Lifer football historian and Lindy’s Magazine editor Howard Balzer gets Nestor ready for another season of NFL theater and talks about upcoming Hall of Fame candidacies of Marshal Yanda and Terrell Suggs.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
quarterback, year, lamar, game, win, howard, nfl, players, team, running, super bowl, vote, hall, football, luke, kurt warner, sport, fame, orioles, baseball
SPEAKERS
Howard Balzer, Nestor J. Aparicio
Nestor J. Aparicio 00:01
8
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, Jost, Baltimore and Baltimore, positive. We are positively into the football season. It’s still fake football season. We’re going to get to the real stuff soon enough. And I’m reaching into my bag of tricks and calling on some old friends because just I haven’t had a lot of football conversations, because we’re almost like a baseball town now, so much so that when the cheatstroes come to town the 23rd Luke and I will be gathering at fadelies for a delicious crab cake. All of it brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lotto. Have the Gold Rush sevens doublers to give away, and our friends at Liberty pure solutions, as well as Jiffy Lube, multi care, putting aside on the road, getting Luke to training camp, getting Luke to Camden Yards and maybe getting the Orioles out of second place, first place, wherever we are, one thing will not happen. Nothing really significance can happen to the Ravens. Get together with the chiefs to kick off the season. This guy’s kicked off lots and lots and lots of seasons, from the fighting city of Philadelphia and brotherly love out to Saint Louis, where he ushered one team out and another team in, now out in the desert, and Howard Balzer joins us here. He is a Sirius XM. He does a whole bunch of really cool off season things to get people ready for the football season. And he is, he’s a legend, in my mind, and you’re still voting for Hall of Fame, right? How are they take that away from you yet?
Howard Balzer 01:18
Right? Not yet. This will be the coming class. What we just inducted, obviously, a class in Canton. And that was my 20th year as a selector. And so now I’ll be entering 21 because we’re already in the process of selecting next year’s class. So it’s, it’s, it’s never ending and always on, you know, always on the go. Howard, I’ll
Nestor J. Aparicio 01:40
say this to you. We got yonda and Suggs up, and I was going to save that to the end. We’re going to do Lamar, do my homes, and do all that, and off season comings and goings and Derek Henry. But since you are on the committee, everyone here just convinced they’re both going to just walk into the Hall of Fame first ballot. I want you to sort of set the ledge for Ravens fans here in regard to the greatness of John Ogden, the greatness of Ray Lewis, the greatness of Ed Reed, the greatness of yonder and Suggs, which is a different level of great. I think it’s sort of like, is Cal Ripken a Hall of Famer Yes, is Mike Messina. He might have to wait his terms. I don’t know where yonda and Suggs are perceived in your room, as well as the whole room and the body of the electors. And I know so many of you, but my gut is there’s already a dozen guys waiting in line before these guys even get to the rope, right, exactly.
Howard Balzer 02:34
And I think every fan base thinks the way the Ravens do when one of their guys come up, oh, they’re first ballot guys. Well, it’s awful hard to be a first ballot guy. And the reality of the numbers, like you said, are that every year you have 15 finalists and five advance to be in the Hall of Fame. And that means you’ve got 10 others that are coming back the next year and have been waiting for a long time. The only time all 10 don’t is when someone times out, basically, and enters the abyss of the seniors pool. And so I mean, last year, for example, Antonio Gates was a first time eligible guy, and many people thought up lock he’s going forward, no problem, and he didn’t make it. And there’s a guy that certainly had the credentials to be a first ballot guy. So point is, it is hard, and I do think that yonder will be a Hall of Famer at some point. Terrell Suggs, you know, probably. But who knows? Like you said, you never, you never know what the whole room thinks, but you
8Nestor J. Aparicio 03:38
feel more strongly about yonder than you do Suggs, you do, and that’s you’re an outside perspective. I feel similarly. I feel like there were a lot of guys that did what Suggs did, and did it well, and he was one of them. I feel like yonder was a different level. In regard to yonder will get in before Suggs will get in. I think, I think, if I had to bet, yeah, no,
Howard Balzer 03:57
I think that too. Now, does being a guard affected, who knows? I mean, we just went through Nestor, a process, if you will, of a whole bunch of offensive linemen that I’m trying to I don’t think you know, there was Kevin muy and there was Steve Hutchinson, and there was Alan fanica, and there was Tony Boselli. And I think I might be, I might be forgetting one other guy. But bottom line is, they all had a weight, and no matter how, you know how good they were, and it’s just, it’s just normally, what happens certain amount of that is because they were all up as finalists and in that cave, you know, at the same time. But you know, again, we also have next year’s first time eligibles. We have Adam Vinatieri and we have Eli Manning and Luke Kiley. So there’s a bunch of first time eligibles, and they they probably all are not going to make the final 15, much less make the final five. And then you have guys like, you know Tory Holt, who’s been eligible for 10 years already. This. Will be his 11th year of eligibility. Reggie Wayne, sixth year of eligibility. Jared Allen has been, you know, a finalist now several years in a row,
Nestor J. Aparicio 05:10
you make the case for hope, being the same, having your st louis roots,
Howard Balzer 05:13
8I do. I do. I’m the president. I’m the presenter, and I’m I’m still, it’s interesting. I’m still listed. I’m listed officially as the selector for the Los Angeles Rams. That’s a little bit of a gut punch, quite honestly. But I
Nestor J. Aparicio 05:30
have a feeling that’s not elected by Stan cronky at this point. You and he probably aren’t, you know, like this. I’m thinking about
Howard Balzer 05:35
not, but a lot of that is because they haven’t, you know, they haven’t been able to identify anyone in Los Angeles that would be on the committee, and so that’s the way it’s been. Perhaps that’ll change someday, and I’ll jump back to being in that large guy. But anyway, it’s a very difficult process. People don’t look at it objectively. I get it because they’re fans, and that’s, you know, that’s the way it is. But it’s, it’s difficult, and I always laugh at this Nestor, because people will say, when the class is announced, a lot of times, it almost seems like there’s more emphasis or more talk about those who didn’t get in. And you’ll hear comments about, oh, the committee doesn’t respect that guy. He has something against them. They don’t like them, and all that. And I
Nestor J. Aparicio 06:16
say art modella had that case. I definitely had that case. That was
8Howard Balzer 06:20
probably that one’s probably, you know, that is, you know, true about that, but generally, we’re not voting on that. And the other point is, if, if, if the majority of people didn’t like a guy, and that was truly what the you know, what you were voting on, the bottom line is, it’s hard to be a finalist. I mean, no one. I’ve never heard anybody say that it’s hard to become one of those 15 finalists. And just that, to me, shows the respect that the committee has for those guys that that make it that for it doesn’t mean that there’s not respect for the other guys that didn’t make the 15. But, you know, it just comes down to a vote. And the thing I’ve always said about the vote, all the levels of it, voting to 25 semifinals, then voting to 15, then a reduction to 10, then a reduction to five, which ends up being the class. Normally, no one ever knows. Let’s say, you know, cutting the five, who was six, How many votes did they miss by probably not very many. Well, this
Nestor J. Aparicio 07:22
is it’s for the art monks and for and I guess the Tory Holtz that wait forever, that the numbers never change. They always say that. And look, you know, my cousin got in last year of eligibility as well, back in the day, 40 years ago, into the Baseball Hall of Fame. And, you know, we’ve seen a lot of players sort of wait or get or fall off the ballot? Right? I mean, is there anybody you go and fight for the fell off a ballot? Because Tory old starts to sound like this is it might not happen for him.
Howard Balzer 07:50
My sense is, it probably will. I can’t say when I get that question all the time, especially from my old friends in St Louis last year, in this, this last year’s vote. You know, the year before, when it was, it was Holt Wayne and Andre Johnson as the finalist, and all of them made the initial reduction to 10. And so I thought that, oh, one of them was going to go in, because all three of them made it this far, and it’ll be good. I’m hoping it’s Torrey Holt, but if it’s one of the other guys, that’s a positive, because one of them exits. You know that group of three? Well, none of them got in. And the reason, being most likely is because you had three guys out of the other five that didn’t make it to the five, and they probably split votes. So some, you know, some are voting for Holt, some are voting for Wayne, some are voting for Johnson, and none of them got enough to advance this particular year, which we just enshrined. Andre Johnson. He and Tory Holt made it to the reduction to 10. Reggie Wayne did not, yeah,
Nestor J. Aparicio 08:47
8I was gonna say, if I have to rate them, I call that Johnson, uh, Holt Wayne, that’s how I see that. So
Howard Balzer 08:55
that’s why it gives me hope that it will happen. And one of, one of my, one of my arguments, and it’s really, it doesn’t say he’s a Hall of Famer, right? But I, I’ll definitely make the point, what better year to elect him than at the 25th anniversary of that 1999 Ram’s greatest show on turf team? And yes, it’s been 25 years. Hard to believe, crazy.
Nestor J. Aparicio 09:21
I was there that night, walking out of the dome, catching the the St Louis transit out to the airport, watching the Tony Dungy walk off beaten. You know, I mean, like that was a night to be in St Louis, I’ll tell you that, and that never got any better than that.
Howard Balzer 09:36
Did it that you’re talking about the NFC Championship, yeah, which was an unbelievable game that the Buccaneers had that greatest show pretty much under control for most of the game, a game in which, by the way, Tory Holt less the game early because he got hit so hard that he was at he was actually spitting blood, but he still came back and played, but he wasn’t a. Himself and so, yeah, so that’s 25 years. I’m always
8Nestor J. Aparicio 10:03
who hit him? Was it Lynch? Who hit him? One of those guys, right? I
Howard Balzer 10:07
don’t remember who hit who had Tory hold on that particular play. I probably have to ask him. You know about that someday. But you know, the crazy thing you talk about moments is when Kurt Warner hits Ricky Kroll for the winning touchdown on a blitz, which you wonder, why the Bucks Blitz? Because they were getting pressure with four all game. That was Ricky brol The entire season, Regular season Playoffs. That was his only touchdown reception of the entire year. But I it’s interesting. You mentioned, you mentioned Tampa Bay and Warren SAT was playing for the Bucha years. Talk about 25 years, several years ago, in Canton for the celebration, doing a show for serious and was interviewing Warren Sapp, and I said, what you were in? You were enshrined. I forget, let’s say seven years ago. At that point, I said, time flies, doesn’t it? And here’s what Warren Sapp said, I’ve never forgotten it, and I’ve repeated it many times. He said, Well, I’ve always said the days drag, years fly and decades zoom. And we all laughed, and then I thought about it, I said, Man, is he right, decades zoom. And here we are, two and a half decades from that rams Super Bowl season and numerous decades from a lot of other things in the history. Hey,
Nestor J. Aparicio 11:24
same with us with Purple Rain one and Trent Dilfer and Ray Lewis and Ryan Billick and yeah, we’ve lost. We lost Jacoby Jones here a couple weeks ago. He was on the second team at 40 years old. So Howard Balzer is here. We still have him. You still have him. The NFL still has him. Sirius XM still has him. So while I’m on this hall of fame thing, because we’ll get to Lamar, we’ll get to the season and all that I saw, and look the off season’s long with all this, who’s the number one player and who’s the top one under this and you know all of the the conversations that happen, and we’re still a month from lame real football at this point. Um, someone said Mike Tomlin is a Hall of Fame coach. And you know, I like Mike Tomlin. I like him a lot more than I like our ball. Um, but that would make John Harbaugh a Hall of Fame coach. And then I brought this up with Luke earlier in a week. He’s like, Well, cowers in the Hall of Fame. And I’m thinking, well, then the Pete Carroll’s got to get in the Hall of Fame. I mean, what? What’s the bar on coaching now? And championships, I had always sort of worked under the assumption that horrible better win another one, especially after blowing the Time Out New England with kind of fat there, shanking a kick in the championship game this time around, running the ball three times in a championship game and losing at home to Patrick moms like, I don’t know, horrible to me, feels like he has to win another one. So does Tomlin. I have felt all along like you got to win two. If you’re a coach,
Howard Balzer 12:44
8you have to, because Tony Dungy won, I believe just won. There’s a lot of coaches that Dick Vermeil won only one. And I think we get power. Yeah, I’m in the group, and I might be, you know, everybody has their own feeling about it. I think certainly, winning is a big part of it. To me, it’s the entire body of work. And I mean, heck, Marv Levy and Bud grant got in and they never won one. They went to four, but they never won one. I
Nestor J. Aparicio 13:16
was gonna say, if you give me Bill Cowher Marv Levy, I’ll take Marv levy over any of those cats. You know, I take shot nine or two, by the way, throw him in there. He didn’t totally
Howard Balzer 13:27
shot. I agree 100% and here’s the thing I always say, it’s the to me, it’s the total body of work. And certainly, if you win multiple Super Bowl, if your team wins multiple Super Bowls, that’s obviously tremendous, but it’s damn hard to win a Super Bowl. You get into the postseason and you’re one and done. And as we’ve seen, anything can happen in the postseason, and I don’t think it should be taken against a guy if they haven’t won multiple ones that that’s just the way, that’s just the way I feel, and I’ll and I always remember this your good friend. And Brian Billick, I’ll never forget a comment he made that summer after the Ravens won in 2000 and someone asked him, Why is it so hard to repeat as a Super Bowl champion? And Brian said, well, one of the reasons it’s so hard to win just one, much less to win a second. Then when you get into the playoffs, you’re playing the best teams. You know, the best teams are in the postseason. And as we begin, as we as we’ve seen, basically anything can happen on one of those days. I mean, heck, Andy Reid was considered a borderline, you know, you know, Hall of Fame guy, until finally, his team won the Super Bowl. Now it’s now it’s like a lock, you know. Now he’s a slam dunk, but he’s
Nestor J. Aparicio 14:46
a great example of being on another team and having another chance with like Peyton going out to Denver if he could win there. There is something about that, and then there’s something about just keeping your job a long time, like Howard did. Like, why don’t we say Dungey Dungy? With two different places, two different Super Bowls, two different teams. I mean, our ball and now Tomlin, to some degree, have been there so long. They’re doing it with two different generations of players, two different sets of quarterbacks, all of that. And I there’s a point where Brady and mahomes, over the last 20 years have made this feel like it’s easier than it is. Totally agree 100%
8Howard Balzer 15:23
and we could get into a long debate about Tom Brady, who is essentially, you know, is acclaimed by virtually everyone, as the greatest of all time. I
Nestor J. Aparicio 15:35
think he’s a cheater, by the way, and, you know, like, that’s, that’s where I am on that much like the baseball thing. Like, to me, I have a feeling he was serially cheating, you know, like, I don’t. I have very little doubt about the footballs just being the inflated football being one of the things we know about that’s all
Howard Balzer 15:53
aside from that, he gets that acclaim because the teams he was on won a lot of Super Bowls, and so all sudden, he’s the greatest of all time. Is that how you Is that how you rate an individual player in the ultimate team sport that there is, if you really go back and look at some of those Super Bowl victories, several of those games, he didn’t play that well, but, but there’s he
Nestor J. Aparicio 16:17
8also did not have a lot of Hall of Famers around him either in that era, which, which makes it it’s kind of like Marino, you know, the players around him. He Kurt Warner had special players around him. A lot of them he did, especially
Howard Balzer 16:29
in St Louis and so. But my point is, is that it’s a team sport, and teams win or lose. There’s nothing Nestor that drives me nuts more than when I hear a commentator and I say the times I catch myself when a commentator, whoever talks about a quarterback and said he won that game, or he won the Super Bowl, or he lost. Well, no, his team lost. It wasn’t him. I mean, do we do we think less of Kurt Warner because of the Super Bowl when he was with Arizona and they went ahead late in the game, and then Ben Roethlisberger took the Steelers down the field to win that game. Is that a knock on Kurt Warner? I mean, there’s so many aspects that go into winning or losing a game, and I think sometimes that’s lost
Nestor J. Aparicio 17:14
sight. You know, I brought that up about Flacco, that Lee Evans caught that ball, or Cundiff hits the kick and they go to Indian apples and win. Flacco might have two Super Bowls and Eli Manning might only have one. And then you would look back and say, Okay, where’s Flacco? Because he was not a Hall of Fame player in the way that people would probably pick on Kurt Warner, although I saw Kurt Warner play, I think Kurt was a more effective regular season quarterback than Joe. But again, a guy like Flacco could have had two. Howard balls is our guest. He’s out in Arizona. Howard, what else are you doing besides Sirius X? And give me the whole because, I mean, I know you do preview season previews. You do a whole bunch of work in, inside and around the NFL. If
Howard Balzer 17:53
lindy’s magazine is still on the newsstands, it got on the news stands at the beginning of June, and probably might be sold out a lot of places. But if people still want to get one, they can call can call lindy’s office. Just look it up. Lindy sports com. You can also order online. I’ve been the senior editor of that magazine now for 33 years, and so I’ve been doing that. I think we’ve had it
8Nestor J. Aparicio 18:15
around here all 33 years. There’s a little bit of a guide book that was on the desk of every radio host at wnsd in the 90s, in the arts. And I know loops are control. Contributor as well. Yes,
Howard Balzer 18:24
he is. And then here in Arizona, I contribute to cars wire through the USA Today, network, writing and doing some podcasting for, you know, covering the Arizona Cardinals. So those are the main things that I’m doing right now and managed to keep busy at my advancing age.
Nestor J. Aparicio 18:43
Well, listen, this is where I wanted to start the conversation with you. But I never know where it’s going to go. I like man, I get a cup of royal farms coffee and I get going with you. We can go all night, because I love you, and we could probably talk baseball another hour, if we had to, especially with the Orioles doing what they’re doing, and your your old Phillies and either Cardinals. You come from a baseball town, Lamar. Lamar. I want to talk Lamar with you because you mentioned players and teammates and where they are. I don’t need to tell you about the racism in the sport, the perception of running quarterbacks in the sport, the perception of slight running quarterbacks, the perception of Lamar, Hey, kid, you’ll make a nice wide receiver. Go out and split wide. You got speed. Go do that that he heard probably in Pompano Beach when he was a kid, the where Lamar is two MVPs, not just envy, not just whether he’s going to be a Hall of Famer or not, but the notion of what he needs to do. And to your point, the horses and courses of the Ravens saying, We’ll take that kid will at that time. Marshall yonder was a part of the team, and Ronnie Stanley and they had a stand up, drop back Super Bowl MVP quarterback. They’re paying a lot of money to we’re going to change the entire system. And John Harbaugh is going to talk about. Revolution, and Eric de Costa is going to get together with Mike Elias and sigma Idell and a bunch of the Yankee nerds and talk about analytics, and bringing the analytics of of baseball to football, and how we analyze the game and the value of a run and the value of a pass and the value of a play, um, and the value of a quarterback that you have to scheme 11 on 11, not 11 on 10, because you’re not afraid of him running Exchange the game. It’s changed everything. I don’t know if Lamar is a Hall of Famer, you know, if he doesn’t win another playoff game, I really don’t know, but I do know this has changed the game, and it’s amped it up from where you saw Steve Grogan and France Tarkenton, and then Steve Young try some things, and then McNair came and, you know, Randall Cunningham could run a little bit, but this generational things you’re out in Arizona with the quarterback out there, um, there, this has changed everything about the game, the tectonic plates, and probably that alone makes Lamar a Hall of Famer. And it might make a hard ball Hall of Famer if he could certainly get Lamar to a Super Bowl, but doing it this way, a lot of the old school people said this couldn’t be done this way.
Howard Balzer 21:07
8Continue to say it. And I think it’s as much it’s to me, it’s not as much about just the fact that running the football, because I think everyone has come to accept that that is a way that you can have a quarterback and you can win. The problem is, is when those guys get hurt, and that’s, you know, that’s the thing, is keeping them healthy. It’s hard enough to keep a quarterback healthy when they’re not runners. You mentioned Steve Young. I mean, he was sometimes more of a runner than a passer, and Bill, Bill Walsh coached him into going through his reads, doing that if you need to run run, but don’t make that be your The first thing you do. And so hey, I remember when Michael Vick came into the league and everyone said, Well, this is going to revel this is going to revolutionize football. So it’s, it’s been going on for and I,
Nestor J. Aparicio 21:53
by the way, I was at the preseason game where Dallas Thomas snapped his leg in half. I was sitting up with that Hooters eating wings right above the right above the end zone in the Georgia Dome. And like you talk about changing a franchise, nothing changes anything like Lamar getting hurt, right? And the last year was, it was all contract. And then he made good on that with the MVP, and then didn’t make good on that in January. And here we go again. Howard, they don’t have an offensive line right now, like, other than the center, they don’t know who’s playing really,
Howard Balzer 22:22
and that’s, you know, that is so much what determines offensive success in the NFL. And so, you know, Justin fields has moved on from the bears, obviously, to the Steelers. And you know, he had some injuries. You mentioned, Kyler Murray, he you know, it’s all, it’s all about, it’s all about staying healthy and and getting a guy comfortable, you know, being as much about being both, but, but still being able to throw the ball from the pocket, being successful, being accurate. And I think, I think Lamar has improved along those lines as a passer, and he hasn’t, you know, for the, I know he’s got the, you know, tight end, Mark Andrews, but he hasn’t had a lot of great consistency with with the receivers. I think that’s getting better, certainly, and it makes, makes the ravens, you know, a heck of a team. But I think that in terms of people thinking it doesn’t work, I think they’re it’s always in the back of a coach’s mind. I just don’t, I don’t want, we can’t get this guy injured. We can’t get this guy injured. And so every time the quarterback runs, the coach, sometimes, probably deep down, cringes, saying, I just hope he’s able to get up, you know, after this. And so that’s that that becomes, you know, that becomes a big part of it. And then you look at, you know, and, you know, Patrick mahomes a good example. I mean, he’ll run now and then. But it’s certainly not with the with the number of times that that that Lamar will run, or or some of those other quarterbacks, I mean, rulson, earlier in his career, ran a whole lot more than near the end of his his career. But that was, that was certainly a part of his game. A big part of it is learning when to get down. But like you said, those two seasons when, when Lamar got hurt at the end of the year, that just made it awfully difficult for that team to win. So what, in terms of Hall of Fame and all those things about to see where his whole career goes, but the guys putting together certainly a career where he will be considered and, you know, we’ll see where it plays out. But you know, again, you look at those quote norm, you know, pocket quarterbacks, the Peyton Mannings and Dan Fouts and you know, guys like, you know, there were people saying, well, this is good. This will change the game so much that it’s going to go totally away. Well, it’s never going to go totally away from those type of quarterbacks. But bottom line is, whatever you you got to protect them. You’ve got to have that offensive line to protect them, and that has become one of the hardest things to do. Nestor in the NFL, with the offensive line because of free agency, guys move on because of injury, you get instability because of the lack of hitting in training camp and the regular season. Some offensive they’re just not. Are really ready to play in the trenches. Of what goes on down there, you start getting some injuries in your offensive line, and your offense is cooked, no matter who you got at quarterback and at the at the skill positions. Well,
Nestor J. Aparicio 25:11
then we saw them as Cincinnati Bengals couple years ago. Chiefs had the same problem when they played Tom Brady RAM, same problem. Howard Balzer is here. He’s covering the great game of football. We’ve talked a lot of baseball around here. We’re ramping up for football season. You know, wanted to throw the Lamar thing at you in that way, because you go to the Hall of Fame Game every year you’re out in Canton, you’re one of the electors out there. The year that that they they put ray in was the year that Lamar got drafted, and Luke and I attended. We had bus trip out there. We sat up top of that game and that they were remodeling the stadium right around then. And it was Lamar first game, and Flacco was still on the team at that time. And Flacco was going to be the quarterback, and this was the fifth game they were playing the bears. I think they were putting her lacquer in too, right? So I remember when he on this it was August. It was like July almost, right? And he’s running into linebackers, like, just the formation. And that whole year, it was like watching the old metallic football game by Mattel, where the players, the electronic gamer, that all run into electric football. Yeah, electric football, right? Which you’re more familiar. I my generation could never figure that damn thing out. Still can’t, um, buzzing all over the place. I that night, I cringed at Luke, and I’m like, he runs into linebackers. This isn’t, I don’t want my quarterback running into linebackers. Now, we’re six years in. We’re $300 million into this. We’re one championship game. And to play off one out of every three years he gets broken in half and can’t play. And before Chad Steele threw me out after 26 years of covering the team, this is my third season of being excommunicated while they discriminate against me and allow my Caucasian employee access, one of my final questions that really pissed hardball off. He got the jugulars all going when he got off the podium, Lamar ran the ball 21 times in an overtime game against the Minnesota Vikings, and they had to play four days later on the road against Miami. And I asked him, as before he got off the pod, he said, Lamar ran the ball 21 times today, John. Is that sustainable? And I’m just expecting to say, Hey, dude, we won the game. I was expecting to give me some stock answer. Not be mad at me. But I was like, How dare you notice that he ran the ball 21 times. Now, history would say he played four days later poorly and never was seen again that year. You know, in that season, he was gone forever. After that, there is a point where, if I’m if I am in that position of risk, reward management, you said something that I don’t think anybody said here, Howard about three minutes ago, you said there will always be room in the game for a six foot three quarterback that throws the football, because in the end, yeah, it’s nice. Your quarterback can run. And it’s it. They used to call it, by the way, Flacco insulted. He called it a gadget gimmick. He called it gimmick football. You know the what would the the dolphins ran that? What was that dolphins offense? They ran for five minutes. Yeah, what
8Howard Balzer 28:16
was, what did they call it? They
Nestor J. Aparicio 28:17
had a name for that. Dolphins offense, whatever last the running backs going to be your quarterback for three minutes. I don’t know Howard like the pendulum is swung where all these young athletic kids are, and especially African American kids are being given the ball at Pop Warner all the way through. And now Lamar is a bright light after Vic was a light that won a rye and you have one in Arizona that Justin feels all of this generation of players that we’re not uncomfortable anymore with them running in the line. I still am. You pointed out that if you try doing that 160 180 times a year, your quarterback’s gonna get broken in half. Now, that being said, Howard, for three years, Luke has laughed at me when I said they need Derrick Henry. They need Derrick Henry. They need like, it’s almost like the Costa was listening and the GUS boss and the drafting of Dobbins and his knee got ripped up in a preseason game down in DC. I think Derrick Henry’s a game changer, because I don’t think Lamar is going to run 170 180 times this year. Maybe I’m wrong. It’s still their best play. Their best play is Lamar off tackle picks up 34 yards somehow, you know what I mean? Like that is still the most explosive, maddening, frustrating thing for defensive players. You know it? It’s demoralizing for defensive players when he does that once a quarter, but they gotta be careful. And that being said, I love Derrick. Henry, I think this is if they had the offensive line they had a couple of years ago with a yanden and this and that, they can figure that out. He’s got a lot of weapons. They can be really good this year. Howard,
Howard Balzer 29:56
I think they should be very good that division probably talked about. Bottom is the arguably, probably is the best in the NFL. But you know, you’re the key word you said is sustainable, and that’s what everyone wonders about, especially as the player gets older, and even if they’re able to stay relatively healthy, you know what happens when they start nearing 30 and all of a sudden there’s different. If you get a little injury, it’s a little harder to come back. Is that overly sustained over, you know, overall sustainable. But like I said, you know, you look at the league now, and you’ve got Joe burrow, you’ve got Justin Herbert, and you know, you’ve got, you know, quarterbacks, you know, like that, that are very successful, and there has to be some mobility. You have to be able to escape the pass rush. But in the passing game, those you know that that’ll, like I said, it’ll never go away. It doesn’t mean there’s not going to continue to be those other guys. And then, you know, we’ll see the teams that you know to take a chance with. You look at this year’s draft, right? You got Caleb Williams. He can run around a little bit, but he’s not a runner. You have Blake may Jaden Daniels is the runner I question. You know, you know Jaden Daniels? I mean, this biggest part of his game in college was running the football. He’s a good passer, but the big thing was running the football. But let’s see what he does now that he’s at the NFL level, and see if he, if he can sustain it. So it’s, it’s always interesting to see. And you know, you just have to let it play out and see what happens.
Nestor J. Aparicio 31:29
8Last thing for you, as an ex communicated media member that’s still in the media somehow, and then the league signed on for this. Howard, I’ve been thrown out of the out of radio row and like, Oh, I haven’t. I haven’t touched anything in two years. So the billionaire class and the people that run this league and the way every team now has its own hard knocks, edited and sanitized by the General Manager, the coach, the owners. You’ve seen this thing where this nice, you know, community minded midwesterner attacks to the Walmart family would buy the rams and, oh yeah, move them to La um. So you’ve been a part of that. You’ve been affected by it. I mean, your life was uprooted by it for what you did for a living. I talk about my woes in a couple of weeks of not being allowed the ability to work and do my job, the same as everybody else in the marketplace, but the people that own these teams, and the new guy that just bought the baseball team here, and the new guy that just bought the football team that literally appeared drunk on ESPN as the begin his ownership last year. Thoughts about where sports is going at this point and where the media is going in all of this. Because the one thing about you picking the NFL to cover and me having the NFL here, I see the difference now with what the baseball owner here has inherited for $1.7 billion which is a sport that doesn’t have a media model, that’s a completely local, if not regional, sport, where they have to go hand the mouth against the Yankees and the Dodgers. And then there’s the NFL, where a guy like you would say, any idiot can be a team president in this league. There’s $400 million that that gets delivered on January 1, and nobody spends more than 250 or 300 million on expenses. There’s just so much money swimming in the NFL that they kind of do whatever they want, including, and this is where I’ll let you wear the union hat the 18th game. You know, remember when 14 was going to become 16? I know you do, and 16 was going to become 18. Um, the owners can kind of get away with anything they want to get away with at this point. I think just
Howard Balzer 33:34
about because they showed back in 2011 that they’ll shut the game down, and the players don’t, and a lot of times players, oh, they’re not together, they’re not this, they’re not that, they’re not together, like the baseball union was. Well, baseball is a totally different situation, where it takes players longer to get there, and then there’s a bit more longevity. Whereas in the NFL, you have a you have, you know, more than double the number of players, and you’re also going to have guys say, oh, we’ll be willing to give up a season, or give up games. No, we’re not going to do that. And the owners know it, and the owners know it, so at some point they will get what they want, and from the media. And I mean, what we see is a creeping, keep it in house, you know, with with the team websites, where, that’s, you know, they, I don’t know if it’ll ever get to it, but that’s where, at some point they want most of the information to be emanated from their websites. You know, oh, we don’t, we don’t want a discouraging word, and they’re not going to be able to eliminate it entirely. But you see, you know, you see it with, with the sometimes you’ll, you’ll read a story on a team website where the writer had access to a player or quotes and whatever, on a story that the rest of the media did not have. I mean, the Cardinals did something about a month ago where, and I’m sure all of them do it, I happen to notice, you know, we were actually there, though, all the media. For a press conference, you know, you know, media availability with a player. We were there, and about an hour later, the team announced that, I think it was that they assigned one of their draft picks, and we’re all going what they couldn’t have told us that when we were there, and we would all have the story and maybe, you know, get a comment or a quote. No, but not only did the team announce it on the website. But this, this one blew me away. Where the Cardinals sent out. I looked at the time stamp on the press release, and I’m going to say it was like 2:03pm right? The team announced the signing of this guy. Then I went to the web, then I went to the website, and there was a story on this guy signing with quotes, and the timestamp on that was, guess what? 2:03pm, so it was, if they gave the story, they told the writer, hey, we signed this guy. Get some quotes. Tell us when you’re done your story and have it ready to push the button to publish, and when you put, when we push the button to publish the story on the website, we’ll push the button on the on the press release to send to the rest of the meeting the same exact time. And that that’s where we are. And it’s funny during
Nestor J. Aparicio 36:19
Well, the other part is that, and wrote that and wrote that they get punitive, the punitive part of punishing you when you you know when they got punitive. With me, Howard, let me I’ll ask you an ethical question here, because this really happened to me. I don’t think I’ve ever brought this up on the air, but I’m going to be writing about a couple weeks Chicago, Illinois, about 10 years ago. And I’ll say 10. I don’t know exactly when it was, but it was when it was up in the press box to playing. The bears were at Soldier Field, the new Soldier Field, with the spaceship on top and underneath the stadium. I don’t remember if the Ravens won or lost, but I was milling about. There was some sort of weirdness in the air in the locker room. And on my way out, Ozzie Newsome was being gurneyed into an ambulance. I had had five people tell me that Ozzy was not feeling well under the weather, people that were concerned about him. And I, as a reporter, I witness a Hall of Fame player, the guy who runs the organization, at the time, being served into the back of an ambulance underneath the stadium in the do I report that? Or do I not?
Howard Balzer 37:25
I would say you, do you have to right?
8Nestor J. Aparicio 37:27
I did. I don’t think they were ever the same with me after that. They thought like I had seen something I shouldn’t have seen when I was standing in the locker room and people were talking to me about it, but they didn’t report it, and they didn’t give it to Jamison Hensley, and they didn’t give it to Jeff’s reback. I reported it. I can tell you, I was at Midway Airport, and Peter King used to be on the Sunday night football, and I saw it on the crawl, and Peter credited me in halftime and talking about it, because I had reported that he was going to be fine, but I reported that it was there. So they got angry with me. So, you know, there’s a great example of, like, you piss them off and then they eventually throw you out. So that that’s, it’s an amazing thing where we are. But like, your things worse, like my thing is worse, where people would ask me why I’m the prick reporter. Because I saw Bob Earth say, take my football team in 1984 I watched Sam Cronkite take your football team five minutes ago. I was at the press conference when it happened, you know. So I just having eyes on these billionaires. But shot, he hasn’t been seen since Ray Rice punched his wife and they all lied about it and tried to get him out on the field. Shot, he has been evaporated since that point, and that’s sort of in line with a lot of the other owners. Mean Jerry’s going to be the last one that speaks to people. I’m convinced of that.
Howard Balzer 38:46
And all he does is put his foot in his mouth when he does that. And and the one thing about owners doing whatever they want, and we, we’ve talked, I know about the whole ramp back to LA deal many times, but to me, they got sued for
Nestor J. Aparicio 39:00
a billion dollars, right? It would have been a whole lot more money had the lawyers not cashed out St Louis just to get their check. We went through that. I mean, that’s how dirty it is. It was so dirty that he knew that he could leave, get sued, defend himself, and get off the hook in the end, because the lawyers would want to cash the first quarter of a billion they get. That would be enough money for the lawyers. They’re not going to go all in which they didn’t,
Howard Balzer 39:21
8don’t, don’t want to go through all the appeals and all that. But the point I was going to make was that there was close to enough votes for the owners to pick the Carson project for the raiders and the Chargers. And Dean Spanos was running the chargers, only needed like two or three other votes to totally get it. He had about 2122 votes going into the meeting, and so all of a sudden, and this was the epitome of what the owners did.
Nestor J. Aparicio 39:51
They had a secret vote, and they screwed him. They screwed Spanos,
Howard Balzer 39:55
because then he wouldn’t know which guys turned on. Him, and it was, and it was the second time that I have knowledge of, and I confirm this, it was the second time in the modern day NFL where there was a secret vote. And the other one was back in the day, back in the 80s. I think when Leonard toast, the owner of the Eagles, was trying to get a Super Bowl for Philadelphia, and no one wanted, hardly anyone wanted to do that, but he had set he didn’t have enough votes to get it, but he had enough votes to block Pasadena from getting it. They were, they were the Philadelphia and Pasadena were the final two. And they kept having ballot after ballot after ballot, and they couldn’t get enough votes for Pasadena. Well, they finally had a secret vote. And now all of a sudden, some of those guys in lender toast his hip pocket turned and and the Super Bowl went to Pasadena. So that was a secret vote. Never again, until the Rams vote. But I’ve always said that’s one, you know, that’s one thing to have a secret vote over Super Bowl, right? Remember this investigation
Nestor J. Aparicio 41:00
for millions of dollars about one of your owners sexually exploiting cheerleaders, and have it come to a quiet oral presentation that no, nobody ever the truth never came out about Daniel Snyder ever Right? Very
8Howard Balzer 41:17
true. That’s very true. And so, like I said, it’s one thing to have a secret vote for a Super Bowl. Quite another to have one where it’s taking a team from a city and not think twice about it, just to get the final, you know, the final result that they truly wanted. Well, I
Nestor J. Aparicio 41:36
mean, I guess this is where it’s going to come for me, at 55 when I do my Labor Day writings. I’m a man of letters. Howard, I’m writing some letters in early September to the ownership and to the new people running the Orioles and Katie Griggs and all these people. And just like I fundamentally don’t want to believe they’re all scumbags, but because I’ve been in the room with all of them, and because the Colts left and the bullets left before that, and you know, I didn’t want to believe Bucha. He was a scumbag when he was using my restroom downtown and hanging out on my couch, strumming my guitar and drinking my beer. But in the end, in the end, as I sit outside in their diversity, inclusion and equity side of the media side and seeing what they’re doing, you know, I’ve just come to the grand conclusion that that’s what we have here. And I’m not going to play K Fabe and pretend it didn’t happen. You can’t play K Fabe and say that the rams are still in St Louis any more than I can say the Colts are in Baltimore, right? Like all of this is on record, but it is, it is they are too big to fail, right? Totally.
Howard Balzer 42:36
Yeah, no doubt about that. I mean, like you pointed out before, the amount of revenue that is in this sport, and is the classic, the whole embracing of gambling this, this was anathema. First
Nestor J. Aparicio 42:51
8thing that would have gotten us thrown out of the league is if you and I were taking numbers. Now, everybody’s got their picks on Sunday. Now we have five Super Bowl MVP quarterbacks get throwing their picks out on the weekend. It’s
Howard Balzer 43:01
crazy. I’ve always joked, and it really wasn’t a joke, that there was a rule in the NFL that if you worked in the league office and you even uttered the words Las Vegas, you’d probably be fired. And they fought it and fought it and fought it. And finally, when it be, you know, the states voted to have it, and then state after state fell after New Jersey, all of a sudden, now the NFL says, Hey, there’s revenue here. Oh, we love gambling, right? We love gambling. It’s an amazing
Nestor J. Aparicio 43:27
thing, Howard, because the way I explain it is this, this is the way I this is to a two year old, right? Howard, let’s you and I get together. Okay, we’ll create a game, we’ll call it balls or ball, and we play it with a ball, and we’re going to get officials for it, and we’re going to get two teams, and we’re going to get and we’re going to get the whole country involved in this, and we’re going to adjudicate the game. We’re going to set the rules, we’re going to buy the policeman for it. We’re going to take the money in the bets, and then we’re going to settle the bets, and we’re going to have a guy we call a referee or an umpire, that’s going to say, you won, you lost, and that’s going to settle billions of dollars of bets every Sunday around four o’clock. And you would say that sounds like a dice game in an alley. Dude, like, literally, that’s exactly what it sounds like, right?
Howard Balzer 44:13
Just remember, though, they have all the commercials about betting responsibly
8Nestor J. Aparicio 44:16
well, and I read them and listen everybody. My dad brought pool cards home from the point 1978 it’s how I realized Rice was a university and not a food group. You know, in that college thing there, you know, when I would see them on the pool cards. But you know, I’m with you that there’s there, there’s not Gold in the Hills. At some point there’s going to be trouble for all the sports. And I talk about basketball, baseball, all of that. Howard, we’re too old dude. I mean, I don’t feel like Get off my lawn here. I’m gonna leave you with some good feelings. If you’re a Baltimore positive what do you still love about football,
Howard Balzer 44:49
the game? I mean, still at its heart, you know, it’s a great game. It has drama. You really don’t ever totally even though there’s people who think they know what’s going to happen, you don’t know. Now, and it’s 17 game season, and that’s not a lot of games. There’s not a whole lot of difference between winning seven games and winning 10 all the game. I mean, heck, 55% of the games are one score games. And believe it or not, almost three quarters of the games every year are one score games, at some point in the fourth quarter you have incredible athletes, you know, doing your thing, doing their thing. You hate the injury aspect of it, because it’s going to affect teams. You just can’t get away from it. I mean, all these teams you enter, enter training camp, feeling great, and then the back of your mind you’re going, boy, when are the injuries going to start? And, boy, do they start. I mean, we’re only, what, two and a half weeks into training camp, basically, and you have guys going down all over the all over the place, so you hate that. You hate it for those players that to deal with those injuries. But just the whole, the whole nature of the sport is just, it’s almost addictive in a lot of ways. And that’s what’s made it number one and number one by far in our country. You
Nestor J. Aparicio 46:04
know what I’ve had fun with the last couple years? I collect these crazy Pacifica belt buckles, rock star belt buckles. But I I’ve also I have all of my old Houston Oiler stuff. You know, what an oiler idiot I was all my life and my childhood. I have a big box of all of it. I’ve never really gotten rid of any of it. And in the modern era, I found an Earl Campbell throwback sweater full on. Looks like a new rock knee kind of piece from the 20s or 30s, but it’s an oiler piece. And I, you know, I and I had Dan pastorini on recently, with my Dan pastorini jersey on. So I’m just doing throwback oiler stuff around here in the way that maybe you even go throw back Cardinals. The most important thing we all know Howard is whether the Orioles are going to win the Super Bowl, right? I mean, the World Series. I’m sorry, yeah.
Howard Balzer 46:48
8I mean, who knows?
Nestor J. Aparicio 46:50
I said Orioles wins Super Bowl. That’s funny.
Howard Balzer 46:54
You know, you just, you just never know, I and, you know, everyone, everyone buries teams. Oh, it’s over for them. And then all of a sudden they get hot, or whatever, whatever.
Nestor J. Aparicio 47:01
You lose five pitchers, and then you don’t look the same. Or your quarterback gets hurt in October, or your quarterback gets hurt in the first quarter of the first game, like Aaron Rodgers last year, right? Like things change quickly. And it’s, it’s, that’s the beauty of the NFL,
8Howard Balzer 47:16
all sports. And it’s, you know, the narratives drive me nuts. Sometimes. You know, so much media, so much TV stuff, where you just have to fill segments, and you come up with talking points and all those things. But hey, that that, that’s, that’s kind of the nature of it. And then we all fall into the trap, right? Someone puts out a top, a top 100 list, and, you know, it’s, it’s mostly a bunch of crap. And then you go, well, they’re they’re doing it. So we’ll talk about it on shows like this or on talk radio. And then you fall into the trap and say, Oh, here we are. We’re ripping it, but we’re talking about
Nestor J. Aparicio 47:48
it. Well, you know, the difference for me is we have baseball here for the first time in a long, long time to talk about. So it has been like in St Louis, where you had the blues a little bit and some other things like, at least, we’ve had like, a real baseball season here, a real era of baseball. So I haven’t talked a whole lot of football. We haven’t had to do that. The only thing that matters we all know Patrick mahomes, the best player in the league, because he’s the one that keeps winning. And until Lamar can do that, we’re going to sit here, Josh Allen, or any of the rest of these cats, we’re going to have to figure it out. I miss you. I miss hanging out with you. At some point, I’ll get to Arizona and we’ll figure out some good tacos together or whatnot, or maybe a spring training baseball game or something like that. It is always a pleasure to have you on and always pleasure to have your knowledge and your wisdom here. We’ll be listening at it serious. I’ll tell everybody to buy to lindy’s Magazine, because Luke’s in it too. And don’t be a stranger here. Come back and visit once in a while.
Howard Balzer 48:36
Alright, I don’t get back east that much, but hey. Well, we’ll put it on the list. It’s at some point come back from the Orioles parade. Here we go. Always enjoy our discussions. That’s in Philadelphia.
Nestor J. Aparicio 48:46
I’m getting away first. Howard Balzer, the H man. He’s a legend. He is long, long time insider with the National Football League. I always go back to those fun videos he puts up with the 1983 draft with the ESPN and all that stuff. You can find him out on the interwebs, and you can certainly find him out of Sirius XM radio from time to time, as well as in the lindy’s magazines, which do a great, great job, great. I mean, perfect magazine this time of year to catch up on everything, have it on your desk. Take it where you want to go. And I’m old school. Sometimes I need a little bit of paper and a pen. I am Nestor. We are wnst. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, and we never stop talking Baltimore positive. I.
