Texans-Bills TNF preview, Rockets' big win over Cavaliers!

The A-Team's Adam Wexler and Adam Clanton share their predictions for Texans-Bills, react to the Rockets' win over the Cavs, and weigh in on the Astros trading Mauricio Dubon.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Why do we start Thursday show with some reading. Let's
read some things to the people today. You can read scripture,
see what's on their mind, see see what needs to
be said. Figured we would get into this at some
point this week. Today is a good day for it,
since earlier today we were forced to get back into it,

(00:20):
something that we've been talking about four months since the
off season, since June specifically, and then every single week
and every single month since then this afternoon, Welcome to
the eighteen. By the way, Levin oh two a m
Ian rappaport on the Old X platform sources. Texan's running

(00:41):
back Joe Mixon is not expected to play this season
and see deals with a foot injury from the off season.
Mixon likely remains on the Physically unable to perform list
through the season. Meanwhile, Houston moves forward with Nick Chubb
and Woody Marks first of all, noting that they're moving
forward with Nick Chubb and Woody Marx in that order,

(01:02):
and moving forward, I mean these are the only two
guys basically that carried the ball all season, and I
don't know about how it's worded and moving forward. Everything
about it is comical. Woody Marks, you probably want to
list him first. He's the main running back. He went
again a few minutes later to help describe the situation
that everybody here in Houston already knows about and has
known about four months. The Texans have been preparing for this,

(01:26):
having signed veteran Nick Chubb in June, and he's averaging
more than four yards per carry. Plus they drafted Woody
Marks in the fourth round, trading up to do so. Okay,
more intel from Ian. Thank god he's alive and doing
well and helping us on the X platform with all
the news, like we've said, we've been talking about forever,
I wanted to post something on X and I said, ah, now,

(01:48):
I'll save my snarkiness for the show. And then I
typed out the whole post and I couldn't even get
through it without being snarky in it, so I'd never
ended up posting it, and I anticipated not really opening
the show with this. The Texans actually play a football
game today. They are eleventh consecutive game without Joe Mixon,
so they'll be moving forward now tonight, finally without him.

(02:10):
Without Joe Mixon, I am compelled to continue reading from
the X platform. Boy from just a couple of minutes ago,
just in time for our program at one forty four
pm this afternoon. Okay, Now, I get everyone's looking for
splash news and clickbait? Oh did did I forget to

(02:30):
tell you who posted this? At Joe Maine Mixon he
posted it nineteen minutes ago. Now I get everyone's looking
for splash news and clickbait, But I'm just curious, Ian,
how do you know more about me than me? Perplexed
emoji at Peter J. Shaeffer Get your man's bro. Pete
Schaeffer is a very prominent sports agent, very close to

(02:54):
the situation. So Ian says he's not gonna play this year,
which we've all been saying for quite some time. Texans
have described it a couple of different times as a
very gray area and we don't have definitive answers on it.
And now Joe Mixon says.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Hey, whoa, whoa whoa.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Click bait splash news? How do you know more about
me than me? So now what he's not playing this year?

Speaker 3 (03:24):
I mean, it's a nice little fantasy, and he's definitely
feeding into that by posting.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
That maybe he'll be there tonight. Of course he'll be
there maybe we'll see him there tonight. In well, of course,
well obviously he's not gonna be playing tonight. I'm just saying,
according to him, it could happen. Actually it cannot happen
because the logistics of it, of an NFL roster would
not allow for it. That's those are details. But I'm saying, well,
maybe he'll be there, Maybe he will be seen there,

(03:52):
maybe he wants to. I mean, he has a platform.
Social media provides players the opportunity to speak directly to
the fans or anybody else, and they don't even need us.
Nearly one hundred and ninety thousand followers. You doesn't need
me to tell you, guys. He posted that you guys
follow him. You already knew that he doesn't need us tonight.
He doesn't need to gather us to speak to us,
so we can then deliver the message to the media

(04:13):
or to the fans if he wants to deliver, He's
more than welcome to. But they're playing a football game.
They're eleventh consecutive game this year without Joe Mixon. That
is not.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
Changing, No, very somewhat interesting, just in the fact that
the timing alone right before the show starts on a
day where it is game day Texans and Bills tonight.
But yeah, that's all that is doing. If your Joe Mixon,
in my opinion, is creating very very very slight false

(04:45):
hope for the fan base, it's actually kind of probably
cruel in a way.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
Would I would at this point beyond he's good, I
would love for him to play now, why just because
the whole situation would be even fier than it is today.
Well yeah, that point and again the not funny part
of it all. It would be just for him personally.
He's trying to continue his NFL career.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
Shouldn't be over Well, somebody will sign him this offseason
and give him money.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, but what if he can't play?

Speaker 4 (05:14):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
I'm talking about the injury. Yeah, but I don't think
that's I don't think that's the case. Like I think
he's I think he is got plenty of gas left
in the tank whatever you want to use, but.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Not if he can't walk or run.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
Well, here's my thing. This is what irritates me all
over again about this situation. And no, I did not
think we would be talking about this in the first segment,
but it's been forced upon us, not by you, by them,
by me. No, it's it's a good thing to get
to what's the injury. I know it says foot injury,
you'd ankle surgery, and he's had it.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
I believe he also this is I do not know
this for a fact, but I do believe there was
a second procedure on the ankle. There's something going on
with his foot and ankle. I hope that is correct,
because I, like I said, I'm speculating, but it just
did not go as planned. Some sort of treatment did
not go as planned. And that's why they don't have
definitive answers on it, because had it gone as planned,

(06:14):
they would have a he'd already be back, and B
that they would know why. It's just h There have.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
Been some bizarre, prolonged injuries in Houston sports in recent memory.
I mean, the whole Kyle Tucker thing was handled Flambert.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Bizarre is only in how it's been handled that way. Ye,
a injury might not Carl Tucker had a ball off
his foot.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
They had a broken bone, yeah, but it wasn't called
that until months after the fact.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
This is all all of those situations except for the
time it took for the astros to actually figure out
what was wrong, and they've had a lot of trouble
with that. They the team knows what's wrong. Joe knows
what's wrong. Joe knows what went wrong. The team knows
what went wrong. I'm not telling you they have a
definitive timeline, but they have the answer to every single
one of those questions. They have been reluctant to tell

(07:08):
us that that's their decision. They're not obligated to do so.
But for the long, unnecessary, somewhat embarrassing speech, I thought
that Demiko gave us for the speculating. It's not our
job to speculate. If you are forcing us to speculate,
it could be your job. It doesn't have to be.

(07:30):
But if you'd like the speculation that you're so upset
about to cease, then just give enough information, or more information,
or all of the information that would prevent it from happening.
We can speculate on a timeline, but you're now the
speculation about what is even happening is NonStop because we
don't know that it's not a bad thing, not a
good thing. I don't know why they treat it as

(07:52):
a bad thing or a good thing. It wouldn't have
to be treated at all if they would just tell
us the information that they have well.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
And that brings up another element or layer of this scenario,
this repeated scenario, both in Houston sports and abroad. The
only thing almost is bad as the mishandling of the
information or the lack of transparency, or however you want
to phrase it or describe it to me, are the
people that immediately get online and rally. I'm using that

(08:22):
in a very very light way, rally around whatever team
or player or coach in question.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
He does you know you anything? Who are you? You
don't need just because you can have you know now,
you can write your story. They don't owe you anything.
You're right day don't. You can't also tell us how
to do our.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
Correct You can't have it both ways. You can't get
online and be mad online about the way it's being covered.
If you're going to also get online and be mad
online about the way that we are treating the lack
of information, we are being given.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
All right to that exact stuff mad online. Now, cry
your tears because the Astros traded Mauricio dubon last night night.
Listen I have. I have seen it all I have.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
I have run the gamut of emotions with you guys
on social media, and I gotta tell you, X I
was it was amusing.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
I get it. He's been a great clubhouse guy.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
He's been a guy that spelled and I don't even
want to that's probably not doing it justice.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
He's spelled very well.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
Jose Altuve when he broke his thumb in the World
Baseball Classic, I mean he was very very good while
how Altuve was healing and coming back, and he's been
everything you would hope for for a infield and outfield
utility guy, a guy that can do it all, doesn't
rock the boat. Great clubhouse guy. I can't say that enough.
Great clubhouse guy is what I'm always going to associate with.

(09:48):
Mauricio Dubon. It's just who he is. It's his reputation.
See this for what it is there, clearly I get it.
Nick Allen, he sucks. It's not about getting Nick Allen.
It's about clearing money to go get something that you need,
which is probably in all likelihood, if I had to
guess starting pitching, that's not justin Verlander.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Most likely it is. We will see if it goes again,
all the things that go with it we will dive into.
But that is in fact what happened last night. Both
teams announced it. The Astros traded Mauricio Dubon to the
Braves for Nick Allen. Dana Brown will be on Sports
Talk seven ninety this evening addition of astroline Todd Kallis

(10:30):
and Steve Sparks sat down with him earlier this week
for discussions about the Astros, so you look forward to
that coming up as soon as we wrap things up tonight.
We got a lot to get to between now and
then now and kickoff later tonight seven to fifteen over
at NRG Stadium, a rather important game. Dropping to five
and six with six games to play is not the

(10:52):
ideal scenario to extend your season into the postseason, so
the importance of this game cannot be understated. It is
another Mills game, so we dive into those items as well.
We'll also hear from Rockets head coach i may Doka
if you missed that earlier, a little bit from him
after the last night's victory over the Calves and Friday
nights in I think interesting matchup early season litmus type

(11:15):
test against the Denver Nuggets over to it at Center
tomorrow night, and plenty of other things to get to,
including in the fact that we are having a Thursday
night Houston Texans NFL game. We'll give you the first
of our selections, each of our stone cold locks because
the game's tonight. With all that is, we continue here
on the A Team.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
It is the A Team Sports Talks seven ninety Thursday
edition of the program. We were getting through the whole
Joe Mixon minutia. That's what this boils down to. I mean,
if he were likely to come back this season and
we both believed that, I think there'd be more to this.
Right now, it's just a back and forth between he

(11:55):
and Ian Rappaport on social media. That's basically all this
will amount to in the grand scheme of things. I think, yes,
and we move on, we move forward. I'm sorry, well, yeah, no,
we're not gonna move on. We're gonna move forward.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
We're gonna move forward with the A Team with that
Adam Wesler and Adam Clanton, just like we have been
doing for the last twelve weeks, just like the Texans
have been doing with Woody and Nick. I like, how
you put them in the correct order of the depth chart.
H yeah, but Nick's averaging four yards of carry this year?
How many carrying on? Like I said, can we.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
Go ahead with much to the chagrin of Doris Burke,
can we go ahead and give the Rockets their flowers
after last night?

Speaker 1 (12:34):
Well, you're gonna have to fill me in Rockets games
on Sports Talk seven ninety and Space City home Network.
I haven't watched any highlights and watch a single moment
of the game that ESPN produced. I stuck with the locals,
so I don't know what was what was said.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
You're smart. I'm not one of those people that's anti
Doris Burke.

Speaker 4 (12:51):
By the way.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
I think she does a good job.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
Probably wouldn't put her on the A team for the finals,
but then again, I wouldn't put Mike Breen on the
eight team for the finals.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
So different strokes, I guess.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
But I think she said something to the effect of,
and this is during the game, so it wasn't determined yet.
She wouldn't put them in the same tier, I guess
as the thunder that's understandable. Nobody's in that tier, and
the Nuggets in the Western Conference.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
I e.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
These two teams are head and shoulders above the rest.
I think that correctly applies to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
They're on pace for seventy six wins on pace, guy
says after last night's latest victory. But what's Doris gonna
say if Denver comes to town Friday for all of
a sudden, a humongous matchup. Forget the cup stuff, just

(13:43):
barometer game.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
This is it?

Speaker 3 (13:46):
Like, these are the two best teams in the Western
Conference not named OKC right now.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
That could change over the course of the year. But
I'm sorry, Like I'm not going to give any passes
or try to sugarcat or soft sell it or anything
like that. And I know what has happened in the
postseason relative to the regular season. That Cleveland team is
a good team.

Speaker 3 (14:08):
The Rockets beat last night, and they beat them soundly
before kind of letting them back into things late.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
They beat the crap out of the Calves.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
And I know that the Cavs had an awful shooting
night throughout the majority of the game, and Donovan Mitchell
was as big a part of that. I know he
finished with twenty one to make it look respectable. Because
he scored like nineteen or whatever it was. In the
fourth quarter, he's averaging thirty one. They shut him down effectively.
And the abuse that the Rockets are putting on people

(14:37):
on the glass, it needs to be talked about more.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
They are ridiculous on the boards. Yeah, I mean, i'd
give I'd give the Rockets credit for doing the smart
thing to slow Donovan Mitchell down. But I'd also give
Donovan Mitchell credit. It's a one point game after he
hit those back to back threes. You play forty eight minutes.
I don't think the Rockets crushed them at all. They
were very good at what they've shown they can do

(15:01):
this year. They were up by more than twenty for
like three seconds.

Speaker 3 (15:05):
No no, no, no, no, no, I'm not gonna let
you do this. The Rockets beat the crap out of
the Calves last night. It was not whatever you're trying
to frame this as it was. It was dominant. It
is absolutely dominant. You can pound about.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
Me all you want to do this, so I will.
I will figure something else out to say. All right,
you're right, they sucked. They were off last night. They
barely can You can go that direction if you want
to that's.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
Only that's the direction you're going. Yes, it is, like
I said, the Rockets beat the crap out of them
last night. They were up by more than twenty points.
It was a good Eastern Conference team with the number
two seed currently in the East. And I don't know
why you're downplaying it, but you do, you man.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
Whatever, downplaying it. I just don't think a game that
went the way it did last night was what I
would call a dominant victory. They they beat them, they
never gave the lead away once they got it. These
are all good things. They had a big lead in
this game. It didn't slip away by accident. It slipped
away because of like you're trying to do it both ways,
like it's a really good Eastern Conference team. Well, that's

(16:06):
why they got back in the game, because they're a
really good Eastern Conference team. That's why the Rockets had
to keep making buckets to keep the Calves sotealing it
from them.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
Threes that they were missing all night long, that was
just because they were just missing them.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
No, the Rockets are good, Like no point if I
said the Rockets aren't awesome, Like, I don't know why
this is such a big deal. I agree.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
I don't. I don't either. I don't know why it's
such a big deal to say that they dominated them last night. Okay,
that's what turned you when I said they dominated the calves.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
That's when you went into your little WEX thing that
I do because I just don't. I don't see it
that way. I don't see it that way at all.
I want to see at the game last night and
thought they dominated them, or if it's how WEX is
phrasing it, whatever, you have to be right. I'm just
explaining my No, that's the thing you do have to know.
Every day you have to be right. Well, today's the

(16:57):
first of many days in the future. I don't have
to be I don't care if I'm right. I just
I'm sitting here to explain what I thought. That's why
I'm here. Okay, Well do I what's a different way
to go back? This is what's funny about you. If
you get challenged, then you just all right, Well, you're
gonna be twenty point lead with eight minutes to go
on the third quarter. They held it for thirty three seconds. Okay,

(17:19):
I said three. I should have said thirty three. I'm sorry,
and they immediately gave it away. It was like the
fastest six minute run. They went from twenty two, the
two possession game, the whole lead, this dominating lead they had.
It lasted for half of a quarter. They were never
it was never in doubt because they had answers. The
few times that they had possessions where the Cavs could
have cut into it and taken the lead or made

(17:41):
it a one possession game. Again, the Rockets just kept
having answers. But they also had a couple of lulls,
and that lull was when they gave that enormous lead away.
You're talking teams figure out how to not lose those games.
That's what they became last year, and that's what they're
showing this year. They're even better at it.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
But you're talking about a small sample size of the
third quarter and completely ignoring the entire first half as well.
If you say that they were up by double digits
most of the first half, it wasn't just the twenty
two point lead or twenty point lead they built in
the third quarter that went away because Donovan Mitchell decided
to like not shoot like ass for a change in
the fourth quarter, along with the rest of his teammates,

(18:19):
by the way, But I don't know, like this is
a team that came in with all of these insane
offensive numbers. I'm talking about Cleveland, not Houston. You could
say the same thing about them, But they didn't look
like themselves all night, and I realized that they just
got done with a stretch where they were playing, you know,
six games and eight nights or whatever it was, and
the Rockets have had ample rest in comparison this year.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
But I just I don't know.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna act like that wasn't
a dominant victory last night.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
That's just how I saw. Well, let's start there. We
got people on both sides. Andrew was first. Andrew did
the Rockets dominate? How many points did the Cavs score
in the first half? It was forty.

Speaker 5 (18:59):
They were absolutely crush and then they came back in
the third. Sure, but the point of being a dominant
team is that if somebody makes a run, you can
put the boot back on their throat, and previous Rocket
teams haven't been able to do that. So they crushed
them enough to be able to overcome a little hiccup
in the third quarter. Yeah, it was not a dominating
start to finish, but is absolutely a dominating win.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
All right, Scott, did the Rockets dominate?

Speaker 6 (19:24):
They dominated in spurts, which is a problem that I
see happening later in the year. They're gonna They got
up twenty points and let them crawl back to one point.
They got dominated out of the halftime, which is a
concern for me. How do you come out of the
halftime of twenty and be so cold and let them

(19:47):
come back that far there. I think they dominated in
spurs and got dominated as well, so I think you're
both right appreciate.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
What's funny about that is we can only take one more,
so we can have a differing of a bit real
quick before you take the last. Yes, I say, I happened.
I'm not.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
This is not me patting myself on the back one
way or the other. I came out of halftime where
Matt and I have our conversation before the third quarter starts,
and I said, the sign of a mature team is
what they're going to do with this double digit lead.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
He's right, it was forty. It really was thirty seven.
They hit this like BS three that you know, the
very like I thay it his last feeling though, didn't it?
It did because I was like, ah, I would have
looked nicer to say you held the Calves at thirty
seven first half points, but yeah, I think it was
fifty seven to forty at the half. I'm just kidding.
We'll take as many calls as you guys want, but
just one more before the break. Let's get Cam in

(20:39):
here and ask him that very simple question. Did the
rock It's dominate?

Speaker 7 (20:44):
I I gotta say with Scott, and I gotta said
with Wets on this and you can argue go to hell,
you can argue nuanced and thank you.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
I'm just missed with you.

Speaker 7 (20:55):
But yeah, I mean the rock is to dominate for
for for those.

Speaker 4 (21:00):
Sporadic moments of time.

Speaker 7 (21:01):
And I think that that's just a testament to how
good that the Calves were in this game, and how
good the Cavs have been all year. Is that they
were able to claw back but the Rockets ended up
sending them off, and then that late push at the
very end really feel the deal and why the Rockets
truly came above. But calling it a clean sweep domination is.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Not what I'm clean domination. They dominated sorry, Cam. We
appreciated each of you others, and we've got more lined up.
We'll take some more as we continue. But the thing
that I think both of us would agree, and I
think all three of the callers we've had in so far,
and I think all Rockets fans and management would probably
also agree. Whatever words you want to use to describe it,
those are the kind of games you want your team

(21:44):
that you believe is elite to have. You went into
their building and they challenged you, and you had to answer.
You had to come out and throw the first punch,
which they did. You had to answer their rebuttal, which
they did, and you also prevented the crazy late drama.
There was no oh my god, here they come again.
They were never down less than or they're never up

(22:05):
less than six points down the stretch, so it was
still a multi possession game. They weren't in danger. They
did have to leave their starters in, but this game
was really never in doubt under the final six minute.
Afford me this.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
As we go to break, we will get to best
of X and it'll be Astros related amongst other things,
and we can get back to this. But would you
at least afford me the fact that Albrinchingoon dominated the
reigning defensive Player of the Year.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
All I know is he doesn't back down from anybody. Yeah,
well those are his words, his words. Well now I
know because he told me. We'll get into that also.
That is of consequence. It was definitely mentioned quite a
bit last night. That's right, Evan Mobley. Evan Mobley the
defensive player of the Year. They're over with the Cavs.
We get in more on the Rockets. As you mentioned,
we got best of 's coming up. We will hear

(22:53):
from their opponents on Friday nights, none other than Nikola Jokic.
We'll hear from Davis Mills and others. As we continue.
You mentioned we'll talk some astros. We will hear from
Brian McTaggart before we call it an afternoon coming up
in the four o'clock hour, also from his earlier appearance
on Sports Talk seven ninety and of course more of
you guys helping to guide the direction of this very program.

(23:16):
Did you all see this?

Speaker 7 (23:17):
I should be putting out between five and fifteen.

Speaker 6 (23:19):
Posts a day.

Speaker 4 (23:20):
Four hundred people were arrested for things that they said
on social media.

Speaker 8 (23:24):
History repeats itself type Bangi's succeed. Never doubt that you're
the one who pus for no one. You'll believe you're
the bests. Nothing's gonna ever top you know you're the
best of X posting every single day, you're the best

(23:45):
of its breaking the entire Internet.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
All Right, we're going to get to some of the
I'm gonna call hilarity.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
I don't know how we need.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
We need to both of us have a voice on
how we phrase things on this show and how we
described them today. Otherwise we're gonna start arguing again.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
Did remind each other during the break that there was
something very specific from last night's game, but for totally
different reasons we need to bring up again. So we'll
get to that. All Sime might play. We didn't get
to the Calves coach Kenny Atkinson saying what a lot
of people who see the Rockets will start saying soon.
Not everybody in the league seeing him yet certainly not
up loose and personal like the Calves. And he also noted, yeah,

(24:32):
this is liked us three times in a row. He's
he's a believer. We'll tell you that, but we will
hear from him in a little bit you said we
were shifting to little Astros for Best of X. Well
we got okay.

Speaker 3 (24:42):
So last night I was doing the game when I
think this all came down. There was a there was
a tweet sent out by at Astros and I'm just
gonna go to the original one because there's no sense
in going to all the ones. I mean it could
there's plenty of responses to all of them, but just
the press release. This is at eight point six pm
last night here in Houston, at Astros with a press release.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
It's a graphic. We have acquired.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
Infielder Nick Allen from the Atlanta Braves in exchange for
infielder slash outfielder Mauricio Dubon. And we go to the comments.
Lauren says, this is so rude. How could you robin
a little bit more demonstrative? What the f guys? Then
we got I hate this so stupid, Cancel it and

(25:35):
delete this right now. You traded a two time Gold
Glove winner and truly one of the most versatile utility
guys around for a guy with a lifetime batting average
of two thirteen, make it make sense. Michael just tweeted
a picture of Orbit downtrodden with his hat off, looking
down at the ground.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
That's sad. I mean, I get it. You don't like
it because Dubon was this too? You that too.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
They didn't trade Jordan Alvarez last night, and I think
some people were acting like they did.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
Yeah, and it is also fair to note they didn't
get better. No, this trade does not make the baseball
product better. And if someone is going to try to
argue otherwise, I'd be very surprised. But that was not
the goal of this deal, which is again hard to stomach.
But pointing where on the roster they are, and this
is just a day after they made the decision to

(26:29):
a dfa Ramona Reus so they could get down to
the forty man limit. They had two of arguably the
four or five best utility players in baseball that could
play all over the place, and now they have neither
one of them. Both of them were set to make
a lot more money than Nick Allen is set to make.
He heads in a year one of arbitration, he'll be
in the million and change range, I think is one

(26:50):
point three. We'll see. You just never know, but yes,
it should be somewhere in there. Mauricio's Dubon is set
to make three to four times that much five million
ish range. This would be a little bit lower than that,
and also Dubond's in the final year of club control.
Nick Allen was a finalist for the Gold Glove this
past year. He played most of the games for the
Braves at shortstop, all of his games at shortstop, and

(27:12):
he is an elite fielder. He's played a tiny bit
of second base and even less bit of third base,
and no outfield, so he's obviously not quite the utility Glove.
Obviously that Dubond not only can play those positions, but
he's awesome at it, as the Gold Glove twice would indicate.

(27:32):
So they did not get better. You were selling Nick
Allen in any way offensively. I don't really want to
get into it. I'll just go to what I posted
a couple of things on this because the first thing
I posted made a lot of people wonder exactly what
this deal was all about, all evidence by the things
that you just mentioned. I quote tweeted the press release
from the Braves and said, as soon as I looked

(27:52):
over Nick Allen's numbers, I thought, hmm, it looks like
he's the worst offensive player in baseball. In fact, is
five thirty six OPS since twenty twenty two, is the
lowest among all major leaguers. In twenty twenty five, Allen
was an NL Goal Globe finalist. He's played all but
thirty of his two and eighty one games there, So yes,
in fact, Maricio Dubon is a below average offensive player.

(28:15):
He's less than one hundred OPS player for his career,
and for all his time with Houston. He's gotten a
little bit less successful offensively each of the last three
years to where his OPS was in the you know,
the six hundreds last year, six forty four. And I
could still sit here and say he's a significantly better
offensive player than Nick Allen. That's been born out over
his four years in the majors. He was an A's

(28:36):
player for several years. They moved him last year to Atlanta.
Atlanta was an awful team last year, so it must
not have met a whole lot to them that they
had an awful offensive player playing shortstop one hundred and
thirty six times, because he wasn't keeping them from winning.
Their good players were keeping them from winning. And the
same thing will would be true here. He may or
may not make the twenty six man roster, he may
not be a part of things moving forward. But the

(28:58):
bottom line is this. It's hard to get this point,
and you don't have to accept it. This is a
decision made by the team in putting this in place.
We've been talking about this for several years now. There's
no salary cap in baseball, but teams can choose to
operate any way they choose they want, and he has
apparently chosen yet again maybe smartly, for how much money

(29:20):
there actually is to spend. I don't want to I
don't want to be in this CBT. Hell, I don't
want to be a taxpayer. I don't want to be
at that level. I don't want to move up into
the next level to sign Ooh so this should be
needs to be, and reserve judgment until it is. If
this cost cutting move doesn't result in spending this money
that they saved, they can't put it in their pocket.

(29:41):
They don't intend to put it in their pocket. They
intend to spend it on players that can help them
win a lot more than the player they moved. Just
got a text totally tongue in cheek.

Speaker 3 (29:51):
Has to be Okay, damn, just realize they're gonna sign
freaking Paul schemes.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
Now it all makes sense. Gotta have that five million
bucks so you can go get Skiens. Absolutely. I mean
you should make the call, don't you think, Hey, this
is a Dana. I was just wondering if we could
maybe get Paul from you. Well, the worst they can
say is no. They've already said no many times, many
times publicly, privately. I don't think they'll ever win with
him because of the way they operate. But there are

(30:17):
actually free agents out there. There are actually pitchers that
you could trade for that will be under less of
a financial burden to your owner who has the money
if they are able to trade for him. But again,
this also it gets us back to the same conversation, well,
why won't this owner spend money? Is this owner's cheap
They're operating in a way that will prevent them from winning.
I hope you enjoyed the Golden era. I still have

(30:40):
a hard time with the word cheap. When the astros
are in the top ten and spending they are obviously though,
making a move based on their personal financial beliefs about
how much they should spend, and other teams in the
top ten don't do that as often. They just keep
spending and keep spending and keep spending, and oftentimes they
don't win either. If you look at out at equ

(31:01):
one equals the other, it's not always the case, but
that is in fact one of the many many. This
is going to be an extremely busy offseason I think
for the Astros, and this move, along with Fromberg declining
his qualifying offer and becoming a free agent, the tendering
of contracts to their arbitration eligible players. The deadline on
that is tomorrow, and then we're just to start seeing

(31:21):
more signings around baseball and probably more trades. There are
still teams looking to move a lot of talented players
because they want to spend even less money. Busy off
season ahead. If you asked me, this one took the cake.
As we go to break.

Speaker 3 (31:36):
Hold on miss why fun this keep happening to me?
Oh yeah, Brandon says, yeah, we're not making the playoffs again.
If Dubon was having a humongous impact on the upcoming
season in any way, you're right, you weren't making the playoffs.
He's a utility guy, like by definition, he doesn't even
play that much. I think, after like a decade of

(32:01):
being successful, Astros fans would be smarter than this, at
least the ones that I was reading tweets from some
of the others must be. Nick Cassario just did something
that's gonna make you mad. And I'm gonna tell you
when we come back. It is the A team sports.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
He didn't die. No, I'm talking about Auzzie.

Speaker 3 (32:21):
I know, Okay, I will read aloud much like you
did in the first segment. The Twitter timeline revealed the following.
A few minutes ago two forty one pm at Sam
Warren Underscore three, he of the Chronicle. Of course, the

(32:42):
Texans have waived running back Damian Pierce. The team announced.
That's just who I saw it from first. And there's
a lot of people that are probably putting this out there.
Damian Pierce was not playing. Damian Pierce was not probably
going to play. And maybe this is all even more
interesting in light of the back and forth between Ian

(33:03):
Rappaport and Joe Mixon earlier. But I'm assuming, and I
asked wex this during the break. You did try to
trade him, right, Nick?

Speaker 1 (33:13):
Yeah, I don't think there's any doubt, but you got
to consider who he is. He's a reserve who doesn't
play for you, and you're trying to move him, Well,
what are you going to get for him? He's a
former fourth round pick who's fifth on your depth chart,
fourth on your depth chart. There's a reason why. I'm
sure he wasn't moved, and we talked about it at
the time. You know, Christian Harris was kind of similar.
He had some promise, certainly early in both of their careers.
They had a ton of promise. Both have made a

(33:34):
ton of plays early in their career and slowly others
have passed them on the depth chart. Christian Harris is
healthy this year. I know he just missed a game
with a shin injury, but he played special teams for
the Texans.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
He doesn't get reps at linebacker anymore. I'm sure both
of them prior to the Harris injury, which just happened
to happen the week before the deadline occurred or the
game before the deadline occurred, is it worth trading a
little bit of depth for a conditional seventh round pick
or the two hundred thirty six pick in the draft. Maybe.
I mean, if your nick it probably is because he

(34:04):
likes using them so much, but it just never worked out,
and Damien's case, I don't I'm trying to remember exactly
when I thought this, so I can, you know, pinpoint
it to where I'm not just saying it today. But
I actually thought the Texans were going to do this
because I think this is a do right by the
player type of move. Damian Pierce is going to, I think,
sign with somebody very very soon, and you know a

(34:25):
team that's had some trouble at running back. It very
well could be a team that the Texans just saw,
either the Chargers or the Broncos. Actually the Broncos who
they just saw, and obviously JK. Dobbins is down the
Broncos who's had multiple injuries in the backfield with Hampton
not quite ready to come back yet and other injuries
there with Harris. So those are just some options, and
those are the same teams I thought Nick should have

(34:46):
been talking to about it. It just never really nothing
came of it. And maybe the teams were like, well,
I trade for him if we might be able to
add him in a couple of weeks, or a guy
on our practice squad is comparable, but he did a
lot of good things early in his NFL career, and
I'm sure somewhere in Cleveland, Deshaun Watson is breathing a
sigh of relief because this will prevent Damian Pierce from

(35:09):
passing him on the Texans all time rushing list. Pierces eighth,
Watson his seventh, three yards behind him.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
The day that Deshaun Watson starts worrying about any rushing
statistics as a Texan.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
You don't think he ran to the list of immediately
when he saw this deal, That's what I did.

Speaker 4 (35:27):
No.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
I think he ran to the bank to withdraw some
more of that guaranteed cash that Cleveland is paying him
on that massive contract that's probably the worst in NFL history.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, I knew that. Again, the Texans all time lists
things like this are usually pretty unsatisfying to look at
because of what they have not done over their history.
They have thirteen players who have rushed for one thousand
yards or more. Two of them are quarterbacks Deshaun and
Dave and the most recent addition to the thousand yard
rushing club and Texans history is none other than Joe Mixon.

(36:00):
Played his last game as a Texan already. Yeah, the
three year deal the Texans signed him to. Well, before
we get there, just we'll run through the list. The
Texans made that announcement around two forty one when you
started seeing the news. There were four roster or four
other players involved in their moves today. Damon Arnette who
was signed to the active roster recently but then waived.
He's now resigned to the practice squad. They have signed

(36:22):
from the practice squad to the active roster as Johnnie Carter,
the former North Shore secondary player. He played a very
large role in the Texans special teams a week ago
when he met his NFL debut and now he's on
the active roster. Continued contributing on special teams. Jalen Mills
and Jackson wood were elevated to the active roster for tonight.
Jamal Hill is out. He is a linebacker who plays

(36:44):
special teams. I would assume that's why Woodward was made
active for tonight's game. Again elevated, not active. Elevated to
the roster and Mills will play because they are limited
with what they have at safety because of the recent
injury to m J. Stewart, and they continued absence of
Jalen Petrie and all that went along with Damian Pierce
being waived. But the Joe Mixon acquisition we all thought

(37:09):
was great. You got him for next to nothing, a
seventh round pick. You reworked his contract immediately into a
three year deal. He played year one splendidly. He hasn't
played it all here in year two, and most likely
is they will take the two million dollar dead cap
hit in twenty twenty six and he won't be a
part of the team. So essentially you restructured his new

(37:30):
deal when he got here for three years and twenty
five million, and he'll end up playing one year at
about sixteen in change. Not great. It just I would
have liked Saquon Barkley, but you just it. Probably it
was supposed to be. He would have played two years
for roughly eight and a half nine million each, and
he could have still been let go after this year

(37:51):
even playing this year.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
If he had played this year, I do wonder how
many wins that would have.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
Five be awesome, We will continue five wins like they have,
or five more wins than they'd be undefeated. Yeah, you
choose somewhere in between.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
I'm guessing. We'll continue to discuss all things Texans. In fact,
we'll hear Davis Mills and who he needs to find
in the offense tonight when we come back Stalks seven
to ninety and Space City Home Network on a Thursday
edition of the program, a game day edition of the program.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
Are we gonna get a Houston one to two? That's
what I want.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
I want a dominant win over the Cavs last night,
and then I'll take whatever I can get out of
the Texans as long.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
As they win. I don't think they're gonna dominate. Not
a lot of faith in those that make predictions. You'll
hear ours in the final segment and they'll drop into two.
Tomorrow's Stone Colt Locks seven to fifteen to night over
at the old building next to the Dome. Texan's not
getting a lot of love. Most think the Josh Allen
led seven and three Buffalo Bills are the better team.

(38:56):
They might have thought that regardless of the quarterback matchup,
but they definitely think it in part because of the
quarterback matchup. It's great that Davis Mills, considering what could
have been, the Texans could easily be three and seven,
very easily be three and seven heading into this game.
They were down nineteen points in the fourth quarter to
a team ahead of them in the playoffs standings, and
they were struggling two score points against the Titans, to

(39:19):
the tune of they walked into the halftime locker room
with none of them. But they managed to win both
of those games, and instead of being three and seven
or four and six, they are five and five. And
there are plenty of pathways to the postseason. Many of
them will include a victory tonight, very few of them
will not. If the Texans are in the postseason without
a win tonight, that would be rather surprising. It almost

(39:41):
means they would have to win every game the rest
of the way. That means beating the Chiefs, beating the Chargers,
beating the Colts twice, and winning the games against the
Raiders and Cardinals. I can't even guarantee you that that
would put them in the playoffs at eleven and six,
but I think it would. But they're not a team
that we should be asking to do that. They have
won half of their games, all their games, they won
half of their games. I'm telling you they need to

(40:02):
win all of them. If they don't win tonight. I
think there are a couple of things that could play
their way, and we'll start with that. They have been
doing this already, just find a way to continue this. Hey, Davis,
see that guy over there for you and right here
for me. He wears number twelve in red. It's battle
red night for the Texans. They'll be wearing an awesome

(40:23):
shiny red helmet and red from head to toe. Find him, brother, Hey, Nico,
it's Davis. Catch this. Don't you think that would be
a good idea? Yes, I think he does too. Davis
Mills agrees.

Speaker 9 (40:37):
I mean, Nico's a great player. Anytime you can get
him the ball, it makes it hard on opposing opposing
teams their defenses, Especially when you're getting a guy like
that the ball and it's really affecting the game, they
have to find a way to stop it and it
ends up opening up other people on the field. So,
I mean, I'm not saying we're really like forcing them

(40:59):
the ball, but there's plays when we're trying to get
one of our best playmakers, if not our best playmaker
on offense the ball out in space. He's going to
make a big time play with it and defenses have
to account for that, so it helps the team out
a lot.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
I think it's pretty obvious that he is not and
they are not forcing him the ball, but the other
team knows when he is going to get the ball
and they still can't stop him. That's a number one
wide receiver third and sixteen. I told you what they're
at DC. The Titans DC had to say about it
the other day. They knew where the ball was going,
they knew what defense they wanted to play to help
prevent that, and they obviously had to defend other things.

(41:34):
You can't just commit everybody to Nico on third and
sixteen and leave the openings for other players to catch
a five yard pass and turn it into a twenty
yard game. It's not like the Texans still have Duke
Johnson or anything, but you know what I mean, And
he made the play. Both sides they got the protection necessary.
Davis Mills threw a rope and Nico Collins went up there,
grabbed the ball, got his toes down, and they moved

(41:55):
the chains.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
You think that tonight's the night where he throws said
rope to Nico Collins for a touchdown and thereby avoids
any sort of potential, lackluster and frustrating for all of
us non results in the red zone.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
Well, it's what they did before their touchdown. And I
wish I wasn't saying their touchdown, but they only had one.
They only had one touchdown last week and their victory
over the Tennessee Titans. But that's exactly what they did
to get it. They threw it to Eco Collins. They
weren't right up on the one yard line, where they
have a tendency to not call particularly good plays. They
had a tiny bit of space, they were on the

(42:32):
three yard line. They were on the one yard line
before they lost two yards when they ran it up
the middle on first and goal from the one, and
then they threw it to their best player and he
was wide open and he made a nice catch and
they put six points on the board. I know it's
I'm leaning towards saying, is this so difficult that right there?

(42:53):
I get it. Another team out there, they know what
you want to do. You know what, There's more to
it than I'm making it sound. And I just would
throw it more often. They're not a good running team.
You should just cease with the running up the middle.
If you want to sneak up the middle with Davis
Mills go ahead, I probably would not advise any other
running play that calls for the running back to get

(43:15):
the ball, put in his belly three to five yards
away from the goal line, and try to worm his
way through all five of his linemen who have not
given him any push. They never have even with tonight's
new alignment, and I think we'll have a new alignment
not expecting them to push the Bills into the end
zone on first or second or third and goal from
the one call something else. There's plenty of plays that

(43:36):
can work. They absolutely have to do that. This is
a game you lose if you fail in the red zone.
If the Texans are kicking field goals from inside the
thirty five yard line multiple times tonight and not scoring
touchdowns inside the red zone or in goal to goal situations,
they're going to lose.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
I think the most interesting part of this game tonight
is that, in light of the fact, and I think
rightfully so, there's just not a lot of expectation from
this offense, even with Nico Collins, even with you know,
Dalton Schultz has been productive during this run that David
Smills has been the starting quarterback or has played the
majority of the snaps. In the case of that Denver game,

(44:15):
I just if the Texans defense does what I think
they will.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
I mean, I don't you got a number like you
could give me? The Texans will win if they allow
the Bills to score this many points or viewer, how
low is that number? Well, see the funny Bills score question.
Are you guaranteeing a Texans victory? I am If the
Bills scores seventeen, are you guaranteeing a Texans or Because
that's the problem.

Speaker 3 (44:41):
The answer to that question is directly proportionate to what
can you squeeze out of this rock by way of water?

Speaker 1 (44:50):
That will be the Texans. Whatever. The three times this
year the Texans have averaged six or more yards per
play on offense, one of those was Davis Mills two starts.
Last game, they averaged four point six, which is somewhere
a little on the lower end. They had four hundred
yards against Jacksonville, they had three hundred yards against Tennessee.
There's nothing that's eye popping about what they have or

(45:13):
haven't done in the two starts that he's had versus
the rest of the season other than what they did
in the red zone, other than what they did with
their goal to go situations. That obviously applies to the
Jacksonville game. They were four or five in the red
zone against Jacksonville. That means they scored those touchdowns. That's
how many times they put six on the board, and

(45:33):
they were two for three in their goal to go situations.
This is crazy. If you throw out the Baltimore game,
just that one game, the Texans have scored a touchdown
in their goal to go situations only four times all year,
and two of them happened in the Jacksonville game. They've
only done it in two other instances the whole rest
of the year.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
Are there people that really think Davis Mills is a
better option at quarterback than CJ Stroud?

Speaker 1 (45:57):
Definitely not people that matter. And I want to say
no in general, but no, probably there are a few.
I mean, you look at all you see is you're
blinded by what you immediately see. And CJ's obviously not
having what I would call a good year. He's not
having a down year. He hasn't regressed even more. I
guess if you want to call last year a regression,
one of our favorite words. But he's about the same
last year to this year. We know why Davis is

(46:18):
playing behind a comparable line. You've had a tiny sample size.
That means you've only got two defenses to look at.
You got the Jacksonville defense and the Titans defense. Obviously
we could dissect the Broncos defense, but I think that's
a little tougher and maybe a little unfair to the
backup because he's thrown into it and you saw what happen.
He's had one really awful performance. It was against the Broncos.

(46:40):
They didn't score any touchdowns. They did actually score points,
but it also looked like they were going to score
more points if CJ. Stroud had stayed out there the
rest of the game. But a two games sample size,
how can there possibly be people that want this moving forward?
Think this moving forward? Don't you think there's a reason
he's been in the league for five years and not
been a starting caliber quarterback. I know he started in

(47:02):
years one and two, but he wasn't a starting caliber quarterback.
He's just the best quarterback on this roster on a
team that had no intentions of winning.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
Well, he won the most important game since January of
two thousand and five.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
Hey Davis, this is a great win today, a huge
upset over Buffalo. CJ could be back next week. Do
you ever think about the fact that you engineered the
drive that won the game that got you benched. It's
exactly what happened. It's exactly what if you don't win
that game. I mean, he probably he probably would have
started much earlier, according to many people like yourself, because
they would have drafted Bryce Young and he would have

(47:35):
been benched by now right because he's awful easily, especially
behind this one coming off a Player of the Week
award in the NFC. What if Bryce Young had to
play behind this line. On top of just being bad
at quarterback, his line has definitely not been among the
league's best either. They've made a lot of changes and
I think they've made a lot of mistakes there too,
But no, he hasn't played particularly well. Last week was
definitely outside the box. The Bucks game for CJ and

(47:58):
his rookie season still does kind of stand out of
all above all of his other games. His only five
touchdown game, that miracle comeback, the four hundred plus yards,
that's what Bryce Young now has He now has one
of those games. It took him three years to get there.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
Speaking of quarterbacks and the aforementioned Colts, since that's the
team that Davis Mills wills. Interesting news Daniel Jones, according
to our guy Ian Rappaport.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
The Indianapolis Colts when they released.

Speaker 3 (48:23):
It, he's all over this today. Well, I didn't see them,
don't know it's it's out.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
I don't know. He just found out. He called someone.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
Quarterback Daniel Jones was limited with a calf injury after
having no injury status yesterday.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
Something to watch.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
And then he quote tweets his own tweet of that
a few minutes later and says, sounds like the Colts
are being cautious. Still worth keeping an eye on. Look,
we got players in the NBA right now that are
being overly benched in some cases I think just out
of caution or precaution, because they don't want the dreaded

(49:01):
calf whatever to turn into the much more dreaded. Oh
he ripped his achilles, he's out because let me tell
you this, if he does that for the Colts, this
little magic mystery tour they're on right now, poof bye bye.
I don't care how many touchdowns Jonathan Taylor runs for
It is not going to be the same YEP.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
As announced by the Indianapolis Colts several minutes before. Ian
made everybody aware it because he has a bigger following.
I think he thinks he was in fact placed on
the injured list today practice report injured list, he had
a limited practice. He has a calf injury. We'll keep
an eye on it. He's got a calf. We'll see
what happens on Sunday when they take apart. Kansas City

(49:40):
Chiefs Talk seven ninety. It's Space City Home Network.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
It's the Rockets with ten wins going into a humongous
matchup against the Denver Nuggets coming in here on Friday
night NBA Cup Action. And that's after the Rockets took
care of business in Cleveland night. Hey, let the Cavs
make it interesting more than they should have in the

(50:06):
second half, specifically the third quarter into the fourth quarter,
I guess. And then they again, Alprinchingoon put the reigning
defensive player of the year on absolute skates and he
did it all night.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
Yeah, that was a lot of the discussion. There's two
things from that game we'll get to and then we'll
get to hearing from Ime Udoka, who made an appearance
his weekly appearance on The Mat Tommy Show With Ross,
we'll talk about the fourth quarter beast performance from his
teammate Aaron Holliday, the play that probably was going to
make the rounds everywhere regardless, but the play that he
made by sticking his face in the middle of it.

(50:43):
Jared Allen went high up over the rim and threw
it into the rim, a non dunk but sometimes gets
portrayed as a dunk. Had everybody in the arena off
their feet. I'm sure everybody on both sidelines were off
their feet. But he also smashed his hand into Alpi's
face on the way to the basket, and it was
correctly called an offensive foul. So and O basket. Nothing there.

(51:04):
What I want to say is I wish people wanted
this to happen more often. And what I'm talking about
is this business decision nonsense. I don't want it. I
want a player to not care if he gets posterized
because he's trying to do something for his team. He's
trying to help his team, he's trying to make a play.
He's playing basketball. That's all alpooryn did guy's gonna go

(51:29):
dunk it. I'm gonna challenge him. I'm gonna try to
block the shot. I'm gonna try to get in his way.
I'm gonna commit a foul. Or you could just slide
out of the way and head back down court and
have two more points on the board. It's okay to
get posterized. It happens all the time. It shouldn't be
a negative. You shouldn't care that the Sports Center highlight
or the highlights on the socials, Oh, look at this player.

(51:50):
They're isolating it, they're slowing it down, they're showing it
in whoa, he just caught a body. You might actually
make a play every once in a while. I loved
it that they just didn't say, have at it. We'll
move out of the way. I'll make a business decision.
You can have your dunk because I'm not getting posterized.

Speaker 3 (52:07):
You know what's interesting about that very way of thinking,
and I do think players take that into account.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Now.

Speaker 3 (52:12):
They may not, they don't have enough time, by the way,
to have this whole thought process go through their heads.
But I guarantee you there are a number, probably more
than they would like to admit of NBA players that
have seen other guys be a quote victim on social media,
specifically because as you said back in the day, oh

(52:35):
Man MJ dunked on this guy. That's embarrassing. It's all
over Sports Center.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
Like, I'm pretty sure Jason Terry is actually on an
NBA bench right now as an assistant coach. Uh huh.
But I also know that he's dead because Lebron killed
him when he dunked over him.

Speaker 3 (52:48):
Who is the guy that Blake Griffin put they put
the coffin on him. I don't even remember his name.
He is a role player that I don't think.

Speaker 1 (52:53):
I think DeAndre Jordan has one two same thing I
think actually was DeAndre Jordan. It wasn't Blake Griffin.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
I'm just so used to Blake being the guy on
that team where both of them dunked on people religiously.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
Maybe they will talk about it. Friday Night's game is
a prime game. He is part of that studio. We'll
get into that a little bit more. Wanted to get
you to he may Udoka's comments. His conversation in full
can be found at Sports Talk seven ninety dot com
or via the iHeartRadio app on Sports Talk seven ninety
was on The Matt Thomas Show with Ross. Full conversation there,

(53:24):
part of the conversation here his first thoughts about the
performance they got from Aaron Holiday down the stretch against
the Calves.

Speaker 4 (53:31):
He was great. He came in and made timely shots.

Speaker 10 (53:34):
You know, we have to foul trouble across the board
a little bit with Jabari and some guys, and so
we needed some other guys to come in and you know,
defend Hunter, defend Mitchell.

Speaker 4 (53:42):
And you know, he did what he could there.

Speaker 10 (53:44):
But on the offensive end, Al Brandon, Kevin, A're gonna
draw that attention. He obviously knocked down timely shots, but
got a lot of deflections, hands on the ball, get
on transition, made some playoffs and floaters as well.

Speaker 11 (53:54):
You may you were a role player in the NBA,
so you obviously empathize the guys that are on that
second tier group. What do you you used as your
experiences to talk to guys that Aaron's not gonna be
called every single night, but make the most of his
opportunity is given to him.

Speaker 4 (54:07):
You have to be professional, which he is. He's been
there from day one.

Speaker 10 (54:10):
Be ready for every opportunity, and sometimes it's going to
be two minutes, three minutes here you have.

Speaker 4 (54:14):
To come in and perform.

Speaker 10 (54:15):
And when you come in the game in those situations,
your job is to increase the lead and get an
uptick and effort and all the intensity and all those things.
And I think it's a tough thing to do, but
it's an admirable thing the way Aaron goes about it.
Jay Shan, those guys ready to play aren't always called.
I have to stay prepared, and you see the work
they put him behind the scenes, and so for us,

(54:36):
it's no secret, that no surprise that they're going to
make shots and play at a high level and they
get their opportunity.

Speaker 11 (54:41):
Albrn sch Goon continues to impress, even going after and
scoring on the defensive player of the Year down the
stretch in the last game, where even since you've been here,
what have you seen from him as far as growth
in his game?

Speaker 10 (54:56):
That's as boys understanding it's a long game. If he
has some ups and downs, he's gonna still have his
opportunities to make plays on you know, whether scoring the
ball or facilitating for him.

Speaker 4 (55:04):
I don't think he looks at anybody as the defensive.

Speaker 10 (55:06):
Player year or anything like that, and neither do we.
We feel he has an advantage every night on whoever,
and whether it's mobile one night or who be it.
You know he's gonna attack the same way, be aggressive,
and he's confident in his ability to score, make the
right play on anybody.

Speaker 11 (55:19):
Obviously, one of the nicknames he's gotten has been baby Joker.

Speaker 1 (55:22):
What what do you think?

Speaker 11 (55:23):
I mean, obviously, Nikola Jokic is just a different animal.
But when you you hear those comparisons, what do you
think about the similarities and differences of their games.

Speaker 10 (55:32):
Well, I mean there's the fact that they both you know,
are flirting with triple doubles every night.

Speaker 4 (55:35):
Jokis has had a ton help.

Speaker 10 (55:37):
He's right around there the passing ability and.

Speaker 4 (55:39):
It's just not a typical back to the basket center.

Speaker 10 (55:42):
They both can score in the post, but they can
handle on the perimeter, they can be we can run
pick and rolls for them.

Speaker 4 (55:48):
They got isolations on the wing.

Speaker 10 (55:49):
I would say the difference is at this point Jokic
is just more seasoned and he understands and makes a
simple play. He'll get caught up every now and then,
but you know, he's doing and ambitious and learning on
the fly as well. And for him that his athleticism
a little higher than Yokitches and so they have a
ton of similarities, and that's obviously a great name to
be compared to.

Speaker 4 (56:07):
But I'll be trying to carve out.

Speaker 10 (56:09):
His own niche and he looks up to him and
the things he does and season areas he can be.

Speaker 4 (56:13):
Successful as well.

Speaker 11 (56:14):
I know he's been floating with triple doubles a lot
so far this year. Does he ever beg to stay
on the florida get that one final assist or does
he get like one shot in one channeling to get
it done?

Speaker 10 (56:22):
Of course they all beg the scene and to me,
if you get in the natural flow of the game, great,
it's not We're not going to leave you in up
thirty and risk injury or anything like that. And so
you know it'll happen that it continues. He's had him
in European Competition's flair flirter when I'm like you said
here and so you know last year he had an
injury having not men you know, he's won away and
rolled his ankles out for a few games. So less

(56:44):
and learned will never do that again. But guys understand that,
especially a big, you got to play with the game.
You mess around with it, things happen. So he'll have
a chance to get a ton and he will throughout
his career.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
I was a man. I embrace the role.

Speaker 11 (56:56):
He's been your starting point guard and it's not an
exclusively ball handled but he's been in that lineup and
then in that back cord, and he moved him all
over the spots last year because of injuries or whatnot.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
I know, turnovers are always a thing.

Speaker 11 (57:07):
That's not his exclusive responsibility to make sure the low
turnovers aren't coming. Players are gonna come into play, obviously,
But where do you see him now as compared to
start of the season in terms of just embracing the
role of I'm in that back court every single time
and I'm the primary ball handler.

Speaker 10 (57:20):
It's just an understanding of, you know, one to be
an attack mode, looking to score, when to set guys
up and look to get us into sets, and so
at times, you know, we love him when he grabs
the rebounds and pushes at the pace he does, he's
going to either get to the basket or find guys.
But in the half court is who needs to shot?
Who are we trying to get a mismatch against, cross
match against? And then understanding that part of it. And
so it's only eleven games in and he's twelve games in.

(57:43):
He's improving rapidly at that, but stiffer for him. I mean,
he had in his hands a ton throughout his career
and ote last two years did a bunch of different
stuff off ball, and now we're asking him to get
back to facilitating that as well as being aggressive the score.
So it's a balancing act that he's approving on game
by game.

Speaker 11 (57:59):
And for you run a thought or two about this
Denver team. It's a group play game tomorrow night. Look,
we had a great time in Vegas last year and
I think those guys wanted to have an opportunity to
do that again and tomorrow night will be a huge
portion of how this group played.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
Tournament turns out.

Speaker 10 (58:11):
Yes, it's added in tene for sure. You know, the
energy is different, like you mentioned, and I think the
fact that we got there last year and had a
really tight game against Okay, see that we didn't play
our best and if we did, we were you know,
had a good fifteen point lead probably if we made
some shots because we defended at such a high level.
We want to get back and give ourselves a chance
again and be on that stage. And so, you know,

(58:31):
if not only the fact that we're neck and neck
in the standings already, just you know, two really competitive
teams that have gout a good start the tournament adds
to it. And anytime you play a team like Denver,
some of the top of the West, you want to
have a great game.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
And there you have it. They have had a great
game against some They've had really good games against the
best teams, and again San Antonio's record obviously puts some
of that group saying thing for ok see Detroit last
night's opponent and tomorrow night's opponent. There's nothing wrong with
the way the Rockets have played, big picture in any
of those games. They obviously lost the first two and
then lost the game up to San Antonio as well.
That's the one that probably stings the most because there

(59:06):
were things that they could have kept them much much closer.
They obviously went double overtime with OKC last minute lost
to the Pistons. They've beaten the Calves now and I
like their chances to slow Denver down tomorrow night and
do the things that they continue to do. I know
the NBA Cup is always secondary to most people. I
don't know if it truly is to the players and
coaches that are involved in it. There's a little bit

(59:28):
of an incentive, but in how the group play has begun.
They're halfway through. All five teams have one win and
one loss. Detroit ourxcuity. Denver is first in point differential
at twenty three plus twenty three. The Rockets are second. Well,
if the Rockets beat Denver, obviously, if they beat Denver
and Golden State next week, they're going to win the

(59:49):
pool and they'll be three to one and win the
pool and advance just like last year. They're beating Golden
State next week, and I can't wait. I am here
for that. Well, I have to wait and see who
Golden State will put on the court that night. They've
been rolling through sitting people and resting people and injured
people for quite some time. No, they've played the most
games in the NBA so far. We'll cry for them

(01:00:10):
right around never. Okay, what what's up?

Speaker 4 (01:00:17):
Bill?

Speaker 3 (01:00:19):
When you and Robin are texting with each other and
you're not fighting as per usual.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
Right, yes, like I'm trying to even I'll look while
you're talking. Have I ever had a Twitter like a
text fight with her? I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
Darre tell you about the time I fought with my
future wife on Twitter.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
I never would be the case. I thought you did
other things with her on social media, like what would well.

Speaker 3 (01:00:45):
Yeah, that's I put that comment on her Instagram post,
just to start at the pot.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
Okay, So yeah, Robin, I like you don't know me.
We are texting each other hypothetically boring things. What's for dinner? Exactly?
Are you back in town? One sentence? Just nothing's? What's
that like? To live so stress free in your relationship?
That's awesome. I love it. I bet it is. I
think she likes it too. I'm really happy for you both.

(01:01:10):
I'm glad, genuinely. I'm happy for anybody who lives a
stress free domestic life. Well I don't even those that
have some stress. I'm happy for you you've still found someone.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
Like thirty minutes or so before the show started, she
had sent me a text about something and I you
saw me before the show?

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
What was I doing before the show? Hard?

Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
Preparing for today's four hours of conversation. What was I
doing immediately before the show started? Go ahead, tell everybody
I was in a group. Yes, Gordy had something on
his phone.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
Yeah, I wasn't. I had to throw a program under
the bus while we're at it. He was showing me
you were watching a video that had everybody watching in stitches. Yeah,
we were just it was just two material. I'm sure
we don't it yet, right, and we won't just totally
run of the mill office stuff. But it wasn't my phone.
It was Gordy's phone.

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
My phone was sitting probably not even five feet away
from me on the counter, the desk or whatever, and I.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Didn't see her texts.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
So then there's like four or five more texts, right,
and I finally see them in the middle of our
second of our first segment of the show today, when
she finally sends another text that says, well, I figured
that would be your response. Now listen, I get it.
You're you know, you're trying to tell me something. I
don't see it usually as fast as I because I'm

(01:02:30):
always on my phone.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
So if you here's a little tip.

Speaker 3 (01:02:33):
If you text me if you've gotten my number and
you text me and I don't like immediately respond, I
either A don't like you or B I'm trapped under
a heavy object.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
There's really no point in between.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
But like, if I don't respond to you and then
you send that, what do you think my response is
going to be?

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Not anybody's response?

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):
My response now, I'm not asking like if Robin sent
you a text like.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
That, because she never would. It'll be fiery, right, just
like what any red blooded American male would do. So
I of course took the exact wrong approach, and I
get back you know how my job is busy, bah
blah blah. I'm like, okay, so let me get this straight.
If you text me something and I don't respond in time,

(01:03:18):
I'm gonna get you know. But if I tell you
something and I don't get, well, I've just got to
deal with that because you're busy. Sounds right.

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
I got several paragraphs after that, and then the last one,
which I read to you during the break, that was
the kapper what she's gonna do when I get home tonight.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
It's physical assault, all right, And I sent her a picture.
You were indicating your feelings about that, very strong about
what you describe that. I'll for the people that obviously
want more intimate details about my side of things in
my relationship, I'll share with you the most recent exchange

(01:03:57):
from last night. The missus had a day work trip,
flew out of town, did her work, flew back into town,
and it begins last night at seven forty five? Can
we tell the people where she was or no? She
was in the valley, the Deep Valley, the state of
Texas barely. She texted me from the airport, landed and

(01:04:19):
taxing to the gate. I responded, beautiful, what can I
whip you up for dinner? She responded, nothing right? Now,
what did you guys have? I responded, I made a
pizza period, Ryan made a pizza period and she gave
me a thumbs up emoji. That's it. Then I waited
for her arrival at the house. And today, how's that gone?

(01:04:39):
Any texts that I'm telling you? It's the last corresponded.
I mean, we spoke to each other this morning. I
helped get her off to work and how was that?

Speaker 3 (01:04:46):
What did that include getting her off to work? What
does that include kissing her goodbye? WHU you all walk
out to the car with her?

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
And if need be carry one of the items she's
carrying to the car. So nice, and then get a
kiss goodbye before she rolls out of the driveway.

Speaker 3 (01:04:59):
No passive aggressive messages or comments, or.

Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
Are you home for dinner tonight? She'll sometimes ask, no
poking of the bear? Nothing? Huh? Which one of us
is the bear? You are? Okay? I'm definitely the bear,
I know, until she is. Yeah, it's all good, so far,
so good. We're heading heading towards what should be a
fantastic weekend. I can't wait. What a just what an uneventful, mundane,

(01:05:26):
peaceful existence? Huh?

Speaker 6 (01:05:28):
Is that?

Speaker 12 (01:05:29):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
It's nice? How many texts do you think I'm gonna
get it to game tonight from this particular subject, from
this person or in general you know this person tonight?
A usual amount? I'll say five. That's you're hitting the over. Oh okay,
you're slamming the over on that number? Is she is

(01:05:51):
she catching? Is she got to go to sleep early? Nope?
I mean you're not gonna be home till eleven ish?
Who knows, Earl is? Maybe I won't even come home.
Maybe you're gonna tie one on. I don't know. Yeah,
maybe I just sleep in my truck. What if the
five plus texts from her are pleasant and welcoming, Well,
describe what those would be. What would those wait till

(01:06:13):
you get home tonight? There's a little much. There's dinner
waiting for you last night. You will lead at the
game because I worked the Rockets game. Yeah, I was
driving home and she was like, how close are you?
And I said, well, I've turned on to the it's
the road that gets to our street, so I'm very close.

(01:06:33):
And I told her that and she said, well, I
was just gonna wait until I dove back into the
studio to say hi to you. Very nice. That sounds great.
Yeah that was yesterday though, Oh this is today. Huh.
I better get back to her in time, right, she
might be asleep when you get home, Like, what's.

Speaker 3 (01:06:52):
The longest you can go without answering a text from
Robin before she fires off something that makes you want
to fly into a fit of rage.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
I mean, I don't know an fit or rage. It's
so different. I'm sure it's happened, but not in decades.

Speaker 3 (01:07:08):
There was one time I was at your house and
you got upset about something, but it wasn't anything she
was doing. It was just the everybody was at the
table and you didn't like how things were going.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
And I don't even remember what it was. It's like
what happens here, but it was like the kids were
much younger, and what you weren't yelling at the kids
you were You weren't even yelling. You were just raise
your voice about the situation. And I was like, Wow,
he's getting real bent out of shape about something. But
I was super single, so I didn't care. I probably
didn't care that much either, or you never it was

(01:07:38):
you've witnessed two marriages with me, and you've witnessed one. Well,
I didn't go to it. Thanks for inviting me.

Speaker 3 (01:07:44):
Wow, I thought we'd been friends longer than that. No,
you were married right before we met each other. I
do remember when Samantha was born.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
I probably won't have another one, just so you can
get invited a wedding. Maybe we'll renew our vals with
that help you. I don't feel like you're the renew
our vows type. Hey, Robin, are you busy this weekend?
Let's renew our valves this huge Yeah. He thinks you
will never say you would do it at the justice
of the peace, though, wouldn't you. It's to save time. Yeah, sure,

(01:08:14):
it's private event. All right, Well there's that segment. It's
sorry in the rundown, it says the domestic segment. We
will get to who the astros might be targeting with
all this saved money. You know that they're socking away.
Chandler Rome wrote an article about this, and others have
commented on it. Plus what is the real Joker saying
about the baby Joker in anticipation of this matchup on

(01:08:37):
Friday night, we'll discuss next. You know, judging from what
we've heard from Davis Mills over the course of the
last few weeks, especially in light of the comment he
made about he and his wife when they get into
an argument, I don't think that they exchange text messages
like the ones that I exchange with my wife. He's
going on on, Yeah, he's very much whatever kind of guy,

(01:08:59):
go with the Yeah, what if I was like that
too much? Rattles Hi, I'd probably live longer than I'm
going to. You'll you're gonna live plenty. Fine, Oh thanks.
My wife used to get mad at me. Sometimes she'd
ask me a question or want to argue a little bit,
and I wouldn't react. She's like, why are you not mad?
I was like, it is what it is. We'll figure
it out.

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
It's even better when Davis milts, yeah, it's it's really
it's something. Okay, real quick, before we get to some
of the potential targets of the astros. I wanted to
go inside the victorious locker room so close.

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
What I wanted to go inside the victorious secret dressing
room is what I thought you were gonna say.

Speaker 3 (01:09:41):
Something in your mind right now, Go ahead, keep going,
ease a little salty at three forty nine in the afternoon,
was like Friday.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
Sky rockets in flight. Okay, so let's go inside the
victorious Denver Nuggets locker room where the media brought up
and this timely, hey, hey, hey, hey, hang on a second,
give us a second. Pelicans won eighteen New Orleans last night.

(01:10:10):
Hold on, all on horses.

Speaker 3 (01:10:13):
Need to be whoa yeah man, or we could go
with the beep beep, grab the reins, easy, baby joker.
That would be I'll be and the real joker, Nicola Jokic,
he you know, had his latest dismantling of a team,
Nuggets coming into town Friday night. So somebody in the uh,
somebody in the locker room? Did they not dismantle them?

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
All I can do to say they didn't dismantle it?
Was it a two point game? What did he do?

Speaker 3 (01:10:42):
Jokish was very good. He dismantled their defense. See, we
can always come to a compromise. So they were asking
him about Shingoon and he was pretty quick to say
he's his own man.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
Essentially. I'll let him to describe it.

Speaker 13 (01:11:01):
I think he's that. I think people are connecting with him,
but I think we have to be a different title player.
He's he's an amazing player. You can see some similarities.
But I think I don't want people to see him
and tell me he's something like me. I think he's
a good enough player, that he's good enough player to.

Speaker 2 (01:11:25):
Have his own story.

Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
Is it cool to at least kind of see Is
it weird? Is it cool? Is it weird? They're going
to be teammates this year on the February fifteenth, Oh,
because they're they're gonna be the is it the world?
Is that will be representing the world?

Speaker 13 (01:11:44):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:11:44):
And there's I can't health is the only thing these
two guys are going to be NBA all stars this
year circumstances if.

Speaker 3 (01:11:52):
The morons that vote these things in sometimes don't get
it right with Shingoon, which is probably likely because.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
He's he was an All Star last year. Yeah, but
he's been significantly better so far this year.

Speaker 3 (01:12:06):
Yeah, but I mean Kevin Durant will probably take a
front court spot away from him as a starter.

Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
There's no such thing. Why there is no front court spot?

Speaker 14 (01:12:17):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
I forgot the advance changes? Do the forma name these things?

Speaker 3 (01:12:21):
Know that the United States of America is in the
world because somebody like you, this must be driving them crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
Oh it's a team USA versus the world. Wait a second, No,
the Ryder Cup got me used to this. Oh okay,
you were eased in, Yeah by the game of golf. Yes, okay,
you know. Different to sports have gone this route a
couple of times, but they've made a couple of tweaks
to it. It's positionless. Now from a voting standpoint, there
are going to be twelve or more representatives from the

(01:12:47):
US or the world, because if the voting doesn't make
it work right, they'll add the necessary player or players
to have it work right. So each team has at
least twelve. There could be. I take it back at
least eight players, because this is going to make up
three teams in a round ropin format, So it's there's
no way. I mean, just flat out he's going to

(01:13:08):
be an All Star. I don't think there's any way
around it. But to what he said, I wish everybody
would agree. I don't know if they will, because I'm
pretty sure on the national broadcast with five new people
in the studio and the broadcasters on the microphone specifically
for the game, and the sideline reporter, it's they're going
to one of those eight people will say it. Probably
four of those eight people will say it. I wish

(01:13:29):
none of them said it. I agree totally and completely.
It's not a I don't really think it's a slight.
I don't think it's an insult. I don't think it
should be taken negatively. But it's totally unnecessary. I wouldn't
want to be baby Jokic. Okay, great, I play like him,
But what are you also saying he's definitively better than
I'm which he is, or older or older or what

(01:13:51):
normally is a baby? What does a baby have? A pacifier?
What else? A rattle? How did the baby get made?
Who made him? The stork? No, the stork brings him,
doesn't make him. God, No, I'm doing what you do
to me. He has a yet who is as? Who
is his mother? The other one?

Speaker 4 (01:14:11):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:14:12):
See, I can do this too, isn't it fun? I
do this at the house all the time. Okay, his
fajah his daddy. Yeah, you don't want to be nicknamed
as telling everybody, well, he's your daddy.

Speaker 3 (01:14:24):
You know what's funny about this? You're talking about baby?
At what point does the nickname graduate? Because right now exactly,
you can go to a concert and go see the
new kids on the block or the Backstreet boys. Yeah,
they are not kids or boys anymore, and they haven't
been for like several decades.

Speaker 1 (01:14:40):
It's weird.

Speaker 3 (01:14:41):
There are Backstreet men and the new or the old
men on the live in the neighborhood.

Speaker 1 (01:14:47):
You probably have had somebody move in since you've been there, right, Yes,
even though they are adults. What did you and t
ever refer to them as the new kids on the block.

Speaker 3 (01:14:56):
No, no, we know that's reserved for Danny, Jordan, Good, Johnny,
Joey and Jonathan.

Speaker 1 (01:15:04):
You're awesome, Boom, get on my level.

Speaker 3 (01:15:07):
Shout out to Tracy Hughes, huge n KOTB fan. Yes,
when they seeing hanging to if it doesn't get any
better and we have an alternative, why can't we just
call him the Wizard?

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
Well? Yeah, and see, you don't think outside of Houston
people are into this yet, they don't really realize it.
He looks like a character from Potter and he plays
look at the behind the back pass to Steven Adams
the other night Wizard like many of them, will happen
this year.

Speaker 3 (01:15:32):
And the Rockets are definitely trying to facilitate this, Yes,
tweeting videos of him and say, look at the Wizard.

Speaker 1 (01:15:38):
Here is this wizardry. That's how there goes that wizard again.
Okay they didn't say that last That's how nicknames happened. Yeah,
you use them, so mix it in. How locked out
the game tomorrow night? I'll see what I can do.

Speaker 3 (01:15:50):
How long until Craig Ackerman because we know he's the
one that's gonna do this, Yeah, screams at the top
of his lungs.

Speaker 1 (01:15:56):
We're off to see the Wizard.

Speaker 3 (01:15:58):
It's coming, right, should be? Yes, I love Craig, I
love Matt too. There's no disparaging, you know, comments either
way here, But yeah, he has been a wizard.

Speaker 1 (01:16:07):
It's going to be awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:16:08):
I hope it's just a fantastic basketball game at Toyota
Center tomorrow night. We will get into the Texans game
tonight and the run game specifically, because as WEX said,
that's the formula for success. The eight Rockets or the
Texans have to run all over the Bills and we'll
tell you how they're going to do it four o'clock,

(01:16:29):
four o'clock hour underway here on Sports Talk seven to
ninety and Space City Home Network. It is the A team,
He's WEX, I'm a c We're taking it until six
o'clock tonight. No Rockets basketball. They will be back in
action tomorrow night as they will look to be winning
their sixth straight game if they can knock off the

(01:16:50):
I mean insanely talented, very well run, very well oiled
machine Denver Nuggets in NBA Cup action and again do
so to the tune of six straight wins. It hasn't
really mattered where the Rockets have played. They have been
getting it done. It hasn't even mattered what's happening or
what has happened in the game. Throughout they have been

(01:17:13):
getting it done in one way or another. Some might
say it's dominant, others might not. But the Rockets won
last night for the fifth straight time, and that's all
that they care about. We're gonna hear more from that.
Donovan Mitchell was insanely complimentary of both himself and the
Rockets defense all in one SoundBite. I will explain that.
You'll hear him talk about what the Rockets did to

(01:17:36):
effectively take him out of the game for a large
portion of the night, and then he went absolutely gangbusters
in the fourth quarter. But I still can't get it.
I mean, that's all well and good, because the best
player is always going to be targeted. I still can't
get over the fact that you know that Evan Mobley
to an extent, I think he made some comments early

(01:17:57):
on in his career that taking Jalen Green instead of
him the Rockets at number two in that draft, that
that was somehow a mistake. And I'm very much paraphrasing
just some of the comments he made sounds accurate though, yes,

(01:18:18):
and then Shing Goon was taken well after him in
that same draft, and I bet, I bet the Cavs
would do that one over.

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
Uh, that's pretty interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:18:28):
Defensive player of the Year or everything Shingoon brings to
the table for the Rockets right now.

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):
I mean, you totally change all the other moves that
they've made since then. They're not gonna be playing with
Jared Allen. There's a few other things they would have
done differently, but these that's it. That's an interesting thought
because not only well, first of all, it applies to
fifteen teams because shng Gun went in the back half
barely of the first round.

Speaker 3 (01:18:50):
You can't stop Rafelstone. You can only hope to contain him.

Speaker 1 (01:18:53):
But Mobley, as he does, seem like a build around
me kind of player. He might not be the best
player on your team. And it's fair to say Alpi
is also not that for the current Houston Rockets because
Kevin Durant is here. But I do think they are.
They would both be considered. This is a player, a
cornerstone player. He's part of our big three, big two.
If that's all you have. He's played very well, say,

(01:19:13):
there's no reason to knock him. He's just very, very different.
You don't get creativity from him like you get from
Alperah Alpern's gonna finish. I don't know what the numbers
will be this year. It's crazy, but I wanted to
say he'll finish in the top twelve, fifteen and assists
this year. And those numbers are up, and they would
have maybe gone up because of improvement anyway, but they've

(01:19:34):
definitely gone up because Fred's not there and because the
ball's in his hands more, because there's just different things
being asked of him, which he's up to it. He's capable,
he has improved his abilities. He's a better ball handler
than he's ever been, and it's a good thing. This
is part of what he's been working on his whole career,
because they absolutely need it if they were just thrown
into what we need you to be, and he's never
been working on it. It's all part of the ascension

(01:19:55):
of skills. What about his game hasn't gotten better? All
of it has. He's a better free throw shooter here
so far, He's a significantly better three point shooter and
hopefully more selective, and he has been so far. I'm
sure those numbers will end up going down. He did
not start the year hitting twos very well. That has
slowly started to turn again. He shot about fifty two
percent over his last five games. And his offensive rebounding

(01:20:19):
I have to actually look at that one in particular
to verify, but I'm sure it's significantly better than it's
been because we're obviously walking through these games, each of
us doing them every other game. And here's a six
offensive rebound night. He got the five offensive rebounds that
Adams didn't get. He wasn't doing that previously. And maybe
it is a little bit easier because now we're seeing
more games where he's on the floor with a second

(01:20:41):
big who's taking somewhat Well, we can't leave this guy.
We've got to lead. So maybe it has been but
just across the board, he's been awesome. And again I
still can't believe Evan Mobley was the defensive player of
the Year in the league. I know he plays great
defense and he is a good defender. That did surprise me.
You thought it should be Rudy Gobert. I mean, I'm
glad people are looking at more of the advanced numbers.

(01:21:03):
Same reason why Men Thompson is the first team All
Defensive player. You know, shooting percentage, you'll out when you're
the primary defender and things like that. There, deflection, There's
so many things to look at besides just watching the games.
He's a very good He's definitely one of the best,
but it really doesn't matter the players as strong as Durant, Shngon, Jokic,

(01:21:24):
Donovan Mitchell. Whatever you want to do might work for
a short period of time, it rarely even works for
a full game. Janice isn't gonna stop Alpi. He might
win a battle or two, and Mobiley's not gonna stop Shngoon.
He might win a you know, a possession or two.
Not many last night. Not many last night.

Speaker 3 (01:21:42):
I mean there was the aforementioned player where he just
let him sail by him and then you just because
he stopped on a dime and then just put it
into the to the hoop.

Speaker 1 (01:21:50):
But he went Maverick on him. Yeah, I mean, I've
hit the brakes. You're gonna do what? Yeah, that's exactly
what he did. But that moon shot dream shake that
he hit on the left baseline, I was not expecting
that to go in. I don't think he was either.
It went right in.

Speaker 3 (01:22:09):
I mean there is high arching and then that would
have cleared Victor winmbin Yama easily.

Speaker 1 (01:22:15):
Maybe he's prepping for Victor will be hurt.

Speaker 3 (01:22:19):
Okay, let's get to this game tonight with the Texans
the Bills, and the fact that, as you've pointed out
this week leading up to tonight's matchup, Uh, the Bills
don't exactly play the run very well. Defensively, they're not.
They're definitely not as good as they are when they
employ ed Oliver Well. I guessally they they technically still
employ him. He's just not available for work tonight. He's

(01:22:41):
so good. And I'm not just saying that because he
comes from you of h and comes from Houston, but
it's just a he's a game changer. He's every essence
of that term. That's what he is, and that includes
helping to stop the run. They can't do.

Speaker 4 (01:22:56):
That.

Speaker 3 (01:22:57):
Problem is on a day where the Texans outright released
Damian Pierce, you have to be expecting what from I'm
just gonna say, Woody marks Knight, maybe Nick Chubble surprise
all of us and have a big game, just.

Speaker 1 (01:23:11):
Like he did last game. He had several big runs.
He was a big part of their effort. And the
same thing happened the week before. He's just being used less,
and I think that's probably good for him.

Speaker 3 (01:23:19):
Yeah, but what he marks is where it's at. If
for no other reason, then he can also catch the ball.
But it is that. I'm not gonna sit here and say, oh,
that's the way they beat the Bills. The way I
think they beat the Bills is have sustained offensive drives
that keep Josh Allen on the bench and then have
a fresh defense to face him when he is out there.

Speaker 1 (01:23:39):
Yeah, if they're gonna run the ball on first down,
they need to be much more successful than they were
last week. Because that's how you sustain drives. You give
Davis Mills second and fives. You give Davis Mills third
and threes instead of third and nine and third and
elevens where he inevitably likes CJ and any other quarterback
is facing pressure, and ultimately you end up with fourth
and twenty one and you got your bad spot. That's

(01:24:01):
what running successfully on first down will do. I think
they should be aggressive and pass a little bit more
often on first down. Two things before we hear from
Demiko on this very thing, running the football defensively, expected
points added per rush allowed, Defensively for the Bills EPA
per rush, they're thirtieth out of thirty two NFL teams.

(01:24:24):
That's a pretty good indicator of how they have struggled
against the run. Now, the Texans are twenty ninth offensively
in the very same stat they have not been very
good as a running team. So movable object, resistible force
type of thing. One of those two is probably going
to give the other thing to note. Since you brought
up at Oliver will Anderson Junior, he is second in

(01:24:47):
the NFL in what is called splash play rate. He's
at twenty one point one. Daniel Hunter's seventh. Few others
are on the list. We'll get to that later. But
if I tell you he's number two, then obviously there's
one player ahead of him. It's at all. That's how
we've sat here for eleven weeks and told you that
Will Anderson Junior is having a defensive Player of the
Year caliber season, and he is well ed. Oliver is

(01:25:11):
having a comparable season on the interior in terms of
just blowing things up and getting into the backfield and
making a disruptive play in this case called a splash play.
Tamiko Ryans on the importance of getting the ground game going,
taking pressure off the rest of their offense, and maybe,
like you said, keeping the Allen led Bills offense off
of the field.

Speaker 15 (01:25:32):
Hey, running the ball for me, it's always a key
no matter who you're playing, who's your opponent, you gotta
run it. Well, that's just you know, when you can
dictate and control the line of scrimmage just opens up
your playbook a lot more so. The run game is vital.
Of course, is going to take all eleven guys blocking
really well, being detailed in what we're doing in our
backs is finishing.

Speaker 1 (01:25:54):
Finishing backs. I think it is, as I've said a
couple of times, you know the line doing there. It
should be Ingram Patterson at guard, Andrews at center, Urcery
and Howard back at their normal spots that left and
right tackle respectively. I imagine they will run a lot
of tackle eligible plays. I think they should and I

(01:26:14):
think they will, And I think that obviously puts Blake
Fisher on the field. They're going to have likely both
Yakub Johnson and British Brooks up. Brooks is always going
to be up because he's such a good special teamer,
and Johnson is aware enough, if necessary, to run a
lot of the things they might want to otherwise do
with one of their two tight ends. He's essentially a

(01:26:34):
third tight end but also a fullback. So Stover, Schultz
and Johnson will handle some of those things, and they
all go into trying to be just they have to
be a little bit better. And some of that probably
does come from play calling. Mostly it comes from the
success of the players literally handling business. Do they handle
their business the right way? But the Texans just have
not fared particularly well running the football, and it is

(01:26:55):
obviously a factor of their offensive line. The Texans just
on a per rush basis running the football, they're twenty
second in the league. That is not a surprising number
if you've watched them. They're they're to the back part
of the league.

Speaker 3 (01:27:10):
Yeah, I don't know if that's going to translate tonight. However,
even with that Oliver out, even with you know, all
that kind of stuff. That's why I say, you know,
keeping keeping Josh Allen. It's it's like with Mahomes honestly,
and I would say Lamar Jackson in maybe a healthier year,
but now that he's healthy.

Speaker 1 (01:27:28):
Stay practice fully today.

Speaker 3 (01:27:31):
I just there are some guys. Brady was like this,
Manning was like this, But it's way easier said than done.

Speaker 1 (01:27:38):
You have we got to keep Brady in the pocket. Well,
I'm not. We cannot let Manning get out on the edges.

Speaker 3 (01:27:45):
About keeping him out of the pocket, as in keeping
him on the bench. I do think that's a and
I bring that up in a large part because the
Texans have dominated time of possession a lot of games
this year. There's no reason why they can't do that
here tonight. It's not like he needs a lot of
time to score though that's the problem.

Speaker 1 (01:28:02):
Many many things to get you to six o'clock tonight
here with us on the A team, about to hear
from Brian McTaggart his immediate thoughts on the Mauricio du
Bond deal. We ought our signature segment coming up in
ten minutes. What's up with that? Longhorns In the middle
of that conversation, a little bit more on the respect
for the Rockets football at five, I think you know

(01:28:22):
when that will be. And we still have tickets to
give away to a couple of different events coming up,
the AMA super Cross and some other items you might
like it get your hands on like basketball tickets to
go see U of H play this December, and our
stone Cold Locks Texans picks, well they are tonight because
the Texans play tonight. And then we'll add it to

(01:28:43):
the graphic tomorrow with the other twelve picks that we
will make as a trio of stone cold lockers. The
Astros announced it last night, utility player out, middle infielder
in money to be saved. It has been played out
now over the last twenty plus hours. I think people
now have a little bit better understanding at least of
the reasons. Why not that they have to agree with it,

(01:29:04):
and obviously not to diminish the role that Mauricio played
with this team over the last couple of years. They've
had so many different injuries, and on a daily basis,
even when players aren't hurt, he has provided something I
think there's very few players in Major League Baseball can provide.
Really enjoyed some of everybody, both media and teammates that
went through their memory banks or their camera roles and

(01:29:27):
put out moments with Mauricio. I'd probably give the one
of the best ones to Spencer Araghetti. If you remember
he was throwing a gem in Philadelphia yep, And he
gave up a very well hit long fly ball to
left field, and Mauricio was his left fielder, and he
ran into the wall to catch it and preserve it,

(01:29:48):
and Spencer had an awesome reaction which was captured by television. Then,
so he said, he owes him a bottle of red
sometime soon when they get together in Atlanta. But there
are so many plays like that. He ran unto the
wall and left field like ten times in the last
two years, and made spectacular plays all over the infield
and just was a really important reserve for this team
for a number of different reasons. Brian McTaggart covers the

(01:30:09):
Astros and is a frequent guest here on Sports Talk
seven ninety. Covers the Astros for MLB dot com and
of course Astros dot Com. Made an appearance earlier today
on The Matt Thomas Show with Ross. Full interview can
always be found at sports Talk seven ninety dot com
or via the app iHeartRadio just to go help help
go ahead and get yourself subscribed to Sports Talk seven

(01:30:31):
ninety if you aren't already. The portion of the interview
here starts with his ranking scale of one to ten.
Brian McTaggart, How surprised were you that Mauricio is no
longer an astro?

Speaker 5 (01:30:44):
Probably two or three.

Speaker 16 (01:30:46):
I mean, if you would have told me Dann of
the season, I thought they would have kept one of
those guys. But as you talked to more people, as
the offseason goes on and you realize they got to
free up some money to do some other things, and
then it became he became likely that, you know, paying
Mauricio Dubon six and a half seven million dollars when

(01:31:06):
if this team is healthy, he probably doesn't play much
at all, just doesn't make a lot of sense. And
so's and you know infields an area of strength, they
have a lot of depth there when they're healthy, So
it makes sense. It's not like they're gonna put all
this money from I think it's about eight point five
million they're saving by by Urius and Dubon being gone.

(01:31:26):
It's not like they're going to stick that in their pocket.
They're gonna try to reallocate it and get some pitching,
which is their their biggest needs. So the long way
to go in this offseason. I know Dubon is a
popular player, man, you know, I loved eting to death
and was texting him last night and laughing and man,
you know we've seen this stuff before us a business
and at the end of the day, it all comes
down to money.

Speaker 11 (01:31:47):
So do you think this was part of the plan,
was to get rid of two utility guys? Does that
mean now Christian Walker is safe or is everything still
on the table when it comes to shaking up this
infield for twenty twenty six.

Speaker 16 (01:31:59):
I think if they traded Christian Walker, they're gonna have
to trade. They got like trade Perettis probably and until
and I don't think they're gonna do that. I think
Dana Brown's come out and said he's not gonna do that.
So I don't think Christian Walker is going anywhere. I mean,
they got rid of to you, to you till your players.
They did add Nick Allen so he can play up
the middle. Perettis, you know, can play first and third.

Speaker 5 (01:32:21):
Uh.

Speaker 16 (01:32:21):
You know Korea can play short and h third base. So, uh,
they're covered in a lot of different ways without Dubon
because that you know, Alan can't come in late in
the game. And you know Phil a need as well.

Speaker 4 (01:32:33):
Uh, you know, not a.

Speaker 16 (01:32:34):
Great offensive player, but he's younger, and you know, maybe
he's got a little bit of enough side and he's
got three years of control left when Dubon would have
been gone after this year.

Speaker 11 (01:32:42):
What does this mean, if anything, for Bryce Matthews. Do
you think they're planning on him having a role in
the infield.

Speaker 16 (01:32:48):
Yeah, I think it opens up maybe a little spot
to where if he has a good spring, he can
force his way in there. You know, we've seen him
play some short and second you know, can he you know,
maybe he beats out Nick Allen for a spot in
the middle of the infield, you know, I know, you know,
he's the first raft pick that Dana Brown had coming
to the Astros, and he's a guy Dana Brown really likes.
And you know, he had flashes last year where he

(01:33:10):
looked really good and he had a really good minor
league season. So he's played a little bit of outfield
as well. So I think Matthews very much if he
has a strong sprint and put himself on the map
to get to get in here and get some bats
in this infield. But you know, right now, it's a
pretty crowded infield. They got rid of two players, got
one back, and they still probably have too many players

(01:33:30):
on the infield. So you know, they still have thirteen
guys that are arbitration eligible that on Friday they have
to tender contracts too, so there's gonna be a few
more guys who are going to get non tendered, or
maybe they trade somebody before Friday so they can get
something back and return. So we'll just get we're just
getting started in this offseason. There's gonna be a lot
of stuff going on. Yeah, that was leading me to

(01:33:50):
my next question.

Speaker 11 (01:33:51):
Brian McTaggert MLB dot Com with us here on Sports
Talk seven ninety. I mean, where where do you think
the next domino is? There has been mentioned of Jake Myers.
We just hinted at you did with Matt about Esik
Praatis or Christian Walker. I mean, where do you think
the next move comes from?

Speaker 16 (01:34:08):
Yeah, he would not shock me if they trade Jake
Myers before Friday. I think they feel it's probably time
maybe to see, you know, see what Zach Cole has. Yes,
he strikes out a lot, but you know, Jeremy pen
you struck out a lot too when he came up.
Let's find out what Jake Melton has. You know, you know,
it looks like this is going to be a big
year for cam Smith and right field. You know, is hey,

(01:34:28):
Sue Sanchez still going to be here. They're going to
dfa him and then you know a few other role
players he might be on the bubble, you know, guys
like Tremmel.

Speaker 1 (01:34:35):
And so forth.

Speaker 16 (01:34:36):
But yeah, they're still trying to shape this and I
think once they get all the position players sorted out,
we get past this arbitration deadline, they get a better
idea their payroll, they're going to go start to acquire
some pitching. But I Jess would be surprised at this
point if they traded Parretes because I think he's going
to be right in the middle of that lineup. And
I think Walker would just be really tough to trade
at this point as well.

Speaker 11 (01:34:57):
Because of the fandom. It's a tough move for a
lot of fans today because Maurico did a variety of things.
But if there's an ind game to it, making it
a sexier offseason, I get the sense. And again, I'm
gonna trust you more than myself, But it feels like
to me, there's gonna be some shuffling, for sure, but
we're gonna be still looking for that wow moment.

Speaker 1 (01:35:17):
I don't know if we're gonna get it this offseason.

Speaker 11 (01:35:19):
Do you feel like there is something in Dana's repertoire
that says, let's go get somebody that people don't anticipate
the Astros having on their radar.

Speaker 1 (01:35:27):
I don't think so.

Speaker 16 (01:35:27):
I don't think there's gonna be a wow moment. I
think there's gonna be a lot of moving pieces, and
I think they're gonna acquire a lot of players who
people are gonna go like, okay, whatever, and then the
Astros will have to see how they fit. I just
don't see them going after the Dylan Ceases and guys
of the top market, of the starting pitchers, because I
just don't think they're gonna spend that money. I mean,
they haven't done that in this ownership, and I don't

(01:35:49):
think things are gonna change.

Speaker 1 (01:35:52):
Hmm whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:35:53):
That Nothing instills confidence in a fan base than moves
that make you say that whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:35:59):
I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:36:00):
Brian McTaggart as a national treasure. We already knew that,
but he.

Speaker 1 (01:36:05):
Did drop the Dylan Cee's opinion there at the end
that he did not believe the Astros would be in
the running to put a contract in front of seas
that would bring him to Houston. I don't like.

Speaker 3 (01:36:16):
The longer it goes, the more I don't like it.
I don't care if he's durable either.

Speaker 1 (01:36:21):
I'm not a fan either. Obviously it would be a
fine at the right price and right number of years,
but I don't believe that's possible because I think there
are other teams that are much more willing to make
a mistake and offer him much more money and many
more years, which would, hopefully, in my opinion, mean the
Astros have to look elsewhere. There's pictures that I think

(01:36:41):
would be even better for this team that probably won't
even be more costly. And we brought up the name
Michael King a couple of times. Just from a free
agent standpoint, I would think that would be tremendous. I
would love that acquisition. I'm totally fine with the season
he had a year ago, even though he was hurt.
That's at least one of the directions I would go.

Speaker 3 (01:37:00):
Will Jake Myers survive the end of our show before
he's trained.

Speaker 1 (01:37:03):
Yes, I feel confident in the next hour, in thirty
four minutes, he will remain an Astro but he didn't.
Brian did indicate there he thought there was a real
chance that it could happen. And again, Friday is of
some importance. He's like twelve other teammates that are arbitration eligible,
you know, dfaing Arius and now trading Mauricio Dubon saves
you money when you don't have to pay the two

(01:37:25):
three four five million whatever it is for which one
of the arbitration eligible players you're talking about, Well, you
just I hope add that to the amount of money
they have saved on spending so they can turn around
and put it back into spending. I mean, if you're
able to pair off players at the back end of
your roster that are making two three four five million
dollars but they're not frontline players, that's what you've done

(01:37:48):
with Dubon. Potentially you're doing that with Myers. It's possible
you did that similarly with Chas McCormick. Okay, well, turn
around and spend that money on a player that is
at the front side of your roster, somebody that is
going to help you thirty two times a year when
he starts for you, or something on that along those lines.
That's what I anticipate they're doing. That's what I believe

(01:38:08):
they're attempting to do. You know, hey, sus Sanchez, we
haven't talked about all off season for a good reason.
He was awful last year. Is there any reason you
want them to pay him whatever he makes an arbitration
to stay here. I hope not.

Speaker 3 (01:38:22):
Nobody that they have let go has raised my eyebrows.
I mean, Mauricio Dubon being traded is just part of
I mean, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:38:34):
Not that I didn't like him, it's a they have
to spend the money though. If this is it is
a cost cutting move, but in order to then spend
because you've cut other costs. If this is cut cost
to cut costs, then there's not really anything to be
happy all that.

Speaker 3 (01:38:46):
But if you're if that's who you are, you know,
parting ways with and then you get somebody that's going
to make the team better, everybody's gonna trying forget of mine,
but they're gonna forget about it.

Speaker 1 (01:38:58):
A new signature seven called What's up with that? What's
up with that? What's up? If I say what's up?

Speaker 17 (01:39:15):
That?

Speaker 1 (01:39:16):
Signature segment time halfway through the third hour of the program,
eachhol every week to afternoon, right around four thirty, we
hit you with our signature segment as long as we
don't have a guest coming on, like yesterday with Andrew Whitworth,
fantastic interview if you missed it, He'll be part of
the TV crew tonight for Texans Bills. Thursdays, we hit
you with what's up with that? It's a topic that

(01:39:38):
has now been needed is needed to be addressed a
second time on the forty acres. If you remember, a
couple of weeks ago, in advance of a big game
for Texas, in advance of a any other game for
the Titans, a seemingly unsourced report came from Diana Rossini,
and as will happen, when those reports hit the inner

(01:40:00):
and social media, people will just repost them and continue
to run with them. And that did not sit very
well with the head coach, nor is Agents coach Steve
Sarkesian reportedly, according to Diana, was letting teams know, like
the Tennessee Titans, that he would be interested in becoming
their new head coach. They have an interim head coach
right now. Brian Callahan got fired and Mike McCoy has

(01:40:21):
lost every game he's coach since, but he didn't like it.
His agents issued a statement, and he hit his postgame
press conference with some very stern words for a report
that he wished would not be mentioned when it is
totally and completely inaccurate. If you have any problems, can
we all just agree not to do this? And if

(01:40:42):
you had any issues, just ask me or ask my
athletic director if you want to know what's up. Well,
for some reason, we're at it again. Yesterday he had
his media teleconference and he felt the need to open
it before questions with a statement on this Well, Diana's
reports weeks old. Why would he bother because this happened

(01:41:03):
on Twitter on the X platform excuse me on Monday,
as an extremely well known member of the College Game
Day studio crew decided to take out the garbage and
share his thoughts. This is Desmond Howard walking his garbage
can to the street and saying he has thoughts, thoughts
on what Desmond.

Speaker 18 (01:41:24):
I'm here taking out this garbage had a couple of thoughts.
Don't be surprised if that Texas job opens up at
the end of the season. Hey, you guys were shocked
when LSU opened up imagine how you're gonna feel if
that job in Austin pops open. I'm not calling or

(01:41:45):
saying anyone's gonna get fired. Maybe a mutual parting of
ways you dig.

Speaker 1 (01:41:53):
You dig, Maybe a mutual parting of ways. Well, it'll
be worded like that no matter how it goes down,
because nobody likes that's gonna say. You know, he got fired.
If he takes the job at Tennessee in the NFL,
then it really doesn't matter what they say. It obviously
means he's left. They are not. It's this point in
the season. We're further along than Penn State, We're further

(01:42:13):
along than LSU the Longhorns. If you only base expectations
on people guessing about how good they are, meaning the
preseason poll, when you've seen exactly zero snaps of the
college football season, then fine, they did not live up
to expectations of people who'd never seen them play before,
myself included. But now you've seen them play for ten weeks,

(01:42:36):
does it look like they're underachieving? Does it look like
I mean, you can now get into maybe he's not
coaching very well, maybe he didn't recruit very well. That's
a totally different story, but they look like a seven
and three football team. You put two of the best
teams in the country on their schedule, neither of which
were played in Austin, and they've lost both games. You
put a Florida game out there, and that's kind of
life in the SEC. You have a down game, anybody

(01:42:56):
can beat you. Florida went out there and big, fair
and square. They're just simply out played them. That's three
losses and they still have the Aggi's left you firing
your head coach after an eight and four season, after
a year removed from being in the SEC title game
and a trip to the postseason again. I don't really
think that's what they will do. I'm sure they'd like
to fare better against Georgia. They've played them three times,

(01:43:16):
they've lost to them three times. They also beat Oklahoma
this year. That seems to matter. Nonetheless, Sark he's just
not gonna go away and not say anything about it,
so he spent about the first two and a half
three minutes of his teleconference before questions commenting on it.
I've shaved some of it down for brevity, but coach

(01:43:37):
Sark not happy.

Speaker 17 (01:43:39):
I'd like to comment on something before I get into
our team. Something that has been bothering me now over
the past few weeks, and that is people reporting that
are insinuating that there's a possibility I could lead the
University of Texas, and that is absolutely false and untrue.

(01:43:59):
I'm not going anywhere. Never do I do this because
I never want to be a distraction, so I never
addressed these things. But at this point now I feel
like that is important that I do do this because
it's important for our team, it's important for our university.
I've had no discussions, not with my agent, not with
the university, not with any other school, not with any

(01:44:21):
NFL team about ever going anywhere else.

Speaker 1 (01:44:25):
I came here to win championships.

Speaker 17 (01:44:27):
I've got two kids enrolled at the University of Texas,
one in law school, one on our team. I've got
a third that hopefully decides to enroll at the University
of Texas next ball. And my wife and I just
had our son here in Austin. This is our home.
We came here to win championships. We've built a damn
good football program. One of the five years that we've
been here, we've been to two College football Playoffs. We

(01:44:48):
won a Big twelve championship, we went to the SEC
Championship game in year one. We've had twenty three players
drafted the last two years, which is more than any
other school in the country, and our team GPA is
at an all time high. Please stop putting things out
there that you have absolutely zero evidence on, and then

(01:45:08):
can we please stop retweeting, putting it back out there
as if it's true, as if it's the gospel.

Speaker 2 (01:45:15):
It is not true.

Speaker 17 (01:45:17):
If you have a question about my future, call me
or call christ O Connie or athletic director and we
can set the record street for you.

Speaker 1 (01:45:26):
Yeah there, Yeah, here's the problem.

Speaker 3 (01:45:29):
That's way too much pushback.

Speaker 1 (01:45:33):
So my first question, I want your immediate reaction to
this when he is not the head coach of the
University of Texas following this season, what is your reaction
to all this zero surprise?

Speaker 3 (01:45:46):
Well, my reaction to this specifically will be see told
show like guys that go.

Speaker 1 (01:45:53):
That hard in like Nick Saban did this. Now, I
do think there could be an alternative to that they
are deaf. Everybody's gonna negatively recruit And this was mentioned
throughout the day on the socials and I tend to
believe there's probably some validity to this if if you
think you can convince people recruits, their agents working for them,

(01:46:13):
their family, their friends, other players that are also I mean,
you can, you can stay committed there, you can go
on your visit there, you can get committed there, but
you're not gonna be playing for coach Sark. My understanding
is he is on his way to blank. You're committing
all of your future. You're putting your future in his hands,
and he's not even gonna be there. But hey, if
that's what you want to do, go right ahead. You've

(01:46:34):
got our number again. He's in demand because of the
things he just mentioned, by the way, I guess.

Speaker 3 (01:46:43):
I My only question is is he going?

Speaker 1 (01:46:47):
Where's he going in the NFL Nowhere? That's what I mean. Like,
is he's a good football coach, that's it. But he's
been a coach at the NFL level before. That's why
it's it's been on an NFL coaching staff. Yes, I
mean Cliff Kingsbury's on an NFL coaching staff. He's been
an NFL head coach. You think another NFL team's gonna

(01:47:09):
hire him? No, he was a less successful college football
coach jumped to the NFL and did not last very long.
And that's just one recent one. I mean, I'm not
saying he'll never go to the NFL, and he doesn't
belong as an OC in the NFL level, and he
may even be a good head coach at the NFL level.
But of the handful of teams there will be more
in the NFL they're looking for a head coach. I

(01:47:30):
will be surprised when they have the Steve Sarkisian introductory
press conference this January. I don't see that happening. Well,
see what else happens. That's what's up with that.

Speaker 3 (01:47:42):
The couple things that have happened over the course of
the last hour when we were talking about other things.

Speaker 1 (01:47:50):
Yeah, because of what we played last segment, I am
very very hopeful that College Game Day will go to
Longhorn's Aggies next week so Desmond and Steve can be
on set together. Wasn't it going to go there? Anyway?

Speaker 3 (01:48:02):
We'll see where else would they go. I don't know exactly.
This is so far under the radar, probably, but shouldn't
be as it pertains to the Rockets, simply because he
usually does damage against them.

Speaker 1 (01:48:16):
Demottes. Sabonis is out three to four weeks.

Speaker 3 (01:48:18):
It's the latest injury to a big man in the
West that if nothing else, gives the Rockets problems, or as.

Speaker 1 (01:48:27):
A monkey in the a fly in the ointment, it's
always possible you could lose a game to the Sacramento Kings,
but I would find it very unlikely. They have Sacramento
at the after this long road trip coming up. They
have five or six on the road. Last night was
game one, then they're home tonight Tomorrow night obviously for Denver.
Four straight out West. When they return home December third,

(01:48:48):
they will play the demandis Sabonis less Sacramento Kings for
the first time. They have a second game with them
on December twenty first, so it's possible he's unavailable for
both games. They also stink because they're old and hate defense.

Speaker 3 (01:49:03):
Yes, but who do they employ that routinely kills the Rockets?

Speaker 1 (01:49:08):
Damar yep. Oh, well, I don't know who he's gonna
fight with now, because neither Dylan nor Jalen is here.
Maybe he'll fight with Kadi. I hope not. I think
there's some level of respect.

Speaker 3 (01:49:20):
If he did fight with kd You know what, Katie
would say to him, he's exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:49:26):
Their team is made up of a bunch of players,
probably six, that should all get traded, every single one
of them. If they can. They put together a team
that can't win. I don't think they're very well coached.
Well it's not Monty former Rocket, Monty McNair was pushed out,
but this is I mean, with zach Lavine and Demartaros

(01:49:48):
and with Monk and Sabonis, there are talented players there.
They just don't play winning basketball as a team. They
don't defend at all. They are I don't think they
really know what they're doing. They just go out there.
We're talented, so we'll just go play. It's like a
pickup game every night for them. But that is of
notes Rockets. By the way, nothing clearly is known yet
because there's more than there's actually twenty eight hours before

(01:50:11):
tip off tomorrow night, but they do have an additional
player listed on the injury report as of now. Jabari
Smith's back on it. He was on it before the
last game but played through it obviously, so the same
right knee that's at least been giving him trouble hasn't
kept him out of action. He'll be available for the
game presumably, but he's listed as questionable. Steven Adams has

(01:50:31):
joined him there very same injury description both of them,
with tendonopathy for Adams his ankle, for Smith his knee.
Otherwise the injury report is the same.

Speaker 3 (01:50:43):
Am I crazy that Jabbari started the game very strong,
by the way physically?

Speaker 1 (01:50:48):
Yeah, like, get off of me, mister Tyson, Well, that
guy's an idiot. He actually is an idiot. I thought
he spit on Jabari with how Jabari reacted, because well,
he shoved him on the way to the basket, then
Jabbari shoved him back, and when they were in each
other's faces, the manner in which Tyson's head went forward
and Jabbari reacted so angrily and physically, that's what I

(01:51:12):
thought happened. When he didn't do anything after people got
in between him, I realized that probably isn't what happened.
And then you saw the replays and nothing of the
sort happened.

Speaker 3 (01:51:19):
My theory on that was that the previous trip down
the floor, Jabbari was under the basket in prime position
for a rebound, got shoved in the back. No call,
which happened all night last night Rockets honestly had probably
three or four different occasions where I was Aaron Holliday
got completely obliterated. They had not only do they not

(01:51:40):
call anything, then they did the stupid thing they always do,
which is tack him with a foul on the other
end when he inevitably gets physical because he gets the
same thing that happened to read against the Magic.

Speaker 1 (01:51:50):
So you're saying, if I said, how come Aaron Holliday
left Donovan Mitchell, who was red hot? How come he
left him wide open? Your answer would be because Mitchell
put a sh older into him and shoved him to
the ground right in front of the referee who didn't
blow his whistle, Shay Gilgess alexandered him. I mean, maybe
he thought he was flopping, but he wasn't. He wasn't.

(01:52:10):
He got destroyed by a bigger guy. And then they
went head to head in the fourth quarter offense for offense,
and exactly so, Jabari Smith did get off to a
good start. He was playing physically, he did. I just
I don't remember.

Speaker 3 (01:52:23):
I felt like there was a lull during the game
where he did not join the fray and then came
back in late and again made some big baskets, big plays.
Did he sit out in the nordon amount of time
in the middle of the game or was that just
me being crazy? I felt like he didn't. No, he didn't.
I wouldn't say that at all. He played what appears
to be his normal rotation minutes eight minutes and change

(01:52:45):
in both the first and second quarter, about six minutes
and change in the third and eight in the fourth.
I guess I just maybe he was quite a huge
three right after Cleveland had just made one to re
establish a little bit more comfortable lead. Yeah, they had
a great game, plus ten nine rebounds, a couple of assists,
hit three three pointers, two of them in the first quarter.

Speaker 1 (01:53:07):
Rockets did what they usually do with their three pointers.
Is a little bit before their season average, but thirty
eight percent, even this year where everyone's going crazy, it's
still respectable. But they only took twenty four threes. They're
getting so they're so good about getting better shots every possession.
If they can't, they're gonna make more threes. If they

(01:53:28):
take more threes, that's how well they're shooting, and that's
how open they are. But I do think this is
being coached, and I do think they are believing in
it because of how well it's They're the number one
offense in the NBA. Because they're doing this. They are
last in the NBA in three point attempts per game.
They are first in the NBA in three point accuracy.
Those things usually don't go together, but because they're so

(01:53:50):
good at getting whatever they want, because Kadie's out there,
because Alpi's out there, because amen, they're all forces. They
all have gravity, they all force the defense into being
out of position at some point during the first sixteen
eighteen seconds of the shot clock. So the patients the
Rockets are showing. Slows their pace down, but increases the
looks to be elite looks everywhere in the half court.

(01:54:12):
Kenny Atkinson's a believer in the Rockets.

Speaker 19 (01:54:16):
How should I say? They enforced their identity when we did.
And that's what this lead comes down to. You have
your identity and you got to go with it. And
you know, it's a third time they beat us, you know,
three in a row, so they've done a better job.
Think they have nineteen offensive rebounds, you know, so yeah,
credit to them.

Speaker 1 (01:54:35):
Heck of a.

Speaker 19 (01:54:36):
Team contender, you know. Tonight we couldn't stand toe to
toe with them. Just wasn't wasn't there.

Speaker 1 (01:54:42):
And two of those three straight wins were in Cleveland.
I might add, Yeah, those two games we brought them
up yesterday. Those were much closer games, nothing like the
dominating performance they had last night.

Speaker 3 (01:54:52):
Ah, you've seen the light since the first segment. All right,
we will leave it at that on the Rockets conversation.
But there's still more because Donovan Schill was also giving
out some compliments, and we'll hear from him in the
five o'clock hour. But because the first segment of the
five o'clock hour is known as Football at five, then
I think what we're going to be discussing next segment

(01:55:14):
is football on a day where the Texans and the
Bills are getting together for Thursday night football.

Speaker 1 (01:55:20):
We'll do that next five o'clock hour underway here on
the A Team Sports Talks seven to ninety, it's football
at five as we will get you.

Speaker 3 (01:55:29):
Uh well, let me take that back. We're going to
continue getting you ready for the Texans and the Bills.

Speaker 1 (01:55:35):
Repeating today's top news story. We go back to the
beginning of the show. Uh oh, it was reported by
our good friend Ian Rapaport, not friend of the show,
sources Texans running back Joe Mixon is not expected to
play the season he deals with a foot injury from
the off season. Mixon likely remains on the Physically Unable
to Perform list, which he's not actually on through the season. Meanwhile,

(01:55:58):
Houston moves forward with Nick H. Woody marks he's on
the NFI list, the non football injury list. Close enough.
That was quote tweeted and we told you this as
well by at Joe underscore Maine Mixon. That's Joe Mixon,
Texan's running back. He says, Now, I get everyone's looking
for splash news and clickbait, but I'm just curious, Ian,
how do you know more about me than me? And

(01:56:21):
then he said, at Peter J. Shaeffer, get your man, bro,
who's Pete? He has responded, by the way, Pete is
an agent, Well, specifically he's Joe Mixon's agent. And he
quote posted Joe Mixon's post which acted him, and he
said the truth and what comes out of his mouth

(01:56:46):
is mere coincidence. Color me confused. I mean, so Joe said,
how do you Ian know more about me than me?
And then his agent Joe's agent quotes that and says
the truth and what comes out of his mouth is
mere coincidence. So people have responded obviously, so he's right.

(01:57:12):
Who are you talking about and who is telling the truth?
Everyone seems perplexed.

Speaker 3 (01:57:20):
Have you read the full article about I mean, this
is an NFL dot com article.

Speaker 1 (01:57:25):
I definitely need to because I'm definitely in the dark
of how we've been talking about Joe all season long.
I can't wait to hear what's in there.

Speaker 3 (01:57:30):
His prolonged foot surgery is expected to cost him the
entire season. He'll remain, as you said, on the non
football injury list through the regular season, and news of
Mixon's foot ailment first surfaced over the summer, sending him
to the team's non football injury list before the start

(01:57:50):
of the regular season, disrupting the Texans' intentions with their backfield.
At first, the hope was Mixon would return at some
point during this year, restoring the leading rusher from last
year to an offense that has since proven it could
certainly use him. Instead, they've been forced to lean on
Nick Chubb and what he marks. By the way, did
you know that they've split carries evenly ninety nine. Each

(01:58:13):
through time, I had not I knew that, and I
knew that. We had also never mentioned that leading into Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:58:20):
They talk about Houston's signing Chubb in June. Yes, remember
when this happened to you signed either OTA's and Minnie
camp were going and they made this seemingly well. We
knew Joe wasn't practicing, so maybe you know this was
the biggest beep beep, red flag, red flag, something's going on.
We all knew it at the time, and still to

(01:58:41):
this day we're here in November. He was signed in June.
We still don't really know what, but we knew this
was a precursor to Joe Mixon's absence is going to
be a long one.

Speaker 3 (01:58:52):
Okay, This paragraph honestly just makes me flat out mad.
Mixon's absence has been felt throughout the Texans offense in
twenty twenty five. It's ironic, since this is something we
talked about yesterday, nobody's really talked about the fact that, oh,
they're doing this without Joe Mixon because nobody's even it's
and it's because of this a unit that has struggled
mightily for significant stretches with an offensive line that is

(01:59:16):
still settling in and has proven inconsistent for most of
the campaign. Stop stop saying this offensive line is settling in.
It's week twenty at this point. Basically, settling in is
something you do in the first month of the season.

Speaker 1 (01:59:33):
It's like the first five to ten minutes after you
get on the flight, you're settling into your seat exactly.
They're not doing that. They're bad. That's it. That's all
there is to it. They are getting they are doing
things in some areas a little bit better than before.
And we don't really get into this in detail enough.
And I think we were seeing it at the beginning
of the year. It's not every game, but I thought

(01:59:54):
it was definitely happening. There are some metrics to back
it up. A friend over Texan's Cap over the Cap Troy,
who does a great job diving into the minutia of
the salary cap is good as lofty because he's a
numbers guy. Well, I think it's hard to do, yeah,
And he also does a lot of other analytic work
and produced this chart that describes the offensive line work

(02:00:16):
at least in their pressure rate, so basically their pass
blocking and their the yards before contact, so a measure
of how good a job they're doing. And with their
run blocking the Texans in twenty twenty three versus twenty
twenty four, they were roughly the same with their pressure rate,
and they were significantly worse in their yards before contact,

(02:00:40):
meaning Joe Mixon saved their butts last year because they
were getting penetration into the backfield on running place non stop.
And my eyeballs tell me that's exactly right. That's what
we were watching. My eyeballs this year were telling me
beginning of the season, Nick Chubb and then Woody Marks,
we're not seeing that much activity in the backfield from
d defensive players. There wasn't as much penetration. They were

(02:01:02):
actually able to assess the scene, make a quick cut,
try to hit the hole, not avoid a guy from
hitting you for a four yard TfL. And the numbers
back that up. They have gotten significantly better in the
yards before contact number this year. They've gotten slightly better
with their pressure rates, So they're a little bit better,
not a significant amount better from a pass blocking perspective,

(02:01:25):
but they are seemingly significantly better from a run blocking perspective.
Yet the Texans are running the ball less successfully this year.
Do you feel Joe Mixon's absence.

Speaker 3 (02:01:37):
Yeah, and this isn't an attack at what you're trying
to say, But do you feel like when you start
a sentence with well, there's some areas they're improving in.

Speaker 1 (02:01:47):
We're talking about the dumbest stuff. Man, I don't want
them to improve from twenty eighth to twenty fourth.

Speaker 3 (02:01:53):
It's minuscule and it's a symptom of a larger problem.
You went discount been shopping for your offensive line, with
the exception of drafting, admittedly finally a good offensive lineman,
I think in nursery. But you know, anytime you start
a sentence off with that, it's like moral victory Monday.

Speaker 1 (02:02:17):
Not as bad as we used to be. It rings
is hollow to me.

Speaker 3 (02:02:20):
I'm not saying what you're saying, but it's just there
is a better way. There is a mentality as an
organization that not only are we going to put the
effort into it and achieve it, we are not going
to let our franchise quarterbacks Jersey get dirty. If we
can do anything to help. It's what the Chiefs do.

(02:02:41):
It's what Brady's offensive line did, It's what all the
greats have done, and I don't know why. For the
better part of the existence of this franchise, that just
has never been a priority. And I know what you're
gonna say, Well, their first ever.

Speaker 1 (02:02:54):
Expansion pick was an amazing left tackle who never played.
This was the start of it all.

Speaker 3 (02:03:01):
It's almost like it's the curse of Tony Boselli because
of the position he played on the unit he played.

Speaker 1 (02:03:06):
Yeah, but this version of their offensive line, pretty much
the CJ's played with these three years, is such a
backslide from previous years when they've had an opportunity to win.
Matt Shaw played behind competitive offensive line, the best offensive
lines they've ever found. After the David Carr era, where
they clearly were doing it wrong and just didn't have

(02:03:26):
enough talent and didn't have enough veteran players that were
legitimate strong players. They've had a few times, a few
seasons or stretches of seasons where the offensive line wasn't
derailing the team, wasn't the biggest focus of their weaknesses,
wasn't the biggest focused every off season. But it has
been that each of these three years, and they just
haven't made it quick enough progress. You know, we had
to take three years to get one pick, right, you

(02:03:49):
can't take three years to add an outside player to
your organization. And you talked about the bargain bin. I
mean they went out and spent ten or let's see one, two, three,
eight figures on Cam Robinson. He should have never been
on the field for this team, let alone any team.
Why this was a fallback option before the draft, not
knowing what you'd get. It made no sense. He's a
bad player. You signed a bad player to a lucrative

(02:04:11):
one year deal. That is bad. That is a bad
way to do business. You're not guessing on him. He's
not a draft pick. You're not watching him at the combine.
You're not watching him against suspect competition in college. He's
a longtime NFL tackle playing bad football elsewhere. And this
is what you thought your possible solution was. Luckily, the
coaches tried to bail you out and say, we don't
want him on the field. We have better options. We're

(02:04:33):
gonna put Titus Howard to tackle, and we're gonna start
ursery over him because they're both better than him. And
then Ed Ingram got hurt before Week one, and so
they had to put Cam Robinson out there and then
they traded him. The drafts tomorrow. What's your target? What's
your target in the first round? Where are they picking eighteen?
They just missed the playoffs. Sounds familiar. Uh not recently,

(02:04:54):
but yes, it would definitely be there. And I think
there's a good group of offensive linemen. I would love
more of these teams to keep trading up and take
some of these quarterbacks off the board.

Speaker 3 (02:05:03):
So when they trade out of the first round again
and take some other position, doesn't matter what it is.

Speaker 1 (02:05:08):
Will you put your head through this concert? No? Click
with me, No you join me. I like Jayden Higgins,
he's a good player. I like Jayalnole. He's also a
good player. He's fine. And Urseres a very good player too.
What were you doing? They needed an offensive lineman and
they got one. What were you doing trading out of
the first round when you needed offensively You're trying to

(02:05:30):
say there's no way that Urser is better than any
of the tackles after the top fifteen. They got drafted
between fifteen and.

Speaker 3 (02:05:39):
Just because Stefon Diggs was gone and Tank Dell was
injured doesn't mean that you have to sabotage the twenty
twenty five season with a dumb decision, which is what it.

Speaker 1 (02:05:47):
Was, you still would have only added one tackle. You
could have added Simmons or Connor. How many good tackles
do they have right now? The one they drafted and Titus,
so they could have had two. How are you getting two?
You're gonna draft another one? Okay, well, yes you could
have drafted another one with I just but you were
running out of available players at that point, and they
wouldn't necessarily have had the thirty fourth and forty eighth

(02:06:09):
pick also had they just stayed with pick twenty five.

Speaker 3 (02:06:12):
And I guess this was what this is why when
you have a press conference where your GM is sitting
up there almost arrogantly saying, I mean something means to
define me what the best pick a draft is?

Speaker 1 (02:06:24):
I mean, I don't even know what that means. I mean,
Gtfo's a he's a really good I think he's drafted
very well. He has, except he accept the staff have
had a bad done a bad job evaluating college lineman.

Speaker 3 (02:06:37):
And now, for no other reason that I'm tired of
having this conversation, we're doing We're gonna do it for
another three hundred and sixty five days, aren't we Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:06:45):
Sure sounds good with vacation sprinkled in there. Yeah, I
like it, you know, I just can we not? Please? Yeah?
Just make the playoffs and dominate the rest of the way.
Get us off of this awful dominate like the Rockets
absolutely talk seven ninety, counting down the minutes until that
ale red Thursday. Was that what they call its battle

(02:07:07):
red game Day? Did they?

Speaker 3 (02:07:08):
I can't remember last year if they used these uniforms
on a Thursday as well?

Speaker 1 (02:07:13):
Didn't they play the Detroit Lions in a primetime Thursday
night game? Or is that the game? That was the
game they wore them? I could be wrong about the No,
you're right it was prime time, but I thought that
might have been a Sunday game.

Speaker 3 (02:07:22):
But I don't know. You're probably right. They don't have
to libably not right?

Speaker 1 (02:07:27):
Was it Sunday?

Speaker 3 (02:07:28):
I don't remember? Oh, I was asking, Actually it might
have been a Monday. I don't I don't remember. I
feel like that was on the same Monday night. Yeah,
I feel like that was on the same night Sunday
night game as they What was the date?

Speaker 1 (02:07:40):
Do you have it? November tenth?

Speaker 3 (02:07:41):
Okay, so the other Detroit team had long since disposed
of the other Houston team.

Speaker 1 (02:07:45):
Yes, they only picked off the quarterback that night five
times and lost man lost. The won the turnover battle
by three, had five ITTs lost late on a field goal.
So you're wearing them tonight against totally different team. Yeah.
CJ threw a really bad pick in that game. I
think he had is that the game he had Dell
wide open the back of the end zone and just

(02:08:07):
under threw it too much, something like that lofted it.

Speaker 3 (02:08:09):
Some would say, okay, a gentle toss so the defender.

Speaker 1 (02:08:13):
Could get right there. Yeah, that was uh you said
November tenth. I did.

Speaker 3 (02:08:18):
I felt like that was the beginning of the end
of the season. I really do, because like, you win
that game that night, they would have been seven and three. See,
and then the injury started happening not soon after that,
like bad injuries and then Tanks was like the.

Speaker 1 (02:08:35):
I'd probably say until before was maybe the beginning or
the Halloween. The game before that was the GG game.
CJ got can cuss that night right or was it
a different injury? I don't think anything happened him that night.

Speaker 3 (02:08:47):
I thought CJ got hurt in the Jets game. Maybe
I'm thinking of the year before, the year before he
got Quinn.

Speaker 1 (02:08:51):
Williams and the Jets. Guy's right, Okay, but they were
six or two to start the season. They finished four
and five and that's how they won the division. They
say poorly on Halloween, Yeah that was awful. But yeah,
so none of that tonight, Nos, just just Josh Allen
and the Bills against Davis Mills. Yeah, the Bills defense,

(02:09:13):
non defense. Their defense is not awful. But the Texans,
there's nothing that they should be. Oh, we're not gonna
do this. We're not gonna be exactly. They will make plays,
they have good players, but they're not among the better
defenses in the league. They're not awful either. You know
who is among one of the better defenses in their league?
I do know who? The Texans.

Speaker 3 (02:09:33):
No, the Rockets. Okay, I mean, you're right about the Texans.
But did you hear Donovan Mitchell last night complimenting both
himself and the Rockets defense in the same sentence.

Speaker 1 (02:09:42):
I didn't hear it. Yet, Well, here it is. He's
going to talk about both right now.

Speaker 2 (02:09:47):
I mean, I love im man, He's he was my coach.

Speaker 20 (02:09:49):
Should Temusa many I had to say many years ago.
But like a few years ago, I knew, I knew
something was coming. I knew, and no to what extent,
you know what I mean, just because that's just how
he you know, it's a sign of respect to the point.

Speaker 2 (02:10:05):
I mean, obviously they they see who I.

Speaker 20 (02:10:07):
Am and the threat that I am, and I think
that's that's the ultimate sign of respect you can get
from a coach.

Speaker 2 (02:10:14):
So, you know, like I said, it was unique. It's different.

Speaker 20 (02:10:17):
Do I think every team has the you know, personnel
and decide to do that. No, But like to his credit,
he found a way to try to, you know, try
to manipulate the game. And my biggest thing was like, hey,
I had two points. I'm fine, Like, it's just keep
trying to find a way to build and it's not
always going to like I tell you it's now, it's
gonna be a thirty. But how do you find a
way And then when my time is called, my time
is called. And but when you get guarded like that, Yes,

(02:10:40):
it's the ultimate sign of respect for sure.

Speaker 3 (02:10:42):
I mean, credit to Donovan Mitchell for perfectly fifty to fifty,
the credit to himself and to the tech or the
Rockets defense in just a minute long SoundBite. Yeah, not
a lot of teams. Everybody knows who I am, but
not a lot of teams have the personnel to do this.
And Emay was coming after me, and I knew it
was going to come with something. I didn't know what

(02:11:02):
it was, but boy, you know, and it's a sign
of respect for a great player. And you can just
hear I May watching that later on and just thinking
to himself, you know, we did it after you.

Speaker 4 (02:11:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:11:11):
Ema talked about it after the game. Kenny Atkinson talked
about it after the game, specifically to what they tried
to do to Mitchell. And when Kenny was asked about it,
he kind of just shut the question down and he
knew what they were going to ask, and so he
just answered it very succinctly. You know, what were they
trying to do with Donovan? And he goes, they blitzed him,
and they basically left it at that. That is what
the Rockets did. One for seven in the first half,

(02:11:32):
zero for zero in the third quarter. He had only
attempted seven shots by the time they got to the
final twelve minutes because they simply took the ball out
of his hands, forced him to have his teammates try
to be the scoring punch and keep them in the game.
It obviously worked to the Rockets advantage until it started
to not work, and he wasn't necessarily the reason that

(02:11:53):
they totally got things back together in the third quarter.
I just mentioned they made this big run in the
third quarter. Donovan Mitchell and the third quarter played less
than half the quarter and took no shots while they
outscored Houston thirty to seventeen. His teammates just kind of
figured it out a little bit and the Rockets got
careless with the basketball, and then a typical Donovan Mitchell

(02:12:14):
quarter happened. He took ten shots, played the entire fourth quarter,
made seven of them, scored nineteen of his twenty one
points in the game, but the Rockets had enough to
hold him off. It is a major sign of respect.
It's also something that probably makes the Cavs look inwardly
and saying when we face teams in the playoffs that
do have the personnel to do this. You've been going

(02:12:35):
on and on about Donovan Mitchell and his thirty one
points per game. Rightfully so, because over the course of
an eighty two game regular season, you know, four out
of eight games, four out of ten games, eight out
of ten games, the other team can't do anything, they
don't have the players to do it. Playing bad teams
in the playoffs that changes.

Speaker 18 (02:12:51):
You know.

Speaker 3 (02:12:52):
It's a very James Harden career trek he's on right now.
James Harden is a rocket. I'll leave it at that,
because he would routinely put up insane regular season numbers
and then he would expect to do the same thing
in the postseason, and for whatever reason free throws, he
wouldn't be able to do it a lot of times,

(02:13:13):
wasn't getting those calls.

Speaker 1 (02:13:14):
Josh and I were talking about this last night. Josh
c it was.

Speaker 3 (02:13:18):
That very exact scenario where you almost wish that they
hadn't changed the rules for James Harden, like maybe sooner,
and he would have somehow kind of coached himself into
finding a better way.

Speaker 1 (02:13:32):
I guess I don't know if I'm explaining this correctly.

Speaker 3 (02:13:35):
But it really and if this happens again this year,
I don't If I'm Cleveland, I don't know what I
do YO.

Speaker 1 (02:13:42):
I think it's a little tough to kind of pigeonhole
him into what has happened in his postseason career. You
know as well as I do. He went to the
playoffs five times with Utah. Did he lose because he
played poorly? And he did against Houston a couple of times,
but they weren't the better team. They weren't even close
to the better team. I don't think one of those
years with Utah, the year he went the seven game
series in twenty nineteen, best playoffs I've ever seen from him.

(02:14:07):
I don't think he'll ever have a playoff series like that.
He's averaged thirty six points a game and made more
than fifty percent of his shots from three and from two.
He was insane. Yeah, he's been really good in the
postseason the last two years for Cleveland, but they have
an advanced past to the second round, and in this case,
that's where you If this continues to happen in Cleveland,
where they're clearly one of the more talented Eastern Conference

(02:14:29):
teams last year where they were the most talented record
wise Eastern Conference team, there should be more in the
East with him there with their roster. If there isn't,
we'll have something to unfortunately be negative about his career.

Speaker 3 (02:14:42):
Here's what I'm afraid of for him, and if I'm
a Cavs fan, they do get past the second round
or whatever this year, but it's because of the injuries
to two of the two best teams in last season's
Eastern Conference. And then they come back and Cleveland goes
back to where they were. You know, it's almost like
you're you're fooling yourself into thinking you're better than you are.

Speaker 1 (02:15:02):
Yes and no, all these titles that everybody's won the
last handful of years, we talk about postseason injuries all
the time. These just happened to happen sooner. Yeah, are
we really gonna should they care? Do we care? If
you advance to the conference finals, you advanced the conference finals,
if you get even fly play? Who's there?

Speaker 2 (02:15:17):
Right?

Speaker 1 (02:15:18):
I like the Warriors every single time? Right?

Speaker 4 (02:15:20):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (02:15:20):
Who was hurt for that team that they beat in
the postseason? Just pick which one? There was always somebody
there was.

Speaker 1 (02:15:25):
I know. I mean, it's like nobody. It's happened to
a lot of teams, but nobody else. They talk aboutnything.
It happened to them for them a lot. I get it.

Speaker 3 (02:15:32):
You know, health and luck are sometimes the same thing.
They go hand in hand.

Speaker 1 (02:15:36):
What about last year? They they got past the Rockets,
but then Jimmy still wasn't healthy and then Steph got hurt.
What could have been for the Warriors just last season
if they wouldn't have been hurt.

Speaker 3 (02:15:49):
What could have been for the Rockets if Jalen Green
wasn't their number one offensive option.

Speaker 1 (02:15:53):
He wasn't hurt exactly? They blitzed him, Oh yeah, yeah,
And so the rest of the team could be did they.

Speaker 3 (02:15:59):
Blitz me game two? Or did this just decide not
to that game? They they learn from their mistakes for
the next five games.

Speaker 1 (02:16:05):
For the next five games, well executed plan. Still, they
didn't lose all on Jalen's shoulders. That's it was the
shoulders for sure. Well, they obviously focused on trying to
make that happen, and it worked. I didn't think it would.
I thought they were gonna win the series no matter
how poorly he played, because the rest of the guys
should have beaten him anyway. No team that has a.

Speaker 3 (02:16:27):
I'll stop short of saying starring role from Brandon Pajemski
should ever advance in the postseason.

Speaker 1 (02:16:35):
That guy sucks. And you know what, if he got
a haircut. Would you feel the same way, Nope, because
he'd still have the stupid pink shoes. He's just they
shouldn't have lost that series. I know's nothing I can
do about it, just like the Rockets shouldn't have lost
to the Spurs during this streak.

Speaker 3 (02:16:51):
We'd be talking about how many games in a row
they've won right now if they hadn't turned the ball
over twenty four times for thirty two points.

Speaker 1 (02:16:57):
Well, they've won ten of eleven, so it would be
an eleven game winning streak instead of a pair of fives.

Speaker 3 (02:17:03):
Why why is it that all the players that also
annoy me? Also they look funny.

Speaker 1 (02:17:08):
That's why they annoy you? You think so? Yes, I
definitely think there's a correlation. At least the way they
play is part of it. On another charge that he
didn't deserve. And then the floppy, curly hair that's not
common in the NBA. He looks like.

Speaker 3 (02:17:23):
A rec league reject, doesn't he, especially when he's falling
all over the place in his pink shoes.

Speaker 1 (02:17:30):
We got a case you missed it. We got details
on the tickets we're going to give away in the
final segment to show all that is coming your way.

Speaker 14 (02:17:36):
Next the eighteen on Sports Talk seven ninety.

Speaker 1 (02:17:42):
Deets on tickets will be giving away in the final segment,
we'll also be giving you our stone cold lock on
the Texans. What do you hear? What the line is?
Any over under? But we do have a pair of
tickets to give away to the Houston Hoops Showdown that
features U of H against Florida State at Toyota Center
December sixth. And we also have a pair of tickets
to Monster Energy a super Cross on January thirty first,
that is at an RG Stadium. Tickets for that go

(02:18:04):
on sale and have been on sale at takeamaster dot com.
I'll tell you all about it. Final segment. Ask you
a question. You will know the answer to it because
you've been listening to the program, Like maybe what was
it we were fighting about in the opening segment of
the show three hours and thirty minutes ago. Maybe you
were listening, Maybe you weren't. You will know the answer
if you were. But let's go ahead and move on
along to in case you missed it this afternoon, So did.

Speaker 12 (02:18:27):
You guys hear about George piketson Ceedee Lamb not playing
in the opening drive against the Las Vegas Raiders Monday
Night Football.

Speaker 1 (02:18:34):
I know one thing. The Cowboys were playing Monday Night
Football against the Las Vegas Raiders and it was a
home game for the Las Vegas team, So the Cowboys
were in Las Vegas preceding the game. Is that correct? Yeah,
that's correct. Okay, So tell us the story.

Speaker 12 (02:18:49):
So apparently these two knuckleheads student play in the first
drive because of they were quote unquote suspended by internal affairs.

Speaker 1 (02:18:57):
Not what was the reasoning behind it? Internal affairs. The
Cowboys have an internal affairs department.

Speaker 12 (02:19:02):
Yeah, like the coaches said, hey, guys, sorry, I'm not
playing you.

Speaker 1 (02:19:05):
You suspended for the first drive. Yeah, we noticed it. Obviously,
it was talked about in the broadcast. They both ended
up having productive games, but this seemed like the internal punishment.
More details forthcoming continue.

Speaker 12 (02:19:16):
So apparently Lamb told reporters that he and Pickens were
at the Red Rocks Casino having dinner and drinks.

Speaker 1 (02:19:23):
He did not that he was throwing up outside the.

Speaker 12 (02:19:25):
Casino, which had been mentioned on social media. The reason
why they didn't play in the opening drive is because
they missed the ten pm perfew set by the staff
and because they came back later, the team said, you
know what, Sorry, guys, even though we're trying to go
win a playoff game and make a run to the
postseason and feel like that we can actually be contenders,
we don't need to tell this opening drive you're suspended.

Speaker 1 (02:19:46):
We're gonna set a message you Why I need to
interject here. So they flew to Vegas day before the
game Sunday for a Monday night football game, and the
curfew is ten. Come on, I don't think teams I

(02:20:07):
could be wrong. I don't think they really change their
curfew a lot when the game is kicking off the noon. Typical,
we're on the road, we made the trip, you're back
in by this time, and then we go about our day.
That for that's successive. So this is on the team.

Speaker 12 (02:20:21):
Yes, you can't, especially in Vegas.

Speaker 1 (02:20:25):
Come on, what's one member of the Dallas media that
you have the utmost respect for. He's been a a
friend of the program, been on your shows many times. Oh,
Calvin Watkins. So per Calvin Watkins, So I can trust it. Yeah.
Se ced Lamb denied throwing up, as Cole said in
a Las Vegas casino before the Cowboys Raider game, because
he quote knows how to hold his liquor.

Speaker 3 (02:20:50):
You're asking me if I trust Calvin Watkins. Of course
I trust Calvin Watkins. What you should be asking me
is do you think that you should trust Ceedee Lambs
saying I quote can hold my liquor.

Speaker 1 (02:21:02):
Yes, he's first of all, he's one of ours. It's
from Richmond. He was an unbelievable high school football player
at ohe you and now it did in Dallas. He's
been phenomenal. He's had a great Draft night story because
of how his Draft knight went and the people that
were with him, and he played very well in this
game that he was asked not to begin. I've actually
been to the Red Rock Casino, which is nowhere near

(02:21:24):
the strip, which I don't doesn't surprise me that a team,
even if they weren't staying the stay away from the
riff raft. Yes, but or is it the north end?
Oh Fountain dude, I don't know north end. I don't
know what that needs. Oh my bad, my bad. I'm sorry.
It's not on either end of the strip. It's nowhere
near this. You stayed at Fountain Blue, right, Yes, so

(02:21:45):
that's the north Okay, I'll try to or what would
be yes, But when you drive past Fountain Blue from
the south to the north and go past it and
then leave the strip and say you take a left.
Now you're gonna go to the you're going to you're
going out to the to the or or you're going
to if you're going out towards the mountains, you're going
to Palace in going out towards the mountains exactly because

(02:22:07):
that literally is exactly where we were headed when we
had to pick up the last group of people on
our tour and they were at Red Rocks Casino. Did
you stop off at the Palace in say hi ToJ OJ?
Didn't spend that much, Noblia Cole. If you will allow
for this, I need to commandeer some time here. And
in case you missed it, Yes, in case you missed it,

(02:22:29):
there was a major O. J. Simpson related story saw
it and it was not mentioned on this show.

Speaker 2 (02:22:35):
I was.

Speaker 1 (02:22:37):
In the last week this took place. I was proving
that I don't always bring him up. He was warranted
because it was just about money. You didn't care. I mean,
Ron's dad got paid. Supposedly all these creditors were looking
to get there just due there's a lot of money

(02:22:59):
owed from the estate, but this was one of them.
Ron's suit and family, they said, we'll pay this one.
It's a big sum.

Speaker 12 (02:23:07):
And out of curiosity, does Ron's dad still have that
stupid mustache?

Speaker 1 (02:23:10):
His name spread?

Speaker 3 (02:23:11):
By the way Ron's dad that you, of all people
should appreciate you.

Speaker 1 (02:23:16):
I feel bad in this situation just going that route.
Ron and Kim's dad definitely did not see any mocked up,
fake old Thanksgiving related commercial promotions with OJ Simpson as
a caption. I'm not saying that you wouldn't. I think
that One of the saddest parts of that documentary, among many,

(02:23:40):
is when he's talking about the judgment, the civil suit
judgment to get this very money we're talking about, he goes,
what they don't tell you is when you win a
case like this, it's a piece of paper. That's it.
And especially in OJ's case, he's creating fake companies to

(02:24:01):
launder his money and earnings from so that he doesn't
have to pay the families of the people he locked
their heads off. Come on, man, you already did that.
Why do you have to now do this?

Speaker 4 (02:24:12):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (02:24:13):
J Simpson's attorneys said they don't want the Goldman family
in the courtroom for the upcoming trial. Why is that?
According to Norm McDonald, if you recall, yeah, I don't recall,
I don't recall the punchline. But that's my lucky shavin Kat.
It's more like because it reminds him of how much
more killing he still has to do. Thanks Norm, All right,

(02:24:36):
what else we have? Okay, we'll make this one quick.

Speaker 12 (02:24:38):
Did you hear about what's going on in Los Angeles?
It's fires and the fact that we have an idiot
run in that stage mud slides. Los Angeles Lakers are
reorganizing their basketball offer.

Speaker 1 (02:24:51):
A certain j busus but not the j Bus.

Speaker 3 (02:24:55):
They did that thing where they named all their kids
with the same first letter.

Speaker 1 (02:24:59):
So for the first time ever on the show, will
you repeat those two bus names that we've never said
before and never will again.

Speaker 12 (02:25:04):
Just Bus but not Genie are out from their representative
front office executive positions immediately, according to Shamserania. When reached
for comment, a Laker spokesperson confirmed the team had moved
on from both Joey and Jesse and had no further
statement at this time.

Speaker 1 (02:25:19):
Joey and Jesse, Wait, really, you've got right right? There
you go. No, where's the Rippers now? Well, they're practicing
with the Beach Boys, Joey and Jesse. How will the
Laker survive without Joey and Jesse? I thought they were
selling the team. They did, it's been sold, but she's
still running it. When they made the sale, they made

(02:25:41):
very clear management in place. We love Jeanie Buss. She's
going to continue, and everybody at the moment that happened
said great statements. Great to see that she's gonna stay there. Okay,
how long till she's out? And she's not out? Well
Joey and Jesse, but don't worry because Jay is still
in the mix.

Speaker 5 (02:25:58):
They cut it out.

Speaker 1 (02:25:59):
They exactly certainly did They certainly did that. Our picks
Texans Bills, Stone Cold Locks first of the fifteen. Gotta
get them to you today. We'll do that next the
eighteen on Sports Talk seven nineties. Before we get to
our Stone Cold Locks, we will ask you our trivia
question and get you sep for tickets here tickets to

(02:26:20):
see either the Houston Hoops Showdown, that's college Hoops you
of h Florida State December sixth at Toyota Center, just
the sixth time these two teams have faced one another,
and they haven't done so in more than fifty years.
You can get tickets via Toyota Center dot com if
you don't win them here. We also have a pair
of tickets to Monster Energy am A super Cross January

(02:26:41):
thirty first at NRG Stadium. Tickets for that are on
sale now ticketmaster dot com. If you don't win them here,
feel free jump on in and enjoy the event. If
you know the answer to this trivia question from something
we discussed here on the show, that you can call
in and win seven one three to one two five
seven ninety seven one three to five seven ninety yesterday's

(02:27:05):
SEC media teleconference, when it was time for University of
Texas head coach de Sarksian to meet with the media
virtually on the phone on a teleconference, he opened things
up by shooting down yet another pseudo report about his
departure from the Longhorns following this season. He felt the
need to address it again. He's really unhappy that everyone

(02:27:28):
keeps running with these totally unsubstantiated reports. His kids go
to UT He's expecting another kid soon to be in college,
to be there. He had his son right there in Austin.
This is our family. We love it here, not going anywhere.
Why did he feel compelled to do this? Well, because
somebody put it out there again on Monday of this week.
That don't be surprised if it's a mutual parting of

(02:27:52):
the ways and he's no longer there. Head coach of
the University of Texas Longhorns, played that audio for you
today earlier on the show, but well known college football
analyst said that earlier this week about coach Sark that
we played here earlier on the show seven one three
two one two five seven ninety. By the way, he
was taking out the trash at the time, and he

(02:28:13):
saw a tennis ball in his yard. Seven one three
two one two five seven ninety. They were just his
thoughts if you know the answer to that question. Time
for our stone cold Locks. Should we play the intro
pre pre edition, No, no intro needed, no graphics made.
We'll do it all in full and remind you of
these picks in essence, how did they go? Because we

(02:28:34):
will know come tomorrow at four thirty, well, we'll know
tonight around ten thirty. They won't to play the intro.
I mean no, I said no, already. We don't have
to change my mind. Why why am I asking? All
rights are five and a half point underdogs. Tonighth was
something playing. I couldn't hear it. I'm sorry, you would
just talk over it anyways. All right, you guys can

(02:28:55):
do whatever you want. I'm just one person. There's three
of you here now. Good whatever you I'm I'm willing
to listen and are you gonna do it whatever you want?

Speaker 14 (02:29:03):
Remember that magic as official until you play a nice
little shaken official.

Speaker 1 (02:29:08):
Look at this I'm getting late tonight.

Speaker 14 (02:29:12):
You can trust whatever it said, or you could trust
these two guys named Adam.

Speaker 1 (02:29:18):
It's a crap shoot either way. But these are your
stone cold locks, stone cold all right. We'll hear that
all over again tomorrow at four thirty. I love it,
So we get to our stone cold locks. What will
you ever do with those thirty seconds of your life? Twice?
I will stare deadpan into the television screen just like

(02:29:41):
I just did. You're gonna die of an eye rolling accident.
Days our college football game of the week. It does
happen to be where game day is. It's out West.
The Trojans make an appearance for the first time all
season here with us USC and Oregon are playing, and
I will ask you to make a selection on that
game tomorrow tonight. Bill's five and a half point favorites. Obviously,

(02:30:02):
that means the Texans are five and a half point underdogs.
The over unders forty four and a half flip from
usual Cole, You'll still go first, but give us your
Texans pick. I'll be quick on this one, not really apparently,
I think Texas. I'm taking phone calls. I know, I'm
just messing with you.

Speaker 9 (02:30:22):
I tried.

Speaker 1 (02:30:22):
I thought I bought enough time, and I've tried to
prevent you from buying more time by not letting you
play the intro.

Speaker 12 (02:30:27):
Since look good against two mediocre teams, prove it against
a really good team.

Speaker 1 (02:30:33):
I'll believe in that. Sorry, I don't believe in it.
Give me the Bills at miles five and.

Speaker 3 (02:30:37):
A half, Dacy, I already feel bad about it, but
I'm taking the over forty four and a half.

Speaker 1 (02:30:46):
I'm gonna do the same what I'm gonna take the over.
I think the Texans will get some things done because
I think they're playing a defense that's not a whole
lot different than the last two defenses. Granted, they should
have scored way more points against Tennessee. Sixteen is pathetic,
and they did score a lot more points against Jackson.
I took the under on that game at thirty seven
and a half and got blasted.

Speaker 3 (02:31:08):
No, wait, you won. I won that one. Okay, Now
I'm really confused.

Speaker 1 (02:31:12):
I don't Bluman's correct.

Speaker 3 (02:31:15):
Yeah, I know I misread that. Ah man a screag
give me the over.

Speaker 1 (02:31:21):
I do think Josh Allen will maybe, I mean it's
not gonna take much, but I think he'll have his
finest against It's not about Davis Mills. It's about I
believe the Texans in the Texans defense that much. That's
what's holding me up here. How about the Texans return
game lands them impossible to not score a position more

(02:31:42):
than once score. Maybe they score themselves, or they certainly
deliver them, especially on punt returns, deliver them really really
good field position, shortening the field for their offense, for
their field goals. I'm hopeful that they don't do that,
and maybe maybe Kami will again. They cut or released

(02:32:02):
or waived Matt Wright earlier this week, fresh off his
game winning kick. So if Amy, for some reason just
tells them. I'm man, I think I think I hurt
my quad again in warm up, So I don't know
what to do. Well, Dari will step up if asked. Heck,
he'll step up wherever they need it. But maybe they'll
just say, look, we've played this kickfield goals all day game.

(02:32:22):
We got away with it against Tennessee. We did not
get away with it the last time we were here
against the Denver Broncos. Second to last time we were
here against the Denver Broncos. Why'd they beat the Jaguars
because they scored a bunch of touchdowns? Do it again
in the fourth quarter? Can we just scored four touchdowns
in the fourth quarter, three of them on offense.

Speaker 3 (02:32:41):
Can we just spread this out when they score these?
This doesn't have to come in bunches, all right.

Speaker 1 (02:32:48):
Open the game with the score, play from a reasonable
position on the scoreboard, keep things close enough, and you know,
sneak out with a win. Can I get that? I'm
taking the over, so I'm not telling you they're going
to win, But I also don't think it's going to
be lopsided either. I think this is a game into
the fourth quarter and maybe they catch a break, maybe
they make a play. Maybe they've learned how to win
a close game. Got to be in one to win one,

(02:33:09):
and the last two have been close, and they finally
got there first too. There are teams out there like
the Chiefs that have still yet to win one. All
five of their losses are in close games. All five
of their wins are not in close games. This is
the first huge step towards saying they have recovered from
zero to three and they stand a good chance. I
believe their playoff probability to coordinate a one set of

(02:33:31):
numbers rises to thirty seven percent if they get a
win over the Bills from twenty two, I believe is
right now would dip into these single digits.

Speaker 3 (02:33:38):
If they lose, step into the dead digits.

Speaker 1 (02:33:43):
Final score prediction you me go first? Yeah? Please? Twenty
four to twenty one bills? How many is that total?
Forty five? Exactly? What's the number? Forty four and a half? Okay,
good prediction. It wins me the over, that's all I
care about. All you care about? Twenty one thirteen?

Speaker 12 (02:34:00):
Final score gives me the plus, it gives you the
miles five and a half. There's enough to like about
the Texans offense that says, hey, they're good, but.

Speaker 1 (02:34:07):
Not as good as Josh Allen. Team points, not as
good as Josh Allen. MVP. You only gave up twenty one. Yeah,
I think it's a few more points, a little bigger
spread than you mentioned, AC, but an over and close
enough to think that it's not over until the it's now,
it's over. The clock is run out?

Speaker 3 (02:34:24):
How long after the game until I get the text
from you?

Speaker 1 (02:34:28):
If that's the final score, what foe before the final
buzzer hits? I will send it to you. Are you
kidding me? From eight stories though, that would be unbelievable,
But we got the Astrolne Dana Brown talking to you
guys right here on Sports Talk seven ninety. That is
next