Brandel Chamblee: Justin Rose Is Looking Really Good

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Get an expert now on TurboTax.com. And now, sitting in for Rich, it's Tom Pelissero. Welcome to another Rich Eisen-less edition of the Rich Eisen Show. I am Tom Pelissero. Pleased to be in studio once again with the fellas, Chris Brockman.

Tommy Page. Who looks, you're like, I'd say 75% less Masters Festive than you were yesterday. I mean, I have a hat, too.

Should I just put the hat on? I think it's, I got used to the bright Kelly green. That really brought the whole thing together. It was really bright. This is a little more foresty green. Sometimes I doze a tad, you know, like an hour or three of the show, but every time I looked at you, it really just, yeah, I was taken aback.

It was like the Kenny Rogers chicken episode of Seinfeld. Exactly. Jason Feller. He's already hitting the buttons here. What up, man? How you doing? Doing fantastic.

I'm glad. You know, somewhere Winkler is a friend of the show. Do you think he'd approve of the way this is put together?

Yes, I think he would. His was black. Yours is brown. All good.

Definitely you can go through. And Mr. Henry is such a nice guy. I think he'd approve of you, Tom. I think he'd like the homage. And I did think of it this morning when I looked at myself in the mirror.

I thought, I look good. You've got a rolled up pack of squares in your shirt sleeve, like Bowser from Sha Na Na. I think those are, I think that's now frowned upon. I don't know if he can have the rolled up pack of smokes anymore. I saw a photo this morning on Instagram or something of Tiger Woods caddy Fluff in 97.

Are they still together? No, Fluff's long gone. He's like five caddies later, assuming that he's going to play again at some point. Fluff's still with us. He's still caddying. But Fluff, he's not dead.

I just mean he's not alive. Are they still together? In 1997, he's smoking a cigarette and using the cigarette to check the wind. Yeah. That's not that long ago. I sometimes forget how recently it was socially acceptable just to be smoking everywhere.

Yeah. At major golf tournaments. You can still smoke in bars when, you know, in the early 2000s.

Airplanes, airplanes, restaurants. I did enjoy that Robert Kraft had to specifically deny that there were still ashtrays in the armrests of the team plane. He had to deny that.

Because that NFLPA survey is like, let me be clear. There are not cigarette ashing in the armrests. It does not exist.

We do not have ashtrays. Well, that's good to know. So we've been told a lie?

Well, it's perhaps somebody said it meaning that metaphorically. Like, man, how is this plane so old? How old is it?

How old is it? So old it's got ashtrays in the arms of the plane. We need a new plane. That was a real thing.

I kind of wanted that to be true just so I could keep bashing ownership. If you think back, well, he said they are looking to upgrade the plane. Oh, great. Great. Thank you, Robert. They are looking to do a lot of things and, you know, improve the locker room situation.

Spend the money, baby. I mean, they're one of the last teams. They're still underneath the like underneath the bleachers. You know, all the ceilings are kind of at an angle because you're you're right there. Yeah. It's a different different facility, but they're investing.

They're doing that. The ashtrays in the ashtrays in the armrests, though, like made me think, too. What's the thing you miss the most on airplanes now? Like, if you're thinking back to what it was like to fly in the late 80s, early 90s, I liked the the phone that you could use.

It was either in the back of the seat or in the armrests. Right. And you can scan a credit card to like make a call from like a corded phone. Yeah, that's right. I forgot all about was a that was actually revolutionary because it wasn't. Car phones were not particularly prevalent at that time.

But you could be at thirty thousand feet. Right. That was like that was ahead of Wi-Fi, obviously. Remember in the late 90s, early 2000s, it was the car phone in a bag. In the bag car phone that you like plugged into the right the the the lighter.

Oh, I still had that. I jumped into in my I was interning at ESPN circa 2002, and I jumped into a pool with my cell phone in my pants, fried the cell phone. My parents solution, since obviously I had no money at the time, was to send me like their old car phone from like nineteen ninety three. And for the rest of summer, I was driving around only worked if it was plugged in.

If you need to get a hold of me, you had to get me when I was driving my Toyota Previa from Avon to Bristol to show up and cut down ten hour senior golf tournaments, the seven hours for a rear on ESPN. By the way, the Toyota Previa, one of the ugliest cars ever made. It was it had its moment. You know, a car was bad when no one copied it. No one was like, you know, we really need our own egg van. That design is we need that.

It's it's the suppository vehicle. This is what it was here. Was it that the preview? It was probably a ninety four ish. Oh, that's early, early 90s.

It's bad. I mean, you can look it up, but that thing could not have been manufactured for more than two or three years because you couldn't find them after that. I mean, this looks like a good car to, you know, rob a bank with or something.

I don't know. The sliding door was it was very functional. Get out at the big bench bench seating in mind.

Mine by that point, you won't miss it. You know, by that summer that I was driving that around to and from working at ESPN had no muffler either. Oh, so it was full on like you're driving a Ford Mustang. I was like, man, they're really revving it over there. What is that? Is that an egg that a maroon egg shaped van that you got?

Wait, they're trying to bring it back as an electric vehicle. Wait, what? Yeah. No way.

Twenty six. No way. Prevy is coming back.

It looks much it's not attractive still, but it looks better. What did we mention? This show is brought to you by Hyundai. Great, by the way.

I love Hyundai. I am excited. It is coming back. You're right.

I am excited to be here, not just to talk about egg vans and old airplanes. I'm excited because we have a 40 something year old quarterback who agreed to come to the AFC North after all the waiting. I know it's actually it's not Aaron Rodgers. Oh, it's it's Joe Flacco, who is headed to the Browns a one year, four million dollar deal that is worth up to 13 million dollars with incentives. This is a backup quarterback deal on a team that at the moment does not have a starting quarterback.

This is not the type of contract that you're giving it to somebody who you anticipate is going to play a lot of games for you. Let's let's level set Joe Flacco. Everyone likes Joe Flacco, the guy. OK, he's somebody everyone's like, oh, man, Joe's the best. This is the best guy that you can have around. He's the best.

Everybody loves. He was also sitting on his couch until late in the season two years ago, thinking about immediate career, deciding what he was going to do until the Browns finally called him. And he got his opportunity after three or four other guys got hurt.

They rolled him out. He played pretty good football for five, six, seven games on the stretch. That is by far the most that we have seen Joe Flacco play in many years. You got to go back to, I believe, 2016 to find the last time Joe Flacco threw 20 touchdown passes in a season. OK, this is not this is he's a 40 year old man.

He's a man. It's 40. Nobody played at age 40 until pretty recently. Brady obviously blew right by and played to 45.

But for a long time, everybody retired at thirty seven, thirty eight. And this is not to suggest that there's not a scenario where Joe Flacco is starting out of the gate. But if you're asking yourself, I'm sure there might be a few people who are Browns fans around the country asking, what are they doing?

I would say this. It looks very similar to what the Giants have done setting up their room. They spent more money on it. James Winston got the Flacco contract. They also signed Russell Wilson for more money.

The Browns at one point were in on Russell Wilson, but at a much slower price point, probably more similar to what Flacco just got. But the Giants, when they set up that room, my take on it, talking to people within the league is they're setting that up to drop a rookie quarterback in as the third man. It gives you optionality in the draft. You don't have to force it at number three, but you're probably going to draft one somewhere along the line. You could even take one at number three.

I don't think it's completely out of the realm of possibility that you do or Sanders could end up being the pick. I know there's some fans of Jackson Dart out there, but it would not shock me if the Giants took one of three for the Browns. They had Flacco after adding Kenny Pickett, who's still on his rookie contract, not making a lot of money. So, again, they've given themselves some optionality in that room. They're still paying a guy forty six million dollars this year who, barring a major shock, is not going to play for the team.

So it makes sense to go on the less expensive side. But this also seems to be the Browns setting themselves up to draft a quarterback. Now, does that happen at two? I would say that would surprise me at this point. But they got five picks in the top one hundred five picks or so. They got a lot of draft capital, a lot of ways to move around, potentially move back into the first.

Could move back, although I don't know that you want to move out of the elite player category, which they are in line to get an elite player, whether that's Travis Hunter or Abdul Carter, where you're going to be in position to to dress. The other thing that this tells me is that the Browns do not have confidence that the Falcons are actually going to be reasonable about moving Kirk Cousins because Kirk Cousins walks in the door as you're starting quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. You trade for him. And let's say the price is a mid-round pick. Let's say it's a fourth rounder, which is probably along the lines of what the Falcons would be looking for in a trade.

And they're going to want you to pick up money. You're bringing Kirk Cousins to start. You are not signing Joe Flacco to that contract going, well, we got our guy. We're good. We've won Flacco Magic.

It's never good. It's never good when everybody is posting stuff about like, oh, the Magic's back. Magic is not a real thing. Magic generally means luck.

It generally means like right place, right time. You caught a heater. We talk about the Ervin Johnson, bro. We remember we remember what happened when he came in for the Colts. You bench the number four overall pick, Anthony Richardson. You bring in Flacco two games later. You went, oh, we just got to go back to Richardson.

This is bad. And again, Flacco can function. And he's always had the thing that all the coaches who run the type of system that Kevin Stefanski does, which is very much precision based and it's it's a derivative of the McVeigh Shanahan stuff. But what they always talk about is like Flacco's arm twitch. Even though he's this tall, lanky guy who is not a threat to beat you with his legs, he's twitchy in terms of how he gets the ball out, which is what you need. See it.

Rip it. That's also been Kirk Cousins talent throughout the course of his career. I don't believe that spending four million dollars on Joe Flacco precludes you for making a Kirk Cousins trade. But that trade is not going to happen until in all likelihood after the first round of the draft anyway. So if you're the Falcons now, you're sitting there and if you were counting on the fact that eventually the Browns were going to be desperate enough, they would just give up what you're asking for. Let's say they want you to eat 20 million dollars and give them a fourth rounder. That's a hard sell when you're sitting back and going, are they really going to keep Kirk Cousins on the roster?

Is this guy eventually are they eventually just going to need to get him out of there? Because they realize having a veteran, highly productive quarterback behind Michael Pennix might not be the greatest thing for Michael Pennix. They have him looking over their shoulder, eating a bunch of money and giving up a high pick.

That's a tough sell. And so to the extent that the Browns have explored it and other teams have explored it, the Steelers have explored it. I haven't gotten any sense that the Falcons are at a position where they're like, all right, let's actually do this. Because remember, they would also need Kirk to waive the no trade, right? If all of a sudden you're down to Kirk's got one option and you're coming into him in July, he might just go, I'm good.

No, thanks. I'd rather you I'd rather you have to cut me. I'm going to get all my money either way so I can either sit here, not play.

Stare over the shoulder of Michael Pennix or you can you can cut me loose or you can cut a deal that actually makes sense. I don't get the sense that Kirk Cousins has a great urge to help out the Falcons. He's not going to give up money, that's for sure. And so the Browns, the primary suitor for Kirk Cousins, all of a sudden now have made a move that, again, does not preclude them for making a Cousins trade. But definitely signals the Browns are going, we don't know if this is ever going to happen. So we at least need to get somebody in the building who we've seen play knows the offense.

We can roll them out there if we have to, depending what happens in the draft. And knowing how that front office, knowing how Andrew Berry think about these things, they're going to be examining every different way that they can maximize the value. Get the player that they want at quarterback if they're going to draft one.

But also figure out what is the best way to do that. In other words, trading down, which is unlikely trading up, which is certainly possible. Waiting and letting it come to them later on in the draft or shocking the entire world and taking a quarterback at two.

It's the draft, man. Yeah, exactly. I can talk to everybody I want to. I can read all the tea leaves and there are some things that happen.

That you just don't anticipate. Let's know what's going to give you a straight answer. People will give you straight answers about everybody else, right? Not the very honest information about other teams from the right people. You generally will not get the absolute hammer answer on somebody, definitely not on April 11th, still 13 days out from the draft. And so we continue to wait on Aaron Rodgers, who now his only option also happens to be seemingly the most logical option. Also for Kirk Cousins, if he's going to get traded, Browns aren't out.

But the one place that's not besides Mason Rudolph added somebody with a long track record as a starter in the most weird quarterback market I can ever remember is the Steelers. So tick tock, Aaron, anytime we'll get a lot more into the NFL, the draft, the quarterback market. Ian Rappaport is going to join us later. Quinn, yours for Texas quarterback, I believe making his debut here on the Rich Eisen show. He's going to join us in a little bit.

Another one of those quarterbacks that as we get past round one quite possibly could be in play for a bunch of different teams coming up after this, though. It is it is Friday of Masters Week, as evidenced by Brockman's not quite as green as yesterday. I think this is forest green.

That is that is forest. What is the official green? I feel like you're in an Eagles vortex of are you the 80s Kelly green, which is still the best or the you know, the forest. The official green of the Masters. Oh, this is actually the green green. It's a it's a brilliant rye green. I think they're talking about the actual green. Yeah.

Oh, no. Pantone three, four, two, which is used for the green jacket. That's what I thought it was. Yeah, that is not that is not the color of the green jacket. I don't I think that's darker. I don't know. We'll do we'll do some comparison.

Like yesterday, I bought this off eBay. Well, we'll get Randall Chamblee's crush between the Kentucky bluegrass, you know, we'll see what Brandel has to say. Maybe he can do a he can do a color comparison for us coming up right after this. Every day when we're on the road, people around us endanger themselves and others by using their phones while driving. They think they're hiding it, but we've all seen them and know exactly who they are. For instance, there is the sneaker peeker who darts their eyes between the road and their texts. There's also the got a ticket or looking upset because they just got a ticket for using their phone while driving. And what about the fast scroller who can't drive five minutes without updating their social feeds or the night lighter who has that mysterious glow illuminating the inside of their car after dark?

Do any of these sound familiar? If they remind you of yourself or someone, you know, rethink your behavior before you find yourself becoming the fender bender, the veering off the rotor or worst of all, the driver who killed someone put the phone away or pay paid for by NHTSA. Don't let the urge to sing along to that catchy tune distract you from that truck drifting towards your lane or that lane splitting biker creeping up beside you. Fortunately, every Hyundai offers advanced safety features that can alert you to potential dangers around you. And Hyundai is over 120 IIHS Top Safety Awards since 2006 because Hyundai is always working to ensure the road doesn't get you. Hyundai vehicles have won over 120 IIHS Top Safety Awards from 2006 to 2024. Let's talk O'Reilly Auto Parts, people.

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That's OReillyAuto.com slash Eisen. You are an accomplished water skiing enthusiast. Yes, I am. You once worked as a water skiing instructor.

Yes, I am. When the Happy Days riders found out, they wrote it into the script and that's how Jump the Shark was born. My father said to me, tell Gary Marshall you water ski. I said, I'm not telling him I water ski. Tell him you water ski. So he told me enough times. I went to Gary.

I said, I'm just going to say this. My father wants you to know I'm a water skier and I was a counselor in camp as a water skier. All of a sudden, I'm water skiing. I pull up on the beach. I let go of the rope.

I pull up on the beach. I step out of the skis and I go, hey, look at that. And I'm smiling. If you watch the scene, half of that smile is the fans going, hey, I did it.

And the other half is Henry going, oh, I can't believe you did it. True. And you are aware of the phrase Jump the Shark. I am.

It's meaning within the pop culture. I am. A young man, John Haim. John Haim. Yeah, he's a Michigan guy. A Michigan guy in his dorm room. Yeah. With his roommate, don't know his name.

They came up with the phrase Jump the Shark because of that episode. Yes. And I met him years later.

Now, this is America. He comes up with a phrase. There's a book. There's a game.

He's on the radio, on the Howard Stern Network. That's true. Now, people say, how did you feel? You know, this phrase, Jump the Shark, every time they mentioned it, and it was in the newspaper, they had a picture of me water skiing. At that time, I had great legs, so I didn't care for one minute.

We were number one for five years after that. What did I care? That there was a phrase. That's true.

That's true. Welcome back to the Rich Eisen Show Radio Network. I'm Tom Pilicero, sitting at the Rich Eisen Show desk, furnished by Grainger, with supplies and solutions for every industry. Grainger has the right product for you.

Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by. It's a great day right now for the moment at the Masters in Augusta. Brandel Chamblee joins us right now, analyst for the Golf Channel. Is this going to hold up? We've seen reports of maybe thundershowers and things coming through. Is this morning group catching a little break here? No, I think the weather's going to be good the rest of the week. At least that's what the forecast is. It rained a little bit last night. It softened the golf course up.

So I would imagine it's as close to ideal scoring as it can get out there. We've certainly seen that this morning. Justin Rose, we've heard this one before, your 18-hole leader. He's 900 now, three shots up. What have you seen from him so far, and what are your feelings on, after five times being in this position, whether this could be the year? He's looking really good today. One of my feelings, you know, look, he's got a marvelous career.

It hasn't been, I would say, brilliant, but it's been a marvelous career. He's contended a great many times in major championships, got it across the line just one time, has struggled being in the lead more often than not. But today he looked a little out of sorts early on. He looked like the nerves were probably not right there, but he was able to lean on his short game. He's been spectacular today with his short game, saving him when he gets out of position, and then just did a gorgeous shot into the 12th with the hole location front left there, hit it about four feet away, and now he's got 13 and 15 in front of him. So he's probably going to be tough to track down by the end of the day. I just had to scroll down a little ways to find Rory on the leaderboard.

He won under, tied for 17th. He was rolling until the 15th yesterday, and it just seemed like, I mean, you've been in that position. Take me through that hole and what happened there. Well, you know, the green is really firm. It's a new green, so it's a lot firmer than it has been in the past, and we saw a number of players knocking over the back of that green yesterday, a couple of them, just a couple of them, chipped it back over the green and into the water in front of this hole location.

Most of them managed to play pretty conservatively, leave it 20 feet. This is a maddening thing if you're a Rory McIlroy fan, and there's a lot of them, that he just does these things that you can't believe in major championships. He's been doing it for the better part of 10 years. It's like he's one player everywhere else. He gets to majors, and he's consistent in them, but he will have two or three holes where he just looks like he's never been there before and just makes the most bizarre mistake. So he doubled there yesterday, chipped it in the water, knocked it over the back of the green at 17, and then chipped it on and three-putted. So he had two doubles in the last four holes, and he went from looking like he could lead the tournament at the end of the day to looking like, well, it's pretty unlikely at this point that he can come back and win. He still has a chance because he's Rory, but this golf course does not treat chasers very nicely. Randall, a ho-hum performance from Scottie Scheffler. He makes it look so easy with his 68 yesterday. Might get a bad break this afternoon with the wind picking up, but obviously you've got to like what you've seen from Scottie so far. Yeah, the thing about Scottie is, like most great athletes, it's not any one thing that makes him extraordinary.

It's an aggregate. Look, he's long. He's not the longest out there. He's not Bryson, DeChambeau, or Rory, but he's plenty long.

If I were going to make an analogy in baseball, he doesn't throw at 102 miles an hour, but he throws at 95, 94. So he's plenty long, but he's like Greg Maddox, if I'll continue the baseball analogy, accurate off of the tee. Last year on the PGA Tour, he had the smallest miss on tour. Most of the guys on tour that have the smallest misses are short hitters.

You just don't see what he did last year, if ever. And then he's an incredibly accurate iron player. He's a great chipper, and he plays the game very methodically, very strategically, very judiciously, much in the vein of Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus. They're so good that I'm sure it occurs to him like, nobody's going to beat me if I don't beat myself.

They're going to have to come get me, and I'm just better than they are. And that's the way it is. Right now, even though Justin Rose is up there, Scottie Scheffler, I'm sure everybody's looking at him, and if you beat him, you probably win. Yeah, he's still the betting favorite. And it's funny, too, you mentioned about not beating yourself and being smart out there. Rory has said that he wants to play more like Scottie, so that's why it was kind of bizarre to see him finish double-double there in the last four holes and kind of take himself out of the front runners. Yeah, I mean, you know that adage, a leopard can't change his spots. Rory's just a little bit more impulsive.

He hangs his head a little bit more when things are not going his way. And he just doesn't hit it as straight as Scottie Scheffler. It's funny, everybody says Rory's the best driver. They go, all right, he is, but he doesn't hit it as straight as Scottie Scheffler. And he doesn't hit his irons as straight as Scottie Scheffler. He doesn't chip as good as Scottie Scheffler. And he just doesn't seem to manage his game as well as Scottie Scheffler.

There was a time when Rory could do all those things earlier in his career, but they come a lot harder to him now. Yeah, you mentioned Bryson before. Kind of a tale of two live golfers with him and Jon Rahm.

Bryson's having a great day today. He's three back of Justin Rose at six under. And Rahm, yesterday on the broadcast, you could hear him talking to himself, just kind of belittling himself about how bad he was playing.

What have you seen from these two guys so far? Well, I think in the case of Rahm, I feel like he comes into major championships and he's got something to prove. And I think he puts a lot of pressure on himself.

If you look at, and not many people look at Liv, the ratings are terrible. But he's finished in the top ten in every event he's ever played on Liv. I think that's a commentary on him, but it's also a commentary that the competition isn't that great. So I think he comes in here and he just puts a lot of pressure on himself. Last year he came here and he hit the ball beautifully, T.T.

Green, he led the Masters in greens regulation, but he had seven three putts. So he just comes in here unorganized. Bryson, on the other hand, I think is more motivated. I almost look at, I think he's out at these Liv events preparing for major championships. I don't think he's put his heart and soul into it.

He hasn't played any good at all this year on Liv. And he gets to the Masters and he looks like he's having the best year of his life. That's a good shot right there. That's him hitting that bunker shot on the 18th hole last year at Pinehurst. He had some about 50 yards and hit it to about three feet away and made it. It was probably the shot of the year, the up and down of the year. And already today he had it in the left bunker on the fourth hole and holed it out.

And it has hit some incredible chips. So you always think about Bryson DeChambeau as just being this Hulk Hogan out there playing golf. But he has turned into this little bit of a wizard around the greens.

And you put that together and he's, man, is he good TV. Yeah, and then much was made this week about when he hit 400 shots on the driving range. They're tracking that now and then last night he finishes up and then immediately goes to the range and he's there until dark.

It's so funny watching this guy kind of work. Yeah, he was there until after dark. It was pitch dark and he was still out there hitting golf balls.

I can't remember if there were any lights on, but he doesn't need them. He's got his track man there. He hits and he looks down at his numbers and he gets all the information he needs right there, I guess. He's a bit like, and I've made this analogy just a little while ago, he's a bit like John Daly in that he plays with this audacity. He plays with this recklessness, swings as hard as he can off the tee. But he's also like Ben Hogan.

I mean, those are just, you couldn't get two more through his at-poles people. He never stops practicing. He's never stopped trying to perfect it.

So when I say he's great TV, you know, people love to watch John Daly because there was a train wreck coming and he was swinging as hard as he could. There's not so many train wrecks coming with Bryson, although they do from time to time. But he's relentlessly pursuing perfection and that's kind of cool. And I think he's gotten more humble. At least he's certainly about to be. I hear people say it's not sincere.

I don't buy that. Honestly, I think he's grown up a lot. And he's really fun to watch. And he's comported himself as well as he's played the last year and a half. And you've got to applaud that. Yeah, he's a showman.

And he's kind of come a long way since his comments of, oh, you know, Augusta's a par 67 for me, you know? Yeah, you know what? Now that you mention that, you know, I had the pleasure. I got to go watch the Magic play Golden State this year. And I had great seats, floor seats. And Steph Curry came over before the game and he was yucking it up with my buddy and my wife.

And we were having a good time. And then he put on such a show in that game. I think he scored 56, one of the best games he's ever had. Made so many threes. Made one from well, well behind half court, right at the buzzer.

And then came over, did this little golf swing in front of us, you know, like having some fun with us. He was such a showman. You know, I'd never really seen him up close. And a shot maker and a showman. And I was trying to think, has golf ever had anybody who was a shot maker and a showman? And I thought, well, maybe Lee Trevino. But, you know, no disrespect.

I mean, Lee Trevino was in the Hall of Fame, a hell of a player, but he wasn't Scotty Scheffler. Or excuse me, he wasn't Steph Curry. And now that you mention it, I think Bryson might be the closest we have to Steph Curry as far as being a shot maker and a showman in the game. I'm not saying he is Steph Curry. Steph Curry's in a league that we've never seen before. But he's the closest thing that we might have to him.

Yeah, I think it's close. I mean, last year at the Open, you know, the crowd was fully behind him. Whereas, you know, Rory has been kind of the face of the tour for the last few years. And the crowd was really in Bryson's corner. And then he hits that amazing bunker shot at 18 and everyone's going nuts.

And he's fist-pumping. And it kind of seemed like, you know, he's the people's champ now. There were eerie parallels to him and Payne Stewart. You know, Payne Stewart famously won there in 1999 and then tragically lost his life in a plane accident shortly thereafter. But Payne went to SMU. He wore that Cam O'Shanter hat. Bryson wears the hat in honor of Payne Stewart.

He's back at Pinehurst. Payne made a great up and down on 18 in 1999. Bryson makes the great up and down on 18 this year. The parallels were eerily similar. And people, first of all, they love a winner. And second of all, they love people who hit it nine miles. And they love people who kind of awe with error. You know, it's like he's also kind of like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, you know. You look at him and you're like, that's not quite right, but it's really cool. And that's what he is, you know. And then I think there's the humility that we've seen. And then there's your YouTube channel.

Put all that together. You know, I love this that I'm sitting here talking to you and I'm also thinking about, you know, what I'm going to do tonight on the show. But now that I'm sitting here, I'm like, I have a breakdown. I'm going to do Steph Curry. I'm going to do Bryson DeChambeau.

You've saved me some time, actually, trying to put that together for tonight's show. Let's talk about Ludwig really quickly. What do you think he learned from last year's kind of meltdown on the second nine there? And he's off to a great start today as well. Yeah, well, I would imagine we're not going to see him left of the whole location on the left. Right. You know, I mean, that's the thing. I mean, these guys are so good.

Ludwig's amazing. Hogan famously said eons ago, if you ever see me on the 11th green, you know, I pulled it. And he was the greatest shot maker of his era. Of course, they were probably hitting much, much longer shots in there.

Nobody's actually trying to miss that green to the right unless it's rare circumstances. What did he learn? I'm sure he learned a lot about himself. Everybody expects Ludwig to win major championships. He reminds me a little bit of Scottie Scheffler. He plays the game with a machine-like consistency. He just meets out great shot after great shot after great shot.

So, you know, and he handles himself with so much class. You know, look, I mean, the game is maddening. People lose their mind. It's sport. It's reality. But there is an absolute tsunami of profanity that is so prevalent in the game of golf. You can hardly watch a telecast without F-bombs falling like a confetti at a wedding. Right. And look, I understand it.

I don't know that I was as guilty of that, but I'm sure I've done it. And it's refreshing to see somebody come along like Ludwig who never throws tantrums, never throws clubs. You will not hear him ever. I promise you're not going to hear him yelling the F-bomb out there. He handles himself like Ben Crenshaw or Bobby Jones. And it's great to see someone come along like that who's not interested in being, you know, the cool kid who drops the F-bombs here and there.

And I think that's refreshing. I really do. I just – it's hard not to love Ludwig. We've talked a lot about a lot of the big names in this tournament, Brad. Is there anybody we're not talking about or somebody you just like how they're swinging the club here?

Gosh, there's a lot of them. Look, I love the way Colin Morakow swings the golf club. He's got a fabulous record here.

We talked about, you know, Rory being four back from Scottie Scheffler, and he's probably the guy you got to beat. He's still got a chance. Colin didn't play his best golf yesterday, but I'm looking forward to watching him play this afternoon.

Incredible move. Shane Lowry, I love the way Shane Lowry swings the golf club. I thought maybe he would have a chance. You know, I think there were a lot of surprises yesterday. And one of them for me was just how unorganized Justin Thomas went around this golf course. The last two years, he's shockingly played poorly here, but he comes in here with everything you need to play this golf course well.

I mean, I would easily have put him in the top five coming into this week. I love the way he swings the club, but I certainly don't like the way he plays this golf course. But the thing I think that your audience should know is that very quickly Augusta National decides who can win this golf tournament and who can't. After 36 holes, going back 25 years, 25 years, go all the way back to 2000, the average position of the eventual winner is third place. If you want to know who's going to win this golf tournament today, you do not have to look past the first page of leaderboard. And you really don't have to look past the first few names at the top of the leaderboard. So this is a it's a it's a terrible golf course to chase on. It's a fabulous golf course to lead on. So, again, you know, at the end of the day, you know, if you're not going to say it can happen, but I mean, if you're in 10th place and everybody's like, I can come back, just doesn't happen around this place.

Brando, I'm writing that down third place, and that's who I'm betting tonight after 36 holes. Got it. Thank you, Randall. Thank you. Thank you very much. Try to avoid any tsunamis of F bombs on the air tonight. We'll be watching on Golf Channel. We appreciate it.

I can't promise anything, but thank you. We got through it. We appreciate it. See you, Brando. Brando Shambly join us from Augusta, where apparently who is Brockman? Who is Akshay Bhatia?

Oh, he's great. He's a he's a young gun lefty. He looks exactly like Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel. I just saw him pop up on TV and I'm like, is that McDaniel? Good one.

Twins. It's like a dead ringer. Yeah, he's a young guy and he's the first drive chip and putt youth to make it to the finals at Augusta to eventually play in the tournament, which is a super cool random nugget. He's also the skinniest guy I think I've seen. He's very thin and hits it very far. I was laughing at Brando's his comparison with Steph and Bryson because Steph is probably the smallest superstar just body type wise we've ever seen in the NBA and Bryson has to be the largest.

And Bryson's like toned down a little bit. He was way beefier a few years ago. And now, you know, he realized that wasn't the best thing for his game. That's kind of where it turned was he'd stopped being completely muscle bound and all shoulders and actually got some flexibility in his body. Yeah, and realized, you know, this isn't sustainable to winning championships. And, you know, we've seen what he's done the last couple of years. He's just tremendous. And he's three back of Justin Rose. Here we go. Heading to the par five eighth.

Tell me more, Jim. Matt McCarty, I have no idea who that is, but he's made many birdies in a row and he's four under today. And he's four back of Justin Rose along with Sungjae Im also four under today. But your round of the day at Augusta right now belongs to someone named Rasmus Ogard. He's got that O you know with the line through it. Not enough guys named Rasmus. Because he's Scandinavian, you know, his brother.

He has a brother who plays on tour as well. He's heading to Amen Corner at five under today four under for the championship. American golf writers everywhere very concerned that Rasmus is going to be relevant because they don't have the button on their keyboard for that O with the line through it. Is that like a shift option situation? I think it's function O. It's a bow in the Danish region. Actually don't do that.

I don't know what function O does. I think you said it correctly. Scotty Scheffler at four under he's set to tee off in about 43 minutes. Tyrrell Hatton. I remember we had issues with his name yesterday, but I do believe it's Tyrrell Hatton.

He's going to tee off in 54 minutes. That was by far the funniest bit on the show was your seven different pronunciations of the early leader in Augusta. Hello friends. Hello friends.

Some of you I know, some of you I've never heard of. It's so green in Augusta right now as I'm watching it on 3K television in front of me. The flowers are very pink.

They're called azaleas. That's also a drink that I'll be having this weekend. Maybe I'll go live on Instagram. That sounds like a rapper from Australia. The projected cut is plus one. Tom Kim, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas among others. Brooks Koepka sitting on the cut line. I must say our Jim Nantz klai golf voice sounds much more like people on NPR introducing some alternative hit from 1998 by the blue turtle.

Wasn't that also a Saturday Night Live skit where they just talked like this for the whole segment? It was a delicious dish. Bryson DeChambeau with a birdie on eight.

He's now two back at seven under. And Brockman let's make sure to make good of Tsunami of Profanity. Tsunami of Profanity I think will be my fantasy name. That's the name of the band that is playing our next hit.

That's from 1974. It's Tom's second favorite emo band. On the Wings of Storks. Alright. Okay. We'll get back to the NFL. Top of the hour.

Ian Rapport is going to be with us. This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. We know just how fast your life moves. You have bills to pay, mouths to feed, and not a lot of free time. That's why we created an all-in-one banking experience that lets you keep on banking on. It can save you time and money with new lightning-fast direct deposit setup. And it offers checking accounts with ATM refunds and no service fees. Plus, whether you have credit or not, you can build your credit score with the new ability to report on-time bill payments. And with personalized financial insights on my making sense, the ability to view all your accounts in one place, custom notifications, and 24-7 fraud protection, you can get a full picture of your finances.

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Insured by NCUA. I'm just trying to keep up with you, brother. Stop it now. That's it. You do this. You got TV shows. You're the face of a network.

I'm not giving away cash and prizes. I'm not saying good morning to an entire nation. Well, I guess on this show, I'm doing that.

Yes, you're doing that. But I guess maybe it should be the Good Morning Rich Eisen Show America or something. Let's not push it now.

I was just saying, we need to workshop that idea a little bit better than that. But it's good, man. And I'm one of these guys. I'm very grateful. And I understand I owe everything to the game of football. And I know there's a lot of flack about football and a lot of the things that have come back, you know, the haunt, you know, some of the players in the game.

And I know a lot of players out there with a lot of issues and there's a lot of responsibility that needs to be had on their behalf and on all the players' behalf. But at the same time, I think, you know, I'm very grateful as well. And you've got a second season of Pyramid coming up soon, right? Yeah, $100,000 Pyramid, man. Come on, win some money, baby. Help somebody win some money. By the way, you know I am a game show aficionado.

Are you good? You know, everybody said that. I'm not doubting you. But everyone says, oh, man, my mom, the same way. We did chunky soup commercials years ago. Oh, boy, I can act. My mom. So we get there and her line was, you need a hot bowl of chunky soup to fill you up right. You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you. What happened, Denzel Washington?

Where are you now? So it's it. The game sounds easy and the game looks easy when you see someone who's really good at it. But it is tough when that clock is ticking. You got 30 seconds in that person across from you. Who are you talking to?

Come on, Rich. I can give clues. I can receive the clues. I know all of the business.

I know you got to put your hands in the straps. You know, you set yourself up, right? Oh, I'm I'm ready to make somebody's one hundred thousand dollar dream come true on your show.

It's going to happen. Like Joe Namath. I am calling my show.

You're like Joe Namath now. Oh, yeah. I'm guaranteed. You're calling a hundred thousand dollars.

I'm guaranteeing a hundred thousand dollars for whatever lucky individual your producers care to pair up with you. OK. Oh, yes. I love that show. You know what?

We're going to make that happen. I watched the Dick Clark daytime version. I watched Dick Clark nighttime version.

And I watched your version. It is fun. I love it because if Pran can do it, I can do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Prime.

I got to say, wasn't Prime's finest moment to do the show? Some of the he was given body signals that didn't match up with the words. I'm like, what? How does that mean money? I don't get it.

But the Prime, it made sense. We got a lot more to come here on the Rich Eisen list. Rich Eisen show here with me, Tom Pelissero, Quinn Ewers, coming up a little bit later on in the show. A lot of questions for him, a guy who's won as much as anybody in college football over the last couple of years, yet is not really in the conversation among the top quarterbacks to go in this draft. I'm guessing he's going to have some thoughts on that. Ian Rappaport also going to join us at the top of the hour. Dive a little bit deeper into the remaining quarterback madness in an offseason full of it. Joe Flacco is a Cleveland Brown again. Aaron Rodgers is still unaffiliated, unconnected, unaffiliated, undecided.

We'll break all that down when Ian joins us at the top of the hour. Recent news and uncertainties around the economy really hits home for all of us. One thing that stands out about Hyundai is their commitment to supporting American consumers and making investments in this country. And no surprise, Hyundai announced that they will not be raising the prices of their vehicles through June 2nd.

Not only that, they believe in investing right here in America, $21 billion to be exact in the next three years, that's meant to expand manufacturing, future tech, and create more jobs for Americans. It's not just talk, Hyundai is about action. Boss, welcome back to every time, every time I get to the end of it, Marshawn's just on my other shoulder here. Take care of your chicken, take care of your chicken, take care of your mental, your chicken. That's Marshawn, the all time unique individuals.

Yeah, no doubt. We've got, I think a first for college football, we've got a spring practice holdout. What? A Tennessee quarterback, according to Pete Thamel, shortly before the show began, Tennessee quarterback, Niko Iyama-Laava, or as he might now be known, Niko, I'mma leave him. They're not going to work here anymore, that's for sure. Did not attend spring practice. The sides have been in conversations about a new contract. According to multiple reports, everyone was shocked that he was not out there. According to the expanded story, the day before the winter portal opened, or excuse me, closed in December, his representatives wanted to renegotiate his deal in the $4 million range. He's currently expected to make $2.4 million.

Now with the portal set to open again on Wednesday, his representatives were again looking for $4 million and sources told ESPN, the Tennessee quote, wasn't going to blink and pay him any more money. So this is what we've created folks come to. Yeah, exactly.

And I want to be abundantly clear, Niko Iyama-Laava, if he ends up being Niko, I'mma leave him. I don't begrudge it. You reap what you sow and college athletics have spent decades refusing to pay anyone finally with a legal gun to their head. They are close to an agreement about directly paying players, regulating things. And you now have players saying, you know what?

I'm not showing up. And the rules say I can leave, which having talked to college head coaches about it, this is one of the worst things. This is probably the worst thing for their sanity, for their lifestyle, for program building. Especially if you are not, of course, Tennessee is a blue blood type program, but if you are not the Alabamas and the Georges with unlimited pockets, the worst part of the job is you recruit guys. If they play well, other schools can come at them during bowl season. Then after spring practice, you can come out of again, two different windows.

You have to re recruit your own players. And in the cottage industry that is quarterbacks, you're talking about millions of dollars and there are many, many quarterbacks making this type of money. So that's where it, you know, in reading earlier this week, the details of this, this pending agreement that a judge has to sign off on to properly compensate people for past and future, but also establish a salary cap at 24, $20.5 million per school, allow major conferences to police booster deals. We're back baby.

We're back. We're right back to the old system, which is okay, 25.5 million, the old cap was zero. So that is progress. But now the new cap is 20.5 and that's, Hey, police those boosters.

You're literally back to where you were before. It's just, you know, you have a baseline of what people are making and whether it's Iowa given everybody the same deal or whether it's schools offering three, four, five, $6 million to a quarterback to come play one season. All this means is there's now just a different threshold for where you're going to have the under the table money you have somehow created in this agreement, which again, let's be clear better than the old system of no dollars allowed and everything was illegal, right? You are still creating the same old problem, which is that rather than just saying, we're going to have some type of structure and regulation, you're saying, Nope, can't go over that number. If you do, then that's, that's a violation who is policing that the conferences that have a vested interest in making sure that they're in the big bowl games and they're in the college football playoff, they're going to be the ones that are policing this, you, you attend at Weinberg, they're putting the, you know, I don't see Greg Sankey, like crawling under the table to see if someone's got a paper bag with some money in it. It's just not, it's not realistic. Like how you spend this much time and you arrive at a system that is exactly the same.

It's self-preservation. There's no question about that, but how in the world is that better? Ian Rappaport's going to join us at the top of the hour, dive into all things NFL and the draft 13 days out, stick around on the rich eyes and show as for the situation at Tennessee Nico Amaliva is going to be a test case for how binding certain agreements are. The answer of course is appears not there's not, there's not a collective bargaining agreement.

That's the other thing. There's no union, no union in the NFL. The reason that the salary cap and the structures of rookie contracts and tenders and everything else, the reason it works is because it's collectively bargained because the players are bound by those rules here. You're creating a system where, by the way, you still can opt out of the main settlement and Sue separately.

You got the guy, the guy with the buzzer beater for Villanova yeah, Chris Jenkins is currently, he just filed his own lawsuit while they're trying to resolve this. You said, you know what? I specifically would have made more money than I'm going to get. I'm going to do my own thing.

I don't, I don't have a clear answer for how you fix it. My opinion has always been, this is it for lack of a better comparison. This is, you know, medicinal marijuana. This is the regulation of THC, which is the harder, the more complicated you create of rules on it, the more people are going to end up just going to their dealers. Anyway, if you regulate it and tax it and just say it's all up for grabs, you actually get people to play by the rules because you don't have as many. If you create this complicated tiered system of, all right, we have a specific salary cap per team. Now these booster deals, you got to regulate them separately and anything over that's a violation. You're, you're going to go back to a quite frankly feckless agency like the NCAA now disabled. No. Now the conferences can police it because we, we know everyone knows we don't know what we're doing. Let's have the conferences who benefit the most from having the most good players on their teams.

Go police it. And why? Because one coach complains about what another coach is doing. This is the old system. It's the exact old system. This is like the office. It's like, it's the same picture. How do you guys not see it?

It's the exact same problems that you had before. And these are super conferences. Now the days of the 10 team conference are over. See you 20, 20 team plus you're going to have to hire an entire investigative body on this. The way that things are calculated is going to be subject to it. You're going to have complicated accounting mechanisms. Listen, salary caps are ultimately good for sports. Look, look no further than baseball to see how out of whack the economics of your sport can get. If you don't have a cap that promotes equity, this doesn't create equity.

This just creates a system where the people who are best at getting away with stuff are going to have the best opportunity to win. Bravo TV star Lala Kent holds nothing back. There's been so many times where I'm like, I apologize that I said that, but that wasn't meant for you to hear. I feel you there.

How fun would it be to bring in some bravo liberties and make our own bracket icon? All right. I'll take Dorinda. You take Sonia.

Sonia is who I wish I could be. You and me both. I cannot be someone in the program. What's PTO? Pay time off. See?

You never had a real job. Give them Lala. It is nothing but honesty. You guys know. Just follow and listen on your favorite platform.