Speaker 1: Tuesday afternoon.
Speaker 2: We are looking at about fourteen minutes past the hour
Speaker 2: of two o'clock.
Speaker 1: We're a little late today.
Speaker 2: We had some fun crosstalk with Sean on this Tuesday afternoon.
Speaker 2: But as it is every single day, it's gonna have
Speaker 2: you along for the ride. Spence check, it's me on
Speaker 2: the mic. That's Porter Larsen beyond the Glass today. Happy
Speaker 2: Tuesday to you, beautiful day outside, and as it is
Speaker 2: every single day, it's gonna have you along for the ride.
Speaker 1: Jam Pack show.
Speaker 2: NBA Playoffs inching closer and closer to May the twelfth,
Speaker 2: which is the next date that will be interesting for.
Speaker 1: The Utah Jazz and Jazz fans.
Speaker 2: The Jazz once again for the third straight year not
Speaker 2: participating in the spring tournament.
Speaker 1: Not is the NBA Playoffs. So some fun games last night.
Speaker 2: We have four games tonight's well Tonight Slash this afternoon.
Speaker 2: There's gonna be one game that actually gets going while
Speaker 2: we're on air and may even be at like halftime
Speaker 2: by the time that we finish.
Speaker 1: So four o'clock today.
Speaker 2: On NBA TV, the Indiana Pacers are going to try
Speaker 2: to eliminate the Milwaukee Bucks. A lot of people wondering
Speaker 2: if this is the final game. Yannas Sante to Cumbo
Speaker 2: will be playing for Milwaukee.
Speaker 1: Indiana has been.
Speaker 2: Very impressive and should they advance, They're going to take
Speaker 2: on Donovan Mitchell and the Cleveland Cavaliers, who dog walked
Speaker 2: the Miami Heat last night. They were up by sixty
Speaker 2: at one point and ended up winning.
Speaker 1: By I believe fifty five.
Speaker 2: It is the largest single series plus minus in the
Speaker 2: history of the NBA Playoffs. The Cavs just ran away
Speaker 2: from Miami. Of course, Miami winning the play in style
Speaker 2: tournament to get in as the eighth seed, and their
Speaker 2: reward was just to get smoked by the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Speaker 2: Donovan's been really good. You know, we'll talk about this
Speaker 2: on the show today. We're not really used to as
Speaker 2: jazz fans here in Salt Lake City, we're not really
Speaker 2: used to seeing players that played here and played really
Speaker 2: well here go on to find extreme success in other
Speaker 2: play This kid is going to be the exception. Donovan's
Speaker 2: going to be the exception. For all the conversation about
Speaker 2: the calculated risk and I'm being kind of Nico Harrison
Speaker 2: that the Dallas Mavericks took by trading a twenty five
Speaker 2: year old generational superstar Luka Doncic.
Speaker 1: The Jazz did the same thing.
Speaker 2: Jazz did the same thing and trading away Donovan Mitchell
Speaker 2: as he was kind of approaching his prime. And now
Speaker 2: Jazz fans watching this Cleveland Cavaliers team and seeing what
Speaker 2: Donovan is able to do as he continues to grow.
Speaker 2: And then last night man great television with the Warriors
Speaker 2: in the Rockets just Gripping TV. Saw Golden State hang
Speaker 2: on at the end one nine to one six. Jimmy
Speaker 2: Butler did play after all the conversation about whether or
Speaker 2: not he was going to go, and he had fourteen
Speaker 2: points in the fourth quarter, hit all twelve of his
Speaker 2: free throws. Houston as a team missed twelve free throws.
Speaker 2: As a group, they were nineteen of thirty one. Draymond
Speaker 2: Green with a great defensive stand there at the end
Speaker 2: and Jimmy Butler with a grown up ground ass man
Speaker 2: winning rebound to seal the deal for Golden State.
Speaker 1: So move over to the action tonight.
Speaker 2: Like I said, there's gonna be a really early tip
Speaker 2: four o'clock on NBA TV. Is the Bucks and the
Speaker 2: Pacers also an NBA TV will be the Magic and
Speaker 2: the Celtics Boston trying to just eliminate Orlando. They're up
Speaker 2: three to one. Not sure if Drew Holliday is gonna play,
Speaker 2: not sure if.
Speaker 1: It even matters.
Speaker 2: Orlando's been pesky, but Boston I still think the best
Speaker 2: team in the East, although Cleveland will have something to
Speaker 2: say about it. And then the Pistons in the Knicks
Speaker 2: return to the world's most famous arena and the mecha
Speaker 2: of basketball in the heart of New York City, Madison
Speaker 2: Square Garden, where the Knicks will try to advance to
Speaker 2: the second round as they lead Detroit three to one.
Speaker 2: That's been a fun series as well, and then a
Speaker 2: lot of intrigue for the late night game. It's eight
Speaker 2: o'clock on Turner and TNT also has the Pistons in
Speaker 2: the Knicks, so it will be Clippers Nuggets eight o'clock
Speaker 2: Mountain time from Ball Arena and Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 1: That series is tied to.
Speaker 2: Two, and that's been a really cool series, fun series
Speaker 2: to watch as well. So NBA Playoff Action on the
Speaker 2: program today will kind of bring it around to talk
Speaker 2: a little Utah jazz to the prism of what we
Speaker 2: can learn from some of these teams that have been
Speaker 2: rebuilding and now we're actually playing games that matter. Get
Speaker 2: into some of that on the show. Alex Jensen and
Speaker 2: the Utah men's basketball staff added a piece yesterday and
Speaker 2: John much about him, but watching some highlights over the
Speaker 2: past twenty four hours, he's a really dynamic ball in hand,
Speaker 2: playmaking guard, which is exactly what Utah basketball did not
Speaker 2: have last year. College football transfer portal is closed, but
Speaker 2: we'll get to the latest in the college football world
Speaker 2: storylines NFL draft, which only saw two local players drafted.
Speaker 2: One youth Caleb Lohner goes to the Denver Broncos and
Speaker 2: Jalen Royals from Utah State drafted. No BYU players drafted
Speaker 2: this year, but we will get to the latest in
Speaker 2: the world of college football and if you care about
Speaker 2: such things, House first, NCUBA all of the legislation we're
Speaker 2: waiting to hear past to kind of understand what sort
Speaker 2: of guardrails and guidelines will be in place, so we'll
Speaker 2: get some of that stuff on the show as well.
Speaker 2: RSL continues their road heavy April slash May schedule.
Speaker 1: As we are about to turn our calendars.
Speaker 2: To May coming up, they're gonna be in Vancouver coming
Speaker 2: up on Saturday, after getting all three points in San Diego.
Speaker 1: So little soccer on the program as well.
Speaker 2: A lot to do Tuesday Afternoon style of this little
Speaker 2: old radio program, We appreciate your ears. We'll start things
Speaker 2: off with Kyle Bonnigura, who covers college football and also
Speaker 2: soccer for ESPN NBA Daily Assist Style with Tim McMahon
Speaker 2: on the show today. Kaylan Jones, our old friend who's
Speaker 2: been with Sports Illustrated and The Ringer.
Speaker 1: He's now with Netflix. Netflix has a couple of.
Speaker 2: Really exciting sports docs coming up, one on Brett Favre
Speaker 2: As the trailer was just released today. So we'll bring
Speaker 2: in our old buddy, Kayln Jones, and then Sam Bruckhouse,
Speaker 2: who covers the NFL for our friends at Zoomer Sports
Speaker 2: for some NFL Draft takeaways on the program as well.
Speaker 1: So a lot to do.
Speaker 2: Kyle Bonneger, Tim McMahon, Kaylan Jones, Sam bruck House, Me
Speaker 2: Spence Check. Its all of you, the great listeners, Happy Tuesday,
Speaker 2: beautiful day. And that guy Porter Larson producing the I
Speaker 2: don't know, man, I'm not sure where you're at with
Speaker 2: this Warriors Rocket series. But you know, Golden State's probably
Speaker 2: gonna win it. But this has been gripping television. Last
Speaker 2: night was a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: We talked about it before the weekend. It was probably
Speaker 3: the series that, from like a a clashing styles standpoint,
Speaker 3: was the one we're most looking forward to, the one
Speaker 3: that was a you know, most interesting because you have
Speaker 3: this changing of the guard that's happening in the NBA.
Speaker 1: It doesn't happen overnight. It never does. It's not how it.
Speaker 3: Works, but there is a little bit of a changing
Speaker 3: of the guard, and you see it in this series.
Speaker 3: It's Steph, it's Jimmy Butler, it's Draymond Green. And yes,
Speaker 3: I do think they're gonna win the series. But although
Speaker 3: it's three to one, it hasn't been you know, it's
Speaker 3: been closer than three to one. All the games have
Speaker 3: been competitive, the back and forth have been fun. I
Speaker 3: just don't think the Rockets have quite enough experience for
Speaker 3: the late game situations in that series.
Speaker 1: We saw that last night.
Speaker 3: But yeah, man, it's been probably the most entertaining series
Speaker 3: to watch from a standpoint both of clashing styles of
Speaker 3: basketball and kind of generations clashing as well.
Speaker 2: No doubt, no doubt. It's been a lot of fun,
Speaker 2: so I say it all the time. Spring basketball reminds
Speaker 2: all of us basketball fans what this great game can
Speaker 2: look like when the best players in the world actually
Speaker 2: care about, you know, doing their job and showing up
Speaker 2: and playing ball. So Kyle Bondiguerra, our first guest, right
Speaker 2: out of the gates, we'll do some college football squeezing,
Speaker 2: a little soccer I time allows with Kyle, but on
Speaker 2: a Tuesday afternoon. Before we get to Kyle, courtesy of
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Speaker 4: Welcome to the Drive with Spence check its on Utah's
Speaker 4: number one sports talk Now into the studios of ESPN
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Speaker 2: season long. All right, A couple quick things regarding the
Speaker 2: NBA playoffs. I was thinking about last night, and then
Speaker 2: we'll get to some college football. Kyle Bonnagura. You know
Speaker 2: I say often and if you listen to the show.
Speaker 2: First of all, thank you, hello, how are you?
Speaker 1: Second? Of all superstars in the NBA.
Speaker 2: They get it done on the road in the postseason,
Speaker 2: but they also get it done in the biggest moments
Speaker 2: when the big moments present themselves.
Speaker 1: Star players are ready.
Speaker 2: So to start the game last night Golden State Houston,
Speaker 2: Stephan Curry just couldn't get any space because of course,
Speaker 2: imy U Doka and the Houston Rockets are gonna do
Speaker 2: everything they can to blitz them. They're gonna do everything
Speaker 2: they can to get the ball out of his hands,
Speaker 2: and they're gonna do everything they can to make him
Speaker 2: a facilitator and not a shooter, because there's never been
Speaker 2: a shooter in the history of the game. Like stephen
Speaker 2: Wardel Curry, Jimmy Butler could not move at all to
Speaker 2: start the game, and Draymond Green got in a foul trouble,
Speaker 2: then of course picked up the TECH and then a
Speaker 2: flagrant won. Honestly, I think that flagrant one should have
Speaker 2: been a TECH and Draymond should have been ejected. For
Speaker 2: all the conversation that you hear around pro basketball that
Speaker 2: Draymond gets picked on, he very much does not. In fact,
Speaker 2: more often than not, he does not have the same
Speaker 2: sort of treatment from the officials that other players do.
Speaker 2: He should have been thrown out last night. Okay, I'm
Speaker 2: not a Dylan Brooks fan at all. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: if anybody is. He's a tough guy to root for.
Speaker 2: But basically, the three superstar players for Golden State did
Speaker 2: not get it done to start the game. It wasn't
Speaker 2: until the second half and the fourth quarter. For the
Speaker 2: most part, Steph got it going there in the second
Speaker 2: that those three stepped up and make game winning plays
Speaker 2: when the biggest moments manifested. So Steph started hitting shots
Speaker 2: there in the fourth quarter. He had that massive corner
Speaker 2: three with about two and a half minutes left to
Speaker 2: tie the game. Draymond Green had two or three massive
Speaker 2: defensive stops against shnng Goon out for in shng Gun,
Speaker 2: the really talented Rocket center who went for thirty one.
Speaker 2: Sheng Goon when Draymond was the primary defender, went three
Speaker 2: of twelve. He was nine of sixteen against everybody else.
Speaker 2: And when the Rockets had a chance to take the
Speaker 2: lead after Golden State went up one because Dylan Brooks
Speaker 2: made a boneheaded foul on Jimmy Butler's corner three, Houston
Speaker 2: was anticipating a switch, but Draymond called the switch off
Speaker 2: and guarded Shngun one on one and got the stop.
Speaker 1: And then Jimmy Butler got one of that.
Speaker 2: Like, you're not gonna see a lot of people talking
Speaker 2: about big rebounds. You're gonna hear people talking about big shots,
Speaker 2: big threes, big stops, whatever.
Speaker 1: That was a.
Speaker 2: Grown ass man rebound from Jimmy Butler to seal to win.
Speaker 2: So all three of the players for Golden State that
Speaker 2: are Hall of famers, I mean, certainly Stephen draymondhar My
Speaker 2: guess is Jimmy will be as well, made game winning
Speaker 2: plays down the stretch. After the young players kind of
Speaker 2: lifted them to start the game. Brandon Pajemski was really
Speaker 2: good to start the Quinton post Kid came off the
Speaker 2: bench and knocked down a couple of threes, And when
Speaker 2: I was watching it, I always try to juxtapose my basketball,
Speaker 2: you know, my NBA basketball kind of takeaways to what
Speaker 2: we're dealing with here with the Utah Jazz and watching
Speaker 2: the Golden State Houston game off the heels of watching
Speaker 2: the Cavs just absolutely blow the brakes off the Miami
Speaker 2: Heat just once again made me think back to the
Speaker 2: Quinn Snyder, Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell, Joe Ingles boy on Bogdanovitch,
Speaker 2: Mike on the Utah Jazz, and really what a calculated
Speaker 2: risk Danny Ainge and Justin Zanik decided to take by
Speaker 2: moving on from Mitchell at the age of twenty five,
Speaker 2: as he was just entering the prime of his career,
Speaker 2: moving on from Rudy who was in his late twenties,
Speaker 2: and some of the other pieces. You know, Bogdanovitch was
Speaker 2: getting older, Mike was getting older. But what really stings
Speaker 2: about the Jazz electing to pull the ripcord on that
Speaker 2: group is they were learning step by step about what
Speaker 2: you have to do to win in the playoffs.
Speaker 1: And that's how this thing has always gone.
Speaker 2: Don't forget John Stockton Karmelom did not make the NBA
Speaker 2: Finals until their mid thirties. They need did twelve thirteen
Speaker 2: years together before they actually were an NBA Finals team.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine in like nineteen eighty eight eighty nine,
Speaker 2: after the Jazz took the Lakers to seven games in
Speaker 2: eighty eight and then got smoked by Golden State the
Speaker 2: next year, can you imagine Scott Laden trading John Stockton
Speaker 2: and trading Carl Alone because he didn't think they could
Speaker 2: get it done, because they didn't get it.
Speaker 1: Done in their mid to late twenties.
Speaker 2: That would have robbed us of the best basketball that
Speaker 2: we've ever seen here. That would have robbed us of
Speaker 2: the NBA Finals with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls
Speaker 2: in town. It would have robbed us of the best
Speaker 2: Jazz basketball era that we all witnessed and we all
Speaker 2: saw but that Jazz front office. And look, I know
Speaker 2: it's a different time, and I know conversations like this
Speaker 2: are complex and nuanced, and we could get into the
Speaker 2: whole like was Mitchell gonna leave?
Speaker 1: Was he done with the entire thing?
Speaker 2: Quinn Snyder saying in his press Conference before he left
Speaker 2: our market, he didn't see any way forward. I know
Speaker 2: it's a little bit apples and oranges, but watching the
Speaker 2: way Donovan has evolved and elevated his game just to
Speaker 2: be a more comfortable leader and more comfortable facilitator and
Speaker 2: also more engaged defender under Kenny Atkinson, and this Cleveland
Speaker 2: Cavaliers group that I don't think will be the Boston Celtics,
Speaker 2: But watching the Mitchell maturation and feeling like we were
Speaker 2: robbed of having that here will always make me wonder
Speaker 2: whether or not that was the right move. And the
Speaker 2: dirty little secret and the sad part of the reality
Speaker 2: of our current NBA team is they are not a
Speaker 2: Cooper flag away from being competitive. They are not two
Speaker 2: or three pieces away from being competitive. They are probably
Speaker 2: four or five roster pieces and roster upgrades away from
Speaker 2: even being a playoff team.
Speaker 1: Like if you're.
Speaker 2: Juiced on being a playing team nine or ten seed,
Speaker 2: all right, that's fine. But if you look around the
Speaker 2: landscape of the Western Conference, this calculator risk the Jazz
Speaker 2: took four years ago has not paid near the dividends
Speaker 2: that anybody thought that it would pay. Some of the
Speaker 2: draft capital from the Goberian Mitchell trades have I'm in,
Speaker 2: but the draft selections that I've been made have not popped.
Speaker 2: They have not proven to be players that we can
Speaker 2: rely upon to help this franchise grow back to respectability
Speaker 2: and competition. And watching NBA playoff basketball this year, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: has reiterated my belief that the Jazz are a marathon
Speaker 2: away from even being decent. Utah Men's basketball picked up
Speaker 2: a transfer portal edition yesterday.
Speaker 1: We'll tell you about this new player.
Speaker 2: I think there are five roster spots left for Alex
Speaker 2: Jensen and his staff to fill out. Of course, plenty
Speaker 2: of time before the season gets rolling. But our first
Speaker 2: guest on this Tuesday afternoon covers college football for ESPN.
Speaker 1: It's been a number of months, but please.
Speaker 2: To welcome Kyle Bonnaguera back on the show on a Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Kyle, Happy Tuesday, man. How you doing. I'm good. I'm good.
Speaker 2: I was looking at your I don't know, Twitter or
Speaker 2: x whatever calling it. You have not been very active
Speaker 2: on the socials as of late. What's been keeping your attention.
Speaker 5: Everything else that matters? I guess I just kind of
Speaker 5: found that the more time I spent on social media
Speaker 5: the less I was getting out of all of it,
Speaker 5: and I think, you know, if I put more effort
Speaker 5: into the stores, I'm ready and care more about those
Speaker 5: sort of things as opposed to kind of caning followers
Speaker 5: on social media, Like I'm probably better off long term,
Speaker 5: just like how I feel about the job and just
Speaker 5: kind of day to day. So yeah, I kind of
Speaker 5: just stop seeing the value for the for the role
Speaker 5: that I do for the newsbreakers and people like that.
Speaker 5: I think there's still value for that, but when you're
Speaker 5: kind of doing feature stories and taking on on specific subjects,
Speaker 5: I just don't think it really adds much anymore.
Speaker 1: Everything else that matters.
Speaker 2: Was such a great Kyle Bonneger answer that was right
Speaker 2: on brand, a perfect answer, buddy, all right, I wanted
Speaker 2: to start today because you're familiar with Dion Sanders and
Speaker 2: should Or Sanders and Colorado and have covered that program.
Speaker 1: And of course I'm not sure if you heard, Kyle
Speaker 1: because you're not.
Speaker 2: On social but should Or slid a little bit in
Speaker 2: that NFL draft all the way down to the fifth round,
Speaker 2: and it's always interesting juxtapos seeing NFL Italian talent evaluators
Speaker 2: to what the media believes is going to happen. And
Speaker 2: maybe this is just as simple as NFL people don't
Speaker 2: believe that Shador is worth spending a high pick on,
Speaker 2: and maybe it's more nuanced and complex than that. I
Speaker 2: just wonder what your takeaways are from watching shod Or
Speaker 2: slip all the way to the fifth round.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I paid. I paid pretty close attention to this.
Speaker 5: I wrote a little bit about some the so it
Speaker 5: was part of our kind of draft coveraging leading up
Speaker 5: to and so I was really curious to see where
Speaker 5: he went, where Hunter went, kind of where all the
Speaker 5: players that I kind of paid a close attention to
Speaker 5: during their college careers landed landed in the draft.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: It's kind of graduation day in that sense, And so
Speaker 5: I think there's a lot to it, right. It's a
Speaker 5: it's a very complex issue when we're talking about Shador
Speaker 5: and why he fell or or why he didn't fall,
Speaker 5: why everyone just had him wrong and he didn't fall.
Speaker 5: He just ended up where he was supposed to be.
Speaker 5: But I think like the prevailing thought that I tend
Speaker 5: to agree with is, look, if he was worth all
Speaker 5: the other stuff that comes along with him, if his
Speaker 5: talent was that good, if he was really at top
Speaker 5: five talent. He would have gone there, right. NFL teams
Speaker 5: would have decided that if he adds wins, right, if
Speaker 5: he gets you the those results, the things that matter,
Speaker 5: then you can kind of put up with the kind
Speaker 5: of the circus that kind of comes with everything Sanders
Speaker 5: these days. But after the evaluations were complete, they determined
Speaker 5: and this is kind of where I fell too, is
Speaker 5: that he really wasn't that great. I mean, there was
Speaker 5: a lot of things he did really well. Sitting in
Speaker 5: the pocket, there was a beautiful ball, took a lot
Speaker 5: of sacks. I thought there was a lot of stat
Speaker 5: padding going on. The story that I've kind of told
Speaker 5: friends over the last few days kind of illustrates kind
Speaker 5: of why I didn't really view Schedure as kind of
Speaker 5: a winning player earlier in the year. It was the
Speaker 5: first game of the year. Actually, I was there in
Speaker 5: Colorado to play in North Dakota State. It's a one
Speaker 5: possession game a minute in a minute in like forty
Speaker 5: five seconds ago, somewhere somewhere in that range. So you
Speaker 5: had a chance to just North Dakota State had one
Speaker 5: time out left, so you had a chance to run
Speaker 5: the ball three times. It would have taken you down
Speaker 5: to about ten seconds and you could punt it away
Speaker 5: the game's over. Instead, on first down he checks to
Speaker 5: a he checks to a downfield pass, which was just
Speaker 5: a completely bizarre decision in that game State. And then
Speaker 5: on second down they passed again incomplete. So they basically
Speaker 5: gifted North Dakota State a timeout and a chance in
Speaker 5: the time of the game where they could have just
Speaker 5: completely ended it. North Dakota State ends up getting the
Speaker 5: ball back. They marched down the field, they come up
Speaker 5: a couple of yards short of a thirty, like a
Speaker 5: really lengthy drive with thirty seconds left, and end up
Speaker 5: costing the game. And so I just felt like that moment,
Speaker 5: for me, kind of illustrated that he was more about
Speaker 5: his stats and all the other stuff than winning. And
Speaker 5: that's just one example, and maybe it's a little harsh
Speaker 5: to point that out, but I think there's like a
Speaker 5: lot of examples, like the shows that this kid wasn't
Speaker 5: really focused on the thing the NFL teams wanted him
Speaker 5: to be. And so when you're now a sudden, you're
Speaker 5: not drafting a starting quarterback, You're drafting some guy and
Speaker 5: compete to be the backup. Now you have someone who's
Speaker 5: you know, whose dad is, is a a list celebrity.
Speaker 5: He generates headlines like few people do in sports and
Speaker 5: pop culture. He's going to be calling for him to start.
Speaker 5: That's inevitable, right, We'll see that soon enough with the Browns.
Speaker 5: And if you're the head coach, if you're the GM,
Speaker 5: do you want to deal with that for a backup quarterback?
Speaker 5: You know, probably not, So you know, we can talk
Speaker 5: about this for days, But that's kind of the kind
Speaker 5: of where I where I started my thought process and
Speaker 5: valuating everything.
Speaker 6: Sure, do you.
Speaker 2: Think his dad did him a bit of a disservice
Speaker 2: because you hear all these things where it's like, well,
Speaker 2: Dion used to sandbag interviews too, and it's like, well,
Speaker 2: he was the best cornerback in the history of football. Like,
Speaker 2: even if two or three teams were turned off about Dion,
Speaker 2: somebody was going to take him and somebody was going
Speaker 2: to sign him because he was just that good and
Speaker 2: to your point and how you articulate, it was really
Speaker 2: really good. Like with all of the questions that just
Speaker 2: simply surrounded Shador as a prospect, if you remove all
Speaker 2: the intangibles and everything on the outside looking in, just
Speaker 2: as a football player. It appears to be pretty clear
Speaker 2: that out the talent evaluators didn't necessarily see him as
Speaker 2: somebody that they were comfortable taking a high pick. And
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't want to say wasting on him,
Speaker 2: but as far as like maybe the example he followed
Speaker 2: from his father and Dion himself being front facing about
Speaker 2: he is a top five pick and even at one
Speaker 2: point alluding to maybe getting involved in harkening the whole
Speaker 2: you know, Eli Manning situation. Do you think maybe his
Speaker 2: pops did him a bit of a disservice during this process.
Speaker 5: Yeah, completely, I think that's I think that's pretty clear that. Look,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of benefits to having Deon Sanders as
Speaker 5: your dad, Right, There's a lot of ways that he's
Speaker 5: been very helpful kind of shepherded him along his career.
Speaker 5: But in this case, not only has he Deon Sanders
Speaker 5: and been very vocal about all those things. I mean,
Speaker 5: it was just a few months ago where you know,
Speaker 5: there was speculation that Dion Sanders was going to be
Speaker 5: a candidate to be an NFL coach. Right, so I
Speaker 5: imagine you're the head coach, you have shoud a on
Speaker 5: the bench, you're losing. He probably doesn't deserve to be
Speaker 5: in the game. But now you're hearing all this outside. No,
Speaker 5: now you're probably hearing, you know, should Deon Sanders be
Speaker 5: the coach? Right? And that's an element that didn't exist
Speaker 5: with Eli. That kind of adds to this in a
Speaker 5: way that I mean, you saw that could be probably
Speaker 5: saw that the clips of the draft room for the Browns,
Speaker 5: and they didn't look thrilled to be, you know, having
Speaker 5: picked Sugar Sanders. And it's certainly possible that was taken
Speaker 5: out of context, but it's also possible that they were
Speaker 5: not thrilled knowing that every single day with that guy
Speaker 5: in the building is going to be examined in a
Speaker 5: way that it wouldn't have been had he been somewhere else.
Speaker 5: And so you you certainly benefit for being Dion's son,
Speaker 5: but there's a lot of a lot of other stuff
Speaker 5: that comes with that, and I think in this case,
Speaker 5: it costs him a lot of money.
Speaker 1: So his teammate Travis Hunter goes too.
Speaker 2: And another player that you watched, another player that you covered,
Speaker 2: I wonder what you what do.
Speaker 1: You anticipate Jacksonville doing with him?
Speaker 2: I mean, a lot of conversation about whether or not
Speaker 2: whoever drafted him was going to want him only on
Speaker 2: offense or allow him to play on both sides of
Speaker 2: the ball, which he did at the highest of levels
Speaker 2: in college. And he was one of those players, Kyle.
Speaker 2: Every time I watched it's like, yes, he is one
Speaker 2: of one. He is a unicorn. He is as unique
Speaker 2: as any prospect I think that I've seen in a
Speaker 2: long time. Do you do you think we'll see a
Speaker 2: two way situation for Travis Hunter and Jacksonville. Every time
Speaker 2: Travis is asked about it, he's very clear, salient in
Speaker 2: front face, and like, yes, I want to play on
Speaker 2: both sides.
Speaker 1: Of the ball.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I just wanted to watch a video today kind
Speaker 5: of showing his arrival in jacksonvilleson the behind the scenes
Speaker 5: stuff there, and he was talking about how he wants
Speaker 5: to get the playbook and then he corrected himself and
Speaker 5: he's like, actually the playbooks plural because he needed offense.
Speaker 5: And so I think, you know, all the signs indicate that,
Speaker 5: you know, certainly to start off, they'll work him on
Speaker 5: both sides of the ball, and you know, use that
Speaker 5: information to kind of inform what the decision is during
Speaker 5: the season. I think it makes sense to let him
Speaker 5: try both. I don't know if in the NFL he
Speaker 5: can you know, go go uh go full time both ways.
Speaker 5: And he didn't start playing both ways full time in
Speaker 5: college either. He kind of worked himself into that as
Speaker 5: he became more experienced and more comfortable at the college
Speaker 5: level too. And that's even starting you know, down down
Speaker 5: at FCS. With with with Jackson State. I've discussed this
Speaker 5: a lot with you know, friends and colleges and you know,
Speaker 5: you know, other people in the media, just like where
Speaker 5: is he better? And I think the fact that there
Speaker 5: isn't really a consensus, that you have people arguing on
Speaker 5: both sides, is really probably the most interesting takeaway that
Speaker 5: it's not clear he was. He started as a corner
Speaker 5: that was what he got recruited as. But you know,
Speaker 5: last year he won the Bolitannicop Award as the best receiver,
Speaker 5: and part of that is just named recognition, and there
Speaker 5: wasn't the other candidates were you know, Nick Nash from
Speaker 5: stand State. He's not going to generate a lot of
Speaker 5: hype nationwide, so maybe he benefited just from from that
Speaker 5: to a degree, But still he had over one hundred
Speaker 5: catches something like that for well over thousand yards. Was was
Speaker 5: unguardable at times, it seemed. In the Big twelve so's
Speaker 5: he's probably the most interesting prospect of his generation because
Speaker 5: he is you said it, he's one of one. No
Speaker 5: one else's has been valued in the same way. I mean,
Speaker 5: you probably have to go back to Dion right to
Speaker 5: see another guy who got legit run on both sides
Speaker 5: of the ball, and even that was like packages and
Speaker 5: ways to kind of use him as either a decoy
Speaker 5: or to get in the ball like early on, you know,
Speaker 5: early in to play so Jack Nville's early a team
Speaker 5: that can use the help on both sides, and it's
Speaker 5: almost like you got to use two picks with one,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 2: The past couple of years, it's been an interesting kind
Speaker 2: of situation to antalyze like former Pac twelve quarterbacks who
Speaker 2: have gone on to do great things. And look, when
Speaker 2: Jayden Daniels was at ASU.
Speaker 1: I thought he was fun, I thought he was good.
Speaker 2: I thought and he was almost a ute actually, which
Speaker 2: is kind of an interesting subplot. But then he goes
Speaker 2: and wins the Heisman, and he goes and just takes
Speaker 2: the world of pro football by Storm as a rookie,
Speaker 2: and I don't know that I thought he was going
Speaker 2: to be that when he was out in our footprint.
Speaker 2: And I'll ask you the same thing about cam Ward,
Speaker 2: who certainly was out of school, you know, well in
Speaker 2: Wazoo and put up great numbers, but kind of same thing.
Speaker 2: I don't know that I ever thought he'd be the
Speaker 2: number one pick in the draft. He transfers to Miami,
Speaker 2: of course, has a great year, and he goes one
Speaker 2: in the draft, and it appeared to be a consensus.
Speaker 1: Did that surprise you at all?
Speaker 2: What was kind of some of your takeaways watching this
Speaker 2: journey for cam Ward?
Speaker 5: So I think by the end, I think it was
Speaker 5: pretty clear that that was going to happen. So I
Speaker 5: wasn't like when I guess the better way to phrase it.
Speaker 5: My answer is that if you would have asked me,
Speaker 5: you know, two years ago, if I thought cam Ward
Speaker 5: would be the number one pick in the draft, you know,
Speaker 5: they would have been a resounding no. Absolutely not. I
Speaker 5: thought he was the guy who had progressed to the
Speaker 5: NFL and have a chance to be a pro maybe
Speaker 5: even for a long time. But I think the step
Speaker 5: foward he took at Miami this year was really impressive, right,
Speaker 5: I mean, they had arguably the best offense in college football,
Speaker 5: and a lot of that was because of him. He
Speaker 5: was he had a lot of really special moments. He
Speaker 5: sits in the pocket, well, he's athletic enough to extend plays.
Speaker 5: I thought his decision making got a lot better as
Speaker 5: he progressed through college football. And I think a lot
Speaker 5: of people in it's you know, maybe more people are
Speaker 5: familiar with his story now. But keep in mind too
Speaker 5: that he ran the wing tea in high school, so like,
Speaker 5: this isn't one of those guys who was bred by
Speaker 5: some quarterback guru in the seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade,
Speaker 5: and and it was essentially a finished product before he
Speaker 5: had a chance to really start going. He's someone who
Speaker 5: had a lot of groaning to do when he got
Speaker 5: to college because it was his first time in a
Speaker 5: passing offense, and so he had a chance to do
Speaker 5: that down at the FCS level with an Eddingcarrentet Word
Speaker 5: advanced his career at WCu and kind of had that
Speaker 5: graduate level of education at Miami and really did a
Speaker 5: good job developing I think, and going back to Shaduur right,
Speaker 5: I think Kim Ward really looked good in some of
Speaker 5: those workout videos that got published between the two and more,
Speaker 5: he said, I want to be known as a football player.
Speaker 5: Should We was talking about, you know, let's let's you know,
Speaker 5: let's cut a song together or something like that, and
Speaker 5: Cam was very focused on football and football only. So
Speaker 5: I think all of those, you know, the two progressions there,
Speaker 5: I think it says a lot about both of those players.
Speaker 1: Kyle. I want you to know that I'm a grown
Speaker 1: up who can do hard things.
Speaker 2: So even though you don't tweet out your pieces anymore,
Speaker 2: I was able to find a couple of them. So
Speaker 2: I want to ask you about the piece you wrote
Speaker 2: about Abdul Carter, who a lot of people believe, you know,
Speaker 2: when we're talking about the twenty twenty five NFL Draft
Speaker 2: in ten years, this is the dude we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking about take us through this journey, positional change
Speaker 2: and what do you think what type of difference can
Speaker 2: he make for the New York Giants.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so he's a really he's a fascinating guy. He's
Speaker 5: like I had a chance to speak with him quite
Speaker 5: a bit down in Arizona head at the quarterfinal game
Speaker 5: against BYU. That's why I did a lot of the
Speaker 5: interviews for that story. And really quiet guy, a really
Speaker 5: cerebral guy, and I don't think he necessarily think that
Speaker 5: When you think about you know, big time pass rusher
Speaker 5: at a big school, right, you kind of think, oh,
Speaker 5: this guy is probably confident in brash and all those things.
Speaker 5: But he is not that. He is an introvert. You know,
Speaker 5: he talked to me a little bit about, you know,
Speaker 5: playing chess and the analytical side of football and those
Speaker 5: sort of things, but had a really good feel for
Speaker 5: who he was and how he could impact the game.
Speaker 5: So the story goes, you know, he started at he
Speaker 5: came in as a linebacker. You know, he asked for
Speaker 5: the number eleven jersey, which is you know, we saw
Speaker 5: him try to do that again this week for Lawrence
Speaker 5: Taylor's retired fifty six. So we asked for the eleven
Speaker 5: jersey at Penn State, which is a big deal there.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of significance, a lot of you know,
Speaker 5: all time great players have worn it there. He goes
Speaker 5: through summer workouts as a freshman. They're impressed by him
Speaker 5: so much that they go ahead and grant him that request,
Speaker 5: he gets the eleven, and then from day one he
Speaker 5: is he is wrecking havoc as a linebacker. But two
Speaker 5: years in, he gets to that off season after his
Speaker 5: sophomore year and he's like, look, I think that can
Speaker 5: be I was a little bit out of place. You know,
Speaker 5: he was playing week side linebacker. He does a lot
Speaker 5: of you know, hand in the dirt rush and edge
Speaker 5: type stuff, but really thought he should be as a
Speaker 5: defensive you know, playing and consistently as a defensive end,
Speaker 5: not dropping into coverage in those sort of things, even
Speaker 5: though he was physically capable of doing so. Anyone who
Speaker 5: watched Penn State, it probably didn't take a lot of time.
Speaker 5: So if you're watching for the first time, you're like, oh,
Speaker 5: who's eleven?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 5: He just every snap it feels like he was. He
Speaker 5: was getting to the backfield, disrupting plays. You know, his
Speaker 5: numbers were good, you weren't generational or anything like that.
Speaker 5: But he affected the game in a way that few
Speaker 5: players did. And I think that NFL teams had noticed
Speaker 5: that well before he made the position change, and once
Speaker 5: he added some weight, kind of got his body to
Speaker 5: a place where he can be a defensive end at
Speaker 5: the next level. You know, it was pretty clear that
Speaker 5: he was going to be an early pick in a
Speaker 5: very early last year, and so I had a good
Speaker 5: time talking with him. His teammates were all very complimentary
Speaker 5: of him. Coaches raved about him, you know, everyone I
Speaker 5: talked to about him. You and look, this isn't so unusual,
Speaker 5: but it was all very believable, and it felt genuine
Speaker 5: that they really believed in this guy's talent and who
Speaker 5: he was as a person.
Speaker 2: All right, moving over to a little Utah football and look,
Speaker 2: it is April, so I'm not going to ask you
Speaker 2: to break down there too deep for August in September,
Speaker 2: but I just kind of wondering what your confidence level is.
Speaker 1: Coach wit is back.
Speaker 2: I didn't necessarily cover the will Kyle stay or leave
Speaker 2: story as deep as everybody else. He simply is a
Speaker 2: coach under contract, and my thought was he did not
Speaker 2: want to go out like that.
Speaker 1: The spring game was last week Forever twenty two game.
Speaker 1: I was up there.
Speaker 2: I was able to catch up with Kyle and Morgan
Speaker 2: Scalley and met Jason Beck for the first time. There's
Speaker 2: a new quarterback in town, and Devin dan Pierre. There's
Speaker 2: a grip of new players, because of course there is
Speaker 2: that's not a Utah thing, that's a college football thing.
Speaker 2: But after a failing and to even qualify for a
Speaker 2: bowl game and winning five games last year, I do
Speaker 2: feel like maybe the pressure is off. You know, last year, everybody,
Speaker 2: including me and I believe you picked Utah to win
Speaker 2: the Big Twelve and advance to the expanded twelve team CFP.
Speaker 2: And you know, there are a lot of outlets that
Speaker 2: have already done the whole like way too early Big
Speaker 2: twelve projection thing, and Utah's mid table on most of them.
Speaker 1: So maybe taking that pressure off or will help.
Speaker 2: But do you have some confidence that you're two in
Speaker 2: the Big twelve will at least look better than your
Speaker 2: one for the utes?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I mean there's a there's a very like fundamental way
Speaker 5: to answer that. It's like, it can't be much worse.
Speaker 5: You go two and seven, you're probably gonna do better
Speaker 5: in the conference, right, because it's that the record was
Speaker 5: that it was. But yeah, but that said, like, I
Speaker 5: just have never lost faith in Kyle Whittingham as they've
Speaker 5: kind of had these two weird years. Right, there's a
Speaker 5: lot of factors outside of his control. That you know,
Speaker 5: contribute to that. You're you and your you know, your
Speaker 5: listeners know that you know probably even better than I do.
Speaker 5: And so I think with like, with those circumstances, it
Speaker 5: wasn't that the program was falling apart. The defense was
Speaker 5: among the best in the country.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 5: The quarterback thing was such an outlier in terms of
Speaker 5: how a program should operate. The you know, the fact
Speaker 5: that they didn't have a capable backup, someone who could
Speaker 5: step in and win games two years in a row
Speaker 5: probably alblematic, right, But when you add a quarterback like
Speaker 5: they did, who's you know, has documented success and you
Speaker 5: bring his coordinator with him, and so there's no learning
Speaker 5: curve with the offense. That's a formula that has worked
Speaker 5: several times in college football in recent years. I mean,
Speaker 5: we just talked about cam Ward you know, worked for
Speaker 5: him at Washington State. We saw it with Caleb Williams
Speaker 5: at USC. The list goes on, right, and so I
Speaker 5: think it there's enough reason to be optimistic and confident
Speaker 5: that they can they can be a contender again in
Speaker 5: the Big Twelve, if you know, even allowing for some
Speaker 5: drop up on defense, because that team that that side
Speaker 5: of the ball was so good. I think the offense
Speaker 5: will be a lot better. But at the same time,
Speaker 5: I think the conference is really improving too. Like Arizona State,
Speaker 5: their improvement is is was pretty remarkable. I mean, I
Speaker 5: would say probably takes a step back. Those receivers they
Speaker 5: lost were really good. I think Colorado with that Trivis
Speaker 5: Hunter probably takes a step back. But it's such a
Speaker 5: deep you know, there's so many teams now, right, So
Speaker 5: it's not like you have to you just have to
Speaker 5: beat nine other teams, ten other teams. There's just so
Speaker 5: many teams who are adding and really competitive. And you know,
Speaker 5: you mentioned kind of the state of college football. Everyone's
Speaker 5: new and so Texas Tech has a lot of money
Speaker 5: and they're anile program. They're bringing in a lot of talent.
Speaker 5: Arguably the best transfer class in college football if you're
Speaker 5: into those sort of rankings. And so, yeah, look, do
Speaker 5: I think Utah deserves to be the favorite to win
Speaker 5: the conversating Absolutely not. I don't think that would be
Speaker 5: kind of ridiculous to say, you're in April. But yeah, look,
Speaker 5: a lot of teams that have come out of nowhere to
Speaker 5: to improve significantly, and in Utah certainly wouldn't be coming
Speaker 5: out of nowhere the tracker who's there. They've had to dip,
Speaker 5: but there's enough experience and incredibility in that room to
Speaker 5: allow for a quick return to prominence.
Speaker 2: Regarding the future of college football, you know, it is
Speaker 2: an exercise and futility to try to predict any of
Speaker 2: this stuff. And we continue to await the final settlement
Speaker 2: with a house for NC double A, as Judge Wolken
Speaker 2: has basically given them a couple of weeks to change
Speaker 2: the roster limits before she will even entertain the settlement.
Speaker 2: But I want to revisit kind of your belief about
Speaker 2: where we could be headed, whether or not there is
Speaker 2: a pro model on the horizon, whether or not there
Speaker 2: is this big super conference on the horizon with two
Speaker 2: conferences that look like the AFC and the NFC, or
Speaker 2: you know, the Trump administration comes in. Some of the
Speaker 2: changes to the Department of Education and other departments have
Speaker 2: kind of changed people's perspective about their belief about what
Speaker 2: the future college football looks like. What's the Kyle Bonna
Speaker 2: gera belief about what the future of the sport looks like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's I still think it's trending in a direction
Speaker 5: to where it's like the pyramid will keep narrowing at
Speaker 5: the top, right, and eventually, just like we saw the
Speaker 5: Pac twelve, you know, rest and peace go away. I
Speaker 5: think eventually that same sort of evolution feels like a
Speaker 5: logical way this could go, right because if you are
Speaker 5: in the sec right, you're Alabama, Georgia, we all know
Speaker 5: the names, and you're in the big ten Ohio state,
Speaker 5: and you know whoever else Michigan, we all know the names.
Speaker 5: Are you comfortable sharing equal revenue with you know, with
Speaker 5: your Marylands of the world, with your Vanderbilts of the world.
Speaker 5: You know, maybe, but also maybe not. I think it's
Speaker 5: completely reasonable to expect those teams at the top too
Speaker 5: at some point want to want a bigger, you know,
Speaker 5: bigger slice of the pie, right, or there's another kind
Speaker 5: of breakoff where these teams all at the top say hey, like,
Speaker 5: look that you take the top, whatever the number is,
Speaker 5: pick pick one at random, sixteen thirty two, whatever, forty,
Speaker 5: and say hey, if we get together, then look at
Speaker 5: how much more money we can make. The college programs
Speaker 5: in university have been operating with that, with that mentality
Speaker 5: for a while now, and so the idea that it
Speaker 5: all of a sudden would go away seems you know,
Speaker 5: I don't know if I'd buy that. There's no logic
Speaker 5: to indicate why that would stop. We are at a
Speaker 5: pro model. These guys are making money. There's going to
Speaker 5: you know, in one the roster rules are all set,
Speaker 5: there's going to be a clear path forward on how
Speaker 5: to manage roster, how to distribute you know, some of
Speaker 5: the shared revenue stuff that's part of all this all
Speaker 5: this madness, right, I'm having trouble keeping track of all
Speaker 5: the matriculations myself, and so once you have these programs
Speaker 5: that we're able to pay players directly. Now, at one point, look,
Speaker 5: Kyle Willeningham was actual talking about it is a couple
Speaker 5: years ago. I remember like being very clear, like, look,
Speaker 5: we're going to get there. It's just a matter of when, Like,
Speaker 5: are we going to get to a point where eligibility
Speaker 5: even matters? Are you going to say, is the four
Speaker 5: year eligibility model. We've already seen that pushed and tested
Speaker 5: in several different ways, whether it's COVID, whether it's junior
Speaker 5: college or red shirts or transfers. Right, every it seems
Speaker 5: like at every turn that players have fought for more
Speaker 5: eligibility that came out on top recently in the court system.
Speaker 5: So eventually do you get to a place where you
Speaker 5: know there isn't a four year eligibility cap. I don't know.
Speaker 5: It seems crazy that college football would eventually get there,
Speaker 5: But I don't think guy would write it out either
Speaker 5: write it off either. And whether that's in five years
Speaker 5: or ten years or fifteen, you know, it doesn't like
Speaker 5: it doesn't matter. Like eventually, I think all those things
Speaker 5: are going to be tested. And you know, like you said,
Speaker 5: exercise in utility, there's just so many moving pieces to
Speaker 5: have a great idea where it's all headed. I don't
Speaker 5: think anyone can be competent of that other than like
Speaker 5: changes just going to continue to be inevitable.
Speaker 2: Before I set you loose, I am going to sneak
Speaker 2: in a soccer question, and no, I will not ask
Speaker 2: your take on the current battle at left back for RSL,
Speaker 2: but I will ask you we have this young player
Speaker 2: whose star continues to rise, Diego Luna, who had another
Speaker 2: brace last week. He in San Diego and for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: the Olympic coach didn't like him. But Pochettino seems to
Speaker 2: like him, and he's had a couple of national team
Speaker 2: call ups. There's this great, you know, snapshot of Diego
Speaker 2: breaking his nose and continuing to play and really endearing
Speaker 2: himself to all the goobs that love the US men's
Speaker 2: national team, Sam's Army, whoever they are. Do you think
Speaker 2: there's a chance that Diego Luna will be on the
Speaker 2: US men's national team for the upcome World Cup here
Speaker 2: in this region?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 8: No, I think so.
Speaker 5: I think there's a chance will be with him this summer. Like,
Speaker 5: I think there's enough, and I think he like the
Speaker 5: fact that Poschattino does like him. I think that's probably
Speaker 5: the best indicator that he has a chance. Like I
Speaker 5: don't think if I was projecting the roster today, i'd
Speaker 5: include him on it. But he's his trajectory is rising
Speaker 5: in a way to certainly you can't rule it out
Speaker 5: right now. I think just the way he's playing an
Speaker 5: MLS has been has been really impressive. He's a guy
Speaker 5: who actually paid attention to for for for quite a
Speaker 5: while because I mean, you know, I lived here in
Speaker 5: the Bay Area, he's from around here. Was actually I
Speaker 5: believe he was cut by the earthquakes at a really
Speaker 5: young age, and so he's he's someone that, like you,
Speaker 5: I heard that story early on. Then he's you know,
Speaker 5: with El Paso and kind of working his way through
Speaker 5: USL gets the shot at at RSN. I has really
Speaker 5: done an incredible job, you know, not letting the early
Speaker 5: career disappointment stunt his growth. And yeah, I think it's
Speaker 5: really only a matter of I mean, enjoy them in
Speaker 5: Salt Lake for as long as he can, because he's
Speaker 5: a guy who certainly feels like he should be headed
Speaker 5: to Europe sooner rather than later.
Speaker 2: Kyle, thanks man for the time. I always appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Have a great week and we'll.
Speaker 1: Do it again soon.
Speaker 5: Okay, sure thing all right? Thanks Man.
Speaker 2: Bonager covers college football sometimes soccer for ESPN. Does not
Speaker 2: tweet anymore, but you can find his piece pieces up
Speaker 2: on espn dot com.
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Speaker 1: Today. Tim McMahon, Happy Tuesday, sir, How.
Speaker 6: Are you otty partner? How are you doing?
Speaker 1: I'm good, man, I'm good.
Speaker 2: You know, we always have this debate here in State
Speaker 2: about like who's the best local college basketball player to
Speaker 2: play in the pros? And it usually it usually involves
Speaker 2: b YU players and UTAPA.
Speaker 1: It's clearly Damian Lillard.
Speaker 2: Who played his college basketball Weaver State, just got it.
Speaker 1: You know, He's one of our favorites around here.
Speaker 2: I wonder what you make if this entire situation, what's
Speaker 2: next for Dame and what's next for Milwaukee?
Speaker 6: Yeah, Unfortunately, what's next for Dame is a long ruling
Speaker 6: rehab process. You know, I don't know that Dame's going
Speaker 6: to be able to get back to the level that
Speaker 6: he's played at his entire career. Obviously, a mid thirties
Speaker 6: achilles injury is devastating, and you know, the guy's work
Speaker 6: ethics speaks for itself, certainly his skill. It's a really
Speaker 6: difficult situation and in Milwaukee, odds are they get bounced tonight?
Speaker 6: And then the clear big question will be is this
Speaker 6: Gianness's swan song in Milwaukee is this when he finally
Speaker 6: comes to the conclusion that it's it's time for the
Speaker 6: next chapter of his career. And I think if you
Speaker 6: took a poll around the league, you would and you
Speaker 6: get more people to say yes to that question than
Speaker 6: no at this point. And you know, if that's the case,
Speaker 6: shame's gonna be a really tough stretch for the Bucks
Speaker 6: because they have been all in on winning a title
Speaker 6: around the honest for a while now. Obviously, the great
Speaker 6: news is they did hang a banner. The bad news is,
Speaker 6: you know, they are out their own first round capital
Speaker 6: until twenty thirty one, I believe, and you know, if
Speaker 6: you're honest, does indeed decide that it's time to go,
Speaker 6: They'll make the best deal that they can. But it's
Speaker 6: going to be a while before the Bucks are going
Speaker 6: to be a competitive franchise again.
Speaker 2: So what are the most likely and who are the
Speaker 2: most likely suitors if Giannice is on the market. Obviously
Speaker 2: anybody would love to have a dude like that, And
Speaker 2: I do want to say, just for the record, I
Speaker 2: really respect what Milwaukee decided to do to go all
Speaker 2: in to try to surround him at any price because
Speaker 2: Dame is making I think one hundred and twenty million
Speaker 2: dollars for the next two years, and Milwaukee, unlike don't
Speaker 2: know Denver, decided that they were going to do everything
Speaker 2: they could to maximize a generational talent while they had them.
Speaker 2: If this is it, you know, and we are in
Speaker 2: Salt Lake City, we have a basketball team with tremendous
Speaker 2: draft capital and salary flexibility, I don't I'm not sitting
Speaker 2: here saying the Jazz are going to make this move
Speaker 2: for you, honest, but what sort of deal do you
Speaker 2: expect if Giannie is dealt?
Speaker 6: I mean, you've heard a whole bunch of noise about Brooklyn,
Speaker 6: and I'll be honest, I don't see how that makes
Speaker 6: sense for either side. I just don't like for your
Speaker 6: honest Okay, you can talk about a big market, but
Speaker 6: let's be honest. Brooklyn is the JV team in New York,
Speaker 6: and well, I don't have to give up a lot
Speaker 6: of stuff to get him, and they're not close to
Speaker 6: being a title contender, So that one, frankly confuses me
Speaker 6: on both sides. I think Brooklyn needs to go through
Speaker 6: a rebuild. I don't see how trying to press fast
Speaker 6: forward to get Yannis in there accomplishes anything, and I
Speaker 6: don't see why that would be an attractive situation for you, honest,
Speaker 6: but that is the team that you hear the most.
Speaker 6: I think you're going to hear a lot about Houston,
Speaker 6: you know where clearly, Hey, I've got a story come
Speaker 6: out tomorrow about how Houston is a go to guy
Speaker 6: and elite offensive bingein away from being a real deal,
Speaker 6: bona fide title contender. Yeah, be honest, is thirty years old,
Speaker 6: still in his prime. Obviously, they'd have to give up
Speaker 6: a lot to get them, but they've got a lot
Speaker 6: of young talent, They've got a ton of assets with
Speaker 6: some of the deals that they've made. To me, the
Speaker 6: Rockets would be the team, you know, the realistic destination
Speaker 6: that would make the most sense. But you know, I'm
Speaker 6: sure there will be plenty of teams that would be interested.
Speaker 6: And then obviously, the other thing that has to happen
Speaker 6: is has to the Bucks aren't just going to trade him.
Speaker 6: They you know, Giannis has to ask for it, and
Speaker 6: I'm not certain that he's reached that decision yet.
Speaker 2: So Milwaukee's motivation would sound like what Tim because is
Speaker 2: it when you're if they decide to go this route,
Speaker 2: when you trade somebody like that, you have so many
Speaker 2: options at your disposal. You could ask for two or
Speaker 2: three really good players to keep you afloat. You could
Speaker 2: decide to go all in on draft capital and cap
Speaker 2: space and maybe a couple of youngsters, and then rely
Speaker 2: upon the future. Because if they are just simply looking
Speaker 2: to grab a bunch of draft assets and young players
Speaker 2: and completely go all in on just a tank or whatever,
Speaker 2: a team like the Jazz does make sense. But if
Speaker 2: they are trying to stay competitive and maybe even salvage
Speaker 2: another year with Dame if he gets healthy, maybe they
Speaker 2: do want You know, I saw some scenario about like
Speaker 2: a Karl Anthony Townsend mckel bridges in New York.
Speaker 1: I have no idea if there's anything there.
Speaker 2: But what do you think Milwaukee would be looking for
Speaker 2: should they deal Giannis?
Speaker 6: Yeah? I probably should have mentioned the Knicks. The Knicks
Speaker 6: have definitely been a team that it's no secret they're
Speaker 6: hunting for, you know, top level superstar. And you know
Speaker 6: there's definitely a team that has been mentioned as well.
Speaker 6: Here's the thing. The Bucks can't go into a like
Speaker 6: a traditional full fledged rebuild in the sense of a
Speaker 6: tank because they don't benefit from that. They've either got
Speaker 6: their picks gone out right or via swap again until
Speaker 6: twenty thirty one. So to do a total teardown doesn't
Speaker 6: make any sense whatsoever for the Milwaukee Bucks because they've
Speaker 6: they've blown through all their draft capital over the next
Speaker 6: several years while going all in trying to build around Johnis,
Speaker 6: you know, trying to win another title with them, and
Speaker 6: you know, I don't think that's the situation you regret.
Speaker 6: I mean, you don't get a guy like that very often.
Speaker 6: You know, for Milwaukee, it was almost fifty years from
Speaker 6: the time they lost Kareem until your honest was able
Speaker 6: to deliver a title for them. But it's put them
Speaker 6: in a like they're in a really compromised position now
Speaker 6: because again, typically if you're forced to trade this type
Speaker 6: of talent, then it is okay. It's like Houston did,
Speaker 6: it's time to tear down. When they had to trade
Speaker 6: James Harden and go through kind of a traditional rebuild,
Speaker 6: it's start to really pay dividends for them. You can't
Speaker 6: do that if you don't have your own picks.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Good point just while
Speaker 2: we're in the Jazz space. Of course, I don't think
Speaker 2: we really can understand what their offseason plan is or
Speaker 2: will look like until May twelfth, when we know when
Speaker 2: they're drafting. But as you and I have discussed, as
Speaker 2: a result of the decision that Danny and Justin made
Speaker 2: to move on from the last good iteration of this
Speaker 2: team and stockpile draft assets and have very clean books,
Speaker 2: any of the teams that do elect to yard sale
Speaker 2: I'm using air quotes could look to the Jazz to
Speaker 2: grab some of their assets and utilize the books to
Speaker 2: shed salary. Are you hearing anything about what this offseason
Speaker 2: could look like for the Utah Jazz.
Speaker 1: Nobody is under the phrase big game hunting yet.
Speaker 6: Tim, No, I don't think it'll be big game hunting.
Speaker 6: And obviously, yeah, let's be honest, success of this offseason,
Speaker 6: you're gonna have a pretty good idea, like you said,
Speaker 6: when you hear the lottery results. But you know they
Speaker 6: are in a position where they can be opportunistic. They
Speaker 6: do have several veterans who are on large expiring contracts
Speaker 6: and would make a lot of sense for teams that
Speaker 6: are looking to clean up their books. You know they
Speaker 6: do have a bunch of picks to play with. You know,
Speaker 6: haven't said that. I know that the Jets have a
Speaker 6: very long term view at this point. I don't think
Speaker 6: that anybody's goal in that front office or even in
Speaker 6: that building is going to be Okay, let's put the
Speaker 6: best possible team in place for the twenty five twenty
Speaker 6: six season. You know, they're trying to be able to
Speaker 6: crack open a window as a contender, and they're not
Speaker 6: you know, one move or even one summer away from that.
Speaker 1: Nope, they're not.
Speaker 2: And they're not one player or two players, three players,
Speaker 2: or maybe even four players away from being close.
Speaker 1: So this will take some time.
Speaker 2: Three years now since the Jazz had spring basketball as
Speaker 2: far as an experience here.
Speaker 1: In Salt Lake, So only time will tell.
Speaker 2: All right, you reference the Rockets and this Warriors Rocket
Speaker 2: series has been must see TV. Butler comes back last night,
Speaker 2: goes for fourteen in the fourth quarter, closing out This
Speaker 2: Houston Rocket team is going to be a royal pain
Speaker 2: in the ass. But what are your takeaways from the
Speaker 2: first four games of Golden State in Houston?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean the Rockets aren't ready. They don't have
Speaker 6: the go to guy that you need to compete with
Speaker 6: good playoff teams, and that's not a surprise. You know,
Speaker 6: they're young, and they kind of they win with grime.
Speaker 6: They've been in Medio Grosson's team all season long. A
Speaker 6: good defensive team, a great rebounding team. But they are
Speaker 6: one piece, one major piece away from being a real
Speaker 6: threat to make a deep playoff run.
Speaker 2: Kevin Durant, Devin Booker. Phoenix has to do something. A
Speaker 2: lot of people draw a line between Phoenix and Houston.
Speaker 2: You think we could see some movement there.
Speaker 6: Durant is a possibility. There will be internal discussions in
Speaker 6: Houston about whether that makes sense, how much would make
Speaker 6: sense in terms of cost to to you know, in
Speaker 6: the trade as well as he's gonna have to be
Speaker 6: a contract extension. I don't I don't know that I
Speaker 6: would call that likely. I'd call it possible. Booker's not possible.
Speaker 6: Phoenix is not trading Devin Booker this summer.
Speaker 2: So do you think anybody on Phoenix could be a
Speaker 2: very well, I guess the Brad Beale thing. Uh, he
Speaker 2: has his own Uh, he's got the no trade clause,
Speaker 2: so they might be stuck with him. But anybody outside
Speaker 2: of Booker and Bill available on that roster, then.
Speaker 6: Yeah, everybody. Yeah, Now Kevin Durant is going to have
Speaker 6: to stay on where he goes. He's got one year
Speaker 6: left on his contract, is extension eligible. You know the
Speaker 6: team's not going to trade. I would be shocked if
Speaker 6: a team would trade Kevin Rant as a rental player
Speaker 6: for just one year, given the cops that it would
Speaker 6: take probably to get him. And you just haven't talked
Speaker 6: to people in Phoenix. You know that they intend to
Speaker 6: cooperate with kat and Katie's representation.
Speaker 2: Lakers on the brink of elimination, you know, you're not
Speaker 2: going to say they're done until they actually are, because
Speaker 2: they have two generationally special players.
Speaker 1: I wonder you know JJ Reddick.
Speaker 2: Elects to play all five of those guys every single
Speaker 2: minute in the second half.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I'm not a psychologist.
Speaker 2: I just wonder if that was a message sent to
Speaker 2: the front office like we just have no depth. We
Speaker 2: have nobody like I'm going to go with these five
Speaker 2: players because I don't have any other options off the bench.
Speaker 2: Lebron didn't score in the fourth, Luca looked gas, Finney
Speaker 2: Smith had a dunk that was short what were your
Speaker 2: thoughts watching JJ Reddick simply go with all five of
Speaker 2: those players for every moment in the second half, and
Speaker 2: you think the Lakers can get back.
Speaker 6: In this well, I mean no question that it was
Speaker 6: a move that rate of desperation, and it was a
Speaker 6: move that you know, I thought pretty clearly backfired. And look,
Speaker 6: there were times last year where Lebron I'm sorry, where
Speaker 6: Luca had played the entire second half for the Mavericks
Speaker 6: in the playoffs, but he wasn't coming off the longness
Speaker 6: in the absence of his career. You know, he didn't
Speaker 6: have to condition in the issues early in the season
Speaker 6: that he did this year. And he you know, he
Speaker 6: wasn't Bartner's guts out thirty six hours earlier. So obviously
Speaker 6: you know it didn't work out. It's highly a highly
Speaker 6: questionable decision, even with the ross that they had. I
Speaker 6: thought you had to at least get Luca Lebron a
Speaker 6: little bit in the second half. But you know that
Speaker 6: that Ryan they need, they need better death than they
Speaker 6: need a real big man. You know, the Jackson Hayes
Speaker 6: guy that they played four minutes in a playoff game.
Speaker 6: Decided I don't want to see anymore of so I
Speaker 6: think that they are at least one transaction cycle, perhaps
Speaker 6: two or three away from being a real title contender
Speaker 6: in LA. And you know the other part of that, though,
Speaker 6: is Okay, how much longer is Lebron at forty going
Speaker 6: to be able to play at this level?
Speaker 2: You know, over the past three four months or whatever,
Speaker 2: after Oklahoma City clearly established themselves as the best team
Speaker 2: in the West and maybe the best team in pro
Speaker 2: basketball on a weekly basis, I would ask you to
Speaker 2: revisit a topic like who's the biggest threat to them?
Speaker 1: Is there a threat to them?
Speaker 2: After watching what they did to Memphis Round one, I
Speaker 2: don't think the next.
Speaker 6: Round will be easy, whether it's the Clippers of the Nuggets.
Speaker 6: I don't think it's going to be easy. And obviously
Speaker 6: the Nuggets you're looking at specifically because Joke was just
Speaker 6: such a dominant force. But man, the Clippers have been
Speaker 6: playing as well as anybody for like two months now.
Speaker 6: And Kawhi looks like the guy who's been a finals
Speaker 6: at VP twice. You know, he's got that kind of
Speaker 6: a spring in his step. You know, they do have depth.
Speaker 6: They are a great defensive team. You know, they do
Speaker 6: have a couple other guys who are legitimate shot creators.
Speaker 6: I think the Clippers are the biggest threat to the
Speaker 6: Thunder in terms of getting out of the Western Conference.
Speaker 2: So that brings us to tonight, obviously, a big game
Speaker 2: in Denver. Based off of what you just said, I'm
Speaker 2: assuming you're going to take the Clips to win the series.
Speaker 1: But what do you think happens tonight in Denver?
Speaker 6: Well, I would take the Clippers to win the series,
Speaker 6: and I would change my mind if they don't win tonight.
Speaker 6: And how's that for a cop out of an answer?
Speaker 1: Not fair enough?
Speaker 6: You know, Listen, the Nuggets did lose the Game seven
Speaker 6: on their own home court last season to the Wolves.
Speaker 6: That's unlikely to happen again. However, you know, the Clippers
Speaker 6: do have a deeper team, there's no question in that,
Speaker 6: especially like the rough thing had gone off the rails.
Speaker 6: Any ways, now he's dealing with this foot thing. But
Speaker 6: you know, like Joker's got to play forty six to
Speaker 6: forty eight minutes to night and he's just getting the
Speaker 6: crap beat out of him. The longer the series goes,
Speaker 6: I would say, the tougher it is to that guy.
Speaker 6: And if he's not right, then the Knights don't have
Speaker 6: a chance.
Speaker 2: The potential of a second round series between the between
Speaker 2: the Timberwolves and the Warriors, and like I said, until
Speaker 2: Lebron and Luca are dead and done, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to say that that series is over. But just like, okay,
Speaker 2: see potentially Clippers second round Minnesota Golden State. And I
Speaker 2: will give you credit because you actually pointed out Minnesota
Speaker 2: starting to kind of figure some things out at the
Speaker 2: end of the season when they finished really well. And
Speaker 2: you know, it's been kind of interesting Tim because oftentimes
Speaker 2: in this Minnesota Lakers series, Jazz fans know that when
Speaker 2: JJ decides to go small, Minnesota has kind of leaned
Speaker 2: into the whole, like we can sit go baar and
Speaker 2: we feel comfortable doing that in the way that Quinn
Speaker 2: ever did. Now, Quinn didn't have nas Reid, so it's different. Sure,
Speaker 2: But the potential for that second round series, what do
Speaker 2: you think that looks.
Speaker 6: Like they're gonna be all of the series. And you know,
Speaker 6: Ant won't be scared. I can tell you that he's
Speaker 6: been the best player in this series, in the series
Speaker 6: that that features Lebron and Luca, and has clearly been
Speaker 6: the best player, But I think more important, or most important,
Speaker 6: is the fact that he hasn't, you know, like the
Speaker 6: last game it's going down the stretch, he didn't play
Speaker 6: hero ball, which he's been guilty of really pretty much
Speaker 6: all season long. He started to see that turn a
Speaker 6: little bit down the stretch of the season, but some
Speaker 6: of Ant's best plays didn't show up in the box score,
Speaker 6: you know, but it's his willingness still Okay, you're gonna
Speaker 6: throw to it me, let me get off the ball,
Speaker 6: and you know, boom, boom boom. It's it's a wide
Speaker 6: open shot for a guy like nas Reed. You know,
Speaker 6: Jake McGann has been playing off pretty well, so I
Speaker 6: think you know that like Ant's numbers in his production
Speaker 6: obviously pops off the box score page, but I think
Speaker 6: a lot of his growth is stuff that you don't
Speaker 6: necessarily see in the numbers.
Speaker 2: Do you leave any space for Golden State to make
Speaker 2: this stuff interesting moving forward, something beyond winning this round
Speaker 2: and maybe even beyond winning the next round.
Speaker 6: I mean you have to leave space for it. They've got,
Speaker 6: you know, dudes who have won four championships. You know,
Speaker 6: they've they've been awfully good since they've made the trade
Speaker 6: for Jimmy Butler, who's proven to be a phenomenal fit.
Speaker 6: You know, Jimmy Butler has willed teams with a lot
Speaker 6: less talent than this to the finals before. You know, like,
Speaker 6: I'm not ever going to be a guy who doubts
Speaker 6: Steph Curry. You know, Draymond's one of the great playoff
Speaker 6: kind of complimentary stars, if that makes sense of this generation.
Speaker 6: So yeah, you've absolutely got to leave space all.
Speaker 1: Right before I set you loose.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm gonna draw a little parallel here because
Speaker 2: the big story out of the NFL draft is that
Speaker 2: George Sanders fell to the fifth round, and the media
Speaker 2: conversation surrounding the way that talent evaluators in the NFL
Speaker 2: do their job juxtaposed to the way the media analyzes
Speaker 2: prospects has been interesting. And in the NBA draft, I mean,
Speaker 2: when it comes to the draft, all of us on
Speaker 2: this side of the equation, you know, media members, you've
Speaker 2: got to be careful about, you know, going with what
Speaker 2: you're told from front offices because you're lied to and
Speaker 2: smoke screens happen all the time. I wonder what your
Speaker 2: experience has been like trying to cover the NBA Draft
Speaker 2: getting information from front office people juxtaposed to the way
Speaker 2: that the media analyzes prospects, and how sometimes those two
Speaker 2: aren't even close to aligning.
Speaker 6: Can I tell you a secret, go ahead, I don't
Speaker 6: really cover the NBA draft. Oh okay, I mean seriously,
Speaker 6: We've got you know, Jonathan Cavoni does that on a
Speaker 6: full time basis, so does Jeremy Wu. The NBA draft
Speaker 6: is just days after the finals. I'm not I don't like,
Speaker 6: I don't pretend like I'm studying these guys. I don't
Speaker 6: pretend like I'm doing a lot of intel. Once they're drafted,
Speaker 6: that's when they've become my responsibility to cover. But I'm
Speaker 6: fortunate to work in a place for ESPN where we've
Speaker 6: got two guys who were great at that, who were
Speaker 6: you know, have great eyes for talent, who also talked
Speaker 6: to people year round, and these guys can tell you
Speaker 6: who the best fifteen year old prospects and the Czech
Speaker 6: Republic are right now. So yeah, just to be real, like,
Speaker 6: I've got a lot of things that are on my plate,
Speaker 6: the NBA Draft is not really one of them.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, all right, buddy, thanks for the time. Enjoy
Speaker 1: the game tonight with chat Zoom, Appreciate Your Brother and McMahon.
Speaker 2: Fun Night of Basketball ahead and it starts in just
Speaker 2: about thirty five minutes with the Bucks and the Pacers
Speaker 2: on NBA TV. NBA TV and TNT have double headers
Speaker 2: tonight Milwaukee, Indiana at four and then the Magic and
Speaker 2: the Celtics at six thirty on NBA TV. Early game
Speaker 2: on Turner is Piston's Knicks from MSG and then Big
Speaker 2: One tonight. It should be a fun one. Clippers Nuggets
Speaker 2: Ballerina in Denver, Colorado. All right, coming up on Friday.
Speaker 2: I'm really excited for this. We're gonna be out in
Speaker 2: about encourage you guys to come say hello. We'd love
Speaker 2: to meet you and shake your hand. We're going to
Speaker 2: be at the Former Legacy Center. It's a legacy fulfilled.
Speaker 2: It's the grand opening of the Former Legacy Center. The
Speaker 2: location is one h nine six zero South Park Road
Speaker 2: in South Jordan, so Milestone.
Speaker 1: That's forty years in the making and it's going to be.
Speaker 2: Realized on Friday, May the second, as the Former Legacy
Speaker 2: Center celebrates the official grand opening. It's a sixteen five
Speaker 2: hundred square foot community sports and wellness complex. Inspired by
Speaker 2: Utah's legendary boxing brothers Gene Fulmer, of course, Jay and Don,
Speaker 2: and it's located in the South Jordan Sports Sports Complex,
Speaker 2: minutes from the side of the current Former Brothers Boxing gym.
Speaker 2: The new center honors the enduring former legacy while building
Speaker 2: a dynamic future for youth and community wellness. The event
Speaker 2: is going to run from eleven am to three pm
Speaker 2: on Friday. Of course we'll be there until six. They're
Speaker 2: offering tours of the facility. We're gonna have a ribbon
Speaker 2: cutting ceremony and appearances by local leaders, dignitaries and sports personalities.
Speaker 2: So again, the ribbon cutting ceremony starts at eleven, so
Speaker 2: be out there at eleven o'clock on Friday at one
Speaker 2: O nine six zero South Park Road in South Jordan.
Speaker 2: The former Legacy Center will serve as a hub for
Speaker 2: amateur boxing, youth mentorship, and community health programming, including fitness
Speaker 2: boxing for women, seniors, and individuals living with Parkinson's.
Speaker 1: The Former Brothers, known around the.
Speaker 2: World for their success in professional boxing as well as
Speaker 2: their humble grit, spent decades mentoring hundreds event at risk kids.
Speaker 2: Retiring after they retired from professional boxing so come on out.
Speaker 2: We'll be out there really excited for this. It is
Speaker 2: one O nine six zero South Park Road in South
Speaker 2: Jordan starting Friday at eleven.
Speaker 1: To bring in Kaylin Jones.
Speaker 2: Today Kaylen good friend of the show TALX and NFL
Speaker 2: football some NFL Draft. Kaylen spent time with Sports Illustrated.
Speaker 2: He was with the Ringer. He's landed with our friends
Speaker 2: over at Netflix. Hey, Brett Farb documentary coming out on
Speaker 2: Netflix over the next few weeks.
Speaker 1: I think May the twentieth is that date.
Speaker 2: Big day because we're giving away golf to Bonneville, my track,
Speaker 2: my home track, Bonneville, great little munic course here in
Speaker 2: Salt Lake. It's the ESPN Festival of the Teas powered
Speaker 2: by the Utah Golf Association. Each day of spring, ESPN
Speaker 2: seven hundreds is giving away rounds of golf from to
Speaker 2: of the best courses in the state. Listening to The
Speaker 2: Down and Dirty with Scott Mitchell from ten Excuse me
Speaker 2: yeah from ten to eleven, the Sean O'Connell Show from
Speaker 2: eleven to two. In this little radio program, The Drive
Speaker 2: with Spence check Its from two to six for your
Speaker 2: chance to win. Each day from ESPN seven hundred and
Speaker 2: the Utah Golf Association. Details can be found at ESPN
Speaker 2: seven hundred sports dot com. Yeah going to Bonnie today
Speaker 2: text line eight seven seven three five three zero seven
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Speaker 2: Text in right now. Let's see what should we do today?
Speaker 2: Text in right now? Just give me the one youth
Speaker 2: that was drafted in the NFL draft. Easy one today,
Speaker 2: because you know, we want to be kind and we
Speaker 2: don't want to make you think too hard on the show.
Speaker 2: First person to text in the lone ute drafted in
Speaker 2: the NFL Draft, We'll go to Bonneville on us. It's
Speaker 2: the ESPN Festival the Tease powered by the Utah Golf
Speaker 2: Golf Association. ESPN seven hundred sports dot com is where
Speaker 2: you go for more information. We also have a new
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Speaker 1: It feels like it's right right in your wheelhouse.
Speaker 3: It might be, it might be I'm dry at the moment.
Speaker 3: I am at the moment proud of you. But I
Speaker 3: am as much as anything, very very enthralled with the
Speaker 3: wild West, the Outlaws. I may know and spend as
Speaker 3: much time, not now but historically on that is. I
Speaker 3: do like sports and whatnot. So yeah, it might be
Speaker 3: done my own.
Speaker 2: Maybe we could open like a sports themed wild West
Speaker 2: joint of some sort.
Speaker 1: Oh, there we go. I mean, I just do it.
Speaker 1: We can just do a remote Outlaw. I'm an idea man,
Speaker 1: you know this.
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to think what that would look and
Speaker 2: feel like, because you have to have more of a
Speaker 2: hook than just like come watch sports and talk about cowboys.
Speaker 3: Yeah it's fair, it's fair. Yeah, We'll just do a
Speaker 3: remoted Outlaw. We'll invite everyone there and have some shots.
Speaker 2: And towards and go from there. Well, let's chill with
Speaker 2: the shots. I mean certainly from two at two o'clock.
Speaker 2: If you're doing shots, you to have a conversation.
Speaker 1: You referenced something.
Speaker 2: When we were interviewing Kyle bonagera Abduall Carter, Yeah, goes
Speaker 2: to the Giants at three. And certainly most of the
Speaker 2: draft experts I've read believe and looked we should acknowledge
Speaker 2: the Travis Hunter as unique as any prospect.
Speaker 1: We've seen it quite some time.
Speaker 2: But in ten years when we're talking about this draft,
Speaker 2: do you think we're going to be talking about Abdual Carter.
Speaker 3: I think so. Now I'm not saying you're not going
Speaker 3: to be talking about Travis Hunter. I just think that
Speaker 3: the surest thing as far as if you go into
Speaker 3: an NFL draft and you have, you know, maybe your
Speaker 3: highest floor, highest ceiling, and where you want that overlap
Speaker 3: to be the smallest, it's Abduall Carter. I really do
Speaker 3: think that he is. When you look at the prototype
Speaker 3: that you want as a current NFL edge linebacker hybrid, right,
Speaker 3: you look at Micah Parsons, you look at players like
Speaker 3: Abdull Carter, yes, out of Penn State. So there's a
Speaker 3: little you know, there's there's there's a little overlap there,
Speaker 3: a little where you're trying to separate, you know, the
Speaker 3: prospect from the fact that he's just a really good
Speaker 3: linebacker out of Penn State. No, he is a lot
Speaker 3: like Micah Parsons in the way that he can disrupt
Speaker 3: a game. Watched him live at the at the Rose Bowl.
Speaker 3: It's a guy who even back then against Utah was
Speaker 3: getting a lot of reps, getting a lot of snaps.
Speaker 3: I think was their starter even for that game. So
Speaker 3: I look at him as the surest thing. And you know,
Speaker 3: if Travis Hunter ends up being what some folks think
Speaker 3: he is on both sides of the ball, then yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's probably the guy you look to in this class.
Speaker 1: But I think that is a huge if. Now.
Speaker 3: I think he's good, and I think he's going to
Speaker 3: be productive, but I just I have questions on the
Speaker 3: ability for a one hundred and sixty five pound five
Speaker 3: ft ten corner two do those things on both ends
Speaker 3: of the ball like he did at the college level.
Speaker 3: I think he'll be productive. I think he'll be a
Speaker 3: fine player, but to replicate what he did at Colorado.
Speaker 1: I just don't see that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, we'll see what Jacksonville does.
Speaker 2: They need a ton of help. Every time Travis is
Speaker 2: asked about what he wants to be in pro football,
Speaker 2: he talks about his desire to play on both sides
Speaker 2: of the ball. But you've got to have a coach
Speaker 2: willing to do that. So we'll see what that looks like.
Speaker 2: You know, I do find it interesting. We talked about
Speaker 2: it at start of the show, and you know, I
Speaker 2: was trying to get a little info from Tim McMahon,
Speaker 2: who joined us last segment, about what it's like covering
Speaker 2: the draft, covering the NFL draft, covering the NBA draft.
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm not in the news breaker space
Speaker 2: of this industry either, you know, a guy like Adam Schefter,
Speaker 2: a guy like Sham Shararni, or you know, before he
Speaker 2: decided to take his job as the GM, a Saint Bonovich,
Speaker 2: or of course Adrian Moojanarowski. There was a time in
Speaker 2: my career, maybe when I was younger, earlier on, I
Speaker 2: did effort a lot of information and tried to break
Speaker 2: things here there. It is kind of part of the
Speaker 2: job to try to get some info and then of
Speaker 2: course bring it to the listeners. It's an exhausting way
Speaker 2: to try to do this, to try to do this job.
Speaker 2: I can remember Chris Mannis who used to join us
Speaker 2: pretty consistently for a few years. Before Chris landed at
Speaker 2: Sports Illustrated, he was with Yahoo and he worked with
Speaker 2: WOJ before woj went over to ESPN.
Speaker 1: And when woj was kind of rising up through the ranks.
Speaker 2: Everybody was just like enthralled with how he was able
Speaker 2: to do what he was doing. And a lot of
Speaker 2: it is through agency relationships. Because Adrian Wojnarowski I don't
Speaker 2: think he is anymore because he's not in the space,
Speaker 2: but he was represented by CIA, and CIA is the
Speaker 2: most powerful agency really in all of entertainment, not just sports.
Speaker 2: They have actors, they have musicians, and then they have
Speaker 2: a lot of people that aren't necessarily front facing broadcasters,
Speaker 2: certainly front facing for sure, behind the scenes people. And
Speaker 2: as a result of those relationships, Woje met a lot
Speaker 2: of other agents, not just the work for CAAA, but
Speaker 2: work for other agencies, the Mark Bartelsteins of the World
Speaker 2: and such. And I asked Mannix on the show, like
Speaker 2: you work with Woj, what is his day to day
Speaker 2: like like operationally, how did he go about his business?
Speaker 2: And Chris told these wild anecdotes about Woj having multiple
Speaker 2: cell phones and checking them all at once and then
Speaker 2: having to be glued to those phones pretty much all
Speaker 2: day and then glued to your socials pretty much all day.
Speaker 2: So you can disseminate information when it comes your way.
Speaker 2: And then the complicated part of it is trying to
Speaker 2: dig through the noise and trying to disseminate the information
Speaker 2: without furthering propaganda that clubs just want you to take
Speaker 2: to the masses to further a message they're trying to
Speaker 2: get out there, even if it's not true, and often
Speaker 2: more often than not, actually it's not true. And certainly
Speaker 2: in today's day and age of of media where so
Speaker 2: many teams have in house media that work for the team,
Speaker 2: and I use media in air quotes like the BYU
Speaker 2: TV Guys or.
Speaker 1: Any you know podcast that is team run.
Speaker 2: That's not media, that's your propaganda message that the team
Speaker 2: wants you to forward that oftentimes isn't true. You just
Speaker 2: want the public to really buy into the message you're selling.
Speaker 2: And again oftentimes it's BS and we talked about this
Speaker 2: a lot on the show.
Speaker 1: As the As the As the Public.
Speaker 2: What exactly do you want, whether it's sports or politics
Speaker 2: or whatever it is. Do you only want to reaffirm
Speaker 2: your the beliefs that you already have, regardless of it's real,
Speaker 2: regardless of its being propagated by charlatans that are looking
Speaker 2: for engagement in order to make money, right, or if
Speaker 2: it's just being propagated by a team that just want
Speaker 2: you to believe their message. Even though it's pretty easy
Speaker 2: to see oftentimes what's true and what is not true.
Speaker 2: But you do have to learn to pay attention in
Speaker 2: a different way. You do have to call balls and strikes,
Speaker 2: you do have to call it like you see it.
Speaker 2: And certainly a big part of media these days is
Speaker 2: opinion driven, not truth driven, just opinions driven. And that's
Speaker 2: what makes the NFL Draft really really interesting. And that's
Speaker 2: what makes watching mel Kuiper melt down on television for
Speaker 2: three days really interesting because it's hard to know whether
Speaker 2: or not mel Kiper was married to his should or
Speaker 2: Sanders take, or he was just trying to be part
Speaker 2: of a TV show, which is what the NFL Draft is.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day and say what you
Speaker 2: want about Shoudor Sanders. He certainly is a story because
Speaker 2: he's Dion's kid and there was so much attention around
Speaker 2: Colorado football over the past couple of years, and also
Speaker 2: should Or was really good. I think one of the
Speaker 2: things lost in all this is that Shurear Sanders is.
Speaker 1: Still a really good football player.
Speaker 2: He just wasn't the number one overall pick, and he
Speaker 2: wasn't a first round pick. He wasn't a first two
Speaker 2: day pick. He had to wait till Day three in
Speaker 2: the fifth round. But I don't know that there is
Speaker 2: an event that brings more more of a dishonest approach
Speaker 2: from both NFL talent evvaluators and media members then the
Speaker 2: NFL Draft every year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can. You can pull up any mock
Speaker 1: draft that you prefer.
Speaker 2: Dan Brugler from the Athletic who joins us from time
Speaker 2: to time Front of the Show, is really good at
Speaker 2: his job. He had Shadora, I think, as the forty
Speaker 2: third pick in his mock draft. So we didn't have
Speaker 2: him at one, didn't have him as a top ten,
Speaker 2: didn't have him as a first round pick, but he
Speaker 2: had him at forty three and Dan's a really talented
Speaker 2: you know, a media member who does a really good
Speaker 2: mock draft and works really hard to get all that
Speaker 2: information out there, and ultimately everybody's just guessing.
Speaker 1: And it does bring this dynamic of.
Speaker 2: Media members that have no business analyzing draft prospects but
Speaker 2: understand how much you want that content. And so it
Speaker 2: brings about this clickbait feel during this time of year
Speaker 2: where people just love the NFL Draft and if you're
Speaker 2: a college football fan, you want to know where the
Speaker 2: players that you love for your alma mater are going
Speaker 2: to go. And if you're an NFL fan, it is
Speaker 2: like the one time of year where hope is out
Speaker 2: there and what are the holes that the team has?
Speaker 2: How many picks you have? How many holes can you
Speaker 2: plug in the draft? Are you going to see a
Speaker 2: draft night of tremendous activity and a lot of trades
Speaker 2: is going to be quiet, Like people love the draft content,
Speaker 2: and it'll be interesting to see the interest in the
Speaker 2: NBA Draft coming up June twenty fifth, and we're going
Speaker 2: to have great coverage for you guys that night. It's
Speaker 2: going to be Gordy Chase, It's going to be Richard Smith.
Speaker 2: Looks like we might be out on location. It is
Speaker 2: a two day event. Round two will be the next day,
Speaker 2: on June the twenty sixth, in the afternoon, So there's
Speaker 2: a chance that we're just going to kind of lean
Speaker 2: into that on our show the next day, maybe on location.
Speaker 1: We'll keep you up to date on that.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that I always find fascinating
Speaker 2: and one of the ways I try to do this
Speaker 2: show is I kind of have a unique prison because
Speaker 2: I've been in front offices and I've had a chance
Speaker 2: to do NBA scouting, and so I've been able to
Speaker 2: work with and listen to and learn from some of
Speaker 2: the best basketball minds that you're ever going to find,
Speaker 2: you know, the Dick mcguires of the world for the
Speaker 2: New York Knicks, and the Scottie Laden's and the Dennis Lindsay's,
Speaker 2: the Arnie Grunfelds. He ed Tapscots and being in those
Speaker 2: rooms and listening to the way that NBA evaluators evaluate
Speaker 2: talents and then leaving those rooms and listening to media
Speaker 2: members try to do the same job, or reading mock
Speaker 2: drafts and knowing how wrong they are colors my perspective
Speaker 2: in my prism as far as how I want to
Speaker 2: cover these things, and ultimately it really leads me to
Speaker 2: approach it differently because we're all just guessing, and not
Speaker 2: many of us are willing to say that out loud
Speaker 2: because we want to present ourselves as experts. We want
Speaker 2: to convince you that our opinion is the same opinion
Speaker 2: you should have, and we want to be right about
Speaker 2: our talent evaluations, and certainly all of us in the
Speaker 2: space enjoy being right.
Speaker 1: And I've had prospects that I've analyzed where.
Speaker 2: I've been completely correct, and I've had plenty of prospects
Speaker 2: that I've analyzed that I've been completely incorrect about. I
Speaker 2: was excited when the Jazz draft to Trey Burke, and
Speaker 2: I was dead wrong.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: We all have prospects that we've analyzed, and we've tried
Speaker 2: to tried to figure out whether or not their skill
Speaker 2: set will translate when they take the step up, which
Speaker 2: is really hard to do because there's a human element
Speaker 2: to this that oftentimes is ignored, and the human element
Speaker 2: to the shad Or Sanders storyline, as we talked about
Speaker 2: with Kyle Bonneger earlier, has been really fascinating for me
Speaker 2: to kind of study and listen to other people talk
Speaker 2: about and then after the fact, listen to those same
Speaker 2: people try to muddy the waters and flood the zone
Speaker 2: with misinformation and try to convince you that what they
Speaker 2: told you last week wasn't really what they believed. It's
Speaker 2: this entire ecosystem of liars and this entire ecosystem of
Speaker 2: grifters that really just want your engagement. And it's just
Speaker 2: so funny how the business has either evolved or devolved
Speaker 2: simply has changed.
Speaker 1: Or progressed, whatever your adjective is.
Speaker 2: Where you have guys doing these credible victory laps about
Speaker 2: the things they got right while ignoring the things that
Speaker 2: they got wrong and never bringing them up again just
Speaker 2: to paint themselves as experts.
Speaker 1: And all these grifters on TV they do the same thing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: They want to lean into the draft projection that got right.
Speaker 2: They want to focus on see I told you so
Speaker 2: here there, and I'm sitting there like, wait a second,
Speaker 2: I heard you last week talk about four or five
Speaker 2: different things that weren't even close to being true. But
Speaker 2: the difference in the gap between evaluators that work in
Speaker 2: the pro leagues and the grifters that work in the
Speaker 2: media has always been fascinating to me, and there are
Speaker 2: examples across the board and both the NFL and and
Speaker 2: the NBA, And I just think with this stuff, there
Speaker 2: were so many football talent evaluators that just didn't think
Speaker 2: Shador was the prospect that the Melkuipers of the world
Speaker 2: thought that they were. And I'm not trying to run
Speaker 2: down Mel Kuiper. I mean, he's been doing this for
Speaker 2: forty two years. I think this was his forty second
Speaker 2: draft if I read that correctly. And the dirty Little
Speaker 2: Secret continues to be the powerful television executives that have
Speaker 2: one motivation and one motivation only, and that is for
Speaker 2: you to tune into their TV show.
Speaker 1: They don't give a rip if.
Speaker 2: Mel was right about his Shador Sanders' evaluation.
Speaker 1: They don't.
Speaker 2: All they care about is whether or not Mel Kiper,
Speaker 2: the TV actor and character put on a good show
Speaker 2: for you. And the thing is he kind of did right,
Speaker 2: Like it was kind of fun watching him melt down
Speaker 2: every time another prospect was taken, every time another quarterback
Speaker 2: was taken, and it wasn't shauld or melt melted Down
Speaker 2: clearly wrong about his analysis if you take it at
Speaker 2: face value. But what was his motivation just to put
Speaker 2: on a good TV show? Was he fooled based off
Speaker 2: of his relationship with agents or maybe even Dion himself.
Speaker 2: Did he buy into the hype in a way that
Speaker 2: talent evaluators in the NFL just didn't and therefore brought
Speaker 2: his approach on TV for you to be entertained. And
Speaker 2: it's always fat for me to kind of experience this
Speaker 2: just from the outside looking in, knowing the way talent
Speaker 2: evaluation works in the pro leagues, and then understanding the
Speaker 2: ecosystem of the media and how many dishonest people are
Speaker 2: out there, some taking calculated guesses and some taking educated
Speaker 2: guesses based off the work they do, but so many
Speaker 2: of them getting it wrong. And Porter, I think you
Speaker 2: talked about this yesterday when you know ultimately we may
Speaker 2: be overthinking it. Is it fair to bring up the
Speaker 2: lack of humility he appeared to exhibit during the interview process, probably,
Speaker 2: And there are conversations about him sandbagging interviews the way
Speaker 2: his dad used to, But that's such a false parallel
Speaker 2: because Dion was generationally special as a talent, so he
Speaker 2: could sandbag as much as he wanted. There are going
Speaker 2: to be talent evaluators that said, Okay, maybe he's kind
Speaker 2: of an ass, but we still want him because he's
Speaker 2: that good. Schidora is not near the talent his dad was,
Speaker 2: so if he followed the example of his father, I
Speaker 2: think his dad did him a disservice. But this could
Speaker 2: be as simple as football talent evaluators to work for teams,
Speaker 2: taking emotion out of it and just saying we don't
Speaker 2: think he's very good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was off air.
Speaker 3: I think when I was talking to you and Smitty,
Speaker 3: you kind of asked my thoughts on it, and I
Speaker 3: just said, I think everyone is kind of making this
Speaker 3: a bigger story than it is, partly by design, as
Speaker 3: you mentioned, the ESPN stuff, the clicks that surround the
Speaker 3: Sanders family, just in general, like you're going to play
Speaker 3: into that. But ultimately, what I really thought happened over
Speaker 3: the weekend, Spence was a mid round quarterback, got drafted
Speaker 3: in the fifth round. I thought he could have been
Speaker 3: a second, third, fourth round pick, but like I said yesterday,
Speaker 3: that also kind of depends on how the draft goes.
Speaker 3: Once all those offensive tackles started rolling off the board,
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter what position you play. You understand that
Speaker 3: there's going to be, especially if you understand how the
Speaker 3: NFL draft works, there's going to be a run of
Speaker 3: offensive tackles. If you're a defensive back, you just got
Speaker 3: pushed down the line a little bit. Regardless of how
Speaker 3: good you think you are where you sit in the
Speaker 3: prospect room. Sometimes the NFL draft goes that way. Quinn
Speaker 3: Ewers also dropped several rounds farther than a lot of
Speaker 3: people thought he would be Dylan Gabriel. You know, these
Speaker 3: guys are are one quarterback away. As far as where
Speaker 3: Dillian Gabriel was picked and where Shador was picked, there
Speaker 3: was no one in between from the quarterback position, even
Speaker 3: though there was a full round of NFL Draft between them.
Speaker 3: So you kind of have to look at how the
Speaker 3: draft usually plays out from a positional standpoint. You have
Speaker 3: to look at the fact that, yes, the majority of
Speaker 3: like actual talent evaluators, not draft analysts, not NFL analysts
Speaker 3: that are just draft analysts. During the week of the draft,
Speaker 3: not and I love my guy Tony Jones, Tony thought
Speaker 3: he that Shador was going to be the number one pick.
Speaker 3: That's a basketball guy. Tony and mel Kiper might have
Speaker 3: been the only guys that I saw that said he
Speaker 3: would be the top pick in the draft.
Speaker 1: And then you have what I.
Speaker 3: Think is kind of the casual sports fan who then
Speaker 3: tune in on draft. We can think, oh, should Or
Speaker 3: is gonna be a top five pick, right, That's where
Speaker 3: it all comes from, because I don't really think a
Speaker 3: lot of the serious people around the draft really had
Speaker 3: any expectation of that happening. Thought he might be a
Speaker 3: second round pick, sneak into the first round maybe, but ultimately, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think this is a story around the Sanders that
Speaker 3: is getting way blown out of proportion because it's a
Speaker 3: story around the Sanders, and because, as you mentioned, Shaudor
Speaker 3: may have exacerbated and Dion may have exacerbated the slides
Speaker 3: slide a little bit with how they handled NFL agents,
Speaker 3: NFL scouts, guys in the front office that aren't necessarily
Speaker 3: used to a player thinking he kind of runs the
Speaker 3: show already, especially when he's not his father, who was
Speaker 3: the best cornerback of all time.
Speaker 1: Well, and also one more thing here.
Speaker 2: One of the jobs you have when you're building a roster,
Speaker 2: as a roster constructor in pro sports is you have
Speaker 2: to mitigate risk and you have to, you know, mitigate distraction,
Speaker 2: and you have to eliminate as much of that as
Speaker 2: you can.
Speaker 1: That's in your power.
Speaker 2: A lot of it's not in your power, like the
Speaker 2: one of the variables that you know, the Melkipers of
Speaker 2: the world don't seem to discuss very much, and one
Speaker 2: of the variables that makes all this stuff really hard
Speaker 2: and very complicated. It's why the great scouts are worth
Speaker 2: their weight in gold is you do not know how
Speaker 2: an eighteen nineteen twenty like a young person between typically
Speaker 2: between the ages of eighteen and twenty two.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a little bit older.
Speaker 2: With the new normal of college athletics, it will be
Speaker 2: older oftentimes, you know, twenty three, twenty four to twenty five.
Speaker 2: But the point still stands how a young person will
Speaker 2: react to instantly becoming a millionaire, how a young person
Speaker 2: will react to instantly becoming rich and famous. Now, a
Speaker 2: lot of these young players now are receiving a tremendous
Speaker 2: amount of wealth prior to entrance into the pros, and
Speaker 2: I don't think we have enough data at our disposal
Speaker 2: to indicate whether or not that allows them to land
Speaker 2: a little softer with more maturity, because they actually already
Speaker 2: have some money in their pocket and maybe simply just
Speaker 2: aging a little bit is a good thing before they
Speaker 2: actually are thrown into this world of tremendous wealth and
Speaker 2: tremendous attention. But the highway is littered with the bodies,
Speaker 2: not literally that's morbid, but of prospects that were highly
Speaker 2: thought of simply as talent that could not handle the
Speaker 2: sudden attention and did not know how to handle the
Speaker 2: sudden wealth and did not have the right people around
Speaker 2: them to help them traverse that space, and had too
Speaker 2: many hangers on or add too many family members that
Speaker 2: needed to get out of debt, or family members that
Speaker 2: were using you and relying upon you as their golden
Speaker 2: ticket to change their lives, which has always been extremely unfair.
Speaker 2: It's why a good agent is worth his weight in gold.
Speaker 2: And by the way, didn't have an agent, he hasn't
Speaker 2: signed one. And yes, he has a father as a
Speaker 2: mentor to kind of give him the answers to the test.
Speaker 2: But guess what, the answers to the test this year
Speaker 2: were wrong. I think he would have done himself a
Speaker 2: great service if he had outside representation that could sit
Speaker 2: him down and say, look, I don't give a rip
Speaker 2: who your dad is. I don't give a rip about
Speaker 2: the advantages you've had because of that. You are a
Speaker 2: talent that has a chance to have a long career
Speaker 2: in pro football. But if you want that, here's how
Speaker 2: you have to approach this process. And advice from an
Speaker 2: outside voice may have changed the entire thing. But it's
Speaker 2: always interesting when a story like this manifest to listen
Speaker 2: and read the reaction for media members that clearly are
Speaker 2: embarrassed that they got it so wrong. When the talent
Speaker 2: evaluators that actually work in the industry are the ones
Speaker 2: that we need to listen to all the time, the
Speaker 2: problem is we don't have as much access to them
Speaker 2: as we do with the media members that want to
Speaker 2: join shows and kind of spout off their opinion and
Speaker 2: their takes in order for engagement. First game of four
Speaker 2: for tonight's NBA Playoff action actually just barely tipped off.
Speaker 2: It's the Bucks and the Pacers. Keep you up to
Speaker 2: date on that as the show goes on. Get back
Speaker 2: to some NFL Draft stuff. Sam Brouckcassuomer Sports joins us.
Speaker 2: But a good friend of the show stops buying a
Speaker 2: Tuesday and it's been way too long Kaylin Jones.
Speaker 1: Happy Tuesday, buddy. How are we doing.
Speaker 9: I'm hearing your voice, man.
Speaker 1: Yeah great. Great to catch up with you as well.
Speaker 2: And it seems like every time I chat with you, you
Speaker 2: have taken another job and another really cool job as well.
Speaker 2: So I need the career update, I need the life update.
Speaker 2: What's going on with you now?
Speaker 9: I mean, I'm very blessed. Man. You know, media is
Speaker 9: not an eat the industry to hold steeple jobs as
Speaker 9: a current throughout my career, but I'm currently an associate
Speaker 9: producer for Netflix is Untold, the sports documentary series. It's
Speaker 9: been about a year now. I've kept it low key
Speaker 9: because there hasn't been too much to share. I'm excited
Speaker 9: because the first round of episodes that was a part
Speaker 9: of I really wasn't part of. I was just getting
Speaker 9: an a with that person in the group who didn't
Speaker 9: really do anything on the group assignment and got an
Speaker 9: a on it. This time around had a little bit
Speaker 9: more of a hand in it, and I'm excited for
Speaker 9: our episode that's coming out called Shooting Guards about Gilbert
Speaker 9: Arenas and Javaris Critteninson and in the lot of incident.
Speaker 9: So we've got a couple more episodes coming up. It
Speaker 9: takes a few years and.
Speaker 7: Make these things.
Speaker 9: I'm learning, but it's been a really fun experience so far,
Speaker 9: transitioning over from journalism to the film space.
Speaker 1: Very nice, very nice, Calen.
Speaker 2: We are losing you a little bit on the cell phone,
Speaker 2: so I'm gonna reset quite a little bit of a
Speaker 2: long question. I'm gonna ask you just move around a
Speaker 2: little bit, see if we can get a better connection.
Speaker 2: So Cayln Jones is our guest. He's been a friend
Speaker 2: of the show for five six years. He was with
Speaker 2: The Ringer, he was with Sports Illustrated, with the Athletic
Speaker 2: is now landed over with our friends in Netflix. So
Speaker 2: what has been so this this uh, this Gilbert Arenas
Speaker 2: doctor you have coming up? I wonder what has been
Speaker 2: this process? What what the process has been like for you?
Speaker 2: I mean, I certainly will never forget this story. I
Speaker 2: am beyond excited to watch this and as a lifelong
Speaker 2: quite frankly, being around the NBA my entire life, somebody
Speaker 2: who's worked in it and has covered it for quite
Speaker 2: some time. Of course, I can remember Gilbert Arenas as
Speaker 2: a great college player and a very very talented pro
Speaker 2: and I completely remember when this news certainly came down
Speaker 2: in the fallout for both Gilbert and Javaris Crittin and
Speaker 2: what's what's what's the process been like for you guys
Speaker 2: to make this.
Speaker 9: So when I joined about a year ago, the process
Speaker 9: it already started conducting interviews with Rena and Baris Criton,
Speaker 9: uh both you know, people close to the both of
Speaker 9: them former teammates, so to witness the whole incident go down.
Speaker 9: And then obviously the police departments from Atlanta who with
Speaker 9: kind of the fallout as far as Varis Critins inside
Speaker 9: of everything. But when I joined the processes, you know,
Speaker 9: you have the editor or a couple of editors who
Speaker 9: are in a base and after you're basically trying to
Speaker 9: help them, you know, nurture the story along. You send
Speaker 9: a few cuts to the big folks at Netflix, they
Speaker 9: send some notes back. You probably do that five or
Speaker 9: six signs before you get a final cut and line
Speaker 9: that process six about a year. It's been really fascinating.
Speaker 9: But you know, it's really cool, Spence, because you know
Speaker 9: how it is with media scrums and most interview sessions,
Speaker 9: you know they're they're five ten minutes and you're sticking
Speaker 9: a microphone in an athlete space after, you know, a
Speaker 9: huge moment. With documentaries, we get the luxury of sitting
Speaker 9: with subjects for hours and so being able to get
Speaker 9: fuller context and provide that on a platform like Netflix
Speaker 9: is really special to be a part of.
Speaker 2: All Right, for our listeners that are going, who are
Speaker 2: Gilbert Arenas and Javar's krittenan? Because it is sixteen years ago,
Speaker 2: let's revisit it, Kalin, So tell our listeners what went
Speaker 2: down Christmas Eve two thousand and nine.
Speaker 9: Yeah, So, Gilbert Arenas, as you were talking about's talented
Speaker 9: NBA player, multi time All Stars for the Washington Wizards.
Speaker 9: He and Javaris Critinton, who was a backup point guard
Speaker 9: on the team, young in his career, had been drafted
Speaker 9: by the Lakers, trying to kind of you know, trying
Speaker 9: to save his career. They during a slight home the
Speaker 9: two of them got, you know, they were playing cards
Speaker 9: on the plane over. You know, there was a debate
Speaker 9: over who owed who money, and between Gilbert and Javaris
Speaker 9: it became sort of an emotional showing of manhood and
Speaker 9: challenging one another, you know how it is with your friends.
Speaker 9: Sometimes sometimes we have friends who take things a little
Speaker 9: bit too far. And while they're on there talking about
Speaker 9: bringing guns to each other, you know, bringing guns to
Speaker 9: the locker room, and Javars and Gilbert both ended up
Speaker 9: following through. Uh, they ended up pulling out guns on
Speaker 9: each other. And hello, can you hear me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're you're, you're you're breaking up pretty fierce. Is
Speaker 2: there is there any way we can get you to
Speaker 2: relocate or do you? Porter can porter, Porter can call
Speaker 2: you back if you want, if you want to take
Speaker 2: a second, we can reconnect with you.
Speaker 9: Ah, man, I'm sorry, man, I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 9: a better spot in the hotel to the uh speak
Speaker 9: to your prom im in Atlanta. Actually, we're doing some
Speaker 9: interviews for another episode.
Speaker 2: You sound really good right now, wherever you're at, just
Speaker 2: stay right there, okay.
Speaker 9: Perfect, But yeah, the two of them got into a
Speaker 9: incident showing a manhood calling each other out on the plane.
Speaker 9: Both threatened to bring guns into the locker room, and
Speaker 9: I think, you know, uh, we all have friends who
Speaker 9: take things probably a little bit too far, a little
Speaker 9: bit too literally. And of fortunately, yeah, they they brought
Speaker 9: guns in the locker room and both were suspended given
Speaker 9: two of the late suspensions in NBA history, essentially ended
Speaker 9: Javaris Crittinson's career and Gilbert Reer ever really recovered after that,
Speaker 9: and so what we do is really examine the fallout
Speaker 9: of it. It's really tragic, honestly, like what ends the
Speaker 9: pappening in Javar's side of things, and he kind of
Speaker 9: probably aware of Gilbert Arenas's son, Elijah Arenas, one of
Speaker 9: the top prospects in college basketball. He just recently, you know,
Speaker 9: luckily survived, but there was a car accident out in
Speaker 9: la where he was trapped in a cyber truck and
Speaker 9: was able to luckily get out. He wasn't put into
Speaker 9: an his come up, but he's awake now. And Yeah,
Speaker 9: we examined their relationship, Javar's fallout. It's a really compelling
Speaker 9: episode in one of the best untolds I think will
Speaker 9: ever come out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm excited for what is the nature now for
Speaker 2: our listeners that don't know Javaris critten In a few
Speaker 2: years later was charged with the murder of Julian Jones,
Speaker 2: twenty two year old mother of four. He pled guilty
Speaker 2: to manslaughter. He was sentenced to twenty three years in prison.
Speaker 2: It was later reduced to ten years and he was
Speaker 2: released from prison last year. So, you know, of course,
Speaker 2: a very sad story for a number of different reasons.
Speaker 2: What was the effect of the incident, not the murder
Speaker 2: the Javaris committed, but the incident between Javaris and Gilbert
Speaker 2: and the gun incident, What was the effect that that
Speaker 2: had on their relationship and what is the nature of
Speaker 2: their relationship today?
Speaker 9: Really did sort of pedo things right. Javaris was, you know,
Speaker 9: personally upset at Gilbert because after the incident happened, after
Speaker 9: the NBA handed out or at least threatened to hand
Speaker 9: out the suspensions, Gilbert Renus was. There's a famous picture
Speaker 9: or infamous picture of him, you know, in the huddle,
Speaker 9: the team huddle and finger guns at everybody, and you know,
Speaker 9: Javaris saw it as you know, Gilbert playing around and
Speaker 9: not taking things seriously. You know, their their relationship, It
Speaker 9: took a few years for them the sort of men things.
Speaker 9: After Javaris had gotten out, they are now I wouldn't
Speaker 9: say close, but you know they're they're acquaintances, cordial, however
Speaker 9: you want to put it. They're on good terms at
Speaker 9: this point. I know that Javaris has been on Gilbert
Speaker 9: Arenas's podcast a couple of times at this point to
Speaker 9: discuss everything and kind of you know, air everything out.
Speaker 9: But yeah, it's it's in a much better spot today.
Speaker 9: And as you mentioned, you know, obviously there's a seriously tragic,
Speaker 9: uh you know, portion of the story that you know,
Speaker 9: we we do a really good job of getting into.
Speaker 9: But it's it's a really fascinating story. Like I said,
Speaker 9: I think it's gonna be one of the best sports
Speaker 9: documentaries that comes out this year.
Speaker 2: As far as you know, we referenced the player that
Speaker 2: Gilbert was, and you know, he ultimately when you look
Speaker 2: at from a Macros standpoint, because he was not super
Speaker 2: highly thought of as an NBA prospect coming out of college,
Speaker 2: I don't think you can he was a second round pick.
Speaker 2: I don't think he can really analyze his career as
Speaker 2: anything other than a massive success based off of expectations.
Speaker 2: But from a Gilbert Arenas angle specifically, how did that
Speaker 2: incident kind of change the trajectory of his NBA career.
Speaker 9: Yeah, like I said, you know, things kind of filled
Speaker 9: with out for him afterwards. He wasn't able to return
Speaker 9: to being you know, the superstar. He wasn't the face
Speaker 9: of the league. He was literally on the cover of
Speaker 9: NBA Live in two thousand and eight. I still I'm
Speaker 9: pretty sure I had that game. He was one of
Speaker 9: the faces of the league. And after that incident, the
Speaker 9: NBA did it. You know, it did its job to
Speaker 9: protect its brand and made sure that you know, he
Speaker 9: wasn't necessarily considered a face. For Gilbert, his career tailed off.
Speaker 9: He ended up playing Memphis Orlando. He was never really
Speaker 9: the same player, and so for him personally though, I
Speaker 9: think that and he talked about it in our episode,
Speaker 9: it's you know, played a role in him evolving and
Speaker 9: maturing as a man, specifically as a father. He's much
Speaker 9: more involved in Elijah Arenas's life. Gilbert, like I said,
Speaker 9: he's someone who's a goopall didn't take things seriously. That
Speaker 9: incident helped change him to being a little bit more
Speaker 9: mature and taking things a little bit more seriously. And
Speaker 9: like I said, he's ensuring that his son isn't on
Speaker 9: a similar path to not taking things serious. And I
Speaker 9: think that's the reason why he ended up not going
Speaker 9: in the first round during the draft and why he
Speaker 9: wasn't considered as highly a prospect because he was so talented,
Speaker 9: but he didn't have maybe necessarily the work at elite
Speaker 9: work ethic. Obviously every athlete has work ethic, the elite
Speaker 9: work ethic to keep him consistently at an all star
Speaker 9: caliber level. So I think it changed him for the better. Obviously,
Speaker 9: it's unfortunate that it took that incident, but you know,
Speaker 9: for his personal life, and we see him now obviously
Speaker 9: with the podcast. He's still a jokester, but there is
Speaker 9: a little bit more maturity that comes with the experienced
Speaker 9: seasons he's had, you.
Speaker 2: Know, uh, in in both pro sports and if for honest,
Speaker 2: in society, the topic of gun control is one that
Speaker 2: comes up often and people feel very passionate about it,
Speaker 2: both on both sides of the aisle wherever you stand.
Speaker 2: Uh And of course when it comes to the NBA
Speaker 2: or the NFL. You know, oftentimes when a player is
Speaker 2: caught with a firearm without a license, or you know,
Speaker 2: they're pulled over and there's a firearm in the car,
Speaker 2: the leagues come under a tremendous scrutiny to serve as
Speaker 2: an example for everybody else.
Speaker 1: How did this incident, if.
Speaker 2: At all, kind of change the perspective or paradigm of
Speaker 2: pro basketball in the way that they view and handle
Speaker 2: gun control issues.
Speaker 9: Well, the reason why the penalty was so severe the
Speaker 9: suspension was for the rest of the season. I'm blanking
Speaker 9: on which season that was. It might have been two
Speaker 9: and two thousand and nine, but both of them ended
Speaker 9: up being suspended for the entire season, and poor Javares Crittin,
Speaker 9: and I mean he was essentially blackballed from returning to
Speaker 9: the NBA. And then I think the severity with which
Speaker 9: the NBA came down was to ensure that, you know,
Speaker 9: the league itself has had to overcome different types of stigmas,
Speaker 9: right like before the Magic Johnson Larry bird eras you
Speaker 9: obviously the league had a crack cocaine issue with its
Speaker 9: players and so being able to rescue the league. It's
Speaker 9: with the bird Magic area and Michael Jordan, you know
Speaker 9: all that the league was nervous about that NINGU raced
Speaker 9: when the early two thousands, late nineteen nineties, you had
Speaker 9: players who the league had the recond with hip hop
Speaker 9: culture coming to the surface and players expecting themselves that way.
Speaker 9: So you had different points throughout the league's league history
Speaker 9: where it's had the grapple with perception outside of perception,
Speaker 9: which ultimately affects its you know, final dollar. With that incident,
Speaker 9: I think they made sure very very strongly that you know,
Speaker 9: it would not tolerate you know, gun gunplay literally within
Speaker 9: the flocker room, and so the penalties were super severe,
Speaker 9: and I think that, you know, how the league handled
Speaker 9: it super fascinating for Gilbert. I guess I'm telling the
Speaker 9: untold part of it here, but Gilbert explained that the
Speaker 9: League really came down fiercely upon him because he was
Speaker 9: trafficking guns essentially using private planes that the NBA was providing,
Speaker 9: because he had guns in Phoenix and he would bring
Speaker 9: them over to Washington, d C. So using the NBA's
Speaker 9: private planes, so they He believes that the reason why
Speaker 9: the penalty was so severe is because the NBA didn't
Speaker 9: want that to be.
Speaker 2: Non When is this coming out? I'm telling you, I
Speaker 2: am giddy with excitement. This is gonna be awesome.
Speaker 9: It's coming out on May six, Okay.
Speaker 1: Oh nice, right around the corner.
Speaker 2: So you rep, there are some other un and we've
Speaker 2: had Tony Vai Nuku on the program a couple of times.
Speaker 2: He's a Utah filmmaker who worked on the Manti Teo documentary.
Speaker 2: I'm told what what are what are the other projects
Speaker 2: you have coming up?
Speaker 6: Kal?
Speaker 9: Yeah, so until that's two more episodes. The episodes that
Speaker 9: are coming out are based on the social media guy
Speaker 9: named Liver king uh and then also there's an episode
Speaker 9: coming out about Brett Farv. Neither of those episodes, I guess,
Speaker 9: like the Hollywood of it, those weren't done by our
Speaker 9: production houses, the production house that I work with. We
Speaker 9: have a few more episodes coming out in the pipe
Speaker 9: that regard the NBA, regard Major League Baseball, and the NFL,
Speaker 9: And unfortunately I want to protect my job, so I
Speaker 9: can't say what it is yet, but I think that
Speaker 9: they will also be some compelling stuff. So I'm really
Speaker 9: excited about what we're working on, even what I'm here
Speaker 9: in Atlanta working on right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've I've loved all of them. I mean, Malice
Speaker 2: in the Palace that was the first one I saw.
Speaker 2: Let's see were the other ones we have. I've referenced
Speaker 2: the Girlfriend who Didn't exist, Anti Taya, and a lot
Speaker 2: of local ties here, the rise and fall of Van One,
Speaker 2: I mean I loved and one back in the day,
Speaker 2: I thought it was great. Uh, there's a ton of
Speaker 2: great ones. The one on Manzell was really good. I
Speaker 2: recently saw the one on Steve McNair, So what a
Speaker 2: cool Uh, what a cool series. Fore you'd be involved in, man,
Speaker 2: I think that's great. I wanted to bring you into
Speaker 2: a conversation we've been having because in your former life,
Speaker 2: and you're still a very young person, you've just done
Speaker 2: so many really cool things. But I've been talking the
Speaker 2: past couple of days Klein about you know, on one side,
Speaker 2: you have NFL talent evaluators that actually worked for the
Speaker 2: league and work for teams, and then on the other side,
Speaker 2: you have media members that kind of moonlight as NFL
Speaker 2: talent evaluators and draft you know, draft you know evaluators,
Speaker 2: and oftentimes there is a massive gap between those two groups,
Speaker 2: because if you're evaluating talent for a pro team or
Speaker 2: a pro league, you have to remove emotion from the
Speaker 2: equation and simply analyze the prospects you have at your disposal.
Speaker 2: We're on the media side, especially during the draft cycle,
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, people want so much engagement that they
Speaker 2: don't necessarily pay as much attention to the nuts and
Speaker 2: bolts of analyzing players, and they just want you to
Speaker 2: engage with their content. Which brings me to this Shitter
Speaker 2: Sanders story, which has just been fascinating. Is this as
Speaker 2: simple as maybe media people getting this wrong and NFL
Speaker 2: talent evaluators just saying he's not as good as you
Speaker 2: people think.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both. As
Speaker 9: someone who was on the media side of it, as
Speaker 9: you mentioned back in what was it twenty twenty one
Speaker 9: when we had justin Fields, you know, and I wrote
Speaker 9: a story that you know, drove a lot of traffic.
Speaker 9: You know, I'm not necessarily proud of that part, but
Speaker 9: you know, the narratives that gets stuck with particular prospects
Speaker 9: is very fascinating. And so you mentioned engagement, and I
Speaker 9: was thinking about it, and I was talking to a friend
Speaker 9: about this with Chador, you know, I was joking. I
Speaker 9: was like, hey, like I loved him, but I would
Speaker 9: I don't think he's a first round talent. I think
Speaker 9: he has a weak arm. I don't I think he's
Speaker 9: a great prospecting that he's tough as hell and we'll
Speaker 9: hang in the pocket. I mean, he drists a little bit,
Speaker 9: but he's willing to sink in the pot and we'll
Speaker 9: throw over the mill you can't. Those are two traits
Speaker 9: that I feel like, generally, you know, suggest that you
Speaker 9: can last in the NFL. That being said, he doesn't
Speaker 9: have the biggest arm and he's not the biggest dude,
Speaker 9: So I'm not surprised at all. I would have taken
Speaker 9: less than one and a half if I could have
Speaker 9: gambled on it, even though two quarterbacks win, like with Shador.
Speaker 9: It's really fascinating that. And I guess drafts in general,
Speaker 9: right justin Fields drafted there was Trevor Lawrence all time prospect,
Speaker 9: and we were still focused on the narratives that were
Speaker 9: surrounding justin fields. That's why I wrote the article. It's like,
Speaker 9: why are we talking about the negative about this bad
Speaker 9: prospect instead of there's other people that we can talk
Speaker 9: about and same wished the door. We had a show
Speaker 9: to hey o Tani esque prospect in Travis Hunter who
Speaker 9: went number two overall. I think that's more dramatic, like
Speaker 9: there is a one unicle who wasn't selected number one.
Speaker 9: I think that's way more compelling to me than you know,
Speaker 9: a quarterback that probably wouldn't wouldn't have gone first overall
Speaker 9: in the stronger quarterback class, you know, falling out of
Speaker 9: the first round. I think it's compelling because you guys
Speaker 9: know how it goes first and foremost, like college football
Speaker 9: fans are most rapid and most passionate stand base in
Speaker 9: the United States. I think the other element of that
Speaker 9: is the Deon Sanders of it all. Granted I'm young,
Speaker 9: I'm only twenty eight. I've covered I was covered at
Speaker 9: in my previous job. I come to Colorado UCLA game
Speaker 9: when they were in LA and my assignment was go
Speaker 9: follow around Colorado, go hang around the tailgates, go watch
Speaker 9: the game from the stands on the Colorado side. I've
Speaker 9: been told how massive you know, Deon Sanders, how big
Speaker 9: of a deal he is, And I understand that, but
Speaker 9: I understand it even more having been around these people
Speaker 9: who love and pray, and that's why Shaudor's number gotten fired.
Speaker 9: I don't think it's like a great thing, but I'm
Speaker 9: not surprised. It's their church essentially, people that put on
Speaker 9: their pedestal, and so a compelling element of Shador being
Speaker 9: Deion Sanders kid is why we're so engaged and for
Speaker 9: him to be dropped all the way down to the
Speaker 9: fifth round, I pray, look, and you guys watch college football.
Speaker 9: I don't know if he's worse than Dylan Gabriel. I
Speaker 9: don't think he's a worse quarterback process to some of
Speaker 9: the other guys that went before him. So that gets
Speaker 9: a little funky for me. But as far as him
Speaker 9: falling out of the first round, I wasn't that shocked
Speaker 9: or do you think, like he said, the narratives that
Speaker 9: the media has a run with the negative. The negative
Speaker 9: narratives are what drives content and attention, fortunately, and I
Speaker 9: think that's what happened for sure.
Speaker 2: I wanted to follow up with this, do you think
Speaker 2: his dad did him a bit of a disservice because
Speaker 2: the fact of the matter is Dion Sanders could sandbag
Speaker 2: interviews all he wants, it didn't matter. He was one
Speaker 2: of the best, if not the best cornerbacks in the
Speaker 2: history pro football. And there were moments where Dion said
Speaker 2: things like, we're going to get involved where he plays
Speaker 2: and it might be Eli Manning's situation, and Deon saying
Speaker 2: he's a top five pick, he should be the number
Speaker 2: one pick, and you know, maybe the power of Dion
Speaker 2: Sanders swayed everybody, including Vegas, by the way, did not
Speaker 2: meet just media. Vegas at one point last year had
Speaker 2: Shador as the favorite to be the number one pick.
Speaker 2: Do you think throughout this whole process, Chador may have
Speaker 2: been let down a little bit and done a disservice
Speaker 2: by his dad?
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, I think so. I think it's fair to say,
Speaker 9: like you said for him.
Speaker 5: Let's put it this way.
Speaker 9: If you and I are running an NFL team and
Speaker 9: we have a first round pick, we need a quarterback,
Speaker 9: why would we risk who? Again, he's not no offense,
Speaker 9: not Josh Allen right now, Cam Newton somewhere where he's
Speaker 9: supremely physically gifted. We're gonna bet on the traits you don't.
Speaker 9: Why would I risk, you know, Deon Sanders potentially affecting
Speaker 9: our plan? You know, with a first round pick, it's
Speaker 9: the value is just not worth the risk, and even
Speaker 9: potentially a second round pick or a third round pick,
Speaker 9: because then all of a sudden, the conversation becomes about
Speaker 9: that and that toxicity. If we're being real as opposed
Speaker 9: to what can you provide for our football team? And
Speaker 9: does he fit as opposed to does Daddy like where
Speaker 9: he's going that, and I do believe that that did
Speaker 9: a disservice to him in terms of where he ended
Speaker 9: up being landed.
Speaker 6: And you know, some.
Speaker 9: People have written that both Sor and Deon needed that humbling.
Speaker 9: If the report's about him purposefully not just bombing meeting
Speaker 9: and interviews like purposely being dismissive are true, I guess
Speaker 9: on some level, yeah, he did need this like sort
Speaker 9: of reckoning and humbling on some level. But at the
Speaker 9: same time, you know, I do think that for Shador
Speaker 9: while he you know, I would love to be in
Speaker 9: a hus in the sense that I grew up as
Speaker 9: Theon Sanders kid, but also yeah, with being his kid,
Speaker 9: you probably have to be on the same You're probably
Speaker 9: taught to be super confident and super brash on some level.
Speaker 9: So you know, there's we could go on for like
Speaker 9: two hours about this. It's really fascinating to me and sincerely.
Speaker 8: But.
Speaker 9: Yeah, at the end of the day, I do think
Speaker 9: Dion being a little bit not over confident but brash
Speaker 9: and suggesting that he would be involved in where Shador
Speaker 9: lands did cost him. At the end of the day,
Speaker 9: what you know, upwards of thirty million or whatever it
Speaker 9: was that people have been able to project.
Speaker 2: All Right, before I set you loose, I just looked
Speaker 2: up some details of the upcoming untold the Fall of Farv,
Speaker 2: and this is a perfect This is a perfect topic
Speaker 2: and person, quite frankly, not just player to do a
Speaker 2: documentary on, because it was such a wild ride as
Speaker 2: a player that not a lot of people thought highly
Speaker 2: of when he was a young college player, and ultimately
Speaker 2: becoming one of the most entertaining the players in the
Speaker 2: history of pro football to play quarterback, and then the
Speaker 2: precipitous fault Caitlin that quite frankly.
Speaker 1: Is still going on right in front of us.
Speaker 2: So before I set you loose, what can you tell
Speaker 2: us about the FARV documentary coming out next month?
Speaker 9: Yeah, So from the cut that I've seen to just
Speaker 9: to be fair like I the production house that did
Speaker 9: make it was our one of our associate houses. From
Speaker 9: what I've seen, it definitely centers around Jen Surger, the
Speaker 9: woman who Brett Barre sat the inappropriate text to. He
Speaker 9: used to work for the Jets, and getting her perspectives
Speaker 9: is super fascinating because, like you said, it's it's Brett Fire,
Speaker 9: someone who was one of the most entertaining and quarterbacks
Speaker 9: in football. It's fascinating seeing how someone who didn't have
Speaker 9: power suddenly being in a position where they are elevated.
Speaker 9: Similar to like we were talking about with the Sanders
Speaker 9: in Green Bay, Brett Favre was God essentially and for
Speaker 9: him to you know, have the power that he had
Speaker 9: as a face of the NFL, it's easy to or
Speaker 9: not easy to see, but it's it's fascinating to see
Speaker 9: how he misused that and wasn't maybe not aware, but
Speaker 9: using his power for good. I don't know how to
Speaker 9: articulate that, but it was unfortunate and it is sad because,
Speaker 9: like I said, he was one of the most entertaining
Speaker 9: players ever. I love watching highlights of Brett Farre like
Speaker 9: there's no one who throws a football harder than him.
Speaker 9: But at the end of the day, you know where
Speaker 9: he's at right now and what he's been doing is
Speaker 9: it's super unfortunate and seeing that the sense in real
Speaker 9: time we talked to I think that we talked to
Speaker 9: people involved in the lawsuit, or at least a part
Speaker 9: of the Mississippi state government who do comment on how
Speaker 9: unfortunate and sad it is that you know he's been
Speaker 9: alleged of taking advantage of state funding. So it's a
Speaker 9: really fascinating doc all things considered.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: Next guest joined us last week to break down some
Speaker 2: NFL draft storylines.
Speaker 1: Now is time to look back on what we saw.
Speaker 2: Are Buddy, Sam Bruckhaus from Sumer Sports On a Tuesday, Sam,
Speaker 2: Happy Tuesday, man?
Speaker 1: How are we doing?
Speaker 8: Happy Tuesday? It's a Knicks game day here at seven
Speaker 8: thirty eastern, so we'll be tuned into that, But for now,
Speaker 8: I'm ready to break down some.
Speaker 2: Draft wade a second, Wait a second, are you telling me, Sam,
Speaker 2: you're a Knicks fan?
Speaker 7: I am?
Speaker 6: I live.
Speaker 8: I live on Third Avenue in New York, so I'm
Speaker 8: a big fan of the Knicks.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, Well, this is kind of a weird
Speaker 2: radio situation in Utah where I am the host as
Speaker 2: a Knicks fan and my producer Porter is also a
Speaker 2: Knicks fan.
Speaker 1: Are you? Are you a lifelong New York Knicks fan?
Speaker 6: So?
Speaker 8: I grew up in South Louisiana and I was in
Speaker 8: a zone if you remember all the RSNS, where I
Speaker 8: could catch both Fox Sports Houston and Cox Sports New Orleans.
Speaker 8: So I kind of grew up watching vaguely all the
Speaker 8: Southwestern teams. I grew up between Houston and New Orleans,
Speaker 8: so sometimes I rooted for the Rocket, sometimes I rooted
Speaker 8: for the Spurs. Sometimes I rooted for the Pelicans. But
Speaker 8: when I was in middle school, I started liking the Knicks,
Speaker 8: and then I moved up here to New York. So
Speaker 8: now the Knicks are my chosen basketball team.
Speaker 1: Love it.
Speaker 2: So I can ask you this, are we as Nick fans?
Speaker 2: Are we going to get it done tonight?
Speaker 7: I'm certainly hoping.
Speaker 8: So it seems like we're going to have to have
Speaker 8: another thirty point game from Jalen Brunson in order to
Speaker 8: do so. I was in the house at MSG for
Speaker 8: Game one. I have some real fears about Malik Beasley
Speaker 8: getting hot at any given point in time, and so
Speaker 8: I don't want to jinx it. We may have to
Speaker 8: put Malik Beasley back in the freezer to keep them
Speaker 8: cold for a little longer, or at least for another game.
Speaker 8: But I'm hoping we come out with the next victory.
Speaker 2: Tell me this, Yeah, you know, I spent my childhood
Speaker 2: going into midtown Manhattan to Madison Square Garden to watch
Speaker 2: the next Is there that new York springtime buzz around
Speaker 2: the next can you fill it in the city.
Speaker 8: Oh yes, certainly. They're hosting like watch parties in and
Speaker 8: around Manson Square gardens. So after a home victory, there's
Speaker 8: as always people kind of sprinting in the streets to
Speaker 8: get to MSG to get on the side talk review video,
Speaker 8: which I'm sure they'll put out at the end of
Speaker 8: the series. But there's also people watching. And so I've
Speaker 8: been again, I'm from Louisiana, so I've been in the
Speaker 8: house for Tiger Stadium versus Alabama, the New Orleans Saints
Speaker 8: in the conference championship game against the Rams, and those
Speaker 8: were pretty crazy. The fact that a game one MSG
Speaker 8: game even stands up close to that is pretty impressive.
Speaker 2: I love it well, Sam, now that I know that
Speaker 2: you're a Knicks fan. We could do this for an
Speaker 2: hour and a half, but we will not because we
Speaker 2: let's talk at the NFL Draft, And of course I'm
Speaker 2: going to start with the low hanging fruit and the
Speaker 2: story that everybody's talked about. And you know, we're out
Speaker 2: here in Pac twelve formerly Pac twelve Country, Big twelve Country.
Speaker 2: So we watched Ador Sanders play against the Utes on
Speaker 2: multiple occasions, and you know, watch a lot of his
Speaker 2: college games, and I don't know where you had him analyzed.
Speaker 2: Certainly there is always a big gap between media analyzing
Speaker 2: prospects and then talent evaluators that work for teams, and
Speaker 2: obviously that gap was bigger than most people thought, and
Speaker 2: he slides to the fifth round.
Speaker 1: What do you make of the story?
Speaker 7: So, I mean, just.
Speaker 8: On paper, you can make an argument that he was
Speaker 8: a day one, day two quarterback. I thought that was
Speaker 8: pretty clear. If you look at our sumer scores, we
Speaker 8: have one for accuracy, which on a frame by frame,
Speaker 8: millisecond by millisecond basis, figures out how accurate players are
Speaker 8: as compared to every other play that we have in
Speaker 8: our database. He was by far the most accurate passer
Speaker 8: at all three levels in this draft class. So he
Speaker 8: did have a superpower. Typically when you have a superpower,
Speaker 8: it tends to translate to a higher draft profile. And
Speaker 8: then you look at what the consensus big boards, they
Speaker 8: which have over one hundred and ten media evaluators and
Speaker 8: people that are close to teams if you are to
Speaker 8: read arefa Son's consensus big board for example, and they
Speaker 8: had him as the twenty first best prospect. Typically we
Speaker 8: see that the floor for those type of players is
Speaker 8: picked sixty eight. That was Malik Willis back in the day,
Speaker 8: and Malik Willis was having you know, there was a
Speaker 8: lot of weird COVID stuff going on that year and
Speaker 8: a lot of kind of extinguating factors. Given he was
Speaker 8: coming from Liberty, a G five school, So with all
Speaker 8: that in mind, I thought he was pretty certified to
Speaker 8: be a Day one or early Day two guy. And
Speaker 8: so it brings up into my head that there was
Speaker 8: extinguating circumstances. It seems as if there were some interview
Speaker 8: things that came up. There seems like there was some
Speaker 8: fears potentially about you know, his dad wanting to jump
Speaker 8: into the NFL and whether that could cause like a
Speaker 8: Lebron and Bronnie James situation where people thought Lebron may
Speaker 8: want to go to another team in order to play
Speaker 8: with his son. I think these are very interesting, one
Speaker 8: of one chances to occur things, and we probably won't
Speaker 8: see another drop like Shador standers in recent years.
Speaker 2: Tell me if you believe I've talked to a few
Speaker 2: guests about this over the past couple of days. Do
Speaker 2: you believe that he was done a little bit of
Speaker 2: a disservice by his dad. I mean, Dion talked a
Speaker 2: lot about things, you know, such as we might pull
Speaker 2: on Eli Manning situation, and I'll certainly be involved and
Speaker 2: dictate where he plays. Now he backed off of some
Speaker 2: of those comments, but throughout the course of the process,
Speaker 2: I mean, you hear things like, oh, well, his dad
Speaker 2: sandbag interviews.
Speaker 1: So it's okay.
Speaker 2: If Shador did well, no like Dion was generational, you
Speaker 2: still might be the best cornerback that ever played pro football.
Speaker 2: Do you think throughout this process Chador has done a
Speaker 2: bit of a disservice by his father.
Speaker 8: I don't know if I can parse that out. I
Speaker 8: think it may have come down more to the fact
Speaker 8: that we have eight to nine teams still evaluating quarterbacks
Speaker 8: on their rookie contracts. Again, that's kind of a one
Speaker 8: to one thing as of late. That so basically a
Speaker 8: third of the league is evaluating rookie quarterbacks as we speak,
Speaker 8: and thus not really in the market for a quarterback
Speaker 8: on Day one or day two. When you really break
Speaker 8: it down, the Browns were in the market for a quarterback.
Speaker 8: The Steelers were in the market for the quarterback, and
Speaker 8: the Giants were in the market for a quarterback as well,
Speaker 8: and the Browns and Steelers decided to go different directions. Obviously,
Speaker 8: the Browns end up coming back in the fifth round
Speaker 8: and picking him, so I think it was more of
Speaker 8: the environmental scan and the real really only to service
Speaker 8: his dad could have done to him is putting him
Speaker 8: in a position not to win, given that they were
Speaker 8: contenders for the Big Twelve title this year. I can't
Speaker 8: with any degree of confidence say that Coach Prime did
Speaker 8: anything to.
Speaker 2: Her his son removing Shador from the equation. Give me
Speaker 2: another player that slid quite a bit that surprised you.
Speaker 8: So I got to keep it at the quarterback position.
Speaker 8: I'm surprised that Jalen Milroe made it as far as
Speaker 8: he did. Again, the NFL invited him to go to
Speaker 8: the draft in Green Bay. That indicated to me that
Speaker 8: there were some league sources, and in that case direct
Speaker 8: league sources that thought he was going to go in
Speaker 8: the first round that didn't end up happening. He ends
Speaker 8: up in a perfect situation as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 8: with the Seahawks behind Sam Darnold in a very similar state,
Speaker 8: probably as JJ McCarthy was rehabing injury. In this case,
Speaker 8: Jalen Molroe probably gets to continue playing. I thought teams
Speaker 8: were going to take a shot on him as early
Speaker 8: as the late first round or early second round, given
Speaker 8: that he had some of the highest highs in the draft,
Speaker 8: and then just some other followers. I think more due
Speaker 8: to the structural aspects of the draft. Jalen Walker, I
Speaker 8: was kind of surprised that he made it all the
Speaker 8: way to the Falcons. I thought he could but beee
Speaker 8: a potential top ten pick. But sometimes the draft just
Speaker 8: plays out as it does. Teams don't necessarily bite on
Speaker 8: certain premium positions, or if you're a flex player like
Speaker 8: Jalen walker is, they maybe project you to a different position,
Speaker 8: the off ball linebacking position in their defensive scheme. Thus
Speaker 8: the Falcons get to snap him up.
Speaker 2: What about the biggest reach the player that was off
Speaker 2: the board the uent Wow, that seems way too high
Speaker 2: for that guy.
Speaker 8: So I think when you really analyze it very closely,
Speaker 8: I don't want to call it a reach because I
Speaker 8: know y'all are out there in raid Her territory. But
Speaker 8: I personally, if I were asked to recommend what I
Speaker 8: would do in the first round. I would not recommend
Speaker 8: taking Ashton Genty at pick six. We saw how it
Speaker 8: turned out in New York. There was one kind of
Speaker 8: playoff year that seemed like a fluke where Sakwuon Barkley
Speaker 8: was able to play well in a Giant's uniform and
Speaker 8: then it ends up that he is an MVP candidate
Speaker 8: in someone else's uniform. I think that's typically going to
Speaker 8: how be how we continue to see running backs end
Speaker 8: up in this league, and frankly, that's how it's ended
Speaker 8: up for pretty much everyone that has drafted a first
Speaker 8: round running back. It's going to be very interesting to
Speaker 8: see how the Falcons, the last team to take a
Speaker 8: running back in that position, approach it after this year,
Speaker 8: especially if they don't make the playoffs with John Robinson.
Speaker 8: But I just think it puts you in a very
Speaker 8: stressful situation in which Aston Genty has to be this
Speaker 8: year one of the top five running backs in the league.
Speaker 8: And there's a lot of good running backs in this
Speaker 8: league right now. That's asking a lot of a twenty
Speaker 8: one year old, twenty two year old player.
Speaker 2: Away from just individual prospects and more team related questions.
Speaker 2: Give me some winners, some teams that came away with
Speaker 2: a good draft over the course of the three days.
Speaker 8: So you got to look at the Los Angeles Rams
Speaker 8: and what they did. They got a first round pick
Speaker 8: next year for the twenty sixth pick in the draft.
Speaker 8: That's really we've never really seen that before. Even right
Speaker 8: before it, the Giants, who I think had a pretty
Speaker 8: good draft as well, traded into the twenty fifth pick
Speaker 8: for a lesser price. And now the Rams have two
Speaker 8: first round picks in which they could potentially replace Matthew
Speaker 8: Stafford next year. They were not even close to that
Speaker 8: scenario this year. And a kind of underlying caveat to
Speaker 8: this is we think of the Rams with Sean McVay
Speaker 8: and less Need and Matthew Stafford and Puka Nakua and
Speaker 8: all these good players as a team that is just
Speaker 8: a certified playoff candidate. Every year they're over under win
Speaker 8: total this year is nine and a half. So that
Speaker 8: indicates to me that they looked at themselves realized that
Speaker 8: the market doesn't think we're that great of a team. Obviously,
Speaker 8: we are going to try to overachieve that as much
Speaker 8: as possible for all intentsive purposes. They were one play
Speaker 8: away from the conference championship. But you got to understand,
Speaker 8: you got an aging quarterback, you had a lot of
Speaker 8: injuries last year. You have a very youthful defense that
Speaker 8: hopefully grows another year. But the idea that they were
Speaker 8: able to get a first round pick for as late
Speaker 8: of a pick that they had is quite frankly impressive.
Speaker 8: And then another item. They just came in with the
Speaker 8: plan and they almost always execute it. Here's a weird
Speaker 8: little silver lining that I've been finding about how they
Speaker 8: liked to draft. Most of their defensive linemen are guys
Speaker 8: who transferred up from lower levels the FCS, the G five,
Speaker 8: into a power conference and immediately contributed. I'm talking about
Speaker 8: Braden Fisk, Jared Vers, Kobe Turner, Byron Young. That's four guys.
Speaker 8: They added another one of those guys, Josiah Stewart out
Speaker 8: of Michigan, previously was a coastal Carolina blew the doors
Speaker 8: off of our suomer scores.
Speaker 7: They had him in.
Speaker 8: The middle of the draft. I think between those two moves,
Speaker 8: sticking to their plan, continuing to have a process, that
Speaker 8: is why I like the Rams draft.
Speaker 2: On the other side, a team that left to scratch
Speaker 2: in your head after the draft process.
Speaker 7: I don't know if.
Speaker 8: I'd say scratching my head as much as it was
Speaker 8: just kind of all over the place. And the way
Speaker 8: I described the Cleveland Browns draft is like when you
Speaker 8: go to the Walgreens or you go to the convenience
Speaker 8: store and you really just want a single bag of chips,
Speaker 8: and then you are a single Snickers bar and you
Speaker 8: bring that up and they're like, hey, you could get
Speaker 8: two for one, and you're like, uh, okay, well, I
Speaker 8: guess I'm eating two bags of chips now, and then
Speaker 8: you feel kind of bad afterwards, but at least you've
Speaker 8: got two bags of chips for the price of one.
Speaker 8: That happened twice to the Browns. I think. I think
Speaker 8: they were in a position to select Travis Hunter, and
Speaker 8: the Jaguars just made an offer, as they say and
Speaker 8: the Godfather, that they just simply couldn't refuse. They, very
Speaker 8: similarly to the breakdown that I gave of the Rams,
Speaker 8: were able to get a total another first round pick
Speaker 8: next year for their selection, alongside moving just a few
Speaker 8: picks afterward. I think if they evaluated the situation just
Speaker 8: on its face, Travis Hunter, a two way player, very shiny,
Speaker 8: but at the same time, no player has really done
Speaker 8: a two way thing at the professional level. And then
Speaker 8: you look at all of those snaps he took at Colorado,
Speaker 8: maybe a potential for an injury. He's taken more snaps
Speaker 8: than probably any player in recent draft history. So I
Speaker 8: think you take those two analytics, you trade back. It
Speaker 8: probably has the same inspected value with Mason Graham, who
Speaker 8: also blew the doors off of our Schoomer scores, has
Speaker 8: a little bit more predictable position at the interior defensive tackle,
Speaker 8: but it doesn't have the same taste. They had a
Speaker 8: potential to get the certified number one consens Big Board player,
Speaker 8: and because the offer was too good, they end up
Speaker 8: moving back. Same thing at the quarterback position. They go
Speaker 8: get their guy. Quite a bit of a reach if
Speaker 8: you're just looking at expected draft position on Dylan Gabriel.
Speaker 8: Then all of a sudden, Shador Sanders is still on
Speaker 8: the board. It becomes too good of a value to
Speaker 8: pass up to have those two guys, who I assume
Speaker 8: they thought were two of the better quarterbacks than this
Speaker 8: draft on their team. But it leaves a weird taste
Speaker 8: given they passed him up so many times I think
Speaker 8: that kind of makes you scratch your head. It seems
Speaker 8: like two things where the value the analytics say it
Speaker 8: was the right thing to do, but you know, it
Speaker 8: feels a little weird when you end up executing it.
Speaker 2: Every time Travis Hunter has asked about it, he's very
Speaker 2: front facing about his belief that he should be allowed
Speaker 2: to play on both sides of the ball. Jacksonville hasn't
Speaker 2: been as adamant as far as what their plans are.
Speaker 1: How do you think this plays out?
Speaker 8: I think they're going to use them on offense first,
Speaker 8: Liam Cohen as an offensive player. I don't know if
Speaker 8: that's exactly what I would do, because I think that
Speaker 8: a single offensive snap is maybe a little bit more
Speaker 8: valuable than a defensive snap. So you can put him
Speaker 8: in on key downs, third downs, first down packages and
Speaker 8: still get a lot of value and swap them in
Speaker 8: and out, whereas at the cornerback position he could cut
Speaker 8: off the entirety of the field on any given pass play.
Speaker 8: But from my understanding of what they said in the
Speaker 8: press conference, going to be an offensive player first and
Speaker 8: be a package guy on defense. Don't know if that's
Speaker 8: the way I would approach it, but it makes sense
Speaker 8: in terms of positional value, and I think that's the
Speaker 8: way it's going to end up going. I wouldn't be
Speaker 8: shocked if in three or four years he's just a
Speaker 8: wide receiver.
Speaker 2: Frankly, Jackson Dart grew up about fifteen miles north of
Speaker 2: where we're talking today, but played his high school football
Speaker 2: about fifteen miles south at Corner Canyon, and they've had
Speaker 2: Kwie Iron developing quarterbacks. Of course, he ends up QB
Speaker 2: two and the Giants trade back in to take Jackson Dart.
Speaker 1: How do you think this is going to work?
Speaker 8: It's an interesting, you know, play out. I think that
Speaker 8: the Jalen Hurts comp or at least the Jalen Hurts
Speaker 8: play style makes sense. He does like to go after
Speaker 8: his first read and then scramble, very similar to Jalen Hurts.
Speaker 8: He was very accurate at the short and intermediate levels
Speaker 8: this year, even though the deep passes were not super accurate,
Speaker 8: which is what I think separated him from guys like
Speaker 8: Cameron Ward or like Sanders, for example. But he kind
Speaker 8: of takes a lot of sacks, so it's going to
Speaker 8: be interesting to see how they bring him along. I
Speaker 8: think the pick and the value in which they got
Speaker 8: the twenty fifth pick was fine, and I think the
Speaker 8: way that they approached the rest of the draft made
Speaker 8: a lot of sense. I think the Giants end up
Speaker 8: coming out process wise as one of the bigger winners
Speaker 8: of this draft season. Given they got their guy at quarterback.
Speaker 8: It was quite a bit of a reach in terms
Speaker 8: of the consensus big board, in terms of how people
Speaker 8: projected this player to be long term, in terms of
Speaker 8: the expected draft position, where people thought Jackson Dart was
Speaker 8: going to go, and where you would have to get
Speaker 8: in order to select him. It really wasn't a reach
Speaker 8: at all. All together, I think I'm not going to
Speaker 8: criticize the quarterback selection, particularly when it's a guy who
Speaker 8: has such a good relationship with the head coach and
Speaker 8: the offensive coordinator. So all together, I think it's all right.
Speaker 8: I think it's going to be good for Giants fans,
Speaker 8: and I think, frankly for the Giants all together. The
Speaker 8: fact that you have Wilson, Jameis Winston, and Jackson Dart
Speaker 8: all under the roof, you probably are in at least
Speaker 8: safe hands to do better than last year per se
Speaker 8: and actually get the ball of the elite neighbors quite
Speaker 8: a few times this year.
Speaker 2: I will take an opportunity selfishly, as a lifelong suffering
Speaker 2: fan of the New York Football Jets, to ask you,
Speaker 2: how do you think my squad did?
Speaker 6: Look?
Speaker 8: I liked it pretty down Broadway, which is what they needed.
Speaker 8: They got a tackle at the right position early on.
Speaker 8: That's what they needed. I thought that they were going
Speaker 8: to want to run the ball. Darren Mugi, their general manager,
Speaker 8: comes for the Broncos, built on a strong offensive line.
Speaker 8: Aaron Glynn from the Lions also built on a strong
Speaker 8: offensive line. Then they just made good picks at good positions.
Speaker 8: As we moved on. Tight end Mason Taylor good value
Speaker 8: at the selection, was a very productive guy at LSU
Speaker 8: as a Riah Thomas, the cornerback from Florida State, kind
Speaker 8: of benefited the Jets kind of benefited from a swing down.
Speaker 8: Florida State had a year, a night marish year. Given
Speaker 8: that those two guys I mentioned earlier, Jared Verse and
Speaker 8: Braden Fist, ended up being two of the better defensive
Speaker 8: linemen in the NFL much less college football this year,
Speaker 8: they take a downturn. I think that was a good
Speaker 8: selection altogether. I like what the Jets did pretty down Broadway.
Speaker 8: Pretty I'm not gonna call it safe, because the draft
Speaker 8: is never safe, but it seems as if they made
Speaker 8: good selections at good prices at positions that matter.
Speaker 2: A couple of minutes left, Sam before set you loose,
Speaker 2: so I'll take advantage of the space to ask you
Speaker 2: about teams that are highly supported here locally. John Lynch
Speaker 2: used his first five picks on defensive players. What do
Speaker 2: you think of what the forty nine ers came away with?
Speaker 8: I think the forty nine ers have their own separate
Speaker 8: approach to these things. Typically they will just go ahead
Speaker 8: and reach and get their guys, which is fine, It's
Speaker 8: worked out for them, Okay, Just analytically, maybe not the
Speaker 8: best process, and you put yourself kind of behind the
Speaker 8: eight ball on having to hit on these players. Here's
Speaker 8: a player I want to highlight up in Stout out
Speaker 8: of Western Kentucky. He was quite a bit of a reach,
Speaker 8: but then I went and looked at his summer scores
Speaker 8: and he was excellent blue chip at limiting separation from
Speaker 8: wide receivers, at covering these guys both in man and
Speaker 8: zone and press covered. I think the reason why he
Speaker 8: was not a highly touted prospect was because Number one,
Speaker 8: he's out of Western Kentucky. Number two, he is pretty
Speaker 8: diminutive in size. I'm talking five to seven, five to eight.
Speaker 8: I think he is my favorite prospect from their draft.
Speaker 2: Denver Bronco seven picks and the only ute selected was
Speaker 2: Caleb Lohner, who really danned a name for himself as
Speaker 2: a high quality basketball player.
Speaker 1: Around here. We have a lot of Broncos fans here
Speaker 1: in Salt Lake City. How do you think Denver did so?
Speaker 8: I think they did a pretty good job. You know,
Speaker 8: you look at what they want to do all the time,
Speaker 8: and it is attack, attack on defense with Vance Joseph
Speaker 8: and then build up an established balance offensive passing game
Speaker 8: for Sean Payton.
Speaker 6: John A.
Speaker 8: Barren really loved the selet I think this was a
Speaker 8: guy they probably had high on their board. Did they
Speaker 8: maybe want to go with another position perhaps, but he
Speaker 8: just fell and they snagged him up. That's going to
Speaker 8: be a nasty defense with Riley Moss, Whu Funga the safety,
Speaker 8: Patzertan the defensive player of the year, and now jo
Speaker 8: Da Barron slotting in at the slot corner. I'm going
Speaker 8: to be really interested to see how he mixes in
Speaker 8: another guy, Pat Bryant, the wide receiver round three. They
Speaker 8: really had to need at wide receiver. I wouldn't be
Speaker 8: surprised if this guy was another guy they were a
Speaker 8: little higher on than most teams. He popped up really
Speaker 8: well in our sumer scores in terms of getting open
Speaker 8: and after the catch. I really liked that selection. And
Speaker 8: then you mentioned Caleb Lohner as well, seventh round pick.
Speaker 8: I think it's going to be interesting to see how
Speaker 8: he can slot in at the tight end position, given
Speaker 8: that Sean Payton over the years with the Saints was
Speaker 8: able to find value late in the draft at the
Speaker 8: tight end position.
Speaker 2: Last one, I know you touched on the disagreement you
Speaker 2: had with the Raiders.
Speaker 1: You know when it comes to a perceived reach.
Speaker 2: But Dad eleven overall pin and by proximity, that's the
Speaker 2: closest team dous Sharon saw Lake macro thirty thousand foot view.
Speaker 1: How do you think the Raiders did so?
Speaker 8: Again, Mike, it's tough. Was Ashton gent one of the
Speaker 8: most nflready looking players. Yes, so as a result, good
Speaker 8: pick for them. Everyone thought that he was going to
Speaker 8: go around there. It's just tough from an analytical perspective
Speaker 8: to draft a running back guy. I want to highlight
Speaker 8: Jack besh out of Louisiana. He's an excellent wide receiver,
Speaker 8: really showed out at the Senior Bowl. I'm going to
Speaker 8: be interested in how they use him in particular, but
Speaker 8: just kind of down the line, a lot of needs addressed.
Speaker 8: As you said, eleven picks made a guy. I want
Speaker 8: to highlight Round six, pick four, JJ Pegeese. I'm really
Speaker 8: interested to see how Chip Kelly utilizes him because here's
Speaker 8: a guy who was really recruited as a tight end
Speaker 8: ends up becoming an impact performer at defensive tackle. I
Speaker 8: wouldn't be surprised if he plays a little both ways.
Speaker 1: Ball Sam, Where can people go find your work?
Speaker 5: Bud?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Go check out our new documentary on YouTube. It's called
Speaker 8: From Undrafted to Unforgettable. It's about Jonathan Cassius, a linebacker
Speaker 8: NFL multi time Super Bowl winner. I went into New Jersey,
Speaker 8: his hometown, interviewed him and if you're a football fan,
Speaker 8: you're gonna love his story coming out of New Brunswick,
Speaker 8: New Jersey, overcoming injury at Wisconsin, becoming a core special
Speaker 8: teams player, and then becoming a starter for the Saints,
Speaker 8: the Patriots, and the Giants. Go check that out YouTube
Speaker 8: sun Mersumer sports dot com.
Speaker 1: Thank you, my friend, having good week and we'll do
Speaker 1: it again soon.
Speaker 7: Thank you all so much.
Speaker 1: Bye bye, all right.
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Speaker 2: All right, final segment of the show Today, fun Tuesday
Speaker 2: show with a lot going on. It's a busy night
Speaker 2: in both the world of pro hockey and pro basketball,
Speaker 2: with a lot of Stanley Cup action and NBA playoffs
Speaker 2: as well, So enjoy that.
Speaker 1: Tonight.
Speaker 2: I will be on TV with Dave Fox, who has
Speaker 2: two Pelotons and two Emmys, wasn't on the show today, which,
Speaker 2: you know whatever, I thought that was kind of the deal.
Speaker 1: We'll see you even get him on this week.
Speaker 2: But ten thirty five KMYU, we call it five questions
Speaker 2: with Spence. What was that Prima Donna's excuse for not
Speaker 2: coming over to do.
Speaker 1: The show today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, apparently he's got a meeting. Yeah, give me a break,
Speaker 3: a station meeting that. I'm sure that they need Dave
Speaker 3: Fox for the decision making, the planning, the producing.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he's got a bunch of.
Speaker 2: I'm quite sure that they did not need Dave at
Speaker 2: the meeting at all, but I will be on TV
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Speaker 1: All right, Porter, you're somewhat.
Speaker 2: Of a nature expert, right, I mean that's kind of
Speaker 2: in your wheelhouse. You like hiking, you like birds, you
Speaker 2: like things that are concerned with nature. Yeah, and animals
Speaker 2: and such, yes and such. Why am I continuing to
Speaker 2: see a debate about one hundred men versus one gorilla
Speaker 2: in a fight?
Speaker 1: I don't know what am I missing?
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Where that's where that's coming from, but I have seen
Speaker 3: the same thing.
Speaker 2: Do you have a hot take? Do you know who
Speaker 2: would win in this? And it seems like one hundred
Speaker 2: men should be able to handle one gorilla.
Speaker 3: One hundred is a lot and seems kind of unfair.
Speaker 3: And you're right, you should be able to like a
Speaker 3: a full grown silver backed gorilla, whether a mountain or
Speaker 3: a lowland gorilla.
Speaker 1: Let's be clear, there are two different two different species.
Speaker 3: Both of them are like at least ten fifteen times
Speaker 3: stronger than an average man, they got big old K
Speaker 3: nine teeth. But one hundred men, I think you, I
Speaker 3: think you have to first off, which hundred men. Is
Speaker 3: it one hundred men that are like Sean O'Connell's black belts,
Speaker 3: or is it a hundred men that are going to
Speaker 3: be at the whatever that thing is at the Maverick
Speaker 3: Center in a few weeks.
Speaker 2: Oh the alpha chodes or is it a different thing.
Speaker 2: If it's a hundred of those guys, the gorillas have
Speaker 2: a no issue. But if it's one hundred Schan O'Connell's,
Speaker 2: I'm taking oc. So it's it's a hard debate, I guess,
Speaker 2: According to Tara Steinski, who's the President's CEO and Chief
Speaker 2: Scientific Officer for the Dion Fosse Gorilla Fund, because of course,
Speaker 2: she says, a gorilla would come to the fight posting
Speaker 2: more physical strength, much stronger jaw muscles, and thick skin
Speaker 2: that is tough to penetrate. Male gorilla is known as silverbacks,
Speaker 2: can weigh more than four hundred pounds, and says they
Speaker 2: are estimated to be about four to ten times as
Speaker 2: strong as humans. She goes on to say it's an
Speaker 2: issue of sheer numbers and not all the one hundred
Speaker 2: men would walk away alive, but ultimately they should be
Speaker 2: able to handle it.
Speaker 3: There you go, That's exactly what I yeah, what I
Speaker 3: would expect. But yeah, depends on the men there are.
Speaker 3: There are a collection of one hundred men that I
Speaker 3: bet that Gorilla could beat.
Speaker 2: All Right, weird online debates, you people, and they didn't
Speaker 2: need to get a hobby. All right, fun night tonight
Speaker 2: in the NBA and in the NHL, So enjoy some
Speaker 2: playoff action porter what comes our way on a Wednesday
Speaker 2: edition of the show.
Speaker 3: On a Wednesday edition of The Drive, Spence will continue
Speaker 3: the NBA playoff action discussion. Tony Jones stops by the program,
Speaker 3: Chris com Ronnie stops by. Actually on a Wednesday this week,
Speaker 3: we'll have c K and Studio for an entire hour,
Speaker 3: Trevor Sikhima to continue the NFL Draft coverage and reaction,
Speaker 3: and then oh yeah, it's Dave Fox all right on
Speaker 3: a Wednesday.
Speaker 2: Well we'll see about that because he ditched us today.
Speaker 2: But I will be on TV. You know what, maybe
Speaker 2: I won't go do my TV here with Dave tonight
Speaker 2: if he's don't show up. Yeah, if he's going to
Speaker 2: do it, to us. Maybe maybe I'll do it to them.
Speaker 1: Text him right before the show. I should let him
Speaker 1: know you're not going to be there.
Speaker 2: I should, but just in case, tune in to cam
Speaker 2: Yu at ten thirty five to check it out. It's
Speaker 2: called Five Questions with Spence and with that Wheel Saga
Speaker 2: Night Special. Thank you today to Kyle Bonnegert, to Tim McMahon,
Speaker 2: Kaylin Jones, and Sam Bruckhaus for any of the sound
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Speaker 2: I'm Spence saying to night and enjoy Tuesday evening. Talk
Speaker 2: to you on a Wednesday drive as always, cann catch
Speaker 2: out right here on ESPN seven hundred