Transcript links use the exact YouTube video’s clock. Machine transcripts can contain errors.
Episode notes & curated moments 8 recordsmoment
Jay Griz's theme-song debut hijacks Mike's sick-day fill-in
With Mike sick, cardboard Jay Griz occupies the third host seat beside Andy and Jason. An off-camera producer unmutes Jay's mic mid-Mike joke, making the hosts think something broke and launching a song-and-camera package so ill-timed that Jay is threatened with replacement by a cardboard octopus. The operator is identified as Al; the hosts compare the cue to a manhole cover and the J.D. McKissick drop, explain that a verbal mistake or silence would be the correct moment, review two later growls, accuse Jay of trying to become the star, and lament that Jay's close-up hid their shocked faces.
moment
Mike's impervious tattoos surrender his chair
Absent Mike had become big-headed after avoiding an earlier household COVID case, declared himself impervious, and argued that tattoos made him too tough to get sick. His actual illness leaves the hosts free to resume the fundamental show activity of mocking him, with a planned forehead joke described as a large runway that Al's interruption misses.
moment
Kurt Warner is Jason's interview Everest
Andy says no human on the planet matters more for Jason to interview than Kurt Warner, whom Jason admires as a man, player, local hero, and near-father figure. Jason calls the booking his peak and Everest; Andy and Jason recall the January 18, 2009 NFC championship game as their greatest sports memory, note Mike attended too, and describe Warner as bringing long-suffering Cardinals fans redemption and a moment in the sun.
moment
Production prints a one-free-Andy-agreement Golden Ticket
A rare host agreement inspires a coupon that can force Andy to agree during one later argument. The request goes to the Deucers as a real note, is immediately called the Golden Ticket, and returns within minutes as a formal camera-ready card reading one free Andy Holloway agreement. Jason is told he gets only one, jokes about a photocopier, and promises to save it for the right bad argument later in the season.
moment
Kenneth Charbonnet resolves into Ken Bone Walker the Third
While discussing rookie threats to veterans, a host accidentally merges Kenneth Walker and Zach Charbonnet into Kenneth Charbonnet. The desk stops, confirms the collision, receives an apology to Zach, and returns to the established player identity by calling him Ken Bone Walker the Third.
moment
Jason gives the Santonio toe another 10 to 15 years
The hosts begin their dream Kurt Warner interview by seeking unanimous agreement that Santonio Holmes did not get both feet down. Warner praises the impossible throw and effort without settling the toe question; Jason insists he knows the truth, says Holmes did not complete the catch, and estimates he remains another 10 to 15 years from acceptance.
moment
Kurt Warner's fantasy love-hate purity test
Warner calls his relationship with fantasy football love-hate: it grows the NFL and player fandom, but fantasy rooting can replace pure appreciation and conflict with loyalty to a favorite team. A host answers with his Cardinals season-ticket dilemma—wanting Arizona to win while also hoping opposing fantasy player Marshawn could score a few times—and the show later invites Warner back to compete with trash-talking Rich Eisen.
summary
Episode notes
Andy and Jason host while Mike remains down with the sickness after pridefully claiming tattoos and repeated escapes made him impervious. Jay Griz takes the open seat as the third desk presence. An off-camera producer unmutes Jay's mic in the middle of a developing Mike joke, launching a Jay Griz song and solo-camera package so unexpectedly that the hosts think something broke. Jay is warned that other cardboard animals exist and that a cardboard octopus could replace him. The operator is later identified as Al, whose timing misses the runway just as the hosts are about to use Mike's forehead as material. The song is admitted to be good but compared to a manhole cover hitting the face and to the J.D. McKissick drop; its repeated growls are judged to have a vibe, but Jay is accused of trying to become the star. On YouTube, the cue gives Jay the close-up instead of preserving Andy and Jason's confused reactions, which they want recovered from other cameras for social media. Separately, an agreement coupon promised during a rare Andy–Jason consensus is built by production within minutes as a formal Golden Ticket for one free Andy Holloway agreement. Jason's special guest, Kurt Warner, is described as his personal interview Everest and the source of the greatest sports memory of his life: the January 18, 2009 NFC title game attended by Andy, Jason, and Mike as long-suffering Cardinals fans. The interview opens with the hosts demanding agreement that Santonio Holmes did not get both feet down; Jason says he remains another 10 to 15 years from acceptance. Warner describes fantasy football as love-hate because it grows the sport but can displace pure appreciation and team fandom, prompting the hosts to recall hoping their fantasy player could score against Arizona only within a Cardinals win. The episode also returns to Gus Bus and Ken Bone Walker, while Matthew Betz is credited with annually updated injury-recovery research.
We do try to focus on the entertaining aspects and the way it accents the NFL game, even though we know how those realities can meet sometimes. Oh, yeah, even personally, when I was a season ticket holder and going to the games, it's like I hated when I had someone playing against the Cardinals because it was like, oh, I want to win, but let's go Marshawn. Yeah, it was like, let's win by enough to where Marchion can score a couple times. Yeah. Right. Right. We've been doing, today's show's been all about overreactions to some of the things that happened with the news and the offseason. We just had the NFL draft, which was spectacular. And we had 12 quarterbacks go, or sorry, six quarterbacks go in the top 12 picks. So, you know, historically, rookie quarterbacks from a fantasy perspective, it's hard to trust them in year one.
There are growing pains. It seems like five of the six are going to have opportunities in year one, the one that likely on the bench, Michael Pinnock's waiting on Kirk Cousins' time in Atlanta. But we've also seen players like C.J. Stroud, Justin Herbert in years past, have very big statistical seasons right out of the gate. So when you look at that crop of incoming rookies, I'm just curious if you think. the trend of young rookies having more of an impact is going to continue, and is that a product of the way the game is played now? What do you think about that situation? Yeah, I mean, you know, I think there is two ways to look at it, is that, you know, the nature of our game now, you're usually not that far away from success. You know, you look at Houston, you know, there's a team that's picking number two overall, and so oftentimes you see number two overall.
teams and you say, oh gosh, they're a long ways from having success and they're a long way from their quarterback being able to have success. That's not necessarily the case anymore, is that, you know, you can be one year away with free agency and the parody in our league from being really, really successful. You know, I think Caleb Williams is in a great situation as well. They go out and get a bunch of weapons around him, giving him an opportunity to put up some numbers. You know, whether their team wins or not, obviously fantasy football isn't all. you know, based on that. So, you know, you've got some teams that have and some young quarterbacks that have some really good weapons and players around them. And the nature of the league says, okay, if you've got players around you, you're going to have a level of success. It's just a matter of what level is that. And, you know, I think that's the hard thing to always project for many of these guys is I always say, all these guys have to get better in the NFL if they're going to be great quarterbacks. None of them can stay who they were in college.
But I do think we've got some situations that lend itself to, you know, some of these young quarterbacks having the opportunity to have, you know, a successful year by, you know, fantasy standards, putting up numbers because of some of the playmakers around them. Yeah, I mean, we talked earlier about J.J. McCarthy's situation in Minnesota. You come into, you know, a very productive season from a rookie in Jordan Addison last year. You've got Justin Jefferson, obviously. a play caller that I think is very trusted. You know, out of those, maybe take Caleb Williams out of the list, but those other five names, did you have a player there that what you saw in film really impressed you and gave you the impression that they could have early success? Well, I mean, I think there's things to like about all of these guys. And, you know, so much of it is fit situation, you know, are they going to ask you to play the game the way that you can play the game?
But, I mean, if you just watched the tape from a year ago in college football, I mean, Jaden Daniels was spectacular. I mean, he was phenomenal. He was the best player, even above Caleb, in my opinion, in terms of, you know, on the field last season, he played the best quarterback of anybody. Again, I don't know how that directly translates because he's going to have to be better. But with what I saw and the way he made throws and the decisions that he made and the fact that he's a pocket passer, and I think they've got some really good weapons.
in Washington, that I think he's got a chance to have success without a doubt. You know, J.J. McCarthy, you mentioned him earlier. I mean, you know, you had T.J. Hawkinson. You had, you know, Aaron Jones, two guys that can make the game easier for a quarterback with short throws, kind of work in the underneath areas, along with arguably the best, you know, wide receiver in the league. And a rookie, as you said, that Jody could be a number one when Justin was out last year. I love the weapons around them. Plus, you know, four guys in their offensive line are number one picks, you know, our first round picks. And so, you know, you look at the guys up front and you say, okay, they got a pretty good mix up front too that can help their young quarterback. Now I'll say this, you know, of all the quarterbacks that we're talking about, you know, he's the guy that is, you know, less established, I guess you'll say, in terms of showing what he can be on an every week basis, showing that he can carry a team, showing that he can.
make 35 throws a game and be really successful with it. We didn't get to see that in college. But I do think the supporting cast in Minnesota lends itself to say if he becomes the starter, he's got an opportunity to put up some really, really good numbers because he's got pieces at every level in every area to allow you to complement one another and allow you to have success. Let me ask the opposite. So we didn't see a lot of J.J. McCarthy don't have a ton of film. We saw 752 collegiate games from Bo Nix. We have 22 years of him playing college football. I'm really curious because this is the player that from pre-draft to after round one, I kind of went back and watched the tape, and I'm trying to look at how he fits in the system there for Peyton and all of that. And I have not actually seen your take on Bo Nix. I'm sure you've said it a million times. But I'm curious from your perspective, right? This is a guy who's...
about preparation and timing and, you know, the on-time accuracy, which reminds me a lot of, like, how you were as a player. And most of the people that I've seen are like second round grades on Bo Nix. Obviously, that wasn't Sean Payton's, but what was Kurt Warner's? What was your pre-draft grade on just the player in the film that you saw? Did that change at all with the landing spot going 12 to Sean Payton? Yeah, I think all of these guys, the top six guys have a lot of positives about them, and all of them have some questions that you have going into the NFL. And so, you know, Bo Nix was no different, that there was a lot of positives. I looked at the Bo Nix tape and said, if there's one quarterback that was asked to do more of what you're going to be asked to do at the NFL level than any of the other guys, it was Bo Nix. They asked him to see the field. They asked him to see more combinations.
They asked him to get the ball out on time to go through reads. It wasn't a lot of this pure progression stuff. And so from that standpoint, I think he showed us that of all of these guys, you know, when you're talking about asking him to make NFL-type reads, you know, play in and play out, his offense was the most NFL-like of all of these guys. And so to me, it goes, okay, that means he's probably going to have a chance at the NFL level. You coupled him with... you know, with Sean Payton, and you say, well, that's exactly what they did with Drew Breeze. Drew Breeze was an accurate quarterback, get the ball out of his hands, wasn't asked to wing the ball down the field every snap, but get the ball out and get it to the right guy, and they're going to ask him to do a lot if they go back to playing that brand of football. So I think it's a really, really good fit. The one thing you see with Bo Nix is that he didn't push the ball down the field a whole bunch. And again,
This is always an interesting tag, and I was tweeting about it the other day, is we throw around the term arm strength all the time. I saw, I saw you talk about that. What does arm strength mean? Like, what are we talking about? You know, you hear these guys say, oh, you don't need arm strength. And then the other guys, oh, my gosh, does he have enough arm? And I'm like, what do you mean? Like, what, what is it? What's the definition of arm strength? Because all of these guys can throw it probably farther than I ever could, right? So they can make all the throws that you're going to ask him to make.
against air? Can they throw an 18-yard comeback? Can they throw a 20-yard dig? Yeah, all of these guys can do it. For me, arm strength comes down to when things aren't perfect around you, when the pocket isn't perfect and you can't step into it and drive your throws, now I want to know can you make the second-level throws. Can you make those chunk throws, 15 to 35 yards when you're off platform, when you got a guy in your face. That to me, and again, I don't even like to use arm strength because I think most times in those situations, it's more about creating power with your body and understanding how to do that than it is to have a really strong arm, meaning I can just, if I was just winging it with my arm, I can throw it farther than other guys. And so, you know, I'm going to liken Bowenicks based on what I've seen in college to a guy like Daniel Jones. Daniel Jones, to me, was a really good college player that he did a lot. They asked him to do a lot.
You know, he made a lot of plays. But the question I had coming out with him was arm strength. And again, you watch Daniel throw and he's going to throw it farther than I could ever throw it and he could throw the balls down. That's not the problem is when things aren't right around him, can he make those kinds of throws? And that's something that he struggled with in the NFL. He has struggled to be able to do that. Doesn't have any problem when the pocket is perfect. which it hasn't been very often for Daniel Jones. But when it is, he can step in and drive and throws. And Bo Nix is no different. But that's my question with Bo Nix. Like you can turn on the tape and see him make NFL-type throws. But I haven't seen him make a lot of those throws when things are falling around part around it, you know, when he's got that pressure on him. And now he's got to create that power, you know, without being able to drive through with his feet or lead or get momentum going in that direction.
So that's my question for him. And when I talk about arm strength, that's what I mean is the ability to create a pace on the football when things aren't perfect. Because in the NFL, very seldom are they perfect? You don't live in that perfect world. And that's the question for me he's going to have to answer. And I'm not sitting here saying he can't do it. I'm just saying I didn't get to see it enough where I'm fully confident that he can be that guy. You know, and so that's the big question for me with Bo Nix, but I like the situation that he's going into. If they're going to play more, you know, I'll say Drew Breeze-esque asking him to see the field and deal the football, I think he's got a chance to be very, very successful. I mean, most accurate quarterback of these guys last year. So he's got a lot of really good tools, but he's going to have to be able to do what I just talked about to be able to elevate himself to become one of the really, really good quarterbacks at the NFL level.
Yeah, a lot of really good thoughts there. And I did see that tweet when you were talking about arm strength. I also saw you talking about some of the mental aspects of the game, being able to read defenses. It's funny because we go through the combine process, right? And we see running backs without pads, running straight lines, right, and evaluate that speed. And that kind of seems like a parallel to, okay, we watch Zach Wilson throw one really nice deep ball with no one rushing at him on video. And he's going to be, you know. A superstar. So do you think there are some blind spots there in quarterback evaluation that are simply blind spots because we don't have the ability to quantify them, you know, go and measure them, but they're intangibles? Without a doubt. You know, another part of that, you know, tweet exchange that I had is just the idea that we fall in love with this idea that you can't teach speed. You can't teach arm strength. You can't teach.
body size. I get it. I understand the point and there's validity to the point. But I'm also a firm believer that just as hard as it is to teach those things, it's that hard to teach a quarterback to process at the NFL level so you have to think fast and react properly and be able to see and get the ball out of your hands in a positive manner and make those throws that you have to make. That's just as difficult as teaching a guy to run faster. Right? And so I think we lose sight of that when you talk about blind spots. I think that's a blind spot is that we think, oh, I can teach him to process. I can't teach him to throw at 70 yards where I'm completely the opposite. Like if my guy can process and he can only throw at 55 yards, I can work with that. You can run an offense that way. If he can get it out on time and, you know, and he can have anticipation, if you only can throw up 45 yards, that's all you need. Yeah.
Very seldom in a game, do you see guys throwing it farther than that anyways? And so I think that's the lost part of it. And I think it's lost because we don't have a way to evaluate it. Like, I don't know if a guy can process at the NFL level until he shows me he can process at the NFL level. I can give him any test I want to give him. Oh, I'm going to have him hit, you know, lights on a wall. Right, right. He hits it faster than everybody else. Or I'm going to ask him to remember this play for 10 minutes while I talk to him about something else.
Now he can regurgitate what I just told him, put it on a board. I don't care. Like, none of that has anything to do with, you know, can he run this play and run it effectively and have all the answers and think fast and all of that. I've seen lots of guys that can take, you know, three minutes on a play on a board and give me every detail that I need to know about that play on the board. To the point where you're just like, wow, this guy knows it all. Yet it takes him six seconds to process that three minutes on a football team.
Yeah, C.J. Stroud did really. I got to do it in four seconds. Really bad on his S2. Yeah. Who's that? I was just saying C.J. Stroud last year, you know, he failed that S2 test, you know, people worried about can he process. I don't even know what, yeah, I don't even know what that S2 really entails. But, but yeah, I mean, I got people talking to me all the time is like, okay, you know, I'm going to do this. I even had, you know, a quarterback coach reach out to me today. And he goes, what do you think about in between plays?
You know, if I give my guys trivia or if I ask him to do a crossword or I've seen people go, we're going to make them play chess in between throwing a route. So they have to think. And I just sit back and go, what does that have to do with anything? Like, I don't know what that has to do with anything. Like in a game, I don't really care if he's thinking about chess in between plays. I didn't want to think about the play that I'm giving him. Like, can you run the play that I'm giving you? And I think C.J. Stroud is a great example of that where, yeah, we did this test and we're like, let me play.
Get plays football. You knew it in about 10 minutes, right? He sees it. He's got great technique. He gets the ball out quick. And, you know, the funny thing about CJ and I talk about all the time and I get people from Ohio State fans that argue with me. But when I watched CJ Stroud on film in college, I thought it was a good player, like really good player, had a chance to be really good in the NFL. I did not see him play football the way that he did last year with Houston. They weren't asking them to do the same things. They played a short to mid-redge game last year, getting the ball out of his hands, seeing it, you know, quick release. I didn't see that at Ohio State. Didn't mean he wasn't a good quarterback. I just didn't see everything that C.J. Stroud was. And that's another aspect of this, is that some guys don't get a chance to beat all that they can be at the college level. And, you know, J.J. McCarthy could be an example of this. He didn't have to do all of that. We didn't ask him to do those things. I got it.
I don't know if he can because you didn't ask him to. But maybe he's just a sleeping giant where it's like, I can do all that. I just didn't get asked to do it. And CJ showed us that last year as he played at such a high, I thought he was a top five quarterback in the NFL last year. And I did not see that on tape. I did not see him being able to do that the way that he did and as quickly as he did. And he's a great example of we don't know. We don't know until you're asking somebody to do it, whether they're capable of doing it.
the way they need to. And, you know, that falls into all of these questions. Caleb, you could go back to Caleb. He's got the best body work of all these guys. When you look at the two and a half years that he's got, you've seen him do everything. But last year, he lived being creative. I need to see him processed in the pocket. I saw a Chicago Bears quarterback for two years that lived being creative. He was a great athlete. He made a lot of plays, but he didn't play on schedule in the pocket. And so he was very inefficient and they didn't win games because of it. Caleb is going to have to be more efficient in the pocket than he was last year. Seeing him do it at times, can he live in that world? I don't know. And so there's questions with all of these guys that I can't answer for you. You know, I would have a better idea if I could sit down in a room and go through tape and ask him these questions. And I didn't get a chance to do that. Obviously the teams get a chance to do that. But even with all of that said,
you can sound really, really good in a room, right? There's guys in this league that are really, really impressive in a room that, you know, take the Wonderlich test and get 36es on the Wonderlich test. And there's guys like me, I don't know what I got, but I didn't do very well. And, you know, but I can process information. You give me a play. And that's the other thing is like, they'll take it into a room and they'll give you a play and then they'll talk to you about your family. And then they come back to the play 10 minutes later. And I've always asked, like, what does that do for me?
If you're not, you're going to give me a play on Monday and I've got to run it on Sunday. I'm going to go over that play a million times. So by Sunday, I'm ready. Like, you're not going to give me a play and then say, oh, forget about it. Oh, come back to 10 minutes and go run it. Like, we're just trying to fool ourselves, I think sometimes by trying to come up with this thing. Well, man, he could regurgitate this. Just trying to measure what that means. Trying to measure something. Yeah. I want my guy to take as much time as he needs throughout the week. So he's ready to run it on Sunday.
I'm not going to try to hold the back from him and see if he can run it on the spot. And so, you know, that stuff to me is where there's so much disconnect and so many blind spots and so many things that we don't know until we know. And it's why the quarterback position is a crapshoot every year. It's 50-50 with first round picks. And then, you know, the other aspect, too, and I'm just going to go back to Chicago is sometimes these guys are thrown in before they're ready. And so Justin Fields was thrown in and asked to be a starter in the NFL before he was ready.
And when you do that, not only was he not ready, but the team wasn't ready. And so over the last four years, he struggled to really grow and get better at being a pocket passer because they threw him the ball and said, go be competitive. We don't have the piece around you. You're not really ready. Take the ball and go be competitive. So what are you going to do? You're going to go out there and do what you've always done. And I'm going to run around and try to make plays and make as many plays as I can. And now after this many years, it's like, hey,
We've got to let him go because he hasn't shown us he can be that guy. Well, you know, we forced him almost to be a different kind of guy. And he did the best that he could do. But it's unfortunate for him that he didn't get a chance to grow. And that becomes the other aspect is how many of these guys are going to be thrown in too early and not be able to grow into what they could become, right? Some guys, Andrew Luck, it didn't matter. We can throw him in early. He's got all the pieces. he'll continue to grow while we struggle or as we've worked through this not everybody is like that some guys get crushed some guys you know need more time you know to really focus in on what they need to get better at and they get thrown in in two or three years we're not convinced and boom we're on to the next guy and so that becomes another element you know you think about a drake may what's his makeup you know can he go into a team that doesn't have a lot of weapons around him and be successful and be able to work through that
and get better at the things he needs to get better at or is it going to be here's the ball drake yeah you don't have a lot of help just go see what you can do and now he gets lost trying to be this playmaker instead of learning and growing in the game you know let's say like a jordan love right jordan love probably wasn't ready to be a full-time starter but he got a chance to grow into the position sitting on the bench for a couple years and we all saw what he was able to do and how he got better and how he was ready for the moment
because he was able to grow for a couple years as a quarterback by the time he became a starter last year. Yeah, yeah. First of all, they should bring Kurt Warner into the room with these guys as they evaluate them. I would love that. I would love that. And second of all, yeah, you're going to see it because five of these six guys are probably going to play early. Real quick, did you agree with the Michael Pinnock Jr. move? Did you agree with the pick? Disagree with the pick? Lots of opinions. I'm just curious what your reaction was. Yeah, I didn't agree with the pig. Yeah. You know, and not because I thought Michael Pennix was probably the third best quarterback in this draft off of tape. Like, I don't know. I'm not in the room, so I don't know how you manage, you know, three season-ending injuries and how you put that in there and what you think of that. So I don't know about all that drafting stuff. But just on, you know, tape over the last two years, Michael Pennix, to me.
was right up there with those other guys in terms of how he threw the football. And so I don't disagree with it from the standpoint that he's a top 10 pick or that he was right there slated ahead of some of those other guys. I don't have a problem with that at all. I just don't under. And again, we all know that if everything works out perfectly for Atlanta, this could be a great pick. I just don't know what that perfect scenario was in that room when they were talking about it. If you're giving Kirk this money, then you have to expect that he's going to play out those four years. At least I have to expect that if you're going to pay him that much. Going out and getting him and making that commitment to him, I feel like there's a part of that that says, hey, we made this commitment to Kirk. We need to give him an opportunity to live up to this commitment, not bring another guy in. And then, you know, that's the other piece is that you bring him in. What are we hoping for?
