Andy McCullough: The Padres Are A Complete Team

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Not available in all states. Lion's Safety, Kirby Joseph. Host of the Business of Sports Podcast, Andrew Brand. Coming up, Senior Writer for The Athletic, Andy McCullough. And now, sitting in for Rich, it's Tom Pelissero. Final hour of this Rich Eisen-less edition of the Rich Eisen Show, though I think he talked more than me in hour two. Live from London, he's got the Jets and Vikings game early Sunday morning on NFL Network.

I'm actually here through Tuesday. Is that going to be enough time for us to get resolution on the Devante Adams situation? I would note that in the past few minutes we've now reached the Devante Adams posting cryptic things on his Instagram portion of the program. I love it.

This is the precursor, right, to every situation. Devante Adams, I would think, I would have thought if we were going to escape without this, Devante Adams would be the type of guy, he's a little bit older, he's a very smart dude, he's not somebody who craves constant attention, just does the occasional Taco Bell commercial. Other than that, he's got one in his house. He goes about his business, he just, he does his thing, but he posted a photo of Edgar Allen Poe, which inevitably is going to lead to, you know, a solid 24 hours of Devante Adams to the Ravens speculation. I don't believe that that is something that's happening right now. Now, would the Ravens call? Ravens always call. I mean, they better have, yeah, yeah, they called. Eric DeCosta's in on a lot of these things.

He's on it. We'll get to some more injury updates around the NFL a little bit later on. I'm sure we'll talk about Devante Adams more as well, but right now I want to turn it back to last night and what happened at halftime with the Falcons Buccaneers game. Pete Alonso with one of, I would say the greatest, most memorable home runs already in recent MLB playoff history. And for more on that, let's bring in senior writer for the athletic covering major league baseball. Andy McCullough is with us on the show right now. Andy, you, you consume, you, you live baseball far more than I do since 90% of my brain is always on football right now, but take me through in your mind, the Pete Alonso home run, the magnitude of that on that stage for the New York Mets last night. Yeah, I do just want to say it's possible that Devante Adams is just a huge Edgar Allen po head and he's actually referencing like death.

He's the red death and he's going to the chiefs. So just put that out there. Yeah. So last night I'm here in Los Angeles watching, preparing to cover the Dodgers Padres. And I was watching in my hotel room, the, you know, the Brewers Mets game.

And when Alonso hit the home run, I sort of let out like a very embarrassing kind of Yelp sound that I don't want to replicate, you know, in this program. But it was a huge moment for the Mets, for Alonso, you know, it's good. Like baseball has made a big deal about the wildcard series.

There's a lot of folks within the game who have some issues with it. But I think in terms of like an entertainment product, you know, in terms of like in, like in a sort of vacuum, it's made some very, very exciting stuff. And so, yeah, it's created a ton of excitement around the Mets who've been playing great baseball for several months. And, you know, now they roll into Philadelphia to face a team that, you know, a lot of prognosticators view as the kind of favorites to win the World Series.

So it should be a fun, fun week. I mentioned this at the top of the show. I believe that that home run last night, in terms of like, you know, the big, the big playoff type home runs, the ratio of immediate celebration to distance by which that cleared the fence, makes me, it made me a little nervous. Like every angle I saw, like the shot down the fence where you see, I think it's over by like a couple of feet. It's not like he hit this thing into the upper deck, but the moment he hits it, there's this guttural roar that he lets out. He's walking down to first base holding the bat.

Yeah, you got to understand Pete Alonso's hit a lot of home runs. He knows what they look like. So you can see like as soon as he makes contact, he's like yelling, yes. Because he knows like that's a home run.

It doesn't matter what it looks like to the naked eye. Pete Alonso understands what a home run looks like. And so his, his celebration was understandable, I guess. So what do you make of the next series? It's Mets, Phillies teams know each other well here. What are the Mets hopes hinge on in that series? I think like you can look at it one of two ways, right?

You can be romantic about it, you can be rational. And the romantic sort of view is that the Mets are a team of destiny. They've been playing excellent baseball for a while. They clearly have this sort of vibes based success that is like kind of hard to replicate, but it's also very real. Just you see the way they've come back against, you know, the Braves in that double header in game one, you know, last night, like they clearly like feed off one another and seem like a very tough team to beat from a rational perspective. They've also expended a ton of like emotional energy, a ton of like literal energy in playing these games that use their bullpen, you know, a lot.

And they're going to come into Philadelphia at a bit of a deficit. So there's two ways to look at it. You understand why, you know, the team sort of look at it from a rational perspective, but the romantic one is a lot more fun, I would say. I sometimes struggle to describe how influencers make a living, like what, what makes them. I'm thinking vibes based success is the best description I've ever heard for that entire coterie of people.

All right, let's flip it over to the other side here. The Tigers are maybe the hottest team in all of baseball down the stretch here. They've certainly got their work cut out against an opponent that they know really well in Cleveland starting this weekend. Is this, is this Tiger's team equipped to continue this run or are they eventually going to kind of run into a reality check of their own?

I mean, who knows? Like, look, they, they are better suited to win a short series and a long series. That's for sure. Just because their pitching is like, you know, AJ Hinch made no secret about it. When he talked about their, what they were going to do against the Astros is they're going to use Tarek Scubel in game one. You know, Scubel's a presumptive Cy Young Award winner.

He's really, really good. And then they were going to do, as he called it, like pitching chaos from there. They're just going to run bullpen games and all that sort of stuff.

And so logic would dictate that they're going to run out at some point, both in terms of just, you know, their relief arms getting overutilized. And then also the fact that their offense is not exactly, you know, the 27 Yankees. I think they were 29th in the majors and on base percentage this year. They don't have a player who hit more than 25 home runs.

You know, they don't really have offensive stars. At the same time, though, like you start, like you start playing baseball and weird things can happen. And they are also having, I would say vibes based success. And so, you know, in a short series, you know, a lot of things can bounce their way, I would say. So, you know, we look at that playoff bracket again. I'm sure we can show it.

All I can't get past here is the fact that, yes, there's a lot of fun stories. There's the hot teams like the Tigers. There's some up and coming teams. I struggle to find the scenario. Listen, baseball is a weird sport.

Things happen. A lot of it's matchup based. What if anything, though, stops us from having chalk here and it's Dodgers, Yankees and the World Series? Well, I mean, the Dodgers got to get through San Diego, which is going to be a real challenge. I mean, the Padres are a very, very complete team.

They don't have a lot of notable flaws. They have star power of their own. And, you know, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado are like a sort of like high octane back of the bullpen that can really shorten games. And so, you know, like and the Dodgers also, they have some real issues with their pitching. They've dealt with a ton of injuries.

You know, Clayton Kershaw won't be available. You know, they had Tyler Glasnow go down. They had a bunch of younger players get hurt. You know, so many younger pitchers got hurt this year that they're going to have to do like an overhaul of their pitching development program, they've said, this winter. And so, you know, they have a lot of things going against them. They also employ Shohei Ohtani.

And that really, really helps. In general, teams should try and, you know, employ Shohei Ohtani. That's a good sort of blueprint as starting a baseball team, except for the Angels, unfortunately.

But either way, like, so, yeah, they have a I think they have a much tougher path. The Dodgers do than the Yankees, who, you know, the Yankees are facing three teams who three teams left in the field who I think they're clearly better than. Whereas the Dodgers, you know, some folks might say that they're the third team, you know, behind the Phillies and the Padres. Andy, do you like this new format with the three game wildcard and the five game division? Because it kind of turns the whole postseason into a crapshoot, you know, like we saw last year with Texas and Arizona making it.

And, you know, in years past, you know, the Braves and Dodgers not getting out of the first round. Are you in favor of this? Do you like it? Is it good for the sport? Good for the sport. I don't know.

That's like sort of above my pay grade. The sports doing fine. They make billions of dollars. I would say like from an intellectual perspective, I dislike it because I think you should reward teams for, you know, like trying to win as many games as possible and not just trying to get in to the tournament, you know, not like aiming for 87 wins because that's all you need. I think it's better in general for like competitive balance when teams are trying to win 100 games rather than 88. But at the same time, like it's fun to watch baseball games that have meaning. It's fun to watch, you know, elimination baseball. And so like I think in general it like it kind of slows down the trade deadline. It makes teams a little bit less interested in spending in free agency.

You know, it allows a risk averse injury or industry to, you know, continue to avoid risk. But Pete Alonso's home run was pretty fun. Yeah, but it's just, you know, it seems like the whole deal is get hot late, sneak in and then kind of ride that momentum to the championship series or the World Series. Yeah, I mean, that is what happened last year. There were two wildcard teams in there, you know, the year before the Houston Astros were the best team in the American League and they basically blitzed their way through. And so I do think in general that the more teams you add to the tournament, the more chaos there is and the less value is placed on the regular season.

The league clearly feels that getting that postseason money and building up the tournament as a, you know, something closer to, you know, like kind of a chaos engine is better for business than, you know, rewarding teams for trying to win 100 games. And, you know, over the course of the long season. Yeah, we mentioned it earlier, too. I think it's hilarious that the Central Division in the American League has three of the final eight and then also the worst team of all time.

Like what a balance. I said this the other day. I said this the other day. Maybe the White Sox got a raw deal.

Maybe they were actually pretty good running up against juggernauts. All right, Andy. So last thing for you here, you know, prognosticate this out for me. How do you see the rest of this thing going? You're best guess. I believe you picked the Astros to win it. So we'll set that part aside. Give me a new I'm giving you a de novo attempt at this.

Start over from scratch. How does the rest of this postseason play out? Yeah, the Astros are a lock, according to my picks from three days ago.

I don't know. Everyone is picking the Phillies. That's kind of been like the default pick, which has surprised me a little bit.

I was I just because they kind of played not great down the stretch. No one's picking the Dodgers, even though they had the best record. I like I don't know. I'll pick the Yankees. Why not? Whatever. Yankees. I live in New York.

I won't have to travel. That was the best analysis I've ever heard for a pick. I like it. I like the pure honesty of nobody knows this is all screwed up and some weird stuff's going to happen. I felt very confident like five days ago that the Astros were going to win the pennant and they're out. So what's the point of, I don't know, Yankees?

That'd be different. Andy, thank you very much. Enjoy the rest of this postseason. I appreciate you being here. Thanks so much for having me.

That is Andy McCullough from the athletic. I do appreciate the honesty. Whatever. Ah, Yankees.

Why not? It has turned into that though. The last few seasons with this new, you know, three game wildcard, it's just kind of a toss. I mean, last year, I don't think either team won 90 games, Texas or Arizona. And that ended up being a fun entertaining world series, but not exactly, you know, two powerhouse juggernaut blue buds.

You know, I know everyone's at Fox is rooting for Dodgers, Yankees, but like the chances of that happening are kind of small now with the way the format is. Well, the entire baseball industry, major league baseball is driven for now off broadcasting rights, which drives all your revenue because it's individual deals. I know that they've talked about how do you make this more of a national sport and be able to kind of reconfigure that aspect of things. But it's also about playing a crap ton of games and selling the most hot dogs and the most $14 beers that you possibly can, right?

Like that's, that's the foundation of it. So from an intellectual standpoint, to borrow Andy's phrase, I would say just the regular season is way too long, way too long. And you could clearly have an even longer and more robust playoffs if you shorten the schedule back down to let's say 144 games and simply had more teams that got into the tournament. Like the idea that we're degrading the major league baseball season.

It's true. You're absolutely are degrading the value of the regular season, but it's all about having the most teams relevant for the longest amount of time possible, which is why the NFL went to 14 playoff teams was, well, that keeps this many more teams alive into December. Whereas before it, same thing with extending the season to 17 games, you have that much more, we don't, we don't know what's going to go on in the NFL. We're four games into this thing. And some of the teams after two weeks, you were talking about my goodness, the saints look like they're going to beat everybody. And then they lose a couple of games and you see teams that start out really bad. The Ravens 0-2 if they lose to Dallas, they're done.

And now they're two and two and it's are the Ravens the best team in all of football. Like that's, that's kind of the unknown baseball. It's just, it's so long. It takes up so much time during the summer, but that's also the point. It's the same reason that the entire idea of like speeding up the game, like I get it, it's more watchable, but if I'm in the ballpark, I want to have time to go to the bathroom and get a second drink.

I don't want the game to be two hours and 12 minutes. It's like, they're pulled in both directions here of the sport is inherently, it's something that you can have on in the background for a long time. And it passes time in the summer, but then yes, to the extent that you get excited about teams and then some team that just gets hot and wins 15 of their last 20 in the regular season gets in and starts mowing people down. Yeah, it does. Absolutely.

Yeah. The new, the new clock rules are great for watching it on TV, but if you go to the game, it does noticeably go by a lot faster and you find yourself kind of missing things even when you're sitting in your seat. It would be interesting though, to your point to go down to 144 games, but then have all three playoffs rounds go seven games. Like have, have the wildcard round be a best of seven, have the division round be a best of seven. You'd be more apt, I think, to have the best teams ultimately play in the world series. And it would be less of a toss up on just, just the hot team at the hot moment. Well, if I'm not mistaken, didn't, hasn't the NBA played with that through the years of the first five versus seven games to do five back in the day. And now every round is seven. Right.

So, I mean, that's, that's a fundamental difference to it. The playoffs take two and a half months, but you know, you can't have that in major league baseball, I guess, but you absolutely could. Let's say, let's say you step back. We're going down to 144 game regular season of baseball again.

Okay. You're carving 18 games off basically three weeks of the season, but you have 16 teams get into the playoffs and it's just a complete free for all. You could sell the rights to all those games. You can make it more of a national sport.

Probably make more money. I mean, the NBA, 16 teams get in out of 30. Out of 30, right.

More than that. Well, now NHL 16 teams get in. 2020 make it because of the, the, the play in now. The play in game.

In the NBA. That's the thing. Like it's, you know, the NFL still has the most exclusive. It's only 14 out of 32. It's still a lower percentage. And it used to be 12. Right.

It's still the lowest percentage in all of it. Speaking of expanding the, the regular season or contracting it in the case of baseball, uh, I got some ideas. We're, we're headed to London, right? Rich is literally there. I'm going to be there in spirit. I'll be on the pregame show at 4 AM on Sunday, kicking off another London series of games.

Obviously they went to Brazil this year. There's been a lot of talk about, could you eventually put a team in London? Could you put a whole division in Europe? I got another idea.

If we go to 18 games, I've got some thoughts on exactly how you could reconfigure the schedule for competitive equity and also for every team to play internationally every year, I will explain my international extravaganza proposal right after this also some injury updates around the NFL that's coming up next. And we will read mask of the red death on the other side of this break on the rich eyes and show the Raven. This episode is brought to you by progressive insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game, shifting a little money here, a little there and hoping it all works out? Well, with the name, your price tool from progressive, you can be a better budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill too. You tell progressive what you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll help you find options within your budget.

Try it today at progressive.com progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law, not available in all States. Let's talk LinkedIn people and small business owning. I'm a small business owner.

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That's why you got to use them post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Eisen that's linkedin.com slash eyes and a post your job for free terms and conditions apply. Let's talk about game time tickets. People we've been talking about it actually for months here on the rich eyes and show and our rich eyes and podcasts, but guess what? There's something new to tell you about game time. There's a new feature called game time picks that makes getting tickets to see your favorite teams play live. Even easier game time picks filters out the fluff to show you only incredible deals on great seats. So you don't have to waste time searching through thousands of tickets yet another way that game time makes things easier for you when you're looking for tickets to anything in your area with the new game time picks it's curation easier to save more on sports concerts, comedy, theater, and more. And with the all-in pricing feature which is my favorite you get to see the total up front so there's no surprise fees at game time checkout. And with game time you always get the lowest price guarantee or game time is going to credit you 110 percent of the difference plus your purchase is covered with the most flexible customer service policy in the ticketing industry. Take the guesswork out of buying concert tickets in particular with game time. Download the game time app create an account and use my code eisen for twenty dollars off your first purchase.

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Last minute tickets lowest price guaranteed. Rockman just out of the blue. Where were you when you sent this tweet Chris? Oh I mean was that on a Sunday? Was it a Sunday night?

Don't remember. I was probably just at home and you just said you know if the Eagles make the playoffs I'll take a bite out of Mike Del Tufo's hat. You said I will take a bite out of Mike Del Tufo's hat? Yeah. Eagles have made the playoffs and you have avoided the inevitable for a week. That ends now.

I just sliced up a one inch by one inch cutout of Mike Del Tufo's Callaway hat and I placed it like little Easter eggs into the half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Yep. Take a bite. Here we go.

Here you go. Rockman is taking a bite. Did you get a piece of the hat there? Oh yeah. I think you did. Oh yeah. You're the one who chose the peanut butter too.

Can I scan nearby? Nope. We don't. Oh there's part of the hat sticking out. I didn't get it.

Oh that is a that is an awful piece right there in that in that sandwich. No you may not. No. As long as you eat it.

As long as you eat it. Keep going. Keep going. I didn't go through.

No man this piece is like right on my tooth. Why did you even do this? Chris you didn't have to. You took the McLovin baby. Because the Eagles stink. You took the McLovin baby. They're terrible. Oh my god.

That was Sunday. Radio audience I can't even tell if that's a piece of glistening jelly or a piece of a glistening gel a jelly glistened del tufo hat piece. Down it. Just I feel like I'm talking to Taylor eating her broccoli. Just eat it and we'll get off your case. Oh he just went one bite. He finished it. This is not going to be good because that is peanut butter and it is jelly and it is del tufo hat and you just jammed literally three inches by three inch piece of sandwich.

It was a proud day for my future son. Oh my god. Welcome back to the Rich Eisen Show radio network. I am Tom Pellicero 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. Heck of a start to week five in the NFL last night. It continues on Sunday in London. The Jetson Vikings. Rich joined us earlier.

He'll be calling that game bright and early 9 30 am eastern 6 30 am pacific on NFL network. This is the first of the three consecutive weeks of London games. They're going back to Germany. They went to Brazil. We know there have been a lot of designs on going to other places right? Whether it's Spain. They've talked about China.

They've talked about Australia. All of which has led to a lot of speculation in recent years about okay at what point do you put a team over in let's say London. Of course the Jaguars have been connected a lot to that though they've now invested in a facility and a stadium and that seems like that's off the table.

Let's go keep playing their their couple of games every year. It's also come up could you put a whole division somewhere in Europe and how would that work because that would limit some of the travel. You basically have to have two headquarters right and go back and forth. I've got a different proposal and I have run this up the food chain to a variety of people who would be involved in any discussion surrounding an 18th game which of course has been a topic of conversation in recent months here about at what point is that going to happen. It would even out the schedule in terms of each team then having nine home and away and away games or would set up a scenario where every team could play two international games every year. So here is my idea my proposal for how this would work we're calling this what do we settle on here we went to like five different names Tom's International Extravaganza. Hey here it is this would be my proposal again this is all for a world in which the NFL would go to 18 games which is probably an inevitability it's coming it's a matter of when and then rather than having teams play sporadically one game internationally and that takes away a home game this would put everybody on a level playing field and here would be my proposal you have eight pods of four teams each the NFL schedule is built around in part you play one other division in each conference every year right so you would take two of the teams that are in those divisions that are across from each other so four teams would go at a time and you would do these somewhere whether it's multiple cities in Europe could be multiple countries in Europe multiple cities in Brazil multiple cities in China whatever every team would be a part of one of these four pods you would have eight pods you would go over and you would play two games at a time so you would be international for let's say 10 days it wouldn't be the quick go there come back be jet lag try to recover type of situation you actually have longer you'd have time for your body to adjust you would then play the other two teams within your pod the two teams that are from the other conference you would play each of those they're already on the schedule they are divisional division versus division games and you would have those teams play you would sprinkle those between weeks five and twelve every week at a time you would have four teams and at times eight teams because the overlapping times of that and you would play 32 international games over the course of the season this would take the inventory that would already exist plus the additional inventory you got from the 18th game move those games over you would then have time for teams to really actually spend whole a whole week which i think on some level to the extent of actually seeing the city or doing something more community events ways to grow the pie it puts additional international inventory there it creates these games all sell out instantaneously you get more the pushback i've gotten when i've run this idea by people really comes down to as much as anything it's finances and it's operational it's owners already don't like giving up a home game right and going over internationally but again if we're talking about the overall growth of the game and the international push this is certainly one way that you could do it you could have flag football events during the week that's a huge push going into the olympics here the operational element is also financial the cost of moving an entire nfl operation whatever that is 150 people and moving all of it to a foreign country for 10 days as opposed to just we got to get through this game we're going in for two three days some teams are gone for the whole week but a lot of teams now the vikings and jets included thursday or friday you go in you make it a shorter stay even though the league probably if you ask them they'd like you to be there a little bit longer this would remove that choice this would actually shift it plus you can essentially establish an nfl whether it's europe that would be the logical place to start type headquarters where they would take on a lot of the overheads and the operational things in other words you may be able to effectively outsource certain parts of the program the equipment the practice fields the hotels rather than every team having to individually make all these arrangements you would basically establish the nfl in these other places and for those two months a year the nfl exists in whether it's europe china australia brazil maybe multiple different places that to me is the logical way to do it you're not moving a whole team you're not moving a whole division because ultimately those teams then would have to fly back to the united states and play games if you could remove some of the overheads the growth potential of this i think is significant brockman your thoughts you look very thoughtful i i'm i'm taking it all in and i'm kind of buying it i i think whether you like them or not you know international games are not going anywhere they're here to stay i love that there's a fourth window of football which is super fun you know it's 630 here imagine it's every week for weeks five through twelve we got a quadruple header that's what i'm talking about you know fourth window oh it's great i think this is i i love it i'm curious like how far up the flow chart you've taken this idea i would say i've had multiple conversations with people who would be in the room with things like this were to set okay and again there is some pushback i think that i mean put it this way this this is the most logical if you want to grow the game right at some point you have to create the additional international inventory and i like i i've spent time with teams you know back in 2013 when the vikings went over and played the steelers in london like i did a lot of behind the scenes stuff and like the amount of care and the amount of care that goes into the meal prep and the facilities it's all those operational things that are the biggest pain to the teams which is part of why teams don't want to go for a longer period of time they want to have the least amount of practice that you can over there do the least amount of football work because it's just it's a bigger headache yeah but if you had you know a base nfl headquarter almost like a 345 park but in london say and you had whatever how many employees and that was their sole job is to take care of this two-month window where the league is playing games there that would take a lot of off of the plate of individual teams that you know something they don't really want to do anyway so have the league take care of it and then like you said ultimately it's it's growing the game it's eventually maybe expansion over there 10 15 20 years down the line i think this is a great way to kind of plant those seeds and have it grow look you look at the fans love it the international fans absolutely love the nfl if you look at all these games in 10 minutes they sell out in no time it's like a taylor swift concert basically and you know all the jerseys in the stands and the apparel it's it's a huge hit and so it makes sense that eventually this is going to be a real thing where it's going to be part of every single week we're going to have some type of international and there's there's some of these more experimental type things like brazil was clearly an experiment and there were you know the good parts of it like i personally i i saw criticism of like the the sound and the look of the game on tv and whatnot i i had no issues with like the game presentation the field was not great right that was not ideal although like if you pulled players on would you rather have a really sloppy field where the grass is chunking up or would you rather have like a turf that's like gripping you and you're worried that you're gonna pull your achilles on any given snap you take the field where things slide right i mean that was a soccer field if you want soccer games like that stuff happens and those are dudes who weigh 160 pounds instead of 300 pounds yeah so those ones are less fully baked europe on the other hand is like pretty far down the line going all the way back to the the nfl europe days in the late 90s early 2000s where you you had i mean a similar type of thing it was just with other than obviously there were the kurt warner's and jeff garcias the world but it was you know other than that it was a lot of fringe type players now imagine you essentially re-established the european operations just to give an example you could certainly as time goes on figure out is brazil viable long term is china viable long term australia and put one pod there but if you started out even just saying we're going to put everybody in europe think about the proximity factor of europe and the amount of different places that you potentially could go if everything can move on land everything can move by train car whatever it is you could be in germany you could be in ireland you could be in in great britain you could be in spain there's a lot of different you know optionality to that i just think that you know adding continuing to add games which they want to do and you've seen that slate expand albeit incrementally which is how the nfl does pretty much everything other than institute a pass interference rule that gets whacked after a year they don't do anything willy nilly just you know seat of their pants it's all very much like you do a little bit and you re-evaluate and you do if it worked you do a little bit more this would be a big move and maybe it's not something that happens instantaneously but the moment you go to 18 games the math problem changes in terms of how many games should be you know home for teams they're really driving back there i just got a good view of it in my return really aggressive what are they doing they're really aggressive yeah yeah yeah it's a forklift we're trying to fix international games in the nfl i mean that's these guys all right every time a team goes over you got driving guys driving around with those guys they gotta move all the equipment in let's just keep the equipment there i thought that guy was coming through the window i just i saw it this is like how you remember back in the day randy moss pioneered like the you'd look at the jumbotron while you're running and figure out whether the ball's coming to you and then or figure out if somebody was behind you and basically you know he'd throw up he'd look at the board and then throw up his hand like there's no safety here i've got a step throw me the ball that's like the equivalent of me looking down and being like we're about to die i'm about to get hit i'm about to get hit by the guy back here thank you vince uh do we know what's happening out there programmers fair just check at any rate i i think that it's it's an interesting concept just because everybody's had kind of the narrow view of do you move team a team or teams there what if you move everybody there for whatever that is nine percent of your schedule ten eleven percent of your schedule every year it's a ways off but short of ending up with like a you know dubai football situation where somebody else starts a competing league like the the best chance of international expansion is via flag football which comes in 2028 to push that in places that don't already have it in a huge way expand the inventory take the best players in the world to other territories and see where it goes would you say let's say your plan goes into place roger i'd like to think that it will blesses it i think it's a great idea 10 years 15 years until this is a reality how long in terms of the international slate yeah in terms of doing your idea until that it's gonna have to be re-evaluated when they go to 18 games which the the cba ends after 2031 so that's seven years down the road there's a new regime with the nfl players association lloyd howell's the new executive director he comes from a business background and so you would think somebody with a business background probably looks at this and says wait so we either can wait eight years to start making more money by playing 18th game or we can negotiate a better deal for ourselves asap doesn't mean it's front burner doesn't mean it's happening next year it's probably happening sooner than later once you get that 18th game there's real conversations to be had of where does that 18th game opponent come from how do you divide that would even things out nine home games nine away games but you're also expanding the international slate at the same time the 18th game to me is what opens up all these options for potentially expanding the international slate if you're going to expand the international slate you know the idea that half the league every year is going to go play international game or every team's going to play an international game but they're all one-offs operationally it just doesn't make a ton of sense i still think you have to get through the financials no owner if you go to 18 games is going to go like hey can we all give away a home game every year that'd be great no but nobody wants to think through that lens if you're talking about the broader increase in the value of franchises and i mean where does that come from it's the ratings are higher than ever it's penetrated every aspect of american life it's not that way really overseas 2028 the la olympics right that's right flag football that's where we'll make its debut so you're gonna have natural buy-in to the idea of football here by 2032 that's eight years down the road you got to be thinking about where the 2032 olympics i don't even know off the top of my head it's not a place with a massive american football base i can fairly say that without even knowing it's not in canada i don't think it's in germany brisbane australia brisbane australia wow australia one of those places that they would really love to play a game you got to be thinking about over the next eight years how do you expand the reach of the sport big way to do that is put more nfl games out there and i'd be shocked i would be shocked if you didn't have one or more games in australia prior to 2032 where do those games come from maybe it's from the 18th game do you think nfl players are playing in the 28 olympics i think that in order for them to gain the buy-in that they want to they have to let you are going to need names to play in those games you can't have it be because i've watched all due respect to hoosh well i mean that's the thing is it's like listen we have we have flag football or touch football games the ot7 league and stuff on nfl network it's it's entertaining it's really entertaining stuff but it's not tom brady throwing to tyree kill entertaining is it going to be former players is it going to be active players who get let out you know you wouldn't think you have a super high degree of injury risk but there's still injury risk i mean robert brooks tore his achilles in the pro bowl in like 95 playing beach football back when they did that and shredded his whole basically never played again right that i was on the beach it was on the beach but it's still like weird things can happen it's a lower risk just like you don't have as many injuries and seven on seven and otas but there's still a few dudes who get serious injuries you've already heard patrick mccombs and caleb williams talk about wanting to play in this right and if patrick mccombs says i want to play he's playing it's hard to imagine the nfl is going to go no we don't want to have the most compelling product i mean as much as that's you know 92 in the dream team what was it was it senegal that they played or whatever and beat him by like 90 points angola angola right it's yeah like that happened but look 30 years later and look how competitive the olympics are that's what really drove the growth internationally of basketball was those games you know it was seeing michael jordan and larry bird if it was just christian latner was the primary player on that team and wasn't the 15th guy on the bench because everybody forgets he was on the dream team didn't really play a whole lot but he was on the team i don't think anyone forgets that no one forgets christian latner was on the team i think we all kind of know right well i think we're of a certain age with that if you if you said like the memories it was it was barkley shoving somebody it was it was michael jordan and it was magic coming back and it was larry yeah drexler ewing that well the iconic sports illustrated cover with those guys in the rings right i i just think we're going to see it these teams can complain all they want but patrima homes is playing in the olympics like almost and my point in this is if you want to drive this for the next 30 years yeah you you don't think through the lens of let's just give them a product it's let's give them the best product let's have these guys absolutely destroy everybody on the playing field but then also drive all these kids who are growing up in other places playing soccer or rugby or whatever the other sports are and going i can go to the olympics playing flag football that's really cool what he did maybe i'm getting into the american game that like that's the the chess of this entire thing i mean i think it'd be extremely fun you watch everything if you're you know clark hunt you're watching with gritted teeth just going like please don't have something weird happen with my homes or or more likely one of the receivers or somebody else who you could have a collision you could have god knows what happens and it's happening during training camp even if you get a high ankle sprain you're missing a bunch of time in the regular season but for the good of the sport in the big picture and for my personal entertainment value hell yeah yes get the nfl players out there all right we got a few more injury updates get to around the nfl heading into week five of the season we will get to that right after this say rich eyes on the show with me tom pillacero listeners please welcome a real finance nerd from our sponsor nerd wallet hey sean hey rich thanks for having me we all know nerd wallet for their credit card comparisons but there's more to it than that right so much more even for credit cards it's not the basic this card versus that card with us you can filter for features you want add your top cards to a comparison table and get access to exclusive offers smarter tools smarter financial decisions exactly beyond credit cards we research and review thousands of other financial products from high old savings accounts to mortgage lenders so you can find the smartest products here that world nerd wallet is not just credit cards thanks for that important psa rich and where exactly should people go to compare and find these credit cards and savings account and mortgage rates and more nerd wallet.com forward slash learn more thanks again to nerd wallet our paid sponsor of this segment nerd wallet finance smarter hey that's my line finance smarter y'all nerd wallet compare inc nmls 161-7539 let's talk o'reilly auto parts people you love their jingle you're gonna love their friendly helpful service even better because they're in the business of keeping your car on the road and the parts knowledge they have it's all you need for your maintenance and repairs they've got thousands of parts and accessories in stock either in store or online so you never have to worry if you're in a jam the team at o'reilly auto parts can test your battery for free in or out of your car if it needs to be replaced they'll find you just the right battery for your vehicle need your windshield wipers 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Akbar your your first pitch in Philadelphia is such the stuff of legend yes um that it it's it's received a documentary treatment from the ultimate in sports documentaries oh what yeah oh it has it check it out wow look what if i told you throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game isn't as easy as it looks that many have spent the rest of their lives regretting their trip to the mound what if i told you a former professional football player who used his speed strength and agility was about to have his hard-earned athletic reputation shattered in only a few seconds by a tiny little baseball i was so fired up when i heard akbar was throwing out the first pitch i mean i had visions of the big man going out there throwing a frozen rope and the crowd chanting didn't exactly work out that way though i mean how hard can it be rich isin through a strike guys not even a putter not even an athlete did you see the philly fanatics reaction that was awesome from espn films critically acclaimed documentary series 30 for 30 it's akbar's first pitch presented by lens crafters prescription eyewear friday at 8 p.m oh that's my new favorite movie of all time oh my god oh my goodness okay first off i'm a huge fan of 30 for 30 and i would like to think of myself as a person that deserves one what if i told you oh my god as i was watching both thrilling baseball and football games last night i was thinking how fun would it be to actually be in the stands for a game like this enter game time and the game time app let me tell you about this it is a way to watch all your favorite sports and entertainment and concerts live all you do you pick an upcoming game in the app browse through the seats on game time picks and talk about the great deals that you find you get curated deals to make it easier to find the best price on great seats you got the super deal you got seat views before you buy plus the lowest price guarantee event cancellation protection job loss protection and so much more so take the guesswork out of buying get concert tickets with game time and game tickets as well download the game time app create an account and use code rich for 20 off your first purchase terms apply visit gametime.co for restrictions again create an account and redeem code rich for 20 off download game time today what time is it game time it is less than 48 hours from game time for the bulk of the fifth week of the nfl season coming up on sunday another injury update by the way for the giants already no malik neighbors he is out against the seahawks devin singletary the report just came out downgraded to doubtful so arguably the two most important players you've got on that offense not going to play against the seattle team that oh yeah has shown they can score some points yikes through the through the course of the week if you've got devin singletary on your team brockman who are you picking up who's even available right now uh is it is it is it i have no idea who the giants pack of running back is this is my point as much as devin singletary has not been burning it up so far statistically uh you're you're kind of running short i think it's a guy they got the rookie tracy guy they got tyron tracy he's the rookie that guy has been used sporadically so far this season he was fun to watch in the preseason he suffered what looked like a massive injury and then ended up being largely fine uh laid on in the pre-season here but that's a that's a pretty significant one against a seattle team but even after taking that loss against the lions on uh on monday night still alone atop the most beat-up division in the nfl and that's the the nfc west i i think that you know in terms of just the games this weekend i'm really interested to see packers rams just because you know it's two coaches who know each other really well of course lefleur was one of the the offensive coordinators at a time under sean mcfay you got a really good quarterback matchup with jordan love going up against matthew stafford and he had a rams team that's like it just feels like they're on the brink you lose another game and you fall to one and four are you starting to think about we need to break this thing up and sell are you thinking about we can just keep pushing forward here get cut back get puka back cooper's probably going to be before puka on that list just just find a way through i would think that they're going to get trade calls on some of their top players if they lose this game well i threw this out there on overreaction monday on a tuesday why wouldn't the dolphins call about matthew stafford i believe that they would if they felt that tua was going to miss the rest of the season i think that the difference for the dolphins right now is you're just trying to find a way to win a game you're hoping and believing based on the medical information here there's a chance to is back in a few weeks there's not to this point that i'm aware of any doctor who's told him you're not going to play you you can't you can't come back dr alan sills the nfl's chief medical officer is on a media conference call during our show so i wasn't on it but i saw the tweets of quotes from him in which he was saying like we believe in you know patient autonomy there's nothing for the nfl to get involved with if a player passes through the protocols the doctors say he's good to go it's not the league's place to stop him which makes sense nfl's never stepped in and kept somebody off the field with tua he was feeling good enough nine ten days after the injury to get on a plane and fly across the country to seattle and stand on the sideline with an earpiece in this is not a guy operating as if he doesn't know if he's playing again this season this is a guy going as soon as i'm eligible i think i should be out there yeah the key for the dolphins here for these next three weeks and they may well get a boost i would not be surprised if o'dell plays on sunday against the patriots they need tariq kill to play better they need jaylen waddle to play better they need to rally around snoop huntley who's going to be the starting quarterback again and just do enough i didn't watch that game last week and go like man they're just totally in over their heads it was just like the whole thing was disjointed the best players the guys they needed to elevate the quarterback the backup quarterback didn't do so that's two weeks in a row i don't think we've gotten the best from tariq i don't think we've seen the best from jaylen waddle either like at some point yeah you need your your franchise quarterback the guy you're paying 52 million dollars a year for tuatung aloha he's supposed to elevate everybody else if you're onto your third quarterback right now which the dolphins are you need the other guys you're paying a lot of money to elevate that quarterback and that's what i want to see on sunday against a really good patriots defense and a patriots offense that it's really is terrible any points right now i was being kind it's horrid it's it's not great awful they had a practice squad center snapping yesterday to jacobi brissette a guy who's a undrafted free agent this year and that may depending on their backup center status a player who i quite frankly don't even know his name but he was limited in practice he had the the practice squad guy snapping the ball yeah you're hoping this is a week your defense is going to make place and the defense for miami seems to be playing better and better they had one big bust last week but anthony weaver's done a pretty good job with all their injuries remember jaylen phillips now is out for the season after he hurt his knee you're hoping this is a week where maybe your defense makes a player too and helps him out too everybody else look at what the packers formula was with malik willis matt leflour the first week malik willis had to start which was week two of the season he had been on the team for like two three weeks you know at that point he spent the week pumping up the backup quarterback malik willis and then saturday night i was told before the game matt leflour got in front of the team and just said malik everyone in this room has your bleeping back and it was all about complementary football it was the defense has to make a play the special teams has to make a play everyone else on offense has to make a play he challenged everybody we all need to step our games up not because we don't have faith in malik because we may not be able to win the same way that we've been winning before and you watch that first game malik willis makes a couple of plays there's a coverage bust and he by the colts and he finds the open man throws touchdown other than that it was a lot of the defense made plays special teams made plays malik didn't make the big mistake second week with him in the lineup he made more plays and they cut him loose a little bit more let him throw the ball let him use his legs it's got to be a similar type of formula for the dolphins with snoop hundley it's got to be everybody else has to do more to help this guy out we need that big tyree kill game we need jaylen waddle to go out and play well reen moster might be back this week too that also would help that running game here i anticipate the dolphins are going to come out and play well not being on prognosticating things especially with games the patriots are again a really good defense here i think the dolphins come out and play well because this is very much a game where if you lose to this patriots team oh even on the road yeah you are one and four and two can't get here fast enough and at that point you're kind of out of options could they somewhere down the road go after another quarterback not if they lose all these games not if they don't win a game before two it gets back it doesn't even make sense you're not trading for matthew stafford to start two games for you yeah this is a really big game for miami this in the last minute uh tom what happens sunday night in pittsburgh i mean the cowboys need to come out and play their best game the mike zimmer defense has to play better than they have been they got no mica parsons they got no demarcus lawrence they are going to be challenged on that uh i anticipate the cowboys also come out and play well uh real quick before we uh before we lose uh the audience here uh we do have a devante adams update earlier earlier in the show he posted on instagram story a photo of edgar allen poe amazing quote the raider nevermore unless you read his second post minutes later which says believe nothing you hear and half of what you see a quote from edgar allen poe now the question is is he saying don't buy into my instagram story saying the ravens or is he saying don't believe everyone's saying that he wants to go to the jets everything i've understood is the jets oh is his preferred team the saints would be the next one but whether you're talking about the ravens or the bills or the steelers or the 49ers god there's a lot of other teams that could use the devante adams right now they saw him do against them a couple of weeks ago thank you very much to everybody for listening and watching all right bill we're recording now and please put your phone on silent oh where is my phone let's go man get it together over there player go ahead pick on me the way that you want to i would say that to my son just go all right why would people want to listen to the sims complete podcast father-son dynamic duo talking about the game of football we do a lot of quarterback and coach talks it's fun i love doing this it's been awesome sims complete check us out on the believe network appreciate it just search believe b-l-e-a-v wherever you listen