[00:00:25] Speaker A: Past the hell ride is officially over, and it's time to count the bodies. First on the list is the beloved Bernie Kozar, who the Browns let go over violating league policy by placing a newly legal bet on the Browns to win for charity. Not to be outdone by that disaster, there was still a football game to lose. New Year's same browns. With clowning nowhere in sight and a locker room ablaze, Kevin Stefanski led his sheep the slaughter one last time. The season may be over, but the fun is just beginning. And we'll break it all down for you next on the Burning river sportscast.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: It was cute at first, but now it's just stupid.
Anthony Midget fired. I don't know if that's how you say that.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: And he went balls out.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: His hair's pissing me off.
Kevin Stefanik. That's right. You don't even have your correct last name because you were so bad and ugly this year.
Battery exhausted.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Who knew?
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Welcome into the Burning River Sports cast, presented by tap and media. I'm Kenny Thunder, alongside the man once ranked top ten in the world in both LARPing and spelunking, forever, making Jarrens's bitch red hot. Ronnie jams. Ronnie, tell our friends where they can find our pod all year long, but do it in Morse code.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: You can find our podcast wherever you get your podcast. I'm talking Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Pandora, iHeartRadio, Podcast, Castro, and more. So, Kenny.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: Yes?
[00:02:10] Speaker B: How was your weekend?
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Well, I think we would be remiss if we didn't. You're correct. Start the show today.
Just talking about DeMar Hamlin.
Obviously, we typically record on Monday nights when the game is going on, and last week was an anomaly in our schedule. So we weren't together when the game went on air?
[00:02:33] Speaker B: No, we recorded earlier in the day, so it wasn't during the game, and it didn't happen until after we were done, so we didn't get to touch on it.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: So we haven't had a chance to really discuss it at all. But I think by now, most everyone kind of knows the story. Obviously, DeMar went down after what looked like a routine tackle during a Monday Night Football game on T. Higgins immediately got back up and kind of lost his balance, stumbled and fell over, went into cardiac arrest, completely collapsed.
Fortunately for him, an NFL game is rife with resources, with medical staff and supplies, and they acted quickly and performed CPR immediately.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: Again, once he got to the hospital, they had to.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Yeah, and so eventually got into the hospital. He was in critical condition for several days.
Obviously one of those very scary, that was terrifying moments, right? I mean, we like to have fun on the podcast, and the NFL is obviously a huge entertainment business, and this is just one of those things that's not expected given the amount of precautions taken from everything from rules to equipment, the way the game is played, the way the game has evolved to try to prevent things like this from happening. So this is one of those bigger than football moments.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: Yeah. We all love the game of football, obviously, but occasionally plays or situations arise during the game where, like you said, you realize and it becomes extremely clear that there are a lot more important things than the football game you're watching. This was one of those moments, and more so than any other moment than I've ever seen on a football field.
It was just terrifying.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it was one of those that makes you sit back in your chair. I don't have young kids, but I imagine many parents had to make that decision around. Like, do I send my kids to bed while this is going on? I mean, I think we were all tuned in, waiting for any kind of update. And what a tough position for the broadcasters to be in.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Totally kudos to basically all of the broadcasters on there. And then following that, I know ESPN covered it and did a very nice job on Sports center with SVP. They did a really nice job talking about it the next day. Some of their shows, some of their analysts talked about it in very profound ways. That kind of just changed into perspective for people.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: It's just really hard because especially at the time, right? I mean, in the moment, no one knew what was happening, no one knew what was going on. They didn't know if there was even going to be a football game played that night. So they're trying to be respectful to the situation on the field with very little facts or understanding of what's going on.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: Which in regards to that, I will say, shame on the NFL for even considering starting that game again. I mean, literally the first words out of, what is it? McDermott's mouth, head coach for the Bills, were, I need to be at the hospital. I can't be coaching this game. And then good on Zach Taylor and the Bengals for saying, yeah, we totally agree with you. Nobody should be playing right now instead of pushing the envelope and wanting to play that game. Most people don't know this. There's only been one person in the history of the NFL die on the field, and it was actually a very similar situation to this.
Except unfortunately, he did not live through it. By the time medical personnel got to him on the field, he had already passed away.
And that game was picked up ten minutes later.
They literally picked him up, took him off the field and started the game.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: And obviously that was decades ago. So you didn't have social media and the media presence and viewership that you had on it.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: No, but my point is, shame on the NFL for, I mean, you almost committed that blunder again. And how could you not? Granted, it was decades ago, but learn from your mistakes. You don't do that. That's a man's life. Well, it's just unsure what's going on with it. Nobody's in the right state of mind to play a game, watch a game, any of that stuff. What are you doing even considering.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: And it was just such a terrifying and unusual circumstance because no one's expecting that. There's no roadmap for what to do after that. But right to the point where we're performing CPR on the field, that's not good. And I think by and large, it.
[00:07:25] Speaker B: Took like eight minutes or something.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
It was a lengthy because I wasn't even watching the game and my mom texted me and said something happened, so I turned it on.
It was almost a full half hour that they were out on the field working on him and getting him into the ambulance. I think they tried to load him up the first time and lost rhythm and had to take him back off the cart and use the AED or do CPR again. And just super bizarre. But the good news is, I think I've heard it said a couple of times over the last few days is just if something like that is going to happen to you, the best place for it to happen to you are A, in a hospital and B on an NFL sideline because of the amount of resources, first responders and people that are there to help take, you know, fortunately, he was know, as Ronnie said, he was in the ICU in critical condition for several days. Still in the ICU now, but update there. So actually he's made pretty good progress over the course of the last week. And I think it was late Thursday night into Friday morning, he kind of came to and they were able to remove his breathing tube. And within a few hours he was kind of walking around with assistance. And the situation is still very delicate, but he seems to be making good progress according to all the reports. And then they weren't able to transport him back to Buffalo until he was dispositioned out of critical status. And this morning he was actually upgraded to good to fair or fair to good. So they were able to move him back to Buffalo today. Great news there. Great news. I mean, I think the outpouring of support understanding just across the board.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: If you haven't yet, go ahead. He's got his charity up. His toy drive is up. Go give to that charity. I believe any jerseys of his.
A lot of the proceeds are, if not all the proceeds are going. Kenny Thunder ordered a jersey.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: I did. I have my tomorrow.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: Unfortunately, a lot of them are on back order right now, but that's to be expected with the influx of orders coming in. But if you haven't, go support his charity.
DeMar Hanlon.
One thing that came out of this, that tHere's not a lot of people around the league, unless you're a Buffalo fan or somebody in Pittsburgh area where he kind of went to school and everything, don't really know him as a person. And I think it was nice to see that come to light of how good of a person DeMar is. And so that's why I say, if you haven't yet, definitely know. Do what you can for his charities, help him further his causes.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: And I just think the outpouring of support has been cool to see all the different shirts that players were wearing and warm ups. And I know that on social media at one point, all of the NFL clubs had changed their avatars or logos to the three.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: I will say this, too much discord as there is in the world today, and arguments and disagreements and everything else, it was amazing to see so many people come together and rally behind him.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: It's kind of sad that it takes something like that.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: It's very sad, but it's true. Great to see.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Yeah, it's true. Just again, moments bigger than the game, bigger than football, puts things into perspective for a lot of us. And while he does seem to be making good progress in his recovery, it's been said that this is the type of recovery that's measured in weeks to months. So still a long road ahead for DeMar, but hopefully he'll be able to make a full recovery from this. I know middle last week they said neurologically he appeared to be intact. So all those things are all good and we just hope he can make a speedy and full recovery.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: Yeah. So with that, yeah, I agree with you. Speedy and full recovery. Absolutely. But how was your week and weekend, personally?
[00:11:44] Speaker A: So I have a couple of sisters and one of them lives in Australia.
Good day, mate.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: Put another shrimp on the Bobbay and.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: We don't get to see her very.
So she hasn't been in the States for, I think, four years. So she was actually in town this week, so I got to catch up with her. And she has three small children of her own and her husband came, so it was a whole big trip for them. They do things a little differently down there.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: The water swirls the opposite way.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: I think they go to school, I think all year round. So the kids have, like, quarters off. So when they take this type of trip, obviously it's a 30 hours flight or something, but they generally stay for a few weeks. But they have family from between the two of them, between here and Texas, so they kind of just traverse the whole Midwest for about two or three weeks. So we got to keep them for a couple of days. But it was good. Good to catch up. Good to see them. And outside of that, just doing some things around the house.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: Yeah. For us, we're finally getting into a rhythm with the baby and being a dad and being parents.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: Does she talk yet?
[00:13:05] Speaker B: She kind of, like, cooz and makes noises at you. She can't talk yet, but I am teaching her dual language. I'm going to try and teach her Spanish at the same time as I'm teaching her English.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: But you don't even know Spanish.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: I know Spanish well enough.
This is why I keep telling her, yo soy tu papa.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: You are her papa. Yeah, that's true.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: Then I tell her a as to Madre.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: So her first word is going to be yo soy.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: Maybe.
But, yeah, it's been fun every day. Almost every day. There's kind of a first something, so it's pretty cool.
But things are going well and she's meeting a lot of new people now. We're getting pretty close here to the three month mark where she gets her vaccines, like her shots and everything, and then nice, she can really start meeting people.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: So do you have, like, a baby book that you're writing all those things down on?
[00:14:00] Speaker B: My brother did get us one for Christmas, and Emily's been filling it out as we go. So nice. If it was up to me, I would have forgot everything.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: She just put a camera on her twenty four seven and tap in media.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: Is this the Truman show?
She is the Truman show.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: Raise her her whole life.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: But, like, do you think that tapin Media would sponsor a Truman show on my daughter?
[00:14:26] Speaker A: I think so. We should Truman show her, but Omit something very not important, but very normally used, like orange juice. She lives her whole life and has no idea what orange juice is, man.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: What a wild life to live.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: And then one day she finds out what orange juice is. She's like, this is good. That would make good TV.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it would. But anyways, we've spent a long time getting into this one, so the season is finally over. Like you said, we have all been unceremoniously put out of our misery. That is the 2022, 220 and 1003 iteration of the Cleveland Browns. So let's just go ahead and get right into it. The Week 18 recap.
As always, we're going to start with our opponents here, the Pittsburgh Steelers.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: Freudian slip.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: Yeah. We'll start with their offense. Kenny Pickett, 13 of 29 for 195 yards and a touchdown.
I mean, it wasn't a great day for him, but whatever. No, when you throw, what is that, like 38%, 40%?
[00:15:43] Speaker A: Yes. Not very good completion rate on the day.
He's been like that all year, right? I think he's a rookie. Still learning, obviously.
So I don't know. I mean, he made plays when they mattered. I don't know that he did anything spectacular, but obviously they played well enough to win, let's be honest.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: Not to throw him under the bus, but it wasn't much worse of a stat line than our quarterback.
Next up, Naji Harris. 23 carries for 84 yards and a touchdown.
[00:16:16] Speaker A: He did have that one play where Miles got in the backfield and he power slammed Miles to the ground.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: He still got tackled in the backfield. Is that the one you're talking about?
[00:16:26] Speaker A: He did get tackled.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: He did just throw Miles off.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: He choke slammed Miles first.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: Yeah. So that was interesting to see.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: To say the least. Miles isn't a small man.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: No, he's a really big man.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: Actually.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: Dude, they were talking about Naji Harris like six. He's listed I think at six 1230 or six 2230. And they said when you see him in a room, he's actually more like six four, like 250.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: He's an imposing human.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: Yeah, but I mean, actually, I think they did pretty, fairly well with him, seeing as he's pretty much your whole offense. I don't think we were great against the run in this, especially because there was times throughout the game where I was like we Were just getting gashed for plays.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: I mean, we have the best round defense in the league.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Yeah, there's that. Jalen Warren, six rushes for 36 yards. So there's somebody who averaged six yards of carry. And then I threw Derek Watt on here because he had one carry for 1 touchdown.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: He did score.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: And the Watt brothers, I don't know if you saw that before the game. Derek and TJ both wore JJ's jersey to the game, which was pretty cool to see what a family this is. Like the Mannings. Like, how do you just get.
I was actually three brothers, and Derek, who scored, actually got to score a touchdown. He's like, Cooper.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Yeah. He's the not good Watt. They just keep him around for spare parts in case one of them needs a transplant.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: I was actually just talking to Christine about this because obviously she's with child.
About.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: I always think it's funny when people say she's with child.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: I was trying to figure out if there's a place that we can take her to do, like, in uterine.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: Train them now.
[00:18:13] Speaker A: Well, prenatal, like, genetic coding to make them tall and handsome and intelligent.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: Everything.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: You're not like, Gattica.
Like, give them the ability to grow a full beard. Where's that in the genome sequence?
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Yours is coming. Okay.
[00:18:29] Speaker A: No, I almost shaved it today because I was like, when I was, like, 18, I was like, maybe when I'm 20, I will be able to grow a full, bushy Beard. That didn't happen. And then I was like, maybe by the time I'm, like, 25, it'll start to really come in. And then when I hit 30, I was like, probably not going to happen for me.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: It did happen for me. Mine actually was coming in pretty good before I cut it down this week. So. Sorry.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: I'm just not a hairy guy.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: No. Next up, though, for the Steelers, George Pickens. Three catches for 72 yards in a touchdown.
He had an okay day, but, I mean, he only had three catches.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: Look, he didn't get a ton of work in this game, but that dude is an absolute unit.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: Dude. The catch that they said was incomplete was absolutely complete.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: 100%. Yeah.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: I don't care what they say. AnD we'll get into this. I have a little segment down here talking about the refs, people, conspiracy theories, all that crap. That was when the refs got wrong. They called it incomplete. And he super, absolutely caught that. I was like, what? In the. At first glance. No way. When they showed it slow motion, he caught that. Put that up there. Can you put that up there?
[00:19:37] Speaker A: Where?
[00:19:37] Speaker B: Show his feet, maybe if you can find it.
[00:19:39] Speaker A: Won't be able to see it back there so well, but just a superhuman effort.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, it was wild. Which is one touchdown, by the way. We'll get into that. Nobody was around him for 20 yards.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: Yeah, look, he's going to be a force to be reckoned with for the rest of his career. So. Not looking forward to that.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: Yeah. The other wide receivers for the Steelers didn't have much going on. He threw for 195 yards, and 72 of them went to George Pickens.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: Picket to Pickens.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Their defense, though, the Steelers defense, seven sacks, ten QB hits. They were all over Deshaun Watson in this one, and they ended up with two interceptions, so they played pretty well.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it wasn't good. Wasn't good.
Not for us.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So I will say this, Mike Tomlin for the Steelers. I wish we had a coach like this man, in case anyone's wondering, still has never finished a season below 500. And no matter who this guy has on his roster, he always gets the most out of them. His teams are always disciplined. His teams always want to play for him. There's hardly ever any drama in that locker room, and when there is, he makes sure he writes that ship immediately.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: I think they've only played one game during his tenure where they were already mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. Yeah.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: And I believe it was like the last game of that season, right?
Yeah.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: It would have had to be impressive stretch. I mean, we've said all year long that from a talent perspective, that team is not on par with the rest of the league. And they're know they've had a carousel at quarterback and their offensive line is not great. They have a couple of playmakers on defense, but TJ Watt missed a ton of time this.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Oh, and that's another thing. If you look at their record with and without TJ Watt, that is the craziest thing I've ever seen. They literally don't lose when he plays and they don't win when he doesn't.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: Yeah, he's amazing. But Tomlin, I mean, we talked about it last week. Tomlin is a tremendous coach. I don't understand why every year Pittsburgh wants to get rid of him, but should they ever decide to, he's welcome.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: At the very least. I mean, I know there's going to be a lot of Pittsburgh fans that will tell you that that's the vocal minority, that they don't actually want to get rid of him. But this year it was the vocal majority early on in the season when they were struggling.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Well, they started, what, two and six?
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Yeah, they started bad.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: So, I mean, I get it, but, man, that wasn't a Mike Tomlin problem, right? No, this was a roster problem. This was a noted rebuild. No one expected the Steelers to win.
[00:22:19] Speaker B: The Super bowl going into the season. They were picked last in the division by just about everybody, and they said.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: They were in complete rebuild and in complete rebuild mode. They finished ahead of the Browns.
[00:22:30] Speaker B: Yeah, that hurts. But as great as Mike Tomlin in the Tomlin is, the Steelers themselves are still classless pieces of crap.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: Trash.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Did you see the CPR celebration that they did right after DeMar Hamlin had had his situation on the field?
[00:22:46] Speaker A: I mean, just a total lack of awareness.
[00:22:49] Speaker B: Just a bunch of trash bags. Guys are.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: There's no one anywhere with less class than everyone in law.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: So that'll take us to the Cleveland side of things here. We'll start with coaching. Joe woods defense was trash, and we finally got our wish today. But we'll talk more about that later in the show here. I will say that there was another atrocious busted coverage. We just talked about it a second ago with George Pickens. Nobody within 20 yards of him, and again, we couldn't really stop the run to save our lives.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: I just want to know who feathers Pickens is.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: You got to love autocorrect feathers Pickens.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Look, this was the Joe woods defense.
This was the Joe woods defense we watched all year long. We gave him a small reprieve last week because the defense had played better in the weeks leading up to that. But this was like back to feathers picking back to day one.
Just giving up big plays, not stopping the run, poor tackling, just undisciplined and just a mess.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And then Kevin Stefanski. Stefanik, as we call him.
Just another day of baffling decisions from this guy. Nick, we'll start with this. Nick Chubb had twelve carries. Don't even have to say anything else, just let you know. Nick Chubb had twelve carries.
And then one major gripe that I had for him before half, we decided that he wanted to go for a field goal before the half. Right, we start with it. What were we at our own? It was right around the 20. It wasn't like, not terrible field position. It was like 2025. I think it was 25 one time out. And I think it was just under a minute left, if I'm not mistaken.
Or either just under just over a minute. Either way, not a lot of time. One time out left. Our very first play, a design QB draw.
There goes our timeout. The play went for about six yards. Was unsuccessful. And what analytics are telling you that this is a good way to start that drive if you're going for a.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: Field goal, I have to mention, I just don't need to see Deshaun on designed runs in Week 18 of a meaningless game.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: Right. Needless to say, that drive went nowhere. We got no points.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: Needless to say.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And then the whole Jacoby in on every single short yardage situation, that's just pissing me off now. It was cute at first, but now it's just stupid. It just seems desperate from Kevin. Stefan, I don't really know what to do here.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: It's unnecessary. It's unfair to both guys. Look, I like Jacoby as much as the next guy, but that doesn't mean we should just put him in one play game.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: If Deshaun Watson is the guy, let him be the guy. You paid him $230,000,000 to be the guy. You're telling me he's the guy? Except for on fourth and one, like.
And what does Jacoby actually give you there that Deshaun Watson doesn't? I understand how many times he converts there, like his conversion rate, but it's still fourth. And like Deshaun Watson falling forward is the same thing as Jacobi.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: The conventional wisdom on fourth and short like that is quarterback sneaks. So regardless of whether it's Deshaun or Jacoby, that's what most people are expecting. So for Jacoby to pitch it, what difference does it make?
[00:26:20] Speaker B: I agree. And then this vaunted and efficient air raid offense that we have had six yards of offense in the third quarter.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: Six yards?
[00:26:27] Speaker B: Six yards of offense.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: And again, for like the 15th week in a row, the commentators are going, it's really bizarre how much they have not run the ball today.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it just gets annoying.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: I mean, you have Nick Chubb in the backfield and they just don't give him the ball.
[00:26:42] Speaker B: Speaking of which, every time we committed to the run on a drive, we moved the ball and scored points. Chubb averaged 6.4 yards per carry in this. Literally. Don't have to do anything else. You could have just handed it to him every time. If he's getting 6.4 yards a carry, we get a first down. Every single series, every single drive we score, we win. It's easy. And let's just run down this real quick. Six carries for 39 yards in the first half.
Still not enough for the first half, mind you, but we were in the game. Ten, seven, right. How many carries did he have in the third quarter?
[00:27:11] Speaker A: Not enough.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: Two. Two carries for three yards in the third quarter for this? What is this, the second 3rd week in a row that he had only a couple of carries in the third quarter, and then we were out of the game, it was 20 to seven at the end of the third quarter, did come back and give him four. And he got 35 yards on his four carries in the fourth. But now we're playing catch up.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: What is even more baffling is I can understand load management on Nick Chubb because it was the end of the season. Give him twelve carries. Fine.
And they spelled him with Kareem, which again makes no sense because he's not going to be here next year. But why are we not, why were.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: We not playing Jerome?
[00:27:50] Speaker A: Getting some other guys, some carries. Hand the bottle to Ernest, hand the ball to Jerome Ford.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: Hell, just see what they Ford in there and give him 25 carries and see what happens.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: Yeah, he should have been the spell for Nick Chubb all day long.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: And if you even have been the spell, if you're going to give Nick Chubb twelve carries, just give Jerome 425.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: Yeah, give him 13 and tell Kareem.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: Hunt he's sitting the bench this week.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: It's amazing to me that this man just cannot read a room because you.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: Had to know watching to wonder if he even knows how to read.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: You had to know looking at his.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: Denny's menu and he doesn't know what to call.
[00:28:23] Speaker A: He had to go with the Grand Slam. Watching that game early on, that this wasn't going to be your Deshaun, vintage Deshaun game. It just wasn't. He didn't come out hot. He wasn't looking spectacular. He looked bad again for the most part.
And they just continued to want to force that with him because they wanted him to play well. But read the room. Read the room.
[00:28:50] Speaker B: He doesn't know how.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: He can't.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So that'll take us to the offense. DeShaun Watson 19 of 29 for 230 yards, two touchdowns, two interceptions, six rushes.
[00:28:59] Speaker A: For 44 yards, and the seven sacks.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: And he got sacked seven times. Yeah, but that's not necessarily on him. I mean, some of it was probably on him for holding the ball, but.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: On him, I think that a lot of them were on him and receivers probably not getting open. But what stuck out to me about that stat line is that it's nearly identical to Baker's last year against the Steelers. In that last game that he played, save for a couple of completions, two touchdowns, two picks, Baker was sacked nine times, Deshaun sacked seven. So again, how do you let that happen?
[00:29:37] Speaker B: That you close the season twice and in one game you give up nine sacks. The next season you give up seven, like nine. And seven sacks should never, ever happen in a game, period. But you do it two seasons in a row.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: As long as Kevin Pupanski is the head coach of the Browns. Like, my enthusiasm level for anything going forward is like, how many times?
[00:30:01] Speaker B: Don't say that he's not a great coach because people will jump all over you.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: How many times does this guy have to show you who he is?
[00:30:11] Speaker B: Where's the clip? He is who we thought he was.
[00:30:13] Speaker A: When people show you, you should believe them. He's not a leader. He's not a head coach. The team hasn't gotten any better in the course of a whole year. There's no cohesion and they're a sloppy, undisciplined, underachieving mess.
[00:30:27] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. With that, we'll move on. Nick Chubb, I'm actually going to save his stats for later.
We'll talk about him again in a minute. Kareem Hunt, four carries, 13 yards, three catches, 15 yards. He was more involved than recent weeks, but they still have no idea how to use him and he's not going to be here next year. So I don't know why he was on the field anyways, especially when we're out of it and it doesn't matter who knows. Mari Cooper, two catches, 51 yards. David and Joku, four catches, 42 yards and a touchdown. All other receivers, nothing really noteworthy in this one. And the offensive line, just God awful, as we've mentioned multiple times, gave up seven sacks. We did have 134 yards.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: They still do that well.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: Yeah, good job. But pretty much they were a sieve out there. Just stopped. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And if this is the line going forward, and I know they're going to argue, well, we weren't 100% healthy. We didn't have that. I don't care if this is the line going forward, I am very nervous for the future of this football.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And Chad Conklin didn't play in this one. James Hudson started at right tackle, so he had his hands full with TJ Watt. But it wasn't like TJ Watt had seven sacks on his own.
[00:31:39] Speaker B: TJ Watt had a half sack.
[00:31:42] Speaker A: This was other guys that were disrupting. Cam Hayward's a good player, too, but it was the other guys on that front that were causing havoc and linebackers getting into the backfield. So this wasn't a TJ Watt game?
[00:31:56] Speaker B: NO. I mean, he caused a lot of issues, but it wasn't like he did it. Yeah.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: Biggest issue is Jed Will's turning around and watching to see what Deshaun Watson's going to do on every play.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: You said it before, I'll say it again, absolute turnstile out there.
[00:32:10] Speaker A: And then he played so bad he had to fake an injury at the end of the game just to get the hell out of there.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: Oh, man. When he went down, I was like, oh, no, an offensive lineman went down. And not that I want anybody to get hurt, but I was so relieved when it was him.
As far as, like, if we were going to lose a lineman to try and win a game, that's true. He's the one not missing much.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: If he goes down, he's the one you can replace.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. I'm not wishing injury on him. I'm just saying you can replace him fairly easily.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: So let's go ahead and get over to the defensive side. Miles Garrett had a sack in this, the team's loan sack, two QB hits, seven tackles. So a big tackle day for him again. So that was good. He's getting all over the field, showing some effort. Tony Fields, the second eight tackles. The secondary looked fine in this. They held everybody pretty much in check. So there's not really much of note on the defensive side. We didn't cause any turnovers. We didn't really do much.
[00:33:07] Speaker A: Yeah, you put that the secondary looked okay except for they gave up the big plate of feathers was a.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: They did have a busted coverage. But as much as that annoys me and pisses me off to watch, I put that more on Joe woods than the secondary themselves. Because at this point in the season, how can you have that many busted coverages if it's not a coaching issue?
[00:33:30] Speaker A: And John Johnson, and we will talk about Joe woods in a moment. Again, but John Johnson came out today during his exit interviews and basically said it was a problem needed to be handled, that it wasn't so much that it was too complex, but it was just that it was. Why are we trying to.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: We can't even do the normal things right.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
There are moments where we don't need to try to trick the other team so much that we end up tricking ourselves.
[00:34:01] Speaker B: Joe woods really bought into the Kevin Stefanski line of thinking.
Outsmart yourself on fourth and one in.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: Sub zero temperatures, throwing the ball 30 yards.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: Everyone else, we outsmart ourselves.
[00:34:11] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: Yeah. So special teams, Kate York, two of two for extra points.
And that's it. So that'll take us to the burning River. Sportscast dog of the week.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: I'm a dog. No, no.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: Dog mentality. Come on now.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: I'm coming in and kill right away.
But he did pun.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: Nick Chubb is this week's burning River Sportscast, dog of the week. He had twelve carries for 77 yards, 6.4 average. Could have easily got over 100, but we gave him twelve carries, five catches, 45 yards and a touchdown. And he became the first Cleveland Brown to eclipse 1500 rushing yards since Jim Brown.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: I think that was his first receiving touchdown all year long as well.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: That might have been one of his few receiving touchdowns of his career. He's vastly underutilized as a pass catcher.
[00:35:09] Speaker A: They always talk about Kareem catching passes of the backfield and Kareem. Sure, it's part of his skill set, but Nick Chubb has really valued hands.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: Because I've seen him make some very good catches, especially for a running back.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: It's not like I see him drop balls all the time. No more than anyone else.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: I've seen a Joku drop way more.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: Balls than, yeah, we keep throwing it to that guy, but not to Nick Chubb.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: I take it back.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: I like Joku, too, but he has dropped a lot of balls in Cleveland.
[00:35:37] Speaker B: Yeah. So Nick Chubb, once again, the Burning river sports cast. Dog of the week.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: Final dog of the week.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: All right, so overall in this game, the Browns, 307 total yards to the Steelers, 337. Time of possession, Browns 29 four, Steelers 30 56. It was a poor overall effort, if you ask me, for the final game against a division rival. Coaching wasn't great. Players didn't play great. Just seemed like everybody was ready to pack it in and get into the offseason. And then, once again, we were completely undisciplined. Nine penalties for 65 yards.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: There you go. We moved on from quarterback a little quick, so I want to highlight one other thing before we jump into the rest of the notes.
I want to read you some numbers. Are you ready?
[00:36:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I know where this is going, but go on.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: 610.
1310 20. 414.
You know what those are? What are those?
That's how many points you've scored with Deshaun Watson at quarterback in the last six weeks. An average of 12.8 points per week.
[00:36:51] Speaker B: Not only with Deshaun Watson at quarterback, but with Kevin Stefanski, the offensive guru at the helm.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: I guess my point, though, is like six games. I think we've seen a handful of plays where we were like, it was good. Baker couldn't have done that, but that's a handful versus. Here's a body of work. Now, this is six games.
Look, I understand that the rust is a real thing and that he needed to shake that and get into game form, and we're all hoping that he comes out of the offseason looking like the old Deshaun Watson. Here's my question, though. Are we prepared to afford him more Rust games in 2023? Because if you say I had 700 days off, that's a long time. It's kind of unprecedented. Right. We've talked about how difficult that would be. But if this is him after six games, what if these six games look a lot like the first six games of 2023?
[00:37:54] Speaker B: I would say there's absolutely no leeway for Rust games. Because in 2023, because when you come back, you've had a full offseason with your team. It's all the same guy. Well, most of the same guys. We know there'll be some turnover, but it's most of the same guys.
You're in football shape at that point. You're doing football workouts. It's not like you're banned from being with the team or anything like that. He has no more excuse. He needs to hit the ground running next season, and if he doesn't, it's going to get pretty loud pretty quick.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: I mean, we gave this man $230,000,000 guaranteed. Well, not, we don't have any money.
[00:38:32] Speaker B: But I couldn't give you that if I try.
[00:38:35] Speaker A: We gave him the most guaranteed money in history, and he's been worse than Jared Stidham. And.
[00:38:43] Speaker B: I mean, that's, know, I. I hear where fans are coming from when they say that. And I agree. Like, so far, he absolutely has not lived up to the bill. What I will say is, like I said, there's no excuses next year, going into 2023 with Rust and things like that this year, to put things into perspective for everybody, the quote unquote rust year for Deshaun Watson, we only paid him a million dollars.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: I don't know when that is.
I think Siri is talking to you.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: Was it mine?
[00:39:18] Speaker A: Mine's on do not disturb.
[00:39:20] Speaker B: Anyways.
Yeah.
[00:39:26] Speaker A: I'm just saying, I don't want to ring the alarm bell, but I think there's valid concern at this point.
[00:39:36] Speaker B: I would agree.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: After six games of not seeing.
[00:39:39] Speaker B: I would agree. Well, I've been saying to you, anything special back is that I want to see at least one good game before the season ended and we didn't get it.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: I mean, Jacoby at the helm had this team as the 9th most efficient offense in the NFL. This year, when Deshaun Watson came in, they dropped from 9th to, I think, 18th.
[00:39:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
No argument here. Facts are facts. But I'm just saying, I would still give him a pass for this year, and we weren't really playing for anything for the last few games. And Kevast Stefanski is still, um.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: They could have been playing for something if Deshaun had played better.
[00:40:17] Speaker B: That's fair.
I'm just saying I give him a pass for this year, but going into next year, there's no excuses. I'm going to be just as hard on him as anybody else next year because there's no more excuses at that.
[00:40:31] Speaker A: Just, I'm just concerned. I'm mostly concerned with Stefanski.
[00:40:36] Speaker B: But, yeah, I think that's the bigger issue is I don't know that we ever hit a next level as long as he's our coach. But we'll talk about that later because there's a lot to say.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: Fair.
[00:40:47] Speaker B: So let's get in other Browns notes for this Judavion. Clowney, before the game this week, blasted Cleveland in their coaching this year in a sit down interview with cleveland.com. He's bold. Yeah. Not just like a quick off the cuff remark to a reporter. No, he had a sit down
[email protected]. And aired his grievances. He said that they just wanted to put Miles in the hall of Fame and not win games. He said he is 95% sure he won't be back. And he also said that some people in the organization may be gone and then he would consider coming back.
Kevin Stefanik, who likes to, for some reason, out of nowhere, he decided that accountability was the name of the game.
[00:41:34] Speaker A: Discipline matters all of a sudden.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And he sent Judavian Clowney home from practice the next day. He was a, did not play on Sunday. Coach's decision, and he is most likely done in the CLE when he said.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: He was 95% sure he won't be back. Was that a dig at Miles?
[00:41:54] Speaker B: I don't know, but that's a good question. I think that was just coincidence. But that might be a dig at Miles. I didn't even put that together.
[00:42:03] Speaker A: Look, here's the thing. Did Davion, for the most part, underperformed in his time in Cleveland? He was good last year, right? I mean, what do you have, eleven sacks or nine sacks something last year?
But he didn't do a whole lot this year, was injured a lot.
[00:42:17] Speaker B: Well, now we know within this whole thing is he faked his injury earlier in the season and only played on third downs.
[00:42:26] Speaker A: But to be fair, his points are kind of valid. I don't think that they only care.
[00:42:32] Speaker B: I totally agree with you. I don't like, when players do this sort of thing, especially during, you can't do it.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: Right. It's a no no.
[00:42:38] Speaker B: Yeah, but at the same time, I think people need to, like, it's not just him saying these. You mentioned Johnson coming in and saying, we've had problems all year. Nobody addressed. It's, there's multiple players, whether quietly and kind of under the radar or loudly like this throughout the season, have called out Joe woods, have called out Kevin Stefanski, have called out Mike Prefer said they are not put in positions to win games. I mean, it begs the question, like, at what point do fans actually start listening? Because I still keep hearing how Kevin Stefanski is such a good coach. The players want to play for him and they want to follow him. Well, I'll tell you this, there's zero evidence that proves that, and there's plenty of evidence to the contrary.
[00:43:22] Speaker A: And last year, Odell Beckham did the same, Baker did the same, and they were the ones that were the.
Just this. We're a broken record saying the same thing all year long. Of all the problems that existed last year, all the dissension in the locker room, it still exists. There's still problems in that locker room because there's a vacuum of leadership, there's a vacuum of accountability, and nobody fucking cares.
[00:43:48] Speaker B: True.
So, yeah, that happened. And then up next here, just a.
[00:43:54] Speaker A: Good way to kick off Steelers Week.
[00:43:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I just love.
[00:43:57] Speaker A: He's just out of nowhere. The funny thing is, in last week's pod, I said before this happened, this won't be the last time something like this happens.
The locker room still has issues. None of those things are going to go away. You're going to continue to, I promise you, there's going to be more stories all season long about players that are disgruntled or something. That was weird. Somebody's going to get in trouble.
And then literally three days later, Judevion comes out and he's like, the Browns.
[00:44:29] Speaker B: It's like we can tell the future. Either that or we've just learned so much from our past.
Next up, we got Bernie Kozar. You mentioned it at the top of the pod, got fired before the game for placing a bet on the Browns to win the game. Now, I will say this, people keep making it sound like the Browns hate this guy. And they have actually done some questionable things to Bernie over the years.
[00:44:53] Speaker A: His skills have been diminishing for a long time.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And I'll be honest, we actually thought this at first, too. But unfortunately, there are rules in the NFL with the NFL against any personnel for the team placing bets on the games.
And that's kind of why I think the Browns hands were tied. I actually would not be surprised if he was back with the team next year and kind of explain that away to the NFL.
[00:45:16] Speaker A: And I can understand he doesn't really.
[00:45:17] Speaker B: Do anything with the team.
[00:45:19] Speaker A: He's like a fill in radio. Yeah, look, I get that rules are rules, but come on. Sports betting just became legal in Ohio. This was a promotional thing.
[00:45:32] Speaker B: It was a ceremony, charity.
[00:45:35] Speaker A: This was akin to the Pete Rose when he put his first bet in on New Year's Day. As soon as sports betting was be, we have to be able to, as human beings, as adults in the room, be able to say, okay, can we make an exception here? Bernie now understands he can't place bets, even if they're for charity, but to just say, Bernie, you're out. Sorry, see you later.
To the point where I think why fans were upset was because Bernie was upset.
[00:46:09] Speaker B: It doesn't sound like he came out on Twitter and he know they're not letting me do the game. They said that they no longer need it. Just, it feels like a few years.
[00:46:18] Speaker A: Ago when they let him, you know? And Bernie's one of those guys when you talk about he loves the brown culture in a locker room and in the building and in the organization.
That guy bleeds Brown and orange and.
[00:46:32] Speaker B: We just keep shitting on him and.
[00:46:33] Speaker A: We just keep kicking him out.
[00:46:35] Speaker B: We definitely keep giving him the brown.
But, yeah, it's unfortunate. Like I said, I do think that in the Browns eyes, that got weird.
In the Browns eyes, they had to do that. But I think that they were quick to pull the trigger and they probably could have talked to the NFL and say, look, this guy's a radio guy.
[00:46:58] Speaker A: There's always things that can be.
[00:47:01] Speaker B: How is the radio guy going to.
[00:47:02] Speaker A: Make an exception for.
And we just are so endeared to our rules.
[00:47:10] Speaker B: Next on the docket for Brown's notes, Peyton Hillis remains in critical condition.
[00:47:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Here's another wild one. Just, what, a week in the NFL.
[00:47:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Peyton Hillis remains in critical condition after saving two of his children. Is it only two children, two of his children, from drowning in the ocean this past week.
Look, the white rhino is such a man. He's just an absolute legend.
Obviously, he had the couple of good years for Cleveland, made it on the COVID of Madden.
[00:47:39] Speaker A: I voted in that at least 20.
[00:47:41] Speaker B: Just a legendary run when he was here, and he just hard nosed, tough hurdled dudes. Yeah, it was so much fun to watch. And he shows here again, he's just a true hero to Browns fans in every sense of the word.
[00:47:57] Speaker A: And I just think this one has flown under the radar a bit because of the DeMar Hamlin issue, but he's in a bad in. He's still in critical condition. They said that he's having issues with his kidneys, and because he swallowed so much, he's. He's really in danger still. And there hasn't been. I don't think I heard a single mention of Peyton Hillis on any of the pregame shows on Sunday, which is.
[00:48:26] Speaker B: Wild to me because he was such a big part of.
[00:48:28] Speaker A: Peyton Hillis was a bad guy. He kind of left Cleveland not on the best terms or whatever because his.
[00:48:35] Speaker B: Star was shining bright and he wanted to cash in.
[00:48:37] Speaker A: Yeah, but that doesn't make you a bad guy.
[00:48:40] Speaker B: No, I agree with you. I'm just saying that's the only reason he was on quote unquote bad.
[00:48:45] Speaker A: Could be argued that we're paying other bad guys to be on the team.
[00:48:49] Speaker B: Let's not go there.
[00:48:50] Speaker A: But Peyton Hillis was, for the most part, a decent human being, and this was obviously a heroic effort to save his kids. And he's really in a dangerous spot right now. So hopefully.
[00:49:02] Speaker B: So, prayers for Peyton Hillis. Hope he makes a full recovery for.
[00:49:05] Speaker A: Peyton Hillis, and hopefully he gets back on the men soon.
[00:49:09] Speaker B: Yep. Next up here, Browns fans. Can we please stop? Just stop with the referee. Conspiracy theories. There's a photo going around right now. You probably throw that up there. Mike Tomlin Fist bumped the ref as he was leaving the field and people were putting that up alongside the face mask of Deshaun Watson that was not called and saying there's some sort of conspiracy that the refs are out to get the Browns. And they were on the Steelers side.
There was the face mask call, the no call on the face mask, like I said, and the Deontay Johnson Air quotes here, incompletion, where he caught the ball and took, in my opinion, took a full step and turned up field and then fumbled and they caught it. Incompletion.
But that comes back to it's 2023 and we still don't know what a catch is.
[00:49:57] Speaker A: Yeah, it's amazing that you only have to have 2ft down on the sideline to make a catch, but on the field of play, you have to take more than three steps to make it a catch.
[00:50:07] Speaker B: It's crazy. But my point of this whole thing is people are quick to forget that there was a roughing the passer call on Deshaun Watson. That was absolute trash. It was just the most basic football play I've ever seen in my life. And they called roughing the Passer on. It actually kept us in the game for a whole extra series.
[00:50:26] Speaker A: We'll take it.
[00:50:28] Speaker B: So don't tell me there's this conspiracy theory that the refs are out to get the Browns.
[00:50:33] Speaker A: Look, I think every time we see an egregious foul that gets called in the NFL, we all go, oh, my gosh, that was the worst thing I've ever seen. Another one happens that roughing the passer call might be the worst penalty I've ever seen.
That was on my guy. I'll take the yardage. And like Ronnie said, it kept us in the game, but, wow, that was beyond bad.
[00:50:56] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what saying. So, like, don't tell me that there's this conspiracy because, yeah, there was a couple of bad calls the other way. We actually mentioned another one that went our way, and they called George Pickens incomplete on the sideline when he absolutely caught that ball.
[00:51:09] Speaker A: Well, those refs had a hard time figuring out what a catch was.
[00:51:12] Speaker B: Yeah. So there's no conspiracy there. The refs weren't on their side. Mike Tomlin was just showing respect to the refs for what they do.
[00:51:18] Speaker A: Two things, I would fist bump Mike Tomlin.
[00:51:23] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:51:24] Speaker A: Cool guy.
And two, I don't know this for a fact because I don't know in the picture who's actually fist bumping Mike Tomlin, but I know that it was said at the beginning of the game that the head referee for this game was retiring. After retiring after the game. After like 257 games or something ridiculous. Like 25.
[00:51:51] Speaker B: Probably seen him at least 100 times. Okay. Probably not. But he's seen him like 25 times, probably.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: My assumption would be that it might be that guy, that he's like, oh, you're retiring after today after a 20 year NFL career as an officiator. Good on you.
[00:52:06] Speaker B: WhaT people don't understand is it's not like Little League football where you don't really talk to the refs. The coaches and players all form relationships with the refs because they're going to be ref'd by these guys year after year and they want to make sure that they have a good rapport with them.
[00:52:21] Speaker A: Peyton said on the Manning cast early in the year, he's like, that guy never won a game with that guy.
That guy always had it out for lifetime.
[00:52:29] Speaker B: Right. And they keep track of these and they know. So, yeah, I mean, that's probably all.
[00:52:33] Speaker A: And I have to think, too, that, not to dive too much into this, but just as a final note, I think the referee crews also fit into analytics across the NFL because they look at the number of penalties called, the number of types of penalties called with specific crews. So they know those are points of emphasis heading into the week. Hey, these guys call a lot of defensive holding. Hey, these guys are iffy on pass interference, so those things all get baked into everything they do every week in a game plan. So absolutely, they know these guys.
[00:53:05] Speaker B: Yep, I agree with you. And so finally here we have going into the locker room after the game, Jimmy Haslam looked pissed. This picture, he was looking like a dad that's ready to whoop his kids'asses. Hopefully that meant that changes are coming. And the first change came today with Joe woods being fired. Thank you.
[00:53:24] Speaker A: Should we have a celebration?
Where's our Pyro guy?
[00:53:30] Speaker B: Can you put confetti in here?
[00:53:31] Speaker A: I can probably. I don't know. We'll see.
[00:53:34] Speaker B: Joe woods was fired. It made my Monday.
But we'll talk about that later in the show because again, we're going to have quite a few things to say about it. For now, I want to remind you guys about the Burning river sportscast. Hot take hotline.
[00:53:48] Speaker A: Hot take hotline.
[00:53:49] Speaker B: Don't forget to call in and air your grievances. 330-227-8080 that's 330-227-8080 330-227-8080 it's going to.
[00:54:04] Speaker A: Be a long offseason. Call us and bitch at us. Oh, yeah.
[00:54:08] Speaker B: So that'll do it for the Browns Week 18 matchup. Let's take a quick revenue break and then we'll come back here and talk about the rest of the league and what we have to look forward to in the playoffs.
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[00:55:03] Speaker A: Go and get some.
[00:55:04] Speaker B: All right, let's get into the division roundup.
Previously we had stated that the score from the Monday Night Football game between Cincinnati and Buffalo would be added once it was complete.
Obviously, as we talked about before, that game was canceled.
So we talked more about it at the beginning of the show, but we will not have that added to the tally for King of the North. Even though the tally doesn't matter anymore.
[00:55:39] Speaker A: I think we should each get a victory for that one victor, because you.
[00:55:43] Speaker B: Want to be 500. Spoiler alert.
So let's move on. This week, Cincinnati beats Baltimore.
Joe Mixon in this one breaks out the coin flip celebration. After the DeMar Hamlin situation, the NFL made up some wacky rules on how they were going to figure out the playoff seating, and basically it benefited everybody except Cincinnati. And they were not happy about it. They were fired up all week. They talked about it a lot. And so Joe Mixon, if the Ravens would have won, they would have had a coin flip to determine home field advantage in this one. And Joe Mixon used that as a celebration. Pretty cool.
Also, one fun note in this one, Joey B. Was being interviewed after the game, and he was asked about the window, the quote unquote window for the Bengals to win a Super Bowl. His response to the reporter, the window is my whole career. The window is always open, Joe.
[00:56:44] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:56:45] Speaker B: So that was pretty funny. We were both right in this one. We both picked Cincinnati.
[00:56:50] Speaker A: I don't know what Baltimore is going to do.
[00:56:51] Speaker B: I mean, they're going to lose.
[00:56:52] Speaker A: They're just going to lose, I guess.
[00:56:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And then the Browns game we discussed at length. We were both right with our picks in that when we picked the Steelers. And so this week, Ronnie, myself, that is, and Kenny both went to an O. And because this is the end of the season and there are no more picks to be made, this leads us to the King of the North.
For the King of the North.
[00:57:27] Speaker A: I'm just going to put a picture of Amelia Clark up there for this whole segment just because it's the last one of the year when she comes.
[00:57:33] Speaker B: Out of the fire.
[00:57:33] Speaker A: Just any picture where she looks good.
[00:57:35] Speaker B: Okay, so as I just mentioned, we both went two and O this week, the final record for both of us, adding in the victory that Kenny was so kind to give us. I went 37 and 19 on the year, and Kenny went 28 and 28. Somehow he managed to get back to 500 with that extra win that we were given.
[00:58:00] Speaker A: See?
[00:58:02] Speaker B: So Kenny did make it back to 500, but I win the King of the north quite easily. Have you decided what you're doing yet?
No, I'll just remind everybody.
[00:58:12] Speaker A: Do I get to decide?
[00:58:14] Speaker B: No, I'm probably going to decide. I'll remind everybody of my ideas. These are the ones that the final cut for ideas. It's probably most likely going to be one of these.
Waxing your legs, dyeing your hair a silly color, letting me cut your hair, which you already mixed. So we'll get rid of that one. Eating a spoonful of cinnamon, although you turn that into eating a spoonful of cinnamon every time you tried to talk on the podcast.
Dressing as a clown for the podcast. And better yet, and this is probably what we're going to land with. I'm going to make you dress up as a clown when we go to Tailgate at the Muni for a game next year.
And we'll probably put a sign around your neck that says, I lost the king of the North.
Make everybody ask you about it. Maybe I'll bring a gross of eggs and have them throw it at you. I don't know. We'll see.
[00:59:01] Speaker A: None of these sound particularly fun.
[00:59:03] Speaker B: Well, you're going to have to do.
[00:59:04] Speaker A: One of them, but I guess I earned it.
[00:59:06] Speaker B: You always earn it. All right, so let's get into around the NFL playoffs.
Yeah, that's what the Browns are saying right now. They can't even win a game.
The playoff picture is complete. On the AFC side of things, we've got in order, the number one seed Chiefs, the number two seed bills, three seed Bengals, four seed Jaguars. Yeah, the Jaguars, five seed Chargers, six seed Ravens and seven seed Dolphins. This week, the Jaguars edged the Titans in a close game for that playoff spot to win that division.
[00:59:56] Speaker A: It's really impressive season.
[00:59:58] Speaker B: They had a really impressive turnaround that they had at the end of the.
[01:00:01] Speaker A: Season because they didn't start well either. I think they lost to the Texans. They were the Texans. One win for most of the season.
[01:00:07] Speaker B: And then the Patriots this week lost to the Bills to be eliminated. The Dolphins were able to squeak past the jets in a snoozer eleven to six, and they made it into the playoffs. And the Steelers took care of business against the Browns, but were eliminated when the Dolphins beat the Jets.
[01:00:23] Speaker A: I was surprised that the Dolphins lost that game or that they won that game.
[01:00:28] Speaker B: Yeah. I thought the jets would have put up a little bit more of a fight.
[01:00:31] Speaker A: Well, and the Dolphins started. Skyler Moore, I think is his last name, hence the Snoozer. Yeah.
[01:00:38] Speaker B: And then on the NFC side of things, in order one.
[01:00:43] Speaker A: Hold on.
[01:00:43] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:00:44] Speaker A: Just real. Um, the jets were pretenders this year because they started the season as trash. Absolute trash. Robert Sala said, I'm keeping receipts. They got good for a minute. He mailed me mine, and everybody was getting receipts. They got their invoices from, you get.
[01:01:02] Speaker B: A receipt and you get a receipt.
[01:01:03] Speaker A: And you get a receipt, and then they finished the year as trash. So I just want to make it known.
[01:01:08] Speaker B: The jets are still trash.
[01:01:09] Speaker A: The jets are still trash, but the.
[01:01:11] Speaker B: Browns were also trash.
[01:01:12] Speaker A: As we said at the beginning of.
[01:01:12] Speaker B: The year, they're trash. So, yeah, the NFC side of things in order, one seed Eagles, 249 ERs, three Vikings, four Buccaneers, five Cowboys, six Giants and seven Seahawks.
So this week, the packers lost to the Lions 20 to 16, and Aaron Rogers came up just short.
We've been talking the last few weeks about how great he is at the end of the season, but he was not able to pull it out in this one. And they did not win this game.
[01:01:43] Speaker A: Yeah, he threw a late pick there. And that Lions team, I know that they aren't in the playoffs, but they played like their game depended on it.
[01:01:51] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, they were all over Aaron Rodgers, specifically this week. They said that if the Lions weren't able to go to the playoffs, then the packers weren't going either. And the DBS actually called out Rogers. And I think he had a couple picks in that game, if I'm not mistaken.
[01:02:06] Speaker A: Did you see they interviewed? I don't remember if it was right before the game or right after at halftime, when the field reporter says to Dan Kimbel, she says, how do you stay motivated for this game knowing that you're officially now eliminated because of the results of the earlier games? And he said, we don't want them to go.
That's it. We don't want them to go either. We're not going. We don't want them to go there.
[01:02:32] Speaker B: And then in this game as well.
Packers player. I feel like this was a typo. Is it Quay Walker? Is that his name?
[01:02:40] Speaker A: I think it is his name.
[01:02:41] Speaker B: Well, then it wasn't. But he pushed a Lions trainer in this game and got ejected. That's just a bad job out of him. Like, what the hell? Just a trainer out there doing his job, trying to help hurt people, and you just shove them to the ground, basically.
[01:02:55] Speaker A: No idea.
[01:02:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know what that guy was thinking. And apparently it wasn't his first disciplinary misstep because he said he came out after the fact and said, I messed up again. I don't know why I do things like this.
[01:03:09] Speaker A: Sounds like you.
[01:03:10] Speaker B: Whoa, whoa. I've come a long way.
[01:03:14] Speaker A: You have come a long way.
[01:03:15] Speaker B: I've come a long way to be.
[01:03:16] Speaker A: The reasonable adult that you are. Yeah, I'll say.
[01:03:19] Speaker B: Shut your mouth.
[01:03:20] Speaker A: This was a surprising one. I definitely thought the packers were peaking at the right time in the season.
[01:03:25] Speaker B: I was very surprised. I definitely picked them to pick up the last.
[01:03:28] Speaker A: They gave that one away. And now starts the Aaron Rogers drama that we all live for now. It's already started.
[01:03:36] Speaker B: They asked him if he was coming back, and he is.
Bret Favre 2.0.
[01:03:41] Speaker A: He loves the attention.
[01:03:42] Speaker B: Yeah. He's like, I might be back. I might not. I'll let you guys know. I don't know. In August.
[01:03:48] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it would be interesting to see him in a different team's colors next year, like, if he were to go to the jets or somewhere.
[01:03:53] Speaker B: I just feel very similar to what they did with Bret Favre, is they're finally just going to get fed up with it and say, you know what? We're going to start. Jordan, love, you're gone.
[01:04:02] Speaker A: More importantly, though, out of this game is a really critical question.
Is Jared Goff good?
[01:04:14] Speaker B: I don't know.
[01:04:17] Speaker A: I mean, he's had a hell of a run to get that team back to playoff.
[01:04:21] Speaker B: I mean, I don't know because he's also been Jekyll and Hyde this year. He's had some really good games, but he's had some very Jared Goff games.
[01:04:28] Speaker A: But that offense was the strength of that team all year.
[01:04:31] Speaker B: Mean, I'm not.
[01:04:33] Speaker A: I mean, he played better than our quarterback.
[01:04:36] Speaker B: Hey, wasn't hard this week, but yeah. So the Seahawks beat the Rams to clinch after the Green Bay loss in the Lions win, but eliminated. They were eliminated when the Seahawks won their game. So the Lions needed the Seahawks to lose as well.
And then, speaking of the Seahawks, Gino Smith became the franchise leader for passing yards in a season at 4282 yards. A couple of things here breaks Russell Wilson's record that he held with the Seahawks, and it took them exactly one year to completely forget about Russell Wilson.
Not only that, but I was actually very surprised to see that 4282 was their franchise record. With the amount of attention that Russell Wilson has gotten and, like, the number of MVP Conversations he's been in and those types of things, that's not that many for.
[01:05:30] Speaker A: I was going to say the exact same thing. I mean, that was my note on this was, I can't believe, given the notoriety of Russell Wilson, that that was his best year for yardage ever.
[01:05:40] Speaker B: Right.
[01:05:41] Speaker A: Because it feels like he would have thrown for a lot more than that.
[01:05:43] Speaker B: But clearly not every year. Usually the top quarterback is right around that 5000 yard mark anymore. I mean, they're at like 48, 4900 this year, Patrick.
[01:05:53] Speaker A: At least 45.
[01:05:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Patrick Mahomes went over 5000 again this year. So I mean, it's wild that 4282 that Russell Wilson has never thrown for more than that.
[01:06:04] Speaker A: Well, and I think that actually broke the record by a pretty good bit. I think the record was like less than 4100 but good on Gino Smith.
[01:06:13] Speaker B: A resurgence and we mentioned it last week, actually, I think he's earned himself like a solid three year contract because he's a little bit older.
He's over 30, I believe. So. He's a little bit older, but I think he gets a good short term contract. He gets a solid three year, four.
[01:06:31] Speaker A: Year deal and it's just a cool story.
[01:06:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:06:34] Speaker A: Because he was one of those guys with the Seahawks.
[01:06:37] Speaker B: I hope they keep him.
[01:06:38] Speaker A: He was one of those guys that came out with a lot of hype and expectation based on his college career and did nothing.
[01:06:44] Speaker B: He was in a lot of poor positions early on.
[01:06:47] Speaker A: Oh, certainly. Yeah. I mean, he had the deck stacked against him for sure, but to see him have success out there is pretty cool.
[01:06:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Speaking of Russell Wilson though, finally had a decent game this week and the Broncos were able to beat the Chargers, a team that is playoff bound. Russell Wilson did throw for three touchdowns in this one and he closes the season with 16 touchdown passes. This is significant because last week we forgot to mention it, but his number of touchdown passes on the season finally eclipsed the number of bathrooms in his house. He has twelve bathrooms in his house. He went to 13 touchdowns last week, added three more this week. He really wanted to make sure he put a stamp on it and left no doubt that he could absolutely throw for more touchdowns in a season than he had bathrooms in his house.
Broncos country, let's ride.
Tom Brady sets the single season completions record for the second straight year at age 45. I don't even know what to say about that.
[01:07:48] Speaker A: He's not human.
[01:07:50] Speaker B: That doesn't even make any sense.
[01:07:52] Speaker A: I was just watching a video from when he was on Colbert a few years ago and just to think about a 40 year old Tom Brady and he's like 40 year old anybody in the NFL. I'm not going to play forever, but I don't know when I'm going to retire. And we're five years now.
[01:08:08] Speaker B: Here we are. And that's my next note. There are no signs that he's retiring after this season. He's talking like he's probably going to pick up a free agent contract from somebody else and go somewhere else and probably win another.
[01:08:17] Speaker A: Got it.
[01:08:18] Speaker B: There's actually talk about him returning to the Patriots, which is kind of interesting.
[01:08:21] Speaker A: You got to figure that he gave up his entire life, his marriage, his kids.
[01:08:25] Speaker B: Well, it all came crashing down.
[01:08:26] Speaker A: Now what do you have to lose? Everything for a football.
[01:08:29] Speaker B: You already lost it all.
[01:08:30] Speaker A: And they're likely not going to win the Super bowl this year. I'll never count them out, but just for the probability is probably lower than it is in normal years because that Buccaneers team hasn't been dominating anyone this year. They're not that great. They'll be a solid playoff team. Maybe they get a win or two, but I don't see this team going the distance.
[01:08:51] Speaker B: We'll see. Like you said, I can never count them out, but I would have to agree with you. I don't see it happening. But from old guys to young Bucks, Chris Alave and Garrett Wilson became the first duo of rookie wide receivers from the same school to top 1000 yards. That's our Buckeyes.
[01:09:08] Speaker A: Oh, hell yes.
[01:09:12] Speaker B: And now that the season is over, we expect to see a carousel of coaches as everybody gets their pink slips and so forth. Today was black racing for pinks. Today we record on Mondays. Today was Black Monday and it did not disappoint. Among the changes today, Joe Woods Confetti. Yay.
Defensive coordinator of the Browns, fired. Lovey Smith, head coach of the Texans, fired. Cliff Kingsbury, head coach of the Cardinals, fired. Steve Kim, GM of the Cardinals, stepping down technically, but I mean, he was basically forced out. Dean Pease, defensive coordinator of the Falcons, retiring for the third time. Who does this guy think he is? Bret Favre?
[01:09:55] Speaker A: Aaron Rodgers, apparently.
[01:09:58] Speaker B: And then Titans today fired four assistant coaches. Offensive coordinator Todd Downing, fired. Offensive line coach Keith Carter, fired. Secondary coach Anthony Midget, fired. I don't know if that's how you say that.
And offensive skill assistant Eric Frazier, fire.
[01:10:21] Speaker A: That was the most excited I've ever heard anyone about people getting fired.
[01:10:26] Speaker B: Well, they gone enjoy your bad luck. Yeah, they join the earlier season firings. Matt Rule, head coach of the Panthers, fired. Frank Wright, head coach of the Colts, fired. Nathaniel Hackett, head coach of the Broncos, fired. But coming back for his 24th season in the NFL, Bill Belichick announced today that he will indeed be back for the Patriots.
[01:10:53] Speaker A: That guy is going to coach till he's.
[01:10:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
And then other rumors that are out there as of the recording of this podcast. Sean McVeigh may be done with the.
Sounds like there's not a lot of information, but it sounds like it's like a mutual thing. Like, the Rams are kind of lukewarm on him at this point, but a little bit more on Sean McVeigh's side. He's had a lot of apparently personal things happening. He's like, I just don't know if I want to do this.
[01:11:21] Speaker A: Super bizarre. I know there was talk at the end of last season, after they had won the Super bowl about him maybe stepping away just because he's so young. He has a broadcast career waiting on him, and it's just a lot less work. And once you win the Super bowl, unless he wants to be Bill Belichick, you've accomplished everything. Right.
But that being said, he came back this year.
The season did not go as planned.
[01:11:52] Speaker B: They actually become the worst defending champion of all time this year.
[01:11:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Pretty ugly season they had. I mean, they signed Mayfield, but it's just bizarre that there's any talk about the Rams maybe not wanting him. I can see if he's saying, hey, for personal reasons, I have to step.
[01:12:12] Speaker B: Away from those rumors were few and far between. There were some rumblings, most of them were on Sean McVeigh's side, but there were some rumblings that even the Rams had soured on him.
[01:12:21] Speaker A: And even from the McVeigh standpoint, though, if you win one Super bowl that age, that young, wouldn't you want another one? I mean, you could win five, six and be one of the greatest of all time.
[01:12:34] Speaker B: But speaking of this, if he does decide to leave the Rams, man, Jimmy Haslam, take a look. He's got to be better than our guy.
[01:12:45] Speaker A: I know we're going to talk the press conference here in a moment, but I'll say after the press conference today, doesn't sound like Pupanski's going anywhere for a while.
[01:12:56] Speaker B: Unfortunate. So this takes us to five current vacancies at the head coach position in the NFL, and there's possibly more coming, but that'll do it for around the NFL. Let's go ahead and quickly jump into a playoff preview. New for this week.
[01:13:14] Speaker A: Yes. This segment will get shorter and shorter each week.
[01:13:17] Speaker B: Yeah. You gonna come up with a sounder for this?
[01:13:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Here we go.
That'll do, pig. Nice.
[01:13:31] Speaker B: All right, so the AFC wild card matchups. The Kansas City Chiefs get the buy. We got the Samsonite. I was way off the Chargers at the Jaguars, but I'll talk first on this. The Chargers have been kind of up and down. What we're going to do is we're going to go through just kind of talk about the games and then give you guys a pick for us real quick.
[01:13:53] Speaker A: Rapid fire.
[01:13:54] Speaker B: Yeah, so the Chargers have been up and down this year. The Jaguars have been super hot as of late. Trevor Lawrence is a huge part of that. He's playing very well to close out the season. I think they continue to play well in this and I actually have the Jaguars taken down the Chargers.
[01:14:08] Speaker A: This was a tough game to pick.
The Jaguars have played so well down the stretch, but that being said, the.
[01:14:16] Speaker B: Chargers just lost to the Broncos. Let me remind you.
[01:14:19] Speaker A: Understood, but I'm still not on the Trevor Lawrence Bandwagon. I still don't know that his hair.
[01:14:24] Speaker B: Is pissing me off.
[01:14:26] Speaker A: It looks a little like mine.
[01:14:27] Speaker B: Yeah, we have long hair.
[01:14:29] Speaker A: I just, I'm not a believer yet in Trevor Lawrence. I think that when you look at just the quarterbacks alone, the Chargers have that one in Justin Herbert. So I will go Chargers this week.
[01:14:41] Speaker B: Worst rapid fire ever heard. Dolphins at Bills Bills are the superior team. Dolphins a shallow team that started the season so hot. So I'm going with the Bills pretty easily.
[01:14:51] Speaker A: If Tua was playing, I actually think this would be interesting. I would probably pick the Dolphins, but since I know who their quarterback is going to be this week, I have to pick the Bills.
[01:15:02] Speaker B: Fair RAveNS AT BeNGALS I'm picking the Bengals. They're just a better team. Nobody knows if Lamar is going to play. Nobody knows even what's going on with him. And without him, the Ravens are trash.
[01:15:14] Speaker A: Yeah, similar situation to the Dolphins game. I think if it was for sure Lamar was healthy and coming back and going to play, I might entertain the Ravens winning this game. But with the question marks at quarterback and the Bengals just being hot this time of year, I'm going to go Cincinnati.
[01:15:31] Speaker B: So that'll take us over to the NFC wild card matchups. Philadelphia Eagles get the buy. We start with Seahawks at 49 ERs.
The Seahawks have lost twice to the 49 ERs this year. The last one was a lot closer, but Brock Purdy has been pretty good. So I'm going with the 49 Ers.
[01:15:50] Speaker A: I also picked the pool 49 ers this game. I would like to see the Seahawks do well, but I think this 49 ERS team is quietly becoming a juggernaut.
[01:16:00] Speaker B: They're Brock solid, if you will, and.
[01:16:02] Speaker A: Outside of Brock Purdy, just inexperienced. That team is loaded on defense.
They have a tremendous running game and Kyle Shanahan has done a tremendous job with that team this year.
[01:16:14] Speaker B: Yes. So you're taking the 49 ERs. Next up, Giants at Vikings.
Listen, this is actually a tough one for me, even given the Vikings good record.
Fun fact right now for this one. The Vikings this year finished with the worst point differential of any team with 13 wins in the history of the NFL. Their point differential this year, negative three. The next closest 13 win team in NFL history, plus 63 from the 2019 packers, which means they've had a hell of a lot of good luck this year, and I think that ends this week. And I've got the Giants taking out the Vikings in round one.
[01:16:56] Speaker A: Look, I'm iced out. I'm just going full kirk Cousins all the way to the Super Bowl.
[01:17:00] Speaker B: Nice. I wish you had a big chain to put on.
[01:17:02] Speaker A: I'm going Vikings.
[01:17:04] Speaker B: Next up, Cowboys at Buccaneers.
I'm just going to say it. I think the Cowboys are overrated again.
I know they had a decent season. They lost this week, I'm pretty sure, and Dak had a shit game.
But yeah, I mean, Tom Brady's the GOAt. I don't ever count him out in the playoffs. I'm going Buccaneers.
[01:17:24] Speaker A: In this fair, Tom Brady is the GOAT. I had a hard time picking this specifically, I had a harder time picking my next pick, which is our Super bowl pick, and it was between the team that I picked and the Cowboys. So I actually think a lot of the Cowboys team, I think Mike McCarthy is a solid coach and I think that the Cowboys wide receiver, you and.
[01:17:47] Speaker B: Skip bail is putting his foot in his mouth, I don't know, 15 times this week.
You guys love the Cowboys.
[01:17:54] Speaker A: I just think the Cowboys offensively because of their receivers match up, really make it a really difficult matchup for anyone they're playing right now. So I'm going to go Cowboys this.
[01:18:06] Speaker B: Week and then finally that's going to take us to before these playoffs start. We're both going to make a Super bowl pick. Mine. I've kept it from the beginning of the year. I'm keeping it the same. Now I'm going with the Buffalo Bills. I think Josh Allen takes him to the promised land and their team is just solid top to bottom. There's not really a weakness on that Buffalo Bills team.
[01:18:29] Speaker A: Anchor bar sucks.
[01:18:32] Speaker B: The only downfall for the Bills are they're basically in Canada.
[01:18:40] Speaker A: I really wanted to pick the but.
[01:18:43] Speaker B: I'm glad you didn't. I would have made fun of you, but I didn't.
[01:18:46] Speaker A: And I would have picked the packers had they made it because they were playing good football down the stretch until Dan Campbell humped them there at the end and he went balls out. Did you see that game last night? The end of the game? No, literally, it was fourth and one, and if Detroit converted, they could run the clock out. And he ran the clock down to like a minute, minute ten or whatever they had left. So it was either convert or give the ball back to Aaron Rogers. And this dude says, hey, Jared Goff, why don't you just go ahead and throw this thing?
[01:19:17] Speaker B: He pulled us to Fannick, but it worked.
[01:19:19] Speaker A: But it worked when they ran the clock out.
[01:19:21] Speaker B: So anyway, the Packers Allah, Andy Reed and freaking Chad Henney against the Browns in the playoffs a couple years ago.
[01:19:29] Speaker A: Yeah, the Packers Super bowl hopes were dashed at that time. But look, I think I'm going to go Philadelphia Eagles fly. Eagles fly. They've Been impressive all year long. They're going to have that first round by, everybody's going to get healthy. And I just think they're a tough matchup because of the way Jalen Hurts is playing this year across the board for anyOne. So I will go Eagles the rest of the way.
Fair.
[01:19:56] Speaker B: We'll see what happens.
So, yeah, I mean, that's the playoff picture. You know who's not in the playoffs? The Browns.
[01:20:02] Speaker A: The Browns.
[01:20:03] Speaker B: So let's go ahead and Do a quick season review.
[01:20:10] Speaker A: So many new sounders this week.
[01:20:12] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, you got to come up with tHem. Listen, the browns were ass this year. Ass hot garbage, especially given the expectations and the talent on our roster coming into this season, grossly underperformed. We Looked.
I mean, we don't really have a lot to get into, to be honest with you, because it's been the same storyline throughout the entire season. Kevin Stefanski likes to just sling it. For whatever reason. He doesn't like to give the best running back in the NFL the ball. OuR defense was trash. Our special teams were trash.
It was just the same things over and over again. And there's not a single adjustment made the entire season. And we were completely undisciplined and at.
[01:20:57] Speaker A: Times uninterested and almost unwatchable. This had to be one of the most.
[01:21:04] Speaker B: This had me reminiscing, not in a good way, but reminiscing on the days when we benched Brian Hoyer for Manziel. Like it was just hard to watch.
[01:21:14] Speaker A: It just has to be, all in all, one of the most unlikable Browns units of all time. I mean, I'm a Browns fan and I love the Browns, but I'm thinking from the outside looking in like, this team has to be very unlikable and.
[01:21:27] Speaker B: Undesirable to mean because, like I said, we look at them on paper. Coming into the season, we felt good. Even with Jacoby starting the season for that many games, we're like, you know what? I think we could compete. I think we could be okay here. We have a solid roster, we've got a lot of talent, and we just pissed it all.
[01:21:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep. We've wasted another year of a bunch of really good athletes in their prime. And you can't get that time back.
[01:21:53] Speaker B: No, absolutely not. So that'll bring us to today's press conference. Kenny, I'll let you go ahead and kind of break that down.
[01:21:59] Speaker A: Oh, I thought we had a few more points, like good and bad.
[01:22:02] Speaker B: The good and bad comes after the press conference.
[01:22:04] Speaker A: Oh, I was going to do it before the press conference.
[01:22:06] Speaker B: All right, we'll get into the good and bad now the good, bad and the ugly. We'll start with the good. Jacoby Brissette was a pleasant surprise this year. I was happy to see him play well through the first part of the season.
[01:22:16] Speaker A: Yeah. We were both extremely excited about the way he played.
I think he became very quickly became one of my favorite Browns over the course of the season.
[01:22:25] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And especially coming in because he was probably the only one where the expectations were very low. We expected him to do.
[01:22:32] Speaker A: The reason I picked the Browns to go seven and ten was because I didn't think Jacobi could play.
[01:22:36] Speaker B: He was the last reason we went.
[01:22:39] Speaker A: He could play. He could play.
[01:22:41] Speaker B: Next up in the good Nick Chubb rushes for 1500 yards. Finished third overall in rushing for the NFL. This year would have been number one. But we don't like to run the ball. He averaged like, I don't know, 13 carries a game or something like that.
[01:22:54] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, he was only like 100 yards behind Josh Jacobs. He was like 15 yards behind Derek.
[01:22:58] Speaker B: Henry, which is weird. Legitimately, if you go look at these guys, I don't have the exact numbers off the top of my head, but if you go look at these guys, I believe Josh Jacobs and who else was ahead of him?
[01:23:07] Speaker A: Derek Henry.
[01:23:08] Speaker B: Derek Henry. Both average at least four or five carries more than him per game.
[01:23:13] Speaker A: That would be accurate. Derek Henry on the season has 349 rushes. Josh Diggs has 340. Nick Chubb finished with three two.
[01:23:22] Speaker B: Yeah. So 40 more carries.
[01:23:25] Speaker A: It's basically two or three full games in the Stefanik offense. There's almost four games.
[01:23:29] Speaker B: Yeah, not good. Another good thing, though, for the Browns. This year, the emergence of MJ Emerson as a legitimate starter. This guy can play.
[01:23:38] Speaker A: This dude has the dog in was.
[01:23:41] Speaker B: Yeah, he absolutely does. He was young and confident. It had me thinking, uh, Joe Hayden in the lockdown on the know when, when Ward was healthy, when Newsom was playing well, and MJ Emerson came in here and played the way he did. There were a few games. There were a few games where we played very poorly, but that was more of a scheme thing, in my opinion. But there were a few games when they didn't have any of those busted coverages where we just shut people down and some big name receivers at it.
[01:24:11] Speaker A: And he's just a high motor, high physicality corner.
Just loved everything I saw out of him. I think he's going to be special.
[01:24:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm excited. I think he may move into the opposite corner of Ward going into next.
[01:24:26] Speaker A: Oh, 100%. He's a suitable starter, so we'll see what happens.
[01:24:29] Speaker B: Another positive this year, DPJ. A proven wide receiver, too at this point.
[01:24:33] Speaker A: Wide receiver, too.
[01:24:34] Speaker B: So that's good to see. We were kind of questioning whether or not he could take on that role this year. They expected a lot of him. I will say that is one positive for the front office that they kind of called that. They said DPJ would be able to handle being a wide receiver, too.
[01:24:48] Speaker A: Yeah, he had a nice season, and from a depth standpoint, they're still lacking that guy that can take the top off, but maybe they can make a move in free agency or find him in the draft late in the draft since we don't have any picks. But yeah, DPJ had a nice season. That was encouraging to see because otherwise that would have been another hole going into this offseason.
[01:25:10] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And then finally under the good here, we avoided major injuries to all of our young stars. So we at least get one more year with everybody intact.
[01:25:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, every time one of those guys goes like, that's the worst thing that could happen.
[01:25:25] Speaker B: Not only are we wasting a season, but, oh, God, let's hope they don't get hurt.
[01:25:28] Speaker A: I mean, an Achilles or even an ACL is not great for anybody. That's of.
[01:25:35] Speaker B: And so next up, we'll get into the bad and the ugly. Number one on the list here. The defense was absolutely atrocious this year.
[01:25:43] Speaker A: Terrible.
[01:25:44] Speaker B: So bad. That's all I'll say. I don't think it needs to be all year long.
[01:25:47] Speaker A: Miscommunication, undisciplined, just not knowing where to be. Guys in the wrong spots.
And there were some personnel issues at play here, too, because you didn't have a good solution at backer and no interior defensive line is really on.
[01:26:03] Speaker B: Winfrey decided he would finally step up with a few games.
[01:26:06] Speaker A: He played a little bit better, but they need a lot more than Perry on Winfrey.
[01:26:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
Next up, I'm going to skip this one and come back to it. Next up, O line. The offensive line grossly underperformed, especially down the stretch.
[01:26:20] Speaker A: They straight up turned into a pumpkin this year, dude.
[01:26:23] Speaker B: Down the stretch, I don't even know what they were doing. Like, did they even show up half the time?
It was awful. Look, I think it's especially in pass protection.
[01:26:32] Speaker A: I think Joel Batonio obviously is likely a Hall of Famer. I think he had his hands full trying to cover up Jed Wills's mistakes.
Had in and out at center. Obviously, we had a ton of injuries at center, but Ethan Pochick came in and studied that for a while until he got hurt.
Wyatt Teller was battling a calf most of the, you know, I think he gets a little bit of a pass because I think he played hard through year.
[01:27:03] Speaker B: I completely understand the injury thing, but the fact that we have literally no depth to the point where we lose a starter and all of a sudden our offensive line is trash.
[01:27:13] Speaker A: Well, and then I think you have a really questionable starter at left.
It's just a really tough year for this offensive line, and they need to play a lot better next year.
[01:27:22] Speaker B: It's bad. When I said my take earlier in the season was to resign Jed Wills just simply for the fact that you're going to get a huge bargain on him, and then I backtracked that completely and said, no, just get rid of him. He's that bad. He needs to just be gone.
[01:27:35] Speaker A: You should be able to get a bargain for him. Still a bag of stale popcorn at.
[01:27:39] Speaker B: The movie, like he should pay us.
But next up here in the bad and the ugly, Miles Garrett's car wreck.
Not a good look, first of all. And then it kind of loomed the whole season.
[01:27:54] Speaker A: It was just something we had to talk about. Kind of banged all year long. He was battling the arm with a shoulder injury all year long because of it, and it was just a major lapse in judgment, too.
I know accidents. No one accounts for that, but he probably could have not put himself in that situation.
[01:28:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
Next.
[01:28:15] Speaker A: Speaking of his car, though, did you see it went for auction? It's a $290,000 Porsche and up for auction at over $40,000 right now.
[01:28:25] Speaker B: Just completely totaled.
Somebody's hoping that he gets into the hall of Fame one day and that they can cash.
[01:28:33] Speaker A: I guess it's a cool story. I have Miles Garrett's wrecked car.
[01:28:36] Speaker B: It's sitting back there. It's really rusty. Now.
Next up, this is where I'm going to go with it. Kevin Stefanik. That's right. You don't even have your correct last name because you were so bad and ugly this year.
Refusal to run the ball all season. We mentioned most of these. We'll mention them again. Refusal to run the ball. Just airing it out for no reason on third and fourth and short, terrible goal line calls, terrible clock management, bad play calls in general, awful locker room dysfunction, which I put under him. Clowney we mentioned, caught out the team this week. There was a players only meeting after week two. Johnson, in the middle of the season, said no one wants to do their job.
[01:29:18] Speaker A: Miles Garrett said they were running through the wrong wall.
[01:29:21] Speaker B: Yeah, there were multiple players saying that they weren't being put in position to win.
I mean, that all falls under the head coach. And actually these next two points, Mike Prefer and Joe woods both fall under the head coach. Joe Woods. Yeah, he's gone now. And that's what we're going to talk about next. But it took the entire season. There was no accountability for him. All season long we had a chance to still make the playoffs and nothing changed. We stuck with him because that was Kevin Stefanski's guy. He thinks we had the right people in place. Well, guess what, 18 weeks later, Kevin Stefanski, clearly he was the wrong guy. And you finally listened to everybody and got rid of him.
[01:29:59] Speaker A: Stefanik may be the wrong guy.
[01:30:01] Speaker B: Stefanik is the wrong guy.
[01:30:03] Speaker A: Yeah, to put a bow on that Mike prefer. I don't know how this guy still has a job.
[01:30:07] Speaker B: He doesn't. We'll talk the pref, oh, wait, Mike Prefer does.
[01:30:10] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll talk the presser here in just a quick second.
But it was said today that Stefanski hasn't necessarily talked to his coaching staff yet, so there may be some further coaching changes coming.
[01:30:21] Speaker B: Mike Prefer needs to go.
[01:30:23] Speaker A: But with Joe woods going today, I don't know why they wouldn't have just got rid of Mike prefer at the same time. I just don't understand how this guy is still employed in the NFL given he was brought in under the Freddie Kitchens regime, was not good. Under that regime wasn't good. There hasn't been good since then because we talked about earlier in the season that they hadn't had a kick return for a touchdown in five years, he hasn't done anything special. And to put it out, not only is he a bad coaCh, he's kind of a bad guy. This was the guy that got in trouble for essentially saying we should put all homosexuals on an island and nuke it.
[01:31:08] Speaker B: Those words several. We will lead it with allegedly. But those words allegedly came out of Mike Prefer's mouth and a grievance was filed against him with the NFL for it.
[01:31:18] Speaker A: Yeah, several years back when he was with the Vikings and there was a whole thing with Chris Kleuy and that he was being harassed on the daily because he supported same sex marriage.
I just don't know that there's a place in the NFL for a guy like that anyway, and he's a bad coach. So I don't know why he's still employed.
[01:31:38] Speaker B: If you're bad at your job and you're bad at life, what are we doing with you?
[01:31:43] Speaker A: I don't.
[01:31:46] Speaker B: Then that takes us to Joe woods, who actually was fired today.
[01:31:51] Speaker A: Thank God.
[01:31:52] Speaker B: Yeah, thank God. Let's do another celebration.
[01:31:54] Speaker A: Confetti cannons.
[01:31:56] Speaker B: And actually, I won't even talk about Joe woods anymore because he's not part of our team. But I will say this. A lot of analysts are saying that Cleveland is a very desirable location for defensive coordinators right now. Well, but free agents still don't want to come here. Did you see what Cam Jordan said? Yeah.
[01:32:12] Speaker A: So Cam Jordan said he played here, what, two or three weeks ago when the Browns plays. He said there's no amount of money in the world that could get him to go there.
[01:32:21] Speaker B: Wow. Just shit all over us. But I digress. Early list of candidates for the defensive coordinator position here in Cleveland.
Gerard Mayo.
The Browns have officially requested to interview him.
[01:32:35] Speaker A: Yeah, so this one they've already officially requested. Like Ronnie said, unclear if he would be interested in leaving the New England Patriots, but considered a rising star in the ranks. He's only 36 years old and he's only been coaching since 2019 with the Patriots, but he did have eight years under Bill Belichick playing and was a multi year captain under Bill Belichick.
[01:33:03] Speaker B: Next up, Brian Flores. They have also requested an interview with him.
[01:33:07] Speaker A: Yeah, Flores is a hot candidate this year, I think, for not only, like, our DC job, but for a lot of head coaching jobs. Obviously, there were a lot of things going on in Miami over the last couple of years. He filed lawsuit in February against the NFL alleging racial discrimination and hiring practices because of some of the things that went on while he was at Miami. But given all of that, he still had, I think he was close to 500 as the Dolphins head coach with some bad, bad teams. Did have a winning season in 2020 at ten and six, but he spent most of his career coaching under Bill Belichick in New England, so won Super Bowls there, started as a low level staffer and has had a bunch of different jobs on the way up. But he's expected to be a hot commodity for head coaching and coordinator jobs this year because he was coaching linebackers, I think, in Pittsburgh.
[01:34:05] Speaker B: Yes. And then some other names that are being kind of floated out there for the Browns. Jim Schwartz.
[01:34:11] Speaker A: Yeah, Jim Schwartz. He's with the Titans now. He's been with the Titans actually for a long time. This is his twelveth season in the NFL or with the Titans, but his 29th in the NFL.
So he's one that has head coaching experience as well. He was a defensive coordinator in the league for 14 seasons and then obviously, like I said, he was the head coach for the Lions before moving on. So he's another one that's expected to have quite a bit of demand this offseason.
[01:34:42] Speaker B: Yes. Next up, Mike Zimmer.
[01:34:44] Speaker A: Mike Zimmer is a really interesting one. Mike Zimmer, obviously head coach of the Minnesota Vikings from 2014 to 2021, and Stefanski was on that staff. So in 2018, Zimmer is who promoted Kevin Stefanski to offensive coordinator. Oh, how the tables have turned there. And he's served as a consultant, I think, for Dion Sanders's Jackson State University this season.
Again, another guy with defensive coordinator experience and has coached both four, three and three four teams in his tenure in the NFL. So he's certainly flexible when you think about scheme and the familiarity with Stefanski makes that one pretty interesting.
[01:35:32] Speaker B: Yep. Next up, Vic Fangio.
[01:35:35] Speaker A: Fangio fired this year actually after three years as Denver Broncos head coach, so didn't have a tremendous record there, but is regarded as a brilliant defensive mind and his teams have been noted as being aggressive. Ball Hawks. You go back to the Seahawks teams of the last few years.
[01:35:56] Speaker B: Yep. Jim Leonard.
[01:35:58] Speaker A: Jim Leonard, another player coach again, rising in the ranks in the coaching world, regarded as one of the top defensive minds in the college game and served as the interim head coach for Wisconsin. But obviously our old friend Luke Fickle has been hired as their new head coach. And then he did play for, I think, five teams over a ten year NFL career with his final year being a Brown in 2014.
[01:36:26] Speaker B: Yeah, but I'm sure there's going to be others that pop up. We'll continue to update this as the coaching search goes along.
[01:36:33] Speaker A: There was one other one that I know that they've already requested, and that was at Giro every out in Denver.
Who's their defensive coordinator there? This was his first year as defensive coordinator, and we obviously know all the offensive struggles that Russell Wilson brought to Denver this year, but their defense was ranked top ten in a lot of categories.
And he's a young guy but has good experience working under guys like Dom Capers, Vic Fangio, Monty Kiffin, Wade Phillips, Raheem Morris. So he's got a lot of interest. I think he'll be another one that's looked at for head coach. In fact, he's expected to interview for the Denver Broncos head coaching gig.
[01:37:18] Speaker B: Yeah, and so, like we said, we'll continue to update this as the search moves along. Just real quick. We'll talk about it in a future episode. But out of those guys, who's your favorite?
[01:37:31] Speaker A: Favorite? I don't know that I have a favorite. Mike Zimmer. I think because of the familiarity with Kevin Stefanski and because I think that Stefanski is young and troubled, and maybe Mike Zimmer is one of those guys that can serve as an even keeled mentor for him to try and help steady the locker room a bit.
And he has really good experience. I think he was successful in Minnesota. I mean, you go back to some of those teams over his tenure there. I mean, they had some good years, but that, and I just think from a schematic standpoint, he's flexible. I think those make him a good candidate for the role.
[01:38:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And so I actually have a lot of the same points as you, but I go the opposite end of the spectrum here. I like Gerard Mayo.
I think Kevin Stefanski, contrary to what a lot of Browns fans want to put out there, I don't think he has this locker room. I think the locker room is very down on Kevin Stefanski. I think there's a disconnect there. But I think if you bring in somebody like Gerard Mayo, who's pretty fresh off playing, still has a lot of relationships in the NFL, a lot of those guys know him, and I think that would kind of bridge that gap a little bit of building rapport with the players.
[01:38:52] Speaker A: You don't worry about his inexperience?
[01:38:55] Speaker B: No, because there are guys out there in the NFL.
Like we've said before, we never played in the NFL, obviously, but you've played football. You know, guys that kind of have that coaching mentality, you just see it way before it actually comes to fruition.
And everybody talks about Gerard Mayo like he was one of those guys. He just was a student of the game and knows the game. And I think all the reports as of now are that he's kind of a rising star. And so if we can nab him early, who knows, maybe he'll succeed.
[01:39:31] Speaker A: He absolutely seems to be well respected to this point, which is kind of crazy because like I said, he's only been coaching there since 2019.
Pretty stark contrast in the way that he's perceived versus the way a guy like Jeff Saturday was perceived when he took over as interim head coach. I mean, no one would really be surprised if Gerard Mayo got a head coaching gig next year because he's been a coach since 2019, but that's not that long and he's only 36, so he's not far removed from being a player in this league. But Jeff Saturday was public enemy number one when all that went down. So just interestinG, just the way that.
[01:40:11] Speaker B: He'S Colts owners fishing buddy.
[01:40:16] Speaker A: Jim Ursay.
[01:40:17] Speaker B: Yeah, but anyways, real quick, I just want to remind everybody again, now that we've mentioned the good, bad and the ugly with the Browns this year, we didn't get into their press conference, so just go ahead and do a quick rundown of their press conference today.
[01:40:31] Speaker A: Yeah, real quick. Obviously, with it being the end of the year, today was players like exit Interviews Day. So there was a press conference with Kevin Stefanski and Andrew Barry to just kind of wrap up the season. So I wanted to make a couple quick things that talk about a couple of quick things that stood out to me from this press conference. One, Stefanik, per usual on the what went wrong this season, answered with, well, it's a lot of things because Stefanik has no shortage of excuses.
[01:41:06] Speaker B: Everything we want is on the other side of hard.
We're going to get it figured out.
[01:41:11] Speaker A: No shortage of excuses coming from him. Andrew Barry said Jed Wills made positive strides this year.
The reporter was questioning him pretty hard.
[01:41:23] Speaker B: On where to he actually said Jed Wills made.
[01:41:28] Speaker A: He said, you know, they're obviously going to do a lot of like they're.
[01:41:31] Speaker B: Going to pull strides to the left and right to let the defensive lineman in.
[01:41:35] Speaker A: They're going to pull apart all the tape and everything over the next couple of weeks and work on personnel things.
[01:41:39] Speaker B: But it'll change fast.
[01:41:41] Speaker A: Jed Wills overall, along with all the players, made positive strides.
[01:41:46] Speaker B: Listen, Andrew Barry, if that's your actual take on Jed Wills, thank you for making it very clear that you have not watched a single game this year.
You're the general manager.
[01:41:57] Speaker A: Thank you. Also watching the Browns, Kevin Stefanski said confirmed they will not look in house for a defensive coordinator candidate. So thought that was interesting because obviously there's no one in their ranks that they even trust to have the conversation, not even out of professional courtesy like, hey, you've been here this whole time and no, got nothing for you.
[01:42:22] Speaker B: Top notch team we've built here.
[01:42:25] Speaker A: Yes. So we talked about a little bit about prefer earlier in that Stefanski said other coaching, the conversations with individual coaches will happen as the week goes on. So he did not rule out further coaching changes, but was very uncommittal on Mike Prefer. So there's still hope that prefer will get his due.
[01:42:51] Speaker B: Hashtag fingers crossed.
[01:42:52] Speaker A: And another part that I thought was really interesting was a reporter had asked about do you feel that the addition and the trade for Deshaun Watson has made it difficult from a cap standpoint and a pick standpoint, just a resources standpoint to add to this team and certainly to fill some of the gaps that they need and how are they going to address those? And the first thing that came up was that Andrew Barry said, well, our coaches do a really good job of telling them, the personnel folks, what they need to match their schematic vision and personnel. So my first thought was apparently Joe woods went to them and specifically told them, we want defensive tackles that are either undersized and unathletic or so big they can't move.
And I was like, that seems like a really strange play, but hey, that's what they tell you, then fine. But also that Andrew Barry feels totally comfortable with the resources they have that are needed to fortify areas. Here's a question of need for this.
[01:44:05] Speaker B: Year, is that the beginning of the foundation being laid of Stefanski being the scapegoat if Deshaun Watson doesn't work out because he said, they tell me what they need and I go get, it's possible.
[01:44:19] Speaker A: I mean, it seems that last year it was Baker, this year it's Joe Woods. So Stefanski's run out of fall guys.
[01:44:27] Speaker B: Yeah, just saying.
[01:44:30] Speaker A: And then the only other thing that stood out to me was Kevin Stefanski did give Cave York must see TV vote of confidence during the presser today. Good.
He's a young guy, we expected ups and downs. He's got a strong leg and he's going to get better.
[01:44:46] Speaker B: He should give him vote of confidence. Browns fans are too hard on that.
[01:44:49] Speaker A: Guy, but that was it. I just thought, it's not every day that we get AndrEw berry out in front of a mic and with Kevin as well. So it was a 35, one room.
[01:45:01] Speaker B: You don't know what to do with it.
[01:45:02] Speaker A: It was a 34, 35 minutes press conference, and I think they said maybe four minutes of anything meaningful.
[01:45:13] Speaker B: 34, 35 minutes of excuses.
[01:45:15] Speaker A: Yeah, well, just the word vomit. Just the way those guys talk, it's like they just can't have a conversation with you.
[01:45:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So that'll take us to a reminder once again of the Burning river sportscast. Hot take Hotline. Hot take hotline. Don't forget to give us a call and air your grievances. Be it with the coaching staff, with the front office that just had this press conference. They gave you no answers.
[01:45:41] Speaker A: Kevin Poopansky poops his pants daily.
[01:45:44] Speaker B: Mike, prefer you want to talk about how much you hate the now departed Joe Woods? Who cares?
[01:45:51] Speaker A: We'll even take Baker Mayfield calls.
[01:45:52] Speaker B: Yeah, just give us a call. Let us know. 3302-2780-8033-0227 Eightyzero 227-8080 Call now.
[01:46:05] Speaker A: Call now. Operators are not standing by, but there's an automated voicemail.
[01:46:11] Speaker B: All right, that'll take us to. For. The landlords are still out there playing basketball, in case anyone was wondering. They are now 26 and 15, still fourth in the east, but they are now tied for first in the Central. And this week was a big week.
[01:46:34] Speaker A: Was a big week.
[01:46:35] Speaker B: Donovan Mitchell scored 71 points in a game this past week. 71 points. That's the most since Kobe's 81. That sets a Cavs franchise record for points in a game previously held, shared by LeBron and Kyrie Irving at 57. He didn't just break that record, he smashed it.
[01:46:57] Speaker A: Smashed.
[01:46:58] Speaker B: Only had 16 in the first half, which makes it all the more impressive. His 55 after halftime. Tod Kobe for the most by any player over the last 25 years.
He assisted, if you count his assist with this. He actually had 99 points that he accounted for on the team. The only person to ever have more than that was Wilt Chamberlain in his 100 point game. The Cavs came back from down 21 in this one.
They were down two with 3 seconds left in the game. And Donovan Mitchell purposely missed his free throw, got his rebound and made a circus shot to force overtime.
So, yeah, they forced overtime. They ended up winning it in overtime. Mitchell had 13 in that overtime period. And yeah, it was just a wild game.
[01:47:54] Speaker A: I thought it was interesting that it came out the next day or whatever and said that there was a lane violation, of course, on that, whatever, but still, one of the all time performances. I mean, literally all time, right?
[01:48:07] Speaker B: It was insane.
[01:48:07] Speaker A: That's going to be. When you look at the record books for the next 25 years, there's going to be 181 and 71 in there.
[01:48:17] Speaker B: A couple of funny things that I saw tweeted out after the game.
All of the Cavs jumped on and said, and we're being tested for Peds.
And then also Lopez, one of our big guys, tweeted out, he said, let it be known that last night, Lopez and Mitchell combined for 72 points. What an effort. What an effort.
[01:48:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it was a good week for Cavs. Memes. Thank God for the Cavs, because as the Browns season wound down and it was just miserable.
[01:48:48] Speaker B: You can always go back to the Cavs. Good news.
[01:48:50] Speaker A: The Cavs, at least have been winning and playing fun.
[01:48:52] Speaker B: They've. They've been a lot of fun to watch this season. So that'll take us to the closing of this show. Kenny, what can we expect next week?
[01:49:00] Speaker A: Next week? The Hot take Hotline. Next week, we will recap the playoffs, round one, and we will do a preview of Round two, where those games were and where they're headed. And then obviously, we will cover any new Browns moves, acquisitions, departures, anything fun, anybody talking shit? We'll get it all and bring it to you here.
[01:49:25] Speaker B: Yeah. So on social media, make sure you check us out. Tap in media is on Facebook and Twitter, at the tap in media and on Instagram. At Tap in media official and Burning River Sportscast. That's this podcast hosted by Kenny Thunder and me, Red Hot Ronnie Jams. We're on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at Burning River Sportscast and on Twitter at Burning River Pod. And you can find the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Stitcher, Pandora, iHeartRadio, Pocketcast, Castro, and so many more.
[01:50:01] Speaker A: So many more.
I will say the Burning river sports cast shorts to make good toilet reading or watching.
[01:50:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think all of our videos do. I love watching myself on the toilet.
[01:50:16] Speaker A: All right.
Right on.
A couple quick notes before we depart, our dear friends thought this was fun. A new baby can cost new parents approximately 750 hours of sleep over their first year.
[01:50:34] Speaker B: I can attest that does happen.
[01:50:38] Speaker A: And since last week we talked about the old Nerf ball hand grenade, I actually was reading about Nerf and its inception, and the first sales pitch for the Nerf ball was Nerf. You can't hurt babies or old people.
Brilliant.
[01:50:55] Speaker B: Absolutely brilliant. Why did they not go with that?
[01:50:58] Speaker A: Thankfully, they moved on from that.
[01:51:03] Speaker B: Wow.
The greatest tagline of all time never got used.
[01:51:08] Speaker A: And out of the you never know where you might end up files.
Before R. L. Stein wrote the famous Goosebumps series, he got his start in writing.
[01:51:21] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:51:22] Speaker A: Writing jokes for Bazooka Joe. Bubble gum rappers.
[01:51:26] Speaker B: Fantastic.
Worst bubble gum on the planet, by the way.
[01:51:31] Speaker A: They were probably not nearly as scary as his Goosebumps books. No. And then one final bonus fact.
I really enjoy a good lobster. Who doesn't?
Well, apparently, American colonials didn't.
Lobster was not considered a delicacy 200 years ago in this country.
In fact, it was so cheap and plentiful that it was primarily served to people in prison.
[01:52:04] Speaker B: Well, dang, they were living large back in the day. Good job, guys.
[01:52:08] Speaker A: So that's not a problem. But if there is a problem and you're a problem, don't just be a part of the problem. Be the whole damn problem.
[01:52:18] Speaker B: And only you can prevent. River fires.
[01:52:22] Speaker A: Burning river.
[01:52:24] Speaker B: Burning river sports camp, burning river sports, burning river.
[01:52:55] Speaker A: Oh, what a loser.
[01:53:07] Speaker B: Today's episode was brought to you by Topath Gin. Topath gin, a true craft American gin. Made in its own style. A blend of nine botanicals brings a moderate amount of juniper with a citrus backbone. Layers of seven other botanicals shine through for this incredibly well balanced and high quality, small batch topath gin.
