The Killer B's: Joel Blank & Jeremy Branham
ESPN's Mike Greenberg on the Houston Texans Wake Up Call vs Minnesota
[MUSIC PLAYING] Now at T-Mobile, get four 5G phones on us and four lines for $25 a line per month when you switch with eligible traders, all on America's largest 5G network. [MUSIC PLAYING] Minimum of four lines for $25 per line per month without a paid discount using debit or bank account, $5 more per line without auto pay, plus taxes and fees and $10 device connection charge. Phones would be a 24-monthly bill credits for well qualified customers, contact us before canceling entire accounts to continue bill credits or credit stop and balance on a required finance agreement to bill credit and send if you pay off devices early, ctmobile.com. All right, let's go out to the HRNP guest line. Be enjoying now by Mike Greenberg. ESPN's Mike Greenberg from Greenie. You can catch him on Sunday NFL Countdown. He's got a new book out, too. Got your answers. The 100 greatest sports argument settled. It's good for guys like you and me. It came out yesterday. It's available on Amazon now in the book, Greenie, and producer, himbo. It's tackled the 100 most debated questions in the sports talk world and provided 100 lists that will tell you who is the best of the best in football. Basketball, baseball, hockey, boxing, and more. This book comes out just a year and a half after the two released. Got your number. The greatest sports legends and numbers they own. Greenie, thanks so much for taking a few minutes to hang out with the killer bees. I'm curious your point of view. You'll kind of be in national. We're local. We see it a little bit differently. Your view of the Houston Texans and where they are going into year two of D'Amico Ryan's and CJ Stroud. I thought Sunday was a little bit of a wake-up call. No, it's interesting. We had this conversation on the Countdown Show. First of all, hello, guys, and thanks for having me. On the Sunday Countdown Show, I described the game with the Vikings this past Sunday as a measuring stick game for the Vikings. And Teddy Bruski jumped me on the air and said, why isn't it that for the Texans? Who exactly is it they've beaten? Why is it so convinced that they're the team that people are sort of making them out to be, having beaten the Colts and the Bears. Teddy was sort of in a they need to show me kind of mode. And three hours later, we all saw what happened. So I think it was disquieting. I'm still a believer. I think the coach is phenomenal. I think the quarterback is phenomenal. I think teams have bad days. And I think Brian Flores is defensive. He could make a lot of quarterbacks look bad this year. But it has to have been a wake-up call. I think it's don't just grow all the way up to the sky. And that felt like a little bit of a step back. I still think that the team that beat in the division-- I've run that, but I don't think that that's particularly even close, but largely the vision sinks. Are they as good as and ready to go toe-to-toe with Kansas City, Buffalo, whoever else winds up being the best teams standing at the end of the AFC? My gut feeling is they will be. But this was a step backward. There's no-- there's really no other way to say it. Mike, look, we know you're a die-hard Jets fan. Take it from a die-hard packer fan. It was excruciating for me when you got on the Aaron Rodgers train over a year before he was available and got the word out there. But you got your guy. It's been kind of up and down so far with him. And I've seen signs of the old Aaron. What is your expectations for this season? What would be a satisfying season for you realistically? And then what would be disappointing? Well, I mean, so there's so many different layers to that. I mean, disappointing-- let's sort of finish the season. It would be devastating. Players get hurt all the time. So if he misses a week, year, or there, that's not what I'm talking about. But if he has something happen like what happened last year, I may have to give up watching this before. So someone else may have to take over for me. I just don't know that I can do it anymore. Disappointing, I think, would be if the Jets remain relatively healthy, and they don't make the playoffs. So I think that would be a major disappointment. But the Jets, as most people probably know, have the longest current playoff drought of any team in the four major sports. So for me to sit here and say, they need to go from a team that has not played in a playoff game since January of 2011 to sit here and say that not making this Super Bowl would be a disappointment would be setting yourself up for failure. It's not-- I don't think it's impossible, but it's not realistic. What I think are realistic expectations, the Rodgers continues to build on what we saw last Thursday night and stays healthy, as I think the Jets could challenge, Buffalo for the division, the Bills were great. And I think they have a chance to be among the last teams standing. I could see them, and the Texans, and the Bills, and the Chiefs being the final four in the AFC. I could easily see that. I'm surprised at how good Baltimore hasn't been, at how good Cincinnati hasn't been. I'm not sold, but Pittsburgh has enough offense to be there all year long. I mean, it's very early in the season, so some of those things will turn themselves around. But I think realistically, get to the playoffs, win a game. It will be crushing in the short run if they don't go further than that. But I think realistically that it would be setting yourself up for failure to demand anything greater than that. ESPN's Mike Greenberg joining us on the HR&P guest line. His new book Got Your Answers, The 100 Greatest Sports Argument Settled, can be found now on Amazon. Mike, who do you think is the best team in the NFL through three weeks? I think Minnesota is the best team in the NFL. And I don't know that that means they're going to stay that way. I think they've been the best team in the NFL through three weeks. I mean, they wiped a field with San Francisco and the Texans. And those are two teams that I think we-- a popular Super Bowl picks. I know that the 49ers are banged up, but the Vikings are playing without. They're tight end who's going to come back. They've played much of their way without their second best receiver, Jordan Addison. Their defensive coordinator is elite. And Brian Flores is a great example of someone, I think, who some people just cut out to be great coordinators and maybe not to be head coaches. His head coaching tenure in Miami looks worse. The way you've seen them since his departure. But he is an elite coordinator. So I think they've been the most impressive team through three weeks, followed maybe closely by Buffalo. And Alan looks so good that offense is diverse. That offense is multiple. The new coordinator is such a good job there, Joe Grady. The defenses, they've patched it together. At Sean McDermott, the coach defense, man. And they've lost so many good players on that side, but they still look pretty good. So I would say to this point, the Vikings and the Bills have been-- have looked to me like the two best teams. Mike, I'm curious because you are one of the faces of ESPN now, and you've got so much on your plate with NBA Countdown and Sunday NFL Countdown and get up in the mornings. And I'm curious and also appreciative of your loyalty to still do your radio show. Is that something just because of the fact that it's kind of one of the things that really got you going and then really blew everything up? Or is it-- I'm just curious the background behind that. Because obviously, you have so much on your plate. Just enjoy it. I mean, you guys, you don't need me to tell you there's nothing more fun than discerning a microphone on and talking. Everything else I do involves a great deal of structure and planning and sort of rigid framework. And radio remains just a blank canvas every single day that I can sit down to and paint any way I wish for two hours. So yes, it is where my roots are from. Long before there was a mic, I was doing radio in Chicago. I started out in radio in 1991. And so I will always love it. But the very simple answer to your question is I do it because it's fun. And not too many people get to do a job that is fun. But it is most definitely fun. And now an author, too, a couple of times over. And your new book got your answers, the 100 Greatest Sports Arguments Settled. You can find it on Amazon. What's your favorite argument or two? So here's the thing. I can't choose between them because there are 100 good ones. So what I have been doing in these conversations, let me quickly explain what the book is. So we decided that if there is one thing that all sports fans love to do, let's argue. So you think she's the best? I think she's the best, whatever the case may be. We like to sit and debate and argue it. So Humberland, I sat down and we identified the 100 best sports arguments. And then using extraordinary research, we just settled them. Once and for all. You will never lose a barroom argument again, as long as you live. And Humberland includes 100 sneaky Humbert trivia questions, which are great fun. But so the way I will do the way I've been doing these interviews is I will literally just open it up to whatever page it comes to. And I'll read you that page. Who were the top 10 sports prodigies? This is absolutely one of my favorites. Top 10 sports prodigies. The secretary was a horse and does not count as a prodigy. So the top four are LeBron James at number four. Serena Williams at number three, Tiger Woods at number two. And each of them could have made a pretty legitimate claim to being the number one prodigy. Tiger Woods was on the Mike Douglas Show when he was three years old. Serena Williams was interviewed by CNN when she was nine. LeBron James was on the cover of Sports Illustrated when he was 17. However, and each of them wound up being arguably the greatest in the history of their sport. So we had to decide which one faced the most pressure in their youth. So I will call to your attention the first interview Wayne Gretzky ever did, was for a newspaper. He keeps a copy of that newspaper article with him to this day. The headline reads, Paul, Rashard, Al, and Gretzky. Arguably the three greatest players in history at that point. And Gretzky, that was the headline. That was written when Wayne Gretzky was nine years old. And so we decided that that was a level of pressure that no other athlete had met. So Wayne Gretzky is the number one sports prodigy, followed by Tiger Serena LeBron James. And the rest of the top 10 is Michael Phelps, Sidney Crosby, Tengripe Jr., Nadia Comineche, Bob Feller, and Bryce Harper. And there are 100 just like that. So if you or anyone you know, anyone in your life loves sports debate, loves sports conversation, loves sports arguments, you will never lose a sports debate. Again, there are 100 of them just like that. And I will also briefly tell you, if I may, that one of the pieces of feedback that we got from our book two years ago was because we wanted so much in it, it was a big and expensive package. So we told the publisher, because we wanted our audience to not have to worry about this. The book is less than $15. We wanted it to be under $15. It's $14.95. And Amazon is actually running a special on it for the release. So if you order on amazon.com right now, got your answers, the title of the book, the author is me. It's under $14. And that's what we wanted as a way of trying to make it easier and more affordable for all of the people who listen to us on the radio every day and beyond. So that's the book and we couldn't be more thrilled with the way it's being received. - Whenever to win arguments with my co-hosts, I'm gonna get it, I'm gonna buy one for my co-hosts, but I'm not gonna give it to him. - Oh, I see. - I'm not gonna give it to him. Mike, thanks so much for the time, and I look forward to reading Got Your Answers. - Oh, thanks for having me on. - And Mike Greenberg of ESPN, Got Your Answers, the 100 greatest sports argument settled, came out yesterday, I get it on Amazon, Greenie talked about the deal you can get now, it's affordable, any sports lover would love it. In the book, Greenie and producer, Himbo, tackle the 100 most debated questions in the sports talk or world. And it sounds very, very good. We appreciate Greenie for the time. - Owning a rental property sounds like a dream until you realize how much work goes into getting it ready. Determinate competitive rent price, market the property, schedule the showing screen, time to drop the lease at a rent collection, and it'll make it a request, make it a communication. - Whew, sound complicated? Renner's Warehouse is here to take the hard work off your rental to-do list. Qualify tenants, check, rent collection, check. Maintenance coordination, you got it. Go to Rennerswearhouse.com for a free rental analysis to find out how much your home can rent for. Or call 303-974-9444, because from now on, the only thing you need on your to-do list is to call Renner's Warehouse. - Hey, your job, do you ever have to deal with a nose roller? How about a snub bully? - Well, if you're installing a new conveyor belt system, dealing with the different components can sound like you're speaking a foreign language. 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