Jarvis Landry: Passion For The Game Hasn't Left Me

This episode is The Rich Eisen Show with guest host Tom Pellicero. You said the first item up for bids involved the Bears. Live from The Rich Eisen Show studio in Los Angeles. Caleb's first game in Roma D'unze and the Bears faithful showing up.

Maybe you put them in Detroit. Earlier on the show, Senior Writer for NBA.com, Steve Ashburner. Coming up, ESPN staff writer Dan Murphy. Free agent wide receiver Jarvis Landry. NFL Network insider Ian Rappaport. And now, sitting in for Rich, it's Tom Pellicero.

Welcome back to a Rich Eisen-less edition of The Rich Eisen Show. I am Tom Pellicero joined by Chris Brockman, Mike Del Tufo, TJ Jefferson as well. We talked a lot of NBA in the first hour of the show. We got a lot of NFL talk still to come. Jarvis Landry is going to join us shortly here.

I will give you the inside story of how all six of those quarterbacks who went in the top 12 of the NFL draft ended up in those spots. Ian Rappaport, NFL Network insider also going to join the show in a little bit. But right now, pleased to have staff writer for ESPN, Dan Murphy joining the show right now.

Dan, who along with his colleague Pete Thamel, a very interesting story Dan, earlier today. Appreciate you being here on the leaders of college sports being involved in deep discussions to reach a legal settlement that would likely lay out the framework for sharing revenue with athletes in a future NCAA business model. We go so far down the path Dan, that sometimes in terms of the number of lawsuits, the number of union items, class action, all this other stuff that the people who don't follow college sports on a daily basis, like myself, end up reading this and going, this is blowing my mind, I don't know. Distill it for me here. What exactly would happen in terms of this settlement and how would this for college football, college sports fans, how would this impact the sports that they love?

Thanks, Todd. I feel like I deserve an honorary law degree after having covered college sports for the last three or four years. The upshot of it all is that there has been a huge shift in momentum in the past year, but really even in the past few weeks where college sports leaders have sort of come to the acceptance that they're going to have to, or would behoove them to share revenue with, at least at the top end of college football, their athletes moving forward through some kind of collective bargaining agreement. And right now, the catalyst or the vehicle that might help at least get the first framework of what that agreement might look like, this usually happens through a players union and pro sports. Colleges don't have a players association like that set up yet. So the first framework for what a revenue share agreement might look like would likely happen as part of a settlement for this antitrust lawsuit that's been going on for a couple years.

And the two sides in that case are getting pretty into the weeds on a discussion of what that framework would look like looking forward. So for college athletes right now, college athletes in the future, we know that NIL has gone from being the wild west to basically still the wild west, and they're trying to put guidelines in place, but the guidelines aren't necessarily real stringent. There's different schools that are competing very much financially, especially in the transfer portal for college football players right now. If this goes through, how, if at all, does that potentially allow the NCAA or other governing bodies to rein in some of the craziness that's led to what we've seen over the past several years?

The kind of things we see in collective bargaining agreements for pro sports lay out the ability for them to sign contracts that have a player staying somewhere longer than a year. Right now, college sports with the way the transfer portal and NIL is set up, at least once a year, sometimes twice a year, players have an opportunity to basically be unrestricted free agents. And I think a lot of coaches and athletic administrators have realized that's not a great idea, but in order for them to get a little bit of control back over that part of the game, and there are lawsuits preventing them from making rules that prohibit that right now, they're going to have to give up something else in order to get that control back, and that something else is almost certainly going to be a piece of all of the TV money that has been pouring into college sports over the past couple decades. How much is this also about the NCAA just fighting for survival as an organization in terms of, you know, we know that there have been proposals on could you have the big schools all band together and basically break off and form a completely different league. For the NCAA to even be relevant, to exist in five years, how important is it for them to resolve some of these things from a legal perspective and at least have a path forward that they remain the governing body here? So the House case, if it goes to trial, and it's scheduled to go to trial next January, could cost the NCAA somewhere between four and five billion dollars in damages if they lose, and it's a pretty good bet they're going to lose.

Their track record in these cases in recent years has been pretty rough, so I think that's one of the big motivations behind negotiating it. So it is an existential threat for the NCAA, and I think we still may see a model in the future where the top 20, 30, 40 schools, whatever it may be, split off and do their own thing, but the NCAA for the past 30 years or so has been an after-school extracurricular activity when it's convenient for them to think of themselves that way, and a huge multi-billion dollar entertainment business when they want to think about themselves that way. We've reached a point where they're going to have to pick one of those two lanes, and we may see some schools decide they want to take a step back and operate more like a D2 or D3 school, but we're definitely going to see a group of schools say jump with both feet in into the sort of this is a billion dollar entertainment industry, and we're going to start treating it like one. The amazing part, and I'm not intending to put words in your mouth here, Dan.

We appreciate you being here. Dan Murphy, staff writer for ESPN.com. Basically what I hear is this is illegal, what the NCAA is doing. It's always been illegal. We've been complicit in this for decades of letting them do the illegal things because we like football, because we like March Madness.

We like those types of things. In your mind, if this model moves forward here, does the fabric of the sport change? Does it even potentially change for the better in terms of some of the things with NIL and unlimited transfers and those types of things?

Is this an improvement for the average fan, or is this going to work to the detriment? We're going to go completely down a different path here moving forward. The law is not quite black and white, and that's why I think it's tough to say that it's been illegal for the past 30 years. Really, the Supreme Court and judges have changed their mind about how they interpret this murky part of the law that for a while gave the NCAA basically a special exception to violate some of the rules that no other industry in the country can violate.

That special exception is now gone, which is why we've had this turmoil over the last three to four years. In terms of what this means for fans, if you are a fan that really wants to make sure that he sees Alabama play Jacksonville State because they live in the same state or wants to make sure that Ohio State is going to play Akron every once in a while and likes those stories, that might not happen in the future. But if you're a fan who wants to see Ohio State play Oregon every week or Alabama play Texas, we're going to see more and more of those matchups coming because I think what this is leading to is a bigger separation between the 30 or 40 schools that are just playing in a different stratosphere than everybody else with money right now. One of those teams that's kind of in that middle ground is UAB where the players became the first ones to vote and opt into effectively the college sports union. Trent Dilfer, the former NFL quarterback, former ESPN analyst who's now the head coach there, said he actually wanted this and he informed the players about this opportunity and said, hey, it's going to happen eventually.

You should join up right now. I'm curious, number one, how does any administration view a coach's actions like that? And number two, how soon do we potentially see other schools doing the exact same thing? I asked Trent Dilfer's bosses at UAB what they felt about it.

They decided not to comment on it. It is an odd position really. In a sense, Dilfer is middle management in college sports and you don't often see management asking the labor force to organize. It is a unique position Dilfer is taking there and one that I think we see more and more coaches who want to position themselves as player-centric and player-friendly who are going to stand up and say we need to be giving more to the players right now. There's a little distinction between what this group is and a union just for sort of employment legal reasons. They're trying to negotiate a little bit differently, but in effect, they're trying to do the same thing.

And I think we will see more people jump on board with this. As we said at the start, schools are starting to see why it would be good for them to bargain collectively with athletes. And the biggest missing piece of the puzzle to get to a point where schools are sharing that revenue and bargaining with athletes is they need somebody to sit across the table from them who represents the athletes.

Right now, they're a group all over the place and you need to be able to have a single entity or only a couple entities that you can actually sit across the table from and bargain. So this group, athletes.org, that was down at UAB a couple weeks ago signing them up is one of a handful of different people trying to position themselves right now to be essentially the players association and the voice of athletes when we inevitably get to that bargaining table. You mentioned a school like Akron, maybe in this future universe here, them playing Ohio State every now and then.

It just doesn't happen. What happens to programs like that or what even happens to programs like my alma mater, Boston College, that just lost Jeff Halfley to an NFL defensive coordinator job in large part because he was having to recruit his players and then re-recruit them and then re-recruit them again after spring ball to keep them out of the portal and find NIL money, which is not really prevalent at a school like BC. Those programs that might be in one of the power five or power four conferences, I guess at this point, between them or those, the max of the world, what happens to those programs if we move in this direction?

It's a great question. I think of this in two phases. Within the next year or two years at max, we're going to see schools having the opportunity to share revenue with players more directly. And that's going to create a rift where schools who want to go all in and spend as much money as they can to build the best rosters are going to do so. And some schools might decide that's not for them.

We'd rather look at this differently. And I think that phase two of that plays out in the next five to eight to ten years as all of these conference TV contracts roll over where five to ten years from now when the Big Ten is looking at signing its next deal, the TV partners are probably going to look at that and say, hey, we love the Ohio State versus Washington and USC matchup, but we don't really care for Maryland versus Illinois because you cut those guys. And there's going to be this dash over the next five to eight years for the Boston colleges of the world to decide if they want to be at the big kids table. They need to spend a lot of money in the next five to eight years to have the best teams they possibly can in order to make sure they get a seat on that bus before this big rift happens between some of these top notch schools and everybody else in college sports. Dan, last thing for you.

Appreciate you being here. Give me the timeline here. I know it's difficult when you're talking about things that are in the court system and you've got multiple different cases, a lot of moving parts here. But how soon can we see any of these things potentially take effect? In other words, this fall, are any of the things we're talking about actually going to impact college football right now? Or are these ripple effects that we're really going to be pushing out for a few years? The only guarantee is it's going to be slower than everybody wants it to be and thinks it should be, I think. This year, we will probably see some changes that come as schools get more involved in paying NIL deals for players and it already looks more professional than it did a couple years ago as schools are sort of saying the things out loud that used to get whispered in the back of the bar by campus. But I don't think the really significant shifts are probably at least a year out.

My best guess is we start to see some of that summer of 2025 and then it evolves from there. Dan, illuminating stuff, man. Really appreciate you coming on, on short notice. The full story of everybody can be at ESPN.com. Thanks for being here, man.

Thanks for having me. That is Dan Murphy, ESPN.com staff writer. That entire conversation, just like, I mean, my head hurts slightly. Dan did a great job breaking it down, but there's just, there's so much here. It reminds me a little bit of just covering collective bargaining in the NFL, where there's all these complicated issues and they all kind of merge. The difference is this is fundamentally shifting away from what college sports have been built upon.

I'm not saying that in like a get off my lawn, why are we paying these kids' way. It's more so, we already are seeing it with NIL. We're already seeing it in terms of, you know, the haves and the have not programs. We're seeing it in the NFL draft, frankly. When you got pretty far into the draft, think about this last week. You had a gap of, I want to say it was 130 something picks between quarterbacks after the first six guys went. And I had been warned about that by coaches and scouts going into the draft, that they're just, there was going to be a huge drop off.

Why? Because all these guys who normally would be your third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh round picks went back to school. All the guys who still had eligibility left because you're going to get paid quarter million, a half million, a million dollars to transfer even to like the seventh best SEC program. Where in the NFL, you're a seventh round pick or you're an undrafted free agent.

You're getting like a $50,000 signing bonus. So those guys weren't coming out. And I think you also saw it reflected in some of the draft strategy. Look how many times the Eagles were trading picks this year for picks next year.

That's, Howie Rosen probably isn't going to come out and say it, but that's a pretty clear indication. Like we don't think this draft is very good. This is, all the guys are still in school. Next year you're going to have this massive class because everybody finally is going to run out of eligibility.

When I was writing that quarterback story, everybody's 24 years old. They've all been in for six years. There's one guy who transferred three times. He transferred, I think it's Ben Bryant, transferred from Cincinnati to Northwestern, back to Cincinnati and then to, I don't even remember where it was, Louisville, I think. I think it went to Louisville.

Like those stories are the norm now. It used to be when you talk to scouts, hey, a transfer, a two time transfer. Northwestern, Cincinnati, Eastern Michigan, Northwestern. Northwestern was the last one.

Okay. See, I threw in Louisville because I was a different transfer guy. You have to look up who that is.

I lost track and I do this professionally. I lost track of where all these guys have been. It used to be when scouts were looking at it, if you had a guy who had transferred twice, that was always the red flag. Oh man, we got to dig into this. What was really going on? Did he get kicked out? Did he fail drug tests?

What was the explanation? Now it's just, yeah, that guy went and got his money. And so there's all these people who are in for so long. What you bring back to the college football conversation is we're already seeing this change. COVID was part of it too because everybody got that extra year of eligibility. But the way that NIL is being used right now, it's being weaponized by certain programs to, we're just simply going to outbid you. And so schools that have, Nick Saban talked about it after he left Alabama.

And that was another get off your lawn moment to a lot of people. This is what we were built on. But it's true. You used to say, hey, you come to Alabama, you're going to get a great education. You're going to play for national championships. We're also going to do everything we can over three, four, five years to prepare you to go to the NFL. To prepare you to be a professional and to make money. And everything is equal in college sports in terms of the compensation.

But guess what? You're going to have better facilities. You're going to get better coaching. We're the ones who like welcome NFL scouts to campus where some coaches push them up because we want you to be ready. Nick Saban will go and talk to the teams and say, hey, you're a second round pick. You should come back.

Or, hey, you're a first round pick. You should go. We're going to get the information. We're going to prepare you in a pro style environment here. We're going to get you ready. So it's, as Saban said, everybody's coming in saying, well, how much am I playing?

How much am I getting paid? That part of it is different. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not sitting here saying you shouldn't pay college athletes. It's more so the change is already happening.

You need to have some types of guardrails. Otherwise, you have things like what happened at BC. Not to keep bringing it back to my alma mater that hasn't been relevant since Matt Ryan was slinging it around in 2007. But it's hard for all programs at that size that don't have that money.

They don't have millions of dollars. And for players, you understand it. For student athletes, you understand it. Where, listen, I might not be going to the NFL. I might not make a ton of money. But I can go right now to this program and make $100,000 and I can't get that here.

I've got to make those types of decisions. The Zay Flowers of the world who turned down a half million dollars to go to the SEC and play for a year because they want to stay and break all the records. And they know they're going to get 20 balls a game because that's all BC has. Those guys are rare.

They're few and far between. Being able to at least have some type of a system of rules that are in place that are uniform and it's not governed by state law. It's not governed conference by conference. It's the only way you're going to have anything loosely resembling, it's never going to be a level playing field, but a fair playing field where at least everybody is operating from the same rule book, even if some programs get to skip certain chapters.

It's a different type of world. Coming up after this, a guy who was a college football star and is now a five-time Pro Bowl wide receiver, didn't play last year. He's going to the Jaguars rookie camp in hopes of jump-starting his NFL career once again.

Jarvis Landry, one of the fascinating individuals in the NFL, joins us right after this on the Rich Eisen Show. Because we could adjust the firmness of our mattress on each side. Improve your quality sleep because Sleep Number learns how you sleep thanks to their smart beds and provide personalized insights to help you sleep better. J.D. Power ranks Sleep Number number one in customer satisfaction with mattresses purchased in store. And now save 40% on the Sleep Number limited edition smart bed for a limited time. For J.D. Power 2023 award information, visit J.D.

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Just a high point. Okay. Here I go. I'm going to hide.

I want to read it. He's going to take you both. I don't know what to do. You've got to be involved.

What's an awful jam? And I'm going to hide it over. That is what we're going to happen here. We got to go. Oh, nice. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

This means business now. Hall of Famers, by the way, and I can say that I'm the only host that lays out like that. Welcome back to the Rich Eisen Show Radio Network. I'm 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. I am not Rich Eisen. I'm Tom Pelticero filling in today, talking a lot of NFL throughout the course of this show. And right now I want to bring in a guy who's a five time Pro Bowl wide receiver, one of the good dudes in the league right now, a free agent, Jarvis Landry, joining the show. Jarvis, man, it's been a minute. How are we doing? Doing wonderful, Tom. Thanks for having me on. You got it, man.

There's so much I want to get into, but I need to start. I need to start with what's behind you here. It appears to be a mural of the three Mikes. You got to tell me the story of this piece of artwork right here.

No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So probably around like twenty eighteen, I got really into art. And, you know, I wanted to have a piece in the gym or in the house that kind of resemble greatness. And, you know, this is kind of all three spectrums of entertainment right here. And I thought that this plane and a name just so happened to be my all name just happened to be Mike.

I thought it was a perfect play, you know. So now it's in the house and every house I've been in, every gym that I've been in. So I'm excited. If Tyson loses to Logan Paul, does he get to stay in the mural or do you have to kind of cover that part of it up? I don't know. I don't think I don't think I covered that part of it.

You know, I think the history behind Tyson and what he's accomplished and I think I think he's going to surprise some folks. So we'll see. All right. So, Jarvis, take me through the past. Let's call it, you know, 16 months or so. You were you were banged up at the end of the year in twenty twenty two with the Saints. You didn't play last season, but I know right now you are full go.

I posted the video the other day. You're ready to roll here. Just just take me through kind of the journey you've been on with your your body, your career and where you're at right now. Yeah, man, it's been you know, it was it definitely was a roller coaster of a time. You know, I know that the last two seasons that I played hasn't ideally hasn't went ideally for me, you know, being that injured in Cleveland, injured in New Orleans last year, just trying to make sure I get my legs back under me and to be able to walk into an opportunity. This year, you know, like going out to get healthy, you know, working with doctors, getting the support from the people that I trust dearly, you know, switching agents in the middle of all this.

You know, it really was it really was a dark time for me, you know, trying to figure all that out and maneuver. But, you know, I know that the sense of football, the passion behind it, the way that I play the game, the spirit hasn't left me. And that's something that, you know, I want to go out and just play, you know, with these opportunities that I get here in the near future to really need a mark that I wanted to leave. I don't think that the way that I ended the last two seasons is a reflection of the type of player that I am, you know, the type of leader, the type of teammate that I am. And that's something that over this course of time of figuring out is, you know, which really still got that itch, which really still makes me go out here and train and want to continue to do this at this age, honestly. So there have been plenty of guys who, you know, you get to this stage in your career, you're a five time Pro Bowl receiver and say, I won't even take a visit.

You know, I don't feel like I need to work out. You either sign me, there's there's mountains of tape on Jarvis Landry. You know, what more do you need to see? You're going to go out coming up here to the Jaguars rookie camp. There's going to be some 22 year old undrafted cornerback from South Florida or Monmouth or Merrimack or something lined up across from you. They're going to be seeing Jarvis juice Landry.

Why is this something you're willing to do? And what do you hope to show when you actually get out there on the field? Yeah, you know, you know, as well as I know that this league is in a way only getting younger. But, you know, there's guys like myself that are still making headway in this league. And I believe that the preparation that I've put in, I believe that, you know, it's not always the fastest dog.

You know, it's about the one that bites the hardest to. So I'll be out there just competing at a high level. And like I said, I'm very excited about the opportunity. Got a lot to show. What do you think you got left? Somebody gets Jarvis Landry, whether it's the Jaguars or somebody else. What are they getting at this point in your career? Same Jarvis Landry.

They've always got hard worker, professionalism, team guy, leader, community guy and production and production. It feels like a long time ago at this point, we're talking to Jarvis Landry. A decade or so ago, you had your NFL draft experience right back in 2014. You get taken by the Miami Dolphins. Now you're sitting back and you're watching like two generations later of LSU receivers.

And they're still going in the first round. Have you watched much of Malik Nabors, who's now a member of the Giants, Brian Thomas, who's with the Jaguars? Have you watched those guys?

What do you think of them? Yeah, of course. You know, I want to say, you know, a year or two ago being surrounded by Ohio State guys, you know, we always had that conversation about wide receiver you, you know. But those guys have been tremendous for LSU. Obviously, they're going to do big things. One of the guys, hopefully, I get to see this weekend. I'm excited to see him working firsthand personally, you know, and kind of lean some of my expertise and knowledge and wisdom on him as well.

So I'm looking forward to that. This is a tough question, but like you're creating the Mount Rushmore of LSU wide receivers. I mean, there's we're talking on four spots up here.

Who's making you put yourself on it? You're four, your four faces up there on the LSU wide receiver Mount Rushmore. Man, man. Oh, I like.

See, I'm a historian, right? So, you know, I like Josh Reid. I like Dwayne Bowe up there. I like Michael Clayton up there. Odell Beckham. How could I not say that name first?

You know, Jamar Chase. I mean, it's so many. It's hard to create a Mount Rushmore. You already got too many. You're already over the limit. You got to reduce it to four, man.

Who's getting up there? You got four. Four. I had to say four. If I had to say four.

Okay, I would narrow it down. I'll go Odell Beckham. I'll go Jamar Chase.

I'll go Justin. And I like my league neighbors. I think he's going to be a great player out there for New York. You know, with Malik, it was interesting because in the pre-draft process, obviously, you know, he had an incident that happened in college. And so there were questions just about him. Everybody I talked to, the scouts that went in there, like yeah, that's one thing. But like in the program, he's regarded as an absolute dog. Like the dude who is like the tone setter. Can you see that in his play when you watch that guy on the field? I absolutely do. And then everything with the connections that I have in Baton Rouge still.

Everything that everyone that I've talked to around the program have said the same thing. You know, hard worker. Obviously, a guy can flat out ball. He's, you know, he's a record holder at LSU, you know, which is no small thing to do. You know, it's a big thing to do. And I'm excited about his upside and, you know, the type of traction he's going to carry in this league. His name is going to weigh tons here in the near future, I'm sure. What do you think of Jayden Daniels? He goes to the commanders at number two. He obviously, I mean, he was the Heisman Trophy winner last year at LSU.

When you think about that guy, his skill set, from what you see on TV from the people you've talked to. Well, what are the commanders getting? Oh man, they're getting a hard worker. They're getting a playmaker.

They're getting a guy that can just flat out ball. You know, there's a guy. Who we got in here?

Yeah. This is my son, Jay. Jay. Yeah, he's going to be a star someday. LSU Tiger.

Future Tiger right here. But you're getting a guy that can flat out play, man. You know, I think all his hard work and the things that he's done has shown for itself.

And obviously, a Heisman winner. You know, I think he's going to help the commanders. And if they're looking for a receiver, you know, I might know a guy.

I might know a guy. There you go. I like that Jay's working on the ventriloquist act right here. He's doing, he's just melting every single word.

That's good. Is he playing? Is he playing football?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's into sports right now. Got him into gymnastics as well.

You know, starting him early on some things. So I'm excited about his future. He's in the gym with me.

I said he's in a gym with me. He's been, you know, he's been helping me along the journey in this process. You know, just being with him every day, you know, and working hard being in the gym, you know, and seeing his reaction to some things and, and really, really finding out why, why I still want to play, you know, and he's definitely a big part of my why and why I want to continue to keep doing it. I would think too. I mean, the older he gets, the more those memories are going to stick, right?

You put that, those pads and that helmet on again, this, this might be the year that he, he remembers that on the field. Absolutely. And I'm looking forward to it. You know, like I said, that's part of the why.

So all right. So this is the rookie mini caps coming up a couple of weeks. We just, you just put out the APB to Adam Peters, Dan Quinn and company to get you to Washington and team me up with, with Jane Dales. Have you, have you heard from other teams? Have you, have you had discussions, are there other teams in the mix or other visits and things you're going to, you got coming up? Yeah, there were some other teams in the mix.

There was some other teams in the mix last year as well. You know, for me, obviously on top of getting healthy, I want to be in a situation, you know, obviously to, to be valued, you know, I think in understanding a little bit how the NFL works, you know, and seeing this side of it and knowing football, you know, it can get tricky at times. So for me, you know, I, to be, let's, let's backtrack, to be honest, I've, I've found joy in obviously the things that, you know, this off season of not playing has brought me with my kids.

I see you got the best dad ever on your desk, right? So, you know, I think all the things that I miss, I got a chance to catch up on, right. But at the same time too, I feel like it also made me kind of hone in on what I wanted to do as a football player as well, you know, and I wanted to be in a position to be valued in the offense. You know, I wanted to opportunity to be valued on the team, you know, and earn that, have an opportunity to earn that more so, you know, and I just didn't, and that's kind of like what we figure it out.

That's kind of like what we're going through right now to just try to figure out, you know, where we can go and, you know, get the value is not about the money, you know, it's not about money really about having an opportunity to truly earn value on a team, you know, and play good football. Jarvis, you've always been one of the good dudes in the league, man, best of luck coming up with the mini camp, wherever you end up in the NFL this season, man, thanks for thanks a lot for coming on. It's great to see you again. Thanks for having time.

Appreciate it. That is Jarvis Landry, five-time Pro Bowl wide receiver going out there in the Jaguars rookie camp in a couple of weeks. Can you imagine again, because rookie mini camps, right, a lot of teams do this as like a Rick Spielman in Minnesota used to call it the call of the wild, where anybody who went to any school in the state, like you want to, you want to be a Viking for a day, come on out. And so you'd have all these guys, you know, from Minnesota State Mankato and from University of Minnesota Duluth. Like, I think there were probably limits. It probably wasn't like the equipment manager gets to suit up like anybody was like an actual player.

Just you go out there. That's where they found Adam Thielen. He showed up to this camp coming out of Mankato, undrafted, didn't have a deal, shows up, was a dominant player in that weekend, gets signed to a minimum contract and is still playing in the league. Had a great year last year.

You had like a hundred catches for the Carolina Panthers last year. But so you're, you're some guy who went to give me a directional school in Florida. I'm trying to think what Central Central is a real, that's like if one undefeated season, not that long ago.

It's got to be South is even still too high. It's got to be, what was the, the basketball team that had like, they were all the high flying stuff a few years ago, Florida Atlantic, FAU, it was the other one, golf coast, Florida Gulf Coast. So you're some corner from Florida.

I have no idea if they've got a football program, Florida Gulf Coast. And you're like, everybody else is getting reps against, you know, the USF guy, whatnot. And then it's like, all right, I'm going against Jarvis Landry now. That's a moment, right? That's one that if that's the last time you ever put the helmet on, that's a good story, right?

Yeah. The Jarvis Landry. Now I'm, why am I selling insurance while I went against Jarvis Landry and the Jaguars rookie camp?

That's a pretty, that's a pretty good reason. They have a club football team. I don't think they actually are division one.

So that counts. I don't know that you're getting invited off the club football team. There's always, I've always wondered that too, because like the rookie mini camps and the, you know, the tryout camps, every team has their local day two before the draft where you bring out a bunch of these guys, like to come at some point, there's gotta be like the listserv and there's certain names you're just like, Oh man, you can't just don't get that guy's hopes up. He's too earnest.

He really thinks he's got a shot here. You don't, we don't, we don't need to, we don't need to bring him along, but you never know that that Vikings camp, Adam Thielen was the guy Marcus Sherrill's was another one. If you remember that name, he was a corner and return guy.

He was in the league for probably 10 years with a couple of different teams. There are those people who have those opportunities. And in the late rounds, I'm always thinking about that too, because, you know, listen, when you get down into day three late in the draft and I'm hearing from, you know, agents who are getting nervous because their guys aren't going teams, they're not supposed to, but most teams are making calls and basically making offers like get guys is undrafted for agents. Sometimes the guarantees on those deals can be better if you're undrafted than if you're taking in the sixth, seventh round, but it's such a massive bummer, especially if you've had people in your ear saying, yeah, you're going second, third round and all sudden it's the fifth and the sixth and the seventh, and you're still watching and you've been the top guy the entire time, listen, it's yeah, your percentages are a lot better over the course of time. If you're a first, second, third round pick than they are, if you go late, but there's also so many of those stories of the Adam Thielen's of the world or to go Vikings again, John Randall to actually go on drafted, there were like 17 rounds when John Randall went on drafted and he ends up being a hall of fame player. There are those examples and somewhere out of the, let's call it 300 to 400 guys who get signed, got signed after the draft and the thousand more who will be in these camps on a trial basis, there will be three, four or five of those names that will be household names within a year or two here. That's just kind of the nature of the NFL. It's one of the things that makes it unique. Best of luck though, to Jarvis Landry going out there, not a lot of five time pro bowl receivers would do this and show up to a rookie camp and go compete. You still want to play. This is what you got to do. And he's got, he's got a Y to it as well.

Agent McCarron talked about that last year where it was, you know, part of the reason he's still in the XFL right now was he wanted to see his, his son to see him and remember him playing. Jarvis has a little J there who crashed the segment. That was pretty good. I thought it was pretty good. That was great.

That was very solid here. So best of luck to him. All right, let's get back to the NFL and the draft. The guys who did get taken, I know Brockman's got some, that's what we're doing, right? Start bench cut. We're going to get some NFL draft questions for me.

It's a big picture NFL questions as we look ahead to the 2024 season, that is a little over four months away. We'll do that right after this, Ian Rapport joins us in the final hour of the show as well. I'm Tom Pellicero in for rich on the rich eyes and show.

Our house is a mess. Come on in. I'm Amber Wolin, internet comedian and host of your new favorite podcast fly on the wall. That's pretty presumptuous to assume that this is going to be their favorite podcast. By the way, anyway, that wasp that you just heard interrupt me is my husband and cohost Benjamin wall in listening as we discuss relationships and keeping our sweet baby kid alive.

Fly on the wall and wherever you listen. So I played 11 years. You did.

They've been to the super bowl nine times and I didn't get there once. Right. Think about that.

Right. And I was one pick away from being drafted by the Patriots. What happened?

The charges drafted. I know that's what happened. They didn't, they didn't, they didn't come up and come get you. So I went to a, so I went on the visit to the Patriots and that's when Charlie Weiss was office coordinator. And I go to Boston and I really liked the visit. I like Charlie.

I love Charlie Weiss. You meet with bill. I did meet with bill. You know, we sat in his office right above the stadium right there where you looking out at the stadium and we really just sat there and we really didn't talk about much. We just looked at each other. What do you mean?

What do you mean? You just looked at each other, like each other's eyes, you know, I guess you're saying it was awkward. I mean, I just, you know, you know how bill is. He just, there's only a few things he probably wants to know about you. And I guess he was trying to get a sense of, you know, was I passionate about football as most coaches coaches do you invest a first round pick on a guy you want to make sure they're passionate. Do you think they would have chosen you if you were available? Well, they said they were going to choose me. Charlie Weiss promised me if I was there at sticks because they needed a running back, they needed a running back bad that year. And so, uh, yeah, when the charges drafted me, I think they took Richard Seymour. Have you ever brought up to Brady when you've seen him? I never brought it up. You could have been Robin is bad. Always. I always thought about, you know, what would that be like with all due respect to Antoine Smith?

I'll do. Yeah, I know. I know. It would have been a little different. No way.

Yeah. It would have freaked out a lot of excitement right now about the basketball playoffs. I'm getting excited to maybe attend a game in that Minnesota Denver series right in my backyard. Once I get back to Minneapolis here, browse through the game time app, there's upcoming playoff games. Where else would you want to get your tickets then right in the game time app, you got last minute tickets, flash deals, zone deals, views from every seat in the venue, plus the lowest price guarantee. So take the guesswork out of buying basketball tickets with game time, download the game time app, create an account and use code rich for $20 off your first purchase restrictions apply visit game time.co for terms again, create an account and redeem code. That's R I C H for $20 off download game time today. Last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. I really might go over there. It might be another 20 years till the Timberwolves are in a second round playoff series.

I'm guessing probably not. My daughter's like my nine year old wants, she's like, it'd be fun. We should go to a game.

It's like, well, he might be 29 the next time and that might be a little awkward. That's why you got to go taking you to that game at that point. I'm willing to bet that the T wolves are taking, that the T wolves win a championship before they miss the playoffs again. That is a very, that's a Boulder take. I mean, you're originally a championship.

You're talking about the whole thing. Anthony Edwards is going to be the best player in the league very soon. I mean, when he's dialed, when he chooses to show up, there's always those games that Steve Ashburn talked about earlier in the show where even, even in game four, he got off to, he was basically invisible for the first two quarters. And then the second half it was just, Oh, I guess I'm going to be the best player on the court. I mean, Katie's out here, Booker's out here, but I think I'm just going to take over.

Cool. I'm just going to, the only problem with that is the fact that there's a guy named Victor weapon Yama who exists at the same time, who might actually have the mantle. Didn't make time this year, a best player. You said that yourself though, in about two years, it's going to be both these guys.

It's both their leagues, but I'd love it. I think he probably should be the face of the league. That guy's personality is off the charts. His game is on point.

Like you've got to love it. I'm saying that as a member of Jason Tatum's family, like he's my adopted son. You do love take Anthony Edwards looks physically like Michael Jordan, where he's like, he's very thick through his whole body. He kind of, he wears the, he wears the wristband like Jordan, he's showing the mid range game now. I'm not saying he's Michael Jordan. I can get on board with that as the next superstar. I still struggle with the very tall, super skinny guys, whether it's Victor women Yama or it's Chet Holmgren or any of the dudes. If you're like seven foot tall and it looks like, you know, if somebody needs you in the back, you would actually break in half and fall apart. That's what happened to Chet last year.

He ran into LeBron, his body, his summer league game, and he missed the whole season. But both of those guys, that's what I'm saying. Like I think they're going to put on weight. I just worry about it. Yeah.

You would hope over time. You hope that they're not permanently in Sean Bradley territory where they're always just like super skinny dudes. You know, Giannis weighed about a buck 80 when he got in the league.

Now he's too, you know, 250 and diesel. He wasn't a buck 80. No way. Yeah. Look up what I find that find his weight, his rookie year, one 80.

There is no way. Now he might've looked super skinny at like one, one 90, one 90 in 2013 in 2013 scrawny bro. I mean, Chet Holmgren has just got to gain about 55 pounds to get to one 90, but man, he, he and he and when we are so skilled, the skill set on these two guys is just unbelievable. That's the difference. I mean, the guys now, if you're seven feet tall, you, you learn to shoot that I feel like is the biggest difference from growing up with the NBA, where if you were seven foot tall, no seven footers shot every now and then minute, they'd let them shoot a three.

And that was more like a comedy. If you remember Ralph Sampson back in the day, seven, four, he had a bag like these guys were out. Sampson was a unicorn man. He was an anomaly guys that size didn't play the type of game that Ralph Sampson has. And now you see when being Chet and guys like that, man, who are seven, three, seven, four, who can handle the rock, who can shoot, who can lead the break, distribute the ball. Like it's, it's incredible to see I'm a fan of the big man in basketball. So I love the fact that joker and, and bead and, you know, cat, even though his game's more similar to those other guys, I just mentioned, I love the fact that the big man's coming back in vogue and basketball would a, would a bill, bill and beer type work in the current NBA, forget like the idea that every, everything on tape, all his highlight reels, like you'd get suspended for now, but like just him as a player, would that work or are people too skilled now? We're just being the toughest guy on the floor.

Wouldn't work. Remember? Lamb beer was, you know, he was a tough guy, but he also was a dude who had six, 10, six, 11. He was shooting, you know, 17, 18, 20 players in the modern NBA. Would he still, but would he still be a very good player in the modern NBA? Very good player? Be a bench guy. Yeah.

Seventh man. But you got to remember, like I said, lamb beer did have a skill set that he didn't use because that's not how the center position was used in those days, but I can distinctly remember him hitting jumpers like deep jumpers. And so maybe, maybe he had more to his game than, than he was allowed to show. I don't know, but you know, like Brockman said, the game has, Steph has changed the game and you know, now it's all about shooting the three, but I like the fact that the big guy is kind of finding his way. That's why I'm interested to see what's going to happen with Zach Edie out of Purdue. Like is he going to, you know, find a path, find a position or is he just going to be a guy who's stuck on the bench at seven, four, all the analysts, again, cause I don't follow it closely enough, but everything I read is basically his game doesn't translate to the NBA. He's seven foot four. He's one of the best players in college basketball. I would think that there's a place for him somewhere, but if you try to match him up against wimby, I don't, I don't know what the problem, but when he's going to be a problem for anybody for the next 17 years. So how do you build around wimby? I guess is the question. What does that team look like? Ideally?

Cause they're not there clearly right now. Yeah. No, I've got to get some shooters. You got to get my horn lamb beer type Chris, a guy who like, if you put your hands on protect wimby, basically enforcers is like your goal scorer. And then you need somebody out there to fight for him. Every team needs at least the guy who go out there and you know, throw them bows as ludicrous said, you know, it's just a necessity. Not like all the teams have that though. Does every team have a draymond? I know he's again, the guy who gets suspended. So he's the, I would say he's probably has at least one dude on there. Who's there because they they'll bring the ruckus if necessary, I would assume, right?

Like everyone's got to have somebody like that. I mean, they're singing through the playoff teams. Jokic is the biggest guy on the floor a lot of the time. His brothers do the enforcing.

They do the enforcing from the stands though. Our toughest player was our coach that we got rid of. Well then you, and you knew that Marcus Smart go, he was probably, Smart's gone and one of the Morris twins, he was there for a little bit. Yeah.

I don't know. It's, it's not the way the NBA has played now. You know, the guys get flagrants for, you know, hard fouls. Remember when Kevin McHale clotheslined Rambis?

Yeah. Like that was just a common shooting foul. It's one of the things that my Instagram, whatever you call it, the algorithm, when it suggests things all the time, like eighties, nineties basketball assaults is one of the things that it thinks that I like. Old hockey fights is another, another one that I get a lot of those through there.

But the, but the old basketball highlights, there's, there's no way you just, you wouldn't have, and I understand why it existed at that point, but basketball looked more like the NHL in those days that it did the modern NBA because anything went, you know, it's funny. People always say, now these guys are soft. These first of all, they're not soft, but people like to say, and then you get a situation where MB grabbed, um, Marcus Robin or Richard Robinson, Richard Robinson.

Okay. It was a bad play. I don't know if you saw it. Then B got knocked down. He grabs Robinson.

I saw it. It really was an inch off the ground when he grabbed them and people were complaining them like, one, you guys keep saying the league is soft and somebody does something like this and it's like, he should be suspended and they wanted him ejected and Chris, like Kevin McHale hit Kurt Rambis with a Russian sickle. Like he was Nikita Koloff back in the day, gigantic cause no one got kicked out of that common shooting. When was the last time a punch landed in an NBA game? An actual punch.

Are we going back to the palace? I'm sure. There's fights, but it's always one of these.

It's always like, Hey, get off me. Chris child's getting up, Kobe and a preseason game. I don't know if it was pretty easy. He definitely hit him with a three piece, no biscuit, but, um, yeah, I'm sure there's no punches that land that are just like knocking people out anymore because I don't think guys really want to fight in the nineties even you still had actual fights. Yeah. I mean, I felt like there were real, you know, a horn. Yeah, Jeff Van Gundy's hanging off your leg. Like there was, you know, it was much more, it was just much more chaotic.

He'd get up in your face, you know, good word for it. Right. So are you, if necessary, it almost looks like, you know, in Olympic hockey, they play with like the larger sheet of ice and it just, it opens up the game. Like just the way like the entire flow of it's different because you just have more space.

That was the case. The Olympic sheet to larger Olympic rink is larger sheet of ice. So, but that, that's what the NBA looks like to me now, which is you actually just have more space for everything to occur where for whatever reason, it's not, it's not the truth, but the NBA in the eighties felt condensed. And that probably is a function of a lot of offenses pre Phil Jackson were, we're going to dump it into the post and Robert Parrish and Kevin McHale are going to go to work and we're going to be physical.

And then we're going to kick it out of care. You know, occasionally everything was inside the third point now because you're the big man stretching it back then, you know, now that you have, you know, Carl Anthony towns can hit a 30 footer that didn't, that didn't exist or at least that wasn't your strategy. You took your biggest players and you put them in the post. Now you're creating mismatches out on the perimeter. I don't know that that leads to fewer fights as much as you know, the NBA legislating that part of it out of there.

But it does seem like that's part of it where when you have a collision now in the paint, it's such a rare thing that everybody loses their mind. Should they make the court bigger? Like wider or longer?

Both. I mean, it's, it's, it's like 94 by like 50 or something right now. Long enough. Um, a little wider. We should make the course a little wider. Push back the three point line since everybody's shooting from 40 feet anyway, make it so that the corner three isn't 22 feet. Make it so it's actually 23 nine.

Like the rest of the, so it doesn't have yet the little, yeah, the straight little straight lines right there. Well, why don't we go full rock and jock, bring back the four point shot, like a circle somewhere, a 10 pointer from half court, right? Don't think the WNBA wouldn't think about it with Kaitlin Clark.

If she's making 10 pointers, no matter how bad her team is and she's coming back in the big three where they have the four point play. Right? Yeah.

Yeah. It's all stolen though from Dan Cortez and those great match-ups. Dan Cortez. You remember those, right?

If we do that, it was like every funky rule and now like homeboys and away boys. We think about Dan Cortez and Bill Bellamy making the call back in the day. Is Dan Cortez alive?

Yeah. Is he still Tony? Hey, but is it, have we seen him in the last 25 years? I looked at his Instagram about a month ago. What's he doing?

He's 56. I'm not really sure. I used to, I used to telemarket with his brother back in Pittsburgh back in the day, but there was no like, whatever he is, he's killing. You have a connection to Dan Cortez?

Random. Yeah. His, his, his brother Vince.

We used to telemarket. Vince Cortez? Yes. Where's Vince? That's the real question today. Back in Pittsburgh. What up Vince? If you're out there, baby. All right. Back to NFL Talk. More joins us shortly on the Eisen Show. Rolling Stone Music Now, wherever you listen.