We’re 83% complete with Super bloated Wild Card weekend…

It's the Adam Gold show. How you doing? That might be all I've got right there. It was good.

It was a good start. Modern medicine, ladies and gentlemen. Cytus infections, man, this time of the year. Brother.

Hope everybody is well on this holiday afternoon. We have college basketball games going on. There's a bunch of those. The Ivy League is celebrating MLK Day. The biggies, we have Villanova-Georgetown. Purdue will play Michigan State later. The NBA's got seven afternoon games. So that's cool.

This would have been a good day for the National Football League to intrude on everybody. I know. Right? Yeah. I mean, they've sucked up every other holiday.

Why not? I mean, Thanksgiving, that's traditionally a day for the NFL. It used to be Christmas was only the NBA. Now the NFL went, nah, man, we want part of it. Here's three games. Amazing. Look, the NFL is king.

They can do whatever they want. I'm kind of surprised that Monday Night Football isn't being played at three o'clock this afternoon. Yeah, me too.

Right? Anyway, we've got a lot of things to do. We'll have, in a way, breaking news. But I'll tell you what the breaking news, I'll give you the signal for the breaking news in a little bit. I'm excited. Yeah, I actually think it's significant.

It will make some people unhappy. Oh, yes. Sometimes that's the best breaking news. Right. What a tease that is on a Monday. I'm Adam Gold.

That's Victoria. We are here until three o'clock today. And there's a lot to do. We've got NFL football to talk about, college basketball to talk about, and more. I don't know that we're going to get into it today because there's so much, like, so many games to talk about.

So many. But the the NCAA has they just these old people don't get it. They just don't. They're begging Congress to save them. Yeah, folks, it's too late.

You screwed it up a long time ago. Congress doesn't care enough to save you. They don't know. I wish they understood this, but they don't. And they're just going to beg Congress. No, they're not going to because it ain't on their agenda. Like, I'm sure there's some people who care, but not enough to put it to a vote.

So not to mention, I'll use the cliche. There are far more important things for them to do. Right. Right. We got to find out what's in what's on somebody's laptop.

That's way more important. Let's start. We are 83 percent complete with super bloated wild card weekend, puffy wild card weekend, super bloated, very, very much so we're not done yet.

No, no surprises at all. From where I sit. Two division rematches were either tight throughout or at least for a little bit. San Francisco, Seattle was Seattle had a lead in the first half. Yeah, but San Francisco eventually just went, what are we doing? Yeah. Chargers.

Sorry about this story. Chargers vomited all over a twenty seven nothing second quarter lead in a come from a head loss. And this is not the poll question, but it very well could have been is charging more devastating than Clemson. It's tight.

Yeah, it's tight. I think charge Clemson is losing games. You shouldn't lose like to an opponent. You shouldn't lose to I think charging is losing games that during the course of a game. There's no business losing like there's no way they're going to lose this game. Hold my beer. Old takes exposed.

Had a field day with everybody who had thrown dirt on the Jaguars in the first half. Look, I was busy. We had a hockey game to do on Saturday night. So I did not see I didn't see the lead. I didn't see twenty seven.

Nothing. I didn't see any of that. I didn't see Trevor Lawrence like deer in the headlights.

I didn't see that Trevor Lawrence. But when the hockey game was over when I was trying to do other things like the aftermath and everything else. I had the game on in front of me. Yeah.

And I was watching it going. They're going to screw this up, aren't they? And they did.

They absolutely did. We'll get to that in a second. Bills are worrisome. I said this when we were talking about this last week of the three big favorites. My fear is the bills don't really get it yet. Yeah. The bills are playing football games like they know they can't lose. And at some point they will.

Yes. Because that ain't a way to get and get through the playoffs. They played that dolphin game like there's no way the dolphins can beat us. Miami had the ball with a chance to win. They did.

They are. Buffalo is begging to be beaten. Don't do that to Cincinnati. I actually think I like Cincinnati in the game anyway.

Yeah. And I love Buffalo all year long. And I want the bills to win the Super Bowl. Same. And it has nothing to do with the events of a couple of weeks ago. Has nothing to do with DeMar Hamlin.

Nothing. Right. But I wanted the bills to win the Super Bowl all year long. And I'm not rooting against them. I'm still rooting for them.

I just don't feel it. Yeah. Minnesota Vikings found out the hard way that it isn't disrespect if you can't prove anybody wrong. Yeah. The world was on the Giants.

Why? Because Minnesota went 13-4 with a negative point differential which tells us something. Which means they got freaking lucky all year long. Now, they came through.

They beat the Giants by kicking a 61-yard field goal. Yep. If your kicker isn't named Justin Tucker and he makes a 61-yard field goal, that's luck. Yeah.

That's just flat-out luck. Alright, quickly to the Jags comeback. So, Trevor Lawrence threw four first-half interceptions. Four. Yep. The Jaguars are the only team in NFL history to be minus five in turnovers and win the playoff game. Wow. Which also means that the Chargers were the first team ever to be plus five in turnovers.

To allow it. And lose the playoff game. Yeah. But look, there was no panic. Lawrence got a touchdown back right before the end of the half. And then he threw three more touchdown passes in the second half. And Doug Peterson, I'm sure when they went to the locker room 27-7, I'm sure he said, hey guys, we're okay. It's a long second half and they're the Chargers. Here's Doug Peterson after the game. I played with one of the greatest quarterbacks ever in Brett Favre and there were times when he didn't have a great first half.

And came back in the second half and could light it up. And that's what I love about Trevor and his demeanor and his aggressiveness. And the ability to just forget and move on. But he'll be the first one to tell you that it's not about him.

It's the guys around him too. Made plays. Protection was good. Receivers were doing a nice job being where they needed to be. But from an individual standpoint, this is really a great performance by our quarterback. He was awesome in the second half.

Awesome. I have not been a Trevor Lawrence fan. I didn't see the first half.

I can't critique it. But he was great in the second half. Awesome. Well, and it doesn't hurt either that the Chargers decided to completely wipe out their strategy from the first half and go with something different in the second. We are going to find out what Will Brinson thinks in just a few minutes of that. The clock is ticking on the tenure of Brandon Stanley.

Yes. And Sean Payton is in the outer office right now. If the Chargers will open up the wallet for Sean Payton, he will be in Los Angeles. Four second half drives for Lawrence. 38 plays, 288 yards passing or 288 yards of offense. Three touchdowns. And then the game-winning field goal as time expired.

All right. The PNC Arena on Saturday. The Hurricanes lost and then won.

Proper order, two. We will start with the latter with the win. Canes beat Pittsburgh 2-1. Intense game befitting of a team desperately trying to not get swept by the other.

That would be the Penguins. They brought they brought their effort. Carolina was just better and they were better for 60 minutes. Now, Pittsburgh did push in the third period and there was a Freddie Anderson. I don't even understand. An own goal.

That's the best way we can describe it. He tried to fungal a puck out of the zone on a Pittsburgh power play. And he fungal it right into the shaft of the stick of Ricard Raquel and it fluttered in the net. And everybody Rod Brind'Amour's eyes rolled like, are you joking?

Right. But Freddie was so good on Saturday that it didn't matter because Freddie was like, that's on me. That ain't a goal. It counts, but that ain't a goal. He didn't give up a goal. He scored on himself. And that's OK because he was great from that point on, too. Carolina was so good in the game. It's really remarkable that they didn't score more than two goals.

Casey DeSmith was also very good. All right. So it was Freddie's second start. Here comes we. Do we have the breaking news, Sander?

We do. Let's have it. As you may have heard predicted on the Canes Corner podcast last night, Piotr Kacekoff returned to the Chicago Wolves in the American Hockey League because this is the right thing to do. Freddie Anderson healthy. Freddie Anderson showed you the Freddie Anderson of last October, November, December, most of January. And as long as that Freddie Anderson is here and Auntie Ronta is healthy and he is. I spoke with him Saturday night, just kind of casually in the hall.

We talked mostly about having lunch with our kids and and just general dad stuff. But he's healthy. He's ready to be what he is supposed to be, which is the backup to Freddie Anderson. So the goaltending is taken care of and you cannot keep three goaltenders sharp.

You can't do it. The National Hockey League doesn't play every day. You can't keep three guys ready. So the best way to get Piotr ready is to let him go play two out of three games a week in Chicago, in the American Hockey League. Not to mention the fact that the Wolves defense is a dumpster fire and he's going to face a lot of shots. So he is going to be kept sharp.

Iron sharpens iron. There you go. So there you go. And I understand that we all think that Piotr is the future and in many ways is the present.

I think they might need him actually in the playoffs. So let him go play. Get some practice. The puck's the same weight in the American Hockey League.

It it does the same type of things. Just go keep yourself sharp. Be ready. Chances are Freddie or Auntie will probably get hurt.

That's just the way these things work. By the way, it didn't go so well yesterday for for the Hurricanes. They lost in a shootout to the Canucks, which of course has Cain's Twitter in labor. It'll be fine. They'll get over it. I mean, it is what it is. But it's true. At least they didn't lose outright.

They had to leave with 17 seconds left. But that's another story. We'll talk about it later on.

All right. State beat Miami in overtime. That was the other of those. The Hurricanes loss on Saturday.

Right. Miami Hurricanes. They lost at PNC Arena. Wolf Packer now four and three in the league.

Here's Kevin Keats opening his postgame. Great team win. Gritty win. You know, it's one of those wins that you'll look back and say, man, that was a great win.

It's it was a great January, middle of January ACC battle. And give Miami a lot of credit. You know, there was a moment in the game where I thought Isaiah Long just took the game over.

He had a stretch where we just couldn't guard him. Give our guys a lot of grit, a lot of credit. I know we stepped up in a big way. I have to shout out Ernest Ross. You know, another one of those guys that, you know, that's been on our bench for a long time and then came on at 17 points in nine rebounds. And, you know, this team keeps putting together good games and it's always someone else who's stepping up.

And, you know, when we put the team together for the first time, we thought we had 10 guys that could play. Ernest Ross. That's right. Ernest Ross.

Wow. Ernest Ross and DJ Burns were the reason that NC State beat Miami. Now, the guards were good in overtime.

Smith and Joyner were both good in overtime. But if you had told me that state would beat the team that I believe to be the best in the league. And granted, I don't think there's that big a gap between one and say five in this league.

I really don't. I think that's they're very, very even. But I think Miami is the best team. If you had told me that Ernest Ross and DJ Burns would be the difference in that game, like they had Ernest Ross had. I think it was the end of regulation, five points and their last five points and three offensive or two offensive rebounds and three total rebounds like the last two minutes. It's crazy. Ernest Ross had a monster game out of nowhere.

Eight of 10 from the field and DJ Burns at seven assists. That's awesome. Absolutely awesome. So good for the good for the Wolfpack. We'll talk more about this later with Brian Geisinger. Carolina won at Louisville on Saturday, thankfully. I just just thankfully. Yeah, because you can't lose.

That was we talked about it. That's a don't lose this game, please. You can't lose the Louisville. Louisville's really bad. Like historically bad for a team in the ACC for a team with their history in a major conference. Louisville's like a second tier historical blue blood. And there are people who would argue that they belong in the top tier.

Whatever. Howard, I can't believe how bad they are, but they are. They're off.

Absolutely awful. They might. I don't believe they won a game. They might not win a game in conference play.

I don't know how many times they play the other bad teams in the league, but we'll see. Duke went to Clemson. And I actually think that the Blue Devils did what at least what I expected them to do, what I hope they would do, which is go down there and compete, which is what they really didn't do against NC State.

And Clemson is very good. And Duke did that. And ultimately, in the last nine minutes, Duke's inability to score got to them. They had two field goals in the last nine minutes. The only way they were getting points is getting to the free throw line, extending possessions with offensive rebounds.

And that's just where they are at this point. Duke cannot score. So Kyle Filipowski had a double-double. Tyrese Proctor had 17, but he needed a bunch of shots to do it. It was two of nine from three, five of 15 from the field. Duke shot under 40 percent for the fourth consecutive game.

Under 40 percent. It's hard. It's really hard to win when you are that inefficient. You can't turn it over at all, but you have to be you have to get all your offensive rebounds. They're the fifth best offensive rebounding team in the country. And that's the only way they are even competitive on the scoreboard. But I did like the way they battled in this game. They just they're not good enough offensively to pull something like that out.