After Hours with Amy Lawrence PODCAST: Hour 1

I'm Snoop Dogg, and I'm giving up smoke.

I know what you're thinking. Snoop, smoke is kind of your whole thing. But I'm done with it.

I'm done with the coffin, and my clothes smelling all funky. I'm going smokeless. Solo Stove Fix 5. They took out the smoke. Now you can have a nice blaze without any clouds ruining your day. Go smokeless.

Go to solostove.com. Tell them big Snoop Dogg sent you. Hahaha. Let's face it, most people aren't making massive turkey feasts on the regular. And after 364 days of not thinking about it, it can be hard to get that bird just right. That's where Instacart, the holiday rescue app comes in. From getting all the ingredients to prep a full seasonal spread to getting last minute swaps in a turkey emergency, Instacart has everything a holiday host needs to save face and save dinner. And right now, if you download Instacart, you'll get free delivery on your first three orders and delivery in as fast as one hour. Offer valid for a limited time.

$10 minimum per order, additional term supply. It's happened again. Someone's been schooling with the computers. Someone has hacked our Facebook account.

And by ours, I mean Jay. Haha. Because we cannot get into our Facebook page. Very strange. It wasn't even 24 hours ago that I logged out of it.

And now, somehow, I can't get back into it. But maybe that's a blessing in disguise. Did we ever think of that, Producer Jay? Maybe, in fact, it is a blessing that we cannot access the FB account.

Is this the excuse we've been looking for? Uh huh. Oh, so sorry.

Sorry, not sorry. Aww, that's too bad. What a shame. Oh, it's terrible. So yeah, unable to access it at this particular time, but we'll keep trying.

Yay! We'll give it the old college try. Oh, someone sabotaged us. So I don't know what happens around here in the daytime, but things get moved. They disappear.

They don't work. The chair situation. There's chairs in different rooms. The chairs get swapped out.

They lose arms mysteriously in the middle of the daytime. Yeah, we have no idea what happens here during the daytime, but crazy enough, they actually invited us to come to the Christmas party. I guess it's called the holiday party, so no one's offended. The holiday party.

And it's the middle of the afternoon. It's actually next week, I think. Did you RSVP?

No, not yet. Are you going to RSVP? I missed the invite, actually. Did you?

Maybe I didn't get it. Oh, I'm happy to send it to you. Yeah, I can do it. RSVP to the Christmas, oh sorry, holiday party invitation in the middle of the day. I'm not even sure I'll be awake for the holiday slash non-Christmas party. That's very considerate.

Very considerate. Why don't they do one at night? Yeah, two parties. There's a bunch of us that work different hours that couldn't possibly be here during the daytime.

So why not a second tier? Or just leave us some of the goodies? An evening gathering sounds pleasant. Does it? Does it sound pleasant? A little bit. Or maybe they just give us the loot.

I don't think there's a gift exchange of any sort, because that would cost the company money. But maybe there's food. You know what's going to happen? We're going to walk in, there's going to be food residue everywhere. It'll be icky.

It's going to be like four soggy hero rolls just hanging out in the corner. The cleaning crew will not clean that day because there'll be a party going on. And I actually don't think they clean every day. Do you remember during the pandemic when we were supposed to leave flags on the areas that were dirty? That was an idea. And then the flags just disappeared.

I think like a week or so into it maybe. Yeah, but not just that. We would place the flags in a particular spot and they would just be there for a month until they started disappearing. The spot we never cleaned. It was like a starting line. We were running races in here.

Oh yeah. That didn't work. We did eventually get some semblance of a cleaning crew or cleaning schedule back, but it's not every day. We know that for sure because sometimes we come in and it's not cleaned. So that's why I still, I'm the only one left who still wipes down the studio when I come in. You're the smart one.

I don't want to get strep throat or I don't even care about any viruses other than strep throat really. That's the one that scares me the most. But I'll keep cleaning as long as my key card works. I'll keep cleaning this little spot right here. Anyway, no Christmas party for the 11th straight year since I've been here. 11 years, 11 holiday parties, not one time. Jay, you're missing out. Wait, just wait till you have a streak like mine. I'm on what, four or five years now?

Haven't been to one. So it's building. All right. It's getting there. All right.

You should be up to about four weeks of vacation by now, no? Oh no. Oh, come on. I think it's time. Should be up probably a lot of things, but we're not going to tell those.

It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. I would like to tell you that I could access the Facebook page and respond or maybe continue the conversation that we began on Ask Amy Anything. But right now we can't get into it. We're not going to sweat it. We're going to try, try again.

Maybe a different server, maybe a different laptop, maybe something, maybe a different person. Either way, we will not forsake you. We will try. So in the meantime, you'll have to find us on Twitter, A Law Radio, After Hours, CBS, or you'll have to call. I mean, dang it.

Just call 855-212-4227. It's not that long ago. And actually Micah Parsons is still responding to Tom Brady calling the NFL mediocre. A lot of mediocre play. A year ago, he said it was just bad football.

So on a scale of 1 to 10, and you can use your words too if you like, you can use your numbers, you can use your words. How would you rate the football we've seen through week 12? I honestly think there have been some really good games.

The Bills Eagles game, tremendous. We've had some really quality entertainment, as we always do. Now, the quality of football is not necessarily the quality of the competition. Right, so the quality of football can be hideous, or U-G-L-Y, but the competitive nature of the game could still be super high. We know that we have injuries that are affecting a lot of different teams because of multiple quarterbacks. It's not the only injuries. We've seen teams, of course, lose key players at key positions. And that does happen every year. But when it's quarterbacks, well, the offense suffers mightily. And we definitely are seeing that.

I can't tell you I have quantifiable evidence for it right now. But it certainly does seem like the majority of primetime games are field goal driven. The majority of primetime games have not been highly entertaining. I have high hopes for Seahawks and Cowboys on Thursday night to kick off week 13.

But think about the three games on Thanksgiving Day. Lions made the opener of that triple header look respectable, but they were down 20 to 6 after the first quarter. The Packers looked terrific. The Lions turned the ball over. Green Bay up 20 to 6 after the first quarter. Now, again, Lions made it look competitive. There wasn't a whole lot from Green Bay after that first quarter, except the defense was able to hold off the Lions. So you saw Green Bay put up 20 in the first quarter and then field goals the rest of the way. But at least they had enough and the Lions were unable to rally past them.

I take it back. I forgot the the score in the third quarter for the Packers was a touchdown, but there was no two point conversion. So they did have another touchdown.

That was the one to Christian Watson. But not a whole lot from Green Bay after that first quarter and really the first half in which they had 23 points. Second game, total blowout. Now, was it entertaining if you're a Cowboys fan?

Sure. Daron Bland with his history, Dak Prescott looking good. The offense locked in, but competitive. And then think about Niners, Seahawks, same thing. Niners jump out to a pretty healthy lead.

Seahawks never really challenge. We got another highlight reel moment on Friday with the Javon Holland pick six. And remember, that comes on the heels of the two to the two to the pair of two interceptions. Oh, and a lost chunk of his arm. Do you know there are people who put videos on the Internet that seemingly show Tua's arm chunk flying away? I did not stop zero in or do the slow mo thing so I could so I could see it because I really don't want to see it. I just know there are people out there who have actually tried to isolate it and slow down the video frame by frame so they can see the chunk of Tua's arm flying away. That looked like money.

Well, that's not what his wife said. So there have been competitive games. There have been some highly played, high quality, high octane contests. But I do think for the most part the loss of quarterbacks and so many quality quarterbacks has really hurt the standard of play this year. Then you take into account the fact that the tight end position, I don't want to say it's non-existent, but Travis Kelce, by his standards, a down year, 700 yards, five touchdowns.

I don't know how many other tight ends would say, well, that stinks. But you look at the tight end position and he's still top dog. Mark Andrews is hurt. Kyle Pitts is, I don't want to say he's in the pits because that's not fair, but he's not having a banner year. Even George Kittle, there are moments where we're reminded what he's all about, but it's not been consistent. So that position is down in terms of its offensive productivity. We've got teams where they've either lost high profile and key running backs like Nick Chubb.

Jonathan Taylor now hurt again after missing the first month of the season. Derrick Henry, just because of how bad the Titans have been, is not a huge headline. I mean, there are exciting teams in football. The Dolphins are a lot of fun to watch. The Eagles, as much as they said they haven't played their best football, they make it compelling because they come from behind seemingly every week. The Cowboys, they can dazzle. The San Francisco 49ers have a lot of star power and they're back on track. The Ravens, they're tough, they're physical, they're battle tested. We still have the Chiefs and the Jaguars who can fill up a highlight reel, though sometimes it's the opposite when there are some really good teams. But I'm wondering if you agree with Tom Brady or Micah Parsons that the football is mediocre this year. Point blank, period.

It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. We put a poll up. Wait, so can you get into Facebook in there? I can. Can you? What is going on with this computer?

I'm going to give it a look. Do you think there's a block, some type of a block on Facebook? I don't know.

Someone finally got fed up. You're using the same browser you normally use, right? Well, someone closed the window, so I'm not using the browser I was using yesterday, for instance.

But I can try a new browser and see if it works in a different window. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah, I got it in here, so I'm in in here.

All right, trying. I'm in. You're in.

I'm going to have to come in there to look at the Facebook page. Possibly, or phone. I can give you my phone. It's in the mobile way. It doesn't, it doesn't work. You're going to have to try, you're going to have to try again. Is it saying it's, like, blocked?

Is there any, like, guard coming up? No, it just, it says it's not, maybe your account, except that it's your photo and your name, so I don't know how it could be the wrong account. Maybe we should try changing the password all together again and see what happens, except then you, wait, you logged in outside in the newsroom. Did you log out of there? No.

Oh, Jay! Yeah, we're going to be like, well, it is your Facebook account, but we're going to be logged in, we're going to be like Shep, logged in on seven computers. No, I log out before I leave at the end of the shift, but. I suppose I could try my own, but it won't let me use the actual page, remember?

We've been two years now of the server meta not allowing me to access my own page. You've gotten to know my friends pretty well over these years. Lots of them having babies. Lots of them getting married, lots of them having babies.

A lot of them. That's Jay's friend group. And then when it's someone that we both know, like John Kincaid, I'll see one of his awesome posts pop up about how he's cancer free or he's being honored with some really cool jersey or gift and because everyone's so excited in Philadelphia that he's now cancer free and I'll like it from Jay's account. I just kind of feel like you should be participating. No, I appreciate that because you probably use my own personal Facebook more than I have, nonetheless. I've never actually written back to anyone.

Being on it and liking something is more than I've done. So if it's a good post, I appreciate that. Feel free. All right, let's see if we can figure this out. But we have put a post up on our Twitter asking you on a scale of one to ten, how would you rate the NFL football we've seen through week twelve? And if you want to, of course, you can respond with your words. So, I tend to feel like, again, I don't have any scientific evidence, but the offense is down and there are a lot of games where it feels as though the majority of points come from field goals.

Not that kickers aren't people too, you know, because they are. I enjoy the fact that if there's ever a mistake with the podcast, people let us know right away. So, there was a malfunction with our server that keeps our podcast or that posts our podcast and somehow we ended up with our one from Tuesday when it should have been our one from Wednesday. Immediately, I'm barely in the door after the show and someone's already letting us know. But I was thinking that's a good problem to have producer Jay because people are on it.

They're looking for the podcast immediately when the show is done. I agree. I appreciate that.

I was able to fix it and get the right one up there within an hour and a half. So, yeah. Thank you for letting us know. So, we'll have a ton of QB news on this edition of the show because we are about to kick off week 13.

That's nutso. Bryce Young talks about Frank Reich and the new head coach, interim head coach of the Carolina Panthers speaks out about his communication with the rookie quarterback. By the way, he's the special teams coach, or he was. And apparently, he says it was him who fired Deuce Daley and Josh McCown. How does an interim coach have the power to fire other coaches?

I don't, wow. So anyway, it's a soap opera in Charlotte. And then, as we even think ahead to Converse Championship weekend in college football, did you hear what Matt Ruhl had to say about what it's like these days to build a quality team starting with a quarterback? And the Bobby Petrino story, just bizarre. But he is on the mic now for the first time since being rehired at Arkansas. Something I never thought I'd say. Never thought I'd say it. Oh, by the way, Aaron Rodgers turns 40 this weekend and he's aiming to return Christmas weekend. At least it's not my wedding weekend.

I think I'll be able to throw pretty good, so I'm about 60 or 70. Because then I wouldn't be able to talk about it, but since I'll be returning on Christmas night after my wedding hiatus, then I feel like I'll still be allowed to talk about whether or not Aaron Rodgers returns in record time from a torn Achilles. Unless you believe he didn't tear his Achilles. I'm just saying, people out there are coming up with this conspiracy theory, Jay.

Don't make shit up, okay? I don't believe it, because I don't believe that he wouldn't be out there playing if it was anything less. But there are people who think there's no possible way he could return from an Achilles that he tore in September to play again in December. I mean, that's not even, not even three full months. Well I guess it was early September, but by the time he had the surgery, we're talking about just over three months. And Cam Akers was what, five months, I believe, and his was unheard of. His was considered record time, exactly.

Three months. I hadn't considered that. All I'm saying is that I can understand why people think that he is faking it or that it wasn't a torn Achilles. But here's why I don't think it could be pulled off. Because no one can keep a secret that juicy. There have to be people who know.

The Jets team doctors, the Jets themselves, Robert Sala, maybe the general manager, maybe the owner, not to mention the medical staff and the doctor who worked on him in California, the people who were rehabbing with him. There's no way that someone would keep a secret that juicy. There's no way. No, things get leaked just for far lesser juicy intel gets leaked all the time.

So there's no way. In fact, maybe that whole story was fabricated by the AI writers at Sports Illustrated, the fake ones. It's a dangerous game, I'm telling you. How do you know if the AI generated stories are accurate? How do you know if they come from real writers or fake writers?

We're going to go down this wormhole with movie scripts and with songs and it's a dangerous game. But those are for entertainment purposes and don't necessarily need to be based in truth. Yeah, very true.

Right? So a song or a movie or a TV show is fiction or can be fiction. It doesn't have to be, right? And even when it is based on a true story, the writers and the actors slash performers take liberties with those things. When you read a story, now I tell you all the time, be careful what you read on the internet. I never had any idea how true that would be. But when you read a story on sportsillustrated.com or si.com or read it on social, don't you expect that it's the truth?

Well maybe not anymore, but you should think so. How are we going to know? How do we know if a sideline reporter is telling the truth or making bleep up? How do we know if it's an AI generated story from a fake writer, a fake byline?

How do we know? I'm losing all faith in my industry. Oh no, that happened a long time ago. Well, not all faith, but I'm very cynical about my own industry. I will say that journalism is a lost art. Objectivity is a lost art. It's different. How's that?

Yeah, it's very different. We need some AI to establish objectivity again. So how would you rate the season to date? And I don't necessarily mean for your team. I mean overall.

How would you rate what we've seen across the board? I know I went way long. I actually wasn't planning on that. Just sometimes things come out of my mouth that I wasn't intending.

Walk the dogs, school drop off, meetings from 10 to 3, take kids to soccer, then no time left for a jog. When everyone else is relying on you, it's easy to put your needs last. BetterHelp connects you with a licensed therapist online so you can show up for yourself the way you do for others. Visit betterhelp.com slash positive to get 10% off your first month.

That's betterhelp.com slash positive. Well well well, shopping for a car? Yep. Carvana made financing a car as smooth as can be.

Oh yeah? I got pre-qualified instantly and had real terms personalized just for me. It doesn't get much smoother than that. Well, I got to browse thousands of car options on Carvana. All within my budget. It doesn't get much smoother than that. It does. I actually wanted a car that seemed out of my range, but I was able to add a co-signer and found my dream car. It doesn't get much- Oh, it gets smoother. It's getting delivered tomorrow.

Visit Carvana.com or download the app to get pre-qualified today. I'm Tony Kornheiser and this is my show. My friends come on and you know them. We talk about the sports you care about, football and now basketball too, though we don't really pay attention until later in the year and the absurdity that is our lives.

Line etiquette at your local pharmacy, the current phase of the moon, the importance of talking to a human being on the phone and most importantly, the power of a box of that. Listen on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. You are listening to the After Hours podcast.

You're listening to After Hours with Amy Lawrence. Firing for the end zone. Come on. Touchdown. Touchdown. Takes it himself to the power on. Touchdown.

One man to beat ten. He's gone. They throw in the end zone. Touchdown.

Pay the guy a miss. He's inside the five. He's to the three, two, one. Touchdown. In to the end zone. Touchdown.

The people have spoken and one score stands above the rest. Here is your TD of the week. Hurts in the gun. Swift to his left. Three receivers left.

Now, Swift goes in motion. Hurts on a quarterback draw. He's at the five. He's in. Touchdown.

The Eagles win. Hurts does it again. Oh, my God.

Hurts does it again. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?

He's amazing. Yo, there's a party at Lincoln Financial Field. And the Eagles are ten and one. We continue to find ways to win. We play together. We've shown our resiliency day in and day out, game in and game out. We've been challenged in a number of different ways.

We always find a way, and that's something you can't really take for granted, and it's hard to quantify. It's a clean sweep for Jalen Hurts and the Eagles this week, both Monday MVP as well as TD of the week. And you hear that same call in overtime against the Bills, Merrill Reese on Eagles radio. Is Mike quick? Is Mike quick with who's with him?

I'm pretty sure it is, yeah. All right. If I misidentified, someone will let me know.

We're asking the peeps, and that includes you. We're asking the peeps whether or not you agree with Tom Brady and Micah Parsons that it's been a season of mediocrity or essentially average football, in some cases below average. Now, I'd said to you earlier in the week, but I'll repeat the stat, that we've already seen 50 different starting quarterbacks, but that's actually not a record. Jake Browning was the 50th different quarterback to start a game this year. But through 12 games last season or 12 weeks last season, there were 53 different starting quarterbacks. Through 12 games of 21, there were also 50. And so we're kind of right on the mark. Through 12 games of the 2020 pandemic season, there were 52.

So maybe I guess a little off the pace. And yet I kind of feel like it is affecting the quality of play on the field. It seems like primetime games specifically tend to be field goal driven over and over again. Bad Monday and Thursday and Sunday games, but a lot of Monday and Sunday games. So on Twitter, after our CBS, love to know how you rate the quality of the football this season. We're not talking about your team, although I suppose you can narrow it down if you want.

But the quality overall, what we've seen in the NFL. And yes, we did get into the Facebook page. We had to have a code. We had to have the code resent. We had to use a different server. We had to acknowledge that it was on a different server, all kinds of stuff.

But now instead of using Chrome, we're on edge and we've managed to get in. It's yeah, it's doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. Margot, what do you think about the quality of the football this season? I feel like every year it gets kind of we lose something. And I still say it keeps coming back to the fact that these guys don't practice. They can't.

They've got their pads. There's that's one of the biggest things that they've taken away is all the time on the practice field. It takes half a year to get them to click. And we see it and now it'll start to pick up and teams will start to get better. We're seeing it with certain teams, certain clubs. You'll see as everything kind of as the season moves on, it used to be two to three weeks.

Now I feel like it's half a year, at least a minimum and start to find consistency and separate themselves because they don't know who they are. I mean, you've got to figure out who the hell you are and you don't know how to do that until you actually get live hitting. You don't do that until week one. Nobody plays a preseason.

Nobody practices and pads. You don't know. You don't really know who you are. So you're trying to figure it out and it takes you four, five, six weeks to figure out who you are.

Then you've got to reshuffle it and see who's got off to a decent start and try to adjust to what you were doing and what you didn't do well in the first five or six weeks. That's why teams go one and five, one and six and all of a sudden can rattle off four wins and you're like, man, I thought they were garbage. They just didn't know who the hell they were. That's part of it. And teams that were four and O and you go, I thought they were going to be for real and they fall off the cliff because it wasn't legitimate.

Everything was a mirage. It getting more and more like that with the NFL each and every year. And it's not going to change. It'll only get worse because no one can practice certain things. And special teams is just a flag fest. So there's just, it's, it's becomes a little bit of a mishmash. It becomes a mess.

A mishmash, such a good word. Micah Parsons blames it on the fact that the defense isn't allowed to play the way the defense wants to play. I mean, look, there's, there's some element to that. All the rule changes to be able to help the offense.

There's that there is confusion. How do I hit the quarterback? When can I hit the quarterback? There is part of that, but I, I feel like that's something that players adjust to. I feel like a lot of it comes from, I mean, not only the turnover, cause you constantly talk about all those different quarterbacks, you talk about constant turnover and coaching staffs, constant turnovers and rosters. So you have different rosters that come in, in year in and year out, you have different coaching staffs.

You don't practice. You get on the field. It just feels like everything is, they're feeling their way through and they're not a hundred percent. And when you're not a hundred percent, you get what we see on Sunday, which is confusion and teams kind of searching for things.

And then when they find it, it's a glimpse here, a glimpse there. And then when it actually clicks, I mean, you're talking 12, 13, 14 weeks into the season. You just got to hope you're still involved. We could have quarterback number 51 start this weekend. If the Browns make a change, we don't know exactly what the Vikings are going to do at quarterback.

So there's that as well, but the teams that have actually had their starting quarterbacks all the way through, well, those are few and far between. And so we'll do a little QB news in advance of week 13, but coming up next, I asked a hall of Famer, Steve Largent, who was our guest on the last show about changing quarterbacks mid-season and how that affects the offense, how that affects the receivers and his answer gave you a little insight and Intel. A lot of you liked the interview, so we're going to bring back part of it from yesterday's show. So find us on Twitter after our CBS.

Yes, we finally got into our Facebook page. People are still responding to the scarred and charred Walnut Crunch pumpkin pie photos that I shared, but I feel very bold and brave. Also, I forgot to bring Jay his Walnut Crunch pumpkin pie.

It's in my freezer, the good one, not the charred one. What would you have done if I had brought you pie that looked like that? Knowing the story, I would have laughed. I would have honestly just eaten it and be like, oh, it looks fantastic probably. Would you? No, you wouldn't have.

Probably would have. I mean, everything you give me in the past. Do you like burnt things? Burnt food? Well, I don't know, I guess I'd say I'd like things more like more on the well-done side than rare side.

Oh really? Okay. But in terms of like baked goods, no, not burnt, no, but everything you give me in the past has been good. So I would have definitely eaten it. You would have tried it?

Even if I didn't like it, I probably would have been like, oh, it's great. Marco, you missed the story of how I set my oven on fire with a Walnut Crunch pumpkin pie. The topping caught on fire in the broiler and it was a legit like five inch flames coming out of the top of the pie. So really funny, one of Bob's family members has become a routine podcast listener.

So he doesn't listen during the show when it airs live, but he listens to the podcast. And I'm wondering if I should send him the link about, especially since I'll be joining them for family Christmas, should I send him the link about how I nearly set the kitchen on fire? Or do you think that would spread through the family like wildfire and I would no longer be allowed to cook or be part of the kitchen staff? I don't know. Apparently, Botch likes a good burnt blueberry muffin, so you never know. You never know. Maybe somebody's into it. I don't know. Don't chart up.

Set it on fire. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence. You are listening to the After Hours Podcast. Rolling out right is Gardner Minshew. He's at the five. Going to take off and run. Makes a man miss. And Knights his way into the end zone. Touchdown! A rushing score! Gardner Minshew finds the end zone. Touchdown!

I-N-D-Y! Browning fakes a handoff, rolls left, his pass, caught at the 11, sample, toward the end zone. Touchdown!

Bangles! Drew Sample knocking over bowling pins on his way to the end zone. Dobbs, shotgun, short drop, looks right, sees nothing, throws to the end zone! Touchdown! TJ!

This is After Hours with Amy Lawrence. Not only have we seen 10 rookie quarterbacks make starts this year, we've seen 50 QBs start overall through week 12, which is right on par with what we've seen since 2020. Churning through quarterbacks at an alarming rate.

So then, how do you get ready? How do you adjust if you're a member of an offense when you have to pivot to a new QB? It was a question I asked of Hall of Famer Steve Largent when he joined us on our last show. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. So we'll pick it up there, bring it back a part of this interview, starting with an adjustment to a new QB in season.

It's difficult. I would say that for most of my career, in most games, we had the quarterback, our starting quarterback was playing and was not injured. We didn't have very many injuries in Seattle for whatever reason. And that was a huge plus for our offense to have the same guy call them plays and executing plays that you have the whole year. And that really makes a huge difference for a team. When you have to substitute a quarterback in, even halfway through the season, or now they're three quarters of the way through the season, it's really hard. It's hard to adjust to another quarterback snap count, the way the quarterback calls the plays, the way the quarterback adjusts and makes alternative plays when he's snappable. That makes it really hard on a team. And some teams can do that and they accept that burden and they carry it very well. But most teams don't. And so if I was a betting guy and I was saying, you got a year round starter in this team and you got a second team quarterback on this team, which one's going to win the game? And it's halfway through the season like we are right now or more, I'd always take the starting quarterback and never the backup guy because the backup guys are backup for a reason. We're definitely seeing the changes at quarterback affect a lot of the teams that we thought would be contenders. You miss very few games during your career. We see guys go down with injuries every week.

Some are non-contact, some are because of the contact. Any secrets? I think number one, it was a real huge blessing to me to be able to play as many games as I did for that long a time. And I didn't really have a serious injury until like 1984, 1985.

And I fractured my arm and so I was out of the game for six weeks that particular season. But so I was very fortunate, number one. Number two, I really worked out hard in the offseason and I think that oftentimes your work in the offseason is reflected in the amount of time you can play in the game when the regular season hits.

But the biggest part was just I was surely blessed. What was the best thing about playing the majority of your career, I guess all of your regular seasons in Seattle? That really was special because I got to play with the same group of guys and the coaches in the front office would alternate certain players at different times and that was their prerogative but for the most part I had a core group of guys that I played most of my career with and to get to have that relationship with them and with the fans. The fans in Seattle are just fantastic and I think they're the best fans in the league although there's a lot of good fans in the league. But I think Seattle fans would rate number one in my book and that made it so much fun just to have them cheering for you from the minute you drove up to the stadium to play a game and then you come out of the stadium and they're still cheering.

It was just really a fun place to play. Hall of Fame wide receiver Steve Largent is with us here after hours on CBS Sports Radio. We've never had a receiver earn NFL MVP honors. We've never had a receiver go over 2,000 yards. Tyreek Hill is well within reach of that number sitting on now 1,324 yards through 11 games. So Steve, someone who knows the position inside and out, should a wide receiver be considered for an MVP?

I think he could legitimately but when I played we just didn't throw the ball as much as they do now. So that's what I was talking about earlier that the receivers complete such a vital component in any team's offense now and so I could see a tight end winning that award. I can see receivers winning that award because they're catching so many more balls for so many yards and touchdowns. So they've become a more vital component of every team's offense now. And every team doesn't just have one good receiver, they've got two or three good receivers and then they've got a couple of tight ends. So I can see that being a receiver today is a much more important role to play than it ever has been in the NFL in the past. Steve Largent is with us here after hours on CBS Sports Radio and we partner with him courtesy of Southern Recipe Small Batch Pork Rinds and the Gridiron Grates Assistance Fund which was started by Mike Ditka to help players of previous generations. Why is it important to you to be involved with Gridiron Grates, Steve? I really admire Mike Ditka for having put this together so many years ago and being behind it totally.

And I just thought he's right on point. There's so many players that I played with in Seattle that are really hurting, guys that didn't make a lot of money. I made $28,000 the first year I played in the NFL. And there's a lot of guys that didn't make that much. And so then they get hurt or some have some kind of recurring injury or something like that and then they're really hurting.

And some guys, they need medical attention oftentimes, they just need help. And so that's what the Gridiron Grates Assistance Fund is for, is for those players who didn't make all the money but really were the heart of the game. There's players from every single team that are walking through this life and they need help from us. That's what really was the convincing thing for me to be involved with Mike and help raise money for these players that really haven't gotten help from anybody else. So glad you enjoyed that conversation with Hall of Famer Steve Largent. Really cool whenever we get the chance to connect with a different Hall of Famer. We don't mind repeat visits, but I do enjoy picking the brain of players from various eras.

A lot of times I'll ask them, what's the biggest difference between the time that you played and what you see on the field now? And Steve was very clear about the difference when it comes to the passing game. But he also said that his first season in Seattle, he made $28,000. That's not even minimum wage. I think Jay makes more than that. The whole Steve Largent interview is on our podcast. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio.