Terrell Eldorado Owens is an American former football wide receiver who played 15 seasons in the National Football League. Regarded as one of the greatest wide receivers of all time, Owens ranks third in NFL history in career receiving yards and receiving touchdowns.
Purchase Terrell’s line of scented candles, Loft 81 Home: https://bit.ly/3QNuExa
Check out Terrell’s lifestyle and apparel brand, Prototype 81: https://bit.ly/45XkPBe
Follow Terrell on Instagram: https://bit.ly/463o4qA
Connect with Terrell Owens on Minnect: https://bit.ly/47nEzii
Purchase tickets to the PBD Town Hall: Live Meet the Candidate Event with Robert F. Kennedy Jr on December 6th: https://bit.ly/3sog9qg
Connect one-on-one with the right expert to get the answers you need with Minnect!
https://bit.ly/40v1oic
Get best-in-class business advice with Bet-David Consulting:
https://bit.ly/40oUafz
Visit VT.com for the latest news and insights from the world of politics, business and entertainment: https://bit.ly/472R3Mz
Visit Valuetainment University for the best courses online for entrepreneurs:
https://bit.ly/47gKVA0
Text PBD to 65532 or call 866-939-6984
Subscribe to:
@VALUETAINMENT
@vtsoscast
@ValuetainmentComedy
@bizdocpodcast
Want to get clear on your next 5 business moves? https://valuetainment.com/academy/
Join the channel to get exclusive access to perks: https://bit.ly/3Q9rSQL
Download the podcasts on all your favorite platforms https://bit.ly/3sFAW4N
Text: PODCAST to 310.340.1132 to get the latest updates in real-time!
Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Okay, so there's an epidemic going on in the NFL with fans that we got to figure this thing out right now and correct it before it's too late.
It's not Terrell Owens.
It's Terrell Owens.
Say it, Terrell.
Terrell.
Like Cheryl.
Terrell Owens is the proper pronunciation, not Terrell.
And by the way, I'm speaking to myself because I called him Terrell before he walked.
Let me properly introduce our guest today, although many of you, if you follow sports, if you love sports, you definitely know who this man is.
He's a Hall of Famer.
I was glad when it happened, although a lot of people would say it was well overdue.
But third all-time, I think, in yards, touchdowns, eighth in regular season receptions, 1,078, 15,934 yards, 150 touchdowns, 153.
And the only player ever to catch a touchdown with every single NFL team, this is according to ESPN, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2018.
And on top of that, recently on my birthday, it was reported that a car hit him and was absolutely damaged.
I'm sorry, I'm reading the story the other way, Ron.
You know, Terrell hit the car.
Terrell hit the car.
The car is suing, Pat.
The car is suing.
The car is a Terrell.
It's injured.
It's got a lawyer.
The car is a lawyer.
It is great to have you on the podcast, man.
Appreciate it.
Thank you guys for having me.
Yeah, it's very good to have you on the podcast.
It's interesting.
You know, as a fan, we're sitting here talking.
Tom says, you were at the last game, right?
You were at Jerry Rice's last game.
Yeah, my wife is Niner Faithful, man.
Niner Faithful.
And if they didn't want you to break the record, why did they keep throwing it to you?
That's the one where you get 20 catches.
I think Jerry's record was, what, 16?
And, you know, was it against the Bears?
The Bears, yeah.
Against the Bears.
Right, right.
It was a talk of town because it was supposed to be.
Shut them out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But anyway, so everybody has a Terrell story of watching you.
You know, I got a couple other questions I want to get into.
Obviously, you know, the Stephen A. Smith stuff that we got to get into.
We'll get into that in a minute.
We'll talk about courier.
We'll talk about football.
We'll talk about today.
We'll talk about fastest.
We'll talk about a few different things.
But very open-ended question for you.
As a guy that maybe is a fan of the game, of course, I saw you with Deion the other day.
We have to talk about Deion as well.
Do you like today's game more than the game you used to play in or the game even before you?
Which game do you like more?
From what I watch, again, the game is a little bit less physical.
Obviously, I think that's why you have an inflation of receiver yards and catches.
Obviously, they've kind of minimized the kind of like the defensive aggressiveness of the defense.
But I'm a basketball fan at heart, so I don't really watch a lot of football.
And it's probably surprising to a lot of people that ask me the same question that you're asking me.
When I grew up in Alabama, I was raised by my grandmama and my mama.
I wasn't really into sports like that.
I played a lot of sports, but I didn't ever think that I would play at the professional level or reach the level that I did.
So I only watch football occasionally now with guys that were playing while I was playing.
And some of the guys that I've run into, run across probably over the last four or five years that have entered into the league, like DK Metcalf, for example.
Still talk to Julio Jones.
He just got acquired, just got back in the NFL, and he's playing with the Philadelphia Eagles, guys that I've worked out with over the last few years or so.
So that's kind of like my involvement.
And then obviously, obviously with social media, I stay kind of like abreast of what's going on around the league.
I mean, I have a number of friends that are either Cowboys fans, they're Eagles fans, or they're San Francisco 49ers fans.
As a matter of fact, last night I had two of those guys on the phone.
They FaceTimed me last night, a 49er fan and a guy that's an Eagles fan.
And for the last three to four weeks, they've been calling me, kind of asking me like my take on who's going to win, why they're going to win, things of that nature.
So my 49er fan, he's having a tough time right now because a friend, he's because they've lost three in a row.
And I kind of gave him a heads up.
And I tell them, look, I'm not really invested in it because I see it from a different perspective than fans.
So I honestly, I give my honest assessment as to what I think is going to happen in the game, you know, why are they going to win or why they may lose?
And so I've been pretty much, I'm batting a thousand right now.
And my Eagles guy, he's on cloud nine right now.
Eight and one.
They just had a very good Cowboys played good, but they had a very good game.
What is their record?
Five and three or five and three?
No, no, the Eagles.
Eight and one.
Eight and one.
Number 81 here.
So if anybody wants the picks for next week, Seagull's going to lose.
That's a good one.
Eight and one.
So, by the way, what do you think about this whole conversation about a lot of guys that, you know, post Brady, they kind of want to get connected with the next Brady?
What do you think about this conversation that Purdy has what it takes?
You know, underdog, you know, wasn't drafted that high.
Nobody really banked on this guy.
His parents even brought him there not thinking he's going to play.
He's got a very good underdog story.
Do you think that is a little bit too much hype or do you think he has the goodies?
He shows the signs that he can be a player like that?
I mean, I think when you look at what he did last year taking over and obviously winning a lot of games and got him to the Super Bowl.
And then obviously, unfortunately for him, he got hurt in the Super Bowl.
So we don't know what would have happened.
But based on what we saw leading up to that, I mean, they very well could have won the Super Bowl.
But then you start this season out, you're starting out hot.
And then the last three games, you know, you kind of feel like, okay, maybe defenses are catching on to him.
They've done a lot of film study.
They're kind of choosing to see what his strengths and weaknesses are.
And defense, maybe defensive coordinators maybe are trying to expose those or exploit those.
I mean, so right now, I think if you look at what he's done, he's definitely capable of playing in this league.
I think when you think about the Tom Brady, you start to mention guys like Tom Brady.
What makes those guys great is the consistency of their play.
And I think that's what's in question right now, especially within the last three games.
You ever caught Brady's passes?
Like even just like Pro Bowl in any have you and Brady ever caught a pass to like have you actually I did he was I was in Los Angeles.
I can't remember what year it was.
It might have been like around 20 maybe, 14 to 15 maybe, and he was working out with one of his trainers, Tom House, at USC and we ran.
I ran a few routes and stuff out there with him and some other receivers in a in a.
In a running route like that can you get a feel and say damn, that was okay.
So this is why he is who is.
Or is it so much more about discipline consistency, mindset that you don't sense the difference between him or Roma or Garcia or Young or McNabb?
Like, no, I definitely felt the difference with Brady.
Well, you can know, you know the difference between a catchable ball and like a guy that throws with finesse, knows when to throw with a little zip, little velocity on it.
I would tend to more give you a better assessment in game in a game setting or practice setting because now he has to figure out, understand my run gate, how I come in and how I transition in and out of my routes, my speed, all those things.
In a practice setting and in a competitive setting, that's when you kind of feel, get a feel for what a quarterback can and cannot do.
But when it comes to game time situation, when you look at, and I was just mentioning this to the guys too last night, when you think about the game that the Super Bowl that they won coming back from, what, 25 down against the Atlanta Fouls, 33.
23.
Yeah, something like that.
When you think about that game, the error, the margin of error is really, really small, especially being down that many points.
So you have to understand with a guy like that, you have to be very cerebral to understand the matchups.
You have to know when and where to throw the ball with, again, ball placement.
And then you have to pick your matchups.
Obviously, the plays have to be called, but you have to execute those plays.
And for Tom, like I said, being down that many points, you have to maximize every opportunity to get back into the ballgame.
And then it's another thing to actually win it.
So when you think about what he did in that game, it's remarkable because you have to look at, I can't remember, know the receivers that were on the team at that time, but you have to understand like every down and distance, every play matters.
Exactly.
And you got to understand the matchups that are on the field.
When you think about the Gronkowskis, I think maybe Elderman was there.
You have to pick your battles and understand on this down and distance, like who's over here, who's over there.
You have to manipulate the defense, like whether it's cover one, cover two.
You have to manipulate the defense with your eyes and your feet.
And he was able to do that.
When you think about just the accuracy and just the velocity and where he puts the ball, that's a lot.
Let me ask you, as a receiver, I don't know what it is to be, you know, one of the greatest receivers, in some arguments, the greatest receiver of all time, right?
Do you know if you can't see the quarterback throwing the ball, do you know just by catching and the way the ball comes who it is, like with the guys you played?
Could you tell?
That's a Garcia pass.
That's a young pass.
You can't.
Well, from a right-handed quarterback and a left-handed quarterback, yes, that was something that I had to get adjusted to because for so many years, I've always caught right-handed quarterbacks.
But then when I got with the 49ers, I had left the way.
The ball is spinning.
Yeah, I had Steve Young.
And then I think I may have dropped the ball a couple of times.
When it came to me, I'm like, it just hits the hands differently.
It's a different rotation on the ball.
So those are things you have to get adjusted to.
You're not the only one to say that about Steve Young.
Everybody, there's a lot of receivers that really respected playing with him.
Oh, I didn't see you over here.
My bad.
Hey, Tom.
What's going on?
Tom's crumped up on you.
He's getting back at me.
There was a lot of receivers that said when they had to learn to play Steve Young, they said you could trust him because the ball was going to be there and he had good finance, good placement, everything you're talking about.
But the ball spun different.
Yep, it did.
Especially if it was a little wet.
And they said that that took getting used to.
Well, yeah.
I mean, that's as a receiver, like I said, it wasn't something that I thought about.
But then I knew when I ran the route and the ball hit my hands, I knew something was different.
And obviously, when you think about the West Coast offense, everything is based on timing and precision.
That's why I'm so fortunate.
I'm grateful to have been number one drafted to the Niners, but then I got a chance to watch another great athlete of all time and Jerry Rice, who played the position that I, again, like I said, I end up kind of shattering some of his records.
But I got a chance to watch him.
And so I couldn't have been in a better situation coming from a small school, UT Chattanooga.
And then obviously, like I said, playing.
Like I said, I was drafted to a team, obviously, that had future Hall of Famers in that room.
And you think about it, like I said, obviously Jerry Rice and then obviously Steve Young.
Again, these two honestly kind of helped unfold who I was as a receiver.
And unfortunately, I didn't get to play the entirety or the majority of my career with Steve Young, obviously due to the concussions.
But I only got to play three years with Steve Young.
And then obviously Jeff Garcia came in.
And then I played with a plethora of quarterbacks.
I mean, Elvis Gerbach, I mean, Tim Ratte.
There are so many quarterbacks that I played with.
But who's to, I honestly, I wish I don't know what I could have accomplished had I had Steve Young for eight years.
I was just going to ask you, who was out of all of them, Teal, out of all the quarterbacks, game time, passing everything, all the way, who do you think was the best one to throw to you?
Game time.
People ask me this and they think I'm being funny, but I love Ryan Fitzpatrick.
Wow.
I do.
And I played with a number of quarterbacks.
But if you think about Ryan Fitzpatrick's career, he was never with a team for a long period of time where he was the main state of the starter.
He always came in and he filled in, but he played very, very well.
And so obviously, like I said, there's a number of quarterbacks obviously that I played with that obviously I could give a nod to.
But again, I look at late in my career, especially in Buffalo, because that was like my first stint with him.
And Trent Edwards was the quarterback at that time.
And so they brought me in and they was like, okay, we need you to come in and kind of help groom this guy.
And so obviously for him, some injuries came into play.
He had his main guys that he was throwing to.
And it's hard.
Like I said, that was later on in my career, but I knew I could still play the game.
But he had somewhat of a comfort level with the guys that were already there.
Lee Evans, Josh, I think Josh Reed.
Is it Josh Reed?
I don't know.
Some other receivers that were there that he was comfortable with.
And so I didn't really get a chance to really evolve and really play like I wanted to play until Ryan Fitzpatrick took over at quarterback.
And I started to just play like everybody expected me to play.
He's a dog, though.
Fitzpatrick is a feisty guy, rally players from obviously from a fan's perspective.
It looked like players liked playing with him.
I don't know what he was like in the locker room, but there was something attractive about his personality.
No, no, he's a baller.
He's a gamer.
And again, he's very, very, he's tough.
And again, obviously, smart guy.
What did he went to Harvard?
He went to Harvard.
Economic.
Economic student at Harvard.
Hysterical interviews afterwards.
Yeah, yeah.
Playing with the media.
With the beard and the glasses just looking at him.
I didn't get that question, sir.
I didn't get that, Ryan, but I got a chance to watch it from afar.
Got it.
Obviously, yeah, but he's a good guy.
Like, again, over the years, like I said, people have asked me that question.
But that's no knock at any of the other quarterbacks that I played with.
And obviously, like I said, I mean, Steve Young, Hall of Fame quarterback, but I only got to play three years with.
But just think of when you look at Jerry Rice and his career and the numbers that he amassed, he didn't have a drop off at the quarterback position because he went from Joe Montana, Hall of Fame quarterback, to Steve Young, Hall of Fame quarterback.
What would have happened if you had that?
I mean, look at, I put this in, I guess I put it in perspective because you look at the things that I did with the number of quarterbacks.
Again, if you want to compare the ones, you know, compare those quarterbacks to the Hall of Fame quarterbacks that Jerry played with, it's kind of like it's apples and oranges.
So you think about what I did with the ones that I played with, who's to say what, I mean, I think everybody knows what would have probably happened.
I probably have maybe five, I'll probably say, maybe three to five thousand more yards.
Who knows?
So you think you would have cracked 20 if you were with Joe and so meaning exact number of seasons Jerry had with Joe and Young, would you have more yards more?
I would have definitely threatened.
Can you pull up Jerry Rice stats against Terrell?
I'm actually curious now myself because, you know, Jerry, can you pull that up?
Because I'm right at like 16,000.
I'm right.
You're 15,934.
And Jerry was what, he's like 20,000?
Holy shit, he's at 22,895.
22,8,950.
Touchdowns, 197.
That would have been, I mean, you only needed 44 more.
Right.
Yeah, 153, yeah.
Receptions he had 500 more, a little less than 500 more.
So it's interesting because the point guard in the NFL is the quarterback, right?
So if you got a good point guard, you're able to, you know, like Carl Malone had the advantage of having Stockton.
Right.
Right.
So what would have happened if somebody else had 15, 18 years of a Stockton as a point guard?
And that's what you're saying.
Right.
Is the story true about the one story I remember?
Did J.J. Stokes come out of UCLA?
95.
95.
I still watch him at UCLA.
He meant there's a guy from USC receiver, Johnny Morton.
I think he went to the Lions, if I'm not mistaken.
And he was playing with Herman Moore and Mitchell.
So was it Scott Mitchell, the left-handed?
Scott Mitchell, your quarterback.
But is there a story where you guys are climbing up this hill that Jerry would run and you and JJ running up with him and you guys beat him in the first mile or whatever it is?
And all of a sudden he comes back and says, you know, hey, young guys or some, this is a story, a myth I've heard.
What really happened then?
I've never run the hill with Jerry.
You've never run the hill with Jerry.
Not with Jerry.
Okay.
I have not.
But we've heard this story.
And the story's been told.
So you were not part of that story with JJ Stokes running up.
No, I was not.
Have you ever heard this story with others telling you?
I know it at least.
I may have, but yeah, I'm not familiar.
When they tell the story, have you heard it with your name being included in it or no?
No, I have not.
You've not heard it.
So it's a story with JJ being in this.
It might have been JJ, but I wasn't, yeah, I never ran the hill with Jerry.
How disciplined was his training?
I guess that's the question I want to ask.
Very meticulous.
I mean, even from his training, the way he put on his uniform, just the way he went about just being the receiver that he became, and he was.
The difference with me and Jerry, Jerry, he grew up as a young kid wanting to be a football player.
He wanted to be, again, a receiver.
And then eventually, ultimately, he wanted to be the greatest receiver of all time.
And he had a dad.
He had somebody obviously to help him and push him to be that.
I didn't grow up wanting to be a professional football player.
I never thought I would be in a million years.
I got to Chattanooga on the heels of another receiver that they were recruiting in high school.
And so I got there at UT Chattanooga just kind of like somewhat on a package deal.
And again, I was very competitive.
I played a number of sports in high school.
I played baseball, basketball.
I ran track.
And then, like I said, getting to UT Chattanooga, again, I didn't really play much my freshman year.
I didn't really play till like late in the season.
And then I think my sophomore year is kind of like, it was kind of like my breakout year.
The coach that I had at the time, Buddy Nicks, he didn't really believe in playing freshmen unless you were like coming out of high school, unless you were like an all-American or you were a four or five, you know, four or five-star athlete.
And so I was definitely not that coming out of high school.
And so I just kind of just kept working, just trying to find my way.
And then my sophomore year, I had somewhat of a breakout year.
I think late in the season, I had four touchdowns against the defending national champions, Marshall Thundering Herd at that time that was in our conference.
And I scored all four touchdowns and we won the game 33 to 31.
That was sort of like the stepping stone of kind of like me, you know, thrusting into, you know, on the scene of becoming a receiver.
So you, and you, sorry, and you said, you said that, so your, your mother and your grandmother raised you to your.
So how much of a role were they, were they more like, okay, like you're a stuck, like they could, they knew you were athletic, but they, were they, were they pushing you to you?
Or was it you just on your own in school?
Because like you were saying, this guy had a father.
Your father wasn't in the picture to you?
No.
So you had to find that on your own because realized like, yo, I'm nasty.
No, I wasn't nasty in high school.
I was just being a kid just playing sports.
And that was just one of the things.
And it was just kind of like one thing after another.
I mean, I had enough skill, I guess, talent.
Like I said, I tried out for the basketball team.
I made it.
You know what I mean?
Went out for baseball.
I made it.
You know what I mean?
But I was never, I wasn't a star.
You know what I mean?
Obviously, I played football, played JV, and then eventually my junior year, I ended up going to varsity.
There are guys that were like in my freshman, sophomore year, they were talented enough to play at the varsity level.
And I saw those guys.
I witnessed those guys.
I was never one of those guys.
And so when you look at the entirety of my career and how it started and where I came from, for me, I still go back and I'm like, man, how did this happen?
But I always talk about, you know, when I ultimately got inducted into the Hall of Fame, but prior to that, I got nominated in 2016.
And I think about, I'm like, man, how did I get here?
And I always thought about like, how did this all happen?
And then I just kind of reflected back on everything and I had gone through, who had helped me along the way.
And then just really just internally, like there was something about me that was different than everybody else.
And so I kind of just like, man, I sat back in my condo after doing an interview after being nominated in 2016.
And I'm like, man, how did I get here?
And I came up with these three D's, which is desire, dedication, and discipline.
I had the desire to play whatever it may have been.
But when you think about guys that are considered great, you think about what it takes to do that.
With every athlete, there has to be some sort of dedication.
But what really separates the great from the good is discipline.
And I was fortunate enough and I had enough wherewithal to think about like, how did I get here?
When I started to think about, and then throughout the course of my career, people start saying, man, you're the Michael Jordan of football.
What?
Michael Jordan of football.
Who would have ever thought that?
I never would have thought that.
Me, and I say this because I'm like, wait.
At what phase did they say that?
How early?
This was, I mean, when I was pretty much at the height of my career, I guess it was like, I guess, year, early on, that's, I guess, year maybe six or seven, you know what I mean?
Going into eight, you know what I mean, with San Francisco.
And then I went to Philly.
And then I was, you know, my game was off on another level.
And then I went to Dallas and it was still on another level.
It was the consistency from like maybe four year four or five and then the trajectory of my skill set and my talent, it was still trending at a level that I started to realize, like, man, when I stepped on the field, I felt unstoppable.
And all of that came about because of really, number one, my desire to play the sport.
And then I saw the greatness in the locker room that I was in with the Jerry Rice's, you know, the Tim McDonald's, the Merton Hanks, the Steve Youngs.
And then I saw J.J. Stokes.
Like these guys helped develop me into the receiver that I became because I came out.
When I came out, I was really raw and green.
I wasn't really, I wasn't playing at Chattanooga.
I didn't play the Power Five Schools.
I didn't play the tough, stiff competition to where I was ready to play as soon as I stepped on the field in San Francisco when I was drafted in 96.
I didn't have that eye-popping ability to play right away, like a Randy Moss coming out of college.
You saw that ability.
I didn't play right away.
It took like three to four years for me to really get to where I got to and become the receiver that I became just by just really working hard.
It was really due to those three Ds, the desire, the dedication, and the discipline.
When you think about some of the greatest to ever play their sport, whether it's baseball, whether it's tennis, you just think about all the greats.
There's only a handful of those guys.
But if you think about every sport, there's a lot of good athletes, but there are only a handful of great ones.
And discipline is what separates.
When you listen at people talk about people that they have played with or coaches that have coached great players or their peers that have, you know, played against them, played with them, it's always something different.
And discipline is that word.
Did you love the game?
Did you love it?
I became in love with the game because I started to become in love with the process in which I became the receiver that I did.
I had a personal trainer that I acquired in 90, right after the 99 season, after I caught the pass to beat Green Bay.
Sick.
Sick.
Brett Farr's look.
Is that the one you're saying afterwards?
The highlights on his face?
Look like he lost his dog.
Right.
So like I said, I'm a big basketball fan.
I'm living in Atlanta at the time.
So I go to Crunch and Buckhead and I'm all that that was my way of conditioning.
That was my way of keeping myself in shape.
When you talk about the heel that, you know, Jerry, I never really ran routes.
I never really focused on route running or anything to like training camp.
I never did any on-the-field things.
I didn't do anything to really, I guess, enhance my football abilities as far as route running.
Never.
Not genetics.
Not to year nine.
That was the first time I really worked out.
You're nine.
You're not with, are you still at San Francisco?
I'm with the Philadelphia Eagles.
That's right.
Because you played eight with F-49ers.
Right.
And I say this because, and I'm, and I, and I'm saying this because I think about now, like you see all the YouTube and the training and all these guys with these personal trainers, this and that and the other.
They're running routes.
I'm like, I wonder what my career would have been, been like if I would have dedicated myself in the offseason like these guys have.
And I never did that until year nine is like when I got traded to eventually getting traded to the Philadelphia Eagles.
Donovan had, he was living in Arizona and he wanted to try to get the guys on the field all together to try to get a feel for each other to develop some chemistry right before the season.
And so that was the first time I had really gone and ran some routes, taking some time to devote to like, okay, I'm going to go run some routes today and do things like that.
But that was the first time in my career.
So then to me, if I may, here's, you know, like if you're in high school, if you're 6'6 in 10th grade and you don't like basketball, guess who's going to come knocking on your door?
The coaches, right?
They're going to say, hey, Johnny, come on.
What do you mean?
You're going to play ball.
I don't play basketball.
I play video games.
No, no, you're going to play ball.
Come on down.
You know, you're going to come.
We're going to teach you how to play this game.
And then a couple of years later, maybe you do.
And then five years later, you're in the NBA.
And at that point, you may be a center at the Lakers called Andrew Bynum, you know, and maybe you don't love the game, but you're great at the game.
Andrew Byner was great at the game.
And I would watch it.
I'm like, I don't know if we're even asking the most basic question.
Does this guy even love the game?
So for me, when I watch you, I'm like, okay, so if you can pull up the picture of Terrell Owens, okay, so this is you, men's fitness.
There's God knows how many pictures of your physique.
Absolute human specimen is what you are.
And sometimes, like for the average person, they can work five days workout, five days a week at the gym for five years, and they still may not look like that.
Okay.
There's certain things that genetics plays a role when you're looking the way that you're looking.
But if there's no love of the game and the game kind of just comes, like I just shook your hands right now, can you put your hands right here so just the audience can see?
You still got mitts.
Look at this shit.
I don't think people realize, like, if you see Terrell's hands, it's just like your hands.
It felt like a baby going in.
But again, Phil Jackson will call Jordan's hands, what do we call them?
Mitts?
Mitts?
He says this guy had these hands, right?
So, and you just answered a question where you're kind of like the love of the game came in ninth grade, not ninth grade, your ninth year in the NFL or make kind of the process.
Did you struggle with that?
You're like, look, I'm just playing this because I'm good at it.
This is a joke.
You guys are trying so hard.
I can do this with my eyes closed.
Did you kind of have that mentality?
No, I mean, I was humbled early on in my career because, again, like I mentioned, I was really raw from a skill set standpoint.
I had the physical attributes.
When you think about the end of the 90s, I was drafted in 96.
And when you think about that era and you think about the receivers that were playing at that time, they were tall, like six feet, 6'3, 6'4.
You mentioned one of my earlier, like the Herman Moores, Jake Reeds, JJ Stokes.
He was 6'6.
Like Chris Carter, Michael Irvin, Jerry Rice.
This was the state of the game at the time.
These were the big receivers.
So I had the physical attributes that they were looking for in a receiver at that time.
But there was a lot of things I didn't possess.
To, again, I was drafted off potential.
And then, like I said, I had the prototypical type of body that was playing in the league at that time.
And then just from that.
But that was common is what you're saying.
Yeah, exactly.
So everything that I've done, like I said, there's some thought behind it.
You know, like I said, just follow me.
Prototypical was what I kept hearing coming out of college.
Like, oh, he has a prototypical body, blah, blah, blah, blah, the height.
I had the physical attributes.
There were things that I had to do along the way to enhance my abilities as a receiver.
And that's where my personal trainer came into play.
But once I started to figure out the game itself, once I started to figure out and put things together as far as like, you know, I was struggling reading defenses because I played at a Division I double-Hooler.
I didn't play, like I said, the PowerPoint school.
I didn't play the competition.
When I got into training camp, it was tough.
The bump and run, I struggled with that.
Free access, I could run free access all day.
But once guys saw in training camp that I struggled with bump and run, every day we had one-on-ones, that's where I got better.
And then they started to like, you know, come up and press me.
You know, I can run routes off coverage all day.
But once they saw that I struggled, that was something that they wanted to do every day.
And then we watched the film after practice.
I mean, everybody had one-on-one routes.
And so as we went through the film, you know, coach got frustrated with me because I couldn't get off bump and run.
So it was just like almost like a wasted rep. And it got to a point, it became repetitive.
Like we go to the film.
I knew I was coming up.
Like he would critique me, you know, the first, you know, couple of times.
And after a point, it was like it was almost embarrassing because he would just go to the next person because he's like, I'm tired of trying to, you know, get you to, you know, learn this and get off this, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So I took it upon myself to kind of work after practice.
We had a martial arts guy named George Chung on our team that was kind of just on the team that kind of just worked with players or what have you.
Why?
Wonderful bump and runs.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
So, yeah, so I mean, he was just like pushing off.
Wow, that's great.
That's a good idea.
Hand plates or things of that nature.
And then obviously with hand, you got to move your feet too.
So there were some things that I had to work on is like, you know, footwork, hand work.
And so when you think about, you know, bump and run, a DB, what they want to do is disrupt you coming off the line of scrimmage.
And so when you think about, we talked about earlier, you think about the West Coast offense, which I played in a number of systems, but most of my career, I played in West Coast kind of offenses or what have you, which is predicated timing and precision.
So you can't waste any time, you know, coming off the line because the quarterback has his progressions.
I mean, I guess an average play is what, between three and four seconds.
So you got to think about, okay, if you're first in the progression, second or third or what have you, then you can't be dilly dallion at the line of scrimmage.
You got to have a plan A, you got to have a plan B in a split second.
Plan C, you're not going to probably get to plan C because the quarterback's already moved on to option two, to option three, depending on, obviously, the matchups, depending on the coverage or what have you.
And so those are some of the things that I had to work on to enhance my abilities as a receiver.
Would you say you were coachable?
Very coachable.
My coaches, I'm chilling.
Larry Kirksey, my first year, first few years in San Francisco, George Stewart, who was my first three years, while Kirksey was my receiver coach, he was my special teams coach.
So coming in as a rookie, you're not starting playing right away.
You're going to play special teams.
So I played a lot of special.
I played special teams.
I played either on the punt team.
I played on kickoff.
I played kickoff return.
And so again, that's kind of like the groundhog days of being a rookie.
Like you got to pay your dues.
And so that's what I did.
And so that's how I became, and like coaches saw that I was tough.
And then when George Stewart, who was the special teams coach, he became my receiver coach, when he came in that room and he knew that I was with the Jerrys, the JJs, and I was, it was kind of like we were three-headed monsters.
Just like, you know, the Vikings had Chris Carter.
They had Randy Moss.
And they had, they had another receiver.
Yeah, they did.
They had another receiver.
Who was the guy that they had?
They had a third option.
Was Reed up there at that time?
No.
No, they had a third option.
I can't remember who it was.
They had a third option.
Yeah, but it was like, yeah, so I got to tell you about change.
The Rams had that too.
They take Bruce, Torrey Holt coming up, and Ricky Prol on the slot.
Right.
So they had that comparison of us big three in like in San Francisco or Cisco versus the Minnesota Vikings big three.
And so those guys kind of like said, kind of motivated me to to become who I became because, like I said, there was a lot of work to be done.
But if honestly, it said, if I didn't have my personal trainer, buddy Prim, that I, that I came across with the you know from a guy that I ran, ran into, that introduced him on a basketball court, I don't know honestly where my career would, would be, what I, what I want to know.
So I got obviously, from a fan's perspective, we've watched the controversy with you over the years and we've watched what everyone said, whether it's Mariuchi Skip you, Stephen A I've watched a lot of that stuff over the years.
But I'm listening to you right now and I'm wondering one, um okay, so this guy's got an unbelievable skill, like you said, prototypical.
You know, you know the what was the word you use?
That they're, they're calling you when you're coming out of college.
He's the, the typical wide receiver, prototypical physique.
You know you're 6'3 215, you look bigger, but it used to say 6'3, 215 and you're coming out playing.
Does he love the game?
Does he not love the game?
Okay, and you know if I had a, you know the same amount of years I played with Joe Montana and Steve Young.
What kind of stats would I put up?
You know what would I have done?
You destroyed people.
I mean, i've seen you one time, you know, Dion's playing a defense on you.
You just push him and Dion falls and he's even laughing at himself the way you threw him.
I mean, even he jokes about you.
Guys are friends right yeah, but fast forward to today.
You know uh look, looking back with your game.
You said a few things earlier.
You said, you know, I was raised with my mom and my grandma, no father figure in the picture.
Let's just say you did have a father figure.
What is the benefit of having a father figure?
What is a?
You know, a difference between a fatherless home versus a father raising?
Uh tarot, what would have been the difference?
Um, I probably have to say uh structure uh, kind of like.
You know, having uh that that, that voice, or having somebody to lean on uh, to talk to.
Um, I mean there's there's, there's responsibilities, you know, with the mom in the, in the, in the household, and the dad in the household.
Um, at certain, at a certain age, especially from the time that you're born you're you're, you're dependent upon your mother for a large part of that, and then at some point you transition, you know, from being around the mom all the time to where okay, this is where the dad has to pick up the pieces, and this is where especially if it's whether it's a daughter or or, or a boy uh, or a son, you know, I mean and and,
And this is where you have sometimes you have like, you know, girl dads, boy dads.
And so for me, I never got a chance to experience that because as I went through life, I started to look at other male figures as as as as to how to go about life and how to do certain things.
When I didn't have I didn't have an uncle or big brother to lean on, to talk about tough questions or or go through tough times with.
Um, when you think about a father, I mean, they're very much needed in the household when you need somebody to talk to.
And then again there's guy things that mom can't do.
That's right, you know what I mean, and vice versa.
And so, I just, like I said, I don't know how different my life would be, but who's to say?
But I mean, you can only imagine, like I said, being in a structured household versus a not structured household or a two-family household in a single-family household.
There's three things.
I'm in Dallas a couple days ago, and I was talking to an audience crowd with Sapalo's birthday.
I say, every boy needs three things.
He needs someone to love, someone to respect, someone to fear.
Okay.
So, you know, in most cases, love is mom.
If you got a dad, you can love as well, even better.
But you don't necessarily need it if you got both of them in the household, right?
Respect, you want to respect mom, but maybe, you know, not at the level you respect a man that's going to check you.
Right.
And then the fear.
So the 14-year-old, 15-year-old, 16-year-old Terrell, who did you fear?
My dad, you fear.
You fear your grandma.
Oh, my, she was no joke.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
I always say that she was kind of like my mama and my dad.
She raised me.
Again, she raised all of us.
And so, again, my mom had me at an early age.
And then, you know, honestly, you know, her dreams got, you know, it was cut short because she had kids.
And so she couldn't do the things that she wanted to do.
She had aspirations to be a model.
She had aspirations to be a designer and do those things.
And so it's so funny now as I progressed throughout my career and I saw and I got to know what those things that she wanted to do, I got a chance to do those things.
She kind of got to live vicariously through me.
And so my grandmama, she was very strict.
She was a disciplinarian to the nth degree.
And I got a chance to understand how she grew up.
And she raised us how she grew up.
You think about the segregation era of having to just face racism, do all, you know, experience those things.
And I didn't know anything about it, but I used to be around when she used to be on the phone and talk to certain people about how she grew up and how her mom and dad grew up.
And just the whole black and white picture, I didn't understand at that time.
But as I grew older, I got a chance to understand and look back and I'm like, oh, this is what she meant.
So again, when you think about racism, you think about systemic racism.
Those are some things, like I said, I heard.
But then as I went through life and I got older, I got to experience a little bit of those things.
And so when you think about how she was raised and then how I was raised, honestly, like I said, I mean, she replaced, you know, the father that I didn't have.
But again, as I grew up and I went through life, I realized me not having a father and then me having kids, I didn't want to be that to my kids.
I wanted to go a different path.
And then sometimes it's all about, like I said, you don't have to be in the same household, but you have to be present at some point in time in your kids' lives.
And so for me, I have kids and I always try to be supportive and I try to be there for them when I can.
Relationship now, because, you know, as a kid, my parents got divorced and I was, you know, my, I saw my dad once every other week when they got divorced.
We came here.
I lived in Germany two years at a refugee camp, so I didn't see my dad there.
When you were later on yourself, I think you had a, did you rekindle the relationship with your, there was a meeting with you and your father, right?
I think Open Winfrey Network where you guys had a sat down.
Yeah, right.
I Janla Van Zunt did a show, had a show called Fix My Life.
And so, yeah, they reached out to me about doing it.
And it almost didn't happen because he signed on for it.
And then, you know, I think it really got deep for him.
It got tough for him.
And he almost backed out of it.
But he stuck in there.
And we went through it.
And that was the first time, honestly, on that show, that was the first time I had ever seen my mom and my dad in the same room for more than five minutes.
As I went through the city, I grew up and I saw him around town.
It was kind of like more of high by, you know what I mean?
Maybe spend a five or five to 10 minutes here with him here and there.
But that was pretty much the extent of it.
But my dad lived right across the street from me, living with my grandma, grandmama.
And so ultimately, like I said, I found out that he was my dad.
But, you know, at some point, like I said, there was a time that I didn't know.
And then once I found out, like I said, it was just kind of like, okay, he's my dad.
So what age did you know?
Around like 11 or 12.
Got it.
Yeah, somewhere in there.
Got it.
I was a preteen.
Got it.
And are you guys good now?
Like, do you have a relationship or no?
I mean, it's cordial.
I mean, we don't have like the best of any, nothing changed.
Nothing really drastically changed when I made it to the pros.
It wasn't like he knew that I was a professional.
I made money.
It wasn't like, you know, now he wanted to leech on.
It was nothing.
I respect that either.
Sometimes you hear those stories.
That's good to hear.
Right.
It was nothing close to that.
Is there an effort?
Like, is there like, hey, you want to have lunch?
You want to go to dinner with the quarter or something like that?
When I go home, I make it a point to stop by.
Respect me.
And, you know, my grandmama, she passed in 2012.
You know, my sister, my nephew, they live in the house.
So I always go by.
And like I said, our town is so small.
I mean, I just usually, like I said, when I go home, you know, my grandmama is who raised me.
So I always go ride by the house.
And so he's always there.
Last night I'm watching a documentary of the Shah, 2,500-year celebration in Iran.
It's not anything that has to do with this interview.
And Zahedi, who was the ambassador to U.S. representing Iran, he was dating Elizabeth Taylor.
He said something very powerful on this documentary.
He says, two things destroy a man, status and money.
When you first came and you experienced money, you made almost $100 million.
I think NFL, I don't know the exact contract.
I think you made $80 million, give or take.
NFL has brought money.
What was harder to handle?
Was it more status, eyeballs, limelight?
You can't go out.
Girls are.
I mean, you're a good-looking guy, good body.
You got swagger.
You know how to talk.
Was that tougher to handle as a young man?
Or was it money, sudden money coming into your hands tougher to handle?
I don't think neither was hard to handle.
I mean, I think I took the fame.
I took it all in stride.
Again, I didn't see myself as a superstar, and I wasn't a superstar right away.
Again, I was drafted off potential.
And so that potential really didn't get tapped into to after that.
I would say like after that Green Bay playoff game, that was when I think I started to develop some confidence in myself that, okay, I could play at the next level.
Anybody that knows about that game, it didn't start.
It didn't start well by any means for me.
But I always say this is so cliche.
It's not how you start.
It's how you finish.
I had a terrible start of the game.
And so for me, I put a lot of pressure on myself because that was a like now I'm starting to play.
This is year three.
Now I'm starting to really play alongside Jerry Rice, J.J. Stokes, Brent Jones, Steve Young.
I mean, I'm starting to be a part of the offense.
And so I wanted, and I, for three years, I got a chance to watch highlights of Jerry.
I got to watch practices of Jerry.
I got to watch playoff games of Jerry and how he performed.
And I wanted to be that, I wanted to be somewhat like him.
I wanted to be that star.
And I think I put so much pressure on myself to make a play every time that I touched the ball that it was counterproductive.
Like it was just something that just went wrong.
I had a fumble.
I dropped a touchdown.
I mean, there were passes that literally I watched into my hand after a couple of ones, a couple of passes dropped.
I went to the sideline and my coach is like, man, just watch, you know, my teammates, he's like, man, just watch it all the way into your hand.
But this is my third year.
It's not like I don't know how to catch, but this for me, I'm thinking, okay, this is the playoffs.
In order to get to the Super Bowl, you got to win.
In order for all these things to happen, you got to play well.
And so I wasn't playing well at that particular time.
And so I literally, like I said, it was one play, like I remember the route.
And my coach was like, yo, just watch it all the way into your hand because they saw that I was pressing.
I literally, I watched the ball all the way into my hands and I still dropped it.
Still dropped it.
But I had so much confidence in myself.
And when you're in the league, you hear people and players say like, you go to the next play.
You can't dwell on what just happened because if you're just going to linger throughout the course of the game.
And essentially, that's exactly what I did.
I had to keep, I said, go to the next play.
And you think about Jerry Rice was on the field on that last play in which I ultimately caught.
When you think about basketball, when it's a last-second shot, you need a bucket.
You're usually going to put the ball in the best players' hands.
On that, and that particular play, obviously, Steve Young touches the ball.
The quarterbacks touch the ball 99.9% of the time.
Obviously, he's one of the best players on the team.
But in that particular time, we needed to get the ball into the end zone.
We got Jerry Rice on the other side.
We got JJ.
We got myself.
We got Brent Jones.
They ran cover two pretty much that entire series.
The play before I caught the touchdown, they ran exact same coverage.
Steve Young threw the ball right before that play.
He threw the ball on a comeback to JJ Stokes that almost got picked off.
And on that play, I saw that I was wide open because they played cover two.
In cover two, he playing a slot.
The middle is wide open.
You have the seam.
Yeah.
And I'm, yo, and I came back and I'm like, yo, I'm wide open on it.
So when we called the play, it's called all go.
The play before that was called all go double comeback, in which it almost got picked off.
He throwing to JJ.
He called the same play.
We got to go to the, we got to take shots.
The two outside guys, instead of them running comebacks, they got to go to the end zone.
So it's going to threaten those two safeties.
They got to play one way or the other.
So I think that they were probably thinking that he's going to throw that ball, like I was alluding to.
When you talk about basketball, you're going to put the ball in the best players' hands.
At that time, I'm playing bad.
I'm pretty sure they're probably not thinking that they're going to throw me, throw the ball to me.
But as an offense and as a defense, you have to play to your principles.
All I did was run.
I ran the same exact route.
And I just bent.
I saw the seam, the middle wide open.
I ran it.
And Steve Young threw the ball literally where it could only be caught.
And I made the play.
I caught it.
I watched it.
It was like slow motion.
And I didn't know he almost fell on that play until obviously watching the highlights.
Could I ask you a question about that play?
He tripped on the center's second step, right?
Hold on.
But could I ask you a question too?
Because I mean, he almost falls, by the way.
You catch it, T.O.
That hit right there probably would have been a penalty today.
Are you hurt right here?
Are you just like, no?
Oh, my God.
No, I went literally, it gives me chills to see this.
Yeah.
Because immediately I thought about my grandma.
Wow, dude.
Immediately.
Wow.
Immediately.
Because she always, she always, I was raised in the church and she always told me, taught me to just have faith no matter what.
And in this particular time, like I said, I had to have faith in my abilities that I could be able to do what I, again, internally, mentally, that I, you know, it wasn't showing that I could do.
But I just had to have the faith to keep going to know that I could make this play.
And Steve Young, I mean, he put the ball literally like where no one else could catch it but me.
Sick.
As soon as he hit, as soon as I caught it and they hit me and I went to the ground, I said, Thank you, Jesus.
Wow.
I said, Thank you, Jesus.
And my grandma, I literally, I was thinking about my grandmama at that time.
Amazing.
Well, we as fans thought your shoulders popped because you got sandwiched.
You were like, okay, this guy's injured right now.
But again, going back, you know, it's funny.
I want to go back to the question, but I do want to bring something up here that your reaction right now to that clip.
But my question's still not answered.
So I want to go back to it.
I'm going to go back to this clip, August 29th, where you said, this is terrible advice.
Ex-Cowboy wide receiver Tarot Owens chimes in on Michael Irvin's words of wisdom to CeeDee Blam, right?
If I go to the story, and you'll see where I'm going to this article here.
What pages it is at eight?
There you go.
Okay, Terrell Owens criticized Cowboys Riders and Michael Romer's advice to them.
Terrell Ball, he took issue with the idea that the receiver should primarily catch the ball with their body, stating every receiver coach and head coach is cringing right now.
Listening to the notion for receivers to catch with your body.
In some cases, yes, but this isn't bad advice.
This is terrible advice.
Owens emphasized his disagreement with Irvin's advice by highlighting his own impressive career statistics, stating that I got more touchdowns and combined than the two of you guys.
I think you're talking to who?
Carter and Keyshawn?
Is that who it was you were talking to?
No, Irvin and Irvin and Keyshaw.
They had 139, you had 150.
But let me understand what you were trying to say and see if I'm understanding correctly.
When you're going through the middle, guys don't want to go up and get the ball because you're going to get hit.
You're going to get popped.
You want to catch the ball here.
There's possibilities of being injured.
You didn't give a shit.
You get up there and go get the ball.
Is that kind of what you were alluding to?
Yeah, I mean, in certain situations, especially depending on where the defenders are.
And today's game, and even when I play, defenders are really crafty and they know the catching points and where the ball is being thrown.
So they're going to try to stick their hands in there to disrupt and dislodge the football.
So what I was alluding to, like in certain instances, as a receiver, you have to catch the ball with your hands because if you allow it to get close to your body, especially with a defender behind you, they're either going to hit you and have it and dislodge it, or they're going to just put their hands, they're going to slap the ball down versus catching the ball out front versus letting the ball get here.
From the coaches, I would never, I would never let a ball get to here if I'm running away from a running away from a defender.
Why would I let the ball get to here?
Because with having a tendency, because if you have late hands, anything, if you have your hands dropped and you have late hands and you start that, you see the ball coming to you and it hits, you're going to have a tendency to probably drop that ball because it's going to hit your pass and it's going to ricochet off.
It's going to bounce off versus catching the ball with your hands and tucking it.
You've had a lot of coaches.
Which coach has ever told you to catch it with the body, not with the hands?
Has any coach never told you?
No coach.
Coaches you liked or disliked never told you to catch with the body.
No, I've never.
That would be the dumbest thing for you, and this is Michael Irvin.
Catch the ball with your body.
It's not to say that you can't, but there are basics.
There are basics, fundamentals to everything.
And the basic fundamental for catching a football is to catch it with your hands.
You're not going to tell a kid, teach a kid to catch it with your body.
Even if you're throwing with a little kid or whatever, you're wanting that kid to catch it with their hands, right?
Because if it gets to their body, they're going to typically drop it.
And this is Keyshawn and Michael.
Both of them had glues.
They had great hands as well.
I mean, Keyshawn.
They caught a lot of balls, but then you think about to be a receiver and to obviously be a really productive receiver, you want to score touchdowns.
And you look at those two catch, I think Michael was more of a body catcher.
And he was talking from his experience.
He's more of a body catcher.
And if you look at his game, he catches the ball a lot like this.
I just never, I was never taught that way.
Maybe he was, and then maybe it worked for him.
But for me, I just, I don't understand, like I said, being a professional, that you would encourage a body catch.
You prompted three questions.
I got to get to all of them.
I'm so curious.
Let me go back to it.
Number one, limelight status.
You went to the story and you talked about how you caught the ball and they went to you.
JJ almost interception.
Then you caught the game.
Boom.
You didn't answer the question.
So limelight or money.
For me, I've experienced money and where money to me didn't come sudden because in the insurance game, you don't go from, hey, there's a superstar insurance agent coming out of Northridge, California.
Boom, next, you get to $20 million.
It doesn't happen in insurance.
You kind of go from $100,000 to $200,000 to $400,000.
And you might be, oh, I make a million.
I make $10 million.
I made $100 million.
Damn, we made $300 million.
It experiences that way.
But in NFL, you go from high school back in college.
If you were getting paid, you were getting paid because you were a great valet guy.
You work once a month and got $100,000 tip.
But for the most part, people didn't get paid back in the days in college.
Then you come into the NFL.
Then all of a sudden, as a fan, Terrell, you're not a fan of the NFL.
You're a fan of NBA.
You said it earlier, right?
As a guy that's a fan of the game, we typically, as fans of the game, we follow two different things.
Okay.
When the leaders, but when ESPN Apps comes out, you're checking a couple things.
One, you're checking your team.
Right.
And two, you're checking your players.
But then there are some players, whether you like them or dislike them.
If they're on, you just got to watch them, right?
You were one of those guys.
So I became one of those guys.
You were either a fan, you were either hated, or you were on a team that was winning so people were interested.
And you didn't just play on any teams that the fans are like regular fans.
You're talking about 49ers, hardcore fans, Eagles, hardcore.
Cowboys, religion.
You didn't play on regular teams.
So going back to it, limelight, I really want to know because when was it when you're like, Shaq tells the story when the first time he got money, boom, it went like this, right?
And I've had Shaq on, and we've talked multiple times.
Boom, money went because he'd never seen money like this before.
Did the money or status, were you ever like, I've never had this many people.
And back then, there wasn't Instagram where you're getting 6,000 DMs and you're like, oh shit, you never played Instagram DM days, right?
You're pre-dad era, right?
But there must have been a time where you got certain limelight and money.
What did that do to you?
It motivated me, number one.
As far as the limelight, the status stuff, I think I just took it all in stride.
I mean, I saw what superstars were like.
I got a chance, like I said, as a rookie, watching Jerry.
These guys are driving Ferraris, Lamborghinis.
I was driving a Ford Explorer, the limited edition, but it was the top line.
But it was the limited edition.
Yeah, the Hayden Bomber.
That was a limited edition.
I love that car.
Right.
But that's what I was driving to practice every day.
And I saw these other guys.
They were driving Mercedes, where there was the coupes or the sedans, the V12s.
That's what motivated me.
You never had a Ferrari or Lambo?
Nope.
You've never had a Ferrari or Lambo.
Nope.
I wasn't even in.
I wasn't a car guy.
What's the most expensive car you ever had?
Mercedes, I think the V12 maybe or a G-Wagon.
You had a G-Wagon in San Francisco.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's it.
But never a lot of people.
Tommy was talking about.
Yeah, but I mean, that was what motivated me.
And then I saw that.
I don't think money changed me.
Like I said, again, obviously I made a lot of money.
Like I said, what motivated me was seeing what I could get based on what I was doing on the football field.
And at that point in time, what I was doing on the football field didn't warrant or guarantee what I wanted.
So again, a lot of factors helped me along the way to become who I became.
It wasn't, like I said, we all have our motivations.
But for me, it was my training, my training, the way that I trained my body.
And once I changed my diet, my nutrition, all those things optimized my performance.
And once I saw what those things did, the result of it, again, I honestly, I came fixated.
I came obsessed with the results.
And so that's why I trained so hard in the offseason.
That's why I took it.
I took things personally when I saw my teammates not doing certain things or I knew what I was doing in the offseason.
And I'm like, man, obviously these guys aren't working as hard as I am because I saw the shoes that I eventually that I had to feel in Jerry Rice.
And then the light bulb clicked on a couple of times for me is when I when I saw that the the Niners traded away Jerry Rice and kind of just basically kind of give me the keys to the car, that was like, okay, they think a lot of me to be getting rid of, getting rid of the greatest receiver of all time, who pretty much has pretty much been a mainstay for that organization for a number of years.
And so for me to have this guy come out of UT Chattanooga, a small Division I school, small town in Alexander City, Alabama, and see the potential of possibly, again, possibly taking this franchise to possibly winning a Super Bowl championship.
That's when it kind of all hit for me.
So, Tom, I do want you to ask the question.
One thing I do want to know, I'm still going to get into the question I want to ask you.
Okay, because I'm sensing the language.
By the way, we got a ball here signed by Terrell Owens, which some of you can get.
And Rob, you want to tell them how they can compete for this ball here?
Sure.
At the top of the chat, there's a trivia question, something that Terrell, Terrell had mentioned earlier.
Robert, something that Terrell had mentioned earlier during the podcast.
If you click the link, it's in the top of the chat.
Go ahead and answer the trivia question.
And one lucky winner is going to walk away with that sign football as well as one of the candles from 81 Loft.
I love it.
Love 81 Home.
Yes, sir.
I love it.
Let's put that link below as well.
So let me go back to its status.
I've listened to you, and I speak sign language.
And what sign language is, having been around a lot of competitive people in our industry, we're very competitive.
We have a competitive environment.
You've talked about yourself with Jerry multiple times.
And so I asked Kobe a question years ago and Shaq wasn't happy about it.
He DM'd me immediately and he blocked me.
Eventually, we rekindled and our relationship is fine today.
But when I brought him to our convention last year and his guy says, hey, Shaq wants to talk to you, I go to the back.
Shaq says, you know, that's the dumbest question I've ever heard anybody else.
I said, what was the question?
That's a stupid question.
I asked Shaq the question, how many championships would he have had?
You know, I asked Kobe the question, how many, the late Kobe, how many championships would they have had if Shaq would have had the same work ethic as Kobe?
And then, you know, Kobe gives his answer.
We'd have 10, 11, 12 rings.
But you, you know, everything is Jerry Rice.
You know, you know, if I had Joe Montana and I had Steve Young, I would have had 3,000, 5,000 more yards.
I would have had 50 more touchdowns.
And, okay, it's a great argument that could have been made.
And then running out of the two choices they had, they threw to me.
And, you know, instead of going to Jerry, I'm the one that caught the ball.
We won.
We beat Green Bay, boom, and earlier JJ interception.
Then, you know, I asked about the Hill.
I would have thought for sure you trained with him with the Hill.
You said you never went up to two and a half mile hill with him.
Okay, I got that.
And then also there was a couple other comments you made about Jerry with him.
You give him respect, but the language I'm getting from what you're saying is you feel you were a much better receiver than Jerry Rice.
Is that a fair question?
I had the potential to be that.
The statistics doesn't say that.
But longevity-wise, like I said, that's where it stands.
And I'm always going to give him respect in that regard.
But there's a lot of people that watch our game and you kind of look at how he played the game and how I played the game.
A lot of people could probably say that, yeah, I would have been better than Jerry.
But obviously, like I said, based on my genetic makeup, I feel like I could have eclipsed a lot of things had I been able and afforded the opportunity to play three or four more years.
I would have threatened a lot of his records.
And it would have been really, it would have been a no-brainer.
It would have been very distinctive as who is the best receiver of all time.
Obviously, does that, you know, does championships come into play?
Depends on who you talk to because there's a lot of great athletes that don't have championships.
That doesn't mean that they're not champions.
I mean, I always say like, yeah, I don't have a championship, a Super Bowl champion, championship ring, but I played like a champion.
And so for me, I don't need the championship to validate what I did on the football field.
I think the statistics, your optics, if you watch how I play the game, it speaks for itself.
There's a lot of things that Jerry did that I couldn't do early on in my career.
But there's a lot of things I caught up very, very, very in a short period of time.
When you think about the speed in which we play, I became faster than Jerry.
Some of the things that I struggled with early on in my career was drop balls.
When you look at the history of Jerry, he struggled with drop balls too at some point in time.
So Jerry set the barometer.
He set the bar for everybody.
I think a lot of receivers that are playing the game today.
And I think some people, some kids would probably say I've set the bar for how they played.
And I've run across a number of people that are either athletes or moms or dads of their sons that have basically said like, yo, you're the blueprint for my son or for my kid.
And they were always asking me advice as to how I became as good as I did.
And it wasn't an overnight process.
A lot of people don't even remember my college career.
They just know of my professional career because I didn't play at a Power Five school.
And obviously now we're in an age and an era of highlights, social media.
But again, a lot of people, when I do interviews or I've done speaking engagement, some people, they don't even know, unless I give them the introduction, they don't even know where I played in college.
They just know about me playing in San Francisco.
They remember me going to the star.
They remember the highlights on ESPN, the dances, the touchdowns.
They remember me playing in Philadelphia, going there, playing lights out, going to the Super Bowl, playing basically on a broken leg in the Super Bowl.
They remember me going to playing in Dallas, playing against the rivalry teams, playing against the NFC East, whether it's the Giants or the Eagles.
They remember that.
A lot of people don't, they'd be hard-pressed to find a lot of highlights and a lot of clips from my college career.
Let me go back to this on what you're saying with Jerry.
So, in your mind, you said you're an NBA guy, right?
You said you're not an NFL.
You're a fan of NBA.
And I'm assuming you've watched the last dance, and I'm assuming you know the stats and all that.
You know the arguments, the arguments, Michael versus LeBron, Michael Kobe, you know, and then boom, you know, well, Michael's got six out of six, never went to game seven, LeBron, blah, blah, blah.
Michael Kobe, LeBron, that's my that's my order.
Michael LeBron Kobe.
No, Michael Kobe, LeBron.
Oh, you have Kobe Heda, LeBron.
Okay.
In your mind, in your mind, do you kind of tell yourself, you know, I didn't have the longevity that, like, do you look at Jerry as Kareem and yourself as Michael?
Yeah, I could say that.
That's what I'm hearing from what you're saying.
I could say that.
Yeah, sure.
I could say that.
Yeah.
So you think you're MJ as a receiver?
I do.
I mean, I did.
I played at a level that not many could play at, considering where I came from.
But then, like I said, when you think about it, you talk about those stats.
Had I played right away my first three years, if I had the ability to play right away, then you factor in, I got probably like maybe at least 2,000 yards there in those first three years.
But I didn't really play a lot my first three years.
So you put two there.
Let's just say it's 2,100.
We give you, that puts you at 18,000.
And then you kind of get a couple on the back end.
Maybe you'll be at 20.
You know, in the GOAT conversation, I don't know if it's just stats because if you do stats, Malone will be in the conversation.
You would have to put all these other guys in the conversation, Kareem in the conversation.
So what do you put yourself against?
I don't know, not, I don't want to put Calvin Johnson.
What do you put yourself against Randy Moss?
You and Randy Moss.
I feel like I'm better than Randy Moss.
You think you're better than Randy Moss?
Yeah, because of how I played the game.
I played every facet of the game.
I didn't just play receiver.
Randy played when he wanted to, and he said that.
And I'm not sure.
He said that, yeah.
You know what I mean?
When you look at when we, when we, my coach, George Stewart, like, I owe a lot of what I became to my coaches at every stop, pretty much.
Larry Kirksey, George Stewart.
And when I went to Philadelphia Eagles, it was David Cully.
And when I went to Dallas, it was Ray Sherman.
Those were, when you talked about father figures, those were my father figures at my stops.
And those guys pushed me and elevated my game to where it did because they saw the potential that I had.
And they didn't want me to, they didn't want it.
They didn't want me to take it for granted.
And so when you think about it, and so we, there were, like I said, we played the Minnesota Vikings.
And there were times that we played teams that played the Vikings.
And Coach would pull up highlights of Randy.
He would not even move.
It would be a running play.
Obviously, it could be backside or whatever.
He wouldn't even come out of his stance.
For me, that's not a team player.
You think about guys that block down the field, doing the extra things, not only when you have the ball, but when you don't have the ball, that's part of being a team player.
I played every level of the game, you know, all facets of the game.
I blocked.
I caught the ball.
I caught the ball over the middle.
That was something I wasn't afraid to do.
I mean, it comes with a little fear.
You got to be kind of a little nuts.
But again, but if you trust, again, that's where practice comes into play.
When you trust the guys, when you trust the practice habits, you trust those things that you're doing, and you trust that a quarterback is not going to hang you out to dry.
But if you're doing and you're where you're supposed to be on a given route, then you're not going to have those hits.
you're not going to have those bone-crushing jarring hits because you know that you've prepared and you know what to do and when to do it.
And if you're reading, if you're becoming a student of the game, you're running your routes and you're learning where the holes are, when to run, man, when you run zone, when you find the different holes in the offense or in the defense, there's something we call the scramble drill.
When the quarterback gets out of the pocket and you have to be in relationship to the quarterback, in order to get that ball and to extend plays, obviously you got to have a quarterback that can actually do it.
But for me, I mean, I'm big on acronyms.
I was going to say one early when you started mentioning.
You said the 3Ds, desire, discipline.
Right.
And there was one.
Yeah, you were talking about Andrew Bynum.
You know, we're talking about the master.
Yeah.
I got an acronym for guys that really, they're in the league, but they're not really taking advantage of their height and what they could be doing because they're in the league because of height, sometimes not because of a lot of skill.
And I always tell some of those guys, like, they're BFNR.
That's an acronym for big for no reason.
Big for no reason.
I'm like, bro, you can play better than what you are.
You're just on the court because of your height.
A little bit of skill, but you could be playing way better than that.
So my other acronym is I call MYA, which is make yourself available.
And when you're in that scramble drill, a lot of my plays came, big plays came off of that because you have to be in relationship.
Depending on where you're on the field, you have to be in relationship with the quarterback.
And so when a quarterback gets out of the pocket, number one, he's trying to find, you know, the play is broken down and he's trying to find, you know, somebody to throw the ball to.
And when they're getting out of the pocket, especially when you have some, you know, defensive guys that can really hurt you, you know, you don't want to take, you know, you don't want to be on the other end of a Sean Marion hit or a Ray Lewis hit or any of those big guys.
So you're trying to find, they're trying to find, you know, the first available non-opposing team jersey that they can to get the ball to.
So for me, depending on where you are on the field, you want to make yourself available for that quarterback to get the ball and then make some positive yards.
And if depending, like I said, where you're on the field, you either you can divert with that route, go down the field, you can come across or you can come back to the quarterback.
Who was greater?
Who was greater?
Joe Montana or Jerry Rice?
Joe Montana.
Ooh, I would probably say Joe Montana.
So then that says a lot.
So if you have a pick and you got two players in the draft ahead that you can pick up, you got Joe and Jerry.
Do you pick up Joe or Jerry?
You're saying Joe.
Yeah, Joe or Steve?
No, it's Joe and Jerry.
Joe or Joe.
There's a reason why I'm asking this question.
So you're on the draft.
I'm going to go with Joe.
Why is that?
Why Joe or Jerry?
Joe Montana over there?
Because Joe, I mean, just think about his acumen of a quarterback.
When you think about precision and timing and what I watched and what I learned about the West Coast offense, Joe is accurate.
He can get out of pocket when need to.
He wasn't as mobile as a Steve Young, but he reminds me, and I think of a Tom Brady.
He knows when and where to put the ball.
It's ball placement, his timing.
He's going to put the ball where it needs to be, and he's going to create in the offensive plays and the offensive coordinator, they're going to create different matchups in order for you to get the ball.
So for me to be on the receiving end or be on the fold on the field with a Joe Montana, I know that the level of success that I'm going to have with a guy like that that knows where to put the ball, when to throw it, and knowing me as a receiver, what I can do once I get my hands on it.
Joe or Young?
Joe still.
Joe Montana.
Yeah, Joe Montana.
Tom, do you know why I'm asking this question?
I'm asking this question because if in your as a receiver, if you believe you're a better receiver, you know you running with Joe, you think you would have had better numbers than Jerry running with Joe for the same amount of years.
Oh yeah, that's where I was going with it.
Yeah, I got it.
Because I think if you, you look at uh, how I played the game, I mean I was a bigger um, I was able able to break a lot of uh, a lot of tackles um, obviously going.
I mean, like I said, I didn't have to really go up and high point a lot of balls, I didn't have to.
Early on in my career you didn't really see me catch a lot of deep balls until I left and I went to San Uh, Philly and then and then Dallas, and that was mainly because of the quarterback position, so Garcia wouldn't throw deep.
You have 54 touchdowns with them, but it wasn't a lot.
It was more runs, catch and run right.
Garcia, we never, if you think about it, you watch the highlights we never was on it like the, just say, backed up in our own territory and he wasn't a guy that's going to throw you a 50 60, 70 yard ball.
We never really got to throw deep balls unless we got close to the 50, to where then okay, we can take some shots, because he didn't have that strong of an arm.
Our offense was predicated on his skill set and he was better coming rollouts um, not really a.
He was not your traditional pocket passer for, for instance uh, interesting to be thinking about that that that whole process for me with Michael Time, I think you wanted to ask something.
You were, you were looking at your notes to ask something.
You bring up something really, really good about, about being the entire player right, because there are receivers who would block that no, that no um, safety or corner wanted to take their eye off on the block, and I think of Shannon Sharp and Vernon Davis, big boys that were unafraid to block.
And so somebody's in the slot and they're coming across this way and all of a sudden, the cornerback disappears.
Where'd he go right?
Well, he wasn't paying attention and you kind of played.
Heinz Ward used to do that too.
Now, Heinz Ward also had a reputation for sometimes being a little, a little dirty, maybe a little little late, a little later than he was supposed to be.
All right, but you had, you had all that and you also played at that time.
You say you don't really talk about the eras, but there are three eras.
There was the era that Jerry drafted in by the way, it's the niners and another small school guy, Mississippi.
Yeah, there's a lot of similarity there.
And you had a time when he started, guys like Kenny Easily could do stuff that they would get flagged all day for today.
Then you had the middle era right, where they changed the pi rule.
And then you have today's era.
It says you came right into that middle era right, and even though you say I get together friends, I don't really watch the game.
You know, do you think if you had back it up seven years and you had played in that much more physical era, where do you think, where do you think you would have been in that?
Because it seems like your career is like a pot of chili.
It just kept getting better, it kept cooking and getting better.
You get draft.
You had the big game in the championship.
You beat Marshall hey, this guy should be at the combine pick in the third round.
And and obviously from your own words here you're saying you knew you could play in the Nfl but you weren't sure you were going to stay in the Nfl.
Right, it was you.
You caught that ball.
When you think back of that super physical era there with with the physical attributes you had, when you think about your yards, do you think about today with the pi rules?
Are you thinking about that era?
Because it's different today.
It's easier to get yards today than it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago.
Yeah, that's why I say there's such a, there's an inflation with these receivers, with their yards now, because they really can't get touched and then a lot of defensive guys they're not, they're not hitting guys they're, which could lead obviously to interceptions, incompletions.
They're not really playing with the physicality um that you mentioned, that that were early on.
They're not playing with that type of physicality um.
So what's your question to me is like, would I?
Which era would I would have?
Yeah, if you look to when Jerry started and you're comparing yourself to Jerry's yards, you have to remember when he started, right?
Uh, there's a famous quote from Joe Montana.
He said, there is one man that I want to know where he is at all times on the field and it's not on my team.
It's Kenny, Easily.
He said that it's like five years into his career because of the era.
So, when you compare yourself to Jerry, i'm asking you to go back and think about that era that Jerry started in, where you had to be so crafty and so aware because the pi rule was different.
But you know who i'm talking about, right?
And so again, that that's that's where I I I I alluded to earlier when, when you think about going across the middle um, there's a lot of ways to protect yourself.
You can't just be running aimlessly, just running routes, just because okay, you got a dig route and it says go over the middle at 15 yards.
There's a reason why you have to go a certain down, a certain distance.
There's a reason why you have to, you know, check up in the hole.
There's a reason why you have to keep on the move.
Um, that's where practice comes into play.
Um, and there are tendencies again, like I said.
I mean, there are some guys on the other side of the ball that can play just as well uh, as as the guys on the offensive side.
There's a lot of guys, defensive guys, that play.
They're just as smart.
So again, that the quarterback, again, they can protect you with throws and again, you have to know where guys are.
That can disrupt the game, um.
But I think if I played in Jerry's era um again, I think I would have been just as successful, especially with a quarterback that is, that is very cerebral, like a Joe Montana and then a Steve Young.
Because, like I said, everything is that West Coast offense is predicated on precision and timing, and there wasn't back then.
To your point, there wasn't a lot of these exotic defenses that defensive coordinators and schemes are playing now and the athletes are not as great then as they are now either.
So so okay, let's transition.
Did that help with your question time?
I don't know if you were trying to give him question or you want to know how much you know the game.
We all know you know football very, very well, comparing to right.
I wanted to go back to the real era.
Yeah, and even until even on that catch against Green BAY, they would have called those guys for penalties for hitting them the way they hit them on the table.
Get a flag.
The other day I didn't even understand.
I'm like, what was the flag for this?
For hurting his feelings?
The guy hit somebody hard and they gave.
They gave a flag made no sense to me.
Look at how they baby, babysit the quarterbacks.
I mean forget, you can't even touch them.
You can't do this.
Yeah, like that's crazy.
You're doing full speed and then you run into a guy's leg and you're calling a flag like you can't freeze frame uh, your speed and then move yourself out of the way not to hit somebody.
They even moved the kickoff right like till you don't even see any kickoff returns.
I mean that's, that's one of the most exciting parts of the game.
That's gone yeah, so so let's go with with uh.
Uh, let me see if i've covered this.
I've covered this.
I got this this this, I got all of this good.
Uh, Stephen A and Max Kellerman Uh, these guys had a show prior to that.
It used to be with what skip A-lis and Skip and uh Stephen A used to do first take and a Max comes in and I think Skip goes with uh Shannon Sharp and by the way Shannon one of my favorite speeches uh Hall of Fame Shannon gave it when he said he believes his brother needs to be in.
I don't know if you remember that speech he gave saying Sterling Sharp needs to be in the Hall of Fame as well.
Right.
And Sterling was in tears.
But Stephen A and you and Skip, where did all these issues start?
Did the issues start with you being on and saying, you know, Max is blacker than you are, Stephen A?
Because you tweeted out the other day, like a month ago, you put it out, and then Stephen A had to respond to it.
Where did the issue with you and Stephen A start?
I think it started with that comment that I mentioned about, you know, Max being, you know, blacker than Steve or seeming to be black, you know, kind of understanding more black topics.
And at that time, we were talking about the Colin Kaepernick situation when he was trying to get back in the league.
And so he was just, it was, it was just so against what Colin Kaepernick was doing.
And so again, at that point in time, I don't know how the flow of the conversation went, but Max was making more sense with the commentary towards that topic.
And that's what it was, I said it tongue-in-cheek because if you watched the clip, I was laughing and I didn't really think much.
I didn't think too much of it.
And obviously he took offense to it.
And then obviously it resurfaced, like you said, about a month ago.
And all I did, it was something he mentioned on Joe Budden.
He was talking about why Max, he was part of the reason why Max is not on the show.
He didn't like him.
He said he was in his book, by the way.
He broke it up.
He's talking about him being oceans apart because he wasn't an athlete.
And I guess he didn't go to school to be a journalist or what have you, but that doesn't discount a guy's knowledge for anything, information or whatever the topic may be.
And so I just basically, and like I said, I didn't bring up, I didn't put up the clip.
Some the other fans saw the retweeted it.
Right.
Some the fans saw the podcast and they reacted to his comments.
And so I didn't know what happened.
I just kept getting alerts and I was being tagged.
And so I just saw it and I'm like, facts.
That's all I said.
And so obviously he took offense to it.
And yeah, we got into a little war of words right there.
He asked the question on his rebuttal to you.
He says, what does it mean to be blacker?
What does that mean?
What does it mean?
Well, it was the topic in which they were discussing.
Like I said, me being, like I said, being a black American, a black American, like I said, me understanding how we talk in the streets and as it relates to whatever talk, whatever topic, it seemed that Max would have been more keen on the culture than he was as far as his, I guess, his responses to whatever topics that we were talking about at that time.
And that was what?
That was, if I'm not mistaken, that was when, you know, Kaepernick didn't want to show up unless of the contract or the agreement because what Stephen A was saying, the fact that you would have shown up anytime, any place, and you probably would have shown up without a contract.
You would have just showed up to see how, you know, whether you, you know, the teams want to see because you were confident.
Like anytime, any place, I'll come run routes with anybody.
Right, but there was something along, there was something added or taken out of the contract that he had to sign that's not standard.
It wasn't standard for whatever he had to sign.
And so for whatever reason, his men, Colin, speaking, his management, Colin's management team, they saw something wrong or saw something kind of fishy with that.
And they, again, they changed their mind at the last minute and went somewhere else.
That doesn't mean that, you know, again, he can't play or he can't be evaluated the same.
If there was something fishy about it, then yeah, I probably would have taken a different route as well.
It doesn't matter.
Football fields, they're all the same size no matter where you go.
You think with Kaepernick, you think the NFL was more against him playing or you think Kaepernick was his own worst enemy?
Because there's two arguments, right?
There's these arguments where, you know, guys will sit there and they'll say, you know, dude, if you really want it, don't sign any contract.
Just come and watch me.
Okay.
I'm not signing nothing.
Just come watch me play.
Okay.
Forget about the contract.
I'm going to be there.
Here's where I'm going to be.
Bring your guys.
Watch what I got.
Okay.
Stop acting like a victim all the time.
And, you know, Kaepernick recently, I think, came out, whether it's in a documentary or a book talking about that, you know, the family that adopted me, you know, they injected certain thoughts and all this other stuff.
And, you know, some communities are like, dude, they at least gave you, yeah, here's Carl Kevin on CNN, calls out adoptive parents racism as he promotes new graphic novels.
He was telling him, I mean, his white, the white adoptive parents were white that adopted him.
But the week that people were questioning the timing, because the week that this book was coming out, he was like, oh, by the way, my parents were racist.
The white parents showed me racism and knowledge.
So for a guy that's played in the league a long time, one of the best to ever do it, some call maybe the best to ever do it as a receiver.
Do you think it's more the NFL, you know, trying to hurt Kaepernick or you think Kaepernick is being a victim and getting in his own way?
I mean, it could be a little bit of both.
But I think it's like, okay, obviously there was a settlement reached with the suit.
So obviously there's something there.
But I think I've heard it, you know, I've heard some people say it too.
It's like, okay, you've sued the company that you're actually now trying to go back and play for.
Yeah, it's kind of weird.
It's a weird kind of dynamic, right?
So I don't know if that is factoring or playing a part as to why they're not allowing him to play.
But you got to understand, you can't sit up here and say that the guy can't play.
And I'm not, if you look at the, I guess, the quality of quarterbacks that are in the league now that are playing, you know, for instance, like Zach Wilson, I mean, he was drafted number two pick, what, a few years ago?
Clearly, you got to think that somebody could go in there and play better than Zach Wilson.
And I like, I actually watched the game last night because I've been rooting for the guy because I'm like, man, he's shown signs of what he could be as to why he was drafted.
He was a second pick a couple of years ago.
And so obviously it's unfortunate for Aaron.
But again, I'm like, okay, now this guy's been thrust back on the scene.
I think for me, it's like God's giving you another opportunity.
Like, can you seize this moment?
Again, like I said, whatever doubts or mental struggles he's had over the first two years, okay, now, okay, you bring in Aaron.
Okay, you're kind of been humbled a little bit.
Okay, now you need to kind of really prioritize what you need to do to get better because clearly this organization has taken, vested into you for the pick in which they chose you.
And so now he's back on the scene.
And obviously, like I said, I've been rooting for the guy to like really just come out of this funk and really play like he's capable of playing.
I think when you saw him play against the Kansas City Chiefs, if you didn't know who Zach Wilson was and you knew that Aaron Rodgers were supposed to be playing this year and you looked at those passes, if you just saw a clip and you looked at those passes, you would have thought Aaron Rodgers was throwing those passes.
He's a stud.
Well, no, he was a stud in that game is what he's trying to say.
He's not saying he was.
I was at the game.
We were at the game in New York, right?
We went to watch him play against the Patriots a couple weeks ago.
Went to the Yankees.
Yeah, went to the, you forgot already.
So we watched him play.
And I feel what you're saying.
He shows signs.
But you're saying Kaepernick is better than Zach.
I'm saying he can play just if he can't play worse than Zach.
Bro, you can't, I can play right now given the opportunity.
And I'm not just saying that just to be saying it, bro.
I'm telling you, I can play.
People have watched me train.
Yeah, training.
Like, I can go out and play right now if I was given the opportunity to.
To play 60, 70 steps, no.
Understanding who I am and where I am at age, third down, red zone, that's where I would be a viable asset to a team.
But we're talking to Colin Kaepernick right now.
You're trying to tell me his skill set and what he's done.
Who cares?
You can bring up stats as to what his record was when he last played.
There are guys that are playing now.
You could be equally the same or worse.
But I know I feel like he has the ability to play.
But again, to your point, it's like, is he stepping in his own way?
I have no idea.
Only the ones that the powers to be can answer that.
Is Cap a friend of yours?
Like, do you guys talk regularly?
No, I've reached out to Kaepernick a couple of times.
I've seen Cap a couple of times here and there.
So it's not like you guys are friends in relationship, buddy, buddy, dinner all the time.
Yeah, I'm not, yeah, I don't have a dog in the fight.
I got you.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's okay.
I've reached out to him.
Even when he was on this trail of trying to working out with guys, I had reached out.
I even know some people that do.
I'm going to get back to you.
No.
Oh, no.
You and Cap have never communicated.
No, no.
Wait a minute.
Never, not once.
No, no.
That's a very interesting because, you know, if somebody would have watched that with you and Stephen A and Max, they would have thought like you guys talked to Colin Wright before and you're his boy and you're defending him and all this stuff.
This is very weird to hear this now.
I'm just under, I just understand the dynamics of what's going on.
And I understand, like you said, when you talk about the contract that they signed, like there's certain language in there.
They went in there to amend certain things.
But if he's not getting back to you, okay, to you, you're not.
No, but you're not even in it.
All I'm saying is from an outsider.
I'm not involved.
You don't even need to comment on this.
I'm just keeping you mine.
All I'm saying is from an outsider, here's a Hall of Fame fucking receiver that is defending you and you don't want to even give him.
That tells me more about his character if you ask me.
And you don't even see, I'm telling you, those are my words that I'm saying this.
But going back to Stephen A.
I like Stephen A.
Okay.
There's some people that don't like Stephen A.
And there's a lot of those and there's some that like him.
What's your biggest challenge with Stephen A?
Or if any, if you don't, if you say, I don't have any challenges with him, what's your biggest challenge with him?
I don't know if there's a challenge, but I think it's consensus like for people that have had, I guess, an experience or encounters with him that watch him.
I think they've seen a kind of shift and change in his delivery or I guess his objective takes against certain athletes versus other athletes.
And I'm pretty sure he'll try to really differentiate, you know, why he says certain things about certain guys and or not.
Or he could say he talks about everybody the same.
But when it comes to certain athletes, I think, you know, it's a different tone.
It's a different energy.
And for me, you know, we came across each other, I guess, some years ago.
He's talked very highly of me.
He's defended you on many occasions.
Before.
And then, like I said, I just didn't like, I didn't like the way it came across when he had his obviously his podcast, obviously millions of viewers.
And he was holding up, he was holding up, you know, paper like he had documents on me, like he had something on me.
And I'm like, and you do that and you're like, oh, well, I've talked to this guy.
They told me not to do it, this and that, but I have a lot of stuff on you.
And I'm like, like you would think that like he has something on me.
What is it that you have on me that you can't reveal?
And I encouraged him, like, whatever it is, I'm like, if it's not in the courthouse or in a, police precinct, then I'm good.
What you had, like you had classified documents against me, I guess, with something that I've done wrong.
And so that he was going to, like he said, he was going to expose me.
That was his word.
He was going to expose me.
Expose me for what?
Like, I'm a very open and honest guy.
I'm an open book, you know?
So.
Like I tell you, even with my dating likes, I'm an open book.
I just, I'm hard to read.
You know what I mean?
So with that, you know, I just, I didn't like that about it, that he felt like, and it made, he insinuated that he had something on me, that he was going to expose something about me that I guess the public didn't know.
Like I said, whatever the case may be.
And then he insinuated that it was, you know, what there was a money grab situation involved in this because of the suit that my attorney had filed against ESPN with something that happened on the air.
And so he was mad and upset about that.
So that's where it all kind of resurfaced or rekindled with that interview with Joe Budden.
And then when I responded with the retweet, when I said facts.
The read I get with Stephen A is the follow-on read.
I've spent a little bit of time with him when I was in Connecticut.
We did one interview together.
That's the only interaction we've had.
And I've just watched him.
Again, I've watched you guys more than you've watched us because we're not playing.
You're playing.
So we watch your game.
And I get the feeling from Stephen A that he's a guy that is very proud to be African American, black American.
He's very proud.
That means a lot to him because that's his family's legacy.
That's the feeling I get from it.
But also at the same time, the feeling I get from him deep down inside is the fact that there's an element of a bit of him being conservative because he was raised conservative and he's got an element of that.
And sometimes, you know, bringing those political side of mindset that he has in it gets him in trouble because he can't please everybody and he's a tough place to be.
This is why I think he started his podcast so he can freely talk to other people.
But, you know, I like that.
I actually like that.
I like the fact that he's doing that.
I like the fact that he's going out there talking to certain people that's going to piss off the community and say, wait a minute, are you black or are you not?
You know, are you doing this or are you not doing that?
But I can see both sides.
But now that I'm hearing that you've never had a conversation with Kaepernick, yet you're defending him and he's never gotten back to you as somebody that played for the same team that he played for and you played there for years and the history, all of that.
It's a little bit confusing to me.
Well, I've even reached out.
I know some people that were working for him or know, could have gotten in touch with him directly, got in contact with him, and I've had them reach out to him.
And still.
And nothing.
But I mean, it is what it is.
I'm not going to force myself, force my friendship on anybody.
But by the way, you know what this does do?
You know what this does do?
This validates Stephen A. Smith's point.
It validates Stephen A. Smith's point on who Kaepernick is.
That's what it does to me.
I didn't know you were going to say that.
But what you just said about him validates who Kaepernick really is.
That even the guys, listen, in your life, that if you have people that even want to help you, and these are guys that are defending you.
And it's not just anyway heavyweight saying this.
It just validates Stephen A. Maybe what he was trying to say.
We're trying to say something.
And going back to the Colin Kaepernick thing, it's like, I don't understand how, I mean, the off-the-field actions, your comments obviously play a role, Teal, when it comes to like the NFL.
He compared the NFL combine to modern day slavery, which, and as you know, Teal, if you get invited to the combine, white, black, Hispanic, everybody, that's an honor.
You know what I mean?
To go up there and shine.
So he calls that.
And then it's kind of hypocritical.
Aaron Rodgers goes down.
Now you're calling that same league to be like, yo, I want to play with you guys.
They're obviously not going to have a good taste in their mouth.
You know what I mean?
Like, you just called us slave owners, basically.
So then he accuses his white parents of being racist.
So I have a question.
He's capitalized big time.
The race thing with Kaepernick is huge.
He's made money with Nike.
Didn't he get $40 million from Nike or something?
Nike, Disney, and then the Netflix documentary, Pat, was insane if you actually seen it.
So I just want to know, like, when you guys see somebody like that, Joe, do you think that's a genuine cause that he's doing?
Or is it basically he's doing it for like a money?
Because he took the, because the victimhood mentality, there's money in that, bro.
So like, do you think that that played a big role in it?
Because I mean, athleticism aside, he's making what?
He made at least $40 million.
I don't know what they can you pull up with the go ahead.
Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Obviously, yeah, Nike is obviously paying him the documentary.
Speaking of that, I'm getting ready to do a documentary that will be sometime, probably released around the start of the football season next year.
Oh, dope.
I'll be doing it with Amazon.
Awesome.
What's it about?
Just a little bit of everything, you know.
Your life, but it's your story.
Yeah, my life.
Yeah, I mean, but again, it's not going to be some fluff story.
I mean, I'm going to, you know, it's going to depict and show like my imperfections, some of what we talked about, what I went through.
There's some stuff that I haven't talked about, you know, relationship with coaches, kind of how I was treated, you know, by certain coaches, Mariuchi for one.
You know, my time there in San Francisco, the transitioning, you know, from, you know, obviously Steve Young to Garcia, how I was treated, you know, you know, myself with, you know, compared to Garcia and when my contract, you know, negotiations were going on and how he was treated, all those things.
And so, again, I got a number of coaches that, again, that were, they wanted to be a part of this documentary.
And I think a lot, a lot now how it has changed when you think about the freedom in which athletes are talking, especially with podcasts.
You know, just think if I would have had some of these platforms, I would have been able to dispel or dispute some of the things that were being said about me and how the media portrayed me.
Namely, like I said, obviously ESPN was the mainstay.
Like, you know, just with some of the, you know, even guys that transitioned from the field, you know, to the desk and how I was being characterized versus other players.
Those are some of the things that will be revealed.
So, until you mentioned systemic racism earlier.
You spoke in the past with your relationship with Steve Mariuchi.
You said in regards to him, and I'm going to quote, it was there talking about systemic racism, but you didn't let it bother you.
Let's let it distract you from what you had to do on the field.
You experienced it during and him and under him.
You're like, trust me, I've experienced it.
Can you give any example of what you actually felt that would constitute systemic racism under a coach like that?
I mean, I'll go more in depth once I do the documentary.
And then, like I said, I have coaches, I have players that were there to kind of witness some of those things.
But again, it just, yeah, it was kind of like how I was treated versus, you know, maybe just say Garcia.
I mean, those are some of the things that I saw.
Like I said, I don't want to give it away here.
But once the documentary comes out, like I said, I'm an open book, bro.
And so, again, I have no reason to lie about anything because these are my experiences.
And I know for sure, like, you know, there was a time I was late for, I remember this particular event, I was late for practice one day.
It was around the time that we were announcing the Pro Bo votes.
For whatever reason, I overslept.
And coach at that time, he had this policy because according to the CBA, depending on however many infractions or whatever they find you, this amount, this amount, this amount, what have you.
But he had one thing about him.
He didn't want to take guys' money.
So he gave the, if you got fine, you got fined or you were late or whatever the case may be, he didn't want to fine you.
He gave you an opportunity to buy the team lunch.
And so that was nothing like a few hundred, few hundred, 800 bucks or something like that.
A fine, depending on the degree of it, it could be up to like, I think 3,500 bucks or whatever.
And so I was late.
He didn't ask me.
He didn't even ask me why I was late.
They always appoint a coach at the beginning of the year to handle the fines with the guys.
So just so happened that year, my coach, my receiver coach, happened to be the guy to handle the fine.
So we had gone through, walkthrough.
Like I said, I had missed the meeting where they had announced the Pro Bowl voting, the guys that made the Pro Bowl.
And obviously, I had made the Pro Bowl that year.
And so he didn't ask me, you know, Coach, okay, George Stewart comes to my locker.
He gives me this sheet, the fine, and he fined me, and it was like the maximum.
And I'm like, why am I getting fined?
I'm like, he didn't even give me the option as the other guys to buy the team lunch.
He just fined me the max off the rip.
And not even on that.
He didn't even ask me why I was late.
I could have been an offenderbender.
I could have had a family emergency, anything that could have maybe excused or being a little bit lenient as to the fine.
He just fined me right off the bat.
And so I looked at it and I told my coach, I was like, I'm not paying this.
And I literally, I immediately, we had a little back hallway to get up to the coach's office.
And I went right up to the, I said, coach, I'm not paying this.
And he said, where are you going?
So I went and I said, I'm going to his office.
And he's like, I'm going with you, big dog.
So he followed me all the way up the stairs.
And there was a reception.
I was like, is Moochin is he in the office?
And then she left.
So she called and said, you know, said I was out front.
She's like, send him in.
And I took the paper and I said, I'm not paying this.
Sorry about that, bro.
Tom, you're not today.
And I said, I said, I'm not paying this.
I said, I'm not paying it.
And I said, if I have to pay this, I will go out there and I will tell them what I've experienced up to date if I got to pay this fine.
And then shortly after that, rest in peace, who was the coach.
He was a coach, but then he ended up being the Bill Walsh, Bill Walsh being like a consultant.
I went down to Bill Walsh's office and I told him exactly what happened.
And he said, don't worry about it.
He's like, I'll handle it.
And I didn't end up.
Bill Walsh said that to you.
Yep.
And because I told him exactly what happened.
And there was no reason.
I didn't lie about anything.
And I'm like, why would I be fine?
And he giving everybody else the option of buying the team lunch.
Now, is this the first time you're late?
It doesn't matter.
Even if that, if it was the second, first, second, or third.
At that time, I don't remember.
To your question, I don't know if it was the first time.
If I'm a coach, it would matter.
If you're doing it now to punk me in front of my players and I'm losing credibility, it's very annoying as a coach to go through it.
If it is the first time and he's doing that, he's an asshole.
But if it's not, you may also try to get under his skin because players know how to do that as well.
Well, again, I knew like at that time, like media, obviously, they come to the locker and talking about the upcoming game, this and that and the other.
So I just like, look, if I got to pay this fan, I'm literally, I'm going to tell them.
And I mentioned certain events that had happened that I experienced.
I'm going to say this and I'm going to say this.
And then, again, I went down to coach at that time, he was at Bill Walsh's office and I told him what happened.
And he even said that it wasn't right.
And then he said, I'll handle it.
I didn't end up having to pay the fine, but that was just one of the instances that I witnessed that I experienced.
You know, this world of sports, like, I don't know what it is to be in it.
I've heard what others say, you know, hey, you're getting paid to play, have fun, enjoy.
We're the luckiest people alive.
I heard Denzel one time, you know, said about a couple of the actors were complaining about how tough it is, mental toughness, attention, all this stuff.
He's like, he says, what are you talking about?
We're the luckiest people alive.
We don't have a job.
We're acting.
We're getting paid to act.
We are the luck.
So there is that mindset as well.
That's why I asked the question earlier with limelight, pressure, performance, personal life, getting out there, doing it, media dividing you against your quarterback.
Because you know, media's job is to get that fire within the club.
The more controversy, the more conflict there is, the more stories they have to talk about, the more viewers they get, the more money the network gets, the more contract they can get.
They need you to have a fight within the locker room.
The less fights in the locker room, the less money they're making.
They want to be able to see some of that stuff happening.
So if you're in it, how do you handle that?
You know, if you're in that world and you're seeing it, I don't know if there's a, you know, who do you trust?
You know, do you go talk to one of your college football coaches?
By the way, who was one of your I think in one of the clips, you said your favorite guy was Andy Reid.
Is that you said?
Yeah, my favorite coach was the best coach I've ever played for.
I mean, what was unique about him with you?
What was the relationship like?
Because I think with the talent that I felt like I had, and obviously that kind of goes to what you guys were asking me about.
You know, do I think I was better than Jerry at some point?
I saw the skill set and talent that I possessed.
And when I went to the Eagles, he saw, because we played against him.
We played against Andy.
And I performed well against the Eagles, which is like one of the like during the time that we're one of the toughest defenses to play against.
And I fared pretty well.
So obviously, when there was a time, obviously, you know, for me to play, get traded, and I got an opportunity to play for him.
I had basically got a chance that I think the year before playing in the Pro Bowl because, yeah, because when you lose the NFC championship, the loser coaches the Pro Bowl.
Yes.
Like it's a good and a bad thing.
Kind of like a good and a bad thing.
It's kind of like a good and a bad thing.
But I didn't know that.
So you got to think about it.
Prior to me going to the Eagles, they had lost the NFC championship four times, four in a row.
And so one of those, when I one of those years, like I said, the year before I got there, obviously I was playing with the Niners.
I made the Pro Bowl.
So I got a chance to play with that, you know, be coached by that Philadelphia Eagles coaching staff.
And so that was the first time I got a chance to play with Donovan and some of the Eagles.
And obviously he was the coach.
And so obviously playing with him, going to play with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Again, he's a student of the Niners, just a student of the game.
He's an offensive guy.
And he saw what I was able to do with that West Coast offense.
And if you think about that West Coast lineage and that tree, he's in there with the mooches and the home grains.
He's in there.
He's good.
Right.
So he was able to basically put me in the best positions to win and play at the highest level that I felt like I could have played at.
Like I told you earlier, nobody knew that I was as fast as I was, especially until I got to Philadelphia then after Philadelphia.
Because everything that I did within the offense of San Francisco post Steve Young with Jeff Garcia, it was the short intermediate route.
And then I took it the distance.
I wasn't catching a lot of bums.
I wasn't catching a lot of go routes.
It wasn't until I got there that people saw what he noticed and realized that I could do those things.
And so he put me in the best.
I played in 21 games and I had 20 touchdowns.
Sick.
So that puts it in perspective for you.
And so then I went to Dallas.
Again, I had like, I played that three years.
And I know this because people tell me all these stats.
I had 38 touchdowns in the three years that I was there.
It's almost like 10 a year.
So again, it was like I was playing and I was efficient.
It's like a shooter.
You're performing at a high efficiency.
And I was scoring like on a regular.
Like it was, I would talk to my friends or on the way, or my mom or my brother on the way to games.
I would tell them like how many touchdowns that I felt like I was going to score.
Sick.
And Donovan had an arm.
Right.
Rifle.
Again.
Yeah.
That was the strongest arm quarterback that I had played with.
He was.
He was the strongest armed quarterback.
That makes sense.
Was he most accurate?
No.
No.
But he put it on the bottom.
He didn't need to be with you.
But again, it just shows you the type of quarterback that I played with versus not.
Makes sense.
Tom, Andy Reid, where do you put him?
Is he the best coach right now in the NFL?
I think so.
I mean, you take a look.
Theo quickly pointed out, you know, the Bill Walsh coaching tree, Shanahan, two Super Bowls.
Reed, two Super Bowls, Holmgren, one Super Bowl.
I think right now, you look around, he is the last of an important generation.
He and probably Bill Belichick, yeah, for sure.
Yeah, that generation.
And then you have some guys coming up.
You know, San Francisco, you get the sun coming up.
But I would say right now, if I was drafting a team right now and could choose a quarterback.
Could you pick your coach and be him?
I would choose Andy Reid.
I'm sworn.
Wow.
Hand on a Bible.
I would choose Andy Reid, my quarterback right now.
I mean, my coach, as my coach right now.
He also gets along well with a variety of general managers.
And that chemistry has to be.
Why is that, though?
I mean, because look, athletes, there's drama, there's attention.
You need one-on-one attention.
You need them to know how important you are.
They need to be believed in.
You need to know how to challenge them.
You need to know how to have tough conversations with them.
How did he balance that with players and coaches and GMs?
I don't know.
I think it just comes with the sport itself.
And then, again, how you're groomed, how you're being taught.
Yeah.
I mean, I think, yeah, those things are very obvious and evident to coaches with his amount of success, especially when you're surrounded with success and you're watching how they go about coaching and how they're dealing with different players, different personalities or what have you.
He was around that for a number of years because, again, he was at Green Bay.
Like I said, that West Coast, that tree of coaches, and he mentioned a number of them, it's fascinating.
Like I said, even Mariuchi, all these guys are part of that lineage and part of that tree.
But again, like I said, when you think about Andy Reid, like he was.
How did he challenge you?
How did he challenge you behind?
Like, did he ever have tough conversations with you?
No, because I was a breath of fresh air.
Honestly, when I went to the.
There's zero conflict with the two of you guys.
The only issue we had was when I went there, I was used to wearing tights in practice.
That's how I watched Jerry do it for a number of years.
And so I adopted, and even the receivers, we adopted, you know, that's how we practice.
We practice in our tights.
I went there and I went outside the first practice and with my tight, I had black tights on.
The equipment guy sent me back in.
He said, go get your shorts.
And I'm like, what do you mean?
I'm like, this is how I practice.
And he's like, no, Andy wants you to put shorts on.
I'm like, what?
So I'm like, in my mind, I'm looking at that picture and I'm looking at Andy and I'm like, is he jealous of my body or something?
Like, why does he want me to go put my, why does he want me to go put shorts on?
By the way, they don't make tights that size.
No.
So let me tell y'all a funny story.
So let me tell you a funny story.
Let me tell you a funny story.
Special order only.
Let me tell you a funny story.
The world almost got to see him in a pair of tights.
No.
Uh-oh.
Was that a bet?
Yes.
So I, so for eight years, that's all I've ever known.
Like, aside from my first couple of years rookie, what I wore my shorts and training camp, this and that.
But then I saw Jerry do it.
Like he would wear his Tyson practice, whatever, warmed up in everything.
So again, just told you a story.
They sent me back in to get my shorts.
I was hot, bro.
I was low-key mad.
I'm like, because it just felt like I felt like I was in a good mood.
I was in a great situation.
I'm looking to come here.
And like, really, like, play and help this team get to the Super Bowl.
And then it was just like, it was just, that was a damper on my day.
So I went in and I put shorts on.
I was reluctantly putting those shorts on.
And I went back out.
And so we ended up having a conversation about the tights.
And he saw, he saw my energy go down.
And we talked about it now.
He said, you really want to, he said, you really want to not wear those shorts, huh?
And I was like, I said, coach, I said, this is what I've known.
I said, the greatest receiver of all time, this is how we practice.
So this is what I've always known.
I'm like, it's not that I just don't feel comfortable.
He said, and he said, he said, let's make a bet.
Let's place a little wager on this.
And I said, cool.
And he said, how many touchdowns did you have last year or whatever?
I don't know.
And then I think the most touchdowns I think an Eagle receiver has had, I think it was like, I think it was, I think it may have been 14 or something.
I think that's how many I had in San Francisco leaving there.
And he said, do you think you'll get 14 here?
I said, yeah, for sure.
And he said, no, he said, no receivers ever had that many touchdowns.
And he said, I said, okay, cool.
I said, so if I beat that, he said, I can wear my tights.
He said, yeah.
And I said, if I beat it, I said, you got to wear some tights.
And so he was like, okay, cool.
So it was a bet.
So I left it.
What it was, when I got hurt, I was at 14.
Get out of here.
Get out of here.
What a great story.
So you know, in his mind, he's like, yo, I love you.
Oh, no.
Well, listen, on behalf of fans, we want to thank you for the money.
I spared the world.
I spared the world.
But honestly, I was so, I was, I didn't think about it till later, but I was livid.
I'm like, oh, I was at 14.
By the way, did he let you wear the tights the rest of the season or you couldn't do that?
Dude, I had to wear, dude, I had to wear your peak on pregame warm-ups.
My wife and I saw you on pregame warm-ups, and I said, take a look at that.
How, if you're a corner, do you not say to yourself, that is a human being?
I got to come.
Yeah, forget.
This is San Francisco, you're saying.
Yeah, we will see it.
I've heard so many stories of me working because that was my routine.
That's probably the PG-13 story.
There's probably some rated RC.
No, no, no, no.
I don't have any.
I mean, that was just like my pregame routine.
And then, obviously, like I said, there were some women reporters that I've come across.
Like I said, there was the all-white that I had worn.
That became a topic of discussion with a lot of people.
Pull up the all-whites.
Let's see what the hell.
But I didn't know.
That's your question.
I didn't know anything about it.
Did this pregame include casually running past defense stretching?
I would watch where you would have routes all over the open field.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
So I always made sure they could see every ounce of what they got to defend.
Right.
I always ran or I always took a full lap around the field.
Always a full lap around the field.
And the defense is stretching in the end zone and you're just cruising.
Yeah, and I've heard some player that's like, oh, my God.
I've heard some coaches, you know, go to their DBs, they look, that's what y'all got to cover.
That's a good tactic.
That's good.
By the way, shout out to Andy Reid.
He was an offensive tackle at Glendale Community College Time.
Did you know that?
I did.
He was an offensive tackle at GCC.
Anyways, this is.
So he wasn't tight to play.
Wow, listen, a long time ago.
That's look at it right there.
He played for BYU, but before BYU, he was GCC as an offensive tackle.
T.O., it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on.
Gang, if you're watching this, we have the winner for something.
The person that asked the question, answered the question.
The question was, what, Rob?
The question was.
Who was Terrell?
I'm sorry, Tom.
Carol Owens' favorite QB.
Yes, during his career, the options were Steve Young, Jeff Garcia, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Donovan McNabb, or Tony Romo.
The answer is Ryan Fitzpatrick, which was guessed correctly by Paul Galushkin.
Paul Galushkin's a good guy.
Paul!
That's right.
That's my boy.
He's a good guy, man.
Good for you, Paul.
You're going to be getting this ball sent over your role.
By the way, for those of you guys that are watching this and you have questions for Tio, you want to ask him questions about career.
Maybe you got kids that are going to college.
Maybe you want to ask him about, you know, you're in the game.
You want to ask him questions, financial contracts, lawyer, whatever it may be.
Any kind of questions you have, you can ask those questions of T.O. on Manect.
Rob, if you can put the link below for Manect.
And then on top of that, last but not least, TO, do you mind telling us about these candles before we wrap up?
Yeah, so earlier I talked about like what I call my three pillars of success, which are my three D's: desire, dedication, and discipline.
So I designated, so all the scents are dedicated to these candles.
So there's a scent for desire, there's a scent for dedication, and there's a scent for discipline.
And then there's a fourth one that I added.
I have five, but the fourth one that I added was during the pandemic.
Everybody was shifting and pivoting and doing things.
And so I got in the wine space.
And so I have a wine under the Tommy Lasorda, Lasorda family wines label, which is called 81.
And so the ingredients with that, it has cockadoo plum and some other things in it.
And so we had, so we made a wine pairing candle to pair with the wine.
And so obviously, like I said, with the candles, with desire.
So I was very instrumental with my partner, business partner, Carolyn Taylor.
She had an existing company and she knew everybody that knows me personally, they know that I like home decor.
I love fashion, which is part of why I got into the clothing line business, as well as like my mom.
She was a seamstress growing up.
But as it relates to the candles, everywhere that I've been, I always had bought candles.
You know, it was just like just an accessory.
And then, like I said, you like to have your house smell inviting, especially when you have guests and all those things.
So she asked me what I want to be a partner in.
And I'm like, sure.
So we came up with Loft 81 Home, obviously the brand.
And then with these candles, we started out with Desire, which is made up of a cashmere vanilla, a dark labdanum rose, and a saffron tobacco.
Oh, wow.
Saffron tobacco.
Saffron.
Come on.
Middle Eastern.
So we love that.
Right.
Right.
So that's desire.
So I wanted something obviously that smells sexy, you know what I mean?
That's not overpowering, this light.
And so when you think about the cashmere vanilla, it kind of softens some of those ingredients up.
And then dedication, it's made up of sage and lavender, the same dark labdanum rose, and then a rose patchouli and amber.
But listen, the way you said it, bro, I want to order a case.
You sound like the candle signs.
And so the candles are made with intention.
Everything is about intention.
It's about mindset.
So everything that I've done, like I said, there's, like I said, it infuses the desire and the dedication and the discipline in it.
And so even with the box, with the box, you see here, I was very instrumental with the texture.
You got the embossed logo here.
And then this little tab right here says pull with intent.
So again, obviously you can use these candles, the boxes as well, once the candles are burned.
But yeah, that's pretty much how I got involved with it.
And like I said, we want to sell a lot more candles.
We want to obviously get in some retail stores or what have you.
Again, it's simple.
It's simplistic.
And yeah, and then the last one is discipline.
Discipline is like, you know, kind of the mindset.
You burn this candle when you want to, you know, get in a mindset.
If you want to just go to the gym and you want to just meditate or just kind of just get deep in your thoughts, like for me, I just think about like my off-season training.
If I'm just like, once I started training in April of every after every offseason, whatever I was doing within the months of my last game up until April, I just kind of just let myself go, kind of gave myself a chance to just unwind, let my body heal.
But as soon as April hit, that first week in April, I was back on grind.
Yeah, I was back in grind mode.
Nothing else mattered, but preparing myself for the upcoming season.
So desire, it's made up of a, I mean, a discipline, it's made up of a marigold and a cedar musk, and then a woody, a woody leather and brandy.
Brother, I've never met anybody this detailed with candles.
We officially, I'm telling you, he's got a nickname.
It's the T.O., you may have a lot of nicknames.
You're the candle scientist.
Place an order for candles.
If you're a candles person, I got a candle on my office upstairs.
I got to go replace it with one of these now.
Loft81home.com.
Loft81home.com.
The link's going to be below as well.
Gang, T.O., again.
Can I do one more?
Go for it.
Because this is for my grandmama.
Go for it.
Every month, well, not every month, but in June and November, it's Alzheimer's Mental Health and Alzheimer's Awareness Month.
In June, it's mental health.
But in November, it's Alzheimer's Awareness Month.
And so my grandmama passed in 2012 to Alzheimer's.
In 2000, I spoke before Congress to help with obviously bringing awareness and obviously increased funding for the disease.
And so we partnered with Alzheimer's Association.
So we have a candle.
I have a candle dedicated to my grandmama because I remember I told you she was she was very, very strict.
So this respect, right?
It's called Tough Love.
So it's in a purple, the month.
It's not one of those, but one of those, so the month is purple.
You know how breast cancer is pink or whatever.
So we're using a, we got a purple vase for the candle.
Yeah.
So if you, yep, so you go to Loft 81 Home, you obviously you'll see respect.
And respect for that.
So tough love.
So in tough love, so to come up with the scent with that, I came up with something that obviously that made me think about like a grandmama, which is like, you know, dried floral and incense, you know, something along those natures.
So when I grew up, when you think grandma, you think floral, something, blah, blah, blah.
So that's what I, that's what we have it.
And then the cashmere plum kind of softens it up a little bit.
So honestly, it's probably the one that has the most potent throw.
When I think about grandma, I think about Bill Withers, the song Grandma's Hands.
I don't know if you know that song or not, but it's an old school hand.
