51. Pick Six - The Men’s Names are the Headlines but the Women are the Heros

0:18Welcome back to the game and another installment of Pick 6 where I go over the best, most interesting or most fun to talk about stories in and around the NFL from the last week. This is the best episode of Pick 6 yet, mostly because, and this is not going to come to a shock as a shock to any of you, the men are the ones in the headlines, but literally the women are the entire story in nearly, if not every single story this week. And I love the girls. That's why we started this entire show. So I can't wait to get into it. How are you guys doing? I saw a, I'm going to do a little anecdote and then I'm going to get into the stories that I just so happily foreshadowed.

1:18Words are not coming to me. It's a little bit late. It's 9.30 PM. Literally this morning, I was like, I'm going to have the recording done by 2 p.m. Did not happen. It's 9.30 p.m. This comes out at 4 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesdays. So if my words don't come out, I apologize. I am doing the most and enjoying every second. So we've all had those periods where everything is chaos. We're doing a million and five things. And we're also so happy. And that is the season we are in right now. So apologies for the words coming out, how they're coming. I digress. I saw an Instagram this evening and I really just feel like I hope that it continues to go viral.

1:58But the girl is like has a paintbrush and she says, but did you grow? And then she says, no, I didn't ask how much you grew or if you think that you grew enough, but did you grow? and I just love that because I feel like especially as women we get so hard on ourselves and we forget to even I don't even want to go as far as saying like celebrate the small wins but sometimes we like forget to acknowledge them and so I want to challenge you to just like acknowledge one place where you've grown or kicked ass or gone out of your comfort zone or even just been nice to yourself or did something nice for a friend and just like take a quick little minute to do a little acknowledgement for yourself.

2:45I was talking to my sister a couple, this is so chaotic. I was talking to my sister a couple of weeks ago and I was like, let's name like one small thing. Like, I don't even know what we're talking about. And then she goes on to name something actually like that made sense to the prompt and I ended up doing something so dramatic and like big. So let me name something small. I hung the curtains in my apartment and I moved the ugly piece of furniture that the previous tenants left and I put my cute little table into the spot that I've been wanting to put it in and I am obsessed with it. I love it.

3:16I'm so excited about it. So what's yours? If you feel so inclined to DM me at HeyVictoriaHunderson, I would love that. I feel like I've taken you on a chaos ride. So let's get into the planned and prepared for portion of the evening, morning, day, week, where we talk about the best stories in the NFL and go on a little fewer bird walks than we went on in the first four and a half minutes of the show today. All right, starting off, and this is a strong start. So buckle up, strap in, turn up the volume, get cozy, get your walking shoes on. Let's talk about it. The Seahawks just sold for$9.6 billion.

4:04There are 40 to 45 countries that's GDP is literally less than the cost of the Seahawks, which is crazy. Now, what you're going to see is the estate of Paul G. Allen sold the Seattle Seahawks to a man named Vener Kozla. That's the headline you're going to see. It is. The estate of Paul G. Allen sold to Vener Kozla. But this is so far from the entire story. This is so far from the best part of the story. So I'm going to give you all of the details you need to know. As a reminder, last year, Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl. Before the sale, the team belonged to the estate of Paul G. Allen. Paul co-founded Microsoft with his childhood friend, Bill Gates.

5:12They met at school in Seattle. And in 1983, after a Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis, he stepped back from day-to-day work and stayed as the vice chairman of Microsoft. Then he goes and buys the Seattle Seahawks in 1997 for$200 million, basically saving the team from leaving Seattle. Then they become an actual contender for the Super Bowl, four Super Bowl trips, their first title 2013-2014 season. He also owned the Portland Trailblazers, which he bought for$70 million in 1988, and part of the Seattle Sounders. Now, in 2018, Paul passes away at 65 from complications of the non-Hodgkin's lymphoma with a network of around$20 billion, approximately the 44th richest person in the world at the time, according to Forbes.

6:17He'd already given away more than$2 billion, including$500 million, to his own Allen Institute for Brain Science. Now, in his will, he specifically instructed that his sports holdings eventually be sold and that the proceeds all go to charity, which is the entire reason that the sale happens. Since he passed away, his sister, Jodi Allen, who is around three years younger than him, has been basically running the show since he passed away. She studied drama. She ran Vulcan Incorporated, which is the siblings family investment and philanthropy company as the CEO from 1986 to 2015. And then she became the trustee and executor of Paul's entire estate after he passed away, which essentially put her in charge of the Seattle Seahawks for the last eight years as the team's de facto owner and chair.

7:23then they win the Super Bowl then she pulls the trigger on the sale so Paul G. Allen not only co-founded Microsoft but leaves his entire estate to his sister he had the Seahawks winning a Super Bowl 2013 to 2014 season and then his sister takes over the team and they win the Super Bowl in 2025 to 2026 season. So iconic of her. And then she wins the Super Bowl and she says, you know what, I'm done. Let's do the sale. The best part about this story, technically the Paul G. Allen family trust owns the Seahawks, but she ran the show. Now we're putting another woman in charge and Guillermo always says, he always quotes me on this because it's one of my favorite sayings, But anytime anything's wrong in the world, like anytime any business is not doing well or anything like that, I literally say, like, put a woman in charge.

8:26If you have a problem, put a woman in charge. Because you know that if you have a problem that actually needs to be solved, that's not like, if you, any problem, honestly, put a woman in charge. Give her a decent amount of time, not even a ton of time, a decent amount of time, and she will come up with a great solution. So we are putting another woman in charge. Let me tell you about it. So Vinod Kozla, 71 years old. He was born in 1955. He was born in India. His father was an army officer. Then he gets an engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi. comes to the U.S.

9:07in 1976 on a scholarship to Carnegie Mellon for a master's in biomedical engineering, then goes to Stanford Business School, which he actually got rejected to and then repeatedly called the admissions office until they let him in. So, girls, reminder, you can literally do anything. You just have to be a little bit more audacious. And sometimes you do have to ask, what would a man do? Because sometimes they do crazy things that we wouldn't imagine ourselves doing, but that we could totally do, like calling Stanford Business School until they let us in. I don't think this would fly today, but be a little more audacious for me, will you?

9:45So he goes to Stanford Business School. Then he co-found Sun Microsystems in 1982, which created Java, the programming language that helped basically build the internet that we know and love. And then he hired Eric Schmidt at Sun, who went on to become the CEO at Google. He was also an early investor in Google and then spent two decades at a venture firm, Kleiner Perkins, before launching his own venture firm, Kohl's Love Ventures, in 2004. Super interesting about and like very timely of Kohl's Love Ventures. It bought a 5 % stake in open AI for$50 million back in 2019. So not even that long ago, seven years ago.

10:33This past March, Forbes had open AI valued at$852 billion.

10:43It's crazy. Crazy. So obviously, super smart guy, multiple ventures. Also, don't forget to invest. I actually have been listening to a podcast called Hot Smart Rich by Maggie Sellers Ream. And she talks a lot about angel investing and just about how you can invest in angel. Like you can be an angel investor for a lot less money than you would think. And if you're interested in investing and in like women-led businesses, women entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, that podcast called Hot Smart Rich is absolutely incredible and has really made me think differently about investing in general. I think we always kind of think like, just put your money in the stock market or put your money in a 401k and make sure that it's vested.

11:35But this kind of opens the door even just to a conversation through a podcast parasocially or maybe even in your social circles of different ways that we can invest our money in different ways that we can increase our portfolios other than the ways that we were kind of traditionally taught. And I think that women exploring in these ways is extremely important. So if you're looking for a show that is really interesting, she's an angel investor and has some other angel investors on. So I would highly recommend if you're into that. Anyway, a couple other portfolio names that he has, DoorDash, Instacart, Stripe, which he was an early backer to Impossible Foods, where he was one of the first investors back in 2011.

12:23Personal net worth,$13.4 billion around. And Forbes just ranked him number 10 on their list of America's greatest innovators. Honestly, I agree. I agree. You look at his portfolio. Obviously, he knows exactly what to look for. He's known for being blunt and possibly to the point of being like very brutal. His firm's website says, we prefer brutal honesty to hypothetical politeness. And he said the book Lying by Sam Harris basically is his life philosophy. So maybe we should read that and learn how to stand up for ourselves a little bit. We, oh, I said it wrong. We prefer brutal honesty to hypocritical politeness.

13:08The drama. Okay. Anyways, let's continue. So he's been investing for a long time. He has a, you know, multi-billion dollar net worth. He joined the 49ers ownership group in 2025 by buying just over 3 % of that team at an$8.5 billion valuation. Now that he's buying the Seahawks, the league forces him to actually sell off the 49ers stake completely because you can't hold two pieces of, you can't hold pieces of two NFL teams at one time. Now, here's where the story gets like fun and interesting, even though his story is like actually really incredible and very inspiring. We talk a lot about the girls here.

13:54So let's talk about the girls. So his wife, Neeru Kozla, is actually becoming the team's control owner, not Vinod. So their son, Neil, who's also the CEO of a healthcare AI company called Cure AI, also is getting a significant leadership role. But let's talk about the team's controller owner, Neeru. They met in high school in India. She was actually supposed to have an arranged marriage, or he was supposed to have an arranged marriage to a different woman, but then chose Nehru instead and like disappointed his family. They got married regardless of his family's opinions, and now they have four kids together.

14:39She originally is a molecular biologist and worked as an actual scientist, So studying gene expression at Stanford and has a master's in molecular biology from San Jose State, plus a master's in education from Stanford. She left the lab and in 2010 gave a TED talk saying that radioactivity and pregnancy don't go together. So I gave up molecular biology. Honestly, like iconic in its own right. So in 2007, she co-found the CK12 Foundation with another entrepreneur using AI and open content, including free textbooks to make K-12 STEM education cheaper and more accessible. And she's still the executive director of the CK12 Foundation to this day.

15:36They also have four kids. So now she is the controller of the Seahawks. She is on the boards of the American India Foundation and DonorsChoose. She is education heavy. She is a molecular biologist, a scientist, a mom of four, and a philanthropist. And now she is running the Seattle Seahawks. And I truly cannot imagine a better story than our girl taking over the Seattle Seahawks, winning the Super Bowl, then selling the Seahawks. Proceeds go to charity for another woman to step in and be the controller owner of the Seahawks with her son having a seat at the table. I just think it's a beautiful story.

16:28I absolutely love it. I really wish that more outlets were covering this side of the story, but that's why we have the game giving us all of the details we actually need and want to know. All right. I hope I did that one justice. That was a lot of info. Let's get into a little bit lighter and easier story for story number two. Juju Smith-Schuster gets married and Taylor and Travis show up. So Juju Smith-Schuster tied the knot with Laura Kirk on Friday, July 10th at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel just one week after Taylor and Travis get married. They, Taylor and Travis, are at the wedding. And honestly, one of my favorite looks that Taylor has ever had.

17:16They look so happy. I was surprised that they went to such a public event so quickly after their wedding. But obviously Juju didn't anticipate Taylor and Travis getting married in that exact timeline, because how could you? And the majority of people plan their weddings way far ahead. So I'm assuming that Juju and Laura had their wedding planned way before Taylor and Travis. But Taylor and Travis went and we got gorgeous content to continue to feed the narrative, keep them relevant, even though are they ever not relevant? I honestly didn't know that much about Juju Smith-Schuster. I know that he has like a fairly good reputation in the NFL.

17:54Like there's really nothing crazy going on. I feel like the temperature on him is like warm to hot. People like him, but his name isn't coming up that often. So let's talk about what he's doing in the league. So he just signed with the New York Giants after his stint with the Chiefs for a one-year$1.3 million deal with zero signing bonus or guaranteed money. which I feel like you really don't see that often. It feels like a prove-it contract, but, like, I don't know. I don't love the contract, especially just it being the Giants. Like, the Giants have a lot of potential this year, and I hope that we see them do really well, and Juju could be a big part of that, and I hope that if he is, he gets the actual payday that he, you know, essentially deserves.

18:43So he last year had some pretty, I don't know, not a great, not great stats. 33 catches for 345 yards and one touchdown. Mostly he was filling in when Rashi Rice was out on his suspension, on his injury, you know, all the Rashi Rice stuff. If you want to hear Rashi Rice drama, check out the last few pick sixes because they are in there. In case you needed to know, he's Sagittarius. He was born November 22nd, 1991. His now wife, Laura Kirk, is 33. She is a fitness and lifestyle coach, about 66 ,000 followers on social media, sells workout programs and diet plans through Laura Kirk Fit. They got engaged in September of 2024.

19:31She actually made some headlines the week before her own wedding because she and Taylor Swift's childhood best friend, Abigail Anderson, accidentally showed up in the same Sauli gown to Taylor's wedding. Small world, but expensive coincidence. Honestly, that's like my nightmare. Also, did you guys see Abigail, Taylor's best friend? Honestly, she's an absolute queen. Like it all makes sense. But I was shocked when I saw Abigail. I was like, that is like, she should be on the cover of Vogue. She should be on the cover of the New York Times. She should be on the cover literally everywhere. She's so stunning.

20:10Her aura. Insane. Insane. So I loved seeing there, seeing her. So then we saw, obviously, Travis and Taylor there, and we loved every second of it. Some people are saying that that style of gown, like the A-line gown, is what they assume she wore in her wedding. So can't wait to see. Story number three, the top 10 quarterbacks are in and Mahomes is not number one. So ESPN essentially pulls executives, coaches, and scouts across the league to rank this year's top 10 quarterbacks. The winner was Josh Allen, not Patrick Mahomes. Now, if we want to figure out how voting actually happens, more than 70 executives, coaches, and scouts each submitted their own personal top 10 list.

21:01ESPN then combined everyone's ballots into a composite race ranking, factoring in how many people put a guy in their top 10 at all, plus each player's average ranking across every ballot, then follow up interviews to settle close calls. So it isn't just who won the most first place votes. It's who ranked the highest, the most consistency consistently across 70 ballots. Josh Allen, the Bills quarterback, signed a six-year$330 million extension in 2025 with a$147 million guaranteed at signing. And he won number one. In 2025, his stats, 3 ,668 passing yards, 25 passing touchdowns, and ran for a league-high 579 yards and 14 rushing touchdowns.

21:51He is married to Oscar-nominated actress and singer Haley Steinfeld. Then Mahomes was number two. He actually got more first place votes than Allen, 41.5 % to Allen's 34.1%. But Allen's ranking across all the ballots and all of the details that I just explained edged out Patrick Mahomes. So Josh Allen got the number one. Patrick Mahomes, number two,$504.75 million contract with$397 million guaranteed. Honestly, that's the first time that I saw that$397 million guaranteed number and actually clocked it, which is insane, averaging$63 million a year. If you didn't know, which I didn't know, he is a Virgo.

22:38His stats last year, 3 ,587 passing yards, 22 touchdowns. and he tore his ACL in a week 15 loss to the Chargers. All right, let's do the full top 10. One, Josh Allen, Bills quarterback. They're all quarterbacks. Two, Patrick Mahomes on the Chiefs. Three, Matt Stafford, Rams. It was his MVP year with 46 touchdowns, eight interceptions that took him from number six last year to number three this year. Then Joe Burrow at number four. number five, Lamar Jackson, number six, Dak Prescott. He was unranked last year and jumped on nearly 75 % of ballots, which is super interesting. Also has some of the highest stats of all quarterbacks from 2025-2026 season.

23:27Number seven, Justin Herbert. Number eight, Drake May. Patriots was in a Super Bowl MVP run last year, also was at the Super Bowl, but lost to the Seahawks. Number nine, Jared Goff on the Lions. Number 10, Caleb Williams on the Bears, who beat out three others, Sam Darnold, Jordan Love, Jaden Daniels. One interesting thing on here is that Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts was like an honorary mention, but did not make the top 10 list. I'm kind of wondering, now listen, I love Jalen Hurts. I've said Jalen Hurts for president before. I think he's fantastic. I feel a little worried about like the Eagles kind of dynasty being on the way out, just knowing that there was some stuff going on.

24:23Like it felt like internal drama to me that was coming out in very weird ways last season. What do you guys think? Are the Eagles cooked? Was last season just a little blip for both the Eagles and the Chiefs? Like maybe Mercury was retrograding too much. I don't know. But tell me what you think, because I don't think I, I mean, I don't know. I don't know that I would put Joe Burrow above Jalen Hurts, to be honest. I like love Joe Burrow for the content. Like I love seeing him show up at fights and I love seeing his like cute little romance going on. But I don't know that I would say that he's a better quarterback than Jalen Hurts.

24:59Maybe last year alone, if we're going just on last year's performance, I think you know maybe Joe Burrow is better I don't know but everyone has Joe Burrow at number four so maybe I'm wrong Jalen Hurts I don't know is he better than any of these top 10 definitely not the top five but could have been snuck in there and felt good to me in the top 10 I don't What do you think? All right, moving on. Story number four, the wedding report. Three couples making it official. So couple one is Ty Okeda and Anna Kreetinger. Okeda, Ty Okeda. So Ty is a Seattle Seahawks safety. He is on a$1.145 million exclusive rights tender for 2826.

25:52This contract is super interesting to me and something that doesn't get like publicly talked about that often, but basically he's an undrafted free agent out of Montana State. So he didn't get drafted in the 2023 NFL draft. But then right after the draft ends, teams call up guys like this and offer to sign them as free agents instead, which is how he got into Seattle. So there's two Hall of Famers that also took the same pass. So Kurt Warner and Warren Moon both started out undrafted, but only about 20 % of undrafted signees ever make a real roster. So Ty starting 11 games and winning a Super Bowl is like actually a long shot story.

26:38So basically they call him up, they sign him, he goes and helps win the Super Bowl. The interesting thing here is that exclusive refers to the team's exclusive control over him. So he can't negotiate. He can't shop himself to other teams. He can't sign elsewhere. Basically, his only offer was to sign that price or leave the NFL. So this is what the exclusive rights tender is. It sounds like a perk, but it's actually pretty opposite. So players with fewer than three accrued NFL seasons whose contracts just expired can basically get this exclusive rights tender, but it makes it hard for them to negotiate.

27:24Hopefully, Ty has an absolute banger of a season and can, you know, raise this amount. I would like to see that happen. Anyway, he gets married to Anna, who he met in accounting class at Montana State. She is based in Denver. He proposed in Montana and they got married. How cute. Couple number two, Jonathan Brooks and Bailey Brandon. Jonathan is a Panthers running back on a four-year$8.42 million rookie deal with$2.94 million signing bonus. He tore his ACL as a rookie, came back, retore it three games into 2025, and really has no action to speak of in 2025. His last game in action in 2024 was nine carries for 22 yards.

28:17Hopefully he comes back, but him and Bailey got married, so congrats to them, and I really can't wait to see what the Panthers do this year. Then one of the most well-known receivers in the league, Like Emeka Ibuka, absolute breakout in 2025, $18.1 million rookie deal with a fifth-year option attached. He is a Libra, just like me, born in 2002. In 2025, his stats were 938 receiving yards and six touchdowns on 63 catches. He was named NFL Offensive Rookie of the Month for September, and he's the third player since 1970. This is such a man's stat. I'm sorry for including this, to hit 425 plus yards and five plus touchdowns in his first five career games alongside Randy Moss and Jamar Chase.

29:09I don't know. Okay. Anyway, impressive. 425 yards and five touchdowns is a great stat in his first five career games. And he was a offensive rookie of the month. So go off Emeka. I think people are loving watching him in the NFL. Lady Matriano is a pro soccer player. She's from Ohio, has seven siblings, and is signed her first pro contract with Swedish club BK Hacken this February. He is getting married on the break, which puts their wedding now. So you can see that on social media. I love a pro sports couple. Also honorable mention for tonight, the ESPYs are going on as we speak, and Miles Garrett is favored to win an award tonight.

30:02I believe it's a breakout player or record-breaking, yeah, best record-breaking performance. So we will see if he actually wins that tonight. All right, ESPY Awards. Miles Garrett. As we speak, the winner of the 2026 ESPY for Best NFL Player is Miles Garrett, who broke the SAC record. Oh, that's so fun. I love to do a little live reporting. Miles Garrett is also dating Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim. They're the cutest couple ever. They have, like, gaming in common, which is crazy to me because I know nothing about gaming. but they are just a really sweet athlete couple. Miles actually photographed her at the Olympics when she was competing as well.

30:50So just, I don't know, one of the cutest super sport couples to follow, maybe Emeka and his wife Lainey will become kind of as iconic as Chloe and Miles. But that is a hard couple to catch up to. So we'll see as they grow in their sports and in the league. Story number five, super quick one before we get into our final story of the night, which is a little bit of a longer one. Taylor and Travis service post wedding. They show us their wedding bands, the Montana Hideaway, after they showed up at the wedding of Juju Smith-Schuster. Sources say they're going on a proper honeymoon outside of their little mini moon that they did in Montana.

31:39Honestly, I love that Taylor did a vintage ring. I looked at the rings for way too long, and I honestly, I was kind of on the edge of sharing this story, but like the number five, just them resurfacing. But one of the things that I've noticed is Taylor is more public than ever. I feel like just because she's showing up around all of the NFL events, which are also so public and have brought so many women into the NFL. And I don't know. I'm just thinking like I've been thinking a lot about kind of the lore of Taylor and how private she is and how this impacts her popularity, likability, what she's going to do for her next tour.