1/14/25 - The Mo Egger Radio Show - Mo Egger

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Money.

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Enter it now.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
This is Paul Dayner Junior and Moe Egger in studio
talking all things Bengals and general NFL topics on ESPN
fifteen thirty, Cincinnati Sports Station. No, we haven't run that
thing since August. What's up.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
Good afternoon. I'm Allegar and this is ESPN fifteen thirty.
Thank you for listening. I hope you having an awesome Tuesday.
Paul Danner Junior is here.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
We're in studio this afternoon.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
After a football seasons where the shows on Tuesdays at
Buffalo Wild Wings, which we miss sorely and hope you
back to doing next football season.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
We are back in studio today.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Paul is here at the Athletic dot Com, the Growler
Podcast and on x at Paul Danner Junior. It's it's
good to have you. It's good to be here. I
wish the Bengals were playing, but the last few weeks
got weird with you and I because of the holidays,
because of the Bengals playing on Saturdays, and it got weird,
and so it's it's just it's nice to have you back.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Here with me in studio. This feels like home base.

Speaker 4 (01:07):
You know, it's like, let's start over, Let's get back
to our foundational roots here in the studio and just
get just get back to normal.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
And you know, mu's more normal than how do you
fix all this?

Speaker 3 (01:20):
That's right, Yes, there is a there is a comfort
level that I have in trying to fix all the
Bengals issues.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah, there's many, Well, there's a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
And you wrote a lengthy rundown of some of the
decisions the Bengals have in front of them regarding their
own free agents not named T Higgins, which is a
category onto itself, and I want to get to that
a little bit later on. Let's start though, with the
search for a defensive coordinator. It's ongoing, it's ongoing. Yeah,
when do you think Smoke will emerge from the venue
originally known as Paul Brown Stadium to tell us that

(01:50):
they have hired a DC. I don't think when Notre
Dame's done planned. That feels like that would be a point.

Speaker 4 (01:59):
You know, we've talked about a few of the known
connection candidates here and ones that they would want to
talk to, and it certainly would seem that Al Golden
would be somebody that they would want to talk to.
Here's the thing, here's you know, when we are trying
to pin down a timeline, which has been hard to
pin down, sure, but in general, I think here's the Bengals.

(02:21):
Believe it or not, they're the domino. Okay, the defensive
coordinator market is not really gonna move with anyone until
the Bengals move because they're the one that the top candidates,
or at least the top of the Bengals list, will want. Now,
maybe other ones that they're you know, guys that they're
not interested in, you know, maybe those guys will sign

(02:43):
elsewhere first. But I think from the group, if you
think you have a chance at the Bengals gig, you're
not moving until you know you've been told explicitly you're
not getting it. I don't think, and I think that's
to their advantage. They're not gonna move quickly thinking they're
gonna miss out on somebody. That gives them time to
wait on the people that they want to talk to,
whether it's NFL assistants that are still in the playoffs,

(03:05):
whether it's somebody who's in the college football playoff, whether
it's anybody who they have on their radar that they
just want to make sure that they talk to to
check that box.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
I think they can do that.

Speaker 4 (03:15):
I don't feel like they need to rush, and so
for that matter, I think it's kind of open ended
a little bit. But I don't think they wanted to
drag on forever. But I think, you know, a week
or two probably feels like you start closing in, you know,
pretty closely.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yeah, we've seen some bigger names become a part of
the conversation, like Matt Eberfluss.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah, which as long as he's not in charge of
any sort of game management.

Speaker 4 (03:36):
It's what I said when we did the original list,
So he's not going to have to make any game
management decisions.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
You know, you worry about his.

Speaker 4 (03:45):
Reputation taking a hit a little bit with players what
happened in Chicago, But whatever, man, you go back and
you look in the basic of his defense coordinator work,
where three of the four years in Indianapolis he had
a top ten defense and points allowed, and that's what
got him that job. And he held onto that job
for reasons that he was liked within the building. And
so you worry about that, But he's not doing any

(04:05):
you know, he's not gonna be over here trying to
make game management decisions at all. He's just he's just
gonna be taking care of the defense with head coaching experience.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
So yeah, that would I like that. And then I'm
reading about Don Wink Martindale. Don't worry about Don Wink Martindale.
We're good. I don't want I don't want him to
be the I don't see Wink being in the mix.
I don't want him to be the guy I don't
think he's gonna be, because.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
Then I'm gonna have to take back all the mean
things I said about him when he talked about Joe
Burrow not.

Speaker 4 (04:26):
Yet being in these Burrows show up in the Krusty
Krab sweatshirt the first day he's on the job, Like, look,
there there was there was some some ill will between
these coaching staffs, and specifically over some of the stuff
that was going on with Wink Martindale. So yeah, I
don't I don't put it much stock into into his

(04:47):
name being.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Should we put any stock into a Dejon Anthony's TikTok?

Speaker 1 (04:50):
No? Did? How much stock did you have in it? Before?
I didn't know it existed? In stock.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
So, so here's the friend that I was. What day
was that last week? Whatever day it was, it was right.
It was right before I got set to either come in,
or maybe it was one of the days I did
the show from home. Anyway, I took a pause to
eat lunch in my kitchen and empty the dishwasher, which
is the one household chore that is mine that I

(05:16):
am assigned to because my wife hates doing it, And
so I'm in the middle of doing that that I
equally do not like, but it's mine, and I'm emptying
the dishwasher and a friend of mine text me and goes,
who's the new DC, And I'm like, I don't know.
So I start scrambling furiously you and all the other
folks who cover the team, and then finally I stumbled

(05:37):
upon Dejon Anthony has tipped that it's going to be
shocking who it is. And I'm like, all right, do
I have to spend any energy on this? Anytime on this?
And so I had to spend some Did you have
to spend any Yeah?

Speaker 4 (05:51):
Yeah, I mean you gotta at least check and make sure,
like this isn't just some player who accidentally fell into
some knowledge and didn't know what to do with it,
like he was playing on fourth and sixteen, you know
what I mean, Like, is that what happened here? And No,
I think, you know, whatever, whatever that was one who cares? Okay, Two,

(06:13):
I don't, you know, I don't think that there's it
could have been a name. Hey, somebody's in the mix
and you're the next thing, you know, you're on TikTok
saying you're gonna be surprised to it, not having any
real clue about how any of this works. So no,
I don't. I don't put much stuck into it. It
was a real thing in the moment because you had
to try to figure out like is this just some

(06:33):
dumb thing that happened, you know, like this this happened
every the off season, so you were just immediately reminded
how instufferable the off season can and it's like this
stuff happens and you got to like.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
Follow it for a day.

Speaker 4 (06:44):
Yeah you're like, ugh, no, I don't want to do this,
but yeah, no, I you know, it's not really much
of it.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
And I was trying to figure out on our show.
First of all, the problem with this was I started
to go down the day Jehn Anthony rabbit hole, and
then I forgot that I had only emptied half of
the dishwasher. So when my wife came home, I had
to explain to her I didn't finish because of Dejon
Anthony's TikTok.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
Yeah, that's a tough one. That's not where you want
to be.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
No, it questions your ability to be the person responsible
for loading and unloading the dishwasher, honestly, but it.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
Does set the stage for an off season where you
know who's going to be spotted at the Kenwood mall. Uh,
who just landed at CVG, Who's out to dinner?

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Like, man, God love you. Yeah, and you haven't even
gotten into who said a thing?

Speaker 4 (07:33):
Yeah, a trade request or the problem we even gotten
into any any of that world.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
By the way, how did you acquire that?

Speaker 4 (07:39):
Did you acquire it because you proved to be good
at it at Look? Are you like a meticulous dishwasher loader?
Because there's like two kinds of people, people that are
very militant about the structure and then people who sort
of loaded like you know, mefed out raccoon or something
like that. I kind of am like that, but I'm
willing to do it, and I feel like that causes

(08:01):
a little you know, you can have problems in there.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, for whatever reason, my wife does not like that
particular chore.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
I also dislike it because no dishwasher that I have
ever owned actually dries the dishes.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
And the most annoying thing in.

Speaker 3 (08:17):
Life to me is if you have a bowl in
the top racket it still has water and you pull
it out and the water it spills on your foot.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Like that is my pet peeve in life.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
But I think with my wife it's like, look, I
can count on you to do maybe three things.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
This is one of them. Yeah, can you just do this?

Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah, So it's kind of become This morning, I'm getting
ready to leave. My wife was off today home and
there's the green light on the dishwasher, and it's like, man,
before I go. So right after I was done texting
with you, I'm like, before I go, I better empty
that thing.

Speaker 4 (08:43):
Yeah, I have a really weird thing. I'm not sure
what this says about me. One of my one of
the most soothing sounds that I feel like I ever
hear that I enjoy most is a quiet house at
night with nothing but the dishwasher running.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (08:57):
I like the sound of it running, Like when you
go up to go to bed and that's he's turn on.
It's running overnight or whatever, and I hear it. I'm
like it just it makes me feel calm.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
It gives me anxiety because when I wake up in
the morning, that's what I'm gonna have to do.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
And I don't like it. That's fair.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
That's why I like. I buy a lot of paper plates.
Like we're going into areas the audience doesn't care. I
buy a lot of paper plates. Yeah, so we use
the diswasher less, so I just spend less time emptying
it because I genuinely don't like that.

Speaker 4 (09:22):
I'm pro paper plates. Yeah, I'm for sure. Is this
what happens when we're not at a bar having to
have this is what happens when the defense is No,
this is too much comfort in studios. The defensive coordinator search,
to me, is boring. I'm gonna be painfully honest with you.
It's not that it's not important. What about the offensive
line coach search where you really won't know any of
the names.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
Yeah, is that one. Here's here's what I'll ah.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
I can tell you the defensive coordinator will be aggressive
and the offensive line coach will be intense.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
It'll be intense. Yeah, he'll be He'll be a real
football guy. Uh, were you surprised?

Speaker 3 (09:55):
I guess he has added Atlanta to his list where
you at least somewhat surprised that there wasn't maybe a
a little bit more DC interest in Lou.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
I think there's I mean, I think there is.

Speaker 4 (10:03):
I mean a couple when you've got enough Indy and
Atlanta's happening, and I would imagine he'll pop up as
more movement happens, right, I mean, you've got it's still
kind of stagnant until the head coach. Things start to
start moving, and so then you can see you can
see Lou sneaking in. I think he'll I think he'll
end up, you know. I think he'll end up with

(10:25):
a DC job, And I think he'll probably have talked
to four or five.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Teams when it's all said and done.

Speaker 4 (10:31):
Really, I feel like that that's kind of the buzz
out there around him right now. I just think he's
well respected. And we talked about this like it doesn't
mean that either side is wrong. You know, the Bengals
needed to move on. They need a fresh voice, They
needed a change. But it wasn't because Lou suddenly became
a terrible coordinator. It just it just there's a stale

(10:53):
factor that was happening there. And I think a lot
of teams look at what Lou has been able to
do and see it as, look, you need somebody that
can game plan in the playoffs. We've watched this guy
do it with the right components. We feel like we
have the personnel that can fit him. This could be
a match and you could make it work. So you've
always felt like he's still a good coordinator. I'm not

(11:14):
stunned at all, even if even back in the middle
of the season when things were going terribly, I remember
us talking about it and the point was, yeah, they
got to move on. But I feel like he's still
gonna be a defensive cordator next year. Like it just
feels like there's just too much respect for what he
did and too much knowledge of how things just here
just kind of became untenable.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
I feel like among the many missteps I've made in
my life is not studying to become a defensive coordinator,
because it kind of feels like once you're in the
club you're in. I was thinking about that watching the
Steelers on Saturday Night with Tara Austin, and I'm like,
that's just one of those dudes. He'll probably coordinate defenses
for like nine teams by the time he's done it.
Just wink Martindale. Like these guys that just sort of

(11:55):
hop scotch around the league and maybe they go get
a college job. But defensive coordinators, it sort of feels like,
as long as you still want to work, there's a
team that'll go, yeah, we'll let you coordinate the defense.
And so I feel like Lou is in the club
and it's a hard club to get kicked out of.

Speaker 4 (12:09):
You know, Defensive coordinators and defense this as a whole.
They're kind of like kickers. Yeah, Like they're volatile, yes,
you know, like one year they're great and used and
it's just all working, and the next year it's just
not working for whatever reason.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
Why.

Speaker 4 (12:25):
You're kid, you're or you're Evan McPherson, right, and you
go from the tub. And but once you're in it,
when you're one of these veteran kickers, you're never just
sitting at home not getting a call, you know, like
Will Watts is always gonna get a call, right, Okay,
no matter no matter what's going on. I mean I'm
not I'm actually a surprise Jim Breeze doesn't get more calls, right,
I mean, how many game winning kicks do you got
to make?

Speaker 1 (12:45):
Right? You know?

Speaker 4 (12:46):
And so like, once you're in there, I feel like
that is it's one of those things you've proven you
can do it, You've proven you're capable, and those markets
are just so unstable from year to year that it
just induces change and people just want comfort. They want
knowledge that you're gonna show up and know what the
heck's going on and not be totally overwhelmed, which makes

(13:06):
it hard to be rising defensive coordinator candidate guy. Right, Yeah,
and those guys tend to end up being really good,
Like you see a lot of big time success stories
and they quickly become the next round of head coach candidates.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
But teams are scared. It's a bigger risk.

Speaker 4 (13:23):
And I think it's the interesting aspect of this discussion
when we sit here and talk about names like, you know,
whether we're talking about Wink Martindale or Eberflus or whoever.
These people that have done it before, Versus Jim Leonard
from Denver or Christian Parker is only thirty two from Philadelphia,
but he's the hot, up and coming thing on the defense,
which there's a risk in that, and you get a

(13:45):
risk being too cute trying to make the perfect play,
or just give me somebody that knows what they're doing
and can coordinate the fifteenth ranked defense. And I feel
like that's gonna be an interesting situation, not who it is, necessarily,
but which side of the coin is that Bengals landouts.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
What I enjoy most about like the first two weeks
of the season because it's it's it's like it's like
when you run into former co workers, right and you're like,
oh yeah, he's working over there on Channel twelve now right,
Oh yeah, okay, and you see like they'll show on
the sideline there's uh I'm trying to think of a
good example that there's Tarrell Austin right there, there's Matt eberflush,

(14:23):
there's there's Vic Fangio, Like, oh yeah, that guy's the
coach of the Broncos. Okay, they'll show him in the
box and then the kyron will have his name and
it's like I was wondering what happened to that guy? Yeah,
and so like defensive coordinators, it just so, we'll do
that with lou next year, and then whoever the Bengals
higher will do that with that guy in four or
five years when we decide and he's no good and
some other teams are like, yeah, we'll take him.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
Can't wait?

Speaker 4 (14:45):
Yeah, waiting for Tarol Austin to be the latest time
that he takes the fall right, Pittsburgh, Right, Yeah, defense
falls apart. Well, I'm sure it's Tarol Austin's fault, of course,
same way it was here and then he backed somewhere else,
and you know, it's just it's it's the nature of it.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
All right.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
So the smart should I wager on Al Golden being
the guy? I'm a wager if I had to bet
on one man. There's a lot of variables with Al Golden.
I mean, I think he makes sense, but he would
be expensive. He has to not want to do something
else in college. I mean, I imagine some if there's
a college head coach or some sort of a rays

(15:19):
that he wants to get there.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Does he even want to come to the NFL? Does
he want to.

Speaker 4 (15:23):
Stay at Notre Dame. Like, there's a lot of variables
with that to happen. There's just the connections are there obviously.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, all right, well, but I.

Speaker 4 (15:30):
Wish I wouldn't wager on it, but I do think
I you know, you'll see something, okay.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
Like Tuesday morning after Notre Dame loses to Ohio State.
In the title gay, uh.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
I'm not saying I'm not saying.

Speaker 3 (15:41):
That it is nineteen minutes after three o'clock. Go read
Paul's Piecethathletic dot com about the Bengals in their own
free agents. Someone to spend a few minutes on that.
When we come back. He's here till four, We're here
till five thirty. Kentucky Basketball bumps us out of the
way a half hour early. My name is Maulwgger. Glad
you are with us today on ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports.

Speaker 5 (16:01):
Station Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty.

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Speaker 3 (16:58):
Thank you so much for listening today, Paul Dander Juniors
here until four o'clock. Go to the Athletic dot com
Paul as this is an annual exercise running through the
list of Bengals free agents, and as you pointed out, T.
Higgins is sort of a category unto himself. Yeah, I
wrote it last week. I started.

Speaker 4 (17:18):
I started like doing the normal exercise that I do,
and I got about four words into starting Tea, which
last year became a four part series obviously, and I
was like, okay, stop, this is its own thing. So
I wrote I think about fourteen hundred words on Tea
last week as sort of the entire state of where
that stands, which is to say that it's wildly complicated.

(17:42):
But the other way everybody else is up there now,
which you know what's interesting going through it. You take
Tea out of the equation there and there's not a
lot to like fret about. There's not a lot to
get all been out of shape buck where the last
two years, yes, they have been very very much of
the core of those Super Bowl teams have been up

(18:03):
for debate and whether you're gonna resign them. And we've
seen this mass exod this that you know, these players
that we're still now talking about and reiterating every time
people complain about the state of the Bengals. But this
year's not as much that you know, and I think
there's decisions there and there's guys, you know, WHI talking about
j Hill and Hilton and there's players, but I feel
like it's it's not what it was where you're feeling like, man,

(18:26):
they're gonna be lettings. They have so many decisions to
make on how they're gonna let all these people walk.
Maybe it's not really like that. And if there's one,
you know, silver lining to some of the clouds that
are out there right now.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
So I agree with you, and you're right, But I
do think there are a couple of guys who are interesting.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
There's also somebody. I want to give an award to.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
One guy who's interesting to me is I bet if
you would have asked most fans where did Mike Hilton
rank in Pro Football Focus is grading of corners, they
would have said middle of the pack, lower part fourteenth.
Now I know that's based on the role that they
carved out for him as the season went on, where
he was great blitzing off the corner and great against

(19:05):
the run. I was dismayed. I say this here every week.
I do not want to give away your content, but
I was dismayed to a degree at how unlikely you
think it is that he comes back, Because I think
there's a role for him on the field and also
in the locker room.

Speaker 4 (19:21):
Yes, so I think he is. You're right fascinating because
I think there's two sides to this. I think internally,
they have to look at this defense and say, look,
the saving grace is gonna be all of these young
corners developing under some new coordinator who comes in with

(19:43):
a fresh voice that is kind of known for developing
young players, maybe specifically under you, whether Dax Hill, Cam Taylor,
Britt DJ Turner, Josh Newton, all those guys add in
a couple more of whatever. But I think inevitably and
they've got a lot of guys that can play the slot,
and theoretically it's like that was supposed to be Dax
Hill's job in twenty twenty five for a couple of
years now. So that said, you need them to take ownership.

(20:10):
You need them to feel, in Bolden, this is my team,
this is my secondary. It's our time is now. And
it's really hard for them to look at it that way.
If Mike Hilton's still there and this isn't a knock
on that team had like three dudes that can make
plays on defense last year and he was one of them,

(20:30):
and he made a ton of them, and he made
himself money and proof he still has value in this league.
And if you use him the right way and you're
blitzing him all the time and you're aggressive with him
off the edge and maybe you figure out ways to
pick your spots in terms of maybe it is taking
them off fielding, third down, whatever, talk about that that
there's real value with Mike Hilton still. Clearly he's so
instinctive and such a good player there. That said, though,

(20:52):
if you're worried about the entire room feeling like this
is my group, this is my team, you kind of
have to let Mike Hilton walk. And that's a hard
decision to make because on the other side of it
is everything I just said and people that love Mike
Hilton and understand what he is as a core of
you know, the team and the fabric. But at some

(21:15):
point you got to move it on. And when you're
having a new coordinator coming in and all this new
feel that you want to have, it felt the reason
I popped his percentage down. It felt a little out
of place to still have him around. And that's not
about Mike Hilton. Yeah, like that, that is not about
Mike Hilton, the player that is about the Cincinnati Bengals defense.

(21:35):
The situation, I think that's what makes it a really
hard decision, and amongst the hardest on that entire list.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
You had him a twenty five percent. Yeah, that's the situation.
I genuinely want you to be wrong.

Speaker 4 (21:46):
I genuinely think that the future and the immediate future
for this defense is going young and really leaning into
the young players, specifically in the secondary, and again adding
more that can take this thing over. And it's just
it's hard to do that until you clear the deck.

(22:09):
You see that with like when they had to get
rid of Carlos Dunlap and Geno Atkins for Sam Hubbard
to feel like a leader and a captain. You know,
like this happens all the time. You just you kind
of have to clear that deck. And I feel like,
but you had Sam Hubbard and you knew he could
be a captain. You're replacing Mike Hilton with Dax Hill
and Cam Taylor Britt and Josh Newton and DJ Turner.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
You're right, like they're in a bad place mode.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
But I mean, like, you know, the Carlos Dunlap thing
kind of got sideways.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
At the end.

Speaker 3 (22:39):
But like you, you knew what you had in Sam Hubbard.
You knew at least you know who. You maybe didn't
know how good of a player he was going to become,
but you knew, Okay, here's a guy, this is a dude,
this is a bye and this is a culture guy.
This is a future captain.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
You knew. Can I say that about any one of
those other corners right now.

Speaker 4 (22:58):
Not with the certainty you could about saym Hubbard. But
I think there's real belief in those guys in terms
of the people that they are, how much it matters
to them, and the confidence that they can play with
if it feels like they've been given that confidence, you know.
An example of this on the flip side is what
happened at Safety this past year with Jordan Battle. I

(23:18):
feel like when they brought Von Bell back, it really
beat Jordan Battle up mentally to be like, they don't
even see me as the guy, and these are young
kids that need that confidence. Rookie season, yes, it felt
like he had earned the right, not earned the right,
but it felt like it was his time in year

(23:39):
two to be the guy. Okay, And then they brought
in Von Bell and they put in this former captain
over top of him, and so what happened He kind
of lost all his momentum and felt like, man, they
don't even see me as a young kids can be
affected and confidence can go one of two ways. And
if you aren't clearing the space for these guys to

(24:02):
dive headfirst into this being their time and their career
and there's no one in front of you now, then
you can stunt their growth. And I think that's that's
a position that you find yourself in right now with
this team, is which which side do you want to
go in the proven playmaker and the guy who's been
such a good player and a guy in something you know,
or clear the runway and hope these guys.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
Run I want to have I want to I'm late here,
so I'm going to break in. But there's one more
pending free agent that I want to discuss, and then
we have to create an award.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
You know, we have the Mulger Award. Yeah, during training
time winner Andre Yoshi, and we've determined Andre can't win
it anymore.

Speaker 3 (24:38):
Okay, well that'll that's a topic for July. But there's
another award I want to hand out and maybe we'll
name it after the person we're going to give it to.
We'll get to that when we come back. He's Paul Danner,
Junior at the Athletic dot Com and The Growler Podcast.
Here till four o'clock on ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports Station.

Speaker 7 (24:56):
SINCY three sixty with Tony Pike. We want to move on,
have to keep going and Boston Elmore.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
I think you should contind let me keep going down.

Speaker 7 (25:04):
Sincy three sixty Tomorrow at twelve News on ESPN fifteen thirty.

Speaker 5 (25:11):
Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty. Traffic from the.

Speaker 6 (25:16):
UC Health Traffic Center. Don't let injury slow you down.
The UC Health orthopedics and sports medicine experts can help
keep you moving. Schedule a same day appointment at ucehealth
dot com. There's a few problem arias to watch out
for as you make your afternoon commute. There's an accident
on Paddock Road between Tennessee Avenue and Nordwood Lateral Expressway,
and beware of an accident on Infirmary Road at Pinnacle Road.

(25:38):
Police on the scene. Watch out for delays in that area.
There's still a few problem areas causing some delays to
you after word commute, Watch out for that disabled vehicle
that has the right lane blocked on seventy one seventy
five southbound after Buttermilk Pipe. Police on the scene. Watch
out for delays. There's also an ongoing accident on Infirmary
Road at Pinnacle Road. Police on the scene there as
well that disabled vehicles. Finally, you're on six seventy five

(26:01):
northbound at Wilmington Bike. I' monju Jones, we're traffic this report.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
Xavier looking to make it two straight wins as they
take on Eric Dickson in the Phalandeva Wildcats a game
from Cintas Center at seven on seven hundred I'm sorry,
six thirty. Tip off on seven hundred WLW. Tonight on
ESPN fifteen thirty, we have Kentucky and Texas A and
m Pregame coverage starts at five thirty. Miami's at Northern Illinois,
Ohio State Battles Wisconsin, Indiana will host Illinois. The Columbus

(26:29):
Blue Jackets, looking for a fifth consecutive win, take on
the Philadelphia Flyers tonight. Paul Danner Junior is here from
the Athletic dot Com. Is there any Bengals news today,
I mean today. No, don't put in the headlines.

Speaker 4 (26:41):
No, I don't think there's anything any news today. Okay,
not in the most newsy time.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
No, no, not just waiting to find out till that
doin drops. Yeah, coordinator search.

Speaker 3 (26:52):
One more on your list of free agents, which folks
should go read at the Athletic dot Com. Reading your
blurb on Mike Kasiki means I'm he's not a tight end.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
He's not. I mean that was. They didn't use him
as such, right, Like the biggest misnomer, I think that's
the word you use. The biggest misnomer is that guy
is a tight end? Yeah, right? And so he was
a productive wide receiver for the Bengals this year.

Speaker 4 (27:18):
He was when T Higgins was not on the field,
he was the clear by a long way number two option.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
So there's a strong case that could be made for T.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
Higgins to be on the team next year, which we've
talked about occasionally occasionally, And there's a very strong case
that you could look at Mike Kasicki's body of work
and want that guy back next season.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
Can they have both? Yeah? And can one basically be
the replacement for the other?

Speaker 4 (27:45):
I think I think it's it's a couple aspects to it. One,
if T goes, you have to bring back Kasiki and
now a little more affordable. But you have to because
you know that he was really what helped keep them
afloat without Tea this year, and they got They were
really creative and and as good as it gets at

(28:07):
finding ways to use the weapons that they have and
and make it all fit together. Whereas you know, a
lot of teams I think looked at Kasiki and really
focused on what he couldn't do as a as a.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
Blocker or whatever.

Speaker 4 (28:20):
They really focused on what he did well, and they
just leaned into that all the way, and that was him.
I think it ended up at nine percent about of
in line snaps, yeah, which was the most, the least
amongst tight ends.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
The second number would have gone down if Eric All
would have stayed health right.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
Second second least in the NFL was Mark Andrews at
almost twenty percent. So again that was just like, this
guy's a receiver. He's a really good receiver. Let's use
him as a big body receiver. And he kind of
developed and evolved into the Tea replacement when T was out.
So I think that's the part of it. But there's
no reason they can't bring them both back. You know,
something that stuck out to to me about Kasiki when

(28:57):
we were talking to him at locker cleanout day was
in pointing out like, look, I mean, I'm not gonna
say it's all about the money, but I did kind
of miss a couple of contracts the last couple of
years while I was dealing with whatever happened at the
end of Miami and the non usage in New England.
So he is looking to make up for lost time
a little bit and will. But will other teams see

(29:18):
the value in what he did here? Will they be
willing to pay him? Where does his market end up?
And I think that's I think you can have both.
I don't know they will end up with both, but
you can't. You certainly can, but they you know, he's
bringing him back certainly far down the list of priorities
when you start talking about the defense and the guard

(29:38):
play and all the other stuff.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
We also forgot about my guy Eric Hall. I didn't
forget about Eric, but it's interesting if you talk about
like the least talked about player in the second half
of the season, as we discussed guys who could have
an impact next year, Like who did love everything they
saw from Eric Hall? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (29:54):
What he was healthy? Now back to back significant knee
injuries makes you have some pause. But like when I
watched that guy play, I said it to you, like
that's a dude, Like that's a guy.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
He changed.

Speaker 4 (30:06):
He changed the way they constructed their offense. And I
think a lot of the issues that you saw happen
with them in the run game and in short yardage
and them just leaning all the way into throwing at
every single snap essentially a special second half a season
was a direct result of losing air call. They were
willing to lean into that run game more.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
When he was there.

Speaker 4 (30:26):
They were getting great stuff out of him and out
of it, and it was allowed them to creatively, you know,
find space on the ground with an offensive line that
wasn't exactly plowing open enough holes. And so if you
bring him into the equation again, if with the medical
being a big part of this, how how effective is
he going to be?

Speaker 1 (30:44):
Can he stay healthy?

Speaker 4 (30:45):
If you can do that, it's it's a game changer
for the way they could operate. You could make an
argument at that point then if you could get another
air call type in this draft, you go out there
and become a twelve personnel team as a reaction if
you were to lose teague, Okay, you could come out
there and say Eric All and a first or second
round tight end and put those guys both out there together,

(31:09):
and and now now you're kind of cooking a little
bit more of a power team off of what you're doing.
All of that would be a reaction to the one
main thing that everything starts with, which is the trio
technically of t Jamar and Joel the other one.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
And this is if you asked. If you asked, I
think more casual fans to name the players that have
been here since Zach Taylor's first game. They'll they'll mention
Sam Hubbard, and I think they'll mention Jermaine Pratt, and
they might have to think for a second. They'll go
Drew Sample. Most won't say Travion Wins. This dude has
played in the NFL for six years. As you pointed out,

(31:47):
he has managed only sixty two carries. This guy is
my hero. You can name the award after me. Work
for a long time in the same place and accomplish
nothing to go like legitimately, this could be the.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
Mulleger Award Part two.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
Right, Hey, this dude is I give it up to
this guy twenty seven years old. He's made a nice
chunk of change for himself. He has managed to avoid injury.
He has made no real impact. The guy could walk
into most sports bars in town, no one have any idea,
and I applaud this. I think he hasn't gotten in trouble.
He hasn't said the wrong thing, he hasn't cried about

(32:19):
playing time. He's done nothing stupid in a game. There's
been no nothing against the guy, but no Dejon Anthony
moment where he's got to live down this awful mistake
on the field, like nothing. Six years, he's made almost
five and a half million dollars, He's got his health.
He can go play in the NFL somewhere next year.
Maybe it's with the Bengals. This is the sort of
thing that should be celebrated. I'm the guy that so

(32:42):
I love longevity. But if you could accomplish longevity and
also accomplish little else, which is basically my career in
a nutshell, awesome.

Speaker 4 (32:50):
I feel like Trevion's kind of like the company culture higher.
You know, it's like, look a great dude. Everybody likes him,
shows up on time, does everything the wrong the right way,
nice guy. Not super sure what his impact is around here,
Yeah it does. But people really like him, yes, and
he really is a good dude. You should just keep
him around. He's such a nice guy and like makes

(33:11):
everybody feel better, and and you just kind of you
just kind of want to root for a guy like that.
You know.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
That's that's what trade yard is. Yere six male, six.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
Years like and I guess in the back of my
mind I knew that, but it wasn't until I read this,
and I'm like, six years, sixty two carries. He's been
been active for the overwhelming majority of those games, right, Yeah,
like awesome.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
I want him back?

Speaker 4 (33:34):
Made me your favorite Travan Williams kickoff return, can't I
want him back? Seven years?

Speaker 1 (33:39):
I want to row it?

Speaker 3 (33:40):
Ye, how long can it go? Average ten carries a season,
let's go. I'm rooting like hell for this guy during
training campus is gonna be all I'm talking about. Who's
Who's Trayveon? Gotta fend off? Who's Trayvon gotta fend off?
To be the third running back and never play.

Speaker 4 (33:53):
I don't know if he's gonna be back. I don't
feel good about it. I feel like, I mean, six
was asking a lot. I mean, okay, he got the
six the bank. You and I have joked about this
in the past. They have two type of press releases
for when they release a player. There's the sort of
like single line or in some cases, multiple paragraph quick statement.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
With no quote from coach, owner, anybody else. Travon Williams,
I want Mike Brown, I want Duke Coben, I want
Zach Taylor. I want all of his position coaches, because
he's had multiple Give me a teammate or two, give
me a Burrow quote. This should be celebrated. I need
a thank you video on at Bengals. It's gonna be
hard to show moments. I've got grant you that, Yeah,

(34:33):
but they've got to have, you know, a few still
shots of him standing on the sideline cheering for his teammates. This,
this is the sort of thing that should be celebrated.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
I think you should be quoted in it. You should.

Speaker 4 (34:43):
It should be a whole portion of the press release
just talking about the Trevion Williams Award. How it's been
amazing to actually watch him grow into this role.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
Yeah. How he's been a.

Speaker 3 (34:51):
Motivator for you know what player, what number he wears.
But I'm gonna get his jersey thirty two. Yeah, I'm
gonna get.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
He's my new favorite, my third favorite all time Boomer Blake,
Trayvon Way, my free all time favorite Bengals. You play
in this day and at that position.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
That position where they're constantly churning and looking for guys.

Speaker 4 (35:10):
Every sixth round pick running back is like worth a
pick where the flyer they becomes, somebody send them all off.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
God love you. This is amazing, amazing, what an amazing career.
All right, I uh, I want to spend a few
minutes on a four part series. You could do this
coming off season. Okay, you've got an idea. I think
it's a pretty obvious idea. And then can we talk
about the Steelers a little bit?

Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (35:35):
You just want to take some shots at Mike Tomland
on you yeah, Marvin Tomlin, yes, Marvin yeah, absolutely, and
uh and Russell Dalton Yes.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
Eleven away from a four o'clock ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati
Sports Station.

Speaker 5 (35:49):
Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty traffic from the.

Speaker 6 (35:54):
UC Health Traffic Center. Don't let injury slow you down.
The UC Health Orthopedics in Sports Eddison experts can help
keep you moving. Schedule same day appointment at uceehealth dot com.
There's a few problem arias to watch out for as
you make your afternoon commute. There's an accident on Paddock
Road between Tennessee Avenue and Nordwood Lateral Expressway, and beware
of an accident on Infirmary Road at Pinnacle Road. Police

(36:17):
on the scene. Watch out for delays in that area.
There's still a few problem areas causing some delays to
you after word commute. Watch out for that disabled vehicle
that has the right lane blocked on seventy one seventy
five southbound after Buttermill Pike Police on the scene. Watch
out for delays. There's also an ongoing accident on Infirmary
Road at Pinnacle Road. Police on the scene there as well.
That disabled vehicle is finally cleared on six seventy five

(36:39):
northbound at Wilmington Pike on Monjrew Jones with Traffic.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
This report is sponsored by Staple Stores.

Speaker 3 (36:45):
Look the Bengals are closer to winning a championship than
the Steelers are.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
Right, Yes, and absolutely we've seen that chick.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
Yes, they are where Marvin and Andy war which is
not an awful place to be, but it's not a
championship place.

Speaker 1 (36:59):
To you bin ship place to be. I mean, just
talk about playoff wins in recent memory, four part series
this offseason on Trey Hendrickson. Yeah, that could do it. Yeah,
you could do it. You could do it. I I
I couldn't. Well, no, it's it's certainly it's certainly hard.
You could.

Speaker 4 (37:15):
You could dive fully into each of the possible things
that could happen, and one of just you know, the
idea of just sitting back and just letting him throw
a tantrum but realizing he's gonna eventually play might end
up being the most likely option of where it ends.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
But yeah, it's his. His case is just fascinating at
this point.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
I think it's the most I mean, I said this
to you on on the Growlary and Balls Don't Lie.
I think it's the most interesting dynamic of the off
season in an off season filled with them.

Speaker 4 (37:41):
Yeah, I mean, I think you get to it after
you deal with whatever's gonna happen with the Big three,
And then you realize, though, that can be the impact
because if it does end up coming down to there's
just not enough money for everybody, but there would be
if you took Trey Hendrickson's money away. And if you're looking,
like I mentioned earlier, this whole go young concept on

(38:02):
the defense with the secondary, well, no one wants to
see Trey Hendrickson's production go away. But if that's that,
if it's a get young, you one more year left
of Trey Hendrickson, Look, they're not going to pay him
what he's worth after that. I can't imagine they Maybe
they come up with an extension and decide that's struction
in their go It would be very surprising for that
to be the case. If that's the case, then maybe

(38:24):
adding what you could be a lot of draft picks
would be the way to go there. But there's there's
anything you could extend him. You could you could just
let him get mad and simmer. You could try to
trade him and work ahead of the problem. You know,
there's a lot of philosophical stuff of who are you organizationally?

Speaker 1 (38:42):
Are you proactive? Are you reactive? Are also you you
hire a new defensive coordinator? No matter who it is.
And you say to him, hey, welcome to Cincinnati. We've
got to rebuild this defense. But the best player from
last year, Sorry, you're not going to get a chance
to coach him.

Speaker 4 (38:58):
Now, I'll point now, you got to do it the
way the Rams did. The Rams lose Aaron Donald. Now
this is differently lost AARONI.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
We're tired.

Speaker 4 (39:06):
But look at how quickly they rebuilt it with a
bunch of young draft picks. We saw this on display
last night. All these guys third, fourth round picks, second round.
They drafted the right guys, they gave They cleared the
runway for him and said, you guys, go grow and
get and go get the quarterback right. And they've created
kind of a little bit of a monster there on
their defensive line really quickly after losing arguably, maybe not

(39:29):
arguably the greatest defensive lineman.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
And we've seen in this league.

Speaker 4 (39:32):
And so you can look at it in a small
in a microcosm, you can look at it kind of
the same way here. Could you do something similar here
with the defensive line if you decided to add more
picks or whatever it would be, if you had to
move on, it'd be easier.

Speaker 3 (39:48):
To answer that question if Miles Murphy was any good
or if Joseph Osi.

Speaker 4 (39:51):
Was any good, right, or any of you knew anything
about any of these young guys that you have invested in.
It's a big I mean, you can't keep whiffing, which
is the inevitably the root of all of this.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
But yeah, all right.

Speaker 3 (40:02):
Go read the Athletic dot Com. You have something coming
out tomorrow tomorrow similar to today's except this is about
the cap cut type players. When they're talking about the
Sheldon Rankins of the world, the Sam Hubbards of the world. Uh,
the guys that are that you could see them move
on from this offseas but who plays guard on the list?

Speaker 1 (40:20):
Yeah, on the list.

Speaker 4 (40:22):
So yeah, there's a there's a whole you go through
the chances of those guys sticking around which cuts I
think you're most likely to see in turn of things
that I've heard about that.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
So that's that's tomorrow morning. All right, Well look for
that the Athletic dot Com.

Speaker 4 (40:33):
Yep, and I gotta start working on my four ports
series on Tranison apparently.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
In the podcast tomorrow podcast tomorrow, Yeah, we'll be better.
I'll be on that one you will be on that one.

Speaker 4 (40:42):
I mean, if you show up, how much of the
time are we going to dedicate the Trevion though?

Speaker 1 (40:47):
Is the question A lot?

Speaker 4 (40:48):
I think, and make sure I have the highlight ready
to roll so we can get the highlight on on channel.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
We watched it during the break.

Speaker 4 (40:55):
Is an amazing There's a lot of detail to that
play that I think we need to talk about. You know,
the the rewatchable your favorite game rewatchables long run shout out.
Shout out to Dan Hordy texted with that nugget. That's
the last Bengals fifty yard run against the Ravens nineteen.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
It came teamed down by twenty eight point Paul Danner Junior,
The Athletic dot Com and the Growler Podcast. As we say,
where you get your podcast. It's coming up on four
o'clock on Moweger. I have an apology to give next
ESPN fifteen thirty Sports Center.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
I'm Christine Leaci.

Speaker 8 (41:33):
Jimmy Butler still wants that one way ticket out of Miami.
ESPN's Sham Sharanios reporting the heat. Small forward reiterated his
trade demands in a face to face meeting with team
president Pat Riley last week, Butler won't sign a new
contract with Miami intends to only use his fifty two
million dollar player option in the off season as a
trade maneuver. With the February sixth trade deadline looming, the

(41:54):
slumping Warriors under pressure to upgrade the roster, but soon
to be thirty seven year old point guard Steph Curry's
cautioning Golden State against making any rash decisions.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
First Take host Steven A.

Speaker 6 (42:05):
Smith, I really really appreciate selflessness on Steph Curvey's park,
But in the same breath, I'm saying he is still great.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
And if I'm the Golden State Warriors, do I say
let me.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
Build incrementally and gradually, or do I really go for
it while I still have Steph Curvey playing damn there
like he's in his prim.

Speaker 8 (42:27):
Former Orioles pitcher Brian Mattis died last week of an
apparent drug overdose. According to a Phoenix police report obtained
by The Baltimore Banner, Mattis was thirty seven years old.

Speaker 9 (42:39):
Hey, it's the Residents, Super World Champ Chris Kennedy coming
up Wednesday, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, and Jalen hurts.

Speaker 3 (42:44):
I'll tell you which quarterback is under the most pressure
this weekend.

Speaker 5 (42:47):
It's unsports for like weekday mornings at six right here
on ESPN Radio, ESPN two in ESPNU.

Speaker 7 (42:56):
You found Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty.

Speaker 3 (43:00):
Better than that hour, Paul Dayner Junior. It'd be better
if I wasn't a part of it and just let
Paul go. That was was terrific, even in the depths
of the dog days, so to speak. What's up, maleegor
ESPN fifteen thirty. Thank you for listening. Hopefully you're having
an awesome Tuesday. We're done early today, UK hoops at

(43:20):
five thirty, Wildcats at home against Texas A and M.
On a busy night of college basketball here in the area.
Xavier home tonight, Musketeers taking on Villanova. Some good stuff
from Adam bound from Sincy three sixty earlier today coming
up in just a bit. We spent a lot of
time yesterday talking about UC basketball, and I enjoy that.

(43:44):
I enjoy those conversations about the team. What I enjoyed
most about yesterday talking about UC's performance against Kansas, which
was not awesome, and the state of the team right now,
which is not awesome. But what I enjoyed was we
did not all three hours, but just you know, sometimes
the show goes where the audience takes it, and the

(44:05):
audience was interested. You were interested in talking about the
Bearcats yesterday, but they were like good conversations about the team.
And I think I've been doing this show now for
a while. Oftentimes when a college basketball team is struggling
our college football team as well, the conversation becomes about
one thing, and that's removing the coach, firing the coach,

(44:26):
replacing the coach. Those are very fair things to bring
up as it relates to any college sports program, and
particularly one that is struggling a little bit right now.
But I enjoyed the conversation about this year's team and
the actual basketball part itself, and I really sincerely hope
there can be more of that.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
I actually I'm gonna try.

Speaker 3 (44:50):
I'm gonna try, and I don't know that I'm gonna
have much success, but I'm gonna try to be a
little bit more optimistic when it comes to the UC
basketball see and coming up here in just a little while,
and more on the Bengals as well, because I got
some feedback on yesterday's take on the.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
Steelers, which is always fun. I quickly here want to
make an apology about something yesterday. I was on as
I am every day, right around two forty five at
the end of since e threety sixty, we do quick hits.
We used to do locks of the night, but we
don't do locks of the night anymore, and maybe one

(45:30):
day soon we.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
Will, but we do quick hits. And Tony and Austin
asked me about their pole question, which was the Reds
over under for the season, which I guess some books
have it at seventy eight and a half. I had
seen it at seventy nine and a half, regardless, kind
of in that ballpark, seventy eight and a half, seventy
nine and a half, and I said, I said under.

(45:55):
And it's not that there aren't real reasons for optimism.
There there are for optimism. Like I think there are
a lot of teams who were where the Reds were
last year that would love to have Hunter Green and
Nicolodolo and h rat Louder and some of the young
starting pitching they have at the major league level and
in the system. I think there's a lot of teams

(46:16):
that would like to have some of the building blocks
the Reds have Ellie Dela Cruz, Matt McLain, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
But an over under that's a wager. Excuse me, that's
a wager.

Speaker 3 (46:27):
Like the over unders are given, and yeah, they're a
pretty good guide as to maybe what the baseline expectation
for a team is going to be. But they're meant
to be something wajured on, and they're meant to get
half the people on one side and half the people
on the other.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Often doesn't work out that way. But an over under
is a wager.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
So when I'm asked about an over under, I think
about it in wagering terms, in betting terms.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Where would I put my money? I do this every year.
This is just me.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
I always bet on the Reds over. This has been
a terrible bet for this century, a terrible bet, like
and I meant to pull this up, and I'm going
to during the next break. But I don't think there's
a team that has performed worse against the over under
in baseball this century than the Reds. But I do
it every year because in September it's like my own

(47:19):
little Pennant race. Some years they don't even come close.
But I want to have something to root for and
a reason to pay attention in September. And so, because
the Reds are rarely in the thick of things in September,
I've bet the over under. And they went over in
twenty twenty three, and they went over in twenty twenty one,
and they barely went over in the COVID year of
twenty twenty. But beyond that this century they mostly have

(47:39):
gone under. But it's a wager, so I said seventy
eight and a half. I got some pushback, and my
basic take is there are too many unknowns, too many
unknown variables for me to feel comfortable if I'm doing
this objectively, and again I make my wager unobjectively. I

(48:00):
make my wager for selfish reasons. I make my wager
because I still want to be a fan in September.
But a wager is, for the most part, supposed to
be something that's not emotional. It's supposed to be something
that you're not doing with your heart. You're doing so
processing information and thinking about things. If I do this objectively,
and you're asking me to bet an amount of money
that matters on whether or not the Reds win seventy

(48:23):
eight or fewer, or seventy nine and more. I think
there's too many unknown variables I'm going under. I'm sorry,
that's not what anybody wants to hear. In January, we're
twenty six days away from pitchers and catchers. That's where
I am right now. Maybe that'll change before opening day.
Maybe that'll change because the Reds do have one more
move in them. Maybe I got some coin from the

(48:44):
new TV deal and they're gonna throw it at an
outfielder that can hit the ball out of the ballpark.
I don't know, but right now, if I'm doing this objectively,
I'm not betting on the over.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
But here's why I'm gonna apologize. Sports.

Speaker 3 (49:02):
Gambling talk on outlets like this has become mainstream, which
is great. It is a way to talk about sports
that differs than the other ways to talk about sports.
We on this show six years ago, seven years ago,
decided that we were going to include gambling talk on

(49:24):
this show, not exclusively, not the majority, in the grand
scheme of things, a very tiny segment. But I think
it's fun to talk about sports through that filter, and
a little bit more so obviously during football season. But
I think people like me are guilty of something, and

(49:45):
for this I apologize that we focus so much on
things like over unders that it has skewed, ultimately what
the conversation about a sports team should be about. The
Reds could hit the over this year and still be
a massive failure, because the number we should be talking

(50:06):
about is not seventy eight and a half. It's not
seventy nine and a half. It's not whatever Vegas says
the over unders should be. The number we should be
talking about is closer to ninety. That's the number of
wins I assume it will take to have a chance

(50:29):
to win the National League Central. Obviously, they can make
the postseason with eighty five wins or eighty four wins.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
And if the idea is to.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
Barely sneak in every year and get that last National
League wild card spot, fine, I as a fan, I
have larger aspirations Like I one year, I'd like to
see the Reds not just win the division, but run
away with it and maybe be playing games in September
for a bye or god knows one day. Dare I

(51:01):
say even home field advantage in the National League playoffs?
I think though that people like me have spent so
much damn time on over unders that we make the
conversation too much about over unders. Frankly, unless you're betting,
if you're a fan, who cares if the Reds win

(51:23):
seventy nine or seventy eight games? The problem is you
can have a fair argument about whether they'll win seventy
eight or seventy nine games.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
What we should be talking about is can they win ninety?
Can they win ninety two? Can they win ninety five?

Speaker 3 (51:39):
How about this, let's get really crazy, can they win
one hundred? I don't think the answer to any of
those questions for any of us is yes. One day
in the offseason. I'd like for it to be. There's
my frustration. So I'm sorry, because we do it on
this show every year. We ask the poll question every year.

(52:00):
Austin and Tony did it this year, which is which
is fine? Focusing on the over under? Who cares about
the over under? Who cares? Legitimately? The over under I
care about is eighty nine and a half? Can they
get to ninety wins? That's the conversation, And the problem
is it's a lot easier to make the case that
they're gonna win more than seventy eight and a half

(52:20):
than it is to make the case that they're gonna
win more than eighty nine and a half. And frankly,
until we can get there where we talk about this
team in terms closer to eighty nine ninety ninety one,
they're not where they need to be. Like just once,

(52:43):
I brought this up. I think Friday and maybe yesterday,
sometimes the day is run together.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
Just once.

Speaker 3 (52:50):
I want the expectation to be they win the National
League Central, not the hope.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
Not the hope. So forget seventy eight and forget the
over under. I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
I'm not going to spend any time on the over
under this year because it's irrelevant for most fans.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
It's relevant to a better It's relevant.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
To me because I loved it when I saw seventy
nine or seventy eight and a half, because I had
seen it at seventy nine and a half, hadn't made
my bet yet, was waiting to see if the number
would move. I wanted to plummet because I want to
hit my bet. I want to have an easier chance
of collecting money at the end of the season. But
as a fan, we're way too caught up on something

(53:32):
at times that doesn't matter all that much. The Reds
could hit the over this year and go eighty and
eighty two. I don't think that marks success at I
keep coming back to this. Timelines get thrown off for
a lot of different reasons. Right The Bengals organizational timeline
got thrown off because they made the Super Bowl in
twenty twenty one, well ahead of schedule. The timeline, though,

(53:53):
I always thought, was punt on twenty two, give up
on twenty two, deal with what you have to deal
with in twenty two, get out of that mess in
twenty three, compete in twenty four, contend in twenty five,
contend in twenty five. Anything shy of genuine contention. And

(54:14):
what I say genuine contention, This is just me. When
I say genuine contention, I don't mean, oh, there's two
weeks to go in September and there's six games out
of the Wildcard. They're not mathematically out of it yet. No, no, no,
I mean like genuine contention is in, Like they're one
of the teams that has a chance to win the
World Series.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
Right now? Does it feel like the Reds are one
of those teams that can win the World Series.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
And if the answer is no, okay, when's the answer
going to be yes? Like, when is the answer going
to be yes? And you hear my voice exasperation with
to a degree how they've handled the off season, but
but also the constant drumbeat of being told to wait

(55:05):
and hey, it's you know, they're they're getting there. It's
gonna be the future.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
It just after a while it rings hollow. And so man,
I'm excited for the season. I cannot wait. I cannot
wait for the season to start. I cannot wait for
spring training to get here, cannot wait for Opening Day.
I can't wait for warm summer nights at GABP. I

(55:29):
cannot wait. I cannot wait to watch.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
Ellie de la Cruz and Hunter Green and Reht Louder
and Matt McLain hopefully for a full season.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
Cannot wait.

Speaker 3 (55:37):
Cannot wait to see some of these guys who didn't
play last year answer one way or another are they
building blocks? More than anything, what I can't wait for
is to go through an off season where we're not
convincing ourselves they have a chance. We know they have
a chance, and we're the over under actually aligns with

(56:02):
where a regular fans expectations are, where it's closer to
ninety than it is eighty And the fact that we're
not there yet is disappointing to me. And it means
that they're not following the timeline that we all sort
of agreed on way back when before the twenty twenty

(56:24):
two season even started. Wasn't this supposed to be the year?
And it may be. It may be, but if it is,
that'll be a surprise. And still, even if it is,
it still feels like the ceiling is not as high
as it should be. Maybe they can sneak in, Maybe
they can get in with eighty four wins. Hey, maybe

(56:46):
get in with eighty five wins. One day, I'd like
for us to be talking about how the expectation is
ninety plus a division title and having legitimate hopes to
be the last team standing. I guess it's remarkable. Go
around with your friends this week or this weekend or
whatever and like bring up the Reds winning the World Series.

Speaker 1 (57:08):
You're gonna get laughed at.

Speaker 3 (57:13):
I want to have those conversations one day, in the
offseason and during the season. So I'm sorry we have
spent way too much time focusing on numbers that only
matter for a handful of us, like over unders. Legitimately,
if you're not a better, what do you care about
the over under? And I do know that most sports
fans aren't better, which is why we don't do the

(57:34):
majority of our segments around gambling. Who cares if they
win seventy nine games and hit the over? How about
winning ninety two and going over ninety and sailing into
the playoffs and maybe even contending for a division title.
We can have the conce You can have the conversation
about every team's over under the Reds, the Cardinals, the

(57:56):
Miami Marlins, the Fresno A's, or no other than calib
Wine Country A's wherever they're playing, Seattle Mariners, Boston Reds.
We can have a conversation about all thirty teams and
they're over under.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
How many teams?

Speaker 3 (58:09):
Can you have a conversation about ninety wins? When will
the Reds be one of those teams? You could have
a conversation at ninety wins with five point three seven
four nine fifteen thirtys are phone number eight sixty six
seven oh two three seven seven six at Moegar on X,
your phone calls are coming up ESPN fifteen thirty, Cincinnati
Sports station is twenty seven and for four this is

(58:31):
ESPN fifteen thirty on Moegar.

Speaker 1 (58:33):
I really do appreciate you listening.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
We're going to get back on time because I went
along that last segment and we are going to take
your phone calls. I referenced this and I said I
was going to have it in front of me, and
then I did not, so I got it. During the break,
I was talking about reds over unders, and you know, look,
you can you can do with this whatever you please.
But I do think it illustrates how much they have

(58:55):
underachieved for quite a while now, from nineteen ninety through
two thousand twenty four. Now you're gonna hear this and
you're gonna go, wait a minute, they're missing a year.
In nineteen ninety four, all bets got voided because the
season was scrapped in August because of the strike, so
everybody got their bets back. So there have been thirty

(59:18):
four years since nineteen ninety thirty I'm sorry, thirty three
seasons since nineteen ninety where a team could hit its
over or under. No team has hit its season over
less frequently than the Reds.

Speaker 9 (59:31):
Now.

Speaker 3 (59:32):
Think about that for a second, because since nineteen ninety
we've added two teams. The Arizona Diamondbacks came into being
in nineteen ninety eight. They've hit the over more frequently
than the Reds since nineteen ninety, so have the Tampa
Bay Rays. The Reds are ten and twenty three, meaning

(59:55):
in ten of those years they hit the over, including
twenty twenty three. Right in twenty three of the last
thirty three years. Again, take away nineteen ninety four because
of the player strike. In twenty three years since nineteen
ninety they have failed to hit the over worst in
Major League Baseball in that time frame. Now, you might go, well,

(01:00:18):
in the nineties, for like the for a lot of
the nineties they were good, and they were they hit
the over, ninety two they hit the over. They were
four and four in the nineteen nineties. I'm sorry, five
and four in the nineteen nineties. So okay, what about
since two thousand, Well, the numbers are pretty gory. Five
times since two thousand, they've hit the over five times
this century. We're a quarter of the way through the

(01:00:40):
twenty first century. Five times this century they've hit the over.
They did hit it in twenty three, they did hit
it in twenty one, they did hit it in twenty
twenty depending because if you remember, it was touch and
go for a lot of folks that last game in
the sixty game season in Minnesota that the Reds had

(01:01:01):
already clinched a playoff spot, but that was a.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
Big game for a lot of us. And they actually
went under that year. I said over.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
They went under that year ten times since nineteen ninety
it was thirty five years ago. So in the thirty
three years where you could cash a ticket for going
over or And I have learned this the hard way,
because again I've done this every year since twenty thirteen.
It's a lot easier now it's legal in Ohio. But

(01:01:31):
just ten times since nineteen ninety, including nineteen ninety has
the overhit. It happens very infrequently, It's happened less frequently
in the twenty first century.

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
It obviously did not happen last year.

Speaker 3 (01:01:45):
And by the way, there are a lot of books
for what it's worth, and again I'm doing gambling talk.
There are a lot of books right now that haven't
even released their season over unders because there are still
there's still some volatility with free agency and stuff like that.
So there you go. It's not been a bet that
has hit. For those who have hit the over, it's
not cash. A lot of winning tickets often over the

(01:02:05):
last thirty five years and really over the last twenty
five years. Sports headlines and phone calls next to ESPN
fifteen thirty three sports headlines Our service to Kelsey Chevrolet
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(01:02:25):
credit approval from their family to yours for life, Kelsey
chev dot com. Xavier home tonight for Eric Dixon and
Villanova UC fans got a chance to see firsthand how
good Dixon is. Musketeers got very good play from their
front court on Saturday in their game against De Paul.
I'm not sure there were any major takeaways to pull
from that game. Xavier should have beaten to Paul. Xavier

(01:02:48):
did beat to Paul. The schedule after this one gets
We use the word gauntlet a lot when it comes
to scheduling. This is a gauntlet after today at Marquette,
at Saint John's Home for Yukon at create. They need
to stack a whole lot of wins in a very
short amount of time. Tip off tonight six point thirty
on seven hundred Wow. Wildcats are four and two in

(01:03:10):
Big East play Kentucky and Texas A and M tonight
the Wildcats. I was talking about that with somebody here
in the office, one of the few folks who talks
with me. That's a joke about how good that game
on Saturday night was Kentucky beating Mississippi State in Starkville.
They tip off against Texas A and M tonight at
seven on ESPN fifteen thirty. Travis Steels team the Miami

(01:03:33):
RedHawks on the road tonight against Northern Illinois.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
Miami is three and ozero in MAC play, eleven.

Speaker 3 (01:03:38):
And four overall, former Xavier musketeer Cam Craft averaging seventeen
in the game. Also tonight, Ohio State battles Wisconsin, and
Indiana takes on Illinois and the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Are the Blue Jackets good.

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
Four straight wins, They've put themselves in a wild card spot.
There's obviously a ton of season to go. Chance to
make it four straight to night home game against the
Philadelphia Flyers. They've got to be better on the road.
But they did win their last home game against Saint
Louis hosting Philly tonight. There you go, all right, had
one other thing.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
And lost it. So take phone calls.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
Five, one, three, seven, four nine, fifteen thirty. Uh, we
have a lot of computer mice in the studio. I
have to grab the right one to make the phone work.
Jeff in Virginia, You're on ESPN fifteen thirty.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
How are you You having a good day?

Speaker 3 (01:04:28):
Mo?

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
So, I'm having a great day. How about you?

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
Good good? I just got the over understuff was making
me laugh because I'm with you. I hope they win
one hundred and five games, to be honest with you,
but as I was talking with Tony and Austin yesterday,
the schedule in August and September is very unforgiving, and
I'm betting the under. There's no doubt I with my
own money at once.

Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
Definitely, I want to stop fighting over whether they win
seventy eight or seventy nine games. Like you know, again,
if you want to talk about it from a pure
wagering standpoint, you know, fine, do what you want with
your money. But I like we're we're really going to
fight about whether they win eighty games or seventy eight games.
That's that's that's that's frustrating. I want to fight over
one day, can they win ninety Can they win ninety two?

(01:05:10):
Can they win ninety five? Like that? I want to
fight about that. I don't want to fight over they
win seventy eight or seventy nine. At the end of
the day, unless you're betting on it, who cares.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
Yeah, I agree, but with my money on it. I
had to do some analysis and that end of your
schedule is very unforgiving.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
So one of the better things I hurt way in
a minute, Jeff, we'll hang on a second. Now, you're
you're totally discounting the big impact piece they go get
at the trade deadline that's going to offset the tough
schedule in the last two months.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
What I am counting is the unlikelihood of them being
more than ten games over five hundred and being interested
in the middle of July point the most famous saying,
just keep me interested in past mothers date, please if
they can.

Speaker 9 (01:05:58):
So.

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
Yeah, one of the good things today was here in
Daner say you don't have to worry about Wink Martindale
and the the main reason for my call was college hoops.
What did you think of Mick getting a boot in
College Park on Friday and getting roasted Rutgers.

Speaker 1 (01:06:15):
Again last night? So it's funny.

Speaker 3 (01:06:17):
I was watching the Maryland game simultaneously with the Ohio
State game, and if you were watching UCLA versus Maryland,
you saw a building to where it got like there
was there was a moment in that game, and again
my attention was divided where it felt like the official
who ultimately threw him gave Mick Cronin about as long
a leash as you can give a coach without seeing

(01:06:38):
them up. They had about about five to ten minutes
before he got kicked out, as animated as a coach
can be in a one on one discussion that lasted
like sixty seconds to ninety seconds, and Mick was losing
his mind. He had historyonics and the refs stood there
and took it and then double banged them with the
technical foul that Mick after the games that he was

(01:07:00):
trying to get tossed. I actually listened to his postgame
show online because I just I wanted to hear what
he had to say and Josh Lewin is the play
by play voice of UCLA, and just you know, kind
of asked a question about the game, and then Mick
came right out talked about the officials, talked about wanting
to get thrown out. I do know, I do not
know what the Big Ten has done with him. And

(01:07:21):
then I watched his team play last night. Mick was
frustrated and exasperated. And then I watched his postgame scrum
and was There's a lot going on there. You could
sense and feel the frustration building with with him and
his team. You could sense and feel the frustration with

(01:07:42):
Mick and the schedule and and what playing in the
Big Ten is doing in terms of travel. And then
obviously you add on top of that everything that's happening
in that part of the country. But yeah, I uh,
it was it. I have I've seen Mick get kicked out.
I've not seen him do what he did on Friday
night in college.

Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
But yeah, Friday night was very early. We were like,
it seems to me that you know, that was the
pressure cooker. All the team just coming out of the
pressure cooker, and you know he's right. I mean, Maryland
had to fly out to you know, Seattle and Eugene,
and they got roasted in both those games by two teams.
And I don't think are as good as Maryland is,

(01:08:20):
but it is what it is. You know, the West
Coast football teams have to come here and play noon
games and start at nine am West Coast time. It's
brutally unfair.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
Yeah, the people who make these decisions about conference realignment
do so and either independent or totally ignorant of the
real life impact on the people who are going to
be affected most by it. So I know nobody's going
to feel bad for UCLA. But UCLA played Maryland on
Friday night, had to travel. I think they flew out

(01:08:53):
on Wednesday. They stuck around to play in New Jersey
last night. Like, that's almost a week away, and there's
a lot of teams to do this, seeing the Big
twelve is gonna have two game road trips. They have
one later this month where they play at BYU and
at Utah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:06):
And that's not extreme.

Speaker 3 (01:09:08):
The what I wonder about are the Olympic sports, right,
Like we're gonna take women's tennis and we're gonna hopscotch
them across three different time zones to play tennis matches
that make nothing against women's tennis, no revenue. I just
the real life, practical part of conference realignment. As much

(01:09:28):
as there's a lot of it that I really like
in some of the matchups, it is created, It is
going to create competitive disadvantages. It is at times going
to be rotten for fans. You see later this month
is going to play back to back ten pm Eastern
Time games. Yeah, and so there's a lot of it.
There's a lot of it that is just it's not good.

(01:09:49):
The thing between but the thing about Mick is like
Mick on Friday night again on his postgame show, he
threw the Big ten under the bus. He kind of
threw his athletic director under the bus. I mean he
was pulling no pun and I got the sense that
what we saw on Friday was his his frustration with
the officiation, with the officiating, but it was also his
exasperation with a lot of other stuff happening as well.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
Yeah, that was a season long thing. So all right,
well I have a good afternoon.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
Mo Jeff, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:10:18):
And you know it's if you're a UC, if you
want UC in the Big twelve, like we're happy the
Bearcats are in the Big twelve. But yeah, again like
they had a ten o'clock and I'm a night all
I stay up, Like they had a ten o'clock game
at Colorado and football this year ten o'clock Eastern time.

(01:10:41):
There's that later window in football that they're going to
be in more often. They have back to back I'm
pulling up the schedule now again like ones on a
Saturday night, but back to back ten o'clock Eastern time games.
I have college football teams. I think Rutgers in USC
this year kicked off at like eleven thirty Eastern time.

(01:11:05):
You know, I mean, how many folks out out there
in Jersey are are staying up to watch the Scarlet
Knights play at eleven thirty at night? But yeah, the
Mick on on Friday night. I'm sure if you care,
you have seen it. If you haven't seen it, I've
watched you know what's he been at UCLA now six years.

Speaker 1 (01:11:24):
I've watched nineteen years worth.

Speaker 3 (01:11:26):
Of mixed games, and I've seen historyonics on the sideline,
and I've seen temper tantrums. I have never seen it, legitimately,
I've never seen a coach before he got kicked out.
I think Jeff Anderson is the official's name. I have
never seen a coach go face to face with an
official and act out the way Mick did and call

(01:11:49):
it that. I mean, he's it's a grown man acting out.
You might like it, you may hate it. I find
it immenseally entertaining. I've never seen a coach act out
for that law a period of time and not get
a technical foul and like not even get warning. The
official stood there and took it, which tells me the
official new Mick had a point. Now about five minutes

(01:12:12):
later after his team I think they missed a free
throw and he wanted to reach in foul against one
of the Maryland players, Mick just lost it. Got back
to back teas that effectively end of the game, and
Mick got chucked. I get the sense there's a lot
of frustration. I did wonder A lot of us wondered
when the PAC twelve effectively dissolved and now UCLA is

(01:12:33):
going to play games in the eastern part of the
United States, Like, how's that going to go over? That's
gonna go over with our guy, Mick. And perhaps because
of the fact that they lost both those games. The answer,
from my understanding is not good, and you know to
a degree I can't blame him. It is a quarter
to five on ESPN fifteen thirty, Cincinnati Sports.

Speaker 5 (01:12:53):
Station Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty.

Speaker 6 (01:13:00):
From the UCE Health Traffic Center. Don't let injury slow
you down. The UCE Health orthopedics and sports medicine experts
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out for as you make your afternoon commute. There's an
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and beware of an accident on Infirmary Road at Pinnacle Road.

(01:13:23):
Police on the scene. Watch out for delays in that area.
Minute ride if you're on seventy one seventy five southbound
from downtown two two seventy five due to an accident
that has the left lane blocked on seventy one seventy
five southbound at Dixie Highway. Also beware this secondary accident
that has the right shoulder block on seventy one seventy

(01:13:43):
five southbound.

Speaker 1 (01:13:44):
At Dixie Highway. Amanju Jones with traffic.

Speaker 3 (01:13:48):
Telling you thank me later. The plumbing tip, right, we
need to do plumbing tips on this show. Wait, we
can do plumbing tips and get a plumbing company. The
sponsor it five thirty is our our phone number, Ron
in Milford. Thank you for waiting. You're on ESPN fifteen thirty.
Good afternoon.

Speaker 10 (01:14:09):
Well I called talk about the Bengals, but quickly the
uh over under You always know that I take deyonder
with the Reds. That's just how it is. The Reds
and the Bengals have one major thing in common, which
is winning is always secondary. Uh, the Bengals. So I
don't know, did I miss out? Paul Dayner tell us

(01:14:30):
that hopefully Wink Martindale is not really under consideration because
basically he would be even worse than loop.

Speaker 1 (01:14:37):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:14:37):
I can confirm for you that Paul confirmed for us
that Wink Martindale will not be the Bengals defensive coordinator.

Speaker 10 (01:14:44):
Oh good. And obviously you know, I'm thinking to myself
only slightly jokingly, but you know, they had Mark Duffner
as a senior advisor, and I'm just wondering, you know,
do they hire a senior advisor? And if so, do
you think that Marvin has a chance.

Speaker 3 (01:15:02):
I'm sure they'll hire advisors. I'm gonna guess that Marvin
would not want to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:15:07):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:15:08):
I would also be willing to bet that if Marvin
Lewis called Mike Brown, who has a deep affection for
Marvin Lewis, and said I would like to help out,
that Marvin would have a chance of Mike pushing for it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
But if if you were Marvin Lewis, would you want
to do that?

Speaker 9 (01:15:23):
Well?

Speaker 3 (01:15:23):
I mean would would I don't know what his interest
in working in football is next year. I don't know,
But if I was Marvin Lewis, I just on a
I'd have to swallow a lot of pride to show
up and be a senior advisor and help out the
guy who took my gig. I don't know that I
could do that. Marvin's probably a better person than me,

(01:15:45):
a bigger person than me, and would do that. But
if I'm if I'm Marvin Lewis and I and I
really want to work in the NFL, I I gotta
wonder if like he served in an advisory role for
Antonio Pierce because they had a an existing relationship, like
they're boys. So I don't know that that same relationship
exists between Marvin Lewis and Zach Taylor. If I'm Marvin

(01:16:07):
Lewis and I still want to work in the NFL,
I think there's a capacity for me that's higher profile
and frankly higher paying than senior advisor.

Speaker 10 (01:16:17):
Yeah, probably so Mode did. And again I apologize if
I'm trying to catch up on things here. Did Paul
where you been?

Speaker 1 (01:16:24):
Where were you when Paul was here? What were you
doing that was so important?

Speaker 10 (01:16:29):
I had a work called mom, trying to do some work. Belle,
come on, do we have any inkling where things are leaning? Because,
as we know, I'm very you know, excited and hopeful
that we had get an actual, real defensive coordinator none
of those first couple of guys we've interviewed.

Speaker 2 (01:16:47):
Is it still too early?

Speaker 3 (01:16:49):
I don't think it's too early. You know, I brought up,
and I did so sort of tongue in cheek. I said,
are they just going to announce this on Tuesday morning
after Notre Dame is done playing because they're waiting on
Al Golden And you know, Paul's response to that did
not make me think that Al was not under consideration.
But I think that the thing you have to think
about with that though, and Paul mentioned this is if

(01:17:09):
the Bengals want to hire Al Golden, and there's maybe
pros and cons to that. Is there another capacity for
Al Golden out there right?

Speaker 1 (01:17:16):
Like? Could? Could it? Could have?

Speaker 3 (01:17:17):
Could there be a head coaching gig in college out
there that he desires? Maybe not this cycle, but but
next year. The crux of the conversation about the defensive
coordinator from Paul was that a lot of teams are
looking for dcs right now and that the league is
sort of in limbo until the Bengals make their decision
about who their guy is going to be, which is

(01:17:38):
not a bad place to be.

Speaker 10 (01:17:40):
Yeah, and I mean frankly, with Al, he could probably
get paid more to stay at Notre Dame than the
Bengals pay. Let's face it, we know that. I mean, honestly,
how much should we pay these guys here?

Speaker 3 (01:17:51):
Well, I don't know what the Bengals defensive coordinator job
is going to pay, And off the top of my head,
I do not know what Al Golden makes. I mean,
it's obviously the money is a big, big part of it.
I guess if you're Al Golden, maybe you're asking like,
what do I want to do?

Speaker 1 (01:18:04):
What do I want to be?

Speaker 3 (01:18:05):
Does he have a desire to be a college head
coach again, which he's done before. I guess it would
make sense for him to maybe stay in college. Does
he have less of an appetite for recruiting given what's
involved now? Well, okay, then maybe the NFL is a
little bit more attractive. Does he seek, maybe down the road,
a chance to be a head coach one day. I

(01:18:25):
don't think he's going to be one of those, but
I would imagine if he wants to do that, it
makes sense to be working in the National Football League
if he crosses a National championship off. If Notre Dame
pulls off the upset on Saturday, and all right, I
can cross that off, And now I want to go
chase the Super Bowl in the NFL, which I came
close to when I worked for the Bengals the first time.
Maybe there's that, Maybe there's a level of coaching stability

(01:18:47):
that the Bengals defensive coordinator job would have that perhaps
college football, even for a winning program, perhaps doesn't present.
I don't know what Al is looking for, but I
do think it's interesting that they haven't made a decision.
Al is still out there and he's the one guy
who is still working.

Speaker 10 (01:19:06):
Yeah, I mean I was somewhat excited when I saw
Eberflus's name mentioned, just because I mean, don't get me wrong,
he was a terrible head coach, but as we know,
there are a lot of guys that are terrible head
coaches that are still good coordinators.

Speaker 3 (01:19:19):
Well, Ron, here's the thing we talked about Matt Eberflus
as well, And what I invite you to do is
hear that conversation, of course when we podcast it on
the iHeartRadio app, but we did go over that possibility
as well. And look, Matt Ebraflus, and I joked about
this with Paul. As long as he is not in
charge of game management or clock management or time out
management and he just has to call the defense, there's

(01:19:41):
actually a lot of reasons to really like that hire
as well.

Speaker 1 (01:19:43):
Ron, I gotta run man, Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:19:45):
All right, take care him out, You got it. We'll
do more segments like that where we recap stuff that
the audience might have missed. It's coming up on five
o'clock on Molegger a half hour ago. Kentucky Basketball coming
up at five thirty. Between then and now, you and
I on ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports station.

Speaker 1 (01:20:04):
Now your chance to win one thousand dollars. Enter this
nationwide keyword on our web. What's the word cash, cash
cash Cash Enter.

Speaker 3 (01:20:12):
It now fifteen thirty s page cash Hi. Five minutes
after five o'clock. This is ESPN fifteen thirty. My name's Moegar,
the person in charge of our social media accounts having
some fun with me, which is nice. I don't even
know who that is at ESPN fifteen to thirty.

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):
So go check that out. Follow them. Thank you. Let's
see we are We're done.

Speaker 3 (01:20:41):
Early today Kentucky Hoops five thirty, Wildcats taking on Texas
A and M on a busy area college basketball night.
Xavier is home tonight to play Villanova. I'm going to
that game. I rarely can make six thirty tip offs
because typically we're on till six o'clock. And I went
to the Xavier Marquette game a few weeks ago, and

(01:21:04):
we set a new record for people who asked me,
what are you doing here? I get that often we
hit five, so tonight we're looking for six. Xavier and
Villanova Musketeers looking for a second consecutive whim. Paul Danner Junior,
By the way, we had a caller before asking you
know about some of the stuff Paul and I covered.

Speaker 1 (01:21:26):
Paul is always awesome. But we talked a lot about the.

Speaker 3 (01:21:28):
Bengals defensive coordinator position, and we talked a lot about
some decisions the Bengals have in free agency with their
own guys, and spent a few minutes on the Pittsburgh Steelers.
As listening there in the top of the hour from ESPN,
Mike Tomlin has I guess told folks that teams interested
in trading for him should save their time and not

(01:21:51):
bother and he says he understands the frustration. He understands
maybe some changes need to be made this offseason, and
they will be. I have encouraged the Steelers to absolutely
stay the course, absolutely stay the course.

Speaker 1 (01:22:07):
I hope they continue to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:22:10):
What the Steelers is what they're going to have to
try to do here moving forward is difficult. And when
we saw the difficulty of that here, I said yesterday
they they're kind of in that Marvin Lewis Andy Dalton zone,
which is certainly not awful. Marvin and Andy went to
the playoffs five straight years, won two division titles. Like,
there's a lot to that. That's hard to do. But

(01:22:32):
one of the frustrating things when the Bengals lost the
twenty fifteen playoff game against the Steelers, what was so
frustrat It was a lot of things frustrating about that, right,
But one of the things that was frustrating about it
was it was the year where it felt like everything
that needed to go right did go right. They built
almost a perfect roster around a deeply imperfect quarterback, and

(01:22:58):
that year the Bengals had the number mber two defense
in scoring in the NFL. They had a night, you know,
not to relitigate ten years ago, but they had a
very good defense, number two in the NFL in scoring,
that an elite offensive line, high end skill players, balanced
offense depth all over the place, terrific roster, good coordinators,

(01:23:25):
and yet it still wasn't enough, mainly because Andy Dalton
got hurt. They had great health for most of the season,
and it felt like everything they had been doing for
years was building toward that season. And you know, emotionally,

(01:23:45):
there were a lot of reasons to be so deeply
dismayed by that loss that night. But among the reasons
was it's really really hard to build around a quarterback
who's not great. And they did, and it still wasn't
good enough. It's still unraveled, it still fell apart, and

(01:24:07):
so I think most of us emerged from that playoff
loss thinking some dark times are ahead, because there's roster attrition,
and because it's just it's really hard. It's really hard
to try to build perfections. Not the right word, but
let's go ahead and use it anyway. It's really hard
to build perfection around a flawed quarterback, a guy who's

(01:24:33):
not among the league's best, a guy who has his attributes,
a guy who's certainly starting caliber, a guy who can
do some really good things for you, but is just
not capable of elevating the talent around him. I think
it's easier to win a championship if you've got a
quarterback who can elevate the talent around him. The Bengals
this past season were deeply frustrating, sorely disappointing.

Speaker 1 (01:24:56):
You could argue they underachieved. They also went nine to
eight with a flawed roster. It went nine to eight.

Speaker 3 (01:25:03):
Two years ago with Jake Browning playing a large chunk
of the games and Joe Burrow not being himself early.
I'd I'd rather try to build a league average defense
and an above average offensive line and tell the quarterback
to to elevate everybody. Then build a team that's capable

(01:25:28):
of elevating a quarterback to where you want them to go.
And that doesn't mean you just do what the Bengals
do with Joe Burrow off in the season, which is
telling them to do.

Speaker 1 (01:25:36):
Everything like you.

Speaker 3 (01:25:37):
You can't just say, hey, we're gonna suck and we're
gonna be awful at this, this, this, this and this,
and you you just carry us like you can't do that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:46):
But I'd rather be where the Bengals are.

Speaker 3 (01:25:47):
They've they've got the most important position in all of
sports solved. They have one of those guys, one of
those Now it highlights how inconceivable it is that the
Bengals didn't make the playoffs behind a quarterback that good,
who had that good of a season. But the most
important thing they've got fixed, they've got and they've got
set for the rest of the decade, and so you

(01:26:07):
just have to figure out the stuff around them. I'd
rather do that then look at the Steelers in quarterback purgatory,
having to make a decision about Russell Wilson or Justin
Fields or what's behind door number two or door number three,
and then get everything good enough around that QB that
you can win a championship. It's not that the Steelers

(01:26:29):
are bad. They'll probably win more than they lose next season.
It's a very good chance they are a playoff team
next year, better than average chance they beat the Bengals
once or now maybe even twice the next season. I'd
rather try to do this offseason with the Bengals are
going to try to do. We got our quarterback. This
guy's going to make sure that we're relevant. I'd rather
make sure that I'm relevant every year because of a quarterback.

(01:26:51):
Then the reason why the Steelers are relevant every year,
which is.

Speaker 1 (01:26:54):
Their head coach. And that's how it gets framed Rothery.

Speaker 3 (01:26:57):
Tomlin never has a losing season, Okay, awesome, haven't sniffed
the championship at any point over the last eight years.
I again, it's not a lack of respect for the organization.
It's not a lack of respect for what Tomlin has
accomplished with the two teams have in front of them,
and here in town we constantly compare the two with

(01:27:20):
the two teams have in front of them. I'd rather
embark on what the Bengals are going to try to
do this offseason and the Steelers there are no questions
about the QB. How there are no questions about the
backup QB and no questions there. So how do we
build around this guy versus how do we build around
the guy they have in Pittsburgh, whoever it is, and

(01:27:41):
have to have a roster that's better than almost everybody
else because our quarterback is not as good as anybody
else's in terms of the elite teams in the league,
and Bengals are not one of the elite teams in
the league, but they've got an elite guy at the
most important position, which to me means you're not that
far from true championship contend And that's not to undermine

(01:28:02):
or minimize the work the Bengals have in front of
them this offseason, because it is substantial and it's not
going to be easy. But if you gave me, I
can I can fix what's happening in Pittsburgh, or I
can fix what's happening in Cincinnati. Say what's one about
both teams ownership groups. I'd rather try to fix what's
happening in Cincinnati than in Pittsburgh. Fourteen after five o'clock

(01:28:25):
five one, three, seven, four nine.

Speaker 1 (01:28:26):
Fifteen thirty is or our phone number. Let's see. Thanks
to those of you who have waited patiently. Ian, you're
on ESPN fifteen thirty. Good afternoon. Hello, Hello oky man.

Speaker 9 (01:28:38):
I you want to say, you know, you comment yourself
and I'm not that great and you're just joking around.
But I want to say, hey, I've been listening for years.

Speaker 2 (01:28:50):
Than you are that career?

Speaker 1 (01:28:52):
Really? All right?

Speaker 2 (01:28:54):
Damn man?

Speaker 3 (01:28:55):
For sure you called ESPN fifteen thirty.

Speaker 2 (01:29:02):
If yeah, ud.

Speaker 1 (01:29:05):
Did you? Are you trying to call any fingers?

Speaker 9 (01:29:09):
No?

Speaker 8 (01:29:10):
Just you?

Speaker 1 (01:29:10):
But that's very kind of you. Thank you.

Speaker 9 (01:29:14):
All Right, I'm gonna put these together. I've been mulling
over this for weeks. Okay, okay, it's Reds and Bengals
because it I mean, the way it's pinning up, it's
like the same thing, and it's basically the limitations of
you know, budget it makes like a ten to fifteen

(01:29:35):
year cycle when they don't hit the mark and run
out of players.

Speaker 6 (01:29:42):
And what I've.

Speaker 9 (01:29:43):
Come to is my question for you, because you would
know better than I come up with. Can they bring
in like third party ownership to beep it up, to
have bigger investment when you have a quarterback, like, are
you gonna sit there and waste four out of the

(01:30:04):
sixth year deal or are you going to try to
find any way possible to shure up the ends and
make this thing happen. I mean, he saw what he did.
He almost put if he would have gotten to the playoffs,
and like everybody's saying, look at this poor play in
that first round of playoffs, he would have done serious damage,

(01:30:25):
maybe gone all the way and what And then on
the Reds, I'm saying, I think they wanted to get
a big bat and what the Dodgers did kind of
hampered him. And they sit there and talk about it
out early. So now they're back to last year's mentality

(01:30:46):
where they're hoping that Cees could be that big bat
and mac McClean stay healthy. They got the manager and
they want to do that small ball.

Speaker 1 (01:30:57):
Look I love that.

Speaker 9 (01:30:58):
I mean I wish it would work out. But that's
why I tie in both teams and say can they
bring in like some help, because this can't you can't waste,
at least on the Bengals side with Burrow, Like, you
can't sit there and waste. If you're gonna do that,
why are you an NFL team?

Speaker 1 (01:31:19):
Why don't you.

Speaker 9 (01:31:20):
Trade him away and let him blourish. I don't really
want that, but I'm just saying, like there's kind of
be a way to make it happen, you know what
I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (01:31:28):
So yeah, I mean, I mean, well, it's not apples
to apples because the NFL is a salary cap league
and Major League Baseball is not. The Bengals, look, they're
what they have to play. Pay to pay players is
essentially the same as everybody else is.

Speaker 9 (01:31:47):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:31:47):
It differs when it comes to being able to put
away money for guaranteed contracts, but there's no shortage of
money with the Cincinnati Bengals. Now, you might argue sometimes
it's a willingness to spend it, but we it's a
lot easier to wrap your brain around the money the
Bengals have because all you have to do is look
at what the yearly salary cap per team is and

(01:32:08):
you understand what percentage of league revenues go toward player payroll,
and then if you do, if you know that, then
you can wrap your brain around what the Bengals revenue
is beyond the things that don't get thrown into the
overall revenue pot. And I'm overly complicating this with the
Bengals' It's not they need an infusion of cash.

Speaker 1 (01:32:26):
They have plenty. They're fine.

Speaker 3 (01:32:27):
They're a National Football League team and NFL franchise has
just got a winfall from the latest series of media deals.

Speaker 1 (01:32:34):
With the Reds.

Speaker 3 (01:32:36):
You might say, well, we are a small market team, true,
and we don't have the resources that the Yankees and
Dodgers have. True, and we're never going to be able
to spend money on a player like Juan Soto who
got seven and fifty million dollars in the Mets.

Speaker 1 (01:32:53):
Okay, fine.

Speaker 3 (01:32:53):
And you might say, well, our TV deal, the uncertainty
surrounding it created some financial issues.

Speaker 1 (01:33:00):
Okay, fine.

Speaker 3 (01:33:01):
But the Rats do have a bunch of different owners
and I've I've lobbied for this for a while. They
have the controlling shares go to the Castellini family, awesome,
but there are other minority owners, and those minority owners,
for the most part since whenever they bought in have
done nothing but make money off the Reds.

Speaker 1 (01:33:19):
What they don't do, what they don't.

Speaker 3 (01:33:22):
Do, what the Castellinis don't do, and they I think
they wear this as a source of pride is they
don't go to those owners and say, look, we need
a million dollars per or we need this because we
want to boost the roster, because we want to make
the team better, because we want to throw it into
player payroll.

Speaker 1 (01:33:39):
It's certainly their right to not do that.

Speaker 3 (01:33:42):
I would like to see them say, you know what,
we have folks who have invested in this team for
quite a while. We've never asked for anything from you.
You've done nothing but make money in this investment. It's
it's now time for us to ask you four more
money so we can go ahead and win. And by
the way, if and when we do, you're going to
cash any more because you've made money all this time
while we haven't won.

Speaker 9 (01:34:06):
Yeah, I agree, one hundred percent. I just I know
you got to go here, but I just want to
finish off by thinking like with Cincinnati in general, I
know it's different, but with the NFL cap, can they
dip further into their own pockets for investment or they

(01:34:28):
not allowed.

Speaker 1 (01:34:28):
Well, what do you mean.

Speaker 10 (01:34:32):
With Cincinnati and.

Speaker 9 (01:34:33):
The Brown family and the Blackburns, And you say there's
a cap, everybody's getting roughly the same money, and with
the advancement next year there'll be even more money to
the cap, Like, can can they go beyond what the
NFL is giving them or whatever for cap?

Speaker 3 (01:34:50):
Like, well, I mean further in you you you can't
spend over the cap. So the cap this year was
two and fifty five million dollars, so you can't. Baseball
has a luxury tax, and the NFL is a salary cap.
Now baseball teams use the luxury tax as a salarycap, like,
for instance, the Dodgers and Mets. If that, let's say,

(01:35:11):
because I don't have the hard figures in front of me,
let's say the baseball says every dime you spend over
two hundred million dollars, you have to pay a tax.
The Mets and Dodgers are willing to pay that tax.
No other baseball team, the Padres have paid it. But
it's a it's a it's an essence of soft cap
that penalizes you for every dollar you spend over it.

(01:35:33):
But you can still spend over it. You're allowed to
spend past it. You just have to pay a tax.
The NFL doesn't have something like that. They have a
hard cap.

Speaker 9 (01:35:41):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:35:42):
The cap went up substantially this year by over thirty
million dollars, and it will go up next year, and
it will go up the year after that.

Speaker 1 (01:35:49):
But that applies to everybody. That applies to all thirty
two teams.

Speaker 9 (01:35:54):
Well, I'll end with this.

Speaker 8 (01:35:56):
I know you got to go.

Speaker 9 (01:35:57):
I think in this situation and with the Burroughs talent
and the predicament of all the needs, they need to
focus on getting it right with with with more help
with Duke Tobin or whatever they have to do to
identify the correct players. And uh, you might as well

(01:36:19):
just try to trade Hendrickson and and receiver and try
to get somebody to make something work. Because Burrows enough
talent he can get the ball to guys. I mean,
I know you want key, but in this it's just
it makes sense to me.

Speaker 3 (01:36:40):
I mean, I don't know I know everybody else it's
it's it's about it's about wasting greatness. Right. You have
a legitimate leader, you have a legitimately great quarterback, it's
really I mean, there are franchises. The Chicago Bears have
gone decades, decades without a great quarterback, basically my entire life.

(01:37:00):
There are franchises that spend decades trying to find the
right guy. Bengals have the right guy. If you have
one of those guys, you have no excuse for not winning,
especially if you have one of those guys who says
I'll stay with you beyond my rookie contract. They're gonna
have Joe Burrow. Let's say, you know, nothing catastrophic happens.
Let's say he doesn't decide to retire. They will have

(01:37:21):
had Joe Burrow for a decade. Even if he doesn't
re sign with them past twenty twenty nine, they will
have had Joe Burrow for a decade. When you have
one of those guys, you cannot waste it. And it
is a legitimate fear until the Bengals prove us otherwise
that they they may waste having this this sort of
player at that position.

Speaker 1 (01:37:41):
It's a ian. I do appreciate the kind words. Thank
you very much. Call again. Okay, okay, all right, we
are way late UK basketball. We're done. Tara's playing music.
We're finished. Wow, took us all the way up to
UK basketball again. All right, well, Kentucky basketball is coming
up next?

Speaker 9 (01:37:58):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (01:37:58):
Tom Leach.

Speaker 3 (01:38:01):
And Ghost Gibbons, Buzz Baker, Cameron Mills. I haven't heard
Oscar Colemes. Oscar Colmes has been hospitalized. I hope he's okay.
Maybe we'll hear him tonight.

Speaker 9 (01:38:13):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:38:14):
I don't hear every Kentucky pre game show, but I
will listen on my way to a XU game. We're done.
My thanks to A. Tarn Bland for producing. My thanks
to you for listening. Have an unbelievable night.

Speaker 3 (01:38:25):
We're back tomorrow at three oh five on ESPN fifteen
thirty Cincinnati Sports Station, Cincinnati's

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