Tommy Jack I of fancied here with inspirational speaker and former fullback of
the Pittsburgh Steelers, Meryl Hodge. Merrill, how's it going today? Tommy, great, good to be
with you. Tell me what you got going on here. Where do we start? Look at all this stuff in
front of you now. Uh, tell me what's going on here. Well, Tommy, we're gonna start I'm gonna
throw you a curveball, but this is critical for a game day. The Bobada humidor is a
must-have, especially if you enjoy cigars. It's the perfect cigar storage. Um, the humidor
with a patent of two-way humidity control and sleek design for just 299. It requires no
maintenance unlike conventional humidors. This humidor comes with a one-time seasoning. To get
you going for 6 months and comes up with an comes with an auto replenishment option. And
then you got to have food, you got to have great dips, and Hellman's and snacks, well,
they help you bring the whole thing together. People come for those snacks, especially the
dip. Having great dip is critical, like Hellman's disappearing buffalo chicken dip. The
secret ingredient is Hellman's mayonnaise. Get the recipe at Hellmans.com. And here's where
Hellman's stands out from the others. Hellman's does not get oily or separate. It
holds up through heat and time. And it stays craveable from kickoff to the final snap, which
is about 3 to 4 hours, so that's vital. And then Borden cheese, comfort foods unite us all.
My favorite is make your own grilled cheese bar. Add things like meat, onions, avocados.
The key is get creative. In a, in a recent grill, uh, cheese survey, one of 4 Americans
prefer using mayonnaise instead of butter to grill their cheese crust. And this room is
actually 2 for 2. So, who doesn't like a grilled cheese with Borden. American cheese
melts. You add Borden, jalapeno, it's better with Borden. And then you got to watch the TV.
So this LGO lead line is up to 83 inches. That's a 48 inch. And the secret play of the
day, ice cream cake, the Carville Game ball cake. These cakes are available at most major
grocery stores or go to Iloveicecream cakes.com. So, you got a little bit of
everything and you pull this off at your tailgate, they're coming back next time. Oh
Mary, you're making me hungry. Just looking at that stuff there. Uh, that, that's awesome.
Let's talk football for a minute if we could. Did you get a chance to watch the Steelers
debut? Aaron Rodgers, I mean, 41 years old, 244 yards, 4 touchdown passes, no picks. I mean,
he was as impressive as I guess we could have expected in that game. Where do you kind of see
things going from here for him? Well, listen, I, that's the one thing that I tried to really
caution people, you know, they got so caught up with Aaron Rodgers outside the white lines
versus inside the white lines. Inside the white lines, he's been as elite as any
quarterback in the history of our game, and he still has that eliteness and obviously put that
on display, and he put it on display without really having other phases to your offense that
you need. Like they didn't run the football very well. Um, they didn't stop the run very
well. So when you do that, your quarterback, you know, is gonna have to play pretty, pretty
exceptional, which he did. But that all being said, I mean, if they don't get the turnover,
they still probably don't win that game. And so, they got a lot of things that they got,
they got to clean up their defensive line and offensive line in those areas they have to play
better. You know, just to win a championship, you're gonna have to, because I tell you this,
every every Super Bowl that we've, I've ever studied, The offensive defensive lines, the
team who wins it, that's where they played their best. And they're gonna have to play
better there, you know, Aaron Rodgers is going to be consistent and he's even going to be
better, the better that all those phases are. So, I think there's a serious upside to this
team. It'll be interesting to see how the next two weeks unfold because the opponents they
play are like the Jets, they like to run the football, and they're pretty good at stopping
it. So we'll see what kind of improvements they've made. Yeah, and Merrill, you talk about
the running game. Obviously you know a lot about that playing running back, playing
fullback, they couldn't get anything going on the ground, and I think we have to point to the
guys up front. It starts with the guys up front if they're not uh containing their
responsibilities. It's really hard to get a movement. That's what we saw from Jaylen Warren,
Kenneth Gainewell, Caleb Johnson on his lone carry, just nothing going on the ground. Like
what has to work right in order to get this running game off the ground. Well, even though
it was a player, and even, and then evolved into an analyst, like the number one killer in
the running game is penetration. Like, you have to get movement at the line of scrimmage
or where the ball is initially going to give your back a chance. And they, they struggled
with that as a group. It's not any one individual. And the running game is, you know,
really 56 guys because tight ends are a critical component of this, of working together
and Every time, not every time, but a majority of the time, the point of attack where they're,
they were, they were going, they just didn't win, you know, the, and it came on the Jets
have a pretty good up front 7. They got some defensive line that can wreck things, but
everybody's gonna have that. So, you're gonna have to do better upfront. What, what I thought
was most noticeable is they didn't work well together. Um, they seemed that they were
thinking through things versus you're really being instinctive and reacting. So, Uh, we'll
see if that doesn't improve this week. You're gonna work on that. It may not be, it's not
gonna be all solved in a week, but hopefully, and they'll need to have a better outing
against Seattle because Seattle's defensive line is, is pretty good. Their box players
might be a little better than the than the Jets, so this is a big test. Yeah, I know we're
only one game into this Merrill too. We can kind of see, I mean, things didn't go the way
that we expected, 0 66 total points in that first game. Are you concerned about
Pittsburgh's defense, the way that it looks at all right now? A little bit. Um, and that, that
concern goes right. Listen, I've always believed, the better you are closer to the ball,
the better you are, you're gonna be as an overall team. And, um, we, we got blown off the
ball from our nose guy to our ends, to our outside backers, you know, I mean, we
just didn't win in close to the ball at really any one time. And that was a little concerning
because, you know, To lose a few times. I mean , that's just the way it is. I mean, you walk in,
there's gonna be 60 snaps. We hope we win 40, 45. We got to win, not hope, we got to win 45
to win the game. OK, we can't lose 45 of those snaps and only win 15. Here's what I'm getting
at. And they just, there was nothing in the running game that was real positive from a
defensive line perspective, and that includes everybody. It's not just one guy. So, that,
that probably made it more disturbing that You know, there wasn't one guy that even was able
to stand his ground. So, you know, they kind of have a similar situation where they're gonna
have to do, you know, some evaluations of techniques and how they're going about playing
it. You need to do some things scheme-wise, you know, people think of blitzing as a passing
deal. You know, actually, a lot of teams will run blitz, you know, but they often do that
when they're struggling up front, and that's not the most sound way to do it because, like,
I'm gonna tell you from our perspective offensively, if we know you run Blitzing, All
we know is that you might get outside your gap because you're on Blitzen and we get you, we
get the one guy pinned, then we get big runs. You know, there's bigger runs off of those
things, but they can blow things up too. So, we'll have to see what they do scheme wise and
just improvement wise in this week's game. Yeah, absolutely. And uh I mean, we've got a
long season ahead of us, kind of some winnable games coming up here in Mary, and then the
season gets a little bit tougher as it goes on . Could you give us the Steelers maybe record
prediction this year? How far do you think they're going to go? Well, listen, um, uh, I
never say, every game is winnable. It's easy, you know, I, as a player, I, I'll give you an
example. I think we played the Patriots. I think they were all in 10. They came into
Pittsburgh. We, we beat them on a, on a 4th and 1. They, they were on the 1 yard line and
we stuffed them with like a 1 2nd left and we win the game. I remember we got in the locker
room, we're like, how is that team 0 and 11 now? I'm like, they were like one of the
toughest teams that we played all year. So, I, I'm just sensitive to saying, you know,
uh, this is a winnable game. And keep in mind, That's only going off how they played last year.
There's some teams that are not going to play as good this year as they played last year, or
some teams are playing better than they played last year. So, I never say that. I never look
at that. Let's put it this way. If you don't improve in the areas that they struggled with,
I mean, you're lucky if you're 9 and 8 or 8 and 9. if they get better in those areas, I
think this team, you know, might have, Caught lightning in a bottle, especially with, you
know, the play of Aaron Rodgers and, uh, DK Metcalf, you know, some guys that have some
really, I mean, they're elite and they, they bring some professionalism to help your team,
and some of the players that they've, they've brought in. So, um, that's gonna be the biggest
difference is what we see in the next couple of weeks is really gonna set the tone for the
type of team that they really are going to be. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Can't take any of
those games lightly. Merrill, you showed us all the amazing food that you have, uh,
tailgating here, getting ready for football. We're excited, we're pumped. We're ready to see
how this goes. We'll see if those predictions come true. And thanks for joining us today.
Appreciate pleasure. Thanks, Tommy.