From High School to Packers: Football is Back

It's time for Make the Call, a weekly discussion on the top Wisconsin sports stories of the week.

You can listen to the show anytime on the free Civic Media app.

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Now, it's time for Make the Call, a Civic Media sports production.

Happy weekend to you.

It is Make the Call, part of the Civic Media radio network.

I'm Jimmy Cuska, sports director here at Civic Media, and we are

into the football season, our first official games being played at the high school level this week.

College football right around the corner and of course the NFL actual games that count in the standings that everything happened in early September.

We are happy to have you along today and we'll get to some of the high school talk later in the program.

We'll also hear from Mike Clemens and a sports week in review.

We'll do all that coming up here in just a bit.

But right now, time to welcome aboard the co-host of the program.

First, we head to the Northwoods and we welcome in the member of upper management overseeing this whole thing and making sure I don't say anything stupid, which is impossible.

This is Greg Henderson at Park Falls.

What's up, Greg?

Good morning, Jimmy.

Glad to be here, and you're right.

It's an impossible effort, you ask of me, but a try, I will, nonetheless.

And we head now to Madison, where we have the person who is actually, like, honestly, probably the most important part of this, because he's the one, you know, pressing the button to record us, and Aaron's and broadcast us all across the state.

That would be Parker Vertical Olson.

What's up, Parker?

I'm just, I'm thinking about all these buttons.

Jimmy, and it's a lot of buttons.

I don't know if people know this, but there's a lot of buttons involved in radio.

And I just, eh, I'm not fueling all the buttons.

I don't need

all the buttons.

I did a career day once and they asked me what I do for a living.

I'm like, I talk in a soundproof room to myself and I press a button.

Yeah.

And it's a silly life.

And I'm like, oh, wait, that's what radio is.

Yeah.

You want even better reactions call it a padded room.

You'll get some looks.

Let me tell you

Yeah, sometimes I wear a jacket, you know, it's just what it is, but you know radio day, so it was a fun fun week to post about oh I don't know 180 years in radio for me.

You guys have been in it for a while It's just it's just great to be here talking sports and this is what we do and we should probably talk some sports on a sports program We will recap the second Packers preseason game will do that coming up

About a half hour from now.

Again, we will have my Clemens later in the program with the sports week in review.

Talk some brewers, talk a little bit of Badgers to boot.

But we have to get started.

We are doing the top eight at eight to round out our summer programs the next couple of weeks.

And we start at number eight.

These are the top eight sports or not sports stories of the week.

And right away with number eight is high school football season.

I just coached in a game yesterday.

where I'm at in Southwestern, Wisconsin.

We had over, you know, over 400 teams flying high school football in the state.

You don't have to go too far to find one.

So I got to ask you guys, what's your favorite part of high school football?

For me, it's something that exists within any given high school sport, frankly, it's the community support.

It's not unique to football, but sports kind of has that magic way of wrapping people up in the moment, even if they're not paying attention up till that point.

I'm talking about that moment where, you know, maybe you've got a tight game and

your offense goes long.

Passing in high school football depends on the size of the town you're in a lot of the time, but you stand up to see what happens with that pass, and you don't even realize it until the ball comes down and the result is determined.

Like, wait, when did I stand up just now?

But everybody did.

The moment demanded it, and there you are being part of it, even though all you did was just lift yourself off the bench.

It's such a cool feeling to realize, whoa, there was something just moved through this audience.

Is that, am I waxing poetic too much for the first answer of the day?

That was beautiful, Gray.

Man.

I

was

waiting for the music to play underneath that.

Wow.

That's a great explanation of sports in general.

That was beautiful, Gray.

Well, thank you.

I'm glad I didn't make too much of a fool of myself.

I'll try again later.

Well, I'm sure you'll do better later.

Yeah, I mean, you kind of hit the nail on the head.

Community is just one of those

things.

I'm just wiping tears from my eyes right now.

I know, it was

beautiful.

It was really, it's hard to put words together now.

Community, you're right, Gray.

It's just one of those things in high school sports.

High school football, especially, is kind of the best example of nobody cares about what anybody really thinks about anything other than this game and who you're rooting for.

It's just a cool place to see a bunch of people come together and have a good time.

I think high school football among high school sports is unique in a lot of aspects.

I should say a lot, a couple aspects, and mostly it's that...

Um, you know, it's a sport that most kids participated in, you know, especially boys.

Um, and it's also something that only happens once a week.

So, you know, a lot of the other sports that you have in high school, they're playing multiple events a week for the most part, not every, but most.

Um, and you've got this every week.

It's like an appointment.

It's like probably why NFL and college people are so popular.

You know, we've got high school Friday, college Saturday, NFL Sunday.

Well, NFL every day now at this point, or if you're the action, action league, you've got that every night too.

But

The main point is is that it's once a week and I think people look forward to it.

And as you guys said, there is a big community aspect to high school football, high school sports in general, because why we spend so much time here at Civic Media with 10 stations doing games across the network this year.

We are at everything, including we had eight games just on the air this week.

We have the Packers obviously on a Friday night, which took away a few of the signals.

But we had a lot of high school football already in week one and.

There's a lot more to come once our stations, Minnesota and Michigan catch up their seasons open up coming up here this coming week.

Number seven in our top eight at eight.

And the question is this, I don't know which one of you knuckleheads put this on here, but catching your son's first home run ball is the equivalent of what?

And I remember this story from this week.

This was a brewers prospect, right?

That had this happen.

That's really cool, actually.

That's incredible.

What are the odds?

I wrote the question, Jimmy, and I can't think of a good answer for it.

I don't know what this is the equivalent of.

Lightning in a bottle, probably.

What are the odds of that?

It's

so, whoa.

Well, and that's kind of what stands out to me, Parker, as I was thinking about this.

And only one of us has any kids.

Only one of us might have ever caught a homerun ball that I'm aware of.

Maybe you guys have it, Ampham or something like that.

But I looked at this question and thought, I'm woefully unprepared.

So honestly, my lame answer is like, if you're out in the woods and you see an incredibly rare animal of some kind that you don't expect to, like you know

it's theoretically possible and it's temporary.

That moment leaves.

It doesn't actually necessarily have a permanent and lasting change that it brings to your life.

But it's an incredible opportunity that you can't.

Is it even comparable?

That might be the real question.

Jimmy, you might be the best position to answer this question.

What comes to mind for you as a father and the only father here?

Well, you know, I think that the odds of a home run ball, especially incredibly low because the home run

can literally go anywhere.

The only thing I've got that's comparable is that kids very early in their soccer careers, they do those parents versus kids kind of things.

And my younger kid, you know, doesn't score a lot of goals.

He just, he's kind of a squirrel.

He just runs around or whatever.

But his first goal and that parents versus kids scrimmage when he was in 4k, he slid down on his ground.

He landed, you know, he landed right on his butt and he kicked it, it came up, it hit me.

my backside and went into the goal.

And now he tells everybody that he scored a buck goal.

So that's kind of the equivalent for me as a parent.

I don't, catching a home run ball is so improbable in any circumstance, but especially your own kid's first one.

I mean, that is really crazy.

That is a really, truly unique thing in sports.

So you're telling me that Mark Sanchez walked so he could run?

Yeah, exactly.

Or fall as it turns out.

But yeah, that was his first goal and it was against me.

And yeah, he was very, very proud of what part of his body was responsible for that.

As you can imagine, a four-year-old at the time, maybe seven now, but yeah.

Anyway, all right, let's talk some sports here.

Number six in our top eight today.

What's your favorite special sporting event?

So there's a lot of unique kind of games that get set up.

For example, Wisconsin Badgers are playing at Lambeau this year.

Pretty cool.

The MLB has invested a bunch of money in Dyersville, Iowa to play field of the field of dreams game there.

Do you guys have a favorite special event in sports that happens on the calendar, whether it's every year or every few years?

I mean, just the Little League World Series as a whole.

is my favorite thing I think it is on ESPN for pretty much two weeks non-stop it just started this week and it is always been a favorite of mine since I was a little kid older than those kids were even probably then when I started watching it I was like this is this is cool these are people that are close enough to my age that they're on TV they're playing a sport that we love it's really cool but now I look at it I'm like this is I've always said that division three college football is probably like the most pure form of college athletics but little league baseball is the most pure

form of sports and of being a kid.

It's just, I think it's one of the most awesome things ever.

Gray, what's one of your favorites?

I totally agree with you on the little league thing.

But for me, it's field of dreams specifically because it has that impact from even people like me who haven't been as historically into baseball as other sports.

I'll admit, though, even with that being said, I actually finally watched that movie all the way through for the first time earlier this year.

But I'm really glad that I waited because I straight up wouldn't have gotten it.

I might have had good memories, but like the

the fatherly relationship that's at work behind all of it.

And it's like, yeah, it's about baseball players, but it's actually not.

It's about interpersonal relationships with people you love and pattern your life after.

Like I wouldn't have gotten that.

Guess we get poetic gray today, by the way.

I'm thinking, I'm blaming you on this one.

You set me up here.

That's fair.

Oh man, we gotta have the music just whenever Grace starts talking today.

Just little soft piano music in the background.

That's great.

Mine, by the way, is the opposite of all this.

When the NHL puts hockey outside or college hockey goes outside,

I'm in and you've sold me on the idea of taking professional hockey players on a 10 below day in Boston or Minneapolis.

You're putting them outside and telling them to go play when they're so used to playing in those cozy little arenas and don't have to worry about elements.

You get a little bit of snow or freezing drizzle and they can't even play these outdoor games.

But to me, that's just it's just amazing that they would try to play professional hockey games outdoors and have it count the standings.

That is insane to me, but also insanely awesome.

So.

That's my vote for this one.

Number five in the top eight at eight, the Badgers.

Do you think they'll finally have a quarterback make it through an entire season?

I mean,

hopefully.

It's funny because for the last couple of years, they've been excited about their quarterbacks because they keep getting these transfers that everyone's like, OK, yeah, this this could be the guy that the Badgers that kind of evolve into a more modern offense with because he's got a good arm and he's a little bit of a dual threat.

Maybe they've just had terrible luck with injuries.

So I don't know that the tea leaves are any different this year than they were in previous years, but everything that we're seeing from Colton Joseph so far has been like.

Yeah, he's gonna be a good leader.

He seems pretty confident.

He's got that dual threat ability.

So, Gray, what do you think?

Can the injury bugs stay away?

Well, I'm hoping so.

The one thing that really buoys me here is that we aren't hearing any scary stories about how the offensive line has been performing in practice situations or anything like that.

So, there's no reason to believe things will go horribly awry, but there haven't been for the last three years.

You end up with torn ACLs and broken hands and crazy things like that anyway.

Here's one thing I don't know maybe you guys have considered, maybe you haven't, but

Maybe they thought that previous quarterbacks didn't have enough first names, so they got Colton Joseph here with two of them ready to rock.

Okay, more seriously though, I get a little bit nervous anytime you can describe somebody as a dual threat quarterback because, well, Jackson Dart and Josh Allen come to mind.

Josh Allen's been doing it safely, but Jackson Dart already ended a season by playing that way, and he would be far from the first quarterback to do so.

I was actually watching some

Kirk Cousin's Vikings content recently from when he tore his Achilles, and he was actually talking about how optimistic he is about playing through injury because he's a pocket passer.

And that just isn't as available depending on the injury, depending on the situation for somebody like Colton Joseph.

So I'll call myself cautiously optimistic, but I would say that every day.

So what's actually changed?

Jimmy, what are you thinking?

You know, it's going to come down to whether or not they're effective.

I mean, their schedule doesn't really get tough.

You know, it's a pretty, honestly, pretty light schedule.

They've got a couple of

hangers in there, but I don't know.

I think any position you're asking someone, can you make it through 12, 13, 14 games and not have issues?

That's a tall order, especially a position like quarterback, which is going to get hit a lot.

I just done that front, even if it's not the Badgers, I would err on the side of no, no quarterback is getting through this unscathed.

They're going to miss quarter, maybe a game.

I had to make my bet, I would say no, but I think

The point of the question is, do they have someone that they're going to lock in for the whole year?

That is their true starter.

And even if they do get danged, is that going to be their guy?

I'm a little higher on that this year.

I feel like there's been a lot of optimism about what they've got at the position.

But we won't know until they turn the lights on the player.

We just won't know.

And that first game is a tough one.

So I'm a little more optimistic this year, maybe, than I have been the past couple.

But so much changes of football.

So it's really hard to know for sure.

Let's go to number four in our top eight today, and then we'll take a quick break on this We are gonna recap the Packers game from Friday night here just a bit but this is more of a question about anything in preseason Do you think that or how much do you think starters should be playing in the preseason games in the NFL?

They get three games to get in there I'm just curious what you guys thoughts are on whether or not

We should be seeing the starters more here in these three games.

If you guys don't mind, I've got I've actually thought about this one because I saw that question.

I thought, you know, that's a fascinating question.

And having never been a coach, I need to put that disclaimer out front.

But here's the thing.

There are four possible combinations here at all.

Either you play in preseason or you don't.

And either you play well in the regular season or you don't.

That means there are you do the simple math.

There's four possible combinations.

At this point, I'm just into my thirties.

And I have already seen all four of those combinations dozens of times, which tells me that anything is possible.

So I'll go back to coaching.

I figure coaching has.

just as much to do with success as the preseason approach to playing starters.

So I know that doesn't necessarily give a yes or no.

They should play or they shouldn't.

If you're going to play them, it shouldn't probably be much.

And you should find a way to coach that up into some regular season success.

Frankly, there's some some magic coaching sauce here that I think is necessary for whatever choice you make.

I don't think there's one obvious best choice, though, because again, I've seen every version of this even just in the last 10 years.

And some people have done fantastically.

Some people have done

terribly, it might matter by player or by position coach.

Do you guys see, I can't see a general trend here that has me believing there's one right answer.

Do you guys spot something that I haven't mentioned?

I mean, to me, the most important thing is you can't replicate game speed in practice, no matter what.

And it doesn't matter how much of a, how long you've been a pro.

You could be Aaron Rogers or you could be

Whoever the rookie quarterback is this year you can't replicate game speed and you've got to actually take a second to get okay This isn't practice anymore.

This is an actual game.

So to me starters at the very least should play I would say a Total of a quarter maybe in the preseason just so they can get that taste and I don't care if it's spread out across all three games Or it's the first game or the last game whatever it is there probably should be a pretty

sizable amount just to give you guys a taste of okay this is what a game feels like because we're not talking about practice boys we're talking about a real game and it's different right Jimmy you know this you're a coach

yeah I'm gonna try to keep this as short as I can because we've got to get to our next segment but here is here's what I'll say there are only three preseason games so you have a small amount of time to do it

Your roster cutouts don't happen until after the third game now.

That's different from prior years where they would have different levels of cuts throughout the preseason to kind of whittle it down to what you actually want to look at.

But I will offer this as well.

Teams are doing joint practices.

They are doing, you know, they're doing more in that regard to kind of find these things in game speed in a very controlled environment.

A game is not a super controlled environment.

But if they can get those game speed reps with another team and do it kind of in these joint practices, I think that's where you're kind of seeing

where a lot of those starters that might be normally doing the things you guys are talking about, they're doing those in a controlled practice setting where they can just reset if something doesn't look right and try to adjust from there, where you can't really do that in a preseason game.

And I also feel like the preseason games are much more about team ownership management saying, we can get full admission price for this.

We can get TV rights on this.

There's always been this big debate about how many they should have.

Honestly, do we need pre-season at all?

Do we maybe just need one game?

Just to say let's do it up and go.

That's been the argument because they've gone from having 14 regular season to 16 and now 17 regular season games and now the pre-season games they used to have.

Sometimes they had six or seven pre-season games.

Now they've got four and now three and they were on the Hall of Fame game.

And that's kind of the trend I'm seeing, personally.

I think that the starters, though, kind of up to the teams what they want to see, but I'm with you guys in a quarter, maybe, to get your bases in and just see what it looks like live.

That's probably about all you need for film, right?

There's a lot that goes on in the NFL that doesn't happen at the level of a coach, but I feel like if you can get it done in practice, you're feeling good about it.

We are going to talk a little baseball in this next segment.

We're going to talk that, and then we'll recap the Packers game from Friday night.

do that coming up right here on Make The Call, part of the Civic Media radio network.

Welcome back to Make the Call on Civic Media.

Welcome back to Make the Call here in the Civic Media Radio Network.

Mike Clemens will be joining us later in the program with the Sports Weekend Review.

We'll also recap the high school football scores from around the state on the Civic Media Radio Network as well.

We have eight games across the network.

Talk about those coming up here in just a bit.

Coming up in about 10 minutes or so, I'm going to talk about the Packers game that happened Friday night, but right now we have numbers three and two in our top eight and eight.

We're going to talk some baseball in this segment.

The Brewers this week, they had a big explosion of points.

They took two or three from the Mariners, but I think the one that caught everybody's eye was them tying a record with a 22-nothing shutout for whatever reason decided not to do the extra point and went for two and demolishing the Mariners.

I think it was Tuesday night this week.

I'm curious, guys, does

that display of offensive power, which jumped them up to like fourth and run scored and, you know, tops and run differential.

Does that offensive explosion, you know, help ease any concerns you have about maybe what they can do on offense going forward?

I hate to say no, but frankly, no, this can happen all the time.

And it's important to remember that I believe seven of these runs came against a position player who was pitching later on in the game.

So the one dude threw it into the stands like, yeah, I know.

Yes.

Oh god.

Oh, I stood up off the couch.

I'm a brewer fan.

And I went, what are you doing?

There's two outs.

Dude, I was upset for him.

There was

fucking little league.

You called for three outs and little

league.

It's so easy.

But no, honestly, it doesn't do a ton for me on the offensive concerns because of the fact that it's baseball.

This happens.

And then the next day, the Brewers lost seven to five and they were down seven.

Oh, so like, yeah.

Sorry, it's fun to see, but I don't think it's a really big thing long term.

Gray, what about you?

You know, I might actually deviate a little bit here.

I won't say that it's going to be the kind of success you can expect long term, but I don't know.

I feel like I believe that it is possible to manufacture not even similar success.

Twenty two is ridiculous.

I think we should call out that it was the largest shutout in MLB history.

Like again, seven runs stacked on that kind of thing.

But before you get to that point, it wasn't like four guys had.

three-run homers to get us there.

You know, it was a lot of grind out, a lot of stringing together base hits, and outside of the Garrett Mitchell thing, he kind of just went ham, like some players do some days.

Everybody else just did well enough to manufacture that success.

Now, against an opponent that might not be a good example of who they'll face down the stretch, but at the same time, I don't know, it felt to me as a super ignorant new baseball fan, I'll admit,

that they were using methods that could work against more serious and more competitive teams.

Sorry for the pun.

Am I off base there?

But don't.

That's awesome.

I think that, honestly, it's one of those things.

There's 162 games, right?

It's an outlier.

It's clearly an outlier.

But at

the same time, adding 22 and moving your run scored up to number four, they're in the top half of baseball regardless without this game with regards to run scored.

I feel like they're doing enough.

on offense and they've got good pitching that's going to help you get there, right?

It's more about pitching and defense anyway, when it's to get into the postseason.

People are complaining, oh, there's no bad.

Well, you know, you got to stop runs, too.

You got to score runs.

We got to stop runs.

And I feel like they're pretty well set up for that.

And that being said,

Do they need to make another move with a call up or you know, number 200 top 88 by the way, do they need to make a call up here because it seems like that they have been managing a ton of injuries.

And we've seen a lot of faces here that maybe some guys are here for three days and left like they've done everything they can.

They just kind of get through this stretch.

But do you guys think that they need a call up?

Is there someone you're following the table for for them to bring in?

I don't really think so.

I think right now I'm pretty content with what they've

God, I mean, assuming Bryce Terang is healthy with his knee and assuming that Self-Relax comes back after he's made some really nice games on rehab.

Assuming that they're all healthy, I think this is the team.

I think that what they've got is pretty darn good.

Jory Ortiz has found his bat after he was trying to use a toothpick for a long time.

So it's been very nice to see him get together and a lot of guys have got together.

I think that they've got what they need.

That sounds about accurate to me.

Unless you want to address depth somewhere, I mean, even with Freelik not back yet, Laura's been doing as well as people hoped when they were talking about him as a ridiculous prospect.

So I think that kind of becomes the question to me, just like you mentioned Parker.

It's it's more about how the injuries shake out.

Let's let's call it bad if there's no free look and no terrain Then we might have different answers here.

Well, there's certainly the where the Brewers are in a good spot I mean, they're up, you know, and they're in the first place in the NL on the standings or up in the division There's still a lot of baseball to be played and we had a lot of time to talk about first baseball homes We ended to September but we are gonna ship gears here and we are gonna move back talks and football Packers played on Friday night.

We're gonna recap Packers preseason game number two of

And we'll do that coming up here next.

Mike Clemens joins us later in the program with the Sports Week in review.

You're listening to Make the Call part of the Civic Media Radio Network.

Welcome back to Make the Call on Civic Media.

Welcome back to Make the Call here on the Civic Media radio network.

As promised, going to talk a little football in this segment before we make way for Mike Clemens coming up here in just a bit.

Well, the Packers played on Friday night and it's not quite a demolition, but got a big win over Denver.

You got to see a little bit of the starting lineup in this game, guys.

And I think

We had asked a question earlier about how much should we see the starters.

Well, we got to see a Jordan Love touchdown pass.

So we had to see a little bit of the work they did.

And obviously, in the first half, putting up some points there before halftime.

So for you guys, was there anything that stood out to the starters that it seemed to mesh pretty well when the guys were out there?

Well, the starters seemed like they had a pretty solid mesh going on.

The one thing, there was some issue with penalties on the offensive line and with performance there in general.

But we're not surprised to see that.

I was pleasantly surprised by some of the

lower end of the roster tight end play which is becoming the upper end of the roster with the injuries that we've been seeing this year.

What really blew me away though was the guys who are not only clearly playing for their spots on this upcoming roster cut down but who are

How many there are and how incredible it was specifically a wide receiver with Will Shepherd and Isaiah Nair and then at running back with Damian Martinez and Pierre Strong like on kick returns to special teams these I've never been this deep into preseason because I've never seen such fire in the third and fourth guys trying to become number two Parker.

What was what was catching your eye out there tonight?

Honestly, what really struck me right away was the fact that it felt so much like a real game which is kind of a weird thing to say but like

When the starters were in at least it felt like really intense like it felt like a legit game like the head bow Nixie had Jordan Love and they were both marching down the field Putting drives together really good to see and you're right to the once again further down the roster You were see pierce wrong my goodness that guy

His legs keep going.

He's just shifty.

It was really fun to watch out of the running decks position.

But yeah, like you said too, there's a lot of guys on defense as well.

If you look further down that roster gray.

Even on defense, there's a lot of good stuff going on there, right?

Well, right now, the question actually almost becomes after a performance like the one against Denver, how do you make the decision on positions like the defensive line?

Past rush, maybe not so much.

I would have liked to see a little bit more sparkle there.

But that said, there was a collapsing pocket here and there.

Huge credit to defensive tackles like rookie Chris McClellan, for example.

There's there's some really hungry, hungry guys out there.

And

I mean, we talked about the cornerback position earlier, but man, it almost felt like there was extra depth laying around without seeing.

It was, I'll tell you what, Parker, what immediately comes to mind, it's tough for me to believe, to your point, by the way, this is echoing what you said, it's tough for me to believe that there is an extra set of guys above who we watch play most of this game.

You know, we saw the starters play for one series, and then we saw the second

the second line playing about as hard as starters did and it's like wait there were better guys than these before like this feels this feels like it could be the team then we lost a little bit of that that cohesion in the fourth quarter

But the thing is, when the team that is all backups looks bad, that's not as much a reason for panic, because if you have all of your backups out there at once, something horrific happened.

I mean, we're talking about the bus didn't make it to the stadium, but for some reason the plane did kind of stuff.

Like you don't, that your long story short, you'll never have all your backups out there.

But I was super, super excited to see the guys playing hungry.

I mean,

Even positions that we didn't necessarily talk about.

The one thing that I did not see stand out was more than one tight end.

Drake Dabney pulled a couple things off.

I saw McCall and Castles grab a pass, but I didn't see anybody just make it clear.

Nobody was out there ringing a bell like, hey, sign me, sign me, sign me.

So I feel like the tight end position is still a little bit of a toss up.

Also, it was rough seeing Edger and Cooper get scored on.

We got to, I think we have to admit the fact that

That was rough bow nicks and

Eric Waddle, actually.

Excuse me, Eric Waddle.

I'm thinking of Eric Weddle, the former Raven Safety when I say that.

Bonix and Jalen Waddle, much better.

Former Miami Dolphins receiver there, now a member of the Broncos.

Looking like they're number one, carving us up.

I will say that a few of those passes were just really good play calls from Sean Payton, and that's kind of what Sean Payton does.

But Jonathan Gannon did a couple of similar things with that strong defensive line on the left side.

There were exotic looks out there.

Beautiful coverage disguises is too high actually too high is to actually three is somebody to rotate down and again Watching the defense flow tough to believe that there's a whole line of guys like Javon Bullard like Xavier McKinney who didn't play more than one play or one series if they played at all

Yeah, I honestly though there was something that stood out to me that I was really happy to see is you saw a continuation of

of a couple of things that the Jeff Halfley defense was doing last year that was really important.

You saw guys flocking to the football, something that was just refreshing to see last year, and it was very nice to see a good reiteration of that tonight.

You saw a lot of guys getting to the football, getting in on those tackles.

And another thing that you saw too, open field tackling.

Kamala Hayden is one of somebody that stood out to me.

It's making an open field tackle.

That is something that the Packers for

Basically, as long as I can remember, frankly, I grew up on Air Rogers football, and I grew up saying, you know, if the Packers could just put together an average defense, they would win more Super Bowls, being any more than the one that they did with Air Rogers.

They're putting together, I think, a nice philosophy of everybody's flocking to the football, and we're starting to make those open field tackles.

And Jimmy, you know how important that stuff is, right?

Yeah, I coach high school football and that's something you scream from the sidelines every night at teenage years to, hey, wrap up, get low.

Like, you know, that's what you do.

No, we're talking about the Packers win over Denver preseason game Friday night.

You know, I obviously, the special teams coach of a place in my heart for watching kickers kick things through the back of the Nets.

I thought that was great to see Troy smack.

And I got 59 yarder in, which I thought was pretty

pretty awesome.

You know, when you get to the later stages, you're kind of looking at the fringe guys, was there anybody maybe

on that bottom end of the roster that really stood out to you in this game, guys, because I mean, that's really what we'll be talking about next week when we get the roster cut downs.

Is there maybe someone that could sneak in and steal a roster spot

here?

Will Sheppard, that touchdown catch was some phenomenal control.

Sheppard, notably, I mean, if it's notable to you is a second year player spent last year on the practice wad.

But before that, he was studying under none other than prime time himself, Deon Sanders at Colorado.

You heard it mentioned many times if you listen to the game.

directly that Shepard went to Boulder.

So he's pretty local to the Denver scene.

There's a little bit of personal touch there.

And I hope he still has that fire outside of his kind of home turf there.

I'm hoping he can ring that up at Lambeau because as many people know, Packers like to really load up on extra receivers.

Love likes to spread the ball around.

That variety becomes a critical component of the offense.

I'm hoping players like Isaiah Nair and Will Shepard find room for themselves on this roster.

But I mean, you've got

three locks, you've got Savion Williams on the bubble.

Boy, how many receivers do they even take and who they are?

I think we've got exactly enough preseason left to let that shake out, to shake the pan of gold one more time and let the dross settle out.

Parker, who do you believe in in that offense today?

I was so glad to see offensive fire.

Well, you know what stood out to me was I felt like I saw a lot of bow melting.

Which was weird to be seeing on offense,

right?

Yes, it really was.

But he was looking like that savvy vet out there, like making special teams plays too.

I mean, yeah, no, no, no.

Bo Melton, the football player formerly known as a cornerback Bo Melton out there.

That was awesome.

You root for him automatically.

But does he actually make the team?

I don't know.

He'll be there if only for special teams.

But if that's all he's there for, it's a luxury.

And I don't think we have the roster spot for a luxury player right now.

No, but they did talk about him a little bit on the broadcast that are like, you know, he's got a lot of speed and that's what is so exciting about him.

But they just really haven't been able to really make give him to be.

They haven't made an application form really yet.

They tried to keep him because you know how hard it is to find an athlete that is capable of being in the NFL.

That's why they tried him as a corner last year and you know what didn't work out, but he's a really good athlete.

You want him on your roster.

So that's why he's back to being in the wider C record.

Who

knows how much we're going to

see.

Well, well, I actually I'm thinking next week.

Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you there, but I'm thinking we'll see something next week.

I'm hoping so because the final preseason game is in Arizona against the Cardinals or excuse me, I might be backwards on the location, but it is against the Cardinals and Bose brother Max plays corner for them.

So there were the two melting corners last year.

Now it's a wide receiver in a corner again.

I don't think we've actually gotten to see the melting, melting match up, but.

That might be possible next week and it might be part of what determines the bottom half of the wide receiver position.

Jimmy, I know you like to watch defense a lot more than us young firepower type guys.

What did you see?

Who are you looking to see shape up and finish making their case next week?

What position do you think still needs to shake out?

First of all, the game against Cardinals is gold

package.

So that's that's a green baby.

Thank you.

Gold package, baby.

Woo.

So for me, I'm looking squarely at one position on defense and that's defensive backs because we have questions and we need answers.

Is there someone that emerges from that group that maybe they can stash on a practice squad?

Honestly, is there someone on another team that you might be looking at that might get caught when the roster cut downs come?

I feel like there are some moving pieces on the back end of the defense, maybe even in some of the other spots defensively, but it feels like what we see right now on the roster that there's going to be change, and it makes sense because that happens over here.

Yeah, we have to assume that there will be some level of it, and it's going to be shaped differently than ever before, because like we mentioned earlier, the roster cut-down system works earlier.

Worth mentioning that there have been plenty of rumors, but only rumors that I've seen.

Nothing substantial, but I think I've seen three potential trade target cornerbacks, including Riley Moss from Denver, who exited after the first series with a rib injury, after forcing that fumble from Christian Watson in the first drive.

I thought that game was over, by the way, after that fumble.

I thought, oh no, now we get to...

We get to just nose dive as we've seen so many times before.

It's amazing how often that can happen, but it didn't happen tonight.

They corrected the ship, but yeah, plenty of rumors about cornerback trade targets.

At this point, it almost feels like, and I talked with Mike Clemens about this recently, it almost feels like we've gone from short on corner to long on corner.

And I wonder if we don't ship one off in exchange, you know, maybe package it with a pick for an upgrade at the corner position.

I still wouldn't mind seeing

Somebody either step up or be replaced by a reliable veteran somewhere.

I mean, a second Benjamin St.

Juice, please.

Anyone?

Anyone?

Me, me, me, please.

Teacher Mech.

Well, the impactors got to win 33 to 13 defeating Denver.

They get Arizona on another Friday night game, a seven o'clock kick gold package game coming up.

And then they're off until the season opener at Minnesota on September 13th.

And they won't be back at Lambo again until almost the end of September.

So you get this one preseason game, it's kind of a little teaser, and then they don't come back home for a while.

We'll have all the breakdown of that coming up next week here on make the call We're also to get a bit of a replay and a review of this game and the sports we can review with Mike Clemens We're also going to take a look back at week one of the high school football season talk about some big games including a big game in eastern Wisconsin between Between Green Bay Notre Dame and Nina a 56 53 gaming which the state's top running back scored seven touchdowns pretty crazy They talk about it next right here.

I'll make the call part of the civic media radio network

Welcome back to Make the Call on Civic Media.

It's time now to take a look at high school sports from around the state and civic media.

On WJMS, it was hurly defeating Tri-County 36-0.

WPFP had Bruce defeating Shawamagin 44-16.

It was Gilman shutting out Phillips on WCQM 57-0.

Port Edwards all over Green Lake Princeton 58-6 on WFHR.

The other feature on WFHR was Nakuza defeating Crandon 38-8.

Ripon over Laconia 16-6 on WRPN.

Sock Prairie beat Bear

boot 37-6 and a featured game on WRCO this week, Ithaca Weston and Riverdale.

Here's Phil Knee.

Ithaca Weston won for the first time as a co-op football team with a 14-0 defeat of Riverdale on Friday night.

Chieftain quarterback Bevin Dennis ran 74 yards to the end zone, only to have it called back because of a penalty.

Both defenses had moments.

Ithaca Weston's Caden Keller had two interceptions in the game, and Riverdale's Miles Daly picked off a pass.

It appeared the game would be scoreless at the half.

However, on the last play of the first half, IW sophomore quarterback Jacob Keller ran 11 yards to the end zone.

The extra point missed, and it was 6-0 at halftime.

The Chieftains drove to the IW3 yard line before turning it over on downs in the second half.

Ithaca-Weston then mounted another long, time-consuming drive that was capped with 5-51 remaining when Jacob Keller scored his second rushing touchdown and then later threw to Spencer Nelson for the two-point conversion.

Following the Ithaca-Weston 14-0 win, they will play at Weston High School against Wozika Stubin-Seneca.

Riverdale will be at Hillsborough.

for week number two.

I am Phil Knee for WRCO Sports.

Other matchups of interest around the state, including our

Defending state champion and eight player moving to seven player this year, McDonald lost to Regis 59 to 12.

Kenosha St.

Joseph, the reigning D7 champion, beat Shoreland Lutheran 20 to seven.

Darlington will play St.

Mary Springs today.

Mayville defeated Cedar Grove, Belgium 23 to nothing.

Winniconny got by Wrights down 21 to 20.

It was Grafton, the division three defending state champion, falling to Mount Horror Barnabale 14 to 10.

West of here had no problems with Sunbury East 42 to 20.

Arrowhead took down Marquette 35-7.

The game of the week this week, Green Bay Notre Dame defeating Nina 56-53 in overtime.

Kingston Allen, the top-rated running back in the state of Wisconsin with seven touchdowns.

Now it's time for a sports week in review with Mike Clemens.

The Brewers' incredible season continues high on Mike Clemens with our Wisconsin Sports Weekend Review.

Baseball, the Brewers headed into this weekend with still the best record in baseball.

Last Sunday, they beat the Dodgers in L.A.

in a 6-2 win.

To take that series three games to one on Tuesday night at home, they tied a Major League record for the most lopsided shutout 22-0 over the Seattle Mariners at American Family Field in Milwaukee, Christian Yelich, breaking out of a slump with a three-run homer in the fifth.

to get the ball rolling.

The game ended with position players on the mound like catcher Gary Sanchez for Milwaukee, Yelich.

Add to the lopsided shutout.

Kind of crazy.

I mean, it happened fast.

You know,

it's always fun to be on this side of that.

Just a fun night for the guys and cool to see Gary out there closing it and kind of just contributions from everybody.

So there's always

great nights when they're going your way.

The Mariners came back the next night, scoring all seven of their runs in the first two innings.

Off of the Brewers, Dustin May picked up in that trade with

with St.

Louis just before the deadline, May after the loss.

There was a lot of stuff that I could have executed better.

But this is one of those outings where, like, you can't be super frustrated with yourself just because you didn't really give up any hard contact on stuff.

So, like, you were still beating guys, but they were just putting it where we were tonight.

Seattle winning that one 7-5, the Brewers bounced back then the next day with a 7-4 final score to win that series two games to one.

Then came Friday afternoon against the visiting Atlanta Braves, Chris Sale, against the Brewers, Jacob Mizorowski, who pitched six scoreless innings of a 2-1 win over Atlanta.

But after the game,

The Miz explained he had to win using his other pitches instead of his trademark 100-mile-an-hour fastball.

How did you feel this stuff played today, especially the

off-speed?

Yeah, the off-speed felt great.

You know, I feel like that was the only pitch that I had on today.

So body felt a little off, you know, nothing weird.

I mean, just, you know, one of those days where, you know, it was just a down day.

Just had to grind through it, make it work.

Manager Pat Murphy and his press conference Friday night after the win over the Braves was asked, what about Mizorowski?

It wasn't in sync early on, you could see that, but he competed, and that was special.

So after the series with the Braves, the Brewers then head to New York for a three game set against the Metz, followed by a three game weekend series at home against the Texas Rangers, then it's off to Wrigley Field in Chicago for a four game set against the Cubs.

NFL, a week of ups and downs at the Packers training camp in Green Bay.

After losing to the Steelers in their first pre-season game, Matlow Flurk called out the secondary to be

more aggressive veteran Keisha Nixon was concerned after he was removed from the first team to the third team defense in

practice.

I guess I'm being punished right now.

I guess.

I don't know.

I don't really worry about what I'm running the account for.

One of the tools I just keep my process and just compete for kind of same process and get better every day and just stack days.

Tiden Tucker Kraft able to participate in 11 on 11 team drills for the first time since suffering that torn ACL nine and a half months ago.

I asked Kraft if he would be limited heading into the season.

Absolutely.

They're going to take into account my

my rep range until halfway through the season.

Then they're just going to pat me on the ass and send me out there and send me the wolves.

So, you know, how this offense is, just the more you can do all the hats I can wear on the offense, you know, I want to bring

everything to the table.

Running back, Marshawn Lloyd has looked good in camp after missing his first two years with multiple injuries and setbacks.

Lloyd scoring a touchdown in the Packers 33 to 13 win over the Broncos Friday night.

Meanwhile, the other tight end, Luke Musgrave continues to

with a neck injury.

Packers general manager Brian Goodekinst.

You know, when players miss time, that's tough.

That's tough on these guys.

They're young guys and they want to be out there so badly.

You kind of saw Tuck get out there for the first time the other day.

No, different than Marchant.

When they get out there and they're playing football, they're usually at their happiest.

You know, so whenever you see guys go through things and then get back out there, you can kind of see the joy in them.

And I'm happy for him.

He's doing a great job with his opportunities.

I think he's got a chance to help us this year.

After the game Friday night in Denver, quarterback Jordan Love

the first touchdown drive of the preseason against the Broncos with a pass to Marshawn Lloyd.

The drive we had tonight ended on a great note.

That was a good 12-play drive we put together.

guys executing on a lot of levels right there so you know I think that's a great note to end on obviously we'll have a joint practice next week against Cardinals get a lot more good work in but to end that on a preseason note right there that's that's good.

And how about kicker Trace Mack against the Broncos going four for four in field goals including one from 59 yards

and completing all of his PATs?

They're great but

same thing.

He's got to go do it again.

So, I mean, that's life in the national football league.

You're only as good as your last performance and he's just got to continue to be consistent.

That's head coach Malo Flur with our Wisconsin Sports Week in Review.

I'm

Mike Clemens.

You're listening to Civic Media.

You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.

Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime, anywhere.

It's time for Make the Call, a weekly discussion on the top Wisconsin sports stories of the week.

You can listen to the show anytime on the free Civic Media app.

Download it now on your devices app store or at civicmedia.us slash app.

Now, it's time for Make the Call, the Civic Media sports production.

Happy weekend to you.

It is Make the Call part of the Civic Media radio network.

I'm Jimmy Cusca, sports director here at Civic Media, and we are

into the football season, our first official games being played at the high school level this week.

College football right around the corner and of course the NFL actual games that count in the standings that everything happened in early September.

We are happy to have you along today and we'll get to some of the high school talk later in the program.

We'll also hear from Mike Clemens and a sports week in review.

We'll do all that coming up here in just a bit.

But right now, time to welcome aboard the co-host of the program.

First, we head to the Northwoods and we welcome in the member of upper management overseeing this whole thing and making sure I don't say anything stupid, which is impossible.

This is Greg Henderson at Park Falls.

What's up, Greg?

Good morning, Jimmy.

Glad to be here.

And you're right.

It's an impossible effort, you ask of me, but a try, I will nonetheless.

And we head now to Madison, where we have the person who is actually, like, honestly, probably the most important part of this because he's the one pressing the button to

uh, record us and Aaron's and broadcast us all across the state.

That would be Parker vertical.

What's up, Parker?

I'm just, I'm thinking about all these buttons, Jimmy.

And it's a lot of buttons.

I don't know if people know this, but there's a lot of buttons involved in radio.

And I just, eh, I'm not fueling all the buttons.

I

don't need all this.

I did a career day once and they asked me what I do for a living.

I'm like, I talk in a soundproof room to myself and I press a button.

Yeah.

And it's a silly life.

And I'm like, Oh wait, I'm sorry.

That's, that's what radio is.

So yeah.

You want even better reactions call it a padded room.

You'll get some looks.

Let me tell you

Yeah, sometimes I wear a jacket, you know, it's just what it is.

But you know, sometimes

I make a pillow for a

radio day So it was a fun fun week to post about oh, I don't know 180 years in radio for me.

You guys have been in it for a while It's just it's just great to be here talking sports and this is what we do and we should probably talk some sports on a sports program We will recap the second Packers preseason game will do that coming up

about a half hour from now.

Again, we will have my Clemens later in the program with the sports week in review.

Talk some brewers, talk a little bit of Badgers to boot.

But we have to get started.

We are doing the top eight at eight to round out our summer programs the next couple of weeks.

And we start at number eight.

These are the top eight sports or not sports stories of the week.

And right away with number eight is high school football season.

I just coached in a game yesterday.

where I'm at in South Western Wisconsin.

We had over, you know, over 400 teams playing high school football in the state.

You don't have to go too far to find one.

So I gotta ask you guys, what's your favorite part of high school football?

For me, it's something that exists within any given high school sport, frankly.

It's the community support.

It's not unique to football, but sports kind of has that magic way of wrapping people up in the moment, even if they're not paying attention up till that point.

I'm talking about that moment where, you know, maybe you've got a tight game and

your offense goes long.

Passing in high school football depends on the size of the town you're in a lot of the time, but you stand up to see what happens with that pass, and you don't even realize it until the ball comes down and the result is determined.

Like, wait, when did I stand up just now?

But everybody did.

The moment demanded it, and there you are being part of it, even though all you did was just lift yourself off the bench.

It's such a cool feeling to realize, whoa, there was something just moved through this audience.

Is that, am I waxing poetic too much for the first answer of the day?

That was

beautiful, Gray.

Man.

I

was

waiting for the music to play underneath that.

Wow.

That's a great explanation of sports in general.

That was beautiful, Gray.

Well, thank you.

I'm glad I didn't make too much of a fool of myself.

I'll try again later.

Well, I'm sure you'll do better later.

Yeah, I mean, you kind of hit the nail on the head.

Community is just one of those

things.

I'm just wiping tears from my eyes right now.

I know it was

beautiful.

It was really, it's hard to put words together now.

Community, you're right, Gray.

It's just one of those things in high school sports.

High school football, especially, is kind of the best example of nobody cares about what anybody really thinks about anything other than this game and who you're rooting for.

It's just a cool place to see a bunch of people come together and have a good time.

I think high school football among high school sports is unique and a lot of best in a couple of years.

I should say a lot of couple aspects and mostly it's that, you know, it's a sport that most kids participated, you know, especially boys.

And it's also something that only happens once a week.

So.

you know, a lot of the other sports that you have in high school, they're playing multiple events a week for the most part, not every, but most.

Um, and you've got this every week.

It's like an appointment.

It's like probably why NFL and college people are so popular.

You know, we've got high school Friday, college Saturday, NFL Sunday, NFL every day now at this point, or if you're the action, action league, you've got that every night too.

But

The main point is is that it's once a week and I think people look forward to it.

And as you guys said, there is a big community aspect to high school football, high school sports in general, because why we spend so much time here at Civic Media with 10 stations doing games across the network this year.

We are at everything, including we had eight games just on the air this week.

We have the Packers, obviously, on a Friday night, which took away a few of the signals.

But we had a lot of high school football already in week one, and there's a lot more to come once our stations of Minnesota

that Michigan catch up their seasons, open up coming up here this coming week.

Number seven in our top eight at eight.

And the question is this, I don't know which one of you knuckleheads put this on here, but catching your son's first home run ball is the equivalent of what?

And I remember this story from this week.

This was a brewers prospect, right?

That had this happen.

That's really cool, actually.

That's incredible.

What are the odds?

I wrote the question, Jimmy, and I can't think of a good answer for it.

I don't know what this is the equivalent of.

Lightning in a bottle, probably?

What are the odds of that?

It's so, whoa.

Well, and that's kind of what stands out to me, Parker, as I was thinking about this.

And only one of us has any kids.

Only one of us might have ever caught a homerun ball that I'm aware of.

Maybe you guys have it, AMFAM or something like that.

But I looked at this question and thought, I'm woefully unprepared.

So honestly, my lame answer is like, if you're out in the woods and you see an incredibly rare animal of some kind that you don't expect to, like you know

it's theoretically possible and it's temporary.

That moment leaves.

It doesn't actually necessarily have a permanent and lasting change that it brings to your life, but it's an incredible opportunity that you can't.

Is it even comparable?

That might be the real question.

Jimmy, you might be the best position to answer this question.

What comes to mind for you as a father and the only father here?

Well, you know, I think that the odds of a home run ball, especially incredibly low because the home run.

can literally go anywhere.

The only thing I've got that's comparable is that my kids, very early in their soccer careers, they do those parents versus kids kind of things.

And my younger kid, you know, doesn't score a lot of goals.

He just, he's kind of a squirrel.

He just runs around or whatever.

But his first goal and that parents versus kids scrimmage when he was in 4k, he slid down on his ground.

He landed, you know, he landed right on his butt and he kicked it.

It came up, it hit me.

my backside and went into the goal.

And now he tells everybody that he scored a buck goal.

So that's kind of the equivalent for me as a parent.

Catching a home run ball is so improbable in any circumstance, but especially your own kid's first one.

I mean, that is really crazy.

That is a really, truly unique thing in sports.

So you're telling me that Mark Sanchez walked so he could run?

Yeah, exactly.

Or fall as it turns out.

But yeah, that was his first goal.

And it was against me.

And yeah, he was very, very proud of what part of his body was responsible for that score.

As you can imagine, a four-year-old at the time, maybe seven now, but yeah.

Anyway, all right, let's talk some sports here.

Number six in our top eight today.

What's your favorite special sporting event?

So there's a lot of unique kind of games that get set up.

For example, Wisconsin Badgers are playing at Lambeau this year.

Pretty cool.

The MLB has invested a bunch of money in Dyersville, Iowa to play field of the field of dreams game there.

Do you guys have a favorite special event in sports that happens on the calendar, whether it's every year or every few years?

I mean, just the Little League World Series as a whole.

is my favorite thing I think it is on ESPN for pretty much two weeks non-stop it just started this week and it is always been a favorite of mine since I was a little kid older than those kids were even probably then when I started watching it I was like this is this is cool these are people that are close enough to my age that they're on tv they're playing a sport that we love it's really cool but now I look at it I'm like this is I've always said that division three college football is probably like the most pure form of college athletics but little league baseball is the most pure

form of sports and of being a kid.

It's just, I think it's one of the most awesome things ever.

Gray, what's one of your favorites?

I totally agree with you on the little league thing.

But for me, it's field of dreams specifically because it has that impact from even people like me who haven't been as historically into baseball as other sports.

I'll admit, though, even with that being said, I actually finally watched that movie all the way through for the first time earlier this year.

But I'm really glad that I waited because I straight up wouldn't have gotten it.

I might have had good memories, but like the

the fatherly relationship that's at work behind all of it.

And it's like, yeah, it's about baseball players, but it's actually not.

It's about interpersonal relationships with people you love and pattern your life after.

Like I wouldn't have gotten that.

Guess we get poetic gray today, by the way.

I'm thinking, I'm blaming you on this one.

You set me up here.

That's fair.

Oh man, we gotta have the music just whenever Gray starts talking today.

Just little soft piano music in the background.

It's great.

Mine, by the way, is the opposite of all this.

When the NHL puts hockey outside or college hockey goes outside, I'm in man.

You've sold me on the idea of taking professional hockey players on a 10 below day in Boston or Minneapolis.

You're putting them outside and telling them to go play when they're so used to playing in those cozy little arenas and don't have to worry about elements.

You get a little bit of snow or freezing drizzle and they can't even play these out.

outdoor games, but to me, that's just, it's just amazing that they would try to play like professional hockey games outdoors and have it count the standings.

That is insane to me, but also insanely awesome.

So that's my vote for this one.

Number five in the top eight at eight, the Badgers.

Do you think they'll finally have a quarterback make it through an entire season?

I mean.

Hopefully.

It's funny because for the last couple of years they've been excited about their quarterbacks because they keep getting these transfers that everyone's like, okay, yeah, this could be the guy that the Badgers kind of evolve into a more modern offense with because he's got a good arm and he's a little bit of a dual threat, maybe.

They've just had terrible luck with injuries, so I don't know that the tea leaves are any different this year than they were in previous years, but everything that we're seeing from Colton Joseph so far has been like,

Yeah, he's gonna be a good leader.

He seems pretty confident.

He's got that dual threat ability.

So, Gray, what do you think?

Can the injury bugs stay away?

Well, I'm hoping so.

The one thing that really buoys me here is that we aren't hearing any scary stories about how the offensive line has been performing in practice situations or anything like that.

So, there's no reason to believe things will go horribly awry, but there haven't been for the last three years.

You end up with torn ACLs and broken hands and crazy things like that anyway.

Here's one thing I don't know maybe you guys have considered, maybe you haven't, but maybe they thought that pre-

quarterbacks didn't have enough first names, so they got Colton Joseph here with two of them ready to rock.

Okay, more seriously though, I get a little bit nervous anytime you can describe somebody as a dual threat quarterback because, well, Jackson Dart and Josh Allen come to mind.

Josh Allen's been doing it safely, but Jackson Dart already ended a season by playing that way and he would be far from the first quarterback to do so.

I was actually watching some

Kirk Cousin's Vikings content recently from when he tore his Achilles, and he was actually talking about how optimistic he is about playing through injury because he's a pocket passer.

And that just isn't as available, depending on the injury, depending on the situation for somebody like Colton Joseph.

So I'll call myself cautiously optimistic, but I would say that every day.

So what's actually changed?

Jimmy, what are you thinking?

You know, it's going to come down to whether or not they're effective.

I mean, their schedule doesn't really get top.

You know, it's a pretty, honestly, pretty light schedule.

They've got a couple of

bangers in there, but I don't know.

I think in any position you're asking someone, can you make it through 12, 13, 14 games and not have issues?

That's a tall order, especially a position like quarterback, which is going to get hit a lot.

I just on that front, even if it's not the Badgers, I would, I would err on the side of no, no, no quarterback is getting through this unscathed.

They're going to miss quarter, maybe a game.

I had to make my bet.

I would say no, but I think.

The point of the question is, do they have someone that they're going to lock in for the whole year?

That is their true starter.

And even if they do get dangned, is that going to be their guy?

I'm a little higher on that this year.

I feel like there's been a lot of optimism about what they've got at the position.

But we won't know until they turn the lights on the player.

We just won't know.

And that first game is a tough one.

So I'm a little more optimistic this year maybe than I have been the past couple, but so much changes of football.

So it's really hard to know for sure.

Let's go to number four in our top eight today and then we'll take a quick break on this We are gonna recap the Packers game from Friday night here just a bit but this is more of a question about anything in preseason Do you think that or how much do you think starters should be playing in the preseason games in the NFL?

They get three games to get in there I'm just curious what you guys thoughts are on whether or not

We should be seeing the starters more here in these three games.

If you guys don't mind, I've got I've actually thought about this one because I saw that question.

I thought, you know, that's a fascinating question.

And having never been a coach, I need to put that disclaimer out front.

But here's the thing.

There are four possible combinations here at all.

Either you play in preseason or you don't.

And either you play well in the regular season or you don't.

That means there are you do the simple math.

There's four possible combinations at this point.

I'm just into my thirties.

And I have already seen all four of those combinations dozens of times, which tells me that anything is possible.

So I'll go back to coaching.

I figure coaching has just as much to do with success.

as the preseason approach to playing starters.

So I know that doesn't necessarily give a yes or no.

They should play or they shouldn't.

If you're going to play them, it shouldn't probably be much.