9/8/26 Full Show

0:00It's Jeremy White. Deep drop, Underwood, five seconds left. Underwood is going to toss it toward the end zone into the crowd and out of bounds. Tom expires. It's the attack from the Mac. So here in Ann Arbor, Michigan catches a break. On third down, Deep drop, Underwood, and out of bounds. Underwood is caught. Joe J. Buchanan, touchdown. A miracle. At Michigan Stadium. You're listening to Jeremy and Joe on Western New York Sports Giant WGR. Hello. Happy football season. Happy Tuesday. I went outside today or I got dressed today and thought, man, it falls here.

1:00It might be pants season. I didn't wear pants, I'm wearing shorts on the shorts report. Then I heard the forecast before I actually got outside and gotten into the car. It's going to be 80. So if you walk outside early and think, oh, it's chill in the air. Make sure you're prepared to weather 80 degrees. So it'd be nice today. That's nice. Jeremy and Joe, Joe's out again this week. I'm sold today with Owen Parker, Joe Cali, both here as well. Sal coming up at seven. It's a bills game week. And that also means we can have Austin Corvette on the show. He joins us at 830. Bill's guard Austin Corvette will talk to him every week during the season. Get a chance to know him, talk football, talk prep for the upcoming game, talk about what happened. That's going to be on Tuesdays and football season. So happy to have him with us at 830 today. Meanwhile, millions of things to get to over the weekend, including that Michigan game, were you gentlemen watching it? I watched the end of it. So I saw all that in real time. I caught a bit of that end of it too.

2:00So I was there for the importance. End of it. I don't need you to know if you saw the second quarter, the end of it. Because I feel like the entire beginning of it was horrible. It was not a good game. Yeah. The end of it. I mean, what? What? I've been thinking about it since it happened pretty much the entire time. Yeah. It was, of course, if you didn't see it live, you must have caught up on it by now. You should have caught up on it by now that the officials in Michigan and the big 10 found a super secret clock that they could invent and add a second to. And if Western Michigan doesn't give up a Hail Mary, then it's just a funny little anecdote that they had to defend it twice. But yeah. And then hold on a second for you conspiracy theorists out there. You're telling me on the same weekend that we found out of a additional secret clock that officials run that there was a prime time stand alone game that was delayed in such a way

3:02that they could just run it off of the individual clock. The officials keep that happened two days later. Right. Two days later, the NCAA went so deep on this conspiracy. They said, no, no, we need the clock. We got our officials clock. We're going to run that one. We all are so trusting of you right now. Right. Thank you so much. The same weekend. Make sure we get our stories straight. Why don't we kill the lights at SMU Florida state and have them go on the officials clock. That'll do it. Yeah. That'll let everybody know that officials have been keeping time. Power outage wasn't real. It was just an inside job. It had to be. It had to be. It's unbelievable. You're telling me the power came back for some lights but not for the jumbo tron. Some lights but not the communication between the coach and the quarterback. Hey, listen, we've got lights in the bathrooms but the coach can't talk to the middle linebacker. Okay. Yeah, yeah. That's how lights all come back on. I'm quite sure the officials, their batteries work. I suppose on is the official clock kept on only battery by one official. Is it in the building? Is it main framed in?

4:02I don't know. That's a word. I'm over here trying to build a conspiracy theory because it's a little more fun to do it. But man, so much to get to. I have a lot of that stuff to get to. Of course, the bill season starts. The Patriots and the Seahawks play tomorrow. And the Patriots have extended Christian Gonzalez. So that deal finally got done. Very normal to get a deal done the day before your season begins. All right. That's fine. Patriots do that. I read that it's their first first round pick extension since 2012. Oh, wow. They have not extended a first round pick since 2012. That seems crazy. Oh, leave them. Seems impossible. Yeah. Seems impossible. Yep. But that's right. So. I'm blown away. Model franchise. They do everything right. Model, you're right. You got a draft. Well, I don't even remember them trading that many of them that it should be that long. They just have it. They just really haven't drafted that well. They just aren't that good at that. So it's our coast. So that's in there as well.

5:02I feel like we do have updates on the Conor Hella book story. From the insider standpoint, we're getting more things to come out. More suggestions to come out. I wonder if it could be this kind of deal, which tells me that that thing might be moving forward. See about that. On Tuesdays, we do our legend of the game trivia, which gives you a chance to win a $50 gift card to the BFL store. So that'd be a fun thing to win. Keep listening. We'll have a trivia question about a former Bill's legend of the game. And if you get it right, you win that $50 gift card to the BFL store. That's not quite everything I've got on the menu for you today. I've got, I went to a Columbus crew game. Let me tell you about that. Yes. Let me tell you about that. Cars celebrated. It's 20 year anniversary. I've got a good take on that. And that's most of it. So I texted Owen this over the weekend. I forgot I ordered a bootleg Conor Hella book Sabers jersey a month ago. And I got this random charge because it's just from one of those Chinese websites.

6:03And I looked and I'm like, okay, I have a 40th anniversary Sabers Hella book jersey on the way. This is going to be nuts. So I'm hoping you're talking about that deal potentially moving forward. Hoping that could happen. How much did you spend on that? $65. Wow. $65. Shipping was mostly of that $68. Okay. What was it? $20. It was $28. Okay. It feels like $28. That's a solid gamble. That's a solid gamble. I'm okay with that. 40th anniversary, huh? Yeah. Speaking of which, I've got a, I've got a slug mug today. Nice. Hashtag slug mug. I feel like the slug mug is going to be a staple in here. Yeah, that's a good one. Sabers slug mug. I got a lot of time for slug mug. Slug mug. Hashtag slug mug. All right. Anyway, if you're joining us on the YouTube stream, welcome in. It is a game week. The NFL season is upon us. And we'll talk about it with you. We'll get ready for the bills and the Texans. We've got sideline reported John Harris tomorrow. One of Sal's buddies. He has a mind every year. So we'll talk about the Texans coming up tomorrow.

7:05But where to begin? Let's start with the Michigan thing. All right. Just one thing I'd like to know, our phone number 803-0550. You out there listening today in the dark, driving to work, getting ready, getting dressed. Have you joined me yet? Have you come around that replay must die entirely for all of us to live? Has that, have you gotten there yet? Are you ready? It feels like the only possible place you could be after this week. It has to go. It has to go. It has to die. The rules analysts have to go. We need to reclaim things that we watch. We need to have them back. If we can have a secondary fake clock that a conference can invent and say, no, no, no. Everybody on earth is watching this clock, but it turns out the real clock had one more second on it.

8:05Is that what pushed you there? What got you there? And are you with me yet? Because no solution is good. Nothing works. Number of challenges. Well, they should do this. You should be penalized. If you challenge and get it wrong, you should have two challenges. We should, we should, we should go ahead and review every single thing. Replay has to die. It has to go away forever. I'm not optimistic that it will, especially with gambling being such a big part of it. And people being so fearful of some official being on the take. So that's a hard part of it is how it actually does go away. But have you had enough joy sucked out of your life by this scourge that's on sports yet? Has it happened? Are you there? We love to joke in here. We love to joke about Gene Starrator who's sitting here looking at me in the cardboard cut out every single morning. Who were about to get back into Gene Starrator season and Terry McColley season. And of course, that play, who was it?

9:08Was it Terry McColley? Because it's an NBC game. The Michigan game. The Michigan game. Yeah. Okay. Hey, Terry, tell us about this additional second that they found. Oh, what? The first he said they must have ruled that the player touched the ball because he stepped out of bounds and jumped up and touched it in a Hail Mary, which would make that a dead ball with one second left. All right. Great. Sounds great. Sounds going incredible interpretation. Too bad the video did not show that. Here's a rules official telling you a thing that he didn't see making something up. That's what they ruled, guys. They ruled that the player was out of bounds who jumped up in the air and touched it. Oh, great. My eyes work. I can see this game. That didn't happen either. Why are you here? Why is any of this in place to ruin sports? Why is the offside challenge here to ruin sports? Every single thing they give us from replay, every advancement. And if nothing else, I hope that this last one with Michigan can get us to a place where this illusion that if we have transparency will be happier.

10:11That's the biggest lie you've ever heard in your life. It does not help you get any better. You don't get any different outcomes. All you get is the bumbling fools that want to make this call incorrectly. You hear how they do it. It's like watching some sort of impractical jokers show. It's watching some expose on, I don't know, I don't know where I'm going to expose it. Like some television show where you get behind the scenes to see people get to a bad decision. That's what replays become. And everybody seems to think that one more step makes it a little bit better. What if we just instead, what if instead we had the officials just tell us what they were seeing. Just tell us why they're making this bad call. That I could trust it. No, you can't. And Michigan and Western Michigan proved that. That there will be no peace for anyone supporting replay. And there will be no peace for any of us. Imagine that Western Michigan and Michigan is not the first game of the year where any team can recover from anything. I mean, Western Michigan, you nearly had a whatever a program defining win.

11:13Instead, you have a moment where the entire world realizes that replay is a scourge and ruins all of it. You don't get better outcomes. You don't get more accurate results. What you get is stoppages, bigger controversies, more questions of impropriety, more questions of fixes. Because of what happened. How could the big 10 possibly possibly have us believe that there's just a clock that six people see. And no one sees the real clock. Why not have that be the scoreboard? Just put a scoreboard up there with some random score and tell us after the game, actually the team that won, the officials kept the different score than the score that everyone else out there saw. How about down in distance? The officials said that the markers said third and ten, but actually they had it a second and ten. Oh, okay, they keep their own and we don't get to see what the actual down in distance is or the time on the clock. It's nuts that it's gone this far. And then we're all sitting here held hostage by instant replay, held hostage by your, is it Ross Jackson in it?

12:19Ross, who's the, who's the NHL guy? Not Ross Dave Dave, Dave Jackson, yes. Who's Ross Jackson is held hostage, I say, by this Dave Jackson character who I don't know who his name is, no, I learned his Dave. It is all horrifically bad and it needs to go and it only gets worse. And I'm sure we have yet to see the worst example yet. The worst example of no replay, you might have a hundred of those in your life. Did you think about a call that got missed that didn't get reviewed? Maybe it's the Rams and the Saints pass interference, which led us to review penalties for a year. It lasted one year and they said that was awful. Let's get rid of it. So we are not that far. I wonder if this is the year it happens. An NFL team, a Super Bowl gets decided on a replay that is clearly wrong. Like this one in Western Michigan and Michigan, clearly wrong. And they'll just say, the officials have deemed this.

13:21Therefore, the Lombardi trophy goes to Cincinnati. Sorry, sorry everybody that watched it happen. But we've made an official ruling because the officials on the field have a different scoreboard, have a different, whatever it might be. All right, there's my two cents on it. Has anybody joined me? Has anybody come to this place? You used to support it and now you realize it is ruining everything. It feels like that sentiment has been growing. And last, I think that that game put a lot of people into this place. You're describing it. I saw everyone's favorite Nick Wright ranting on it, which is one of those the worst person you know just made a good point moments. Right. But Nick writes all over it that replay has to go. It's just, you know, somebody in chat, like you were forgetting about the pain of a horrible call. And like I would 100 times out of 100 rather have that than what happened in Western. For getting about the pain of a horrible call, that treating it like that is to suggest that those don't happen anymore. Right.

14:21And they still do. It just happened. What's the game? Yeah. You've got two, it's deciding to stop whatever to go on a diet and having nothing change. Right. Like why am I doing this? I'm not an auto team diet, but I'm also doing carbs. That's essentially what this is. It's just what, what's the point? And it's, and yeah, and the mistakes feel so much more unbelievable and frustrating because the system is in place to stop them from occurring. And yet they happen and this stuff goes down. And it's, we've got all this pain. We've got seven minute reviews to get it wrong still. And then it just makes no sense. Just have the guy on the call field call it. And if he gets it wrong, he gets it wrong. That's the way it goes. Because we're adding all this in and we're still getting it wrong. Quit it. Right. It's not worth it. These rules analysts too, they, they double down. If they look at it and it's not something that they know what they're talking about or anything like that, they'll just really double down on what the referee on the field called because they want to, they don't want to go against that.

15:26Yeah. So it's just this cycle of fraternity thing. It might be a tough pick for me if I had to pick which of the two went if it was rules analysts or just replay. It's a tough call for me because again, the rules analyst, what does that person do? That person either agrees with the call and then when it's wrong, it's like, well, what do you hear for or disagrees with the call when it's obviously wrong. And it's what are you here for? What am I learning? Last night in that SMU Florida state game when the power went out and it was going to be nobody plays, no nothing, no jumbo tron. I was like, oh, great, look at this. I'm going to get a game where there are no reviews. And what do they do on the broadcast 30 seconds later went to the rules analyst to talk about what it would be like to not have a replay. How the officials going to do this are the same way they do it all the time, which is just watch the game and throw a flag. What do the officials need for technology? I see a hole. I throw a flag. I walk to center field. I have a hand signal. I have a, oh, there's no microphone for the official. We never needed it anyway.

16:27That's what they have hand signals for holding that side. Ten yards. The entire sports world turned itself over to the officials and the rules analysts and the replay system. And never mind. Every league has its own system of challenges this and challenges that. Poor Western Michigan. Oh, could you, it was, I can't believe it. Being on that poor, poor Western Michigan, then Michigan fans storm the field for that one. Listen, the good news if you are someone that hates Michigan, you still did get that. You did, you do get to forever make fun of them for storming the field for beating Western Michigan. I know it's a last minute. Hail Mary, but you do get that, which that's kind of nice. Did you guys stay long enough to watch the head coach, the Michigan head coach interview on the field afterwards? I think I'm rage quit. No, I'm not. I'm waiting him. It might have been the greatest on field interview ever because after the game, you know,

17:30whether the reporter is, she goes over to ask him and you can tell his mood is clearly, well, the, that's pretty bad. Like, yeah, he was not into it storming the field. He basically said, yeah, he stammered to the first answer and then the second was, what did you learn about your team today? And he said, he stared right at her flat and goes, they we got a lot of work to do. Yeah, man. Good for him for being that. Yeah, he was, he, you could feel his embarrassment coming out of him. Yeah, that they were storming the field, having won against Western Michigan after giving a free extra play. I wonder if you asked him in an honest moment, whether he would have rather that didn't happen if he would tell you I would rather that didn't happen. It's a great question. You know, he got hired this year. If he had started his tenure with a loss to Western Michigan, they'd have fired him the next, or the fans would have had him fired within 10 minutes. I think that this though now becomes all season long following them as like a, they're fraudulent, they're whatever.

18:36And it's going to just, I think that that you can get over like, all right, first game, horrible loss, unacceptable. But we can move on and try and have a season. This now feels like it might just define their season. Yeah. Like this just might be it. Because the, the quarterback looked, oh, it looked like a, it looked like a mess. And what are you going to be now? Yeah. Except this. I think this defines them now. I know it's week one, but I know I just don't see this story. It's terrible. Getting shaken. No. 803 05 50 is our phone number and one 88, not a number anymore. No, making progress. The fans have been insufferable for Michigan, by the way, Michigan, by the way, too. They're saying, how can a Michigan fan be insufferable after that? How would you not just like go into a cave and wait six days for the next game? It's a great question. But they're talking about how the quarterback look good. They get, you know, a comeback of he didn't look great. And then they're like, well, he did on that Hail Mary. Oh, yeah. He just wins, right? I'm sure he just wins. That's how this works. Well, JJ McCarthy story. Yes. This guy gets it done.

19:36Yeah. He has the ball off 80 times. Come on. Yes. Truly terrible. It's done. Truly terrible. Anyway, 803 05 50. They're going to add hundreds of seconds to the clock. Well, that's, that is a conversation we have had on the show before. Because they do that with the play clock. Oh, the one went to zero and then you look at your watch and then you look up or something. Some rules analysts 20 years ago decided to say that and everyone decided, I think that makes sense. Yeah, when it hits zero, that's not yet zero. Oh, right. Okay. When does zero actually get hit? Oh, there's an undetermined time when it actually hits zero. When the ref feels like it. Yeah. It's relative to who's counting. That said, you don't ever have these controversies in the Premier League or any sort of soccer when the clock is defined as like whenever the official kind of feels like it. Yeah. He basically will say like, I'll give you one more run. You know what? You got the ball. Go ahead and attack. You got like 12 seconds to get up there and attack. I could have used one quicker whistle in the menu game this weekend. I saw they scored what the 95th.

20:37Yeah. Nice. Yeah, nice. Yeah, that's tough. That's tough. There's something to say for that. The looseness of the end of a game. You probably couldn't do that in football. Probably not. Anyway, who's ready for the bills to get robbed in Houston on a review? Oh, no. Who's ready? Just prepare yourself. I know. I can't even think about it. I watched the divisional game yesterday because it was on replay before the college football game. Interesting thought. The one where they lose to Dishon Watson. This was the brain. It cooks the visual game from last season. Oh, yeah. Sorry. That makes sense. Yeah, that makes more sense that that would be on replay. And that one of Houston would have been a wild card game anyway. Yeah, right. Really? You did that, huh? I did. Lots of looks for my family at our Labor Day picnic thing. What are you doing? Yeah. Why are you watching this? But I had to. Couldn't look away. A lot of Gene Starrach were there. They were calling them Geno on the broadcast, by the way. Of course. Of course. I didn't realize that in real time.

21:37Geno. You got here. Big guy, what do you say? Thanks, Geno. Let's go to our man in the hour. Yeah, thanks, Geno. Yeah. It's almost back all the way. Tomorrow, the Patriots and the Seahawks, the Patriots have signed Christian Gonzalez to a four year $135 million deal. He's now the top paid corner and football. They waited a long time and gave him big money, which is usually how that goes. So good for them. They will certainly need him against Seattle and going forward to have a top corner like him is pretty important. And it dragged on long enough and he got a deal. So Patriots and Seahawks tomorrow and then we're off to the run for a football season. Kyle Shanahan and the Niners are in Australia and he gave a hilarious answer about their preparation. We'll play that for you at some point. And then off to the regular season. Bills and Texans won a clock on Sunday. What's the vibe for this game, everybody? What do you feel? It's a game week, right? It's a game week. We're going to talk with Sal at seven.

22:38Austin Corbett at 830. What's your vibe? Get out alive. Expecting a win. It's tough to expect a win against Houston because it is a team that as much as any other has their number if you could use that multiple seasons, multiple starting quarterbacks, multiple times they have beaten the bills and in the process made their offense look silly. Right? If we go back through these games, the bills offense has looked silly after the games. We come back here and say, what on earth are they doing? In fact, Josh Allen shouting into the telephone or just looking at the iPad on the sideline, the Microsoft surface pad saying, what are we doing and throwing it? That was last year. Houston brings that out of the bills offense, which means it's a pretty big test. So we'll dig into that. We'll talk with Sal coming up at seven. Get your phone calls as well. And off we are to an NFL season.

23:40Full of review, I'm sure, but hopefully some fun along the way as well. Jeremy and Joe, Joe's out this week. Nate's going to join me later in the week. We're going to keep getting ready for this football season and the season opener tomorrow. Join us on WGR. It's certainly one that I'll never forget. I mean, it was just a dramatic ending and she could possibly have. But nobody, as I said, after the game, nobody's in the locker room hooting and hollering celebrating because we know we didn't play very well now. I don't want to negate or downplay Western Michigan. They're a good football team. I would guess they're the favorites to win the Mac and so forth, but still no excuse for how we play. We get to play better. How long did you play Donut Ball season? Oh, geez. Five in the morning. Yeah, I'm going to suffer.

24:42Kyle Winningham had coach of the Michigan Wolverines after their dramatic win. Jeremy Joe, Joe's out this week again. It is the start of the NFL season and we're getting you ready for it. Can announce a couple things, by the way, Owen Parker, Joe Kelly here as well. Let me pull this this full list up because I do have something to tell everyone about that maybe you know, maybe you don't know and I don't think you do. It is what our lineup is going to look like. Our football lineup during Bill's games. You heard Joe mentioned, we've got pregame just as we usually would. Me and Joe and Nate rotate and some pregame ideas. Pregame starts same normal time. Take your rep to game time, but on Mondays. So Mondays this football season, we will rotate here in the morning between as a guest DJ Moore and Conor McGovern. So day after game DJ Moore Conor McGovern rotating weeks, alternate weeks. Very excited. The wide receiver train has reached the station at the point where our wide receiver is on

25:45the show. After Sunday games, it'll be Monday and again, the day of the week might move a little bit just based on is the game of Thursday on Monday. Friday, you know, but DJ Moore and Conor McGovern, Austin Corbett joins us on Tuesdays. So does Mike Floreo. He'll be with us on Tuesdays on Fridays. You'll have on the afternoon show they've got Aaron Williams on Fridays. They're also going to have Dion Dawkins and Ross Tucker regularly. So you'll hear from some high profile bills, players and experts throughout along the way. So very excited to announce some of our player shows and player lineup again, DJ Moore and Conor McGovern, a couple of well, one bills newcomer and one bills veteran, but at positions that, you know, we'll have a lot to ask about. If after this Houston game, it's either going to be depending on who goes first, it's going to be what was it like running up against Derek Stingley or how about that defensive line of the of the Texans. Those Texans Sunday, one o'clock in our pregame will be just, you know, like you always hear it. So, yeah, excited for that.

26:46Our Buffalo football Mondays will be packed with our coverage and your calls and, you know, we do what we do 80305 50 open the show talking about the replay situation in Michigan between Michigan and Western Michigan because it's a personal cause for me to eliminate all replay in all of its forms from all of sports to deliver it back to us. I've got a let's get to put on that a little bit later. On bills Texans, Sal's coming up at seven o'clock on bills Texans. What's the what's the expectation here? Because Joe Brady's first game, I would struggle to think of a tougher test and that doesn't mean they're not going to win. I don't know what's going to happen. None of us do. They are favored to win the game and your belief in CJ Stroud, my guess would not be very high. Let me saw him play. It was against the Patriots and the playoffs and he was a disaster. Now are the Texans any better offensively than they were?

27:48I'm not convinced. How many points win this game? 23. Now the bills get to 23. Would you feel pretty good? The tough part is that it's strength on strength and that's bill strength offense, right? Against the Texans strength. That is defense. And that it's week one. Who does that favor? Who's that more likely to help that it's the week one? The bills are the Texans. You can probably spin it anywhere you want. I do think it is probably good for the bills because they will have their wrinkles offensively and Houston defensively is known to just pretty much line up and play. So if the one spot on the field where I've got strength on strength, bills offense against Texans defense. I've got Houston's defense which tends to be very, I mean, maybe I'm oversimplifying it, but everybody that you read about the NFL defenses, the Texans are very basic. They're just so unbelievably talented and fast and nasty that they're going to line

28:49up and they're going to smoke you. And the bills under Sean McDermott were said to be often said to be a defense that you know what they're going to do. They just are able to do it better than you. And for most of the time, maybe not the playoffs, but most of the time McDermott defenses could line up and just beat you. And that is Houston with the monsters all over the field defensive and defensive tackle corners linebackers like they don't have a weakness on that defense. There's very few ways to beat them, but Josh Allen's probably one of the ways to beat them. That it's week one. I'm ready to get back on something from way back when when Joe Brady took the job with the bills and became the offensive coordinate replacing Kendoor see they go in house for that higher, they go in house again to elevate him to head coach. So he's come up from you know, assistant to Dorsey to the offensive coordinator and not of the head coach. And his first game, he gets a chance to show the world, show the league that he's got the goods, right?

29:50He's got the ability to not only call plays, which he's done, but keep a defense like Houston off balance or have answers, whether he does, we'll find out, but I do think it should help Brady to have weeks and weeks and months and months really the day he gets the job. He has to wait until May, May's when the schedule comes out. Yeah, mid May. So he's known the defense. He's going to go up against four months. When do you start game planning, do you start game planning on Monday, the week of or is it a little bit here a little bit there? I know what I wanted to do last time that we couldn't do. Maybe the receiver core is better. Maybe they feel more faith in James Cook this time, whatever it might be, there are there are slight differences this time than the last couple times. And if you go back to the last two times, the bills have played the Texans inside the season. I mentioned it in the first segment. The Texans have not only beaten the bills, but they've made them look silly. They've made them look foolish offensively.

30:52Two years ago is the gaming Houston where the bills get the ball backed up in their own end zone pretty much and Josh is throwing down the field looking for Mac Hollins. They go three and out and Houston wins the game in regulation, which was, you know, pin down McDermott McDermott asked why are we throwing the ball? Alan might have checked to a pass, whatever, it's two years ago, but they looked silly in that game. I mean, the answer is, he and Coleman had a catch and run touchdown on that game. And other than that, what one big broken play, it was a struggle. And then there's last year, last year, if not for a kick or turn touchdown from Ray Davis, I mean, do they put up single digits? It was tough. It was tough sledding. They looked bad again. They're running mesh all the time. Alan is getting thrown around. He's getting beaten badly. The Texans game was everything wrong with the bills offense last season, whether that's the lineman were hurt because both Dawkins and Spencer Brown were playing injured. Like that's that's tough. Okay, you get to go and healthy. Again, why is it an advantage for the bills week one?

31:54Healthy. Feel good about the offensive line. You're missing David Edwards, Hallock Anderson and said, okay, I got one change. And then at the receiver position, I've got more pieces healthy. They played Houston without Shakira a couple of years back. So full receiving core available, full offensive, full playbook ready and they haven't seen anything, right? Houston hasn't seen much. So I don't think it's an easy game by any stretch. But in strength on strength, I do have the time to prepare and the time to find if there's any way I can get through that defense. So I like that for the bills offense defensively. You could say the same thing for the for the Texans. They however don't know what the bills do on defense. They kind of know what a gym Leonard defense might want to do. Demiko Ryan spoke about this week and had nice things to say about the bills and how big of a test it is for them. It's football season. Coach is always talking up the opposing team. The difference is probably that in this case, it's legit, right?

32:57He would have some respect for Jim Leonard as a player. They both played in the league as a coach. He would know that if Houston's defense wasn't the best last year, it was Denver's. Houston Denver, those two and Seattle, one, two, three were arguably the three best defenses in football. Houston's just got the reputation for being the nastiest because their pass rush is just relentless. So I think it's a tough matchup. The bills can certainly win and I want to get back to when Joe Brady got the job. I started to say this, no, finish it. We would joke around is Joe Brady on the level of the Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVey, the witches. Is he one of these guys that just he's got it skamed up. He's got things to go. They were able to run hook and ladders successfully multiple times and that's, does not a small point to me because he was only busting out the hook and ladder plays in the most desperation, desperation moments. It's a fourth and 12 and they're down by six.

33:57It's a, and they worked every time and they lost all those games, but they didn't lose because of the hook and ladder. The trick play, whether or not it comes to be a part of this offense, whether or not the hook and ladder is a staple. If they rep it so much and feel good about it, will Brady really show us the artistic freedom, the creativity that he might have felt was not fully there on his own 80305 50 but not fully there when he was not on his own as the head coach. Now that he's on his own, will he feel like he's got more free and will said free activity and that's not a word, but it should be freedom and creativity. Bobby Niagara Falls is up. Bobby, good morning. It's great free activity. It really should be a word, right free activity. Here's what I think, by the way, hi guys. So there was an old Broadway show called South Pacific and the words, Cuckai Optimus was in that show and that show became a movie, South Pacific.

35:01So I'm a Cuckai Optimist. I think this is going to be a new era for the bills against the Texans because as sad as I was to see Sean go, I didn't like it. Maybe it was a good thing. But I think now this could be a new era and I trust Joe Brady and that's my optimistic point of view, guys. Thanks Bobby. We'll find out there are a lot of new coaches and a lot of new play callers. Lamar Jackson has a new play call or two, right? Is Declan Doyle have the answers that Todd Monkin didn't? Does Joe Brady have the answers that I was like Joe Brady didn't have last year or the year before, possibly possibly the different approach? It's certainly a new era. And by the way, Sean McDermott's been making the rounds lately and what he had to say, we'll play for you a little bit later, but it's that he would be rooting for the bills to win and is picking the bills to go to the Super Bowl, which it's interesting. There's a little bit of a first off, I think I think McDermott is authentic in that,

36:07thinking the bills are going to go to the Super Bowl. But the unspoken follow up question is like, would they go if you were here, right? You know, and necessarily ask him that, but he's rooting for the bills, picking the bills, what about when he got fired, how he went back to people in the organization and said, what more could I do? What did I do well? What did I need to do better? A very self-aware introspective kind of guy that's looking to get a job again and be a head coach and be great at it. So I thought McDermott's message was kind of all class as he sits on the sidelines and watch. And that makes me think that as the season goes on, McDermott might be a great studio analyst for this season. Tomlin did it last year, right? And Tom, oh, sorry, Tomlin's doing it this year. Tomlin's with CBS, I think it's CBS. Oh, and who's Tomlin? I believe he is with CBS. It doesn't even, it doesn't matter. But anyway, Tomlin out there is, hey, that's Mike Tomlin.

37:08But McDermott out there. NBC for Tomlin. NBC, thank you. Okay, NBC for Tomlin. McDermott out there, if they got him for a really important bills game, I mean, I'm not saying bills fans would necessarily want that. But McDermott would have the one degree of separation to Josh Allen. And you know how I feel about this? I feel like Allen is now about to be or already is the number one story in the NFL of the guy that needs to win more than Jackson Jackson. Sure he's got that too. But I think Allen paces him on that. Allen named the NFL's number one quarterback by executives and players. And there seems to be more of a fight online if you go online about Allen and how he needs to win. And if McDermott is out there doing media rounds, they're going to ask him all the time about what do you make of his, his thought process in these big games. What do you make of his, his, his actual process is game mentality.

38:11I just feel like I can see McDermott being asked these questions a lot this week because the bills are far more relevant for that storyline than the Steelers are. I mean, asking Tomlin about the Steelers. Like, maybe that happens with McCarthy and Rogers doing well. But McDermott's got a spot in the media. And I think he's kind of testing it out right now. 803 0 550 more your calls. Sal top of the hour here on WGR. Learned over the weekend that the dolphins had coach Jeff Hathley. Uh, choose 10 pieces of gum per half. He's the new Pete Carroll. Just chomp and gum. I was just thinking who's the coach that I would always see. Pete Carroll like a cow. It's Pete Carroll. Yeah. Pete Carroll gum. Uh, the NFL's new gum chewing coach. I hope it sugar free. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to have some problems. 10 pieces of gum.

39:12Wow. There was Sean Peyton to a juicy fruit, right? Oh, that might be right. I think I think he, the, in the home team film with Kevin James playing Sean Peyton. He was a big juicy fruit guy. That's my, uh, that's my basis on that. That was the Saints movie. Yeah. You watched that? Yes, I did. Unfortunately, when that came out a couple of years ago. That's, uh, that's what you know what else has to. I'll say that. Yeah. I never considered it. I never thought about it. You jumped on the grenades. I thought it was like a fantasy football punishment to watch that. Yeah. So it was, uh, forgettable. Yes. Yeah. Uh, around the NFL, some other stuff is picking different captains for each game. Good or bad? Hmm. Ever game different captains. You know, who did that? Famously didn't Rex do that. Yeah. Rex Ryan, different captains each game. Is it good or bad? You have to decide and then I'll tell you who's doing it. I don't like it either. I think you need consistency. Okay. Well, the sea hawks are doing it. And I love Mike McDonald. Mike McDonald. You know who else is doing it?

40:12The Browns. Okay. Bang, that's correct. Yeah. It's the perfect footballism of, is this good or bad? Well, the best team in the worst team are both doing it. So it's very ping pong table. Yeah. Narrative. I think that I think my take is going to be on that that Mike McDonald is a good enough coach to overcome his different. Different captain about having different captains. We don't have that yet for the bills, right? No, I didn't. I haven't seen a captain enough today. I've been seeing posts about them all today. The day when there's tomorrow, they're going to practice tomorrow before heading off to Houston. But team captain's last year was just Josh and Taro Bernard. Yeah. And they went from having as many as like seven or eight. The year that Gabe left and Moore's left, they lost all these captains and went just to Josh and Bernard and I wonder if they do that again. It's always an interesting one with a new coach. Yeah. It's kind of a locker room vibe thing. And then you also wonder as soon as they, if they vote on it, if a coach does it, the players do it like if Bradley Chubb were to be a captain, like, oh, wow, look, he's already gotten a lot of respect in the room.

41:14Same with DJ Moore. So let's talk about that and other things coming up. Sal Capaccio, a game week. Get the schedule down, Pat. Your life can get normalcy again. My day of the week clock, I'm not going to need it as much because now, you know, all the games are going to happen on Sundays and Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays. And we got to get you Kyle Shanahan's comment on time travel at some point as well. 803 05 50 Jeremy and Joe and WGR. Sal Capaccio joining us on the Western hotline football seasons upon us. Tomorrow we get a game between the defending Super Bowl champion Z-Hawks and the Patriots who just signed quarterback Christian Gonzalez to a monster deal. So the season starts tomorrow and then Thursday in Australia. I don't know what day that is in Australia. I've cousins that live in Australia, Sal. And I always have to ask my phone what time it is there before I call them. So yeah, Kyle Shanahan's having trouble with that. We're going to get that a little later. And of course, Bill's in Texans Sunday, one o'clock.

42:15Welcome, Sal, to another football season. Yeah, you're right. It's funny. I don't know if you saw the story about how who was it that one of the one of the Patriots. I'm sorry, one of the 49ers coaches, his birthday was the day that got skipped by them traveling. So he never got his 50th birthday. They left on the second. They landed on the fourth. His birthday is the third. Yeah. So actually he lost his whole birthday. I did that trip a couple years ago, as you might remember. And I was actually in Australia when the bills traded stuff out of digs. And that's what happens. You leave on like a Tuesday. You arrive on a Thursday and you have never experienced Wednesday in your life. It's time travel. And then the way back, you leave maybe on a Wednesday and you come back on a Tuesday. So you actually go back in time. Yeah. So yes, you're right about that. Jeremy, it's very confusing. But I know this. The game will kick off at 8.35 PM Eastern time Thursday night. Thursday night football. You're also while you're in Australia surrounded by venomous snakes the entire time in scorpions. And Caljianne also said he was surprised.

43:16He hadn't seen crocodiles and kangaroos just like walking around. Which with kangaroos, I think you do see those. Anyway, so bills Texans, you know, I was just pulling something up here from a Texans account called Houston stressens. But actually some good info here about the differences in these teams from last year to this year. And we'll start with the bills, of course. And it's not just additions on the field like DJ more in Skylar Bell. But last year when these two teams played, Dalton, Ken Kaden, Keon Coleman did not play. And on the defensive side, I've got a ton of new players. Sure, we've got a coaching scheme change on the defense. But what I'm most interested in is how this offense looks in an early test. And arguably its biggest test just straight up against another defense on the road in that environment. And for Kincaid and Coleman and Moore and Bell, all to be new pieces from just last year. That says I've got Joe Brady with a full arsenal where, and maybe the last two seasons, he hasn't had that.

44:21He had such a interesting show. We had Mark Vandermeier, the Texans play by play announcer on our always game day Buffalo podcast. And we all know the reality of what's happened the last few times the bills have gone down there, right? Including last couple of years. It's statistically some of the worst performances of Josh Allen's career, especially the one a couple of years ago. But the bill is really just did not handle the Texans defense. And to your point, what he's saying is he said basically even despite all that, it took every single thing the Texans had until the last drive in each game to beat the bills. And the bills have not been, they have not had, you know, they're for a full arsenal maybe, or they just played a really tough game and bad game. And last year was all about not protecting Josh Allen. On that being said, you go out there and presumably healthy. Now we will wait this week to see what happens with Colossia here. We don't know if he's going to be healthy enough to play. Ty Johnson, we don't know if he's healthy enough to play. Those are two really big parts. And I would say really, I think both of them are extremely important in this game because as much as you didn't have Concade or Coleman the last time they played

45:24and those are going to be big pieces to add to the offense, especially Concade in this situation, I would argue that Ty Johnson is a very, very important piece for past blocking what they want to do on third down against that defensive unit for the Texans. And of course, Colossia here and having him available in the slot and able to kind of just be that outlet guy for Josh Allen. So yes, you're right. You're adding a couple of pieces in and if you can stay completely healthy, that could mean a big difference for the bills in this one, obviously. First of all, for Ty Johnson, the injury report, we get the full designations tomorrow officially for the first time, right? We've kind of gone through the preseason and the bills and anything that wants to do this, they can kind of fudge who's doing what blah blah blah. But by tomorrow, official designations, we know who's getting treatment will get game designations as well. That's correct. Tomorrow will be the first time that that'll happen. For the games going on this week, we already have those as far as the Wednesday game, the Thursday game. For any game on Sunday, like the bills, first designation will come out tomorrow.

46:24We'll be out of practice tomorrow, obviously. There's nothing today with the team for the media, anything like that. So got to wait another day. It's a normal Sunday week for the team. So it's a Tuesday. They're doing their routine leading into a Sunday game. So Wednesday, Thursday practice, Wednesday injury designations. I wouldn't be surprised to see Ty Johnson, Kool-O-Shakear, Jalen Kilgorge, Evan Solomon, Jordan Hancock. Those are the five guys that have not practiced really. And all of them are interesting for how they fit on the roster in their own right. Good to get back Conor McGovern last week. I wouldn't be surprised we still on the injury report, guys at our practicing Conor McGovern key on Coleman. He came back the last week. So I'm sure you might get some of these guys on the injury report. We'll see where they trend from Wednesday to Thursday and then to Sunday. So I wonder about that Sal, you said like they haven't been practicing. Throughout this process, if a player is injured, Joe Brady might have said, hey, if they're a real game, he'd be able to play. I wonder how he approaches that with practice because we did hear a story this week or last week, maybe where when DJ Moore picked up that injury in the preseason game that he wanted

47:27to keep going and go back out there and practice through an injury. This is a big time thing to watch, right? How they handle practices and what if a guy practices on this day, how likely is he to play because this head coach might have a different approach to getting a guy ready for a Sunday game as the last head coach. Yeah, and I don't have the specific numbers on this, but I felt like last year there were less vet rest days that went on. There was less of the backing off on guys. It happened. You know guys might not be out there to Wednesday. It's a vet rest day. I felt like there was a little bit less of that last year. Last year there were also a lot of practice injuries. Remember that? There was just a lot of guys that throughout the week, he'd be like, oh my God, this guy got injured during practice. He wasn't on the injury report on Wednesday, but he was on Thursday. Guys getting their feet stepped on a lot last year, feel like they're having like three, four times. Different things like that. Get an ankle roll, whatever it was, and I agree with you. I think all of that, and I will tell you, they look at all of that. What is the reason for that? Is it just some sort of bad luck or is it something we're doing different?

48:28I wouldn't be surprised if Joe Brady has a, you know, some sort of plan to try to avoid those kinds of things, whatever that might be. I agree with you. Like what does it look like this year? But let's remember, Jeremy, what it looks like in the beginning of the season when it comes to Wednesday, Thursday, guys banged up, who's practicing is probably a lot different than what it looks like in October or even December. You even have different rules in the NFL. Once you get past a certain number of weeks, how many padded practices you can have actually and things like that. So things evolve throughout the year. And then let's remember this. We haven't talked a lot about this because you're not trying to jump ahead. The bills actually have two games in five days. The bills don't just play on Sunday. They also play a week from Thursday, which would mean load managing maybe somebody for the first game to the second. Right. Right. So, exactly. So, let's just say, you think, let's just say you think Ty Johnson's close. Might not be quite there. I think it might matter that they have a game on Thursday and you say, look, if we play

49:29him on Sunday, you know, I don't know how good he's going to be for Thursday or a re-enjury something like that. You're just always concerned about that. You back off on him because you get that extra few days just to be available for week two. And then you also have 10 days to the next game, right. So I think all that has to matter. So Sal, to beat the Texans, obviously like it's the bill's defense stopping C.A.J. Stroud, let's start with the bill's offense and what you think they will want to do differently. Because the last time they played there, it was about not only a loss, but it was about Josh being as exposed as he ever was in terms of taking hits. He took a ton of hits, a ton of sacks. And after the game, it felt like the national media descended on the bills for what was Joe Brady doing? What were the bills doing? They could not leave him out there like that. Their tackles were injured, dockens with a concussion, brown of the shoulder injury. What do you think the biggest difference will be in the way that they try to keep Alan from taking the beating that he did last time? Yeah, and I felt like the last game last year, the big story was leaving the tackles

50:32on an island kind of, right, against Will Anderson and Daniel Hunter and that group. They have Jadavian Clowney now too. I know he's older, but he's adding to their past rocks, right. I mean, they just have dudes that did get after the pastor and that's what they're going to do. And it's really loud in that stadium. It's tough to hear and get your checks in and they're going to have to be very buttoned up. I think the best way to be buttoned up is to make sure that you're insulating Josh just a little bit more. Maybe that means you got to get rid of the ball a little bit quicker. You know, we've talked a lot, Jeremy, since really this, what this off season started when they hired Pete Carmichael, Jr. about his influence on the offense and how wherever he's been, they've thrown to the running backs more, right? Ladinian Tomlinson with the Chargers and Alvin Camaro with the Saints. Like that's just been something that's been a part of his offensive acumen and resume. Where he's been. And I wonder if we see some of that. And again, I'm going to go back to I think Ty Johnson's a really important player in this game if they can get him back. And we'll see where that goes. But either way, James Cook might have to be involved in the passing game. Tight ends are going to be involved in the passing game. I think that's where this game is going to be really interesting talking again with Mark

51:35Vandermeer, who was the Titans play by play announcer. We asked him a mad, asked him like, hey, we know how really good the Texans defense is. Where can they where should the bills try to attack? He mentioned the linebacker level and how they rotate linebackers sometimes and maybe the bills will try to get a specific matchup. So I think that to me points to slot points to tight end points to Dalton concade might point to running backs out of the backfield. I know everybody wants to see DJ Moore every week at 10 catches for 120 yards. And oh my god, here we are. We could bills got the receivers got the receivers. What have I said since I've worked at WGR with you every game has its own DNA, right? I mean, like this might not be the game for that. Jared, this might be the game where, hey, get the ball out of your hands, get it to your tight ends, get some matchups against linebackers. Make sure your quarterback is, you know, not feeling the heat and taking sacks like you did last game. Make sure that you have extra protection. Go back to what you asked originally on this question. Make sure you're not leaving those tackles on an island. Make sure that you're giving a little bit of a chip here, a, you know, a little bit of,

52:37you know, double team there and things like that. I think this might be the kind of game for that. Yeah, Shakir ended up having eight for 110 in their last game on 10 targets. And, you know, sales, you say slot for him. One thing we're waiting to see from this bill's offense and its evolution is we'll colline Shakir distance himself from the line of scrimmage in a way that he really didn't last year. It's not to say he can't do it. We just know how they use him. Do you think we are in for a change in the way Shakir is deployed? I do from a standpoint of, I don't know. You're just going to see so many throws like great down the line screens like that. Like that's going to happen sometimes, right? But I think you'll see more of a true slot receiver running routes, getting open five, six, 10 yards down the field from that aspect. I think you probably use Kalo Shakir a little bit more around the field, you know, than what you saw last year. Last year he was just, I think, I mean, I have to go look at his average depth of target. I'm sure I can find that. But it just, it seemed like every time that they threw to Kalo Shakir it was something

53:39really short. I remember times where maybe he was a little bit more down the field. But yeah, I think that's got to be a part of the game plan this year. Again, I think maybe Sunday doesn't look quite like it might look on Thursday night in the opener at home against Detroit Lions. That might be, well, who are without a couple of safeties, right? I think that game in this game are going to look maybe totally different than what we see. But this game might be a game where you have to throw the ball short to Kalo. You have to throw the ball short to the running backs. This year though, I would expect Kalo Shakir's numbers to be a little bit higher in that category and getting down the field. I'm looking at last year's box score and just like going down memory lane. Shakir 110, Ty Johnson, who you mentioned could be a big part of a game plan. 45 yards receiving. Third in receiving that day was Jackson Haas with 26 yards. And the number one receiver outside of Shakir was Gabe Davis who had a catch with 22 yards. So like, it's a revamped core. I even got an Elijah Moore catch in here. One catch for minus three. Well, to the defensive side, injuries. By the way, can I just say I just looked it up?

54:41Yeah. Average length of reception for Kalo Shakir last year. So this means in the air of all of his catches, the average yards down field he was when he caught the ball, 2.6 yards, 83rd in the NFL amongst qualifiers. Yeah. If it's for his average depth of target, not just like caught balls. I mean, he was, I think, only, you know, the only guy below him might have been Greg Dorch by the way, ironically, who's now with the bills and could handle punt return duties. Sell to the defensive side of the ball. Nico Collins has had some success against this team. The revamped defense, the safety room. You mentioned you're watching Jalen Kilgore and how he looks in terms of injury status for the defense. How is it looking for week one? I'm really excited to see what Jim Leonard has in storage here. I mean, I, I, I just think all the messaging we've been getting from Jim Leonard and the defensive players is kind of they've been really kind of working on their communication and they're, you know, they're based stuff, but they're kind of holding stuff back here

55:43and they're, they're waiting. They're not going to show you in preseason. And I don't know if the Texans are necessarily knowing what they're going to get from Jim Leonard and the Buffalo Bill's defense. So I'm interested, you know, they're going to be, they're going to be more aggressive unit. They're going to play more man to man. We know that all those things are going to happen. But the blitzing, where is that going to come from? So I think that's going to be really interesting to watch here. The only like roster question I think we have, right going into this game. The one thing we don't know, who is starting at linebacker? We still don't know that. Now today there should be game notes and a depth chart come out. That doesn't have to mean you don't have to like you, you can less to every one in the depth chart. Doesn't mean that guy has to actually be on the field to start the game, right? So, but are we going to see to Robert and I are with Dorian Williams? Are we going to see to Robert and I are with Caleb E. Lambs or? And if we see that is one, who's a Mike, who's the will, right? That's the one question. So you asked me like, what's the defense look like? I'm wondering what that position specifically looks like. And then schematically, and this comes down to really, to me, yes to those defense.

56:47But what are you getting from CJ Stroud? There's a lot of questions about CJ Stroud in Houston right now. When he came out his rookie year, he looked like maybe the next great superstar quarterback. I mean, he was terrific. And then he's been inconsistent since then. I went back and looked Jeremy, if you look at the last four games he played last year, this is two regular season, two playoffs. He had five touchdowns and seven interceptions in those four games. And there were offensive line issues. They feel a lot better about their offensive line now than they did last year. The Texans do. They feel a lot better about their running game than they do last year, according to Mark. He's very, he said they didn't have the running back. What he marks was there, but he really likes what he marks. They have David Montgomery now. So this will be a different kind of Texans offense. And honestly, with their injuries at wide receiver with no Jaden Higgins, I know they've Nico Collins. He's very, very good. Higgins is hurt. Tank Dell is not playing yet. Booty just got there. This could be the same thing on the other side. I just talked about it.

57:47I think that they're, they may be looking at, hey, we're going to, they're going to try and run the ball. And yeah, they're going to take a shot or two down the field of Nico Collins. But this might be a game where they're getting guys involved underneath and doing those kinds of things because they don't have quite their full arsenal yet. South Capaccio and Abil's Game Week season starts in the NFL tomorrow from the, from Seattle Seattle and New England. The bill's open in Houston Sunday, one o'clock. And so finally, like, all right, the coaching staff, right? Whether it's Jim Leonard and him in putting together this new defense, he's kind of told us, I think he's told us essentially that it's a work in progress and we'll see how it comes along. They're throwing a lot at all these players to see what they can do. And now it seems like this is the time where they're going to build it into what it's supposed to be. But offensively and for the head coach, Joe Brady, his first game on the field, calling plays, running things in that environment. What have you gathered from him in terms of his readiness, his nerves? I mean, Brady seems to be a pretty just authentic guy, right?

58:50I'll just, you know, tell you how he feels about things. How do you feel like he's approaching this game, his first as an NFL head coach? Yeah, first of all, the other question I have is where is Jim Leonard going to be when he calls the defense, right? Because we don't, we don't know, but we know Joe Brady is going to be on the field. He's a head coach. He's going to call the offense from down there. We don't know if Jolander's going to be down downstairs or up top. He's still working through that. You know, going back to when Joe Brady was named the head coach, there was a lot of surrounding that, right? And just, you know, the NFL offseason and the changes. And people wondered, can this young head coach with not much experience elevate this Buffalo bills team to where they haven't been yet? And there were a lot of questions about that. We all had them. And then you get to, you know, work out in April. Then you get to OTAs in May, in a minicamp, and then you get to preseason. And I would say, Jeremy, from my perspective, I think Joe Brady has kind of checked off a lot of these boxes along the way.

59:51He really has. What I mean by that is the energy around the building, we knew would be a bit different. It is. I think players are really responding to him. Like just being around there, I'd really do. I think players are really responding to him. The energy that he brings, there's no doubt about it. It feels like the operation of everything. When I watch a new coach, when I watch a young team, and this isn't a young team, all those things, a lot of things I'm looking for operationally. Like how does it look operational? I'll give you an example. You go to Cleveland, that joint practice. Like operationally, the Browns offense, you can tell they couldn't get out of their own way sometimes, right? Like that was the talking point. It's not just Watson and Sanders who's better. It's who can run the offense better. The bill's operationally under Joe Brady going back to everything I've watched in April in May. Everything's smooth. It looks good. It looks like it's supposed to look. You know how it's supposed to look. And it looks like it's supposed to look. Now, so I think, and then you get into the preseason, they have two pretty much blowout wins, and then they have that late comeback win at the end.

1:00:54And I mean, that's great for any young coach. First time head coach, I don't care if it's preseason, you get that feeling of, hey, we got these guys at the bottom of the roster. They're fighting their butts off. We're trying to win. We win that game. So I think Joe has done all of that right. But we all know that if they go to Houston and lose on Sunday in any way, shape, or form, a lot of that gets erased, right? From the fan base and people come out. It doesn't have to be reality of, you know, doesn't have to be an indictment on who is going to be his head coach whether this year rest of his life. But we know how this is going to work. So I just think that up till now, he has checked a lot of these boxes. He has answered a lot of these questions, a lot of the critics, criticisms, all those kinds of things. I love the energy around it. I love the operation around it. I think it looks really good. To me, it looks like it's supposed to look. You got to go to Houston and win that game, though, I think, to kind of validate that, both internally and externally, and then you go from there. Quick with Sal, Mike and Pennsylvania, Mike, good morning. Hey, good morning, guys. Hey, real quick, two things, defense, I'm excited, but Sal, I really called for you because

1:01:5820 years ago, I got a story for you real quick about your Syracuse Orange Man on the weekend. 20 years ago, my best friend and I were sitting down playing Madden and we were forecasting having sons and playing in the NFL and, you know, fast forward to 20 years later, I had four daughters, didn't have a son, but my best friend is, and he's sons and Sylvain Aderson Jr., and I told you that guy's a manchild, retouched down, spruce game, true freshman, George Pennsylvania, 10 carries, and it looked beautiful out there. Can't just put you into the rest of the college season or his college career. Thanks, Mike. I love it. Thanks, Mike. Sylvain Anderson, you look good. He looked good. They look, hey, hey, we got to celebrate a 63-point win, right? They spent the weekend saying, don't talk to me unless you're college team scored 60. I don't want to hear anybody. Don't talk to me unless you scored 60. 66 to 3 for Syracuse over New Hampshire. You know, by the way, speaking of, he's talking about like 20 years ago, we'll go back a

1:02:59little further than that. Was that Bill's practice last week? And you know who was there on the sidelines watching? Kevin Rogers, remember him, the offensive coordinator for Don of a McNabb? And I got introduced to him. They said, hey, Kevin Rogers, oh my gosh, they started talking. I'm like, I was there. I said, I watched the freeze option. And he started laughing. We were talking about it. And just like, you know, the evolution of football, basically, these days. And those were some fun times. And hey, this week, that was a nice win for Syracuse. They have a nice group of running backs. And then you have to get used to this. I told Max, we're watching the game. The running backs name at Syracuse is Ty Lee Kill. Not Ty Lee Kill. Ty Lee Kill. And then the kid that he's talking about as well, that came out and as a true freshman was terrific. These kids today, Sal, they don't know the freeze option. They don't understand what it was like to watch McNabb take it, fake the full back dive up the middle, sprint out to the right, stop and launch it down field. Amazing. You know what?

1:03:59Next time I talked to Joe Brady, I'm going to ask about the freeze option. Josh Allen could run the freeze option. I'm just saying. Well, I think that's where I believe that that's Kevin Rogers and Joe Brady. Crossed over. They know each other and Kevin was with Joe and that's how they, that's why he was at practice apparently. I mean, I will ascend to another plane of existence if I see a free option from Josh. All right, Sal. So practice tomorrow for the bills and then, you know, normal week schedule because of a Sunday game. So we'll get designations tomorrow and all that. Yep. You got it. So nothing for the media or for the team today. You know, well, you said today they should usually choose day you get like game no step chart, but you know, we'll see if that happens this week. It is week one and today and then tomorrow practice injury designations. They'll practice tomorrow Thursday, Friday and then get on a plane on Saturday for Houston. Very good. Excited to talk to you about it throughout. Thanks, Sal. You got it. Sal Kabachio, our bill's beat reporter, bills and Texans starting to preview that game and really, you know, locking on it. There's of course a game tomorrow from Seattle, the defending Super Bowl champs, opening

1:05:00up on a Wednesday and then Thursday, the Rams and the Niners. You've got to hear Kyle Shanahan. We'll get to that. We got to hear from Kyle Shanahan. You got to hear from Sean McDermott. The big debate is do people believe him that he would be rooting for the bills to win the Super Bowl? He did pick them to go. So lots to get to here. Your phone calls as well, 8030550, your thoughts on this game, driving home just how many differences there are from last year to this year that list of players for the Texans for the bills. It's again, the Twitter account Houston stressons just really like I guess I didn't realize how many bills offensive changes there are because King Cade and Coleman were not on the field for them last year and will be this year along with DJ Moore and Skylobele four new receivers from last year. Of course, you lose David Edwards and then defense. You lose Jordan Poir and Joey Bosa, but last year, no ed Oliver, no Michael Hoyt. Those are guys that were already on the team. And then I'm also adding in Chobb, C.J.

1:06:02Carter Johnson, D. Alford, Caleb E. Alarm's or TJ Parker and maybe Jalen Kilgore. So lots and lots of differences for the Texans, Jalen Petri's back in, Reed Blankenship, J.J. V. Clowny, Caden MacDonald, the guy that we liked in the first round for the bills this year, talked about him a lot defensive tackle from Ohio State. They also had the Texans to David Montgomery, the run game, K. Sean Booty, if he's ready to go in. Two new offensive lineman and of course, C.J. Stroud. So major differences from last season to this season. And if you want to have a good time, go look at those box scores. The last two Texans games. It's, um, yeah, it's tripped on memory lane 80305 50. When we get back, I want to talk about ESPN's football performance index, football power index. They ran 10,000 simulations. Right. You know how that works? Oh, and the bills make the playoffs this number of times. And they win the Super Bowl this number of times. But an article unlike any other, they decided, let's pick one at random and write about

1:07:04it. Seth Walder, ESPN picked simulation number 9,187. And the way this came to me was on Twitter, a bills fan writing in, I think it was Z-Bot on Twitter. Wait till you see what the bills do. And I clicked it and I still remain stunned. It's just a simulation, but you're going to have some fun with it with us next year on WGR. Um, now with what they've done, the moves that, that Brandon Bean has made and the activity they've had on the roster, just over the last, you know, X amount of months is, I think been very important. And so I think if you're betting on a Super Bowl, um, contender, there, there's certainly one of them. And why, you know, why you went bet on them. Is that not super prediction? Is that it? Bill's Rams? It'd be Bill's Rams. That'd be a great Super Bowl. People asked me all the time, Hey, do you still root for your old team? And I said, why wouldn't I?

1:08:05Right? Of course I do. I mean, the impact that you want to have is a head coach on a team and a community. That's one thing. But man, oh man, the impact that that team, that building and that community had on me and my family, we'll remember that for the rest of our lives. Bill said coach, former bills had coach, sorry, former bills had coach Sean McGurman on with Rich Eisen predicting the bills, go to the Super Bowl and then he would root for them, which I think led to a lot of, uh, Joe Kelly said on Saturday, you talked about this. What was the take? People don't believe him. People wonder, I would simply say, I definitely believe him. However, I would want to put it to the test that I put all of us to, which is wait till the game starts. Yeah. Because you think, you know, and then the game starts and you change your mind, but I, he does say that in the, in an extended version of that. Yeah. He says, well, the games have to be played first and harps on that first.

1:09:07I think he means that for the Super Bowl pick though, not for whether or not he would root for the bills. Right. Right. Yeah. And to me, it makes total sense. He would root for the bills. Imagine you're a bills player and they cut you. Is there any different than being fired? You're a player. You get caught. That's getting fired. Yeah. Right. You get fired. Like, we want someone else to do your job, but you still root for the bills. Ryan Fitzpatrick roots for the bills. Right. Why? Because he loves to play for a million teams. Why is he root for the bills? Is him not being as good as Josh Allen, make him not want to root for the franchise because of the fans that he met along the way? So I believe McDermott. I also think that if the bills are in the Super Bowl, he would feel happy for the players that won. And also, it would be a really tough thing for him to deal with or anybody to deal with. They win the year after you leave. Yeah. Players deal with that all the time. Coaches, coordinators, training staffs. You know, it's a, it's a, that he lasted as long as he did his rare on its own.

1:10:10Right. That's part of why I think I believe him so much is there are coaches that I think would be fired by a team. You spend three years in a place and you're like, yeah, I mean, it didn't work out. Bleep them. Yeah. This was a, this was a real symbiotic relationship that I think was really good and I think McDermott grew here and, and changed here and, and sort of really embraced it. And I think that that's a very different situation than, you know, Adam Gace in New York. Of course he hates New York. And the flip side is also who would we root for after they left? That's different too. Right. Right. There's plenty of players that leave and you think, I hope he never wins anything. And then another player leaves and you're, you're happy for the person. Ask that question about McDermott. Wherever he gets his next job, are you going to be happy for him if he does well? I, I will be happy for him. I think most people would say that they would be. There will be people that are like, you know, never forgive them for 13 seconds and that's,

1:11:10you can think that that's fine. Sure. But I think the majority of people would go like, that guy had a really good run here, changed what it meant to be a Buffalo Bill and changed the, the standing of the organization in terms of the league. And we have to appreciate that. So I hope he, I wish him well. He's also, I think, you know, that fits. Yeah. He's also doing more retrospective, like looking back on his career with everybody than I've seen another coach do. Like he's talking to people who are in the building and asking him what he could have done better and all that, right? Like he's taking it pretty seriously. Yeah. His time away from the bills. Yeah, I've been impressed here. Like he wants to, like he wants to learn from what went wrong. Yeah. And that, in that Eisen interview, he talks about all the coaches he visited with this summer. And like the list is pretty impressed. Like Ben Johnson. Sean McVeigh. Sean McVeigh. Sean McVeigh. Uh, who else? Mike McDonald and John Harbock. That's his four, like, all right. You want to go talk about. It's a big four.

1:12:11Good defenses and good offenses. It's pretty much about the, the gig. There's also like rooting for him in his next stop will very much depend on where it is. Right. If it's the jets, you see twice here, you might not. Right. If it's the Philadelphia Eagles, you might. You're, yeah. Good comment in the chat here about rooting for former players. Like what do you think the Browns are doing with Miles Garrett? Browns fans. They rooting for Garrett. You played here forever. You were amazing. The team is a joke. You leave. Do I want you to win? It got a little stinky. Like he got, he got, you know, there was the summer before when he was like, get me out of here. Yeah. And then they paid him and they hired Todd Monkin and named Dishon Watson, the starter week one. And if you're a Browns fan, you might say, okay, yeah, this place, this place is a massive. You should want to get out of here. I mean, um, yeah, whatever. The players that we say, yes, and players that we don't, if Jeff Skinner had a game to win the Stanley Cup and was in the lineup, would he reform? Absolutely.

1:13:12Yes. He also got fired by the Sabers. They paid him money to go away, right? The bottom are. So I don't think it has to be that a guy gets fired. You have to get some, I believe, McDermott. One thing I tease going to the break. So ESPN's football power index, the FPI, if you will. It's, uh, you know, ranks teams and projections and this and that and whatever. 10,000 simulations that Seth Walder did. They punched all in their computer. And this is basically a flushed out fun version of the NHL or the NHL lottery simulator. You know, click the button, run the lottery. Here's who wins. And when we were in the deepest throws of that, we knew the numbers that represented each team. All right. There's 10,000 combinations. 2,312 produces this. Anyway, they pulled out simulation 9,187 and said, all right, let's see what happens on this one. Okay. All right. So it's again, this doesn't mean that this machine thinks this will happen, but it's

1:14:17so ridiculous, absurd, amazing, good, wrong, whatever. The takeaway is like the Cowboys win the NFC East, the chiefs win the West. Broncos miss the playoffs. The Patriots miss the postseason. Whoa. Yeah. In the simulation. That's crazy. They are six and three and lose games down the stretch. They go nine and eight. They lose their tiebreaker or the cults make it instead of the Patriots, the playoffs. The Panther start, oh, and seven, the jets get the number one overall pick though. The Jaguars get the South, but what really gets to that's just wild. The NFC West is won by the Niners, I think. Yeah. Niners win the NFC. Right. So things happen. The Rams, even though they didn't win the division, they knock out the Niners and the playoffs. The playoffs is where we get going because Bill's fans, we live life where all that matters

1:15:18is what happened to the playoffs. The bills go 12 and five in simulation, 9,100, 87, they go 12 and five. They win the division. They get the top seed. The bills are the one seed. Let's go. All right. Yeah. That's good stuff. Five, one seed. One seed. And they have the one seed over the chiefs because they beat the chiefs on Thanksgiving, 31 to 30. Whoa. So, listen, simulation, simulation, 9,187 of the football power indexes nuts, but hey, whatever. That's Thanksgiving dinner all over the floor. That's what that is. Yeah. Yeah. Then, all right. So you can click on and go like, or what happens in the playoffs? Of course, the bills have the buy, first round buy. In the division around, the bills host the Indianapolis Colts and they beat the Colts 55 to 23. Whoa. All right. All right. To then host the AFC championship game. They're hosting the chargers in simulation 9,187.

1:16:21All right. That up. And one week after beating the Colts 55 to 23, the bills lose to the chargers 10 to 7. What? It's like the Broncos. 10 to 7. Oh, man. Josh Allen, he has, here you go. Sorry. He throws an interception to Tarhebes still and also Fumbles twice. Oh, no. And Jim Harbaw gets the chargers to the Super Bowl. So the NFC championship was Lions Rams. The AFC was Bill's Chargers and the thing that everyone thought all year, they're going to get his bills rams. The simulation 9,187 is Lions Chargers in the Super Bowl and the Lions win it. Wow. Oh, my. What? I just can't imagine an existence. And again, they have to play the games where the bill score 55 in their first playoff game after a buy and then the next week's score seven.

1:17:23But that is nearly impossible to believe. But hey, fun with the football power index. This means you can never read anything of the power index ever again if you want to. But I thought it was reasonably fun. That I can't, I mean, we saw that game from Josh worse last year. He was Denver and they still scored, you know, it was in overtime. Right. Yeah, they were at the wire. I just, I would, I almost, I want to see the Madden simulation of this. I want them to run it through the Madden. Right. So I want to see make me see it. What happened in what world could Josh Allen not only have three turnovers, you can tell me at three turnovers, the AFC championship came and I'd say, okay, I think it's still win 100%. But they're not going to score seven. No, never. I can't imagine being at a game. I know the bills have had this happen before they source seven. I know. But it does not happen much when Josh is the quarterback. Right. No. That's crazy. I loved everything about that simulation until that point.

1:18:27You know, my name is like the chief's winning their vision and whatever. Yeah. You know, that's incredible. It's pretty horrid if that's the way that ends. 803 05 50 Austin, Carbett joins us at 830 bills guard. We'll talk about the upcoming season. We'll talk to him every Tuesday before and after games, leading you to the week, going ahead, looking back in the games that of course played out and they go to Houston. Austin, Carbett, he started for the Rams. He's a super bowl champion. One thing I kind of forgot about when they brought him in, he played a lot. He's been to these these big games. So I'll ask him about that. What kind of experience he can bring and, you know, a team with Super Bowl expectations. 803 05 50. He's coming up at 830. Whether or not you would root for Shawn McDermott, do you believe he's rooting for the bills? I do. I don't think it's hard to believe at all. The chat, the YouTube chat, a little more on the cynical side. So we'll get to all that with you here on WGR. Overall, this is a new Buffalo Bill's team. It's not the team we played the past couple of years.

1:19:27Our new head coach and new coordinators on all three phases. With Jim Brains, they're going to be a more multiple front. So you'll see more five down fronts than they've had in the past. So they're going to put their base defense out there. He's going to try to mix it up, try to confuse the quarterback with some disguises, bring it different pressures, drop in the outside linebackers and covers. So we have to be on it from a preparation standpoint because right now, for his track record, it's his first game, calling it with the bills. So he has everything that is the disposal when it comes to trying to confuse the quarterback. So we just have to make sure we're playing rules ball. Dmitriko Ryan's head coach of the Houston Texans. Bill's Texans Sunday, one o'clock, week one, another season in the NFL begins. Walk outside, it feels like football. It really does. By this afternoon, it might be a little hot, but it feels like football right now, 57 degrees where we are here in Amherst and high today around 80.

1:20:30Jeremy and Joe, Joe's off this week again. He's back on Sunday as part of our pregame coverage. One of the things I mentioned earlier when I get to once again is what we've got in terms of our weekly lineup that you can count on for Buffalo football Monday and football Fridays and all that good stuff. We've got great guests for you this year and really excited to share. So on Mondays, you'll get DJ more or Conor McGovern with us in the morning. We're going to have those guys rotating. So either DJ more or Conor McGovern in the afternoon's Deandalkins four o'clock with Showbiz in the Bulldog. So after games, you hear them from some pretty big names here on WGR Tuesdays. We're going to welcome in Austin Corbett who's going to join us next segment, the former Carolina Panther, former Los Angeles Ram came here to the bills is on the depth chart in the offensive line has some experience with teams that have one big in LA and we'll talk Super Bowl expectations with him coming up. Mike Florio joins us on Tuesdays, Ross Tucker in the afternoon on Tuesdays and on Fridays. Mike Karuchi, he'll be on with us 8 30 Friday mornings and Aaron Williams, former bill's

1:21:34safety Aaron Williams in the afternoon, four o'clock on football Friday. So that's like your lineup among others along the way. You know, all the best voices, all the experts out there and excited to bring all that kind of football coverage to you here this season, bills and Texans getting your preliminary thoughts on it. It's a Tuesday. You know, we'll talk yourself into a lot of different things between now and then, how you're feeling about it. Let me know 803 0 550 and then the other part of it is whether or not you are, you believe Sean McDermott. McDermott says he'd be rooting for the bills. A lot of people here that he still loves and the community and the team and the area of the fan base, what they left on him, how he still would root for the bills. He was out there doing the rounds. He's been doing some media here and there. I think there are some bills fans, of course, that will always have hard feelings toward McDermott for specific games. We're not the mention of them. And then I think there's a good chunk of the fan base that appreciates what he did and

1:22:35would say best of luck to you. Thanks for the memories. Thanks for the good times. See you later. Good luck and you know, turn to your team, which starts a new season with Joe Brady. Brady's test in the opener is a big one. That Houston defense just from a Jimmy's and Joe standpoint. It is elite. It was amazing last year, but look at it. The box scores the last two seasons. This is what I hope things get different. It starts football seasons underway. It starts tomorrow, Patriots and Seahawks and then it goes to Australia. But here we are. It's a game week, right? I'm going to dip into something that I've been very passionate about the last couple seasons. That's the receiver core because looking back on last year and two years ago, it feels like the argument or the fight we're having about the receivers over the years is the context to how we feel about it right now. Most all of universally every single bills fan thinks that they are more well equipped

1:23:40that that position right now, right? We all do. It's not debatable. How could you make the case last year's group is more equipped without a youngster in Skylar Bell and of course the established guy in D.J. Morley. We all think and expect that the group is better. We'll see about the results. We'll see if the group is good enough. We'll see if people say healthy. Josh Palmer, of course, got hurt a bunch. Keon Coleman has had his run-ins with availability, whether that's injury or immaturity as the bills might call it. The receiver core is better. The line's about the same and one change out. The tight ends are the same. The backs are the same. The quarterbacks are the same. That's different for the offense. It's the receiver group and it's the existence of no one above, should say the lack of existence of McDermott above Joe Brady. The offense to the moon, the offense has a chance to prove in game one that they will be

1:24:41different, that they will be tougher to defend. They're always tougher, tough to defend because of Josh Allen. They've always been tough to defend as long as James Cook's been running the balls effectively as he has and the line's been as good as it has. But against Houston, they have not been tough to defend. They have not been a pain in Houston side. Houston has held them down offensively and made them look bad. And the last couple box scores tell a story here. And it's not like the bill's defense has looked bad against Houston. You could bring a Shaw McDermott defense to this Houston game and they'd probably feel pretty good. Even with a skeleton squad of older guys that aren't in league anymore. They went to Houston last year and the defense was generally fine. Yes, they lost the Davis Mills, but not because of what happened on defense. When you go back two years ago, Colby ships were a key season. They get hit over the top once and an eco-cowons bomb. And other than that, there just wasn't that much. But the receiving core, the target core for last season, Jackson Haas was way too far

1:25:42up the depth chart in terms of how many passes he caught. The receivers last year, Khalil Shakir, eight for one 10. I think one of those was late down the sideline. Like some hook and ladder yards for Shakir on one of those big plays. Your second leading receiver was Ty Johnson with 45 yards. Then Jackson Haas, Davis 22, Josh Palmer 21 yards, Elijah Moore minus three. The team as a whole, Alan goes 253 on 34 attempts and is sacked eight times eight sacks. And not just you run of the mill, how many how many how many yards should you lose on eight sacks? If you have Josh Alan, you might expect that to be like 30 to 40 yards. He gets back on the scrimmage. He fights for it like not all sacks are created equal. He got sacked eight times and they lost 70 yards on sacks. It's a passing game that passed for 253 and lost 70 on sacks net passing yards in a

1:26:46way there of 183 on 34 attempts. So can they be better? Definitely. James Cook ran well against Houston last year, 17 for 116 yards in a touchdown. After the game was a little bit of a where was James Cook? How come you're not running more James Cook? Last year's bills, we wondered if they were built well enough to come from behind. Granted, they did against Baltimore, but in other games against the Falcons against the dolphins, they'd get in games where they're behind and the blitzes would start to come and Alan would be under pressure. Alan to be under siege. And this time around, maybe it's different. Maybe it's different not because of the offensive line, but because of the weapons available at receiver. I mentioned last year's receivers in the Texans game, Shakir Gabe Davis, Josh Palmer, Elijah Moore Shakir Gabe Davis, Josh Palmer, Elijah Moore.

1:27:50Those were the receivers the last time these two teams played for the Buffalo Bills. And if you go to the year before, it's maybe not as bad, but also rough Coleman led them in receiving in that game with 49 yards. The receivers the year before Coleman, Mac Hollins, M.V.S. Curtis Samuel. Wow. Two games against UC, where your offense looked silly. And I think I can identify the main reason they looked silly. They didn't have, I mean, who's the best receiver of the bunch? It's Shakir. Yeah. Eight for one 10 last year. Other than Shakir, Coleman, Hollins, M.V.S. Curtis Samuel, Elijah Moore, Josh Palmer. These games have been where all of the conversation became like, oh, I actually, you know what? Yeah, you might need somebody out there. Yeah. You can be playing digs in that first game in the first game.

1:28:51In the first game. That's right. And the first game digs went for 82 yards on six catches and was a part of why they lost that game. Yes. And we do this exercise and we go back and look at the receiver rooms. It's tough. M.V.S. is like a gun shop. M.V.S. It really upsets. M.V.S. had three targets for no yards. Curtis Samuel had no targets. I'm sorry, had no yards on four targets. All this is to say, like, we all think it's going to be better. We all know it's going to be better. It's really important to note how bad it was. It really, really upsets me. Like, it is unbelievable that that was the plan. Right. Well, you have the superstar quarterback and that's the receiver room. Again, out there. Two years ago, they're missing Shakira. Last year, they're missing King Cade. The room is a hole. It's right. That was the plan. Was that those rooms? And that just... People wonder why we talked about it so much.

1:29:52Just look at it. Yeah. It's crazy. It was crazy. That happened with this quarterback. That's like the Dolphins defense this year. That's what it feels like. These rooms, they were... They were jokes compared to the rest of the league. It was insane and it's just... It makes you feel like this year could be so different. Right. It's funny because in the last two losses, there are two very different losses. Both were one-score games. Whether it's 23-20 or the year before was... Sorry, 23-19 and 23-20. And in one game, Alan gets sacked eight times. They score 20 points. In the other game, he gets sacked once. And they scored 20 points. So a lot of ways to do it. A lot of ways to hold the team down. The way the Texans held the bills down was they didn't have anybody. We're throwing two.

1:30:52And now it appears they're going to go into this game with who we think are there three most important pass catchers? Would anyone dispute it's going to be DJ Moore, Dalton Ginkade and Khalil Shakir? All three will be available. The bills have not walked into a game like this with two pass catchers of this caliber yet. And this time, they get to go in with three. Say what you will about what they rank. League wide. To me, that's a different conversation. Two years ago, it is nine for 30 for Alan nine for 30 passing the ball. And your leading receiver is Keon Coleman who caught one pass for 49 yards on five targets. He had the one catch turn and run without that one play. Alan is eight for 29 for less than a hundred. They didn't sack him. They got him once. He couldn't go anywhere with the ball. They should be ready for that this time.

1:31:53And then again, the following year, no King Cade only Shakir and your next option was Gabe Davis. So I'm ready to start like feeling the bills will have an adequate group of targets and they'll have their answers for Houston. I should hope so. What do you think 80305 50? It's important to remember where it was to feel good about where it is, right? Look, they say don't look back. Don't look backwards. You've already been there all these like it's probably somewhere on some sign in your living room. You know, don't look back. You're not going that way. It's important in this case. Look back. Look at the progress you've made. It's taken some time, but they're better prepared. And that includes some of the same names like a Josh Palmer and a Keon Coleman no longer in the top three options. All three of your top options should be available Sunday, one o'clock. Mike in Virginia, Mike Good morning. Hey, Jeremy. I was on a wedding recently. Father of the bride said, don't cry because it's over smiled because it's happened. I feel like you're the opposite.

1:32:54You're smiling because it's over and crying because it happened with you at the airport. That's right. That's right. Question for you. What would you do with the about five million or so that we've kind of got in caps, money left? We've got 10. You need some for call-ups throughout the season. What would be your number one move in the weeks to come? Thank you, guys. Yeah. Thanks, Mike. I would predict what they need at the deadline. What would it be? It's tough to know now, right? I've got to see a couple, you've got to see a couple teams that are going to fall apart or who has a player that's going to want to leave and go to a contender. But they'll probably need something on the defensive side would be my guess. Whether they go for a linebacker or that they did just bring back Shaq Thompson, he could get in sooner than later. Is the pass rush going to be what they want it to be or could we get to October? And well, who's available? Who could be had in this spot?

1:33:54The last couple seasons, it's been Jaylen Waddle or Amari Cooper. We went through the receiving court last two years. Last years, that's been an obvious answer. If someone on this core were to get hurt and be out for the year, I think they could be hunting again, definitely. But I think it's a tough ask, what do they need? They need good players. They know they need somebody that would make a difference. Who would elevate their defense 10% at that individual position? 10% more at corner, linebacker, safety, defensive tackle. It could be anything. I think it's tough. There are numbers on that side of the ball. If you were to ask somebody which bills player, I think it's going to surprise on defense this year, ask 100 bills fans. How many names did you get? 10, 11. Getting back to just how different it is this year than last year for bills Texans. That's a bills defense that did pretty well in a loss.

1:34:57Your new defensive players that were not on the field for them last year at Oliver's on the list, Michael Hoyt's on the list, Bradley Chobb, C.J. Gardner, Johnson, D. Alford, Caleb E. Alarm's or TJ Parker, Jalen Kilgore, and Geno Stone, I guess I put him in their two ways on the practice squad. That how many guys you expect to see a lot of on Sunday? Chobb, Oliver, Hoyt, C.J. Gardner, Johnson, D. Alford, I'm at five. Their first round pick or the first pick I should say, second round. TJ Parker is there. I'm at six. And is Caleb E. Alarm's or did he win the job? Am I at seven new defensive players? That's a different defense. That doesn't have to be better, but I've got some juice defensively where, you know, last year when they're playing Houston, I can pull up the snap count to see who's in there. But I mean, you really did see a defense that purged a lot of its older pieces, you know, respect to the guys that played here for so long that were legends, Poir, Milano, Trey

1:36:01White and Joey Boas is on the field for them last year when they play. Joey Boas is not in the league. So if you want to look at the roster and say, I think the roster is stronger. I think there's an easy way to get to that spot. And what will they need? I mean, earlier was it last week, two weeks ago? I suggested we just wait it out and trade for Nick Fulk on the time comes because he's kicking for the jets and makes all his kicks. I can't imagine the bills would really need to do that if Matt Prater's there if things aren't working out for Tyler Bass. So thanks for the question, Mike. Thanks for the call. Apologies that my answer is I don't know. If DJ Moore got hurt and it was a season ending injury, it would have to be a receiver. I mean, it would have to be. And I kind of was saving this for maybe tomorrow, but let's do it here in five minutes because college football starting up again means that if you follow me on Twitter, you're going to see me write a thousand times future bills receiver again to all these receivers that

1:37:04are putting up highlight level catches and track on the first round. And you know, how much of it is a bit versus how much of it is real? I mean, it's it's fun to suggest that every one of these guys is going to be a future bills receiver. But it's important. I would say like the seasons about to begin. And yes, I'm going to tell you that in the draft, we should talk receiver and the reason is that that whole exercise is going back to see what it was the last two years that could have been prevented the entire time. And it can be prevented again. And the bills are arguably in the exact same spot. I know DJ Moore isn't the same as Diggs, but the whole thing started with the idea of let's make sure you have, you know, the pipeline filled in for when Diggs isn't here anymore. And then Diggs exit was accelerated and you were unprepared. So make sure you're not unprepared. When when then all started, the bills had a very healthy core, very good, five deep group we like Diggs Davis Sanders, Beasley, isamacensi was a role player guy, right?

1:38:08So yeah, when they get to the next next off season, I'm not going there yet. Absolutely. It'll be about, well, now Moore will be 30 years old and Coleman's in the final year. And Palmer is going to be let loose. And she keep like, absolutely, it should be a priority next year to make sure that that exercise we just went through remembering the last two times they played Houston, who they had as pass catchers never happens again. It should never happen again. 803 05 50. Can you Kyle Shanahan forming here, Joe Kelly? We'll do this real quick. Justin Corvette of the Buffalo Bills coming up in about 10 minutes. We'll talk to him on Tuesdays, get to know him his first year here with the team as part of the offensive line as they go to Houston, start watching tape on, you know, the wrecking crew that it is. So eager to talk to him in about 10 minutes. But before we get that, we got a game tomorrow, Seahawks and Patriots in Seattle. And by the way, I know we're all ready for New England to fall to earth. But the Seattle secondary is not looking like it's at its best right away.

1:39:10I think I'm in worry is limited. He might not play and they lost a couple other key pieces. So just worth worth entertaining the idea that Seattle could have some challenges in the secondary. Tariq Wullen, he went to the Eagles. They lost Kobe Bryant, not that Kobe Bryant, but a different Kobe Bryant. Kobe Bryant left as well. He's to the Bears. So two big pieces of what they do on defense over that they leave two corners. They lost two corners and their stud young safety is limited in practice. I'm ready for everyone to say New England's catching a break again, right? Because they catch a lot of breaks. Anyway, so that's first game. Seahawks and Patriots. The second game is Rams Niners. Now the Rams have not yet left. They might leave. Oh boy, it's going to be tough on me trying to figure out when they leave today. Time travel. Let's look Kyle Shanahan explain how difficult it is to understand what date is over in Australia.

1:40:11And we did our totally normal routine. I'm not sure because we're like I said, we're a little confused with when I look at my clock and it says the time and then I try to see my family's time and it says the time but it says yesterday. And then we get how that's possible. So I feel like I'm in the future. And then also when we play on our Friday, which I think is the Thursday in the US for such creatures of habits. So I call today Tuesday. No, wait, sorry, I call today Wednesday, which is the first day we put in a game plan. But I think it's Monday, however though it's Sunday and the present. So like I'm going to mess that up all week if you guys ask me. But today is just our first day of the game plan, which is a Wednesday. We'll put in some on a Thursday. Friday is the final part of the game plan. Saturday we walk through when we play on Sunday, which is a Friday in Australia and a Thursday in the US. So don't ever make me do that again. Huh? Rams? Rams by 60. I might pass out right now. Yeah. What? I'm about to fall over. I have a day of the week clock in this room because I have enough time remember, enough

1:41:16trouble remembering what day it is. And I'm not traveling. That's why this clock is here. He's over there talking about today's Monday, but I call it our Tuesday. No way. I call it. He's lost his own right. We've got the nexus of the actual time in San Francisco, the time in Australia and the time that a football coach pretends it is if his game is out of Thursday, all meeting to create that, whatever that was. Right. What? That word vomit. That was. Oh. Rams by a million. I do, I do have a stat of the day on this game for you, which is a, which is, I mean, it's pretty cool. Anyway, how do you prove this? There's actually a way to measure this. The stat is that and brought to you by Jan Smokshop too in Gasmar where everything about Jan Smokshop is smoking. This game between the Niners and the Rams, court, Doug Kloss and CBS Sports, it will feature or should feature the most combined first team all pro selections in one game since 1999.

1:42:24That's the talent on the field. Australia did not get Brown's Jags. They got the most all pro selections on one field in a single game since 1999. McCaffrey, Mike Evans, if he plays, of course, Debo, you know, George Kiddell, Nick Bosa, Fred Warner, Ojimic, sorry, Trent McDuffie, not Ojimic Duffy, it's for my age. Trent McDuffy, Aaron Donald, if he plays Miles Gera, Pukinakua, Devante Adams, Kyron Williams and Matthew Stafford. Crazy. Most combined first team all pro selections in a game since 1999. The previous 1990 now, there's a Cowboys Vikings game that had Aikman, Emmett Smith, Michael Irvin, Dion Sanders, Larry Allen, Leon Lat, Darren Woodson and Gary Anderson, Chris Dolman, Julius Randall, John Randall, sorry, John Randall, a guard named McDaniel.

1:43:26Oh, it's my fault. I thought I was going to get all of them. I don't know, McDaniel, who's McDaniel, the guard for the Vikings, Chris Carter, Randy Moss and Robert Smith, quite a star studded cast. They play at the cricket ground. 803, 05, 50, Bill's guard Austin Corbett, part of their football coverage. He joins us every Tuesday. We'll chat with him coming up next and Howard is popping in at nine o'clock. Yeah, Howard's popping in. How about that? He's not picking the bills. He's not picking the bills. He's not picking the bills. Not going to make him. He's not doing it. Don't tell me to do it. He's not doing it. There's not a bit. He's not doing it. Austin Corbett coming up next. Football season is upon us. It's a game week. The season in the NFL starts tomorrow with the Patriots and the Seahawks from Seattle. Then we go to Australia and then home Sunday, one o'clock, bills and just home in the US. It'll be in Houston. Bills and Texans will be kicking off their seasons in a game that could have, well,

1:44:28a lot of reaction at the end of it because both these teams are thought to be Superbowl caliber teams. I've seen the Texans get plenty of picks. The bills, of course, one of the favorites and Sunday, one o'clock, we get things started. Part of our football coverage this season. On Tuesdays at 8 30, we're going to talk with Austin Corbett of the Buffalo Bills, offensive lineman. His appearance on WGR brought to you by North Town, Hyundai, Western New York's premiere, Hyundai dealership. Austin, good morning. It's Jeremy and Joe. Joe's not here. So it's just me. Good to get you on and welcome to another football season. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Excited to be here for today and the rest of the year. Yeah. We'll be talking each and every week as people kind of get to know you. You've been around the league a bit, right? You've been in Carolina. You're in Los Angeles with the Rams for a Super Bowl. So you've had your time around the league. How is Buffalo treated you so far? It's been awesome. You know, started out, you know, drafted a Cleveland back in 18, quickly traded to the Rams. And since then, the state of traffic and level of traffic I'm dealing with is consistently

1:45:32going down. So it's been awesome. Yeah, not bad. Your time with the Rams, you know, that's a team obviously that was great. And the whole thing and now you're here in Buffalo for a team that has Super Bowl aspirations and maybe even Super Bowl expectations. Do players feel that level when you know a team is that good at even at this time of the year? Yeah, I want to say it's a, you know, feel it, right? But it's this, it's more of an e-earness, right? It's a, we know we're good. We know what we're capable of and the only way to get there is to start week one in Houston. That's, I mean, it's as big a test as possible for the offensive line based on what they, what they have up front. Yeah, absolutely. In heck, my front, heck, my front seven and, you know, both edges and Daniel Hunter and Williamson right there. You're cooking off the edge. Two big, fast, strong guys and, you know, I'll show you there. You know, leading the core to the wine backer group.

1:46:33And I mean, they're just having penetrating jet off the ball. You know, stop the run on the way to the past type front and just a violent front that, you know, clearly is the playstyle from Domingo Ryan there. And, you know, it's a testament to, you know, kind of the leadership that he brings and to get those guys to play as hard as they do. It's going to be a great test to open up with. Big test. And also on the road too, like how much of a difference does it make to try and stop speed rushers like that around the edge. So again, their interior penetrators are great too. Home versus road. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think, you know, if anything, we saw it in the preseason there in the, in that new, how much stadium I like that there is a capable difference when it comes to snap count. And so week one, anywhere is going to be rowdy and especially when you get a team like Houston who, like you said, they got those super ball aspirations as well. It's going to be rowdy. That's the excitement of week one. The season's back.

1:47:33And so it's just going to be dialed in, you know, every silent count. And you got to work variations, make sure everybody's on the same page and the snap counts for one advantage that you get. And so doing everything you can to create that biggest advantage each and every time. Austin Corbett joining us on the Western hotline ahead of the bills and Texans game. Austin for this offensive line, it's a group you jump into. They return a lot of starters, a lot of players that have been here for quite a long time. Looking at the group overall, what have you learned about? Some of these guys that maybe you maybe saw them from afar. The Undocken Spencer Brown. What have you learned about them as players and as teammates? Yeah, I think from afar, you know, just watching, you know, with my ramps ties of David Edwards these last few years and then, you know, coach Kromer as well as I was always watching, you know, supporting Dave, supporting Krom and always just seeing what Krom was up to. And, you know, kind of like, well, he's doing the same things that he's done, you know, in our way. And that's the style of football I love. You know, hopefully he didn't hit their retirement age, but all for it.

1:48:37And spring Pat Meyer and the new O'Lean coaching work is the same stuff. He's teaching the same techniques and Krom has been working in a long time. And so that was a big part of why I wanted to come here and be a part of this group. Because this group understands and is also in the foundations of all that Kromer kind of really caught me in the NFL and how, you know, mid zones, how outside zones or gaps came. Like, I don't know who's supposed to work. And, you know, so it is so easy to step in here. And the guys have just been awesome. You know, from, you know, just straight down the line with all the guys and, you know, Deon out corner, cybe, up Spencer, just so many good dudes in that room. And it's been such an easy transition. And, you know, they made it easy and they make it fun, show them to work every day. And that's the biggest thing for sure. You said like the way you like to play. How is that? Yeah, it's more an aggressive style of offense line, right? It's not, you know, it's going to get your hands on. And it's being, you know, playing on the other side of the line of scrimmage instead of backing up.

1:49:40Like these guys are too fast and too strong now. So let's go get our hands on. Why wait? Let's start to fight. Let's take it to home and, you know, let's create a new line of scrimmage every single but. And you also mentioned Aaron Kromer who has since retired, you know, one of the reasons you wanted to come in and play here. I've heard a lot about Kromer that one thing about him that might be unique or identifies like what he, how he coaches is he, he's not trying to get you into a box. He's trying to let you do what you do well. Absolutely. And I think that's a. It's hard for coach. Right? And you want to get in and it's like, I'm supposed to coach. You have to do this and this and I have my certain ways. But when you get in the foul, it's like, right, well, you were to pretty skilled at football. What got you here? Okay, let's just make that better. And let's let you shine what's every person is significantly different. There's, you mean, you look at just the tackles alone between D on and Spencer. Those are two completely different football players. And they are both two completely dang good football players.

1:50:42And so it's, you know, how can we get you guys to do what you do best? And that's across the chrome. And it's the exact same thing with, you know, Pat Meyer now of, you know, what can we do to make you better? How does your body work? How do you move best? Let's make it as efficient as we can. And let's go control. Austin Corbett joining us on the Western hotline. Austin, how about head coach Joe Brady? We're all kind of waiting to see what it's like for him as a first time head coach. He's been here for a couple of years. So Bill Span's do know him. But how about the, the tenor of camp and the preseason? And, you know, you've played for a number of coaches. What are your impressions of Joe Brady run on the show right now? Yeah, he's been incredible. He's actually another big reason of, you know, coming here in free agency. He was in Carolina for a few years before I got there. You know, he left right as I got in. And all the guys that were still there, they just absolutely loved Joe. And just so many higher march for him. And he was like, right, this is no brainer going to join that. And I mean, the way he's able to command and lead.

1:51:44And this is not a every, every day, first year head coach by any means. He's got this, he's got a dialed in. He's got his schedule worked out. He's efficient with what he does and then play calling wise. And he saw in the preseason too. Like he's, he's, he's, he's dialed in with this often to scheme and being able to throw out these weapons and bring B day more. And he has so much relationship in Carolina with them. And you know, arm like Josh, we'll put it where B day is going to end up. Like it's, it's, it's a force for sure. Are you as a guy that's been around the league? Like you've been a veteran, whatever you are a veteran. You've been around, you mentioned a couple different teams stepping into, to an offense like this. It's, I mean, I always say it was almost kind of ready made, right? There's a spot open here there and injuries will pop up. Like do you feel like you are, I guess you feel like a leader among the group? Do you want to be there? We're waiting to find out the captains of the team are and all that and like learning who's who? Do you feel like that's a role you've taken in your career to this point?

1:52:46Yeah, for sure. I think it is, you know, kind of nice, you know, I've had some incredible veterans along my stops of, you know, in Cleveland, my rookie year, you know, is Doba Tonyo, JC Treter, Kevin Butler, three into your guys, which is absolutely incredible played a long time in this league. Then I go to L.A. and I go play with Andrew Wootworth in Rob Haven's time, you know, tackles who are, you know, that my last year in L.A. If you know, Andrew Wootworth turned 40 and he's still playing out there. So everything in those first four years of my career, it was just absolutely to be a sponge, you know, learn, you know, taking what I can and, you know, fortunate to win a Super Bowl that early in a career too. And so then, you know, when I hit free and see the first time, you know, all right, where can I go to then share all this knowledge I've gained? And so, you know, I got so many hard guards. I knew a few buddies out in Carolina. I was like, all right, this place, this is where, you know, I can spread this knowledge and, you know, that's what it was last four years.

1:53:46And that's how it was. And there's no different now of, you know, I've played so much football. I've been around so much football, been around so many amazing people just let me share. Let me grow this game. And especially on the off-the-line, there's absolutely no secrets out there. And that's five guys you got to be on the same page. So it's wherever you can talk where we can help. Just using those past experiences to help guys. And that's, you know, it's just what I tried to do in my, for sure. Austin, last thing for today, like, I'm sure you know, like this, this team, this fan base starved for a Super Bowl. The major coaching change is made to try and get over the hump. So it's, you know, there's, whether it's Super Bowl or Boston or expectations or whatever. It's all about, you know, getting to the final, beating the final boss, getting all the way there. And you're someone that's been on a team that did it. Has any teammate come to you and said, so like, what have we got to do? Just get a little lucky along the way. You know, you've, you've, you've been to that mountaintop. And a lot of guys in this room have been very close and believe that this team has what it takes.

1:54:49So what's your words of wisdom for, for teammates, for fans, whatever it might be? Is someone that's, that's been there. Right. I think it's, uh, it's truly this week by week thing. And you have that goal, but you got to break it down of, you can't get there unless you win your divisions. So you got to start small and you can't win your division without winning week one, right? And it's, you know, as cliche as boring, you're, it is, but that's, you have to create that simple focus of, you know, you think like Olympic archery, airlers should have now, you know, 60 yards at these targets. You got to install miss small. And that's what it has to be. It's just narrow control centered focus. And it's, I mean, when we went, we, we won the Super Bowl back in 21, like, we didn't win a game in November. I think that's so easy to overlook that you have to bring in your whole trophy. But we didn't win in November. It was like, you know, everybody was writing us off at that point. And it's just what I think the story is, stay in study.

1:55:50And that was a discredit to that time of like, yeah, we know we're good. Take a breath. We said, let's get going. And you know, off we went, but it's just this steady mindset can't get too high. Can't get too low. You know, all the boring stuff that's already been said, but it, it's simplest form. It is the fundamentals in technique. And you cannot let it slip from one moment. You dropped a aim small, miss small, which I'm sure applies to many sports, but are you a golfer? If you call it that, I really, fair enough. I can hit it a ways, but. So you're good on your good on a scramble team then get you for a scramble. Oh, absolutely. I'll keep you good. All right, very good. I'll keep it in mind. Austin corporate here, joining us as part of our football season coverage all year long. Austin, thanks very much. We'll talk again next week. Yes, sir. Appreciate you. All right. Austin covered his appearance on WGR brought to you by North Town, Hyundai, West in New York's premiere, Hyundai dealership. Who says aim small, miss small golfers, shooters, archers?

1:56:53Any any sort of target based quarterbacks? Any name small, miss small? I feel like I've heard Josh say that. Yeah. Yeah, but that's right. Josh is a golfer. So like, that's true. You know, you apply your golfisms to the rest of your sports life if you play golf and do other things. It's definitely right. Does it actually work? Or do we only think it works? I feel like it works. I think it's got to a little bit. Psychologically, there's got to be some, you know, ability and talent in there. Like if you're a golfer, you can, you can not very good. You aim small. I'm not going to do much. Right. But you got to be able to at least be somewhat on target. I think it works. 8030550, the phone number, thanks to Austin Corbett, we'll get to him every Tuesday. Jeremy and Joe, what do we got when we get back? I've got still to get to. At some point, I want to update the Connor Hellerbook thing, because some insiders did some updating.

1:57:54And there is a zoom call of all 32 NHL GMs today. Something to consider. They're going to be talking a little side text afterwards. Howard Simon's walking in. He's going to, I think he's going to sit down on me at nine o'clock. What? What do you got to do? You got to go break. We're on camera. We're not going to go break. You're here. I get to blame it on you. Howard's going to sit down for a minute. I don't know what we'll talk about because it's not going to pick the bills. So not going to pick the bills. It's fine. Jeremy and Joe, NWGR. Hey, everybody. Jeremy and Joe, Joe's out today. Very quick minute on something. Maybe you saw Lightning McQueen was one of the official cars, honorary pace cars at the Italian Grand Prix. Very cool. Nice to see Lightning out there. The 20-year anniversary of cars, the movie, the original cars movie. Ask me my hot take on cars. Go ahead. Somebody ask me my hot take on cars. What's your hot take on cars? No movie has nailed an ending better than cars ever.

1:58:57Ever. It's the best movie ending ever. I don't know if that's hot. I don't have an alternate. Do you feel like you hear people saying that all the time? I feel like that's a good ending. No movie sticks the landing better than the original cars. How about the usual suspects? Not as good. Not as good. When he's pushing the king over that and he turns down the dinaco sponsorship. Yeah. And then they go back to radiator springs. Yeah. He's opening his thing. Michael Schumacher drives it. It's fun from start to finish, nailed it. Credits, post credit, pushing the king across the line. My kids watched cars and they were younger. They watched it again recently. And they officially got to the age where they flat out said what the lesson was by pushing the king across the line. Nice. Oh my god. Nice. Cars. That's big. Cars is goaded. Amazing movie. Holds up. Beautiful start to finish. Best ending of all time. Not even just because it's a good happy ending. It's the right ending. Good opening of the movie too. Very fun.

1:59:58Great opening. Yes, great. It's a great movie. All right. Did it win best picture? It should have. It's back in theaters. I mean, you know what it's what it's against. Let's find out. 2006. We have to look. Let's get the big 10 officials to go back and check the replay. Get a new best picture. Howard's in studio next. Just chatting about stuff. See how he's doing. It won't bring up major league baseball. He just. All right. I just said major league baseball. All right. Uh, yes. Yeah, in a minute. Texans bills in Houston has all the makings of the overreaction game. Whoever wins this game, it's going to be Sunday night, Monday, Tuesday. This is it. The AFC runs through them. And it doesn't matter which one wins. The AFC is going to run through one of them. And the other way, well, the loser isn't a little bit of trouble here. Right. They're scheduled. We're going over the loser schedule. No question about it.

2:00:59Something. Bill Simmons of the ringer. I totally agree with that point. Maybe not for the loser, but for the winner. Yes. Bill's Texans has the most on the line for like the narrative ball for the winner. Howard Simon's in studio with me, Jeremy White. Sneaky Joe's off this week. It's football season here. It is football season. When you start, you've stepped away, of course. I have. Are you going to watch games in the bunker? No, or you socially watch them? Yep. No. My bunker days are done. Wow. Out on the town, just watching the games. Having a good time. Gonna watch the opener. We're going to be in Denver. So I already picked the, uh, bills backers bar in Denver, downtown Denver. And I will be watching with the Denver bills backers. The bar's called Lotto or something like that. It's, uh, Wow. I'm a Vendor one. It's, I don't know. I have it in my phone. Got a reservation ready to go. Denver bills backers. I think it's downtown Denver. Yeah. Yeah. Cool thing. Guess what?

2:01:5911 a.m. kickoff. That's nice. A little bit early for drinking, but never too early for wings. It's going to bother me to not know the name of this. Lotto, I think it's called Lotto, but it could be wrong. Lotto's the district though, right? Lotto's the area at that time. That's right. I thought it was a bar called Lotto and that, don't test my memory. Jackson's Lotto. Nope. Uh, anyway, someone will write it in. Someone will text it in. Someone in the chat. Somebody will know it. Stonies uptown tavern. Okay. The primary official home bar for Denver bills backers. Stonies uptown tavern. All right. That's what you're, you're going to be. I'll be hanging out with the mask at this. The Howard Simon World Tour. How about this? Gonna make you proud. Third game of the season. We're gone for the first two. Third game of the season. Put the TV on the back deck. Have the neighbors over watching over. I'm watching outside. Outside bills watching. I mean, it's one's once you do that, you know, I've heard you're allowed to actually watch bills games

2:02:59with family and friends. Yeah. Like socialize when the game is on. It's good time. No idea what that concept is like. You'll find that it's not that social. People are watching the game. And if you try to talk to them, they'll say, shot up. I'm watching this game. How ironic would it be if I'm the person trying to initiate conversations? Right. WGR sports radio 550 powered by Tim Hortons, the official coffee the morning show and game day tailgates. Jeremy and Joe, Joe out Howard's in. Now Houston Week one. Something about people who work with you take a lot of vacation. They do. I was just on vacation too. He's taken more paternity leave taking a while. He can. I mean, working with you does take a toll on people. It can. From what I'm told it can. By the way, I'm sorry. Remember Houston Week one. I don't want to get you out. But you're, uh, you're lying with Joe B the other day about how you're still on the air here for all these years. And then there's in no way pathetic. That was very funny. Yeah. I'm glad you're still on the air. It's been a long time. It's been a very long time. It's been a very long time. When you get to 30 punt, I was thinking about it recently. What was the thing I was on here? No, we're talking years.

2:04:00We're talking to young guys here, Owen and Joe Kelly. And I'm like, oh, I was on the air when that happened. And they're like, two. How cool is that? You're that guy now. How many years have been here? 25? Sure. Yeah. Right? Yeah. 25 at the station mornings for 22. November of 0-4. Yeah. So November the 22 years. In this chair, you are a pro two gold watch territory. Did we ever sit in different chairs? Did you start in this one? No. I was always on this side. I don't think so either. I think I always sat in this. I think it's actually a different chair. Yeah. I get the same spot. Carpet's new. If this chair was 22 years old, we'd have something to talk about. So you said you've been here 25 years total? I think so. Owen and I are 24. That's crazy. I just love references that make you old. I mean, that's just really funny to me. Honestly, I've learned a lot from you and my time that I spent with you. Because when I do something that I think is cool and they tell me they also think it's cool, I think they're doing to me what I used to do to you.

2:05:02Yeah. Yeah. Oh, very cool. Yeah. You're doing it. Just trying to make it feel good. Right. Humor the old guy. That's what I think they're doing now. This is so cool. I just like to turn this way. Don't do that. You got to be honest. Don't pretend. Guys, don't hurt his feelings. Make him feel like he's still cool even though he's out of touch. We'll do our best. We thank you, fellas. Yeah. And they've had some fun. And a couple days I come and I'm wearing my shirt inside out. That's happening. Yeah. We had an open almost ready to go in the third hour. It almost made it. I get me that. Well, I don't think so. The double sunglasses. That's also a problem. Double sunglasses happens a lot where I'm wearing my glasses and my sunglasses are on top of my head. The YouTube stream is how I catch that. Now I pop on this stream, see how I look. And I'm like, oh, I'm wearing my sunglasses on top of my glasses. Have you seen that? That didn't happen as much this summer. I didn't notice it. You've been locked in on that. I'm pretty good at this. I texted you the other day. Glasses on the hat. You're complaining. You can't find your glasses anywhere. Yeah. I lose everything. Yeah. Well, you lost everything when you were younger. True. So that's not really a big difference. No, that's right. It's all right. I'm sorry. So Houston, week one. Are we raising money to send all one on the road trip?

2:06:04Jackson's. No. Okay. Loto was the old location, Anthony Ritzon from Denver. Loto was the old location. It's Jackson's now. The Bill's backer bar in Denver. I watched a, I watched a Sabers game there. It's okay to wear a Bill's gear in Denver and actually I'm not sure. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you can get chirped at because of the playoff game. Then right. Maybe they should have lost. Denver should have lost. I should yell at them for losing to New England. Idiots. Well, Denver, don't think about Denver is, we could sit here and say how we are cursed in this and that. I mean, imagine if the Bill said one, the Denver game in Josh and I'll break his ankle. Yeah, that would basically in the kneel down process. Right. Yeah. How would we feel? Cursed. Cursed. We are cursed. More cursed. Cursed year. Well, week one Houston. I bring this up because it's the topic close to my heart that I like to talk about quite a bit. The last two games they played in Houston. You remember those, right?

2:07:05Not good. Yeah. Losses, Josh Allen getting thrown around. In one game, he had eight sex. In the other game, he had nine completions. Yeah. Last year's receivers that were available, I put the dates wrong on this. I'm going to have to redo this because I'm an idiot. Last year, the receivers that played in the Houston loss, Carlisio Kierg, gave Davis, Josh Palmer, Elijah Moore. Okay. Two years ago, Keon Coleman, Matt Collins, MBS Curtis Samuel. Those of you who are receiving cores, the last two seasons in losses in Houston. Yeah. And this year, it's very different, right? DJ Moore and then that other stuff. But still deep around the back end. DJ Moore, Carlisio Kierg, Josh Palmer, Skyler Bell, Keon Coleman. Yeah. It's better. I hope. I hope. It better be. It should be better. Needs to be. Yeah. So they can bail out the defense while the defense figures out how to play. I am of the belief like you sound like you are too.

2:08:07People should temper their expectations on the defense early. Yeah. How do you not do that? Because they're going to be aggressive, Howard. Okay. I know. I'm with you though. I'm eager to see it come together, but anticipating it will take time to come together. How wouldn't it? We've gone through this before, and this was without having a new defensive coordinator in a change of scheme. We've had other bills seasons before you, and I went into the season, but well, the defense is going to be working progress, folks. I think they'll be better at the end of the season. Let's be patient. Now there's a new coordinate or a new scheme. Half the starters are gone. Yeah. Like how do you not think they're going to go through grow? What's Detroit putting up in the home opener? The bills are going to win 5148. Jameer Gibbs is going to have a big day. I mean, it's just, it has to be a work in progress. There's, you know, I told you before we went on the air. I listened to your segment last Friday with Joe Buscalia, and you guys, you guys hit it. Who are the inside linebackers? Where's the stud pass Russia? Who is cornerback two?

2:09:09Those are really important questions. Let alone learning the new scheme, and maybe if you're going to be aggressive, maybe there's going to be, maybe this team is going to go from sit back and keep everything in front of you to maybe gambling, creating some plays, but giving plays up. I can't, I mean, I have no idea what to expect from the bill's defense. I think if you have high expectations from day one, for the bills defense, I think you're going to be very disappointed. It could be good when all is said and done, but there are some big holes on that side of the ball. You would need someone to be great. Who's great? Like, can that's the thing? It can, Ed, is there a game changer over there? Ed was great in limited action last year. Is the on walker ready to be great? Is Bradley Chubb going to return to a form that he was a couple of years ago? Like, on that side of the ball, who do you anticipate being great? What is Rousseau turned into like, take another step up? I feel like Rousseau, I'm going to bank on him being exactly what he was. Yeah. Right. Right. Exactly what he was. Well, then where else is it coming from? We know Benford's a top-notch corner.

2:10:10I loved, I was very interested in listening to Joe, Joe actually this, I think, was on the Channel 7 show. He was raven about Cole Bishop. And what Bishop could turn out to be now. If Cole Bishop turns out to be a playmaking safety, that's great. But that's not going to mean the defense right off the bat in Houston on day one. It's going to be a killer. I think they're going to go through some issues. And I think the offense is going to have to get back into what we usually expect from them. Score over 30 points. And pray the defense makes some stops every now and then. Protect Josh. Oh, like, run the ball. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, what's the passing game going to be? Are we now seeing that they're going to go away from throw behind the line of scrimmage yards after catch and actually throw down field? I'd like to see that with DJ Moore, you should be throwing the ball down field more, right? I'd like to see that return. So I'm confident in the offense. I, you know, I know they're down a starting offensive lineman.

2:11:12There's always issues about whether can Cade can stay healthy. Who knows if, if, um, you know, Keanu'll turn into anything. But I'm fairly confident that the bills will still have a top five scoring offense in the NFL, as long as the guy at quarterback is there. They could have the number one scoring offense with one small change. And that's not necessarily DJ Moore. They could have the number one scoring offense if they just decided to have more place. If they up their tempo, if they passed more, that's it. There are team that runs all the time and scores a lot of points. And if they passed it more often, they probably score more points, especially now that, like we just went over those, those receiver groups, they had in Houston. Houston has been a house of horse in part because their meager receiving cores have gone in there depleted in games like they were without Shakir in one without concade last year. And this year I've got concade Shakir and DJ Moore already go all healthy in the Houston game coming up on Sunday.

2:12:13So like I can lean on them healthy. And if I lean on the passing game more, then I just will score more points. The only thing that I would bring up here, this is a flashback to 30 something years ago, is if you do that, if you go up tempo, yeah, you can score, you can score fast. And then if you're worried about your defense, if you go three and out, your defense is on the field very quickly. Is it putting, if you're going to play tempo and not score, you're putting a lot of stress on your defense. And if the defense isn't ready for the challenge, that could be an issue. But honestly, if you asked me which way I would go, I would lean towards your way because I have faith in John Schellen. I have faith in him to lead the offense and do the things they need to do. And like I said, I think when they play the talented offense, I'm not sure what Houston's going to be offensively this year. And David Montgomery a bunch. I love David Montgomery, but you played Detroit. You play the Rams. Yeah. You play even the Chargers. Like teams that can actually put up points in bunches.

2:13:13That's a very interesting dilemma for Joe Brady. Montgomery, I just love as a player. He's been a fun, like I don't think he's all that dangerous for the bills. To try to stop, but the way he plays, like total Dan Campbell running back who has been awesome for the Lions. And finally gets out of there, you know, Gibbs taken over full time. Keishan Booty. I don't know how I like him. Me too. I don't know how much of a role he'll have in that offense. I think he's good. They need to get him open. I mean, he can be a downfield playmaker. He consistently burned by consistently, I mean, more than anybody else in football. Like he was the Stevie to Revis on Derek Stingley, who's on the Texans. Booty beat him for two touchdowns deep. Nobody else like three other guys had beaten Stingley ever. He's beaten him twice, including in the playoffs. So Houston, not only got Booty to help their receiver core, they got the one guy that beat Derek Stingley with some success. Yeah, I think he can be a game breaking receiver. The little bit we saw of him against the bills. Again, to go Nico Collins. It's a nice pair.

2:14:13Yeah. CJ Stroud would think of him. The other thing about the bills and, you know, we spent so much time talking about them and their expectations is who got better in the AFC? Well, that's a good question. New England get better. Yes. Did Cincinnati get better? Yes. Well, they get Joe Burrow back makes it. They do, but they also got a lot of pieces on their defense and bigger pieces. Like they went hunting for bigger pieces in the bills. Did Dexter Lawrence and Boyam Offair, both bigger pieces than the bills got. So that's a part of it. Did Baltimore get better? Maybe that's a coaching change. Well, that's about a one-minute change. That's a rookie head coach. The rookie head coach. The guy discussion the bills are having about Joe Brady. So rookie OC and Declan Doyle, who comes out of the Ben Johnson treat, did Kansas City get better? I don't know. Uh-huh. I don't think so. I don't know. They lost, they, who were their corners? Mansort Elaine and I don't know who else. I mean, they're kind of doing, I wouldn't say, retooling the defense, but they took some hits there. Yeah. Did the chargers get better? Yes. Try to remember what the chargers did in the AFC? They changed their offensive coordinators.

2:15:14Oh, that's right. They brought in McHenry. And they got their tackles back. Yeah. Well, that's huge for them. Right. Their offensive because Herbert gets killed. Did the Broncos get better? They lost a couple of pieces on defense, but they had a Jalen Waddle. Yeah. So, you know, to, to only evaluate your own team based on, do we look better than we were at this last year? Like, you might have been, but how, how's the conference looking? So, but to your point, at least with Denver and New England, you are talking about teams that are rivals of the bills for conference supremacy, bringing in really good weapons to help their passing game, right? The leagues about scoring. The leagues about having a franchise quarterback and putting up points. And two of the big rivals in the conference added huge weapons for their passing games. Yeah. I mean, as much as they hate the Patriots, it's a great pick up. Both might be more in endops. And Waddle. Yeah, that's right. I forgot about him. And, and I love Waddle. I think, you know, I'm not a huge bow next guy,

2:16:15but I think Waddle is a terrific player. Dan and Jersey Dan, good morning. Hey, boys. Good morning. Listen, I had a question about expectations. And I was thinking back to you were talking about draft season, which I don't want to look ahead to yet. But I feel like a lot of like the demands around the draft are based on where you finish, you know, this year. And so just thinking about expectations, like what is a good season look like for you guys, both on the defensive side of the ball and on the, on the offensive side. Because for me, I think the offense has to be top three. And if it's not, you got to keep investing in that. And if the defensive top 15, to me, like that's, that's a good season. So I'm just curious what you guys think about that. Thanks, Dan. I think there's a, I'm glad you said like, what's a good season? Because there's a difference between good season and good outcome. I could have a good season for my defense. They finished 10th in the league. That's a good season. They go to the playoffs and lose to Joe Burrow. That's not a good outcome. But did I get a good defense? You know, where am I in evaluating Jim Leonard

2:17:16and evaluating the last couple drafts where they go so heavy on the defensive line? Does TJ Parker look like a future star? You know, like there are things they could happen this year that could be without a doubt good. And the ultimate outcome is not good. Right. Last year, how is the outcome? Not good. They lost in Denver. They fired their coach. What good things happen along the way? Plenty. You know, your offensive line look good. Oh, Cyrus Torrance, you decided it's good enough to lock into his spot. James Cook led the league in rushing. That's a good season for him. So what's a good season look like for the defense? For me, I would say for me, a good season from the defense is two players on the defense look like certified top of their position guys. And that can be cold bishop and. Dion Walker. Sure. If those two, I think those are honestly, that's why I was going to go. It's less about for me about team stats and rankings. Although I think you've got to be in the top half. If you're not in the top half, that's bad. But it's more about building. Do they have guys that turn out to be huge pieces, cornerstone pieces like Christian

2:18:17Benford has turned out to be a cornerstone piece. You need to identify by the end of this season, you have cornerstone studs on the defensive side of the ball. And I want to say, right or wrong, better than Benford, whoever these players that pop are better than Benford. Benford, I saw someone today pointing out that since Christian Gonzalez got paid big, big money, you know, can you believe being got Benford for so much cheaper. And part of that's the passage of time. The other part of it is Benford for whatever reason, underrated or whatever. He doesn't rate. Executives coaches scouts were asked to rank the top corners in football. He didn't make the top 24. Now, they might all just be wronged on some level. But I want guys on this defense that it is impossible to miss. And Benford is good. His job might get tougher this season with a lot more man press. I can be. And I and behind him. And behind him, who knows? So not saying Benford is not good, but I want guys that are unavoidable.

2:19:18I can't possibly say, you know, this guy's underrated. I've had a little too much for my taste of us thinking the bills have all these bargain contracts. Why do they have all these bargain contracts? It's impossible because we think the players are a little better than the league things they are. And that's if that's Benford, that's Benford. Now, whatever, when we talk about it with Joe Marino, lock down bills, like he thinks he's the top five corner league. Great. I want him to get a new number because he needs a marketing campaign. I need bills, players that are undeniably great defensively. I have that on offense with Alan. Yeah, but I have it with Cook. I have had it with Dawkins. I have had it with, you know, when Diggs was here, that's right. Right. And King Cade is another, like what's a good season, but not a good outcome. A good season might be adult and King Cade. We're not checking the injury report every week. And he puts up 1200 yards and like, oh, turns out he is a top three tight in the league. I really don't spend much time talking about the offense and like what's a good season

2:20:20because standard operating procedure for the offense for, I don't know, five, six, seven years now is top five or top three. I fully anticipate that'll happen. I really, what's your concern? What concern would you have about the offensive side of the ball? They did lose one starting offensive lineman. And that's been a very stable unit for a couple of years. What would be your concern over there? Outside of injuries. Yeah. Still receiver depth is a question. Yes, yes, I still, I mean, if we were getting right down to it, I would, if you want to ask you the biggest weaknesses, receiver two might be, but is that okay enough weakness to take this team out of a top five scoring spot? Shouldn't be right. Shouldn't be because the quarterback overcomes everything. Yes. So it's really what's happening on the defensive side of the ball. And I think back to the caller's point, yes, if you could look at it and go, man, Colbexia has turned into one of the top safeties in the league. Hey, Dion Walker's a wrecker on the defensive line. Like if that stuff happens this season, that would be tremendous.

2:21:22Another playmaking linebacker would be nice too. Yeah. 803 05 50 is our phone number. And tomorrow Seattle and New England and then the game in Australia. And did you watch the Michigan outcome last night with whatever Saturday? I did not. I'm aware of what happened. I did not, I could not bring myself to watching the clip because I can't stand Michigan and I knew what happened. Did they get screwed? Weston Michigan? Yeah. So as I, again, I did not, this is one of those moments where I try and stay away from sports that will stress me out. So I was on Twitter, X whatever. And I saw the tweet that, hey, here's this what just happened. Tough break for Weston Michigan. And I watched the video of the incomplete pass. So I knew, okay, there was another down and they won the game. And I really didn't want to watch it. And I didn't look for the explanation. Guy was out of bounds, touched the ball or something. Oh, okay. You don't know the whole explanation. Let me give it to you because this blended clock thing is close to blended clock.

2:22:24So but a Weston Michigan, it was a Hail Mary. A Weston Michigan player was out of bounds, went up, touched the ball. Yes. So did they rule a legal touching or something or was no, no, the, and the clock ran out. The rules analyst upon review because the game ends. Yeah. We all watched the game end. And then they said the previous play is under review. Okay. Now me watching, I thought for what? What's to watch? You can't overturn. Okay. Why they review it was the quarterback ball across the line that would even matter. It's incomplete. Right. They go back and they see that the ball was first touched by a Western Michigan player that had jumped while standing out of bounds. Okay. Which would mean as soon as he touches the ball, the ball's out of bounds. The clock stops. Oh, right. Problem. He hadn't touched the ball yet. You can see the ball in the air with zero seconds on the clock. And he's jumping for it. Zero's not touching the ball. Then they put one second back on the clock. No one can understand why. And their explanation after the later, the big 10 releases a separate video

2:23:28that shows the other clock that no one sees that only the officials have access to. That's not in the stadium. That's not on the broadcast. A different clock. There's a mystery clock. There's a different clock that shows when the player did touch the ball as they said, it was one second left. Where's this other clock? Secret. Only six people have it. Officials. The officials have that clock. They have their own clock. When did this happen? Turns out the clock you're watching, not the clock. They have their own clock. Oh, and not our clock. There was a second left. Can they put the officials clock on the screen so the rest of us can actually see what the time is? What's like, I mean, ball thought that's what's happening the whole time. Turns out, now they have their own clock. Who knew? And it's just the perfect amount of time off to allow. You went into the real kick in the T. Wow. You went into the real kick in the T. The real kick in the T is on the prior play. Michigan got a first down and it was clocked with eight seconds left and they added a second to the clock to go from eight to nine. And then they threw a Hail Mary. We're time expired. And then they added another second to go to one second left and gave West Michigan another Hail Mary.

2:24:34This is why I don't watch sports anymore. Good thing they reviewed it, right? Sunday Sunday. And then you'll have me back in for my thoughts on replay. Well, then Michigan stormed the field. So if you hate Michigan, the good news is you get to make fun of that forever. They storm the field because they beat Western Michigan. Yes. Come on. They should not get a home game the rest of the season. That should be the penalty. No more home games. And I love the Mac. Western Michigan. Bo Schemblacher would be turning over in his grave. I can't believe they stole these guys. The best part of it beat the Rockos. The best part was they had Kyle Wittingham on the field after like right away in the pandemonium. Yeah. And the reporter asks him, you know, about the moment and he's he's very much like we should and then the question is, would you learn about your team? And he goes like this that we got a lot of work to do. Yes, they do. No offense, but man.

2:25:34All right, anything else? We're all good. We're all good. Up. I should go back and watch those Hail Mary's one more time. Don't do that to yourself. Just free memo to every coach in the world. Blitz on a Hail Mary. Send someone. Did they rush two or three? Rush like four. Go get him. Lord knows we have no experience with Hail Mary's burning a team around here. I mean, twice, but we're any of consequence, I guess the. The Arizona game. Hail Mary one. Yeah. We'll have a great season. Thank you. Thank you. What's your official prediction? Did you do that yet? My official prediction is this. I have a narrative prediction. The defense takes a step back. And because of that, the offense will have to do more. We'll play faster. We'll have more passes. They will score more points. Allen will have his best statistical season in like three or four years. And it'll be ironic because people will say that's because

2:26:38McDermott stopped controlling the offense. When in reality is because McDermott stopped controlling the defense. Yeah. I liked your question the other day. Four points from the offense or four fewer points by the defense. I'd go with four more points. Where they coming from. It's all it's I mean, that's why I've always wanted them to get a receipt. As we sit here this morning, again, I fully anticipate the defense in January will look better than the defense we see Sunday. But right now I would tell you they need four more points from the offense. You going any of these games? New high mark. You got plans? No, I can't afford the ticket. I'm going with me. I'll take you to a game. Is it free? Are you going to charge me like you did for the Carolina Playoff game? What about face value? Something on it. What is face value? It's not secondary market value. I went on the secondary market the other day. The only game was it was the Jets game in January was the cheapest ticket on the secondary market. And that was still, I don't know, 200 something? Just wait. Just wait. Right now the cheapest. The cheapest. Right now the cheapest ticket to Detroit is back up. Oh, I'm not even thinking about that.

2:27:39But it went again like is it 400? Can you story about the price of tickets? It's using secondary tickets is just a lie of a story. Yes it is. I do that does what for me four months ago the price was $680. Two weeks ago it was $350. Right now it's 412. Well if you invite me I would consider going face value. Okay. I got a check and see if my limited income account can afford this. You make it all the way up to the upper deck because I'm way up there. Yesterday. So I do tours in the falls. They just opened up a new thing called the cataract stairs. It goes from the bottom at the boat level all the way up to the top of prospect point. Set of stairs. Over 300 steps. Wow. Did that yesterday. I wasn't suggesting it like you couldn't do it. I mean the heights you were. No like the heights. We got up to my our seats and my wife looked down and I thought like her face went white like whoa. It is that steep huh? It's pretty steep. I will tell you in the old odd you were never in the odd where you. No but I've been in the carrier dome.

2:28:40In the old okay. So in the old odd the oranges were the top seats. I was always scared to walk down to my row in the oranges because I thought if I tumble I will collapse down the steps go flying over the railing and hit down below and die. It was scary walking in the so if it's that steep the stadiums pretty steep walking down to your seat would be just kind of be careful. But I can handle steps. You let me know. All right thanks for coming in. Nice to see you. Nice to see you too. Always a pleasure. Go bills. Go bills. We're picking the bills I think someday this week with all of your recorded voice version of it so you know 17 and oh I'll be picking them just using your voice. Okay so it's actually your pick. Yeah but in my pick. I would like people to know that it's your pick so when the complaints come in please send them to Jeremy. I'm still going to call it Howard picks the bills. I'm just going to guess what you would pick. Is that copyright infringement? Trademark? Pat and anything? Can I get money from that? I think no because I invented it.

2:29:40Like that's a very good point. Dolly noted. Thank you. All right thanks for coming in. All right Howard Simon here. Jeremy and Joe back in a moment here. What haven't we got to? Oh let's get the quick little hell of a update. Insiders are talking about it a little bit more and talks of a three team trade. Three teams may be getting involved to make it happen. And the Sabers golly going out. Notice a rattle in your ducks or rise in your heating and cooling bills if you do give bell mapper ring with 0% financing the cost of upgrading to a high efficiency dual fuel heating system is a breeze. Learn more bell map heating dot com that's bell map heating dot com. Go green save energy and money with bell map schedule a free estimate on your new installation give bell map ring at six eight eight seventeen twenty eight for more comfort and less catching give bell map or ring. Just saw coming down the NHL wire that uh Frazier Minton of the Boston Bruins has signed a

2:30:41seven year seven million dollar contract that's seven per for seven years. He has played one full season in the NHL and scored 17 goals. Yeah. He was 21 years old and he just signed the Tage contract. Yeah. And Zeev Buium over the weekend signed a monster deal with Vancouver over nine million which is also crazy early. But this is like hockey fans have to get ready for the NFL model. This is the passage of time. Yeah, I think I think teams might think that the cap is going to go up more than even we expect and they're trying to just get this all done now because it's going to get crazier and crazier. This is another great example of if you're not trading you will lose. Yeah. You will not ever find a young player in free agency. Here's a 21 year old who scored 17 goals locked up for seven years. Yeah. He's good but he's I mean, well, you said he's just never going to find it. He's very little. He was as rookie season. He's 10th in the call. Yeah.

2:31:42And he might be very, very good. But you will just never get a young player. No. And just too hard. Which the flip side of that is, you know, like what's consta Helen is going to get in his first contract. Yeah. Seriously, Yarmul might want to think about this. We can all sit here and talk about how much you love. Kool-Eak, Ocelain, Helen, use. Am I missing one in there? Who's the other one? Kool-Eak. Ocelain, that's the three. Yeah, that's the three. Okay. If all three of them become who you think they're going to be, massive gobs and gobs of money. And maybe you're going to think, I am only going to want to pay two of the three and then I'm going to want to have one that I've drafted or developed. So, you know, young players are worth a lot because you have not yet paid them a lot. And the flip side is you soon will. Yeah, they absolutely. And that's part of, I think why I think it might have been smart to burn a year off of consta's deal last year. For sure. Get burn that. Get that done. It was you can get closer to signing him long term earlier. It's been something to see for a while.

2:32:44Wow, burning a year. It's been quite obvious. There's a good reason to do it. To get a guy to sign quicker because you can't sign them. Until they get to a certain, it's not like football. You can just sign them tomorrow. Right. You have to wait. Couldn't do the Christian Gonzalez thing. Like get the deal. I need the deal now. Even though I'm under team control for another three years. Right. We've got to do it. We've got to play it out. And you know, you get one year out. So they're closer to that consta extension than they would be had they waited. And I think that's going to end up benefiting them. If the cap does do what I think everybody thinks it's going to do. And that's that's good smart business, I think. NHL training camps open in a week. Yes, they do. Pretty much one week from tomorrow. The preseason begins the 19th. Well, we're 11 days from the start of the NHL preseason. Sneaking up. Yeah. And I'd mentioned the latest on Connor Halibuk. I would imagine the sabers are still very much courting.

2:33:45That's the that's the buzz. The insiders have it as they're still doing that. So a few pieces over the weekend, one from Elliott Friedman, one from Jeff Merrick. Friedman, long weekend. So this might have been Friday or Saturday said the Jets have Stuart Skinner. They're going to need another goalie. Is there another goalie? They're willing to say, Hey, that gives us an acceptable tandem for what we're about to lose. Carolina Buffalo have extra goalies speculated to be available. Jeff Merrick said as part of the Securus and Price show, he has a wide frame of teams he can be traded to. We're all wonder, wondering, okay, how does he get to Buffalo? Is there a three-way deal here? New Jersey involved. Carolina, do they come in San Jose? The idea that I saw most recently suggested was that Alex Lyon would be on the move. Yeah. And that's how they would make this happen. Now, if the sabers were to do that, now they have a cap crunch and they have to do something because I don't think they can,

2:34:47that they have not going to, you're not going to want to have Luke and Ann and, right, and and hella bucks deals. It's not a deal breaker that it would be that you'd have both of them, but I just, I don't think that, I don't think they coexist as goal tenders, let alone the contracts. So I think that that would come with a corresponding move. I would assume. I think no matter what, if the sabers trade for hella buck, Lukin and his no longer on the sabers, whether he's in the deal or not, it's a matter of time. It's he's done. He would, he would, he would ask out. Yeah, he's got a, he'd want to leave. It's just not a spot where you want to be behind that guy as a, as a goalie that thinks you can play 50 plus games. Yeah. And so the three team deal, I brought this up like before the draft as an ideal with Carolina, because part of the deal with Winnipeg is they want a young guy that could potentially be a long term starter. Buffalo doesn't, other than Lukin and who it doesn't sound like wants to go,

2:35:52have that to offer unless they really think highly of Colton Ellis, but I don't think that's going to be in a deal for hella buck that just doesn't feel like it's a, a piece that they'd be interested enough in. And my, my thought was trade lion to, to Carolina and get them to send Kachakov up to Winnipeg. Cause they, Carolina is very comfortable with a rotating set of goalies and lion I think would fit very well what they do. He's very consistent. He plays a style that I think would be a really good fit with Carolina. And I think it would make sense. They would be willing to do it because that's a, that's the kind of thing they do. Freddie Anderson, they, they've got all kinds of guys that are I think of the lion archetype. Yeah. And that I think could solve one of the issues that Winnipeg is facing that there's not what they want out there. That could be a way around that problem with Buffalo. And because I don't think Carolina or New Jersey, two of the teams that Merrick mentioned as possibilities in a three team

2:36:53trade would be that interested in hella buck himself. Those are two, I've said, I've made this point about sunny madea and, and Eric Tulski and Caroline is the same way. Hyper analytically focused general managers and a 33 year old goalie that had a down year is not a hyper analytical guy move. It's just not. The analytics will tell you you can get by with anybody in net. And those guys are more likely to follow that philosophy than anybody. And so therefore I think it makes sense for them to say, well, if we could add a piece we think might be 20% better or more consistent for us in net by getting a veteran and moving out a young guy that's been hurt for us a lot. Could check off. I think that would make sense. And so I think there's a real possibility of a three way deal getting done here if the sabers do end up acquiring hella buck extend those sports coming up. We'll keep you up there in hella buck. If anything changes there, but yeah, training camps pretty much a week from tomorrow Thursday. And the NHL's preseason begins next weekend. Not this one,

2:37:57not this coming weekend. The weekend after this coming weekend. That's next weekend. Feel like maybe we should argue about that. Anyway, extend the sports in the north town automotive extra point show. Breaking sports news airs first here. Guarantee WTR sports radio 550 2020 sports. Extend those sports. Get game day ready. The BFL O store massive selection of officially licensed Buffalo bills gear jerseys hats, teas, hoodies, sideline gear and more. Check out their exclusive tailgate clip collection made for Buffalo tailgate season featuring Buffalo theme teas, hoodies hats and accessories, including the popular nobody tailgates like us styles, whether you're tailgating, heading to the game or watching from home, the BFL O store has you covered shop four locations at BFL O shop.com, the BFL O store, the official retail destination of western New York. I went to an MLS game this weekend. I went to see the Columbus crew. And it was awesome. Beautiful 20,000 person stadium stadium. Just man.

2:39:09You know, there's an old proverb. Is it a proverb? The best time to plant a tree is now? No, sorry. It's the best time to plant a tree is 30 years ago. The second best time is now, right? Columbus, the crew are 30 years old 1996. Wow. 30 years ago, they planted a tree and man, I am jealous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful, beautiful soccer stadium. Great seats, great sight lines, food, breweries, beers, pizza, bustling scene. Like Columbus is a cool city. And I mean, I've been to the football stadium to a buck-ice game, bit into the blue jackets where the sabers open the season by the way in like three weeks. Yep. One, two, three weeks and two days. It's come a quick. Three weeks and two days, the sabers have a game that counts. And the crew. And we walk right by the baseball stadium all down there as well with a clippers play. But man, it made me jealous. So anyway, very cool, very cool. What else happened? Yeah, I don't know. How do Arsenal do? No one. Arsenal beat Chelsea. Big win,

2:40:17big win. United absolutely blew a one goalie twice in the last 20 minutes of the game. Again, Severton. Against Severton. It was not good. Their new center back, absolutely screamed one in the 95th minute to get it to a draw. It was a heck of a shot. It was really something. It was like a it was like a defenseman coming off the bench, like walking into a one-timer full speed from the blue line and just like hammering it through the through the net. Yeah, Arsenal beat Chelsea. They were down one nothing at two minutes in and came back to win two one. Check out the second goal. There's a beautiful like what looks cooler than when there's a dummy right where the pass goes, you pretend to take it. Yeah, you dummy out. Hobart. Oh man, who's pretty nice to get stuff. They won. All they do is win. Champions League games today and tomorrow by the way. All right, we're back tomorrow with Joe Marino among others. John Harris to Texan Southern reporter.