Lacrosse and the Iroquois nation

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Welcome back to the Nat Coom Show. I am your irregular host , Ben Isaacs, but you're not here to hear from me anyway. You'd be here to hear from Nat and Mike . The important thing is that Mr Iran Michael Carlson is here with me right now showing his sporting loyalties with the baseball cap that he is wearing M.ike , for those who cannot see you right now , tell us about your baby. We're watching an audio only . Yeah. It's an old STX Lacrosse hat Which I don't even know what the status of STX is these days I think that I think that I think that brand exists still . Yeah . And the X in STX, one of the two lines of the X provides a vertical for a lacrosse stick. So it's white with a blue blue brim and yeah, it's Corduro. It's really not a summer hat, but since I've been indoors most of the day, I've been wearing it around the house so we're going to make this a look . My hair's in kind of weird shape because I had a really bad haircut and it's amazing because I lost all my hair and it's grown in thicker and less gray than it was before I lost it. So you look you look ten years younger, Mike, you look ten years younger. That's weird because I've grown a beard and most people, you know, the beard will make you look older I looked pretty old before. I think I think you've got one of those kind of distinguished beards now that make you actually look like you're sort of like a cool fifty year old. So I think you've got it going on right now. You could get out there playing Lacrosse with Bill Belichick and all would be good in the world. But we will that would be fun. That would literally be fun. I remember when I cut I had a mustache, which many people have noted. There was that Iron Mike comic book with me with the mustache in it that somebody created a couple of months ago . And then I shaved it off because I wanted to look younger basically. And that worked for a time . But there wasn't also a time when I was cultivating the professor look on channel five late at night and I would wear bow ties tweet jackets in and I think that would go really well with the beard now. You know, I could I could do those inside the huddle things which Sky Stole and And which a friend of mine who worked at NBC praised me when I was doing that. And it was like a five minute segment where we talked about strategy and tactics for the team. And he said, I've never seen anybody read the auto queue as well as you do. You know, your eyes aren't even moving. And I started laughing. He said, What's that? Why are you laughing? I said, We don't have an auto queue . We can't afford it He said, What? He said, You're ad libbing? I said, Well, I mean, not, you know, I've written it and I know what I'm going to say. And he said, But you're running bubble. Bubble is the is the music that kind of goes under neath everything. You're running bubble on that. So what happens when you make a mistake? You have to start over, right? And I said, Well, yeah, but we just try not to make many mistakes. Yeah, that's the key. You don't make mistakes. You don't have to do it again, one take, job done And sky producer once, you know, yell at me or actually did not yell at me, yelled at the management complained that I was changing scripts she'd done for me . And they called me in and I said, I don't I've never rewritten a script for her ever. She said , you know, when you're doing those intros, you're changing the stuff on the auto queue that goes into the auto queue and I said , Well, if there's something wrong, I'm not going to say it . You know, he said, hang on, so what you're just changing it on as you read the autocue . I said, Yeah . He said, How can you do that? Well , it's like, I'm not reading like one word at a time, you know, when I'm saying it . So that one went by the way, but it was just another mark against me at Sky you're a free thinker . Let's talk about Yeah . Well, you're a free thinker and that's dangerous. I was going to I was going to briefly mention the incredible postseason run that the New York Knicks had, but I know that that would upset you. You dislike I think it deserves it deserves mention . My personal take on it not being a Nick's fan and always being what would you say, irritated by Nick's fans who now once again, you know, had the greatest dynasty in pro sports history since they won in what was it seventy one, seventy five poor and two thousand but it was it was sad. It was it was tough. I mean give the next credit for hanging in there it's part of my old man rant about modern basketball, the way that it's played. You know, Jalen Brunson's a great player, but I'm not sure how great he would be in an era where they made them dribble and didn't let them throw stiff arms at the guys who were guarding them . But San Antonio blew that series in so many ways and you know, you know, none to me more egregious than the miracle game where you know, just before the incredible comeback and the final second yeah Fox had the ball there was a steel and he had the ball and he took it to the hoop and got blocked by OJ AJ and who then got the tip at the other end. I mean remarkable play by him. Just that's what basketball is about . But the lack of basketball now and or coaching that tells a guy with just seconds left in the game to go to the hoop against the big men when could he should have done and any point guard starting with, I don't know, Bob Kuzi in the fifties would have turned around, gone toward the hoop and then turned around and gone to the outside and just dribbled the ball for the last eight seconds of the game or may make someone follow him and get the free throws. And if they do that, they win the game. And it was full of little moments like that where the Knicks had composure. They were obviously well coached. They knew what they were doing and played hard. And the Spurs with a big lead just started to always look lost . So here's my here's my question, NFL related question . Who Who which franchise in the NFL is like the New York Knicks? So I'm thinking a team that is beloved by its city but has gone decades without a ch ampionship but may be on the verge. You don't get to look far. It's the Jets . Although the Jets haven't been as close as the knicks had been, they know to the finals once before, you know, in that interregnome . But I mean, actually the jets are actually the best analogy for England , the team that won once in the sixties And even worse, England did it at home with all the advantages that has . And then have considered themselves the natural favorites for every season since then . Despite seeing all the biggest rivals win multiple titles since then, the giants exactly Patriots yeah , I've seen these comparisons before, you know, which World Cup country is an NFL team. And obviously, I think the best match are the jets in England . Oh , okay. In that case, who 's the who's the Seaaw Hks then? That's , you know, a team that is perhaps I feel like they're not last season. I feel like they were teams that had more talent than them. And maybe I'm thinking that in part because they had Sam Darnold and some people had superstar quarterbacks . Who would you fancy to be the Seahawks? A team perhaps lacking a little bit in star power , but it would be well dreamed. It would be a team lacking , ye a teaham lacking star power good defensively you know because they were defensive under Pete Parrim as well. Maybe a bit less so under Mike Holmgrin a team that kind of rose, you know, not traditionally, but rose in recent years to be to be a real force . Iceland would be obviously would be a jump but from that description you might take you might take them on I'm thinking I'm thinking somewhere one of the one of the central European like the Czechs maybe when they had a couple of really good teams without without without a major offensive star . You know, their rise resembles Portugal, but Portugal's always been more of an offensive team. Yeah , offend, you know, a square led team like Yeah and having one particular focal point. It's killing me though seeing these beautiful grass pitches well let's see if they've got anyone who's like killing the NFL players association as well. Yeah, these grass pitches believe people have forced them to have that the NFL owners for years said, Oh well, it's absolutely not possible. It's not possible and you have to wonder now whether the NFL players association will want this in the next bargaining agreement. Well, they've they've already they've already gone public saying they do. The answer has been it is possible, but they're but they're taking the extra expense because it's a short term deal and the turf the grass doesn't hold up as well as turf. So that's the major reason why they use turf now because it lasts and it's easier to groundskeep. But the second one, which may have some truth is that they're not using the football grass, they're using football grass . It's a soccer which calls soccer yeah soccer grass and as you know, I mean, you know, if you've been down at Wembley for example and when it gets wet, it's slipper y, slippery than the normal grass you'd find on a college college ball. It does not give you the traction that you would have, you're right. Yeah. It's thinner . It's a thinner kind of grass and it's very quick, very fast, but when it gets wet, it does get slippery. But to me, that's not a great excuse because I don't think you'd have that much more problem growing the kind of grass the stadiums grew . You know, the problem is maybe damage. I remember a game Monday night game we did in Pittsburgh when Pittsburgh University had played on Sunday, I think for some reason. And then we were doing Monday night or maybe they played on Saturday and it was a Sunday night g ame , but the pitch was so water locked and the grass was so bad that there was one punt that landed tipped down and just sat there and never bounced it just sort of squished into the into the wet wet turf, the wet grass and just stood there up, you know, standing up and so maybe there's a bit of a point to that, but I'm all in favor of grass at, you know, going Dick Gallon of the Baseball player for the White Sox and other teams. If a cow can't eat it, I don't want to play on it. I mean, the turf that is used in most NFL stadiums now , at least if you compare that with the traditional astroturf of the nineteen seventies and eighties , it was just like a thin carpet on top of concrete . So like the gap between old Astroturf and modern turf is so big that's a big ger gap than between turf and grass now. Well, I'm not I'm not convinced of that because it's only about an inch thick and laid over concrete . It's got more gives though, hasn't it? It's got more give like it has given so thin before Yeah . But you know, we used to say, you know, if you used to have a basement, if your parents had a basement or your friend's parents had a basement and you'd play tackle football when you were like nine years old in the basement, you were basically playing on an astro phyte. Yeah , which was concrete with a carpet over it. I mean, if it was if it was the if it was the seventies, the shag pile on that carpet might be thicker than what the NFL players were playing on. You might have cushioned. Yeah, especially if yeah, especially if your dad was a like Hugh Hefner playboy kind of good . The shag shag, you know . We won't go there for mister Isaac Senior. But you started off on the Seahawks, which is a good place to start because I know we want to talk about the big the two big trades late in the the trading scene and and the thing that they have in common is that they were made by the Rams and the Patriots who were the last two teams to lose the Seahawks on their way to the to the Super Bowl. And especially in the Rams case, it was clearly a matter of keeping up with the seahawks or passing surpassing the Seahawks . Because I mean at the end at the end of the season , when I was thinking ahead to the cont enders for the twenty twenty six season . I actually put the Rams like in my list above the Seahawks. I just felt there was more talent in Los Angeles , but they knew they wanted to make big splash . And the fact that obviously they mean it was it became clear that Miles Garrett was going to leave Cleveland, that it had all been kind of set up in the way for that to happen and for it to hurt Cleveland as little as possible and for Miles Garrett to get to have that championship run. But obviously the Rams have given up Jared Verse who is an absolute fantastic player in his own right . But a good deal for both teams, both the Browns and the Rams, Mike Yeah, I think I think so. Yeah, there were machinations. You know, the Rams were trying to get the NFL to agree to let teams trade five first round picks in the future , you know, and that was come I wonder why they wanted why would they want to do that? Who would they be going after ? And and as you said, the Browns made Garrett's contract as tradable as possible, you know, while still paying him a lot of money . But we know the Rams when they think they're they're close to the hump are willing to pay a lot to get themselves what they consider over the hump. And I agree with you. Well, when we did the Florida State game in Dublin with that and you know, Vers obiously was a great player and his rookie his first two seasons have shown that. I heard a lot of people whining that you know, he only had five or six sacks each year, but that's not he's not Miles Garrett and that's not so to speak his job. He'll get more sacks, but he gets a lot of pressures and he's a big guy who can hold the edge. He can play inside if you want if you want him to so I think from a rebuilding point , this was for Cleveland's point of view, this was the time to get rid of Miles Garrett and get a haul for him. And what they got back was pretty good because like you, I think Versus a hell of a good player Garrett and they can grow with him . Garrett was kind of wasted on a bad team . They've got a first and then a second the year after that and then a third the year after that which could which can be useful. You know, people say third two years from now, but a third could come in handy , especially if they get the RAM kind of bug and think they're one player away and they can use a couple extra draft picks to help them move up in the draft . But from we know that Les Sneed and McVeigh are not afraid to trade to pay a big price for a guy they think and get him over the hump . And you know, it was a similar deal with Detroit when they traded Goth and Draft Picks. Worked out well for Detroit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, a win win very well for them because the one Super Bowl to them is worth the, you know, the couple the year of rebuilding or two years of rebuilding that they had to go through . But to me the most interesting thing is that they've got Aaron Darn , Donald Trump about coming out of retirement . What sort of shape is he going to be in ? I don't know. I would guess he'd be he's going to be in good shape. And if anything, I would I would guess, again, I haven't seen a picture of him or anything like that even, but I would guess he stayed in shape. He may have even lost weight since he played. I doubt if he's gotten bigger and that much slower. But if he can get into good enough shape to play twenty snaps a game , that's all he needs. An even bigger in an even bigger problem for teams because obviously the difference between Garrett and Versus is that you have to plan for Garret and you don't have to plan for Verse, you know , you don't have to slide your protection in his direction. You don't have to worry about double teaming him. Worry is the biggest thing that affects an offensive coordinator when you've got a player like Garrett on the other side and and the Rams took, you know, they took steps to to strengthen their defense , you know, they really were going all in. They got they got McDuffy, they signed Watson , you know, they resigned they resigned Curl and now I think that what you're looking at is a team that Elric Johnson or Jackson sorry, Eric Jackson gets suspended, he's got another domestic abuse problem brewing, you know, his very strange because he was he was a woman he a woman a couple years ago was he was recording while they were having sex , consensual sex but non consensual recording . And this time, he appears to have thought that a woman was recording him, although it doesn't say they were having sex, but was recording him. And he's trying to get her phone back for her phone from her. And this is a domestic, which could affect them. I think they're probably okay if he plays. If he's not, then it's a question as to, you know, whether the rookie can start at right tackle, whether McClendon can move over to left tackle . You know, and that's a big problem. And the other problem of course is whether or not Puka is going to play and be at one hundred percent physically and or mentally. Yeah, that's mentally is my worry there . Yeah. And I think without Puka, without one hundred percent Puka, the offense is a little bit lacking . I just want to say before we get onto the Patriots , the The can you think of another player as talented as Miles Garrett traded in his prime? Like I thought maybe Eric Dickson Dickerson was younger but, Dickerson had come off some incredible seasons with the Rams true and then went to the Indianapolis Colts and was never the same player . And I don't think that's the cult. I think that was simply he was taking such a beating and was taking so many , so many carries. Marshall Folk, another running back who went from the Colts for the Rams. The Rams Falk to the Rams was a great trade, but not even and he could be running back off the trade . Yeah , running back he was wrong style for Indianapolis and the right style for Mike Marts running backs in those days were more important , but nowadays , I don't think, you know, Garrett was probably Garrett's probably bigger than either of them. Yeah, I think it's the biggest I think it's the biggest biggest trade player in the league basically . Yeah. I mean Ramsey got traded Talib got traded, but you know, again, that's not the same not as impactful as the pass russia and no even trades that have worked out brilliantly for the teams that have taken them on, say, Christian McCaffery. McCaffery was a fantastic player before he was traded, but he didn't become the McCaffrey we know now until afterwards playing on a better team. Whereas Garris That's a very good point. Yeah, that's a very good point because he was a very good player in Carolina, but they were not using him in the way that would maximize his talent . I'm trying to think of a quarterback Norm Van Brocklin maybe traded to the Eagles, but he wasn't really at his peak and nobody would have called him the best quarter back in all week when he at the point he was traded that's a tough one but it's a good it's a good point. I mean certainly certainly like players impactful yeah like players of that ability tend not to get traded. They might become available in free agency, you know , at Reggie White wound down his nowadays contract and that's what we see a lot now but a trade like that. Let's let's go on to AJ Brown then AJ Brown. Yeah and joining the patriots. We all knew it was going to happen . Yeah, you notice the way that it affects the betting lines, you know, how much the one player can switch the , you know, the Rams went to being strong favorites over the Seahawks instantlyaneous which may be overremed . Now the patriots to me are not in a position this would this wasn't a one player over the hump kind of deal because they're not in the position to be one play er over the hulk. They're not that good yet . And they also face , I think it's the toughest schedule in the league if not, it's the second toughest schedule in the league , although luckily their easy games are all in division or relatively easy . Yeah, that's true. So they can get they can get to two cracks in each of those each of those teams. But the difference a happy AJ Brown , which we assume he will be playing under V al because he was happy when he played under Val in Tennessee and Brabble was unhappy when Tennessee traded him out from under lots of people have been happy under Mike Frabel . Yeah . I don't know who I'm referring to, but please continue continue . Allegedly . And and and I think it's a it's a great move because as good as Dig gs was last year . Brown does two things that Diggs didn't do particularly as well. One is go over the middle , which is part of his problem with the Eagles is that Jaylen Hurt seems reluctant to throw over the middle, which was Brown, one of Brown's strong points. And the other one is being a target all the time , any route any route that he's running and you can throw the ball well or badly and he's still got a great chance of Kent coming down with the ball, which with no disrespect to Stefan Diggs was not quite the same thing, although Diggs made a number of remarkable catches and really carried that Patriot's team. And if they'd been able to hang on to him and he could even duplicate last season, that would be an amazing one two punch and then I think that would elevate the Patriots quite a bit . So yeah, I would I would say it wasn't like they were a player away from getting over the hump, but this was a real area of need that they absolutely needed a wide receiver like AJ Brown and lo and behold literal AJ Brown desperately wanted to be a patriot and that is it feels like a match made in heaven for AJ Brown, Mike Vel and Patriots fans he. was And obviously a vailable from day one. Yeah Someone said the epic saga of AJ Brown and one of the NFL insiders and I just responded to it. I said, What saga you were just repeating the same story every day since February and it doesn't make it into the iliad , you know, it's the easy part of this is that the receiver group now becomes much better . The harder part of it is that the offensive line really needs to prove itself and I think they've moved in the right direction Questions remain about Campbell, but I think if you take into account that he was injured through the last part of the season , the short you can kind of forget the short arms business , but they drafted Lomu first round, another tackle and they've got Morgan Moses so they can , you know, they can play around with how they use these guys and they sign ed they signed Alo Vera who's when he's healthy is a really great guard . The jets thought he was going to be a really great tackle, but it didn't work out that way. But he but he's never been healthy for, you know, full seasons or something you don't get from him. But I think moves plus moving Wilson from guard to center gives him a better chance of being an effect ive player . And if on when you is in any kind of shape it could be a decent offensive line. And certainly their problems in the playoffs came because they were facing a steady run of good defenses who could put pressure on Drake May . And I think May played pretty well under that and will probably play better this year . So yeah, I think that's all very positive for the Patriots and the price they paid was not really high. I like the idea of a deferred number one for a year because that gives them time to prepare for losing that pick , you know, to maybe accumulate more picks so they can move up , you know, if not to another number one then higher in round two or whatever and you know and they'll be they'll be targeting a pretty high draft well as in they'll be hoping their draft pick is in the thirties that the one that they that they gi'venre away. This isn't a team that has low expectations I want to take us on to something less less positive though, might. I want to get on to Alden Smith Just one second because the other thing is from the Eag les point of view is pure how he Roseman , he knew he was going to lose AJ Brown. He probably wanted to lose AJ Brown just for the sake of a happy boat and a happy quarterback . And so he prepared for it . You know, he signed some free agents who aren't AJ Brown. He drafted and he did make one. I mean, the draft pick, I look forward to seeing his bowers Everybody's saying, oh, replacement for Dallas Goddard. I don't think that's the way he's looking at it. I think he's looking at that as being an offensive weapon alone. Yeah, agreed. Yes, Godard who makes who makes that off much more, much more viable . And I think it was, you know, an excellent move to prepare for that . But now Alden Smith. Yeah, that's a very sad story . Yeah . So for those who for those who don't know he died Saturday, he was thirty six. He was found unresponsive in his car. He had six seasons in the NFL as a rookie , fourteen sacks . He came second in defensive rookie of the year in twenty twelve, nineteen and a half sacks. He was he was becoming an absolute force . He had a lot of off field issues, ten arrests in nine years and his career just kind of faded. He then he went he went to the raiders , the cowboys. He tried to he tried to come back with the Seahawks. He was arrested again. He was waved . And he's clearly been he's clearly had his had his troubles, but it's obviously it's very sad . He was a guy with a lot a huge amount of talent as a kind of outside linebacker pass rusher, you know, a three four ideally . And you know, thirty three and a half snacks in his first two years is a lot of sacks for any player. And he's playing on a really good San Francisco defense in those days, you know , with Patrick Willis in the in the middle . And then the arrest started, you know, DUIs , drug problems , weapons, carrying weapons . He wound up in rehab for I think two years. He missed two full seasons to rehab . The raiders were not necessarily the best place for him to go. We had one good the pattern was he would have a good year that said, okay, next year now he's ready to go and then he would lapse back . Dallas was probably not a great place for him to go. Seattle was a marvelous place for him to go and he would have in that leo if he could have position under Pete Carroll , but he hadn't he had that final DUI before he actually started playing for Seattle after they'd signed him and all they just they just released him pretty much on the spot, which was I mean sad for him because that was the perfect last chance for him, you know, if you're if you were going in and I think he probably would have been a standout in that Seattle defense if he could get anything like his his rookie form. I still haven't seen a cause of death but, no they haven't know that there was no it was natural causes . Yeah it hasn't been released and you know in the last couple of years he's been he's been trying to work with young players especially those who have had some off the fie ld issues. He's been determined to kind of turn the negatives in his life into positives for other people, which is, you know, obviously admirable . And the yeah , the day that he the day that he died, he was he was doing charity work . So he's he's a, you know, a man in his thirties who knew that he'd made a lot of mistakes , that things had gone wrong for him, he talked about his struggles and he was determined to try and help people learn from the things that he'd done. So our thoughts our thoughts for his family. Yeah, sometimes the hardest person to help is yourself . Yeah . If your business runs on five different apps, twelve browser tabs, and one spreadsheet that everyone's afraid to touch , it's probably time for Odu. 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Count on Granger for quality products, easy reordering and twenty four seven support. Call one eight hundred granger, click Granger. com or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done . I started Ornaud in twenty thirteen and we make bike apparel. The best part of Shopify for me is our ability to run the business as essentially non technical people . We're able to admin everything on the back end, front end, and sell things online easily. If Shopify were a bike accessory , I think it would actually be the bicycle. It's the thing that you'd do the thing on. We run the business on Shopify. Start your free trial on Shopify. com another former NFL player who has died in very different circumstances earlier this month, Raym ond Berry . He reached the grand old age of ninety three , Hall of Famer, wide receiver with the Baltimore Colts. For me, I always associate him with being head coach of the New England Patriots, but I'm sure Mike, you will have you will remember him as a wide receiver as well. And he's one of these players who because he was in that year first favorite he was my first favorite player . When I got to high school, I wore number eighty two . My coach wouldn't let wouldn't let me play offense . So it didn't do any good to be the next Raymond Berry . But he was he was and by that point too, I I had, you know, sort of moved on from Raymond Berry to Lance Allworth was probably my favorite receiver at that point . So I always think of these two together, Mike, and I'd love for you to kind of give me your perspective on this because when I see highlights of Barry and Ulworth and I and I see their stats, I have no concept of how players in that era , even though they had some incredible quarterbacks like Ray Berry, Johnny United throwing in the ball , how wide receivers in that era were able to do that. Not all of them could, obviously, very few could do what they did. But how did Raymond Berry make the amount of catches he was making at a time where the rules were designed to stop that from happening? You know you could just batter wide receivers . It was so difficult and yet he was open and just making all these catches . The first thing I'd say is go back and look at the film of the Greatest game ever played, the fifty eight championship game between the Colts and the Giants and watch the last drive that Baltimore abuses to tie the game and then the winning drive Barry has I think five catches in those two drives . And when you watch them, not only does he get open running pretty much simple what looked like simple passparals, but he also breaks tackles, keeps his balance. And the reason that he did this was this is a skinny six foot two hundred and eighty five pound receiver who didn't start on a high school team until his senior year and the high school team was coached by his father then went to and caught thirty three passes in his college career, although as he said, we all didn't run it. We didn't pass the ball very much . And he got drafted late by the colts. He made the team, which surprised people. And United came in the next year and the two of them clicked. And the reason they clicked was that United had been a good passer in college in an era where, you know, big passers were not the thing. It was at Louisville and nobody paid much attention to it . And he got cut by the steelers and he was playing semi pro and signed with the they both worked hard that craft of passing and nobody ran patterns the way Barry did. If Don Hudson was the guy who invented pass patterns, Raymond Barry was the guy who perfected it in the nineteen fifties . And he was slow. I think he was timed at four eight when somebody finally went around to timing them in the forty, which they didn't really do in those days. Not back then . But you watch him and you see how he's open and I used to I wouldn't say watch him all the time because obviously their games would show up now and again and that championship game was the first game I ever really watched on TV with the adults I'd seen live games at Yale , but I was seven years old and they let me sit with the adult men to watch that game while all my cousins and siblings were playing together with the kids and all the men I tell this story all the time. All the men were drinking high balls and smoking cigars . None of them were wearing giants or colts jerseys in those days hats , you were crazy . Yeah, no hats, nothing, nothing like that. They were men, they weren't kids . And my dad, they were all giants fans because we were in Connecticut bas,ically. But my dad had played against Andy Robistelli and in college. And you know, and they were the giants were a glamour team, but the Coles had stars too. You know, United was one and Lenny Moore and Alan the Horse and Miche and Gino Marquetti who was their equivalent of Andy Robistelli only he was bigger and tougher, you know, big daddy Lipscomb, Fatzo Donovan they were they were good solid teams all the way around and Barry just mesmerized me watching him get open and catch the ball. And I read as much as I could about him. He and United with practice after practice , Barry would dig he would on one of the practice fields, he dug what was like the landing pit for the long jump and the sidelines and he would practice diving to the sidelines and keeping his feet in bounds while he fell into the into the pit, catching catching the ball. Yeah . Their patterns were precise. Unitis led him precisely . And from him I gleaned one fact and I worked on it as much as I could without much coach, obviously no offensive coaching in high school and not much in college. But I said to my freshman year quarterback when I was playing split end and defense event on our freshman team. I said , I'm open if my body is between the defender and you if I don't look open, I'm open . Throw the ball anyway. And I believed firmly that if I could get myself between the defender and the quarterback, I could catch the ball as long as he didn't hit me before it came, you know? And that proved true. Now , since the Varsity quarterback would never talk to me, I couldn't say that to him , but they moved me into tight end, which made it a little bit different, but the same principle applied. And I think that's really what you see from Ray mond Berry plus the ability to keep his balance once he caught the ball, never drop it, get hit and keep going because one year he averaged like seventeen yards a catch and nobody looks at him as a down field receiver. It was mostly yards after the catch on the on these slamp slant roofs. So you know, I just he was just marvelous and he's to me the best receiver of the fifties . He's on the all decade team, obviously. Crazy Lakes Hersch is on that team, but he really only had one great year , which was probably the best receiving year anybody had until the twenty first century, I think . And Alworth is the only receiver from the sixties , who's in the Hall of Fame from the NFL or AF well, from the NFL's all decade team of sixties, Charlie Taylor's the only receiver who's in the Hall of Fame. Allworth and Don Maynard are both in the Hall of Fame from the AFL. But the NFL also has Dell Schaufner and Gary Collins and Boyd Dowler on that sixties team. And Collins and Dowler, Collins was better than Dowler as a receiver, but they were flankers. And in those days the flanker was either a half back who was playing out as a or he was a six foot six big receiver who ran slants like Raymond Berry . And that was what Dowler did and that's what Gary Collins did really well. And Schaufner, the other guy, was a great receiver who just had too short a peek. And I think people forget, but he looked like Raymond Berry, but he had speed and he was another Texas guy . So then as you said, Barry went on to coach . Some of his old teammates hired him. Forrest Greg was his teammate in college, hired him at I think Cleveland he was at that point . He wasn't an there was no Tyrell Owens in him . There was no AJ Brown, there was no Randy Moss, you know, he is these were the days before guys were were stars, but he wasn't a self promoter. He was a quiet guy. They loved him as an assistant coach because he wasn't going to try to take their job or promote himself . And he had retired. He was fired by the Patriots when he was assistant coach because the head coach got fired and they hired a worse head coach Ron Meyer . And they brought him out. He was selling real estate in Massachusetts, and they brought him out and hired him as head coach and he turned the team around him midseason. He turned them around to a nine and seventeen and the next year they went eleven and five. They were the first wildcard team to make the Super Bowl. They won three games on the road in the playoffs and then they ran into the bears . They had the misfortune of running into the bears when it was the great best bear. But they beat a brilliant dolphins team at in the orange bowl when they hadn't won in the Orange Bowl for like fourteen years or something and that was absolutely incredible. And I think perhaps his coaching story gets diminished a little bit because of the fact they got demolished by one of the greatest teams ever. But dolphins team was everyone assumed that dolphins team was going to win that game comfortably and the patriots went in and beat them . They were a better team than the Patriots were for sure . But everyone forgets with the score seven nothing, the Patriots Tony Eason was the quarterback. They drove down the field . They were in touchdown position . Stanley Morgan ran a slant toward the posts in the end zone. Esan threw the ball and it bounced off his chest and I held at the time and I still think it would have been a closer game had the Patriots tied it at seven . I don't think they had a chance of beating the bears, but forty six to ten was not a fair fair account. But Stanley Morgan dropped that pass. And then Barry eventually got fired by the Patriots. He was considered too easy a coach, too much of a player's coach, you know, too easy going and they needed a tougher guy. And he then coached a couple of more years , I think as a quarterbacks coach for two teams if I remember right for a year each and then retired . But you know, a gentleman , a smart guy , a great answer of football questions. And to me, as I said, the best receiver of the nineteen fifties and a guy who is strangely overlooked when people put together their all time teams because he wouldn't be if I was picking three receivers for a modern style all star all time team, he wouldn't be in the three , but he would be in the second team, I think for I mean, he was an absolute technician when it was incredibly difficult to play wide receiver one of the most difficult positions on the field, if not the most difficult position to play on the field at that time in history . And he was he had seasons where he was getting an average of one hundred yards a game at a point where your leading wide receiver might get fifty yards a game I've got we've got time for one question from the Hickory's mailbank before we get out of here. He was also a small white guy and being a slow white guy , I looked up to him . By the end of the sixties, my favorite receiver was Howard Twilly of the Dolphins , who was a slow white guy who also was small . So he had every handicap you might believe. And he caught he caught like one hundred and fifteen passes in college. Tulsa was one of the first teams to really go with that wide open spread kind of offense . And he was a remarkable guy himself, but I just threw that in just a if you've a second. Yeah, if you're listening and you've not really seen Raymond Berry play, look at some highlights on YouTube. Look at I mean at the very least look at the highlights for the nineteen fifty eight championship game, the game that is called the greatest game ever played. He had one hundred and seventy eight yards receiving in that game at a time when that was that was not a common thing. Before we get out of here , we're going to go to the Hickory's mailbag and it's a it's a kind of a philosophical question. I just want your gut take on it, Mike, before we finish here. And it's from RT Torrence , friend of the show . Hi gents . Is the NFL a world sport? Or is it a sport played and supported by a world audience? So with the World Cup on right now, obviously the NFL is not going to reach World Cup status, but Mike, do you feel the NFL is now a world sport ? No , I don't think you can elevate it to that level yet . I think it's a world event and I question seriously viewing figures on, you know, on the World Cup , which were released the next morning after the, you know, because anyone who knows ratings knows that you can't get complete ratings nowadays overnight. You never you know, you can get overnights in a in a few mil in a few markets but not and and they've been caught before doing things like pro rating the audience in Shanghai by a factor that brings two billion people or assume. And remember that the games are played in American time. You know, the British were complaining there was a great there's a great colon from Portsmouth me video meme on the side where the guys complain ing about having, you know , not being able to watch the games in prime time because the Americans are watching in prime time. Why can't we keep up with them ? And they say, So you're not, you know, you're you're big a football fan. He says, No, I'm from Portsmouth . But anyhow , but you know, I think the NFL's done a great job of spreading the sport around the world to the point where it is a spectacle and the Super Bowl becomes an event and it's a popular in a number of countries during the season , you know, quite quite a few. But it's got a long way to go, I think, in terms of overall playing acceptance . And there's a huge gap between the top country and the second country and an even bigger gap between the second country and the third country, say in terms of playing caliber . So I think it's it's off that and soccer has a huge advantage in the sense that it's the biggest sport in most of Europe and most of South America, which gives them two almost captive markets . In much of South America, there's very there's not many solid number two sports in the in those countries . And Africa, of course, it's coming on leaps and bound s. But, you know, when the NFL the NFL's done a great job of now opening Africa to recruiting , bringing in players, you know who are already having an impact, I think . But as long as the path to playing in the NFL revolves around playing in US college sport , which I think it does for the most part still . The International Development Program has done remarkable work with a few people . But those players are at a disadvantage compared with someone who's had three or four years in the SEC. Exactly . Yeah exactly. And it means almost by definition, it has to be a limited number of players who can get that attention that they need. I mean, it's made huge progress. And if you'd asked me this twenty years ago, I would have said no way . So the fact that we're even we can even talk about it now. Yes, yes . Yeah. Yeah . I mean, I think obviously and these two sports are nowhere near football , but cricket and basketball the closest, I would say to being a world sport. But the thing is with cricket , there are a huge number of people, but it's so it's because of India. It's hu age. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny puts the number of football purists to football purists who say to me things like, can you know, why is the World Cup and the only country in the world where football is not the main sport ? I said, blame the have ever been in Ireland ? It's not but the fact the holes in football's world reach are precisely the British Commonwealth . Yeah and you know the, four biggest countries in the world, football's not the biggest sport in any of them except Russia . India , China is still undecided, but basketball table tennis is the biggest sport, but the biggest team sport, basketball right now, basketball . India , Pakistan , the United States, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Australia, New Zealand , the Pacific Islands , the British Pacific Islands . Ireland, Lithuania, Israel , South Africa, although South Africa is changing rapidly . You know, those are the countries where football's not the number one sport. I think crickets cricket and rugby have similar dis persals around the world very comparable to baseball and ice hockey . Yeah . They've got these pockets where people will love it. But they have the bigger they have the bigger countries, although hockey's huge in Russia as well . But they each have somewhere between eight and twelve first class teams and somewhere between eight and twelve respectable second class teams , but there's a huge gap between the A group and the B group which some of the sports themselves do not do encourage that changing rugby being particularly bad in that in that area , you know, where at the world rugby world cups, they used to the six big teams would all play on weekends and the other teams would play force the midweek each other in midweek matches, then play a big team three days later and then have a week and a half off before they repeated the process . Yeah, which always rugby seemed to have no interest . Yeah, it had no interest in kind of building up those smaller countries. It was right. We just need the matches between the big nations and so in the smaller countries produce good players, they steal them . Yeah , yeah, they become naturalized very quickly. Now we don't know when La Cross will reach will reach this list, but for now, Mike, we'd better we'd better get out of here. Normal service would be resumed . Do not hold your breath. It's going on, but still and La Crosse is the same way It.'s going to be the Olympics. He's coming to the Olympics as well . Yeah , it's an exhibition sport in LA. Yeah. You know, I've done the I've covered the world championships in Britain even when they were in Berry ' ninety four, I think it was , you know, and and even with the huge advantage they had , not so much over Canada, but over Britain, England and Australia , the Americ an guys in charge of the tournament were trying everything they could to gain more advantage and you know, it just and then of course the fifth nation in La Cross is the Iroquois nation , but they've been barred from two tournaments in Britain so far because they don't have biometric passports and they refuse to travel on their American or Canadian passp orts out of principle . I didn't know that. That is fascinating . Yeah, it became a diplomatic cause predecur with Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and trying to get the British to waive the rule. And he was one of those things where, well, you guys insisted on the rule in the first place . Well, I am, but we're going to I have been talking to England Lacrosse just the past few days. Maybe I'll bring it up to them next time I speak to them . That is not a joke. I have been in communication with the Lacrosse Government. I should confess that Ben's daughter is already a qualified lacrosse coach . Which makes me feel very old, Mike. Makes me feel very old. We have a vest we have a vested interest your daughter and I promoting the game. It's a great game . Yeah, she's become newly qualified, very, very proud of her . Her local lacrosse club, they had a donation that was being used to get to get some of the older youth players there to become qualified coaches and help the younger kids, which is which is brilliant there's a lovely sport. If you are an NFL fan and you don't like the idea of your child playing American football, get them playing Lacrosse and they can follow in Mike's shoes. But on that note, we're gonna head out of here, Mike , thank you so much and next time next time you'll speak with Nat and you'll be able to figure out the biggest comedy star of the nineteen eighties which I was banned from talking to you about Nat's gonna Nat's gonna take care of that one. Until then , thanks Mike, thanks for listening. He's not the boss for nothing exactly. He writes the checks . I'll catch you all soon. Bye bye