Sean Pendergast | SportsRadio 610 Houston Morning Host

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That's BetterHelpHELP.com slash positive. Sean Pendergast, who's co-host of pain and Pendergast weekday mornings on Sports Radio 610 in Houston. Sean, how are you this morning? I'm good, Amy. How are you? It's been a while. How are you doing?

We're good. I want you to know, I want the world to know, we booked you for the show before you became the latest viral trend on Twitter. Fantastic.

So good. Yes, I got a text from James, probably like yesterday evening. Got done eating dinner, settled in to watch the Astros get taken to the woodshed by the Rangers, and I'm just sitting there watching the game, and James is like, hey, Texans training camp, Astros, you want to come on and talk a little with Amy?

And of course, the answer is always yes, I'd love to. And then two hours later, my social media world got turned upside down by DeAndre Hopkins. Alright, so I have to ask, for people who don't know, you tweeted about rare footage of DeAndre Hopkins practicing. Were you being snarky? Were you being serious? Where did that tweet come from? A total snark.

Just trying to be funny. I don't think it's a secret in Houston or Arizona, for sure. Definitely not in Houston, because I think DeAndre's practice habits were probably one of the reasons why Bill O'Brien traded DeAndre Hopkins three years ago. DeAndre never practiced.

Bill O'Brien didn't like it. I don't even have an issue with DeAndre not practicing. He's an amazing player.

He was an incredible player here in Houston. It was just a playful jab at DeAndre Hopkins, just having some fun on Twitter. And yeah, as you said, it was a picture of him just kind of getting into a stretching line or something that tightens practice. And I said, yeah, rare footage of DeAndre Hopkins practicing, and I didn't tag him on it. A lot of times when you don't tag an athlete on something that you say like that, people are like, why don't you tag him on that? I'm like, because I'm doing him a favor. He doesn't need his Twitter timeline blowing up with all the replies that I eventually got anyways, because DeAndre Hopkins retweeted it. Any idea how he saw it? Somebody must have pointed it out to him. Oh yeah. Well here, DeAndre, and look, I really like DeAndre Hopkins.

I think he's a great player. It was not personal or anything. It was just having fun on social media for my Twitter audience, which is literally like 6% the size of DeAndre Hopkins' Twitter audience.

So I'm guessing, two things. I'm guessing that he, and by the way, when I say he retweeted it, he retweeted it with a comment. Yeah, he did.

Which is why I got all that. It'd be one thing if he retweeted it and just hit retweet, but he retweeted it with a very funny comment that I'll either, you know, you can read it or not read it. It's up to you, Amy. But I think as far as how he found it, normally I would say with somebody like DeAndre, like yeah, somebody brought it to his attention. He does not follow me.

Let me just be clear on that. He doesn't follow me on Twitter. With DeAndre though, he gets up in his feelings a lot about stuff. He takes a lot of stuff. I don't know if he takes it personal, but he goes out of his way to see it because he is the rare lion that will go fighting the sheep on Twitter. And I'm being self-deprecating here.

And so he may be one of those guys that searches his name, but it got enough run even before DeAndre saw it that it probably floated across his timeline in some sort of way, I would guess. So you're saying he is the NFL version of Kevin Durant. He absolutely is. I got that comparison from a lot of people. Oh, did you?

Yeah, yeah. I don't think he's got as big a following as KD. You know, KD is, you know, he's global.

DeAndre is really good. DeAndre's got, I think, 717,000 Twitter followers is what I saw last night. You know, KD, I'm guessing, is well into the millions in followers.

But yes, he does definitely have that KD trait where he'll just get in the muck with anybody on Twitter over stuff that they say about him. He quote tweeted with this comment, just buy my jersey for your wife at this point. I'm sure she's tired of hearing my name in your sleep.

So you're telling me there's no history there? It really was. Let me just tell you, Amy, first of all, it was a clever bard. I think just as soon as he mentions my wife, people just stop reading the rest of the tweet and think that he implies he's sleeping with my wife. I had to actually explain to a few people, like, no, what he's saying is that I'm the one dreaming about him and my wife is hearing me say DeAndre's name.

So I do explain it to a lot of people, which was really frustrating. But it's funny because people like, oh, how's your wife feel? I'm like, dude, I read she was sitting with me watching the Astros game.

I read it to her five seconds after I saw it and she cracked up. Like, what are we doing here? Just out of curiosity, how long did the replies come in? For hours? Yeah, they're still coming in. I still come to like seven of them.

Yeah, no, they're absolutely still coming in. And this is where it's a really interesting experience. I know we'll talk about other stuff here in a second, but this is probably the most relevant thing going on on my show today, honestly. I felt sorry for DeAndre Hopkins as I was reading the replies because I, you know, DeAndre's Barb was funny. The people who are taking up for DeAndre Hopkins, most of whom are Titan fans, who if I went and Googled hard enough or searched on Twitter hard enough, I probably find plenty of things that they're saying about DeAndre Hopkins. You know, three years ago when he was on the Texans, they're all of a sudden they're big DeAndre Hopkins fans, even though he's had one practice with them. But I felt sorry for him because I'm like, man, these, because those people got way more personal than DeAndre.

You know what I mean? Like way, like, you know, you're, you're talking about the lowest common denominator on Twitter. They were getting way more personal and they didn't know who I was until DeAndre retweeted me. And I'm thinking to myself, man, this is what DeAndre and these guys deal with on Twitter. Rest assured DeAndre will drop a pass at some point. Maybe he rarely does, but maybe he will. And these, these same people will be coming after him the same way they were coming after me.

So I, my big takeaway was that, uh, I felt sorry for DeAndre Hopkins after it was over. Oh goodness. Funny stuff. Again, we booked Sean Pendergast on our show before any of this happened. Vulture. You and James are not vulturing my, my 15 minutes of relatives here. We're not ambulance chasers. Yeah.

It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence here on CBS Sports Radio. Good to have him back in the AFC South though. Absolutely.

Yeah, no, it makes it fun. You know, it's, uh, it adds some sauce to the two games that the Texans play, the Titans this year. Um, so that'll be fun. Uh, the big, the, the oiler Jersey, which, um, you know, that's gotten a lot of traction over the last week or so down here that the Titans are going to wear the Oilers jerseys in a couple of games. And I think it's, it's almost a foregone conclusion that one of those two games is going to be week 15 against the Texans.

Um, so that'll, that'll be really cool. And, you know, seeing DeAndre that Oilers uniform, a lot of, a lot of Houstonians are up in their feelings about the oil of Jersey being unveiled period. The fact that DeAndre Hopkins is going to be wearing them is going to be like a reminder of every bad thing that's happened in Houston. Not every, but two of the worst things that have happened in Houston football history, which is the Oilers leaving for Tennessee and DeAndre Hopkins getting traded for a second round pick.

I was joking on the air. I'm like, man, all they need to do is bring out Jack Easterby to flip the coin before the game. And it'll be just the montage of all the bad things in Houston football the last two decades. Sean Pendergast is with us before his morning show, no doubt, plenty of chatter about D-Hop.

It's after hours on CBS Sports Radio. What stands out to you at this point about new head coach D'Amico Ryans? Um, well, I mean, we knew D'Amico going in as a player and we knew what his track record was in San Francisco as a coach. I just think the thing that's jumped out at me so far, nothing has surprised me about D'Amico Ryans. You know, so unlike the, you know, like when they hired David Cully two years ago, it's like, all right, we don't, I didn't even know who David Cully was until they hired him as a coach.

So there was a lot of mystery involved. There's very little mystery with D'Amico Ryans, so I wouldn't say anything has surprised me. I think what's jumped out at me is the enthusiasm in town here for the Texans with hiring D'Amico Ryans. You know, I have no idea how good a head coach he'll be. If he's as good a head coach as he was a coordinator, there's some really good things coming up in the next few years for the Texans. Cause he's a really good, he was a really good coordinator and he's just a great guy.

I mean, he's a, he's a great person. So there's tremendous enthusiasm for the Texans in town, which there has not been, I would say really since probably a few years into the Bill O'Brien era, you know, Bill O'Brien kind of wore his welcome out here. So the last couple of years, you know, even when they were making the playoffs, there were a lot of people who were kind of having to grit their teeth as the Texans were doing that because O'Brien was not very popular. And then we know what the last couple of years have looked like here. So real great enthusiasm, the eight open training camp practices for fans, whereas you couldn't give away tickets to them the last two years.

They're sold out, you know, that you can't get a ticket to the training camp practices. And I think CJ Stroud has something to do with that as well. So I think it's the enthusiasm here, which we haven't felt in a long, long time. What do you need to see from the Texans this season in terms of progress, in terms of wins, whatever the gauge is to know that they're on the right track? I think they definitely need to win more. You know, like it's one of those, like they've been, you know, they won three games last year and four games the year before. I think it's going to be hard to come away from this season with them winning three or four games and saying, but we feel awesome about that. So I think they need to be more of like a six or seven win team. I think Vegas has them at six and a half wins.

So that's kind of where they're being forecast right now. You know, I don't think they need to compete for a playoff spot or anything for fans to feel good about the team going into next year. I think they need to I think they need to jump up probably one notch in the, you know, in that tier of teams winning wise, they can't be one of the worst teams in football. They can be one of those teams, kind of like how people were feeling about, you know, the Lions going into last year or, you know, maybe not to the extent of how people feel about the Jags going into this year because the Jags won a playoff game. But I think if between the team winning a little bit more, I think the defense needs to be at worst like a middle to upper middle of the pack defense because that's, you know, that's D'Amico Ryan's forte is the defensive side of the ball. So you got to feel good about the direction that's going and I think a lot of it is going to be CJ Stroud. And if you feel like CJ Stroud is one of those young quarterbacks who, yeah, you went six and eleven, but boy, he wasn't the reason. He was keeping you in games.

He was making you competitive. He was better at the end of the year than he was at the beginning of the year. And I think people will feel really good about the trajectory of this team in 2024. They still got you with the trade up to get Will Anderson. They still have a ton of draft capital, so they're in good shape.

Looking forward to it. I think there's a lot of attention on them because of Ryan's and obviously CJ Stroud as well. But yeah, got to see some progress. It's been a couple of bleak years there with the Texans. It's after hours on CBS Sports Radio.

Sean Pendergast just about another 90 seconds or so. How confident are you that the World Series champions are going to be able to make a run here or start to surge through the rest of the back half of the baseball season? Ask me in a week. Let's see what they do with the trade deadline. You know, seriously like this, the most disturbing thing about this. And it sounds crazy to say because there are two games out of first, which they're not used to being even in. You know, they're usually well ahead of the rest of the division at this point in the year. It's amazing they're only two games out of first right now when you consider all the injuries that they've had and not just the injuries. They were counting on for Amber Valdez and Christian Javier to be the two hammers at the front end of the rotation. And they've both been terrible for the last really the last hobby or since the middle of June and from her Valdez all of a sudden is it's like Javier coughed on him or something like that. He was awful last night. So I think that's the big concern is the pitching. So I got to wait and see if Dana Brown, the new GM, makes a big move.

But I'm not feeling good right now. You can't you're not going to win in the playoffs winning games 10 to nine all the time. That's how they're winning. But when they are winning lately, they're either winning 10 to 9 or it's J.T.

France who wasn't even on the roster going out and winning games. He's their best starting pitcher right now. And people are like, who? And I say, exactly. I mean, Justin Verlander might be available. We would love that. You can find Sean on Twitter at Sean T Pendergast.

I mean, DeAndre Hopkins did. So you can ask a and he's getting said to do pain and pendergast on our Houston affiliate sports radio 610 coming up six o'clock central time. Always good to catch up with you. You made us laugh last night. Thank you, Sean. Happy to do it. Good to talk to you, Amy.

We'll do it again, too. I'm here to tell you about a new show that's going to make you uncomfortable. Going to make you laugh.

You will feel pangs of recognition. It's all about class. And it's hosted by me, former working class kid, Jonathan Manhevar. The show is called Classy and it's full of people talking about all the awkward, embarrassing and strangely intimate things that class tension makes us do. Available now on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.