REShow: Hour 2 (11-9-2022)

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$8 a month at NFL Network. Have you seen now they're doing the, so you have still the blue check, but then the official. I saw Rapoport tweeted this morning, had official. I texted him, I said, what is that?

He said, I don't know. The blue check has always been the, you're official. Hey, that's what it is. It's really you.

Now it's $8 to just say, yeah, I'm that guy. You get the blue check and then the tiny official. Well, we don't see the official.

Like if you look at their. It's not on the desktop, it's on mobile. Oh, it's on the mobile. That's where I saw it was on the, on the Twitter app. Yeah, it's on the mobile.

The insider tag, technically I was reporter. Right. Until like a few months ago. I doesn't mean you got bumped up.

And it was just quietly all of a sudden just put in there. It's, I think it's just a function of that's how we operate on TV. Like my job is very much divided between on Sunday mornings to our NFL network. I'm at a game, I'm on the sideline, I'm doing interviews, I'm doing all the things reporters do.

But then any other day of the week, I'm probably in my basement delivering news and doing that, that side of things. So at some point they were just like, Hey, like I'd tell it to you this way. The main reaction I got when people saw the new title was, what were you before? It's just, yeah, they just kind of gave the title.

That was what I was, what I was doing at my job. So looking forward to talking to Dwight Frini later on in the show, again, digging more in. Jeff Saturday has now stopped talking. So I think.

It's finally done. Yeah. I was saying, Jeff Saturday, as a head coach, you have five press conferences a week, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, post game on Sunday. So every day, new layers, and depending what happens on Sunday against the Raiders, a team that Saturday tweeted a week ago was horrible.

I love that. When he was still an analyst on a TV network, was complaining about Devontae Adams. I mean, they were handicapping his fantasy team, not putting up points. Is that, have we ever had a game where you go into it and the player on the air team knows the head coach has him on his fantasy team?

What happens to the fantasy team? That might be a first for him. He has to pass that off to like one of his kids, right?

Depends if it's for money. I think you can technically play for players. Campbell has said that he's, he's got his fantasy team. He didn't start Devin DuVernay in that early season game. We know players play fantasy all the time.

Famous stories ever as Chris Cooley was playing against himself in a game that he had three touchdowns. Which is unfortunate. Yeah. My question on that is just, how do you not draft yourself? Exactly.

Someone stabbed him before. If I'm in a reporter fantasy draft, I may not think I should go number one, but I'm taking myself number one. Otherwise I'd never want to be rooting against me. But how's the scoring work on the fantasy reporter? Oh, we can make this out of it. I would tell you, let me tell you something about that TJ.

There's a lot of different ways that you can measure it. And the news breaking aspects of things and something as competitive as the NFL is unique. Because do you credit the person who had the initial, the interest, let's say it's a trade. You trade the person who initially had, they had, you know, they're talking. Do you have the closing? Do you credit the closing in person? Do you credit the, it's final now.

It's official. Do you credit the person who has the compensation? And we spend. I do like the compensation tweets. It's a good one. I do like those. So those are fun. When you have the entire thing, you know why it's great for us is because then there's nothing left for anyone else.

There's nothing anyone else can find. If you just have this guy's getting traded, someone else can go for a second round pick. If you've got the whole thing, it's just, well, on to the next one. What do you get for like, they're looking for a house in a city? Oh, I love the real estate one. I love the real estate one.

It's like Tom Brady years ago, his house in New England's on the market. Though those can mean anything. There's so many things like the Twitter, the random Twitter people. I have my DMs open. All right, I'm maybe making a mistake announcing this on a free streaming TV show and radio show. But the DMs are open because every now and then, someone will send me something that's actually right. 99 out of 100.

I was gonna say, what's the hint? Made up or just completely wrong. I heard this from this guy. And some people will get one right. And then they'll send me 10 wrong ones. And so it becomes very apparent that they may have just lucked out on the first one, but bring it on.

Bring on the DMs. I will check them out because that's one thing at this point in covering the NFL that we've come to learn, which is you have to check everything. Because things that sounded crazy a few years ago, especially trades, those are now real. I remember hearing, I was out with my wife to dinner. You'd imagine how well this went over, but this is a common story and got a call from a team, or a text, excuse me. Why are the Chiefs shopping Tyreek Hill? And you went, they are? And I went, let me find out. And then three days later, Tyreek Hill ends up getting traded to the Dolphins, but it was several days of what's actually happening here.

Because that sounds like a bonkers thing, but it was real. And a team that wasn't involved in the trade talks called me because they, like everyone else, got a call from the agent saying, hey, Tyreek's available. Would you pay him 25 million a year?

Would you pay him 30 million a year? And that whole thing was messed up for a variety of reasons that we can get into later, how that whole thing played out with Tyreek. But the point is you hear things that sound like in another NFL, there's no way they're right. And now it's like, well, kind of got to ask. Odo Beckham Jr. to the Cowboys seems too perfect to be true. They're trying. They're actively recruiting them. Jerry Jones is out there on the radio, writing love letters. Oh, Michael Parsons is sending him tweets. Well, that all started here on the Rich Eisens Show. I don't know if you knew. We were the ones who kicked that off, I think, right, Chris? Like three weeks ago, we were... What did you say? Who had the information? We were like, well, Odell, he's healthy.

Where should he go? Came down to the Cowboys. Also, you had the Cowboys fan, though. You had the speculative. Well, you know, me and Jerry, we just met each other, but you know, me and Jerry's like this. So a lot of times I hear stuff where I pass to him and vice versa. I've already said too much, though.

I've already said too much. If we called Jerry right now, he would come on for 20 minutes. Oh, and he would talk and talk and talk. We'd have to be like, okay, Jerry, we gotta go. Imagine being the head coach, Mike McCarthy of that team and knowing there's so many places that have a one voice policy in the season. You don't hear from the general manager during the regular season for this reason, which is when Jerry goes on and then Steven goes on and then Mike McCarthy has to get up there and you've got three different versions of whatever's going on.

And it's just every single day, there's something new that you're dealing with. Little different than when McCarthy was in Green Bay. And we'll talk some more about him going back there coming up this weekend with the Cowboys, but in Green Bay, no one talked.

Ted Thompson, certainly, the late Ted Thompson, who was a fantastic human, never talked. He did training camp press conferences and that was it. Sometimes you could call, you could call his secretary and Ted would call you back like three days later.

And he was fine when he got him. He would never tell you anything about what he's doing with the team. It was always kind of cursory, broad comments. At one time, I remember talking to Ted on the phone and he, the valets had misplaced his car. So we're talking, having a conversation and every like third word, he's going, no, it's this, I have this number.

No, it's this number. But then he would just go back to the conversation and went back and forth for 20 minutes. And eventually I was like, I don't know that either of us is getting anything out of this.

Please find your car in Alabama or wherever he was. And come back to it. But in Dallas, you just have that drum beat of whatever's on Jerry's mind or Steven's. They're gonna say it. And on some levels, for those of us who cover it, that's not entirely a bad thing. Of course, that's great.

Because then at least you're not trying to figure it out. It's not like Josh Allen's elbow where everyone is clamped down and you've got like bits and pieces of the story. But Jerry is just, open book. Josh Allen not practicing today, day to day, according to Sean McDermott, not week to week. Of course, his code for he's not gonna play on Sunday, but McDermott also not saying he will play.

Also on Sunday. Vegas might know something, Tom. The line is now Bill's three and a half.

What was it before? I think it was higher, obviously. I mean, there's a non-trivial chance Case Keenan plays his old team, which would be a fun storyline. Revenge game. Case Keenan digs too. Case has been around now since that magical 2017 season when he took over for Sam Bradford and played the rest of the year and got him to the NFC championship game. Got paid in Denver. He ended up in Cleveland. There might be another stop in there and then Cleveland traded him to the Bills. Yeah, Case Keenan, we haven't seen him on the field a whole lot, but he's been around. He's definitely- You mentioned all the weird trades.

This is one thing I wrote down to him when I asked you. What's the biggest trade that you heard that was close but didn't happen last week? I think those records are permanently sealed, Chris.

Maybe just like dance around it. I mean, the Brian Burns thing I thought had a chance all the way down until the final day because the Rams were being so aggressive in coming after him. I mean, two first round picks and more for a player, even a 24-year-old edge rusher is gonna get better. Still a lot. Still a lot to turn down, but it shows how much the Panthers value him and they're now gonna have to pay him at a rate that his agent's going to say, hey, look at everything you turn down. This is gonna cost you to get this deal done.

That's probably the biggest one. But not like Aaron Rodgers didn't almost get traded or anything. Aaron Rodgers is virtually untradeable right now. I asked this on Monday, do you think the Packers regret not trading him in the off season?

I mean, it's a good question. There were other dynamics at play. The Broncos moved on to Russell Wilson fairly early in the process. So the idea that because Nathaniel Hackett went there, he was gonna get Aaron Rodgers was a bit of a stretch. That's not why the Broncos hired Nathaniel Hackett and they pivoted because think about it this way. And again, hindsight's 20-20 with the way that Russ is playing with the way that Aaron's playing. You can make the argument that nobody should be given a multiple first round picks for those guys. But again, early stages of the season. We didn't know that five months ago.

Exactly. But with Russ, the price was going to be higher on Russell Wilson because he was going to actually give you stability. With Aaron Rodgers, you don't know.

Is he gonna walk after this season? You're back to going year to year, which is not what Denver wanted to do. You get Russell Wilson, you're thinking, this guy can be our quarterback.

He's 33, I think he was at the time, five, six, seven years. We can solidify this position that's been the problem. We got a strong defense. We got young playmakers on offense.

Let's get the guy who's gonna be here for a while just to this point. Has not worked out. I would say in Russ's defense, he hasn't been healthy really the entire season. So let's see coming out of the bye. He's had a couple of weeks. The lat strain, the hamstring, been a lot going on. A lot of high knees.

Well, it's a lot of high knees. I've been doing those in breaks too. You've never retraced it. It's amazing.

All right, 10 names. I was thinking about this on the plane out here last night, which by the way, was followed by what happens now at LAX where you have to get on a bus for 20 minutes to get to your Uber. Yeah, it's awful.

What is, I've never seen that before. You should have just hit one of us up to come pick you up, man. You should have called. I didn't want to put you out. It was late.

It was so close. It sounds like there's so much construction going on because they're getting ready for the Olympics in 2020. Is that what it is?

Yes. So there's a lot happening at LAX. I'm looking at the little map, trying to figure out, because it's like, go to your pickup location. We'll give you a car when you get there.

I can't tell where it is. Then I get on a bus. I'm like, okay, we're just going here. No, we went this way, all the way around, eight stops later, finally make it there. Yeah, you make every step inside, right?

And then you get to LAX. If you were flying Delta, you literally could have went left and walked. That's what I would, I realized that later. It probably would have been quicker. I thought that's the direction it was going. It definitely would have been quicker.

It was not. Southwest Delta, you don't even think of getting on a thing. You just go that way. Go left and walk. I haven't even walked from American because I didn't want to wait for the bus.

Yeah, Tom, it's the, I don't know. It's just, because you're already like, you're finally home. And then it's like, oh my gosh, LAX is on this bus.

I had no idea. It used to just be, you went up one flight of one escalator and you're there. It was a complete clown show because it was right by like the split where you had to get on the highway and go back around. And so they were constantly being like, just run across four lanes of traffic. So I don't have to, I don't have to go all the way around. And in your head you're going, that sounds dangerous, but I also don't want to go around the rest of the way.

So you dodge traffic with your luggage. Anyway, thinking on the plane, if you were telling the story, we're nine weeks in, right? We're at the exact midpoint of the NFL season here. If you're picking the 10 names, you cannot tell the story of this 2022 season to date without. Who are they? I'll give you mine.

Just, just be logging in your head. Tell me, tell me who I've missed. Charlotte, number 10 is Gino Smith. Well, you're going reverse order. Reverse order? You ranked him.

I want to build up. Yeah. Yeah. Let's start out with number 10.

Thank you for Gino Smith. Cause I saw someone on the show do a list and they started with one and I threw my remote across the room. I can't do it. I gotta give you some music. I gotta give you some music.

I'm doing all this for social. Number 10, Gino Smith. All right. Everyone assumed that the Seahawks were going to be terrible. I didn't, and you can go back and find the archives from social media and NFL network.

I walked out of that camp and I was there. I want to say August 9th, maybe was hosting one of our inside training camp live shows there and said, this is not a bad team. You've got a lot of speed on defense, speed at linebackers, speed in the secondary. I thought they'd be able to brush the passer better, but Kenneth Walker was like an absolute stud. You've got the receivers with Metcalf and Lockett. And at the time I, and I think many people in the Seahawks organization believed you were going to be winning with Drew Lock.

Drew Lock was the one who was practicing well through that portion of the schedule. And then he got COVID. The plan was to give him the second start.

Like this was three days after I visited probably. And sure enough, he gets COVID, has a bad practice cause he doesn't know he has COVID yet, but he doesn't feel well, goes out there, practices, does terribly, comes off, test him. He's got COVID, Gino starts again.

Gino was the guy who had been there. The coaches wanted him to be the guy, give him every opportunity. The locker room loves him.

You could give everybody there, put them on the lie detector test in the building. Nobody thought Gino was going to play this way. Nobody thought he was going to be this calm in the pocket, able to distribute the football. He's running the offense. He's running the actual Shane Waldron offense and not the mishmash of Russell Wilson stuff that they were running last year. Waldron trained under Sean McVeigh in Los Angeles.

It's a precision timing offense. That's not Russ. Gino Smith, who everyone had forgotten about. A lot of people didn't realize he was still in Seattle for the past several years. So he did of course play and played pretty well when Russ was out last year with the hand injury or thumb or finger or whatever it was, finger, I think it was. But he comes in and is playing like a legitimate starting quarterback right now on a team that is winning. You cannot tell the story of this season without him. Number nine. He has seven games with multiple touchdowns.

Yeah. And he looks like it. You watch the games, you go, this guy's really good. A legitimate MVP candidate who doesn't get put in there. Where's the division here?

The butterfly effect. If Gino Smith doesn't get punched in the face by his teammate, get his jaw broken in camp in 2016, I think it was right around there. Somewhere in there. IK NMPauley, I believe was the player who punched him, broke his jaw. They end up moving on. They draft Sam Darnold. Gino bounces around, ends up in Seattle as a good backup. Now he's out there playing and is a legitimate MVP candidate.

Not saying he's going to win, but he has to at least be in the conversation. No doubt. Number nine, Kirk Cousins. And not solely because of the shirtless dancing videos, Kirk Cousins, though, part of it. That's definitely part of it.

Lil' Cuzzo. He's so much more relaxed when I've talked to him, what his teammates are around him. He's very comfortable right now. And they're not playing totally lights out on offense yet. They're still, I was at that game in Washington last week, right down the field for a touchdown on the opening drive.

Then there's like 50 minutes of game action where it's just a battle. And then they needed some plays at the end. He drops one in the bucket to delve and cook. He makes some big throws. Kirk Cousins and the Vikings right now are seven and one as they get set to go and potentially face Case Keenum in Buffalo. It's one of the stories of the season in my mind. Number eight, you can go a lot of different ways.

The name I had written down was Giselle. You can certainly just say it's Tom Brady. But you think back to everything this entire off season, to Tom Brady opting to retire, ostensibly to spend more time with his family. Never used the word retire. Each said he's done. Put out a pretty lengthy Instagram statement saying goodbye to Tampa. He thought he was going to Miami.

The R word never came up. There was a lot happening there. But a big part of it was the family dynamics with his children, wanting to spend time with them, ends up unretiring, comes back, looks like he's miserable at times on the field, seems completely worn out, has to make a public announcement about his divorce during the season. Last week for a glimpse for the last 40 seconds or whatever it was, you saw a glimpse of that Tom Brady and certainly at his post-game press conference. He seemed far more relaxed, but just the unique dynamics there from a family perspective from the fact that there's a 45 year old quarterback we had never seen anybody perform at any level at that position at that age before. And our standards are so high for Tom Brady that when he is just okay, when he's on a team that let's face it, it has an older roster. They've got some veteran players, they've had injuries. All the receivers, it seems like, are on the injury report every single week. But right now he's not been to this point in the season.

Tom Brady. And that's something that was going to happen eventually. And I think that there's still a huge part of me that goes, but it's early November. But we still got time and they're hanging it. They're tied for first place in the worst division that we've seen for quite some time. Beat up, the Falcons are tied for first place in that division as well. The Saints look bad the other night. Obviously the Panthers are, they're two games back. So who knows? PJ Walker gets another start this week.

Do you think the Bucks should be favored this week against Seattle? In London. In Germany.

Or excuse me, in Germany, Munich. I should know that. That's where Rich Eisen is. Rich is going to join us, I believe.

He's got us in about 10 minutes. Bucks are three point favorites. It seems like a stretch. Is that insane? I mean, I think that that still goes back to, people still think the Seahawks aren't any good. They've watched it.

They don't believe it. But week in and week out, this is like the old school Seahawks right now. It's what Pete Carroll had in 2012. It's the doggy dog, everybody competing, everybody fighting. No big egos on the roster. Figure it out.

And they're winning like they did back in 2012. We gotta take a break here. I wanna get to the rest of the list. We've gotten through the first, what, three? Three. Three of those 10 names. You know like that.

Kurt Cousins and Tom Brady so far. Let's get to that on the other side of this break. Influencer.

It's a word that gets tossed around a lot these days. There is a woman who went the distance, who broke ground as the first true influencer by living a remarkable life. Her name, Elizabeth Taylor. I'm Katy Perry.

This is the story of the original influencer. This is Elizabeth the First. Elizabeth the First, the podcast.

Wherever you listen. Tom Pelissero in for Rich on the Rich Eisenshow, a lot to come over the next 90 minutes here. Kenyon Drake is going to join us for us off a huge performance.

Love the Drake. For the Ravens. Which is like four stops past the last time I think I saw him. I recall interviewing him in a Dolphins uniform in Miami. And I feel like he's been all over since then. Dwight Farini's gonna join us as well.

May have some interesting insights from his perspective on the Jeff Saturday interim coaching hire with the Colts. Right now, joining us from, I believe, Munich, Germany. It's none other than Rich Eisens.

Rich, it's Tom keeping your seat warm. Where do we find you right now? I am in a restaurant called Kofer Chanka here in Munich. I'm sitting across the table from NFL game day morning coordinator, producer Andy Gregg, Ms. Lovely Wife, Jess.

My buddy, Bruce Stern. And to my left. And to my right is an empty chair that was occupied by Michael Urban. Oh. Who for the second time in our trips to Europe, dined and dashed. He's now done that in two different European countries. Wait, really? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. He did it to me in London. And now you can add Germany to the list. Where he ate.

And didn't pay the bill and left. Oh. Oh, no. Yep.

Yep. Nothing quite like, you know, I guess he, I guess, look. He flew out here yesterday. I flew out here today. I'm fighting through the jet lag.

I guess he's not like Russell Wilson. He felt the jet lag. He slept today, sent Andy Gregg, again our coordinator, producer, benefit game day morning, a tech saying, what's for lunch?

It was five o'clock in the afternoon. And I invited him to the dinner reservation that I had with my friend, Bruce. And he came, he ate, and he left. So. No, he didn't put any cash down on the table or?

No, no, no. It was one of those like, gotta go. I guess he's doing his podcast. He's got Ryan Leaf as his guest. Then he said he's got to do TSN.

I had no idea he's got to do something for Canada. And then on the steps, the top steps of this restaurant, waved goodbye and then left. So. That's the update for Munich, guys. I wish I had football to talk to you about, but I just arrived here. And that's what's going on. Go to it. Hey.

So what besides? I thought urban. I got it. Besides attempting to dine with your game day morning colleagues, what is the plan for the week? It's still Wednesday there, right? It's Wednesday night.

So you've got four days up to kickoff. Is there sightseeing involved? Is there actual work? What are you up to? I don't know.

I gotta be honest with you, Tom. You've got kids, right? Yeah.

Correct? I've got a 14, 11, and a nine. And I don't have them here. And as you know, I do that show every day that you've been kind enough to say you will do today and tomorrow and Friday. I don't know.

I've never done. I can't remember the last time where I just got somewhere. I only had one thing to focus on at the end of the week. So tomorrow, I got the morning free.

I hope to sleep the whole damn day. Not gonna lie. Um, I, you know what I did? You know how, you know, when you're at dinner with friends and you make the reach for the check, in other words, something Michael Ervin didn't just do at all. You just make the reach, right? You made the reach. I got this.

I made the trip to the hotel gym just to look at it. Oh, wow. And that, to me, checks the box. Um, where I've at least thought about it. Um, I don't think I really am gonna go through with it, but once it's all done, and by all done, I mean the morning, uh, I'm on NFL, I'm on a good morning football, which is actually recording a short walk out here. Yes.

Um, I will be doing that. And then after that, I'm gonna go visit the Seattle Seahawks, um, and, um, go to practice. We've got meetings with Pete Carroll, um, and Geno Smith. And, oh, this is great. Kenneth Walker, the third.

And, um, Rich Eisen show fans, um, who have been, you know, diehard followers of the show know this, and I'll update you, Tom. Last year we had an NIL deal, um, where we gave $1,000 and free products with our sponsor that we hooked up with, two college football players who, you one would think doesn't have an NIL deal, but had a certain game, a certain quality, a certain story that did merit a deal. And week by week we did it. And there was only one school, one program, that refused to bring the deal to the kid, refused to. And that was Michigan State.

After Kenneth Walker, the third, ran for, I think it was five touchdowns against my alma mater. I thought, you know, hey, that would be pretty cool if the Michigan guy gets an NIL deal to the Michigan State guy beating his school. They wouldn't even entertain it.

They wouldn't even bring it to him. So I get to tell Kenneth Walker tomorrow, to his face, that his school and sports information director and coach owes him $1,000. And it's going to be great.

I figured you were just going to hand him $1,000, Rich, and just kind of make good on the whole thing. Let's not kid each other, despite how you're always one-to-one with the dollar right now, and it wouldn't really be that bad, but no shot, I can't wait to stop the meeting and tell the story. It's going to be awesome.

I want to, I wish a big GoPro on me. It's going to be awesome. I can't wait. So that's tomorrow. And then Friday, the bucks, we go visit them. Then Saturday, we go to Allianz Arena, which I passed by on the way from the airport. Looks like, you know, a spaceship landed.

It's very, it looks incredible. And then Sunday's again. Can you give Tom Brady a hug for me?

How so? I just want you to give him a hug. Just, you know, just when you see him, don't shake his hand, just hug.

Chris, Chris. I feel like he needs more hugs these days than ever. And I want to be there to give him one, but I can't, but you are, so you can do it for me.

How long though? I mean, you can't linger. Don't linger, don't linger, but be firm. Like, just like walk me through it. Like, how do you want this to happen? So you've met Tom before, so it's going to be friendly. He's going to see your face and smile because you have a friendly warm face and he's going to go, oh, hey, Rich. And you're going to go, Tom, I have to do this. And then you're going to give him a hug.

He's tall, so you're going to have to reach up a little bit. I'm not going to announce it. Well, I'd rather you announce it than just do it and surprise him. This is for Chris Brockman. I have a feeling we're going to dap. I have a feeling, and I'm going to say this, we're going to dap each other up. And then, you know, there's an opportunity when you dap, you go in for the hug. I can't say this is for Chris Brockman. No, don't use my name, but like, you and I will know that you get it.

You want him to give him a hug on your behalf but not acknowledge it's for you. Yes. Like a secret candy gram situation here. Wait a second. Welcome, Tom.

Welcome to the insanity of this show. Yes, I will have another glass of wine, by the way. Yes.

By the way, for the case it's wondering, it's a Keonti. Oh, whoa. I figured you'd have a beer stein. No, father, I actually had a Wiener schnitzel or a nice Keonti. It's a very Munich version of Silence of the Lambs. Silence of the Feel, you know. So yes, I'm not going to do that, Chris.

I appreciate the suggestion. There's still a couple of days to think about it. But that won't happen. I don't think it'll happen. I've never met Tom Brady. Ask him if he's keeping the boat.

Yeah, it won't happen. But I appreciate the suggestion. I might, you know, in the middle of all of these things, what's the word for it? Prepare for the game. You know, like, go over the research packet that you kindly printed out for me before I left TJ. I got the boards, you know, the boards. Oh, yeah. Depth charts. Yeah, I got the charts. So I'll do it.

Yeah, you know, because I'm a professional. And again, I don't know what it's like to just do one thing for an entire week and just have five days to prepare for it. It's great. It's going to be great. What was for dinner? What'd you have for dinner? Oh, I had a terrific scallop dish.

And then and then Viner Schnitzel. And then, you know what, I'm going to put pictures of it all. It's going on my Instagram.

Doesn't have to be Italy. If I'm in Europe, pictures of what I'm eating. And I'm putting it on Instagram and I don't care what you guys have to say. I don't care. So back off in advance. Well, it's a work trip.

So it's fine. It's not a work trip right now. I'm not working. I'm off the clock.

Do you have a hat yet? I am taking photos. I took photographs. It's great. I mean, the pictures of my food. Oh, gosh. I love it. What do you think that the German servers and things are going to be saying when Rich leaves the restaurant?

American was on top of the opposite dinner and taking photos of his food. Actually, you know, none of them are like the guy from Sprockets. That's my only that's my only reference point I do in a German accent.

Although the guy who did Travis and the cat was named Stefan. Wow, really? Yeah, in fact. But the guy who was the major D here, because Michael Irvin was coming here, I'm like, you follow Dallas, I always football.

Like I said, I do. He said here, and he did say that everybody here is looking for tickets for the game. That is the hottest ticket in town is this game. And it's pretty cool, man. I'm looking forward to soaking this whole thing in over the next couple of days, you know, in between working out and turning down hugs for Brockman. Trying to find her.

Things like that. Yeah, I'm working out in the gym. And I mentioned I'm working out in the gym, the hotel. Or should I do that? Should I make like a Michael Irvin video? Yes.

Where I'm like full sweat. Can you please send that to us for tomorrow's show? You need to channel Irv energy though, in terms of your enthusiasm for life and football and working out in it. Yes. But I've got to be in a full lather. And yeah, I'm going to do that. Absolutely.

Done. Certainly since I know where it is. It's half the battle. I know where it is. It's sixth floor. It's on the sixth floor.

It looked great. I don't think I'm going to go there though. I just know it. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Rich, enjoy. Any final thoughts, any advice? We've gone through half this show. I don't think I've burned it down yet.

Any final words for me? No, one of the things you're going to, honestly, like if you call me tomorrow, if I call in tomorrow, I'll have football to talk about. Right now it's travel stories and there's a dessert here.

Cool. The ice cream spaghetti. And they literally put the ice cream through what you would normally think makes pasta. And it looks like a pasta dish.

And the red sauce. For 30 seconds. Strawberry. Unbelievable. It's going on my Instagram account.

You're going to have to call. Well, I see no seconds. But you won't give Tom Brady a hug. I mean, come on.

Well, I mean, you're right. There's two more days to go. Thank you. You know, I'll think about it while I'm working out.

I'll think about it while I'm getting a sweat. So what's that? Is that it?

That is. Thank you. Enjoy the ice cream spaghetti, Rich. Enjoy the workout.

We'll look forward to talking to you later on in the week here. Send that video. Thank you, Rich.

That is Rich Eisen in Munich. The game Seahawks Bucks is going to be on NFL Network in the early, early, early window, which would be what? 6.30? 6.30 Pacific time, baby. Love the early window. 9.30 Eastern, 8.30 where I'll be at home. We'll have a pregame show before that, too, that I will be on for two and a half hours before that game. It'll be Rich and Irv and Mooch and Kurt calling the game, assuming that Irv finds the stadium, doesn't disappear on that. Who's rich drunk?

I got a. Well, you got a second glass of wine, which means he was probably number three. Yeah, so he was drunk. Is drinking wine in Germany not a little bit of a strange move?

Like I understand they drink wine, but you're not in Italy, right? I expected it to be 32 ounces of a hell beer. The thing is I cautioned him. Maybe this was it. I cautioned him yesterday because I went to the hoof brows before and my eyes were bigger than my stomach and I thought I could handle two of these and I couldn't.

So maybe I'd scared him off of the beer. I don't know. What's your policy on vacation over sharing on Instagram? I'm probably wondering what that whole thing was about. This is what it was about. So Rich took a summer vacation to Italy for two weeks while we were here.

Yeah, we ain't going nowhere, Tom. He was posting just out of control, like a teenage girl situation and it got to be a bit much. And so we kind of had some, sorry, I kind of had some fun with it on the show. We all did. I didn't like it. I thought it was a lot.

And he took, you know, a little umbrage with my, you know, my questions about why are we sharing so much? Just enjoy the trip. I'm a one post per trip guy. Just at the end of it, one thing on Instagram, don't document every second. Doesn't need to be in the stories.

You don't need just the regular thing. We get it. You're away for me.

I don't want people thinking I'm just messing around here and not working either. Just one thing at the end. I went back to my alma mater on Friday night, went to the football game for the first time in 20 years. Where'd you go? One post, Boston college, BC. So Jeff Halfley, I've gotten to know him since he took the job. He used to be on staff with the Kyle Shanahan and the floors and everybody out in San Francisco.

So a lot of mutual friends. So got to hang out with him, went to the team meeting the night before the game. And then hung out on the sideline during the game. They lost to Duke. They're playing basically 19 year olds against Duke's 24 year old med students that they've got on like their seventh COVID year that they have out there. So the game itself was rough. They got Z Flowers though, who's probably going to be a first or second round pick in this draft.

Best receiver BC's probably ever had in program history. But one post at the end of it. I learned very early on too, because when I'm traveling for work, going in for games and stuff, and you know, you'll go and you know, I try to leave the hotel cause I got used to in 2020 when you had to eat with like, you know, eat a steak with a plastic knife in your room. It was just a sad, depressing experience. Now it's like, all right, I'll try to at least get out for an hour and go to dinner. But I remember my first training camp when I started covering the NFL nationally for USA Today. So this is like 2013 and I was posting photos of dinner and I'm doing all this. And I got back from that first week long trip my wife's like, it looked like you had a really good time, huh? Looked like you really had fun on that trip. I was at home alone doing nothing.

So now, nothing. If I'm on a work trip, there is nothing. The only appropriate answer is how was the trip? How was dinner? It's just, it was fine. It was fine. Nothing to write home about. The only exception is if the only way I got a table was if I told them I would post something on Instagram.

So if you ever see something up there, tagging somebody, it's because of some kind of a, well, you're gonna have to do this if you wanna, that's perfectly acceptable, if you wanna get in. Yeah. Let's get back to the names you can't tell the story of the season without. We'll also talk about something I wanna dive into, which is Aaron Rodgers comments and Mike McCarthy's, McCarthy's return to Green Bay coming up this weekend. We'll also have Dwight Frini at the top of the hour. We will have Kenyon Drake coming on a little bit later as well. So a lot more to come. Talked a little bit earlier in the hour about the 10 names.

You can't tell the story of the 2022 NFL season without. We'll be getting to Dwight Frini, Kenyon Drake. They're gonna join us in the final hour of the show, but I wanna get to the rest of this list, all right? And I wanna hear your thoughts as well, who I'm missing.

So I'll move relatively quickly. I'm gonna wait till your list is over and then I'll fill in some more. I already said Geno Smith at number 10, Kirk Cousins at number nine.

I put Giselle at number eight. Really, it's about Tom Brady, but trying to mix it up, not to say a bunch of quarterback names. Number seven, Russell Wilson. There is no way you can tell the story of the season without all the different things, from the trade back in March, to the struggles out of the gate here, to the controversy that initially seemed to be centered predominantly around Nathaniel Hackett, the head coach, but then in recent weeks has swung much more, it seems, toward Russell Wilson, to the point that you had Pete Carroll in recent days, mentioning that, yeah, Geno's wearing that wristband now.

It's really helping, and there was some resistance to that in the past. If you look at Russell Wilson right now in Denver, not wearing a wristband. I think it's so many shots. If you think about some of the issues that the Broncos had, especially in the early weeks of the season, play's not getting in in time.

Delay of games, there's a lot there. Why does everyone hate Russ? I'm not saying I hate Russ at all.

I'm not saying he banged up a lot. Seems like all of his former teammates do. I think it seems to be the lack, well, the former teammates is a different thing.

I think that the social media and some of the, what's called lack of awareness amidst the struggles, probably is driving that. Number six on my list, I'm gonna say Mike McDaniel. Has there ever been a coach who has come in and had a bigger challenge to prove that you actually should have that job, except maybe now Jeff Saturday, than Mike McDaniel? All right, he takes the job in January. It was a surprise hire, hadn't interviewed any place else.

I've known Mike for a long time. He's a different personality, unbelievably smart guy, but someone who not a lot of people would have said that guy's definitely a head coach. And immediately has stories about they were tampered with Sean Payton. They didn't really want him.

This was not plan A. They come out, they start hot in the season, but then Tuatunga by Loa, the concussion controversy. Mike has to speak on that.

He is not a doctor, but had to speak on behalf of people because you don't generally put your team doctors up behind the microphone. Weathers that storm comes back again. They're putting up massive numbers.

They're all in. They're a relevant team and the Dolphins have not had a lot of periods of relevancy. Brian Flores, very good coach, did not make the playoffs during the course of his time in Miami. Mike McDaniel has this team looking like a team you've got to contend with right now going through the rest of the season. Number five, Zach Wilson. You can take that any direction you want to go, but I would say if there's any what emblematic of what the Jets are doing right now, it's Wilson. People were calling for his benching after the game a couple of weeks ago, comes back and plays pretty well last week in an upset win over the Bills.

He's going to decide. All right, this is a very young, talented roster that Joe Douglas has built. They've driven things the right way with Robert Sala. They're going to go, though, as Russell Wilson goes. Good and bad.

And he's very much at the forefront of this. Number four, I'm going to say Devontae Adams because was there any trade that had a ripple effect across two teams like this one? Maybe the Russell Wilson trade, but he goes to the Raiders, a team that was in the playoffs a year ago.

They decided to overhaul it. We're going to upgrade, and they're not playing well. And they have long stretches where they're not scoring. And meanwhile, the Packers can't score because Aaron Rodgers doesn't seem to trust those receivers. Doesn't want to push the ball down the field.

Long relationship with Devontae Adams. Now without him, Aaron Rodgers hasn't looked like Aaron Rodgers. Number three, I'm going to say Jalen Hurts. Another guy who, similar to what I was saying about Taylor Heinecke earlier, it's been three years of his NFL career, and everyone's been trying to get rid of him. The Eagles have all the picks. They can get any quarterback they want. Jalen Hurts is going, are you sure you want to do that? You sure you want to replace me?

I seem like I'm going the right direction. We're undefeated. Howie Roseman's added all these talented pieces, but Hurts is playing at a high level. Number two, Jimmy Garoppolo. Remember like two months ago, three months ago, when it was just, where's Jimmy Garoppolo going to be?

Not going to be in San Francisco. Now he's the quarterback on a team that, granted, is driven by the defense and by Christian McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel. But he once again is in a position where he's at the helm of a team that should be competing for a Super Bowl bid. I put Garoppolo on that list, and then number one, it's probably not going to come as a surprise after the first couple of hours of the show. Jim Erce.

Yeah. The combat, has anyone ever earned as much goodwill and as much ill will in a three week span? Jim Erce coming out at the league meetings, the fall meetings, and calling, the only owner still to this point, to say there's merit to remove Dan Snyder. Wildly popular. He's the hero we needed, according to plenty of fans and people around the league.

Three weeks later, fire Frank Reich and hire Jeff Saturday and hold the press conference and everyone wants to know what in the world are you doing? Who did I miss? Brockman. Who did I miss on this list? Two right off the top of the head for me, Tyreke Hill and Patrick Mahomes. Dak Prescott, I think could be up there. Yeah, I didn't have a Cowboys thing on there.

That's your case for Mike McCarthy. That was where you aired in your list. No cowboy love. No cowboy love. Far less chance that this is going to go viral.

True that. You don't mention the Cowboys. I should've, it's top 10 reasons the Cowboys rule this season.

I mean, I could do that right now for you. Devontae Adams is good because it touches on Green Bay and the troubles in Las Vegas, but you know, Aaron Rodgers could be on there as well. Tom, I'm sorry, who was number six? Mike McDaniel.

Okay, okay. Mike McDaniel. Well, I toyed with Christian Watson for the same reason.

The drop pass on the first play of the season that set the table. I would. Everything with the Packers. I would move forward.

We've got Dwight Frini coming up by the way, top of the hour. I'm sure he has some thoughts on Jim Orr saying what's happening in Indy. It could be information to change your life forever or the something you should know podcast could just be something interesting. Ramit Sadie talking about being rich. The old definition of rich had a lot to do with how much money you accumulated, but it wasn't about how to spend it. It was more about how to get it. But okay, so once you get it, what do you do with it? In our culture, everybody tells you how to save, but nobody teaches you how to spend it. Something you should know wherever you listen.