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New episodes drop every weekday, including trench talk Tuesdays with former NFL linemen, Mark Schlaris. Make sure to subscribe to The Best Football Show on the Odyssey app, or wherever you find your podcasts. Pain and pender gas with today's headlines. Alright, today's headlines, let's get to it. Reunion. The Texans have brought back a familiar face. I don't know that this is what turns the offensive line back into what it, what we hoped it would be, but I will say this, one of the best performances of the offensive line in 2023 was against the Pittsburgh Steelers with Austin Deculus starting at left tackle. Oh yeah! I don't think Laramie Tunsel needs to be looking over his shoulder by any means, but if he wants to, that's fine. But Austin Deculus, Seth, back in the building, signed off of the Saints practice squad yesterday. He's just been hanging around home in the Gulf Coast in general. He went to Seifair, right? And then LSU guy, and it comes to Houston and then goes over to back to New Orleans. I like that. Austin's a guy, boy, he's got great size. I think that when you watch him as a young player, he has made progress in getting better. He's just not naturally as athletic as guys that are stud offensive tackles, but can he make it in the NFL? I think yes, he has a chance to do that. I think it's got to be through refinement of technique and being super smart and everything else. And some guys get better at their offensive lineman, especially. Athleticism is kind of a hazy term, but they can improve their athletic traits over time, especially with strength training and everything. So I'll be curious to see him this time around. Do you think that being in New Orleans and being around Trevor Penning is going to help him, Seth, get that dog in him? You're going to be fake tough and just be able to drive safeties out of bounds. They're going to be a practice today. And they'll be like, why is Austin Deculis jumping on the pile after every play? Why is Austin Deculis acting like past protection isn't a part of his job? They're like, it's 2025 now. And Trevor Penning is out there acting like as long as you're good at run blocking, the offense will have no issues whatsoever. He doesn't pass block anymore, but he punches guys at the bottom of a pile all the time now. What the hell? This is not what he signed up for. When he pass blocks, it looks like he's trying to have a really good run block. And it's like, OK, if they do decide to pull it down and run, then this is going to be awesome. Oh, it looks like you wanted to pass. That's Trevor Penning, not Austin Deculis. Welcome back, Austin. Welcome back, Austin Deculis. We'll see you at practice today. We'll get an injury report today. Do you think that CJ Stroud is going to be on the injury report in any capacity? You know, since the the banged up revelation happened, you do? I think you will. And a lot of times, CJ, it'll be on the injury report, but you don't really think much of it. With quarterbacks in general, if there hasn't been a report or anything, I now this this is the where the rubber meets the road with my prediction. I predicted that I think that they will sit CJ just because it feels like there's enough smoke about him being banged up. Where's that smoke come from, Seth, CJ Stroud himself. Yeah, exactly. And others that maybe it is affecting his place somewhat. The fact that he's had all these errant throws that don't make any sense. Like, it's hard for me to believe that's anything other than injury. You know, that one that he airmeled to Nico on Christmas Day, he had time, he set up. It was just a really bad throw. Yeah. I think there's something going on there. And there's no amount of, there's nothing you can do to all of a sudden fix that offense after you haven't been able to do it for 17 weeks. The best thing you can do to make them incrementally better is for the quarterback to be as healthy as possible. Yep. I'm with you on that text message, CJ didn't look hurt until the tank Dell injury. I don't believe him. Well, we're talking about his body, not his feelings. Yeah. I don't, I think he's looked hurt at times this year and it's been a rolling question of just like, all right, I don't know, maybe there is something you don't want to speculate on it, but it's just, if it is curious, this is some of his misfires. Yeah. Now, there's also times where on the TV copy, it'll look like a bad throw. And then when you go watch from the end zone, you realize, oh, oh, he actually, there was way more pressure than it looked like, or the, it was clear that the receiver and he weren't on the same page. So that's where things get hazy because I don't, I think the perception from just watching on TV would be that like, wow, he's making a lot of errant throws that he doesn't usually make. Usually when I go back and watch the end zone copy of those, it usually is maybe like 50% of less where it's actually an errant throw. Yeah. It's just, it's been that kind of year where there's just everything so disjointed on so many levels that you got it. You got to write a damn term paper to figure out who screwed up on any given way. No, you're, you're 100% right. Um, all right. NBA news, I'm in Thompson suspended for two games for his role in the Donnie Brook that took place at the end of the loss to the heat. Yeah. It feels about, right? You know, it's, uh, it's, I mean, what are you going to do? He hip toss Tyler hero to the ground, he slammed hero to the ground. And honestly, like, and it's such a way that Tyler hero's future children are going to be ashamed of him. Uh, it was, uh, it's, uh, that was, that was, it wasn't just violent. It was degrading now, but now hero can say scoreboard. That's the other thing. I hope that that's how he salvages his pride. I saw a man Thompson, he did, he did a media scrum after practice yesterday. Yeah. And, um, I was hoping that he would just start off and they say, what do you think about your two games suspension? I was hoping he'd just go worth it. Yeah. Like. Look at Tyler. So those guys are allowed to be around the team on their suspension. Yes. Yeah. We're in the NFL. It's like your ostracize. You might want on them. Oh, yeah. It's sent off the one. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You might as well go as well be your awful, like, Oh, like send them to an outpost in Fairbanks. The last. Aziz al Shire war hero. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, did you hear it? Not it's headlines not to get too off topic. Aziz went and met with Roger Goodell during his suspension. I don't know if you saw that. Did he tweak his clown nose? He should have. He should have. He should have. But he was like, he was very diplomatic. He's like, no, no, it was a good conversation. You know, he wanted to talk to them about the statement. I think he met with Goodell, Runyon, Troy Vincent, like he met with all of them. And so I think he wanted to talk to them about the statement they put out, which made him sound like the worst person in the world. Yeah. I'll tell you the thing about that statement. And this is where it's messed up is that they did, they delivered that statement before they even hear Aziz al Shire side of the story. Right. Like that's just, that's fundamentally that's that's a flaw in the system right there. That's messed up. And what it does is it makes it hard to take those statements seriously because then the NFL, they look like a grandstanding politician. You know, when you're watching, you're watching some poor general get interviewed and in both parties do this, like the, the congressman up there is like not given the guy any chance to answer. And that's what it feels like, like, okay, this is you getting yourself on television to be able to show the people how much you care. Totally. That's what, that's what that letter felt like. Yeah. Come on. You're better than that. I'd like to thank you. You're really good at the TV contracts for sure. He's richer than most politicians. Most. Okay. Hey, real quick headlines, college football yesterday, LSU 44 Baylor 31. That wasn't even a Trump joke. That was a, that was a part that was for all anybody got triggered by that. That was about just various Congress people that, you know, might have inside their pocket are lined. Yeah. There's Texas ball LSU 44 Baylor 31 Fiesta bowl last night. We've got our first, uh, we've got our first, uh, team school into the semifinals. It's Penn State. They beat Boise State last night 31 to 14. I tell you this college football playoff has been fun just cause it's new. None of these games have been super competitive yet though. Like, the closest game was Notre Dame, Indiana 27 to 17. And if you watch that game, that game did not play like a 10 point game. Indiana scored two touchdowns in the last four minutes to make it look closer than it was. So we, we have there. They've all been blowouts. Um, we have three games today. I think two of them have a chance to be really, really good. Texas plays Arizona state in the first game. That's a big spread. But then you got, you got Ohio state in Oregon where Oregon, the number one seed is an underdog in this game. And you've got Georgia and Notre Dame, which has flip flop back and forth between Notre Dame and Georgia being favored. I think these are all like, regardless of how you feel about the seating, it ends up with a really good football game. Yeah. This is where, this is, this is it, Sean. Today's the day where college football stops being the next highlight that it were just a, uh, after watching, like this, this sport's done for other, I mean, like the sport of football will, will buoy it as long as it can. But the NCAA as an organization, it might, I might as well be watching a highlight in some pit in Miami, highlight still pops up on space, any home network from time to time. Does it really? It does. It does. Is it in Miami? Is that where they're showing? I don't know. We had a highlight for Anton in, in Hartford when growing up. It was, it was big in New England in South Florida. Yeah. Much like New England is kind of big in South Florida too, because that's where they all go. Yeah. It's probably why it's not like going to, it's not like you're like, oh, I'm going to take a nice relaxing vacation to the beach. So you go to South Florida and you're like, this feels a lot like, uh, angry New Yorkers everywhere. Why, uh, this is not as relaxing as I thought it would be. Screw it. Let's go to the highlight for Anton. Yes. Ryan from Magnolia checks in. Good morning. Happy New Year guys. Appreciate you. Um, we have, uh, we have a listener checking in from Southern Kansas, getting their Texas sports fix. That's probably the furthest suburb that's listening today of Houston. Southern Kansas. Yeah. Southern Kansas. We were, uh, Sean and I were talking during the break wondering what are like, if you could draw a loose perimeter around the city where, how far out do you go where people really don't want to be called to Estonians? Yeah. It almost gets lumped in. And I know it's different in different situations, but I feel like people in Katie or like, you know, Katie is a city unto itself now. The woodlands obviously is a city unto itself and yet I feel like they still consider themselves Houstonians loosely, but I'm not sure I checked in on this in a while. And we only want opinions of people who actually live in those places. We don't want opinions from people that live in upper Kirby saying those people are not used. Don't be like one of these people who are not from New Braun fells who claim that you know how to pronounce New Braun fells, right? When you're actually dead wrong about how people in New Braun fells pronounce New Braun fells. Right. So the, the feelings on the Texans right now in the playoffs, but the optimism level, not very high, the optimism level long term, I'm going to give you guys a reminder in the next segment that the team we're about to talk about is the closest to the Texans in the AFC South. And when you look at everything they've got going on, it feels like at the very least the four seed is right there for the taking for a long, long time. We clown the Colts next.
Seth and Sean talk headlines as One Houston Sports athlete will see some missed time while a couple others return to action.