PMS 2.0 1477 - Merry Christmas Eve, NFL Christmas Day/Week 17 Preview, Mike McCarthy, JJ Watt, & AJ Hawk

22:04Pat McAfee:Okay, so I don't want to start piecing things together, although it is Christmas Eve, and a lot of people are going to be doing all those things around the family dinner table. But where are you from, Mike McCarthy? Where are you from? Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15217. Okay, I'm from 15239. I believe Sirianni, Western Pennsylvania as well. I believe his dad had a time at Western Pennsylvania. Signetti, obviously, Western Pennsylvania. We all, AQ obviously comes on the show every single week. We all kind of have a similar mindset that the trenches are where it's at. Do you think it's because like Pittsburgh football?

22:41Pat McAfee:Like, do you think that is what Western Pennsylvania, AFC North? Basically, we've been accustomed to just like, obviously everybody talks about the steel curtain, but let's not forget about Jerome Bettison the entire, Like it's just a run all the way back to Frank. I mean, we're it's a run place. So do you think that is potentially from like birth? You were going to be a big time trenches guy. Do you think that is something that has happened? Or do you think just most football people are trenches people? Well, I'm buying it. You know, I'll buy anything from Western Pennsylvania for sure. Absolutely.

23:11But I think it's you look at the history of the game. You look at championship football. I mean, you know, I don't know if you can go through all the Super Bowl champions and look at their O and D line, and it was not a strength of their football team or definitely part of the strength of their football team because you have to have it. You know, you can't – you know, defense, I will always look at the defense as the thermostat of your football team. You know, they regulate how the game is, you know, because the defense can always keep you in the game. And you watch these playoffs, every one of these games is going to come down to a two-minute drill.

23:43You know, it's going to come down to that last series. So you've got that defense that keeps you in the game, and that's why, frankly, I think you have to spend a tremendous amount of time on the game management and the two-minute drills and so forth because that's how you advance in playoffs, and that's how you eventually probably have to win the Super Bowl. So it starts in day one. But the trenches, you've got to have it, and it's hard to win a championship if you don't have a defense regulating those football games for you. And I could just tell you, of 18 years being a head coach, I've had one top-five defense that I've coached, and that's the year we won the Super Bowl.

24:19So there's definitely some statistical support that lays it out there for you.

24:25Pat McAfee:Yeah, and it feels like this year there's a lot more elite defenses or great defense, at least more than in past. I think way back in the past, from my perspective, one or two good returners in a league, one or two good returners in a league, then it became like everybody saw that that was an added benefit. We're going to try to get a good returner. I think it's the same thing whenever it comes to this defensive conversation. I think there has been in the past like two, three defenses that maybe we thought could win a Super Bowl. Now it feels like it's more prevalent. Like, hey, do you think that's because defenses are catching up to the modern offense?

24:56Pat McAfee:Do you think that's why that is? Do you think defense are getting better? Do you think defensive players are getting better? Why do you think defenses are maybe getting better across the board? I think it definitely caught up with that question. I think the biggest thing that I've seen is, you know, these role changes and who adapts to them, you know, the quickest. And, you know, I can remember, you know, when they'd taken the helmet out of the game and just the way it was, you know, officiated, you know, it was so hard to play safety in our game. There's a point that you're wondering if, you know, some of these guys were really going to be able to play.

25:28But the coaches and the players, they got it done, focused on the techniques and made it safer as far as taking the head out of the game in that particular area as far as crossing routes and those kind of collisions and so forth. So I think the adjustments of these role changes is now we're into a full generation of that. So it's definitely being coached and taught in high school and in college. And so I think our game as a whole is that you have more flow than where you could make an argument through the early 2000s, you know, really from 2000, 2000, you know, 15, 18, that, you know, there was so much change in the rules and, you know, and officiating.

26:11Those guys even had a tougher job. You know, what was a foul? What wasn't a foul? And, you know, those things affect, you know, can affect outcome of games. So I think that that's what I see has been a big part of it. But, you know, I think these D lines in today's game are as dominant as I've ever seen. If you don't have four number one picks on your defensive front, I mean, you're behind at times. And I think if you're looking for value, value distribution, how you build a roster, if you just want to look for a blueprint, four number one picks in that front is kind of the norm. And that's why as an offensive line, you probably ought to consider having three number one picks as far as the value distribution of how important it is to win up front.

26:54So I think that's something that really has always been there. But I think everything's heightened because people like yourself and the conversations and the detail of the conversations that I see now that being able to sit out and watch people talk about the game, the education and expertise is so much more available for our fans. And I think we've helped educate the fan base better. And, you know, in gambling probably has advanced that too some. You know, not that I gamble. Oh, no, if you did, though, if you did. Hey, hey, hey, hey.

27:28Pat McAfee:It would be bad. You hit on so many things there. The generational heads-up football shit, I do think that was huge help. I think that was huge because all the OG football players were in the middle of like, hey, I've been taught this one way my whole life, and now at the highest level against the fastest people I'm having to think. And I think that's what you're talking about with flow. Now everything's just natural. These guys have their heads up. They're going to the side. Now, some people will still say it's a little bit softer, but we're still getting huge hits now. And the hits aren't necessarily the crown.

27:54Pat McAfee:We're getting big-time shots from shoulder-hitting strike zone. It's like these kids have been doing this since high school. So, like, they have perfected. There's still dogs out there. They've just perfected where we're going with this thing and what they call. I think you're 100 % spot on that. And then you're talking about the four ones up at the front. Philadelphia Eagles, like, to your point. Like, that's what the Philadelphia Eagles had. They also had the trenches and the run game going. It feels like whenever things change, it all comes back to the same. Maybe we're playing the best version of this football right now than we had been for the last few years.

28:28Pat McAfee:It's a good time. The games are great. And even 44-year-olds can get back in there and spin that thing. Hey, huh? Phil Rivers, not bad. That was impressive. Okay. Were you at the game? It looked like a great atmosphere. I was doing everything I could for him. I was doing everything I could for Phil. I was trying to be as quiet as possible when he was making the checks. I guess watching the TV, everybody could hear everything he was saying. Are we doing that to every quarterback? Are we doing that to every quarterback? Are we having the mics all the way up at 10 whenever he's speaking? How come everybody at home knew Orlando was going to be the quick for Tyler Warren, pick six for D winners?

29:03Pat McAfee:And then he even talks to him afterwards. He goes, you heard me do that in the first half earlier. And D goes, yeah, I heard that. And then you did it again or whatever. He goes, that's all right. Good play. Good play. And he jogs off. And it's like, well, you know why I heard it? and sure maybe just his ears although i i'm not sure if you're able to hear anything after here now lucasville stadium one time but maybe it's because the tv had phil rivers on 10 and it was echoing through the goddamn sidelines maybe i mean he was everything he said we heard and obviously he's making checks but they had this clip uh come out yesterday on inside the nfl uh which is now available on x from nfl films and by the way that's right home for him it's a clip show they showcased Aaron Rodgers, okay?

29:40Pat McAfee:And he is talking to a guy that he's been putting over all year, Kenny Gainwell. Publicly, he's been putting him over. He's been saying, I can't believe we're only paying this guy this much. This guy's so good at football, which once again goes back to leadership, okay? Whenever you're publicly putting people over, they know that you're on their side. So then they want to show up for you in an even bigger way. Aaron knows that Kenny Gainwell is severely underpaid. This guy is severely underpaid, which could be a little bit of an issue, especially with how he's performing versus other people who are making a shit ton of money in the locker room.

30:13Pat McAfee:Aaron Rodgers being like, I like this guy. This is my guy. Going to bat for him publicly is a form of leadership that I don't think people are really talking about whenever you talk about rallying the troops and getting the best out of people, no matter what position they are. Then on the field against the Detroit Lions, have you seen a clip of him talking to Kenny Gainwell? No, I didn't see it. Boom, here it is. Oh, you're talking when he changed it and told him to go to a go? Yes. Yes. This side, this side. I'm going to run it flat to the right.

30:42Motion all the way out. We're going to go all the way out.

30:51Rodgers off his back foot. Throws it down the way. And look at Gainwell. And he scores. Thinks he has the touchdown. He catches it.

31:00Pat McAfee:He catches it. Excellent. Okay, so, Coach, that is a play that I think we don't really see much from quarterbacks anymore. Phil was doing some of it. Aaron obviously doing it. And Bruce Arians, who was in here yesterday, he's like, that's a quarterback. Like, that is what a quarterback is right there. What is your take on that play? And how normal or common was that back in the day versus maybe now, Coach? Oh, I think that's, you know, of all the quarterbacks that I've had the privilege to work with, his at the line of scrimmage command, and, you know, They all see it great at the line of scrimmage.

31:33I think just the way these young quarterbacks come into the league and the way they have available. But there's one thing of understanding it and seeing it, but to apply it in real time, I always felt Aaron had such a gift there. And if anything, the challenge was him playing so much faster than his other 10 teammates. But yeah, his ability to process at the line of scrimmage and get that done in real time, I always thought he was exceptional he played a different level in that area and that's a great example of it right there

32:06Pat McAfee:How much does that have? Because he's literally just drawing it up basically in the dirt there they're doing this, you definitely have a linebacker on you right now, instead of running a flat Kenny, let's go, and Kenny by the way is told to go to the flat still looking forward in his thing he's told to go to the flat, so Kenny said alright, I'm going to the flat, who knows what the actual play call was and then two seconds later motion all the way out and run a go Yep, you got it. I'm out of here. Just not even questioning. I think that showcases a lot of buy-in, too, that nobody really talks about in what these Steelers have going on, Coach.

32:37Yeah, and what I like about it, too, is really the second part of the play. That was the pre-snap, but look, you watch what he did in the post-snap. He's obviously looking off the safety. He's holding the safety on the backside ash, so he's clearly going there. Once he confirms he has the one-on-one there with the linebacker, so the ability to take the safety out of the play, too, is a big part of that, too. So not only to see the check, to recognize the man coverage, but to also, in real time, have the presence to hold off to safety, hold off to safety, and then to make the throw off his back foot.

33:15So, I mean, that's quarterback play, and that's a big part of his greatness.

33:20Pat McAfee:Yeah, certainly. And then also making a catch. Yeah. Getting up there and doing it. That's awesome. Now, granted, he deserves a lot of money, so he's on contract here. So those types of catches certainly help. But I think everybody around him is like, he's already earned whatever contract is coming. This guy is unbelievable. Speaking of unbelievable, 19 straight years of a non-losing season. Go ahead, Tone. Yeah, Coach. Mike Tomlin, 19 straight years of not losing, 22 straight for the Pittsburgh Steelers as a whole. He got his 200th win on Sunday. Can you just talk as a head coach how hard this is and how impressive this run is.

33:57And I think you're pretty close to 202 yourself, aren't you? 185. I looked it up. 185.

34:04Pat McAfee:Hey, that's a lot of wins. Hey, that's a lot of wins. Okay, coach. That's a lot of wins. Hey, Shane, you know what I'm doing? That's incredible. Good for you. I mean, 200 wins. Actually, I'm so happy to see Mike get the recognition and love that he deserves. We talked about Mike a few weeks back here on the show. and this is to me is the reality of who he is as a coach. I mean, to do that for 19 seasons is incredible. I mean, you want that in your leader. You want that in your leadership of how you train the team and to do that 19 years in a row, it's incredible. He's a Hall of Famer in my view and I'm just really happy for him to see him recognized properly and this is what he deserves.

34:49Pat McAfee:All right, so who are all you olds that have been head coaching around for a while? Andy, McCarthy, Sean Payton will count. Sean Payton will count, I believe. Mike Tomlin. Who else? John Harbaugh. John Harbaugh, I guess. And I guess Pete Carroll. Pete Carroll, yeah. Which? Hey. The run. Jim Harbaugh? Yeah. Jim Harbaugh. Yeah, I guess two. Yeah, I mean, he was with the Niners, though. But it's like, it's obviously, if you're ass, you're not getting that, you know. So it's like, you don't survive that long for being an ass at your job at anything in the NFL. True meritocracy, you know, that will actually catch up with you if it's not going how it's supposed to go or how they're expecting or how they are hoping it would go.

35:37Pat McAfee:But Coach Tomlin, always winning. Tell me what that, because, you know, you know, Jensers, shit, you know, Jensers. So whenever you talk to them, they're like, winning season, cool. Yeah, this is fun. All right, this is fun. We'd like to win a Super Bowl. Feels like after watching this team beat the Lions the way they did, the Steelers fans are starting to be like, wait a minute, maybe this team can win a Super Bowl. It was just a few weeks ago when they were saying, we're done. This team is cooked. They can't win a Super Bowl. Yeah, we'll win games, but there's no way when it matters they'll win.

36:06Pat McAfee:Now they get a win over the Lions. They play the way they do. It's a tough win, obviously, crazy ending there. But they think to themselves, actually, our team can win a Super Bowl. What are your thoughts on the Pittsburgh Steelers? and what are your thoughts on what they would need to do to win a Super Bowl and can they do it? Yeah, well, I think I can. I mean, you know, Sunday I called home, you know, right during the game there, you know, the Pittsburgh-Detroit game. It kind of reminded me of old times. You know, my mom was cooking. Everybody was there at the house watching the game, and everybody was there.

36:37Everybody was so excited. Now, just like you've said, and, you know, they're talking about winning Super Bowls again back here, and that's an exciting time. It just reminded me of when I was a kid back in the 70s. So that's what I'm rooting for. I think Green Bay still has enough to make a run here. Let's get healthy and get this playoff berth here this week. But, yeah, it's exciting times in Pittsburgh, and that's the way it should be. And it's great to see the fans just stay behind this team. But I know just talking to family and friends this past weekend, everybody's fired up, and it was cool to see that.

37:11Pat McAfee:I love the nostalgia, good vibes, because Pittsburgh is obviously a place where when the Steelers are winning, the town is much happier than whenever the Steelers are losing. And we actually asked everybody that's going to be on the show today in front of a microphone what their Christmas wish would be in football. What would their ball Christmas wish be? What was yours, Coach McCarthy? Well, I'm sorry. I jumped ahead. No. No. Perfect timing. I'm wishing for a Pittsburgh Super Bowl. I think it'd be great to get back to see the black and gold. And really just when I was asked the question, I was thinking about my conversation with my mother and my siblings this past Sunday.

37:52So kind of had that vibe. You know, it had that 70s vibe to it. And I think it'd be awesome to see these guys going to run here.

37:58Pat McAfee:Could you imagine Aaron Rodgers going into Pittsburgh after he was just booted out with Achilles and a half out of New York, goes into the darkness booted out of Green Bay and then he goes to Pittsburgh a town that and their team that was basically like hey figure it out here they go all in shout to the con artist if they were able to do this spending 30 million on a wide receiver that's never been in Pittsburgh before okay now granted he's going to miss a couple games and that whole contract thing is certainly up a conversation and there's an investigation going on and that whole thing but nonetheless they make a lot of plays that they don't normally do like that is not what the Pittsburgh Steelers normally do go outside the building johnny smith jalen ramsey darius you start naming off all these things the amount of money they have invested on defensive side of the roster it's like everything that they've done this past year has been a little bit out of the normal because the normal for the pittsburgh steelers is we're sustained greatness we don't need to do all the weird desperate moves that everybody else does to try to make their team good we don't fire our coaches we don't spend crazy we build from within this is what we are this is that that is what Steelers have always been is like we are who we are so this past offseason basically making a declaration of doing something vastly different I know it's a different GM as opposed to uh Kevin Colbert Kevin Colbert good guy could have drafted me didn't so okay sick uh but he was good guy to me he was good guy to me Con obviously doing things very differently right now but they also made a statement like hey we don't know how long this group has as Pittsburgh Steelers and a big part of like you listen to Joey Porter whenever he got announced he was going to the Steelers Hall he was like we felt like we did our job because we brought a trophy into that building like that was kind of how they view it like Steelers alumni still hang out and what they're proud of is like the decoration which is the Lombardi that they added into the facility into the stadium so it's like I feel like this group that Steelers have all kind of acknowledged like hey we need to we need to do something different and I appreciate that they did it if it pays off The answers are going to be pumped.

40:01Pat McAfee:And then next year, what are we doing now? Okay, we don't got a quarterback. I mean, it's just immediately into that. Eight's coming back next year. What's that? Eight's coming back. Not if you win the Super Bowl, he's not. Eight for eight. Seven. This one was for seven. This one was for seven. This one's for seven. He's going to say, this one's for seven, you know, Ben. And then he's going to go next year eight for eight. Oh. Eight for eight actually doesn't work. Oh, my God. You're right. That's his wish list. That's his Big Mike's football Christmas wish. I love to hear that about talking to your family back in Pittsburgh and kind of feeling alive.

40:35Pat McAfee:It's special. All right, let's talk about some other stuff. Go ahead, Ty. Yeah, Coach, the Pro Bowl rosters were announced yesterday, and I think the Pro Bowl has kind of just turned into a shit show that nobody cares about. But for you, I believe you had five of your former players got selected yesterday. What is your just opinion on the Pro Bowl as a whole? And also, is there a chance that maybe you're heading down to Disney World in Orlando to be head coach of the Pro Bowl games. No, I don't plan on going to Disney World anytime soon. It's a huge honor. That would be a huge, huge honor to coach the Pro Bowl.

41:11Pat McAfee:Could get 186. Maybe win 186. Nonetheless, sorry, we apologize. I don't think that counts. I love the Pro Bowl. Great memories as a family coaching the Pro Bowl. I can remember my daughter Gabby always wanting to go to the Pro Bowl and say, no, honey, we want to go to the Super Bowl. We've been to too many Pro Bowls. So I was very fortunate to coach it a number of times. But it is, it's a great honor. I always enjoyed the moments of when you acknowledge the players in the team meetings and when you announce it. But you also have the disappointment where just this voting process It sometimes seems where a young player gets voted in maybe the next year instead of the year that he actually has that great season.

42:00So, yeah, the voting process, I mean, you could pick that apart if you like, but it's a big deal. And because just like anything, when you do have acknowledgement from your peers, you know, when the coaches and the players do vote on it, I think that means the most. I always felt respect is what we all want in this game. And to be respected by your peers, it definitely carries a lot of weight. But, no, it's the game itself and what's happened to it. Frankly, I think it's a shame. I thought the Hawaii setup was outstanding. But, you know, with player safety and everything that goes on, the risk is, you know, I do understand that and what they've done with it.

42:40So I think the league has done a really good job trying to keep it intact. and just only watching it on TV, it looks like the guys do have fun with it. But the reward was always the families. To see the players and their families and the time around the pool and just the activities. My two sons still talk about it all the time. Some of the best times that they had was back at the Pro Bowl. So it is a big deal.

43:07Pat McAfee:Congrats to all the guys who made it. It is a big deal. like Coach Mike McCarthy is talking about, in the team meeting room when you find out that you made it, guys care. Like, that is a moment where guys care. At the Pro Bowl, it does appear as if it's not that big of a deal to some guys while it's happening. I do think the flag football trying to make it something is certainly an effort. But with all the studies and research and money that is currently available, I think Miles Garrett got hurt during the Super Dipper. He did. Broke his toe during the relay race. Off school course. It's like, yeah, that's just going to be now what everybody says I'm not doing that for.

43:42Pat McAfee:Okay? Now I have a real reason not to do it. So I don't know how you save it unless you make it some contests. I think they should make return to what they did in Hawaii. The quarterback contest was awesome. Now we're not expecting Peyton Manning against Brett Favre. I think I saw Warren Moon in one. Garcia. And Steve Garcia. And, like, I think Sims was in it. Rich. Marino. Dan Marino. We watched those old quarterback contests from the Pro Bowl, and it was like, holy shit, in the content world that we're in right now, this, if you were to put up a prize with a donation on the side of it, this would do massive numbers.

44:17Pat McAfee:This would do huge numbers. But then, yeah, to what Tone just alluded to, it would be asking people to go through an entire, because nowadays with how long warm-ups are and how many throws and what your arm can handle, It's like we know too much to have what we used to have in the Pro Bowl. I think we know too much. We have too many terrible catastrophes that happen that can happen any time a sporting event takes place for anybody to really buy in. But just like the dunk contest, if you put a big enough prize up and you find the right group of competitors, you can make something good. It's like I hope we get creative in saving it because the celebration of the elite in the NFL is certainly something that we should save.

44:59Pat McAfee:And it's held against people or for people whenever there's Hall of Fame conversations later. So it carries a lot of weight. So, you know, but you talk about that Hawaii Pro Bowl, what it used to be. I mean, there's legendary clips that come out of that. That's why as a lifelong NFL fan, okay, I remember Cordell Stewart competing in this thing. As a lifelong NFL fan, and I got into the NFL, I'm like, I can't wait to make the Pro Bowl in Hawaii. Then I start hearing stories. Turns out, and I think it's already been said publicly, Peyton Manning was like the mayor of this thing. okay he had this thing set up and i've been to some stuff yes he was okay so he was i've been to some stuff that peyton manning has set up he every attention to detail this guy he sets up amazing things so i've heard the pro bowl around the pool it's all set up that we got this that we got this guys meeting with each other talking with each other families meeting each other setting up like i think there's multiple charities that have been put together businesses that have been like i've heard the pro bowl back in the day let alone the party the amount of booze and that's taking place by everybody celebrating life and ball it's like i heard these magical stories when I got in the league.

45:58Pat McAfee:They're like, oh yeah, Peyton kind of puts it all together. I'm like, yes, I need to make the show. I can't wait to do this entire thing. So I finally make it. They move to fucking Arizona. I like Arizona. I like Arizona. I love Arizona. We didn't even have the whole hotel. Hotel was split with some other convention. Big conference that weekend. So guys couldn't even drink in the lobby. I mean, it was like the worst. I'm like, whoa. I missed it by a year. I think I missed it by a year. But it's like, I think there is a way to save it, and it all revolves around I think back in Hawaii where it becomes like a celebration of the greats kind of getting together and the amount of content behind the scenes shit we could get could make that a profitable thing but I think it's gonna be hard to bring it back to life coach but it matters it does matter I think you know it was incredible I mean the Coalena Resort out there it was fabulous you know my first year in the league was 1993 and the hotel just opened up and I can remember going downstairs and having toast and coffee, and it was$18.

46:55And just watch that whole area grow out there. And then to go back there as a head coach in 07. And you said it. I mean, Peyton was the mayor of that whole operation. He actually would give an address to the whole, both teams of the AFC and NFC. And with his sense of humor, I mean, it was awesome. I mean, he did such a great job of letting everybody know kind of the rules around the pole. I can remember him talking about autographs, a situation where I think it was Jerome Bettis or somebody came up to him, and it was his uncle. Then he had to throw Jerome and his uncle into the pole. He had these funny stories to go with it.

47:38He did a great job of setting the tone the first night that we were in there, whether it was Sunday night or Monday night, when it started. Definitely as a coach, you'll always appreciate it. The game was really secondary. You know, the post-game party, I think people look forward to that more than the game. But it was the interaction between players and coaches and the families. You know, like I said, great, great memories. And, you know, I think that part's missed. Now, I've never done the Pro Bowl and Disney. But I would think, you know, they do have that component in place down there. Because, I mean, who doesn't love going to Disney World?

48:16Well, you just turned it down. We asked you to coach and you said, hell no. I got plans, man. I got business. I got things to do.

48:24Pat McAfee:I got this dog wants to go hunt. Yeah. He missed the window there. Does? Yeah, I got some. Well, I didn't miss the window, but, I mean, I'm not going to be able to take them. You know, calendar's starting to fill up here a little bit, Pat. We got a big family trip coming up here for Christmas. So, you know, we got plans. What says the first Christmas and how long? Ooh, 19. 19, I was, you know, 2019. but before that would have been 1987 or 1988. Jesus Christ. This guy has lived in a football building. You see this, man? Yeah. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Yeah, Merry Christmas. Well, enjoy it all.

49:08Pat McAfee:We would like that. We appreciate you joining us. Now, there are people, obviously, that are still in the game at the head coaching role that have big decisions to make here going into these last couple weeks. Gar, last week, go ahead. Yeah, Coach, how do you handle teams that have clinched? You know, like looking at the Steelers as we've talked about them, if the Packers beat the Ravens on Saturday night, the Steelers are in. You know, they don't even have to play week 17, week 18. So how do you handle that with these 10 teams here that have already clinched going into the last two weeks? No seeds have been clinched, so there is still some movement to be made.

49:42And then how do you handle the other side of it, you know, with the teams that are completely done? You know, we got the number one overall pick bowl this weekend between the Raiders and the Giants. Raiders are already snipping, guys. They put Brock Bowers on the IR, basically saying like, hey, last thing we need is for you to get her. We'd rather have that number one overall pick for Mendoza. How do you kind of handle that as a coach? And how do you kind of have to respond to what the front office tells you what they want to see as well? Great question. I think just through experience, I've done it both ways as far as playing guys and not playing guys.

50:17I think, number one, it's the health of the individual. And I think you've got to go through your roster on an individual basis. Because for the teams, using Pittsburgh, you would hate to see someone get injured in the final game that does not mean anything to the playoff run. But healthy players, in my experience, want to play. So I think, you know, you go through it individually and see, you know, where they are, you know, like Aaron, what is what his wrist. I mean, I'm sure that's something that will be talked about if they are in that situation. So I think the preventative, you know, mindset is part of that.

50:58And it really comes down to those individuals. You know, I've sat people in the past, you know, and then if you don't win that divisional round, then you think, oh, shoot. We should have never sat those guys. We were 15-1 in 2011, and we sat guys there in the bye week. And I think mentally that was not a great decision because the last game of the season was against the Lions, and both offenses threw for over 500 yards. So, I mean, it wasn't what you wanted to do, put your defense in that situation in the last game of the season and then go into a bye week and then go into a divisional round. So, I mean, I've seen it on both sides of it, but I would say it'll come down to the individual, where he is, how healthy he is, will he benefit.

51:45I'm talking more the veterans because, you know, I think a veteran, you get above five, six years a veteran. And, you know, and also part of it is how do you train your team? You know, I think when you get into these end of the year practices, you know, definitely shorter, you know, you got to cut the reps back and you got to be smart. but you do need the intensity, particularly in the drills that require timing and when the ball's being distributed and so forth. So you've got to keep that intensity and you've got to keep your practice environment to the level where if you do give a guy a playoff that week off, he is still in the regimen of getting ready to play a game.

52:23So I think you look at all those things and just been fortunate to do it over a long time. Those are the kind of conversations I think definitely will be going on next week if those teams are in that situation. Obviously. Okay, go ahead.

52:36Pat McAfee:No, I was going to say it's a good situation to be in, obviously. It's a great situation. Oh, it's a great situation. Yeah, it's a great situation to be in. And I don't think there's a wrong decision. You know, I don't think there's a wrong decision. Because, you know, you have all the facts. You know what's going on with every player on your team. And also, who's going to play? And, you know, you've got a young guy that, you know, he may be, you're projecting he's going to start playing maybe 25 % to 30 % reps in the playoffs as opposed to being the guy that's right there at 49-52. There's a lot of things to talk about, a lot of things to consider, how you anticipate that roster is going to look when you line up in that wild card game.

53:16That's how we've always approached it in the past. I think the teams that are out, the question I would ask is, particularly a quarterback or someone you're early in your career, early in your program, you know, your first year, second year, third year, you know, like a Jalen Daniels, you know, it's important for Jalen to be healthy going into the off season, you know, because these, these players, particularly the quarterbacks, there's so much more that they have to do away from the facility because of the limitations of these off season programs. Now I know I sound like an old coach bitching about it, but you don't have the time at the facility that you used to have.

53:56So these quarterbacks, and I look with, you know, my last experience with Dak Prescott, the amount of time that he spends with his perimeter teammates and away from the facility is, is remarkable. And, and that's, you know, that is now part of your off season program and you have to approach that. So, I mean, you know, if I'd want my quarterback healthy coming out of that, you know, regular season, especially if these games are, are not, you know, to, to, you know, you're not fighting for the playoffs, but you know, also you got, don't cheat the game. Like I understand that. The fans are paying for it and so forth and so forth.

54:30But if you're early in your development of your football program, boy, I'll tell you what, I'd want my quarterback healthy for that offseason program. Selfishly, isn't it?

54:39Pat McAfee:Yeah, and you talked about four ones on the D-line as well. You know, you've been saying a lot of things, but nonetheless, they're going to get people excited in New Jersey, New York. We have been thankful to follow along this football season with you every single week. and the gift that you sent to us, one of the kindest things we've ever received here, honestly. I want you to know that. Chef Foxy was chopping it up this morning. We had a nice charcuterie board. That Wagyu steak you guys sent. Oh, my God. Oh, so good, so good. The apple pie. Oh, the apple pie. So all of it was great, Coach. We appreciate you for that.

55:15What else should you get? Because we got to thank Jessica, because I love to tell you, Pam picked all that for you, but Santa Claus's workshop has nothing on her. You're on her Christmas list. She said she was going to take care of you and I'm sure she did.

55:30Pat McAfee:I'm appreciative of you just being that open about it. There was not Wagyu steak in there. We're just going to start rattling off things for you to go. Yeah, I love that apple pie. I thought we were going to maybe... Instead, what you've been all year is just your true authentic self. You've been amazing to us. We're so incredibly grateful. have a great Christmas Merry Christmas Eve to you Jessica and your entire family have a good one for the first time since second time since 1987 alright thank you Pat thank you man Merry Christmas Happy Holidays I've had a blast this has been awesome alright we'll never see you again

56:09Pat McAfee:we love you man we love you he's a good guy and Jessica his wife the box she knocked it out of the park beautiful a lot of boxes huge boxes right across the top, perishable. So much pressure. So much pressure to open this right now. Also, we got a lot of boxes here. I'm kind of nervous to open because who knows what's inside. There could be some story about somebody going through something. This might change my entire life. I get a real anxiety with these boxes and what's inside. So anytime I see perishable, it's like, they're kind of forcing me to open this right now. All right, I guess we got to do it.

56:43Pat McAfee:That meat. Oh my God. That cheeses. How about Foxy's display? I don't know what that's called. Artistry, I guess. Unbelievable, Fox. It would have went to waste if we didn't cut it up today, so I had to get it out there. That's why they put perishable on top. And speaking of perishable, this hour's ending right now. We'll see you on the other side. Be a friend, tell a friend something nice.

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58:47Thank you.

59:40¶¶ Thank you.

59:48Wow.

59:49Pat McAfee:Oh my gosh. Power key begins, right? Unbelievable. Now. Hey. What? Let's go. This show stinks. And the fact that you listen, we are very, very thankful for. McAfee on the line with a gorgeous assist. The all-time leading tackler for the Green Bay Packers. You pick. Stunner. Stunner. Damn it. You're a friend. Tell a friend something nice. could change their life. We want now! We want now! We want now! FOOT! FOOT! FOOT! Hello beautiful people. As Sam exits stage level, that man can play a fiddle, can't he? Yeah. On his glorious Christmas Eve, our tour begins. Alright, now... FOOTBALL! I'll tell you what.

1:00:39Pat McAfee:Ding, frizer, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, What a wonderful rendition right there. Unbelievable. That's Christmas. I mean, did that not get you fired up about Jesus Christ's birthday tomorrow? Sure did. Fat man coming down the chimney? Mm-hmm. Kids everywhere celebrating and families coming together to celebrate life and ball, and not just basketball as it has been basically for the last 30 years. Also, a football slate on Netflix and Prime that sports are going to unify and make this holiday the greatest holiday it's ever been. And I'll tell you what, there's nothing better than Sam.

1:01:09No, there's not. No, there's not.

1:01:11Pat McAfee:On the damn fiddle with the Carol of the Bells. He nailed that thing. Sam or Santa? Send it, he said. Yeah. No flubs. How about him at the end? Any part of that can... Oh, yeah. A little bit softer now. I'll tell you what. He did kind of a little bit softer now at the end of that. You know, every once in a while, you go to a Howl at the Moon, and some fiddler will get up there and play the devil down in Georgia. And it's actually, in my drunken state, a couple of different times, have purchased violins or fiddles to be delivered to my house because of how cool it looks whenever you're really getting after it.

1:01:44Pat McAfee:I think it's a pretty hard thing to do, though. Without a doubt. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a spot. I've tried a couple times. I haven't really been able to get there. No, no. Because, boy, it would be good to be Johnny and send a devil packing down there. But it turns out it's pretty difficult. So shout out to Sam for that. And shout out to Christmas for happening. Talks at tables here at Boston Corner and at Ty Schmidt. Whenever the hammer, done. Cowboys AP Town is here. And joining us live from Anattic in Ohio, ladies and gentlemen, is a college football national champion, Super Bowl champion, Ryder Cup winner, A.J.

1:02:11Pat McAfee:Ha. A.J. Ha. Hawker, did you – Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, Hawker. Thank you. Merry Christmas, absolutely. Who's on your shirt? Can't see because you're on my – I believe it's Cork Griswold, yeah. Is that your favorite? Nice. Christmas Vacations, your favorite series or movie as a whole? Christmas. Yeah, I'd say a Christmas movie, no question. Christmas Vacation. That's the king. Okay, shitters full. Grinch, you like Jim Carrey one? Jim Carrey. Jim Carrey, absolutely. What's the one I've been watching with Mackenzie? Benedict Cumberbatch. Yeah, Benedict Cumberbatch. I don't think I've seen that one.

1:02:43It's good.

1:02:44Pat McAfee:If you haven't seen it with your kids, I don't know if you'll get into it. Your kids might be past the age of it. But, like, Kenzie, two and a half years old, three years old. I mean, it's right in her wheelhouse because of the incredible animation and the songs, bangers. And, you know, obviously the animation is just at such a level where it's like 8K. I mean, it is. It's better. Yeah, it's a good movie. I like the Jim Carrey version still. we watched that as well. She understands that this is also the Grinch. Two different Grinches here. How about the Santa Claus with Tim Allen? That's a yearly tradition for my household as well.

1:03:18Was there three of those? They didn't get better as they went but they still are alright. They existed for a while.

1:03:24Pat McAfee:Story's still good. The Santa Claus story's still good. Speaking of story, Christmas story. Miracle on 34th. Or 32nd, whatever it is. Miracle on 32nd. I don't think I've seen that one. It's a wonderful life. Classic. Wonderful life? Yeah, it's a wonderful life. That train movie sucks. I love Polar Express! You son of a bitch! So that one was the one with the bear? Is there a bear in that one? Tom Hanks. Polar Express, Tom Hanks animated thing, right? Bear, I don't think so. It's Tom Hanks and he plays like six different characters. He's a freaking nut job. I don't think I've seen that one. You brought up Elf.

1:04:02Pat McAfee:People get real emotional about Elf. I think people really love Elf. I really like Elf. That's kind of my generation. That makes sense. It's a real new school dude kind of thing. It's an all-time class. But it is. That new school, though, does love Elf. They love Elf. You'll get into Christmas movie discussion with that particular generation, and there's real emotion behind Elf. And I don't think I knew the first time the smoke that I was walking into, potentially, because I had not seen Elf. I think my generation, a little bit older than yours, I missed it. I apologize for that. So I am Will Ferrell fan.

1:04:33Pat McAfee:Let's not get it twisted. That one movie may be worse than the history, but all the other ones are bangers. So I think that should be certainly talked about. Semi-pro brother got me through a lot of times. No doubt. What bad one? What's the bad one? That one where there are detectives. Yeah, like the last five. Oh, is it like he's trying to be serious, like dramatic, or what? No, they were trying to be funny. Very slapsticky. It was tough. Home Alone? He may have come back afterwards, though, but I didn't say Elf as mine. Home Alone, exactly. That's my goat. One and two. That's the goat. Home Alone, Santa Claus, Grinch.

1:05:06Pat McAfee:I'll toss in a Christmas story. Turbo Man. You sure? Jingle All the Way. Four Christmases is great. That one's not bad, but I was rattling all these. I didn't say Elf, and somebody got actually very mad at me for skipping over it. I watch it. It is a good movie. I think that's a very good Christmas movie. It came out when Will Ferrell was on that generational run with all those movies that came out that you guys mentioned, so it just hits It's harder. And anything that lasts every single Christmas, it still plays on TV. That's a good movie. Okay, let's do something that we forced Coach McCarthy to do in the first hour because he brought up the Pittsburgh Steelers.

1:05:42Pat McAfee:We asked him via text, just like we did to you, hey, what's your football Christmas wish if you could have one this year? He said, I want to steal his one at the Super Bowl so my family can have fun again. I feel like it was the 70s. Yeah. I mean, what a cool thing for him to have. Hopefully that'll happen. And Conman, what was your football or football's Christmas wish? Yeah, my Christmas football wish this year was kind of concocted this offseason by someone, and I thought it was genius. Maybe it's every offseason, but whatever. I want for Christmas every single year the offseason acquisitions, whether it be free agents or trades, to not be announced until week one as teams are running out, i.e.

1:06:23Pittsburgh Steelers. Who's going to be their quarterback? The season ends last year. No one knows. Week one, 10 guys run out. Who's going to be the 11th guy? Who's going to be the quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers? Boom.

1:06:44Pat McAfee:Aaron Lundin! Holy Jinger's beers. Oh, my God. The celebration that the Pittsburgh Steelers. Because let alone DK Metcalf comes running out. Yes. We got DK. How much we paying him? That would be the first question. Oh, the quarterback's got to be some low salary ass. Better not still be Russ. Yeah, Jameis. Yes, somebody. And then all of a sudden, head down. I think hoodie up. I think we got a Stevenson Ranch hoodie on. No helmet. No helmet on. It's over top. And we walk out. And then all of a sudden, like AJ Styles. Yes. Double hits. And then run out. Oh, my God. Name comes up. Fireworks are going.

1:07:27Pat McAfee:And we'd like to showcase how selfless we are. Because, boy, our jobs would suck if we didn't know where any free agents were going. Hurts us. Hurts us personally. Yeah, but could you imagine? See, think about Sunday night football. Think about the first weekend Sunday night football. Now, granted. It'd be elimination. Yeah, of course, there would be elimination. But also, you might not know. Like, who knows? Maybe this guy got hurt in the offseason. You're not sure. Boom. 2026. who's running out of the tunnel for the, I don't know, let's just say Indianapolis Colts who are on Sunday Night Football.

1:08:00Hmm. Lamar Jackson. Oh my God. How did this happen? You know, granted, you know. Can you imagine the reaction to Dan Jones running out though? For the Colts? Yeah. Oh. Might get a negative reaction for some of those guys. Yeah, but that might be even cooler. I went on crazy though. I went on absolutely crazy. And then after the first drive, they walk down the field, everyone's like, oh, of course Danny Dimes is our quarterback. But hold on, first drive, Danny Dimes runs freaking wild, brother. Which he did. Yeah, maybe throws a 30-yard touchdown.

1:08:29Pat McAfee:Never punted. Yeah, we didn't punt for six weeks. That rollercoaster. The whole, the only issue is if you're an away team, which half the leagues would be, you would be jogging out to, I guess, some away team heat, and it would just have to be there. Or maybe all the starters have to wait until the home game two days. Or that's the cool pregame, you know, hey, why are we watching pregame shows on week one? That's why. The away team reveals their. On the pregame show, they still jog out of the tunnel. Empty tunnel. Empty tunnel. Pre-pre-workout. Exactly. Just coming on, light show, the whole thing.

1:08:58Pat McAfee:I'm a Pittsburgh Steeler now. That whole thing. Yeah. Not a bad idea. Okay, Ty, what was your football Christmas wish? My football Christmas wish is pretty simple, pretty attainable, too. I think it's something that could actually be done probably fairly easily. I simply want Micah Parsons to get a new knee for the stretch run here, preferably his own. So I don't know if there's a way if they could, you know. Is that you? Who is that? I'm up to the task. If I need to. He's got cleats on. Good scrub. Well, yeah. I mean, what are you talking about? I'm performing knee surgery on the field to make sure that this guy's ready to go for the playoffs.

1:09:30So, you know, because Coach Mike said it. Hey, I think the Packers have enough to, you know, still make a run. Boy, I'll tell you what. If I could just somehow get this guy a new knee before, what, 8 o 'clock on Saturday, I'd be feeling much better going into the playoffs. And I think it can be done.

1:09:49Pat McAfee:I would like it to be known that the biggest response in pop that I got from hearing the boys' responses whenever I pitched idea of football Christmas wish, Ty's response within the words, leaving my mouth, they just got out of my lips. Ty goes, I want a new knee for Micah. Is that what we're talking about? I'm like, yes, that's exactly what we're talking about. So this is something he has thought about before being asked today. So I appreciate the fact, Ty, that you have spent time away from show and away from Packers games where you have envisioned yourself finding or robbing a good knee and then putting that thing on Micah so we can maybe have a top five defense and go on a Super Bowl run.

1:10:31Yeah, exactly. And that's where it gets a little fishy because I can't give it my knee. Because your knee is not good enough.

1:10:36Pat McAfee:No, exactly. You're not going to be able to bend. Exactly, exactly. So that might be the only snag. Where are we going to find this knee? Can we just use his knee and maybe put it through a meat grinder and fix it a little bit? So that's the only place where I'm kind of getting hung up. But no, I mean, like 3-D printing. Whose knee are you trying to – it seems like you've got an idea over there. I mean, look, there's a guy who wanted to play for the Packers for$5 million he told us last week. I don't remember him ever having a knee problem. I didn't even think about that. Or if a team's been eliminated from the playoffs, you're allowed to take their best player's knee and give it to Mike.

1:11:08Pat McAfee:Oh, like an organ donor, a joint donor. Boom, Brian Burns. your knees coming to Green Bay. Sorry, pal. So you're taking Brian Burns' knee and putting it on Mike? He'll get it back after the playoff. Yeah, give it back. What if they win a Super Bowl? Does he get a Super Bowl? No, that's Mike's knee. No, it's Brian Burns' knee. Not one. Burns has to get a Super Bowl ring. You know what? That's part of it. If he wants a Super Bowl ring, we can get him a Super Bowl ring. Because it's his knee, he gets a pinky toe ring. He gets Mike's knee back. He's just going to rehab now. Sorry, you don't get a Super Bowl ring.

1:11:42But now, go rehab this ACL, dude. For Mike, let's try and win you a Super Bowl.

1:11:46Pat McAfee:Try and win you guys a Super Bowl right now. All right, interesting. I don't know if we're at the technological state of that. I think we're closed. But I'm excited to see what it is. AP Tone, if you had one football Christmas wish, what would it be? Yeah, so last year in the first year of the college football playoff, we were at Notre Dame on Friday night and then Ohio State on Saturday. And then this past weekend, we were at Oklahoma and then Texas A &M. And those home atmospheres are so incredible. I believe, just like a lot of other great prestigious coaches in the college football, believe that it should be home playoff games until the championship.

1:12:18And the coolest thing that we have kind of seen in all of these, that I think personally is all these entrances, all the home atmospheres. This was the light show at Oklahoma. But Oklahoma, while this was going on, also ran, they have the coolest voiceover videos with highlight packages that just, and the crowd goes nuts. Everything about these home college football playoff games are unbelievable. and we need more of them.

1:12:40Pat McAfee:Yeah, I think so too. Especially because other team goes in there, massive comeback and wins. People are saying like, does it even matter? It's like, yeah, did you watch that? It was fucking electrifying. I mean, it is, that is what college football has that no other sport in, maybe on earth. Yeah. Because of how big it is, how many people it is. Now I know the soccer teams obviously are very passionate and all in, just like these colleges. They feel as it's a sense of us, our town fighting us versus everybody. so it has that same passion as the soccer hooligans over there. Stadiums are so much bigger.

1:13:13Pat McAfee:110 ,000 of them kind of packed in. That's a lot of humans all in one particular place, all sawing in the same exact direction, literally and figuratively here, for the Texas A &M team. We should want to showcase that more. And if you're a CFP for the good of ball, we should want to showcase that. Psycho right there. Love that he's so locked in in that moment. But he even talked to his team about how, hey, this is Autzen, which is a legendary college football place with a legendary fan base. This is the first ever college football playoff game. Let's do that. There should be more of that, AJ. We should be celebrating the home fields, which are a massive part of the entire story of college football, more as opposed to less, AJ.

1:13:52Absolutely. Dan Lainey basically said this, didn't he? Like, we should – like, these should be home games until the finals. You should be rewarded for being a top seed. I agree. Like, there is – there's nothing else on the planet like it. When you get – we were just in College Station, obviously. like the atmosphere surrounding a huge college football game. I've never been into anything like that in any other sport.

1:14:11Pat McAfee:That was 11 a.m. local. Remember, they were all in that stadium at midnight the night before, just 10 hours before that. Still showed up for game day, still showed up for the tailgate. Obviously socked every inch and second of everything that happened in there. Those fans were awesome, man. Those fans are fully. I mean, they are all in. And they're not the only ones. Obviously, there's a lot of places like that. Need it more. I appreciate that being your Christmas wish, Tone, for the good of ball. I agree. It'll be awesome. And also, I see what you did, Nick. You know it's an S. You know it's not a Z.

1:14:42You know I was forced to use a Z because of social media. Okay? I don't like what you did. I just want to point that out.

1:14:47Pat McAfee:Nick does the lower thirds, what Tone is talking about there. Oh. Even adding the S to the Z, I don't even think you have to do that. Giggs's? Yeah, so I think Nick was actually spotlighting that an S could be here. You know, just let me go ahead and add that on there. Massive respect out of Nick back there. He's done a couple things, hasn't he? He added a half a point to Bruce's thing yesterday just because he liked it and didn't really appreciate the way AQ was operating. So, you know, when you have access to that down there, that's a lot of power, it turns out, especially if you want to promote somebody's social media handles.

1:15:18Pat McAfee:Thank you for doing that, Nick. Merry Christmas to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as far as the BA thing goes, you know, I didn't want to abuse it. I just wanted to, you know, you talked about maybe rewarding him for using it first. And I thought it was a clever move to beat AQ to the punch, and strategy paid off. Yeah, good for him. I mean, now he's winning by half a point. Yeah, the Christmas champion. Big one. Big Christmas champion. And then AQ with the games. Forget it. Let's continue to kind of move along here. AJ, what's your Christmas ball wish, brother? Mine was a little bit more as far as rule changes and as far as physicality.

1:15:49I felt like defenders, I get worried that when they are trying to, what do they call it, unweight themselves as they are hitting a quarterback, I think they're going to get hurt. So I think we need to be able to land on the quarterbacks a little bit more. We need to have a little leeway there. and I think horse collar tacklers should come back when a running back or receiver is running east to west, not north to south. I think those are dangerous. The guy's trying to get outside. I'm chasing him towards the sideline. I should be able to yank the back of his shoulder pads and tear him down.

1:16:15Pat McAfee:Okay, this is his football Christmas wish. I love that. I want to be able to land on his quarterbacks. I'm sick of these guys almost hurting their wrists. They can land on me. Say I'm a defender and they're coming to block me. They're going to try to put all of their weight on top of me. Offensive linemen are doing that to everybody. I mean, they're doing that at the end of the game. So we got to whiplash ourselves because we had a successful play? I got to dislocate my elbow because I'm trying to unweight myself, whatever that means. Okay, that's a lot of pressure. Now, if you listen to Coach McCarthy, he goes, yeah, he's an old school guy.

1:16:44Pat McAfee:New school, these guys have come up in this. They kind of have good ways to kind of take the – Oh, no, you can still – no, if you're a high school player, you are landing full go on top of that quarterback. They didn't change that. Oh, with your Christmas wish? Are you saying that it's still – No, I think in life right now, I don't think – especially like high school refs, think about it. There's no instant replay. Those guys got to be spot on. That's Ohio. I saw him knock on a touchdown, a high school game. That was an NFL criminal win. Situational horse collar tackles. I don't know if I've heard anybody wishing for this.

1:17:10Pat McAfee:I'm happy you called. I don't like that. It's a football Santa. You get it. East to west. Say you're a D-end. They're running like a jet sweep or something. Old buddy's trying to get outside. I'm chasing him from behind. He has not turned up the field yet because I think those are dangerous. If a guy's going full speed like down the sideline, you get him. If he's running towards the sideline, has not turned up. If I can get my hand on him, I should be free to get him down wherever I can. Okay, now on that note, we'd be asking a lot of the refs to decide what is east-west and what is northeast maybe, you know, or northwest.

1:17:39Pat McAfee:That would be certainly a decision that they would have to make in real time. And I like A.J. Hawk has an opportunity to do a football Christmas wish. We've got a new knee for Micah. What was yours again, Connor? We don't announce acquisitions, free agents, or trades until week one. And Tone, what was yours? Home playoff games until the finals of the college football game. AJ said, don't you think we need a little bit more on these? Yeah. Don't you think we need a little bit more? You know, they're already taking the hip drop, whatever that is. Proud of the helmet, too, I think I heard him say it as well.

1:18:05Pat McAfee:That was the third one. No, I was going to. I felt like that would be too, like, cliche to use that one, to say you could hit people across the middle or something. But you would like to add that on. If we are making these wishes come true, let's go ahead and slide that one. In a perfect world. In a perfect world, yes. Especially, like, a bang-bang play. You should not be penalized or fined if both the guy catching the ball and the guy hitting them both put your heads down. Like, then it should just be, hey, here we go. His whole upper body like that, whenever he goes. Yeah, it's a special human we have here in AJ.

1:18:32Pat McAfee:It's a special game. I appreciate that's your Christmas wish. Joining us now might be a guy who has something similar. My Christmas wish is I hope everybody's comes true. Joining us now, ladies and gentlemen, is a man that I hope his Christmas wish comes true because he is great for ball. Not only on our particular program that he still joins us with and talks every single week amongst him becoming an owner of multiple teams, maybe a Champions League team. Yeah. This guy owns in the soccer world. And then obviously he's becoming one of the greatest color commentators in the biggest league on earth.

1:19:02Pat McAfee:He has so many other things. The fact he still talks to us, we're very appreciative of, ladies and gentlemen, a member of the Bull Ring of Honor down there for the Houston Texans, future first ballot Hall of Famer, J.J. Wall. Yay, J.J.! Merry Christmas Eve, J.J. Merry Christmas Eve to you. Merry Christmas to you, guys. Thank you. We're giving up our football Christmas wishes around. A.J. Hawk would like to be able to land on quarterbacks in east-to-west horse-collar tackling. That's a little tougher. It's hard for you to sell that one? I'm with you on the northwest-east-south. We got refs trying to figure out catches and not catches here.

1:19:37Let's not go Garmin GPS on them.

1:19:40Pat McAfee:Okay, on that note, what is your football Christmas wish, J.J. Watt? I'm actually, I'm on the same path as AJ because I would like there to be replay assist allowed on roughing the passer and I would like to be in charge of that replay assist only for roughing the passer. They can do everything else. I'll just handle roughing the passer. You're handling the whole league? Yeah, whole league. I just sit in a room and I just have a screen in front of me and every roughing the passer flag comes to me and I decide no rules or parameters just purely based on what I see. If I think it was roughing the passer, they leave the flag.

1:20:19If I don't, they pick the flag up.

1:20:21Pat McAfee:I like that. Judge, jury, executioner for one particular play that is 15 yards. Game changer. It is a game changer, a career changer. Now, you feel as if you had a better feel on what the intent is, if they could have let up, if they're trying to hurt, if it was a cheap shot. You think you naturally, because of who you are, what you've done, and how you view the game, have a good grasp on what they're looking for and what they're not looking for? That is why you should be the ipso facto god of roughing the passers? Yes, that's correct. Okay. That one that we've been showing, the Ravens one, not roughing the passers.

1:20:59There you go. Shocker, I know.

1:21:02Pat McAfee:I think the football people would be happy with what football dictator would be deciding there, though. I would. I think that would be something that people would be pumped up about. Why aren't you maybe a couple other flags too? You're not as comfortable with other rules or other? I'm comfortable with everything. I'm comfortable with everything. But let's just start with one at a time. I want to prove that I can do it. And then they give me more responsibility. But just one. Like, I just want to get this one right. There's a lot of other stuff. There are some that are extremely difficult. Extremely.

1:21:36I don't want to. Refs have an extremely hard job. I don't want to take anything away from refs. Roughing the passer. Not that hard. I can handle that. You can tell.

1:21:45Pat McAfee:That's very kind of you. You're doing that for free, too, for a prove-it year. Do you hear what I'm saying? For free. Yeah. I would just enjoy it. I would just enjoy it. I'll still call games from the booth. Just put it on one of the monitors, and you call into my game. Anytime there's a roughing the passer flag, I just pop over to your feed. I said, nope, clean, there you go. Because you think quick, too. No problem. No, I don't need 15 angles. I don't need more than two angles. I might need two just in case there's some obstruction of some alignment or something in the way. Two angles, all I need.

1:22:16I'll tell you right away. Roughing the passer, not.

1:22:18Pat McAfee:Man, this is crazy. You're calling a game while doing? I didn't even think that. I thought you were fully committed in a room by yourself. No, it's not even that difficult. Just pipe it right into my monitor. I got a separate monitor. It's called the RTP monitor. Roughing the passer monitor. And flag goes up. New York sends that sucker right into my feed. I send back negative and carry on with their game. I think literally all you got to do is the thumbs up, thumbs down because you might be in the middle of one big time player. Wow, what a fantastic play there going down. That's all you got. Or a flag or no flag button.

1:22:58Pat McAfee:Oh, you're talking about right here and right here. It actually is like a slingshot of a flag. Every stadium adds a J.J. Watt flag or a flag crane, like in those arcades. Yeah, those are great. Every stadium has to add one. The new one in Kansas is already building this. It's the J.J. Watt roughing the passer flag grabber. And it comes down and picks it up. You just have to ignite it with the button that you're pushing while you're calling the game. The J.J. Bot. Oh my God, the J.J. Bot. J.J. Bot. J.J. Bot. J.J. Bot. J.J. Bot. He literally comes down with a 99 jersey from the middle, and it picks up the flag, yeah, just like that in his figure, and then just kind of goes back up into the top, and there's somebody up there that's like, good job, J.J.

1:23:49Pat McAfee:Bott, and picks up the flag, yeah. Okay. Yeah, but if you throw too many on the year that got overturned, you're out. J.J. Bott picks you up. Yeah. You, you're gone. Breaks your neck. We've learned that you don't know. You can't ref. You weren't good. Too many false alarms. Gouges your eyes out. A little on the mouth hook. Kind of gets it out there. J.J. Bott has his legs. Yes, it does. And arms. Big ones. Strong ones. We're going to see it on CBS before the end of the season. Yeah, I think so. Angry face. Oh, my God. Red eyes. Maybe bullhorns like the Texans. Yeah. J.J. Bott. J.J. Bott. Okay, let's talk about J.J.

1:24:32Pat McAfee:Bott. You almost had to call or almost got to call. Sorry, Miles Garrett breaking the record for the amount of sacks in a season. I believe you even publicly lobbying for him to get a half a sack when Josh Allen turned and saying like, hey, Miles Garrett forced him to turn there, which forced him to slip. So he should certainly get a full sack or maybe a half sack. I want to let you know because TJ Watt is a part of the record. And obviously the Watt family and Garrett are massive in the tackling of quarterbacks community. And there could be maybe tension. You on the call for the game in the way you were handling it.

1:25:06Pat McAfee:and celebrating it, I thought was incredible. Now, on that note, how big of a deal is Myles Garrett getting this? And how special should this be looked at? Especially because he is this absolute freak, an anomaly, an alien, so good at his job, and it feels like Cleveland might waste it all, which is like what happened to Joe Thomas, which is what happened in the past. Do you get that same sense, or do you think there's a chance they turn it around, and maybe Myles is a pillar guy that helps them going forward, Jage? um well let's let's tackle the first thing first from that game I mean it's inevitable he's going to break it guy's unbelievable having an insane year um he's he has a chance to do it early which is obviously great I mean phenomenal player that specific play was a fascinating situation all around there was a whole lot going on from safety not safety who got the sack uh Mason Graham touched him first so he got the full sack and then they came back a couple quarters later and said, you know, we split it half and half.

1:26:05And what I said on the broadcast was Miles Garrett either gets all of that or none of that because, I mean, you guys know me. I've been studying sacks for 15 years. I played in the league, and every single week after a game, you're lobbying, hey, I got a half of that sack. I got my hand on him. I didn't, whatever. I have never seen a split sack between guys that didn't touch him. But so like, you know, when you run a guy out of bounds, the guy closest to him who kind of forced him out of bounds gets that full sack. Or the guy in a situation where the quarterback falls down or something, the first guy that touches him gets that sack.

1:26:43That's why guys scramble to get there. So that's why I said what I said on the air is I've never seen a split sack where you don't touch the guy. That's what I that was my point in that. And I think that Alex Wright also has, 91 wants some piece of that. He's like, hang on, I was here too, turning this guy in. So it was a wild play. And then just the fact that we came back a couple quarters later, and it was like, all right, we had to explain it to people. It was wild. But he's going to break it. He's insane. He's also close to the tackles for loss one, which is crazy. Like, he plays the run, he plays the pass.

1:27:18He's an unbelievable player. In terms of what Cleveland looks like going forward, They have a ton of rookies who are playing well. Swechinger, defensive rookie of the year, unbelievable player. Really smart, very good, athletic. Like, really enjoyed talking to him in our meetings. Harold Fannin, phenomenal player. Really, really good. They continue to add more to the offense for him. Shador went out there and he made some plays. They took away a lot of the deep stuff, which Shador is really good at. And they made him throw it underneath. And he took the underneath throws. He wasn't forcing the ball deep.

1:27:52He took the underneath throws. He used his legs a lot in the game, which was very good. And he got stepped on or whatever, and his pinky was like, you know, tip of his pinky was hanging off, taped that thing back up, came out. So there's some good stuff there. Now, there's certainly a lot to work on. There's no question that they need to work on a lot, and we'll see what happens there. But in terms of some building blocks, there's at least a couple things to get excited about.

1:28:18Pat McAfee:Yeah, you know, I've been watching Browns games this year. It's crazy. It's like, how's Shador doing? Okay, and is Miles Garrett going to get it? And then you immediately go back. Man, it sucks they're never going to win there. That's just like the natural opinion. I'm from Pittsburgh, so obviously growing up, I'm told Cleveland's never going to win at football. That is kind of how it goes. When I first went to Cleveland, I was surprised how nice of a city it was. Honestly, with everything I was told. Jack's, I believe, was the casino. Very nice. Very nice casino. There's like five floors. Third floor was very giving to us.

1:28:48Pat McAfee:Yeah, the mall. Yeah, there's a mall that's like the oldest mall in the country. Gorgeous. That's still up there. It's beautiful. So, like, I was mind blown when I got to Cleveland. It was a nice city. I was like, man. There's water. I've been told my entire life this is a shit hole. You know, the mistake by the lake and everything like that. And I get up there, I'm like, it's actually kind of charming. You got a good casino. You got some good history, it appears. I didn't know that. People was kind of nice. And then you watch the Browns. It's like, well, everything they said, though, about the Browns growing up, though, was pretty accurate.

1:29:16Pat McAfee:It feels like. It's also a cool stadium. Like, I was looking at, like, I mean, obviously, I played there a few times. but like the fact like the new stadium coming up like if you're standing in that stadium it's a cool stadium and from our booth you're looking out i mean it's tall it goes up like it's a it gets a lot of hate but i mean i like that stadium now i get why people build new stadiums i understand the luxury boxes the cash everything that comes with it but like in terms of a football stadium that's that's a good stadium like we don't need to be tearing down stadiums of that caliber yeah agreed let's keep it open for maybe other shit to happen if we have to maybe we could profit off it as a business but since you led into it i mean that's a great storyline for today go ahead con man yeah jage earlier in the week the chicago bears basically announced that they're going to gary indiana uh that situation with arlington heights is up in the air a lot of question marks but something that is kind of concrete now is kansas city going to kansas starting in the year 2031 hopefully uh what do you think about this kansas city middle of the dynasty leaving their Arrowhead Stadium in Missouri to go to Kansas feels like something the football gods might raise a brow to, but this feels like a can't-say-no deal for the Hunt family and the organization as a whole.

1:30:31How do you feel about them going to Kansas? I mean, if everything that's been reported is accurate with what they got in terms of you know, the tax money and also the perks that come with it from the rent situation to the reinvestment situation. I mean, like you said, man, you, I mean, if you're sitting there looking at that deal on the table, I don't know how they possibly couldn't have taken it. Um, and if you're on the Kansas side of things, you're hoping that the economic impact and the amount of people coming and potential Superbowls and everything makes up for that. But that again, if all those numbers are true that is the sweetest stadium deal for ownership that i have ever seen in my

1:31:14Pat McAfee:entire life yeah in the star bonds that are allegedly paying for this we looked into this a little bit it is a kansas thing i assume others have it as well where the local area will be paying it back uh basically is how they look into paying back the three billion dollars is everything that they're building and hopefully chiefs world will be able to pay for that i just read this wrinkle for the first time uh being reported by pompliano kansas will own the stadium right which is cool chiefs will pay them seven million in rent annually but that money's not going back just no no it's actually going into their own pockets into their own um uh account i guess for future repairs back into chief's world okay so would like that on my house i'd like to pay i'd like my my mortgage to go back into making my house nicer now can i can i sell that how the hunts sold that to kansas it's like we will commit to seven million dollars going back into our chief's world to keep it nice and all that type of stuff i think that is how they sell that now granted whatever you get that to be an agreement it's like okay so i'm just allotting seven million of our budget every single year to an account that is basically going in the future to keep this shit nice that's a fascinating nice sweet deal that's a very cushy yeah but there's no rent then that there is no rent then yeah that is the rent that's what i'm saying you're just that's like saying i'm gonna put in a pool and that's gonna count as my rent yep yeah you just put in a different bank account basically for next year whenever we gotta do renovations yeah you're just sliding it from one account to another saying we gotta do renovations now who's getting hired to do the renovations to is it hunt contract yeah exactly who's getting the interest on that too who's getting the interest on that account as it grows oh you know the renovations brother so the stadium yeah more renovations the cell is the newer seats the cell is we're going to keep this nice so the chief's world is continues to be a draw you know that's the cell to the state is like hey everybody is going to come all the stores and restaurants we're going to be able to make money back off of that kansas is going to become a draw there's going to be more concerts there's going to be more people traveling to kansas like that's the sell but boy i'm assuming kansas state or texas people are kansas taxpayers are not exactly thrilled with everything they're reading today about this is that stadium picture uh that's going around is that legit or is that just a a rendering to show a new stadium because i do like we are getting extremely cookie cutter with stadiums now.

1:33:34Arrowhead is one of the... I've hated playing there because I've not had a lot of success there, but Arrowhead is one of the best environments in sports. If we're losing Arrowheads left and right, we are in a bad way. Even Soldier Field. It's got its quirks and everything, but I like Soldier Field. It's unique. It has its own. You get snow. We get the Packers Bears like we had the other night. We can't be losing these types of atmospheres in these games. What's next? Are we going to wipe Lambeau out? No.

1:34:00Pat McAfee:No, that's the thing, though. Lambo is actually a good blueprint for everybody else to try because Lambo has the Hall of Fame, the museum, the tours, the restaurants, the bars, the things to do, and the hotels people are traveling in. Now, granted, they don't have an owner, but they're the ones that have to open their books. And their real estate was like$170 million a year or whatever, and that was from all the shit that was coming around it. So whenever other teams are selling that and then Jerry World, Jerry Jones said something. I think it was reported like$70 million in revenue on game days jerry gets versus everybody else's home games because of all the other shit around it and what's all built into it i think that's all anybody's looking at but to your point about designs and stuff it's like there's only so many real groundbreaking changing stadium designs and everybody's trying to copy them now like sofi they're like well we saw what they did with sofi and we thought wow that's a good idea so we implemented ourselves allegiant stadium over there in Vegas like a spaceship so everybody's like we kind of want to make it look futuristic because it is the future and then have you seen the photo of um what buildings were like designed back in the day versus what they're designed like now it is not just a stadium issue it's like everything is kind of just become like very kind of bland as opposed to like you know character having character in their own different ways so I don't want to get into a deep like design infrastructure design conversation but everything is starting to look the same everywhere you know We appreciate that there's renovations and getting newer, but it's like we somehow have to hold on to – Like Buffalo.

1:35:32Minnesota's unique. Minnesota's got a unique – it's still indoor. It still has the roof that shows light through, but they have built in – Minnesota is a massively underrated stadium. That place is incredible. And it's still unique. It's not the same as everywhere else. I think that place is awesome. I agree. That's why the Bills is really cool, though, because everyone is now doing like the, well, we've got to build an indoor stadium so we can have a Super Bowl. and the Bills are saying, no, we're just going to put a canopy over, still outdoors, still going to be cold in Buffalo, but will be new, even though I do not love the Bills.

1:36:04Pat McAfee:Yeah, and they've got those big bison out front. Well, TBD, TBD, okay? J.J. Bott is probably going to be bigger than those bison. Well, J.J. Bott's going to have to be because it's going to pick up a ref. That's true. But those bison, they've got the message loud and clear, don't you think? I don't know. I think they've got the message loud and clear. I don't know if they're going to abide by the loud and clear message because... The Bills abide. Their stadium was just on fire. The Bills abide. The stadium was just on fire. I don't know if they're worried about the Bison. Jage, I think I saw you already.

1:36:34Pat McAfee:What happened? I missed that. I missed that. Heated seats. The stadium was on fire? It was just a little tech fire. Where there's smoke, there's fire. These things, construction sites, there's always going to be... Fire, a lot of smoke there. I felt like that was a lot of smoke. Obviously not great, but, you know, every once in a while... Whip up somebody in the back. Sorry. Whip up the Birmingham City new stadium proposal. No clue if it's actually going to come through. But if that does, that's unique. Congratulations. That is cool. So you just mentioned an XFL team, US XFL team. Tom Brady, soccer squad.

1:37:07Oh, soccer. No, soccer. Come on, guys. Who is this? Who is this? It's not your team? This is Birmingham City. Let me look at that. That's unique. That's like the AI design. That's the AI design.

1:37:18Pat McAfee:Yeah, I like what we're doing here. Need it. smokestacks. It's a castle. Don't know if it's actually going to happen. If it does, phenomenal. That was one of our Christmas wishes, actually, was make all the AI stadiums real for everybody. Yeah, and also make... You're welcome, Tom, for the free publicity. I know you need it. You're welcome. Yeah, anytime we get the show Farmingham's team, we're certainly going to give credit to who they are. No doubt. Okay? The Farmingham squad is in the middle of the group. They're in the big one. Is that the right name? Farmingham? Where are they? Birmingham, man.

1:37:55We're Peaky Blinders. Come on. Tom Brady. Birmingham, middle of England. You know.

1:38:01Pat McAfee:Birmingham. They're right there in the middle of the Premier League. They're 14th in the championship. No, they're in the championship. Tom's got a championship. His Raiders stink. This team stinks. This guy doesn't know what he's doing. Oh, no, Tom. Oh, I didn't know that. Hold the phone. So you're telling me Birmingham is owned by Tom Brady. That's what I'm just learning here. And so he's got to pay for that? And they're shy? Yeah. And they're... I think he's got somebody to pay for it. No, him and Tom is shy. What's he going to do next? Go buy the Marlins or the Pirates? What the hell is this guy doing?

1:38:35Oh, don't put that on the Pirates. We can spend money on Mr. Kern. It'd be more like a river house.

1:38:40Pat McAfee:Ryan O 'Kern coming to Pittsburgh. O 'Hearn. O 'Hearn. coming to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This guy bats 217. No, no, no, it's not. 287. He's a good player. This guy's a good player. He's a good player. We added two offers. You guys are putting in offers on people, though. You're putting in offers on people. We're potentially. They're not getting them, but you're potentially getting them. We're potentially putting offers together, but you haven't followed. Excuse me. We just signed Mr. O 'Hearn. And Brandon Lowe. And Scouble wants to play in Pittsburgh. He said, I'll take an even bigger pay cut.

1:39:10Pat McAfee:Detroit's offering me Scroobles. I'll take Scubles over in Pittsburgh, actually. to go play for the Buccos, Paul Skeens, and Scoobo. There's a chance there that people were following Jet Passing's X account, and they're saying, you know what, maybe the Pirates are up to something. First baseman, obviously I knew he played first base. This guy's got a good mitt. You should see his flexibility, too. I see him do a full split, like in those, whenever he needs to get somebody out at first. I saw he's been doing this a long time over there. And whenever you talk about picking people off, he's like the mayor.

1:39:38Pat McAfee:He's got them so relaxed. They have no idea, bang, you're out, and we're out there. We're stealing stuff. Look for Paul Skeens to work on his throwout over there first. He might actually do one of those because O 'Hearn does that. You're out. So that's what the Pirates are doing. So, no, Tom Brady doesn't need to come ruin what we got going on. You were right with the Marlins. You were right with the Marlins. Yeah, Marlins probably, yeah. I heard your team may be in the Champions League. Is that real? All right, Spaniel is playing unbelievable. Five wins in a row, fifth place right now, and we have got a massive, massive crosstown rivalry with Barcelona Derby coming up.

1:40:15Barcelona. Barcelona.

1:40:18Pat McAfee:You're disrespecting them. Whenever you talk about motivation for Barcelona, I'm certainly calling them the wrong name. Classic American. I bet you go to Ibiza, you idiot. Have you been to Ibiza? No. My last game of the season is obviously on the 4th. And so I was literally trying to find any way I could make it over to Spain for our match and seeing if I could just hop over, pop back, and make it back in time for our game on Sunday. And there's just no way to do it. It's going to be an insane, insane atmosphere in the cauldron of chaos. Bartholomew. In the morning, we drink coffee. In the afternoon, it's morning.

1:41:02Pat McAfee:And then we play Bartholomew. And we win everyone. It's Espanol. Espanol. Oh, lucky, lucky, lucky. Another goal. Yeah. That's pretty good. Just brilliant. Just brilliant. Champions League. So if you're top three at the end, you go to the Champions League where the owners get paid a lot of money. Top four. Top four. There's certain situations where five actually makes it. It's all a little tricky. But fifth is Europa League. So we're in that slot. right now. A lot of ball left, but boys are playing incredible, incredible ball. AJ, the Europa League matters. They're up again. What's the pinnacle?

1:41:46Where are we all trying to get to? F1. Thank you. We're not trying to get to F1. Yes, we are. It is pinnacle, man. Hop in. Champions League. Champions League. Top from every country around Europe, and they put them all in one tournament and the mls that's the biggest and it's on wednesdays right that's on wednesday nights is when the mls cup it's midweek yeah it's midweek yeah oh yes if you if you play in european competitions you are playing in significantly more games per year which is obviously uh taxing on your squad but you're also obviously making a lot more money but it's it becomes more of a challenge from a roster management standpoint making sure you have the guys and

1:42:31Pat McAfee:managing that but yes is Tyler from dude perfect the part of Espanol too um they are they are part of the group wow what I didn't know Tyler damn champions I know he's like that of course he is dude how was your guys time at A &M was he there yeah good stories down there great I went to midnight yell did you hear about this I didn't I did not hear about your experience at midnight yell I know what it is so we traveled down from Oklahoma we're down there Okay, we fly in. We had had communication with Yale leaders throughout the week about going to Midnight Yale. We had full communication about it.

1:43:09Pat McAfee:The plan was to do that. He's like Buddy Garrity out there. Look at that. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm at Yale practice, bro. Midnight Yale practice. So we fly to Oklahoma. We're all tired. Or we fly down to Texas A &M from Oklahoma. We're all pretty tired. Some kind of boozed up. I mean, there's a lot going on. So we decide we're not going to this midnight thing that is still two hours away, an hour away or whatever it is. So we're not going. and we're all tired so i happened at this particular uh stay stay in a bus the bus was right outside the stadium so i was trying to go to sleep in the bus and all i heard was cannons going off and people screaming i couldn't sleep and i thought to myself i told these people i would go it's literally happening right there i cannot sleep right now because how loud it is i have to go so after we all as a group decided we weren't going and everybody went to bed I'm in bus, okay, all by myself, and I'm like, fuck it, I'm going.

1:43:59I get up out of bed, cowboy hat on, black jacket on.

1:44:03Pat McAfee:Let me do the cowboy shit here real quick. I'm out of bed in like three minutes. I exit bus, and I just go, all right, I don't know where I'm going, but I'm walking straight to the stadium. We didn't get final details on where we're going to meet, somebody to get in there. I just assumed I'd get to the stadium, I'd be able to get in there. Cop, who is sitting outside of bus for security, has no idea I'm getting up there. So he scramble open door. What? Where are you going? Where are you going? I'm like, I'm going in there. He's like, oh, I'll come with you. I'll come with you. Shuts his door. Great guy.

1:44:31Pat McAfee:Thank God he came, by the way. I mean, I would have been walking in absolute circles. He goes, we're going down to the left here. We're going to hit the tunnel. So I'm like, sweet. I'm walking fast, though, because I feel like I'm going to miss it because they had been doing a lot of yelling. So I'm walking fast. Cop, he comes from sitting in his car with nothing. Full sprint. Holy shit. I'm fresh out of bed. We're doing this entire thing. Yeah, he's fully booted, too. I was like, oh, I'm so sorry. I was playing on just walking in there alone. I completely forgot. And that is just, that is a bad decision by me.

1:45:01Pat McAfee:As soon as I get in there, full fucking chaos. I mean, full chaos in that place. You got 30 ,000, 40 ,000 people there, plus people on the field. I walked down there. I'm standing in the corner. I have no idea where I'm supposed to go. I realized I do not have the direct connection to Yell Leader that Bruce was talking to. And then I thought it would all just kind of be manageable on where I'm supposed to go to. It was not. So all of a sudden, a buzz and a scene starts on the sideline. All of a sudden, now the stands are starting to recognize me. I think at the beginning, they said I wasn't going to make it.

1:45:28Pat McAfee:So I got hissed earlier. So whenever I walk in, I think it was a full thing. I'm in my bed. Seven minutes before this, I walk down there. Get right to the middle. Holy shit. I didn't know you got hissed. I didn't know. Oh, yeah. At the beginning, they hissed me, I guess, because they mentioned that we weren't coming. So there was like a hiss at the beginning. So then I walk all the way to the middle. Chaos, chaos, chaos. a lady lovely lady leads me there thank i once again no idea who this lady is no i have no still to this moment have no idea who she was thank you to that lady she guided me as there was a little platoons kind of coming down taking photos i get to the middle chancellor's standing right there hi i'm pat hi i'm the chancellor thank you so much for coming oh shit you're like the one here okay very nice to meet you kids are here okay and i'm standing there and the yell leader's like ladies and gentlemen please here boom walk up here here's microphone nine minutes from my bed I think in the indecision.

1:46:19Pat McAfee:I have a microphone in front of 30 ,000 people at midnight. It's like, all right, here we go. Right before I get the microphone, I asked the chancellor. I'm like, hey, quick reminder. What's the shit? What's the shit that you guys, what's the thing? He goes, you start with Howdy, you end with Gig 'em. So I was like, sweet. So I start that thing with Howdy. They all have a full Howdy back. But I didn't expect there's like a follow-up with a woo. I almost stepped on top of their woo. Pig suey? Yeah, boo, hey. Yeah, that whole thing. it was it was electrifying but when you talk about just like sensory overload real quick i had no idea and i would say if you're in the area and it's happening you need to go it is an insane amount of commitment from people to ball but i dropped a huge f huge fuck in there i mean just a gigantic one in the middle of the speech no flubs by the way but in the middle i dropped a massive one and i'm like yeah i feel like i nailed it walk out there's four-year-olds five-year-olds it's midnight why are these kids here i i could not have expected these kids to be here and they're like oh this is what we've done since like they literally 80 year olds there five year olds there and it's like just the thing we all do this the night before so it was special i thought it was very special windy though jage windy 40 mile an hour winds changed the whole game changed the whole game yeah no question wait talk about windy cleveland when i was flying into cleveland plane.

1:47:44Issues. Issues. Landed. Okay. Three tries. Very scary. Did you go back up? Two tries at one airport. Said, this is not happening. Went to a different one.

1:47:57Pat McAfee:One on the lake. You were landing on the one on the lake and you guys passed it. I don't think I'm ever going back there again in my life with the experience that I had there this weekend. Never been more frightened in my life. Yeah, that's a dangerous one. Especially because it looks like the tip might hit the water. You've seen every bad movie. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, and I was watching the pilot, and he handled it well. We made it. We might be going down. But the flight attendant who was on the plane with me, she, after the first attempted landing, we went up, and then we started a second one, and it wasn't going well.

1:48:31She moved seats to come by me, and she was like, it's safer back here. I'm going to sit by you if that's all right. And I was like, I don't like where this is going because you're the one I'm looking to. I'm telling you dude sketchiest 45 minutes to an hour I have had in my life I think

1:48:50Pat McAfee:we're so happy we still got you you know what that's my ball Christmas wish I hope you all have your Christmas wishes come true even your crazy medically advanced one that you forecasted and wished for for Mike and Evan I would like J.J. Watt to have a safe season that's what I would like as somebody who gets all the same thoughts that you had every time we take off and every time i land uh i couldn't even fathom aj gets sick sweats and pukes every time he flies loves it i don't puke every time i fly but i get very yeah i get sick no sweating full sweat every flight and then immediately afterwards like i want to be a pilot it's like that's crazy that is absolutely crazy that makes it kind of difficult you're right that is crazy that that's how it is but I have the same, the thought you had in those 45 minutes, I have during like smooth landing, and every once in a while, I'll get on there, and once again, we're talking about something that nobody in life is supposed to experience, like it's the greatest thing of all time being on smaller planes as opposed to commercial planes, you have some pilots though that like want to impress us, I think you know, like he goes, he goes after the second one, he goes, are you alright, I think we're gonna try and land in a different, I said, dude you land this plane in whatever country you have to land in to put it on the ground.

1:50:08Why'd you ask me after the second one, brother? I said, I don't care where we put this thing. Just get it down.

1:50:15Pat McAfee:Home Alone. What is it? He doesn't, Polka, the Polka band. Oh, yeah. They don't fly, right? They just ride in the back of a box truck or whatever. And then John Madden, right? John Madden, right? Yeah, John Madden. Yeah, only drove bus. He was only on a bus. It's like, I feel like I know what happened. I think I was potentially in one of those planes where you're like, I am so lucky to be getting off of this plane right now. I am never stepping foot back on one of these. And John Madden, actually, there's some people that have been like, no, where's it at? Arizona? All right. I need six days. I'm leaving now.

1:50:45I've been close, man. That's what I took. That's what I took away from this. I was like, okay, I should never have been scared at any point in my flying life. Because if planes can do this and if pilots can do this, I am good. Like, it was that level where we were doing stuff that I did not know was capable. Like, we were fighting it, and it was crazy, and I was like, oh, okay. Any turbulence, regular turbulence, no problem. I have now been through the maximum.

1:51:12Pat McAfee:Did you touch and go? Was it an actual touch and go, or did you go low? We almost touched the water and went, brother. We almost touched the water. What? I'm laughing. I'm not joking. I was in my head, whether rational or not. I was thinking, how far can I swim? Did you text your wife? How far can I swim? yeah no like did you say goodbye did you do a video I've done a video I made a video have you ever made a video no I made a video so I had a I made a video to family and friends and I was like I actually made a full video about what was about to happen we took off they couldn't get the landing gear up so we had to turn back around and land not that big of a problem is it what if when you hit the ground it comes up you know because they've been hitting the button to lift it they've been hitting a button to lift it for the whole time and they're like hey we gotta go land this thing we can't fly obviously with the landing gear down we think it's gonna be okay but there is a chance that whenever we hit it kind of unlocks it so we are gonna obviously try to do as smooth as possible uh that's what we gotta do or whatever i'm like yep let me go ahead and get this out and i go uh no way sam it happened i know we knew it was coming uh this is it i did like a full thing talking mckenzie was a little baby mckenzie was a little baby i talked about her and her like because they were turning this thing around yeah oh yeah oh yeah i i was i was there i was there dude yeah and then i i videoed it going down i'm like here it is by the way just know that whenever the worst was about to happen your dad wasn't you know scared like this is happening he just got it's out of your control sometimes.

1:52:52Pat McAfee:I'm giving it a life lesson. Then we hit the ground, and we bounce, and I'm like, and then we hit it again. I'm like, all right, this is getting deleted. I shut it and put it in my phone. Then immediately get off that plane, get on another plane, and now we take off to go where we were supposed to go. As soon as we get in the air, I'm like, I just thought I was going to die. Then I just sign right back up for it. It's like, what is my problem? In Connecticut, me and Tony thought the same thing. We had a guy who was a couple sneezes away from the grave. And it was like, okay, how do we have a guy this age flying this plane?

1:53:28And he couldn't even see when he was taking off. It looked like he was going to fly off. We almost ran off the runway during the takeoff.

1:53:35Pat McAfee:There's not enough Zanax on this planet for that plane ride. I think we have some film from that plane ride. Yes, we do. We refused to get back on. You had to make a couple calls to me until I was like, nope, we're not getting on that plane. So you either get a different one or we're living in Connecticut now. Yeah, I don't think I was going to get on that plane either. That was the worst experience we had had, just by pilot ineptitude. That certainly was scary. I mean, it was like a 40-minute flight, too, and we're just doing this number. And then while we're taking off, he's driving sideways.

1:54:03Pat McAfee:We can see the runway. We can see it at the front thing. And this guy's getting closer to the side. It's like, this guy's driving cockeyed, actually. And then we had packed plane. That was the most packed plane we had. Oh, yeah. Because it was a shorter flight, so everybody jumped in. I remember looking back and Tone Diggs sitting sideways on the couch just full body sprayed out sweating white as a ghost I think like an actual ghost and then just right down the line everybody has the same look and it's like alright yep we're never getting on this plane again everybody's like we're not getting off of this plane that is the problem we're talking about yeah it was when you gotta be the tough one like when your family's on there it's a completely different like you're not you're you're putting on the face i'm sure somebody on that plane with you guys had to put on the face yeah pat when you're by yourself like i was this time it's a completely different like you are no longer the macho man that you are in front of your family i love you girl you're gonna have a great life okay you need to know that and then we land i'm trying to figure out how you were gonna get how that video was going to get yeah when are you sending the call was gonna survive when were you sending it somebody has it somewhere it's in the cloud Somebody needs to see that, okay?

1:55:13Pat McAfee:Somebody will be able to see that, okay? Don't you worry about it. And I don't need you talking about my flawed thoughts before I'm about to die on a plane as I'm sending them to my daughter and my family, okay? On that note, Merry Christmas, everybody. Merry Christmas. Hope you guys have a great Christmas. We've got a lot of football coming up, a lot of good balls. We'll be back on Monday. You're the greatest people of all time. Be a friend. Tell a friend Merry Christmas. Goodbye. Hope it's the greatest of all time. That a baby, Jage. Thanks for bringing it up, James, right before we send everybody off to Christmas on TV.

1:55:43Pat McAfee:Merry Christmas. Hopping on a plane right after the show today. So very excited that that's what we just talked about for the last 30 minutes. No, we've all survived every plane ride we've ever taken. I know. And there's thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of planes in the sky. I know. I know. It's not like that. Because we have had some. I remember specifically coming. It was the Miles Garrett-Mason Rudolph bonk game. when we came back from Pittsburgh, we hit like a straight nosedive. And I never sit facing the back of the plane because I just can't do that. And I remember just like fucking levitating and like coming up.

1:56:22And it was – I still think about that way too often.

1:56:25Pat McAfee:Yeah, and now that I'm talking – Ty told me one time, it was after some plane flight that we had. Yeah, bad flight. We had a terrible – I mean, Jay, just a real part of it. That is why when you see what I'm on, it's what I'm on because of all these situations that have happened. It's like, it feels like if we get a bigger. I was on one. I was on a big one, dude. That's what I'm saying. That's not good. That's bad. That's not good. New pile. But as we roll through our life, and once again, we're talking about something that we should not be able to experience. It's the best part of life, basically, that when you have money or somebody else is willing to pay for it, it's like, this is what you would like.

1:57:02Pat McAfee:It takes out all the bullshit. so we don't want to complain ever because there's no reason to in this entire this isn't relatable we understand this is just a couple people catching up here who have been in some very scary situations in this whole thing Ty though after one of these nightmares flights A couple of days later, it comes up to me. I had a dream last night. We went down on a plane, you and me. Oh, yeah. Oh, come on, dude. Dude, it was the worst flight ever. And normally, I wouldn't say that. But it was like we had just come off the worst flight ever. So, James, as you could probably assume, me and Ty were not on the same plane for a long time.

1:57:41Pat McAfee:We were not on the same plane for a long time. It was fun on Southwest, brother. lyrics as soon as i heard that like all right we're getting a couple planes if ty needs to fly he will be on the other one that'll certainly be the case we got and we talked about uh which i'm if you have just let's keep it moving but i would like to throw some heat at somebody if we haven't talked about this yet the article about you stopping the charitable kicks we don't need to get into that i'll flame throw that guy i'll flame throw that guy whoever the hell anonymous quotes in that article were yeah but this just like kind of goes to show everything that we've kind of been saying about how everybody is kind of just like that's an absurd thing i mean big night out i gave away like three four million bucks to people and uh you know potentially changing their state the same similar type of thing it's like um yeah it's just all very fascinating how much hate like these people have for us you know and it's like it's it's unbelievable it's awesome unbelievable thank you it's very cool that we have it yeah you know they say having heat's good you know we got a little we got good heat out there but like these people are just so fucking blind by it's a very absurd thing but on that note we just had a 1.5 million dollar kick in front of 110 000 people i don't know what else we get and it who knows what college game day looks like next year i mean there's like so many different variables to it but i'm not somebody i think people know this jj watt being on our show on a regular basis is a segment we don't really stick with a lot of things get bored with things it's not like hey we found something let's do this forever so you know me hinting at this might be the end of the series like it was what if something else comes up what if it doesn't happen like there's so many things to it but also saying it's a bad business sense to do away with it it's like this thing i've ever heard in my life you want to know it's bad business giving away millions of dollars that you were like like this is the most heritable philanthropic thing you could possibly do oh dude i'm i want to lose it on that guy i'm like are you kidding me like you're gonna sit here and anonymously give quotes to this little article and you're gonna have an entire article written about a guy giving away millions of dollars to charity like that's a problem that's a problem with our everything that's going on right now is you want to attack something and you're going to attack somebody giving away money to charity by a kid picking a ball through a pole like come on now what are we talking about there's so much negative shit in this world to attack and we're going to attack giving money to charity get the out of here man thank you for that jay hey jay i appreciate you doing that for me and for us as a whole but if you want to look around i mean you can go to that website there's a couple other ones anytime we have been talked about there's some sort of angle or just like i don't even know how you have that unless like you do your thing but once again we just hey sit in the pocket keep it going and try to make cool moments for people you know and uh there's a song coming out uh here in a little bit that i wrote about like i treat finance like i'm robin hood okay try to find a brink's truck and figure out uh how to give it back basically you know like that has been a massive piece of us and we're not the only ones I mean, Mr.

2:00:34Pat McAfee:Beast gives away so much. You talk about like the things that I think a generation has done with the access to the amount of shit that we've got access because of how good our people have been to us. It's like there's a natural reaction to want to give back and give away. And it's like I think some of the olds just like don't fully understand it. You know, and I think there's a lot of people that don't really understand like that is his money. It's coming from someone else. Like, well, all money is earned from somewhere else. But, yes, that is certainly coming out of our company's account to these people and to these charities.

2:01:05Pat McAfee:So it's like that's a fulfilling thing to do, though. Like it's a cool thing. Now, do you find out new ways to do that? And, like, do you do things like that? I think so. We've kind of proven to do that. But a$1.5 million kick in front of 110 ,000 people at a college football playoff game, I don't know what else, you know, I don't know what else we do. But if there is something, let's go ahead and do that. And what does game day look like next year, you know, as a whole? So it's like, you know. I appreciate you going to bat for me, though. But that's kind of been our business here since we started licensing our show on ESPN and taking two hours daily away from some producer who has a super genius idea that led ESPN to where it was before we got here.

2:01:42Pat McAfee:You know, so that those people are always going to be, you know, power, attention, clout, money. I didn't even think about them feeling disrespected or disrupted in that thing for what they've had for a long time. but there's certainly a class of those people that don't appreciate us potentially coming in here and saying like yeah like we can tell them to give away 2 million of their own money create your own show that gives away 2 million dollars or 5 million dollars or 7 million dollars go ahead see how that show does go ahead and they had the they had the amount wrong too they undersold the amount you know and it's you know it's just everything you could do to kind of diminish it is a cool thing that they do so I appreciate you going to bat for me J.J.

2:02:21Pat McAfee:we love you man thank you J. Love you, Jay. So I'm here for pissing me off. I know you probably won't go to bat for yourself on it, so I will gladly call attention to it. I got some songs coming. I go to bat for myself. Yeah, yeah. You get to hear inner thoughts from old Pat McAfee in a lot of these songs. And there's some kill shots in it. There is some good bars, I believe, is what they would be described at. And, you know, just when they come, how they come, and everything kind of gets added into it. So I appreciate you doing that for us, you know? I do appreciate it. That was something I don't think I, or maybe you guys knew.

2:02:55Pat McAfee:I didn't fully expect the full war from the people that see us as a threat to their power. You know, I didn't see that. I thought we were like joining a team, like joining a lineup. Whenever we start licensing our show through ESPN, I'm not understanding the corporate world or the ineptitude of places or the lack of talent or creativity from people who've been at a place for a long time. I didn't expect the potential. and it's not everybody i'm not saying it's everybody but it is people that are sitting in positions where if they were to give a quote it does seem as if it matters because they have a title and have been i don't think i expected the inner anti-us thing and the reason why it is and how passionate those people could be you know what i mean so like i don't think i expect from day one the announcement of our show yeah the way it was framed was like a an attempt to kind of bury us or hey you know all these people you like we had to fire them because of this company it's like I don't think that's exactly how that whole thing went you know because I think they just put up another billion for another thing that's being licensed like our show is being licensed we're not coming from a talent budget I think we're coming from a licensing budget where's that come from so I don't think that is actually how that works so that's an interesting thing but that was in the announcement of it so it was like immediately like hey everything you like gone everything you hate here and it's like oh that's a tough start and then literally every leaked anonymous quote to whoever it was wall street journal legit places new york times washington post whatever it is these are real places anonymous quotes coming out uh you know underperforming not worth the problem like they're swearing are the advertisers like it's like everything was like boom boom boom and it's like geez i didn't expect the barrage and it's now that i'm older and we're kind of in this it's like that was a guarantee brother those people are losing 10 hours a week on espn of what they have it's like i i should have known that but now we're a little bit hardened you know a little bit more hardened and i believe there is potentially uh a track record of success now at this point so i'd say i'd say that's fairly accurate i think there's a potential extinction coming?

2:05:10Pat McAfee:Potentially. Dinosaurs. Since the history. Meteor. Have kind of disappeared. So we'll see. Good luck to you all. We appreciate you, Jage. We appreciate the hell out of you, man. We appreciate the hell out of you, brother. Merry Christmas, guys. I appreciate it. Have a great holiday. Send the best to your families. Always a joy. See you next week. We love you, man. Merry Christmas to you and yours. Also, tell Teej that if he needs us to do the to pump that lung back up. We will for the Christmas holidays. I'll give him my lung. We don't want that. It's a little late for that because Ty had already offered up some knees and he wished for knees.

2:05:48You clearly didn't wish for any lung. Or J.H. I've said for many, many, many, many years that I would take a bullet for TJ. Yeah, but you wouldn't give up a lung on a Christmas wish. Oh, I'm sorry. We're all going to do the same thing. Oh, I'd like to. We're all going to do that. Okay. Great, Tiffany. You're saying, hey, listen. It's just not a show. We got to hit different angles here.

2:06:07Pat McAfee:College football playoffs needs to be represented. Yours was great. Yours was great. Yours is 100 % accurate. Again, another money thing. Why we're not going to get it, we all know that. But if you want to, that is what it should be without question. You're the man, J.H. He's going to play? I mean, we'll see. I mean, he's still working through it, man. Still day by day. Still day by day. Can we give him a – If he needs somebody to talk to him. We can have a Zoom call with him if he wants us. We'll talk to his mom. Jim Tone's number. Yeah, give me a call. If you need to. Yeah, he's a big talker.

2:06:42He's a huge media. He loves media. He does lots of press conferences. He's a couple of buddies. He's a couple of lads. Hey, what's up, man?

2:06:49Pat McAfee:I'll have some smoke. You know, Tone will have a cigar maybe. Ty will come in with a whiskey. We'll all be on the same Zoom link. We'll just be talking if he needs us. And then we'll be motivating his lung to come back to full. You know what I mean? That'll be the goal of the whole thing. They might not have to. They're in a situation where if the Ravens lose it on Saturday, they can rest. Let's go pack. It's over. How do we feel? We feel good. I'll feel a lot better when I know who's playing quarterback on Saturday because we got both current quarterbacks are banged up. Love was limited, right?

2:07:18Yeah. Malik is limited. Malik Willis said he will be ready to go on Saturday. Don't even think about calling Phillip Rivers. He's always. Oh, I won't. They got Clayton Toon on the practice squad, and if it comes down to it, you're going to be seeing him on Saturday.

2:07:32Pat McAfee:Ooh. Love that. All right, Jage. Merry Christmas, buddy. We appreciate you. Merry Christmas. What game are you calling? I'm calling the Seahawks-Panthers. Awesome game. I've got a great game. One of the few. Very awesome game. It's kind of a shitty slate. Very excited. Kind of a shitty slate. Yeah, it's like it all got worked because of Sunday Night Football flexed out the game that CBS was going to have, and they put the Sunday Night Football game back into Fox, so we got this game. I don't know how it all worked out. Very happy to have Seahawks-Panthers. very excited we're happy you're on the call too we can't wait to listen to you brother you're the man ladies and gentlemen and also i believe he was a surprise friend of the program on quizmas yesterday if he would have been no way dude i was waiting by my phone that's not waiting ba was just crushing questions i had to show on i had to turn it off because as you talked about earlier with ray and i'm yellow leaders with your f-bomb uh show was not quite prepared for my three-year-old uh what so luck i'm saying show off so i was going blind on the questions i was I was trying to see the questions ahead of time and then Google it if you ever called me.

2:08:36Didn't happen. Sat by my phone for a half hour.

2:08:41Pat McAfee:Stood up. That's why you're the greatest, J.J. You're the man. Ladies and gentlemen, J.J. Wong. Yay, J.J. Okay, let's take a break. On the other side, we're going to speed round the picks for the weekend for the entire slate because we're off the next two days before a wonderful holiday weekend. Christmas Day is going to deliver in a big way, even though the slate is potentially shite whenever it comes to ripple effects of the outcomes of the games. It's also a bunch of superstars playing football on Christmas. Let's enjoy this. Let's enjoy all of it. I like things my way, my coffee, my schedule, and my treatment.

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2:10:02Pat McAfee:football he's awesome that's AJ Hawk he said listen we got holiday photos just give me the haircut that I've always had I tried to do the thing just give me what I've always had I would like to look the exact same way that I've always looked before I decided to kind of make a little bit of a change everybody noticed by the way I didn't think anybody was going to notice everybody noticed just give me what I always have had AJ you look fantastic on this Christmas Eve Merry Christmas to you and all the Hawkers. Merry Christmas to all of you guys. You guys look great as well. How about Sam? So good.

2:10:38I cannot imagine. I've never tried playing the violin or fiddle. I would imagine that's very difficult.

2:10:42Pat McAfee:He got booked 20 minutes before you saw him. He happens to live about 10 minutes away. So you do the math. As he was walking, shout out Zito finding him. As he was walking, we had a conversation before the show. If we could find some sort of Carol of the Bells performance, we would do that. Zito found somebody. He said, hey, I think he can come do Carol with the Bells on violin. Would you be willing to pay him this amount of money? We countered with an amount of money. I guess the agreement takes place. Then all of a sudden, we see him walking in here during the break. He has no idea what's going on.

2:11:14Pat McAfee:Obviously, I go to the bathroom. I come back out. I go, hey, we're about to be live. You're standing in the middle of the stage here, bud. What's that? Hey, 10 seconds. You're right here. Carol with the Bells, you got it? He goes, yeah, just which way? Camera's that way. Camera's that way. We're about to be live. Four, three, two, and for him just to... Right into it. Nailed it. I mean, no flubs. Fucking send it. Allegedly, once Sam walked off stage here and we celebrated him, an hour or two actually began. Just as soon as he's done, we run the intro. We tell him, thank you so much. Let's take a photo real quick.

2:11:45Pat McAfee:Yeah, we're live again. The fuck out of here. We're live, basically. That's kind of how it goes. And then he walks off. And then I guess right over there he goes, were we live for that? And Zito was like, yeah, you did great or whatever. and then Zito obviously does the shuffle out. So that guy was in here for – we paid him well, by the way. Merry Christmas to him. And thank you to him for being able to be that nimble, that quick, at home with his family potentially. He sees a DM. Do I want to go pick up a quick – yeah, I think I do actually. Let me go ahead and nail this. He crushed it. Yeah, he did.

2:12:15That's what it's all about, isn't it? That's the holiday season.

2:12:19Pat McAfee:Magical moments. It's all about. Talks at the tables here at Boston Corner and at Ty Schmidt. Ty, you can provide a magical moment for one half of the hammer. Done. Cowboys, AP Tone. Dressed up in a full Grinch onesie today. Yeah, it looks awesome. Incredible. I'll tell you what, wearing white sweats is an aggressive move. I would never be able to. The green was sold out. But I'm just saying, I understand. So you have the same thought I had as well. Yeah, that's it. I think you look good. Thank you. I walked in here this morning. I saw you wearing the all white. I was like, oh, he's wearing a costume.

2:12:47Pat McAfee:I didn't know what it was. And then I saw you kind of move a couple different times. I'm like, oh, a Grinch fit here. You really outfitted everybody here today. Thank you. I believe they say you threw a fit. Now, granted, AJ shows up with Christmas vacation right there on his chest, so we're very thankful. I wore green today, as you see. As did Ty. Ty tried to mix in a little bit. You, what do you want with throwback? Christmas sweater. Got it. Yeah, I assumed we were doing Christmas sweaters. Bad assumption. I did have a different one that might have color, might have worked a little better. but I just figured why would I abide by some stupid color?

2:13:25Pat McAfee:Hey, big game last night for the Bees. I saw two massive scraps and tilts to start that entire thing with Montreal. I love everything about that. Yeah, the bad boy Bees are back. Unfortunately, they lost 6-2. This is three seconds into the game. Three seconds into the game. I don't know what happened, who did what. Are we trying to build the rivalry back? Let's fight. Yeah, Bruins-Canadians is probably the oldest American-Canadian team rivalry. A lot of people obviously have the Battle of Alberta or whatever the fuck it's called up there in Canada. But Bruins, Canadians, both original six teams, huge rivalry.

2:13:58And it is back. This Bruins team, not supposed to be that good. They've kind of become bullies again, which is incredible. And then the Canadians, very good teams. They threw down right away. And these aren't the big boys. The big boys came later. The big boys put on their big boy pants.

2:14:14Pat McAfee:This is seven minutes later. The big boys said, you know what? Center ice. I'll see you there. ding, ding, ding, and they get after it. Yeah, Zadorov and X-E-A-H-U Chakai. There it is. Jay, not even. Jay, they battled. Yeah, look at that. 6-4, 2-40, 6-7, 2-55. Just throwing mitts, man. I mean, that's what it's all about. Just chucking knucks. If you ask me, hey, what do you want for Christmas? It's me and my brother underneath the tree doing that shit, which is still the plan for tomorrow. Okay, well, I hope you win. I hope you're the... I won't. I'm the younger brother. I don't know who won that because obviously Zdorov ends up on top, but Z...

2:14:54Pat McAfee:Yeah. X-E-J-A-A-A-A-A-A. You can call him Wi-Fi. What? That's what the boys call him. Boom. Okay, Wi-Fi got some in there. I mean, he was Bluetooth connected on the password. Yeah, he certainly was. So I'm proud of the boys getting after it. I like good scrap. This is something that hockey has that no other sport, especially in 2025, has where it's like, yeah, fights are good for the game. They're good for the environment. They're good for momentum. them they're good for a team they're good to set a tone they're also good to send a message from one team to the other what they're about like they respect fighting and also the refs have feel for game like the refs have feel for game there is makeup calls in hockey and they just kind of like naturally understand that there's some things in the hockey culture that are far superior than every other sport yeah i believe that second one and also the first one because right off the tip it is one of those things like hey give me the honor of this fight you know uh rupper has been on here, a friend of the program, Mike Rupp, Stanley Cup champion, about how Zidane Ochara, legend for the Boston Bruins, 6 '9", beast, basically would ask him, like, please, give me this fight.

2:15:54Do me the honor of this fight. And both of those felt like that. One to start, and the other like, okay, our smaller guys won at the beginning. We are the big and fortunate. No one wants to fight us on both teams. Let's throw down a setter.

2:16:07Pat McAfee:Let's go ahead and let people know that this is a robbery. Yes. Yeah, let's go ahead and let people know what this is about. I enjoy that from hockey. And hockey season's going to be electrifying. Don't look now. Sidney Crosby scoring more than everybody else. Pens are about to win the fucking Stanley Cup. I know we lost yesterday, but the Pens are about to win the Stanley Cup. Stu Skinner? Oh, yeah. There's like two, three different times where our defense was seemingly non-existent and there was just breakaway after breakaway after breakaway in the middle of games, which shouldn't be happening at the rate in which it was happening.

2:16:36Pat McAfee:So I'm stacked the pads a couple times. Butterfly style? No, complete opposite. He was actually just laying on his side like the fucking nutcracker. Laying tall. Yeah, laying tall. He was laying tall and playing big out there. It was good to see Stu kind of get used to his game a little bit. Seemingly every time he's in that, there is a lot of goals, but I see him make some saves. Oh, yeah. I see him make some saves. Got to get that figured out. How many more games in a hockey season, Nick? How far into the hockey season are we right now? Feels like we still got some good time to go. That's a good question.

2:17:06I think there's quite a few to go. 38, 39, maybe 35. Have to see. Yeah, we got it right. The most I'm seeing right now games played is 38, so we got at least 44 more to go.

2:17:20Pat McAfee:Perfect timing. We got some time still. Yeah. We got some time still. How's Detroit doing? You guys still a hockey team or no? If you look at the top of this list right here, Pat, the Red Wings are in second. They're in first in their division. They're on absolute fire right now. And just the other day they sent me this cool jacket and a cool box of all sorts of goodies because they're a first-class organization. I think the pen said yours is on the way. Okay. They ain't calling that cool in Boston. They're calling it something else, Fox. What are they calling it? You don't want to know. They're saying it's red, I think is what they're saying, how red it is.

2:17:50Pat McAfee:That is a great jacket, though, and I appreciate that they sent that alongside some videos reliving the glory days of Detroit. It was black and white. 100 years of hockey town. Yeah, the box had its LED screen on it with all these throwback videos of them winning so many Stanley Cups because it's hockey town there, and they're all the way back. They won last night. They beat Gumpy's stupid Dallas Stars in overtime. It was awesome. Glenn Galutian. Okay, so riddle me this because I know you were talking about Stevie Y coming back to Detroit and creating a winner. Is that now coming to fruition in Detroit?

2:18:21I sure hope so because there are a lot of – Is it still his team though? Yes, it's still his team, and there are a lot of fans in Detroit that are fed up with it. I'm not because Stevie Y could do no wrong.

2:18:30Pat McAfee:I'm not because they sent me this jacket in a box two days ago. That certainly helps. And growing up, hockey was like the coolest sport of all time when he grew up in Michigan because of Stevie, Y, and all the boys. So, yeah, we're looking good. Yeah, but you can't skate. That's the thing about Foxy. No, he can't skate. He's a bender. He actually one time did post this video. Look at me skating, guys. It's so cool. I mean, his fucking ankles are sideways. It is classic. Like, okay, that's a guy who doesn't know fucking shit about hockey right there. You grow up in Michigan where it actually gets cold, not like Indiana, not like Pittsburgh, where all the lakes and all the ponds are frozen.

2:19:07Pat McAfee:Well, I was skating on three rivers growing up, brother. Okay, you don't know what it's like to work and then hop over a dead body. You guys could never do that. You know this entire all-star skills challenge that they're doing for McJesus, his workouts? That's what we're doing off the bottom of bodies whenever we were skating on the river growing up. Just take a look at all the NHLers from the state of Michigan right now currently playing. Okay, that's because we're playing on ponds. We're playing on lakes all the time growing up. Yeah, you got no dangles. Speed, dangles, you name it. Physicality, I'll admit, I might need a goon on my side, so I'm not going to do a lot of physicality.

2:19:48But I'll do everything else for the team.

2:19:50Pat McAfee:Did you actually grow up playing pond hockey? Yeah, I played pond hockey. I actually played hockey until I basically had to choose basketball or hockey, and I chose basketball. So on that note, we play a lot of deck hockey, ball hockey in Pittsburgh. We did roller hockey in the summers. I can't skate for shit. I can't skate. I had$5 Friday night free skates. So awesome. Gold Mile Highway. So good. Ended up in a hospital a couple times. Not because of me. Chris Warman got sliced up. Sure. It's expensive. It's a very tough game to get into. It's the best. Yeah. Hockey's. That is by far, growing up, people would go sledding.

2:20:25Pond hockey is the greatest. It's awesome. Leave in the morning, come back at night.

2:20:28Pat McAfee:See, I've never experienced the pond hockey day. Is it like an après skate tour? Are we having beers up there? The whole time. Bingo. Yeah. Oh, the whole time? Oh, yeah. It's fantastic. You go at like 10, and you're probably leaving at like 4 or 5. Oh, it's perfect. And you're newt. Oh, so it's a day drinking? Yeah. And you're fucking newt. You are fucking sent my life. Is there any frozen ice fishing happening around? Anybody get digging any holes in this thing on the sides? Or is this just strictly hockey operation? Probably Michigan because that's some dumb shit to do while everyone's playing pond hockey.

2:21:00Pat McAfee:But I'm not sure. We've been ice fishing in Minnesota. Yeah, fun, right? Worst thing ever. Oh. It is. I grew up ice fishing. It sucks ass. It's the worst. Why can't you catch big fish? Why is it only those tiny four-inch fish that fall about those baby holes? How big of a hole are you going to do? I guess it is the size of the hole depending upon the size of the fish that you're going to do. I don't know if it's not, though. Even if I say I drill a little hole and I drop some bait down there, if a big old monster comes in, then I need to expand that hole to pull him out of there. Is there something about hibernation for the big ones and then the little ones still swimming wherever it's frozen.

2:21:36I always thought you could still catch big ones in the ice fishing. Well, I did. I just never see it. Oh, you did. Yeah. Man, you saw that thing I pulled up. They're still talking about it today. Oh, yeah. All the trophy fishes are warm water. Yeah, because soft fish. Ain't no marlins up in some lake.

2:21:52Pat McAfee:What did I pull out of? A tuna. A what? Guppy. Yeah. No. I think it was. I think the fucking guy who ran the thing we were in went to Walmart Bart beforehand and just grabbed a bunch of them and dumped them down the hole and said, ah, these guys will catch up within the next two hours. We'll be good. I almost didn't. I know, I know. The shot clock was running very low. It was the last cast, if you do recall. It was the last cast. I'm getting out of here. Fucking A. I don't think I'll do that ever again. No, no, never. It sucks. Yeah, it was not good. I've never done the ski life, really. Skiing is also incredible.

2:22:27Those are the two things I feel like in the Northeast, it is very prevalent growing up, at least.

2:22:31Pat McAfee:I heard it's good for families, too. Like my daughter, something to do. Like it is a wintertime skiing thing. Boyce Park, I guess there were people that snowboarded and skied and stuff. I didn't really get into it much. I worked there. I did the tubing. Were you a snowboard god over there? Yeah. Is that what you were checking passes? Totally. It was the best gig. You worked half hour at the bottom of the slope, half hour at the top, making sure people didn't fall off and get on, stuff like that. And then you had an hour off where you could snowboard and ski. So it was the best job for a high school kid.

2:23:00Pat McAfee:And then you're down at the lodge acting like you're running the show. Yeah, free churros. Hey, slow down. Every time I went there, everybody that worked there from Plum, Penn Hills, Monroeville, it was at East Hills, Pittsburgh, basically Haven, which we all know more about that part of town now. So we understand what that was like. There was a lot of, you know, alternations that took place at this particular. Everybody that had the badge that they worked there really felt like they were walking around like snow gods. And I assume you did utilize that position of power as well. Yeah. Good food in the lodge, if I do recall.

2:23:29Something about eating and drinking while skiing. Like, the food's better. The drink's better. What about tomorrow?

2:23:37Pat McAfee:What's the big one for Christmas? Christmas Eve or Christmas? Ham? Stuffing, right? That's the big... Is everybody doing that? The seven fishes tonight for the Italians, I believe, you guys have going on? Seven fishes are tonight. Normally start off with a shrimp scampi, something like that, and then move through the night. It's a delightful... Scampi. Shrimp scampi. I guess that is one of the fishes, huh? We count it as one. Are you guys going to be eating what I pull out of there? Guppy? You guys have any guppy courses? Fried guppy? Probably not. That's probably the final one, right? The seventh one?

2:24:08Pat McAfee:I don't know. I have to check in with Coach Sealy's. What fishes are there? Swordfish, salmon? Swordfish, salmon. Nick, what are the fish? Tilapia. Lobster mac. Oh, that counts as well? Calamari. Oh, my God. Calamari. He's hard fishes, man. Yeah, it sounds like you guys are eating American fish. Standard fish universe. Caesar dressing counts because it's got anchovies. No, I asked for no anchovies. I wouldn't count that. I didn't know we're doing mac and cheese counts with the lobster mac in there. I guess that makes sense because that is a fish technically. Is it? Any seven things you can pull out of water basically.

2:24:44Oh, I like that. You eating dead bodies? Good.

2:24:49Pat McAfee:Seven fishies and also that fucking rat. Let's do some picks. Shall we? AJ, there was a mistake on last week's scoring. you and I actually ended up tying. Oh. We ended up tying. Did we? Yes. Hey, whoa. Whoa. I don't like the way you talked about that. Okay? I don't like the way that kind of went down. And to be clear, I found it to be a little sketchy as well to find that out a few days later. But on that note, New York ruled in. And we had a tie last week. So 6-8-2 is my current record against you. We got two weeks left. So guess what, H? This could be 8-8-2, and we go into the offseason knowing that you and I saw it the same exact way.

2:25:32Pat McAfee:And that's what good teammates are all about. Let's get to the picks tomorrow. Dallas at Washington. Dallas favored by 7. Who do you like? How do you like it? AJ was 66 % of the bets on the Cowboys. Man, this is tough. I picked Dallas last week and got rocked on that pick. But you know what? I'm sticking with them. Give me Dallas minus 7. I'll take the Dallas Cowboys as well. Detroit Lions favored by 7.5. Traveling into school country. Wemby won't be there, but there'll be a great clap. Just saw that the Vikings have shut down Christian Derusaw, starting left tackle who's paid a bunch of money.

2:26:03He's done for the year.

2:26:04Pat McAfee:Okay, we don't want to hurt him going into the offseason. We know what it is. And Max Brosmer. Okay. He's playing. Take a look at his numbers. I thought they shut him down. No, no, no, no, no. Save him for the offseason. He has to be shut down. His numbers were very good in their win last week. What were they? Against the Giants. I think they had like 7 of 9 for 63, something like that. Kevin O 'Connell can do whatever he wants with the quarterback position. AJ, 7.5 for Detroit. I mean, Detroit needs to win this game, obviously. Give me Detroit here, minus 7.5. Feels like a lot of points, but give me Detroit.

2:26:36Pat McAfee:I'll do the same in Denver, 13.5 against Kansas City. We all like Denver. The team's leaving the state. And Chris Aludacune is the Chiefs quarterback. Who? Chris Aludacune, he was a Steelers' seventh-round pick out of South Dakota State. Two-time Super Bowl champion. Aludacune? O-L-A-D-U-K-U-N, I believe. Oos? Not sure. Oh, I don't know. I don't know. Not sure if he is an oos, but one of the things from this week people were going nuts about with Kansas City was they didn't do an injury report because they just didn't do practice that day. They just skipped it. Andy Reid. Thank God. Nothing matters now, right?

2:27:11Pat McAfee:We just lost our Titans. I'm meeting the family afterwards. I never met them. Three of the teams playing on Christmas Day will be down to our third string quarterback. The Commanders will play Josh Johnson. The Vikings will play Brosmer. and the Chiefs will play Chris Oladokun. Okay, sounds good. So Denver, minus 13.5, H. Yep, give me Denver right there on that one. Okay, we're all seeing it the same way. Houston, Chargers. Chargers favored by 2.5 at home, over under 39.5. Almost 60 % of the bets are on Houston, just at 57%. Anything else we need to know about this game? This feels big. Yeah, very cool stat was that C.J.

2:27:45Stroud's only had, what, a four-game win streak two or three times in his life in both times was ended by a Jim Harbaugh coach team.

2:27:52Pat McAfee:And that was Ohio State heading to Michigan. AJ, Houston or the Chargers, two and a half to spread? I think this is the time that C.J. Stroud breaks that whole curse on that. So give me the Houston Texans. I'll ride with you. Baltimore, Green Bay, Baltimore getting three against the Packers who are receiving 63 % of the bets. 8 p.m. Eastern on Peacock. Go ahead. Lamar, no practice today. Yeah. So he's probably not going to play. That's his thing. Yeah, but that's his thing when they play on Sundays. Yeah. Lamar Jackson, back contusion, was the only Ravens player missing in Wednesday's practice.

2:28:27Pat McAfee:Ravens have their final on-field workout tomorrow. Time is running out for a return, says Jonas Schaefer. Jonas Schaefer's talking about the urgency here. There's a lot of urgency for both parties here. And this game's on Peacock. People are going to be pumped about that. Baltimore getting three. AJ, who do you like? How do you like it? Who's playing quarterback for Green Bay? Do we know? They were both limited in practice. again, like these, the concussion things, guys haven't been able to come back a week later, so I don't know if Love's going to be able to, and then Malik Willis was banged up, and he basically said, like, hey, if it comes down to it, I will be ready to play on Saturday night.

2:29:03AJ? Okay, well, maybe put a guardian cap on Jordan Love, but give me Green Bay here, minus three. He took a massive shot. Yeah, big time.

2:29:09Pat McAfee:I mean, that was a old-school CTE era of football shot, right to the face, and then landed on him, too. and I appreciate he, you know, he's a dog it feels like by all sense. So maybe he is able to get through the protocol quicker than most in this particular year. I'll take the Packers as well. We're seeing it the same age. Maybe this is the one where we go absolutely perfect. Let's go Seahawks, Panthers, J.J. Watt on the call. Seahawks favored by seven in Carolina. Huge game for the playoffs here. Yeah, it is. Minus seven does feel like a lot for the Seahawks on the road. Give me the Carolina Panthers here.

2:29:42Pat McAfee:Most games as an underdog this season, the Titans have had 15. The Giants have had 14. The Jets have had 13. The Panthers also 13. Panthers plus seven at Seahawks here, says Hembo. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays to Hembo. We appreciate everything he's done for us this year. And also the Quizmas questions yesterday. You like the Seahawks? I like the Panthers here. Plus seven. Me too. Steelers favored by three against the Cleveland Browns going into Cleveland. Game obviously might mean nothing, depending upon what happens in the Ravens-Packers game. Steelers favored by three with 75 % of the bets in Cleveland.

2:30:22Pat McAfee:Steelers have voted well in Cleveland. Miles Garrett could get the record, though, against Pittsburgh Steelers, which would be obviously gigantic. Anything else that we're missing? No, nothing at all except for T.J. Watt back at practice. I assume he's still not going to play, but he is back at practice. A certain outside linebacker has resumed practicing for the Steelers, says, Joe Rudder from the Trib. Now, he's not paying your$11 to get the blue checkmark, okay, Elon? I'm a fucking journalist. I can't be bought. So shout out to Joe Rudder doing that and for his dedication to the city working for the Trib Dyer.

2:30:53Pat McAfee:Oh, and DK's out. Metcalf. Yeah, not just this week, the next one. And out of guarantees as well. But the Steelers have said they are going to honor that move forward. Yeah, they said that. We'll see how it all goes. We hope the best for everybody. Because he drops a pass round one. He won't. H? Give me Steelers on the road here. Me as well. Cardinals taking on the Bengals. Joey Burrow, fresh off an ass-beating of the Miami Dolphins. He looked very good, and he said, this is what it's about. When I'm rehabbing and not playing football, I'm miserable. When I'm playing football and it's going well, I'm happy.

2:31:29Pat McAfee:He basically addressed the entire I'm happy, I'm not happy situation about his future. Bengals played their best ball last week. Do you think that continues here with the Cardinals traveling in? Yeah, I don't know who the ruler of the jungle is, and Cincinnati, but I'm going to take the Bengals either way. Yep, me as well. We're all, hey, this might be the week, you and me, H. Here we go. Can't wait. Undefeated. Patriots, Jets. Patriots getting 81 % of the bets against the Jets. What is the normal outcome between Patriots and Jets late in the season? We just piss on their face and kind of celebrate, except for last year.

2:31:59Pat McAfee:I'll take the Patriots. AJ? Patriots, Patriots for me as well. Buccaneers, Dolphins. This one feels too easy. Give me the Dolphins plus five and a half down there in Miami. Are you taking the Dolphins or taking the Bucs? You said this one feels too easy. I thought you were going Bucs, so I'm taking Bucs here. That's what I did mean, which immediately made me go, all right, I guess I'll go the other way here. Five and a half doesn't feel like enough for the Bucs. So this one smells to me. A bit stinky. This one's a little bit stinky to me. I did see a stat. I can't remember who it was from, but in situations like this where the one team has to win or whatever to improve their playoffs or get into playoffs, there's a team that has nothing to play for.

2:32:36The team that has nothing to play for is actually covered 60 % of the time.

2:32:39Pat McAfee:I'll take the Dolphins plus five and a half. Quinn, yours? Hey, this guy can leave the train station later and get there at the same time. That's right. I saw the tweet last night. I saw the tweet last night. Jacksonville Jaguars traveling into a hostile. Yeah. Lucas Oil Stadium. Fresh off a master class by Phil Rivers. Yeah. Now, defense can't get a stop. Plus 3 ,000 odds right now to make the playoffs, the Indianapolis Colts. Pretty good. A lot of things have to happen. One of them is beat the Jacksonville Jaguars, who are hotter than they've ever been coming in to Lucas Oil. And also motivated because I don't want to say that they're saying that we are talking shit about them, but they're basically saying everybody's seemingly talking shit about them.

2:33:23Pat McAfee:And they can certainly utilize clips from our particular program to signify that. So maybe we're not good that I am a Colts fan. And maybe these teams are using a lot of motivation from what I'm saying. I haven't even really thought. It'd be very narcissistic of me to think that I matter that much. but in the current world that we're in right now with bulletin board material and us being considered national media the things that I say hyping up Colts teams during weeks of games I think if their coach was to be somebody that pulls clips from national media and shows teams we could have potentially been motivating some teams I think there's a chance that maybe we're part of the problem so I like to say this it's Jacksonville Jaguars seems a really good team God they're so good Trevor Lawrence is flying around looks like a goddamn stallion out there Huge market.

2:34:07Pat McAfee:Liam Cohn has lost so much weight. Oh, my God. He knows that it was always wrong. It was always supposed to be. Oh. Shad Khan, this guy, not only best mustache in history, guy created bumpers, saves all our lives. Thank you to him. But also, he's a visionary. I mean, he has been seeing this for a long time, and they've been talking about it for a long time. Yeah, exactly. I mean, he looked at this, and this is what they envisioned in January. Okay? We're going to do it in September and October and November, and now we're doing it in December. We're going to do it in January. Probably even February.

2:34:41What? February? And then after February? You know what's after February? What's that? This is going to last forever!

2:34:50Pat McAfee:There's a chance. We're mocking a little bit there in September and October. Had to. But boy, with what they're playing and how they're playing right now, this Jaguars team is actually unbelievable. A real buzzsaw. I don't think a lot of people want to play him in playoffs. But on that note, I'll take the Colts plus six and a half, of course. Age, who do you like? How do you like it? Yeah, I mean, on that note, especially hearing you know, reminiscing over what Sean Conn, how he rallies the troops, I will take the Jacksonville Jaguars. In the lot has? Yeah, I am. Sorry. I think Phil, you know what?

2:35:26I think Phil continues to roll. I love what he's doing, but this Jaguars team is really putting together at the right time.

2:35:31Pat McAfee:What the fuck happened to our defense? I mean, we literally scored You took a couple of risks and all of them fucking ate shit is really what happened, unfortunately. But, hey, look, got good young pieces still. Just need to figure out that quarterback position. Maybe a couple other pieces on defense. Maybe a couple other pieces on offense and you're there. Next year's your year. We got some tradable parts. Oh, yeah. We're out of picks for a long time. Long time. We're out of picks for a long time. We don't really have a lot of assets, and we've paid everybody, basically. But we got opportunity for other teams to potentially get really good players in their prime to give us an opportunity to potentially build for a future if that's what we're trying to do, or we lack our guys.

2:36:15Pat McAfee:There's a chance we try to get healthy for next year. Yeah, I think you guys lack your guys. You've always lacked your guys, and I think that's one of the things that a lot of Colts fans have issues with. I'm sick and fucking tired of hearing we lack our guys and then not making the playoffs. Yeah, what about that guy? Plus 3 ,000 real quick. Still got a chip in a chair. Phil Rivers knows that. He's going to go get it. I can't believe you're taking the Jags minus 6.5 in the lot house. I thought you knew a ball of age. Well, you do got to think. They just went into Denver, which is pretty hostile, and they won 41-17 and just kind of beat the shit out of one of the best teams in the NFL.

2:36:50And Phil Rivers is like, hey, I'm throwing it here to the defense.

2:36:54Pat McAfee:No, no, no. D Winters said he just knew what he was doing because he called Orlando earlier. and we talked ad nauseum at the beginning of the show how it feels like they've turned Phillip Rivers' microphone up louder than every other quarterback in the NFL, maybe in the history of quarterbacks, because they know how funny he is. It's like, well, actually, you're giving away our entire fucking thing, that whole world. AQ walks in the building and goes, I know all of Phil Rivers' checks. And it's like, okay, that's good. He's been in the building 13 days. Now he's got to redo all of his checks. Okay, I'm sure that'll help out.

2:37:23Pat McAfee:I'm sure everything's good. Age, I don't like what they're doing to us. That's why Backs against the wall. Chip in a chair. Still a chance to make the playoffs. See, here's me adding bulletin board material. Exactly. A very good Jacksonville Jaguars team. Loses to the Colts this week. What? Wow. Yeah. Do I know really anybody on the roster? No. Phil Rivers. I know him, yeah. I'm a fan of him. Boom. I don't know. Do we know him, really? I mean, we know him well enough to – I don't think we have a relationship with anybody on the team at this point. Do we? Tyree. Oh, no, that's Pacers. Yeah, exactly.

2:38:05Pat McAfee:He doesn't like the Colts anymore. Exactly. Daniel Jones we had a relationship with. He reached out, fan of the program, which we're appreciative of. Yeah, uh-oh, Chris Ballard. He's the only one that we do, and it feels like maybe because of that, his days might be – No, no, we are not the curse of the Colts. Maybe, I don't know. I do see a lot of people potentially giving us credit for potentially forecasting everything that's kind of happening here. But on that note, I would like it to be known. I'm still a believer. Pittman. Yeah, we kind of know Pittman. When you see him, you said what's up.

2:38:38So. Yeah. That counts. Super Bowl that one time.

2:38:42Pat McAfee:Yeah, we know these guys. Hey, Liam, we know more people on your team than we know on Colts' team. So we would like to not be used as motivation against Indianapolis Colts. we would like this to not be run to the Jacksonville Jaguars team. They won't. Kalen. Ownership. Bingo. Pete. Yes, Pete. Frog T. Yep. Training room. Yeah. We're still in there. Conti. Stinking. Conti. Chris. Stinking. We don't really know Shite. His name's Shane. Okay, you don't know Shite. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you don't know. Alright, let's get to the next one here. Saints, Titans. Oh, um. Shuck. Give me Shuck. I'll take the Saints.

2:39:23Give me Cam Ward and the Titans on this one. Wow. I think they found something. I think they may have found a little something.

2:39:30Pat McAfee:I like the juice that they had. I like the energy that they have. I like the vibes that they have. Huge win over the Chiefs. I think the Saints might have found something, too. Giants, Raiders. Raiders favored by one and a half? I don't think so. Give me the Giants. It's a good game. Who's playing quarterback for the Giants? Who cares? Darn if they let him. I want Russ. I want Russ in there. Maybe Jamelle. Or Jamelle. Or all three. Yeah, at the same time. The investment package. Yeah, so who do you like? I like the Giants. This is for a number one pick? Yeah, loser gets a number one pick. No meaningless game could mean more.

2:40:03Pat McAfee:Than what we have this weekend. It should be something that's football. It should be something that's football. Bruce, how do you feel about the game? Because I heard Coach McCarthy talking to the Giants. If you've got four ones, you can win a Super Bowl. And if you've got a young quarterback in the middle of his development, We would like him to be healthy in the offseason. Really felt like he was talking to the Giants there. And obviously, Giants fan Bruce is like, hey, McCarthy to the Giants really starting to kind of scratch where I hit right here in it all. What are your thoughts on Dart playing or not playing as a Giants fan?

2:40:33Yeah, there was some chatter about shutting him down, but it was kind of alongside the Joe Burrow chatter where it's like, hey, he's better. He's got to go out there and play. So they are playing him, but in our play calling, being very protective. He had six pass attempts in the first three quarters of the game against the Vikings, and we ran the ball 35, 40 times. So while he is playing, it is clear no design runs, and we're not dropping back to pass much, especially if they're coming zero blitz like Brian Flores was. With all that said, no Brock Bowers kind of handicaps them on their side as well.

2:41:04So it should be an absolute dogfight. Both defenses trying and playing well, and both coaches offensively probably working with what they got and maybe playing a little scared on the Giants side.

2:41:14Pat McAfee:AJ, who do you like? I like the Giants here. Me too. Eagles, Beals. Beals favored by one and a half at home. This is, we're talking home field advantage conversation for Buffalo or either of these? Yeah, Buffalo's still in it. Buffalo, they're a game back, but they could still win the AFC. Technically could be a home field advantage, so they have a lot to play for. Philadelphia Eagles already win the division. They have a home playoff game. Can they move up the standings in the NFC much? They could, but no. A lot needs to happen, but it's not that bad. And the Bears have the head-to-head tiebreaker against them because they beat them.

2:41:49So Eagles not much here.

2:41:51Pat McAfee:Bills a lot. Yeah. Bills a lot. Limited participation for Josh Allen and Bills walkthrough on Wednesday. New addition not participating is tight end Dawson Knox with a knee. Walkthrough, limited. What's that mean? That he didn't walk through all the plays? What's a walkthrough limited mean? I think it means if they would have a normal practice, he would have been limited in a normal. Oh, yeah. We were told that they have to project if it was a full day what it would have been. Is this G-Day? Christmas Eve? Late in the season? Maybe. Or is this actual issue we shall see at this moment? Who are you taking?

2:42:26Pat McAfee:How are you taking it, AJ? I'm taking the Buffalo Bills at home at minus one and a half. Me as well. And then Bears, Niners, Sunday night football. Niners favored by three at school football team. Oh, yeah. I just watched them live at school football team. You know, on the flip side, Chicago Bears. That's a good tough football team. This is a great Sunday night football game. We're pumped and excited about it. AJ, who do you like? How do you like it? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if George Kittle is going to play how he is doing, but either way, I am taking the 49ers on this one. Me as well. I will take the Niners favored by three.

2:42:57Pat McAfee:And remember, the Niners can still get the number one seed in the NFC if they win out. So there's a lot to play. Not that the Bears don't have a lot to play for, but the Niners can literally have a home game all the way to Super Bowl and through Super Bowl if they win out. So a lot on the line for Brock Purdy, who is dealing. on Monday night, fresh off of five touchdowns. Man, he brought – well, I know Brut was B.A. saying, doing a little like how his ball kind of – those are two or three ball, as you hear these guys talk about on TV. But, yeah, his anticipation is what sets him apart. I think he's awesome.

2:43:28Yeah, and that thing is – Deadly accurate. He's playing Battleship.

2:43:35Pat McAfee:You know when you sit on – you know the game Battleship where you're saying like C7 or whatever? That is literally what he's doing. but he's launching it over the thing. You can't see where it is, and it's just hitting exactly where he needs it to go. It is. You're watching a master at work whenever you're watching him live. And now, granted, was that the Colts' defense? No. Partially. They didn't fucking punt Thomas Morstead's last Monday Night Football game. Yeah. Potentially last Monday Night Football game. Kind of messed up. Zero punts. His whole family was in town. Everybody was in town. It was a good game for him.

2:44:09Pat McAfee:Is Brock a bad teammate? He held a lot of perfect extra points Perfect And that fucking guy almost hit from 64 Ed Pinheiro I didn't know he could do that I saw Ed walk out on the field He can actually It was a 64 yarder And I was like There's no way this fucking Let's get a returner back Let's go ahead and try to steal one here Eddie Pinheiro's gonna hit from 64 The record was 63 just like 10 years ago Eddie Pinheiro not known for a big leg Obviously incredibly accurate He lines up from 64 This guy almost makes it it's an inch away from going through it. So close. We didn't have a returner back there.

2:44:46Pat McAfee:Okay. That's not like their guys. Let's get to a break. Shut up. It's not how we're going to Christmas. Okay. They knew Eddie had it. They knew Eddie had it. And I'm impressed by it. That was a great kick. Just like groupie hitting from 60. Incredible. In Seattle, it's like, yo, I did not know that was possible. I made eye contact with him. I was like, 60? And he gave me one of these. I was like, this little guy's got Moxie. Kickoff, he fucking full send body in air. I saw that actually. You see a little body floating through. And he fucking got tossed around and then he fucking got up and then jogged off to the side.

2:45:21Pat McAfee:This guy runs sprints too to keep warm on his side. And you just watch him. It's like, I fucking love this guy's Moxie. I really do. Because he's doing more than most kickers. But also, it is very obvious that he's the smallest guy on the football. Maybe in the history of football. He might be the smallest guy to ever be on an NFL football. field like for real you see him out there and it's like holy fuck this guy small and he murders the ball i have no idea how he's he's he's a marvel blake groupie is a marvel in my eyes and we're lucky we have him and hopefully he'll be around for the long haul but boy what does it look like for the long haul what does life look like for the long haul we have no idea all we have is this moment and today we have no idea what tomorrow's gonna bring so let's try to enjoy it all it's holidays obviously christmas christmas eve let's go ahead and have great conversations go ahead and be thankful for what we have let's go and bury some maybe the hatchet with some people oh yeah sure and on that note let's cut off some anchors new year new you right around the corner somebody sucks go ahead and get them out of your life don't feel bad you gotta look in the mirror every single day and say is this life worth living it should be because it's a beautiful thing to be alive in general merry christmas to you all we can't thank you enough for allowing us to do this for a living aj great work thank you great work boys merry christmas everybody merry christmas Shout out to Sam Fiddleport.

2:46:40That's right. Yeah, great job. Great job.

2:46:43Pat McAfee:All right. We love you all. Thank you all. Merry Christmas. Enjoy your families. Enjoy ball. And we'll see you on Monday. Be a friend. So good. So good. So good. Everything you want for summer is at Nordstrom Rack stores now. And up to 60 % off. Stock up and save on the brands you love like Vince, Sam Edelman, Frame, and Free People. Join the Nordiclub to unlock exclusive discounts. shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. Tell a friend something nice might change your life. We're in this thing together.

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