00:00I think even with D'Amico having been here three years as a head coach, Seth, I still think there's
00:04people out there that take his press conference persona and his affable southern friendliness,
00:12I'll call it, and think that he's too buddy-buddy with these players. He's not hard enough on the
00:19players, and it couldn't be further from the truth, and I think we got that. Of all the things
00:26that got hammered home in that conversation with Aziz, he spent a big chunk of it talking
00:31about, and I think in a very professional way and in a way where he's appreciative of
00:37this, but talking about just how demanding D'Amico Ryans is, especially for a guy that
00:43plays his old position. He's spoken about that before, about just what a pain in the
00:51acid is to play for D'Amico because he is so demanding, and it doesn't come with a
00:58whole bunch of yelling and screaming and everything. It's just that he, unlike a lot of coaches,
01:02and a lot of times the coaches who yell and scream the most are the ones who are least
01:05capable of teaching actual technique, and D'Amico is very, very detailed in the kind of technique
01:14he wants you to play with, and he holds you to that standard, and it's really frustrating
01:17when you have a coach like that because every single thing is getting critiqued all the time.
01:22But I thought the part of your interview I thought was really good because it was something
01:28that I didn't heard anybody talk about was that after they lost that scoring title and
01:35after they had that bad game versus the Colts, that D'Amico really sounded like he just bluntly
01:40told them, oh, you guys, you think you're that great, huh? You know, like, oh, here you go.
01:44Like, this is what happens when you start eating all the rat poison, and you think you're that
01:49great. It goes, going back to that Colts game, you know, and as you said, they didn't think
01:53they're, you know, they didn't think, oh, this is going to be easy or whatever, but it
01:57is a little bit of what you worry about if you're a coach like D'Amico and you're going
02:03into that game, and you know that the smart thing to do is to rest guys for the playoffs
02:09if it turns out, like it did in the second half of that game, that there was no reason
02:15to win it. That, man, it's just never as simple as, well, we should beat this team and we should
02:22be better, we should be this much better of a defense. And then especially if you start
02:26chasing stats as opposed to, like, really genuinely caring about winning, that it's just
02:32hard to keep up that same edge. And, like, that's exactly what happened in that last game.
02:37They didn't have the same edge. They just, they weren't operating at the same level.
02:40You and I talked about it the day after D'Amico's, I can't remember if it was the Monday after
02:45and he was chippy in the post game or if it was his Monday presser. And yeah, I think it
02:50was his Monday presser. And you and I on Tuesday were like, God, for a guy who's getting ready
02:53for the playoffs, like your team just made the playoffs. He seems he like D'Amico was chippy
03:00that day. And you and I kind of hypothesize, like, I wonder if it's because they, they lost
03:04the scoring title. Yeah. And I don't, the thing is, I don't know, you know, I don't
03:08know if it was as simple as just because they lost the scoring title. It's the manner in
03:12which they lost it, which is that no matter, cause remember it was, they let up, they let
03:19up way too many big plays and allowed too many points before they pulled all the starters.
03:24Right. And they were playing without Kamari Lasseter, but that shouldn't, that's not an
03:28excuse for some of the mistakes they made in that game. So I think it was probably the overall sum
03:33total of it was yes, they lost the scoring defense title, but it was because they played sloppy
03:38football and that it just wasn't the version. It wasn't the version of his football team that he
03:44thought he had probably. Okay. A couple other things from the conversation. And you thought the
03:49exact same thing I did as I was sitting across from Aziz, having the conversation where I asked him,
03:54what does the contract mean to you? What does it symbolize to you? And he said, well, you know,
03:58just I'm paraphrasing, but he said, you know, basically take a look at it. If you're the
04:02Texans, like you, you know, you, you buy things, it means that the Texans value me. And he said,
04:06Sean, if you look at, if I looked at what you spent your money on, I would be able to
04:09say,
04:10these are the things that you value. And Seth immediately types in the rundown touch tunes.
04:16Yeah. That's what Sean values. I value vibes. Yeah. The vibes.
04:21Have you invested in touch tunes? I should. I personally, yeah. I should be like Shaq. Shaq
04:28only does commercials for companies he's invested in. Yeah. Yeah. I should. Well, you should check
04:32out and see, you know, how well they actually run their business. That might be an opportunity for
04:36you. You might buy the whole company. Maybe it's an awesome concept that's just being mismanaged.
04:40There should be some sort of sharing going on, like a stock sharing thing. Well, but we've talked
04:43about that before too. It's that that's where the part of the psychology of guys wanting to be paid
04:52and like the top line number, like matters sometimes more than it, than you would think
05:00it would. Um, just because it is ultimately a show of respect by the organization and that you're
05:06wanting, you know, that's right. It is one of those things where, you know, sometimes some players do
05:11care about state income tax and all of that. Some players, whether they admit it or not,
05:16like when it comes to free agency decisions between going to a California team or a Texas team,
05:22there's something about the top line number that matters just because of the show of respect
05:26from the organization. But then also whether your ego factors into it or not. For sure.
05:31When your own team extends you and gives you a contract like that, I think that's the,
05:36the biggest, the biggest thing that feels good about it, aside from it always feels good to
05:41get a boatload of money. Um, it's just that, okay, wow. They're, they're really voting on me.
05:45Like they really, that is a, that's a show of commitment about how they genuinely feel about
05:49me as opposed to like, Hey, we love you so much. Yep. And because you're such a good guy,
05:54discount, right? Yeah. Yeah. What he, by the way, disease is down right now. According to average
06:00annual value, that new money he's getting is the third highest, third highest average annual value
06:05of any off ball linebacker in football. Um, what, by the time it kicks in, it'll probably be,
06:11it will definitely be a little bit less than that. Yep. Yep. Uh, what did you think of his strategy
06:16when he's mic'd up to not want to know about it? That's so smart. Yeah. I've never heard of that
06:21before. I always just turned down getting mic'd up because for every reason that is, he's cited,
06:26which is he was afraid that if he's mic'd up, he's going to be a different version of himself.
06:31You're either monitoring yourself or you're trying to put on a show or whatever. So he just says,
06:35I didn't know this was an option. Just, yeah, don't tell me I'm mic'd up. Uh, so I always refused
06:41it when I was a player for that same reason. Aziz is very, very smart. See, this is where Gen
06:46Z is
06:46smarter than us olds about stuff like this. Yeah. Performative. You know, they're used to
06:50performing on TikToks and things like that. Well, back in our day, they had to like, they took this huge
06:54actual stage microphone. Crammed it underneath. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. The microphone technology
07:02has improved. That thing must be, mic must be microscopic. Well, they probably, and they put
07:08it because, you know, you get your pads taped on with a double-sided tape so they can put it,
07:12they put it between your jersey and your shoulder pads and if you don't know it's there, you don't
07:15know it's there. Yeah. I guess not. I guess not. Yeah. That's, that was a, boy, I wonder if that
07:19footage still exists somewhere because as he mentioned, they lost the game. If you lose the game,
07:24the mic'd up stuff never gets out there. Yeah. They typically only use it in wins,
07:27but I wonder. Yeah. So for the years he didn't hear the interview, he's talking about how after,
07:30when he was injured at halftime of that game and he was debating whether or not he could go back
07:35out and play, he said a lot of stuff that he probably wouldn't have said if he had known
07:38he was mic'd up. Yeah. He said Shane Goon couldn't shoot or defend. Called Tari Eason an idiot.
07:47His burner shoulder pads. Yes. Oh my God. Yeah. That was, I wonder if that footage is,
07:54I'm sure it exists somewhere. They don't, they don't throw it away. I'm guessing. So I would
07:59be curious to see exactly just how miserable he was. You need to be the investigative journalist.
08:05Yeah. I got a Pablo Torre, this thing. Yes. No, I said, he said he was crying and everything.
08:09It was probably just more emotion that he would have, than he would have shown if he had known
08:13he was mic'd up. Well, he, he had a, I was not expecting him to say that that was his
08:18favorite
08:19moment of his career, the interception against Kansas city a year later, you know, sort of
08:23retribution for that playoff game. Well, you know, there are a couple of things about, um,
08:28Aziz, if we go back to when the entire NFL world seemed to be painting him as a villain because
08:33Trevor Lawrence decided to slide late. Um, the one thing about the full cut, like everything coming full
08:42circle of that, it was when Travis Kelsey in that moment, bobbled that football, I, it's, it's hard
08:49for me to wonder, not to wonder whether, okay, the fact that it was Aziz Alshire bearing down on
08:54him and Aziz comes with a reputation is part of the reason that, that he ended up bobbling the
08:59football. But then also last year, they did call it differently when quarterbacks were sliding and
09:08they gave defenders more of the benefit of the doubt. The Texans, the Texans got the, the, the,
09:14the, the brunt of it when CJ Stroud slid, remember? Yeah. And, um, Denver against Denver and the
09:20defender was initially flagged, but they picked up the flag. And D'Amico was mad about that afterwards
09:25because he said, Hey, we've, we've had that call go against us as a defender before. And I was like,
09:30yeah, but because the league kind of realized that it's, it's unfair to expect defenders to completely
09:37avoid contact that you gotta, you gotta account for a fact that if a quarterback slides late,
09:43he's putting some of that responsibility on himself. Well, and remember I could, the, the
09:47name of the player who hit CJ escapes me for a minute. It was a corner who was kind of
09:51coming
09:51from the side. He's got a double last, he's got a hyphenated last name. I can't remember his name,
09:55but I do remember Aziz coming over and talking to him, you know, and not like a talking to like,
09:59Hey, you just did that to our quarterback. Like Aziz talked to, you know, like Abrams drain,
10:05Abrams drain. Yeah. And, and I remember Aziz said, he talked to him out there like, Hey,
10:10you know, I think kind of like preparing him for what, uh, you know, first take could look like on
10:16Monday and it never really materialized. Well, it wasn't helmet to helmet. So that was the big,
10:20that was why they lifted the flag up. So they turned it into like, and the other part of it
10:24too,
10:25where the Texans got screwed two years ago was in that chiefs game where Mahomes just drops at the
10:30last moment. And those guys get flagged. Like clearly that's on the quarterback. The quarterback's a
10:35runner at that point, you're not allowed to just all of a sudden basically flop. And they did a
10:41better job of that this year. And part of it, unfortunately it was because Texans defenders
10:45got so routinely screwed the year before. Yep.
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