Payne and Pendergast Full Show July 22,2026

Summary

Payne & Pendergast | July 22, 2026 | Full Show Summary

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Overview

This episode delivers a classic mix of Houston sports analysis, lively banter, and deep insight from Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast. The show covers the Houston Astros’ latest game, the team’s trade deadline outlook, Houston Texans’ training camp questions (especially at tight end and defensive back), and the LeBron James–Miami Heat social media saga. The hosts also riff on notable national sports news, including ESPN’s talent layoffs and NFL predictions.

Their trademark humor and camaraderie are present throughout, illustrated by authentic local perspectives and memorable anecdotes—both on the field and (unexpectedly) off, like a detailed discussion about surviving a bison attack.

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Astros’ Outlook: Momentum and Trade Deadline Questions

Astros Take Another Win, Fans Debate Buy/Sell Strategy

(02:14 – 11:39)

• The show opens with excitement about the Astros’ 5-3 win over the Marlins, highlighted by Esoc Paredes’ three-run homer (“Little bit of hustle. Guy behind you, just esox one out of here.” — Payne, 09:00).
• The hosts reaffirm their belief the team should “be a buyer…go get some things” at the deadline (Pendergast, 03:14).
• Discussion centers on the pros and cons of the Astros standing pat, given injuries and players coming off the IL. Payne makes the case for internal improvement: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. The first half of the season we didn’t really have a lot of the guys that we thought we were going to have.”
• If additions are made, Pendergast would prefer “a left-handed bat in the outfield” and “a right-handed reliever for a prospect that isn’t somebody you view as game-changing” (04:47).

Highlight Moments: Hustle, Home Runs, and Triple Plays

(07:13 – 11:39)

• The hosts replay the sequence where Yordan Alvarez hustles to first on a dropped third strike, setting up Paredes’ homer.
• The Astros also hit into a triple play (Altuve), which the hosts recall humorously: “Jose Altuve got tired of grounding into double plays, so he grounded into a triple play” (Pendergast, 10:21).
• It’s noted that everyone in the division (except the Angels) has led at some point—a testament to how tight the AL West has been (06:20).

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National NBA Story: LeBron & the Heat’s "Accidental" Announcement

LeBron-to-Miami Saga

(13:37 – 15:15, 140:22 – 145:54)

• Miami Heat accidentally posted (and quickly deleted) a scheduled YouTube livestream titled "LeBron James Introductory Press Conference (July 27)."
• Hosts analyze the odds movement (Miami surging as the favorite over Cleveland and Golden State), and discuss Pat Riley’s appeal and how LeBron might appreciate “the way Pat Riley runs things” as a veteran (Payne, 15:10).
• Speculation: Was the leak really a slip, or a tell? Both believe it signals LeBron to Miami is imminent. “You do not set that up unless it's happening… take out your 401k [and bet on it]” (Payne, 171:03).
• LeBron’s athletic legacy debate arises: is he building a case as the “greatest of all time” and could playing with Giannis be the partnership that cements it?

Notable Quote:

“The Miami Heat is Pat Riley. Pat Riley runs such a tight ship. I wonder if it's one of those things where, as you get older, you realize why your dad was so tough—maybe LeBron will appreciate that now."
— Seth Payne (14:50)

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Texans Training Camp: The Tight End Room and “Swarm” Culture

What’s the Ideal Texans’ Tight End Room?

(24:52 – 33:19)

• With training camp days away, the big question: Who makes the tight end roster?
• Locks: Dalton Schultz (“going to be the starter”), and Marlon Klein (second-round pick, “you’re an incredible bust if you don’t make the team as a second round pick”—Payne, 27:52).
• Free agent Foster Moreau likely makes the team unless rookie Cade Stover “really comes into his own.” Stover vs. Brevin Jordan (dynamic playmaker but injury-prone) may come down to blocking ability and “swarm” mentality.
• Team is “tough, physical, and wants their guys to be versatile” (Payne).
• The “swarm blinded” concept is discussed: Do the Texans sometimes overvalue grit/intangibles? Payne cautions that attitude and motor must be paired with NFL talent.

Notable Quotes:

“You can have a swarmy attitude, but it doesn't mean you look swarmy on the field… You gotta also produce.”
— Seth Payne (45:11)

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NFL Coverage: National Preview and Houston’s Rising Profile

Respect for the Texans (or Too Much Hype?)

(44:47 – 54:50)

• NFL Network experts unanimously pick the Texans to go over 9.5 wins—Pendergast voices unease: “When you see seven experts all pick the Texans over…this is where I start to get nervous.”
• Texans are favored in 13 games; the hosts dissect the defense’s floor, continuity (thanks to DeMeco Ryans and staff), and wonder what the downside really is. “If this defense were to backslide… Are injuries the only thing that can short circuit this?” (Pendergast, 54:22).
• They break down the importance of a hot start (“they need to go five and two before the bye week”) and the emotional significance of a Week 1 win at home against the Bills, considering tiebreaker scenarios come playoff time.

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Astros’ Deadline Analysis: To Buy, Stand Pat, or Sell?

Will the Astros Actually Sell?

(98:09 – 111:31)

• Jeff Passan’s top-100 trade deadline list features five Astros in the top 62—including Jeremy Peña (#7, with 35% chance to be traded), Hader, and Paredes. Payne and Pendergast both feel 35% sounds “way too high.”
• Is Peña’s true value inflated by ballpark factors and a possibly unsustainable WAR from past seasons? His propensity for injuries plus having Scott Boras as his agent are factors in any team’s calculus.
• The business side: Jim Crane’s aversion to empty seats and the memory of the “dark years” likely keep the Astros from a hard reset—even if “the right thing to do in a vacuum” is a bigger step back (Pendergast, 106:52).
• Segment underscores why even moves that make baseball sense might not happen when ownership prioritizes attendance, brand, and gate receipts.

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Texans’ Draft Success & Defensive Back Goldmine

Are the Texans the NFL’s Best at Drafting DBs?

(128:29 – 134:08)

• “Best in the NFL at finding defensive backs?”—Seth gives credit to Nick Caserio and DeMeco Ryans’ system, but especially to the coaching of Dino Vasso.
• Texans have churned out productive starters (Bullock, Lassiter, Jalen Smith) and alternates, primarily from mid- and late-round picks.
• There’s a running joke about Houston’s affection for drafting day-3 USC DBs—“the treasure trove of distressed assets.”
• Pendergast notes the best-case scenario: “It’s not like Texans didn’t get the most out of these guys, then they went somewhere else and looked awesome.” Only Roy Lopez has really produced after leaving.

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Around the Horn: ESPN Layoffs & Modern Sports Culture

National Media: Bloodletting at ESPN

(114:24 – 121:32)

• Discussion on ESPN’s high-profile layoffs: Carl Ravich, Cam Newton, Ryan Clark, and others. Payne is particularly disappointed about Charles Davis but notes he’ll still do games for CBS.
• Shift in media landscape: being cut by ESPN is less consequential for ex-athletes with successful podcasts/platforms. They quote Cam Newton:

  “If you don’t own your own platform, you’re gonna get overlooked, bypassed, and be extinct like dinosaurs.”

• The conversation turns to “the Notre Dame test”—would you want to take a long car ride with a job candidate? If not, don’t hire them.

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Banter Break: Bison Attack Survival & Offbeat Anecdotes

The Yellowstone Bison Story

(80:49 – 91:11)

• Sean and Seth hilariously recap a viral story of a 75-year-old man getting tossed by a bison in Yellowstone (and living to tell about it). Payne shares he’s reading "Death in Yellowstone," marveling at how often tourists fail to respect the dangers of national parks.
• The segment shifts to players and injuries: discussion of a baseball player’s ruptured testicle, and the ins and outs of athletes wearing cups.

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Lighter Fare, Closing Bits & Crossover

• NFL edge rusher “take-a-mania” (Micah Parsons debates Miles Garrett about who’s best). Local plug: Will Anderson gets name-checked as the up-and-comer in those conversations (156:05).
• John Harbaugh’s reaction to a Giants player (Cam Scatterbo) doing a post-injury backflip: “At least stick it!” (166:29)
• End-of-show banter about staffing dynamics, the “Golden Nugget rule” for hiring, and a tease of the big 10am station announcement.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Some hitters just need a little bit of extra heft to be at their best.”
  — Payne on Esoc Paredes’ body type (09:31)
• “No Kizzy—it means you’re dead serious. That’s what ChatGPT told me.”
  — Pendergast (11:21)
• “Tell Tove he’s No Kizzy.”
  — Payne, referencing a ChatGPT-generated phrase after the triple play (11:20)
• “I’m not being cute.” — Pendergast on the Astros’ potential to contend; the show’s recurring mantra.
• “The crowd has such a big effect on that game, and they can make it as miserable as absolutely possible for Josh Allen and the Bills fans…”
  — Payne on home-field advantage (60:33)
• “I have a sack at every spot across the line you can have a sack at... I'm talking about truly play it at my weight. I can't beat 240, bro. That's facts.”
  — Micah Parsons, on his unique skill set (157:18)
• “Big announcement coming at 10. Stay here. You won’t be disappointed!”
  — All show, building up to the station’s “massive” news

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Timestamps to Key Segments

| Topic | Segment Start | |-----------------------------|------------------| | Astros win, trade deadline | 02:14 | | Jordan Alvarez hustle/Paredes HR | 07:13 | | Altuve hits into triple play | 10:21 | | Miami Heat/LeBron accidental leak | 13:37 | | Texans tight end room/“Swarm blinded” | 24:52 | | NFL Network Texans win projections | 44:47 | | Astros as deadline sellers/Peña's trade value | 98:09 | | Texans DB draft success/USC picks | 128:29 | | ESPN layoffs/player media platforms | 114:24 | | Bison attack banter | 80:49 | | NFL edge debate/Micah Parsons | 156:05 | | John Harbaugh on Scatterbo’s backflip | 166:24| | Big announcement crosstalk | 176:45 |

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Tone & Style

The episode blends sharp sports analysis with signature local color, frequent humor, and lively, insightful back-and-forth. The hosts’ comfort discussing both X’s and O’s and the quirks of modern sports fandom makes the show appeal to casual and hard-core Houston sports fans alike.

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For more: Listen to Payne & Pendergast weekdays on SportsRadio 610 or via the Odyssey app.

Transcript

[Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

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[Seth Payne]

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[Sean Pendergast]

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[Seth Payne]

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[Sean Pendergast]

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[Seth Payne]

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[Sean Pendergast]

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[Host/Announcer]

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[Seth Payne]

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[Sean Pendergast]

opened my dashboard for the only positive

[Host/Announcer]

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[Sean Pendergast]

Sports Radio 610 presents Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast.

[Seth Payne]

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

[Sean Pendergast]

Great day, Great day. Oh, give me some juice, baby. Oh yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Let's do it. Gives Paredes a chance for an RBI here with two outs. First and third. Two outs and he hits the ball high in the air, deep to left field and that hustle's gonna pay off. A three run homer and the Astros lead it five to one. Little bit of hustle behind you. Just esox one out of here.

[Sean Pendergast]

Love it.

[Seth Payne]

Esoc paredes a three Run bomb off the community leaderboard side and the Astros have a four run lead.

[Sean Pendergast]

There you go. Todd Callis. Jeff Blum on the call Space City Home Network. The the Astros get another win. Well, two in a row last night.

[Seth Payne]

There's one thing that's been consistent since the All Star break. It's our undying devotion towards our belief that this, this Astros team has what it takes.

[Sean Pendergast]

They got what it takes. They got the stuff.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Since the All Star break, you could, you could tune in at 6am and know for sure. The pain of Pendergast are saying this team needs to be a buyer.

[Sean Pendergast]

They gotta be a buyer. They gotta go get some things.

[Seth Payne]

At the break, some people were down. Some people after, you know, after getting swept in the first series out.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, I was one of them.

[Seth Payne]

No, so was I. I do that there is an element to, to this team where for one. Okay, Imai, as you would have said at the beginning of the season, you would say the first half of the season. All right. At some point, you know, maybe things will click for him and all of these differences that are giving him trouble. And last night it was him taking the advice of the coaching staff and mixing in a change up especially got as he got into the second and third time through the lineup. Um. Okay, that's cool. Renell Blanco looked pretty damn good in his. In his first two home runs. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And I'm not. And I'm not being. I'm not being cute.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. No. But as far as there's actual stuff. Yeah. And everything else. Yeah. Like that was a very promising debut. And there is an element to me where I don't, you know, typically. Yes. If you're a team that's a contender, you got to make some moves at the trade deadline. You got to round out some of these things. I think that this team for where it is in its farm system, I'm. I'm content. If they just stand pat and say, look, these guys coming back from the il am I figuring it out like we are the ones we've been waiting for and that it just. You got to find some balance between being stupidly aggressive and just flat out saying, look, we. The first half of the season we didn't really have a lot of the guys that we thought we were going to have or we had guys who are underperforming. But on paper it was good enough to be a contender and. Or at least somebody that can make a playoff hang around.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. If they can cherry pick a left handed bat in the outfield if they could cherry pick a right handed reliever for a prospect that isn't somebody you view as, you know, even close to game changing, I'm totally cool with that.

[Seth Payne]

Sean Lucas Spence and Bennett Sousa are the. The only things we need that. Yeah, those are the.

[Sean Pendergast]

Based on getting thrown into the woods and you get handed this bag of weapons and you're like, there's like a rubber knife in there. Yeah, I got to defend myself with this.

[Seth Payne]

All right, You've got to. You're going to MacGyver your way through to this. You do.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's what they're going to have to do. They're going to have to MacGyver. So right now, as of as I went to bed last night, I got to see what it is as I awoke this morning. The standings can be different when you go to bed than when you awake in the morning, I've learned.

[Seth Payne]

Because the west coast stubbornly clings to their time zones.

[Sean Pendergast]

They don't start their games the same

[Seth Payne]

time what China does. One time zone for the entire nation. That's right. Hawaii. Deal with it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, exactly. You too. Alaska. Sit up. All right. The Astros, three games back in the division. That feels good. Four games back in the wild card. As we awake this morning. That's the. That is the as you awoke. Standings update brought to you by.

[Seth Payne]

I can't remember. I watched Dan listen last night. I think so. I can't remember if it was Todd Callis or Robert Ford who was pointing out that on the first of the month, for each month this year, a different team in the division has been leading the division. It's been. Everybody except the Angels has shared the. Has had the lead at some point at the. On the. Of the month.

[Sean Pendergast]

In the division.

[Seth Payne]

In the division. Yeah. It was the Astros once. It was the Rangers once. It was the A's once.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, okay.

[Seth Payne]

And I think it was the Mariners once. Yeah. April, May, June, July.

[Sean Pendergast]

So at one point, but I don't remember that April.

[Seth Payne]

The Astros had the lead on April 1st.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, that was back when they were good.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they were.

[Seth Payne]

They.

[Sean Pendergast]

They had split with the Angels. They. They swept the Red Sox back in the day. Yeah. Those are good times.

[Seth Payne]

March ever.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, that's right. Those were good times.

[Seth Payne]

So, yeah, everybody except the Angels.

[Sean Pendergast]

Five, three last night. They beat the Marlins. The two big things that had people talking. The first one we heard, which was the Paretes home run, but not so much the Paredes home run, but the at bat right before it, Jordan Alvarez beating out a stray strikeout that rolled away from the catcher and hustling his ass down the line.

[Seth Payne]

You know what he. Maybe, maybe Zach disenzo, you know, took. Took young Yordan under his arm and said, hey, listen, don't make the mistakes I've made.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

You know, maybe. Hey, listen, young Yordon, this is the

[Sean Pendergast]

thing through a translator.

[Seth Payne]

I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but when the catcher drops the third strike, you can run to first, you can get on base. Disenzo didn't know Di Zenzo when he just stood there and pouted this weekend. He didn't realize and he just stood there.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's a good example of something good coming out of something bad.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know, everybody learned from Zach Zenzo's mistake.

[Seth Payne]

Jordan will make something of himself now,

[Sean Pendergast]

getting down the line fast.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, well, I really know that's the thing about Jordan, he is fast. Like, it's.

[Sean Pendergast]

I just don't want him running.

[Host/Announcer]

He's.

[Seth Payne]

You know what Yordon is. Yordan's the equivalent of a white quarterback who can run. Everybody has to be reminded at points like, hey, well, he can run. You know, Romo. Romo acts like he's. Promo's such a throwback in that a. There was a time when guys sounded drunk all the time when they were broadcasting and baby. Yeah. Romo is the guy who will keep reminding the audience that this white quarterback can run. Remember the. The Jaguars versus the Bills? It was like, yeah, thanks for the reminder that Josh Allen can run. Thanks. Romo, really, that guy.

[Sean Pendergast]

That had to be overload for him because Trevor Lawrence can run, too.

[Seth Payne]

He's got so little. He's got. He's got very little melanin. Are you sure?

[Sean Pendergast]

That's.

[Seth Payne]

I don't know.

[Sean Pendergast]

Realize you haven't watched any of their games this year. Tony, get down to the red zone here.

[Seth Payne]

And Trevor Lawrence, I think he can run.

[Sean Pendergast]

So that. That was. That was cool. I mean, it happened with two outs, so it kept the inning going. And it left. Let's play it again. I want to listen to the Esac Paredes home run again.

[Seth Payne]

Gives Paredes a chance for an RBI here with two outs. First and third, two outs. And he hits the ball high in the air, deep to left field. And that hustle's gonna pay off a three run homer.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's good. We don't need all the puns and everything else. I just wanted to hear the home run again. Yeah. So Paredes with the big knock, three Run homer and got a little dicey blue ball. Came in and made it interesting. Yeah, they made. They made these last couple games a little too interesting. The bullpen. But. But yeah, it was.

[Seth Payne]

It's been nice. I like Hater. Doesn't look like his classic, you know, shut down self, but I'm okay because I like burning those. Burn those performances on when it's also a victory.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So you're going to have a few of those, you know, dicey moments. And somebody brought this up to me yesterday. I don't think he wants me to say who he is. Pray this pray is in the field at times this year. Looks like, man, maybe if you were like 10 pounds lighter, he would have made that play. And I kind of. I've always with guys who are. Some hitters just need a little bit of extra heft to be at their best.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think that's his optimal body type, man.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I think you can't. You. You lose a little weight and you're gonna sacrifice something at the plate.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. We're not all built the same and

[Seth Payne]

I know lots of skinny, wiry guys are really good power hitters, but still just everybody's got their own body type.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

But he also made this point, which is that that, that little bit extra pudginess might be why Priddis seems like he's 35 years old.

[Sean Pendergast]

Definitely.

[Seth Payne]

Even though he's actually like 18.

[Sean Pendergast]

Definitely. He's got an older face, too. Everything about him screams 35 years old.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Paredes. The other thing that happened last night in the eighth inning. Jose Altuve. Jose Altuve. I saw somebody make this joke. Jose Altuve got tired of grounding into double plays, so he grounded into a triple play. Runners on first and second, nobody out. Up comes Jose Altuve.

[Seth Payne]

Rounds this one to third. They might have a chance to turn three and they are going to hit. Triple play on Jose Altube. Grounds the ball right to the back, and the Marlins turn a triple play on Altube.

[Sean Pendergast]

We're good, Byron. We. That's hilarious, Blum. Jeff Blum's awesome.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, the.

[Sean Pendergast]

The home run calls. There's some times where it feels like it's really getting, you know, like he's really trying to pigeonhole something in there. That's hilarious. Yeah.

[Host/Announcer]

Just.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, my.

[Seth Payne]

I don't. That's another one. I like seeing that in the victory. It's fun to watch a triple play. There's like an artistry to it, you know, game recognized game and so forth. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Tell Tove he's No Kizzy.

[Seth Payne]

Would I say no Kizzy there? Brian Byron? Probably not. Yeah, you could.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, I think so. Because you're being serious about something. Because they said on ChatGPT yesterday that it's also sort of a synonym for I'm dead serious.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, no Kizzy.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, Kizzy. Yeah. Yeah. Altuve hit into that triple play, but I'm cool with it. No Kizzy.

[Seth Payne]

We can't do that.

[Sean Pendergast]

I just did. Do you know the last time the Astros hit into a triple play?

[Seth Payne]

Oh, yeah, it was. It was 2000. It was 2021.

[Sean Pendergast]

2019.

[Seth Payne]

Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

2019, May 20th. I didn't know if you'd seen it or not. May 22nd, 2019.

[Seth Payne]

No, I. Just throwing it out there in case I nailed it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, I totally remember 2019. May 22nd. You would have had to sit and guess for a while as to who it was.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, really?

[Sean Pendergast]

Jake Marisnik. Oh, Jake came into a triple play.

[Seth Payne]

I was glad that he put the ball in play.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. That's why it would have been hard to guess.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Prior to that, it was 2018. Evan Gaddis.

[Seth Payne]

That one, I believe, when you standardize it for.

[Sean Pendergast]

Did you. So the Ashes.

[Seth Payne]

Well, that was one. There is still. You know what? It's more impressive now without the shift. So there's still a shift back then. So with no shift, a triple play is even more impressive.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

The circumstances have to be just right.

[Sean Pendergast]

You gotta. You gotta ground it if it's gonna be one. Unless it's one of those crazy ones where somebody lines out, this guy's off a second and this and that. But that was a classic textbook triple play last night. Heart smashed. A third guy doesn't have to move, he just steps on the bag and it's basically a double play with an out of the first out added on to it. Apparently last night, shifting gears here, the Miami Heat put out a tweet on their social media or they posted a link, I think on their YouTube. Yeah, that's what it was. They posted a link on their YouTube, a link, a future link to a LeBron James introductory press conference. They now, they quickly took I'm looking at Legion hoops on Twitter, Fans discover. And they posted a video, like one of those screen grab videos of somebody pulling up the Heat YouTube account, and they're, you know, kind of swiping through and things like that. Fans discovered the Miami Heat posted a scheduled live stream titled LeBron James introductory press conference slated for July 27 on YouTube, which would be Monday. Okay, so that would be next Monday. It was quickly deleted. Miami has since responded saying it was a mistake from their social media team. In preparation. In preparation for a potential.

[Seth Payne]

Right. That's the thing, though. So at the very least, let's get

[Sean Pendergast]

out in front of this and put a link to the introductory presser on a specific.

[Seth Payne]

On a specific date. So at the very least. At the very, very least, let's say that LeBron hasn't actually made his decision. There might be some machinations going on where that maybe they've. Maybe rich Paul and LeBron James have informed some people that. That they are going to make a decision by that date.

[Sean Pendergast]

Definitely they have.

[Seth Payne]

So, like, maybe some teams are getting ahead of it and just saying, okay, just in case.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, that. That's what Miami hopes. You believe, I think.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And. And I. And who knows if he's actually made a decision and talked that. The other thing. The thing you got to keep in mind with Miami, as opposed to Cleveland, where I know he's played before, but he doesn't have a relationship necessarily with this front office or Philly is the other team that's believed to be in the running where he's got really. No. That I can think of any existing relationships there with the front office in Philly. Miami Heat is Pat Riley.

[Seth Payne]

Pat Riley. Well, and it's interesting because the stories back then were there.

[Sean Pendergast]

And the same head coach.

[Seth Payne]

LeBron. Yeah, that LeBron, you got a little. He chafed a little bit under how tight a ship that Pat Riley ran. And I wonder if it's one of those things where as you get older, it's kind of like when you realize, like, oh, now I know why my dad was such a jerk back then.

[Sean Pendergast]

You could have used that discipline.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Now that I've got my own children. Yeah. So now that LeBron's had his own basketball children and been the guy at all these places, that he might really appreciate the way Pat Riley runs things.

[Sean Pendergast]

For what it's worth, Miami, yesterday, before this link got posted last night, was the favorite on the odds board. Even money plus 100. You bet 100, you win 100.

[Seth Payne]

Before that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Before that. Yeah, yeah. Yesterday, the Jimmy Shapiro emails that we get where it says, hey, here's the latest LeBron odds. I actually went back and found all the Jimmy Shapiro emails that have been sent out since the Lakers got knocked out of the playoffs as to where LeBron could end up. He's Jimmy. And for those who don't know, people are like, who the hell is Jimmy Shapiro? He's a PR agent. Who represents BetOnline AG. So he, like, daily he sends out what the most relevant odds are on things, and LeBron is a very relevant topic right now. Since May 12, there have been six different times that he sent out odds on LeBron. May 12 was right after the Lakers season ended. Then he didn't send another one out till June 30, after the finals had ended and the draft was over. And then since June 30, he sent it out, like, every four to six days. So there have been six different times he sent out the odds. Cleveland was the leader at the very beginning. Cleveland has been the leader two other times, and Miami is the leader now. The other two times, Golden. There was at one point where Golden State on June 30 was the heaviest favorite that there's been in this whole process, minus a thousand. At one point. At one point, Golden State was a lock to get LeBron. Now they're down third on the list. But if you just look at the. How the odds have moved over the month and a half since the Lakers season ended, Cleveland has spent the most time. Cleveland has been no lower than second.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

On the odds board. Miami. Miami is kind of making a late run here at it. And so Miami's the favorite right now, but Cleveland has spent most of the last six weeks as the fate.

[Seth Payne]

What are you. When you do your daily listen in on Cleveland radio? What. What are. How are they treating it?

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, so. So for the most part, the last three weeks, they've just been kind of. At least Ken has. Ken, Carmen, the more volatile of the two hosts. Anthony's just been kind of, like, riding along, like, hey, this is kind of fun.

[Seth Payne]

Is Ken kind of. Let me guess. Ken's kind of cynical about the whole thing because they've been through this before.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's ambivalent because he's like, man, make a decision. You know, come on. He's. You know, he made the comparison. Like, if you're waiting for somebody to say yes to you, asking them to prom, eventually you're going to move on and ask somebody else.

[Seth Payne]

I'm guessing there's probably a part of it when Cleveland. Where they've already done the old whole. The whole homecoming thing, but then he decided to leave again. And that. I'm like, I'm just guessing. I have no clue. Does LeBron actually spend all that much time in Akron or Cleveland?

[Sean Pendergast]

I get the sense that he. I mean, he's got a house there, obviously. Houses everywhere.

[Seth Payne]

He's got houses. But. But I'm wondering If there's just not that same emotional appeal that there was once before, obviously there. There are good times to remember, but it doesn't necessarily feel like, oh, the prodigal son has returned.

[Sean Pendergast]

No. Now LeBron is a family man now. His two old. His two boys are older. You know LeBron, he plays in the league. OB well, he sits on the bench in the league.

[Seth Payne]

He goes to the D league when he allows it.

[Sean Pendergast]

His other son is collegiate aged. His daughter is in high school. And I don't know how much that factors in.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So, yeah, from that aspect of it,

[Seth Payne]

I want to raise my daughter in Cleveland, not Miami. Tell you what.

[Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, no kidding.

[Seth Payne]

Walk around a mall in Miami or Las Vegas. Those are the two places where I'm like, nope, nope, nope, nope.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, not raising the family here. So I think in Cleveland now, I think they're just kind of like. They're kind of ready. Like, come on, man, let's get this done. Let's get this over with here. I don't think they're going to be. I don't think they're going to be completely distraught or like the news this morning about this Miami link. It wasn't like catastrophe or anything like that.

[Seth Payne]

Hey, what time is this scheduled for on Monday?

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, I didn't see.

[Seth Payne]

I'm guessing it's not between 6am and 10am Central. I don't think it's going to be anything we're going to be allowed to carry on. Capable of.

[Sean Pendergast]

Carry on the air. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't say. It just says LeBron James introductory press conference posted 11 hours ago. The link. Yeah. So future link. So that's where we are with LeBron right now. Miami. Do you think if he act.

[Host/Announcer]

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[Seth Payne]

I wrote a little song to remind you. Choice hotels get you more of the experiences you value.

[Sean Pendergast]

Mm.

[Seth Payne]

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[Sean Pendergast]

A rooftop bar.

[Seth Payne]

Have a ball.

[Sean Pendergast]

Cocktails up here.

[Seth Payne]

Feel just right. It's Cambria.

[Sean Pendergast]

Amazing.

[Seth Payne]

All right. Bring a date.

[Sean Pendergast]

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[Seth Payne]

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[Host/Announcer]

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[Seth Payne]

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[Sean Pendergast]

opened my dashboard for the only positive

[Host/Announcer]

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[Sean Pendergast]

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[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, Mr. Floopers. Meow once if I'm the best cat

[Seth Payne]

mama in the whole wide world.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, meow once if it's Shiba time and I'm the best. I knew you loved me. Go from ignored to adored with Shiba Grilled. It's protein rich and made with real chicken or seafood tap to buy now or find at your favorite retailer. Actually picked Miami and they leaked this because LeBron. Look, LeBron is dragging this out, I think in large part just because he enjoys being the center of attention. He hasn't gotten to do this recently. He spent eight years with the Lakers.

[Seth Payne]

There's a little bit of element though, too, where Rich Paul is such a kingmaker now that he might be dragging it out himself because he wants to sign, you know, like, hey, LeBron goes here, then my other client can go here or what have you.

[Sean Pendergast]

And he has other clients. You're right.

[Seth Payne]

There's other dominoes that are going to fall.

[Sean Pendergast]

No question. No question. I Wonder, like, if LeBron truly did pick Miami and he let them know and then some intern post this link.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Would that be enough for LeBron to change his mind?

[Seth Payne]

Change his mind? I can't remember. What kind of operation are you guys running over there? I bet Pat Riley's freaking out on somebody as we speak.

[Sean Pendergast]

Definitely would be like, if this were like, if he really. They should be freaking out on somebody either way. Like, that's. Even if LeBron isn't going there or hasn't made a decision yet. That's. That's a bad mistake, man.

[Seth Payne]

No, that's a class. That's one of the biggest. The most intriguing things to me in modern sports is that the social media department is vital to the business side of things. Except everything about it is what coaches hate.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And they have to grudgingly go along with a lot of it. But then, then when there's mistakes like this, man, it's hard for the coaches to want to go along with the social media stuff.

[Sean Pendergast]

Amen. Amen. All right, we're off and running on a Wednesday. I know you guys have probably seen, if you follow us on social media, big announcement coming today at 10am There's a big announcement coming today and we'll have in the loop in the studio with us here. It'll be during the toss. So it is a. No hyperbole, no Kizzy. It is a big announcement we've got coming up at 10am so baseball talk, by the way, which we did a few minutes ago on Sports Radio 610 presented by Xfinity. Score the most reliable Wi Fi one price five years guaranteed. Xfinity. Imagine that. Ten days until Texans training camp. We're doing a question each day. 10 day countdown began a few days ago. Today is question number six. So we're down to six days until six radio days till Texans training camp. Question today that I'll bounce off. Seth, what does the ideal tight end room look like for the Texans? They made a lot of moves at that position. We'll hit that coming up.

[Seth Payne]

Presents live from the West Point Lincoln and West Point Lincoln of Sugarland Studios.

[Sean Pendergast]

Here's Payne and Pendergast. Hi, Payne and Pendergast with you. It's fun watching people guess at what the big announcement is today at end the at 10am I'm not going to say one way or the other the guesses are accurate or the magnitude of the guesses. I'm just saying it. It makes. Makes me laugh.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. We're not going to get out of the game where we start denying every suggestion because then we'll use their powers of deduction. All Sherlock Holmes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Yeah. Not doing anything. It's pulling myself in front of the bus. Okay.

[Seth Payne]

That's right. Yep. I know. If I ever get arrested, I will. I'll talk. I was about to say, like, I'll remain like you.

[Sean Pendergast]

Out.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no, no, no. Even they say, even if innocent, just to not say. Every lawyer will tell you, even if you're completely innocent, don't talk to the cops. And I'm like, okay, I understand your theory. I know me. And there's no way in hell I just, I'll be like, no, I need to clear my good name.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know your good name? Yeah. Or if you actually did it, your conscience, you'd be like, no, no, if

[Seth Payne]

I did it, yeah. That's a whole separate scenario.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

I wouldn't. That's why I try not to commit crimes all that often, because I know yeah, I'll buckle. I'd feel guilty about it, and I would just give it all up.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, question of the day.

[Seth Payne]

But it's easier to tell somebody if you did it. Just deny. Don't say anything.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, don't say anything.

[Seth Payne]

But if you're completely innocent, that's where it's hard. The lawyers will tell you even if you're completely innocent, don't talk to the cops. And all you're thinking is, like, man, as soon as I don't talk to them, they're gonna assume I did it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Looks guilty.

[Seth Payne]

And then they start building a case against you. And even if you are innocent, then, like, what the hell?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. Absolutely.

[Seth Payne]

You do this segment by yourself. I'm depressed.

[Sean Pendergast]

Come on. No, no, no.

[Seth Payne]

I'm thinking about my future. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You love the tight ends. Question number six. As we count down, as we count down to Texans training camp week from today, week from today is the first practice. So as we count down to Texans training camp, question number six. What does the ideal tight end room look like for the Texans? Keep in mind, this is a tight end room where they've added through free agency, they've added through the draft, they've added through guys coming back from another debilitating injury.

[Seth Payne]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

And they've got existing guys in that room. So this is sugar and spice and everything. Nice going there.

[Seth Payne]

There are five main names, and keep in mind that Most teams keep three tight ends on their 50. Three, man.

[Sean Pendergast]

Four at the most.

[Seth Payne]

Four at the most. And especially I think that's going to be more common now because that's the trend right now. And I mean, in the draft, there are more tight ends taken than any time in the last 20 years or whatever it was. People are really leaning into the multiple tight end packages. So I would say of these five guys, though, the Texans are likely only to keep four of them. And it gets interesting.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep, it does. The. I would say. Okay, so as far as, like, sub questions to the big question, as you and I try to construct the ideal tight end room with this group, Dalton Schultz is going to be the starter for this team. That's obvious. Schultz had a good year last year, certainly catching the football, and I think he's a willing blocker. He's just not a good blocker.

[Seth Payne]

He's willing, but he's also. Yeah. And I think he's improved in his career at it when he's healthy. But that's the problem, too, is credit to him because he's tough and he fights Through a lot of injuries. But I think the injuries have been a factor in some of his poor blocking performances.

[Sean Pendergast]

He hasn't missed any games, but he's been banged up.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. And he's. Look, he's productive as a receiver. They imported the guys that they want that they hope are good blockers. And one is Foster Moreau, who is a good blocker. He's been in the NFL. They, you know, he beat cancer a couple years ago, which kind of derailed his career. But Casario thinks Kasario laid it out, you know, that he thought very highly of Foster Moreau before he got cancer and that he, it's. It feels like the Texans think there's a lot of upside there.

[Sean Pendergast]

Do you think? Okay, so Schultz is a lock. Do you think Foster Moreau and we're. I'm going to assume health for everybody here. Do you assume he's he a lock to make a team?

[Seth Payne]

No, I think Foster Moreau depends on what Cade Stover looks like. Because I think they want Cade Stover to develop as a blocker. So if we think about Foster Moreau as a guy that they wanted to come in to be sure we've got a guy who can block, we need to be sure that we got a guy we trust in pass protection, can block in the run game. We don't want to be using six offensive linemen all the time. If Kate Stover takes a step forward or if Marlon Klein, who I think they drafted because at Michigan he plays like very few colleges do these days. He plays in line, tight end, NFL style. Tight end, had to block a lot. He's capable as a receiver. If he were to look really, really good in camp, then that's where I think there's a lot of pressure on guys like Foster Moreau and Cade Stover because of the blocking dynamic.

[Sean Pendergast]

Is Klein a to make the team solely on the. Oh, yeah, he's a second round pick.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. You're an incredible bust if you don't make the team as a second round pick.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, so there's in your mind as we're constructing this room.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And I got a couple other sort of sub questions to bounce off of you here.

[Seth Payne]

So Dalton Schultz and Marlon Klein are definitely on the roster.

[Sean Pendergast]

And would you say Foster Moreau. It's more likely than not that he makes this.

[Seth Payne]

I think it's more likely than not. And then it turns into Kate Stover and Brevin Jordan.

[Sean Pendergast]

It turns into Kate Stover, Brevin Jordan and the desire to keep four tight ends.

[Seth Payne]

If they if they decide to keep four. And at least, at least one of those guys, whoever is trying to be

[Sean Pendergast]

the fourth tight end may be more competing with like the sixth cornerback.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Than they are Foster Moreau.

[Seth Payne]

And that's where it gets interesting with Cade Stover and Brevin Jordan. Is that all right? The. There's certain things that if you just look at them physically and for what they theoretically could do, Brevin Jordan, much more dynamic playmaker. You could see him in certain game plans and against certain matchups. Sport, you really like him in there almost as a. As a beefy slot receiver. Whereas Cade Stover, I think they're hoping that he develops into a versatile all purpose tight end who can play fullback at times, you know, be that H back position. So they're, they're different flavors of players. And I don't know if it, I don't know if it comes down to like a flat out, you know, meritocracy type decision. It's just, it's what it. If both. Let's say both those guys look really good in camp.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

They might just have to make a decision. All right, we want more of this guy or we want more of this type of guy.

[Sean Pendergast]

What, what type of guy do you think Nick Caylee would like?

[Seth Payne]

I think Kaylee would like it if Cade Stover really came into his own and they want to be able to run the football. And I think they want to have guys that when they go in there, you don't know if. You don't know if Kate Stover and Foster Moreau are in there because they definitely want to run the ball or if they're going to. Hoping that you bite on the run. And those guys are both out in patterns.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think Kaylee likes the Stover type. I agree with you on that.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

There is something that would be intriguing about if it's a fourth tight end because again, I think Schultz Klein, I think Moreau makes the team. So it's down to Stover versus Jordan. I think there is something to Brevin Jordan's diverse skill set and having something like that on the team. It's just that, man, the injuries have been such a dark cloud over him.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know, and you might be sacrificing Cade Stover. Would you say that Kate Stover. Kate Stover is a fourth round pick. So, you know, he's, he kind of hovers around that line. Like, boy, if he turns into a contributor, you're winning with a fourth rally. Anything beyond round four. Four. It's like, whatever. Has he been a. But, but they. But this is also a player that Nick Casario used the word elite to describe some of his traits after they drafted him. And he's a guy that they've. They've really. I think. I think he's made of the stuff that they.

[Seth Payne]

Like he said elite, but he also made. I brought up George Kittle just by way of making a point, and he's like, hold on a second. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, he's not. He's not George Kittle. No, no.

[Sean Pendergast]

And I'm not saying Nick said he was George Kittle or anything, but. But he was. As far as fourth round picks go, there was a lot of gushing that went on about Kate Stover. Would you say he's a disappointment?

[Seth Payne]

Well, it's hard to be a disappointment as a fourth round pick. I mean, like anybody's a disappointment if you, you know, have high expectations above and beyond.

[Sean Pendergast]

Let me rephrase it. Do you think the Texans think he's a disappointment? Because they said a lot of big things about him, but yet he's a fourth round pick.

[Seth Payne]

And I think they look at him as a guy that is just at that point where this is the year you decide whether he's a disappointment or not. You know, like is a. But like a lot of guys taken, remember Kate Stover was. Had only played tight end for two seasons at Ohio State.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's right.

[Seth Payne]

And you're looking at him. We do this all the time. You draft the guy and you think, well, he's probably going to be a project. And then three months into the project, you're like, what the hell's taken so long? Yeah. Why is he not here? Yeah, I think this would be the year that they would expect him or hope for him to really take that step forward. And I think with Brevin Jordan, they pretty much know who he is as a player. It's just a matter of whether can he stay healthy or not. So, Brevin. So. So Cade Stover is the one who really has to have a good camp, who really has to show that. That he's taken a step forward, that he can be a more physical and more dependable blocker, and that if he. If he really shows up in camp, then just by virtue of availability. And I think. I think the way Nick Caylee wants to operate as an offense, that they'd probably. It would be a hard decision for him, but they'd probably stick with. With Kate Stover.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. So.

[Seth Payne]

But he has to prove he really has to prove it in camp.

[Sean Pendergast]

If you had to make a prediction right now, breaking camp in late August, when they make the 53, what do you think the tight end room?

[Seth Payne]

I think it'll be four tight ends and I think it'll be Dalton Schultz, Foster Moreau. I think Kate Stover and Marlon Klein.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, that's what I have in all the 50 threes I've been doing.

[Seth Payne]

And Brevin Jordan's tradable, too. I despite his injuries, I think there's a lot of teams out there that remember we're talking about all these teams wanting to go multiple tight ends and they can look at the upside of him and you know, look, look, the brewers just traded for Lance McCullers. So like a long injury history isn't a complete barrier to trading for somebody.

[Sean Pendergast]

And the word tradable, there's degrees to it. Like, tradable could mean Brevin Jordan and a six.

[Seth Payne]

You just pick up a late round pick in 20, 28.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, something like that.

[Seth Payne]

All right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Pain and Pendergast with you. We do. We're doing this every day on the show at this segment leading up to training camp starting next Wednesday. All right, Coming up next, headlines, Astros win last night. We'll dig into that a little bit. Boy, it was a busy bloodletting at ESPN yesterday. Holy smokes. A lot of big names now out on the market at esp.

[Seth Payne]

Payne and Pendergast with today's headlines. Pena sends one to deep left center field. Looking back is the left fielder, Hernandez. And that is off the top of the wall and in Play. Pena into second base with his 10th double of the year. I think that's a home run.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think it hit the railing above

[Seth Payne]

that signage out there in left center field. Joe Espada out of the dugout. He wants them to check. He's going to ask crew chief James Hoy took that off.

[Sean Pendergast]

Speed pitch. The fireworks started early yesterday. Well, Jeremy Pena just snuck right over the top of the wall, banged right there and got him off to a nice start.

[Seth Payne]

Yesterday is yet another moment where replay has been good for baseball. This is my favorite sport that they use replay.

[Sean Pendergast]

This is something if I'm looking ahead. And by the way, headlines, the Astros win last night, five to three. Jeremy Pa let off the game with a home run, as I like to call it, a springer. Yeah, they did it. He pulled a spring off.

[Seth Payne]

Home run. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Home run in a game. The thing that I am going to be doing over the next couple months, I'm warning you because it might annoy you is that I'm going to be rooting for Jeremy Pena and others batting in front of Jordan to not clear the bases or have the bases empty for your.

[Seth Payne]

Exercise some judgment. Okay. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Be on base. Because we. Yeah. If you could have hit it a little lower and you get a double.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And then Jordan comes up with some guys on base. Because I. I need Yordan to win the Triple Crown. This may be the only Yordon going for the Triple Crown. May be what sustains us in September.

[Seth Payne]

You can do your cute little thing where you pretend that's what you're doing, but when you do it over and over again, I'm going to start to think that you're serious about it, and then it's going to annoy me.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, I legitimately was a bit upset. The pain. You hit that grand slam. The other. What?

[Seth Payne]

Well, it's not a guarantee that Yordon's going to get up and hit a. Hit a grand slam, but it's an opportunity.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's an opportunity. And by the way, he hit a home run the very next day.

[Seth Payne]

I know he did. I know he did.

[Sean Pendergast]

Byron. I was right. It's annoying already.

[Seth Payne]

Well, you did it yesterday, and I thought you were joking, but now. I was serious.

[Sean Pendergast]

I wasn't joking at all.

[Seth Payne]

I didn't want Pena to hit Ryan Clark on you. Here.

[Sean Pendergast]

I didn't want. They're 47 and 54.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, you think that's what the players in the clubhouse are, Sean? You don't know because, unlike me, you weren't a Major League Baseball player.

[Sean Pendergast]

There it is.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, there it is.

[Sean Pendergast]

There it is.

[Seth Payne]

You don't know if you didn't play the game. There it is. All right. And this is where I'm upset.

[Sean Pendergast]

This is where I'm shrager. Don't belittle me. You have to belittle me. So. So the Astros win. And I'm in all seriousness, good job. Jeremy Pena. The big hit in the game was. It involved Yordon. Actually, it had nothing to do with Yordon hitting a bomb. But the, The. The sequence that really put this game out of reach for the Marlins last night was Jordan with two outs, striking out. But ball rolls away from the catcher. He hustles down to first base and gets on base.

[Seth Payne]

He did what Zach disenzo did not be bothered to do, Right? Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Very next pitch, Paredes hits it into the Crawford boxes. And that made it 5 to 1. They go on to win 5 to 3. The other big story, Imai a solid outing last night for Tatsuyama against a decent Miami team. That's not a bad baseball team.

[Seth Payne]

No, not at all. They're like. They're just like one of those many, many teams in Major league baseball this year who's slightly above.500 for now. See what happens.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah. You come to Houston, it gets damaged. So five to three, they win last night. Astros go for the sweep tonight. Report. Aaron Wilson had this report on.

[Seth Payne]

The big thing about last night, too, is for those who missed it, Imai looked really good. Yeah. Like that was a. It was like he added his change up in and the. Which is something they were hoping that he was going to do in the first half of the season. For whatever reason, Imai just wanted to do things his own way as he Never too late. He told all the major league baseball people, this is how I'm going to handle Major League Baseball. Yeah, yeah. But. But yes. It's not too late.

[Sean Pendergast]

Moral of the story, it's never too late to mix in your change up. It's a metaphor for. It turns out, according to Aaron Wilson, Nico Collins didn't participate in OTAs in minicamp. I mean, he was out there doing some things, but he wasn't practicing doing the 7 on 7, 11 on 11. Just keeping him fresh. You know, Nico's dealt with his fair share of bumps and bruises through the years, so nothing to be too alarmed about there.

[Seth Payne]

Just quote was that. Yeah, he had just said the team. That's what the team told him to do and that's what he was doing. It might have been both, you know.

[Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

I don't know. The timing of it was kind of.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, as opposed to the contract thing.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Yeah, that was the. Yeah, that was the. Yeah, I thought that's why you're bringing it up.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, I'm just.

[Seth Payne]

No, you were the first one that speculated that. Well, wow, the timing of this was. Man. Right before mandatory minicamp, they announced that he has a deal. So I assumed that's why you're bringing it up.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, I was just bringing it. Well, I was bringing it up because it was a headline. I was. I was just thinking more. There was. There is. There is always going to be a little concern with me about Nico physically. You know, he's. He's dealt with a bunch of things through his time in the NFL.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, they. He was asked. Oh, so he was asked about whether there was a nagging injury to worry about because he had sat out, too. Not at all. They just did that. I listened to the coaches listen to the GM saying yes sir. Yeah, and they told me to be ready for camp. Yes sir.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes sir.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I'll be there.

[Sean Pendergast]

ESPN was a busy day over at ESPN yesterday at the Worldwide Leader they were letting a lot of people go yesterday. We know the big story was from a couple of days ago when Ryan Clark got let go from his football duties at espn, was part of Monday Night Countdown, was a frequent contributor on First Take. Somewhat controversial at times. We know that because he said to apologize multiple times in the last 12 months for things he said. He's no longer with ESPN. He's still got his podcast which is very successful, but the reason they had to tell him when they told him is because there were other firings coming down the pipe and his was about the leak in the media. So we got the list yesterday of who's getting let go. I would say the Are your ad

[Host/Announcer]

campaigns lighting up the dashboard, but not the pipeline. That's bullspend and marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions.

[Seth Payne]

My boss asked for results so I

[Sean Pendergast]

opened my dashboard for the only positive

[Host/Announcer]

sounding metric I had. Impressions Cut the bull, Spend. See revenue, not just reach LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad NETWORKS. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com campaign turn and conditions apply. Oregon Parks make an Oregon Summer but what makes an Oregon park well? Oregon Lottery Gameplay helps no matter the game Megabucks, video lottery or keno funds from lottery games help support parks projects across the state, ensuring they stay safe, accessible and open for all. In fact, Discover State Park Scratches are in stores now. It's the perfect way to put a little bit of Oregon's parks in your pocket. The Oregon Lottery Together we do good things. Must be 18 or older to play lottery games are based on chance and should be played for entertainment only. I'm Anna Garcia, host of True Crime News, the podcast.

[Sean Pendergast]

Every week we bring you in depth coverage on cases making headlines as well as those that go under the radar.

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[Seth Payne]

Yeah, at Carl's Jr when late night cravings hit you hit back after 8pm for just 5.99 bag the Cali classic Spicy Chicken Sandwich or for a limited time. The Bacon Cheeseburger Decide between fries or onion rings and get four chicken stars. You build it. We bag it just 5.99. Build your bag all day and unlock more choices on the app.

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See out for details. Pacifico the crisp Mexican lager that wasn't brewed to blend in. We were made for the moments when you live like you mean it. When you don't just hear the music, you feel it. When you let the bonfire burn into the night and find places you'd never spot on a map. So when the moment calls, choose to reach for the bright yellow. Can choose yellow choose Pacifico 21 plus Discover responsibly Pacifico Clara beer imported by Crown Imports, Chicago, Illinois biggest names that ESPN let go yesterday were that our audience would know of Carl Ravich, who has been with them for over 30 years, largely tied to baseball. Carl Ravich, you know, part of the Sunday night broadcast and mlb. Other mlb, you know, ancillary coverage. Cam Newton let go by espn. He just signed a new contract with them. Like, is Drake May aware of it?

[Seth Payne]

Has anybody asked Drake May if he knows where Cam Newton is or not?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, that's right.

[Seth Payne]

That was the one. The big Stephen A. Smith was incredulous that Drake May didn't know that Cam Newton was on First Take. Now he doesn't because you know all these zoomers up watching, they're up watching ESPN all morning long in their dorm rooms.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, Charles Davis. And we got to keep in mind too. They started dropping a couple names. I'm like, they can't fire him. He doesn't work for them. Yeah, all these NFL Network guys work for ESPN now. They're part of the same family. So Charles Davis, I would say Tom Pelissero is one that maybe few of our listeners know. He's like sort of a second tier nugget hussy behind the Shefters and the Rapapores of the world. Bart Scott, former linebacker who is part of their first take. He's on the ESPN radio affiliate up in New York as well. Those are probably the biggest names, I would say.

[Seth Payne]

I was glad that as of now they kept Bucky Brooks and they kept Greg Rosenthal just because those guys have me on their podcasts. So I like them. Well, Bucky was a teammate of mine in Jacksonville. Oh yeah, no, I like Bucky. I always Charles Davis being let go was disappointing and that's where I started Worried that they were going to let Bucky Brooks go. Because those are two guys that are like, they really. They're. They're informed. Like, they really work at it. And like, I like watching. I like games that Charles Davis does because I've. He's the classic guy where I feel like, oh, okay, this guy's teaching me something about the team that I actually cover. He's good. This is as opposed to so many of them where you're like, oh, this is. You're completely wrong about this. Yeah, yeah, he's.

[Sean Pendergast]

Charles Davis is good. I like him. I like him. We'll have to talk later. You know, Cam Newton had some interesting things to say about his ouster at espn about. He's not too worried about it because he's got his own platform. Yeah, we should talk about that later. I think that's some interesting.

[Seth Payne]

Emanuel Acho had, like, some weird take like he has and about Ryan Clark, and I saw a lot of people in the comments saying, like, Manuel Acho should be next. I'm like, he works for himself.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's got his. Been through this. He's been through this.

[Seth Payne]

He's got a podcast. Yeah, yeah, he's been through this process. Acho. Nobody can fire Acho other than Acho himself.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's right. That's right. Right. All right, coming up next, speaking of the NFL Network, the NFL Network experts weighed in on overs and unders for teams. Does the collective opinion on the Texans worry you or make you nervous at all? We will tell you what that Sports Radio 610 presents Payne and Pendergast. Okay, we'll get to the. The question that I asked as the tease here. The, the. The consensus opinion on the Texans in just a second. We talked about the tight end at 6:25. That was the question. Question number six in our countdown to Texans training camp was, what do we think the tight end room looks like? I. This texter uses a term that I kind of like, oh, are the Texans swarm blinded? Oh, Stover.

[Seth Payne]

They're just too blinded by the swarm.

[Sean Pendergast]

Like, Damian Pierce makes the team because he possesses the qualities of the swarm mentality.

[Seth Payne]

Well, I think this is the thing about being swarmy. You can have a swarmy attitude, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you. You look swarmy on the field. And I don't like. There's nothing about Cade Stover in his first couple of years where I felt like, oh, hell, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

That's the kind of. Yeah, I don't. So I think they might think he's capable of being a swarmy player.

[Sean Pendergast]

They definitely think he's capable because they've talked about him in such big terms.

[Seth Payne]

But you got to be. You got to be competent. That's one of the keys. It should be swarm. It'd be a special work ethic and relentless mindset. Incompetent swarmac in a perfect world.

[Sean Pendergast]

I agree with you. I think bringing up Damian Pierce is an appropriate, appropriate thing to bring up by the texture, which is like, hey, Damian Pierce had a lot of those qualities. Didn't really, after 2022, didn't really display them.

[Seth Payne]

I was.

[Sean Pendergast]

And they kept him around for two more years.

[Seth Payne]

The biggest thing that swarm blinded and, you know, you and I, through a couple of training camps, I told you it was tough. And it was tough in the. In the preseason games because, all right, there was times where it looked like I didn't think Damian was necessarily reading the blocking all that well or seeing the field all that well, but he also didn't have good blocking in front of him. That's really dicey for a running back. The thing that concerned me the most about Damian that I could see in. In training camp practices was that for a guy whose calling card was breaking tackles, he was on the ground a lot. Just when guys were thudding him up, he was on the ground. And, you know, he had lost weight from his rookie year, which is cool. He looked quicker and all that. But I think we were talking about this with baseball earlier. Some guys, some power hitters especially, they just. That they've got their ideal body weight where it's. They're a little chunky. Like some guys. It's not as simple as, wow, if you lose ten pounds, you'll be that much quicker and everything. Some guys just have to be the right body weight. And for Damian, I felt like whenever he. Once he got more slender after his rookie year, he was just. He didn't break tackles, and that's being a little bit faster when speed isn't your calling card, isn't worth it if you're losing your superpower and your calling card, which is breaking tackles. Yeah. Like, this happened for two straight years. First in 2023, it was that Damian was the feature back early in the season, and it wasn't working, and it took his injury to realize, okay, we got to move on. And. And then last year, I thought the same thing. They just, they. They. They still believed in him more than he had really shown since. Really since the first part of his rookie season. People forget yet that his rookie year it was awesome. But then before he got injured, there was a couple of games, at least a couple of games where he was averaging 2 yards per carry, you know, and it was a bad team. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's where it's tough with running backs, same way it is with quarterbacks. How do you separate the blocking from the actual running back performance?

[Sean Pendergast]

He's on the Eagles now. I think Damian is, because my aunt texted me like two or three months ago, Damien. And had he at one point signed with the Eagles. You never know what happens through OTAs and minicamp with guys that are fringe guys. And he's a fringe guy now. He's a guy trying to make a team. And she's like, well, tell me about this Damian Pierce. I'm like, it's very complicated, Aunt Barb. Yeah, it's very complicated. Not because Damian's a bad guy or anything. He's one of the greatest guys ever. Yeah, but he was. He was a. He was a shining star his rookie year, and then it just never came back.

[Seth Payne]

And then there's an element and then certain types of. Of the thing is, he's a guy that. He wants to be able to see the hole run through the hole, and that's. That's hard in modern football. You know, that. That things are a little bit more hazy than that usually. And if you put a guy in who's only good with certain types of run plays, it gets pretty damn easy for the defense to figure out what they need to defend.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

And like his. His inability to kind of see the field is what they were hoping was going to click at some point and just never clicked for him.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm going to keep an eye out. Texter. I like that term. Swarm blinded when the make their cut downs to 53. Are there any guys that make the roster where I'm like, they're a little sworn blinded with this.

[Seth Payne]

Was there anybody? Well, it's always that, that mix. And this is. Whenever you try to emulate the way Belichick did it, you know, Belichick did a really good job with the guys that were unheralded in terms of their athleticism or what have you, you know, the Julian Edelmans of the world, that people start like falling in love with that concept, but you gotta always check yourself and be like, all right, yeah, you can check off all those boxes in terms of the intangibles and everything else, but like, at the end of the day, you gotta. You gotta also produce.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. And they.

[Seth Payne]

They fall in. Yeah, you it's good to be concerned about the process more than results, etc. Etc. But you always have to check yourself that like, all right, you gotta execute the process properly.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. The final score matters. All right, so the NFL Network did an exercise last week where they, they, they took a cross section of their, of seven of their experts, all of whom I think are still with the company after yesterday, after the, the, the layoffs. And they, they gave their predictions on records for the various teams around the league, including the Houston Texans. So this follows a trend that I've seen this off season with the Texans where, where ironically, in a postseason where their quarterback completely collapsed in a game against New England, it is hard to find a negative opinion on the Houston Texans right now.

[Seth Payne]

At least. Yeah, there's nobody. At least. I haven't seen anybody have notes saying, boy, the Texans are poised for a collapse because of their quarterback. Yeah, it's a lot of, man, the Texans are a good team. And it's just a matter of, okay, how good can C.J. stroud be to, to. To make them an actually elite team?

[Sean Pendergast]

So these seven experts, you would think amongst, you know, people that, you know, don't have a vested interest in the Texans, that there would be at least one or two dissenting opinions. And I need to point out that the Vegas season win total for The Texans is nine and a half. Yeah, it's nine and a half. So the over. Under nine and a half.

[Seth Payne]

It's nine and a half. But they're, they're currently favored in 13 games.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

And I think that's where. When people go through the exercise and you're trying to figure it out, that's what. Because I did that, too. I'm like, all right, like realism, like nine and a half. I know people think that, oh, that's like an insult or something. No, it's, it's really, you got to be really, like, really, really good to, to get, you know, more than ten and a half wins. Oh. If you have a preseason project season

[Sean Pendergast]

win total of 11 or more, you're an elite football.

[Seth Payne]

Right. And, and yet when you go through the, when you go through the game by game odds. Yeah, they're favored in 13 games. And they all make sense.

[Sean Pendergast]

They all make sense.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Obviously they're going to lose some of those, you know, and that's why we

[Seth Payne]

have a win or two or three or four from the upsets. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. You steal one or two.

[Seth Payne]

The Bills, the. Them being underdogs against the Bills. That's the only one that Rankles me.

[Sean Pendergast]

And that may change between now and the start of the season. We'll see. You know, and obviously, injuries can change a lot of things. This is, this is where I start to get nervous when I see it done empirically like this. It's one thing to see like, oh, Nate Tice did a video picking the Texans to go to the Super Bowl Bowl. You know, Dan Orlofsky's really liked the Texans over the last few years. I'm sure he said nice things about them. I'm just cherry picking individual examples. When you see one person saying nice things, it's like, oh, that's nice. When you see seven experts in one exercise all pick the Texans to go over nine and a half wins. All of them.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

The win total is designed to get people's opinions landing on both sides of the aisle. And these are, are. These are NFL Network people, you know, other than Lance Zurline is one of them. He lives here in Houston and he likes the Texans. He's the only one, I would say. And I don't think Lance makes his predictions based on a bias or anything like that. But there's two, Colleen Wolf and Nick Shook that pick them 10 and 7. There's three Lance, Grant Gordon and Brooks Saracemo, who picked them 11 and 6. Your guy, Bucky Brooks has them going 12 and 5. Dan Parr has them going 13 and 4. I get nervous when I see stuff like this. Everybody's on one side.

[Seth Payne]

You know what, though?

[Sean Pendergast]

They're gamblers.

[Seth Payne]

They're all on one side. I think, though, that there is an element with the Texans and this team specifically is. They've been. They've been in the preseason. They've been nine and a half the last couple of years.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

And the defense has been really, really impressive. Last year it was really good. And they bring back all their starters, plus add a couple guys to the mix. Defensively, I think it's more of a. It's usually what a lot of people with the nerdy types will tell you is, man defense fluctuates from year to year. But there are exceptions to that. Like, it's harder to predict that a team's going to have a good defense consistently than it is if you've got a really good quarterback and you get the same guys come back, you have a really good. Yeah, it's easier to predict that they're going to consistently be a good passing offense. Yeah, I think with the Texans defense, they're. They're one of those outliers that, because of the consistency because d', Ameco Ryan's and the defensive coordinator remain the same. You got all the personnel coming back, and they. And they had the record they did last year that it just. It's. It feels like it's. It's more stable, that they should win more than nine and a half games. But there's only. I mean, there's only two people out of seven here, eight here, that picked 12 wins or more.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So. I mean that.

[Sean Pendergast]

So they're in that range.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. I think, like, it's a. It's a show of respect to d' Amico and the defense and the fact that they weren't a horrendous offense last year. Year, they were a very mediocre offense, but they weren't a horrendous offense. That. I think that in the regular season, that's where people are looking at them. It's a. It's a vote of confidence for the defense.

[Sean Pendergast]

What if. Okay, that's. That's interesting. If this defense were to backslide this year, and I don't think. I think there's a floor on how far they could backslide.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

But I think everybody around football thinks the floor for this defense. Healthy is like a top three defense. Is. Is. Are injuries the only thing that can short circuit this defense? Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And, you know, there's one. The other thing that people might say is that, all right, the Texans are relatively vanilla in terms of their scheme and everything that they do. They're not as complex or ornate as a guy like a Vic Fangio, and that sometimes over time that you feel like, okay, people start to get a beat on you. I don't worry about that with the Texans because they've already. They've already been through that part of it. They get by because they execute really well. They're really well coached. They've got the players that fit the scheme and all of the potential weaknesses and everything about the way they operate. Like, it's already known if, like, if you go to Pete Carroll back with a legion of boom, now Pete Carroll was even more just, we're gonna line up and play. You know, we're gonna play cover three all the time or just like. Which is an exaggeration. But where it started to fall off was when they started to lose some of the person. You know, it's okay to show your hand and to be somewhat predictable as long as you execute really well. So. But for this year, I'm not worried about that. That's a problem for two and three years. From now if they have to. If they can't retain both Kaylin Bullock and Kamari Lasseter and those types of

[Sean Pendergast]

issues, I I got super stoked for the first month of the season when

[Host/Announcer]

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[Sean Pendergast]

My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive

[Host/Announcer]

sounding metric I had.

[Sean Pendergast]

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Cut the bull.

[Seth Payne]

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[Seth Payne]

Are you looking for a podcast about pro football that doesn't put you to sleep with an avalanche of analytics or insult your fandom with brainless hot takes? Well, hi, I'm Dan Hanzas.

[Sean Pendergast]

And I'm Mark Sesler.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, hi Mark.

[Sean Pendergast]

And we're the hosts of Heed the

[Seth Payne]

Call, the NFL podcast you've been waiting your whole life for. He the call covers every game, every storyline, everything that matters.

[Sean Pendergast]

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[Seth Payne]

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[Sean Pendergast]

Follow and listen to.

[Seth Payne]

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[Sean Pendergast]

I were talking about it the last couple days for the. For this defense. Like the challenge of those first four games.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

This defense is going to be one of the most fun things to look forward to throughout training camp. For those who don't have the schedule committed to memory, home for the Bills, home for the Bengals at Indianapolis, home for the Cowboys, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, and then skip ahead to Dak Prescott. All three of those games at home. And then as you pointed out yesterday, if Daniel Jones is healthy and that Colts offense gets the same groove going early in the season. Season, this season that they did last season. That's a. At least offensively. That's like a first four games in terms of the challenge of like the O' Brien Covid 2020 season.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

When the Texans opened the season and that was more of just a general overall team versus team challenge. But that season we looked at the schedule to start the season and we were like, oh, crap, like they might go 04. And they did. And Bill O' Brien got fired because it was the Chiefs on the road road. It was the Ravens at home with Lamar coming off his mvp, his first MVP season. It was the Steelers in Pittsburgh back before Ben Roethlisberger became a complete geriatric. And then the Minnesota Vikings here. Yeah. And we were like, wow, they could go 04. And sure enough, they went on 4.

[Seth Payne]

This is what I like about the opening those first three home games. This is. This is big for the crowd itself. It is a. This is a difficult place to play by. By they week one, it will be officially renamed Reliance Stadium.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

Is it yet? I think it's August or something. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Host/Announcer]

I don't know.

[Seth Payne]

Whatever it is, the World cup stepped

[Sean Pendergast]

in and needed Houston Stadium.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, they're gonna. They're Right now, they're still like peeling tape off of logos and everything in the stadium because all the branding stuff that FIFA did the. So it's a hard place for quarterbacks to play. We know that because Josh Allen has had some of his worst games of his career at NRG Stadium. They face. They face Josh Allen. The home crowd. I'm talking about here. So the home crowd. And I'll be out in the stands for some of the parts of these games. I'm not allowed to cheer when I'm in the press box. I'm allowed to scream my Face off when I'm down in the stands. So you've got Josh Allen, you've got Joe Burrow, you've got Dak Prescott at home three times in the first four weeks.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

That like, that's.

[Sean Pendergast]

How fun is that?

[Seth Payne]

The noise and the energy and everything thing where at the beginning of the season your every emotions are running high. That Bills game is just critical in terms of just people who might let go of the rope early or something if there's a disappointing performance. The crowd has such a big effect on that game and they can make it as miserable as absolutely possible for Josh Allen and the Bills fans who are increasingly reluctant even to come to Houston anymore because it's like people in Buffalo, Sean, you know I'm, I'm from that area.

[Host/Announcer]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

I know Bill's fans.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

Loathsome people, but they're related to me and they don't like the idea of going to you. My brother in law who travels to a lot of Bills games, he's like, I'm not going down there.

[Sean Pendergast]

Not a small.

[Seth Payne]

Sorry, I see you enough, Seth. I don't know. I don't need to go watch my team get destroyed.

[Sean Pendergast]

No. And the way, the way that, the way the Bills have played spanned it. It's. It's spanned the entirety of Josh Allen's career. Yeah, he came here as a rookie and he got replaced in that game. Game. Came here in a playoff game. Got shut down in the second half of that game. And then we almost made a classic

[Seth Payne]

young Josh Allen mistake in that game. Remember when he tried to lateral it? It could have been a disaster.

[Sean Pendergast]

I do. And then the, the big thing is the last two years because that we still, there's still so much connective tissue on both.

[Seth Payne]

Last year, Last year was the second worst game he's played as a pro.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

By some metrics it was bad.

[Sean Pendergast]

That was a Kalin Bullock game.

[Seth Payne]

Now the thing is, D.J. moore, like they're, they're putting a lot on D.J. moore. Yes, they're putting a lot on DJ Moore. And, and Joe Brady, the offensive Joe Brady. Joe Brady is somehow acting like now that he's the head coach that there's going to be something different with the offense despite him being the offensive coordinator. So I don't know how heavy handed Sean McDermott was when, when Sean McDermott was telling Joe Brady how to operate. Remember that story about Joe Brady went to Keon Coleman and said me, me becoming, me being your head coach is the best thing for you.

[Host/Announcer]

Oh yeah.

[Seth Payne]

I'm like all right, well, how about you being his offensive coordinator?

[Sean Pendergast]

It was weird.

[Seth Payne]

What the hell are you talking about?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, like, oh, so it's everything's now, I guess. Yeah, I started thinking about too the way you and I were looking at the first four games and we were going through an exercise like, okay, if they were to go three and one in the first four games, but the football gods let you pick who they lose to. And I put up a poll and most people said the Bengals because that's the one that's got the least emotion attached to it. I would say if I could pick the one I least want to lose, it might be the Bills that I least want to lose. Like I might want to lose less to the Bills than even the Colts in the division and the Cowboys boys being Dallas be and here's why. Two reasons. One, I just don't want to lose the opener. I just don't want to be Owen one again. Yeah, they've been owing one to start two of three d' Amico seasons his first season and then and last year and that was an Owen three was miserable, but Owen one I don't want to start. Oh, and one, the other thing is if the Texans are what all these NFL Network people are, not all, but most of them think they can be or one what most Texas fans hope they can be, like a 13 win team.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

The tiebreakers you're talking about have less to do with the division and more to do with your standing in the conference. In other words, we know the Bills are going to be a good team like the Bills are going to be at minimum. If Josh Allen is healthy. They're a 12 and 5 football team at a minimum. There's a reason why they're the favorite out of the AFC to get to the Super Bowl. I believe they're the favorite, if not their second favorite behind, behind maybe Baltimore or somebody ironically, probably not New England who actually made the super bowl last year. Maybe Denver's in the mix, but the Bills are among the top three or four teams to make the super bowl if, if the Texans are who we hope they are. And that would be a team that's fighting for a one or a two seed.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, you're.

[Sean Pendergast]

You should be more worried about your head to head with the Bills than you are your head to head with the Bengals or certainly the Cowboys. In the nfc, the head to head with them means nothing.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Or even the Colts. And I know people are going to say, well that's a head to head in the division don't you have to win the division first? Sure, you got to win the division first. But the fact of the matter is if the Texans are going to get to a Super Bowl, I felt strongly held the Texans are just going to get to a conference title game. They've never done that before. They've got to be a one or a two seed in my opinion. They've got to be sure that they're playing that divisional round game at home. Enough of going on the road in the division.

[Seth Payne]

Well, and you go back to. Alright. The strength the of of this team as of now is the defense. And where is the defense like the defense. The defense is a big. What you get out of this defense at home in that environment, especially because it's your pass rush that makes really everything tick. I think you gain just so much more of an advantage there even than from the quarterback and passing game side of things being in a, in an advantageous environment at home. That your superpower as a team gets amplified when you're playing at home.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

And it does it aside for all the conventional reasons, reasons that your quarterback is better off playing at home and the weather elements and everything, that makes it a lot easier for CJ Stroud to not do whatever the hell that was.

[Sean Pendergast]

They play two home playoff games under d' Amico Ryan's and they both been blowouts. Yeah, they both been blowouts. And the crowd.

[Seth Payne]

And the crowd they were hinged on the defense really. Like the offense got off the slow starts in both those blowouts. It was defensive. It was. It was big plays by the defense that really. Well, especially in the Browns game.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, the Browns game was the closeout. They had the two pick sixes in the second half.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, that's what I mean. Like it was. Oh, the other blowouts. Yeah, yeah. So yeah. The other thing about the Bills is just that there's so many things about that defense that are going to present. It's physically not as big a challenge as the Bengals will probably be. But the Bills have a brand new defensive coordinator in Jim Leonard. Jim Leonard does. He comes by way of the Broncos and they do a lot of funky stuff. They're probably going to blitz a lot. They're going to be a lot different than your normal Bills defense from the last few years. And there's not going to be any film on them. You know, like so. So this offensive line at the beginning of last year, the offensive line was doing all those same old things where they had a hard time sorting things out. CJ Trying to Run the show and being involved in pass protections and everything, there's going to be a lot of mental challenges and facing that brand new defense that you don't have any film on that might be best solved by just saying, all right, we got to be able to bash these guys in the mouth.

[Sean Pendergast]

Do you think they're watching a lot of old Jim Leonard film from other places?

[Seth Payne]

I mean, the coaches. The coaches, yeah, the players. It's trickier. Like it's. That's. It's a. Week one sucks with that because you're. You're trying to prepare for the individuals and the guys you're going to play. But when it comes to scheme, like you watch a bunch of Broncos film and like there's a disconnect. And also. So you don't know how much Jim Leonard's going to take from that with different personnel. So is that week one sucks for

[Sean Pendergast]

game three, so that's interesting. So the ambush factor in week one probably favors the Bills over the.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Cause they have more chance like Joe Brady. We know Joe Brady's been the offensive coordinator. He's maybe going to put his own flavor on things. But yeah, the defensive side of the ball is going to be a complete unknown. Especially when you face teams that blitz a lot and do a lot of funky stuff. They're probably going to be pretty vanilla in the preseason season and not show a lot of that. You're not the. Nobody plays their starters anymore. So, yeah, you. You go into that game and Nick Kaylee really has to. They've got to be prepared to pivot multiple different directions depending on what they see.

[Sean Pendergast]

Couple texts to the text line here. 3 and 1 in the first four games. Is that a little too hopeful? No.

[Seth Payne]

Well, I mean, that's why, like by the odds, that's what they're favored to be.

[Sean Pendergast]

They are.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

They're favor. They're. They're slight underdogs to the Bills. Yeah, they're favored by. They're one of only two teams that are actually favored over the Bengals this year. The Bengals are favored in 15 of their 17 years.

[Seth Payne]

Give a lot of credit to that off season that they had defensively. I mean, they were. They were like the. They were one of the very worst defenses in the league last year. They added a bunch of free agents. But that's always. That's. Sometimes it's awesome, sometimes it's a flaming disaster.

[Sean Pendergast]

Absolutely. But the Texans are one of two teams to be favored over the Bengals. They're favor. I think they're favored in Indianapolis against the Colts, I think a slight favorite favorite and then I think they're favorable like a field goal over the Cowboys. The Texans, they, they're favored in 13 of their 17 games, and yet there's not a single game they're playing in where the spread is more than like six and a half points one way or the other. Yeah, it's a lot of coin flip games on this schedule.

[Seth Payne]

It's a hundred percent all about just people respecting that defense and expecting to win games in close, close margin games.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep, Absolutely. Absolutely. So, yeah, I, I, my feeling is not just three and one in the first four. I think they need to go five and two in the first seven because of what the back end of the schedule looks like in terms of how lopsided it is, road versus home, some of the venues that they're going to, the situations they're put in in some of these games. They're playing Christmas Eve on the road on a Thursday in Philadelphia. Like that checks every box for a loss.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

If we're picking the most likely games for the Texans to lose, like if we were power ranked ranking most likely to win games for them, the bottom of the power rankings would be that Philly game Christmas Eve. It's on a holiday outdoors, cold weather Thursday. I don't know who they play the. I think the week before they play Jacksonville. So they'd be coming off a division game, you know, so there's an emotional part of it is. So there's meant to be a letdown coming off a Jacksonville game. So yeah, that back they got to go five and two before the bye week. That's my opinion.

[Seth Payne]

Are we scheduled to be in London for the London game?

[Sean Pendergast]

Not yet.

[Seth Payne]

Guy yet.

[Sean Pendergast]

We got to work on a sponsor for that.

[Seth Payne]

I think Yingling is probably your go

[Sean Pendergast]

to if you're listening.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Like, do they have a presence in England yet?

[Sean Pendergast]

I don't know yet. Let's get one. Yeah, let's get one for him.

[Seth Payne]

There's one thing I know about Europeans is they love American light. They never complain about it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, shifting gears here for a second, Kevin Durant went on Draymond Green's podcast. We know the two of them haven't always gotten along. It seems like they've buried the hat it and actually this cut you're about to hear, and I'm playing this, I want to look at this through a Rockets lens in a way with Kevin Durant, but this is him and Draymond sitting down. If you recall, he and Draymond did not get along. And probably the peak of that was a game In November of 2018, early in the season, after they'd won two championships in a row, they got into a big dust up at towards the end of a game against the Clippers where they needed a basket. At the end of the game, Draymond's bringing the ball up the floor, and Kevin Durant's, like, clapping and wanting the ball to go get a bucket. And Draymond just goes into business for himself, drives the lane, turns the ball over. They start yelling at each other. They're yelling on the bench at each other. They're yelling in the locker room at each other. Was apparently very uncomfortable, and it made for a pretty toxic setting for the rest of the year. It kind of set the table for what that relationship was going to be like. And Kevin Durant looks back and always says, that was a big reason he left Golden State to go to Brooklyn. He just, you know, it was a toxic environment. The two of them have buried the hatchet to the point where Kevin Durant sits down with Draymond Green and hashes out, this is what Golden State could have done better to not have that toxic environment between Draymond and Kevin Durant.

[Seth Payne]

It wasn't the argument. It was the. The way that everybody. Steve Kerr act like it didn't happen, Bob Myers and tried to just discipline

[Sean Pendergast]

you and think that that would put

[Seth Payne]

the mask over everything. I really felt like that was such a big situation for us as a group. The first time we went through something like that. We had to get that all out. I remember watching the last dance, and when Scottie didn't go into the game, the whole team in the locker room said, scotty, that up that you did that. We needed that. We just needed to throw all of that table and say, yo, Dre. Okay, like that up that. We even had to go through that. Let's just wipe our hands with that and go finish the. I don't think we did that. We tried to dance around it. I just didn't like how all of that, just the vibe between all of that, it just made weird to me. And I'd rather us be who we say we are.

[Sean Pendergast]

Family first.

[Seth Payne]

Communication is key. Like, we didn't show that. And that's what rubbed me the wrong

[Sean Pendergast]

way more than anything.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Family first. Okay. So publicly the Rockets acted, including Kevin Grant, acted like Burner Gate was nonsense.

[Sean Pendergast]

He didn't want to get into Twitter nonsense.

[Seth Payne]

Right. So that's publicly. Yeah. Do we know internally how they handled it? I Don't know anybody spoken about, like having a meeting about that specifically?

[Sean Pendergast]

I don't know. I just know that that looked, the Rockets looked like a team.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

After the All Star break. Because that happened at the All Star break. Remember, Durant's walking around on the floor

[Seth Payne]

at the All Star game, looking at his phone all the time, and it's.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, and that was when the whole, whole thing was bubbling up. So people assumed he was looking and seeing what the, what the, what the fallout was, was from all that stuff. They did not play like a team that squashed whatever these issues are. They didn't look like a team, didn't seem to act like a team. And when people get asked directly about it, you know, the players get asked directly about it, they deny that there's chemistry issues and things like that. I just know they played like a team that had chemistry issues. And I don't know if we have a full answer on how it all got handled behind the scene scenes. How did Ime Udoka handle it? Did he take it head on directly? Because that's what Durant's complaining about there. It's kind of funny to me and it's a little off putting to me that Durant's almost complaining. Like, why didn't the adults discipline us a little bit more? Yeah, like, why, why didn't they take the, the reins on this? It's like everybody did.

[Seth Payne]

Like nothing happened and like, maybe assuming that us two adults would figure it out.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Yeah, you're right. No, 100%. I'm glad you said that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Like, wait a second. Like, why, why is it on?

[Sean Pendergast]

So it's Bob Meyer's fault and Steve Kerr's fault.

[Seth Payne]

Right. Like, Steve Kerr, sure, he could have handled it differently, obviously, but also you've got some agency in that you're being one of the parties involved.

[Sean Pendergast]

That cut made me that, that as a Rocket fan. Yeah, that cut made me concerned for two, I guess not concerned. I mean, I, I think we know the kind of, the deal with Kevin Durant going in and he's, he's ne. He's never going to be a take the team by the lapels kind of leader that it just takes the reins. He's a great basketball player. There's no question about that. And there's certainly, I'm sure, ways he leads by example. But this, this cut to me just kind of reinforced like, okay, we know what we're not getting with Kevin Durant. You know, we know we're not getting somebody, somebody that is this. This chemistry leader, force multiplier. Like an ethos. Force multiplier, culture, force multiplier. Behind the scene.

[Host/Announcer]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

Was. Has he been in complete denial about the burner gate stuff? Like, did he just flat out tell everybody? No, it's garbage. I don't. This is. Then this is the problem. This is where it. But the problem is that's a hard denial to make because of your reputation as a guy that's on Twitter all the time and has burner accounts and all that. That. Yeah. You know. You know, you've been in positions before where you're totally innocent, but, you know, it looks like you're guilty.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

And that's a hard way to talk yourself out of because all of a sudden you sound defensive, like, oh, but you're saying exactly what a guy would say.

[Sean Pendergast]

For me, I almost get it into my head that I did.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. All the circumstantial evidence looks like I did it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And I know that as I try to explain this, I'm going to sound exactly like somebody who's lying about not having a burner.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Because, like, so he made his bed in that regards. Yeah. I don't. I don't have an appetite for Kevin Durant blaming management or Steve Kerr for him. For him not getting along with Draymond.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. That's.

[Seth Payne]

Those are, like your two veteran players that should be able to figure this out. If you're gonna have a veteran led team, you should be able to figure this out.

[Sean Pendergast]

Draymond and I were acting like babies, yelling at each other. It affected the locker room for the rest of the year, by all accounts, to the extent that Kevin Durant. Kevin Durant up and left the team and went somewhere else at the end of the year. Whose fault is that, man?

[Seth Payne]

Everybody but mine.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Yeah. So I take no accountability.

[Sean Pendergast]

Does it make me more concerned? Less concerned. The same amount of concern about Kevin Durant, because Kevin Durant is an outstanding basketball player. It doesn't move the needle for me very much because it's not like I thought they were bringing Durant in here to be this. This. This thing that the chemistry of the team was built on.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's here to score 28 points.

[Seth Payne]

Nobody. Nobody.

[Sean Pendergast]

Don't rock the boat.

[Seth Payne]

Nobody expects Durant to come in and be the alpha that tells everybody how it's going to be or anything. He's a good resource for the younger players and all of that, but he's not necessarily going to be the guy that just creates the emotional drive of the team.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting seeing the two of them sitting down with each other and just kind of nodding their heads and talking. Draymond kind of agreeing with Kevin Durant that it was Steve Kerr's fault. Bob Myers, I mean, Draymond.

[Seth Payne]

Draymond's one of those, you know, he reminds me of a little bit, is like he's. If C.J. gardner Johnson just could control himself a little bit better because CJ Gardner Johnson knows that he can be a bit much, and yet he just always goes back to, like, even within the same interview. I watched a bunch of interviews of him last year, and, you know, he's a guy that knows he needs to act different, but then he just can't help. But at some point, even after he's said he takes accountability for it, like five minutes later in the interview, he's blaming somebody for why it didn't work out here, why it didn't work out there. Draymond has that tendency, but I think he's more self aware. Like, he knows he's a pain in the ass, but he also knows that him being a pain in the ass is kind of part of what makes him. Like, it's part of what works for him and also works with him being on that warriors team, but. Or those great warriors team. He just. He's got more self awareness of it than C.J. gardner Johnson. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

No. Draymond being a heel is part of what makes him. What has made him at times a great. I think he's still a good player.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

What has made him at times a great player.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

At least a great fit in Golden State for what he does. No question. No question about that. All right, Payne and Pendergast with you. I want to get to this later. There was an article in the. In the Ringer about the Rocket by Michael Pena. And I. I was. I don't know where I was on the spectrum of hoping the Rockets would make a big move this off season. I'm sure at times I probably said, look, if you're going to catch OKC in San Antonio, running it back ain't the way he. He. He actually kind of talked me into the running it back thing. We don't have time to dig into it a little.

[Seth Payne]

If he says all the same things I've been telling you, I'm going to lose my crap.

[Sean Pendergast]

What. What he puts. He puts big value on Fred Van Vliet coming back, Right?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Which is what I.

[Sean Pendergast]

Look, I. Sean might, but he puts some numbers behind. Yeah. This baby think okay.

[Seth Payne]

No, this is where honestly, like when you try to detach yourself from everything, it's that if you look at this team running it back goes back to before Fred Van Vliet got injured last year, people were very, very bullish about the Rockets.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

It's the exact same roster, by and large, that you were bullish about before Fred Van Vliet got injured.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's what he told me in this article.

[Seth Payne]

I know. It's what I've been saying this all damn time and that. And he probably also says without friend Van Vliet, this young core that you're so excited about were forced to play out of position. So certainly you didn't see the better version of those guys.

[Sean Pendergast]

It says simply a focus on clearer roles and fewer turnovers. No, in all seriousness, the, the part, I didn't realize just how bad they were at some of these things. 27th in turnover differential last year, second slowest pace.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. When you got a bunch of young guys trying to figure out how to run the offense through themselves and they're not that good at it, you turn the ball over a. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Some of the things he's saying. Yeah. All right. He brought up some other things too, about how well positioned they are going into this season to be nimble. We'll get into that later in the show. But I, I, I'm start, I'm starting to go through, I go through this like Kubler Ross, five phases with all my teams in the off season, like after they get knocked out of the playoffs. And I'm kind of at acceptance right now for last year and I'm ready to start talking myself into the Rockets.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, No, I think that honestly what

[Sean Pendergast]

took me a little longer to go

[Seth Payne]

through the problem is the whole, the whole thing about the Fred Van Vliet stuff is it gets tied up with Raphael Stone's refusal to do anything about it. That you also, I think, just get sick of talking about or using it as an excuse because it doesn't feel like, well, okay, an above average point guard, but not a star point guard. Should it really make that big of a difference? Yeah. If that's the only guy you have, that's the only guy you have. Yes. And it's a big deal.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

All right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Pain and pender gas with you. What is it like to be chased around by a 2,000 pound bison? We have the description, the play by play from the guy who went through that from his hospital bed. Here's Pain and Pendergast. I Pain and pender gast with you as we head towards the 8 o' clock hour. All right, so we.

[Seth Payne]

Big announcement at 10.

[Sean Pendergast]

Big announcement. 10 o' clock today. Yeah. Be here for that. I'm telling you, be here for that.

[Seth Payne]

I will.

[Sean Pendergast]

You will not be disappointed, Sean.

[Seth Payne]

I've been telling you, telling me, nagging and nagging.

[Sean Pendergast]

Hammer at home, stay until the end of the show. Going to over communicate with you on this. I'd also like the rest of you to be here for it as well. But damn it, Seth, you'd be here for it too. 10 o' clock today, big announcement. Can't wait. So one of the stories that last week that really fit in perfectly for the week that was last week, that classic like, oh, there's no baseball and there's no this.

[Seth Payne]

A lot of people are on summer vacation.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

Maybe even taking a trip to Yellowstone or something, you know. Right, right.

[Sean Pendergast]

I feel bad saying this, this, and I can say it now because he survived the attack.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

But for content reasons only. It's kind of a good thing that this guy got attacked by a bison. This Carl. Ice Carl.

[Seth Payne]

I didn't know the outcome. He wasn't, he didn't get gored to death, right?

[Sean Pendergast]

No, no, no, he's alive. If he had died or had been debilitated drastically, I would not be saying these things.

[Seth Payne]

But those of you didn't see it. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

But go ahead.

[Seth Payne]

A lot of times you got, you know, you hear about somebody getting attacked by a bison and you're like, oh, this is going to be pretty bad.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And then you watch and you're like, how is this possibly worse than what I thought it was gonna be? He went this bison through this. Like, how old is he?

[Sean Pendergast]

He's like 75 years.

[Seth Payne]

75 year old man who's like, not, you know, he's got a little extra weight on him. He's not at his ideal body weight and he's 75 years old.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Get jacked 12ft into the air and land pretty hard after. Also, I was worried about, about him. He was dodging the bison pretty effectively, using the tree trunks as cover for a while.

[Sean Pendergast]

He was doing a good job of reading his blocks.

[Seth Payne]

The guy's ticker probably isn't doing all that great by that point. So he, I see, survived though.

[Sean Pendergast]

He survived. He suffered some leg injuries, getting tossed in the air.

[Seth Payne]

He wasn't taunting the bison or anything. So it wasn't one of these stories where you're like, oh, you idiot.

[Sean Pendergast]

It was him and his grandson.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So his grandson, he's a teenage grandson who was there in a Dolphin's Journey jersey. And the two of them were standing literally all the way across the street.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

With. He had his iPhone out, just taking a picture. You're right. Wasn't taunting him. Was, you know, barely making, you know, like, probably thinking, oh, good, he's not making eye contact with us even.

[Seth Payne]

But it's being the beginning of the rut for bison up there. A lot of the males are getting kind of ornery, kind of agitated. Yeah. They're headed out to the club.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. So he's like, well, that looks kind of like a bison. Let's go. He's got a lot of hair on his face.

[Seth Payne]

Thank God it didn't turn into that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, Jesus. So, yeah. Right. The only damage was, was this guy. His name again is Carl Ion McDaniel. So one of the news stations caught up with him in his hospital bed. So if you're wondering a sort of a first person account of what it's like to get attacked by a bison, Here you go. Even though I was on the ground, he could have stomped me. He could have gored me, could have done anything. We saw the bison and he was down. He was. It wasn't showing aggression or anything like that until it picked a target. That target happened to be me at the time. I had my grandson with me. It was like, you need to get up to the amphitheater. I will deal with this down here. They moved faster than you could ever imagine. He just kept coming and he was more aggressive. And as soon as he got off that tree, he launched me in the air.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Way in the air.

[Seth Payne]

He sounds. If I had to guess, I would guess that was like a 35 year

[Sean Pendergast]

old guy, very young sounding voice.

[Seth Payne]

No wonder this guy's so resilient.

[Sean Pendergast]

He looks super old. Cause he's got one of those long ZZ Top.

[Seth Payne]

Well, he had that long beard. He had like a flannel shirt on. He looked like a guy that might have. Again, even as he's talking about the bison there, it doesn't sound like he's like one of these idiots who thinks they're gonna go feed the grizzly bears at Yellowstone. Correct. You know, like it does that. Like he probably. He sounds like a guy who's probably. Maybe even a little embarrassed that it happened to him because he's probably told other people, like, hey, wild animals are. They're called. W reason he probably himself has said, hey, they move a lot faster than you think.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

But then all Of a sudden you're like, oh, it really is moving faster than I thought.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm a little disappointed that this guy doesn't like have his own podcast yet. Remember Hawk to a girl, she went viral. Yeah, yeah. She's making millions on her podcast now.

[Seth Payne]

Are making a lot of money anymore. She might not get some kind of a.

[Sean Pendergast]

She had a crypto scam. She's got a lot of followers still on social media. She's probably getting a little, some little luck from Instagram and stuff.

[Seth Payne]

That guy sounds really young. And I would never guess that's a 75 year old man.

[Sean Pendergast]

I don't know what his podcast would be about, but he was the viral thing for like a week.

[Seth Payne]

I'm, I'm.

[Sean Pendergast]

Go get that money, man.

[Seth Payne]

I'm reading a book. Okay. I'm listening to a book, Death in Yellowstone. And it was not about the show Yellowstone. Death in Yellowstone. You know, that's, that's stupid show. I used to love it and then it gored me. Like there's a lot of death.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's why.

[Seth Payne]

So no Death in Yellowstone. It's an account of the various deaths from the 1800s until like 2012 in Yellowstone. And so far I'm early into it. But there's a common theme which is people doing stupid stuff at Yellowstone. Yeah. And more than anything, just like people. This is what it sounds like. People really, they go to Yellowstone and they think they're at Animal Kingdom.

[Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Like they don't realize, like, no wild animals will kill you. They'll kill you dead. They don't have a. Like this is not. And then.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, you mean like Animal Kingdom at Disney?

[Seth Payne]

Yes, yes, yes. They really think like, oh, we ride a tram and. And then we go. But all these people, like there's signs everywhere saying, hey, these are not just hot springs, they're boiling springs.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Don't go in them. And then. You know why I got the book? Because last a few days ago, a woman and her child decided to go off of the boardwalk and start walking up to the edge of this boiling hot spring, which people have died multiple times as evidenced by the book Death in Yellowstone.

[Sean Pendergast]

Death in Yellowstone.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, but this is the part that pisses you off about the book. How many of these people's families, after they die in Yellowstone being idiots. Sue, Sue, Sue, Sue Yellowstone or sue the government or whatever.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Like how could you know? Well, you need to explain further that boiling water can kill you.

[Sean Pendergast]

Do they win these lawsuits?

[Seth Payne]

No, no, they get thrown out really quick.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, it's A kind of. It's one of the. It's like with. You know, when you eat raw oysters and you get poisoning, the courts are like, yeah, that's what happens.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, we know it's an aphrodisiac, but it's also a colon cleanser at times.

[Seth Payne]

But that's the other thing that happens is that people just don't. Like, they think they're going to. They sit their kids on a bear, you know, like, they think that's a good idea. It'll be a good photo op for the. For the gram.

[Sean Pendergast]

Hey, speaking of, of. Of. Of attacks and stupid things and whatnot, what do you think? This is according to Gemini, so I acknowledge that the numbers may be off. The percentage chance of surviving a bison attack.

[Seth Payne]

Surviving a bison attack.

[Sean Pendergast]

Just surviving.

[Seth Payne]

Okay. I'm guessing, you know what? The survival rates are always higher than you expect. Even like a gunshot wound to the head has a higher.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'd expect that to be zero. You ever heard the story of Harry? He was a legend around here.

[Seth Payne]

Until one afternoon he left, never came back. Turns out Harry went and made himself a website using Squarespace. Used Squarespace domains to buy artisans seatcushions.com and he built a beautiful site with

[Sean Pendergast]

an online store to sell his artisan seat cushions. Now Harry's sitting on a fortune. And if our Harry can do it, anyone can. Build your [e-mail], use, offer, code, everything for 10% off your website or domain. My name is Shannon Maldonado.

[Host/Announcer]

I'm the founder of Yaoi, a gift shop from the lens of artists and handmade objects. I chose Shopify because when I was testing other platforms, it was definitely one of the most user friendly. It was important to me to think about where we would be in the future. All of the tools for reading your sales, like planning inventory, they're just right there on your dashboard. For anyone starting a small business, the biggest thing I can tell you, it doesn't have to be perfect. Shopify can help you build upon it. Start your free trial on shopify.com flowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them. That's bullspend. And marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions.

[Sean Pendergast]

I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow.

[Host/Announcer]

Yeah, it.

[Seth Payne]

It wasn't.

[Host/Announcer]

Cut the bull. Spend LinkedIn lets you target by company job title and More. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com campaign terms and conditions apply.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm Dana Carvey. I'm David Spade. Fly on the Walls Back for another season now on audio and video every Monday and Thursday. So many incredible guests will be joining us. Follow and listen to Flying the Wall everywhere. You get your podcasts too good be true.

[Host/Announcer]

Oregon parks make an Oregon summer. But what makes an Oregon park? Well, Oregon Lottery Gameplay helps no matter the game. Megabucks, video lottery or keno funds from lottery games helps support parks projects across the state, ensuring they stay safe, accessible and open for all. In fact, Discover State Park Scratches are in stores now. It's the perfect way to put a little bit of Oregon's parks in your pocket. The Oregon Lottery. Together we do good things. Must be 18 or older to play. Lottery games are based on chance and should be played for entertainment only.

[Seth Payne]

No. And it's not.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's not.

[Host/Announcer]

Right?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, that's.

[Seth Payne]

But it tends to be like you don't want to survive it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

The. I would guess it's like 67%.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's according to Gemini. To Gemini, it's 99%.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. And here's wild animals. If they're not carnivores, they're not trying to eat you. Or even if they are carnivores, they're not trying to eat you. They're just. Just trying to like minim, like get rid of you.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's what it says. While bison are incredibly powerful, weighing up to 2,000 pounds and capable of sudden charges.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

As Carl Ice and McDonald McDaniel found out, their attacks typically consist of a single charge toss or gore followed by the animal moving on rather than a prolonged assault? Do you think that more of the deaths come from getting tossed way high in the air and then just the landing on the ground or getting gourd? I bet the gore is when they just jam the horn through you.

[Seth Payne]

Right. They don't like use when I've seen the tab, only seen a couple of them, but they don't. It doesn't seem like they're trying to thrash you with their horns the way like a bull would or something. So I'm guessing it's the fall to the ground.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, maybe. Fatalities are very unusual according to the National Park Service at Yellowstone.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, so this book you're reading probably doesn't have many bison related deaths.

[Seth Payne]

Not yet.

[Sean Pendergast]

Not yet. Well, it's. If. If they do, it'll be one of two.

[Seth Payne]

Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

Only two recorded fatalities in Yellowstone from encounters with bison. That surprises me a little bit.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Just like only two, and there hasn't been one. Boy, this Iceland McDaniel guy almost made history. There hasn't been one since 1983 at Yellowstone.

[Seth Payne]

You think he's disappointed that he wasn't maybe 75? I mean, he wants. It's not like you're setting a record. It's just the first since 1983.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

You want to call that a record? That's like the Al home run record. You're like. You're manufacturing it. You.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

This guy's no better than Aaron Judge, if that's what he know.

[Sean Pendergast]

What I liked about the cut we played of him was. Was him, like, making sure his grandson was okay. Yeah. I was like, hey, man, get to the. Whatever the amphitheater is. I'm guessing maybe they've got, like, an amphitheater where they do, you know, shows or whatever up there in Yellowstone.

[Seth Payne]

Again, Sean, it's not Disney. There's no animatronic bear show or whatever, you know?

[Sean Pendergast]

No, but. But Amy and I went to Theodore Roosevelt national park and they had an amphitheater.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, no, they probably do. They do their little, like, nature, their wildlife.

[Sean Pendergast]

Have you ever stayed at Animal Kingdom?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Disney. Yeah, me too. It's pretty cool.

[Seth Payne]

It is.

[Sean Pendergast]

The animals do come kind of walking up. If you have the. If your room faces the right way. The animals come walking up there.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

But you're right. They're much more docile, probably.

[Seth Payne]

And hasn't been a single bison attack

[Sean Pendergast]

animal kingdom that I saw. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

This other kid. The other big sports injury news, other than the bison attack was this. This player for the A's.

[Host/Announcer]

Oh.

[Seth Payne]

Underwent emergency surgery for a ruptured dude

[Sean Pendergast]

testicle after getting a base hit.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Like, he got hit in the schnutz.

[Seth Payne]

He played for. He played for an inning after.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

The. The. The. It was.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's like, wow, this still really hurts.

[Seth Payne]

It was Joshua Croda Grauer, however you pronounce his name.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

He underwent emergency surgery to repair a ruptured testicle Monday night, hours after fouling a ball off the region.

[Sean Pendergast]

Dude.

[Seth Payne]

The region of his testicles.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, does he wear a cup?

[Seth Payne]

I don't. Probably not.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, he will now. An iron one.

[Seth Payne]

Not as many guys wear cups as people.

[Sean Pendergast]

I know. I know. People are.

[Seth Payne]

There's some people that don't realize that football players don't wear cups. Yeah. Yeah. Like, nobody wears a cup. That'd be the dumbest thing ever. But I like, like, sometimes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Why would you come?

[Seth Payne]

Because it chafes and everything. You got to run around yeah, Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I remember the first time we wearing one, like, in Little League. I'm like, this hurts.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. No, it's awful.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

No, because in football, like, if you're playing, it's an. It's an incentive to play with proper pad level.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's true. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. If you're playing low and in a good position, you're not. You're. Yeah. You're kind of protected.

[Sean Pendergast]

You ever take one in a game, like a knee ever land?

[Seth Payne]

No, I don't think I ever have. Not football. Yeah. I can't remember a single time I took a nutshot.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know what that tells me? You play with perfect technique.

[Seth Payne]

No, that's definitely not it. Yeah, it's just. It's not as. It's just not as common.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Everybody's trying to punch up around your toes, torso.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, okay. Gotcha.

[Seth Payne]

I've never been into. I never had, like, a moment in the pile or anything where there was one time where Stories. There was a. One time where I was fighting for a ball down there at. We used to call it Reliance Stadium back in the day. That's what they're gonna do soon.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's old as new.

[Seth Payne]

We were playing the Chiefs, and there was a. There was a scrum. There was a loose ball, and I was trying to get my hand in and. And grab the football, and I grabbed and squeezed, and I was like, that's.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's not a football.

[Seth Payne]

That's a flaccid forearm. And then I was like, wait a second. Forearms aren't typically flaccid. And then I was like. And then all of a sudden, I felt deep shame and inadequacy. I was like, what the hell is. Oh, my gosh. And I let go. And the. The person I was doing to wasn't. It wasn't all that thrilled about it. He thought I did it intentionally.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And I was like, no, dude, it was exact. But by the way, good for you.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

What the hell? I didn't know this. This was. That's not anything. Of the. Yeah. Of the two that I've now held in my life, that one is by far the superior one. I don't have a lot to go off of, but, man, good job.

[Sean Pendergast]

Coming up next, I can't wait to find out who it was.

[Seth Payne]

Tony Gonzalez. Well, it's. He gonna be upset that I told everybody.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's great. I'll never look at him the same again.

[Seth Payne]

Sorry I divulge your details.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's going to sign an Amazon prime deal for 20 years starting today. All right, coming up next, we'll get back to the Astros. We'll talk about last night. Is the percentage chance of these guys getting traded from the Astros as high as Jeff Passon thinks it is? We'll discuss style. Every Home Sports Radio 610 presents Payne

[Seth Payne]

and Pendergast gives Paredes a chance for an RBI here with two outs, first and third. Two outs, and he hits the ball high in the air, deep to left field. And that hustle's gonna pay. A three run homer, and the Astros lead it five to one. Little bit of hustle. Guy behind you just esox one out of here. Love it. Esoc Paredes a three run bomb off the community leaderboard side, and the Astros have a four run lead.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, that was Todd Blum and Jeff. Todd Blum. Todd Callis. Jeff Blum on the call. Space City Home network work. I got to admit, when. Cause we know Blum likes to do the. The, you know, the. The home run calls with the little jokes and things like that. I thought that when he. They were talking about the hustle, obviously. They were talking about, if you missed it, Jordan Alvarez, the at bat before Paredes hit that home run, struck out. But the ball got away from the catcher, and Jordan really did hustle down to first base.

[Seth Payne]

It took him a second to realize it. Yep. But he. He did realize it and hustled. And as we all know, he can move fast. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

When he wants to, for sure. He's like a Bison, you know?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He moves faster than you expect you.

[Sean Pendergast]

Not all the time, but when it's. When he's motivated, he moves fast.

[Seth Payne]

So.

[Sean Pendergast]

So Yordon gets on base. I'll admit, I thought Blum was gonna go. We had some of that hustle. And then comes Isak with the muscle. I thought we were gonna get a

[Seth Payne]

rhyme, but we made a good one.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, you would have liked that one.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Maybe I need to write his mentality.

[Seth Payne]

I like all of them. As long as I don't like the. Like, every time. Yeah, I like it. Kind of save them for special time. Yeah, yeah. Like every now and then.

[Sean Pendergast]

Because Mark Vandermeer doesn't say rock and Rol.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. I don't know if he says it anymore.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, he does.

[Seth Payne]

He does. Okay. I didn't remember one from the last year.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's probably listening. Vandy, if you're listening. And I don't know. Vandy. I've never asked him this. If he's got a criteria for it, it's got to Be a certain distance of touchdown. If it's a certain time.

[Seth Payne]

Again, he knows in the moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Or maybe it's just a feel.

[Seth Payne]

Don't ruin this with analytics, Sean. Yeah, it is. You're sucking out all the data, Brown.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right now.

[Seth Payne]

The mystique of the game.

[Sean Pendergast]

Gut feel, man. Yeah, you nerd. All right, so the Astros win last night. So they've won two in a row. So two days ago we're doing segments about who they're trading away and now they win two in a row and they're kind of back in the mix right now. I don't know what to make of this team. My feeling is they're just going to be treading water like this the rest of the year. Probably.

[Seth Payne]

Well, okay. This is where as I tend to do, and I know that I was going to do it after they got swept coming out of the All Star break, I couldn't have been any lower. And yet the biggest thing that we've talked about and why I shifted from wanting a left handed outfielder to just wanting a starting pitcher is because there's just so many times this year where it doesn't matter what the offense does if you're, if you're, if your pitching staff has a 6.0 ERA. Blanco looked very promising in his return. Imai has looked a lot better. You know, other than his really, really bad performances.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'll say this, there's been way more good than bad since he first seemed to start to turn it around.

[Seth Payne]

So you know what? There have been more good than bad. The trouble is this, the bad performances have been bad. Performances have been horrendously bad.

[Sean Pendergast]

They horrendously short too, which kills your

[Seth Payne]

bullpen, which is one of the weird graphic they were showing last night was that if he does manage to make it late into the game or with a higher pitch count, he gets better as, as the pitch count gets higher. It's just a matter of actually getting to that point.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's one of those guys like if he gets to the third inning, he's going to make it to the sixth inning.

[Seth Payne]

Well, you know what we saw yesterday was okay. He started to add the change up in, in the second and third time through the order. Yeah. So like he's got that incredible slider, he's got that fastball and you go through the first time through the order and you beat him with your, your go to stuff. But then just by then adding that element in as the, is the game went along, you can see why that's what they were hoping to get out of him was a guy that could, that could go deep into games. And I know, look, six. I know six games is like the, this era's version of the complete game.

[Sean Pendergast]

Six innings.

[Seth Payne]

Six innings. What did I say?

[Sean Pendergast]

Six games.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. That's a big mistake. So six innings, like that was a, that was a very promising performance out of Ema.

[Sean Pendergast]

Absolutely.

[Seth Payne]

The other thing too is like that a lot of the turnaround in the reset of the season, it coincides with the return of Josh Hater. And like, so on the pitching side of things, they're still one of the worst teams in the league. And in terms of ERA and everything. But it's been the, the trajectory on the relief side has been way better. And then on the starting pitching side, you can see maybe a light at the end of the tunnel. If a few ifs come true.

[Sean Pendergast]

If a few ifs come true. Now, look, they're. They're gonna have to come to grips with what they are over the next. Really the net, less than two weeks. August 3rd is the trade deadline. Trade deadline actually on the calendar is a few days later than it's normally been. It's on August 3rd. That's a Monday at 5 o'. Clock. So the Astros need to have sort of a clear picture, at least in their minds as to what they are because the. I know there's people nervous out there about them buying and what they might give up. And then maybe Jim Crane, who is. Has a way more of a history of swinging big than standing pat or at least green lighting his GM swinging big. I mean, hell, James Click mine and gotten fired because he didn't swing big. Big enough. Yeah, when he was the GM here. So we, we know which way Jim Crane kind of leans in terms of buyer or seller. The problem is if they're not honest with themselves, if they truly are a seller, and there's more evidence this season so far that they should be selling than buying. They're 49 and 54. Then they might miss out on an opportunity with a market that could be a seller's market. If there's a lot of teams thinking we can make a playoff off run, Jeff Passon of ESPN.com did his top 100 trade candidates. There's five Astros in the top 62. There's three in the top 23. Jeremy Pena is seven on this list. Josh Hader is 21st on the list, and Isaac Paredes is 23rd on this list. You actually texted me this article yesterday and your text me was, man, and he gives a percentage chance of each of these guys getting moved.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Of the top 20, 25. Top 25 guys getting moved the next 26 through 100, he just lists names, but he does deep dive analysis on the top 25 guys. 35%. Basically a one in three chance. He thinks that Jeremy Pena gets moved at the trade deadline.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, that feels high.

[Sean Pendergast]

I, I agree with you. I, when you text me that, I'm like, I, I agree that feels high. Not because there wouldn't be a great market for Jeremy Pena, but because that just doesn't feel like something the Astros would do. They've never done, done that in season.

[Seth Payne]

I mean, the biggest thing that's changed with Jeremy Pena over the last year or so is that he hired Scott Boris as his agent. And that's when.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's a big one.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And he's become injury prone.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's another big one, too.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. If you start thinking about, boy, if the Astros are going to break their trend of not giving out long term deals, is it going to be to a guy that's not. Not just injuries, but a bunch of soft tissue stuff on swings, the bat,

[Sean Pendergast]

and all of a sudden he's out of the game the next, you know, so that's. And, and, and I'm thinking more through the lens of do. Does that affect his trade value? You know, dude, are teams looking at Pena and you know, obviously other teams know this. You know, they, they look, are they looking at Pena going, man, the guy's missed. He, he's been on the injured list a couple times this year already, and he's missed time while still on the roster with a couple of other little bumps and bruises as well. And he missed the last week of last season with an oblique injury. Also, like, he's of. Had lot, a lot of, he had a lot of injuries. For a guy who's in good shape, man, he's, he's had a lot of injuries. I'm with you. 35% sounds high. The, the negatives on Pena would be that he's going to drive a hard bargain to get a contract extension done. He's been injury prone. The one benefit is he does have one year of team control.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. The one thing that getting him for a year and a half, like every team in the league, you know, thinks about this stuff way more analytically these days that last year's performance, it was, was, it was considered a lucky performance or aided by Minute Maid park, that it's probably more in line with like, his value As a player last year by, by wins above replacement and everything was, you might say, a little bit illusory that, that there's almost six.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

It was almost 5.7 or 5.7 war.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Where he's usually been about a 2.5 guy.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

So like, I don't know, maybe his value is, is his perceived value is higher than what other teams think of him.

[Sean Pendergast]

Passing says the downside with Pena is there aren't many contenders in need of a shortstop.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And he's a shortstop. Like he's not a third baseman or a second baby. He is a shortstop. Pendy says that's what passion says. Pendy me says you only need two teams to create a bidding war.

[Seth Payne]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

I don't need all. What do we count, like nine teams in the American League alone that are, that are buyers. That's just in the American League for, you know, we could go look at the National League and add probably five or six more teams. I just need two of them to be in desperate need of a shortstop and have really good minor league prospects. Yeah, I don't need all of them. It's not a vote.

[Seth Payne]

I feel like, you know, we don't ever expect Jim Crane to go through an, an outright hard reset or at least I've. We're, we're, you know, we suspect that he never would. I. Is there part of maybe their long term strategy where we're actually in the middle of the reset? That he wants to stay competitive as possible and that. Look, the. I like in baseball attendance is a big deal. More so than in the NFL. You know, like the Bengals. The Bengals can make money because of revenue sharing. The Cincinnati Bengals in football can make money if nobody shows up to the stadium money. Baseball, it's a lot different. And attendance really, really matters. Plus I saw on a list the Houston Astros fan base are among the league leaders in amounts spent on games, on food and beer.

[Sean Pendergast]

Hell yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Or at least in calories consumed. I didn't see the monetary break.

[Sean Pendergast]

We are fat and we like to party. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Like they're making a lot of money off of people showing up at the park.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

And then in some ways, I mean, if you look at Dana Brown's strategy for the pitching this off season, it was, it was volume over quant quality, it was quantity over quality. And it was a lot of like the things you would do when you're kind of figuring, okay, our farm system at the low, lower levels is starting to be promising. We don't have major league ready guys yet. But if we can maybe find a diamond in the rough with some budget pickups on the pitching side of things and, and keep humming along and be competitive, but not take these major swings, that, that's, this is Jim Crane's version of a reset.

[Sean Pendergast]

I, I'm glad you brought this up. Cause I actually had this conversation with somebody at the game. I was at the game last Friday, the first game out of the All Star break, and was talking to somebody and I, the conclusion I arrived at. I think the thing that scares Jim Crane the most about doing a harder reset, doing something closer to a rebuild like the trading Jeremy Pena would signal to me, you know, that, that, that we're, we're, we're starting to get into a tear it down mode.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I mean, Jeremy Pena is an iconic player here. He's an MVP of a World Series. I think the thing that scares him the most is a slew of empty seats.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

The vision of what that ballpark looked like from 2011 to 2013. I tell this story all the time. In 2013, Amy and I took all three of my kids to an Astros game. They were in town visiting. My kids were. And they had a deal going on with something like where it was buy one ticket, get three for kids free. And so we bought a $13 ticket in the outfield for eight. Amy. I got in with my media pass and we brought all three of my kids. Now, we did end up spending like 150 bucks at the concession stands.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Beers, helmet Sundays, things like that. But I, I, I think that's the thing that's, I don't think it's the losing that scares Jim Crane. I think losing would anger him because he's a competitive person. I think that as a business person, the thing that scares him would be the, the irrelevance again.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. The 0.0. It's never going to be, it's not going to be 0.0. TV ratings was. But like, yeah, that's probably burned into him.

[Sean Pendergast]

If you tra. If you, if they turn into a seller at the trade deadline and I, and look, everybody who's arguing that they should. I'm not going to argue against you that functionally in a vacuum, if these games were just played in empty stadiums and there was nothing to do with revenue of getting butts in seats, that the right thing to do with this team is to tear it down. Like, like empirically and pragmatically, the right thing to do with this team is probably to take a step back for a few years. And accumulate some minor league prospects, some good ones. That's probably the right thing to do. But that's not the world we live in. And, and I think that's the scary thing for Jim Crane. The fact of the matter is if they. Jeff Passon has Pena 7, Hater 21, Paredes 23. He's also got Walker and Abreu a little further down the list. They go trading all these guys. They are certainly, I will blindly say they are way better off in their minor league system with whatever they get for the. Those guys. It also turns into a situation where the only reason you're going to the ballpark is one of two reasons. You just like to go to baseball games. Yeah. Or you're watching Jordan Alvarez try to win the mvp.

[Seth Payne]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's it.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

There's no other reason to go to the ball.

[Seth Payne]

The other, I mean, like pitchers put butts in seats and you got Hunter Brown. And I think they were hoping that EMI would be a. Put a buttons and seats type of guy. The, the, the other part of the organization as a whole. And if you're trying to recapture some of the greatness of the goal golden era, they had a, they, they were just much better with their Latin American prospects. They, they went full bore into Cuba when a lot of other teams were hesitant to and didn't know exactly how to evaluate Cuban prospects. The Astros would end up with the most Cubans in their system of any other Major League baseball team. And this year they've turned their sights towards Asia and they, you know, they, they said in the offseason they want to just spend more time over there, explore that more that I think they hope to figure out some kind of competitive edge there. So far, the sum total of the results with EMI have not been great,

[Sean Pendergast]

but not been great. But are we at a stage now with emi with the performance that you and I have just cited over the last six weeks or so, we're okay. I feel better about them dipping over.

[Seth Payne]

Look, if you look at his contract, you know, my biggest fear was that Imai was going to suck in the first half of the season. Then the second half of the season was going to play well enough that he could exercise his option and get a bigger deal somewhere else. If you look at that as all right, getting their toe in the water and figuring out they now know all right, at least with this one Japanese player that we brought over, we weren't prepared for how to handle the. How the drastic changes. All of these drastic changes were to going to affect Him. I feel like the Dodgers probably have a pretty good plan for what the transition is like for Japanese pitchers. The Astros did not. Yep. And like that. But getting, getting those reps and maybe creating opportunities where they get more guys and, and onboard them more quickly in the future might be something that they could have an edge.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, Pain and Pendergast with you again. A reminder, big announcement coming up at the station. A huge announcement coming up. You'll want to be here here right at 10am here listening to the toss between myself and Seth and the guys on in the Loop. So be here, be here. Just stick around is the easiest thing to do. Coming up next, espn. Boy, they let a lot of big names go yesterday. Who are the names that move the needle for the most for you? And do former athletes, they get let go from these gigs? Does it, does it bother them anymore? Especially the two, two of the ones, they got let go yesterday. I'll explain why I'm asking that question.

[Seth Payne]

And West Point Lincoln of Sugar Lamb Studios.

[Sean Pendergast]

Here's Bain and Pendergast. John, do a Pender poll. This is on the text page. Would you suck for three years, for another six years of greatness for the Astros? A thousand times?

[Seth Payne]

Everybody always says yes. I would totally take that. This is the problem. Somewhere in the middle of those three years, you're going to lose faith. This is why tanking. This is one of the biggest obstacles that tanking. And this is where I give Jim Crane a lot of credit. At some point, ownership loses faith. They get so many angry emails. People are calling them bums at the grocery store because, you know, the way billionaires shop at grocery stores.

[Sean Pendergast]

Aisle.

[Seth Payne]

I was talking to Crane. I was like, I cannot pick an avocado that isn't spoiled. By the time I get home, he gave me some tips.

[Host/Announcer]

But.

[Seth Payne]

But the. There's like people lose their nerve and like Crane, to his credit, kept his nerve through a really, really hard tank. I don't think you can really. Because it's one of these things where people love to say like, oh, no. Cause I would totally understand the strategy and everything. There are a lot of people who out there right now because I see them who lie about how they were feeling in 2013, 2014. There was. Yeah. In hindsight. Oh yeah. It made perfect sense. Look, they're winning all these triple A championship. That's not how people felt. Like people were disengaged. People were just flat out disgusted. They weren't watching on television. Half the city couldn't watch. That was another Thing that added to the misery of it. They didn't even have the TV channel. But that's the hard part. It's like, yeah, you say, hypothetically, sure, I'll suffer for three years. If you're gonna give me another six year window. That does the vast majority of time. That's not what happens. So somewhere in the middle of those three years, you convince yourself that the process. Process sucks. And everybody's a bum in that realistically that most times people. Teams do it. Look at the Brown. The Browns are on their second round. So different sport. The Browns are on their second round of tanking. Yes, they, they tanked hardcore by football standards, and it didn't work out. Right now they're trading away Miles Garrett. They're tanking.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And like, do you think people in Cleveland are like, well, yeah, this is the process. This is the way. No, this is how you get it.

[Sean Pendergast]

They're not. Yeah, they're. They're. They're not, they're not. They are not ready for another process.

[Seth Payne]

And, and the other thing that kind of happened was that like, for multiple reasons, tanking didn't become as effective. Partly because just more teams caught on to it and started trying to do it them. So all of a sudden you're competing with other teams that are trying to suck too. And it's a, it's a road to nowhere. But I, There are, there's more often these days it's a, it's, it's a soft reset. You know, you got to, you got to kind of. It's like, it's like just, you know, tightening up your own personal budget for a couple years because. But you know, there's a payoff at the end. I think that's, that's what most teams approach it like now, which, which firing

[Sean Pendergast]

by ESPN yesterday because they let at least about a dozen or so front facing on air people.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, go.

[Sean Pendergast]

Which one move the needle the most for you?

[Seth Payne]

Okay. This one didn't move the needle in terms of it being a big name or anything, but I just really liked Charles Davis. I liked it when he did Texans games. I've just felt like he just, he really studied the opponents and knew a lot about it.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's still going to be working for cbs.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, that's right. Oh, so I don't have to worry about that?

[Sean Pendergast]

No.

[Seth Payne]

Okay. I never watch ESPN anymore, so. Okay. I don't watch really much of that other than the clips I see. Okay, cool. As long as he's still doing color. Okay, that makes sense. Yep. I should have thought of that. I think the biggest news needle mover is probably Carl Ravage. Just because he's been there forever.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think it depends on age. I think Carl Ravage for guys in our age bracket because he's been there 33 years. He's been as tied to one sport.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

As any ESPN personality. Baseball, obviously. I guess in the Younger people might say Cam Newton or Ryan Clark.

[Seth Payne]

The only thing about Carl Ravich is that I feel like he shoehorns the being better than everybody else scandal in sometimes into of conversations about the shows when he doesn't need to.

[Host/Announcer]

Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

See, I. I don't want to say. Well, good. I'm glad they fired him.

[Seth Payne]

That's.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's bad, bad karma for you. I want to do that. I will say this about Carl Ravich all time hairpiece team Mount Rushmore. That's a hairpiece. Yes.

[Seth Payne]

Really.

[Sean Pendergast]

And has been since the early 90s.

[Seth Payne]

He passes the test there. I had no idea he had a hairpiece.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. And has been since the early 90s.

[Seth Payne]

Does he wear it in nature or just on television?

[Sean Pendergast]

I think. Well, I've never seen him out in the wild before, so I. So I'm not sure. I would assume he's been wearing it for like over 30 years.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So that would feel to me. Which means he was a young man back then. That feels to me like someone who's wearing it everywhere he goes.

[Seth Payne]

They do pretty much as much as people. You know, the toupees get a bad rap. I feel like it's all a matter of just how. It's kind of like with clothes. Yeah. If you wear crappy clothes. Clothes are dumb. Yep. No, there's a lot of guys that have toupees. Like. Well, Ted Danson.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

You would never guess that he was a toupee guy growing up, right?

[Sean Pendergast]

Nope. I would not have. I would not have the. So Ryan Clark and Cam Newton are the two. And Bart Scott got let go too. But I think the two former players that move the needle the most for people. Ryan Clark and Cam Newton. And I know, look, I know there's people that like both those guys. I know there's people out there that Ryan Clark particularly may not be their cup of tea. Cam Newton's just kind of entertaining to me. He's got a vibe to him.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think he says some silly things

[Seth Payne]

sometimes, but he also has like. He's a performer. So there's times where even if you disagree with him, he's saying it. He's saying it. In an entertaining way.

[Sean Pendergast]

This is what's interesting nowadays. And this is where I give both of these guys credit, the Kelsey's credit, other guys credit is that, yeah, I got fired from espn. Okay. I got this other platform. I'm making plenty of money over here. I can focus more time on that, whatever it may be. Cancer. Cam Newton said this yesterday. The video's too long for us to play it, but I'm just gonna read the money quote from this. Um, he's talking about getting fired alongside Ryan Clark getting fired. Saying that Cam Newton said he viewed his time at the network as an internship and holds no resentment towards the company.

[Seth Payne]

Quote.

[Sean Pendergast]

I want you to learn one rule about the times we live in right now. If you don't own your own platform, you're gonna get overlooked, bypassed, and be extinct. Extinct. Like dinosaurs.

[Seth Payne]

Like dinosaurs.

[Sean Pendergast]

Dinosaurs. So you gotta have your own platform. According to Cam Newton, it is.

[Seth Payne]

What a schmuck. He believes in dinosaurs.

[Sean Pendergast]

It does give these guys a soft landing when you let go, you know, get let go by. By espn.

[Seth Payne]

Right? Yeah, no, that's what. Well, it used to be. I used to really enjoy watching people who had these massive inflated egos who are at ease. Espn, who got let go by espn and they had to realize all of a sudden, like, oh, oh, it was more about the platform than it was about me.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

Because they would be so bitter for so long. And I do think that part of it has changed where people do understand and realize, okay, look, you got to have your. Make it on your own with your podcast simultaneously while you're at espn and it can be a good launching board to notoriety.

[Sean Pendergast]

I do, I do think. I think Cam is a little dismissive of the platform that ESPN gives you to cross promote all that other stuff that.

[Seth Payne]

You're right. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

But he's already.

[Seth Payne]

He's different because he's already a superstar in his own right. And like, and he does. He's an entertainer personality. Like, he's got a panache to him. It's. It's more difficult for like Carl Ravich isn't going to be able to go and all of a sudden have a, A podcast that's worth a hundred million dollars within a couple years. Most likely the way that Cam or somebody else like that, because he's already. He was. Cam Newton was a star before he went to espn, but he said he

[Sean Pendergast]

regarded it like already doing this before he went to espn.

[Seth Payne]

Well, and he said he looked at it like a good. Like an internship.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

That he has been. Which is True. You learn a lot of just the, The, The. The fundamentals of being on camera and acting in a certain role. And you get a lot of reps.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, you do get a lot of reps. And you're around a lot of people who've been in broadcasting. You can be a bit of a sponge.

[Seth Payne]

That's what. And that's what McAfee, when he joined up with ESPN, the way he was framing it, I could. I think it was very much almost like a, you know, we'll see how it goes. But like this, this isn't. This is going to be really good for visibility. He had said, hey, espn. Despite the changing landscape and everything, you go to an airport, you go to a doctor's office, you're sitting getting your oil changed. There's a good chance ESPN is on.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's.

[Seth Payne]

And all of a sudden, Pat McAfee, who was already really successful with his YouTube and podcasts like that, many more people are now thinking about Pat McAfee. So even if it didn't work out, and that's why I think he's. He feels very. He doesn't. He's very brazen about calling people out at Es, espn, everything, because he just really. It's not that he doesn't care, but if he had to. If he had to cut ties with espn, he's just right back to doing what he was already doing.

[Sean Pendergast]

Crazy.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Crazy Money MacVee. And he's about to make. That was the other funny thing to see, too, yesterday. Pat McAfee, if you believe the reports that are out there, is on the verge of signing a deal with ESPN that's worth upwards of $60 million.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So you've got that story out there, which kind of. Kind of got out there last week. So it's been sitting out there, and then all of a sudden this week, at the beginning of the week, there's this bloodletting of people, $2 million, guys being let go. It was so funny. I saw somebody tweet yesterday because Stephen A. Smith also makes, and he's very public about this, a ton of money. Stephen a. Makes like 20 million a year. McAfee is about to make 60 from ESPN. And somebody said ESPN's acting like they're trying to get under the second apron so they can fit McAfee and Stephen A. Smith under salad, actually.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, that's does make sense.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Well, it's like, it's a good lesson for any business, like anybody that's. Any young people are just starting your first Real job. Just never, ever, ever forget that. The, like, the way your management is looking at you is, are they making this company money? Sometimes people lose sight of that. Like, we see that in our industry sometimes where there'll be guys that have, like, big egos or whatever, and they might be very, very talented, but they. They don't fundamentally understand that, dude, you're not making the company any money.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

You're expendable. Like, when they go to fire you if what they. If they have to say, wait a second. Like, there's. There's 10 advertisers that really are only with us because of this guy. We can't fire this guy.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

You know, where there's a lot of other guys who might be more talented or what have you, but, like, they just. They're not bringing money to the table.

[Sean Pendergast]

At the very least, it's a huge risk to fire.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a big risk. You got to replace all that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Or hope that somebody picks up the slack.

[Seth Payne]

No, it's the same way. I mean, it's like, it will. Like. Like in some companies, it's easy. Like, if you're in sales. All right. You can show exactly how much money I'm bringing to the table.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

You know, if you're doing other jobs, it's not always quite so clear.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes. Yes.

[Seth Payne]

Remember, you're in constant competition with your co workers.

[Sean Pendergast]

Absolutely.

[Seth Payne]

Stab them in the back every chance you get.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's right.

[Seth Payne]

That's what they like.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's right.

[Seth Payne]

You hear me, Byron? You're taking notes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

No, don't do that. That's. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know how many times Seth and I have stabbed each other in the back? At least 20 times a piece.

[Seth Payne]

Okay. I was joking about the stabbing in the back. That's another little life lesson is like. That's. The other part is, like, people, they. You're less likely to get fired if people like you. There's times where people. I've been in these meetings where, like, all right, you can have a conversation about a few people. Like, this guy's just kind of a pain in the ass.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's a tiebreaker.

[Seth Payne]

It's a tiebreaker.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. It's a tiebreaker.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

The funniest. The funniest thing I was ever. Advice I was ever given. I'll make this quick. Is when I first got into management in my old job when I was. I was promoted from, you know, being a sales guy to being area sales director, and I was on a com. I was having a conversation with The CEO of our company, who is a career sales guy. His name was Pat Martucci. And he's telling me, he's like, hiring is going to be. 80% of your job is going to be how well you hire and fire people. 80% of your success is going to be based on how well you do that. So his piece of advice was something. And when it came to hiring somebody, this is sort of the tiebreaker thing we're talking about, about life. He said, I have this little thing called the Notre Dame test. You'll like this, Sean. And our company was in Chicago. He was from Cleveland. He goes, the Notre Dame test. He's like, how far into a trip from Chicago to Cleveland? Like, when I drive to go see my mom, it's what, about 90 minutes to Notre Dame? I said, it's about 90 minutes. He said, the Notre Dame test is this. If I'm interviewing somebody and I'm thinking of hiring them, but I'm not quite sure, I think to myself, if they were riding shotgun with me on a trip to Cleveland to see my mom, do I want to kick the bleep out of them by the time I get to Notre Dame?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

If the answer is yes, I do not hire that person.

[Seth Payne]

It's a good. It's a good role to live. It's a good.

[Sean Pendergast]

If you're hiring and firing, that's a good rule. What would that.

[Seth Payne]

Why it's always important to shower before you go to an interview?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So the rule here, if I were to equate that to people hiring and firing in Houston, I'll call it the Golden Nugget rule. If I'm driving to New Orleans.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And I want to beat the crap out of this person, by the time I get to the Golden Nugget in Lake Charles, I might even call it the Beaumont Rule.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Then I do not hire that.

[Seth Payne]

I did. You know what I should have called the Beaumont Rule? I wish I would have talked to you about 17 years ago.

[Sean Pendergast]

Why?

[Seth Payne]

Because I did. I went into business with somebody who, like, was really, really talented and good at what they did, but he annoyed the hell out of me. And, like. And I was kind of like, I was thinking, like, you know, my gut tells me no, but all the other boxes are checked. And it was two days into the relationship, I was like, oh, I made a huge mistake.

[Sean Pendergast]

I always had a fun team. Yeah, I always had a fun team. All right, coming up next is Nick Casario and the Texans and D' Amico Ryan's. Are they the best in the NFL at this. We will things. Big announcement 10:00am today. Be here for that. 9:00am will circle back to one of the big stories today. The Miami Heat accidentally air quotes leaking a link to a youth YouTube. A YouTube link for a press conference to introduce LeBron James on Monday. Posted it last night, took it down quickly, downplayed it, said, we were just doing it just in case. We'll talk about that.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. What are they having a fire drill or something? Like, hey, just gonna go through this. This is what we'll do.

[Sean Pendergast]

This is what it's like to put a YouTube link up.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

It takes so long.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, God. What if it was that? What if it was just like somebody onboarding a new social media person, just having fun, like, okay, so this is what you do. Let's say we're gonna. We're gonna introduce LeBron James. And then they went through it, and the. Into the eager young intern hit. Hit enter

[Sean Pendergast]

like this.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right. By the way, Patrick Creighton, colleague and friend here at Sports Radio 610, said his rule would be the Baytown rule

[Seth Payne]

of you can't make it to Baytown without getting annoyed with a guy that you're interviewing.

[Sean Pendergast]

Boot him out. He said, if you get to that BUC EE's right there, and it exits, what, 791 or something like that out. And for those wondering what we're talking about, I told a story about how if you're looking to hire people and you're not sure if you should hire them, then we call it the. We'll call it here. We'll call it, you know, Patrick, we'll call it the Baytown rule. Pretend that you're driving to New Orleans from Houston, and if you want to beat the snot out of the person by the time you get to Baytown, do not hire that person.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Do not surround yourself with people that fail the Baytown rule.

[Seth Payne]

Hey, Speaking of BUC EE's, by the way.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So I was driving. I was driving towards Texarkana on Interstate 30, you know, from up northeast, and I saw Buc EE's sign, and I got excited, and then it's a. It's like Buc ee's 137 miles.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, they do that all the time.

[Seth Payne]

I know, but I don't. I don't like it.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, I don't either.

[Seth Payne]

I hate it. I was all. I was looking at, you know, I. I like going to truck stops more. So they tend to be cleaner, have more options, usually better restaurants, like Fast food and everything.

[Sean Pendergast]

Impulse buys.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally need this Dickies jacket and the fluorescent vest. Yeah, I need this fluorescent vest. And I need one of those trucker. Trucker headsets.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

That only cover one ear.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

No, I didn't like it. But right around the same time, one of the most impressively, impressively aggressively jerk drivers I've ever seen. A guy driving aggressively while pulling a travel trailer with a big jacked up Ram pickup truck. That was all it was. And it was, it was. It was adjusted to be able to roll coal. So, like, no, he was. This guy must have. I wanted to go. I wanted to pull this guy over and interview him because he's. He's want a pretty big travel trailer and like dodging in and out of traffic and every time he's jamming on the gas, it's blowing black smoke up. It was the most dangerous thing I've ever seen in my entire life. And yet I have, like a grudging respect for just the. The amount of testosterone and idiocy courses.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's hilarious.

[Seth Payne]

This guy has definitely been married six times. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes. And smokes seven packs a day. Okay, question. Are the Texans the best in the NFL? NFL at finding defensive backs, at staffing a defensive backs room.

[Seth Payne]

This front office, this coach has kind of been the. The word or the narrative or the belief around Casario since he's been here is like, man, he's really hit it out of the park with defensive backs.

[Sean Pendergast]

And the only high pick in that room is Derek Stingley.

[Seth Payne]

Right, right, right. I think that's where it's a combo deal. And, you know, I always like to look at, like, I think there's so many times. And I go back to, you know, Charlie Casserly and Don Dom Capers with. With our first team here. I think both of those guys were awesome at their jobs. I don't know if they were the right fit for each other. And it's not because if anything, it was because, like, neither one of them was an A hole. Like, which that's. It doesn't have to be that way. But I think that it's always about the mix of your GM and your head coach and how well they work together. And I think that d' Ameco and Nick work really well together. So, like, I don't know. I don't know how good Kaylin Bullock would have been if he'd gone to other teams. I don't know how good Jalen Petrie would be if he'd gone to Other teams. Teams and had different coaches. You know, he had a very promising rookie year, but there was a lot of stuff that he had to work on.

[Sean Pendergast]

What about Lassiter?

[Seth Payne]

Lassiter, likewise. I think that Lassiter. There's a, there's really, really good coaching. Like Dino Vasso does an incredible job coaching those guys. D' Amico and Matt Burke have done a great job putting together that defense. And one thing that it does annoy me when I hear from people outside of Houston, Houston say, well, they just line up and play because they've got such good players. And like, all right, look, they've got. And they'll, they'll start reeling off Kalen Bullock, Kamari Lasseter, Jalen Petrie. Well, where were you guys pre draft talking about these guys?

[Sean Pendergast]

Exactly.

[Seth Payne]

You know, like, wait a second. Aren't you the guy that said that Kamari Lasseter was too slow to go in the first round?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So it's a combination of identifying the right kinds of guys that fit d' Amico's system, but then also Dino Vasso coaching those guys up and getting the most out of them. It's a group effort. Yeah, yeah, like that. Like to have, to have. This is plenty. Like you don't want to get too married to draft status or anything, but to have that many guys who aren't first round picks so don't have those, those high level physical traits coming out of college to be performing as they are as well as they are individually. Yeah, that's a lot of it's on. It's Casario finding the right guys for the system. It's, it's the coaching that goes on and then it's the players themselves just kind of. They're like having the right attitude and mindset to play this defense which involves a whole lot more physical physicality than what they want out of defensive backs elsewhere.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Casario has drafted eight defensive backs since he got here as the gm. Most of them have been while d' Amico Ryan's has been here. The two that were not were Derek Stingley Jr. Who's the third overall pick in the draft, and then Jalen Petrie was a second round pick. The others are. Brandon Hill was a seventh round pick. He's, you know, he seventh round pick. Kamari Lasseter, Pro Bowler, Kaylin Bullock, Pro Bowler. And I know they're alternates and they may, but they're good players. Yeah, Jalen Smith is a really interesting one to me. Drafted in the third round last year by the consensus boards, maybe overdrafted a Little bit. He was seen more as a day three guy than a third round pick. Their guys, his teammates this off season have been gushing about him. Yeah, he's had a good off season.

[Seth Payne]

No, and he, you know he had a hamstring injury last year. Year that basically just wiped out anything the that you might have seen out of him. But yeah, they seem, they seem to like him a lot and I think he's another one that when you watch him in college, okay. There's a lot of elements to where you see, okay, he's not afraid of contact whatsoever. Makes a lot of plays behind the line of scrimmage. The, the high level physical traits aren't there but we've seen, we've seen the Texans get the absolute most out of guys physical ability by, by coaching them up right real well. What and then Jalen Reed and Kamari Rams Jalen Reed last year and Kamari Ramsey.

[Sean Pendergast]

Reed got on the field last year,

[Seth Payne]

six round pick but he had injuries, you know that he was dealing with too as a rookie. Yep. Kara Ramsey is another interesting one. Kamari Ramsey, the latest of the Texans liking some college programs because they seem to be coached really well but then liking USC because I think they don't get enough out of get this guy

[Sean Pendergast]

three rounds later in his talent.

[Seth Payne]

They get guys cheap because you USC hasn't developed them as well as they should.

[Sean Pendergast]

They don't pay attention to defense there.

[Seth Payne]

I think if they drafted more USC players than any other college in the

[Sean Pendergast]

last couple years, there's at least four or five USC guys on the team. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So the cause you know, Nick and d' Amico have both said like okay, well we know they love Matt Campbell and he does such a great job with the Iowa State guys. They like what's his name up there at Minnesota?

[Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

PJ Flag. Yeah, they'll. They'll draft some of these guys and they'll gush about the program that they come up come out of. And yet they draft all these USC guys and they never brag about the program. They're buying low on those guys.

[Sean Pendergast]

Who's the best player that Nick has drafted that didn't work out here, you know what I mean? And I'm not saying defensive backs, I'm

[Seth Payne]

saying just in general the best player that they haven't. That Nick is drafted. I think it's Roy Lopez probably Roy Lopez, the defensive tackle who is his Knicks last pick in his first draft.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Six or seventh round pick. He's gone on to do some good things. I was going through, and I didn't find a lot of other guys who were drafted here, left and then became consistent starters elsewhere. Thomas Booker did start 13 games for the Raiders last year.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Seth Payne]

Like, Garrett Wallow and Austin Deculas have had a few starts here and there, but they're just largely backups.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

And, yeah, it's. It's. It's been like, there, there. Yeah, a lot of those. It's not like, okay, the Texans didn't get the most out of these guys, and then they go somewhere else and they're. They look awesome.

[Sean Pendergast]

The two. The two that I'll keep an eye on this year, the big one I'll keep an eye on is Christian Harris.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Because two years ago it was Chris. After the 2023 postseason, Christian Harris was viewed like a guy who could be in line to get a second contract from the Texans. He was arguably the best player on the field defensive for them in those playoff games that year. D' Amico's first year here. And then the calf injury hit, and then the calf injury healed, but he just never got back on the field again. Christian Harris, that'll be the one. I'll be. Well, he's in Atlanta now, if I'm not mistaken.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And. And look, it may just very well be. Christian Harris isn't going to be a good NFL football.

[Seth Payne]

Well, I think with him, it would be that that calf injury just ended up being some kind of lingering, weird thing that happens with these lower leg injuries sometimes where just the. The nerves don't come back the right way. I don't know. Like, it just whatever the hell Joe Mixon had last year.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. The USC in the last few years has been really.

[Sean Pendergast]

Can I. Can I try to name them real quick here?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, you have to name chronologically.

[Sean Pendergast]

You got them in front of you here. Okay. Okay, so I'm going to say you're

[Seth Payne]

going to miss the one real obvious one.

[Sean Pendergast]

Does it start in 2024?

[Seth Payne]

It starts in 2024.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, so that would be Kaylin Bullock and Solomon Burr.

[Seth Payne]

Okay, you got that? Good. Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

And then the next year would be Woody Marks and Jalen Smith.

[Seth Payne]

Yep, you got that.

[Sean Pendergast]

And then Kamari Ramsey last year, five

[Seth Payne]

guys from USC in the last three years and not a word about how great the USC program is.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, they're all day three guys, too. They're all day three. And, like, three of them probably should have been day two at least.

[Seth Payne]

This is where we go to find.

[Sean Pendergast]

Bullock was a third rounder, so he used day two.

[Seth Payne]

Right. But this is where we go to find undeveloped talent.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah man, you're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft.

[Host/Announcer]

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[Sean Pendergast]

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[Seth Payne]

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[Host/Announcer]

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[Seth Payne]

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[Sean Pendergast]

opened my dashboard for the only positive

[Host/Announcer]

sounding metric I had. Impressions Cut the bull.

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[Host/Announcer]

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[Seth Payne]

as the US Men's National Team takes center stage at a Homeworld Cup 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 Miola, Marcela Balboa and Benny Fieldhaber 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 what you want on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, Maxing is so maxing right now, bro.

[Seth Payne]

Get ready for spicy chicken maxing because

[Sean Pendergast]

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[Seth Payne]

a 5.99 maxed out double stack double

[Sean Pendergast]

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[Seth Payne]

Seriously, just 5.99 double stack spicy chicken. This is unreal value in the bromosphere.

[Sean Pendergast]

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[Seth Payne]

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[Sean Pendergast]

Taxon included, not valid for use within a combo or a combination with any other offered discount. And yeah, treasure trove of distressed assets.

[Seth Payne]

I don't know. Like Woody Mark. Woody Marks wouldn't fit that category because they used them a lot both at. At Mississippi State and at us.

[Sean Pendergast]

He was on offense. Yeah. All right.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. The defensive guys, into the 9 o'

[Sean Pendergast]

clock hour we go. All right, we mentioned it a little bit earlier. Is there an intern getting fired in Miami today over. Over this mistake? Air quotes that happened with the Miami Heat and LeBron James last night? If you haven't heard the story, we'll give you our take on that. Sports Radio 610 presents Payne and Pendergast. Seth is pulling out his Amazon orders which he had delivered to the station.

[Seth Payne]

This is a built basics crew neck. You know what, it's a little bit more polyester than cotton in the cotton poly blend.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

But I'm going to keep it nonetheless.

[Sean Pendergast]

I would keep it. It looks comfy.

[Seth Payne]

What color is this? Burgundy?

[Sean Pendergast]

Is that. That is burgundy.

[Seth Payne]

Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, yeah. Or some sort of maroon. I mean, you're an honorary Aggie. It fits.

[Seth Payne]

No, it's definitely not. Yeah. Okay, good.

[Sean Pendergast]

Are you buying that in anticipation of wearing it at training camp?

[Seth Payne]

No, just in.

[Sean Pendergast]

Just because it feels a little training camp heavy to me.

[Seth Payne]

Right, right. No, no, this is an in studio shirt. Got it. Yeah, got it, got it.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, real quick on the text page, we just got done talking about how good the Texans have been in staffing their defensive backs room over the last few few years. And Seth pointed out the. Made the astute observation that, boy, they really do like USC guys.

[Seth Payne]

They've drafted five USC guys. Whereas they've dressed. Look, they draft Iowa State guys pretty regularly and they'll gush and gush and gush about Matt Campbell. Yeah. But they've drafted all these USC guys and not said a single thing about that great USC program and how he develops his defensive players.

[Sean Pendergast]

So they drafted five USC guys. Three of them have been defensive backs.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Text message. USC is great and all, but have you heard of John Carroll?

[Seth Payne]

No, that's untapped. Yeah, that is like. It might as well.

[Sean Pendergast]

They might as well get their coaches and gm.

[Seth Payne]

The next time they draft the USC guy, they should say, well, you know, Lincoln Riley is a great recruiter. And. And there you have it.

[Sean Pendergast]

There's a nice backhanded compliment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's really good at finding guys that

[Seth Payne]

we find guys that we consider bargains in the draft.

[Sean Pendergast]

Trapped In a field, fifth round.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

In a few years. So LeBron watch is still on. It took an interesting turn overnight last night when the Miami Heat, their social media team, Whoever handles their YouTube account, posted a link on their YouTube page for. Hang on a second, let me pa. I'm gonna. I'm gonna pull it up here. The title. LeBron James introductory press conference conference, July 27, 2026. So obviously they're posting this in anticipation of there being something on, you know, it'll go live on the. On July 27th if it were real.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

They promptly took it down and when asked about it, said, oh, that was a mistake. We were just doing that in anticipation of a potential.

[Seth Payne]

You're just getting dunks in a row. Like. Like they had a drill going, and they were going through the checklist and like, okay, this was. This is a big alarm went off, and it said, like, this is the. The. The.

[Sean Pendergast]

The.

[Seth Payne]

We're signing LeBron James. We're going to announce it on Monday. What would we do?

[Sean Pendergast]

We are LeBron ready.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's what they. You got to be LeBron ready. And that includes putting up a link to an introductory press conference. So obviously the basketball world read into that as well. It's over.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

LeBron James is going to reunite, but it's not with Cleveland. It's going to be in Miami.

[Seth Payne]

What do you think the. What do you think the chances are that that was an act, Like a. A mistake? That was the big mistake, which is that they are. They already know.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think he's my.

[Seth Payne]

You think that's it?

[Sean Pendergast]

I think he's going to Miami.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I do. Unless this somehow. Unless the very leaking of this makes LeBron believe that the organization isn't functioning properly.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's not this type of clown show. When I was here in 2011 through 2014. Yeah, it's a clown show show now. Old man Riley is now acting like an old man, probably.

[Seth Payne]

You know what?

[Sean Pendergast]

They accidentally posting links.

[Seth Payne]

This is the classic thing that would happen if Pat Riley said, you know what? I want to. I want to keep young. Let me. Let me handle the social media accounts for a bit. It's like when you try to teach your grandma how to use the computer.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know, there's an inordinate number of dad jokes coming from the Miami Heat. Social media accounts, even maybe granddad jokes.

[Seth Payne]

Oh. Inappropriate boomer jokes going out on social media and everything. Wow.

[Sean Pendergast]

Miami social media account. It's not like, racist, racist but it's

[Seth Payne]

like Archie Bunker racist lingo about minority players that was acceptable in the 70s. Like whichever term that. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

What's up? These Archie Bunker memes that have been going up on our social media accounts. So I. What do you think?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I think that. I think somebody. I think they know and somebody screwed up. I don't know. They probably were working on whatever. They were getting all their ducks in a row for the announcement. Somebody hit enter when they weren't supposed to hit enter.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

You drafted it and you thought you were going to, which can happen. I'm thinking about YouTube. When I post stuff, it's hard to post something and not realizing you're posting it. But if you're doing a big batch of stuff, they might have thought it was going to be a draft. And oh, you know what? They probably scheduled it wrong. That's what they. I bet they were going to schedule it and they forgot to put the actual date on. So it went to like they might have scheduled. Like they might have put it into the schedule yesterday.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Seth Payne]

They scheduled it and it wasn't supposed to go live. And then.

[Sean Pendergast]

So what you're saying is the press conference may very well be on July 27, Monday. But they didn't set the link to go up on July 27th. They actually did yesterday last night. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

But even.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, July 22nd. I'll tell you, the dates make sense. This is why I think it makes sense. I think it makes sense that Miami has found out that they're getting LeBron.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And LeBron is waiting till Thursday to make his announcement and. Cause he's not going to do it on Friday because that's when irrelevant news drops on Friday. And LeBron, we know, thinks he's anything but irrelevant, accurately. So he's one of the most relevant celebrities on the planet. So I think this news. I think. I think the decision. This is my prediction. I think the decision gets announced tomorrow, if not to this afternoon, but more likely tomorrow to let a little. Maybe. Maybe even put a little space between this accident with the link. But I think he announces tomorrow that he's going to Miami, not on Friday. And certainly the press conference wouldn't be on Friday, Saturday or Sunday. That's not when relevant things have press conferences or people have press conferences.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Monday he does the press conference. And we got all week on get up and first take and shows like ours to play the audio to talk about LeBron. That is the timeline. The Miami Heat messed up putting up that link. That press conference is going to Take place on Monday. This decision is coming down in the next 36 hours, and LeBron James is going to the Miami Heat. That's my prediction.

[Seth Payne]

The. The interesting thing about Miami. Miami is that, I mean, for one, it would be. Look, I mean, if you think about Antetokounmpo And Adebayo and LeBron, that's pretty exciting. But they're. They're installing this new system that basically doesn't use pick and rolls at all.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, really? Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. I haven't looked at any of this, which is, like. I don't know. That might be intriguing to LeBron. Koare is like, this is a big rhythm changer.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Late in my career, and take something that's been a staple of what I do well and just flat out mix it up completely, kind of unleash hell and ambush people with it. It's intriguing. He probably appeals to him from the basketball nerd side of things.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, if you were. If you were LeBron, because it seems like the three teams that we're down to here are Miami, that we've heard are Miami, Cleveland, and I. Philly is still in the mix. I'll throw Golden State in there, too.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Those four teams. If you. If you were LeBron and it was purely about who you're partnering with.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Would you rather partner with Giannis? Would you rather partner with Steph and Draymond? I guess.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Would you rather partner with Joel Embiid, Jalen Brown? Boy, they got a lot of star power in Philly, Tyrese Maxey, all that. All that. That. That ensemble they put together.

[Seth Payne]

Which of those. Or what about Anthony Edwards and Rudy Gobert?

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, that's. They're down the list. Yeah. Or James Harden.

[Seth Payne]

Oh.

[Sean Pendergast]

So I'm just. I'll just do the marquee guy at each place.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Just to make. Keep it simple.

[Seth Payne]

My answer is Miami.

[Sean Pendergast]

You got to pick one. Giannis. Steph.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Harden or mb.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, it's. It's. It's Giannis, I think, because he's still. I know he's getting up there in years, but I think the. The intrigue of that ethereal, physical talent. Well, he's still, like, injuries aside, he's still in his prime, healthy.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's the best of those four guys. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Even Steph.

[Seth Payne]

They're probably with him. I think there might still. There might be a little bit of a. Like, a mentorship that he would like. Like that LeBron would like, enjoy being a mentor to Antetokounmpo, who's already a Made man and a full grown, you know, star and everything, but still, like, is Also, you know, LeBron's gone through the transition at that age that antenna kupo is now that he might really look forward to that opportunity to just kind of team up him almost from a. Like a. Like a philosophical and strategic standpoint point.

[Sean Pendergast]

As a fan.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

A casual observer, not a. Not a hardcore fan of LeBron, but just a. An observer of the NBA, a fan of the NBA. Which do you want to see him go to? If it's based on those four guys, do you want to see him partnered up with Giannis Embiid, Steph, or James Harden? I know my answer is your answer.

[Seth Payne]

James Harden. Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Hell yes. Oh, I gotta see this.

[Seth Payne]

He might, you know what? LeBron might look at this. That as like, hey, you know what? You know, he's got a lot of experience having success in the playoffs, this guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who's got two thumbs and has actually done things in the playoffs. This guy. I can be the guy that teaches young James Harden. Okay, okay, okay, okay. No, no, no.

[Sean Pendergast]

This is a good. That's. That's a good angle. Here's why. Because we know that LeBron is still in this struggle with Michael Jordan over who the greatest of all time is, over who the greatest goat is. And we know LeBron thinks he's the goat. I think Michael Jordan thinks he's the goat. I don't know what society thinks. It does seem to be very age driven. The older people are like, I watch Jordan with my own two eyes and that LeBron ain't Jordan. And then I think you can make a perfectly good case for LeBron. Jordan's always going to have the championships, unless LeBron goes somewhere where he wins two more and then he's tied with Michael with six championships. But this is where you can get something where you go, okay, maybe I didn't win six, but I dragged one of the biggest playoff chokers of all time, James Harden.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

To an NBA championship.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's worth like four championships.

[Seth Payne]

Right, right, right.

[Sean Pendergast]

So maybe for his legacy, being able to drag choker James Harden to an

[Seth Payne]

NBA championship, I think that, look, LeBron's,

[Sean Pendergast]

he's done it in Cleveland, Miami before.

[Seth Payne]

This is the one thing, though, like, because you can fall in love with the story or the outcome or whatever, but I think realistically, you get to that age, too, and I think this is probably how he looks at it. With Steph Curry, it's like, yeah, there's a lot of things that we Would jive great together with. And it would be incredible and everything, but like, more times than not, especially in basketball, you know, and you've seen people fall in love with these old guys who have big names and that. It's just, it's not the same, you know, the limits of exactly what you can do with a bunch of old guys.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

And I think that the appeal of intended kounmpo is still that element of it. It's a. I think that. And that's probably why they. That's probably why there's going to be an announcement or a press conference on Monday.

[Sean Pendergast]

Press conference. Monday. He's announcing it on social media or somewhere in the next 36 hours.

[Seth Payne]

My brother in law. My brother in law, you know, he played basketball in college, real good athlete. And this last year, I think he's 50 now, he dunks once a year and the kids, the kids asked him to dunk this year when he was coaching. He's like, a couple of years ago he said, I'm not going to do it anymore. I'm not. I'm just done with it. Because he used to like kind of train for it and everything. He wanted to be here. No, he did it. And he's like, never again. Never again. He's six foot five.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Is he the one whose son is a big Giannis fan?

[Seth Payne]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. And still a big Giannis fan. Yeah. Yeah. So he's got a basketball player.

[Sean Pendergast]

Does he like LeBron?

[Seth Payne]

I assume so. These kids like everybody. They don't hate people the way we used to.

[Sean Pendergast]

I know.

[Seth Payne]

There's no.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's their fatal flaw.

[Seth Payne]

They're really not nice kids.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Yeah. Tank on nowhere. Yeah. All right. Jordan stayed in one city for most of his career. He didn't ring Chase. Okay. I. Yeah. I mean, LeBron's been a bit of a nomad.

[Seth Payne]

I mean, that now we're getting into the whole debate about, like, okay, yeah, you know what? That horse is out of the barn. Yeah. Like, that's so, like, he's texting that in response to you saying that, hey, if, like, what creates the best narrative for greatest of all time? Right. The state. Guess what? LeBron's not going to stay with the same team his whole career. Like, so that part of the argument is already. That's what wins it for you with Jordan. Like, so there's. We're talking about. What else can LeBron do to, to try to put a, a brick in the wall of his, of his argument.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. Question. So since Matt Campbell is at Penn State. Now, is that the new hunting ground for the Texans? A thousand percent.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. I think there's. And it doesn't mean that they're always.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think that with better players coming

[Seth Payne]

in, I think they look at certain pro programs that they feel like these guys are better prepared to enter the NFL and that they can accept a certain type of coaching. I think they like guys. Like, they might go three years without drafting somebody out of Georgia, but they still like somebody that Kirby Smart coached. Yeah. That there's just certain programs that they respect.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. SC alum here. You guys are killing me. Hey, man, we're just telling the truth. We're not being mean.

[Seth Payne]

We were just pointing out that they. They drafted a lot of guys from USC in the last few years. They. Despite never actually praising the USC program.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, reaction to this. James Harden's ego is too big to get dragged to The Finals by LeBron James. James Harden has a big. I mean, I think all celebrity athletes have a big ego to some extent. Do you think he's got.

[Seth Payne]

Well, I guess. What does that look like? What does that look like? What does that mean? Like, if he refuses to get dragged, like, what's. Is James Harden gonna all of a sudden sit out or something or pout or.

[Sean Pendergast]

Here's how. Here's how I read it this. And this is how I'm going to interpret it this way, because I think this is what this guy or gal might be saying is that James Harden will have a hard time deferring to LeBron James being the star of the team. I would point out James Harden's already on the team with Donovan Mitchell and has already. James Harden has at various times in his career been fine taking a back seat to other guys, other stars on the team and being a facilitator. He did that with the Clippers with Paul George and Kawhi Leonard.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. When he was scoring 30 plus points per game, it wasn't because he was a ball hog and that's what he needed to do.

[Sean Pendergast]

He led the league in assistance.

[Seth Payne]

He was the only actual NBA player on the court at that time.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Yeah. So I don't. I think that's a. I. I think that's a mislabeling. I don't think it's a.

[Seth Payne]

So what are you saying? You said you don't think LeBron will have a hard time deferring to.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, no, I don't think James Harden will have a hard time deferring like this. This person. I am interpreting this person's text as. As saying James Harden will have a hard time having another star come in and not be the major star anymore. Yeah, that's how I interpret that text texts. And I'm like, we've already seen evidence that James Harden can mix in with other stars. He just bails at the first point where it doesn't look like they're going to win a championship.

[Seth Payne]

That's all.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's how I assess it, at least. All right, Pain and Pendergast with you. Big announcement coming up at 10:00am today. All right, we're doing a little take a mania early here. Won't necessarily be an official take a mania, but two of the best edge rushers conversing about something and wow, some silly stuff getting said. And. And also John Harbaugh has spoken. Yes. He saw Cam Scatterbo almost snap his leg again. What did he think about that?

[Seth Payne]

Sports Radio 610 presents live from the West Point Lincoln and West Point Lincoln of Sugarland Studios.

[Sean Pendergast]

Here's Pain and Pendergast. Payne and Pendergast with you. Big announcement coming at 10am this morning. Right. At 10. So be here early. Just be here. Just stay here. That's the easiest thing.

[Seth Payne]

Announcement. We're gonna let everybody know whether that shirt is actually burgundy or maroon. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. We're gonna put it up on social media and let you guys pick, like

[Seth Payne]

the blue, gray, red shirt, maroon shirt.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes, yes, yes. Exactly. Exactly. What are you. What are your thoughts on Micah Parsons coming into the season? Oh, he is silly. Yes.

[Seth Payne]

I think look is a run of the mill acl. We haven't had any clips of like

[Sean Pendergast]

Fred Van Vliet saying, though it sounds

[Seth Payne]

he will miss some time. But it was late in the year. Right. I mean, it was very late in the.

[Sean Pendergast]

The year's late in the season.

[Seth Payne]

It was way later in the year than I had remembered. I. I had misremembered it and I had to fact check myself last week when Luke was 13 games. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that. I think he'll be fine. But yeah, they're going to be careful with him. And it's just because he can come back from an ACL in nine months doesn't mean that it's always the best idea to come back in nine months.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

So I think he's going to be just fine.

[Sean Pendergast]

So Micah on his podcast had Miles Garrett.

[Seth Payne]

Plus we saw Micah working out at the Pro Bowl.

[Sean Pendergast]

We know he's rehabbing diligently.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Because he took up the entire home hotel exercise room. He treated it like it was his own personal gym.

[Sean Pendergast]

Kid running around.

[Seth Payne]

He had his family in there. He had his massage table set up in the middle of the gym, like. And it's a hotel gym. It was a nice hotel. Yeah, it was a nice gym and everything. But it's not. It's not. It's not a 20,000. It's not a lifetime fitness or something, you know, and you're like. Like, what the hell's going on?

[Sean Pendergast]

Trying to get over the elliptical, and you're having to, like, kind of make yourself thin to slide by it.

[Seth Payne]

I also didn't like that the entire time. Time that his physical therapist, whoever was there working on him was. Micah was on his phone the whole time, like, not really interacting with the. The physical therapist. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And he wasn't paying too much attention to his rehab.

[Seth Payne]

He looked pretty healthy. And that was just a. That was only a month or two after the surgery.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, it was. It was pretty. Pretty, pretty near after his surgery. So he's got his podcast. He had Miles Garrett on there. This is Micah Parsons. Miles Garrett, who now holds the single season sacrifice record. Yeah, I broke the record last year. One defensive player of the year. Clearly, Will Anderson was part of this conversation at some point as well. Cause his name gets dropped in here. It's a Micah and Miles thing, but Will's name gets dropped in here early. But this is Micah Parsons kind of going at Miles Garrett, talking about the record and how Micah's gonna break it. Just take. Take a listen to. To Micah here.

[Seth Payne]

I think I'm still right here because

[Sean Pendergast]

I still do things that none of

[Seth Payne]

y' all y' all do.

[Sean Pendergast]

Who is.

[Seth Payne]

Who is none of y'?

[Host/Announcer]

All?

[Sean Pendergast]

You will rest of the league.

[Seth Payne]

Like what? Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

[Sean Pendergast]

Thank you, bro.

[Seth Payne]

Hold on, hold on. What are we talking about? Hold on, hold on, hold on. Yes, that record stands, and we're not taking that away, but we're talking about actual gameplay here, y'. All. There's nobody in the A league who can line up from left to right and play every position as if they

[Sean Pendergast]

got paid at that position.

[Host/Announcer]

Facts.

[Seth Payne]

I have a sack at every spot across the line you can have a sack at. I'm talking about truly play it at my weight. I can't beat 240, bro. That's facts. That's not what I'm asked to do. I. You know, I actually got to set the edge. Go ahead and break it again. The league's been holding me back for years, brother.

[Sean Pendergast]

If.

[Seth Payne]

If you're. If you're ahead of Me in. In one step as far as double team, it might be like a half a percentage. And pressures. Pressures. They said on the screen, I let the league. And pressures.

[Sean Pendergast]

What you.

[Host/Announcer]

What you want?

[Seth Payne]

Sacks or pressures? I'm just saying I play 13 games,

[Sean Pendergast]

so obviously I'm getting to the quarterback.

[Seth Payne]

In 13 games, I had 18 sacks. I'm not going to lie.

[Sean Pendergast]

That was suspicious. Miles Garrett, didn't it sound like at the end, like Micah. That was Micah at the very end, where he goes. I'm not gonna lie. I thought he was gonna do like, you're pretty damn good.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm not gonna lie. I thought that bleep was suspicious.

[Seth Payne]

Was he talking about the sacrifice? I like Miles or Micah Parsons.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's very entertaining.

[Seth Payne]

He's entertaining. He gets into these arguments and he gets so far out over skis. Remember when he was arguing with CJ a couple of years ago about how the NFC east was the best division based on. Based on. In a year where the NFC east was horrible? He was saying, based on preseason predictions last year, we were the best. Yeah, but you weren't. You're awful.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know, you played a season after that.

[Seth Payne]

I think. I think that CJ Said the AFC north was the best division, and Miles Garrett comes in acting like. Acting like he had an argument.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So like he just now, here, okay, you can argue this way or that way about, you know, like, hey, he's got some points he could make about being a better pass rusher or whatever than Myles Garrett, but as soon as he starts in, like, who else can line up at every position along the line? I'm like, well, listen, look, Myles Garrett could line up a defensive tackle and if it turns out to be a run, actually do something.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Like, Miles Garrett is 240 pounds. That's not just because you can do it and you can rush the passer. Anybody in the league can do that. You do it really, really, really well. But you're Talking to a 285 pound freaking nature that, that he can do some things because of his body weight, that you can't do that. And plus, yeah, no, you can't line up and play actual nose tackle Micah Parsons. You know, it's just. No, but he does because he's smaller and faster. He can do some things at those positions that Miles Garrett or that Will Anderson couldn't do. But. But it's because he's smaller, which makes him. And he's not as imposing a run defender as Will Anderson and Miles Garrett.

[Sean Pendergast]

I mean, it's a little like Romeo Cornell used to do. Do this with Clowney. He did it with Whitney Merciless, too, which is probably a better example than Clowny Clown. He's bigger and more stout. But they would line up if in certain situations.

[Seth Payne]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

They'd line smaller guys up over.

[Seth Payne]

So yeah, no. And as like Will Anderson had that sack last year where he. Or this last season where he just bull rushed the center.

[Sean Pendergast]

Shove the center back.

[Seth Payne]

I don't even got a sack on that player. Not. He just destroyed the center.

[Sean Pendergast]

I know the center wound up hitting the quarterback.

[Seth Payne]

I think that they're. They're different. Different types of guys. And it's funny because, yeah, Micah Parsons, the undersized guy who's just so blisteringly athletic that it's scary and he got a lot of his best work he does against the run is when he's just jetting up field or through a knifing through a hole. But he can't set the edge the way Miles Garrett or Will Anderson can. And Will's kind of like in the middle of those two. Miles Garrett is like the extremely large freak of nature. Micah Parsons is the smaller freak of nature. Will Anderson is like right in the middle of like, hybrid of both those guys.

[Sean Pendergast]

I don't know what the conversation was leading into that. I just thought as a Texans fan, it was cool that when Micah Parsons started arguing with Miles Garrett.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

The guys he brought up were Miles, obviously, because he's sitting five feet away from him. And then Will Anderson and then it was a bunch of other guys. I said, he said or whatever it was. I'm like, that's kind of nice having our guy. I think that lofty atmosphere.

[Seth Payne]

I'll say this, though, too, that of those three, and this is the same reason the Texans drafted up so high to. To get Will. It's the. It's the intangibles and it's the leadership element and everything that I think that Will is just. He's above both those guys. Like, there's people wondered, like Miles Garrett, the. The like does not have a reputation as a guy who's like blood and guts in it for his teammates. All that stuff. You know, Micah Parsons. We're not so sure if people even liked Micah Parsons by the time he left the Cowboys, he's a different dude. Like, Will Anderson is the. He's like everything. He's a coach's dream in terms of the. The personality traits and everything.

[Sean Pendergast]

This is a very. This text is a variation of what you're saying right now those guys don't have the heart or motor that will.

[Seth Payne]

Right? Yeah. Like, no. And it's not even close. I don't think. I don't think any Cowboys, packers or Browns fans would argue against that either. I think that it was, you know, I don't want to make too much of it, but the fact that none of the Browns players expressed any remorse about, about Miles Garrett leaving and I think there's an element of like, I think the Browns want Jared Verse to come in. Jared Verse is. He seems to me, just by virtue of the way he plays, he's wired a little bit more like Will Anderson.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

So I think if you're the Browns and you're like, okay, we want a young pass rusher, he's not going to be as good a pass rusher as Myles Garrett, but he's everything we want in the type of attitude we want moving forward. Jared Verse plays football that way and yes, he's not as good a player as Miles Garrett overall, but there's just.

[Host/Announcer]

He's got Oregon Parks make an Oregon Summer but what makes an Oregon Park? Well, Oregon Lottery Gameplay helps no matter the game. Megabucks, video lottery or keno funds from lottery games help support parks projects across the state, ensuring they stay safe, accessible, and open for all. In fact, Discover State Park Scratches are in stores now. It's the perfect way to put a little bit of Oregon's parks in your pocket. The Oregon Lottery Together, we do good things. Must be 18 or older to play. Lottery games are based on chance and should be played for entertainment.

[Sean Pendergast]

There are moments that define who you

[Host/Announcer]

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[Sean Pendergast]

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[Host/Announcer]

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[Sean Pendergast]

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[Sean Pendergast]

And I'm Angela Kinsey. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies. Just because we finished Rewatching the Office

[Host/Announcer]

does not mean we're going anywhere.

[Sean Pendergast]

Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the Office and our friendship with brand new guests. Plus, you can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. So follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever

[Host/Announcer]

you get your podcasts.

[Seth Payne]

Nothing beats tradition like weekly game nights at Mom's House and Tostitos crafted with masa made the traditional way, starting with whole corn kernels with flavors worth gathering around like a hint of lime and Mexico Mexican street corn and no artificial

[Sean Pendergast]

colors, flavors or preservatives.

[Seth Payne]

That's the Tostitos way. Bring Tostitos to your next game night and you'll be winning either way. Tostitos tradition matters,

[Sean Pendergast]

yeah, at Carl's Jr.

[Seth Payne]

When late night cravings hit, you hit back after 8pm for just $5.99. Bag the Cali Classic Spicy Chicken Sandwich or for a limited time, the Bacon Cheeseburger. Decide between fries or onion rings and get four chicken stars. You build it. We bag it just 5.99. Build your bag all day and unlock more choices on the app.

[Sean Pendergast]

Available for a limited time at participating restaurants.

[Seth Payne]

Tax not included.

[Sean Pendergast]

Price may vary.

[Seth Payne]

Not valid to any other offer, discount or combo.

[Sean Pendergast]

See app for details.

[Seth Payne]

Got a certain tenacity and viciousness to them that Miles Garrett. No doubt. No doubt about it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Cam Scatterbo, running back for the New York Giants who headed his leg, just destroyed in a game this past year. The big thing was a broken tibia, but he's rehabbed his injury. He's looking ready to go. He was at Fanatics Fest this past weekend and did a standing backflip, after which when he landed, he stumbled. It didn't look great and people were wondering, boy, John Harbaugh's got to be having an aneurysm watching Cam Scatterbo do these things. Here's John Harbaugh on He was on with Bob Papa, the play by play guy for the Giants, and Carl Banks, the former linebacker for the Giants. They were on a YouTube stream together and they asked him, what was your reaction when you saw Scatterbo doing the backflip? What's up with the backflip and Scatterbo?

[Seth Payne]

What was your reaction when you saw that on your timeline?

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, my reaction when I saw it on my phone. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

My reaction was was I haven't talked to him yet.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm going to talk to him, I'm sure. But my reaction was this dude, at least stick it. You know what I mean? Land the thing if you're going to do it. You know, that was my first reaction. So.

[Host/Announcer]

So.

[Sean Pendergast]

But, you know, Scott's going to be ready to go, and he's going to be. He's been working super hard. He's really been training like crazy, and his mind is on camp. You know, he's. He's, he's. He's healthy, he's ready to roll, and I can't wait to see him out there at practice.

[Seth Payne]

The. I wish it would have been. I wish it had been one of Jim Harbaugh's players. I feel like Jim Harbaugh would. Had something more colorful or something, you know. Yeah. You know, like I always say, if you're. You know what? If you're. If you're bored, you're boring. He doesn't look bored at all. I like guys that have a little bit of juice to him.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's funny you say that about Harbaugh. John Harbaugh.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I. There was. The Giants, I think, are doing one of these internal documentaries. You know, the Texans do stuff like that. Iron sharpens iron. The Texans do. So the Giants are doing one where they're. You know, the Harbaugh area is off to its start, and so I think the first episode is dropped. Maybe it was like a meeting with some of the. It might have been like the first meeting with the rookie.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

They put up on YouTube. They put like a minute of it up on YouTube. Like the first minute that Harbaugh's up in front of the team, I'm like, oh, this would be pretty good. I'm gonna. I'm gonna pull this audio for the show. He was boring. He's like, yes. It's the beginning, huh, guys?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

The beginning is. That's like. It's like a big deal. It's an honor to be here in front of you guys for. You know, it's so. Where you start things.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

At the beginning, but that's how.

[Seth Payne]

I don't know.

[Sean Pendergast]

Can we get to the gym? Harbor part of it.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. The. The Wait, who's. That was John.

[Sean Pendergast]

It was John. Can we get some more like. Yeah, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

A lot of the. But that's the thing about the. The whole thing about pep talks and speeches and all that is that, like, in the NFL or in pro sports in general, it just. It's got such limited impact, you know? D', Ameco, one of my favorite clips from d' Amico was when he was. When the Texans hired Him. I went back and watched all his press conferences from San Francisco because, you know, the coordinators meet once a week. So I was kind of like getting a feel for the way he's operating, operating and everything. And one of my favorite quotes somebody had asked him was like, how do you hold these guys to this certain standard on defense to where they play so hard and practice so hard? And the Miko's like, we don't, we don't really talk about it much. We just, there's an expectation and we get the right guys in.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

That act a certain way and it says that if you need a, if you need a pep talk or you need a fiery speech to get guys going, you probably don't have the right group of guys and they're probably. It's going to be very short lived.

[Sean Pendergast]

The most effective pep talk is getting a room full of guys that don't need a pep talk.

[Seth Payne]

Right, right. Yeah. Like you hold people to standards and you got your little slogans and everything. You might say, but like Larry. Yeah. Like they've got, they got Swarm posters up all over the place. But it's, it doesn't have to be a moving movie, you know, Hollywood version of a pep talk all the time.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right. All right, final segment coming up. Big announcement coming up at 10am I would say just stick around and hang out. It is a big announcement. Will not disappoint. At 10am we'll find out what the guys got going on on in the loop as well. What's the question? Here's Pain and Pender. All right, painted Pendergast with you. Final segment here of the show coming up. We've got big announcement coming up at 10am so be here for that. We'll find out what the guys got going on on in the Loop. Seth, we were talking earlier in the hour about the Miami Heat accidentally, definitely accidentally posting a link to, to a, an introductory press conference that would take place on Monday, July 27th to introduce LeBron James as a member of the Miami Heat. That was definitely done accidentally. The question is, was it, was it being posted because there actually is going to be a press conference or is the Heat story on this thing the actual real story? Which is. No, we were just in potentially putting.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Getting our ducks in a row.

[Sean Pendergast]

Getting our ducks in a row. We don't know what he's doing yet, but boy, we better have that link ready.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

For the press conference.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Our former web guy here at Sports Radio 610, Garrett Heinrich said that that's that sounds like a normal mistake in digital programming. And Garrett's obviously posted thousands of YouTube videos where you hit publish.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Instead of schedule. He says he's done it before.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I said, so that means. Means this is my follow up to him. I said, that means they're. They're probably getting LeBron. Right. Like, you wouldn't do that unless there's. There's a reason to do it. He said, yes. You do not set that up unless it's happening.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Unless you're trying to sabotage someone else. But that feels really, really weird.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. So it's almost in our minds. And according to Garrett Heinrich, if you want to go bet money on this, take four. Take out of your 401k.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Garrett's telling you to go ahead and bet your entire life savings on it.

[Sean Pendergast]

I wonder if they've pulled it off the board based on.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

If you can't. If you can't bet on it. The odds came out yesterday that the Heat. The Heat were the favorite as of yesterday to land LeBron. Even money.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Bet a dollar, win a dollar. Bet a hundred, win 100. Cleveland was two. Cleveland has not been any lower than two on any odds board since LeBron's season ended back in May. And then, you know, Philly, Golden State, Minnesota's on the fringe. Those are the teams.

[Seth Payne]

I don't like any kind of gambling on things that are going to be determined before the event. Yeah. Like where people know. There's people that actually know the outcome before it. Because that's like. That's right. Like, people can. Starting with their conspiracy theories about NFL games. But, like, if you, like with award shows, like, who's going to win the Oscar, Whatever. Like. All right, I know. I know Arthur Anderson keeps this all under lock and key and what. But whatever. The. The outcome's already been determined. I don't. I. If I were a gambler, I would have a hard time just putting money on something in that I know has already been determined a lot. I don't like it. It doesn't feel right.

[Sean Pendergast]

A lot of times with bets like that, there's very low limits on it. Yeah. So that. So the casinos can't get killed.

[Seth Payne]

And there's no incentive for somebody to go awol and like. Like somebody who does. Like, if there's five people in the world, you know, none of those five people are thinking, oh, I can make a million dollars right now.

[Sean Pendergast]

There are lines on summerslams, but they're really low limits.

[Seth Payne]

So, like, they actually prefer somebody for Somebody to actually go out and do something illegal or that it's going to get them fired.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

It's probably not worth it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Low limits. And at least with the wrestling ones, because I think this fits what you're talking about, which is these are literally scripted events.

[Seth Payne]

Whatever. Conspiracy theorists.

[Sean Pendergast]

Most of the time. Most of the time you don't know that that's true. Most of the time the lines are so skewed.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

To where the favorite is a heavy favorite. You know, like, so it's you. The only time I can remember a heavy underdog winning where I was like, oh, wow. Was when Brock Lesnar broke the Undertaker had an undefeated streak at WrestleMania. He was like 17 and oh. At WrestleMania and Brock Lesnar broke the streak. And the Undertaker every year at WrestleMania mania was like a minus a thousand favorite to win his match. And that year he was too. And Brock Lesnar was like, plus 600 and he won. And I'm like, holy crap. I would love to know what happened in the back betting markets with this.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Because it's almost like with wrestling, it's like you don't even bother betting on an underdog if the line's that heavy. Like that means somebody's talked to the scriptwriter.

[Seth Payne]

Were people upset that Brock Lesnar won? Kind of, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

People. People like the Undertaker, you know, that's. You know that somebody was going to break the streak eventually.

[Seth Payne]

Byron, you said you were.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, I'm a big Undertaker guy. Yeah, that's my favorite wrestler. He's from Houston also, so I think we're a little biased.

[Seth Payne]

Where'd he go to high school?

[Sean Pendergast]

He went to high school with Jerome Solomon. He. I think Milby maybe. No, that's where Bruce Pritchard went. Undertaker High School, Houston. Where did he go? I know. Texas.

[Seth Payne]

The hard driving sports trip. He went to Waltrip.

[Sean Pendergast]

Waltrip High School.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Waltrip High School.

[Seth Payne]

That.

[Sean Pendergast]

This has nothing to do with the big announcement.

[Seth Payne]

So LeBron. LeBron is almost. We're so you've convinced me that LeBron's almost definitely going to be in Miami.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think. I think he's going to Miami.

[Seth Payne]

All right.

[Sean Pendergast]

And I've got the timeline nailed down.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's coming either this afternoon or tomorrow. Because he wouldn't do it on. He wouldn't. It's. He's going to announce on social media with a video or something in the next 36 hours. Cause he wouldn't do it on a Friday.

[Seth Payne]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's when. That's when news that you're trying to bury drops yeah. But definitely not do it on a weekend because people are busy. And then the. He'll drop it in the next two days. The press conference is Monday, so that all the shows can talk about it for the rest of the week.

[Seth Payne]

I like. You know what? I like anything that's interesting to me but that I can watch for from afar. So, you know, go do your thing over in the Eastern Conference and it'll be fun. It'll be fun to watch. I am intrigued by antenna, KMPO and. And LeBron being on the same court together.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm with you on that.

[Seth Payne]

I was like. I'm like, that's not a hot basketball take.

[Sean Pendergast]

The Golden State thing would have been fun just because, wow, this is a really old, old core they've got there.

[Seth Payne]

And that's. But that, you know what I don't like about that is that it ends up being depressing.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Because more times than not, it's just. Yeah. The old. The old guys like Steve Nash and Carl Malone.

[Sean Pendergast]

Lakers.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. When the late people got so excited about that Lakers team and you realize, like 20 games into the season. Oh. Oh, all right. Yeah. That whole father time thing that they always talk about is true. That's Mother Nature being undefeated.

[Sean Pendergast]

Indeed. Indeed. So, yeah, I think it's coming down. I think it's coming down in the. In the. In the next 36 hours with LeBron. That's my prediction. John Lopez and Reggie Attatula are settling in. We're settling. This is not any normal Wednesday off the station.

[Seth Payne]

Reginald, I brought you oranges in case you want any. I don't know if you saw them or not. If you have.

[Sean Pendergast]

Dude, I didn't see it. I love it because I already have my normal oranges. And so today I'm going to be real vitamin C up. Yeah. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Your clementines are so much smaller than mine, though. Look at that. You should be embarrassed. It's good that it's just the audio clip, because what we actually did physically

[Sean Pendergast]

is he had the two in one hand.

[Seth Payne]

Clementine.

[Sean Pendergast]

They're over here in this. They're over here in this clementine measuring contest. That's right.

[Seth Payne]

There's a couple of San Francisco Giants,

[Sean Pendergast]

a couple of Giants outfielders or something. Yeah, yeah.

[Host/Announcer]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

It is not a Normal Wednesday.

[Sean Pendergast]

In seven minutes, LeBron James is going to announce that he is becoming a host here. Diana Rossini, Radio 610. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Rossini and Lopez.

[Sean Pendergast]

Hey, what are the wild.

[Host/Announcer]

What are the.

[Sean Pendergast]

What are the. What were some of the better?

[Seth Payne]

That was one of the better.

[Sean Pendergast]

So you guys were doing for the Clark. You. You're doing wrong. Wrong answers only. Those were good ones. Someone thought that my favorite one, because this was so pure of heart. Somebody was like, they're going to announce the Seth is a grandfather. And I was like, I love that you guys think that we would.

[Seth Payne]

We make this whole big hoopla for me. Look at the baby. A grandfather.

[Sean Pendergast]

Look a baby. Days in advance posting social media. I'd be. I would be mad if I were Lopez.

[Seth Payne]

Dude, they were coming at me from every angle.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, no, I'm saying if that were the thing. Seth being a grandparent, like Lopez over here, like, three times, multiple times over. And we're about to have a party for Steph.

[Seth Payne]

My thing was everybody kept going. Is Lopez retiring? Like, come on. Hey.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. I said to you guys during the break, I'm like, will you really find out how people feel about you in the station posts about stuff like this? I got all the comments on Facebook.

[Seth Payne]

I should have started a rumor that I was to be replaced with JJ Watt or something just to really destroy my own ego.

[Sean Pendergast]

And then.

[Seth Payne]

And I want to see all those. About time. So, yeah. And then. Was it Figgy that said, no, they wouldn't make that big a deal out of you? Retire. Was he serious? That's great. Push you off on an ice float somewhere. I'll have a Viking funeral.

[Sean Pendergast]

Give Lopez a Viking departure.

[Seth Payne]

Put me a boy on a boat and set it on fire.

[Sean Pendergast]

Someone, Adam says, I swear to God, if something's happening to Figgy, I'm starting a riot.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Now, Figgy will be here. It's all good. Figgy will be here. Spoiler alert. Figgy will be here. I mean, as much as we can tell that anyone will be here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not the big announcement. Let's put it that way. So we got five minutes coming up till that. So we're counting down. So prior to doing the big announcement here, let's do a little normal crosstalk. What is the quickest. Well, hang on. What is the question of the day? I'm gonna get the disclaimer in here in 20 seconds, but what is the question of the day? So you saw Joshua Kuroda Grauer had a ruptured testicle.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, we talked about that a little bit.

[Sean Pendergast]

We call those clementines.

[Seth Payne]

Clementine.

[Sean Pendergast]

He had a ruptured clementine.

[Host/Announcer]

And.

[Seth Payne]

And we're not necessarily saying injuries, but

[Sean Pendergast]

what's a term or a phrase that you absolutely never want to hear just as an example?

[Seth Payne]

So it's not necessarily ruptured testicle, because you never want to hear that. You also never want to hear anal fissure. Those are medical things.

[Sean Pendergast]

But one of the camera. Kazmatsui.

[Seth Payne]

I just always remember being amazed that it's pronounced Fisher. Yeah. Like, why would you make it that easy to turn into something else?

[Sean Pendergast]

That would be a good prank to play on Blake Fisher.

[Seth Payne]

Like, if he.

[Sean Pendergast]

If he doesn't play well again this year. Like, look, if you're in the bottom 20% on PFF. You have to change your name for the season.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Not from F I S H, but to the other version on your jersey. You got to put.

[Seth Payne]

You know what. Okay. So. So do you want to. Did you do the disclaimer?

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, thank you, Seth. You're listening to KLTM, KLT FM HD2, Houston, and Odyssey Sports Station Crosstalk, brought to you by DNA Models.

[Seth Payne]

You know, the one thing I was disappointed in is that I never got. I got cut twice in my career, and. And I never. I never got the old, like, hey, can you bring your playbook in?

[Sean Pendergast]

Really?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. No, no, no. Twice. Okay. I got cut twice. Once it was Gary Kubia called me. And this is after my 10th year in the NFL. Gary Kubia called me, But I knew what was coming. And Gary. It's cool that Gary himself called me. I felt like, oh, that's nice.

[Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

You know, so that was cool. And when I was in the next training camp, the guy wouldn't play again. But I was in training camp the next year. They called me in, but they called me at, like, you know, 6am on an off day. So I think they told me to be. I can't remember. I think I said, all right, you want me to bring my playbook? Right? And they're like, oh, yeah. Cause it's some intern calling me, you know? Yeah, don't worry about it, kid. I'm not sure I want to play anymore. Anyway, the one that I mentioned to

[Sean Pendergast]

Sean off air is even though we feel as if we're all relatively well

[Seth Payne]

established and, you know, not in any trouble, at least until we get something

[Sean Pendergast]

wrong, but anytime my boss or anyone

[Seth Payne]

says, hey, would you mind closing the door? I have like, a half second of, oh, yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You're a trapped animal. Tell you, Parker hit me with a three. Like. Like a three punch on that one yesterday, because we were joking yesterday about how I made a comment about Parker lets us eat cake. And, you know, the connotation, everything. I'm, oh, now I'm going to get fired. Yeah, and then I botched the. The. The disc. The FCC disclaimer. I botched that. I'm going to get fired for that. I go to Parker's office. He asks me, close the door. So I close the door, and he says, I'm not going to fire you for the cake comment, I suppose. Okay, I'm not gonna fire you for messing up the disclaimer. Now I'm like, building up to something. You get to that second. Once you get to a second one, you're like, then I am getting fired for something. And he pauses, and I'm like, what am I getting fired? He's like, you're not getting fired. I was just telling you you're not getting fired. I'm like, what the hell, man? For a second there. What the hell? For a second there, when you got to the second one, I was like. And now we get to our announcement. Yeah, no, no. Parker's here, by the way, real quick to answer the question of the day. Texts that say two words. Call me. Oh, yeah. Because if it's from somebody that actually is allowed to do that with me, it means it's urgent. I don't like urgent things. Yeah. If it's somebody else, you don't have the. If you're telling me I hate being on the phone. If you're saying, call me, you better have a damn good reason to say, call me, you better tell me why I'm supposed to call you. Right. With that said, we bring in the man who scared the bejesus out of me yesterday. And all of you also. Sorry about that one, Sean. Yeah, man. I like to have a little bit of fun with you. It's been a fun couple of days around here. Ticker, you know? Yeah, it's been an awesome couple of days around here.

[Seth Payne]

Every time Parker tells me to close the door first, I start disrobing.

[Sean Pendergast]

I've never asked you to do that. Hold on.

[Seth Payne]

Let me be really, really clear. I've never once asked you to do that.

[Sean Pendergast]

In fact, I immediately say, whoa, Parker,

[Seth Payne]

that's not what I meant. Easy, easy.

[Sean Pendergast]

Parker doesn't jump Parker doesn't jump on the air. Very often when you do this is what you're jumping into right now is this whole thing. I'm used to it. I enjoy it. Usually when I jump on the air, it's because big things are happening. Right. And I typically don't wear jackets around the office, but I felt like on a day like today, this was a jacket kind of day.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know, we've been teasing this big announcement since yesterday morning and admittedly it's been really entertaining to kind of see the reckless speculation that has been coming in on all our socials on the text line. And look, this is a massive day for us and we weren't kidding when we said that this was a major announcement. I will go so far as to say this is the biggest announcement that has ever been heard on sports radio six time period. We've been doing this for 32 years. We've had a lot of really cool things to talk about. Today is a day that is going to go down in history on this station and as we're 10 seconds away, I want to make sure we hit this tease absolutely perfectly. I can't be the one that makes

[Host/Announcer]

the announcement Oregon Parks make an Oregon Summer but what makes an Oregon Park? Well, Oregon Lottery Gameplay helps no matter the game Megabucks, video lottery or keno funds from lottery games help support parks projects across the state, ensuring they stay safe, safe, accessible and open for all. In fact, Discover State Park Scratches are in stores now. It's the perfect way to put a little bit of Oregon's parks in your pocket. The Oregon Lottery Together we do good things. Must be 18 or older to play. Lottery games are based on chance and should be played for entertainment only.

[Sean Pendergast]

Maxing is so maxing right now bro.

[Seth Payne]

Get ready for Spicy Chicken maxing because

[Sean Pendergast]

Carl's Jr. Is saving you big with

[Seth Payne]

a 5.99 maxed out double stack Double

[Sean Pendergast]

Stack Double Stack Spicy Chicken sandwich.

[Seth Payne]

Seriously, just $5.99 double stack spicy Chicken. This is unreal value in the bromosphere.

[Sean Pendergast]

The new Spicy Chicken Max Wallet Friendly

[Seth Payne]

Max Tasty only at Carl's Jr available for a limited time at participating restaurants.

[Host/Announcer]

Tax on included.

[Sean Pendergast]

Not valid for use within a combo or a combination with any other offered discount.

[Host/Announcer]

Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard but not the pipeline? That's bullspend and marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions.

[Seth Payne]

My boss asked for results so I

[Sean Pendergast]

opened my dash for the only positive

[Host/Announcer]

sounding metric I had. Impressions Cut the bull spend. See revenue, not just reach LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad NETWORKS. Advertise on LinkedIn spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com campaign terms and conditions apply. Finding ways to be financially savvy is a smart move, and knowing you could be saving money for the things you really want like that dream home or new new ride is a great feeling. That's why the State Farm Personal Price Plan can help you save when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Head to statefarm.com to get a quote. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts, and savings and eligibility vary by state.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm Toba Neath.

[Host/Announcer]

And I'm Kristen Press. We're World cup champions, Olympians, and the hosts of the Recap Show. Week in and week out, we celebrate. Sit down with sports legends, cultural icons and global change makers to talk everything from clutch games to causes that matter. This is about creating the future of women's sports. A future that's honest, inclusive and real. Join us for our reimagined journey. Follow and listen to the Recap show wherever you get your podcasts.