Pardon My Take - Julian Edelman, Greg Maddux, Phil Rivers Retires And Championship Weekend

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

Phil Rivers has retired and we're very sad about it. We talk about his career and Hall of Fame candidacy.(2:16-12:35) The Lions hire Dan Campbell and he's the greatest Football guy of all time.(12:36-21:40) Championship Weekend Preview and Cant Lose Parlay. (23:01-40:22) Patriots Wide Receiver Julian Edelman joins the show to talk about Championship Weekend, Tom vs Time, and his favorite football game memories. (42:00-1:14:00) Hall of Famer Greg Maddux joins the show to talk about classic Mad Dog stories, how he was so good, and being the prank God.(1:15:46-1:56:02) We finish with Fyre Fest of the Week. (1:56:51-2:08:54)You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/PardonMyTake

Hey, pardon my take listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. On today's part of my take, we have a twofer. We have Julian Edelman, Super Bowl champion, AFC championship weekend veteran, talking about Tom Brady, talking about his career. He's not retiring. And then we have, by my estimation, like that, well, he's not retiring. Maybe, and then we have, by my estimation, the greatest baseball player of all time. Yeah, I said it, Greg Maddox. Whoa. Okay. Well, I guess we talk about that as well when he goes up against Barry Bond. So awesome interview with Mad Dog. Great two interviews. We also have a preview of championship Sunday,

Firefest, Phil Rivers retires, and Dan Campbell comes on the scene. We have all of that brought to you by our friends at the Cash App. Go download the Cash App. Right now, use code Barstool. You get $10 for free, $10 to the ASPCA. The Cash App is the greatest app ever created. If you download the Cash App, you can get that for $10 for free. And like I said, you're helping people with, they're helping animals with $10 to ASPCA, but you also get a great app because it links directly to your bank account. You can buy Bitcoin, you can buy stock, you can send money to friends and family. You can do everything with the Cash App. It is super easy to use. It's the greatest app ever created. We'll say that besides the Barstool Sportsbook app and the Barstool Sports

app. It is the greatest app ever created. We love the Cash App. We're in the Cash App studio. So go download the Cash App right now. Use code Barstool. You get $10 for free, $10 to ASPCA. Download it, download it, download the Cash App. Okay, let's go. Welcome to part of my take presented by the Cash App. Go download it right now. Use code Barstool. You get $10 for free, $10 to ASPCA. Today is Friday. Thank you. Friday, January 22nd and Dan Gummett, it just gets the stew out of me. Philip Rivers has retired. It's probably the most depressed I've ever been about a retirement of a player that doesn't play for one of my teams. It's a bunch of horse mess. I was sick too when I saw it. I mean,

this is a guy that has given so much joy to us and defensive backs on Sunday afternoons. I'm going to be, I'm going to be missing him next year. I mean, hopefully we can get James or a quarterback that is of his same ilk to provide us with the same type of type of late Sunday drama. But yeah, this is one of those where were you moments like that? Now I feel old now when Philip Rivers, I feel like I'm 29 years old. It absolutely you're 29. I'm 35 going on 50. I had a moment where it happened. I processed it. I tweeted some of my favorite clips. And then I said to myself, wait, I'm actually kind of really upset about this because Philip Rivers, and I was thinking about it. I was trying to understand my emotions. I was

really trying to get in touch. This is great too. That like the most emotional thing that happens to us is a football player retires. I was going to say man card, but I think in this circumstance, you're allowed to cry during the national anthem and when Philip Rivers retires. So I was, I was trying to do some self diagnosis really looking in. It's, you know, mental health is in the news every day. We're in tune with our emotions. So I was wondering why I feel this way because we also had, you know, Eli Manning retired, Peyton Manning retired, guys who have been part of our NFL Sundays for many, many years. But the difference is when Eli Manning retired, we knew it was kind of over. When Peyton Manning retired,

even though he won a Super Bowl, it was kind of over. Philip Rivers wasn't peak Philip Rivers in the last few years. His arm strength wasn't there, but he still was a joy to watch and he was still fun and his teams were still competitive. So it feels like, you know, I'm happy that he's going out on his terms. I'm happy that we won't get some like terrible, terrible year of Philip Rivers where we all, it just gets sad, but I still think he could have played another year. So that's why it hurts me. And there are so many Sundays where he was, we made the joke many, many times, but he was the anchor to Sunday at six 30, seven o'clock after watching so much football all weekend long. Phil Rivers was there trying to lead a furious comeback, trying to bring the Chargers

or the Colts this last year back and win a game in a hilarious fashion. And we thank him and I'm sad. PFT. I actually went and looked up a stat. He led, I think it was by over a hundred, the amount of passes thrown in the fourth quarter when his team is down one score in the last 10 years. And is that not the most perfect? Yep. Philip Rivers stat you've ever seen. Hold on. I'm pulling it up. Here it is. It is 604. The next closest one is Matt Ryan at 560. So that's Philip Rivers. And I love them forever. Well, the only reason Matt Ryan isn't even higher than that is because he doesn't throw that many passes when they're behind. He throws a shitload of passes when they're ahead and then very few at

the end when they give up the lead. So he only gets like two passes in late in the fourth quarter with Philip Rivers. He is Mr. First, Second and Third Quarter. And then the fourth quarter, actually that is where you get the most distilled version of Philip Rivers. And it's hard to put a pin on when Philip Rivers was at his peak. Like if I were to ask you what year were we at peak Philip Rivers? I don't really know when that was because I remember the stuff like him lying on his back and jumping up in the air like a bullfrog that's getting fucked more than I do the really, really good Philip Rivers where he got to the AFC Championship game. So peak Philip Rivers to me started when he was playing that game against the Broncos and Jay

Cutler and Philip River screaming at each other across the sidelines. I think that was his arrival. We're like, Oh man, this is going to be fun. I do think that AFC Championship game when he played on the tournament ACL and you know, we'll obviously get to the Hall of Fame debate, but Phil Rivers had some bad luck. It's a team sport. It's actually crazy to look at the numbers and realize how like your career and, and you know, I think he'll eventually get in the Hall of Fame. He's not a first ballot Hall of Famer. I think he will eventually get it, but he obviously will get dinged for the lack of playoff wins and the lack of a signature win and the lack of a Super Bowl. But when you actually look at it with Philip Rivers versus Eli Manning versus Ben Rothesberger,

Eli and Ben both have two Super Bowls. Philip Rivers was the better quarterback in terms of numbers throughout his career. So it's, I don't know. I just, he was such a, and honestly, if I were in the Hall of Fame committee, if David Baker was our boss, I'd be like, okay, all your numbers mean nothing to me. Like he was so much fun to watch. I don't really care. Like I can't think of football the last 20 years without Philip Rivers. And yeah, he was never the greatest quarterback in the league because he played with Brady and Peyton and all these guys and breeze at the height of their abilities. But he was the most fun for a very long time. So I think that there actually does need to be a Hall of Very Good. People forget that it's the Hall of Fame and not

the Hall of Very Good, but we should make the Hall of Very Good and put people like him and like Matt Schaub, fun guys, people that gave us moments in football that gave us years and memories that we can't just like let be lost to the sands of time that need to be memorialized in some way, even if they're not good enough to get into the Hall of Fame. And I actually, I do think that Philip Rivers should be a Hall of Famer. I agree with you on that. I think, I mean, it's fun to go back and say like, what if the Chargers had drafted Eli Manning and he didn't hold out and demanded trade to the Giants? I mean, that, that to me, I think that Philip Rivers would have won more Super Bowls than Eli Manning did. Yeah. And so here's another stat to back it up. So Robert

Mays tweeted this out, rank and EPA expected, I think what's EPA expected points added is the stat since from 2006 to 2020 or 2020, Philip Rivers was six overall, Big Ben was 12, Eli was 35. So like, yes, Super Bowls matter. I'm not saying they don't. They clearly do. Like Ben and Eli have those Super Bowls. Those guys are first bound Hall of Famers because of their Super Bowls. But my argument would be Philip Rivers still deserves to be in the Hall of Fame eventually because it is a team sport and he was, you know, he was part of some very good teams, never got all the way, you know, to the top of the mountain. But that also is, I like, that's also kind of perfectly Philip Rivers too. You know what I mean? Like the whole story is perfect. And, and his

retirement statement to Adam Schefter and to the league was so funny when he, he said, I appreciate the opposing defenses making it challenging physically and mentally every week. I also enjoyed the banter. I appreciate the referees for putting up with all my fussing. I think I was right most of the time. Dad gum it. And like, so that's Philip Rivers. In his, in his retirement statement, he thanked the defenses and the referees and his 17 children. And that's perfect. Philip Rivers, the story of a man who tried and tried as he might, kept climbing that hill, but never reached the climax. That's, I think that's what we always think of when we think of Phil. I think that after he retires, he should definitely, I mean,

there's talk about him going into the booth. I think it'd be awesome on television. I think that Philip Rivers would be a great, he's going to go home, try to coach high school football, try to do that. And then he's going to be like, shit, I got all these kids. This is a real pain in the ass having to be a dad all the time. So I better do something that takes me at least out of the house for three or four days a week. I think he's going to be a football coach forever. And he's going to win like a million Alabama, you know, class five state titles and whatnot. Also, let's just throw this out there. Cause this one needs to be said, 240 consecutive starts. That's fucking insane. Brett five obviously has the record,

but just think about how physically taxing an NFL season is and how many, like how hard it must be to play that many games in a row, never missing one, played on an ACL and the AC, you know, a torn ACL and the AFC championship game. Like that should be mentioned in the Phil Rivers story. And that, that game streak, it's almost as impressive as any numbers streak. You know what I mean? Like it's almost as impressive as any touchdown streak or a past completion, anything like that. Playing that many games, the NFL consecutively is fucking incredible. Yeah. How many did Eli have when, when Ben McAdoo do pulled them out for that one game for really no reason? I don't know. Let me see. Eli, I mean, obviously you like a lot of games, but Philip also had

some games where he was like, I'm just not going to not be the starter today. Like regardless of how I'm feeling. So he was just a guy that's like, you can never lose your job if you never let the next guy in. Yeah. 210. 210 was Eli. 240 was Philip Rivers. And Eli, I mean, we, we joked about it, but it did have the last few years where he self-sacked for preservation. Yeah. Maybe not taking as many hits. Mr. Stats, Dan Stats, do you have Philip Rivers career winning percentage? Oh, I don't. Do you? I don't have it in front of me. I just remember that Eli was perfect 500, right? Yeah. No. Oh, I do have it actually. I lied. Eli was 117 and 117. Philip Rivers was 134 and 106. There you have it. And then Big Ben was obviously on a lot better teams, 156 and 74.

I just think, again, I'm not saying that, uh, Philip Rivers, you can sit here and be like, he was better than Big Ben or Eli. Statistically, he was, but obviously super roles matter. They absolutely matter. He just should be in the Hall of Fame. Again, he should be in the Hall of Fame. He was more fun than Eli Manning. Yeah. And Eli Manning was fun. He was very, a lot of fun. This is not against Eli Manning, but Philip Rivers, you're right. This was like the funnest quarterback class of all time, all time. And Philip Rivers was head and shoulders above the others. Yeah. So, um, all right. So we say goodbye to a legend, but good news, you know, uh, as one birth happens or one death happens, a birth happens, we get Dan Campbell,

head coach Dan Campbell. Now he wasn't interim head coach for a while for the Dolphins there, but holy shit. Was that not the greatest press conference of all time? If you missed it, Dan Campbell was hired as a lot, new Lions head coach. He did a press conference where he accidentally swore and then he had the quote, we're going to kick you in the teeth. And when you punch us back, we're going to smile at you. And when you knock us down, we're going to get, uh, get up. And on the way up, we're going to bite a kneecap off. I, does Dan Campbell think he's coaching actual Lions? He thinks he's coaching war. He's going to war up there. I, I do take exception when he said another birth happens. Dan Campbell was not, he was not born. He was

forged. This is a dude that like came out like an iron and twisted steel. Um, he is my favorite interim coach of all time. I'd even put him above Jim Tom Sula in terms of coach. Oh, was it? Well, coach Joe has kind of risen above that. Yeah, but he won us so much money when he was interim, but Dan Campbell, I think is the ultimate essence of an interim head coach. And this press conference was perfect. His whole mentality basically is we're going to be more physical than you. He's Dan Campbell was just always ready to engage another human being physically. He's just like always on the lookout for that. And he just, his mentality is that of like a porcupine. He's like, you're going to kick our ass, but you know what, we're really going to make you hurt when you do

it. You're going to hate, you're going to hate beating the Lions. Yes. And he also, you know, people obviously are clowning on it because I think we pointed this out last week that the first thing Matt Patricia did with the Lions was run the Oklahoma drill. The first thing Dan Campbell did with the dolphins when his interim head coach was run the Oklahoma drill. But I think the way that Dan Campbell presents it is going, guys will buy in more than they did with Matt Patricia because Matt Patricia had a little bit of an arrogance to him, a little bit of, Hey, I was with Belichick. I know what I'm saying. Dan Campbell is just a dude. So much so on his office door, it just said the dude. It said Dan Campbell, the dude. He is, he is a guy. And I

don't know if it will last forever. And he has to clearly hire some smart people around him, but he's a guy. If you polled the NFL, I guarantee you there would be a majority of NFL players being like, I love to play for a guy like that. Yeah. I think his players will absolutely like him and enjoy it. The only thing is if he gets, you know, if it's a four and 12 season, that might be a little bit much at the end of the year to have like Dan basically tying you to a chariot and riding you around practice, you know, for the last game of the year. But I think, you know, the Metallica, he needs to bring back the Metallica practice. What do you call it? You call him Dan Tallica? Dan Tallica. I like, I like Dan Tara. Dan Tara is pretty sweet because, because he

used to be, he was a cowboy from hell. And I know that that's like a Texas band. And they're fucking that. If I were listening to Dan Tara, chances are I'm getting into a fight that day. Like they're going to be, I think they're going to be like three to four all out training camp brawls this summer. And Dan Tara is going to fucking love it. He's going to eat it up. And they're going to hug after, yeah, brawl and they're all going to be like, dude, that was awesome. We're a fucking team now. Yeah. Whereas if you got into a brawl with Matt Patricia, he would just kind of sit there and smile and smirk at him, be thinking to himself like, this is good that they're doing that. But then he would punish you. I'm sure after the fact.

Be like, we can't be throwing hands at training camp. Dan Campbell will make the team hug it out bitch after every single brawl. So I think they're definitely going to be a physical team. We're really the ones that are lucky here with Dan Campbell because like he got a six year deal big cat, six years, six years is so long for a first time head coach. And you know, they never fire guys or fire people. Yeah, exactly. So I think I think Detroit, Detroit is going to be, they do. Yeah. But six years, I don't know. I feel like he's got, he's got to stick around for at least three of them, right? Yeah, three. He gets three. I agree with that. Three. Three feels like we'll get at least three Dan Campbell. And I really was like, I do think the world works this way

where it was sad to lose Phil Rivers and you need a character to take his place. And there it is. It's, it's Dan Tara. It's Dan Talica. And we have urban now. By the way, did you see on a side note? Did you see who urban goddess is GM? No, bulky. The guy who Jim Harbaugh and yeah, he had the biggest feuds ever on their way out in San Francisco. That is such I love that Urban Myers bringing Ohio State Michigan feuds to the NFL with that. It was, it was a this league higher if this were the NBA. Yeah, it was a passive aggressive move. It was a direct shot at Harbaugh for really no reason whatsoever. Fuck that's a good GM. He broke a good team and Nick Saban got our guy. He got he got one of the

dugs. He got Doug Morone as is what offensive line coach. Yeah, offensive line coach, which that's gonna be great dog on the sideline. I was thinking about that too, because I think the Bears are losing their offensive line coach like, man, I wish we had gotten Doug Morone. But then I realized like, it really is a genius thing to do for a coach that just got fired because you're going to Alabama and you know, you're going to win. You're gonna almost like it's almost a cleanse of your body because if you're a coach that got fired, you probably lost a lot. Now you get to go get a cleanse like a nice spa year where you win and dominate the fuck out of everyone else. And it's not like there's going to be any firings at Alabama. The

only thing that happens Alabama is guys get hired to new jobs. So it's the greatest rehabilitation program of all time. Nick Saban needs more credit for rehabilitating football guys and setting them back out in the wild. How quickly do you think it takes to get rehabilitated by Saban? Like if you coach Alabama for two months, do you think you'll get another job right after that? Yeah, I think so. I think if they win a national title, by the way, so I'm in Detroit right now. Yeah, everyone's joining me for the weekend. But I'm hearing the pipes right now and it is so loud. It's so loud that we have to live in this. Hey, is Pete in the room with you right now? Well, they're voice activated. That's the problem. He's a loser. He's a loser. If Pete

comes back in the room, bring him over onto the mic because I feel like he should have to address our listeners. He should have to explain. Come address the listeners. What? It's so loud in here, Pete. He just groaned. I think he was jerking off, which is weird because he actually can't produce calm after his vasectomy. No longer nuts. Do you want to address them? No, I've worked on the pipes. He's worked on the pipes. He's worked on the pipes. Yeah. Yeah, I heard pipes. I heard you were working on the pipes. Fuck you. They drain the pipes. Pete drain the pipes, that's what he said. I actually do think that Dan Campbell would implement the ideas that we gave Matt Patricia when we were up there talking to him doing the interview with him that Matt Patricia just kind

of like looked at us smirked. He was kind of he was a prick in like a lovely way. But if we gave those same ideas to Dan Campbell, he'd be like, I'm going to write all these down because I'll use at least one of them. Like the idea of having the factory clock, the punch clock right at the door every day, the lion or the sheep that you ignore because lions don't care about the opinions of them. I think that he could we in Dan Campbell would get along very, very well swimming. Yes. Yes. And Matt Patricia was one of the weirdest interviews because we had fun with it. We thought it was funny and then it just didn't translate to the podcast where people were like, man, he was a dick. Like, no, actually, he was kind of he was nice in person. Like he wasn't it was

kind of a jokey way. But that's, you know, Dan Campbell, we will try to interview Dan Campbell. We have a request out there. Dan Campbell, you probably listen to this show because you're a football guy. What up? First of all, congrats on the hire. That's awesome. Six years. You'll probably be there all six, but also let us come interview you while we're in Detroit. Yeah, please do. Here's a free recommendation. This is just a taste of some of the stuff that we'll throw at you in person. Just get heavier weights. I don't know why more coaches don't do that. Just like get heavier weights than you currently have in the weight room. Got the silver metal ones. Yeah, just heavy. Yeah, just as long as you can be like, we lift heavier weights than any team in the NFL.

That's the Dan Tara way. Yeah, maybe get the guys doing the Scottish big log toss that they do. Hell yeah. I feel like member when everyone was member when Sean Payton took his sabbatical and came back and tried to get everyone to do CrossFit on the Saints and they all got injured. I think Dan Campbell definitely has some like, hey, we're all going to do Navy Seal training and everyone's getting injured. That feels like a Dan Campbell move waiting to happen. Look around. Look at the guy next to you and the guy next to you. Two of you are going to die. Two of you are going to throw out your back before training camp even begins. The only problem might be that he's too alpha. Imagine like being an alpha dog because you need a couple alpha dogs

on your defense and on your offensive line and leadership. Imagine like having a coach that you knew was always going to be alpha over top of you. That might be an issue right there. Yeah, it's true. I mean, that's that's a good point. Like you could if he might have to put on some pads, you might have to play. He might have to get out there and play and show him how it's done. I wouldn't hate that either. All right, let's get to conference championship preview. Then we got two great interviews. Julian Edelman and Greg Maddox coming up before we do that. Pepsi. Pepsi is bringing you a halftime experience like never before. Grab and scan your Pepsi to get closer to the action. Tune in on February 7th for the Pepsi Super Bowl halftime show award winning

artist the weekend will be performing live on the world's biggest stage and go to Pepsi halftime.com to check out exclusive behind the scenes content, AR filters and more for the halftime show. I love the half Super Bowl halftime show. It's always great. It does feel like it's it's an event. It feels like an event. I know they announced it like two months beforehand. It feels like an event. They have blinding lights playing on every commercial, which is a banger. So I'm not even mad about that. But Pepsi has the best halftime show out there. February 7th, the big game for the Pepsi Super Bowl halftime show, the weekend will be performing. And you can go right now to Pepsi halftime.com to check out exclusive behind the scenes content, AR filters and more for the

halftime show. Thank you to Pepsi. Actually, once I checked into my hotel room, I had a refrigerator full of Pepsi. So I am good to go for the weekend. Go again, Pepsi halftime.com. Thank you to Pepsi, our wonderful sponsor. All right, conference championship. Let's do it. Let's start with the battle of the bays or as Chris Berman used to call it, the Bay of Pigs. Tom Brady going up to Lambeau. I have talked myself into the Bucks being able to beat the Packers. No surprise, but I have. I have fully talked myself into it. I don't know. I just have talked myself into it. I don't talk myself into it. I don't think so. I don't think so. I think I think Green Bay is going to be able to handle it pretty easily. The weather right now it's scheduled to

be 29 degrees and snowy in Lambeau field. Like that to me just that's a Packers win. God is on their side this week. I have a big cat. Let me just let me try to phrase it to you in a way that you can accept the fact that the Packers are going to win. Just say like this feels like an Aaron Jones game to me, but they can't the Bucks defense is it run defense is the strength of their defense in Vita. I don't know if he's going to play. It'd be crazy if he did. But if he plays even half the snaps, that's a nice addition for them. I just here's what here's what I like. I look back at the Packers season. They're not frauds. They're clearly not frauds. Aaron Rodgers been playing. He's the MVP. He's been playing at an incredible level. I just think it's

going to be a coin. I think both of these games are going to be coin flip games that whoever makes a play like late in the fourth quarter. I know this sounds cliche, but it's clearly like this is actually saying something with how good these teams are. You're not going to have Tom Brady panic. You're not going to have Tom Brady like go behind it. You know what I mean? Like the Packers game script pretty much every game is they come out hot. They're really good in the first and second quarter and then they'll sit on the ball a little bit. Tom Brady is not going to be afraid if they're down 14 nothing right out of the gate. They were down 10 nothing and then they won 38 10 earlier this year. I have a crazy stat for you that Hank, you're going to love this. I saw this

tweeted out this weekend and we talked about Phil Rivers. It's a team sport. So this is a team sport. Tom Brady obviously been on some really good teams, but if you took Tom Brady after turning 37 years old, he has 14 playoff wins. Peyton Manning has 14. This Peyton Manning career, Drew Brees career, Aaron Rodgers and Ben Robson. Their entire career versus Tom Brady after he turned 37. Tom Brady has more playoff wins that Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Ben Robson's burger. The same amount is Peyton Manning. And like all these stats, it's crazy. He basically has a full career after the age of 37 that all these other guys have. And I just, we talked about it on Monday, but he just, he just, when is he going to stop being like getting big wins that

we don't expect, right? Yeah. I'm very much looking forward to this game. I mean, Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers in the playoffs against each other. It doesn't, it literally does not get better than that in football. It doesn't get so period. I've talked myself, I have talked myself into the bucks beating the Packers because I know that I need like, I think if the Packers get to the Super Bowl, then they're just going to win it. I don't, I just can't handle that. I can't handle that. Okay. I understand that, but I still think the Packers are going to win this weekend. And we joked about Brady not being a cold weather quarterback, being a Florida kid from California. I do think that Bruce Arians is not a cold weather coach. I think he's a warm weather coach. But Brady's coaching now,

didn't you hear? Brady's doing full-time play calling. What about Byron? Yeah, that's right. Bruce Arians has just set himself up for like the perfect, like he's just middle of himself perfectly where he was like criticizing Brady. And then once they got good, he's like, well, Brady's doing a lot of the coaching now. They didn't do that in New England. So that's why we're winning. Yeah. But then when they lose, you'll be like, well, Brady was coaching. So I agree with you, PFT, in that we will get a, Bruce Arians face was, looked like he had no oxygen in his, his skull when he was in a dome in New Orleans last weekend. It was now ready with Lambo. Yeah. And Lambo, like we're going to get Tom Coughlin face to the max. I think you actually

need to, to probably cover him in Vaseline before he even goes outside this weekend, just in case, because Bruce Arians, yeah, it is a life alert. He should have a life alert instead of the red flag, just in case something goes wrong. I'm going to need a Pantone check on Bruce Arians face this weekend because last weekend it was, it was like a purple. It was, it was like darker red than the team colors were. So yeah, going to need a definite Pantone check on that. He's probably going to just have a flask on the sideline to keep warm. If I know Bruce Arians, he's got, yeah, he's got like a couple of nips of crowns stashed away. Oh man, I'm so nervous about this game. I really need to pack her salutes. Can I, can I call something real quick? I'm just a future call here.

Aaron Rodgers, he announced that he was going to be doing Jeopardy or Sports Jeopardy. He's going to be hosting it. I actually think that Aaron Rodgers is going to eventually be the full time host of Jeopardy. I think he's going to be after he retires. I think he will. I thought it was Kenny, the kid. I think Aaron Rodgers is going to like doing it too much and it combines like all his favorite things, mustaches being smarter than everybody and letting everybody know that you're smarter than them. So like, I think that he's going to really enjoy hosting Jeopardy and just stick around. So you're saying pretty much my only shot now at this point to get rid of Aaron Rodgers. I need like Pat McAfee to have a kid and then keep that kid from eating

beans and then have him tweet it and then get canceled and then cancel Aaron Rodgers by association. Yes. Okay. All right. Well, I will. I will work on that happen. You can make that happen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I will try. I will try to get Pat McAfee's unborn child to get addicted to beans and never be able to learn how to use a can opener. Fuck. Fuck. He's going to be around forever. He just Chris by the way here. I'm going to prop. I don't even know if the props are up yet and I'm going to get to my can't lose parlay. I think Chris Godwin's going to have a big game. There it is. Jair Alexander is one of the best corners in the league. So it's going to be interesting. Like I think it's going to be up to Antonio Brown of his knees. Okay. Gronk, Scotty Miller,

Chris Godwin to do a lot of the heavy lifting here. Playoff Lenny. Playoff Lenny by the shirt. Now we actually work. We are collaborating with Playoff Lenny on this shirt. That makes sense because I was confused why he was like promoting the shirt. Yeah. Yeah. No, you hit me up. This is called. He was called Playoff Lenny and he's embracing the nickname. Yeah. It's great. We better get off Lenny from Joe Buck this weekend. All right. Over on there is 63 and a half yards. Who's Godwin? Chris Godwin. I like that. All right. I'm going to take the over and his catches. Um, all right. So AFC championship game. Now I said it on Monday and I'm sticking with it. I think the bills are going to win and I wouldn't be surprised if they wouldn't

win convincingly. I agree. And it's not just because it's not just because I bet on the bills early in the week when I thought that Patrick Mahomes is going to be out with a concussion, which is not going to happen. He's just practicing. He's just taking all the snaps and practicing and they're saying he they had to delete a tweet earlier this week because it was Patrick Mahomes very clearly as the number one quarterback and they're like QB one. And meanwhile after practice, Andy reads like, yeah, he's in the concussion protocol and they had to delete the tweet because it's like, yeah, obviously he's going to be starting. His foot is an issue. The toe is an issue. I'm kind of mad at you by the way, because you let your, um, human side,

you became too much of a human being like Patrick Mahomes might not play. Yeah. And you forgot that this is football and they're going to make him play no matter what. I forgot that Roger Godell was in charge of the NFL. Yeah. Yeah. You thought for a second that we actually cared about player safety. Yeah. Roger Godell probably would delay the game by a week. No offense to Colin Coward. He probably would just to make Patrick Mahomes play. He would probably personally go that he would infect himself with COVID and go into the chief's locker room and just piss all over the place, ensuring that they had enough tests to get the game postponed. Yeah. And by the way, we care about player safety. The NFL does not care about player safety. We want that on the record.

We do, but we just know better that the NFL does not and their star player is going to play and they'll find any way to spin it that it wasn't a concussion and it was a choked nerve and whatever it may be. I just, I think we're going to get the best bill's performance. And I do, there's, there has to be a point that the chiefs have not covered in nine weeks now. So I guess really if you're betting on the chiefs this week, you're saying they're just going to flip that switch we're talking about and they will be those chiefs. And maybe that's true because Patrick Mahomes still is the best quarterback in the NFL. Yep. And those chiefs, to be clear, if those chiefs show up, I think those chiefs beat those bills, but I think,

I think those bills beat these chiefs. Well, let me throw this out there too, because remember those chiefs still last year were down what 24 to the Texans, 10 or 14 to the Titans. These bills are better than those two teams like they just are. Right. So when they go down by, if they spot the bills, 17 points, that's going to be very, very difficult. It's not the same as playing against the Texas defense that can't stop anything or Titans defense that was slightly fraudulent. Like that. Right. It's just not the same. But those Texans are very bad. Don't get me wrong on defense, but those chiefs were just like, when they flipped that switch for the last three quarters of those games, it was, they were unstoppable. The bills can't stop that. And they

won so convincingly that if that switch does get flipped, I don't think that the bills can stop that either. But I haven't seen those chiefs with the exception of maybe like a couple halves this year. Yeah. First half against the bucks. Yeah. First half against the bucks when they just torched the bucks. That was the last time it really felt like those chiefs showed up. At what point though, would they have to flip the switch? What I'm trying to say is the bills are good enough that if you don't flip the switch in time, it will be, it will be too late. Like it would be too late for the, if the chiefs are down and they're like, Hey, we're just going to flip this switch in the fourth quarter. I don't think that's possible against these bills. I think 17 points

at halftime. That's the cutoff line. If it's 14, then the chiefs are still in switch territory. If it's above that, then I think the bills have it. But yeah, I agree. I think that the bills are going to win. And I might, I might even double down on my bet because I feel it. Here's why. Because I feel so shitty about the bet. I feel like I was an idiot for thinking that Roger Goddell was going to take player safety seriously and that Patrick Mahomes probably wasn't going to play a week after a concussion. And at the time, hand up, I didn't know that he just had a nerve stroke or whatever it was. I thought he actually had a concussion because that's what was reported. That's what he probably had. But I feel so bad about the bet and so uncomfortable

with where I am. I might double down on it because those are the types of bets that I usually win. I always lose the ones that I love, the ones that I'm super confident about. Always 100% of the time lose those. So I feel, I feel a little dicey about it. But I think I'm going to double down and I think it's going to be bills. I'm going to say bills by six. This is now making me very nervous because we're both way too confident in the bills and it feels like a Monday show where we're like, Oh yeah, Patrick Mahomes is the best quarterback on planet Earth. Whoops. Yep. Yeah. What about Bucker though? What about Bucker? Bucker's had issues. What about Bucker? He's got issues. He is the opposite of me. He can't hit

his short field goal or an extra point. And I think we're going to get, I think we're going to get two. Wow. Josh Allen plays. I think we're going to get two plays where he's like, holy shit, a rival. This could be the coronation of Josh Allen because if you know, I think that goes both ways though. I'm saying, wow, Josh Allen, like what the fuck. Oh, hating our friends. Another he, you guys talk about how he does crazy shit. He just does. He messes all the buttons. He panics and just, yeah, you're right. He does do that. You're talking about a difference between like a wow play and a whoa play. Yeah. You're talking about it. There's Josh Allen has whoa plays where it's like, holy shit. That was incredible. And then he also has

no, no, no, no, no, no, yes plays. Yeah. It's like, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? Oh my God, it worked. And then he's got yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no plays. That's those are the ones where he matches the buttons. And then he's got whoa plays like it's like he's a horse that needs to be restrained. But either way, Josh Allen's either way, it's going to be fucking awesome. These are the two quarterbacks of the strongest arms in the league. And it's going to be nuts. They're just going to be throwing the ball over the place. So we're going to be wrong about one of these games or both of these games, but I don't give a fuck because they are it is one of the most exciting championship, you know, Sundays we've had in a long time. It's the

it's yeah, it's the top four quarterbacks in the league. Would you not say it is the top four quarterbacks in the league this year? Yeah. What does that happen where we get all the top four quarterbacks in the NFL this season are playing on championship Sunday? You can't ask for more than that. And no matter what, we're going to get a great Super Bowl batch up. We've got it could be Mahomes Rodgers. It could be Mahomes Brady. It could be the first home Super Bowl for Tom Brady. That's going to be a great storyline. Allen versus Rodgers. Yeah, Jordan Love versus Chad Henney. That's true. Matt Barkley could start in a Super Bowl. There's all kinds of combinations. Whoever the backup in Tampa is probably Byron Lefwich, Ryan Griffin. Ryan Griffin is what I was going to say.

Tom versus time. Tom versus time. Yeah, all of these things. Tom's been kicking time's ass. Yeah, it really hasn't been a competition. Yeah, no one beats time, but like Tom Brady kind of has. Yeah. Alright, you want to hear the Can't Lose Parley? Let's see what's you guys tell me which part of this loses. Before you do, I got a question. Yeah, the Can't Lose Parley has lost a bunch of money this year, right? Wrong. Thank you for asking PFT. So we had, we went back, we were getting accused of being a losing bet every single week. Yes, it has lost more than it's won, but guess what? It's always a big plus money bet. So if you had bet the Can't Lose Parley every single week this year, you'd be up 0.75 units. There you go.

So if you bet 100, no, I'm not going to say that. Gable responsibly, 1-800 Gable. Alright, Michigan. Michigan is going to be live noon today. noon today, Michigan is going to be live. So the Can't Lose Parley will be the, you download the Barstool Sportsbook app, you put in money. If you play with the money you put in, Penn is matching it for small businesses in Michigan. So it's going to the Barstool Fund. So we are, you'll see all types of promos. Ask yourself this, do you want a promo that helps small businesses, that helps your community, that helps the people around you? Well, that's Penn, that is Barstool Sportsbook app. So go download it, put in money. It's super easy process. You can bet legally as of noon on today and the Can't Lose Parley will be in there.

Also, it hasn't been fully set up yet, but I think I'm going to be introducing a new bet on Sunday where you get the combined points. You can either bet the underdog or the favorite. So what is it right now? It's like three and three and a half of the game. So it's six, you get six and a half. So if like the bucks went outright, you now have, say the bucks went by three, you now have the bills plus nine and a half. It carries over to the other game. Yes. Yes. Or if the favorite blows them out, so you can bet favorite or underdog and it's a combined bet. Kind of a fun deal, right? I like it. I like that a lot. Yeah. All right. So here it is. Bucks plus eight and a half, bills plus eight and a half. Both the games over 45. That's Can't Lose Parley. It's going to

probably be like plus 400. Thoughts. I love it. I'm scared how much I love it. I love it too. Wait, both games over 45 and a half. 45. Over 45 and then it's eight and a half. Eight and a half for both the teams. It's going to be cold and snowy though, big cat. Snow doesn't matter, Hank. We're going to get to that with Jules in a second. Yeah, you weren't paying attention to the interview, Hank. I'm just saying, I'm just, I'm just trying to, you know, be played. Now it can lose. Just so everyone knows it can technically lose, but it can't lose, but also gamble responsibly. If Patrick Mahomes' toe acts up. And by the way, the whole turf toe thing, turf toe is a very serious injury. That's why I keep saying it's

more serious than a concussion, even though it's not. Turf toe is just a completely mislabeled injury. If it had a cooler name and a more dangerous sounding name to it, I think people would respect it a lot more, but turf toe just sounds like a stubbed toe that you call it, I don't know, fire foot or trench foot. Paralyzed foot. The devil's ankle. Yeah. Yeah. Can't walk injury. Yeah. Amputation. Diabetes. Pre-diabetes. Yes. Pre-death. Everything's pre-death, right? Yeah. It's serious though. So just keep your eye on Patrick Mahomes' right toe. That's all I'm saying. All right. Let's get to our interviews. And we have Julian Edelman and Greg Maddox. Great two interviews and we'll finish with Firefest the week. PFT,

you had something you want to tell people about? Yeah. Before we get to the interviews, I want to talk to you guys about Simply Safe. Everyone wants to keep their home and family safe, whether it's from a break-in, a fire, flooding or a medical emergency. Simply Safe Home Security delivers award-winning 24-7 protection. You guys ever just like all of a sudden remember a dream that you had? I just remember my dream from last night. My home got broken into in my dream. But I had an alarm system. I don't know if it was Simply Safe. It must have been because I got out fine. But Simply Safe is that exact type of home burglary system that will let you know if somebody is trying to break into your house, give you an early alert, they'll contact EMTs,

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free trial. So there's nothing that you have to lose. Visit simplysafe.com slash PMT for your free security camera today. That's simplysafe.com slash PMT. And now, here's Julian Edelman. Okay, we now welcome on our very good friend, a three-time Super Bowl champion, Julian Edelman. Future Hall of Famer. Future Hall of Famer, Julian Edelman on the show. Been too long. Let's start here, Jules. Can we get you to reconsider your retirement from football? You guys are nuts. What are you talking about? We don't want you to retire. We don't want you to retire. What are you talking about? You're not retiring, correct? Right now, we're being a dad

right now, and we're sitting back, and we're training, getting our body ready for the next year, and it's a time to get away from football right now. Okay. All right. It's a long, crazy year. Yeah. All right. So breaking news, Julian Edelman is not retiring from football. Thankfully, we could dispel that because we saw Phillip Rivers retire, and we're like, uh-oh, Jules is probably next. He had a great career. He had an unbelievable career, but I don't know. We're not there yet. Right now, it's the time, like I said, it's going to be, this whole year was so jacked up, man. Like, it was so long. I just need to decompress for a little bit, and I'm out in LA right now, and taking my kid to school, and picking her up, and doing those kind of things that

you don't get to do during the season, and I'm enjoying that right now. So don't necessarily know what you guys are talking about. Yeah. I was joking. It's more, it's more along the lines of, we've had so many of our stars retire recently that we're just leading every conversation off with, you're not retiring, are you? Because like, we're worried that everybody that we talk to is on the way out, but you're not, you're not, you had a, you had a knee thing this year that you're recovering from. I wanted to clear this up right off the bat because I've been, I've been following Adam Schefter's Twitter account pretty carefully over the last six months, and he always uses this exact phrase about your knee. Maybe you can explain to me what it means.

Julian Edelman underwent a precautionary standard knee procedure this morning. What is, what's a precautionary standard knee procedure? That one baffled me too. I don't know. I don't know who's leaking all these things, but I don't, oh, Chef Schefter. He has got me on there. Was it preemptive knee surgery? Because that's what, that's what it sounds like he said there. Yeah. I don't know what he was trying to sound. I had to go in and get some stuff taken out. I don't think anytime you go into your knee, it's a good thing. So, you know, but oh, Chef, he's got his, his ways of putting everything. Are you feeling okay though? Like, are you, does it feel good? Are you healthy?

I'm getting there, man. I'm getting there. It was a, it was a rough year when it came to just my physicality and then how I felt. You know, it's, it's, it's tough, boys. It's tough, but this is the time where you sit and you self-reflect and you self-evaluate and you self-scout yourself throughout all of last year and, and you, you really go in and strike, try to develop a formula and try to develop a game plan for how you're going to attack the off season. That's, that's the process I'm in right now. All right. Self-scout. Yeah. So I was obviously joking. You're not retiring, but do you, you say it's a tough year and I, it's been a tough year for a lot of people. How weird is it to not be in playoff football right now? Because that feels like for you,

at least it was so routine that every year come January, you were ready to go. You had your beard very long. I bet you that probably is nice not to have that long, you know, gross beard because you're a good looking dude, no offense. Is it weird though to sit here in January and be like, I should be playing in playoff football right now? It is. You know, since I, I got to New England in 2009, we didn't, this is the first year we didn't win the division, let alone go to the playoffs. So it's, it's definitely, it's super weird sitting and watching teams play in the division around when, you know, usually this is your first week, you know, you're going in and you're going to get some reps and put towards the game plan off the buy week. There's always like a pep in

your step, you know, the years of grind, the, the, you know, the first eight weeks, you're, you're cool because you're, you're coming off the off season and then like week 11 through 13, you're like miserable because things are nagging, things are adding up and then usually you get a buy week going in. I've been fortunate enough to be part of teams that have had a lot of buy weeks going into playoffs and that's when you get your like second, third win and things started realigning and that's when you're starting your team. So it's been, it's been definitely different, you know, but as a football fan, I mean, I've been sitting and watching games and, you know, it's been fun to watch the games and see some of your former teammates

play on multiple teams. Yes. So it's been cool. So you brought it up, watching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers play or is it like the SpongeBob meme where you're, you're up in the window and you're looking down and you're like, there's Brock and Tom having a great, oh, and then they have Scotty Miller down there. That doesn't make me feel bad at all. Hey, he's a stud. He's got some speed. Now it's, you know, it's, it's kind of like a relationship where you guys kind of, or a marriage where you grew apart, but you still love each other. You know, you still love each other. You still may have a couple of kids. We have three kids. So there's like, you know, there's, there's still communication of, of what you guys are going through and how you're doing, but you both

got your own lives that you have to keep on, you know, going towards. And then that's, that's kind of how it's like, you know, I want to see those guys do well. It's awesome seeing Gronk and Tommy doing well and playing and, and making big plays. And, you know, right now it's, it's obviously definitely weird, but it is what it is. When is Tom Brady going to retire? Are you, you've been around him more than anyone else, you know, in terms of career wise, we're sitting here being like, he's 43. And yeah, he's not peak Tom Brady, but he's still making throws down the field. It's not like some of the other older quarterbacks you've seen Peyton or Drew Brees on their way out. Like, is this shocked you at all? Is there a moment where you're like, Hey, he's got

to eventually like, it eventually has to end, right? But maybe not. My respect level for Tom goes up each year. Because the older I get, you know, I'm 34 turning 35. And, you know, it gets more and more difficult when you compound years in this league. And to see him, you know, going out at 43 playing, you know, really good ball. It's, it's, it's inspiring. That's what it is. Do I, I don't know what his, his plan is, but knowing him, I mean, it's, it's all in that little fire turns off in his little chest. And I don't think that thing's going to be a turn off here soon, because he, that's the one thing that you can pull away from Tom when you, when I've played with a lot of guys is his competitive stamina is second to zero to like, to no one, absolutely no one.

I mean, he, he comes in every day, you know, with a purpose with, with, you know, trying to improve something. He eats, breeds and sleeps this stuff. And, you know, I, I've never doubted them and I don't think anyone should. So I think he'll go when he wants to go. It does sound routine to just say that because it's cliche and everyone's like, Oh yeah, this guy's competitive stamina or his competitive drive. But I think about like my own personal life. Like I take almost, I take at least a half day off every day. You know what I mean? Like I, there's a, there's a couple hours every day where I'm like, yeah, I'm going to sit back and just do nothing or, you know, scroll the internet or watch some basketball.

Well, scrolling the internet is also your job. Kind of. So like you're like, I'm going to look at the different websites for a couple hours. But I have a competitive drive that's like medium, I would say. I mean, you guys are doing pretty well. I mean, you're competing at a high level in this, in this world that you're in. So I would say your competitive stamina is higher than what you think. Well, that's also a little trick to catch us. Yeah. Like you appreciate that. Telling everybody that he doesn't work hard. So then nobody else tries to work as hard as he does. And then people like you are like, no, no big cat. You do work really hard.

But there are days like Tom Brady, would he come in on a, well, I guess during the week, let's say off season, would he come in like on a Friday in the off season and be like, Hey, we're going to take a little easy today. Or it's like, no, I want to get this done. No, I mean, anytime we go out and we would work, there would be no taking it easy. Unless it's, you know, like a down day and he has a certain amount of throws that he wants to do, or I have a certain amount of routes that I would want to do. I mean, you would go into that, but you would, it would be formulated. Right. You know, like today is going to be kind of like a chill day, but he's going in with that glare in his eye, that stare that he has,

and he's going to attack it. That's just the guy he is. Now, I'm sure, you know, he takes days off and, you know, him and Alex have a, you know, a routine and a formula that they do, where they probably, you know, look into all those things, how many throws he needs, how many of this, how many of that, you know, they've got it down to a science. I mean, the guy's been doing it for, this is his 21st year. I mean, if you do anything for 21 years, I mean, you're going to find ways to just refine and evolve and, and get better at. Yeah. I'm sure if you guys listen to your interviews from what, like five years ago, you're like, damn, I wish, like, what was that? I sounded like, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. No, the one or more. It's pretty good. But it is. Wouldn't

you say there are definitely like Fridays or, you know, a Monday where you're like, Hey, I'm going to come in and I'm just going to kind of hang out. I'm going to fuck around. This feels like a purpose to my day today. Yeah. There's definitely those days. Yeah. I mean, we all have those days, but sometimes you have to like, you have to schedule that day just for your, your, your mental clock for your mental wellbeing. Like, all right, well, I've been grinding way too hard for these last like six, seven days. Let me have a day or two or, you know, I go two days on one day off, you know, I mean, there's a lot of things you got to take care of, especially in the off season, you know, but during the season, there's an old saying that Bill would say,

you know, he would sit and say, put everything in the drawer and deal with it after the season. Like, like he bring up this drawer like four or five times, like after week 14, like, all right, put it all in the drawer. We got, you know, we got to go out and do this. You know, we all understand you have bills, taxes, like let's just put it in the drawer and worry about that after the season. I like that. I'm going to start saying that. I also like that you, you bring up like scheduling your downtime because if you schedule like a shitload of downtime, then that's technically work. True. You're not wasting. That's actually, it's a rest day. Yeah. If you just call it a rest day and have it on your calendar, you can do whatever you can be as much of a degenerate as you want

that day. And it's like, listen, this is, this is self care today. You got to recharge the batteries. You got to recharge the batteries. Sometimes you need, you know, just to chill and hop on a Warzone game or, or watch some, some TV, some Netflix or something and just chill. Yeah. You want to squat up in Warzone sometime? I mean, I think we have, haven't we? You and I have, yes. I don't think I've, we used to play. I don't think I've played with you yet. I've got a team going. We got a, me, Hank and, uh, and Aaron Ripkowski are just shredding fools on, on Warzone recently. Are you doing a resurgence, the quads, resurgence? Are you doing an actual old event? The old map? No, we're doing it. We're in Verdansk. We're in Verdansk big time.

I like to keep it. I like to keep it in the, uh, you know, the new, uh, what is it? Uh, rebirth. Rebirth. Yeah. I like the rebirth. It's quicker. It's just quicker. It's fast pace. You know, you guys can like respawn. There's a little different kind of strategy towards it. My ADD can't kick in. Yeah. You get a lot of reps. You operate a different speed. Playoff football. By the way, what do you think Bill Belichick is doing right this second? Cause that's, I mean, you are a player. So like you said, you're, you know, working on your body, taking the recharge, he's got to be going crazy, right? Oh, well, he's one of the like most extraordinary humans when it comes to like never really getting complacent and dealing with his time to make

the team better. So like the fact that we're not in the playoffs right now, he's probably putting in extra time to evaluate going forward. What we have to do, like it's a full self scout. Do I have like everyone in the building working on every single player on the, the squad, on the, off the practice squad and evaluating every single thing that everyone does. And then that's how he goes into like the draft and then going from the draft and the free agency. I mean, March 15th is when we start, you know, I think he's, he's probably doing a lot of that. And then, you know, he's, he's big into the, the player personnel thing as well. So I got, I got to assume that you're a, you're definitely rooting for the Buccaneers, right? Out of the NFC.

You know, I'm, I'm just rooting for people to do well. Interesting. Why aren't you rooting for the Bucs? Interesting. Hey, I only root for one team. Who's that? I only root for the San Francisco 49ers. And I grew up in the Bay Area. What about, what about in the AFC? Is there a part of you that you, you respect the bills because you've been playing against the bills, you know, twice a year for forever,

and you'd like to see them do good or are you, are you finding yourself rooting more against them because they are kind of one of your rivals? I, I'm very, uh, I'm excited for the bills. I'm super excited for that, that team, that city. I mean, I've gone there for a lot of years and, and their fan base is crazy. It's everything that everyone thinks it is. It's, it's one of the most extraordinary places to play. I mean, I've, I've literally been on a field and, and seeing a dildo thrown on the field, like it's unreal. Every time you go in there and you win, they have the most creative ways to flip you off that I've ever seen in my life. From everyone, I'm talking six year olds, grandmas, parents,

I mean, it's, it's unbelievable to see them do well. Man, I think it's cool for the league. I mean, I think, I think it's great for the league that they're doing well. And, you know, day ball over there and that coach and staff, he was part of ours for a while and we had a good relationship. You know, I've, I've, I've sat and talked with, you know, beastly over the years of just picking each other's brains and, and seeing Josh Allen the way he's been able to play in the addition to digs. I mean, digs has been an absolute monster in that offense and they're scheming up things for him and, and they just got to, they got a good thing going. It'd be, it'd be pretty cool to see a team like that going and, and, and do well. Yeah.

What temperature does it officially suck to play football in? Where's the, where's the cutoff? I would say, uh, when you start hitting in the teams, when you start getting teams, because in the wind brings you below like zero, those are always the tougher ones when it's windy. I mean, if it's cold and it's still, it's fine. If it's cold and it's still, it's fine. It's more if it's cold and you have that wind and that winds blowing. I mean, I remember we played the game in 13 against Denver. It was windy as heck. And it wasn't the coldest game. It was probably like maybe 28 degrees, but like the wind was, was ripping. And once you get that wind, it just, it goes through all the layers of clothes and it's, it's miserable. The ball's hard. Your hand's hurt.

So I would say, you know, that, that team area is pretty tough. Yeah. Because I still, I still pick, go ahead, but no, go ahead. I still pick to play in the cold though over rain any day. Really? Like a, like a, like a 37 degree rain is the worst thing to play in when it's so cold, but it's still really cold and it, but it's wet. You'd rather go in the snow or, or have it cold. In the snow, I would assume the snow always, like people think whenever they see snow, like, oh, there's going to be no offense, but I always assume that the snow is good for the offense because you know where you're going and they don't. So you always get a little bit of a benefit in the snow, right? I love the snow. I was a mutter. I'm a mutter. So like, you know, if you

have good balance and like you said, you know where you're going, the defense is doing it backwards. I mean, I've had some, I've had, I've loved playing in the snow over the years. We've had some cool games against Tennessee and, and Chicago, we went to Chicago, soldier field and that was an option. Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was honestly one of my favorite games in my career just because of, I've never been, I never really knew about soldier field and they like redid it and we had the snow game in Chicago and we had the, I think we had the old unis on too. It was fun. I've always heard that, uh, I've heard that Bill likes to put the thermometer in the visiting teams hallway so they have to see what the temperature is and sometimes he'll make it like a few degrees extra

cold. So they have to like look directly at it when they're going on the field and he doesn't put that in your tunnel on the way out on the field. Is that true? I do not know any of that. Um, you know, I don't know if that's just regulation or anything. We float. We float at a good, uh, we float at a good area. You know, we abide by everything that you can and cannot do. How much time during that? That does bring, that does bring out. I remember playing against the raging Cajuns and they had the similar thing like that back in college and they're like you're 50 feet below sea level, like the temperature is hotter, like right in front of our locker room is, but not, not in England. How much time during the week do you have to just rehearse in front of the

mirror? The, uh, the boilerplate talking points that, that Belichick has approved for you. I like to do, I mean, I, I've been doing it for a while. So it takes me roughly about five to 10 minutes on a Tuesday after what we can and can't talk about. So it's, it's usually around there, but I'm sure it's tougher for the younger guys. What, uh, speaking of your old games, what was your favorite game non-superbowl that you think back? Is there, or maybe this question, do you ever, like if you dream or you find your mind going to a specific game over time, which game is it? I had the last two games. My favorite game was definitely when we went to the AFC championship in Kansas city. I thought that's probably one of my, my old time favorite games.

Cause they just didn't guard you on third down, any third down, they just weren't guarding you. Hey, I don't know, but, uh, I remember, you know, we, we went to like two or three AFC championships prior to that in Denver and got beat. And there was like a stigma that we could only win, you know, at home and, and going there and playing, I mean, that team's, that team's an electric team, uh, in an electric stadium. That place gets rocking. Um, that was the fun. That was just like a very fun football game, uh, just the competitive level going back and forth. I mean, it was, it was insane, honestly. I remember on that, that penalty, I always had, I always think about this. I forgot who it was, but on the penalty were Tom through the pick and it was off sides.

One of the safeties came up to me and said, you guys had a hell of a year. Like, and I was sitting there and I'm like, fuck that. Do we really just loot? And then I saw the flag. It was D Ford. Yeah. It was, and I was like, holy moly. I literally saw like that year in front of my eyes of all the hard work and everything that you do for a season. I'm like, it just went to shit like that. And then we had like a second life. It was insane. Uh, that was a crazy cool game. And then I was, I was really, uh, in 15, when we went to Denver, we were kind of banged up and we lost on a two-point conversion. You know, that was, that was a rough one that I think about a lot. The air, that was

the air one Dave said, uh, because we were giving him shit on the rundown. He said he, he forgot to account for the air. So maybe that's what happened. He just didn't, he forgot that it was mile high. I'm not even going to lie, bro. We were sitting there. It was Peyton's like, you know, later years and we're like Denver, January, it's going to be freezing. There's going to be snow. We're going to have crazy competitive advantage. Peyton can't, you know, hold the ball this, that, which he could do, but we were just, you know, you always want things to go in your favor, at least what we thought was. And then it was a 75 degree beautiful day, unreal. They ended up playing a great game. We, we were, we were banged up and, and just couldn't get, make, make enough plays. But

yeah, that one, that one sticks out. I don't, I don't like that one. I like a big cat phrase that question. Like, do you dream, like when you dream about football, do you actually dream about football? I do. I have the same dream that I've been dreaming since I was like 18 years, or like 13 years old. There was this place in Santa Clara. I think it could have been Santa Clara High. We used to play this little pop owner team. And I remember I went up the sideline and I broke like a run and I always want, and I remember talking to like this older football player. He was in high school and he told me to try to do like a stiff arm spin, like stiff arm him and then spin on him. And I, I didn't do it one time.

And I think of that same play. Like I got to use this stiff arm spin at the sideline. Like I still think about it too. It's all right. It's gnarly. Have you ever pulled it off in a game? Never. You got to do it. You got to keep playing until you do it. That's when you know that it's time to retire. That's future Julian. Like an interstellar. That's a great white buffalo. Yeah. Walk off, literally just walk off after that play and just be like, I'm done. I've accomplished everything. The sideline. So the, so I'm the fifth LL and I see it and then it just comes or what? No. So like future Julian is going to be pushing books off of a bookshelf telling you, letting you know when it's time for you to retire. And it's going to be like,

he's going to come to you during a play and it's going to be set up perfectly. You're a stiff armored dude on the sideline, spin around him, gain a couple of extra yards, maybe even get a touchdown. And then at that point you'll know that it's time like he'll send you a message from the future. There has to be like, yeah, like something happened to the scoreboard because sometimes when you're running in the open field, you'll look at the scoreboard. So you'll look at the scoreboard. I always like to look to see in the rear view if you can, you know, you got to throw on the jets or something. So if something happens in there, you see some on the scoreboard and you pop out the spin, stiff arm spin. We're going to make sure that this happens at some point for you. It's

got it. Yeah, it's got it. Can we play a little, little word association here? I'm just going to say like two words at a time and then you just tell me what you think about those two words. All right, first one to Sean Watson. Mm hmm. Insane. Insane. Insane. Carson Wentz. Just random words. How many words can I use? As nice as you want.

Whatever you want. Yeah. Looking forward to the next opportunity. Okay. Mitch Trebisky. Uh, Mitch Trebisky. That's good. That's actually a good analysis right there. Just his name.

Yeah. Yeah. Mitch Trebisky. Yeah, Mitch Trebisky. James Winston. Ooh, good one. I mean, you're only as good as your last throw. Oh, James to New England. It happened. There it is. Perfect.

I saw that play. I knew you guys were going to go absolutely bananas over that whole thing. Yeah. Oh, it was a great throw. How could you not? Would you, would you do if, if, if you were in the huddle and, and your, and your quarterback, whether it be Tom Brady or, or it was Cam Newton this year, tried to eat a W right in front of your face. I would, you know, try this side of it. You done with that?

Yeah. Yeah. You're going to eat. Oh, you got some, there's still some meat on that bone. Let me get a little, let me get a little lick on that. Is it W vegan? Because Cam Newton, he, he doesn't eat meat at all, right? No, he does not eat meat. Ooh. Okay. Billy football thinks that that makes him a bad quarterback. You know that, right? This Billy football, where's he at? Where is this guy? We don't got him. He's in the protocol.

Oh, is this beat? No, he's in the protocol. He's in the protocol. Is he fighting, is he fighting, can say go? Yes. Yes. But he's currently in the protocol. What protocol? Listen, not concussion over the course of the week.

There are certain steps that we take and we look at every day as an opportunity to get better. And Billy is certainly looking at all those steps to get better right now. When Billy's ready to be medically cleared, he'll be medically cleared. That's all we're going to say about that. Day better than yesterday. He's just a day better than yesterday. Yeah. That's right. Do you think, are you worried about it? Do you think he can beat Canseco? I don't know. I hope he doesn't get killed by Canseco.

I don't care if he does. Canseco's a big, he's a big love of flaccid meat. He sucks. So I don't know what Billy football looks like as I listen to you guys. Right. So I really don't know. I have no clue what he looks like. Is he blonde?

Yeah. What does he sound like? Describe, describe how he sounds. I don't think he was like a blonde kid. I thought he was maybe like a short like Burnett kid, like maybe a little pudgy. You're talking about me. You're just describing me. Both of us. No, you have lighter hair. I'm talking like a real dark Burnett.

He's like six, two, no, six, three. And yeah, he doesn't look like this. He's like 230 pounds. I think he's going to win. I really do because he's quick and he played college. Well, kind of, he kind of played football. Well, no, he played football. He played football.

He actually was, I'll send you a highlight. He was a beast. I don't know, but Jose Canseco, I mean, he's a man. But I mean, you went up against some big dudes yourself. You're undersized for a wide receiver for an NFL player. Like, you know that it's not about the size of the dog in the fight. It's the size of the fight in the dog.

Fact. Yeah, but the dog still has to have some, something in him. Like he's got a, like, I don't know. I don't know Billy like that. He just, you know, a little kid. He seems young. He is young, but he's also built different. He's 17.

No, he's like, his brain is 12, but his body is like 23. He ran a marathon with no training whatsoever. Just got on the treadmill and did it. So like, he's a good athlete. I mean, that's, I mean, that's impressive. He seems like he knows all this stuff for sure. Yeah, he, he thinks that he knows. He knows a lot of words, but I don't think he knows what any of them mean sometimes.

I'm trying to find a video that I can, a highlight tape video that I can send to you that will, will hopefully change your opinion. And you'll be completely Billy, team Billy football. Oh, I got a question for you. I'm not team Billy football. I want Billy to do well, but I just, I mean, I don't know how old is Konseko now? Like 50, 100, 110. I mean, he's getting old.

And I'm just, I'm just going to take a guess here, Jules. I don't think Konseko's on the TB 12 method. I don't think he's skipping, you know, strawberries and ice cream and stuff. Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. Do you have to be a good fight? Do you have any advice for him? Like as a scrappy undersized dude, like when you were going into a game and you knew that

you were going to have to do a lot of run blocking and you had to set an edge out there and block a dude that was, you know, 70 pounds heavier than you, how would you prepare for that? That's when you just take a teaspoon of cement, you let them drop and you just got to go. Take a teaspoon. You have to be careful with how you phrase that because Billy actually will. Yeah, so a little cement. Nah, nah, yeah. He's a big kid.

I just saw a picture of him. Yeah. Here, watch that video. I just sent you and we'll end with that. By the way, you're wearing a pH. What the hell's the pH? What is it? pH water?

Yeah, bro. Perfect hydration. It's a, it's a, it's a great water company. What is this? You sent it to me on the internet? Yeah, I just texted you. I just, no, I just texted you. Oh, text.

Yeah. I just texted you a video of Billy football and then you tell me if you, if you think he can handle it. He's a selectionist. He's huddled it. He has a standard huddle soundtrack. Is that one play? Yeah. Searching for it.

He's the quarterback. There we go. Yeah. There we go. You see him fucking truck that kid? Truck stick. Yep. That's Billy football.

That just helped me out. That just helped me out right there. Yes. You got it. Yes. You might have it. We might need you to have a video because remember you, Jules actually helped Hank in his fight, sending a video pumping him up.

So we might have to call on you to pump him up as well because I know he would get very excited about that. How's old Hammer and Hank doing? He's great. Hank, you want to chime in? Great. This is great. How you doing, Hank? I'm, I'm great.

Where have you been? I'm just been chilling. You know, doing my thing. He's in, in verdance with PFG. He's taking a mental year off because the, the Patriots didn't make the playoffs. He's been very, you know, he's taking a mental year off. It's COVID year. It's not, you know, it's not, it's not a real year.

Yeah. 2020 was rough. It was a rough one. But you're coming back. 2021. Yes. Hank is also, Hank's also not retiring. So yes, none of us are retiring.

Still here. This is the no retirement podcast. Stairway to seven. Yeah. There you go. Jules. Thank you, man. As always, we appreciate it, man.

Always. He's, Hank is just bashing Pittsburgh under his breath now. Why? What happened with that? He doesn't like the fact because he thinks that New England is going to be the first franchise to ever get seven Super Bowls. So he says, stairway to seven. And Pittsburgh people think that they invented it, but they didn't.

That's a, that's a beef. I don't know. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you Jules. You're not aware of. Thank you, Jules. We're going to, we're going to be watching for a stiff arm and a spin move on the sideline.

That's, I love that by the way. I love that so much because that is such a, that was such a good peek into the difference between fandom and actually playing the sport. Like everyone who's listening is like, yeah, fuck you, Hank. Stairway to seven. And you're like, yeah, I have no idea what you guys are talking about. I just go and play the games like and win the Super Bowls. Only three, only three, bro.

You don't win a lot. All right. Yeah. You're the best Jules. We appreciate it, man. All right, fellas. It's always a pleasure. Yeah.

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And now, the greatest pitcher of all time, Greg Maddox. And now for something completely different. Okay, we now welcome on a very, very special guest. It is Hall of Famer, one of the greatest pitchers of all time, Greg Maddox. Absolute legend. Greg, you are here because there's a golf tournament coming up. So January 21st to 24th, at the Four Seasons Golf and Sports Club Orlando, the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions, $1.2 million purse.

That's pretty nice. So that's coming up and you can watch on the golf channel, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that 1.2 is for the women. And I think the guys are playing for like $500,000. So okay. Okay, perfect. And the tournament's raised almost $4 million for charity.

So that's awesome. Yeah, really impressive. Yeah, real good event, a lot of fun. I mean, for me personally, it's good to reconnect with all the guys I used to play with and against and also meet some guys from all the other sports as well. So it's a pretty funny band. I'm glad that COVID didn't take this one over because it's something I've looked forward to the last couple of years.

Yeah, does Smoltz make you put this tournament on every year just so he can win and get another trophy and collect that $500,000 purse? Yeah, I'll tell you what, he's pretty good, man. He was swinging good today. I know today was fun. Got a chance to play having Smoltz. Greg Olson caddies for Smoltz. So it was a lot of fun being out there today.

That's great. So everyone, you can watch it on the golf channel and NBC actually on Saturday and Sunday. So I introduced you as one of the greatest pitchers of all time. I truly believe that it's great to have you on, talk some baseball, whatever else you want to talk about. I guess, I don't even know where to start because there's so many awesome Greg Maddox stories. Where should we start?

This is, I'm a little intimidated by you as a guest. Because your legend has grown over the years because I don't know how many people in our audience actually got to watch you pitch. I used to spend summers essentially just watching Braves games every single day. So I watched you pitch a lot. And there are a lot of like Paul Bunyan type rumors about you. So maybe we can start out by knocking some of those out. First one.

True or not true? Yeah, true or not true. Maybe expand on the story. I like that. Yeah. Did you intentionally give up a homerun to Jeff Bagwell one time? Didn't intentionally give up a homerun. But there are times where you try to have the hitter have some success off you.

So you know, he'll be sitting on it for the rest of the year. So I think, I had a coach that told me what a hitters remember and they remember success. So you know, if they get you on a certain pitch, they're going to be sitting on it for a long time. So the story goes that you essentially were like, I'm going to let him have a little success knowing that I'll probably see him in the postseason. And when I see him in the postseason, he'll be looking for that pitch and I won't give it to him. Well, hopefully that was the plan anyway. You know, but it did it mostly in spring training.

You know, I think you tried to plan a seed in guys heads in spring training and you know, try to get away from it once the season starts. I heard a story that you didn't even, did you train in the offseason? You just show up to spring training and your command would be there and you'd be like, all right, let's go. First time I'm throwing a ball since the playoffs last year. No, I trained. I trained.

I didn't throw a lot, but I took care of my shoulder. Had a real good physical therapist in Vegas. I went and saw him four times a week and learn how to take care of my arm and definitely try to take care of my body in the offseason. As far as the throwing goes, a little bit of old school, you know, I'm going to kind of save my bullets for the season and, you know, we had enough time in spring training to get ready. You know, I didn't, I didn't feel like I had, I felt like I had enough time to get ready to throw a hundred pitches just with the spring training going on.

Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, go ahead. I was going to say, there was another story out there about you that when you'd be facing off against like Gary Sheffield, who's extremely intimidating hitter, I would imagine going up against, uh, you would sometimes be like, you know what, I'll let him get to the warning track on me as long as he doesn't hit home run. That's not, well, no, that's not true.

I had one with chef where, uh, again, it was spring training and, uh, Sheffield loved the ball inside. And if he got beat inside, he was not going to get beat inside ever again. And, uh, I remember telling chipper, he was playing third base at the time and I go, hey, Chip, man, I'm going to throw Sheffield all fastballs in today. So if you want to back up and get in the left field, go ahead because he's going to rock it something down there. But, uh, uh, no, I think, uh, Sheffield was our right fielder once. And I think it was a different hitter.

And, uh, I knew that if I executed my pitch, that hitter would hit the ball right underneath that 390 sign in right center. I knew he didn't have enough to get over it. And, uh, uh, I remember asking chef, you know, hey, you see that 390 sign if it lands, you know, five feet in front of it, it should be an easy play for you. So I think that's kind of where that story came from. It wasn't against chef. Chef could hit it over that 390 sign.

He was good. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, there were a lot of hitters that had just enough power to reach the warning track to right field. And, uh, you know, as long as they didn't pull it, you can keep them in the park. Did you remember every pitch that you threw? Because I also read a story where you, uh, you know, once everything became computers

and you had to print it out, uh, script of like every pitch you had thrown and you went up to someone and you're like, Hey, this is wrong. Like it says right here that I threw a fastball to Tony Gwynne in 1993. That was actually a changeup. Like what's going on? Yeah. It really wasn't like that. I think a lot of it was, uh, they were, they had that, uh, guy, what was it called?

The inside game or something? They had some kind of scouting things set up where they tracked all the pitches and everything. And this was late in my career. And, and, you know, come to find out it was a bunch of college kids in Florida watching the games on TV and doing it. And, uh, you know, that they would, they would get some pitches wrong on that. I didn't remember every pitch I threw. I don't think anybody could do that.

But, uh, you know, I watched a lot of video. I relied more on video and getting my own scouting reports than, uh, oh, the inside pitch. That's what it was called. And, uh, you know, they just had all the stats on there. And, uh, you know, you'd get, you'd pick your nuggets out of it. There were some good ones on there. Uh, you know, you, I remember reading some of them and, uh, you know, the guy hit 080 on changeups until strike one.

But after strike one, if you throw him a changeup, he hit like something like 520 on changeup. So, you know, you, you could know and pick out stuff like that and, and use it to your advantage. But, you know, again, the hitter had the same thing too. I think everybody knew I was going to throw him a fastball away and a changeup. So, you know, it's pretty much strength against strength. This is a testament though to the legend of Greg Maddox, because you say, and you're right, you know, it would be impossible to remember every single pitch. You threw so many of them.

But if there were ever a guy to be able to remember every single pitch, it would be Greg Maddox. Now, was there ever, um, a pitcher or a hitter that you saw that thought the game the way that you did and used, you know, because I, I, I think you would say maybe you wouldn't because you're humble. But the way you thought the game, the way you saw the game was almost like a superpower compared to your competition. Is there anyone that you went up against that's like, that guy clearly was thinking the game on a different level, the level that I'm on? A hitter? A hitter or a pitcher. Yeah. I mean, there, there were a lot of guys you played the guessing game with, you know, I didn't, uh, I really trusted what I saw. You know, I didn't have a game plan scripted out.

I mean, I had an idea what the hitter's strength and, and, and weaknesses were, but, uh, I always trusted my eyes, you know, hitters can change in a heartbeat, you know, they could, you could see him move up in the box. You can see him move back. You could see their hips flying open. I mean, I really trusted what I saw on the field and, and, you know, I kind of pitched off my last pitch, probably more than anybody, uh, you know, ball or strike, regardless, I think each pitch kind of sets up the next pitch. And sometimes the hitter will do something that will make you, you know, maybe throw, throw it to a different area. So, uh, you know, just a lot of trusted what I saw, you know, I had a pretty good, I had a pretty good follow through where I was able to see pretty good. And, uh, you know, once I, once the ball left my hand, I was kind of watching the hitter more than I was the ball going to the plate. I read one time that you had, uh, like three different circle changeups.

Is that, is that true? Are there three different ways to throw a circle change? Yeah. I mean, you know, change up, it's kind of a field pitch. And every five days you're kind of throwing a different. You're just trying to find the right field for it. And, uh, you know, I had one circle change, but I had about five swing thoughts to go with it before I threw it. And it was just a matter of finding what thoughts right for that day.

You know, I knew, uh, uh, as the game would go on, I always felt like my change up would get better. So, uh, we were talking about hitters. You're, you know, you won four in a row. Cy Young's, which has never been done. Eight time All-Star, Hall of Famer, Tony Gwynne though. Tony Gwynne, uh, hit four, 15 off you and never struck out. 107 played appearances. What struck him out one.

He struck him out one. The only thing he called. What? What was it about him? Was he like, that's really the only guy. And we, we can talk about Barry Bonds too. Cause you said you just, you tried to pitch to Barry Bonds once and you realized it wasn't for you. But Tony Gwynne, uh, what was it about him that would made him so special?

Well, uh, he could hit, he can hit a two hopper to the left fielder with the best of them. And, uh, uh, no question. He was a very good hitter, uh, probably the best pure hitter that I played against. Barry's easily the best hitter I've played against. You know, there's a little bit of a difference, uh, you know, he was hitting 485. I got him down 60 points late. So there you go. You know, you know, my, my whole philosophy was if I can keep it in front of the outfield,

better than the guy I'm facing, then I'm going to win. And, uh, you know, Tony Gwynne, Barry Bonds as a, as a young pitcher. That was when I learned how, you know, you don't beat hitters, you beat lineups. And, you know, you have to pick your fights. And, uh, you know, I was, I didn't want to give up a single to left with Tony Gwynne, but I sure gave up a lot of them. You know what I mean? But, uh, try to keep it in front of the outfield.

Make sure you get Tony Fernandez out, Ken Kamenetti, and then you can still beat that team with Tony, standing on first or second base. Do you think that's a lost art in today's game? Like beating a lineup, not a hitter. Do you think guys are thinking that way? Or is it a lot more like mono we mono and trying to strike guys out? Cause we've seen, you know, the game has changed a lot. Home run, strikeouts, you know, guys pitching a hundred miles an hour.

Do you think that's lost? You know, I try to keep it in front of the outfield. I see a lot of pitchers today trying to make them miss. And, uh, you know, they go strike one down when they want to. And then, you know, you see a lot of balls out of the zone, uh, you know, I like to attack the strike zone a little bit more just so I could pitch deeper in the games. You know, uh, uh, I really believe and still do today that the hardest count to hit in is O2.

And so why not throw a strike and make them hit O2? I agree. You see, you see guys spray one up top, bounce two in the dirt, and then they miss and now it's three, two in the hitters back in the count. So, uh, you know, just a different philosophy now. I think if I threw 95 with a wicked slider like half these guys do today, you know, I might, I might, you know, I probably would try to strike more guys out too. You know, I just really wasn't just wasn't who I was or what I did.

Was there a point in your career where you thought about going for it where you were like, you know what, um, if I can get three, four extra miles per hour of my fastball, I can become a dominant power pitcher. And you kind of had to reel yourself back and say, Hey, this is what you do best. Why don't you just become the best at all time at it? Yeah, you know, I felt my fastball was good enough. You know, uh, I did throw it hard. I might not have came out fast, but I put a lot of effort into my fastball.

I think, uh, uh, I was taught that movement and location are more important than velocity. I was taught that being able to change speeds was more important than velocity. So, uh, you know, I just came up with a different coach. I learned that in high school when I was, uh, just getting started. And, you know, I remember my coach told me at the time he goes, you know, you're going to throw hard enough to get drafted, but you're going to need movement to, uh, get to the big leagues and win in the big leagues. And, uh, you know, I'll never forget that day.

I was 16 years old when I was trying to make it sink. And, uh, uh, very fortunate to have that guy in my corner back then. His name was Ralph Meter, by the way. He, uh, actually died my junior year in high school, but I spent about two years with him. And, and, uh, he kind of laid laid down the foundation for me. And, uh, you know, it was all about movement and location. It was never about velocity. That's what our guy, Dan Herron says.

Future Hall of Famer, Dan Herron. You agree that Dan Herron's a Hall of Famer, right? Uh, I have to look him up. I know he was good back in the day. I know, uh, didn't he win 20 some games with Arizona? Am I mistaken? Uh, yeah, with the A's too. I think he has the lowest ERA in World Series history.

Minimum of six innings pitched. The lowest. That's not a, that's not a cherry pick stat or anything, but, uh, yeah, he does. Do you, speaking of Hall of Fame, what the hell was up with the 2.8% of voters? Are you like, that was a complete slap in your face. You were, you should have been an unanimous Hall of Famer though. That's complete bullshit. Well, thank you.

I mean, you know, it's just, uh, honestly, you're happy to get in. You know, I'm surprised I didn't piss off more riders than I did. But, uh, you know, I was, it's, it's pretty odd. It's a pretty big honor just to get in there and, uh, uh, to be able to go there and, and walk down to, uh, walk down from the hotel down where you have breakfast and, and see all the guys you looked up to, you know, I grew up a huge Reds fan. So, uh, uh, I remember walking down the stairs going into breakfast and I saw Joe Morgan and, uh, Tony Perez, Johnny Bench.

And, you know, those are the guys that I idolized growing up and, uh, pretty special feeling. So, you know, the 2%, you know, what is it? Water off a duck's back or whatever. It is what it is. I don't know. I hate those guys. They're idiots. Yeah.

What, what was the process like for finding out that, that you got in? Uh, got a call from, uh, Jeff Edelston from the Hall of Fame and, uh, you know, said you made it, you know, pop open a bottle of wine, had a drink and, you know, got ready to get inducted the following year or the following summer. Of all the numbers that, uh, you have in, in the, in the crazy statistics, is it safe to say that your stat that you, uh, went 10 straight seasons with at least one stolen base, never getting caught stealing. Is that, are you most proud of that?

Cause that's a hilarious and it feels like that was a Greg Maddox. Like you knew that in the back of your mind. Like I got a steel base and I can't get caught stealing. You know, I never really got caught stealing a base. Okay. Uh, I did get thrown out at third base twice cause Chipper struck up. You know, it was first and second, three, two count. So, uh, uh, you know, Bobby sent the runners and you know, Chipper struck out and they threw

me out at third by 10 feet. But, uh, you know, it was fun. It was fun. It was fun being a baseball player. You know, I, I, I, you know, I don't, not a fan of the DH. I get it. But, uh, I'm glad I never had, I'm glad I never had a DH. You know, I enjoyed playing the game.

I enjoyed hitting, running the bases and all that stuff. It was, uh, it was actually fun. It was a good time. Yeah. And you're all time coat guy on the base path, which is a lost look. We need pictures to start doing that more. Yeah. That's back in the day, back in the eighties.

Yeah. Yeah. I was old man. You had to, you had to have a jacket on out there. Did that actually help? Cause I remember you would not only wear the coat on the base path, but in between innings, you would just put one arm into the coat just to keep, just to keep your arm loose and warmed up for the next thing.

Would that actually make a difference? Kind of. I don't know. Just maybe superstition or whatever. Who knows? I think, uh, uh, you know, just more comfortable with something on it than, you know, sitting there, you know, especially if it was windy, you know, you don't, you don't really want the wind blowing on it.

And, uh, you know, just what it is, what it is, it's no big deal. Probably superstition more than anything. Leo Mazzoni, the, the pitching coach, he was a big time rocking guy. If you've never seen him, he just, he was always moving back and forth throughout the entire game. Did that make you nervous? Uh, I mean, it kind of budged a little bit. I mean, you're trying to watch the game and the guys walking in front of you.

So, but, uh, you know, he did it every day. You got used to it. You know, it was really weird my first year over there when, when he's up there rocking. But, you know, you get used to it over time and, uh, you know, Leo, good coach, some good philosophies about pitching, uh, you know, enjoyed pitching for him as well. Have you thought about, uh, being a manager knowing that you know so much about the game and all these stories about how, how you saw the game?

Uh, no, not really. I think, uh, there's a lot more to it than that. I think, uh, uh, you know, you got to be a leader. You got to get along with players. You got to, you got to handle the media. There's a lot of responsibilities besides just the X's and O's. You know, I, I've always been with the X's and O's. Uh, I did do a little part-time coaching and enjoyed that.

Uh, I was at UNLV the last four years doing that as well. So, I mean, uh, uh, you know, I do like being around the game. I do like watching it. Uh, I enjoyed coaching just on a part-time level. You know, I also enjoy being retired. It's nice to, uh, be retired and, and kind of do what you want to do every day. You, you say that like you wouldn't be a great manager with like the clubhouse and the media.

Like you're great with the media. You're great. I mean, there's a legendary stories that we can get into of Greg Maddox, the greatest pranker of all time. I, I, are you just being humble? Like you would be an incredible manager at the big league level. Well, you have to, uh, you know, what's the word I'm looking for?

I mean, you have to be able to connect with all the players, you know, and, and, and manage each, each, each and every player separately. Uh, you got to handle your coaching staff. I mean, it's, it's, it's a lot of time. It's a lot of responsibility. Uh, you know, that's something I don't think I, you know, like I said, I, I enjoy being retired as well. You know, I, I enjoy the game, but at the same time, I also enjoy being retired.

I mean, I've played for 25 years and, uh, you know, missed half of my kids growing up and, uh, it was kind of nice to catch up, you know, in their later teenage years and everything. So, uh, uh, you know, I'm not a good enough people person, I think, to be the kind of manager that I would like to be. I don't know about that because big cat alluded to some of the pranks. And we had Tom Glavin on the show. He was one of our very first guests that we ever had.

And he told us a lot of great Greg Maddox stories. Not sure how many of them are a hundred percent true. There was one, I think where you, uh, you, you probably made up, you cleaned yourself with someone's undershirt. I'll put it that way. And then, yeah, that was, yeah, yeah. He said, I wiped my butt on Walt Weiss's shirt. You know, yeah, that one.

Uh, see, I don't remember doing that. And especially to Walt, because I liked Walt. Walt was just a class act and a good guy. And I'm like, there's no way I would ever do that to him. So, uh, somebody could have done it and I got blamed for it. But, uh, I, I need to ask Walt about that. And the next time I see him and say, Hey, Walt, is this true? Did I really do this to you?

Because I mean, I know, you know, as we get older, we forget a lot of stuff, but, uh, I don't remember that. You're bad luck. You're, you're absolutely wiped your ass. Yeah, you absolutely did. We also had, we also had Andre Dawson on the show. And he's told the story about you pissing in a hot tub. Well, okay, that was true, but that was just a joke.

Okay. What about pissing on other guys? Like, I feel like you were probably the most fun guy to be around in the clubhouse. Only if they got me first, I would get even. I would never start it up, but I would get even. I mean, that was kind of thing. You know, there is a different world back then you do that now. And they might put you in jail for two weeks.

You know, it's just, that's true. Also, the clubhouse is like, I mean, the Cubs clubhouse up until like three years ago. You probably could piss on everyone because the showers were like right next to each other. So that probably helped with the pranks, the proximity that everyone had together in old clubhouses. Yeah, just stupid fun really is all it was, you know, guys having a good time. And, uh, uh, you know, I mean, it was, there were some scenes in there. And, uh, you know, it was, we had, we had good times.

Guys being dudes, I think you're the, I think you'd be the perfect teammate. What was the worst that anybody ever got you? Uh, I think blouser got me a couple of times, you know, he would get you. He would get you when you're in the crapper. He'd do something to you when you're in there. You could never see it coming. So, uh, Damn, speaking of legendary stories, is the Brad Penny story real?

So the story goes that Brad, you knew Brad Penny's pitching better than Brad Penny. And you once called an entire game for him. Uh, and I think he shut out the Cubs and you were calling every pitch for him from the dugout. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I had just gotten traded from the Cubs to the Dodgers and, uh, he was in it and, you know, asked if I'd do it and I said, yeah, I'll do it. I enjoy doing it.

I'll do it. And, uh, yeah. And, you know, he threw every pitch right where he was supposed to throw it. I mean, it was, it was pretty impressive how well he'd located not only his fastball, but his breaking ball and changeup that day. I mean, it was, it was a pretty solid game. So, I mean, his command was so good. Even if you screwed up and called the wrong pitch, you still put it in a place where they couldn't hit it.

One of my favorite rivalries to watch was, uh, you against the umpire's brain. So you would get a lot of, you would get some strikes called that other pitchers wouldn't get, but it's because you kind of like lead them into calling those strikes. And then I'm sure at some point in your career, the umpires heard all this and they're like, we need to call Greg a little bit tighter. So then you had to like overcome the umpires being afraid to call those outside pitches or those pitches inside on the left-handed batter. How would you manipulate the umpire's brain over the course of a game?

You know, I wouldn't, I never did that. I, I had my catcher set up in a certain spot and I tried to throw it there. And, uh, uh, you know, we took a lot of abuse for that, uh, not only me, but, you know, a couple other guys on the team and, uh, I remember charting pitches like for Glavin. And smolzy and, you know, if the umpire was given, you know, two or three inches off, off one side of the plate, they would throw it there. If, if the other pitcher did it, the umpire would still call it. But the thing was we had throw like seven or eight pitches out there.

And the other picture would throw two or three. And then, you know, we would get accused of getting more pitches than the other guy. And, uh, it came down, we were making more pitches than the other guy. I mean, the strike zone's the same for both sides. And, uh, you know, I mean, a lot of that left in the mid nineties, you know, I think, uh, there were certain players that had different strike zones. There were certain pitchers that had different strike zones, but, uh, you know, it was it, that left probably in the nineties.

So, uh, you know, Tony Gwen was the hardest guy in the world to get strike one on, you know, and the pitcher comes up, you could throw it anywhere and get strike one. So there, there, there was a different set of standards back in the eighties or early nineties, but, uh, it kind of got cleaned up pretty, pretty quick. What did you think of the entire Astros controversy and, you know, the like, obviously they, they got caught cheating, uh, what, like, what was your take on it? Were you, were you mad because it's like, Hey, we, I did it with my brain. I didn't need, you know, computers and, and, uh, you know, video cameras in the outfield and stuff.

Like what, what, what was your, where'd you ultimately land on that? That's a different way of cheating. I mean, uh, you know, uh, if a pitchers tip in pitches or, or a hitters tip in location or one of your fielders is moving too early and, and giving away pitches, uh, that's baseball. That's one thing, you know, you got to be able to, uh, disguise your pitches. But, you know, to have, to have some guy on a computer and a, and a button sitting in the video room and, and seeing what the catcher's putting down. I mean, that's, there's, there's no place for that in the game.

That's, you know, that's cheating. That's cheating. That's not looking for an edge. That's flat out cheating. And, uh, you know, it's pretty disgusted with it. I'm not going to lie to you. I think it's, uh, it's a shame that they would do that. You know, I know you hear grown up, if you're not cheating, you're not trying.

But I mean, that's, that's, that's a whole new, that's a whole new way to cheat right there. You know, I don't think it's, you know, if you're going 70 and a 65, it's not that big a deal. But you know, you start going a hundred, it becomes a big deal. And I think they just kind of went over way overboard on that. Do you think you would have still been able to get the entire Astros lineup out? Pete Greg Maddox, Astros cheating. No, I don't think anybody could have got them out if they know what's coming. It good hitters too.

It's not like they needed to cheat. They had some pretty good hitters. Yeah. So, you know, uh, yeah, it was a shame it happened. You know, I kind of feel bad for the Dodgers, you know, for that. Yeah. Yeah. Is it, um, when you're looking at a opposing batter and you're trying to get inside their head

and figure out what pitch they're sitting on, how much of that did you use to rely on, on the study that you went, that you put in before the game and how much based on like their body language or, uh, or the situation? Like would you try to get actually inside their head and be like, this is Aubrey Huff. He's dumb as shit. He's going to be sitting on a fastball. Well, yeah. I mean, you thought that way sometimes, but, uh, uh, mostly you wanted to know how the hitters

saw the ball coming out of your hand. And, uh, you know, if, if I, if I knew how he saw the ball coming out of my hand, uh, I know I could throw cutters, sinkers and change ups all kind of through the same spot and have, you know, have one pitch end up in three different places. So, uh, that was kind of how I looked at it. So a lot of it, that's when I said it goes pitch to pitch based on the last pitch, what you throw next, uh, a lot of it has to do with where did he see that last pitch come out of my hand at?

And, and how can I throw that pitch again and have it be something different? That was kind of what I was trying to do. So the quote that I alluded to earlier about Barry Bonds, which is very funny. You said, uh, how do I pitch to bonds? Very simply, I did not try it at once. Wasn't for me. Yeah. No, he was the easiest guy in the league to pitch to, I mean,

because you throw him fastballs away and if it mattered at all, you just walked him. So he was like, no stress. That dude was so easy to pitch to. Is this all for, you know, being as good as he was? But, uh, yeah, I mean, you know, the big thing with Barry Bonds is again, it goes back, you know, you, you got to get the guy out perform and the guy out after him. So, uh, you know, look at the year Jeff Kent had that one year and Jeff Kent was a pretty good player. And, uh, you know, he got everybody after Barry.

And also, you know, there's kind of the Barry Bonds effect. You know, if you're a pitcher and you're out there and you're facing the best player in the league, as soon as that at bats over, you kind of go, okay. And the next at bat kind of sneaks up on you. So I think, uh, uh, you know, you have to be very aware of, uh, of after you have a matchup like that, that you don't let your guard down before the next guy steps in. What was your mindset as you were pitching during a game? Were you, were you one of those guys that goes out there and you're nervous?

You have to chug Pepto Abismo before your, your appearance and you use those nerves or where you call them? Both, you know, I think, uh, uh, a lot of nerves and, you know, you're a lot of calmness as well. So I think, you know, you, you'd have to fight through the nerves. Some games and some games you wouldn't, some days you would be calm. But, you know, I tried to stay calm on the days I pitched. You know, I didn't, you know, I didn't try to come to the park and put my game face on and be Johnny tough guy and all that. Like you see some guys be, you know, I was, I was who I was. And, uh, you know, I try to keep it as simple as possible.

I could just locate and change speeds. I think I'll be okay. What are you most proud of? Let's just call it your Cy Young Awards or the season that you hit was it 224? Uh, well, I mean, I'm most proud of winning the World Series in 95. I mean, that to me, that was, that was the highlight of, you know, my career. You know, the Cy Young's are cool. The Gold Gloves are cool. Hitting home runs, that's way cool. I mean, it's pretty cool hitting a home run. That's probably cooler and still in the base, but, uh, nothing tops that ring.

I mean, when, when, when you get a chance to share success with, you know, your teammates, your coaches, your neighbors in Atlanta, you know, that you, you, you know, live around with all season and, and, you know, just, just be able to share something with the whole city was pretty cool. So this question sucks. So I'm just going to preface it with it, but it is a, uh, something we talked about actually this week with Drew Brees retiring. Is there a party that looks back on that braves the nineties and winning all those, uh, division titles and being like, man, we should have, we should have had one more. Like we should have one or two more. Absolutely. You know, it would have been nice to win four or five. You know, I

thought, uh, there were a couple of years where we were easily the best team, but we didn't get it done. And you know, it was, it was a tough pill to swallow. Uh, you know, the, the 14 straight division titles and to be a part of 11 of those is, is pretty special. You know, I think that's never been done in any sport. Uh, that's something to feel pretty proud about, you know, it's kind of, it's kind of hard to complain when, you know, you go to the post season every year and you don't get a ring, you know, it's pretty special just to go to the post season. It's not as easy as we made it look. And, uh, you know, I'd love to have a few more rings, but you know, I'm happy I got one. If you were to take one guy besides you, you can't use yourself. If you've got Smoltz,

Glavin and Avery all at their peaks and you got one game to win, who would you send out there? Oh, that's a tough one. Uh, you couldn't pick a wrong guy really. I mean, all three answers are right. You know, I think, uh, uh, you know, flip a coin between Smoltz and Glav, you know, I think Avery was pretty good too. I mean, that's a tough question. I mean, uh, you know, I think looking back at it, Smoltz probably had the better track record in the post season, but then again, Glav did win the deciding game, uh, and threw a shutout, you know, to get the series ring. So, uh, you know, they're both pretty special pitchers. What about expanding that? What about expanding that to any pitcher that, uh, was in the big leagues

when you pitched in your career? Who's the one guy that you'd be like, that's the guy I'd put out there? Probably Mario Rivera. Okay. I know he's a closer. If you had to pick a starter. Yeah. I mean, you know, for my money, I always thought the best pitcher was, uh, Clemens coming up, you know, the guy that I played with in my era, you know, I thought he was a complete dominant pitcher. I think he had not only, not only the, uh, the, the great stuff, the great God given ability to throw, you know, fastballs and sliders and command. I thought he had really good game plans as well. I thought he, I thought he was a very good pitcher that had great stuff. Then, you know, he was just kind of known for blowing guys away and everything. But, uh,

I think he was a complete pitcher. I saw him, you know, pitch to both sides of the plate, up, down, hard, soft and out. It was, it was pretty impressive. I would take Tim Wakefield at his best, like on one of the nights when I don't know what the humidity was just right and the ball was dancing and impossible. Yeah. Would you, did you ever think yourself like, maybe I should give this knuckleball and shot? I mean, I tried to throw a couple. I know my hands were too small, so I could, I could never really do it. Uh, got my fingernails and had small hands. So that pitch kind of wasn't for me. Bad combo. What about, so I think I remember you having a special catcher. There would be like Maddox catcher nights when Javi Lopez would take a

night off. Did that, did that ever piss Javi off? Was he ever like, Hey man, I'm not chopped. No, pretty good. No, not at all. You know, my first year with Javi, I mean, I won 20 games with Javi and then come up the following year and Bobby said that he wanted Javi to catch like 140 games a year, something like that, or 120 games a year, I think is what it was. And, uh, he said if he gave Javi my games off, he would only have to find him like 10 more off days during the season. So that, that was kind of a whole thing about that. That was, that was Bobby managing 160 games, not just for that night. And, uh, you know, so I always got the backup guy and, uh, you know, worked out good. You know, you know, you start to develop really good relationships with your catcher that way.

And, uh, you know, he was as fired up to play as I was because we both sat on the bench for the last four days. Yeah. And you're missing the other point is that you actually proved that you could catch Greg Maddox with your eyes closed. Like that actually is something that was proven. We did do that one day in the bullpen in San Francisco, but I was with the Padres in and, uh, we were just screwing around having fun at like two o'clock in the afternoon one day. And, uh, yeah, I'm trying to remember the guy with some crazy Australian guy, you know, and, uh, Kyrie Irving, it took about four or five throws before he finally caught one. Yeah. So, so there was a guy standing, there was a guy standing a few feet,

there was a guy standing a few feet from the catcher and he would say, he would say now to when the catcher should close his mitt and after two or three throws, he was able to do it where you would throw it exactly where it needs to be. And the guy would say now and the catcher would actually literally catch Greg Maddox with his eyes closed. Yeah, he did it. It was pretty cool. It was a lot of fun. I remember the first one I threw hit him in the glove and he bounced off. And then I about hit him in the kneecap and then I whistled one right over his head and then the, I think the fourth one he actually caught. So it was pretty cool. That's awesome. Yeah. I remember you being a big cover your mouth when you're talking to the catcher guy.

So when you'd have your meetings at the mound, like some guys just cover their mouth. You got in there, like you were eating popcorn out of it. It covered your entire face. Do you think that pitch, that batters are actually like able to sit back there and read your lips? Curtis Pride could. Do you remember Curtis Pride, the deaf guy that played Montreal? But yeah, there would be meetings on the mound and then he would go tell the manager what they said. So, you know, I think you can read some lips. You know, you could see, you know, fastball in change up a way or, you know, curveball, whatever, if you can read lips. So it was just kind of a way of guarding against that. You know, you're, you know, you get paranoid out there sometimes.

Yeah. How many times would, how many times would you be pulled from a game or have the manager come out and try to take you out of the game and you were able to successfully tell them like, no, I'm staying in this game. You're not taking me out. Probably zero. You know, I think my managers were pretty good. I always got the benefit of a doubt, you know, and I would always tell my managers or suggest to them that, look, I'll lie for you, never to you. Okay. If you're going to come out and ask me how I'm doing, I'll tell you the truth. And if I think I can get the next hitter out, I'm not going to lie to you. I'm going to take ego out of it and give you an honest answer because, you know, I want to win. I want to win my games and

sometimes you're not good enough to win your games and maybe your teammates can win them for you. So, you know, I never lied to my managers, never had to talk a minute or out of anything, just give an honest opinion. And I think I got pulled from a game once that I was kind of pissed I got taken out of. Bobby Cox was an all-time great too. And I could watch him and I could tell when he was feeling extra spicy that day, he'd start against an argument with the umpire in like the top of the first. Were there days when you could just see Bobby trotting around, you're like, Bobby wants to get tossed today. Yeah, we used to try to call how many pitches into the game before he yells at the umpire. And the numbers were two, three, five. It was going

to be in the first and it was matter what pitch it was. He had one game where it was the first pitch of the game, you know. So, you know, that was just Bobby being Bobby cheering for his guys. He was always in your corner, loved playing for him. I think all the guys love playing for him, wasn't just the pitchers. I think the hitters enjoyed playing for him as well. And you know how to treat people the right way. All right, so this has been awesome. We really appreciate it. I have one more stat for you. From July 1993 to May 2000, you started 213 games for the Braves and you only had 212 walks. I love these stats because they're like, I don't think we'll see them ever again. These types of, that type of command. It hurt that one. Yeah,

that's good. I don't think they should intentional walks in there though. I agree. I'm sure there's, I'm sure there's intentional walks. A lot of guys, a lot of intentional walks because how many times are you walking the eighth place hitter to get to the pitcher, you know? Yeah, yeah. So, I don't think those should count, but they count them. But you know, I'm a pitcher. All right, well, Greg, this has been so much fun. We really appreciate it. Legend. You're a current guest now, so you have to come on whenever we ask you just so you know that's part of your contract. But everyone check out the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions. It is this weekend. You can watch the golf channel and NBC. I got one last question for you. This is more just like

asking you to rate big cats goatee. You were a pitcher in the mid 90s. You saw the best pitching goatees of all time. I think it was like, it was mandated. I'm pretty sure that if you were a leaf pitcher, you had to have the Van Dyke. Scale of one to 10 or like a scale of Steve Bedrosian to Mark Moloz. Come up closer. Just ranked big cats goatee. Get good luck there. I think he might be, he's pretending to be frozen. Wait, who's goatee? Am I ranking? You're kind of cutting out on me a little bit. This is big cats goatee. Oh, there we go. Eh. Eh. Kind of like a little like a fake Steve Bedrosian. He said fake Steve Bedrosian. But that's not bad, because Bedrock had you know what? He had a push on his face. That's just that's just mad dog being mad dog.

He's you're just, you know, just guys busting each other's balls. I got it. We're teammates now. Yeah. It's pretty cool. You guys are doing for the small businesses, by the way. Thank you. Yeah, it's been awesome. It's been awesome to watch. But we, we really appreciate you coming on. Yeah. They, oh, they've been, all of those videos are incredible. Absolutely. All right. Thanks guys. All right. Appreciate it. All righty. Mad dog was brought to you by CBS All Access. They've got the AFC championship. It's presented by Intuit TurboTax Live. The Buffalo Bills are circling the wagons in Kansas City this Sunday at 6.30 p.m. Can Kansas City defend their Super Bowl title? Or is Josh Allen and the Buffalo

Bills going to reach their first Super Bowl since 1993? Watch it live on CBS All Access and don't miss Super Bowl 55 streaming live Sunday, February 7th on CBS All Access. Go to cbs.com slash NFL. Get your free seven day trial so you can watch. It's a free seven day trial. Watch it on any device. Check it out. It's the home of Super Bowl 55. That's cbs.com slash NFL. All right. Firefest. Great Friday show, by the way. Great Friday show. It was a Friday show. Friday show. My apologies last week. It did actually, I did have a bad gambling weekend. So, because of the lack of Friday. So, just a programming. We'll all be in Detroit this weekend. Make sure you watch us. We'll be on live stream during the games. And then we're going to be

back here in a couple weeks for the Super Bowl. Like I said, we're going to try to get Dan Campbell. Why haven't we just called them Man Campbell? Man Campbell is good too. I've called them Man Campbell. Okay. So, Man Campbell and then also Dan Harris. Maybe we're trying, if anyone's listening, we're trying to get PFT's most overrated coach of all time on the podcast, Tom Izzo, which would be electric. So, they have a month named after him, according to Rothstein. Yeah. January, February, Izzo, April, May. That's what his tweet is when they win. Which actually is kind of perfect. Rothstein didn't even realize that he kind of negged himself on that because the final four is always in April. Yeah. That's true. And that's exactly why people are saying this

type of stuff about Izzo is because he's not named after the championship month. He always, right? Yeah. Sure. He'll win the first two rounds of the tournament. And by the way, my take on Izzo is it's a pre-take. I'm squatting on the take. I'm not saying that he's overrated. I'm just saying people one day soon eventually will start saying that Tom Izzo is overrated. That was just a simple reminder because if we do interview him, I want you to have to say that to his face. I will be very funny. Yeah. I know you will. All right. Firefest of the week. Let me start. So, I flew to Detroit today. I am so out of practice in traveling. I did the following things. I forgot to pack deodorant, toothbrush, underwear, not even a single pair of underwear.

And then on top of all of that, I went to the airport. When did you pack? Dude, I just, I when did you pack? I packed this morning. I packed everything else. I have like seven sweatshirts, jeans, couple pairs of shoes, socks, and then I just was going through my bag when I got here. And there just wasn't underwear where the underwear was supposed to be. So, I did all that. And then when I was at the airport, I sat down. I got, I got there way too early because I'm out of practice. I was there like an hour and a half early for my flight, sat down, ate some lunch, got up, just left my coat in the booth and just like my winter coat. So, I don't have that anymore either. At least I, I, I, I've been out. Detroit's not that cold, right? Yeah, right. It's, I'm so

out of practice of like doing anything but going from my apartment to the office and back to my apartment that I can't, I have to relearn how to act in society. So, yeah, that sucked a lot. That's tough. Socks are the one I always forget, but underwear, underwear, that's a tough one to forget. So, have you gone to the store yet or are you just going to go freeball? I'm going to, I'm going to go to the store after this. And I, I agree with you. Socks, it feels like you can buy socks and it's not really much of a difference. Buying all new underwear, you've, I'm going to feel off. I'm going to feel off. Oh yeah. It's going to be like starchy. It's going to have the fuzz on it because you can't wash it before you put it on. When you buy socks, I actually think that

when like the only socks that I've purchased in the last probably 10 years are socks that I've bought out of town when I've forgotten my old socks. So it's a good excuse to re-up on brand new pairs of socks. I might just not bring socks on me just so I can get some new tubal ones. There we go. All right. What do you got, PFT? My firefest is, I still have a Christmas tree in my house. So it's, what is it, the 22nd of January right now? Now, great. I did pay $300 for the Christmas tree. So I'm getting my money's worth. Right now it's, it's like a birthday tree. That's what I'm telling myself, but it's a, it's in bad shape. It's in really bad shape. And if you have a Christmas tree that far into January, you can't just take it out to the curb because they've done

the Christmas tree collection. I don't think, I don't think that they do, they don't just pick up trees if you leave a tree on the sidewalk all year round. So now I have to figure out how to get somebody to come to my apartment and get my tree from me. And then I have to deal with the shame of, yeah, I still have my tree. Why, why wouldn't you just plant it? In my apartment or outside? No, outside. You're not throwing it away. Just plant it, plant it outside. There's really no grass near my apartment. There's got to be those, uh, those little wells like, uh, you know, on the street. You know what I'm saying? A manhole. A dog's piss. A manhole. No, not the manhole. I can take the manhole off. I plant your tree. And then plant the tree in the sewer. Plant your tree and commemorate

it to Tommy Lasorda. We'll do a whole fucking thing for it. I'm down for that. I'm absolutely down because I don't know what else to do with it. Once I'm going to plant this tree. Once I'm in like April, I, uh, I lived on a highway and we had taken our tree out like to the side yard. And then we got a notice from the homeowners association. So I had to take this tree and run across three lanes of a highway out to the median. I just threw the tree into the median and then ran back into my house. So every day for like the next six months, I saw my dead, just skeleton of a Christmas tree sitting in the middle of the highway. It's pretty cool. And people almost crashed every day. No, I, I, I weighed it down. I actually did kind of plant it in a way. I wedged

it. It was more of a wedge. Oh, it was a grass median. Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. No, no, it wasn't it. I didn't just like throw it onto a concrete barrier and then run back. It was like a significant strip of land and I wedged it into some, some rocks before somebody came took it. All right. Hank, I have a couple. My first one is I didn't make any hilarious Bernie Sanders sitting memes. Oh yeah. That meme burned out, burned out pretty quickly. I lost sleep over that last night. Was that the fastest meme has ever been used out? Yeah. It has to be. It has to be. I would stick with it after five minutes. Yeah. Everyone fucking our colleague BW Carlin had posted up, someone did a painting of it like two hours after like who the fuck has paint just lying around

to paint a meme? I guess painters do. Yeah. My other one. So this is, well, this sounds to me like you had a meme, a specific one you wanted to do. And then you realize it was too late. So why don't you just verbalize it? Talk it out. All right. It's, it's Bernie Sanders sitting. Yeah. But he's in a cat. He's wearing, he's wearing the mittens and the gloves and he's sitting in the coat. He's sitting like the coats from the other meme too, by the way. Yeah. This is already hilarious. Hank, I'm once again asking you to continue your meme. All right. And then he's, he's sitting at the pub with the Peaky Blinders. That's okay. That's good. Just imagine that had gone out at like 1201 on Wednesday. Right. Like I was, I was, I wasn't really paying attention. And by the time

I tuned in and saw, you know, how hilarious it was, it was too late. And I just, I really, I lost sleep over it. Yeah. And then my other one. So this one, I was talking to PFT whether or not I should even say it before, because I might just like double-firefest myself with this. But I, my HVAC unit needs to get like work done because it like, the heat will turn on and just turn off after 20 minutes. So we were emailing back with my landlord and the person that is coming and he was like, Oh, I can come on, on Friday. By the way, I'm in all caps, huge fan of chicks in the office and part of my take. Oh, so I, it's just, it's just the awkwardness is my firefest that this guy,

that's a huge fan is just going to be chilling in my apartment, obviously judging the shit out of it and me and just normie normie. It's just a nice guy. I'm sure he is a nice guy. And I'm sure I'm just overthinking it and just being like, this is, it's just the awkwardness. It's just awkward. You know, absolutely going to be sneaking pictures of normie. He's going to have his phone out. Try he probably thinks he's going to get a threesome Hank in his wildest dreams. Is it? Don't you only speak Spanish at home though? So it's going to be tough for him. Yeah. See, like that. I thought you said that you always wanted to raise normie as a Espanol speaker. So you only speak Spanish at home. Yeah. I've been getting hooked on phonics

learning my Spanish. Yeah. So, so he seems like a nice guy, but unfortunately, if you come to Hank's house and he's there, he will not understand what you're saying. Well, that's why it's really just awkwardness. But my hope is that I was like, PFT, do you think if I say this, he'll hear it by 11am when he's supposed to come and he was like, probably not. So I'm just hoping that when this guy hears it, it's after he's already been in my apartment. Otherwise, it's going to be even more awkward. Yeah. And if you're, if you're listening to it right now, just bring a cat over and just let it loose and Hank's apartment. No, if you're listening to this right now, dude, you actually sound like a really sweet dude. So you're cool to like hang out for a while. Maybe some more zone.

Yeah. I like that. Get stream with him. Yeah. Well, I'll hop on stream. Go live. Go live with that guy. Dude, why not? Are you not, do you not like our fans? No, I, that's what I'm saying. It's not, it's really, it's nothing to do with the guy. I'm sure he's a great guy. It's just, you know how it is. It's just awkward. It's just, it's just, I actually, I would rather the people that come into my house, I would rather pretend that they don't know I exist rather than then I'll really be like, Hey, I know you. Disagree. I'd rather disagree. I think, I think that's way, I think that's cool that he did that this way. I would so much, it's, it's like, I would so much rather someone just say it outright, then imagine if

they like, as they were leaving, they're like, Hey, just a heads up. I'm a huge fan. You're like, Well, what? But the damage is done. Then what I say, what did I say? What did I do? Like, did you take a picture? I think it's way better that you just know it's because now you can just be like, Hey, this, all of our cards are on the table here. I guess I'd rather him say it on the way out and I could be like, All right. And then, then it's already over. The deed is done. There's nothing you can do to change the past. If you're listening, unless you're tenant, give Hank, give Hank a real clear picture of how to fix the pipes in this office. He'll probably know, right? Oh yeah, you can do that. Yeah. If he has some extra time, we'll pay.

I would gladly pay hundreds of dollars to have somebody fix this thing just so I could hold that over Pete's head for the rest of his life. Yes, I took care of it myself. Fuck Pete. Pete, you still here? Just clean the pipes. He's still here. He's like, One day I'm going to come. I'm going to just keep, yeah, keep trying. Yeah, he's, I can just hear him masturbating in the other room. All right, Jake, do you have a firefest? Yeah, I showed up to my orthodontist appointment this morning to get some more Invisalign for my bottom row, and they told me my appointment was canceled, and I'm like, no, you canceled it the day of that blizzard in December.

It's a blizzard. Remember the blizzard in December? Yeah, we had like six inches of snow. Yeah. You go to the doctor too? Yeah. Oh my God. Such a PUSSY. Oh man. All right, you want to do numbers? Yeah, let's go with it. I'm going to go eight. Eight hundred. I think I'm going to do eight again. Nine. Fun fact, in ancient Greece, pigeons delivered the results of the Olympic Games. What'd you say, big cat? Hundred. Fifty-two. I feel like it's been in the fifty-two while. Fifty-two. Fifty-two. Five-two. What is it? Fifty-two. Fifty-two. Fifty-two. Wow, a five Pete. Fifty-what? Fifty-two. We had four fifty-two. Oh my God. This is our fifth.

We last had December 27th. That's nuts. Fifty-two's got a dynasty. It's too bad. Fifty-two is not on the roulette wheel for this week. Yeah. Yeah, go download the Varsal Sports app, play if you're in Michigan, gamble responsibly. You know what we should do this weekend? We should have somebody in this room playing the Lotto machine and then telling us what number to put our bets on on the roulette. Like, yes. Can you imagine if that hits? We need a zero, a double zero. On Sunday we can. Yeah. On Sunday we can. Yeah. What about Saturday? Saturday I don't think people come to the office. Okay, we'll see. All right, love you guys. There once was a ship that put a sea in the name and that ship was a billiardine. The winds blew hard about it down. Blow me bully boys blow.

Talking away, I'm the one to say I'm savin' away. Today's another day to find you, shinin' away. I'll be coming for your love of game, shinin' away. I'll be coming for your love of game. Take on me, take me on. I'll be gone in a day or two. Needless to say, I'm all to say this, but I'll be stolen away. The learnin' of the life is okay. Say up to me. It's no better to be safe than sorry. Say up to me. It's no better to be safe than sorry. Take on me, take me on. I'll be gone in a day or two. Soon may the walla man come to bring us sugar and tea and rum.

One day we'll take it and it's done. We'll take our leave and go in a day.