Speaker 1 0:00

What's going on. Everybody, this is House of Heckman, and I am your host, derek Heckman. Thank you for joining me on episode three, where we're going to dive into the NFL free agency, maybe a little bit of NASCAR and who knows what else. Before we get there, I want to tell you something interesting I learned today. Did you know that a giraffe, in order to protect itself, will karate kick other animals? Legit Straight up? Yeah, karate kick Crazy. They'll also headbutt them. Didn't know that. Learned all this at our third grader's parent-teacher conference last night. She wrote a book after doing some research on giraffes Interesting things that I knew nothing about. Anyway, thanks again for checking out House of Heckman. Kick off your shoes and stay a while. Let's get this podcast going.

Speaker 1 1:03

So, as I mentioned, I want to dive into the NFL free agency a little bit Now. I know there's a ton going on and I'm not going to be able to cover all of it, nor do I really want to. Way too much happening there. Before I dive into that, though, I want to be honest with you guys a little bit, so I record these episodes on Tuesday night. If you've been watching and listening, you know this already. I got to tell you. This is the second time I'm recording this episode. I pretty much had the first recording done at about 9 pm, 9 30. It was terrible. I couldn't stop coughing, I was getting incredibly hot and I don't know what was going on. I had to just completely shut down, take a break and here we are, we're at number two. We're gonna see how this one goes through. Hopefully it's better now. I could have went through and probably edited out a bunch of the coughing fits that I had and cleaned it up, but that really wouldn't be true to how I want to do this Now. I know completely recording a whole episode is also one giant edit, but I feel this is better. It lets me actually talk things through a little bit more clearly. We're cooled off. We're going with the t-shirt now had a hoodie on earlier, let the window open just because it keeps the room even cooler, especially on a night like tonight where it's 50 degrees outside and just awesome. But anyway, I wanted to share that with you. This podcast stuff, like I said last week, it's tough Really when you're doing everything. We may definitely start getting into bringing in some guest hosts. It's tough for me to say right now for some reason, but I really think having that other person to bounce things off of is going to make this even so much more better.

Speaker 1 3:03

Now, with all that being said, let's jump into some of this free agency stuff. People are getting paid bonkers money. It's incredible to me how much money flies around in the NFL. Now, I know it's a multi, multi-billion dollar industry, a not-for-profit, which, however you want to see that, I I'm not sure, but anyway it is. Let's start Josh Allen, buffalo Bills.

Speaker 1 3:36

Awesome dude seems like a great guy. I don't know him. He's a hell of a quarterback. He just got an extension six years. I want to say it was $320 million in that range. $250 million fully guaranteed. That's mind blowing. I mean, if you had $250 million guaranteed over the course of the next six years and all you got to do is just show up to work, that's it. Now, obviously he's going to show up, he's going to work hard, he's going to earn that money, but that's insane $250 million.

Speaker 1 4:24

I don't even know where to begin on. What I would do with $250 million. I'd probably get some properties. Really, I would get into real estate, get a bunch of rentals, maybe car washes. They seem to bring in tons of money. Just make sure that they're in good neighborhoods, because I don't need all that drama in my life. But yeah, $250 million, now that's pretty standard for a quarterback nowadays it seems. At least a full contract anyway not the whole thing like that guaranteed and then more on top of it.

Speaker 1 4:56

The one that really stuck out to me this week was Miles Garrett. So Miles Garrett if you don't know which, if you're listening to me, you probably do he's a defensive lineman for the Cleveland Browns. Now, about a month and a half ago, he came out and said that he wanted to be traded. He didn't want to be in Cleveland anymore. He wanted to play for a contender and try to win a championship. I understand that. And try to win a championship? I understand that. I think if you're at the top of your game, you definitely want to be in a team and a position that you can play your best and play to try to win a championship. It's what they all strive for. This week it got released that now he is the highest paid non-quarterback in NFL history. The Cleveland Browns gave him a four-year extension worth $160 million. That's $40 million per year. That I don't even have words for that. A defensive lineman.

Speaker 1 6:06

In my opinion, no matter how good they are, shouldn't be in the $40 million a year range. That is what happens on teams and organizations that are bad. Frankly, the Browns are bad. They gave a terrible deal a few years ago to Deshaun Watson after he set out a year and then he was suspended because of his legal issues, which I'm not going to dive into. I don't even want to really give it the time of day, but they gave him a terrible contract that was fully guaranteed and he's been terrible for them. He hasn't really played that much. He's been injured even after he got suspended.

Speaker 1 6:48

And then they go and do this with Miles Garrett. Organizations wonder why they can never get ahead and why they always lose it's deals like that. It clearly stems from the top. It's an organizational issue that they just throw the money around and don't really think of how things are going to come through and what's going to happen. You look at other organizations that they'll just move on from players. Miles Garrett said he wanted to trade but the Browns refused. So in order to make him happy and keep him there as what they wanted, they had to throw out $40 million a year. You shouldn't do that the guy wanted a trade. Let him go. You can rebuild, even when he was on the team last year you didn't win that many games. So what's going to change now? To me, nothing, absolutely nothing will change. Everything will stay the same. The browns will be terrible. They'll go through probably two or three more quarterbacks during that four-year span, if not more. And yeah, I, it's bad. It's a badly run organization and I really don't think it's going to change anytime soon.

Speaker 1 8:06

A team on the other side of things that will let players go is my Chiefs. They've done that quite a bit, especially since Brett Veach has been there as the general manager this year. We didn't re-sign Justin Reed, who was our really stud safety. He just signed with the Saints. Deandre Hopkins we had him about halfway through the season last year after the Rashi Rice injury. We didn't re-sign him. He's now signed with the Ravens Again.

Speaker 1 8:38

These aren't huge, huge current stars that are going to make or break your team, but they are pieces that are very beneficial to have and we understand that in order to go forward and progress as an organization, you have to let some of these guys go. Another one that we let go was actually in a trade was Joe Tooney, our stud left guard. That about I don't know. Four weeks left in the season he moved out to left tackle to try and provide us some stability there. We traded him to the Bears. Why? Capspace? We needed room, and yes, I'm saying we because clearly, well, I'm an owner of the team. I say we, it's my team, it always has been, always will be. But Tooney was traded. We just needed the cap space. We didn't want to keep paying for him when we have other needs and we can make things work and bolster that position.

Speaker 1 9:39

Brett Veach has always been good with that. He can find guys in the draft. It doesn't always work, but for the most part it does. That's why organizations like ours the Eagles, the Bills, whatever they tend to do the right things and end up in good spots, unlike the aforementioned Browns. Speaking of the Eagles, they seem to be trading a ton of defensive players away but then, at the same time, going out and getting other players to fill those spots Again moves that make sense. You need to sometimes add by subtraction Doesn't make a lot of sense sometimes, but the end result will usually show that that is the right thing to do In the NFC, specifically the NFC East, since we were just talking about the Eagles, specifically the NFC East, since we were just talking about the Eagles the Dallas Cowboys what the hell are they doing?

Speaker 1 10:44

So they've got Micah Parsons, which he does have a year left on his contract. He's looking at the Miles Garrett deal, thinking, well, if he's getting $40 million, I need to be right up there, close to that too. But instead of trying to figure out a deal with him which they should have done last year, so then they wouldn't be in this position now they've re-signed players that I don't really think are that key to them. One of the big ones I saw today was that they re-signed Turpin, who's their return specialist and a receiver, which is great. I mean, you obviously need a good return guy, but at the end of the day, is that really going to make a big difference? Hard to tell.

Speaker 1 11:27

Staying in the NFC East. We've got the Giants. Who knows what they're going to do? They need a quarterback. I think it'll be potentially Aaron Rodgers, but I think that's also going to come down to what happens with him and the Pittsburgh Steelers, because there's a lot of rumblings that Rodgers. But I think that's also going to come down to what happens with him and the Pittsburgh Steelers, because there's a lot of rumblings that Rodgers may end up with the Steelers Very possible, but I don't know for sure. Here's why I say that. So you guys, from checking out the other episodes and if you haven't, go back check out episodes one and two You'll get caught up on a few things that I'm going to go through right now.

Speaker 1 12:02

But I'm an Iowa State Cyclones fan. That stems from me being a Chiefs fan when I was little, moving to Iowa and then getting asked which do you like, the Hawkeyes or the Cyclones? Well, I went with the clones. They had the same colors pretty much as the Chiefs. That was holy cow 35 years ago and still with them. Still love them. Anyway, back to current time. I love Brock Purdy, loved him when he was at Iowa State and I followed him when he went to the Niners and got drafted there as Mr Irrelevant. And I followed him when he went to the Niners and got drafted there as Mr Irrelevant.

Speaker 1 12:46

Here's what I think the Steelers could do and I wouldn't be shocked and it would kind of wrap all around Aaron Rodgers. I could see the Steelers going out and trying to get the 49ers to trade Brock Purdy to them. Now the only thing I don't know is what kind of compensation the 49ers are going to want, and I don't even know if they would have an idea. The reason I say that is it really hasn't happened before where you have the last pick in the draft, turn out to be a pretty darn good quarterback in the NFL and lead your team to the Super Bowl and to two NFC championship games. So the compensation would be a little tough, I think. But if the Steelers could get that pulled off, they could get Brock Purdy sign their quarterback for the future. See what happens there. Probably wouldn't cost them a ton. Probably in the 45 million dollar range would be my guess, 50 million maybe.

Speaker 1 13:45

And then aaron rogers, where he comes into play as he's from southern california. When he was growing up he was a huge 49ers fan. I could really sing all this happen. And then aaron Rodgers going out to San Francisco and being their quarterback for a couple years to get them the bridge quarterback, if you will, until they can find their next guy. Will it happen? I don't know. Is that even on the table? Not a clue? I'm not an insider, I'm not Ian Rappaport, I'm not Adam Schefter or any of those guys, but that's just what I think could happen and I could see that making some sense really for both parties, because it seems like the 49ers are trying to figure out what they want to pay Brock Purdy and it doesn't seem to be getting done quite yet. So we'll keep an eye on that one, see what happens, see how that shakes out.

Speaker 1 14:40

Now, since we're talking about Aaron Rodgers, let's talk about one of his guys, devontae Adams. So he was with the Jets for the last year maybe what three quarters of the year, I guess when he got traded from the Raiders to the Jets. Well, he became a free agent and now he is signed with the LA Rams. It's a two-year deal somewhere in the 40-some million dollar range. 45, 46 million Quite a bit of money to me for a guy who's 32. Now he does still have the get off at the line of scrimmage. He can still shake guys. He can still run really crisp routes and get open. Shake guys, he can still run really crisp routes and get open. So it definitely could be worth it to them. You can definitely tell that they valued him a lot more than what they valued even cooper cup, since they've let him go try and find a trade, which it looks like he'll get released today. But who knows, maybe something crazy happens and they decide to bring him back and he restructures his deal. He might get traded before he's released. But they're about the same age.

Speaker 1 15:46

I think Devontae Adams is about six months older than Cooper Cup. The only downfall is Cooper Cup has faced so many injuries in the last couple years and has just really fallen off. He's not quite the same guy he was a few years ago when he won the triple crown, the year that the Rams won the Super Bowl. But we'll see. A guy like Cooper Cup, if he can stay healthy, will definitely end up on a team and play a pretty good role. I think he might have that resurgence kind of like Adam Thielen did when he left Minnesota and went to Carolina. But time will tell.

Speaker 1 16:19

If Cup was available I wouldn't turn down the thought of him coming to Kansas City. We could pay him a little hopefully not too much money at all to maybe come in and be a slot guy, come in and relieve some other players. He definitely wouldn't be a one or a two. We've got those guys. But it'll be interesting to see how that shakes out, and especially with the Rams having Devontae Adams there is going to help. Matt Stafford is still able to sling the ball. He's still a great quarterback. He's tough as hell. So you know he's going to be in there, but I guess we'll find out. We'll really see what happens there on that front too. We'll find out. We'll really see what happens there on that front too.

Speaker 1 17:01

When it comes to other free agent moves, there's been a ton. There are a ton. Like I said, I really can't sit here and go through all of them. I would say some of your big ones, though, and one that I do want to spend a few minutes on is everything involving the Seattle Seahawks. So, if you don't know, geno Smith was the quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks. Well, they traded him to the Las Vegas Raiders. On top of that, they've also let go of one of their wide receivers, tyler Lockett, and then they made a trade with the Steelers, sending DK Metcalf, who is a dude, to the Steelers. So the Seahawks are in this weird spot where it kind of seems like they're in rebuild mode, but at the same time, they go out and sign Sam Darnold to a three-year deal worth just over $100 million.

Speaker 1 18:04

Now you might be thinking Sam Darnold, he was just with the Vikings. He had one good year, but other than that his whole career has kind of been trash really. He was with the Jets no good there. He was with the Carolina Panthers not good there and then he spent a year in San Francisco being the backup for Brock Purdy I guess what we'd call now two seasons ago. I get that, but here's where I think it works for the Seahawks, and then we'll dive into how I think Geno Smith going to the Raiders works for him, to how I think Geno Smith going to the Raiders works for him.

Speaker 1 18:46

When it comes to the Seahawks, what you have to realize is that Sam Darnold is basically Geno Smith, but five years younger. Hold that thought. All right, we're back. After that minor technical difficulty, as I said earlier, I had the window open and all of a sudden people outside started yelling. Usually it's not a big deal, but apparently everybody just wanted to be yelling right now. Anyhow, back to Sam Darnold Seahawks. As I said, he's basically the same quarterback and the same kind of player as Geno Smith. He's just five years younger. Goodness, I can't even talk now. Not only is he five years younger but he's also cheaper. So with the money that Geno Smith wanted to get on a restructured deal, it was more than what Sam Darnold was getting right now.

Speaker 1 19:36

To be their starter Makes sense. I thought so. So on the Geno Smith side of things, where I think it makes sense is it gets him reunited with Pete Carroll. So Pete Carroll was the one that gave Geno the shot in Seattle to be the starting quarterback. I think that is really smart of the Raiders to bring him in, and that pains me to say because I hate the Raiders. But it really shows, in my opinion, how Tom Brady is affecting that organization. Being a partial owner, he may only be a minority owner, but he knows how to win and he knows a culture that is needed to have a winning team and I think it's pretty evident by the moves they're making. They're making actually intelligent moves. Crazy, right, the Raiders.

Speaker 1 20:27

In all of the time that I've seen NFL free agency over the years, this one seems and maybe it's just because it's getting covered more and I'm paying more attention to like the NFL Network and ESPN and all their free agency frenzy, as they call it, but it really seems like this one is bigger. It seems like things are moving around more and it's going to be interesting to see how all these dominoes fall with the rest of the players that are out there and exactly what's going to happen. I know that right now there's not a ton of big, big names that are being weighted on. I guess Russell Wilson, aaron Rodgers, like I talked about earlier, would be one, but other than that, a lot of the guys have already kind of been moved around a little bit. So it'll be really intriguing to see what happens with the free agency.

Speaker 1 21:22

I know the how do I want to put it? I guess the the over arcing theme has seemed to be guys getting paid, as the kids would say, guys are getting the bag. This year there's a lot of players that have won their Superbowl rings, they've got the championship. Now they're just getting the bag and that's fine. More power to them.

Speaker 1 21:47

I know that in some kind of way does upset some fans, which fan is short for fanatic. So of course there's going to be emotion tied to everything, but a lot of people get upset with the players that go and chase the money everything, but a lot of people get upset with the players that go and chase the money. I say more power to them, especially if you've brought a championship to a team, if that team doesn't want to pay you and you can go get that money elsewhere, go get the money. There's nothing wrong with that. At the same time, from an organizational standpoint and an ownership standpoint, it is a business If you don't want to pay the guy because you feel like you can do different things with that money to better the team. For the long term, I think you have to do that, even if it does maybe hurt you short term, you have to do what you have to do. Term, you have to do what you have to do and I think in the long run fans will understand as long as you do show that you can do that properly.

Speaker 1 22:51

Going back earlier, the aforementioned Browns they throw money around willy-nilly at people that really have no, absolutely no just way to help the team. Like I said, it's great that Miles Garrett is an awesome player, but he's not winning you games, at least not as many as you need to actually be competitive. So teams pay the players, but don't be stupid. I think that's all that fans really care about. And win championships we like to win. Winning is good, and I know it's hard to say that from a Chiefs perspective because we have well, we've won a lot of games lately. It is what it is Free agency talk. I think that's enough for today. I've probably already rambled on way too much about that anyway. So if we went too far I apologize. I know I went on a few tangents there and then had to shut a window because people were yelling Crazy, crazy things that go on a Tuesday at 1045 as I'm recording this.

Speaker 1 24:05

On another note, a different sport, let's chat a few minutes about NASCAR. So this last weekend was the NASCAR race in Phoenix A little bit different from, obviously, the few we've had recently. We had Dayton and then there was Atlanta, both speedways, and then we had a road course race at COTA last week and then this week Phoenix. It's a flatter track, it's just over a mile long. I want to say Sometimes these can be a little boring, but this one was actually pretty darn exciting.

Speaker 1 24:40

One thing that really helped it be more exciting, in my opinion, were the tires, of all things, the tires. So if you don't know much about NASCAR, typically how it works is teams get a certain standard, certain standard that doesn't make a lot of sense a certain amount of tires, sets of tires that you can use for every race. Well, most of the time, all these tires are the exact same. This weekend in phoenix, what they did is goodyear, who's the supplier of the tires, gave each team two sets so eight total tires of a special compound tire that was softer and really just had more grip. Now they didn't last as long as the standard tires, but more grip equals more speed. You can corner faster and you can make better passes. That made for some exciting racing.

Speaker 1 25:35

As I mentioned, each team only had two sets of these tires and they had to change all four at the same time. But if you didn't use your tires all the way down or wear them all the way down, you could put them back on later in the race if you wanted to. Some teams used a lot of strategy put them on early to make up track position. If they got behind somehow, or if they had a bad pit stop, or if they had a penalty, they'd put them on early. That way they could make up that track position. Because it was incredible, these different tires were probably I want to say about three seconds. Yeah, maybe might not have been three seconds, but at least over a second faster per lap. Lap times were so much better. Other teams would wait until the very end of the race to use both sets at the end. Good strategy there too.

Speaker 1 26:30

So this was definitely one of those races where it wasn't just about go fast, turn left. There was a lot of strategy involved and really it was so much fun to watch. There were a few I guess you would call them minor wrecks compared to the big wrecks you see at, like a Daytona or a Talladega, the super speedways where you're going almost 200 miles an hour At Phoenix you're lucky if you hit 145 on the straightaway, but there were some pretty good wrecks. There was also very good passing Like. It was just an incredible race to watch Christopher Bell, who he's won the last two races. He won Kota and he won the week before at Atlanta, won again three in a row, which in NASCAR is incredibly hard to do. I want to say the last time that was done was 2019 or 2020. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was Kevin Harvick that did that the last time, with three in a row.

Speaker 1 27:27

Now, the other thing that made this race pretty entertaining also was. It was the second closest finish ever at Phoenix for the Cup Series Almost and when I say almost, if you watch the replay of this race which unfortunately I can't show you because I don't have rights from NASCAR but if you watch the end of that race, bell almost got spun out towards the like, probably 10 feet from the finish line, and that would have been something I still think he would have finished first, but he would have been angry and that wouldn't have been good. But yeah, that was a really good race, enjoyed it. If you don't watch a lot of NASCAR, I implore you, watch a race, sit down, sit back and just relax. It's a good time. I'm going to try this year to go to one in person. I either want to try and make it to the Iowa Speedway for the NASCAR event there or down to the Kansas Speedway down in Kansas City quite a bit. That wouldn't be too far over from there, so we could check it out and see what happens at a NASCAR race in person and see how really loud it is and how fast those cars move in person. I think would be awesome. Other than that, that pretty much is going to wrap it up for today. Again, thanks for bearing with me, thanks for getting through these episodes. As I mentioned, this was the second time recording tonight. I'm glad that the only thing that happened this time was just people yelling outside, so that made this one a little bit easier to get through.

Speaker 1 29:08

If you have any comments for me, if you have any feedback, let me know. You can hit me up on social. I'm on x, house of heckman. You can find me on youtube again house of heckman and anywhere you get your podcasts. Like I said, this is a process. I think I've said like I said about four times. Now I'm learning. This is episode three and I have so much still to go, so much to learn, but it's been fun. This is incredibly fun. I wouldn't change it. The only thing I would change maybe would just be doing this a little earlier in the day, versus. I think it's like 11 o'clock right now. So that's that, but anyway, let me know what you think. Subscribe, like everything. Follow me on X, twitter, whatever you want to call it. Have a good night, have a good day. We'll see you next week.