October 8, 2025 • 47 mins
Max and Rob cover a ton of first hour topics from bye week mindsets to varying injury severities as they discuss the state of the team.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is in the locker Room with King and Starks
on Steelers Nation Radio, presented by your neighborhood Forward Store.
The F one fifty is the official truck of the
Pittsburgh Steelers and by Steelers Pro Shop. Get it direct
from the team at the Steelers Pro Shop at shop
dot Steelers dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
And thank you very much for joining us on this
hump day alongside Max Starks.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I'm Rob King, Max. How are you today?
Speaker 4 (00:33):
I'm doing good, Rob, I cannot complain. Slowly but surely
getting back into the mold of I'm on the Pacific
Times out. Yeah right, I was eight hours away for
two weeks, so slowly but surely getting back into the
swing of things.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
So I you know, listen, I think before we get started,
our producer, Justin Miller breakfast to champions. He's having himself
a pop tart.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I think you and I see eye to eye and
a lot of things, Maxers, there are things we don't
see eyed eye on, but I think we see eyed
eye on. Do we agree? Frosted? It's got to be frosted, absolutely,
no question about it.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
Okay it It is a crime against humanity to do
a frostless pop tart. It's not even a pop tart anymore.
It's just it's just it's just it's like a Graham
cracker crusted jammy thing. It doesn't it doesn't become a
pop tart until it gets frosted.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Well, you know, it's amazing how things have changed. Like
when I was a kid, you know they that uh
you know still at black and white TVs with rabbit ears, right, Uh.
I don't think they'd invented to frosted pop tart, and
just a pop tart toasted was an unbelievable treat. Now
it's like, you know, if you went back and checked
out the old school oreos, like they didn't have that
(01:50):
much icing in the middle. Now the expect more cookies,
more lots of icing, right, yeah, which is crazy because
what a what a now oreo use is used to
be a double stuff exactly.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
That's that's my point, right, that's exactly. Double stuff is
like a quadruple stuff, right. Yes, it's almost like an
embarrassment of cream between two very thin cracks, and the
cracker got smaller.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
I feel like, so it may may have.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah, I mean there are certain things that that you know,
I think the expectations changed, Right, you don't. You don't
expect to black on white TV anymore. Well, you don't
expect a pop tart without frosting on it?
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah, no, you do not.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
I mean because it separates a pop tart from a
toaster pastry. Right, okay, but I got you toaster pastry
you know that went in the toaster oven, right, that
didn't have frosting. But a pop tart that's what you
really felt like, This is truly made for the toaster.
(02:55):
And then the frosting on the size, just the additional
level of goodness that you gives you the first visual
sense it as it pops out of the toaster. That
frosting is like a Hello sign. It has little sprinkles
in it looks very festive, looks very inviting, you know
it just it has that confetti goodness and it just
it pops out, pop Hello. How are you doing? Eat
(03:17):
me that? That's what That's what a pop tart says.
Toaster pastry just says.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
This is something I'm gonna get off this topic after
I have one final question for you.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Yeah, okay, got it.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Because I feel very I feel very I mean, I
feel strongly about the about the about the glaze and
the pop charts. I don't really eat many pop tarts
o there. Every once in a while, I'll get in
the little groove.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Man.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Once you eat one pop tart, oh, it's like you're
going right back to the snack machine and getting more.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
You know, absolutely. It's why they give you two every time,
that's whah yeah, because they know they can't just give
you one, right, But if you have it on a Tuesday,
you're probably going back on a Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Then you just have to wean yourself off. You have
to cut yourself off. So this is the one I
feel strongly about. When it comes to this kind of thing,
butter cream versus whipped frosting, I don't.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I can't.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I can't comprehend whipped frosting. It's like it would be
like if you gave me a manuscript written in Greek.
I just wouldn't be able to understand it. I look
at a whipped topping and I just don't understand it.
Are you okay with whipped topping on a cake or
a cupcake?
Speaker 3 (04:29):
No? I'm not.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
I am a butter cream guy. So whipped frosting is
like diet icing, you know, what I'm saying, like it's
that's the reason why you whip it. It's more air
in it, right, and it's not.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
I don't know the point. I don't understand it. I
can't comprehend it.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Yeah, yeah, because butter creep denser, right, you know, even
like I'm actually even more so cream cheese frosting, like that's.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
That's like the bee's knees that that goes on under
carrot cake, right, that goes.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Car cake red velvet cake, Like it's red velvet. You
need that on there. But the butter cream is is
the is the it's it's the it's the condiment of
all for cakes, right, It's it's just a standard issue.
This is a standard issue.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
I'm regretting the yogurt I had with berries. It sounds
like it sounds I made it.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
I could tell you I made it.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
You did, okay?
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Pop tarts and butter cream. O. Man, the non fact
playing Greek yogurt doesn't quite hit.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
The saund No, No, that's exactly what it.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Was too, all right. So uh so we have it's
a hump day Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
So Jim Wexel is going to be joining us at
eleven o'clock in the next hour as we kind of
you know, make that turn here now.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
So Max, I wanted to ask you.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Now, you know, we've talked a little bit about what
a player does during a bye week, so I wanted
to ask you coming out of the bye week. So
there's a couple of questions here that I want to
have in terms of Prepper, because I want to get
into the mind in psyche of the football players, and
then we'll get into the into some of the key
matchups in this game. What is the I mean when
(06:11):
you come out of a bye is there just a
is there a different feeling? Is there like a sense
of rebirth or or restarting thing? Is it just another week?
Because you know, as you discussed last week, you know,
for those of those that missed, uh, you know, what
a player does in the bye week. You're still going in,
You're still watching tape, You're still keeping yourself limber, You're
(06:35):
still you know, exercising, you're still hanging out with a team.
It's not like you're hopping in a plane and you know,
going to Tuscany for a week, right, You're not, you know,
so is there is it just another week? You're rolling
in or is there a different sensation you get in
this week than you might in a normal game week.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
No, you you definitely, you definitely have a renewed say rejuvenation,
you know, because you've given your body a chance to heal,
and that's that's something that you don't ordinarily get all
the time, those moments to just absolutely kind of reset
your body and say, hey, I know this has been
(07:17):
nagging us, but now I'm going to give you some
time and make sure that we get this thing right.
We'll get a little bit extra treatment in the week,
and you'll get a little bit extra rest. You'll make
sure you're doing the right proper stretching, you hit the
steam room, hit the sauna, and just allow your body
to recalibrate and to repair. And then you had a
(07:42):
Sunday where your body's normally used to tense physical action,
the anxiety, the neurons and everything that fires up in
your body to get you ready for a game. You
get to say, chillax, bud, take a beat. We don't
have we don't have to go break everything down that
we just built upright now. We got another week before
we do that. Your body calms and then you hit
(08:04):
that bonus day and you're bouncing around, got a little peppy,
your stuff, got a little hop, got a little hippie hop.
And then Wednesday, your body says, Okay, I'm ready to
do battle today. Let's let's go ahead, let's attack this week.
And you feel so much better after that week off,
whether you traveled, whether you stayed home, just to get
(08:26):
yourself away mentally, just to give you that kind of
pause button, so to speak, on that regression slope that
you're on that I talked about. Right, when you're on
that regression slope from the beginning of the season all
the way to the end, you just hope that it's
not too steep of an incline and that it's a
gradual decrease and that your new one hundred percent is
higher than that guy's remaining hundred percent. Right, that's what
(08:50):
you're going on and you're trying to create that path. Now.
Do I love it this early and a week five?
Absolutely not. I mean the sweet spots eight, nine, ten
is usually it because it gives you a half and
half point of the season that you can physically have that.
But I think for our team, considering the injuries that
we had and obviously hearing the news yesterday from Mike Tomlin,
you know this was needed because we got we got
(09:10):
some addition by by subtraction maybe you subtracted having a game,
and we got to add guys back in the process.
So that was a good thing. That guys are trending
in the direction to being available and that depth is
getting closer to being restored with everything. So it was
a good thing. It was a timely thing for I
think for our team.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
So one other thing, and.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
You have the Steelers have a short week coming up
next week, so you come out of the buy you
got a regular week, then you got.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
A short week, right, Yeah, So before I get.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Back to back division games, by the way.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Yeah, and before I get to that and how you
might manage that in a typical week, right, So Sunday
you go and and I know every week's a little
bit different, right, but let's say you come through without injuries,
just the normal sort of battering you take in an
NFL game When in a given week you play a
(10:13):
Sunday one o'clock game. When in a given week, do
you feel, okay, I'm over the kind of that the
aches and pains of this associated with play, as Mike
Tomlin might say, associated with play. And I feel like, okay,
I'm ready to play a football game. Is it Wednesday, Thursday, Friday?
Is it all the way to Saturday? When do you
(10:34):
when does your body feel like, okay, I'm good to go.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Whenever?
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Whenever the next game is. That's the easiest question, like mentally,
because like you said, because it can be a Sunday game,
but it could also be a Sunday night game, right,
it could be a Monday night game. You have Thursdays
as we get later in the year, and there's Saturdays,
so you so, like you said, from week to week
is different. But you know when the game is and
(11:00):
your body knows when the game is because it talked
to your brain that also remembers when the game is.
So they're at a fight with each other until game day.
Oh man, remember the outside of our left knee. That
that's the body talking to the brain. The brain's like,
I don't care, get it going, you know, it's like
we get we got work to do. We can't think
(11:21):
about that knee. You know what, if you need something here,
here you go, boom, We'll put a knee brace on it.
Boom here, let's put some icy hot on it. It's like,
we got to go. So it's a constant fight with
your body and your mind trying to trick each other
that you're ready to go a week week. So that's
why I say, whatever the game is, that's when your
body feels the best, because that's the agreed upon terms
(11:42):
that the brain and the body have come up with
and they know that you have to perform. So so
it's like it might not feel great, but like I said,
it's always a new hundred percent that you're finding and
maybe on that short week that that regression slope gets
a little bit steeper in that moment, but.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
You know, but you still ready to go, so it
doesn't really matter, right, I mean the Thursday game from
a physical standpoint, you're physically you make sure you're ready.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
To go on a Thursday night.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
Yeah Yeah, Once you strap the pads on, muscle memory kicks.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
In, right yeah, and and adrenaline takes care of a
lot of that stuff, right and you know, on the
other end, drop and we'll talk more about that next week.
The mental approach to a bye. But I did want
to ask, you know, like a mini buy as they
call it. I did want to ask you this. When
a team knows it has a Thursday night game coming up, right,
you got the game on Sunday and you know you
(12:37):
have a Thursday night game coming up? Is there anything
different in preparation? Is there less hitting in practice? Is
there any or do you just say you know what
it's for the short If we have a game week
on Sunday, boom.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Let's take care of business.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Let's get ready in our in their the exact same way,
and then we'll worry about next week next week week.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
Yeah, I mean you're going to hit less because you
have less time. Right, the normal day that you would
hit is you're now your travel day.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
No, no, no, I'm not talking about I'm not talking
about next week.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
I'm talking about this week.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Would you do anything different at all knowing that you
don't sure coming up?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Nope?
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Do not? All right, everything stays status quo normal, You
keep it going. It is what it is because you
have also come off of a bye, so you need
to reinvigorate yourself with with contact and hitting. So you're
gonna do your normal Wednesday, normal Thursday, normal Friday, and
your Saturday walkthrough and then you're gonna play, then we
(13:39):
worry about next week. But you get right now this week.
You can't be looking ahead. You can't be planning ahead
in any type of fashion because you have to get
ready for this week. Any change to the modus operandi
that is a regular game week played on Sunday is
going to mess mess up the rhythm of the team.
So you don't You don't change anything. You only change
when you have to change, and that have to change
(14:01):
starts Monday after a game, not this week.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
So uh, we started this segment, you know, with a
with a with a food discussion in a in a
in a silent off of the cap to our to
our dearly departed great friend Craig wolf.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
So now I have to ask you. I'm gonna I'm
gonna bring this back.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
To to to Craig wolfly observation that that made me
chuckle this morning what I was thinking about him. So
you you have done games all over the country with
so many different play by play guys, right, You've worked
with many many different play by play.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Guys, Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Do most of them use computers or printouts? So, so,
for full disclosure, I'm a handwriting guy.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
I write them on old vanilla Manila envelopes.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
I've done it for years, not envelopes, you know, the
folding the folders that way, you know, file that's right.
So I've done you know, this is obviously just my
second year doing the Steelers, but I've done play by
play over the years, high school football, college football. I
just haven't changed it. I liked the process. I don't
want to change it. Do do you work with anybody
(15:15):
else that does that? I mean, are there others out
there that still do it by hand? Or oh yeah, okay,
so I'm not a I'm a breed that's moving towards extinction,
but I'm not extinct yet. I'm not the I'm not
the Dodo bird yet. No, you're not the Dodo bird.
And here's the thing.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
Every person requires something different. Like for me, I elevated
that because I started the same exact I actually had
a print out that was probably the most rudimentary thing,
with a little grid system, and I hand wrote every
position on my sheets when I started right, And then
I got and then I progressed to the filefolder because
I was like, oh, this is double sided, and I
(15:51):
and then I grabbed like I had a ruler and
I had a pen out and I was making my
own grids on the file folder. And then from there
I started printing out like sheets by position, like I
would take all this extra time to create a system,
and I almost, I almost actually wanted to. I was
actually going to see about actually creating an actual software
(16:14):
and an algorithm to create that. But then I realized
that system it's close enough. It's the spotting charts that
are now there. So when I got with my first
play by play guy that actually used a spotting chart,
I was like, oh wow, because I saw because I
was working Monday night football for Westwood One and Kevin
(16:37):
Harlan and Kurt Warner were both using spotting charts and
that was my first time seeing and they're like, hey,
do you need to send this to you? Like, oh yeah,
let me try and use this, right and as a
sideline reporter, because I was a sideline at that time,
it's a very cumbersome thing. So that's why I started
laminating them because I was out in the environment, right.
(17:00):
But I didn't do it on the large sheet that
I use now. I used eleven by seventeen. I did
it on eight and a half by eleven, So I
made a smaller normal page size, but it's very hard
to read. In the moment, I realized I didn't need
to use all of that information. So what I started
doing was I started cutting out the parts that I
actually needed, because like I knew the offensive and defensive
(17:23):
line guys and kind of had I had their status memorize,
but it was more so the DB's wide receivers and
running backs and tight ends, like their stats and stuff.
So then I started manipulating my own like little handheld
to where I could use that more efficiently. But then
when I got back into the booth for my college
football games, you know, I had Ron Thulin. It was
(17:46):
a legend in the game did He used to do
NBA on TNT back in the nineties.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
And Ron Ron.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Would actually just he would type it up and he
would and he would and he would print out his sheets,
so he wouldn't have have even like a spotting chart
like you had. He literally had sheets of paper that
he would use and he was separated by by position groups,
and then he would and then he would and then
he would take them all together. That would be like
(18:13):
his board. And then of course, like my Cousins. Mike
writes his stuff out. He has a more presentable you know,
he has a more upgraded version of what you have
where but his are just done on big sheets eleven
by seventeen sheets and he writes it out, so there's
there's a lot.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
And then Brian Custer.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Brian Custer does the spotting charte, but he has a
different configuration for his spotting charts. So it just everybody
has something different. Whatever makes people comfort. Now a lot
of us on the analyst side, we're a little bit
more standard and for me, I usually have my notes
written out on the side to the sheet. I just
need the sheet for name recognition and position recognition because
(18:55):
I'm trying to take in so much information.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
And I believe I've sent it over to you.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
You've seen the sheet, Yeah, it's like, it's good. It
has some great conversation points. But for like us and
with the Steelers, like I do it, but I don't
really need a lot because I already know the Steelers
team inside out off of memory, so I don't need
that kind of remind It's more so for the opponent
because there's things that I'm going to see in game film.
(19:20):
But it's also different knowing their totality, because I mean
the biggest thing I use it for is historical reference, Right,
what's the career looking like? Where are the career total numbers?
Not just the season numbers, because I'm pretty good on
where they're at in season. So that becomes like the
one thing that I use. And because I do so
many games, you know, some of those things get racked around,
(19:42):
especially when it comes to like new opponents. I just
want to be safe and sure because like if it's
the Steelers, it's preseasons, all those things. I don't worry
about the Steeler stuff, Like the Steeler stuff I have
stored heavily in my in my brain bank. But the opponents.
It literally I cram, cram, cram for a test and
then it's out of my brain. Like I can't tell
(20:03):
you anything significant about the Philadelphia Eagles, you know, stat wise,
even though I just did the game Sunday. That's like
I kind of forget it and I moved to the
next game. I get that short term memory loss for
those things. But the Steelers, because it's a consistent you
constantly say, hey, this is in the say this goes,
this goes imprinted on the hard drive. This doesn't go
in the trash folder to get through it. But everybody
(20:26):
has their different way of doing their processes. And after
I've probably done games with at least twenty to twenty
five different play by play guys over my career, and
like I said, everybody's different. Everybody has their own thing,
and you know, and I've gotten to work with, you know,
(20:50):
a lot of different variety. I mean, I worked with
a kid last year, Jason Ross, who is a young kid,
probably about twenty four years old, and you know, we
were doing the We're doing the HBCU National Championship in Atlanta,
and like I said, I mean I felt I felt
like I felt like a dad in that and in there,
so anything I've ever thought, I apologize to you in advance, uh, Rob,
(21:16):
because seeing that age gap and Deally, I was like,
oh my goodness, Okay, this is what Rob feels like
when he's talking.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Oh wow, oh oh yike.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Yeah no no, So I was like, so I was like,
So I was like I get it now, I get it,
you know, because at first you don't get it, and
we're and you and I. You know the thing is
we've gotten to work, and we have a lot of
similar similarities and a lot of crossover, so it doesn't
it doesn't feel like that, you know that different, Like
we have shared experiences and lifetime experiences that go together
(21:51):
that make us a good combo. But like Jason, like
I never talked to him, never knew about him, never
did anything, And they're like, yeah, I'm twenty four. I
was like, okay, okay, all right, you haven't even seen life, Bud.
You haven't seen life yet. Okay, got it. So I
can't make any references to you.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
So and again, just I just wanted to wrap this
up with with the Wolf reference that I was getting to.
So lots of different ways to do this job, and
everybody's job is a little bit different. And I've tried
to explain this to people, like I see the game
differently when I'm calling it than I would when I'm
at home. It's just a it's just a different My
responsibilities are different, Your responsibilities are different.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
What we have to do.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So I would handwrite my charts, and of course Wolf
hand wrote his charts as well. And and and the
only one of the differences we had was that Wolf,
you know, you write down the number, you know, sixty
seven Calvin Anderson, right, and then you circle it.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Wolf would circle it.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
So I I go back over color coded to the team,
you know, find the find the sharpies, and I draw over.
I would draw you know, sixty seven Anderson, and then
I would write over the top of that. This year,
I'm trying not to actually write the names, just use
the numbers because the spotters, although I don't really generally
need the spotters, but they say it's easier to just
(23:11):
spot the number than if anyway, it doesn't matter. I
I wouldn't magic marker the offensive linement because again, the
only time that they are going to be mentioned on
the air, and again you're just trying to keep your
chart clean and easier to read for yourself, or if
(23:32):
you have a spotter, the only time you're going to
mention them is if they either fall in a fumble
or if they commit a penalty. Sometimes if they get
you know, beaten on a you know, on a pass
rush or something, but they're not touching the ball, right.
So yeah, So I could tell Wolf for years would
be he'd look over at my chart. Then he wouldn't
(23:54):
say anything. He'd look over at he was an offensive
alignment to the end, and finally one time he said,
how come you don't put Magic Parkers.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
On the offensive alignment. I knew it was coming. I
knew one day he was going to ask. I knew it.
I knew what he melted my charts for. I knew
he was going to ask me.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
And sure enough, one day he asked me, and I
explained it to him, and he kind of gave a
little nod of the head, but I could tell he
wasn't really satisfied with my answer. So, as I was
doing my charts this morning in preparation for the Steelers
and Browns on Sunday, I just I had a Wolf moment.
So I just wanted to bring that up since we
started the segment talking about food, which is a Craig
Wolfly topic. I just I just thought i'd share that
(24:32):
because it made me. It made me snicker this morning
when I was doing my charts.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
No, that that's a good one. Like you said, Wolf
is all about equality with didn't don't single us out,
all right, we don't have any real tangible stats now
now we can't get a highlighting marker.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
What a beautiful human being? Okay?
Speaker 2 (24:54):
So oh, he's the best. We're gonna take a break.
We have Jim Wexle coming up the Browns. We could
trade yesterday, but that's going to affect the next two weeks.
Next two opponents for the Steelers. We'll talk about that.
Jim Wexsel joining us at eleven o'clock. We wanted to
remind you that you can gear up with the latest
game day necessities at the official Steers Pro Shops. Get
(25:15):
the latest Sideline apparel, jerseys, terrible towels, authentic memorabilia and
custom exclusives you can only find directly from the team.
Visit one of the official Steelers Pro Shops located at
Akroscher Stadium, Grove City Premium Outlets, or Tang Route Let's,
or gear up online at shop dot Steelers dot com.
Get it direct from the team at the Steelers Pro
Shop at shop dot Steelers dot com.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
We'll be back in.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
The Locker Room presented by your neighborhood Ford Store and
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Speaker 1 (25:49):
This is in the Locker Room with Kingon Starks on
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Speaker 2 (26:08):
Com and let's go inside Steelers Nation presented by UPMC,
the official healthcare provider and health plan of the Pittsburgh
Steelers and Max. Before we get onto the Browns trade
yesterday with the Bengals to the quarterback position, it seemed
like some encouraging news from Mike Tomlin regarding injuries. It
(26:29):
sounds like Alex Highsmith, Joey Porter Junior, Jalen Warren are
trending in the right direction to be able to play
this week against the Browns. That is very nice to
have him back for divisional play, especially considering the fact
that you're able to go three and one, you know,
with various levels of injuries for those guys, and you know,
(26:50):
Jalen Ramsey and Calvin Austin not completely ruled out yet
for this week. So all in all, your thoughts on
the injury news for the Steelers coming out of the I.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
Thought it was very positive. You look at the biggest
thing was twenty four and fifty six. Joey Porter Jr.
And Alex high Smith being listed as arrow pointed upward, right.
I mean that's what you wanted to hear. Guys have
been gone for a couple of weeks and they they're
now back to their normal positions on the field, getting
(27:26):
things done and getting them back. But like you said,
Jalen Ramsey, Calvin Austin Hamstring for Jalen obviously Calvin with
the shoulder, I think those are ones we're gonna be
cautious of. I don't know if I think, in my
heart of hearts, I think Calvin will be ready for Sunday,
(27:47):
and you know, when you know you have that and
a short turnaround week, I'd rather save him for a
Cincy and let him get a little bit more healthier there. Jalen,
Hamstring's tricky. Your body knows, and we know the difference
that he is when he's on the field, all the
plays that he's responsible for. But that also short week
(28:07):
next week. I don't know if I'd necessarily want to
put him out there in harm's way before because the
issue of next week in my head, and this is
as a coach, when you're looking at just the health
standpoint of guys knowing I have a Thursday night football
game a guy who might be questionable and might be
(28:28):
arrows up. Man, you know, I don't want to. I
don't want to risk longer term injuries, even though we've
had a week off. You know what I'm saying, Like,
because both of those guys, we need them deep in
this run, and we also need them for multiple head
to head division battles coming up. But you know, I digress.
(28:52):
Everybody knows their body differently, everybody responds differently. Jalen is
a vet. He understands this. Calvin, you know, is getting
to that vet status, but he's still experienced. WHI is
still a little bit raw. So sometimes you have to
save the player from himself. No how, he feels sure right,
And I think this is another opportunity for other guys
(29:13):
to get involved. I think, you know, if Calvin can't go,
now we get a little more Roman Wilson, right, you know,
Now he kind of moves up the pecking order. We
see Scronica Scottie Miller kick in a little bit more.
Those two are two tried, tested and true veterans. Both
of them got Super Bowl rings. They've done the work,
They've earned the opportunity, let them master special teams and
(29:35):
kind of fill in and some of the nuanced things
with the with the offensive side. And I think you're
good enough if you don't have cal for this week defensively, right,
getting Joey back, you now get another corner. And if
Jalen can't go, you feel good because now you've got
(29:57):
Joey and you have Dashaun back. That's that now takes
a little bit of pressure off of who we have
to get out there. Right, Let's make sure Brandon Echoes
is also. You know, he had the ankle going into
the end of the game, going into the by that
didn't come up. So you feel good about where Brandon stands.
You feel good where Sleigh stands. Wan and Chuck are
(30:19):
still there on the back half. So you got some
guys and and even if you even if you need
to bump somebody up for that nickel position because you
have more guys dedicated to corner, well, you still got
Beanie Bishop, right, I Beanie Beanie is sitting there, and
I know people kind of forgot about him because you
got all these other big names at the dB position.
(30:40):
But let's lest we not forget Rob who let our
team in interceptions a year ago, Beanie Bishop, that's right,
and that guy, and that guy's still sitting there on
your team, happy, happy that we have him on the
practice squad. I know he would love to get elevated
and play, But like you said, you've got some dogs
in there right now, and so at the opportunity for
(31:00):
present itself, if you have to elevate, be that's not
a bad thing at all. That's a very very good
thing that you have that much depth sitting sitting there
in your reserves. So I feel good that if if
we don't go with Jalen or we don't go with
Calvin this week, we're going to be okay for all
intents and purposes. But I'm thinking about Thursday as as
(31:21):
a coach and as an athletic trainer. How can I
have guys on a short week ready to go? And
those guys didn't have to deal with the setback on Sunday.
They can now progress through and be ready for Thursday.
From the planning standpoint of that, the other guys who
had multiple weeks missed to get to healthy, those are
the guys I'm like, Hey, if you're ready to go,
(31:42):
we're going. But the guys are fresh injuries, like, hey,
let's take a beat. That's why we That's why we
gathered all of this depth. That's why we made sure
when we cut this roster down, and the way that
we u strategically put together our practice squad to prepare
for these moments. And we've done a great job so
far holding on right when we've had those massive injuries
(32:03):
in game. I just want to be as prepared as possible.
So from that perspective, hearing the injury report, I felt
really good. But I also knew whoever wasn't going to
go that there is contingencies and redundancies there to cover
up in case you don't get those guys available on
Sunday at wide receiver and at one of the defensive
(32:25):
back positions.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
You know, I wanted to ask you to as it
relates to injuries. So I have this discussion with people,
and you know, there are people who would say, you
know and listen, I understand. There there is no black
and white, right if this is a playoff game, you know,
and a player doesn't feel like they're really one hundred percent,
(32:50):
they may say, you know what I got all off
season to rest, I'm going to get out there and
give it my best. And you know, like you just
talked about, it's still long season. Yeah, they're coming out
of the buy. They've only played four games. You know,
they still have thirteen regular season games and hopefully some
playoff games coming up after that. So I understand that
not all injuries recoveries are the same. As a fan,
(33:15):
your temptation is to say, even if Jalen Ramsey is ready,
let's save him for Thursday, because that's the kind of
game you have him for.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
You have all these receivers because you got to deal
with Jamar Chase and t Higgins, and now maybe, you know,
maybe that's advantage for you. Maybe you don't run out
of your good guys to cover their good guys. You've
got depth, you know, you've got you know again, Minnesota
is a team that you'd like to have all your
(33:48):
weapons out there against when you're dealing with Jefferson and
Addison who came back last week, Naylor and some other guys.
So you know, maybe you can just take that third
receiver right out of the game because your guys just
clearly better than their guy, you know, and you feel
good about the other matchups. Now that having been said, hey,
let's save him for Thursday. I think, by and large,
(34:10):
and maybe I could be totally wrong on this, Max,
I'd like your opinion on this. I mean, do do teams,
you know, think that way? And again? Like so, now,
let's say you come in and your player actions and
you're like, hey, man, I'm one hundred percent healthy, I'm
ready to go. Does a coach look at you and say, well,
let's save you for next Thursday? Or do they say great,
(34:31):
you're cleared, let's get you in there. Or is it
a sliding scale as you know, sort of life is like,
you know, we were led to believe life is black
and white, but I think if we all step back,
we realize life is largely gray matter.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Not the gay matter of your brain, but just gray.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
Yeah, I mean life, life, work, life works in in
the gray zone a lot, you know. Uh, And I
think if a guy is healthy, you never limit a guy, right,
if he's completely healthy, clean bill of health, athletic trainer, doctors, whatever,
clean bill of health, players also feeling it, you let
him go. That's because exactly because that's the best way
(35:11):
to do it. You don't purposely Now if a guy's
coming off of injury and there's a question mark, meaning
the player may feel like he's good, but the athletic
trainer or the doctor have a different thought process at
a different course of action plan. Then you kind of
have to weigh the options. And that's where the head
coaching comes and that's where Mike Tomlin talks about That's
(35:32):
why I get paid the big bucks, right. I have
to make those type of decisions in the moment. Do
I protect the player from himself or do I listen
to the player over the advice of the athletic trainers
because he knows his body better. I have to weigh
these options, and that's what a week of preparation shows you.
And you're gonna look at it with a fine tooth
(35:53):
comb and you're gonna comb over every play. You're gonna
comb over every movement that the player makes because he
made me mentally trying to push through it. And he
may be thinking, man, I feel great, I'm moving, but
it looks like he's running in quicksand like man, coach
watches his cut and his cut looks very very slow,
or it's ginger, say he has a knee or an ankle,
(36:15):
and that cut he kind of wobbles a little bit,
but mentally he's trying to push through it and trying
to make it look good. But you can see the
biomechanical aspects of it. Then it's like, now I gotta
shut that dude down, like because he's gonna do more
harm than good to himself. And if I give him
another week, that that that's gonna that's gonna cure itself. Right.
That's where that's where you kind of let the actions,
(36:37):
and that's why we practice. You know, you don't just
sit there and put a guy on a shelf till Sundays.
They go out there and go, I've got to see movement.
And obviously older guys that get the VET days, those
are the guys you know that they're gonna be ready
by Sunday because they have a body of work and
a resume that proves that. So you don't worry about
those guys. But guys coming off of injury, that's where
it has to be. Everybody has to be a unanimous decision.
(36:59):
You can and have a two thirds vote, right, it
has to be all or nothing when you're making that
type of decision for a guy and you can't let them.
You can't let them hinder themselves. Now, playoffs, there is
no next week, so it's like whatever you got is
good enough at that point. But you've also built a
(37:20):
season's worth of resume to back that decision as well.
When you get the playoffs, you're talking about the eighteenth
game of the season, nineteenth game of the season, twentieth
game of the season, twenty first if you're a wildcard team, right,
those are the ones where it's all or nothing, Like
we are all working on a zero zero, you know,
gotta have it. There's no tomorrow type of week, so
(37:42):
you put whatever you got in there. If I know
that his eighty percent is better than this guy's hundred percent,
I'm going with the guy that has the eighty percent
because his eighty percent is a high has a higher
ceiling then the other guys one hundred percent, which has
a lower ceiling. That's where you come into those decisions.
But in season this early, you would rather be cautious
because you, like you said, we still have twelve more
games to go, you know, and and like I said,
(38:06):
the two thirds opinion doesn't matter all or nothing because
we're trying to protect this guy for the long haul.
I'm not just trying to get him for one quick
second and then let's say he does more damage to that,
because if he's a dB and has a hamstring or
has a quad or has a calf like strains and
ligament and and muscular things can be worse for guys
(38:30):
who have to be fast twitch. Now, if you're an
offensive lineman and you got and you got, you know,
you got, you got, you got a bruise on your
quad or you know, in the case of myself at
Willie Cologne, you have a bruised tailbone. Where I can
talk about that too deep, but just know that you
got hit. Things shifted when you got hit because you
got blindsided on a on an interception return and you
(38:53):
just get You just get cold cocked one time that
that that could hurt it. You get knocked on your
keyster a little bit, a little bit awkwardly and funny,
and and you have a bruisetail belt that you push through,
sit on the doughnut for the week and just deal
with it. But you know when it's something and even
even for some guys, you know, for us like I'll
never forget my second year Rob I tore I tore
(39:13):
my rotator cuff the internal side of it. Ohor sorry,
the labram connected in my rotator cuff on my shoulder.
That's one that's easy fix. Put a gatorcuff on, keep
it going, you know. And I think Roger Jones had
something similar where you had a little shoulder issue. They
strapped the gatorcuff on him. You go and you just
you play through it.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
You know.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
I had a moniscous tear week twelve and two thousand
and five. Guess what, Brace it up and keep going.
Like that's one of the things where you just you
figure out what's something that can get better with rest,
and what's not going to get better with rest, and
you just got to push through it or have surgery.
That's when you make those type of decisions, Like if
it's a surgical thing, but you can get by with
(39:55):
it until the end of the season.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Then you do it.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
I mean, that's what I ended up doing my second
year in the league, and that's the year we went
to Super Bowl forty and won it. I tore I
tore my knee. I tore my knee week twelve against Baltimore,
and I was like, I'm not missing this. You know
what I'm saying, I can't miss this. I can't miss
this time because if I had to take surgery, that's
four to six weeks, and at that time we didn't
(40:20):
have the short term I R. It was all IR
or no IR.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
That was it.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
Once you got put on IR, you were showed for
the season. And I didn't want to be showed for
the season. So I was like, let me figure out
a way to put this together. And I got through
it and we ended up winning a Super Bowl. So
I would have missed all of that run if I
had sat out and got surgery on my knee. And
I pushed through it. Now, granted some other things happened
later in my career, had probably like, hey, if you
(40:45):
got surgery, but I don't worry about that because at
the end, I accomplished the goal. And so you make
those decisions in those moments. It's like, if it's something
a soft tissue, though you want to you want to
be very tepid about that because that can heal over
time because rest, blood circulation to the joint or to
the muscle helps aid in recovery. But when it's ligament
(41:10):
or it's meniscus or it's cartilage like those things are
only repaired by surgery because there's no blood flow to them,
so that's a different situation again. But once again, this
was not a medical situation we were talking about. It
was just simply how do you approach it? So I
say all that to say that this is when we
just gotta listen to the trainers, listen to the doctors,
(41:30):
and listen to the players. All or nothing. If you
get one out of the three that says nay, then
it's a nay completely. But if you get all ya's,
you go full speed ahead, don't.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
You don't hold a guy back?
Speaker 4 (41:41):
This ready?
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Right? Okay?
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Well answered Max Starks. Thank you very much Again, These
looks inside what goes on within team confines fascinating. Thank
you Max. We have more to come. We have not
talked yet about the trade. We will get to that.
We also have Jim Wexel coming up on a hump day.
When we continue in the locker room as enter by
your neighborhood Ford Store and the Steelers Pro Shop on
(42:02):
Steelers Nation Radio, a part of the Steelers Audio Network.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
This is in the locker room with King and Starks
on Steelers Nation Radio presented by your neighborhood Ford Store.
The F one fifty is the official truck of the
Pittsburgh Steelers and by Steelers Pro Shop. Get it direct
from the team at the Steelers Pro Shop at shop
dot Steelers dot com.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
And we thank you very much for being with us
in the locker room. Max, just have a couple of moments.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
But after we got off the air yesterday, a trade
of significance for the next two weeks. The Browns traded
Joe Flacco, who, again for fans, he'd started the first
four games of the season for the Browns. He was benched.
Dylan Gabriel, the rookie, was brought into the game. There
are larger ramifications to this deal, which we can get to,
(42:59):
but for next week, it means the Steelers. I don't
see how they're not facing Joe Flacco, whether he starts
this week or not. I've got to believe he'll be
starting against the Steelers. I don't think you make this trade,
even though they didn't give up a ton. I don't
think you make this trade if you don't if you
don't think that Joe Flacco is going to be your starter,
(43:20):
and that also means shreder Sanders who always seems to
be right in the middle of everything as far as
controversies and discussions, and you know, the people wringing their
hands because you know, he kept falling in the draft.
I mean there was one draft expert who who couldn't
believe the Steelers didn't take him in the first round.
Then he wound up going to the fifth round. You know,
(43:41):
he brings with him some other things you know that
you can debate left or right if you're a football fan,
but just kind of your thoughts on you know, how
it affects maybe this week because we'll talk more about
the Bengals next week as Flacco gets traded to the Bengals.
Speaker 4 (44:00):
Yeah, I mean a lot of news yesterday. I think
the biggest one, of course, when's the last time you've
ever seen a quarterback traded in division in season?
Speaker 3 (44:13):
Right?
Speaker 4 (44:13):
Right?
Speaker 3 (44:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (44:14):
Usually does a postseason thing or a preseason thing, never
an end season thing, and definitely not to an opponent
that you're also fighting with at the at the bottom
of the division. But and you know, from the Browns perspective, like, well,
we benched him anyways, he's old. We got him for free.
We got him off the couch, and we're getting a
(44:36):
fifth round pick forim win for us. Not that the
Browns need any more draft picks. They keep a massing
draft picks, but it seems to be you know, it
feels like futility. It's just for them to posture and
move around for their trading purposes. But for the Bengals,
how bad are you that you have to trade for
the recently benched old guy because he's better than your
young guy that can't stop throwing interceptions, and you know
(45:00):
this is where you are, Like, I mean, they could
have went and got Russell Wilson from the New York
Giants like we had talked about and we postulated and
was ruined. I thought that was because he was also
I thought I did too. I did too. Flacco or him,
I've seen enough Joe Flacco for an entire career in
the AFC North and also this is his third division team. Yeah,
(45:21):
nobody in the history of the NFL has ever been
to more common division opponents than Joe Flacco.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
I don't see him completing the the quad fecta. I
don't know, he's not gonna see him as stee but
by the way, And for those of you, look, Joe
Flacco gives you a puncher's chance and the Bengals give
you a puncher's chance. I don't want to diminish that.
And again, a quarterback record is sometimes extremely reflective, well
(45:49):
very frequently extremely reflective of the team around him. But
he's six and twenty one since he left the Ravens. Yeah,
I don't understand saying maybe maybe Russell Wilson wasn't available.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (46:01):
Yeah, maybe they didn't want to because you need a
backup play in case Jackson Dart does go down, but
you still had Jameis Winston. I mean so, I mean
that that's a conundrum to me, or maybe this price
was too steep to acquire him. But Joe Flacco, we
thought we were gonna see him this week. Looks like
we're gonna see him next week. But I will say this,
(46:23):
he gives you a puncher's chance because you have T
Higgins and Jim back. He can push the ball down
the field, and he could push the ball better down
the field than Jake Browning can. But the caveat here
is will he survive until Joe Burrow gets back with
that offensive line in front of him. That is the question. Sure,
(46:45):
there's a reason why Joe Burrow is injured and has
to get surgery. It has to take long. It was
not because of something that he did on his own.
It was simply they could not hold water at Joe
Flacco's way more immobile than Jake Browning or Joe Burrow.
So it's going to be very interesting to see how
he does that.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
It is a hump day coming up. Jim Wexle is
going to join us next. You are in the Locker Room,
presented by your neighborhood Ford Store and the Steelers Pro
Shop on Steelers Nation Radio apart of the Steelers Audio
Network
This is in the locker Room with King and Starks
on Steelers Nation Radio, presented by your neighborhood Forward Store.
The F one fifty is the official truck of the
Pittsburgh Steelers and by Steelers Pro Shop. Get it direct
from the team at the Steelers Pro Shop at shop
dot Steelers dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
And thank you very much for joining us on this
hump day alongside Max Starks.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I'm Rob King, Max. How are you today?
Speaker 4 (00:33):
I'm doing good, Rob, I cannot complain. Slowly but surely
getting back into the mold of I'm on the Pacific
Times out. Yeah right, I was eight hours away for
two weeks, so slowly but surely getting back into the
swing of things.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
So I you know, listen, I think before we get started,
our producer, Justin Miller breakfast to champions. He's having himself
a pop tart.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I think you and I see eye to eye and
a lot of things, Maxers, there are things we don't
see eyed eye on, but I think we see eyed
eye on. Do we agree? Frosted? It's got to be frosted, absolutely,
no question about it.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
Okay it It is a crime against humanity to do
a frostless pop tart. It's not even a pop tart anymore.
It's just it's just it's just it's like a Graham
cracker crusted jammy thing. It doesn't it doesn't become a
pop tart until it gets frosted.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Well, you know, it's amazing how things have changed. Like
when I was a kid, you know they that uh
you know still at black and white TVs with rabbit ears, right, Uh.
I don't think they'd invented to frosted pop tart, and
just a pop tart toasted was an unbelievable treat. Now
it's like, you know, if you went back and checked
out the old school oreos, like they didn't have that
(01:50):
much icing in the middle. Now the expect more cookies,
more lots of icing, right, yeah, which is crazy because
what a what a now oreo use is used to
be a double stuff exactly.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
That's that's my point, right, that's exactly. Double stuff is
like a quadruple stuff, right. Yes, it's almost like an
embarrassment of cream between two very thin cracks, and the
cracker got smaller.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
I feel like, so it may may have.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah, I mean there are certain things that that you know,
I think the expectations changed, Right, you don't. You don't
expect to black on white TV anymore. Well, you don't
expect a pop tart without frosting on it?
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah, no, you do not.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
I mean because it separates a pop tart from a
toaster pastry. Right, okay, but I got you toaster pastry
you know that went in the toaster oven, right, that
didn't have frosting. But a pop tart that's what you
really felt like, This is truly made for the toaster.
(02:55):
And then the frosting on the size, just the additional
level of goodness that you gives you the first visual
sense it as it pops out of the toaster. That
frosting is like a Hello sign. It has little sprinkles
in it looks very festive, looks very inviting, you know
it just it has that confetti goodness and it just
it pops out, pop Hello. How are you doing? Eat
(03:17):
me that? That's what That's what a pop tart says.
Toaster pastry just says.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
This is something I'm gonna get off this topic after
I have one final question for you.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Yeah, okay, got it.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Because I feel very I feel very I mean, I
feel strongly about the about the about the glaze and
the pop charts. I don't really eat many pop tarts
o there. Every once in a while, I'll get in
the little groove.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Man.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Once you eat one pop tart, oh, it's like you're
going right back to the snack machine and getting more.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
You know, absolutely. It's why they give you two every time,
that's whah yeah, because they know they can't just give
you one, right, But if you have it on a Tuesday,
you're probably going back on a Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Then you just have to wean yourself off. You have
to cut yourself off. So this is the one I
feel strongly about. When it comes to this kind of thing,
butter cream versus whipped frosting, I don't.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I can't.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I can't comprehend whipped frosting. It's like it would be
like if you gave me a manuscript written in Greek.
I just wouldn't be able to understand it. I look
at a whipped topping and I just don't understand it.
Are you okay with whipped topping on a cake or
a cupcake?
Speaker 3 (04:29):
No? I'm not.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
I am a butter cream guy. So whipped frosting is
like diet icing, you know, what I'm saying, like it's
that's the reason why you whip it. It's more air
in it, right, and it's not.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
I don't know the point. I don't understand it. I
can't comprehend it.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Yeah, yeah, because butter creep denser, right, you know, even
like I'm actually even more so cream cheese frosting, like that's.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
That's like the bee's knees that that goes on under
carrot cake, right, that goes.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Car cake red velvet cake, Like it's red velvet. You
need that on there. But the butter cream is is
the is the it's it's the it's the condiment of
all for cakes, right, It's it's just a standard issue.
This is a standard issue.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
I'm regretting the yogurt I had with berries. It sounds
like it sounds I made it.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
I could tell you I made it.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
You did, okay?
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Pop tarts and butter cream. O. Man, the non fact
playing Greek yogurt doesn't quite hit.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
The saund No, No, that's exactly what it.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Was too, all right. So uh so we have it's
a hump day Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
So Jim Wexel is going to be joining us at
eleven o'clock in the next hour as we kind of
you know, make that turn here now.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
So Max, I wanted to ask you.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Now, you know, we've talked a little bit about what
a player does during a bye week, so I wanted
to ask you coming out of the bye week. So
there's a couple of questions here that I want to
have in terms of Prepper, because I want to get
into the mind in psyche of the football players, and
then we'll get into the into some of the key
matchups in this game. What is the I mean when
(06:11):
you come out of a bye is there just a
is there a different feeling? Is there like a sense
of rebirth or or restarting thing? Is it just another week?
Because you know, as you discussed last week, you know,
for those of those that missed, uh, you know, what
a player does in the bye week. You're still going in,
You're still watching tape, You're still keeping yourself limber, You're
(06:35):
still you know, exercising, you're still hanging out with a team.
It's not like you're hopping in a plane and you know,
going to Tuscany for a week, right, You're not, you know,
so is there is it just another week? You're rolling
in or is there a different sensation you get in
this week than you might in a normal game week.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
No, you you definitely, you definitely have a renewed say rejuvenation,
you know, because you've given your body a chance to heal,
and that's that's something that you don't ordinarily get all
the time, those moments to just absolutely kind of reset
your body and say, hey, I know this has been
(07:17):
nagging us, but now I'm going to give you some
time and make sure that we get this thing right.
We'll get a little bit extra treatment in the week,
and you'll get a little bit extra rest. You'll make
sure you're doing the right proper stretching, you hit the
steam room, hit the sauna, and just allow your body
to recalibrate and to repair. And then you had a
(07:42):
Sunday where your body's normally used to tense physical action,
the anxiety, the neurons and everything that fires up in
your body to get you ready for a game. You
get to say, chillax, bud, take a beat. We don't
have we don't have to go break everything down that
we just built upright now. We got another week before
we do that. Your body calms and then you hit
(08:04):
that bonus day and you're bouncing around, got a little peppy,
your stuff, got a little hop, got a little hippie hop.
And then Wednesday, your body says, Okay, I'm ready to
do battle today. Let's let's go ahead, let's attack this week.
And you feel so much better after that week off,
whether you traveled, whether you stayed home, just to get
(08:26):
yourself away mentally, just to give you that kind of
pause button, so to speak, on that regression slope that
you're on that I talked about. Right, when you're on
that regression slope from the beginning of the season all
the way to the end, you just hope that it's
not too steep of an incline and that it's a
gradual decrease and that your new one hundred percent is
higher than that guy's remaining hundred percent. Right, that's what
(08:50):
you're going on and you're trying to create that path. Now.
Do I love it this early and a week five?
Absolutely not. I mean the sweet spots eight, nine, ten
is usually it because it gives you a half and
half point of the season that you can physically have that.
But I think for our team, considering the injuries that
we had and obviously hearing the news yesterday from Mike Tomlin,
you know this was needed because we got we got
(09:10):
some addition by by subtraction maybe you subtracted having a game,
and we got to add guys back in the process.
So that was a good thing. That guys are trending
in the direction to being available and that depth is
getting closer to being restored with everything. So it was
a good thing. It was a timely thing for I
think for our team.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
So one other thing, and.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
You have the Steelers have a short week coming up
next week, so you come out of the buy you
got a regular week, then you got.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
A short week, right, Yeah, So before I get.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Back to back division games, by the way.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Yeah, and before I get to that and how you
might manage that in a typical week, right, So Sunday
you go and and I know every week's a little
bit different, right, but let's say you come through without injuries,
just the normal sort of battering you take in an
NFL game When in a given week you play a
(10:13):
Sunday one o'clock game. When in a given week, do
you feel, okay, I'm over the kind of that the
aches and pains of this associated with play, as Mike
Tomlin might say, associated with play. And I feel like, okay,
I'm ready to play a football game. Is it Wednesday, Thursday, Friday?
Is it all the way to Saturday? When do you
(10:34):
when does your body feel like, okay, I'm good to go.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Whenever?
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Whenever the next game is. That's the easiest question, like mentally,
because like you said, because it can be a Sunday game,
but it could also be a Sunday night game, right,
it could be a Monday night game. You have Thursdays
as we get later in the year, and there's Saturdays,
so you so, like you said, from week to week
is different. But you know when the game is and
(11:00):
your body knows when the game is because it talked
to your brain that also remembers when the game is.
So they're at a fight with each other until game day.
Oh man, remember the outside of our left knee. That
that's the body talking to the brain. The brain's like,
I don't care, get it going, you know, it's like
we get we got work to do. We can't think
(11:21):
about that knee. You know what, if you need something here,
here you go, boom, We'll put a knee brace on it.
Boom here, let's put some icy hot on it. It's like,
we got to go. So it's a constant fight with
your body and your mind trying to trick each other
that you're ready to go a week week. So that's
why I say, whatever the game is, that's when your
body feels the best, because that's the agreed upon terms
(11:42):
that the brain and the body have come up with
and they know that you have to perform. So so
it's like it might not feel great, but like I said,
it's always a new hundred percent that you're finding and
maybe on that short week that that regression slope gets
a little bit steeper in that moment, but.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
You know, but you still ready to go, so it
doesn't really matter, right, I mean the Thursday game from
a physical standpoint, you're physically you make sure you're ready.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
To go on a Thursday night.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
Yeah Yeah, Once you strap the pads on, muscle memory kicks.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
In, right yeah, and and adrenaline takes care of a
lot of that stuff, right and you know, on the
other end, drop and we'll talk more about that next week.
The mental approach to a bye. But I did want
to ask, you know, like a mini buy as they
call it. I did want to ask you this. When
a team knows it has a Thursday night game coming up, right,
you got the game on Sunday and you know you
(12:37):
have a Thursday night game coming up? Is there anything
different in preparation? Is there less hitting in practice? Is
there any or do you just say you know what
it's for the short If we have a game week
on Sunday, boom.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Let's take care of business.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Let's get ready in our in their the exact same way,
and then we'll worry about next week next week week.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
Yeah, I mean you're going to hit less because you
have less time. Right, the normal day that you would
hit is you're now your travel day.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
No, no, no, I'm not talking about I'm not talking
about next week.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
I'm talking about this week.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Would you do anything different at all knowing that you
don't sure coming up?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Nope?
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Do not? All right, everything stays status quo normal, You
keep it going. It is what it is because you
have also come off of a bye, so you need
to reinvigorate yourself with with contact and hitting. So you're
gonna do your normal Wednesday, normal Thursday, normal Friday, and
your Saturday walkthrough and then you're gonna play, then we
(13:39):
worry about next week. But you get right now this week.
You can't be looking ahead. You can't be planning ahead
in any type of fashion because you have to get
ready for this week. Any change to the modus operandi
that is a regular game week played on Sunday is
going to mess mess up the rhythm of the team.
So you don't You don't change anything. You only change
when you have to change, and that have to change
(14:01):
starts Monday after a game, not this week.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
So uh, we started this segment, you know, with a
with a with a food discussion in a in a
in a silent off of the cap to our to
our dearly departed great friend Craig wolf.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
So now I have to ask you. I'm gonna I'm
gonna bring this back.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
To to to Craig wolfly observation that that made me
chuckle this morning what I was thinking about him. So
you you have done games all over the country with
so many different play by play guys, right, You've worked
with many many different play by play.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Guys, Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Do most of them use computers or printouts? So, so,
for full disclosure, I'm a handwriting guy.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
I write them on old vanilla Manila envelopes.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
I've done it for years, not envelopes, you know, the
folding the folders that way, you know, file that's right.
So I've done you know, this is obviously just my
second year doing the Steelers, but I've done play by
play over the years, high school football, college football. I
just haven't changed it. I liked the process. I don't
want to change it. Do do you work with anybody
(15:15):
else that does that? I mean, are there others out
there that still do it by hand? Or oh yeah, okay,
so I'm not a I'm a breed that's moving towards extinction,
but I'm not extinct yet. I'm not the I'm not
the Dodo bird yet. No, you're not the Dodo bird.
And here's the thing.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
Every person requires something different. Like for me, I elevated
that because I started the same exact I actually had
a print out that was probably the most rudimentary thing,
with a little grid system, and I hand wrote every
position on my sheets when I started right, And then
I got and then I progressed to the filefolder because
I was like, oh, this is double sided, and I
(15:51):
and then I grabbed like I had a ruler and
I had a pen out and I was making my
own grids on the file folder. And then from there
I started printing out like sheets by position, like I
would take all this extra time to create a system,
and I almost, I almost actually wanted to. I was
actually going to see about actually creating an actual software
(16:14):
and an algorithm to create that. But then I realized
that system it's close enough. It's the spotting charts that
are now there. So when I got with my first
play by play guy that actually used a spotting chart,
I was like, oh wow, because I saw because I
was working Monday night football for Westwood One and Kevin
(16:37):
Harlan and Kurt Warner were both using spotting charts and
that was my first time seeing and they're like, hey,
do you need to send this to you? Like, oh yeah,
let me try and use this, right and as a
sideline reporter, because I was a sideline at that time,
it's a very cumbersome thing. So that's why I started
laminating them because I was out in the environment, right.
(17:00):
But I didn't do it on the large sheet that
I use now. I used eleven by seventeen. I did
it on eight and a half by eleven, So I
made a smaller normal page size, but it's very hard
to read. In the moment, I realized I didn't need
to use all of that information. So what I started
doing was I started cutting out the parts that I
actually needed, because like I knew the offensive and defensive
(17:23):
line guys and kind of had I had their status memorize,
but it was more so the DB's wide receivers and
running backs and tight ends, like their stats and stuff.
So then I started manipulating my own like little handheld
to where I could use that more efficiently. But then
when I got back into the booth for my college
football games, you know, I had Ron Thulin. It was
(17:46):
a legend in the game did He used to do
NBA on TNT back in the nineties.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
And Ron Ron.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Would actually just he would type it up and he
would and he would and he would print out his sheets,
so he wouldn't have have even like a spotting chart
like you had. He literally had sheets of paper that
he would use and he was separated by by position groups,
and then he would and then he would and then
he would take them all together. That would be like
(18:13):
his board. And then of course, like my Cousins. Mike
writes his stuff out. He has a more presentable you know,
he has a more upgraded version of what you have
where but his are just done on big sheets eleven
by seventeen sheets and he writes it out, so there's
there's a lot.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
And then Brian Custer.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Brian Custer does the spotting charte, but he has a
different configuration for his spotting charts. So it just everybody
has something different. Whatever makes people comfort. Now a lot
of us on the analyst side, we're a little bit
more standard and for me, I usually have my notes
written out on the side to the sheet. I just
need the sheet for name recognition and position recognition because
(18:55):
I'm trying to take in so much information.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
And I believe I've sent it over to you.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
You've seen the sheet, Yeah, it's like, it's good. It
has some great conversation points. But for like us and
with the Steelers, like I do it, but I don't
really need a lot because I already know the Steelers
team inside out off of memory, so I don't need
that kind of remind It's more so for the opponent
because there's things that I'm going to see in game film.
(19:20):
But it's also different knowing their totality, because I mean
the biggest thing I use it for is historical reference, Right,
what's the career looking like? Where are the career total numbers?
Not just the season numbers, because I'm pretty good on
where they're at in season. So that becomes like the
one thing that I use. And because I do so
many games, you know, some of those things get racked around,
(19:42):
especially when it comes to like new opponents. I just
want to be safe and sure because like if it's
the Steelers, it's preseasons, all those things. I don't worry
about the Steeler stuff, Like the Steeler stuff I have
stored heavily in my in my brain bank. But the opponents.
It literally I cram, cram, cram for a test and
then it's out of my brain. Like I can't tell
(20:03):
you anything significant about the Philadelphia Eagles, you know, stat wise,
even though I just did the game Sunday. That's like
I kind of forget it and I moved to the
next game. I get that short term memory loss for
those things. But the Steelers, because it's a consistent you
constantly say, hey, this is in the say this goes,
this goes imprinted on the hard drive. This doesn't go
in the trash folder to get through it. But everybody
(20:26):
has their different way of doing their processes. And after
I've probably done games with at least twenty to twenty
five different play by play guys over my career, and
like I said, everybody's different. Everybody has their own thing,
and you know, and I've gotten to work with, you know,
(20:50):
a lot of different variety. I mean, I worked with
a kid last year, Jason Ross, who is a young kid,
probably about twenty four years old, and you know, we
were doing the We're doing the HBCU National Championship in Atlanta,
and like I said, I mean I felt I felt
like I felt like a dad in that and in there,
so anything I've ever thought, I apologize to you in advance, uh, Rob,
(21:16):
because seeing that age gap and Deally, I was like,
oh my goodness, Okay, this is what Rob feels like
when he's talking.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Oh wow, oh oh yike.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Yeah no no, So I was like, so I was like,
So I was like I get it now, I get it,
you know, because at first you don't get it, and
we're and you and I. You know the thing is
we've gotten to work, and we have a lot of
similar similarities and a lot of crossover, so it doesn't
it doesn't feel like that, you know that different, Like
we have shared experiences and lifetime experiences that go together
(21:51):
that make us a good combo. But like Jason, like
I never talked to him, never knew about him, never
did anything, And they're like, yeah, I'm twenty four. I
was like, okay, okay, all right, you haven't even seen life, Bud.
You haven't seen life yet. Okay, got it. So I
can't make any references to you.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
So and again, just I just wanted to wrap this
up with with the Wolf reference that I was getting to.
So lots of different ways to do this job, and
everybody's job is a little bit different. And I've tried
to explain this to people, like I see the game
differently when I'm calling it than I would when I'm
at home. It's just a it's just a different My
responsibilities are different, Your responsibilities are different.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
What we have to do.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So I would handwrite my charts, and of course Wolf
hand wrote his charts as well. And and and the
only one of the differences we had was that Wolf,
you know, you write down the number, you know, sixty
seven Calvin Anderson, right, and then you circle it.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Wolf would circle it.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
So I I go back over color coded to the team,
you know, find the find the sharpies, and I draw over.
I would draw you know, sixty seven Anderson, and then
I would write over the top of that. This year,
I'm trying not to actually write the names, just use
the numbers because the spotters, although I don't really generally
need the spotters, but they say it's easier to just
(23:11):
spot the number than if anyway, it doesn't matter. I
I wouldn't magic marker the offensive linement because again, the
only time that they are going to be mentioned on
the air, and again you're just trying to keep your
chart clean and easier to read for yourself, or if
(23:32):
you have a spotter, the only time you're going to
mention them is if they either fall in a fumble
or if they commit a penalty. Sometimes if they get
you know, beaten on a you know, on a pass
rush or something, but they're not touching the ball, right.
So yeah, So I could tell Wolf for years would
be he'd look over at my chart. Then he wouldn't
(23:54):
say anything. He'd look over at he was an offensive
alignment to the end, and finally one time he said,
how come you don't put Magic Parkers.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
On the offensive alignment. I knew it was coming. I
knew one day he was going to ask. I knew it.
I knew what he melted my charts for. I knew
he was going to ask me.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
And sure enough, one day he asked me, and I
explained it to him, and he kind of gave a
little nod of the head, but I could tell he
wasn't really satisfied with my answer. So, as I was
doing my charts this morning in preparation for the Steelers
and Browns on Sunday, I just I had a Wolf moment.
So I just wanted to bring that up since we
started the segment talking about food, which is a Craig
Wolfly topic. I just I just thought i'd share that
(24:32):
because it made me. It made me snicker this morning
when I was doing my charts.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
No, that that's a good one. Like you said, Wolf
is all about equality with didn't don't single us out,
all right, we don't have any real tangible stats now
now we can't get a highlighting marker.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
What a beautiful human being? Okay?
Speaker 2 (24:54):
So oh, he's the best. We're gonna take a break.
We have Jim Wexle coming up the Browns. We could
trade yesterday, but that's going to affect the next two weeks.
Next two opponents for the Steelers. We'll talk about that.
Jim Wexsel joining us at eleven o'clock. We wanted to
remind you that you can gear up with the latest
game day necessities at the official Steers Pro Shops. Get
(25:15):
the latest Sideline apparel, jerseys, terrible towels, authentic memorabilia and
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Visit one of the official Steelers Pro Shops located at
Akroscher Stadium, Grove City Premium Outlets, or Tang Route Let's,
or gear up online at shop dot Steelers dot com.
Get it direct from the team at the Steelers Pro
Shop at shop dot Steelers dot com.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
We'll be back in.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
The Locker Room presented by your neighborhood Ford Store and
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Speaker 1 (25:49):
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Speaker 2 (26:08):
Com and let's go inside Steelers Nation presented by UPMC,
the official healthcare provider and health plan of the Pittsburgh
Steelers and Max. Before we get onto the Browns trade
yesterday with the Bengals to the quarterback position, it seemed
like some encouraging news from Mike Tomlin regarding injuries. It
(26:29):
sounds like Alex Highsmith, Joey Porter Junior, Jalen Warren are
trending in the right direction to be able to play
this week against the Browns. That is very nice to
have him back for divisional play, especially considering the fact
that you're able to go three and one, you know,
with various levels of injuries for those guys, and you know,
(26:50):
Jalen Ramsey and Calvin Austin not completely ruled out yet
for this week. So all in all, your thoughts on
the injury news for the Steelers coming out of the I.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
Thought it was very positive. You look at the biggest
thing was twenty four and fifty six. Joey Porter Jr.
And Alex high Smith being listed as arrow pointed upward, right.
I mean that's what you wanted to hear. Guys have
been gone for a couple of weeks and they they're
now back to their normal positions on the field, getting
(27:26):
things done and getting them back. But like you said,
Jalen Ramsey, Calvin Austin Hamstring for Jalen obviously Calvin with
the shoulder, I think those are ones we're gonna be
cautious of. I don't know if I think, in my
heart of hearts, I think Calvin will be ready for Sunday,
(27:47):
and you know, when you know you have that and
a short turnaround week, I'd rather save him for a
Cincy and let him get a little bit more healthier there. Jalen,
Hamstring's tricky. Your body knows, and we know the difference
that he is when he's on the field, all the
plays that he's responsible for. But that also short week
(28:07):
next week. I don't know if I'd necessarily want to
put him out there in harm's way before because the
issue of next week in my head, and this is
as a coach, when you're looking at just the health
standpoint of guys knowing I have a Thursday night football
game a guy who might be questionable and might be
(28:28):
arrows up. Man, you know, I don't want to. I
don't want to risk longer term injuries, even though we've
had a week off. You know what I'm saying, Like,
because both of those guys, we need them deep in
this run, and we also need them for multiple head
to head division battles coming up. But you know, I digress.
(28:52):
Everybody knows their body differently, everybody responds differently. Jalen is
a vet. He understands this. Calvin, you know, is getting
to that vet status, but he's still experienced. WHI is
still a little bit raw. So sometimes you have to
save the player from himself. No how, he feels sure right,
And I think this is another opportunity for other guys
(29:13):
to get involved. I think, you know, if Calvin can't go,
now we get a little more Roman Wilson, right, you know,
Now he kind of moves up the pecking order. We
see Scronica Scottie Miller kick in a little bit more.
Those two are two tried, tested and true veterans. Both
of them got Super Bowl rings. They've done the work,
They've earned the opportunity, let them master special teams and
(29:35):
kind of fill in and some of the nuanced things
with the with the offensive side. And I think you're
good enough if you don't have cal for this week defensively, right,
getting Joey back, you now get another corner. And if
Jalen can't go, you feel good because now you've got
(29:57):
Joey and you have Dashaun back. That's that now takes
a little bit of pressure off of who we have
to get out there. Right, Let's make sure Brandon Echoes
is also. You know, he had the ankle going into
the end of the game, going into the by that
didn't come up. So you feel good about where Brandon stands.
You feel good where Sleigh stands. Wan and Chuck are
(30:19):
still there on the back half. So you got some
guys and and even if you even if you need
to bump somebody up for that nickel position because you
have more guys dedicated to corner, well, you still got
Beanie Bishop, right, I Beanie Beanie is sitting there, and
I know people kind of forgot about him because you
got all these other big names at the dB position.
(30:40):
But let's lest we not forget Rob who let our
team in interceptions a year ago, Beanie Bishop, that's right,
and that guy, and that guy's still sitting there on
your team, happy, happy that we have him on the
practice squad. I know he would love to get elevated
and play, But like you said, you've got some dogs
in there right now, and so at the opportunity for
(31:00):
present itself, if you have to elevate, be that's not
a bad thing at all. That's a very very good
thing that you have that much depth sitting sitting there
in your reserves. So I feel good that if if
we don't go with Jalen or we don't go with
Calvin this week, we're going to be okay for all
intents and purposes. But I'm thinking about Thursday as as
(31:21):
a coach and as an athletic trainer. How can I
have guys on a short week ready to go? And
those guys didn't have to deal with the setback on Sunday.
They can now progress through and be ready for Thursday.
From the planning standpoint of that, the other guys who
had multiple weeks missed to get to healthy, those are
the guys I'm like, Hey, if you're ready to go,
(31:42):
we're going. But the guys are fresh injuries, like, hey,
let's take a beat. That's why we That's why we
gathered all of this depth. That's why we made sure
when we cut this roster down, and the way that
we u strategically put together our practice squad to prepare
for these moments. And we've done a great job so
far holding on right when we've had those massive injuries
(32:03):
in game. I just want to be as prepared as possible.
So from that perspective, hearing the injury report, I felt
really good. But I also knew whoever wasn't going to
go that there is contingencies and redundancies there to cover
up in case you don't get those guys available on
Sunday at wide receiver and at one of the defensive
(32:25):
back positions.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
You know, I wanted to ask you to as it
relates to injuries. So I have this discussion with people,
and you know, there are people who would say, you
know and listen, I understand. There there is no black
and white, right if this is a playoff game, you know,
and a player doesn't feel like they're really one hundred percent,
(32:50):
they may say, you know what I got all off
season to rest, I'm going to get out there and
give it my best. And you know, like you just
talked about, it's still long season. Yeah, they're coming out
of the buy. They've only played four games. You know,
they still have thirteen regular season games and hopefully some
playoff games coming up after that. So I understand that
not all injuries recoveries are the same. As a fan,
(33:15):
your temptation is to say, even if Jalen Ramsey is ready,
let's save him for Thursday, because that's the kind of
game you have him for.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
You have all these receivers because you got to deal
with Jamar Chase and t Higgins, and now maybe, you know,
maybe that's advantage for you. Maybe you don't run out
of your good guys to cover their good guys. You've
got depth, you know, you've got you know again, Minnesota
is a team that you'd like to have all your
(33:48):
weapons out there against when you're dealing with Jefferson and
Addison who came back last week, Naylor and some other guys.
So you know, maybe you can just take that third
receiver right out of the game because your guys just
clearly better than their guy, you know, and you feel
good about the other matchups. Now that having been said, hey,
let's save him for Thursday. I think, by and large,
(34:10):
and maybe I could be totally wrong on this, Max,
I'd like your opinion on this. I mean, do do teams,
you know, think that way? And again? Like so, now,
let's say you come in and your player actions and
you're like, hey, man, I'm one hundred percent healthy, I'm
ready to go. Does a coach look at you and say, well,
let's save you for next Thursday? Or do they say great,
(34:31):
you're cleared, let's get you in there. Or is it
a sliding scale as you know, sort of life is like,
you know, we were led to believe life is black
and white, but I think if we all step back,
we realize life is largely gray matter.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Not the gay matter of your brain, but just gray.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
Yeah, I mean life, life, work, life works in in
the gray zone a lot, you know. Uh, And I
think if a guy is healthy, you never limit a guy, right,
if he's completely healthy, clean bill of health, athletic trainer, doctors, whatever,
clean bill of health, players also feeling it, you let
him go. That's because exactly because that's the best way
(35:11):
to do it. You don't purposely Now if a guy's
coming off of injury and there's a question mark, meaning
the player may feel like he's good, but the athletic
trainer or the doctor have a different thought process at
a different course of action plan. Then you kind of
have to weigh the options. And that's where the head
coaching comes and that's where Mike Tomlin talks about That's
(35:32):
why I get paid the big bucks, right. I have
to make those type of decisions in the moment. Do
I protect the player from himself or do I listen
to the player over the advice of the athletic trainers
because he knows his body better. I have to weigh
these options, and that's what a week of preparation shows you.
And you're gonna look at it with a fine tooth
(35:53):
comb and you're gonna comb over every play. You're gonna
comb over every movement that the player makes because he
made me mentally trying to push through it. And he
may be thinking, man, I feel great, I'm moving, but
it looks like he's running in quicksand like man, coach
watches his cut and his cut looks very very slow,
or it's ginger, say he has a knee or an ankle,
(36:15):
and that cut he kind of wobbles a little bit,
but mentally he's trying to push through it and trying
to make it look good. But you can see the
biomechanical aspects of it. Then it's like, now I gotta
shut that dude down, like because he's gonna do more
harm than good to himself. And if I give him
another week, that that that's gonna that's gonna cure itself. Right.
That's where that's where you kind of let the actions,
(36:37):
and that's why we practice. You know, you don't just
sit there and put a guy on a shelf till Sundays.
They go out there and go, I've got to see movement.
And obviously older guys that get the VET days, those
are the guys you know that they're gonna be ready
by Sunday because they have a body of work and
a resume that proves that. So you don't worry about
those guys. But guys coming off of injury, that's where
it has to be. Everybody has to be a unanimous decision.
(36:59):
You can and have a two thirds vote, right, it
has to be all or nothing when you're making that
type of decision for a guy and you can't let them.
You can't let them hinder themselves. Now, playoffs, there is
no next week, so it's like whatever you got is
good enough at that point. But you've also built a
(37:20):
season's worth of resume to back that decision as well.
When you get the playoffs, you're talking about the eighteenth
game of the season, nineteenth game of the season, twentieth
game of the season, twenty first if you're a wildcard team, right,
those are the ones where it's all or nothing, Like
we are all working on a zero zero, you know,
gotta have it. There's no tomorrow type of week, so
(37:42):
you put whatever you got in there. If I know
that his eighty percent is better than this guy's hundred percent,
I'm going with the guy that has the eighty percent
because his eighty percent is a high has a higher
ceiling then the other guys one hundred percent, which has
a lower ceiling. That's where you come into those decisions.
But in season this early, you would rather be cautious
because you, like you said, we still have twelve more
games to go, you know, and and like I said,
(38:06):
the two thirds opinion doesn't matter all or nothing because
we're trying to protect this guy for the long haul.
I'm not just trying to get him for one quick
second and then let's say he does more damage to that,
because if he's a dB and has a hamstring or
has a quad or has a calf like strains and
ligament and and muscular things can be worse for guys
(38:30):
who have to be fast twitch. Now, if you're an
offensive lineman and you got and you got, you know,
you got, you got, you got a bruise on your
quad or you know, in the case of myself at
Willie Cologne, you have a bruised tailbone. Where I can
talk about that too deep, but just know that you
got hit. Things shifted when you got hit because you
got blindsided on a on an interception return and you
(38:53):
just get You just get cold cocked one time that
that that could hurt it. You get knocked on your
keyster a little bit, a little bit awkwardly and funny,
and and you have a bruisetail belt that you push through,
sit on the doughnut for the week and just deal
with it. But you know when it's something and even
even for some guys, you know, for us like I'll
never forget my second year Rob I tore I tore
(39:13):
my rotator cuff the internal side of it. Ohor sorry,
the labram connected in my rotator cuff on my shoulder.
That's one that's easy fix. Put a gatorcuff on, keep
it going, you know. And I think Roger Jones had
something similar where you had a little shoulder issue. They
strapped the gatorcuff on him. You go and you just
you play through it.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
You know.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
I had a moniscous tear week twelve and two thousand
and five. Guess what, Brace it up and keep going.
Like that's one of the things where you just you
figure out what's something that can get better with rest,
and what's not going to get better with rest, and
you just got to push through it or have surgery.
That's when you make those type of decisions, Like if
it's a surgical thing, but you can get by with
(39:55):
it until the end of the season.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Then you do it.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
I mean, that's what I ended up doing my second
year in the league, and that's the year we went
to Super Bowl forty and won it. I tore I
tore my knee. I tore my knee week twelve against Baltimore,
and I was like, I'm not missing this. You know
what I'm saying, I can't miss this. I can't miss
this time because if I had to take surgery, that's
four to six weeks, and at that time we didn't
(40:20):
have the short term I R. It was all IR
or no IR.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
That was it.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
Once you got put on IR, you were showed for
the season. And I didn't want to be showed for
the season. So I was like, let me figure out
a way to put this together. And I got through
it and we ended up winning a Super Bowl. So
I would have missed all of that run if I
had sat out and got surgery on my knee. And
I pushed through it. Now, granted some other things happened
later in my career, had probably like, hey, if you
(40:45):
got surgery, but I don't worry about that because at
the end, I accomplished the goal. And so you make
those decisions in those moments. It's like, if it's something
a soft tissue, though you want to you want to
be very tepid about that because that can heal over
time because rest, blood circulation to the joint or to
the muscle helps aid in recovery. But when it's ligament
(41:10):
or it's meniscus or it's cartilage like those things are
only repaired by surgery because there's no blood flow to them,
so that's a different situation again. But once again, this
was not a medical situation we were talking about. It
was just simply how do you approach it? So I
say all that to say that this is when we
just gotta listen to the trainers, listen to the doctors,
(41:30):
and listen to the players. All or nothing. If you
get one out of the three that says nay, then
it's a nay completely. But if you get all ya's,
you go full speed ahead, don't.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
You don't hold a guy back?
Speaker 4 (41:41):
This ready?
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Right? Okay?
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Well answered Max Starks. Thank you very much Again, These
looks inside what goes on within team confines fascinating. Thank
you Max. We have more to come. We have not
talked yet about the trade. We will get to that.
We also have Jim Wexel coming up on a hump day.
When we continue in the locker room as enter by
your neighborhood Ford Store and the Steelers Pro Shop on
(42:02):
Steelers Nation Radio, a part of the Steelers Audio Network.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
This is in the locker room with King and Starks
on Steelers Nation Radio presented by your neighborhood Ford Store.
The F one fifty is the official truck of the
Pittsburgh Steelers and by Steelers Pro Shop. Get it direct
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Speaker 3 (42:31):
And we thank you very much for being with us
in the locker room. Max, just have a couple of moments.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
But after we got off the air yesterday, a trade
of significance for the next two weeks. The Browns traded
Joe Flacco, who, again for fans, he'd started the first
four games of the season for the Browns. He was benched.
Dylan Gabriel, the rookie, was brought into the game. There
are larger ramifications to this deal, which we can get to,
(42:59):
but for next week, it means the Steelers. I don't
see how they're not facing Joe Flacco, whether he starts
this week or not. I've got to believe he'll be
starting against the Steelers. I don't think you make this trade,
even though they didn't give up a ton. I don't
think you make this trade if you don't if you
don't think that Joe Flacco is going to be your starter,
(43:20):
and that also means shreder Sanders who always seems to
be right in the middle of everything as far as
controversies and discussions, and you know, the people wringing their
hands because you know, he kept falling in the draft.
I mean there was one draft expert who who couldn't
believe the Steelers didn't take him in the first round.
Then he wound up going to the fifth round. You know,
(43:41):
he brings with him some other things you know that
you can debate left or right if you're a football fan,
but just kind of your thoughts on you know, how
it affects maybe this week because we'll talk more about
the Bengals next week as Flacco gets traded to the Bengals.
Speaker 4 (44:00):
Yeah, I mean a lot of news yesterday. I think
the biggest one, of course, when's the last time you've
ever seen a quarterback traded in division in season?
Speaker 3 (44:13):
Right?
Speaker 4 (44:13):
Right?
Speaker 3 (44:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (44:14):
Usually does a postseason thing or a preseason thing, never
an end season thing, and definitely not to an opponent
that you're also fighting with at the at the bottom
of the division. But and you know, from the Browns perspective, like, well,
we benched him anyways, he's old. We got him for free.
We got him off the couch, and we're getting a
(44:36):
fifth round pick forim win for us. Not that the
Browns need any more draft picks. They keep a massing
draft picks, but it seems to be you know, it
feels like futility. It's just for them to posture and
move around for their trading purposes. But for the Bengals,
how bad are you that you have to trade for
the recently benched old guy because he's better than your
young guy that can't stop throwing interceptions, and you know
(45:00):
this is where you are, Like, I mean, they could
have went and got Russell Wilson from the New York
Giants like we had talked about and we postulated and
was ruined. I thought that was because he was also
I thought I did too. I did too. Flacco or him,
I've seen enough Joe Flacco for an entire career in
the AFC North and also this is his third division team. Yeah,
(45:21):
nobody in the history of the NFL has ever been
to more common division opponents than Joe Flacco.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
I don't see him completing the the quad fecta. I
don't know, he's not gonna see him as stee but
by the way, And for those of you, look, Joe
Flacco gives you a puncher's chance and the Bengals give
you a puncher's chance. I don't want to diminish that.
And again, a quarterback record is sometimes extremely reflective, well
(45:49):
very frequently extremely reflective of the team around him. But
he's six and twenty one since he left the Ravens. Yeah,
I don't understand saying maybe maybe Russell Wilson wasn't available.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (46:01):
Yeah, maybe they didn't want to because you need a
backup play in case Jackson Dart does go down, but
you still had Jameis Winston. I mean so, I mean
that that's a conundrum to me, or maybe this price
was too steep to acquire him. But Joe Flacco, we
thought we were gonna see him this week. Looks like
we're gonna see him next week. But I will say this,
(46:23):
he gives you a puncher's chance because you have T
Higgins and Jim back. He can push the ball down
the field, and he could push the ball better down
the field than Jake Browning can. But the caveat here
is will he survive until Joe Burrow gets back with
that offensive line in front of him. That is the question. Sure,
(46:45):
there's a reason why Joe Burrow is injured and has
to get surgery. It has to take long. It was
not because of something that he did on his own.
It was simply they could not hold water at Joe
Flacco's way more immobile than Jake Browning or Joe Burrow.
So it's going to be very interesting to see how
he does that.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
It is a hump day coming up. Jim Wexle is
going to join us next. You are in the Locker Room,
presented by your neighborhood Ford Store and the Steelers Pro
Shop on Steelers Nation Radio apart of the Steelers Audio
Network
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