Best of The Ben Maller Show

Big Ben talks about the Detroit Pistons getting blown out at home in Game 7 against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Steelers finally coming to terms with Aaron Rodgers for one more season, Maller to the Third Degree, Insta-Advice Line, and more!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for listening to the best of the Ben Maler
Show podcast. Be sure to catch us live every weeknight
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Speaker 2 (00:24):
This is the best of the Ben Maler Show on
Fox Sports Radio.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
So our lead this hours we begin the new week.
Welcome in here, and we start out in Motown. It
was an island game, the only game going. It had
the entire sporting world watching. In theory, of course, it
was on Amazon Prime, so I don't know how many
people are watching. People clicking drounded by some toothpaste. Hey,

(00:53):
what's that? Oh it's a basketball game. Okay, I'll watch
a second of it. And that's that. But Game seven
in the East, the final spot in the Final four
of the NBA on the line. Here. I don't know
if you watched this or not, perhaps you missed it,
but it was Spider Man, well not really Spider Mitchell.

(01:14):
Donovan Mitchell with twenty six points and it was really
more Jared Allen and Sam Merrill, who they each had
twenty three, and the Cavaliers stomped out the once proud
Pistons a one, twenty five to ninety four. Holy Joe Dumars, Batman.

(01:36):
What happened? As the team from Ohio has advanced to
the final four of the conference finals. There the four
seeded Calves often referred to as there by their nickname
the Cadavers. They have the house to the top seed.
Detroit was the number one seed in the Eastern Conference

(01:58):
and they are out. And so the third seeded Knicks
will have home court advantage at the Mecca for Game
one of that series tips off in Midtown Manhattan, just
adjacent there above Penn Station, and that'll be coming up
on Tuesday. That is a good jumping off point. Let
us discuss the question, all right, what is the word?

(02:22):
What is the word for caid cutting Hams Pistons losing
an elimination game by thirty one points? Thirty one point
loss at home. So I've got SpaceX, GPS and rotary
phones and we will combine all of these things together

(02:44):
and we are going to hit a walk off home run,
is what we're going to do. So a my word again,
we're playing a word game. What is the word for
Caid cutting Ham's Pistons losing an elimination game by thirty
one points? So my word is the G word gutless?
That was gutless by the Detroit basketball team. My god,

(03:08):
was that bad. You don't lose by thirty one points
if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, if
you're fighting and scratching and clawing that team. Quit. There
are a bunch of quitters, the Detroit Pistons in a
game seven. Quit. Tell me I'm wrong, Tell me I'm wrong.
Tell me that the Cavs are thirty one points better
on the road than Detroit. If Detroit's trying, come on,

(03:31):
it's pathetic, right favor They were favored by four points
the Pistons at home, season on the line, and that
was the effort. That's all you got. Like, what are
we doing here? Seriously? Now? Home cooking? You might want
to you might want to call the ambulance in advance,
if that's how you're cooking your meals at home. The

(03:53):
Pistons burned the kitchen down. Okay, think of it like
one of those SpaceX Atlites disintegrating as they re enter
the atmosphere that was the Detroit Pistons here spraying aluminum
oxide into the ozone. And the crowd watched and they wah,

(04:14):
my god, what is that? Burn, baby burn, that's your
twenty twenty six Detroit Pistons right there. This was not
a situation where they were overwhelmed by the moment. They
were steamrolled by the moment here. My goodness, gutlass uh
does not even cover it. Really, I use the word gutless,
but yeah, you gotta go deeper than that. This was

(04:36):
like Oregon donor level soft is what this was. I mean, Detroit.
They didn't just lose, you know what they did. They
did a base jump without a parachute is what they did.
That doesn't go so well as we saw in this
particular game. Kate Cuttingham, the former number one overall pick
face of the franchise, Kate Cuttingham here, and he did

(04:58):
not rise to the moment. Oh yeah, being mean, mallor
why are you being mean? I'm just telling you what
I watched. He tripped over the moment Kate cutting him,
and then commandeered the vomit commet. In fact, he loved
the vomit commet so much he sold tickets. Come on down,
you're on the vomit comet. Why not? Why not? My goodness,

(05:24):
it was so bad the team playing didn't just divert
to Panic City. They upgraded the entire team got first
class tickets to Panic City. There and they signed the least.
My god, and he said, well, it was a magic run, wonderful,
great to all that magic carper ride top seeds during
the regular season. Well, the clock definitely did tick tick

(05:46):
tick tick tick towards midnight. And how about Tobias Harris,
who had played way above his skill set for most
of this playoff run for the Pistons, And he turned
back into a YMCA stretched four at the worst possible time.
He turned back into the guy everyone said, why did
he get all that money? Why did Tobias Harris get

(06:09):
paid all the money? He turned into that guy? Yeah. So,
and Cinderella did not just lose the shoe, No, no, no, no.
Detroit crushed Detroit themselves crushed. It wasn't Cleveland crushing a
Detroit crushed it all right. Now, staying with the Pistons,
here says we get some outrageous commentary, and we got
some from JB. Bickerstaff. You might not know who that is,

(06:33):
because why would you know the coach of the Pistons.
I mean, come on, please, anyway, So JB. Bickerstaff is
the head coach. I remember his dad, Bernie, Bernie Bickerstaff.
I believe he's passed away, but Bernie was coaching in
the NBA for a million years, coach the Sonics and
a bunch of other teams. Anyway, the kid, JB. Bickerstaff,
the NEPO baby, the NEPO coach. He was asked about

(06:55):
whether or not this is a disappointment and losing by
thirty plus points at home, hello in a game seven?
Kind of an obvious no brainer answer, low hanging fruit. Well,
it turns out Jay JB. Bickerstaff didn't take the bait.
Take a liss How big of a disappointment.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
It's not a disappointment at all. I'm not ever will
I be disappointed. These guys every single day give us
what they got, you know, So it is not a disappointment.
It's a loss, and it's a tough loss. But you
know that adjective will never be used as this.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
Group, all right. He wanted to say anything other than positivity,
is unacceptable. That was the rest of it. So the
question coach JB. Bickerstaff, moments after the Piston has lost
Game seven by thirty plus points, said it is not
a disappointment, and he said that they will only accept positivity.

(07:56):
What say you, all right? So I said, capital M
malarkey is what I say. Okay, Detroit, they didn't choke,
as we've laid out here. They never showed up. They
never showed up. They pitdled down their legs in a
game that was plausibly on national TVO, that was on Amazon.

(08:17):
They trailed for ninety nine point nine percent of the game.
They briefly had a three to two lead at the
eleven minute mark of the first quarter of Game seven.
That is not a stat that is a diagnosis. For
those of you a little slow in the back of
the room. This is a civic embarrassment. Listen, I'm not
from Michigan, I'm not from Detroit. I got no skin
in the game. I'm just outside telling you what I see.

(08:39):
And this is pathetic. All right. If you check the GPS,
you know a lot of teams say who's house? You know,
with theme, home court, home field division, Who's house? And
in Detroit. They can yell crap house. Who's house, crap house,
that's the Pistons. And they even supplied the plumbing which
was all backed up with feces in the air everywhere.

(09:03):
There wasn't basketball per se. It was not basketball. It
was public defecation. And they had around twenty thousand witnesses
in downtown detroitworked out, hustled, outplayed, and apparently not disappointed.
That's your Detroit Pistons in a nutshell right there. That's it. JB.

(09:24):
Bickerstaff saying no disappointment is the most disappointing thing of all.
It's like, come on, do you think the fans are morons?
Maybe they are idiots? Are you Piston fans? Your coach
thinks you're morons? Is he right? Is JB. Bickerstaff right?
My god? You know what. Hearing that and listening to

(09:48):
some of the other comments from the Detroit locker room,
this is what scared franchises do, right, They talk about
positivity while they're drowning in po They talk about positivity
and all that stuff. And Bickerstaff sounded scared. That sounded
to me like a man that was scared. He's afraid

(10:11):
to criticize his players. Are the Detroit Pistons that soft
that if the coach just comes out and says, hey,
we sucked at a time we cannot suck, which is
what everyone knows that he's gonna lose the locker room
or they that delicate of the delicate little flowers there,
Kate Cuttingham and the Pistons, they can't be criticized. Come on,

(10:31):
you refuse to publicly acknowledge the snuffleufigus in the room, okay,
and the player gonna normalize as oh I were, nothing's disappointing.
What are you talking about? If I own the team
and my coach after a thirty five point game seven
loss humiliation, came out and said what JB. Bickerstaff said,

(10:52):
he would be fired before the news conference ended. That's it.
I'd goung him off the stage, get out out of
here now. The Pistons have already, from what I understand,
given Bickerstaff an extension, because that's what bad teams do.
They just why not? That's this didn't work, So let's
bring back the guy that's like, no, listen, I understand
coaches in the NBA and do very little. Yet you

(11:15):
got to give me more than that. You got to
give me more than that. And if that does not
qualify for the Pistons as disappointment, I would hate to
see what does qualify as disappointment. You were non competitive,
you gave up, you were down by as many as
thirty five points, a loss by thirty one a home
You showed no fight, no gut, no backbone. That's the Pistons,

(11:39):
That's how they played. I'm just telling you what I
saw and and that's it, and that there's a team
that needs a Joel So when I had a top
seed in the East and all that stuff, keep an
eye out that John Morant chatter. You know, not that
I think John Morant's God's gift to basketball. I did
at one point. But there's a team, shake it up,

(12:00):
make a move, Try to get John Moran somebody like that.
To change the temperature in the room, you gotta change
the temperature in the room. Meanwhile, the last word, we
now go to the coveted big picture, because I know
that you've been dying to know. My take from a
wide angle ends. The NBA's final four is sick. The
last four who will be cutting down the nets after

(12:22):
the NBA Finals. Oh, they don't do that. Okay, fine,
But anyway, you have New York versus Cleveland on the
eastern part of the bracket, and oh Oklahoma, Oh Oklahoma
and San Antonio in the west. One of those teams
will stand alone the pro bouncy ball mountaintop as the

(12:43):
champion of pro basketball. So the question what story lines?
What storylines stand out about the twenty twenty six NBA
Conference Finals. So the conference finals are a buffet of
you got some inspiration off to the right, over here,
the little desperation. You've got delusion, that's all over here.

(13:06):
There's in the middle, there's delusion. And then you've got
over here on the left hand side, you've got television
executives who are clutching stress balls right now. They're holding
the balls, the stress balls. What they're doing here. The
Knickerbockers have not won a title since nineteen seventy three. Okay,
that is not a drought. That is, to use a

(13:28):
term familiar with Oklahoma. That is a dust ball is
what that is. Fifty three years without winning in the
top market supposedly in terms of population in the country.
The Knicks have not won since the era of rotary phones.
What is a rotary phone? And the price of gas

(13:52):
when the Knickerbockers won the championship was thirty nine cents
a gallon. I just filled up here in LA the
other day. It was like five eighty something a gallon.
Thirty nine cents. Of course that's most of that's the
People's Republic of California tax. But thirty nine cents a
gallon for gas. When the Knicks won the championship the

(14:12):
last time, and there were there was no internet, and
there were three channels on television, that's it. That's all.
You got the ABC, CBS, NBC and now I guess PBS.
So nobody watched that, like nobody watches it these days.
So that's where we are. That's where we are. And
what else though? But wait, there's more. Well, you've got

(14:33):
at this point that the Knicks are like a social experiment,
and you'll see how how low can you go, right,
how much hope can one fan base endure before spontaneous
combustion leads in. They're gonna think about the Nicks every year, like, oh,
this our year, we're gonna be good. Oh the next
you're gonna get this year. Anyway, here's the reality the

(14:55):
Knicks are in this scenario, the final four teams of
the avay. The Knicks are a life. On the other side,
you've got the Enigma Bowl. Okay, you've got Carl Anthony
Towns versus James Harden. Carl Anthony Towns versus James Harden,
and Kat still carries that even though he's payed well
in the playoffs, he carries that Marshmallow vibe with him.

(15:18):
You've got that. And then you've got James Harden, who
one of those guys gonna make the finals. If James
Harden makes the finals, that effectively breaks the social media
world and I think basketball Twitter will have to just die.
That'll be it. And either way, though, someone is going
to get the redemption arc that we do not want.

(15:39):
It is going to happen. Then you got Spider Mitchell,
Donovan Mitchell, who grew up in the shadow of Madison
Square Garden in the New York area there and now
he can evict the Knicks from championship dreams and all that,
and then that, and so he's the hometown kid who's
playing the role of the neighbor burglar. You've got out West,

(16:02):
you got Wemby versus SGA, that's the match up there,
and the Parisian prodigy versus what the what they call
me the Maple Mamba. I don't know it seems gonna be,
but you know, a former Clipper, of course. And then
you got Wemby, who's out there looking like he's built
in a lab somewhere, some kind of weird basketball lab

(16:23):
in France with French philosophers, or possibly just a draft
that learned to dribble by studying jazz. It's also possible
he still looks like a draft. Meanwhile, you got the
the SGA clipper, former clipper there, the debonair superstar who
just won another MVP award, reigning champion, trying to add

(16:43):
to his jewelry collection and all that stuff. And if
you look though at the tail of the tape, it's
very important to tail of tape here, and you look around.
A finals without the Knicks. If Cleveland ends up winning
a finals without the Knicks is a eatings apocalypse. Now,
I don't work in television, I don't work for the NBA.
It's not my problem. And I will talk about the finals.

(17:06):
I don't care who's in it, and it's part of
the job, however, doesn't mean I'm gonna be all gung
ho and this is looking really dangerous. If the Knicks
aret in, you're gonna have either Cleveland versus San Antonio. Gain.
That's not a finals, that's a rerun from twenty seven
that nobody asked for. So you got that. Cleveland is

(17:27):
the seventeenth largest market media market in the country and
although without Lebron, it feels like they're one hundred and
seventeenth in terms of impact. And it's weird watching the
cast because they had a good team this year. It's
just those uniforms. It should have gone back to the
old school uniform Those are like the Lebron uniforms, like
you're waiting for Lebron to run out. He even run out.

(17:49):
San Antonio is the thirty seventh biggest media market in
terms of Marcus size. But first and please please don't
make the finals energy, So you got that, and then okay,
see the reigning champions there market number forty five, which
in terms of television is like having a TV station
in a ghost town in terms of national appeal, so

(18:11):
that's what you got. The Knicks are the only thing,
the only thing keeping the NBA Finals from becoming a
regional broadcast and yikes, yikes, yikes, hikes ya and Mike Brown.
I mean, I none even thinks of Mike Brown's that
good a coach. But here we are. The league spent
several decades, several decades building global ambassadors to the sport,

(18:37):
and they very well could end up here with the
finals watched exclusively in airport bars, which shows you how
little impact SGA and Wemby have made in terms of
being must see TV. They're just not not that despite
the success on the court.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maler
Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific on
Fox Sports Radio and the Iheart's Radio.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Aip Hey, it's Ben, host of The Fifth Hour with
Ben Maller. Would mean a lot to have you join
us on our weekly auditory journey. You're asking, what in
God's name is the Fifth Hour? I'll tell you it's
a spin off of The Ben Maler Show, a cult
hit overnights on FSR. Why should you listen? Picture if
you will? A world will We chat with captains of
industry in media, sports and more every week. Explore some

(19:22):
amazing facts about human nature and more. Listen to the
fifth Hour with Ben Maller or the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Well, we're back
at it. The NBA down to the final four. Perfect
time for us to talk about something out of Pittsburg, PA.
That is where our lead is the confluence where they
give birth to the Ohio River. Right there, the Alleghany

(19:44):
and the Mahangahila have a baby and they spit out
the Ohio River. And we had a breakthrough. The long
standoff ended over the weekend. Did you see this at all?
We're paying attention. Were you watching the golf and the
other stuff that was going on, you weren't paying attention.
A bad job by you. Came to a rather quiet end,
not a lot of fanfare, not in any bells and whistles,

(20:07):
and nobody was playing the tuba aeron. Rogers has decided
to play football. Oh, I can't believe it. Rogers agreed
to a one year deal with Petsberg Steelers worth up
to that's weasel terminology, up to twenty five million. Over

(20:31):
the weekend. Wow, helllllujah, helllllujah. So Rogers signs our long
national nightmare has come to an end for another year,
and the tabernacle of Rogers Aaron Rodgers continues. Here we
are told the deal is expected to include a base salary.
I love this between twenty two and twenty three million,

(20:54):
and a couple of million tossed on top to suiteten
the deal in the form of incentives. Well that's pretty good.
Minimum wage twenty two to twenty three million. Dallas Rodgers
is reunited, and it feels so good with the rotun
Mike McCarthy. They were together for thirteen years, most agree,
chronically underachieving, with the green Bay Packers only winning one

(21:17):
championship despite having teams that when you're the top of
the NFC pretty much every year Rogers played in green Bay,
but only one breakthrough season. So that is a good
jumping off point. Let us discuss the question what is
the word? I love words, So what is the word
for the Steelers? Finally coming to terms with Aaron Rodgers

(21:37):
over the weekend, the Saturday News dumps. So I've got
my observations. I got Thermostat artistry and Thousand Island dressing,
and we will combine all of these things together and
as our friend Andrea in Berkeley likes to say, we
will thank our lucky stars, is what we're going to do.
So number one, one, one one, all right, they got

(22:03):
the deal. Sure, the deal is dunskies. However, my word
is bitter sweet. That is my word. My word is
bitter sweet. And here's why it's bittersweet. Because Aaron Rodgers
has the Steelers by the balls. He does, He controls
the thermostat the playlist, the entire mojo of the franchise.

(22:28):
Rogers is in control. This is the NFL's version of
getting back together with your ex because the rent is
due and you don't have enough money to pay the
rent yourself, So let's get back together. Why not? What
do you say? That's where we are. The Steelers had
no other options. They purposely went down the store. Now,
my theory all along was that Rogers just didn't want

(22:49):
to be hassled to have to attend team functions and
things like that, so he just sat around. The season
ended in January for the Steelers, and he sat around
in February, March, April. Now here we are in mid May,
and Rogers has apparently agreed to sign the contract. Neither
side really had any options, any real options.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
This was it.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
So Rogers held the franchise hostage with what a shrug,
A shoulder shrug from Aaron Rodgers pretty much. So it
wasn't so much a negotiation. I think that's the right
word for this negotiation. I think that's it. This was
the Steelers sitting in the lobby waiting for Aaron Rodgers
to finish as ayahuasca infused vision quest and he just

(23:36):
sat there. They had some of that lemon water, a
little strawberry water, and they sat in the lobby and
they were just sipping their water waiting for Rogers to
get done. And that's it. And now Rodgers has done
so here we are. They also inherit the drama they continue,
which is fine for me. Now I don't work for
the Steelers. It's good as a talk show host, it's good.

(23:58):
So you get all that. You get the darkness retreats,
you get the podcast appearances with the Joe Rogan, all
that stuff. Rogers, now he negotiated this contract. If you
want to call a negotiation, like a man who enjoys
watching the other side sweat a little bit, just make
him sweat a little bit, just a little bit. That's it,
and the Steelers picking up again into the the Aaron

(24:21):
Rodgers timeline. They get his mood swings and his moon cycles.
And I'm sure Andrea will pop up here at some
point this hour and give us what moon cycle Aaron
Rodgers is on. And it's all in the stars. It's
some kind of cosmic event as to why he chose

(24:42):
to sign with the Steelers over the weekend. Now, keeping
the hour of Rogers going, it's the Mister Rogers neighborhood Hour,
at least here at the start. So the other question
I had is how much does Aaron Rodgers have left
in the tank for the Steelers? Waited a round for
this guy. Didn't pursue the video gamer Kyler Murray who

(25:05):
took his joystick to Minnesota. He didn't try to get him.
He didn't attempt to trade in the draft to acquire
a quarterback. And there were other questionable quarterbacks that change
teams and you didn't have any interest in them. You
had tunnel vision, tunnel vision in Pittsburgh for Aaron Rodgers.
So how much does Rogers have left? So we turned

(25:27):
to Bennie's big board. Not a list for Terry and
England Bennie's Big Board of NFL Quarterbacks and the soundtrack
for Aaron Rodgers. The soundtrack for Aaron Rodgers here is
a Begi's classic Man in the Middle, because if you
look at Bennie's Big Board, Rogers is right in the middle.
He's stuck between washed and worshiped, with a heavy lean

(25:50):
towards washed. At this particular point, somewhere between the Hall
of Fame myth and he is going to the Hall
of Fame. But the mythology of that he's going hall
of fame based on his body of work with the
Green Bay Packers and the fact that he ran out
to the field with the Jets holding the flag and
that was the highlight of his Jets' career on nine
to eleven and then proceeded to get hurt right away.

(26:11):
But the mythology of that and the reality of the
fact that he is now currently running Aaron Rodgers on
the fumes of unleaded gasoline, that's where we are. That's
where we are with Aaron Rodgers at this particular point.
Rodgers is not totally cooked. I'm not going to sit
here and tell you he is. He's not. That would
be a bad take. Rogers is not fully cooked. He's

(26:32):
not He's just water temperature dependent, and the temperature is lukewarm,
luke warm. Aaron Rodgers. The Steelers are betting what they're
betting that a couple of sparks means there's still some
firecrackers in. There's some fireworks in Aaron Rodgers game plane. Now,

(26:52):
the raw numbers say that Aaron Rodgers was the sixteenth
ranked quarterback last season. However, even that comes with a
giant cheating a hole size asterisk the size of Western Pennsylvania.
It does. A chunk of the production for Rogers last

(27:15):
year came in the form of statback and I ripped
dak Prescott all the time, the Bandito Dakoda Prescott. I
gotta be fair here, Aaron Rodgers. If you didn't pay
attention last year, a lot of his damage was done
when the game was over, whether it was ahead or behind,
mostly behind for the Steelers last year. In fact, I

(27:36):
went back. I looked at the numbers. Rogers' stat padding mode.
Fourteen percent of his passing yards, so almost fifteen percent
came when the Steelers were down by multiple scores, and
over twenty percent of his passing touchdowns came when the
game was lopsided, whether the game was decided in favor
of Pittsburgh or behind just over twenty percent. Now, how

(27:58):
do you decode that? I'll tell you how to do
coded if you need garbage time artistry, an artisan of
the garbage, if that's what you need. Aaron Rodgers Picasso.
He's Picasso. He is well last year, he's Picasso. Now
give him some leftover lettuce. That's a little the spaghetti

(28:22):
he's been laying around for a couple of days. He
threw it out, and he'll make some art out of that.
He will, but it's obviously not anywhere near an MVP
level player. This Steelers are getting. This is the hipster
podcast version, slower, more thoughtful, occasionally interesting, but you're mostly

(28:44):
hanging around for nostalgia and the brand name. It's a
good brand name that you got there, solid brand name.
Way to go. Now. You wonder when Rogers is it
reintroduced as the Steelers quarterback. You think his wife's gonna
show up to that. You think we'll see his wife, Theresa,
here's my wife. If she encouraged me to come play

(29:04):
football again. She can't really stop him from playing football
because I don't think she exists, so you know anyway,
final point, So continuing the Rogers express ray, we are
going down the Aaron Rodgers express ray. So the other
question here to put the ball on this? What is
the projection for the Pittsburg Steelers of twenty twenty six?

(29:28):
Now that Aaron Rodgers has emerged from the darkness and
back on to the gridiron for another season in his
early forties, he's back to do it again. So heading
into his age what will be his age forty three
season before the playoffs playoffs, Rogers turns forty three, Rogers

(29:48):
is at this point he is Iceberg Lettuce. Aaron Rodgers
is Iceberg lettuce. What does that mean? A cold, bland
and useful of everything around? Everything around is seasoned perfectly.
And people say, oh, I like salad. I always love
when I see people eating salad. I don't eat salad.
Me and al Michaels and Pokin de Coua on a

(30:09):
no vegetable diet other than garlic. I give an exemption
to garlic. But I go out to restaurants, I don't
go off. I don't go out to the restaurants much anymore.
When I go out to eat. I see people eating salad.
I laugh because it's not really salad. It's a chicken
salad with a lot of delicious dressing. And they put
the toppings on there, you know, beef or whatever it
is on there. So you know what I mean. The salad,

(30:31):
it's called the seals, a great marketing gimmick to salad
bull crap, Like if you just want to really eat salad,
just to eat some lettuce. Nobody does that. Why because
it's disgusting. So and that's the way I look at Roger.
He's iceberg lets. So for this to work, the Steelers
are gonna have a lot of pepper. They're gonna have
to add some croutons on top, some onions, some kind

(30:53):
of meat heavy pore of Thousand Islands dressing on top
of the iceberg lettuce there, just to make it palatable. Now,
if all that happens right, you know, then you got
something right. The defense, the special teams, it's you know,
we'll get to say, but it's like a Dick and
Dayton take.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
You know.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
Dick and Dayton famously told he calls up years ago
about the Cleveland Indians, the old baseball team that the
Wolkeser's got rid of and they said, what do the
Indians need to do, Dick to turn things around? Well,
they got to pitch, they got to hit, you know,
play defense, and as essentially the Steelers. The same argument,
the Dick and Dayton argument is well, the Steelers, they
need to play defense, and they need a good running
game and special teams, and then Rogers will be fine.

(31:32):
He's an aging rock rock and roll guy that can
still occasionally hit the high note, but only after three
throat lozenges and a couple of prayers, a couple of
Hail Mary's, and then you're okay. But if you look
at the mat in twenty twenty five, over sixty percent
of the time you got either one touchdown or zero

(31:56):
touchdowns in games started by Aaron Rodgers. So it was
this sixty two percent of the games Rogers either had
won or no touchdowns for Pittsburgh. And Rodgers is a
at this point, he is a jag, of course, not
a Jacksonville jag, just a guy who used to be
a TG the guy, but now he's just a guy
instead of the guy. And every few weeks he'll take

(32:20):
a spin in the DeLorean. Aaron Rodgers will get to DeLorean,
he'll crank it up to eighty eight miles per hour,
and the rest of the time he's stuck in neutral
on the Parkway East there in Pittsburgh. He's like, I understand,
I can't get I cannot get this thing up to
the proper speed. And it turns out that even Rogers,
that flux capacitor needs load management. So tough break there

(32:44):
for the Steelers and Aaron Rodgers. The Steelers they're not
continuous there about where they were. We're gonna find out
how much of whatever this was the last twenty years
was Mike Tomlin and his coaching and how much of
this was just the the roster and the talent because
Mike McCarthy is I know, Spacoli gets upset when I says,

(33:08):
but McCarthy, I'll say, anyway, is not as good a
coach as Mike tom I would rather have Mike Tomlin
than Mike McCarthy. Yet, you know, we'll find out this
is McCarthy just is it the doppel ganger? Is he
the same guy? They're going to be the same Steeler
team Where there they're going to be at nine and
eight and right there and hanging around just waiting for

(33:29):
Joe Burrow to get hurt again, and you know, Lamar
Jackson to continue to stink like he did last year.
And so there you go.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Meller
Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
It's Mallard. How about that? To the third degree. This
is n battling flu like symptoms.

Speaker 4 (33:52):
Coobo and Dion Sanders talked about why his son should
dour In Di an entire agent, and he said, well,
you're projected to go what first or second?

Speaker 1 (34:02):
Right?

Speaker 4 (34:02):
Why give somebody four or five percent or whatever it
is that they get. Now, Ben, do you think not
having an agent attributed to his free fall? Ah?

Speaker 1 (34:13):
No, not that alone. Agents do help because they leak
your look like there's a lot of guys in ESPN
and whatnot and Fox that get have the same agents
and they just repeat the same talking points, and that
does help out a little bit. It's part of the problem.
It's not the only problem. There were other issues there.

Speaker 4 (34:29):
Next Anthony Richardson, it looks like he's gonna be staying
with the Colts. He said, the culture is still giving
me a chance to go out there and work, work
hard and potentially get on the field.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
Do you think he'll get on the field. No, of
course not everything. We go terribly rolling for the Colts.
If Anthony Richards sits in, if he gets on the field,
it's not over yet, Coop, It's not over yet. He
can still get released.

Speaker 4 (34:52):
Next, they're bringing real grass into at and T Stadium
or Dallas Stadium as they're gonna call it for World Cup.
Lamb wants it for the real games, the NFL games.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (35:03):
Do you think that'll ever happen for them?

Speaker 1 (35:05):
Yes, if Ceedee Lamb pays for it, Coop, Yeah, Jery,
Joe's I gotta pay for if he pays for it, Yes,
how do we know you pass the win? I won?
The guy I won.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
the nation. Catch all of our shows at foxsports Radio
dot com and within the iHeartRadio app. Search FSR to
listen live. Hey you sports figure, guy or girl?

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Who here were you talking to? Son?

Speaker 4 (35:34):
Here?

Speaker 1 (35:35):
Some instant advice hold that though no one's paid attention
to me for ten whole seconds, and if you don't
like it, you well, sometimes this is hard to come
up with people that need advice. Well not today. The
Detroit Pistons, a number one seed at home in Game seven,
lost by thirty one points. What advice do you have

(35:56):
to Caid Cunningham and the rest of the Detroit Pistons
eight seven, seven ninety nine on Fox, you're live on
the air. When you hear my voice, Hello, Line one.
Advice to the Pistons. Line one, If you're gonna come
back from the aisle, just make sure you don't miss
your bubblehead night. Yeah, very important. He made your but
he did. He pitched his snell in his bottle that Hello.
Line two, you're on the airline two. Yeah, morning time eight,

(36:18):
piston changing attack.

Speaker 4 (36:20):
That's when you're under pressure.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
That's right, Rick and Maryland there, morning time. Line three,
you're on the airline free advice of the Pistons. Line three, Hey, Ben,
but I met on the real pitch that whereas Doun
Bennie versus a Tenny basketball, hockey and baseball. Oh yeah, okay, yeah,
that's a good idea. We should we should pitch that.
I'll have some meetings coming up. Line four, Hello, line four,
I can just be a line for myself. Shed from

(36:45):
the Redneck Riviera checking in. Line Uh five, Hello, line five,
your advice to the Pistons. Line five, don't be like
that jerker spoiled at the ending of Shawshank redemption for me.
F you Robbie the manor all right? Uh? What do
you think at line six? You're on the Airline six? Hello,
Line six. Line six is not paying attention. We'll go

(37:06):
over to line one. Advice of the Pistons. It's the
instead of ice line Hello. Line one. Callers are blind
and some of us wish we were deaf so we
didn't have to hear ho raina. All right please. Line
two you're on the airline too.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
Hello.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah, they should have played Kevin Heurder and bring back
out ah one more coop. Hurry up? Line three, you
said Line three, Line three you on their go. No,
Line three were not. You're not fasten up. Line three,
Bag up.