Transcript of The Big Suey: The Steak & The Oatmeal (feat. Domonique Foxworth and David Samson)

Welcome to the Big Suey, presented by DraftKings.

Why are you listening to this show? The podcast that seems very similar to the other Dan Lebitard podcast.

I'm sorry. I'm not going to apologize for that.

In fact, the only difference seems to be this imaging.

I have been tempted in restaurants just walking past tables to grab somebody's fries if they're just there. That hasn't happened to you guys?

I've done it. And now, here's the marching band to nowhere, Fatface and the Pitchou a Liar.

This episode of the Dan Leventhal Show with Stugatz is presented by DraftKings. Draftkings, the Crown is yours.

Dominic Foxworth is going to spend the hour with us. We're going to go in and out of football. Maybe I can get him to argue with David Samson about what I was just saying about the salary cap, because I don't imagine that they agree on this. But before we get to Dominic real quick, I want to go to David Samson because I want to ask him about that Balmer interview, and he's more informed than most here when he's looked at all of these legal documents and he has read the fine print on what it is that Pablo's reporting is. So thank you, gentlemen, for joining us. And before we get to David's expertise on this, just tell me what your thoughts are-Bad judgment. About the salary cap. I'm going to both of you here, bad judgment.

It's just bad judgment. You got an opportunity, right? You have a choice. You have a choice. There's some steak in front of you and there's some Dale Oatmeal. And you were like, Hey, guys, we're going to get to the steak. But let's kick it off with a question for The Oatmeal. Anyway, back to you, Dan.

The Oatmeal.

What does that even mean? Day-owned Oatmeal. Are you talking about the story or are you talking about me?

Dan, go ahead. Do your show, buddy. Knock yourself out, big dog.

No, I'm not going to say a word until you answer that question. Are you calling the Pablo story with Balmer the Oatmeal because NFL football season started? Or are you calling you the Steak and me the Oatmeal?

If you have to ask who the Oatmeal is. I got bad news, David.

I don't need to be here, Dan. Enjoy your time with Fosworth.

I'll let people figure it out.

What a sensitive little man. No, it's not that I'm sensitive. You are sensitive. Whatever, dude. What are you tired of? I'm not sensitive. It's ridiculous. Are you happy, Dan? It's a ridiculous start to the show, in my opinion.

It's a great start. You know what is entertaining? Tension. You know what we got?

No, because I don't have tension, but you stick with it. What is this?

This ain't tension?

No, this is idiacy.

We now turn to our chief shit, sir, to broker peace. Dan, make this right.

Chris, were you saying that if you don't know who the oatmeal is, then you're the oak?

Bad job making it right. The Gack.

David, you're super rich. Why do you put up with this?

You shouldn't be doing this. I agree. I'm on David's side. I am. You should not subject yourself to this. Why put up with this? Nonsense. I was here four seconds ago. It was called Oatmeal. Can we be nice to our Yes.

First of all, Dominic came here. No, look, you guys missed what actually happened. Dominic rolling in and telling me how to do my show, first of all. That's what just happened.

Who can't get better? Are you uncoachable now? I mean, I feel like everyone needs some coaching, right? There's coaching in private.

There's coaching in public.

I'm a football player, man. We do this shit in public. You get cooked, you get cooked. Everybody know you got burnt. We got to sneak behind closed doors. I'm not afraid. Sometimes I mess We talk about messing up. Sometimes you mess up. We got to talk about messing up. It's okay. Don't mean you're a bad person. It just means you need a little coaching, baby.

I'm just saying- Are you angry?

You can dress up oatmeal. You can put fruit in it, maple Syrup, brown sugar.

Brown sugar, bananas, raisins.

Back right now, at this time, I'm more in the mood for oatmeal. Yeah.

Exactly. It's morning time. It was a compliment. High in fiber. We eat steak for breakfast.

We seem a long way removed from these days when When David Samson jumped into Dominic's arms like a spider monkey and they enjoyed a long embrace. David, we're having you on because of the Balmer interview and because you're informed. Tell me, what are the holes that can be poked in that Balmer interview when he's coming out there and doing the public relations crisis move?

Well, you have to understand that there's two things happening. One, there is the criminal part of this, which is the fraud, which is the reason why there's a guilty plea by one of the cofounders of Aspiration. You do not want to talk about Aspiration publicly. You don't want to do anything where there is any ongoing investigation. Very different than what the MBA is doing. That's an internal investigation where, yes, he could be suspended, he could be fined, but it's not criminal in any way. So he chooses ESPN instead of Pablo. He chooses Shelborne Ramona instead of doing it with what I would call an area where there's going to be a serious journalist asking questions because this He was the biggest softball 16 minutes I've ever seen. She had an opportunity to ask him, I'm sorry, you introduced Aspiration to Kawhi Leonard, and then that's the last you heard from either one of them, yet you invested $50 million in Aspiration, yet Kawhi Leonard is your close friend player, and no other conversation took place. She didn't even ask him that. He just stated on the interview, Yeah, introduced him. That's totally legal under the CBA, and that's it.

That was the end of the story. That's a huge missed opportunity. I don't know whether she had been given the questions or he had been given the questions.

David, she's a good journalist, but this is deepwater. This is deepwater stuff here. Pablo has done seven months of research.

And yes- But why would she agree to do it then? If you're not going to do it, she's a great journalist, but you're telling me you watched that 16 minutes and you said to yourself, Wow, she really asked the tough questions?

No, I did not think that, but I think it's hard for people ask the tough questions right now, given that everyone is really far behind on this story.

But when he says... You can just go by what he said in the interview because he had talking points, obviously, it may have even been from the NBA. It's not a coincidence that he sat down with ESPN. It's not a coincidence that it happened yesterday because he's had two statements now and one interview, and the NBA has an ongoing investigation. So if there's nothing going on, there is no reason to give any interview. And the one he gave to me made it even worse. When he was asked, why did they give Kawhi so much money? A reasonable question that he should have been prepared to answer. His only answer was, I don't know how much money. Well, it's right there. And the Pablo Tori finds out it was $28 million. And so she said to him, Hey, it's $28 million. And his answer was, Yeah, I got conned also. So Kawhi and I together got scammed by scammers, but that was not and should not have been the point of the interview. The point should have been, Hey, Steve, did you not communicate with Kawhi at all about what this was? But we never heard it.

What are What other holds in the interview worth noting?

I think that it's important to know that he said, specifically, that there's a lot of mystery around Kawhi Leonard. He doesn't speak much. So then my next question would have been, had I been sitting there, well, then Steve, why did a company invest $28 million in him to be a pitch person if he is a man of mystery who doesn't speak much? Doesn't it need to be the opposite? I found that to be surprising. Number three, he said he has not spoken with Kawhi at all about this. That sounds a little bit like Horsake to me, because when a player is owed money, and Dominique can speak to this once you get out your steak knife, if you are owed money, the player and the agent tend to call the team president or owner and say, Excuse me, where's my money? I'm having a problem collecting from this company that you are an owner of. But there's been no conversation between the two of them. I'm not buying it at all.

Any other things that we should know? Because, again, I want everyone to know that when you're talking about 3,000 documents and seven months of work, there's a lot of stuff that David has gone through What else should have been asked last night that wasn't asked? And what are some things that Balmer could do better as someone who knows what crisis management and public relations management has to look like?

Well, let me start with number one. Instead Statement 1, given to the PTFO episode when it aird, it said that he has information that will prove Pablo's allegations to be false. Ramona said, Well, provably false, that disappeared from statement 2. When they released another statement, they no longer included those words. So what is it that you had that was provably false? And Palmer said, I have emails of introduction that I gave over to the government as part of discovery, as part of a criminal investigation. I gave them all the emails. All it is, Hey, Aspiration, meet Kauai. Hey, Kauai, meet Aspiration. Well, that's not sufficient. What you could have followed up with, well, what else was part of the negotiation with Uncle Dennis that was not part of the discovery? Because remember, the government is not interested in salary cap circumvention. The government was interested in fraud. And that's not what Pablo is discussing vis a vis, Kawhi and Steve. So instead of conflating the issues, we could separate them and then get Steve to answer questions. And what I would have advised him, Dan, is under no circumstances to speak with ESPN until you are more prepared and you've got to deal with Adam Silver as to what your punishment is going to be.

Dominic, do you have any thoughts here about the last three days that include Mark Cuban on Pablo Torre finds out this morning?

Lots of thoughts. So the first thought is, David is fun, and I like David. And we worked really hard, and I thought David and I built a relationship that was more locker room adjacent. And you rib your friend. So David, I would like to extend an apology. I mean, no disrespect. You're a sweetheart, and oatmeal is freaking delicious. That aside, healthy- And good for you. And good for you. And steak, bad for your heart. Not too much steak. Oatmeal, it ain't bad for nothing. It's delicious. Add a little bit of brown sugar.

I would love to be your brown sugar, Dominic.

We're going to be my brown sugar? Now you got too far. Try to be your friend and try to make up with you, and you go too far. I feel like you're hitting on me, which combined with the fact that you-It does call Paul Pierre's Daddy. To buy with the fact that you koalered me? Yeah, I'm getting a little concerned, but fortunately, we're not in the same location. But as for the Kauai Leonard story, there's a number of things that jump out to me. First, what is the burden of proof? Because I listened to Pablo's episode and I've been reading the stuff that's coming out. I think Pablo does a great job of building a case around a lot of insinuation, which it seems obvious to all of us. And we can go back through all the facts in his case. But there is no smoking gun. There's an email that says this, and I don't know what the burden of proof is for the NBA for these type of things. So that's the question. When they say provably false, that extends, that creates a burden for them that I think is much higher than they probably want, which is why it probably came out of It took a lot of future statements.

But I think Pablo, there's not an email that says, This is what we're doing, which is hard for him. The other thing that is just hilarious is I love that Metalark is doing investigative research on no-show jobs as I look at Dan in a completely empty studio. You guys are no-show job experts out there knocking it out the park. Look at lonely Danny. I love it.

I didn't have to work Fridays last year.

There's so much fun now.

Also, can I say one more thing about that? Pablo, I get that Pablo is doing reporting, and a true journalist does not care who he takes down, but salary cap circumvention Kind of awesome. It's great. The guys who are the most valuable and most talented have a unfair and illegal in most industries cap put on their wages and finding a way to get them some money. I get that is breaking a rule, but some rules need to be broken.

You're saying that there was no anything that Pablo had other than insinuation? I should point out that the salary cap circumvention came from all the sources within the company who went to Pablo, and one of them on the record in a modulated voice said, Yeah, that's what we were told, that this $28 million completely out-of-market endorsement deal was for the purposes of salary cap Convention. So it was not Pablo, actually, who made this up and tried to put pieces of a puzzle together using frogy DNA. It was the employees of the company.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that Pablo is wrong, and I'm not suggesting that his story is not based on enough fact to go with. I don't think that he would put himself at legal risk in that way. My point is that if anything is going to come out of this, I don't know what the NBA needs for proof. And I don't know if anyone is going to speak to the NBA after if the biggest, most damning evidence they have is someone in the company said it. I'm not sure that anybody in that company at this point, given what's happening, is interested, or a former company, I guess, is interested in stepping up and telling the NBA that, or even if that's enough to hold water. So I think it doesn't necessarily matter to Pablo if Balmer or the Clippers are punished. It matters to the rest of the teams in the league. My only point is I'm not sure that something will come of this because it's a little different if you're like, hey, Pablo's previous reports had real documents that had actual names and explicit reasons for things happening. So I think that's...

I don't mean this as a criticism of Pablo. I just mean this as going forward, is anything going to come of it? That's what the question floating around in my head This episode is supported by FX's The Lowdown, starring Ethan Hawk.

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Don Levatard. I may take it one step further. Wait a minute.

You're getting sexier by the moment. Slow down. We haven't even gotten.

Stugatz. Jason Sanders, you're unnoticed. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Oh, my God.

What in spite of him.

Oh, wow. I love you, Duke. This is the Don Levatard show with the Stugatz.

I think I'm Mark Cuban's show. I'm Pablo's show that dropped that I watched at 5: 00 AM. I don't know why, Dan, you have him as head of Metalark, why he's dropping episodes at 5: 00 AM. Although it's fantastic for me, but for those who are not... You and I actually are the only people I know watching it at 5: 00 AM. But that said, Cuban said something fascinating on that episode that's out right now where he said, I'm team bomber. However, if it's true, then I am team Mavericks. I 27 % of the Mavericks, and they're done. The GM, any executive's bomber, and that would be great for the Mavericks. And Adam Silver is right now taking the temperature of 29 men, Cuban not amongst them, to figure out exactly how deep and far Adam Silver has to go.

I think that's the interesting part, too, is that we often misunderstand that the league or the commissioner is in charge and running the show and policing all of this. So many of the things that happen in pro sports that we view as the league coming down on a team or owner or player or an organization or a partner, we view that as the commissioner, and this faceless league is doing it. No. The people behind the scenes with the power are most of the time lobbying the support enough owners or enough powerful owners to get what they want to happen to happen. And we saw it often with Deflategate and Bountygate and those sorts of things in NFL. It It seems like it's more of a reaction. And honestly, this swing to more punitive punishments for players who were mixed up in any allegations. That comes from the owners. And my guess is that if the decision to move forward with the Balmer allegations in the past was not driven by the owners, the decision for what they will do now will be driven by the owners and how they feel about it and what they want done about it.

But Balmer happens to be one of the more powerful owners, so that plays a part in and the leverage, because what's going to happen is just like any political situation is you want your friends, and you have to trade favors oftentimes to be able to get the things that you want. So if you are seen as the owner who's rallying support around some punishment for Balmer, then when the things come up, when your organization gets in trouble, or you want a rule changed, or you want more revenue sharing, you're not going to be able to call on Balmer to get that vote. So that's how a lot of times these things behind the scenes work, which I guess maybe I shouldn't be saying that. Maybe, David, you disagree.

No, I think it's interesting. When you're inside the room and you're talking about owner v owner, you definitely have to think about revenue sharing. You think about who's got the power. But people often mistake rich for power. The richest owner in baseball when I entered was a guy named Karl Polad, who was the owner of the Minnesota Twins, a team that was going to be contracted. They didn't have a new ballpark at Target Field. They were playing at the Metrodome. So there's not necessarily a correlation. Steve Cohn, he's the richest owner in baseball. He couldn't get 23 votes together right now to do what he wants at all. So when you say that Steve Ballmer is the seventh richest guy, and I think Pablo corrected it, he's now seven. There's been some downtick in Microsoft, I guess. Seventh richest guy, not the sixth. So at the end, he doesn't make him the most powerful owner because the power comes in packs, and that's what the commissioner tries to protect against is too many different packs and having any one them be enough to block any vote. So that's why Adam is going right now, figuring out, and he's annoyed with all this.

And NBA executives have said internally that the NBA is furious about Pablo in this report because they're forced to scurry around and deal with the 29 owners on an issue they'd rather not talk about.

How do the other owners feel about Balmer self-financing the stadium? Because when that happened, I know we all as fans were like, Cool, finally. One of these guys who can afford it can pay for it. But my assumption would be the rest of the owners would be annoyed by creating that expectation and frustrated, which would put Balmer in a situation where he's costing these guys billions of dollars, which would make him probably not the most popular and not have the most power. It would have a group of owners salivating the opportunity to stick it to him in this situation.

Yeah, I don't want to open up an old woo, Dominic, but I'll tell you, when we did Marlin's Park deal, the other owners were not happy with it because it was not enough public money. I know it's going to sound crazy to Mike and to Billy, but when the San Francisco Giants did a fully private stadium, the only reason they did that is that they was a threat to move to Tampa back then, and they needed Tampa as an expansion city, and there was no public money coming fast enough, and they had to get out of candlestick. So they do not like private financing of buildings because it screws everything up. In the NFL, nobody does a new stadium in the NFL without public financing.

Yeah. I remember clearly from the CBA negotiations I participated in, it was when I got my eyes open to how there are divisions, and there is a political fight inside all of that is, Jerry Jones was more upset with other owners than he was with players. He was one of the owners who wanted to get back on the field, and the things that he wanted more than anything was a requirement and an incentive for teams to generate more local revenue. And then it all became clear and crystallized me is that it's no different than any other collection of people, that the power, it comes from some mass of opinions in group. No individual To your point, the money isn't there, or the money itself isn't going to get you anything, just like in the rest of the world. The money isn't going to get you what you want. What will get you that is some contingence of people who are willing to sacrifice in and make decisions and push for the things that you want. The idea of them having to work in that way is, I don't know, entertaining. Dave, you should write a script about that.

You've written a script.

Not about that, though.

Billy has been trying to ask you guys a question for about seven minutes. No, the two of them are having a conversation.

Is it funny? We need to be funny. This is Dan. I'm sorry to take over and pretend like I know this.

Billy, you were trying to ask a question. I'll take my show back here and ask you to ask the question.

There's your way to go. Grabbed them things, Dan.

Well, I was going to say, how crazy is it to think that the The owners don't actually want Steve Ballmer to be disciplined here, right? Because once you, even if he is proven to have been cheating against them, we're pretending like the rest of them are all clean and they want people looking into what they've been doing to potentially skirt salary cap also. I would think the owners wouldn't really want him to be disciplined, even though he may or may not have cheated to get an upper hand against them.

I think they do, actually, because I think they will want him punished. And I think he's going to get punished because there's not only the fact that it's great to bring down the big guy. Baseball would do anything to find Stevie Cohn continuing to do the things in baseball that he did with his business that he got in trouble for. But when it comes to what Balmer did, there's also the question of what amount of revenue may have been hidden from the books of the Clippers, which would change the finances and the money that's going between teams. We spent time, Billy, every day trying to sneak around and see whether the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Cardinals, whether they were hiding revenue. And we would go. One of the reasons we go on the road with the team is you're looking around, you're keeping track of their signage behind the plate, outfield wall. You're looking at different promotions because you have a way to audit what revenue they're actually announcing as part of revenue sharing. So that part is real.

I'm sorry. The basketball union, when I worked there, we had to audit basketball-related revenue because they were hiding money, essentially. And we got a bunch of money back. It's something that you do on a regular basis. And you can think about, again, this Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft, the reporting that has Jerry Jones trying to keep Robert Kraft out of Hall of Fame. I think some of the motivation is personal, some of the motivation is professional. And my guess would be there are a lot of different things driving teams. Some of it is making more money, some of it is winning championships. My guess is that small market teams definitely want to do something about this. They're probably also... That's like a voting block, generally. And they are always trying to do something to be able to level the playing field because there is no other way that they can compete if you're to circumvent the cap. And I think, generally, all the owners, even if they are doing this, they don't want to be doing this. They would like to be... If they've created the expectation amongst the greatest of players that there's going to be some side deal, they would like to eliminate that expectation, my guess is, because that's costing them more money.

That's normally the driving force behind all the decisions that are made from the ownership and league side. It's like, how can we make more money? We want to play a game in Brazil? Hell, yeah. This is going to help grow our game. We want to add another game to the end of the season? Sure. You want to reduce the salary cap? You want to motivate guys to have higher local revenue? That's normally a good starting place for the decision. Of course, emotional things might make you because you hate another owner or whatever, that might make you make a different decision or you owe it to someone else. But generally, if they can find a way to get on the same page, it's always about reducing the overhead cost and putting more money in their pocket. So I'm guessing that's the starting point. If something else other than that happens, it's going to be for either some personal reason. And I don't think it's fear that they'll get caught doing it also, because I think they want to stop.

And they'd be happy for it to be over. Dominic, it's interesting. You talk about salary cap versus non-salary cap. What's not counted in the salary cap is what your off-court expenses are. And one of the ways that teams like the Clippers or teams like the Dodgers flex is they spend a tremendous amount of money. And I almost had the votes. You needed 23, didn't have it, but damn close to put a salary cap on off-field expenses within baseball front offices. Because what's happening is, and the Clippers are doing this. The Dodgers definitely do this. You're getting spent to death, and a lot of the teams can't keep up.

Let me ask you guys this before I let you go. Again, nothing personal is the name of the podcast. David covers terrain that no one else in the podcast space is covering. I don't know how you guys feel about the general existence of a salary cap. I was saying before you came on here, it's asinine that Juan Soto is going to make $200 million more guaranteed, even though if he doesn't play another game today from injury, then LeBron James made in a career that was six years longer. Tell me, David, how you feel about the salary cap, and Dominic, you chime in here wherever it is you disagree.

I think that the difference you're comparing Apple to oranges, and Juan Soto is a lot younger than LeBron James. And so you have to look at also times. There are players who played in the '80s and '90s who should have, in theory, look at, by the way, look at the career earnings of Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan, and then compare to some of the schleppers in the NBA who will make more in their career.

Again, how do you feel about the salary cap as a concept? Baseball does not have one, and therefore, its players get bigger guaranteed contracts.

I'm fine without a salary cap because I don't want a salary floor, and you can't have one without the other. And that's been the big problem within baseball.

I think that's a good point by David. And I think it's one of the risky things, I think, about getting engaged in any of these arguments is that all of this stuff can be manipulated. There's tons of different levers. And when you focus on the salary cap itself as the only lever, there are other ways around it because baseball is celebrated, and deserveably so, for being a very strong union that has fought off the salary cap. But they have found other ways to suppress the salaries. By a division of revenue, I think the last time I saw was probably six to eight years ago, baseball players get a smaller percentage of total revenue than the other major sports. Because Juan Soto and players like that get enormous contracts and have a disproportionate amount of power in the union, the salary cap is a thing that we all focus on. I think baseball players celebrate. Like, look at us, we fought off the salary cap again while they are at 40% of league revenue. It's just the idea what you think about it, it's like, Yeah, we got this. So in football, we think about it too.

It's like,. You got to get both, though.

When you got the power of Mahomes or LeBron James, what you have to get is both no salary cap and not any of the other restrictions that are given away. Because look at how David's sitting here smiling because he knows what the players were given. David knows how many negotiations he's gone into where they're like, Oh, you want more Mike and I? In the clubhouse? Sure, we'll do that for you. And we're going to grab this $100 million over here when you're not looking.

And Dominic, I would hate to have you on the other side of any of these negotiations because you just did it. You actually put in words the exact thing that baseball union has not been able to put in words where you put for the salary cap, salary cap, salary cap. All right, we'll give up on that, but we'll take a debt service rule. We'll take a luxury tax threshold that's a $217 million, and we'll still We still only give you 46 % of revenue, but it's up to us whatever number we want to get to.

And then you win the press conference every year when you sign somebody to a $200 million contract or a billion dollar contract. And then we all are like, Man, baseball is killing it. Then you look at it, and I felt the same way. I was researching to do an episode about free agency and the salary cap. I ended up not doing it yet. We might do it later. But it was just the point that we celebrate what we consider modern modern day free agency in the NFL and other sports. But free agency really does not exist in pro sports yet. We pretend as if it exists, but all of these arbitrations, the draft in the franchise tag I act like all of these things act against restrictive free agents. They act against keeping you to true free agency. But we call it free agency, and you guys call it free agency, too. And we're all like, Yeah, we're free agents. And in the back room, you're stuffing money in your pockets.

It's not You're just not free. I just want to be clear. It's not about stuffing money in the pockets. It's using the word free agency and go all the way back to Kurt Flood, do whatever you want. But make no mistake, there's nothing free about players.

David Samson, get out of here. Good talking to you. Nothing personal is the name of the podcast. He's done a lot of good work with Pablo, and they have advanced. The story has been advanced here on Pablo Tori Finds Out, which dropped at five o'clock this morning with Mark Cuban.

Don Levatard. I took my son to the barbershop, get a haircut, and my man gave all some limp dap.

Oh, no.

Damn, damn, damn. Stugatz. I disowned him. I threw him right under the bus. I was like, Whose kid is that? Out here dissing out limp dap. This is the Don Levatard show with the Stugats.

Dominic, your thoughts last night from the game, will that stick to Jalen Carter? Will everything that happened there stick to him?

I don't think so. I think his interview after the game, he seemed to be much more in control of his emotions and behavior in the way that he discussed it seemed to be fine. I think a lot of how we react to this is how we feel about a player before he does something like this and how he handles it. I think Jalen Carter had moved to a place that he distanced himself from some of the the issues that he had in college and had become... The story about him was him being a great player. And then after the game, he handled it as well as I think, you could handle a situation like that. I don't think that it sticks to him. And honestly, there is a plausible... Like the video of Dak, there's a plausible defense for him, not that it makes it right or that I believe that Dak was trying to spit on him, but I don't think that sticks to Jalen Carter. He's going to dominate in the of that D-line for years to come, and we're not going to be like, he's the spit guy. That's not going to stick to him in any way.

There's some hyperbolic takes going on right now. One game sample, we were all hungry for football. Some of the narratives that are out there is Seedy Lambs drops, hurting the Cowboys, and now everyone's really putting that aspect of his game under a microscope. You have the lack of production from the wide receivers at Philadelphia, A. J. Brown being that talking point. And you also have Dak Prescott looking good, slim down, looking healthy, looking like Dallas can be better. Which of those three takes that are running wild right now on social media are probably the most relevant and have the most juice to them?

I think the Dak Prescott one is the most relevant. That What is the hope, is that this team, the only chance of winning is having two really effective receivers and a quarterback like Dak, who I think is one of those guys. I remember Tom braided made the point not too long ago that the modern quarterbacks aren't making decisions at the They aren't the classic Payton Manning field general types. That's exactly what Dak Prescott is. That's what he does best. He looked sharp last night. It's funny how the stats can skew the performance because he had a 50-something QBR when I was like, No, Dack looked great. Jalen Hertz had a 98 QBR, which is insanely high. Not that he wasn't that good, but I thought Dak looked sharper than Jalen Hertz last night. I think the Dak point, we know how high his ceiling can be, and we know I said this defense is going to have some issues, but I think that will make this team competitive if he can stay healthy and he can be awesome all season long. As for the other ones, City had some drop issues last year, but I don't expect that to be a long-term lasting concern learn.

There are a couple of other things that I think are interesting about this game that, to your point, we don't want to overreact. The Eagles lost a couple to the Bucks early last year. They lost another, I think, NFC South team early last year.

They were bad at the start of the season.

Last year. Yeah, Kelenmore did reshape the offense after that Bucks loss. That was a transformative loss for their chances.

Dominic says, though, I'll let you continue your point here. Please staple it to what it is that you're saying here. I have a hard time with what the analysis of Jalen Hertz is, because when I watch him play, it's always going to be some form of 11 for 14. And oh, it's a buck fifty. And over the last couple of years, we've seen a lot of these quarterbacks are going for 150 yards because the game has changed, and he's got so much help that I have a hard time doing individual measurements with him.

I think the idea of having to do individual measurements is like, born of sports media in general, which is fine. It's something that we have to do, but it don't really matter. He's not playing tennis. I switched over last night to the US Open a little bit, and that's somebody out there all alone. Jalen Hertz, it doesn't matter. As long as this team is built the way that they're built, then it's pretty clear that he's capable of operating this at a high level. Yesterday, it feels like he's not listening to the noise, which I think is hard. I mean that because a lot of players would take this as a challenge. They would enter the season. And honestly, I thought Jalen Hertz was going to enter this season and try to put up numbers to be able to say, I'm just like these other guys. But he's like, No, it's third down. Or actually, he did on first out a bunch of times. It's first and 10, you guys going to play man or you're not going to blitz me? I'm going to run it. I'm not looking to trick you into believing that I'm something that I don't have to be.

And I will do that if it's called on me. We've seen him be able to win the game with his arm before, but it's a lot less risky to do it with your legs. And I guess I respect it. I don't enjoy it as much as I enjoy watching a more diverse style of quarterback play, but I respect it. You know who probably don't like it? Aj Brown. It appears it might be a long year for my guy, A. J. Brown.

There's always something with A. J. Brown. One thing's for sure, though, both these teams seem fun to watch live. Those tickets are going to be highly in demand, Dominique. If you're like me, you like to travel the country and watch some great football with iconic brands, hard to find tickets sometimes on the primary market. So you know where I turn to, Dominique? I turn to game time. I take the guesswork out of buying my NFL tickets with Game Time. Go ahead and download the app right now, Dominique. Create an account. Use code Dan for $20 off your first purchase. Okay? That's code Dan. Terms apply. Swipe, tap, take it, go.

As football season is here, Dominique, I want to ask you about something I've been parroting over the last couple of weeks since the Micah Parsons trade, where I'm saying, if you are inclined to somehow try to figure out how Jerry Jones can defend this as a football move beyond run defense, we need to improve our run defense. The way that you make the argument on behalf of Jerry Jones trading Micah Parsons is he realizes that he's got an expensive quarterback in his 10th year who's not going to get better, and he's lost the division to cheaper quarterbacks who are younger who may indeed get better in Jaden Daniels and Jalen Hertz. Mike pointed out earlier, Jalen Hertz is not so cheap anymore, actually. But the point stands on you've got two in your division that are better than you, younger than you, and Dak is in his 10th season. Dak is good for 12 wins this season. But if you want to correct the gulf between you and them, you have to do something about the fact that Dak is not going to get any better than what it is you saw last night.

Yeah, I appreciate that you are trying to do this. I got into an argument on get up because I was doing the same thing. After a full summer of saying, what is Jerry doing? Jerry's mishandling this, and then a week of us all saying, How did he blow this? This was such a bad trade. I was like, Well, let's try to figure out how this would make sense. And everyone said I was stupid. But you have to at least extend some benefit of the doubt to try to understand this. And I guess it was the Penix draft where I was on the island where my point was, and that point was, you don't let Kirk Cousins keep you from drafting a franchise, which you believe could be a franchise changing quarterback if it comes up. It's harder to make that same rationale around the Micah Parsons' decision because you can always be critical of the return for a player of that value. However, the logic behind it, it feels stable where it's this team went 12 and five for three years in a row and did not get close to winning a Super Bowl. If we are going to rebuild this team or we're going to win the Super Bowl soon, we're going to have to make some drastic changes.

The problem is you wish that Jerry Jones would have made this decision in March and gotten a better the price for it, but it doesn't change the fact that I understand the logic behind it. It's just the value that he got for it seemed like a mistake. Also, there was no, I'm happy that a player demanded a trade and got a trade, but also, if he wasn't going to be out there, then you could have waited and tried to get more. But it's just being critical. It's one of the other things that's completely difficult about having your GM and your owner be the same person is if this was about personal feelings, which a lot of people have said it is, between the GM and the player, that's why the owner is there, because he can show up and say, All right, I don't care about your feelings. This guy's a great football player. We're going to sign.

We will talk to you again next week. And your studio looks nice.

Dude, we've been talking about it all day.

You look nice. You look great. You look clean. That's all right. Sexy steak. Oh, man, David Samson, Brown Sugar.

Bye, guys.