Payne and Pendergast Full Show July 28,2026

Summary

Payne & Pendergast Full Show — July 28, 2026
Guest Host: Brandon Scott in for Seth Payne

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Episode Overview

Sean Pendergast and Brandon Scott (in for Seth Payne) break down one of the wildest Astros wins of the season, discuss Texans training camp storylines—including the mystery around Tank Dell—and tackle a surprising etiquette debate about babies in fine dining. With a blend of sharp Houston sports insight and their signature relatable banter, Sean and Brandon go deep on baseball, football, and the quirks of everyday life, fielding a flood of colorful listener reactions along the way.

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Astros' Improbable Comeback Win Over Angels

Ninth-Inning Chaos: Analysis & Recap

• [01:51–14:00, 34:57–44:00, 139:44+]
  The hosts detail the Astros' 6–4 comeback win versus the Angels—a game full of errors, walks, and wild plays in the ninth inning.

Key Points:

• Astros trailed 4–2 entering the ninth, having managed just one hit in the 10-batter frame—and still scored four runs.
• Angles’ mistakes: Two errors (including a potential game-ending double play botched), two hit batsmen (including the tying run), a passed ball, a walk with bases loaded.
• Angels intentionally walked Yordan Alvarez to load the bases, only to hit the next batter and walk in another run.
• The comeback was as much about Houston’s grit as the “classic collapse” by the Angels.

Memorable Exchanges:

• Sean [13:22]: "These were two—one really bad baseball team and one just really inconsistent, mediocre baseball team. And I'm glad I got to watch it on YouTube."
• Brandon [14:06]: “Ninth loss for the Angels this season when leading after eight innings...I don't know if you can describe collapse any more clearly.”

Notable Quotes:

• Sean [14:44]: "The MVP of this game undoubtedly was Christian Javier. ...five innings in relief, three hits, no runs, no walks, seven strikeouts.”
• Brandon [15:14]: “Is the ‘invisible’ still invisible? ...And shout out to him last night for actually performing when the Astros needed him most.”

Tatsuya Imai & Astros' Rotation Uncertainty

• [16:00–24:00]
  Discussion of Imai’s highly inconsistent outings—dominant or disaster, with huge ramifications for the bullpen and rotation plans.

Key Stats:

• When Imai pitches 5+ innings: Opponents .163 BA, sub-1.0 WHIP.
• When less than 5 innings: Opponents .347 BA, WHIP ~2.5.

Notable Quotes:

• Sean [21:59]: “He’s putting nearly three guys on base per inning and giving up a batting average that would basically win the batting title in a runaway...”

Trade Deadline: Jeremy Peña Rumors

• [146:16+]
  Sean reacts to The Athletic’s Chandler Rome predicting Peña could be moved to replenish the farm system—a hot take both hosts doubt Jim Crane would actually pull off mid-year.

Notable Quotes:

• Sean [147:38]: “That would be the Astros saying, we don't think we can win this thing this year... we have no chance.”
• Brandon [149:00]: “It is best for the long-term...but I think right now I care more about the moment and the short-term viability...”

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Texans Training Camp: Tank Dell’s Mystery & More

The Tank Dell Question

• [25:09–34:20, 172:31–174:43]
  Sean & Brandon tackle Houston’s biggest preseason mystery: What can and should be expected from Tank Dell, returning from injury?

Main Talking Points:

• Dell hasn’t played football in over a year—status for camp is still the number one question among fans and hosts alike.
• Workout videos show speed/agility, but real concern is: “Is Tank ready for violence?” (i.e., real football contact) [Brandon, 27:39]
• Is Dell more than a slot receiver? His health could completely shift WR depth chart & Texans offense potential.
• If he’s still on the PUP (Physically Unable to Perform) list when camp opens, mood changes fast.

Noteworthy Quotes:

• Sean [29:01]: “He’s joined what I call the Clowney club... Every time he gets hurt, you’re going to be looking at everything—his joints, legs, whole body.”
• Brandon [34:20]: “If he's out there, that's a huge game changer... What does Tank Dell, recovering from traumatic injury in contract season look like?”

Defensive Outlook: Are There Any Weaknesses?

• [55:57–73:42]
  Sparked by Todd Haley comparing Houston’s 2026 defense to the legendary ‘85 Bears (yes, really).

Big Points:

• Defensive depth is so strong, the weakest link is “who backs up the All-Pro DEs.”
• Even with the loss of E.J. Speed, linebacking and DB depth is still at “embarrassment of riches” level.
• Listener and host speculation on injuries and nickel/base defense roles (especially if Jalen Pitre goes down).

Notable Quotes:

• Todd Haley via Brandon [56:55]: “I don't see any weaknesses in this group. ...I would not want to play this defense as an offensive coordinator.”
• Sean [73:23]: “If there’s a world that’s better than first world problems, that’s the Texans defense right now—these are monarchy, oligarch problems.”

Is CJ Stroud Top 10... on His Own Team?

• [60:27–67:14]
  In a creative breakdown inspired by the NFL Top 100: Is CJ Stroud even one of the ten best Texans purely at doing their job?

The List:

• Will Anderson Jr., Danielle Hunter, Nico Collins, Derek Stingley Jr., Kamari Lassiter, Jalen Pitre, Kaylin Bullock, Aziz Al-Shaair—before you get to Stroud.
• Dalton Schultz and David Montgomery were on the bubble.

Notable Quotes:

• Brandon [62:44]: “I had him ninth. ...Had I left Kaimi [Fairbairn] on, [the kicker] would have been ahead of Stroud.”
• Sean [63:02]: “If you just talk about better at their job, are we holding it against David Montgomery that he wasn’t on the Texans last year?”

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Pettycast & Off-Field Banter: Squirrels, Babies, and Etiquette

The Squirrel Saga

• [46:19–49:58, 91:05–92:10]
  Outrage and delight over a massive black squirrel on the Tigers’ field brings out a swarm of fun texts and playful social commentary.

Memorable Exchange:

• Sean [47:03]: “Shout out to the men of that stadium...no less than like a dozen guys go out there and get after it trying to capture this thing.”
• Brandon [47:29]: “It looked genetically engineered! ...That squirrel was not normal.” (laughs)

Fine Dining Baby Etiquette Debate

• [94:00–103:41, 123:25–126:47, 184:25+]
  Sean’s story of a couple bringing a strollered baby (and breastfeeding at the table) to Mastro’s launches the longest, most passionate, and text-filled etiquette conversation ever.

The Scene:

• Couple w/ baby at expensive steakhouse; dad walks baby around table for 15 min. Mother breastfeeds at table (with blanket).
• Multiple managers quietly check with Sean/Amy to gauge their reaction—hosts’ wives and listeners weigh in.

The Debate:

• Sean: Fine-dining isn’t for infants. Can’t enjoy $400+ meal in nursery conditions; bring kids to kid-friendly spots!
• Brandon: His wife would breastfeed in public, but they’d never bring a stroller baby to a steakhouse; proper etiquette means stay home or step outside if child acts up.
• Lopez (when asked): “So many mitigating factors if you bring your baby...but after that, whether it’s breastfeeding or burping or crying, you GO OUTSIDE.”

Listener Feedback:

• Opinions split; most texts side with “no strollers” rule for upscale dining, a vocal minority defend “natural” parenting everywhere.

Notable Quotes:

• Sean [100:09]: “This is somewhere people go to get away from babies.”
• Brandon [101:26]: “We probably would not have taken the baby to the steakhouse...She’d have breastfed with no shame, but we wouldn’t have gotten that far.”
• Text [123:35]: “If you bring a baby, and it loses it, pay and leave immediately.”
• Lopez [184:46]: “Bring your baby, fine. ...But after that, whether it's breastfeeding or burping or crying...you GO OUTSIDE the restaurant!”

On-air “Petty” Awards

• Listeners and hosts get playful over who’s the bigger “turd” for complaining about babies/personal grievances.
• [158:49+]: “Let’s stick to sports!” texter gets roasted—“Who’s WE? This is our platform!”

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NBA & NFL Notes

Rockets Season Win Total: Vegas Line

• [160:32–164:11]
  Sean & Brandon’s over/under predictions: Vegas sets the Rockets at 47.5 wins (fifth in the West) despite strong returning roster.

NFL News & Speculation

• [128:27–134:02]
  • Aaron Donald’s possible mid-season return: “He’s going through a regimented process...similar to what he did when he played.” (Sean McVay)
  • Patrick Mahomes set to be full-go for camp; conversation comparing modern quick injury fixes vs. ACL/Achilles rehabs of the past.

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Quotes & Notable Moments Index

• Ninth Inning Breakdown: 08:20–14:06
• Javier as MVP/Rotation Issues: 14:44–22:11
• Tank Dell Camp Outlook: 25:09–34:20, 172:31–174:43
• Texans Defensive Strength: 55:57–73:42
• CJ Stroud Top 10 List: 61:09–67:14
• Squirrel Antics: 46:19–49:58, 91:05–92:10
• Fine Dining Baby Debate: 94:00–103:41, 123:25–126:47, 184:25–186:03
• Jeremy Peña Trade Spec: 146:16–155:11

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Episode Tone & Takeaways

• Typical mix of pointed analysis (especially Texans defense and Astros meltdown), fun sports radio “petty” back-and-forth, and a listener-engaging “life” topic that blows up the text line.
• Hosts balance sharp critique with warmth, humor, and openness to personal stories.

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Summary

• Main Theme: Houston sports, highlighted by improbable Astros win and high-stakes Texans camp storylines, all doused with classic morning show personality and over-the-top engagement on pressing real-world etiquette.
• Key Stories: Astros’ ninth-inning comeback and wonky pitching, Tank Dell’s health status, “Stacked” Texans defense, CJ Stroud’s team ranking, and a fine-dining standoff about babies (“Mastro’s, not McDonald’s!”).
• Style: Insightful, playful, relatable, mildly petty—keeping listeners, and each other, engaged and entertained start to finish.

Transcript

[Sean Pendergast]

Hey, this is Richard Deitsch, the host of the sports media podcast. If you're interested in what's happening with

[Brandon Scott]

all the places where you consume sports,

[Sean Pendergast]

the sports media podcast has you covered. I've been turning down interviews all week. CodeCAPI reached out. Oprah, George Stephanopoulos. So I said no. I was booked on the Deitch podcast before the Taylor Swift phenomenon. I must live up to my responsibility. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Brandon Scott]

Mom, can you tell me a story? Sure.

[Sean Pendergast]

Once upon a time, a mom needed a new car.

[Brandon Scott]

Was she brave?

[Sean Pendergast]

She was tired mostly.

[Brandon Scott]

But she went to Carvana.com and found a great car at a great price. No secret treasure map required.

[Sean Pendergast]

Did you have to fight a dragon?

[Brandon Scott]

Nope.

[Sean Pendergast]

She bought it 100% online from her bed, actually. Was it scary? Honey, it was as unscary as car buying could be. Did the car have a sunroof? It did, actually.

[Brandon Scott]

Okay, good story.

[Sean Pendergast]

Car buying. You'll want to tell stories about. Buy your car today on car buying. Delivery fees may apply. Understanding power requires more than headlines. I'm Peter Hamby, host of the Powers that Be, a podcast from PAC examining politics, economics, and media. To provide context, analysis, and clarity without sensationalism, we ask how power operates, who benefits, and what's at stake. If you want to move beyond breaking news to deeper understanding, join us on the Powers that Be. New episodes every weekday. Follow the Powers that Be wherever you get your podcasts. Sports Radio 610 presents Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast.

[Brandon Scott]

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

[Sean Pendergast]

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

[Brandon Scott]

Let's do it. Broken back Hader backs up fields. It throws in time. Astros win it 6 to 4.

[Sean Pendergast]

Not an easy play as Hayter navigated

[Brandon Scott]

the back of the mound, kept his feet and threw out Grissom to end the game. Blummer, that was not a classic. Top half of the ninth inning, but what a comeback by the Astros. Santa came early.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well put, Blummer.

[Brandon Scott]

Well put indeed.

[Sean Pendergast]

And understatement of the year. Not a classic. Top of the ninth inning for the Astros. Okay, so welcome in everybody, here on a Tuesday. I'm Sean Pendergast alongside Brandon Scott, who's in for Seth Payne today. Seth back tomorrow. This is the last day for a while that we will be in studio because Texans training camp gets started tomorrow. Can't wait for that with the media party last night. And this plays into some of what we're about to talk about here. The Astros beat the Angels last night. If you went to bed and you're not like me, and when you wake up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, if you ignore your phone, that's a good thing to do. Ignore your phone. If you have to get up. You know, I'm not, I'm not quite at John Lopez level yet. Lopez wears on his sleeve that he gets up like four times during the night to go to the bathroom, which

[Brandon Scott]

is probably an issue. Probably not great.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's not good.

[Brandon Scott]

But I'll let Lopez handle his own business.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. If he wants to get that kind of sleep, that's. That's on him.

[Brandon Scott]

Grown man.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right. But I get up typically either zero or one time in the, in the night. And especially if I've been out carousing and having a good time, I can almost guarantee I'm getting up to hit the restroom at like 2:30 in the morning. Yeah. So we had the Texans media party last night and it was fun. Shout out to the Texans and the, their, their media relations staff through a, through a great kickoff party to the 2026 season. It was a whole lot of fun. Good seeing some familiar faces out there who will be seeing for the next several weeks out of training camp. But the party started at 6:30. On paper, it was supposed to be over around 8:30. But I'm always one of those people. I'm the opposite of Seth. Seth can just stroll out of a party and nobody sees him. He's the king of the Irish goodbye.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, I ended up doing that too, eventually.

[Sean Pendergast]

You Irish goodbye to.

[Brandon Scott]

I had to.

[Sean Pendergast]

You just snuck out.

[Brandon Scott]

Well, because I would have stayed forever.

[Sean Pendergast]

And you've been in for Seth for the last three or four days. So you gotta, you know, you gotta

[Brandon Scott]

channel Seth in the spirit of true

[Sean Pendergast]

Seth if it's gonna be pain and Pendergast with Brandon Scott in for Seth Payne, you've gotta lean into his gimmick. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

I didn't even realize it, but I was just through osmosis.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Brandon Scott]

Live through Seth vicariously or vice versa.

[Sean Pendergast]

All these times you've been telling people to go die during the show. No. You haven't been doing.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, I haven't done that.

[Sean Pendergast]

You haven't totally channeled.

[Brandon Scott]

Haven't done that just yet. My mom listens and I don't think I did. I would get angry texts if I did.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right, right, right. So. So anyways, Tatsuya Imai was knocked out of this game before I left the party. I know the game started at 8:38. I was one of a few people still kind of milling around Flight Club last night. Fun place by the way. Kind of milling around there till like nine. And I look down on my phone, the Astros already down to nothing.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And AJ Blue ball is in. And I'm like, I thought imai was starting and then I remembered that when you pull an imai, when you use his name as a proper name for a performance. Yeah. It means you didn't make it out of the first inner.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. Or when you Imai. That's as a verb.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Either way.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Brandon Scott]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

You pull an imai or you ema e my everywhere.

[Brandon Scott]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Got. He might all over the place. It was the worst.

[Brandon Scott]

Got him. I was just all over that dog on mountain.

[Sean Pendergast]

Walked four in the first inning and he was done. And credit blue ball like he, he kept the. He left the bases loaded. Blue ball came in there and almost got like he almost. He got like an in game save. Almost. Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Blue ball, which is kind of, kind of the story of the Astros. Like it's been up and down with the starters as we know. And the bullpen as ragtag as it is, has saved it a many times. This is just another example of that. And I do want to say before you continue, speak for yourself, Jeff Blum. Speak for yourself, Sean Pendergast. It felt like a classic to me. This is like, this is turning into classic Astros of just dig yourself out a hole or in some cases get a little bit lucky in this one.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Well. And it is. It was classic Angels too. Yes. That's a bad baseball team.

[Brandon Scott]

So.

[Sean Pendergast]

So it was when I went, I got home, you know, left the party, got home. It was four nothing by then. And. And Taylor Tramell hit a home run to make it 4 to 1. And I'm like, okay, I just can't. I got to go to bed. I got to get up early and do a show. This game doesn't feel like it's going anywhere.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Seen this movie before.

[Brandon Scott]

Back to back games with a home run for Taylor Tramill. Just by the way.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. With. And then look with plenty of at bats to seize out there in the outfield. Like, you know, there's. The outfield is a problem right now. He can be really nail down a spot if he keeps hitting the ball well. So I went to bed. It was 4 to 1. I wake up at 2:30 in the morning to hit the. The, you know, the restroom.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

The tinkle Torium and the Tinkle, Torium. And I. And I. I bring my phone with me because I'm an idiot, you know? Don't bring your phone with you when you get up in the. I bring my phone with me.

[Brandon Scott]

I'm the same idiot that you are.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just. Well, especially because there was an Astros game, I'm like, I guess I'll see, you know, how much they lost by. And I've got. I've got, like, nine push notifications from Mark Berman. Not texts, but like, Twitter, you know, I've got certain people set to. To push, notify when they tweet.

[Brandon Scott]

And Mark, probably from back in the days when he was breaking news and being crime Mark Burnham.

[Sean Pendergast]

Mark is still a really good follower.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. It was no reason to turn off the notifications.

[Sean Pendergast]

In some ways, he's even a better follow because we don't. We don't get the breaking news anymore, but someone's always going to break the news. Like, it's just not Berman anymore.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Although he does from time to time. Feels like he dips his toe in the water there still.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

But. But he's more fun now because he's opinionated.

[Brandon Scott]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

And he's very useful, like, for Astro games. He tweets everything that happens after the game.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So I wake up to, like, eight push notifications from Berman, and the very first one I see is some quote either from Ashenfelder on the postgame show or from somebody saying that the Astros were handed a Christmas gift today. Or, you know, or the. Or maybe it was Ashen Felder quoting Blum. Or it might have been Berman quoting Blum. You know, something like that.

[Brandon Scott]

Santa did come early last night.

[Sean Pendergast]

He did. He did. And so. So I'm like, holy crap. So I just looked to make sure they won, and they won. They got four in the ninth. It's. It appeared from the tweets, it was a classic Angels thing. I didn't open YouTube and start watching, though. I'm like, I'm go get my two hours of sleep.

[Brandon Scott]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Get up at 4:45 and come in. Holy crap. What an awful, awful baseball team this is. And honestly, that ninth inning, what a battle of two teams. That one is awful and one's just not very good.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I mean, you.

[Brandon Scott]

Somebody had to win the game.

[Sean Pendergast]

Somebody. Yes.

[Brandon Scott]

That's what it was. Somebody had to not. Did the Astros win, or did somebody have to not lose? And was the other team just an outright undisputed loser?

[Sean Pendergast]

Right. Because amidst this sea of errors, the Astros are still Popping up sacrifice bunts and getting thrown out at home plate by 10ft in the ninth inning. Like it, it wasn't, it wasn't perfect by any means, but if you're an Angels fan, this is what you watched your team do in the ninth inning alone last night, leading four to two. The very first batter was Taylor Trammel. He was hit by a pitch. Yeah, the. He went to second on a passed ball. Then Christian Walker gets a single to center field. Because they're playing the outfield practically with their backs to the wall. Yeah, because they don't want to give up two runs in the inning. I mean, he hit a ball. That's probably, if they're just playing at normal depth, it's probably a pop out to center field.

[Brandon Scott]

But they played their way, they played their own way into that situation.

[Sean Pendergast]

Strategize their way into that. Right, right, right.

[Brandon Scott]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Because of the, because of the hit by pitch in the pass ball. Yeah, yeah. So. So then Nick Allen grounds a ball. No, no, sorry. Nick Allen came in to run for Christian Walker. So. And he got thrown out at home plate. Eventually they, Joe Espada did that thing where he put somebody in. It's like a, a tiny fraction of a second faster than a good hitter.

[Brandon Scott]

And he loves to do it with Nick Allen or Bryce Mattress.

[Sean Pendergast]

He doesn't like Nick Allen as Vince Coleman or something like that.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So that's another Espada thing, man. Like this whole pinch running thing because you might go to extra innings, man,

[Brandon Scott]

he's, it's like he's got some kind of pride in using the entire bench, but it's like that's cool and all, but sometimes it feel like he's doing it just for the sake of using the entire bench. He overthinks just to say he did it.

[Sean Pendergast]

And this is I guess what they used to do back in the 80s, you know, that kind of thing. The, the Angels then Lucas Spence grounds a ball to second, which should have been a double play. Yeah. Should have practically ended the game. And it rolls through the second bay. Rolls through. Through Grissom's legs in the innings alive. Instead of two outs and a runner on third. It's. It's. Runner on, I think. Well, no, it's. It. It's. Tramel scores on the play.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Now it's four to three.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Vasquez pops out a sacrifice bun. So here's, here's Joe Espada doing 80s baseball again. Got a bun. And I know, I know Vasquez is your nine hole hitter. He's also been pretty decent this year with in clutch situations. Yeah, I think I'd rather have Christian Vasquez swinging the bat right there if it were me, but I'm not going to go through this like Paredes gets.

[Brandon Scott]

They.

[Sean Pendergast]

They intentionally. Eventually, they intentionally walk Jordan Alvarez. Upper run with runners on first and second. Yeah. They choose to walk Jordan Alvarez. So they now push the tying run to third base.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Relevant because the next batter, Isaac Perez, was hit by a pitch.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. Another. We're talking still in the ninth inning.

[Sean Pendergast]

Another hit by pitch. Another hit by pitch that scored a run because the Angels manager chose to push the tying run to third base with an intentional walk to Jordan Alvarez.

[Brandon Scott]

This will be the only spot here. Not that I'm here to defend the Angels at all, but this is the one move that they made that I thought was not a comedy of errors. Because I would rather face anybody in the Astros lineup, especially with the game on the line, considering that they're actively coughing up the game in the moment. Well, knowing that I'm not going to give Jordan Alvarez a chance to beat me, but you know what else I'm not going to do? What else is non negotiable? Like, I think it's non negotiable to let Jordan Alvarez bat in that situation. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

It's also non negotiable to hit the next guy.

[Sean Pendergast]

Being a guy.

[Brandon Scott]

Can't do that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Cannot do it, man.

[Brandon Scott]

And they did.

[Sean Pendergast]

And they did. And that only tied the game because then Lamont Wade Jr. Walked with the bases loaded. Bases are still loaded here. Can't do that either. By Angels. Angels challenge. The call. Got it wrong.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, they should do that.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's. That's a spot where you do challenge. Smoke them if you got them. Then. Then there. There's another fielding error by the third baseman. And. And. And Jordan Alvarez scores. So if you're keeping track at home, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the ninth inning last night had two errors to hit by pitch. A past ball.

[Brandon Scott]

Walked your on Alvarez to load the bases.

[Sean Pendergast]

Walked. Intentionally walked him to push the tying run to third.

[Brandon Scott]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

And then hit a batter. I mentioned the hit by pitch. Then walked a batter with the bases loaded. Lost the challenge in the process. These were two. One really bad baseball team and one just really inconsistent, mediocre baseball team. And I'm glad I got to watch it on YouTube.

[Brandon Scott]

A hit, two walks, two errors. It's one of hit batters. It's to hand them their. To hand them their ninth loss of the season. This is the Angels I'm talking about here. This is their ninth loss of the season when leading after eight innings. I mean, I don't know if you can describe collapse any more clearly any more clear or succinct than that. Yes. Like, that's as bad as it gets.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. Yep.

[Brandon Scott]

It was almost like by the time he got to the ninth inning, the Angels were like, yeah, I know we've been leading the game for pretty much its entirety, but. But here's the game. We're not actually interested in winning it. Here you go.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, and let's. So. So we laid out the comedy of errors. That was the ninth inning. And look, credit the Astros for being gritty. This is. This is a gritty team. They. You know, they've. They have during this run where they've played better baseball. They didn't play great baseball, but better. Better baseball. They've. They've been much more of a threat in the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings than they were in the first couple months of the season. So I will grant them that.

[Brandon Scott]

The.

[Sean Pendergast]

The MVP of this game undoubtedly was Christian Javier. Yes. Christian Javier last night had five innings in relief, three hits, no earned runs, no runs at all. Shut up. Ball. No walks, which is big, and seven strikeouts, which is big, too. Cause that's the big thing we've been watching with Javier since, really, since the Tommy John surgery is his velocity has been so up and down. And not that he's some guy that blows you away with Velo, but he does need to be in the mid-90s with the invisible and everything like that.

[Brandon Scott]

Exactly. It's. It's not just the velocity, but it's the movement. And I've been asking ever again, ever since he came back from Tommy John, is the invisible still invisible? Yep. And that's. That's just been an open question for a long time now. And shout out to him last night for actually performing when I feel like the Astros, you could argue it needed him most. This was probably his most. Like, I don't even know if you'd call it high leverage, because it seemed like it was unlikely that they'd be able to come back, but they Absolutely, if they were, they needed him to be what he was.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, this is what the inconsistency of guys like Imai, Spencer Arrogetti, and I know he's on the IL now, but he couldn't make it through an inning, and he was even before the injury. Like, he. He's been very up and down.

[Brandon Scott]

Spencer Arrogetti, post AL Pitcher of the month. Whenever that was May or June. May. May or May.

[Sean Pendergast]

It was May. And he's been terrible since then. Yes, he's been awful. So. So with the inconsistency of the staff as a whole, it's really almost evolved into where aj, Blue Bar and I guess now Christian, Javier are almost like your. Your starters, 5A and 5B, like, they've got those two guys now have to be on call, especially when Emi is on the mound. They've gotta be on call like an emergency doctor.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Cause you don't know if Tatsuya Imai. I don't think I've ever seen an Astros pitcher that has a bigger window into what you may or may not get out of him. There have been times in the last couple weeks where Imai has looked every bit worth the $18 million that they're paying him. And then there's nights like last night where he doesn't get out of the first inning. Like, he looks like a guy they called up from Double A that day, you know, who got no sleep the night before. Like, he just looks terrible. Half his starts, he doesn't. He doesn't make it to the, to the fifth inning, you know, and that's his third start where he doesn't make it out of the first.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And we know the damage that does to your. To your bullpen. That's the pressure it puts. Boy, the pressure it puts on Peter Lambert tonight. Peter Lambert, almost, to use your word non negotiably, has to give you six innings tonight. He has to.

[Brandon Scott]

Well, it is gotten to the point, and I feel like they've been here for a while now because this is not like, obviously we're talking about the most recent events with the Astros, but it's not like this is a new sort of feeling with Tatsuya Imai. And the way you just laid it out, a host of the Astro starters. And so this is kind of like. This is almost like a part of their identity now, which is a. An unsettling thing, but a part of their identity nonetheless.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Brandon Scott]

And you know what? I would say this about Imai. I'd love to make the excuse that, well, because, you know, earlier it was, oh, the mounds are different and dinner's at the wrong time, and I'm just not comfortable and I'm fatigued. And I thought, well, maybe it's going to be. Maybe Tatsuya Imai is going to be the guy who just pitches well at home and going on the road is just going to be an adventure every time. Tatsuyi Maya's Turn around the rotation.

[Sean Pendergast]

Color His. If you look. Or his.

[Brandon Scott]

I'm looking at his.

[Sean Pendergast]

What are his splits?

[Brandon Scott]

But they're. That's the thing. When you look at his splits, you're expecting to see much better home numbers versus away, and you don't. His ERA on the road is 4.8, 4.88 on the road.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's. That's. I know. That's better than his home because his. His actual era is in the sixes.

[Brandon Scott]

There you go. His era at home is 6.68. Yeah. So it's like, okay, well, you want to give him a pass for maybe not give him a pass, but. But consider maybe this guy is just much more comfortable on a mound that he pitches on more often, which is obviously the case at home. But he ain't good on the. He's not reliable, at least, because he can be good at times on the road or at home, but he ain't reliable at home, on the road or anything like that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Nope. Reliable is not.

[Brandon Scott]

That's not going to be him.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's not him, man. That's not him. And yet, if he had to start a playoff series, well, it'd be pretty easy right now if it were a wild card round. You pitch Hunter Brown and you pitch Peter Lambert, and you hope that you win the thing in two, and then you deal with a divisional round when you get there.

[Brandon Scott]

But to the point, though, if you do have to play that third game, it's basically as it should be because it's one. That means it's one one at that point. But it's all hands on deck.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Brandon Scott]

Like, no matter who you go with, it could be T. Tatsuya Imai, it could be Christian iv, who has playoff experience, but any of those guys. And you and I were talking about this before the show, whoever it is, you need a backup plan and maybe even a backup plan to that backup plan.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's wild, man. It is wild. But here we are. They got a win last night. I'll read this text real quick, and then we'll. We'll. We'll hit the break here. Um, I'm an I. It says I'm a. I'm an OTR driver. I'm in New York. So I didn't have a prayer of staying up late, but when I woke up, I saw we had 10 batters in the ninth and had just one hit. And my first thought was, Angel's gonna. Angel.

[Brandon Scott]

Yep.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's exactly right, man.

[Brandon Scott]

One hit our Angels.

[Sean Pendergast]

10, 10 batters go to the plate. One hit.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, true Angels. Y' all are Angels to me. Don't let. Don't let nobody tell you.

[Sean Pendergast]

Angels in the outfield.

[Brandon Scott]

Don't tell any infield. Don't let anyone tell you any different. Anaheim and behind home plate, your Angels

[Sean Pendergast]

in our eyes, all of you contributed. All of you. All of you Angels came from the catcher all the way out to the center fielder. All of you contributed.

[Brandon Scott]

The Astros needed Angels last night to win. They did, and they got them.

[Sean Pendergast]

There was literally an angel on their shoulder, at least nine of them. Baseball Talk on Sports Radio 610 is presented by Xfinity. Score, the most reliable WiFi one price five years guaranteed Xfinity. Imagine that. Ten days. Still training camp. It's a series. I know there's one day, really two for purposes of this segment, but we've been doing 10 days till camp and we've been doing a question each day. We're down to question number two. Question number one will be tomorrow when Seth is back. This is a B. Scott question, and It's a simple 14 word question. What is Tank Dell? We'll dig into that. We'll do that coming up next. But first, Lincoln of Sugarland Studios, here's Pain and Penetration. So the TV in our studio is on the. Is on the Astros game. The the replay of last night's game. So we're now getting to watch this Tatsuya Imai. Boy, the numbers when he goes five plus innings and when he goes less than five innings. Holy smokes. Holy smokes. Now, naturally, the numbers are going to be worse when you go less than five innings. Yeah, take a picture of that B Scott. When he goes more than five innings, his opponent's batting average is.163 and he's got a whip of under one. When Tatsui Imai can't make it to the fifth, which is half of his starts this year, if I saw that correctly, they have a batting average of.347 and a whip of nearly. Of around two and a half.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, over two and a half.

[Sean Pendergast]

Over two and a half. He's putting nearly three guys on base per inning and he's giving up a batting average that would basically win the batting title in a runaway this year.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, there's not a more Jekyll and Hyde type of performance or profile on a pitcher than than that.

[Sean Pendergast]

When he makes it to five innings, though, he's. Squarespace is not only the best place to build your website, but to discover new Domains too. Something like topfootballcamp.com for your top football camp. Whisperingbloom.com for your silent retreat. Or whisperingboom.com for your shouting retreat. Maybe velvetcords.com for your music studio. Or existentialglitter.com for your artist studio. With a website from Squarespace, you can build your brand and your business [e-mail] get your domain before they're gone. With offer code, make it real for 10% off your domain or website. Lemonade.

[Brandon Scott]

Fresh squeezed lemonade.

[Sean Pendergast]

Lemonade.

[Brandon Scott]

Oh, nuts. Is your business struggling to be seen not reaching the right customers?

[Sean Pendergast]

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[Brandon Scott]

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[Sean Pendergast]

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[Brandon Scott]

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[Sean Pendergast]

Visit digitallocalads.com to learn more about our local advertising solutions. That's digitallocalads.com okay, people, line starts here. He's Justin Verlander. You know what I mean? He's vintage Justin Verlander. If Tatsui Imai can make it to five innings, he's outstanding.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

If he can't make it to five innings, he's me, basically. Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

And to that point it's like he's like. It's beyond useless. It's like where it's worse than useless. It's like now you have to either he's giving you this great advantage, giving you those great numbers that you're talking about if he's going deeper into the game, or he's a liability. And the new task of the day or of the night in this case is to overcome Tatsuya Imai and manage

[Sean Pendergast]

your bullpen and tax your bullpen. Yes. He's a reverse force multiplier is what he is.

[Brandon Scott]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Your force multiplier is normally a term used for somebody that augments or raises the level of everybody else.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Tatsuya Imai makes sure that Joe Espada is challenged for the next three days after this.

[Brandon Scott]

Well, I wonder. This is something I could even ask them. I doubt that they would throw their guy under the bus. But I wonder if like the bullpen, whoever are the available pitchers on a given night. I wonder if they play like a game when he's on the mound. Like when, when, when do you. How long do you think we're going to sit back?

[Sean Pendergast]

That's going on out there.

[Brandon Scott]

That's what I'm saying.

[Sean Pendergast]

They've got bets going on out there,

[Brandon Scott]

because I know you can't really bet on baseball. That can be dangerous. But could you do a prop, like a bet within a bit? You know what I mean? Like this very specific prop. Bet on your teammate.

[Sean Pendergast]

Incredible. I've never seen anything like this. Never seen anything like wild. All right, 10 days, still camp. We're down to day number two. Tomorrow will be day number one, will be the day of training camp, and that'll be our final question. I would guess it'll have something to do with CJ Stroud. I don't think we've hit CJ in any of these questions yet. Yeah. But today's question is a B. Scott special. Today's question, B. Scott, is what is

[Brandon Scott]

an emphasis on the words what is. What is Tank Deal?

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Brandon Scott]

Simply put, and this is kind of an offshoot of a previous question that we've done on the show before. I don't think I was in with you guys on that day, but y' all did a version of this question about the non Nico wide receivers.

[Sean Pendergast]

That was question number nine. How confident? That was when Cole Thompson was in with us.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Cole came up with this question, how confident are the Texans in receivers not named Nico Collins?

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. So this is a little bit of an offshoot of that question, because obviously Tank Dell would be a wide receiver not named Nico Collins. Now, I think when you think of the previous question, receivers not named Nico Collins, you think more so of the healthy guys, maybe the guys who were here who actually played last year. You kind of put Tank in his own box, which is why I felt like he's worth his own question here, because that's going to be a big piece, at least for me. Going out to training camp tomorrow observing what exactly is Tankdale?

[Sean Pendergast]

That. That. That is the. The guy. You know, when I. When I see people, I, you know, out and about, and they're all excited. They're Texan fans.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And I say, yeah. Training camp starts Wednesday this week. C.J. is the guy whose name always comes up first. Tank is. You don't get past, like, this, the. The third or fourth player and not have Tank Dell's name come up. When you. When people are talking about who they're most interested in hearing about.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Because 99% of the people I interact with aren't going to get to go to practice.

[Brandon Scott]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

So they're like, hey, I'm looking forward to your updates on social media on the show. You know, some of them are on group texts with me and things like that. And Tank is the one. Because the. It's still such a mystery. He did get in. In OTAs and minicamp doing, like, walkthrough type stuff.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So if we're talking about trends, it's been a slow trend. Obviously it's been over a year since he's played competitive football. But he did start to do some things. The videos are getting people very excited that he does his workout videos where he's got the, you know, the little floor cones and he's doing his. His jukes and his cuts. And he looks, obviously, he looks a thousand times quicker than the average human being. He looks really quick. He looks really small. He looks really thin, but he looks really quick.

[Brandon Scott]

All consistent with what we know Tank Dell to be. Quick, small, thin, all of those things.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's been all those things since. Since he. Since we saw him at U of H playing football.

[Brandon Scott]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

How excited do you allow yourself to get looking at the Tank Dell workout videos?

[Brandon Scott]

So I don't allow myself to get excited at all. And it's for one real specific reason. It's because of a question that I've been asking on the air podcast, wherever else I talk about this sort of thing. And so I almost feel like I'm either preaching to the choir or sounding like a broken record. But this is a part of the question that we're asking about. What is Tank Deal? I asked this, when is Tank Deal going to be ready for violence? Right. Like, they're not going to have on pads tomorrow when we go out there. But that's happening eventually, probably a week into the thing, and then I'll really be locked in. Cause, like, how involved is Tank Dell in the violent parts of the game? Because that's the question you're asking me about the videos. We already know that, or at least reasonably expect Tank Dell to be quick. If he's not quick, then what is he? Because he's so small, there's not much else he can do if he doesn't offer you that. So I'm expecting them to have, or at least at the very least hoping that he has these physical attributes that he had before. Fingers crossed. We'll see. But the, the, the relevant question, the most relevant question, due to his size and now injury histories, unfortunate injury history, is is this guy ready for violence? Like, is he ready to take a hit, to take a licking and keep on ticking, as they say.

[Sean Pendergast]

Specifically his legs? Yeah, that's where all the injuries have been.

[Brandon Scott]

And honestly, every time he gets hurt, you're going to be looking at everything he is joined legs, his whole body. You're like, is he, is he going to get up? Is he okay?

[Sean Pendergast]

He is joined what I call the Clowney club, which is when Jadevian Clowney's first two years, you know, his rookie season obviously got completely wasted because of micro fracture surgery. So after that, anytime Jadevian Clowney went to the ground, I will never forget because his second year was pretty injury plagued also. Yeah. Anytime he would go to the ground. Get up. Yeah, get up. Get up, Jadevion, get up. I call it the Clowney club. Like that's what it is. Anytime Tankdale takes a hit over the middle.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Gets hit in his lower body, especially. Especially his knee, especially on his left leg.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, it's Clowny club.

[Brandon Scott]

It's the Clowny club. But even scarier because at the very least, Clowney looked like a, like an Adonis where his take tail looks like a teenager looks. He looks barely past puberty out there. And so when he takes a lick, you're. You're probably already worried absent of the injury history. Now you add that on top of it, it's going to be one of those kind of cringe things until you get through the thick of the season.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think even the first practice, because we know they're going to run the offense, they may just not do it in pads. So there's going to be a three wide receiver set that we see with the ones at some point.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

If we see Tank even in a walkthrough thing with the ones out there in any capacity, then I'll be pretty excited. Now the misnomer with Tank is that people automatically assume because of his size that he's a slot receiver.

[Brandon Scott]

Not the case.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, no. He played more, way more on the outside than he did on the inside. And so I don't see Tank going. I like, I think they're. If when they go out there in a two wide receiver personnel grouping, I think I'm. I'm like 95% certain it's going to be Nico Collins and Jaden Higgins today. I am today. Today, Today.

[Brandon Scott]

Which is why this question is relevant. Because today that's how I feel. I'm curious, like, so I agree with you.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Brandon Scott]

I'm curious about a week from now, are you and I singing a different tune two weeks from now, are we singing a different tune? Because this is the thing too, like the, the next logical thought on that is, well, if Tank Dale is Tank Dell, what does that do to the rest of the wide receiving pecking order hierarchy? Depth chart, however you want to look at it.

[Sean Pendergast]

The most discouraging thing would be. The most discouraging thing that involves Tankdale being out there where we can see him tomorrow. Obviously, the most discouraging thing would be if he's, you know, in the bubble or, you know, or doing what injured guys do sometimes.

[Brandon Scott]

Not coming out there in the building somewhere.

[Sean Pendergast]

In the building somewhere. That would be the most discouraged. Now, based on ota is a minicamp. I don't expect that to be the case.

[Brandon Scott]

No reason to expect that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. And based on the workout videos he's been dropping, I don't expect that to be the case. But so. So within that realm, within the realm of expecting to see him out there in some capacity, the most discouraging would be if he's off with three other guys working out with elastic bands and medicine balls on, you know, two fields over from us, or we can barely see him. That kind of thing. That would bum me out tomorrow. Yeah, that would bum me on there. Him not being with the ones or him only doing certain things. Okay, well.

[Brandon Scott]

Cause, you know, not only would it bum you out because he's not out there, which is obvious, but it would. It would what? It. What it would tell you, I think, would bum you out because it would tell you that there's been some kind of setback. You just laid out why you don't expect that to be the case.

[Sean Pendergast]

I should have gotten the audio for this segment. That. That's a fail by me. The audio of Nick Casario. We asked Nick. I asked Nick.

[Brandon Scott]

That's right.

[Sean Pendergast]

I asked Nick point blank, and maybe we'll.

[Brandon Scott]

We'll.

[Sean Pendergast]

We'll grab that audio. Byron, I'll tell you where to get it. Don't worry. I'll tell you where to get it. But. But just to paraphrase, I asked Nick, are we going to see Tank practice at some point here? This is back during OTAs and minicamp, and Nick gave the most affirmative answer that we got. He literally said the word yes, and he kind of not even hinted. He said the words training camp.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Around training camp is where they were looking. I'll get the quote, we'll get the cut. So I don't misquote Nick at all

[Brandon Scott]

here, but training camp was the, like, the goal. That, like, that's the sort of the finish line in this process.

[Sean Pendergast]

One other thing on Casario, and I think I asked him about this at the super bowl, but I. Because I had seen some people talking about Tank and. Okay, when Tank does come back, it's a new offense to him.

[Brandon Scott]

Literally. I was about to say he is

[Sean Pendergast]

yet to play in the Kaylee offense. And so there were people like, is, you know, is that going to be an issue? You know, is there going to be a learning curve? Casario completely dismissed that, you know, to, to the extent where he's like, no, Tank's a smart dude, you know, and he's around.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

All the time. And he is around all the time. Like he was standing next to d' Amico at every victory speech during the winning streak.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

He is with the team or was with the team all last year.

[Brandon Scott]

He was like the counter example to Joe Mixon last year. Not to relive two years ago.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know, Dig shows up at Christmas. He's been hurt for six weeks. Weeks, you know.

[Brandon Scott]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

So. So Kasario dismissed that as a, as a concern. Yeah. You know, the playbook.

[Brandon Scott]

But, but aside from the playbook, though, I do think it's interesting for all of us media fans to, to think about the offense and what it looks like. So put aside the learning the offense part, just what he provides for you. I think we're looking at and discussing the Texans offense a lot differently. Like we gotta just put them in a whole different frame of mind if you're gonna have a healthy Tank build. The issue doing that is that is how big of an if that actually is.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. All right, Good one, B. Scott, what is Tank Dell, if you missed that segment, if you're just getting in your car, We've been doing a question for camp every day for the last nine radio days. Tomorrow will be the final question. Probably C.J. stroud related. If I had to guess, training camp starts tomorrow. We'll be out there 6am Seth and I will be out there. All right, Coming up next, headlines. The Astros win in highly. I say improbable fashion, except the opponent was the Angels. We'll lay out exactly what went down, good and bad last night. We've got news around the NFL, some scary news around the NFL that we'll get to in the next 22. 22. Pain and Pendergast.

[Brandon Scott]

With today's headlines broken back. Hayter backs up, fields it, throws in time. Astros win at 6 to 4.

[Sean Pendergast]

Not an easy play as Hayter navigated

[Brandon Scott]

the back of the mound, kept his feet and threw out Grissom to end the game.

[Sean Pendergast]

Plumber.

[Brandon Scott]

That was not a classic top half of the night hitting, but what a comeback by the Astros. Santa came early.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. I had to let Blum get that in there. Because he's accurate.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Santa angel showed up last night. He did. The angel of Christmas, the angel of baseball Christmas showed up in the ninth inning. If you missed this game. And I could very well see where many of you treated that game last night. It started at 8:40 local time here, the same way Brandon Scott and I did, which is, I think you said, like me, you went to bed when it was 4 to 1.

[Brandon Scott]

It was 4 to 1.

[Sean Pendergast]

Tramell hit the ball when I fell asleep. And I'm like, well, this is a nice thing to go to sleep to. Taylor Trammell hitting another home run because he hit one a couple days ago, too. But so I went to bed. I'm like, it's just not their night. And Tatsuya Im I got knocked out in the first inning again. So went to bed. Woke up to several push notifications from various outlets. Shout out Mark Berman, who tweeted no fewer than eight times after the game last night, and see that The Astros won 6 to 4.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

With four runs in the ninth inning. B. Scott, if you're keeping track at home, the ninth inning, and I'm reciting this from memory now, I don't have the box score open anymore, but you correct me if I'm missing anything here. In the ninth inning, trailing 4 to 2, the Astros sent 10 men to the plate. Yeah, they got one hit. Out of 10 plate appearances, they got one hit. Yeah, there were.

[Brandon Scott]

It's all they needed.

[Sean Pendergast]

There were two hit by pitches, including one with the bases loaded. The bases were loaded because the Angels manager intentionally walked Jordan Alvarez with runners on first and second.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

A walk with the bases loaded. Two errors, a passed ball.

[Brandon Scott]

Pass ball. Yep. And you mentioned two hit batters.

[Sean Pendergast]

I mentioned the two hit batteries.

[Brandon Scott]

There was a. There was a.

[Sean Pendergast]

A.

[Brandon Scott]

A hit in there.

[Sean Pendergast]

There was one hit.

[Brandon Scott]

So you did get the single.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Got to include that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, I got the single in there, but that's it. It was just this comedy of errors by the Angels.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, man.

[Sean Pendergast]

And when I say errors, the two. There were two errors. One was literally a bad news Bears double play ball that rolled straight through the legs of the second baseman.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. Hey, Lucas Spence has some kind of juice to him, man. Like, even when he's not like that, that should have been a double play.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, my God.

[Brandon Scott]

But there's just been something about this week plus. Or a couple of weeks that Luke Spence has been up.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

And he's had some. Some really good fortune. You tell me, is this more of a sign? Like, is this a. A Sign of encouragement or just like. Like, are the Astros just lucky? Because this feels. This feels like. Like we can celebrate an Astros win here. But. But it feels like. Like it's. Is this, like, real or is this just like. Like team of destiny or just a straight up luck thing here?

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, here's a Just real quick check on the standings. I'll answer your question. There's still two back in the division wildcard. They are one and a half back. So this is as close as they've been since they were for that one day inside the velvet rope of the playoffs by a percentage point. That's it. To answer your question, I guess the way the lens I look at it through is, how do I feel about this? Do I feel differently about this team today than I did 24 hours ago? And the answer is no. I don't feel different at all.

[Brandon Scott]

It couldn't be.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes, the starting pitching scares the hell out of me. The bullpen. I guess the one thing that happened last night is Christian Javier had a truly vintage Christian Javier performance last night.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. It was affirmation for your bullpen.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

And Christian Javier, specifically, as you mentioned,

[Sean Pendergast]

if Imai had to die for Javier's sin, you know, like, if I. You look, Sean, you're going to get another one inning outing lesson in inning from Imai. But. But you're going to get five shutout innings, no walks. Yeah. And seven strikeouts from Christian Javier. I'm like, I'm going to take that trade off. You know, for the moment, I could

[Brandon Scott]

just see if you were. Not that we are, but if you were to just straight up look at this game with, like your Astros orange colored lenses, you'd be like. Instead of just looking at the epic collapse of the Angels, you'd be like, oh, team of destiny, you can't count these Astros out.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, I think there is something to that. I said that in the open that I, They. They are showing some real grit as a team. I think when they're trailing these games late. Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

I was going to say they have throughout the entire season.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. But this, but this was. I've not seen one in anywhere close to where it feels like the other team just handed you this game. If the second baseman fields that ball that Spence hit, it's a double play ball and the game is practically over at that point.

[Brandon Scott]

What's wild about this ninth inning that we're breaking down is that, at least to me, the most logical and sensible thing to happen was walking Jordan Alvarez to load the bases and walking them on Purpose.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Brandon Scott]

Out of all things that happened. Yes, yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, that right. Intentionally walking a guy with runners on first and second.

[Brandon Scott]

The most sensible thing that happened.

[Sean Pendergast]

Sensible thing that happening in that happening. Crazy. Crazy. All right, I'm going to say Byron, I'm going to save the tank. Del, cut for the next segment just because we need a little bit more room here for some of this stuff in headlines. This story in the NFL yesterday happened in the middle. It broke during the final hour that you and I were on together. B. Scott. Yeah. Scary story in the NFL. Elijah Bien, who is the 27 year old son of Eric B. Enemy, the offensive coordinator for the Kansas City Chiefs arrested yesterday. At least the news broke yesterday that he was arrested for shooting his mom, Eric B. Enemy's wife, Mia at their home in Virginia. So now what you need to keep in mind is Eric B. Enemy. Is it Chiefs training camp. He's their OC Again. He's a chief's training camp, which is not in Virginia. No, it's in Missouri. It's in I think Joplin, Missouri, St. Joe's Missouri, something like that. So this is a scary situation. I don't. I'm guessing Eric B. Enemy is back in Virginia to tend to his wife. I would assume so. This is Andy Reid yesterday on that situation. This is our hearts go out to Eric Bienme and his family. Thoughts and prayers are with them. I can't get into details on it, but things happen sometimes and Eric will work through it. He's got a great support group here, as does his family as needed and. And then we'll just let time take care of it from there. But Mia is stable, which is a plus and so is Eric Jr. And that's all, that's all important. All right. Okay.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. I didn't hear anything about Eric Jr.

[Sean Pendergast]

Eric Jr. Must be another. Obviously another son of Eric B. Enemies. He was in a very scary situation. Again, the son that shot his mom is Elijah B. Enemy.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Not Eric Jr. Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

So Eric Jr. Could have been a witness. Who knows? But like you could imagine though, the entire family, everybody that's connected to this family is shaken. I would imagine.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's a wild story, man. That is a. That is a wild story. Okay, two less serious things now. Daniel Jones cleared for training camp. These Achilles tears are. I think I saw it might have been. I think it was Landry locker mine and tweeted this yesterday.

[Brandon Scott]

I saw this.

[Sean Pendergast]

I thought the exact same thing. There was a time where when you tore your ACL back in like the 80s, it was a death blow to your career.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. Your career could be literally over.

[Sean Pendergast]

Your career could be over. At the very least, you're coming back a much lesser version of yourself. And I think the Achilles tear was similar, you know. You know, say 20 years later, the Achilles tear kind of became the new acl.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And now it feels like the Achilles tear is the really new acl. You know, like we're to where like, wow, the surgery. You can get back on the field pretty quickly. In the film that I've seen of Daniel Jones, it in their off season stuff, he looks pretty mobile.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, well, Daniel Jones, I mean, how about even before that we've seen an old guy do it. We saw Aaron Rodgers come back and I know we understand he's not the same player that he was 10 years ago or even six or seven years,

[Sean Pendergast]

but I think that's just normal aging. I don't think it's because of the Achilles that he's not who he was.

[Brandon Scott]

That's, that's what I'm getting. Yeah. I'm saying we, we at least saw him like you would think, for example, 10, 15, 20 years ago, a 38, 39, 40 year old guy tears his Achilles. He probably doesn't even consider the comeback the road to return. Whereas Aaron Rodgers did it. And you figure now if a guy around 40 can do it, then certainly Daniel Jones or anybody in the prime of their career can do it. It is, it is like, like amazing to see the progress in medicine or therapy or whatever it is that allows these guys to come back so quickly because it, it felt like Daniel Jones was just out there playing with a broken leg and tearing his Achilles. And you figure, okay, well, he's going to miss a year certainly.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right. Well, put it this way. I mean, they gave him a contract extension when he was not back from this injury yet.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You would have never given a quarterback a contract, let alone two years. $88 million that they gave him. Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Let alone him of all people too, on top of that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Him who's been kind of inconsistent.

[Brandon Scott]

It's not like he was Aaron Rodgers.

[Sean Pendergast]

No.

[Brandon Scott]

You know.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, you'd never give that guy two years, 88 million, you know, just a month or two after. Because he tore his Achilles late in the season. Yeah, it was after they played the Texans in week 13. It was the next week, if I'm not mistaken.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Because he played in that Texans.

[Brandon Scott]

Well, because the story had been, I want to say, either the week before or a couple of weeks before they had played the Chiefs before But he also going out there with like a broken leg or a chipped fibula or something crazy like that.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, Brandon Scott in for Seth Payne. Those are your headlines today. Reminder, August 13th, the big changeover. 95. 7 the Fan is born at 8am on August 13th. Be here for that. If you've been out of town, you missed the news. We are, we're going to be all growns up. We're moving over to FM95.7 the Fan610 will still be running simulcast of the station. So it'll be exciting. We'll be on two stations here in this great city of Houston. All right. Coming up next, we will circle back just as the sort of the, the epilogue to our question of the day. What is Tank Dell? We'll, we'll revisit Nick Casario's kind of forecast for what Tank's schedule looked like a month or two ago and see if we think that he's going to hit that schedule. Also. The highest compliment I've heard for the Texans defense came on Sunday when Zach Yelb and Brandon Scott were doing some radio. We'll have that for you. Sports Radio 610 presents Pain and Pender Gas. I couldn't tell B. Scott, could you tell on the TV here in studio? So B. Scott and I have the TV on. We, we have, we have on KHOU here in the morning watching, watching the news and, and it flips over to CBS Mornings and they the video is a major league baseball game last night. I didn't catch which stadium it was, but there was some sort of vermin running around on the field.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, it's a good way to put some kind of vermin.

[Sean Pendergast]

It was either a black squirrel or a skunk that doesn't have any white in its.

[Brandon Scott]

Not that thing was too big to be a squirrel.

[Sean Pendergast]

Do you think it was a skunk like the op, like a bizarre Football is fun. Why shouldn't your football podcast be the same? Follow and listen to Heed the Call NFL podcast with Dan Hanzas and Mark Sessler wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, albino skunk. Yeah, maybe it was an all black skunk.

[Brandon Scott]

I wanted to say that it could have been like a, like a possum. But, but possums aren't normally that color.

[Sean Pendergast]

Then they don't have furry tails like that. Kind of a furry tail.

[Brandon Scott]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

If you know what it is we're talking about. If you saw the same video, text in and let us know. I'm genuinely curious about this, but shout

[Brandon Scott]

out to the men of that stadium, of that ballpark, because no less than like a dozen guys go out there and get after it trying to capture this thing.

[Sean Pendergast]

Producer Byron has information here. Byron, lay it on us.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, it was a squirrel at the Tigers.

[Sean Pendergast]

Squirrel.

[Brandon Scott]

Squirrel.

[Sean Pendergast]

I got here this morning.

[Brandon Scott]

While I walked in, they were playing it on espn.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. Over. Yeah, okay, so it was a squirrel.

[Brandon Scott]

That was. That was a humongous. That's the biggest squirrel I've ever seen.

[Sean Pendergast]

It look genetically engineered. Yeah, it was big and it was dark. I've never seen it. That. That squirrel. I mean, my. My eyes are not deceiving me. Right. Like, that was not normal. No Gray colored squirrel.

[Brandon Scott]

No. If that was a normal squirrel, I feel like maybe they would have even let him make it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

You know, like the squirrels in your neighborhood. Yeah. Byron, you remember, I don't know if you remember, the squirrels of Huntsville, Like a couple. Oh, dude. The squirrels in Huntsville kind of ran the place at times. But this didn't look like one of those. No, this looked like a. That's why I confused it with a potential armadillo or opossum or something like that.

[Sean Pendergast]

This looks like they have a lab in the basement of Comerica park that they genetically engineer squirrels and they're toying around with genetically engineering a gigantic pitch dark black squirrel. And one of them escaped from the lab, possibly by mauling the security guard.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. I'm curious. I kind of want to go back. Do like the. There's this trend online now where people are doing like the TikTok of my Netflix stock and they do like the opening shot of their Netflix.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. DeAndre Hopkins did one.

[Brandon Scott]

There we go.

[Sean Pendergast]

He did.

[Brandon Scott]

He did. I wanted. I want to know the backstory of how did the squirrel get that far? Like where. What's the squirrel's origin story? Where did it come from?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Brandon Scott]

And how did it get that far

[Sean Pendergast]

with the security guard that the squirrel mauled? Yeah. Still with scratches on his face, a sling on his left arm, war wounds, a crutch under his right arm. And he's here to tell his story about how he got mauled by some mutant black squirrel.

[Brandon Scott]

Where's that dog? On squirrel. Yeah. Look what he did to me.

[Sean Pendergast]

Detroit's a dangerous city. Who knew the most dangerous things were the squirrels?

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, a hundred percent. And I'd like to point out, too, I've been going to either Daikin slash before that Minute Maid park on a regular for no less than seven years now. And I still get. Hey, can you flip your badge around. Can we make basically, can we make sure that you're supposed to be here? All of the checks and balances to make sure that the human beings that are in these ballparks are supposed to be there. Yeah. Namely me. Somebody who there all the time and they should recognize.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

And this squirrel makes it all the way to the field.

[Sean Pendergast]

Dude, it. And it took like 10 people to corral him. Yeah, it was amazing. I. We need a Kevin Harlan on that game to call it. He. Kevin Harlan's the best at calling things that have nothing to do with the actual play on the field. All right, so the cat is elusive.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, I remember that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Look at the moves on the cat. All right, so just a follow up to our question. Training camp question of the day for the Texans. What is Tank Dell? This is back on June 3rd. Okay, so June 3rd was the last time. That's the last time we've had Nick Casserio on this show. Now he's going to join us next week. Next Tuesday, August 4th, Nick Casario is going to sit down with Seth and I out of training camp.

[Brandon Scott]

So available to Media tomorrow at 8:30.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Brandon Scott]

In with pain and pender gas next Tuesday. Next Tuesday, August 4th. There you go.

[Sean Pendergast]

Here we do it after SummerSlam so Nick and I can break that whole thing. There you go. So. So this was nick back on June 3rd. The answer to this simple question. Are we going to see Tankdale practice here at some point? Yes, I would say more than likely it'll probably be in training camp. You know, we have about, I don't know, however many days left here in the spring. But there's certain things that he's able to do. He's done some things on the field, maybe separately, kind of off to the side. I think the goal is training camp. So we'll kind of see if he stays on schedule. But I mean, nobody's worked harder. Nobody's had a better attitude, you know, talking about a player that hasn't played football in, you know, almost 18 months or however long it's been. But you know, his attitude, his approach, he's chomping at the bit and he's certainly anxious and wants to be out there. By the same token, we want to make sure that we're taking care of him and doing the right things and putting him in a position where he can go out there and be the best version of himself. So I would say training camp seems like a reasonable time frame in terms of his availability in terms of next steps. Okay, so that tomorrow is training camp.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

This should be at the top of the list of things that we're looking for out there that people should be curious about. I think it would have been on the list anyways. Really high up the list. But repurposing that bit of audio right there, I think Hammers at home. I think, you know, Tank dropping more of these workout videos recently would seem to be his way of saying I'm on track to. To. To be doing stuff at training camp. That's how I interpret it at least. So good. I'm glad we found that audio. So tomorrow is the day. Nick. Nick said that on June 3rd. And he mentioned training camp multiple times. Tomorrow is the first day of training camp. Will we see Tank Dell fully activated?

[Brandon Scott]

I just feel like it's got so many implications. What is Tank Dell? Back to the question, you know, obviously for Tank, but more specifically for the team, how that changes the offense, how we look at them, how we view them, what their potential actually is. I think. Not that it hinges on Tank Dell per se, but then it also kind of does because if he's out there, then that's just a. That's just a. Another weapon. Whereas we're having the conversation or we asked the question earlier in this exercise when y' all were doing the 10 questions leading up to training camp. What are the non Nico wide receivers? Well, if you can throw Tank Dale in there, that is. I mean, that's just a huge game changer for me.

[Sean Pendergast]

Huge, man.

[Brandon Scott]

And then on top of it. And again, this is more specific to Tank and his own personal situation. We also got to consider the fact that it's a contract year for Tank Dell. Like what. What does Tank Dell recovering from traumatic injury in contract season look like? And first year in the offense? All of those things together colliding at once. What does it look like?

[Sean Pendergast]

That's a. That is a really good question. I didn't even thought about the contract. I've just been focused on him. As you should, getting back to. To playing football because it's the cart before the horse.

[Brandon Scott]

But that is the next logical question.

[Sean Pendergast]

After that, it is definitely the cart before the horse. But. But if we can play the hypothetical game for a little bit, why not? This is a team that's going to be paying a lot of guys pretty soon, including the quarterback who really likes Tank. Tell, you know, like he, you know, tank Dell is CJ's guy. So, you know, CJ himself has to get his stroke back. Like the question after CJ's rookie year would be like, how much stroke does CJ have in the building to make sure the tanks around for a second contract. Now the question is, two years later, you know, C.J. does C.J. stroud get his stroke back in the building? You know, I say stroke in the building. You know, Nick and d' Amico are going to make all the decisions. But you could have foreseen a day, you know, back when CJ Was winning Rookie of the Year, where they'd maybe get his input on things like that.

[Brandon Scott]

Back when. Back when CJ Was winning Rookie of the Year, it was unthinkable. Just the concept, the idea that by 2027, perhaps Tank and CJ aren't here anymore.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

I don't think you would. Maybe you would have predicted one maybe, you know, look, they're already paying Nico. Maybe they have to make a business decision at some point. But you would have thought at the very least one of those guys would be be here. And ideally, both of them are foundational pieces and are here for as long as they're in their prime health and all of that sort of thing. But now tanks in a contract year after having not played in a year and a half or whatever it's been. And we've got all of these questions with CJ Stroud.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. All right. Pain and pender gas B. Scott in for Seth Payne today. Seth back tomorrow. You and Zach Gel have been doing some radio on Sundays recently. I don't know if people listening realize we have weekend programming here on Sports Radio 610.

[Brandon Scott]

We back, baby.

[Sean Pendergast]

Soon to be 95. Seven the fan.

[Brandon Scott]

That's right.

[Sean Pendergast]

And it's. And that's going to continue to grow and grow. So that's. This is fun. This takes me back to the days where it was Sports Radio 610 live and local, seemingly pillar to post. Right?

[Brandon Scott]

Yep. Nights and weekends.

[Sean Pendergast]

And you guys sound great. You had Todd Haley on this past Sunday.

[Brandon Scott]

We did Todd Haley this past Sunday. Warren Moon the Sunday before that.

[Sean Pendergast]

You want to set this one up here?

[Brandon Scott]

Well, so we were asking Todd Haley, you know, a host of questions, right. About really these were offensive questions talking about C.J. stroud. And he volunteers in an answer about C.J. stroud, about the offense, and of course, Todd Haley, as you guys know, and if you don't know, a former offensive coordinator and, you know, head coach in the NFL. So he comes from, you know, from an offensive mind with an offensive bent. But he goes straight to the defense. And we were surprised to hear him make this comparison about the Texans defense. I don't see any weaknesses in this group. I really don't. You know, and if health isn't an

[Sean Pendergast]

issue, like I said, I mean, Reed

[Brandon Scott]

being there, I think is big.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's kind of a quarterback, ball hawk

[Brandon Scott]

type dude that the, the ball just comes to him. You know, I like the entire group. And I love d' Ameco and the energy that he brings to the group. And I would, I would not want

[Sean Pendergast]

to play this defense as an offense coordinator.

[Brandon Scott]

So. And so the comparison there, though, leading up to that question, in a previous answer, he says this is the 80. This is like the 85 bears. Wow. He compares the Texans to the 85 bears. And. And the answer you just heard there was his justification, his reasoning for that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

And it's because. Cause I had to follow up on that. Like, why do you think you've seen a lot? Why do you think that this team is comparable to the 85 Bears? And then that was the answer you heard. Because I see no weaknesses. And the, the parting shot there is. I wouldn't want to face this defense.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes. That's a former offensive coordinator saying that. Yes. Former head coach saying that.

[Brandon Scott]

And has coached in a Super Bowl.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right. Reed, who he's bringing up there, obviously is Reed Blankenship.

[Brandon Scott]

Correct.

[Sean Pendergast]

And I, I kind of posed that question. I did. I'm doing a piece for tomorrow for the Houston Press. Three questions about the defense heading into training camp that we've got, and one of them is, quite honestly, with the signing of Reed Blankenship. And I'll throw the drafting of Kaden McDonald in there, too.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Does this defense even have a weakness right now? Do they have anything remotely resembling a kill spot on it? You know, like, you ever watch Swamp People back in the day?

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And, you know, they. These are all a bunch of gator hunters in Louisiana. It's hard to kill a gator, but they've got that soft spot.

[Brandon Scott]

Yep.

[Sean Pendergast]

On the top of the head. So anytime you, Anytime you saw Troy Landry. Chewed him. Chewed him. Anytime you saw Troy Landry kill a gator, it was always shooting one very specific spot.

[Brandon Scott]

Yep.

[Sean Pendergast]

I don't know that the Texans have that soft spot on the top of their alligator dome.

[Brandon Scott]

So I can tell that they don't because of another question that we've asked in this exercise. Cole Thompson, I think, came up with this question as well. Shout out to Cole, will the real or will the new? Was it the new Derek Martin?

[Sean Pendergast]

It was question number eight. Will the new. In the countdown of 10 questions the camp that we've been doing at 6:25 every day, will the new Derek Barnett please stand up? That's exactly what it is.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. And this is kind of, it's a little bit of a Slim Shady reference there. I, I see what Cole was doing. He was kind of going for an Eminem Slim Shady reference, but going with the idea with like with the Texans. Derek Barnett, to your point, is there a weakness on this defense? We're here up here talking about who's going to back up the two all pro defensive ends.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Brandon Scott]

Like that's the life of luxury, the house spoiled, the embarrassment of riches that we're talking about right now with the Texans in this defense. It's like, well, what's going to happen when one of those all pros has to take a breather?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Do they have another guy that could go out and get eight to double

[Sean Pendergast]

digit sacks or five interceptions like everybody did last year secondary. There you go.

[Brandon Scott]

So, so there's your weakness. It's that oh my God, poor Texans. They don't have a third, third pass rusher to terrorize offenses.

[Sean Pendergast]

I saw an interesting one too that you had put in the rundown. Just going back to your show with Zach on Sunday.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Cause we talked a lot about the top 100 with CJ Stroud and how it's looking more and more like he will not be in the top 100 this year. Oh yeah. When he's been 20th and 39th his first two years.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So his peers have voted him. You know, if you believe in the voting system. His peers have voted him the a top 40 player in the NFL the first two. The first two seasons he's played in the league. It would appear as though his third season has not impressed them thusly.

[Brandon Scott]

No.

[Sean Pendergast]

So you pose an interesting question. Nevermind top 100, nevermind top 10 QB in the NFL. Is CJ Stroud a top 10 player on this team? Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

And I'm throwing that, I'm throwing that to you because Zach and I did this exercise. So Zach kind of threw.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, you want me to workshop this thing? So live on the air.

[Brandon Scott]

Well, so. And this will be fun because like I've already done it and like once you start rattling off names. So the exercise on Sunday was where does CJ Stroud rank? Like we didn't do the top 10 framing, we just did. Hey, how many names will you get to? Where does CJ Stroud rank amongst his own teammates? Amongst Texans players and being good at their job. Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Because there's two different arguments here. I know. You know where I'm going with this. He is unquestionably the most important player on the team.

[Brandon Scott]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Because of the position he plays.

[Brandon Scott]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's valuable. So he. There is value to C.J. stroud that. That transcends safeties.

[Brandon Scott]

Correct.

[Sean Pendergast]

Or guards.

[Brandon Scott]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Or things like that.

[Brandon Scott]

And so my goal was to try to do this exercise independent of the importance of the position.

[Sean Pendergast]

Who's good at their job.

[Brandon Scott]

Just wanted to evaluate them in a vacuum. Now, I did cheat a little bit. Before we start, I do want to tell you, just as a qualifier, I did cheat a little bit, and I just left Kaimi Fairbairn off the list.

[Sean Pendergast]

I was just gonna say.

[Brandon Scott]

I said no kickers, no specialist. Leave them off the list because.

[Sean Pendergast]

Exactly what I was just gonna say.

[Brandon Scott]

But honestly, it's a little bit of an indictment on Stroud and credit to Fairbairn for being a really good kicker. But a little bit of an indictment to Stroud because had I left him on the list. Fairbairn, that is, Left the kicker on the list.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

He would have been ahead of Stroud on this list.

[Sean Pendergast]

Better at his job last year.

[Brandon Scott]

There you go.

[Sean Pendergast]

He set the record for field goals in a season. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Okay. All right.

[Sean Pendergast]

So that's just real football players.

[Brandon Scott]

Real football players.

[Sean Pendergast]

Sorry. Sorry. Kaimi, if you're listening.

[Brandon Scott]

So here's how I.

[Sean Pendergast]

And punters, too. Whichever punter ends up winning the job. Although. Although the one rookie they brought in has a little bit of juice to his game. The Kroger, the kid they picked up. He's not the rookie. Stonehouse is the rookie. The Kroger kid they picked up from New Orleans has a highlight reel of passes that he threw back at South Carolina.

[Brandon Scott]

Stay tuned. Yeah, stay tuned.

[Sean Pendergast]

Still not a real player.

[Brandon Scott]

So.

[Sean Pendergast]

So.

[Brandon Scott]

So just to give it away real quick, and I'll let you do this. I had him ninth.

[Sean Pendergast]

You had him ninth. Okay.

[Brandon Scott]

I had C.J. stroud ninth. Barely checking into that.

[Sean Pendergast]

See if I get the same eight.

[Brandon Scott]

Let's do it. Let's do it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Brandon Scott]

Who's the best player on this team?

[Sean Pendergast]

Will Anderson Jr. Is the best football player on this team.

[Brandon Scott]

All right, so we're agreed there on the top number two.

[Sean Pendergast]

Number two on this team is. I'll go. Derek Stingley Jr.

[Brandon Scott]

Okay, this gets interesting because I think there's three guys who are candidates for number two. I had somebody else, but go ahead.

[Sean Pendergast]

Daniel Hunter. All right.

[Brandon Scott]

I had him at number two.

[Sean Pendergast]

Him number two. I think you can interchange either of them. I expect them to be within a fraction of each other when their names get revealed.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know, within a. Within a few picks of each other when their names get revealed in the top 100. Because they'll both make it.

[Brandon Scott]

Of note, three picks in. You have three defensive players.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. I would say the next one would be Nico Collins.

[Brandon Scott]

All right, so you've got my top four just sort of reordered. Yep. I went will Danielle, then Nico and then Derek.

[Sean Pendergast]

Stingley had. Nico had a Stingley.

[Brandon Scott]

I did. I did.

[Sean Pendergast]

Stingley was really good this year. He was. He was better the year before, I thought. Still. Still deserving to be all pro. I mean, he's. We're. I mean, we're really talking about levels of greatness here. We're not talking about. Guy was good or bad.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I would say Kamar Lasseter was better at his job last year than C.J. stroud.

[Brandon Scott]

Okay, so now we're at 4. 5. 4, 5. Now we're at 5. Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

I would say Jalen Petrie was better at his job last year than CJ Stroud.

[Brandon Scott]

Make my list as well.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. I would say Kaylin Bullock better than CJ Stroud.

[Brandon Scott]

You're on it. I got one more ahead of CJ Stroud.

[Sean Pendergast]

Z Al Shair.

[Brandon Scott]

There you go.

[Sean Pendergast]

So it's basically all the guys that have gotten some sort of accolade in the off season.

[Brandon Scott]

Yep.

[Sean Pendergast]

Or some sort of recognition.

[Brandon Scott]

That's eight guys, right?

[Sean Pendergast]

That's eight guys.

[Brandon Scott]

Do you have anybody else?

[Sean Pendergast]

I would say, you know, he didn't. Boy, if we're just talking about better at his job, are we holding it against David Montgomery that he wasn't on the Texans last year? I wouldn't, you know, like, is David. Is. Is David Montgomery. He's clearly, clearly plays a position that's not nearly as important as quarterback because, and this is no disrespect, How We

[Brandon Scott]

Made youe Mother is a rewatch podcast that looks back episode by episode at the hit TV show How I Met yout Mother. It's hosted by me, Josh Radner, along with series co creator Craig Thomas.

[Sean Pendergast]

In seasons one and two, we were joined by Neil Patrick Harris, Cobie Smulders, Bryan Cranston, Ashley Williams, Wayne Brady, Jenna Fisher, and Angela Kinsey, Joe Manganiello, and my brilliant co creator Carter Bayes. And now we are diving into season three. So whether it's your 50th rewatch or

[Brandon Scott]

your first time through, follow How We Made youe Mother wherever you get your

[Sean Pendergast]

podcasts to David Montgomery, running back has become the most interchangeable position in the sport. Now, there are ways to set yourself apart, and there are ways David Montgomery sets. There are things he's excellent at, better at than most. Running back, short yardage, physicality. I think probably the type of guy he is behind the scenes factors in. So I'm just bringing that up to workshop it with you for a little bit. I'm not necessarily saying, but I think it goes to show you that we would. Even having a conversation like this is kind of indicative of where CJ's at versus he would have been. He would have been in the top three on this list after his rookie year.

[Brandon Scott]

Dude, not only that, you're talking about David Montgomery. I struggled with the ninth spot, which again, CJ Stroud came in at the ninth spot for me, but I had not just David Montgomery, but another guy in this conversation.

[Sean Pendergast]

Was Tommy Togi better at his job than CJ Stroud last year?

[Brandon Scott]

Now. Now we have crossed a bridge.

[Sean Pendergast]

Tommy Togi better at his job than CJ Stroud last year?

[Brandon Scott]

It's a fair question. I did not have time in my mix. He. I'm going to say no because. Because he wasn't even in the mix for me in this conversation. But I think it's a fair point.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's really good at his job, man.

[Brandon Scott]

You know who was, though, in this conversation for me? Go ahead.

[Sean Pendergast]

On the offensive side or defensive side?

[Brandon Scott]

Oh, that's going to be a dead giveaway.

[Sean Pendergast]

Offensive side, offensive side, better at his job.

[Brandon Scott]

You've already. And mind you, you've already mentioned David Montgomery, who is finally or firmly planted in this conversation. No.

[Sean Pendergast]

Was it somebody on the. Dalton Schultz?

[Brandon Scott]

Dalton Schultz.

[Sean Pendergast]

Don Schultz, Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Who for me, tapped in at 10.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

So I had C.J. stroud, 9. Dalton Schultz.

[Sean Pendergast]

Dalton put up really good numbers. I think CJ and Dalton are really. They're probably pretty close. Yeah, but I would put CJ ahead of him, like you did is exactly what.

[Brandon Scott]

And I did leave David Montgomery just outside. But. But those three were in that conversation for me. For the ninth guy.

[Sean Pendergast]

Think of the top 10 for the Texans. Sort of like in baseball where you've got wins above replacement. Oh, that's what somebody's saying on the text page. Yeah, someone's saying on the text page. Also, I spit my coffee out when B. Scott brought up the Huntsville Squirrels. They ran that campus, often with violence.

[Brandon Scott]

Dude, I am not telling a story here. This is a lived experience of walking up on a squirrel, us looking at each other dead in the eye and having to make A decision.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, this is where. This is where. Texter, you need to listen, okay? And I'm going to put your business out there. Your last four digits of your number, 9,664. Texans QB1 is the alligator kill. Well, he says alligator bait. What? WTF are y' all talking about? With no weak spot on this team. I said on the defense.

[Brandon Scott]

Defense, bro.

[Sean Pendergast]

Defense. Listen. And it's not alligator bait. It's the kill spot on the top of the alligator's head.

[Brandon Scott]

Not listening at all.

[Sean Pendergast]

You gotta listen. I appreciate. No, look, dude, I appreciate you listening to the show, but you can't come in correcting us on a text with complete lack of intricate listening skills.

[Brandon Scott]

Is there.

[Sean Pendergast]

You just can't do that.

[Brandon Scott]

Is there anything.

[Sean Pendergast]

Maybe it'll be better on FM for this guy. Maybe some static.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right now kind of bled out, the fact that I said defense.

[Brandon Scott]

Look at you. Provide an excuse.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. He's a loyal listener.

[Brandon Scott]

The listener or listen listener.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Sean loves you because he just. He just came up with an excuse for you.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, man, but.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, nah, come on, man.

[Sean Pendergast]

We said the defense. We didn't say it.

[Brandon Scott]

And also to the point, WTF are you talking about? Go ahead and text back. Since you're correcting us. Text back with your weakness for the defense. Because I tried.

[Sean Pendergast]

In an apology to me. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

If.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, yeah, if there's. There is no kill spot on this defense. The k. I'll tell you what. One of my other questions is for my Houston Press article I'm writing for today.

[Brandon Scott]

All right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Can they have the same type of injury luck as a defense this year that they did last year?

[Brandon Scott]

I'm glad you bring it up.

[Sean Pendergast]

Those. Name those seven. Name those seven defensive names you have. You have ahead of C.J. stroud as being better at their job than C.J. last year, those seven names missed a combined total of five games last year. Three of them were Jalen Petrie with a concussion.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So the other.

[Brandon Scott]

Can you count on that?

[Sean Pendergast]

The other six, you know, and Kamari was like, week 18. They sat him out. Like, he probably could have played, you know, if they had to get. Win that game to get the one seed or something like that. Yeah, he probably could have played. So you're talking about, you know, concussions are just weird. They can happen. You know, I'm talking like the normal bumps and bruises, like Will Anderson, the ankle issue he had the first couple years, they basically missed as a collective foundational half dozen or so guys, just a couple of games with bumps and you know, Aziz missed the Raiders game.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, that thing. So I'm glad you mentioned the injuries because, like, I. I know that the afternoon show did a similar exercise or they just asked the question of can the defense be as good or better as they were last year. And I think Ron's justification for saying no is because he did not want to just grant them the injury fortune that they had last year. Yeah, he's. He's doing a calculation of like this war of attrition that happens in football of like, man, they. They just can't get that lucky again. Which I think is a fair point, but also relevant to this group of Texans because. And right on time. Sean Caldwell, in our YouTube chat, he points out, and I think this is a fair point, defensive weakness. Who feels E.J. speed's role, which I think we did a version of that in our questions, talking about the linebacker depth. That's a fair point because injury is going to be like the question of can the defense replicate what it did last year? And oh, by the way, they've already had a fairly significant injury to the defense before they even play a downer football.

[Sean Pendergast]

They have. E.J. speed played a lot of snaps for this team last year. I think Seth. Seth has the number. Typically, when we bring up EJ Speed. I've heard Seth say it. I think it's like he played like 45% of the stats.

[Brandon Scott]

I believe that's the. That's the number that he's.

[Sean Pendergast]

So he was on the field a lot. So if you're looking for other guys for us to keep an eye on at training camp this year, you know, I think obviously Aziz Al Shiyr and Henry Toa. Toa are your top two guys. They. They play a lot of nickel with Jalen Petrie out there. Jalen Petrie, he's your third linebacker. He's kind of your third linebacker. But, you know, something happens to Jalen Petrie. You know, we've posed that question before. Jalen Petrie is such a unique player.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Who is the backup to Jalen Petrie? The backup is. You play base defense. Yeah, that's the backup. The backup isn't. You throw another Jalen Petrie out there because there's only one.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. And they tried to do it a little, little bit with Miles Bryant and respect to Miles Bryant, but that's just not the same thing.

[Sean Pendergast]

The guy, he ain't Jaylen Petrie. So you go to play more base defense. So now this all of a sudden turns guys like Wade Wood as guys like Jamal Hill.

[Brandon Scott]

Yep.

[Sean Pendergast]

Guys like, you know, even Aiden Fisher, I know he's a seventh round pick, but it gets you, it gets you watching these guys out at camp because they. One of them is probably in the running to be the backup plan to something happening to Jalen Petrie? Yeah, they'd still play some nickel because it's the NFL. You're not just going to be in base the whole time, but on first and second down, you're probably going to be in it a lot more than you would be with a healthy Jalen Petrie.

[Brandon Scott]

But it makes it a fair question of do the Texans. Does the Texans defense lose its superpower if for some reason it loses Jalen Petrie for any stretch? Right. Like is the superpower in the Texans, the fact that they're base defense is their nickel defense and that their nickel defense is their base defense as opposed to without Jalen Petrie having to play a much more traditional base defense.

[Sean Pendergast]

But to your original point about my question, is there a weakness on this defense now that they've signed Reed Blankenship to lock down that safety spot, which I think too, and Seth makes this point a lot. I think you're going to get a better version of Kalyn Bullock with Reed Blankenship out there, hopefully. So, you know, probably can roam around a little bit more, do kind of those Hawk things that he does. And then with, you know, the drafting of McDonald helping shore up the interior. I say shore up the interior. Played fine last year on the D line, but he's certainly a nice. He's an interesting piece. He's a rookie, so I don't want to get too out over my skis with him. But to your original point, when you talked about the Derek Barnett question from a week or so ago, like, these are the things we're talking about. Backup line. Excuse me, backup linebacker, backup defensive end, the other safety.

[Brandon Scott]

Even if there's a world.

[Sean Pendergast]

If there's a world that's been better than first world problems. Yes. That's the Texans defense right now.

[Brandon Scott]

Like royalty, I guess.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

These are. These are monarchy.

[Sean Pendergast]

These are regal problems. Yeah, Regal from monarchy problems. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

I'm not mad at it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oligarch problems.

[Brandon Scott]

There you go. Yeah, there you go. All right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Pain and Pender gas B. Scott in for Seth C. Pain. Okay, fellas, this is not the guy who I just corrected, by the way, but this is a guy sticking up for the guy.

[Brandon Scott]

Okay?

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, fellas, we have jobs that take us away from the radio. Don't sit on us because we like to participate in the show. No, not sitting on you. I'm just correcting somebody the same way this person was correcting us.

[Brandon Scott]

And we're under the assumption.

[Sean Pendergast]

Am I not allowed to correct the corrector?

[Brandon Scott]

Well, let's. Let's break down the. The, like, kind of break down the barrier here. This is all in good fun, right? Like, we're just. We're just joshing.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Having a good time.

[Sean Pendergast]

If I saw you in person, I would be nice to you. Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

What, are we really good friends if we can't, like, needle each other a little bit here?

[Sean Pendergast]

And that's. That's. That's right.

[Brandon Scott]

Come on, now. We're family.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's right, B. Scott. All right, people weighing in. Defensive weakness. Henry to A. Toa and friendly fire.

[Brandon Scott]

Okay, fair enough.

[Sean Pendergast]

To A. Toa's got to chill out with the friendly fire. Probably a little bit.

[Brandon Scott]

Fair enough. Fair enough. Mobile quarterbacks. Speaking of Henry, Toa, Toa. Mobile quarterbacks. Could be it. They. They have had their issue with mobile quarterbacks. It's. I accept. I guess. Except Josh Allen.

[Sean Pendergast]

They've had their right. Right. They've had a plan for him.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

There's that black squirrel video again on espn. That thing is. That's a beast.

[Brandon Scott]

That is a big old squirrel. That's not the Huntsville squirrel. No, I'm gonna tell you that now.

[Sean Pendergast]

We get a lot of people weighing in on the black squirrel. Lots of black. They call them black cat squirrels, I guess in East Texas. It does look like a cat.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, man. When you mentioned it, I said, no way that's a squirrel.

[Sean Pendergast]

They've got every. They literally have every single, like, maintenance worker at the ballpark surrounding this thing trying to catch it.

[Brandon Scott]

It's like everybody that's got on a navy blue shirt and khaki pants.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Come out here right now. You're needed.

[Sean Pendergast]

And this. And this thing, it is. Oh, nice job. Someone just threw a towel over it and they caught it.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, well, that's what they had been trying to do. But the squirrel is elusive.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, and he looked like he got away.

[Brandon Scott]

Kevin Harlan would say.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, look. Looks like this thing is tailor made for yakety sacks. No,

[Brandon Scott]

dude. Where was Kevin Harlan when we truly

[Sean Pendergast]

needed him in this moment? Yeah. Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Come on, now.

[Sean Pendergast]

Someone said that if you. If you're able to get the video of it, that the play by play guy, maybe we'll go find it. Had a. Had a great call of this, actually.

[Brandon Scott]

I hope he did.

[Sean Pendergast]

I hope he played by play, channeled some. Some Kevin Harlan.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right. Shifting gears for a second. I am still on my Twitter timeline. The algorithm is still feeding me financial videos of athletes or celebrities telling me how little. Well, one of two things telling me how little money nine figures is.

[Brandon Scott]

What is this trend?

[Sean Pendergast]

I don't know.

[Brandon Scott]

Why are they doing this?

[Sean Pendergast]

And I clicked on a couple of them, and now that's all I get fed. Now the good news is I'm starting to get some more sensible ones or more fun ones fed to me, too. Like, I played. I don't know if I was with you last week, B. Scott, or if Seth was here, but I played one of Jameis Winston. No, Seth was. He was me and Seth talking about it. Jameis Winston was a delight to listen to him talk about his first deposit, his first direct deposit he got from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of $13.4 million or something. And he talked about how amazing it was to log into his bank account and see $13 million in. It was classic Jamis. Yeah. And he spent two minutes talking about the recliner that he bought his diabetic grandmother.

[Brandon Scott]

Love it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Who. You know, who. Who was on her feet all day because she's a nurse. So I'm getting fed stuff like this and stuff like what we're about to play, which is, I guess, Roan from Barstool.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Who shared some of my frustration with some of these videos starring athletes that seem to think that they're the only ones that pay taxes on their income.

[Brandon Scott]

You know what has been endlessly pissing me the off? There's a trend right now where athletes are like, how did you spend your first million? Or other athletes like J.J. redick talking about, like, how 10. What $10 million does for an NBA player. And every single one of them are like, well, what you don't realize is uncle Sam takes 50% off the top. As if they're the only people who pay taxes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Everybody pays taxes.

[Brandon Scott]

If you work at McDonald's, you have

[Sean Pendergast]

to give a bunch of it to taxes.

[Brandon Scott]

If you make $100,000 a year, you

[Sean Pendergast]

have to give a bunch of it to taxes. Talk about tone deaf dudes who are like $40 million.

[Brandon Scott]

Actually, you have to give your mom $150,000 car. You have to pay off a house for your dad.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's like, shut the up.

[Brandon Scott]

That's. That is tone deaf. That is infuriating.

[Sean Pendergast]

I actually had no back and forth with this. About this with Mike Meltzer over the. Over the weekend because he saw me tweet about it.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And so he Was like, he wasn't hardcore defending the, you know, the people I'm arguing or the people I'm pointing at kind of. But he's like, you know, could. Could it be that. That they see. What did Meltzer say? Oh, could it be that he sees like the other multimillionaires? That it's not just. They're not just W2. Like, these guys are all. These players are all getting W2s, that sometimes they see these CEOs out there that are getting stock options and things like that. That there's, like, there's these ways around it and things like that. I said, well, Mike, a couple of things I know you know this. You do pay tax on stock options as well, once they get exercise.

[Brandon Scott]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Like Uncle Sam comes for you at some point, regardless of what the form of income is.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. The only thing other than Father Time that's undefeated is Uncle Sam.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Brandon Scott]

He will find you one way or another.

[Sean Pendergast]

And if you notice, the ones that I have that I take the most issue with aren't the ones that talk about the taxes necessarily, or even the agency fees and things like that. It's the ones that act like part of the to do list when you get your $100 million contract is you have to buy a bugatti for your 10 favorite relatives.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You've got to buy a mansion for your mom that she will have to pay property taxes on in perpetuity, which I don't think they realize that, like, those are the things you can't just

[Brandon Scott]

find a regular old subdivision. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

You know, just like a normal house

[Sean Pendergast]

you will be able to pay the property taxes on after you're done playing. Yes. Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Like you can buy your mom a nicer crib than the one that she raised you in. Thank you. Without buying. Without going to River Oaks or whatever. The nicest neighborhood ever. And getting her a million dollar crib. Like there is an in between. How do I know it? Because most of us live in places like this. Most of us are not at the very, very bottom of the food chain. Most of us ain't rich and just live in a regular old house, man.

[Sean Pendergast]

And you can have nice neighbors and nice things put in a pool.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Do all those things you could.

[Brandon Scott]

You know what? And it's not out of the question to buy your mom.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

A Toyota or a Link to go to West Point Lincoln instead of getting her a Bugatti.

[Sean Pendergast]

Thank you.

[Brandon Scott]

Or a Rolls Royce.

[Sean Pendergast]

Absolutely.

[Brandon Scott]

You don't have to do that.

[Sean Pendergast]

They have new and certified pre Owned there.

[Brandon Scott]

I'm telling you.

[Sean Pendergast]

Over a thousand on the lot, B. Scott knows he bought one from them.

[Brandon Scott]

I'm a normal guy with a normal, nice car.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right?

[Brandon Scott]

You can do that.

[Sean Pendergast]

You can do that.

[Brandon Scott]

And I've never gotten a $13 million check, just for the record.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, no, no. Me neither. You know, Joe Hayden was the one where I'm like, well, and then once. Once I was done, he's like, I got this $12 million bonus. It was 7 million after taxes. I'm like, all right, here we go with the taxes. He's like, and then once I set my parents up with $3 million of their own, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What? Like, that's your choice, bro.

[Brandon Scott]

But you know what it does show, though, Sean? Yeah. The fact that their financial literacy does not come until after they've squandered.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right, Right. For a lot of them, because they're

[Brandon Scott]

saying things that the rest of us adults that just live in the regular real world are saying. Yeah, you got to pay your taxes.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think this is the best part about nil in college is not only do you get money where you need to have financial literacy to manage it, and I say this as somebody who has operated in my adult life with not great financial literacy, okay. But I think there's schools out there, too, that are making it part of the curriculum for the athletes. As a year, you're getting this nil money, you're going to take this. It may not even be a course that they're getting credit for. It may be that they bring in one of the finance professors, and after practice for a week, they come in and do an hour of financial literacy stuff. I think it's great. Yeah, I think it's great.

[Brandon Scott]

I might sidebar this with Woody Marks, who famously told somebody around here that he made more money in his last year at USC than he did as a rookie.

[Sean Pendergast]

He did.

[Brandon Scott]

I'm curious on what. So what was the financial literacy that went with that? Because I imagine he didn't squander his rookie check after having already gotten paid.

[Sean Pendergast]

As a question for Woody Marksman, training camp gets started tomorrow.

[Brandon Scott]

There you go.

[Sean Pendergast]

Nice. All right. Pain and Pendergast B. Scott in today for Seth Payne. All right, add one more. One more deflection to Mike Vrabel's bag of tricks, and the results are in. Who's the bigger jerk? Brandon Scott or Shaun T. Pendergast? Sports Radio 610 presents live from the West Point Lincoln and West Point Lincoln of Sugar Lamb Studios. Here's Pain and Pendergast. All right, so, B. Scott and I got into a bit of a debate yesterday. I did not expect it to be a point of contention between the two of us. We'll tell you what it was in just a second. But let's pay off on the tease of audio here. So Mike Rabel, who. Who at his first press conference of training camp brought a cute little puppy dog with him underneath his arm. And as I've had several Patriot fans point out to me, as I. And you being among the hundreds of thousands of people that thought it was a disingenuous attempt to deflect having any questions asked about his alleged affair with Diana Rossini, to portray him as, you know, some sort of gentle family man, sympathetic figure. Sympathetic figures. Good way to put it. Yep. So that was day one. Yesterday. There was a. I guess a reporter there that brought his daughter with him to the press conference. I don't know, it was bring your kid to work day or something like that. I have no idea.

[Brandon Scott]

Still, summer things happen.

[Sean Pendergast]

But Vrabel. That's right. Yeah, it could be something like that. Yeah, it could be something like. Yeah, whoever watches her, you know, had a. Had an issue, whatever it was. There's a 12 year old girl at the press conference, and Vrabel, I guess, traditionally allows a woman to ask the first question at his press conferences. Um, so in this case, he. He allowed this particular reporter's daughter to ask the first question of the press conference. Karen, you might get Trump this morning. Olivia, welcome.

[Brandon Scott]

How you been? Good.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's good to see you.

[Brandon Scott]

Do you have a question today? Kinda.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. Kinda. They kind of have questions, too.

[Brandon Scott]

How was Taylor's wedding?

[Sean Pendergast]

It was good.

[Brandon Scott]

Thank you.

[Sean Pendergast]

It was a fairy tale or whatever she says in that song. Okay. Your true crime podcast keeps listeners on the edge of their seats. But here's the real mystery. Why isn't it making more money? Odyssey Creator Lab is here to solve that. We host your show for free. No fees, no catch. You focus on the suspense while our sales team brings in advertisers and revenue. Stop leaving money on the table. Apply now at creators.odyssey.com and turn your passion for true crime into real revenue. Thanks for asking. How was Taylor's wedding?

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, he could have given her a little bit more than that. Give us a little tea on the wedding, my man.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, I wonder. We've not heard a table a ton about that wedding. I like. I wonder what the. The marching orders were for people who went to that wedding. Oh, and I'm about what they are allowed and not allowed to share in press conferences and things like that.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. Like, if you're big enough to have your wedding at the Garden. And again, not. Not a Garden. The Garden.

[Sean Pendergast]

The Garden.

[Brandon Scott]

Madison Square Garden. Are you, like, are NDAs at the door or at the entryway?

[Sean Pendergast]

Question. Like, you know, who went to it? Who's a regular guest on this show? Hopefully we're getting him this season, too. Ross Tucker.

[Brandon Scott]

Ross Tucker went to the wedding.

[Sean Pendergast]

Ross Tucker went to the wedding. Now he's a Philly guy and she's a Philly gal. Taylor is.

[Brandon Scott]

Whoa.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Ross Tucker went to Taylor Swift's wedding.

[Brandon Scott]

I've met Ross Tucker, and I've met somebody that went to the wedding.

[Sean Pendergast]

Absolutely.

[Brandon Scott]

Wow.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. Yep.

[Brandon Scott]

That's pretty cool.

[Sean Pendergast]

Ross Tucker. All right. So. So that was. That was Rabel's. You know, I don't know how many more tricks he has up his sleeve to try to soften the beginning of all these press conferences. He's got a puppy dog. Got a little girl asking a Taylor Swift question. I can't wait to see what the tactic is today to make Mike Rabel soften his Q rating here. You know, get him winning the. The PR battle, if there is one to be won up in New England. I have no idea. But. So you pointed out yesterday that this was that the dog. Specifically the puppy dog. Forget about the girl whose audio we just played. That the puppy dog. You brought up Joel Embiid.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Bringing his kid to a press conference after they had just lost. They just got swept by the Knicks.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And Joel Embiid brings his. His young kid who couldn't have been older than three or four years old, swept and collapsed.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. So, like, not just you lost, but we got real questions to ask you.

[Sean Pendergast]

Absolutely. He brought his kid to the press conference, which has long been something I have found. I. I don't know if offensive is the right word. I'm not a journalist like you are. Like, it just.

[Brandon Scott]

But you don't like it.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's tacky. Yeah, it's tacky at best, which I actually. And I don't like it.

[Brandon Scott]

And I actually agree with that part of it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

So my objection was I agree that it's tacky and borderline unprofessional, that you just shouldn't do it. Unfortunately, it is a common thing that they do. I just didn't draw the same conclusion. So I. I guess I dislike it or think it's tacky for different reasons. I didn't Draw the same conclusion that y' all had.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think it's a human shield situation.

[Brandon Scott]

Right, Right. I just thought it was just flat out tacky, but not necessarily the human shield that this to me clearly was.

[Sean Pendergast]

So you, you definitely think that Vrabel is a human shield, even though there is a charity component to this, to the. That dog and other dogs, this potriots thing that they do at training camp where they're trying to find homes for several dozen stray dogs.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. If they did it last year, it wasn't a human shield. Last year. Doing it now it is.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. So even though they did it last year. Okay. So you.

[Brandon Scott]

So I doubling down on this.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think the Embiid thing, bringing his kid to the press conference, to me is worse than Vrabel bringing a cute little puppy dog to his press conference. You, on the other hand, feel strongly the other way.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. And maybe for no reason because we've just seen so much of it before. I might be more conditioned to it, but. Yeah. I thought this was worse.

[Sean Pendergast]

Who do you think the voting constituency on this Pender poll voted for? I posted this yesterday. A few hundred people have voted.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So Brandon. Brandon. I'm just going to read it for the audience. Brandon Scott and I differed greatly on this today, so I'll put it to the people. Which is worse Dwelling B. Bringing his kid, Mike Vaughel bringing a cute puppy dog to. To. To his presser.

[Brandon Scott]

So I, I followed it, went on and vote. Exercised my right as an American.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Get out and vote and, and vote it.

[Sean Pendergast]

You can still vote. There's six hours left if you're listening.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. Many great people f for that. So I went ahead and voted in my Pender poll.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Brandon Scott]

And so about 150 votes in is the last time I checked in on your poll. And the Embiid. I'm sorry, the. The Vrabel one was winning by a landslide at that point.

[Sean Pendergast]

It was like, you are winning this right now.

[Brandon Scott]

Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

74% of the people agree with you.

[Brandon Scott]

Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

That Vrabel bringing the puppy dog is worse than Joel Embiid bringing his kid to the press conference.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So evidently I'm the a hole of the two of us.

[Brandon Scott]

I think you're just missing the. It's just. To me, it's just so much more obvious.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Like I think you can justify or at least explain away bringing your kid up there. Even though we do agree that you should just leave the kid wherever he came from. Like wherever the. Whoever brought the kid, let the kid stay with that person until the very least you're done with your press conference. It's a professional setting.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

So I don't think the kid should be there for that reason. But I don't think that they bring the kid up there necessarily. As a human shield, I don't know if there's a lot of thought given into that. I do think that there's thought given into let's bring the puppies up there while we've got our shameful head coach up there.

[Sean Pendergast]

I just love that it's this lopsided. I. If I had to predict I. Well, I probably would have predicted embiid, but I guess I'm com. I'm lacking in some self awareness on that. It is very lopsided, this vote. Interesting people pointing out the various places in the United States that have black squirrels. I had never seen one before.

[Brandon Scott]

Hey, man, you got to get out into the grass.

[Sean Pendergast]

I gotta get out. I know you're doing. I gotta get out of my gray squirrel neighborhood shelter.

[Brandon Scott]

Son of a gun.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's funny I asked. I asked chat GPT other than color, how are black squirrels different than regular squirrels? And my chat GPT bottom lefty is his name says. Great question, Sean. The short answer is they usually aren't much different at all. A black squirrel is just a color variation of the same species.

[Brandon Scott]

Huh.

[Sean Pendergast]

You don't talking during the break and I'm like, this feels like we're talking about human beings here.

[Brandon Scott]

It's a metaphor for life.

[Sean Pendergast]

We're not all that different, man.

[Brandon Scott]

Take note from the squirrels. Yeah, we ain't all that different.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's right. That's right.

[Brandon Scott]

But it is worth wondering, would that squirrel had been treated differently if it

[Sean Pendergast]

wasn't black with the gray squirrel, would the gray squirrel have gotten away with running onto Comerica Park?

[Brandon Scott]

Only a black squirrel. Yeah. Could cause a dozen men to have to jump out of his seat to corral him. I'm just telling you the perp walk

[Sean Pendergast]

they made that black squirrel do off of the field.

[Brandon Scott]

This is life. But in all the while as chat GPT or is the as the AI bot tells you, we ain't all that different. Hey. All right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Fun fact. This is chatgpt. If a black squirrel and a gray squirrel mate.

[Brandon Scott]

Oh, now we're getting into some really risky.

[Sean Pendergast]

Can be black, gray or even a mix.

[Brandon Scott]

Oh.

[Sean Pendergast]

Depending on color genes that they were basically squirrels. We're basically squirrels when you put it that way.

[Brandon Scott]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, man.

[Brandon Scott]

I bet you we just changed a lot of hearts and minds out there.

[Sean Pendergast]

Today, I think we did.

[Brandon Scott]

Doing the Lord's work here on radio.

[Sean Pendergast]

This is no disrespect to Seth. This is the most important episode of Pain and Pender. Look, this is a very special episode.

[Brandon Scott]

I would. Knowing Seth, I would predict that he is a little bit upset that he missed this moment in time.

[Sean Pendergast]

Maybe.

[Brandon Scott]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

That he would. That he wasn't here for all of us through the radio.

[Brandon Scott]

I'm telling you, this is to hold hands. This is a Hallmark moment.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Brandon Scott]

A seminal moment in history right now.

[Sean Pendergast]

I mean, you can mad lib in humans here.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

For squirrels. And that's how we should feel.

[Brandon Scott]

I could. I could just imagine your chat bot going. A response to your question going.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Oh, he wants to know. He wants to let. Well, let me tell you about the difference. Yeah. There ain't. No.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's funny. I've never seen him. I've literally. People are commenting on it. I'd never seen one before. Die black squirrel.

[Brandon Scott]

I had neither. And I. And I've been.

[Sean Pendergast]

Apparently there's some up in Huntsville.

[Brandon Scott]

I've been.

[Sean Pendergast]

You went to school.

[Brandon Scott]

I've been in the trenches with the squirrels. Didn't see any black ones.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, man.

[Brandon Scott]

But I'll tell you, this wouldn't have treated him any different.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's right.

[Brandon Scott]

Other ones.

[Sean Pendergast]

Hell yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Tell you that.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's right.

[Brandon Scott]

All right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Pain and pender gas. B. Scott in for Seth Payne. Are you ready to get petty, man?

[Brandon Scott]

I can't wait.

[Sean Pendergast]

In the next segment, I actually have two things I'm petty about, including one thing that I saw this weekend on my staycation with Amy that appalled me. I will have that for you.

[Brandon Scott]

Let's do it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Sports Radio 610 presents Pain and Pendergast at 8 o' clock on a Tuesday. B. Scott, have you. You've done a pedicast before, right?

[Brandon Scott]

I have done a pedicure.

[Sean Pendergast]

You're probably the most frequent pinch hitter host of Pain and Pendergast, I would say.

[Brandon Scott]

Well, that and on top of the fact that my regular day job requires me to be tapped in. I don't catch every segment because I can't. But even the ones that I don't catch, I have to go back in and check them out. So I'm probably for somebody that doesn't host every day, most familiar with everybody's content.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. No doubt, no doubt. Brandon Scott in for Seth Payne. It's Tuesday. It's 8 o', clock, so we do the pedicast. God, we're getting some hilarious squirrel texts right now. We'll get to them in just a little.

[Brandon Scott]

I did not know that this is what was going to unlock the audience, which was already active to begin with. Yeah, but this is it. This is. This is the niche topic.

[Sean Pendergast]

I've got two things that I am personally petty about. One is sports related, one is not. The first one is I am Petty that Jeremiah Love, who might be my favorite Notre Dame player in my history of rooting for the school. Oh, that's saying, keep in mind my brother played for Notre Dame. I might like Jeremiah Love even more than my brother Kevin.

[Brandon Scott]

Your own flesh and blood.

[Sean Pendergast]

Maybe.

[Brandon Scott]

Maybe that's saying a lot.

[Sean Pendergast]

He would listen to the show more. I would like my brother more. But he's probably number two. But Jerem, I love Jeremiah Love tapping

[Brandon Scott]

hit at number two is my brother.

[Sean Pendergast]

My brother. Yep. Jeremiah Love number one. I am Petty that he got drafted by the trash ass Arizona Cardinal organization. Not just because I watched a video yesterday of them running a play and Jeremiah Love getting squashed by nine people. Or would have been if you were. If they were full contact.

[Brandon Scott]

Welcome to the game. This is going to be your life.

[Sean Pendergast]

I forgot Nathaniel Hackett's their OC dude. Nathaniel Hackett might be the biggest boob I've ever seen of coaches in the NFL.

[Brandon Scott]

Well, and especially considering that, like, he's had a crack at this. And I know he was much more respected as an OC than he was as a, as a head coach.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's hard to be less respected as a head coach.

[Brandon Scott]

Fair enough, Fair enough. But it was so bad as a coach, a head coach. It does make you wonder, how did this guy flying work again?

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, he's a Nepo baby. I mean, his dad was a pretty prominent coach back in the day.

[Brandon Scott]

That's how I'm.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, that's. I'm just that. That's the only good answer. Yeah. Because the guy stinks at his job and he's a clown and he is the OC for Jeremiah Love. I just hate. And Jeremiah Love is so enthusiastic about being a Cardinal. That's just who he is. He's going to be a great teammate. He's going to be a, A great guy in the building. He is one of the most exciting players I've ever watched. And he is not going to get unleashed in Arizona. This is a, this is a team that caved to Jacoby Brissette.

[Brandon Scott]

They did.

[Sean Pendergast]

Jacoby Brissette signed a two year deal a year ago. He started most of the games for them and he was set to make almost $5 million this year.

[Brandon Scott]

He's like, that's not good enough.

[Sean Pendergast]

He held out of OTAs and minicamp, and they just caved and gave him a contract. A new contract worth up to 21 million bucks. Why on earth, if you're the Cardinals, who will win three games, whether you're starting Carson Beck or Jacoby Brissette, why on earth would you overpay for the right to win three or four games this year?

[Brandon Scott]

What is. Idiots. What would Jacoby Brissette's metaphorical war be? Maybe football has a war stat.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think they might.

[Brandon Scott]

They do. Nobody uses it.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, no, no.

[Brandon Scott]

But what would his war even be, bro? Half a game? Yeah, maybe, if that. He's a tough guy. I'll give him that.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's a tough guy. He's a good backup.

[Brandon Scott]

Excellent backup. Yeah. But a backup nonetheless.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Brandon Scott]

And was able to hold out and get him $20 million.

[Sean Pendergast]

20 million bucks, man. He played the Cardinals.

[Brandon Scott]

Good for him.

[Sean Pendergast]

The other thing I am personally petty about. So my wife and I had a staycation this weekend at the. The very, very nice Post Oak Hotel. We don't do this all the time. This is the second time we've done it in the last few years. Really nice place, of course, Mastro's, which is one of the nicest steakhouses in town. You know, it was a celebratory weekend, so we had our occasional really, really nice dinner, and we went to Mastro's, and we love Mastro's. So we sit down, and in the middle of our dinner, there's a couple that sits at the table next to us, very underdressed, which I don't mind. You know, the husband was wearing jeans. Hit him, button down, shirt that was buttoned like the middle of his chest.

[Brandon Scott]

Oh, I was giving you a little bit at Lopez. Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And the woman was underdressed, but I don't get. I don't get worked up about that. Mostly because in Mastros, it's. It's really dim and dark in there. You can barely see other people at times. But this is the table right next to us. They also had a stroller, like a carriage stroller with a small baby in it at Mastros. Okay, I know there's going to be a portion of the audience that is not going to like what I'm about to say.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, you got to be able to take your baby everywhere, apparently, I guess.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, so. So. So this is. So let me set the scene for you. This is what happened, and this is how I know what I'M about to describe to you happened should not be happening. Because multiple managers came over to us to check. Like, are you guys having a. They didn't mention the table next to us, but they were like, is everything okay? Is everything. Like, that doesn't. I mean, they have great service there, but you never get multiple managers coming over within a 10 minute span to check when the following happened. So for about 15 minutes, the husband pulls the baby out of the carriage, puts it on his shoulder, and just circles his table, walking the baby. The same way you'd walk a baby in, say, the baby's bedroom to try to get him to go to sleep.

[Brandon Scott]

Yep. You see the logic in what the dad's trying to do, but he's doing

[Sean Pendergast]

this in the middle of mastros.

[Brandon Scott]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Walking the baby around the table. Well, turns out the baby was hungry. So at the table, the wife or the mother, I don't know if they're married or not. Breastfeeds the baby at the table. Now she took a blanket and put it over her torso.

[Brandon Scott]

Yep.

[Sean Pendergast]

I still say, I think it's out of bounds that the baby is even in the restaurant in the first place. This is an upscale steakhouse. It has $5 signs next to it. The cheapest cut of meat is 65 bucks. This is somewhere people go to get away from babies.

[Brandon Scott]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

There should be in nice restaurants like this a no stroller rule or the rest. You got to bring in a kid that's in a stroller. You should not be at this restaurant.

[Brandon Scott]

Or it's the restaurant that you take a woman to to perhaps make the baby to impress. Yeah, right. This is the front end of the baby making restaurant. Well, not the back end. Once you make the baby and have the baby now you got to go to, I don't know, Olive Garden or wait till the baby's big enough to eat a steak on their own.

[Sean Pendergast]

Thank you.

[Brandon Scott]

Or get a nanny.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's one of those things like should the. What should the rule be about bringing small children to a restaurant? And I would just say it's a little like that politician described pornography back in the day.

[Brandon Scott]

You know it when you see it,

[Sean Pendergast]

you know it when you see it. And I would say that Mastro's is above the line where you should allow a baby in a stroller to be in there.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. So a couple of things.

[Sean Pendergast]

So I'm not blaming mastros here. I'm not blaming. I'm just saying this is what society's rules should be. I'm blaming the couple for going to a dinner that probably cost them hundreds of dollars.

[Brandon Scott]

So I'm gonna seem like I'm riding the fence, but I want to be clear on this. So I have. I have three children. And when we had these kids, my wife would breastfeed in public. She would do that. She would do the thing where she. And she was proud of it too. And we had our discussions about it, about me being uncomfortable about it and her saying. Trying to break down the barrier, the wall, and say, no, this is normal. This is natural. This is what people should be able to do. But the thing that we wouldn't do is go to upscale places or anywhere where we thought it was supposed to be like a quieter vibe, like McDonald's, chick fil. A place that have.

[Sean Pendergast]

Knock yourself out.

[Brandon Scott]

That have, like the playground sort of thing going on. Those are places where you can take kids. It's perfectly fine. Yes, we probably would not have taken the baby to the steakhouse. Now, once we got there, she wouldn't have shown any shame in breastfeeding the baby right there in front of you and your wife and everybody else who wanted to see.

[Sean Pendergast]

She'd have done it proudly, but we

[Brandon Scott]

wouldn't have gotten that far.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Brandon Scott]

We would have just stayed home or gone somewhere else.

[Sean Pendergast]

That was gonna be my follow up question to you when you were laying it out. B. Scott. It's like, yeah, did she ever do it in Match Drop?

[Brandon Scott]

Nah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know, or any nice place like that. So I'm petty about that. I've been petty about that since. Since Saturday when it happened. And shout out to the managers who came over to our table. I didn't even realize until Amy pointed it out. She's like, they probably came over because they're wondering, like, are we okay with what's going on over. Oh, that's clearly it. Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

And it's implied.

[Sean Pendergast]

I thought they were just being nice.

[Brandon Scott]

Oh. They didn't want to say it because they didn't want to accidentally have the table next to you overhear it and then offend them. But it's implied when they come. Come over there and check on you excessively, like.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes, yes.

[Brandon Scott]

Are we getting crushed for being anti baby?

[Sean Pendergast]

No, no, no.

[Brandon Scott]

It's family.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's. It's pretty split. If you've got money for mastros, then you've got money for a babysitter.

[Brandon Scott]

I think that's a fair take.

[Sean Pendergast]

100% accurate. Sean. Preach. I love y', all, but you're wrong.

[Brandon Scott]

Fair enough.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. I mean, that's. Yeah. Love the segment. Somebody say Yeah, I. I think these are things we need to hash out. You know, we.

[Brandon Scott]

But I think it's clear from the text line we don't have consensus on what proper etiquette is once you have an infant, a breastfeeding level baby.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right. Like out in public. Yeah. Like etiquette out in public.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I just think. I just think. I can't even imagine. I can't even imagine spending the amount of money it takes to eat dinner there and have the distraction of having my babysitting there.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's just. I just. I can't imagine.

[Brandon Scott]

This is different, too, because another thing that I'm petty about, but I never say anything and I always. I'm very nice to whoever it is around me, but I don't love it when the baby's on the airplane. But I get that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, that's.

[Brandon Scott]

You've got to travel with the baby. It's a baby. You got to understand it. It can be annoying, especially if the baby's annoying.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

But you get that this is not an airplane. It's a steakhouse.

[Sean Pendergast]

This is a willing. You are willingly getting in the car and going to an expensive restaurant. All right, Keep weighing in. Someone says y' all are goofy. Okay. But do you agree or disagree? I mean, you could have said that about the Black Squirrel segment. We did three segments.

[Brandon Scott]

I wear goofiness with pride.

[Sean Pendergast]

Absolutely.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. Maybe that was a compliment. Thank you. Either way, thank you.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think it's accurate.

[Brandon Scott]

Appreciate that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Hey, let's skip down to Dave Portnoy here for the Petty cast. Byron. Because nobody does Petty better than the founder of Barstool, Dave Portnoy, noted Boston fan, which means he's a Celtics fan, which means he's going to have feelings about LeBron James. Yeah. Signing with the Philadelphia 76ers. I love it. I actually love it. He's trying to go do a super team. This team is not going to win. This team is not going to win. It's going to be delicious. It's going to be delicious. You know that.

[Brandon Scott]

What is that?

[Sean Pendergast]

Like, gif of like Cartman, like, licking tears when this team implodes and there's only one basketball and Embiid has one tendonitis left, and LeBron is huffing and puffing in and reading books and being passive aggressive. He is going to get booed out of Philly.

[Brandon Scott]

He is.

[Sean Pendergast]

This guy is going to get booed out of Philly. In Philly. You know, you hate this guy.

[Brandon Scott]

You get exactly what you deserve.

[Sean Pendergast]

This. This impending implosion is going to to be delicious. Okay. Portnoy is acting like this is going to be the Celtics of old here. Like the Celtics. I think most Celtic fans are completely distraught and were before the LeBron signing, completely distraught about their team and the Jalen Brown trade.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And getting, getting possibly cooked Paul George in return.

[Brandon Scott]

And let's be real, Hortonoid does Petty as well as anybody and he's an entertaining figure, but he's just talking through it. That's therapeutic. That is cathartic for him. He's just talking through it because here's the reality.

[Sean Pendergast]

Trusting his own process, man.

[Brandon Scott]

Inject truth serum into Dave Portnoy and ask him right now, would you trade the Sixers roster for the Celtics roster and just put Celtics jerseys on the Sixers and make that your team? He would do it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

In a heartbeat.

[Sean Pendergast]

In a heartbeat. Yeah, it's the. In the party kind of dropped in there. You and I talked about this a little bit, but the whole like, they've only got one ball. Like I. If that was your take before LeBron. Okay. Like, but I like dropping LeBron in here, if anything to me helps facilitate distributing the basketball. Way to put it then, then, then denigrated in any way that I could

[Brandon Scott]

not have said that better. Yeah, that is exactly how I feel about it. Like LeBron James, of all people. And, and by the way, aside from him being one of the more brilliant basketball players that we've seen, we've also seen him do this exact thing that we're talking about. Like, how do you handle the one ball, too many cooks in the kitchen dynamic? And he's literally done it no less than twice before. Maybe three times if you count. I know they didn't win a championship with Luca, but like they were kind of dealing with that same dilemma. Three on ball guys between him, Luka and Austin Reaves. And they, you know, for the most part, when they were healthy, figured it out.

[Sean Pendergast]

He willingly, outwardly made himself the third wheel on the Lakers last year.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Behind Reeves and Luca. Like he's, he's. He, he ain't. I don't think LeBron. I think LeBron's got a huge ego like most players do. I don't think the ego is something that is going to factor in with

[Brandon Scott]

the Philadelphia 76 and the best basketball player. I want to tell you about a new podcast from Odyssey called Family Lore. It's about interesting family stories and the truth behind them. It's available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get Your shows players do know how to, how to handle this thing like that. That's the thing about getting high end talent is that they're much more likely to figure it out than say the low end. Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right. The, the Speakeasy. Emmanuel Acho's platform that he's created since leaving Fox. Shady McCoy is one of the other, one of the other co hosts on there who he was also with Fox for a while. They both got let go, started their own thing. They're getting a lot of traction with it. Ryan Clark recently let go by espn. Of course, Ryan Clark has his own platform, the Pivot. So they got talking about Ryan Clark getting let go by ESPN on there and they talked about Ryan Clark on the Pivot podcast tearing up when talking about his departure from ESPN. Shady McCoy very suspicious and petty about Ryan Clark's. I don't know, I guess maybe crocodile tears, I guess is what Shady McCoy might think. Shady McCoy's pettiness towards Ryan Clark.

[Brandon Scott]

Imagine we got fired from Fox. They did all this though. You just start crying and all that. And I like I'm so crying with you. We got all type of press.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know what I mean?

[Brandon Scott]

Like, come on, it's part of the game. But.

[Sean Pendergast]

But when you pay of my money,

[Brandon Scott]

like they've been paying us to be on TV to run our mouth.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's part of it.

[Brandon Scott]

That's assuming the crying was because he got cut. I'm saying I don't think he cried because it got fired. I think he cried.

[Sean Pendergast]

I knew it was going to be something.

[Brandon Scott]

I knew he was going to monetize this whole thing. You know what I'm about to make this something as we did is getting fired like everybody else. You know what I'm.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'mma.

[Brandon Scott]

We going to make some other things, but we gonna get some cliff.

[Sean Pendergast]

Shady McCoy is having none of the Ryan Clark Pivot podcast tear streaming down his face about his departure from espn. Yeah, he ain't buying it. B. Scott.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. And so one of the things I'm actually a, a fan of Ryan Clark for the most part. But this is. And I wouldn't have gone as strong as Shady did. This is why it's a good podcast, a good show. But I do understand what Shady is saying on like putting just a little. Because I don't doubt that Ryan Clark was hurt and offended by the way he was let go. And personally I do think that the way it happened, not the fact that he was let go because that happens. Like what, what Shady is saying. Yeah, this is the business. But the way it went down was shady and would have bothered me personally if I were to put myself in Ryan Clark's shoes. But that being said, it did feel like there was a little extra mustard on adding tears to it. And one of the things that is a pet peeve of mine with Ryan Clark, and again, I like and respect Ryan Clark, but it does feel like he just uses a little bit too many, like almost too many words too much. There's just a little bit more extra sauce on things every now and then with Ryan Clark. And I felt like this was an opportunity for him to do that. And he seized said opportunity, even though I agree with the point of the way he was let go was pretty shady.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, no, it was shady.

[Brandon Scott]

No pun intended.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, and at one point in it. But ESPN painted themselves into that corner because supposedly his firing pending firing had leaked to some outlets. There was already speculation over the weekend. And so espn, because they have leaks in the boat, had they were either gonna have Ryan Clark find out on social media or they had to go tell him in the middle of a show. That to me is the part with espn. It's like, man, get your house in order. Oh, get your house in order. Like you were put in. You put yourself in a position where you had no good choice on how to tell him personally that he was getting fired. Because you got somebody talking, somebody starting their own podcast, somebody's doing an underground podcast to. To Andrew Marshawn and people like that, the media reporters.

[Brandon Scott]

And see, this is the issue, though, like, the reason why I wouldn't even even give them that much grace or say, get your house in order because this feels like a deliberate attempt. Had they leaked it to front office sports or to the athletic or somebody like that, a more down the middle media coverage outlet, that would have been one thing. But the way this story goes is they leaked it to outkick, which is notably anti Ryan Clark. So it felt personal and like there was an ax to grind from the very beginning with this.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. All right, CJ Stroud, let's circle back to cj. That was the petty cast. We'll read some of your. Your text too. Father of two and two grandkids, hun. A thousand percent unacceptable by those people at the table next to us.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, man, you gotta do better.

[Sean Pendergast]

You gotta do better.

[Brandon Scott]

Gotta do better than that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Foster Moreau was on a podcast talking about his new quarterback, C.J. stroud, what he likes about C.J. stroud, and maybe what surprised him a little bit about and West Point Lincoln of Sugarland Studios. Here's Pain and Pender. Hey, somebody just said on the text page, not sure if y' all brought it up yesterday, but did you see Wemby playing soccer in Katy over the weekend with a bunch of people?

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, we didn't bring it up. No, And I didn't see it.

[Sean Pendergast]

I meant to acknowledge him. Can I acknowledge Victor Wimbanyama? I thought it was cool. Now, I don't know how cool spurs fans or the spurs front office thought it was. You got big, gangly Wemby out there with a bunch of people half his size right next to his knees. Yeah. Playing soccer with him in a rival

[Brandon Scott]

city, by the way, in Katy. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Where it'd be very easy to put a hit out on him. Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Like if they were depending on how. How solid of a Rocket fan are you and how gritty and grimy are you out there in those mean streets of Katy.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's it.

[Brandon Scott]

Are you really about that life, though?

[Sean Pendergast]

Everybody knows that's where the biggest mob hits take place in the Houston area.

[Brandon Scott]

Just trying to tell you out in Katy, if anybody. If you. It's one of those. If you know, you know.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's right. That's right. So Foster Moreau did an interview recently where he talked about his quarterback, C.J. stroud, and he. Here's kind of Foster Moreau, who, to me is early on. Here is one of the more thoughtful interviews on the Houston Texans. Yeah, he feels like a broadcaster, actually, the way he talks. This is his kind of scouting report on what he's seen out of C.J. stroud so far. Very early on, I wanted to go hang out with.

[Brandon Scott]

With CJ Just, you know, get a

[Sean Pendergast]

vibe, just see how he's feeling, catch a few balls. And I mean, his arm talent is exceptional. Some of the best I. I've been

[Brandon Scott]

able to play with. He missed three games last year. I mean, his.

[Sean Pendergast]

His statistical numbers for, you know, where he wants to be in terms of as. As a successful quarterback.

[Brandon Scott]

He's.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's always chasing greatness, always chasing excellence. He's an underrated. He's underrated with his legs. I mean, that cat can move, Right?

[Brandon Scott]

You know, I'm excited.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm excited especially for what I've seen throughout OTAs, throughout the. The phase one, phase two. He's got the guys. He's getting. He's getting everyone together out in. Out in sunny California for a nice

[Brandon Scott]

throwing session, as most quarterbacks. As most quarterbacks do nowadays.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, so we got a little more from Foster, moreau Foster Moreau's vibe just cracks me up. He's the one that, when they asked him, I forget he did an interview or they asked him about Demiko Ryan's. It might have been like his first presser or like the zoom that he did after he signed with the media. And the first thing he brought up was, yeah, d'. Ameco, Ryan's really like him. Good firm handshake. Yeah, good firm handshake. Okay. Yeah, it's cool. He's got a good firm handshake.

[Brandon Scott]

And he does. He does have a good firm handshake. But of all things, the point out,

[Sean Pendergast]

like in the first five seconds of your. Your press conference, it was just. It was really funny, this guy. Yeah, it was really funny. So good scouting report on cj. I like this follow up, though, that he maybe based on what he had seen early from cj was kind of surprised at how vocal CJ is. And I thought he was a quiet leader for us when I first showed up.

[Brandon Scott]

And then we got into the workouts

[Sean Pendergast]

and we got into the actual.

[Brandon Scott]

The bulk.

[Sean Pendergast]

Majority of what we actually do as a football team. And he's vocal, he's loud.

[Brandon Scott]

Like, he. He has an expectation and he has

[Sean Pendergast]

a vision for what he wants our offense to be, what he wants our

[Brandon Scott]

team to be, and he doesn't have a choice.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's a leader for us regardless of circumstance. You have to be. Yeah, you have to be in that position. I liked hearing that at the very beginning when he's like, I thought he was a quiet leader. I'm like, oh, God, please don't be a quiet leader. I think in that position you've got to be a vocal leader. There's no quarterback is not a lead. Lead by example position. Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

And I think this is a part of the CJ Stroud narrative that has gone left because of some of the things that we've seen outwardly. And Foster Moreau is kind of hitting on this a little bit without saying it quite as demonstrative, but like, he was, I think, observing CJ from afar and then his initial impression before they get out into the nitty gritty of what they're doing as a football team, as he lays out there, oh, this guy must be kind of quiet, soft spoken. And a lot of the things that we've seen from CJ Stroud publicly are like, unfortunately, this narrative has changed a little bit because he cries when Tank Dell gets injured. And we've seen some pouting on the sidelines a time or two to where I think people could easily just assume either he's not a vocal enough leader or he just does not necessarily command the room, which I think is just been a misnomer since the beginning of the start of that narrative.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Like that's just not necessarily the case. Even if that's a, an easy assumption to make based off of what you see outwardly.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think the other thing it does to the things you talked about, the, you know, the Tank, you know, the scene around Tank that day. Yeah, the, the, the sideline demeanor at times. And then, and then just in, in the case of the playoffs, the actual results and what we saw in the field is that it gets people questioning his mental toughness.

[Brandon Scott]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

And I don't mean his intelligence, I don't mean his intellect. I'm talking about toughness.

[Brandon Scott]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Being able. And I know we hear from people around him all the time and I know there's evidence in his actual off field life too, of overcoming things.

[Brandon Scott]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Overcoming. You know, his father's in prison. Overcoming. He was a, you know, a no star, you know, like a two star recruitment until he went to the elite 11. Like CJ's got a story.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So there is that. But the fact of the matter is, here we sit in the last time we saw him, he was throwing four interceptions in the first half of a playoff game. And was the main reason they lost that game, the game prior to that, I think most people would say they won in large part because of the defense. When he's fumbling the ball five times on snaps that are. Snaps that are right to him, things like that. So that's. That is the biggest story with the Texans, bigger than anything else is has C.J. stroud recovered from whatever was going on in the playoffs last year? And what does redemption look like for CJ Stroud? Does it have to be something where they get to a Super bowl for people, does it have to be something where they have to get to the AFC title game? Does it have to be something where they get knocked out in the same round of the playoffs? It's not. Cause C.J. stroud, through four interceptions, he did his job. I don't know what that is for. I like for me, for me, I just need him to play a whole lot more like he did at the beginning of his career. That's redemption for me. Like him individually now he's going to be the main reason that they go as far or not as far as they end up going this season. Like the defense gives them a floor, but eventually eventually, like Sam Darnold eventually had to make some plays for Seattle.

[Brandon Scott]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

I know we like to point to their defense, and their defense is the biggest reason they won't. Whatever. You. Eventually your quarterback's going to have to do some things, and certainly he's going to have to keep from doing things that make you lose these games.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, the. The weird part about CJ's season this year is, like, the timing of his. Because he's going to have a bad game, he's going to have bad moments. Literally everybody does. I don't care how good you are, but what is the timing of those moments? When's it going to happen? Is it going to be in the middle of the season? If it's in the playoffs? Is it going to be. Is it going to be something that the Texans can overcome? How often, if at all, are they going to have to overcome their quarterback versus him being the reason why they win? Like, can he win them a game in the wild card round but still be the reason why they lose the divisional round? And how does it. Because, like, when we look back, they won that first game. But he wasn't good against Pittsburgh either, right?

[Sean Pendergast]

No.

[Brandon Scott]

So, like, what. What is the. What's the math on that? Is the question for you?

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, even in the regular season, you know, and maybe the defense is so good now that you're really not in a position where he's got to put a cape on like he did a couple times his rookie year. The defense wasn't as good in 2023, certainly as it was last year, and probably in 2024 also. It's been an elite defense for two years now.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, I mean, they got Daniel Hunter in 2024, and they've taken off ever since then.

[Sean Pendergast]

I mean, I think. I think CJ had more games his rookie year than he did the next two years combined, where he went and won the game for you. The Tampa Bay game was the biggest turning point of his. The early part of his career.

[Brandon Scott]

Yep.

[Sean Pendergast]

Through for nearly 500 yards, brought him back in 46 seconds. I mean, you go back and watch the highlights of that game, it's like, man, I would love for that guy to walk through this door again. That CJ in that game that day, he was incredible. And then the next week, they go

[Brandon Scott]

on the road and Be Joe Burrow.

[Sean Pendergast]

Beat Joe Burrow. Be Joe Burrow. And that was a game where CJ actually made a mistake towards the end of the game. He threw a horrible interception. When they're up 10, you're just trying to protect the football and bleed the clock. And it opened the door for Cincinnati to tie that game. But then CJ goes down and gets in position for. I think, I think that was the Matt Amendola game where there was the backup kicker field goal in that game. So, so he, you know, and then the, the game, the do or die game against the colts in week 18. Oh, he was. It's neat. He was great in that game. And then the following season they opened against the Colts, and he was great in that game too. But it's been a while since CJ's had games like that. Where you go, boy, he just put the team on his back. And again, maybe some of that is with this defense, it hasn't been necessary for him to do that. But they have lost some games, you know, they, they. Even with this defense, they've lost some games over the last few years. Um, so we just haven't. We just. I feel like we haven't seen that version of cj, you know?

[Brandon Scott]

Well, it's. And it's fine for it to not be like, we love it, that the defense is so good that it's not necessary for CJ Stroud to put the team on his back and all that sort of thing. Right? Like that, that part of it is good. The bad part is even within that context when he's giving the game away.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Brandon Scott]

Right. Like, it's one thing to say we don't need you to put us on your back and go win the game, but the non negotiable, the thing that you can't do is be the reason why we lose it, especially at the

[Sean Pendergast]

quarterback position, especially in the divisional round in New England when you would have faced the Broncos backup quarterback the next week in the AFC title game. Especially then I text messages. This goes back to the Petty cast in the previous segment. I described a story of a couple next to the table at a nice steakhouse here in town that. That Amy and I were eating at over the weekend. And this couple brought a baby in, in a stroller, like a carriage stroller. And the husband was circling the table with the baby on his shoulder, like, trying to get it to sleep. Turned out the baby was hungry, so the mom breastfed the baby right at the table, put a blanket over the whole scene. But still, you know, you got people spending hundreds of dollars on a nice dinner, you know, not to sit in a nursery.

[Brandon Scott]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

So most of the texts that have come in have supported the notion that, hey, just skip dinner that night, guys, stay Home. It's not appropriate for.

[Brandon Scott]

I'm Dana Carvey.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm David Spade. Flying 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 Fly on the Wall everywhere. You get your podcasts too Good be true. An upscale restaurant like that. There are a few people saying that, that we're wrong in this, but this one is not one of those people. I wouldn't mind someone bringing a baby to a nice restaurant as long as one of the parents takes the kids out. If they start crying or being loud, I don't think it's appropriate to pop a boob. I'll say boob out. To breastfeed at the table. Pump before and bring a bottle.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. I mean, that's a reasonable take.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

And there are, there is like a whole. I don't want to call it a political movement, but there is a whole, like, you know, women should have the right to breastfeed. And it's natural and like that. They're, they're like, that's the whole kind of ethos or thought process, if you will. Like, people believe in that. And I, like, I'll give you that. My wife was one of those.

[Sean Pendergast]

Sure.

[Brandon Scott]

So, like, I'm, I'm cool with that. But the initial point of, like, what's the proper thing to do when the, when the baby starts making noise? It's not to get up and walk around the table like you're at the baby's nursery or in your living room or in the privacy of your own home. You take the kid, even if the kid's a toddler or if it's a preschool age kid, an elementary school age kid. Once the kid starts acting up, you leave the scene entirely. You go to the bathroom, you go outside, you find a quiet space to tend to the child.

[Sean Pendergast]

My point is that an upscale steakhouse, the baby never should have been in there in the first place. If you're bringing a stroller to a place where the cheapest piece of meat is $65 on the menu, then you shouldn't be going into that place.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. I feel like people just want you to have the right to do everything. But look, I had three kids and one of the things I had to accept was that we were gonna have to make sacrifices once we had three kids.

[Sean Pendergast]

And I'm not saying arrest these people. I'm saying etiquette. Yeah. Proper etiquette.

[Brandon Scott]

Tell them to take that stuff outside.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Come back in when you're as you

[Sean Pendergast]

so eloquently pointed out the upscale steakhouse is where the beginning of the birthing process takes place.

[Brandon Scott]

Exactly. You don't come back. You don't come back 912 months later.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right. With the baby. Oh, remember that night we came here and we did it afterwards?

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. Let's commemorate this night. There's a baby annoying the hell out of everybody else that's here.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right. Guy says, I've canceled nights out before. And the babysitter cancels when our plans are to go to a nice restaurant. Other couples might be having their own night out that night. Only it only. And it only happens a few times a year. That's my point. It didn't spoil it for us because, as you know, Brandon, I immediately said, well, I can talk about this on the show on Tuesday.

[Brandon Scott]

Here's.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, here's. Content didn't bother me. Yeah, I mean, it did in that it was in the Petty cast, but, you know, aside from that. All right, coming up next, two big names, two of the biggest names in the NFL, arguably the two best players in the last 10 years in the NFL. Are they going to be in the NFL on week one? Are they going to be playing in week one? We've got updates coming up. Network Sports Radio 610 presents live from the West Point Lincoln and West Point Lincoln of Sugarland Studios. Here's Pain and Pendergast. Hey, Pain and Pendergast. B. Scott. In for. B. Scott. In for. In for. Seth Payne. All right, we got a lot of takes on my restaurant experience that we'll read in just a little bit. Appreciate everybody tuning in. It is funny to me that the football talk generates its fair share of texts, but when we talk about a black squirrel getting loose on a baseball diamond, in my experience, at an expensive steakhouse, sitting next to a couple that brought a baby in that. That's what generates most of the back and forth.

[Brandon Scott]

Well, because they're just slightly more relatable. Like somebody pointed out on the YouTube chat, you know, we might have solved racism earlier in the show.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, you know, the squirrel talk.

[Brandon Scott]

The squirrel talk. And then in this case with the high end restaurant, what to do with the baby thing, at some point, everybody is gonna run into a situation like this, whether you're the parent or in your case, you're just the couple that's going out for a nice quiet evening.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, I'm just a diner there, man. But I will say that the. The conversation about the upscale steakhouse etiquette has only made this even more Important. An episode.

[Brandon Scott]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Of pain and Pendergast.

[Brandon Scott]

Because I do feel like we need to come to a resolution.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's a very special episode.

[Brandon Scott]

We, we do need to solve this issue. We gotta, we gotta solve this problem. What, what is the right way to handle this? Because I think the easiest play is just step outside.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know who I'm very anxious to get their take on this.

[Brandon Scott]

Who's that?

[Sean Pendergast]

John Lopez.

[Brandon Scott]

Oh, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I am anxious to see. I think Lopez's take on this could be all over the map.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. The, the, the delta between what the possibility could be. Yeah. Seems to probably be massive. Yeah. Because you could see Lopez being the, the heartwarming type, saying, oh, no, just let the. He's a grandfather. He's a grandfather, so just let the baby in.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

But also Lopez well traveled. Probably been to his fair. Not. Probably has been to his fair share of fine dining experience. High end.

[Sean Pendergast]

Like a normal person. If you're going to spend 400 or $500 on a dinner, wants to make sure that he and Jan are having the perfect experience.

[Brandon Scott]

A parent himself, obviously a grandparent and a parent himself.

[Sean Pendergast]

Like, I have no idea. He's. It's, it's a total wild card to

[Brandon Scott]

me, but I do feel like he's going to have a solid answer. Whether you agree with it or not, it's going to be a solid lived experience. Answer from Lopez.

[Sean Pendergast]

Do you think Aaron Donald is coming back to play football this year for the Los Angeles Rams?

[Brandon Scott]

I do. Based off of how Sean McVay talked about it and talked around. Sounds like he's going to at least like whether he does or not. It does sound like he's going to at least give it a shot, give it a go.

[Sean Pendergast]

This is the quote you're talking about. This is from Sean McVay just a couple days ago. For those of you guys that do know Aaron, Aaron Donald, he's very diligent. Anything he does, he does all in. And so he's going through a very strict regimented process that was similar to what he did when he played end quote. That says to me, he's coming back.

[Brandon Scott]

He's trying.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's trying. Now. I think this, if I had to predict because we've seen other players do this, most notably in Dominic and Sue did this with, I think the Eagles back in the day and got to a Super bowl with them doing this.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Is he came back in like week 10. I could see Aaron Donald doing something like that. I don't think if he's coming back he's coming back for the money, so it's not like he needs. Well, I got to get, you know, 17 game checks. You know, Got a max out here. No, I think Aaron Donald coming back with fresh legs in the middle of the season.

[Brandon Scott]

Scary proposition.

[Sean Pendergast]

Scary proposition. And I think the smart proposition, if you're Aaron Donald and the Los Angeles Rams, they're already going to be a good team without him.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Can you imagine adding. It's like adding Aaron Donald at the trade deadline for nothing.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, it.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's depending on how much Rusty has to knock off.

[Brandon Scott]

You know, this is a fair. It is fair to call this an embarrassment of riches if they're able to get this guy back, because they don't need Aaron Donald. They did, by the way, just trade for, I don't know, Miles Garrett.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Didn't they do that?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Brandon Scott]

So. So, like, what do you need Aaron Donald for? Just the idea that those two guys could line up next to each other. Some version of Aaron Donald. I don't even know what it's going to look like, but you got to figure he's going to still be a bad a. That's scary, man.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know what it's like, because I don't think we'd be having this conversation if the Miles Garrett trade hadn't gotten made. I think there's something to playing alongside Miles Garrett. Yeah. And certainly something that. I mean, they were a Super bowl contender, even with Jared Verse. They were a game away from getting to the super bowl last year, the Rams, so they were already a good team. This is a little bit like the dynamic you and I talked about, I think, yesterday with LeBron James and the Jalen Brown trade. LeBron chose the Sixers, and Jalen Brown being there was a. Reportedly a big part of that. Like, if Jaylen Brown weren't on the Sixers, there's a good chance LeBron James is not on the Sixers as well.

[Brandon Scott]

Clear domino effect.

[Sean Pendergast]

So the trade. And he signs for a minimum contract.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So the trade that the Sixers made for Jalen Brown functionally included LeBron James in a way. Yeah. It's almost like they. They got LeBron James in the Jalen Brown trade in addition to Jalen Brown.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. It's like this.

[Sean Pendergast]

Paul freaking George.

[Brandon Scott]

It's like The Celtics traded LeBron James to the Sixers despite him being a Laker.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. But functionally, Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

I mean, that's it.

[Sean Pendergast]

This is kind of similar in that if. If Myles Garrett is the Jaylen Brown in this analogy, if he's the big reason Aaron Donald wants to come back and play. It's almost like the Cleveland Browns traded Miles Garrett and Aaron Donald to the Los Angeles Rams.

[Brandon Scott]

Dude. What. Just what a wild.

[Sean Pendergast]

If one is tied to the other inextricably, and I think these are pretty close to that, then. Then it's. It's an over the top, genius move by Les Snead.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. I don't think you're reaching at all here. Like, this is. This is two plus two equal and four to me. Yep. Or two plus one plus one equal in four, if you want to do it that way. But nonetheless, you still get to four. Yeah. And I'll point out to me, this is different because your original question is like. Like, do we think he's coming back the way that Sean McVeigh is talking about Aaron Donald is even different from. Remember a couple of years ago, we kind of did this from a Texan standpoint with J.J. watts. Like, is he gonna come back and play for his old teammate? And d', Amico, he's still only just a year or two removed from playing. He talked about himself, hey, I'm only gonna be working out like this for a certain amount of time. I'm not gonna do this forever. What? That seemed to be like they were kind of playing coy a little bit tongue in cheek. Like they were just playing into the joke. This doesn't seem like Sean McVeigh is playing into any joke. That's. That sound like an actual breakdown.

[Sean Pendergast]

The.

[Brandon Scott]

The.

[Sean Pendergast]

The part where he's talking about there being a regimented process. Yeah, Michael. He's doing something then.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know, and I know Aaron Donald's been keeping in shape in retirement. I know that he looks amazing. All that stuff. This feels very football specific. The way he's talking right now.

[Brandon Scott]

He's already a maniac in the gym. He's going the extra mile of being like an NFL maniac in the gym.

[Sean Pendergast]

Patrick Mahomes is going to be full go for camp with the Kansas City Chiefs. Yeah. So he's going to. Looks like. Did the. Did the league miss its window here to smack the Chiefs around a little bit?

[Brandon Scott]

I mean, they might have.

[Sean Pendergast]

They got smacked around last year. People forget. The Chiefs were already kind of an average team even before Mahomes got hurt.

[Brandon Scott]

Oh, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Mahomes getting hurt just cratered the season and allowed them to pick in the top 10 in the draft.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. Their odds were pretty slim that, like, they were at a point where they were going to have to run the after Showing that they were a.500 football team.

[Sean Pendergast]

They were 6 and 6 when the Texans played them.

[Brandon Scott]

There you go.

[Sean Pendergast]

In week 14.

[Brandon Scott]

And they got to a point where as well, we gotta run the table if we want to have a shot. And then the quarterback gets. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

He tears his knee. So Mahomes is going to be back for week one, which is. And he's going to be full go for camp, which is very different than what the forecasts were when he first hurt the knee.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I mean, there was talk. I remember we'd, you know, when they signed Justin Fields, I remember doing a segment with Seth. We're like, all right, well, what's that going to look like for the first few weeks with Justin Fields in an Andy Reid offense? Because it was going to be necessary because we thought Mahomes was going to miss some time.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. And this now goes back to our conversation about how the injuries are. I don't want to say easier, but much more likely to recover from or recovering much sooner than you did in the past when we were growing up with sports.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. Except Tankdale. Year and a half.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. Which you can see why.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Physiologically, why that. Why that checks out.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. Text message. My name is Ryan. It's my first time texting in.

[Brandon Scott]

All right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Welcome to the show, Ryan. But you said something that's very polarizing. In my home, my wife will say, quote, it's a baby thing. It's what babies do. Talking about either, you know, crying or breastfeeding at the table, whatever.

[Brandon Scott]

We're familiar with that.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm the complete opposite. When our son was an infant, I avoided doing anything. If we did go out and he lost it, I'm paying the tab and I'm leaving immediately.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Now I. And there's people wondering, like, well, what would you do, Sean? Like, you have three kids back in the year. I have three kids now, but they're all in their 20s. We rarely went out. You got to understand, I had twins and then Sammy was born 17 months later.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So we had three little kids. The fanciest thing we would go to would be to go to, like, a Buffalo Wild Wings or. Or a Willy's Ice House. Not Willie G's, the fancy seafood place, like a Willy's Ice House, where you go and it's very casual. And my kids were always really good about not crying at the table. We. We never brought them when they were infants. Now it would look like a food bomb went off around our table. They'd all be sitting in high chairs and they'd be eating and it was a mess for the staff to clean up. But those places are built for that sort of thing. Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

And that. That is normal. That's normal is what babies do.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes. There was never breastfeeding going on at the table, I can tell you that. No, but I know it's everybody's right to do that. I looked, I asked Chat GPT. It's perfectly legal.

[Brandon Scott]

I do feel like. And of course, our audience is fairly male dominated. I do feel like the stances. The stances on this fall along gender lines and the men who cross over to the woman's side have been convinced and. And conditioned by the woman's position on

[Sean Pendergast]

this thing and probably lead happier, more cordial marriages. Yeah, I get it. You're caving. You know they'll cave at some point.

[Brandon Scott]

Happy wife, happy life.

[Sean Pendergast]

Absolutely.

[Brandon Scott]

But a man got to draw the line somewhere. And the baby crying at the steakhouse or at the high end restaurant is the line for me, dog.

[Sean Pendergast]

Absolutely.

[Brandon Scott]

We got to go outside.

[Sean Pendergast]

Got you. Got to. All right, 9 o' clock hour coming up. Let's circle back to the Astros. Maybe the most improbable win of the season, certainly the most improbable win of this little run that the Astros are on here. They've won six out of seven now, so they're working their way back in it. We'll get you updated on the standings. And if you missed it last night, holy smokes, what a wild ninth inning for the Houston Astros. That is coming up next. Sports Radio 610 presents Payne and Pendergast. Someone suggesting on the text page that once a month, high end upscale steakhouses do baby night. So for the month, people are wondering why we're digging deep on this topic. I was telling the story of my wife and I going to Mashrose. We had a great time. By the way, Mastro's is amazing. But there was a couple sitting next to us that had brought a baby in, in a stroller in like a carriage stroller with the intent to sleep. And the baby did anything but sleep. And the couple that was there did anything but take the baby out to either breastfeed or calm the baby down or anything like that. So that's why it was in the pedicast. And that's why we've been mentioning it, because we're getting a ton of texts on this. This is the by far the thing we've gotten the most texts on. But the person texts in says, I'm a sales and marketing guy. You Know, they should do once a month, kind of like, this is me talking now. Kind of like where the Astros have the day where you can bring your dog out to the ballpark.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Maybe you're not a dog person. Well, don't go on dog night.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, yeah, there you go. Bringing the dog. They also have those programs with kids and dogs, basically, but they got. They got kid programs where they let the kids go out there and run the bases. Yeah, but they don't let the kid. You know, when they don't let the kids run the bases in the seventh inning, you know, when the show's going on, they wait till either before or after the game and let the kids run around.

[Sean Pendergast]

Good point.

[Brandon Scott]

But not in the middle of the game now. Not during the seventh inning stretch.

[Sean Pendergast]

No. Oh, my God.

[Brandon Scott]

What are we doing?

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, we'll read some of these texts in just a little bit. Oh, Byron, did I hijack the bump in here?

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, sorry about that.

[Brandon Scott]

You're good.

[Sean Pendergast]

Now you know how Ben Gary felt all those years. Here's what the final call of. Here's what the final call of the Astros game last night sounded like.

[Brandon Scott]

Broken back hater backs up fields it throws in time. Astros win at 6 to 4.

[Sean Pendergast]

Not an easy play as Hayter navigated

[Brandon Scott]

the back of the mound, kept his feet, and threw out Grissom to end the game. Blummer, that was not a classic top half of the night bidding, but what a comeback by the Astros. Santa came early.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well put, Plumber. Well put. If you missed it last night, and a lot of you probably did, a lot of you probably did the same thing that me and B. Scott did, which is that we both decided to hang it up when it was four to one.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know what? Three, four innings into the game, something like that. If you missed, and I can see where a lot of you watched maybe the first inning, and you're like, here we go. Imai gets knocked out in the first inning again. Gonna be one of these games.

[Brandon Scott]

Imying.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, he's E Ming. He's pulling an E min.

[Brandon Scott]

He's pulling an E mine. Ming all over the mound.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes. Like he's want to do E Ming all over the place. He got knocked out in the first inning. Blue box came in in in the first inning and was able to steady things for a bit. Left the bases. The Angels left the bases loaded. So the damage could have been far worse if blue ball hadn't come in. Blue ball ends up giving up a couple of runs. The story of this game was the ninth inning that we're about to outline here. But it was also Christian Javier. Christian, Javier came in this game and gave the Astros five innings of shutout relief with seven strikeouts, no walks. Christian, Javier was outstanding in this game for the Astros. That's huge. I don't know what that does for Javier. As part. As far as the trust level goes, you know, we do the circle of trust from time to time on this show for the Astros, and I almost feel like all season long, the starting rotation has had its own sub. Circle of trust going on. I don't know if that outing last night gets Javier back into the starting rotation. Circle of trust. Look, the Astros may not have a choice here because you keep having guys get injured like Spencer Arrogetti, whatever the case may be. So Javier was a big story. The other big story was the comeback in the ninth inning. Four to two, top of the ninth. And the Angels had to hit by pitches, one with the bases loaded. Keep in mind, the bases were loaded because the Angels manager intentionally walked Jordan Alvarez with runners on first and second.

[Brandon Scott]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, so he pushed. He. The Angels manager voluntarily put the tying run at the time on third, but

[Brandon Scott]

he's also at that point challenging his pitcher to get the next guy out,

[Sean Pendergast]

who is Issac Paredes, who's been very hot lately.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. But at the very least, don't pluck.

[Sean Pendergast]

Don't beat him. And he plunked him. So they had two hit by pitches. There's a passed ball in there. There were two errors, awful errors. A ball through the legs, errors by the second baseman. That would have been a double play.

[Brandon Scott]

That's the big one, like, just right between your legs.

[Sean Pendergast]

That was the gateway play of that inning. I didn't. You know, when he. He hits Taylor Trammel to open the inning. Okay, that's going to have the elite off guys get on all kinds of ways late in games. And then there's a pass ball gets Taylor Tramell the second. All right. It's two run game at that point. It's not like the tying run just got into scoring position. Closers should be able to manage their way out of this thing. The. The double. The potential double play ball that rolled through Grisham. Grisham's legs was. That was the one where you're watching. You go, oh, they. This. This could happen against a bad baseball team.

[Brandon Scott]

You. You did mention, and this is not me trying to split hairs here, but you mentioned the comeback. I think it was that error, specifically the. The ball going between the legs. That was Supposed to be a double play. That is the line of demarcation between comeback and collapse. So.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, like is, is this so kind of the question, like, did the Astros seize this game or did the Angels give it away?

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, and sometimes it's both. But I think that is what turned what, what flipped the ledger in the collapse direction versus the come down. We'll take it either way.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Brandon Scott]

Right. As a win is a win.

[Sean Pendergast]

We need them all.

[Brandon Scott]

But going to split hairs here. That's where it officially, to me, becomes a collapse. Right there on that play.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes. Yeah. And there was, there was an inning. I'll tell you the inning. I decided to go to bed. It was when the Astros. It was when the Angels scored a couple more runs, when Jose Altuve fields a routine ground ball to second and just sails the throw. Oh, yeah, just sails the throw. And then the next guy up. I think it was the next guy. It was the same inning because it drove in a run, hits a pop up behind first base, and Christian Walker's just like casually jogging back there to go get it. Yeah. And the thing drops in between him and Cam Smith.

[Brandon Scott]

There were some issues with locating the, the fly balls for the, for the Astros, specifically, because the, the parts of this game that I did see, I want to say Lamont Wade had a, had a tough time locating a fly ball as well. So this, this was a part of the game, within the game of, of not being able to see the fly balls. But yeah, when you're talking about comedy of errors and what direction it could have gone in, the Astros kind of had their moment there as well.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's when I went to bed. That is when in the rundown, I typed the sentence F these A holes. That's all I typed was F these A holes. And then I woke up in the middle of the night to, to, to hit the bathroom, you know, 2:30, 2:30 in the morning there.

[Brandon Scott]

And now you love these A hole.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, and I grabbed my phone like I normally do, like any insane person would at 2:30 in the morning, because that's what you need when you get up to go to the bathroom is to get hit with a bunch of sensory stuff that's going to make you even more awake and unable to go back to sleep. Yeah. But I was curious about the outcome of the Astros game. And I open it up and I've got eight push notifications on Twitter from Mark Berman, who basically live tweets these games. It's fun as hell.

[Brandon Scott]

We miss you, Mark. But not that much since you give us this much content, this version.

[Sean Pendergast]

I like this Twitter version of Berman even better than the breaking news version of Berman.

[Brandon Scott]

Fair enough.

[Sean Pendergast]

Because he's got opinions now.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know, he never put opinions out there before because he was a newsbreaker. He was a journalist. Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

He was a professional.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's a professional now. He puts opinions out there. He's got strong opinions sometimes and still

[Brandon Scott]

mixes in, like, what we could call now aggregation. Yeah, he's quoting folks on the broadcast,

[Sean Pendergast]

but I look down and Berman's like. Berman's quoting Blum and he's quoting Kevin Eschenfelder from the studio show on how the Angels gave this game away. I'm like, holy crap, they won. So I immediately went over to my iPad real quick before I went back to bed, and I said, on f these a holes, they won the game. Yes.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, take my F back.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, man.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, with it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Chandler Rome. They did a. I felt kind of bad for Chandler about this yesterday because clearly this was one of those pieces on the Athletic where they were trying to get something click worthy out of all their beat writers. And they had to do a trade deadline prediction. Each of the beat writers for. For their team. And Chandler Rome is obviously. He's the Astros beat writer. And. And you know, there's. And there's some in here predictions that aren't all that hot. Takey. Some that are. I truly wonder if this is just Chandler hot taking or if he really thinks this is going to happen. His prediction, Jeremy Pena will get traded before the trade deadline.

[Brandon Scott]

That's hot. Take it.

[Sean Pendergast]

He says the Astros will recognize their myriad of issues, acknowledge their long odds of making a meaningful run in the playoffs, and reinvigorate their farm system by trading. Jeremy Pena talks about them coming close to a contract extension last year, but then he hired Scott Boris, and then the Astros have shown they're willing to move on from guys before. Now, granted, Kyle Tucker was in the off season, not in season. Kyle Tucker did not signify a waving of the white flag because of when he was traded. Yeah, he was traded in the off season. You actually got major leaguers back. I know Cam Smith is the crown jewel of that trade, or we hope he is eventually.

[Brandon Scott]

So far has been Isaac, but it

[Sean Pendergast]

is been the best player from that trade. Yeah, but Cam Smith has shown signs as to. Okay, I could see why they thought this was a good idea.

[Brandon Scott]

Highest upside guy.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, but. But that was in December or whenever it was. This would be a. This would be the Astros saying, we. We don't Think we can win this thing this year? We think we have no chance.

[Brandon Scott]

It would feel that way. It could also be that. Look, we feel like we could replace Jeremy Pena both as a leadoff hitter and that somebody could come in here and play respectable shortstop for us defensively. But that would be a tough sale. Like they, they could try to sell it and they might even actually believe it. But it would certainly feel like, to your point, feel like a waving of the white flag. One of your best players. You're already, as I point out all the time, you're already a top heavy and infield heavy lineup. Right. So all most of your production comes at the top of the lineup for which Jeremy Pen is the leadoff hitter.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

And it's infield heavy for which Jeremy Pena is a shortstop. And you're trying to get some more from everybody else. If you take one of those guys away, then it feels like a wave, another white flag.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep, it definitely does. But Jeremy Pena is doing everything he can to make himself a very, very intriguing asset to teams right now. So here's the way, by the way, we haven't mentioned this Player of the week for last week.

[Brandon Scott]

That's right. That was mentioned in headlines.

[Sean Pendergast]

Jeremy Pena. We got. We were so swept up in the nature of last night's game. Jeremy. Jeremy Pena, who hit.500 last week, he was 13 for 26 with five dingers.

[Brandon Scott]

All right. So here's where I'm at with the Jeremy Pena thing because I feel like objectively we can acknowledge that trading Jeremy Pena, especially if they're not going to pay him and none of us believe that they are, trading Jeremy Pena is. Was. It is what's best for the long term. For the long term viability of the franchise, it is best to trade Jeremy Pena, especially if you're not gonna pay him for the long term viability of the Astros franchise. But I think I decided over the weekend, as they're handling business against the Chicago White Sox, that right now I think I care more about the moment and the short term viability of the franchise because I don't know when they're going to play baseball again. Yeah, I'm not as concerned about the future of the Astros. True. Because I don't really know about the future of baseball as a whole or in general. So why not just go all in on the potential of. And I'm not saying this is a great Astros team by any stretch, but there ain't no great teams in the American League. Like the idea that you could still go out there with this middling team and still have a chance at a pennant with Jeremy Pena and then be like the last American League champion or if they go even further than that and win the World Series, be the last champion for, I don't know, six months, eight months, nine months, a year, or longer or however long. I'm intrigued by that.

[Sean Pendergast]

I just haven't gotten to a point where I'm emotional one way or the other on it because I don't think they're going to do it. I think there's a 0% chance they're trading Jeremy Pena because that's not how Jim Crane is, Is wired. He's wired to go for it. He's not wired to, to concede and people will argue. The Kyle Tucker trade again. I think that happening in the off season and honestly feeling like a trade that the Astros have won to this point. Yeah. Is, you know, that felt like a practical thing to do because we also know another thing. Jim Crane is not going to give out the types of contracts that Kyle Tucker was looking for. Yeah. So it's the irresistible force meets the immovable object. You got to do one or the other or let him walk for nothing. Right. And they've let too many guys walk for nothing. To me, that was self awareness. Knowing that your minor league system cannot sustain you, you got to go bring in stuff from the outside. That's the spirit behind these talks with Pena, too. I just don't think, I just don't think they're going to do it. And I, I'm. I don't mind it because I think the same mentality, maybe some degree of delusion as well, but I think that same mentality that has them thinking, hey man, we're going to be a buyer here, we're not going to be a seller, is the same mentality that takes the teams that you already have that are good and turns them into World Series teams. When you're willing to make big moves like that, like Verlander, like Granke, like Gear Cole in the off season, after 2017, when that, when they're already a World Series champ, they made a trade for Garrett Cole. Yeah, that's the type of mentality. So if I've got to live with both, I'd rather live with the owner who is a little delusional in times like this, that's going to take the really good teams and put it over the top to. If I were to make a football comparison, it's probably how Packer fans had to deal with Brett Favre. Back in the day, Brett Favre, at one point, I believe, led the NFL in career touchdowns and career interceptions.

[Brandon Scott]

He did.

[Sean Pendergast]

And so that's, you know, Jim Crane a gunslinger, I guess, in a way, because that's what everybody called Brett Favre.

[Brandon Scott]

Jim Crane, the Brett Favre of mlb.

[Sean Pendergast]

A little bit. A little bit. Like, you know what? Sometimes you end up with Justin Verlander, sometimes you end up with Jose Abreu.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Sometimes you wind up with Jeff Luno. Sometimes you wind up with being a co GM with Jeff Bagwell and Reggie Jackson for a little while.

[Brandon Scott]

Dims the breaks.

[Sean Pendergast]

But I think it's safe to say, like, the balance sheet of Jim Crane's ownership here has been outstanding. Yeah, the balance sheet. I won two World Series championships, so that's kind of where I'm at with the whole Pena thing. I. I'm not. I'm not strong one way or the other just because I don't think it's happening. I feel like we're. I would be wasting calories worrying one way or the other when I don't think he's going anywhere.

[Brandon Scott]

I like your point about the Astros in some ways playing defense by not giving him away to another contender, Jeremy Pena being him. Like, I. I get that. I do wonder, though, kind of going back to the point of the existential crisis of the league overall, MLB overall. I wonder if this situation. Because it's very similar to the Kyle Tucker situation, but I wonder if the difference is there potentially not being an offseason, they trade Kyle Tucker in the off season because obviously you don't want to make yourself less competitive during the year. And I don't imagine that they want to do that now. Right. But the difference between now and then is that there was an off season to trade Kyle Tucker.

[Sean Pendergast]

In talking about the lockout.

[Brandon Scott]

The lockout. The potential. The. The potential and what we all think is a looming and unavoidable at this point lockout.

[Sean Pendergast]

Did you see some of the reports yesterday? There's apparently owners out there that think there's not going to be a season next year. Yeah, well, they think there's going to be no games played.

[Brandon Scott]

And that's. And that's what I'm talking about saying to me. So are you more to. Does it. Does that make you more likely to hold on to Jeremy Pena and say, hey, we're going to go all in for kind of like how I was saying earlier, I'd rather just go all in and act like this season is the last one ever? Or does the fact that there's not an off season to trade Jeremy Pena and, you know, you need to either pay him or get something for him. Does that mean that you have to jump the gun and trade him earlier than you normally would like? Which side of that balancing act is Jim Crane gonna ultimately fall on?

[Sean Pendergast]

Someone said The Crane Special, four to five years, 140, 250 million. No more than that. Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

That horse has left the barn.

[Sean Pendergast]

They offer. Well, they. The reported offer to Pena before he signed with, before he signed with Boris was something somewhere. It was like a five year deal somewhere in the neighborhood of like 120 million.

[Brandon Scott]

I think that's right.

[Sean Pendergast]

So, you know, somewhere around, you know, 22, 24 million.

[Brandon Scott]

Which sounds sort of like the Carlos Correa deal, proposed deal that would have been years before him.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Or the Bregman deal was six years, 156 a couple years ago.

[Brandon Scott]

Very familiar numbers there.

[Sean Pendergast]

Don't forget texter. Don't forget that. That Hayden Wisneski was part of that Kyle Tucker trade as well.

[Brandon Scott]

We haven't forgotten. He's just been injured.

[Sean Pendergast]

He had Tommy John surgery. Yeah, no, I know. People are going to point out he's coming back. He's going to come back pretty soon. I know.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, we'll see.

[Sean Pendergast]

None of these Tommy John guys have worked out.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, yeah, Stay tuned. But yeah, to Sean's point, like we're not about to hang our hat on the Tommy John guy.

[Sean Pendergast]

Let me clarify something here. Someone says, nice knowing you, Sean. The women are going to be all over you for the breastfeeding and public take. I'd only be more worried if you had said something bad about Taylor Swift. Again, let me, let me be clear about this because I laid out the entire, the, the chronology of what happened. It was a couple who brought a baby in a stroller into a nice steakhouse. That's the choke point for me right there. Yeah, that's the issue I have. And the, the restaurant's hands may have been tied. I don't know what the legalities are of it. I don't think it's illegal for them to bring in. Now. Restaurants have policies about things. I have no idea. Clearly this restaurant had a policy where they allowed this couple to bring the baby in. And then two things happened. The husband grabbed the baby and put it on its shoulder and walked circles around the table to calm the baby down, to get it to sleep.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

For like 15 minutes.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. A normal thing to do at your home.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. And then handed the baby to his wife. Or girlfriend. The mother of the baby, presumably to breastfeed it at the table. She put a blanket over her while doing this. Let me be very clear. The breastfeeding is way down the list of things where I'm like, I don't know if that should be happening here in a nice restaurant. I was way more bothered by the father treating the restaurant like it was the kids nursery. And at the table next to us, just walking circles around his table for 15 minutes. That was rude.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Like the breastfeeding things. The breastfeeding thing. I. Again, the choke point for me is just don't bring a baby to a restaurant and don't bring him to a theater. We have people texting that in. Like the worst of the people that bring crying babies to a theater and then don't leave the theater with the baby.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Those are bad people. I'm just gonna say it. They're bad people.

[Brandon Scott]

One of the most common examples of this is like in a church, you know, And I know this is not a church, but baby starts crying in church, you go out and step into the.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Into the lobby area.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Or they got a little like a crying room.

[Brandon Scott]

Right. That's a normal thing to do. Not sit there in front of everybody and let the baby cry.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. All right. Peyton Pendergast on a Tuesday. Brandon Scott in for Seth Payne. Couple segments here and then we'll talk to the guys on in the Loop, see what Lopez has to say about this all important topic. And Reggie, But Lopez being the grandfather and father on that show, I'm very intrigued. Peaked the season win totals out for the Rockets. Boy, was the B Scott and Pendergast compass off on this one. What do we think over under for this season win total? We'll tell you what it is. Coming up next. Sports Radio 610 presents live from the West Point Lincoln and West Point Lincoln of Sugarland Studios. Here's pain and. Oh, boy. This is one of those texts where I'm like, I. I know if. I know if Seth were here, I know what would happen. I know what the next two words to be uttered would be. Uh, go die. That's what they would be. Text message. Let's skip. Let. Let's stick to sports commentary. Okay. We don't use our platform to air personal grievances. Okay. A couple things. Anytime you're lecturing on attacks, like, let's stick to blah, blah, blah, That's. That's bad. The. We don't use our platform to air personal grievances, sir. Or Ma', am, if you are not a broadcaster of some sort, that's even worse. Like we don't. Then now you're a teacher or somebody like that, like an instructor. Like, yeah, we don't do these things.

[Brandon Scott]

Who is we?

[Sean Pendergast]

Who's we?

[Brandon Scott]

Like who. Yeah world is we?

[Sean Pendergast]

Who is we?

[Brandon Scott]

Because we like and appreciate you and Seth for allowing me to sit in this chair and our boss, Parker. But this is our platform. You know what I mean? Like the we is you and me.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

And we're all together doing this together. Right. But unless I'm confused here on the we part, unless.

[Sean Pendergast]

Byron, did you text the show by any chance? No, you didn't text the show? Okay.

[Brandon Scott]

If I had an opinion, I just

[Sean Pendergast]

would have talked to you all. You would have talked. You would come in. Would you have addressed us like that? Would you have walked in? Can you picture Byron walking in here? Brandon. Byron walks in like, hey, let's stick to sports commentary. Okay.

[Brandon Scott]

That would be cringe.

[Sean Pendergast]

Like that's like a try hard. We don't use our platform to air personal grievances.

[Brandon Scott]

And you would be a traitor, a Benedict Arnold, if you will. You're supposed to be on our team, right? No, I agree with Sean, like walking around your table and stuff.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's just doing too much. Like. No, it is. And like I get it, like, you

[Brandon Scott]

know, breastfeeding, all that. I get it like walking around table

[Sean Pendergast]

when people are trying to eat because like what happens if the dude bumps

[Brandon Scott]

Sean's elbow or bumps Miss Amy his

[Sean Pendergast]

elbow and her wine hits her outfit? Now what happens? Well, he wasn't close enough to do that to me. It's just the distraction of somebody walking around their table in circles if they were doing that without a baby.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You'd be like, what the hell is wrong with this person?

[Brandon Scott]

But this lecturing us on the text line. Everybody's entitled to their opinion, by the way. This is, this is like in the realm of annoying, bringing a baby to a high end restaurant.

[Sean Pendergast]

Is this yours, right? Is this the first week you've been listening to the show? We don't. Eric, we don't use our platform to your personal grievances.

[Brandon Scott]

Welcome to Pain and Pen.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's all we do. The pettiest show in the city. Yeah. Oh my God.

[Brandon Scott]

Do a pedicast. Yes. We do an acknowledge me segment.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right?

[Brandon Scott]

Where we're using Roman reigns sound sound bites and thank you drops to do things.

[Sean Pendergast]

Thank you.

[Brandon Scott]

Come on now.

[Sean Pendergast]

So you and I, I asked you either yesterday or one of the days you And I have been doing radio together the last week or so. What do you think the Rockets season win total will be in Vegas for futures. For a futures bet. And I think you said 51 and a half. You were the book. Your number would be 51 and a half.

[Brandon Scott]

Yep. I had them right under their actual total that they've had over the last couple of years. Yeah. Which the point that I was making is that I view them at least regular season wise to be the same sort of caliber team that they've been the last two years.

[Sean Pendergast]

So are you a gambler at all?

[Brandon Scott]

Only a little bit. Like I like I do, you know, draftkings, prize picks, some of those stuff. But I don't. I don't. The only time I really gamble is when I tell some of T Mill's best bets for the. For the app.

[Sean Pendergast]

Those are good.

[Brandon Scott]

Those are good. Yeah, I do that.

[Sean Pendergast]

So. So in. And you've got, you know, you still got three school age kids that you're doing the responsible thing by not going knee deep into into gambling.

[Brandon Scott]

Mouths to feed, mouse to feed.

[Sean Pendergast]

Now I will say this, especially if you feel like 51 and a half was a good number.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Those mouths might be overflowing with food.

[Brandon Scott]

Hell, I could feed my kids. And the one that was at the steakhouse the other night, you take the

[Sean Pendergast]

over on the number that Vegas has put out there on the Houston Rockets. The Houston Rockets Vegas win total. They just put out the totals yesterday. BetOnline AG did. Or it might have been. I don't. Which outlet is this? I should.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Bet online. 47 and a half for the Rockets.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, like my, my 51 and a half might be a little bit too ambitious but I think that this line is on the low end.

[Sean Pendergast]

47 and a half. It puts them fifth in the west in terms of number of wins. Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Which that is reasonable.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. OKC is tops with 60 and a half.

[Brandon Scott]

See it.

[Sean Pendergast]

San Antonio is right next to them at 59 and a half. Same way it finished last year.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Denver, which I think was the three seed last year is next at 49 and a half. Now the four and five seed last year were the Lakers and the Rockets.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

They are not next. Next is the sixth seed from last year, Minnesota at 48 and a half.

[Brandon Scott]

They did add Lamello ball.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Brandon Scott]

They're really good.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Brandon Scott]

They. And they beat Denver by the way. So the six did beat the three.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

So not that much of a difference between them.

[Sean Pendergast]

So the Rockets are at the. The lower end of a tier that also includes the Lakers at 46 and a half. So you got OKC in San Antonio way out in front of everybody else.

[Brandon Scott]

Yep.

[Sean Pendergast]

And then the next four or five teams are all kind of a gaggle of teams and bunched up and the Rockets are right in that swamp right there. I my feeling about the Rockets last year was heading into the season was I think they're going to have a really tough time with the good teams. I think they're just going to out talent the bad teams and for a while that was true. And then they had that stretch where they were losing weird games to bad teams and then they just got really bad at the end of games in holding leads in the end they win 52 games last year. But we know what the playoffs ended up looking like and we know Kevin Durant got hurt. I do think the return of Fred Van Vliet. I think the return of Van Vliet. It surprises me that Fred Van Vliet returns and their season win total dips by four or five games. Yeah, that just feels off to me. I think that I am going to put a big bet on the Rockets.

[Brandon Scott]

I think two things are happening though as to the reason why that is. Yeah, I think that the west got well, so the spurs were sort of revealed to us to be much, much, much better than I think we were giving them credit for going into the season. They were a bit of a revelation throughout the season. So there's that. They were already though at the top end just as they were last year and are anticipated to be this upcoming year. But when you add that with the fact that the Rockets and I know they're getting Fred Van Vliet back, we can use that as the caveat. But everything around Fred Van Vliet and around Kevin Durant in that playoff series specifically was exposed. And I don't think that folks are as are as high on the young talent that the Rockets have now as they were last year.

[Sean Pendergast]

And so that's a good, that's a good one. Like who got better of those guys last year?

[Brandon Scott]

And even if you want to argue that somebody did just as a unit as a whole, it's like the pieces didn't necessarily always fit. And I talk about this all the time kind of not to get too inside basketball but like there is a true conflict on both ends of the floor with their best young player. Put Kevin Durant to the side for a second. Alperin Shingoon, the two time all star and the best of the young core so far. Has a legitimate conflict on the offensive end of the floor with Amend Thompson. Cause neither guy can shoot from the outside. And a legitimate conflict on the defensive end of the floor with Reed shepherd because the two of them are both defensive cones at times and you can't have it's right.

[Sean Pendergast]

And having the two of them on the floor at the same time really exposes.

[Brandon Scott]

However, ideally you have all three of them on the floor, which means that this conflict exists on both ends of the floor at some point, whether you have the ball or you don't.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

So I think that's a good observation. Is that the Rockets the view of them Fred Van Vliet with or without him is lesser than it was before on TV.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right now first take is on and they're saying ESPN Sham Sharania Sixers plan to put play LeBron at point guard this goes back to you and I during the petty cast. We played Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool and noted Boston Honk. Talking about the, the. The notion he's excited that the six are signed LeBron cause he thinks it's going to blow up in everybody's face. And one of the things he brought up was there's only one basketball. If that was your take before LeBron got there, then fine. I get that there's a lot of guys that need the ball in their hands to score. I understand that LeBron should not be something that creates that take. LeBron is an elixir to the need for multiple basketballs in Philly. And this bit of news right here from Shams I think directly indicates that. Yeah, if that's how they're picturing LeBron playing, that he's going to be the facilitator out there, then obviously they see Tyrese Maxey, they're. They're essentially going to go with like a three guard offense more or less. Right with the, with Edgecomb and Maxi and that's it.

[Brandon Scott]

LeBron James and of course we're in the. Not to make old school basketball fans roll their eyes at me, but we are in the era of positionless basketball where you're six nine, 260 pound, all time leading scorer in NBA history can actually go out there and be your point guard. And so to the point it looks like LeBron is going to have the opportunity to solve this. This actual like to actually solve this problem that we're talking about about too many ball or too many hands for one ball. Well, LeBron James's job it looks like is going to be to make sure that everybody adequately touches said ball.

[Sean Pendergast]

So you like this?

[Brandon Scott]

I do like.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, I do too. I think it makes a lot of sense.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, I think it's gonna work. Like, even if they don't win a championship, I think the logic and what they're trying to do makes total sense and can plausibly work.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Brandon Scott]

They just need health to be on their side.

[Sean Pendergast]

Text message. I find Sean's voice, bald head and name dropping, distracting. But you don't hear me being a whiny bee about it. No, I don't hear you, but I read your text. Being a whiny bee.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. Funny enough we do.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

We don't hear it, but we see it.

[Sean Pendergast]

I heard my annoying voice read your text and now I've heard about it. Yeah, text her.

[Brandon Scott]

And the irony of you listening to this station for free, but Sean going to that high end restaurant and paying hard earned money.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. LeBron should be point forward some attacks in. I think we're just semantics.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, that, that, that's what we're saying.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Yeah, we're. We're semantics.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's going to be the facilitator. Reed shepherd done yolked up. Lol. Yeah, Reed. I. I've seen some pictures and videos of Reed Shepherd. Looks like he's been spending some time either in the weight room or with a pharmacist of some sort.

[Brandon Scott]

It looks like he hit the weights and ditched his razor. Yeah. Because he's got like, his peach fuzz is grown in. He's got a beard. Yeah, he's, he's bulked up a little bit. He looks like, dare I say an adult.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's turning heel. If he starts wearing black everywhere and he turns it into a goatee. Yeah, he's a heel.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, he. And he needs to do some Dylan Brooks type type of things. Like, I don't know if he can still steal the bit of staring down the competition pre game like Dylan Brooks does, but he needs to do something, man. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Let's add some going, Reed.

[Sean Pendergast]

Let's go.

[Brandon Scott]

On top of. We want you to be less streakier of a shooter. We want you to develop a little bit of a personality here.

[Sean Pendergast]

Consistent and personality. All right, I want to circle back to Tank Dell. This is the last segment. We'll be in studio for, for a while. We'll be out at training camp starting tomorrow. Seth will be back. Really enjoyed hosting with you the last four shows, by the way.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, man, it's been fun.

[Sean Pendergast]

Been a good time. So we'll be out of training camp. So I do want to circle back to the Texans and something Brandon Scott and I talked earlier about. And I want to play some Nick Casario audio. Nick Casario laid out a timeline for Tank Dell back in June. That timeline is now upon us. Let's revisit that. And I actually have a new answer to what would be the most discouraging Tank Dell news that we could get today or tomorrow. That's coming up next. Sports Radio six ten presents live from the West Point Lincoln and West Point Lincoln of Sugar Land Studios. Here's Pain and Pendergast Payne and Pendergast B. Scott in for Seth Payne for one more segment. And then Seth will be back tomorrow as we will be at Texans training camp. Cannot wait. We'll be at Texans training camp for the next couple weeks. Before we know it, August 13th will be here and we will become 95. 7 the fan. And we're very excited about that. We had actually somebody ask a question earlier on the text page. If this person's still listening, they're a die hard. Cause it had showed up on there like two hours ago. But it's a question I haven't seen anybody ask yet. Um, does that mean that the Texans games on Sundays and whatever days they are will now run on three stations? Cause currently they run on here 610, 100.3 the bull. They the games themselves.

[Brandon Scott]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Run on those two stations. The answer is no. It'll still be two stations. It'll just be 95. 7 the fan and 610 the fan. Yeah, it'll run on those two stations. 100.3 the bull will likely be playing country music while the Texans are playing.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah, everything that you're used to on the FM side, whether that's the HD2 side or if it's just 100.3 the bull on a Sunday. Any FM destination that you've had to listen to us will now be on as of August 13th will be on 95. 7 the fan.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. Sean is winning Tyler's turd of the week for his baby and Mastro's take. Lol. I'll stand on it, man. I'll stand on business. Don't bring small babies in strollers to upscale steakhouses.

[Brandon Scott]

Hey look, we'll just be stand by that a turd matching a turd. We can be the spider man meme, right? I'm the turd who doesn't like you bringing the baby and you're the turd who brings the Baby.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

But either way, we're just standing where to draw.

[Sean Pendergast]

There's nowhere we can go from here.

[Brandon Scott]

Let's do it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Text message. Okay, this is. This will segue us into Tank. Tank Dell is now throwing off flat ground progress. He's playing catch. Tank Dell actually is playing catch. I mean, he did get in. In the walkthroughs when they, you know, he. I did see him catching balls out there. Yeah. He's playing catch a soul.

[Brandon Scott]

So to prelude into your segue. Yeah, into the Tank deal discussion. I do want to point this out because I noticed this during the break. The Texans have tweeted out a video saying, hello. It's not Tank Dale doing any kind of workout. It's just a hey, Tank Dell. Hey. And the waving emoji with the Tank Dell app. So tagging Tank Dell's Twitter account with him. With him walking. It's a video of him walking into the building and they dap him up.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Brandon Scott]

My thought is if there's.

[Sean Pendergast]

They're probably doing that with several people.

[Brandon Scott]

I would imagine with all the guys that we really recognize, especially if it's just like one player to acknowledge this is today.

[Sean Pendergast]

They're doing it because today is the day they report. Tomorrow's the first practice.

[Brandon Scott]

This was posted 25 minutes ago.

[Sean Pendergast]

So these are guys arriving at the building for the beginning of the training camp, which for them today is. Doesn't involve practice on the field.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. And so I only point out. Point that out to say if there was awful news about Tank Dell, I feel like they wouldn't have done that. Okay, let's stay tuned, though.

[Sean Pendergast]

This is where. And let me. Let me say here, I think the Texan social media team is excellent at what they do. This is where I wonder if the right hand knows what the left hand is doing.

[Brandon Scott]

Fair question.

[Sean Pendergast]

Everybody knows Tanks popular.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

But there are going to be fans out there that see that. See social media, and they start reading tea leaves. Yeah. Oh, my God. Tank is one of the eight guys they had walking into the building.

[Brandon Scott]

I'm doing it right now.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right. We're speculating about this. All right. So before we get into hardcore speculation about Tank Dell, which is easily one of the biggest stories of training camp, heading into training camp. This was Nick casario back on June 3rd. Okay. So up to that point, we'd seen Tank doing workouts. Tank was out at OTAS in minicamp. I don't know if he had participated. I think the very next day. Actually, the very next day was the day that tank participated in walkthrough, 7 on 7. It was literally the day after Nick Casario said this. So. But that's not hardcore practice. That's not contact. That's not pads, Mike.

[Brandon Scott]

It's not violence.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's not violence. To use. To use the word you used earlier, which I think is appropriate. My question to Nick Casseria here was, are we going to see Tank practice here at some point? Yes. I would say more than likely it'll probably be in training camp. You know, we have about, I don't know, however many days left here in the spring. But there are certain things that he's able to do. He's done some things on the field, maybe separately, kind of off to the side. I think the goal is training camp, so we'll kind of see if he stays on schedule. But, I mean, nobody's worked harder. Nobody's had a better attitude, you know, talking about a player that hasn't played football in, you know, almost 18 months or however long it's been. But, you know, his attitude, his approach, he's chomping at the bit, and he's certainly anxious and wants to be out there. By the same token, we want to make sure that we're taking care of him and doing the right things and putting him in a position where he can go out there and be the best version of himself. So I would say training camp seems like a reasonable time frame in terms of his availability in terms of next steps. So we're here. It is training camp. Tank dell literally was one of 90 players to walk into the building today.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So that cut, which was from nearly two months ago, Will, the truth is going to come out here at some point as to where exactly Tank is here. Earlier, I had said when we talked about this, the most discouraging thing for me as it pertains to Tank would be if he's one of the. However many guys are still coming back from something that are working out way over on that side field where we can barely see them and barely see what they're doing, and we're not even paying attention to them, really, because the good stuff's going on on the. The near fields that we're close to. I said earlier that would be the most discouraging thing. I'm going to amend that slightly because I think this probably goes hand in hand with being one of those guys working out on a side field.

[Brandon Scott]

Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

But purely as labels go, they're going to announce later on today the players that are beginning training camp on the PUP list on the physically unable to perform list. And sometimes it's guys who are on it for just a few days and they get taken off of it. Sometimes they're guys who are on it and are on it heading into the season and have to miss the first four games. Either way, if Tank Dell is one of those guys, it is going to generate conversation tomorrow and today. If it comes out during, you know, the drive and certainly the guys tonight would talk about it if the label physically unable to perform. And again, most of the time that the label itself is, you know, probably feels bigger than, you know, than, than the actuality of it.

[Brandon Scott]

It's a broad label.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's a broad label. But, but I think, I think it would be discouraging to fans. I know it'd be discouraging to me and I think it would probably come with Tank either working out in the building or working out off to the side. And especially seeing how he's moved in some of these videos that he's posted. You know, I don't know if it would feel like a step backwards. It just would feel like, eh, okay. The whole thing about leaving Tank sort of off to the side as his own entity here, you know, whether you're doing it psychologically or that's how you truly feel he is, health wise, you know, that becomes a thing. It's not. That's not fun.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. So when we were first talking about this, you know, and I, and I was first thinking about, I'm like, you know, more than anything, the PUP list in the case of Tank Dell is a, it has the potential to be like a pr. I don't want to call it a PR nightmare to say like the Texans misstep because if he's physically unable to put perform and they put them on the physically unable to perform this in a vacuum, there's nothing wrong with that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Brandon Scott]

But just from a fee, from a purely PR standpoint, you're doing a bit of a disservice to Tank and to the fans. And when I said disservice might, might not be the right word, but it's definitely going to do exactly what you're talking about. It's going to cause some angst and some nervousness because you have to think like if he's on the physically unable to perform this to start training camp, then what is his road to being physically able to perform these things?

[Sean Pendergast]

We know. And by the way, if he's on the PUP list, then to me it does run contrary to what Nick's forecast. What credit Nick for giving an answer. Like everybody seems to want to dodge. Tank Dell answers when it comes to the medical stuff. And I kind of get it. Nick has been, by far Casario the most direct when asked about Tank Dell. We asked him about Tank at the super bowl, and he talked about all the different metrics that they're using to measure how that knee is coming back and things like that. So I appreciate the candor. The fact of the matter is, if he's on the PUP list later on today, then it runs contrary to what they're. You know, to training camp being the forecasted beginning of when he can do things. Cause you can't do things when you're on the PUP list.

[Brandon Scott]

And run runs contrary. Not from the standpoint of Nick being dishonest, but runs contrary in this, from the standpoint of what you're talking about. About the. The. The setback part of it. Right, right. It would be hard to argue that it's not a setback if he's not able to do the thing that the general manager said that he expected him to be able to do once training camp starts.

[Sean Pendergast]

The thing we know. The thing we know is, at the very least, they have been extremely cautious with him. Extremely cautious with. With Tank Dell.

[Brandon Scott]

As they should be. Yeah, as they should be. I mean, he's the. He could be the difference between the offense that we saw last year and the offense that we could potentially see this year. Like he's that significant of a figure.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. Absolutely. Sean hates kids. This is a text message. He ran those kids off at the baseball game because they smelled like a kid. Now he wants a baby run out of a restaurant for doing what everyone else in the restaurant was doing. Eating.

[Brandon Scott]

Not the baby. The parents.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, exactly. The parents. Let me be very clear. I don't want the kid run out of the restaurant. I don't want the kid. The baby. The baby in the restaurant in the first place. Yeah, that's my thing.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah. We were perfectly fine with the baby living a happy life in his actual crib or somewhere where babies actually go.

[Sean Pendergast]

Let me be clear on this running the kids off at the ball game thing. Let's. Let's not. Yeah. I don't remember this. Let's not lose sight of the details. I stand on this one forever. Amy and I, our favorite seats at Dyken Park. We like sitting in the first row above the bullpen because you can BS with the guys sometimes. It's a fun view.

[Brandon Scott]

I know where you're talking about. That's a good spot.

[Sean Pendergast]

I like watching that spot. You know who's great to watch out there? Watching Josh Hader go through his process out there, starting in like the fourth inning with the elastic bands and everything. And he does this in games that are like 8 nothing. Like he gets ready every game as if he's going to pitch. It's really amazing to watch.

[Brandon Scott]

Don't got to get ready if you stay ready.

[Sean Pendergast]

Not quite as fun to watch out there. When in empty seats that don't belong to these two kids who are about puberty age. At least that's what they smelled like. These two kids who were like 12 or 13 years old come down, sit in those seats above the bullpen, and they stunk. They reeked you. Amy was sitting four seats over from them. She's like, is that those kids that smell like that? And I said, yeah. I said, I'm getting them out like those. If they were their seats, I wasn't gonna kick them out. They bought those tickets. In America, you're allowed to stink, unfortunately, but not when those are your seats. I stand on that. I and I. And you know what? They wouldn't say it at the time, but the people that were also sitting near them saw me as a hero. I guarantee it. Look, there's nobody that enjoys that smell.

[Brandon Scott]

Hey, I'll go a step further. Like, I don't. I don't think that you need a reason to get anybody who stinks up out the paint. Like, if you smell, I don't care how old you are, you got to go fix that. You can come back, but you got to come back smelling properly.

[Sean Pendergast]

Thank you, Beast.

[Brandon Scott]

And it sounds like these kids were at that age where it's like borderline, where you still have to make the kid bathe.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Brandon Scott]

Because I got kids these, these, this age right now where, like, they're good kids, but they'll only take baths because I tell them to.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's in that anti sweet spot where they don't shower regularly, but they're starting to smell. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all live through it at some point.

[Brandon Scott]

Oh, yeah, I lived through it and I got them now. So that's. That is a thing.

[Sean Pendergast]

Thank you. I feel like everybody else here called me a Karen because I got those kids kicked out of those seats.

[Brandon Scott]

You might be what?

[Sean Pendergast]

They weren't their seats.

[Brandon Scott]

But in this case, Karen's right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Karen's right.

[Brandon Scott]

Karen can be right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Thank you.

[Brandon Scott]

And she's right. In this case.

[Sean Pendergast]

Thank you.

[Brandon Scott]

Okay, smelly people, out of here.

[Sean Pendergast]

So, Reggie. Hello. Hi. I didn't Realize that you were the villain in a Disney Channel movie. That's all I heard.

[Brandon Scott]

I gotta be.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's all I heard is that you're like, these children, they're ruining the fun for us adults, making life better for everybody else. Oh, yeah. Cause I'm sure everybody at Mashrose on Saturday wanted that guy circling his table, rocking his baby on his shoulder the whole time.

[Brandon Scott]

The baby, who, by the way, is being breastfed and could have burped at any moment. Yeah. Could have created a messy situation. So that's what I'm talking about.

[Sean Pendergast]

So, John Lopez, also. Hello. Hi, John. Howdy, howdy.

[Brandon Scott]

I have a take on that.

[Sean Pendergast]

I will and I don't. You always. Yours was the take I was most looking forward to getting. Because you have kids and grandkids. No disrespect to Reggie. Yeah, none taken.

[Brandon Scott]

But.

[Sean Pendergast]

But did you hear my story earlier? Okay, so, yeah. So I'll give the 15 second version for people who are new to it. Amy and I went to an expensive steakhouse on Saturday. In middle of our meal, empty table next to us, they sit a couple down, rolls a stroller in, like a carriage stroller in, and we're like, okay, well, as long as the baby stays quiet, I guess. I don't. I don't get, like, bringing a baby to a place where your bill is going to be hundreds of dollars, but whatever. Well, within 10 minutes. Within 10 minutes, the husband is holding the baby on his shoulder in, like, burping position and walking around the table.

[Brandon Scott]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Circled the table for 15 minutes. Yeah. And then proceeded to hand the baby to the wife or the mother of the baby at the table, who then took the baby in breastfeeding position, put a blanket over herself and breastfed at the table.

[Brandon Scott]

Yep.

[Sean Pendergast]

Where are you on the. On whether any of what I just said violates societal etiquette. Okay, so this is where I am.

[Brandon Scott]

You are both 100 right and 100 wrong. That's 200. You are 100 wrong in.

[Sean Pendergast]

That wasn't a math. He was a writer.

[Brandon Scott]

A lot of percent.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

Aggie math. You're about to see some 100 wrong in that. You bring your baby to an expensive steakhouse. You bring your baby anywhere.

[Sean Pendergast]

Fine. There.

[Brandon Scott]

There are so many mitigating factors we don't know about, and maybe they just want, you know that. No babysitter. No, you know, whatever it is, bring your baby. But after that, whether it's breastfeeding or burping or crying or whatever, you go outside the damn restaurant. I can't Tell you how many times either. Either my wife or I ate with the other kids or ate by ourselves with the other. With the kid outside. You go outside that. That. That you are 100. Right. They never should have done that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, but the.

[Brandon Scott]

But the reason why he's a 100 or 200% right is because if you know you're not gonna do that. Cause I don't think they just, like, all of a sudden realized, oh, we've got a baby. We've got a. They brought the baby knowingly. So if you know that that's not gonna be your plan to go outside or to remove yourself from situation, well, then you should know not to bring the baby.

[Sean Pendergast]

I will never, ever, ever criticize any.

[Brandon Scott]

Bring. Bring your baby. Doesn't matter how long.

[Sean Pendergast]

And maybe it's once stuff starts happening. Yeah, yeah.

[Brandon Scott]

You leave.

[Sean Pendergast]

You go same page. Same page. And I want to make a couple of points here that. That I've made earlier, but I want to make them with you guys here. Is that I was way more put off by the dad walking around the table than I was the woman breastfeeding the baby because the woman put a blanket over herself. Like, it's. So it wasn't just. It wasn't distracting. Other than you knew there's breastfeeding, who cares? But you can even see the baby quiet. For all you sophomore people on the text page, did you at least get to see a boob? No. You didn't even get the that. But the. I was way more put out. Put off by the guy circling the table like it was a nursery.

[Brandon Scott]

Yes. That was a horrible move because that's also how you know that he's not abiding by the rules that Lopez just laid out. Like, if I don't do those, I don't abide by Lopez's rules.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, you should.

[Brandon Scott]

But if this person knows to leave the restaurant once the baby needs some comfort in you leave, then they wouldn't have. You know what I'm saying? It's clearly that they. That they did not have that in mind, because they did the thing that Sean's talking about. Hey, there.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm Kendra Adachi, and my show, the Lazy Genius podcast, helps you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't, and you get to decide what matters. I'm not here to tell you what to do.

[Brandon Scott]

I'm here to give you a new way to see.

[Sean Pendergast]

Episodes of the Lazy Genius podcast are full of compassionate time management tips and permission slips to do what makes sense for you. New episodes drop every Monday. Follow and listen to the Lazy Genius podcast on the free Odyssey app or

[Brandon Scott]

wherever you get your podcasts.