This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself, and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes, and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
Listen and use code listen at checkout. And now, sitting in for Rich, it's Tom Pelissero. Welcome in to a Rich Eisen-less edition of the Rich Eisen Show. I am Tom Pelissero. Happy to be back at the studio with the fellas.
Chris Brockman, Mike Del Tufo, TJ Jefferson, all in the house. Yeah, how are we doing over there in Mets land? Today's the day. Why are you wearing your Mets hat?
Like the last two days you're wearing Mets hats. I was late yesterday trying to turn the tide. I was late getting over here. I didn't have time to properly get over here. They lost Cox for five minutes before he comes to us. I'm not used to having a camera.
Be honest, it's fast. You weren't ready? We were recording The Insiders, the Monday edition that's on YouTube via the NFL's channel. And it was in the ninth inning of that wild first game in the Mets Braves playoff. Basically the made up double header. So it's in like the eighth inning. That was the back and forth. It's 3-0 then it's 6-3 and then the Mets roar all the way back. Crazy game. And literally like we're five minutes into the show and all of a sudden Rappaport just screams and walks off camera. You could hear him down the hall. Yeah! I live in Minnesota where they decided the season ended about mid-August this year.
And the playoff probability went from 90% to 0% over the course of time. I agreed to come in and fill in for Rich who's over there in... Is he already in London or he's en route? He's already there. He's already there.
Judging from the texts he sent me at 4.17 a.m. I'm going to say yes. What are we doing?
He doesn't need any extra encouragement to do that. But he'll be doing the game. Calling the game on Sunday Vikings Jets.
We'll talk about that. Sam Darnold revenge game. This is like Ghosts of Rich Past right there. Sam Darnold now playing like he thought Sam Darnold was going to play in 2018 for a different team. Adam Gase had other ideas. I don't blame Adam Gase on that.
We can get into that one a little bit more. But Sam Darnold is out on the perfect spot. A Gase truther huh? You get some great... Listen, Adam Gase, he won a lot of games.
I don't want to derail you Tom. Adam Gase won a lot of games in Miami with a lot of challenges. If Ryan Tannehill doesn't have the partially torn ACL that he re-tears all the way and they have to bring in Jake Cutler. Cutler was good that year though. That was my first year at NFL Network.
We did not have a Miami based reporter at that time. And so I was down there like the third day of camp. Where was Cameron Wolfe? He had not yet arrived. Darlington had left a year or two before.
And I interviewed Tannehill on like the second or third day of camp. And he's hey, he's got the huge sneak brace on. It's like his whole leg. He's going yeah but I feel good and rehabbed hard and really excited about this team. I leave town the next day. Tears the ACL the rest of the way. Season ending surgery.
I then get put in Miami for basically all of camp. The pre-season opener because that's Cutler. I'm standing by the side of the field doing play by play as like the plane. We cannot say for sure if that's the plane that Jake Cutler's on. It's fine if you know where their old practice facility was.
It was right by the Fort Lauderdale airport. Those are you know and then I had the tweet that still pops up about once a month in my Instagram feed. Where I said Jake Cutler has passed his physical and now is officially a dolphin. To which somebody replied if football didn't exist this would be a way cooler tweet. And that was an all-time viral thing. Still people send me that to this day.
No way. Because it will pop back up. Some one of those meme accounts will pop up. And maybe Antonio Pierce accidentally likes it somewhere along the way. We'll get into that. I thought to it. I've done that. I have done that. Okay I'm not blaming Antonio Pierce.
I'm not taking a shot at him. Like there are so many times everyone will send me. Do you have friends who communicate solely via the DMs?
Yes. Like you could text me a link or you could DM me over and over and over again. And I've got like a handful of people who communicate. Just gifs and memes.
Predominantly. They could call me. Look at the phone. Call me. Text me. Rather send you a gifs bro. They'd rather send me the third slide in something from the NFL memes account. There's 20 pictures here.
Go to the fifth one. It's like it's something making fun of, you know, fill in the blank. Zach Wilson. Whatever it is. And like I'll be, you know, scrolling past it. I accidentally like it.
I'm like, oh, I got to unlike that in case anybody sees my name pop up. And I'm not a head football coach in the NFL. So the stakes slightly higher. Though that's just one reason that something that was probably always going to happen. If Devante Adams was looking at potentially moving on maybe to the New York Jets. Now it becomes accelerated into the public view a good month ahead of the trade deadline.
Which is what I was getting at. Which was when I agreed to come in and do these shows, I'm doing the calculation, right? My primary job at NFL Network. Hosting the insiders.
Tracking the news. And I'm like, all right, it's first week of October. You sometimes might have, you know, there's some hot seat stuff that might happen early. There's sometimes a coach who gets fired in the early stages. There wasn't last year. There are some simmering seats right now, Tom.
I wouldn't say simmering. I mean, Jacksonville's got work to do, right? They're 0 and 4.
I don't think that they're bad. Everybody's impression was the week 3 game in Buffalo, which was terrible. If not 3 and 1, they blew the first two games. They had Houston beat last week.
Correct. And Trevor Lawrence misses two wide open receivers in the end zone. I don't blame, I know that there was a lot of focus on Doug Peterson's comments. Saying like, hey, coaches can't go out there and make the plays. But if you watched the game last week, he's right.
There's two wide open dudes. Trevor Lawrence hasn't been the worst quarterback in the NFL, but he might be the most disappointing player in the NFL. I think that's fair.
Through the early portion of the season here. When you pay the guy $55 million, even after he and the entire team collapsed on the stretch last season, you're expecting him to take a leap forward. Not be one of the reasons you're not winning. It's not all on him. Travis Etienne had that fumble on the goal line early in the season that was a big factor in them losing the game. The defense in the first halves of games hasn't been able to get off the field. But when Doug Peterson goes and gives an honest answer, I kind of appreciate it.
Because he's right. I don't think that anybody, including Pres Taylor, is going to say that they're doing a perfect job right now. But the idea that this is just, you switch up the play collar and everything will be fixed, that's tricky. But I thought, taking this shift, I'm like, well, what could possibly be going on?
And then here we are in the past couple of days, and an Instagram like, and a conversation, and a million reports later. We're talking about Devontage. We'll get to that a little bit more later. We had great revenge games this week, including Sam Darnold v. Jets. We got Stefan Diggs v. Buffalo Bills, which I think is a lot of fun. I was there.
I talked to Diggs before the game in Minnesota. I think that one's kind of, it's worn off, right? You know, the entire revenge aspect of it. It's been like five years. He wanted out of there. Buffalo is a little different.
He was probably ready to move on. But at the same time, it's still fresh and this is the first time they were going up against a team that went, you know what, we think we're good with Khalil Shakir and Dalton Kincaid and eventually Keon Coleman. We can, we can do this.
The higher register. So that'll be fun. It starts out tonight.
Yep. We got Buccaneers, Falcons. The Buccaneers who might be the single most, and I hate to use this term because it's like an overused cliche, but the single most disrespected team in the NFL. They win the division every year. They have been impressive through the early portion of this campaign. Did not play well in week three and they ran into just kind of the perfect storm of a motivated team that needed to go in there and get a win. But they're, you know, Todd Bowles does a great job with that defense and Baker Mayfield's playing at a pretty good level. With the Falcons, they are still one of the biggest mysteries to me in the NFL because they've won a couple of, of, you know, solid wins.
They go into Philadelphia. If Saquon catches a pass on a third down, we're not talking about that being a victory for Atlanta, but they found a way. Cousins leads a really impressive two minute drive. It's something he's done really well. And then last week, you know, they get a good solid division win. Dennis Allen, the sage coach says that to the game.
That's one of those ones that rips your heart out, but like it's not pretty and offensively as much as we talked about. Boy, it's Cousins coming in, going to finally get the most out of Bijan and Kyle Pitts and Drake London. They bring in Darnell Mooney. Nobody's sitting back right now and go, man, they've lit it up.
And I don't think people should be surprised by that. You've got a 36 year old quarterback who's coming off a torn Achilles. He got a lot better from week one to week two. And again, that two minute drill is exactly what you expect from Kirk Cousins because he has been really good in those situations. At the same time, Jake one catches the ball on third down. We're sitting there talking about Atlanta's 0-2 and the offense hasn't looked good.
You take advantage of the opportunities. I'm taking nothing away from the Falcons. But you look at the rankings right now, you look at Bijan's stats, you look at Kyle Pitts' stats that there really aren't any to look at right now.
There's still a lot of question marks. This feels, I think it's way too early to say must win, but I would say this. The Atlanta Falcons and their fans who have not necessarily seen a juggernaut that they might have anticipated at home in Atlanta. It's going to be rocking on a Thursday night. You know, it's going to be a party in the streets outside the stadium like it always is. It's going to feel a lot different if they're waking up tomorrow morning, three and two, tied for the division lead, going into a mini-buy versus being two and three coming off of a home loss and being two games back in the division.
We'll get into that. We'll get into a lot more of week five in the NFL as this edition of the Rich Eisen Show rolls on with me, Tom Pellicero. Coming up after this, a guy who probably liked watching what the Broncos did last week against the Jets. How can you not, as a running back, love getting a win when you throw for 60 yards?
Terrell Davis, one of the best to ever do it. Join us right after this on the Rich Eisen Show. the right professionals for your team faster and for free. It's not just a job board, this LinkedIn. LinkedIn helps you hire professionals you can't find anywhere else, even those who aren't actively searching for a new job, but might be open to the perfect role. In a given month, over 70 percent of LinkedIn users don't visit other leading job sites. So if you're not looking on LinkedIn, you're looking in the wrong place. LinkedIn knows that small business is wearing so many hats and might not have the time or resources to hire.
That's why you got to use them. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash Eisen. That's LinkedIn.com slash Eisen to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies.
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That's OReillyAuto.com slash E-I-S-E-N. O-O-O-Reilly Auto Parts. Hey, Ed, swap spots. Go out there with Rod.
It's like the Ravens back in the day. I'm going to beat the double cup for a long game. I'll high point this. Here I go. I'm going to high point this thing.
Kurt Warner. You ready? He's going to take you both down.
Ed's not even mic'd up. This is going to end bad. I'm getting inside.
Here you go. Come on. He's going up. The ball just behind you, man. Did that just turn into an intersection?
That's on the receiver, though. No, no. I tried to get away from these guys. Here we go.
Here you go. They don't know what to do. You've got to beat the ball. You've got to beat the jam. I'm going to beat Bob Woodson off the jam and I'm going to high point it over Ed Reeves. That is what's going to happen here.
I'm not going to jam you, Bob. Here we go. We've got to go. Oh, nice.
Take it, babe. Oh. You did everything. You won. You were interference. That was interference.
That was. On the defense? Absolutely.
How much time do you got left? On the defense? All right. Come on. We've got to make this happen.
Pass interference. Hey, I know how you saw it. This is amazing. Go with the quick out, Rich. Uh-oh. He means business now.
He's coming. Go. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh.
Who are we working? Oh. Yes. Yes. Oh. Yes.
That's it. Woo. The young coverage. Fantastic. The young coverage.
The two hall of famers. By the way. And I can say that. I'm the only host that lays out like that. Normally, I lay out for a sound bug out of football. Welcome back to the Rich Eisen Show Radio Network. I am 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. Week five. Boys in the NFL already kicks off tonight. Bucks Falcons. Some great games ahead on the slate. One team that's on a winning streak right now. How about the Denver Broncos? Have won two games in a row. In at times interesting fashion, I think it's fair to say. Very impressive win down in Tampa.
Last week against the Jets. Pouring rain, which I would imagine is a 40-year-old quarterback. The prospect of playing in just a driving rainstorm. Miserable.
Not as good, right? But as I get older, my willingness to do anything like I stepped out of the hotel this morning, which is about six blocks from here, and I felt a single raindrop. Oh, what hit my shoulder? I don't know exactly what it was, but I was like, do I need to take an Uber because of the hair?
Wow. Because I'm thinking if I have even just a few raindrops on my shoulders, it is going to ruin my entire day. Raindrops. Aaron Rodgers is out there for about five hours between the warm-ups and then playing the game in that driving rainstorm.
I would think. Miserable. Doesn't go over that well. Let's bring in a guy who played in some bad weather in his day.
Pro Football Hall of Famer, Super Bowl MVP Terrell Davis is with us right now on the show. You look good, man. You all right? You're in there. See, Tom, I don't need. I can't talk this day. So, you see how the water would just drip off my head? I don't need to have a hat. I don't need an umbrella. I got an all-weather head. You can't get that hair wet, man. You're very aerodynamic.
You're definitely, yeah, you wick the water away. You watched that game, I'm sure, last week. Is this a running back's dream to watch a team win with 60 passing yards? No, because, I mean, they ran the ball, you see, a game like this, you got to run the ball like 40 times. Like, this is like a 40 carry type of game right here, Tom.
This is, you know, I think, you know, Javonte had it 19 times. I think they, as a team, they probably carried it, I think, maybe in the 30s, but yeah, this is one of those games where it's 40 times you run the ball, you know, 200 yards in this one. But yeah, I mean, you'll take a win any way you can get it, though. You take that win.
You take it 10-9, you take it, you know, sevens a year, it doesn't matter. They came at it with a win. Well, everybody always talks about, you know, you got to hold on to the ball, right? Ball security's big. Anytime you got, whether it's snow, rain, whatever, you see the fumbles. It's a lot easier said than done.
What's the key? You played in bad weather throughout your career. Like, in those conditions, what is the key to making sure that nobody can strip that ball out of your hands? Well, the key is you have to practice it. So at practice, you got to find out what works for you, whether it's gloves or no gloves, whether it's sleeves or no sleeves. I always found, for me, if I had no sleeves, sometimes I would have to take my gloves off because I felt like I had more attack doing it that way. And then you just have to consciously be, you have to subconsciously be aware that in these conditions that they're going for the strip or the chance of fumbling the ball go up when the weather gets bad. So yeah, you got to be aware of that, man. Just squeeze the ball a lot harder. Make sure you're being focused on two hands on it when you go in traffic.
And that normally works. What do you make of these Broncos? Bo Nix, obviously, everybody's going to talk about the 60 passing yards. I think we've seen probably more athletic ability than a lot of people might have guessed we will with Bo Nix. He's doing a lot with his legs in addition to throwing. What do you make of him four games into a rookie career? Just that whole Broncos team as they get sets to take on the Raiders this week. Yeah.
You just said it's four games, right? And I know we all want him to show look like he's the 12th overall pick immediately. We want instant gratification. It's a process.
It really is. And I try not to judge anybody until I see more of a sample size. But I will say this, though, you do watch and start. You want to see moments in a game or throws or something more consistently consistently that looks like that 12th overall pick.
So far, we haven't seen a lot of them. He does play well when they when they kind of go with a more hurried up offense when he's allowed to just react. He seems to play well on that. I think the big thing is that I feel like his teammates and the guys on offense trust him right now while he's back there, and they understand he's still young. So I think they're starting to grow as an offense and they believe in believe in him right now. That's going to we'll see how that goes moving forward. But yeah, I think they like the young man and he seems to be the guy for them. Now we'll see. Short term concerns will be, you know, we haven't really seen him consistently look like that 12th overall pick. But again, it's still early in his career.
I'm also curious. So the Broncos are taking on the Raiders this week. Raiders have a situation going on right now with Devante Adams who made clear in a conversation a couple of days ago with the team that he'd prefer to be traded. We know that Aaron Rodgers, both publicly and privately, has been recruiting him for a long time. You didn't play that long ago. You played like 20 years ago. I feel like, though, this is a new phenomenon, obviously, there wasn't social media.
You didn't have to worry about Mike Shanahan accidentally liking a post on Instagram about your future. But has the mentality, has the power dynamic shifted to somebody who comes from just, again, not that long ago? How do you view the way that those player team relationships have evolved?
It has changed and it's changed the way you said it. When I played, if I had to get a message out, it was probably through my agent or I had to go through somebody in the media. I had to tell somebody in the media and then they would just put it out there. Now if I had anything to say or a message to give to anybody, I can just tweet it.
I can just put it on social media and now it's out there and my feelings and whatever I'm going through are instantly transferred to whatever type of device that I need to put it on and I can just spit it out there real quickly. I think players do recognize now that they do have a bit of leverage when it comes to just complaining about things because they do have followers. They have all these people they can just say, hey, I want to be traded, I want to do whatever.
And now you have all those people who are saying, okay, he wants to be traded, so trade them. It's wild. We always talk about this.
I don't know if I would have been, I don't know how I would have acted back in the day if we had social media. It's a lot, man, it's a lot because you hear a lot of things that you don't want to hear. You don't want to hear and then your family hears it and they tell you about it. So it's definitely a different environment. You have the classic, the cool down period before the media is allowed in the locker room after games because guys need that 15 minutes. Well, guess what? You get ticked off about something, you grab your phone and tweet it.
There's no cool down. Whatever emotions you're feeling, there's no real filter toward it, so that's definitely a part of the dynamic as well. Terrell Davis is our guest here on behalf of Wells Fargo. Terrell is returning to his alma mater for homecoming week, teaming up with Wells Fargo to take part in a content series on financial education targeted toward student athletes.
Tell me more about this endeavor, Terrell. Yeah, so as you mentioned, man, I'm doing this interview now, obviously, but later on tonight I'll be going back up to campus. I will be hosting a conversation with the Wells Fargo executive and the student athletes who will be talking a lot about financial empowerment. This series started a couple of months ago when Rod Robertson, running back for Georgia, we did a series of content series that we kind of kicked things off with back then. And again, it's an awesome conversation we were having with him. And Rod Robertson, in case you didn't know, we went to the same high school, Lincoln High School in San Diego. So I've known him from there. We kind of mentor him in everything in life and so we have been doing some financial education mentoring with him.
So looking forward to seeing him again tonight. And then we'll be talking to the student athletes about the empowerment of NIL. You know, NIL is this latest and greatest where athletes are allowed to sort of profit off their name, the image and likeness. And so how do you navigate that? How do you find, you know, financially be empowered? How do you be responsible?
How do you save? So there's just a lot that goes with that. The Wells Fargo has done a great job of giving back to student athletes. With this program, I have this game plan and it's a lot of great things that's happening right now. And I'm pretty excited about that. I have learned and have knowledge in all facets of life and I feel like one of the things that I enjoy doing is giving back to young people when I have experience and knowledge about something.
So they can either take that and grow from it and not make the same mistakes and that's always been something that I really enjoy doing. All right, I'm going to lean into this for you here, all right, for Wells Fargo for bringing you here, Terrell. I'm curious. I want you to give me your five running backs in the NFL right now that you would take to the bank. All right, for Wells Fargo, who are the five running backs right now, the five guys you would trust more than any other you'd put on the field right now? All right, let's go with, let's go with, let's go with big Derrick Henry. Let's go with Derrick Henry number one and these, and these are not in any particular order.
I'm just being my top five, right? I know, see, I know Chris McCaffrey's out, but I'm going with Christian McCaffrey on my list. I like Alvin Kamara as another one. Let's go with Saquon as the other one who was, who else, I mean, is that five or four, you got four. You can bring, you can bring on one more here. You know, Bijan Robinson's a young guy with a lot of talent though still hasn't had the productivity probably had some fancy football players would like Josh Jacobs, another top running back potentially could be in there.
Mixon's had good start when he's been healthy. We got, we knew we need one more here. I know, I know, one more, one more, one more running back, I'm trying to see you cause you caught me off. Cause I want to see a list. I want to see, I want your knee jerk reaction. Yeah.
All right. We'll give you the top four, top four is top four. So who, who on that list of those Derrick Henry, C-Mac, Kamara, Saquon, who's the most like a young Terrell Davis, if any of them? No, they're very, they all do different skills than me, they definitely have different skills. I always say this, I always say that when you look, if you looked at me as a running back, you wouldn't say like, Hey man, this guy is talented.
Like you wouldn't say anything like that. Cause I didn't, I didn't possess those types of skills where you look at it like you live at, look at Alvin Kamara and you think, man, he just, he runs like a gazelle and it was got great stop, uh, you know, stop start abilities. You know, he's fast, Derrick Henry's big powerful, like they have all these different qualities where I was just a football player masquerading as a, as a running back, man, that was it. I was good football player masquerading. That's a fact.
Those Macs got a lot, a lot of good skills that I don't, that I wish I possessed. All right. Last question for you, Terrell. And I think this is the most important question of the interview back in the nineties. Uh, when at the time Terrell Owens got to San Francisco, he decided that he wanted to be Terrell and pronounced the first syllable of the name. So for years throughout history, it was always Terrell. Everybody was Terrell. Nobody saw your name and had any question about how to pronounce it. All of a sudden there's a Terrell Owens. Who's also a really good NFL player. Did you ever confront him about messing up the pronunciation that people might have in their heads when they see your name forever?
How did you, how do you feel about it? Well, I know he's from Alabama, right? Yep. And I think there's a, I always thought it was a Southern thing because there's a Terrell Texas that spelled the same way. And I always thought that that's the way they pronounced it in the South. So I had no, I had no beef with him. I had no beef. I actually, I actually liked the fact that his name was pronounced differently, but you said that he came up to the league as Terrell.
Well ever. He let everybody call him Terrell. We see that sometimes where guys don't, until you have some success, you just let everybody say it wrong. And then you're like, Hey, I'm a pro bowler. Now you're going to call me the right name. That's the difference. The difference is he didn't tell you that you started calling Terrell Owens.
And he just finally said, you know what, I'm tired of this. A good player called me by my, my real name. So I respect that.
No, I never warned him. No, he can say Terrell. I like that. He can be Terrell. Terrell. Terrell. Thank you very much.
He almost just did it right there. That's that's how deep this thing goes. Thanks a lot for being here, man. Enjoy the, the Wells Fargo.
Always awesome talking to you. Good to see you, Tom. It is Terrell Davis with a mile high salute for all of us right there.
This is a true story. So we're at the, the Reese's senior bowl last year on the sideline reporter. It was the anniversary game, I believe it was the 75th anniversary game.
So they brought back a lot of the legends of the game. And so there was like, Hey, you know, Tom, can you go interview a few of these guys as they're coming off the field at various points, you know? And so one of them was Terrell Owens. So he comes up and they're in the middle of some thing where they're like, I don't know if there was a different segment or we're doing plays, but he's waiting and I'm sitting there going, I know this is probably not a guy that we want to keep waiting a long time, but it was like, then it was, they go to break at the end of the drive and now we're waiting around and I don't know if somebody said Terrell or if it was just something in his head, but I hear him, I get the one minute back in my ear.
I'm like, all right, man, it's one minute back. And he goes, uh huh. And I hear him under his breath, just go Terrell. And I don't know if that was cause he heard somebody else say Terrell near him because he was just planting the seed one more time, but there is still something there. He's Terrell Owens. Every time I see, every time I see, is it AJ Terrell or AJ Terrell? Is it Terrell Owens? Is it Terrell Davis, Terrell Davis? Every time I'm very confident that I know for NFL players, but at times you have like a new player comes in the league, I'm always like, let's take a step back here.
How are we doing? It would not exist without Terrell Owens. Is there another Terrell? Do we have another Terrell in sports in general? I'm pretty sure it's all Terrell. I don't. There's got to be.
I can't pick one off the top of the dome. I was actually thinking, cause you know, we had Keegan-Michael Key here a couple of weeks ago doing, doing the bit with the names and I was trying to think, how would he pronounce your name, Tom? And I'm thinking, would it be like 2M Palacero or something like, you know what I mean? It'd probably be like any of the number of ways I've been introduced over the years on various radio programs, TV shows, and I think, I listen, I take no offense to it because there's plenty of times I get 10 seconds to the segment, I'm like, oh crap, how do we, we do it on this show. Yeah. There's some, you know, whatever, some writer or something that I haven't talked to before, I'm like, what, what is the pronunciation correctly here? Oh yeah.
But every now and then it's, it's hard to come back though. You start a radio interview and you know, we all have some level of ego to us, right? Sure. And so you like, you go on the show and you're like, all right, I'm here, I'm going to deliver, you know, some really, they want me on cause I'm giving them some really information, really good information inside. They're like, all right, Tom Pelarusso's up here.
What's, what's going on? You're just like, do you have any idea? It's, I'm not going to pull it, don't you know who I am, but it's like, how am I on your show? Well, if you don't know who I am, why am I on the show? And people I really like, Tom Pelarusso, no, that's close, very close. Not actually my name. Again, I don't try to have like an ego about it. It's just more like, well, how am I on the show?
If you don't have an idea, who am I going to be? We play that clip too in the TV breaks of, uh, of John C. Reilly and, and Will Ferrell who are here. Will Ferrell, not Will Ferrell, right? There you go.
All right. There's a bunch of Ferrell. There's a bunch of Ferrell. It's spelled the same though, right? As a first name too, if you got, right. It's Ferrell.
Ferrell. Yeah. But yeah, exactly. Go on.
It's like, if you don't, if you should know the person's name, but you're not quite positive and you're just like, you, what's up, man? Yo bro, good to see you. Okay. He was like, there he is. Yeah.
Like the tiger meme, like big dog. Like at least do that even on a show. Do you ever take a shot? Like what's the percentage in your mind where you're willing to run the risk that you're wrong because I'm, I'm at this point, I gotta be a hundred percent sure.
I I'll sometimes let it fly like 99%, but I might sort of mumble the name the first time. Yeah. What's up, Mark? That's it. Yeah.
I'm remembering names. It's just something I've, I don't know why, but there are times where I'm not sure. I'm like, Hey, what's up, man, how you doing dog?
I got to say, and I got, I'm just banking that they're not listening. I do that with basically all of my neighbors where it's just like, Hey, good to see you. Good morning.
Oh, absolutely. And they say, Hey Chris, good to see you. Have a great day. And I'm just like, you too, brother. Good to see you. Have a great day.
See you out there. This is funny, Tom, because I started my neighbors. I started doing this back in the day when I couldn't remember someone's name, just me and my friends. We just started calling everybody, Joe, like, what's up Joe?
And that, and to this day, I'll just like, I remember I said that to rich one day and he kind of looked at me. I just like, I just called people Joe and that's how I would address you. Sometimes I'll go, thanks G like I'll just, I'll just call him a G, but then they think you think his name is George or something or I just, you know, I'm calling him a gangster or something, you know, I guess what's the deepest into a conversation you're willing to get while still playing 20 questions to figure out the persons who the person is much less their name. And they obviously know you.
So like, all right, take the senior bowl. For instance, every, every agent in the world is down there and you're on the streets of Mobile, Alabama may or may not have been, been in the Haberdasher for a drink or three. And somebody will come up who there'll be people who come up to me who I absolutely have no clue. There is nothing about them. They're not wearing any logo, clothing. They don't have a familiar face and be like, Tom, what's going on to understand why that is. Well, right. No, I get that.
I get the different dynamics. They see me every day. It's like when you see people on Facebook or when you see your people on Facebook, you're like, Hey, how are your kids doing? It's like, I haven't seen you in 20 years.
You don't know about my kids. Right. Oh, right.
Cause I post my entire life on social media because that's how I try to feel good about my life. But I will, I will have lengthy conversations where I'm like, Hey, so what's going on? Yeah. Oh yeah.
No, totally. So like, what's, you know, what's going on with your, your guys here is like you try to drill it down. I've gotten 15 questions into a conversation before, before I went, Oh, Oh, I got it now.
Justin, it's you. There are tons of times of that, but if I'm not, if I'm not a hundred percent though, it's like, it's not, it's just not worth it. It's not worth the risk. Cause then they're like, Oh, but then you gotta have to, you kind of have to have the face and the eyes going. So they're convinced that, you know, who they are. You don't want to out yourself with your facial expressions.
There's definitely an aspect of that too. How long do you go? If someone gets your name wrong, how many opportunities do you give them? If they say your name wrong, they look at you right dead in the eyes and they go, Mike, what's happening. I get that a lot just because of initials. So I'm always usually cool if somebody like gives me like, sometimes what are you, what is TJ stand for? To jiggy.
Everybody knows that. What is your actual name? To jiggy. You're not going to tell us your name now. Tell nobody.
Nothing, man. Anybody who's searching public records on TJ. It's right there on my price is right sticker. It's Temujin. It is.
I'm sorry. Temujin. Temujin.
That's my man right there. See? And now next time when he asked me, when I see you next Tuesday and you go, what's my name?
And I'll go, what's up? See? Yeah. No one could pronounce it when I was little. So we went with TJ.
And that's a logical reason to do it, right? Is you, you have a name. My oldest daughter's name is Tegan, but it's spelled T E G A N. So not only can you have a mistake on the spelling, but you get a lot of Tegan, right? And then it's Tegan should be T there's nobody named Tegan.
Yeah. But then Tegan a lot of times is T E A G A N. Oh, for me, I don't have, I mean, everybody knows it's Tom. Tom. I thought, I thought back in the day, like when, when Tom Brenneman was coming up, you know, at Fox and he had the T H O M. There was part of me that was going, should I like spell Tom with two M's? I would have.
Just to disambiguate. I had a roommate. I was in a three person dorm, my freshman year of college, where nobody knows anybody right. Of course.
At Boston college. We'll have a head coach, Bill O'Brien coming on a little bit here, but I lived one of the two guys I lived with was named Tom. Oh, so you had two Toms and a trip in one three man thing, two P's or one P on trip. One P on trip.
You're in a triple with the guy named Tom, Tom and trip. That's correct. Wow. Okay. So Tom got ejected from the room after like two days, cause he was in ROTC and woke up at 4 AM blasting Romstein and doing a sit-ups on the floor. That was the end. And you're like, bro, what are we doing? We traded him for a guy named Chris down the hall, which did help the whole, the whole initial thing. How does dorm room transfer and trading? I believe it was Tripp's mom who went, this guy's a little, there's something not quite right here.
We need to, we need to trade them out for somebody down the hall. Okay. And his mom named was Karen ironically enough.
Oh, she was, yeah, she was in charge. I'm kidding. Same thing. Freshman year at Syracuse, we knew about eight different Chris's. So everyone had, it was, there was like VA Chris and Buffalo Chris and everyone had kind of a, a tag to their name.
Right. And then the college is also an easy, it's fertile ground for nicknames too, right? Like everybody just, you know, and a friend we, I just called Beaker once and then that became his name forever. And he looked a lot like Beaker. That's how it works. It was a good, it was a solid, it was a solid, he went his Beaker from Sesame street for Halloween once.
Why wouldn't be? But it's like, once you say that it's just like, that's him. That's your name. One kid who, uh, refunded some of his, uh, Bush lights on a Friday night got called boots for four years. It's terrible when you get a nickname when you're like 11 and then somehow that sticks with you. We had a kid, we used to call toe jam like, and uh, we didn't know that was bad when we were 12.
But you get to be 15. It's like, Oh, sorry about that. The Texans wide receiver, Nathaniel Dell got nicknamed tank when he was like two years old because he had an enormous head. I've seen a photo.
I got his, his, uh, his agent or his parents sent me a photo of him. Big head, big head. Definitely a big head. Now he's like a small guy. He's like five, 10, five, eight, five, eight, 160 pounds.
And now when your tank is tank, it's like you call the big guy tiny. Yeah. Right. So it's memorable, but not necessarily fitting, but it's all because he had an enormous head when he was a small child. I love it. Where is A.A. Ron right now?
Exactly. Texans, big game this weekend, Texans and bills. It is Stefan Diggs going against his old team. Let's get into that after this cause Diggs talked about it this week, Josh Allen talked about it. One, just one of the revenge games we've got in the NFL. So let's take a quick break here.
More on week five in the NFL, which kicks off tonight right after this on the Rich Eisen List show. Let's talk Omaha Steaks, people. I love grilling steaks at home and so does Susie. We just love steaks in our household. We also love going to steak houses, nothing like it. You walk in the door, you smell the smell of steaks from the kitchen.
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Last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. Good to see you gentlemen right here. Very much. Very much. Good to see you too, Rich. Yeah, right back at you. Great to see everyone.
Not just you, Rich. I have a friend who when he sees someone coming towards him like in a room that he's supposed to know, he can tell, I'm supposed to know this person, but I don't, he goes, there he is. There he is. How are you as a ref though? Strictly what's called an AR, assistant referee. So I'm the guy who runs on the sideline with the flag.
I thought AR meant ****hole ref. The shorts are pretty short too. I mean, they're stocked in length right there. Look at that ample thigh. That's a ham hock right there.
Look at that. That's ready for market. You might want to smoke that for a couple of days. You guys want a slice?
Put some hickory around it. You know what I would genuinely love for you as a second career if you ever decided you want a second career? You might finally be a broadcaster, be someone who's calling color, right? Rich, maybe you could give me a break.
I mean, that would boost ratings for whatever sport you were talking about. What if I took over the Rich Eisen show? Ron Burgundy did help announce the national curling finals in Ottawa, Canada, and they had all these ads for Tim Horton's coffee, which is a big coffee chain for our Canadian listeners. And I just kept saying all the signage, I'm like, who the hell is Tim Horton?
Who does he think he is? Is there any possibility that we see a Step Brothers sequel? We haven't never talked about this face to face in public. No, we haven't.
Let's break some ground here. Are we going to do Step Brothers 2? I don't think so. Yeah.
I don't think it's going to happen either. That's what I thought. Yeah.
Put up the Photoshop anyway. Oh, you make sense in that world somehow, Rich. Welcome back to the Rich Eisen show just got done with talking with Terrell Davis and then having the lengthy, unprompted, unnecessary discussion about pronunciation of names. Broncos take on the Raiders this week. We'll get to Devante Adams at the top of the next hour. There's a lot of layers of this that I want to peel back because we're in a, this is one of those stories that's like, it's, it's isolated because we're a month out from the trade deadline. It's the only big name that's like in an active trade scenario. And so we are 700 different conflicting reports deep already over the past several days of what's actually happening. What's actually possible.
I will try my best to unpack it at the top of the next hour. Bill O'Brien also going to join us here shortly. Head football coach, Boston college, obviously won a lot of games in the NFL as well, but let's start here talking about week five in the NFL and specifically it builds Texan's game that I think when the schedule came out, the NFL did a good job and a very intentional job mind you of front-loading a lot of these interesting matchups in the season. If you notice, like we've gotten a lot of really good games and the notable storylines early in the season that is driven in part by the fact that it's an election year. You want to have those marquee matchups upfront because history suggests that in the early portions of the season, people might be turning over to a debate. They might be turning to watch political coverage and other things.
The TV ratings would indicate that that has been successful, that they have been very successful in terms of being able to push those games upfront. Bill's Texans is definitely one of those in week five, not just because you've got two of the top teams or at least two of the teams that are viewed as AFC contenders as two of the threats to the Kansas city chiefs. Bill's coming off of a not great performance in week four against the Ravens. Texans bounced back last week after a not great performance that I was at in week three in Minnesota, where they just, they looked disjointed on both sides of the ball.
Sometimes there's those games you run into a buzzsaw, it all gets away from you. That was one of those types of games. But this is also notable because this is Stefan Diggs going up against the Bills. And I talked to Diggs before that game in Minnesota. He was all smiles before the game, even after they got absolutely boat raced by Minnesota.
He was still all smiles after the game saying hi to support people and former teammates and people he knew. And I'm not saying that he won't be that way this week, but I know Stefan Diggs well enough to know there's something extra for him on Sunday. He's not even, I mean, let's be fair. He's not even the top threat, the number one guy that teams are fearing on his own receiving core right now, that's Nikko Collins. Is there a quieter superstar in the NFL than Nikko Collins? I couldn't tell you, I've never heard his voice. No idea what he sounds like. I talked to him on the phone before the week three game against Minnesota, very nice, unassuming, smart dude. Could have been anyone. You don't know what he sounds like.
That's actually a great point. I was speaking to Pico Collins, his stunt double, who gave me a bunch of quotes that I may or may not have used. But with Nikko Collins, we had Jalen Petrie on the insiders yesterday and he made the point he's like, sometimes like those long strides are deceiving, he's actually faster than you think. There might be something to that where you don't think of Nikko Collins as a burner, but you watch him play and he can make things happen all over the field. Diggs, while still a really good player, he's still a difference maker on a team, but realistically, he's probably a two at this stage in his career and certainly on his own team. But Diggs practices so hard, he puts so much into it. I would anticipate this is a week where Stefan Diggs wants to come out and absolutely have a vintage Stefan Diggs game.
And I would anticipate if the Texans coaching staff, which is really smart, led by D'Amico Ryans and Bobby Slowik, they're going to find ways to make sure that Diggs is involved in this game. I go back to 2010 when that was the season, as you remember well, Brockman, that the Patriots traded Randy Moss to the Vikings. That trade happened right about now. Get your 84 jerseys out. It was.
Get your 84 jerseys out. I was at that press conference. That was the highlight of the Randy Moss return. Yeah, he was terrible. And then it ended up going to the Titans later that year, right? He did end up, yes. After he got released by the Vikings, he ended up on the Titans.
But so they traded him. It was late September, early October. It was right about this time of year.
He has that press conference. First game was a Monday night game against the Jets in which that was when there was a bunch of stuff coming out about Brett Favre and various photos that he may or may not have sent to a Jets employee. That was a big tabloid story that week. It was the game was delayed. It was the same week. Lightning delayed the game for a long period of time. The very first play was a Randy Moss end around and he threw it to Favre, except Favre wasn't an eligible receiver on the play and it got called back.
This was like, this whole thing was teetering. So we get to, I think it was week eight. It was a Vikings Patriots game and they go, so this is Moss going back like 24 days or so after he got traded.
And you can correct me, Brockman, if I'm wrong on any of the timeline here. So they go back. It was week eight.
Yes. Week eight. I'm at that game in Foxboro and it's, you know, listen, this is, this is Randy going back. He had been telling the coaching staff all week, Hey, this is what Belichick's going to do to me.
Here's how we can get around it. So Belichick, knowing that he can create a ticking time bomb on the Vikings sideline, even though this is not the Randy Moss of 2007, at this point, this was a Randy Moss. He wanted a new contract. He publicly said that early in the season, Bill said, thank you very much. We're going to move you to Minnesota, which only traded for him because they lost Sidney Rice in training camp that year. So it's Moss going back.
This is obviously a big deal because he respects Bill so much. He wants to show out. Bill puts a safety over the top of him the entire game. And when I say safety over the top, I'm not talking just like strict cover two. I'm talking about the corner is here and the safety is here and they are doubling him every snap. And sure enough, I want to say he had like one or two catches in that game.
He had one catch for eight yards, one catch for eight yards in that game. And sure enough, Randy's losing it on the sideline. He walks into the locker room and basically tells the owners like, you got to get rid of these coaches.
They don't listen to me. Goes to the heat. We're in the locker room.
Okay. So we're all gathered around. Do you know that that's what Randy told the coaching staff that Bill was going to do? He told the coaches during the week, like, this is like how I think they're going to approach me.
Here's some ways we can get around it. We're going to get me the football. But Bill doubled him the entire game. Wasn't concerned about anybody else on the field. So we're all gathered around Randy's locker. Randy would normally, if he was going to talk, which wasn't always a given, he would talk at his locker after the game. And he turns to Tom West, long time Vikings PR guy goes, Tom, I'm going to the podium. And Tom West, who doesn't react to much, just kind of went like this and was like, okay, so we all go into the podium. Moss goes to the podium and delivers a soliloquy about how much he loves Bill Belichick. And he's the greatest coach of all time. Then this is the same week he got fined for not talking to the media.
So we say in something along the lines of what's, you know, 25 grand, you know, which I don't really care. I talked to who I want to talk to, but he basically just says like, this guy's a way better coach than our coaches. Didn't get on the plane back with the team. The next day, Brad Childress cuts him, which Chilly told me years later was like his number one regret because he won a lot of games. Brad Childress won a lot of games over his five years in Minnesota, but he didn't tell the Wilfs, the owners before cutting Randy Moss. That did not go over well.
And Brad got fired about a month later. But all this is to say, whatever might be said, let's hear for a second here. Let's start with CJ Stroud. Here's what he had to say about Stefan Diggs going against his old team. I think he got a bad rap, you know, just by the media and by people, but he's not been nothing but just amazing to this team and to his teammates. He's helped me out a ton.
And as you can see, we're clicking more and more every game. So, you know, I'm very happy for him and I'm glad that, you know, he's finally, you know, having fun playing the game and, you know, doing what he loves to do because he loves football a lot. So, you know, just really, really happy to be, you know, a part of his journey and like just being around him. It has been real awesome.
Okay. And then Stefan Diggs also talked at his locker, not at the podium, talked at his locker this week. He's never one to kind of feed in the public remarks, but here's, here's what Stefan Diggs had to say about this match. Obviously, when you go to a new team, this is my third time or second time going to a new team. So, you don't never know what to expect and what kind of guys you'll be around. But obviously I have a little bit of a rapport with CJ prior to, and it's easy to get a bad rap. You know, word travels fast, but you know, when you get to a place and people get to know you, they kind of get to engage you for their own personal and their interaction with you and things usually turn the corner when I get somewhere else.
It's usually be smiles and a lot of positive stuff. So, I just take it with a grain of salt. I got big shoulders.
I can take it. Stefan Diggs got a lot of balls. He gets targeted a lot, had a lot of productivity in Buffalo.
Whatever he's smiling and saying right there, I am just telling you, it is burning deep down inside him. This is a game that matters even more than all the other ones do to that guy right there. And we'll see, we'll see how the Bills try to defend him here. Because again, if you're breaking down, you know, every practice right in the NFL, like you put the red jerseys on with a lot of teams use that with the number of the player you're playing.
Okay. I would say most teams are going to have that red jersey on the guy from the scout team playing Nico Collins. That's kind of where it starts. Joe Mixon's plan, quite possibly because of how they're using him in the run in the pass game. He's been out the last couple of games with an ankle.
We'll see whether he potentially can progress and play on Sunday. That's probably the next guy that you're putting it on. And then it's, and then it's Diggs, you know that Sean McDermott is going to have a plan for how they're going to handle this guy. You know that they're going to be conscientious of the fact that you might, and again, the Texans are going to play to win this game. That's what matters here, but you might in these situations, just knowing the juice it will give the digs, the juice it will give to the team.
You might try to find a way to scheme something up and make sure that you get that guy going. He's not, I don't believe going to be a Randy Moss level ticking time bomb. I do think that this game is going to matter a whole lot to Stefan Diggs, because basically whether they said it or not, they opted for, we can get by with, you know, Khalil Shakir and we'll draft one and we'll throw the ball Dalton Kincaid and we'll sign Mack Hollins and Marquess Valdes Gantley. We think that we can have success doing this first three weeks of the season sure looked like they were working right last week. Not quite as good, not so much, but this is going to be a fun game to watch in week five. I'll be fun to see what happens with Devante Adams in the coming days here.
Let's dive deep in the Adam situation right after this on the Rich Eisen show. This is a mini meditation guided by Bombas. Repeat after me. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I'm comfy. I have zero blisters on my toes. Blisters. And that's because I wear Bombas, the softest socks, underwear, and T-shirts that give back. you
