Tell us about that.

I always kind of think about to one of those old Looney Tunes cartoons or one of the old movie tropes where you got the devil on one shoulder, you got the angel on the other.

And one guy's telling you to do the bad stuff and one guy's telling you, no, no, no, make the good decision.

Make sure you do the thing that's going to set you up for future success.

And I feel like there's two little McVeighs sitting on Sean McVeigh's shoulders telling him opposite things that...

Sean McVay wants to throw the ball.

Sean McVay wants to be innovative.

What's going on in that ever-critical yet rarely discussed third phase of the game?

really do, especially on paper, absolutely.

Yeah, they do not look on that favorably.

And when the Rams finished the season the way they did last year and they went out and they got Trent McDuffie and then they went out and got Jalen Watson, and that felt like, okay, you addressed the issue that the team had, their inability to cover.

One of the biggest examples was A.J. Brown last year.

They just had no answer.

for him at all.

And so you addressed it.

I think

Yeah

...

the bigger question is whether or not he's Myles Garrett or...

And if he is Myles Garrett, do you get the full Myles Garrett experience or not, that...

You know, I, I, I'm a, I'm a big believer, I've said this on, on the pod a million times, like, I'm, I'm gonna go by what you do, not by what you say, right? So when the, the, the Rams brass is, "Oh, he's fine, he's fine, it's just this, it's just this, it's rest, it's a veteran day, it's not a big deal.

He could play." Like, uh, o- okay, fine.

All I know is he's not practicing as much as I'm sure everybody would like him to practice.

And, and can they be successful doing that and, and stay in front of the sticks? That's what the, that's what Kyle Shanahan's gonna try to do, and that's what they're gonna have to do or Brock Purdy's gonna start he- gonna need to heave some stuff on third and longs.

And so, um, before we really kind of unpack the project, everything, but just, Travis, if you don't mind, share a little bit about Orion Solutions.

Sure.

So, you know, we're essentially a vegetation management solutions provider, and w- we serve a lot of the specialty markets, you know, habitat restoration, forestry, land management, transportation and energy, range and pasture, aquatics.

So we work in a lot of diverse market segments, but with that we have a, a team of experts that have a lot of technical knowledge.

And so what we do is try to provide the technical expertise as well as the products and, you know, related services to help support all the folks in the field that are trying to do vegetation management.

Again, um, you know, a lot of us are very passionate about, um, hunting and fishing and outdoors and, you know, certainly conservation is something that's important to us- And so we get to basically our work, um, is, you know, a lot of times not considered work, but we love talking with folks about how to manage land, you know, to help a- achieve their objectives.

In a lot of cases it's, you know, trying to improve it for habitat for either recreation or wildlife purposes.

You, you are our adjuvant expert.

Mm-hmm

...

if it were just him and Harper, I'd say, okay, that- that's okay.

But if you put Mitchell on top of that, then all of a sudden- Trouble ... you're j- McCain gets tossed into a bigger role than he should probably have.

Isaiah Joe all of a sudden has to play a little bit more, so you're not as good defensively.

So if it's the two versus the one, I'll, I'll take the, I'll take San Antonio's, uh, having the edge there.

He's unbelievable

...

Yep

... [chuckles] and I, I don't think you have to really work that hard to get there.

I think it's a reasonable position for both groups.

I think, uh, two, maybe two and a half things need to happen for the Rams to, to have a, a, a very good chance to win this game.

Number one, and Sean McVay talked about it after the, the Bill- uh, the Bears lo- uh, win.

That is his...

I, I, I don't even know the right word for it, Corbin, his reluctance maybe to run the football.

So, uh, I, I think two and a half is too big, to be [chuckles] honest with you.

What are the Rams' vibes right now going into this game? Obviously they won in Chicago, but it hasn't always been pretty the last few weeks.

No, it hasn't.

They really have not put their best foot forward in the better part of two months.

You go back and you look at the last time that the Rams played four quarters of really high-quality football.

It was on November 23rd against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on a Sunday night.

That was the last time that I think the Rams would – if they were being honest about it, say we played nearly one of our best games.

The offense was good, the defense was good, the special teams, if nothing else, at least didn't get in the way.

So going into this game, what are you looking at for the Rams as far as what they need to do? What do they need to accomplish in order to go to Seattle, beat this red-hot Seahawks team, and get to the Super Bowl?

Like, what are the things that can't go or don't- that can't go wrong, or they can't afford to go wrong, or need to just go right that we maybe haven't seen four full quarters of?

Yeah, I think there are two things, and I think that they go together.

I think that when they have an opportunity to score points, they need to put points on the board.

We saw in Carolina where it, it w- it was a weird situation because I kind of understand what Sean McVay was trying to do.

He was trying to end the game in the first half.

He was trying to put that three-touchdown lead on the board and just have this thing just basically, "Let's get out of here.

This game's over.

Like, it- we're just happy to be here and have a good time, and I think the Rams are like, "No, we gotta win this game." Like, Super Bowl window is right now, and I think Chicago's just, like, having fun, and the r- it's almost frustrating, I think, for, for the Rams and other teams to look at Chicago and be like, "W- you guys are..." Like, not that they're not taking it seriously, but like, "You guys don't deserve this the way we deserve this."

But also good on the Dodgers saying, "Maybe we need a closer."

I, I think they finally, I, I, I don't wanna say figured something out, because I think they're the smartest guys in the sport.

So I think they, they, they finally just decided to do it a little bit differently.

Because the criticism for Roberts, you know, this is the fifth time, excuse me, sixth time they've been in the World Series in, or fifth time they've been in the World Series, in the last 10 years.

And the, the criticism was always exactly what you were just describing, Sully, was that, "Well, this is what led us to 103 wins, 105 wins, 111 wins, and this is the formula that works for us." Well, it works over the course of 162 games because- Big numbers add up to this amount of wins, but they finally altered their philosophy in the postseason last year.

And, and they did it not because I think they had a philosophical change, they did it because they had no choice.

Not the Mets.

No, no. It's not this, this drunken sailor spending where I'll, you know, just do who's the most, I'll take one of those and one of these.

And I know the Rams are going to do everything they can to make it that Clint Kubiak can't do that and get a lot of third and longs like they did the first time.

Yeah, I think, you know, you mentioned him having a short memory from what happened last time.

I think we're both looking at exactly the same things from different sides, that this is not just what they did to him at SoFi Stadium where they forced him into four interceptions.

This is three times in a row that they've absolutely terrorized him.

That you go back to last season in Minnesota on a Thursday night, actually, they sacked him seven times and they broke him.

Then he came back to the playoff game in the wildcard round, which was actually played in Arizona because of the fires we had here in Los Angeles.

They sacked him nine times.

So there might be some different ingredients to what we saw in that first matchup in terms of matchups, positional battles that we need to watch in this one.