The Ravens weren’t good enough on the field

Firing the head coach and changing leadership will certainly create an interesting offseason in Owings Mills. No one covers the Xs and Os of the NFL like Mike Tanier of Too Deep Zone. The one-time geometry teacher of Joe Flacco joins Nestor to discuss the depth and salary cap numbers of the Baltimore Ravens roster and the structural changes Eric DeCosta will need even after Steve Bisciotti finds a new captain to lead Lamar Jackson.

Nestor Aparicio and Mike Tanier discuss the Baltimore Ravens’ 2022-2023 season, highlighting key issues such as the team’s 8-9 record, missed opportunities against the Steelers and Patriots, and the need for structural changes. They debate the future of quarterback Lamar Jackson, considering his health and performance. Tanier suggests the Ravens should hire a new defensive coordinator and reassess their draft and free agent strategies. They also touch on the broader issues of media access, team accountability, and the impact of ownership on team dynamics, drawing parallels to the Philadelphia Eagles’ current challenges.

• [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Write and send a letter to team owner Bisciotti expressing concerns and requesting presentation of a plan for structural changes in the organization
• [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Deliver an extra 1971 Philadelphia Eagles belt buckle as a gift to Mike Tanier
• [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Schedule a casual meeting (over a beer) with Mike Tanier to discuss Algebra II and related topics (informal conversation; date/time to be set)

Ravens’ Season Overview and Initial Thoughts

• Nestor Aparicio introduces Mike Tanier, highlighting his background as a math teacher and his role in football analytics.
• Nestor discusses his recent travels and mentions his frustration with the Ravens’ season, particularly the missed field goal that led to their elimination.
• Mike Tanier agrees, noting that the Ravens’ season hinged on a missed field goal, and he shares his experiences with Pittsburgh radio.
• Nestor and Mike discuss the Ravens’ 8-9 season, focusing on the team’s performance, the owner’s accountability, and the media department’s issues.

Evaluating the Ravens’ Performance and Leadership

• Mike Tanier emphasizes the importance of the Ravens’ missed opportunities against the Steelers, Bengals, and Patriots.
• Nestor and Mike discuss the need for structural changes within the team, particularly in coaching and player development.
• Mike suggests that the Ravens’ leadership, including John Harbaugh and Eric DeCosta, should present clear plans for improvement.
• Nestor and Mike debate the future of Lamar Jackson as a $65 million quarterback, considering his running abilities and the team’s offensive strategy.

Roster Issues and Player Performance

• Nestor criticizes the Ravens’ roster, mentioning that key players like Kyle Hamilton and Tyler Linderbaum had ordinary seasons.
• Mike Tanier agrees, noting that older players like Mark Andrews and Ronnie Stanley may have been past their prime, while younger players like Humphrey and Stanley struggled to develop.
• Mike highlights the lack of a pass rush as a significant issue for the Ravens, suggesting that the team’s philosophy of developing young players has run its course.
• Nestor and Mike discuss the potential impact of hiring a new defensive coordinator, such as Jim Schwartz, to address the team’s defensive issues.

Owner and Media Relations

• Nestor expresses frustration with the Ravens’ owner, Steve Bisciotti, and the team’s media relations, which he describes as poor.
• Mike Tanier agrees, noting that the team’s lack of transparency and accountability has led to public frustration.
• Nestor shares his personal experiences with the Ravens’ media department and the team’s owners, highlighting the lack of communication and trust.
• Mike and Nestor discuss the broader issue of media access and control in the NFL, comparing it to other professional sports leagues.

Future of Lamar Jackson and Team Dynamics

• Nestor and Mike debate the future of Lamar Jackson, considering his health, performance, and potential trade value.
• Mike suggests that Lamar’s frustration and media reports may be due to his banged-up condition rather than systemic issues within the team.
• Nestor and Mike discuss the potential impact of Lamar’s health on his long-term success and the team’s performance.
• Mike emphasizes the need for clear communication and accountability from the Ravens’ leadership to address fan concerns and improve team performance.

Eagles’ Season and Local Sports Culture

• Nestor and Mike shift the conversation to the Philadelphia Eagles, discussing the team’s recent success and fan reactions.
• Mike highlights the tension between fans and the Eagles’ management, with calls for the firing of certain coaches and the potential benching of Jalen Hurts.
• Nestor shares his personal feelings about the Eagles, noting his preference for other teams but his respect for coaches like Vic Fangio.
• Mike and Nestor discuss the broader culture of sports fandom in Philadelphia, including the impact of local media and team management on fan attitudes.

Personal Reflections and Final Thoughts

• Nestor and Mike reflect on their personal experiences with education and sports, sharing anecdotes about their time as teachers and coaches.
• Mike discusses the challenges of teaching math and the importance of making education more practical and engaging for students.
• Nestor shares his struggles with algebra and the impact of his educational experiences on his career and personal life.
• Mike and Nestor conclude the conversation with a discussion about their favorite music and the importance of staying connected to their roots.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Ravens report card, offseason shopping list, Lamar Jackson, defensive coordinator, pass rush, roster issues, John Harbaugh, Eric DeCosta, missed field goal, Aaron Rodgers, Jim Schwartz, NFL analytics, media relations, player performance, team accountability.

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SPEAKERS

Mike Tanier, Nestor Aparicio, Speaker 1

Nestor Aparicio  00:01

Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T. Am 1570 task Baltimore. We are Baltimore. Positive. We’re going to get the Maryland crab cake tour back out on the road, kind of hanging waiting for the bad weather. And though it’s mild, I may need to go to New York before all this is over. With one weekend in Pittsburgh. That’s sort of enough. And I make my way to New York. I usually pass this guy’s house. He was the one time math teacher. I believe it was geometry, although I flunked out of algebra two. So what the hell do I know he was known as Mr. Tenier Back in the day in the jersey suburbs of Philadelphia. He is a run and shoot gangster, and really, we were trying to pound the rock last weekend in Pittsburgh, you know. And some days it works, and some days it doesn’t work. He is really a an insider on all things analytics. He has been a partner to the godfather of DVOA, who joined us couple weeks ago. Aaron shots, we welcome one of our defending champions of all things football and x’s and o’s and a little bit of fun. He plays in a rock and roll band too. He’s Mike tenier, what’s going on? Dude, how are you? Man, how’s the two deep zone going?

Mike Tanier  01:04

Zone is going great. I’ll tell you what, one weekend in January in Pittsburgh is enough under the best of circumstances. I don’t think you were there under the best of circumstances. City.

Nestor Aparicio  01:15

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I want to give a little free plug, because, like, driving to Pittsburgh allows me to stop at the bake house in Frederick and come home. I got crow nuts going on in here. Dog day two, day three. So elimination kind of sucks, and we have to talk about it in the aftermath of all this. But give me your totality on the Ravens this year, because, I mean, Luke and I have talked hours about offense, defense, the owner, the accountability, the fact that I’m out in the cold and their media department’s a joke. And the way har ball runs the thing. Har ball di Costa, bishati, Lamar, all of that comes in the full focus when you’re eight and nine in my town, man,

Mike Tanier  01:55

when you’re eight and nine in your town. And it is funny how we are having this conversation because of a missed field goal. So I I did some Pittsburgh radio. I did this radio, doing national and it’s like, remember that this entire conversation, whether it’s about the Ravens or the Steelers, hinges on a missed field goal. And by the way, if they would

Nestor Aparicio  02:15

have won the game, if it would have hinged on the other kicker missing the Extra

Mike Tanier  02:19

Point, would have been on Boswell, missing the Extra Point, and I’d be on talking about Mike Tomlin, Omar Khan, what’s this team? What’s this direction? What are you doing? Mr. Rooney, yeah. What are you doing? Rooney, what’s going on with this family? And they’re now, they’re going on, and it’s like, well, you know, this could be Aaron Rodgers is double deluxe legacy, and we’re doing this here. So that doesn’t minimize You’re right. Eight and nine. You look at the one in five start you say whether the amount of you know things that can’t be controlled at the beginning of the season couldn’t be controlled. It’s that end of the season. It’s that sweep of the Steelers. It’s that Bengals loss, it’s that patriots loss that have me looking at this and saying that team was healthy enough, that team was organized enough to win those games, played well enough to win against the Steelers, played one off to win against the Patriots, and comes away with losses. And that’s where you mentioned all the principal characters. I don’t know what structurally has to be done. And I’m not going to come out here and be like, fire, horrible fire. You know, dicost it. They have to present their plans. If I, if I’m biscotti, present your plan to me about how it’s different next year, and don’t say we’re just going to run it back. Show me how, structurally, how fundamentally we’re going to change things to prevent underachieving, because that’s what this was in the second half of the year when the Ravens could have gone on the run under achieving.

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Nestor Aparicio  03:35

What are you on? Lamar as a $65 million quarterback, if not that, he can’t run, but he won’t be the runner over the next three years that he was five years ago when he was the sensation of the league. Nor do you want him to be that runner. You want him to be the threat of that runner. But we saw this thing go from bumper cars to, let’s make him drop back and pass to gaudy statistics, 41 touchdowns, four interception. It didn’t even win the MVP last year. So I mean, and the perception that he’s going to the Hall of Fame, whether he wins the Super Bowl or not, the perception that he wants to play in Miami or some other place, the perception here, that there’s him and Harbaugh are not simpatico, or that the offense and Todd monkey, just all of it, the bad reporting that came out two weeks I don’t mean bad by I mean just sort of stuff’s leaking out of the building when things might not and he might be the best player in the league when he’s healthy. Certainly on Sunday night, there was occasion to think like he looked healthier than he’s looked since, like week three,

Mike Tanier  04:44

healthier than week three, but you saw him getting chased down from behind too, so he wasn’t as healthy as he was in 2024

Nestor Aparicio  04:50

no one could catch him for years,

Mike Tanier  04:53

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and the future is coming where he’ll get caught more often, but he goes from one of the best scramblers of all time to a scrambler like. That when he’s healthy, not necessarily down to Oh my gosh. Now you’re Philip Rivers, so it’s not going to go like that. Now I’m out of Philly, so when you start talking about leaked frustration and anger and people not getting along, we’re always at DEF CON to here in Philadelphia, and you realize that a lot of that winds up being losing begets frustration, begets grumbling, begets insider reports, and a lot of that is solved by everyone doing better.

Nestor Aparicio  05:24

I didn’t even know the Eagles offensive coordinators name until everybody in town started burning it like, right?

Mike Tanier  05:30

Well, that’s the thing. He was so anonymous in the first place that, like, if he was doing a job, well, people would have known him. And then by the time you figure out who he is, a little bit like Zach war, okay?

Nestor Aparicio  05:43

And you’ve brought up a great point there. So by the way, Mike tenier is here, if you’re listening on the radio side. I love him. He’s up Philly. He wears great hat. He was Joe flacco’s math teacher, really, roster wise. And this is where I start to get after the costume, which is really in your lane of how guys are performing and doing their jobs to do your job of Bill Belichick, Luke and I have witnessed this. We talked at length about we talked about the field goal. We talked about all the politics we could talk about who’s got contracts and who likes each other, but the body of work, the eye in the sky not lying with your buddy, Jaworski up there. I mean, the all 22 tells me I can’t find anybody on the field. Maybe Kyle Hamilton, and he was banged up most of the year. That had a plus year, that had a year where we’re like, hey, they’re ascending, they’re getting better. We’re gonna have to pay them more. Maybe Tyler Linder bomb, who was surrounded by two stiffs at guard. This was really a roster issue all year long. It felt like they don’t have good enough players, and the players that they think are really good, roquan, Marlon, Humphrey, Ronnie, Stanley, Mark Andrews were just ordinary at best, right?

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Mike Tanier  06:50

You mixed a couple because you mixed older guys on the downside, like Andrews. And Stanley was like, We know those were good ball players. They might have been hanging around too long. Might be two inch banged up, in the case of Stanley, Amanda puke being out for a whole year, mixed with the younger guys who haven’t developed to that level, or, I guess, a guy like Humphrey, like, yeah, you’ve been there for a few years too. You’re you’re not here, you’re but you’re being paid to be here, paid here, and your expectation is here, and your role is here, and that’s it. I start with the pass rush, one of the like, you get rid of OA, and then there’s no for some reason. Finally, in Baltimore, the cupboards bare. No one can rush the passer. 20 years of that team, that’s the thing that the Ravens did. And I think a lot of that is the philosophy of saying we’re going to do a next man up. We’re going to home, grow these guys. We’re going to pick these guys, work, traits and tools, guys in college, wait a year or two, and then they’re going to come up at some point that runs out. And this was a year in particular. I think you win a game or two down the stretch if you’ve got a monster edge rusher, or even if you have an above average rusher, even if you’ve got the Jalen What

Nestor Aparicio  07:53

about Jim Schwartz done in Cleveland with Miles Garrett Right? Like right? He single

Mike Tanier  07:58

handedly fixes a bunch of problems, and there was nobody like that. Now you might not be able to find miles Garrett. He Garrett. Can you find Jalen Phillips? Can you find somebody who’s out there where it’s like we are rushing for Baltimore Ravens last six weeks of that season, when they rushed for there was no pass rush. Aaron Rodgers is comfortable in your pocket. Aaron Rodgers,

Nestor Aparicio  08:15

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he had a good time, didn’t he? Yeah, he had. He had an easy night. He really did. I mean, in the way that, like his mind processes, if nobody’s coming to kill me, right? I’ll just wait for somebody to get open, or I’ll dirt the ball like, right?

Mike Tanier  08:29

The person coming to kill me is a safety coming in this. I’ve been doing this for 26 years. If he’s coming here, I know who’s getting open over there. I’m going to get the ball to them. Aaron Rodgers is going to get vivisected next Monday night by the Texans. He is, by the second quarter, he’s going to be wishing he was out in his yurt somewhere, because that’s a real pass rush. But the both times that he played the Steelers, he’s out there, he’s able to process. He doesn’t even have DK. He knows he can dump it in the flat. So it starts with defensively. One of the first things I’d say is I don’t think, I think there should be a new defensive coordinator. You just mentioned Schwartz. He is out there in the market, probably right now, looking for work, and he has ties to these guys. Why don’t you bring him in?

Nestor Aparicio  09:08

He’s from Baltimore, dude, huh?

Speaker 1  09:12

Yeah, come in. Where are his Orioles at? Let’s start talking about Mark Ballinger.

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Nestor Aparicio  09:16

You know what he’ll do is he did this for me back in the day. He has, um, you’re an old school teacher. You remember the notebooks with the black and white checkerboard top binding underneath? He has one of those from 1979 where he kept score every night with the Orioles.

Mike Tanier  09:33

Ken’s Ken, Ken Singleton’s like, literally,

Nestor Aparicio  09:35

in that era. He has that. So, yes, no,

Mike Tanier  09:38

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he would, he would come back and he’s, he’s a coordinator for a lifetime.

Nestor Aparicio  09:41

I can’t imagine he can work for John Harbaugh. I just, I don’t see that as even I mean, keeping in mind that Jim and his brother almost got in a fist fight at the 50 yard line 50 years ago.

Speaker 1  09:53

All right, all right, that’s fair. I forgot that one. That’s a good call. Well, this speaks to hardball,

Nestor Aparicio  09:57

not hiring the best coaches, hiring. Guys that can get along with hardball. And I’ll tell you what, I’m not a guy that can get along with hardball anymore. You know what? I mean? Like, it just like, that’s a certain level of paranoia and power that, yeah, yeah, I the hardball show here has really gotten old for the fans. And look, you’re in Philly. They’re firing everybody every minute of every that’s not my town, right? Like, I’ve been doing sports radio 35 years. I we don’t do fire the coach around here, a matter of fact, why should we? Because they’re not firing him anyway, and that’s where I am, like, he’s like a son to Basti, like, and the same thing with the Costa. So part of this is they’re all going to burr up and save themselves and save their own. And that’s why this month is such a strange thing, and the Lamar rumors of because if Lamar wants out, it’s all hell here, Mike, but what

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Mike Tanier  10:51

does that even look like? What does a Lamar trade even look like? Because we can talk about and speculate, he doesn’t have an agent, right, right, right. First of all, you don’t know how to get it done. And secondly, who’s out there? Like you know, he was on the market three years ago, and everyone’s like, I don’t know about this. This sounds weird. And again, that was different, because you would have had to go like, through five different things. But what Lamar for? Lamar for borrowed straight up, like, what? What is it? What does it look like at that level? I don’t, I can’t perceive what the trade looks like. Lamar to the jets for eight first round picks that that’s a disaster for both sides.

Nestor Aparicio  11:20

Probably Can you perceive that Lamar would say, I don’t want to be here anymore like an NBA player?

Mike Tanier  11:25

I don’t think so, because he doesn’t. He’s never struck me as wired that way. If he’s mumbling, grumbling in the back to like his honorage or his buddies or something like that, it never manifests itself. And the other thing I would ask is how much of that is he’s banged up. He’s getting talked about in the media and stuff like that. He’s a frustrated person. And if he goes fishing for two weeks, he comes back, he gets his mind right.

Nestor Aparicio  11:46

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That’s Are you a believer that he could still win the Super Bowl here in the next three years?

Mike Tanier  11:50

He is, when he is fully healthy, he’s the third best quarterback in the NFL, behind my homes and Allen. If he has lost his scrambling ability down to like a certain level, maybe he’s the sixth best, seventh best. You know, you reach a level where him in the pocket is better than and you can just start rattling off the is better than Jared Goff is better than Sam darnold is better than. You name guys in the playoffs? Well, there’s

Nestor Aparicio  12:14

a lot of guys in the playoffs this week, and we’ll get to that too. You know, whether it’s Trevor Lawrence, whether you know all of these one, one kind of cats you mentioned burrow who might want out of Cincinnati. And I just think it’s Billick used to always say this, and I’ve never heard anybody else say it, but Billick would say there’s a time for pay and a time for play. And you know what? When that ball sailed wide right on Sunday night, Mike, it’s now the time for pay for everybody. And in an eight, nine season where they’re not used to that here, and the fans are antsy, and the stadiums emptied out five different times here, in a way that I’ve never seen in my lifetime. And you know, the Justin Tucker thing here is horrific in a million ways, but really dirty karma that it was a missed kick on Sunday night too,

Mike Tanier  12:59

a little bit of dirty karma. And that’s the thing a raven’s existential problem, where they always seem to have the guy who’s done the horrible thing, and they’re like, stuck dealing with it going back to Ray Rice or whatever. But again, if that kick goes through, we’re talking about Lamar making this amazing through to Isaiah likely, and making this touchdown to say flowers down the stretch, and getting these things done after crawling off the injury report the previous week. So that’s where you have to say some things may look different in a week or two, and in terms of again. So if you talk about hardball being a son and to Costa being a son, I don’t fire my sons, you know, but I might say, if they F things up really badly, you got to come to me and we got to have the real conversation about what you’re going to do differently down the road? Show me. Put it in paper. Put it in writing, face to face, eye to eye, different defensive coordinator, some different coaching staff on the offense. I don’t think moncan is a problem, but maybe you bring in somebody else to work with Lamar, work with the offensive line. Draft strategy. Are we going to do things differently this time? Are we, you know, a free agent strategy? Are we going to pursue a young, Elite Edge rusher, not somebody who’s 39 years old that we’re bringing back in for their farewell tour. Show me what this looks like, and you put that ultimatum in front of them, then you can say and again this year, maybe the only person who loses their job is or somebody else like that. But then in the future, say we had benchmarks that you were supposed to hit. You didn’t hit them. Now it’s time for all of us to part ways.

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Nestor Aparicio  14:23

Mike Kinnear is here. He has been covered football as well as anybody. He’s up in the fighting city of Philadelphia, brotherly love. He’s over in the Jersey side. A one time math teacher. Dude, that’s such a cool celebrity thing, like you were. Joe flacco’s What teacher in what year and how

Mike Tanier  14:38

it was calculus and it was like 1998 or something like that. Flacco’s got a gray beard now, he’s got a great beard now, you know, actually, he still lives somewhere a couple miles away. And also, you taught him and he, and the joke about him is like he’s this old guy who’s got teenage kids and everything like that. So it was a minute ago. I haven’t been a teacher, believe it or not. I think it’s been like 16 years.

Nestor Aparicio  14:58

Dude, you brought your teacher issue. Out with me five minutes ago, I backed up, and I’m like, Mr. Teniers on me right now. You know, like you were doing a little scolding a minute ago about, like, what are you going to do? Eric dicostia, to make things better? Like, like a real parent would be. And I’m writing a letter to bishati here at this point right now. He hasn’t spoken to the media in eight years. I don’t know what Jeff Laurie does up in Philly, or how often he’s out. I was struck in Pittsburgh, and I’m, you know, I’ve the both of the Rooneys. I’ve been in their company for 30 years. They’re sitting in the press room when you’re up in Pittsburgh. You know, you could sit, Mr. Rooney would just be sitting there. You know, when you talk to him, you know, anybody could talk to him, because he’s a man of the people. We’re at a point with the billionaire club here, and the smell of this organization. And you know, Mike this, it’s not about me, but it is. I covered the team for 30 years. I’ve been thrown out sitting in the cold, and they’re making up lies about calling the Steelers and make it. I mean, the Justin Tucker thing here, when all is said and done, and all the real reporting would be done, the culpability and whether people in that building knew or not, and he still kicked for 10 years, I there have been no questions answered since Ray Rice, literally, because the owner is just not interested anymore. It’s not fun for him anymore to do that and and the stadium’s emptying out. You know what? I mean? They’re begging people to buy tickets.

Mike Tanier  16:26

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That’s the place where you should have stepped up. Like, I don’t need this guy to come out here and talk about hardball or whatever, like that. When the Tucker situation, he should have done out and did that. He did do that for Ray Rice. He did go out there and give a long press conference. Hated it. Hated every who would like it, who would like that? Who would like that? That’s your job. You make a big, gazillion dollars.

Nestor Aparicio  16:45

You can go out and say, when we found out, when we saw him punch his wife in the elevator, we didn’t cover it up. They covered it up this, this got covered up, right? So, yeah, that’s the problem that that was the issue of shame and not coming in facing it, because they lied about all of it repeatedly, all of them, all of them. It wasn’t just that he did it. And I like Ray Rice. I mean, Ray Rice is working in town and signing autographs and taking eating seafood pub. I always liked Ray Rice. And we all do wrong things. It’s what happens after you do something wrong, you know,

Mike Tanier  17:21

and then you get the ugly question of whether it’s something that was in the heat of the moment or a systemic thing that you did a lot, you know, in the in the cold, covering

Nestor Aparicio  17:28

up as a systemic issue in there that is, and lying in their building about injuries, and the head coach lying about practices he may or may not have had with the pads and may like, it’s, it’s, it’s hard ball. In I don’t even the Michigan things explosive, right? And meanwhile, Jim’s playing this week. John’s at home. People are talking about his job. I mean, it’s, it’s a tough business. I would say

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Mike Tanier  17:51

it is, I try to line things up like, I don’t like the brother is not responsible for the brother. So nothing that happened in Baltimore is has anything to do with anything that happened in Michigan, etc. Some of this, you can’t fire the owner. That part of it, you’re stuck with and whatever he’s doing. At that systemic level, there are a lot of owners who are doing evil in this league. And when you talk about the practice thing that was inexcusable, there are, there have been, like, three or four giants things that have come out. This is another thing that’s happening around the league where you discover, oh, they were hiding injuries. They were putting guys on IR who weren’t hurt.

Nestor Aparicio  18:24

When you start taking bets now you’re like, gangsters, right? Like, you know, like you’ve created a game, you’ve issued referees that adjudicate bets for billions of dollars on video, like, keep it on the up and up. That’s what I say. With the lottery. They give me these lottery tickets, it’s on the up and up. That’s part of gambling on it is thinking it’s on the up and up. The leagues haven’t figured that part of it out yet, and certainly when it comes to what’s on the up and up with the head coaches and hi pub, come on, dude, are we? Are you giving a real injury report? Here is one of those old Denver Broncos injury reports, you know, right?

Mike Tanier  19:00

Or one of the old patriots injury reports with Belichick. We’re all 45 guys were on the injury report. Well, because they’re all a little banged up. When you talk about also you getting squeezed. I’ll go on, and I’ll talk to somebody else and like, well, I’m getting squeezed. I’m getting squeezed. The NFL has been squeezing media for years, and they’ve been, we have been pushed further further, further further further out from where we were in terms of

Nestor Aparicio  19:23

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being because guys are having head trauma and CTE, and guys are killing family members and crazy, you know, like, and they don’t want any part of any of that, right? So when real media people are involved with real questions about things, they’re not, they’re not really, and the team websites focus on a propaganda in the same way that Trump last weekend came in, took the Venezuelan leader, ran off, said it wasn’t about oil. And you know, like he has real concern for the Venezuelan people. You know what I mean? Like, don’t pee down my neck and tell me it’s raining. That’s part of. The NFL ethos at this point, and I find that to just be fascinating. On a business level, this is how they choose to operate.

Mike Tanier  20:09

It’s gross, it’s nasty, and let’s not forget, on the other end of things, if you try to go to say the player individually, you discover that their agent and publicist have three layers of people between them, or it’s Lamar, you just don’t even know whose phone number, and you’re going to get some guy who sells workout equipment, and you have to work backwards from that. So it’s like, well maybe, and then you’d be going, I just went to a pub piece on you, quarterback, whatever. And the agent and the publicist, the publicist, publicist, have to sign off on that, and they give you a no, because you told a joke once two years ago, and it’s on the it’s on your blue sky feed. Then you go back to the team publicist, and you get these things where it’s like, it’s very easy for them to say no, and it’s, you’re right. It’s a propaganda element. It’s an information control element. There’s just the culture among the powerful. Let’s just put it that way, that the media can go f itself, like we’re just we’re just a problem. We’re just an irritant. And whether that’s at the White House level, or in that sphere of influence, or in the NFL, or in the NBA, or anything, oh,

Nestor Aparicio  21:08

there’s no question that Chad Steele would aspire to be Catherine Leavitt, or whatever her name is. There’s, there’s just, there’s no doubt about it. Mike denier is here. We like to talk football. Who do you like in a tournament?

Mike Tanier  21:19

Dude, this particular I think we’ve slept on the Seahawks. And if you’re a Ravens fan who’s like tired of the ravens, and you want a team that looks like the Ravens used to look, go root for the Seahawks. You got McDonald you got this amazing defense. You got the quarterback, Donald, who’s a little bit of a cross between Joe Flacco, Trent Dilfer and insert, I don’t know, Vinnie Tessa verde here. You know where he’s just sort of getting the job done. They run the ball really hard. It’s just tough, physical football. They beat the crap out of teams at the end of the game, fans are like, that wasn’t that good. It’s like, dude, the score was 28 to 10 or something like that. It’s like, it was closer than 28 to 10 because there’s because there’s such a complimentary old school football team that, you know, it’s not whiz bang, you know, eight touchdowns in the first quarter kind of football.

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Nestor Aparicio  22:10

But you’re asleep. I just beaten you all night. Yeah, you’re right,

Mike Tanier  22:13

right, right. If you’re not a fan of that team, like, Oh my God. Like, maybe we’ll get back into it and your quarterback gets sacked three times.

Nestor Aparicio  22:19

Like, how come we couldn’t get back playing this weekend. They gotta buy Well,

Mike Tanier  22:23

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if you like, this weekend, root for the Houston Texans. Because, again, Yeah, cuz gonna watch the Steelers. Gonna watch Aaron Rodgers get into a helicopter and fly away at halftime to get away from that defense.

Nestor Aparicio  22:36

All right? Well, you’ve predicted gloom and doom for the Pittsburgh Steelers. So we love you here. How about this angles? What’s going on up there? Yeah, that’s your city up there in Philly.

Mike Tanier  22:46

Yeah, the Eagles won the NFC East and are defending champions, and they’re going to the playoffs. And everyone hates everyone you talk about. Fans want Sirianni fired, Kevin petullo, the offensive coordinate fire. Let’s get let’s face it, that’s not a terrible idea. They they don’t want Fangio fired. Everyone loves Fangio. Love the paisons up here, but and there was talk of benching Jalen Hurts, and it’s like, well, maybe Tanner McKee is better than Tanner McKee plays poorly against the commanders. So this is a team everybody’s looking at the 40 Niners. And Eagles fans always look at 40 Niners like because there’s history in the playoffs, and there’s been like, vengeance story lines, and there’s been cross sniping with their fans, so it’s a tough matchup coming up on Sunday afternoon. I usually

Nestor Aparicio  23:27

hate the Philadelphia sports teams in a general sense, starting with the flyers, and I’ve always loved the Phillies, but the Eagles, not so much. But Vic Fangio, like you say, Who do you root for? At this point, I sort of root for people I like, and I like Vic Fangio a lot. He was here for a minute, and he likes me, and we would always talk baseball and different things. So, you know, I, I don’t root for the Eagles, but when I see him up in the box call and plays, it does make me think a little differently about it. When Joe Buck’s calling the game, that’s all Mike promote. What you do tell everybody about the great football work you’re doing, because people listen to me. They want to learn football. They want to talk more football, better football. That’s what you’ve dedicated your life to doing after you educated. Joe Flacco,

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Mike Tanier  24:07

well, my website is called the two deep zone. You can find it at Mike teneer, dot sub stack.com too deep zone to Oh, too deep like your college girlfriend, not like Vic fangio’s defense, where their safety is back there, and we, I cover the NFL from all angles, lot of analytics, a lot of jokes, a little bit of an irreverent sense of humor there. And I’ve been doing it now for almost for two full seasons. It’s been a lot of fun.

Nestor Aparicio  24:33

Well, he is my kind of iconoclast and former math teacher. I man, one day we’re gonna have to talk about algebra two, just like over a beer somewhere. We’ll get some pencil number two pencils out and erasers still don’t understand it.

Mike Tanier  24:49

You’ll discover how much I’ve forgotten the last 15 years. I’ll be halfway through. I’ll be halfway through a problem. Actually, it’s pretty good. I doubt my son’s up until about two years ago, so I still I’ve never understood

Nestor Aparicio  24:59

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Can I just. Take two minutes here and just bitch to you on the radio, on my show. I’ve never understood how a guy from Dundalk that could take algebra one and Algebra Two and struggle mightily with it from the time I was 13 until I was 22 quite frankly, and then give it up, and then 35 years later, think to myself, I’ve never needed it once in my life in any way, and for that, and I wasn’t going to be whatever the smart kids did. What did those kids eat? I guess they’re running NASA NOW and getting thrown out by Trump, who doesn’t even know what a weather map looks like. But in a general sense, I never used it and it it enervated me like back it made me cry when I was a kid, because I just couldn’t do it. And I’m such a writer, and I’m like, I’m just gonna go do that. I’m good at that. But the math thing, the part that kills me is I never used it in my life.

Mike Tanier  25:52

Mike, I do have former students who wound up at NASA, at Pixar, in various engineering fields, economics fields, etc, a business analyst, but that’s probably like 10% of my students. The rest of it never used it again a day in their lives. And that’s a problem, a structural problem with with American education, that we could probably talk about somewhere along the way, about how math could be made better, more useful, and how things like shops, languages, music and art could be reintroduced and not turned into these side things, but be reintroduced into the into our education system, so that kids come out, maybe not crying over Algebra Two, but knowing how to change their oil and maybe, you know, play a couple chords on The piano and stuff like that, and be better rounded and be better educated, and have their what, how you say, like their minds more open to all these ideas, then we learn something that. Again, the reason why you learn algebra calculus is because it was the space race that was like Eisenhower and Kennedy. That goes back to that. That’s why you were forced to do it, because so you could put a rocket on the moon.

Nestor Aparicio  27:01

Nestor, I came out of a subway in New York a couple years ago, late in the day, and I came up and a pretty girl, I mean, and she was, you know, spoken complete sentences. There was nothing destitute looking about her. She was just out on the streets in New York, and she said, she, I guess I look safe, you know, with my long hair. And she said, Hey, do you know which way? And like, and there was a point where I looked up to the sky and I said, well, the sun’s setting over there, so that’s west, yeah. And she looked at me like, she had no right, like, that I was really smart for knowing that. She’s like, really, like, it was like, one of the and I’m like, oh, man, no matter. No wonder Trump got elected here, man. And I see that on my Facebook, just the level of education and just basic things that people getting cars now and get directions, but they can’t read a map. You know, it’s crazy.

Mike Tanier  27:54

No, no. It’s like from Baltimore to Philadelphia. To ask an adult, what’s the general idea of getting from Baltimore to Philadelphia? What direction you gotta go? What’s the highway? Somebody who’s been driving for 10 years, I don’t know. They can identify. I 95 like, how are you functioning in the world? Like, yeah.

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Nestor Aparicio  28:10

Like, I have a radar built in anywhere I am, even in an airplane, when I’m flying West, I know I’m over Kansas first and headed toward Wyoming. You know, it’s just sort of like, I It blows me away, dude. But thank you for being an educator. Thanks for educating us on football. Mike Teniers here, he’s got the 2t Oh. Tell everybody how exactly

Mike Tanier  28:32

Oh, 222, deep. Like, too deep. It’s like, I’m listening to a cure album. Too deep zone. I listen

Nestor Aparicio  28:38

to a cure album last week. My wife’s like, put some cure on. I want to see if I like it. Wait.

Speaker 1  28:44

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That’s the first time you listen to the cure her.

Nestor Aparicio  28:46

She so when she was gone for Christmas, the cure did a night where they had their and they just lost their keyboard player. They had a concert about a year ago. And I know Reed screw a little bit from the tin machine, and David Bowie era from my music critic era, and they did a show, I believe, in Spain, Portugal, whatever. They shot it in HD. It was 31 songs, and they put it in the theater, like December 11. And I went down to run the mills and paid my 20 bucks and sat there and watched it. And I My wife wasn’t in town. And, hey, what did you do when you’re gone? Saw a cure thing, because I took her to the Depeche Mode thing, and she thought that was freaky. Deaky, and the cure thing, she’s like, I don’t know if I’d like, you know, like, put it like, she knows the hits Come on now, but, like, but I put it on, and it’s so loud and noisy, and you really have to like, Robert Smith’s voice. And I said that to her, but I said, it’s trippy for me. It’s groovy for me. It’s trancy for me. And I love the cure for that

Mike Tanier  29:41

their hits are quieter and more accessible than their

Nestor Aparicio  29:45

like, plain song or like, right? You know what I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Mike Tanier  29:49

There’s they’re more trance, like, I think they’re just heavier. I think they’re just louder songs in general, on the on the album. So that can be impenetrable. I’m just, I’m just stunned hearing people like, our age, and it’s like, and when. Being like, yeah, I never really heard the cure. It’s like, she

Nestor Aparicio  30:02

knows, just like heaven, she knows that love song, she knows the hits, but she didn’t know, like, the early like, love cats, and she didn’t know, let’s go to bed. And she didn’t, you know, staring at the sea, Type error. Or she wasn’t college rock radio in the 80s. She was more like, Bobby Brown, MTV, you know what I mean, salt and Peppa. You know that’s more her.

Speaker 1  30:22

So you get, like, the hits, because they would get mixed in with that. Because she’s

Nestor Aparicio  30:25

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from Manchester, New Hampshire, listen to pop radio and MTV. That’s all they didn’t have, like, a college radio. She wasn’t, she doesn’t get REM the same way. I do. You know what I mean? That’s all

Mike Tanier  30:34

well, dating girls in the 80s who like the Pesh mode was no fun either.

Nestor Aparicio  30:39

Oh, man, do we have to discuss that differently? Man, you were just you were on the wrong side of the boardwalk in Ocean City in 88 and 89 with that violator album, dude, trust me. Mike deniary, Violator is one of my top 10 favorite all time albums ever, and so, you know, I can’t say that about a cure. I love. Kiss me. Kiss me, kiss me. But not my favorite all time out. That’s, that’s why they make chocolate and vanilla. I guess that’s why they make you. Mike Teniers here, he’s covered football this week in Philly, but you’re not an Eagles guy, right? You don’t root for them, right?

Mike Tanier  31:10

Childhood, so all my life, Eagles fan, you never lose the rooting interest. I guess, unless you start actively fighting with the owner, you don’t lose the rooting interest.

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Nestor Aparicio  31:20

I didn’t actively fight with the owner. By the way, I have a Philadelphia Eagles a belt buckle here. I’m going to gift you from 1971 I have an extra one, so, yeah, there you go. You put that right behind you there. I’ll make you think of Bergy and Carmichael and all that. All right,

Mike Tanier  31:33

oh, that would be great. It’s national coverage on the two deep zone. There is a little bit of Eagle centricity, because we’re based out of Philly, and that doesn’t hurt when the team is the defending champions, and a lot of storylines do roll through Philly.

Nestor Aparicio  31:43

Nobody covers the league better than you guys, so I appreciate that. Mike Teniers, here, it is a week, not just with Mike. It’s friends and family week here. This week, it’s been like the last couple of weeks, we’ve been doing crab cakes and holidays and great stories, and that’s friends and family too. This week, we’re getting down and dirty with some of my best friends in sports, people I haven’t had on. I’m just like getting to the bottom of the hardball bishaddy Lamar thing, and, of course, Orioles prosperity that lies ahead spring training around the corner. I’m Nestor. We’re W, N, S T, A in 1570 Towson, Baltimore, and we never stop talking Baltimore positive. You.