Carolina Panthers, Ron Rivera, Damar Hamlin, and it's "Greed Week".

Well, obviously a lot of yesterday's program was about DeMar Hamlin fence back of the Buffalo Bills who remains in ICU will have a little bit of an update on that wall. There's really no new information. And everything that I've heard says that there really isn't going to be an update until they bring him out of a medically induced coma because I don't think they're going to know until they do that.

And I mean, I've heard so many interviews now about it that they all say the same thing. It could be it could be days. It could be a week or more before we really have any idea what kind of progress is made. I realize that everybody wants we want we all want to see.

This kid. Walk out of the hospital until we want. And I just I hope it happens soon, but.

It's not going to happen on our timeline. It's all I got. I mean, it's really all we can say about that.

Again, there's a little bit of news and some audio we're going to bring you from that coming up in just a few minutes. But today, we actually probably a good idea to go back and you know, what do we do here? We do we talk about sports, sports things. I make losing wagers. We do that. We hurricanes lose hockey games. Oh, yeah. What a streak.

I know it's all right. They're still good. They weren't going to win out the rest of the season.

They were not going to do that. All right. We get a lot of football. There's some hoops to talk about and a big game in Raleigh tonight.

Duke at State. I will tell you right now. Kind of like the Wolf Pack. Oh, I like it. All right, let's go. Somewhere, there's somebody out there going, oh, no, we're doomed. Gold thinks we're going to win. I mean, you're probably right.

All right, let's start here. David Tepper talked with Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh. But it wasn't an interview. They talked about the Panthers head coaching job, but it wasn't an interview. Of course, it wasn't his. But what was it about that?

Just talking about the holidays. I'm sure like what you get for talking about the job. What are the parameters of that job? We're not just not an interview. We're not interviewing for the job.

They were just discussing the job. We'll get you wear a fancy headset. Right.

Do that. And we have maybe that we're talking about khakis. Yeah. You know, Harbaugh likes to wear the same pair of I think they're Dickies or Dickies or Dockers. Yeah.

What's your favorite kind of tennis shoe on our artificial turf? Yeah. Unbelievable.

But it wasn't an interview. Jay Williams from ESPN's Keeshawn Jaywill and Max would rather have the current guy. I wouldn't over Steve Wilkes. This guy has gotten the locker room together.

They lost CMC. I lost Baker Mayfield. I mean, what else could Steve Wilkes do to earn a great opportunity to be the next head coach of the Panthers?

I don't understand when these things happen. I know Jim Harbaugh is a hot name and I know what he's done to beat Ohio State. You know, they get to the Final Four again. I hear all that and I get that you're going to have options.

But damn, the options right there in front of your face. Who else can better corral this locker room and put this team on the right path than the coach that you currently have in place? I mean, I wholeheartedly agree with Jay Williams have been.

I started saying this in the second game that Wilkes coached. Have we not learned our lesson yet from one college and well, I don't think Harbaugh is a college coach. No, but I think he's a pro coach. I think he's a pro coach that has had success in college. I felt the same way about Pete Carroll that he was a pro coach that had success in college. They were pro coaches first Harbaugh, although Harbaugh was not a pro coach first. He was a college coach first, but he really was coaching first University of San Diego and then Stanford like a pro team.

But he's had he's had tremendous success at both levels. And I think Jim Harbaugh is a good coach. I don't know that Jim Harbaugh is a great coach, but I think he is a good coach. And what he did with the 49ers was he kind of resurrected first Alex Smith, resurrected his career. And I mean, Smith was the first pick in the draft. So it ain't like Smith was terrible. No, but he created an offense that Smith could really get the most out of. And Smith was a was a very, very athletic quarterback coming out of Utah.

Remember, they ran. I was Urban Meyer was his head coach. They ran that spread offense. So his athleticism was big anyway. And then Harbaugh recognized that Colin Kaepernick was a freak athlete with a great arm and devised an offense that utilized and showcased his best talents. And they were really good. And then it was running its course and he got out.

Yeah. The problem with Jim Harbaugh and I personally think he's going to end up if he goes back to the NFL, it's going to be Denver. The problem with Harbaugh is that he's got an expiration date. That expiration date is not as far down the road as you think.

That expiration date is like four years and then we're pretty much done. He would have taken I don't know how long he's been at Michigan now, but he would have taken the Vikings job last year if they had given it to him. They offered it to him. He went there thinking that the job was his just for showing up.

He interviewed on the February signing day. So, but look, it had nothing to do with recruiting because their recruiting class was already done. And obviously he's recruited well at Michigan. But anyway, I don't, we don't have to go into the weeds about this, but Jim Harbaugh.

Okay. Steve Wilkes back to back to the current interim head coach. It all came to an end with the loss to the Buccaneers. What did Wilkes say after the loss? We didn't do what we wanted to do.

All right. They made more plays than what we did today. So we got to give those guys all the credit. We didn't play according to our DNA, which is physical and effort, which I thought for the most part, you saw, you saw that we didn't play smart, not at all. But the one thing I stated to those guys, the last element, that's what we're going to do this week. We're going to finish.

That's what men do. That's what good football teams do regardless of the record, regardless of the circumstances. We're going to come in tomorrow, put this game to bed and have a great week of practice with that leading to game day execution. We're going to finish next week. And that's our mindset.

All right. Well, Sam Darnell gets another opportunity to be the starter. He was good early, even into the third quarter against the Bucks. Then the offense just kind of like an old car. It just, it just gave out and is still sitting there on the side of the road.

It sucks. You know, obviously we knew what we were fighting for, you know, and to come away with, you know, to be that close and especially, you know, going down there, Eddie kicking a field goal. Obviously we don't get the on side, but our defense coming up with three big stops there. And, you know, we had a chance at the end, you know, and just, just came up a little short. So, you know, a lot of motion goes into it because, you know, we know the kind of preparation that goes into it, you know, throughout the week, not just throughout the week, but throughout the whole season to, to accomplish our goal. We were right there at the end and we just couldn't get it done. They were, all of that is true. And I know people will be upset about it and that's fine.

I mean, if you're a Panthers fan and they had a chance to make the playoffs and they don't, that's disappointing. Start a journey, not a fad. Kick off your fitness journey with up to $500 off Peloton bike, bike plus or tread packages. Choose the package that will take your training to the next level with accessories like our cycling shoes, heart rate band, non-slip grip, dumbbells, and more. Join now, and you'll see why 92% of households that start the year with Peloton are still active. A year later, all access membership separate offer in January 8th, 2023 excludes bike, bike plus and tread basics.

See additional terms at one Peloton.com. But the fact that this team got it to week 17 with a chance. Yeah. After the way they started. That's such a positive.

It is such a positive. I mean, they'll go out, probably beat the saints. Yeah. Screw up draft position. And as soon as I started giving Darnold any kind of credit, he's, you know, went down in the tank.

So I thought, okay, come on. He's not the answer. They have the quarterback. Their quarterback is not on the roster. I think it's pretty obvious, but there's a lot of teams that can say that too. So I, my curiosity is where the musical chairs of quarterbacks, current quarterbacks that are not going to be starting where they are currently.

Yeah. I cannot wait to see where, how, where that stops. So anyway, all right, let's move on to week 18 or as I like to call it greed week, there's never been any reason for a 17th game of an NFL season. There's never been a good reason, but because this was the way to extract more money for the television contracts.

So the league and the owners could give a small fraction of that to the players. This is why we have a 17th game. Not because we needed a 17th game, not because the players needed a 17th game. We also don't need Thursday games each week. That's bad for players, but we have them terrible match-ups to this season for the most part.

Yeah. We, I actually think they've, they probably had a better schedule this year than they ever have because most of the time you just don't know, you just have no idea. And I believe every team must appear once on the Thursday night.

I think every team has to appear once on a Thursday night game. I don't, all right. Courtney Cronin of ESPN, uh, took it one step further.

I was more broad. Courtney Cronin narrows it down. Why do we need to play this week? We need to take a beat right now because we have, this is so unprecedented that we have no idea what tomorrow's going to look like, what Thursday's going to look like, and we're not the ones playing in these games. How about we worry about the mental health and emotional wellbeing of these players, both on the bills and on the bangles and on 30 other teams in the NFL who were trying to process how something like this could happen to a healthy 24 year old knowing that yes, while it was a freak thing that happened, there's a lot of emotion that comes with trauma and processing that trauma.

So the fact that we think, Oh, well it's just business as usual. I'm tired of that mindset. I'm tired of the next man, next man mentality mindset that has continued to become a systemic problem in the NFL in sports period.

At some point you got to take a look at your situation and say, you know what? Right now is not the time for sports. Right now is not the time to be playing in this game right now. We need to take care of each other and you can resume the games next week.

I don't necessarily think Courtney Cronin is wrong at all. All right. But it brings us to this. I have a trivia question for you. Oh boy.

Are you ready for a trivia question? Let's go. All right.

Uh, I will give you an Adam Gold show t-shirt Victoria, if you get this right. Okay. Okay.

Do you have an Adam Gold show t-shirt? Uh, I will say no. Okay. So even if you did, you could have, uh, you can have five. I don't care.

Um, we have them back there. Other than for player strikes, how many NFL regular season games have been canceled since world war II? Ooh, I'm going to go with zero. That is the correct answer.

Let's go. Zero. We had two work stoppages, 1982 and 1987. The NFL was so loathe to cancel games in 87.

That's the one where they used replacement players. And because the players currently who were in the league at that time realized that the owners didn't give a damn. They don't now players started breaking the picket line and went back to the game and then that, that, so that work stoppages over the NFL players union, unfortunately is majority of players who need the paycheck, who need, because the careers are so short in the NFL, they need the paycheck. So asking they could legitimately get a much better deal for themselves if the league was willing to sacrifice a season, an entire season, we ain't playing under these rules because they have the worst collective bargaining agreement in all of sports. They had zero power. And who complains when players hold out for more money?

Fans can't believe it like, you know, you don't complain when your team cuts your favorite player. Anyway, so the we've had no games canceled COVID canceled, no games, COVID canceled, no games canceled a lot, but not games. Wait, wait, I'm hearing the truthers out there. What COVID Oh my gosh, that came up obviously Monday night. Oh wow. Oh no, no. Oh yeah. Oh, it was fantastic Monday night. Anyway, not going to get into the issue, but they were sitting there waiting.

All right. So now that brings us back to Damar Hamlin, because that's what Courtney Cronin was talking about. We have not only players on the bills players in the Bengals, but in every locker room around the NFL. And if I was going to guess, I would say that there's a fair amount in other sports as well, who feel the same way about watching an athlete nearly die on the field and hoping that he'll come back. But obviously in the NFL community, these guys, I'm not, I'm sure there are some players who are afraid for their own safety because that did look like a pretty common collision in his, in the Hamlin tackle of T Higgins.

It looked very, very common. I'm sure there's a fair amount of fear involved, but ultimately these guys are crushed because one of them is intubated in ICU in medically induced coma. Start a journey, not a fad kick off your fitness journey with up to $500 off Peloton bike bike plus or dread packages. Choose the package that will take your training to the next level with accessories like our cycling shoes, heart rate band, non slip grip, dumbbells, and more join now. And you'll see why 92% of households that start the year with Peloton are still active a year later, all access membership separate offer in January 8th, 2023 excludes bike bike, plus intrep basics.

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Drivers who switch and save could save hundreds progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates potential savings will vary. So I would understand why there are players who not that you can't go out and play, but preparing to play today, tomorrow, Friday, Saturday, that is really more of the issue than the actual game. I think preparing to play anyway, his uncle Dorian Glenn was in Cincinnati and ESPNs. And I think this is Coley Harvey doing the interview. He has been covering this for ESPN.

Here's a Dorian Glenn on any information he's heard from Damar Hamlin's doctors. Like I said, they really talked to my brother and my sister-in-law a lot more. I just been kind of just kind of like hearing as much as I can and really just being here to be in support for him.

And you know, I know he's still here and I know he's fighting and I know that you know, we appreciate all the prayers and support we've been getting from like people all over the not just the country but the world and I know that prayer just power and prayer and for all the prayer that we've been getting it really means a difference for my family to see that and I know it'll mean a difference to more when he sees that as well. By the way, the toy drive. Yeah. See what the total is now?

No. It's almost 6 million. What?

It's almost 6 million. Yeah, exactly. Wow. I mean, it's incredible.

It's awesome. Anyway, he was resuscitated not once but twice. They resuscitated him on the field and he needed to be resuscitated again.

That's what I read this morning in the hospital when he arrived at the hospital. I do think there is an argument to be made for the Bills not playing on Sunday. But that brings us back to the answer of the trivia question, which is zero games cancelled due to anything other than a labor stoppage since World War II. Every game, every single game that was postponed was played in 2001 after the attacks on the Trade Center and the Pentagon. They took I think it was week twos NFL games and they just took the entire week and put it at the end of the season.

But they're not doing that now. The NFL has already said that week 18 will happen as scheduled. Which is funny because I was listening to NFL radio on the drive in this morning and Solomon Wilcox was hosting and he was ripping the NFL for not giving any information.

I'm like, we had that yesterday. The NFL said yesterday week 18 will go as planned. There were some game times that were still up in the air because they were still trying to sort through what they're going to do with Bills Bengals. But ultimately week 18 is going to happen as week 18 is scheduled, which means Chiefs Raiders on Saturday, Titans Jaguars on Saturday, everybody else on Sunday. There's no Monday Night Football. There is a Sunday Night game between the Packers and the Lions.

Now what do you do with Bills and Bengals? And my guess is that since they feel like they need to play the game, if I was guessing I would say they'll probably play that the following week. Maybe they play it Friday. I don't know.

No idea. I wouldn't put it past them, right? But they probably play it the following week and just push the start of the playoffs back. I mean, there's nothing we really don't know all of the seating anyway for the playoffs. So it's not like what we have hotels booked. Everybody everybody can be flexible here. I don't know.

That's my guess. I still think there's a good chance that we might see something that is legitimately unprecedented and that game just not played. And it wouldn't bother me. I mean, it would be bad for like the Bills who can't wouldn't be able to get the first the number. I guess they could if the Raiders beat the Chiefs and the Bills win, they could be the number one seed.

But either way, those things are inconsequential compared to what the real story is here. One more football thing. Ron Rivera.

This is fantastic. So I will just say it in this term. Ron Rivera did not have his fastball after the commandos lost to the Browns in week 17. So they were eliminated from the playoffs by virtue of late game results at the moment. They were in the hunt. I think it was the Green Bay win over Detroit. I think it was the Green Bay win over over the Vikings because it meant that the commandos could not get in front of the winner of the Packers and the Lions. I think that's what it means or what ultimately was the result. But a question was asked of Rivera about potentially playing Sam Howell, former North Carolina quarterback now at Washington in the finale because the game might not matter.

And that was the way the question was asked of Ron Rivera. To clarify, you said you would talk about quarterback next week. If you guys are eliminated today by what happens at four o'clock, is Sam Howell in consideration? We can be eliminated. Yeah.

If the Packers beat the Vikings, then you guys are eliminated. Oh, look on his face. Oh, OK. I love Ron, but come on. Well, I I am a fan of Ron personally. I've been very consistent about my thoughts on Rivera as a coach in that I think Ron Rivera is a good coach. He is not a great coach. He is a good coach. He is a great human being. And I think he is perfect for what Washington needed and needs. They need an adult.

They don't have a lot of adults right now in Washington. Now, and I will say this. His ego sometimes rides in the front seat, and I think it's happening here again. Taylor Heinecky is going to start for Washington. Now, he said they said yesterday or today. It was yesterday that Sam Howell would play. But Taylor Heinecky will start.

So let me get this straight. Riverboat, the guy you benched in favor of Carson Wentz in a game you needed to win. He's going to start. Wentz, who was not good, the is inactive.

And how how will will play? I don't understand this. Start Sam Howell because who cares? Yeah.

Give Sam Howell the feel of the lead up to starting an NFL game. Makes sense. I'm just going to go under the assumption that this is way more difficult than I understand. And I think that's probably what I just said is probably correct. That all of this is way more complicated than my tiny brain can comprehend because it seems easy to me does let him go through the business of being a starting quarterback.

If unless you have no idea, unless you have no plans for him to ever be a quarterback. Start a journey, not a fad. Kick off your fitness journey with up to five hundred dollars off Peloton Bike, Bike Plus or Tread packages. Choose the package that will take your training to the next level with accessories like our cycling shoes, heart rate band, non slip grip dumbbells and more. Join now and you'll see why ninety two percent of households that start the year with Peloton are still active a year later. All access membership separate offer ends January 8th. Twenty twenty three excludes Bike, Bike Plus and Tread basics. See additional terms at one Peloton dot com.