What a weekend of sports in the NFL and in Triangle college basketball

It's improving by the way. I know. I would declare myself one of my favorite moments of or eras of my, I hesitate to call it a career here but I can't come up with another word for it, covering the Ty Lawson era at UNC. So Ty had like an ankle sprain, of course he treated it with Epsom salts, never mind, never mind, doesn't even matter because his dad said use Epsom salts, fine. He would declare himself like a certain percentage, how was he? And he literally said one day I'm about 76% and I thought man that's perfect. Very specific.

So he is, athletes are in tune with their own bodies. Yeah. He knew I'm about 83% right now. It's very exciting as I feel like I am almost all the way back. Baby steps.

Oh my gosh, no these are huge giant steps. Oh man, I was so discouraged Saturday morning. I woke up Saturday morning, I'm thinking I'm never going to get well. I know, it feels like that. It's, I'm almost there. All right, we got a lot of things today. That play, that play, first of all the music behind that play should have been Yakety Sax.

Yeah. For those people who don't know what Yakety Sax, can you find Yakety Sax? It's the old Benny Hill.

Now this is way too old for most of the people listening, but if you knew the Benny Hill show, you knew, you know exactly what I'm talking about because it is simply, it is high comedy. That soundtrack is to major guffaws and hijinks and that's what that play was. The amazing thing about that form, they came out in that formation and you know what that formation is. It's Ezekiel Elliott at center.

Huh? Like they had linemen all the way split wide to the left. I think there were a couple of linemen split wide to the, to the right. It was crazy. I, if you were watching on TV, I went the wrong way.

Either way, it doesn't matter. So this is it. This is Yakety Sax.

Yep, it's perfect. That play was horrific. I, but funny. All, when that, when they execute, well executed, when that play was executed and I use the term executed literally. Yeah, actually literally, they were executed on that play. All I could do was laugh.

Yeah. I felt so bad for Ezekiel Elliott. I felt so bad. It just, like, it just tumbled back into deck Prescott. Turpin, the wide receiver caught the pass was just smoked as Kevin Burkhardt said on TV.

Smoked as soon as he caught it. Play had nothing. Zero. It was, but that was indicative and it's actually going to be the, the thrust of our first hour today. We're wide open for all of us to enjoy the first hour.

We don't, we don't do this a ton, especially on Mondays. Normally we talk to Will Brinson about the NFL, little, little scheduling snafu. Will is going to be with us at the end of the week.

So we're going to leave it wide open. We got four football games to discuss. We got two basketball games to discuss. There are other things also that we can get into, issues surrounding the NFL. We can get into issues surrounding certainly football.

919-860-5326. Throw it wide open. Whatever you want to talk about is cool. You know people have takes from this weekend.

Oh my gosh, there's so much bad from this weekend. Frankly, I have enough bad to just talk for an hour. And I'm, I have enough of my energy back where I might just do that. Right, but you might, you might spend it all though. You gotta, you gotta ease into it. That's what the second hour is for. There's just a ton of things I want to get to.

919-860-5326. But this weekend, my predictions was that play in microcosm. I was wrong on everything. Every single thing I said would happen didn't happen. Well the only thing, I was close. I had the Bengals. I had the Bengals beat the Bills, but I also had the Bengals plus the over. And that didn't go over.

Thank you Buffalo. So other than that, that's as close as I got to being right. I, I place your bets went 0 for 5. I apologize if you paid attention to place your bets this week and thought, hey gold's on a roll.

Let's just go with those. Nope, 0 for 5. We lost them all. Couldn't have been more wrong on Duke Miami. Couldn't have been more wrong on State Carolina. Looks like Taquavian Smith's going to be okay. It's actually might play tomorrow when State hosts Notre Dame. It certainly didn't look good when we were watching.

I thought the ejection of Leaky Black was curious, to say the least. I'm like, it was absolutely crazy. So all right, we're going to just to prove to you that we're going to talk to you. John and Fuqua is going to lead us off. We haven't even gotten out of the gate yet.

We're going to do out of the gate in a second. John and Fuqua, how are you? I'm doing good. How are you all doing today?

I mean, I can only speak for me. I'm okay. Victoria, how are you? We're good, yes.

We're all good. Great weekend of football. Okay, well, it all depends on who you're rooting for. Oh yeah, but you know, the one thing I don't understand is Dallas wouldn't even made the playoffs if it hadn't been for the backup quarterback. And here we are watching Zach do what he does this weekend. Oh, he was great last weekend.

But who would they play it? I don't understand it. If Dallas is America's team, we're in a sorry state of mind. Wow.

We just associated that to the United States government. That is terrible. I had other things I wanted to say about that, but we'll let that go. That's fine. That is 100% fine. Appreciate your time. Have a great day. Thank you for having me. You too. Well, it was a good get. All right, 919-860-5326, you want to talk about anything from football this weekend if you want to associate it, not just to the American government, but foreign governments. That's fine too.

All right, who would be Brazil? I don't know. That's a good question. All right, let's do out of the gate.

We got a lot of stuff to talk about. I mean, they are America's team. Sorry state of affairs. Look, I was wrong about everything. I was. I said state would win. Couldn't see a path for Duke to beat Miami. Loved the giants in Philly. Dallas was coming for San Francisco. I even thought Liverpool might score a couple of goals and beat Chelsea. None of that happened.

Oh, no. None of that happened. All five place your bets were losers. Although again, if the Bills had actually played.

Right, showed up. If they were ready to play a playoff game, then maybe that would have been a winner. I still think Cincinnati wins the game. Cincinnati did what they had to do, 27-10. I figured that game was going to be played in the low 30s.

Bengals would win it. So, and by the way, the poll question, which we will address maybe throughout this hour, but also at one o'clock, which of my sorry predictions was the dumbest? So you can go to my Twitter at a gold fan, or you can go to the 99, nine to fan Twitter account or at the underscore to underscore the underscore.

Victoria. Yeah. And, and there you go.

Just, just answer. And by the way, right now, the, a lot of votes been up about an hour. I think the correct answer is the choice so far, but I'm not going to, I'm not going to skew it. We'll have a debate state over UNC, Miami over Duke, Giants over Eagles, Dallas over San Francisco, which was the dumbest of those predictions. We are going to talk about all of it.

All right. Well, it's, we'll start in basketball just because I there's, I know I realized those games were Saturday, but I thought two intriguing, very different basketball games start with the heels, beating the pack. And really this was about two players for me. It was about Armando Bacot being great and RJ Davis being great. And there was really nobody else for North Carolina that did much for me in the game in terms of, did you play really well?

I'm not saying guys didn't have their moments. I thought Leaky Black played okay. Caleb Love made a lot of free throws. Speaking of free throws, North Carolina made a lot of free throws.

I would say this to NC State fans and I saw the Twitter. I didn't watch the game until yesterday. I had hurricane's game. So I didn't watch the game until I knew the outcome.

And then I watched specifically because, oh my gosh, the Twitters were nutty. Carolina got all the calls. I'm like, you know what? Here's my takeaway. State shouldn't fail so much.

Don't fail so much because you failed a lot and you failed a lot unnecessarily. And guess what? It adds up and all of a sudden Carolina's in the bonus with 14 minutes left in the second half. Of course, they're going to go to the free throw line and shoot a lot of free throws. Not to mention you failed a bunch on offensive rebounding opportunities for UNC. I did not. The worst thing you can do as a fan is use free throw disparity as proof.

Oftentimes an indication of how the game is played is way more important. I was looking for, hey, did Carolina get away with this that NC State was not? And there might've been a couple of occasions, but I didn't think it was egregious. I didn't.

Sorry about that, people. Look, other state was right there in spite of the free throw disparity. They were right there, had a chance to win the game, even after Terquavian Smith went out. I think they cut the lead to six pretty much right after Smith went out. State's got really good guards. They had a chance to win that game. I am not, I feel the same way about NC State today as I did before that game.

Nothing has made me change my opinion of the Wolfpack. Carolina did get 36 of their 80 points from the free throw line. That is a remarkable, remarkable number. Armando Bacott, his 61st double-double, that is a school record.

He had 23 points in 18 rebounds. And Hubert Davis talked about Bacott after the game. It's very hard.

It's not very hard to describe. You know, I said to you guys before that one of the greatest feelings as a coach is to know what a player or a team, what they're, you know, what they're bringing to the table every day. And for Armando, that's what I have in him. Every day at practice, shoot around, game, you know that he's going to give his best on Bolton to the floor for himself, for the team, for this program, and for him to pass Tyler Hantsborough and Billy Cunningham for the all-times double-doubles and points in rebounds.

That's just, just unbelievable. He's a fantastic player. He's one of the best players in Carolina history.

And I'm just really, really proud of him. He had a really good game. R.J. Davis was the best player on the court. And frankly, it wasn't close. It wasn't. R.J. Davis was, maybe is Carolina's most important player.

So, but here's the other part of this. Leaky Black should not have, I didn't understand that. There wasn't enough there for, to eject him from the game. Hard foul. I didn't think it was, I didn't think there was anything dirty about it, but they called what they called. I got the feeling they called the result as opposed to the act. And we always get in trouble when we react to the result. Just call the foul.

Okay. Hard foul, flagrant one, we move on. Anyway, my thought about UNC real quick. Caleb Love. If you get great Caleb Love, UNC is really dangerous and has a high end. If you don't get great Caleb Love, I think UNC is just okay. He is, to me, he is the barometer for what UNC is going to be. Because there's just not enough consistency there for me.

But I do know that when it goes, when it's going, man, he is something else. Watch out. So that's the way I am, that's where I am on UNC. As for NC State, here's Kevin Keats after the game. Very physical game. When you look at the stat sheets really, it's, I know we did some good things. We shot from the field 41%. We actually made six more field goals than UNC. I just, I've never been involved with a game where a team's taking 39 free throws. And so we, that means we have to get a little bit more aggressive. We were, we took 12, we were 12 for 12. And so, you know, we get a little bit more aggressive than possibly then maybe a different game. Maybe we get there 20 times or 25 times, we'll be 20 for 20. But just a tough one.

It's a physical game. My prayers and thoughts right now is with to Quavion. I don't have an update for you guys. I know he is. He did come to the hospital, waiting to hear back.

Very emotional situation for me right now. So apparently he's okay. He was out, I think with teammates on Saturday night. So good.

Look. As far as, you know, the media reports are, he had numbness in his neck and his arm, and precautions dictated how he was going to be removed from the court. And all of that. He went for tests at UNC Hospital, turned out he's okay. And he may play tomorrow. I think that's awesome. That's great news for NC State. Because when they're whole, and when Mihorčić comes back, I mean, this could be a really, really good basketball team. I think they're good anyway. So we'll see.

We'll see how they respond to this. They have responded to losses well in the past. They've responded well to winning in the past. Look, I said going into the game that this was a more important game for UNC than NC State. And I believe that it wasn't about rivalry, although it may have been about rivalry also to UNC's players, and we'll talk to Brett Friedlander next hour about it. I just think that Carolina needed a good win. And NC State provided them with that opportunity. They played better.

End of discussion. Duke, man, I don't know. If you watch the game, I'm going to point this out. For those people who are fans of the Carolina Hurricanes, there were moments in that game that reminded you of the Carolina Hurricanes in that, my gosh, as many opportunities as both teams had right around the rim to not score, I was having major flashbacks. I was like battle scars at watching the Hurricanes not be able to score right in front of the goal. It really was crazy how many layups and contested layups though.

We're not talking about wide open bunnies. We're talking about hard fought contested shots, but all within three feet of the rim that neither team could make. And I guess this is the way it's going to be for Duke. Here's John Shire after the game.

I was told before, it's the 500th sellout, consecutive sellout that we've had, and what an amazing place to play basketball games. You know, Cameron is one of a kind, I think. It's shown today, really proud of the overall effort. I thought everybody on the team stepped up at different moments. And you know, I just, for me, Derek Lively, he's been working his butt off every day with Coach Jefferson.

He keeps getting better and for him to have six offensive rebounds, 10 rebounds overall, five block shots. I thought, you know, we had to change our defenses up. Miami's an explosive team.

You never relax when you're playing against them. And to hold them to 66 points, I'm really proud of our defense and the job that we did. You know, Coach Lucas, Jay's been our defensive coordinator. He's been, you know, he actually had the scout for Miami as well.

He's been huge for us and what we've done. I think that Duke games are going to be tough watches for a lot of people for the rest of the season. Although Jeremy Roach played, I thought pretty effectively, he came off the bench. It looks better when Jeremy Roach is in. I also thought the Tyrese Proctor played a pretty good game. And so there were some encouraging signs for Duke. It did take a really off night for Isaiah Wong, who apparently, according to Jim Laronega, has been dealing with a sinus infection.

I can empathize. Yeah. Uh, shouts to, uh, shouts to my guy, Isaiah Wong, but that's a good win. And it's a good win for Duke. All right, back to football.

And I know it's going to really deal with the bulk of our day. We will talk to Brett Friedlander in about an hour, uh, about state Carolina and Duke Miami. And Duke, by the way, plays tonight against Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. So we'll see how that goes. Uh, 49ers beat the Cowboys because they clearly practice.

That's the way, what a concept, what it comes down to for me. One team looked like they practiced and the other team looked like they just show up and play. Oh, we got a lot of good players.

I'll meet you at one and we'll play. Well, and Jack had one game where he didn't have interceptions. Well, can't have two in a row. That is true. Here's the thing about it.

Because my first thought watching the game, when the game was basically over, I thought, boy, Tampa Bay really was bad. Yep. Because the way it looked last week, Monday night. Oh my gosh. What a machine. Dallas looks great.

Yeah. And then this week. Dallas didn't look great.

No, they did not. Two more bad interceptions, frankly, could have been a couple of others. Uh, the second interception of the game cost Dallas points and gave San Francisco points. I shouldn't say it cost Dallas points because we don't know. We don't know if they would have been able to kick a field goal because Brett Barr missed a bit. Okay. The first extra point was blocked, but it was, it was good for him that it was blocked because that extra point might've been 25 feet left. Yeah.

It was never going to be close with all of that said he did make two field goals the rest of the game. So he's been healed. Maybe we don't know. Brett Mark will not be the Dallas Cowboys kicker next year. Okay. He'll be in somebody else's roster. Cause Dallas needs to a, they need a scapegoat and B it's probably better for all parties that Brett Maher goes somewhere else.

He'll have to win a job, but it's obvious that he's a good kicker. All right. Now back to the 49ers and the Cowboys, the two interceptions that deck through the first one was a bad read. Worst throw, worst, bad, bad throw. Worst read.

I don't know. It was terrible. It was terrible. The second one was very typical of DAC of late is I am telegraphing everything that I'm doing. The, uh, the quarterback on the play who should have caught it outright didn't, I mean, DAC hit him in the chest and the ball popped up and Fred Warner caught it.

Um, they were obviously going to CD lamb because basically that's all they do is go to CD lamb. So the corner just kind of, uh, drifted back inside and got there. Should've made the catch himself, but he didn't anyway. It was an interception anyway. Uh, and here is DAC on hanging his defense out to dry. Just disappointed. As I said, I mean, guys that played their asses off defense, who gave us an opportunity to win this game, who played there, who played hard against a really, really good offense, a really good team. And, um, for us to only put up the points that we did, that that's unacceptable.

And it starts with me and I've got to be better. I mean, that's, there's no other way to sugar coat it. DAC Prescott has had a lot of experience this year taking responsibility for being bad. Yeah. He's not like Zach Wilson.

I was thinking the same day. Now the problem is that we've seen that too many times out of DAC Prescott and Prescott has already been taken all the slings and arrows. And I'm telling you, you give DAC Prescott better coaching and DAC Prescott is a better quarterback. There's no way you're going to convince me that Daniel Jones is better than DAC Prescott. No way. Guess what Daniel Jones has better coaching.

Huh? It met coaching. Steve Logan always says coaching matters. Yep. And it's, it clearly hurt the Dallas Cowboys. Now we're going to get into some of the other games on the other side, but to me, this game is going to be remembered for the way the Cowboys were exposed as a horribly coached or incredibly stupid football team. And maybe those are the same things.

I don't know. So I'm going to run through a couple of things real quick here before we take a break. So Dallas with, it was like 235 left and DAC Prescott was sacked to set up a fourth and 10 from the 20 yard line. And Mike McCarthy made the decision to punt, which wrong decision, because you were now hoping that you would get the ball back. The truth of the matter is that you had the ball, even though it was fourth and 10, you had the ball. I would have rather trusted your offense to pick up 10 yards on one play, then trust your defense to get the ball back. And even if you did punt the ball and get the ball back and you did everything right before then you were more than likely going to be in exactly the same position you are now with no timeouts and less time in the clock. So I understand it was essentially you had to pick up the first down or you lose, but that was probably your better chance. Anyway, you punted the ball, but you let 25 seconds run off the clock before you punted.

So dumb. If you're going to punt it, just call a timeout. You had all three, call a timeout. You had all three. So two 35 timeout. Now we kick Dallas gets the ball.

There's two 30. You've got two timeouts plus the two minute warning at you still had to get the ball back at worst. You get it back with one 55 left. Yeah. As opposed to what happened with, by the way, San Francisco with a brain fart where your kid ran out of bounds.

Exactly. Oh, you still, you got the ball back with 33 seconds left. No timeouts needed to go 94 yards. You got the ball in worst field position with zero timeouts.

First play was a designed roll out. The deck nearly got plowed for safety. I laughed.

I'm sorry. I laughed at that. He ran all of a sudden. Who was it?

I don't know who Hendrix in number 91 for Cincinnati. Oh, he rolls out like, Whoa. And the guy, I think the defensive end was surprised that Dak was there. Yeah. Like what was he doing? He should have just tackled him.

Anyway. Second play was a designed Schultz or two plays later, whatever it was, Schultz doesn't out route, tries to get out of bounds, but he doesn't try hard enough to get out of bounds. And the clock's running like, dude, this is not casual. There's nothing casual about this. Get out of bounds.

Oh no. Just a little casual. Then he fails to get two feet down. Do we practice?

Does Dallas work on these things? What are we doing? And then the final play, the dumbest play design I have ever seen. And here's the thing about it because we've never seen that before. So somebody had to dream that up. Yeah. Okay.

And I'm sure there is a whiteboard where they wrote that up for the first time somewhere in some meeting room, there's a whiteboard X's and O's. Oh man. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to put Zeke at center. We're going to put all these lime in this way, all these lime in that way. Oh man, they're not going to know what to do. This is great. I hope that that is on a whiteboard somewhere.

And I hope that we can get Kellen Moore or Mike McCarthy to autograph it and sell that sucker on eBay because that will be worth millions. That was the dumbest thing I have ever seen. And I'm sorry, but the way the play was executed with Ezekiel Elliott getting knocked basically back to Dak Prescott's feet and the wide receiver who caught the ball being just stuck immediately was justification for a silly play. Yes. A silly play.