Broncos Country....Let's Ride! (Hour 1)

Live from the police show yet not overly ostentatious studios of CBS Sports Radio here in beautiful New York City sitting on top of the 10th floor of 345 Hudson Street. Welcome on in to a Thursday edition of the Zach Gelb show across all of our great local CBS Sports Radio affiliates, Sirius XM, Channel 158, and that free Odyssey app. 855-212-4CBS. I'm going to jump on in.

855-212-4227. You can always get at me. You can follow me on Instagram where I'm straight flexing or the good ol' cesspool of Twitter at Zach Gelb.

That's Z-A-C-H-G-E-L-B. And we're coming to you live from the Rocket Mortgage Studios. Whether you're looking to purchase a new home or refinance yours, Rocket Mortgage can help you get there for home-owned solutions that fit your life. Well, Rocket can and producing this extravaganza for the next four hours is no other than hot take kicky.

I don't know about that hot take kicky. I got to start the show off today with the massive extension around the National Football League for the now Denver Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson. It's still bizarre when I have to say Denver Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson. My brain is starting to process it when I look at the NFL schedule all throughout the summer. I'm like, oh, the Seahawks are playing. Yeah, that'd be a good game.

I'm like, oh, hold on. Geno Smith or Drew Locke, both terrible options going to be their starting quarterback potentially. We know now it's going to be Geno Smith. And it still took a while for the idea to fully resonate with me that when you looked at the AFC West for all the last five, six years after Peyton Manning did retire, it was just terrible quarterback after terrible quarterback, whether it was Paxton Lynch, Brock Osweiler, Case Keenum, Joe Flacco towards what we would thought was going to be the end of his career. It's been incredible how he's still on a roster in this league and is going to be starting, you would think, for the Jets come week one up against his old team, the team that he got his career started with with Baltimore Ravens.

So you just go through all the swings and misses for Denver. And even though it was only like a five, six year stretch, which seems forever if you're a Broncos fan, it takes a while for it to resonate with me, someone who's not a Broncos fan and has no rooting background for Denver. It's not like I dislike him. I hate him. I may be rooting against him this year because he thinks they're going to win the Super Bowl. And he thinks that Daniel Hackett is going to be coach of the year. But when I look at Denver now, it's starting to come together and it's starting to resonate in my mind that Russell Wilson is their starting quarterback. And I think an unforgotten part about this or forgotten part about this was when he got traded there, you're like, all right, that's where Denver Denver is going to have their quarterback for the rest of Russell Wilson's career. But we've kind of forgot that he was going to eventually need to get an extension because he had two years left in the contract.

He's thirty three years old. It wasn't a matter of if he was going to get the extension. It was just when the extension was going to come. And you saw earlier today from Adam Schefter that the Broncos reached a five year agreement with Russell Wilson. Two hundred forty five million dollar contract.

One hundred sixty five million guaranteed. When you factor it in with the old deal, they now have Russell Wilson tied up at the age of thirty three in Denver. Seven total years and two hundred and ninety six million dollars in the never ending QB carousel.

The never ending QB market where the teams just spend, spend, spend for their quarterbacks. But I want to start off talking about the career of Russell Wilson. Russell Wilson is a great quarterback. Russell Wilson is on his way to the Hall of Fame, but the way that Russell Wilson won. And it's always interesting to me because for some guys, we just say you just got to win one.

And that timing of when that one ring happens is really big in the way that we discuss your career. Like you look at John Elway for a while, it was just win one and then he finally wins one at the end of his career and then he wins another one. And we know John Elway is one of the top seven, eight quarterbacks of all time. You look at some other guys like a Drew Brees. He won one and that Super Bowl was enormous, enormous for what it meant for the city of New Orleans, Drew Brees, Sean Payton, the entire franchise, the entire city. And then he came up short when he had some really good teams and he did not play well the last two, three post seasons that he was in the NFL. With that being said, I don't think anyone now looks back at Drew Brees and go, oh, yeah, he should have won a second one and he didn't.

So now I think differently about him. Drew Brees is one of the better quarterbacks you'll ever see. He's a top 15 quarterback of all time. And maybe it's because of the unlikely road, because when he left San Diego, he was a pro baller. No one could have predicted that he would go on at one point to have the most passing yards in NFL history when Miami failed him on that physical. Nick Saban wasn't able to go get him.

The next thing you know, he's in New Orleans. So it's always fascinating to me how we talk about quarterbacks and how we talk about quarterback rings. Like look at Aaron Rodgers. Who would have ever thought that Aaron Rodgers, when he won that first ring and his only ring up against Pittsburgh, all these years later, Aaron Rodgers would still be stuck on one ring. Now, I'm not a dummy. I'm not an idiot.

I'm not a moron. The moment when Aaron Rodgers retires, he's going to have to wait the five years and then he'll be a first ballot Hall of Famer. That will be one where they go in the room and they vote right before the Super Bowl on that Saturday. And it's going to be OK, Aaron Rodgers, boom, instantly in the Hall of Fame, maybe a 30 second discussion, if even that.

And that's it. But if Rodgers does finish his career with only one ring, you could still have a great career, what people would consider an all time great career, not the greatest of all time, but a guy that could go down as a top 10 quarterback in the game. And there still could be some disappointment with that, because if Rodgers ends up with one ring, especially with the shortcomings in the last two or three postseasons, that would be a little bit disappointing. You could also acknowledge, though, how great of a quarterback he is when we get to Russell Wilson. I think Russell Wilson is a great quarterback.

I think Russell Wilson is one of the best seven, seven best quarterbacks, seven or eight best quarterbacks in the NFL. Russell Wilson, though, when he won his ring, is not viewed the way that we talk about Russell Wilson today, because when he was in Seattle, when you thought about that team that won a Super Bowl, when they just opened up a can of whoop ass in a game that I was at up against Denver, ironically, since now he is the Denver Broncos quarterback, that team was first identified by their defense, Allegiant Abu, and all those great defensive players on the defensive side of the ball. When they also won that Super Bowl, the talk was Pete Carroll, who had greatness in college at USC, then failed a few times in the NFL, now he gets his ring in the NFL.

And also, when you looked at the offensive side of the ball, I don't even think Russell Wilson was the first player you talked about in the offensive side of the ball. That team, if you remember correctly, it was Marshawn Lynch. I'll never forget the media scene surrounding Marshawn Lynch after he won that Super Bowl, walking across the field, walking across with all the confetti falling down at MetLife Stadium. You know when you see just big herds of media, and it's a big herd of media, and like when Brady, I'm not saying it was to this extent, but when Brady beat the Rams the second time, and that was Super Bowl LIII. When he won that Super Bowl, or actually, yeah, Super Bowl LIII, when he won that Super Bowl, that was the last one in New England, you almost, it looked uncomfortable when they were trying to do that post-game interview, when Brady was just trying to walk to go celebrate with his teammates.

That was a little bit similar, where all the attention, all the cameras went on Marshawn Lynch, and I'll never forget watching the stands walking across the field. So Russ, I'm not trying to diminish his importance on that team, but Russ wasn't the first player or the first part or area of the team that you thought about in winning that Super Bowl. Now the following year, and it was an incredible story, when you remember Matt Flynn was supposed to be the guy, then they draft Russell Wilson, Russell Wilson wins the competition, and Pete slowly worked Russell Wilson in, even though he was the starter, but slowly started to give him more and more on his plate, and that's why it was weird how that ended, because Pete didn't want to let Russ cook as much as Russ wanted to cook, he wanted to find more of a balance.

When for years people would say, oh, you got to trust a quarterback more, you got to trust a quarterback more, you got to take the training wheels off the quarterback. Then when they go back to the Super Bowl in back-to-back years after winning one, how do you remember that game? When I talk about Super Bowl 49, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? Super Bowl 49, the first thing that comes to your mind, Russell Wilson throwing the ball to Malcolm Butler at the goal line, they should have ran the football with Marshawn Lynch. So fair or not, that year will always be remembered, and that Super Bowl will always be remembered, game on the line, Russell Wilson didn't step up and deliver, and yes, Pete Carroll should have run the football. Then after that, you started to see an identity change in Seattle.

Slowly, the LOB started to break apart. You saw guys on the defensive side of the ball that made plays outside of the secondary start to go to different teams, and then that really started to become Russell Wilson's team. They had some good teams, they had some very good teams.

They never, though, returned to the Super Bowl. And at the end in Seattle, really the last two years, I know last year was ugly, but the year before that, they got off to that really good start and they were terrible down the stretch. It was some inner fighting between Pete and Russ, where Russ was saying, this is my team, I want to throw the football 45 times a game, I want to be the guy. And for the first half of the season, that worked, but then in the second half of the season, Pete thought he had to change that two years ago and not have him throw the football as much, because even though he's thrown a lot of touchdown passes and had a lot of passing yards, a lot of passing attempts, you started to see the interceptions naturally creep up.

So Pete thought the turnovers had to get limited, and that's why they tried to limit how much Russ could throw the football. I believe, though, in the last two years, if we were to poll our listening audience, at Zach Elba on Twitter or 855-212-4CBS, if we were to poll you and say, who do you blame more in the fallout of Seattle last two years? Is it Russ or Pete? I would bet that the majority of the audience would say Pete Carroll. I think there'd be more blame towards Pete, because you look at that offensive line, it was in shambles, sure they had DK Metcalf, sure they had Tyler Lockett, the defense wasn't great anymore, but they really didn't have anything else on that team.

So I think more people were blaming John Schneider and also Pete Carroll. So now Russ is in Denver, Russ got what he wanted, new team, excited again. Russ has said before, when all this nonsense started two years ago, remember, he was at the Super Bowl watching Tom Brady when this was two years ago when this all started, and then I think he went on the Dan Patrick show, and that's when you started to hear some frustration from Russell Wilson, because he wants to be an all-time great quarterback. And when I look at Russell Wilson, I do think he'll be a Hall of Famer, and when you're in the Hall of Fame, right away everyone says, okay, you're an all-time great, but there's different levels of all-time greatness.

There's different ways that we evaluate and dissect a quarterback. And if Russell Wilson wants to get in that top 10 conversation of all time, he's going to need another ring. He's going to need, and sometimes this gets just nonsensical, because people go, oh, he got a ring.

Like, come on, at least he got one. There's some quarterbacks that haven't, but it does matter how you get that ring sometimes, even though we like to at times downplay it. If Russ goes to Denver, which he's now in, and he wins a ring, he's the face of the organization. He's the franchise. The offense runs to Russell Wilson.

The team, the identity, the look, the feel is all a reflection off the quarterback. And that ring would be the most important ring if he could get one of the next five, seven years of Russell Wilson's career, and on the all-time great list, it would bump him up a bunch of spots. I don't think he'll ever be a top five quarterback of all time.

But when it gets in the top 10 conversation, he's going to need to go play three or four more great years, which he could still do at the age of 33. He's going to, though, need to win another ring, because then this ring would be the ring that is defined as a ring, and that will define Russell Wilson, and it will all center around Russell Wilson. When he won the first one in Seattle, he was a big part of that team, but you thought of P. Cal. You thought of Marshawn Lynch.

You thought of, first and foremost, the Legion of Boom. He has a ring, but he needs that new ring, which will be a little bit more shinier, no doubt about it. That will be a reflection of, okay, that was Russell Wilson's team. And I'm fascinated to see if he gets that ring.

Now, my producer extraordinaire, Hot Take Kick, he thinks that's coming, you're number one. I think he's crazy in a loaded AFC West, and also with the new head coach, for everything to come together right away. Now, Ryan will tell me, But Zach Brady did it, but Matthew Stafford did it.

It's a little bit different to me. When you have a new head coach, we don't know what that coach is going to look like. And then also, they play in a gauntlet of an AFC West. I know the Bucks didn't win the NFC South that year when they won the Super Bowl, but that NFC wasn't that strong. I look at the Rams, that NFC West wasn't as great as we thought it was going to be, and they struggled at times, and then they got hot. But if you have the Broncos struggle at any point this year, they go on a three-game losing streak. Just naturally, when you bring in a new quarterback, you bring in a new coach, and it takes a while for it to come together. Now, the first two games are Cupcake games, but if it takes a while to come together, that could cost them from making the playoffs this year. Because of not only how great we think the AFC West is, but how well-rounded and talented and how deep the AFC is this year. Will Russell Wilson win another Super Bowl in the league, and will he get one in Denver? And what will that do for his resume if he either gets another ring or he doesn't get another ring when talking about the resume and legacy of Russell Wilson in the NFL? 8-5-5, 2-1-2 for CBS. 8-5-5, 2-1-2, 42-27.

This is at the Gelb Show. Russell Wilson paid. And an NBA trade that we knew was coming, but a surprise destination. Donovan Mitchell to the Cavs? Uh-oh.

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That's right, it is Zach Gelb Show on CBS Sports Radio. So, I visited my grandmother today, it is her birthday and she turns 91 years old. So, happy birthday to my grandma. Now, some people may be saying, Zach, weren't you just in Florida visiting your grandma for her 91st birthday? Different grandmother. So, both of my grandparents, both of my grandmas recently just turned 91, one in Florida on my mother's side.

And then a few days later, you have my grandma on the Gelb side and my father's side turned 91 as well. So, I'm driving back from New Jersey, trying to get to the studios today by 4.30 ish p.m. Eastern. And as I'm driving, I hear on the radio that Donovan Mitchell has been traded. And right away, my immediate thought was, OK, Leon Rose finally did it. The Knicks finally did it. The Knicks got Donovan Mitchell.

Because I don't know about you, Ryan, and I'm not a Knicks fan, you are. But it appeared even though there was a lot of speculation. And when you have speculation, nothing's concrete and I guess nothing should surprise you. But it did appear not that the Knicks were negotiating against themselves. Once the R.J. Barrett extension got done, there was a thought, OK, maybe this means a deal is not going to get done. But I was thinking that means R.J. Barrett is off the table extension with the Knicks. The Knicks feel confident with all the picks that they have and whoever else you're going to give away in that deal, Topping Grimes, whoever.

They're going to be able to go out and acquire the services of Donovan Mitchell and then keep intact. You just have Jalen Brunson there. You have R.J. Barrett.

And not that that is a big three. But you could have a good team with Donovan Mitchell be in the face of your organization, Jalen Brunson. And then you also would keep R.J. Barrett in the fold. So I'm waiting to hear where he got traded. And I'm thinking, OK, this is going to be the Knicks.

Leon Rose knew something. They get the deal done with R.J. I thought this was going to now take a little bit longer, but eventually he would go to the Knicks. And then you find out it is the Cleveland Cavaliers, according to Adrian Wojnarowski, who are going to be landing the services of Donovan Mitchell. And they're going to give up Laurie Market and O'Shea Jabi from Kansas, who's now in the league, Colin Sexton, who already agreed to an extension, three unprotected first round picks and two pick swaps.

So that was the deal. It's a good move for the Cavs. I don't care that you give up three unprotected first round picks. You look at their young nucleus with now Darius Garland.

You have Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley, Jared Aaron, Caleras-Slavert. I don't think this is a Cavs team that goes and is a legit NBA contender for a championship. But they could be a very good team in the Eastern Conference. Miami's really solid. I still look at Miami, though, as being another big time player away from winning a championship. It looks like the Celtics have something.

We know Tatum's a stud and Jalen Brown's been very good. Now they had some bad moments towards the end in the postseason, but they just got to the NBA Finals, so they'll be knocking on the door. And you have Miami and Boston both kind of knocking on the door.

And can you get over the hump? You've both been to an NBA Finals. Can you go out there and win it with Jimmy Butler being your best player and Jason Tatum? Milwaukee, we know the Bucks, to me, are by far the best team in the Eastern Conference. And if Chris Middleton, and it goes year by year with injuries, two years ago, if Kyrie Irving didn't get hurt, if James Harden didn't get hurt, maybe Giannis doesn't have a ring. This past year, if Chris Middleton doesn't get hurt, there's a very good chance that the Milwaukee Bucks would have got back to the NBA Finals. And you have Giannis, you have Chris Middleton, you have Drew Holliday, which we all know has been very successful for the Milwaukee Bucks. For Philadelphia, I love Embiid.

I think when Eric Snow joined us, he put it to a T, hit the nail right in the head. They got to go win the next two, three years. And when James Harden is your finisher, even though he took a more team-friendly deal, as they say, when James Harden is your finisher, and the guy you're going to need to rely on to make big shots, that's not a championship-winning team to me.

Even though I'm a big fan of Tyrese Maxey. Toronto, they're good. I don't think they're great. Brooklyn, if you could ever get Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving to put all the drama aside, they could go win a championship. They could go to an NBA Finals. And Atlanta, they're an intriguing team to me, but I don't think they're a title team. So you put the Cavs in the mix of, yeah, I could see them being anywhere from like a three, four, five seed.

It may be creeping to the two spot because here's the tricky part with the NBA. You never know what effort and what level of dedication the players are going to give in the regular season. Because some teams, they just treat the regular season as if it doesn't matter, we'll be one of the eight teams and we'll get to the postseason. And we've seen that with some great teams and it not matter, but then when you get good teams do that, that's when it comes back to bite you in the you know what. So I do think the Cavs could be a very good team.

I just don't view them as a team that I'm going to be saying, okay, I feel as if they're a championship squad. So I like to move for Cleveland, but I do believe that a big storyline out of this is going to be, it's once again the Knicks and all the buzz and the Knicks fan falling for all the hype. All right, we're going to get this guy. This guy's going to want to be a New York Knick, you know, with all of his New York ties, Met fan, all that stuff. We're going to get Donovan Mitchell and you almost talk yourself into it being into existence and reality.

And now it didn't happen. And now you look at the Knicks. Yeah, Jalen Brunson, nice player.

RJ Barrett is a good, not great player. But do you trust the other youngsters to end up being a part of a core that I'm not even going to say win a championship? Because I don't think that's a goal right now for the Knicks. For the Knicks, this new regime, it's just important that they're in the playoffs back to back to back years because you made the playoffs and you missed the playoffs. You go miss the playoffs again.

You're going to have people that are to be critical and start to change their opinion on this regime, led by Leon Rose and led by World Wide West. So, Hickey, I'll go to you because you're a big time Knicks fan. Your reaction today when you saw the news Donovan Mitchell's traded and he's going to the Cleveland Cavaliers and not your New York Knicks. Go, New York, go, New York, go! I mean shocked, to be honest, because I always thought this entire time Danny Ainge was trying to hype up that other teams were involved.

I didn't buy it for a second. I thought the Knicks had the most to offer. I thought really they were the only team involved in the discussions. And then Danny Ainge shows he's not playing around. Gets the deal done with the Cavs. I was shocked. I thought for sure it was going to be Donovan Mitchell to the Knicks.

Just really the matter, the question would be when, not if. What did you make of the return for Utah? Who got a Kings ransom for trading Rudy Gobert, four first round picks. You could technically say five if you want to put in their first round pick from the shit they ended up getting in Walker Kessler. Three unprotected first round picks, two pick swaps, and then Colin Sexton being the big player they get back in the deal. Person I thought it was like, if you're going the Oklahoma City route where you're just going to pick up draft picks and picks and picks and picks.

Three unprotected, I think you could have got a lot more. I actually think it's fair. And hear me out on this one. I think we were all bracing ourselves that it was going to top the Gobert deal. And I think we were all mentally preparing that Gobert, who is a good player, a very good player, tremendous defensive player, but not a great player. If he went for that much and Minnesota had to give up that much to go get him, then it's going to create a domino effect. And I think you're seeing it in the NBA and then also the NFL. Just because one isolated thing happened does not mean that other dominoes all the time fall. And it's a continuation where you just add on what the return was when you look at what Rudy Gobert got traded for.

And maybe the market started to level back out where that was so odd and so bizarre. And I'll compare it to the NFL in a little different kind of analogy, like when Deshaun Watson gets $230 million guaranteed from the Browns with all that he was facing. Everyone's like, oh, Lamar Jackson's going to get a fully guaranteed contract. And that probably isn't going to happen.

Kyle Murray didn't get one and neither did Russell Wilson today. So just because one team does something and one team benefits greatly, it doesn't mean, like we think that's the bar and sometimes it is. But it doesn't always mean that the bar is met. And you saw it a little bit with KD where people go, oh, if Gobert went for that, then Kevin Durant easily is going to go for five, six, seven first round picks. And that didn't happen. And no one was even willing to come close to that. So in this case, I could see what you're saying, Ryan, and I'm not even totally saying like, wow, you're wrong. You're wrong because if you would ask me yesterday that Donovan Mitchell got traded and you said it was only three first round picks unprotected in two pick swaps.

I would say I probably would have thought to be four bare minimum, four first round picks that you would get and maybe some protections on the fourth one. But I think this is now the market now coming back down after it got off to such a crazy start following the Rudy Gobert deal. That's fair. It also depends on how you view Colin Sexton come off the injury that can, you know, player that right. And he could maybe, you know, well, they're telling you. And I know that the Knicks just extended R.J. Barrett. Is that Danny Ainge saying we value Colin Sexton more than R.J. Barrett or was Leon Rose just not willing to give up R.J. Barrett?

Yeah, I think it's working reports on that. I don't think the Knicks are going to give him up. And if they were going to give up R.J. Barrett, maybe only attach. I read two first round picks to him. But regardless, R.J. Barrett got the deal done. I saw the Knicks officially announced that today right when the Donovan Mitchell news was breaking.

So that wasn't a good look. But I do think the big takeaway is nice move for Cleveland. They'll be a very good team this year.

But then if you're a Knicks fan, here you go. Oh, once again, where you thought you were going to get a player and you got all hyped up and all excited. Donovan Mitchell, him, Jalen Brunson, R.J. Barrett got a nice core. They could be a playoff team for a few years in a row.

Still going to have to take eventually that next step. And you could question if that group would have ever been a championship contending team, but they would have been a very good team. And it was all offseason long. They're going to get Mitchell. They're going to get Mitchell. They're going to get Mitchell. Then they don't get Mitchell.

And now it's like, where do you go from there? Because Brunson's good. I'm not going to say he's great. And we got to see what he looks like when he's now one of the major pieces of a team. R.J. Barrett's been developing.

He's been good. I don't think he's a one or a two, though, necessarily on a championship team. And now it's about developing all these younger guys until you eventually make that next big move. But the question is, will Leon Rose ever be able to make that next big move?

Because if you missed the playoffs this year, then that's back to back years of missing the playoffs. And I have no clue how James Dolan will react to that. That's the toughest thing in sports is to try to predict and get inside the cabeza of James Dolan. It is the Zach Gelb show on CBS Sports Radio. When we come on back, we're going to talk a little bit about Lamar Jackson's contract. It hasn't got done yet.

Is it going to get done by week one? You're listening to the Zach Gelb show. That's right. It is Zach Gelb show on CBS Sports Radio. Before we talk about Lamar Jackson here, the backyard brawl comes your way at the top of the hour. What's the name of this new stadium now? I know it's not a new stadium, but they just changed the name of the stadium in Heinz Field.

Hot take, Kiki. Do you remember what the name of this new, well, once again, not a new stadium, but just a new name of the stadium is. Do you have it there? I believe it is called Acrisure. I'm not 100% sure if that's actually how you pronounce it.

A-C-R-I-S-U-R-E, but Acrisure. I will still look at it as Heinz Field. Acrisure Stadium. That's a great way to debut the name.

Backyard Brawl. A lot of attention on the name. I still look at that and say Heinz Field.

It'll be a while to now finally admit and fully have my brain be wrapped around the fact that Russell Wilson is the starting quarterback for the Denver Broncos, no longer in Seattle. It's going to take at least three or four years, bare minimum, before I start to even open up to this new name. There should be, I know. Listen, you want to take company's money.

There should be some sort of limit or bar. Your name has to be easy to say, easy to remember, or else we're out. Acrisure is tough. Now, nothing against Acrisure Stadium, and this game's coming up at the top of the hour. There's two things I got to play for you. Now, before we get to the audio, JT Daniels and Keaton Slovis are going to be battling up against one another. JT Daniels, former USC quarterback, now with West Virginia. Keaton Slovis, former USC quarterback, now with Pitt.

We had Keaton on the show last week. I think Keaton Slovis is going to have a big year. I don't think Pitt's going to repeat as ACC champs, but I like this Pitt team, and I like Keaton Slovis. People forget, he had like 30 touchdowns in 2019.

Then he had that weird COVID year in 2020, last year gets hurt, had all the problems with Klay Helton at USC, was barely even there that year, so there was a lot of chaos there. I really do like Keaton Slovis for this upcoming year. I think he's one of those quarterbacks that has a bounce back year, one of those redemption stories in college football. Just once Pitt wins the ACC, you still think that Clemson is now going to bounce back and win the ACC this season. I'm not going to take it any step further than that, other than just thinking that you're going to see a good year from the quarterback in Keaton Slovis.

But he better have a great game tonight. And I don't have a problem with this, but we talk about bulletin board material, and we talk about not adding more fuel to the fire. Well, you had Keaton Slovis the other day at a pep rally add a lot of fuel to this fire and to this rivalry of the backyard brawl between West Virginia and Pitt. Listen up to the new Pitt quarterback in Keaton Slovis taking no time to get acclimated to this rivalry.

And we got one more thing to say. So you have the bleep West Virginia, and this is going to be, I'm just going to have a limb here tonight, I'll take it. This is going to be a rowdy crowd tonight.

I'm seeing some of the videos in the parking lot of Acashore Stadium or whatever the heck it's called now, whatever the bleep it's called. The West Virginia fans, I'm not saying Pitt fans don't know how to party. I saw the videos though of the West Virginia fans, West Virginia fans said no surprise, know how to party, know how to get down before a game. There's going to be some viral videos and there are going to be some fights tonight. There is no doubt about it at this game between West Virginia fans and Pitt fans. Safe to say a lot of moonshine crossed the Pennsylvania border earlier this afternoon and late last night, that's for sure. There are going to be some drunk people during this game and there's going to be, I don't advocate fighting at a football game.

There are going to be some drunk people though getting into some kerfuffles at the football game tonight. Now, Pac-Man Jones played at West Virginia. He went on a Pittsburgh radio station today, our friends at 93.7, the fan, and he went on with their morning show.

And I love Colin Dunlap, does a great job hosting that show. Adam Pac-Man Jones, he started to curse a lot on the radio station. Let's listen up to Adam Pac-Man Jones. He has some choice words for the Pitt fans. Now, you know, between playing at West Virginia and then playing for the Bengals, there's a lot of people in Pittsburgh that they don't like you as a sports fan. I know you don't like your music.

Well, that's okay. But I know, I know you got people that you do like. You like Vaughn Rivers and Eric Wicks and all of those guys from Pittsburgh you're tight with, right? But take me through, you seem to have become one of the, I don't want to say enemy number one, but a lot of people in Pittsburgh don't like you.

Does that bother you at all? Man, **** Pittsburgh. Eat ****, Pitt. Oh, jeez. Oh, boy.

Oh, boy. He's gone because I dumped him twice. Yeah, you had to go. Now, Hickey, I used to know the behind the scenes working here on the dump button, but at every radio station it's different. How many dumps do we get before we got to let the person go? I've never gotten to a point where I don't think it automatically unless it is two, but we have three separate ones.

It takes a while for it to rebuild back up, right? Well, yeah. Because I used to do the weekend overnights here when they would use the dump button.

Now, Ben Horowitz could have been a little bit paranoid, potentially, too. But whenever they used the dump button, they said you'd have to wait like two minutes to ramp back up to a caller. Per dump. But if you just said to me, Zach, go bleep yourself, and I dumped it, and then I kept your microphone on and you then said bleep you again, would we be okay with just two dumps there? We go up to three, yep. Oh, so we get up to three.

So if you say bleep me again and then you then set it a fourth time, then it would get out over the air. Yes. Okay. Yeah.

I could understand why the radio station then had to hang up on him because they didn't want all these FCC violations. I guess the way that it works in their system, you dump twice because he had multiple curse words. It might be automatic. Yeah. You cut the phone off because if someone calls up and they curse me out, I know when we dump you, it does mute the phone line for like six or seven seconds.

And then you could go, maybe it's a little bit shorter than that, but it feels like six or seven seconds. Oh, no. We managed to turn it back on. So if you're done with them, we can just don't turn back on. Oh, okay.

It's all manual. We can just turn it back on right away. Yes. Got it. If you have a guest that curses accidentally. Yes. Right back on a second. You won't even notice. I once have a very funny.

Well, it's funny now. Radio cursing story. I was in Philadelphia. Hosted on 97.5, the fanatic hot take.

A guy calls in Eagles post game show. He goes, Zach, your mom's bleep. Says the C word. So we dump.

And we think that right. It's a dump. It doesn't get out over the air after the show ends. I had to call my mom, check in, you know, see how she's doing and everything. I was living in Philadelphia.

She's living in New York. And she goes, oh, that was a lovely thing that a caller said about me. And I go, wait, you heard that over the air? She goes, yeah, I was listening on the stream and I heard it. And I go, oh, geez. I go, that's kind of crazy. So I told management at the station because at the time I'm a part time getting paid like next to nothing.

Part time host in Philadelphia. And I tell station manager, they go, I must have just been only on the stream. There's no way it got on the air, a.k.a. they weren't listening to the radio station then.

The next week got to be like a Tuesday or Wednesday. I'm listening to the station. Mike Missanelli is the afternoon host and I hear the caller. And for some reason, when someone calls your mother the C word, you remember the caller and you remember what the caller sounds like. And he's doing the same shtick. He has the same build up and I go, oh, no, here it comes. And he didn't call Mike's mother the C word. He used like, oh, she's a mother bleeper or something.

Not that that makes it really any better. And I was listening and it didn't dump. Station management called me the next day.

They go, you were actually right. Someone turned off the dump button. I don't know how that happened.

Someone turned off the dump button at the radio station. So there is audio somewhere of a caller calling my mother the C word and then Mike Missanelli's mother, a mother bleeper somewhere that did make the air. Now, the next week later, because I will say in our call screening system, hot take hickey.

It's pretty extensive. You call on the same number. We your name goes up there. We could see how many times you call. We could block you. All that stuff that you call on a different number.

There's nothing we could do. Their phone system sucked. It was just seven lines. And then they would manually just type on the screen who the person was and you never even got to see the phone call. The next week, I'm hosting the postgame show. And I forget what the guy's name is now because all these years later, I'm like, all right, we'll go out to so and so in Philadelphia. And I'm hearing this guy like, oh, I recognize this voice and he has a similar build up and he stuttered. And I go right before you deliver your punch line.

Never call me again. Hung up on the guy. And it was the same guy as he was about to pull this shtick once again. So that used to be postgame in Philadelphia in the year the Eagles won the Super Bowl. That was the one year I did it so I could see why the host in Pittsburgh had to hang up on Adam Pac-Man Jones because he was cursing too many times. How about Adam Pac-Man Jones, who's now I guess you could say in the media. And I know he does a show on Sirius and he does a lot of podcasting, so it doesn't matter if he could curse.

You get him going. Hey, Pittsburgh fans hate you. Eat bleep bleep pit bleep you. That was some awesome stuff from Adam Pac-Man Jones. All we needed is Sweet Caroline to have the tune there for eat blank pit.

That would have made it perfect. Who wins that game tonight? Upset West Virginia.

Wow. JT Daniels goes into Acra Shore Stadium and stamps his mark. This is my stadium. I think, though, that is a you hating pit because when Narduzzi joined us last year. Narduzzi, you even said it. You don't you don't like Narduzzi, Pat Narduzzi. But after Narduzzi came on our show, you go, wow, he's really likable in that interview. And now this offseason, once again, after he made the whole Big Ten comment, you aren't a fan of Narduzzi again. And that slight love that you had for Narduzzi is completely washed away. I think that's more of a heart than a head pick from hot take. Lost their Heisman Trophy finalist quarterback, lost your offensive coordinator, lost the best receiver in college football.

I think that's a lot to overcome in one year personally. But it's fair. I'm not saying that they're going to win the ACC again. I just believe that Keaton Slove is better quarterback JT Daniels. Now, it's not all about who your quarterback is. But I do think that Pitt is going to win the game tonight. So we'll see. I have called you the most knowledgeable person when it comes to college football at this network.

So this is big now for you. Real big for you on West Virginia and Pitt in the backyard brawl this upcoming year. When we come on back, we'll eventually get to this Lamar Jackson conversation. Trista Crick from BetMGM tonight is going to be joining us in studio as we got some over-unders in the NFL. We'll take a look to the college football slate this upcoming holiday weekend. Zach Gelb's show, CBS Sports Radio.