Remembering Chris Wesseling

00:00:05
Speaker 1: Welcome to NFL Daily, where we're always thinking about Wes. I'm Greg Rosenthal. I'm here in the Chris Westling podcast studio. I'm taping it in the studio that bears my great friend's name before I head up to San Francisco for this Super Bowl sixty and I did want to just kind of stop in the middle of what's a crazy season, a crazy week and recognize that it has now been five years since West died, and this week is always tricky because it's the Super Bowl, but it's also the time of year that West died, and if you've lost anyone, grief is so interesting that the dates, the dates are important like that those anniversaries, you kind of feel it and you feel them in the air, and it almost makes sense that it's all it's all combined. It's the Super Bowl, it's Wes, and for me especially, you know, Wes was such a special person in my life, but initially as a special person in my football life. I met him, I'm putting in air quotes online on a message board, and his life force just just leaped off that message board so strongly that I wanted to get to know this guy and get to meet him and eventually to hire him and become a great friend.

00:01:38
Speaker 2: And then we were out here. And so.

00:01:41
Speaker 1: This time of year you think about him because I share a birthday with Wes two. It's in a couple of weeks. It's the two of us, me, Wes and the three of us if you want to include Roger Goodell, the three pillars we used to joke about of NFL Network, NFL media. We all share a birthday to the people on the Pisces cusp. And yeah, it's to me a cool thing that it's a time of year. And of course it's mixed feelings and it's heavy too, and it's sad, but I like the idea that it's a time to think about the person because the last thing I want to do is is ever forget them, not celebrate them, not talk about them. I know, if you're listening to this now, you're not gonna forget them.

00:02:26
Speaker 2: And it didn't.

00:02:27
Speaker 1: Feel right to go through this week without recognizing this anniversary in five years. And it's one of the first things Keisha taught me, you know, my great friend and the love of his life, Keisha, so early on, she really just had this this feeling that it felt it feels good to talk about the ones that you love and that you lost. And I'm far from a person who has like learned wisdom over the years, but that is something that really has stuck with me that I think helps people, and it really stuck with me the response we got in the aftermath of Chris dying, not just in the days after, but in the months and the years and even now. Right before we started, Eric, our producer, was saying, look, anytime we talk about Wes, it gets so much response and people want to be able to share their memories because for so many of you it felt like losing a really close friend and it was you had our podcast, the Around the NFL podcast originally Around the League in your Years, three four times a week for so long, and I think, especially with Wes, he gave all of himself to that podcast. What you heard was what you got. And I think for a lot of our listeners, who of course are younger and just growing up, and some people joined us in middle school and high school and college and it runs the gamut certainly, but a lot of younger listeners we heard and this really stuck with me that it was the first time a lot of people like experience a loss like that, and it almost makes me think now, like, oh here, it is like Wes teaching us life lessons again. Because Wes loved a good time, and that's one of the reasons why he made so many great connections here at NFL Media. Everyone's relationship with him was really different. But how I connected most with Wes beyond the football and just working side by side and loving to like figure out his mind talking football was he loved to ponder the meaning of it all, like he'd loved to debate the stupid stuff, but he also loved to talk about why are we all here? And spirituality and what it means to be a good person and yeah, death, And I almost think I can almost hear Wes's voice because we heard from a lot of listeners and I understood all the responses, and for a lot of people, it was really so difficult to lose Chris, and I understood that. The hardest thing that we ever did was was do a podcast that week and right in the aftermath and just continue to do it. And a lot of people told us like, I love you guys, but I can't deal with it anymore. Basically like that they stopped listening at that moment.

00:05:34
Speaker 2: And I do totally.

00:05:36
Speaker 1: Get that response, but part of me also hears Chris in my head being like, come on, like face it, face it, head up, like this is life, this is what happens, and it is terrible, and I don't want to get stuck in the bad stuff. But this week, I do, you know, think about the fact. Look, I drive past the hospital where Chris died every other day. It's just sort of part of my life. It is not hard, you know, it's hard not to think about that, to always be next to like the bar where me and in Dan of Mark and met up with his brother Phil, you know, right afterwards. And you know, I always think about it because it's right, it's right next to the Trader Joe's. And I do think about that week because it was the worst week of my life. We're doing shows for god knows what reason, trying to kind of think that maybe what we, you know, think we're watching happen is not happening as it was. But I bring all that up just to say, like, I think it's a trap to get stuck in those moments. Again, I can hear like his his voice in my head, which is like.

00:06:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sucks.

00:06:41
Speaker 1: But it was a miracle that the four of us all got to come together.

00:06:45
Speaker 2: It was a miracle that Wes existed.

00:06:47
Speaker 1: It was a miracle that Wes got to meet Keisha in the first place and have Lincoln, and that he had this life force that was so strong that it brought him all the way to Tybee Island at a part in his life where he didn't know exactly where he was going, and that we ended up connecting, and that he eventually, you know, found a lot of meaning, not just with football, but more importantly with the friends and the relationships that he made through football. But but football, football was the start to it. Like I saw this guy writing down every dynasty league ranking that he had, and he was such a you know to use a westward like irascible down like he was just so opinionated but stubborn but open but warm, but man, it was tough to get him to move off of a position, but you always respected that position. And part of this week for me, I had a little fun like going back and listening to some of the shows from that week, and I can almost I'm amazed how concise we were It's four of us and we're doing a forty eight minute Super Bowl recap and it's just moving around.

00:08:06
Speaker 2: Eric.

00:08:06
Speaker 1: I'm looking at him and like I could learn a little bit something.

00:08:10
Speaker 2: It was great.

00:08:11
Speaker 1: It's a great show around the NFL, and it was fun to go back and listen because we have Seahawks Patriots, and so I thought, Okay, well that's nice, a nice tie in here.

00:08:23
Speaker 2: Obviously, that was a long time ago. That was eleven years ago.

00:08:26
Speaker 1: That was only the second super Bowl that the four of us covered together. We had won before Wes was fully on board and hired, and so that was the second Super Bowl we were all together, and I thought it'd be cool to go back and just listen.

00:08:46
Speaker 2: Here.

00:08:46
Speaker 1: Here were some takes that Wes had. This was actually from the recap show. I listened to all of them from that week, but he was embedded with the Seahawks during the week, and then this was some of the takes he had after Super forty nine between the Patriots and the Seahawks.

00:09:02
Speaker 3: I think when you factor in the ridiculous curse catch, how well the Patriots defensive backs played on that entire drive and then the final play of the game to me, the greatest super Bowl I've ever seen.

00:09:13
Speaker 1: Everyone always wants to say the greatest super Bowl of all time right away, and I think it probably was.

00:09:18
Speaker 2: I don't know, had some more points.

00:09:20
Speaker 3: Okay, you're talking about, in addition to the back and forth of two great quarterbacks, one of the best defense we've seen in at least fifteen years, and possibly the best pass defense we've ever seen, you've got Belichick and Brady going for their six for their fourth title in their sixth Super Bowl, and you're doing it the caliber of opponent. You're doing it against the reigning Super Bowl champs.

00:09:42
Speaker 2: Against the best defense in the league for three years running. I don't want first team like that since the late.

00:09:47
Speaker 3: Sixteen I don't want to hear that the Patriots Panthers game was better.

00:09:49
Speaker 2: It wasn't.

00:09:50
Speaker 3: Now we're here last year and we're talking about Peyton Manning's legacy and going into that game, most people considered him greater all time than Tom Brady. A year later, we're not even bringing up Peyton Manning in the discussion. Brady has distanced himself a little bit from Peyton Manning.

00:10:06
Speaker 1: It is really interesting just to think about that game specifically, in how things change. And one of the great points Wes made, like there were a lot there, which it wasn't even included, was how he said, while we're in the press box watching it, that this next drive with the Seahawks moving the ball down the field and eventually getting right up to the goal line is gonna impact like how we talk to Tom about Tom Brady. And it shouldn't impact how we talk about Tom Brady because there's nothing really to do with Tom Brady. Tom Brady just orchestrated two touchdowns in the fourth quarter against the best defense in football, and I'm not planning to do like football talk on this show. But to me, that was the relationship I had with Wes and certainly that you guys had with Wes, that it could go from the deepest stuff to the football stuff in the matter sec And that's what I really enjoyed kind of looking back at at all these episodes, like it was all combined. And I'm thinking of Nick Westling today too, because I talked to him and I was supposed to include this on the previews the Pick Show that it's already been out with Cynthia Freelan and it and it I'm reminded of it because Wes and I and Market believe it had you know, did have the page its winning this game, you know, against the Seahawks back in the day in this Super Bowl.

00:11:27
Speaker 2: By the way, big bro Nick says.

00:11:29
Speaker 1: Seahawks by thirty, I mean, just totally disrespectful, and he's like, well, maybe not exactly thirty, but that that's what I said about the Eagles last year, and he got that one right. So I'm just putting that putting that out there. Another clip we have here was a pretty famous one if you're a huge diehard of Around the NFL, and also if you go even now to the Around the NFL Twitter page, it includes a part of a of this clip, a really great edit. We're had a lot of the great moments of Chris's time doing the podcast, and it's still pinned to the Around the NFL Twitter page, which I love, and it has part of this clip, and I decided to go back and listen to it, and what I found was it it was.

00:12:19
Speaker 2: You know, even longer.

00:12:20
Speaker 1: And had a little more depth and breadth to it than you even heard in that video. And I thought it would be cool to kind of play this on the show. And the crazy thing is to set this up is it just comes out of nowhere in a random week fourteen Tuesday show about twenty minutes into the end of the news where we're just basically talking about how Reggie Wayne, who was in the final season of his career, was playing through a triceps tear and didn't look good and that was all that set this up.

00:13:00
Speaker 2: I'll let West take it from me.

00:13:02
Speaker 3: Well, I think I've been a little flipping about this that I haven't given it the nuance it deserves. Reggie Wayne is playing through a torn triceps and is playing as bad.

00:13:09
Speaker 2: As any wide receiver in the NFL.

00:13:12
Speaker 3: He's also a respected team leader, and I'm sure within those walls they want him to battle. They want him to battle through this and show what he can do. So I feel like maybe we should give it a little bit more thought. I mean, you and I have talked about what what adult? Why would adults be interested in sports? And I think this kind of speaks to that that you mentioned a few minutes ago. I'm thinking like an analyst when I watch game rewine and if I think Mark's probably read this book Zen in the Art of motorcycle maintenance. He makes the point the analyst something is always lost in art or experience when you analyze it. Like Mark Twain, once he became a riverboat pilot and learned the technical side of it, the Mississippi River was no longer beautiful for him. And I think that's part of being an analyst. In football, we kind of lose track of what's important about sports. You know, when you get old. You know, athletes naturally rage, rage against the dye in the light. And I think Reggie Wayne's doing that and we have to let him do that. I mean, I just, I guess I just wanted to get that off my you.

00:14:15
Speaker 2: You feel badly for being negative to a guy it's been a great player for a long time.

00:14:18
Speaker 3: Well. I think if I was to hire a sports writer, the first question I was going to ask him is how do you reconcile the essential meaninglessness of sports?

00:14:30
Speaker 2: Interview?

00:14:33
Speaker 3: Because there is an answer. I mean, how do you reconcile watching young men bang into each other and try to advance and inflate a pig skin against mark territory? I mean, that's what you're doing. How do you reconcile the importance of that, and I think it's that at its best, sports is look at what humans can do. This is the best that we can do. It's like Shakespeare's poems or Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. This is going above and beyond. We're sending somebody out there, like you know, we can't get to Mars, so we send the rover. This is we're going above and beyond. And I think we've seen examples like the best willis Reed Hobblin on Latunnel, Kirk Gibson limping up to the plate against an unhittable closer Michael Jordan in the flu game. When an athlete is injured, and especially towards the end of his career like Reggie Wayne Is. Look, older players can still get it done. It's just that those those plateaus are fewer and far between. And I think there's something to be said for an older player trying to do that. There could still be something left, There could still be some light in reggi.

00:15:34
Speaker 2: Waying look at what humans can do.

00:15:39
Speaker 1: The crazy thing to me there is is that just in the middle of a Tuesday show off the Dome, a lot of it, I mean out of nowhere, and you know, It makes me emotional hearing him get to that, look what humans can do, because I think, like, yeah, Chris Wesseling podcasting, look at what humans can do?

00:16:04
Speaker 2: And it's such.

00:16:06
Speaker 1: A unique relationship I think between really regular listeners of a podcast, in a podcast like around the NFL, that that you get to know the hosts. And the crazy thing was like Wes was born to do that. Now he was even better in life. A rack on tour would be another way that I would use it. And so many of my best memories with Chris and Keisha are just sitting around the fire outside their house and just talking late into the night about whatever. And sometimes it'll be like ridiculous talking and sometimes it'll be that, but it was brilliant and it was open hearted. And when he says like, look at what humans can do, like look at what how humans can be, I think good and bad.

00:17:03
Speaker 2: Like Wes.

00:17:06
Speaker 1: Always showed sort of a full breadth of like, look at what humans could be.

00:17:10
Speaker 2: They can contain a lot.

00:17:13
Speaker 1: And it's so crazy to me that that's just dropped in the middle of a random episode and I swear twenty seconds later we just immediately go into Jimmy Jay Cutler getting benched for Jimmy Clawsan, and it was just like, oh.

00:17:28
Speaker 2: Greg's got to go handle the news.

00:17:30
Speaker 1: Let's get into Jay Cutler getting bench by Jimmy Clausid.

00:17:33
Speaker 2: And meanwhile, I'm thinking, look.

00:17:35
Speaker 1: Listen to this back all these years later, No bros like stop. He barely got any popper response from that a little bit. I give TD a lot of credit because we did move on a little bit thirty seconds later, and then we did kind of mentioned like, oh and he was just like Wes was on fire there. That was awesome. And I guess it's a reminder just Buck, when you have those sort of moments, when you have those sort of people in your life, just stop and recognize it in those moments and appreciate it. And look, I'm thinking about Chris today, and we think about Chris all the time here in the Chris Westling podcast studio, and you know, I'm just thinking about everyone that's out there too, and so I love all y'all that that are still listening, and I know so many of you have such love for Chris and everyone who is listening out there today. Yeah, think about him a little bit that that means a lot to me. And Keisha and everyone that that's so close to Wes over the years.

00:18:49
Speaker 2: Hell, look what humans can do