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20:52Nobody's going to sit there and defend and go, all right, a player who repeatedly, you have three horse collars in a year or three hip drops like it was with Frankie Louvoo, well, you should be able to get off scot-free. No, it's all right. Those guys need to be punished. What the NFLPA wanted was, we got to relieve the financial burden on all the other players because the vast majority of fines that are handed out to players for player safety categories were one-time offenders. Most guys, it's a one-time thing, but you might be losing 10 grand, 20 grand, depending on what the foul is. If this had been in place in recent years, it would have been an average of about$1.7 million back to players.

21:30Just because all these guys who had a single foul, you get either 50 % of your money back, because it's one of those five major categories, or if it's some of those other ones like roughing the passer, use a helmet that are a little bit harder to control because they're football plays, those ones you would get 100 % of your money back if you're a one-time offender. So it makes sense in that regard. The other piece of this too, yes, there's the coach accountability. That's a big thing. The union wanted that. Like, hey, if a guy's got a bad technique, who's teaching the technique? Why is he not making that play better?

22:02Let's bring the coach and the coordinator in so they can be educated on like, what can we do to try to keep this guy from getting suspended? But the other piece of it that I think is important here is if you were previously in repeat offender category, you had to go two full years, 34 games, without an infraction, without a fine to exit repeat offender territory. Now, if you have just a hypothetical, all right, let's say you have two points, right? In the three-point system, You have two horse collar tackles in a year. At the end of the season, if you don't get a third, you drop back to one entering the following season.

22:36Even somebody who gets suspended for it, if they don't have another one the rest of the year, they enter the following season with two. If they get through that season, they go back down to zero and they're completely out of the program. So if you adjust your behavior, if you have better technique, if you're not putting your fellow players in danger, you have the opportunity to not be one bad hit away from a suspension forever. We'll see. It's on a one-year trial basis. The NFLPA wants to make sure that the NFL is not going to now take this as license to like start finding more guys and then suspending them.

23:03And you got to rash the suspensions. And the NFL is going to want to see like, all right, this is a one-time coupon you can use. If we start seeing a huge uptick in these illegal follow-ups, you guys are like, hey, I can get away with it once. Then they're going to have some things to say about it. But the full intention is this is going to be a long-term thing. It's also a common sense solution where both sides wanted something that probably, even though it doesn't impact the collective bargaining negotiations that are coming up in the following years, it at least shows like, hey, when everybody looks at this and goes, the system doesn't really make a lot of sense, let's make a deal.

23:33At least show the sides could get together and get something done that everybody seems to be happy with. Yeah, part of me, you know, my initial instinct was that, okay, like everything else in the NFL, this is a bit unnecessarily complicated. it. But as Tom explained it there, as he went, went through it, I'm like, okay, that actually does make sense. Cause what's always the complaint from players. It's like, we're moving at full speed. It was a one-time thing. And then the announcers are going, you try to change how you're tackling that guy when you're trying to bring, bring down Derek Henry in the open field.

24:03So now that it's like, all right, it's a one-time thing. We understand football. It's hard to control all those things. Um, every single snap you play in a given season. And to Tom's point, you can still appeal it. So if you feel like it was unfair, you can still win that appeal and they can look at it. It's not just one official on the field determining whether you get that strike or not. So that makes a lot of sense to me. And then the repeat offenders, I mean, most players would be for that, where it's like, this guy is crazy out there. You know, this guy, like, like Tom said, it only applies to maybe a couple of guys over the last couple of years, but they're looking at that, especially offensive players.

24:37You're looking at Aziz Alshair and they're probably like, yeah, that guy, you need to do something about the way that guy plays because it's putting my livelihood and my career at risk. So I think it makes sense, Billy. Where do you come down on this now that you've done all the research on Tom's reporting?

24:52Sheil Kapadia:I mean, I'm very happy and glad that Tom broke this news. I'm sorry that I didn't appropriately credit you for the news breaking. I think that to his point, like it does open up a path for potential, you know, gaming the system saying like, I can get one of these in here and there won't be too many consequences. I did also, as I told you, I was kind of confused by the situation. We start with a clean slate. Money can be given back. You might get some of this. You might get some of that. You're now telling us that you can go from three to two if you're good at the end of the year. So it's a fun experiment.

25:25Sheil Kapadia:I mean, look, player safety has been long an issue of the NFL. We saw reports come out earlier this week that was testing players that have passed away and CTE and all that stuff. Obviously, there's things that need to be done to clean up the safety. So, you know, kudos to the NFL for trying a new approach to maybe incentivize players because I guess the fines weren't enough to not continue these dirty hits and dirty plays intentionally or not intentionally. All right, so Billy is coming out anti-charity. I don't know where Tom came out on that. I, for one, maybe I'm the only one at the Ringer NFL show.

25:55I believe giving to charity and helping these causes is important. But listen, we all don't have to agree on everything.

26:02Sheil Kapadia:She'll pledge before this episode to donate all of his earnings from today's episode to charity, which is nice. Thank you, Sheel. Correct, absolutely. All right, the human fund. All right, let's take a break. We'll come back with more of Billy's categories on the Ringer NFL Show. The Ringer NFL Show is brought to you by FanDuel. Before the football season begins, every team is undefeated. Every fan believes this could be the year, the year their team wins the division, makes the playoffs, lifts the trophy. And with FanDuel, you can bet on any of it. From who will win it all and division winners to season win totals and playoff futures, FanDuel has all the ways to bet on the season.

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27:24This episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios' The Dog Stars. Only in theaters and IMAX this Friday, visionary filmmaker Ridley Scott returns with a gripping post-apocalyptic thriller when a mysterious radio transmission shatters a lone pilot's isolated existence. He embarks on a dangerous journey in search of hope. Starring Jacob Lorty, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, Allison Janney, and Guy Pearce. The Dog Stars, only in theaters and IMAX this Friday. Get tickets now. Connecticut. All right, we are back here on the Ringer NFL show. I think we've done three. Is that correct?

28:00Sheil Kapadia:Yeah, we've done three. How do we feel about this so far? It definitely got off to a rough start. We're not going to mince words on that whatsoever. I think it's going great. I think now we're getting rolling. I think you just keep going right on down the list there, Billy. That's a new approach. And we're just going down the list. I'll give you the name of the category. It doesn't even matter anymore because I'm just going in order. But, Tom, I think you're going to like this one. All right. This one's a category called, what are we hearing? And here's how this game works. I'm going to give you the name of a player who is a free agent, and we're going to discuss what we're hearing.

28:28Sheil Kapadia:So let's start off with former Detroit Lions offensive tackle Taylor Decker. What are we hearing? It's been quiet on Taylor Decker, but there are teams with left tackle needs. The Bears, who saw him forever, are still trying to figure out their left tackle position. Obviously, Washington with losing Laramie Tunsil. Every team needs a swing tackle at minimum, but Taylor Decker's a longtime starter. He's had a lot of injury issues down the stretch last season. He got ill before the Christmas game that they lost to the Vikings, but still a guy who can function at a high level. I wouldn't be surprised at all if we see him if he chooses to play this season.

29:03But it's also a matter of, you know, what's the price point? What's the right spot? There's a bunch of veterans sitting out there right now, Billy, that I would say, you know, all of them right now, you're kind of just going, all right. If they really want to sign, they could sign. But not everybody wants to do what some of these veterans have done over the past week and just say, screw it. I'll take the minimum right now because I just want to play.

29:20Sheil Kapadia:Well, how many of the free agents are just doing the whole I want to avoid as much camp as possible? Like, I'll get back there eventually. Like, I want to play. I don't want to sit up the year. I have my options, but I'm going to take my time to not do the stuff I don't want to do. I mean, there's certainly, you know, guys who are in that category. But I think that a lot of times, I mean, listen, if you're talking about these veteran players, there's still a bunch of them. We saw, you know, Vaughn Miller came in and signed for, I think it was like five and a half million dollars. So Darius Smith came back for six million dollars.

29:48Guys like Darren Waller came back and took the minimum. Trayvon Diggs took the minimum. These are guys who were like highly paid, if not the highest paid at their position at a certain time. And so there's kind of a recalibration at some points. Stephon Diggs sat out there for a while. Keenan Allen sat out there for a while. Like sometimes there's just kind of a, all right, what do I actually want to do? Because I've made all the money. This is pennies on the dollar for what I've been making in the past. Like, do I really want to play? You know, does this offer make sense? Or do I just wait until somebody's in a bind and they got to pay me to come back?

30:20There's more of that, especially with guys who have gotten paid on a second, if not a third contract, than I think a lot of people realize here. It's not that it's all about the money, but the money is a piece of it here. And those guys were taking minimum deals just to get themselves back on the field. Najee Harris took a minimum deal from the Giants. Those are guys who were just going, you know what? The money's probably not going to get better. If I want to play, I better get in there right now and establish it. Because if I sit out for several games now and then nothing pops up, all of a sudden, I'm the guy who didn't have a job for half a season, which if you're pushing 30 or over 30, that can kind of be the end.

30:55Billy, can I hijack this and do a what are we hearing to Tom? Yeah. Now, you didn't prep Tom for any of these, right? Okay. You're just off the cuff? No, I think that's apparent right now, yes. Okay, yeah. I was going to ask you, I thought maybe if it's, you know, specific veteran-free agents like Taylor Decker, you know, we'll work on it. The prep, maybe, you know, he can make some calls. Bobby Wagner, what are we hearing? Okay, well, hold on, hold on. This one's better. This one's more interesting, Billy, because this is a, what are we hearing?

31:21Sheil Kapadia:Bad team ratio. Well, because here's what I'm doing. I'm going through all the preview stuff. All right, which teams do I think are going to be good? What are my official picks going to be? And Tom, I'm seeing a bunch of teams that I like where I'm like, man, if they had an edge rusher like Max Crosby, I might pick this team to go to the Super Bowl. And I was just thinking how weird the whole Max Crosby thing was. He gets traded, he comes back. They're like, no, we're not going to trade him now. And I'm like, wait, why are they not going to trade him now? Is it just that teams are not willing to give up anything close to the same draft capital?

31:52Is it one of these things where they hold on to him for the first month, see how their season's going? And then a team comes calling at the trade deadline. Do you think he's going to be with the Raiders for the whole season? Because I'm looking at teams like Detroit, Chicago, Dallas. I'm like, these are good teams that, man, if they added Max Crosby, I would be so excited about them. What are we hearing, Billy? That's the category. Yeah, what are we hearing? What are we hearing, Tom, on Max Crosby? One thing that I think is important to understand is how close Mark Davis is with Max. So when Max, after everything that happened, and listen, he was not fully healthy.

32:24He was like three months away from being done with his rehab. Everyone knew that. Baltimore was within its rights to terminate the trade. Many other GMs they spoke to around the league thought it was BS how they handled it. But again, they're allowed before the trade is actually executed, before there's trade papers. You are allowed to do what they did, even though we very, very rarely see it. When Max came back to Vegas, and from everything I was told, it was very emotional, him getting back with Mark and him seeing his teammates and the people that he still knows around the building. Max wanted and wants to be a Raider.

32:59And unless he goes to Mark Davis and says, you know what, I want out again, I don't know that there's a great appetite for the Raiders to do it. One thing you mentioned is absolutely true, Shield, which is once the trade gets terminated, you had two first-round picks, and that was the high offer from anybody in the league, which is why, like, Dallas got priced out because they weren't willing to do both of their ones this year. Realistically, there was no way until he was fully healthy and showed he's Max Crosby again that somebody was going to go, all right, he is still worth the two first-round picks, right?

33:28So I think that what you're going to see here is, listen, we'll find out what the Raiders are. Max came back to a vastly different team. All of a sudden, they had spent on a bunch of players on defense. You know, they continued to fortify things in terms of other positions on the field. They made a wide receiver signing in free agency. Like, he came back to a different team, and then they get Fernando Mendoza along with Kirk Cousins. So, the team he is returning to is not what they were in 2025. Let's see. Maybe they're okay. I'm not going to sit here and go the Raiders are going to be great, and they're going to come out, and they're going to be ahead in an AFC West where I think by any objective measure on paper, you would rank them fourth out of four in that division.

34:03But let's say they're okay. I don't know the max is going to go, I want out of here. You know, Max always wanted to be a Raider. He didn't want to leave, but he was sick of the dysfunction. He was sick of the losing. He was sick of the constant changes. If Clint Kubiak can come in and calm things down, and we did that category last week where it was, all right, what coach is going to make the most first-year impact? I said Clint just because it's been chaos. And Clint, like his dad, is like this. He is absolutely, totally flatline, totally chill about everything. And that's just his natural personality.

34:35I think that's going to be good for the building. If they're sitting there at 2-6, 2-7 as we come up on the trade deadline, I'm sure they're going to get calls. They didn't have to make calls in the first place when it came to trading them back in March before they didn't end up doing that. They got calls from other teams. I think it would be the same thing. If they start losing, you'll see them start to get calls. Is it possible that something could happen before the start of the season? Anything's possible. I mean, any player in the league outside of maybe a couple dozen guys, if somebody offers them two first-round picks, that player can be traded.

35:06But I wouldn't say that that's the likely scenario here. I do not believe that they're going to trade Max Crosby against his will. If he's like, Mark, I want to be a Raider, I don't see Mark Davis, as much as he's not interfering right now with what they're doing football operation-wise, I just don't see them making that trade. I don't see Tom getting involved and saying we're going to trade him against his will. And obviously, he had a lot of frustration at the end of last year, too, with it being made clear to him they were shutting him down, which looked to the whole world like they were trying to lose those games to Max who wants to play.

35:37It wasn't a great situation. But again, everything that's happened like in Max's world, from what I've been told, this is like the sign from God. Like I was meant to be here, happened for a reason. I want to be in this place. They get off to another terrible start. We'll see where we are come November. But right now, I believe Max Crosby is going to be a Raider. Okay, so the scenario would have to be Raider struggling, Crosby feeling the unhappiness maybe a little bit more that I don't have a competitive team again. and then another team that is contention. Yeah, or somebody just calls and goes, hey, we will do the two ones.

36:06And they go to Max being like, hey, what do you want to do? Do you want to go and compete for a title? We're not going to win it here. Or do you want to stay with us? I'm not saying it's completely, I'm not painting this as a binary. It's totally up to Max. The Raiders have to do the best thing for the Raiders, but he's Mr. Raider. He's the face of the franchise until Fernando assumes the starting role here. There's more to this than just a normal, you know, we're trading a guy away. Okay. Billy, good category. It let me get Tom's take there on Max Crosby. Appreciate that. But I think Bobby will play.

36:37I think Bobby will be somewhere. It's just a matter of when and where. You know, I don't know that the commanders, you know, are right now planning on him being back there. So it's possible that he's going someplace else. I don't believe that Bobby is done. You know, he could go in the Hall of Fame tomorrow based on where he is. He's 35, 36 years old, but he can still play. If you look at his tackle numbers, I mean, he'd have like 140 tackles even last year. Like the guy could still play football. I believe he's going to be playing. Janu, it's been really quiet. There really hasn't been a great deal of interest.

37:05Again, there's teams that would bring him in, but Janu's, he's made a lot of money and he may not need to do this right now. You know, with Tyreek, it was a significant injury. You can go back and look at what I said on TV at the Super Bowl. You know, the reason that it was clear the Dolphins were going to release him was because they didn't know when or if he was going to be able to play in 2026. That wasn't just an ACL. That was like a whole knee reconstruction. He said himself in a video not that long ago, you know, he doesn't have the power back in that leg yet. So we'll see if Tyreek plays, it'd probably be somewhere, you know, during the season and maybe ramp him up and try to get something in the playoffs.

37:41But it's also possible we just don't see him this year. He does what Odell did when Odell member had that awful looking injury in the Super Bowl where he was the best player on the field for like a quarter and a half or whatever it was. And then all of a sudden his leg is like dangling off. He missed a whole year, came back, and the Ravens gave him$18 million to go play for him. That could be the Tyreek plan. That's still kind of a shifting thing. There's no clear timetable at this point. But if it happens, I don't think it's going to be really in the near term for Tyreek. What was the last one you said, Billy?

38:10I forgot the last one. Odell Beckham. You just mentioned him. He's had a good case. Here's what you have to ask yourself. If you cut him, is any other team going to sign him? He's not subject to waivers. In other words, you could release Odell, bring him back on the practice squad, elevate him up to three times and save yourself a roster spot so you don't have to put one of your young guys through waivers. I think that Odell will be a part of the team. I don't know. I have not talked to Odell. I don't know how he would feel about the practice squad route. Some guys are just against that. If you want me on the team, keep me up.

38:43But if they can come to him with a plan of like, here's how we're going to get you integrated during the season, I could see that being a scenario here. I mean, John is really fond of him. He's had, I mean, I know he dropped that ball in the preseason game, but he's had, by all accounts, a really good camp. He still is as explosive as plenty of guys in the league. We'll see exactly how it plays out, but I do think you're going to see Odell most likely with the Giants at some point this year. I just don't know in what capacity or exactly when he's going to be a guy that they're going to be really using on the field.

39:12That's wild, Billy. What percentage of our audience do you think even knew that Odell Beckham Jr. is part of the Giants training camp in the year 2026.

39:22Sheil Kapadia:I mean, I give our audience huge credit, Sheila. I feel like they're plugged in on everything. They just know what's going on at all times. It would be a nice ending to his career, right? If he goes back, he plays the Giants, wraps it up there, but I don't know. We'll see. All right, Billy, what do we got? What's the next category here? All right, I feel like we're picking up steam here, Sheila. How do you feel about this so far? Yeah, Tom, how do you feel about this so far? Feeling better? Yeah, feeling great. All right. Well, in a story that was broken to me by Tom Pelissero, I don't know if he broke it to everyone, but he broke it to me for sure.

39:57Sheil Kapadia:No takesies backsees. So a memo sent out this week, the NFL informed its teams that any player who returns to college will be prohibited from signing with an NFL team the same season. Now, this has come because the NCAA is kind of a disaster at the moment. They're making up rules as they go. Players are leaving. They're coming back. We have our first situation where two different players, Xavion Harris, who was signed by the Saints and released, and Daquan Wright, who was signed by the Eagles, released, signed by the Browns, released. Both are now going back to play for their former coach, Lane Kiffin, at LSU.

40:33Sheil Kapadia:How do we feel about this? I feel like the players aren't to blame. Maybe you guys feel differently, and this is just a situation where the NCAA has made a mess and now the NFL is having to react to this. Yeah, I need Tom's explanation on this because I find this to be one of the more confusing things that's happening anywhere in sports this summer. I can't wrap my head around what's going on. I can't wrap my head around who's supposed to regulate it and what the future is going to hold. So Tom, like Billy said, you gave him, I don't know if you gave him a personal voice memo or text or just send him.

41:04Saw it on Twitter.

41:04Sheil Kapadia:He shot it out. He showed us the memo essentially. Where did Tom get this? There you go, Tom. Explain this to me because I'm very confused. It's a complete mess. And the NCAA has adopted the posture over the past several years that, like, every matter should be settled in court. You can pick your various fight. You know, take Brennan Soresby. They could have settled Brennan Soresby. They could have suspended him and, you know, agreed to a suspension for, you know, probably close to half the year. And instead, they're like, nope, you're not going to play. And if you want to play, you got to fight us in court.

41:36And the NCAA, it would make sense to me if they were winning, but they are losing repeatedly. Almost every time this goes into court, you lose. So they're not helping matters. you are now, the conferences are having to take matters into their own hands because you have these legal rulings, like the one that restored the eligibility. Basically, the short version is players now have been given a fifth year of eligibility, while the players who went to the NFL because they thought they were all out sued and said, we should get out in the fifth year. The courts gave an injunction saying, yeah, you can come back.

42:14So those couple of players you mentioned, all right, they're going to go to LSU, for Lane Kiffin, who is not, who was already not a popular figure, by the way, in the NFL. So nobody within the league is surprised, is surprised that like Lane is somehow at the center of this. But now the SEC comes out and says, actually, we don't, we don't really support this. The Big Ten says, hey, you can't do this. The NFL is now putting out their own word because, and listen, teams were trying to gather information on this over the past week because all of a sudden, like, think about this. All right, the cut down is Sunday.

42:47It's 6 p.m. Sunday, which is totally ridiculous. And I won't even get into it, the fact that there's preseason games the night before. Nobody has time to assess their injuries, do injury settlements. It used to be on Tuesday. It used to be, back in the day, it was like last preseason games, everyone played Thursday, Saturday afternoon cut down. So you have like 36 hours. Then in recent years, it was all right, the preseason games end on Saturday. You got till Tuesday. This year, it's the last preseason games are like late at night on Saturday. and then you have to cut down by Sunday afternoon.

43:17So anyway, that's a side story. But so his teams are going through this. And I've had people within the NFL like tell me about these stories. And it's like, all right, we got two defensive backs, right? We can only keep, let's say, just making up numbers here, we can only keep five corners on the team. All right, the coaches want this guy because he contributes on special teams. This guy's, you know, maybe got more talent, but he doesn't really play team. So if we're going to cut it down, we want this guy. And the scouts have to go, yeah, but this guy told us he might go back to college. So you now have a thing where you're trying to figure out who do we keep because our guy's going to bail.

43:49What happens with the guaranteed money? If we owe guarantees, no NFL team has contract language saying, hey, if you go back to college, we don't have to pay you the money. Because that was never contemplated. The player from the Browns, what's the name, Daquan Wright, I think? Yeah. He, I was told, gave up his guarantees to get out. because part of what the NFL said was, if you're under an NFL contract, you have to honor that contract. In other words, you're going to have a legal fight with us if you just say, I'm leaving for a different contract in college. The Browns came to the agreement, hey, we'll release you.

44:23We're not going to pay you that extra 25 grand that we owed you. He also got a$25 ,000 signing bonus from the Eagles after the draft, which I don't know, can they claw that back? That's a whole other untapped world. But so these are all questions that NFL teams are trying to sort through. And also like, I mean, I've had scouts being like, Like, yeah, this coach texted me, who's now on a college staff, being like, hey, can you break down those two rookie runners you've got? And it's like, no, dude. No, I'm not going to give you the information so you can come take the guy I was going to put on the practice squad so we can come play for you in the SEC.

44:54Like, these are real stories that are happening. So basically what the NFL did was just say, hey, all right, here's the rules. If a guy is a free agent, if he gets cut, he can go back to college if the rules allow him to, which it increasingly appears that it might not actually happen and all this might be for not. and these guys who went back and think they're going to play at LSU might end up playing like NAIA ball somewhere in Wyoming because no one else will let them play. But for the NFL teams, it's all right. If they're cut, they can go there. If they don't sign with a call team or if they do, they're a free agent next year.

45:24They're not back in the draft. They're free agents like everybody else. But if you cut them, and this is the part that I tweeted out yesterday, if you release a player, you can't have like a weak nod. Hey, we'll let you out, but you got to come back in January. We want you back on the team. If the NFL finds out, that there is an agreement or even an understanding, anything undisclosed where that player is going to go back to the team, then that team can lose draft picks. They can be fined. There are all kinds of different ramifications there. And the same thing, if you go back to college, you can't come back up this season.

45:57I mean, that's the image I had. Let's say you're, to give an example, Garrett Nussmeier. I don't think he's getting cut by the Chiefs, but let's say he did, right? Garrett Nussmeier in this environment could go, hang on, I can make the rookie minimum in Kansas City as the second, third string quarterback, or I go make$5 million right now to go to Texas Tech. I might go for the$5 million. And then, all right, it's October. And now an NFL team loses their quarterback. And the Chiefs lose. Mahomes, they're like, Garrett, come back up. We'll pay you. The NFL didn't want to have it be like a minor league type of a system.

46:30But these are all like, I can't even believe we're having these conversations. But I've had them with all these people within the league who are dealing with this stuff on a daily basis. In the end, it might end up being a big nothing burger if all the conferences say like, NCAA, you're a bunch of morons. Why are you going to court? We're just not going to allow this to happen. It might all end up all being for naught other than those players who already went in the transfer portal and got themselves cut from NFL teams. But right now, it is chaotic because we are three days away from the cutdown deadline.

47:00And normally it would be, all right, if my guy clears waivers, we want you back on the practice squad. That player might now go, actually, you know, University of Nevada wants me on their team. I might go do that. It's just, it's this dynamic the NFL has never really had to deal with before.

47:13Sheil Kapadia:How sick is the NFL getting kind of this dysfunction in NCAA? Because you mentioned Soresby. So Soresby, for those who aren't aware, had a whole, basically he had a gambling scandal in college. And then Texas Tech brought him in and he was ineligible to play. But they found a lawyer, like a judge, like you're saying, there's always going to be a court where you can find a judge who's going to say, you know what, this player is eligible for college. And because the NCAA doesn't seem to have any control, they just go back. But this caused this whole stir in the NCAA. So then eventually his lawyer said, you know what?

47:43Sheil Kapadia:He's not going to play this year. Texas Tech gave up pretending that they were the victims. And he declared for a supplemental draft that the NFL had not announced. And then the NFL had to come out and say, hold on a second. There's no supplemental draft. You're declaring for something that doesn't exist right now. We're not holding one of those this year and you're not eligible. So this is at least the second major issue that the NFL's had to address that the NCAA is just kind of letting go this offseason. A hundred percent. I mean, if you remember with Soresby, yeah, the NCAA, like, all right, he was he lost his eligibility.

48:13The school ruled him eligible. The NCAA said he was ineligible. He goes to a former district court judge and gets an injunction that says he can play. And then all of a sudden you have multiple state attorney generals involved. you have conference you have other schools within the conference saying we're not going to play and schedule texas tech in anything i mean and then it all ends as you said with eventually texas tech goes we're not going to win like they're going to find a way to yank them off the field we just we can't keep fighting like this so he thinks all right now i'm ineligible i'm dropping my lawsuit i'm going to go into the nfl the nfl does something that really doesn't happen which is they just go actually we're not going to have a supplemental draft we're just not going to do it so brendan Sorsby is going to be down in Texas this year, basically studying NFL playbooks and getting himself ready for the 2027 pre-draft process.

48:59He is eligible to play in the Senior Bowl, which will be really interesting to see if Drew Fabianci and company have him play in that All-Star game as a one-time showcase. You want to talk about something that'll bring eyeballs to that game, putting Sorsby in it, I would certainly do that. But there's a bunch of players who listen. Sorsby's not a victim. I said this many times. He had serious issues. At what point it became a compulsion or an addiction that became a problem as opposed to him making poor choices. Like that's something that is honestly, it's like, it's a medical diagnosis. Like we can't really get into that, but like he made the choices ultimately that led to it, but he still was caught up in this broader game where everything is such a mess at the college level and the NFL is having to be reactive to a certain degree because the last thing they want to do, they've always had this kind of understanding with the NCAA, Like, where does the whole you have to be three years removed from high school to enter the NFL draft come from?

49:52It's a joint agreement with the NFL and the NCAA because NFL teams don't want 19-year-olds coming in and getting the shit kicked out of them. Like, they want you to have time to actually physically develop before you're coming into the NFL. So they've always worked together. But now that the NCAA has lost all control over everything to the point that I wouldn't be shocked if by a year from now, there's just an SEC Big Ten Super Conference with like 40 teams and everybody else, ACC, Big 12, do whatever you want. But you're not part of this. And every kid in America is going to want to go to those schools because they got the most money.

50:26They're playing the biggest games. They're on the biggest stage. And everybody else is like in a secondary tier. Like that's absolutely what could happen because the NCAA has no control. And again, the legal strategy, I'm not a lawyer, but I would say repeatedly getting your head beat in in the legal process is probably not a good way to calm a massive dysfunction like they currently have in college.

50:48Sheil Kapadia:Well, kind of to add to your point of what you're saying, too, about like, you know, there could be super conferences, everything. What ends up happening with this story of the players trying to go back to the NCAA is now the individual conferences are having their own votes, voting that they cannot come back to the NCAA. So now conferences themselves are banning players from going from the NFL back to college, even though they've really only played like preseason games or training camps. They're not really NFL players, but even the conferences aren't aligned, creating more dysfunction. while Lane Kiffin's just like, we'll take anyone.

51:18Sheil Kapadia:Like, whoever you want, just come down here. LSU, we got spots. We got a spot for you. Exactly right. You know, the team content part of my brain when Tom was describing the Nussmeyer thing, I'm like, now that would be interesting. He goes to college, he's playing, and then a quarterback gets injured. It's mid-October. A team's like, man, he looks pretty good there. And then he just jumps up to the NFL. That college team gets screwed. So that's not going to happen. But from like a podcaster perspective, I got to admit, I was a little intrigued. I've seen Pavia file another lawsuit to try to get, remember, he won the lawsuit a year ago to get the fourth year because he had two JUCO years.

51:53Well, now, by the same exact logic, why wouldn't he get a fifth NCAA year if the JUCO years don't count? He's not on an NFL team right now. He would be free, again, depending on what the rules are. Like, I don't see an offer coming in the NFL for him. You tell me Diego Pavia was the Heisman runner-up last year, can't get$5 million to even go back to Vanderbilt? right now like these are i mean listen i and in no way am i saying like guys shouldn't make all the money that they can like that part of it is is great like players should be going and getting all the money that they can but you have to have a set of rules and a set of established guidelines and what you can't have i mean it would be like the equivalent honestly would be if the nfl was just losing over and over in court and then like you know the nfc north was like actually we're going to have different rules.

52:41Like what? What are we doing here? Like that's the, that's the equivalent thing. Like you need someone to be in charge here. There's just, there's not a, there's not enough grownups in the room and the grownups that are in the room all seem like the type of grownups you wouldn't want to be sitting next to at a youth game. It's chaos. And it feels like the part of it's out of the NFL's control. All of it's out of the NFL's control. They have to react and try to try to come up with solutions to some of these issues that they are not creating. All right, let's take one more break. We'll come back with the rest of Billy's Categories.

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54:24For lunchtime inspiration, visit boarshead.com slash back to school or head to your local deli counter. all right we are back here on the ringer nfl show where are we billy how many more we got

54:36Sheil Kapadia:i think we're halfway done so we'll just have lightning rods yeah we'll see we need to speed up here yeah we'll go through sorry about my soliloquies in that last segment honestly if you want we can revisit the card talk one of one yeah i don't know i'm trying to remember was that conversation yeah more relevant or less relevant you guys could be collectors you guys have kids i don't know if your kids are in this can i just say one thing this card thing i mean i understand that every like league now is in business with fanatics and tops and all that it's gonna bust at some point right like this idea that these cards are just gonna continue to go up in value forever and ever seems insane to me like this is not gonna be a long-term i'll say this i was at um like my college buddies get together every year um in the summer at a one of the guys lake houses and like this year somebody went to like a card store they live in LA and bought like, I don't even know, 500 packs of old football and baseball cards.

55:31Like you can get them in bulk. A lot of times they're like the ones that they've manufactured way too many of. So there's not a ton of valuable ones in there. The thrill of opening the pack is real, right? Like the, I don't know what I'm going to get in here. Like we, we opened all these packs and we got a Randy Johnson rookie card. It was like, that's a pretty good one. Like I found like old random football players. Like I pulled a, I pulled a Trace Armstrong card and like, I'm like, man, you know like oh that's a cool you know just like people you know guys that i like know and remember playing and then but we got to the end of the weekend and it's like someone's like hey what do we do with all these cards there's just like 10 000 cards later i'm like i guess we just throw them away but that seems weird oh that's wasteful right but what do you do with them i'm not gonna bring home 10 000 fleer 94 cards like no yeah i think the as a kid i liked collecting

56:24Sheil Kapadia:cards, then I discovered like, wow, you can just buy the complete set. So like you lose some of that, but like, you know, like I got everybody, like this is a cool little box. It's like 30 bucks or whatever you put in the corner. But like now the way the cards are going, you're realizing this is kind of a racket. Like you need to buy special, like thousand dollar box of cards where that's where the actual like big money cards are. Like, it's not like a lottery ticket. You can't just go into like a target or something, buy a pack of cards. And all of a sudden here's an $11 million card in this pack.

56:54Sheil Kapadia:The more you kind of read into it. Apparently now, that's what they're promising the people. I'd love to see the number of packs that Fanatics is producing and what the percent chance is. I don't know. You know, it's like one of those, it's like the claw machine. It's like, how many things are you going to pull out of there? They all cost three cents and then you might get the one big stuffed animal that doesn't fit down the hole. All I'm saying, it's odd that Tom Brady opens up his own card store and all of a sudden, some of the most sought after cards just happen to be sold there. It just seems a little weird to me.

57:22You know what this smells like to me? This smells like a Billy Gill offseason deep dive. I'm going to investigate this right now. He's coming for your corner. Yeah, write that down, Billy. Start doing the reporting and then we'll revisit this maybe after the Super Bowl.

57:36Sheil Kapadia:Can I tell you something about Pablo? Yeah. He pisses off a lot of powerful people. You know what I mean? I know better. I'm not going after big cards here. You know what I mean? I'm just going to say it's a little fishy and that's about as far as I'm willing to push that. You're just asking questions. You're just a man asking questions. As far as we're going. All right. What do we got? Let's get back on track here. And let's again, lightning round. Boom, boom, boom, boom. We'll go through quick. I guess we only have five more, so we don't have to go that quick. But preseason revenge game is something that we might be looking out for this week.

58:01Sheil Kapadia:So Tua Tungavailoa, former Dolphins quarterback is now going to be starting in the final preseason game for the Atlanta Falcons against the Miami Dolphins. Earlier this week, your friend, possibly foe co-worker, Ian Rappaport put out there. He said it, Tua has made it impossible to be named QB one of the Atlanta Falcons, based on his play thus far. It seems like the Falcons are just waiting for Michael Penix to come back. Is there anything that Tua can do in this game to actually win the starting job? Is it possible to have a revenge game in the preseason? And furthermore, preseason week three, what are we looking out for?

58:36Sheil Kapadia:What should we be watching, guys? Listen, first thing I would say is somebody's got to start week one. And if you were just approaching this logically, can you remember a whole lot of quarterbacks? Can you name one quarterback who wasn't cleared for 11 on 11 by, what, the third week of August, didn't play in the preseason, who was in a competition, there's different types of competitions, and started week one? That's what I would say. I do think, I know that, you know, they like Michael Penix there. He's had a lot of injuries. This is his third ACL, I believe. And there's a, you know, the rhythm and timing and tempo doesn't come back overnight.

59:17night. So I think it's possible that Michael Penix Jr. ends up starting the regular season in week one. But right now, you'd have to say it's Tua, if for nothing else, than by default. And listen, I know that, you know, the first preseason game didn't look good and there were some memes that came out of that. I would say we overreact sometimes to those things. They're running the most basic concepts. You know, if Tua does play, if in fact he does start this preseason finale, then the thing he's just got to do is just go out and function in the offense. They've got pretty good players. I mean, if you look around the field and they've paid them all in this offseason, Bijan and Drake London and Kyle Pitts and some of the other parts that they have on that offense, like they should be able to go out and be a, you know, a functional offense if the quarterback just plays on time and gets the ball where it needs to go.

1:00:04If Tua gives him a better chance to do that because he's just had more time on tasking camp, I don't think that Kevin Stefanski would hesitate to put him out there. And also remember, it's a lot easier to go from Tua to Michael Pennix Jr. than it is to name Michael Pennix Jr. the starter with virtually no reps and Tua goes and becomes the number two. That would send a greater message as opposed to, hey, we still believe in Michael Pennix. We want to give him time and make sure he's back to 100%. Let's ease into this season and get to him later. That to me, just speaking logically, I'm not saying anything's done, I would just say logically that makes a lot more sense to me.

1:00:41Well, given Penix's injury history, like you said, it seems like a terrible idea to rush him out when he's not ready to play. And you have a 17 game season ahead of you. Like you said, you have talented players like Drake London and Kyle Pitts and Bajon Robinson who do not want to go through a season where no one can get them the football, where their season is just totally torpedoed because of horrible quarterback play. So yeah, if you're the Falcons, you got to keep the long-term in mind. But Tom, my question is, if they're really considering still starting Tua in week one, why are we starting him the final preseason game?

1:01:14Like they think the reps are that important that we need him to get in a rhythm here again, given his injury history as well. Doesn't that seem a little strange? Where is Jack Strand? But like, what are the odds that week one, we look up and you're reporting on Sunday morning, surprise, Jack Strand is starting for the Atlanta Falcons today. I'm not going to say I invented Jack Strand, but I guarantee I led the national media in Jack Strand reporting before the draft. Because he is like, that dude is like, what is he? Six foot six and like 230 pounds. He's a huge guy. The huge arm, he tested off the charts.

1:01:49And he was, you know, enough of a prospect that they made a quick move. It was right after the draft to bring him in. But that's a developmental type of player. Cooper Rush is there too. He started games in the league. We'll see how they end up sorting out that room. But I would not in any way read into, hey, the preseason didn't look good for Tua, maybe you just want to end on a high note. If nothing else, just go out, let everybody feel like they're confident as opposed to, listen, if you don't play Tua this week, you're almost sending the message, hey, we've already decided it's Tua. Let's put him out there.

1:02:20Let's have one good drive, move the football a little bit, and then put him on ice till the season. Billy, Tom's got a nice background there, but I think a little invented Jack Strand banner might look good maybe over the right shoulder.

1:02:32Sheil Kapadia:Yeah, there seem to be some shelves there we can put on a shelf. there's always a couple of those kind of fringe guys that uh you know over the course of time you uh you kind of feel like you have a personal attachment to you know uh the scottish hammer jamie gillen the punter was another one where his nickname came out and then that became a thing before the draft i'm like i was i feel like i played a small part in making that a thing before the draft there was once an eagles kicker billy and his nickname was murder leg or murder toe and I wrote a big feature on him and I don't believe he made the team.

1:03:05So to Tom's point, you try to claim your guys when you can. Some of them hit, some of them miss. But to answer your point, I'm not looking for a lot in week three of the preseason. Like Tom said, some of these teams are probably like, we have to make cuts maybe less than 24 hours later. We're going to put guys out there who are probably not going to make the roster. They can get some film. Maybe we want to hide some guys and we're not even going to play them because we don't want other teams to see more film of them. Maybe we want to sneak them on the practice squad. But yeah, I don't think a bunch of stuff is going to be decided.

1:03:33I think what might be more interesting is kind of the trades, the roster moves that happened this weekend as teams try to get to 53.

1:03:41Sheil Kapadia:I've been searching for murder toe. I don't see anything here. I might have got it wrong. Murder leg? I'll try to look it up. Here, give us the next category and I'll look it up. How do you get that wrong? If the name is murder toe, I feel like I'd have a hard time forgetting that. Tom, listen, I'm an old man. You haven't discovered him. Remember what happened yesterday? I'm not going to remember a story I wrote 10 years ago, accurately. I'm just being honest with the audience here. It's the Tokyo Toe. There's a rookie kicking in the Tokyo Toe this year. Oh, no, that wasn't it. All right. Tom, what do we got?

1:04:13Sheil Kapadia:Murder Toe. All right. That's a weird place to put those signs. So this is another topic, and this is another quarterback controversy we have going on Monday. One of our quarterback controversies came to an end. The Browns head coach, Todd Munkin, announced that Deshaun Watson will be the Browns' Game 1 starter this season in Jacksonville versus the Jaguars. Deshaun, as many know, was booed basically off the field in preseason game against the Bills at home. Fans are not happy about this situation. This is just a general quarterback mess that's going on. Fans were so upset that they went and they taped signs to a statue of Brown's legend, Jim Brown.

1:04:48Sheil Kapadia:Signs said$280 million, 27 plus victims, zero supporters. Another sign read permanent damage to the city and fan base. These, again, were taped to a statue of Jim Brown, who, if you do a quick Wikipedia search, has some stuff in his past. So I don't know that that's necessarily the statue to, you know, tape permanent damage to the city and franchise to, but it is what it is. How do the Browns get out of this quarterbacking mess? The draft one next year. Like, I mean, that's it's as simple as that. They've got two first round picks next year. Realistically, you know, they're on that list of teams.

1:05:22I think we talked about this last week, who their starting quarterback for 2027 is probably in this year's draft. It's probably not somebody that's on the roster right now. You know, what Todd Monken said was in part, they opened with two road games. Deshaun started a lot of football in the NFL. They think that the ability to function and to play on time, he's just got the best opportunity to allow them to do that. And if you look at Shadour, as well as he played in the second preseason game, like there was stuff down the stretch, you know, late in the half that didn't just operationally look like it was off.

1:05:51And that's the stuff that frustrates Monk. And he knows what he's getting in Deshaun Watson just from the ability to operate the offense. You put him out there for two games. I mean, the biggest question, Deshaun had a good offseason. He hasn't played. I mean, he's played 19 games over the past five seasons combined. He has not played since his two Achilles tears during and after the 2024 season. It's been a long time since he played football. But from a football perspective, that wasn't really the concern. Yeah, he may never be the guy who was considered by plenty of people to be a top 10, if not top five quarterback when he was at his best in Houston.

1:06:24But it's more so about how is he going to do in the game environments? And honestly, a big part of it, or at least part of the factory, was what happens when he gets booed? What happens when, home and away, he's the most hated man on the field and he's got to hear all that stuff. He's been through all this. There's plenty of guys like this would be if it, when Teddy Bridgewater came back after his gruesome knee injury, like he had a standing ovation when he came in the game and handed off a couple of times. Most players, if you come back from an injury, Alex Smith, when he went back on the field, you get that bump of just like, man, he's been through a lot.

1:06:55Like we, as much as we not, I might not think Alex Smith is a great quarterback. Like I have empathy for him. I feel like we can, you know what I mean? Like I feel as if this is a guy that I can get behind. Deshaun, for all those reasons, and he wasn't wrong. Listen, in that post-game press conference, everyone's picked a part. I don't think that anything Deshaun said was wrong. I probably would have rephrased the, I don't regret anything in my life part. but in terms of like, you know, the fans are booing me for something that has nothing to do with football. There's some football because you just haven't played, but yeah, a lot of it is you.

1:07:25It is. Like, he's absolutely correct in that. It really ends well when you go after the fans, but Tom Munkin's got to make a decision that has nothing to do with who's going to get booed and who's not. Just like I was talking about with Atlanta, it's a lot easier to go Deshaun Watson starts at the beginning of the season and then you put Shadour in the game than it is to say, hey, we're going to let Shadour leapfrog Deshaun right after those comments, right after the brutal second preseason game. At that point now, what do you do with Deshaun? Do you just say, hey, do what the Texans did back in 2021, and we're going to pay you but just kind of hide in the training room for the whole season?

1:08:02I don't know what you would do. This is kind of the last gasp. And based on how his contract is structured, they have to hold him through this year. They don't have to do anything. but all of the bonus acceleration would take place immediately. It would all come into 2027. You don't want to have that. They did a restructure in December 2024. It essentially allows them to push it out as far as 2028 with some of the cap hits, which is just easier to deal with going forward. So I think he'll be on the roster. I don't think they trade him. I don't think they cut him, even if he is not the starter by week three or whenever it is during the season here.

1:08:35But there's no doubt. I mean, there's some pressure on him to try to turn the tide a little bit. He's going to hear it, but he's going to hear less of it if they're 2-0 when they come back home. I think that contract point is the biggest thing. If it wasn't prohibitive to cut ties with Deshaun Watson, this to me would be an absolute no-brainer. You mentioned he's played 19 games in the last five years. Statistically, the worst season for any quarterback in the last two years was Deshaun Watson in 2024 when he actually played and he was terrible. He's never admitted to any wrongdoing. He's antagonizing the fans.

1:09:10I mean, you add all these things up, this would be a very easy conversation in the front office. We got to cut. I mean, Jimmy Haslam said, what, two years ago that like we swung and we missed on Deshaun Watson. And now he is, here he is starting at quarterback. You're a Browns fan base who's like, we just want some excitement with some of the young players on the roster. We know we're not going to be very good. And now this guy's going to be out there being our quarterback in 2026. You can see how they're looking at it like this sucks. We want to be excited about football. And even if it's like, hey, no, we're getting our quarterback in next year's draft.

1:09:41And Tom's right about that. They've acquired draft capital. They've tried to build an infrastructure where maybe you can plug in a rookie and have success next season. I get where they're coming from, but I do think it's just mostly contract related where even Shador Sanders is not perfect and was not good last year. You would find another option if you could cut ties with Deshaun Watson. So yeah, when he said this isn't about football, you're right. Deshaun, everybody knows it's not. I mean, now if you were playing great, now maybe you wouldn't hear that same reaction, but obviously it's everything together.

1:10:12It's the off-field stuff. It's the lack of admitting you did anything wrong. And then it's you being terrible when you actually got a chance to play quarterback. So, you know, just in terms of fan bases that go into this season with like just having a tough time getting behind their team, even in September, I think the Browns have to be number one on that list. The only other thing I would add would just be the history lesson of how the Deshaun Watson trade happened, which I said at the time, that was not a trade. That was free agency. The Texans basically said, here's the price. If you're willing to meet it, you can negotiate a contract.

1:10:47And it was not just the Browns. There were four teams at that time. They were all willing to meet the Texans asking price for Deshaun, which was three first round picks plus additional picks. It was massive. Deshaun actually told the Browns they were out. because he was not going to go to Cleveland. And the way that they got him was to give him a five-year, $230 million fully guaranteed contract. At that time, what other people in the league said, and they were not happy about it, was like the Browns just rewrote the entire economics of the NFL. This exact scenario, as unique as this is, it's things like this, which is why teams don't want to do guarantees beyond two or three years of a deal.

1:11:32When you see fully guaranteed contracts, they're generally shorter because none of us know what things are going to be like four years from now, all the other factors. But the only way the Browns were going to get him was if they did this contract that no one else was willing to do. But again, just as a reminder here, there were four teams lining up with everything going on to all trade for Deshaun Watson. And if he had gone someplace else, maybe things are different. Maybe the team's better. Maybe he plays better. Maybe he doesn't suffer as many injuries. If he had gone anywhere, including Cleveland, and played well, I hear what you're saying, Sheil, about not expressing remorse for his actions and those things.

1:12:12He's got a social media presence that I know rubs some people the wrong way. If he plays good football, no one cares. And that's just the bottom line. I'm not being insensitive. I'm just saying nobody is consumed with it. It's the fact that they invested so much in him. It set them in. I mean, right now they're in the year two of another five-year rebuild in Cleveland. The draft class was really good last year. From everything I've been told, it looks really good so far. It's early, but in camp, it looks really good again this year. They are all building this to place the quarterback in in 2027 and then roll in that division.

1:12:45I mean, think of all the things that could be different in the AFC North a year from now. We don't know who the Steelers quarterback is going to be. Aaron Rodgers already said it's his last year. Who knows what happens if the Bengals have another disappointing season and what changes could take place there. And even Baltimore, where they've been trying for two years to get a Lamar Jackson contract extension done, there could be further evolution of what's happening with the Ravens. So it's not to say this season doesn't matter. You can never say that in the NFL because, listen, if it's bad enough, everybody can get fired.

1:13:12We've seen that many, many times. But I believe that there's an understanding in the Browns building that, yes, they'd love if Shadour steps up as the franchise quarterback. they like if Deshaun gives them a chance to win and they don't have to bench him throughout the course of the season. But the odds are pretty good that the quarterback is in the draft in 2027 for Cleveland. And so all that we're talking about right here is one more year of everyone going, the Browns are being the Browns before they hope they're going to rewrite what being the Browns means starting next year. It's a great what if for those other teams that were interested and even other teams that were interested, but maybe didn't quite get to that point as those four.

1:13:48There are other teams there. I know it's a what if in Philadelphia that is asked like, huh, I think he might have poked around that Deshaun Watson situation after 21 and didn't didn't get to that point. But yeah, it is a move that once you get to the point where you fall in love and you're like, we have to have this player and you're willing to go where no other team is willing to go in terms of guaranteeing a contract, you open yourself up to a situation like this. And I feel like, yeah, no one's done it. So if you're like, they got what they deserve. I don't necessarily disagree with you there, Billy.

1:14:19So. Wow. By the way, this is off topic, Billy, but.

1:14:22Sheil Kapadia:Yeah. Murder leg. Okay. Oh, murder leg. Cary Spear was the kicker. I know we're jumping around here a little bit. What's he up to now? You want to close the loop on that. I don't know. I didn't get that far. I was just telling you about my story. Cary Spear and his nickname was Murder Leg. I feel like he could have done more with Spear. Well, yeah. I don't know. So his leg was the spear? 2014. And that's why it was murderous? A different time, you know? All right. All right. There we go. Cary Spear did not expect to get a shout out on the Ringer NFL show today. All right, Billy, what do we got?

1:14:50What's the next topic here?

1:14:51Sheil Kapadia:We were going to come off of Deshaun Watson and start talking about trading cards. This is where things took a lighter turn off the field, more towards like, oh, these are things that are football related, but not necessarily the most important. Second half of the show. Okay, so we'll move on past that. Hard Knocks announced this week with one week to go in this season's Hard Knocks training camp with Seattle Seahawks. Season finale is coming up next Tuesday. It was announced there will be no in-season Hard Knocks this season, but there will be a return next year to the offseason hard knocks, which we saw once before, which was the New York Giants.

1:15:24Sheil Kapadia:Famously, we saw Jones, Joe Shane's son telling him you should trade up and get Jaden Daniels quote. You only get this job once might as well try to win. Of course, they did not get Jaden Daniels and they have not done much winning since then. His son obviously kind of knew something, but it's not just as easy as let's trade up and get the player that I like. That's how things work. But when they return, because teams haven't wanted to be part of that situation, because there was some criticism and you're really showing your cards the entire time. They've decided when they come back and they do that offseason version, they're going to do a division, which they've done a couple of times in season where they've just covered the entire division.

1:15:57Sheil Kapadia:So when it returns, it will be a division in the offseason. Has Hard Knocks jumped the shark? Because we got to a point where we had three Hard Knocks each year. There was the offseason one, there was the regular training camp, then there was the in-season one. Now there's different versions of Hard Knocks with different names, with quarterback on Netflix. The Chiefs have their own version of hard knocks. I think it's called the franchise where they've just kind of followed the Chiefs all year long. Are we over hard knocks in all of the spinoffs of hard knocks? Is it too much? Because there was a time I felt like it was appointment watching and you'd come in on Wednesday morning or whatever day it was and water cooler talk, like, did you see hard knocks last night?

1:16:31Sheil Kapadia:Did you see what they said? Oh, did you see what John Gruden did? Antonio Brown, he burned his feet. That was crazy. Like, what's going on here? And I don't feel that buzz anymore around hard knocks. I like the off season here, Tom. I think this is the right move because in season when they do it, it's like we're trying to watch games every week. We just talked about it. You're trying to catch up. Everyone has their fill of football in November and December. It's not like, oh, we need more football here. The offseason, you're hungry for football. And for me personally, I can't, you know, be like, oh, let me put myself in Patrick Mahomes' shoes and feel what it's like to have this defensive tackle bearing down on me.

1:17:04But you know what? I can be a smartass and just be like, Joe Shane, what are you doing? If I were Joe Shane, I would have done X, Y, and Z. And I think other fans feel like this. So you do that in the offseason. I thought that was a great hard knocks with the Giants in the offseason where you're seeing how ownership comes in. You're seeing the conversation with coaches. You're seeing how you stack the draft board. Free agency calls with agents. That is a very fun time in the NFL calendar. And I like it, Tom. I'll be tuned in to the offseason hard knocks. The Giants offseason hard knocks is the best football show, inside football show that I've ever seen.

1:17:40And yes, there were great, like some of the classic hard knock seasons. Like we all remember, you know, the Jets with Rex Ryan. You can think back to, you know, the Browns when it was Hugh Jackson versus Todd Haley in every meeting. Like that was a pretty entertaining one. To me, where hard knocks started to change away from, you know, what I would say is the most relevant stuff. It's not just the, all right, we don't want to show some teams, we don't want to show a guy getting cut. Those were really interesting moments and like highly emotional. Sometimes it's just philosophical, like that's a private thing.

1:18:09We don't want to do it. Like that's part of it. But it's also, like you talk about the Antonio Brown thing where one episode ended and it was that same afternoon the episode aired and it was Antonio and his agent Drew Rosenhaus like walking onto the field. And that had just happened that day. Then all of a sudden in the seasons that followed, you were a week behind. It would be like the following Tuesday and you'd be like, it would end with the preseason game from the prior Thursday. and a bunch of things had happened since. That, to me, was part of the allure of Hard Knocks training camp was the, like, you would actually get news sometimes from it.

1:18:45Like, you would see what happened with that transaction that happened that day. You would know what happened with that guy's injury and how they're feeling about it the day after. Once you got, like, five days behind, there was no real news urgency to watch it. And so that was a change. With the Giants, the reason that I liked it was it was very honest. It was very open. and explain to people, for all the people who are like, the cap doesn't exist. I hate that entire line of thinking. Every dollar you spend hits the cap eventually. And so they were actually explaining when you're budgeting and how you're doing it with cap dollars and cash dollars.

1:19:21And the Saquon part of it, which like when you heard, when I heard Joe Shane's explanations, like their studies on like, all right, running backs over whatever it was, running backs over age 27, like what their durability is and how long they maintain their production. Um, that spoke to me cause I'm like, all right, I understand the logica where Joe got burned on that was Saquon went to the Eagles and ran for 2000 yards and won the Superbowl. It's like literally the worst case scenario because you're carefully thinking through it. Like the odds tell you this, that's, that's a big part of it in scouting in, you know, the medical and you're evaluating players coming out in the draft of free agents.

1:19:58You're not just going to like, right, this guy's the best player. It's also like, all right, well, what are the odds? How many games is he going to play? How long is he going to be productive? Are we going to owe him guaranteed money? In Deshaun Watson's case, several years after he's functional and playing at the same level right now, that's what they're looking at with Saquon, which was, yeah, he had a good year, but he'd also had a bunch of injury years. What are the odds he's going to stay healthy and we're going to pay him this much where we can go and pay a couple of offensive linemen and then we go and draft Tyrone Tracy and we put it together that way?

1:20:27Instead, logically it made sense, but then it becomes indefensible when the guy goes out there. None of us have the benefit of hindsight when we're making decisions. Outcome-based analysis is dangerous. So to me, what they did was fantastic. And I'm taking nothing away from the Eagles or Saquon, happy for everybody involved, but like it did hurt. It definitely hurt other teams' willingness to be that open and honest because the outcome was so bad that everyone could just go, see, told you, told you. If Saquon had sprained an ankle in week two and had run for like 900 yards in the season and the Eagles had been wanting down the plastic, we're not talking about it that way.

1:21:02The Giants still could have not won a lot of games, but we would have looked at everything differently because of the benefit of hindsight. Yeah, it really wasn't a crazy decision at the time when you look at the state of the Giants franchise and where they were allocating dollars and premium positions. I mean, that had generally been— And by the way, they had tried to pay him. They had tried to pay Saquon multiple times. They tried to pay him by the year before. They tried to pay him. The best offer they made him was in March before the franchise take. Like, once they tagged him, his leverage went away because they had him at a lower number than what they would have had if they had just paid the guy.

1:21:36So the numbers weren't going to get better. You know, Saquon, maybe, you know, there were times where he may not have gotten the best advice through the course of the process. He ended up with a great deal in Philly. And then last year, I mean, tell me how impactful Saquon was. If it was last year's Saquon instead of two years ago's Saquon, you'd probably go, all right, I get where the Giants are coming from. that was tough Billy when the owner comes in and says like I'm gonna have a hard time sleeping if he signs with the Eagles there so Tom's right it ended up being basically the worst case scenario for you know a GM and I understand why other teams would then be hesitant to do it but I'm glad that they're doing it because I think Tom's right it made for good content it takes you behind the scenes in an area of the NFL that we can't just see as the games are played on Sunday so I like

1:22:19Sheil Kapadia:All right. You want two quick topics here to wrap up the show? Yeah, let's wrap it up. What do you got? All right. So we talked about how the NFL takes money any way that it can to commercialize everything, tries to make a quick buck. As part of the quote unquote year of the Super Bowl, which is what it's being dubbed by Disney and ESPN and ABC because ESPN will air its first Super Bowl this year. the NFL and Disney have reached a collaboration along with Champion and Fanatics, once again, and Fanatics, in which every NFL team has been made a Disney pairing with a classic Disney character. Each team has been assigned a character.

1:22:56Sheil Kapadia:They are now selling merchandise that is the official character of the team. So if you live in Minnesota, per se, the Minnesota Vikings character is from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Thor is now Minnesota's Disney character, Philadelphia. I have no idea if you're kidding about all this, by the way. No, this is absolutely... This could be a complete setup. That would be a good bet. He makes up one of these. Yeah, maybe next week. Give me a team. I'll tell you who their Disney character is. The Eagles have Doctor Doom. Each team has been assigned a Disney character. They're now selling merchandise with the character.

1:23:27Sheil Kapadia:If you like the Giants, I hope you like Wreck-It Ralph because that is now your character for your team. Merchandise is out. You can buy it probably way overpriced on the internet. Do you guys have a team, a character, I guess, that would represent you? You seem to be a Joker fan, Tom, or a fan of the comic books. Do you guys have anyone you'd like to represent you as a team from Disney or elsewhere in the world? I do not. I want nothing to do with this. And just a PSA for the listeners out there who are parents. Let's, you know, without throwing anyone under the bus, let's check the quality of the merch before we're shelling out those big bucks.

1:24:02let's make sure the characters' names are spelled correctly and that it actually looks like them and that the sizing is right. I'm just looking out for the consumer out there, Tom. That's all. I have no thoughts at all on anything ESPN or Disney are doing. I mentioned five games on Netflix this season. Started out week one in Australia. Rams 49ers can't beat that matchup.

1:24:24Sheil Kapadia:Maybe you can have one of the K-pop Demon Hunters be one of your official mascots there, Tom. What do you think? I mean, I've seen that one a number of times. I've seen, I've heard that soundtrack about a hundred times over in the car. So sure. Why not? Fantastic pivot by Tom there, Billy. Yeah. That's a good move by him. Honestly, probably should have exercised better judgment on my part. Captain Hook, the Buccaneers official mascot. If anyone was wondering about that. No comment. All right. Billy. Real quick, last topic before we head out. I wanted to give you guys the opportunity. If you wanted to eulogize Dolly Parton or Tim Curry, not Tim Burden, who may or may not have been mentioned earlier in this episode.

1:25:01Sheil Kapadia:He's still very much with us. Any thoughts on Dolly or Tim, either one of you? I don't know that I have anything, you know, that anyone else hasn't said. Dolly Parton does seem to have like a universal approval rating where every corner of my life that I'm looking at, it's like, oh, everybody actually loved Dolly Parton. Yeah, and there's not a lot of people that you can say that about. So that's all I have on it. Tim Curry is one of the great that guys of all time. Like, I think there's a lot of people who are like, Tim Curry? And then you show a photo like, oh, you know, whatever, Home Alone 2.

1:25:33Like, he had so many memorable roles, but it was never somebody who was like in the public consciousness of like, you know, a superstar. He had this way of playing villains that was very unique. You know, I think there's something to be said for, and again, he was a very famous actor going all of that to, you know, Rocky Horror Picture Show. But the fact that you can go that long and never be like the A-list guy but be in that many classic movies and like the moment you see him, you're like, oh, this guy. This guy's going to elevate the movie. Like that to me is Tim Curry. What do you got, Billy?

1:26:06You got something here for us? No, it's just sad.

1:26:09Sheil Kapadia:A big fan of both either? No? I'm somewhat of a fan of both. You know, it's just sad. Dollywood, obviously. It's just weird how like, you know, celebrities and people say it's like rule of three or whatever where three people go, both on the same age within, you know, a day of each other. It's just kind of a sad thing. So, you know, thoughts and prayers. Yeah, Dolly, Tim's families. I got to be honest, Tom, when I thought we were doing 10 most interesting, fascinating people for this episode, I was sure that there was going to be a January conversation that we were going to have to be very careful about as we discussed it on here.

1:26:42But you know what, Billy, a lesson for young journos. If you got to do a list of 10, do nine and then wait if anybody, you know, might pass away. And then that can be your 10th there. A good lesson for procrastinators. everywhere.

1:26:55Sheil Kapadia:I didn't want to put you guys in a bad spot also because things are still coming out in that story and it's kind of like, how do we present that? We're still learning things. I like that. Maybe the next episode. There will be more episodes, I think. We'll see if that ends up being the case. Thank you to Billy Gill. Thank you to Tom Helicero. Those are 10 stories that I think have our attention this summer as we approach Cutdown Day, the end of preseason, and the start of the regular season. Also, thank you to Christopher Sutton for producing Stefano Sanchez on video and additional production supervision by Connor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgopal.

1:27:32I'm Shil Kapadia. We'll talk to you next time on the Ringer NFL Show.

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