NFL Head Coaching Has Taken A Dive (Hour 3)

CBS Sports Radio. Good afternoon to you. Good evening, as well, in some parts of the land. I hope you're in a spot of the country that gets to enjoy fall. And if you're not, I hope that you take, like, go to Maine or something. Go to Oregon.

Go somewhere you can look at the foliage and leaves. Because fall rules. There's something about watching football when it's 50 degrees outside. Even if you're inside your house at 70.

Just that you know it's 50 and you can, you know, you go out to get the mail or you take your trash out. And it's, ooh, it's chilly. I want to get under a blanket. Oh, fall's the best. Halloween. We love Halloween. The neighborhoods that we drive around in, inflatables are real big this year. Like, bigger than ever. Like, a couple years ago, I would take my kid and he'd say, I want to see an inflatable. And, oh, my God, we're driving around. I'm going to take a gas try to find one spooky pumpkin.

But now, my goodness, block to block, hop, skip and a jump. They're everywhere. And I'm very pro. And so we decided that we're going to buy some Ferrari-ard to kind of join in. But now it's so late. Halloween's two weeks away. So November 1st, we're going to raid the Halloween Express and get some big-time discounts on Halloween inflatables for Halloween. 2024 at the Winkler home. Oh, it's going to be great. 855-212-4227.

855-212-4CBS. The trick-or-treating in our neighborhood is during football, football Sunday. So I, like several dads, will be walking around watching. I'll be into the Packer game, Packer fan.

I'll be watching it on my phone as my kid trick-or-treats. What a great memory for him. Was your dad there as a child?

Well, yes, he was always on his phone watching a game of some kind. That's why I'm really trying to, again, whatever my kid likes, whatever he likes, he likes. But I am trying to get him into like sports so that he can share those memories with me. Also, a lot of these coaches, my kid's four.

I wonder if, not saying that he would, but like maybe me. I honestly think you take the football, you take like, so one of my takes once was that I could coach an NFL team to nine wins. I'll just come out and say it again. One of my takes was I could coach a team to nine wins. I think what's happened over the years is football coaches used to have this aura to them where they convinced you that they unlock this recipe of information that you could never know. You're just a fan. You just watch the game. And I will say like when you do play and are involved and active and coach, like I grew up in soccer. So Packers strike one, soccer strike two, I know. But I grew up in soccer. So I probably, because I've coached and played, I know more of the concepts. I know more than someone who's never played or at least I've got the head start. I think that there's a lot of these people in the media that look at tape and look at the all 22 and try to figure out play design.

And I think they're right. I think you can look at stuff and say, oh, yes. Now, sometimes we don't know the audible. We don't know the check down.

We don't know that kind of stuff. But for the most part, the information that used to be secretly available to NFL coaches and college coaches and high school coaches is available to all of us. And that's why it's so frustrating when we watch some of these games like under no circumstance on earth. Should a college quarterback crystal ball of Miami not kneel the football and run the play, have a fumble that that should never happen. And historically, when you looked at these late game situations from him, that's something that he constantly did. OK, that's something that he constantly way never knelt down.

And how do you not do that? So many coaches, they get presented with these situations where it's fourth and two and they're in plus territory above the 50 yard line. And it's like they've never been presented with the information before in their lives where they've never even fathom that this could be a scenario. These guys work on play designs.

These guys work on route concepts. They work on managing 53 different personalities at some point in their week. If you're in the facility from three thirty in the morning to two thirty in the morning the next day and you run out and get some dunking or something, or maybe go home and, you know, give your wife a kiss on the head and then go back to work. Like at some point, honestly, can you play a game of Madden?

Can you can you do some exercises where there's some clock management? Because what we're seeing is just atrocious. Like there are there are there are teams that just Josh McDaniel should not be a head coach. The decisions he makes. Oh, should I should I go for a touchdown here?

No, I'll take the three points. Try to get the ball back. I never do. Onside percent onside kick percentage.

It's like eight percent. You don't bank on the three when you need seven. You're not getting the ball back. Brandon Staley, the L.A. Chargers, should be one of the better teams in the league. This is like the third year in a row.

But Brandon Staley is so inept that they're going to continue to lose in spite of him. I think Matt Lafleur with the Packers watched some of these guys when they're presented with situations. They look at a situation.

They almost need to freeze time. And then go back to their office and chart out what they should do. Because I think with a little preparation, they might know what to do. But there's so many times where they're just pressured into not knowing what decision to make or even to think that they're presented with this in the first place.

And I just wonder, it's excusable sometimes. But there are coaches whose reputation is not knowing how to be a game manager. Even Andy Reid for so long. Well, now he's won a Super Bowl.

But he was historically bad at it. And whatever happened the other night with the Giants? Let's yell at Tyrod Taylor on national TV.

When it's you, Brian Dable, that is letting the wheels fall off of whatever success you had last year. It's crazy to me that there's 32. This is the most elite coaching job in America. And there's only 32 of them. There's only 32 of them. And we can't find 32 good ones? It shouldn't be that – and this kind of goes for quarterbacks too – it shouldn't be that, yeah, there's 32 of them, but like 10 are good and 15 are like eh.

And the other eight are pretty bad. We only need 32. We don't need a thousand. We don't need a million. We just need 32 guys to play quarterback.

We just need 32 men of any age. You're not limited by your body and your athleticism. Just know how to coach. And you're going to rank them and okay, this guy will be worse than this guy, but he's still good. That's the thing in the NBA.

We always clown these guys that are on the 12th, 13th, 14th part of the bench. They're still one of the top 400 basketball players in the world. I'm not sure that some of these coaches are some of the top 400 coaches in the world. I'm not sure that there's more than 15 guys who know how to properly execute a game and game management and play calling. And it's crazy that this NFL product keeps getting bigger and bigger and guys seemingly get dumber and dumber.

Or maybe we know more. But for the most part, the football – I don't know, the football isn't always – was that a good game? I refer to Sunday night as a good game. Was that a good game between the Bills and the Giants?

It was not. It was not a good football game. Good game is like that Chiefs-Bills game from a few years ago.

That's a good game. But it was a compelling game. Football almost – it's almost like – if it was too good, it wouldn't be this entertaining.

This is why I think they like some of the decisions around penalties. Well, if we made everything clear and perfect, then it wouldn't be as compelling. We're not trying to make it good. We're just trying to make it entertaining.

That's another thing you've got to remember. Roger Goodell is not making $65 million to run a sport. He's making $65 million to run an entertainment business.

Now, the results are on the up and up. It's not sports entertainment. That would be wrestling. But this is an entertainment business.

Ultimately, it's to entertain us and keep us engaged and keep us coming back and spending money and talking about it. And I just – there's so many teams that the coaching is just so very poor. But then there's coaches that we regard very highly.

And, man, they are having some tough times. Like, Denver is 1-5 right now. Sean Payton, that PR machine on him has come to an end. I don't know why anybody thought that would work.

And it's very clear that he knew it would not work. Billy Turner, you may know the name, you may not. He's an offensive lineman right now for the Jets. He had been with the Broncos in the past. And he was the first one to call out when Sean Payton started saying, hey, this is worse than I thought. Nathaniel Hackett must have been the worst coach of all time. Billy Turner right away said, oh, no, no, no.

You realize that you're not going to be able to turn it around and you're trying to get ahead of it. The Sean Payton PR machine is going full throttle. And I think that we're trying to figure out, like, okay, maybe it's not him. Maybe he does better there. Denver's going to be active in the trade deadline, we think. Maybe he does better there, but they are hamstringed with Russell Wilson, man.

I don't know how they turned that around. They are hamstrung with him. They owe him a lot of money. If he gets hurt, if Russell gets hurt, because he's already got $39 million guaranteed next year. Any significant injury, this is from Jason underscore OTC at overthecap.com. If Russell Wilson gets hurt and can't pass a physical in March, he actually gets guaranteed another $37 million. So if the Broncos are going to be this bad, at some point they're better off sitting him just to not get him hurt so that they're not out another $40 million.

You want to be smart with your money. You don't want to be like the Jets and turn down the insurance and then see your cash cow get hurt in Aaron Rodgers, who, by the way, is not coming back this season. Aaron Rodgers has got a little FOMO where he's on the sidelines and he's seeing other people get talked about a lot, like Travis Kelce. He's the Aaron Rodgers this year. He's the media darling. Aaron Rodgers was the biggest celebrity in the game.

He really was. Travis Kelce took over. Travis Kelce, every day I see him advertising for a new commercial. He's doing two-second cameos on Saturday Night Live. He's popping up everywhere. He's having a moment and he's riding it. Sure, Taylor Swift put him on the map.

Wink, wink. But he's having a moment. So what does Rodgers do? Challenges him to a debate? He's a little jealous.

Can't be too jealous. I also wonder, speaking of good coaches gone bad, what's happened to Bill Belichick? And he's another scenario. I did a whole thing the other day about how Bill Belichick is like, he just doesn't have the team and, you know, he maybe doesn't like whatever.

It's just it's not there for him. These aren't the guys. And then I was quickly reminded, Bart, Bill Belichick is the GM. He assembled that team. And I know Zach Gelb wants to tank, wants his Patriots to tank.

And they probably should. Like, that's the only way out of this, I think, for Belichick is if he kind of pulls a Gregg Popovich. That's an easy comparison, I think, but a good one. Popovich, the last few years, those teams in San Antonio were awful. But he kept coaching. And you'd think, well, why are you still coaching? And we were told, oh, he just likes to coach. He likes to coach young guys and instill philosophies. He just likes to coach. And I think Belichick likes to scheme and likes to create. But does he, like, like to coach? Does he really like, I don't know, does he like to see progress in Mac Jones? Or does he just want to do the chess match every week and do that? Well, he doesn't have the pieces for him.

But he's the one that built these pieces together. And then you wonder at what point, because this isn't, even this year is an anomaly. Last few years without Brady, they've been winning seven, eight, nine games, made the playoffs one time.

This is an anomaly. And so you do wonder when a guy has had so much success. At what point, like how many, how many years of coaching bad teams to bad records did the six Super Bowl wins by him? Is it a year for every Super Bowl he won? Does he get six years after Brady leaves to kind of take this team into the mud? Does he get four?

Does he get three? Is Bob Kraft going to have that conversation? I just think there's a lot of, like, interesting how is this going to end scenarios that are happening in the league right now as well. So again, very compelling league, very interesting. The Broncos have my Packers this week. Oh my God, if the Packers lose, that's not going to be good. The Patriots host the Buffalo Bills this week as well. So these two bad teams. Giants, the other one in five team. Chicago two, Chicago two.

All at home it seems like. They're really bad teams. Cardinals one in five on the road against Seattle. 8-5-5, 2-1-2-4, 2-2-7. 8-5-5, 2-1-2-4, CBS.

Again, I'm Bart Winkler. I'll tell you who the good team is. The Detroit Lions. And I think they've done a good job so far of being good, but still being under the radar. And that would be my advice for them.

Stay exactly where you are. Glover Quinn is going to join us, former Lion and still talking about the Lions on Believe in Lions, the podcast you can get. He will join us coming up next. Bart Winkler and for Zach Gelb, CBS Sports Radio.

8-5-5, 2-1-2-4, 2-2-7. My name is Bart Winkler and for Zach Gelb tonight. With no offense to our next guest, Glover Quinn, former Lion, former Texan. Former second team All-Pro in 2014. Now on the Believe Network for Believe in Lions, I had a buddy who is a Lions fan tell me that week one against the Chiefs was the biggest Lions win of his lifetime.

He's like 30-something. And then last week, he said it every week, the Lions, what they are doing right now, the last time I did a show a guy called in who was a Lions fan said, I don't know how to act. Glover Quinn joining us, again Believe in Lions, I would say act happy. This is a pretty fun season and I think that's a pretty good team that the Lions have.

No question. A very good team and a very fun season. I would just say, you know, I can't say act like you've been there because they've been, you know, few and far between.

I can't remember the last time there was five and one. But I would always say just be humble about it. We already know what it feels like to be on the other end. So let's just be proud of our team and support our team. But, you know, just be humble about it.

That's it. I think they're in a good spot too. The thing that I was saying the other day was because the Lions, so the NFC North as a whole is bad. And so that's good for Detroit because they are good and, you know, the other teams can fight for scraps. But you still have to the Niners and the Eagles and the Niners and the Eagles are going to get a lot of attention. So if I'm the Lions, like from a pressure standpoint, I just kind of draft off of them. They lost to the Seahawks, the Lions did, which maybe took some pressure off because if they were the lone undefeated team right now, it just seems like the division is going to be in the Lions hand. You don't have to fight with being undefeated.

You're still going to lose headlines from the Niners and the Eagles just because of how dominant they've been. So I think, Glover, they're in a really good spot where they can just kind of play football and do it without all the pressure. Right.

And I think that's what you really want. You know, we used to love, I mean everybody wants to play national TV games. We all know that. But we definitely used to love the situations and the times where just had a bunch of 12 o'clock or 1 o'clock games and you just kind of get to go and play. You don't have to worry about the hoopla that comes with all the other stuff. You just kind of slide under the radar and just play football. And I know the Lions aren't sliding under the radar because they are one of the top teams. But like you said, 49ers, the Eagles, they're going to get out of those headlines. People, especially in the national media, they're going to still not believe truly in the Lions until the end of it.

You know what I'm saying? So yeah, they're going to throw them a little bit right now, but they're not going to get out of the hoopla that those other teams are going to get. So like you said, it keeps the pressure down and they really just got to go out there and play. Has there been an area of the team where when you look at them, the Detroit Lions at the beginning of the season, what you thought of at the beginning of the year with all the different position groups or whatever, where you're the most impressed with how far they've come through six weeks?

I probably would say the secondary, just being honest with you. You know, they did sign Cam Sutton from Pittsburgh and they signed T.J. Gardner-Johnson. They signed Emmanuel Mosely from San Francisco and got hurt in his first game back. But I'm really surprised at how those guys have been able to play after losing Chauncey Gardner-Johnson.

Brian Branch has been a great draft pick for those guys. I know he's missed the last two weeks, but he's playing phenomenal before that. You know, they have dealt with Tracy Walker, who was able to step in right after C.J.

Gardner-Johnson went down. Kirby Joseph has still been there and Jared Jacobs has played really well for them at the other corner. I was kind of concerned about the other corner position after, you know, Cam Sutton, but Jared Jacobs has stepped up. He's played well. He has three interceptions right now.

Brian Branch has been out the last two weeks and Will Harris has stepped up on the interception last week and been making plays as well. So I've really been impressed with the secondary of this line defense because when the secondary can hold up, it obviously gives those pass rushers time to get there and harass the quarterback. You know, how about like because you played in the secondary, of course, how much did the how much do you think your freedom and your ability to defend change from the beginning of your career to the end as the rules continue to favor the passing game?

Did you feel like it was harder, much harder, a little harder, not much harder your final year than in your first year? Nah, I didn't really think it was that. I mean, I think Because some of the stuff these guys get called for, it's like you blow on a guy and you get 15 yards. Yeah, I mean the hits are definitely different, you know, and they were emphasizing hits to defensive receivers back then and hits to the shoulder and head and neck area back then. But now I think I think they're doing more just based off of what it looks like, honestly, because there's plenty of times that guys get flags thrown on them. And when you look at the replays like, bro, that wasn't that wasn't a hit where it deserved a penalty. So I don't know if they need to go to what they do in college, you know, it might slow the game down some, but you know, in college, they call a targeting call or whatever. And then they go review it just to make sure that it was a targeting call. Because, you know, when you throw a person to file a flag on those guys, whether it's really a flag or not, they're still going to get fined by the NFL. And if it's not a flag, a play that was warranted in the flag, you just, you know, kind of taking money out of these guys' pockets for no reason.

So I do think that's changed a little bit. But I mean, you know, the hand, you know, the double chucking and all that stuff, pressing yards at the five, the hands at the five and, you know, illegal contact, all that stuff is pretty much the same. He's got to be good at how to do it, I guess, as you were Glover Quinn, joining us here, the Believe on Lions podcast, and again, 10 year NFL Pro. How much of the Lions success do you think is given to their coach? I mean, Dan Campbell, obviously, he's somebody that with the interim job in Miami, people liked him and is well regarded around the league. But it does seem like if you're going to try to change a culture or bring a different attitude, Dan Campbell seems to be the perfect guy to do that.

And so far, that's what he's done. Yeah, I mean, I think the one thing about Dan Campbell's personality is it matches with the personality of the city. And it's easy to build the team one on easy, but to get the team to buy into that mentality, because that's the mentality of the city, hard working blue collar guys. And that's what Dan Campbell has brought to the team, you know, the grit, the attitude, the effort, just loving to play the game of football. And when you look at the Lions fans, you know, they love the game of football, even when the Lions don't have great years, the fans are still there.

And that's just the city, that's the culture out there. And Dan Campbell does a great job of, you know, mixing in and blending in with the culture. And he's done an excellent job of getting the team to buy in as well. And I think another guy that is getting a lot of accolades and should is the guy under center in Jared Goff.

You know, there's so many of these quarterbacks where they have a few good games and we think one thing, and then they have some bad games, we think another. But I think Jared Goff has really proven that he's a great fit for this offense. And the Lions, I think, are very happy to have him. Yeah, I think he's been excellent for the offense and, you know, been excellent for the team.

You know, he fits the personality. I think he's done a great job with his leadership on the field, off the field. And I really feel like Detroit fits his personality.

I think L.A. might have been a little bit, maybe too much for him. But I think he came to Detroit with that chip on his shoulder. And he's been excellent. He's been excellent in his time there. I think he runs the offense at an incredible rate.

He throws the ball well. So I think they're happy with Jared Goff and I think they're going to look to lock him up at the end of the year. They got a big game this week, the Lions do, in Baltimore, at Baltimore. This is, you know, historically we'd probably look at this and say, okay Ravens, you know, they're at home.

But Lions aren't that kind of team anymore. What are some keys they need to do against that Baltimore defense and maybe stopping Lamar Jackson this Sunday? Well, I think, you know, obviously offensively the one thing you can't do is turn the ball over. The Ravens have been known to have historically a good defense, very physical, opportunistic type of defense.

And so they got to go out there and just kind of stick to their game plan. I think a lot of it depends on how well the offense plays. The offense, I mean, the defense plays. If the defense plays well and stop Lamar Jackson, keep those guys under wraps and, you know, be able to stay with their run game.

I think that right there alone helps you because now you can stick to your run game, you can stick to your play action pass, you can stick to the things that you want to do. If the game get out of hand quickly, now you kind of have to go away from that and you get into a more of a passing game and that allows the Ravens defense to, you know, tee off on the quarterback and look to make plays in the secondary. So I think the defense has to do a great job of preparing Lamar early in the game and not letting him get some big plays over the top.

And they've been doing a great job with that. They have struggled a little bit with scrambling quarterbacks who struggled a little bit with Geno, who was not really a scrambling quarterback, but I think the Lions defense has gotten a lot better. They've been playing great the last few weeks. I look for them to continue that this week and they can do that and the offense can stay within what they want to do. I think over the course of the game, they have began to wear their Ravens defense down. It could look a lot like the Tampa Bay game last week where you're looking at 20 to 24 points, but the Lions defense having to step up and stop the Ravens.

You got the big one this week with the Eagles hosting the Dolphins, but this is, I mean, this is right there up there on the menu, the Lions going to Baltimore on Sunday afternoon. Glover, thanks for some time. Good to talk with you. Keep up with the good work on the Believe podcast and enjoy the rest of the year, man. All right, man. Appreciate you guys.

All right, see you. Glover Quinn, Believe in Lions. You can catch that podcast for more on the Lions. And I mean, I'm liking, you know, so I am a Packer fan, yes, but this is deserved.

This is good for the city. And I think the rest of the NFC North, it's weird when you're bad for so long. Like, it's not that I'm rooting for the Lions, but I'm not rooting against them. And if the Lions win the Super Bowl, like if the Bears or Vikings won a Super Bowl in my lifetime. Ah, Bears won.

I was a baby. It would hurt me. It would hurt me as a fan. You don't want to see your rivals succeed, but we're all like pulling for the Lions. The guy that I referenced at the beginning, my Lions friend who said the win against the Chiefs was the best Lions win of his lifetime. The previous best Lions win of his lifetime was not even a Lions game. It was when Matt Stafford won the Super Bowl for the Rams.

That's how downtrodden they've been. This year though, completely the opposite. And I will say, we'll see what happens this weekend. But if they beat Baltimore, if that loss against Seattle, I think did the Lions a lot of favors. Because keeping the pressure off, I think, is a big plus.

You don't have to deal with, you know, more of the extra attention. So first of all, they already played the Chiefs outside of a Taylor Swift game. That was good and they beat them. But they lost to the Lions in a game where not a lot of us saw it was overtime. They lost to the Seahawks rather.

They are the Lions. They're 6-0. If they beat Baltimore, they could have been 7-0. Then they have the Raiders. They could win that game. The Chargers, they could win that game. So there's a universe for their 9-0.

The Bears, the Packers, the Saints, the Bears, the Broncos, the Vikings, the Cowboys, the Vikings. I mean, they're going to win a bunch of games. And so it's almost like, good thing we got the undefeated nonsense out of our way because that would just bring more pressure that's not needed. I just think it's great that we can do a segment on the Lions in October. Because most of the time, the Lions got one segment a year on every show. And it was, should they still have a Thanksgiving Day game? They're not any good.

Should they still have it? Yeah, well they are good. And they're getting segments and they're going to have a lot more. So thanks again to Glover Quinn for joining us. 8-5-5-2-1-2-4-2-2-7. We'll wrap things up.

I've got some thoughts on flag football. Don't go anywhere. Rich Ackerman right now. CBS Sports Radio. Bart Winkler in for Zach Gelb for the final stanza before a primetime edition of Hick at Night with Ryan Hickey.

So stick around. I like Hickey's college football takes. He always puts out videos of who to bet and I always bet against him and I'm rich.

I'm rich as sin, thank you. I think he got Texas. He did get Texas over Alabama. I remember that one. But I think he had the one Hickey content I always see no matter what is his college football pick. And when he goes in the shower.

What a guy. Ryan Hickey. Hick at Night.

Coming up next on these CBS Sports Radio stations and on the Odyssey app. I got some bad news for you. Ryan Hickey just took his shirt off. He's very angry with you calling out his picks and his shower talk.

No, I'm pro shower talk. Well, I mean, he's basically taking a shot. He's half naked in the studio right now. He's very angry with you. Oh, well, you know what? I think he'll get over it. That's my prediction. I'll take my shirt off.

I'm on a live stream. Should I take my shirt off to join him? Should we go? Should we just should we do the show as if we are cavemen and just be Neanderthals about it? I just promoted his show for a full minute.

What's there to be mad about? You should you got to pay for that kind of exposure. Which I can do with the money he's made me by going against his picks.

So happy, happy to help. It is time to answer our Ask the Pros Question of the Day brought to you by O'Reilly Auto Parts. This question comes from Pete. He says, Why are Ryan Hickey's picks so bad? No, no, no. This is from Tim in Tampa.

Should NFL players be allowed to play flag football in the Olympics? Oh, juicy. You could submit a question by tweeting us at CBS Sports Radio. Use the hashtag Ask the Pros and think O'Reilly Auto Parts for all your car care needs.

Get guaranteed low prices and excellent customer service from the professional parts people at O'Reilly Auto Parts. So there have been a few sports added to the Olympics. Lacrosse is going to be an Olympic sport.

These are in 2028 in L.A. Gays will be in L.A. Baseball, which really, I mean, is weird that it's not. It was for a while and then it was gone.

And I think again and then gone again. It's been back and forth. Softball.

OK, excellent. Cricket. I'm very actually glad cricket's in the Olympics because that's the one sport. Like I said before, I don't know much about the NHL, but I'm very cognizant of what hockey is and how it works. I just don't know all the players and names and coaches and like cities that are still currently having friends.

You know, I don't know as much. But cricket, I'm I got no idea. Some games go for like a day and a half, I think. And it's like almost baseball, but not really. So I'm glad that it's going to be in the games because then I will watch. I am an Olympic guy who watches as much as he can. And I'm not going to seek out some of these sports. I can't tell you if I've ever watched, you know, curling, tried to cut some prime time after the Winter Olympics that one time. But nobody watches curling squash again. Is that like cricket?

I'm not 100 percent sure, but I'm going to find out and I'm going to be willing to do that. So if there's sports that are played around the world at a high level, they should be. In the Olympics, isn't that the whole point? American football. We always wonder, like, what would an American football team look like? Then we wonder, who would we play? That the thing about the NFL, as much as we've talked about the NFL today and Roger Goodell and the Lions and anything NFL related. There's not a lot of other people playing in other countries. The top players in the league.

I think, like, I went over this one day. The top players in the league that are born internationally. There's like a Jacob Johnson. There's like a fullback from somewhere. And then a bunch of punters and kickers.

So they'd be good in that department. They'd be trying to do field position battles. But then we'd just have Joe Burrow checking up the C.D.

Lamb for six in an instant. We would crush. We would crush. But somehow along the way, American football, football as we know it, doesn't get in. Flag football does. How is flag football big enough even here to like who's who is playing flag football? The biggest flag football game that there is was last year's Pro Bowl.

Who is playing? There's not like Bar League flag football. I haven't played a game of flag football since I was in sixth grade.

Oh, my God. I was slow in sixth grade and I was playing tight end and I busted past the secondary and I was wide open and I caught it and I scored. It would have been the only touchdown I ever scored. But the ref called it dead because the lineman that was lined up against me to be a jerk took my flag off at the start of the play.

So I only had one flag. I remember this. I could I could show you the exact exact spot in my hometown where it happened.

Like the exact blade of grass. You know, there's some memories as a kid that you you they like you're a photograph in your mind. And it's normally the scarring ones.

That one scarred me very, very good. So maybe that I have an anti flag football bias. But who's going to play like who is good enough at flag football that they didn't play real football? And then are we going to do NFL guys? Is it is that even going to be fun? Is this just like a whole thing so we can get the Americans more or the Americans like, yeah, you can have cricket. Nobody, nobody here knows how to play that.

But give us an easy one. Give us like give us flag football, like football that that I. Am I wrong on this? You guys flag football is how is it an Olympic sport? It's not even a sport. It's stupid. Am I wrong? I don't think you're wrong.

I'm actually totally with you on this. It would be very weird to see NFL players playing flag football and against other countries where who are they playing? It's weird.

Yeah. We're trying to just show them what football is. We're trying so hard to show them what football is here and like it.

And now we're going to give them like an eight percent version of the product. It's stupid. I like I'm not like I'm not. Hey, I'm on the radio. I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to play this up a little bit.

No, I legit. This legitimately bothers me. It angers me.

I am very upset that flag football is an Olympic sport. What's next? Pickleball. Squid game. Ben is in Wichita.

Hey, Ben. Yeah, I mean, I think the hate from the Cowboys comes from the fact they have so many fans that don't know football. They're they're fandom is so broad reaching and people just get tired of the mindless dribble from all their fans. So there's not strength in numbers. No, it is strength in numbers and the strength is their downfall. Same with the Yankees.

Same with all the other major, major programs. We get tired of hearing the people that don't really pay attention and we write them off and we despise those teams because of their fans. I'm a Lions fan. I hate all Bears fans just because they're so obnoxious. Yeah, I don't I don't hate the Bears. I really don't. I do hate Bears.

I do. I do hate Bears fans and Vikings fans. I do not like as a Packers fan, although I do not like the Vikings that franchise. I don't understand how anybody. No offense.

None taken. I hope Lions look at that. Look at the Lions representation today. So we're all rooting for the Lions, a team that hasn't been good.

See, this is all about branding. Lions haven't been good. They've won one playoff game since like 68.

So let's just look at 98. Since 98, they've won nothing. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have won their division more recently than them. And they're not even in that division.

They haven't been in 20 years. The Dallas Cowboys. Sure, they've made more playoff appearances. But what have they won? They've won the same amount of nothing. But the Lions, we only see once a year on Thanksgiving with the cool throwbacks, historically. And the Cowboys, yeah, they're a little more in your face.

And so I think that that, but again, again, what I was saying earlier was they don't win anything. They are the villains in Scooby-Doo. They are scratchy on Itchy and Scratchy. I think Scratchy's the cat. Itchy's the mouse. I think on Simpsons. They always get caught in the end.

And so I don't know. I think a lot of the, like, we love the 90s. We're very nostalgic about the 90s. If you grew up in any part of the 90s. Oh, we love the neon pants and the, you know, jinko jeans and the surge. We love all the 90s stuff.

Saved by the Bell and our Trapper Keepers. Yeah, we love all the 90s stuff. And those things are nostalgic. You think of those things and you're like, oh my God, that's ages ago. That's the last time the Cowboys won anything. They're ancient.

They're nostalgic. They don't win. All right, Ryan Hickey. Up next, Hicket Night, I will be tuned in with my wagering app. Listening. Thank you, Stu Kovacs, Mike Samter, and you. I'm Bart Winkler. CBS Sports Radio.