Dan and Nick go LIVE and provide give their immediate takeaways from the Giants third episode of Hard Knocks
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Big Blue Banter: A New York Giants Football Podcast
Giants Hard Knocks E3 Free Agency: Key Takeaways
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Just go to indeed.com/bluewire right now and support our show by saying that you heard about Indeed on this podcast, that's indeed.com/bluewire, terms and conditions applied. And to hire, you need Indeed. You will hear it as a normal podcast, we are going live right now on our YouTube, so hopefully, some of you will join us live, and like we do with these live shows, we're going to do our recap, we're going to do a full show of our recap for those of you listening on the podcast, or who can't make it live, but then we're also going to get to questions from those of you who are here live and are curious about this episode of Giant's Hard Knocks, episode 3, which we're recapping, or episode 4 coming up because there's some juicy nuggets in that preview, or anything about the Giants. You can ask us anything about the Giants, you know what I always like to, Nick, any questions about golf? No, just kidding. You don't have to ask me about golf, I'm joking, I'm joking. You know what that reference is, Nick? No, where's the joke? I'm joking, I'm joking. It's your guy who hates it. I think you should still leave. It's a skit from the Tim Robinson show. I don't hate Tim Robinson. I've heard good things about Tim Robinson, and you actually, Danny, your credit, you've shown me a few clips of him that I was laughing at, the Bachelor part or the, the, the zip line. You're only here. The zip line? Yeah. Yeah. I was dying at that. I thought that was so awkward. You're only here for the zip line, but there's a sketch, Dylan's burger that I'm referencing. If you know, you know, but the point being, we got juicy nuggets the end that we're going to get to. So yeah, ask us about whatever you want, but we want to not do this by just starting off with recapping the preview of the next episode, even though it was very intriguing. We're going to do it in chronological order so we can avoid getting to that first and stay in order. So we open up this episode, Nick, with the Saquan Barkley discussion. And I'll tell you what stood out to me first about this. The first thing is I was thinking in my head, one, do you think Saquan Barkley watches Hard Knocks? My guess would be no. He wants to put this behind him. So I want to ask you to hear your answer on that. And then two, is Joe Shane just always watching game film? Like no matter where he is, like the big screen on his computer screen, he has some other game films. Guys, just grinding tape. I would hope he is. He's a NFL general manager, Dan. If he wasn't, that would be a huge problem. So yeah. But to your point, I love that he's over there grinding film and got on the phone with Ed Berry and Saquan Barkley. Look, I think Saquan Barkley wanted to put the whole New York Giants experiment behind him. I think there were some resentment from last year as I brought up in previous episode. And he was just ready to turn the page. And it seems like when it comes down to, as you asked, do I think Saquan Barkley watches Hard Knocks? I don't know, man. I don't know. I think I have a chip on his shoulder going into the 2022 season, remember when he did that podcast and he started cussing and things were all like, Oh, well, look at that. I wonder how how he feels about all this kind of getting rehashed at this point. I think he has put it behind him. I think he is content being a Philadelphia Eagle. And I really think he's just kind of eager to go towards the season. So I would have to say no, if I'm a betting man, but I know nothing about Saquan other than his public persona. Yeah. I'm saying with you, it's mostly just an assumption, but I'll say this. I had the assumption going into this thing, Nick, just some of the vibes I was getting from Saquan and what we saw during the time of the screen, saying everything. But I feel even more confident that Saquan may have made his mind up way earlier before he knew this happened because when we got to the point where Joe Shane was on the phone with his agent and he said, here's the offer, um, laid it all out, guaranteed money, annual salary, Justin said, all right, let me talk to my people. And if I come back and say, I want to match it, Saquan's going to be signed, right? Like in Shane's mind, it's like, well, he said he wanted to retire a giant. We talked about the ring of honor matching it is kind of what we always agreed on. Like, you give me your best offer and come back to me. And if we can match it, it's ours. But that didn't sound like the case because giant's general manager, Shane said he hemmed and hard. And to me kind of sounded like Saquan already made his mind up because he would have just been like, yeah, of course, you know, I'll resign. If you match it, that was always the plan. Um, and then finally, Nick, uh, I wanted, so I wanted to throw that in and finally it was funny to me. All right. I guess the best word isn't funny, but it was odd to me when Joe Shane finally brought John Marry. And Marry was like, you know, I'm nervous about this because Saquan was our most popular player by far. That was the John there. Or quote, our most popular friend. I was wondering Nick, when how many championships have one been win, uh, one in the NFL by accruing the most popular players in the league? Uh, I don't know. I would say zero. Probably. Yeah. Probably zero. And how many times have the Giants been to the playoffs since 2018? One. But look, we understand John Marry's love and affection for certain players. And Saquan Barkley is one of those players that he feels very strongly and passionate about. And it sucks for John Marry because it seems like he probably hasn't slept since March. It definitely seems like he hasn't slept through March. And as we saw from the previous next episode, he, there was a, whatever he's talking about, he says, we do this deal. And obviously it's a draft episode where we're talking about a trade up, uh, some people still assume it was for an offensive tack or a receiver for quarterback. Um, and if he does do that trade, it sounds like John Marry was going to have a legit heart attack. Like he was like, I'm having heart palpitations thinking about doing this deal. So felt like this deal got a lot closer than we were maybe able to, uh, lead on to believe. And I think that's what's going to be. And we'll get this, the end of the show, that's going to be interesting to see if the Giants got closer on the trade up, uh, for the quarterback, then we were led to believe. That's just way too much change for a guy like John Marry and then you're going to trade up in a draft to get another quarterback to supplant Daniel Joe. That's just way too much for John Marry. But I, I found it funny when, uh, when John Marry was told that say when Barkley was going into the Philadelphia Eagles, you just kind of like sat there with a coffee cup that looked like it possibly was like a dip spitting cup or something of that nature. And there's like, all right. And he like turned around and walked out of the door and they showed him like walking slowly down the hallway, just kind of sauntering. And I just like picture, like the, I will remember like a background, like slow walking back to his office. John Marry. Yeah. It was a hard one for the old guy to take. That is epic. It's one of my favorite bits you've had on the shows is to just love that right there. Like the Sarah McGawk. I'm like, you see it with the doll with the pet, uh, commercial, the dogs, when you adopt this dog, when you make John Harrah, a happy man, he just lost his favorite, most popular player on the team by far, I love your John Marry impression too. It's getting better and better. You really hit that deep, those deep notes really well. But then we got to what I thought was, well, also one more thing on the sake one thing before we moved past that, um, we did get to a point that I thought was interesting. Joe Shane said I had heard the Eagles are out on Saequan Barkley. So, uh, and, and that was just days or maybe moments, at least in the show, moments after he got off the phone with his agent. So, you know, to some extent, Joe Shane too is getting false information when it comes to maybe draft rumors for agent rumors because whatever he heard and whoever he heard that the Eagles were out on Barkley, well, the Eagles ultimately ended up signing Barkley. Yeah. They ultimately ended up signing Barkley. We got the C-Saequan and his family dressed in Eagles garb and, and yeah, now it's a nothing but history at this point. I think Giants fans were ready to turn the page. One thing about this episode that I didn't find interesting was we got a little bit of insight on some of the other targets of Joe Shane and the New York Giants. Guys like Robert Hunt, which was to no one surprised, but if I'm not mistaken, wasn't Hunt signed very early on to the Los Angeles Rams? Was that correct? Hunt was signed very early in free agency. I don't, I don't, was it to the Rams that the Rams get in hunt? I don't even remember who got Hunt. I thought it was a lesser team. Why am I thinking a lesser team made this flash for Hunt? Not exactly sure. Let's look this up. I was the Carolina Panthers. Yes, the Panthers went hard on Hunt, but on that front, and we're getting now into what I thought was by far and away the most interesting part of the show, that little 10, 15 minutes of, I felt like we were getting rapid fire takeaways when they were planning out for agency. So there's a lot to unpack, I thought, from the free agency standpoint, but let's start maybe. Yeah, I've got a good bit here from a Jorge contrarian. Okay. Yeah, it's get some calm. Sanquan retweeted the talk in Giants, referencing the Giants, not offering him a deal and not matching the Eagles offer. So I'm guessing that he does watch the show is what Jorge says, possibly, or he's just aware that that could have been in at that time. But yeah, not, I mean, let's just stay on the Sanquan thing for a little bit. Once it got to the number that it got to, I can't say that I'm surprised at all that Joe Shane was like, all right, that's, that's a little bit too much like north of 25 million guaranteed. That's, that's a more money than I would want Joe Shane to allocate to a running back at that. Well, we certainly, I agree with you. And I know we certainly feel very strongly about that, Nick, but I will say this from their standpoint, we got in said as to why as we start to impact the free agency side, except so which again, was by far the most interesting, probably in my opinion, the best stretch of this hard nook season by far, the entire start, start of that for agent discussion, then going in, but individual positions, then laying out their big six, which I want to talk about because there were some surprising names on their big six one, especially. But to start, Joe Shane asked Brian Dable, simple question, what do we need most? What do you need most? Where do we need to improve most? It's almost like the questions fans ask us, Nick, and the questions we asked each other on this podcast. It was cool. It was almost listening to a podcast. And Brian Dable and Joe Shane had the exact same answer as to what they need to address most on this team to help them get better fastest offensive line table offered a little bit more specific interior offensive line, Dable pointed to, but they said offensive line. And that was the theme of this episode, the theme in their free agency. And the reason why they didn't want to allocate that money, say, quanbar because if you don't allocate that cap space to Barkley, now you can sign multiple free agents to potentially start on your offensive line. That's exactly what the Giants did. Yeah. And I couldn't be happier for that. It did seem so cavalier, like the conversation, like Dave's just kind of sits down on the couch, puts his feet up on the table like, what do you think the biggest need is? What for the whole team? Yeah. Yeah. It goes for offensive line. It's like, yeah, no shit. That's something we've been talking about for a while. I'm guessing some of that is for the HBO audience. But I'm very glad they would be focusing on Robert Hunt and then Runyon and Aluminor. And those were the three that they were discussing and they got two of them, right? Aluminor got bumped up. I think a million dollars. They wanted to get him at six. They got him at seven million and then Runyon, they had up the guaranteed money because he almost went to the New York Jets. New York Jets snipping around all the New York Giants guys in a now than Tyrod Taylor from the Giants. And Runyon, they wanted, and the Giants had to give Runyon an extra year, I believe it was with a little bit more that was 17 million guaranteed, 10 million APY, right? Just to draw him away from Aaron Rodgers in the fan, you'll hack it. So I'm glad that Runyon accepted that because again, he's not the sexiest signing, which I think Judy Patista might have said in the show. And by the way, I'll say this, dude, there were like several sexual innuendos throughout this episode. There was a leave Schreiber just said something like, well, sex may sell, but it doesn't win games. It's all about the Patrick Mahomes, because that dude's having like his third kid. That guy has like a kid every time he wins the Super Bowl. It's pretty freaking crazy. And then when they signed Devin Singletary, they called it motorboat because his name is motor. And I thought that was something that was a little odd as well. But funny enough, Dan's not paying attention as he's looking down at his phone. But yeah, man, no, back to, um, back to what we were talking about. Yeah, I'm glad they got a Luminor and, uh, and John Runyon because if it wasn't for that, I don't really know exactly what would have happened if they also did not land hunt. We're driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search match with Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Ditch the busy work, use Indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster, leveraging over 140 million qualifications and preferences every day. Indeed's matching engine is constantly learning from your preferences. So the more you use Indeed, the better it gets. Join more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com/bluewire. Let's go to indeed.com/bluewire right now and support our show by saying that you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's indeed.com/bluewire, terms and conditions applied. And I'm glad to hear your thoughts on this podcast. If so, you should check out AG1. 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It seemed like the Giants main competition at the end of that deal was the Arizona Cardinals. They were in the mix there. Though I did thought it was interesting, multiple times Shane said, "Aluminor is their number one free agent." I didn't know really what he was referencing. I didn't know if he was referencing, he was the Raiders' number one free agent, or if he was-- That's what I think. --they as in the Giants offensive line coaches and Carmen Priscilla. I didn't know exactly what that meant, but I thought it was one of the two. I think it was the former, because I think he would have just said, "Carms" or something like that if he was talking about Priscilla, or if he was talking about the collective of Rosetti and all those guys as a they, it might have been them. But I think probably the Raiders, but I don't know exactly who they're for, because they also had Josh Jacobs as a free agent. So that was what part would be there, or confused me a little bit about that there. He mentioned that twice with Bronyan. That's an idiom with "Aluminor." Yeah, that's a good point, because I interpreted it as it's the Raiders' number one free agent. But then I was also like, they had to have somebody else, and you just brought up the Jacobs thing, but Jacobs was also on the franchise tag. Maybe they understood that Jacobs wouldn't be back for some reason. But I thought it was that and not the Giants' number one free agent, because just judging by the money, obviously he wasn't, unless they were just trying to get him at that value of $6 million, which there does seem to be some merit to that, because Aluminor, I think $7 million a year for a player like Aluminor in today's NFL, a player who can give you relief at right tackle and who can play interior offensive line is going to start on the offensive line. I think that's kind of a deal, even though he's a little bit older at this point. I agree with you. Obviously, again, we talked about something on a recent episode that we haven't dropped yet, but we've recorded. We want to remain goshly optimistic about that being the case in the offensive line. But as far as us getting those upgrades, which we still hope to get, but let's just see. But on that front, I did think it was really interesting to hear the Giants discuss not only where, why they wanted Aluminor, but also, I misheard it. I thought they said we got our starting, I thought they said with these two guys, we got our starting guard and our starting right tackle, right guard and right tackle. But what he really said is at Aluminor, we got either a starting right guard or a starting right tackle. In which case, we can assume that that's part of the reason we've already seen Aluminor start off on the right side. Yeah. So good for the Giants, getting themselves some offensive linemen. We got some appearances too, man, from Ed Triggs, who seemed to be the primary orchestrator of the Aluminor contract with Josh. It seemed like there were a lot of moving parts to the Giants for an office, obviously. But sometimes us as fans, and I'm guilty of this as well, I think it's like always Joe Shane on the phone. Like Ed Triggs was the one handling that whole Jermaine or Aluminor situation. So all of those guys that are under Joe Shane who have these titles, I think they're actually much more important than maybe we realize in terms of landing the contracts and the free agents that come in here and then we all talk about. Yeah. And I thought with regards to that, it was interesting to see his role in it and we'll probably get more of that Nick as we get to the draft. I'm sure there's going to be another big player that we're not thinking of who plays a role in that. So that could be more focus on Shane. I'll be interested to see how that plays out because it looks like we're going to get a lot based on the preview. But one thing I thought was interesting was the Giants had a big six free agents. They had a top six free agents that on their priority list. And some of those we expected, Brian Burns, Aluminor, John Runyon all signed, Devin Singletary all signed. They ended up signing four of their six priorities. The one that, two, they didn't sign, one, Robert Hunt, he said sign with the Panthers. He just signed for too much. He was, we talked about that. He loved to hunt going to the free agency, but we also said he was going to sign for the mega deal. He was going to set that market in a card. And I told you at the time, Nick, and I stand by it, I'm personally happy and fine. We didn't sign Hunt. I don't like going for the top of the market. Offensive lineman unless it's a difference maker, like Joe Tuny when he hit the market, and there's been other guys like Tuny at the market. I personally find Hunt to be a clear, tier and level below the Joe Tuny types of the NFL. I don't want to pay new market reset to that type of player. If you get the Tuny, fine, otherwise no for me. The other one, though, and are you agree on that? Would you have preferred the two guards over Tuny that we got? I mean, over Robert Hunt, sorry. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Over Tuny, I was like, well, I'm going to have to go back. We got Tuny. Can we get Tuny out? Give up both the Luminor and run you right now. Yeah. No, I would definitely prefer. I think with the Giants, they're in the offensive line. That's what we should have expected with this offensive line group. I would much prefer those two to Robert Hunt and to your point, I like Robert Hunt from a little bit of film that I have seen of Robert Hunt, and I think he is a better player than John Runyon slightly, but I would prefer the combination of Runyon and Luminor 100%. Sure. And then the other thing was the sixth guy, Tyrod Taylor. He was a priority for the Giants to re-sign. They asked Brian Dable, "What do you want to do a quarterback?" Obviously, backup quarterback was important to them at the time. And Brian Dable said, "I want to re-sign Tyrod Taylor." He said, "That'll give us the continuity and bring back the same quarterback room as last year." To which Joe Shane reply, Nick, for now. For now. Very interesting comment by Joe Shane there. Brian Dable says it'll bring us the same quarterback room as last year for now from Joe Shane. What do you think that means? I don't know. What do you think that could mean? Who knows? I mean, they were probably just going to sign for a quarterback, like literally everyone reported, including Ian Rappaport and Mike Garifolo, but yes. You think? I thought they were just going to sign Drew Lock or Sam Darnell. They're going to go. Well, eventually, they did break down the price points to Nick, which I thought was cool. They put up the Andrei. Sorry. Did you want to say something? I didn't want to. No, I was just going to say the poker editing after they had that in my notes. Full 3.9 inches for Dan Schneider. No, no. The opposite. The opposite. Really? Yeah. Really, really poor poker references by Hartnach. Just a total misunderstanding of the game holds them, which I'll guess. You're being the stickler right now. If you're going to go hold them, you better have the references down, the reference points down. But on this note, and we'll get back to that. We'll go back to that nonsense. But on this note, we saw a lot of interesting things. We saw like they gave that offer early to Tyrod Taylor. He was one of the first contracts they offered in frequency as one of their big six priority resigns. But it wasn't a huge offer, clearly. It wasn't as much as the Jets offer, because when the Jets did ultimately sign Tyrod Taylor, Joe Shane said, "Look, this is deeper into frequency at that point, Nick." So they'd already signed run-in and all these guys. And maybe if they hadn't signed some of those players and some of those deals fell through, they would have had more money to allocate backup quarterback and they would have eventually matched the Jets deal or upped it for Tyrod. But at the time, he's like, "Look, we just didn't want to do it based on the injuries and the guarantees in the contract." That was the decision to not go Tyrod in which he said, "You know, earlier, the guys he outlined is if we don't go Tyrod, you know, he said, "If we don't go Tyrod, we might go Gardner." He said, "Gardner's probably going to cost too much." And he was right about that, and Gardner meant you. And then if not, we'd go Darnold or Drew Locke. So ultimately, they ended up going Locke instead of Darnold. I want to say Darnold got more than Locke, too. He definitely did, I feel like, from the bike. Yeah. I don't know how that'll tell my head. I think it was around 10. 10. Locke got one to five. And part of that is what Joe Shane said. He said, "It's the timing." He's like, "Look, we locked out because by the time we started negotiating with Drew Locke, we didn't have any money left in frequency. We had spent it. So his agent can't really push us that hard. It's basically you want to be here or not because we got X amount to spend in frequency at the quarterback position right now, back up to quarterback, and that's it. There's no negotiating, really, which helped the Giants in the end. I really hated when Joe Shane, when he was talking about John Runyon, said, "Oh, he hasn't missed a game in three years." Ronnie talking to the Ronnie Barnes, and I'm just like, "I would say that, Joe Shane. What is wrong with you, man?" But he's right. He's been a pinnacle John Runyon of durability, and hopefully he can protect the quarterback room now that doesn't have that type of continuity that they wanted. I mean, Tyrod Taylor, look, he might have a, I don't know, man, he might have a good opportunity to play if something happens to Aaron Rodgers over there with the New York Jets. It has an opportunity. You would have had an opportunity to play here, though, too, so it is what it is. Yeah, it is what it is. And it might have made things complicated if he did resign as far as, you know, if Jones is slow, it seems like Jones is going to be ready for the start of training camp at this point in that speculation, but it's based on Joe Daniel Jones' recent interview with you guys want to check it out with Matt Sims and Phil Sims, and we, Sims, complete. And he talks about he expects to be ready for the first day of training camp. So that's a good new, that's a good sign. But otherwise, it might have given Tyrod a chance to maybe even compete for QB1. I don't know, Nick, but I did think it was interesting to see them break down like each position one by one and what they want to spend, like running back the other guy in the mix. It sounded like, and we heard some names earlier in the first episode, but now that we got to the nuts and bolts of it, it sounded like it was either going to be Singletary or DeAndre Swift. Yeah. Obviously like the tape they saw Swift against the Giants last year. That's very interesting because we heard in the first couple episodes how much of priority this coaching staff puts on decisiveness, and then they're into DeAndre Swift. DeAndre Swickers is not really a decisive runner. He is an incredible athlete who played running back in a good situation last year. But if I remember correctly, DeAndre Swift signed to Chicago like immediately. He was the first for you to fall off the board. And then I think after that, it was like, if we don't get Saequan, we're going motor because Dable seemed to be all in on motor singletary. Yeah. And that was something Dable wanted to get done. Dable seemed like it seemed that Dable got a lot of the guys he wanted, honestly, out of this frequency. I'd like to see that he was much more involved in this process than we had seen in some of the earlier episodes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what I expected. Joe Shane and Brian Dable have a great relationship and they're really good friends. That's his Dan Morgan and Joe Shane as we've seen throughout this, and it was so funny how Dan Morgan tried squeezing him for a seventh round pit. Yeah. Well, that was the best that Joe Shane was whining about not getting nickel and dimeed by Dan Morgan. He's like, "Oh, hopefully we have a long time in this business. Don't nickel and dime me for the extra seventh." So he did kind of say, "You're either going to get 39 and nothing or 47 and something else," but it ended up both of me being 39 and some other things that the Giants had to put in there, which Joe Shane admitted or agreed. And there's always going to be some back and forth in any kind of trade discussion next. So I'm not knocking Shane for this, but he's like, "Yeah, we met some of your demands." He said to Morgan, "But just don't nickel and dime me for the end of this thing." Yeah. And that makes sense, too. He's like, "You got to have allies." I think is what he said. He's like, "You guys will be picking first and we're picking six." Don't our teams suck, all right? We kind of need, I think he said something like we need that pick, too. We need guys as well. So those draft picks are still very valuable, even if they are in the seventh round. Yeah. No doubt about that. You know, Joshi and also a few other notes I see that I was thinking about. Joshi did also mention Joe Flacko when he was talking about the range for the backup quarterbacks. I wonder if the Giants had considered it at all, giving him a call. And I don't know necessarily if this is the situation Flacko would have wanted to join, but I was curious about that Flacko mention. What did you think about that? Yeah. I thought it was interesting as well. And I think Flacko kind of proved that, "Hey, you don't need to be, I guess, maybe as desperate at backup quarterback," because he came in off the streets and was a competent, more than competent quarterback for the playoff Cleveland Browns last year. Now I think he signed with the Indianapolis Colts. But I did find it interesting because right after he said that about Flacko, he went on to lock. Flacko calls like four million a year, they got him at five million. But he's like, "We're going to have to prime away from Seattle, but our selling points is Daniel Jones and his extensive injury history," didn't say that in so many words, but they alluded to it. And also, Trubisky's contracted tie rods contract, both of those players getting contracts after being coached under Brian Dable, and that more than like healed to Drew Lock. I like that point. Yeah. That was interesting. I don't know if I even caught that on the first go-around next. I definitely like that. And that's something you can sell. And, you know, Giants are always looking for ways to sell these freedoms. It's like a back-and-forth there, too. You know? Your salesmen, Dan. Not to cut you off. Yeah. But remember last year with, or last episode, I should say, with Saquon Barkley, they were trying to sell, like, "Oh, you want to be the ring of honor, or do you want to be the ring of honor?" And they're like, "I'm trying to find a way to appeal to the players." They do. And I thought you put some great notes in about just the discussion about, you know, making that decision. They talked to Shane Bowen and they were like, "Look, if we go out and we get Brian Burns for you, that's it, buddy. That's all the money we got. That's your only piece we're giving you on the defense side of the ball. Is that worth it to you?" And in his mind, it was Shane Bowen. He felt like, you know, as he said, he's going to get a lot of snaps out of Brian Burns. He doesn't have to take him off the field. He's using him as a two-way player. And then, you know, you got insight from other guys in the Giants organization, Brandon Brown, had a great point. He says, "Rarely, do young, good character passwords at the market." Tim McDonald said, "This guy has more Saq's Brian Burns than a lot of those in his draft class that have already been paid." And all of those kind of went in, I thought, Nick, the decision, Nianne, ultimately, for Joe Shane to meet, in his words, some of Dan Morgan, Panther's general manager's demands. When you also look at the Carolina Panthers, and I don't know if Dan Morgan, I don't think Dan Morgan was a general manager, but it was two years ago where the Rams offer two first-round picks for Brian. You're still getting this player out of discount, even though you had to pay him. And as Shane Bowen, I believe it was, said, "It's going to play a ton of snaps. He's going to play his ass off." So you expect him out there, which I expected anyways, on first down. I just hope he's not too much of a run-liability. He's more of a, "I'm going to try to get around you than I'm going to stand up at the point of attack type of player." But he's stronger than he looks. I'll give him that much. He has some power rush moves as well, and I'm excited that he's going to play next to Dexter Lawrence and Cape Antibidot. In this episode, they even brought up, "Look, I think the addition of Brian Burns is going to maximize and get the most out of Dexter Lawrence and Cape Antibidot." I'm with you on that, Nick, and ultimately, it puts a big, in my mind at least, it puts a big bow tie on the whole entire idea of, "Look, what was our thoughts with what we need to do this offseason? We need to protect the quarterback. They allocated a resource to the offensive line with two key signings they wanted. They took resources out of a flashy playmaker, like Saquon Barkley, to protect the offensive line." The other thing was, one, protect the quarterback to get after the quarterback, Xavier McKinney, who was barely featured at all in this series, and kind of seems like a giant search totally out on that, from this episode and prior episodes, wasn't going to help them get after the quarterback, but Brian Burns was, and that's what Shane Bowen wanted too. So they really did a lot, man. It may not work again, Nick, and the Giants may not improve on the tough seasons we've had the last five years, but man, their objective was to protect the quarterback and get after the quarterback. They did a whole shit ton of work and put so many resources into doing those two things. Hopefully, it shows up already right away in year one. Joe Shane was very surprised when he saw the Xavier McKinney contract. He was like, "Oh, geez, like 17 million." That put them out. What? 17 million a year? It was like four for six days of state safety. Yeah. And then there's no shot at the Giants. And I think they liked Xavier McKinney, but once that number started getting floated out there, it was a done deal. And like you said earlier, man, this is all you're getting is Brian Burns, but that can be a transcendent piece for this defense, specifically this defense in this defensive coordinator. But again, the Giants can stay competitive and get into passing situations. Right. And that's something that we've talked about for a long damn time, and we'll see if it can happen. Do we miss anything else in this episode before touching a little bit on the preview of next episode? If anybody has any super chats I actually want to say, please send them in and we'll answer whatever questions you guys have. I don't think we hit on just about everything with this specific episode. It wasn't the most exciting episode. I would say, even though we got a little bit of Joe Shane and Brian Dable listening to Beyonce as they go over free agent additions, possible free agent additions. But damn, next episode, I'm hoping it actually is as exciting as it's built up to be because it seems like there's some really cool nuggets in there. If the preview is not just, you know, a, you know, thing to hype up people who to get from HBO to get people to watch the show, next episode could be unbelievably crazy. Like they may show the full trade talks to get to number three with the Patriots or whoever else they might have been talking to. I think it was only the Patriots. I think Washington was definitely out on it, on trading back with the Giants and the Bears were taking Kayla Williams, but, you know, those full trade talks with, with the, with the Patriots because in that one force, you know, 40, 60 second preview, we heard Brian Dable say, yet they asked Brian Dable, would you trade up for Jaden Daniels who we didn't even really, you know, hear that much of us said, yes, I would trade up for Danny, trade in Daniels, then Mara is referencing like a deal, which was clearly the trade up for quarterback is like, I'm going to have heart palpitations if we pull this deal off. And then Joe Shane's like, if we don't land a quarterback, which would have to be via trade up, we'll roll with Daniel and draft the best player for him. All three of those things were in the preview. And in the preview, it opened up with Malik neighbors, I think, at his pro day catching passes and Joe Shane or Brian Dable, I'm sorry, saying like, like neighbors have a little dog and a little dog and it'll be so good. Like they love the Malik neighbors. I think he's going to be there at six. He might be there at six. He might not. I'm not sure. We know for sure that Brian Dable loves Malik neighbors. We've got so much content on that already. I think it's pretty clear. Yeah. Go ahead. Something else I want to bring up before we get out of here, if we're done with this episode, and it's just some giants news. And that's Theo Johnson getting placed on physically unable to perform list. I'm hoping this is some sort and I haven't done any research into this. I don't know exactly what's going on. I don't think any injury was reported. I'm hoping it's some sort of like transactional move. I don't know exactly why that would happen right now. It's not typically a time where those things happen, but what's your beat on this, Dan? Yeah. We don't have much on that. I'll say this. My beat on this is they're more prepared than they typically are for this type of thing with the reasoning, at least from my mind being, I am cautiously, I don't want to use this word again. I'm just going to say I'm excited. I think from I watched a little bit when they signed him and then we talked about him on a couple episodes ago and I went back and I just looked at true meat. I looked at my service. I don't want to give the way and for where I can get my film and I kind of like the movement skills from Jack Stahl. I think if Jack Stahl gets on the field, the Eagles didn't need him. They didn't use him. If he gets on the field, he's going to be more of a receiver perceiving option than people realize, in addition to being a blocker. So if I got belly install, and Mannhurst to play the role that we expect for the start of camp until Dio Johnson gets back and I guess Lawrence Cage as well, I'm good because you know what? I want this team to live in 11 personnel anyway. I don't want to. I have too many receivers that I want on the field to be running that much 12 anyway. I want to see Daniel Jones operate an 11 personnel offense with those three receivers, the top floor receivers or rotation of that wire. Zero three on the field for as many snaps. So I feel pretty good. I'm not like too scared off by this. I know it's a hip injury is what Ron on reported it, but I'm just not sure like the extent of it or how it happened. If it's just something minor or whatnot, hopefully he can get in a camp because I think those snaps in training camp are still valuable, incredibly valuable for a rookie to just learn the tricks, the trade of playing. We have a super here from Cliffside. Cliffside, thank you so much for the donation. What do you think of Dable emphasizing interior offensive line? I would say Cliffside, Dable has eyes and he's seen how bad the New York Giants interior offensive line has been, probably for like the last decade, but specifically over the last two years. And I believe it was summed up by Joe Shane, I think it was in the episode. And you mentioned it a little bit earlier on this podcast, it was you protect the quarterback and you rush the passer and protecting the quarterback. Look, Daniel Jones has faced a lot of interior pressure with Mark Lewinsky and JMS last year and whoever they had at guard. It was just a nightmare for a quarterback. And I think fixing that situation had to be at the forefront of Brian Dable's mind. And I'm glad they did that with at least two competent, possibly three, including Aaron's any three competent veteran guards. Yeah, I think this was the point of priority for me too. Like you can't win in the NFL without pocket integrity on the interior and the Giants simply didn't have that last year. Too many revolving doors at guard, JMS himself got injured. This was more important to me in a lot of ways than anything else because tackle, we just have to hope for the best there. And now they even have a backup option, right? As they mentioned this episode, if things go wrong with Evan, alumni can play right tackle. But guard, man, that interior office line needed to be short up. So Mark Thompson, longtime listener, thank you, Mark, said he is on the active PUP. So he is still a part of the 90-man roster. So it's probably just my injury at this point. Yeah, I didn't think that the other thing was going to be that serious. I'm happy to hear that though. Yeah, just hopefully it's not something that like lingers throughout camp and affects him because, I mean, we need these young players to get as much practice as they can. I mean, dude, not long ago, there were two a days where these young players were able to, you know, work their ass off, but they were able to learn a bunch. And that's not... And I don't think the injuries were up or anything like that. I know the NFLPA argued against it to take it away for, you know, the idea of putting the players through more and injuries, and they'll never be able to reinstate it at this point. That's it. Now that these players are used to not having to do two days, I can guarantee you they'll never agree to do those again. But I almost feel like it trained them, their muscles and maybe helped them sustain non-injured, like not get injured because it's like injuries are only up in the NFL. It does seem that way. By the way, that was based on no scientific evidence. I don't have anything to prove that injuries are up, just a feeling, just a gut feeling that we're getting more injuries these days. All right, Dan, let me put you on a spot here. All right. Three episodes in the hard knocks and people in the chat, please send in your opinions of this. What is the most interesting part of hard knocks so far for you? For me, it was this free agent process. I thought that. The quarterback interview was the one for me before this, but this was way more interesting. I thought that was a riveting 12, 11, 12 minutes of TV right there when they were giving every position, breaking it down, the options, the price points and that top six priority list that we went over. So I definitely thought that was my favorite part. I think so too. Yeah, I think so too. It wasn't the Schmuckers. It wasn't the Schmuckers. It wasn't the same. It wasn't the same. Were these 40 time that they spent five minutes time? Dude, yeah. They spent like six of them. We just need to burn this because we don't want to give any more information. Yeah. I thought the graphics in this episode was cool. I just think the whole thing is cool, just seeing the behind the scenes and the little conversations between Joe Shane and Brian Dable and all of the other ancillary pieces where I don't really exactly know what a football operations guy does. I think about it and be like, yeah, he probably does this, but it was cool to see Ed Triggs actually have a real huge responsibility of reaching out to a primary free agents and then landing him and he'd be the lead basically on that under, obviously, the guidance of Joe Shane. But we got a super chat here too from Mr. Bob Imbermann. Thank you so much, Bob. Thank you so much. He says, Nikki, no carbs and Danny, no sweets. I appreciate you guys. No sweat. No sweat. Sweats. Sweats. I don't really know the no sweat reference. I don't know what that's in reference. We'll address that after we're done. I appreciate you guys. Have a beer on me and keep up the great work, Bob. I appreciate you. Yeah, Dan. You're a sweaty guy. I don't really sweat that much. Yeah, of course. You're a normal person. Maybe that's what it's. I don't know how you would know that. I don't know how Bob would have. You probably mentioned it at some point. Yeah, actually. Though it happens to me more lately. I don't know. I'm not like it. It depends. Like this heat. It's hard to judge. Obviously, I've played some golf in this heat, so it's an easy, easy to sweat playing golf and there's the golf reference. I had to get one in. It's been a while. But don't worry. I'm not referencing too much on that front, but yeah, I guess I don't sweat, but I know you don't eat carbs. Yeah, I mean, definitely got one locked in there. That's ridiculous. I have something. You know, they're okay. They're okay. Okay. You'll have one. Alrighty, Dan, do we have anything else to go over here on this episode? No, I think that's it for now. Keep it locked and loaded training games on the way and we're going to have some more positional previews and maybe some other content coming as well that will come through with. So thanks again for everybody who supports us always. Have a great rest of your night and we'll talk to you soon.