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Not available in all states or situations. Today's guests. NFL VP of Broadcast Planning, Mike North. Seahawks General Manager, John Schneider.
Actor, Josh Duhamel. And now, it's Rich Eisen. Hey everybody, welcome to this edition of the Rich Eisen Show. We're live right here on the Roku Sports Channel. We are live here on the Infinity Sports Network.
We are just live all over the place. Good to see everybody here on the Rich Eisen Show on the Infinity Sports Network as well. Hey, we've got ourselves schedules. The National Football League schedules have been released.
I did a two a day. I did the three hours here yesterday. I did the three hours on NFL Network. All 32 teams have their schedules. Mike North, the man who helps put these schedules together, is going to be on this program coming up in just a few short minutes to explain all of his work.
And I demand answers on some of these subject matters. And the General Manager of the Seattle Seahawks, John Schneider, will join us in hour number three. And then the dreamy Josh Duhamel will be here in studio in hour number three in support of many of his projects.
The show Ransom County on Netflix is available on Roku. He has a longevity, energy, and performance for men company he wants to talk about. And just to show you just how confident an individual I am.
Josh Duhamel is on this program in studio. And Suzy Schuster is also here, my lovely, lovely bride and wife and my wife, the center of my universe. Sorry, Rich, I was just busy doing some research for that interview. Okay, very good.
I'll be the one conducting it. In case you're wondering. The latest edition of Women's Sports Now is up and up and at them. So all of that good stuff is in our neighborhood. And as soon as we are done here today, we're taking off for Atlanta. Chris Brockman has already taken off for the East Coast. We're going to meet him in Atlanta tomorrow, where TJ Jefferson, you and I, along with Mike Del Tufo and Jason Feller are going to be playing a few. Yes, sir.
It's the Dan Patrick show. And Suze, you will be conducting in Women's Sports Now takeover of this program. We are. Colleen Wolf will be here and sitting in this seat right here will be Sarah Tiana. Okay, so she'll be checking on Chris's workspace and we'll pop the best mom ever sign out here.
I'm shopping, you need me. Very good. Whatever Chris does during the show. Okay, fantastic. Argues a lot with Rich.
So lots to talk about. 844-204-Rich is the number to dial on this program. If you are a long time consumer of this program, you know when the schedules are out, we invite you as the viewers on the Roku channel or the listeners on Infinity Sports Network, Sirius XM or Odyssey to call 844-204-Rich to play the win loss game. To say your favorite team schedules now out, you got to give us the wins, you got to give us the losses, you got to predict the final record of the season. And now that we've got schedules, the win loss game is now in effect.
Josh Duhamel is going to be the first celebrity guest to play it for his beloved Minnesota Vikings later on in this program. I mean, that always goes over so well. And you always, it does. And I love doing it.
Suze, you love when you sit in this chair. Suze loves callers. You love callers, you love the win loss game, you love all of it.
Yeah, and if you're listening right now, by the way, we'll take all of those callers tomorrow because the girls have never played this. So they're so excited to play win loss. Well, you've got to have Colleen doing the win loss for the Eagles and you've got to have Sarah do the win loss for the Falcons. And if you want to take a shot at the Patriots, feel free. I always hold my Jets stuff in abeyance. You hate doing it for the Dallas Cowboys until we force you to do it.
Well, I hate the fact that you always make me go super early. I like to have the 53rd man on the roster settle before. Thankfully, we have fans to do it.
844-204, which is the number to dial. Of all the storylines in an NFL season, the number one storyline involves the defending Super Bowl champions and whether they can repeat. And that always leads to the conversation we, as a matter of fact, had it on the three hour program last night on NFL Network. And the subject matter is always who is the biggest threat to the defending Super Bowl champs? And what is the biggest threat standing in their way for a three-peat or two-peat, which is the normal thing in last year being the three-peat? And so the question involving the Philadelphia Eagles is who is standing in their way of repeating? Now, sometimes you sit there and go, well, they lost too many players on their roster and they did lose some players in free agency, but nobody that I think is going to shake the foundations of this team, clearly. Last time they won it all, the biggest threat to their repeating, as we all know, was the quarterback position.
Right. And they did, in fact, have a shot to repeat with foals and then lost in the playoffs. So as it turned out, they had a real good shot to repeat that year. The last time they made the Super Bowl, their biggest threat to making it back was they lost both coordinators. This time around, they've lost their offensive coordinator. He's now the head coach of the New Orleans Saints.
So is that the biggest threat? Then you look at other teams, the Washington commanders got better. The Rams were the team that came closest to beating the Eagles in the playoffs last year.
They got better. We're assuming it is based on the results we've seen from Cooper Cup the last couple of years in terms of availability and production on the field, that Devante Adams is an upgrade for Matthew Stafford, who was on last night's schedule release show and singing the praises of Devante Adams. We'll talk about how he's still in touch with Cooper Cup, and he can't wait to see him, as he will see him twice this year for Seattle. Again, John Schneider will be joining us later on the program, the GM who brought him to the Pacific Northwest.
But the point is, there's really nothing that's just screaming at you in the face right now that says huge impediment. They drafted well. They paid some of their stars for their 2024 season.
Everybody appears to be healthy. So here's the biggest threat. And we found out about it last night. It's a schedule. The Philadelphia Eagles will face seven of the top 10 scoring offenses from last season. They will face six of the top seven scoring defenses from last season. They have 11 games against 2024 playoff teams. Now, we knew that they were going to play these teams all along. And we knew that of the 11 playoff teams that they would be facing this season from last season, every single team that they saw in the playoffs last year are one of those playoff teams that they're seeing. They're seeing every single one of them.
And you could sit here and go, well, Rich, what does that matter? Because they dominated everybody but the Rams, but got past them because they were so dominant that the Rams couldn't dig out of the hole that they dug, or the snow drift that they were running into while Saquon was running past them. You could say that. That'd be a valid point.
But now you see, though, the order of things. And of the teams that they faced in last year's playoffs, they see two of them in the first three weeks. And the one in the first three weeks that didn't make the playoffs are the Dallas Cowboys, who one must assume are going to be better. They're starting with Dallas at home.
Then they're at Arrowhead. Then they come back home for the Rams. Then they're at Tampa, which beat them last year. And I understand the first month of the season was a different Philadelphia Eagles team. We can all stipulate that, but they have trouble winning in Tampa. We know that's when Jason Kelce strolled off his football career field for the last time and went to ESPN. Then they're home for Denver. That's a tough first five. They're playing the Giants on a short week Thursday night.
We'll see about them apples. At Minnesota before they face the Giants again, there's a bye. A Monday night at Green Bay. A Sunday night home against Detroit. Then at Dallas. The Black Friday game against Chicago after Thanksgiving. A Monday night game out here in Los Angeles. Raiders at home. We have no idea who the Raiders are going to be this year.
We're assuming they're going to be better. And then their last three. They don't play Washington until their final three games of the season. They play them twice wrapped around a visit at Buffalo.
That is not easy. Now we knew again, we knew they were going to play these teams. We knew it. You know, as soon as the season's over, who they're going to play when the regular season's over. When you know who's first, second, third, and fourth, you know exactly who's on your schedule and where you're going to play them. The minute the season is over and after they found out that information, they boat raced the league on the way to the winner's podium. With the exception against the Rams again at home in the divisional round. But they still got past them. Now we know the order of events.
My goodness. They could still do it. I'm not saying they're not. What I'm saying is the biggest threat to the repeat is that schedule. One unfortunate injury for a month could cost them a playoff positioning. That could cost them in the playoffs. But we shall see.
Schedule's out. Eagles are probably looking at that going, well, at least we got to buy when we like it. And you got to play them when you play them. And we're going to be home for some big ones. And this is going to be fun.
That's I'm sure that's the way they're approaching it. But right now, wow. Those first five is a big wow. And those last three were I saw that. I'm like, oh, my goodness.
That is something else. And that's half their schedule. Eight, four, four, two or four rich number to dial. Want to play the win loss game. Let's do it. Mike North, who, along with the soon to be retiring Howard Katz, put together this schedule. And Mike is going to join us next. I'm the bald one.
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See store or sleepnumber.com for details. A man who is part of the process front and center. 100,000 possibilities and 4,000 computers. I think I got the numbers right. From the National Football League home office, the man of the hour right now, Mike North, NFL VP of Broadcast Planning and Scheduling. Good to see you again, Mike. How are you, sir? Doing great, Rich.
Thank you. Got my dose of schedule, Rizzi. So let it go.
It's so funny. All right, we're going to jump right into it, Mike. When you're sitting there looking at the Steelers schedule, did you look at it through the lens of Rodgers is going to be the quarterback? Or you really can't assume that sort of thing? Because you put the Steelers right in the home of the Jets week one, Mike. Yeah, look, assume nothing with Aaron, right? So I don't know any more than you do.
Right. The Steelers-Jets still sounds like a football game, like Howard Katz would say. Look, I think if we knew for certain he was there and he'd signed already, probably would have done something a little different with Steelers-Jets. Sounds like a Monday night game or a Thursday night game, something in a national window. As it is, it's in the middle of a Sunday afternoon with eight, nine other games going on. If we knew he was coming, I'm not sure that's what we would have done with it.
So kind of tried to play it down the middle. If he comes, great. If he doesn't, you know, Steelers-Jets still a good one o'clock anchor for CBS in week one. Steelers-Packers still a good NBC game in week eight. Steelers-Bills still a good Sunday afternoon doubleheader game on CBS Thanksgiving weekend. Steelers are still the Steelers, right?
Coaches never had a losing season. They're always in the playoff hunt. You roll the dice on the teams that you think are going to matter. The Steelers usually do. They certainly probably get a little more interesting with a certain future Hall of Fame quarterback under center. And then the concept of these standalone, big, huge, marquee window games. Thanksgiving, obviously.
Kickoff being another one. Mike, I've known you for quite some time. We've had these conversations on air, off air for some time. I got to be honest with you. I don't recall the last time you and the rest of the crew at scheduling served up so much filet mignon in the biggest spots.
Normally you do spread it out a little bit. Cowboys at Eagles first night. The Thanksgiving schedule is as blockbuster as they come. Certainly with the middle game that already is the largest regular season audience usually in an year in and year out. With the Cowboys hosting the Chiefs this time around. Why did you guys and ladies decide to do this?
Mike? The function of a couple of things. The first one was just the way the 272 matched up this year. Just the way the rotations worked with which division was playing which. The standings based games. There's a lot of really good stuff in there. Especially like you think about AFC North, NFC North. You got Packers, Bears, Lions playing, Ravens, Steelers, Bengals.
Like they just sound like football games. And so there was a lot of really good quality inventory that you know the fans are going to care about. You know they're going to be interested in.
You know they're going to find. So you could afford to take maybe three, four, five right off the top. Most years you take the three or four or five best games off the list. And you start to wonder if you've got enough left to feed the Sunday afternoon. The Sunday night. The Monday night.
The Thursday night. This year we felt like we had the depth. We had the inventory. We had the quality. And it was really Hans Schroeder runs a scheduling team who really kind of first had the idea. Why wouldn't we test the ceiling?
Why wouldn't we take the Ferrari out of the garage? What could a Chiefs-Cowboys game do on Thanksgiving Day afternoon? And like you said we get 42, 43 million for Cowboys-Commanders, Cowboys-Giants. We haven't really hit you know struck gold with two teams playing that day. Both with winning records and a good game. Last time was probably Cowboys-Raiders a few years ago where it went into overtime.
Like it's been a while. And Hans was pretty convicted that we should at least be open to trying it. I of course told him no that's a terrible idea. But he went to David Burson from CBS, had a conversation. Went to the commissioner and everybody started to get pretty comfortable with the idea if we could see what the rest of the schedule would look like.
So one of the early paths was what would it look like with Chiefs-Cowboys on Thanksgiving? Run it again. Run it again.
Run it again. Hey there's a plenty good Sunday night, Monday night, Thursday night doubleheader schedule in here even with Chiefs-Cowboys on Thanksgiving. So we got comfortable with it and excited to see what it can do. What if we could push 48, 49, 50 million viewers for a regular season game? That's unthinkable not that long ago. And then you know not that long ago you only had four broadcast partners to deal with.
Now you got eight. Bottom outs to feed. Including us. You know here at NFL Network right? I assume that's the first thing you look at right?
Which games you're going to do play-by-play for right? Mike there's an I in my first and last name. Are you kidding me?
Who are you talking to Mike? Get out of here. Come on.
Come on. But when you talk about these games and the mouths to feed how much does RG1 does put his thumb on the scale because obviously you know he runs essentially an organization that is a partner. A broadcast partner as well. How much is he involved?
Intimately. You know he trusts the team. Obviously Howard Katz ran this process for 20 years.
Really kind of did a lot of it in his head. Schroeder took over a couple of years ago as Howard transitioned to eventual retirement. I hope he's not gone forever.
I hope he'll still take our calls. But Hans has been a little bit more data driven. A little bit more analytics focused and kind of like with that Thanksgiving game you know why do it the same way you've done it year after year? Why not try to innovate a little bit? Try something different.
All right if it works great. If it doesn't that's okay we tried something. And so can we feed the beast right? Can we still keep Sunday Night Football the number one show on television? Can we still build Amazon as the streaming home of Thursday Night Football? Is there still room for Peacock and YouTube to have good games? The fans will find them if they're good.
And that's sort of been the mantra these last couple of years. You know the London and the Europe games they're 930 in the morning here in the East Coast in this country so it's not necessarily all about the television viewership. That's not a big TV window. But there's a floor there too.
There's a ceiling that we could push there too. That Miami-Kansas City game in Germany a few years ago did 10 million. So trying to make sure there's good games for international partners. Good game for all the primes. Good game week one. Good game for ESPN Plus. Good game for Thanksgiving.
Good game for Christmas. Obviously none of us know. The season doesn't even start for four months. The December games don't roll around for seven more months. So we're all just guessing. But there was enough good inventory this year that felt like for all the mouths we had to feed we had enough nourishment for everybody.
We'll see how it works out. Yeah it's a new television world right? I mean when you got three Christmas games for the NFL. Two of them on Netflix wrapped around an Amazon Prime video game right?
I mean all of it I should mention available right here on Roku. Mike North here on the Rich Eisen Show. I've got mouths to feed too Mike.
NFL broadcast planning and scheduling vice president here on the Rich Eisen Show. Let's talk about the international games because you mentioned how the phrase of taking the Ferrari out of the garage by putting big time matchups in big time spots already on the schedule. So I guess are you taking the Aston Martin or Range Rover out of the garage? You know I'm trying to come up with all the UK based car companies because what I'm pointing out is there's one game in Dublin and then three games in London all in one. One full month of four windows of football for fans to enjoy here in the United States. But you've got the Vikings on the road in two different countries.
That's the first time that's ever happened. And then I'm sure there's going to be folks in the NFL offices who are going to be spending a month plus in Europe. Are we piloting something for a full year in Europe?
Is this something that you guys are talking about? Commissioner Goodell has been very clear about his vision for our international slate. This is the most we've ever played. It was not easy but he keeps talking about 8, 10, 12 maybe someday 16 international games.
This is probably the tip of the iceberg. Yeah I think we're going to keep trying to do it and kind of like you said you do them all right in a row. Fans can get conditioned and you know oh yep every Sunday morning wake up more football.
You're talking about what 12 more than 12 right 15 hours of NFL football. That's a fun day and to do it over and over and over again in September and October. Yeah I think we are conditioning the fans. I think we're conditioning ourselves. I think we're conditioning our teams.
That's sort of where the Minnesota thing came from. I had reached out to all the clubs that were potential opponents for all the host teams internationally and said look you can see the schedule. Vikings you know you travel to Pittsburgh this year. They're hosting a game in Dublin.
You're a candidate. And then another call a day later hey you see the Brown schedule. You know you're an opponent for them in Cleveland. They're hosting a game in London. It was actually Commissioner Goodell who said you know do you think they might be interested in doubling up and playing them both. To which again I said absolutely not. That's crazy.
Wrong again. I called the Vikings and you know they went from open minded to intrigued to eager and willing and another chance to innovate another chance to try something different. The Jags have done it the last couple of years played a game stayed played another game. But this is the first time same team two different countries both on the road you know strategically I'm sure they were thinking about you know very easily could have been scheduled for at Pittsburgh and at Cleveland in December in the snow. And instead you get those games out of the way early.
You don't have to play them in the snow. God knows what the weather is going to be like over there but I'm sure there was something strategic that the Vikings thought made sense for them not just from a marketing standpoint but also from the football side. And once coach got on board with it it was going to be hard for the rest of the operations team to say hey we're not going to be able to make this work.
They're going to make it work and we'll all learn a little something. When I spoke to you last night on the NFL Network schedule release show you said I'm just getting through. We gave the schedules to the teams and the broadcast partners and those that's just one set of circumstances you will have to deal with the ripples in the pond of that stone that you threw in and you said well tomorrow meaning today you'd be dealing with all the other broadcast partners who now see what you gave the other broadcast partners.
Are you through those phone calls now Mike or I don't think I don't think we heard anything we didn't expect. I mean I think we knew that you know Bengals were going to be a little disappointed playing on the road on a short week in Baltimore yet again. We absolutely had schedules where that Baltimore since the Thanksgiving game was in Cincinnati. This just happened to be the one that you know got to the commissioner's desk and got his stamp of approval on it from a broadcast partner side. You know like we said they all looked at their schedules and said hey it looks great. And then they saw everybody else's and now you know NBC saying wait a minute why did ESPN get Eagles Packers or Amazon is saying why did Fox get Philly Buffalo.
We wanted that for Black Friday like you know Hans always says focus on what you got not what you didn't get. And sometimes we have to remind everybody of that. And then what are the anomalies that you wish you could have avoided but you couldn't with these schedules. What are the ones where you know I did see the Ravens are one of three teams that have three straight road games but that's surrounded by two different three game home stands. And it starts in week five with a three game home stand wrapped around a by then three in a row on the road and then three more in a row at home before finishing with three out of four on the road. You know and I'm wondering when you look at this stuff you say let's take one more shot at it or sometimes it's just the way you have to make the omelet here. I'm not sure a three game home stand is a competitive disadvantage.
I would argue probably the other way. Maybe the Steelers and the Browns and the Bengals are looking at that Raven schedule and saying yeah they do have a three game road trip in there but two three game home stands like that's not fair to us. That's too good for them.
You and I have been doing this together long enough. It wasn't that long ago we had schedules with eight nine ten eleven three game road trips on it. I'm not sure a three game road trip is a thing. I'm not sure it's a competitive disadvantage to somebody. We play back to back road games in this league obviously all the time.
Nobody bats an eye. So you're really just talking about that third of three. If you win that one you can't say that the three game road trip was competitively unfair. So yeah it's something we monitor. It's something the teams are sensitive about maybe more so about not having a home game you know for a month for the fans but that could happen with a away by away stretch which the team's never going to complain about or like the Vikings going across the pond to play to and come back to their bye.
It happens. We're trying to figure out exactly where that line is in terms of what is competitively unfair. We talk to the coaches. We talk to the general managers. Donna Ponti from the league office looks at every schedule. Obviously the commissioner looks at every schedule. A schedule with quote unquote only three game road trips on it I think we'd say is a win but very comfortable playing a schedule with five or six three game road trips as long as they're the right three game road trips. OK. So for you Mike there's always a concert or a tour or once upon a time if I'm not mistaken a papal visit that that went into stadiums that that created some havoc that you needed to for you that you needed to work around. What about this 2025 schedule.
What are those. Couple interesting notes. Billy Joel was touring and what had a health issue or he fell and he hurt himself or something so he had to put his tour on hold and once he started feeling better he wanted to restart his tour. Those dates started coming across our desk more like April.
So some of that was a bit of a late curve ball. Paul McCartney is going out. So obviously there's a lot of buildings vying for his services.
I think the most interesting one maybe Chris Brown. Chris Brown has SoFi in L.A. week two. He booked that months ago before we booked the Chargers to go to Brazil. So when the Chargers realized they were going to Brazil in week one we always try to give everybody at least a home game if not a buy coming back from an international trip. There's no buy in week two. So a charges happy to bring you back to a home game after Brazil like we did last year for the Eagles and the Packers.
But your buildings block Chris Brown's using it. We'll try to find you somewhere to go week two but it ain't going to be SoFi and didn't want to really send them to the Giants or any of their East Coast trips. We were hoping to send them to Vegas. Nice close trip.
Their building is blocked. They got a boxing match and a UNLV game on Saturday. I called the Raiders and I asked them hey not so much for your division rival Chargers but more for the league. Would you be able to play on Monday that week.
And they agreed to stuff around. So they're going to host Monday night. So the Chargers do come back from Brazil to a road game but at least it's the Vegas and it's on a Monday night.
So they do get a little extra rest. It's going to be a very busy weekend in Vegas with a fight and a college game and a Chargers Raiders game on Monday. So appreciate everybody accommodating our requests. I love the back story. I knew there's always got to be one of them and Billy Joel right. The glass houses that you're living in right. I'm just trying to come up with that. I couldn't come up with it. Stu you're the Billy Joel expert. I don't know. That was a rough turn. I don't know.
I mean what else could they're moving out that some of these people are very good. Mike thanks for the time. Cancun next for you. What do we got?
Always a pleasure. No not yet. You know there's still some I's to dot and T's to cross and honestly we'll start thinking about the 26 schedule soon enough. Come on. Really. Really. We know most of the matchups right.
Only three of them are standings based. So we know all but what 48 of the matchups. So we've got 230 of them. Yeah. Let's start thinking about it. Can't wait. Get right back to it.
As soon as you got one. Mike do you get any kind of like suspicious or interesting boxes of chocolate. Do you get it.
Do you get food for this. Yeah. Yeah. What about that.
Do you get scotch. Excuse me. And by the way. H.R.
is listening. They all know better. We can't be bought. That's right. Nobody's nobody's thrilled.
Nobody's sending scotch. They're all just a little disappointed maybe. Right.
That's probably right where we should be. Everybody gets something. Nobody gets everything. We tell our kids the same thing. You know you get what you get.
That's right. You know you don't get upset. But that's what it is. Don't worry about them. And they still get upset. Exactly.
They still get upset. Thanks for the call Mike. Greatly appreciate it. Always a pleasure. Take care. Thanks for the call from the broadcasting department. Kudos to them and to Howard Katz who's mentioned multiple times.
Great retirement for sure. That is how many times do we tell our children you get what you get. Don't worry about it. I got that on my Mother's Day card from Zander. That was one of the lines. Is that what he said? Mm hmm. Oh really? Mm hmm. And he wrote sometimes.
Sometimes. Do you think Mike looks like he's actually in contact with Claire Danes somewhere for a Homeland episode? Oh he's got a very, that's an interesting.
He's very Manny Patinkin in there. Wow. And he's got that beautiful mind behind him stuff.
Okay. And all I can think about is he's going to get really nervous and he's going to start calling Claire Danes for a Homeland. He also might, he also might need a drink himself. He might need that scotch right now. What does he do the rest of the year?
Oh all sorts of stuff. Broadcast planning and he's planning broadcasts. I love how he mentioned that it was kind of like a groundhog where he'd go back in and maybe not come out for a while.
I mean he's, he and that crew, they do an incredible work. When I first went to the NFL, first time I ever walked in the building for the NFL, there was an individual guy named Val Pinchback who used to do this sort of work and they did it with, you know how sometimes when you went to summer camp and you, you, you took a, you know, a life vest or you took a towel or whatever and they wanted you to return it. They would give you like a tag, a little tag that you would hang on a hook with your name on it. It's an old sort of, they did it with tags. That's how they did the schedule, not with computers, not anything like that. Yeah.
And I walked on the board. I'm like, what is this thing? It's like, that's the schedule.
I put a chargers tag at Philadelphia in the week two column. And I'm like, that's how you do the schedule. Really? It's amazing.
Now it's again, a hundred thousand possibilities and 4,000 supercomputers that spit stuff out and then they go over it and one winds up on the commissioner's desk and he signs it and that's the end of it. TJ, I loved Hans Schroeder in Die Hard. He was great. Oh, that was a nice little reference right there. So wait, Rick.
Because these are people on the, on the, uh, on the death chart that I deal with. All right. Rich, one thing you mentioned, I didn't know.
So you said the commissioner has to, he has, he gets that schedule, Hans Gruber, by the way. Okay. No relation to Hans Schroeder. Just checking. There's also Hans Blix. Okay. Well, let's not tell, let's not, let's not tell Hans Schroeder what we're telling Hans Blix. Okay.
All right. So the commissioner gets the schedule. He gives it a once or twice over and then he literally, he does more than a once or twice over. But literally he has to sign off on it like physically and then it gets, I don't know if he puts his signature on it.
Like he's John Hancock, but I'm assuming he's got to, cause he's, he's the most mission critical out of all the mission critical people. So, and the week one schedule, let's, let's hit that before we take our first break, uh, post interview here. Um, we all knew about the first two games coming in the first game in Philadelphia Cowboys, Eagles. They were really stunned about how great that, that matchup is.
I didn't see that one coming. I didn't think they would do that, but as you heard the other, the other possibilities on the schedule all year long with some great teams and great divisions playing one another gives enough of, you know, match-ups like say, uh, let's just say that the, the folks at CBS wanted chiefs chargers or were interested in chiefs chargers week one, but that instead goes to YouTube, uh, well, Hey, Jim Nantz, how does lions Packers sound to you now? That's an old school, like summer all Tom Brookshire or summer all Madden when CBS used to have the NFC package type games, but now it doesn't matter. They'll just take, it doesn't matter what conference it is. They'll just take it.
And as they that's the cross flex is what they call it now. Um, and then the rest of the week one match-ups, I mean the Steelers at the jets, uh, there's no doubt they're thinking if Rogers is coming, everybody thinks Rogers is coming. Hey, everybody tune in. And I believe that's JJ Watts first game in the booth with iron Eagles. So he'll have his brother in New York city, pardon me, New Jersey. I'm sorry, Bill's fans, New Jersey, um, and against the team that told him we're, we're, we're no longer working together. And he says, made him fly all the way out the country instead of FaceTime and him to tell him that Joe burrow, as we all know, has fits against the Browns and miles Garrett. Well, now he's going home again, Pete's going home again to new England and that's going to be Vrabel's first game.
And we all know that Vrabel was supposed to be, everyone thought, well, Brady's now in the ownership group, he's absolutely going to hire Mike Vrabel didn't happen. Pete Carroll shows up and he's going to go back to new England where he was the coach before a guy named Bill Belichick showed up, um, the giants and the commanders are interesting to say the least bucks and Falcons. He got the Niners in the Seahawks, Sam Darnold taking, uh, his first career start in Seattle for the Seahawks, uh, against the team that has been credited with beginning his rehabilitation as a starter in this league, how does Texans Rams, and then the first hit you at the same time as lions and Packers Ravens and bills, the divisional playoff matchup from last year in which the, the bills knocked the Ravens out closing out the first Sunday night of the season. And then the Monday nighter JJ McCarthy is from the Chicago area. His first career start in soldier field, Caleb Williams and the, and the Vikings on Monday night football. I mean, let's go. Oh, that Ravens bills game.
I don't know. That got me excited. So NBC, I mean, to Rico, we were talking to him on the, uh, scheduled release show last night going from Cowboys Eagles to start and then finishing going up to Western New York.
If I'm not mistaken, Mike Hoskins, you would know this or Bill's mafia resident. This is the Highmark stadium final season, right? It is. So the final season opener in old rich stadium slash Highmark now taking on the Ravens and Derek Henry and D hop.
Let's go. I like week one is really excellent. Later on. I've got some top five under the radar games for you on that week. One front.
My guess is that Thursday night kickoff will not be on that on what that's flat out on there. It's in the middle of the radar. I mean, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's, uh, it's beeping more than one ping. Let's put it that way. So let's take a break here on the rich eyes and show, well, let's, we'll take your phone calls. Oh yeah.
Look at that. Soon as we got phone calls, we got win-loss games to play. It's the best time of the year.
It's the most wonderful time of the year. Andrew Bogusch with the sports update. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Not everyone is careful with your personal information, which might explain why there's a victim of identity theft every five seconds in the U S fortunately there's LifeLock LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a U S based restoration specialist will fix it guaranteed or your money back save up to 40% your first year by visiting lifelock.com slash podcast terms apply. I believe you are a fantasy football player.
Is that a true story? Jody Foster. I am. I had to play last year because of the present administration was, you know, I had to be on the top of that and that you can't get all those alerts all at once.
So just too much for me, too many badges on your phone, alerts on your phone. I had to choose. I don't know.
I think next year I think this year I'm going to choose fantasy for sure. Well, I mean, it's an escape though. Right.
I mean, when you say call it a mistake, an escape, I would call it a, a, you know, a hyper-focused art form. Interesting. So fantasy football is a hyper-focused art form. You want to win. Okay. Have you, have you been so fortunate to win a fantasy league?
Who are you in a fantasy league with? A bunch of 16 year olds, you know, like a random way. Yeah. And I, and I have to say, I do enjoy, none of them will trash talk with me because you know, you can do that thing where you sort of type in like you're going down or nobody will do that.
They're just very polite. 16 year olds being polite in a fantasy. So what's your team name? What was your fantasy team name? I can't tell you.
Why not? I'd have to kill you if I told you, and plus I don't even remember what it was. Okay.
Cause I would love to know, I mean, cause that's most of the fun that we thought. Is it? That's most of the fun? Kind of it. Okay.
Yeah. So, but you finished in second. I did come in second. Do you recall who was on your, on your team? Well, I, I got seriously burned by Todd Gurley. It was his first, you know, season with the Rams.
He just disappointed me pretty severely. That was a bad year to be holding Todd Gurley the entire time. Do you have a real football team that you love? Yes.
I love the Green Bay Packers. How'd that come about, Jody? Somebody gave me a cheese head and it was all over. That's it? Yeah.
That's all it took. Who was it? Was it De Niro? Did he ever give you a cheese head? Who gave you the cheese head?
No, I have a friend of mine who has like an in with them. So it was not just a cheese head, but it was a cheese head everything. So there was like a cheese mug and there was a cheese ring and there was a cheese headband. Okay. So you got into that.
The cheese like dog, dog outfits. Have you ever been to Lambeau Field? Have you ever been there?
I never have. It's unbelievable. That's what I've heard.
Cause it's, you're just in there and it's a Midwest town and you're driving down a road and there's a gas station, there's a Kmart. There is the, there is the, there is the cathedral of football where Lombardi used to play. I can dream. I can dream. I can dream. I know I do pretty well in fantasy. Maybe I'll have that.
Maybe you can, you can do such a thing. I had, you know, I've decided I discovered Devante Adams, cause I had him the whole year. So he's my, my gosh, I call him my man, Devante. Does he know that? He doesn't know that.
Maybe he'll know it now. Okay. Jodie Foster seven years ago was here and we were chit chatting about her love of fantasy football youtube.com slash rich eyes and show for the full 10 plus year archive of this year. Program. 8 4 4 2 0 4 rich number to doll. Every phone line is lit. It's a beautiful thing. It's an absolutely beautiful thing.
You've got a what's more likely from the celebrity of the Kevin Ram golf tournament, charity golf tournament for later on. Yes I do. I'm ready to go when you are. No, no, I think we're gonna do it an hour or two. I wasn't saying now. I'm just saying I'm ready. You're ready to go. Yeah. Okay. So you took your glasses off too.
Is that a, is that a family trade? Cause that, you know, Xan was reading comments, which I don't know why, why I don't, he says that somebody was not going to watch this show anymore because it's all I do is talk while taking my glasses on and off. And you just did it because you want to see, do you want to, that's what I wanted to say back to this person, but I don't do those things back on the rich eyes and show radio network 8 4 4 2 0 4 rich is the number to dial. John Schneider, the general manager of the Seattle Seahawks and the very dreamy Josh Dumel and our number three, Josh will be here in studio. He's going to play the Minnesota Vikings win loss game, whether he likes it or not.
That sounded aggressive, but it's true. He's coming in here and he's going to do it first in first up to call in to play a win loss game. First one in 2025 is Terzo and Iowa all rise. What's up Terzo. How are you sir? I'm doing well, rich. What's up TJ Del Tufo. And it's always lovely to say hello to you, Susie. Hi Terzo. Good to see you.
So rich first thing about your guys is big matchup tomorrow. Keep it simple. Yeah. So you got to just think about the a hundred people that they interview for those questions. They're not thinking of anything too complex.
So the first thing that probably pops into your mind is probably the same as it is for them. Okay. Thank you Terzo. I appreciate your, uh, your pieces of advice. That's what you keep saying, TJ.
Just think that you're in a mall and you're answering these questions and let's go. Right. Yeah. So does that mean I should show up with a, with a Cinnabon or something like that?
You know, like Saul Goodman, you know, pretzel. Very good. Terzo who are you most worried about? Who are you concerned about out there? For the Niners or for you guys competing on Family Feud? Feud.
Feud. I have to, I have to think the dangerous one out of the day out of the DP show, I have to think it's either Marvin or DP himself because he's got a lot of knowledge and he's really competitive. Terzo wants to take you guys down. Terzo.
I know Susie. She's not referring to who's dangerous on Dan show. Who do you want to throw under the bus here Terzo? This is what she's saying. Who's the weakest link of R. Who are you concerned about?
R crew. Am I correct Susie? Did I nail that one?
That's exactly what she said. I think you know me. Terzo? Yeah. Who is our weakest link? Yeah, I think it's Del Tufo.
Okay, very good. Mike who's a little bit off the camera right now because RJ is learning the ropes at the board. He'll be at the board for the Women's Sports Now takeover tomorrow of the Rich Eisen Show. All right, Terzo, RJ, can we have some NFL films music? The first win loss game of 2025 is from Terzo in Iowa for his beloved San Francisco 49ers. Of course, we have that schedule. Terzo, what happens when they visit Seattle week one? I think we lose week one.
That's a loss. Terzo says oh and one at the Saints. When home for the Cardinals win home for the Jaguars win three and one short week visiting the Rams here in SoFi law three and two at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers law three and three back home for the Falcons on a Sunday night win four and three at the Texans law four and four at the Giants win five and four home for the Rams win six and four at the Cardinals law six and five Monday Night Football home for the Panthers win seven and five at the Browns win eight and five off the by home for the Tennessee Titans win nine and five three straight wins at the Colts on a Monday night lot ten nine and six home for the Bears win ten and six home for the Seahawks win eleven and six Terzo in Iowa saying that over the Niners will in fact you may lower the music now RJ thank you so much you you're predicting a bounce back I'm eleven and six would be playoff season for the San Francisco 49ers I would have to believe so rich and just I initially thought that they might be ten and seven but just seeing the schedule and how it plays out and good old Vegas putting the over under at ten and a half I I kind of felt good with going with the eleven and seven. Okay Terzo thanks for the call Terzo in Iowa getting the win-loss game started take care man thank you we are off to Atlanta to take care of business against the Dan Patrick show and celebrity family feud more win-loss games and so much more John Schneider the Seahawks coming up. Former MLB All-Star Sean Casey aka the mayor keeps hitting it out of the park. Take my 30 years of experience take the wisdom and knowledge I've learned from the failures when I got sent down my rookie year all the injuries I had to overcome your mind is the most important tool you have in life be relentless keep charging it matters how you talk to yourself how you look at the world that matters we talk about that I don't know I'm fired up baseball's back and it's gonna be incredible I love it. The mayor's office with Sean Casey from believe follow and listen on your favorite platform.
