Seth Wickersham

But I think it's also just like naturally where my brain goes.

Like I was just an avid reader of Sports Illustrated and ESPN the magazine growing up reading folks like you know David Halberstam Joan Didion like a Talese like Wright Thompson Seth Wickersham like all these incredible magazine writers I was I was reading Vic like just die hard in college and in high school and learning a lot about just kind of this way you talk about sports through this cultural lens how does sports kind of reflect whatever is happening culturally or politically or economically in America at any given moment.

So there's always these like threads underneath, I think, the biggest stories in sports.

And you can see this throughout the course of, I mean, even recent sports history.

I mean, you remember this was like peak July content.

Seth Wickersham did this big deep dive.

Not deep dive, excuse me.

He embedded with the Broncos during their run in the playoffs last year.

People can have their own outlets to express themselves and express their views, opinions, and viewpoints, and they don't have to use a reporter as a conduit anymore.

And that, while saying that, I think the people who are able to do the type of, not even just books, but narrative nonfiction and journalism, especially in sports, people like Maren Fader and Chris Herring and Jeff Perlman, Seth Wickersham.

It's pretty, pretty remarkable what we're able to do in this day and age, I would say.

Why do you say that?

But what is unique with Brady is that he's a minority owner of the Raiders.

And when he first started announcing for Fox, Seth Wickersham at ESPN wrote that he was subject to a bunch of rules, including one prohibiting him from criticizing the officials.

Now, the NFL has like relaxed the rules on him over the last two years.

And they gave a statement to FOS, Mark Maskey, a few months ago when he was writing that Aikman had similar restrictions because he was working with the Dolphins front office.

And I've also been really fortunate to have, like I said, I mentioned Jim Thomas, but Bernie Miklas and Brian Burwell, columnists at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who were always quick to answer questions or be helpful in some kind of way.

Um, and I still have that at ESPN, Seth Wickersham, like, you know, we have the Mizzou connection, someone that, that I'm pretty close with that, that I can ask questions to.

And, uh, Dan Graziano, you know, up and down the list, like there's so many people who, um, who help you.

And, and really at the end of the day, it's one of those things where it's like, you know, there ain't nothing to it, but to do it.

We saw it last night, right? I mean, Drake May and Caleb Williams definitely using their legs to keep plays alive or first downs, etc.

I guess what I need to see from Bo Nix this week... is enough where those that would be skeptics of our interview months ago with Seth Wickersham, who wrote an entire story about the Broncos, and Seth at ESPN.com saying, oh, Bo Nix and Sean Payton are fine.

For the skeptics to not be able to say, are we sure they're fine? That's what I need to see from Bo Nix.

Make the declaration that you are definitively the starting quarterback for the Denver Broncos, and there will be no change anytime soon.

There were a lot of questions about Caleb Williams in that first season and on into the second season about... whether he was actually the best quarterback off the board in that draft and whether the bears had missed the trick by not drafting Drake May, which touches a real nerve in Chicago, right? As, as you well know, and as bears fans can tell you, because the bears infamously passed up on the chance to draft Patrick Mahomes, they've wrecked every quarterback pretty much that's ever played in the windy city.

Even Caleb Williams told Seth Wickersham, who was doing his book just over a year ago, he would rather have gone to Minnesota than gone to Chicago, but all that water is now under the bridge.

Um, When I talk about the similarities between both of these teams, this is, to me, as a Thursday night showdown, it's the battle of the two coaches with the biggest auras in the NFL, the two head coaching auras here, Mike Rabel and Ben Johnson.

These guys both have... bunch of players who will run through walls for them.

I'm genuinely curious.

I mean, Andy, we read the Seth Wickersham article.

Yeah.

I don't, I don't think, like...

... dissension going on.

Well, that is...

Back to your point about the Seth Wickersham article.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And look, and, and I agree there were a lot of questionable things in that article, but it was very clear that Caleb Williams and the coaching staff, not just from that article, but from other things as well, the, the Seth Wickersham book, they, they were not on the same page in 2024.

2025, they get on the same page, and that's more of what I'm getting at, not to go back to 2024, but to talk about that Ben Johnson, Caleb Williams combination because Caleb didn't have the coach in 2024.

He struggles.