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February 10, 2022 • 14 mins

Former Bengals Safety Solomon Wilcots and Dr. Brian Cole join Mike Harmon from the Super Bowl 56 Media Center at the Los Angeles Convention Center! Wilcots discusses the Bengals reaching the Super Bowl and gives his thoughts on the matchup. The guys discuss Dr. Cole's work, and Dr. Cole has some advice for Harmon and his knee!

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, welcome in Super Bowl Week. Excited to be here.
The atmosphere right, it's it's early in the week, so
the buzz is is around, everybody trying to get their
stuff set up. But please to welcome in. Solomon Wilcox,
former NFL player, longtime broadcaster. We're gonna talk about some
medical advancement because I think I need some help with
my knees. We'll get into that in a minute. But

(00:21):
the Cincinnati Bengals team you played for now on the
big stage, all these years later, all the all the
trials and tribulations of a franchise, all the stories that
have been told through the years. Are you shocked that
it turns around that fast? Mike, I'm I'm surprised, not shocked,
to be honest with you. Anytime you get a guy
like Joe Burrow, you know that wins tend to follow

(00:42):
the great quarterbacks. By the way, Sure, I just asked
Peyton Manning what it was like when he first arrived
in Indianapolis, Right, Let's ask Tom bradywood was like in
New England. I mean, your great quarterback, wins tend to
follow um. But no, I am I am surprised because
it came together very weekly. Just two years ago, we
were hiring a new head coach, a very young head

(01:04):
coach is Zach Taylor, didn't have the franchise quarterback in toe.
And now it seems like we have a lot of
pieces and one game away from winning a super Boat Trophy.
Just an amazing run for them. Right as we we
look at that offense, there's stars all over. I think
people are finally recognized. Got your te Higgins is uh Zama,
assuming he's able to go. It sounds like he's you know,

(01:29):
the knee is a problem, but you know Joe Mixon
all the way through. But the offensive line that that
is the one story that in all of this. How
do you best against that rams front? Now we gotta
go back to your time and since you in a minute,
but just to get to the exits and o's of this,
how do you best keep them at day? Got run
the football the best way to slow down a defensive

(01:50):
line that wants to rust the quarterback, that's built to
rush the quarterback that's designed to rust the quarterback in
Aaron Donald von Miller and Leonard Floyd, you gotta run
the ball at him to slow him down. Um, you've
got to make them fight a fight that they don't
want to fight, and that's a more physical one stopping
the run, and then your pass game has to come
off of it. And the best way to negate any

(02:13):
pass rush quarterback can't hold onto the football. Last I chuck.
You know there's the rules against hitting the quarterback if
he doesn't have the ball, right, So if you throw
it quickly before they get there, are right, they can't
hit you. The internal clock in your certainly has to
be churned up fast, like I keep having all my
ideas for the play clock issue that has marred the playoffs.

(02:34):
At some point we need an air horn or a
buzzer when it gets to zero at zero and I'm
thinking about the rams in the last round. But you
know that's it can't be arbitrary, right, It's not a
decision of plus one kind of kind of zero. So
when you've played and we're part of the organization, still
a lot of the same, like back backbone to this. Obviously,

(02:55):
the players come and go, the coaches have come and gone.
Give me a snapshot from yours, because we've heard some
of the tales you were experienced when you were a
member of the Bengals as a franchise because can you,
I guess, give us anything that just proves or pushes

(03:16):
away some of the narratives and player treatment or how
the organization so it worked in those days. Yeah, I
mean listen, when I joined the team in seven, Paul Brown,
the old man was still alive, and he was a
very successful hit coach. He was. He's one of the
founding fathers of ali um like a like a George Hallis.

(03:37):
This guy's got his fingerprints all over this league. And
his son, Mike Brown, was the general manager of that team,
and they drafted well. And if you go back to
when the Bengals were founded in sixty eight, they were
one of the fastest winning franchises that came from an
expansion team to making it to the playoffs under the
leadership with Paul Brown, one of the fastest at that

(03:59):
time with free agency right, uh as the fastest in
NFL history. UH to become a winner and to get
to the poll the postseason and play in the playoffs.
And so they had a good infrastructure. We had great
players and Anthony Moonhills, Boomer Scias, Chris Collinsworth right, remembering
that everybody bast a really good football player, and so

(04:24):
we had a really good team. And so at the
end of the day, Um, all those years gone by,
you fast forward now and uh, Mike Brown is still
the general manager. However, the function of a person that
functions in that role. God by the name of Duke Tobin,
who nobody ever hears about. But he's the guy that

(04:44):
has drafted very well for this franchise over the years.
He's the guy that drafted Joe Mixon. He's the guy
that drafted Tyler Boyd, right of Aaron Donald. Well, well,
even if you go back to remember when we had
an A. J. Green, we also had a More and Jones.
We also had a Mohammed Sanu. I'm just a but
that all of them were drafted. They didn't come in.

(05:07):
They didn't come as Duke Tobin drafted those guys. And
now and another reiteration of a roster that's got another
set of trio of talented receivers. He's drafted all three
of these guys, Tyler Boyd, t Higgins, Jamaar Chase. So
if you're asking me what's different, I'm telling you that
Mike Brown is not the guy running it. He's got

(05:29):
out of the way. He does have someone who functions.
Everybody talks about they don't have a scouting stuff. It's
just not true. Everyone talks about it. They may they
need help picking their players. Just not true. I can
point to you a guy who's got an infrastructure for
team building and he did it via the draft. If
you look at the defensive team, most of them are
free agent signings that hit DJ Reader, Larry Ogan, Joby right,

(05:53):
Trey Hendrickson, um Von Bale, Mike Hilton, Jadoo. Yeah, A
six guys right there they hit. They hit so no
and and that's the amazing thing of this right on
both sides of the ball, because we talk about it
all the time. Right, go back to the model of
the Seahawks with Russell Wilson, right, you got your rookie
quarterback contract and building around and hitting on those mid

(06:17):
round guys and sprinkling in the free agents knowing eventually
they all got to get paid. I'm not a fast
forwarding to that. That's a that's a bridge they got
across when they got a you'll buy the team differently
then you'll draft around that as opposed to being able
to sign them in free agency and listen, they drafted
a kicker who in all four season games, the guys
made four field goals every single one of these games.

(06:39):
You're not here without Evan mcpheers. No. But that's the
that's the big thing that's in the NFL We've been
talking about forever. If you find a guy like because
it was shortled about right, and he acknowledges it and
the team is kind of had their fun with it
a little bit. Is that in this league, if you
don't have a guy you can trust, everything else falls apart, right,

(06:59):
Because I'm many teams you look at their postseason hopes
getting there is a kicker that they couldn't trust, so
they had to go run another play. They had to
change how they were calling their offense. With this guy,
you get to the thirty five like you're you're playing
for points on a possession as opposed to all right,
we don't really know what we have here, so we've
got to change how we're approaching this. Darren Simmons is

(07:21):
one of the best special teams coaches in the NFL.
Mike Brown, Duke Tobin. They lean on his expertise. So
they are the only team one who drafted a kicker
just so happens, Hey, the draft any kicker, they drafted
the right kicker guy, and they found the right guy.
I'm just going back to your original question. This is

(07:42):
not your grandfather's Bengals. But that's just right. You laid
it out from a struct because it was always the
structure of things right after the original. But I laid
out Exhibit A, B, C, and D counselor go deep.
You want to go eat, you gotta go eat, go eat.

(08:04):
I can go eat as well. But I don't want
to belabor the point because we came here to introduce
you to a very good friend of mine, Dr Cryant Cole,
who's bringing some great new innovative technology to orthopedic medicine
that really is changing the way that even as weekend warriors. Right,
doesn't that just right? I get back into the because
I've got my clicks with my knee. Dr Cole and

(08:25):
I were talking and welcome in Dr Cole, the procedure,
the macy right they and what five thousand have been done.
I read all the literature. I'm a guy that I'm
walking up and downstairs. People like that sounds like a wrench,
So I've got it, so I I understand it. So
the procedure, you know, what kind of injuries are you

(08:47):
seeing that that bring people to your offices and into
this and the success rate? I mean, however you can
best articulate, you know, that process from the first time
you see him, and how quickly you can diagnose Because
we were talking about statistics before, right, and and Solomon
having that kind of recall of this guy, this guy,
this guy, this guy, and you with all your experience

(09:07):
in this process, how quickly can you diagnose when someone
comes into your office. Well, you and I a pre show,
had a chance to talk, so hopefully I don't. I don't.
I want to keep patient privacy. But I like you
because you're about my height. We both played high school
football and uh we both we both got outsized very quickly.
Right and stop. And you're from Chicago. Yeah, the good
The thing that Mike and I have in common is

(09:28):
he the size he is right now is what he
wasn't in third grade. I'm all over the place like
this could be great. I'm like, there's no height in
my family. But he was telling me about an injury
that he had playing basketball. Right, was basketball? Yeah, it's
white intermeral basketball. Took a hit and instead of being
smart and going with the hit, landed straight leg and

(09:51):
he started. So the most common injury, and in fact
for knee problems in general, there are twelve million visits
a year in the United States, so it's a virtue epidemic.
The only thing we see more of our back injuries. Okay,
so the knee is obviously very common. About half of
these folks have cartilage injuries. And for your listeners who
don't know what cartilage is, cartilage is that white, soft,

(10:12):
smooth covering at the end of our bones, and when
you lose it, the joint can become painful, it can swell,
you can't load it, you can't do participate in activities,
and patients will complain of symptoms that really limit their
ability to do things. So it's not bone on bone arthritis.
It's guys like you who are in the younger age
range who are not candidates for knee replacement. But if
the disease, once becomes symptomatic, goes unchecked, it can go

(10:34):
into arthritis that may have no other option other than
a knee replacement. So we're looking to treat people who
are in their early phases of quote arthritis, which is
loss of cartilage. It can be from degeneration. It could
be from traumatic injury like you had when you played basketball,
for example. It could be like this little girl I
had last week, and not a little girl. She's twenty.
She's a D one athlete lacrosse player who has been
out sidelined since Thanksgiving and because of COVID. She's still

(10:56):
got three years of eligibility left, but she's out. She's
tapped out, and there's no other option to treat her
carlage problem other than something like this. So what is this?
So this is Macy. It's a procedure where we go
in with a small camera called an arthroscope. So you've
heard of ourtoscopic surgery, right, It's it's all over the NFL.
And we take a small piece of carlage from a

(11:17):
non weight bearing area. It gets delivered to a laboratory,
it gets grown on a collagen membrane, a thin membrane,
and literally it's like sod onto a playing field or
or new wallpaper, where there's just a piece that's defective.
It grows into a patch that rebuilds new cartilage. Now
we it sounds like science fiction, and you think, well,
why haven't we had that all along? We've had forms

(11:37):
of it, but this is actually the first and only
innovative treatment. Since that was approved by the FDA, we
haven't had a single innovative treatment to treat college problems.
And this is the second generation of it. Where before
we used to have liquid cells, Now it actually gets
grown grown on the membrane. So it's like getting a
piece of wallpaper that's ready to go, put it up
by the chat you patch the defect. It's it's really sound.

(12:00):
It's quite simple, and besides all the biotechnology behind it,
eyes my eyes like okay, yeah, so I mean, you know,
in the past, when I was a resident, you know,
I used to trained in New York and we would
have young athletes. We used to take care of the giants.
We did the mets. We would have these athletes that
are coming. The only thing we had available to them
was to put a camera in their knee, clean it out,
and send them back to sport. That would last maybe,

(12:21):
if we're lucky, a couple of months, and it was
nothing sustainable. These are sustainable treatments, but not just for
professional athletes. I mean those twelve million people I told
you about who come in yearly for knee paint, those
are just everyday people who want to be active. And
they may be were our weekend warriors, but they want
to play tennants, they want to do yoga, they want
to ride a bike, they want to stay fit, but
they are troubled by pain, swelling, and and dysfunction. How

(12:43):
fast does this get them back? Yeah, so it's a
great question. So the early phases are often some crut
shoes for six weeks to pay on the defect location.
But after crutches, by three months. There we're allowing our
patients to be on a bike, they can be they
can be in a pool, they can be doing Strengthen,
they can do yoga by four or five months, they
can play golf by six to nine months. I don't
care what you do, as long as you have the

(13:04):
symptom relief that we expect you to get. I think
I have some eligibility left. Let's get back and you
can make you better again. So I don't know if
you've got some other things I could grow me. Well,
we were talking about that kind of stuff a little
bit off air, but no, it's an amazing technology and
just hearing about these advances. I had a family member

(13:28):
that was in the transplant surgeries, so they would explain
some of this stuff to me. And look, I we
can talk football, we could draw stuff on it, but
this I'm like, I'm fascinated. I understand basic terms, but
just amazing stuff. Thank you. Well, yeah, if you want
to learn more about it. You know, you might still
have a bumpnee. I don't know what your left knee
is like. But you go to Macy dot www dot Macy,

(13:51):
that's m Aci dot com, and you know there's look
l A. You live in l A, right, Yes, it's
an amazing place. You have some amazing physicians here, and
you know, if that's an interest in you think you
have a cardedge problem, it's a great place to check
it out and find a provider for you. Fantastic Dr
Brian Cole, Solomon Wilcot. Appreciate you guys stopping by and
enjoy Super Bowl week. Thank you very much. Appreciate you guys.
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