All right, Seawan, So let's start with a topic that is getting a lot of discussion so far on Monday and in the aftermath of the Bills and the Ravens game. Let's pretend you are in charge of the Ravens football team. They now have gotten into the postseason three straight years with Lamar Jackson, They've gotten one win, they have lost three times, and what has let them down most often has been their offense. How do you fix what is wrong with the raven offense? And what would you do?
Looking if you were GM of the Ravens right now? Well, you know, for one, you have the most athletic and most dynamic quarterback in all of football. Right, he drafted him. He knew exactly what he was great at doing. So there's no shinn away from an offense or offensive coordinator that's gonna need to design things specifically for him. Right, he's got a drop that guy and sit back there and deliver a ball in the pocket all time. And he's a be a uh sixty forty run the past
type of deal. Uh So, if you're gonna go out and get a coach, you need someone on as offers the coordinator that that that things outside the box and get creative like an Andy Reid. And I'm not saying gonna get Andy read, but you need to be You need to find a coach that's going to allow Lamar Jackson to uh to open this offense up. You know, it can't be the dink and dunk uh read option.
You need to really open it up and realize what you have at at quarterback, but also make sure that he's enough threat that he can deliver a great ball down until he's done it in the playoffs. You know, these last few games, uh and later on in the season, he's delivering a great football. You know he can throw a ball, but he's not consistent. So you need to
find them. Go out and find an offensive coordinator that's gonna really open it up and start thinking outside the box because they keep hitting the wall and they and defense are figuring these guys out of thinking. Lamar Jackson said that during the season, he said, defense are coming up to the line of scrimmage and calling our plays out. That's telling me that you're off is basic and you need to get out of of what you're normally doing. Okay, Uh.
The play that everybody is going to focus on because it really decided the game was the pick six. And obviously Lamar Jackson made a bad read on that interception. But one thing that I heard from several different people about was they were surprised that he didn't get in a position to make the tackle there. He's the fastest guy on the field. Uh, he really kind of didn't make an aggressive move when he had a blocker in
front of him coming down the field. As good as that Ravens defense was playing, I'm not sure even if they didn't give up the touchdown on that return, whether the Bills would have been able to get the ball in the end zone there. How would you assess the playmaking, the effort making, for lack of a better way to describe it, of what you saw from Lamar Jackson on that play. Once he throws the interception, should he have gotten over there and made a play. Do you think
he was surprised the ball got brought out? How did he not end up in front of the return man? Well, you know what, Look what we can think of that all day. And I do agree that he should have probably sacrificed his body a little bit more than what he did. Like if you watch that on If you watch that on tape, would you want your quarterback in a in a playoff game like that to just be throwing himself at whatever he can do to try and
get in front of that guy returning the interception. I wouldn't. Personally, I wouldn't. You really wouldn't. You gotta you gotta, Well, you wanted to make the best effort possible, but he did have a blocker in front of him. Yeah. Uh there, Now you're going out putting putting your quarterback hom's way, Because I can tell you right now, as a defensive player, the first people that we always looked up after an interception, it's the quarterback. Yeah, you know, you want to get
a hit on him if you can. You want to get a hit on him if you can. And he's always the one that's going to uh to slow up the worst way or a wide receivers you know, track you down, tend of to team twenty yards on the field. But ultimately it's really the quarterback where you're looking up and you're trying to find first. And I'm not saying to go out and intentionally heard him doing anything like that, but those are the guys you want to get a lick on because those are the ones that can actually
stop to play. So I wasn't. If I'm a teammate, Um, you might say, oh, you know, man, he could have he could have done a little bit more, but you're not saying it, or what if he'd done a little bit more, that play definitely wouldn't have been stopped. They wouldn't have uh, they wouldn't have scored, right, So that's
that that wasn't the case. But look at the end of the day, um that they this is a cigarette out over there, because you only have a two or three window, a three year window to mac to maximum. You know, contracts gonna be up, You're gonna have players in and out and guys coming in and out of coaches in and out. So you got about a three year window when you're looking at that type of talent,
cohesive talent before everything started getting you know, dismantled. We're talking to Sean Merriman Lights Out podcast I Heeart Podcasting Network. You've played for the Bills flip side of that game. What does it mean for Buffalo to be back in the a f C Championship game and how much are you rooting for them. As a guy who played for the Bills among other teams, are you rooting for them pretty aggressively against the Chiefs? Would you like to see
the Bills back in the super Bowl? And for people who don't know and for people who don't know Buffalo and the culture and the environment up there, what's it like? You know what? Um? It means everything to that city and I'm so damn happy for them. Uh. The only part that this kind of you know, makes me unhappy about the situation is the fans don't get a chance to go to the games. And yeah, you know, I mean, what do you want to do it? Between six and
I think something like that. Yeah, yeah, So you know this like, man, when you play in that city and you see what the fans mean to that team and vice versa, and you're thinking of the fans are not able to attend, that's that's that's a gut punch, man. I mean, it really knocks to win out of you as a fan, because you know, I remember going out there and and uh making Tom Brady throw for an exceptions that we beat the Patriots. It was a parade.
The city got shut down, and it was one of the most exciting things I've ever seen in my whole entire career. You have thought we won a Super Bowl for beating Tom Brady, so I can only imagine a f C championship. I mean, you're kidding me that that place, that place is gonna be rocketed. Now they won't be in the stadium, well you can, You're gonna You're gonna find that that builds Masfia somewhere piled up and slamming through tables and barbecuing and drinking to one and having
the best time, because there's nothing like playing for that city. Man. It really is a special place. And if they go to the Super Bowl, man, I can't even tell you what what that city is gonna look like. After we're talking to Sean Merriman Lights Out podcast. When you watched the way that Aaron Rodgers is playing right now, should the like who? Okay, let's take a step back. We
know that Patrick Mahomes is injured. We know that of probably everybody who played over the Divisional round weekend, the Packers look the best. Do you think that what Aaron Rodgers and the Packers are doing right now, given all the other situations that you would have to say that the Packers are the favorite, or would you pick somebody else? No, And I've been saying this, Um, you know, I thought it was gonna be the Packers and the Chiefs in
the Super Bowl. That was that was my prediction. Um. You know, so when the mid mid early season, and I've been saying that because they if you look at it, there probably have the two most explosive teams in football. But one thing the Packers are doing is making it even scarier now is they're running the ball even more effectively, and they're finding ways to to get the running back and uh, you know out and open positions and things like that. Now Aaron Rodgers didn't have to go out
there and be Superman every single time. When you're winning football games like that, Uh, it just takes the win out of you. You it just demoralizes the defense because you're sitting there like, you know that Aaron Rodgers gonna get his you know, he's gonna go out and let you up. But now they're starting to run the ball and they're playing well on defense and the special teams. You're like, man, this this is gonna be a very very tough team to beat. We're talking to Dr David
Chow talked to him in the first hour. I'm gonna play it again in the third hour. Obviously, the number one story as we get ready for the a f C in the NFC Championship Games is Patrick Mahomess health. He went out with a concussion, and we won't know for several days officially, how he's going to be able to play, whether he will be able to play, all
of those things. If you are a defensive player and you are trying to get ready as a Buffalo Bill, I presume that you just have to assume that he's going to play, and that he's going to play the exact way that he normally plays, that is in his typical dominant fashion. Because if you presume for anything else
you're not prepared. Is that the way mentally you have to get ready, even with the outside chance that it might be Chad Henny, just go ahead and prepare for mahomes And if you get Henny, that's just an easier version, certainly of the quarterback. Otherwise, absolutely, and you know what, I'll say this, it wouldn't be a smart idea to assume that past ma Homes. It's not gonna be Patrick
the Homes because he might have a concussion. So if you're having that, uh, you know, those thoughts in your head, you need to get rid of them right away. Him. I'll never I'll never forget. Uh. You know. Back in um, you know, around two thousand and ten or two thousand and eleven, I think it was, uh, you know, I got injured and I was hurt, and it was it
was kind of out there that my achilles was torn. Um. And I had an offensive coordinator come up to me before the game and said, look, we're prepared as if you were healthy, because we didn't know if you're gonna be healthy or not, so we were paying it that you were a pent. And so when you have that mindset, you go into the game, UM, with this with you Now. You know, I know you don't want to wish a
guy get hurt. You know you're bad health with anybody, but you wouldn't mind as a defensive player with Patrick Mahomes coming into the game and not being a hundred percent, you wouldn't mind that, right, Um. And then so you have to go out and prepare that he's gonna be Patrick Mahomes. He's gonna coming ready to go. He's gonna come in more eager than than he was before because he didn't leave the game. And there's so much question So there's a there's a lot of fuel to this
fire man. But I tell you that I like the Bill and I've been saying it. Um, Josh Allen is to me is the one of the hottest, you know, top three quarterbacks in the the National Football League right now, the way he played, And uh, the Bill is gonna be fortunate records and if they do lose the game, it's going to be very close. What would you say about the Browns? We got a lot of Cleveland fans, I'm sure who are listening this morning, Uh, starting off
their day. They've got a playoff win this year. They made the playoffs. Really they had the ball. I don't know about you, but after the Chad Henny interception when the Browns got the ball back there, I really kind of thought they tightened up a little bit in their play calling and their execution. It didn't seem like they really had that killer instinct maybe that you would want
to see. What would you say to Browns fans waking up this morning and listening to us, They need to be proud of that team is how far are they've come just some years ago to Browns were and not not very long ago, just a couple of years ago, the Browns were a joke, right, You're going to look at the organization and how many gms that pad coaches and players in and out of there, and um, you know, they were a guaranteed w on your on your on
your schedule, that's how they were viewed. And now just in a couple of years they're a real threat to everyone, every NFL team in the National Football League there. If you're going to if you're going to play the Browns now, I don't care who you are, if you're the Chiefs or uh you know, whoever you are, you're going and playing the brown And not to mention they're the best team in the division in my opinion, they're they're they're now the big brother. They're now the big brother in
that division. So Brown, the Brown's fans should be proud and how far they've come. We're talking to Sean Merriman Lights Out podcast. You can go listen to to that and make sure you don't miss any that he's doing. Any of the podcasts that he's doing for. I heart Sean. How tired and beaten up physically is your body By the time you get to the a f C in the NFC Championship game, you're you're so beat up. I mean, look that first snap in training camp, you're never one
healthy after that. That's very first snap. You know you got a risk or elbow or lower back or tow or hip, I mean something. It's it's something the whole week. You know, one week's get your knee is a little sword of next week your ankle on the opposite leg because your compensating for your dee, right. So it just goes on from week to week to week. And uh, you know when we talk last week about having the first round by that's why the first round byes are
so key. Obviously you want to play at home and those those great things, But it's health. At this point during the year, it's who is who's the healthiest, who's healthiest. That's really what it comes down to, is pachon hole is gonna be a hundred percent? Is this guy's gonna be a percent? It really comes down to health because you know that if you've got all your horses, you're gonna be in good shape, man, But I could tell you it's it's you're mentally being physically beat up. You're
mentally beat up. Uh. The season is so along and get trying to find ways to just refocus and keep taking things up another level. You know, we talked a few weeks ago about the preseason and going into the regular season and now the playoff speed and in the f C and NFC championship games. I mean, my god, these guys are just gonna be flying around when you look now that the NFL, I mean, knock on wood, we have gotten to the a f C, We've gotten
to the NFC Championship game. When you really break that down, it's an amazing accomplishment that we're still on schedule with the NFL, isn't it. I mean, to even be in this position right now, it almost seemed like they pulled off the impossible, right. I mean it really, it really does.
Because if you look at how the season started coming, coming right from the NBA season, going into the bubble, everything shut down and whatever, and you've seen guys still getting fine, and now you're going to the football season and look what Denver had never had. We didn't have a starting quarterback, and they found a way to not only have no the game wasn't the greatest and the like that, but there was no there was nothing they had to cancel. The season went on, and so they
found ways to um to continue. And I think that at some point in time there's going to be because we we don't we don't know everything goes on from the outside looking in, So there's at some point in time, I'm sure NFL Films if somebody has done something in the backgrounds to show how much stuff they had to go through during the season in order to continue. And it's going to shock to a lot of people because
I'm sure there were fights in the office. There were probably fights with CDC, and I mean, there was so much going on behind the scenes that we didn't get a chance to see. But it's just been incredible for them to continue the season where they have. How stunted This is not relating to the games themselves, but this story about Deshaun Watson and what's going on with the Texans. How stunned are you that there are reports that things might be so bad that his tenure with the Texans
might be over. I would agree, it's unbelievable, right, it is unbelieve What is a couple of things, right, I mean we we as players understand one that it's a business. Right, We we get it. We're not you know, it's not a passion for us like when we were growing up and played football in the street in the backyard and it was just about passion and loving the game and everything.
We understand it's a business. We understand the organization and teams are gonna do what's necessary for the organization and moving forward. But when you have your franchise quarterback, a very well, very well respected quarterback amongst his peers in the whole National Football League, really good guy that everybody loves from respect, and you don't give him a decency to end just bring him in on the meeting and say, hey, we're thinking about bringing this guy in. This is who
we're looking at. This is you know, this is the CEO of your franchise. So you're telling me that you're not gonna go and talk to your CEO and just have a discussion with him and say, hey, we're thinking about bringing this guy, what do you think Or we're thinking about trading this guy. You traded his there his best talk target. And you know, DeAndre Hopkins, you got rid of the head coach, You're getting rid of all the guys. And then most importantly, what I enjoyed the
most out everything in Candida. I don't know if you've seen it not with Andre Johnson um coming out and saying that they're used to they're they're they're used to wasting guy's careers, and he would talking about himself. Andre Johnson was one of the best wide receivers in the National Football League, but he didn't get the notoriety because they just didn't make a lot of smart moves there within the organization. So I'm happy, and I do agree that he should take it to make his stand and
stand his ground because the NFL careers aren't long. They aren't long, and if you're continuously being put in bad situations by your organization, then maybe it's time for you to go. It is interesting, right, because NBA players have way more power than almost any other athlete. Right, there aren't very many of them. The best of them are worth their weight in old right. I mean, there's a big difference between the top ten NBA player in the top one hundred maybe in a way that there isn't
in other sports, you know, baseball or Top fifty. I should say, right, there's a big like it's easy for you and me to watch basketball and be like, oh, that dude's a you know, definite, definite all star versus a role play or things like that, which is maybe not as easy everywhere else. But I can't remember a guy making a move like this, right, making an aggressive play and just saying basically, I'm unhappy. It feels a little bit because it's the same city. Like what James
Harden just did with the Rockets. It's very similar. Actually if you look at it across the board, and and let me tell you that the NFL, when it comes to star power and things like that, there it is catching up to the NBA level. And I'm not saying Lebron James and James hard any one of these guys. But you know, someone like Deshaun Watson if he's unhappy, uh, and he's voicing his concerns. Now you have Andre Johnson, Now you have all these guys kind of backing them. Uh.
It is looking very bad on an organization. It's tough to get a coach in that situation too, right, I because it's gonna be tough to get a free agent. You know, guys going around and look at their teams and saying, man, I don't I don't know if I want to go there. I've seen how they treated I've seen what they did to DeAndre Hopkins and doyn't think
that the players don't talk like that. All the guys do, so, you know, their friends or their agents or friends and and all this stuff, you know, goes on all the time. And the first thing, you know, somebody saying, hey, man, how's that organization over there? Over there? And I remember doing that even when I went to Buffaloh you know, hey, how did they treat guys over there? And everything? Oh? Ben,
They're great, great organization of all good things. Now, if you're public about how you're treating your players like they are, it's just not going to turn out well for you. When did you recognize the business side of the game for the first time, because you're talking about you know, running around in your backyard, you know, playing with your friends, Uh, low level football? Was it when you were at Maryland?
Was it when you got into the nf FELL Was there a lightbulb moment for you where it's like, oh, man, like this isn't really a game anymore. It's a business, and my mindset has to change. Did you have that sort of epiphany, that moment of realization lightbulb moment, as I said, or was it something gradual. Do you remember
having that recollection or that knowledge. Well, I've always been on the on the business side and kind of the business mindset of things, right, I've never walked in blind and thinking that whole you know, hey, I'm I'm go get the quarterbacks, so they should love me right now. It was always they love it because I can't go get the quarterback, right, I mean, that's that's the way
it is. And but I think it kind of started to sinking a little bit more when I got I got injured a couple of times with the first big injury, and then the trade talks started to happening, right, And I was just a few years straight off for the All Pro and Pro Bowl and run off of the sensor player again all this stuff, and it was and I got hurt, and it was like the trade talks, like damn, you know, I just that's just been balling
for you. Know these last two years, and so it kind of it kind of sunk in a little bit more because when you're playing at your highest level or whenever you're doing the things just supposed to you don't think it's possible for a team to do anything other than pay you right or take care of their take care of their best talent or the best players, or whatever the case is. And it starts to sink in when when the trade talks. And I remember watching it, watching the draft and my name coming up as a
possible trade right there while I'm watching. I had no idea. I had no idea that I was even on the trading blocks or anything like that. I was watching the draft. I remember, uh them bringing ups Hey you know, thinks Sean Ramon might be on the move, And I'm like, hell if you know, Like no one told me. So I think that those type of things, uh start to
sink in. Um, But it's way different now. It's more if guys walk into it and treated as such as a business even though it is their passion to play football. And I think the money has gotten so great, Uh, there's so much revenue built in the sport now that guys walk in with that mentality, for the most part, good stuff is always Sean, We'll talk to you next week. Appreciate it. You gotta thank list that is Shawn Merriman, lights Out Podcast Network,