REShow: Willie Fritz - Hour 1

This is the Rich Eisen Show with guest host Tom Pelissero. Welcome inside the Rich Eisen-less show. Tom Pelissero back for another day. Rich is going to call in, I believe in the last hour of the show, which seems very late.

Right? Is this going to be like at 11pm? He's been out drinking for several hours at a pub. Yeah, it's a nine hour difference. They're nine hours ahead from L.A. Well, we've had more. Well, you've had a few more beers today on this show or yesterday when he retweeted the fake WOJ account about Kyrie Irving getting released. I read your email late last night.

I had no idea. It was up there for a good hour. So I thought what happened was he probably saw it like doing a final scroll in bed if you do that and then went to sleep.

And I thought it was going to stay up the entire night. But he caught it an hour later, walked it back, said something that we could look up his tweet. But it was something along the lines of should not tweet while leaving the brew house. Hey, Tom, before he left, I warned him about the Huff Brow house. I showed him pictures of the house.

I was like, apparently he didn't heed my warning, man. So that fake WOJ account was like at JT and like 18 numbers. Right.

And all you have to do is check that out there. But just really look at the name. Just look at the name. You shouldn't. The buy in blue is already done.

Twitter blew it. It's been a minute. We've already we've already paused that.

Walking it back. We are on Roku. We are on Sirius XM.

We are on Westwood One radio stations. It is Veterans Day. So for any veterans members of the service out there, thank you very much for your service. Pleased that you are joining us on this day. We got a packed Friday show guys here. Tulane coach Willie Fritz going to join us shortly. The Green Wave curling number 17 in the college football playoff rankings. Wild guess Willie Fritz's phone might be ringing here in the not too distant future about jobs open elsewhere. For now, the only wave that really hit this week, right?

Hey, hey, bro, wave roll. Cliff Averill, former Seahawks standout. Does he have Russell Wilson's phone number? We'll try to get to the bottom of that as they get set to face the Buccaneers over in London. Also, Christian Fulton, Titans cornerback.

They are playing a unique brand of football at the moment here. Been trying to get by without Ryan Tannehill. Tannehill though, full participant in practice yesterday. So maybe after two weeks of the Derrick Henry show with cameos by Malik Willis, who may be back to the Titans at Full Tilt or something close to it. No receptions by a wide receiver. They're still not going to throw it. At this point, it's it's Derrick Henry.

And then occasionally if we need you third and 17 because we got stuffed or we took a penalty, might need you to throw the ball. And also my old friend Jim Mahoney is going to be in studio. He's an actor, writer, director.

Most NFL fans will probably know him if we have the photo ready as the Downey U-neck guy. It's an ad that's run for five years. Every NFL game.

I've seen that commercial 700 times. Just one of my oldest friends got a new movie bar fight coming out in select theaters today. Also going to be streaming. Melissa Fumero from Brooklyn Nine-Nine is in it.

I'm a big fan of her. So should be good. Jim is going to be right here in studio with us. Got me.

Chris Brockman, of course, is here. Hey, no hat today. Showing off all the glory. No hat.

Doesn't want any shadow on the stash. It's really I can now I can say this on Wednesday. Couldn't really see the mustache from here. Friday looks good. It's going in nice. It's there.

It still looks like it might be a lighting trick. It's strong. I feel like Damone from Fast Times. Back in the day before I joined the brotherhood. Before I was in the Brotherhood, T.J., I had beautiful, flowing blond locks. I saw a picture. And that's why I have a light. I have a light colored beard.

So that's why I'm sure that's it. You look more like a narc every day. I hate you, Jay. You were supposed to join me today.

You were supposed to shave the beard into a mustache. You said you were going to do it. I got time.

Even his razors back in Rich's bathroom there. Yeah, we're doing it in a commercial bride. Beautiful. Yeah, I got to do the board and stuff. We'll get that done. Jason's here.

T.J. Jefferson is here as well. You just said about shaving. I once this a legit thing happened to me in the middle of a fantasy football draft one year. My man Jason Goldberg went up to a bathroom and he had a full beard when he went to the bathroom at someone's house. When he came down, he was clean shaven. He shaved in the middle of a draft, man.

And so, feller, there's precedent for this is all I'm saying. I played in an abandoned college. Whoa. And what were you? What did you play? Play guitar, vocals. And we played this show at the it was basically like a gymnasium.

It was like a big Battle of the Bands thing. And a buddy of mine got thrown out for smuggling in something that you're not supposed to be smuggling in in a thermos. So he gets kicked out. He had a goatee. Comes back. And all of a sudden I'm looking because I saw him get thrown out before we were playing. All of a sudden I'm like, what's he doing here?

He made it back in. So that's that's how simple it is. You always think like Superman. How can they not tell that it's not Clark Kent. It's just the glasses. Apparently the goatee. Same effect. Just get rid of it.

That is amazing advice. You're a different person entirely. We got a Josh Allen update. Hey, now, first off from the locals, Joe Biscaglia, among others who are at practice today, no Josh Allen during the portion that was available to reporters.

So no practice Wednesday, no practice Thursday. Now, unless they're going to sneak him out there after the stretching an individual portion, which is like the 15, 20 minutes, sometimes less, the reporters actually get to see during a Friday practice. Unless he's out there, you would certainly think this is going to be case Keenum.

Yeah, against his old team, the Vikings on Sunday. Sean McDermott also spoke about Josh Allen this morning. See if you can read between the lines of what Sean McDermott is saying with regard to Josh Allen's status for this game. We are literally in a hour to hour situation here, just looking at how he's going to progress through the day and as he goes through his different tests, medically making sure that he's able to check the box. The box is in a progression to where we can see if we can proceed through the course of the day here. What do you got there?

Nothing. We've got we have week to week, right? We all know what week to week means when an NFL coach says that that means he's not playing this week. Maybe next week. It is week to week, day to day, or as Bill Belichick would say, day by day, day by day, day by day. That means maybe, maybe it improves. I don't know that I've ever heard hour to hour.

That's a good one. My sense was since that was about one hour ago, is that in an hour, you're not going to see him on the field. We are very much hour to hour at this hour. We don't know anything an hour from now. Perhaps you will be able to figure out more and you won't see him in practice and we have three hours of this show sometime hour by hour by hour. Three Josh Allen updates. We may have the injury report, which is technically do I believe by four o'clock local time. So one o'clock out here Pacific time an hour after the show is off the air, but hopefully they will save us an hour and give us a firm answer on Josh Allen hour by hour.

To be fair. I'm hour by hour. If I'm going to be sitting this chair, usually are we all hour by hour ever tells me we're all day by day.

We're all hour by hour and I'd go to the back and shave J. The next thing you know, we're going to happen. Next thing you know, we're going to be the Doobie Brothers. We go minute by minute by minute by minute. We'll keep holding home.

We just got flagged to paraphrase Kyle Shanahan. We could all be. We could all be dead tomorrow. And that's the that's the end.

But the final boss right there. We could be dead. No guarantees.

He really, really used that as an answer. It was about Jimmy Garoppolo. Well, Jimmy Garoppolo be on the team. We could all be dead tomorrow tomorrow, which I honestly I would like if somebody ever used that for my status. Is Tom on NFL Network's game day morning on Sunday? Well, could be dead tomorrow. Could be dead tomorrow. So but we're hopeful hour by hour, day by day.

He's going to be OK. I told you, Brotman, when Bill did day by day, I told you and Rich that was the pinnacle. It's not going to get better than that. It can't get better than that.

Hour by hour is pretty good. I mean, for Bill, for Bill, I'm just saying, I mean, it's Bill's move. So somebody asked Bill a question today. Speaking of hour by hour, Steve Wilkes, very much hour by hour as the Panthers interim coach, probably bought himself some more hours. I think so.

Last night it was. I don't know that we can call it an impressive showing because it was not the most aesthetically pleasing game that we've had in the course of this 2022 NFL season. But I will give him this. That is a tough spot for an interim coach to be in because Matt Ruhl gets fired. You clean out additional the defensive coordinator.

You fire two more assistants on Monday. You've traded away ostensibly your best player in Christian McCaffrey. You trade away Robbie Anderson.

You've got trade rumors swirling around guys like Brian Burns all the way up until the trade deadline. Sam Darnold just got activated off IR. Hasn't played yet. Baker Mayfield was dealing with a high ankle sprain and he was out. PJ Walker coming off a zero point zero passer rating five days ago and came out to believe a full on blue Tarski and played well enough for them to win. And if you watch that game and just going back again through the highlights this morning, every time the Panthers are making a play, it's an effort play. It's them breaking a tackle. It's dragging a defender. It's pushing the pile and those are the sorts of things that if you're going to have a team give up when they see this season is not going to go our way.

You wouldn't have that you saw effort from the Panthers and on the flip side you had a Falcons team that I wouldn't say it's a lack of effort, but it was it was ugly at times. Arthur Smith said after the game did not think about benching Marcus Mariota turning things over to Desmond Ritter, the rookie third round draft pick out of Cincinnati. I imagine that somewhere Jim Erce might have some thoughts on this. You know, I think what I what I would like to see here, you know, really have you guys considered benching your quarterback, the veteran for the rookie who hasn't played and then firing the offensive coordinator firing the head coach is Tony Gonzalez available.

He's really the only man for the job. Steve Bartkowski, maybe Steve Bartkowski Keith brooking. How many more you got in there Jesse Tuggle Jamal Anderson, Jamal Anderson will bring it back to the Dirty Birds indeed. Chris Chandler first team meeting.

All right guys. I don't have a plan for the offense. I don't know what we're going to be on Sunday, but we're all going to do the Dirty Bird together. It's gonna be a dirty bird Eugene Robinson type of season.

Eugene's the right one right in front of the room right now. Great life lessons 15 Matthews to the plate. I'm sure something Matthews Jake Matthews running in in flip-flops. This is unbelievable after his wife had the baby. We talked about that on the show yesterday. You can hour before game time flies to Charlotte. Life goes into labor flies back to Atlanta.

She delivers tweets about it tweets. Hey, I did my part. And then Jake Matthews comes running in two hours before the game if you knew and maybe he just is thinking I just need to like everybody else when their wife goes into labor. I just need to put something on but if you're thinking this might be a Sprint, maybe not the flip-flops probably not not the best. I mean, I've run through plenty of concourses and stadiums. You had to have I wouldn't I wouldn't want to be barefoot there just in general. You look like a sensible shoe type guy. So just a very sensible shoot on an airplane never a good idea. No, I don't I don't want to see feet on an airplane exactly whether it's flip-flops, whether it's the guy who before takeoff has already removed the socks and the shoes and then decides to put one leg up like this and then you're just looking at you look at the sole of the feet. That's black. I've your window seat in that foot just comes to that little thing right there.

That's oh, there are so many you know, you ever you ever get the upgrade to the middle seat on the airplane upgrade. See I reject that up from the you know, if there's three zones and sometimes it can be hey, we upgrade you to the second one and you're like now you're in the middle and if you're between two shoeless people that is a I believe one of the Rings of Hell one of the that's it might be the three when it might Tom reveals the other Rings of Hell. And the other the other last thing which I have out of that game last night Baker Mayfield. Was that a Ring of Hell having to watch the game last night? I made it I survived I tell us it wasn't that we've seen worse. We've seen worse.

We've seen worse. We it was competitive. I was playing against Drake London. So that was a little of a bummer that he scored by the way. I had Cordero Patterson and young hoke and I had your way young way too.

That was a joke that I should never sit on there with some of my friends. I'm sorry, you know, you have these names with your friends and then you just he missed two extra points 3.5 fantasy points. Between the two of them between the two of them. Yikes.

It's not the best. Well, I'm not going to lose this week. That's what I'm saying.

Tom. It's early never never overreact to the Thursday game. When you see those percentages swing we had this talk yesterday.

You're right. The other the other lasting image was Baker Mayfield after the game head-butting his teammates with a hat on and the lineman had face, you know helmets on and he's hitting them like five or six of them. It wasn't like one in the moment went down the line was he and they all had interesting reactions like one of them went with it. One was like, what are you doing?

One guy was like he never even got touched by human being one dude was like, oh like it's it was crazy. I was gonna say there's a joke in there about the Panthers offensive line, but they've actually played pretty well through the course of this season, but I do like it. You know why even though Al Michaels was very concerned that Baker Mayfield was going to put himself in concussion protocol.

I like it because how often have we heard things about Baker Mayfield and there's a narrative that he's going to be the Moody guy and he's going to be high and low and if it's not going as we know he's great when things are going well, but he's going to take out what things are going bad. He's a backup right now. He's excited behind. I'm watching this clip.

This clip is bananas. Yes, literally postgame going down the line just head-butting dudes and helmets. He's I mean to me again wearing a hat.

I would not advise if there's any children who for some reason aren't at school and are watching the show. I would not advise you to head-butt anyone, much less if they're wearing a helmet and you are in a sideline cap, but I would say there's a leadership element of it. If anybody's watching and Baker surely knows his next team, wherever that is, is watching what's happening here show who you are. Yeah show you're not that guy things aren't going well. You want to play we know that don't pout but be part of it be supportive for PJ Walker. Everything he's said publicly has been very supportive.

I personally like it though again. Don't crack your skull open to Lane head coach Willie Fritz coming up joining us right after this here on the Rich Eisen list show with Tom Pelissero. Looking forward to talking to Willie next. 2000 2008 2022 when it comes to the economy. Those are some scary years dot-com crash housing crash and the rollercoaster.

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I'm Katy Perry. This is the story of the original influencer. This is Elizabeth the first Elizabeth the first the podcast wherever you listen Tom Pelissero in again today for rich eyes and Rich will join us a little bit later from Munich at whatever hour. It is over there. We're pleased to be joined though right now on the Mercedes-Benz vans phone line by a guy who's in his seventh year as the head football coach at Tulane Green Wave off to an eight-and-one start this season. Coach Willie Fritz is with us Willie Tom Pelissero here. How's life in the Big Easy for you? Oh, it's going great and I appreciate you having me on Tom.

Thank you. So it was just 20 years ago. I know that's before your time at Tulane, but there was discussion about shutting down that program dropping down a level. The Board of Trustees had to save it when you guys are rolling like you are right now. What's the level of excitement around that program that you're hearing from fans and boosters and obviously in your own locker room? Well, everybody's very excited in the city and here on campus, you know, we've only got about 8,000 students here and I think in our last home game, we had about 4,000 students at the ballgame.

So quite a few were out there. They were loud and loud. You know, I've had more people in the city tell me they're coming to the game. We had the all-time best attendance at a game, our last ballgame, and hopefully going to be able to break that tomorrow.

But everybody's very, very excited. So for people who don't see a lot of Tulane games, what's this team all about, Willie? What's the vibe of this team? You know, I think we do a great job playing complimentary football. We run and pass football, I think, equally well. And defensively, we're doing a super job keeping the big plays away from us. We're staying, you know, behind everything and tackling and playing with great leverage and one of the top defensive teams in the country and doing a nice job in the kicking game.

Just don't know which area is going to influence the game the most each weekend. A couple games in play, it's been offense, a few defense, and a few of them even in the kicking game. So just a good overall team. We're very experienced. I've got, on count it up the other day, I think I got 19 guys who've already graduated for us. So we've got a lot of vets, you know, guys that have been here for four or five and I even got a guy who's been here six years. So it's a good veteran leadership and for the most part, same guy I had last season.

They just did a great job of, you know, buying into what we wanted to accomplish this season in the off-season program in the summer and preseason camp. So a lot of quality veteran leadership. You talk about those guys who have, you know, 19 players who have graduated. That seems to be a trend across, I mean, a lot of programs in college football. I was at the Duke game a couple of weeks ago and they're playing a bunch of, you know, 24-year-olds against another team's 19-year-olds.

How does that just impact the game itself when you've got some of those really veteran players with the, you know, the additional eligibility from the COVID years? Well, you know, the neat thing is you get to know these guys even better. I think I've had two guys that have gotten engaged in the last month, a few months they're playing for us, you know, and you get to know their, you know, their fiancés, you know, because they've been dating them for a long time. You get to know their families and so it's great to have guys for a long period of time. That's probably one of the best things about, you know, being a college coach is you're around guys for, you know, four or five years most of the time. And, you know, yeah, we've had some new coaches so they've had to learn new systems. But another thing that I think is a plus for us, we're one of the top academic schools in the country to sort of get in here, you know, they've got to have proper academic credentials that allows us to maybe be a little bit more complexed offensively defensively special teams.

And I think that's helped us as well. I was texting with an NFL Scout this morning about your quarterback Michael Pratt. He's got some some unique athletic tools to him that potentially could translate.

Just just tell me about him as a guy and a quarterback. Well, he's about 6 to 215 good speed highly competitive, you know, loves practicing. We just got off practice field a few minutes ago and we're trying to try to slow him down on Fridays.

You know, everybody's got these GPS harnesses. They wear for taxes and calculates how many yards you aim and what speed and all that stuff. And we're trying to get fresh in tomorrow, but here's what was getting out there in Coxon and competing and great serving leader for us. And you know, I think it goes, you know, the ball very actually good zip on the ball.

Good touch when he needs that touch and he's smart guys excellent student for us and he's also got a great football like to as well. Toing coach Willie Fritz is our guest. You're 17th right now in those the college football playoff rankings. You're wedged in there between NC State and Texas. Did you be higher here? Willie? Are we are we getting some a little bit of Tulane disrespect?

All I don't I don't know about that. We just you know, we just need to keep being one and O every week trying to get a little better. I think everybody's always trying to chase that elusive perfect game and you know, we keep pulling out our guys. It's better to do it after a win than lost.

Hey, we could have done this better that better wherever the case may be. But you know, there's a lot of football still left in the season. I think we can play a lot better than what we played so far. So that's what we're going to try to take a step in that direction tomorrow against UCF. This is such a unique time in college football with NIL and the way that that's impacting roster building. It's impacting recruiting. How does a program like Tulane sustain when you've got you know, you can recruit guys we've got multiple transfer windows after the season and then again after spring ball and anybody who's a you know, an underclassman who plays well, you know that there's potentially, you know, offers out there for them to go play elsewhere. I know you've got a unique academic element to it at Tulane, but how do you sustain success at a program like that? Well, it does help us, you know, the fact that guys understand the value of the Tulane education.

So they didn't, you know, these guys didn't make be close to graduating and want to stay and get that degree and be smart of them to do it. We're involved in the NIL, not as much as a lot of schools in the country. We're fortunate that we've had a lot of guys play football here. They've gone on to be very successful in a lot of walks of life.

But you know, it is different. You know, you just don't know what you're, you know, your roster is going to look like, you know, every six months and you know, we're very fortunate. We lost very few guys, even though they had a real good season last year.

We lost very few guys in the portal and actually got a few guys come back home. They've gone on to play football in other places and thought the grass was a little greener and found out it was only green and they wanted to come back to NOAA. And so we did add a few quality players that were from the New Orleans area. How much of a sell is New Orleans when you're recruiting? I mean, obviously that's a great talent base in that area, but coming to that city, even though it's not, you know, what people would think of as being a major program, how much of a selling point is the city?

Big time. You know, we sell three things to our guys. Number one, the opportunity to get a world-class education. Then we talk to them about playing big-time Division I football. It's a great conference, an American athletic conference. And last but not least, you could do the iconic city of New Orleans, right?

We show it off during recruiting. You know, sometimes people have only heard about some street that starts with a letter B. I can't think of it. Down there in the French Quarter. Yeah, Bourbon Street.

I don't remember. You know, our guys very rarely go down there. This is a college campus. There's some places to hang around here. We're riding the, you know, the Uptown area of New Orleans. And you know, guys, after they've been here a couple years, they just really enjoyed our guys.

You know, you always do exit interviews with your players and they get done playing for it. It's one of my questions. Did you enjoy the city? Did you enjoy experiencing here? And by and large, our guys love playing for Tree Lane in the city of New Orleans. I was going to say, Willie, you know, some things happen over there in the Quarter. Bourbon Street's, you can find a party any time of day, night, any day of the week. Do you have to have rules about exactly where guys are allowed to be around there? You know, French Quarter is a really vast area and Bourbon Street's just one street on it. So our guys, you know, go down there. I don't think they go down to Bourbon Street very much. At least I haven't ran into them much now. Only time my wife and I ever go down there is when we have guests from out of town.

You know, they want to go down to Bourbon Street. But I don't think they go down there much. We've got a lot of other places that are more, you know, geared towards college students. And you know, and I just don't have very many issues here with our guys off the field. You know, my dad used to always tell me, hang around with smart guys.

You don't do as many dumb things as dumb guys do, right? So we have a lot of smart guys that do a great job of, you know, having fun, but you know, the right kind of fun. So I imagine when you're having success like this, Willy, and there's coaching changes elsewhere, a program like Nebraska opens up. You're going to get questions in your press conferences about it.

Your agent might be getting phone calls about it. How much of it all do you pay attention to anything going on across the college football landscape with regard to your own career? You know, I've been, you know, a good trait that I have is I'm able to zero in on the task at hand. And our players have done a good job of that. And we've kind of gone with this slogan of 1 and 0 since we got beat a few weeks back. And you know, that's what we're looking at. And we just, we know we can't just throw the ball out there and with people, you know, we got to prepare all week, you know, and we got to flip the switch on game day. And we involved kicked off and same thing for the coaches, especially the head coach. UCF's no joke.

I mean, it's going to be a test for you tomorrow. What's the key to victory there? Oh, you know, we talked about playing to win all the time, you know, winning the turnover, takeaway margin. You know, I've been head coach now going on 30 years, I guess, and you know, we've been plus one or better and turnover, takeaway margin. We went over 90% of our games and, you know, playing solid in the kicking game.

And we talked about wave, don't beat the wave. You know, we just trying to eliminate those police to have post play penalties. You see happen all the time that anybody can call in the stands.

You may not know much about football, but they can make that call. So, you know, if we can play that discipline style of football, which we've done a nice job of so far this season, you know, I like our chances, but we're playing a quality team in UCF. Coach Miles on his staff really dialed in and playing well here last few weeks. So it's going to be a tremendous challenge for us.

No talent team. We played up to date so far 30 years as a college football head coach, man. I know how you still have the energy for this thing. I love it.

I enjoyed it. You know, I get to do this, you know, I always tell my guys when they're start talking about their, you know, job when they've graduated from Tulane, you know, find something you have a passion for, you know, if you have a passion for it, you know, you're in feel like you're working. You know, I've always felt like this is my calling and I, you know, I just love coaching and you know, I they're very seldom do I, you know, my wife always says how come you always beat the alarm clock up in the morning?

You know, I just I'm excited to go to work every day and so I enjoy coaching. Hopefully I'm going to be doing another 20 years. I don't have that problem Willie. I have the five different alarms set and I'm silencing them one by one until my wife finally goes. What are you doing? Get out of bed.

You've had four different alarms go off. Willie, best of luck to you coming up this weekend against UCF and the rest of the season, man. We really appreciate the time. Hey, thanks for having me on. Roll Wave.

Roll Wave, roll the rolling down there to Lane. Best best season since the the Sean King days, right? OK, why this is nice poll. They had an unbeaten year, right? They did Sean King and did not.

There was nowhere for him to go. When was that? Was that I mean, that 12 team playoff. They'd three years ago, two. They'd sneak in there randomly. The guy I told you about who shaved during my draft played baseball for two lane. I didn't even realize that coach was coming on.

So that was a weird thing we had there for. Well, Jason's going to shave, right? We already covered this. Well, the Clippers in the back are broken, they don't work. That is that what he told you?

No, we literally we tested them and they were no dice. Hey, I want credit. I agree to it at least. Oh, wait a minute.

We might have an update on that. Sorry, Jason. What are you guys hearing? What am I not hearing? Well, you know, Mike decides who he wants to hear things. I thought it was all button.

I didn't know that. The Bourbon Street element of that is interesting, too, because like I had a friend in college or from high school who went to went to Tulane and it is like there's a campus, but you are in pretty close proximity. Yeah, there's if you want to find what goes on in the quarter, you can you can definitely do it. I kind of get what he's saying, right?

Because from what I know from my friends who live in Vegas, like, you know, the tourists, we all go to but you live there, you go everywhere but there so I can I can see what he's saying. Like, right, these are kids wear yourself out your first your first two months as a freshman since it's a bar. The age for bars down there still 19. Was that a thing? It was definitely 19 at certain bars when I remember visiting down there. Wow, did not I did not know that was it? Yeah, stories that won't be told from spring break 2000. Tulane was 12 and 0 in 1998 1998 with Tommy Bowden got the number seven in the eight people.

How about that? They're up to 17 right now in the college football playoff rankings. I do like this aspect of the 12-team college football playoff if indeed this comes to pass. You would have the two lanes that are on the verge and we had Dave Doran on from North Carolina State yesterday to they'd be on the verge and you're playing in you still have of course a buy for the four teams that are getting through will be the natural ones that are in the playoff to letting those other eight teams play. I mean, it's a no-brainer from the perspective of fan engagement and the number of programs that would remain relevant. You would hope it's not just going to be the fifth best team from the SEC and the sixth best team from the SEC taking up those spots. I like the idea of it. I like when a Cincinnati gives out of the AAC and gets themselves into, you know, a big-time bowl game or college football playoff. So it's not going to arrive quickly enough for Tulane this year.

It's certainly interesting dynamic to to examine going forward. Let's take a break. We do have some injury updates, not just Josh Allen, but Ezekiel Elliott. What is he doing as the Cowboys? Oh, man, you're ready to face the Packers coming up this weekend here, variety of other injury updates from around the NFL phone lines open to 844204 Rich. It's Tom Pelissero in for Eisen. More to come here on this edition of the Rich Eisen List show with Tom Pelissero. We got Christian Fulton, Titans cornerback coming up in a little bit here. Cliff Averill, Seahawks legend, talk about one of the hottest teams in football, what he's seen. He's still based up there.

And also Jim Mahoney, writer, actor, director, going to be sitting here, new movie Bar Fight coming out. He'll be with us shortly here. Phone lines open to 844204 Rich. Let's go to the phones right now. Terzo in Iowa. What's going on, Terzo?

All right. What up, fellas? What's up, man? Hey, this week's been a great, been a great bit of shows from you guys, man.

I love Brockman. You asking Tom fantasy questions daily, man. That has been great.

I've got a couple more actually. You know who's not liking it? Tom. I heard it yesterday.

Tom's like, can we not do this every day? Well, I got another one. So I got a question.

I got a question for you guys. Out of these four teams, who do you believe needs to win the most? The Bucks, Tax, Bills, or Niners? I'd have to say it's the 49ers at this point. They're, I mean, they're facing the Chargers.

They're four and four. The 49ers are. They're playing them at home. Chargers have obviously dealt with, I mean, a ridiculous number of injuries. The speculation about Brandon Staley's job that I've seen in some corners right now, blows me away because I'm not sure there's any coach in football who's had to adjust to more players being out when you're talking about your star pass rusher, Joey Bosa, and basically all your receivers have missed time. Your quarterback, Justin Herbert, playing with a rib issue for a good chunk of the season.

It's been unbelievable. Well, the 49ers, of course, have had their own injury issues. They're another team that's been banged up. If you lose at home to the Chargers, on Sunday night, of all things too, so in primetime in front of the country at a time that you've really gone all in by trading for Christopher McCaffrey unique situation at quarterback with with Jimmy Garoppolo, but you're potentially if the Seahawks beat the Bucks that would put the Seahawks at seven and three, seven and three. So you would be two and a half games back in the division coming off that loss. I mean the Bills.

Yeah. I mean if it indeed in his case Keenum, and of course we are going what is in boys hour by hour by hour by hour on Josh Allen. It appears it's case Keenum. If you lose that game to Minnesota with case Keenum, I don't think that that's really a killer. The Patriots could use a win. I'll give you that turns out. That's another one that just based on where they are based on some of the issues that they've had.

But I just look at the 49ers as being that team that just needs to needs to figure out a way to get things going here. And I completely agree with you. And I think Kyle Shanahan was actually the one that first said hour by hour. Whenever he made this statement, we only we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. That's right.

And because we could be dead tomorrow. That's right. There's appreciate appreciate the call, sir. Anybody guys? I'm great one. You too.

You too, bro. Some other injury updates. The Browns ruled out JOK, Jeremiah Owusu, Cora Moa. He's out. So is David Najoku Sunday against the Dolphins.

Oh, that's really a surprise on Najoku. He's got a fairly significant ankle injury that he's working through, but that's a big weapon and they paid him like a big-time weapon. Well, he's carrying too much muscle. You can't be Jack like that.

He is too much muscle. I talked to him. It was before a game.

I want to say in last season in 2021. And this is when we still had like some covid restrictions. So we had to sit outside and be six feet apart. But like he was in, you know, he had taken off his shoulder pads. He's just wearing like the skin tight sleeveless thing and he's just the biggest human. You're going to see it's unbelievable just how massive he is. I don't I don't know that that's actually any any cause for injury concern. But like you want you if you look at him, if you were drawing like what should you're explaining to someone who's never seen football here?

What what should a tight end look like? You go David Najoku. That's that's the guy. Should we pick up Harrison Bryant?

You're just unbelievable. Waller really screwed all of us. I'm not the only one in this boat. I'm there too. We're all rowing in the same direction.

Yeah, but I took care of my problem. Do I go with Kate Otten in the Munich game or do I roll the dice with Harrison Bryant? I mean Kate Otten's been gathering a little bit of steam here. Yes. Cam Brait is I believe he traveled, correct? He did.

I know he practiced. Potentially Cam Brait could be back this week, which would impact the target share there. Brockman, brother Jefferson put you down to Kate Otten weeks ago, so you should have already had him and he should be rostered by them.

I'm telling you, I have him. Oh, so what's your question about starting? Do I go with him or Harrison Bryant now that in joke is out? We'll get we have an entire segment for the time to use time to figure it out over the next hour here.

Figure it out. Ezekiel Elliott, who I also have in the league, some very important news, did everything today. So certainly so in practice. So according to Mike McCarthy, full participant, which would seem to put him on track to play in Sunday's game against the Packers. There is going to be a lot of, I'm sure, interest in what the division of labor is between Zeke and Tony Pollard. To hear Jerry Jones, who is Ezekiel Elliott's biggest fan tell it, it's still going to be Zeke's show. They like Tony Pollard in the more limited role, so to speak, that they've carved out for him here. And you know, I would I would say this, there's not a lot of running backs who are true bell cows in the NFL. So the idea that Tony Pollard is ever going to be a 25 carry a game guy in the long term, in the macro, it's probably unlikely that's going to happen.

Right? So the question is, from a snap perspective, from a touch perspective, are you more even now between Zeke and Pollard as Zeke is coming off of an injury? Again, Jerry, and the buck stops with Jerry on everything, continues to say it's going to be Zeke.

That he's the guy that this offense revolves around, even though we've seen the explosiveness of Tony Pollard. But that'll be one of the many storylines to keep an eye on in Sunday's game. Of course, Mike McCarthy going back to Green Bay the first time since they fired him unceremoniously after a loss. The Packers have their own injury issues.

Eric Stokes, who's one of their he was their first round pick last year, I believe out of Georgia defensive back. He had the injury last week. Does that sound like he's going to play again this season?

So that's another thing that the Packers have to deal with that. They also just lost for Sean Gary. Aaron Jones got beat up in that game, and I believe it's in a walking boot after the game. It sounds like he dodged a bullet and actually should be okay to play in this game.

It's just you have to feel for Matt Lafleur at this point with the number of things that are going on here. Whatever chance they had to gather rhythm with this new wide receiver group has been thwarted by Sammy Watkins getting hurt, which at this point should not be a huge surprise to anyone because that's been the story of his career. But Christian Watson has not been able to stay on the field. He got pulled last week for concussion protocol, didn't have a concussion. He'd had one the previous week, and that was his first game back after missing however many weeks it was with a hamstring injury.

Right. So, you know, Randall Cobb is on the team for one reason, which is that him and Aaron are close and Aaron said, I want him on the team. But he's not a vertical stretch player anymore. He's not beating people downfield. He's going to do some dirty work inside. And Romeo Dobbs is also out.

So at this point, what do you do? You've also had offensive line issues. David Bakhtiari has been in and out of the lineup. Him and Elton Jenkins both have told the Packers like hours before the game, hey, I actually can't play.

When they practice the whole week, assuming those guys are going to be in there. It's just it's a hard situation. If you're the head coach, if you're anybody on that coaching staff right now, when you have that many parts going in and out, we're trying to stem the tide. I mean, this would be a great one.

All right. If the Packers can beat the Cowboys in Green Bay, it will suddenly feel like, OK, this is where Aaron Rodgers makes the run. This is where they figure it out. Now, it could be a nine to six game and then maybe nobody's saying this.

But the point is, this could be that type of a launching pad game. And I would bet you, knowing how Aaron Rodgers thinks about these things, knowing how his personality is, he's delivering that message in one way or another, that we've got the opportunity right now to turn this thing around. But it's got to start now, because if you lose this game, that is their seventh loss, I believe. Sixth or seventh loss. Six in a row, seventh overall. They'd be three and seven.

It would be three and seven. And you would need to run the table for the rest of the year, which nothing about the Packers so far this season is giving you the indication that that type of a run is coming. Dallas, on the other hand, has been fairly healthy through the course of the season, obviously, but for Dak Prescott missing a chunk of games with his injury. But they survived it.

Yeah. Cooper Rush stayed out there. We started with Tyron Smith. Tyron Smith, that's true. But Adam up, TJ, give me give me all the excuses.

Well, there's been an excuse like I'm not even pleasantly surprised. I'm just like, you know, when we start the season, everyone talked about how Tyron being out was going to destroy the Cowboys. I had to keep mentioning that for as great as he is, how many games has he missed over the last three seasons? Tom is a considerable amount for Tyron Smith. He's he's missed about double the number of games he's actually played. Exactly. So we've been used to playing without him. I feel the line is doing a great job.

And that was my one of my biggest worries, and I'm pretty happy about settled down just a little bit. I don't think that was a mess. Didn't I talk to you about these drops? I had I specifically talked to you about relevance drops this morning, man.

And then you go put a drop in there. That was not necessary. I feel warranted. Cowboys have dodged a lot of bullets. Let's put it that way. valid point on Tyron Smith, who might make it back to.

Yeah, he could be a month or so away from potentially being back in the lineup, which would be a big boost. You know what that equals, Tom? Championship. You're feeling it right now, aren't you? No, I'm not.

I look I'm the one who is a Cowboys fan. I'm really you're going to lose this weekend. Yeah, I'm really worried about this on Sunday.

How are you going to feel? Is this going to be fully down? No, it's over. Or is it just going to be we'd ever win in Green Bay? Yeah, I mean, look, when you think about some rivalries Steelers Ravens, for example, it doesn't matter what the record is. You know, you're going to get a great competitive game with those two.

I just feel like in this rivalry, Aaron Rodgers has owned us. And until we go in there and stomp a mud hole in them, I'm not going to feel great about it. I'm going to be a mud hole in a stomp, a mud hole in the drive.

Is that a jury ism? Well, that's a Stone Cold Steve Austin. OK, and that's the bottom line because Stone Cold said so don't don't don't don't don't. A lot more to come through the course of this show here. Some great guests, a lot more NFL talk. After this, we're going to have what's more likely. My first time playing Chris Brockman's favorite game here. Fun, Tom. What's more likely ready?

Do I have to prepare for this or just strictly? We are winging it top of the head, top of the head. It's off season activity. You're not going to ask me WWE questions or something like that. I got your back. I'll go through and delete that one. We're covered on this time if you've got some. AEW.

Just too sweet. I'm really not up on any any of them if you go that direction. Looking forward to it.

Be safe. Tons more here on the Rich Eisen Show. It could be information to change your life forever.

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