Mike Harmon talks College Football Upsets, NFL Week 1, the Bears and the Beer Heists

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Greetings and welcome in another fantastic voyage, four hours of
merriment and chaos, certainly here in the Fox Sports Radio Studios,
Fox Sports Late Night. I'm Mike Harmon. You hear me
the weeknights alongside Jason Smith, 7 to 11 Pacific, four
hours of madness and yelling at one another. It's too
bad I can't keep texting him and prank call him

(00:21):
on live air. after Syracuse lost earlier today. But we'll
do that. Pick that up on Monday. Plenty of college
football to discuss. We are less than 11 hours now
away from the start. of the full week one of
your National Football League. Don't worry, we got two games
in the books. We'll get to some of the particulars,

(00:42):
some of the narratives that people are just flat out
getting wrong. We'll lay down the hammer in about 20 minutes.
We got Brandon Deutsch coming in. We'll do a live
version of your fantasy files, get through some of the
particulars and the starts. for week one of your fantasy
season as you get that kicked off. So much to do,
so many roads to travel. Thanks for being part of

(01:03):
the extended family. If you're on the road, take us
with you at the iHeartRadio app, your local affiliate. So
thanks to all of those program directors. And as always,
the little voice in your head, as I say, the
podcast will go up when we're done. I've got the
I Want Your Flex podcast. You need some more fantasy
advice and dart throwing ahead of week one. I got
you covered there. Dan Byer and I get after it

(01:25):
several times a week. But college football. is back in
a big way, right? We've had two weeks. We had
the precursor, the preamble, week zero, a little bit of
a taste test, right? Here's your amuse-bouche, as it were.
You've seen that in movies and TV. Don't act like
you've never heard that term before. And then week one,

(01:45):
we got a little bit more. We got a little
bit of chaos on the in between the white lines.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Michigan with that escape against Western Michigan a week ago
and a lot of noise coming out and deservedly so.
And I think some of that noise probably continues coming
out of today's game, even though they get a huge
win over Oklahoma State. Was it pretty? No, but it
was close late. And if you listen to anything Smith

(02:12):
and I talk about, it's one of the show mantras.
When we're on air for Monday and Thursday night football,
the occasional Wednesday game, Friday college, whatever it is, it
doesn't have to look pretty as long as we're all
wrapped attention. Ass creeping up on the edge of our
chair going, I have no idea how this is going
to turn. And we watched that for several college games. Now,

(02:34):
a lot of the big heavyweights, they played with their
food a little bit, but eventually took care of business.
We watched LSU. They had a big promotion. It's like, hey,
it was a 55-point spread. We're going to beat the
hell out of this squad. So, hey, we'd like to
see you at the end of the game still in
the stadium. So here's a bunch of giveaways. He'll sign

(02:55):
some merch, and Coach Kiffin will do this, and you'll
have that, and you'll get a sideline pass, whatever else. Eventually,
they win 45-14. The backers, in terms of the point spread,
not exactly excitable, but they got their W. You get
my point. Go down the score lines for a number
of your other heavyweights. Notre Dame, what was it, 52-0, and...

(03:17):
And Louisville had the big win on Friday. Miami put
up 77 on Friday. USC only up 19. So still
questions of defense or how much they really care when
they get a big. But it's 49-30. Yes, live late-night
college football here on the West Coast. But you get

(03:37):
my point. You got a lot of the heavyweights that
just went, succeeded, and proceeded. But we did get a
couple of those big matchups that had us all... Agog,
all excitable. And Michigan, Ohio State, or Michigan, Oklahoma, I
should say, conflating those Big Ten rivals for a moment there. Michigan,
Oklahoma gave us everything, right? We're looking at Oklahoma and

(03:59):
coming off of last week's game, and you can check
virtually any pundit. There's just a lot of big question
marks coming into this game for Michigan. You liked what
you saw defensively, but what was that on the grand
scale against Western Michigan? Well, they brought it to John
Mateer and the highly vaunted, highly heralded Oklahoma Sooners today.

(04:20):
You're looking at a 17-10 win. They had a 10-0 lead,
did Michigan at halftime, and I think everybody was in
stunned silence. You go to the, hey, let's go to
the desk and have their review of the first half,
and there's like three seconds where everybody's looking around like...
The hell? What did we just see? What was going on, right?
The line was only five and a half. It was

(04:42):
in Michigan, but it was, well, Oklahoma's just going to
come in and potentially roll them, right? Big plays, big threats. No,
not so fast. We saw from Bryce Underwood, who all
week long had to hear about it. And again, rightly so.
You had what was... A tepid response from Kyle Whittingham

(05:02):
in terms of his job security and his confidence in
his quarterback. As soon as you lead statements and then
finish them off by going, for now, or right now,
or whatever. That means anything is subject to change. If
you're in a relationship or you're at your job and

(05:23):
you're asking your boss, hey, what's the deal? What are
we looking at here, here, and here? And they go, well,
here's the plan for now. Or your relationship? Everything's good?
You were feeling all right? We still got all these
great plans together? Yeah, for now. Yeah, you know something
is amiss. So I'm not going to say that, God,
Whittingham didn't open the door, right? Because when Underwood was

(05:43):
asked about those comments, like, wow, that's kind of out there.
So after the big win today... You know, Whittingham walked
it back a little bit, but still kind of couched
it in the, hey, nothing is forever. I thought he
was going to sing a couple of lines in November
Rain while he was at it, answering the question. Hey,
this is where we are. This is what it is.

(06:03):
Underwood passing the ball. Not exactly a world beater, right?
Didn't like the world on fire. 9 of 17, 111 yards.
He had a couple of big completions to Buchanan, who
is that guy. Two catches, 48 yards. He had a
36-yarder on the touchdown line. possession that they had in
the like right off the jump right in the first

(06:25):
quarter six plays 91 yards capped off by that 38
yard rush by underwood and like all right here we
go now here's a formula that can work because while
i mentioned the passing game with underwood if you watch
this one he actually finished with one more rushing attempt
and then he did passing attempt on the day 87
yards including a 38 yard scamper a couple of big

(06:48):
conversions big plays when they needed it he was able
to find a way. They had penalties beset both squads.
Sloppy in that regard. But you watched the Michigan defense
that really went after a beleaguered Oklahoma offensive line, creating
several holding calls. You had a couple of first downs

(07:10):
taken back. One where Mateer really put his body on
the line. We're all going to see the helicopter from
the other game of the day. And what that meant.
But no, here was one that as he got up
and adjusted his face mask, Mateers realized, hey, that's coming back.
That's not good for business, right? Bad things happen. Ultimately,

(07:32):
Michigan gets the interception later in this game. A nice
makeup for Hill after he'd been called for the. Late
hit earlier and the 15-yard penalty. He gets the interception
cutting underneath a sideline route. Again, some air under the ball,
and that was a constant theme with Mateer as the

(07:54):
game went on. but ultimately enough for Michigan to finish
the job. That's all fine and good. We got plenty
of time to talk Oklahoma State and Oregon as the
night goes on. We got four hours of real estate,
so we want to make sure we give that its
proper notice. be remiss if we didn't just jump to

(08:16):
what was the other massive game number four texas number
one ohio state and what you watch depending on where
you came in you saw two very different football games
you saw 37 minutes of absolute and complete and sheer
utter domination by the ohio state buckeyes bo jackson on

(08:37):
the ground and a little bit by air and jeremiah
smith showing you why If we want to get, you know,
have that Heisman talk, we did a big spot on
Fred Bolitnikoff. You know, they award the receivers get at
the end of the year. We did that last week.
You can check the podcast for all of that because
ultimately that'll be the award he wins. But you saw

(08:59):
several ridiculous catches. And depending on where you came in
at the game, they were doing the graphic of Jeremiah
Smith yardage versus what Texas had put up to that point.
You had two turnovers immediately. You had a big play
downfield to Cam Coleman as he's going to the ground. Again,
you can argue about, all right, here's a deep ball,

(09:19):
beautiful throw from Manning, but he's got to dive. And
as he goes towards the ground, the ball pops up.
All right, there's an interception that you don't see every day.
You had another on an exchange. So you had two
turnovers very fast. And then you had the drop by
Wingo in the red zone, right? That would have been
an easy walk-in touchdown, right? It hits him right at

(09:41):
the goal line, just fall down. And instead, what you
have is absolute chaos. You've got a 20-3 game at
the half. Texas in front of the home crowd, absolute
stunned silence. Third quarter, now it's 23-3. What do we got?
And that's where things flip, right?

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Right?

Speaker 1 (10:00):
This is where you got to play 60 minutes. And
I get it. There's a lot of other games. Some
of you that have the multi-screen experience were probably flipping
back and forth going, all right, put the other game
on the big one. This one's over. We'll pay attention
if it's close late. Or maybe you set up some alerts.
Maybe you were out, you got a kid's birthday party
to go to, maybe some youth soccer or some softball

(10:22):
or baseball that you need to get to, maybe even
some off-season basketball workouts, whatever it is. You weren't paying attention.
Maybe you're on the honey-do list going, well, I mean,
I was really going to give this all my attention,
but this game's a blowout, so tomorrow's the NFL, so
I've got a couple of hours now, I've got a window.
And then all of a sudden it brought you back.

(10:42):
It brought you back, that big... series that big possession
as you get into the later stages of that third
quarter that ends up becoming a 15 play 91 yard
drive covering six minutes 28 seconds all of a sudden
it's 23 20 or 23 10 23 10 great ohio
state next possession three and out All right, we got something.

(11:07):
Everybody's getting excited. Everybody's getting a little bit plucky, thinking,
all right, well, maybe you play field position. No, no, no,
not so fast. 13 plays, 72 yards, score. 23-17. And
suddenly the list is gone. You're back in front of
the TV. Every other game has been shut off because
you don't care about the blowouts unless you got betting

(11:30):
tickets at that point or you're an alum of the school.
And then we're going on, right? And Ohio State misses
a field goal. Opens the door once again. Now we'll
get into some of the decision-making early on, right? Leaving
points on the field saying, hey, we're going to bludgeon them.
So on a fourth down call early on, Ohio State,

(11:51):
instead of kicking what is essentially a chip-shot field goal,
says we'll go for it on fourth down and get stuffed.

Speaker 4 (11:58):
Right?

Speaker 1 (11:58):
That was one of those... Hang a star on that
one for later. But it didn't come to fruition, didn't
really come back into meaning and into everything we're doing
until these final throws. Because after that missed field goal,
what happens? 12th place, 73 yards, touchdown, including the decision-making
that Ryan Day had to grapple with of, hey, do

(12:19):
I call a timeout? Do I not? Do I let
them score? Do I not? Well, he called the timeout.
Did that once. But ultimately, instead of potentially having the
minute and a half on the clock or 25 seconds
as they did, eventually Texas puts it in the end zone.
Extra points.

Speaker 5 (12:40):
Good.

Speaker 6 (12:40):
24-23.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Now, for all of you in the betting world, Texas
was giving one and a half. So unless you had
the money line, they still didn't pay off their backers.
But tell that to Ohio State fans. They're not feeling
so great after all of this, right? You have the
interception that ends the game in the short of it.

(13:02):
It's the tale of two and a half quarters, one
and a half quarters, complete and utter domination, and the
growth of Arch Manning late, right? He was betrayed by
a couple of bad plays early on, and he was
not good. Let's be clear about that. In the early goings,
it was not pretty. The offense was less than efficient,

(13:23):
and it wasn't until late, as I pointed out, 15
for 91, 13 for 72, 12 for 73, right? The
preceding drives, three, four, end of half, seven. Then they
had that 16-play, 69-yard drive going into the second quarter.

(13:44):
That ended in a field goal. Before that, three, four,
and a fumble right off the jump. You get my drift?
Not a lot of lean, not a lot of being
able to build and develop and get that rhyme, reason, cohesion. Look,
we're one game in. Like, there's no preseason. We talk
about it for college football all the time, and folks
do their hand-wringing about all of this. Later on, we'll

(14:07):
get to the hammer, and that's the big point coming
out of this game. Because tell me it didn't make
your day to sit and watch whatever side of the
game you were on. I'm sorry if you're an Ohio
State alum or a fan. I'm a Big Ten apologist.
So yeah, that one kind of stings today. Will it
sting six weeks from now? We'll find out. If they're

(14:28):
as good as they were supposed to be as a
preseason number one and number one going into this game,
then ultimately this is a blip on the radar. And
all this was was a nice little appetizer for the
season to come. If it ends up meaning that suddenly
they're left out of the equation at the end, well,
then it's doom and gloom and death to all of it.

(14:48):
But we'll talk about that later on in the show.
But those are the two games that really had rapid
attention because the Oregon loss comes out of nowhere. And
we'll do a deep dive on that coming up later
on in the show because there's some great numbers that
come with that. A nice reference to the chaos that
we're living in in college football land as we get

(15:11):
ready for what is the beginning of a campaign. Look,
we're just getting our wind sprints in. This is still
preseason conditioning for many. I saw folks that were putting
their grill and trying to get their timing down this
week in their driveway. All right, what can we fit
in for our tailgate? And how long does it take
to assemble the grill, get that fire started? charcoal versus

(15:37):
the propane, all of those kinds of fights that we
get into, you know, insert your King of the Hill
reference as you will. But for me, like this was
as good as it got, right? I'm not worried about
the end of season rankings. I'm not, I'm not for
abolishing preseason rankings. I'm for, in the moment, what gave

(15:57):
us juice, what got us excitable, and what made us
run back to a TV, or if we're out and
about going, hey, you know, the phone's going to creep out,
or if I'm walking past the local watering hole and
I check in, suddenly that game's got my attention. Yeah,
we had it all. today here in college football land
so we'll celebrate it uh as the night goes on

(16:18):
as well as so many other things pop culture sports
there's a beer heist that still has not been solved
and now it has a partner you may have heard
about the first one the second one it becomes an
international case of espionage. We'll talk about all that as
we go live from these Fox Sports Radio studios. You
want to call in 877-99-ON-FOX is the number.

Speaker 7 (16:37):
877-996-6369.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
I'm over at Swollen Dome as we roll on. But
we're coming up to you late here on Fox Sports Radio.
Fox Sports Late Night with me, Mike Harmon. Coming up next,
we're going to do the Fantasy Files. Brandon Deutsch is here.
He's like a caged animal, stalking, ready to get your

(17:00):
lineup set for week one. We'll do it next year
on Fox. Hey, welcome back in. Fox Sports Radio. Fox
Sports Late Night. Hi, I'm Mike Harmon. Grab that cup
of coffee or something extra, let it as you need it.
We appreciate you being part of the extended family as
we go deep into the night, early Sunday morning. If
you're at the workplace, thanks. Tune in and crank it up.

(17:21):
Get everybody involved. 877-99 on Fox is the number. 877-996-6369.
You want to chime in in the Twitterverse, find me
over at Swollen Dome as well. Same thing on Instagram.
That's where you find me regularly. getting you hip to
the music, TV, movies, and all the nonsense, and a
lot of trading cards. So if that's your jam, come

(17:45):
on aboard. We appreciate you being with us. Now we're
going to take a turn into Fantasyland, something I've been
doing since 1999 professionally. Yes, all the way back at
Yahoo at the turn of the century, helping build the behemoth.
You're probably going to do some sit-start toggles on a
little bit later on. We bring in one of our
colleagues here to make us all a little smarter.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
Fantasy Files with Brandon Deutsch. Your go-to fantasy football segment.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
We got one goal to f * * * ing win!
That's right, we're going to blank and win, and we're
going to do it here. BSD Takes, where you find
him in the Twitterverse. He's on TikTok and Instagram as well.
And Brandon S. Deutsch, that's where you find him. Brandon,
welcome in. Another week, we're finally here. The countdown clock
tells me we are under 11 hours.

Speaker 8 (18:34):
Yeah, I mean, I already see the teams, Cleveland, Miami. Well,
bad examples, but they already posted. It's game day, but
I don't know if they should be too excited.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Well, here's the thing. You sell hope until you can't anymore. Yep. Right?
So at this point, everybody's at luck. The Jets are
in first place right now. The Jets are going to
win today. The Dolphins are in first place right now. Yeah.
Take that, Patriot fans. Yeah. All of that to say,
and yes, they could win today. If you're ever going
to get on the board, this is it in week one.

Speaker 8 (19:05):
Yeah, we got a couple matchups between that. I know
we're going to talk about fantasy, but Jets, Titans, and
then obviously Raiders, Dolphins. You got four of the worst
teams in the league playing against each other. Two of
them are going to be 1-0.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
NFL decided, hey, these games will be meaningful for these
four cities, so let's just match them up against each
other early. And the race to No. 1 goes on.
But as we get ready for this, we've already got
two games in the books. I know you're a big
San Francisco 49ers fan, had to be happy with what
you saw from Week 1. But I want to ask
one question about the backfield. We saw Christian McCaffrey, but

(19:38):
we saw a high snap count from Kalon Black.

Speaker 8 (19:41):
Yeah, I posted a video on my TikTok earlier this
week about how everybody, if you did not draft Kalon Black,
and I told people to draft him. in all leagues
especially if you have christian mccaffrey but even if not
because mccaffrey's coming off of 418 touches kalon black was
the number one waiver wire ad before wednesday and thursday's
games like i made a video i'm like Jonah Coleman's great.

(20:03):
We know he's going to take over Denver's backfield probably
at some point, but Dobbins probably will be able to
stay healthy for a little bit. You still got RJ
Harvey there, a brutal matchup against Kansas City. I knew
based on the age Kalen Black is, 25 years old,
the way he played in Indiana and just the absolute
burst that he has. And, you know, McCaffrey just doesn't
have that burst that he used to. He has great vision.

(20:24):
He's a great pass catcher. But they're trying to do
this David Montgomery, Jameer Gibbs type of thing. And I
think it's going to work because McCaffrey, if he were
to get 20 carries again each game, he would probably
get injured.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
But that's the thing. The biggest thing is right. Being judicious.
Much of what comes into the season is how old
the 49ers are. And if your goal is one last
hurrah with this group, you need everybody accountable, right? You
need everybody accounted for deep into the season. And you're
not doing that with him touching the ball 25 times
a game.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
No.

Speaker 8 (20:56):
And I think another thing that we noticed in that
game that I think benefits both Kalen Black and Christian
McCaffrey fantasy owners is that offensive line looked tremendous, way
better than it did last season. They weren't able to
run the ball at all last year. And you and
I both know this. If you can't run the football,
you're not truly a contender. So even though they won
12 games last year, They couldn't run the football all year,
which is that much more impressive how they made the

(21:18):
divisional round, even though they got blown out by Seattle.
But that's a good thing moving forward. I think Black
is a solid play if you have no other options.
I mean, I'm not saying he's going to get 14
carries every week, but he's at least a good stash
because Christian is still coming off of 418 touches. He's
30 years old.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
Old rule of thumb. Better he rot on my bench
than be in a lineup to beat me. absolutely harman
late on a friday night there you are saturday night
i don't even know what day it is.

Speaker 8 (21:48):
Or you have the opposite he starts dribbling on thursday
and he gets injured.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Well well i mean he was he was supposed to
be the guy and and unfortunately he goes up uh
the hard part is he was wearing number seven so
you know that joker that was impersonating a niner guy
love he was wearing number seven.

Speaker 8 (22:02):
Hey he just had to wait a few more weeks
his scam could have gotten even better He.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Could have gotten better. See, now I'm on injury. You see?
They had to cart me off. That's it. All right,
so we look at the board, and then we had
Seattle and New England. Obviously, Sam Darnold gets hurt. Drew
Locke comes in, was able to find JSN on a
beautiful fourth down call. They free him up. He's not
wearing Gonzales as a cape, and he's able to sprint

(22:25):
to daylight. But you've got to have a little bit
of concern there, at least for the next week or two,
as this gets righted. I'm excited to see what Locke
can do. Any guy that can hang around in the
league for near to a decade and still be on
a roster is like, hey, someone decides they love you.
The other is obviously A.J. Brown, though, on the other side,
because now Romeo Dobbs, Mac Hollins. and a cast of

(22:49):
characters have to try to pick up Drake may in
what is a very difficult stretch here over the next three,
four weeks. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (22:55):
I don't know what got into Dobbs in that game.
I mean, obviously it dropped that wide open pass from
Drake may. And he just didn't look like himself. I mean,
he's getting acclimated to a new system. I don't think
he's as bad of a receiver as he played and
he's going to have to step up big time. Pop
Douglas is going to have to step up big time.
I was never an AJ Brown truther in the sense
that he was going to have this wide receiver one

(23:17):
year and, i had him ranked i think in the
mid 20s and i was like look i mean he's
when he plays he'll get a boatload of touchdowns may
he'll target him if Keishon booty had the year he
had last year. Why wouldn't AJ Brown be, be a
little bit better, right? Because he's a better player. So,
I mean, that's four weeks. I'm concerned about that Patriots
team in general, especially with Ramondre Stevenson, you know, with
Henderson out, he had checkdowns almost every, every play.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
He got like six catches.

Speaker 8 (23:41):
He wasn't efficient. It wasn't pretty, but if you started Ramondre,
I mean, he got 15 fantasy points, even though he
didn't score. It's hard to trust anybody on that Patriot side.
And for the Seahawks side, it's hard to start anybody
besides jsn i think it's i think we're at that
point like jadarian price i mean i i don't think
it depends on matchup he looked good but he didn't

(24:01):
get a touchdown helani got i think seven or eight
carries you can get charbonnet back in a few weeks
i don't know i mean it's jsn's the only must
start on either of those teams like drake may i
i want to see one more performance before i can
confidently play him next week either.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
So let's have a little bit of fun as we
look at the rest of the slate. At BSD Takes
is the Twitter account, Brandon S. Deutsch in the TikTok
land and Instagram as you go forward. We've got a
couple of games that have a 50 or higher. Point
total on the over-under. And that's Tampa Bay, Cincinnati, New Orleans, Detroit.
I look squarely at Detroit because a guy that I

(24:39):
think I'm higher than the rest of the world on
is Jared Goff with his weaponry assembled. But the guy
in particular is Jameson Williams. Sit start.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Wow.

Speaker 8 (24:50):
I think you've got to start him. He's one of
those guys. He's like, I wouldn't call him a discount T. Higgins,
but just kind of in a similar range, but just
not as much upside. but not a high floor whatsoever
like if he got zero fantasy points that would not
shock me considering how many guys they have but he's
a guy if you're in week one which we are

(25:11):
right you're zero and zero you can take the risk
it's fine to start jameson williams right if it's week
14 and you need playoff spots on the line uh
maybe it's a little different but look i don't think
new orleans is scaring people with their defense i do
think this is a high scoring game amon raw jimmy
or gibbs will be the two guys but jameson williams

(25:32):
is 25 fantasy point upside so you might as.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
Well start him similar ranking for week one uh you
mentioned t higgins looks like he's cleared to go going
up against the tampa defense so i give you the
either or i will go both sides of that game
abuka versus t higgins oh.

Speaker 8 (25:50):
Abuka abuka i think since now he's gonna be ahead
in this game which benefits abuka and the backfield gainwell
and bucky irving tremendously as well um Look, I know
people are scared to start T. Higgins, similar to Jameson Williams,
because Jamar Chase is there, just like Amin Ra is there.
And then you have Chase Brown, who's turned into this star,
especially in fantasy. They used him in the slot in

(26:13):
training camp, so he could get even more catches this year. But, yeah,
I mean, look, I think this Cincinnati team is going
to be ahead. So that leads me to say, okay, Agbuka,
even though Godwin's coming back, he's still not, it's now
fully a year from the injury, a little bit more.
And then McMillan, he was dealing with a little some

(26:35):
in training camp, but he's talented. Ted Hurst is talented.
I don't know how they're going to deploy either of
those guys. We know Agbuka is going to get the ball.
So if they're down, that means Baker is going to
target him a ton more. So I would start Ibuka
over Higgins.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Hoping to see first half of 2025 Ibuka kind of
disappeared as the season wore on. We've got a couple
of matchups where it becomes the, all right, I drafted
him and I might just have to grit my teeth
and bear it. And you know which matchup I'm looking at.
When I look at Buffalo and Houston and I've got
DJ Moore and I've got Josh Allen and And I

(27:11):
have James Cook. All three guys that you would have
drafted early, maybe not where DJ Moore would have been
a back end to maybe a three, but you're feeling
most weeks, he's the number one on this squad. I'm
feeling good. Against this Houston defense, it's like kryptonite.

Speaker 8 (27:26):
Yeah, I have DJ Moore's sit this week. I know
it's hard to sit a guy that you drafted in
the third round or fourth round, right?

Speaker 2 (27:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (27:34):
But sometimes there are matchups where you're just like, whoa,
you know, Quinn John Judkins is in a similar position
against Jacksonville. I mean, I know we'll talk about that,
but Jacksonville gave up 85 rushing yards a game last year.
They have the number one run defense in football, or
at least they did last year. um and you know
he's on a brown scene it's going to probably be
behind the entire game or most of that game and

(27:55):
even if not what's the upside there he only has
touchdown upside i think it's a similar thing uh when
we're looking at james cook it's going to be contingent
upon touchdowns his production and if we're looking at dj
moore how many receptions is he actually going to get
how much is josh allen going to be able to
move the ball around.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, the check down to James Cook is the one
thing I think becomes the saving grace, right? Where you're saying,
all right, he's at least going to get a couple
of dump offs.

Speaker 8 (28:23):
Well, he caught a lot of passes last year and
the year before. But before that, remember, he was probably someone,
I mean, they would use Ray Davis.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
A lot a few years ago. That was a couple
of years ago.

Speaker 8 (28:34):
Now we got James. I'm still, again, it's just obviously
James Cook is a start. DJ Moore is a sit.
Josh Allen is always a start, but it's not a
comfortable one.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Yeah, no, that's just it. I have to maximize everything
else on all of those others. You mentioned Judkins as
a running back. Who else on the running back board,
as you were pondering this, for your content, but you're
a part of the, I want to flex podcast as well.
Streaming defenses and, and, and chiming in there. Uh, what
else on the running back board leads you a little bit, uh,

(29:07):
unsatisfied and, and, and less than enthusiastic in week one.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (29:11):
Kenneth Walker's, uh, one that's just, it's, it's hard for
me to get a gauge on that. It's going to
be about touchdown production again, because Denver's defense is elite
at all levels, similar to Houston where it's like, well,
It also doesn't benefit Kansas City and Kenneth Walker that
Andy Reid will magically tell Emmett Johnson to get on

(29:34):
the field on first and goal, and he'll get a touchdown,
and then you're like, well, why did we draft Kenneth
Walker in the second round? But little do we know
that the McKinnon era, like Andy Reid's done this forever
where he'll have some third string running back or second
string running back come in.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
And get the touchdown. Right.

Speaker 8 (29:50):
And that was what frustrated people with Isaiah Pacheco when
he was at the top of his game is even
though he.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
Was very good, they're like, why aren't they using them more?

Speaker 8 (29:56):
I am concerned about Kenneth Walker's matchup against Denver as
I am for JK Dobbins against Kansas city in that
same matchup, right? Like Dobbins is always solid when he's
on the field. Problem is he's, he's not always on
the field and.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
RJ Harvey, you got to sit too.

Speaker 8 (30:09):
Cause you're like, well, his, his production simply is, contingent
upon pass catching he's not going to get many touches
out of the backfield so again that that's a that's
a matchup i'm looking at as well where i'm sitting
all the running backs.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
And we have the undrafted left tackle uh trying to
protect uh the blind side of Patrick Mahomes, uh, as well. So, uh,
a little fun, extra theater there. Uh, last, last thoughts.
Cause the, uh, the clock tells me where, uh, we're
hitting the magic hour here. Uh, what, what are you thinking? Uh, any,
any big sleepers, uh, guys completely under the radar. And

(30:42):
I mean, like you had to dig for.

Speaker 8 (30:44):
Them, dig for them at least a little bit. Wandale
Robinson to me should be a, should be a must start. Uh,
the guy was the wide receiver 14 last year with
Brian Dable, uh, He still has Brian Dable just on
a new team. And Cam Ward's going to be in
hell that entire game. He's going to have to do
a lot of checkdowns. He's going to have to get
the ball out quick. There's going to be a lot
of slot usage with Wanda Robinson. I'm way more comfortable

(31:06):
starting Wanda instead of Cornell Tate in that game. That's
a guy that I'm looking at. You know what, Mike,
you might like this one.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
I know, I know.

Speaker 8 (31:14):
Jason would like this one because he's a Jets fan.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Go ahead.

Speaker 8 (31:17):
I kind of like, I wouldn't start him. I'm kind
of expecting a big game from AD Mitchell.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
I really am. I think he's interesting as the off-receiver
and the, look, you draw on the number one, the
other side, all of that, Garrett Wilson's going to get
a ton of attention, Brees Hall, sellout up front. So, yeah,
the potential is there. at least week one, week two,
I don't think you can do much worse.

Speaker 8 (31:44):
Well, I wouldn't advise starting, but if you're in like
a 14, 16, or 18-man league, I mean, that's a
guy where you're like, okay, why not?

Speaker 1 (31:51):
See, I think, you know, because we try to wrap
our arms around the entire fantasy universe, and this is
where we also get into your, hey, making a daily
$ 1 lineup. Where where do I find, you know, one
dollar on my my buy in? There's a wide receiver
you slot because you're going to be one of the
only people that slots.

Speaker 8 (32:09):
I mean, if it booms or jail or Jalen Naylor
on the Raiders that he you know, we talked about
him a little bit on the I want your flex.

Speaker 1 (32:17):
I think it's interesting. No Brock Bowers. Mayor gets paid.
Good for him.

Speaker 9 (32:21):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
Tried to tell folks like just because Bauer showed up
doesn't mean that this guy was out of the picture
but now he gets to be featured and well he
has a nice hefty contract to go with it but
Naylor a guy that I think could be interesting if
this breaks right Because Captain Kirk, we know, will distribute
the football. In that same game, also Douglas, right? I mean,
someone's got to catch passes. Dulcich, too.

Speaker 8 (32:43):
I guess Dulcich, the tight end, could catch some passes.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
Some hot routes from Malik Willis. All of that and more,
you find in BSD Takes in the Twitterverse at Brandon S.
Deutsch on TikTok and Instagram. We'll do this each and
every week. In a little early, we'll have it next week.
And we'll take your calls and tweets and all of
that stuff at our respective sites. spaces the i watch
your flex podcast as well brandon thanks for coming in

(33:09):
and making some time this evening.

Speaker 8 (33:10):
Thank you so much for having me let's all win
week one.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
Let's go and get it uh we'll recap all of
our uh picks sure to go wrong uh no question
about it hey be sure to subscribe to the fox
sports radio youtube channel Search Fox Sports Radio on YouTube.
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(33:34):
YouTube and subscribe. Coming up next here on Fox Sports
Late Night. Yeah, it's the self-serving time where I... scratch
and claw because, well, that's what the White Sox are
trying to do. We'll do all that. A little more
getting to know you here.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
On Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup
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Speaker 1 (34:29):
Subscribe. Hit that thumbs up icon. And comment away. Welcome
back in. Fox Sports Late Night B, Mike Harmon. Welcome aboard.
Thanks for Brandon Deutsch for stopping on by. Check him out,
BSD Takes in the Twitterverse at Brandon S. Deutsch on
TikTok and Instagram. Coming up next hour, we'll start getting

(34:50):
into a little bit of NFL talk. We'll start getting
into more of the college football day. I can't let
that Oregon game just go off into the distance. No, no, no.
That one's still fresh. It's still smarting. Our Oregon Ducks fans,
you'll get to hear Jeff Schwartz talk about it later
on this morning, on Sunday morning here at Fox Sports Radio.

(35:14):
as part of the countdown crew. But each and every week,
the goal is to get to live and die with
the good, the bad, the ugly in my sporting world,
get to know me a little bit. And then, of course,
our guy Mark behind the board, he's also a Chicago guy.
So we'll commiserate a little bit. And I think we've

(35:35):
even got a little open, like we're doing a comedy show.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
He's mike i'm kind of a big deal that's mark
it does hurt just a couple of guys from south
side chicago i don't think we're cursed living in the
past the present and future it's time for mike and
mighty mark.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
Look at that that was like do a little walk
a little dance to go along with it So as
we get ready for the Bears season opener tomorrow, game
against the Carolina Panthers on the road, the Bears two
and a half or three point favorite, a defense that
will learn the starting 11 at kickoff. And an offense

(36:18):
that has a lot of red marks next to wide
receiver names. It's a very quizzical time. Meanwhile, the White
Sox slumping along. They got to win late heroics and
a home run tonight. So I'm kind of in that
anxious moment, Mark.

Speaker 10 (36:35):
I'm just happy that the White Sox are not embarrassing anymore.
Because when I come to work in our lovely building here,
and as the seasons would go by and the White
Sox were.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
A dumpster fire. Yeah.

Speaker 10 (36:47):
I would hear it from all of my coworkers.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
You stink. You stink.

Speaker 10 (36:51):
And so this season, when the White Sox are doing
better and better and better, it was very nice. They're
not embarrassing anymore. And they hit home runs and they
win games. So all is well. Now, when it comes
to the Bears, it's brand new. It's always at the
beginning of a football season. Everybody's hopes are up. They're
hoping that the draft picks are wonderful. They're hoping that

(37:13):
their quarterback can throw the ball, hold the ball, move
the ball, all those things. So you're always just hopeful.
that your team is going to not be embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
We're going to do a little fun with numbers, something
a milestone Caleb Williams is already approaching. We put him
in rarefied air in Bears quarterback history. And all of
you that know your football history and know the litany
of Bears quarterbacks, that have gone under center or taken
a shotgun snap, you know that that's going to be

(37:45):
a fun list to go down a little later on
in the program. But for this one going up against Carolina,
Carolina squad that outperformed perhaps a year ago. Bryce Young
still waiting on that extension. Ted McMillan was fine. They
hope Brooks is healthy to work with Hubbard in the
backfield this year. This is one where it's just the...

(38:07):
I will just wait with bated breath to see what
Caleb Williams and company will have done. Because we've watched
him embrace the city. We've watched the city embrace him
after early reticence because he had painted nails. And he cried.
up in the stands with his mom. Who's this guy
we're drafting? Why are we drafting this guy? And then

(38:28):
all the comeback victories of a year ago, suddenly everybody
decided they liked him. Suddenly he was showing up at
every social function. He's in a White Sox jersey hanging
out behind home plate with other Tyson Bajan and other
Bears luminaries. Trying to go to court about a nickname.
All those things happened. I like that Iceman bit, though.

(38:49):
That was good because we got to put a little
shine I'm George Iceman Girvin, who was once upon a
time a Chicago Bull. Folks may not remember that towards
the end of his run. Right. Not necessarily the Iceman
that had all the posters made of him and all
of those things. I have a signed mini basketball that, unprompted,
he just wrote ice underneath it. It's pretty cool. Great signature,

(39:14):
every letter, ICE. But that's a little bit, as we
get ready for this season, right? The White Sox, I've
always been a big believer in either fail spectacularly, take
big swings, don't be mediocre. Give me something reasonable. Now,
with the White Sox, what we've seen for years is
100 lost seasons. So the fact that they're sitting at

(39:35):
76 and 72, game and a half ahead of Cleveland
here as we begin the football season, I'm afraid a
lot of that energy is going to move over to
Soldier Field and the exploits of the Bears. Because it's
been a fun run having the White Sox and Cubs
both in contention. Pete Crowe Armstrong is going to win
the NL MVP. But Murakami, the Montgomery's, all of these

(39:57):
guys making hay, maybe in your fantasy lineups, maybe in
your trading card collection. But certainly, you know, it's all
good because a lot of you wear White Sox hats,
you know, because culturally it became very acceptable to do.
Don those colors again. Show some support, even if you
have no idea what I'm talking about. It's Fox Sports
Late Night with me, Mike Harmon. That's Mark Ramsey, our

(40:19):
Mighty Mark behind the board. As we continue, we'll take
a look back at the Oregon loss. Dan Laning at
least won somebody some money. Greetings and welcome in hour
two of the program. Cruising right along. If you miss
any of today's show, be sure to grab the podcast.
Search Fox Sports Radio. If you get the podcast right
after the show, and you'll get that up. Follow it,

(40:41):
rate it, give it five stars, provide the review, send
it along to friends and family. That's how we do it.
It's like a chain call, only with good content on
the back end. Search Fox Sports Radio. Wherever you get
your podcasts, you'll find today's full show posted right after
we get off the air. And I say that only
because generally that became a, hey, we're rained out, which

(41:01):
unless you didn't want to go to practice or, you know,
didn't want to get better at your craft, you didn't
want that call you wanted to go and hit. Whether
it was baseball or smash one of your classmates in
a football practice, all of those things. But we're talking
a lot of college football. We'll transition to the NFL,
hit a little bit of the rewind in about 20
minutes of the two games that we've already seen, some

(41:23):
of the narratives that are floating out. As we roll
through the program, but we had a huge upset and
there's no two ways about it. When you're a 23
and a half point dog and everybody's looking ahead to
the week and you start going down like, all right,
where might you see an upset? Where might you see
a little bit of chaos? This game never ends. ever

(41:47):
crossed anybody's mind. And it was a game in Stillwater.
The Oregon Ducks traveling to face the Oklahoma State Cowboys
that have, for a lack of a better term, let's
just steal from our buddy Joe Namath and just say
they've been struggling these last couple of years. You talk
about in-conference games. It's just been abysmal. What is it?

(42:10):
Four and 20 the last two seasons combined. But with
this run, we saw greatness. And Drew gets the ball.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Looks to throw. Under heavy pressure.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Gets away. Mestemaker pumps.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Mestemaker running.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
Diving toward the end zone.

Speaker 9 (42:24):
He's in!

Speaker 6 (42:25):
Pistols firing!

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Touchdown, Oklahoma State! Drew Mestemaker! Give him an Olympic gold medal! Mestemaker,
on the call, 1-0 at home, 1-1 now on the year.
And the Mighty Ducks fall, 39-31 the final. You hear
the excitement. You saw the replay of this a million times.

(42:48):
The pinball into the end zone. As he goes, finishes 3-17, 2-2,
does mess to make her. And he's the focal point
here as we talk about this game and we talk
about what Oklahoma State got done today. One of those
historic kind of wins for the ages, right? We'll remember

(43:10):
this one. For Oregon, is it doom and gloom? Yeah,
it's terrible today. It'll be terrible tomorrow. Maybe you look
at these first couple of weeks because you saw the
narrow win over Boise State. And again, a team that's
supposed to be pretty good. They eventually ran away and
hid in their game today. But the idea being that
thus far it's been uneven at best for the Oregon

(43:32):
Ducks and the returning Dante Moore. He was 14-29, 191 yards,
two touchdowns in this game. But for Oklahoma State, they
are the embodiment, the next iteration. Now, does it mean
that over the course of a season, suddenly they're going
to go on some tremendous run? Because you'll see the

(43:53):
things likened to what Indiana did last year after a
big season the year before. But just the idea of
a complete rebuild. Because you've got a roster that is
complete now. and full from the transfer portal, including Mestemaker,
who shows up with his coach as part of a

(44:13):
20-man entourage from the North Texas Mean Green that show
up here in Stillwater to go and have this massive,
massive undertaking and massive upset of the Oregon Ducks. And
you saw over the course of this game, you have
a lead. That was sustained for a good chunk. You're

(44:36):
at 24-17 at halftime. Eventually, Oregon does take a brief lead.
And you're like, oh, here we go. They woke up.
They have a three-play 50-yard drive, 31-30. It's like, all right,
what do we got now? And you get in a
little bit where you can feel the sands shifting a
little bit. And instead, they go right back down the
field on a 12-play 75-yard drive to take a 36-31 lead.

(45:00):
And that's what you heard there. That's what you heard
the touchdown run. Eventually, they're able to tack on a
field goal, but you have... In the ensuing possessions for Oregon,
this comes after the touchdown to give Oklahoma State the lead.
You had a three and out, followed by an Oklahoma
State three and out. Then four plays, two yards, 30

(45:21):
seconds off the clock. On downs, they give the ball
back to Oregon State. They move it 20 yards, but
they take six plays and a full three and a
half minutes off the clock before kicking the field goal
to make it an eight-point game. One more possession for
the Ducks, nothing comes to fruition, and eventually you're in

(45:45):
operation shutdown mode, six plays, seven yards, final two minutes
of this game. But it's historic. We're talking about a
23.5 point spread. Do we see those? Sure. But Oklahoma
stayed these last couple years, as I said, historically bad.
to where this is a complete rebuild. And last week,
they lost to Tulane, and they looked terrible in doing it. So,

(46:08):
you know, the Michigan side, right, because you start to
try to run parallels on these things, particularly when we're
talking about conference mates, when we look at Michigan and Oregon,
you're looking at the idea that Michigan, last week it
was the succeed and proceed. Was it pretty?

Speaker 8 (46:24):
No.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
No.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
Should you have gotten the extra play, they'll fight until
the end of time over this. But they got the win,
and they moved on, and they were 1-0. And then today,
was it a great, triumphant win overall? No, but they
did enough, right? The defense was great. They flew around.
We talked about it a lot first hour. But right now,

(46:46):
these heavyweights and Michigan will get back into the top 25.
Oregon will drop coming out of this loss, and they'll
drop precipitously. But is it doom and gloom for the
full of the season? No, but you certainly have concerns now.
Or maybe you didn't coming in for Oregon. You look
at what they had coming back, particularly Dante Moore, right?

(47:07):
All the talk, he didn't want to go to the Jets.
So he went back to college football. And now you've
had uneven performances off the jump. 191 yards, two touchdowns, 14-27.
For Oklahoma State and their coach, went out of his
way as he's talking about the greatness of what this

(47:29):
drive was all about, what the finishing of this game was.
Eric Morris, he made sure to keep his sunglasses on
because he started to tear up. You see the crowd
and their reaction, the players and their reaction as they
storm the field and just looking around in the excitement.
Mestemaker in his post talking about, hey, these are my guys,

(47:50):
my brothers. This is the highlight of everything. I mean,
this is the moment. Even more so after he finished,
as he finished his conversation with the reporter going back
into the tunnel, he even had a thing where he's like,
I've never thought about retirement or what's next or any

(48:10):
of that stuff. It goes, but I might start tonight.
It's like, I don't know that it can get any
better than this. And this is what college football does
for us each and every Saturday. And we do that
every given Sunday as well, right? Everybody's watched the movie
any given Sunday once, twice, a thousand times. We claw
for that inch and we do that in our lives, right?

(48:31):
Whatever you're doing for your job, right? And yes, I'm
sitting behind a microphone. But you know what? You scratch
and claw to keep your spot, to make sure that
you're moderately informed, but hopefully you're entertaining and getting folks
to think a little bit. Maybe even if it's just
they direct their anger towards you. And this is what
some of the coaches do, right? Yes, bring it in

(48:52):
like you're the Emperor Palpatine. I'll take all your hate,
all your derision. I'll do it. And we'll do it
here on Sports Radio. Some of the hot take nonsense
is derived to... to give you that outlet to bring
it here. But it's also to get you to think
about the game on a grander scale. Look, we love
what we get to watch each and every week. And

(49:12):
college football, you know, is always my first love. Go
back to Northwestern. I'm featured, me and my idiot friends.
as face painted knuckleheads when we were students in the
Northwestern student section before anybody cared.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Right.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
The 1994 team. Go look it up. All the guys
that got busted for being on the take. That was
a good team. There were a lot of good players.
They should have been contending to the contending type team.
And then you find out, hey, they're not on the
up and up. But we went to all those games.
We cheered. And every week we knew we were going

(49:48):
to get a thriller. And then Barnett takes him to Pasadena.
And now you've had more or less a pretty good
run here for going on. What is it now? 30 years. Yeah.
which really scares me, but it's just that idea that
most years you're going in going, all right, if things break, right,
you can compete. And that's all we hope for. All right.

(50:09):
Mighty Mark and I were doing the bears thing. We
were talking about the, the white socks at the end
of last hour. And for all of you out there,
whatever your college that you cheer for is, whatever your
NFL team is like, we joked about a Brandon and
I doing the fantasy bit, right? You got four teams
that are expected to be vying for the number one pick. Well,
two of them are going to be 1-0 after tomorrow.
And watch, we get two scoreless ties. How about that? No,

(50:32):
I'm just kidding. But just the idea being that as
we watch these college football games, at this point, we
still don't know what we're going to get. You can
go the full Forrest Gump as you need to, reach in,
grab a little bite, and just be like, nah, that
one's not for me. Because the transfer portal... and the
change-out of all of these coaching staffs, coordinators, all the

(50:55):
way down the line, first couple of weeks, we're still
trying to figure it out. Like I said, Oklahoma State,
I believe it was 95 guys are new. 95! Ponder
that for a second. We laugh when there's a line change. Like, right,
my daughter plays college soccer, and with her club team
for years, you'd see, all right, they're getting like five

(51:15):
people up. Yep, it's a full-on hockey line change. That's
what they did with a roster change. In an offseason,
you change a coaching staff, you change out an entire
locker room, and you're trying to build. Doesn't mean that
you can't get it done. Doesn't mean there aren't ways
to streamline how you're building into this process. But to
go in as a home 23.5 point dog to knock

(51:38):
off Oregon? that retained their number one quarterback, their guy,
some of the big playmakers, yeah, that's a pretty big deal.
That's a pretty big day in college football, and we
got to watch it unfold. We watched these matchups. We
watched the Michigan-Oklahoma. We watched as some of these squads

(52:00):
were coming down, the Texas and Ohio State game. That
was insane. We talked about it last hour, a tale
of two games for this, for Oklahoma, For this Oklahoma
State squad to pull off this game, to have that
emotion from the coach in the postgame talking about how
proud he was of their resolve and resilience. We heard
some of that from Whittingham, and we'll get to it

(52:22):
later on in the show. We'll revisit the Michigan win.
But it's just that idea of... Each and every day,
we all should aspire to that, right? That there's something
going to happen in our day that's going to be incredible.
Could it be a tough task?

Speaker 2 (52:37):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (52:37):
Will it be testing? Whether you got kids that you're
trying to bring up, you're dealing with your parents, you're
your siblings, whatever you got going on, stuff at work.
It's the, all right, today's going to be a little
bit different. And I'm not trying to give you a
big speech and sell you a book. I'm just telling
you that's what college football is to me, especially at

(52:58):
this point in the season. We don't know. These teams
are not fully formed yet. Hell, we're going to watch
the NFL in 10 hours from now, and that's very
much where we're going to be. We're going to watch
the first couple of series because a lot of these
guys haven't taken reps together yet. And one of the notes,
and you guys can disagree with me if you're going
to tell me I'm wrong, if it's just a recency bias,

(53:21):
877-99 on Fox, 877-996-6369, at Swollen Dome on Twitter if
you want to chime in. I don't know that we've
ever gone into a week one with this many people hurt.
To where it's like, wait, that guy might go. I
haven't even gotten into Malik Davis. We'll get into him
a little later on in what he's saying about his

(53:42):
availability for a divisional matchup, you know, in primetime TV.
We got that going on. But we watched a lot
of these games, and we've seen them where you wonder
what you're going to get in week one. We saw
it with the first two NFL games. We'll recap and
kind of go through the big storylines and try to
move the narratives along for you here in the overnight

(54:03):
on Fox Sports Late Night. But it's just that idea.
I sat down to watch these games. I thought I
had an idea. Jason Smith and I talked about it
during the week. The Oklahoma and Michigan game. Watching what
the Michigan offense was last week. I know the defense
might be pretty good. Okay, well they flew around and
made Mateer look like just a guy. Okay, today. And

(54:27):
Oklahoma's got some questions they're going to need to answer.
But it's also the scenario whereby We watched Underwood have
more rushing attempts than he did pass attempts. Didn't see
that on the bingo card. But guess what? It got
them a W. Is it sustainable? Is it something that

(54:47):
other teams immediately key on? And maybe it gives you
a little more daylight in your passing game?

Speaker 2 (54:53):
Maybe.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
Maybe that's not the guy, and maybe that's why Whittingham
has been judicious and careful with his wording of things
about being right now. But that's where we are in
the right now. Michigan gets a big win. Oklahoma State
gives college football one of those seismic things. Here in California,
we're always on earthquake preparedness. Big storms. What's going to happen?

(55:15):
It's going to take off the coast, they tell me
at some point down the line. All of that to say...
I can't wait to see what's next. We get the
NFL in a couple hours, but I'm already looking ahead
to next week. Ole Miss and LSU, one of the
highlight games. Northwestern hosts, and selfishly, Northwestern hosts Colorado. Remember,

(55:37):
Colorado had that win, and everybody got excited again. We
saw the ratings. We saw that. Deion in a bunch
of commercials again. Although, I tell you what, I'm at
the point, if I was having a drinking game for
the Save College Sports thing, I'm not getting to watch
any of this because I'm done before the first two
possessions are over. First two timeouts, that's it. I'm getting

(55:57):
at least one mention of it. I'm done. But all
of that to say, we don't know, right? Roy Kent,
any of you that watch Ted Lasso out there, you
remember the famous thing when he became a pundit, right?
And they're like, all right, this young guy is going
to take the pitch. What do you think he's going
to do? Well, this guy's going to command the pitch.
He's going to go out and dominate and whatever. And

(56:20):
the next guy says more or less the same thing.
They go to Roy Kent, and he just goes, we
don't know. We don't know. I'm not in there with him,
but I have no idea how he's going to do
this and what he does before a game or certainly
how he's going to perform because we're not in there
with him. We don't know. And even the coaches, you
see the incredulity on their faces with some of the

(56:40):
stuff their players are doing positively or negatively. I always
want the coach cam in all of these games, particularly
early season, when they've got to make a big decision
and it goes against them. Come on, give me the
immediate reaction. I'm not saying, hey, let's cut to him
seconds after the play is stopped on fourth and two. No, no, no.
When Ohio State lines up in the first quarter and says,

(57:04):
we don't need your three points, we're going to go
for the jugular now. I need Ryan Day. I need
that entire offensive staff in a picture-in-picture as that play
gets stuffed. That's what I need. That's my innovation going forward.
I need cameras on all those people. And if you
want to be really cool, figure out where their friends
and family are and show them too. 877-99-ON-FOX is where

(57:28):
you find us on the telephone, at Swollen Dome, on Twitter,
and Instagram. See my pretty face. See all the pics.
The I Want Your Flex podcast is out there up
as we previewed week one. We had Brandon on to
talk a little fantasy earlier as well. That video will
go up as we go up. uh later into the
show as well so all of that so much more

(57:51):
but coming up next here on vox sports late night
we will rewind to the first two games of the
glorious 272 regular season nfl games we got we got
two good ones that give us a lot of storylines
and a lot of yapping and we'll get out of
our sleep cycles next to do it on fox getting
my strut on in in studio come on Fox Sports

(58:15):
Late Night. Hi, I'm Mike Harmon. Thanks for being with
us here in the evening. Mark and Emmy making me
sound so pretty. Making sure I don't go too far
off the rails. Legitimately, they put up the stuff like
it's at a bowling alley with the bumpers. And I
think I can get tased based on that if I
really take us into uncharted territories. For those who want

(58:38):
to interact on Twitter, hi, Wayne, at Swollen Dome is
where you find us. We gave out the phone number,
877-99 on Fox, 996-6369. Happy to talk to you all.
Whatever you got going on, you're a big college football
fan and you want to react, To the good, the bad,
the ugly of the day that was, please chime in.

(59:01):
We'd love to hear from you. Wayne even added Chris Plank.
I don't know that Chris Plank necessarily wants to talk
college football tonight. Maybe he would. If he's up and
wants to chime in, he knows the hotline. He can
dial it up. But all of that to say, we've
got two games from the NFL season already in the books.
We had the game in Australia. We'll start there. We'll

(59:23):
work our way backwards because a lot of it became
Let's talk about sleep science. Let's have big debates about
sleep science and what's the right way to go. I
think from an NFL perspective, you'd like both your teams
to be boots on the ground, shaking hands, kissing babies,
people that are spending money, people that are wanting to

(59:44):
promote your sport. So I think you'd want to do that.
And that's got nothing to do in terms of Hey,
what an individual team wants to do. I think from
a league perspective, you'd want that. And I know the
Rams had sent folks over the course of the year.
That's all fine and good. When it comes to game day,
we know that the different environment, the different lengths that
you go to a buildup that we're talking about to

(01:00:06):
get us to that point.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
But.

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
We have the final of it all is a 27-7 win.
And what I want to get into here is the
beauty for Sean McVay is that so much has been
spent about his decision and the team's decision to fly
out late. The in-game management, roster management, decision-making has been

(01:00:32):
largely ignored by Anybody else raise their hand if you
paid attention to the fact that they called a quarterback
sneak with Matthew Stafford at the goal line? Anybody? Am
I the only guy that's still incensed about that? 48-plus
hours later going, what the hell was that? You got
Blake Corham. You got your man Kyle Williams. I mean,

(01:00:55):
you got guys that can go and they make plays.
You're talking about guys that are going to be able
to get things done. And instead, you're giving the ball
to your quarterback at the one-yard line. So Kyron Williams

(01:01:19):
and Blake Corham were bystanders. Kyron Williams, last year, how
many touchdowns did he have? What did we have over
the course of the year? Oh, I'm sorry. He's got
three straight years of double-digit touchdowns. Blake Corum, that's the
big back you were going to bring in, right? So
Kyron Williams is the guy that, I don't know, maybe

(01:01:40):
you just said, hey, well, it's the element of surprise.
Stafford's big. He'll get you there.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
But instead, it's easy to talk about sleep. And, yes,
we can talk about Miles Garrett, who suddenly in the
postgame is like, yeah, I wasn't honored. Okay, was that
related to you didn't sleep well on the lay down
on the flight over there? Did you have an injury
that was undisclosed before then?

Speaker 8 (01:02:03):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
I know as I've gotten older, you know, you fall
asleep in a chair or something, you know, you wake
up the legs asleep. Like, ah, that's not good. Your
foot was dangling or whatever the case was, you've suddenly
got a problem. And I'm not saying... You know, for
these finely tuned athletes, they're anywhere on the spectrum as to,

(01:02:25):
you know, the aches and pains of a 52 year
old guy talk show host sitting here, yeet flapping his gums.
I'm not saying that, but we all know that the
body responds differently. You've seen many an athlete, guys that
were part of the U.S. Open coverage, right? You got
John McEnroe going, look, I've flown to Australia a ton
of times. That's not the way to do it. Sleep

(01:02:47):
science can tell you and come up with data to
get you down a path. But each individual body is
going to be different. And then you multiply that and
you keep adding all of those variables up. Man to
man to man. Suddenly you've got a full team where
you don't know how they're going to respond. And in
the end, the sleep science is fine and good. I

(01:03:08):
shove it off the screen like I'm the Joker shoving
off the commissioner and the mayor as they're trying to
tell me about the commemorative festival in the 1989 classic Batman. No,
it's done. It's my turn to talk. That's what we're
talking about here. Sleep science doesn't matter. You went out
and got your ass kicked. And again, if you score there,

(01:03:29):
maybe you make it a game. Instead, you gave the
ball and had Matthew Stafford on the quarterback's knee. He
was 0-2 last year. He's just this side of Phillip
Rivers of things I don't need to see and that
we shouldn't be calling. All right, because we gave the
number out, 877-99 on Fox. Let's get after it. Let's
go out. It's Holler and James. He was first in line.

(01:03:51):
Holler and James, what do you got?

Speaker 9 (01:03:54):
You're in the hospital?

Speaker 6 (01:03:56):
You okay?

Speaker 9 (01:03:56):
We're sending good thoughts to you. No, I fell and
hurt my back real bad. And they didn't believe me.

(01:04:18):
And it was a back injury from an auto accident.
And I see the American family in all states. And
I had Max Hacker as my attorney. He was a
powerhouse attorney. They swiveled, they conceded. I was at a
chiropractor-involved dentist who was unlicensed. They treated me for about
four years.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
Yeah, Holler and James, I can't give you legal advice.
We wish you well, and we hope you get the
answers you need. That's one of those things. We've got
to refer you to the specialist on that. We're just
yucking it up here on the late night talking some sports.
But good thoughts. Hopefully you find some peace and you

(01:04:59):
feel better there. All right, let's go to Emmett out
in Olympia. Some college football. Some fantasy. Emmett, you out there?

Speaker 8 (01:05:08):
Yes, sir.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
What's up, my car?

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
How you been buddy? What's good.

Speaker 6 (01:05:12):
Pretty good, man. Pretty good. No complaints. Just ready for football.

Speaker 4 (01:05:15):
We've been waiting so long and now we have a
full slate of college football for two weekends, a couple
NFL games. And we wake up in the morning and
get the big fight going.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
So I'm ready. Beautiful thing. And you're wanting to know already.

Speaker 6 (01:05:27):
Yeah, 1-0, that's the important part.

Speaker 4 (01:05:29):
I mean, almost didn't get there, came down to the end,
but salute to the defense and drew off, man. Like,
that guy went in and it looked rough the first half,
but that second half, he picked it up and, you know,
found Cooper Cup for that deep play, and that's what, like,
I think changed the momentum for us.

Speaker 1 (01:05:45):
Got him involved and then obviously able to get Christian
Gonzalez off of JSN just long enough.

Speaker 6 (01:05:51):
That was crazy to me.

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
Just long enough to make a big play and scoot
his way 45 yards for the score. So they tell
me also you got some fantasy thoughts. What do you got?
You drafted in a league. You need a sit start.
What do you got?

Speaker 4 (01:06:05):
I have a question for a sit start. I didn't
even think about this until I called and I was
talking to Emmy. I'm like, man, because I was thinking
on my team, right, just for my flex. I have
Luther Burton in the flex right now.

Speaker 6 (01:06:18):
It's a standard lead. And I kind of have this inkling.

Speaker 4 (01:06:21):
Because Trey McBride's my tight end one, but I also
have Isaiah Likely. I had a gut feeling when the
phone was ringing, went from the answer that, should I
start Likely because he's going to be tight end one,
or should I brush Luther Burton against the Panthers who,
for whatever reason, they just make their opponents play weird.

Speaker 6 (01:06:37):
So I'm getting this gut feeling last minute to start Likely.

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
I think that's the right move. You look at the
security blanket that a tight end is for a young
quarterback and the fact that he came over with Harbaugh
from Baltimore. He ain't coming unless he's promised a big role.
So I think that you also have a bunch of
would-be also-ran wide receivers. No disrespect to neighbors if he's

(01:07:02):
clean and ready to go, right? He's a former 100
catch guy. I think we all cheer for the now
blonde again, Odell Beckham Jr., because we all like redemption
and reclamation projects. But beyond that, it's an awful lot
of likely, I think, dump-offs.

Speaker 9 (01:07:16):
I agree.

Speaker 6 (01:07:17):
Just had to get that second thought.

Speaker 9 (01:07:18):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
You got it, buddy. We'll talk to you again soon.
That's Emmitt out in Olympia. It's been a long time
since I talked to Emmitt. All right, let's go to
Bruce in Santa Monica. Let's talk a little bit of
NFL Week 1. What do you got? Welcome in.

Speaker 7 (01:07:30):
Hey, Mike, how you doing? I just want to comment
regarding the NFL is my favorite league. It's an exciting league,
and I've just really enjoyed the first two games. But
I just want to comment on the ridiculousness of the
futile practice of trying to predict the NFL. I know
a lot of people like to do it. Nobody predicted
that Seattle and New England were going to make it
into the NFL. Nobody could be a, you'd be a multimillionaire.

(01:07:52):
If you predicted that last year, nobody predicted that Kansas city,
Baltimore and Cincinnati wouldn't even make the playoffs last year.
And in these two games so far, nobody predicted that
you had two star quarterbacks going at it in the
first game. And yeah, By extension, you would feel if

(01:08:12):
one of the quarterbacks gets knocked out, Sam Darnold, in
the first five plays, the other team would win easily. Obviously,
that didn't happen. The journeyman, mediocre quarterback, Drew Locke, defeated
the star quarterback of New England. And then, of course,
the ultimate one of the two games is... Uh, everybody
predicted that this so-called super team, the LA Rams was

(01:08:33):
going to defeat the San Francisco 49ers fairly easily and
probably go 17 and O or whatever. Uh, but of course, uh,
San Francisco actually shellacked, uh, uh, the Rams. So it
shows you can't, uh, predict anything in, in, in the NFL.
I just enjoy the games. I have my favorite teams
and I just enjoyed that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
Thoroughly enjoyed them here.

Speaker 7 (01:08:50):
Enjoy it all day, uh, today on Sunday. And, uh, uh,
you can't predict it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
Give me the one last, who's your team Bruce?

Speaker 7 (01:08:59):
Well, I'm originally from Chicago, so I guess the bears.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
Well, welcome to the season. I can't wait to talk
to you on the highs and lows of what this
season becomes. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you. That's Bruce in
Santa Monica. Local to us here. I'm sure I'll run
into him at one of the Bears bars. By the way, Mark,
I found a place that I think sets up quite
nicely for a Sunday fair as we get ready for

(01:09:22):
a big week one. But as we're talking, right, predicting. Well,
first off, I took the 49ers to win that game.
I said I don't need them for 17 weeks. I'm
quoting the great Toby Keith. You saw him in your
timelines for a lot of other reasons over the last
couple of days. This was one of my favorites. I
ain't as good as I once was, but I'm as
good once as I ever was. And I don't know

(01:09:44):
how many games I'm going to see that grouping together,
supporting Brock Purdy, including Trent Williams, who I think people
need to talk a little bit more about. of what
that big behemoth was able to do on that defensive line.
Because remember, you got a tackle that can handle a
guy like Myles Garrett, maybe push him, even if he

(01:10:04):
loses him a little bit, it's enough to slow it down. Look,
Myles Garrett had the goose egg. Never. Going back to
his rookie year. That's all you got. No hits. No pressures,
no sacks, no tackles. Nothing. It was like, and we
joked it on air as we were watching, it's like
he did cardio. And then he was trying to catch

(01:10:24):
his breath on what ended up becoming the big game-sealing drive.
So you've got issues you need to work out there. But, yeah,
I know Freezing Cold Takes had a field day with
a lot of the Los Angeles journalists here that had
already scripted the SoFi return for these Rams. Not so

(01:10:44):
easy to go through a long slate. Keep your core healthy.
Have a bit of good fortune. Because remember last year,
this time, we had no idea what Matthew Stafford's back
was going to do. A lot of talk of, did
they address the backup position properly? I don't know. We'll see.
That's why they play the games, and it'll be a
beautiful symphony as we go through. Also, the Patriots were

(01:11:06):
plus three and a half, so I'll take the victory
on the against the spread in that one. But no,
you look at the loss of A.J. Brown. He had
the 34-yard pass interference call that helped set up the Patriots' touchdown.
But when you get to Drake May, the man just
didn't take care of the football, and he was pretty
blunt in his assessment of how he got to that

(01:11:28):
final stat line.

Speaker 3 (01:11:30):
I just stopped being patient. You know, I think that's
a big thing. We were really good up to the
point where I tried to put, you know, fourth one
down the sideline to Romeo where we were patient and,
you know, dumping it off and kind of moved the chains. And,
you know, we avoided a lot of three and outs.
And that was, you know, something we tried to, you know,
just earn more plays and the closest we could come.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
So, you know, just stopped.

Speaker 3 (01:11:47):
Being patient and, you know, made decisions that, you know,
ended up, like.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
I said, that cost us the game. That final throw, right,
as he got out of the pocket and eluded the
defender on the oncoming rush, thought, all right, based on
his body posture, the way he's throwing, it's like he's
just going to flip the ball out of bounds. He'll
kick the field goal. We're going to overtime.

Speaker 8 (01:12:08):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (01:12:08):
Instead, throws it woefully short of his intended target. And
it's picked off. Nice toe tap and grab on the
sideline to seal the win for Seattle. But one thing
to say, Seattle's defense, they were down several guys. You
didn't have him in worry on the field. And you
saw the way they swarmed. Next man up, all of

(01:12:29):
those things in full effect for that Seattle defense. They
were fantastic. We talked with Emmitt and, yeah, Drew Locke. Again,
you're in the league that long, you know something, and
they trust you with the squad, right? It's much different than, hey,
I've got a first- or second-year guy that he's green
and we're just hoping for the best. No, Drew Locke's

(01:12:49):
been around since 2019. If you want to buy some
rookie cards, they're out there. But it's the idea that
you have the opportunity to have a veteran that's been
there a couple years, that's worked with this crew, and
they were able to scheme up the one big play.
You had the completion to Cooper Cup, but then obviously
the touchdown pass to JSN. But for Drake May, the

(01:13:12):
reason we played that clip is that one of the
things in the NFL is we want the home run ball.
We want to be able to make the big play happen.
change the field position, get the defense on their heels,
and then we can open up the playbook and whatever.
But we're always looking for chunk yardage, which you saw
with Drake May in that game, right? The second interception,

(01:13:35):
in particular, receiver falls down, Juan Douglas, but you also,
that was the reaction and the next play after the
huge Romeo Dobbs drop that you've all seen a million times.
scrapes across wide open across the middle turns doesn't look
the ball in starts figuring out where he is and
how he's going to make a move up and then
he drops the ball drake may the next play tries

(01:13:55):
to force it in there's two guys there even if
douglas is standing up can he make a play i
don't know i hope he makes a better effort to
knock it down than romeo dobbs did on the first
interception which was you know the big 50 50 ball
down there so all of that to say For the Patriots,
they had their opportunities, but I agree. That was the

(01:14:17):
assessment we had on air as we watched it. I'm like,
you're moving the ball methodically. You're not getting big rips,
but you're going to be able to build. Now, can
you get the final big punch? I don't know, but
if you've been able to post threes instead of forcing
the ball, that wasn't a game you needed to score
35 points. Your defense was doing its job. especially when

(01:14:40):
Darnold takes the early exit, and it took a while
for Locke and company to feel things out. You didn't
need a massive scoring effort to get over on this one.
All right, we alluded to it a little bit last hour,
but we're going to do it again in full. A
list of quarterbacks. And yes, this goes back to my

(01:15:01):
hometown of Chicago, because Caleb Williams is about to tie
a franchise mark today. Guy's only been playing since 2024.
What the hell am I talking about? Stick around. We'll
tell you next. It's Fox Sports Late Night with me,
Mike Harmon.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):
You play.

Speaker 1 (01:15:16):
Theme song of the night. Welcome back in, Fox Sports
Late Night. Mike Harmon with you at Swallow Dome, where
you find me on Twitter and Instagram. 877-99 on Fox
is where you find us. Via the telephone, we'll take
your calls. If you want to dive in, 877-996-6369. You

(01:15:37):
want to tell me your favorite Toby Keith song. That
would be great, too. We'll talk a little bit pop
culture next hour. I watched some Batman, as I'm wont
to do, because it's almost National Batman Day. I celebrate.
Anybody that wants to run out, you've got that commemorative
60s-era popcorn bucket. That's in the movie theaters now, too.

(01:16:00):
I mean, you can get after it with that. So
you got that. But all of that is part of
the rich tapestry of my pop culture love. And I'm
trying to find the hero in there, trying to make
Caleb Williams a superhero. There's a really cool manga card
that they made for one of the companies where he's
kind of like in a bear outfit, which looked too

(01:16:20):
much like Midsommar. And those of you that have seen
that movie, you know exactly what I'm talking about. We're
hoping that he meets a better fate than the guy
in the bear outfit from Midsommar as we get ready
for this next NFL season that'll kick off here in
a mere nine-plus hours. But Caleb Williams of the Bears

(01:16:42):
and Ben Johnson talking openly about how he wants to
run it up, how he wants to be the most
prolific offense there is. According to NBC Sports Research, Caleb
Williams is one game from tying Sid Luckman for the
franchise record with eight straight games of at least two
touchdown passes. Think about that. The history of the Bears. Now,

(01:17:07):
I know it's a lot of running in a cloud
of dusk. We can go back to Red Grange. We
go through the years with Walter Payton. We just lost
the great Matt Suey, who blocked for him and gave
us great moments in the mid-80s. Great stories of all
of that that went on in those years. Neil Anderson.
Keep on going on down. I can give you the

(01:17:28):
Raymond Harris years. The ultra back. Brad Muster. I mean,
there's a lot. But, I mean, it was the running
game that has been the definition of Bears football. Run,
play defense. Hopefully your kicker's good enough to get you over.
But we're looking at this. including the 2025 postseason. Williams

(01:17:48):
has accomplished that in seven straight games. Now, that's the
fun part, right? You just talk about, all right, the
offense doesn't click. Maybe you settle for field goals. Maybe
you play defense, whatever. Okay, cool. Here's the other part.
Williams last year fell short of the 4,000-yard mark, and
you'll see this graphic a million times. Bears still do

(01:18:09):
not have a 4,000-yard passer. Williams maybe will become that guy.
So he broke Eric Kramer's 30-year-old record with the squad
30 years ago. Guy I worked with over at Fox Sports,
former Lion, former Bear, had a couple of years. There's
nine individuals in... NFL history that have 14 or more

(01:18:34):
3,000-yard seasons. For their history, the Bears have 14 such
seasons of 3,000 yards. Brady, Favre, Breeze, Manning, Rogers, Rivers, Roethlisberger, Ryan.
I mean, you got all these guys that have done
this numerous times. You got me sitting here going, I

(01:18:57):
got one from Caleb, two from Kramer, five from Jay Cutler,
couple from Mitchell Trubisky. You know who else is on
that list? You want to take a guess, Mark? You
want to know a weird name that shows up on
that 3,000-yard list for the Bears? Jim Harbaugh shows up
on that list once upon a time. You also have

(01:19:20):
the great Bill Wade. You have Rex Grossman. Yeah, that's right.
Sexy Rexy. But that's it. That's what you're talking about
for a history, a franchise as old and storied as
the Bears. Very late to the party when it comes
to the downfield pass. Why they used to joke about
the place where wide receivers would go to die. It

(01:19:41):
wasn't just about the soldier field turf. It wasn't just
bad conditions from the park district. So the fact that
they really didn't have a downfield passing game, lo these
many years. So celebrate in cities around where you've been
able to wing the ball around and you have two
or three wide receivers that you celebrate on an annual basis.

(01:20:01):
Perhaps the Bears will find that here in 2026. 877-99
on Fox is the number. Swollen Dome on Twitter. Back
into the NFL as we continue on. Oh, come on
back in. The disco ball still spinning. Marching band appropriately
as we transition out of a college football Sunday into

(01:20:23):
NFL week one. Marching band won't leave the field. We'll
eventually have to shoo them out because we need to
clean up and get ready for whatever monster truck rally
is coming in next. Come on in. I'm Mike Harmon.
We appreciate you being with us here at Fox Sports
Late Night. Wherever you're listening, however you're listening, there's so
many ways to get the program and all of the

(01:20:44):
fine work that's done here at Fox Sports Radio. We
appreciate you trying to entertain, inform, enrage, engage, all of
that fun stuff. As you go through your night and
into the early morning, perhaps you're at a bar or
restaurant preparing for the deluge of people coming in to
get lubricated and watch some Premier League into the National

(01:21:04):
Football League. Perhaps you're closing down a bar somewhere, and
you know what I mean by closing it down. You're
either working there and trying to get out and go
home to your loved ones, or you're getting ready to
leave said bar and you're waiting on an Uber or
you're in said Uber. We appreciate you. Being with us,
the iHeartRadio app will take us all across the globe
and maybe intergalactically. I haven't quite tested that theory yet,

(01:21:28):
but that's what my hope is, that wherever, however people
may want to listen, they can. All those affiliates nationwide,
your local markets, we appreciate you there. And as always,
you can interact with us, 877-99-ON-FOX. That's 877-996-6369. And of course,
find me over on Twitter at Swollen Dome. You got

(01:21:51):
sit start questions for your fantasy league. We can wrap
a few of those in over the course of the
night as well. Or I'll certainly do that ahead of
kickoff after I take a well-timed nap. But all of
that to say we're ready for week one of the
National Football League. We'll do some more college football. We'll
take a twist back in next hour, certainly as we

(01:22:13):
drop the hammer on some of the early season pontification
and hand-wringing that we've seen across our sports media channels.
world we've got the find your wins at the end
of next hour but in between then we'll talk a
lot about the National Football League last hour we talked
some of the first two games that we've been able

(01:22:34):
to experience I'm not a sleep science person I don't
pretend to know I know how my body responds as
soon as the engines are turned on on a plane
I fall asleep it is a Pavlovian response Right. You
ring a bell. You have a squeaker toy. Your dog
goes nuts.

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:22:53):
The doorbell rings. The dog's there at rapt attention. All
of those things. For me, it's very much I get
on a plane. And as long as I don't have
to attend to somebody that isn't me, as in my
kids are now grown, so I don't have to deal
with them. As soon as I'm able to, I am asleep.
And the person sitting next to me has the greatest
four to six whatever hours of their lives, depending on

(01:23:14):
how long that flight is. Because I'm not getting up.
I'm not moving. My elbows aren't flying in their face.
They don't have to watch whatever movie, TV show or
sporting event I've got on. I am out like a light.
And I'm blessed for that. But that doesn't mean that
that's it for everybody. Everybody's got their different way of
approaching a flight. Some are scared, don't do it. Some

(01:23:37):
get in a car and would rather drive it. Or
however you get on the highways and byways. We had
a lot of talk about airline travel. Again, remember, these
guys aren't sitting around in the lounge like you and
I waiting with people that have their... service insert animal here.

(01:23:57):
Maybe a dog, maybe not. I don't know. All sorts
of stuff. The kids aren't running around. You don't have
someone who just starts shouting at one of the airline
attendants at the desk. No, no, no. They're taken right
onto a plane where they, in theory, got to sleep
and had blackout curtains and lights and whatever else they

(01:24:18):
needed to get along the way. And so for the
Rams 49er game, I keep coming back to this. 49ers
may not give you a full season, but when they're healthy...
And when this team can be deployed, and we talked
a little about it hour one, Kalon Black, who's going
to take some of the touches from Christian McCaffrey, some

(01:24:39):
of those snaps to keep him healthy and going. Kyle
Shanahan's got himself a squad if they can stay healthy.
Insert your jokes about the substation. We can talk about age.
We can talk about reps. Look, having a guy like
Mike Evans that can go back through a cornerback to
catch a pass like he did for that touchdown– Yeah,

(01:25:00):
you lost Stribling. That's tough because you were hoping that
he would be a guy to be able to help
take the top off the D. You have already lost Pearsall. So, yeah,
you're thinning out already and hoping that Kittle rounds back
into the guy he is because he's pivotal for two reasons, right?
A lot of people, we get into the box score,
and certainly for fantasy purposes, for betting purposes, we're looking

(01:25:21):
at his touches, we're looking at his targets, we're looking
at his yards and touchdowns. I get that. He's huge
as a blocker. And helping set up that run game
and helping set up things after the screen on the
next level. All of those things, sealing a block to
eat some extra yardage. So, you know, that's as we

(01:25:41):
watch the 49ers in that game, you know, the eyebrow raise.
Seattle won their game and they did it. And Sam
Darnold will be back. They seemingly averted disaster, as you
would call it. Plenty of turnovers last year, but plenty
of big throws as well, and a Super Bowl champion.
We've watched him win games the last couple of years.

(01:26:02):
Drew Locke, curious to see what he looks like when
we get to Week 2. Curious to see what the
offense can open up to be. Eventually you'll get Charbonnet back,
and you'll start rounding into shape. You're still missing a
couple of members of your secondary, but a big win there.
For New England, the curiosity is what's the switch? You

(01:26:23):
brought in the number one guy in A.J. Brown to
help you open up the offense. You paid Romeo Dobbs
a lot of money. And as soon as Brown went down,
things got a little dicey. Still waiting for Travian Henderson
to get right. But as we look at Week 1
as a whole, we've got some massive matchups right off
the jump. Buffalo and Houston, a couple of would-be contenders,

(01:26:47):
and I'll get into contract talk coming up in about
20 minutes because you've got a couple of quarterbacks who
are doing the, all right, fine, I see what the
market's doing. We're betting on us. You didn't give us
an offer commensurate with what we want. We'll talk about
that and how it affects things going forward. But you've
got the Buffalo Bills. Opening a new stadium later on
this month, right? They'll do that on Thursday night in

(01:27:10):
week two, as I believe they welcome the Lions, if
the promo gods did me right, in between all my
college football watching, right? That'll be the Amazon game on
Thursday night on the 17th. So, yeah. So we get
right off the jump. We're going to find out about
this Buffalo Bills squad, because you got Houston this week

(01:27:31):
on the road, and Josh Allen has been terrible. against
D'Amico Ryan's defenses. Talking about a completion percentage just north
of 50. That's right, just north of 50%. These last
four outings, you've got a passer rating at about 66, 67.
And I did not do that. Do not throw things

(01:27:54):
at the radio or curse me out. The whole six,
seven thing. I did not do that intentionally, but I
believe that number was, you know, listen to my guys
on the bet. The board podcast, our guy Todd Furman
that joins Jason Smith and I each week on our show.
You'll hear him later on on Sunday with Arnie and Plank.
But as they were kind of talking about this game,

(01:28:15):
it echoed a lot of my initial findings and what
I've seen, what I've watched with Josh Allen. I'm one
of the original truthers here on Fox Sports Radio going
back to his arrival in 2018 of what could be
with some refinement, some coaching, because you had all the intangibles, right?

(01:28:36):
You've got all the tangibles, the size, the speed, the
big arm, all of that stuff. and now it's just
bit by bit making it better uh and cleaning up
some of the mistakes and they've done that and now
they're one of the huge super bowl favorites well they
don't get any favors early you got this game against
houston home against detroit right cool new new stadium sorry

(01:28:56):
for those folks that'll have a bad vantage point But
then you've got a home date against the Chargers, a
team that many, including what the billboards are telling me
out here, to give you a snapshot of our lives
here in Southern California, and maybe you can chime in
in town, wherever you are, at Swollen Dome in the Twitterverse.

(01:29:16):
I got legal ads, about, I don't know, eight out
of every nine. And then they've actually brought back the
moniker of Super Chargers. on the billboards to get you
to buy some tickets. I'm half debating cutting off some
of my other viewing because you've got the Cardinals in town,

(01:29:37):
big favorites, but a doable ticket price, right? We've got
that across the league. We'll talk a little bit about
that as we go, the different viewing experience. I want
to know, would you rather watch on TV or if
you've got a chance to go see a game live,
do you go? Do you get to the crowds? I
get it. Parking. your time in the travel, your ticket price,

(01:29:57):
all of that, you know, is it still important for
you to be in that mass, right? It's one of
the things, not that you're going to storm the field
like you did at these colleges, but there's something about
that live energy that you can't capture sitting on your couch.
Now you also have a cheaper beer. And you get
to decide how the nachos are made and how fresh

(01:30:19):
they are and, you know, whatever else. I get that.
But you're looking at Houston, Detroit, Chargers, and then we'll
find out week four. By then, maybe we know a
little bit more about what the Patriots are. Because I
remind folks, as we look at some of these matchups,
and we did it with college, you know, talking about
Ohio State and Texas. Tough loss for the Buckeyes. No

(01:30:40):
question about it. but you're also talking about face it
off on the road against another top five team here
in the first weeks of the NFL. We don't get
a lot of reps together, right? We don't get to
see these guys work first team. And I know there's practices.
I know there's joint practices and yes, there's a smattering
of snaps, a couple of sequences and series in the,

(01:31:04):
in the pregame or I should say the preseason games
that we get, but how much real work had the
lines gotten together? I said the Lions. L-I-N-E-S. We'll talk
about the Lions later. But talking about how much cohesion
do you have there? Again, we're talking about free agency
just like in college where we're talking about the transfer
portal and everybody changing up. How many meaningful reps against

(01:31:28):
an opponent do you get before we get into these games?
Bill Belichick used to be derided for some of his Well,
for many things, but certainly for the way he treated
September in a lot of those Patriot run away and
hide eventually in division years. And yes, Breeze and Manning
got to do that in their respective divisions a lot too.

(01:31:49):
Just Brady's easier to pick on because, well, they won.
But the idea being that, I guess, they won the
big one consistently. But the point I'm making with this
is that they would have a feel out in September.
They grind out games. Would they be aesthetically pleasing? No,
but it's playing chess, not checkers. And you're seeing other

(01:32:12):
teams doing this, right? With Sean McVay, he got a
lot of grief years ago when it was, hey, we're
not playing guys in the preseason. A lot of teams followed.
And now we're seeing it go back the other way
a little bit. Not that you're getting full games or
tons of reps necessarily, but you're not doing operation shutdown
in mothballs till week one necessarily. Because you need to

(01:32:35):
get some level of cohesion and do some theory testing.
So we're seeing that now. But the Bills week one,
like that game to me is one of the marquee
games that just stands out. I don't know what I got.
Because for Houston, it's an open audition for the receiver position,
but you've got a defense that can clamp down on anybody.

(01:32:55):
You've got Nico Collins, who's a top-ten receiver nobody talks about.
And then you're looking at C.J. Stroud, where it's like, whoa,
what do we got? What is he? Again, contract talk
coming up in a minute. But for the purposes of
this individual game, there's just a lot of question marks.
You've got Houston is a one-and-a-half point home dog the

(01:33:18):
last i look 44 and a half so you're looking
at an aggressive scheme from jim leonard that maybe opened
some stuff over the top but beyond nico collins trying
to figure out what that pecking order is going to
be you got montgomery and marks in the backfield you
know i'm a david montgomery guy going back to his
days with the bears He's a big fan of the
way he ran the football and certainly what he did

(01:33:41):
in that Detroit backfield, except when he was running against
the Bears. But they got a big test there. You
get Baltimore and Indianapolis. Talk about the Ravens. I made
them the pick. I got them and the Broncos in
my AFC title game. Talk about rosters. Talk about chips
on your shoulder. Talk about new blood, new life. Harbaugh

(01:34:01):
gone to the Giants. So now we've got a new
world order, right? We've got a new way of approaching things.
And that's the number I gave last week. I do
it again.

Speaker 6 (01:34:10):
10-21-14.

Speaker 1 (01:34:11):
Try it on an old lock on a trunk that
you've got. Maybe a padlock in your storage shed, whatever.
But that's what we're talking about. Head coaches, offensive coordinators,
defensive coordinators. Lots of change. So, again, I used it
last hour. I do it again for the new audience
that joins us. The Roy Kent, we just don't know,

(01:34:33):
which makes week one absolutely thrilling. We got those matchups
we joked about to a degree earlier, but, hey, someone's
got to perform, and we can always find fantasy value
on the side of the helmet. We can always find
a betting line. Las Vegas, Miami, Kirk Cousins under center.
So we've got him going up against Malik Willis, who

(01:34:54):
gets his shot with a depleted Miami roster. Again, a
throwback line to when it started to look like this
could be the case, and they paid him and extended him.
Devon Achan, can he approach James Wilder? 492 touches going
back to 1984. We talked about Christian McCaffrey earlier. He

(01:35:14):
was over 400 a year ago. You start being active
in the passing game. You can get there. Talked a
lot about the Bears in Carolina. Well, you got the
Packers in Minnesota. What does Kyler Murray do? Don't know,
but J.J. McCarthy's already in QB3. We've talked about that
a lot here on Fox Sports Radio. Kyler Murray, a

(01:35:35):
guy that played in Arizona. How much was him? How
much was what he was working with all these years?
We'll find out. Because on the surface, you've got a
division that's going to cannibalize itself quite a bit. A
lot of people high on Jordan Love. Retooled receiving core, right?
Romeo Dobbs signed away. He's in New England. Dontavian Wicks

(01:35:57):
is gone. But you paid Christian Watson. How many games
did you get of Christian Watson? Paying out a lot
of big play threat and touchdown potential. Is he right?
Are those guys ready in the backfield when you talk
about Lloyd? taken up as the number one in a
workload split while Josh Jacobs figures out his place, his

(01:36:19):
legal stuff. They got some of that finished, but now
you've got to go back to the league office and
figure out how that gets adjudicated. So you've got that.
So questions in that game. so many others that are
just great, big NFL stories here entering week one. I
did a thing where I started listing two or three

(01:36:39):
stories for every team. That's the beauty of it. It
goes back to the whole idea of a Christmas morning.
It's Rosh Hashanah, right? It's the Jewish New Year. All
of those, when you start talking about gifts, you start
talking about, hey, here's what we're thankful for. We got
a new year, and we have absolutely no idea what
the hell's going to happen tomorrow. or I guess later

(01:36:59):
on today, as I look at the clock, and Mike
and Mark and Emmy behind the desk just started laughing
at me, going, no, no, no, it's Sunday, nitwit. Yeah,
you can do that, too, at Swollen Dome, where you
find me on Twitter. 877-99 on Fox is the number, 996-6369.

(01:37:20):
What game are you looking for? What storyline? What's the
biggest question you've got going into the 2026 season? Well,
I know for two quarterbacks, it's how much are you
going to pay me? We're going to talk about that
as well as it's always been great to have, but
now it's been great to be a tight end. The
hell am I talking about? Well, never skip leg day

(01:37:41):
and more on Fox Sports Late Night with me, Mike Harmon.
We'll do that next. Welcome back in Fox Sports late
night with me, Mike Harmon. Having a blast with.

Speaker 2 (01:37:53):
You.

Speaker 1 (01:37:54):
877-99-FOX is the number at Swollen Dome on Twitter. You
want to chime in, give us a piece of your mind.
You got a big question for the 2026. nfl season
you're reticent uh or nervous about your squad maybe your
new coach your quarterback whatever it is chime in give
us a shout let us know where you are eventually

(01:38:17):
i'll buy a new globe because anytime i go to
one of the thrift stores i can't tell what year
it's from because i think a lot of those countries
have merged or falling off the face of the earth.
But it's one of those where we want to know
where you are, where you're listening, because we know we
have our reach across the country, across the globe, all
the internationals, the expats. We appreciate you giving us a

(01:38:40):
few minutes of your time here on Fox Sports Radio
as we get ready for the NFL later on today.
I've got to keep practicing saying that, knowing that we're
into Sunday morning. Psychologically, starting to do that Dante Culpepper
thing where we got some momentum because we're rolling through it.
The pregame shows are going to start. Going to have
our countdown to kick off here on Fox Sports Radio.

(01:39:04):
Anita Marks and Greg Cosell love working with them. And
Greg giving you all the insights from his years at
NFL Films. Andy Furman, Bucky Brooks coming up after we're
done here this evening. So, you know, keep it locked
in all day long, wherever you're going on the highways
and byways, we'll have you covered right into end zone

(01:39:24):
radio throughout the games, keeping you apprised of all the good,
the bad, the ugly for your teams, your fantasy squads
and everything else. So we appreciate you. And if you
missed any of today's show, check out the podcast, search
Fox Sports Radio, wherever you get your podcast right after
the show, it'll get posted right Follow it, rate it,
give it five stars, provide a review, search Fox Sports Radio,

(01:39:45):
wherever you get your podcasts, you'll find today's full show
posted right after we get off the air. Now, when
we talk about the world of sports, right, we invariably
start talking about the business of sports that's been a
lot of the backdrop to any of the meaningful, substantive things.
Maybe nauseating to you if you just want to get

(01:40:07):
into the X's and O's of football. But the business
comes in of college sports, right? NIL, save college sports.
And who's got money? Who's got power? Where money's flowing?
Because a dollar to him isn't a dollar to him.
All of those kind of things that go through. who's
getting paid, what's the divide going to be, the haves,

(01:40:28):
the have-nots, which have always been there. Now it's just amplified,
and we can see more money that isn't in the shadows.
So let's call it what it is. For the NFL,
it's the same thing. We get into how do you
retain talent, salary cap, restrictions, did we overpay here so
we can't pay him, All of those to go, right?

(01:40:48):
We just watched Baker Mayfield sign a new deal after
he said no to two years and $ 100 million. That
was the report. Well, now he's getting $ 55 million a
year for three. And so the price of poker goes up.
So you have several quarterbacks that are still in the
marketplace thinking about, well, okay, what about me? Now, C.J. Stroud,

(01:41:10):
for those out there among you that aren't convinced he's
your number one guy, remember, we're now at the point
where we've got a dozen quarterbacks or thereabouts making $ 50- plus
million a year. That's what the market will bear. That's
the price of poker here in the year 2026. Now,
you can decide to kick that can down the road,

(01:41:32):
but we all know operating without a quarterback. I just
gave you... I just gave you last hour, we were
talking about Caleb Williams and some of the numbers from
the Chicago Bears that he's trying to best in year three,
that he's trying to tie in year three of his career,
that the bar has been raised that high across the NFL,

(01:41:54):
and it's a new way of doing business. Likewise, we
talk about the cost, right? Do you get ahead of
it and pay the man early, saying, okay, that's our guy?
But if it goes catastrophically wrong, now you beset your
team and set them back. Look at the Miami Dolphins
with Tua Tungabailoa. Got paid money on the hook. They

(01:42:15):
decided to spread it out over multiple years, which I
still think you should have just taken the full hit.
I don't know if they told them they couldn't do that.
There's some bylaw. But otherwise, I'm taking the full hit.
We're going to be terrible this year. And then guess what?
We got draft picks, and we come back at you
next year, and we got a lot of money to

(01:42:36):
get after it with.

Speaker 3 (01:42:37):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:42:37):
So right now, you've got C.J. Stroud and a really
good defense. Got a bunch of guys that are going
to need to get paid on that side of the ball.
But you got a quarterback who's kind of on the
prove it. He's played well in spots. And then there's
certainly points where you can say, OK, they're not able
to make plays downfield. I would also caution you at
some point you need to be able to throw to,

(01:43:00):
you know, the one, two and three guys that you
lined up hoping on your depth chart. Remember those scenes
in all those football shows or movies, Friday Night Lights
or whatever, you got the magnetic tiles with the guy
on the roster? You'd like to actually be able to
put those there and not have to throw them in
the trash immediately because the guy's hurt before he even
takes a snap. And with the Houston Texans coming into

(01:43:22):
this year once again, Tank Dell, I'm glad to see
he's out there running routes. How many snaps? Higgins, already gone,
a guy they were expecting to be their number two.
So trying to go out on the waiver wire, looking
at trade potential partners, all of those things is what
the Houston Texans are going to need to do. That
roster needs to keep turning over. But you've got a

(01:43:43):
guy in C.J. Stroud that eventually you need to decide
whether you're paying him. The other guy, and this is
the bigger one because you've got multiple MVPs behind it,
is they don't have a deal with Lamar Jackson yet
in Baltimore. Now, remember, he doesn't have an agent, right?
It's him, his family, his mom, and they're looking at it.
And it's just been sitting out there for over a year,

(01:44:06):
kicking the can down the road. Now you have a
new coach. You have a new system. Declan Doyle comes
over from Chicago. You've got your wide receivers, right? Zay
Flowers got paid. You got Bateman. You lost, likely, which
is big. You still have Mark Andrews, and you have...
the indestructible world of Derrick Henry rolling up. But for
Lamar Jackson, big expectations, also looking to break the bank.

(01:44:28):
Currently on the board, if you go through the cap
hits for quarterbacks in the 2026 season, you got Patrick
Mahomes sitting out there at $ 64 million. With the resume
that Lamar Jackson has put up, and I know folks
are going to say, what about playoff Lamar? This field goal,
drop pass by Mark Andrews. Lamar Jackson can't levitate and

(01:44:53):
make anything happen on his own. If he does, I
want to see him in lanterns. I want to see
him in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We need to make
that crossover happen. We do it on trading cards. We
haven't quite done it. in real life just yet guys
have not uh revealed themselves on the on the gridiron
to that effect but we got travis here in los

(01:45:14):
angeles he's up with us late night early sunday morning
on fox sports radio talking all things nfl travis welcome
to fox sports late night how are.

Speaker 5 (01:45:23):
You hey can i can i do a non sequitur
for you hit me I was going to propose a
trade for some of your Drew Luck rookie cards, and
I stumbled upon.

Speaker 9 (01:45:36):
So check this out.

Speaker 1 (01:45:37):
How many?

Speaker 5 (01:45:37):
It cracked me up that Jason thought you were going
to know exactly how many you had.

Speaker 1 (01:45:43):
Yeah, well, you know, it's one of those things. You know,
there's piles of stuff, and I'll tell you, Travis, you know,
and I need to be better at my inventory management
because I really wonder if I'd come back with a
specific number. And for those that missed this, we're referring
to earlier in the week, Jason Smith and I, 7
to 11 here Pacific time each night on Fox Sports Radio.

(01:46:06):
The running gag is because of my love of trading
cards since I was a kid, if a guy has
a big day, We'll go through the stats particulars, the good,
the bad, the ugly expectations. And then I'll say, hey,
you want to buy a rookie card? And he'll laugh.
And in this case, he goes, well, how many do
you have? And I'm like, I really don't know. But
we've now established that this is a good proposal that

(01:46:29):
you may be interested in a Drew Locke rookie card.

Speaker 5 (01:46:34):
And so the trivia question for you, I was trying
to think what I'm going to offer you for it.
How many EPs have the Afghan Whigs released in their career?

Speaker 1 (01:46:45):
How many EPs? Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:46:50):
More than I thought.

Speaker 1 (01:46:52):
That's a fine question.

Speaker 5 (01:46:54):
Do you want me to give you the answer?

Speaker 1 (01:46:55):
Yeah, just go.

Speaker 7 (01:46:57):
There's six.

Speaker 1 (01:46:58):
There's six. Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:46:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:47:00):
And on the honky.

Speaker 5 (01:47:01):
Ladder EP, they actually cover a song from the wizard
of Oz. If I only had a heart.

Speaker 1 (01:47:06):
Oh, that's a good one. That's a good, that's a
good cover.

Speaker 2 (01:47:08):
Have a great night, Mike. Bye.

Speaker 1 (01:47:09):
There you go. Thanks, Travis. See, there you go. See, that's,
that's what you call a friend of the show. We
got an Afghan wigs reference. You got six. Now I
got to go through the discography. This is it. As
I get older, they don't rattle off the same way.
That and let's face it, like all of you out there,
I'm lazy because I have the Google machine to back
me up on these premises. Right. You got some and

(01:47:32):
and you'll hear Steve Hartman on later on here on
Fox Sports Radio Photographic Memory. And I told him, you
know what? You were obsolete as soon as the computer
came on. And he gets really mad at me. Says,
what do you mean? And starts telling me about the
Heisman finishers from 1969. And that's good. But I can cheat,
which means and I also had two kids and I

(01:47:52):
lost a lot of sleep. and that meant brain cells,
a lot of coffee, a lot of late nights, early mornings,
which means I'll cheat to the computer. So I'll take
his word at six on the EPs, and I hope
to have an answer on the Drew Locke rookie cards.
So yeah, that's the running joke. I have a mountain
of cards sitting around, sports, non-sports. I bought a cool

(01:48:15):
Bane card earlier today at my local shop, so that
was cool. I should have brought it. in to show
the guys show and tell uh but yeah there's a
lot of content at swollen dome on that kind of
stuff findyourwins.com we're rebuilding that that's more of these my
daily good bad ugly of what's going on in the
world because we're always trying to find some positivity we'll
do that segment uh and a bit and a nod

(01:48:39):
and it's a college football based one for this one
because it's all about you know every once in a
while someone lets you play out your dream for a
minute so we'll do that just kind of like i
get to do here on fox sports radio so thanks
to travis thanks to emmett thanks to all our guys
that had called in hopefully holler and james find some
peace there with whatever he had going on but uh
mark and emmy and i uh having a blast here

(01:49:00):
early morning sunday with you here on Fox Sports Radio.
So back to the task at hand, talking about these contracts,
talking about Lamar Jackson in particular. That's the one that
stands out to me. You pushed it down the road,
and you've seen the heights. Everybody went after Jerry Jones
when he did that with Dak Prescott. That was his guy.

(01:49:20):
Eventually he was going to get it done, and we
watched him do that with multiple stars through the years.
Kick it down the road, and eventually you pay a
higher price. If you're not 100% sure, why spend the money?
Because if it goes poorly, we see it now, right?
I mentioned the Tua Tunga-Vailoa. Miami has a situation. Yes,

(01:49:42):
they brought in Malik Willis. Maybe he's that guy for
the long term. maybe you're still drafting at the top
of the heap. And these guys pan out. Cause I
remind folks, as we get this college football season underway,
remember last year, this time, how many quarterbacks were we
talking about his first rounders? They gotta be first rounders.
And then they're undrafted fifth, six round guys trying to

(01:50:04):
fight for a roster spot. How many first rounders may
not be their team's guy from the last couple of years?

Speaker 2 (01:50:11):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:50:11):
We already mentioned JJ McCarthy ones. Michael Penix Jr. I
put on our little sheet. We do this every year.
We got our Super Bowl predictions, the MVP, and then
there's the out on a limb. I got Jack Strand
starting eight or more games for the Falcons. Cooper Rush
is going to go today. He was the number three.
He moved up to the top spot because Penix isn't

(01:50:33):
ready and Tua is out. The point spread moved a point.
You went from your number one to your number three quarterback,
and the point spread moved a point? What are we doing?
So yeah, getting it right, kind of a big deal.
So if you're reticent to, and I don't know why
Baltimore would be at this juncture, except for the pennies

(01:50:59):
moving about to make sure you can keep your roster intact,
but even then... It's the old rounders line. Pay that
man his money. Now, I also teased really quickly, let's
do this, the tight end position. You always talk about, well,
you've got to stick in the gym, make sure you
get your extra treadmill work in, never skip leg day

(01:51:20):
so the glutes are in full effect, the hammies are
good and all that. But you also need to have
a good tight end on your roster. Michael Mayer, who
was the afterthought to Brock Bowers, who suddenly had to
have surgery, So he's out a couple of weeks. Mayer
gets a big extension from the Raiders that was announced
earlier today. Three-year, $ 45 million contract extension. So he's getting paid.

(01:51:46):
You also had the other note that came down when
it comes down to your 12 and 13 personnel, right?
Tucker Kraft gets paid. He's coming off a big injury
for the Packers. But 12 and 13 personnel, you'll hear
that a bunch from Greg Cosell as we talk about
lining up under center and what quarterbacks are working with

(01:52:07):
this year to where you've got more and more deployed.
right the rams at any given time had three or
four guys uh at the tight end position on the
field last year but you got blockers you got receivers
you got that hybrid you got a lot of need
and certainly for young quarterbacks it's the go-to right we
talked about a little bit earlier with the fantasy question

(01:52:27):
when it comes to isaiah likely so when you look
at tucker craft he's their wr1 in my opinion if
he's a hundred percent healthy that's jordan love's guy And
we talk about Mayer and what he's been able to
do in a limited pass-catching form, but also instrumental in
what they're going to try to do with Ashton Gentry

(01:52:48):
and Mike Williams Jr., a name you'll hear a lot
over the course of the year as well. They paid
him his three for 45, so the tight end position.
Once upon a time in fantasy, you had two guys.
You either got Gates or Gonzalez, and then you waited
until the final rounds with the kickers and the defenses.
We're not in Kansas anymore. Different deployment, different usage, team

(01:53:09):
to team. We're here on Fox Sports Late Night, 877-99-ON-FOX.
If you've got a thought, you just want to chat
and hang out, thanks to everybody that's called in tonight
or chimed in at Swollen Dome in the Twitterverse. if
you have any of the fantasy angles you want to run.
But speaking of running, beer run. That's what we're going

(01:53:30):
to call the next story. We like spy movies. We
like heist movies. We particularly like heist movies here at
Fox Sports Radio. Well, we've got a couple of stories
that continue to fester. We've got big rewards, and we've
got an international flair to it as well. We'll talk
about that as we continue. I'm Mike Harmon, and this

(01:53:50):
is Fox Sports Late Night. a b double e double
r u n famous country song also something going on
here in the criminal world welcome back in fox sports
late night mike arman with you tangentially related to sports

(01:54:11):
because maybe it'll up the cost of your latest favorite
beverage as you go out to uh consume mass quantities
like the conehead said all those years ago on saturday
night live We've got an international one because this is Liverpool.
Normally we'd be talking about the Beatles and bringing up
tales of going to see Ringo Starr and his all-star

(01:54:33):
band and whatever else. No, no, no. You had two
trailer truckloads of the famously creamy dark beer. That's how
the article reads from the Associated Press in London. Valued
at about $ 155, 000 stolen from a depot near Liverpool in
northwest England. Quote, it's famously said that Guinness is good

(01:54:54):
for you. This is great. This is where you get
the sergeant in. It's good for you. But it's only
the case when it's been bought and paid for. We
will settle for nothing less than the full recovery of
all the items stolen. And so you also have the
trailers that are gone. So those are valued at another
$ 67, 000 a piece. So you have that. But you also have.

(01:55:19):
Pabst Blue Ribbon, the case has not yet been solved. Which, again,
leads us to some questions. Something Jason Smith and I
brought up on our show as this started making the rounds.
Where some 34,000 cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Mmm, beer. Yeah,

(01:55:41):
to the thief, we don't fault you for wanting to
brag to your friends how much PBR you have. We
just wish you had obtained it the honorable way. P.S.
This is real and we're deadly serious. They offered a
$ 20, 000 reward for information leading to the recovery, as the
article says, quote, of the stolen suds. Come on. How

(01:56:02):
many times you hear the term suds TV and movie, right?
You take down to the roof with Shawshank Redemption and
maybe some other places. But I mean, this is absolutely
amazing to me. We talk about bank heists. The old
Rob the Train trope that we have. And so many others, right?

(01:56:24):
Go to the museum and have a fake. Now I'm
thinking about Ocean's 8. All of these things. What did
you say, Mark? I'm sorry. Smokey and the Bandit in beer.
There you go. We're going full back. What, 1977? Little
Burt Reynolds. Yeah, I like that. Smokey and the Bandit.
We're going full beer heist. And we've done it twice.

Speaker 3 (01:56:46):
Twice.

Speaker 1 (01:56:48):
Across two continents. We'll see if this becomes an epidemic.
Are they just, you know, is it a team working
across borders? But it's just funny to me that you
can have a truck full of beer just go disappearing.
You don't have air tags or tracking or like all
of those. I mean, they've got all of those things
on board to where, and if you're a trucker out

(01:57:11):
there and you're hearing this, please correct me. Please give
us the 411 on what you're doing. See what I
did there? I dialed information like I'm 105 years old.
The hell? But the point that you're like, you've got
all of this advanced equipment, right? So you can only
drive for so many hours because legally it's, Once you're

(01:57:33):
on the road, it's like a pilot can't fly and
the flight attendants can't be in motion and in on
service more than a certain number of hours for safety purposes.
Same thing with being a truck driver.

Speaker 2 (01:57:47):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:57:47):
That's all regulated and regimented by your individual carriers and
and states. All the way through. So like, how does
this go missing into thin air? So either we're entering
a George Norrie situation where we need to talk to
him about wormholes. See, we were talking about cinematic universes
and holes opening where I could go and discover. So

(01:58:10):
maybe on a different Earth, they're enjoying a nice cold Pabst.
or a nice pint of Guinness. Again, we're just a
couple hours from kickoff of some of these NFL matchups,
but certainly from the English Premier League weekend action coming up,
I think, in about three hours from now. We'll be
on the pitch getting after that. So all of that,

(01:58:31):
for me, it's the curious time. Look, I'm a son
of a Chicago police officer. OK, I heard tales of
some random stories, you know, from years of thefts and worse.
But certainly the thefts were always interesting of motivation and
what you thought you could get away with. Thinking that

(01:58:51):
you were going to pull a full on good fellas. Hey,
someone stole my truck, you know, as you drove away
with whatever it was. It's just amazing to me in
twenty twenty six. Right. That you'd be like, hey, you know,
I don't know what happened. That thousands of pounds of
merch as well as the trucks. So I think Pabst

(01:59:14):
would like the beer back. But certainly for logistics situations,
they like to figure out how you did it. But
also they'd like to return to those nice refrigerated cars.
No question about it. 877-99 on Fox. That's where you
find the number. So as you get ready to enjoy
your favorite, there's people that have gone without because of

(01:59:34):
these heists. Think of them as you down your fourth.
at Swollen Dome, where you find me in the Twitterverse.
Coming up next, we're going to lay the hammer down
on one of the big stories, pervasive in our sporting universe.
Last week, we talked about the villain that you needed.
This week, we talk about the games. We talk about

(01:59:55):
the pageantry and the pomp and circumstance of one of
our favorites. That's next on Fox. All right, let's get
those fours up. Final hour of the program here on
a beautiful Sunday morning. Thanks for hanging out with us here.
Fox Sports, late night Fox Sports Radio, coming to you
live from the Fox Sports Radio studios on the iHeartRadio app.

(02:00:15):
Take us wherever you're out and about. Maybe getting an
early morning walk with the dog. Maybe walking, running, jogging,
getting out to the pickleball. I don't know what you're doing.
I appreciate you being up and hanging out. Maybe you're
sound asleep, but you've got the radio on. Thank you.
Thank you for showing us some love here at Fox
Sports Radio and getting into your NFL Week 1 Sunday,

(02:00:40):
two games in the books. But in this final hour,
we've got some more NFL to chat as we go.
We've got a little bit of the watch party.

Speaker 2 (02:00:49):
Right?

Speaker 1 (02:00:50):
Look, part of this is getting to know you. Getting
to know all about you. And I can quote it
like all those movies and TV shows where they make
fun of it. I think that's 21 Jump Street, right?
We do a little of that. It's just the idea
that we... We need to know each other, so I
give you more of myself. And that's my viewing habits.

(02:01:12):
So we'll get into some TV and movies and chaos
in addition to all the sporting universe. We've got some
big matchups to break down in the NFL. But first,
we've got to lay down the hammer on a couple
of topics here. He's judge, jury, and executioner. How's it
feel to be on the other side?

Speaker 6 (02:01:28):
Point taken.

Speaker 1 (02:01:29):
How's he the guy deciding that? In other words, the
Harmon Hammered. Let's lay it down. There it is. Got
walk-up music. Got a guy with a stand-up bass. The
whole nine yards. Talking about this college football world, right?
We got all these stories swirling. The Dabo Sweeney. Oh,

(02:01:50):
he doesn't want to get into the new world order.
You got Lane Kiffin. Everybody wants to be mad at
him because he said, well, what are the rules? Let's
challenge the rules. Let's fight the rules. It is better
for us, for our university to win. That wasn't good enough,
and everybody stood united against him. Last week's villain you
needed moment here on Fox Sports Late Night. But this week,

(02:02:12):
we get the next iteration of the, hey, it's eventually
going to be 24 playoff teams. And once again, the
sanctity of this season is thrown asunder. Oh, my goodness.
How could we do this? Well, you're cheapening it. No, no, no.
Let's call it what it is. This is all one
massive entertainment experience and TV show. Much like me shouting

(02:02:33):
into your eardrums right now. Yes, dominating the ear holes
of America on a Sunday morning. That's what we're doing.
Is the idea that the more of these games we get,
you also win.

Speaker 8 (02:02:45):
Right?

Speaker 1 (02:02:45):
Playoff games, one and done. Succeed and proceed. And yes,
are you going to get some four-loss teams in there? Sure.
depending on which of the conferences they're in. Maybe it's
still a great team. Maybe they lost one, took one
on the chin early. And that's what gets me to
where we bridge it to what we saw today. Because

(02:03:08):
anybody that watched these games, and I get it, those
that lost are still smarting. You Ohio State Buckeyes fans,
you Oklahoma Sooners fans, and, well, certainly the Oregon Duck fans.
But you get my point, is that you get these matchups,
and I look specifically to Texas and Ohio State for
this one, let's just call it what it is, and

(02:03:29):
the Michigan-Oklahoma, is that you can take this loss and
in a 24-team playoff, maybe 16, whatever, if we have
to have that bridge and keep kind of inching our
way to that way, we get these games. We're going
to get these powerhouses. And some are saying, well, we
don't love preseason rankings. We're going to do it anyway.

(02:03:51):
If there isn't a body, the AP or Sagarin, I'd
bring him up because he had Western Michigan counting with
the wind from last week. But all of that to say,
if they don't do it, guess what? We would. What
we do here on sports radio as a whole, right?
Our Mount Rushmores, our top fives, our top tens. I

(02:04:13):
do it for our fantasy podcast, the I Watch Your Flex,
every week. Here's the top five. Maybe it expands to
the top 10 if I'm feeling a little plucky. And
then we start ranking other things. Who's best, worst, whatever.

Speaker 2 (02:04:26):
Right?

Speaker 1 (02:04:26):
Who's got the best matchup? Who's got the worst matchup?
Who's your favorite quarterback right now? All of that. We're
doing it. Now we just describe more numbers to it. Well,
we do it anyway. And we try to do our
best to assess it. And I've heard the arguments. Well,
we don't know in this day with all the transfers
and coaching changes. Well, then what the hell are we doing?

(02:04:47):
We've never known.

Speaker 9 (02:04:49):
Right?

Speaker 1 (02:04:50):
Otherwise, you go to the Ric Flair to be the man,
you got to beat the man, and then you just
rank them how they finished last year.

Speaker 5 (02:04:56):
All right?

Speaker 1 (02:04:57):
Indiana's first till they lose. And Signetti would be mad
at you. He goes, well, what do we got to achieve?
We're already there. Now we're the Arnold Schwarzenegger from Pumping Iron.
You know, when the wolf's on the top of the mountain,
food's already there. He gets lazy.

Speaker 3 (02:05:14):
Right?

Speaker 1 (02:05:14):
It's one of those things. And so when we get
these hand-wringing over, oh, it's going to water down this
or that, no, it doesn't. It just gives us more
must-see TV later on because you'll still watch. And if
you turn off after the first quarter, that's fine. But
the advertisement's going to be sold. it's great to all

(02:05:37):
of these different networks that want to vie for these games,
which means more money's funneling back in theory into the system.
And that's part of the saved college sports bit. I
think as, as best I read it is some of
it is the institutions need more money. Well, how do
you get more money? Have more big television games, have
more of these marquee matchups, keep those alive. Cause if

(02:06:00):
you keep it smallish, And look, 12 teams, nice solid block, right?
But there's going to be a team or two or five,
depending on the year, that's going to get, quote-unquote, left out.
And that's what we're talking about here is, okay, in
a 24-team playoff, you're not penalized. for losing a game

(02:06:27):
of this ilk this early in a season. And generally,
if you don't stumble and you're as good as your
preseason rankings were anyway, this might be the only hiccup
you have. And if you have a second, you're probably
still going to withstand it in the 12 team, let
alone a 24. So you're still going to get your

(02:06:47):
best teams to participate, which I think is usually the
goal of all of this, right? Because we're talking about
a shorter sample size, add a couple of preseason, then
you get into your conference, and even then, you're not
guaranteed to play every team, and you're certainly not guaranteed
to play all of the other top contenders. I don't

(02:07:08):
have the grid in front of me of expected, but
it's usually done of the, hey, how many top 25
teams does this team play over the season versus their
second team in the conference? You get my point. If
we didn't have the preseason rankings, you're not getting that
same buildup. It's like, all right, two good, highly heralded

(02:07:31):
trophy programs and historic programs. That's all fine and good.

Speaker 6 (02:07:34):
No, no, no.

Speaker 1 (02:07:34):
You need numbers. You need to have the ranking system
because then we argue about it, right? Who's your favorite
band of all time? Are you a Beatles or a
Stones person? Or Afghan Weeks? But all of those things
to say, that's what we do instinctively. We're always ranking stuff.
On your to-do list that you're writing out every week, right? Alright,

(02:07:57):
starting week of the 14th. What do I gotta get
done this week? And you'll start putting all of that
stuff down, and then what do you do? You prioritize it. Okay,
maybe you don't enumerate it, But in your head, it's like, well,
that's more important than that. Maybe you write it down
in the order that it comes to you and then reconfigure.

(02:08:18):
Or maybe it's just top of mind. But either way,
the point is we do it in every aspect of
our existence. So to suddenly think that we're going to
change all of this and you don't have to like it.
It's like a lot of things in your life. You
don't have to like it. You have to do it.
And this is another one of those, the rankings and preseason.

(02:08:39):
That's how we get the buildup. That's how they sell
these packages to present these games to you. How the
different networks go and prioritize and bid on these big
events and packages. Same thing. And if you have more
inventory of playoff teams, well, that means we all win.

(02:09:01):
They get the television made for event that they want.
We get games that have great consequence. And maybe if
you're a fringe team, I don't know, I'm a Northwestern guy.
I would like to think that there's that outside chance
that we get to dance once in a while based
on a larger system that becomes inclusive. And no, I'm

(02:09:22):
not just talking about the fact that we've only been
to the NCAA tournament a couple times, but talking about
from a collegiate football standpoint in playing in the Big Ten,
that maybe things break right, you get the right schedule,
and look, again, that's never going to be even and
uniform across college football. But the opportunity does knock every

(02:09:44):
once in a while where things coalesce, you pull off
the one or two big upsets, and suddenly you have
the opportunity to dance. Larger pool, larger opportunity. It's like
I talked about with the fuzzy math last week on
some of the stuff we were talking about with the
Pro Football Hall of Fame. More voters, more people you

(02:10:04):
have to sway. More people you've got to convince to say, hey, no,
not that guy. Not that woman. So the other college
thing I wanted to hammer down on here is the
amount of people that are going after Sarkeesian for the.
In-game and post-game interactions. And look, at halftime, they had

(02:10:29):
some technical difficulties. They had the opportunity to interview him.
At that point, he's getting his ass kicked. So he
went back into the locker room and they showed him
running up the stairs. Not his fault. Can't wait there forever.
You got a running clock before you got to be
back out on the sideline. So he left. And guess what?

(02:10:49):
He's probably still a little salty about it. Some rumors
of he was salty about some of the coverage leading
up into this game. Maybe, maybe not. But in the postgame,
you can see Holly Rowe gets mad. It's not about her, right?
It's like she's entitled to get mad. He's probably still
miffed over what happened at halftime. Because he was more
than willing to stand there and, yes, tell you how

(02:11:12):
terrible his team would be, and hopefully they'll figure it out,
and all the cliches that a coach is supposed to do.
He waited. They didn't get to him in time. He
went back into the locker room. So after the game,
he shouted, whatever, hook them in, and, you know, go Longhorns,
and ran off. And, yes, Holly Roe was mad. She

(02:11:33):
was expecting an interview. It's not his fault. He's not
forced to stand there. And I get it. People say, well,
he's paid a lot of money. They're paid a lot
of money to do those things. You'll get them in post.
The on the field is great. Again, what's he going
to say? Yeah, we really hung with it. And we
came together in the fourth quarter and did a good job. Okay, there,

(02:11:55):
I did Sark's interview for you. That's it. Really proud
of Arch. He stuck with it. And we were able
to get some drives and get some big stops. Anybody?
Are we getting anything else out of the interview? No
disrespect to Holly Roe, sideline reporters, or whatever else. I
just did it for you. And yes, there would have
been more emotion behind Sark's voice, most likely. But either way,

(02:12:18):
he went back in the locker room, and again, people
are mad that he didn't do that post. How many
times have I read just the opposite of, like, why
do we do this? Why do we have to have
these in-game interviews, etc.? Well... like him or hate him,
they're there to stay. In this case, Sark decided he
wasn't going to pull a Saban, he wasn't going to

(02:12:39):
pull a Popovich, or a Bill Belichick. He just shouted
one thing and ran off to celebrate with his team.
And I can't fault him for it. So, hopefully, the
next technical side, the coach, see, because if he didn't win,
you wouldn't have been worried about getting him, would you,
in the postgame? Ah, let's see what he says at

(02:13:00):
the press conference. But he had the big dramatic comeback. So, yeah,
we got to get that post. Well, he might have
still felt kind of mad that you took a couple
of minutes of his time and he stood there on
ice at halftime when he really needed to figure out
what the hell to say to a team that had
played some really poor football. I don't know. Tale of
two games earlier tonight. So there you go. We've laid

(02:13:23):
the hammer down. Judge, jury, executioner. We'll do this again
next week. We'll see what really grinds my gears to
steal from my guy, Peter Griffin, and family guy, part
of the Fox family. I'm Mike Harmon. This is Fox
Sports Late Night as we roll through. We're at hour four.

(02:13:46):
We laid the hammer down. Coming up next, we're going
to have a little bit of a watch party because
I know Emmy's interested. I got to watch Nightfall. I
rented it. I had to because, you know what, I
celebrate all things Batman. Just a guy with a lot
of money, right? And then we've got some matchups of
the day as we get ready for week one. Yes,
seven hours, 45 minutes later on this beautiful Sunday, September 13th.

(02:14:11):
Stay with us. We're really just getting warmed up on
what is a preview of the day to come here
on Fox Sports Radio. Welcome back in, Fox Sports Radio.
Fox Sports late night. Mike Harmon with you. Coming up
in about 20 minutes from now, we return. The fun
and excitement that is called Find Your Wins. It's a

(02:14:33):
cool college story. Probably you've heard it once or twice
over the course of the last few weeks. We certainly
did a bit on it, Jason Smith and I, as
it became a thing. Well, this weekend it actually got
to come to fruition. What is it? We'll tell you
all about it coming up in about 20 minutes. Because
it's all about, hey, find the dream. Even if you
have to pay an exorbitant price for it, sometimes it's

(02:14:53):
worth it to satisfy that moment. But we... We pause
for a second, right, because, again, we're in the initial
throes of the getting to know you. You hear me
with Jason Smith, and there's a lot of pop culture
that goes back, back and forth. We've got a deep
reservoir and love of movies and TV and general chaos

(02:15:16):
in addition to our love of sport. And it's where
we meet and, you know, you can run some lines.
And if you're with us, cool. It works on multiple levels.
It either furthers the bit if you know the movie
or TV we're referencing. So, like, you get in on that. Otherwise,
it's just a funny one-liner that adds flavor to whatever
story we're doing. So, I thought it would be fun

(02:15:38):
to take a minute as, you know, we're deep into
the overnight or early morning if you're out there on
the East Coast, right? Coming up on 530. That means that,
you know, your coffee places are starting to open up.
Your donut places and bagel places, maybe you're standing in
line for a nice bagel sandwich and a cup of coffee.

(02:16:00):
I might be doing that soon enough. But either way,
the point being that we've got the tapestry of how
the mind works and what our interests are. We know,
and it's very well established, my love of the trading
card world. be it sports, be it the non-sports. And,
you know, there's a Disney set I've been chasing for
a while. And if you know anything about cards, you

(02:16:21):
know what that's done. So I'm trying to dent my
wallet for sure. But also, you know, one thing growing
up since we had cards, one, we were in Chicago.
So you'd think, hey, you guys had a lot of
basketball cards, Jordan, whatever.

Speaker 5 (02:16:33):
No, no, no.

Speaker 1 (02:16:34):
Mom had this thing where it was like, no, no,
you got enough baseball cards. You're not doing that. So alas,
until we were a little bit older, we didn't get
to quite traverse into those worlds. But we also didn't
have comic books like buckets around. Like occasionally you'd buy
a couple of issues here and there. But what we
loved were all of the superhero TV shows and movies

(02:16:56):
as they came out, right? The number of times that
I've seen the original Superman, the number of times that
I watched sequentially and in pieces, the different Batman cereal, um,
cereals that came out, right? Here's this, uh, the Bozo
show would have a Batman, uh, segment. Yeah, that's right.

(02:17:17):
Bozo just celebrated 65th anniversary back in Chicago on, uh,
WGN Chicago's very own David Arquette now owns the, uh, the, yes,
that David Arquette owns the rights to it, but Bozo,
Wizzo cookie, all that stuff. But what they did was
they had that rotation of, of their, uh, In the
7 o'clock hour locally, while we're getting ready for school,
eating our cereal and hanging out, they'd play a segment, right?

(02:17:41):
So you'd have the cartoon, which would be the 23
running minutes, right, plus commercials, but they'd play a third
of it. And they'd sequence it out. to where it's like,
all right, here's Monday. It would be say, here's Transformers.

Speaker 3 (02:17:54):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:17:54):
So you got 10 minutes. Well, until next Monday, you're
not seeing what happens to Optimus Prime. You don't know.
Tuesday is Batman. Oh no, he's tied up. What's going
to happen? Well, I'll see you next week. It's like
you were watching the 1966 classic Adam West show of
all those years ago. But the point being that anytime
there's a new Batman project, I'm in.

Speaker 6 (02:18:16):
Right?

Speaker 1 (02:18:17):
We talked about it a little bit last week. I
just rewatched the animated series. Well, this week, Amazon Prime,
I was able to rent Nightfall. Now, the style of animation,
different look, right? Whenever you start changing up the look
of the classic villains or all the surrounding areas of Gotham,
I know it gets people all kind of in a

(02:18:38):
lot of ways kind of creeped out. And they did
Bane to where he took your action figure and said, well,
let's double that, maybe quadruple that. And Venom became a
much bigger deal. But it sets up and it's based
on the classic, you know, graphic novels and comic book series.
So I watched I know, Emmy, you're you're deep into

(02:19:00):
this world and wanting to. So I don't know that
my rental is still good for you, buddy. It's all good.
I'm going to watch it eventually.

Speaker 11 (02:19:07):
But I did catch like the first five, 10 minutes
of a preview that they put out.

Speaker 1 (02:19:11):
I think it's like the first five, 10 minutes of
the movie. Where, like, Azrael's, like, really kicking butt.

Speaker 2 (02:19:16):
Yeah!

Speaker 11 (02:19:17):
Like, down at the docks. So it looks like they
gave him... They did justice with Azrael, finally. A character
that we've all been waiting for.

Speaker 1 (02:19:25):
But that's one of those things, right? It's like, you
remember how big the Rogues Gallery really gets?

Speaker 8 (02:19:31):
Right?

Speaker 1 (02:19:31):
We had the classic... Five, six villains that have found
their way into most of the movies and TV. But
occasionally it's like, oh, and Azrael being one of those characters.

Speaker 9 (02:19:42):
All right.

Speaker 1 (02:19:42):
I know they did it in Gotham. The Fox TV show,
which I thought was pretty good. Donald Logue, one of
the detectives. See, that's the Afghan Whigs, Six Degrees of
Separation kind of thing. See what I did there? It's
my world and you're just living in it. But it's
the idea that we've got that. Obviously, I'm watching Ted

(02:20:07):
Lasso and enjoying what they did. They brought back Jamie Tartt,
spoiler alert. And if you haven't gotten it thrown to
you as a gift for a meme, then you really
aren't a fan. And the algorithm hasn't caught up to
you in your socials. And if that's the case, good
on you. Because I mentioned something and I get an
ad for it 18 seconds later. Remember, the walls have ears. Um,

(02:20:30):
and what else did I do? Uh, and I just
finished furious. The Emmy Rossum, uh, Emily, Emmy, Emmy Rossum, uh,
the new show she's got going, uh, about serial killers
and some chaos. It's, uh, very well done. Very well done. Uh,
I own and subscribe to way too many streaming services

(02:20:52):
so I can jump around. Yeah, no, I mean, daughters
with very eclectic and differing tastes in TV shows, uh,
sporting events and things that they follow as well as
my own i need everything so i can watch and
and get ready for our world of sports so that's
where we have it but yes nightfall very much worth

(02:21:12):
a watch worth the rental it was 5.99 so get
on board that and while you're at it buy a
snack and if you're lucky maybe you're in a delivery
area that'll show up by time you're halfway through the
movie There you go. I added value and probably to
their bottom line. But but that that's a little bit
of my world. Look, let's get back into the world

(02:21:33):
of the NFL. Eight seven seven ninety nine at Fox
is the number. That's what you got. Movie or TV recommendations.
I will take them from you as well, because I'm
always looking to expand the playground because, well, that's what
we do. Right. You get extra hours and you're hanging
out and it is Emmy. Not to be confused with
Emily Rossum, just for my own edification, so I don't

(02:21:55):
feel bad about a highly decorated actress being smeared here
on the early morning hours of Fox Sports Radio. Great
going back to Shameless, because we celebrate everything William H.
Macy does, of course. As we look at the NFL slate,
we've covered a bunch of the games earlier, and you'll
get the podcast when we're finished and off air. But

(02:22:16):
I haven't really talked a ton about the Denver and
Kansas City game. It's really one of the more fascinating
week one matchups. Look, I'm long on record of, look,
we're so thirsty. You don't have to give us great matchups.
And maybe some would say, well, that's why you're getting
Miami and Las Vegas. That's why you're getting the Jets

(02:22:36):
and the Titans. No, those have great meaning. Because in
those fan bases, someone's going to be 1-0. There are
going to be two teams walking away, in theory, unless
we get ties. And if we get ties in both
those games, I will be cackling like Max Cady in
Cape Fear in that movie theater. smoke billowing and cackling

(02:22:59):
like a madman. That's exactly what's going to happen if
we get ties out of those. But you get my point.
Those are intriguing because someone's coming away with a victory.
They're the presumptive four worst teams clamoring towards a number
one pick. And maybe Arch Manning decided he was stepping
forward with that second half performance. We'll talk about that

(02:23:20):
as the weeks go on, certainly. But for Denver and
Kansas City, right, Bo Nix coming off the injury, Jared
Stidham had to quarterback when last we saw them. That
did not end, what's that word, well for them. And
so when we look at the roster construction, you've got
a relentless pass rush, great defense offensively. multiple running backs.

(02:23:43):
We talked a little bit about it with Brandon Deutsch
in the first hour that you've got Jonah Coleman, you've
got RJ Harvey, and you've got Dobbins as your lead man, right?
You've got three guys that can play, and you're going
to deploy them all. And for fantasy owners, it's going
to be a maddening situation, just like it was with

(02:24:04):
Mike Shanahan when he was coaching there in Denver all
those years ago. But the intriguing part is really on
the other side of the ball. How do you manage
that Denver defense when you're looking at a Kansas City
Chiefs squad? Okay, Rasheed Rice is there. Travis Kelsey, back
and ready to go, quietly, or maybe not so quietly,

(02:24:26):
because the drops were certainly well-pronounced and well-covered last year,
the struggles. Oh, is it the Taylor Swift effect? He's
going to get married, and look it, he can't catch
a football. He still had one of the highest reception
totals for tight ends last year. He'll still remain a
pivotal cog when he's healthy and on the field this year.

(02:24:48):
The big question you have here is, okay, you got Mahomes,
you got Kelsey, you got Rice. Hang a star on him,
health and otherwise. And you've got Kenneth Walker III that
you brought over from Seattle who has had some injury histories.
also your Super Bowl heroics, and a guy that when
things are right and breaking right, massive. Oh wait, your

(02:25:11):
starting left tackle is out, so now we're going to
the undrafted rookie. And in camp, he's played a little
bit on both sides, and you find some sense of
clarity there. You got Bien-Ami back as your O.C., And
you've got Andy Reid still at the controls. So there's

(02:25:31):
some vote of confidence to that. But Mahomes is coming
off a massive injury. Very accelerated. These are always where
I get really excited. Because eventually my body's going to
break down worse than it is. And I'm going to
find that doctor. And I'm going to say, fix me.
Build me back bigger, faster, stronger. Will I be the
$ 6 million man? No. I don't have $ 6 million. I

(02:25:55):
might be able to get my hands on, well, no,
I mean, that lends us back into the beer heist
and other sordid tales from the overnight. But you get
my point, is that we're seeing the medical marvels. I
can't wait to see him move laterally, right? One of
the most magnificent things we ever saw never showed in
a stat sheet because it didn't count. When Patrick Mahomes

(02:26:17):
ran nearly 500 yards, sideline to sideline, as they chased him. Yes,
the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. You remember that Super Bowl, the
beleaguered offensive line, and they just chased him back and
forth and back. He didn't get a yard beyond the
line of scrimmage, so it doesn't count as rushing yards.
It doesn't count as rushing attempts. He's just scrambling for

(02:26:38):
his life. How much will we see of that, and
what can he do? How quick does the ball have
to come out? You know, what's the 1-1000, 2-1000? And
it's got to be gone because that pass rush is
going to be on them. So curious to see what
they're able to scheme up to push back. Big home date,

(02:26:58):
that's Monday night. We'll have plenty of that. Jason Smith
and I will be on air to break that all down.
So that's one of the games to watch. The other,
and Jason and I talked about it a little bit
on our show Friday night. I resurrected here because, again,
it's a game of great curiosity when we're talking about
the Philadelphia Eagles winning and the Washington Commanders. Commanders retooled

(02:27:19):
their receiving core. Jaden Daniels, a couple years removed from
one of the greatest rookie seasons we've seen. Okay, what
do you got for me? Year three. We talked about
contracts a little bit earlier, right? C.J. Stroud, Lamar Jackson,
people are already wondering. Bryce Young there in Carolina, and
certainly for jade daniels what do you got here you

(02:27:40):
got a coaching staff that's probably feeling maybe the wall
right behind their backs at this point in philadelphia nobody's
ever happy at least on the sports side of things
i i'm not trying to disparage you good people in
philadelphia my few visits there have always always been wonderful
But there's also a level of angst that comes through

(02:28:01):
with the expectation of winning. Now you've got LeBron James
and everything, so you're getting ready for a whole other
world here in the fall. And don't worry, we'll have
you covered on that coming up, what, six weeks from
now or so? Yeah, the NBA comes back quite that fast, right?
But the point being, you've got Devontae Smith, you're trying
to figure out your number two, you've got Wicks, and

(02:28:23):
you've got... our man from USC, and whether he's going
to be ready to roll, right? So when we get
down to it, you know, Mr. Lemon, he's been hurt
all of this preseason. So what do you got? Is

(02:28:44):
he going to be able to go and give you
full tilt? Mekhi Lemon, Elijah Moore is there, Hollywood Brown.
We've seen Hollywood Brown. We've seen fits and starts from
him from years of waiting for that consistency. But in Philadelphia,
if it doesn't break right. Now, I'm optimistic for the fact,
even though you got another new OC and folks with
Nick Sirianni, one of those things is how quickly you

(02:29:07):
forget the levels of success. And for Jalen Hurts, I
don't know what he has to do to truly win
people over. Overall, is it always going to be pretty?
Is everything textbook?

Speaker 9 (02:29:19):
No.

Speaker 1 (02:29:20):
But they win a lot of games. They've won a
lot of games with him as the signal caller. The
offensive and defensive lines, always among the best in the
National Football League. So they're set up for another big year.
But right off the jump, we get a divisional battle
that are going to set a lot of narratives in
motion here coming out of week one. We talk about

(02:29:41):
overreaction Monday. Well, get ready for it coming out of
that matchup. No question about it. That's one of the
big ones on the slate. A lot of other highly
anticipated battles. The other matchup in the NFC East. We
also get that on Sunday Night Football. I alluded to
it earlier. Malik Nabors still waiting on word whether he's

(02:30:04):
going to give it a go. He's now said he, quote,
leaves it in God's hands. Okay. Earlier in the week,
it was the team was allowing him, because of the
nature of the injury, to make up and decide whether
it was his. He was ready to go. Well, he's
a big component of what they want to do, right?

(02:30:26):
Former 100-catch guy in what was a down offense. You're
looking for another stable, secure wideout when you're talking about
Jackson Dart. And now you're looking at a receiving core
that's not very deep. They just cut Darius Slayton talking
about past performance, our old back of the football card

(02:30:48):
kind of mantra. But you're hoping for the resurrection of
Odell Beckham Jr. Just because he paints his hair blonde
again doesn't mean suddenly we're turning back the clock a decade.
Now I'm hoping for him.

Speaker 3 (02:30:59):
I am.

Speaker 1 (02:31:00):
I thought he was entertaining as hell. He vexed Jason
Smith routinely here on Fox Sports Radio, and I had
the front row seats. It was fun. turning different shades
of red, watching whatever was next. And I hope we
get to see some of that again. I also hope
to see Cam Scadamu. I don't necessarily love the fact
that he's mocking the meathead persona in commercials, hanging out

(02:31:23):
with the dude from the insurance thing, you know, headbutting
a car into a parking spot. I mean, cash the checks,
but I mean, you know, one of the things people
are wondering after the backflip and all those other things, like,
can you contain yourself? How short is that fuse? Right again,
owing to Batman or a couple weeks ago I went

(02:31:44):
and saw Acme versus Coyote. I mean, how long is
that fuse before suddenly you're in harm's way and putting
yourself in harm's way? That's what we ask about this
Giants team. You can like John Harbaugh. You can like
what he built. He brought Isaiah Likely with him from Baltimore.
You got a really good defensive front. They could be
really interesting. But I hate to do it, but it's

(02:32:06):
the old, if they can stay healthy. And if we're
going to talk about the 49ers in that vein, again,
substation plot for future science fiction. But legitimately, we knew
this with Harbaugh in Baltimore. We knew that with his brother,
with the Chargers and every place he's been before that.
There's a handful of teams where it's like, all right,

(02:32:27):
you're more physical now. But can that get you guys
through a season? And we're going to have that tested
early and often with the Giants, right? Jackson Dart already
wondering if he's the victim of, hey, since I've been
in the blue tent, they send me back there sooner. Well, yeah,
the concussive. effects become magnified. So they're going to protect you,

(02:32:51):
perhaps a bit more than they would someone else. So, yeah,
you add Malachi Fields to Darnell Mooney, Odell Beckham Jr.,
Braxton Berrios, Malik Neighbors. That's your wide receiver core, along
with Likely. So you've got some talent, and Scadamu, Tyrone Tracy,
Devin Singletary, you've got some depth, but it's all going

(02:33:13):
to be dependent on can you keep the injury bug away,
and can John Harbaugh bring his style, the culture, and
some of the wins from Baltimore and their earlier successes
to bear there in what should be a pretty good
and cannibalistic division. All of that and more coming up
later on today. Week one, National Football League here. Fox

(02:33:36):
Sports Radio will have you covered from pillar to post.
Coming up in 20 minutes, you got Andy Furman and
Bucky Brooks. But coming up next here, as we close
things out on Fox Sports Late Night, we're going to
find some wins. We've done that all show long. We're
going to find one more, and it's college football specific.
Hang with us.

Speaker 2 (02:33:54):
You're listening to Fox Sports Radio. Fox Sports Radio is
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Just go to YouTube and search Fox Sports Radio. Hit
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Speaker 1 (02:34:12):
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Speaker 1 (02:34:13):
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Speaker 2 (02:34:15):
Live. Covino and Rich. The Odd Couple with Rob Parker
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And the Ben Maller Show. Fox Sports Radio.

Speaker 1 (02:34:24):
On YouTube. Subscribe. Hit that thumbs up icon. And comment away.
welcome back in fox sports radio fox sports late night
hi i'm mike carmen thanks for hanging out with us
truly appreciate being here with you more than you'll ever
know at swollen dome where you find me on twitter

(02:34:44):
on instagram uh all the other particulars for the random
ramblings that i have over the course of a week's
time uh a day in the life as it were
The I Watch Reflex podcast is up. You hear me weeknights,
Monday through Friday, 7 to 11 Pacific, alongside Jason Smith.
We have a blast each and every night going through

(02:35:06):
the sporting world, and certainly Monday and Thursdays, Fridays, the
alternate Wednesday, whenever there's live sporting events breaking down. We
don't kick them to the curb and wait to see
which way the wind blows. No, we dive on that
and really start to– Sometimes shout ourselves into a frenzy immediately.
Like we did Thursday. Right? Everybody was mad about travel.

(02:35:29):
I got mad at Sean McVay. Said you had a
lot of extra time in those meeting rooms. You weren't
over there glad-handed. Good. You didn't do it. Great. But
what did you do with all that extra time? It
didn't matter. You went out and got worked. So don't
tell me that you're tired. Move on. All right. Now,
let's finish by going 1-0 overall for our four hours.

(02:35:50):
Something we like to call Find Your Wins.

Speaker 2 (02:35:53):
Locker room squabbles. Struggling teams. Cheaters and no-account owners. There's
so much negativity in sports that it can ruin your day.
But not Mike Harmon. He's here to shine a light
on the good in sports with a simple mantra. Find
your wins.

Speaker 1 (02:36:09):
Find your wins. So there it is. The theme song
from Bobby Roode, now part of Talent Development WWE. That
was his entry music, and it would swell. That's what

(02:36:31):
I do when I walk down the hallway to the
studio here. I'm either belting out a Freddie Mercury song,
or I've kind of got this playing in my head like,
you know, you've been waiting behind the curtain for your
big moment. Well, another person that had their big moment today,
Marty Wims. Who's Marty Wims, you ask? He's an Akron
Zips fan. Season ticket holder. And they did a promotional.

(02:36:53):
We talked about this a little, Jason and I, weeks
ago when it was first announced. This is your winner.
They awarded a season ticket holder a chance to call
the first offensive drive of the Akron Zips' new season.
Huddled with Joe Moorhead on Friday night, the head coach,
and he followed a script with precision. They picked up

(02:37:14):
a first down. Looked like they were going to have
a second deep into Robert Morris' territory. Final score was 45-10.
But the drive ended in a fumble. But wins who
was a long time season ticket holder alum all of
that it was the akron's offensive coordinator for a day
contest that went up on social media, and they had

(02:37:36):
over a billion impressions. That's right, a lot of folks
trying to figure out, what the hell? What are we doing?
So this is according to Matt Podorf, their deputy athletics director,
said they sold more than half its season tickets, total
season tickets, in two weeks following the announcement, and they
got Arby's to sponsor it. We got the meats!

Speaker 9 (02:37:58):
Yeah!

Speaker 1 (02:37:59):
Marty Wims got to call some plays, but people in Akron,
They got deals on meat. And if you've been to
the grocery store, you've been to a fast, casual, fast food, whatever,
you know the price of meat is through the roof.
So they added some value there. But on this guy's
46th birthday, he gets the call from the athletic director

(02:38:21):
to say, hey, you've been selected among 10 finalists. A
week later, he got the call saying he was going
to get a chance. And so he did interviews and
had a load of attention locally, certainly. And they were
averaging about 6,000 fans per game. But he said this
was like as big as it gets. So he got
to do a little bit on game day. He did
a bunch of other interviews. So got an opportunity to

(02:38:47):
go out there. Quote, those guys were a lot faster
than me. They won the coin toss, deferred possession in
the second half, so he goes, I got to extend
my 15 minutes of fame a little bit longer as
he got to hang out waiting to make that call.
Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Again, they win the game 45-10.

(02:39:07):
But it's just that idea of every once in a
while there's that opportunity. And in this case, you're already
a season ticket holder. You say, hey, I want in.
And you got to live out a dream. So hopefully
all you out there, as I get off my little
soapbox for tonight here on the Fox Sports late night program,
that you try to reach a little bit. You know,

(02:39:30):
that's what I get to do here when we're talking football,
talking sports with you, a little bit of slice of life.
But for Marty Wins, he found his wins in a
big way on this one. And hopefully your favorite collegiate
team did as well. I know some are still smarting. Remember,
it's a long season. We're only in week two. All right,

(02:39:50):
week three, I don't know what you do once you
start counting past week zero, week one, week two. I mean,
for many of you, just your second game of the season,
your team still have time to figure it out. Doesn't
mean there aren't concerns for both Oklahoma and Michigan, same
with your offenses. But time will tell. Full slate of
NFL later on today. That's right. Just seven short hours here.

(02:40:14):
Fox Sports Radio. Thanks for hanging out. We went 1-0 today.
Follow me over at Swollen Dome. Coming up next, we
got Andy Furman, Bucky Brooks. Thanks to Mark. Thanks to Emmy.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Mike Harmon talks College Football Upsets, NFL Week 1, the Bears and the Beer Heists