FULL SHOW - Tuesday, July 14th

Summary

PAYNE & PENDERGAST: FULL SHOW SUMMARY
Tuesday, July 14th, 2026

Hosts: Seth Payne & Chris Partee (in for Sean Pendergast) Podcast: Audacy SportsRadio 610 Houston

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EPISODE OVERVIEW

This July edition of Houston’s leading sports talk show delivers sharp analysis, hot takes, and some impressive storytelling from Seth Payne and guest host Chris Partee. The duo covers a wide swath of Houston and national sports – from the Houston Texans’ training camp storylines and CJ Stroud’s NFL standing, to Astros trade deadline drama, Texans free agent wish-lists, Houston Rockets offseason moves, Home Run Derby nostalgia, and even flag football's Olympic debut. Expect plenty of direct insight, relaxed banter, and regular doses of self-deprecating humor.

Sean Pendergast is out resting his voice (“vocal rest, not a vacation!”), so Chris Partee steps in, bringing a fresh dynamic and some West Coast flavor. Seth and Chris start with high school sports nostalgia and quickly dig into the biggest questions in Houston sports this summer.

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KEY DISCUSSION POINTS & INSIGHTS

1. Opening Banter & Filling in for Sean

• Seth shares why Sean is out – voice issues, not vacation.
• Seth and Chris riff on high school nostalgia, school security compared to today, sneaking into fields for off-season NFL workouts.
  • Seth: “The only time I’d ever pull a ‘Do you know who I am?’ card would be if I was on city council, and got pulled over. Otherwise, nah.” (05:42)

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2. NFL Top 100 List & CJ Stroud Controversy

(06:30 – 20:37)

• Chris and Seth break down the NFL Top 100, noting Lamar Jackson landed at #69, but Houston’s CJ Stroud is still missing as of today's reveal.
• Discussion on how the list is created: ballots before playoffs; top-20 player votes only; potential for friend/team bias.
  • Seth on rankings: "I always feel it’s dicey… accepting the rankings of anything where people aren’t ranking everyone." (08:30)
• Debate: Does CJ get snubbed? What if he’s not on at all? Is that an indictment of Stroud or the coaching staff?
  • Seth: “This is crunch time… I’m still giving CJ a benefit of the doubt. But this year, he’s gotta step forward.”
• Can players ignore lists? Seth, as a former player, explains social media’s impact compared to the ‘MySpace era.’

Notable Quote

• “You don’t want to care about it, but whenever you find out you’re part of a competition or a ranking or something, you probably care about it a little bit.” – Seth (13:17)

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3. The Phenomenon of Sophomore Quarterback Decline

(15:32 – 20:37)

• Discussion: Has anyone started as hot as CJ, then rapidly declined without injury?
• Comparisons: RG3, Kyler Murray, Justin Herbert.
• Seth: “That’s the conundrum... CJ’s rookie year, high-level impressive. Now he’s in a lull.”
• Context: Difference between circumstances (support, coaching, injuries) and performance.
• “If he doesn’t take a step forward... then I put more of it on CJ.” – Seth (15:19)

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4. Home Run Derby & Astros All-Star Nostalgia

(21:33 – 33:15)

• Chris: “Last night’s Home Run Derby made me feel like I was ten again.”
• Recap: Format changes, dramatic finish (Jordan Walker vs. Kyle Schwarber), silencing the Philly crowd.
  • Seth: “Home Run Derby is that event where, if I tried to enter right now, it’d be most embarrassing, just not being in shape.”
• Astros All-Time Home Run Derby Draft:
  • Both create fantasy lineups featuring Bagwell, Yordan, Berkman, Springer, Altuve.
    • “Recency bias? Maybe. But Yordan’s home runs have majesty.” – Seth (29:36)
• Astros trade deadline frustrations: Teams need a pitcher, but which prospect to part with?
  • Seth: “I want a starting pitcher, but I don’t want to give up any prospects… because I’m greedy and selfish.” (37:17)

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5. Astros Headlines & Injury Woes

(33:30 – 39:23)

• Mike Burrows’ elbow “neuritis” places him on IL. Seth explains the (very specific) medical details and laments the mounting pitching injuries.
• “Trade deadline: I can’t honestly claim I want to be a buyer, if we don’t want to give anything up.” – Seth (38:46)
• Minor league updates: Team needs to restock farm talent.

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6. NFL Coach/Exec QB Rankings & Texans Analysis

(39:26 – 66:57)

• NFL execs rank Josh Allen #1 QB, bumping Patrick Mahomes – has the league finally lost patience with Mahomes’ “good not great” recent output?
  • “At some point you gotta just call things for what they are.” – Seth (126:07)
• Texans’ future: Is CJ’s development held back by coaching/situational issues? What does he need around him to succeed?
• Debates on bringing in free agents: Stefon Diggs, Joey Bosa, Deebo Samuel, Keenan Allen, Bobby Wagner, and company. Are there budget-friendly depth moves Houston can justify?
  • Seth: “You can’t spend on every guy. At some point you have to develop your young talent.” (50:17)
• Reflections on “bust” labels in draft picks: What is a true first-round bust? How have the Texans handled draft misses vs. late bloomers?

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7. Training Camp Storylines: What Matters Most for the Texans?

(83:31 – 92:43)

• Seth ranks the critical preseason issues:
  1. Offensive Line: “If the O-line is genuinely solid, everything else falls into place.” (87:19)
  2. WR Depth – “Tank Dell is the wild card. But you can have a good offense without a stud slot receiver.”
  3. Defensive Depth: “Last year they worked through injuries – can they do it again?”
• Chris: “It always comes back to the O-line. If they’re in sync, everything else falls into place.”

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8. The “Pettycast” – Airing Sports Grievances (and Laughs)

(95:24 – 110:47)

• Dana White (UFC President) explodes after a celebrity misidentification at UFC 329, calling his production crew “the absolute worst”.
  • Dana: "We win! We're the worst ever at this." (97:57)
• Dan Patrick is ghosted by WNBA Commissioner Kathy Engelbert live at a celebrity golf tourney, leading him to vent: “If you want to be treated as a serious league, this is what happens…” (101:49)
• Patriots fans’ conspiracy: Did Tom Brady (now a part Raiders owner) advise the enemy Seahawks’ staff before the Super Bowl? Mike Macdonald comments stir up petty outrage and wild speculation.
  • Seth: “I take [denials] with zero credibility…. He already said it was a conflict of interest!” (107:36)
• Seth’s inside take: The real damage of “bulletin board material” in an NFL locker room.

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9. US Flag Football at 2028 Olympics: Should NFL QBs Play?

(152:17 – 157:18)

• Josh Allen throws his hat in to play for Team USA in LA, 2028 Olympics.
  • Seth: “I don’t a) want my Texans risking injury, and b) I think people are too casual about thinking NFL players will dominate. Flag football’s a different sport.” (152:17)
• Debate: Would NFL QBs really excel? Are dedicated flag football players more suited?

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10. Rockets Offseason & Summer League: Should We Worry?

(158:02 – 170:36)

• The Rockets have had a quiet offseason (Marcus Smart & Bogdanovic added, little splash elsewhere).
• Is simply having Fred VanVleet healthy enough to restore competence?
  • Seth: “Maybe we've overcomplicated it… Fred returns and everyone’s role is better.” (158:08)
• Chris worries about small backcourt size, VanVleet’s defense after injury.
• Summer League: Bruce Thornton shines, but everyone’s hesitant to draw big conclusions.

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11. Show Wrap-up & Handoff

(179:45 – end)

• Quick hits on Texans’ possible moves for “high-drama” players (Stefon Diggs, Tyreek Hill, etc.). Both hosts agree – if forced, take Diggs.
  • “Brandon Aiyuk just doesn’t sound like a guy who wants to play anymore.” – Chris (175:27)
• Colts QB Daniel Jones is healthy – what does it mean for Houston in the AFC South? Seth says: “Give me the devil I know, and let’s go stop Jonathan Taylor.”
• Is “bulletin board material” still a thing? “For some guys, it’s just what you need. For others, it does nothing.” – Seth, with tales of Greg Lloyd’s imagined feuds.
• Handoff: “In The Loop” hosts riff on odd souvenirs (inspired by Erling Haaland’s World Cup raccoon). Seth and Chris share stories of odd sports memorabilia, challenge coins, and the inherent weirdness of what we keep after our playing days.

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NOTABLE QUOTES & MEMORABLE MOMENTS

• "I always feel like it's dicey accepting the rankings... where people aren't ranking everybody, just their top 20." (08:30 – Seth)
• “At a certain point, you just can’t rely on [Josh Allen] being one of the best rushing QBs and carrying your team forever.” (41:10 – Seth)
• “Do you remember what it was like training at a high school? Now everything's under lock and key.”—Seth's NFL nostalgia (04:17)
• Chris: “CJ hasn’t been hurt—he’s just been less productive. RG3 was injuries. Have you seen a rookie ‘fall off’ like this for non-injury reasons—and bounce back?” (15:32)
• “No way the Bills allow Josh Allen to play flag football… right before camp.” (155:58 – Chris)
• “Freddie VanVleet doesn’t have to be a top-10 PG. But having a legit point guard still matters.” (159:46 – Seth)
• “If you bring in Diggs, more the merrier, but now’s the time to see if the young guys can swim.” (50:17 – Seth)

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TIMESTAMP GUIDE TO KEY SEGMENTS

• [02:25] — Show kickoff; Sean’s absence, co-host intros, high school nostalgia
• [06:30–20:37] — Deep dive: NFL Top 100 snubs & CJ Stroud’s reputation
• [21:33–33:15] — Home Run Derby nostalgia + Astros Home Run Derby all-time picks
• [33:30–39:23] — Astros injury woes & trade deadline positioning
• [39:26–66:57] — NFL execs rank QBs: Mahomes, Allen, Burrow, Lamar, CJ’s standing, Texans free agent debates
• [83:31–92:43] — Texans’ 2026 storylines: WR depth, O-line, defensive depth
• [95:24–110:47] — “Pettycast” (UFC’s Dana White rant, Dan Patrick ghosted by WNBA, Brady conspiracy)
• [152:17–157:18] — Olympic flag football: Should Allen, Stingley, etc. risk it?
• [158:02–170:36] — Rockets offseason and summer league: Optimism, concerns, small backcourt
• [179:45–end] — Quick hits, odd souvenirs, show wrap and handoff

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TONE & STYLE

The show is classic Payne & Pendergast: direct, conversational, occasionally self-deprecating, but always insightful. Seth blends veteran insight with a fan’s sense of humor; Chris brings preparation and a fresh, “let’s challenge the obvious” perspective. The show is unafraid to debate, to geek out on the specifics (ulna nerve injuries!), and to laugh at themselves.

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FOR LISTENERS WHO MISSED IT:

This episode gives a comprehensive, honest, and at times hilarious look at where Houston’s major sports franchises stand as summer heats up. You’ll leave with a clearer sense of the stakes for CJ Stroud and the Texans, how the Astros might (or might not) upgrade, and a re-centering on why point guards matter more than ever for the Rockets. Plus—you’ll get some stories you absolutely cannot find anywhere else, from NFL workouts gone rogue to finishing 50-mile marathons, blind from salt and sweat.

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LISTEN IF YOU WANT:

• Straight talk and nuanced debate about Houston sports’ biggest summer storylines
• Up-to-the-minute NFL and MLB news through a Houston lens
• Behind-the-scenes NFL perspective—from the locker room to the perception game
• A sense of why “the little stuff”—be it Home Run Derby highlights, challenge coins, or locker room pettiness—matters as much as the big headlines

(Ads, intros, and outros omitted.)

Transcript

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And you just put in your info and boom. Car's in your budget.

[Autotrader Dad]

Mom needs a second.

[Autotrader Mom]

Honey, you can really have it delivered.

[Autotrader Dad]

Really? Or I can pick it up at the dealership. One sec, sweetie.

[Autotrader Kid]

Mommy's buying a car.

[Chris Partee]

Mommy, look.

[Autotrader Mom]

I think your kid is walking up the slide. Kyle.

[Autotrader Dad]

Again?

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[Autotrader Dad]

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[Autotrader Kid]

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[Autotrader Mom]

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[Seth Payne]

Sports Radio 610 presents Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast.

[Chris Partee]

We come to eighth time. Let's get the work in man. Let's go.

[Ad Voice]

Great day.

[Seth Payne]

Great day.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, give me some juice, baby.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, yeah. Let's do it.

[Chris Partee]

Good morning, H Town. Seth Payne and Chris Partsee here filling in this morning for Sean Pendergast. Seth, what's going on, brother?

[Seth Payne]

Good. No, nothing, man. We gave a little. We just gave a little hint or a tease of Sean Pendergast yesterday. And then, and then he decided to take another vacation, another day.

[Chris Partee]

He must be nice.

[Seth Payne]

He's got. I don't know how much he wants me to divulge about his medical situation, but it's not really a medical situation he had. He's got something. Something going on with his throat. So they were in an abundance of caution. We're gonna let him rest his voice for a day or two. So I'm glad. I'm excited, though. This is the first time I've worked with Chris Partee.

[Chris Partee]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

And. And I was just, I was just looking at your high school online. Pinole Valley High School.

[Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

I think I'm kind of sold on Pinole Valley. This is.

[Chris Partee]

You're sold on it?

[In the Loop Host]

All right.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got a national park right next to it. You're next to San Pablo Bay, which is one of my favorite Pablo Bays. And. Yeah. So. No, but I'm excited to work for you, Chris. I've only, I've only been on the radio with you for tosses at times.

[Chris Partee]

Exactly. For. For crosstalk. Yeah, that's been the only time so far. Yeah.

[Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

And speaking of my old high school, it looks a lot nicer now in the area than. Than it did 20 years ago when I was there. I'll just tell you that that's a

[Seth Payne]

lot of high schools like to do. You end up. You ever go back to your old high school and you kind of like start sneering, Kids are driving nice cars and stuff.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, I've been back. They got gates up around everything. Now, back then, we didn't want gates because we were just walking off on and off campus as we please. So. No, we didn't.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, that's my big complaint about a lot of these high schools. That was the first time when I moved to Houston. It was the first time like I used to, even when I was playing in the NFL, like this time of year when I might be driving around, like traveling a little bit, but I want to get my workouts in. You know, usually you just go and I would like to go and work out at a high school and out in the country, you can just walk on into a lot of fields and, you know, like, it's no big deal. My old high school still like that, but. Yeah, that all of a sudden you're. You're in a city and they got everything under lock and key.

[Chris Partee]

Exactly.

[Seth Payne]

And you got to jump. I've scaled fences. I got booted off of a high school in. When I was in Jacksonville because I went out, I was using their blocking sleds and everything, and this guy came out and chased me off.

[Chris Partee]

Now, is that when you were in college, you were already in the NFL?

[Seth Payne]

That's when I was in the NFL.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, my goodness.

[Seth Payne]

And I never wanted to pull it. Do you know who I am? I'm trying to remember. I know it happened once in Houston. I'm going to have to have my wife if she can remember. But I did. I scaled offense, so it's probably over at Episcopal or somewhere like that.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And I'm like, they'll probably recognize me if they catch me now. It didn't work and I didn't have the. I was like, what am I going to like? I was never going to pull the. You know, that's the most pathetic thing about the pulling the. Do you know who I am? Like, obviously they don't. So whatever in your mind you think your level of notoriety or celebrity is, it's not. It's not what you think it is.

[Chris Partee]

It's not as great as you thought it was in your head.

[Seth Payne]

Right, right, right, right. The only time I'd ever pull if I was some kind of like, you know, city council member or something with a cop. Yeah, I totally do that. I'd be the guy that gets caught on camera. You know, the body cam footage comes out and like, what a jerk this guy is.

[Chris Partee]

So you've never. You've never pulled the do you know who I am?

[Seth Payne]

Oh, God, never. No, no, no. The do you know who I am? Is just. I gotta guess it's got about a 5% success rate. I think that now if you can casually kind of drop some kind of a hint or something, okay, then it might work out. But, yeah, the do you know who I am? I feel like. I feel like most cops and. Or custodians at a high school are gonna. Are just. They're gonna. They're gonna get even. They're gonna get more angry or dismissive of you if you try to pull the who. Do you know who I am?

[Chris Partee]

Like, who are you now? All right, Seth, we got a lot to get into today. Had the All Star game, actually. All Star game tonight. Home run derby was last night, but first I want to get into this with you. NFL's top 100. Now, there's been a lot of talk where I believe we're 31 players in. Now, yesterday, 70 and 69 were announced, and still no Houston Texans quarterback C.J. stroud.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. And. But Lamar Jackson is 69.

[Chris Partee]

Lamar Jackson. My fault. Lamar Jackson comes in at number 69,

[Seth Payne]

which love is already on there. Baker Mayfield, Brock Purdy, and Bryce Young, weirdly. But he's at number 98. Yeah, this is the one that's weird, because last year, CJ Stroud was. He was ahead of. He was ahead of Baker Mayfield. Last year.

[Chris Partee]

Was he in the 50s?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, he's in the 50s.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And I think Baker was a, you know, a little bit higher up the list as well. But Baker Mayfield comes in at 77. Would C.J. stroud, who, like, by and large, they had pretty similar seasons.

[In the Loop Host]

Baker.

[Seth Payne]

Baker's numbers are better in a lot of regards, just because, if I remember correctly, he just played more games. But it. The. The. So that one, I was still thinking, all right, Baker Mayfield. It's debatable. Jordan Love. Okay. He was. We'll see. Lamar Jackson at 69 with no CJ shroud yet. Yeah, I don't think. I don't think CJ has shown that he's a better quarterback than Lamar Jackson by a long stretch. And yet I kind of. I'm kind of hungry for the controversy, the angry. The. The anger and the disgruntled Ravens fans, because nobody gets more disgruntled than Ravens fans. I'm kind of hoping that really happens now.

[Chris Partee]

Now, I told you this before we came on the show this morning. I think if CJ doesn't get announced this week, I don't think he's on the list. I'll be honest.

[Seth Payne]

This is crunch time for him. This is. If you think about the way that the balloting works. Players, for one, it's before the postseason, so players submit them by the end of the regular season, and what they do is they list out their top 20 players. So it's one of those things where I always feel it's kind of dicey accepting the rankings of anything where people aren't ranked. Like, you're taking a bunch of people that people either believe they're in the top 20 or they're not. And. And then, you know, there's a lot of guys that I might not put in the top 20, but that might be consensus. Top 40 guys.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

But I definitely wouldn't put them in the top 20. Do you know what I mean?

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So it's just, like, I always feel like it's unfair to rank everybody based on that. So, like, I don't think, like, realistically, nobody should have put Bryce Young in their top 20 of NFL players, but because he gets a vote or two, he ends up in the top 100. But for CJ so the question is, is anybody going to actually say, yes, CJ is one of the 20 best players in football? And I think at this point, you got to. Based on last year's performance, and remember, it was before the playoffs. I think it's still. If I put myself in the shoes of an NFL player, I'm probably going to be like, okay, you got to have a few quarterbacks on here, obviously, but you run through the top few guys, and CJ is not going to be in the top 20. So it comes down to guys who either went to Ohio State for our friends with CJ Now, I think that's probably what happened with Bryce Young. There's probably a couple Alabama guys that gave him a top 20 vote. I don't know if you're allowed to vote for your own teammates or not. I think you are, but I don't know for sure. Or maybe just somebody on his own team.

[In the Loop Host]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And there's a dynamic, too, where I feel like people that care about C.J. stroud or Bryce Young or any of these guys, they might. They might decide in their own mind, like, you know what? I gotta. I gotta do him a solid.

[Chris Partee]

I gotta help my boy out.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want him to have to deal with an offseason where they're. The people are discussing how he fell precipitously out of the top 100.

[Chris Partee]

Now, do you know why they do it before the. The offseason? I mean, I'm sorry, the postseason, like, why. Why is it done specifically at that?

[Seth Payne]

I think it's partly just because that's the best way to. They can go in. And as they're doing these interviews that you see, that's also when guys are doing the ballot so they know they can get the most number, the most guys on. On camera and everything.

[Chris Partee]

Got it.

[Seth Payne]

And then also, yeah, like, they don't want to be trying to track people down in the off season when teams are out of the playoffs, guys don't, you know, tracking some guy down in Fiji for him to submit his ballot.

[Chris Partee]

That definitely makes sense there. Seth, I want your opinion real, real quick on this. Like these. Now, this is the time of year there's Not a lot in terms of sports going on other than, you know, we got baseball every day, but there's no NFL. There's no even NFL practices going on right now. We got training camp coming up in, you know, a couple weeks here. But this is kind of that dead time of the. Of the sports calendar. No back. I only got some relief, but we'll get into that later.

[Seth Payne]

World cup stuff.

[Chris Partee]

We got World cup stuff. But that's not every year. This is a.

[Seth Payne]

You know, this is a.

[Chris Partee]

That's every four years. This is a. Not an anomaly, but this is not the ordinary year. But these rankings, like what do. Player. You're a former player. What do you guys think about these rankings? And do they even matter to you?

[Seth Payne]

I think the. I. So they didn't have any of this stuff when I was playing the top 100. Yeah. Like any of this. So much of the stuff that fuels all of the media right now, I came in right on the very beginning of, like, there was Facebook. When was Facebook advent in 2005 or so. And I was in. My last year in the NFL was 2006. Like, the only social media for the most part was MySpace at the time. That's how old I am. So that it's been weird for me to watch as it became so much more of the. The sub. Like the substantial thing that guys grew up with. So now we're into a generation of young football players who've only grown up in this environment, you know, like with. With social media, with all that stuff. So I think it. It probably matters more now than it did back then. I think it used to be more of a. It used to be easier to kind of blow off things that were said in the media because there just wasn't that much media.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And like, you didn't have to pay attention to it if you didn't want to. You could read the actual paper or something, but you just didn't see it a whole lot. You could ignore it now. It's just. It's just everywhere and people are going to talk about it, and even if you try to ignore it, people are going to ask you questions about it. So I just. I do think that. I think it's in that category of things where people. You don't want to care about it, but whenever you find out you're part of a competition or a ranking or something, you're going to.

[Chris Partee]

You want to be in there.

[Seth Payne]

You probably care about it a little bit. A little bit.

[Chris Partee]

Um, now, let's just say CJ is not announced this week. Let's say he's not on the list at all. Who is it a bigger indictment of CJ or the coaching staff?

[Seth Payne]

I think it's for right now. I think that if you look at say the the top 10 quarterbacks on ESPN or CJ just barely made the article yesterday, basically ends up ranked based on voting somewhere between 18th and 21st. But I think if you look at the guys that are ahead of him, I you look at a lot of guys who I think have also had better circumstances around them and the for the most part, you know, like okay, Dak Prescott's got some great tools to work with. Justin Herbert is as much a product of I think Jim Harbaugh at this point and them managing his the strengths and weaknesses around him. But he also had a horrible, horrible offensive line last year.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So Justin, you know what? Justin Herbert might be the one that I have to look at and say, all right, he's seventh on the list on ESPN that's voted on by executives, coaches and everything. Had a horrendous offensive line last year. I think he's ranked too high. For whatever reason. Justin Herbert hasn't gotten dinged because he's been horrible and like he's been in horrible in the pro season every single time he's had an opportunity to. But he's also with a veteran NFL coach and Jim Harbaugh who's managed to just get the most of whatever meager circumstances they have compared to saying having Bobby Slowik and then Nick Kaley. So I would, I would put, I think right now I'm still, I'm still in that mode of I'm making either excuses or explanations for J. For C.J. stroud. But you can only do that for so long. And I feel like this, this is the year where I think the circumstances around him as long as guys, as long as his running backs don't all get injured or something like that are enough that yeah, you should see him take a step forward this year. If he doesn't take a step forward statistically or whatever, then I'm going to put a way more of it on CJ But I'm still either because of bias or whatever else, I'm still giving him the benefit of the doubt to a certain extent.

[Chris Partee]

Let me ask you this real quick. Have you ever seen a quarterback have such a hot start his rookie year and then fall off the way we've seen CJ when it's not due to injury now, right. RG3 similar great first year got hurt, kept getting hurt. But CJ hasn't really been hurt like that. It's been more so production. His decline. Like, have you ever seen. And then have you seen them bounce back? Is really the.

[Seth Payne]

The.

[Chris Partee]

The pointer there.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, the biggest. I mean, Kyler Murray gets thrown out there a good amount, but it wasn't like Kyler Murray's rookie year was as impressive. No. And with Kyler, too, there was also that dynamic of, like, all right, let's see how Cliff. Like, let's see how the scheme ages. And this is a guy that, you know, got the benefit of his just being so ridiculously athletic that you were just. You needed to see him grow into being more of a. An NFL quarterback, where with cj, what people were impressed by was, wow, he looks like he's got a lot more polish in terms of adapting to the NFL than a lot of young quarterbacks do. You know, RG3 would be another guy that you know, and that's probably who you're thinking of when you thought about injuries and everything. Yeah, like, RG3 would be the biggest one that just jumps out in my mind. But also he hadn't, like, he had. He had like a crazy deep ball, like, arm talent. He did, but he also had his running ability and everything else. And then injuries kind of tore him asunder. I don't know if this is a good one for the Tex line. I don't know if there's anybody that quite had an impressive rookie year, the way C.J. did it, the way he operated and why people were excited about him, and then has fallen off quite like this. So if you go to the top 10 quarterbacks back in 2024, after his rookie year, he was ranked seventh on that ESPN poll.

[Autotrader Mom]

Wow.

[Chris Partee]

After one year.

[Seth Payne]

After one year after his rookie year. And the things that a lot of people were, you know, pointing out about. About him was like, let's see, here's an NFC executive. This is after his rookie season where he ended up finishing seventh on this list going in 2024. He set the standard for a rookie QB. Has so much poise. He stands in the pocket and delivers the football, stands tall, doesn't see colors coming at him. Several voters pointed out that Houston did a masterful job supporting him. Nico Collins, Tank Dell, Dalton Schultz, and offensive coordinator Bobby Sloik consistently put Stroud in advantageous spots. His 4,108 passing yards were third most in the NFL in NFL history behind Andrew Luck and Justin Herbert. You know, I mean, Justin Herbert, in a weird way, Might be the best example in that Justin Herbert, he, he's, he fell off and did some. He looked more lackluster in a lot of ways, but I don't think he ever, he never had the, the complete crash in terms of no estimation. And I, and I think I'm like, might have been, he might have actually benefited from hardly ever making the playoffs, like never being exposed to that the way C.J. did, because I mean, the crash came in the playoffs obvious like this and. But meanwhile, Justin Herbert threw four interceptions against the Texans in the playoffs a couple years ago and people haven't clamored for, you know, just gone on a wholesale assault on how much he sucks as a quarterback.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn't. And don't get me wrong, I'm a big. I guess I'm a fan of Justin Herbert. I got to cover him a little bit when I was out in Portland, Oregon. Got to cover him while he was at University of Oregon. So I like Justin Herbert, but I agree that it kind of feels like he gets the, the benefit of the doubt a little more than a guy like cj.

[Autotrader Mom]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

The thing about Herbert, though, the other, I mean, the other thing though too is like it was his first three years where I mean he threw. It was 5,000 yards in his second season.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

You know, and it was, it wasn't really. It was like his first few years were really impressive and then he went into a lull. So like CJ's going into a lull in his second year. That's what makes it a little bit unique. Like the disparity between his first year, his rookie year, where he looked like high level impressive, not just some impressive physical traits. That's the part that's such a conundrum with cj.

[In the Loop Host]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah. So, I mean, hey, we got number, I think, was it 68 and 67 coming up later today? That'll come out.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. I think it's going to be mayhem, man. It's got to be. It's going to be. Absolutely. It's either that or it's going to be Sean. Sean and I disagree a lot on how much value to put in this NFL top 100. I don't put nearly as much value into it as Sean does, but people do care about it. And the. Just the optics of having CJ Stroud above Lamar Jackson will be fascinating to watch. Just the. It'll be. You know what, it's going to be awesome because it'll be on first take. It'll be, it'll be all over, everywhere about just what a. What a travesty this is.

[Chris Partee]

If nothing else, it's all entertaining. All right, we're gonna hit the break right now, but on the other side, we're going to talk a little bit of Home Run Derby and the All Star Game coming up. Yes, it is. Payne and Pendergrass. He. Seth Pain. I'm actually Chris Partee. I'm in for Sean Pendergrass this morning, and we had a Home Run Derby last night and All Star Game this evening. Now we'll get into to how the Astros tie into this evening's All Star Game and whether or not you care. But, Seth, last night's Home Run Derby, to me, it made me feel like I was 10 years old again. It made me feel like a kid again. Honestly, I love the Home Run Derby growing up. And last nights had exactly what you would want in such a competition. It had drama. There was intrigue. It really came down to the end. Almost like a buzzer beater.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. The format is, after all the experimenting with different formats and everything, I just. Just like simplifying it the way they did and having a finals and all that. I like. I like that format. I do, too.

[Autotrader Dad]

I don't know.

[Seth Payne]

How long has it been? How long have they been with this current format then? I think.

[Chris Partee]

I think this year, I mean, I know they made some rule changes as far as the 20 pitches, the 15 pitches, but I believe the. This format, they've done it maybe a couple of years now. Where they do, it's more like a tournament.

[Seth Payne]

So brackets. So for those of you who didn't watch the highlights or see it or anything, it came down to the finals was what? Jordan Walker versus Kyle Schwaber.

[Chris Partee]

Kyle Schwaber, Right.

[Seth Payne]

Simple as that. And. And. And it came down to the final swing for both those guys.

[Chris Partee]

Yes, yes. And so Jordan Walker, he got to his last swing and needed what? Six. He needed six home runs. He needed to hit basically six in a row.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

And he actually did it. And. And. And as he's hitting these home runs, you can actually hear the fans in Philly because Kyle Schwaber is the hometown player. Hometown hero. They got quieter and quieter. I mean, he literally silenced the crowd.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Yeah. That, like. Yeah. Yeah. And it's Philly, like, so it's always. It's fun to silence a Philly crowd.

[Chris Partee]

Always.

[Seth Payne]

That was. No, that was really, really cool. I like the. I like hearing the stories around those guys, too. And Jordan Walker had some of the best, like, all time cliche baseball Stories.

[Chris Partee]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

Like slept. Slept with his glove under his pillow from the time he was 3 years old. Hit his first out of the park home run at the age of six and hit his grandma's car. Like, and then. And then comes into the clutch moment and has to hit six home runs in a row and hit six home runs in a row. And that was after Schwarber. Schwarber's home run on his final swing. That was the first time all night that some. Somebody hit a home run on their finals.

[Chris Partee]

It was.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, it was so. It was. No, it was all like the. The way you'd want to try to create as much drama as possible. I thought it worked out really, really well and it was cool. It's fun that the Home Run Derby is always that one thing that, like, as much as impressive it is as it is to watch people run a 4, 3, 40 and do all that stuff. I feel like the, the Home Run Derby is the athletic event that if I were to try to enter right now would be most embarrassing for me, just not being in the kind of physical conditioning to do it. You know, like when you, you can imagine you're trying to hack at the ball that many times in a row and you'd just be gassed.

[Chris Partee]

It's time. I mean, even some of those guys were getting tired and they do it for a living. Imagine us trying to be out there.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

Taking 20 swings in a row.

[Seth Payne]

And it's. And you got all eyes on you. It's because there's a little bit of that dynamic too. Almost like, you know, you never appreciate how much pressure is on golfers until you're in some kind of like, nothing that approaches the PGA or anything. But when you're put in those situations where all of a sudden there's a boatload of people watching you and you're just a hacker golfer. That. Yeah. You realize, like, oh, man. Well, I'm not as mentally tough as I thought I was. And those guys are up there and like in front of a stadium full of people, kind of in a golf like situation.

[Autotrader Dad]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

I think that's something we take for granted as fans. And I mean, you know this better than any of us here. Being on the field, whatever field it is court. And just being out there in front of so many eyes watching you.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

In the crowd, on television, what have you.

[Seth Payne]

You know, the nice thing about being a defensive tackle, though, is that you never have that kind of pressure because when you get. If you have a really bad down, there's still two Other levels of the defense for it to be a genuinely highlight worthy play. Usually another couple people have to screw up or get their butts kicked too.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So you're kind of protected. People don't notice the good stuff you do as well. They don't notice that as much either. Yeah, but you're like literally protected by 21 other people that are around you when you start off with the ball like that. So like being a cornerback or just like being an offensive tackle, when you screw up, screw up, it's a big, big deal and people see it. Defensive tackle, it's a little bit, you know, like unless you get baptized and, you know, completely trucked, you're not gonna. You're not gonna show up on the low light reel.

[Chris Partee]

It's crazy because, you know, playing in the trenches like you did.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

You talk about how, I guess what you do can be overlooked. Yet it's probably the most important area on the field.

[Seth Payne]

What's happening in the trench contract negotiations?

[Chris Partee]

Did it work?

[Seth Payne]

I don't think you guys understand the value I bring to this organization. And let me tell you why you're being stupid right now. Yeah, that. No, the. No, but it's different than like, yeah. Standing there at the Home Run Derby in a completely meaningless situation. The only thing. But because it's, you know, Camino Jr. Camino right now is second in the ALMVP odds for Jordan. And any voter for the MVP would tell you, like, oh, it's stupid for you to think that this might have some kind of an effect on my voting. But I always wonder just a little bit like, let's say if Jordan gets injured or something and the, the odds get a little bit closer. Jordan has to miss 10 or 15 games. I feel like this kind of stuff, not that I want Yordon in the Home Run Derby. I don't want him.

[Chris Partee]

You don't.

[Seth Payne]

You wouldn't in there.

[Chris Partee]

You wouldn't want to see that.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. But if it came down to more of the wire, I wonder if sometimes, like if Junior Camino had won the Home Run Derby or something. I think that that weighs into the subconscious of the voters a little bit. Luckily, he didn't. He wasn't in the final.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, but that's the thing about these, about something like the Home Run Derby and voting for mvp. There's really no, like, set criteria to vote for mvp. It's very subjective. So you might be right. There may be voters out there that say, oh, well, he did have a very good showing or he won the Home Run Derby. That might. Maybe that puts him over the top for me.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Even if it's not conscious.

[Autotrader Mom]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

It's aura. It's all about aura. As the kids, we talked last segment about how they didn't invent social media until I was just about done in the NFL. So, like. Yeah, like, aura. Aura just meant what Aura meant where now the way they. The way that they. The kids use the word aura, I feel like there's a little bit of aura. There's a little extra aura that goes with winning the Home Run Derby.

[Chris Partee]

Exactly. So I asked you, I want to ask you this question, Home Run Derby last night, and you just mentioned how you do not want to see Jordan Alvarez in the Home Run Derby. What if we did an Astros all time Home Run Derby?

[Seth Payne]

Oh, you get four.

[Chris Partee]

You get four Astros hitters from any area you want to put in this Home Run Derby. Who you got?

[Seth Payne]

Okay, so Jeff Bagwell is the all time.

[Chris Partee]

I think everyone's going to say Jeff

[Seth Payne]

Badwell Home Run Derby champion. Yeah. And not to mention just to see his swing yet again or to see his stance yet again. That part of it. And I feel like, you know, there's a younger generation of Astros fans that don't really understand Jeff Bagwell because they might only know him as his, you know, front office member color commentary.

[Chris Partee]

I don't understand how good he was that.

[Seth Payne]

Don't appreciate that. I honestly, I had a hard time thinking about this, and I think I. I think I put. I would still put Yord on first.

[Chris Partee]

Okay.

[Seth Payne]

And. And then I would put Bagwell. I want to base this on nothing but pure emotion. I think I put. I think I would put Springer third again based on pure emotion, and then Altuve a fourth, if only just as a reminder that. Hey, hey, everybody. I know they say it all the time and everything. Yeah, he's really tiny, but, like, which makes it that much more impressive. It's kind of like a short guy. In the dunk competition. Altuve. In the home run competition, there is a shock and awe for factor that comes from just him being so diminutive.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

That I think would be awesome that it would just be an awesome spectacle for him to win the Home Run Derby and he'd get extra style points because he'd be the smallest guy out there.

[Chris Partee]

That is. Now, I'm kind of surprised you went your don over Jeff Bagwell. Now, is that more of a recency bias there or. I know you said it's emotion, but yeah, I know Jeff Bagwell is the all Time leading home run hitter in the franchise.

[Seth Payne]

I think this is the other thing about it that I feel. One thing I was thinking last night was I do wish they would make the same statcast data part of it. Like if you get. I feel like you should get bonus points for anything over 350ft. It's like things like our like or like you get. You hit one over 400ft and you're. You get three extra points or something for it. So I think for part of it with Yordon would just be the. The majesty of it. I think there's just more of a potential for just a more. More majestic home runs and Lance than Jeff Bagwell. Unfortunately we don't have all the stat cast data on Jeff Bagwell's home runs.

[Chris Partee]

No.

[Seth Payne]

I mean unless somebody. Somebody's probably gone back in time and done all these great guys and everything.

[Chris Partee]

I'm sure someone has gone back retroactively

[Seth Payne]

and you know calculate the parabola of all of his hits based on the television broadcast.

[Chris Partee]

Yes. You know, somebody that had a lot of time on their hands. I'm sure somebody has done that. We'll have to find that one day. It won't be today. But, but, but one day. So I got some of the same guys as you. I put Jeff Bagwell first all time leading home run hitter in franchise history. Then Jordan actually put Lance Berkman up there.

[Seth Payne]

Oh yeah. You know what. Yeah. That's where. Yeah. Do. When you ask if recency by. See Lance Berkman is the George Springer of the the for why I might put him on there. There's just a certain lovability or emotional attachment to him aside from their actual home run hitting prowess. Yeah but the Springer. Springer vaults ahead of a couple of guys that the re. And the recency bias is probably affecting me more than it should.

[Chris Partee]

And then I put out to a fourth.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

I mean he's the. He's that. I mean he's the franchise guy. He's going to end up being a lifer here in Houston. So gotta. Gotta throw him in there.

[Seth Payne]

And he's. He's what currently how many behind Craig Vigio is he on the all time? 76, 30 something. 25 behind.

[Chris Partee]

Okay, 25.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

He can get that.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. That's where I get. But you know, and then when you talk about that I'm completely and totally biased from guys that I've watched in my adult lifehood because the guys like you know, Jimmy Wynn and others just aren't. They're the. The Jose Cruz. I could have put on there, but he's not nearly as high up on the list as those guys.

[Chris Partee]

No, no. I mean, there were some other guys you could have put on there, but picking just four, you know, those are the guys that I went with. And I think everyone, you know, automatically the first two you're going to say is back well in your dawn in whatever order.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I tried to. I did a little. I had to test myself with Kyle Tucker. Kyle Tucker's not nearly as high on the list, but.

[Chris Partee]

No, I thought about him, too.

[Seth Payne]

I just. For the aesthetic part of it, just for the beauty of his swing and everything. But then there's also the side of me that just, just, just. I just don't cotton to Kyle Tucker. There's just something about Kyle Tucker that's just always rubbed me the wrong way.

[Ad Voice]

Really?

[Seth Payne]

Oh, yeah. No. Ever since A.J. hinch had. There's always been something about Kyle T. Tucker that. In that golden era, Chris. Yeah. Like, you have to remember that when Kyle Tucker was a young player, AJ Hinch just flat out said that he had to have a conversation with Kyle Tucker about being like, having a little bit more urgency to him, like being more of a, like doing things the Astros way, where he just, there was something about this is not like the others. And he just never fit into kind of just the core and the feel of what some of the golden era players had. And it's always just, it's always been a little bit of a square peg in a round hole. That's why. And I think emotionally, when you talk about the really good players that have left in recent years, I would guess if you did a power ranking of how much emotional attachment guys felt to some of the genuinely good all star caliber players, I think he's probably lowest on the, on the ladder.

[Chris Partee]

I can agree with that. Baseball talk ON Sports Radio 610 is presented by Xfinity. Score. The most reliable Wi Fi 1 price 5 years guaranteed Xfinity. Imagine that. Coming up next, we will do some headlines.

[Seth Payne]

Pain and pender gas with today's headlines powered by Men's Tea Clinic.

[Chris Partee]

All right, Seth, let's get into these headlines here. First up, the Astros. Mike Burrows was placed on the il. How you feeling? Feeling about this? Yet another pitcher.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, and he was. He was sent down to. He was optioned down to AAA on July 7th. So this is retroactive then. And he's got. I. The thing that shocked me first was this was. This might be the most specific diagnosis we've gotten on an injury. Like we Moved on from the days of just general discomfort, or in the case of emi, shoulder arm fatigue or whatever, he has elbow neuritis, which I don't recall anybody recently who's just on the short term IL being given this quick a diagnosis. Elbow neuritis, which is inflammation of the ulnar nerve, which is basically commonly called the funny bone, the ulnar nerve, where it passes beside the inside of the elbow. So it's the funny bone nerve. And when the nerve is compressed there, it's often diagnosed as ulnar neuropathy at the elbow. So I don't know if this is a good sign or a bad sign that we have some specificity on it. It feels like everything we've been reading and hearing about Mike Burroughs is that his arm slotting is all messed up. So he's trying to correct his arm slotting, which sounds like exactly the type of thing that might put some extra stress on your elbow.

[Chris Partee]

It definitely doesn't. And now we actually know the technical term for your funny bone.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, well, I guess. Yeah. Or at least it's part of, I think. Yeah. When you hit your funny bone, it must be that you. You hit the ulnar nerve.

[Chris Partee]

Whenever you hit it, it sounds. It feels like you hit a nerve.

[Seth Payne]

Does he? Elbow neuritis. You probably got a constant funny bone feeling going.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, God, that would be horrible.

[Seth Payne]

But he prayed for Mike Burroughs. That sounds awful.

[Chris Partee]

That would be horrible to have a constant feeling like you've hit your funny bone on the edge of a table.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. There's no way you can't pitch baseball effectively. That's how you end up allowing 10 runs in a game against a Nationals.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[In the Loop Host]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Seven. Seven earned. Only seven earned, but 10 runs on his watch.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, my goodness. Astros are currently 47 and 51. Dude. Three games out of first place in

[Seth Payne]

one and a half game out of the wild card.

[Chris Partee]

One and a half game out of the wild card in a less than stellar AL West.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. You know, now the other one, the other move that happened Sunday was they sent Alamar Santa down to aaa. And I don't just. That bothers me only because I'm just so intrigued by him. He's got a 1.17 ERA and 15 and a third innings. So, like, I get it and all, but just. Yeah, it's more. There's just more churn and more discomfort, both literally and figuratively, emotionally, when it comes to the pitching staff right this moment.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, there's a lot going on there with the Astros. Seth. The trade deadline is less than three Weeks away. Which way are you leaning right now knowing that they've gone into. To the break.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

Losing that, that series to the Rangers. Are you selling your buying? You still think the Astros have a shot to do something this season?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I mean, they, they, they have a shot to do something. Realistically, it's really hard for me to envision them having that shot to do something impressive in the playoffs. So like, they certainly, obviously have a shot at making the playoffs. I just, I've pivoted in the last couple weeks from being fixated on left handed outfielder to just a starting pitcher of some sort. And I, But I don't want to give up any prospects for it, you know, because I'm greedy and selfish.

[Chris Partee]

So what are you giving up?

[Seth Payne]

Everybody's saying that because there's so many teams in the mix that there might be more player for player trades.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

But then I'm stuck in that same position, position of, you know, where are they so heavily loaded on this team right now that you can do without one of these guys? And I just, I'm, I'm kind of stingy when it comes to that too. So I like. And then you end up okay. So what I'm basically saying is I'm, I'm, I'm ready for a half measure of some sort. And that doesn't really vault you up into World Series contender.

[Chris Partee]

What player of note right now on the Astros are you willing to part with to get that, that pitcher?

[Seth Payne]

I don't see, that's where I get the. I, I get greedy. And if you start thinking about guys that other teams might realistically really want or go after, give up something substantial for like, despite the highs and lows or anything else, I don't, I don't want to part with Christian Walker. I don't want to part with Isak Paredes. I certainly don't want to part with Jeremy Pena. And I don't know. I don't know.

[Chris Partee]

So you. So, so that pitcher that.

[Seth Payne]

Imagine I'm willing to part with any outfielder that you name right now, other than Cam Smith. That's about it,

[Chris Partee]

Seth. You just want it all. You want your cake and you want to eat it.

[Seth Payne]

No, no, no. Which is where I realized, no, if anything, like, yeah, that's where I, when I talk myself into it and I go through the little, the exercise every time, I kind of fall on that. All right. I really, I can't claim that I want to be a buyer at the trade deadline.

[Autotrader Dad]

So.

[Seth Payne]

Because, because honestly, what this team needs is for their farm system to get restocked, improve. And they made like, look, they end up with four players in the top 90 in the draft or the top 90, however many in the draft the other day, which is the most they've had in a long time. And that if you ever want to just rip the band aid off and acknowledge that, man, you guys are going to be treading water and you're going to be treading lukewarm water for a long time until you really start to, to build back up this farm system that I'm, I'm okay with kind of marginal moves at the trade deadline to balance things out, but I don't need a, I don't need an over the top move. I don't. I just don't think this is the year.

[Chris Partee]

So no big splash is what you're saying. Yeah. Okay.

[Autotrader Dad]

All right.

[Chris Partee]

Moving on. NFL, NFL coaches and executives are, no, no, no longer looking at Patrick Mahomes as the number one quarterback in the league. Josh Allen has now taken over that top spot.

[Seth Payne]

I think with Pat Mahomes, people are in a point where they're trying to figure out, all right, they, they haven't really given him what he needs at wide receiver the last few years. The offense for the Chiefs has been really like in a lot of ways of an unimpressive offense in the regular season. You know, their last super bowl was fueled as much by their defense as it was their offense. And I think you're just kind of almost like. And it's a weird parallel to CJ Stroud situation just done at a higher level. If people kind of reassessing. All right, like, at what point do we have to acknowledge that he hasn't performed nearly at the level of when he was just clearly the best quarterback in football. Yeah. And how much of it is his fault versus various offensive coordinators faults. I. And then you factor in the fact that he, you know, didn't play the entire season last year. I think like him getting bumped down from number one to number two in place of Josh Allen, I don't think it's as cataclysmic a thing as it might feel or as it should be.

[Chris Partee]

And as bad as the chief season was last year, along with him getting injured, I think they're going to bounce back this year.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. I think the one. The funny thing is, I think with Josh Allen, you look at him and you think, okay, boy, there's a certain point where at some point you just can't also have to rely on him being one of the best rushing quarterbacks in the NFL and carrying the team. But he also hasn't had the help at wide receiver ideally that he should have had over the last few years. Like this is what happens when you pay your quarterback. You know, these guys have to prove that they can do more with less. And I think both those guys have done that. I think it's. Sometimes I think people forget because he's not. Because he's not like a huge runner and he's not as athletically impressive. I think sometimes people forget that Pat Mahomes fall off physically like the natural fall off as you age does make it more difficult for him to make those out of structure plays in some of the really impressive, crazy things that he's been able to do. And when he has to rely just on simple accuracy, conventional accuracy, particularly on throws deeper than 10 yards downfield, like without that extra, that extra touch of improvisational ability, he's not quite the same guy.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And he's kind of almost. It almost feels like Tom Brady. Like Tom Brady never used his legs to make a living or his athleticism or anything, or his circus throws or anything like that. But he did have to when he got into his. His 30s. When he was like that year in the early 2010s, he kind of changed and became more sophisticated as a quarterback. And I think Mahomes is in that. In that margin of his career right now where there's. There's certain things that do have to change in terms of the way he operates for him to be as good on the back nine of his career as he was on the front nine.

[Chris Partee]

Well, one big change in Casey is Eric B. Enemy is back in the building.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

So we'll see what that does.

[Seth Payne]

I know. And that's where, you know, after B. Enemy left, remember there are all these kind of stories that like they kind of hinted up against. Well, the guys weren't actually get along with him as well. And Mahomes and him were at odds a lot. I always wonder about stories and reports like that because there's a healthy amount of conflict that you should have. Like, it's okay. It's okay for quarterbacks and coordinators and head coaches to butt heads and disagree about stuff. As long as it's productive conflict. Maybe it was the right amount of productive conflict with Eric Biennami.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah. And real quick before we hit the break, World cup today, France versus Spain, England versus Argentina. Any thoughts?

[Seth Payne]

No, no,

[Chris Partee]

no.

[Seth Payne]

You asked me during the break. You asked me during the break. So are you much. Are you much of a soccer guy? And I, and I started to say, you know, I tried really hard to get into it. And then I realized as I was saying, I was like, no, that's bogus. You haven't tried hard at all. You've kind of just. I've taken a surface level appraisal of all of this and I've enjoyed watching it. But now that the, now that the Viking looking fella is out for Norway, I'm kind of, I'm not as intrigued.

[Chris Partee]

Not as intrigued anymore. All right, that's going to do it for the, for these headlines. And on the other side, would you be interested in a reunion with a former Texans offensive playmaker? We'll get to that. Sports Radio 610 Are you really buying

[Autotrader Mom]

a car online on Autotrader right now?

[Autotrader Dad]

Really?

[Seth Payne]

I can get super specific with dealer

[Autotrader Kid]

listings and see cars based on my budget.

[Autotrader Mom]

You can really, really have it delivered

[Autotrader Dad]

or pick it up. Mommy walk.

[Autotrader Mom]

I think kid is walking up the slide.

[Autotrader Dad]

Really?

[Autotrader Kid]

Autotrader, buy your car online.

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[Autotrader Kid]

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[Autotrader Dad]

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[Seth Payne]

I remember telling my boss it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't.

[Autotrader Dad]

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[Seth Payne]

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[Chris Partee]

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[Seth Payne]

Prices may be higher for delivery.

[Chris Partee]

It's Payne and Pender Gas. I'm Chris Partsee he Seth Paine. I'm in for Sean Pendergast this morning. So before the Break. I gave you a little tease there. There's an offensive playmaker out there that is still available in free agency who's a former Houston Texan. Stefan Diggs is still on the market looking for a team, and he had some comments recently that if they are true, they would fit the Texans once again to a T. Opportunities aside, people might say it might be like, what, seven? That's like, real one, right? My opinion, I can compete with anybody. But take those as your ones. Right?

[Seth Payne]

Right. You can't name a number two better.

[Chris Partee]

There's not a number two on a team.

[Seth Payne]

Like, let's presumably give people the credit to just say, okay, you want to

[Chris Partee]

take the number one spot away?

[Seth Payne]

Name your number two receiver right now.

[Ad Voice]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

And tell me how much he makes. And then my last question is, is he better than me?

[Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. All right.

[Chris Partee]

A lot of big talk there from your boy.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I appreciate, honestly, though, I feel like this is a weird. A weird tip of the cap to somebody who recognizes that, man, he's still being cocky, but in a way that recognizes the. Like, he's not going to come out and say he's the best receiver in the league or anything, but it's a really good way to position himself, which is like, look, man, there aren't a lot of teams. He's saying there's no team out there that's as good as him. As a no guy out there, who's the number two guy. So he's acknowledging, like, he's telling teams, look, I'm not going to come in and act like I'm your number one guy, but you could have the best number two guy, the best one, two punch in the league. The first guys that jumped to my mind immediately were George Pickens and Devonte Adams.

[Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Like, just so George Pickens with the Cowboys and devonte Adams in the red zone especially, was just unstoppable last year. Right. So I like. But I understand where he's going and how, you know, I brought up devontae Smith, yet I said devontae Smith yesterday. Thinking about, like, if you, if you took last year's, you know, if you're using that example and it's just hard to figure with the, with the Eagles just because the, like, A.J. brown and the way they were using him was so weird and everything was so strange about.

[Chris Partee]

There's a lot going on.

[Seth Payne]

I think he's got a point, though, that he would be the best number two receiver on a lot of teams in the League. I think that, I think the problem is that I think the follow up question is so easy to answer. If that is true, then how come he's not on a team right now? Well, because everywhere you go there's always some kind of controversy either on field or off field. And I would include the Texans with that. He was a dream when it came to. He was a dream when it came to how he operated in the building and as a leader and everything. But there was drama off the field with him.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

While he was here, he was, he, he was being sued for whatever by a couple of women. He goes up into New England and you've got at least two off field dramas. You had the. Well, I look and I don't know, it seemed like whatever the hell happened with Cardi B that didn't seem like. I don't know how much. How disruptive that was or anything. But you also had him, him handing out the pink substance on the boat to the girl in Miami. That was not a good early on that he wasn't in the building as much as possible. People wanted him to be. And then the entire season like he's under the veil of this, this pending criminal charge, which he was completely cleared of eventually. But he's the kind of guy, there's just always something going on. But I don't, man, based on how he operated when he was in Houston, I have a hard time telling a team that you shouldn't bring him in. Yeah, I think for, for me, where I am right now is that the Texans have spent pretty heavily in terms of just total cash up front. They had a lot of cap space that's kind of dwindled pretty quickly. You're not going to sign Stefon Diggs to a long term contract. There comes a point where you got to say, look, we like Jaden Higgins and Jalen Noel and Tank Dell might be coming back that we need to develop these young guys. We think they have a high ceiling. You know, none of us on the outside know exactly how they feel about Tank Dell right now, but it's just, it's, it falls into the category for me of man, you can't spend money on everybody now. And that you also just, you need to. It's sink or swim time for some of the younger players on your offense. We need to bring those guys along.

[Chris Partee]

Well. Seven one, three here on the text line. Yes, Diggs, please. They sound like they want digs back like immediately.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I don't know. And that's a problem. It's like, I could say that about so many of the guys that are remaining right now in free agency. I would say, look, Joey Bosa, hell yeah, bring him in. I know, like as a backup, if you. Yeah, pay him, whatever. There's like different offensive linemen that I'd love to have in here. I mean, at a certain point you gotta, like, you can't spend on every single guy that might be an asset on your team after you've already spent a good chunk. And that's like, that's the hard part. Yeah. Me as a fan, I would say, yeah, bring Stefan Diggs in. More the merrier. I get it and I understand, you know, a couple years ago when everybody wanted Simmons, the safety, because he was out there on the market and they were wondering, all you did, all you have is this second round draft pick, this Calum Bullock kid, what the hell is he ever going to do? Well, I know he's turned into one of the best young safeties in the league. You know, like, that's, like, that's, that's, that's what they. Excuse me. Third round pick. some point you gotta, you gotta give your young guys that you want to see develop a chance to develop and get the benefit of them being on the rookie contract.

[Chris Partee]

If you want to join us on the text line, join the show. Hit us on the text line. 713-572-554-610. So, so, you know, so I guess what is it right now with the Texans and. Or what is it about the Texans in general and bringing in, I guess, players that kind of have, you know, sketchy or murky backgrounds? I mean, they've done it a few different times. It's worked. It hasn't worked. I mean, even bringing in Terry on Arnold for a workout, was it last week? That was kind of surprising to some, but to some, to others, not so much right now.

[Seth Payne]

I think that. Well, for one, all they did was work them out.

[Chris Partee]

Exactly.

[Seth Payne]

So that's not the same as signing him. I think the. There's definitely more of an appetite now for the Texans and signing people that it might have a sketchy past than there was in the past. But I do think that the important thing is they still have pretty high standards for exactly how much chicanery they'll allow when a guy is actually on the team. They're still one of the bottom teams when it comes to players who have been arrested. Yeah. And you know, I brought up, when I brought up Jimmy Ward the other day talking about this, people pointed out that he never ended up getting. He never ended up getting charged with anything officially. Right. But he was arrested. I think they only count the actual arrests.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So whether a guy ends up being exonerated or not, it's still like, okay, there's like, you get a general gauge of, like, how many. How much chicanery is on their team by the number of arrests. And the Texans are still pretty low. I'm all for, like, I don't look everybody. Like, everybody's got things they've done in their past that they're not proud of. Some of them are more extreme than others. You grow, you move on, you change. And I've always been of the opinion that as long as a guy, for one. This is going to sound. This is going to sound really bad. I'm going to say this up front. I understand how bad this is going to sound.

[Chris Partee]

Preface it.

[Autotrader Dad]

All right.

[Seth Payne]

Terry and Arnold is accused of being part of a pretty violent plot to intimidate a couple of guys that he thought had stolen property from him into giving the property back. He was wrong, apparently, about those guys actually being the guys who had stolen the property. And two, if what the police say is correct, he's innocent until proven guilty. Obviously, he was. He orchestrated this scheme where his buddies pistol whipped a couple of guys, a few guys trying to. Trying to get some stuff out of him. That's pretty bad. That's really, really bad. It's. It's not as bad. It's bad. Remember, everybody, I said it's bad. It is really bad. I think, though, it's different than violence towards a woman. Yeah. I think, like, a domestic violence or something like that is definitely bad. Bad. Nobody forget that. But it's also like, I don't. I don't want to. I don't want to, like, throw that aside. Is it like, oh, that's just. That's just boys being boys. Like, no, this is. It's deeper than boys being boys. But he's innocent until proven guilty. And I could see some, like, by way of just his character reports of what he was like as a player coming out of Alabama and the fact that this was part of him and four of his friends who, some of whom sound like they. They must be pretty sketchy dudes to begin with. This is the kind of thing you can look at and say, like, try to figure out, all right, man, what the hell happened? Like, what. How did you go from being a guy that Nick Saban and everybody at Alabama was gushing about for your character to where you got Wrapped up in a scenario like this after two years in the NFL. And I, like, I can envision, I can envision there being a story behind it where you say, all right, we just got to get you back on the straight and narrow path. And you know, you're going to be like you're on a one strike policy and all of that. But I wouldn't be upset if they signed him. The other part that I think people are forgetting is that he was so far, two years into his career, a bit of a disappointment. Like I was. It wasn't ready to call him a bust yet because he had some highs, but he also had some lows. He wasn't nearly as consistent as you would hope he would be. And then he got injured last year. So like, wasn't a bust. But also it's not like he comes in and you think immediately he's better than Jalen Smith or some of the other guys you have on the roster. But you do add him to the mix as guys that can, can be, can be competing for those backup spots.

[Chris Partee]

Seth, you mentioned the word bus there, saying that Tyrion Arnold is not a bus yet. But where's.

[Seth Payne]

Well, I mean, yeah, I mean he's a bus. For the Lions.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, yeah, for the Lions.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

I mean, because he's gone.

[Seth Payne]

But I guess in general, 100% conclusively a bus.

[Chris Partee]

Exactly. But where, where is the, the overall first round bus line? Like, is it three years and you've done pretty much nothing? Or like what. How does that work, like for you?

[Seth Payne]

I have a hard time. I, and maybe I'm too nice. I have a hard time even calling anybody a bust if they're not top half of the first round because it's a, like it's a now. I mean there's, there's degrees to that. Like, if it were based just on his play and he was a second half of the first round guy. But if you got, you know, you get released after your second season, if it was just for his play, all right, that's a bust.

[Autotrader Mom]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

But like I try to with the draft and one of the reasons I don't get as excited about the draft as some people is I just kind of look at it as a probability cloud. You know, I like, I like, I've. Anybody who's got any honesty with themselves at all knows that you're like, it's, it's a dicey predicting who's going to be good and who's going to be bad in the NFL. The best GMs in the history of football are not all that much better at 50% in figuring out which first rounder is going to be good football players or not. So I kind of like, there's guys I get excited about, but I've always got that healthy skepticism in the back of my mind that, like, you know what, though? Like, we'll see. We'll see when we get out there if they're any good. So for me, I got. I tend to be more on. All right. If you're a top 10 pick and you don't become an impact player, yeah, you're a bust. Those are, those are big time assets. Back half of the first round, I start looking at it as more as like, man, it was a, it was a bad pick and they screwed up. But the guy, like, what's the difference really between back half of the first round and first pick in the second round? It's not necessarily all that big.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, yeah, no, I get that.

[Seth Payne]

So do you get, do you get. Are you like a guy. Will you call a third rounder a bust?

[Chris Partee]

No. Yeah, he was drafted in the third round. I mean, you know what I mean? Like, if he doesn't pan out, if he pans out, it's a plus for the team, right? It's a bonus, I think.

[Seth Payne]

Okay, so if we go to third rounders, that's where. Especially in any, in any of the first three rounds, if it's something where the guy just, it turns out the guy didn't have a good attitude or a good work ethic or something, then I'll label him a bust because I hate him because of that. Like, I get a little bit angry and disgusted with the guy, like, oh, all right. And the Texans used to draft a lot of guys like that in the third round where it was just like, you know, some guys get knocked down to the third round because people might think they're not athletic enough. Like they're really good football players, but not athletic enough. The Texans used to draft these guys in the third round who fell to the third round specifically because nobody was sure if they even liked playing football or if they were just kind of lazy or whatever. And like, that's the worst. That's the worst because those guys, they don't get cut for the first three years, in a sense, as a player. When you're on a team and there's some third round pick who's just a bum and he just keeps getting chance after chance because he's a third round pick, you get pissed. You're like, suck. Because you also see, like, I used to do this with offensive linemen. There'd be some offensive linemen who are late round draft picks or free agents, rookie free agents. And I'd be practicing against them and I'm like, this kid's got something to him. But meanwhile, like the, the coaches and the front office act like he's a bum. Where meanwhile the second or the third rounder is starting in football games. And I know for a fact that he's as soft as applesauce, but he's out there starting football games because he's a second rounder. Like, that creates a bad culture on the team that created like, it just feels like you're a player and you're like, these guys don't even know what they're looking for. Or their, their egos are so wrapped up in their own, their own forecast that they can't see the, they can't see the truth of the situation.

[Chris Partee]

But, but that's more about a, I guess a certain type of, a certain level of investment usually. Right. As far as the first and second round pick getting all the, all those opportunities.

[Seth Payne]

Right, right, right. But that's where, but that's where, you know, good GMs know that they got to be open to being wrong. And that's why I always respect the, I like, I like it usually if a team, if I see that a, if I see just without knowing anything else about it, if I see that a GM cuts a third rounder after his rookie year, I like, usually I'm like, you know what? Good, good for him. Like that's a guy whose ego isn't all wrapped up in it because you can take a hit, you know, in admitting, you have to admit that you made a big mistake on somebody early on, then people are going to judge you for it. But the right thing is the right thing. And if, if that guy's taking up a roster spot from somebody who is a late round draft pick or an undrafted rookie free agent or maybe just some blue collar one year free agent that you signed, then you're not doing right by the team. You're letting your ego control things. And that's one thing I think the Texans have done a good job with that in recent years of just saying, hey, look, it's an open competition. We don't care where you were drafted. And they haven't, it's not like they've just automatically made guys who are draft pick starters right away. You know, like they did it with Kamari Lasseter, but It was because they were that impressed with him early on, they felt like, okay, yeah, he's doing everything that we were hoping and thought he would do. But they make some other guys wait. Like Caleb Bullock was raw and, you know, and he was a third round pick, but he was raw and he had to bide his time and he worked his way into it his rookie year.

[Chris Partee]

Seth, I want to get your thoughts on some, a few other free agent names that are still out there and if you would have any interest in bringing any one of these guys into the Texans. But also on the other side, we're going to go over which Houston team are you most confident, Chris? We, we go all the way to 37 here.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, yeah, sorry, I just explained. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do. This is our mega segment.

[Chris Partee]

All right, well, Seth, I thought you

[Seth Payne]

were just doing a long and ornate segue.

[Chris Partee]

That's my fault there, Seth. And you can give me your thoughts here. I'm going to give you a few names here that are some key names that have been, you know, impact players in the past in the NFL. But right now they're still looking for teams. So we got Debo Samuel, Keenan Allen at receiver. Then we also have Joey Bosa on the defensive side as well as Bobby Wagner, Taylor Deck Taylor Decker O line, and Makai Becton.

[Seth Payne]

Debo Samuel is an interesting one. And, and it's funny because I feel like, I feel like there's a lot of people that hear Debo Samuel and they think of that 1400 yard season that he had and, and don't realize how long ago that was.

[Chris Partee]

It has been a while.

[Seth Payne]

It was 2021.

[Chris Partee]

Was it that long ago?

[Seth Payne]

I was thinking 2021.

[Chris Partee]

Wow, that's five years.

[Seth Payne]

He hasn't had a 1,000 yard receiving season since then. And you would say, yeah, but you remember with Deebo, the thing is that he can be a running back too, right? The most running rushing yards he ever had was in that 2021 season. That was where he was so incredible. He had 365 yards rushing. He had 1405 yards receiving in 2021. And like since then he hasn't had as many rushing attempts. He's never had more than 892 yards receiving. And that was in 2023. And like his versatility is really cool and I think, yeah, he can be a valuable part of it. The I like he's a guy in a weird way, I think that Stefan Diggs is 100% a better receiver than Deebo Samuel is. But there's more about Debo Samuel that intrigues me in terms of bringing him in onto this roster where I want to keep developing my young receivers, but with some of the cool and fun and funky stuff that you could do with Deebo Samuel, if he's open to it, that it might add. It might add a certain level of wrinkle to the offense. That would be intriguing, and it would probably be for a cheaper price than Stefan Diggs, but it still does create a really wide receiver. Like a really crowded wide receiver room. Yeah, I think, like, right now, if they were to sign Deebo Samuel or Stefon Diggs, I'd be really excited, intrigued by it. Or Keenan Allen, for that matter, because he's another guy that's still out there.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

I. It would make me, though. It would make me a little bit sad because I would feel like, okay, they really. They don't have high hopes for Tank Dell. If you think about. You think about, like, depending on how they feel about Tank Dell right now, you might be really intrigued by Stefan Diggs still acknowledging that, man, we've got these young guys and Nico and, like, it's just, we want to. How do we work all these guys in, not to mention getting our draft pick some looks. But if. If you don't. If. If you don't have Tank Dell, you know, it's still not overly crowded. If they're optimistic about Tank Dell, then bringing in Debo Samuel or Stefan Diggs right now, it's just like it's wasting salary cap space on something that. On other positions that you might need to fill because of injury or what have you, you know, like backup defensive end. If I had to. If I had to spend money right now to get depth in a position group, I'm way more focused on either the secondary or backup defensive end than I would be in the wide receiver room, especially if they feel good about Tank Dell.

[Chris Partee]

So that sounds like a. Like a. Like you're leaning towards Joey Bosa there.

[Seth Payne]

I know as a.

[Chris Partee]

As a backup defense, you know, outside

[Seth Payne]

rusher Joey Bosa, I'd be really intrigued by. I suspect that Joey Bosa is probably. Probably waiting to see which teams end up either being desperate for a defensive end because they don't like the guys they have, or because of injury where he can be a starter. And, you know, I think the first thing you think of with Joey Bosa is you worry about his injury history, but he's been a lot healthier over the last couple years. I just. I wonder if he's I'm guessing that he's not interested in signing with a team like the Texans, where he's definitively going to be a backup and, and that he might not get as many reps as he would like that, you know, because he started 15 games last year for the Bills. So I'd like. Yeah, I'd be intrigued by him, but he'd have to be cool with understanding that he's going to come in and be part of a rotation with the Neil Hunter and Will Anderson, and he's not going to be the main guy. The guy that's out there right now that doesn't show up any. On any of the lists that I, That I'd really be happy about is Derek Barnett. You know, like, like Derek Barnett. It's weird. I. I don't. I don't know why he's gotten zero credit from people for, for giving you five sacks a year, not to mention a couple of touchdowns. We'll. We'll play in for one of the best defenses in the league. I think that. I think it's partly probably because it's the best defense in the league that people are thinking like, well, yeah, he's a nice piece to have when, you know, when you already have a good defense. And that's what I myself am saying, like, yeah, he's a really nice piece to have, and he's been a part of being a top two defense in the NFL. I think he is also another guy that's probably biding his time and saying, you know, like, I'd like to be a starter somewhere, but I am getting up there in years. It's not like. It's not like Houston is a bad situation or anything.

[Chris Partee]

Not at all.

[Seth Payne]

But he might just be waiting to see if there's an opportunity for him to go in and be a starter somewhere and make. And also make more money, but that, that he's probably. He's still accepting calls from the Texans.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So I think, like, he might show up at some point.

[Chris Partee]

Realistically, could you see the Texan signing any one of these guys? I mean, I know we haven't got the training camp yet, but realistically, any of these names we just talked about, did you see the Texans bringing in any one of these guys?

[Seth Payne]

I think the. I think, realistically, I like. And Keenan. Keenan Allen's another interesting one that I don't like. Boy, I. I would love to have Keenan Allen. And yet at the same time, there's kind of an unorthodox way method to his route running That I don't know if that's what CJ needs right this moment. Like, we're trying to get CJ on time and in rhythm and everything that. It's just sometimes things are just not quite the. The perfect fit based on what you want to be as an offense. Which feels weird because I'm kind of turning my nose up at a really good wide receiver, but just for all the same reasons that I think. I don't want to make that wide receiver room more crowded than it needs to be when you're banking on a couple of your young guys to get. Keep developing. So I like the wide receivers. I'm intrigued, but until there's an injury or something, I don't feel a desperate need for. I think that. I think Joey Bosa might be the one that I'm most intrigued by. And then there's a few. There's a few offensive linemen floating around out there that like. Like Makai Becton still out there. And Makai Becton's been very high and low. You know, he's a bust with. He was a bust with the jets, but then ends up being really good with the Eagles, but then he goes out to the Chargers, and he's part of one of the worst offensive lines in football. Like, he seems like a classic guy that the Texans would say, oh, yeah, bring him out on a cheap deal and see how he fits in. And maybe this is. Maybe Cole Popovich has got the magic touch with him the same way that it seemed like Jeff Stoutland did in Philadelphia. So there's a lot like Cam Robinson still out there. And again, just on a budget, one year deal. It didn't work out when he was here last year, but maybe circumstances are changed. There are a lot of these guys floating around that I'm. I. That could be depth pieces. The one. There was a tweet yesterday from this guy. He used to be. He used to be in the, like, analytics for a few different teams. So it's cool because I like when these guys that are like actual analytics guys show up all of a sudden in the media instead of just like people who can barely do basic math but write about analytics. There are. There's a lot of people out there writing about analytics who just don't understand basic algebra. And like, you can tell they've never taken a stats class because they just don't and they're annoying. So this guy, Ryan Paginetti, okay, he wrote this. He said, from 2023 to 2025. OL 6. So your sixth offensive lineman averaged 408 snaps per season, and your seventh offensive lineman averaged 256 snaps. So, like, those two guys average 1,000 snaps per team on the season, which is almost like a full slate of games. And I think his point is you got to almost. You got to look at your depth at. You got to look at your depth on the offensive line as a starting position. Almost. Your sixth and seventh offensive linemen are just as important. I think the Texans have done a good job of that this year. I think that this is something that I've heard a few different people say. You know what, the top they're starting five. If you look at it, you might not rank them all that high. If you rank their stop, their top eight or top nine, they're actually doing a lot better than a lot of other teams. And like, like, ideally, I'd love to have both, but the reality of the situation is you're probably going to play, you know, at any given time, eight or nine or ten different guys on the offensive line during the year. And I think they're better suited for that this year than they were last year.

[Chris Partee]

So it sounds like you think the Texans may have finally gotten the offensive line right and on track. That's what it sounds like.

[Seth Payne]

I don't know about. It's right.

[Ad Voice]

Right.

[Chris Partee]

Sounds pretty or on track.

[Seth Payne]

Pretty or like they get dramatic or

[Chris Partee]

like they could get up, be on track this year because they've struggled with the offensive line.

[Seth Payne]

In 2023, the O line, for all of its issues, still finished up ranked 16th on pro football folks's final O line ranking. So, like, for whatever it's worth, take PFF with a grain of salt and everything. It's way higher than they've been the last couple years.

[Chris Partee]

That is.

[Seth Payne]

And that was, lo and behold, that was CJ's best year as our most, most impressive and most encouraging year as a pro. I think that they could have got. They might be back at that level now, which is, again, pretty. If they're that much improved, they don't have to be, right? Like, they don't have to be one of the best offensive lines. But if they have a substantively better offensive line and CJ doesn't get better, then that's a really, really bad sign. If he does get better, then, hey, man, what people have been saying all along is like, yeah, you just got to support him a little better.

[In the Loop Host]

All right?

[Seth Payne]

That makes a lot of sense. Look at him. He's been the same guy. He's just, he's got A better offensive line in front of him.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, I, I, I think if the offensive line can get back to that kind of mid level there, like you said, they were ranked 16th by PFF. Take that for you know what it's worth. I think, yeah, I, I think CJ Will improve and I think that offense, I mean I, I've been saying this. If this offense can even be average, I mean this team really should be with that defense. They should be legit super bowl contenders.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, legit. The one thing, because I always bring this up and it's a little bit, it's a little bit shady on my part because I'll point out that they were the 13th best scoring offense last year. Like, all right. But you got to weigh that with a couple of that was they had some blowout victories and situations where, yeah, we know that by and large it wasn't like they were in above average, slightly above average offense. But in terms of just, I always remind myself of that just to remind myself that, look, they weren't the Browns, they weren't the, the Dolphins. They weren't a bad offense. They were just, they, they definitely now and if they didn't have the defense they have, they wouldn't have been the 13th scoring. You know, they were, they're the beneficiary of a lot of turnovers and short fields and all of that. But that there are the, the gap between where they were last year and being a genuinely good offense isn't as great as it feels. And I think a lot of it comes down to again, an oversimplification. But short yardage and red zone and the ability to run the game, run the ball, those things are all interrelated. You know, having the ability to run the ball also makes you a better red zone in short yardage offense. But those three things, like, you tweak those up because they were one of the worst red zone offenses in the league last year. They were really good at getting down into the red zone. They just couldn't do anything when they got down there. They were awesome at kicking field goals in the red zone. But the just by. And that's where I think with David Montgomery. I don't expect David Montgomery to be a top 10 running back this year, but he doesn't need to be if he can just be that guy that. Think of all those short yardage. Think about those short yardage situations down in the red zone where they just needed a half yard and couldn't get a half yard. Yeah, like that's what I need out of David Montgomery. I need a half yard. You know, I need 18 inches. Like, that's a. It's a. It's a big difference, and it creates a much different offense than. And it doesn't need to be that David Montgomery runs for five and a half yards per carry or anything. It's got to be in those specific situations that you can do something.

[Chris Partee]

Well, we're going to find out here soon, because, like I said, training camp, we're coming up on a couple of weeks away. Let's get to this. Which Houston team are you most confident in right now based on your previous season or current season results?

[Seth Payne]

So we'd have to say this. All right, is so confidence kind of the bar for all three of those teams right now is, all right, they're. They're playoff worthy. That, like, obviously, like, it might. Based on recent results or just where the Astros are right now, like, okay, they're all. They're all capable of making the playoffs, so it's a huge disappointment if you don't make the playoffs. How. How capable are they of making a genuine push in the playoffs, like a league championship or a conference championship game? I still feel like it's the Texans, like, despite any of the. Despite any arguments or debates about CJ Stroud, I think, I mean, you look at how close they could have been to being in an AFC championship game last year with CJ Stroud playing the worst football of his life. Like, that's the, the fact that that was still a relatively close game deep into the third quarter versus the Patriots.

[Chris Partee]

It's amazing.

[Seth Payne]

White C.J. stroud being as awful as he was that day.

[Chris Partee]

It's amazing.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Like, I still feel the most confident about the team. Texans.

[Chris Partee]

Texans. Okay.

[Seth Payne]

Where are you on that?

[Chris Partee]

I. I gotta go with you there. I mean, just looking at the. How the Rockets ended their season and what they have really haven't done this offseason, they have not done much. I know you guys have talked about that a little bit. I've talked about it on different, different shows on our slate here at Sports Radio 610. And then the Astros just. I mean, they're just. They've been a mediocre team this year. I know they've played better as of late, last six weeks or so. But just overall, this season, the Astros have been. They've been mediocre. 47 to 51. That's mediocre to me.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. No, and it's really hard. Like, I mean, it's just. I thought the. I thought this Weekend. It was kind of a perfect microcosm of what you're looking at with the Astros, which is that the. It's hard to. It's hard to be a team that's anchored by your relief pitching. That. All right, like, okay, we got. For us to somehow make it through a playoff series, we got to be sure that. We got to be sure that we can score enough runs and that Oakr, Brian King and Josh Hader are the best versions of themselves, which are. Then they've been really good and steady and solid and everything. But, man, I don't like going through and having it. When having it be that they couldn't win that series because. Because their, Their best players and their best relief pitchers had a little bit of an off day or an off night. They have a starting. Yeah. Especially if you go to a seven game series and. Okay, well, we only have maybe by then we have two starting pitchers that we trust, and then we just need the relievers to pitch a boatload of innings versus a really good baseball team in the playoffs. It's like, no, they're gonna. They're gonna. They're not. They're. They're gonna.

[Ad Voice]

You.

[Autotrader Mom]

You.

[Seth Payne]

Like every game can't be a bullpen day.

[Chris Partee]

No, it shouldn't be.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. I honestly, I. Honestly, I feel. I feel more optimistic about the Rockets and their ability to be more the team. The team that people thought they were going to be headed into 20, 25, 26, headed into last season. I do think that. I think that there's some weird gap where. Because positionless basketball is such a big thing these days and everything. I feel like we almost want to act like having a point guard doesn't matter anymore.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, it matters.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I know. But it's weird. Weird.

[Chris Partee]

I don't know anymore.

[Seth Payne]

Maybe it's because people don't like simple solutions or whatever, but I just, I said like. And I'm like, I don't claim to be like the big NBA guy or anything, but there is a part of it. It's like, yeah, I. Look, I know Fred Van Vliet's not one of the top point guards in the league or anything, but when you take a team that's built to function with a point guard, specifically to function with Fred Van Vliet, and you decide like, no, instead we're going to take all these young guys and have them play in an uncomfortable role in position.

[Chris Partee]

Exactly.

[Autotrader Mom]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

You're going to get drastically different results. And then especially even when you make that work to a certain degree, but then Kevin Durant is injured in the playoffs, then, yeah, it's going to look really, really bad. There is a thing going on with the Rockets that's a lesser version, but kind of similar to what happened with the Texans, which is that the playoff results skew your feeling about the entire operation. Yeah, I think to a more extreme degree than it should. And I like. And I just. I don't. I feel like a dullard. But there's a part of me that just wants to say, like, yeah, it really, really matters having Fred Van Bleed out there, and if he can be healthy, I'm a little bit concerned about how his injury and his age might affect his defense. But beyond that, I think they're. But defense wasn't the problem last year with the Rockets, and it hasn't been. Yeah, right. It's that. No, can they have a well structured and designed offense and execute it properly there? It's just going to be night and day as long as Fred Van Vliet is healthy. Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

And if Fred Van Vliet is there and he's healthy, Amend Thompson doesn't have to play out of position at point guard.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

Reed shepherd doesn't have to play point guard. You can put him. Put him off the ball. Let him be a tour. I believe he's small, but I believe he's a natural two guard.

[Seth Payne]

There are a lot of things that we wanted the young core to do in terms of progressing last year. Like, I feel like everybody that talks about the Rockets at two years ago, at the end of the season, at the end of the playoffs, thought, you know, before the Durant trade or anything, it's like, wow, this young core is so good. And these guys each individually, just have to take that proverbial next step forward. You get to last year, and once Fred Van Vliet gets injured, and then certainly after Steven Adams goes down, I think that. I think people almost felt like, well, okay, I might have said they needed to improve by 10%, but really these guys just need to improve by 50% and everything will be just fine. All we need is for Reed shepherd to develop into a true point guard. Okay, cool. So what are they going to do about it? Barely play him at all.

[In the Loop Host]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And really just not give him an opportunity to develop into that role. Okay, so you're going to go out and find somebody to actually play point guard? No, no, no, no, no. We're going to wait until after the trade deadline and then really give Reed shepherd an opportunity to learn how to play point guard.

[Chris Partee]

Well, the 713 on the text line here. Rockets need a better GM so someone is not a fan of Rafael Stone.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I don't. Man, it's hard because again, I don't want to. It just. You never want to just hit the easy button and say it's as simple as yeah, you lost Fred Van Vliet, who was a vital cog beforehand. That part you can't anticipate. Just like the Texans last year couldn't anticipate that Joe Mixon was going to be mysteriously injured. No, you could not, not play football the entire season. But like the, like, what do you do? What do you do to account for it or make up for it? That was where I felt like the organization really failed them last year.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, it did. It did feel like they dropped the ball there. Which Texan storyline could have the biggest impact on the team's success in 2026? As we approach training camp, we'll get to that next. Sports Radio 610 on the under $3

[Seth Payne]

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[Chris Partee]

Prices and participation may vary.

[Seth Payne]

Prices may be higher for delivery.

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[Seth Payne]

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Impressions.

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[Chris Partee]

Yes, it's Payne and Pendergast. He's Seth Payne, I'm Chris Partee and I'm in for Sean Pendergast this morning. Had a little trouble getting that out there.

[Seth Payne]

You're doing a good job though, man. It's hard. It's an adjustment doing early morning radio. It is. Especially for some. You do a lot of the night. You do Area 4 to 5 a lot. That's a big, that's a big gap, man.

[Chris Partee]

Yes, I do Area 45 quite a bit. And you know, I've done some morning radio in the past when I lived in Austin for one of the stations out there, but not as a host, as a producer.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

So I mean, it's obviously different when you're on this side as well, but that's been like 10 years ago. So it's been a while since I've actually done morning radio.

[Seth Payne]

It's been a little while. I always try to remember this when you guys are in and we do an unfair thing with our co hosts when Sean is out, which is I like we had. We have you run the show. Yeah. Because I'm just a organizational mess. You can talk to Ben about it during the break that I just, I lose track of too many things. So I just, I'm along for the ride. But you know, this is what I always think of you guys. Anybody that has to fill in in the morning, whenever I do an interview at 9:30 or 10 at night, somebody has me come on I just. I. My brain doesn't work. I just. I. By that point, you know, I've been. I've been up for 18 hours or whatever. Done. And. Yeah, and I, like, I sound like I'm drunk, which is probably more entertaining, but I just. My brain really doesn't work. I have a hard time paying attention to what questions people are asking me and everything, so. You've been doing an incredible job. If the roles were reversed, I would be much worse off.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, well, you're definitely making. Making it easy for me. So let's get into this. Which Texan storyline Seth could have the biggest impact on the team's success heading into the 2026 campaign as we approach training camp here? So we got. Obviously, we've talked about this on the station, you know, all offseason. Wide receiver depth is one of those things that we've talked about. Also the Texans o line, and I just asked you this in the last segment. Have they finally gotten it right? Also you got defensive depth depth. Tank Dale. Where is Tank Dale at coming into training camp and what should we expect? Or is the team optimistic about him? You know, what's he going to look like then? Also Nick Haley, offensive coordinator C.J. stroud. Can they get him back on track, though? There's so many things going on here with the Texans. So which storyline for you, Seth, could have the biggest impact?

[Seth Payne]

I just. Okay, you know what? It's interesting. You laid out five things and it's 100%, I agree with you. To separate, like, two of those things are the same thing. It's wide receiver depth and wide receiver number two position. That was one of your item lists. And then how will Tank Dell look? Returning from injury is another item, and it does. Those are two separate things, and yet obviously very interrelated. I've been operating in his weird way where I just. I don't. I'm trying not to acknowledge that Tank Dell might come back just because I don't. It's such a wild card.

[Chris Partee]

It is.

[Seth Payne]

But now it's getting to the point of, like, almost professional negligence because the training camp's almost going to be here. I. But what I've realized is I think. I think. I don't want to admit it to myself, but I think I'm a little bit pessimistic about Tank Dell coming back and being the same force or the same presence that he was before just because it's. It's few and far between the examples you can find of guys like that. You got to go to guys like really, the guys who have had three ligament, like a. Torn. Hurt their knee and torn three ligaments in their knee when they, when they injured their knee. Nick Chubb in his injury in college is probably the best example who came back from an injury like that and ended up being one of the very best running backs in the NFL. And there's a few other guys, but it's just, it's. It's hard, it's dicey to come back from. So I always kind of just put it off on a shelf and just think of it almost as like, oh, yeah, like that's the money I put away and forgot about. You know, when you discover an old, discover an old 401k, you forgot about it.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, that's always.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. All right, so I think if we take Tankdale out of it, I still think, I think they're going to be fine with Jaden Higgins and Jalen Noel. And let's say that, let's just say for the sake of this exercise, Tank Dell isn't involved at all. I'm not as worried about those guys. It's awesome if they look if one of those guys really comes along. But you can have a good offense just by virtue of having. You've got Nico Collins. Yeah, it's. What do you do in the run game and what do you do with your tight ends that can really round out the offense? It doesn't have to be that you've got a stud slot receiver, a stud number two receiver. I think the biggest thing for me as far as like, like Nick Caylee in this, in Stroud, that's, That's obvious, like, that's a huge deal. But I think that's also related to the offensive line. I think the offensive line, if the offensive line is genuinely solid, not even awesome, but just genuinely solid. I think that's the thing where everything else falls into place. Like you then if you, if the offensive line is set in their functioning well, then the run game is going to look better than it was last year. The pass game is going to look better than it was last year. CJ Stroud is simply just like, just by sheer logic, you know, okay, take a quarterback, give him a better offensive line in front of him. Unless he's a complete, complete doofus, he's going to look like a better quarterback next year. So for me, it really is still the offensive line. The one, the one wild card that I really, really want to see is just depth on the defense. Because they had injuries last year, they were able to Work through it. But we saw, like we saw when Aziz Elshire was out, they were a different defense. You know, Ashton Genti had his best game of his, of his rookie season against the Texans when Aziz Elshire was out. We saw what happened when Kamari Lasseter wasn't out there. You know, they struggled. They, they were able to motor along without Jalen Petrie, but it felt kind of precarious. And part of the reason they were able to is they were able to go to their four. They just went to their base four, three package a lot more, which had EJ Speed involved. Then EJ Speed's not there. No longer here. Yeah. So like that kind of the depth, I feel like the depth on the defense is, is more precarious than people might realize just because they were relatively lucky with injuries last year.

[Chris Partee]

I feel like this defense is so good that, you know, like you just mentioned, we kind of overlook the aspect of the depth and there being questions about the depth of the defense. I just feel like they're, they were so great last season. It's like, okay, they'll play through anything, Right?

[Seth Payne]

Right. Yeah. And. But it is, it's also though, man, for the vast majority of time, you had the four most important or impactful positions on defense, defensive end and cornerback. You were in pretty good shape. I mean, Derek Stingley having to work through and fight through and play through those injuries, those oblique injuries that he had, you know, people kind of forget in the first part of the season, Stingley wasn't quite himself. There were just a few. There's a few plays that he didn't make and some things that he didn't make do where you could tell, all right, he's just, he. He's physically not quite himself.

[In the Loop Host]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And it could have been disastrous. I guess the. If either of those guys had been injured for a long stretch of time. I think the biggest thing this year that I'm optimistic about or hopeful for with the defenses. If you look at Dino Vasso and Steven at Agoke. Vasso is the defensive backs coach and AD Goke is the safeties coach specifically. They've done a really good job, look, developing a bunch of guys who are not first rounders. You know, Kamari Lasseter, Kalin Bullock, Jalen Petrie, they've done an incredible job with them. Derek Stingley's gotten better, you know, year by year, and more than anything, he's just stayed healthy. But they've done a great job. You want to get to a point like the Chiefs have been for a Long time. And they're going to be tested in this, this year. But the Chiefs have been really good at developing cornerbacks and developing defensive backs to where they can, they can survive the loss of a free agent here or there. I mean, this year they're going to have to do without Trent McDuffie. Like, that's a different level, but that's

[Chris Partee]

going to be rough.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. So I think that's what you hope to see out of the Texans defensive backfield this year. Is that all right? Jalen Reed, hopefully healthy and in his second year, Jalen Smith, some of these other Kamari, Ramsey, the young guys. Like, if they can come along, then that's where, that's where Dino Vasso and At A Goke really prove their worth is that you've got that bona fide depth in the, in the secondary. Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Partee]

But it seems like no, no matter what we, what the discussion is about the Texans, you know, just talk about, you know, defense, defensive line, depth, defensive backfield depth. But it just feels like it always comes back to, like you mentioned earlier in the conversation, the offensive line.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

The offensive line is, is, you know, in sync. Then everything else, it seems like it's going to fall into place.

[Seth Payne]

You get the best version of everybody else just by, just by that very simple thing of, you know, having five human beings be much better football players than they were last year. There are like, replace guys that they did last year and, and also factoring along the way, really it's eight guys at least. Like, yeah, I go, yeah, I can't look at Braden Smith or Wyatt Teller between the two of them and their injury history like it would be. It would be idiotic for me to project that both those guys are going to be healthy the entire season. So your depth is going to get tested at some point.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, man. Yeah. Hey, great conversation. But, you know, it's only going to get deeper and hotter this conversation as we approach training camp. All right, up next, we're going to get a little petty on the other side.

[Autotrader Kid]

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[Autotrader Dad]

[e-mail] are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard, but not the pipeline? That's bullspend and marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions.

[Chris Partee]

My boss asked for results, so I

[Seth Payne]

opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had.

[Chris Partee]

Impressions.

[Autotrader Dad]

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[Chris Partee]

Gone south has been a podcast about crime in the American South. But for our new season, we're widening the lens.

[Seth Payne]

Follow and listen to Gone south, season five, wherever you get your shows.

[Chris Partee]

Hey, Seth Payne, I'm Chris Partsee. I'm in today for Sean Pendergast, taking a much needed rest day. And Seth, you ready to get petty here?

[Seth Payne]

I'm ready to get petty. This is the Petty cast, where we celebrate pettiness in all its forms.

[Chris Partee]

I love it.

[Seth Payne]

And include anything that we're petty about along the way or any of our listeners. Yeah, and Sean, by the way, I should have explained this a few times. Sean's voice just kind of was. He got stuck in a situation where he was just inhaling dry air for a long time and his voice got all screwed up. So he's gonna take a couple of days off here, but the first one up on the docket. And Sean put all these together. Sean's probably sitting at home listening, so he can get worked up and petty about it, but UFC329, as they tend to do, had a bunch of celebrities in attendance at T Mobile arena in Las Vegas. And among those in attendance for Conor McGregor's ill fated return fight was Shakur Stevenson. The who's the latest Zufa boxing signing. So fighter Shakur Stevenson was there and he got a quick shot appearance on camera. However, the on screen graphic for Stevenson instead read Jalen Williams, Oklahoma City Thunder guard, 2025 NBA champion. Here's. Here's what that sounded like.

[Chris Partee]

2025 Shakur Stevenson. That is not Jalen Williams.

[Seth Payne]

What is that? Yeah, so Dana, Dana White. So Dana White, you know, the czar or the owner, however, whatever his official title is. With us ufc, we all know Dana White. I've heard him, I've heard him a lot of times, being very complimentary about his production staff and just how amazing they are at putting out really well edited videos really quickly. This is how he felt about them on that particular evening.

[Chris Partee]

I tell you all the time, my production team, we just did the White House. We built a arena on the south lawn of the White House. And it was the greatest thing in the world to be there live and to watch it on tv. I just paid Shakur Stevenson a load of money. And for some reason we can't figure this celebrity out. They put him up as a OKC NBA player. Are you kidding me? I mean, it's just, it's absolutely crazy. But we are the absolute worst to ever do the celebrity thing. When we put celebrities up, we are the worst. I just had this debate in the back with my guys while I was screaming at everybody back there and they said, no, soccer's worse. Soccer shows the people. And they don't, they don't put up any graphics. Oh, no, we put up graphics and put the wrong guy's name on it.

[Seth Payne]

We win.

[Chris Partee]

We're the worst ever to do it. Crazy.

[Seth Payne]

I feel like the fact that he's very, he did the old compliment sandwich there. He just left the last piece of bread. The follow up compliment off of it, I feel like it was, it was specific. That's a good thing about, you know, if you're going to criticize, then it's, you need to be very specific. And I feel like he was really, really specific in what they do. He complimented them for how good they are overall, but that they're just atrocious in that one. That one FaceTime.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, my goodness. Yeah, he. That, that was hilarious. I mean, I've heard Dana White go go off before or, you know, be critical. But, I mean, he. He really. He went. He went deep there.

[Seth Payne]

I don't. That's my. My biggest fear. The thing I would least want to do in any kind of a sports production would be the person who's responsible for the celebrity. The. The celebrity cameo appearance. And not really knowing, you know, like, how many guys that. How many guys that spend their lives working in MMA know exactly what Jalen Williams looks like. I mean, they should know what Shakur Stevenson looks like, because they've probably done some videos with him just recently. But, like, the mma, though, too, that's a smaller. It's one thing if you're going around a football stadium and you've got multiple different cameras all over the place, I feel like this would be the easiest place to do it. It's a very small area with the ringside seating. They should be able to get it sorted out pretty well. And I'm guessing that Shakur Stevenson was sitting in the wrong seat. I'm gonna give it.

[Chris Partee]

That's what you're gonna say.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. They had it all set up that the cameraman or whatever.

[Chris Partee]

That could have been it, though, honestly.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, no, especially about the different people involved, because the announcers realized it right away, though. You never want to be the announcer that's just reading the card that they're giving you, like, so credit to them for recognizing it right away. So then it turns down to, like, okay, the camera's guys told to stand in front of this one spot. He doesn't know what any of anybody looks like. Then you got somebody else up. All right, this one. This one. I'm most intrigued by this, partly because I still don't think I've seen an official response from the wnba. Maybe I'm wrong on that. I searched for it this morning, but Kathy Engelbert, the WNBA commissioner, was scheduled to go on the Dan Patrick show last week. They were at the American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament. You saw. I don't know if you've seen. Dan Patrick has quite a few. Quite a few interviews with a lot of people. He usually does. Yeah, yeah. Mike McDonald and all those guys. But the. So she was scheduled to come on. He was hoping to, you know, maybe ask him some. Ask her some stuff about, you know, all the current controversy with Caitlin Clark and everything else. But Dan Patrick's not, like, he's not a jerk to his guests ever. No, he's tough, but fair. Yeah, right. And not even all that tough. Like, he has, like, the appropriately tough questions. She no, showed him. Didn't show up. They waited around for 90 minutes after the show was over, after she had already agreed to do the interview, and she just flat out, no showed him. So here's Dan Patrick and how he felt about it. But don't say yes. And then all of a sudden, somebody probably said, in my opinion, oh, maybe we shouldn't do this. Well, at some point, you have to do this. I mean, if you want to be treated as a serious league, then do these. This is what happens. These are tough questions, but this is a fair, fair outlet for you, a fair platform. I will treat you with respect. But when you tell me. And then two hours later with no update, and then we get a, you know, a feeble response like, come on, you don't want to do it. You won't. The commissioner of the NFL does not want to come on this show. I've been doing this for 20 years. There's a reason why he doesn't want to come on. I have no problem if he doesn't want to come on. But if he said to me, hey, I'll come on tomorrow. And then all of a sudden, he says, the NFL PR department said I shouldn't do it. Like, and she's 50 yards away. She's hitting practice shots out of the bunker. So that's what's disappointing. We deserve more respect than what she gave us yesterday.

[Autotrader Dad]

Wow.

[Chris Partee]

Wow.

[Seth Payne]

You gave her. That's a. That's a heavy Kathy Engelbert. I tell. Hey, you know what? We talked early in the show about the whole do you know who I am? Dynamic.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

You got to be really careful pulling out the do you know who I am? Is Dan Patrick pulling a little bit of a do you know who I am here? Like. Like, he's almost, like, doing that and saying, like, yeah, even the commissioner. I'm so big that the commissioner's afraid. The NFL commissioner is afraid to come on here. I don't know. I. I don't know. I feel like I'm almost feeling a little bit petty towards Dan Patrick on this one.

[Chris Partee]

I love me some Dan Patrick, but he may have tooted his own horn a little bit there, but he may have pulled the do you know who I am? Car without actually saying, do you know who I am?

[Seth Payne]

I'll say this. I don't know. Whenever we have a guest, no show. And like, in Sean and I don't. We don't have on a lot of guests. We're just. Our egos are too large. We just like to talk to Each other, but we do it, like. And every now and then we kind of, you know, we'll do one. This really isn't a do you know who I am? Moment or anything, but, like, we had somebody who was supposed to be. It was for one of the streaming services when they were doing a game, we were supposed to have their sideline reporter on and. And they just no showed us. And it pisses you off because, like, all of you know what it does? It really screws up your flow.

[Chris Partee]

It does.

[Seth Payne]

It's like you gotta, like, you gotta rejigger everything and try to figure out what you're gonna talk about here. You're kind of waiting for to see if Ben says, oh, we've got the person on. So you get agitated. No matter who it is that's standing you up, it's like somebody. It's like somebody doesn't show up to you. If you're the manager at a McDonald's and somebody doesn't show up, it screws up your whole morning. So, Kathy Engelbert, what are you doing? And also. Yes. Why is the NBA so dead set on being relevant for all the wrong reasons? Like why, why, why can you not just do the normal thing and, like, go say, like, oh, okay, I'll go on. Dan Patrick, he has a lot. Oh, yeah. Mike McDonald is going to be a Super bowl champion. Head coach is going to be on with Dan Patrick. This is Mike McDonald who's on the Dan Patrick show out at Lake Tahoe at that golf tournament where Engelbert no show. Dan Patrick. This is the thing that's got Bostonians super petty right now and super speculative. This is Mike McDonald talking about getting help from an unnamed source and priority preparation for the Super Bowl. Who did you seek advice from going into the super bowl that might surprise me. Well, I wouldn't have surprised. I called John Harbaugh and I talked. He was great. Probably can't mention one guy that really. That really helped us out that had some conflict of interest. Can we guess?

[Ad Voice]

Sure.

[Seth Payne]

I don't know if I'm going to tell you, but go ahead. Bill Belichick. I'm not that cool. Oh, yeah, no, he wouldn't. You wouldn't have a phone. I've had a beer with Coach Belichick.

[Autotrader Kid]

And that was.

[Seth Payne]

That was a pretty cool. That was a pretty cool day. Who else would we guess? Kyle Shanahan. No. Yeah. So, like, Dave Portnoy is probably the most notable Patriots fan who weighed in on this. And this is what he said about that exchange if this doesn't piss you off as a Patriots fan, you are dead on the inside. I'm not going to say who they are saying. Gave a ton of advice to the Seahawks before the super bowl, but the guy has a statue in front of our stadium. What a joke.

[Chris Partee]

Wow.

[Seth Payne]

Strongly implying that it's one Thomas Brady that was given Mike McDonald information, remember? Well, people are already hot and bothered about Tom because before the Super Bowl, Brady had said that he doesn't have a dog in the fight. As his former team. As his former team and a couple of his former teammates and coaches, you know, and Mike vrabel and Josh McDaniels as well as others are on that team saying he doesn't have a dog in a fight. It felt like a betrayal. And now there are a lot of Patriots fans who are dead set and convinced that it was Tom Brady who spoke to Mike McDonald.

[Chris Partee]

But I mean, isn't Tom Brady the owner of the Raiders now or part owner?

[Seth Payne]

Conflict of interest for him more so from that standpoint, I kind of understand. Yeah, he's already. He's already a part owner of another NFL franchise. I feel like if you're a Patriots fan who hasn't gotten the notes on this, he's not a huge fan of the Patriots anymore.

[Chris Partee]

Not anymore.

[Seth Payne]

It doesn't have to be. But does it have to be rubbed in your nose like you can't have him have a little bit of success? I think that's. I guess what I, you know what? Because as a, as an, as a Raiders owner, what he should have been doing if he had no allegiance to the Patriots whatsoever. You want the Patriots to have a worst draft pick as possible because they're in the afc.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So he should have helped out the Patriots and tried to help them win the super bowl because then they'd have the 32nd pick in the draft instead of the 31st. I suppose. I haven't looked at the Patriots draft. Whatever the. So Zach Gelb, who works for our company or CBS Sports. Right. Zach Gelb says this. Tell me if this does it for you or not. Zach Gelb says, I reached out to Mike McDonald to get clarification on his comments on the Dan Patrick Show. I asked if Tom Brady was the person with the conflict of interest that gave input to the Seahawks before the Super Bowl. Mike told me it wasn't Brady that he was talking about in the interview. So Zach Gel takes this as evidence that it definitely wasn't Tom Brady. I, I take, I take that with zero credibility or evidence like What's. Why are we doing this thing? No, we're going to play the game where you just. He's going to say no to every single. He already said it was a conflict of interest for this person.

[Chris Partee]

Exactly.

[Seth Payne]

Like every denial that he issues afterwards is bogus. He just said, like, I don't want to divulge this guy because he's a conflict of interest. That. So people think that all of a sudden, as long as they guess the right name, Mike McDonald's is like, oh, yeah, I'll screw that guy over right now. Yep. That's exactly who that was.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah. I'm not buying it. I believe, like he said. Said it was probably Brady, but now. Do you think Brady's response was him being a little petty himself, saying he didn't have a dog in the fight. Was that a little petty?

[Seth Payne]

Well, that was. Yeah. And that was before any of this.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

I don't know. I think he was trying too hard to be impartial for multiple reasons. One, because he's a broadcaster and two, because he's part owner of the Raiders. And I don't know. I don't. I don't know who it would be. I don't know if it's Tom Brady or not. Like, there's a. You play the whole six degrees of separation with NFL people and everybody knows everybody. So I think. I think it was probably more likely somebody that's either in the NFC west or something like that, that it was maybe somebody he's buddies with. But that also just, you know, like, it's. It would raise eyebrows for people outside the NFL, but it's probably no big deal for him to have a conversation with this guy inside the NFL.

[Chris Partee]

Before we hit the break. Real quick, let me ask you this.

[Ad Voice]

Did you.

[Chris Partee]

You don't have to name names if you don't want to. Did you play with anyone that was just super petty? Could have been a player, a coach that was just super over the top petty?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had a teammate that was. He was a classic. I've told this story before with, like, Brandon Iuk, where there's a. There's a. It's tough having some guys. There's some guys that are divas, but they act about it a certain way, and it's not that big of a deal. There's other guys who are. Who are divas and petty, and it gets to the point where it's like people in his position group are just hoping the coach doesn't, like. Like, if I were a player in that position group, I'm like, just. Just don't show my good play from this last weekend. Please don't. It's gonna be a whole thing. Like, it's gonna be a whole thing about how this other guy is just gonna feel like I'm getting preferential treatment and everything. You get to the point where you don't even have fun playing well because you know that every time you do something good, the other guy's gonna be like, well, yeah. Yeah. And those guys are. They're way more cancerous than a guy that, you know, I don't know, got. Got busted with some kind of an addiction on the outside world or something. Like, it's bad football character.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

There's plenty of guys who are not good citizens in the real world who are awesome football dudes. Yeah. But then there's also. There's a lot of guys who are boy Scouts on the outside, but who are just horrible. Horrible football.

[Chris Partee]

Can't play a lick.

[Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And the jealousy over your teammates. Success. Success is the worst. That's a. It just. It drains all the energy from everything.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, my goodness.

[Seth Payne]

And those are the guys also, that even when they're doing well, when they have a good game, they're angry because they didn't get enough praise from the coaches. You know, I'm sure, like, it's just. It's never enough. It's never enough for those guys.

[Chris Partee]

I'm sure that was quite irritating, dealing with that. Those type of players.

[Seth Payne]

It's draining. I'm sure it was like, walk into the front office and be like, hey, guys, listen, I'm just. I'm leaving at the end of the year, okay? That's. It's nothing against you guys or anything. I just don't. It's just that it's not. It's not it for me anymore, okay?

[Chris Partee]

It's not working for me.

[Seth Payne]

I'm not trying to pull like, a negotiating thing here or anything. It's just not going to work.

[Chris Partee]

That's just it.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

All right, let's take a break here. On the other side, where do NFL coaches and executives rank CJ Stroud among the best and worst in the league?

[Autotrader Kid]

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[Autotrader Dad]

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[Chris Partee]

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[Seth Payne]

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[Autotrader Dad]

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[Chris Partee]

Hi, my name is Lloyd Lockridge and I'm the host of a new podcast from Odyssey called Family Lore.

[Seth Payne]

In this podcast, I'm going to have people on to tell unusual and sometimes far fetched stories about their families.

[Autotrader Kid]

I've heard my whole life that she invented the margarita.

[Seth Payne]

And then we're going to investigate those stories and find out how much of it is true.

[Chris Partee]

He gets a patent one month before the Wright Brothers.

[Seth Payne]

Oh my God. Please follow and listen to Family Lore, an Odyssey podcast available now on Apple

[Ad Voice]

Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your shows.

[Chris Partee]

Seth Payne, along with me, Chris Partee in first, Sean Pendergast this morning. And we've got our amazing producer Ben Gary, keeping me on track this morning. Appreciate you, my man.

[Seth Payne]

All right, Good job, Ben.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, Ben. Ben. Ben's keeping me on track here. So where do NFL coaches and executives rank CJ Stroud among the best and worst in the league? Yes, we've got another list for you here, Seth.

[Seth Payne]

This is this one. This one's intriguing though, because I like this one. I like this one more than the NFL top 100 because like players ranking other Players where they list their top 20 players, and then somehow that gets turned into a 100 person list. That feels a little bit dicier. The ESPN one that Jeremy Fowler does every year is a specific group of executive executives, coaches, and scouts who rank the top quarterbacks, and they rank each of the. The top position groups. But it feels a little bit more substantive and you get some anonymous quotes, but they have, they have 70 voters who submit these ballots.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a, That's a lot of people voting there.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. And it's more specified. You know, like, it's. I like that when the NFL players vote, they're voting on anybody and everybody. So it's like there's no, there's no restrictions on, you know, number of this position or like that. So I, I like it when they rank it more on just. Okay, there's only so many starting quarterbacks. It gives you a better. Exactly. A better picture of how they feel about things.

[Chris Partee]

All right, so this is, this is a top 10 here. And I don't think anyone expects CJ Stroud to be in this top 10. Yeah, but it feels like he's finishing so far away from even a mention of top 10.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

On this list.

[Seth Payne]

No, no. And Jeremy Fowler, like, he laid out how the voting went, and basically it just puts. It puts Stroud at the very bottom of. Is it 18, guys? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. So, yeah, Stroud was basically. Or like, he puts him in the last, the last group. It's Bo Nicks and Mac Jones and C.J. stroud in the last list. So Mac Jones, the way you listed them out, it looks like Mac Jones actually finished a little bit higher, but at the very least, you can say he's in the group of 18, 19, and 20, which would mean that he is, by this, by this standard, he's a below average NFL starting quarterback.

[Chris Partee]

That's exactly what it sounds like. Now, should we go through this top 10 here and kind of, kind of reel off? Yes or what?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, it was an interesting one. And. Okay, so what do you want to do? You want to do, like. Okay, yeah, CJ's definitely. No, you definitely can't rank CJ above this guy yet.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, let's do it that way.

[Seth Payne]

You want to do it?

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, let's do it that way. All right, so I'm gonna. And I'm gonna go in reverse order, so ten down to one. Okay, I'm gonna go that way. So number ten Is Caleb Williams.

[Seth Payne]

I don't feel about that how you feel about that based on trajectory. And, you know, the biggest thing I'd say about Caleb Williams is that he, he got better as the season went along last year.

[Chris Partee]

He did.

[Seth Payne]

But if anything, I think, man, if, if, if your argument in support of CJ is that he hasn't had the same coordinator or the same support around him as some other guys have had. Like, they gave Caleb Williams everything that you would want CJ to have, which was, man, experienced offensive head coach slash coordinator that really, like Ben Johnson, really knows what he's doing. And they stocked. They stocked the offensive line aggressively last year. And then lo and behold, you see a better version of Caleb Williams. But I would probably put him. I, Like, I. This feels like a little bit of recency bias with him. He's still, like, he's way more erratic than CJ is. And yeah, I wouldn't put him above CJ on this, but I think that more like. But I also don't think CJ belongs in the top 10 right now.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So I think that it's, It's, It's. It's a little premature to put Caleb Williams in the top 10.

[Autotrader Dad]

Okay.

[Chris Partee]

Number nine, Jared Goff, Detroit Lions.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, boy. Yeah. Just based on, based on body of work and consistency, I think the ceiling for CJ is still higher, theoretically for then, then Jared Goff. But I'm, I'm totally cool with him being above CJ right now.

[Chris Partee]

Is that because CJ still so young that the seasoning is higher or still

[Seth Payne]

so young, but he's also like, yeah, Jared Goff is just accomplished more. You know, he's just steadily had better regular seasons than CJ's had.

[Chris Partee]

I got you. Number eight, Drake May, Patriots.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, it's hard to argue against this one. Except that Drake May. Drake May, in a weird way, like I keep reminding myself, he's not a rookie quarterback, but it was the first year where he felt like an actual NFL quarterback. But again, going back to. All right, okay, they. They gave him an offensive coordinator who's worked with multiple young quarterbacks. And the thing about Drake May is despite the playoff performance and despite the fact that they. They faced an absurdly easy schedule last year, it was one of the. By dvoa. It was one of the easiest schedules of all time in the NFL. Like, I can't argue against the, the actual production. So if you're stacking up apples to apples and like, let's not think too hard about what this guy had versus what this guy did. Drake May still had. He had issues with his offensive line.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

His tackles were just an absolute. His left tackle is an absolute disgrace late in the year and in the playoffs, like k' Shawn Booty. All of a sudden we're going to act like Kayshawn Booty was the guy. Like anybody was talking about Kayshawn Booty, like he was going to have the year that he did that. You know, C.J. already had a crack at having Stefan Diggs on his team and didn't do as much with him. So, yeah, I'm cool with Drake May being above him right now.

[Chris Partee]

Number seven.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, your boy.

[Chris Partee]

That's your boy right here.

[Seth Payne]

Justin Herbert. Yeah, yeah, Justin. Or. Okay, if you look at Justin Herbert. Seventh. But then if you look at guys, I think, like the guy that didn't make the top 10, the two guys that really, like, scratch your head a little bit, I think are, especially compared to Justin Herbert is Brock Purdy and Jordan Love compared to Justin Herbert. I don't know.

[In the Loop Host]

I.

[Seth Payne]

Like, I. I feel like Justin Herbert. Justin Herbert's in a weird space in my brain where I want to defend him sometimes, but not too much. Like, I feel like Justin Herbert gets underrated at times because the last couple years he's been playing an offense where they almost try to limit him.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And it feels like they're protecting Justin Herbert from himself. But I also don't want to say that he's trash or anything, but I also don't. I don't think he's as awesome as so many people seem to be convinced that he is. And he just like C.J. like, he's never done anything good in the playoffs where at least CJ Strouds had some good moments in the playoffs. But again, I'll go back to. Based on the sum total of what he's done in the NFL and like, the. His. His bad years all weighed in there, too.

[Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

He's just accomplished more than CJ has to this point.

[Chris Partee]

Yes, you can say that he has accomplished more than cj, but those playoff performances, man, they're hard to forget.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

They're hard to unsee.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

When it comes to Herbert. All right, number six up north, Dak Prescott.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Like, yeah, I can't argue against this one. I mean, we can say whatever we want about the Cowboys in the playoffs and everything else. Like, yeah, Dak Prescott just consistently turns out impressive performances.

[Chris Partee]

He does.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. He said, like, he's had down years, but. Of course. No, but, like, based on the way he played last year. Now he's also got the benefit of having two stud. Stud, stud wide receivers. Yeah, he does that. C.J. doesn't have. But I'm like, I'm not like these things shift and change CJ to you. After his rookie year going into 2024, CJ was seventh on this list.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So it's not like he can't rise back up on it. It's not like a permanent. It's not a permanent appraisal of who they are as a quarterback.

[Chris Partee]

No, definitely not. Number five, Lamar Jackson.

[Seth Payne]

Lamar Jackson is the fifth best quarterback on this list. Yeah. Like, yeah, there's no way in hell I'm putting him putting CJ above Lamar Jackson. And I like people can bring up playoff record all they want. That's great, that's cool. But no, he's a two time mvp.

[Chris Partee]

Come on.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, he's a two time mvp. Arguably could have been the three time MVP pretty easily. And yeah, like he's just, no, he's just accomplished so much. I think the big question with Lamar Jackson moving forward is, you know, last year he had. At any given time he was dealing with one of four different injuries. And the thing with him is it's like it's not the running ability that makes him special anymore. I mean it's still a big part of his game. But his pocket mobility, like his, his strength and ability in the pocket, his pocket movement is really, really good. And I think that's what affected him more than anything last year was it's like it's some of those. It's not the scrambles, it's not the running on designed runs or anything that, that make for a lot of his really great throws. It's when he's able to reposition himself in the pocket like shake off a tackle. Like he's ridiculously strong when he's healthy. So a lot of his best throws come after he evades a sack just simply by breaking a tackle and stepping up two feet and then making the throw. That's what I think. Fell by the wayside a little bit last year, but as long as he's healthy. Yeah, the 100%. Lamar Jackson's fine.

[Chris Partee]

Number four, Joe Burrow.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, Joe Burrow is starting to get a little tiresome for a guy really. Well, no, no, no. For just for I. You know what it is? It's the Bengals. I'm tired of the, like I'm tired of the Bengals not even making the playoffs.

[Chris Partee]

That's true.

[Seth Payne]

And then with such a good quarterback. Yeah. Yet at the Same time you watch him and you see what he's doing and like, clearly and obviously he's an awesome quarterback. I think the one thing that's going to be interesting this year is that they're gonna, they're. It's been kind of a multi year process of teaching him to be more of like a, for lack of a better term, a system quarterback. You know, be able to lean on the run game, be able to lean on your tight ends, do some things like do some of the more boring stuff instead of relying on heroics for, for J. For Joe Burrow. Because there are times where like, they've, like, it hasn't been great in the fourth quarter and there's only so much that QB heroics can do consistently without having an actual well structured offense around him. So for him, it's more like, I feel like in some ways he's still operating like a young quarterback who's got these ethereal physical skills. He's got to be more of a complete quarterback if they want to have a, if they want to have an offense that can deliver in clutch moments.

[Chris Partee]

Well, didn't the Bengals go out and spend a lot of money defensively?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah, they've got, they've got six or seven brand new starters on defense.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah. So, I mean, things could turn around, you know, as long as, I always feel like as long as he's healthy, if they can get something from that defense. Yeah, no, they're going to be in the mix.

[Seth Payne]

An NFL coordinators coordinator said this about Burrow. Quote, burrow doesn't play in a system. He is the system. He's the whole thing. And I feel like that's, that's cool and all, but I don't, I don't know if that's, if that's honestly like the ideal that you want. You know who that was a little bit like Aaron Rodgers, you know, like Aaron Manning. What's the system with Aaron? But at least Peyton. Peyton was running his system to perfection.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah. Oh yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Like where? With, like, with it. So at a certain point with Aaron Rodgers, when he was at his physical prime, like, okay, what system is Aaron Rodgers running? Well, he's kind of sort of running Mike McCarthy system and then. Except that he's checking into a whole bunch of plays that Mike McCarthy didn't call a bunch of the time and it was when he could pull off the circus throws and everything. It worked out. But when you don't have those same physical skills anymore, it tends not to age all that well.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, I mean, Aaron Rodgers, he tended to do his own thing.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

When he wanted to. All right, number three, Matt Stafford.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. I don't know if, like the argument, Matt Stafford at this point would just have to be that at some point he's going to get old and decide to quit playing football at some point. They've done a really good job of surrounding him with good, like, he's got, he's in a perfect situation in terms of. Okay, does he have a brilliant play caller? Yes.

[Chris Partee]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

Does he have awesome wide receivers? Yes. Do they have a, do they have a really good running back? Yes. And, like, there's just everything around him is, is perfectly suited to just get the absolute best out of them.

[Chris Partee]

All right, real quick, before we get out of here, number, number two is Patrick Mahomes. Number one, Josh Allen. We talked about them a little earlier.

[Seth Payne]

I think, like, I would say with Patrick Mahomes at some point, I told you earlier, I think we're kind of almost. Patrick Mahomes is in a much more glorified situation, but a similar situation to CJ Stroud where like, okay, the results on the field have been a lot better for Patrick Mahomes over the last couple years, and yet he hasn't played like peak Pat Mahomes. But people have a lot of excuses for him. Like, at what point does it become, oh, wow, it's been a few years since Pat Mahomes has looked electrifying and looked like one of the definitely, like, definitively top quarterbacks in the league. Yeah. Like, at some point you got to just start calling things for what they are and that the results aren't nearly as impressive as some of these other guys. But, like, I don't know how you detach that from the fact that he has done all those things that he's done.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah. And he definitely does continue to get the, the benefit of the doubt. Really.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

When he hasn't played as well. All right, on the other side, we're going to get into one of One of the NFL's most premier quarterbacks wants to play for the USA in flag football in the 2028 Olympics when it debuts. Payne and Pendergast. On the air, he Seth Payne. I'm Chris Partey in for Sean Pendergast today. So in a minute, we will get to this. What do we have here?

[Seth Payne]

We will.

[In the Loop Host]

Right.

[Chris Partee]

We will get to this NFL court premier NFL quarterback that wants to win gold and play flag football in 2028 when that debuts in the Olympics. But before we do that, we're Going to talk about this top 10 linebacker list by ESPN and your own Aziza Shire is on this list.

[Seth Payne]

Ah, I expect him to be, but you just never know. You never, you never quite know for sure. Yeah. So nothing's guaranteed. This is a big man coming from the, the depths of. Wherever Aziz was. When the entire, the entire NFL world decided that he was the villain of all villains, they turned on him. Yeah, he came back. And just like in the very next season, he's turned into almost. I feel like a lot of people, I feel like a lot of people on the defensive side of the ball have just kind of like, said, all right, enough is enough. We're not coddling these quarterbacks anymore. Certainly we're not going to coddle Trevor Lawrence. Aziz Elshire needs to be recognized for what he was, what he is, which is a really good linebacker who also tends to sometimes just like, tippy toe up to the line when it comes to how, how violently you play the game, which is exactly what we. Isn't that what we want? Football players? If you grew up watching NFL films, documentaries and whatnot. Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

This is not the Olympics. It's not flag football.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. So sixth on this list. It goes from. It starts off with Fred Warner, then Roquan Smith, Carson Schwessinger, the young player from the Browns. Yeah, he really burst.

[Chris Partee]

That's pretty hot. Yeah, he did. He did.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Zach Bond from the Eagles is still up there. It's funny, like, Zach Bond got so much attention and adulation when the Eagles were a really good team. And then people kind of forget. They're like, oh, yeah, the defense is still doing really good stuff. Then Jack Campbell from the Lions at number five, and then Aziz Elshire at number six. Is that too low? I don't. You know what? Here. So the highest ranking he had was three. The lowest ranking he had was unranked. And I think there's a lot of that with, honestly with the linebackers, because depending on what scheme you're playing in, I mean, if you go through the top five guys, I don't know what it's like with the other positions, but like Roquan Smith, his Highest ranking was 1, lowest. He's the number two overall. Lowest ranking was unranked. So Carson Schwessinger, same thing. Zach Bond was more. Highest ranking was 3, lowest ranking was 10. Then Jack Campbell at number 5, his lowest ranking was unranked. And Aziz Elshire, same thing. Like somebody ranked him number three overall. Somebody else had him just completely unranked last year. He was unranked completely. So he's. He's ascended pretty damn rapidly up to number six overall.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, I mean, you mentioned a scheme there. In, you know, whatever scheme a linebacker might play in, you know, they may have a, have. Have a different role in a certain scheme. Is. Was there a certain. Was there a specific scheme that you

[Seth Payne]

preferred when you played three, four, you know, and to speak to the scheme part, one of the quotes in here by an NFL coordinator was he's specialized by scheme a bit, but he's explosive and good in coverage. I just like, I always like the scheme that fits the personnel. If that's. I don't know if I'm punting on that or not, but yeah, I don't like. It's like I played in a lot of defenses that were just more conventional four, three classic defenses my rookie year in my first five years. But we weren't like an attack style four, three. The way the Texans defense is. I think the. When somebody says he's specialized by scheme a bit, that rubs me the wrong way because this scheme that d' Amico plays puts a lot of pressure on your linebackers, if you think about. So they play with a wide nine defensive end, which means everything's getting funneled to the inside. That's cool in that it makes it. Theoretically, it makes it easier for the linebackers to have all the runs funneled to the inside.

[Chris Partee]

Okay.

[Seth Payne]

The trick is though, that it makes it a lot tougher on linebackers where when it comes to play action, like you got to be. You're dialed in and you are responsible for stopping the inside run. But at the same time, you got to get to your coverage responsibilities. So where Aziz really excels is, is. Is having the football IQ to really understand his pre snap reads and his pre snap tendencies into diagnose play action to where they can be stout against the run, but he can also get back into coverage super fast. So it's his football IQ that really like there's a lot of guys that might be physically talented that would have a hard time doing what Aziz does. I almost feel like, I almost feel like somebody is looking at it like in saying that is thinking like, well, yeah, I guess, you know, Fred Warner and Dre Greenlaw looked really good in that scheme too. Right. Because you can only run that scheme if you've got really good linebackers. Like, it's just kind of a. The scheme doesn't work and the scheme didn't look as good before they got Aziz Elshire. But I think that what people probably look at it is they don't look at him as being. They don't look at him as a guy who's awesome in coverage, but the fact of the matter is he gets the job done in coverage and they ask him to do some pretty tough things. So that's my long winded answer to your question. What scheme do you prefer? I prefer the schemes where guys are well suited to do what they're asked for to do. And I think d' Ameco's done a great job of getting a bunch of those guys out there. Like, over the course of the last three years, it's just steadily been more and more like, all right, these guys are just built to play this style of football. The, the other quote that I liked was he's the Dennis Rodman of linebacker.

[Chris Partee]

I'm looking at that right now.

[Seth Payne]

He gets in everyone's head. He can run all day and he can play every down compliment.

[Chris Partee]

That's a hell of a quote right there. He's the Dennis Rodman of linebackers.

[Seth Payne]

I feel like that's a backhanded compliment.

[Chris Partee]

I don't even know how you take

[Seth Payne]

that because it's not. How do you take that?

[Chris Partee]

I'm the Dennis Rodman of linebackers. How do you even take this?

[Seth Payne]

Seems to be a family guy. Like, he doesn't. He seems to be pretty. He seems to be off the field a lot different than Dennis Rodman. I think that if I think about, okay, if, if somebody's a Dennis Rodman of anything, I would feel for one, it's almost got to be like, okay, it's not a three down player. It's somebody that specializes in one thing and does a really good job at it. So like, if you're a, if you're just a guy that's a pass rush specialist that comes in on third downs, or if you're a run stuff around the defensive line, like, I feel like that's more of a. Or if you're a two down linebacker, if you're a guy that's just out there and you can stuff the run like a mother and do all these other things, I feel like that's. Then you might say he's the Dennis Rodman. But the fact that Aziz Elshire is a three down linebacker. Yeah, I feel like the, I feel like the Dennis Rodman part's a little unfair.

[Chris Partee]

Who would be the Dennis Rodman of the NFL right now? Like not just linebacker, any position. Who would be the nf. The Dennis Rodman equivalent, I guess, like

[Seth Payne]

who's the best short yardage back in the NFL? That's something like that.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. That's a good question for the Texans.

[Chris Partee]

Who is the Tex. Line.

[Seth Payne]

No. And include the off field stuff off of it. Who's the guy that lives kind of a wild lifestyle off the field, but comes in and just gives you one. A couple of really, really good things, like in a. In terms of specializing in something.

[Chris Partee]

Can it be Stefan Diggs?

[Seth Payne]

He's the, he's the. He's not that he's the best number two wide receiver.

[In the Loop Host]

Okay.

[Chris Partee]

That's right.

[Seth Payne]

I'm sorry, that's what he's calling himself.

[Chris Partee]

I forgot about that. He's the best.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Yeah. For those of you guys didn't hear it, Stein Diggs did something brilliant in terms of marketing himself, which is leaned into not trying to act like the diva that says he's the best receiver in the NFL. He says I'm the best number two receiver in the NFL, which I don't think he's accurate on that. But he's. He's not that far off. And I think that's a good way for. You can kind of plant a seed in a lot of GMs minds where they're like, you know what, Diggs got a point. Like, all right, as long as he doesn't think he's going to come in and, you know, be the number one guy for the Buffalo Bills back in the day or something. And it sounds like he's cool with that. That. Yeah, he really does fit that role for us right now.

[Chris Partee]

So the rest of this linebacker list real quick also. Aziz Al shire was number six. Number seven was Jordan Brooks from the Miami Dolphins. Number eight, Nick Bolton, Kansas City Chiefs. Number nine, Edgar and Cooper, Green Bay Packers. Number 10, Devin Lloyd, Carolina Panthers.

[Seth Payne]

The one guy that was on here that I found interesting who received votes but didn't make the honorable mention. So he's not in the top 14 as Bobby Wagner at the age of 73 is still out there. It feels like it as a, as a free agent right now. And I don't think the Texans are going to go after Bobby Wagner, but I've always, like, he's another one that I'm always going to be perpetually intrigued by. Just because, man. All right, okay. You got a veteran. If you, if there's an injury during training camp or something. I could, I could, I could totally see having Bobby Wagner on the squad.

[Chris Partee]

And does it also help that he's a good locker room guy? I've always Heard that, right?

[Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

No, especially, you know, and it's they, you know, going back to some of the football IQ type of stuff that I think Aziz is really good at and excels at. I think Bobby Wagner, you could probably make that case that for, for his, his, his tutelage ability, like his ability to tutor some of the younger guys would probably be really valuable. He might be like, I bet d' Amico would just love, you know, comparing notes with him, having conversation with Bobby Wagner about certain things, game plan wise and all that.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, I'm sure they'd probably go back and forth for hours.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Partee]

Hours and. All right, let's hit the break here. Getting to the top of the hour. All right, next up, we're going to talk about it. One of the NFL's premier quarterbacks wants to play for Team USA in flag football's Olympic debut in 2028.

[Seth Payne]

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[Autotrader Mom]

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[Autotrader Dad]

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[Autotrader Dad]

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[Autotrader Mom]

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[Autotrader Dad]

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And you just put in your info and boom, car's in your budget.

[Autotrader Dad]

Mom needs a second.

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[Autotrader Dad]

Really? Or I can pick it up at the dealership. One sec, sweetie.

[Autotrader Kid]

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[Chris Partee]

Mommy, look.

[Autotrader Mom]

I think your kid is walking up the slide. Kyle.

[Autotrader Kid]

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[Ad Voice]

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[Autotrader Dad]

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[Autotrader Kid]

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[Seth Payne]

Hey, it's Jen Hatmaker. Here's what I've learned in midlife.

[Autotrader Mom]

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[Seth Payne]

Yes.

[Autotrader Mom]

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[Seth Payne]

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[Chris Partee]

Yes, it's Payne and Pendergast. He Seth Payne. I'm Chris Partee. I'm filling in one more hour of me for Sean Pendergast.

[Seth Payne]

It's been. Oh, you're doing great.

[Chris Partee]

It's been fun today, man.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I try to make it as easy as possible. You did fill in. I know there's a little bit of trepidation because old Seth, there's never seems like he's quite prepared. That's. I say, might seem like I'm not prepared, but I'm prepared for anything and everything, any and everything. And I make up for whatever my lapses are with energy. So for people that aren't used to doing the morning show, the 9:00 clock to 10:00 clock hours kind of, that's, that's like hitting the 21st mile of a marathon where you realize like, oh, I don't know if I was ready for this, but you're doing great.

[Chris Partee]

You got to pull out my energy drink here.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, pharmaceuticals are the way to go. I do what I tell all the kids.

[Chris Partee]

I was doing good up until about, you know, halfway through the last hour. Like, all right, I need that energy drink now.

[Seth Payne]

Let me tell you a real quick story, Chris Partee. I, I did. I ran a few marathon. Well, I shuffled a few marathons in my time. So I was trying to like, because I got, I was. When I was done playing football, there was a point where I was in rough shape physically. Like, I was really. I had like, I had a couple, I had a couple dozen surgeries in my time and everything. I got a lot of ligaments and, and things that are still out of. I've got, I've got screws in my body that have actually literally fallen out of where they're supposed to be. Like, I have literal screws loose and it doesn't always feel so hot. But I got to point where it was like, I was kind of like Going through the thing where, like, I could get NFL disability and all this, and. And I kind of was going through the process and the entire time I'm feeling like I'm just kind of quitting on life if I do this now. So I went full, full bore the other way. I was like, no. I spent like two years going to rehab facilities and everything. Like physical therapy, rehab. Not. Not the other stuff, the other. I still got those other issues. And like. And so one of them was like, okay, I'm never going to be the same, like, athlete I was. I'm not going to be able to lift weights the same way I did and everything. So I'm just going to go the other side of it and get into like some ultra endurance stuff. And in knowing that I'll never be good, but I'm kind of released from any expectations or anything. I'm just going to. I just want to finish a marathon, get out there and like. And when I knew that I was never gonna run a fast marathon, I'm like, okay, well, you know what? I'm gonna do an ultramarathon. So I did a few. I did like a 50 mile ultra marathon. I've run a really shuffled a few marathons. Never ran a marathon. I've shuffled them. But 50 miles? Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

Wow.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Took 12 hours.

[Chris Partee]

I bet it did.

[Seth Payne]

It was rough.

[Chris Partee]

Goodness. What is the training like for that? Like, what is the training like?

[Seth Payne]

It's like, no, for ultramarathons, it's kind of cool because the training is like, basically you just got to move as much as you can, man. So, like, if you got eight hours on a Saturday, you just decide, all right, I'm going to go. I'm going to go run at a leisurely pace for eight hours and. Or hike. Like, the hills are like, for a bigger body guy, it's actually good. Easier on your joints if you can do a lot of hills, because that's more. You're like hiking up the hills and all that. So. So anyway, the first marathon I ever ran, I got to like these people, they think you're helping out on the course. But like, I was on this course and it wasn't really well marked, so I didn't know exactly where I was. But like, I'm on the. You're running and there's people that are saying, like, you're almost there, you're almost there. And I'm like, oh, that's cool. I must be almost there. And then all of a sudden I see a mile marker and it's like I'm at the 21st mile.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, God.

[Seth Payne]

Son of a bitch. That's not, that's not almost there at all.

[Chris Partee]

Not even halfway.

[Seth Payne]

The first 20 miles are easy. It's like 20 through 26, where it doesn't feel like you're remotely almost there. So never do. As a word of advice, anybody who's cheering on marathoners, don't say you're almost there unless it's like. Unless it's on a clearly marked course. And the guy. The other thing that happens when you're running a marathon like that is your brain stops working at all. And like all the math you do in your head for like, okay, if I can run a 10 minute mile, this or that, like, you just, it goes out the window and you can't. So it's really hard to do simple calculations. For me, at least it was.

[Chris Partee]

That is so amazing to me that you ran 50, whether you ran, shuffled, whatever, 30 miles.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. So it was crazy. The 50 mile one was really cool because it was around. I grew up in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York and my, my family had a cottage on Canandaigua Lake, which is a really. It's a really big lake. So big that if you run all the way around it, it's 50 miles. And that was the one that I did. Yeah, it was a, it's a. The can lake 50. And it's. So you run all the way around Canadagua Lake. So that was kind of cool for me for like somebody that grew up swimming in that lake and everything to do that. And again, shuffle. I shuffled for 50 miles around the lake.

[Chris Partee]

I don't care if you crawled.

[Seth Payne]

I don't care if you crawled.

[Chris Partee]

No, you wouldn't find me out there doing 50 miles of anything. I just.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, okay, so this is what happened on that one. I'll tell this story. All right, so, yeah, just take the next few minutes off. So the trouble with those long ones is it's the hills. The hills crush you. And I still, like, I didn't know. Like, I. My thinking I'm an idiot was like, okay, all right, I'm going to make up time on the downhill because I don't know anything about running. And any runner will tell you, listen, the downhills are actually a lot harder on your legs than anything else. But I'm like, the first 15 miles we got these long declines and I'm just like cruising along. Then you're like, yeah, I'm making up all kinds of time. So by the time I got to like the 25 mile mark. My legs were jelly. And you still got. I've still got a lot more hills after that. So we're coming to. There's a 12 hour course limit. There was at the time. They've changed it since then. So there's 12 hours. You go like, you got to finish in under 12 hours.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, wow. Okay.

[Seth Payne]

And I know people are doing the math in their heads and they're saying, like, Seth, that's like less than 4 miles per hour. Like, how slow? Right? Because there's a lot of hills. Okay. And there ends up being a lot of walking involved on those hills. So I'm getting down and like, there's a guy that's this old guy who's driving this little old beat up Nissan pickup truck. And I've got about 10 miles left. I can't do any of the math in my brain. I feel I've got blisters all over my feet. I was like in extreme pain. I'm starting to cramp up a little bit in this guy in the Nissan truck. I can tell that he's the guy who's responsible for cleaning up the course. So for the previous hour or so, I'd seen him kind of carting. He would have cones in the back of his truck and human beings. So the people, it was the stragglers who were dropping out of the race and it was cones because, like, so. And I started to see, like, so, you know, 10, 15 people. He'd come carted up ahead of me to drop off. Then he comes back and gets more cones. And I'm like, oh, boy. I can read the writing on the wall. You know, you're about to come round me up and take me to the gulag, so. And I'm getting to the point where, man, I am losing it. I don't know which way is up. I can barely, like, I can't think properly. And the old guy drives up past me. He's got a bunch of cones in the back of his truck and he. He starts jogging towards me. And I'm like, okay, you must be here to tell me that, like, I'm. I'm disqualified because I'm too far behind all it in and. And I start to reach down to take off my ankle monitor. Not the legal one that was on the other foot, but the actual. The one they use to track here to track your time and everything. Because I was going to hand it to him, like, all right, I'm getting booted off in this guy. Name was Barry I would learn, he says, as he's running up to me, he goes, not today. You're not quitting on me.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, wow.

[Seth Payne]

And it freaking, like, switched, like, everything in my brain. Like, this was a pivotal moment in my life because I was a few years out of the NFL. I was struggling to figure out, like, I felt like I was soft and lazy. I wasn't the guy I used to be. And it was like, almost like a coach had said just the right thing. And it just, like, my eyes perked up, and he's like, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna. We're gonna run to that telephone pole, and it was, like, two telephone poles up. Then we're gonna walk to the next one, and then we're gonna run two more telephone poles. And so we did that a couple times. And then he ran back to his. This guy's, like, 75 years old.

[Chris Partee]

Wow.

[Seth Payne]

Ran back to his Nissan pickup truck, picked up some cones, and then pulled up another couple hundred yards in front of me and then ran back to me. And it was like. I think at that point, there were, like, five miles left on the course. So he does that, and I'm talking to him a little bit, and he's keeping me going, giving me pep talks the whole time. And then we get to one mile out from the finish line. It's starting to get dark and chilly, too. You know, it's in, like, late September, early October. And Barry's like, listen, the last mile is through a park. I can't take my truck through there, and I got to get back to the finish line. This is what you're going to do. He's like. He explained out the layout of the park, and he's like, then you're going to have one. You're going to have one long downhill, and then one really big uphill. When you get to that downhill, you need to hit it, and then you just bust your ass to the top of that hill, and you'll be there. So I'm like, yes, sir. And he takes off. And I kind of. I get to the point, and I can get to the part where I can tell that he's talking about, but by this time, it's dark out.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And it's getting kind of chilly, and all that sweat that had dried on my skin and all the salt that was on it starts melting, and it's getting into my eyes to the point where, like, because I'm working now, like, I'm running this hard as I can, and I see and I can. I start to get. I get to that hill and the grass is all slippery because there's starting to be dew and everything on it. And I'm like, screw it, I don't care. I'll tear a groin. I just start hoofing it down that hill. And you get to the last part, there's one big uphill and I'm just like. It's like I'm running like hills for a football coach or something. I just bust up it as hard as I can. I get up to the top of the hill and at that point I can't see anything because there's so much salt in my eyes. All I can see is like a hundred yards down. I'm at. I'm at the edge of a parking lot and there's a bunch of lights at the end of the parking lot. That's the finish line. They still got it lit up. There's a clock on top of it. I can't read what the numbers are, but everybody at the finish line is yelling for me. There's like, like 20 people who are just still sticking around. A couple of people that I had met on the course, like runners that had started off and I was talking to them. They were, they wait. They stuck around and waited for me till the end of the race. And they're all yelling and cheering and I just like, I start like on a wind sprint going towards. And I ended up. I ended up finishing like just inside of the 12 hour limit. Oh, wow. And like. And couldn't see a damn thing. Like, I was like blind, Completely blind. It was, it was really. It was one of the coolest moments of my life because Barry, the old guy had just taken it upon himself to, to be my, you know, to be my rabbit for the last few miles.

[Chris Partee]

713 said Nissan truck dude, otherwise known as. What do you say? Barry.

[Seth Payne]

Barry.

[Chris Partee]

Barry went from grim reaper to hero.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Oh, he was awesome, man. He's the best guy. I used to. I gotta, I gotta catch up with Barry after the show.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, so you kept in touch with Barry?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, because one of the other guys that stuck around was this guy. He had been like a minor league baseball player. He was a pitcher, but he's a big dude.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So we kind of bonded for the first 10 miles. But he was like, he was like 6, 5, 210 pounds, which is huge for a distance runner.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

But like, no, he was like 225. It was pretty impressive. He took off way ahead of Me, but then hung out like him and his buddies were just sat and drank beers at their RV until I, until I finished.

[In the Loop Host]

Wow.

[Chris Partee]

That said, that's an amazing story.

[Seth Payne]

It was really, it was, honestly, it was like, thank you. But it was a really, that part of like having somebody like remembering that that can, you know, you get to be an adult and you kind of think you're self sufficient and everything. And it was just this huge reminder of just wow. Like the right person at the right time. Yeah. Like, and a good coach especially can just, just say the exact right thing and it just go into just, you go into athlete mode.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, it definitely got you going.

[Seth Payne]

All right, Stephanie, if you can call. I don't know, I probably average 12 minute mile on those last 5 minute miles. If you can tell, call that being an ass.

[Chris Partee]

We're not going to pay attention to that right now. Did you finish the race?

[Ad Voice]

Yes.

[In the Loop Host]

You did?

[Seth Payne]

I did. You know what they did for me? They, this is what they said. So the rules are some marathons will be like, okay, you have to quality, like to qualify for the Boston Marathon, whatever it is. Like, it's like three hours and 20 minutes. But it's like as long as you fit. If you finish it, three hours, 20 minutes and 59 seconds, that's considered finishing 320. So they did that for me. I finished in like 12 hours and 43 seconds. So they're like, nobody's ever done this before. We're just going to say the rules are that, yeah, you made it under the time limit.

[Chris Partee]

Seth, let me, let me ask you this. So obviously we know that football is going to be a part of the Olympics, like American football for the first time in 2028, but it's going to be flag football. Before I give you this player, what are your thoughts on this? Like, are you, are you for this? Are you against it?

[Seth Payne]

I, I don't. This is, and this is easy for me. There's no conflict of interest between my love for America and my love for my football players. I don't, I don't a. I don't want any of my players on my team, the Houston Texans, I don't want them getting injured right before training camp, a highly competitive sport.

[Autotrader Dad]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

The second part, though, that's easy is that I just, I have been about this. Sean, Sean can tell you from the very beginning when they made this an Olympic sport, I think people are way too, too casual about thinking that it's just a foregone conclusion that NFL players are going to be good at flag football, when they are, they're different sports. It's a different skill set. It's a different body type. Like all these things. Like your size is as much a disadvantage in flag football because you got to play both ways. Yeah. Like it's, there's no collisions involved. So like being Tank Dell sized doesn't hurt you at all in flag football. You know, other than if he's playing db, it's good to have length obviously, or his wide receiver. But that I don't, Yeah, I don't, I don't think there's many football players that can just step into. I would say it's like this. It's like just because you're a really good hitter in baseball, it's not like you can just step onto the mound versus, I don't know, the best male softball pitcher in the world.

[Chris Partee]

Okay. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And that you're going to be able to hit them out of the park all the time right off the bat without a certain amount of practice because it's just, it's a different story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't think, I think it's a, I don't think that, I don't think they should be even asking NFL players to play because I think the, the current guys are probably better than the guys that are going to step in. There's probably a lot of guys that are playing flag football that are really good at it, that were too small for the NFL. But to be like the court, the current quarterback on the U.S. team, everything they've got just a, it's a different skill set. The, and the way they move and the way they train, it's just completely different.

[Chris Partee]

Well, Josh Allen would disagree because he actually wants to play flag football. He wants to win a gold medal.

[Seth Payne]

He was, he was on with. I forget the guy's name. It was a two time gold medalist skier who interviewed him for, interviewed him the other day. And Josh Allen was asked, would you want to play flag football for the US I would sign up tomorrow to be on the team. I don't know if they'd want me, but that, that would be something. Like I said, I've always dreamed of competing for my country and being able to wear my own gold medal. But we'll see how it works. I don't, I don't know the ins and outs really a flag football. And I watched that deal maybe a couple months ago and it was a much different game than I thought it would be. But I do think that there is a potential space I would love to do it. I'm from California. It's in la. You know, I live here now, so who knows?

[Autotrader Mom]

Okay.

[Seth Payne]

That's the part that got me at the end.

[Autotrader Mom]

Okay.

[Seth Payne]

First he said, like, I don't know anything about the sport, but, you know, it's convenient for me. It's in la. Like. Like, I don't. There is something about being an Olympic athlete that I feel like it should be something you've committed to to a certain degree. I don't. Like even when. Oh, it was when Herschel Walker did the. The. The bobsled. Remember, he actually trained for it and everything. And, like, he worked at it. It was like, okay, it's cool and you can understand. Yeah, there's a carry over there. I. I don't know. But, like, yeah, I'd love to do it. I don't know anything about it, but it's in la and that's where I live. I got offended on behalf of America and flag football players because of that. So we should have put this in the pedicast.

[Chris Partee]

We really should have said, there's no way the Bills allow this. Right? No way. Come on. It was right before training camp. Come on, man.

[Seth Payne]

And again, going back to. Okay, he's an awesome runner, but part of his running style is breaking tackles.

[Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And just being a large dude. Yeah, that's not. That's not as much of an advantage, you know, like, he's a much better quarterback than Kyler Murray, but I feel like Kyler Murray might be the better option for America anyway, because you think about a smaller guy that can kind of, you know, shifty, pivot his hips away from things. Yeah, a little bit of a shiftier athlete. More so, like, I don't think, like, likewise with Lamar Jackson. Like, I don't think Lamar Jackson isn't as shifty as some of those smaller dudes. Yeah, I got it. Give me the. The current guy or any of the smaller, shiftier dudes that maybe weren't quite big enough for the NFL.

[Chris Partee]

It's something to think about. But again, there's no way the Bills allow their franchise quarterback to play flag football a month before training camp starts.

[Seth Payne]

We don't have to worry about C.J. stroud once. I do worry about. I worry about Derek Stingley. I worry about Derek Stingley because of his ball skills. Look. So I worry that they'll target him as a guy, like, if they want to put some big names on there to give it as much cache as well possible. Like, Stingley. Stingley might be the best candidate in the league when you think of his, like, his ability. Because if you play both ways also. Yeah, I just think he would like him. And Travis Hunter probably would be the guys that just make.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, yeah, Travis Hunter. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

I think the Texans would probably shut that down, too.

[Seth Payne]

I hope Travis Hunter does it, though. Yeah. Now, okay. We can leak. I can. I can love America and pull for injuries to come on seven. What? There's not. I'm not asking that. I don't. He's just, he's subjecting himself to injury. I'm cool with that. If Travis Hunter does that before the season.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, my goodness. All right. On the other side, we're going to get into some Rockets stuff here. Where are you on the Rockets in their off season or lack thereof? Sports radio 610 Payne and Pender. Pendergast back on the air. He's Seth Payne. I'm Chris Partee. And for Sean Pendergast. All right, Seth, let's talk about the Rockets.

[Seth Payne]

Yes. Let's do this.

[Chris Partee]

Where are you on the Rockets in their off season or. Which, in my opinion, a lack thereof.

[Seth Payne]

I. Look, I think part of the problem is I, I'm a little too. I think I'm a little too easily convinced that, listen, it really was as simple as Fred Van Vliet not being there and then Raphael Stone's complete, complete just negligence in getting any kind of an actual point guard in there last year to play the point guard position as opposed to trying to cobble it together that I feel like we've kind of. I think in an effort to overly complicate things, we've almost talked ourselves into that. It can't be as simple as Fred Van Vliet comes back and then you get the better version of everybody else because we just talked about it for so long and it just. You get bored of talking about the same thing. I think there's a. I think there's a case for. Look, this team, by and large is pretty much the same team that people had ranked as one of the contenders going into last season. And you lose Fred Van Vliet and everything falls apart in so many ways. But you can always go back and tie to the lack of a point guard. Yeah, look, Shane Goon isn't. Shane Goon's not the same guy and can't do all of the things he's actually good at. When you're trying to run the offense through him. Kevin Durant, when he's trying to. When he's trying to distribute the ball is not always making the best decisions. The spacing issues that come up, like all of these things. I don't want to make it sound like it's just as simple as, hey, having an actual point guard in there like, is. Is matters, but it's a big, big, big deal.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, it's huge.

[Seth Payne]

And Fred Van Vliet doesn't have to be a top 10 point guard for it to make a big difference.

[Chris Partee]

No.

[Seth Payne]

So I'm. I think I'm more optimistic than most Rockets fans right this moment.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, I agree. He doesn't have. Van Fleet, doesn't have to be a top 10 point guard for them to be successful, but it is important to have that point guard. They also picked up Marcus Smart, who I guess is more of a. I would call him more of, I guess a combo guard. Not necessarily a true point guard, but a shooting guard. But the only thing with me and Marcus Smart is he's a little older now. Right? He's a little older. You know, he won defensive player the year about four years ago now. He's still a pretty good defender, but I just.

[In the Loop Host]

Him.

[Chris Partee]

And then they also signed, what, Bogdan, Bogdanovich.

[Seth Payne]

Bogdanovich, Donovich.

[Chris Partee]

I don't. I don't know if that's enough really, to get them over the hump.

[Seth Payne]

I think the. I think adding a couple of shooters, that. And that's the other thing it goes into. If you add shooters or add any shooting, it's hard to take advantage of it if the entire offense is so janky to begin with. So the catch and shoot guys, you know, whatever Reed shepherd might be as a catch and shoot guy, shot almost 40% of his threes last year. Like, there's just. When they're not in position to even be catch and shoot guys, then, yeah, certainly you're not going to get the benefit of that. So, like, just having a distributor there makes a big, big difference. The thing I'm worried about with Fred Van Vliet, more so than anything coming off of his injury, because I guess that's the other big wild card, is that, you know, made it sound like that knee injury was way worse than it was initially described. We'll see.

[Chris Partee]

That sounded horrible.

[Seth Payne]

The way he's. If he's healthy, he's still two years older now than the last time we saw him.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And coming off of a knee injury, how much does that hurt him defensively? Because it's hard to think about putting, you know, like, when you've got lineups with Fred Van Vliet and Reed shepherd on the floor, like, that gets a little dicier defensively if Fred Van Vliet's taking a step back in that regard.

[Chris Partee]

And that's the other thing that worries me is a few of their, like, quite a few of their guards are smaller guards. Yeah, I mean, you're talking about Van Vliet. I think he's six foot, maybe six. 1. Reed shepherd is listed as six. 3. Marcus Smart is about six' three. I believe he might be six' four. But they don't have any. Any of these, you know, six, seven guards that can play the wing. Yeah, you know, mostly. I mean, I guess if you want to count a man, Thompson, but he's not really a two guard. He's not a point guard. He's more of a, you know, a wing. He's more of a small forward, really. You need. You got Tari Easton as well. He shot the three pretty well for a majority of the season last year. But it just seems like a lot of the guards back there for the Rockets are really small.

[Autotrader Mom]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

The other worries. The other thing, too, is just when you. Whether you're talking about height or age, I mean, it's. You're kind of in a precarious position where the, Like, I say all those things about what they were and were not last year because of injuries, including the. Stephen Adams, it's that also Kevin Durant gets injured in the playoffs. And, like, that was kind of a big deal. You know, we're doing with the Rockets to a certain extent what we did with the.

[Autotrader Mom]

With.

[Seth Payne]

With C.J. stroud, which is like, all right, let's, like, can we please remember that with CJ Stroud, Nico Collins wasn't there for the final game. The offensive line got, you know, Trent Brown wasn't there. I'm not making that. That's no excuse for throwing for four interceptions in one half, but it is. It is part of the story. And it also makes you forget everything that happened in the regular season. I mean, I like Kevin Durant not being there and. Or even when he was there, not being healthy in the playoffs is kind of a big deal when you're already a janky offense that's trying to make it work. But then you lose the one guy that's the biggest impact on all of those people. But having said all that. Yeah. It's not a foregone conclusion that, you know, do I have to. If I had to bet that Kevin Durant, Fred Van Vliet and Steven Adams are all going to be 100% healthy for the duration of the playoffs. Like, that's a. That's a dicey proposition at the tall order right there.

[Chris Partee]

That sounds like a tall order to hope that they're all going to be healthy by the time you get to the postseason. Let me ask you this real quick, Seth. Is it a make or break year for Raphael Stone and or Ime Udoka?

[Seth Payne]

I think that I would like. If we did this. We did this a few weeks ago, and I wonder how to think if it's changed, if I've changed at all. Because we did it with the Astros. We did those four key. Those four key. The coach and the gm with the Astros and the Rockets. And I feel like at the time, and this might have been before the Rockets kind of made their little mini surge here to where they're now in contention for the playoffs. I think at the time, I feel like Espada. Espada is expendable just because I can make a boatload of excuses for him, valid ones. But at the same time, you know, it's also like, the arguments I would make for him are like, hey, man, look at the resiliency they've shown in the past few years when they got off the super slow starts. All right, cool. But they did get the. He was also the manager when they got off to those super slow starts. The injuries are the biggest excuse I'd make for him with. But with Dana Brown, my. My thought was, all right, this is a guy that was brought in to kind of just stem the tide of all of the bleeding in the farm system, and you still look up and the Astros are one of the worst farm systems in the league. So that's where I wonder, what exactly have you done, you know, given what we were hoping you were going to do with the Rockets, I think Udoka. I think at the time, I ranked Udoka as more bulletproof than Raphael Stone, partly just because I think people would be afraid to fire Udoka. I don't think Toma Partita is scared of nobody, but I think he might be a little scared to fire Udoka. You know what I mean? That whole. I better imagine when you, like, hire and fire people your entire life, if it's no big deal or anything, but every now and then you're kind of like, ah, I don't know about this guy. Did you ever watch Seinfeld?

[Autotrader Kid]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

Remember the one with the. The mail room? The crazy mail room guy.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

That Elaine was gonna fire but ended up promoting. Yeah. Udoka feels a little bit like that.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, wow.

[In the Loop Host]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

I'm gonna go, I'm gonna, I'll tell you what I'm gonna tell. I'm gonna give, I'm gonna give Udoka the what for on this one. And ended up giving him a pay raise. Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

Wow. Hey, if that's what keeps your job, then, hey, more power.

[Seth Payne]

Just sheer intimidation.

[Chris Partee]

More power.

[Seth Payne]

No, with, with Udoka, I think part of it is again, going back to last year. All right, Raphael Stone made a decision to not do anything aggressive in trying to replace Fred Van Vliet. That's a decision and there's, there's justification for it if you look at it through a certain lens. But the reality of the situation was you have a head coach who is not going to be the guy that, like, that's not his forte. Him somehow, you know, reimagining that offense and coming up with an elegant solution to not having a point guard with a bunch of young players and an aging superstar like, you shouldn't expect that that's what Udoka is going to be able to do for you. And then getting down to like. And it was clear that Udoka, it didn't look, Udoka wasn't playing Reed shepherd like he expected him to be. To be the point guard by the end of the season. That, that's the part where I think you got to manage the team. You're on. Philosophically, I can see why you might have thought you could cobble together a point guard, but not, not with Udoka, who's a defensive minded specialist. Head coach. Just that part of it. So for me, yeah, it's. Rafael Stone is. I think Dana Brown's in the most hot water, followed by Raphael Stone. Okay.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, I mean, I, I, you know, when Van Vliet went down, you know, I guess right before the season last year, I thought it was, I thought it was a little odd that the Rockets did not make a move or it really even attempt to make a move to bring someone in. I didn't like that. I didn't like it.

[Seth Payne]

And I look, and it's one thing if it takes time for it to come together or something, but you had a half, you had a half a calendar year before the trade deadline. Never happened.

[Chris Partee]

It just never happened. Said, let me ask you this real quick before we hit the, the break here. Rockets summer league. Bruce Norton, their number one pick this year, the number 31 overall pick this year. He's actually been played pretty well his first two games of, you know, I guess, summer league, NBA action. But still some, you know, NBA action. He scored 27 in his first game. They won. They lost over the weekend. I believe it was on Saturday to the Toronto Raptors. He scored 17 points, had six assists, six rebounds, five steals, and shot 50% from three.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

Do you care at all?

[Seth Payne]

I do, I do, I do. Only this is a look. Reed Shepard did the same thing, and then defenses started paying attention to him, and it kind of. It wasn't as impressive in the second half of summer league, but. No, like, there's so many stories where. Yeah, like, a lot of you hear a lot of stories about guys who have an auspicious beginning and then it doesn't flame out. But, like, sometimes it works out that, oh, no, he's just definitely that good. I think this is an extreme version of it, but remember Jordan's first year? I just. You kept thinking, like, okay, well, at some point, you know, pitchers are going to make the adjustment to the adjustment. So let's not get to. We've seen in sports in the actual regular season, you see these. These really promising debuts. Gardner, Minshew, you know, like, all these guys, they do something as rookies, but at some point, everybody catches up to them. That was what was so impressive about Jordan. It was just. It was an unblemished stretch of just really good baseball out of him. And, like, pitchers adjusted and he adjusted to the adjustments. So, no, I think it's very fair to get excited about Thornton and. And, like, look at this as a sign of.

[Ad Voice]

All right.

[Seth Payne]

There's something to him. He's got. We'll see. You know, don't. If he continues to dominate throughout summer league, then that's definitely notable. But I'm going to enjoy it for what it is right there, this moment.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah. I kind of take this, you know, I. I guess, like what you said, I enjoyed for what it is. I kind of take these things as far as summer league with a grain of salt, because a lot of these guys in summer league, we're not going to see him for a while.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

You know what I mean? Like, we're not. Thornton could be on the roster later in the season, but early on, he's probably going to be down in the G league.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, you're right. And I also think, like, for some of his, you know, he's six foot tall.

[Chris Partee]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

Which means he's what, 511 and there. Are they measuring without the shoes now at the combine or what are they. They changed it. Whatever.

[Chris Partee]

Should be without the shoes.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Like, so, like, okay, how much is he actually going to get targeted and how much are you going to see the downside of that and especially the guys that aren't as capable of exploiting that. You just, you know. But yeah, let's focus on the positive at this point. And as of now, he's a future, you know, at least second team all NBA player is based on current results.

[Chris Partee]

Hey, you can't ask for much more than that. All right, on the other side, we'll wrap up the show and we'll do a little cross talk with the in the loop guys.

[Ad Voice]

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[Chris Partee]

State Farm is there final segment of the show. Fellas, this has been fun. I appreciate both of you. Seth, Ben, helping make it really easy for me today.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, you've done a great job, man. It's been a good time. I didn't realize you hadn't done the morning show yet with either Sean or myself, but I've done it now. Yeah, I think Luke Morrow is going to be in tomorrow. For those of you just tuning in, Sean has a voice issue. So they're just in an abundance of caution. They sent him to the 2 day il and he'll be back on Wednesday.

[Chris Partee]

He will be back this week.

[Seth Payne]

Week or Thursday. He'll be back.

[Chris Partee]

Okay, he'll be back Thursday. So he. Sean will be back this week. All right, Seth, real quick, which questionable character guy do you want right now for the Texans?

[Seth Payne]

And this is. Yeah, before I made a list of four. Just questionable character that's a little bit iffy and insulting. So I probably shouldn't have said it that way. I mean, some of them are definitely questionable. You know, kind of the truth, like 100. The guy I feel weird about is putting Stefan Diggs on there just because he was most recently exonerated from what he was accused of. And yet, like, he's always. There's always something. Yeah, I should, you know what I should say? Which, which potential drama. Dramatic guy. Which potential for drama guy? So I've got four guys whose names are out there right now. Stefan Diggs, Brandon Ayuk, Terry and Arnold and Tyreek Hill. So Tyree Kill is like most questionable right this moment. Mostly because he's just. Because nobody knows exactly how healthy he is.

[In the Loop Host]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

James Palmer. Before we discuss these four, James Palmer had said, there still is, to my understanding, no guarantee that Tyree kill plays in 2026. I think it's wishful thinking. So his knee injury ended up being a little bit more complicated than people thought initially. I don't know, like, do you have a favorite of those four where you said, okay, yeah, sign him up right now. If you have to sign one of those guys and let's say, let's Say you're getting a bargain deal for any one of those guys. So for Brandon Iuk and Terry and Arnold or Tyree Kill, I think it would be like for bargain for me would have to be damn near minimum plus incentives. For Stefan Diggs, it would be a respectable amount. But you gotta, you gotta potentially deal with like all the stuff that swirls around him.

[Chris Partee]

It would have to be Diggs for me because the stuff with Brandon Iuk, I just. It doesn't sound like this guy even wants to play football, honestly to me. Yeah, it doesn't sound like he wants to play football.

[Seth Payne]

Right. And even if you did sign him to a deal, right, Like I don't have any guarantee that, okay, I signed him to a deal and he's going to be disgruntled about the deal within a week. Yeah, that's the problem. The problem with iuk, if he does indeed even want to play football and it doesn't seem like he does that. Yeah, I don't like what's he going to be. He's going to be happy with a bargain contract.

[Chris Partee]

Probably not.

[Seth Payne]

There's no way in hell. Yeah, this was way easier when I was listing the names down. I was thinking I might have to have a debate in my mind about it. Like, no, it's Stefon Diggs by a mine mile.

[Chris Partee]

It has to be.

[Seth Payne]

And if you're paying it and he would make. That's how low those other guys are right now. I think my second place guy though would be Terry and Arnold. Even though he currently is facing eight felony charges.

[Chris Partee]

That's a lot.

[Seth Payne]

Because I do think that you could sign him for minimum and that as soon as you figure out exactly what happened and how he's operating, I think he cut him with no problem whatsoever. He's got the most potential upside for actually A showing up to work and B, you know, like maybe he develops into a good football player. Like you're probably not going to get anything out of Tyree Kill most likely this entire season. Certainly not early on. And then, yeah, like Brandon Iuk, I think just, I would rather. So I would sign Tyree Kill before Brandon Iuk. Tyree Kill probably still wants to play football.

[Chris Partee]

I would too. Brandon. Brandon Ayuk has to be number four on this list. He has to be. When a guy gets to a point especially I think he's what, 26, 27.

[Ad Voice]

Is that all?

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, he's not that old, Brandon. You can't that old when you're that young. You don't. And it feels like, you don't want to play the game anymore. It's tough to want to sign that guy.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

To any type of money.

[Seth Payne]

He's 28, but he's still. Yeah, he's still. Still in the last couple years of the most wide receivers. Prime. Yeah. Prime production. Yeah. I don't. I don't. The fact that, like, for one, that he'll publicly complain about how the 49ers won't cut him or trade him when meanwhile, like, he hasn't even filed the paperwork for reinstatement yet. I just. I. That's where he's either really not in his right mind whatsoever, or if there is any kind of strategy to it. It's just that he's trying to. He's. He doesn't want to play football anymore, and he's just trying to make it as obvious as possible. Well, still also, you know, maybe he's actually making a case for a Section 8, basically, like saying like that, look, they can't. They can't claw back any more of my money because obviously I've got some. Some emotional concerns that that could be it.

[Chris Partee]

Here's this. Daniel Jones has been cleared to do everything coming off his Achilles injury.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

How much does this news change your thoughts on the AFC south if Jones is available for them?

[Seth Payne]

Week one, I actually, during OTAs and minicamp, I was a little bit surprised that this wasn't bigger national news. He was participating in everything except full team drills. He was doing seven on seven, but I hadn't really heard any results about how he looked or anything. And I. So I ended up listening to a few Colts podcasts when I was on a long drive the other day, and they were all like, I listened to the podcast from around minicamps and OTAs, and they were saying that he looked really good in seven on sevens. I am 100% cool with this because I much more prefer the Devil I know to the Devil. That's a mystery. And like, and you go into any given Sunday versus Anthony Richardson or Riley Leonard, like, you just don't flat out like, those guys and their ability to run the ball and bring the RPO and everything into effect, like, it just creates a huge wild card factor. Whereas I think with Daniel Jones especially come up in Achilles, we already know exactly how Shane Steichen is always going to use a lot of RPOs, but you've seen. You've got a lot of film of Daniel Jones doing it. But let's remember what Kalen Bullock said before the Texans played the Colts Last year, this was while Daniel Jones was still healthy and on the roster.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah, of course we got to stop the run.

[Autotrader Mom]

That's.

[Chris Partee]

That's their whole offense. The whole offense go through Jonathan Taylor. He's the best back this year for the Colts and that's just our game plan going here.

[Ad Voice]

Stop him.

[Chris Partee]

And once you stop him, we pretty feel like the offense don't have nothing else. I would say.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, that's coming in. He probably shouldn't have said that, but I'm really glad that he did.

[Chris Partee]

Oh my God.

[Seth Payne]

He basically said, we're not worried about that Daniel Jones.

[Chris Partee]

No, they're not.

[Seth Payne]

You know, Are you serious? We're not even worried about Alec Pearson. He's destroyed us. Alec Pierce can have 200 yard receptions and it doesn't matter because if they don't have Jonathan Taylor working, that's all Daniel Jones is going to do.

[Chris Partee]

And that's one. That's one of those clips where you just hope it doesn't come back to bite you in the butt.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

Bulletin board material. How much does that really matter, Seth? Oh, that's the other thing.

[Seth Payne]

Alec Pierce, by the way, Alec Pierce. It's not. So he hasn't having a straightforward recovery from his ankle injury. So like that's another. I like his people. It's the AFC south, so people don't talk a whole lot about the AFC south teams, but I was kind of surprised that that wasn't more of a news item. We've got a quarterback who is best when he's mobile coming off an Achilles and then the receiver that you just gave a boatload of money to also is coming off of an injury that. Yeah, that's like they're, they're in a more place. Precarious situation than I think people realize. As far as what you asked the bulletin board material, I think it's, it's this the thing. It's. For some guys it doesn't do a damn thing, but for some guys it does a lot. And that's why I've always felt like it's a really valuable tool for coaches because you don't like, you don't need to motivate the whole team with that. It doesn't have to be like high school where you genuinely hate your opponent and everything, which is for. I don't know why, because they have a different logo. Whatever you're. We're really good at teaching high school kids how to genuinely hate their opponent. But there's always like a few, like there's like. I was always Wired for it. I like just finding something to put a chip on my shoulder. The best example I ever saw that in the NFL was when I was with the Jaguars. We're playing the Steelers, and Greg Lloyd the linebacker is screaming at Keenan McArdle, the wide receiver, about. And Keenan came to the sideline. It was like, what the hell is Greg Lloyd talking about? He's, like, accusing me of calling his wife and stuff. Like, all this stuff. Yeah, like, you've been calling my house at night. So what Greg Lloyd would do. Greg Lloyd would create stories in his brain about guys on the other team. Like, so he could pretend that, yeah, Kenan McArdle has been, like, hitting on his wife or something. So that when Kenan McCarthy comes over the middle, Greg Lloyd is gonna. It's gonna destroy him. And that's. He's doing that for Kenan McArdle, who's not even. Greg Lloyd's an outside linebacker. Kenny McCardell's a wide receiver. Like, he's not even gonna have that much of an interaction with him during the game. So Greg Lloyd must have stories in his head about all these different guys on the offense. So, like, yeah, for Greg Lloyd, the bullets and board material stuff worked. I think, like, Belichick was really, like, famous for using bulletin board material. If enough guys. If it. If it works for, like, three guys on your team and they end up being that much better in a game because of it, then, yeah, it's an effective strategy.

[Chris Partee]

Greg Lloyd always felt and always seemed like he was a little off. Oh, he was a little out. A little out there.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. My brother. My brother met him at a bar one night and was like. It was classic. Like, my brother was trying to give him a compliment, and Greg Lloyd was taking it the wrong way.

[Chris Partee]

Really?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, really. My brother Dan's kind of looking around. I'm like, I gotta. I gotta get this straight. I gotta get this straightened out as fast as possible.

[Chris Partee]

That's gotta be a scary moment.

[Seth Payne]

He made some, like. He complimented him for some reason, about, like. Like, the defense. And I don't know if this.

[In the Loop Host]

I.

[Seth Payne]

He had no idea why Greg Lloyd was taking it the wrong way, but I think he just. Greg Lloyd permanently has a chip on his shoulder. And it was. And it worked for him really, really well.

[Chris Partee]

That. That is hilarious. Right?

[Seth Payne]

And it wasn't like my brother just walked up to him or anything. It was like a common acquaintance, and they, you know, had been talking to each other, but at some point, it just. It turned south really quick.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, my goodness. All Right. We got the in the loop guys coming in. John Lopez, Reggie Attitula. What's going on, fellas?

[In the Loop Host]

Yo, what's happening, man?

[Chris Partee]

Glad I had a lid on my coffee there. Yes, glad. That was a good. That was a good catch there.

[Seth Payne]

That was.

[Chris Partee]

Dropped it.

[Autotrader Dad]

All right.

[Chris Partee]

What's going on? I hear you guys got a. Got a pretty phenomenal question of the day for us.

[In the Loop Host]

Yeah, I think so.

[Autotrader Mom]

Just.

[In the Loop Host]

Just because I. I know that Sean usually beats himself about this. Do you want to get in the. Do you want to get in the ID and the DNM auto leasing joint? Like, do you want to do that now?

[Seth Payne]

Just so there's. We got a disclaimer there. Or whatever the.

[Chris Partee]

Or.

[In the Loop Host]

You know what? I got you. You're listening to KLT AM, KLT FM, HD2, Houston, and Odyssey sports station. I got you.

[Chris Partee]

I appreciate you. I'm trying to find it on the sheet. I don't see.

[Seth Payne]

We used to have it on the show. I probably deleted it. This is what happens when Sean's gone, Chris.

[Chris Partee]

It's all right. It's all right.

[Seth Payne]

Everything falls apart. I'm sorry. And I'm sorry you're the one that's entrusted to try to clean it all up.

[In the Loop Host]

No, that's. But that's what teammates do. We help each other out.

[Chris Partee]

Exactly. He had my back always.

[In the Loop Host]

Always. So the question of the day. I don't know if you guys saw this, but I. I called him, like, the breakout star of this World cup, which I know some soccer fans would take umbrage with, because, like, he is already an international star, like, at a. At Manchester City. But Erling Holland definitely was, like, the big winner of this World cup, if nothing else, because everybody fell in love with him and his golden locks and his large Viking self. And his parting shot was just as good as when he was departing the US he was seen with a taxidermied raccoon that was hugging up on a particular. What was it?

[Seth Payne]

A bottle of whiskey.

[Chris Partee]

Bottle of whiskey, yeah.

[In the Loop Host]

And this is. This has caught everybody's attention.

[Seth Payne]

Reginald. Yeah, this was so perfect, because yesterday on the show, we were talking about which animals that people who aren't from North America, when they come to visit North America, which animals seem exotic to them. And a bunch of listeners pointed out the raccoon, which I never would have thought of. Yeah, yeah, but like, raccoons and squirrels. Like, other people, they look at squirrels and they're like, oh, armadillos. That are literally rodents for us. Yeah, yeah, but raccoons and squirrels Especially because they're so damn cute.

[Autotrader Mom]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

You know, so that. So it's really exciting for me to see him carrying off a souvenir raccoon.

[In the Loop Host]

That's right. And so that got us thinking. What's the weirdest souvenir memento that you've ever had or gotten?

[Chris Partee]

Oh, man, that's a tough one. Seth, you got one.

[Seth Payne]

I don't. Okay, this isn't a weird one at all. Except that it's one that I just always feel awkward about having. Is it like, whatever. When I do things with a million. Sometimes when I'm doing a charity event with the military or something, somebody will give me a challenge coin.

[In the Loop Host]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

You know, which is like an honor you receive, like, actual military people, you know, who actually do dangerous things. They get it as, like a commendation. Yeah. Or for having achieved something. I'm just getting it because I showed up and, like, made a three minute speech. But, like, so when you go to. If you're at a bar and you all produce your challenge coins, you know, like, whoever has the best challenge coin or, like, who has the worst one has to buy drinks for everybody.

[Chris Partee]

Or if you forget it, if you don't get it.

[Seth Payne]

Right.

[Autotrader Dad]

Yeah.

[Autotrader Mom]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So I've always felt weird because, like, one of my. I would feel really, really weird, like, just producing a challenge coin to people who have actually, like, risked their. Risk their lives and everything. So I don't know what to do with these. I always just. I look, I got the. I don't want to produce my challenge. I'll buy the drinks. I won't even participate in the company.

[Chris Partee]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Where'd you get yours?

[Chris Partee]

Oh, I MC'd an event.

[In the Loop Host]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. You guys ever been in the. In the. In the muck. That's why I got this Thousand yards

[In the Loop Host]

at the Ramada Inn. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

You don't know my Stoke Ballroom buddy.

[In the Loop Host]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

There's a little bit of feedback from a mic and I'm like, oh, ptsd. I have two.

[In the Loop Host]

And I leave them in my car because, one, I would never challenge somebody. Like, I would never be so bold as to do that. And two, nobody would think to challenge me with a challenge coin. Nobody goes, I know this guy. Yeah, I know this guy.

[Ad Voice]

Did some.

[In the Loop Host]

He did some work somewhere.

[Chris Partee]

Did some work. He served in North Carolina at boot camp.

[Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

He absolutely.

[In the Loop Host]

Like, nobody's mistaken me for that. And so. Yeah, it just. It feels odd. I'm right there with you. Yeah. Honestly, we could widen this out to, like, what's the weirdest thing that you Just own. Because this feels like this is one of those things that you walk into someone's house and you go, what the hell is that?

[Autotrader Mom]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Why is that there?

[In the Loop Host]

And now there's gonna be a lot more people that have it because apparently the shop that sells it, mind you, 750 sold out of them for this raccoon.

[Autotrader Mom]

Yeah.

[In the Loop Host]

People saw Erling Holland did, and they

[Chris Partee]

were like, we need it. Wow. There was a line out. It's called Bills.

[In the Loop Host]

Wow. Bills or something like that. Bill's.

[Chris Partee]

Whatever shop. And there was a line outside the door yesterday afternoon, and people trying to buy stuff for that guy got more out of it than damn Nike did. Talk about free promotion by signing Erling Holland. Free promotion. Yeah, man. Yeah.

[In the Loop Host]

What is. What's the weirdest thing that you own, Chris?

[Chris Partee]

I'm trying to think. It's got to be. Trying to think, like, ah, that's a tough one. I've got a lot of weird stuff.

[In the Loop Host]

I know I've seen something.

[Chris Partee]

I've got a lot of weird stuff.

[In the Loop Host]

Yeah. No, you. You go to his house and there's some weird stuff.

[Chris Partee]

Weird stuff in there. I have a. I have a. A discus from Greece. When I was at the. Was it the O2 Summer Olympic Games? 04.04 Summer Olympic Games in Athens. I have a discus that. That was given to me by some little Greek kid. It's an actual old discus.

[Autotrader Mom]

Now.

[Seth Payne]

It's not. It's not like Olympic.

[In the Loop Host]

It's just some. Some kid gave you a discus.

[Seth Payne]

And it's still in my office.

[In the Loop Host]

And you've. You've held on to it.

[Autotrader Mom]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

I've got all kinds of weird stuff.

[Seth Payne]

I've got. You know what I do have from when. When I was a young child, I lived in North Carolina. My dad had a farm in North Carolina. And I had a commemorative Coke bottle from the 1982 UNC championship.

[Chris Partee]

Okay.

[Seth Payne]

And I had that forever with the actual Coke still in it.

[Chris Partee]

That's good. That's like. I know.

[Seth Payne]

But it felt like, I don't know, kind of weird. Like I don't know how healthy that is. And I was kind of half worried that at some point I was going to get drunk and try to, like, have a whiskey and Coke with that Coke or something. And somewhere along the way we fell and it broke in a move. And I was kind of happy that it did.

[Autotrader Mom]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

I felt weird about there still being Coca Cola in the. In the Coke bottle.

[In the Loop Host]

Is there just something in you that thinks that, like, there. There'd be a moment that You're.

[Ad Voice]

You're.

[In the Loop Host]

You know, the thought inside your head wins, and you just crack that thing open and drink it into your death or something. Is that what.

[Seth Payne]

Right, yeah. Coke. Yeah.

[Autotrader Mom]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Okay, fair enough. It was just disease ridden or something. And I just. I was carrying around a petri dish of just toxic stuff.

[Chris Partee]

You might not even need the whiskey. You might just get drunk off that.

[Autotrader Mom]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[In the Loop Host]

How stable is coke after that while? Like, I think that's actually.

[Chris Partee]

There's only one way to find out.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Get open. I think anything with a lot of sugar and acid in it tends to age pretty well. Right. So, yeah, you could probably drink Coke that's 400 years old. God.

[Chris Partee]

I actually have my. And I think y' all have seen it. If you've been to my house, I know you have.

[In the Loop Host]

Where's that again?

[Autotrader Dad]

Right up there.

[In the Loop Host]

Right.

[Chris Partee]

Right over there. I actually have my high school football helmet. Remember the old bike helmets that you pump air in the top of them?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Autotrader Dad]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

I actually have my old high school football helmet still sitting in my office. It's wild. Like, £17. Wait. Oh, they were heavy.

[Seth Payne]

Good lord.

[In the Loop Host]

That's why you had to have strong necks. Strong next. Back in the day. So. Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

Oh, man.

[In the Loop Host]

Excited to see what kind of odd things people have collected.

[Seth Payne]

I tried to. I was just trying to Google real quick how long coke stays good for. And I stumbled on to the stability of seized cocaine after 16 months of storage.

[Chris Partee]

Well, that's something.

[Seth Payne]

You cops are out there looking to pillage the evidence room. There might be a little bit. I'll forward you the study so you can tell whether you're. How potent your product is.

[Autotrader Dad]

Man.

[Chris Partee]

Okay. Oh, my lord. You guys are gonna have fun with this one.

[In the Loop Host]

I hope so.

[Autotrader Mom]

Yeah.

[Chris Partee]

All right.

[In the Loop Host]

All right. We good?

[Chris Partee]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was it.

[Seth Payne]

Hey, no. Hey, great job today, Chris. Tomorrow will be in tomorrow, and then Sean will be back on Thursday. Antibodies to you and everybody else and everybody. Have a great time listening to in the Loop.

[Autotrader Kid]

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[Autotrader Mom]

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[Autotrader Dad]

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[Autotrader Mom]

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[Autotrader Dad]

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[Seth Payne]

Look at these listings from dealers.

[Autotrader Mom]

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[Autotrader Dad]

Really?

[Autotrader Mom]

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[Autotrader Dad]

Mom needs a second.

[Autotrader Mom]

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[Autotrader Dad]

Really? Or I can pick it up at the dealership. One sec, sweetie.

[Autotrader Kid]

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[Autotrader Mom]

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[Autotrader Kid]

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Really?

[Autotrader Dad]

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[Autotrader Kid]

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[Ad Voice]

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[Seth Payne]

as the US Men's National Team takes center stage at a Home World Cup. Make sure you're listening to Call it what yout Want, part of the CBS Sports Podcast Network where you can join me. I'm Jimmy Conrad alongside Charlie Davies, Tony Meola, Marcelo Balboa and Benny Felhaber throughout this tournament for previews, instant reactions and analysis of every US Match. Then all summer, we're back every Tuesday and Thursday covering all things U.S. men's National Team. Download and follow. Call it what you want on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

[Autotrader Dad]

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