Chris Pika of Blog And Tackle joins Nestor to discuss NFL managing the Cincinnati crisis with Damar Hamlin and the Ravens handling of Lamar Jackson’s contract, injury and playoff readiness.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
game, lamar, player, play, ravens, week, nfl, people, field, pr, cincinnati, hamlin, worked, year, point, season, playoffs, pica, injury, chris
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
W and S T Towson, Baltimore and Baltimore positive. We are still broadcasting High Definition mono sound. Here at am 1570 on your dial, make sure you’re setting a place we’re doing the Maryland crab cake tour. I’m gonna have some crab cakes with my guests here and we’re going to set him up with some ravens scratch offs, and of course some holiday cast droppers as well, because I gotta get back down into the city. We had all the COVID stuff last year crabcake tours, an oyster tourism, brewery tours and all that stuff. We’re gonna be a G and a Coney Island. Not in Ohio dad anymore. No longer in the city out in the county. We’re gonna be out in White Marsh on Thursday. Got some great great guests coming by my pal Mike Chu, formerly at WJC he’s gonna be stopped by There’s a rumor that Tony Dela Rosa is going to be coming by as well. And lapel and Nick Fisher from wise markets as well. All of it brought to you by our friends at window nation as well. 8669 D nation you buy two you get to free and you get 60 months 0% financing which helps the homeowner like my pal Chris pica, who’s about to come here. You know, dude, there’s like GNA moves in the city and county I moved out to the county I was in a city for 20 years. You left the city went all over the world with Michael Jordan back self and ESPN 30 for 30 All deal and then come back and you move into the city here near your homeland just in time for ravens playoffs dude, it’s been like four months it’s I’ve had you on? How was your football season? Man? You’re like in Boise one weekend and you’re in a broken pelvis Kansas and you’ve been everywhere brother, right?
Chris Pika 01:30
8
Yeah, the lat in the last half of the season is always crazy, especially when the bowls are concerned. We got our last regular season games in Pullman, Washington and the Apple Cup Washington Washington State which was an absolute barnburner up that out there. You know it’s surprising we look back on it when Mike leach passed away the Mississippi State coach. We actually did the mike leach tour this year. We were one of our first games was at Mississippi State there was a weather delay game. We were at Texas so
Nestor Aparicio 01:55
did the cowbells down there right missing oh no doubt and they were doing the kettlebells
Chris Pika 01:59
in the rain for about two and a half hours we were able to resume it finish. And then we went the Lubbock Texas Tech and then one of our last regular season game was at Washington State so we saw with with the pirate was able to accomplish it. Three of the more I wouldn’t say distance but let’s say difficult spots to win in college football and then we got the bowl season we were assigned to a FCS or for the for those of a certain age the one double A playoff quarterfinals. We had a Holy Cross.
Nestor Aparicio 02:32
Towson can play in, right. Yes, yeah. So Holy
8Chris Pika 02:35
Cross was out of South Dakota State. We went to the famous Idaho potato bowl for television, which was a pretty good game. I worked for ESPN radio with our announcers. My announcers from the season we had a heck of a game with Arkansas and Kansas with three overtimes and Liberty Bowl. And then every year Kate and I go out to Dallas and we work at the Cotton Bowl and a PR function for them. And that game between two lane in Southern California was one for the ages, especially with two lanes late come back with 15 points and last four minutes to beat a blueblood especially having lived in New Orleans for seven years. I mean to lay football has been down for a very long time. And it was it was nice to see the green wave, you know, come up and do what they thought they could do against a Southern California team in a that has the Heisman Trophy winning quarterback who is going to be a heck of a pro prospect once he finishes his junior year. And he had the Defensive Player of the Year in the Pac 12 There’s an incredible talent but they kept him bottled up so it was an interesting game and an interesting bowl season just glad to be back home and get ready for the NFL playoffs
Nestor Aparicio 03:41
as such interesting friends I really do you know Chris pica has blog and tackle sometimes you could find in Baltimore positive sometimes he’s on the road or working for ESPN and doing spotting and stats broadcasting and, and PR and some Bahamas bowls all sorts of different things over the course of time, but you and I met at the News America in 1984. You went into PR I remember seeing your name at UAB show up in the agate type back when I worked I think even at the paper in the in the 90s in that time, and then you went on to Birmingham barons but to me, your background the thing you really cut your teeth on the thing you’d say I worked for the New Orleans Saints I worked for Atlanta Falcons, I worked in the league and we’re Super Bowls. I worked PR I’ve been there when firestorms happened with Michael Vick’s and different things really crazy things that happen and you’ve been at I’ve been at a lot of football games, bro you would admit right? I would always kit Kevin Byrne about how many stadia I’ve seen an NFL game at almost what the Munich this year with Gen stoner to see another stadium but beat because of my generational issues of going to old stadiums with the Ad Astra domes and Oilers and like all that, just a lot of places, dude, you’ve been in a lot of games in an official capacity in a lot of ways. And you were literally my first text when the stretcher was out before they went to the second TV commercial in what they’re trying to do in the NFL, because it’s really complex, right? Like at the top, they’re trying to make money. They’re trying to gamble. They’re trying to put a television product on. They’re trying to play a game. They’re trying to officiate a game. They’re trying to take care of fans. They’re trying to sell beer, they’re trying to take care of sponsors. They’re trying to hop nah, they’re trying, like, there’s just a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of stuff going on. And then there’s something that happens like that, that stops the whole world. Right. And the first thing I texted you was, boy, I hope there’s a playbook for this right. And I know, in the hours afterward, and now we can say tomorrow, Hamlin heading home, we hope he’s going to live a long, healthy, beautiful life. But in the in the moments, I mean, you had your hat on as a former saints Falcons person there even as a media member, which you are at the Cotton Bowl and working efficiently and all these capacity due to put a lump in your throat takes your breath away as to what happens and what humans are involved in immediately making immediate decisions that they’ve never made before that because the Titanic’s going down, it’s going down in real time. And was there a fire drill? So I asked you I’m gonna let you jump in and soliloquy in the way that only you can Chris pica, but I know you had thought about this and you’ve been in these strange circumstances.
Chris Pika 06:28
Well, I’ll go back to my first year in the NFL in 2000. My first ever games with the New Orleans Saints was a preseason game with the Jets. We lost three players in that game to the seat for the season, for different things, mostly knees, and I forget what the other one might have been. But we lost three guys. And none of those were, they were serious injuries to the players. But they were not a serious injury like we saw with the Warhammer. I had one situation in New Orleans, I think in oh one where we had a player who took a stinger on the field, and was not moving for a few moments. And they had to bring the ambulance out from the tunnel at the Superdome to take the player off. And then we received word pretty quickly that he was able to move his hands and arms and legs. He was okay. When you’re on a sideline and you’re with 52 other people who are brothers at this, and you see a player who’s down who’s not moving. It is it is stressful for them because, you know, listen, it’s a hard game. It’s a violent game at times. But I can tell you that it’s as hard and as violent as football is. Players are not out to hurt one another. There is a brotherhood. You know, people used to say well, why do guys you know, hug each other after the games in the glove midfield, they switched, you know, they exchanged jerseys and they exchanged pleasantries and had pictures taken is because it’s the brotherhood of playing that type of sport. It’s the same thing you see if you after hockey games, it’s the same thing you see after rugby games, where it’s intense physical combat, you’re not out to hurt the guy on the other side. You want to beat the guy on the other side of the line to get to the quarterback and and stop the running back or stop the past boy, but in no way are you trying to hurt them. And the scary thing about this situation was the way Hamlin dropped to the turf. Within about 30 seconds. I remembered the young man over at Loyola High School. There I remembered that there was a lacrosse player who was hitting the Chesil lacrosse ball in a certain way, at a certain point and that player dropped to the field. And that medical attention Jeremy Parr is that Fit Trainer oil and his staff got to that player immediately that young man has made a full recovery. He’s still at Loyola. It is a very freak thing. And that was the first thing I thought of one of the first things I thought of when he landed on the turf after tee Higgins hit him in a normal way. This was T Higgins was not attempting to injure him. He was trying to tempt, he was trying to make a play. That’s what happens. And it’s incredibly scary. I can tell you sitting in Dallas, I was texting with a friend of mine who is part of the I’ll say nebulous waves as part of the media corn Cincinnati, who had who was letting me know in real time, what he was seeing from his vantage point that we were not seeing on television, and I was relaying
Nestor Aparicio 09:26
8television just went away, right? I mean, right? And I went away and I went when I text you I checked it was 906 that I text you. So just to give a timeline because I went back and look because I was in my phone talking to Linda Raskin or maybe Dennis about this on the show earlier this week. And I literally got on went to the bathroom, my wife had fallen asleep and didn’t see any of it. And she kind of came to write after you and I were texting. And she said what happened? I’m like, like something really awful. There’s a kid that might be dying on the field right now. She’s like, What and I’m like They’re not even like, I’m on Twitter and I can’t get any. And you know, like, there was just nothing. And then I thought to myself in my own journalistic way, well, this is why you want to be a journalist. They’re like, literally, if it’s Raven player, a raven issue that pertains to Baltimore, and what I do for a living with my radio station in media, and people are looking to people like me for information in the way that we were all looking to, you know, Joe Buck for information, right or where I was texting you. I mean, you were the only one I was like, wow, I hope Roger Goodell has a playbook for this, that if a tragedy happens, what do they do have a fire drill this, you know,
Chris Pika 10:40
well, and I was sitting at a table with several other media relations personnel on the college side, and I was relaying what I was getting from Cincinnati to them. The second that I got the Texas said they brought out the Aedes to shock his heart. I think all of us at that table took a pause because it was like, Oh, my God, this is you know, the worst possible scenario occurring in real time. I remember is on Monday
Nestor Aparicio 11:08
football in the biggest game of the year early when everybody
Chris Pika 11:13
that right and there was an I mentioned on Twitter that there was only one death in history, the National Football League wide receiver didn’t chuck us in a game in October of 71, against the bears, on his way back to the huddle, suffered a massive heart attack and died on the field. They complete the last two minutes of that game. They did not tell the players on the other side that Hughes had passed away on the field. They got an ambulance to guide him out of there. But times and things have changed. And there are 29 Neat medical personnel on the sidelines. The NFL has, to your point what we call fire drills, in preseason and regular season where they go through what happens. If something like this occurs, you have a massive broken leg of size from an injury. You have something like what happened to Mr. Hamlin different other things that can happen. Who was the lead person in that moment? Who was the lead triage person? Where does the ambulance enter the field? You have 29 medical personnel, different fields available on both sidelines. You have the certified athletic trainers for both teams who got out on the field, literally in seconds. Okay, what they did to save this young man’s life in that moment in a very freak injury that caused this in front of 70,000 people in front of 70,000 people was nothing short of miraculous The only thing I can think of in the last couple of years and I don’t think many will remember this, but a former Tottenham spurs player Christian Eriksen was at the Euros. In two summers ago, I believe, or last summer, two summers ago. In the middle of the game, he dropped on the sidelines, he was running down the field and soccer match in the in the European Championships and dropped medical personnel back to him quickly, as quickly as they did to the more Hamlin they shocked him back to life. He is back playing his sport. I don’t know what the future holds for Damar. Hamlin, I hope to God, that whatever it is when he woke up from his sedation, and he saw the $8 million plus the people gave to his charity, because they were honestly afraid for this young man’s life and they wanted to support him in any way that they could. You can’t open to get emotional because I’ve been down there and I’ve seen how that affects players. It affects coaches, it affects referees, everybody, and nothing that I ever saw live in person and close up with anything like that at all. Okay, you saw some stuff, one singer, couple singers and seven years where that can
8Nestor Aparicio 13:55
go in that moment, that concern and that moment is very, very real. Very, very incredibly
Chris Pika 14:01
real. Yeah. ratably real. I mean, when I’m, like I said, when I got to touch that they were using AED on him. You know, you’re just you’re just you’re hopeful that everything goes according to plan. These are medical professionals that do this for a living. And like I said, the fact that he has come home from the hospital and returned to Buffalo is nothing short of miraculous. And thank God for the for those people that did that job. And you know, and I think, you know, the second point is the game situation which was was was so secondary at that moment. You could tell that the players didn’t want to continue the game, obviously not knowing what had happened to their teammate and their brother player who’s in an ambulance waiting for his life. Every scene becomes incredibly secondary. And Football is a game that you have to play with your wits about you. You have have to be focused on what you do. You have to be focused for, obviously, the plays and everything else, but also focus because the easiest way to get hurt in any level of football is not paying attention. Okay. And I’m sorry, you know, every player on that fields mind was with that young man in the ambulance that was not on the game that was in front of them, that they still had
Nestor Aparicio 15:21
three years all of America, nobody in America really expected them to go back into football.
Chris Pika 15:25
8No. And so it was very interesting there, there is an article from Don van net of espn.com, about sort of the internal situation that was happening in the New York offices. And I’ll explain in a second, there is a game rep from the NFL at every NFL game, they are in communication with the NFL league office in New York, for various different reasons. You know, make sure the game starts on time, make sure that if there is a blackout, like the Superbowl, okay, what happens in those cases? And when I say
Nestor Aparicio 16:02
yeah, catastrophic standpoint, the amount of things in modern times with violence, things, security, and like the amount of things that could go wrong, I mean, to we’re 35 years removed from a guy coming in with a parachute into the heavyweight championship for the world. Like, you know, we’ve seen all sorts of things, I would think, you know, that streak running across the field. I mean, there’s just all sorts of crazy things that happen in real time that, that especially with with media, right, how it’s presented on television is how the world sees it. Right?
Chris Pika 16:41
Well, and I also, and I won’t get into it here, but I’ll just say, without getting into specifics, the security meetings and the meetings we had with NFL representatives post 911 prior and all the way up through Super Bowl 36 in New Orleans, would raise the hair on the back of your neck. Okay, and we went through some scenarios and some and some thoughts and how things if something happened. A, this is what you do. And B. There’s a lot of thought that comes into that. And so at national games about what I mean by national game, every game is national in the NFL, but we’re talking about Monday Night Football, Sunday night football, Thursday night football, and sometimes even the four o’clock Sunday game has a national game rep. So rather than anywhere
Nestor Aparicio 17:30
you see Joe Buck, or Jim Nance or he and Mike to Rica, like literally.
8Chris Pika 17:34
Right, right, what we’ll have is a vice president level or above, at that station, and that’s nationals in this case, right? That’s why she was there. It was a national game. So rather than having, you know, maybe an ex referee or some other NFL staffer who might be doing the game in New York City, for the Jets and Giants, you have a VP level or above because these games are the national game of the only game on television. So Donna Ponte from the league office was that person who was in the middle, talking to the game referee talking to the broadcast networks, well, maybe not the broadcast network, that’s a different point. But also to both teams ownerships general managers. There’s a lot of moving parts that went on with that. So Don was in the center of that, as the national game rep for the NFL.
Nestor Aparicio 18:25
Chris pica is our guest his blog and tackle out on the Twitter verse. He has also been our friend and I Baltimorean by birth and as moved back to Baltimore in recent years. So if you see him around town Yeah, that’s the real Chris mica he’s getting dusting off his his seat cushion for Oriole season and Orioles magic in addition to doing a bunch of these so football this week, and I don’t want to move from A to B but obviously we all saw the threes and John and this and that where the ravens are and where Lamar Jackson because that would have been the thing I would have been talking to you about. I haven’t had you on the show at all during football season. Literally last time you rose during the crabcake tour in August I looked it up from LP steamers so I would say to you seeing this season seeing Lamar you and I haven’t talked on the air off the air about any thing football related where do you put this whole thing because it is it’s quite a sports radio spectrum of sign Lamar give him anything he wants to he’s great but he doesn’t play in January to what is it looked like this week and if he does play it this is a wild chapter in Purple Rain three, you know ongoing right now as to what how this is going to turn out for Lamar for the organization. I will say this. I don’t think there’ll be in Glendale in four weeks playing in the Super Bowl. How about that, you know, like somewhere between here and there. I don’t think they’re good enough with Lamar wherever they are. But this is where the disappointment sets in in a week as you know. Lockers getting cleared Our coaches getting fired. You always seem to come on this week and talk about just how awful it was to sit at the saints or the Falcons and watch people be Greg Roman at that moment in that place in time, and how awful it is in the league this week.
Chris Pika 20:15
It is it’s, I don’t, you know, when I, when I read people say, well, so especially fired or so especially walked out the door, whatever that is, I always cringe because I worked on the inside of that. And I say this every year. It’s hard on families, it’s hard on the staff is an incredibly awkward day in the offices when this happens. I don’t wish that on anyone. I don’t wish that on a coach. I don’t wish that on general manager and I will settle on a sort of staffer who is affected by this. It is a fact of life in the NFL. Yes. But for people to root for someone to lose their job is not, you know, having seen that that effect on people who their co workers and family and friends. It’s difficult. Yes, it is part of when you accept the gig that happens, but it doesn’t make it any harder. And you know, I I don’t I’m not a big fan of that. The Ravens this year, you know, we one of the things we always had in the in the saints building was every week of the season. And that’s been very, very true with the Ravens from start to finish. Lamar is injury. The fact that the wide receiver core hasn’t really been that great. They’ve had a running game that has disappeared at times they’ve had a defense it’s been good at times, not good times. It’s been a very strange season. And I’ve always
Nestor Aparicio 21:40
8said never be another one like this where you have double digit leads like every week and every loss stem from a game where you had a double digit lead and to have the weakness of the sketch just a it’s just a craftsman a crazy Canvas this year all of its money, Lamar, where they are the age of some guys where John is and all of this just it’s it’s messy, you know, where the Abba fans feel about it for sure. I’ve been here for all the playoff runs. I’ve never felt a week where like, we’ve been in the playoffs and feel like you gotta be kidding me. Right? I mean, I don’t think any maybe the the Anthony right year was the only other year.
Chris Pika 22:22
Probably so and then I’ve also said this about the playoffs to you part of advancing in the playoffs is you have to play teams that can’t stop what you do well, and you can stop what they do. Well, the order of opponents to get to a Super Bowl and get to a world championship is almost more important than than your health situation going into the playoffs. So when you look at what the ravens are facing, you know, playing the Bengals team who admittedly beat the B unit, let you know on Sunday in that last game, and they’re going to get well, the eighth unit, I guess I mean, that’s to be determined. I know the Ravens went vanilla in the last game. It didn’t matter what happened. They just decided, hey, if the Bengals win it, they win the division. So be it this is the way this is the way it’s going to be three turnovers, it wasn’t a great day for the Ravens at all in that last game and then you turn around and play them again. So that’s gonna be difficult if you somehow manage to have a good day a beat Joe burrow and that offense, you probably turn around have to play the chiefs in the hopes Okay, so it doesn’t get any easier. If your defense can’t stop burrow, then you’re gonna have a much harder time against mahomes The following week, they’re gonna they’re gonna need a lot of luck. And they’re going to need Lamar honestly to be very, very close to 100% and I think that is the story going into the game against Cincinnati is is he 100% Can he run because without his legs, having him sitting sitting back there and being a pocket passer the entire day, with Cincinnati’s defensive line and ravens makeshift offensive line, in some cases, isn’t really a recipe to win the game. Where do you
Nestor Aparicio 24:08
fall in the uniqueness of his contract and how that may or may not affect his desire to come back his economic ability to come back and this is where I want you to put your PR hat on Chris. So Chris pica, your blog and tackle. Listen, I know 100 PR people right and mostly you think the same most of the time, but this would be one of those cases for me where the coach matters here right? hardball pedal the Lamar is going to come back it’s week to week last year and all went away. This year. It’s been pedal this week, the week you’ve never seen him on the practice field. There have been reports lamps, there been reports of swelling like all of these reports, right? They come out and who knows where who’s getting what information NFL Network was reporting he was gonna play Christmas Eve right, and Rich Eisen seems sort of aghast that he might have been lied to or said there had been a setback. They felt like they were being honest with me, all of that, as a media member who’s now been thrown out famously that the where the, the honesty is and where it gets you into trouble. And where you’re trying to as a PR director, as an organization, for a marketing standpoint, from just managing your fan base b, and b and having integrity, that you’re trying to manage expectations, as best you can. So that whatever you say, one to three weeks, and it turns into something else. Now I’ll say this, and this is where it gets a little complicated. This is where I want you to clean up my, my ramblings on this. This is where having an agent matters, because the agent then calls Jason Locke and for or me or Mike Preston, or Jerry, or everybody and or Aaron Wilson or whatever, and says, whoa, whoa, whoa, we’re gonna second opinion. We’re flying Lamar down to see Dr. James Andrews or what whoever the doctor that you is you want to see? And you’re gonna come back to No, no, no, no, no, no, this is my Roger Doran, my $300 million dollar football player, my generational talent has a level two, spray, not a level one, not a level three. No, no, no, we’re not rushing it. No, no, no. And I would fight for him a little bit on the PR side of what gets reported and doesn’t get reported. Because this is felt all along to me. Like, you know, this is Chad, this is John, this is the team trying to wish him back. I don’t want to say push him back. But promise him back or make it appear as though he’s coming back. And none of these press conferences with John and I’m not there to press him. I don’t text him about anything other than his integrity lately. I would just say this is where their communication part of managing whatever anybody is to expect is that they now have reporters saying he’s honestly there honestly, in the dark about this. I I don’t know what to believe it’s sort of like to tell the truth episode to some degree, because the truth will come out and wash on Sunday. He’s gonna play or he’s not right. I mean, he’s gonna show up and this is he’s gonna be well enough or he’s not. But this last month has been a very cloudy sort of episode, as they skated through this thing. Where if they don’t have clarity on his injury, and the media doesn’t, and the fan base doesn’t and either to the opponents, which is always John’s, you know, deep down, John wants the Bengals to be confused about what’s happening this week. Okay, but then they have to go play and then they’re gonna have to negotiate with this kid and whether there’s been honor on both sides. And Chris, I would just say this. I’ve loved watching him play, I root for him. I’d be the first guy with an eighth jersey, I’d be sitting in my seats if they let me buy him, right. So I’m that guy. I’m a I’m a Baltimore guy. But But watching the Twitter W ETFs. Watching the not coming to OTAs watching him hold up a sign, and then watching them can’t get out of their own way when he’s not in the lineup. Boy, this is a weird negotiation. It’s weird all the way around. And I have a feeling whenever they lose, whether it’s this week, and God bless them. If they win, it’ll be exciting. They get to go to Kansas City, maybe you know, then they get to play buffalo, whatever it is, that their pathway is whenever it ends, this is gonna be a really weird episode for them. Because I just don’t think they’re gonna say, Lamar, we can’t win without you. We love you. Here’s 250 million comeback. Here’s a five year guaranteed deal. We need you. I don’t think that that’s how this ends and I and I don’t know how it ends, but I’m getting the popcorn and I’m ready to write about and talk about it. Because it’s a really pivotal time for the organization this week, this game and everything that happens in the aftermath.
Chris Pika 29:02
Well, you have a couple things in play, and one is obviously the injury report. That is, you know, it’s sacred to the NFL for a lot of reasons. You have to indicate whether player has not practiced limited practice for full practice. So
8Nestor Aparicio 29:16
this week are the consequences of lying. Can I ask
Chris Pika 29:19
that’s a lot, it’s a lot of fines. It’s fine to the organization leads
Nestor Aparicio 29:24
in on gambling now, which is a completely different place than where John was 15 years ago in trying to play games with Bill Belichick right, like
Chris Pika 29:32
8Yeah, I mean, you have you have the list. I mean, you have the Ravens have listed Lamar and I have listed them as either questionable or out and whatever that is, when you get to the end of the week, and especially during the playoffs during that during the playoffs increases the fines increases those issues for the club, if they were doing something like this, to your point to Lamar and lack of agent. One of the things that when I was in the league In the two in the early 2000s, social media had just not yet started to kind of rock and roll with players. And so Lamar doesn’t need to have a PR person is his PR person is this phone, okay? You can go on Twitter, he can put out information. He can say whatever he wants to say you can put anything in quickly he wants to put out. He’s his own PR guy. And so that’s the biggest change for communication staff. So if a player wants to go, I will say go rogue, because, well,
Nestor Aparicio 30:31
it’s been out of the league a decade, but he he will go on social media show himself mowing the lawn.
Chris Pika 30:38
You get a lot bright, but you get players who are
Nestor Aparicio 30:41
all the stuff you want what these kids do in a pathetic government.
8Chris Pika 30:44
Right? And you know, you get players, you know what your player decides, Okay, I’ve unfollowed my team, I want to follow my teammates, and that’s a story, okay, because he’s not following anybody from his current team. Okay, wherever that player wasn’t happening earlier this year. Okay, that’s a big story. You know, people go, Oh, my God, he’s, you know, he’s not doing that. So social media is a big part of that. And Lamar uses that. To whatever end he chooses to use it to? You know, would it be nice if he had an agent who was making those phone calls to say, Hey, this is where they are. You know, there is a competitive aspect. John doesn’t really want people to know whether he’ll play or not. It’s having teams preparing for multiple quarterbacks, you want to make their lives a little harder. You know, and they’re going to get to a point here, you know, that some of the rumors about what the Ravens except to trade for him, and what they could get for him, those those stories start to percolate a little bit about low and mid season. So you know what, again,
Nestor Aparicio 31:45
he he’s unrepresented in a professional space that can quell some of this and and not representing himself during all of this because your point, he could say my knees a little swollen today. Now, John may look not like that one way or another versus the Cincinnati game when he was playing the third string quarterback anyway. But what harm would the honesty be at this point? To manage expectations as to whether he’s playing this week or not? Like I, I don’t want to say they owe it to their fan base because Lord knows, they do whatever they want. But Charlize since the last time you and I got together, honestly, god, dude, you and I got together in August Bashaud, he’s franchise was probably worth three and a half billion because we thought that the Washington franchise was only worth five. Now they’re worth seven Steve’s now worth five. But shot, he’s picked up a billion and a half since the last time you and I got together. I just think at some point, some transparency about all of this, or how it comes out in the wash. Because it doesn’t feel normal to me, Chris, right. Like it just, it feels very unnatural. The words of John Harbaugh, and what he says and how he says it, and the Shawn Jackson’s cryptic sort of stuff this week. It’s just listen there. I watched Georgia waxaa. Team 65 to seven. I’m not suggesting they’re going to Cincinnati and lose 4047 on Sunday night, but if they play the backup quarterback, and that happens, I don’t know what happens here. From an availability negotiation. What you’re worth when you can’t play playoff game. Like I just have a feeling this is gonna get ugly to some degree. And in a really weird way, because there’s no drew Rosenhaus that. I don’t even know what the internet will be alive. That’s all I’m gonna say. And it won’t be good. It just won’t be good for anybody. I don’t think
Chris Pika 33:50
I I’m sure that the NFLPA would rather have Lamar have representation outside of his mom and himself, especially with the type of contract that Lamar was seeking, in the wake of Shawn, the, you know, the Sean’s contract in Cleveland, which was just, you know, absolutely, just like, What are you doing? And I’m sure that the fellow owners as the audio itself, you know, he made that made life difficult for 31 other people in the room, and that’s not the people you’re really want to take off the palace century with all of this is going to come out in the wash. The second that the team loses in the next day, you know, players will start talking, hey, this is what was going on. This is where we were. And it is entirely possible because of the type of player that that Lamar is and you know, I had players in the NFL that worked with Dante Stallworth in New Orleans who had the most incredibly tight hamstrings I’ve ever seen what they had to do to stretch him out to play. On Sundays were practice every day. would make us go cry in a corner in a fetal position. Okay. And that’s someone who’s a wide receiver who was very, very fast, but he had, you know, his body was tight, and they had to really loosen him up for practices and games, so he wouldn’t get hurt. So you have a player like Lamar who can juke and do all these different things and cut and make defenders Miss, you know, I think any player who’s had a knee injury will tell you that you have to have confidence, especially in that moment, that when you stick your your foot down, and you make a cut, or you do what you need to do, that your knee is going to is going to hold and do exactly what it’s supposed to do after an injury is the most nerve wracking thing for an NFL player? Because
Nestor Aparicio 35:47
8a great agent for him right now because he should hear this. Right. Right. And maybe he is maybe he’s not, but all the team wants him back on the field Sunday night,
Chris Pika 35:57
right there, there is pressure for him to play there is there is certainly, I’m sure he’s put pressure on himself, because in a contract year where he wants a big deal, I can’t see why he wouldn’t, you know, if he was at close to 100%, and he felt like that he was Lamar Jackson that we all know, he would be out there. So I look at it from that standpoint, and say, there’s something that’s not physically there yet for him to say, I’m confident enough that when I make a cut, when I when I changed directions, that my knees gonna hold up, my ankle is gonna hold up, everything’s gonna be good. And I’ll be able to do that. And honestly, you can’t do that. So you walk out in the field and actually do it in live action live bullets flying. Okay. And I think that’s, you know, if he doesn’t play this week, there will be a lot of questions at him, there’ll be a lot of questions, the Ravens about what they’re going to do. This is where Eric, the costume makes his money, because they’ve got some really hard decisions to make. And, you know, they’ll have to look at the evaluation of Lamar, because every player gets a physical start the year before they start a training camp. And then there’s an end of year physical. So they’ve got an idea of what the the wear and tear is in that particular year. And I’m sure that they’ve been given chapter and verse from everything that’s gone on with his knee. That’s going to play into it, where he is physically at this point in his career. You know, like I said, I’d love to know on that on that board that’s in the classes office that’s closed and you can’t see who is on the draft board. I’d love to know what he’s got in his quarterback spots. You know, is that something that they’re going to have to entertain here? Do they have the next quarterback in the quarterbacks room right now? Are they gonna have to go looking for somebody? Are they going to trade for somebody and train Lamar, there’s all these different things. There’s just a lot of intrigue here. And people tend to the lips tend to get really loose once the season’s over with that people get relaxed. You’ll start hearing some of that internal information once that season ends whenever that is when ravens
Nestor Aparicio 38:07
Well, it’s just this is unusual, right? There’s there’s a lot linked to this game. There’s a lot riding on this game and a lot of ways and whatever the outcome is Chris bike is here. He’ll be watching all the games this weekend on Super wildcard weekend. We’re gonna have super time through the Marilee crabcakes or we’re gonna be over TNA Coney Island hot dog from Highland town to Whitemarsh got some great guests coming out to join us as well. I’ll be giving away some Maryland skirt lottery scratch off tickets. I got some Raven scratch Raven scratch offs left and some holiday cash drops always hold the wrong one up at the wrong time on the left and right out on my video screen. I am Nestor. We are WNS TA and 1570, Towson Baltimore and we never stop talking Baltimore positive
