What the Football with Suzy Shuster & Amy Trask: Jim Nantz

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Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes in detail. Episode one, season two of What the Football. We are back. We are back with you.

We are thrilled that you are back with us. Amy, I love seeing you again in our new digs here at the Rich Eisen Show Productions. You know, we had a little fight before because the guys didn't want the rug in our swanky new set. And I said, come on, you got a bunch of ladies sitting around.

We got to soften up the set. Do you like it, Amy? I do.

I would like the record to reflect. I did not engage in the argument about the rug because that's just not my thing. I'm not really an interior decor girl. But I do like the rug, Suze.

I'm glad you won that argument. It's a little chic. Kara Henderson, our old friend from NFL Network and also married to Lesnead of the LA Rams, is obsessed with furniture and rugs. So I feel like she of all people will appreciate the fact that we tried to spruce this place up a little bit. And we had to do that because the great Jim Nance will be joining us shortly. And I want to be able to come correct for Jim. I feel like he's got his time in Butler. He's got his time in the most beautiful sets in the world.

And we wanted to show off the placeholder for him. This set is so great that I do want you to know by the end of this show and for future shows, I'm probably going to be camped out in this chair. I may be sideways. I may bring a blanket. I'm really happy.

Take a little nap. So you brought the calling for Jim. I did. I just want to know when we're going to crack it. Soon. Okay.

Just soon. Because, you know, we need to sometimes a little tipsy, Amy, as an Amy that likes to pour out the tea leaves, so to speak. You know, last year on What the Football, I shared with our listeners and viewers that my nickname in college was one beer. Well, I get home and I see a text from my nephew, the gentleman married to my niece. That was her nickname in college too.

I'm kind of proud that my niece takes after me and we were both nicknamed one beer. Well, I would like to tell you that I will have two glasses of this once we open it up. Speaking of preparation for getting ready for this podcast and getting ready for the season ahead, I would call that we need to maybe work into the pores ahead of the game, which I would equate to maybe getting ready for the season in the preseason. We were talking before we started rolling about the choppiness of week one. The other thing I would say is this little segue, by the way, we're not going to sit here and tell you who's going to be in the Super Bowl.

We're also not going to sit here and talk about, you know, how bad people were or teams were a week one, how bad some of the, you know, the teams or the outcomes would have you because all these people that prognosticate about what's going to happen later in the season based off of week one are, I think, crazy. I thought instead I'd pull out the Magic 8 Ball, which I'm not sure. How do you make this work?

What do you do? How can you not know how to use a Magic 8 Ball? I still have one of these at home. Do you shake it?

Hard. And now a little thing will come up in the little window. Magic 8 Ball. Who's going to win the Super Bowl? It's not working. Can you do it?

Well, this is what I would say as you try to make this work. Magic 8 Ball. Who's going to win the Super Bowl?

The answer is nobody knows. Is that really what it says? No, I made that up. I was going to say, I'm like, wow, did it really say that?

No, I made that up. We had a really choppy week one football. And this is what I would say, by the way, and I wonder how you feel about it. Maybe if you have a veteran quarterback and said veteran quarterback has been hurt, and we have several, we have three, maybe take a couple snaps. Can you explain to me as somebody who's lived with teams, what's the theory on not playing a veteran quarterback?

It's a great point. And the quarterbacks to whom you're referring, of course, are Aaron Rodgers. He didn't play at all in the pre-season. Kirk Cousins, I don't believe he played at all in the pre-seasons. And Joe Burrow played the first series of the first pre-season game and then no more. Yeah, we're talking pre-season people.

Yes, pre-season. Each of those men coming off very significant injuries last year. And in the case of two of them, no time in the pre-season.

And as I said, Joe had one series. It's a classic vintage quintessential risk reward analysis. The risk, of course, if you play them, an injury that can happen in the pre-season. The reward, of course, is that they are ready and the timing for the team is better and things are more fluid when you start the season.

Risk reward analysis. And this is a discussion, Suzy, I had with Al Davis regularly. There were times he would want men to come off the practice field during training camp. I remember saying to him, Al, we can't put them in bubble wrap.

That was a quote. We can't put them in bubble wrap. And then a week or so later we had a very, very bad injury.

And I said, you know about that bubble wrap idea, there may be something to that. I remember sitting in the staff area of the press box during a pre-season game and Al telling me to go up to the coaching booth and tell them get him off the field because you do run the risk of an injury. But I believe we saw in each of those games a lot of rust with respect to players who didn't get a lot of time in the pre-season.

Would they have won had they gotten more time? We don't know the answer to that, but there's something to be said for knocking the rust off. Yeah. And I think I listened to Kirk Cousins on Rich's show on Wednesday and he was talking about said rust. And he's always so honest about his performance and really gives, for a lot of quarterbacks who don't want to talk after a loss, he's actually really open about it.

And that there was rust to be had from there. And I think I also believe this, having spent so much of my career with athletes, they'll tell you that they're not thinking about that injury out there. But when you're out there testing it out, I think there's always that apprehension that an athlete has wondering how the surgically repaired Achilles or what have you is going to hold up. He mentioned his ankle. He thinks of it as the whole joint, the whole part of his ankle, not just the Achilles, but you had him out there testing out an Achilles. You had Aaron Rodgers testing out his Achilles repair. We saw Joe Burrow constantly working his wrist, trying to figure out where he is.

And then you just wonder, what is the idea? Is it, like you said, risk reward? I think that I'd want to get out those jinks in the preseason, although the risk is so high.

It is a risk. And look, if Aaron Rodgers plays in the preseason, did they win the other night? You know, San Francisco looked phenomenal. San Francisco looked tremendous on both sides of the ball. The Jets, on the other hand, looked bad on defense. I expected more from the Jets on defense. Now, query, was it that the Jets defense wasn't good or that they were facing a dynamic, dynamic offense or a combination thereof?

And then you look at Burrow. Burrow's one and four in game one of the season. So if he plays in the preseason, do they beat New England? Maybe, but he's not generally good in the first week of the season.

So we can't control for all of those variables and each team is going to do its risk reward analysis differently. I worked for Al and he looked at the risk more than the reward of playing guys in the preseason or more importantly, in training camp. By the way, as a New England fan, I had been telling everybody every time I did the Rich Eisen Show, I love it when people call in. I love my favorite part of the Rich Eisen Show. Anybody who watches when I'm theirs, I love the win-loss game where callers will call in and we'll just do the win-loss section. We go through it fast.

It's like fun and exciting. Anytime anybody wants to do the Patriots, I always say like, well, why bother? They're going to lose all the games. Or like the Patriots will come up and I'll say, okay, loss, moving on. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, seeing a win, especially against the Bengals.

Well, you of course are who Rob and I were thinking of when we were watching the game. A lot of people didn't expect that of New England. I think when you talk to people from New England, they had higher expectations for themselves than others had for them. And again, query, and look, I'm not taking anything away from them for winning that game, but query as to how much Burrow coming back from the injury, the impact of that, not playing more than a series in the preseason.

We'll see more as the season goes along. But you are such a quintessential New Englander. You know, loss, loss, loss, loss, loss. You guys get really grouchy back there.

Bitter, grouchy, annoyed. Nothing's ever happened. That's been good. Oh yeah. All those rings. Come on.

They're distant history. The good news is that we have Jim Nansen who's going to see. Can't wait. Can't wait to quote Bart Squat. Bart Squat. Yeah, I'm in mid-season from Bart Scott.

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Alcohol available only in select markets. Three, two. Hey everybody, there's a great new podcast that just launched I want to tell you about. It's called Throwbacks, and I know the guys who are doing it. It's hosted by former Entourage star Jerry Ferrara and former USC quarterback Matt Leinart, the 2004 Heisman Trophy winner who then went on to play in the National Football League for the Arizona Cardinals. So Matt has a ton of experience to tell you about. Playing for an iconic college football team, winning that trophy, and then of course all the behind the scenes stories from his time in college and professional football, while Jerry is one of the leads of an iconic television series. He's got you covered on what it was like being a young guy starring in a show that everyone was talking about, and he's also the voice of the fans. So Matt brings that former player expertise, and Jerry brings that voice of the maniacal sports fan. Enjoy hanging out with your new favorite pair of throwbacks every Thursday. Follow and subscribe to Throwbacks on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And as promised for all of you, our week one guest is the great Jim Nance, because I always want to come through on our promises that calling is here, Amy's here, Jim is here, and my husband is screaming at me from the back, by the way, producing, telling me that the conversation that we just had off should be on, Jim. This is what happens here at What the Football.

The inmates are running the asylum. I'm trying to do a podcast here. I've got producers screaming in my ear because you and Amy were just talking about pebble and how majestic it is. But also, if you could just explain to us real quickly when you ran into Amy Trask up there, and perhaps she committed one of the greater gaps known in Pebble Beach history.

Well, it actually influenced history. It drove my analyst to retirement. I was working with World Golf Hall of Famer Ken Venturi, who was the longest running lead analyst in the history of network television. For 35 years, he resided in the analyst chair in the 18th tower for CBS Golf. He was a huge mentor of mine, friend, very special guy in my life. And of course, his golf accolades ran really deep, winning the United States Open in 1964.

So he's a pretty, pretty famous guy. So I'd invited Amy to come up and catch a view from our tower right behind the famed 18th green at Pebble Beach. And yeah, there was an introduction there to Mr. Venturi. And I think the line might have been, do you play golf? Have you ever played golf? It was similar.

It was similar and that would not have been far from the truth. You were gracious. You invited us to join you in that tower at the 18th hole. And you introduced us and I was very congenial. And I said to Ken Venturi, Oh, what's your connection with golf?

Is this something that you're interested in, have been interested for a long time? And I just feel this finger like jab right between two ribs. It's my husband standing behind me. And that's the stop talking, stop talking right now.

Was that jab in the ribs? But yeah, I didn't know who he was. So I was being conversational. I said, what's your connection with golf? Do you enjoy golf? Is there a connection with golf? Do you enjoy golf as much as Jim does? It'd be tantamount to, Hey, this is my friend, Tom Brady. Oh really, Tom, what's your connection with football?

Do you have any at all? So we got through it, you know, Ken retired to like a few months later. He said that was the last straw. He'd had it after that. Sorry, Ken. Amy, another gentleman that you've pushed into retirement, really you have that effect on men. It's been a long time though.

That was, that was 20 plus years ago. So you, you're due to come back for another visit. Oh, and I'll try not. Oh, by the way, I did the same thing at one point with Dan Rather, who was in, well, we were in line, going into a commissioner's party the night before a Super Bowl. And I, the gentleman behind me accidentally stepped on the heel of my shoe and was very, very apologetic. And I turned around and I said, please don't worry about it. There's nothing to worry. And then he said, Oh, what's your connection with this event tonight?

I had no idea who he was. And again, I got the finger in the rib cage, like the stop talking. I said, what's your connection with this event? And it was Dan Rather.

I've done that so many times I've stepped on. Yeah, we had a big blowout live event on CBS commemorating the 50th anniversary of the network. It was live on a Sunday night and everybody was there, including Dan Rather, including Walter Cronkite, including Mary Tyler Moore. I'm giving you some blast from the past, Carol Burnett, on and on, all these folks. And I'm actually doing a segment live talking about the history of CBS Sports in the 50 years.

It's kind of a big show. I'm backstage and I'm talking to Carol Burnett. You guys remember Carol Burnett, I hope?

Of course. And she was looking at me kind of glazed over. I was telling her what a big fan I was, the whole tugging on the air. And then somebody said, Ms. Burnett, you're up next. And she looked at me and said, would you mind? You're standing on my train. That's the only thing she said to me. So yeah. Sometimes you have those moments and you can't help but step all over yourself.

And then afterwards you look like the biggest idiot. I'm the master of those. Somehow I doubt it. You brought up Tom Brady, love to hear your thoughts on his first game. I didn't see it. So we were on at the exact same time. We were in the same window. Tony and I broadcast the Chargers Raiders game.

Yes, you did. He was up against, yes, we can talk about that. He was in the same window for Fox with Cleveland and Dallas. I would have liked to have heard it, but I'm going to look forward to hearing him down the road. I'll hear him this week, in fact, because I've got the late game. He's going to be up early.

I've talked to Tom a lot leading into this season and he has called on many broadcasters to get their insights into what it's like in the booth, how to prepare, how fast the game moves. So I know he's going to be really good at this. I don't have any doubt. And I'm certainly not going to make any judgments without having seen him.

And even though I did see him, which I didn't, I wouldn't draw any conclusions after one game. Tom Brady will be very good at this. You know what? Amen to that, Jim. Amen to not judging people at their first moment on the job.

I can tell you this. If I were evaluated after my first week or so with the Raiders, I'd have been canned after my first week or so with the Raiders. You got to grow into some things and learn some things. Now, look, if you're a fighter pilot and you're flying an F-16, yeah, you got to get it right the first time you do it. There's no room for error. Or if you're an open heart surgeon and you're doing your first open heart surgery.

But for pretty much all other business, you can have a little bit of latitude and room to grow. And again, if I were judged after my first week on the job, I'd have been gone. This weekend in our production meeting on Saturday night, the young producers put together a little highlight tape with all of our graphics and all of that.

But they opened it with a flashback. And it was actually a flashback of my broadcasting debut for CBS, which was 39 years ago this weekend. So I began my 40th year at One Network, which I'm really proud of being at one place. I always grew up not being a big free agent fan in sports. I understand why it's there.

I always loved the player, the athlete that was with one team his whole career because he was there for me the next year and the next year and the next year. And I felt a connection there. So anyway, they put up on the tape before our whole team, my broadcasting debut. The reason they did it was because my first game, I was posting the broadcast of a Michigan Notre Dame game, September the 14th, 1985. And the winning quarterback in the first game, the first broadcast ever had at CBS was Jim Harbaugh.

You are kidding. Jim Harbaugh was the winning quarterback that day. And I was making my network television debut in the studio. Now, for the record, if there was social media back then and anybody was wanting to evaluate my work, this is back to your point, Amy, I couldn't wait for that clip to come down, for it to stop because it was cringeworthy to me. The nervousness that was written all over my face, the unevenness of my delivery, I truly looked all of 26 years old, which is what I was at the time. And the moment really was, you know, on its face, it was probably too big for me. And, you know, I got through it, I know I got better.

I got better the second week, the third week, the third year, the fourth year. That's what happens. But these days, people expect you to come out in any realm.

And everybody's got a hot take and they've got something snarky they want to say about it. I didn't have to live with that at that time. I still had the pressure of having to perform. Trust me, I still had a lot of people I had to make happy. But when I saw that clip back and I had not looked back at it before, I could not believe what it looked like.

It wasn't, it was not pretty. Have you ever made a mistake during a game or a broadcast that you just were paralyzed? Or at least that you, I'm so curious to hear about it.

Yeah. You know, I think it can be something really small that I amplify, magnify in my own head, because I try to be as perfect as I can. I say this in one breath. I do cut myself some slack in another way, but when it comes to having a fact wrong, that really eats at me because I feel like my memory is razor sharp. And all week long, I have consumed so much information and data. I've stored most of it and compartmentalized most of it in my head. And it's just, I can't accept sloppiness, but we're all human.

Let's face it. A lot of broadcasters though, they beat themselves up over the wrong thing. And in their attempt to be perfect, they think being perfect is the way that they deliver whatever it is they're trying to say. They don't give themselves enough room to be able to correct themselves or stumble over a word. In normal conversation speak, people do trip over words and you don't even think about it as the one that's receiving the words. But when you get on the air and I see young broadcasters, new broadcasters, they get really hung up on making sure they never stumble because then people are going to know, oh my gosh, that I'm nervous or whatever it is that they're thinking in their head. I'm not, this is not about Brady.

I'm just talking about anybody. And my words to kids when I speak at college or anything, quit worrying about being letter perfect in the delivery. You wouldn't be in this if you didn't have the ability to deliver what you want to say, to communicate.

I would rather stumble. This is what my approach on in terms of how I try to let it flow. I would rather be unscripted. I hate to be scripted. Unscripted and choppy and maybe stumble over a few words and be totally relatable as opposed to being scripted, wooden and unrelatable. That's not a winning presentation.

It's to be letter perfect. You're better if you sound conversational and natural. Now, the factoids and having a fact wrong or misidentifying something, that's in a different realm. And that happens.

Unfortunately, it happens. I'm knocking on wood. I worry about it every time I'm on the air. Trying to make sure you get the story straight and you present it accurately. This coaching session for me has been so extraordinarily valuable.

I am going to have what you advised ringing in my ear every single week on CBS Sports Network. But I also want you guys to know that if I were evaluated after the first week or so on the job, only one of my errors, I won't go into all of them, was I decided that Al Davis had been kidnapped. He didn't come off the practice field when I thought he should have been. So I immediately assumed he was kidnapped. And I was in the process of calling the police to report his kidnapping when he walked out of the shower area in his office. And he looked at me and I said, I thought you were kidnapped.

I was calling the police. That was week one. So, you know, I didn't lose my job after week one. And there was- You were lucky.

You were lucky to survive, Alison. My first game on ABC was Miami of Ohio at Michigan. So I was in the big house. It was my first game on the network. I was nervous because, you know, Rich was watching and it was Michigan and, you know, I'd made it to the big time.

True story. First thing they say is, Susie, we can see your bra through your sweater. So they had to send a PA to a mall to get me something else. By the time I finished, I think I wore a black t-shirt and they called me Johnny Cash the entire game. And then I'm standing next to Ben Roethlisberger, which if you're wearing lip gloss, Roethlisberger, it's tough. So I think I said Ben Roethlisberger and I did exactly what you said. I stumbled on Roethlisberger. And I had a really good game besides that. It was my first game. And I got a note from Mike Pearl, who I loved so much, telling me how proud he was of me, what a great game I had.

And he was so glad that he'd hired me. And all I could think about was the stumble. And I just thought to myself, if I'm going to go through my sideline career like this, I'm never going to make it.

And it's just what you said is that we can be so hard on ourselves that you forget how exciting it is to have the greatest jobs in the entire world, which is what we do have. Or you could make that stumble when you're in appellate court, because you've just joined the Raiders and they send you to San Francisco from Los Angeles, where the team is based and you fly to San Francisco and you go into the appellate court and you know, you don't have to say anything because you know, the court's going to rule in your favor. And then the judge says, or the justice, Ms. Trask, do you have anything you'd like to add? No, your honor. No, go ahead and add something. No, your honor, I have nothing to add.

No, you need to add something really. And then he says to me, the award is going to be in favor of the Raiders. What are you going to do with the money? Absolutely inappropriate question from the bench. I had no answer. So I said, well, you know, we don't have a good quarterback. We don't have a quarterback.

We can use it to get a quarterback. I didn't know there were media in the audience, in the appellate court. And by the time I landed in Los Angeles, that was all over the news.

And when I got back to the Raider facility, the general counsel was standing in the lobby singing, I left my job in San Francisco to the tune of, I left my heart in San Francisco. All of this goes to say, you can make mistakes and it's still okay. It's okay to make a mistake, but you know, you might want to watch it with the bra thing, sis. You just have to be, take it a little easier on yourself. And the stumbling over your words thing, I tell kids all the time when I speak at colleges, universities, quit getting hung up on that. I learned how to just talk like we're conversing right now. That's what I try to be like on the air. When I was in the studio back in the day from 98 through 2003, hosting the NFL today, I did not like to work off a teleprompter at all. They want written leads to go into sound bites and packages and things like that, because they want to know when to roll the tape off the last word. I prefer to ad lib through it. And choppy it may be, but I'm going to be myself as opposed to squaring up to a camera and reading something with my eyes glazed over, looking straight on. That's just not comfortable for me. And you're the best at what you do. Well, you're too kind, but when you start that way, taking that burden off your shoulders, that I've got, I can't let the train get off the tracks in what I'm trying to say, because I don't know how I'm going to get it back on. Now that I've bobbled, I see it all the time. It's the least important thing that people should be worried about, because the guy at home is not keeping score on that.

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That's OReillyAuto.com slash E-I-S-E-N, O-O-O-Reilly Auto Parts. Tell me about your production meeting with Jim Harbaugh. How did that go?

Speaking of your old friend, Jim Harbaugh. One hour and 27 minutes. It was fantastic. I loved it and it could have gone on for much longer. He has such a way about getting excited about little things. Of course, I had Tony sitting right there too and they had a story that they were sharing about a cowboy game against the 49ers when Jim was coaching at San Francisco.

I walked out just super fired up. He has a different way of telling a story and expressing himself. Some call it quirky.

I call it natural. He's just being who he is. But I know this, the way he delivers a message, it definitely resonates with his teams.

Proof is in the pudding. He's got the attention of his players. He's changing the culture there. I know it's a big cliche thing to say, but it's obvious that the Chargers are heading on a great path right now. They played the hardball way week one. They tried to dominate the line of scrimmage and it took a while to wear the Raiders down a little bit, but in the second half, they ran the football the way he wants to run the football. When you put him in tandem with a guy like Greg Roman, it's going to be interesting to see. I think the Chargers are going to be fun to watch this year and he's going to be winning. His first year, whether it was at USD or whether it was at Stanford or at San Francisco or Michigan, his success rate his first year turning a program around, it's immediate. There's not a one-year grace period that he gives himself.

It's immediate. I will tell you one thing because you'll love this one, Amy. As you know, you guys gave him his first chance to be in the NFL. He was an NFL's version of a graduate assistant. I know you have your fingerprints on that.

I don't know about that. I loved it with Jim. Mike Lombardi did and Al did. You guys that really built the Raiders into something special and went to the Super Bowl and those great years and the early aughts, Jim was around for that. He was magnificent to have as a teammate.

I will share with you a great story. Al really took a special, special liking to Jim. He really wanted to see Jim succeed. When Jim went in to tell Al, look, I'd like to go back to college, Al was supportive of that. A lot of people thought Al would be angry. Al was supportive about that. Jim went on to say to him something to the effect of, I'm going back to college just like you went to college. Al looked at him and said, I went to USC.

You're going to USD. It was said in good humor and Al wished him all the best. I loved being a teammate of Jim's. He is a very, very special coach, a very special man. The other person he added to the Chargers, you mentioned Greg. He also brought in Mark Trestman and Mark Trestman was with us at the Raiders. I think Mark is one of the smart, well not I think, I know one of the smartest coaches with whom I've ever worked. He's just an extraordinarily smart human and he's a good teacher. Mark Trestman is going to make a big difference for the Chargers as well.

I can see that right now. I think that was a brilliant hire and of course he brought Jesse Mentor in from Michigan who's going to be a head coach down the road. You can already identify he's got the skill set and he's got some pretty good success rate too as a young coach. It was his first game as a D coordinator. He did tell a story that goes back to the Raider days. He was asked to evaluate for the draft quarterbacks and give him a grade.

Now I don't, Jim doesn't, he doesn't say anything just to try to get an effect. He's not into platitudes but there was Tony sitting there and he said, I want you to know I looked at your tape at Eastern Illinois and I gave you a second round grade for the Raiders. So I said, well what did you do with that? I mean here now were you were you in the room for the draft? When the draft and he got passed over through the first, second, third, fourth, went undrafted. Did you go in and say hey guys I got this guy as a second round grade, second rounder? He said no, I knew my place at that point in my career. I was not in the actual room.

I was in a room next to the actual war room and I didn't say a peep but I thought that was pretty cool. He recognized that Tony had some talent which everyone else passed on him and he, you know, he got signed by the Cowboys in part because Sean Payton, an old Eastern Illinois quarterback himself, had seen enough tape and they gave Tony the contract and gave him a big, I think it was ten thousand dollar signing bonus and that launched a great career for him with Dallas. As we look ahead at your schedule next, obviously you're heading to Kansas City. What are you expecting from them this year? Are we looking at a three-peat in your own vision? Very possible. I mean very possible. They're better than they were last year, don't you think? Yep.

I mean they've got, they've got, it's just saying okay some things stay the same. The offensive line, okay we've got a new left tackle at the moment but Andy knows what he's doing. He's an old tackle himself at BYU. I'm going to say that the line is as good as it was last year. Kelcey, keep him at the same level.

Mahomes, Pacheco. But what's different is they have a vertical threat now. They've got a vertical game that they never had. They won last year, they had nothing on the outside to throw to.

Nothing. And now you've got the speed of Xavier Worthy. You're showing him right there. He touched the ball just a couple times last week and broke two of them for touchdowns. And probably their biggest threat on the outside is going to be Hollywood Brown who's going to be out the first four weeks. Trust me, when he comes back, man, what a wide receiver room you got now. And Rashee Rice, who was a great rookie for them last year and probably the best guy on the outside, he's gone up a notch, I think.

I think he's a wide receiver one in this league. So now you got Rice, you got Worthy, you got Hollywood Brown coming on. That offense is better. And I think the defense was young enough to where, hey, get Chris Jones re-signed, but you've got some guys in the secondary that, sure, McDuffie's been around for a while, but there's some younger guys behind them.

Another year experience. I think they're better. And I think the idea of having to be burdened with the constant drum beat of the first ever three-peat, they can handle that.

I feel pretty good that that's not going to be too much for them to bear. And they went through the playoffs last year and had to go through Buffalo first, then Baltimore as underdogs, and then go into the game against San Francisco and win, win, win. They last year went through a lot of challenges, conquered it. Now they're better. I think there's a really good chance this year they won't be going on the road for the playoffs if everybody stays healthy. And the Chiefs at Arrowhead, better, faster, look out. And Jim, I do have one question for you about the defense. I agree with you. Every word you said about the offense, as to Xavier Worthy, huge addition, as Cliff Branch said to me regularly, speed kills.

My defense question for you is how significant, if at all, do you consider the loss of Lageria Sneed? Well, they can't pay everybody. So we got into a situation where someone is going to have to go and he's a great player. I mean, we saw him last year go pretty much through the whole regular season without giving up a touchdown. Then I think he gave up two in the post season.

I'm not going to hold that against him. I think he's one of the best cover guys in the game right now. But I think they have other guys that can, that can play.

I mentioned McDuffie. They got Watson, they got Williams. Cook was injured last year at safety all year. He's back.

He's healthy. I think Reed's very underrated safety. But that was a numbers game. The one thing that was a minus about Sneed, he had the ability to get flagged for a late tackle, a late hit, personal foul penalties at some of the worst times, because he's a very aggressive, feisty, emotional player. You have to balance that.

So I don't want to put that as an equalizer against his talent, because he was, you know, he's upper deck, upper echelon in the secondary. But I think they can come over that. That's the biggest loss they have really.

I think they can get past that. And it's so funny you talk about the constant drumbeat of the three-peat. You know, I got to do the three-peats for the Lakers, and every game was that again. Like, can they handle the pressure of a three-peat? And to a guy, they would say, I'd much rather handle the pressure of a three-peat than not be up for one.

So I always feel like that's a very first-class problem to have. And oftentimes the media will make more of it than the players will, because they're just glad that they're playing for a said three-peat. But you call that divisional game, um, in terms of the um, in 2005 with New England and the Broncos. And as a New England fan, I think we all remember that moment where, where the dream was over. And I'm wondering if you can glean anything from that experience in having called that game and then looking ahead at these Chiefs game ahead.

Well, Suzy, that's going way back. Yeah, that's, I do remember that game. That was a Saturday night game. And yeah, the play of the game, as I recall, was the Champ Bailey interception. If I had my bearings straight, I did so many Denver New England games, but, but Champ intercepted it at the goal line and went 99 yards before Ben Watson made one of the great plays, tight end, chased him down all the way down the field and shoved him out at the one. But Denver went on to win that game. I want to say 27 to 10, but there wasn't the talk about the three-peat then like there already is now there's already more discussion about the three-peat than there was around that New England team.

And it's only going to, it's only going to accelerate. Just imagine when you get to the postseason, let's say they get a first round by and they win the divisional game. What's the first thing Tracy's going to ask them and rightfully so she's going to ask them down on the field, Hey, you're one step closer to a three-peat.

How does it feel? Goes into the championship game. They win that I'm down on the platform, giving them the Lamar Hunt trophy. What am I going to ask them? I'm going to ask them about going to the Super Bowl and going for the three-peat. I'm standing on a platform right like that next to, to coach Reed. Can I tell you something about just seeing that picture about Andy Reed? Okay. This is, this sounds like a harsh segue, but I have, I have a young son who loves football.

I just can't get enough of it. He's eight years old. And Andy always without fail ask about how my son Jamison, we call him Jamo is doing.

So you saw the picture he's on the victory platform. I've had now three occasions where after we finished the interview and that one at the Super Bowl was, you know, it was seen by like 120 million people or whatever. The interview ends, he turns around, he takes his hat off. He gives it to me and says, give this to Jamo. Oh, wow. Oh, that gave me goosebumps.

I love it. My son upstairs in his bedroom has three Andy Reed championship hats, two AFC championship hats, and one Super Bowl hat. He was at that game in Las Vegas. And it's a pretty remarkable thing.

He takes that hat off and he gives it to me to give to my son. Now, just to give you a little backstory on this brief, but when I graduated from Houston in 1981, I got hired by the CBS affiliate in Salt Lake City, Utah. And not only being an anchor there on the local news on the CBS affiliate, I got to do the Utah jazz games with a legendary figure named Hot Rod Huntley, but also did BYU football games with Steve Young as my analyst that were broadcast regionally. It happened to be the year they went out and won the national championship under head coach Lavelle Edwards. There was a young tackle slash graduate assistant on that staff who I got to know quite well who was a friend. His name was Andy Reed. Come on.

43 years ago. And he's a great friend. Well, and the fact that after that Super Bowl, at that moment in time that he was thinking of your son speaks just volumes. That's who he is. Yep. That's who he is.

Yeah. I've told Jamo do not, do not go wear those hats out and lose it like that. And I've had him write a note every time to coach Reed, just to thank him.

I don't have any expectations he's ever going to do that again. Doesn't need to, but he's, it's just pretty special when you get, you go from being in your 20s, like we both were when we first met, to now there's a six on the front end of our age. And, you know, we're meeting on a stage and I'm presenting him a Lombardi trophy. It's pretty surreal. It's a little bit like, now I didn't have the same relationship with Andy that I did with my college roommates, but it's a little bit like being in the dorm room at the University of Houston with Fred Couples.

And Freddie and I are great friends to this day, brothers. And sitting around daydreaming about one day being at the masters, he wants to win it. I want to be there to broadcast it. I want to be in the Butler cabin.

I want to be there when he wins the green jacket, presenting him the green jacket. We practice at a time or two as kids just play acting and dreaming. And then you fast forward to, you know, adulthood. And that moment actually plays out before the world. So it's neat when you have that relationship that goes decades, is my point with Andy, and you know him and you see his massive success and what he is still achieving. And there's still a lot more to come. And there's just, there's just a very cool bond there. And I'm grateful for that friendship.

Well, and that which you just stated about Andy, his massive success with more to come is equally applicable to you, your massive success with more to come. I don't want to give it up anytime soon. I love what I do. It's just, it's the childhood dream syndrome.

This is exactly what I wanted to do since I was 11 years old. I obsessed about it right down to the network. I wanted to work for CBS because I love the way CBS presented the NFL. And back in those days, it was Summerall and Brookshire before it became Summerall and Madden. I loved all of those eras.

And of course, I love the way CBS presented the Masters and the PGA tour. And that was the place for me. If somehow by some miracle, I could ever get discovered by CBS, that I'm out here somewhere in America. There's a kid longing, dreaming, obsessing about being on your roster, wanting to work for this one place, truly obsessed about it. I know it's a strong word, but that's, that was my, that was my childhood. My teen years, those were my college years. All I ever talked about was wanting to work for CBS one day. And I have a few years to go on this.

I'd like to call a few more Super Bowls and about 10 more Masters, maybe a little bit more. And count my blessings every single day for this opportunity that's been dropped in my lap, an opportunity that I'm grateful for and never take it for granted that I got the lottery ticket to the childhood dream coming true. It wasn't simply dropped in your lap. You pursued it and you earned it. You have to, you have to like in any walk of life, you have to keep re-earning it.

Right. You know, you do, you have to keep trying to get better and finding ways to improve and adapt to the times and things change. And, you know, you have to roll with it too, but yeah, there was just some freakishly great things that happened to me that, that allowed for the opportunity for a kid with a dream and a network looking for someone. This confluence just, like I said, it happened like I said, it happened this week, 39 years ago. And, you know, I'm grateful. It's my 500th NFL game is coming up at some point this season.

CBS looked it up during our seminar and I've never fact check it. I've got every board I've ever done, but they're in my home and in California, but I could go back and count the boards because I've never let go of any one of my spotting boards that I call the games with. But, you know, my 500th game is coming up. And moreover, I was told that I'm the third or fourth person in history to call that many games, which is roughly two, two entire seasons worth of NFL games.

If you took the whole schedule. So, it's a lot of years of being up in the booth, seeing a lot of incredible action and yeah, I'm loving it more than ever though. I have to say it. It's more fun now than ever for whatever reason. I think being with Tony and being with Jim Rickoff and Tracy and Mike Arnold and our crew, I love it. I mean, just can't wait to get to Kansas city. I hate packing and leaving the house and telling the kids I'll see him in a couple of days, but I love it.

I can't explain it. It is when I just wish everybody could feel this way about going to work. If you call it work, going through the process of Friday, meeting with the chiefs and being at their facility all day long. And then Saturday, waiting for the Cincinnati Bengals to come in, meeting them in a conference room at their hotel and going through the coordinators and the coaches and Burrow and Jamar and other players. And Sunday, getting to the stadium five hours early and watching Arrowhead go from no one in the building and watching it come to life. And then all of a sudden it's 4.25 Eastern time and away we go. And you get to watch a game unfold.

It's a great honor. Jim, before we let you go, if you had to call a masters as your last or a super bowl as your last, which would it be? Susie.

Susie. That's a tough one. That's a tough one because it's shining a light on one more than the other.

It's like asking me which one's my favorite child. Well, we all have them, right? We all have them. We all have them. We all love them the same, don't we?

My boys would say, you love her the best. Oh, I hear that. What would it be, Jim? Probably, you're going to press me on this. I can divulge. This is with no respect at the end, no disrespect. See, there you go. I fixed myself and I'm not worried about it. I stumbled over a word.

Whoop-dee-doo. I would say that my last show needs to be the Masters Tournament. A lot of things have to line up and that would be my dream scenario. That's, again, with nothing but love for the NFL. We get the Super Bowl now every fourth year.

It was every third year, but now ABC and Disney are getting into the mix, so the networks will divide it out every four years. This is not the first time I've said this, but I would like to get to the 51st Masters on the resume, which will be 2036. The Sunday would actually be April the 14th, 2036.

I've looked it up. The Masters always ends on the second Sunday in April, and that's an April 14th year in 2036 because that 51st Masters for me would be the 100th plane of the Masters Tournament, and as Jack Whitaker, one of my broadcasting heroes of my youth once said to me, he said, you need to be there for that. You need to be there for the new century, and he said, and I think Augusta needs you to be there too, so he set my goal for me without knowing it.

That became the career goal was to make it the 51 Masters, which would also bring me to about 10 Super Bowls on play-by-play. I got to host a couple, and that is way more than an overly obsessed 11-year-old boy could even dream. That's so exciting. Jim, thank you for this conversation. I hope that you had fun inside our own Butler cabin here, which is our new look on what the football. I love being with you guys. I really do, and I'm honored that you actually, because sometimes people say, yeah, we'll do that next year. You'll be the first, and Suzy, when you reached out to me and said, hey, you brought up the whole thing. We said you're going to be the first, and I thought, my gosh, that's really refreshing. We're going to do this, so it meant a lot to me, and I look forward to the next time, whatever that might be. Well, don't we have to be presumptuous and ask you if you would create a new tradition unlike any other and come on next year for... No, no, he should do first and last. Bookend, you will bookend us. Just so you know, Jim, when you said when you joined us last year that you would be our first guest this year, when we were done, Suzy looked at me and said, book it. He's going to be our first guest, so I think you should bookend us first and last.

I think it's a great idea. You know that you're going to get Aunt Leia's chocolate-covered cranberries anyway when you appear on the show. Those were awesome, but you don't put all that in trouble. That was very sweet, but you don't have to worry about all that.

It's no trouble whatsoever. Both are dear, dear friends, and if you want me to do the bookends, I will always find the time. The greatest. Are you kidding? We don't take this for granted. Jim, the one thing I didn't do appropriately today, although I brought the calling with me, I forgot to bring a corkscrew. So I just want you to know that when we're done, we will be finding a corkscrew. We will be drinking your delicious, delicious wine, and we will be toasting you. I bless you.

I wish I was there to toast with you. We'll do that sometime. That would be cool.

Yeah, that's it. That's going to be the capper of the season. We'll have Jim here. I'll bring a lovely cheeseboard. We'll kick back with the calling.

I think it's a perfect show. And I'll actually figure out how to hold the bottle up so I get the label the right way. Let me know when that happens. Okay. Sign me up.

I'll give lessons on some tasting notes and all of the things you just mentioned, Amy. This makes me so very happy. Thanks again for your time, Jim. Thank you, Jim. I loved it. Thank you, guys. It was just nothing but fun.

Thank you. Here's what's so amazing about Jim Nance. How does he remember everything? Because truth be told, he's telling us about a game from almost two decades ago, maybe two decades ago. We were sitting in the green room before we started recording.

Are you really going to admit this? We couldn't remember who played on Sunday. We had to look up, and I'm thinking to myself, maybe it's just me, and I'm just losing my mind. So I embarrassingly say to Amy, who played on Sunday? And she said, standby. Let me look it up. To be clear, to be clear, you were asking who played Sunday night, because I do want Raider fans to know. I do know the Raider charger game was Sunday. And she was like, it was Chad Bailey.

And he jumped up on the one. Meanwhile, are you okay over there? You're relaxed.

You look very chill. I'm just so happy in this new little set. You like it, huh? Oh, I love it.

I'm kind of all comfy. Yeah. It's good.

It's good. Your feet are on the ground. You're grounded. It means you're getting Amy unplugged.

Yeah. I like it. We're really glad that you popped by and took in our first edition of What the Football for the season for season two. And we are excited that you're back. We're looking forward to being with you throughout this entire NFL season.

Haven't booked next week yet. Working on it. I got to think of things. I got to do all this stuff. So do you have ideas? I do. I do. I was asking the people. But we didn't do it today, but maybe we do it next week.

It's been like an hour discussing Cal beating Auburn. That's a great idea. I can't wait to have the three people listen to that one. But if you have ideas, you can always ping us. We have social media now. I won't look at it. And I know it's out there.

I don't really know how to access it, but we do have it. But we will be back on Tuesday, which is our normal landing spot. We did today to work out for Jim's schedule because he is now off to go pick up his kids. And by the way, I just got the get out of jail free card. Rich is on his way to get a kid. That was on getting the other guys.

I would imagine unless they're going to hitchhike home. Okay, just so you know, you do have three of them. So just because Rich is getting one, there's two others too. You do have three.

There's always someone to take care of. But anyway, thank you for taking in this edition of what the football we will see all of you here next Tuesday. The Rolling Stone Music Now podcast gets inside the biggest stories with Rolling Stone senior writer Brian Hyatt, movie director James Mangold. I don't want to turn Bob Dylan into a simple character with a simple thing to unlock that then makes you go, oh, now I get him. First time I sat down with him, he said, what's this movie about, Jim? It's about a guy who's choking to death in Minnesota and reinvents himself in a branded place, becomes phenomenally successful, starts to joke to death again and runs away. And he's like, I like that. Rolling Stone Music Now, wherever you listen.