Luke Kuechly Opens Up About Why He Walked Away & His Football Obsession + NFL Votes To Ban Tush Push

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Busting with the Boys. We are a show that brings the locker room to life through awesome conversations with incredible guests, a little bit of emotion, of emotional trauma. But most importantly, we are a podcast about being for the boys, and I want you to be for the boys too, a way that you can be for the Boys wherever you're watching, wherever you're listening to this podcast right now, make sure you are subscribed on Apple, Spotify, Google, YouTube, Rumble. We're on all the platforms. Make sure you're subscribed to the Boys. And we also launched our merch store last week. Our website is live. That is BWTB dot com. You can buy these hats, you can buy our merch, you can buy whatever to be for the Boys. Just go shop at our merch store BWTB dot com. I am your host, Will Compton. Some would say the CEO of how in the hell did he play in the league for that long? Alongside me as always is the boy Taylor Lawan, built like a Greek god, brain of a toddler, but God, we love him. We are the boys. On today's episode, we get in a little bit of March madness talk. At the top, we talked about how fried our brackets are, how our brackets have basically just taken a beating by a torpedo bat. Speaking of torpedo bets, we also dive into the torpedo bat conversation in baseball, and we also sprinkle in a little bit of NFL talk because the coach's picture came out. We throw a couple of fun jabs at Vaibel. We talk about his fit. We also talk about the tush push rule that is being decided today as you watch this episode. Then the main event, a two and a half hour conversation I believe is a two and a half hours Mitch with Luke Keighley, your boy as a linebacker. I aspired. I aspire to be a poor man's Luke Keighley. This conversation, this is the smartest, scariest and most respectful psycho path to potentially maybe walk on the football field on the defensive side. We get a deep dive into how incredible he was. He's like a Hollywood director watching film. That's how much film do you watch? We dive into the mind of Luke Keighley, what got him out of the league with concussions and we talk about his post football life. This conversation is everything you want. This is football porn with Luke Keighley. Wherever you're at, buckle up. This is a banger episode. Whether you're in the gym, you're in it right now, you're sitting in a meeting and you have it one AirPod in trying to listen to the boys talk while your boss talks. Wherever you are dial it in. This is a fun episode. Big hugs, tiny kisses. Let's go.

00:02:15
Speaker 2: All right, We're good.

00:02:17
Speaker 3: You like go.

00:02:19
Speaker 4: Busting with the boys, hanging with the face, betting on a game. No woman's gonna tell us what knop be. We're here just drinking beer and making a n baby, I'm hanging with the Fellers. He's busting with the boys.

00:02:55
Speaker 2: Bro, Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of Bus with the Boys. It is episode code three hundred and twenty two. We have a massive guest, the greatest white linebacker, maybe the second greatest white linebacker ever walked this entire earth. As always, we are presented by the wonderful and powerful FanDuel. Bust with the Boys is presented by a FanDuel sportsbook. FanDuel is America's number one sportsbook. We did a couple of parlays this week Thursday and Friday. Thursday plus six hundred odds. What happens? Will Danger hit it? Banger bee hepatitis? See you later Friday. Optimism you're feeling is good. This is literally you just history in the making. We stream two days. First day, bets go well. Second day we're like, it's gonna go great, He's gonna go amazing.

00:03:41
Speaker 1: Plus six hundred banger. We had ready locked in.

00:03:43
Speaker 2: Load plus six hundred banger. We had Michigan in there. We had a couple overs in there. Guess what, not one of them hit. But if you were on that Thursday parlay, you might have made yourself a little bit of coin.

00:03:52
Speaker 1: I want to say too. It was like the first over under one. I think it was like over a half m h and some body want it. It might have been Michigan State, maybe it was I can't remember. But they won seventy three to seventy. Oh god, Arkansas, Kansas seventy three to seventy.

00:04:10
Speaker 2: That is sickening. And how does Vegas know. I just don't understand.

00:04:15
Speaker 1: I don't say we keep we keep the lights on for him.

00:04:18
Speaker 2: We're gonna sandwich this whole thing with positive negative positive. My futures parlay that. A couple of people thought I was jinxing. Hey, hey, let's get that around them. Pause real quickly, what do you mean? Hey? Oh, hang on the way, who thought you were Jens? Fucking you? Get one of those that's showing in there. I didn't know shit about basketball. I didn't know nothing about basketball. I said, let me just put my net on the floor right here, let me flop this thing on here, and guess what happened. We knocked it out of the park. And that is what a feeling? What a feeling? You know nothing? And just go How about these four? Hey, I heard Houston's pretty good. I'll put them in the Elite eight. Hey, Florida's pretty good.

00:04:54
Speaker 5: Eight?

00:04:54
Speaker 2: Sure, this is the phrase I keep hearing in my head. No one's gonna be surprised if Michigan makes it the Sweet sixteen. Let's plopped them in there right there, and then your boys in Arizona. Boy, So what are we gonna do. We're gonna put them in this Sweet sixteen as well. Yes, all of them hit, Yes, all of them head.

00:05:08
Speaker 1: Thankfully, thankfully, because you were on pace to jinx it.

00:05:12
Speaker 2: Fortunately, I threw a little prayer for you. I appreciate that. Yes, I appreciate that. There was talking about chickens hatching eggs. He's just trying to He's trying to do the same thing. I understand. Get let's not get ahead of ourselves. That's all. It's all in the brain of looking out for your boy. I love it, and I actually appreciate you guys doing that because it allowed me and sure him to cook up a nice little video that I truly enjoyed. I enjoyed making that sing on the train tracks, you me and Jared Shirtless. Jared was filming that also, shirtless. Right guy pulled up on us right after, right after we finished. He goes hey, we're just three pasty white guys sitting by train tracks. He goes hey, don't do that again, Yes, sir, Yes, sir. We got a light pile back into my truck, just one bench seat. We just gotta pull off out of there. But it was fun to make. It was fun to do. It's nice to have those things happen. Home Run Parlays. We had a nice little one Friday didn't even get close, did Was.

00:06:04
Speaker 1: It plus one hundred and ninety three thousand, ninety three million million million? Yeah, one hundred and ninety eight million odds.

00:06:11
Speaker 2: So we learned a couple of things about fans since yeah, he won fifty one cents to win nine hundred and I think ninety six thousand dollars. Yeah, And so we we get in the office foot Friday morning, we're kind of hanging out and well, right.

00:06:22
Speaker 1: Now because the home run Jackpop parlay, like everybody was hitting dingers when open.

00:06:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone, especially the Yankees. Yeah, going nuts. Yah, those torpedo bats, which I kind of love. We'll get to that in a minute. But Saran put together no Coop comes over to me and goes, my boys who love baseball. These are the three right here, and it was like plus eight hundred or plus one thousand odds, And I just was like, yeah, I mean, your boy say it, I'm gonna bet it. So I bet it. Then Shearon goes, I think I'm gonna get a little crazy. He puts nine lakes together with you know, a number that I've never seen before my entire life. Go to put in like a hundred bucks, Yeah, to pass we win one hundred. Was walking around.

00:06:56
Speaker 1: He was walking around with the FanDuel AAP and he just hand you the phone and say, pick a guy in this game.

00:07:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where for me in the past. Yeah, And I find out on Fandle the max bet you can win a million dollars. So it all we all had to bet, like I think the max was fifty six cents on that. Jared had a great little idea, bet at four or five times and then you can start cashing out periodically. But I told him, I was like, I think I'm pretty sure like that would get flagged something, something would happen with that. But I but I fell. I did the same thing. I got. I bet like four or five times. I'm kind of hyped up. I go look at I go home. I literally tell my wife, sweetie, we're gonna win a million dollars today. There's an opportunity for us to win a million. She goes, how much did you bet you? Two quarters and six cents. That's what I did. And at the first leg, nope, second leg Nopecause we were.

00:07:45
Speaker 1: One one hit, right, a few of these will hit and we'll cash out.

00:07:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, get up to a couple of thousand, Yeah, a couple of thousand. Kind of just pop that thing in there, no problem. But I think that's the thing we should do Fridays Ungodly parlays put fifty cents on it is eventually you keep swinging, right, it's baseball keeps we eventually you make contact. Fifty cent Friday. I like it. We might have to.

00:08:08
Speaker 1: We might have to start looking at the few cats on the Yankees because they've just been going yard.

00:08:13
Speaker 2: There's a video that came out. There's this guy sitting in like right field. Yankees fans get the Yankee shirt on Yankee hat and he goes. I had a dream last night that the top three and the first inning all hit home runs, and it shows him reacting to all three guys hitting home was like, the first six guys right, so are just going off? Wait? Wait all of that at home runs? Home runs in a row? No, I don't think it was in a row, but I think the first three guys hit home runs right back to back to back home runs because these vortex bats, which I kind of love. The torpedoes.

00:08:42
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00:09:09
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00:09:54
Speaker 2: New York, and again maybe use that home run token.

00:09:57
Speaker 1: Your best bet would be with with a cap from the Yankee Aaron Judge.

00:10:00
Speaker 2: I mean, he's just hitting bombs amazing.

00:10:02
Speaker 1: What was I think I saw a stat that was like, he's hit he's on pace to hit over three hundred home runs right now in a season, and he's hit how many home runs and like like five home runs and seven at bats or something like that.

00:10:16
Speaker 3: At one point yesterday it was four home runs at nine at bats.

00:10:20
Speaker 1: In nine at bats. I mean, the dude is just going yard. Yes, and you learn about this, what is it some mit guy, some cat that they hired a new moneyball We need to get another Moneyball movie. In the words, get Brad Pitt back in there, do it over this mit guy averaging.

00:10:35
Speaker 2: Five forty five That is incredible. Yeah, with four home runs, four home runs already two games in crazy Yeah, helping his boys out of there.

00:10:46
Speaker 1: So what does anybody We don't have coup on the bus. So it sounds like they're taking some wood near the handle and they're putting it around the street spot.

00:10:53
Speaker 2: My understanding of the bat thing is that it has to be a certain weight, and so there's distributing more weight from the handle through the barrel of the bat, essentially giving us all our Little League board text bats back. Yeah.

00:11:04
Speaker 3: But if you look at the shape the to like how it like builds up and then goes back down the end of it's like the same size.

00:11:11
Speaker 2: Of a normal bat.

00:11:11
Speaker 3: But they're like just compressing the amount of wood that's in that one sweet spot.

00:11:17
Speaker 2: So if it hits, it's called juice in that one spot of the bat. Juice in it.

00:11:20
Speaker 3: And if you miss it, like by a little bit, like you'll still hit a good ball. But basically their their focus is on this one spot of impact and you should have success.

00:11:31
Speaker 1: It's insane to me that that is legal legal, But I will say this, I personally enjoy it.

00:11:38
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think let's just hit home runs. Right? Is there anybody is anybody on this bus?

00:11:45
Speaker 1: Let guys take steroids, Let guys juice the bat and let it.

00:11:49
Speaker 2: Would you imagine TRT with this bat? Yeah, it'd be it'd be insane. Everyone always talks about baseball. I don't follow a whole lot of baseball. But they're like bringing back to Mark McGuire, the Sabososa earrow of of the steroids. Everyone was just hitting all the time and always like tuning in to be like, this guy's gonna hit one. I know, chasing records every year, chasing records every single year. And now you bringing this bat without the needle. It's like you're kind of getting what you're asking for. Everyone's kind of getting back to whatever that timeframe was.

00:12:14
Speaker 6: And one, I don't know why it took so long, because clearly it's allowed.

00:12:19
Speaker 7: By the rules, isn't.

00:12:21
Speaker 6: They're insane, right, And if you're a team, how have you not already chased that edge for it? And then now, if you're a team and you're seeing the Yankees, why wouldn't you immediately hire a staff and create these bats for your team like.

00:12:33
Speaker 2: The next like this week?

00:12:35
Speaker 1: Right, every team should have these fucking vortex these torpedo bats.

00:12:39
Speaker 3: Me and my boys are saying the Yankees should just somehow trademark.

00:12:43
Speaker 2: It, make sure no one else can no one else can do it. That's when it gets canceled.

00:12:46
Speaker 3: That is when it gets canceled. But at least for this first like month of baseball. She'd be like, oh, you didn't read this.

00:12:52
Speaker 2: Fine print right there, you stop production.

00:12:55
Speaker 3: We'll actually take those yo.

00:12:56
Speaker 2: Show was one hundred million dollars now for even trying.

00:12:58
Speaker 1: So did you compare to think? It's nuts how that loophole was found. I'm making this.

00:13:04
Speaker 2: I want to see the first guy on the other team that noticed that bat, that the first up at bat that got hold in the bat, and like, I don't can they do that?

00:13:10
Speaker 3: I don't think I knew that teams made their own bats. Yeah, I just thought it was Louisville sluggers.

00:13:16
Speaker 2: Althought we all just go to Dick' Sporting Goods in the corner and be like, all right, yeah, we'll get an MLB baseball bat. It's not how it works at all. Yeah, amount of money that's in baseball, especially moneyball, you see all everyone's always trying to find that one percent. How is this happening now when I.

00:13:30
Speaker 1: Took this long and the fact that that's that's even allowed, It's like, yeah, what was the hold up?

00:13:36
Speaker 2: Yeah? And I want to know.

00:13:37
Speaker 1: I would love to know how that conversation went down where this MIT guy sparked this idea.

00:13:43
Speaker 2: I have an idea slower, stands up nervous. That is crazy, makes makes baseball more exciting.

00:13:51
Speaker 3: People on Twitter like making it bigger each like, yeah, so funny it is.

00:13:56
Speaker 2: Uh, that's kind of dope. Yeah.

00:13:58
Speaker 3: The size of Aaron Judge using the bat is just that's unfair.

00:14:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, six seven, When is he two sixty? He's enormous. He's a unit. Yeah, it's like me on the woftball field. Hey, wolftball is a different game. Now you see those some of those cats out there pitching the way they do just crazy. Yeah, Baseball's Baseball's getting interesting again.

00:14:21
Speaker 1: Now that's getting interesting now that we're down to the final four. Who are you guys? I mean, it's just this. It feels like a no brainer. Duke, Right, I'm Duke.

00:14:31
Speaker 8: I have floida in my bracket, but I think Duke's gonna pull it off.

00:14:34
Speaker 1: They look incredible, man, they look incredible. They just operate too. It's like I saw to where they're the highest scoring like Duke team on points per game in the tournament that of all time.

00:14:48
Speaker 9: It's impressious.

00:14:51
Speaker 3: You know, it's hard to uh forba M to have a showing like that against a team like Duke. You want to at least, you know, you think you slow momentum down a little bit with Cooper Flag. But they have guys everywhere. Their center is insane. Uh yeah, seven what's his name, kanneplek Nipple something. He's lights out, Proctor's lights out. I think he's the most underrated guy on their team. But to have a night like Bama did on Thursday too, then that was just highs and lows in.

00:15:22
Speaker 2: The truest form.

00:15:23
Speaker 1: I mean, Tennessee was struggling too, Jack, How is your mental? How is your mental yesterday? Watching that game?

00:15:31
Speaker 8: I mean, you know, well, I don't know where we're gonna go with this. Tennessee got their assh Well, they played horrible. They were over fourteen from three, they were two for twenty two or two for twenty three from field goals in like the first thirteen minutes.

00:15:48
Speaker 2: It was horrible. And then Houston was playing lights out too.

00:15:51
Speaker 8: So I was just happy that we put hands on Kentucky on Friday night.

00:15:56
Speaker 2: That's a big one, That's all.

00:15:57
Speaker 8: I mean, Like it makes how horrible the performance was yesterday feel a little better, but yeah, you know, just what happens, man, You play so many games in the span of three weeks that if you don't play lights out the whole time, you're gonna get got in Tennessee.

00:16:14
Speaker 2: Got got.

00:16:15
Speaker 8: But to any of the Kentucky fans out there, I'm sorry.

00:16:20
Speaker 2: Sorry that the last laugh, didn't you just Kenty fan.

00:16:24
Speaker 6: I think what's cool about this Final four is that it's two og coaches versus two young coaches. But the style of basketball is very similar, you know, amongst everyone. And for John Shire, if they win, he could be the first ever guy to win as a player at his school and as a coach at his school. And he's extremely young. And I don't know if y'all heard Pat BEV talking about him or if y'all remember watching John Shire playing. He was a dog in college, set records in high school. And I can't remember if he was from Ohio. He's from Illinois. Luke Canard is from Ohio broke Lebron's record. But John Shire was like the guy in Chicago. Pat Bev's talking about him, like, man, this dude. He would pull up to any gym. Everybody feared him. And this is in inner city Chicago. John Shire pulls up, They're all like we don't want any part of it. And the only reason he stopped playing in the NBA was because he got poked in his eye and he's legally blind in one of his eyes. No shit, Yeah, so he is. He was. He was such a beast watch and he was like peak college basketball fandom when we're I think they won twenty ten, so we're like freshmen in high school talking at the lunch table. Yeah, so it's cool to see him in the in the championship.

00:17:37
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:17:38
Speaker 1: I don't know who beats him. I mean, I guess, you know, an it's anybody's game. But just watching Duke far thus far, like they just seem to be operating at a different level when they're on the floor.

00:17:50
Speaker 6: Yeah, Houston could. I mean the fact that they're the team with the lowest turnover rate in the country. You always have a chance with that, But Duke, they just get easy buckets. Every other team, I feel like has to get hard buckets, and every single one of Duke's baskets on Alabama seemed like it was wide open. But yeah, Gary Nelson cat is.

00:18:14
Speaker 2: An update on our brackets. Well, I learned in the pre production, meaning that Garrett is now the leader in the clubhouse with our brackets throughout? Was it ninety nine percent? Oh yeah, one seed, one seed?

00:18:24
Speaker 6: None of this bullshit.

00:18:25
Speaker 2: Gosh, I saw the board, the.

00:18:30
Speaker 3: Percentile, Yeah, I mean top three. I had to take my guys out for, you know, the betterment of the brackets.

00:18:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, you understood, you understood, You understood better than I did. I got a little too generous with the Michigan. But the futures hit, futures hit, though, we put when we need him in that futures bet.

00:18:49
Speaker 3: I do think the best matchup is Florida Duke, just because Florida has bigs that can try and guard Duke. Florida's got a point guard that's like out and Duke is proven that they're.

00:19:03
Speaker 2: And do you have Duke in Florida in your final two?

00:19:05
Speaker 3: I do so I'm a little biased.

00:19:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because I got Houston and Florida in my final two. I wonder if I can catch you.

00:19:10
Speaker 6: Garrett is ranked in the top ten thousand brackets.

00:19:13
Speaker 10: No, yes, let's gone, God bless why one seeds?

00:19:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, this weekend, I just see JP tweeted about next year. I'm only going, Well, you're auto drafting, bro, you thought every upset in the world was gonna happen, didn't you. It's march.

00:19:34
Speaker 6: It's march man. That's how it used to be, and that's how you used to get paid. Yeah more, but now I just hold on to it and yeah, I mean there was only one upset in the first round. Obviously we're in the Elite eight. It was all ones and twos except for one three seed. Yeah, so it's tough year, but there's always next year for the Yeah, but it seems like they.

00:20:02
Speaker 2: Laid it out forty recommnd us.

00:20:07
Speaker 6: I hope as far as upsets go, the quality of basketball is very good.

00:20:12
Speaker 2: But I don't know, do you guys watch the Michigan Auburn game at all? I mean, it was like there was quality basketball going on, but there was a five minutes span in that second half where it was just turnover after turnover, everyone just running down to the other side of the court, losing the ball and someone grabbing and then losing the ball on the other side.

00:20:29
Speaker 6: Well, the ball in this tournament, there was a lot of complaints in the beginning that it's like overinflated, so a lot of guys were having trouble ball handling it over inflated.

00:20:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little opposite of Tom Brady to flate gate, right, something going on? Okay, all right, Auburn.

00:20:44
Speaker 6: All connected, tom Brady, Michigan over inflated.

00:20:48
Speaker 2: Let's see what's going on here. Michigan always a common denominator in those things. When during the SEC Tournament he said he went to the game and he saw Florida and Alabama, and Florida just wiped the floor of Alabama's the point where She's like, I just got to sit here. Oh, I'll get to a point here. He's like, I gotta sit here and basically just watch great basketball take place. And so when I'm watching the Michigan Auburn game, like Michigan's down by one at the end of the first half, and the second half they go up seven, I'm thinking, holy shit, the boys are gonna do. My bracket's looking fantastic. And then Auburn, this center goes crazy, and then zero this freshman starts going nuts, like just basically closing his eyes and throwing the ball in the air. It goes in every single time to the point where they just started to run away with it. And I thought I was in the same position. I thought about you, and I was like, this is I just got to watch Auburn do incredible things right now because they were not missing. There's nothing Michigan could do this.

00:21:38
Speaker 3: I'm alled JP say his two cents about the center, but Oliver like him.

00:21:43
Speaker 2: He is a little demonstrative with his hand gestures. He loves to be seen. I don't like that.

00:21:49
Speaker 3: Zero Pettiford's nice. Auburn's still ass fuck Auburn, but Petiford is nice. I'm alled JP talk about four real quick.

00:21:59
Speaker 6: Broom tweeted it out. But he is the most over dramatic player in college basketball. Yes, he is a beast, but he's also like twenty three years old, and he carries himself like he is Lebron And I want him to do I want him to have I want him to get rich after school. I don't wish any I don't want him to have a horrible career in the NBA. But I can't see him in the NBA doing his thing, and the way he carries himself, you would think he's he's a number one draft pick. But last night in the game, did y'all watch it? This guy bro Now he went down and like it looked like he kind of messed up his knee, and so it's like, oh, snap, that's obviously not good. But then you start hearing it's his shoulder or something, his elbow, and he's like sitting there on the ground with that look of like, man, my tournament's over, and so you're you're feeling for him. He's walking by his teammates, he hugs his mom. He goes to the locker room, tolds yes, maw's the coach. I'm done. I'm like, dang, and you know, he bought. He battled through some injuries earlier in the year that we're also kind of overhyped when it first happened. But he goes to the locker room, come back, comes back out, gets the big cheer, and then immediately gets grabs a one handed rebound and then goes and knocks down a three and is like juicing everyone up. I'm like, this is not you can't do this, this is not allowed, and Taylor likes it.

00:23:22
Speaker 2: He went in there, got that blue bound State shot bro State training staff and they got that need allowed.

00:23:28
Speaker 6: And then I can't wait till he's.

00:23:31
Speaker 2: I didn't know he did that. Listen, he overcame an injury.

00:23:35
Speaker 6: I get he overcame an injury I did.

00:23:38
Speaker 2: I mean, I hated that he was doing it to Michigan, but I loved like his physicality and the paint like he was body and catch plays in the corner you know there, and then grew.

00:23:47
Speaker 1: Up playing sports like you all. You know, you know those teammates that were like, dude, are you even that injured?

00:23:52
Speaker 2: Right now?

00:23:53
Speaker 3: I know?

00:23:53
Speaker 6: And he is that teammate and now he's getting it. He's up for National Player of the Year too.

00:23:59
Speaker 2: Oh you would hate that, Yeah, just the way you said.

00:24:02
Speaker 6: Up for you the flag broom. This guy man, I've been hating on him for for a while now.

00:24:11
Speaker 2: Really, so I brought up a sore subject because he'll be doing it like he will put it on South Carolina even though we should have beat them this year.

00:24:18
Speaker 6: Lost the end. But yeah, he's been he's been bothering me for a while. Damn the NBA.

00:24:26
Speaker 2: It does got talent. And don't you want your players to be like over confident in their abilities. Don't you want like, if this guy's on South Carolina, you would love him?

00:24:34
Speaker 6: No? Yeah, I mean I would I love anybody that wears gardening black. But the Pettiford guy. He's a perfect example. Like he runs his mouth, he thinks he is one of the best point guards ever to touch the basketball court. And he's fun to watch and he doesn't give off the vibe that Broom does like the Auburn point guard. He has this his tape from high school where he's just finding every camera before the game, like I'm killing these I'm doing it into everybody. Then highlights, we roll, putting on a show and I'm about that. He didn't fake injuries, this kid, This kid, he didn't fake injuries.

00:25:10
Speaker 2: This kid zero was insane, unbelievable. He's a freshman, right.

00:25:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, drive into the paint on you guys, drove into the paint, stopped, turn, spun out of it, and hit like a fade away jumper at the elbow.

00:25:24
Speaker 2: And it was we had that seven footer he like somehow got like the exchange, like someone tried to do a pick and so the seven footer went on him and he like just stuttered him real quick and put that kid's feet and just went around laid that thing up no problem. It was crazy to watch anywhere he was, dude, anywhere on the court he was. He put that ball in the air. It either went to somebody got an assist, or he just went in the net.

00:25:47
Speaker 3: It was crazy, yeah games over the weekend, but then there were some really bad ones.

00:25:53
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, all of our teams just got murdered. You me, Jack Weird paid though. Yeah that bracket, shout out that bracket, shoutout March madness. Dude, it's awesome.

00:26:07
Speaker 1: What are we thinking in do we have any any any football topics? I know the the NFL is officially voting on banning the toush push h Why.

00:26:18
Speaker 2: My vov no ban, it'd be no ban.

00:26:21
Speaker 1: Like I it's like, I get frustrated watching it, but at the end of the day, you gotta line up, you gotta figure out a way to stop it. I think, if anything, they need to be very they need to be very detailed on the offense, like false starting, because there it's just such a different looking formation when everybody's all like on all fours, and I feel like there's false starts that kind of happen before the ball is snapped.

00:26:43
Speaker 2: I'll be more focused on getting that kickoff reverse back to what it was like that we have bigger issues out there than the touch push like, you just have man on man, you have dudes on dudes. How tough are you versus how tough am I? And we're gonna find out who's better in this moment. Yeah, it's it's It's an extremely hard play to get passed. There's no doubt. I mean, they've done it for a couple of years now and just have had a insanely high success rate. Other teams that try to mimic it and can't do it, but no one's stopping anybody else from doing this formation. Yeah, it's a torpedo back is to But yeah, you brought up the Bills. The Bills did it, but they do it differently, like Josh Allen takes a step to the left and goes to the b gap.

00:27:23
Speaker 1: They just do it differently, right, And you're saying and not have success. So I'm saying the Bills, like, if you're gonna do it, you just need to go all out and do it like they do it exactly like the Eagles do it have to.

00:27:32
Speaker 2: I mean no, it's not like they they patent it and they're like, hey, nobody else can do this play. Anybody else can do that play and get it done. Sorry, the Eagles quarterback squad six hundred fifty pounds, like, get you a quarterback? Yeah, behind that old line and you have three guys pushing like, I don't see anything wrong with that at all. I see nothing wrong. It sucks. It's especially when your team's playing the Eagles and it's fourth to one. You know, hey, they're gonna get it.

00:27:56
Speaker 1: When you're the commanders and go, yeah, they can award you a free one.

00:28:01
Speaker 2: But it's just I think it's almost ridiculous to even like outlaw this.

00:28:04
Speaker 1: Did you see uh, did you see the coaching photo.

00:28:07
Speaker 2: Do you see our boy Brad? Yeah, shoulders a little stiff in there. Huh, he looks a little siting.

00:28:11
Speaker 1: He's got that funny he's got that little that little grin, that smile where he's actually giving a smile.

00:28:16
Speaker 2: I saw zooming on the photo of the four guys in there. Callahan's in there. It's like when you have to hang out with your ex, uh, your girlfriend's ex boyfriend. It's kind of just kind of sitting there and Raves is over above him, and that that is Braves has got to feel good walking into that building right there, be like, oh, I'm fucking back. But you know he's got it. He's got his little walk in. Yeah, a little stres just owning the room.

00:28:37
Speaker 1: But that right, the strut, the confidence, it's swagged that we know Rabel has none of it.

00:28:43
Speaker 2: None of it is in that photo. He's doing the Will Compton flex is what he's doing. The shoulder up a little bit, got this little thing going, you sees, Pegs. Has he been in the weight room a little No, No, he's been hitting that. He's been hitting that little bag real slow with stretching the corner him and Frank.

00:28:59
Speaker 6: You think he was alty that they had him at the end.

00:29:02
Speaker 2: Maybe, yeah, who knows.

00:29:04
Speaker 6: Maybe I just pictured the person in charge of the photo, like all right, everybody line up please, single, single file line and you just got Andy Reid in the front. Yeah, Like I just pictured that whole behind the scenes process being hilarious.

00:29:17
Speaker 2: Yeah. I wonder if he tried to walk towards the mither, like, oh, could you mind?

00:29:20
Speaker 1: Actually, Mike's over here to the right, zime, no farther.

00:29:23
Speaker 6: Yeah, I've only won.

00:29:24
Speaker 2: A few super at some point he's he's like away from everybody else.

00:29:28
Speaker 1: There's like a big space that's good to himself too, Like I've only won a few Super Bowls and played fourteen years?

00:29:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, how many? How many years in the NFL these guys play, that's crazy.

00:29:38
Speaker 1: I want like the one time you know too, that you can look at this photo and kind of laugh, knowing you can kind of goof on him.

00:29:43
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:29:43
Speaker 1: I feel like, yo, I would whoop your ass in this situation, but knowing like this is the only moment, but outside of it, it'd get a little too physical.

00:29:50
Speaker 2: Did All right, Bro, We're relax, put your little little chest pad on and go go to practice, go to just me. We know you're a psycho. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, he's got to feel good walking in and Patriots head coach. They spent like one hundred and forty million dollars this offseason. They're just getting all He's getting, all those guys, Harold Landry Splaine, all these things. He's getting everybody he wants. He's got Drake May who people are kind of whispering like this kid's a lot better than people think. They've brought on two digs, yes and digs on which interesting.

00:30:20
Speaker 6: And Vrabel digs dynamic to be interesting.

00:30:24
Speaker 2: That is going to be. But I feel like he can handle it. He needs his Yeah, he needs a dog. I thought. I thought, I thought for a min they're to get aj. I thought for a moment, they're only going snipe aj Or from the Eagles. Man.

00:30:36
Speaker 1: I don't know Digs whatsoever, just on headlines, right and gossip and everything else. But again, it's like Raves was working. Raves worked with a lot of different personalities on the tidies. I feel like Braves is somebody that gets it, gets that out of those.

00:30:50
Speaker 2: He's got that tomlin S kind of vibe where he can take multiple personalities make them work together.

00:30:54
Speaker 1: Like we were built around the run game and you had a savage like AJ Brown on the outside, who you know, was frustrated at a time.

00:31:00
Speaker 2: I mean aj was going off, Corey Davis was going off as soon as a j yacht. There. You had who else, Johnny Smith like you had so much talent on some of those teams, Khaliff Raymond just burning kats in Baltimore.

00:31:14
Speaker 6: It's in the right amount. Those guys want to be challenged and they don't. They don't want to coach it. They can say everything they want to. They want a guy that will sort of check them. And I feel like it. It does. It's like you said, bring out the best.

00:31:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's definitely a respect factor that needs it needs to happen with some of these personalities.

00:31:30
Speaker 1: And whether or not as a player, you whether or not you want that or you like that. Right, it does it ultimately like lits you up and then you kind of look back.

00:31:37
Speaker 2: On like, oh this guy was good for me. Yeah, this is where this is where Rabel's fourteen year comment is gonna probably go a long way with dis Yeah, he did do it for a long time. Yeah, I've been nice. Hell always be chirping about how many touchdowns he has and all these different things. How many you got this year? I had this man one year.

00:31:54
Speaker 1: Those bringing up legends, like big personalities like Randy Moss walk through here. I don't know if he played with Randy though, No, Well it will be called it's like being able to play as a team. Yeah, when did frames retire?

00:32:09
Speaker 2: He played with Randy? Right, that's a twenty seven team. I know.

00:32:14
Speaker 1: I was walking around, I can I can picture myself walking around my high school hallways spouting off about how I have Randy Johnson on my fantasy football team.

00:32:23
Speaker 2: So I don't Johnson picture.

00:32:26
Speaker 1: Randy Moss spout off about how I have Randy Moss and my fantasy football team.

00:32:30
Speaker 2: But I don't know. He might have just missed. Was it eight? No, he was still in it. Oh seven? Was that season right? O? Seven eight? Super Bowl? Or was it eight? Season nine Super Bowl? I think it was seven o eight? Oh yeah he played. Oh there you go there. It is good research. Sure, nice work. But yeah, I shout out Rames being back in there. Man, we got to fix that photo though, rapes. Let's take care of that next time we go in there. Let's get a shirt that's a little more fitted, a little more customed out. We got to get out the fox bro too. We gotta sit down. Yeah, gotta see him walk around like we own the place. And then we see him, we just curl up our feet on his desk. He walks in shit, no doubt. Look at him in shape? What a beauty? Yeah? What else we got? Boys? We feel good. We have a massive guest today. Yeah, do you want to, I'll let you up the floor. This is a big moment for Wilcompton.

00:33:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I was ecstatic when he was about coming to Nashville because he was wanting to come on when we were going to the Super Bowl.

00:33:29
Speaker 2: But it was like, bro, we.

00:33:30
Speaker 1: Gotta get you on the bus and we can find him if we can find that because we've been we've been going back and forth with Luke since maybe November October last year because Paul Swan shut up all Swan he kind of hooked it up, put us in a group chat and we were going back and forth. He was already you know, Luke would be out hunting. He's an outdoorsman. He'd have a lot of different things going on. He was requesting to come on during uh during the super Bowl, but again it's like, bro, we gotta get you on the bus so we can find a moment. And I think he came out and worked with Vanderbilt like he was out with Vanderbilt earlier. That earlier that when he came on the bus was in the afternoon, but he was at Vandy old morning. I think just helping with the staff, maybe talking to the players, working with the linebackers. But yeah, get Luke Keigley on. I mean, one of the most accomplished. How long did he play? Eight was it eight years?

00:34:16
Speaker 2: It was eight years?

00:34:17
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the most accomplished careers in that short amount of time ever ever, I mean, he's one of the best.

00:34:23
Speaker 2: And if you're a guy that like truly loves ball, like loves the x's and o's of what's going on, you're going to love watching Luke Keigley dissect all these things. We go into some of the places he's had his back to back picks against the Lions. How he they were in a blitz. They check out the buttz. I'll let him tell a story. But the way he went about the process of the game is a massive reason why he was so successful. Talks about the players he played with, the leadership that was into the rooms. It shows how important a young guy it is for a young guy to get leadership in a room that he walks into, and how important is for those guys that are nine to ten eleven year vets to help the young guys out because it seems like he had great habit before, but getting in with them and them teaching him how to be a pro just send them.

00:35:06
Speaker 1: Yes, empowering him like, hey, you are the guy surrounded by guys that are older than you and had like cut their teeth in the league and very like very respected players that were ahead of him. Absolutely, but dude, it was awesome. I mean it's Louke Keekley and having him on too. It's like getting to talk to him about all the concussion stuff because he's somebody who played his uh his career and he doesn't really go on much or he hasn't necessarily talked about it a whole lot. So getting to kind of dive in on what the insecurities were, like, like what what was popping up, like when those concussions were starting to to create a pattern, like being at peace was retired.

00:35:38
Speaker 2: When did he know he was going to retire?

00:35:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, and him jumping into scouting the year after I thought was insane. Yeah, you're you're just curious a guy at that level, why would you want to go into potentially being a scout in the NFL? Like are you trying to be a GM or you trying to be a coach? And just dabbling in his life after ball since retiring and just hearing him talk about it was awesome and all that seemed like he's he's super he he was super at he's with everything, which I was kind of like, you know, like as a backer knowing that he played at the highest level every.

00:36:07
Speaker 2: Year that he was on the field.

00:36:09
Speaker 1: It's like, man, do you ever think about, like, you know, are you bummed that you didn't get to play like fifteen years or put up a career or play as long as like ray Lewis did, like knowing where his stats probably would have fallen.

00:36:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the only player I've ever seen in my entire life go from being a physical backer and then a little more heady than messy and still have the same amount of productivity. Yeah, because he just understood the game at a different level than everybody else.

00:36:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just his Like the dude ran a four to five I want to say he jumped extremely well on all the combine stuff like his physical capabilities like paired with all that mentality and that preparation and everything else. You just got to see he was a stud on the field man, and his closing speed, the way he could Again, we're we're talking about at the time Julio Jones dunked on him, but he's covering Julio Jones and Julio Jones, which looks like, yeah, we were talking about cover four breaking down how he has to run with Julio Jones. He wasn't really getting a whole lot of help. He had some like late safety help. But we're talking about him running and covering and competing with Julio Jones like when he unfortunately got dunked on.

00:37:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he's just dude, and getting to.

00:37:15
Speaker 1: Break down the Dallas Cowboys plays and him turning his head around and getting that pick.

00:37:20
Speaker 2: Like his ability was jumping out of cover too, because he knows that that's that's covered. He's probably Stafford gone from his read to somewhere else, having his back to a play and knowing what a person behind Hi misthinking and able to turn. Yeah, it's just incredible, dude. Yeah, it's amazing. It just shows like the capability of some football players in their brain that just allows them to operate at that level is just nuts.

00:37:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, just wild dudeses of legends, legend.

00:37:43
Speaker 2: Let's get in this episode. Before we do, let's talk about TikTok. What do you say, Willie? Yes?

00:37:47
Speaker 1: What?

00:37:47
Speaker 2: Hey, Taylor? I have a question.

00:37:48
Speaker 1: What does a mechanic and auto shop owner in Georgia, a taco restaurant operator in Arizona, and a life saving medical innovator in Tennessee all have in common?

00:37:56
Speaker 2: Are they all in small business owners? And they all thriving on TikTok. Yes, bro.

00:38:00
Speaker 1: Across the US, over seven and a half million businesses, from family owned shops to entrepreneurs, are using TikTok to compete and grow. In fact, boys, get a load of this. Seventy four percent of businesses on TikTok say TikTok has allowed them to scale their operations, increasing sales and expanding into new locations.

00:38:17
Speaker 2: What does that kind of growth mean?

00:38:18
Speaker 1: It means jobs. What Today They're over seven and a half million US businesses on TikTok employing more than twenty eight million people, and that number keeps growing. Small businesses thrive on TikTok. Learn more about TikTok's contribution to the US economy at TikTok economic impact dot com.

00:38:38
Speaker 2: And also you can go find Bert's new special Lucky only on Netflix. Shut up, Burt Krescher, Shout out, Burt Kreischer. Let's get to this episode. You guys. Enjoy it, Subscribe unsubscribed, resubscribe and rate five stars for us. Big hugs, tiny kisses, Ladies and gentlemen. This interview is presented by the one the only bud Light out that bud Light Baby. Bud Light has always brew with four simple ingredients for a clean, crisp, refreshing taste. Stuck up on bud Light now and head to bud light dot com forward slash Locator to find a store near you. Bud Light is the official beer sponsor of the NFL, the NFL Draft Tight end you with bud Light partner George Kittle, the UFC Shane Gillis twenty twenty five Tour. Bud Light partners include Will Compton, Peyton Manning, Taylor Lawan, George Kittle, Baker Mayfield, Emitt Smith, Shane Gillis, Post Malone, and Dustin Poorier. Our guest today quite possibly the greatest white athlete to ever be on this earth, a man who has been said gotten apartment his rookie year, had a bed, no TV, just for his iPad so he could be the greatest. Somehow went to Boston College, should have gone to the University of Michigan or Nebraska. Ladies, gentlemen, give your give a ronoplause for Louke Keickley, who also Paul want to see when it drops one day. Hall of fame, all white a team or there we go. Gotta be starting backer. Bro, Welcome to the bus.

00:40:04
Speaker 7: I appreciate it. It's good to be on here.

00:40:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, So how do you want to start? How do you want to do this? Heart pounding? Hey? Yes, right, right, okay, I'll take this.

00:40:13
Speaker 1: Go ahead and start right because I'm just looking at it. That's that's him, that's that's yeah.

00:40:19
Speaker 2: Do you want to start early in his life or he's younger than two? That's what's even crazy? I know, like that's Did you tell Luke that you actually played two more years in the NFL than him? No? I figured we'd get to that point. It's a fact. I can't run from that situation. We get to that point, you get to that point eventually.

00:40:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can go ahead and start it off. Your kick it while I start to gather my thoughts.

00:40:39
Speaker 2: Luke, how does it feeld to be the best white linebacker ever lived? Oh?

00:40:41
Speaker 7: My gosh, So Brian or Lacker was the guy that I grew up watching him and Zach Thomas are pretty daggon good. And then Chicago guy Dick Buckets. I feel like he kind of kind of got it all rolling a little bit can here get it close? Yeah? But uh it was fun.

00:40:56
Speaker 6: Man.

00:40:56
Speaker 7: The game of football is special. And the guys that I grew up watching lack Zach Thomas, Derrek Brooks, Ray Lewis, those are the dudes that when I was growing up, I want I want to be like those guys.

00:41:07
Speaker 2: When did the bug hit you? Because everything I know this is obviously the first time we've met. Yeah, but playing against you, practicing against you one time when you brutal, terrible actually practices we went away did a joint practice and I was always told this guy, Luke Keigley, like he is a football guy. He's a machine. The way he operates, he calls out plays. You have so many clips of guys saying, oh, we would be sitting there, we checked to a play, and then you would call out to play. It was no difference when we were in practice. I actually, I don't know if you read this, I walked up to you in the middle of practice between plays and said something to you. You were like a goddamn robot, like.

00:41:40
Speaker 7: You were so dialog I was hot and trying to get off the field.

00:41:44
Speaker 2: Dons what you were? So when did the bug hit When did you realize, Okay, football is what I want to do with my life.

00:41:50
Speaker 7: I think growing up I wanted to play football, probably start in like second or third grade. You know, you grew up in the Midwest. I grew up in Ohio. The first game that that pops on is at noon, so you wake up on Saturday. We always would have football practice on Saturday mornings. We play on Sundays, and then you'd watch college football all day. So I think for me it was started as a young age. That's the one game that I wanted to play, and we didn't have an opportunity to play in two I was in fourth grade because just how the school was set up, my dad didn't play football. We weren't really a football family growing up. So by the time I got involved with it, I was in fourth grade and my brother was in fifth grade, and we just played on the local school team. It was a group of I think it was Saint Mike's Our lated to the Sacred Heart is where I went to school, and then Saint Xavier. Those are the three team, three schools that made up the team. So it was really like third grade that I knew I wanted to play, and then fourth grade is the first year that actually played.

00:42:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, why Boston College? Like coming to were you were you an offer guy coming out.

00:42:44
Speaker 2: Of high school?

00:42:45
Speaker 7: Yeah, so I knew. You know, when you're coming up, you never expect you're going to play in the NFL. I think for me, it was always what's the next logical step for me. So when you're in grade school, you want to play on So it was third and fourth, fifth and sixth, seventh and eighth. So when you move up to fifth grade and you're on the fifth and sixth team, you want to play on that team. And then as a sixth grader you play, and then on seventh grade you go back in the same situation, and then you get to high school. We had a freshman team, a jv team, and a varsity team. So my goal in high school was to play on the varsity on the varsity team as a junior, which is crazy. It's crazy. We just had we had so many we had. I went to a private all or a Catholic Jesuit all boys school in Cincinnati. That's kind of one of the reasons I went to BC. But there's sixteen hundred boys and we probably had, you know, three to four hundred kids in the football program.

00:43:33
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it was huge three to four hundred years. So your school is one of the reasons why Ohio always looked at such a big.

00:43:39
Speaker 7: Yeah, we were Southwest Ohio, so we had like one hundred and thirty five hundred and forty kids on the freshman team. The JV team was just sophomores, and then that was probably seventy eighty kids, and then on the varsity team was like one hundred and forty kids again, so those numbers get big quick. I went to BC because academically was really strong. That was one thing that my parents talked to me a lot about was go somewhere that you wouldn't be able to get into without football. So I wasn't getting in the Boston College. I looked at Stanford, wasn't getting to get in there. Duke and then Virginia were the schools that I was looking at, and I was like, I can't get in to any of these schools without football. And I'm like, if I can get a scholarship to twent of these schools, I got an opportunity to get a five year education of masters for free and go play football. So that's kind of what you're thinking coming out. And Tom O'Brien was a Saint Xavier guy. That's we went to high school. He went to Saint Xavier and then he ended up coaching at Boston College and started pulling kids out of the high school to go to play football Boston College. So we probably had a kid there for I don't know, twenty twenty years in a row from the high school, just overlapping, and the guys that went to school up there had a ton of success. A lot of them were team captains, a lot of them played really well, and it was a really How that program was run was very similar to how the program was running Cincinnati at Saint Xavier High School of just toughness, playing hard, doing the right thing. We didn't always have the best athletes, but we played really well as a team. And when I was being recruited, Matt Ryan was there, so they were They got as high as number two. They beat Virginia Tech in Blacksburg on that pass across the field from Matt I think I think Andre Calender caught that ball, and there was just a ton of hype around them when I was being recruited, and it was good academically. It was outside of Boston. I knew guys that were there. It was a Jesuit school, just like my high school, and they were playing really really good football at the time.

00:45:26
Speaker 2: So were you an overachiever? Like, were you a beast in high school? As well?

00:45:29
Speaker 1: Like, are any guys in that school that three to four hundred? Are there any freshmen or guys playing varsity?

00:45:35
Speaker 2: No?

00:45:36
Speaker 7: So, I mean, you know, my my freshman year, I didn't play a whole lot. We had we had since the team was so big. We had an A team and a B team. So the A team would play like on a Wednesday, and the B team would play on a Thursday, so we'd play the other freshman team. Yeah, so they played on I think on Saturdays. The varsity team played Friday nights and then we played Saturdays. Typically, I think is what happened. So freshmen don't play on varsity typically, I don't think. I don't know the last time it's happened. Occasionally you'll get like two or three sophomores play varsity, but they got to be dudes. But I would say that eighty five percent of guys don't aren't on the varsity team. Until they're juniors.

00:46:18
Speaker 2: So yeah, so that's why your goal was varsity.

00:46:23
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm thinking you like, if you.

00:46:25
Speaker 2: Had the bug, if you had this kind of drive, the way everyone sees and talks about this kid must have been a freshman on varsity, but this around, it seems like an absolute powerhouse.

00:46:33
Speaker 7: Yeah, and I loved I loved the game of football. I was small, so my freshman year I played outside linebacker, and my sophomore year they moved me to tight end because the backers that we had they were bigger than me.

00:46:43
Speaker 2: There there's better.

00:46:45
Speaker 7: So my sophomore year those guys all play backer and then I played tight end, and then.

00:46:49
Speaker 2: My juniories I was a good blocker. Yeah, I'll tell you what.

00:46:54
Speaker 7: I'm so glad I didn't have to play offense because all formations and trades and shifts. You play mike backer, you just line up in the middle of the field. Yeah, you don't got to go anywhere.

00:47:03
Speaker 2: So that you're also calling out all those tradesformations and ship. Yeah, it's but oftense. Guy.

00:47:09
Speaker 7: There was a guy named Ryan Long. He played right tackle and he played tight end in the year before and then I think in like training camp and then they moved me to tight end and they moved him to tackle, so he knew all the formations, so I'd line up next to him in the huddle. They called the playmac Where do I line up?

00:47:25
Speaker 2: Shit?

00:47:25
Speaker 7: So I Ryan Long was like my my life support? Uh, playing tight end and then I switched back to linebacker as a junior, and then I played like a hybrid safety as a senior.

00:47:36
Speaker 2: So, so, as a junior on varsity, were you starting at that point? I did? Okay, That's when when they.

00:47:41
Speaker 7: Was so I started to grow. I started to grow a little bit. I got a little bigger.

00:47:45
Speaker 2: How big were you going into BC?

00:47:48
Speaker 7: Oh Man? So I played my senior year at like two twelve and then I got to b C. I was probably like two eighteen. So I played I don't know, two eighteen, two twenty as a freshman, and then like two twenty eight as a sophomore, and then as a junior, I played like two thirty one two.

00:48:04
Speaker 1: Just a thicky When did you know in college that hey, I might have something, I might have a future in the NFL.

00:48:11
Speaker 7: So I think you know you? So in college it was interesting because Mark Hurzlik, you guys remember him, monster. Yeah. So Mark Hurzlik was a junior. I went to spring game. He was he was going into his what was it?

00:48:25
Speaker 1: Because he got done with his junior year, right, he was like a first round potential. The cancer thing happened. Yeah, he fought his way sat out a year, so he fought his way back.

00:48:33
Speaker 7: I go to spring ball going as when I'm a senior, Mark's going to be a He's he's going to be a senior in college. So it's his spring ball before his senior year, and they've been telling me, like, Mark's got like a low back hamstring thing, He's probably not going to play a lot in the spring gam I was bummed because I wanted to watch him play. So he goes and plays, a couple of snaps comes out, and then like a couple of weeks later, it's he's got ewing sarcoma bone cancer. So I get there, I get to school. Mark's out the whole year. Essentially he red shirted as he was dealing with cancer. I don't know how the guy did it. He was there all the time, worked out every day, was still big and strong, was in all the meetings. It was fantastic. As a young guy to go. Yeah, he had gone through chemo radiation, everything, but he was a great older guy to have at BC As a freshman, he wasn't playing, so there was like no stress of I mean he was dealing with cancer obviously, but yeah.

00:49:26
Speaker 2: That is a that is a football thing to say. The stress of playing as crazy.

00:49:31
Speaker 7: So so then Mark's out. Mike McLoughlin was our Mike linebacker. He's like the prototype from Massachusetts. He had the he had the cowboy collar neck roll, he had the little bull ring.

00:49:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, he wore the diaper chin strap. No he didn't.

00:49:44
Speaker 7: He had a diaper chin strap and then he switched over to the pad in one. But he was like the prototype. He was coming back from an achilles, so he was going to miss the first couple games of the season and then I don't know, a week or two in the training camp are starting Mike backer. Will Thompson gets like a shoulder stinger. So I'm over with the freshman doing inside run. Get my teeth kicked in and they just needed a mic backer, so they called me over and I had to go over as like little skinny two hundred and twenty pounds Luke and play against the older guys and just get my teeth kicked in. I was like, this is awful. And my coach came up to me after the after that period and he's like, I was pretty terrible. You got to figure it out because you're going to play week one because we don't have anybody else. I'm like, what about this guy? And he's like, well.

00:50:31
Speaker 2: That guy.

00:50:32
Speaker 7: Uh, that guy got popped for a drug test, so he can't play either. So if you're.

00:50:37
Speaker 2: Looking at the coach saying, hey, you're being told you're gonna play week one, but you're like, hey, what about that.

00:50:41
Speaker 7: Guy, I'm like yeah, yeah, I'm like I'm my confidence is zero. So hers Lick's out, Max out, Will Thompson gets hurt, guy gets popped for a drug test, and then before you know, your top four guys are out, and so there's really no one left. So like, hey, week one, you're just gonna have to figure it out. So the first couple games a season or disaster, go down to Clemson, we play in Death Valley against C. J. Spiller and that yeah, yeah, yeah, they had Daikon Bowers and they had another they had an I forget another.

00:51:12
Speaker 2: He's back there JP's a South Carolina guy. He hates every time they're mentioned. They have to they have to be trashed on.

00:51:18
Speaker 7: Yeah. So but then you make a couple of plays in those games you're like, you know, I got a chance. And then I remember my sophomore year was when I was like, Okay, you played against in Clemson against you know, CJ. Spiller, and then you just start going through the guys that you play against. You're like, these guys are all getting drafted in the NFL, Like this might actually be an opportunity for me. So it's it's just interesting how you go from high school you want to play on the varsity team do as a freshman like you're you don't, I don't really have a choice. You get in there and play, and then you're like, man, I'm this is fun. I'm starting to have some success. And then you fast forward. You kind of the next thing you look forward too is like, I love the game of football. I've had a ton of fun. I'd love to keep playing this as long as I can. So you kind of look back as probably probably three quarters of the way through my sophomore year, you look back and you're like, these are the guys that I played against, this has been their career in the NFL, Like maybe I got a chance.

00:52:09
Speaker 2: So there wasn't like a specific play in mind that you made a big play and you're like, oh shit, okay, I can do this. It was a reflection period for you. Yeah, but you're to look back and kind of be like, all right, all these guys are playing in the NFL. This means I can do X, Y and Z as well. Yeah.

00:52:20
Speaker 7: I just think you you know, you look at it and you're like, I've played in like big games. We played at Clemson, we played at Florida State, we played at Notre Dame, and you're like, these are the these are the teams in the situations that you grew up watching and now you get a chance to be in them. And it's something I always tell guys, like, you need to enjoy the game because when it's gone, it's gone. So I was so when I was playing, so laser focused on football in the process that you don't ever take a second to really look back and say, damn, like that was that was pretty cool?

00:52:51
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, because your sophomore in junior year, correct me if I'm wrong, but you led the NC double and tackles.

00:52:57
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, we just we were on the field a lot. We were on the field a lot. We didn't you kind of we kind of really didn't have a choice. You know, you played eighty ninety snaps like you got more opportunities. Especially.

00:53:10
Speaker 2: You know.

00:53:10
Speaker 7: The other thing too, is like we weren't ahead a lot late. So you know what happens at the end of the game. Their team's run four minute, they're gonna run the ball and they got they got five or six run plays, and they're gonna run power, they're gonna lead, and they're gonna run stretch. It's like perfect, all right, here we go.

00:53:26
Speaker 2: Buddy.

00:53:26
Speaker 1: Every time he like you'd see a statueet on like league leaders, and he's sitting there every week averaging like fifteen tackles a game. That is I'm thinking, who was this loukey from?

00:53:38
Speaker 7: He must be on the field a lot.

00:53:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, must like the excuse to the competitor makes like, oh they got Well, you know.

00:53:43
Speaker 7: What's funny is you look at all those things and like people are lying if they don't look at that stuff. Right, So then I went and looked at it one time and it had number of snaps played, and it was like we had a gazillion. And then you go look at like Alabama that got like Dante high Towers at Alabama he had like half the amount of snaps play that we did. Chris Borland had a million.

00:54:04
Speaker 2: Dog Well you were here is twenty thirteen.

00:54:06
Speaker 7: Twenty twelve, twenty that linebacker class was strong.

00:54:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, you guys had because I was twenty thirteen while I was undrafted. But twenty twelve, you guys said.

00:54:16
Speaker 7: It was you, so it was Dante, and then Bobby got drafted in the second round. Wagner, Levante, David, Mario, Davis. Yeah, there were some. I'm sure I'm and I'm probably missing some guys, but those.

00:54:30
Speaker 1: But those top four that you just said tomorrow Davis, Levante, David, yourself, Bobby Wagner.

00:54:34
Speaker 7: Three of those guys, I mean to Mario is still playing with the Saints, and that dude he's you look at his stats and it's like, oh my gosh, like what he's been able to do. Same thing with Bobby. The guy that I never feel like it's enough credit is Levante. I love Levonte. Look at go look at his his sacks, his force fumbles and his fumble recoveries. It's unbelievable, dude.

00:54:57
Speaker 2: He is always around the football.

00:54:58
Speaker 7: He's a great dude.

00:55:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's phenomenal. Yeah.

00:55:01
Speaker 1: Yesterday the Bucks their profile posted like his stats. He has sixteen hundred tackles right now, there's only eight guys in the history of the game to have over sixteen hundred tackles. Him and Bobby Wagner are both still doing it.

00:55:13
Speaker 7: Unbelieva. Who those Yeah, and they're not slowing down. Bobby had over one hundred last year. I think he just resigned and the Levante sign another deal with Tampa, which is cool because you know, as great of his career as he's had, he's been on the same team the whole time.

00:55:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's cool jevity that he's had. Yeah, and and not get jaded over kind of being overlooked by so many guys yourself. At points, Bobby.

00:55:37
Speaker 1: I was tell JP he has one Pro Bowl I believe, and it was as an alternate. But it's such bullshit because he's like one of the most underrated players of all time.

00:55:44
Speaker 7: Well, the thing that hurts him is that he he's classified because they were four to three. He was an outside linebacker. Yeah, so like the prototype outside linebacker is like, you know, the rush and the guys got fifteen sacks.

00:55:58
Speaker 2: Right, that's where yeah, those those salmon willis kind of get screwed over in the Pro Bowl because the guys at their hand of the dirt well.

00:56:04
Speaker 7: And the funniest part about the Pro Bowl is that they those off the ball backers. They're listed as outside linebackers. The only rush it's only a four down look, so those guys have to play off the ball. Yeah, they're playing a four three and Justin Houston is playing off the ball at five yards like, what are you doing?

00:56:19
Speaker 2: Yeah? You know they at the fourth quarter of the game. If it's tight though, I'm about to take yeah exactly, because it is. It is a little bit of a war.

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00:57:12
Speaker 2: Were you you at IMG training for the Combine?

00:57:14
Speaker 7: Yeah?

00:57:14
Speaker 2: Is that where you were? Yeah? That's why I went as well. And that was like I think my first introduction to the luke Keickley. You had like yourself a little mirror, oh gosh on the wall and they're like, you know that guy is we had?

00:57:23
Speaker 7: That was so fun, dude.

00:57:25
Speaker 2: IM really is an awesome place because there's no like I was a big time party. You're in college and then you know, got a little straight as I got into the league. But like when you're in braden'son Florida, there's like newly weds and nearly dead. There's no one between there's no nightlife or nothing. So it was me and like the thirty other guys that were training. Awesome, that's all we had. We had like a small, little shitty. Those little apartments are just off of the iron. Get the golf cart. Yeah, the golf cart you rip it around.

00:57:48
Speaker 7: It was the first time you had a little freedom.

00:57:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of golf cart in your own place, but it's also well regimented. I loved it. There was that Were you thinking about tween there in Exos.

00:57:57
Speaker 7: No, because the guys so occurs, like and then Anthony Costanzo.

00:58:03
Speaker 2: Gangster Boston College.

00:58:04
Speaker 7: Yeah, they were the year year ahead of me in the draft. So Anthony got drafted first round by the Colts. And then Mark Mark was went to the Giants and those guys trained at IMG and and I went to school with them, and I was like, guys Exos or IMG, and they're like just good to IMG. We went there was sick. We enjoyed it. It was awesome. It was sick.

00:58:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're entire Yeah, you work there because IMG, I feel like they do it better than anybody else. As far as like getting guys looking for the combine because they don't just do the weightlifting and the running. But they're also they have a classrooms to go over media stuff, almost improvisation classes. Okay, you're thrown off with this, what do you do now? What do you say to X, Y and Z? They bring up maybe some things that aren't so great about you, like how are you going to attack this situation? So I think IMG was such a great experience.

00:58:50
Speaker 7: It's so funny you do all that work. And then when I worked with the team the first year I got done planning. I worked a team in the scouting department, and you can pull up all your profiles if you know coming and you know every every you know uh report written on you and highth weight, speed and all your tape. And so I was like, I got bored one day. I looked at it, and I looked at my combine interview with the Panthers. It's a disaster. Really Yeah, I was like sitting, I had my glasses on, I was nervous, I was probably sweating, and I was supers like they'd asked me a question bike, Yes that's cover four, And I'm like, gosh, you suck. You sound so bad right now.

00:59:29
Speaker 2: That's how Obviously getting drafted like you, I met with the Titans, and I was probably the same way, but a year removed. Seeing those same familiar faces now in that room. Yeah, timage you are, Oh you're so scared man, And because the train station is no joke. Yeah like that that that combine experience was your Did you have a good combine experience?

00:59:45
Speaker 7: I really yeah, I really enjoyed it. I think that first night of those interviews, because you have the train station, which is like they can just come and grab you, obviously, and then the one on ones or they put you in the room where it's only fifteen minutes and half the first two minutes, three minutes of them introducing themselves, in the last two or three minutes of them leave you leaving, so it's only like a ten minute window. And then they're peppering you with questions and I'm nervous. You're it's your job interview and you're trying to put your best foot forward. And I was just nervous, and I was sitting in there just and I was like, I would not draft that guy.

01:00:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, what the combine is so crazy? As everyone sees what happens when you're running and benching and jumping all that, but really all the scary shit happens four days prior running. When you get to go run, you're finally like, thank god it's over, because you get there the first day and it's like kind of introductions. Hey, this is what's going to happen. This is your land road, this is the train station works, this is how your official meetings work. Four I am, you have a piss test. Yeah, so it's like the number one rule is I just do not miss it and make sure you don't piece. So you I remember I was roommates with Zach Martin h and we took shoes and we put it on top of the toilet seat just in case you wake up in the middle of night and try to go pee, and we would be like a little countabill of buddies, make sure we're all up together. Yeah, it's what you need because you're nervous because you're up at four am for a drug test, and then it's meetings all day, MRIs the middle of the day and then back to the train station everything else.

01:01:09
Speaker 7: Well, were you a weight guy, did you have to keep weight on?

01:01:11
Speaker 2: I was always a guy that had to gain weight.

01:01:13
Speaker 7: Yeah, so you know, they get you there, and then you can't eat as much as you typically do. There's no scale, so then when you have to go weigh in, you don't know how much you weigh right, and they're like, Luke, you need to be over two hundred and forty pounds. So you're just in there chugging.

01:01:26
Speaker 2: And they have the worst fucking snacks. But it's all like less cups and skittles, and she's like, I guess this is what I'm doing.

01:01:32
Speaker 7: I gotta do it. I gotta drink, I gotta eat something.

01:01:34
Speaker 2: Yeah. I always did a great job having like food wait for you, having stuff, a little area where you go with a backpack.

01:01:39
Speaker 7: And they just stuffed it with everything. I'll tell you what the combine was. I loved it. It was so cool because you grow up watching it. You don't really grow up watching training at IMG, like you don't really understand that. But you grow up and you watch these guys run the forty and jump and bench and do all that stuff, and then you get there and you're like, this is sweet. I get to do It's.

01:01:59
Speaker 2: Like your step to the NFL load of MRIs. I had to do it.

01:02:04
Speaker 7: I had to do them on my knees and I had something on my elbow, but like not a not a ton.

01:02:08
Speaker 2: I was pretty lucky.

01:02:09
Speaker 1: It's funny too, how much everybody? Because I know Levante him being like an undersized guy. Guy's just obsessing over hitting a certain weight. You got to weigh in just so you hit the metric, like Levante always played like in the like like two twenty to two twenty five, and he's like, I have to be like two hundred and thirty three pounds.

01:02:26
Speaker 2: Isn't that crazy?

01:02:27
Speaker 7: I never weighed to forty ever again in my life.

01:02:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, but on that little stat sheet says two.

01:02:32
Speaker 7: Forty yea every don't don't skip me a pound.

01:02:36
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:02:36
Speaker 7: When you step on the scale two and you saw two forty two, how juice that thing kept ticking up?

01:02:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was like, yes, dude, you know another thing that's kind of a sleeper. Did they have the little egg pods? Yeah?

01:02:46
Speaker 7: You do that afterwards.

01:02:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we would do those IMG like every couple of weeks. I guess if anything's gonna fucking change. But my body fat would be like I don't know, like twenty or nineteen or something like that. Okay, but it had to be in those rooms. They had to have a certain pressure for those that correctly. So when I got to the combine, they haven't made this open room where it was like being opened and closed a bunch. So my body fat was right at like fifteen percent. Yes, I'm like, oh, I made a four percent jump in a week. That's crazy, I thought I was. I've on my ship. Yeah, I've been on it. What was the most nerve wracking part for you at the combine from from the like athletics standpoint.

01:03:20
Speaker 7: Oh man, the probably the forty yeah, because that was the question was how much you're gonna weigh and what are you gonna run? So I actually had to run it. I ran the forty three times.

01:03:31
Speaker 2: You messed up on one.

01:03:32
Speaker 7: So the first one I run, it goes really well. Second one, because you know you can't see it, you got to find ways to like get it. You know, you look at your phone and somebody texts you, but.

01:03:42
Speaker 2: It's not They don't do that anymore. Do you watch it now? Now they have people in the stands and they show your force. That's kind of because it was the same way for me too, where you go up and like a couple of the guys who are like, hey, what I run like, they're saying X, Y and Z.

01:03:55
Speaker 7: Yeah. So then second one comes up, and you know, when you get in that forty start, there's holes because everybody's been there, so everybody takes like the same, like first two steps, so there's kind of an indentation in the ground. And I was off just to half step to the left, and I took my first step out and I stepped kind of in the whole sideways and I turned right real fast and almost ran into the the laser reader and then straighten it out and I ran like it was I ran like four to nine, and I was like, oh gosh, that was.

01:04:26
Speaker 2: You said that was the second one.

01:04:27
Speaker 7: That was the second one?

01:04:28
Speaker 2: Was the first one. The first one was like four or five.

01:04:29
Speaker 7: And then I go four to nine and this guy comes up to me and he's like, he's like, hey, you're gonna probably have to run another one. We got a bad reading on either the first or the second one. And I was like, oh, no.

01:04:41
Speaker 1: Did you know at the point too, that you had ran a four or five in the first one.

01:04:44
Speaker 7: Yeah, I knew I ran well, and then the second one I knew I stepped in the hole, and I'm like, okay, this kind of makes sense. So then everybody had to go run their second one. So I was the last guy after the last guy in the in the line to go run again. And I ran it again and I looked at it. Guys like, how is that. He's like, you're gonna be good. I was like, all right, perfect good.

01:05:00
Speaker 2: So four.

01:05:01
Speaker 7: Yeah, He's like he's like, the middle one must have gotten messed up. But it was I stepped in. I stepped in a hole. I stepped my step was bad or something. But you know it's so nerve wracking. That's like, don't that matter?

01:05:13
Speaker 2: What's that you didn't want to focus on getting a tan before the combine? Of course?

01:05:16
Speaker 6: Not?

01:05:18
Speaker 7: You look faster that.

01:05:18
Speaker 2: Did you have the task? Did you last in the four fours?

01:05:21
Speaker 7: No? At I I don't think we ever really ran. I think we ran a forty like the first week we were there, and then everything was just segmented out. Yeah, so you work on starts flying twenties, you know, flying forties, so you never really get a true number for what you're gonna run, but you have an idea like I felt good, I felt strong, I felt my starts were good, and then it's like just go. It looks so stiff running it, but.

01:05:45
Speaker 2: I know because it will, and I am You're trying to do everything when you're training. You're like elbows and this and that and relax your face. I remember I ran a forty when we first the forty IMG, and I was like a five to one.

01:05:54
Speaker 7: Yeah.

01:05:55
Speaker 2: I was like, there's no fucking way. I'm like, I'm a sub five guy, no doubt. But I was like trying to like mechanically do exactly what they were saying the whole time to where it was just awful.

01:06:04
Speaker 7: Part of me thinks that they click it a little bit slower.

01:06:06
Speaker 2: I thought the same.

01:06:07
Speaker 7: So they're like, no, you ran you ran five four, So then when you run four nine, they're like, look what we did half second.

01:06:12
Speaker 2: That's we're the greatest thing.

01:06:14
Speaker 7: They were unbelievable. Lauren Seagrave was was he there? He was unbelievable, older older guy, right, Yeah, he was always wore orange, always Warren.

01:06:23
Speaker 2: She had the really shining shoes. And then who was the chick from London? Did you have the girl? Yeah?

01:06:28
Speaker 7: She was a yeah, she was a sin.

01:06:30
Speaker 2: Yeah. She was a great running coach. I can't remember he name right now, which kind of sucks.

01:06:33
Speaker 7: It was I had a ton of like everything that they did there was a reason why they did it. It's not like we just showed up and they're like, all right, you're going to do this and right. And I remember running like the short shuttle. It was footwork. It was like seven or eight.

01:06:44
Speaker 2: Steps and.

01:06:47
Speaker 7: The five in the five ten five.

01:06:49
Speaker 2: Because the fact if I was like two three two or something like something, they had like numbers to it. They're like, okay, you're.

01:06:54
Speaker 1: Somebody who could like skip over to the first five and just get in like two steps.

01:06:57
Speaker 7: You're like, yeah, this was amazing, like all that stuff that you put in for you know, there's Laurence c Grave.

01:07:04
Speaker 2: Right there that Yeah, he is awesome.

01:07:07
Speaker 7: He was great, dude.

01:07:08
Speaker 2: So I don't know if you felt this way, but after I ran the forty and I got the time that I wanted, it felt like everything else was just cake after that, because it's so stressful when you're standing up because we had what number were you do you remember for the combine?

01:07:20
Speaker 7: Oh? I don't so what I was thirteen maybe, I don't know.

01:07:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, nineteen nineteen, I was twenty three, and my whole thing was like, I just don't want to go first, yea. So I was like, oh, I'm twenty three, last name is Lawan, I'll be I'll be solid. Well, they broke it up groups, so it was one through twenty two. So I was the first guy to go in the second group and they're like, we're all kind of warming up. Everyone's so stressed out. Yeah, that's Beyonce want and you see that tan.

01:07:49
Speaker 7: You look Yeah, you look like you look like you're about fifteen percent right there.

01:07:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's what the body comp said. But that chick that I can't remember her name, the one from London, she's like, hey, when you run over the back of the platform and have your Beyonce walk, like every the whole combine everyone, you're waiting on everybody. Yeah, but once you do that, it's now your time. You take as long as you need whatever. And so I took all the time in the world because I was my heart's racing right there, my little gazelle.

01:08:18
Speaker 7: How'd you think your walk was? You give the thumbs out?

01:08:20
Speaker 2: I knew I was. I was thinking, abou okay, steps, you're moving your little feedback and you're just thinking, please don't get called back on this start. That was what I was most nervous about because learning from IMG, they basically tell you like your first start's gonna be your best one or your first two. After that you kind of like your brain fucks up, like your CNS or something. So it was once I ran that and I got back to the boys and hey, they're saying four nine right now, I'm like, all right, I know I'm selling. Yeah, I feel I feel good about it.

01:08:46
Speaker 1: Is there a team you felt like you knocked it out of the park with in the interview process?

01:08:51
Speaker 2: Oh?

01:08:51
Speaker 7: Man, you know what?

01:08:53
Speaker 2: Not?

01:08:53
Speaker 7: Really, I don't really that was I don't remember that. I thought the stuff with the Panthers went really good because so Ron Rivera obviously play with the Bears. My high school road roommate was Mike Morrissey. He was two years older than I am. I was and he was a great older guy. So when we went on trips on the road, he was my roommate for away games. His dad played with on the eighty five Bears. To played with the Bears like ten years and he played linebacker with Rivera. So I remember going to the combine and be like, I don't know any of these guys, but I know that Jim Morrissey and Mike Morrisey have said really good things about coach Rivera and his experience with them and their friendship and playing together in Chicago. So I'm like, at least I have one guy that I kind of have a connection too. So that one was out of all of them. It was probably the easiest one after I said how bad my interview was on that video. But I felt probably the most comfortable with them because I felt like there was a little bit of a connection there.

01:09:51
Speaker 1: Did you know, did you feel really confident that I was going to be the Panthers that grabbed you in the first round.

01:09:56
Speaker 7: I thought there was a chance, So you kind of looked at like teams that I I took a visit to Carolina, so I met with them at the combine. It took a visit down there pre draft, and I kind of knew like nine to fifteen to twenty because fifteen was Seattle and they drafted Bruce Irving. Bruce Irving and then they ended up with Bobby in the second round, so they were going to draft a linebacker. I thought Buffalo was at ten I think they drafted Stephan Gilmour from sc and so I thought it was going to be one of those teams. I also took a visit to Tennessee, so I think it was oh Man.

01:10:34
Speaker 1: They actually were that was yeah. But they did draft a linebacker and it was Zach Brown.

01:10:40
Speaker 2: Zach Brown. He was Brown.

01:10:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, he gets dude Trent Richardson.

01:10:46
Speaker 7: Yeah, I don't. I don't know where they drafted what point?

01:10:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, scrolled down a little bit. I want to see what they took.

01:10:54
Speaker 1: Are you talking about the Titans, right, Kendall?

01:10:57
Speaker 2: Right?

01:10:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, would have got him anyway.

01:11:03
Speaker 2: You knew, yeah, true, should have traded out. Yeah, but yeah, so you do you did you have any did you have a place you wanted to go? Like you looked at it.

01:11:12
Speaker 7: I thought Carolina would have been cool. I had some family that was down there. I was familiar. I liked it because Iran. That was the biggest thing that thought was cool was that I knew him and they spoke so highly of him. And he was a linebacker and he coached like Irlacker and Briggs. Yeah, and he's with San Diego names with the Bears. It just it felt I was like that'd be a cool place.

01:11:33
Speaker 1: How was it when you first got there? How how was he as a as a coach, because.

01:11:39
Speaker 7: Since you were a backer, he was phenomenal. He was like he did a really good job of separating being the head coach, but also like he wanted to be a player again, so he'd be in the locker room, he talked to guys, he was, he'd have you over to the house. He just made you feel very comfortable. So I always felt like, you know, he was obviously the head coach, but he felt like a guy that he just wanted He wanted to help you. He wanted to put you in a position to be successful. It was awesome. I couldn't have been in a better spot as far as just the people that were there. Sean mcdermo is a defensive coordinator. I don't think that I could have ended up in a better system for to play linebacker with that four down look. I played Mike, which was if I was playing Will. It was struggled because in space you're matched up on receivers. It's just bad news. But you can run, Yeah, you can run straight.

01:12:31
Speaker 1: But Jo Jones did you know he did what he did? But everybody's getting there.

01:12:36
Speaker 7: I'm sure, I'm sure they can pull a picture of that up.

01:12:44
Speaker 2: There.

01:12:44
Speaker 1: It is.

01:12:44
Speaker 7: It's yeah there, you know that's that's not even the best one. There's one that's like two pictures, three pictures to the right on that search. That one looks better. That one looks matter of fact, take how much higher he is there? Take me to the ground.

01:12:59
Speaker 2: He just high pointed it because you're running with him.

01:13:04
Speaker 7: So it's quarters and you're competitive by one, so it's quarters. And if you have speed at number three, which Julio definitely accounts for that, you get a backside the backside quarters defender on the hash helps you out.

01:13:17
Speaker 2: Get your three d DEGs.

01:13:17
Speaker 7: Yeah, we called it. We called it a fax call. But yeah, same thing right now, great, you understand my struggle. And they motioned the empty and I'm like, oh man, so for.

01:13:31
Speaker 2: The people listening when they motioned empty one, now there's no more facts or there's no more help from that.

01:13:36
Speaker 7: Yeah, the emotion to emotions, this looks so this look. You know what Matt Ryan's saying right here is my guy's just better than all of you because he looks like he's covered.

01:13:45
Speaker 6: Right.

01:13:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're you are covering.

01:13:46
Speaker 7: So I'm running down the field. I'm like, man, I am in good shape. They throw that ball and I'm like, I am in great shape. I can't see him, but I know he's behind me. I reach up and all I hear is and it's the ball hitting his hands and me falling down and my face hitting the ground, and I just hear the crowd explode and I run and I and I remember I picked my head up, and the only thing I remember him seeing is like, you know, when these guys used to score and they they're like this as they run the band zone. I just saw him do that. Look at me, just face face, face down, and I'm trying to I'm hearing the crowd scream right now. And then I picked my head up, did you? And they right at the end, they show him kind of right there. That's what I see when I look up, I see that. I see it says I can't even see the name Jones because he's tilted forward like that. And then I get to the sideline and my coach is like, hey, you know you're supposed to be on him, right I was like, you know, I.

01:14:44
Speaker 2: Was, I know I was. That is the craziest. You're a mic linebacker.

01:14:50
Speaker 1: You're coaching Keekley and Julio Jones and scores on a competitive ball, and you're like.

01:14:55
Speaker 7: I mean a competitive competitive competitive is a nice way to say it. Mean it looked competitive, and then when the ball got thrown that the competition kind of went out the window a little bit.

01:15:05
Speaker 2: Let this play a little bit.

01:15:07
Speaker 7: I'm running, he's running like three quarter speed. I'm running literally as fast as I can and he's still running away from me.

01:15:12
Speaker 2: Your safety over the top was trying to get in on the action. Yeah, it was just I mean, he looks covered right there.

01:15:18
Speaker 7: It's he's he's covered until Matt right, he just throws the ball up for him.

01:15:23
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:15:23
Speaker 7: Look, I'm trying to pull through the I'm trying to pull through the pocket.

01:15:26
Speaker 2: Stab the pocket.

01:15:27
Speaker 7: I'm trying to pull through the pocket. He just kind of big boyed me there a little bit.

01:15:32
Speaker 2: God, I mean, you see a guy like Julio Jones, you don't have to get me.

01:15:35
Speaker 7: You don't have to give me excuse. You just say that you got you got, you got that. That was on Randy Moss's You got Moss the next week. So you always want to be on you got Moss as a little kid, but not for that reason, that.

01:15:46
Speaker 2: Way at all. Was that what is like your toughest play, that the worst moment you've had the worst? Was that it?

01:15:54
Speaker 6: No?

01:15:55
Speaker 7: That wasn't it? Because I kind of felt like it the best I could have done. Yeah, you know, I give a strong it's just kind of like, hey, hey, man, like.

01:16:06
Speaker 2: Just better than that moment.

01:16:08
Speaker 7: Yeah, so's yeah, he's just better. I remember my rookie year. We were playing Seattle and it was Russ. Russ was a quarterback. Russ and I train together at the combine. For the combine, I remember he breaks contain. He's running to his right. He breaks contain. Obviously he's running down the field. I'm in coverage, so he crossed the line of scrimmage. I'm I was like, I'm gonna crush him. And he's running and he's running like almost straight at me. I've got a great angle and he's running like this and I'm running like that. I'm like, I'm gonna crush him. The last second, right before about to him, he puts his left foot, left foot in the ground and cuts back this way, and I'm getting ready to just like fall into the tackle and I turn and look, guess who was running mock five at my face? That Russ set up Mike Robinson, remember him, Penn State guy. He he hit me. He hit me so hard that I don't really I didn't even feel it. It wasn't a dirty hit. He didn't me in the head. He just hit me and I just crumpled to the ground. And I remember like looking up and he just smiled at me, and I was like, you got me. He's like, I know, I know. So it was, uh, that was that was you talked about like, welcome to the NFL, your rookie moment. Yeah, that was one of them. And then we played, uh played Tampa my rookie year at home. It was it was we were up at the end of the game. We were probably up six or seven points. They ran a vertical ball, three verticals in cover four and I was matched up on Vincent Jackson and Josh Freeman throws his great back shoulder ball to him, and I thought I had him covered in college. You you're close to him, he's covered. Yeah, I didn't know. I didn't know what a back shoulder ball was. And so I'm running with him and then all of a sudden, he spins, he opens up, and he puts his hands backside and he catches this football. I was like, how that happened? Like some of that stuff. You score a touchdown, they tied it up, they go to overtime, we lose an overtime. So it was just like one of those things where you don't you're just naive, and then something happens in a game and you're like, Oh, that's what they were, that's what a back shoulder ball was. In that ball I was. I mean, I felt like I was in great position, but the ball was literally perfect. My awareness was zero, and he just put it on his back shoulder. Vincent Jackson opened up and caught that ball, and I was like, that sucks.

01:18:41
Speaker 1: So did you really not have a TV in your apartment?

01:18:43
Speaker 2: You're rookie?

01:18:44
Speaker 7: That's so uh No, I had. I had everything I had. What happened, So what happened? So what happened was so it happened going into my the the room rumor was going into my second year. I've moved apartments like and ended end of July, so then you know, going into July, you're going in the training camp for the first like three or four weeks of the season, and I just it was on the back burner for to set up cable. I had my Internet set up, but I was like, I don't need cable for this first like six eight weeks because I'm never gonna be here. So I didn't have it set up. And somehow one of my buddies got wind of it and it just turned in this It just turned into this whole thing. Where so that came from one of your buddies somehow. Room, Yeah, it came in the locker room, like hey, did you watch? Like somebody's like, hey, you've been watching whatever. I was like, no, I don't have I don't have the cable set up in my teav in my in my apartment. Yet they're like why not.

01:19:44
Speaker 2: Was like I just moved.

01:19:44
Speaker 7: I didn't have time to set it up. Like we just went to training camp, like not here very much anyway. So when I get back from after training camp, I'll get it set up. So that was like what had happened. Everyone's like, you didn't have TV. I'm like, I'm not a psychopath.

01:19:59
Speaker 2: Very much.

01:19:59
Speaker 7: Frame like that, Yeah, which is I.

01:20:01
Speaker 2: Just pictured you in a carpeted room with a blow up mattress. Yeah, maybe a hyperbaric chamber.

01:20:06
Speaker 7: Yeah, just paper plates in a microwave and macaroni and cheese and ramen microwave.

01:20:11
Speaker 2: It takes out too much nutrients for you. Yeah, there it is right there. God, yeah, that that is one of the things that like, look at just I mean, that's an insane throwing cash.

01:20:22
Speaker 7: And then they went for two. They're down, they're down, They're down eight. So then they got the two conversion afterwards, and I ran into the goalposts and that was just like insult the injury. Like I just got I just got worked and I just got crushed by the post.

01:20:35
Speaker 2: Watch this, look at my leg.

01:20:38
Speaker 7: God sucks. And then you turn around and then you turn and then you look up and you're like, he definitely caught it. And look at the official. It's like he was waiting to do that to make sure you're taking a peek for Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he scored.

01:20:51
Speaker 2: Was like nobody touched that ball. Oh dang, look at me.

01:20:54
Speaker 7: I'm like, gosh, I suck.

01:20:55
Speaker 2: Good hit flexibility though, Or was twenty one, so it didn't really matter.

01:20:59
Speaker 1: The defensive Player Rookie of the Year though.

01:21:02
Speaker 7: But luckily they didn't see that play.

01:21:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, but how awesome is that?

01:21:05
Speaker 7: It was cool? It was fun. I mean it was uh. You just to have the opportunity to play like that as much as I did as a rookie was so cool. Yeah, in a great system. It was. That system was set up for linebackers to just run around. It was cover three, cover four, a little bit of man. We had really good guys in front of us. Our defensive line was sick, and they called plays that highlighted the linebackers. It was Thomas and I. So John Beeson, I'll talk about who I talk about, Like, so go back to college with Hurzlik and Mike mcloffin, like great older veteran guys that had no their pride never got in the way. They were just there to help you. Mike Morrissey the guy I talked about that new Ron and those guys were so helpful. And then when I got to Carolina, it was the same way. So when I got there, it was James Anderson was coming off her career year, Beast was coming back from an achilles All Pro Pro Bowl or like the dude in the middle, like the stud. And then Thomas was coming back from his thirty ACL Thomas at full speed was what Thomas was for sixteen years in the NFL, and then me, So there was four of us. I was the rookie. BS and TD were coming back from substantial injuries and achilles in an ACL and then James excuse me, was gonna play obviously healthy, had a great year coming off a good year. So I remember I showed up my rookie one of my first days there. TD comes in and he's like, hey, I'm Thomas, here's my number.

01:22:31
Speaker 2: Lock me in.

01:22:32
Speaker 7: You need anything, let me know. And I was like, that's just an older guy coming in and like checking a box and doing all this stuff. But it was he was the best helpful talk to you through things, taught you stuff, where to who to talk to to, you know, chiropractors, where to just where to do everything in Charlotte. He was fantastic. How to practice, how to be tough, how to play hurt like all that stuff. And then Beasts was be Scott hurt p Scott put on IR. I think after the Atlanta game, my rookie heear which was like week or week two or three, and so then I slid from outside linebacker to inside linebacker at Mike Beast's spot. And all Beasts ever did was help me. Sat next to me in meetings, talk to me, watch tape with me. Hey, this is how I this is how I played cover two, and this is why this is what my eyes looked like. There was never there was never any sense of like you're playing Mike your first round pick, like I'm hurt. I've been hurt two years in a row. Maybe there was never like I'm worried about my job. It was how can I help you? So I think you know, I was always very fortunate to have guys like that through my football career high school, college and then Beasts and Thomas and James and a guy named Jordan Sen who was played with us for a long time. He was like a could play all three spots, big time teamer, but was very and smart, very intelligent, great with his body. He sat right next to me in the locker room and he would just all he ever did was just helped me. So I just great coach with Ron and mcdee was a decordinator and then those guys around me, it was like a perfect situation.

01:24:09
Speaker 2: Dude, TD had a hell of a career and able to come back and play the way.

01:24:14
Speaker 1: And I met him out at one of the NFL one of the NFL p A meetings, and this dude just see like.

01:24:20
Speaker 2: Burger and fries and that's rever. He sits that, he sits there. I'm like, hey, are you eating like this throughout the season. He's like, Oh, I eat whatever I want all the time. Buddy, How in the fuck do you do that?

01:24:30
Speaker 7: I think some of those guys like that's just they're more that's just what they're their best at. Like this is what he plays, this is what he's how his body reacts the best, and that's what he's gonna do. But his like six inch snap was he was so fast, so explosive snap, ultra physical and just a great guy to watch as far as how to do things.

01:24:56
Speaker 2: Just a dangerous linebacker, just.

01:24:58
Speaker 7: Tough, high f ultra competitive, you know, like all those things that require no athletic ability. It's all like decisions, like you know, you are what you are athletically you are, how high weight, speed, whatever you make a decision, how tough you are, how physically you are, how hard you play, and how much it matters to you, Like those are things that you control, and he was it was great to see that from an older guy as a young guy, like, these are non negotiables that you make the decision when you walk on the field, you're gonna do it a certain way.

01:25:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like a great leadership. Yeah, walking and helping you out on that. Yeah, that's unreal. When you you obviously there's such a conversation revolved around you about like calling out plays and the game. Did you already have that capability to break down film or did those guys were they a big part of teaching you that stuff.

01:25:45
Speaker 7: So I was fortunate in high school. Our high school coach would bring us down to his office during lunch and he'd put on a VHS tape and we'd eat lunch down there and he'd put the tape on. The tape would just run and we could like rewind it if we wanted to. But then you don't really understand why you're doing that until you know you're in the game and you're like, oh, I saw that and when we were watching tape with coach, and usually it's after the fact, so it's like very like retrospective, but you start to figure out, like oh, I can get a real advantage by watching tape. So we kind of did that in high school. And then I got to college and there's a guy, another guy, Wes Davis. He was a safety California guy, super smart, intelligent, big tape guy. So when you get to college, you know, it's like you can you can watch whatever you want. You can sort it however you want to watch it, personnel formation down a distance, you know how it is, whatever you want. So I go in there and I'm like, this is too much for me to hand. I got to figure out how to do this. So I would go watch tape with Wes. This is as a freshman, and you know, Wes would be in there and he'd be like, all right, he imagine we're playing Cover four and you get this like how you play in it. So you start to figure out, all right, I can match my call up with the play so when I watch, when I watch tape, I can envision myself in that situation. So that was kind of like the first step. And then the second step would be Wes would be in meetings and say, all right, he's like this this gives us problems and Cover three and in my head I'm like, I don't really know what that means, but like sure, so he'd be like, this is why it gives us problems. He's like, if I see this look in a game, I'm gonna let you know and then we'll just kind of play it like this, you know, you kind of play the play a little bit, and he's like, all right, I'm gonna give you heads up in the game when we're gonna get it. He's like, I'm gonna tell you when I play it a certain way, and we'll being good Jhape. I was like, all right, great. So then comes up in a game, Wes gives me like a nod and I'm like, hey, I like give him nod back, Hey, what's up? And the play would happened and I would just be aloof and he'd be like, I gave you a nod. I was like, I gave you one back. He's like no, that was what was So then just slowly, over time, you're like, Okay, now I understand why he's watching tape. So you watch tape, you understand situations, and you pick stuff up and you accumulate knowledge, and over time you just understand like this is how teams really want to run the football. This is how it matches up against our defense. These are the top formations. I mean, you know how it is. It's like if it's two by two and the tight ends on the line of scrimmers, their top roun concepts are probably this, this, and this right. And once you know that, then it's like, all right, So if we're in an overfront and they run that first run play and we're in this defense, who's gonna block me? Okay, this guy's gonna block me? All right? Say they run the other play and this same defense, same front. Boom, this, Now this guy's gonna block me. And you go through that, and then when practice rolls around, you get it. And then when the game rolls around, it's like, all right, here's my formation, here's my my call on defense. This is how we're lined up. The ball gets snapped, I get my one read from whoever I'm reading. Boom, Now I know who's gonna block me. I know where the ball is gonna go. I have to beat that guy in the run game whoever's gonna block me, and then I'm clean to the football. You know, one guy's blocking you on each play. So if I know top run concepts. I know how it fits within our defense. I know where I line, I know where my stressers are. The ball gets snapped, I read boom. Now I know who's gonna block me. Now I haven't. Now I already have a plan of attack on how I'm gonna get after him before the ball gets snapped. So then you're playing the game before the ball gets snapped, and then everything just slows down as the ball gets snapped. So I love it was just because you got to like, you know what is you gotta This is a bad play right here. So I remember exactly this play. So Andy Gallax, the center, you guys ran. It was like a split zone. Look split zone. Hang on, we're in man coverage and we're in it's an in and.

01:29:35
Speaker 2: Out, so safety down here.

01:29:37
Speaker 7: Yeah, So TD and I are like the in and out guys. So my guy goes back across the formation at the tight end. I got to fall back in a pass in pass game, but if it's a run, I gotta stay front side. So it was a run. I see the guy go back across the formation. I fall back, and this ball stays front side, and look where it hits. I get blocked by I think Andy Gallax. The center is a BC guy looks where it gets hit, probably right where it should be. Kind of a disaster.

01:30:01
Speaker 2: Who's yeah, yeah.

01:30:04
Speaker 7: Yeah, so disaster. This is a touchdown. I mean Dexter mccluster on this touchdown here.

01:30:10
Speaker 2: So was it twenty fifteen? Yeah, we were bad then too. How would you three and thirteen year for us?

01:30:16
Speaker 1: How did your prep develop? Like in the league? Like are you are how are you breaking down each day like on Monday? Or you first second down?

01:30:23
Speaker 7: Yeah?

01:30:23
Speaker 2: Run?

01:30:24
Speaker 7: So like Monday was so you know, Monday, you come in, you get a workout, flush, watch the watch the game from the night before and kind of our day before whatever, make your corrections. And then I'd always watched two first halves of the team that we were playing and just get like general feel. And I always feel like first halves were better because you got to you got to feel for who they were. So I think about or like think about like, say we're watching We're watching the Titans, and I watched the whole game. Maybe in the second half, you guys are up big, and so now you guys are running the ball a little bit more. Maybe the past game is not as aggressive. They're different than what they want to be coming out VERSU in the first half, like your first fifteen, your first probably twenty five plays or things that you guys have really thought about, your top concept stuff like that. So I'd watch two first halfs and just get a feel for like, you know, what do they look like up front? You know, are they like For example, we play the Falcons, right, Alex Mack like big, athletic, smart range, really good player, Like damn, I got my work cut out for this guy. And then you go, you know, in the backfield, it was Tevin Coleman. He's like big, kind of a slasher, like one cut wide zone type guy. Devonte Freeman is like a little bit of shake good burst, could run physical, not a real big guy, but gets lost and like is a firm really good. I thought he was really good and if he could speed you up, slowly down, run through you. And then you look on the outside of Austin Hooper was the tight end, and then it was like Roddy White and Julio Jones. You're like, all right, boom, So like this is how they look up front, this is what they like in the backfield, Like you know, we play the Falcons. You don't really need to watch Matt a whole lot because you got a really good feel for we played them twice a year's he's Matt Ryan. You know, you know you to take a ton of notes on that, but you get a feel for all right, Kyle Shanahan, wide zone shifts and motions. They're going to try to get you in a compromise position and want to run the ball to the bubble. So that's Monday, and just it's like click through, like click through stuff real quick Tuesday.

01:32:23
Speaker 2: Are you a big notes guy or are you just notes?

01:32:25
Speaker 7: Because that helps me if I write it, then it helps me remember.

01:32:28
Speaker 2: And this Monday, you're not necessarily you know, you're just feeling the game. Yeah, feeling the process.

01:32:32
Speaker 6: Of the game.

01:32:32
Speaker 7: Yeah, and feel them and like I'll write down some notes like if they've got a dude that I'm not used to playing against, or I haven't seen a lot of them, Like this is like offensive line moves really well. Center fifty one is a really good player running backs. This is how these guys feel because I always felt like with running backs, if you don't play against them a lot, you don't know how they like feel on contact and I didn't like that, Like I want to know early in the game, how do you feel you firm like stuff like that, And I felt like that was one thing that I always wanted to watch during the week is how do they run? How do they take contact? Do they like contact?

01:33:07
Speaker 6: Like?

01:33:08
Speaker 7: Are they a stiff arm guy? They what do they like doing? Because then in the game you gotta have a plan. I mean, you'll play Marshawn Lynch. You can't just like run in there and I hope you're gonna get them on the ground. So then I would take light notes on that and just get a feel because mentally, I was like, Monday was a day where I'm like I need to kind of break it up a little bit. So if I took a ton of notes, I'm like this is just too much mentally. So then Tuesday you come in, hit a little workout, and then I'd watch run games. So our coaches did a good job of breaking down run game based on like formation, down in distance, excuse me, top concepts, and then I would go and highlight like four games and then you know, you can sort everything, so i'd sort it by like personnel. It's like all right, I want to I want to see all their twelve personnel runs, and then like, how do they run the ball to twelve personnel? So three by one is it two by two? Do they like running twelve personnel and putting the tight the tight end in the backfield because if so, now it turns into like two back run versus like if they're in a wing or double like ace both on the line of scrimmage. Now it's like one back runs twelve. Yeah, so it's like a completely different concept. So I want to know what they do. And then I would break it down by like personnel, group, then formation, and then top concepts inside the formation. I'd take notes on all those and just chart it, cause like it took a lot of time, but I felt like if I could write it down then I would remember it better. So then and by Tuesday, I usually had I usually had the game plan like first second Hald game plan. So then I'd watch all that chart everything, watch those games, and then i'd watch a full game after that and then see how it fits. So like when do they run it? Like when are they eleven? When are they twelve? What are they like doing out of thirteen? When do they do it in a game, and like what's the game flow? And then you could call I could call defenses within that, within that watching that game, so you know first and ten the first quarter, Like all right, I was gonna play cover three, So line up and cover three, see my overfront, See where I gotta line, see where rotation is, and then kind of go through it that way, and then you know, just kind of buzz through it like that. So then you get a feel for how they want to run the ball out of formations. You get a good feel for what they are, and then you see how it applies to the game and how they get to stuff. And then I can apply our first and second down game plan to that and just run through that. And then Wednesday after practice, I do the same thing but with first and second down pass. So break it down the same way and see how the run game matches with pass.

01:35:40
Speaker 2: Game, what conflicts you could potentially what.

01:35:42
Speaker 7: Conflicts, And then like you start to figure out like are they a formation based team in the sense of do they run plays, run plays and pass plays out of formations? So regardless of what the personnel is, like if it's three by one wing, they could run that at eleven, they could run it at twelve, they could run out of thirteen. They could run it at ten if they wanted. But it's the same run concept and they're just looking for the best matchup within personnel groupings that run that run play. Or are they a personnel group team where in eleven these are their top five run concepts, and then in twelve they want to run this, and then thirteen they start getting heavy. It's like short yarders. They're gonna play too heavy a wing and a backside tight end and it's going to be like load power counter O. Why three poolers going somewhere? Or are they just, like I said, a formation based team. So then as the week goes on, you get a feel for what this team wants to do, why they want to do it, how they get to it. Are they a shift motion team? Do they build sets? Because the only thing that matters in football is what's the final formation? So are they stagnant or they line up in three by one and then shift to two by two and then motion this guy across to three by one. I don't care about any of that. I just want to know results. What's the final result of the formation. Is what I want to get to and how they do it. So when the game comes around, you're not like, oh, well it's three by one. But I didn't anticipate them get into it. Like no, I already knew that there gonna be a heavy shift, heavy motion. My brain's already turned onto it. So when they get to when they start to move, guys, it's like I've already prepared myself for this. Yeah, and then third down you just watch it by you know, down the distance, and then watch watch another game. And so he kind of would all ties together and then Friday was red Zone and special. So like if we were playing you know cal or Alvin Kamara, like you can get a lot of matchups one on one of them. If we play man coverage like I don't, I don't like that matchup.

01:37:33
Speaker 2: You'll be able to get the rat in this situation or.

01:37:35
Speaker 7: Like and if I get put in a bad situation, I need to have a plan of attack of like does he like moving off their certain foot, how does he stem? Where does he get uncomfortable? Where does his move area out of the backfield? Where does he like going? And then so when you get in that situation, if it's man, You're like, all right, Like he's a better athlete than me. He's gonna probably make me miss a bunch. But like, here's my plan of attack that I've thought about on Friday. So when it comes around in the game, you're like, all right, I'm good, Like, yeah, this is my plan of attack, and like I feel good about it, and I'm going to go attack him and if it works, great, If not, like I feel good about what I did going into the game.

01:38:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, how big of a role did the TV copy? Love?

01:38:16
Speaker 7: TV copy?

01:38:17
Speaker 2: Yeah? The TV copy is that where you found their checks and oh yes and stuff like that.

01:38:21
Speaker 7: So you just I would just watch like the All twenty two and then anytime the quarterback comes to the line of scrimmage, you turn on the TV copy and see what you got. Everything that he says. You got to listen to it and write it down, and then you got to check it a few times. You know.

01:38:38
Speaker 1: Do you remember any teams that were changing their verbiage because they essentially knew that they were playing against you?

01:38:43
Speaker 7: No, if I didn't, if I didn't, if I didn't know a word, I never guessed. But like you always have to. It's always just like it's a NTD. It was probably like salt pepper. Yeah, I tell you, yeah, Salt and pepper. So that was was using the Super Bowl, and I thought Salt was left and pepper was right because salt is and pepper was right.

01:39:07
Speaker 2: Because they had and white black. They had the background there in a black line background when they had salt, Salt, Salt, Hey, you're white.

01:39:14
Speaker 7: Hey, they got me fucking my head.

01:39:16
Speaker 2: It looks like hey.

01:39:17
Speaker 11: Lived something on the same page with you because inside inside that game, So inside the game, they said like Tiger and Paradis.

01:39:30
Speaker 7: Matt Paradis was the center and he and he said Tiger Tiger, and one of the offensive linemen was like huh and he said Tiger er. I was like, ah, you're going to the right. So I took that forward to salt and Pepper, and I remember having an argument with TD about it, and we get in the sideline and I'm like, I don't know why they called pepper and they and they went to you. I was on the right side or whatever, the left side. They're right, and he's like, no, you missed the whole thing. Salt, you're white, Pepper. I was like, ah, it makes sense now even the crafty Oh my gosh, it's so funny man.

01:40:09
Speaker 2: So I mean, yeah, there's definitely like a crazy amount of you calling out those plays, Like what do you think your batting percentage was on those?

01:40:17
Speaker 7: I think if you feel good about it, Like I remember we played Tampa in twenty fifteen and they had a toss play. It was Tulsa, and I remember we were it was a check they talked about.

01:40:30
Speaker 2: We were.

01:40:31
Speaker 7: It was like on a third down maybe, and we were all mugged up. So Thomas and I were both mugged up. We had a safety mugged up, so we were you know, if they had and they had a they had a front side bunch and so if they if you just downbock pin and pool off, the ball defenders that are supposed to make the play are never going to get there. It's like throwing a screen out of a mug, look like a wide receiver screen. And I remember he gets there and James comes up and looks around and he's like, all, we got double mug. All these guys in the line of scrimmage safeties down showing off the backside, the rotational guy and the nickel showing up because it's a bunch because he's got to press the point and he checks Tulsa and I'm like, oh my gosh, perfect yeah, and said we pull we pull everybody out and bump everyone plus everyone front side. Just totally get out of the blitz. We're supposed to be dropping defensive tackles. It was like a sim pressure and we just told all the defense I'm like, go, don't drop. It's a run, it's a toss. Go And one of the guys, I think Jared Allen made the tackle and I just I was so happy. It's like it all works.

01:41:40
Speaker 6: You know.

01:41:40
Speaker 7: You get that one play, get that one play you make based on film, and you just like, yeah, it's all worth it.

01:41:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, all the preparation was worth it for sure.

01:41:48
Speaker 7: And TD was great at that. TD watched a ton of tape too, so we had to get a little combo when.

01:41:53
Speaker 2: You get to those games, the amount of preparation you put in, knowing like the album Kamara, when you're like this, I'm gonna attack him. So I know regardless, like my process has been correct.

01:42:01
Speaker 7: Yeah.

01:42:01
Speaker 2: Did you have nerves before the games or was it like the barn Oh?

01:42:06
Speaker 7: I was always nervous. Yeah, like you want to You always want to get in the flow as fast as you can of the game. And the longer you're out of the flow of the game, the less you feel like you're a part of the game. So you can prepare all you want, but you you want to get into the flow of the game as quickly as you can. And if you're not in the flow, you feel like you're floating, and I hate that. So you're always nervous to go in the game because you don't know. Each game feels different, like it feels different from you know, the surface is different, how the team you play is different, the coordinators are different, how they want to attack you is different, the players are different, the run game is different. Like everything feels different each game, and you were always like I don't know about nervous or you're anxious to like feel feel the game and be and feel like you're a part of the game. And until you do that, you're kind of like, damn, like I need to need to get in there.

01:43:03
Speaker 2: You need to get in there, need to feel someone.

01:43:04
Speaker 7: Neither like a little action early in the game.

01:43:06
Speaker 2: With with that thought process, was it better for you in your mind? To go three and out your first defensive drive like oh boys, we got three and out, or like a nine eight nine play gritty drive where maybe they come out points, but like you know the kid, this next drive, I'm gonna I feel like I'm immersed in this game now, So I feel a whole lot better.

01:43:21
Speaker 7: I think it depends on if you get if you get a piece of something early.

01:43:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you got to get a piece of something, Like if.

01:43:28
Speaker 7: You make a good tackle, like on first or second or third down, or like first or second down, you make a you make a good play like around the line of scrimmage in the run game, you're like, all right, I got like kind.

01:43:37
Speaker 2: Of first out the way.

01:43:38
Speaker 7: I'm good, or like you get to like you make a good play on third down you get a stop or off the field in like a three and out, or you know, you just you're in the mix, or like you feel to say they're on power and you like you like stick a guard and you force a guard, You're like, all right, I'm in good shape. But if it's like pass toss run away incomplete on third down, you're still like like itch in a little bit. Yeah, you need to get like you need to get You need to get a piece of something.

01:44:04
Speaker 2: Yea to feel somebody. Yeah, talk about the pain from from the Super Bowl? Yeah, and have you forgiven Cam Newton for not jumping on that phone? Oh my gosh.

01:44:12
Speaker 7: It was. The further you get away from it, the more you appreciate it. Like how special that year was, how much fun we had, how good our locker room was, Like all the games that we played in that were so fun that the city of Charlotte was awesome. Like the media coverage of that season. In the locker room, it was like anybody that was anybody reporter wise, was in the locker room every week. We didn't lose a game until Christmas. We played on Thursday, we played, Yeah, here you go. Played on Thursday night in Jerry World down in Dallas on Thanksgiving.

01:44:47
Speaker 1: Oh buddy, I'm sorry interrupted. Yeah, that was my favorite game to watch of you.

01:44:54
Speaker 7: I'm like, I'm like, you're like a proud father and I'm your son. It's like you got like super comfortable because we'll talk to the Cowboys.

01:45:01
Speaker 2: He usually has a dim light on it, so it's nice to see him light up with the Cowboys.

01:45:05
Speaker 1: Just as a backer and appreciating and respecting the game that we played, like watching getting to watch that Thursday night football game, because again, you're not like watching everybody else like when you're playing on Sundays, but knowing that you had there was dedicated time like on holidays, to where it's like, oh, these teams are playing today and watching you against the Cowboys those two those two picks you had back to back. I've sat there and I was trying to get everybody in the room enthralled, like, do you guys understand what just happened? You being a Tampa two player and them trying to run you out, clear you out for that deep dagger by one and you coming down to pick it off after you already have your responsibility taken care of.

01:45:43
Speaker 2: That is art. Oh you're coming back, coming back.

01:45:47
Speaker 1: The next series and knowing you're in a cover four responsibility with wit as the tight end and they're trying you over the top without any safety help and you picking that ball off, getting your head around.

01:45:57
Speaker 2: That's art. And I just want you to know that.

01:46:00
Speaker 7: Hang around me and talk me up a little more.

01:46:02
Speaker 1: Obviously, you have all the all the accomplishments in the world, but just like some of those plays and you just talking through Tulsa knowing you're mugged up and everything else. I appreciate the art that you put on display.

01:46:12
Speaker 7: Was it was, I appreciate that this.

01:46:14
Speaker 1: Hey yeah, sorry, I'm getting rid this right now. But these plays right here, boys like you guys need to lock in.

01:46:19
Speaker 7: The guy that made the play was Thomas. So we were in a sim pressure So basically what was supposed to happen is TD was supposed to blitz and we were supposed to drop the defensive end to the field. So Romo saw the pressure, so he's like, all right, the hook player. It was just sim pressure Cover three. The hook player is a defensive end, so I'm gonna throw this dig right behind the defensive end. So Romo, Romo checks protection, swings everything, and so Thomas is like, do we need to get out of this? They're just push protection. To me, it's a bad matchup. So he checked. Thomas looks at him as like, hey, we need to check cover two. I was like, all right, cool, let's do it.

01:46:59
Speaker 2: So who's the green dot?

01:47:01
Speaker 7: I did, But Thomas and I and like Roman and Kirk Coleman, it was like, it's just a discussion.

01:47:06
Speaker 2: It's a discussion. Crazy that you guys have enough time to have a discussion as well. That's wild.

01:47:11
Speaker 7: TD and I had like a hey, he's like he just miked it. You want to go to cover too? And I was like you want to He's like yeah. I was like a right, cool, check cover too, So like you've got time. And then this play is like one of those plays that you talked about. You always want to get this play in cover two and it never works out that way, like either you're a backside hook player or you're blitzing, or it's man coverage, and it's just one of those plays where it's just right place, right time, like it happened and you're taking a shot. Oh yeah, you're like you're you're you're trust look at look at Whitney's Yeah.

01:47:44
Speaker 1: He's wide open. But again you're trusting your you're trusting. Can you go back to the top of the play.

01:47:50
Speaker 2: And a lot of it starts too with it's like.

01:47:52
Speaker 1: You starting high and trusting that all right, Romo's went through this progression and where now I'm going to take a shot and leave the middle of the field to go pick off.

01:47:59
Speaker 7: And then stagger the other thing is so Bene ben Wickery is playing, he's on our corners, he's playing at the I think the same at the bottom of the screen. If you don't get a good jam on that guy, then I can't see the release. So the release by one if he inside releases and you get a clear out and then a sit Look at the jam. Do you see the jam by Bene. So the jam slows it down? Yeah, he gets the good jam, pushes him inside and puts those two guys on levels and slows him down. So the procression for Romo is slower, so he doesn't get to dot that ball when he wants to. But I get to see inside release by one. I can see the sit by two. And then once he puts his foot in the ground, I'm all right, I'm clean, Like I'm good because I know that once his inside release, his company's probably gonna run an cut and that's going to push Roman to.

01:48:44
Speaker 2: That over right, So then you're like all right.

01:48:46
Speaker 7: But then you, like you said, you're kinda you're kind of taking like a calculated chance.

01:48:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, so is as the mic backer you have the middle of the field.

01:48:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, Tampa two, you got a bailout and you're deep yeah.

01:49:00
Speaker 1: In his backs to the quarterback. So again he's taking like a calculated wrist just coming out of the middle of the field. And so funny the whole player, you know's it's like you're jumping the fat lady when the pretty ones behind him.

01:49:12
Speaker 2: Why at that point are you like, Okay, I'm safe because you know your safety is now coming back over the top to help you out.

01:49:16
Speaker 7: And you kind of know you kind of know where that ball is meant to be thrown. The ball is meant to be thrown to the dig got you.

01:49:21
Speaker 2: So like his romo in his mind is still thinking, you guys are in a simulator PRESSU where the end's going to drop, and that guy's covering him.

01:49:26
Speaker 7: I think he probably knows at this point that we're not. I just think he probably is like, all I got, I got Tampa, the the hook player jumped the little in and out route, the whip route, So I'm just gonna throw it behind right, So I had a little bit more time to kind of field out because Bene got such a good jam he slowed the progress. That guy really got him inside. So like it's it's one of those things like you don't just make the play by yourself. Really good jam, We had really good pressure that whole that whole game. We hit him a bunch, so like that clock gets sped up, and then Thomas great awareness him of like getting out of that.

01:50:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have incredible quarterback answers of shouting.

01:50:05
Speaker 2: Out the team for the entire course.

01:50:06
Speaker 1: I mean because right, it's like when what Romo scene, It is like he knows as the hook player sitting there, He's like, oh, this is a one hundred out of one hundred, I'm gonna hit this clear, hit this dig over because you can.

01:50:14
Speaker 2: See right here, even with you covering the stableway like that almost seems a little open to me. But he's right here. Yeah, and that where him he's like, oh, there's no one because he's expecting you to still go.

01:50:24
Speaker 7: Up because because avoid in the middle of the field and Nickel is moving out towards that whip, so that ball is supposed to get thrown between the numbers in the hash right that dig it's the dig window. So he's like, I'm in good shape, you know.

01:50:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm sure we're not able to show the screen like during the YouTube, So anybody that's curious as Tony Romo throws an interception to Luke Keekley looked at play up.

01:50:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, you'll be able to show still, Yeah, because that is that is art, Like that's the beauty, that's the game within the game. That kind of like people will see and like, wow, Luke is amazing. But for you to like give us what TD was saying, the the jam all that like that is that's good football. Eleven guys getting Yeah, you know we had time. He bumped him and put him inside and gave me more time. It's like this is happening in four seconds, yes, which is just so crazy because you're not supposed to be anywhere near that ball when it's thrown.

01:51:19
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's just it's just all it's quil It just all fits it like all fits together.

01:51:24
Speaker 2: You know, was there And I hate to bring this up again. Any chatter about Cam Newton not jumping on that fumble. Honestly, no no one ever said, No one ever whispered, no, his.

01:51:35
Speaker 7: His toughness. We never questioned it. The guy never never complained. It's the first guy in every day. He worked so hard, never never yelled at guys, never threw guys under the bus. Like you talk about a dude that just all he wants to do is play football, and it's just that was just a bad game for us. We just didn't play. We didn't play our best game.

01:51:56
Speaker 1: The Seeing Cam Newton on the field, there's a there's like a few guys Calvin Johnson comes to mind, but seeing Cam Newton dressing on the field, he looks creative player. Yeah, he's like an action figure out.

01:52:08
Speaker 2: He's like all of six five. Everybody, well, he's taller than six five. We saw him at Power Slap and he was eye to eye with me. I feel like he was taller. Must get that he's got that.

01:52:19
Speaker 7: He's like, he's like he's like seven ft tall with all that.

01:52:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, no doubt he's not getting any rides. But that's interesting you say that because the way he's portrayed in the media is that like he's a cat that seems like a very much an eye guy. Well that like when he's when he's on ESPN, he said I would rather have my MVP trophy than a Super Bowl trophy. I'm not getting that same vibe as I'm getting from you. Were like, he's would you give up your defensive player of the years for that super Bowl.

01:52:45
Speaker 7: Yeah, the super Bowl is like the Mecca.

01:52:48
Speaker 2: Man, Yeah, you.

01:52:49
Speaker 7: Know, that's all you want, just want to win a super Bowl.

01:52:52
Speaker 2: But he looked at you like you were dumb right there?

01:52:55
Speaker 7: Tell you what toughness, competitiveness, love of the game of football of the Carolina Panthers, like Cam just tough. You never questioned is he going to play hard? Like you never question that. You might question like what is he gonna wear? But the dude competed, He played so hard, loves football.

01:53:19
Speaker 1: Just tough and competitive, and it just it also clearly he knew what was going on. But it's like that what is it that clip of that play where somebody's trying to call out something, somebody's trying to call somebody.

01:53:30
Speaker 2: What you're trying to do? Yeah, oh you like that? Watch this?

01:53:33
Speaker 1: Oh that was Clay Macaulay's watched that wil you watch film toot.

01:53:39
Speaker 7: And he threw that ball to McCaffrey. But it's interesting. So Cam, it's like he he can he remembers like everything. So they had to signal him and Greg had a signal for like it's like a route that he ran, and Cam's like, hey, dude, like we got to switch it up. We've run this too many times, like everybody knows what it is. And Greg's like, all right, what do you want it to be? And Cam's like, ah, I don't know. We did this like four years ago and against Atlanta and it was like the third quarter, and you know it was like ten minutes ago in the game and ten minutes to going third quarter and I gave you like this signal like I don't know, that's cool, we just want to do that. Greg's like whatever, yeah, And like I like went and looked it up and I was like whoa, Like he was spot on. He was like pretty dagone close. Yeah. So, but him and Greg had a really good connection. Like Greg has such a great feel for you know, space and timing and windows and just he had he was really good at a lot of things.

01:54:39
Speaker 2: Great.

01:54:40
Speaker 7: He was big, he'd catch everything, could run, block, never came off the field. But he had such a good feel for like where to be, how to get there, how to stem guys. Like he was so good at that. And Cam and him had such a great connection that they could just kind of look at each other and they both knew what was going on. They'd line up in this set. It was a three by one set, so Greg they called it one by three. Gray was backside and you could line up and cover three or cover four. It didn't matter. It was basically man because it was just Greg in a corner or of safety by themselves and they just look at each other and figure it out. And it was really cool to watch. But a lot of it was just Cam's super smart remembers everything tough, competitive, and it was fun to watch him and Greg play.

01:55:22
Speaker 2: With each other. How was it being in the mix of the Odell Beckham and Josh Norman.

01:55:26
Speaker 7: Oh my gosh, that was like peak Josh Norman.

01:55:29
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:55:30
Speaker 7: Yeah, And that was part of Josh's game. I remember when we played Dallas, him and Des are going at it the whole game, and that was part of Josh's game.

01:55:38
Speaker 2: And you know.

01:55:43
Speaker 7: It was we were in it and they let and I'll tell you what, they let those guys play a little bit until there was a couple. There was like one or two instances where like they had to separate them.

01:55:52
Speaker 2: Odell went had to have missile shot.

01:55:56
Speaker 7: Was that that one wasn't great? But that Josh was another guy. Josh great feel great, feel smart, unbelievable ball skills in ultra competitive, ultra competitive, so that was a great matchup for them. Josh played fantastic that year. Josh was exactly what we needed in our defense, like long rangey, great ball skills, could compete competitive. He was really good and that that was an interesting game. We were up a million points and they came all the way back. Odell actually caught a ball there at the end of the game to tie it up, and then Cam went down and I'm going to kick the field would win it. But it was like we were there there, Josh and I having good chat here.

01:56:40
Speaker 2: Tried tell him to keith his cool.

01:56:41
Speaker 7: I hey, keep doing you man.

01:56:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had him at Washington. He's his ability to punch the ball out, the Peanut punch.

01:56:48
Speaker 7: He learned it from Peanut, So Josh Josh was always around the ball. Then Peanut came in twenty fifteen and Josh was like his Josh, I think saw that and He's like like, I can do that, and he just had It's a timing thing, you know, It's a timing thing. It's an opportunity to think. It was just really good at it. So yeah, he was at Peanut was awesome. You talk about a teammate, Oh my gosh, great teammate, Peanut Tillman, Oh my gosh, I love that guy.

01:57:19
Speaker 2: You guys had some fucking dogs that.

01:57:22
Speaker 7: Super Bowl year, so it was cool.

01:57:23
Speaker 2: I mean you you always Jared Allen to like him.

01:57:27
Speaker 7: Yeah, we had Jared Allen and Peanut that in at twenty fifteen year, and then Romanse came in. I remember the first time I met Pep.

01:57:33
Speaker 2: I was like, oh my gosh, Yeah, he is a monster.

01:57:37
Speaker 7: He's big, but he's very He's proportional, so like when you see him from a distance, you're like, oh, he's big because he's so proportional, and the closer you get to him, you're like, oh, yeah, it's pretty stout.

01:57:51
Speaker 2: I was so happy when we played, y'all, and he was I think he went back right, he played, and then he went to the Packers.

01:57:57
Speaker 7: They played us at fifteen, he was in, he was Green Bay. So he went Carolina, Chicago and then Green Bay and then at the end he came back.

01:58:05
Speaker 2: To us because when he that was like his last year, right.

01:58:08
Speaker 7: His last two years drinking.

01:58:09
Speaker 2: His last two years. So when we played, I mean he put his hand in the dirt. I'm looking at my form and his forum. I'm like, this is not something we're not playing the same game. Him an equal, but he was in that he was in that mode of I'm gonna pick and choose my shots to kind of win, to really go hard. But he was like playing the game and it was love. Just I was so happy.

01:58:27
Speaker 7: I'm just so talented man.

01:58:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, him and guys like Sugs too, like just kind of like understood the game at a level where they knew when it was time to turn it on and not on. That older age was just so cool to see.

01:58:39
Speaker 1: So then another guy that was a freaking athlete, Shack Thompson. Shack, so we're mentioning all those vets and yeah, Shaq Thompson had the ability to he had a lot of range.

01:58:48
Speaker 7: Oh my gosh. So it was interesting. They bring Shack in and he played running back, linebacker, safety at Washington and we bring him in and Thomas was playing well, I was playing. Mike's so like, there's not a ton of room. But we're like, we need to get this guy on the field because he's so talented. He does everything well and he was super smart from the day he got there, Like you tell him at one time, he got it. And there's guys that can like memorize, and there's guys that just have great feel for the game of football and how to play in competitive and effort. Shack showed up in the day that he got there. He had all of that, and so we need to find a way to get him on the field. So we would play him at nickel and we called it Buffalo and it was just like a it was just a package we had. It was like a big nickel, so we could play all of our nickel calls but have a bigger body in there so we could like blitz him. We could play five down with him on the line of scrimmage, we could play zone coverage, so then there was really no matchup issues. But we were able to get him on the field and highlight what he was able to do, and it was just awesome. And he's a great and he's a great. He took so much pride and being the young because our room was good. So it was like Thomas aj Klein was a really.

02:00:05
Speaker 1: Good player because he was a fourth rounder that yeah, he was Iowa State kid.

02:00:08
Speaker 2: Was he twenty thirteen?

02:00:10
Speaker 7: Thirteen year.

02:00:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was my year because he sat behind you. But anytime like you would be down and he'd come in, he'd light it up like he got to go on and take a contract to get bigger money. Yeah with New Orleans, right, yeah, with New Orleans.

02:00:21
Speaker 7: So Aj would play, Shaq would play, but our room was like established older guys, and he came in and it was like his mission, like I'm not going to let any of you guys down. So like that's how he prepared, that's how he practiced. So he's played special teams, never complained ever, just a good guy that like got it.

02:00:41
Speaker 2: So he's got a great career.

02:00:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, fires Mal, you guys did have just a hell of a room. Yeah, I'm sure like Aj, you know, you just got to be itching to get on the field at times, like playing behind somebody like yourself or just knowing you're not going to be seeing the field unless an injury or something like that happens. Because Aj was a stud at Iowa State. And again anytime he came in during extint that you'd be out, like he'd light it up like he was a hell of a middle linebacker.

02:01:03
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'll tell you what you give those guys a lot of credit too, because he was like the the first guy in wherever. So if his needed to be Will, he could play Will. If he needed to play Mike, he could play Mike. If you were playing you know, three backers in like a bass, look, he could play Sam. And you know, you don't get reps at practice, right, Like you don't get any So he had to show up in lock in and meetings and go to practice and you know, do his thing there and then go run down on teams and then oh hey, somebody, Hey, Luke's out, Like go play Mike backer, all right. Well, and that next week TD's out, Lukes backing, all right? Now you get to go play Will backer. And it's like it never he never lost a step or like had a mental blip. He's just it's impressive like those guys that are able to do that at a high level.

02:01:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, what was so fascinating to me is watching your career and like when when you started like four or five six are to sustain a couple of injuries, your ability to kind of take your head out of it but still be so productive. How did how is that like transition for you? Because it seemed, at least from me on film. Obviously, Okay, this guy's not putting his face in as much, but he's still finding ways to manipulate blocks and be just as productive.

02:02:11
Speaker 7: Which you kind of nailed it. Like you the older you get like you physically you slow down, right, but it's like like physically you slow down, but like mentally you you learn more.

02:02:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, you passed your physical ability with mental ability.

02:02:23
Speaker 7: Yes, So then you're like, all right, I don't need to I don't need to go smash that guy. Like I know where his point of attack angles, I know where mine is. Can I speed him up? Can I slow him down? Can I get him playing at my speed? Like my advantages are quicker and faster. I might be a little bit I might have a little bit more like quick pop than he does. If I get in a dog fight with him, he's bigger, stronger, he's more powerful, I'm gonna lose like nine out of ten times. So it's like, how can I manipulate a block in the sense of like if I need to get there, and I can get you to slow your feet down or stop your feet now, I can speed up faster than you. I can slow down faster you. I can beat up faster than you. So instead of like trying to run through your chest, if I can get you to stop your feed doom boom, I can just get past you that way. So it's like how can I You don't you don't want to hit a million guys in the game.

02:03:10
Speaker 2: It just wears you down. So it's like there's an ego element to it, like Mike Linebacker being a thumper, like you could hit Like was there a point where like I don't want to give up this part of me, but I know it's the best from my longevity.

02:03:20
Speaker 7: Yeah, you just like you gotta you love the game of football, like you better figure out how to play it as long as you can. And that's just kind of part of the Like it's kind of part of the game.

02:03:29
Speaker 1: You know, talk to us about how when you were first starting to sustain the concussions, Like if I'm a teammate of yours and you get ding the first time, Oh, Luke, he's got a concussion. Second time, Luke's got a concussion.

02:03:38
Speaker 2: Third time.

02:03:39
Speaker 1: When a pattern starts creeping up and then you're coming into the cafeteria or something, and it's like, hey, what are you learning? Like, talk about that time as a pattern starts to show itself with your head injury.

02:03:50
Speaker 2: Because there's always a point of feeling like vulnerable, like almost like mortals and.

02:03:54
Speaker 1: Too like when you're getting stuff like concussions. You know there's a part anytime you have an injury in your coming in the room, you're you feel like you've let everybody down, or like if you have an ankle right or a high ankle sprain, and guys might be like, you know, they're not questioning can you go, but in your mind you're insecure enough to where you're like, I hope these guys know that I am facing something pretty bad right now. I'm just not able to be on the field. Yeah, but yeah, talk about your the head injuries.

02:04:19
Speaker 7: I think a lot of it is what you learn and you know, like you said, you're twenty five years old, you're like, I'm fine. I think a lot of it is with the concussion stuff. It's like you need to be as honest with you can't with as you can with yourself and with everyone taking care of you, because if they don't know how you feel, they can't help you. So like, the more honest you are with them, the better and the quicker you can come back from whatever you have going on concussion wise, And that's what I learned, you know, probably the hard way is like our doctors are phenomenal. They took great care of me. They did everything they needed to do, And I just wish I would have learned from an earlier age to be more honest with them, because you got to get all the way back before you can go play again. Right, Yeah, Like there's no like, say you have like a risk that's bugging you, you can like tape it and like like okay.

02:05:10
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a badge of honor when you're.

02:05:12
Speaker 7: Like you just like figure it out, like or you do something to your finger, like all right, but like you don't really you'll be fine, yeah, versus your head, it's like you can't really tough it out. And the more you try to tough it out, the worse it gets. And then you start to realize, like why do I like, like you said, you want to play and like you want to bring value to your team, right, And then you start to realize, like, all right, if I'm not honest and I go back out before I should, I get dinged again, I'm providing less value to my team because now I'm gonna be out for longer. So it's like, all right, maybe it takes me, you know, two weeks to come back. I'd rather be honest and take those fool two weeks and come back. Then after we'd be like I'm good and like and you're not, and then you get dinged again. Now it's five weeks, so instead of it being a two week injury, it's a six week injury. And it's because you didn't take care of yourself. Like that's really I think what I learned, you know, probably not as quickly as I should have, But what I learned was the more honest you are with yourself, and the more honest you are with the guys that are their job is to take care of you, then the better it is for you, for them, for the team, for your you know, I just want to play football. The faster I can get back to playing football, So it's like everything gets better the more honest you are.

02:06:29
Speaker 1: Now when you had the first one, like, how many do you would do you think that you had before that first one?

02:06:34
Speaker 7: I don't think I had zero, zero, Like for sure, like one hundred percent, because you always wonder like, well, I know if I get one, And then the first one I got was in twenty fifteen, and I was like, yeah, that's that's one.

02:06:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, So and did that when you come back earlier from like when you're saying I learned it sooner if you did, if you feel like you didn't have any before that first one, was there some of those early ones that you're like trying to in your brain tough enough?

02:07:00
Speaker 7: So that one was the first one, and I was like, I was like, I need to like get my I need to get better. And it worked out literally perfectly. So that was week one and then I think we played, Yeah, we played three games and we had to buy so you know, you got to two weeks into it, and our trainers like, dude, he's like, you need to relax first of all, because you're putting all this stress on yourself. So what's just you're not gonna play next week? How about that? And I wasn't. I wasn't going to be back anyways, but he like, I'd give him a lot of credit. Ryan Vermilion, he took all the the pressure off me and was like, we're just you're not going to play next week, and then the following weeks of bye week, so like you have two weeks so just like kind of relax. And that happened and I was like, oh, like okay. So then I remember I went home for the bye week, and I I knew how to aggravate it, like I knew how to give myself. A lot of it was uh oh uh exercise base, like heart rate base, Like if I got my heart rate up, then I was start getting like headaches, and I was like, all right, I feel really good. It was like Thursday of the bye week, Thursday or Friday, I was back in Cincinnati and I wrote up like a really hard workout and I was like, all right, this is like it like either I'm gonna be good or I'm not gonna be good. And there's like no one between either I'm gona feel like crap or gona feel really good. Yeah, and I hit that working and I was like all right, I'm good and uh then and then I had a full a full another week of practice. So essentially you had like five weeks. You know, you're not really hitting anybody in practice.

02:08:31
Speaker 2: Especially at that point. Yeah, that third week and then Mark.

02:08:33
Speaker 7: Yeah, that was probably the best I could have handled it. And then moving forward, you just have a couple when you want to play, and so maybe you don't like you just I didn't handle it as probably well as I could have, and like it just it was it was unfortunate. But like now it's like you go talk to guys, you're dude, if you get one, like you have to be smart and you got to be honest with yourself.

02:08:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such a difficult game you're talking about though, because you have the hindsight of like looking back, like when these like Will and I talk about all the time, Like when you're in it, there's like these blinders that are on your eyes and you are solely focused on this thing and this is the main storyline of your life. But everything else, like the next forty years of your life you're not even concerned about it. Yeah.

02:09:12
Speaker 7: Well, and you're also like the only thing I want to do is play football, right, Like that's it, Like I just want to play football. I want to be on the field with the guys, like I love playing football on Sundays. And then this prevents you from doing it. So you're like, I just won't play football like I just won't play. I just won't play. I just won't play, And that clouds your judgment more than like really anything else. Is like I just miss wake up on Sunday during football season and like just like watching from your my house. Yeah, Like we played Tampa then in twenty fifteen, and I remember sitting in my apartment, like the team went down there and I was just watching it at my house, Like this freaking sucks.

02:09:52
Speaker 2: There's no there's no lonelier feeling than when a team you're injured and the team goes on an away game, when you watch the buses leave and you're like you feel so ico everybody in your life. Yeah, it's terrible.

02:10:03
Speaker 7: But then it's like it's good perspective. It's like what do you take from it? And it's like all right, well when other guys are missing games, like you gotta have like like you got to check on those guys, like dude, how you doing right? Because you know what's eating them up? Yeah, it's like, dude, I feel you man, like just get better.

02:10:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, they get better. So how many did you end up getting throughout your career?

02:10:23
Speaker 7: Don't I don't know. I mean I miss some time and obviously fifteen sixteen. I missed a game in seventeen and then like nothing that was like really nothing like big after that?

02:10:35
Speaker 1: When was retirement starting to come into the fold end of.

02:10:38
Speaker 7: That twenty nineteen season, because you just like clip a guy and you're like, dang, like like I don't. It wasn't like you know, you should just go smack dudes and have no issues. I would go hit a guy and I'm like, didn't really feel great. And so then once you make the decision in your mind, like you know, I'm not all the way in it once, like mentally, were you starting to think about it a lot in two nineteen, Yeah, like like the last like the last game of the year. I was like, I'm done. Done.

02:11:09
Speaker 2: So that's when you made your decisions that last week.

02:11:12
Speaker 7: After so it was week it's week sixteen, so obviously week seventeens, last week, week sixteen. I remember being like, yeah, probably done.

02:11:22
Speaker 2: So really was there a process of like talking to anybody or was feeling.

02:11:26
Speaker 7: I just remember after that game like I was like, yeah, you don't, you don't got it anymore, Like you just you don't, you don't like you don't have it.

02:11:34
Speaker 1: What's your you don't have it because I'm stay right.

02:11:38
Speaker 7: Now, yeah, like you know, you can't play. I would have been fine if like I physically slowed down, like can't run as well, like not as fast, maybe I'm not as physical, maybe like I don't have the same like fire. I would have been fine with that, and I would have like kind of just probably milked it out a little bit more like Noah, I love playing. But once I knew it was my head and I'm like, like, mentally, I'm like, dude, it's either yes or no, Like, if you slow down, you can, like physically you can still play football hard and like play it fast and play with great effort. But once I knew in my head mentally, like it's not any of that. It's like your head stuff. Now you can't you can't in your brain. In my brain, I couldn't rationalize, like I can't play as hard as I want to. My effort's not going to be there. I can't be as physical. And once I knew that, I'm like, man, it's not fair to the guys in the team, and it's not fair to the coaches, and it's not fair to like the fans and myself and my family for me to go out there at like mentally seventy five percent, Like if I got to thump a guard and push a guy back to Chack to make a play and I'm like yeah, and like I get widened and then and then the shack the tackles really hard on Shack, Like that's not fair to Shack for me to like, no, especially mentally, I know the reason why I'm not stuffing that guy. Once I knew that, I was like okay, versus like I'm you know, Sam Suil playing right now and I'm thirty three years old and I go to stuff a guard and like that dude's twenty five years old and he just mauls me. Like I'm like, I mean, I did everything right. I tried hard. I prepared in the offseason, like I gave it everything I had. That guy's just a young dude and just beat me versus like in my head, I'm like I didn't take him on as like I didn't hit him how I should have, Like I'm not with that, Like I couldn't. I couldn't do that.

02:13:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, And knowing that your effort.

02:13:37
Speaker 7: Wasn't my effort wasn't there, and like that's not fair to like the guys in the team.

02:13:42
Speaker 1: So I was like, all right, in yourself too, like you have to stand in your head of how you play the game and how you want to play the game, and you know, like not that you're half assing, but if you were thinking about that trying to smash a guard and you're like, I didn't do this because of.

02:13:55
Speaker 2: X, Y and Z. In my mind, it's just not fair to any Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you know.

02:13:58
Speaker 1: So I love that you're sweating on the dudes.

02:14:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like this outside. Yeah, well we've had it as we actually started a gravel parking lot in the middle of May. Yeah, dude, it's it's it's so impressive to me because like when I talk to you, when I listen to you talk like this motherfucker loves ball, you could just tell he's not just about himself, he's about the team. He's about everybody, everybody else's job, and I can I can feel that from you. And then you sit there and say, week sixteen, I knew I was done and that was it. It's what was that transition like for you? Because now you're going from a guy that I have no doubt was one hundred percent in on football his entire life to now your service bus brand. Yeah, you're you're one hundred percent in. And now you're waking up in the fall and it's like, Okay, you wake up in August and I know you're feeling we've done it for a few years now. It's like you wake up in August and you're like, it's fucking great. Like there's a priciview that's like all right, Like I know, all them boys fifteen minutes out of the room from my house are dying right now, and I just will go my kids, you know, a little breakfast with them. There are so many positives, But then there's no Sundays where you sit there and it's like two thirty and the noonslate's ending and you see your team catching a big wine and it's like, fuck, I missed with that locker room. Is gonna feel like when they go back in there. Yeah.

02:15:14
Speaker 7: So my first year out, I worked with the team in the scouting department, so that was cool. And then on game days I was in the booth with the offense and I was the personnel guy. So like the they'd come out and I'd be in charge of like are they nickel, are they in base? What kind of base are they in? All that kind of stuff. So that was hell, Yeah, get wed upgrade and we go from paper towers to pre towels.

02:15:37
Speaker 2: It's great. I felt like a little air coming into.

02:15:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're talking about your concussions.

02:15:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, sweat my ass off.

02:15:46
Speaker 7: So it was cool. I got to be at the games on Sundays, and the first year was the first year was like damn man, like I still think I can play, And so that part was hard. And then the further way you get from it, you're like, like I do the radio with the team. Now do the radio broadcast. And I go on the field before the game and you see these guys run by you and you're like, I'm good.

02:16:07
Speaker 2: All set, I'm good man, appreciate you.

02:16:09
Speaker 7: Like Tristan works, he comes running by and you're like, I'm all good.

02:16:16
Speaker 2: There was a video two days ago on Instagram of him squatting five plates for like three or four reps with ease.

02:16:21
Speaker 7: He's like the nicest guy in the world.

02:16:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a great human. The Iowa cat Like, he's just a great dude. He just he is the athletic ability of a linebacker. Yeah, squad seven hundred pounds men.

02:16:32
Speaker 1: We were filming that a couple of years ago when we were at the that Arizona Bowl, and you're just seeing the guys kind of warm up in practice and pop the pads a little bit beforehand, and you're just sitting there thinking like what the.

02:16:41
Speaker 2: Fuck comes, Like, Yo, what psychopath would do this? Yeah? Yeah, because once you get out of it, like you get soft quick.

02:16:48
Speaker 7: You want to be the guy that's like on the team, but they put you on season ending ir so you're like you get to show up like you kind of have a job, but like you don't have to play. You can still travel your stress. Yeah, stress, you like walk out to practice, you drink some coffee. But you're on the team, so like your way of life is like socially acceptable, you know what I mean, versus like if you get done, you're like I can't just like go hang out in the locker room and like lift, Like you can't do that.

02:17:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, here comes this pro scout looke. Yeah you just want Yeah, you're like the places, right, you got to go bring a guy upstairs and get cut.

02:17:21
Speaker 2: Like yeah that year, did you ever have to do that?

02:17:24
Speaker 7: Brought one guy up the worst.

02:17:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, talk about the year being in the pro scouting.

02:17:28
Speaker 7: I'll tell you what, you learn a lot about the NFL, like what plays, types of guys in the NFL. Like you learn a ton and it was super cool. Like I learned a lot and it was super beneficial, but it wasn't something I wanted to do long term, but like you really get to see like what play, like the difference between personnel and a three four versus personnel and a four to three, Like body types like lengthd what guys are looking for, what plays, what doesn't play, types of running backs, Like you don't have a feel for that. While you're playing. Is all you do is studying an opponent. You're not studying like you know height, weight, speed, size, how they play, what kind of football player they are, And you learn like the whole league by doing that. Because we did, we had to watch all the free agents for that season going into the next year. So then like now moving forward, like you watch a guy and you're like, like, we watched that guy for twenty five minutes and graded him and wrote a report on him, and like it's it was really cool.

02:18:25
Speaker 1: So was it like cutting I just remember going up there, probably a linebacker.

02:18:34
Speaker 7: I remember it was a corner and I remember just walking up there, and I remember I walked into the GM's office and I'm like, hey, look like I'm down to do a lot of things, Like I kind of don't want to do that, like after after the fact that, yeah, I was like, guys, like I I'd rather just like not do that. I feel bad because, like, I know how hard it is to play and like and make the roster. It feel like you're on the roster and then get cut, Like you see all your buddies do that throughout your whole career, and you're like, man, like I'd rather not be that guy that has to do that. And they're like they're like, yeah, sorry, we don't have to do that anymore.

02:19:07
Speaker 2: Like cool, You're like, damn, you know you got pulling the gym apologize to Luke's a grim reaper.

02:19:13
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, guy, you don't want to be that guy because you know, you're you're standing at the door waiting for them to come in from practice and everyone's.

02:19:19
Speaker 2: Like, Luke, what's up.

02:19:21
Speaker 7: Man.

02:19:21
Speaker 2: You're like, hey, can I talk to you?

02:19:23
Speaker 7: And they're like dang, yeah.

02:19:25
Speaker 2: And one year removed. Yeah, like eighty percent of that roster knows you as a team.

02:19:30
Speaker 7: As a teammate.

02:19:30
Speaker 2: So I got up.

02:19:31
Speaker 7: I got up there and they're like, we're sorry, Like it's cool, I just rather not do that again.

02:19:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. Was this a guy that was on the team the year before.

02:19:37
Speaker 7: We know, but he was a dude, that's like he he was like a dude, like a dude in the league for a while.

02:19:42
Speaker 2: Oh so, and when you when he says something to him, was there any like common like, man, you're the grim Reaper? No?

02:19:49
Speaker 7: I think he I think he probably knew it was coming, but it doesn't make it any easier.

02:19:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he's he was a vet, herenerstood game.

02:19:55
Speaker 7: He's been in the league for a long time, and like it was a dude. So I think he's probably.

02:19:59
Speaker 1: Like Luke's trying to study on how to cut guys. He's just throwing on moneyball.

02:20:04
Speaker 6: Yeah.

02:20:05
Speaker 2: I mean that's at any point during that season of you being a scout or doing whatever you were doing, did they have a reproach you and be like, hey, could you play a couple more games for us?

02:20:16
Speaker 7: They always joked about it, but I was like, guys, like you know, how quickly you tighten up like quads, he low back. You know, the guy's like running and looks like they get shot. That would have been me, Like first time they run, you know, a seam ball and I got to chase the guy in the middle field.

02:20:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know the first game, the first game that Michael linebacker didn't have a great one and someone made a joke to you, if you would have been like, yeah, I'll give it another like are you for real?

02:20:47
Speaker 7: My injury waiver would have been like this long? Yeah huge, I mean that paycheck though it would have been a league minimum.

02:20:54
Speaker 2: No no, no, no, no, you pull that hamstring. I are the rest of the season. That's yeah, that would have been nice. Bro. Thanks, he's on the team still that guy there, Yeah that is that would suck to me.

02:21:10
Speaker 1: Now, did you were you in a point too mentally to where you're, uh, you're juggling or trying to figure out what you're wanting to do long term, like how's everything checking up?

02:21:19
Speaker 3: Now?

02:21:19
Speaker 1: You mentioned your youth football coach with with Greg Goles, so shout out the boy Greg, you do radio stuff. Was there a moment to where you're like, man, I kind of don't I have no clue what I want to do, and I'm kind of chasing some dead ends.

02:21:29
Speaker 7: I think you yeah, I think there's you don't know what you want to do. Obviously, like you get done and like like perfect word, I would have I would have loved have kept playing, So like I probably happened earlier than I wanted it to. And so then the process becomes like you have to just continually try stuff until you find stuff that you like, and then once you like it, then just keep doing it. And then if you don't like it, then you stop doing it. But like you have to there needs to be a concerted effort. Two, if you're going to go do something like, you got to go all the way in, because if you tiptoe around it, you're not gonna get the full experience. You're gonna waste your time. More importantly, you're you're using somebody else's time too, Like if somebody's gonna help you try to dive into something and you and you don't go all the way and you're wasting their time. So it's like, all right, I'm gonna go all the way in on a couple of things. I'm gonna try certain things out. I tried scouting, just wasn't my thing. It was fun, It's just like I'm not doing this long term.

02:22:22
Speaker 2: And then they too, Yeah, just busy.

02:22:25
Speaker 7: Then the next year I did the radio with the Panthers radio broadcast, like that's awesome, Like I really like that. So that's pretty much the whole season, and then the youth football stuff with Greg. So his son Tates in that picture and that's his dad, Chris. His dad Chris coached high school football on Jersey and just look them up. They didn't lose a game for like five years in a row.

02:22:49
Speaker 2: Look them up. Just look them up.

02:22:50
Speaker 7: So we've been doing that for this will be our fourth year. So it's been awesome, like we have a ton of fun with it. We coach at a a school and Arlott Charlotte Christian is the school. Check us out, okay, And this is our first year coaching at Charlotte Christian was last year because Tate, Greg's oldest was in seventh grade, so we did coach Pop Warner for two years and then Tate got in the seventh grade. So then we coach at the grade school which is attached to the high school, and then we'll coach again at the high school this year.

02:23:20
Speaker 1: So what happens to the current staff that's like, you know, so they kind of bounce back kind of like, hey, Greg.

02:23:24
Speaker 2: Ols and Louke Keiley they're coming in.

02:23:26
Speaker 7: So it's awesome. So it's really we got a new staff.

02:23:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, right.

02:23:31
Speaker 7: The two guys that like make it run it are Greg and his dad, like they're phenomenal, and then the other we got two or two or three other guys. Three other guys, So it's Stu Jonathan Stewart Okay coaches the running backs, which has been phenomenal, just a crazy and then Todd Blacklice. So Todd Blackler's quarterback at Penn State National Championship one was a first round pick. Now does NBC. I think it's NBC College with Noah Eagle Iron Eagle son, so that he does he does college football on Saturday, big, big, big game. So he did all have State Oregon last year. He's like he's a little bit and he lives in and he lives in Charlotte. So it's so much fun because I mean, Greg and Stu are like some of my best budds when we were playing, so I get to hang out with them. Greg's Dad's awesome, Todd's great, and we just have a ton of fun with it.

02:24:18
Speaker 2: Would you ever want to call games like Greg does rap right?

02:24:24
Speaker 7: The I think so the radio. The interesting thing about radio and TV, so radio you really just talk about like what's happening in the game, and like why it's happening. What I think is cool about TV is like Greg does a phenomenal job of like setting games up, and like what I mean by setting it up is like talking about what he anticipates going to happen in the game, why it's gonna happen, what you know, say, it'd be like if say Tristan Wurfs has missed the last couple weeks and he's back in the lineup, Greg will talk about, you know, Tristan Wurf's is back in the lineup, this is how it affects him in the run game, in the past game, this is where Tristan Wurfs is really good in the run game. So maybe they're gonna like Greg does it way better than that. But you can really lay out a game doing TV because you don't have to explain what's happening every play because the viewer can watch the game, and Greg is able to set it up early in the game and then really talk through situational stuff and get into, you know, really why things are happening and why why it worked, why it did. He does a great job with that, and I think that part would be really cool. But I just have a ton of fun with the radio stuff, and like I told you, guys, like I just try to do things that I enjoy, and I enjoy the radio. I think the TV would be really would be really fun as well. So I just kind of see what happens.

02:25:40
Speaker 1: You ever you got out to uh Buffalo, yeah, for some uh for some coaching. Do you ever see yourself coaching in the league one day or trying to coach at a high level like that?

02:25:49
Speaker 7: I think it'd be a ton of fun. It's just those hours, Like.

02:25:52
Speaker 2: Bro, they're nuts.

02:25:53
Speaker 1: It's it's it's like, take what players do when they're studying all week long, and yeah coaches, man, it's it's like around the clock.

02:26:00
Speaker 7: It's just all the time. And like I'm just not ready to give up that much time. So I mean answer proably not.

02:26:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, the hours are crazy. I don't I mean, you the boy might there's like an itch, there's an itch in there. It's somewhere. I don't know.

02:26:14
Speaker 7: If it's not a lot about doing is doing it during OTAs. Yeah, So get out there and OTAs and like and be like hey, these next six weeks, like I'm in, like every day, I'm in whenever you guys are, and just do it and then you'll know by the end of that I like yes or no.

02:26:31
Speaker 8: Yeah.

02:26:31
Speaker 2: But OTAs is such a different vibe than camp and season. Yeah. Ots is so light. The coaches are feel good, everyone's kind of joking around. The minute you walk into the building July twenty fifth or whenever that you know, everyone goes into camp. Buttles are tight.

02:26:44
Speaker 7: Yeah.

02:26:45
Speaker 2: Not only that, but if you get behind the eight ball in the season. Yeah, yeah, you start off in you two and two, one and three, people just pissed off. You're trying to navigate bad attitudes everywhere. It's difficult. That's like one thing you don't miss is like the bipolarness of coaches and teammates.

02:27:01
Speaker 7: It's like you miss like that, like not stress, but like that pressure of.

02:27:06
Speaker 2: Like we gotta go, like we gotta Yeah, it's a big one right here.

02:27:09
Speaker 7: Like we got to go make this like this is a big game. This is for a lot of reasons, Like you miss that, like the urgency, that urgency, that's pressure.

02:27:16
Speaker 2: Those week like Week fourteen on when your team's like on the bubble, like are we going to make the playoffs?

02:27:21
Speaker 1: Are we not?

02:27:21
Speaker 2: What do we control in our destiny? What teams have to lose? And it's like you're kind of with your little whether it's a linebacker group or meet at the offensive lineman's like we got to do X, Y and Z to make a wild card. Didn't happen for us. That's why you play the band of brothers.

02:27:34
Speaker 7: December like you want to be you want to you want your season the matter in December.

02:27:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what I mean.

02:27:40
Speaker 7: You obviously want it to matter in like September, October, November, but like if it comes December and you're like, hey, like you're in the un We're in the mix, and.

02:27:48
Speaker 2: Then anything can happen in January.

02:27:49
Speaker 7: It didn't even matter, Like you're in the mix. Like you're in the mix, that's all that matters. And now you got to just go play your best ball. It's that's the best.

02:27:56
Speaker 2: Part of that is the worst feeling in the world is December and nothing matter. Yeah, and you're like, you hear the older guys in my first two years, we won five games my first two years, and I'm hearing older guys talk about Cabo and all these things are going to go on, and you're just still so involved and you think every game still matters. What's going on here, guys feeling? Yeah, exactly.

02:28:17
Speaker 1: Play for the name on your back now, yeah, anything, find it somewhere. Yeah, but you get those coaches the whay, you know, might they might be on the outs where they just start giving the play for the name on your back. Whatever you play for, whether you find and you just know, way, we're all in December and we're nobody.

02:28:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's.

02:28:39
Speaker 1: The name on your front, your family at home, maybe the cash of the bake account, name on your back.

02:28:43
Speaker 2: Let that heart turn black walk.

02:28:47
Speaker 7: Oh man, you gotta find it though.

02:28:49
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this has been awesome. Yeah it has. I was just gonna ask if you have any hobbies outside of like.

02:28:55
Speaker 7: The football I love so I loved bow Hunt.

02:28:58
Speaker 2: Really, that's my favorite thing.

02:28:59
Speaker 7: I get a little you. Oh you guys are out there.

02:29:02
Speaker 1: With Yeah, dude, he's a real man too, they have you out there, and you know.

02:29:07
Speaker 7: I love That's that's another reason I want to coach. I love the bow hunt. Yeah, white tail, elk, anything with the bow that's like my jam. You.

02:29:16
Speaker 1: I'm assuming you go out there to Montana.

02:29:18
Speaker 7: So yeah, I love to hunt elk in Montana. And then New Mexico's a really good state too.

02:29:22
Speaker 6: Well.

02:29:22
Speaker 1: I'm just saying since we're on the airways right now, Garrett cal Rinella, whoever's listening for meat.

02:29:27
Speaker 7: Eater, Yeah, get your get I got a great concept. There's I hope he has had fun.

02:29:33
Speaker 2: There's so much fun.

02:29:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they missed, but it was a blast.

02:29:37
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but she's part of But you pulled the trigger. I did a lot of guys would stiffen up and even pull that trigger.

02:29:42
Speaker 7: Okay, so you did something that at the moment, you showed up.

02:29:45
Speaker 2: I know. And it's fun too because Will and I we don't. I look in your eyes and you talk about bow hunting and I just don't. I don't have that. But to go out with them and then like work us through like long range rifle streaming. I went and sat down and I went one for five on my first five shots, and I was like, this is going to be the longest couple of days of my life. But then Garrett starts sitting there working with me, and he's like try this is and this He's lining me up. They're great coaches. They don't make you feel stupid even though they're like such bigger, better men than you are. It's just awesome, man.

02:30:12
Speaker 7: It's like those these animals live in beautiful areas. Yeah, you go hunt ELK, You're gonna be somewhere sweet. Yeah, the mountains. The weather's beautiful, it's in the fall, and it's just that's like my favorite time of year. And they go do that stuff. It's just sweet.

02:30:27
Speaker 1: What's been your longest like el hunt to where you're tracking it down?

02:30:31
Speaker 2: We did so climbing mountains.

02:30:32
Speaker 7: Now usually we hunt out of like an outfitter, and it's usually I haven't done like the full like nine miles, ten miles in on a horse and then you set up spike camp. I haven't done that.

02:30:43
Speaker 2: I like that.

02:30:45
Speaker 7: I'm gonna wake up. I'm gonna wake up early in the morning. I'm gonna be out all day and then.

02:30:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm gonna come home. Yes, is there do we have.

02:30:54
Speaker 7: That you don't have to read that, you can just read them.

02:30:57
Speaker 2: Okay, perfect.

02:30:58
Speaker 1: We do have a bud like question for Okay, people would do anything for a bud light. What would you do anything for?

02:31:06
Speaker 7: Oh? My probably my parents, I think.

02:31:09
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that's about wholesome.

02:31:12
Speaker 7: Like you think about your parents and like what your parents have done for you, everything from growing up to high school to college. At all my games in college, it came to down to Carolina, it's like your parents. My parents were fantastic. They set you up for everything. Everything was about my brothers and I and so, yeah, you do anything for him, they do anything for you, You do anything for them.

02:31:32
Speaker 2: I love the short answers.

02:31:33
Speaker 1: Yes, that's a good heart, awesome, beautiful my parents.

02:31:37
Speaker 2: You have how many brothers? Yeah? I got two brothers.

02:31:39
Speaker 7: So there's a picture order brothers on the right. That's John, he lives in Cincinnati. There's my dad, my mom, and then my younger brother Henry.

02:31:48
Speaker 2: Were they some dogs.

02:31:49
Speaker 7: John played football and lacrosse through high school and then Henry was a basketball player.

02:31:55
Speaker 2: Okay, so yeah, I love that.

02:31:57
Speaker 7: Yeah do you?

02:31:59
Speaker 1: I'm sure who's that that profile that has the Luke video where he's going where he's going.

02:32:05
Speaker 2: Who's next? Oh that somebody said that is awesome. That guy, that guy, Who's next Danny or something like that. He's all time. That guy's hilarious. Yeah, he is. Paul.

02:32:17
Speaker 1: Anything that we've missed, we do have Paul Swans sending in the back with the boys right now grinding it out. Paul was very pivotal in getting the boys in a Creatine and an Intangibles group chat with Luke and myself.

02:32:28
Speaker 9: We got creating on the bus right now. Can we can we take house have some of my suitcase. We can take them later on when we get done here.

02:32:37
Speaker 2: Put up.

02:32:39
Speaker 9: It's something going boys, not the real creatam Yeah.

02:32:43
Speaker 2: Anything that I've missed with Luke.

02:32:45
Speaker 9: I mean, this is this is the all American man right here. And that answer right there, I mean that's just that's gold the parents.

02:32:52
Speaker 2: Yeah.

02:32:53
Speaker 9: So I actually just got done here and him talk about most of this when we were talking to Coach Lee over at Vanderbilt.

02:32:59
Speaker 2: So he's been talking about it a lot, just diving in.

02:33:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's breaking down all the players too. How to watch film, how to break down film.

02:33:08
Speaker 7: I'll tell you what that the diego Pavia, He's got it.

02:33:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, like itvage. What do you love about him?

02:33:17
Speaker 7: He's like he walks into a room and he's the dude without trying to be the dude. And he can talk to everybody. He can talk to offensive coaches, defensive coaches. He understands. He's got great His football IQ is great, ultra competitive. He's just he's that dude, like he's got it.

02:33:34
Speaker 2: I love you know what I'm saying.

02:33:35
Speaker 1: You can tell Luke's got his uh his pro scouting background too, so he can like talk about these.

02:33:42
Speaker 7: Snap Yeah, if guys come talk to him, they'll be like, we need to find a way to get this guy around us.

02:33:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he is. He is electric.

02:33:50
Speaker 7: He's a football dude, football guy.

02:33:52
Speaker 2: He just loves ball.

02:33:53
Speaker 7: He loves the game.

02:33:54
Speaker 2: He embraces it. It's that's all.

02:33:56
Speaker 7: He knows all about football. And you know, those guys hard to come by. You know you still I.

02:34:02
Speaker 2: Was gonna say, did CM have it when he first came.

02:34:05
Speaker 7: Oh my gosh, that dude was born with it.

02:34:07
Speaker 2: That he is.

02:34:08
Speaker 7: Talk about a guy that loves football and all he wants to do is just be a good teammate, play hard. Christian the O g incredible White.

02:34:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's another Hall of Fame, all the first ballot Hall of Fame. You talk about a guy. I had a tough photo for c MC though. I mean he's a built cat.

02:34:28
Speaker 7: That is a bad angle. But yeah, I'm so excited for him this year. Come back, rip you going to be a daddy too, Yes, shout out dad.

02:34:38
Speaker 2: Have a great year.

02:34:39
Speaker 9: So i'd be I'd be remiss to say, you know, listening to Luke his art, listening to his football knowledge, but your ball knowledge is it's phenomenal.

02:34:49
Speaker 2: I appreciate.

02:34:50
Speaker 1: I gotta say I do probably myself on some I Q some good. You might not think I played in the league a long time, but from I was the neck.

02:34:56
Speaker 7: You mean you thinn nine years.

02:35:01
Speaker 1: I was there for the tenth year. But you know the league get a credited season, No, because I had a gambling show so they wouldn't let me play.

02:35:10
Speaker 2: Look, did you ever come across Will Compton film at linebacker? Never take anything from his game? Yeah?

02:35:14
Speaker 7: Absolutely? Yeah, for toughness, instincts, try hard, try hard collar guy.

02:35:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's it's those plays you break down? I don't know that's that's that's that shirt you have on.

02:35:25
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's uh like hearing you two talk about plays happening that you don't necessarily make, like being mugged up in the eight gaps. They got you in a bunch, they're checking Tulsa, putting you in a toss situation, any type of situational ball awareness.

02:35:40
Speaker 2: It's uh, it's music to my ears.

02:35:42
Speaker 7: Yeah, we'll get you.

02:35:43
Speaker 2: Appreciate it. We'll get you that year ten.

02:35:45
Speaker 9: If you want to come pit some race cars.

02:35:47
Speaker 1: That seems like a different life too, So I have to be just you can do it.

02:35:52
Speaker 2: I think you can do it.

02:35:53
Speaker 6: Let me play.

02:35:53
Speaker 7: Yeah, they'll let you play.

02:35:55
Speaker 1: I was down there to sign and rip there to sign and contract can't go through because they're like, let's.

02:36:01
Speaker 2: Hold up the NFL. Goodell shut it down. Yeah, Goodell shut it down.

02:36:04
Speaker 9: Dang, when's good when's Goodell gonna come on the bus?

02:36:09
Speaker 1: I don't know he's got an open invite, does he?

02:36:12
Speaker 2: He can come?

02:36:13
Speaker 7: Apologize the will for Yeah, scrapping your ten. You had a good You had a good number two.

02:36:19
Speaker 2: Five to one. It's a great white linebacker.

02:36:21
Speaker 7: That's Sam Mill's number. That number wasn't available.

02:36:23
Speaker 2: You see that pig right there.

02:36:24
Speaker 1: Keller Moore seventeen covered we'll covered you in. We were in Tampa there and we had somebody dropping low hole because we knew he was going to try to work witting over the middle. Keller Moore airmails it right the bread basket.

02:36:37
Speaker 7: But hey, you know what you had the hardest thing about the interception is gotta catch it, buddy.

02:36:42
Speaker 1: That was that was my first one. And when that ball was in the air, it's something I can make the play on it. I was like, you better fucking catch it. I kind of just put the hands out there too, and was just so high.

02:36:56
Speaker 2: Glo gloves, sticky gloves or those offensive line gloves. What's up those gloves you're wearing right there? Those stickies, Yeah, you don't wear We don't wear offensive and you never know.

02:37:07
Speaker 1: I can never get on board with the Keekley risk with the wrist braces though.

02:37:11
Speaker 2: Risks were money. Were you a risk taper?

02:37:15
Speaker 1: It's a little swag here, Yeah, it's a little bit you brought up Jonathan Stewart or earlier too. I did put him on skates in our game. Why it's late game. We were getting put him on skates. Oh I murdered him coming through the a gap. Yeah, I put him on skates, joked him out, put him on skates, like, put him in the air, put his late in the game. We were getting our backs blown out by the Panthers. But your boy, we're still playing for pride at the end of.

02:37:39
Speaker 2: The day when you go out there, yeah, yeah.

02:37:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, the heart was black in that play, ran right through the B gap, right through the gap and just murdered.

02:37:47
Speaker 9: You gonna want to rematch after listening to this, I know you don't want.

02:37:50
Speaker 2: To line up.

02:37:51
Speaker 1: I don't got it anymore, but find that clip.

02:37:54
Speaker 2: I will show you.

02:37:54
Speaker 7: Guys, I'm sure we got.

02:37:59
Speaker 1: Oh but this Hey, look, this has been awesome having me on.

02:38:02
Speaker 2: Thing a long time coming up. This is big for wal Cup. It's for myself as well. Love to see you two together.

02:38:07
Speaker 1: It's great to get a Hall of Fame white linebacker. Just we've had our dude.

02:38:12
Speaker 2: Would love to get Ray. He's got just pross out.

02:38:20
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, like, just the linebacker appreciation that we have on this bus.

02:38:24
Speaker 2: You gotta get on here. There's no better position.

02:38:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've had Fred Warner on that dude, du monster, Yes, you should get quon pro monster. Who are some of the guys right now? You just named a couple.

02:38:38
Speaker 2: Roquan Fred Warner, ah Man, you got me. Levante is still doing it.

02:38:46
Speaker 7: Spot here and Mario Davis has been doing it a long time.

02:38:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.

02:38:52
Speaker 1: Zach Bond and him going to from transition from on the ball to off the ball. I feel like it is a is a heady transitions for for Zack.

02:39:01
Speaker 7: Bad You know who?

02:39:01
Speaker 2: I like?

02:39:02
Speaker 7: Nick Bolton?

02:39:03
Speaker 1: Yes, bro, he just resigned with the Chiefs, So I like splain just to Bobby Gap he just signed with.

02:39:16
Speaker 2: He's a brave guy. Rabes guy would love bottles. Oh yeah, we could explain for sure. His his third and one stop on Derrick Henry twenty twenty on the goal line put him on the map.

02:39:28
Speaker 9: How about Cooper de Jeans stick on Henry?

02:39:31
Speaker 7: Wow?

02:39:32
Speaker 2: Yeah? Great?

02:39:33
Speaker 6: Four?

02:39:34
Speaker 2: It was it was, It was nice textbook. I would produce some corners. Are you if you go anywhere else besides Boston College? If you if this is all going to end the same exact way, you couldn't go to Boston College, Where would you go?

02:39:47
Speaker 7: Probably probably big school?

02:39:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, which one would that be?

02:39:50
Speaker 7: I don't know, you know, would have been fun nor? I mean, I'm not I might say Michigan I'm not going to say a high state. Those are the two easy ones. I feel like playing playing linebacker at Penn State with like a like a sick the sick like Cowboys.

02:40:08
Speaker 1: Yeahs sticking out.

02:40:11
Speaker 7: Yeah, be plause Leslie LeVar Arrington and the Parsons. They got the kid now, Abdul Carter.

02:40:19
Speaker 2: Yeah they had some freaks there. Yeah, you could have wore black shirt? Yeah is that? How is that helmet? The game? News back there? No? Is that Nebraska? Nice one.

02:40:30
Speaker 1: Bras just wraps the classic, the classic game. Luke knows we stopped the mudhole in the ass for what was it, the.

02:40:42
Speaker 2: Stripe Bowl? Stripe Bowl.

02:40:45
Speaker 7: He's waited the whole podcast to say, yeah, just wait bowl.

02:40:52
Speaker 2: And he tried to pretend like he didn't know the name of it. They said that they put that on the board up there.

02:40:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I waited to uh, I waited till we were up to hit the group chat to talk ship.

02:41:05
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's all right.

02:41:07
Speaker 2: Well, you like Bill O'Brien like him a lot. Yeah, A big fan of him.

02:41:10
Speaker 7: Just he is Boston College football, tough, physical run of football. He's greatly He did a great job last year. I'm excited for for this year for him, so.

02:41:20
Speaker 1: All right, okay, well yeah I see we got another standing round of applause for hats all.

02:41:27
Speaker 7: Hell yeah, thanks, thanks for turning to Eric, and yeah we're waiting for