Solomon Wilcots, Former NFL Defensive Back

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Tommyjohn.com slash victory. Seaside for details. Solomon, how are you, man? Thank you for taking the time. JR, I'm doing great. Good to be on with you. Thank you. Appreciate you. How is everything?

What's the vibe like out in that, I guess they still call it Sin City, maybe? Yeah, you know, it's about two teams, right, that have taken two different paths to get here. You have one with the incumbent great quarterback, that is Patrick Mahomes, and then the upstart. And Brock Perdue had one of the most phenomenal seasons by any quarterback in NFL history, but yet he's still battling to get the respect that he feels he deserves. And I think the entire team with the 49ers kind of feel the same way, that they've got something to prove. In some ways, this is a rematch from Super Bowl 54 Chiefs, 49ers, Kyle Shanahan, Andy Reid. They were all part of that Super Bowl 54 game where they had a 10-point lead with about eight minutes to go and allow Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs to score 21 unanswered points. So this is their chance to kind of restore their pride a little bit.

Well, Solomon, based on what you just said, and we know about the injuries, I know a man who is out for the Kansas City Chiefs, and you think about the 49ers with their defense and their offense, who do you favor in this game? It's like revenge here. There's a revenge factor.

There is a revenge factor. I think it's hard to go against Patrick Mahomes because he's just one of those guys that's the grim reaper. He is going to find a way to win. He is not only a talented player, I think he's highly competitive. It's going to take everything you've got to beat him, but the Niners, I think they've got multiple weapons on the offensive side of the ball.

Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle, Brandon Ayew, Deebo, Samuel, and a really good offensive line. So I think it's going to be a high-scoring game. It may come down to whoever has the ball last.

It might. Solomon Wilcox is joining us here at the JR Sport Brief Show on CBS Sports Radio. You mentioned, and I'm in the same boat with you, it's hard to take a look at Patrick Mahomes and bet against the guy. Unfortunately, we learned about the situation involving his dad, the DUI, on Saturday. This guy is so tough, this dude being Patrick Mahomes. Do you think that creeps into his mind, or will actually getting onto that field be an escape for him come Sunday?

Oh absolutely, because that's his place, that's his domain. He's always been highly focused. You haven't seen distractions creep into his life or creep into his game. That's why he's off to one of the greatest starts by starting quarterbacks in NFL history, already now playing in yet another Super Bowl, his fourth Super Bowl in five years.

I think that's absolutely incredible. Has the chance to win three in five years before his 30th birthday. Even the great Tom Brady didn't do that. And so he's doing things that we haven't seen quarterbacks do before. And I think it's because he's just a highly competitive individual and obviously very talented.

Very much so. Well Solomon, we know, and Roger Goodell just at his press conference about an hour and 90 minutes ago went and talked about a variety of subjects. One of those is the fact that a lot of people find Taylor Swift to be a distraction as I stand here in the studio with Travis Kelce addressing the media. What are your thoughts on that whole spectacle? We know the NFL wants as much attention on the product as possible. I don't know that she's been a distraction.

Okay, let's just walk through this a little bit. Travis Kelce in the AFC Championship game was targeted 11 times. He called all 11 passes. He wasn't distracted.

What did he drop one? I don't know where the distraction is. The Kansas City Chiefs, when by the time Taylor Swift started sort of catching the eye of the camera, remember, yeah it distracted us from the fact that they dropped a lot of balls and it helped people turn their attention away from that to Taylor Swift.

The team's gotten better. The economic impact on the Kansas City Chiefs, it sort of multiplied exponentially in terms of ticket sales, the cost of tickets at Arrowhead Stadium. It's brought to the game younger eyes of the female persuasion. Young girls are watching NFL football because of Taylor Swift. He's moving the needle economically in our game and in our sport. And why do you think the NFL and the networks keep putting the camera on him? So I think this is people who are watching the game, why do they have a camera on them? Because the league is making money. That's why.

Always about the cash. Former NFL defensive back current host of the opening drive when Sirius XM NFL radio Solomon Wilcox is joining us. This year's press conference with Roger Goodell was invite only. And I believe there was a particular question about workplace diversity that he did not necessarily want to address. It was still posed to him based on all of your experiences from a player, someone also now working in the industry. Why do you why do you see this question still popping up and why is it such a situation where the NFL or at least Goodell is just like, hey, I'm sick of answering this three years in a row? Well, I do know that Commissioner Roger Goodell has really worked hard to, you know, work for diversity in the workplace. The league itself, as you well know, who had been sort of antithetical to the plight of Colin Kaepernick. They did a 180 and literally everything but an official apology to say, you know what, we were wrong and we need to do an about face.

And they did it. And rarely do you see institutions and corporations of this size and magnitude admit that and then allow the actions to speak for the fact that they're willing to go into a different direction, whether it's the Rooney Rule, whether it's the hiring of Jay-Z and Roc Nation to sort of add a whole different flavor to the way that the game is presented across its family of networks. And so I think that was a more direct hit to Roger. And I think Roger wanted to handle that differently. But look, reporters have to do their job.

They're the fifth in state or the fourth in state, excuse me, and they should be able to ask some of those questions. But by and large, I think you also should be able to handle it in a more respectful manner. So I feel and understand how it works on both sides. At the end of the day, we have within even the National Football League, we do have at the top in critical areas, particularly how these stories are told and who are telling these stories. That's why they missed in the first place on Colin Kaepernick, because there's no one at the managerial level helping them to get it right when they're starting to figure out, OK, what stories are we going to cover and how are we going to tell these stories in a more fair, balanced and more accurate way? And had they had someone on that level at the executive level who's a minority, maybe they would have helped to get it right. Right.

And save a lot of pain and anguish. Ultimately, they did make the bow face, as I said before. But I think these are appropriate questions and I don't consider them to be inappropriate at all. Yeah. And Solomon Wilcox is here with us, the JR sport show on CBS Sports Radio.

You know, I've been in these press conferences, gigantic ballrooms, huge ballrooms to have it brought down to a invite only level was not not surprising, but a little disappointing in that regard. As we talk about hiring, we do know that there were two head coaches who were hired or at least introduced today in the NFL. Dan Quinn up with the commanders, Raheem Morris here in Atlanta, Georgia, with the Falcons. What do you think about those hirings? And granted, both teams need quarterbacks, but do you think they're getting off on the right foot by hiring those two? By hiring which two again?

Raheem Morris with the Falcons and Dan Quinn up in Washington. Well, yeah, look, you know, over what the eight co head coaching vacancies, you had four who were minorities, three African American coaches and Dave Canales, Latino, a coach of Latino descent. I think only time will tell if these were good hires.

I mean, we have to allow them to sort of prove that they were worth the opportunity that they have been afforded. Look, I think the Washington commanders wanted to go in a different direction. But then I think when Ben Johnson decided that it wasn't the right place for him, then I think they fell to the next coach available that they had second on their list. That was Dan Quinn. I'm not excited about the hire there, either as a head coach or the offensive coordinator.

I'm really gonna, I'm gonna wait and see to see how it turns out. But it doesn't get me excited. For whatever reason, I'm not feeling strongly encouraged after that move. Raheem Morris and the move that they made, remember, they could have had Bill Belichick. And as I read in one article that Arthur Blank didn't feel like the juice was worth the squeeze, that there would have been significant changes at the high level of that organization. People were going to be told when to work, how to work, and where they would work from, and what parts of the building they could be part of, that there would be several people maybe not retained.

Then Arthur Blank wanted to protect his people, didn't want to go in that direction. I kind of applaud that move because I don't think you should be sending people home and displacing families that have nothing to do with wins and losses, but they're part of your business operation. Raheem Morris, I think, seems to be, at least on its face, a good hire for Arthur Blank and the Atlanta Falcons.

Let's wait till the game starts and we'll really find out. Solomon Wilcox is joining us, the chair of our sport brief show here on CBS Sports Radio. Just to get another coaching question in there, not necessarily on the NFL level, we all saw what Deion Sanders did in his first year with the Buffaloes, where I know you are very, very familiar with. What do you think about the evolution of coaching in college? We see Nick Saban stepping down.

On the basketball side, we've seen some stars go down in Coach K. Do you think Deion, because of his standing, is going to continue to have success, or are we just going to get more of a hodgepodge going into the future? There doesn't seem to be structure. That's a very good point, and that lack of structure leads it to being kind of like the wild, wild west, right, with no clear direction.

You don't have direction, you don't have vision, but sort of just all over the place right now. The landscape of college sports has changed dramatically, and I don't think it'll ever truly be the same. Now that's not a bad thing. There needed to be some growth, there needed to be some innovation. For as much as we love tradition, we also know that there were some things that needed to be fixed, some things that needed to be addressed and needed to be changed. Look, I covered college basketball at the highest level, including the Final Four.

I covered, obviously, NCAA football for a long time. This was a model that was going to be changed. The NCAA had a chance to fix it. They were told by the Supreme Court, you're not going to like our decision.

We suggest that you come up with a model and present it to us before we render our final decision. They abdicated their leadership and did nothing. And now they've left, they left this wasteland, right, of really with no rules, no clear direction. Subsequently, just as that announcement came down, do you know what happened in college basketball? Two great coaches, Roy Williams at North Carolina and then Mike Seshevke at Duke, immediately said, this is going to be their last year coach. And then we find two years later, you find a guy like Nick Saban saying, ah, that's it for me.

I'm out of here. Right? Because it's like quicksand.

The ground keeps moving. Things keep shifting. Players can just up and leave and go whenever they want.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Coaches have been able to do that. Now the players could do it. Some coaches don't find that a palatable situation for them.

Okay? And when you have players, I just want to know, 10 years from now, what school are they going to go back to as their alma mater? What school are they going to take their kids to to say, hey, here's where I went to school. This is what we left behind. Here's what we did.

Here's my band of brothers that we played with and that I grew with. They got four or five schools they're going to be trying to attend. So all of those things, I think, hang in the balance for really just having some tradition and having some consistency within the marketplace when it comes to college sports. It certainly looks like, as you said, the landscape is going to continue to change and change and change, whether it's unionization from the players being looked at as employees and conference changes.

It's just the wild, wild west. But Solomon, as we talk about change, not just with your own work on air and being a former player, you've also been very forward facing when it comes down to athletes and health from an entrepreneurial route. What have you been up to in that space? You know, I've gone to work with a great company by the name of Veracil, and they've brought really new and creative, innovative treatment to repair cartilage damage in the knee. They brought that to the marketplace. It's called Macy M.A.C.I. to help repair cartilage damage in the knee. Many of us, whether you're a weekend warrior or you're a former athlete or even a current athlete, you're dealing with knee pain and cartilage damage.

You want to go to your doctor. You want to ask them about the M.A.C.I. treatment. It allows physicians to use your own cells to regrow your cartilage. They go in and they take just a snippet through a scope of your healthy tissue, your healthy cartilage tissue. They can grow it on a collagen membrane and then go back in and reinsert it. It adheres to the healthy tissue and smooths out those areas that have been rough, that have been sticking and been causing a lot of pain and help you to have full recovery, right? Keep you from deteriorating to the point where you're bone on bone.

So just go to the website at macy.com to find a doctor in your area and find out more about the treatment. Solomon, you know, for the better part of 20 or 20 years ago, maybe more than that, you know, my doctor told me, he said, man, you got no cartilage in your knee. We got to go in there and clean it up. I said, man, I'm in high school. I'm not doing this. So this this might have to be something I look into. Solomon, thank you, man. Definitely. Thank you for having me, Jay. I appreciate it. Absolutely.

Where can people follow you and your work? Tell us, Solomon. Go ahead. Why don't you go to my my X. We're on Twitter and on X at Solomon's Wisdom. And you can listen to Sirius XM NFL radio. I'm the host of the opening drive.

7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday. Hey, Solomon, always a pleasure, man. Enjoy the week and the Super Bowl and all that good stuff, OK?

All the best to you, JR. Take care now. A peanut butter M&M's production. In a world where Super Bowl winners get the world's admiration and a fancy ring. But the runners up get nothing. One retired cop. That's one retired quarterback. Read the script.

Oh, sorry. One retired quarterback returns to claim what's his. That's claim a ring with diamonds made from M&M's peanut butter.

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