These former r Pro linebacker now the host of the Lights Out podcast. Our man Shawn Merriman. What's up, Sean? Hey, what's up? Guys? Are you doing doing? Good? Man? We we were just talking about how television viewing of sports has dropped the biggest of any gendre right, uh in television news is up thirty one percent, but sports is down. Have your your habits changed since the pandemic hit, you know, a year ago. Do you watch less sports or or you know when it was gone? Are you finding it
harder to get back to watching it? No, I mean not really. I think we've seen the decline because of social media. Is I don't think that people less interested in sports. You know, we're changing because of social media. Um, you know me, you know myself, Like I'm in New Jersey right now. Tomorrow I'll be somewhere else, you know. Some always traveling. So the only way I can see the clips if I'm seeing, you know, clips of the
highlights on social media. So that's how I find out the source of my information, especially when I get busy and I think that, uh, you know, most of the world, that's what they're doing. No one's really even on the pandemic. You know, people are still on social media, whether it's Instagram, Facebook or TikTok, whatever you're looking at, you're still finding the clips there. So I don't I don't take that
as people are watching less sports at all. But but the difference I would just push back is that news is a big time. People have social media to follow the clips. They could do, you know, watch CNN on their phone. They could watch the news there as well, and the numbers just aren't as big. Yeah. But you know, Rob, we're not watching news highlights, right, I mean that's really what it comes down to. People want to see who got dunked on, who got hit hard, who made a
great catch? Um. You know we were talking about news clips. You know, we need to see the whole thing, and and and and the entire entirely. You know, we need to sit back and see what the context of what they're talking about. Um, and to understand and with the entire situation is people we all look at we how many memes are going around just based off the highlights, right, I mean people are waiting for these highlights to happen
just so you can meame it up. I don't think that people are looking for these memes and social media. They're looking to uh fireback based on the information that's given. That's whether it's five, ten, fifteen, twenty plus minutes, you have to watch the whole entire clip on CNN, Fox News. What are you looking at? Sean Robbing. I've talked about this before, how we've talked with athletes, professional athletes, and a lot of them weren't really into watching the sports
when they were coming up. They obviously were great athletes and they just played. Whereas guys like us and and others who weren't quite as good. We're watching a lot of sports. Were you a guy that watched a lot of sports or were you just you played them and you were a great athlete. I didn't be honest. Now, I didn't even have a favorite team, right, So when people ask that's where you go, I grew up in
Peach County in Maryland. I grew up you know about you know, and you would think so, right, But you know, I watched Prime Time, I watched Dean Sanders, you know, I watched Berry sand As, I watched you know, all the guys that you know, Lawrence Till and I can tell you the players, but I couldn't tell you the other ten players on that on that offensive defense. I just watched players and so for that, yeah, and I
can't really make a correlation to it. But for me, I just always had a sense that maybe I'll get there one day. And it wasn't just about me being a fans that is so interesting. Yeah, you would just think and I can see if you grew up in South Dakota somewhere, you know, where you didn't have a team, and maybe you you didn't have one, But then again, Los Angeles didn't have a football team for twenty years, right, and people went on and and kind of went there.
Let's talk about the uh, some of these NFL situations and quarterbacks, Trevor Lawrence now is being kind of dumped on and maybe he's not all that in a bag of chips? What do you know about Trevor Lawrence? And are you surprised or is this is this typical where you know when people start watching film and they start breaking you down. Now they're gonna show all the flaws
when you take the makeup off. No, And you know I was a guy I left I left school early, and um, you know I was their university l for three years, and one of my main reasons for leaving earlier is because once you get looked at too long, people start to get overly critical. They really do um and and also too, I think that people need to understand that um there's a lot of chatter being put out there purposely. So maybe he do slide to that three or four pick. I mean, it's all these things
are possibilities, and you gotta look. I mean, if you are a fan of the game and you know just a little bit about the game, you can tell Trevor Lawrence is the best quarterback coming out in this draft. There's no doubt about that. I Mean, you've got some people that's close second, some people that could go second or third, but he's undoubtedly the best quarterback coming out in his draft. And anybody he's that put anything out
there otherwise are just putting that information out there. So maybe he slipped, you know, maybe it's a it's a smoke it's a smoke screen. So maybe that that tenth or fifteen teams can jump up to that number one or two spots and grab treble treble launch. This happens on It's been happening for for several years, you know, ten twenty years it's happened. So I'm not surprised to be seeing that right now with Trebor launch. That's actually
a great point. I mean, if I was if I say, I was an executive for the Jets and I got the number two pick, and I'm talking to a reporter off the record, so I know he's gonna quote me, but anonymously. Why not throughout there? You know what, Truvor Lawrence is really overrated. I mean, I don't think he's all that. And you hope he slips, you know, he catch get some traction and then you can drift if so, you're right about that. I think that's a good point.
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within the I Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live. Um the Kansas City Chief Sean. They cut their both of their offensive tackles, Eric Fisher and Mitchell Swortz today released them and they're
they're gonna cut the center. And look, Pat Mahomes took less money than he could have gotten, precisely, so they keep some players around, but obviously the cap dropped because of the pandemic, so maybe it couldn't have been helped. But do you think, look, we know some quarterbacks on the face of the league, they are incredibly important to teams, and they get the lions share of the credit for
the success or and blame for the failures. But do you I think the balance of what they're paid compared to everyone else it might be too far out of whack because, you know, it seems the show that when you get a high paid quarterback, it's hard to put a super Bowl team around him. You know, Tom Brady took less money all those years, and so he obviously was able to have a super Bowl team around him.
But in a lot of cases, when the quarterbacks making huge money, they rarely win the Super Bowl because you can't put those great players around them. Do you do you feel like there should be more of a balance between what quarterbacks are paid and other positions. Not that they maybe shouldn't be the highest paid, but that right now is just so far out of whack that it can hurt teams. Well, if we're talking about quarterbacks, yes, if we're talking about Patrick Mahomes, no, you know, it's
I think, yeah, he's a different breed, you know. I think when you start talking about the three or four guys, it's just out of this world, right, and he's one of them. He's one that you won't we won't see another Patrick Mahomes for another ten plus years. And what he's capable of doing physically as mechanics, uh, you know, the type of things you can't coach. I don't care how great of a quarterback you go. He he does some things that you can't simply coach because of this.
I don't know if it's because of his baseball background or whatever the case is. He has thrown motions that are unlike anybody the National Football League. So for him, I kind of take him out of that category. But I understand what they're doing, right. So you've got guys um For one, Fisher went down what I think he had an achilles if I'm if I'm not mistake, he had him achilles. So I've told my I've told my achilles, and you're not You're not one for fourteen and twelve
to fourteen months. It takes you to be one hundred percent from the killings. You can go out there and play, but you won't be a hundred percent Pax Mahomes. Later on during the season, he was getting lit up, and we saw that in the Super Bowl he was getting lit up. He was, you know, basically running for his life. So when you pay somebody that amount of money, you need to bring in the best of the best, and
you need to bring them in right now. And since Fisher is not gonna be healthy for the next start of the season, you have to start looking to do something with him. I thought they were doing him over favor. Now if you go over to that situation now, now, now we got a conversation on our hands, right because in my opinion, that was overpaid. Now, as a as a player, you love to see guys get paid, and I'm happy for him. He got there. He deserved to
get paid. Um, but now you're talking about a situation where um there. Now they're not gonna be to build a team around. He got paid so much money that he's gonna get hit. He's gonna have to curry the load of the team. He's gonna have a lot of stuff on the shoulders, which I don't know if he if he has an ability to step up and handle but we we definitely talked about in that situation, you know, in that in that case, Yeah, that that's the interesting part on how it would play out. Where are you?
Tony Dungee said when he got hurt that it was like a blessing in disguise for the Cowboys that they could get back to running the football first and and and then throwing it. Uh. Now that he's got that contract, should the Cowboys go back to trying to run it more? Or now because you pay a quarterback that kind of money, he has to throw the ball like it's got to be about him. Well, I think coach Dundee was correct by the standpoint. It was a blessing in disguise, but
but not for that reason to running the ball. I think it was a blessing of disguise because we all seen how bad that team is without Dak prescott Um and he might be the first player in history that value went up by him being out like we've we've never we've never seen that before because I think that if he had another sub part year, he would have never gotten forty plus million a year. We wouldn't have
seen a lot of day. But that team tanks so bad, and so many different categories that we've all seen how important he was that team. They got to run the ball anyway. That Doc is not a guy that is going to throw at a high completion rate. He's uh, you know consistently, he's not gonna win games for you consistently. Um you know. They got a lot of guys that were banged up in the office line. They're gonna have to do the same thing that that that case he
is doing. Go out and started searching for some monsters because without that and then running the ball, Dak won't be able to carry the load. He's never been that. He's not going to be that MH. Sean Marriman lights Out great stuff. Man as always checking out on the lights Out podcast. Thanks a lot for the knowledge, brother, appreciate it. Man. Thanks having me