Grant and Danny
Full Show- Thursday, September 5th, 2024
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And on the show today at five, we'll talk to the director of a documentary on the booming business of NIL at LSU that followed around Jaden Daniels, all of last football season. Pretty relatable content to what we care about in DC right now. That's at five o'clock today. Danny Ryuye, a congratulations. Yeah. A happy New Year in order to you. A happy birthday New Year as well. Happy birthday New Year. It is football day in America. I'm happy for me. And as much as you can be happy for other people, I am like, we say that we're happy for you, but it's like, it's just something you say. You know, I mean, like actual happiness. I can't get it from you. I can say the nice words most of the time. But today I swear to you, I think I'm happy for you football. I think I'm legitimately happy for you. I know how happy for me. I got it. I got the tingle. I got the juice. I woke up this morning, a little pep of my step went to the dentist. First thing didn't even matter. I'm there getting my teeth scratched. We've come so far in society. We could do so many things. But if you want your teeth clean, here's a small piece of rope to your gums hurt. And here's a piece of metal scraping over your teeth just to make sure everything's ship ship shape. And I'll see you in six months. We've come a long way everywhere else, except for there. But whatever, I'm sitting there with my mouth open, my jaw's hurting a little bit. I'm getting scraped up on all my teeth and I want football tonight. Egg skin football tonight. Egg hand tonight. I've never heard that phrase and now I've heard it twice in the last two days. I went for zero for 40 some years and now football. Come on, man. Football. We're doing who's done it. Football. Who's been here? Who's done it? Football. Under a game. Football. Football. We got a lot to talk about. We're going to make predictions throughout the show. We'll give you our bold prognostications coming up in a segment. We're going to talk to you in Daniel's expectations. There's a lot of ground to cover. But in annual tradition on the Grant and Danny radio program, those of you who are the real ones who have been with us over the years, you know how we roll on the first day of the calendar. We take the temperature on all of the network, football, anthems, and rank one to five whose jingle is best going into the season. What's amazing about this exercise is that the songs never change. Same songs. But our moods do. How they elicit emotions in us does. How much we like the jingles changes and year to year box or CBS or NBC or ESPN or who knows now Amazon Prime or NFL network, they move around the board. It's like becoming a Hall of Famer 20 years after you played. You know what I mean? Nothing's changed, but how we feel does. So Danny, the way this will work as it does every single year on the Grant and Danny radio program is we're going to have Daris play these songs one by one. I think we give them all a good listen. And then we start to, if we have follow up questions, if we need to hear anything else, we start to interact with Daris a little bit, get some other things played. We work the request line and then we piece together our rankings one to five. But there's no better way to get ready for the football season with this exercise. This is the musical football. This is the soundtrack to football, right? It's the sweeping stadium shot. It's the good evening. Somebody's voicing over for three, four, five seconds. And then you see whether it's Mike Toreko or you see Joe Buck or you see, you know, the iron eagle. That's how we're doing it here. Yesterday, Daris played the NFL prime time theme and theme and I started having blood just go to places in my body. I didn't even know existed. Oh, I mean, it was just things were just moving all over sure a little circulation happening. I didn't even know that was the thing. You do that. I didn't know that that was how what you look at that. But I'm discovering this song is not eligible, but it should be. Like in other words, we can make it eligible. No, we only really use the network songs, because then you're opening up a whole different can of what rules are these. This is our thing. Well, you know the rules. They're very formal around here. There's a there's a governing body. We've got to run everything up. Listen, we serve at the pleasure of the chairman of the board, but I'll tell you what, I get something that I think we had the power to change if we want to. Give me a full blast NFL prime time. This should be it. I'm literally advocating for it right now. Circles the wagons like Grant and Danny. Put it in the six. Put it in. The Buffalo Bills take the field led by JP Losman. He throws that one, not two, but three interceptions. 24 17 Patriots on to Miami, where Chad Pennington led the Tony Sperano led dolphins. So much of that. Oh, yeah. So just know this song has a special place in my heart. It does, but it is not a network game anthem. I'm sorry. It's just not. What are the songs have in common that we're going to be ranking today, Danny? You tell me, don't make me the bad guy. You tell me their network football anthems. Was that an anthem? No. What is it? It's the prime time song. Okay. Are we in a court? Yeah. We don't sound like we're in a court. Are we in a Honda Accord? Would a baby in a bag? Would a baby? Yes. All out. Let's do it. Port Festiva pulls up with a baby in the bag. I hadn't thought about that Sebastian Maniscalco bid in like three years. And the other, like a week ago, my wife was like, maybe I'll drive Uber. I don't even remember what we were talking about. And she's like, I'll just take it. I'm like, what about the baby? She's like, I can be the Fort Festiva. She did. Yeah. Dude, you don't want to get Maniscalco. That's tough. That is not great. I've never been to Chafolte. You know what I got? Barbeque in the barbeque at Chafolte. All right. Here we go. What do we want to start with? We want to go Fox first? Yeah. You know what? I don't like, I don't even want to pick the order. I just want to hear it. Do you know what I mean? Because if I started influencing the order, then do I have a subconscious bias? We hear it clean every time. I have them written down in front of me. So we'll just go and throw in this order. It's kind of randomized by network. Fox, we grew up watching the Redskins play the NFC one o'clock window on Fox five in town. And this was the jingle. Yeah. This is hard to be. I'm feeling good about this one. Welcome to Raujan, Maryland, where today the two and oh Washington Redskins, led by Patrick Ramsey are looking to get off to their fastest start in nine years against the New York Jets to help them. Kicker, John Hall. Kicker Turner, Chad Morton, wide receiver, Santana Moss and guard Randy Thomas, the jet skids. Hello again, everybody. I'm Grant Paulson. Join us always by Danny Ruier, Danny. These red skins are off to a fine start in 2004. They're usually off to a two and four, three and six type start, but this group has started fast under. I guess we look at Steve Spurrier timeline here because of course they were always two and oh, but yeah, their division rival giants come to town looking for some payback from last year's embarrassment. Nice Rutherford. All right, let's go to CBS. Now it was always very rare that Washington was playing on CBS as more now more now. This was the AFC network. So we didn't hear this one as much. But damn, if it ain't good. Okay. Why does that go so hard? Damn. I was ready to say Fox wins. I had same thing. I had Fox above it in my mind. Just now I heard the Fox when I go. Yeah, a lot of nostalgia, a lot of my good times, even when things weren't that great, it was still Fox. AFC was less or it was other. It was far away. Daddy, give me CBS again. Damn. It's that first bar hits. This one gets better every year somehow that it's almost like you're pulling in. It's like an inhale before the explosion. Who do you think of when you hear this? For me, it's like boomerous size. Yeah, it's boomer James Brown, studio crew. I think about Phil Sims as a player though. Currently, it's probably my homes, but I think about Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. Yeah, let me hear Fox again. Who do you think of when you hear the Fox theme? I mean, to me, it's old memories of the Redskins losing mostly, but there's some Brett Favre in there, maybe some Troy Aikman. To me, it's like Donovan McNabb, 77 times, running out of Michael Jackson touchdown dances. You know what I mean? Like he ran out. He did all the videos. That felt better this time. Right. Like, I don't know if it's the first bar probably doesn't compete with CBS. The first bar of CBS better than the first bar of Fox, but the Fox is consistent. The riff. Is it a riff or is it a lick? Those are music terms. Yeah. It's a riff or a lick. I think you could just make it up. A NBC football night in America, Sunday night, football, a couple different iterations here over the years. We've had Michaels. We've had Madden. We've had Collinsworth. We've had now Michaels and Herb Street at one point for some reason. And now we've got Mike Toreko and Chris Collinsworth. I've got to take on this. I want to get you. You tell me what you think first and then I want to bounce something off you. That didn't get me this time. That's been higher for me before. Stop. It didn't wait again. It didn't capture me again louder. It didn't close your eyes. I am. I've been waiting around for that awkward 45 minutes to an hour of eating dinner, had a bunch of texts about fantasy football, some irritation. Washington's already lost. It's Jack Collinsworth now. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I know you do have to see Jack Collinsworth for some reason. It's not getting me. It's not grabbing me. I'm not moved. So here's my take. Kill this for one second. I think and I've never felt this way before. Fox and CBS. They're fun. It's a party, right? We're excited. We're about to go play tackle football. This feels elegant. This feels formal to me. Fox is wearing a t-shirt. CBS is wearing a polo shirt. NBC feels like they're in a suit and tie. And maybe they're going for the network feel. I bet you they are. Maybe they want to be a cut above. It's a little bit stuffy comparatively. Do you get any of that? Yeah, it's it's an more opera. It's like I'm not going to a play. I'm going to the opera. It feels it's in a different language. It's looking down on me. So stuff, a little condescending. You have some condescension. Like, give me real quick first bar CBS and then first bar NBC. Tell me CBS doesn't want to have a drink with you, whereas NBC wants to tell you why the person you're voting for is the wrong person. Right. That's a buffalo wing song. Decision 24. Welcome to our political coverage. No, 7% of polls reporting. Let's go to the wall. King George County typically read 11 votes still out. It's yeah. Am I voting or am I watching football? Why is Steve Carnegie there now? Like, Oh, okay, my sleeves are rolled up and I'm pointing at the screen. And what we're seeing is this. No, I do get size for John King. And you guys are trying to make Steve Carnegie happen because he wears the same khakis get over yourselves. John King pummels Steve Carnegie, ESPN Monday night football. This is tried. This is true. This is about to beat that, but it's a movie. It's the big premiere of the big movie. You know what I mean? This is so good too. Yeah. Because even when even when everyone just like, Oh, the song's over. Now that you're just going to get this, this is good. Like this is again, this is the big part of the movie preview where it's like, how long do you've been a hero? My entire life. You know, like explosion and save everybody. Joe Buck over casually comes in and is very casual about the whole I'm above this whole thing. It's beneath me. We're doing another football game, I guess. Good evening from Cincinnati in week three, where Joe burrows bangles. You see burrow warming up with some guy catching passes on the sideline. Prepare to host the upstart stunning to it. Oh, Washington commanders led by Jaden Daniels. Daniel's is doing like high knees on the sideline for some reason. We show the booth title cards gone and you're on Joe. Oh, again, I'm Joe Buck joined by a Hall of Famer, Troy Aikman. Troy, this Jaden Daniels kid can play football. You're absolutely right. And I'm agreeing with everything you said. I start off even if I don't think that it's right. I start off by agreeing with you. Well, yeah, Jaden Daniels is exciting. I agree. Back to you, Joe. Back to you, Joe. Oh, that's good. That's going to be tough to be. I ask going to be tough to be. I got to tell you, that's real high on the old list right now. We shouldn't even include this one, but Danny's making this is this is my this one's my heart right here. I'm sure I love it. Amazon Prime. Oh, no, never mind. Are you sure? I thought you were going somewhere on Thursday night football. You know, that's better than I remember. Is this going to grow on me? It's better than I remember. That's better than I remember they were hating it. You hated it because it was new. But I don't hate it anymore. Listen to this. Someone's like in the background. Oh, I'm sorry. I got a role in this band. Rit-t-t-t-t-t. What? Rit-t-t-t-t-t. What do you do? You hear it? Listen. The little rattle? Why's your head bobbing? Why's your head bobbing a little bit? You hear it? Dares? Here's it. The song is definitely higher energy than the broadcast because if the broadcast of the song matched, the song would go. Here, I'll play this song for you, right? Kill the song. This would be the open. No, no, no, that's too high energy. I'm performing. Okay, Grant's doing the music now. Thanks, Dares. Here's the open, ready? You get it because the song matches the energy, the broadcast. Here we go. Hey, ow, sorry that a football game's on. Can we wait a week or two to not care anymore? Maybe week three, you can start not being interested. Here we go. Thank you, Coach. Hey, go out. One more time for Amazon Prime. Kirk Herb Street's dog is dancing to this and the booth for some reason. Yeah. You've seen that. I've been thinking about you a lot. You know about this kind of real idea. Kirk Herb Street's dog travels everywhere with him on his private jets and all the broadcasts he has. He does like every job, but now the dog's in the booth with him all the time. So he was doing a stand up the other night and the dog walked into the middle of the shot. And he's like, "Oh, Ben, get over here, Ben." He like, "Pats him on the head." He's like, "This is Ben, but you guys already knew that because Ben's everywhere with me." And they're like, "Oh, Ben, you're the best." And so there was two groups of people on the internet, people who were very mad that Ben was at work with him and then people who were very upset that anyone be upset that Ben's at work with him. And all I can think about is how mad you would be that Ben was there. Now, I happen to also kind of agree that Ben shouldn't be there, but I could just imagine you being salty like that Ben was at work, like he's shadow. What's the dog's name that's outside right now? Right outside the door? There's a dog here I saw it a few minutes ago. Don't, I forgot the dog. Shadow, right? No, it's not shadow. Vite. Savage. Savage. Savage. Savage. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's a workplace or it's not. It can be not. If we want it to not be, we should all have a discussion. If that's a discussion, that's a great one. You know, we'll just do that. Here's the big silly you've been waiting for. Yeah, you know, I love it. They no longer have their own package of games, but they do special broadcasts. Saturday night, they're going to do a bunch of different things throughout the year, international games. This is the old NFL network. Christmas themed. It's the holiday theme. Yeah. It's banger rank. Rich Eisen's on the call for some reason. So much rich Eisen for sure. Which I don't like dislike, by the way, Rich Eisen's good. Rich Eisen, Rich Eisenmark here. Better host, I would say than play by play guy, but that's okay. Am I supposed to go Christmas shopping or watch football? That's my only question. The answer is yes. Okay. Yes. Because that's what it is. That's what that's the time of year, man. We're not some other time of year. We're in the holiday time of year. This whole thing is a damn holiday. This whole thing is a gift to those that would receive it. They're telling you, churches in session, ding dong, we're ringing the bells. Come on in and hear the word. And the word is football. I said that ranking, Stanley. I know. And we're late. So we'll do them next. Top five. We will put them in order. Anthem's as they appeal to us today. By the way, a lot of shrapnel on Twitter for the fellas, including Darris's choice, I guess, of people are saying that we played the wrong Monday night football theme that we played like a karaoke version. There's a lot of people saying that. That that's outrageous. I agree with you. That's the one that now I do have another version of the Monday Night Football song. Which one do you have? It's like the old ABC Monday Night Football theme song. Hank Williams joint. Oh my god. It sounds the same, but the instruments are a little bit different. That might be with these people. Yeah, here I'll play it. This is version two Monday night football. I'm going to say something Darris isn't going to like. I think this is the Monday Night Football theme. What's the same? It's just that this one is the older version. The newer version has a little more kind of like, I guess, aggressive guitar riffs. Do I hear the new one now? Yeah. And what are people talking about karaoke? There's no words to that. He's singing that a karaoke? I don't know what that is. It's the worst karaoke session ever. But that's the one in a football theme. Okay. This sounds like it's digitally remastered. Really? I don't hear a difference. According to the kids, both versions slap. If you ask the children, all right, get your rankings together. I got them. If you guys want to chime in, you can do that. Phones wide open 806361067. Who are you giving the award to for the best NFL anthem? We do this every single year as we get ready to kick off the football season on Grant and Danny. [BLANK_AUDIO] 345 today. We've got our big GND announcement about this football season. So make sure you're listening a little over an hour from now, ahead of the double play. Later in the hour, we'll get to some of our bold NFL predictions for 2024. Welcome back to Grant and Danny. The season kicks off tonight. We'll get our first look in a regular season game at the dynamic kickoff as they're calling it. You know, there wasn't a whole lot dynamic about it in the preseason. I think it's going to be a giant win already. Do you think it has been because kicks actually get returned and they didn't used to? But the one thing you kept hearing there was this narrative that teams weren't showing how they're actually going to be something you watch. I don't know if I believe that, but tonight, I guess we'll find it. I think there's an idea of something. I don't think it's happening. I think there's going to be a lot of kicks returned to the 24. The other thing that nobody's talking about is the hip drop tackle is now a part of football. I didn't really see any preseason hip drop tackle calls, but I could see a situation where tonight in a big spot that gets called and it becomes the story that we're talking about tomorrow. I tell you, I saw a lot of is the left tackle was more than whatever half a body length lined up behind the center. And we're going to call a illegal formation a lot. You're not going to be set back against speed passrushers who are lining up wide. That is a thing that is going to be a factor in the NFL this year. I saw that a million times. Remember that Patriots preseason game? Of course. Are you ready with your rankings of the anthems to complete our annual tradition here on Grant and Danny? I am. All right. We'll go five to one then. I think that's the best way probably to do it. So dearest really quickly, if you would just give us the first bar or so of each one, Danny, you can narrate through them. Yep. Which ones he's playing, but let's rock and roll. Fox tried and true. We know it Sunday, one o'clock, hopefully Washington probably losing. Special treat, little CBS. Hi guys. What's up, James Brown? Demath the star. Good to talk to you, buddy. Mostly FC, but we're on there this year a little bit more often. That's quality. Also, I slept on seeing like Bill Coward and Mike Tomlin. It's a very stealersy thing for me too. The CBS anthem. Yeah. Special. It's Monday night, man. Only game in town. Only game on television. The whole country's tuning in. Hopefully they get better match up. Some they have in the past. They got like third pick in the draft. It seems like for those games and a lot of times we were left with duds, but still Monday night football, pretty special. Dude, his NBC. Look down upon you, common folk. We dained to give you a telecast of your foosball. I got to tell you, I hate my ratings already. I did them in the break. I'm looking at them and just relisten everything. Like if we did it again, in an hour, if we redid this, my rankings would completely change. But here we go. Number five, Danny Ruya. What do you got? We just played NBC. You're already, you lose so many points because there's a dumb song before that. It's 2024. We don't need an intro song to football. We've been waiting all day for Sunday night. Earlier today was the afternoon. Now there's a game and here at go boom. All the people are at the game. Everyone here should be filled with shame. Stop it. It's so stupid. People will be filled with shame. Stop singing songs. Stop singing, stop coming up with stupid songs in a studio next to a green screen. That's the dumbest thing we do. Carrie Underwood guy over here. I like that song. NBC is fifth for me as well. I think it's getting a raw deal. No, I don't want to go full gylo here. Gylo tweeted us, one of our buddies at Grand H. Paulson at Funny Danny said nothing beats the wardrobe and French horns of Sunday night football, number one until the end of time. He's got number one on his. Oh, that's only, it's only number one on NBC on Sunday. Number four for me. This is where I start hating my list. Monday night football. I've got Monday night football for you really on my list. I feel bad about that. Number four. Fox. I thought Fox was going to be one or two coming into this. It didn't hit me. It didn't catch me like it has in the past. I started thinking about all the losses, man. All those years and the 2000s, all the failure, right? It's so much done in the McNabb. Just celebrating it, my expense. Just so much nondescript quarterback from New York or garbage from from Dallas beating the breaks off of me. No, Fox four. I still play this song on our Alexa and the kitchen and all my kids and I dance to it, right? We love the Fox theme. I said, all my kids, like I have 11 kids. Yeah. Every single one of them, they come out of their respective hobbles and they're dancing. So we all dance in the kitchen and we play Fox on Sunday mornings and whatever. We'll do it throughout the off season. This was my ringtone on my phone, high school. Such a good bet. It's third for me. It's third for me because it's a great song. They're just two songs that are that much better. Art lists are pretty similar, I'd say. Number three, CBS. I thought again, this was going to win. It got me, but not the same. I like CBS. In fact, I love CBS. It belongs in my heart, but it didn't win this year. Number three. Number two for me is NFL network. Yeah. That Christmas feel. Happy holidays. So good, man. Do I go Christmas shopping or do I just watch some football, which means number one for your boy again and still the defending champion, someone that I and Eagle and Charles Davis know, somebody call up their boy Jim Nance and Tony Romo. CBS is in the wind column. Number two for me and I found network, holidays, holiday theme, holiday shopping, holiday song. Let's all receive the gift. Number one, and I did not think this was going to be number one, but I heard it and I heard more in it this year than I ever have before. It struck a chord in the soul. You're doing a bit. I'm not Monday night football. I thought you were about to say Amazon prime. No, no, we're not there. We're not there. Monday night football. I go, wait a minute. What a special thing on the night football is. And it just and it felt right. Even the Washington zone in seven trillion on the night football over the last couple of weeks, my years rather, but it feels good. Morning at football. All right, CBS NFL, Fox, Monday night football, NBC for your boy. Morning at football and a phone network, CBS, Fox, NBC. Let's go rapid fire on the phone so we can squeeze in as many as possible. We'll start with DJ and Rockville. What's up, DJ? Hey, how's it going fellas? Somebody taking my call. You got it. I got to take it back in a day with you guys. The old school, CBS, Pat Summerall, John Madden, pots and pans theme with it with it. You got the camera panning over to RFK. That's about top number one. Derek, see if you can find an old CBS intro from what it's been forever. It's pretty my time. So I'm thinking eight early eighties and eighties because Madden and Summerall were on Fox calling Washington game. That Summerall, John Madden. He's at the 10, the 20, 25 out of our light. I only think about him calling like four o'clock games on that old grocery palace. It's like Cowboys, Cardinals, NFC East. He's like, Hey, man, too urban at the 30. Let's go to Shane and DC. What's up, bro? Shane, you there? You will get nothing. No, Shane, Jeff in Fredericksburg. Yeah, I'm going to go old school Monday night football theme. And the worst one is that Amazon stuff. Is that because it's new? It's new, Jeff. It's just because it's new, right? We're not used to it yet. No, no, no, that sounds like something you hear from the doctor's office when you find out you had zero polyps. Jeff. That's a good thing. Jeff, if you get an award for being the on the hold, like the music closest to being on hold music, it is that it's it's it hits a little harder than that. It's not elevator music, you guys. It definitely hits harder. It's better than that. But it's the closest to that of all this man. They're not playing Fox NFL Sunday when you're on hold for those test results. Amazon's getting hit Danny and DC. You're on G and D. Hello, Greg Danny. How you guys doing today? Good, bro. I think the best one personally. I know this wasn't on your list, but it's when Chris Berman's doing the fastest three minutes or the NFL primetime theme. You know, I love that. We did. We both are in on that. Darris, you could you could throw that one back out there. I think primetime probably makes me as happy or happier than any of those other songs. Wasn't eligible, but just him and Tom Jackson going back and forth. Nothing better than that. Just so good. It's so good. This was the recap. What happened in the other games? I have to watch this show to find out. And all of the games within the games, whether it was the nicknames for players, the Louisville bit was always my one seed where they would, you know, they'd pick a player, a large accent from and it was always Louisville would be the shouted answer. Jared Christian from you guys sleep on the former Washington tackle. I'm trying to think of another little Teddy Bridgewater from boom. Let's go to Rod and Landover. What's up, Rod? Yeah, we're good. First time call a long time. Listen, bro. Oh, we appreciate you. Thank you so much. Yes, sir. Hey, but I got to say that. Oh, Jim, that's just got to hop on it. Jim, he's trying to talk. Get it in or you don't, but you don't get to cut people off. That's tough. That's tough. Hey, I think it. I think it is all great. But that old school Monday night football, it did it for me. It did it for me. Oh, okay. So, when he played the first version, it was not at the top of your list. And then he hit the old one. Correct. The first version was was a little but when he played it with the full instrument, it was like playing it on vinyl versus like you said, playing it. I get it. It was 1,000 percent think he's right. When I hear this, I'm 15 at FedEx Field. When I hear the other one, I'm just ready to watch a 2024 football game. And there is a difference. Let's go to Carlos in Savannah Park. What's up, Carlos? Hey, guys, you know, the Fox one is always going to be number one for me. But you know what? I have to defend the NBC is the NBC, Sunday night football. You're doing it the service to it because that version that you're playing, it's like modern day electric and all that. You got to play the original John Williams when it's just like, you know, the March of the Empire of like Star Wars. That's the one that gets me hype up for Sunday night football. I know I'm putting theirs to work, but you know, with that whole modern day, you know, crap, I'm not digging it. You have to play the original John Williams Sunday night opening. So that's that's a whole my game. I don't I didn't know that John Williams, like the Boston Symphony Orchestra did that one say that for Sunday night football. Yeah. We could dig on it. I am open to should probably know that if that's a thing adjusting my feel on Sunday night because the current Sunday night football, I just it's not it's not doing it for me. I don't know why though, because it's always been in my head like throughout the entire day on Sunday. I'm going I'm walking around my house. I'm grabbing my chips and dip. It's all I can do. Rodney Harrison doing a stand up. Jason Garrett, not known to do with his hands. Jack Collins worth just there for some reason. He's just there still trying to figure that one out. Actually, I think we know that we do we're pretty we're pretty confident. It's a rhyme of schleppetism. Why he's there, but we're still just trying to get to the bottom of it. Grant and Danny on the fan. Thank you guys. That's our fun little way to just having fun just having fun. I don't even know if anyone likes it. It's just fun. You and me like it. It's fun for us. It's what we do. I wait 364 days to do this. It's like opening presents on the 25th of December, man. We are here. Football season has arrived. All right, let's get into some of our bold NFL predictions next on GND. [silence] GND welcoming you back on day one of the NFL season Chiefs Ravens, a rematch of the AFC title game in 2023. To kick off the campaign tonight, we will see Kansas City begin its quest for a three-peat. Nobody's ever done that. They'll try to become only the fourth team ever to get to three straight Super Bowls, joining the Patriots in the 2000s, the Bills in the 90s and the Dolphins in the 70s. This is the first time in week one, we'll have a game featuring two players who have won two MVP awards starting at quarterback. Should be an amazing night of football. Danny, let's get to our bold predictions for the NFL season. We've both got three of them to rattle off here. If you guys want to give us a bold NFL prediction, you can hop in at 800-636-1067. Why don't you start? There will only be two repeat division winners in the NFL this year of the eight divisions. San Francisco and Kansas City. Every other division will have a new division champion. Wow. A number one for me, the New York Jets. So a lot of people are picking to win the Super Bowl, make the Super Bowl, play in the AFC championship game. The Jets will miss the playoffs this year. I think there's a chance Rogers gets hurt again. I think there's a chance if he doesn't get hurt that he shows some older age and they're in a tough division. Buffalo, really good. The Jets, excellent. I could see either of those two teams finishing atop the division and the other ones still ahead of the Jets. So I will say the Jets, a sexy pick to get to the Super Bowl, miss the playoffs under Robert Solon. If that happens, major, major changes there obviously, Loon. So that's fascinating because here's my second bold prediction. Congrats to your AFC champion, New York Jets. Wow. They have home filled throughout the postseason and they're going to the Super Bowl. Mr. Immunize himself is leading the team to the big dance. I hope Aaron Rogers wins another ring because I think he's I probably now move my homes ahead of him to be honest because I think my homes might actually be the greatest quarterback ever already. We're kind of like watching it. Yeah. But I had him number two all time on my list prior to last season and he's got one ring and he gets beat up for that. I don't know how fair that is. So I'd be perfectly fine with that happening. That would be cool. Number two for me, Larry, listen up, you're going to like this one. Jared Goff wins the MVP award. Jared Goff, 35 touchdowns, sub 10 interceptions, everything the same offensively for the lions. They win 13 games. They're the number one seed in the NFC and all golfy wins the most valuable player award in the national football league. So that was going to be mine. Because again, I can't stop talking about how they only play three games outside and indoor Jared Goff is good outdoors away from home as he's a praying mantis and he stinks. You don't even like Jared Goff. I can't stand him, but he's playing all his games inside for a team that's built to play inside. You were going to say Jared Goff wins the MVP. That's my third bold prediction. Was Jared Goff wins MVP. I've got I've got others. I will be just fine and dandy. Your comeback player of the year is Kyler Murray, who has a Pro Bowl caliber season. He blows up, goes over 600 yards rushing and throws for 28 touchdowns and over 4,000 yards. My third bold prediction for this NFL season, Caleb Williams and Bo Nix both throw for over 4,000 yards as rookies. They become the sixth and seventh rookie quarterbacks to ever do that. Only five have done it previously in the Bears case. No quarterback has ever thrown for 4,000 yards. So Williams will be the first and then in his rookie year under Sean Payton, Bo Nix with a team in Denver chasing a lot of games will do it as well. So I've got two rookie quarterbacks, Williams and Nix both throwing for 4k. That's a good one. I think the touchdown record that Justin Herbert said a couple years ago is in jeopardy. Caleb Williams is healthy and that with that receiving core, I anticipate him slinging it quite a bit. So those are some bold predictions for you. We can take your temperature with your own next at 800-636-1067, but let's get ready to put our money where our mouths are and make our predictions on division champions. We'll give you our MVP, our coach of the year, our rookie of the year calls. Break out the pandaris. Let's take note of these so that we have them at the end of the year. We'll start making our predictions ahead of tonight's NFL kickoff. We've got a commander's angle of surprises and disappointments coming your way in the three o'clock hour as well. This is the fan. The NFL season is here. It's the opening Thursday. Night. Grant and Danny with you on the fan taking you up to 6'10 and Nat's baseball this evening right here on your flagship home for the Nat's and the caps. The exclusive sponsor of our show, the law firm Condoria and Murad can guide you and your family in the right direction, help you to draft a will, set up a trust or create a health care power of attorney. Schedule a free consultation with their estate planning attorneys at kmloyers.com and be sure to tell them that we sent you so that you can get a discount. That's kmloyers.com. How good was Mackenzie Gore last night, Phil, perfect through five, took his perfecto into the sixth. Things got off the rails a little bit with back-to-back runners getting a boardwalk and an extra base hit run scored. Ended up actually going off of a glove, but it was hit pretty hard. But six innings of one hit ball for him, three straight really good starts in a row, seems like he fixed the mechanical issue that was leading to what was a brutal second half. Increase use of the change up to. I think that's important, right? Again, that is a weapon. I've seen it really good. I know at times he hasn't believed in it, hasn't trusted it, hasn't felt comfortable with it, but he's been using it and it's an extra weapon against righties. Good to see. More on the Nat's later in the show are baseball coverage on the fans presented by T-Mobile, switched to T-Mobile. You can get ton of benefits and still save on every plan against AT&T Verizon. Use their savings calculator to find out how at T-Mobile.com/switch. I want to get into our NFL predictions. We're busy today. We got a lot going on. 345, remember, we're making our show announcement, something you'll want to know about this program in the football season. So make sure you're listening at 345. But let's run through division winners first and foremost. We'll start right here close to home in the NFC East. Who wins the division? The Eagles win this division this year. Dallas, slight step back, not a total collapse, but they won't be quite as good. Philadelphia rebounds from the complete collapse last year. They had the best roster, maybe second best roster. In the NFC, they will be plenty good enough to win the NFC East. They get to 12 and five division winner. So I think both the Eagles and the Cowboys have a chance to be worse than they were last year. The difference being that the Eagles were so bad down the stretch that they finished with about the record they would this year, even if they're worse than last season, if that makes sense. I think Philly does win the division. Nobody. And I mean, nobody did less to improve its roster than Dallas as a front office and organization because they were cast strapped and had to prepare for paying CD land, which they've done. And the inevitability of paying Dak Prescott and Michael Parsons on each side of the ball also. Because of that, I think the Cowboys have a bad running back situation, regress. The Eagles probably hang about where they were and they win the division. I'll say they are an 11 win division champion. Dallas ends up winning nine or 10 games and has a chance to make the playoffs as a wild card. Let's go to the NFC North next. Detroit Lions on paper. They're really good. They were a player two away from representing the NFC to go to the Super Bowl. They don't play a game outdoors until November. They only play three all year long. They are going to have home field advantage in the postseason. They win the NFC North. I have a really hard time finding any way that the Lions don't win that division. They returned everybody. And they added talent, both in the draft where they took Terry and Arnold to play corner in the first round. They took Ennis Rake straw to play in the nickel in the second round. They are even adding to their offense still with some of the rookies that they brought in. They've got a fourth round running back, a fourth round left tackle who's now going to be their swing option. And they've got a college free agent who made the roster wide receiver behind a Monroe St. Brown and Khalif Raymond and Jameson Williams. Speaking of Williams, I think it's a breakout year for him. He's healthy. He's motivated. He needs to start showing out or he's not going to get a second contract. Don't get looks, man. In that offense, like as good as St. Brown is and talking about 90 catches or so for Laporta, you'll be one on one a lot. Ben Johnson, who did not leave stayed put, which is unheard of. Two straight years is the most sought after coordinator. So they've got a lot of continuity and play calling and scheme between he and Jared Goff. And it doesn't happen like that, that veteran quarterbacks putting up big numbers with hot shot OCs just keep working together. Normally the guy leaves you. And for whatever reason, Ben Johnson has not done that yet. They're also able to run the ball with Montgomery and Jamir Gibbs, who's going to have a big year and Craig Reynolds. I mean, they're just deep everywhere. I like the coaching staff a lot too, led by Dan Campbell, who I've come around on big time and they've got as good a front office as there is right now at picking players with Brad Holmes, even though the loss of Lance Newmark, I do think it's significant now that he's here in D.C. But I got them at 13 wins. I think they're the number one seed probably. That's what I got NFC and they win the NFC North. Let's go to the NFC South. Seems like a two division race with the Bucks and the Falcons. If the Saints are a fly in the ointment, maybe you could convince me that a third team has a shot, but the Panthers will pull up the rear. I've got the Atlanta Falcons winning this division and it's not sex. I think it's a nine and eight team wins it two, eight, nine teams in New Orleans and Tampa. It's not as if Tampa is bad. They're fine. They are aggressively fine. Nothing wrong with them on either side of the ball, but nothing that right either. I don't think anybody's really going to have a stranglehold on this division. Well, we'll be in it with two or three weeks left to play and still not know. I don't think Atlanta is good enough to really do much other than win this very mediocre division, but I got them edging out those other teams. If the Falcons defense is good, they're going to run away with the division. I just don't see that. They were not a good pass rushing team last year. And while they traded for Matthew Judon during training camp, I don't think they did enough to be really good on that side of the ball. They also lost a coordinator that I thought did an excellent job last season on defense. I got the Bucks winning this division. I think you're right Atlanta goes nine and eight. I just think Tampa base 10 and seven and they're not overly good. I think Washington could beat them in Tampa this weekend. Wouldn't surprise me at all, but Baker Mayfield has a coach now that believes in him in top, top goals. They paid him. They're carrying that over year over year. I think that losing his coordinator last year, Dave Canales, who's now the head coach in Carolina stings some, but Liam Cohen, the OC has worked with Baker Mayfield. Getting that money, having a team kind of put its weight behind you is going to benefit him. They also have plenty of weapons. Mike Evans is a little older, Chris Godwin, veteran, very, very good, but they drafted Jalen McMillan in the third round. Trey Palmer gives them some decent depth. Pretty good tight end position led by Kate Otton as well. So I just think there's enough there to get to 10 wins. Pretty good defensively. There's a lot made of like, sometimes you lose a guy like Devin White as an example from that defense. He got benched by the end of last year. Anyway, Danny, he wasn't even starting for them. So I don't know if that's as big a loss as people think. I'll say Tampa wins the South, which leads us to the West. Yeah, I could certainly see a lot of things happening that NFC South. I don't think it's particularly great. NFC West, this is boring, but the 49ers, they are the class of that division. Look out for Seattle. I think they're going to make some noise. They were fine last year. And I think of quietly on paper gotten a little bit better. The Rams are the wild card to me. I have no idea what to predict from them. When Stafford plays and is healthy, you think Cooper Cup has a healthy season. That's a formidable offense. I don't know how good they'll be on the defensive side, but we forget how good the Rams finished last year. Just something to note, but San Francisco, it's one of the most complete rosters in football, up and down. Trent Williams is back in the fold. You've got IU, weapons for days on offense. It's really about health to McCaffrey health for kiddell health for debos Samuel, who a lot of times because they take on such contact or so physical, may have to miss a time, you know, gamer to hear there. If they've got their core group going, they are really, really, really hard to beat. I got them winning that division, even though it's going to be decent with 12 wins. Deaf taxes, Kyle Shane ain't in the NFC title game. If he's got his starting quarterback, that's basically what it's been for San Francisco. I don't even think the health of the playmakers is all that important in terms of winning the division. If you're just talking about missing two four games, something like that, McCaffrey, IU, Samuel, there's so much that they can make up for a couple of weeks to a month without someone. The one guy they got to have is pretty because I don't think Josh Dobbs their backup or Brandon Allen, their third string or the former Bengal walks through that door and gets you to the postseason when in the division. But assuming health at quarterback, they're going to win that division going away. By the way, their defense is still really, really good. Up front, Bosa, Malik Collins, Javon Hargrave, Leonard Floyd, they got ballers at every level, Fred Warner in the second level at linebacker, Hafunga, the safety who had all pro season last year, kind of leading the way in the back end with Trevarius Ward. I just, I'm a San Francisco believer, I think they'll be right back in the Super Bowl mix. They'll win that division. Let's go to the AFC and go division by division with our winners here. We'll start in the AFC East where I've got the Buffalo Bills. I know it's an easy thing right now to suggest that they're going to fall off because Stefan Diggs is in Houston, Gabe Davis is in Jacksonville. They're counting on a young receiver and Keon Coleman and an off injured veteran and Curtis Samuel. I believe in Josh Allen. Maybe he runs more. Maybe they run more with James Cook and Ty Johnson. Maybe it's Khalil Shakur who steps up. I don't know how they're going to get there. Maybe Mack Holland's catches nine touchdowns. The former Falcon, Josh Allen is going to combine for 40 plus touchdowns. He's going to get them across the finish line as a playoff team. And even though they have tons of injuries every year on defense, they always seem to have enough at Oliver, AJ F and NASA, Greg Russell, rushing the quarterback. You know, in the back end, they've kind of rebuilt everything, but Tehran Johnson, still one of the better players in the nickel in the league. They had a big opening in safety and apparently Demar Hamlin had it on the start camp and preseason. He's going to start for them for the first time. So that's really, really cool. Good story there. I've got the Bills in a loaded division as the most complete team with Sean McDermott, coordinators Joe Brady, and they've got a brand new DC that they got to turn things over to as well. Fantasy Flyer, late round Khalil Shakur. You mentioned it. Nobody was better in the second half of the season in separation scores, which is usually a great predictor to follow of yards and some totals. So that's a guy that's going to get some targets. The only problem with that is you're the only guy I know that still has a draft. I mean, Danny drafts on the opening night of the season every year. It's one of these favorite things. I don't know how that's possible or why you're in that league. It's it's something I do with one of my best buddies. And he's this group insists on doing it. We had it set from Monday. Two people complain and they move it back. They do it on opening night every year. And I think it's fun. I think it's so stupid. So they don't acknowledge or understand that it's a terrible bit. No, they love it. They love it. They love it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But it's the one I told you about this. I'm putting up your Christmas tree on Christmas night. I guess I told you before I ship my buddy a pretty substantial amount of money. That's not even close to what the entry fee for this league is. He will not tell me what the actual prices. So we do it together. It's great way to stay in touch. But these guys just live in a different sphere than you and I do. They're not affected by the same forces. AFC East, New York Jets. They've been the best team on paper, non quarterback division for a couple of seasons. They've found a way to be seven and 10 in a competitive division with some of the worst quarterback play you could possibly fathom. They won't have that now. They've still got top to bottom as good or rosters anybody in the sport. And they've got a Hall of Famer with something to prove a literal chip Douglas on his shoulder. The Jets when that division Buffalo's gotten a little teeny tiny bit worse each of the last couple of seasons. Josh Allen's going to accumulate all those things. He's also going to turn it over 20 plus times combined. They're going to lose just enough games. It's jets with 12 wins Buffalo with 11 and Miami with 10 none after the weather starts to turn cold. So I got the Jets winning that division by a game under on 20 turnovers for Josh Allen's go to AFC North. Who's your winner? The Baltimore Ravens. This is another one where everybody's predicting the demise. So like what you think about Buffalo is what I think about Baltimore. I wouldn't say that you work with me so you hear it a lot. But they're I think top four and Super Bowl odds right now. But people are saying, well, they lost somebody. They lost your net score now. They lost. They lost. They lost. This is Baltimore. Last year they were the best team in NFL from wire to wire. We don't remember it that way because they didn't play very well and lost to Kansas City. They were outstanding last year. They beat everybody. They beat. They went to San Francisco on Christmas and beat the breaks off of them. They killed Miami by 40 points. They were the best team in the league. They're worse than they were before. Still good enough to win. In my opinion, the best division in sports. They have the third best odds to win the Super Bowl right now behind the Chiefs and the 49ers. I'm going to go with the Bengals to win the AFC North. It's Joe Barrow time. He is back. He is healthy and Jamar Chase is going to play in week one. Speaking of being back, T Higgins like Jamar Chase is gunning for a contract. Danny, there are times where I'm trying to get paid and I'm a distraction. I think those guys go out and light it up to get paid and it all works out. Like what the team wants and what the players want in that moment of lines. It's like a zipper. It's all in unison, man. Why not? Let's all go out and make plays. I also don't think they got worse losing Joe Mixen. Zach Moss is a thumper. It can be a decent running back. I like Chase Brown. I like Chase Brown out of the backfield catching passes as well. I think he could have a pretty good year. The offensive line has been rebuilt over the last couple of seasons. They did draft to Mari Mims who may not start right away, which tells you a little bit about their depth. Their first round pick. I don't think their tight end position is great. I wish they did something else there, but for whatever reason, Barrow has not used the tight end like a lot of quarterbacks do over the years, but they did bring in Mike Gasecki to go with true sample defensively. They're very, very solid. Some depth added with Chris Jenkins, Jr. The Detackle, Cedric Johnson, who's going to play at defensive end. Cornerback Josh Newton added to a group that's mostly holdovers. Gino Stone, who had seven interceptions, I believe, for the Baltimore Ravens. This past season is now in Cincinnati with the Bengals. So I just kind of like what they've got for their offensive coordinator now. New Dan Pitcher, defensive coordinator, really good. Annually, never gets coaching job interviews and Lou Annaromo, Zach Taylor, staple in the playoffs when he's got Joe Burrow. I like the Bengals. I think they win 11, 12 games, and that's enough with a tiebreaker or something to overtake the Baltimore Ravens. How about we go AFC South? Give me the Indianapolis Colts. They were in a one-score game last year with Gardner Minshu and several injuries against the Houston Texans and a winner take all environment. Everyone's forgotten about them. This is a good club. They don't do repeat division winners in that AFC South. It's like kind of our version here in the NFC East. It was Jacksonville. It was the darling. They went from terrible to good. They underachieved the following year despite all the expectations. Houston will repeat that. They'll be fine, but not the jug or not that everybody. Right now on the FS1 shows, on the talking head shows, on the shout at you shows, the hot takeries, it's, is this the next challenger for the Chiefs? Are these the second best team in the NFL next to the Chiefs? Who could beat my homes? Is it Stroud? No, they're not there yet. That's okay. They're going to be there. They're going to be good for a long time. They got to go through a couple things. They'll be nine and eight. The Indianapolis Colts will be 10 and seven. They will win that division. Nine and eight. Wow. I love Steve Palazzolo, who used to work at PFF calls him the shouty shows. The shouty shows. Yeah. That's so funny. They should give awards of the shouties. Right. He's like, on the shouty shows, I just think that's so perfect. I wanted to do a quick impression of someone. Can you tell me who you think I'm being? I know I didn't know what you're going to do, but go ahead and do it. You don't know what I'm going to do. You're going to be asleep. And you're like, I'm Danny on the Texans. I have to ruin my thing. Because yeah, I know what you're doing. I just want to do an impression. Go ahead and just let me do an impression. Here's your go. My doors. Oh, go to sit. Well, that's Grand Obama. You're right. Very right. What about this? Well, but, well, but. Grant De Niro. Ah, you're right. You're right. What about this? Danny on the Texans. Danny on Stroud. Danny on D'Amico Ryan's. Danny on Tanktale. Oh, great. Sorry. Wake up, buddy. Oh, I'm Danny. The Houston Texans. I was just I'm sleeping on the Houston. Yeah. See what I did there. I did. You didn't see that one coming. Do you want that a telegraph machine? Come on. Come on. We're having fun. That receiver now. Come on. You didn't see that one coming, did you? I was doing the Obama. Yeah. And I was doing mine. Oh, I did not know you're doing that. Danny on the Houston Texans. Yeah. You were sleeping a little. Mm-hmm. The division champion in the AFC South is quarterbacked by CJ Stroud. What else do you want? I got Stefan Diggs. I got Tanktale. I got Nico Collins. I got Robert Woods. If you're into old guys without a whole lot left. I am. I really am. If you're into running backs, I brought in Joe Mixon. I got Damian Pierce. If you're into tight ends, I got Dalton Schultz. I got Brevin Jordan. I drafted Cade Stover in the fourth round. What do you want? You want defensive players? I just went and got Daniel Hunter who led the NFL in sacks last year. You like linebackers? I got some of those too. I got a new Mike linebacker to run my defense. You like secondary players? I drafted Camari Lasseter and Kalen Bullock to start for me. I got Jalen Petrie going into year three at this point. Now is my nickel back. The Texans are ready, my guy. That is a 10 and seven and being 11 and 16. That is a division champion, the Houston Texans, which brings us to the AFC West. The always competitive, very difficult to predict AFC West. The Los Angeles Chargers look at you will not win the division. Okay. And neither will the Raiders and neither will the stupid Broncos. It's the Chiefs. I think the Raiders finish last. I think the Broncos are mildly frisky and win seven games this year with this sort of Drew Brees 2.0 bonix. Check it down offense and Sean Payton company. The Chargers go eight nine. Kansas City just is on cruise control the entire time. Chiefs no need to tell you anymore than that. I think you get the story there. Sports grumpy asked, said, uh, is it fair to say whoever plays more games between Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson determines the AFC North division? Oh, because it, because of the injury factor. Yeah. I mean, like if it borrows his 11 and Jackson plays 17 Ravens, whereas advice versa. I think that's it could come down to that. I mean, again, I, I have no idea what to expect from bro this year. I think he's going to be back to being Joe Burrow. And when he is, they're excellent, but we don't have a lot of precedent for coming back from this injury, this wrist thing that he's got, you would think it's all going to line up, right? With, with the weaponry that they've got and, you know, as good as Lamar Chase is, and I know Higgins wants to get paid as well. The best way to do that is go out and produce. So maybe it works. I don't know. There's enough question for me to give Baltimore the knot. Crash on Twitter says, Danny, when you patent that Jets Kool-Aid, you should call it dark room. Going to be fun to hear Robbie for the next 18 weeks. I get that. But what am I robbing you? I don't know. So there've been a couple of things my son has been saying lately. He accused me of selling the other day. And I don't, I was like, what, I don't have an e-commerce store. What are you talking about? Do we need to go to Darison Ryan? We might need to. What is robbing or selling? What's the first one? Robin, because I guess that guy, you're robbing me. Same thing. I don't know. Your kid says robbing? No, you just said robbing to me. Like that guy said you're going to rob me. Okay, but now I'm confused. But your kid said selling. Yeah, he said they're related. I don't know. I said the robbing thing. And then you immediately told me the story about your kid. I was trying to say there, that's mixed two things recently that I don't know the meaning of. Okay. We've got a meaning that's been established for hundreds of years of the language. And now there's been some sort of like, let's make the thing that's always meant something mean something totally different. Fellas, young people, what is selling me? If you're selling something that it just basically means if that he's not going to be trying. You're selling like fronting. You're fronting. Sure. Is that you're not trying? Or you're not trying. That's the opposite of a try hard. Interesting. You use it in a sentence. Let's just say Anthony is taking in his Madden NFL team. And so he's actually going to be selling off the season. Look at that's literally selling off though. That's a football term. So, so I think a better example would be Cadair is Tony tonight. Drop five passes. He's selling. Bruh is selling. So you're bad, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So my son yelled and it was sort of at me, but it was kind of like to the character on Roblox. Are you Amazon, Bruh, because you're selling. And just sort of yelled that. And I was like, are you yelling at me? Is this someone you're playing with? Anthony just brought up another good kind of like alternative term for point shaving. It's kind of the same as point shaving. Oh God. Selling and point shaving is kind of the same thing. Wow. Geez. Okay. Okay. Well, while we have Anthony who was up on these terms, what is robbing me? Is that a term? Robbing. Yeah. This guy says I'm going to be robbing Danny all season because my prediction is the jets when the division and grants is saying because it's a bad prediction. I'm going to take money from you. Oh, that's what it seems like. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Or it's going to be you're going to be able to take advantage of me all season long. I think robbing means like I take something of yours that isn't mine. That isn't that's how we think of it normally. Like you're walking down the street and I grab your wallet. That'll be right now. And you make it yours. Yeah. Now it's my wallet. Sure. Well, G and D on the fan. Biggest surprise. Biggest disappointment. Let's go commanders on this and we can go NFL abroad next. It is kickoff day on the fan. [inaudible] It's football night in America and we'll be soon enough. Anyway, kickoff is about five hours away. The NFL is back. We're granting Danny. You're locked into the fan. It's the best time of year. Sunday the commanders will be playing a real life football game. Speaking of the NFL season returning, we've got a nice announcement we'll make as a show coming up in 15 minutes at 345 ahead of our double play. So make sure you're listening at that time. We're going blitzing at four. Let's talk Jaden Daniels next hour as he gets ready to embark on his inaugural campaign in the national football league. But right now, let's go. Biggest surprise, biggest disappointment. I want to start with the commanders and then we'll go broad in the NFL. So give me your biggest surprise for the commanders this football season. Everybody's got this a little bit wrong. The excitement over an improved secondary potentially coming via coaching. Joe Witt, Dan Quinn, have a great pedigree in terms of being around great seconders. Look at what's happened at Dallas last couple seasons. Interception leader has emerged from relative anonymity. Go back to the Legion of boom, et cetera. So people have pointed to somebody and they will, this guy might benefit a lot. That's not the right answer. Quan Martin will have an outstanding season. Little bit of nickel, little bit of free safety, little bit of everything in between. He'll cover. He's the guy that's going to thrive in this game because he's versatile. He's smart. We think of him improperly because he was so bad at the start of last year, really came on strong towards the end. He's going to start. He's going to play a lot. Quan Martin is going to be the pleasant surprise. Sen Ron Rivera, his ring. You really shot. Okay. I picked him. I knew it. Okay. I'm going to ring my Rivera era draft pick home run bell. They say when you got a garbage offense, okay, you should go corner back, corner back in consecutive rounds. That's what you do. Okay. That's what we were missing. Does Sam Cosme get a Rivera era draft pick home run bell? Hit that bill. He was drafted as a tackle. It really was. They told you it was the right tackle. More sudden anything else. Now he's a really good guard. That's what he is. Okay. I'm going to give it to him. When you don't eat very often, you don't turn food back because it's not cooked just the way that you like, you know what I mean? Guard. Speaking of the Rivera era and the draft pick home run bell. Here we go. Keep it close, boys and girls. Now this is not a home run. Home run sounds like this. This is more of a single like this. Something like that. Did you even ring? It did. It rang. It rang. Got to listen really closely. My surprise. Okay. Jamie Davis comes on like gangbusters. Second half of the season finishes with seven sacks. Seven. Jamie Dave. Seven. Seven sacks. I thought we'd do a surprise, not bold predictions. The biggest surprise. This is a surprise bold. Yeah. The biggest surprise that you're going to have seven is that Jamie Davis becomes a decent situationally used pass rusher. Seven sacks. Seven sacks. Seven. I don't want to say it anymore. Seven sacks. Give me so many chances to lower that total. Okay. Six. There it is. There you go. Jamie Davis. Well. Pass rusher. Second half of the season. He's making some plays. That'll be the biggest surprise this season for the commanders. How about the biggest disappointment? So I like the dude. I don't I feel bad saying this sort of thing. I just don't see it happening for Zach Hertz. I would love for Zach Hertz to be the same target it was a couple years ago. The guy that went for a million catches against Washington when they played who's dynamic. I don't see him staying healthy. I don't see him having a lot left in the tank. I don't see him being a positive on the field. I think he's a great dude to have in locker room. He's a translator for Cliff Kingsbury's offense and system. He's a good dude to have on your roster. I don't begrudge it because it wasn't like one of their huge marquee free agent signings that cost him a whole bunch of money against salary cap and a number of years you're not tied to it. You've got replacements waiting in the wings, but I just don't see him having a huge impact this year. We'd love to be wrong about that, by the way. For me, biggest disappointment, I'll say the commanders get swept by the Cowboys, which is not surprising. Like that's not bold or anything, but the biggest disappointment this season, I think, is that when Dallas comes to Washington, it's hard, or they're Washington on November 24th. And when the Cowboys are hosting the commanders January 5th, I believe that the commanders are going to get beaten both of those games handily by Dallas. Don't love it. Not happy about it, but that'll be the biggest disappointment of the season for your boy. Let's go NFL abroad now. Give me your biggest surprise. Could be a player. Could be a team. The biggest surprise is that the Tennessee Titans are going to be frisky. They're going to be decent. They're not going to be good. They're not going to win the division. But people have written them off. They think we'll levis stinks. They think the Tennessee's and also ran after a couple of bad seasons where they were beset by injuries. Frankly, they're never a good personnel. They have whisper or whisper quietly upgraded an awful lot. They'll be in it until they kind of fall apart at the end of the season. And the Colts win that division, according to my predictions, but I got Tennessee improving by at least a couple of games. I got three NFC North teams making the playoffs as a surprise. Packers bears after the lions win the division. I think Detroit, as I said, is like a 13 win team. I'm going to say Green Bay goes 11 and six and then Chicago goes 10 and seven and gets in as a wild card. And I think three teams from the North bound make the postseason. I also think the Vikings, by the way, are going to be frisky than people think they still got a lot of talent. They're frisky. Kevin O'Connell is a good coach. They're going to run the ball a lot better. They made an upgrade. They brought over Aaron Jones from Green Bay last year. It was like Alex Madison and the ghosts of running back past for them. So I actually think there'll be a quarterback away, which is funny after cousins walks, but they'll have, you know, a lot there offensively. But I just, they're not going to be able to keep up in the division. They're probably going to be like a seven and 10 type team. But that's going to be a sneaky, really good division. Biggest disappointment. I've already kind of covered it. I'll give you a bonus one too, just to make up for it. I think the Texans will be viewed as a disappointment on paper. They're really, really good. But teams usually have to go through some stuff before they really jump up into the elite levels of football. They have a tough schedule as well. So they'll be fine. They'll be just outside of the playoffs with a winning record. So they'll be viewed as a disappointment because everyone's got huge expectations. And my little bonus for the first time in his career, Mike Tomlin's team will finish with a losing record. That's my second little bonus disappointment. Yeah. Biggest disappointment. NFCLC Rams disappoint. That could be a Stafford injury situation. I also just think the loss of Aaron Donald, locker room, upfront in general, just a key cog for years and years is going to register in Loom pretty large. They've got two Florida state defensive linemen that they drafted that they're counting on in verse and fist. But I think they're going to take a step back after having a really good year last year. Now I would throw one more out there from the AFC. I said it earlier. Jets missed the playoffs. I just don't think the Jets put it all together like everybody is assuming they will. They'll be my disappointment. All right. Let's tag in the producers room here. Let's go surprise. Darris. What do you got? So my biggest surprise will be that the Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love is going to finish top three in MVP voting by the end of the season. Thank you for a huge, huge season out there in Green Bay. Got the bag. He did get the bag. Put up all the numbers last year. He's on his way, man. He's a really, really good player. I'm just happy for Green Bay, honestly. Finally, worked out for him because seriously, like the quarterbacks for them, it's been so they've been in the desert just looking for water. They had that far of a guy for like 20 years when MVPs. I'm being told. I'm being told they went from one great quarterback to the next to the next. They're just passing it like it's a relay race. It's not fair. It's not. They need to miss and miss and miss for 100 years to be like the rest of us. Rhino, who was sweet enough to give us chocolate chip cookies today. That was nice. Unless it learned, it sounds like at the clary household. It was. It was. But my biggest surprise is that Willevis will establish himself as an NFL franchise quarterback in his second season. I think Willevis will actually carry the Tennessee Titans to around a 9 10 win season. I think, man, I think the Titans are a sleeper team this year. I think they've got a very good squad. And I think Willevis kind of sling the rock. I'm kind of buying that Tennessee Titans right now. So he's going not only surprised, but like I was doing bold as well. I mean, he's out on the limb there. That would be a surprise. That's what, can you even see the edge of that limb he's on? You can't, you can't touch the main trunk of the tree where you're at. Mayonnaise and coffee, Willevis, Mayo and coffee, biggest disappointment for you, Ryan, this football season. My biggest disappointment for 2024. I was going to say the LA Rams because people are really buying into them, but I'm actually going to the opposite way. I think it's the Green Bay Packers. I'm not buying the Packers weapons this year. They had a relatively easier schedule this last season, compared to what people thought they would. I think Jordan Love is good. I really believe in him. I think he's going to be the guy, but I'm not sold in the weapons surrounding them. They still have not done enough just yet. So I think they're going to be the most disappointing team in 2024. They got all those young receivers that have another year experience. Christian Watson, Romeo Dobbs, Jayden Reed, Dontavia on wicks, all kind of growing with love. They don't have a true number one to be clear. I'm with you there. Dara's biggest disappointment. We got little sprinkles of how good and effective he could be last year, but of course he got injured and the season ended a little early. There's big expectations for Anthony Richardson this year. I got a bad feeling that's not going to happen. I think our biggest disappointment is Anthony Richardson is not going to be the guy this year. So meaning, so you got hurt last year after I think four games. So basically the year ends and it looks like the Colts need a quarterback. I think so. I think we're going for the Colts are going to be back in the quarterback train again. Oh, if that's the case, then Chris Ballard will be a GM somewhere else, probably. And the answer to phone calls would have taken from someone else. Grant and Danny on the fan. We got a nice show announcement to pass along. And it's not just that we had delicious chocolate chip cookies from our guy Ryan today. There's another, frankly, if I could say this, with all respect to the cookies, which were great. Cookies were the big deal. Equally is important announcement. It's pretty big. Yeah. We'll also hit you double play next on GND. [BLANK_AUDIO] Our double play will come your way in just a moment on Grant and Danny. The Beltway Blitz is sub 15 minutes away. We are taking you up to six, 10, excited about our five o'clock segment tonight when we're talking to the documentary maker of what is a really cool series that dropped on Amazon. They've followed around LSU's NIL collective decisions, the players that they brought in, some of the athletes at the program, including Jaden Daniels, Livy Dunn. I want to ask him all about that when he joins us at five tonight, coming up in about an hour and 15 minutes on the fan. But Danny, we do have an announcement to make. We do indeed. I'm excited about this. I think this is one of those. There's a little bit of familiarity. There's also something that's a little bit sexy, a little bit new, a little bit cool. Yeah. So I'll say there's two announcements. One is bigger than the other because one is kind of a known commodity. But we are very, very happy to inform you guys that on Mondays at five p.m. J. Gruden will be back. We're doing it again. On the Grant and Danny radio program. So fun. It's always entertaining, informative, great opinions. He watches every game. I just, he's a really, really good guest. Storyteller? Yep. Comedic genius. Words like this get thrown around occasionally. Ball knower. Guy who called some plays in his day. And stick aside, what I really like about Jay is he calls it like he sees it. There are so many people in this business who coached or played who are petrified of giving opinions. And J. Gruden is not that guy. J. Gruden is whatever the opposite of that is. He is going to tell you what he sees. He's going to tell you what he thinks. He is both entertaining and insightful to me, the perfect radio guest. And there's nobody we'd rather break games down with go around the league with the day after Sunday football than J right here on G and D. That is such a good point, by the way, about being willing to say the thing. Good, better and different, right? I mean, that's what you want his brother to be famously when he was doing one night football was this is probably the best player this league has ever seen, man. It's like, no, it's not. It's okay. It's the backup running back. You know what I mean? Like, it's okay to say like this, like he's hurting this team or this is good. This is bad. But to your point, like he had this getting in the league is really hard. It's really hard up here type of level of analysis. And it's like, I can appreciate that. But also within that, we can have maybe some variants, but but Jay throws the fastball. He does not pull punches. He calls guys out. He's like, Oh, he's a bad blocker. He doesn't catch enough passes, whatever it is. And most of the time, the guys he's talking about aren't here soon thereafter. And knows what he's talking about. But this is something we're very, very excited about. This is going to be new to the Grant and Danny radio program in the 2024 football season. That's a good drum roll. We've thought about doing this in the past, but it wasn't going to work out because he wasn't actually a member of the team. Have a good new it. Tuesdays at five p.m. running back, Austin. Here we go. We'll be a staple. Yeah. On GND. We've had him on a couple of times since he was acquired. Just a star blew us away the first time we had him on just this past week. One of his people hit us up and said, Hey, Austin's launching an app for dozens of football players to try to connect them with fans. Would you guys mind talking to him? And we said absolutely. And he's one of the most unique, sharpest, just thoughtful players in any sport that I've ever been around. I really, really enjoy talking to him. And he's perfect for our show. We are a nuts and bolts analytical, info driven show more than we are wacky guys. And I just think Austin Echlers are really intuitive and cerebral like ball thinker. So I'm fired up. He also loves fantasy football and talking about fantasy football. So we're going to have a lot of fun with him, I think. Yeah, he is sharp, funny, entertaining. You said thoughtful already, but I want to double down on that. Like, in his spare time, when you're feeder up, my feet is the watch and television, he's starting a company. You're going to mean like when you're relaxing, he's like, you know, I should probably get a small business loan and talk to some venture capitalists and found this thing that helps people. Like, this is a different cat. And I mean that in the best possible way. From from the depths of obscurity to star in this league with something left off for here on a new team and he's wildly engaging and awesome. Like, that's as good a guest as you can pull. I recently heard him telling someone that a coach told him that he's the most unique man in football, like the most unique person I buy that in the NFL. And not only does that make sense, but he said he thinks the reason for that is he never grew up thinking about or planning on playing in the NFL. Sure, it was always as a football player, something that he thought would be cool. But this was a tiny guy, undersized that every single level he ever played at, who played non division one football to school nobody's ever heard of and wasn't expected to get any look in the national football league. So for him, he had other ventures, other ideas. He was learning to do other things. And it just so happens more so than probably than a lot of us. Like, his job is not who he is. It's just kind of what he does. He takes that to the nth degree. But man, do I really, really like Echler? I'm rooting for him this year, like everybody else is. And I do believe I could say this confidently. He is going to lead the Grant and Danny radio program and our regulars in receptions in the NFL this season. I think if you tally up like my catches, Danny's catches, Daris's catches. Yeah. That's mildly bold. Even Ryan's catches. I think Echler will catch more passes than us this year. But we're the crazy people who think he's got a lot of tread on the tire. He's going to help this team a lot. And if he's a ball or if he goes out and JD McKissick's this thing, we're going to have a lot of fun on Tuesdays at five p.m. Like to me, that's the minimum expectations. Oh, if they're down back helps them in the passing game, I think there is a lot left here. And I think everybody's sleeping on it. And I think because you've got Brian Robinson to tilt the rock and take a lot of the thumps, a lot of the hits and be downhill. I think he's fine with that talking about Echler, right? Well, I don't have to do 250 carries and, you know, then another 75, 80 receptions. You can tone that down a little bit, still get your thousand total yards via a goal line option, be excellent in the past game, early down work, not all the time, but sometimes I think he's going to help him a lot. I think I think this is their best offensive acquisition, non-Jaden Daniels division. But we're happy about this. And we think it's going to be great for the show and really good for you guys as consumers of our content listeners. So thank you to Crisp, our program director. Yeah. And behind the scenes that made it work out, Jay Gruden Mondays at five, Austin Echler Tuesdays at five. And then Daris, did you have an update on the win? I know Wednesday, we were talking about Tom Brady at five. Thursday, we were saying maybe maybe Peyton Manning at five. And then Friday, I think it was Goodell, Roger Goodell at five. So we're going to contract details. Okay. Well, we should have more on that by tomorrow. But that's the idea would be that Brady would be at five on Wednesday. Yes. I was saying, Peyton Manning, you were hoping for somebody else. Well, like we were looking for Rogers live during the season, like you said, I'm going to be too busy giving hugs to Pat McAfee. That was kind of the thought there. Like we wanted to see if we could get that going. There've been a couple of contract hiccups there for some of those guys. Because he got on the Goodell contract. Well, he was like, you guys have to pay me out of your pocket. We were like, fine, how much? He gave the number. Like we wrote down a number down in napkin. We exchanged that. And I don't want to get the nuts and bolts about it. But it was like, we were a little bit south of his number. I thought it was weird too that we had to ask him about his recliner for some reason. He like wanted and how he gives people hugs. It's one time per interview, the recliner has to come up. It's like, okay. Jay Gruden Mondays at five Austin Echler Tuesdays at five with your pals, G and D football season has arrived. Our Beltway Blitz is next. We're getting into Jayden Daniels at four twenty five right here on the fan. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] Tonight's the night, the NFL returns and we are taking you up to six, ten, getting you in the football mood on Grant and Danny. The exclusive sponsor of this show is our pals, the law firm over at Condorion Murad. They'll guide you and your family in the right direction by helping you to draft a well set up a trust or create a health care power of attorney schedule, a free consultation with their estate planning attorneys at kmloyers.com. Be sure to tell them that we sent you so you can get a discount kmloyers.com. They are local guys, like Braddock High School, George Mason University, huge DC sports fans we are going to be traveling with over the course of the months ahead. They're good. Hey, they are fun. We went to a caps game with them who watched Nick Dow get into a fist fight right in front of our eyes. It's a really good time. I forgot about the doubter ham throwing. I'll never forget about that fight. That was nuts. Nick Jensen got laid out in just about killed. And so doubters. So doubters, buddies just said he was on the ice and you can hear the somebody. Yeah, that was a good time. But go check them out kmloyers.com. It is time for our beltway blitz. The NFL, the commanders on decking in the hole on a football day here on GND. Let's start though with the latest on the diamond with the nationals. The long time voice of the nationals. In fact, since day one in the nation's capital, our guy, Charlie slows Charlie Mackenzie Gore looked like an ace last night, one hit over six innings. He had the good stuff going. Yeah, that three starts in a row. So after making the adjustment of the arm slot, his command has been really good. His stuff has been good. It's shaming and get a better result. But six innings, one run, one hit, nine strikeouts in a walk. You'd almost take that every time out. What's the difference when it's going good for him versus when it's not, Charlie? Well, I mean, he was very efficient pitch count, you know, earlier in the year when his struggles, you know, walks were up. I think he lost confidence. He just couldn't figure it out. Now he's also throwing a change up more that's made a big difference just when you add that to his big fastball and his breaking ball. And really the hitters aren't figuring it out. He's been very effective. And, you know, I think, you know, you look at what Patrick Corbin's done pitching right before him. Same thing using a change up more and a slower curve ball. And that's the difference when you are not as predictable. And you can command those pitches. You can have success. And both of them are doing that right now. CJ Abrams has really scuffled hitting a little over 160 since early July when he became an all star. I don't think he's in as bad of a funk necessarily as he was at one point early in the year where he was just swinging at everything. But he's closer to that than doing the right things at the plate. What do you see him? Yeah, I mean, he just hasn't been able to figure it out and get on any kind of consistent role. We thought, you know, a week or so ago we put a few hits together. We thought we might see him come out of it. He's struggling against left handed pitches, pitchers. And, you know, he's been indecisive. A lot of check swings, weak contact. And so he's not in there tonight. They're facing a, you know, kind of a soft tossing left hand or belly falter. And so nothing new. Yeah, it's going to get out of the start against the left handed pitcher and the bat ninth in the order. And, you know, not seems had a couple of good games to a game. Last game he started, drove in his first run. And, you know, you don't lose anything defensively with him out there. Maybe you've been gained with the great range of the Redford arm that he has. He's fun to watch. I'm pretty impressed. The numbers aren't unbelievable. It's a really short small sample here for, for Shapiro. But just like his presence at the plate, Sean, it looks heterish to me. I like the passes that he takes and, you know, sort of spitting on some close things. They may have found something here with this guy in the lineup. I don't know if he's a first division, you know, middle of the order bat or something like that. But he seems to look the part here. What are your thoughts? Well, most likely a designated hitter, you know, if you are feeling your best defensive team and the national league power from a D H spot, they have 12 home runs combined for anyone who's been the D H this year. And, you know, it's by nature, the name of a designated hitter. You hope you get more power than that. And he swings big. He doesn't get cheated on swings. He had 19 home runs at AAA, Reno, and then four after he killed one with a Rochester, a couple now in the big league. So, you know, he's a potential power bat that they're looking at to see what you have. If you think you can be on your big league team for next year after acquiring him to the trade from Delo from Arizona. Couple of doubles for James Wood going back to the win in the Marlin series. He's been so clutch with runners in scoring position. RBI pace at one point going into the week was well over a hundred for him doing that on a bad team that doesn't score a lot. It's pretty stunning for a young guy. What have you made of his approach when he's got a chance to deliver runs? Well, he's just looking for a pitch you can drive. That was a big double in last night's game in a three run eighth inning that gave them the lead. Unfortunately, they couldn't hold it eventually lost the game in 10 innings. But you like what you saw. He doesn't try to do too much. Sometimes you're watching them. You think maybe go too patient and you wish he'd take more hacks. But, you know, he's trying to only swing at pitches that are strikes and not chasing for a very young player at 21 years old. You know, that's really incredible to watch. I like Jose Tenna. I think I really like him, Charlie. He's the kind of guy that feels, you know, can do a little something of everything. Not maybe thriving in any one way. He's not great defensively. He doesn't have a ton of power. But it's a little bit of a Swiss Army knife type action. I think he's got a place here. He's got a short swing and looks at the ball up the middle. So like what I've seen him here at the plate right now, he's over his last 13. But, you know, right now he's been in there every day against righties and lefties. So he's held his own third base is a relatively new position for him. So we've seen some struggles there on feeling some balls and definitely, you know, with some throws that he's bounced. When Joey Gallo's there, he helps save some throws. Anybody else playing over there, you really got to make a good throw. So, you know, that's where they've suffered a little bit. You know, we got spoiled when Lipscomb was there at third. He plays gold, glove, caliber, defense. And unfortunately, he didn't hit enough to stay in the big league. So we'll see. I mean, everybody still thinks pretty house is the third base for the future. What they do with Jose Tano, who would mostly been a second baseman in his career in the minor league so far. So it remains to be seen where he will end up playing if he has a regular spot. Because, you know, Garcia seems to have trunched himself at second base. So where his position is, who knows, but you finding yourself with more depth in your organization. Tana can swing it for sure. House, by the way, 19 home runs, leads all of the nets. And top prospects down in the minor leagues this year. Charlie, before we let you go, who's your NFL team? You watch any football in the fall? I watch a bunch of different teams that grew up in New York. This is way before you guys. This is when your local team's home games were all blacked out didn't even matter if they sold out. That was before the NFL changed that role. So you only saw your home team a few games a year back when it was 14 games. You saw seven games if you didn't go to a game. So you ended up seeing a lot of NFC West games in New York, the late games because those were the games you were getting. So I was watching the LA Rams where they had Roman Gabriel as their quarterback in the early to mid 70s. So I actually became an LA Rams fan because of that. Oh, look at you would not have had that in the office pool. By the way, that makes no sense. I don't even know what the strategy times are different, man. That is strange. Charlie, thank you. We appreciate you. You got it. Be good. Let's talk football and bring on our guy, Mike Jones covers the National Football League for the athletic. We'll keep the blitz moving. Mike, who do you got tonight? Chiefs hosting the Ravens? We kick this NFL season off. I've got the Chiefs, man. I think it's going to be another really close game, but I feel like the Chiefs are going to come out of here. You know, they're going to try to start their 3P quest with authority to win. And, you know, obviously two really good teams, they've made changes in the off season to further strengthen them. But I think the Chiefs pull this one out again. Are people overlooking the Ravens? Because that division is so good. And, you know, there's all this talk about burrow being back and like it's feels boring, but that's kind of what they are. They're boring. They're always really good. Are people looking past them a little bit? I don't think we're looking past them. Every time I ask people, okay, like who is the threat to the Chiefs? Every team, personnel guy or coach that I asked mentioned to the Ravens is one of those teams. But it might just take a little bit of time for them. They've got, you know, a new defense coordinator. They've got a few new pieces on the back end of their defense. Obviously, they've got Derek Henry, which should help ease some pressure on Lamar Jackson. They've got some changes on their offensive line. So, you know, I think that those changes will pay off for them and they'll be more balanced and more well-rounded. Maybe ease a little pressure on Lamar. I think he could have a little bit of a better season passing as he's got another year in this offense and their wide receivers, particularly Zay Flowers, has another year of experience under his belt. So, I don't think they're being overlooked by anybody in the league. How about some Friday night lights in Brazil? How about the Packers and the Eagles? What do you think tomorrow? You know, I am keep going back and forth on that game. I think, though, that maybe we're going to see the Packers pull that one out. Obviously, the travel is a big factor for both of those teams, long flights and everything. But there's a little bit more continuity with the Packers. They're hoping to build off of that hot streak they finished the season on while the Eagles have a new offensive coordinator, new defense coordinator, you know, changes in their secondary. So, again, you can never really totally pass judgment on what a team is. So, about four games into the season, but it just might take a little bit for them to work out some kinks there. So, I'm going to go Packers. You alluded to this earlier, Mike, but who in your mind is the biggest threat to the Chiefs and the three feet in the AFC? In the AFC, I think it's between the Ravens and the Bengals. I think both of those teams, obviously, look, if the Ravens had a stuck with their bread and butter, they might have won that AFC Championship game. They only attempted eight rushing plays. They turned the ball over. So, they're built and they're built better this year to be able to go toe to toe. The Bengals are built to go toe to toe. They've got some improvements on defense as well. And, you know, they got to get Lamar. I mean, Jamal Chase taken care of, but I think those are the two teams that the Chiefs have to be worried about the most. I just saw that Russell Wilson was dealing with a bit of a calf issue again today. Is there any risk that he wouldn't play against the Falcons on Sunday? Well, we got to see how much, you know, I don't know right now. We don't know exactly if it's just for caution because there's a little sore and they want them ready. I kind of wouldn't be surprised if this is something that's a little bit of a setback. Look, he's, you know, an aging quarterback. They would like to have him as their starter, but you never know. Some of those nagging injuries keep popping up for older guys and they're hard to recover from. And so, we'll see. We might see Justin Fields out there. Where are you on the Rams this season? I think they'll be improved. I don't know as far as the durability of Matthew Stafford. He's had some injuries in recent years and we don't know what his health will be like. But if they can stay healthy, I think they're back in the picture. I'm not saying they're Super Bowl favorites or anything like that. But I think that they are kind of retooled a little bit on the fly and they should be better than what they were last year. They kind of got that ugly season out of the way. And then last year, they took steps forward. I think they'll take some more steps forward this year. Are you a Jets believer or are they pretenders? They're pretenders. They're a circus. There's always something that's going wrong. You just feel like they're like a ticking time bomb. I'm not convinced that Aaron Rodgers will stay healthy this whole year. They did address. They tried to address some weaknesses on the offensive line. They did it with aging guys. So we'll see if they can stay healthy. They don't have their top pass pressure that they acquired via trade because he wants more money. So you just feel like this thing looks good. It sounds good, but it's just not really going to come through for them. Jonesy, good catching up, buddy. Enjoy the start of the season. All right. Thanks guys. See you bud. Let's keep the blitz going. Football combo gets localized now with our guy Earl Forsey, who I saw make the announcement earlier today that he is back for game days on one oh six seven the fan. So as you were making your way, if you're going early, the tailgate over to the fed and land over Maryland, you will hear Earl Forsey early on Sundays 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Burgundy and gold game day on one oh six seven the fan or I've told you this before. Your dulcid pipes, bro. That's football to me. That's a fall autumn Sunday. Getting me ready for the then red skins and Clinton Portis and LaVar Arrington. I'm fired up. Let's do this thing. Boy, that goes back on. Thank you. I appreciate it. Look, and I get a lot of good response from it. You know, for someone who grew up here listening to Johnny Holiday do the old pregame on on WMAL and I go back to the, you know, the early 70 team. So a guy named Steve Gomartin was doing the play by play back then. So it's kind of humbling because I've been doing this for a while. Look, I was part of on the ground floor when the games move from MAL to TEM our early days on sports talk 570 back then. And then when we transitioned to WJFK, it was part of it. So it's it's nice. I mean, it's it's been a while. I appreciate all the support and, you know, that folks kind of embrace what I do, which is, you know, talk football and love DC sports and specifically the commander. So yeah, it's fun to be back and we'll we'll be at it again Sunday before you know it. Look, this season, I know there's no question. I'll get right to it. Eight different starting quarterbacks under the riverboat. So we were at what 35 starting quarterbacks now since 91, 92. Unbelievable. Do you know this eight starting quarterbacks in a row to start the scene? That's a new NFL record. Good job, Ron. Seven in a row. Indianapolis, that streak for them ends this season. So it's going to be eight different starting quarterbacks for each season. You know, going back to Kirk Cousins back in what was it? 2017. And it's a list of, you know, some pretty average names. Case Keenum, Ryan Fitzpatrick who barely played. So just it's great to have it seems the answer to quarterback and DC will know for sure. And I think not trying to put too much pressure on Jaden Daniels, but let's go back to the, the, the other rookie 2012 RG three that coming out party in New Orleans for him. You kind of knew right away that that guy was special. And you know, he was until the knee injury was it was a fleeting moment there, but had the big game. I'm not saying that he Jaden Daniels necessarily needs that, but it would be nice if he hits a field, throws for a couple of touchdowns. They win a game and you're like, okay, let's go. And maybe that's going to happen this weekend. What success looked like to you this year? That's great question. Does anybody really know? Success would be, how about, you know, and we couldn't get past that this week. How about the week one without an off the field story? Okay, let's, let's, okay, we can try next year for that. Can we please, can we please get rid of everything that had to do with the old regime? Please, I've been saying that for months and you still have problems with it. Just, just clean house, exterminate the place. I don't know what you have to do. Just just get rid of it. Anyway, that would be nice. That's not going to happen. What success to any, it would be, you know, feel good about the team. You know, no, none of these, I don't think we're going to have any from the new people in place, but none of these non football stories. You know, it's a good story to start the year. Sam caused me. And last year, countdown to kickoff, you know, it became a Ron bashing final half of the season. And I told my wife at one point, because I do the show at home, I said, you know, I kind of almost feel bad because I was like, this show, and I look back, it was like two hours. I just basically bash Ron. She's like, you feel bad for, I was like, Oh yeah, you're right. I forgot. No, I don't. Because it was from a football standpoint, it was well, well deserved, right? He destroyed a lot. What little was left of the team, he left it in worst shape. I mean, much worse shape four years later than he found it. And they stunk when he found it when he took over. So, and this regime obviously hated everybody that was existing. They got rid of them. Everybody pretty much from the old regime as quick as they could, but they love Sam. How much do they love Sam Cosby? He's a leftover. He should be one of those guys. It's Ron's mainly probably his only success story, right? A couple of last year, he said that yesterday in the press conference, I go into Ron's office, I'm going to move you to guard. Okay. It worked. It unlocks something with that dude who's become kind of what you would hope in that Brandon Sheriff was and really was until, you know, he left for Jacksonville. He's Brandon Sheriff that wants to be here. And you know, he's, you heard some of the presser. I don't know how much you heard yesterday will play some Sunday morning, but he's like, you know, this, I don't feel like I've accomplished anything this to me. And you know, it caused me the paraphrase. It makes me want to work harder. In one year, transitioning to guard, he has become a top five guard in the NFL, arguably guy. So that's a huge success story. I'll give credit where credit is due. And there's not much of it. Ron, you know, they made that work. And that's one of the draft picks. I can't name a second one, but that's one of them that they hit on. And he's going to be a foundational piece on this team. And you know, it's a good story to start the year. And boy, you need it with a young quarterback. You've got a rookie at left tackle. So you better hope there's some stability there and probably cause me is part of it. And that's a good story to start the year and a good thing for him and the team that they recognized that even though he was a leftover that he's a big part of it. And again, maybe that's one of the, you know, they talk about we want commanders. They were talking about this. Adam Peters and Dan Quinn, maybe Cosby is one of those first steps, hold over guys. He is what they want in a commander. And you know, they they've got him locked up, which is good. 9 a.m. Sunday for all four C. There's a gleam, you know, there's a gleam there. Where else wouldn't rather be them right here right now? I know Danny's a gamer. I was a little late connecting today because I have recently, and I mean in the last few days, Danny discovered, um, mobile games on the iPad using a controller. So I'm a big cod guy. Yeah, I was just, I was just dropping in verdansk like the last hour or two. On the iPad girl on the iPad. So you blew to the controller? What do you use? You're in a little Xbox? What are you doing? Yeah, no. Honestly, forget about the computer and the Xbox and the PS five. Now this is unbelievable. No, I mean what controller you use. Yeah, what do you use? I use PS five PS five controller. You know, I could you could hook a PS five control, you know, Bluetooth controller to that. And I was like, well, how about your PS five controller? He goes, Oh, okay. And he hooked it up. You can change all the settings to kind of like what I like, different buttons like it is. It is it's Bo Jackson and Tecmo bowl is what it is. Wow. I mean, I'm dominating games and I shouldn't be. And it's kind of a cheat code, but I don't care. Yeah, get anything off of control. You can't have the, you know, your y-axis, the up goes up, down goes down. That's ridiculous. That's amateur. It's it's it's an unbelievable game changer, which I just found out about this week. I may be a little late to the party, but it's it's amazingly good. And you know, those games always are kind of they're not there's not a lot of stability. Sometimes there's a lot of getting kicked out. None of it. It's just beautiful. It looks great. It plays well. And I'm American dudes all over the place. It's wonderful. I love it. Earl dust off that fat boy slim right here right now. Let's get this thing going. Dust off that Baltimore is a dirty ugly city, whatever other sound clips you were playing. And let's do this thing. There's our four seat on our beltway blitz. Grant and Danny with you on the fan, the guy behind the documentary that followed Jaden Daniels around at LSU last year, joins us at five. Speaking of Daniels, let's talk about his rookie season next. With Danny, I'm Grant. This is the fan. Before we talk about the NILLSU documentary and Jaden Daniels as the star of the doc. Great access to him following him around all year. I think we'll get good intel on the commander's new quarterback. Let's dive into Jaden Daniels rookie season. What does Daniels have to do this year? For you to feel like he's the guy at the end of 17 games could be statistics numbers. I don't think it should be, but maybe that's how you're going to do it. Could be what he looks like could be just staying healthy. What's your answer to that? At the end of this season, 17 games from now, what's it going to take for you to feel like Washington has their answer in Jaden Daniels and not to still be skeptical, not to still need to see more, not to go into next season as a maker break. Let's figure this out in 2025. We'll open up the phones on this 806361067 MGM National Harbor listener lines, 806361067. So the simple word for me is health, but there's a lot that goes into that. And here's what that entails. That's sliding in the secondary. When you've made the big game, you're making the play and you've got a chance for a first down or whatever, you get down, you get out of harm's way. It means you don't hold on to the ball to do that hero play. Like Sam Howl was doing early on last season where he got crunched to knock even in week number one, you with the plays dead, you throw it away. It means you stay out of trouble as much as possible. The hits are going to come. It's the NFL. You're going to be hit as the quarterback of a football team, whether you're good, bad or indifferent. The great ones get hit. The bad ones get hit more. You avoid the unnecessary ones. If he shows the ability to do that, I think that's going to go in an awfully long way to sort of believe that huge amount of anxiety I have about him and his frame and the proclivity to take too many hits unnecessarily. To me, if he's able to get through this year without taking those extra ones that don't necessarily knock you out every time, right? You can, you can take some of those bad hits and bounce right back up and be fine until you're not. That's a huge thing for me. It's about that process of him staying healthy. So that's on my list, but it's not at the top of my list. I'll move that one to number three and we'll get to that in a second. Number one, for Jaden Daniels to prove to me this season over the next 18 weeks and 17 games that he's the guy, I need him to prove that he can move in the pocket. I need him to process and get the ball out. I need him to not make life harder on Washington's offensive line. And this goes to the pressure, sack percentage, things that we talked about quite a bit in a nauseum before the draft. I need him to show that he's not going to turn pressures into sacks and that that's not going to be a bugaboo. The reason that was such a talking point that it became annoying to people, especially those that were big Daniels backers prior to the draft was because anybody who looked at the numbers saw this was an alarming rate. And there are examples very rarely, but there are examples of guys who have left those problems behind them in college and improved, but it's rare. More often than not, if you have that issue in college, you end up having that issue in the NFL. So that's the first thing I'm going to be monitoring very closely. The second thing is another thing that I had is a question mark coming out of LSU. Is he throwing well in the middle of the field, executing the NFL passing concepts on inbreakers that I think are pertinent? We didn't see that in college. We saw like 95% of the stuff you need to be able to do at quarterback done at LSU and at a really high level, a special elite upper echelon all time Heisman Hall of Fame and college type level. But there were a few things we didn't like those in breaking things middle of the field majoring in those fit in the ball into small windows. I'll be monitoring that this year when he gets the opportunities to do that. And then the third thing is the decision making in the open field as it pertains to taking hits, opting out of depleting moments, not putting himself in any more risk than he'll already be in with his frame being as slender as anybody at his height in history, basically at the position to go on to have a strong career, because you already know Danny, you're going to get folded up at times in the pocket. So league, man, you're going to get landed on by some giant. Has anyone seen that dude at the University of Florida, by the way, was like 463 pounds? You mean the two guys that are masquerading has won somehow? That's the biggest dude I've ever seen. Yeah, like that guy landing on you will ruin your afternoon. Imagine just Jaden Daniels on his side and that guy falling on him. That's petrifying. Now, he's not in the league yet. He's at Florida. Luckily, but there are big dudes Gilbert Brown like dude that are just waiting to fall on you and break your collarbone. So the pocket's scary enough. I need the decisions that he makes outside of the pocket to be made correctly. So those are going to be my things I'm tracking. And if he can find me some wins in those categories, I'll know he's the dude because the rest of it he's already proven he can do. And now it's about coaching, bringing it out. This was Booker McFarland covers college and pro football for ESPN. On the show yesterday, we did an outstanding interview with Boog. This is what he had to say about Daniels as a rookie. Anytime you start a rookie quarterback, they're going to be ups and downs. I think of all the rookie quarterbacks. I think he is in not maybe not the best position, but I think he'll play the best. I think his demeanor, his poise, his maturity, you know, he's got some decent weapons up there. As you guys know, led by Terry McClure. But overall, I think he's going to bring a different dynamic to that team. And from everything that I can hear, the leadership, how guys are already following him. I truly think the commanders are going to be pretty good. I think there's a reason for a reason for optimism in DC. So the only thing I disagree with in Booker's statement right there is the weapon reign and the, you know, all the excellence in the passing game. McCorran, yes, there's a lot of uncertainty elsewhere. I think they're trying to take things off as plate, right? My smash mouth a little bit run a little bit going short and try to get some yards after the catch a little bit. But I don't know how prolific it's going to be, but the rest of it, I agree with the positive sentimentality. Let's go to Tony and Fairfax on Grant and Danny. Tony, the question is, what does Jayden Daniels have to accomplish in this rookie season for you to feel like he is the guy at the end of the year? Man, you stole my thunder. I put number one, the intelligence keep myself in the game moves, the slides not taking unnecessary hits. And number two is game and clock management. I know that, you know, that's a negative term to a lot of quarterbacks, you know, game management, game management, but it's very important. If he's got delay of games, he's not getting up to the line. And then the third, I was pretty simple. He's got to hit the receivers that are open that he's supposed to make. Make the throws you're supposed to make. Those three baby steps to me are like, the only thing I'm really going to be focusing on with Jayden Daniels. I love the last one there, Tony. That's a really good answer. Make your layups. The really good quarterbacks in this league. Yeah, there's going to be those special moments, the spectacular wow play, but the really good ones at a very high clip, they hit their layups. They don't, they knock down bunnies. You do not miss because you can't the two, the three, the five, the seven yard throws. You can't miss on the easy stuff. The other stuff so hard. It's so difficult. When you get the gift of, Hey, here's an open guy who could maybe get you a handful more after the catch. You got to take advantage of that. And especially as a young quarterback, my little six year olds are going to play basketball. You know, what he wants to do is run as far away as possible. Half court shot, three point shot. I'm like, make a couple lamps first. You'll be averaging 15 a game in your league in a minute or two. It's a good point. JB Alexandra, you're on Grant and Danny. How are you doing? Pretty good guys. Start at the NFL regular season today, having a pretty good drive home. That's right. Let's do this man football, baby. So for Jayden Daniels, I have a more simplified version of what I'm looking for. Mine is just, I want to see a three to one turnover ratio where I don't care how he gets the ball in the end zone, run it, throw it, whatever. But I want to see at least three scores to one turnover. That's me. So he knows how to take care of the ball. Thanks guys. Is that your game manager? That's the rookie caretaker. Not put a lot on his plate. That's what made Griffin's first season so special to the rookie rushing record there. But the only five turnovers or only five interceptions, a few fumbles, that's going to happen when you're carrying the ball as much as that and doing all the ball handling with all the play fakes, read option and those kind of looks. So that sort of level is pretty incredible. Griff was four to one touchdown to pick ratio. We've seen Dak, CJ Stroud, among others, have that type of statistical first season protecting the football. We'll get to your calls. 806361067. You want to hop in on the MGM National Harbor listener lines. What does Jayden Daniels have to do in this 17 game, 18 week season to prove he's the guy. Top of the hour, we'll talk to the documentary to put together the film on Daniels and LSU with all the access he had for the NIL collective documentary that he did last year. And we'll continue to make our season predictions as we get closer to kickoff. It is a football day. The NFL gets going tonight. You're listening to the fan. [silence] When you look at Jayden Daniels and his adversities that he's overcome, just like Jalen Hirsch overcame adversity from getting sat at Alabama to going to Oklahoma to going on and being the quarterback, he is. You know, Jayden came from Arizona State and no one, you know, everybody thought it was a third day pick going into last season and then he ends up being the number overall, number two overall pick, well deserved because of what he was able to accomplish. So I'm sure they got a game plan in place, but coaches get paid a lot of money to to figure out what they have to do to make sure this quarterback's successful. It is a football day on the fan and we do have an NFL game tonight. So I'll apologize in advance for some skits and bits here, but something very pressing has happened. Bombshell might be too strong. Bombshell's not too strong. But it's something. So there's been behind the scenes some sticky wicked situation happening where apparently, Cleary, you joined me here for a moment to clear this up because you're on the producer chat, but Jeff who produces the B-Mitch and Finley show has been very angry because he's alleging that somebody stole food of his out of the refrigerator. Yes. So this was right after the B-Mitch and Finley show. Jeff was very angry, kind of running around after the show was wondering where his seafood salad was. And now by his seafood salad, I'm assuming this is part of the gigantic spread, the biggest spread I've ever seen in the history of spreads that the junkies got this morning to kick off the NFL season. So Jeff took a pile of food and put it away for himself in the fridge to take home. Exactly. Yeah. It was a side seafood salad that Jeff then put it in the fridge and was expecting to take home to his mom actually. And so, yeah. And then around 202 CK, our boss sends an email out being like, Hey, like if there's food in the fridge and he sent this out to the entire office, if there's food in the fridge, you should not be taking that. And if you if you took the seafood salad, then you should then return it to the refrigerator. And then right after that, Jeff texts our producers group chat and goes, I also have Tom, our engineer looking at the cameras for me. So whoever it was, we'll get some words tomorrow or Friday, which Jeff's actually upset. Jeff is legit mad. Just super quick, respectfully. I believe the engineer working here at the radio station at the cluster radio stations might have more important things to do than look over security footage for leftover seafood salad from the junkies food drop from this morning. And I'd like to offer that. But if I know Jeff, not according to him, Jeff's going to want him to work on whatever this big controversy is. So we're all wondering what happened with the pasta salad or whatever the hell it is, the seafood salad. And I will say there are some new texts into the group chat. It is really it's really upset about it. Jeff is really upset. It is. So here's what's amazing. These guys were trying to crack the case in the studio and in walks Chris Russell, who's now joining us. Check him out on the 10067 the fan YouTube camera. I'm going to spin it to you, Reney, as you're there is under the eyes of Sauron. And we find out Russell ate his seafood salad out of the refrigerator. No, untrue. I grabbed the tub of seafood salad, which did not have his name on it in the fridge. That was from a catered food drop from jumbo up crab cake company in Mass is good product, great product. They brought us food. Remember when you stole all my crab cakes two weeks ago? No, yes, you stole all my crab cakes. Anyway, wait a minute. A restaurant brought in crab cakes for his show in our show is what he's referencing. No, it was from my show. I'm sure. And then they brought crab cakes over and gave them to us and we ate some crap and took all of them and acted like they were none left. And then eventually brought them back like 20 minutes later. Can we get to the point? Yeah, there was food in the refrigerator where people keep their food and you ate it. Right, right, right. Hang on a second. I did not eat it. There was a tub of the seafood salad with the labeling for the restaurant jumbo lump crab cake. Okay. No name on it. No, no tag. No paper. No nothing. Hey, this is Jeff's. This is Jeff's mama's, you know, whatever junkies do not eat nothing. So I grabbed it. I forgot. I forgot that I brought in lunch. I grabbed it. I was going to happen for lunch. It was a catered food drop to the station, not to Jeff Walker. There is a table. There are multiple tables here where the common area is it was delivered at like eight 30 in the morning. You're not going to leave seafood salad out until two in the afternoon. Danny, I can't wrap my head around the logic that once it makes it into the fridge, he's going to pull it back out. There is no law, no rule that says if it's in the fridge as opposed to on a counter, it's not fair game. Yes, because there's no privately wrapped. It was not putting a ziplock bag or aluminum foil or in a lunch bag or anything else. It was not privately wrapped or identified in any way, shape, or form. If somebody doesn't want something eight or eaten, you label it. You say, this is Grant Paulson's wanton soup container. Danny, there's never any common food. There's never any shared food. There's never as long as I work. What do you call a food drop? That is common foods in the refrigerator. When it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Respectfully matters a lot. Food is put in the refrigerator all the time from food drops that they're going to eat. No, from food drops. Never. Yes. It's wrong. It's in the kitchen area. It's out. It's in that little common area of the little tiny table and it's out. If it's out fair game, if it's out fair game, away, you have to take a second order effect to go into somewhere, remove it, and then serve yourself versus out. Shouldn't it be labeled if it is put in the refrigerator, which it has to be because it's got mayonnaise and shrimp and whatever. You don't want that stuff sitting out for six hours. Shouldn't it be put in the refrigerator? Jeff Walker. I work here. He's got to go find a sharpie or some sort of law. Sorry. That's my convenience. What is working? He doesn't work. He's never in the studio. He probably assumed, like I would have, like Danny would have, and everyone else that works here, as soon as it goes into the refrigerator, it's awful. There is no law, no rule, no set of bylaws that says in the refrigerator versus out of the refrigerator. I mean, it's a common part. If we go to a restaurant for lunch and I put my leftovers in there, are you just going to rip them out because they look tasty? No, because that's not a station food drop. But if you open the fridge on a normal day and you just see food in there, it's not a station food drop. That's the distinguishing factor. By the way, C.K. sent out an email to everyone about not stealing people's food, and he's now on the hotline listening right now. That's great. That's awesome. That's great. Chris, I knew you were aware, though. I knew you were an alien. I didn't know you were also a monster. This is unbelievable that you would do this. This is ridiculous, C.K. He's claiming that it's the same. It's a food drop. It's the same damn thing. It's a food drop on the table outside the studio. You can't keep this out for six hours. The leftovers of a food drop go to the kitchen to one of the tables there. This was neither one of those things. You can't keep it out for six hours, C.K. It wasn't Chris. It doesn't matter whether you can keep it out for six hours or not. It wasn't yours. It should have been labeled, do not eat. This is Jeff's. This is whatever. You think you got a little endorsement deal or whatever, the credit card picking, and you're not. Chumbolupcakes.com, C.K. I think that's what's so amazing is if you've worked in radio for one hour, but before you learn what you can and can't say how to tease to break, Chris, the first thing you learn is how food drops work. And when the food comes, there's a table. There's a protocol for grabs when to to your point occasionally it's been out on the table for a while. It gets moved into the other table in the kitchen where anyone in the whole building can grab it. I've never in my life. Have you you've worked in radio for almost 30 years? Have you ever heard of a common area of food in the refrigerator? It's never ever ever ever been done. No one has ever done what Chris did and been walked around like he did the right thing. It's unbelievable. I put it back. I did. Of course I did the right thing. As soon as I was made aware, I put it back in the refrigerator. Where was it? It was in the refrigerator and then it was with me for five minutes and then I saw the note and everybody laughing like a bunch of stupid hyenas. In the history of radio, there's a rule. I bet you if you open up the Odyssey DC playbook, there ain't nothing about refrigerator versus counter in there. But until there is, I don't want any blame talking about. Huh? Odyssey, DC playbook, are you talking about? Rulebook, guideline, whatever. At the bar from a few good men, people eat lunch every day and there's no rule about it in the Marines. Like we figure it out. It's being a human being. We are the crazy people. I figured it out. I was apparently wrong, apparently. Apparently. Apparently. And I put it back. How? So you, how? Literally. Before I took even a spoon. How long did you have? I put a little pepper in it. That's it. You added pepper? Yeah. I thought it was for everybody. I'm sorry. So you thought it was for everyone? Yes. Still added pepper? Yes. To the whole thing. I put a package of pepper on the top of the seafood salad and then all of a sudden I saw a female. Oh my God. I thought I was wrong. I thought I was wrong. It was a common food drop. There was nobody's name on the damn product. Nobody's name. All of a sudden the refrigerators become like like the like King Scott and like we're gold mining for food. Wait a minute. Let me be clear. You got it out of the fridge. You weren't going to eat the whole thing, but you you said, oh, this is for everyone. I was going to eat the whole thing. You damn, you damn well, but have your name on your lunch and tomorrow. Chris, we're all meeting it. That's why. That's why you put your giant salad in. You better have your name on it tomorrow. That big beverage is mine. Clowns are missing the point and I see all the phone line. Russell is right. Team Russell, team Russell. I see all of you people. I appreciate all of you people. You guys are the wrong ones because it was a common food drop. There is a difference between me bringing in me bringing a salad in that is clearly brought in from home that is clearly not for everyone versus Jumbo Club, Craig K company bringing in a buffet spread for the junkies who ate everything and then Jeff crying and whining about food that he didn't pay for that was taken and going to the damn boss. What is it he do? What he's supposed to do to a podcast or something instead of going crying in one of the boss. You have other stuff to do. See, okay? Chris, your salad could feed a Ruby Tuesday. So you better have your name on it tomorrow when you bring that in, okay? Okay. CK, we got to go where our program manager is going to be upset. He doesn't get annoyed. Who's your program? I watched it. It's brand manager. I'm sorry. Senior brand manager of development and innovation. Yeah. All things Odyssey. Rene, you're on the hot seat and we I'm normally team Russell. I can't help you today. There's a lot of Russell is right. Team Russell's on there. I'm just telling you. A lot of people should take those calls. When food's in the refrigerator and you didn't put it there, you can't eat it. And you can't season it for everyone else. I'm going to look at the best part. I didn't season it. I seasoned it for me. For me. I made the documentary on LSU NIL who followed Jaden Daniels around last year. A lot of access to the quarterback. We're all looking to to save the commanders joins us next on the fan. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] Welcome back to Grant and Danny on the fan. We are taking you up to football for the first time in 2024, a regular season game played tonight. The Ravens, the Chiefs, Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City, the exclusive sponsor of our show, the law firm of Condor in Murad. They're going to guide you and your family in the right direction, helping you to draft a will, set up a trust greater health care power of attorney, schedule a free consultation with their estate planning attorneys at kmloyars.com. Be sure to tell them we sent you, you'll get a discount, kmloyars.com. We will preview tonight's game between the Ravens and the Chiefs and break down both of those divisions, rank all four teams in order in both the AFC North and West coming up in just a bit. But right now we're very excited to learn a little bit more behind the scenes on quarterback Jaden Daniels from Dre Cooper who helped put together the documentary that's going to be coming out in five days on Amazon Prime on LSU and the NIL Collective and the big booming business they've created that everybody in college, football and college sports is now trying to benefit from. But LSU seem to have been one of the first programs on the scene. So Dre, thank you so much for the time. We really appreciate it. You're on in DC with Grant and Danny. How are you? All right. Hey, Grant and Danny. Thanks for having me. God, it's a real pleasure. Absolutely. It sounds like such a great project. What a great idea. I watched the trailer and it's awesome. I cannot wait for this. Tell us a little bit about why LSU and kind of how you decided to do this. Yeah. I mean, look, when you look at the college sport landscape, the reality is this, you know, since the NIL policy change, some would argue the scene has turned upside down, right? And many schools were kind of caught trying to figure out what to do. But LSU jumped head first into the deep end right away. And so they mobilized internally. They put together a team inside their athletic department to deal specifically with NIL and right away they saw an opportunity with Olivia Dunn given her social media following. And so together they partnered and they put Livy on a big old digital billboard in Times Square on July 1st, 2021 and said, hey, we're NIL LSU and we're ready to jump in and figure this out. So, you know, the stars align for us. And we ended up following some of the biggest names and college athletics all down there in Baton Rouge at LSU. What was the experience like with Jane Daniels? Obviously, we're pretty invested here on our end in Washington DC as he's the quarterback in the moment, hopefully the future. What was it like to sort of be around him and would you learn? Yeah, I mean, look, you guys have an incredible player on your hand and an incredible young man. You know, Jayden was one of five athletes that we followed closely in the series. And, you know, you'll see firsthand what his experience was like at LSU, you know, for for some of your audience, they may know may know, but others may not that, you know, he was a transfer kid. He entered the portal, but he didn't come to LSU with with a lot of collective money. In fact, they weren't they weren't don't want out any money for him to come. He had to prove himself. He had come out of, you know, Arizona State. Things were a little bit shaky his sophomore year. He had some challenges off the field losing both his grandparents. And so he was ready for a fresh start. And so you you pick up in our series, we pick up in 22 with with his retelling of the Alabama game at Death Valley down at LSU. And he beats Alabama in overtime. And that's really what put Jayden Daniels, you know, on the map down here in the SEC. And so we followed him across the whole school year last year. And that incredible, incredible Heisman run. So you guys can see it firsthand. It's going to be amazing. I know our listeners here in DC can't wait. Drake Hooper's documentary is the money game. It's on LSU NIL and where we're headed, a collegiate Lee in sports with amateur superstars at this point. More about Daniels, just kind of the guy he is, the teammate he is. I mean, you got unfettered access. I think you've probably been closer to him behind the scenes hard knock style than anybody at this point based on the doc you were doing last year. And then also I'm curious about his parents. I know I've just heard from reading some things about the doc that his mom was like more involved maybe than his dad in some of his business ventures. Like what can you tell us about him and his family? Yeah, I mean Jayden got an incredible support system. His mom Regina, you know, plays a critical role, you know, both mom and dad have been there since the beginning, right, when he started, you know, in popcorn or football as a young boy. So both his parents have been closely involved as he's grown up with the game. But yeah, when it came to NIL, mom ran the back end of that, right? She handled the business deals. And I think what makes Jayden's NIL experience unique in the context of our show is that for him, NIL, while he took advantage of it at times, it wasn't the primary focus, right? His primary focus was winning and supporting his football team. And he had his eyes on the bigger prize, right, which was the NFL bag. And so he's lucky, right? Whereas if you're a gymnast, like Olivia Dunn, you don't have a professional lead to look forward to, you're done when college is over. And so, you know, I think for Jayden, it puts things into perspective that like, you know, you don't have to throw all your eggs into this NIL basket, you know, it's great to take advantage of this opportunity. But if you've got real skill and you've got an opportunity to go to the league, then you've obviously got to, you know, focus on the on the big picture, right? Dray jumping off of that through this process. What kind of surprised you sort of thinking about Jayden Daniels and involved here? But what's what did you not know going in? What, you know, kind of took you aback a little bit. It doesn't have to be bad, but just something that you went, I didn't know this is how it was going to go or some kind of detail that as you're doing this, going through this process that took you by surprise. Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of folks have opinions about NIL, right? If you're an avid sports fan, you know, I think most people are pretty leery of the idea of tang amateur athletes. And I think for a long time we had this really romantic notion, right, that the idea of amateurism was this really special sacred thing. And while I do think there's something to be said for it, you realize that, hey, you know, these student athletes are part and part to the success of these schools and they're helping generate revenue. So I think we all agree that they need to be part of, you know, the revenue share, if you will. But I think the thing that I didn't realize going into this that became clear really fast is just how much time and energy goes into the NIL side of things for each of these student athletes. It's a lot of work. It's a huge responsibility. It takes tons of time to go, you know, do the photo shoots or go do the commercials or go do the event. And then you've got to create the content and post it. And so when you're looking at an Angel Reese or Jayden Daniels, they've got support. They've got a team. They've got people that help them with that. But if you're a Leah Armstrong, who's a track athlete at LSU, you know, you're like most college athletes. Well, you're kind of doing it on your own and you're asking around and you're looking for support. And it's hard to navigate. And I think you'll see that this idea of revenue share, which is where we're headed, I think it makes more sense when you understand the toll that NIL takes on these college athletes day to day. Drake Cooper was behind the documentary that's coming out now in five days on September 10th. You can watch it on prime video. The money game is what it's called. Jayden Daniels, one of the athletes prominently followed around. And with all the access, he got great insight into the commander's new quarterback. How much money is there to be made for just some random athlete in a random college sport? You know, it's one thing if you're Jayden Daniels or Libby Dunn, who's a great gymnast and everybody followed her initially because they liked Libby Dunn. She was beautiful and she's talking about whatever, right? Like what if you're just me, a swimmer or Danny, a track guy, like is that real money to be had? Yeah, it's a good question. And I think that's what makes our series so fascinating is that we follow six athletes, each of whom, you know, are on a different part of the NIL spectrum, right? So at the very top, you've got Libby Dunn, who is the biggest earner in NIL in college athletics, right? And then you've got Angel Reese and Jayden Daniels and Flage Johnson, right behind her, you know, and they're making literally millions of dollars. And then you've got the quote-unquote average athlete, you know, you talk about the swimmer or in the case of the Lea Armstrong, she's a track athlete. And in those situations, you know, we're talking much more modest money, you know, 20,000 here, you know, maybe 40,000 there, maybe 50,000 all in, you know, if you're real lucky, you can break a hundred grand, which look for a college, you know, that's a lot that's still real money. That's still real money. And so we actually followed a men's basketball player, Trace Young, really interesting young man who is a, is a hype guy, right? He's the hype man for the team. He's all about bringing energy. But he only played maybe two minutes during the whole entire season, right? That guy made almost 200 plus grand last year. I mean, that's real money. And he does it because he's a hustler. He knows how to play the game. He's really good at social media. And I think that's the piece that's really interesting here is that what you find is that the NIL game is really at the cross-section of college athletics, social media, and the influencer economy. They all come together and they all come together in our show. I just want to get your thought on something because of your unique perspective and what you're going to be able to show so many folks here with this documentary. One of the things that always made me, you know, kind of my stomach turn a little bit as a kid and then growing up kind of pre NIL was the idea of a grown up yelling at a college kid or being upset with him because they didn't catch the pass or make the shot or whatever, right? Where I'm going, if these are, you know, this kid maybe broke up with his girlfriend, maybe he had a midterm or something, right? It was like the, that still, even though it may have been an illusion, it may have been fraudulent, still like an adult yelling at an amateur never really felt right to me. Well now, you know, they're, they're probably making more money than the fan is right now. It's these are professionals in a way, but it's still amateur and I'm not really sure. So I just sort of wonder how you quantify that and just maybe your thoughts generally. That's like one's good or bad. It's just something that I've been kind of struggling with. Yeah. And I think that that's the gray area, right? That's what makes this, this issue so complicated. And I think that's why you're seeing the NCAA and the schools and different states wrestling with this in different ways. You know, I think that's why you haven't seen one clear set of rules. And I think a lot of that is because people are conflicted, right? It is, it is this nuanced situation where everybody I think for the most part is in agreement that the student athletes deserve a piece of the pie. The question is how big is that piece and how does that function? Because to your point, I mean, some of these folks are, you know, these are young men and women. I mean, they're, you know, just getting out of high school. Some of them are leaving home for the very first time, 18 years old, 19 years old. They're just getting their feet wet in the, you know, quote unquote real world. And, and look, when you're, when you're insulated in a D1 program, it's not the real world either, right? Everything's taken care to care for you. So it is tricky. I mean, you know, there's, there's adult responsibility here in managing the money and managing the responsibilities. So I think it's just going to take time to kind of figure out how each school and each program sort of deals with that issue, which is how to support the student athlete, right, with these incredible NIO opportunities, but also figure how to balance it all right with school, with their sport. So there's a, there's a lot of pieces to this. And it is tricky because they're, they're young and they're growing up. The Money Game Series debut Tuesday, September 10th. That's this coming Tuesday on prime video, Dre Cooper. Thank you so much for the time. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Dre. Yeah. Thanks for having me, guys. Our pleasure. We're looking forward to watching and getting that access to Jaden Daniels, which is going to be fantastic. That's really for me. And the rest of it will be awesome, too. I think it's a great subject matter. I'm fascinated and really intrigued by where we're headed with NIO. And this is the first look into it with this detail from the player perspective. But I'll be honest with you. I mean, they had cameras on and around Jaden Daniels for a year. I mean, just the amount we're going to learn about, find out about him, his work habits, what he's like as a guy. Well, this is the equivalent, as I said, of, of a hard docs type situation with the quarterback that's going to make or break this organization in the years ahead. Yeah, that's subject I'd be fascinated to watch a documentary about. You know what I mean? Just even that where it's the before one day, this thing was not. And then the next day it is. And it's a, it's a mad scramble, like the beginning of a dodge ball match from the movie dodge ball, where we're going to the middle. We're trying to figure out the pile of money. What's legal? What's not Noah knows? And the schools that were set up to do well have done very well. And those that weren't weren't value out in the fact that that's quarterback. I can't wait for it. I'll see there. We got more predictions to make before the NFL season kicks off tonight. Our MVP Rookie of the Year, Coach of the Year predictions, plus a look at the two divisions that have action this evening in the AFC North and West with the Ravens and Chiefs playing in about three hours. Let's get to that next on the fan. [BLANK_AUDIO] There's plenty of meat on the prediction bone for tomorrow. We'll talk a lot more about the commanders season ahead. And we'll go through each division with our rankings. But I didn't want to get some thoughts on the two divisions that get underway tonight out of the way. So we could do that in just a moment. Let's start though with some individual awards. We'll start with the most valuable player award Danny. In 2024, call your shot. Jalen Hertz wins the NFL MVP. The Kellen Moore, offensive coordinator, Renaissance, all the weaponry, all of the schemes, the system, the design, it will work this year close to 40 total touchdowns for a pro the golfins that's going to win the NFC East and be the number two seed, maybe three seed in the NFC. I went with my bold prediction earlier of Jared Goff as the MVP is about 20, 25 to one, depending on where you're looking. It's not crazy. Fandled 25 to one. Good value. He's not my pick unless we're doing bold predictions. But I definitely see a path to that for golf. I'll go with Josh Allen at the Buffalo Bills. They win the division. Less wide receiver help around him. And the narrative is he did more. Maybe he did as a rusher. Maybe he's still at the 40 plus combined touchdowns. And he did it with Curtis Samuel and a rookie wide receiver and Keon Coleman. But I'll say Allen who is eight to one to win the MVP gets the not over my homes. At some point, I think people just get tired of rooting or voting, you know, thinking about the same guy. It happens all the time. They kind of go outside the box and say, Oh, who can I give it to? So burrow and Allen make the most. There were years that Michael Jordan when the MVP calm alone did. I'm so sure Charles Barkley did. I'm so sure George, give it to someone else. Yeah, people get bored. I think that's probably how it goes. Rookie of the year. I don't know how many people care about the defensive rookie of the air around these parts. So let's just go. Oh, Roy. Boring chalk. I think we're about to see one of the most prolific rookie seasons in NFL history, the situation is perfect. It's Caleb Williams. I'm on the same page. It's just hard to fathom him not putting up really good numbers in that offense. And I also think having a top 10 defense means the team's going to be pretty good. And maybe they're not going to be behind as often as they have been the last couple of years. The passing yardage comes down, but I predicted earlier 4,000 yards for Caleb Williams. I think both he and Bo Nix do that. And I do think Caleb Williams get Chicago over 500 into the playoff mix. And is the offensive rookie of the year. I think Jaden will push him though. I believe that. I think Daniels has a chance to be in the combo. Because as you know, I think he's going to run all over the place, make a lot of plays with his feet and with his arm. I think he'll be the ultimate kind of dual threat. And you add up all the numbers. They're going to be pretty impressive. Yeah. Some of the other guys to consider potentially Marvin Harrison Jr. is going to get a prominent role in Arizona. That guy could certainly put up some big numbers. If there's a, you know, let's say Caleb Williams misses three games or Jaden Daniels misses a couple and you know, neighbors goes for 1,500 yards and 10 touchdowns. You can see something like that happening, right? But yeah, those one, two picks a quarterback. Those are the, the, the prohibitive favorite, rightfully so. Here's my issue with any receiver, pretty much any non-quarterback. Pooka Nakua this past season had the greatest rookie year we've ever seen at the position. Didn't win the award. 105 catches, 1,480 yards, six touchdowns. Think about that. Yeah, you're right. Over 100 catches in almost 1,500 yards. And CJ Stroud was really good. I'm not saying he wasn't, but it's not like CJ sprout through 34 touchdowns or something. CJ Stroud had 23 touchdowns and five picks. It was kind of griffin-ish. It wasn't, you know, a year we don't see. Dak did something like it. Griffin did something like it. And he still won the award over him. Yeah. So I just don't know if wide receivers in a narrative award voted on by human beings have a real chance. It's going to be Williams or Nix or Daniels or, you know, one of those QBs generally is how it goes. Chris, real quick. You mentioned defensive rookie of the year. Remember, this draft didn't have a defensive player taken until, what was it? Like 13 or 14 or 15 something like that? Yeah. So I like top of my head. I can't remember most of the guys that were taken. My sneaky favorite is chopped Robinson in Miami. They're going to pass a lot. He's going to pass rush a lot on to put some sacks. I like Dallas Turner as the defensive rookie of the year for the Vikings. Yeah, Minnesota. They took him as their edge rusher. He had a great pre-season opener and rushed the quarterback a little bit. Also look out for Jared verse was the defensive end with the Rams. They took in the first round. If you're looking for defensive rookie of the year options, how about your coach of the year in the NFL in 2024? If you were curious about odds, depends on where you're shopping. But Matt Iber flew his eight and a half to one. Jim Harbaugh, same Mike McDonald, 10 to one, Matt Mofloor, 12 to one, Raheem Morris, 13 to one. Anything appeal to you there? Shane Steichen is my answer. Because again, I'm predicting a really nice season for the Colts. 15 to one. I think Anthony Richardson has a really nice year. I'm a Colts believer. So I think he ends up winning it. I would go with maybe Mike McDonald, if Seattle, because they could go one way or the other. I just don't know what to think about them. I think they're one of the hardest teams to project and predict. But I could see Seattle maybe going like nine, eight, 10 and seven in a wild card team and then McDonald in his first year as a coach of the year at 10 to one. The other one I would throw out there is Kevin O'Connell at 20 to one. Minnesota probably won't be good enough. But if they're a playoff team with everything that happened, nine and eight, like to me, that's a hell of a coaching job. And then I would just throw out Matt Mofloor. What if they overtake Detroit in the north and win that division? Nobody thinks they're going to going into the season. La Floor would be in that conversation, I would think, right? You would think so. Yeah. I mean, just when it biscuits when we all think something's going to happen and then it doesn't and something positive took its place, that's where your coach of the year comes up. I know I don't know if that made any sense, but the whole world thinks Detroit's going to win that game by or win that division by three games. If Green Bay does because they beat Detroit a couple times and they're the best team, then you could see a La Floor rising at the top. All right. How about we go AFC North Ravens play tonight? So we got to go through our projected standings finishing order. I know you have Baltimore winning the division. What do you have after? Cincinnati game behind him. I think they're right there. They're frisky. They're team. Nobody would want to play in the playoffs rightfully. So when they were healthy, they went to a conference title game and they've been to the Super Bowl. So I got Baltimore won since he too. I think Cleveland finishes third just because that defense is so good. They've got great personnel, but I think they're a quarterback away. I think Pittsburgh finishes fourth losing them tie back or maybe they'd eight and none. So I'll get cute, I guess, to make things a little different. I already had the Bengals win in the division. You know that. I'll say the Browns second and the Ravens third. So I'll go Cincinnati at maybe 12 and five Cleveland at 11 and six, maybe 10 and seven. And then I'll go with the Ravens at nine and eight outside looking in as either the last wildcard team or maybe even missing out on the playoffs a little over 500. I'm not completely convinced Lamar Jackson will make it through a fully healthy season again. When he's done that, he's been an MVP a couple of times in the last four seasons, but obviously he has issues at times finishing the year out. That was the case in two of the last three years. So that's a factor for me generally with him. Also, I've talked about this probably too much, but I mean, they lost a lot on the defensive coaching staff on the defensive side of the ball. I've still got some questions there. I've heard good things about Zach or their new defensive coordinator and I'll be rooting for him because he's a really young coach getting a shot and I'm into that. But I think they're going to miss Mike McDonald, who we just mentioned is now in Seattle as the head coach of the Seahawks. So I'll go. Bangles one. Brown's two. My bugaboo there is obviously to Sean Watson is just not that good. Yep. But they're so good everywhere else. I think they're going to be great defensively. And I do like their weapons around him to elevate him to basically, you know, slightly above average quarterback play maybe. And that should be enough to get them to double digits. And then I'll have the Steelers rounding it out as well. You said this earlier today that your surprise, I guess, or disappointment would be Pittsburgh because you have them maybe under 500 for the first time on the first time. I could see that. I don't like the quarterback situation with Wilson. I don't know the fields is any better, although I think he'll start more games and it's just how many years can you finish nine and eight or 10 and seven with a bad offense? At some point, the clock's going to strike midday. Yeah, they got away with it with like guts and bubblegum and heart and whatever grit last year somehow winning those nine games. They won a game where I think the offense had like 12 yards, numbers, approximate. The schedule is not easy. In my opinion, it gets harder because again, you don't have the easy button for your offense. I think it's going to be a struggle, even though I like Arthur Smith, especially as an offensive vine, go back to what he did in Tennessee, pretty innovative, pretty smart, pretty sharp, turn Ryan Tanahill into somebody that was serviceable and decent. But I just don't see it. I don't see it with this Pittsburgh team. They're built on defense, good coaching and tough this. And that only goes so far. They also aren't good at wide receiver outside of George Pickens. Nobody seems to care about that. Yeah. Like George Pickens, everyone claims is a wide receiver one. I think he's kind of one-dimensional. He always catches the ball along the sideline on basically nine route type stuff. He's taking a couple slants and in-breakers at the line of scrimmage to the house, but just not a whole lot of diversity to his portfolio to me. But beyond him, it's Calvin Austin. Van Jefferson, who's on like his fourth team, they drafted Roman Wilson in the third round, was buried on the depth chart right now. The former speedster with the bucks when Brady was there, Scotty Miller, is with the Steelers now. But I don't know. That's just, that's not a very good receiver. And we're not used to that, by the way, Pittsburgh, you know, every team's got something they always seem to get right. Pittsburgh was receiver you basically, right? Like just one guy would give away to the next guy who was just a superstar at that spot. And they just haven't had that really. They traded Deontae Johnson, who dropped a lot of passes but caught a ton of passes as well for them the last few years to the AFC. Carolina? Excuse me, to Carolina, right, to the Panthers. And by getting him out of the division to the NFC and the other conference, they don't have to worry about it. But at the same time, I think they're going to worry about their receiver room. How about we pivot to the AFC West with the Chiefs hosting the Ravens tonight? Picking order in that division starts for both of us with Kansas City. What's it look like after that? So I think the Chargers are going to be massively improved. Now, I think that you lower your ceiling when you play this way, but you raise your floor. They're going to be smash mouth, Nebraska in the 90s, wishbone, tongue of cheek here. But basically they're going to thump. Josh Palmer's their best wide out who is basically a tight end. They're going to play heavy, try to make it easy on Justin Herbert, make a player to that way. But you know, this is what Jim Harbaugh does. He rolls in, plays his style, plays his way. You're going to win more with that guy in charge. So you're going to have to deal with some personality stuff. Like it's going to be difficult. He's going to alienate a bunch of people and make it hard to work with him. But your football teams are going to get better. So it's certainly the price you pay. I think the Chargers ascend in that division mostly because I don't think anyone else is any good. I'm going to say second behind the Chiefs would be the Chargers as well. I'm higher on the Broncos. I think than a lot of people. I like Sean Payton more. How high? Like give me give me a level. Like if they finish second over the Chargers, it wouldn't surprise me. Crazy. Okay. Like that high. Like I picked Bo Nyx to go for 4,000 yards earlier in the day. Yeah. You know, now I don't love Bo Nyx long term or anything like that. I think he's a good fit with Payton. I think they're going to have a pretty good thing this year with a quick game and how they operate and insulate him offensively. But I'm going to say Chiefs 11 and 6 because they're not going to really have to hit the gas pedal very often. They'll lose a couple of games just kind of taking weeks off proverbially that they don't need to win. Probably could be better than that. But won't then I'll say the Chargers or nine and eight. The Broncos are eight and nine and the Raiders are seven and 10 kind of spread out that way. We sleep on the fact that Broncos last year, eight and nine. Like everyone thinks they're going to stink on ice and be terrible. They were awful in the beginning of the season. We saw that firsthand with Washington, but they, I think they finished seven and four down the stretch without all that much and now handpicked quarterback. Again, I think it's probably unfair to expect the world from for Bo Nyx initially, but the fit is really good with he and Sean Payton. You could just picture kind of like that New Orleans style 2.0 outside super quick passes, running backs involved, keeping things close to Lana scrimmage, maybe the occasional shot play, but that's not what they major in. They're not bad. I think they finished third and that. This is kind of where I'm going. I mean, they got a decent cast too. Courtland Sutton, Josh Reynolds, Marvin Mims. They drafted two receivers in rounds four and seven as well. Javante Williams, Jalil McLachlan's kind of an undervalued, underrated running back. Autrich Estimae, they drafted in the fifth round as well. Pretty deep at that position. I still like Adam Troutman who Sean Payton had experience with in New Orleans. Greg Dolsich comes over at tight end, a former third round pick. So yeah, there's a lot to like to me about that offense. I'm curious about the defense. I'm not really sold yet. I know Payton and Lombardi will do a pretty good job when they've got the ball. Vance Joseph having the time of his life on the defensive side of the ball. Still got some questions there. Special teams coordinator there, by the way, former commander is great. Ben Katwika. Is that right? Yeah. He's in Denver. Oh, well, I think Greg Menuski's there too, by the way. Are you kidding me? Inside linebackers. I think I think I read that. I think that's a random thing to think that you know. I think I think it. I'll take your word for it. If you told me Greg Menuski live next to me, I would say that might be the case. If you told me coach for the Broncos, I would also say maybe I can confirm he is the inside linebackers coach. As of last year, here we go with the Denver Broncos. Reg Menus score on for Danny. Oh, Greg Menuski. Still kicking. Grant and Danny on the family. Let's go commanders. Stock report next on GND. [BLANK_AUDIO] Week one of the NFL kicks off officially tonight with the Baltimore Ravens and the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium. Welcome back, Grant and Danny on the fan. The commanders are just three days away from getting their season underway. It's time for our first commander's spotlight of this NFL campaign on this Thursday. Danny, get it started. Little spotlight, if I may, GP on none other than rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels. What's going to look like? What's the offense going to look like? How is he going to look under the very, very bright lights of NFL week one, the preseason is one thing planned for in front of 100,000 people in Death Valley in Baton Rouge is another thing. This is the NFL where the pros meet you and they're trying the defeat. This is a challenge unlike anything he's ever faced. You've got Todd Bowles who wants to blitz as soon as he gets out of bed in the morning and really, well, he's in bed. He's trying to blitz. That's going to be a formidable challenge. How do you handle it? Do you come out unscathed? Spotlight, defensive end position and pass rush. Doran's armstrong comes over from Dallas, forgotten man, I'd say going into the season. May have his first 10 sack season loading. He has routinely been the last couple of years in that seven, eight sack range, playing a lot less than he will with starter snaps here in D.C. Cleveland ferrals more of a run stuffer than a pass defender trying to get to the quarterback, but that's where Dante Fowler, maybe Jamie Davis are going to come in. How much do they use Giovanni Jean Baptiste, the seventh round pick at a Notre Dame? I'm really curious about the defensive end position, but spotlight on that group. Spotlight wide receiver two, who's going to be Diami, Luke McCaffrey, Noah Brown at some point. I don't know. I don't know. And a two receiver set who lines up on the opposite side from Terry McCorn. I don't know how many two receivers sets we're going to see by the way, but you might see some on occasion, especially if you go jumbo here, there and everywhere. I think a lot of three receiver sets. It'll be a little bit clearer with Zacchaeus in the slot, but I don't know who the number two option is. And the receiving core, I think the number two options are tight ends, running backs, and maybe even Zacchaeus by extension coast to line of scrimmage. But who's the number two receiver? Who's going to take that gig? Spotlight, George, John, Johnny, Newton, Johnny, did not practice today, dealing with what is listed as a foot and rest. Of course, he had both feet operated on this off season. Then he was back on day one of training camp and we all celebrated that he didn't miss any time, except that soon thereafter, he missed lots of time, didn't play in the preseason, now is very unlikely to play in week one of the regular season based on the fact that he did not practice at all today. Not really sure what's going on with him. Hopefully we get some clarity as we get closer to or after this first game of the year. But spotlight on Newton, because while this year might not be overly significant, it's a big, big deal that they got that pick right. Alan or pain, or both could leave after this season, probably Alan has got no guaranteed money. And then you're plugging Newton in at a position where you are hoping to be really good. Because as we just talked about, the defensive end spot isn't a strength. So your pass rush comes from pushing the pocket, collapsing the interior. Johnny Newton spotlight on you getting healthy and helping out. Spotlight and manual Forbes. Now's the time, dude. Whenever you get a chance, this is a much better setup than last year. Last year, you were asked to be the savior of both a bad offense somehow and a terrible defense. It obviously didn't work out. Now you've got every coach in place that you were probably one. If you had a dream list, they're there helping you succeed. You probably be benched in a more competitive program. You'd probably be an afterthought, but you're going to get a chance here, probably because you were drafted in the first round last year. You're under contract regardless, though you money regardless. So where's your career going to go? Are you a great story that bounced back from adversity? Or are you the bus that a lot of people think you happen to be? Whether that's fair or not, them is the brakes, but he's going to get a chance. Spotlight and manual Forbes spotlight Bobby Wagner, the captain of the defense, the alpha in the locker room, the 34 year old who's going to be leading the boys all season long. 183 tackles last year led the NFL. He's led the National Football League and stops three different times and in solo tackles at different points in his career. Also at a multi touchdown season. This is an athlete who makes plays. He can be, I kind of create game changing moments. Now recently it's just been a human wrecking ball who gets people on the ground, but he has been at worst a second team all pro every single season since 2014. He is going to help fix the line backing position with Frankie Louvoo. Once and for all spotlight on the guy running the locker room, the nine time pro bowler and future Hall of Famer. Welcome to DC Bobby Wagner. Spotlight Tyler Biotich, please, please just solidify this position. This has been a carousel. This has been a hot mess on fire left down in the sun and sprayed with skunk juice. The center position here has been the worst. We can't seem to get it no matter who the darling is the previous regime or this is the time. Now we've got it. Now we're going to figure it out. This is an established pro, not a world beater, but please just be stable. Please be sound. Get everyone on the same page and keep Jay Daniel's upright. It is crazy how bad they've been at center the last couple of years since she's really I got like seriously hurt. It has been a yard sale. There you go. Spotlight on your commanders here in week one as we get ready for the Tampa Bay Bucks on Sunday. We'll have a full preview of the game on tomorrow's show. The other thing about the center position Danny, while I think about it, it's not just that they've guessed wrong or they haven't been able to solve it. It's also that they go through guys one at a time to your point. Like with injuries, it's just been a revolving door. It's been an Achilles heel. That has been, they've got a couple of Elinors, but that's been an Elinor. They cannot swipe that car. They cannot land that plane. Beottish is the first time they've really paid anybody post-rulier and expected that they've figured it out by throwing money at them. They've used like eight centers over the last couple of seasons. Grant and Danny on the fan. Let's get you one last preview of Thursday night football. It's the Sunday night crew on Thursday night. Hopefully that's not confusing. But Sunday night football on a Thursday coming your way tonight to kick off the NFL season and we'll get you ready for the nats and the pirates before we say goodbye on GND.