gonna be quite the battle. Uh. In other news, the Arizona Cardinals are down a starting center uh a Q Shipley has been diagnosed with the torn right a c L. He has done for the season. It now falls on third rounder Mason Cole, who will be a starter most likely. Shipley now heads into free agency at age thirty two off of torn a c also a bad situation for him. Yeah. To me, what sticks up about this is Steve Wilkes has really emphasized all offseason everything starts up front. That's his new mantra. And one of the most bizarre opinions I've heard from a head coach this this year is Steve wilkes opinion that the strength of the Cardinals is the offensive line. This was an offensive line that was one of the biggest weaknesses in the league last year. They added Justin Peugh, they added Andre Smith, who was in and out at Cincinnati over the years, and they didn't do much else adding there. Uh So I think to me, like, Okay, the potential may have been the strength of the team, but that's neglecting to point out that the almost every position on on this offensive line comes with a huge question mark. The Falcons have agreed to a three year extension worth UH close to twenty million with defensive back Ricardo Allen. The free safety had been in talks with the team uh for some time, and they get a deal done. So add another piece again, Mark good franchises have stability. He's a solid player, have been really act they extended matt Ryan, Jake Matthews, paid, Julio Jones. I guess Brady Jarrett maybe the last name on the list here one of the Yeah, I think he should be next, and he's maybe the best player of all those guys. Ricardo Allen was one of the only memorable parts of a pretty quiet Hard Knocks season. He came out of nowhere Hard Knocks season. At the time, he was just trying to make the team. So this this does show you like you can remake your career if you land in the right place. I didn't watch that Hard Knocks, but one of my few ever takeaways from Super Bowl media night was during the Falcons Patriots Super Bowl and that week leading up to it, Ricardo Allen I looked at as kind of a fringe player who was lucky to be a starter, And you could tell just after that media night he was one of the leaders of that defense. And now another edition of Keeping Yes It is Maurice bow Ringer, former draft pick in the Minnesota Vikings, Germany product trying to make his way in the NFL didn't work out with the Vikings. Uh so he caught on with who Mark Well with the Cincinnati BEng and what is new with Mobo? What's new is he largely I would I wouldn't say flamed out, just did not materialize as a wide receiver. And they have he added on some towns. And our boy Henry Hodgson Hansen or Hank, who was very apparently very invested in close friends with Moe Berenger noted that he added on, tacked on some weight, has now become a tight end for the Bengals everyone and that was another additiontive keeping up. I think that's my favorite sound drop sneaky, one of my favorite moments of the show. I just enjoy that to the podcast with Eric Jensen. Check it out. I retweeted it last week. What's your favorite bit on the show? Know those mobile updates? Really I had more too, but we can we can leave it right there. Henry short and sweet handsome Hanks in Brazil right now. Uh and uh. Finally in the news, Johnny Manzel made his CFL CFL debut on Friday night. It could not have gone worse. It went Nate Peterman bad, four interceptions and one half. Uh. The Montreal outlet's embarrassed by the team that uh Manzel was on before his trade that got him in the starting lineup, he got benched. I don't know what when he gets in the lineup. I think this is the moment West where we could probably detach from Johnny until there's any reason. In fact, you could have made the argument, I'm sure about judging by your body language, West, we could have done it today. But it should be noted that Manzel imploded and that's where we're gonna leave him for now. Well, in my notes for the show was one thing on Johnny Manziel, just when are we gonna have a moratorium on Johnny Manzela more like boorratorium. He is a front office killer because they gave up two first round picks and players for him to get a guy that a week later or two weeks later, throwing four picks in one game. I'm just happy for I wanted to imagine the guy they benched from Vernon Adams. So he's he was, he was must have been loving it on the sideline, he literally said after he said, he said, I don't want any Montreal fans basically to ever talk to him again. He will never forgive them for like booing him and saying they want Johnny and he must have just been enjoying this, and I figured, like the Montreal general manager not probably not maybe not long for the league? Where do you go after the CFL? That doesn't go like Iceland? I mean, Eric was recently attached to a football league and saw a Super Bowl? What about that league? I think it's for women only? But the general are the general managers all women? I don't think. Do you know the internal schematics? Unfortunately don't have all the info on that. Um but but but shout out to the Boston Breakers won the title. It's the old Thanksgiving Day game with your boys. That's his next league? Well Montreal l LXGM getting a drive by here to close out the news. That's what's happening in the news. Hey Dan, did you get your passport? No? Yeah, you'd better get on that. You better get on that, well ordered, it just hasn't. You can't travel without You can't travel to London without a pass what better get your passport? You're not going to London without a past past sport? Are you dumb? You don't have it yet, hasn't arrived yet. You don't just screw yourself. You screw all of us. If you don't get a passport. By the way, exactly where's yours? West, Oh, I've had mine, Greg would have lost money thinking on the paperwork, chump here. I have faith you. You put it all in there. You know what I put out there, the government. Put your faith in the US government right now feels solid to make Band's distaste for other countries coming back to haunt him in getting popped here right now. And I'm a little bit nervous. Thank you, of course to the great iconic Sydney Carlson. All right, let's get into a little Hall of fame talk was like three Sydney Carlson's she there are no limits to her abilities. Uh, let's move on and talking about the Hall of Fame two thousand eighteen inductions, Uh Ray Lewis, Randy Moss, uh, Brian or Locker, Terrell Owens, Jerry Kramer, Robert Brazil, Brian Dawkins, Bobby Bethard, nice class um and a lot of a lot of stuff cooking with it. Mark, I know you were super plugged in what was like kind of your the biggest takeaway for you. Greg watched this closely too. I watched it yesterday on repeat, so I could fast forward through all the Well, no, I mean, because I can't tolerate. I don't need it to be a five hour long show. Get to the meat of it. But I was kind of peaked by something that ray Lewis brought up. I believe we have the sound for that. If we could play that, it was all. It was a wonderful ceremony. But this, this was an odd moment that got on my radar. Let's play oh did we hold did we hold that? Lombard? And they tried to turn the lights out on us? No, no, now, let's let's be honest. Let's be honest. If you grew up what me and my mama grew up in the project, you'll like Mike get turns off favorite frid But Beyonce had just before, so something had to happen. They just go out, They go out. But that's the way you're in the Korean Okay. So the child hood comments are fine, and I respect a lot where he's come from, but but it's it's it's sandwiched by two comments about the lights going out during the Super Bowl against the Niners, where ray Lewis is clinging to this theory. Uh, and this is what the ottust moment of the night and an otherwise very nice night in Canton, clinging to a theory that the NFL intentionally, because the Ravens were blowing the Niners out, turned the lights out in the super Dome in New Orleans to blow up the whole mood in that stadium and regalvanized the game to get the Niners back in and make it close. Now, I think that's called an intense scarecrow. I mean he ray Lewis entire speech was madness. Yeah, that was like the that was like the tenth least like most crazy thing he said over the weekend. No doubt martyrs, he said when I when I played Crime, what was lower in Baltimore? It's like no one needed to be mad. Everyone just wanted to be happy and celebrate. Dan found something too, didn't you. A little humble brag from ray Lewis. Oh, one of my favorite humble breggs that has ever happened. And this is this is strange. ESPN had a scroll. Was this new? Yes? I only watched it on NFL Network, so that was new then. Yeah, So ESPN has a scroll that allows the players, uh, the inductees to just to thank you. It's a way to get in names that maybe you otherwise aren't able to get to in the speech, and near the end of Ray Lewis's scroll underneath his speech, thank you to the President President of Tanzania for allowing me to bring water wells to your people. That is the that is the first ballot of le and Mark and Greg's right. Mark's uh quote that he pulled probably wasn't even like close here here, come on, though, you tell me that's not an insane thing. That's an insane thing to say that the whole thing was crazy persons. He also talked about that he would run fifteen to twenty miles to practice every day high school football and wrestling. But his he had a tape of Phil Collins is in the air tonight and he would just rewind it and listen to that song over and over. And then he concludes that story by going, I felt this coming in the air for a long time. What about I was like, what what about the numerology at the top of the top of the speech or he's saying how everything five and two and seven and it all connected to God? Just as like an exercise mark. I thought, what if we took that quote we pulled and just added something underneath it, because there was this man of crazed almost dangerous energy to raise speech. Let me just try this. Did we hold did we hold that a little more? And they tried to turn the lights out on us? Now, let's let's be onest. Let's be honest. If you grew up, what made my mama grew up in the protest? You'll like my d turns off favorite fry. So something has happened. I have the utmost respect for him as a player, and I hope no one ever sticks a microphone in front of his face. Again. Yeah, he was. He was sweating through. That was impressive too. I'm a sweater as well. Like he had not only swept through the dress shirt, he swept through the entire jacket, which I don't I've never seen that happen. No, that's tough to do. But anyway, so thirty three minute long speech, Am I am? I worried about that. That's a lot there needs to be for the sake of modern television in the viewership and where our habits are going. No speech, that's thirty three minute that's what my my big takeaway. Best speech of the night easy was Robert Brazil, who's not going to get a lot of like publicity for on it, but like a writer, he sort of had a narrative device that carried him through the sphere. It was eight or nine minutes long, It had plenty of energy, it had a couple of good jokes, and he was happy to be there. It was delightful. So just congratulations for the best speech. I think they suggest fifteen minutes and Ray Ray used to your people just blow Lewis. I think Louis said before the speech that um, he was going way past that, so he let people know. And that's a lot of yelling and huffing and puffing. Also, you're taking away from the other speakers when you're dn or not that not that everyone felt this way, but when you're taking up that much speaking time, it's just to me, it's like, can you can you stop yourself at the door just a little bit please, Which is taking nothing away from a brilliant career that he's had, but it was the football place. He was on brand at this speech. Uh Randy Moss of course got inducted and Bill Belichick and this made news. Bill Belichick, uh, and Robert Kraft showed up, and I guess it was a surprise. I think we have sound related to that as well. Last, but not least, I'm not gonna forget about you, Bill Belichick. I'm not don't forget about you. I want to thank you for being a friend when it wasn't always about football. You've showed me how much I love the game. You challenged me every day to go out here and be great. You challenged me to be great coach. And I'm sorry we did not bring it home. I picked this one, and Greg, we didn't know you're gonna be here, so we would have had you picked some sound by two. So let me ask you your thoughts on this, because if you were, do you remember watching this point on television Bill Belichick's eyes. I think Bill Belichick is the ultimate football historian, and he's in Canton, and I honestly felt for him a little bit because you have this these knuckleheads in the crowd booing Bill be Eli chick that this is one place where he I'm just I'm gonna jump in rights notorious and famous that I get that, but I honestly saw a little bit of hurt in his eyes, like like I thought that rapport was broken with him. I I totally disagree with you, Dan that he I do think he felt something here and I think that was just it's something about it. I get that you're Eagles fans or what you're you're some jabronies out there that route for another team. Something about it did not fly with me. Well, that's an interesting take, and I should watch it again. But the thing, if it was breaking anything, it was uh an intense sort of from within happiness that you normally don't see from Bill Belichick. I was. I was surprised that Bill Beltick was the last person that Randy Moss mentioned. And you could tell how much Randy Moss and Bill Belichick love and respect each other. The fact that he showed up there after a Patriots practice for a guy that was only there for a few years, and the fact that Ran Moss brought up last, and when he was saying those words to Belchick, you could just tell the smile on his face, like how much that meant to hear from from another person he considers, you know, one of the greatest of all and our guy ben Levinberg took an amazing photo of Craft and Belichick and Moss together, And do you remember that moment in the Belichick NFL never especially where mosses in his office saying kind of goating him on to come to that Halloween party. That was kind of the relationship they had. So it's it's interesting to think back on that. I think Belichick changed not just the Patriots run that they had, but Belichick changed the way people thought about Randy Moss because within a few months of him getting there, he said, this might be the smartest football player I've ever coached. And a lot of people are pretty down on Randy Moss in general. And to hear that respect and even when they traded Randy Moss, they were so like, so much respect coming both ways. I think it helped change, uh, some of the appreciation for Moss that everyone has now that they just didn't have during his play. Still remember exactly where I was on the Upper West Side of Manhattan when I found out the Patriots traded for Moss and death. It was so obvious what was going to happen next, that even though he had fallen off a little bit in Oakland, that with Brady and Belichick. That's something crazy was gonna go down. And uh, to say the least that happened, he had arguably you could maybe throw in Jerry Rice and what was or whatever, but the greatest season ever by a wide receiver, and that is I thought that was a little bit appointment, a poignant I'm sorry we couldn't bring it home, of course, a reference to Super Bowl and eighteen and one, and he would have had the game winning touchdown catch had not, uh, if not for the late heroics by Eli and Plexico. So Belitic didn't just change the way people thought of Moss, he changed the way writers covered him. Writers gave him more respect after that. Terrell Owens did his ceremony in Chattanooga. We we already know what's behind it, but he did confirm it was a His reaction to not be in Canton was because the writers, he felt punished him for not being uh well liked individual or being someone that was uh not seen as playing the game the right way and all that stuff, rather than basing it on what the Hall of Fame is supposed to base your eligibility on, which is just what you do on the field, and and and so that's why he did that West he wrote about that. I don't know if you had anything to add, well, it was sort of it was a speech that had its high points in low points. To me, like he made some really good points. And I do believe he wasn't a first ballot Hall of Famer because voters didn't do their job. Voters took into account things other than what happened on the field. They were wrong. He called him on that. On the other hand, this is an intention starved narcissist who was unwilling to address the self afflicted nature of his own wounds. And you know, I think it was Charles Robinson from YAH who said he's a first ballot blamer, and he absolutely is a first ballot blamer. There were a lot of great moments in the speech, though, and I think the sound bites that ended up going on Sports Center or NFL Network that night we're about the writers and how they didn't let him in. But he had a lot of great moments where he gave credit to a lot of people. You could and everyone that's played with him has said no one questioned his work ethic like that. He loved I don't think anyone. He loved the game of football, and if he did end this speech, I thought was interesting kind of saying what he thought the speech was for or for people that were outcasts and that had been picked on and bullied and and that just didn't kind of get along with the rest of society. And that's how he sees himself, and certainly his childhood if you, if you know about it, had some some rough times. And I do think the way he ended it was poignant and it meant a lot to him, you know, and I think it meant But he also can't you can't blame the media or anybody else for focusing in on those soundbites about because that's what he made his entire Hall of Fame and the induction about being snubbed and about his issues with the voters, so that he made it that it took. That's though. The thing that I didn't like was people saying he's missing out on all this they know better, Like you know, even Steven are utually in our air was kind of almost saying like I feel sorry for him because he's missing out on that, and like that's not really being a friend, Like if you really are a friend, of t o someone that has a relationship, just support and support him in what he wanted to do. That's what you want to do. It was certainly wasn't easy to do that and just let him be one little nugget about him. Hours after this speech, he's trying out for the CFL Saskatchewan rough Riders. How many NFL Hall of Famers have wound up plane in the CFL after being announced in Canton. It sounds like a bit of a stunt, but apparently as a four or four forti speeds still. I don't know if I buy that either, but that's just what's being floated. I just asked that we stopped with the martyr stuff, like he's not a martyr, and and it really bothers me that he's attempting to rewrite who he was as a player. You were the one who hopped on the exercise bike with the sunglasses and and the Lance Armstrong uniform and asked for the attention. You were the one who sat in the driveway and did sit ups and knew you were making a circus. You're the one who threw Donovan Mab under the bus and a bad teammate, So don't tell me all this stuff didn't happen to you, and you brought that on that very unsavory, unfair things about Jeff garcon uh, you know, like overblow the coverage he he started off. That was a mutually beneficial relationship. I remember until it was NFL network every every day during that whole out, that's the greatest hold out of all time the Eagle, because there was like daily updates where something crazy would happen. Wouldn't they cover the same way today? Oh yeah, it would be even more sure and it's entertaining, but it doesn't make you a good teammate anything else. From the Hall of Fame Mark Mark Jerry Kramer, I thought Kramer was well, you know what. First of all, when I saw Kramer up there, I thought, I thought Kramer was in the Hall of Fame, like twenty five years ago. That was my first thought. It's like I've been hearing about Jerry Kramer since I was ten years old. So, but his speech was unbelievable, and I thought it was a good bit of for all the players today complaining about salaries. He talked about signing on with the Packers. First of all, when he got drafted, he had no idea where Green Bay was and had to look at a map with his relatives, where is Cream Bay? And then they he had some someone in his camp say, what is it I'm supposed to ask for? Is a salary? The guy said, yes, right, thousand dollars And he went to the packers and they said, all right, one year contract. What do you want? He said eight thousand. He said absolutely. It's like he knew right then he had been taken for a ride. And then he asked and they said, you got a signing bonus too, and he said two fifty bucks. They said fine, And it wasn't a bonus, It just came out of his first page check. So I thought it was a look back at a completely different time. And that part of the show where they talked about Vince Lombardi, I thought, that's what. It brought a whole pause to the entire proceedings. And you can say it's a little precious, but it was a nice moment for the packers. In a lot of a lot of listeners tweet asking for book recommendations, Jerry Kramer wrote the first real football behind the Scenes book with a player. He and Dick Shapp wrote instant replay in one of the best football books ever and holds up really well. Now. Check out also one more July from Bill Curry and George Plinton, also about the same era of the Packers in Vince Lombardi. Both great football books. And getting drafted and then having to look up where you're gonna play on a map is one of my favorite Like heroes, journey tropes just love that, alright. It's like Steve Francis. Believe no, I'm not saying he made it up, but it does pop up every once in a while. It's just a fun little trope. Hey, one second, guys, it's been a long offseason without football, but fan Duel has spent it getting into the best shape of their lives. That means that fan Duel is ready for more, more ways to play, more ways to challenge your friends, and most importantly, more ways to win. If you're not a fantasy expert, we are, but that such then Fan Duel is clearly the best chance place to play. They have all kinds of contests just for casual fans, in particular, Beat the Score contests are great because they pay out everyone who hits a certain score, so all you have to do is finishing the money to split an equal share of some money. Where's our boy, Joey Watts? Whats uh? Greg's like itching right now? His arms like? Sounds so good anyway. FanDuel also has new options for playing with your friends right now. You can get a ten dollar bonus when you make your first deposit on fan Duel. Greg, where are you going? Just sign up at FanDuel dot com Slash around the NFL. That's FanDuel dot com Slash Around the NFL. Age and state restriction restrictions apply, all right before we go. Yes, we teased it at the top of the show. It's been a while since we heard from one of our great friends, one of the great satellites of the Around the NFL podcast. I don't know if he's at his haunted mansion in New Jersey right now, but let's hope that he is. Connor or what's up about it? Yo? Yeah, Hey, Nanny God, I miss your voice. If you guys, what is going on? Connor? What's do you know? The Living Light Heart? You know, is it still haunted? Like you got um the mortgage and everything. Everything is the same right now? I know you have a different job. So I don't know if anything else has changed in your life since we last spoke. I would say the only major change is that at the at the peak of summer heat, my air conditioners exploded. So that's really that's really about it. And then you also you also have a daughter, you had a child. Yeah, oh yeah, that's and there ain't no there ain't no landlord to call about that a cu and it is there is there, Connor. No, you just kinda you know, you go out there with like a wrench and you pretend that you know you're doing and then you come back in ten minutes later and you're like, ah, you know, couldn't couldn't fix it, but you don't even touch it because you don't know checks. So how's the lake house? That's it? Yeah, that's it? Good? Um so Connor, Um, I wasn't aware you had a lake house. But he lives in a it's essentially a lake house. So there's a lake in town right close by, it's in my backyard. Yeah, but it's haunted. Let's stick to the haunt. We let's stick to the idea there was a body of water. And now that I know that, you definitely have like the The Lady in eighteen hundreds, like White Gown apparition above the Lake at midnight. Everything. It's definitely going on anyway, all right, So Connor, usually when you come on, we you know, we get wacky, we get a reverend, we do maybe or you're kidding me segment uh or you know whatever. But you're doing really good work over at s I. Uh. Peter King said, I'm out of here, bro piece, but you're still there and um and and you have continued to grind. It's grind thirty for you at s I. You wrote a really good piece about a week ago about the Oakland Raiders and specifically John Gruden, UM about how things It's one of the great polarizing debates, both in this room and in the NFL. The subplot is how will John Gruden take in the NFL? Anden and you spoke Connor with a lot of players from his Tampa Bay days and it wasn't all sunshine and roses. Well, I thought like it was. It was one of my favorite conversations because I was talking to Chris Simms and he's like, yeah, you know, I love issues. Is that guy? Because eight months after I almost died on the field. He tried to cut me, and then like three three minutes later he's like, but he's an all right guy, you know, I mean, like everything okay, But so it kind of represents this like really strange like Stockholm syndrome that all of his players had under under him. Yeah, I think it it hit on a great point. It is a great piece to Bucks piece because the talking about you know, talking to the former Bucks players and kind of like, how is that gonna fly? Is he going to adjust that approach, because I think it burned him in Tampa people, the players I think eventually stopped kind of believing what he was selling because they could be, as he wrote about, really well so nice to their face and then cut him or kill him in front of the media, and it was just seemed to like be a lack of trust. And now maybe you're seeing that a little bit in Oakland too. For sure. Yeah, I mean we've already you know the right away, um, you know, to get rid of Marquette King, to quote at an example, and then to see that Khleil mc the defense wasn't even good when they had him, and then uh, you know, like he's been calling out like a steady stream of players. But what's weird about his approaches. He loves veteran guys because they're easier a coach and you can get hit the ground running faster. But he also loves talking crap about players players, and that's the one thing that veterans hate, Like they want to come in, take care of their business, and leave the facility and go home and not have their coach like you you wrote, and like a bullet of what it like kind of like his greatest hits and tools, he uses the media as a tool to pressure and motivate, and that's exactly what to do with Martavis Bryant in the news right now. He's a guy that's getting tweaked big time. Uh. And I think that something that I like that you wrote and what makes him kind of interesting and maybe hard to pin down. You wrote he's neither cold and distant enough to be Bell Checky, and nor warm and engaging enough to be Pete Carroll. So he's kind of a man without a country or what he was by the end of his Tampa Bay tenure. It's about what I guess, whether he learned or not during that time of way the right temperature with the team. Yeah, And I just don't think, at least now, like it doesn't strike me that it's very different, right, Like it's like, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna go to Hooters and eat wings and like say terrible things about everybody and run the fullback offense. And like it's almost like like Trumpy in the way that he's like, We're going to do all this stuff we did twenty years ago, and and everyone's like cool. But I don't think anyone's thinking practically, like like, not a lot of this is gonna work out. I mean, one thing, make the Raiders great again. Like Connor when he when he came to the to Tampa Bay obviously inherited a very good team, one that was on the cusp of, you know, going to the Super Bowl with a lot of pieces in place, and he was able to carry that the distance. And then to Greg's point, I think the Tampa Bay sort of fell apart from there, and the thing that we thought that Gruden was so great at, which was developing quarterbacks, really never happened after the Super Bowl, And it was almost that his stint with Money Night Football in the media almost rehabbed the image of John Gruden and made him this alluring, you know, distant prospect that you'd want to bring in as a coach. But did you talk to any players that said, yes, he has all these character traits that are impossible to deal with, but almost like with a Belichick, he's really he's not the most fun guy, but there's this football acumen and this thing that the team can lean on that will save us every time. Do you get a sense that people feel like Gruden the football coach beyond the person is something that's such that is worth a ten year contract at this incredible amount of money. Well, it's interesting at first, like all the players that I talked to or the players that I talked to, all thought that the media thing was a rehab tour. They said, like, he was not well liked by fellow coaches, by players, and this is a great way for him to sort of reshape his image, which you can do on TV. Mean, we've all seen that and it's entirely possible. The one thing that I will say that that a lot of people have said about him, though, is that schematically he is that smart. He is able to do things, you know, Jeff Garcia told me they would implement something and then three weeks later see another team running it. It made their lives better, It made their lives easier. The only problem was when it came to the game. He would always sort of regress a little bit and play more small ball because he had a great defense. And Oakland is going to be very different now because this is a team that needs to score forty points a game to win. Hey, Connor, after researching and writing this and then hearing sort of his comments throughout the offseason and the moves they've made to bring in some guys and get rid of others, do you have a dramatically changed opinion on what you expect from the Raiders this year after doing this well a little bit, and it's not good. It's just, you know, it seems like he came in immediately and the the his his kind of m oh was always he was gonna cut, you know, the guys that he didn't want to deal with. He was going to bring in older veteran players, um that could pick up the system. And you know that's exactly what he did. I mean, Jordy Nelson's in his thirties, you know, he got rid of Michael Crabtree, and uh, you know, he's playing with the full back again, and it's like, you know, I think that maybe conceivably this could work at some point. I think the only thing to his favor is that he has shortened his play calls um which a couple of players have told me used to be gargante in like thirty word play calls now very short, very concise. So maybe he's adapting a little bit to the times. But still this is a young man's game, and he's really kind of loading up on older veteran guys like that was his whole stick on ESPN, going through the play calls and all the all the nonsense. And now he gets he hits the scene and decides to truncate that. Where do you think Reggie mackenzie, the general managers and all this, because it feels like he had a powerful voice in that organization and Bruden comes in and sort of trumps everything that was built there and just is making these decisions to reshape in his image. I don't know, I'd be pretty you know, I mean, every every relationship right when you first get there, Like, you know, it reminds me of and Rex Ryan got to her. You know, when John got to the Jets and everyone's like, oh, these guys looking along fine him and Rex Ryan and like nothing bad is could possibly happened. But it's true. I mean, John and Reggie are very different people. I'm sure they see um their team in a very different way. And uh, you know, it's going to be interesting to see how this fills out. I don't think you know, no one's rooting for this to work more than than us. I think that having Gruden be successful in this league would be good, but I think that it's, uh, it's healthy to be a little skeptical of how this is going to happen. Uh. Finally, Connor, Um, are you happy? I'm very happy? Like one to ten? Where are you at? What's that? One to ten? Like ten? You couldn't be happier? One? Yeah, poop in your pants? I would say, if it wasn't for the air conditioning, I'd be in the left through the roof. But I'm probably liking in eight right now. It's good. I I don't feel I do. I texted you I think a couple of weeks ago for an or you kidding me? Uh? And I would like to remain in that capacity, but there's a lot less pressure when you know, I I don't have to come on and scream about something. You know, in general, just feels like a really like Connor War at peace. And maybe it's because we're not making you do it or you kidding me, but I feel like you're in a good place. He's got the house, he's got the lake. You know, he's got it all. He clearly likes the job better than the one he had at the NFL. You know, it sounds like a much better old old Peter King isn't swinging his elbows around, so he's gone. You know, you still hate Seinfeld though, Is that clear? You still cannot stand the concept of the Seinfeld franchise. Yeah, it's funny you said that. I texted one of my friends and the Seinfeld super fan the other day and there was a marathon on and I said, I'm gonna watch five episodes. I'm gonna text you many how many times I laugh once once watching it? Yeah, that's I love five. Though. You weren't just dipping in for five or ten minutes five episodes? What made you laugh? Just out of curiosity? I think after a while like, you know, the thirtieth time that Kramer just like blasting the door and does that same old like shaky thing where he's like it it looks like an alcoholic. That that that got me like the prettiest time. I was like, okay, people couldn't even give him that. Jerry doesn't need anything else either. He's happier than all of us. But all right, Connor, you are, You're a great man. You could be followed on Twitter at connor Or that is one end and two rs uh. And he once upon the time went through all of our bios to see how funny they were on Twitter. Yours Reid's. Connor Or is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated in the mm QB. He might he might have elbowed out, Uh, Peter King, I like to think that's what happened. Um. And who knows who's in his way next? Who's in his way next? We'll have some bus tracks overs back. You've exposed my marcom hilly and all right, Connor, good talking to anybody by guys, miss that guy. All right, We're out of here. We'll be back on Wednesday with another show, including our first Hard Knocks recap. How exciting is dan Janzas signing off for a quiet storm. The Mailman, the old Boss, and the loose cannon behind the glass til Wednesday.
