Footballers AMA + Coaching Changes, Giant Heads

Mike Evans and Chris Godwin. And also, is there a possibility that Deshaun Jackson changes his mind? Maybe. Maybe. I've seen what you do with fast guys. So maybe I want to stick around. Yeah, it'll be very interesting to see. Bears defensive coordinator. Vic Fangio is the new Broncos head coach. And the Broncos have brought back Gary Kubiak as their offensive coordinator. So any feelings there? I mean, Fangio is the defensive minded guy. It's great for.

Chub and Von Miller, but... Yeah, that doesn't help my fantasy team. We care a lot more about what Kubiak's going to do there, and he's been a competent play caller before. He's been a good O.C. So I'm fine with it. Todd Bowles still hasn't signed a contract as D coordinator. He's going to choose between Tampa and that new Chicago opening. I think Todd Bowles had his mind made up until Vic Fangio took the job opening things up in Chicago, which should give any defensive mind pause when you say...

Wait, the Chicago jobs open? Yeah, yeah, you might want to jump in there. I'm going to at least try to get that one. With Killeleck. Thoughts on Freddie Kitchens being made new. I love it. Of the Cleveland Browns, Freddie Kitchens was the office of coordinator. Greg Williams was the head coach. He's been relieved of all duties. Look, I try to keep things positive on this show. We rib people, of course. But Greg Williams.

You're not a Greg Williams fan. My opinion on Greg Williams is well known that not a big fan. Not a big fan of Bountygate, how he carries himself, how he thinks that things should be run in the NFL. Not a big fan. So the fact that they went with Freddie Kitchens, it brings me great joy. We were talking about this in the studio that we just imagine.

the brass in Cleveland. They're interviewing Freddie Kitchens. They're just, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. But meanwhile, they're just, they're texting Baker saying, yo, hey Baker. You like Freddie? Should we bring him in? Thumbs up, thumbs down. If he gives the thumbs up, this is where we are. So this is a great success story of a guy playing his way, or earning his coaching his, earning his way into a head coaching job. Yeah. So congrats. I mean, this is good for.

Baker? Yes. Great news for Baker. Do we know, is he going to maintain play calling duties as the head coach? I have not heard that yet. Okay. But it's at least going to be his offense. Yeah, he was with the Cardinals from 2007 to 2017 before he transitioned to be the running backs coach. Then he was promoted offensive coordinator. So in less than a year, he goes from running backs coach to head coach, which is probably the least weird case of all these starting head coaches.

Josh McDaniels says the book is closed on head coaching interviews for him. He'll probably be back as offensive coordinator then. He'll probably be playing the eventually replaced Belichick role. Yeah, that's probably what he's got to go for now. All right, I want to get into this AMA and spend a lot of time in there, but real quick picks for the divisional round. We've got the games coming up, one of the most exciting weekends of the year. I'm sure people want to know who we have in these matchups. Colts, Chiefs, as do I.

Cowboys Rams. Rams. As do I. Chargers, Patriots. Chargers. So do I. Eagle Saints. Saints. Yeah, we don't have any changes here. Brooks, are you? Do you have any different picks? I know you're a cowboy fan. I still pick the Rams to win. How about the Patriots game? That's the different one. I think you've got to go to Patriots. Yeah, I understand that. I understand that. So we shall see what Nick Foles does in New Orleans. If Nick Foles can win this game.

Do they start building the statue on Monday or Tuesday? Yeah, you know, they probably get ready to play the Rams. I'm talking about the city. Yeah, I know. I know. Look, we'll see. Right. We'll see what happens. That was today's news and notes. Hey, listen, remember, you want to play Dynasty. Go play it on Sleeper. Get the Sleeper app. Play Dynasty. No ads on the app. Great platform. Always innovating. Check it out. All right, Mike. You ready for this? Oh, I'm ready.

Mailbag. I was really hoping you. Yeah, I really was. I'm not going to let everyone down. So we did a no holds bar, ask us anything you want, AMA. Tried to pick. I know Brooks picked the majority of these questions. We tried to pick ones. A lot of questions about my waist size, which is frankly rude. Did you end up figuring it out, or is that more of a, are you more of a stretchy pants guy? How dare you ask me that question? Can stretchy pants be a waist size? Yes, you have to get a large or a medium.

Oh, okay. So you get it. Okay. I got you. I mean, we're not animals. Yeah. But I mean, when you go to buy slacks, do you ask for the stretchy pants? If everything could be stretchy pants, the world would be a much happier place. Like, for a long time, I don't know if you realize this. But the voyage for men's jeans and women's jeans, we have come a long way. Tell me about this, Mike. The ladies' jeans, they've been stretchy.

For a very, very long time. Meanwhile, us dudes are watching Brett Fav commercials going, yep, Wranglers, they don't move. That's how I like it. And then all of a sudden... You know who loves those Wranglers? Greg Williams. Oh, yeah. Oh, but he's like, can I get him in khaki? Can I get him high and tight in the crotch? These ones move a little bit too much. I can step forward.

More than a ruler. He gets them wet and leaves him out in the rain. He wants to harden them up. Make them extra crispy. All right. Anyway, but jeans now stretch, and it's so much better. Well, yeah. Yeah, we need that. We need that. I do. I told you today, Mike, when it comes to personal pizzas, I can't, I can't not finish. Well, it's personal. I mean, that's, that's on them for saying that the size is personal. Hey, guess what? The Bucks just hired Todd Bowles. Oh, well, that answers that question. Yeah, that's settled.

That means the bear said no. So everybody out there, since we record the day before, they're like, yeah, we know that. But now you know that we know that, right? All right. Our first question on today's fantasy footballers AMA comes from Instagram. This one's from Paul M. And he says Palm, something. It's Palm, but P-A-U-L. Yep. Yeah. How did you three guys meet? Do you want to handle this one? Well, I'll tell the tale of I met.

Jason. Actually, you should probably start because you met Jason first. Yeah, well, I've known Jason for a very long time. He's a couple years older than I am. We met in high school because Jason chose to enter himself into the freshman. You're going to be really shocked at this. Yeah, Jason the junior was in the freshman Spanish class, all right? And I was in there as a little freshman. And when you go to high school, all the freshmen are quiet and scared.

uh little children and here's boisterous jason moore and we started actually uh our friendship started playing fantasy basketball way back in high school became good friends played real basketball all the time he'll tell you if he was here how many times he beat me because i was like five foot tall and so we met each other he went off to college we reconnected when he started a business doing uh facebook gaming all right this was back in the farmville heyday

We had a Facebook gaming company that he started and he grew it with another partner up to, there were 25 people there at one point in time. And I worked for him at that company. I was the C-O-O of that business. And Mike was hired a couple years after I started. Yeah, I found Jason. I got Bachelors in Game Design and I quickly needed a job. And there's a gaming group, I think IGDA. Is that what it is? It is. Yeah.

So it's like-minded people who make video games to meet. And Jason gave a speech, and I went up and I wowed him. Yeah, you said, hire me, man. Yeah. I said, I do bleeps in the bloops. And so you did game audio design for us, and we worked together. And basically, the best way to paint this picture of our three friendship was that we were fantasy football fanatics in the midst of our regular job here at that company. And so we worked together for...

six, seven years together. That company started to shift, and that's when we started the podcast. So we met through basically that business, working together and doing our fantasy leagues together, and that's how we got started. Does that answer that one, good, Brooks? Well, does it answer well? Yes. Superman does good. Yeah, I was going to say, that was, I learned that in freshman English. Twitter question from at John Hicks 33. I'm going to believe that it's from John Wick.

John Wick has sent us a question. Thank you. What was the hardest thing about starting up your own brand and podcast? Ooh. Do you have an answer for that one? I mean, there's several things. I'll speak to the podcast side. The hardest thing for me was confidence, like believing that you had something to offer, believing that the advice that I was giving was actually.

relevant and will help people win. And so it's, even though I mean, I was winning and doing well, it's still, there's that level of confidence of a, of a person pulling up the podcast for the first time going, who is, who's this guy who's got a really high pitch laugh? And he's just, he says he knows what he's talking about. At that time, a man bun. Oh, yes. The man bun, the much larger beard. So I would say that was the hardest part for me was just believing.

In myself. Oh, we believed in you, Mike. I appreciate that. But no, I would kind of piggyback and just say that like anytime you're starting a brand, you're starting a business, like credibility isn't built in. Like, I mean, you don't just get it necessarily. Right. And so, you know, that's kind of saying what you're saying. But from a credibility standpoint, you can't replace time in an industry. You can't replace time in a business. So you have to.

be consistent. I think for us it was a matter of being very, very consistent early on in the podcast and then letting time pass. I mean, you only earn credibility as you succeed and as you are consistent in what you're doing. So I think the most challenging thing was establishing industry. Dominance. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Industry credibility early on. But yeah, I mean, in terms of the barriers to entry, I mean, the podcasting field, you can buy a microphone. Yep.

You can flip on the switch. I mean, the barriers to entry aren't intimidating. Instagram question from Henkel Media. When you guys first started doing the show, how many times did you think about quitting out of fear that it wouldn't succeed? Hmm. It's zero for me. It's zero for me, too. And that's just a byproduct of, I think, we happen to start it and have success so fast. Yes.

um with the listenership and we some people don't know this we launched the show in February of 2015 and this was dead doldrums for fantasy I mean there's no more dead time than February when the Super Bowl ends and there's no football being played and we launched it then because we were fantasy fanatics and we said there needs to be a year round show where people are talking about the same stuff we're talking about

But I think that inadvertently we just picked a good time because there were other people like us. And we didn't even know if we should wait until the regular season. You remember we thought long and hard about. We did. Oh, man, do we wait until August when the football season goes in? And so I don't think we ever really, I never was worried about quitting because I never, you know, we never got to that point where we were teetering on the edge of success. It was just kind of like we started it. People listened and it picked up.

So, sound good? Yep. All right. Next question. Twitter question from ATF. Whisperers. And we got a lot of questions like this. What advice do you give to new podcasters or analysts trying to make it in the world of fantasy football? This is probably the number one question I've received over the last five years. Yep. And my advice for this is always, it sounds.

cliche, but it is the honest truth. It is the fantasy football space. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of people writing. There's a lot of people doing podcasts now. It's very clutter. It's very, very noisy. So you have to figure out what is it that makes your show special and unique. And the easiest way to do that is the old cliche of find your voice.

And that's difficult. Well, I don't think there's just one way to do it anymore. Right. But my top tip for finding your voice is when you first turn a microphone on and you're speaking into it, one, it's going to be intimidating because it's just a strange thing to talk into a microphone, hear yourself in headphones. You just got to get used to it. Two, there's going to be a little voice inside your head that says, don't say that because that's not.

The proper etiquette. That's not what a professional would do. Now, I'm not a, if you're doing like, if you're nasty, if you're a nasty person, don't, you should keep the switch on. Keep those terrible thoughts to yourself. But I'm saying, like, I, when I was, when I found that confidence and I felt most liberated, it's when I finally turned that voice off, I, any terrible joke I think of. Oh, gosh. I throw it out there.