05/09/2021 – The Jason Martin Show - Fox Sports Radio

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Fox Sports Radio. What's happening. Welcome in,
so Jason Martin Show here on Fox Sports Radio. My
name happens to be Jason Martin. It's Nashville. That's the
location I happen to be sitting in right now. Hope
you're well wherever you are. It's Mother's Day if you
didn't know that, because I don't know if there's a
store open to help you right now, guys, But Happy

(00:24):
Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. If you're
with us, we're with you for the next three hours,
and we're live in the Fox Sports Radio Studios Nashville edition,
and we're brought to you by Discovered. Discover matches. All
the cash back you learn on your credit card at
the end of your first year. It's amazing because Discovers
accepted at places in the US to take credit cards.
Learn more, Discover dot Com, Slash Yes, Nelson Report limitations apply.

(00:48):
You can find me on Twitter at j mart Radio.
You can find me a Bridge Stone Arena here in Nashville.
Last night, as I saw the Predators earn their way
into the playoffs, which no one thought was possible. A
couple of months ago, but this team super impressive down
the stretch. Not trying to get into the hockey of
it here on this radio program, but I didn't want

(01:12):
to mention this off the top just for a couple
of minutes, because man, I don't know what the capacity
was last night. I mean, there were still plenty of
protocols being followed, but it was cool to be inside
a loud arena where the crowd was having a good time,
where all the festivities that the game day promotion staff had,

(01:37):
everything was ready to roll. It felt more normal than
any event I've attended in person in well over a year.
I went to Titans Bills game the Tuesday night, or
it may have been a Wednesday, actually uh NFL game.
It was Tuesday, Tuesday night after the COVID outbreak, first
COVID outbreak in the NFL, and they did have about

(01:59):
ten thousand people in Nissan Stadium that night, but even
that it still was pretty sporadic. There was some noise there,
but last night I actually felt real noise and it
just made me look forward to capacity again in sporting
venues across the country. We're getting there, but it's so important,
and sports misses it so desperately or has missed it

(02:22):
so desperately that it's good that we're finally getting to
the spot where we're gonna see this happen again, because
you forget. I think we take for granted a lot
of things. We just always assumed we're going to be there,
and then the last year and a half or so
have kind of changed our thinking and made us maybe
more appreciative of those things and just being there and

(02:47):
watching all the fans, those that traveled on behalf of
the Carolina Hurricanes, and those that were there for the
Nashville Predators last night. And we're starting to see that
if you're going to baseball games, if you're going to
some of these events, you're starting to see more people
in the crowd. You had what fifteen thousand I think
paid probably a WrestleMania They said it was over twenty,

(03:07):
but that number was a little bit. It was a
little bit couch and most and most of the time
it is, but there were a lot of folks and
you still got you got real noise. The pipe didn't
noise the fake noise. It worked better in some cases
than I ever would have thought it would, but nothing
replicates the real thing, and if we can just get

(03:29):
these college football stadiums full this fall, if we can
get these NFL stadiums full this fall, now we're cooking.
Now we're ready, and I think now is the time.
But it was definitely cool. It was just a cool
experience to be at a sporting event like that and
to see the excitement and the jubilation on the night

(03:52):
that the local team, the Nashville Predators, qualified for the
playoffs for the seventh straight year. And I probably bull
fashion completing it with one game left on the schedule
so that all world goaltender Pekareena can get his finale,
can get his real farewell. He wouldn't be able to
play if the game on the tenth was necessary, But

(04:14):
now that they wouldn't head and clinched it tonight, now
you can put him out there and give him his
farewell and net Uh hopefully is farewell from the NHL.
If he wants to keep playing, Nobody's going to decry it,
but he's He is a a legendary figure in this city.
He's played his entire career here and if he gets
the opportunity to exit here and then maybe go play

(04:34):
for his home country and international play a little bit
and then retire. I think that's the perfect ending, and
you get that, but the perfect start, the perfect beginning
is having a crowd in the seats. So if you
haven't been able to get to an event yet, I
look forward to you having experience I had last night
where sports felt like sports, where being a fan felt

(04:56):
like being a fan, where you really could actually experience
that hashion that drew us in in the first place,
because I don't know how many of us would be
sports fans if we didn't play it ourselves or attend
some stuff when we were kids that helped add vivid
color to the experiences that we had, and that has

(05:19):
been sorely missed, and there have been a I would
say there's been a generation of younger children that might
not have a whole lot of affinity for sports right
now because of what they haven't had a chance to do,
whether it's go to games or whether it's playing games.
But it seems like we're getting to the positive side

(05:40):
of that again, and that's a that's a real plus.
So it was fun. It was fun to be a
part of that environment again, and it's fun to start
watching these games where you can actually see people in
these seats and I'm looking forward to that continuing to
grow in the right direction as the country UH is
able to regain its sanity to some degree, because it
has felt insane for well over a year, and now

(06:05):
we're starting to We're starting to not just treadwater, we're
starting to swim again, and that's a real positive, also
a real positive. Russell Westbrook Russell Westbrook breaking Oscar Robertson's
triple doubles shriek his triple double record. He has thirty
five this season in Washington, had fourteen in the month

(06:25):
of April alone, which is the most in history of
the league. He already had the season triple double record
forty two back with Oklahoma City in and seventeen. It's
just what he does now, without throwing too much shade

(06:46):
on it, as he now ties Oscar Robertson, and he'll
beat it either the next game he plays or within
one of the next couple because that's just the way
this whole thing sits now. Roberts has had this record
since the early sto and you know that it's coming. Obviously,

(07:09):
Washington is not a feam there. Thirty two and thirty six,
So this is definitely an individual achievement. And Westbrook a
lot of his triple doubles, you know, they got some
my roles because Westbrook was ball dominant, always has been,
and it gave him the ability to grab the tenth
assist or the tenth rebound late in a game in

(07:33):
order to get a stat. But I really don't want
to take away from this accomplishment simply because Russell Russell
Westbrook has He's been so good. In terms of just
a player to watch, the NBA is much less about
its teams and much more about its players. I still

(07:55):
think that football is more of a team sport than
an individual sport, even though the spot light is often
on the NFL quarterbacks, But in the n b A
there's a whole lot of teams that we pay attention
to during the regular season that once you get to
playoff time, it doesn't always go that direction. I have
felt for a couple of months now a sense that

(08:21):
the NBA desperately needs a Nuggets or a Jazz or
one of those kind of teams to actually cash in
and win the Larry O'Brian Trophy, not just make it
to the conference Finals, but to actually win the thing.
I know that sports are built on dynasties, they're built
on dominant squads, they're built on golias, But we do

(08:46):
need a David to knock down the goliath once in
a while. And I think this year you have a
really good opportunity to see that because you do have
some great other teams and you have some beatuble golias.
The Lakers could be in a play in tournament. Lebron

(09:07):
James hasn't been right. Anthony Davis is not an alpha dog.
He is a second. Lebron is the alpha if there
is one. I don't think either one of those two
guys can win without the other one. But I know
if it came down to Anthony Davis having to do
it on his own or him being the star, I
don't think he can do it. You've got Janice in

(09:32):
the Bucks. The Bucks haven't done it. If they can't
do it this year, when are they gonna do it.
We've already talked about the Nuggets. What Michael Porter Jr.
Is doing is incredibly impressive because when Jamal Murray went down,
you just kind of felt like that was a wrap
for Denver, and you wouldn't have been wrong to feel

(09:54):
that way, but it hasn't turned out to it turned
hasn't turned out to be that way because Michael Porter Jr.
Is averaging twenty five and six shooting from the field
and from three during the stretch nine and two in
his absence, I mean, Jamal Murray goes down, and maybe
now the Nuggets have three. Maybe before Michael Porter Jr.

(10:17):
Wasn't really able to flourish like this, and now that
he has, you can't put the genie back in the bottle,
but you will get Jamal Murray back if you're able
to run all three of these guys. Now we might
actually have something here in Denver, Utah has a lot
of fun to watch. Donovan Mitchell's hell of a player,

(10:39):
Rudy Gobert is a hell of a player, hell of
a defender. Then you go to Dallas, Luca don Che
scintillating to watch individually. But the problem for the league
continues to be that all these teams that we've been
discussing you and I over this last few minutes, the Jazz,

(11:00):
the Nuggets, the Mavericks. You can put the Suns in
there as well, because they're playing fantastic basketball. Booker is
a superstar, especially when he has a Chris Paul that
can facilitate properly for him. It's also helped DeAndre Ayton
to really come out of his show. But all of
these teams, if we get to the playoffs and the

(11:23):
teams that at least have the ability to flip a
switch and become something other worldly, do so again, and
then explain to me how you sell if you're the
n b A, you're a regular season ever again, flipping
a switch for the Lakers, flipping a switch for the Nets.

(11:45):
Those are the things that I don't I don't know
if that's what you want. If you're the n b A,
I know the question still remains, do you have a
league or do you have a lebron We know the
interest level that's generated there. I don't think that this
thing needs to bounce around from champion to champion to
champion all across the league for half a decade. I

(12:06):
just think maybe once and maybe this year is that year.
Maybe Denver does it, Maybe Utah does it. Maybe one
of those kinds of teams that historically or certainly in
the modern NBA, you just kind of look past once
you get to the playoffs, it's just like, man, they
are a really good team that's gonna get bounced in

(12:27):
the second round of the playoffs. But again, do we
have a bunch of teams or do we have a
star driven league where it's all about the individual performances.
The NBA makes it such that the accomplishment by Russell
Westbrook tying Oscar Robertson in triple doubles feels adequate, feels

(12:47):
special because Russell Westbrook's a special player. They're now ninth
in the playoffs standings in the East over Indiana. The
Pacers are thirty one and thirty six. It was a
historical night. According to Bradley Beal quote that kind of
takes the cake on everything. Bill had fifty. He said,

(13:12):
russ is one of the best players to ever pick
up a basketball. I wouldn't disagree in terms of pure talent. Now,
he plays to some degree, or maybe not even some degree,
but a large degree. He plays a selfish brand of basketball.
But the NBA has oftentimes been a selfish league when
it comes to its stars. The triple double record doesn't

(13:35):
mean that Russell Westbrooks is gonna end his career with
an NBA championship, you would think that he would, but
if you've watched him throughout his career, you know he's
gonna get his. And it's also it's also an easier
task to get all these triple doubles on bad teams

(13:56):
or flawed teams or teams with holes. But this was
his fourth consecutive triple double in a row. Yeah, what's
six of nine and overtime. A couple of key rebounds
clinched the game of the block, he says. It's quote.
I want to make sure I'll leave everything I have

(14:18):
on the floor, and when I'm all said and done,
I can look back and nobody can ever say that
I didn't compete at the highest level or I cheated
the game. I can go out and compete every night,
and that is all I can do each and every day.
Russell Westbrook is very much a me style of player,
but the NBA is still a mes me kind of leak.
I'm just glad we've gotten to watch Russell Westbrook's career.

(14:42):
It's gonna be measured in its championships are lack thereof
every athletes' career when you get to the pros. That
is ultimately it that in longevity. I mean, if you
managed to stay in one of the professional leagues for
a decade or more, then you've had a heck of
a career, whether or not you've been a with a
cash in a chit or not. But a guy like

(15:03):
Westbrook hall of fame talent, it's always going to be
knocked because of that blemish on the record. That's not
as much a blemish as just an empty spot. It's
an incomplete report card. I don't know if he's ever
gonna have the chance to fill it. Oklahoma City, boy,

(15:25):
they had an awfully good chance. He went to the
NBA Finals once, didn't go very well. At that point
in time, Harden was still with the team. He was
not ready for that moment, not Westbrook Harden. Then, of
course the Durant situation. Kde ends up leaving, going to
Golden State, and very quickly thereafter, Oklahoma City is not

(15:45):
really a factor anymore. He goes to Houston. I didn't
think that was gonna work. It didn't work, and now
he's in Washington and he's just having an outstanding individual season.
He does make other people better around him, how much
and how consistently I don't know, because a lot of times,
if you're playing with Russell Westbrook, you're watching Russell Westbrook,
even if you're wearing the same uniform he is. You

(16:06):
can tweet me at j mart Radio. The other big
topic right now in the n b A is Zion Williamson.
It is what has happened with his ring finger, the
injury and who is to blame. I think this is
a this is a big discussion that we can have

(16:27):
and I think there's a lot of different ways to
look at and that's what we're gonna do when we
come back. We're also gonna let you hear from David
Griffin of the Pelicans and where he's laying the blame
at the feet of the league for the injury to
his superstar in New Orleans. Will jump into the Zion
discussion next. Here. I'm Jason Martin and this is Fox

(16:48):
Sports Radio. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk
lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows at
Fox sports Radio dot com and within the I Heart
Radio app search f s R to listen live. Welcome back,
I'm Jayson Martin. This is Fox Sports Radio. Glad have
you but this We're here and well, we're here for
the next two and a half hours taking you through

(17:10):
the early stages of this Mother's Day one. I'm on
Twitter at j Mart Radio. You can find me there.
We're gonna talk Ian Williamson here in one second. Uh.
Elon Musk hoasted Saturday Night Live last night, and I
really I didn't see a second of it, So I'm
not commenting on that. I honestly don't care about the

(17:34):
quality of the show because that's not why he was
asked to host. He was asked to host because his
name is Elon Musk. I looked after the hockey game
when I got back, when I got back to the
studio here, I started, you know, kind of looking through
social media bit and I saw the response and everybody was, Oh,
it's this. I couldn't make it through the monolier, couldn't

(17:54):
make it through this. Get first off S and L
hasn't been good in a long time. So that's actually
more in evergreen tweet then you think it is evergreen
in this media means you could do it pretty much
any time you want. It's not like it was just
last night. You probably could have used that tweet for
the last few years I'm not going to defend Elon
Musk in terms of his acumen to be on Saturday
Night Live. Just know that all the commentary that was

(18:18):
going out about that show explains why they put him
on there. They didn't put him on there to be good.
I wouldn't be at least bit surprised that they put
him on there intentionally to be awful because they don't
like the guy, or they knew that it was going
to be a talking point if he was good. I
don't think people would have said much about it but

(18:40):
that he's bad. Now there's memes everywhere. Now, there's people
taking the usual shots at Tesla, taking the shots at
the Crypto, all of those kinds of things. It makes
it easy. You might not have liked that Ellen was
hosting it for one reason or another, but he is
a newsmaker. He is a huge name. He is about

(19:01):
as well known a name as you can find right now.
And SNL has made weird decisions in the past in
terms of people they've put on the show. This wasn't weird.
It was just not normal in terms of the concept.
How many bad athletes have we seen on SNL through
the years. This was the most interest I've seen SNL
have in a long time. That's why it was on.

(19:24):
He wasn't on because they agreed with him, or they
wanted to give a platform for his views or any
of that kind of stuff. And again that you know, whatever,
you may hate Elon Musk, you may love Elon Musk,
you may not care, but he was going to move
the needle for the two percent of this country that
actively interacts with social media, and therefore it paid its weight.

(19:51):
It may have sucked. As a matter of fact, I
pretty much assumed assumed going in it wasn't going to
be a stellar performance. I have no idea what Elon
Musk's acting chops are. My guess is that's not his strength.
But you have to look past that and realize all

(20:14):
the negative tweets may as well have been positive tweets
because they just put more eyeballs on this s and
now all the people that were saying it was terrible,
a lot of those tweets were seen by people that
weren't watching that forgot it was on, didn't know, and
then went and tuned it in or wanted to go
see it for themselves. Is it gonna be a long
term Boom for Saturday Night Live. No, because I'm pretty

(20:36):
sure the writing stunk even if Ellen was good. But
at least on one night, it might have popped a
night and popped up rating, and that would explain it
the entertainment side of it. Throw that out. This was
a business move, and ultimately that's all Television is the

(20:58):
show that you why exists solely for the advertising between it.
Matman's on the air because of the shows, the commercials
that are really the whole purpose there. You think it's
the bun, but it's actually the meat when you look
at TV. Same thing with radio. We're on because of

(21:22):
the things that happen three times an hour where you
have to take a break every show you like. Is
what makes something like podcasting or something like that unique
is you can technically just do that, and as long
as you're not trying to profit off of it, it
can just be a passion project for you, even though
in many cases it's gonna be hard for you to

(21:42):
stand out and certainly you're not gonna be able to
monetize it unless you take it down the other pathway.
It might be cd you might wish things were more
pure than that, but Let's be real, what you got
out of Saturday Night Live last night is exactly what
they wanted you to get out of it. They may
have wanted to make a mockery of Elon Musk, but
I think the bigger thing was they just wanted to

(22:02):
be talked about again, and they succeeded in that. You
may have hated it, and you may have thought that
you were owning it on social media with the stuff
that you were saying, but all you did was contribute
to the success of that experiment. So I wanted to
say that real fast because I happen to see it
popping around on Twitter again. Um, and it's still trending

(22:27):
right now. But if you were under any other belief
as to why it was happening, there was only one
reason it was happening, and it was to make news.
It was just to be relevant again, because you never

(22:47):
really noticed that anymore. Like I don't see Saturday Night
Live trending anymore when I'm in here doing this show
early on Sunday morning. By that point usually if SNEL
has done something big, it's still trending by the time
we start this show at three am Eastern time. I
haven't seen that in well over a year. Probably. I

(23:09):
think at some point the Trump stuff that out, Baldwin
and those guys were doing, like some of that stuff
was trending for a little while, but it hasn't. It
wasn't even during an election year, and certainly the pandemic
didn't help help the situation. But now you've got massive
interest and massive what's happening, massive trending Saturday Night Live

(23:33):
airing on NBC and there's Elon Musk standing there. That's
pretty much all you need to say. I'm sure it
wasn't great, but it accomplished its goal, all right. I said,
we're gonna talk about Zion. Zion Williamson is out for

(23:59):
we don't know how long because of a fractured ring finger.
Injuries happen, but why did they happen or why did
this one happen? Specifically? Here is David Griffin, and this

(24:19):
I want you to pay attention to what he says
here and what he's trying to intimate here, and then
we'll come back and we'll discuss this from a couple
a couple of different angles. This is the executive VP
of basketball operations from the Pelicans, David Griffin on Zion
Williamson's injury. I'm really frustrated because this was avoidable. Um.
We told the NBA through every means available to us,

(24:40):
through sending in film, through speaking to everybody in the
officials department, everybody in basketball operations, that the way they
were officiating Zion was going to get him injured. Um.
And quite frankly, he's injured now because of the open
season that there's been on Zion Williamson in the paint. Um.
He has been absolutely mauled in the paint on a

(25:03):
regular basis, to the point that other players have said
to him, I'm going to keep doing this to you
because they don't call it. So there's more violence encouraged
in the paint against I and Williamson than any player
I've seen since Shack. Um. It was egregious and horrific then,
and the same is true now. UM. I'm particularly disappointed

(25:26):
in myself and our organization. We did a very poor job,
apparently of explaining in the proper sense of with the
proper sense of urgency, how severe this situation was from
a league perspective. UM, that's my fault. Um. This situation
is very much something that should have been able to
be avoided if we were protecting our players in the

(25:49):
way that we should be uh in the league, and
this just was not done. So again, I'm I'm very
disappointed that he's not going to be available, um here
for the force seeable future anyway. Um, But I'm more
disappointed in our in us quite frankly, that we weren't
able to bring the the appropriate sense of urgency to

(26:09):
the league conversation around the way he was officiated. So
that's David Griffin saying, oh man, we should have done
a better job telling the league that our superstar was
getting hammered down low and eventually it was gonna get
him hurt, and now it has. But he also was

(26:31):
laying the blame on the league, saying this was avoidable
because he's been hacked and scratched and claude and it's
finally taken. It's told. There's been a lot of slapdowns
on the basketball right on his finger, right on his hand,
and now they're superstars hurt. We don't know what the

(26:54):
timetable is for his return. We know where the Pelicans
were in terms of playoff position and all that kind
of thing. But now you know, may not happen. What's
interesting about this entire topic, first of all, is that
you would think, based on the tenor of the comments

(27:17):
from David Griffin, that Zion Williamson doesn't go to the
free throw line very often. Entering Friday's game, he was
second in the league in total free throw attempts. Only
jan As Santa to Kumpo had more, and he's only
behind Janice, Joel Embiid, and Trey Young in free throw

(27:37):
attempts per game this season. Stamen Gunny quote, he certainly
takes a lot of hits. We've been on the referees hard.
I know I have been every game. I get the
response that, well, how many free throws as he shot?
And my response is always not enough. I don't know
what the balance here is, but if Zion is going

(27:59):
to the free throw line that often, how many fouls
are going to be called? And how many free throws
do we have to watch. I'm not saying that foul
should not be called. I'm saying that it isn't as
if he's never going to the free throw line. But
let's throw that part out, because if a foul is,

(28:22):
a foul should be called. I feel like Zion Williamson's
body makeup, the way in which he's built and the
way in which he plays are not conducive to him
getting the foul calls the other guys might, and then

(28:42):
other guys do. And as I think about this, I
think of a couple of different people. I think of
Blake Griffin. I think of Shaquille O'Neil, who David Griffin
reference in the audio we just heard. And I think
of Cam Newton. I think Lebron you can you can

(29:07):
mention Lebron as well, But the the other three come
to mind first. I want to discuss all of them
in detail. But let's go to Finley first. Let's go
to Brian Finley out in Los Angeles. Let's get a
look at the latest, including Canello getting the job done
again and a lot of work in the association. Be
what's going on, Hey Jason, good to hear from you

(29:28):
and Lees. Let's start up in the Association where the
Brooklyn Nets discard a four game losing streak by coming
back from twenty one points down to bash in the Nuggets.
Brooklyn bumps up to the second spot in the East
by a half game over the Bucks. The Warriors sup
plex the Thunder one to ninety seven, Stephen Curry making

(29:49):
off with forty nine points in twenty nine minutes. The
Trailblazers carve up the Spurs on to one oh two.
Damian Lillard had thirty points. Portland now sitting in that
sixth spot in the West, knocking the Lakers down to
the seventh position in the play in tournament, and of course,
just a couple of days ago, Lebron James said, the
person who invented the play attorney needs to be fired.

(30:13):
Russell Westbrook ties Oscar Robertson for most triple doubles in
NBA history, one eight one to be exact. To nudge
the Wizards past the Pacers to one thirty two in overtime,
Westbrook swatted the Pacers shot. At the end of ot
he had thirty three points, nineteen rebounds, and fifteen assists.
The Jazz pierced the Rockets to one oh six, and

(30:35):
the seventies six Ers root out the Pistons one eighteen
to one oh four. And the Major League Baseball the
Dodgers waddled by the Angels fourteen to eleven. L A
nearly kissed away at thirteen nothing advantage. The White Sox
dissector Royals nine to one, Chicago eight runs in the
first inning. The Blue Jays boom to Jack's to snatch
a win over the Astros eight to four. The Braves

(30:57):
strike down the Phillies eight to seven and twelve innings.
The Mets get by the Diamondbacks four to two to
improve to eight and four at home. The Rangers get
a nine to eight victory against the Mariners, and the
Giants fire off three home runs to clamp down on
the Padres seven to one. Our final score. As we
send it back to the man the new Father from Nashville,

(31:19):
it's Jason Martin. Yes, I think I'm gonna sleep right now.
As a matter of fact, it's it's been a bit
of a day, to say the least, but it's worth it,
no question about that. Welcome back Fox Sports and Radio Studios.
I am Jason Martin on Twitter at j mart Radio.
So the three guys that I just mentioned, Blake Griffin,
Shaquille O'Neil, and Cam Newton, those are the three guys

(31:40):
I think about when I started thinking about this Zion
Williamson injury. And I'm sure that there are other examples.
You can tweet me at j Mark Radio if you
can think of others of guys that are just officiated
differently and where it feels really hard to officiate them.
Back in Cam Newton started complaining a whole lot more

(32:05):
about roughing the passer calls that weren't getting made. The
NFL would come out and say, we've missed three roughing
calls on Cam Newton over the last three years. Jake
Cutler at the time now Jay Cutler, Alex Smith, Geno Smith,
Josh McCown, Andrew Luck, Matt Ryan Kirk Cousins, Joe Flacco,

(32:27):
Ben Roethlisberger, Case Kingdom, and Ryan Tannehill. The NFL believed
they had missed more roughing calls on those guys than
they had Cam Newton. First off, it's crazy, and Mike
Tanier made this point for Bleacher Report at the time.
This is how he writes it quote, Since when does

(32:47):
the NFL have uncalled roughing the passer penalty? Since lying
around to be referenced the moment a quarterback raises an objection,
think about that the league was keeping track of miss
penalty and maybe inappropriate flags to Narro goes on to
talk about are they also putting like inappropriate holding penalties,

(33:10):
bad p I calls penalties. It shouldn't have been called
all of this kind of thing. It reflected kind of poorly.
But the bigger question was was Cam right? If you
remember the Super Bowl against the Broncos, he was brutalized
in that game on a Monday night game. It looked
like the opposition was trying to take him out. The

(33:32):
Panthers Cardinals game on a Sunday I think is where
this happened in he took two hits. Neither one of
them drew flags. Both of them looked like rough and calls.
Both of them I think would have been rough and
calls with other people. But Cam Newton is built different.
Cam Newton was officiated as if he was a running back,

(33:52):
even though he was under center or in shotgun in
the NFL. But more than anything else, he was so big.
Is so big that it makes it harder to officiate
him because you don't notice the egregious nature of the
physicality of the contact that he is taking on a

(34:13):
regular basis. It's hard to officiate when it's not obvious.
Think about that and think about yourself. If I walk
up to you. We're standing on basketball courts. I walk

(34:34):
up to you and I shove you. You're going at
least two or three steps back. Maybe you're strong, right,
but most people they're gonna fall back, not flopping. I'm
talking about just the actual momentum and what the human
body does under one of the laws of motion. Someone

(34:55):
interacts with you and you move. Now, think about being
Zion Williamson and the same thing happening. I come up
and do the exact same thing. But you're built like
Zion Williamson, same force, maybe even more force. But how

(35:16):
far are you actually moving? And if I am in
and and then place yourself in a in a state
of someone observing this on the side, how easy is
it to tell that an infraction occurred compared to the
first example. Let's stop there, we'll take a break, we'll
come back. We will continue along this line of thinking.

(35:39):
The Cam Newton side of this, the Blake Griffin side,
which I think is most interesting, and then certainly the
Shaquille O'Neil side as well. The Zion story is fascinating
because I'm not sure what the fix is. Because we
have seen this in multiple sports in the past. It
could be something Zion is going to deal with his

(36:00):
entire career. We'll talk about this in greater detail when
we come back. I'm Jason Martin and this is Fox
Sports Radio. Welcome back. I'm Jason Martin. This is Fox
Sports Radio. Happens to be the Jason Martin Show at
least for the next couple of hours here on fs are.
I'm on Twitter at j mart Radio. Quote. It's really
taking the fun out of the game for me. At times,

(36:22):
I don't even feel safe and enough is enough. I
don't think there's a person that can go through what
I go through and still keep their heads. Hits to
the head, that's one thing, but when you're not protected
in the pocket, that's another thing. Unquote. That's Cam Newton,
after that Cardinals game that the Panthers played in complaining
about the lack of calls, believed he was being headhunted.

(36:45):
If you go back and you looked at some of
the evidence of it, it did seem like he had
a case. And now this is you know, four and
a half five years ago now, but I think it's
right back into the forefront. Was Zion and again very
similar to Cam, Zion is built different now he's He's

(37:05):
not the tallest guy whereas Cam was. Cam is just
a monster of a person in terms of a human being,
in the size at the position that he played. In particular,
if you ever just stand anywhere near Cam Newton, you
just see what a huge individual he is. Zions in
a land of giants in the n b A. But

(37:26):
the way he plays, he plays even bigger than his
height would indicate. But I think it's tough to officiate
a Zion Williamson or a Cam Newton because of their
body makeup, because you don't see it as much. What
might have knocked you on your beer end is a
barely a glancing blow, almost like bouncing off a mack truck.

(37:48):
And it's hard to see the way he plays. The
level of physicality that he plays, with the explosive nature
of the way he attacks the rim, He's gonna have
a lot of as slapping down towards the basketball, and
if he doesn't have some kind of a reaction to

(38:08):
it that's visible, it's harder to call it. Now he's
getting a lot of free throws. He's not getting enough
of the Pelicans, and they want to make sure the
league pays attention to this going forward, and because zi
and Williamson is Zion Williamson, the league might do it
because if I'm Adam Silver, I want Zion Williamson on
the floor. My league's not doing all that well right now.

(38:29):
I need my superstars out there, especially the guy that
I tend to think could potentially become the face of
my league. As Lebron continues to age before our very
eyes and we're getting very close to the end there
there has to be somebody to pick it up. And
with due respect to Nicola Yokich and guys like that,

(38:50):
it ain't gonna be them, at least in terms of
making the NBA matter on anywhere near the scale that
it might win. Lebron is in his prime or when
you have a lot of things firing that way, so
you need Zion out there. So maybe this spotlight is
all that's necessary. And this is a very calculated move,
not just to get the officials to look, but to

(39:11):
get the leak to pay attention to this. But Zion
doesn't have any Marcus Smart in him. Zion doesn't have
soccer flop in him, and I don't I certainly don't
want to see him flop. But I do think that
if he actually is getting found, he has to show it,

(39:31):
and he might actually have to overdo it a little
bit in his own mind just to make it look
like something happened in real time, because if I have
to go back to a replay monitor, or if I'm
at home and I can't tell in real time that
Zion is getting murdered out there, then it's a hard
decision for me to make if I am an official
in the National Basketball Association, to blow that whistle in

(39:54):
the in that moment, I think he might have gotten hit,
but I'm gonna have to go look at a monitor
to ermine that that fault is probably not getting called
more than half the time. So I'm not advocating for flopping.
I am advocating for the pro wrestling style of turn
the volume up just a little bit. We haven't even
gotten to the other comparisons. When we come back, I

(40:16):
do want to discuss Blake Griffin, because I think that
might be the perfect analogy. What's happening in our number
two of the program Jason Martin Show here on Fox
Sports Radio. I'm on Twitter at j mart Radio. My
name does happen to be Jason Martin. I'm in Nashville, Tennessee.
Glad to be with you for the next couple of hours.
One hour into books. You missed that you missed anything

(40:37):
that happens on the weekends, Fox Sports Weekend podcasts or
things that you can download. Look for Fox Sports Weekends.
You can get the whole feed. You can get all
the Saturday and Sunday shows. That way. Of course, you
can subscribe to all the fine shows that happened all
week individually. Podcast numbers through the roof for Fox Sports
Radio right now. We appreciate you for that. Also this

(40:58):
for hot water that never runs out, go Tankless with Nava.
Nava and Tankless water heaters provide endless hot water for
spa like comfort. Visit Tankless made simple dot Com and
save hundreds with local rebates Tankless made Simple dot Com.
So I said, I wanted to talk like about Blake
Griffin as a relates design Williams the for a second

(41:20):
because the comparisons. As we hear the vice president of
basketball operations for the Pelicans, David Griffin, kind of blaming
the league and also saying, well, it's our fault that
we didn't tell you this, which is interesting because Zion's
out now with an injury for an indeterminate amount of time,
fractured ring finger, and they said it's avoidable. The the

(41:42):
team believes it's avoidable, and they were kind of placing
the onus on the league in the officials and all this.
Guys that I thought of immediately, Cam Newton, who we
discussed a little bit, especially back in where you're saying
the game the fund was being taken out of the
game because of the way he was not being officiated
properly as a core were back into pocket. Shaquille O'Neil,

(42:04):
who David Griffin referenced in his comments, and Shaquille was
the prime example of a guy that and he will
say this to you, and I've heard him say that's
in interviews in the past. He got clawbered a lot
of times down load and never got called. And I
think the reasons exactly the same as it is for Cam,

(42:24):
which is you just don't notice it as much. Cam
was treated like a running back. It's a little bit
different there because what Cam was sustaining, the things he
was upset about. If you go back and you watch
some of that film, he definitely had a case and
it wasn't. It didn't have to be a beheading blow.
There were certain things that other quarterbacks, if you even

(42:47):
breathed on them in those spots, you were gonna get
a flag. And Cam would take shots and a lot
of that stuff wasn't called back in the Panthers. I
think it shortened his career and certainly shortened the prime
spot of his career, which I think we're on the
we're near the end of his career now. But his
body was ravaged to degree where it looked like he

(43:11):
was out of the league. He's been able to come back,
and he had an okay year last year, considering the
lack of weapons and considering all the rest of it.
But you thought we were We thought we were gonna
get more from Cam Newton than we had. That Super
Bowl against the Broncos seemed to break him in many
different ways, but physically was certainly one of them. In

(43:31):
Shakille's case, Shaquille and Zion are similar in that they
both are inside a lot of the time. They're both
banging down in the pain and they're both getting hacked,
but they're both so strong and imposing that it's tough
to notice. And a lot of things then slipped through
the cracks. Whether that's fair or not, I'm just telling

(43:53):
you what I'm seeing, And yeah, there is certainly the
argument to have about superstar our calls and how things
are judicated in the NBA, because certainly it isn't fair.
It never has been. The Jordan rules, the famous Jordan rules,
the way in which certain teams played what they got
away with, certain guys that you just feel like constantly

(44:16):
get every call, even stuff like James Harden and the
way he leans into contact of the way he just
tries to bait you into a foul that makes basketball
less fun to watch when he was doing that all
the time. Paul Pierce was another guy that did it
all the time. So there's a lot of that as well.

(44:37):
And Zion is still very new in the league and
maybe he hasn't earned those stripes yet. But I want
to kind of discard that side of it and look
at it from a perspective where I'm giving the officials
the benefit of the doubt that these are calls that
they would make if they were more demonstrative. But I
want to go to the Blake Griffin portion of this

(45:00):
because I have always seen Zion Williamson as super say
on Blake Griffin, Blake Griffin's final form. Blake Griffin, who
I had, I didn't love at any point, Like, yeah,
he was great at Oklahoma, he comes into the n
B A I just I was never enamored with him,
and I think also watching him win a dunk contest

(45:21):
I don't think he should have won may have soured
my opinion to some degree. But he got better. He
developed a bit more of a mid range game, He
developed developed a little bit more of an outside shot.
But one of the things that you noticed fairly early
in Blake Griffin's career was other dudes were going to

(45:44):
test him. They wanted to see because I think there
was a suspicion among power forwards, among his peers, certainly
amongst centers, any of the eyes that he was going
to be encountering on a regular basis. At the three
or four or five, I think that there was a

(46:08):
consensus that maybe this dude was soft. Let's find out.
Let's batter him, Let's brutalize him, Let's knock him around
a little bit, and let's see what happens. Let's execute
an experiment and test our hypothesis, and unfortunately for Blake

(46:33):
Griffin early on he showed weakness because he retaliated in
the form of technical fouls. Goes back to my favorite quote,
maybe from all of the Marvel cinematic universe, from the
first Avenger Captain America, Captain America explaining why he would

(46:55):
stay around and just get punched in the face when
he was a ninety pound weakling, and he said, once
they see you run, they'll never let you stop. The
league's enforcers, more physical players or just veteran savvy guys,

(47:17):
saw Blake Griffin run and they kept on doing it,
drawing more emotional outbursts from Blake that didn't make him better,
that didn't help his team, that would take him off
his pedestal, his own spot. Like he was there, he
was on his foundation, and he looked down. He thought

(47:38):
he had built it on rock, and he had built
it on sand, and it definitely hurt Blake Griffith's development.
I'm not saying that's what they're doing with Zion, but
I wouldn't be surprised if they're just double checking to
make sure Zion's got it. Now. If what I just

(47:59):
said is accurate, relative design Williamson. I think they've made
a mistake because I don't think Zion is soft by
any means. I also think his game replicates Blake's in
some ways because there's limitations. There wasn't a great mid
range game for Blake when he entered the league. He

(48:19):
didn't have much of a jump shot. He wasn't anything
special at all from the free throw line, and that's
been the case for Zion. Zion was not a good
free throw shooter in college. He's not great in the
n b A. He's still very streaky. He can make
a three, but it's not really the shot you want
him taking. The NBA is a three point league, to

(48:40):
say the least, and Zion Williamson is not a three
point player. He is playing the game differently. But if
you look at his body and you look at the
way in which he attacks the rim and the way
he plays the game, he's going to run into contacts
and he's going to initiate some of that contact as well.

(49:02):
And what is the NBA going to do? Is the
NBA going to call every one of these maybe foul
calls and put Zion Williams on the line twenty five times?
A night. I don't think so. So what's the calculus
here if you're David Griffin and stan Van Gundi and
the Pelicans. I think it's simply to get him to

(49:24):
the line a couple more times a game and to
put a spotlight on this so that officials are fine
tuned to watch for it because Zion doesn't oversell it.
The NBA is a league full of oversellers to the
fact that there's now penalties for flopping, and as I

(49:49):
said at the end of last hour, I don't want
to see Zion start flopping. I just want him to
sell the move. In pro wrestling, you've got to sell it, right.
I worked in pro wrestling for ten years during that
time frame, in all the training seminars that I watched,
even though I was not on that side of it,
I wasn't trying to be a wrestler, but I understood

(50:10):
the process and I would help guys in their development
as I was booking them and giving them creative and
helping them set up their move sets and all of
those kinds of things, figure out what they were good at,
what they shouldn't do, giving them finishing moves and all
this kind of stuff. If you can't sell, you're an
awful pro wrestler. You've got to be able to sell,

(50:31):
especially if you're a baby face. If you want sympathy,
you've got to look to that person in the crowd
that you know you can manipulate emotionally and beg for
their help. The best baby faces in the history of
professional wrestling that being the hero side, the good guys.
The best ones are the ones that could emotionally just

(50:53):
reach in and spin around or turn or pull out
the heart of somebody in the first row, or somebody
in the fifth row, or somebody they couldn't even see
in the tenth row. If you go back and you
watch the glory days, back when good and bad was
much more defined, when you could really determine who was

(51:15):
good and who was evil, when there wasn't a shade
of gray to be found, the very best baby faces
in the history of professional wrestling were those that begged
for your help, that looked directly at you. And if
you're on television, you go back and you watch some

(51:36):
of this stuff, for example on like Peacock or something
like that, or if you're watching matches on YouTube, pay
attention how often that baby face is in peril and
he wants you to know it, and he's near the
ropes and he's got to look on his face almost
like he's just begging for you to come stop this.

(51:57):
And that's why you kept watching, and that's why you
were such a fan of that individual, and that's why
maybe you bought a t shirt. It's certainly why you
bought more tickets. It's why Heels have to have the championships,
because you want that guy to finally come back and
knock this other jerk off the throne. You felt it.

(52:23):
You weren't taking the move, but you felt the move
because it was being sold so effectively. So Zion Williamson,
he needs to play that baby face role just a
little bit more. You can't really beg to the officials.
I've seen that done. I don't want to see Zian
Williamson go down that road. But you gotta make me

(52:44):
think the move hurt just a little bit. I'm not
saying Mr Perfect Curt Hending do a triple LUTs over
the top rope every time you take a right hand.
I'm saying, if somebody hit your hand, maybe grab your
wrist a little bit, give them something extra. Now the

(53:07):
Pelicans are getting the league to pay attention to it.
When Zion comes back, they just need to say, hey, Bud,
hey big guy, when somebody hits you like that, just
do something for a quarter of second that makes it
obvious something just took place. It's against our human nature,
especially as men. I think it's against our human nature

(53:31):
to show that kind of weakness. But that's what it's
gonna take. Not an acting job, just a little bit
of a cell job. There have been some great punches
throwing in professional wrestling that you would hate if you
saw them because the person in the match with the

(53:52):
person throwing the punches I didn't like that person didn't
want to make their stuff look good, and so when
the punch came in, they just kind of barely moved
their head. They didn't want to expose the fact that
the punch wasn't real, but they also didn't want to
make it look like it was particularly menacing. Zion Winson
needs to be in a ring with somebody where he

(54:14):
throws a punch and he glances back. It's a it's
a balance because you don't want to start rolling your
eyes at Zion, but because the way he's built, he's
going to have to do something a little bit differently
in order to attract attention. And that's why David Griffin talked,

(54:35):
and that's why Stan Van Gundy talk but specifically Griffin,
and he knew what he was doing because he's a very,
very very smart guy who understands the inner workings of
the league. He wanted to put a spotlight on this
for his player's sake in the future. Lay the groundwork
to get six more free throws a game for Zion
Williamson and see what that means analytically to the win

(54:57):
lost totals. But now Zion can make it even easier
if he just does a little bit more to help
sell it after the fact. So pay attention to that
when he comes back, whether it's this year or whether
we're looking a little bit deeper down the road, Let's
see if the officiating does change. If it did, then

(55:17):
it doesn't matter whether or not you liked what David
Griffin said. It was effective, it was calculated, it was
smart business. When we come back, as we talk about
business right now, in the world of sports, there is
no more interesting business story than the one happening in
Green Bay with Aaron Rodgers will begin to discuss that

(55:39):
and peel the layers off that on your next I'm
Jason Martin and this is Fox Sports Radio. Welcome back
in Fox Sports Radio studios. I'm Jason Martin. You can
find me on Twitter at j Martin Radio. You can
find me in person in Nashville. I won't tell you
where because that would kind of be weird trying to
do a radio show. Here, stay out of the garage.

(56:03):
We're with you for the next hour and a half
or so. I do want to talk a lot about
Aaron Rodgers, and of course I do, because it's the
biggest story in sports, and by the day it gets
more interesting. Adam Schefter went on Dan Patrick and now
I've seen and heard several people kind of go after

(56:23):
Chefty for certain pieces about this story. He broke the
news on Draft day and he said, look, nothing came
in that morning that said, okay, now this story needs
to be out. He wants his story out. He said, quote,

(56:43):
it's just an accumulation of information. Pieces of Schefter's interview
with DP quote, you know, Dan, the funny part about
it is I heard people say, oh, Aaron Rodgers wanted
that out before the draft. I can assure you Aaron
Rodgers did not want that out before the draft. I
have people say the Green Bay Packers planted that it
was a very pro Packers story. I can assure you

(57:05):
the Green Bay Packers didn't plant that. When people guess
at where stories come from, more often than not, they're
usually wrong, and in this case they're wrong. This was
an accumulation all during the off season of just listening
to people talk and observing. If we go back to
the NFC Championship games that the Green Bay Packers lost
at home, did we not here Aaron Rodgers after that
game talk about this level of unhappiness, if you will,

(57:28):
uncertainty for the future. Just go back and listen to
that press conference, and it sounds almost like he's saying
goodbye to Green Bay. And so you're Antenna's up. And
I'm just telling you. Throughout the course of the off season,
there was rarely a week that went by without which
I didn't hear something about Aaron Rodgers. And on Draft
Day there's a report that morning by Paul Allen out
in Minneapolis at the forty Niners made a draft offer,

(57:49):
which they didn't make a draft offer. They never made
an offer, and other people saying that the forty Niners
called and I said, how long till it gets out?
The Aaron Rodgers once out of Green Bay? Is it
next week? Is it? When he doesn't show up to
the O t A s it's gonna come out. What
does it matter if it comes out now or next
week or next month? So then he makes the decision.
That's unquote right there. So then he makes the decision

(58:12):
to break the news on draft day. Says that's accurate,
and DP asked an interesting follow up, because because I
wondered when you said it didn't come from Rogers, it
didn't come from the Packers. It's being characterized differently. I
was wondering, Okay, so you're not gonna tell me your source?
What was the motive behind that? Schefter's answer is intriguing.

(58:36):
He says, Dan, there's not a source. He said it
on an NFL Live, but it was an accumulation of
information throughout the course of the entire off season. I
get that that is probably accurate, but it's very obvious

(59:00):
is that Adam Schefter dropped this five hours before the
draft for a reason, and it's because it actually supplanted
the draft, and then Aaron Rodgers at the Kentucky Derby
last week tells Mike Tarriko, I'm very disappointed this got
out because I love the fans in Green Bay. I

(59:20):
didn't want this to get out. That's kind of way
he says it. He never says it's not true throughout
all of this, as a matter of fact, those that
went after Schefter, because it seems like somebody went to
Adam Schefter at some point it was like, yeah, I
don't really like the way this story came out. But

(59:42):
no one is saying any of it is wrong. Nobody
is attacking Adam Schefter in terms of the facts of this.
But there is no question that it's suspect. Time Schefter

(01:00:02):
makes a point that you can believe what you want,
that it's gonna be hard to convince people it wasn't
a tactical move. I would say, of course, it was
a tactical move, because it is going to be really
hard to prove that to me. Andrew marshawn Is the
Sports Business Journal then responded to this, and he said, basically, look,

(01:00:25):
Schefter probably shouldn't have said anything here because these are
open ended questions This is when you when you start
talking about the way the story gets done, you can't
give up your source. You whatever it was somebody. Look,
there's an accumulation of information, but the information did not
just spontaneously arrive. Someone provided that information. So there are

(01:00:49):
sources here, but you can't provide any of those sources. Therefore,
even speaking about how do you put the story together
is wrought with questions that then can be asked that
you can't answer, and then that leads everybody else. And
this is what Marshahn's point is. It's like, look, when

(01:01:09):
you can't answer that question, then everybody just starts to
form their own conclusions about it. There's no doubt in
my mind that Adam Schefter did button up his reporting,
that he did check to make sure the information was accurate.
Because again, no one has said it's not. No one
from the packers organization has said it, No one from

(01:01:29):
Aaron Rodgers campus said it. Aaron Rodgers has been mum completely.
He hasn't said a word about any of this. But
if this were not true, then you would have immediately
somebody would have said this is inaccurate. So that's where

(01:01:50):
we stand. We're looking at how the story was put together,
but no one is saying the story was wrong. It's
not bad journalism. It might be a little bit of
self indulgent timing, and it's still laughable that Aaron Rodgers
wouldn't want this out there. The story continues to have

(01:02:15):
its own lifeblood, its own pulse, its own heartbeat. What's
going to happen here? Last week on this show, we
talked a good bit about the spite level of Aaron
Rodgers and how I couldn't think of another athlete in
professional sports I think was more likely to take it

(01:02:35):
to the house to give up a paycheck out of
spite if he had to then Aaron Rodgers. Then I
heard this week several talking heads say that the Packers
should just call his bluff and say, all right, we're
not going to trade you, because we're not going down
in history as the franchise that traded Aaron Rodgers when

(01:02:59):
he could still play in his the reigning league MVP.
We're not going to trade you. So either play for
us or go host Jeopardy and retire, because those are
your options. And I've been trying to think of the
last few days whether or not the Packers organization which
is uniquely run. But whether or not the brain trust

(01:03:23):
of that organization, the decision makers, actually have the guts
to do that, I don't think so. I think a
lot of this is posturing. The Jordan's Love thing, to me,

(01:03:44):
is fascinating. Tyler Dunn's a friend of mine. He comes
on our radio program in Nashville pretty often, go along
TV dot com. He used to write for Bleacher Report.
He put up an article this morning basically saying, turned
the page to Jordan's Love. Here's the inside story on
how much Green Bay loves Jordan's Love. And ty Dunn's

(01:04:06):
the one that wrote the expose on the Packers a
few years ago for Bleacher Report, where you really got
to find out just how dysfunctional it had become between
Mike McCarthy, the front office and Aaron Rodgers. But the story,
the scuttle bud is the Packers love their new quarterback,

(01:04:27):
don't care if they get a quarterback in return, and
some kind of a deal for Aaron Rodgers because Jordan's
Love is going to be there. Guy. And if that's true, wow,
that's amazing. I have no idea if it's true, but
I know that it doesn't benefit them to say, yeah,
Jordan's Love is not ready yet, especially now that a
Rodge wants out, or that it's out there that he

(01:04:49):
wants out. If he wants out, then you'd better make
it sound like Jordan's Love is. You know, the cats
me out because it's gonna make things better for you.
It does it need to be a desperate situation here.
Aaron Rodgers has all the leverage to me, because, as
I mentioned last week, you have all the leverage. Whether

(01:05:12):
you've got a no trade clause or not, or whether
or not the team really controls your future in terms
of who you can play for, it's still all in
your court. If you have the money to say, screw off,
I'm headed to the cut, I'm done. You can't make

(01:05:33):
me play football. If you're going to dictate, I have
to play it for you. And we've come to a
spot where I don't respect you. I don't like you
as an organization. And I have existed in this league
from day one, before I even play my first game,
I had a large chip on my shoulder even during

(01:05:55):
the scouting process. I had a large chip on my
shoulder when I saw what people were writing about me.
Now it's my turn now, I've got the power. You
might be a billion dollar organization, But bro, I've made
two forty million dollars in my career. I don't need this.
I'm engaged to an actress, to a Hollywood actress with

(01:06:17):
a decent resume and a good bit of money in
the bank as well. I don't need this. I've got
state farm money. I don't need this. I could potentially
be the host of Jeopardy. I don't think that job
would be offered to him. The ratings were high, but
the performance itself left a little bit to be desired

(01:06:41):
compared I'm not saying it was bad. I'm saying compared
to the other folks that have filled in in that
guest share. For the most part, he was on the
low end. But he doesn't need Jeopardy either. He might
that might be a dream come true for him, and
who knows, maybe it does get offered to him. But
that's not the point. The point is he has already
made enough money to give him the one finger salute

(01:07:04):
and head to the house. When you're in that position,
who really has the power? Who needs who more? The
Packers need Aaron Rodgers lest there whatever championship window you
think maybe they have, it's closed immediately. Jordan's love. I mean,

(01:07:26):
for whatever Jordan's love could be, I imagine it's still
gonna take a little bit of time, and you're about
to have to pay Davante Adams and and some other folks.
And the chances that things are gonna go well for
you in the long term are certainly risky compared to

(01:07:48):
what they could look like. If you have Center for
another four years. Now, maybe you've gotten to the point
where he's so high maintenance that he's just you don't
want to deal with him anymore. So maybe there is
actually more of a reason for you, if you're Green Bay,
to get rid of him, just to just to turn
the page and finally get this nuisance out of your hair.

(01:08:10):
But you're never gonna make that known publicly. What was
that the Texans? It was revealed about the Texans before
then the NFL Draft that the plan was always to
trade Deshaun Watson the week of the NFL Draft, obviously
before all the the allegations and the things changed and
it complicated the situation. But remember, we're never gonna trade him.
Don't even bother asking David Culley he's definitely gonna be here.

(01:08:31):
That's why I came here, and they were always gonna
get rid of him. We knew that. I think in
our heart of hearts we figured that Aaron Rodgers. I
still don't think he plays in Green Bay this year.
I know what a j Hawks said, I know what
some of the other packers have said. Also know what
Brett Farve said. I don't really care what any of
them have said, because Aaron Rodgers seems to be wired different,

(01:08:54):
and I'm just looking at it from the Aaron Rodgers
that has been portrayed, the personality that we've heard about,
the one that's a strange from his family, the one
that's just kind of an odd duck in many different respects,
the one who has a hard time respecting anybody that's
really ever coached him before because he thinks he's smarter
than all of them. And that's that's one of the

(01:09:15):
large conclusions you can draw from that Bleacher Report piece
that I referenced a couple of minutes ago, is that
Aaron Rodgers feels like he's so smart that if he
figures out he's smarter than you, or if he senses
he's smarter than you, it's almost impossible to take orders
from you, or to take any kind of instruction from you.

(01:09:40):
I think that's the crux of the whole situation. When
you look at the personality of Aaron Rodgers, what does
a personality and when we look we can't judge him.
I've never met the man before and had a and
looked him in the eye and had a real conversation
with him. But based on what I know, and that's
all I can do is based on what I know,
he strikes me as a guy that that's not going

(01:10:01):
to just give in here. This looks legit, this looks
fractured beyond repair. Zion is gonna come back from its
fracture ring finger. I don't think Aaron Rodgers is wearing
a Packers uniform from the fracture that exists between him
and the Packers organization. Let's go to Brian Finley and
get another look at what's going on in the wild
and will the world of sports bet The Brooklyn Nets

(01:10:24):
drop of four game losing streak. They nix a twenty
one point deficit to pacify the Nuggets one to one
nineteen in Brooklyn, moving into that second spot in the
East by a half game over the Bucks. The Warriors
dismantled the thunder on to ninety seven, Stephen Curry flourishing
with forty nine points, Golden State dangling to that eighth

(01:10:44):
seed in the conference, Damian Lillard reaping thirty points. The
Trailblazers control the Spurs one to one oh two. Portland's
squatting on that sixth spot in the West, which kicks
aside the Lakers and moves them down into the seventh position.
For Russell Westbrook ties Oscar Robertson for most triple doubles
in NBA history, one eight one to be exact, to

(01:11:06):
boost the Wizards to a victory in overtime against the Pacers,
one thirty three to one thirty two. Westbrook thirty three points,
nineteen rebounds and fifteen assists the jazz corner of the
Rockets on to one oh six. Day Kwon Jeffreys threw
down a nasty dunk right in Rudy Gobert's face in
this game, totally emasculating Rudy and the seventies Sixers blitz

(01:11:28):
the Pistons one eight team to one oh four. In baseball,
the Dodgers get a win against the Angels fourteen to eleven.
L A nearly blew a thirteen nothing advantage. The White
Sox tiff on the Royals nine to one Chicago, with
eight runs in the first ending. The Blue Jays must
up to Jacks to preserve a win over the Astros
eight to four. The Braves find a way around the

(01:11:48):
Phillies eight to seven and twelve innings. The Mets dent
the Diamondbacks four to two to improve to eight and four.
At home, the Rangers throw out a runner at home
plate to get the final out in a nine to
eight contest against the Mariners, and the Giants baying three
home runs to clog the Padres seven till one. With that,

(01:12:09):
we sent it back to a man who is trying
to find some time to sleep. I don't know when
that's coming, but being a new dad, I'm I'm sure
Jason that that comes with the territory. YEA sleep is
merely a concept. It is not a reality. It is
something that I've heard about. I'll look forward to checking
it out at some point down the road. That's that's

(01:12:29):
that's where we are right now. It's the Jason Martin Show.
I think I'm Jason Martin, I'm trying to remember. Yeah,
I believe, so I'm on Twitter at j mart Radio.
I do believe that once you hit June one and
the dead cap money changes and just the finances change.
Because that's the problem for the Green Bay Packers right
now is their cap is such that it is going

(01:12:52):
to be difficult for them even to sign their rookie
class without doing some vagling. So they gotta get guys
on rookie contracts back from whoever it is that they
try to deal with, assuming that this is going to happen,
and I still think it is. So you've got to
go somewhere and you've got to look at assets, guys

(01:13:13):
high draft picks from the last few years. So if
you're going to Broncos, you've got to take Bradley Chub
or Jerry Judy or certainly Patrick Curtan, like, you've got
to get some of those guys back and future draft picks.
Anywhere you go. You've got to get early draft picks

(01:13:33):
from those teams, because it's gotta be dudes on on
rookie deals that don't wreck your salary. Guy, because I
think I think the Packers are like million dollars over
the cap right now. So that's another consideration when you're
looking at where you could potentially land. I think the
list is pretty short. I think my Denver Broncos have
the best chance. In fact, I'm on record as saying

(01:13:55):
that's where he will play this fall. I us the
Raiders could be there. I think the Dolphins is interesting.
The Dolphins have had some really early picks, and maybe
there's a quarterback interest there. If you don't believe what
the Packers are spending about Jordan's love or or the

(01:14:16):
information they want out there, they believe he's their future,
then two, it could maybe be enticing to him. Maybe.
But the Dolphins haven't been good in a while, so
they've had a lot of high draft picks. God's on
rookie deals. They just drafted Jalen Waddle just as one example,
So you've got maybe that option out there. I don't
think he's going to the NFC. Trying to think of

(01:14:36):
anywhere else he could potentially land. That made sense. The
most obvious deal, if it's not Russell Wilson, if you're
trading him out of conference, would have been Houston with
Watson and Rogers swapping potentially, but that one's not gonna
happen now clearly, So I think the list is probably
actually pretty sure. It's a Jason Martin show here on

(01:14:59):
Fox Sports Ray we come back. Ryan Burr Singer has
kind of debuted this this weekend Weird Baseball. We've been
doing that a few times on the show. Well, now
that Burch has moved on uh to A to a
full time position, and congrats to him, his podcast partner,
Bill Benson has stepped in and he's now our regular

(01:15:19):
producer on this program, and he's gonna step into the
big shoes of this Weekend Weird Baseball. So we'll find
out the odd stuff that has happened on the diamond
when we come back. I'm Jason Martin and this is
Fox Sports Radio. Welcome back, Jason Martin. Were you here
on Fox Sports Radio. I'm on Twitter at j mart Radio.
You can find me there. I'm in Nashville, Tennessee. I'm

(01:15:42):
glad to have you with us. Happy Mother's Day to
all the mothers. It was a tough year, no question
about that. We appreciate you, maybe even more so than
ever before. Mom's their jobs and you know, the kids
were at home probably a lot more with the distance,
learning and everything was going on. So I hope mom's
out there everywhere. Have wonderful day, and happy Mother's Day
to my own mother as well as to my wonderful

(01:16:03):
wife who is now a mother three and a half
weeks ago giving birth to our first daughter, Clara Grace.
So happy Mother's Day to Abby, looking forward to a
good Sunday with her. All right, this weekend we were baseball.
We have been doing this with Ryan Burschinger a few times,
and now we bring in Bo Benson, his podcast co
host where they talk a whole lot of baseball. So, Bo,

(01:16:24):
you have a decent bar to try and climb over here.
But what happened on the diamond this week that, um
that maybe I didn't notice because it was a little
bit on the strange side. Yeah, this is a this
is a lot of pressure, so we'll see what we
can do. Um, this one, I think you probably noticed.
We're at We're at four no hitters to start the
season here, really five because bum Garners no hitter should

(01:16:47):
count the seven innings is what they agreed upon, and
he no hit them for seven anythings. So whatever, it's
a no hitter. Um, I I think that the baseball
that they've deadened to start the season here will probably
be undeadened by next week at his point, because four
no hitters, I think. I think Ryan was saying yesterday that, uh,
it's the first time since like nineteen twelve or something

(01:17:09):
like that that, uh, we have this many no hitters
to start the season. So that's uh, that's interesting. Um.
Some interesting stats that I've pulled here from Sarah Lang's
on Twitter. She's a really good follow lots of non
traditional baseball stats to find their um most scoreless starts
allowing two or fewer hits by a traditional starting pitcher.

(01:17:29):
Since one, you have Nolan Ryan with fifty three, Pedro
Martinez coming in at second with thirty two, and then uh,
and third you have Clayton Kershaw with thirty after his
start this evening against the Angels. UM, lots of people
I think kind of forget that Clayton Kershaw is still good, uh,
which is just you know, his his peak was so

(01:17:52):
high that as he starts to kind of decline, it's
still he's still really good. UM. So I thought that
was interesting. And then uh, Pablo Sandoval, who is somehow
still playing baseball. Wait a second, wait he is, Yeah, yeah,
for the I believe he's with the Braves now right, Yeah,
I know, I was just kidding, but yeah, it seems
like Kung. That's crazy to me. He has four pinch

(01:18:15):
hit home runs already this season. The single season record
is seven, so that is uh, something that will probably
be broken at this point if he's going to hit
him at that rate. And then the big story tonight,
the Angels were down thirteen to nothing against the Dodgers,
and then what happened. Dave Roberts pulls Mookie Bets, Corey Seeger,

(01:18:36):
and Justin Turner from the game. After they go up
thirteen and nothing. The Angels pulled Mike Trout. Uh. The
Angels proceeded to get within three runs, making it fourteen
to eleven with a seven run inning, and then the
Dodgers hold on to win fourteen to eleven. Had the
Angels pulled that off, it would have been the largest
comeback in MLB history. Um, but what sucks is like

(01:18:56):
but now it's a bunch of wasted effort. Now it's
just a third seen to other things. So I watched that,
but it still ends up with the same result, like, no, no,
thanks on you just memory hold that. It's it's a
fun story. The next day. But let me tell you,
I was sitting here with John Brown, the technical producer
before Chris here and uh, I told him that the
Angels were gonna have a chance to win that game,

(01:19:18):
and then lo and behold, Mitch White does his best
attempt to give the Angels a chance. Yeah. Well, I mean, look, man,
if you come back from thirteen oh down, I might
as well just go get beat oh than effort that
and then lose fourteen eleven. Yeah, no, it's it's gotta suck.
But I'm I'm glad the Dodgers were able to hold
on to that one though. Gazy drama. That's this weekend

(01:19:41):
weird Baseball for this week. Hey, I think you did
just fine. I think the bar the bar is right there.
We will continue to do the segment. Success has been achieved.
Third hour of the show, we're talking more football. Interesting
article and ESPN about Zack Wilson our number three. Happy
Mother's Day to everybody out there. Jason Martin with you
here on OX Sports Radio, which two hours down. If

(01:20:04):
you missed the same part of it podcast at Fox
Sports weekends, you get all the shows including Straight out
of Vegas, Burning Fratto and The Crew before Us and
Arnie and Aaron Torres and Jason McIntyre and the whole crew.
You can get them there wherever you get your podcasts,
Discover matches, all the cash back you learning your credit
card at the end of your first year. It's amazing

(01:20:24):
because discovers accepted at places in the US to take
credit cards. Learn more, Discover dot Com, slash Yes, Nilson
Report limitations apply. I might pivot here at least for
just a second because something just caught my eye, and
that was that the only known game war North Carolina
Jersey from Michael Jordan's just sold for one point three

(01:20:49):
mill and it immediately, just as soon as I saw that,
it immediately had me thinking about the the trading card industry,
which it was dead and buried, and over the last
year year and a half has made a giant resurgence
to the extent that you've got a lot of people's
cards that are starting to raise and value. Lebron cards

(01:21:11):
I think are starting to really move. People are starting
to pay attention to rookie cards again. And there's even
podcasts on major networks. The Ringer I think right now,
actually has a brand new sports card podcast. Card shops
are starting to reopen. These things are starting happening in
and I've been trying to figure out why, because I
didn't realize that had come back. And then I started

(01:21:31):
noticing people in the industry, writers and things like that
that also owned card shops on the side. Just like
I thought this was dead and buried unless you're just
going to the flea market and you're kind of an
old head and you're in your fifties or something like that.
I mean, I collected cards like everybody else did when
I was a kid. I still have a bunch of those,
but it seemed like it kind of moved on. Yeah,

(01:21:52):
Pokemon was still a thing, or U g O or
something like that. Those things are still there, but in
terms of sports cards, and it turns out it seems
to have made a come back. And I think I
looked through that jersey and it made me again go
to the same conclusion that I have increasingly been pondering

(01:22:14):
this year and late last year, and that is when
you look at like cryptocurrency and you look at non
fungible tokens n F t s where you can own
virtual art, you can own some gift, you can own
a highlight from an NBA game, something like that. And

(01:22:38):
these things are going for insane amounts of money in
some cases just preposterous like their actual art pieces. I
look at them and I'm just like, what a scam.
And a lot of this virtual this stuff that you
don't really own. Right. If there's a book that I
want to buy that I think in anyway some it

(01:23:00):
could become controversial because it's actually a nonfiction book about
any kind of topic, I get the hard copy, even
though I like the space on my shelf too, and
I have an iPad and I have plenty of books
on that iPad. I still like to buy the hard
copy because there's a little bit of fear in me
that that book could just be taken away at a

(01:23:21):
moment's notice by a company if they decide that they're
not a fan of said material anymore. You don't really
own that property. And if you've got an n f T,
what do you really own? What can you really do
with that that's relevant? I think we are coming to

(01:23:42):
a place. It's not really nostalgia, it's just I like
to be able to hold something in my hand. There's
something about actually reading a newspaper instead of virtually going
to Wall Street Journal dot com. I have a journal subscription.
I just have the digital to save money. But I
wish I could you get the full journal at my

(01:24:03):
doorstep every day and sit there over coffee and read
it the way my grandparents would have, or my parents
would have, or even I did when I was in
high school. There is something about actually owning something. There's
something about being able to possess it. There's something about
being able to take it somewhere and show it, not

(01:24:24):
as a file. There's something about having a photograph framed
as opposed to a JPEG saved in a folder or
sitting on your phone, like I have a ton of
photos right now on my phone, but a few even
of my daughter that we're taken in the hospital. We

(01:24:47):
got hard copies of those things immediately when we paid
pretty solid amount of money to do that, because we
wanted that keep taking a different way, And I think
that's what it is with the sports cards. I don't
think that all of a sudden the hobby is making
some kind of at least not in the circles I'm
in there's just a craving to have something tangible, something

(01:25:12):
I can put into a book, something I can hold
in my hand and flip over and read the stats of.
And I found that interesting. Just with that, Jordan Jersey
is just like again, like collectibles and things like this
are absolutely moving back in a direction. Even with technology
and all the advances and all this kind of stuff,

(01:25:34):
we still kind of like what's real. So sorry for
the aside, but that was as soon as I saw that.
I saw it pop up during the commercial break. I
had not seen that story until then. It was just like, Okay, well,
I'm intrigued. Intrigued by this. It was a really interesting
piece of ESPN dot com from Rich to Meini about

(01:25:54):
Zach Wilson and the Jets and how this was a
six month process where they've been looking at this guy
for a while and they just id he was their
guy a long time ago. Joe Douglas and the brain
trust there just kind of fell for him based on
like three or four game tapes. One piece of information
in that thing where I mean, look, that article is
well worth reading. It's really detailed and super interesting and

(01:26:19):
certainly sells Zack Wilson better than anything that I have
seen to this point. Even though I'm still skeptical about it,
I hope he proves me wrong. I want to see
as many good quarterbacks as we can have in this league,
better for all of us. If we have thirty two
Patrick Mahomes walking around, time will tell whether or not

(01:26:41):
the six to Wilson is going to be the guy.
But the one thing I did find fascinating is throughout
this wholesale job and how all the Jets were just
in love of this guy after watching Coastal Carolina and
watching b y U against Tennessee from a couple of
years ago. I think there's a Utah game that's in
there as well. There's a few that are mentioned, and
there's even one where they watched one where he wasn't
very good in a game that they lost. But most

(01:27:08):
fascinating is well, if we had the number one pick,
we would take Trevor Lawrence. That I found funny because
this article is well over a thousand words, maybe over
two thousand words, and it's incredibly detailed about this whole
process and visiting was Zach Wilson watching the tape and
then go into the pro day and being blown away
by the throw that he'll never make in an actual game.

(01:27:28):
That did certainly light Twitter on fire and was impressive
to watch, even though it was against air and no defenders.
But after all of that, after all of what they
say about Zack Wilson, which is very flattering to him
as a player and as a person, well, if we

(01:27:49):
had the number one pick, we would take Trevor Lawrence,
which is hilarious to me. And they said they were
happy when they were the number two spot because they
knew they were gonna be good. They knew that there
were some other quarterbacks that were solid, and they really
really liked Zach Wilson, and they had him so high
on their board, not like Chris Simms having him number
one over Trevor Lawrence. But they were totally happy getting

(01:28:12):
Zack Wilson. But they could have just lost out and
gotten Trevor Lawrence. I just want to put that right
back out there, because if you recall oh and thirteen,
they end up going what two and fourteen end up
winning two games, the Jaguars get the first pick, and
all his history, Urban Meyer's probably not in the NFL
if that doesn't happen time will tell whether or not

(01:28:36):
that that was a good thing for the NFL or not.
But as happy as they are was Zack Wilson, they
still wanted Trevor Lawrence, which tells us what we already knew,
which is it was Trevor and everybody else, And it
was really it was Trevor and Justin Fields and everybody else.
Zach Wilson was on nobody's top fifty list going into
last season, which is why when I saw Tomic Shape

(01:28:58):
put out his quote way too early any two mock
draft unquote, I laughed, rolled my eyes and then cleaned
the vomit off my shoes. Because the top fifty when
the season begins will change dramatically. Mac Jones wasn't on
top fifty before the season started last year. Zach Wilson wasn't,

(01:29:20):
Fields was, Lawrence was, and Lance was period, Kellen Mond was,
Mac Jones was nowhere near it. Trask wasn't anywhere near
it either. I don't believe so things are gonna change
so dramatically. The one thing that is unchanging over the
last few years is that Trevor Lawrence was by far

(01:29:41):
the best quarterback and the best perceived NFL prospect since
Andrew Luck and in that list with Andrew Luck, Peyton Manning,
and John Elway, nothing has changed there, and I think
it makes for an intriguing jack Xonville team, not maybe

(01:30:02):
this year, even though we're going to watch them play.
We're going to be interested in watching them play. But
you can't expect too much out of it this year.
It does portend a pretty solid future though. If you
can just get lucky, if you're the NFL and get

(01:30:25):
three of these guys to become real starters, then this
has been a success for you. Because your league is
defined by its quarterbacks. Do you want all five of
these guys to succeed? And the Trasks and Kevin Mans
and even Davids said, you want everybody, Davis Mills, you
want everybody to succeed because it makes your league deeper,

(01:30:48):
It makes your league better. When you look at the
quarterbacks across the NFL. Right now, we're in a good spot.
Whether Deshaun Watson plays again, whether Aaron Watchers plays again,
there's a lot of young talent to get excited about
in both conferences. A f C is loaded, Josh Allen,

(01:31:10):
Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert Patrick, Mahomes. Now you add Mac
Jones to that mix. Now you add Trevor to that mix.
I didn't mention Tannehill. I should have mentioned Tannehill. Certainly,
Derek Carr is certainly no slouch. Ben's coming to the
end of his career, and the Steelers are going to

(01:31:32):
be in rebuilt mode. Baker is approaching somebody you would
want to mention that list, but he's certainly an exciting
young player on a team on the come up. Joe
Burrow coming back from injury. I believe you're about to
see the deepest a f C maybe we've ever seen

(01:31:55):
ten and seven, which is odd to say, but that's
that's what we're looking at. Now. Ten and seven may
not get every ten and seven team into the playoffs. Now,
these guys are gonna beat up on each other, but
tin wins is definitely not gonna be a guarantee anymore.
When you look at all of the teams in the
a f C, where you believe, all right, that team's

(01:32:15):
got a shot, Absolutely every team in a f C
East got better everyone and even I'm not even talking
about Mac Jones the Patriots. I'm talking about Barmore and
some of the other things that they did in the offseason,
paying John new Smith and bringing in Henry and so
they're gonna run this two tight end set. But they
also paid wide receivers, like they went out and got
skilled talent they knew they had to on both sides

(01:32:37):
of all. A matter of fact, they shored up some things.
They're gonna be better. Miami is gonna go as two agoes,
but Jalen Waddle is a nice piece. And that's if
if Rogers didn't turn out to end up there. But
they already had a defense in the special teams. But
they had a good draft and grabbed another pretty major
weapon to put with that offense. And I think you'd

(01:32:59):
like what that looks like. The Jets are interesting. Again.
I'm still not out on Sam Donald, but I was
out on Sam Donald with them that had to change.
Even if even with the new coach coming in, they
still we're gonna have to turn that page, and they
have and Zach Wilson is gonna make that more interesting.
But I also think, look, you pay Corey Davis, you

(01:33:23):
you pay a couple of guys, you pay good money
in the free agent ranks, and then you draft, well,
you get Alijah More out of Old Miss to pair
with Corey Davis. So now you've got a redone receiving corps.
You've got a new quarterback that look, if he's what
he was at b y U or even close, then
he's gonna be winging it all over the yard accurately

(01:33:47):
with a super quick release and not turning the ball
over all that much. So they're certainly better. And the
Bills didn't have to get better, but they had a
pretty good drafty. They just filled a couple of holes,
but they didn't have very much, but they were already good,
so they're still gonna be good. That's just one division,
which one of the teams in that division are you

(01:34:10):
not interested in watching? Like, I don't think the Jets
are making the playoffs, but I think the Jets are
gonna be a far better team. And if Robert Sale
is actually the answer as a head coach, you might
be looking at what's happened to the Browns happened to
the Jets within a couple of years. But they're definitely
gonna be more competitive. At worst, the Dolphins could easily

(01:34:35):
make the playoffs, especially if two has any kind of
growth at all. The Patriots are gonna be much more formidable,
whether it's Cam or whether it's Mac Jones or whether
it's a mix of those two. Because of the way
that they reloaded, everybody in the division got better. Three
of the four of those teams I think legitimately can

(01:34:56):
make the playoffs. That's just one division. I want to
continue to talk about the a f C and maybe
even look at the NFC. Coming out of the draft,
we can start to look at this and really say,
all right, who's a contender here. The schedule comes out Wednesday.
NFL schedule comes out Wednesday evening, and if you didn't
know how powerful football is, there's a primetime special to

(01:35:18):
release a list of games that are going to be played.
It's become another event that the NFL has been able
to monetize because they can monetize everything. So we'll come back,
We'll continue to talk about the a f C and
the teams that are really still you can look at
and say, well, they can easily make the playoffs. And
I think my case is going to be clear and

(01:35:38):
obvious and accurate that the a f C has never
been deeper and the NFL is going to be such
a fun ride this fall, especially if stadiums are able
to be filled to capacity as they should. We'll be
right back. I'm Jason Martin and this is Fox Sports Radio.
Welcome back Jason Martin Show here on Fox to Radio.

(01:36:01):
I am Jason Martin and Nashville, Tennessee on Twitter at
j mart Radio. Shine by Collective Soul right here, tune
that I still listen to to this day. Big fan
of this song. NFL is shining right now. They'll be
shining with the schedule release on Wednesday night and find
out how the seventeen game schedule is going to stack
up for your favorite team. The point that I was

(01:36:24):
making the last segment is you just look at the depth.
And I'm just looking at the a f C right now,
and I'm thinking historic levels of depth in terms of
teams where look, I know the cliche as everybody has
a chance when the season starts, but how many teams
have legit chances? And we talked about the a f

(01:36:45):
C East in the last segment Bills. Obviously Miami was
on the precipice and has only you would think, gotten
better and if TA has developed, then we could see
a giant jump there. The Patriots have rumored it's some
of their issues. I'm not willing to say they are
any kind of major contender, but they're certainly playoff caliber

(01:37:07):
and the Jets are going to be improved. The Jets
have made themselves better, we think now. I'm a little
skeptical about Zach and they've got a new coach. They've
got a lot of new pieces. It's gonna take some time,
but they're not going to a fourteen this year, and
maybe in two years you could be looking at what
the Browns are now with Stefanski. If solid is a guy,

(01:37:27):
you could see something like that happens. So let's look
at the North. So the Browns just mentioned them. I
think it's about to be their division potentially. I think
they're stacked up. I think, first off, they had a
really good draft universally seemingly. That's the consistus from the
draft experts and just looking at the guys they picked.
I liked a lot of their selections. Baltimore free agent

(01:37:49):
whiteouts were going there, but they drafted two guys that
I really liked at the wide receiver spot. Maybe they
can actually have a passing game if Greg Roman will
allow it. Joe Burrow coming back from injury, but you
saw what you needed to see from him before he
got hurt in his rookie season. They grabbed Jamaar Chase.
They're gonna be more explosive, but the offensive line still

(01:38:11):
worries me. I don't think they're a contender. I don't
think they're a playoff team either, and I don't think
Pittsburgh is either. I think the Ben Roethlisberger has done
them a disservice because he's unwilling to walk away and
he's basically put that franchise in a holding pattern for
a year. They know nothing's gonna happen this year. It's

(01:38:37):
a wasted year, and Roethlisberger is gonna have sendoffs and
it's gonna be very pleasant and all this kind of stuff.
But he really has done something detrimental to his franchise
in this last year. But you've got two teams out
of that division that I could see potentially with playoff aspirations.

(01:38:58):
I don't think the Bengals are there. I don't Steve Wards,
I guess you could say are still. They've got a
lot of talent, so I guess they could get there.
I'm going to knock them out right now, because I'm
just I'm putting teams in here where I really could
see them making the playoffs. And so I'm gonna say
there's five of the eight so far halfway through the
a f C. Just looking at the East and the
North South Texans, I could just start laughing or play

(01:39:21):
a laugh track for five minutes, but we move on. Jaguars.
Probably not yet, but you can see the Jaguars win
in six games this year, seven games this year, starting
to really look the park. The question, the most fascinating
question about the Jaguars is not about Trevor Lawrence. It's
about how Urban Meyer deals with regular losses. Because this

(01:39:43):
is a college coach that's not used to losing at all.
And even if he's good, he's gonna lose six games
a year, five games a year. How will his mind
react to that? I can't wait to see it, because
they're not gonna be great this year by any means,

(01:40:10):
and Urbans just not used to that. But they're going
to be more fun to watch. They have improved themselves.
Indianapolis goes as Carson Wentz goes. I don't buy the
Carson Wentz thing, although when you read the Eagles piece
at the Athletic about just how bad that whole thing was,
first off, you think, oh, well, Doug Peterson is a
pretty good coach. Somebody's gonna make a good hire and

(01:40:31):
bring him in where he's not going to have that
kind of nonsense above him, and he's probably gonna flourish.
But the other thing is, maybe there's something to Winston Reich.
I need to see it before I believe it. But
running game, check defense, check offensive line, for the most part,
check you like enough about them to say, sure they

(01:40:53):
could easily. It's not the strongest division, they could win
that division, and Tennessee is certainly a potential playoff team.
Not as good I don't think, by the way, is
last year. I think that what they built on offense,
they took some of that away for the defense. This
was a Peter. This is a pay Peter from taking

(01:41:14):
from Paul situation here a f C West Chiefs. Obviously,
Chargers had a great draft, justin Herbert's stud If Staley
is good, and what I've read and what I've heard
from people I trust in the NFL, I think he is,
then they're gonna be a force. Real quick. The Raiders.

(01:41:38):
I don't think that's a playoff team, but they're not
gonna be a four win team either. And Denver. Denver's
got everything you could possibly want. Bridgewater is gonna make
them better if he's the quarterback, then Drew Lock. If
Rogers comes there, they're Super Bowl contender immediately. So how

(01:42:01):
many teams is that? That's three out of the East,
two out of the North. I'll say two out of
the South, and I'll say three out of the West
if bridge Water I mean Bridgewater again. I think with
Bridgewater you could potentially make the playoffs. With Aaron Rodgers,
you could win the Super Bowl. So that's ten teams

(01:42:25):
that I really like. And that's just like there's other
ones like Pittsburgh. You could see Pittsburgh make it. I
just didn't. I don't feel good about them right now.
I didn't put the Raiders in, but they technically could
make it too. So if you wanted to be kind
of judicious, there's twelve teams I could easily see making
a run of the playoffs if things were to go
right now. That said, I agree with my friend and

(01:42:49):
Fox Sports radio colleague Jeff Schwartz said it's the Chiefs
and everybody else. I still believe that to be the case.
But there's depth and there's intrigue, and some other teams
clearly have a shot and have made themselves much more
of a threat. That's just looking at the a f C.

(01:43:10):
The NFC is more interesting because we've seen a little
bit more quarterback shuffling. The East is still very unsettled.
Either Danny Domes is gonna have a Josh Allen like
a year, or we're gonna find out that the Emperor
has no clothes there. But the Giants had a good draft.
If they there, you know, the option say Kwan back,

(01:43:33):
they should be better, even though I didn't really agree
with some of the money they spent in free agency.
The Eagles, I still don't know if they've got a quarterback.
I love j Owen Hurts, but I don't know that
I want him to be the starting quarterback from my
NFL team. But at least they're gonna give him a
shot there. I don't think they're in the playoffs Washington.
Fitzpatrick can win you games. There's a ceiling there. He's serviceable.

(01:43:55):
At times, he can be really good, especially when he's
coming in as a backup trying to in another contract.
But I mean that's the team that made the playoffs
last year. Chicago should be better if fields as good,
but that's not a playoff team. Detroit's not really a
playoff team. I'm interested to see what golf looks like there.

(01:44:19):
I like their first round draft pick. I'm not sure
they have the horses offensively green Bay. If if Aaron
Rodgers leaves, is green Bay in the playoffs that becomes
an interesting question. And it all depends on what Jordan's
love is or isn't. And none of us know Vikings.
I'm not a Kirk Cousins believer. I know that a
lot of people thought that Kellen Mond pick was a
wasted draft pick. I don't because I just don't think

(01:44:42):
Kirk Cousins can't lose that job. Because he can look
real good and he can look real bad. Doesn't mean
mind is the answer necessarily. But I wouldn't be the
least bit surprised if he got some serious game action
at some point this year. Falcons have a new head coach,
but they're loaded with weapons. Looks like they're coming back

(01:45:03):
with Matt Ryan panthers new quarterback, but matt Rule did
some good things last year. Their defense should be improved
based on what they did in the defense. I in
terms of the draft, I don't know about the offense.
Saints again new quarterback that that that team is going

(01:45:23):
to go more on how Camerica goes than how the
quarterback goes. But if they're going with Jamis, then Jamis
est to make sure not to turn the ball over.
Tampa Bay. We know Tampa Bay is the class of
the NFL. They brought everybody back Arizona. This is the
make it or break a year for Cliff Kingsbury. He's

(01:45:45):
got all the weapons you could possibly want to run
his offense and if it doesn't click, he will be
the one out the door. Rams were they a quarterback
away for Sean McVeigh will find out with Matthew Stafford
there Niners. Is it gonna be Trey Lance? And how
soon is it gonna be Trey Lance? Or is he
gonna sit for an entire year and it's gonna be

(01:46:06):
Jimmy Garoppolo even saw one suggestion he could sit for
two years. I could not see that in a million years.
You're gonna go up to three and not play Trey
Lance for two years. I doubt it. I don't think
it goes through the entire season, But the Niners are
good outside of that, and Shanahan, if not the best,

(01:46:29):
one of the best offensive minds in the game. And
then the Seahawks, I don't know. I guess it depends
on how the fences are mended between the organization and
their star quarterback Russell Wilson, which was the Aaron Rodger
story before the Aaron Rodger story. So just like I said,

(01:46:50):
just kind of looking through it very quickly, and certainly
we'll do much more deep dives on all of this
as we get closer to the season, and on June one,
we're gonna see a few of these teams try to
patch some more holes or let some people go as well,
which creates different opportunities. But I just look at the NFL,
where there's a lot of teams that I like a

(01:47:12):
lot in the NFL is the one league where I
do think you could have a team emerge and actually
take somebody down. I mean Tampa Bay with Tom Brady.
Can they be there again? Yeah, they're loaded, So I
automatically don't want to pick them just because it's too obvious.
Kansas City. I still feel like I'm probably gonna pick

(01:47:35):
them until I see them really drop the ball in
the a f C. But teams are loading up to
beat them. You're starting to see this arms race in
the a f C particularly. That makes me really feel
a lot like the Western Conference in the NBA when
it was time to try to go after Golden State.

(01:47:55):
What do we need to beat that team? We need
to construct our roster in such a way that we
can beat that team. The problem when you do that,
you see it in the n b A and you've
seen it in the NFL. We're gonna build our roster
to beat Kansas City, and then unfortunately, while we're doing that,
we're gonna lose to Tennessee. We we're gonna lose to Indianapolis,

(01:48:16):
or we're gonna lose to Buffalo because that's not as
good a match up for us. But I do think it. Look,
you have to you have to get up to beat
Golden State three years ago. You have to gear up
to beat Kansas City in the NFC. You gotta eventually

(01:48:37):
hope that Tom Brady's skill set matches his age, because
it hasn't yet. And with all the weapons. You look
at it and you're just like, well, why wouldn't they
be in the super Bowl Again? The schedule is going
to be interesting. Some of the teams that won divisions
and the difficulty of their schedule is going to tell
the tale. I found it interesting just the local team
with the Titans. Some people have them rate it very

(01:48:59):
very highly in terms of easiest schedules, even though they
won the division. So they're gonna play division winners. And
one of the reasons why, I think, is because well,
you get four games, two against Jacksonville, two against Houston,
and then you look at some of the other teams
that won divisions and it maybe it wasn't as strong
as it has been in years past, Like how many

(01:49:20):
formidable division winners were there last year? There were some
spots where maybe you were more worried about the team
that didn't win the division didn't have the best record,
than you were the team that actually won the division.
And then you add the seventeenth game to the mix.
The NFL is king all of this right here, because
I'm fascinated about a schedule release on Wednesday, when they're

(01:49:41):
gonna tell us games that are going to be played
for four months and it's still more interesting than things
happening in sports. That is why football is king in America.
King on this show is Brian Finlay. Let's go one
more time out to La find out what happened be Yeah.
I don't know if I'm in the aristocrats see or aristocrats?
How do I say that? Aristocracy? Wow? Yeah, yeah, that's

(01:50:04):
that's good on me, right there? So solid, Yeah, cut that, Chris,
Let's cut. Yeah, let's cut that tape. Let's make that
another drop, and let's forget. I actually have a college education,
so that u c l A. So my mom went there.
I went to UNC greens Bro. So I know you
went to all right yeah Spartans. Yeah, so I was
a Spartan down in North Carolina. Shout out toenders in

(01:50:25):
North Carolina. And you were from Winston Salem, right so yeah, yeah,
miles from that campus. Thirty miles from that campus, I guess. Yeah.
My first job in TV was working for the affiliate
in Winston Salem, w X. I. I so, oh, wow,
you work for Channel twelve. I did. I was a
sports for New Nights. Yeah, I was. I cut highlights,
I shoot high school softball games and high school football games,

(01:50:47):
and and then we'd try to go to school for
four days a week on the three days I wasn't
working at the stations. So hey, man, this is it? Like, Yeah,
the three days, Apparently you didn't go to a grammar class.
Apparently I did not see something something happened there. But yeah,
I find this story very interesting. I want you to
tell me again next week because I'm destined to forget it.
Five minutes now, hashtag dad brain. All right, Yeah, So

(01:51:09):
the Brooklyn Nets boot out a four game losing streak
by overcoming a twenty one point deficit in plowing the
Nuggets one to one nineteen. The Warriors get an overwhelming
win over the Thunder one thirty six to ninety seven.
Stephen Curry scintillates with eleven points. Excuse me, eleven three
pointers and forty nine points. Golden Stead not scintillating with

(01:51:30):
eleven points. That would be Jason, if you or myself
were involved in some college basketball game. You know, I
played JV basketball as a junior, so that if that
doesn't upon, my athletic talents might put the J in
JV and my varsity coach, who I never actually reached varsity.

(01:51:52):
He goes to me and says, Hey, I know you
really want to be on varsity, but can you do
j V And then what I can do for you
is you can be a guy who passes out the
towels and the water bottles to the guys, so you
can feel like you're part of the team. And he
was trying. Well, yeah, well done on him, And that
was the highest my athletic talents ever reached. Damian Lillard
thirty points the Trailblazers butcher the Spurs on to one

(01:52:15):
oh two. Russell Westbrook ties Oscar Robertson for most triple
doubles and NBA history. Westbrook piles up thirty three points,
nineteen rebounds, fifteen assists with a key block at the
end of overtime as the Wizards elude the Pacers one
thirty three to one thirty two. The Jazz Bloods in
the Rockets one to one oh six. The seventies Sixers

(01:52:37):
startled the Pistons one eighteen to one oh four. In baseball,
just a couple of mentions, the Dodgers aimlessly get past
the Angels fourteen to eleven after l A nearly puked
up a thirteen nothing advantage, the White Sox stiff the
Royals nine to one Chicago with eight runs in the
first inning, and the Blue Jays pony um to Jacks
to attain a win over the Astros eight to four.

(01:53:00):
With that, we send it back to a man who
knows grammar a little bit better than I do. Thank you,
Jason for your help. They're the key assist as I
sent it back to the man from Nashville. Yeah, I'm
the one with the triple doubles around here. Man, it's
the Jason Martin Show on Fox Sports Radio. Congrats to
Russell Westbrook tying Oscar Robertson. He'll beat that maybe the
next game he plays again. I really don't want to

(01:53:23):
throw shade on that accomplishment because it's an incredible accomplishment.
It is an individual league, I think more than anything.
I mean, we just talked about Steph Curry and is
what forty eight and twenty nine that he had last night?
He's preposterous. The league is is it's a collection of superstars.

(01:53:44):
And I think the thing that can change that is
if one of the collection of those superstars that's not
Lebron James, that's not the Lakers actually finally gets it done.
Whether it's Johnice, whether it's the Nuggets improbably without Jamal Murray,
the emergence and Porter Jr. And what jokes just doing,

(01:54:07):
whether or not it's Utah Phoenix is having a ridiculous season,
Luca like, somebody has to break through. I know we
got Kauai a couple of years ago, but there were
some circumstances there with the injury surrounding all that. So
I think that some people have an asterisk place to that,

(01:54:29):
and I can understand why you would. If this is
just nets Lakers in the finals. What have we really
accomplished over the last halful of months other than wasting
time watching a bunch of regular season games that ultimately
end up having no stakes. We don't need David to

(01:54:49):
win every year. We need David to beat Goliath once
and then it ends up an indelible piece of history.
The NBA desperately right now needs to prove that it's
more than just a couple of franchises. They can still
be the foundation and they can still play a key

(01:55:10):
role in this This is the year. I think, if
you are the NBA that you need to see somebody
new rise to the top might not be great for
the ratings this year, but at least it gives hope
that some of these other organizations have a legit chance
to get the job done. We'll be right back. We'll

(01:55:31):
finish up the program the Crazy Rat Versus Raccoon Debate
from the Mets Diamondbacks game. If you haven't heard this story,
how does this happen? Well, I'll tell you exactly how
easy this could have happened. Next, I'm Jason Martin and
this is Fox Sports Radio. Little Alison Chains here to
finish this up. Another successful edition of the Jason Martin

(01:55:54):
Show about to be put in the books. Here if
we can close it at j Mark Radio is where
you can find me on Twitter. Fox Sports Sunday coming
up next with Andy Ferman and Brian Oh. They'll do
a great job. Andy Ferman is gonna yell at me
as soon as I get in the car, and I'm
mean I need that because I'm headed that I actually
think once I get home, I'm actually gonna be able

(01:56:15):
to sleep a little bit. But I gotta make sure
that Abby's all right and happy mothers stayed to her
and to all the mothers out there. Zach Scott, the
acting GM for the Mets, not thrilled with Lindor versus
McNeil from Friday Night, the shortstop and the picture getting
into a bit of a scrap in the tunnel. I

(01:56:38):
think after the seventh inning they had a little bit
of a dust up. I think it's how it was written,
and the story was they were arguing over an animal
that they had seen in the shadows in that corridor
or down there in the tunnel. Lind Or believed it
was a rat and f McNeil thought it was a

(01:57:01):
raccoon or perhaps a possum, and it ended up with
I don't know how many blows were thrown or whatever,
but I think McNeil had a mouse under his eye.
And then afterwards they kind of joked it off a
little bit, but they said, yeah, this disagreement got a
lot of control. You can go back and watch the
video and you see like teammates go down into the

(01:57:21):
tunnel or whatever to break it up. Now, I have
no idea whether or not the story is true. I
just want to believe it's true because we've all had
arguments that had no business escalating. The escalated, like, is
it possible that rat is actually Tina and raccoon is
actually I don't know, um, Rebecca, and these are actually

(01:57:47):
two women, and this is a much different discussion that's
being had. Yes, but if it's rat versus raccoon, who
amongst us has not had the dumbest argument of all
time to where you can look back and just say,
what in the heck was I what were we thinking
on that? Not to mention small disagreements over nothing can

(01:58:13):
then lead to gigantic problems later because as the escalation comes,
then it's not just rat versus raccoon, it's rat versus raccoon.
And my son is better than your son, and there's
a reason why your daughter didn't have a date to
the prom, and all of this stuff, and then it
just gets toy out of control. My lawn is better

(01:58:34):
than yours, your car is busted up? Why are you
still working in that dead end job? Like all of
this stuff starts coming out, and then it's then it
gets very personal, and it's stuff like don't bring your
garbage c plus game of call of duty to me,
I'll take you down in Mario kard anytime, And then

(01:58:55):
before long you're rolling around on the ground trying to
choke the guy's life out or pushed his eyeballs through
the back of his head. Seriously, I'm trying. I've been
trying to rag my brain of how many just stupid
arguments that are just dumb level petty that I've been
involved in where it's just like, at some point I
just want to win the argument so bad that I

(01:59:16):
know it's dumb in the moment. It's like I'm watching
a car crash and I'm the one driving and I
still can't stop it. Like I know it's coming and
i have plenty of time to stop, and I'm actually
spectating on the outside, just like, hey, man, you should stop.
There's a stop sign, right, Hey, there's a stop There's
a stop sign, and then you just roll through it. Anyway,

(01:59:38):
this is a fun story, and it's made more fun
because it's the Mets, and of course it is so
the GM doesn't love it because it's like, hey man,
it took some some luster off of win. Well, here's
the thing. I wouldn't be doing five minutes on Fox
Sports Radio about your five four game with the Diamondbacks,
but I'm gonna talk about this story because it's fascinating

(01:59:58):
to me rat or raccoon, and then apparently Lindo Or
joked and said it was actually a rat coon. Clever,
extremely clever. Two more clever guys, Brian No and Andy
Firman coming up next. I will see you next week,
same bad time, same channel,

All Episodes

05/09/2021 – The Jason Martin Show

Episode Transcript

Fox Sports Radio News

Host

Jonas Knox

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}05/09/2021 – The Jason Martin Show