Andy Pate takes the helm on Rush to Reason, engaging in a candid and compelling conversation with Todd Watkins, a seasoned former Border Patrol agent. They tackle the ups and downs of the U.S. immigration system over recent years, scrutinizing the changes in enforcement strategies and examining the motives behind policy shifts. From government directives to the dynamics of human trafficking and law enforcement collaboration, the episode offers an unvarnished look at how immigration issues are rooted in policy decisions and what the future holds for border security.
SPEAKER 05 :
This is Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 04 :
You are going to shut your damn yapper and listen for a change because I got you pegged, sweetheart. You want to take the easy way out because you’re scared. And you’re scared because if you try and fail, there’s only you to blame. Let me break this down for you. Life is scary. Get used to it. There are no magical fixes.
SPEAKER 13 :
With your host, John Rush.
SPEAKER 10 :
My advice to you is to do what your parents did.
SPEAKER 15 :
Get a job, sir. You haven’t made everybody equal. You’ve made them the same and there’s a big difference.
SPEAKER 07 :
Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there. It is this feeling that has brought you to me.
SPEAKER 04 :
Are you crazy? Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?
SPEAKER 15 :
It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush.
SPEAKER 09 :
Actually, it’s Andy Pate, party of choice.
SPEAKER 03 :
And welcome to Hour 2 here on Rush to Reason. I am Andy Pate, your lovable host, filling in for John Rush while he’s gone for a couple weeks. This is going to be a lot of fun. On the line right now, we’ve got Todd Watkins. Todd, how are you, sir? I’m well, thanks. You’re doing well. Okay, well, Todd, we’re going to be talking about immigration because every day, I wake up not being invaded. And this is a new feeling for me after the last four years. I’m very excited. I’m kind of enjoying not being invaded. You know, it’s kind of a neat feeling. I’m going to say this. Americans right now are so relieved to not be invaded anymore. They are looking at President Trump and they’re looking at Doge and they’re looking at Elon Musk. And all these people on the left are complaining about Musk and Doge and everything. I think Americans are looking at them and saying, you let us be invaded for four years, fully invaded. We don’t care what you say and we don’t care what they do to you. What do you think?
SPEAKER 14 :
I tend to agree to agree.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s that big an issue.
SPEAKER 14 :
I’ve never seen numbers this low. Even during Trump’s first administration, the numbers weren’t as low as they are right now.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, really quick here, before we go on, give us a little of your experience with Border Patrol. Why do you know this so well?
SPEAKER 14 :
Sure. So I was a Border Patrol agent from 1997 until the last day of May in 2021. So I went from boots on the ground, Border Patrol agent, Retired as an assistant chief out of our national headquarters. Been in several different duty stations, several different sectors, including Buffalo sector up in the Canadian border for four years. Special operations as watch commander, emergency manager. I did everything in the Border Patrol just about except for ride horses.
SPEAKER 03 :
When people come across illegally from Canada, are they all riding a moose cart?
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah, I’ll tell you, it’s not Canadian hockey players coming across the northern border.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, I don’t think so. They were not real pleased with us the other day, were they?
SPEAKER 14 :
No, no, no, no. They got the what for from the Kachuk brothers, huh?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I guess so. Okay, well, Todd, I want you to imagine for a moment. I’m going to keep you here for a couple segments. Imagine I am an illegal immigrant, and it’s on the southern border. And I wanted to come through a couple months ago. Now I want to come through again. A couple months ago, I could have gone to any port of entry. They would basically just escort me through, give me paperwork. I could have gone to, you know, come in with their app, you know, into any of our, you know, through our airlines. It didn’t make any difference. What is it like right now for somebody to try to come through illegally on the southern border?
SPEAKER 14 :
So, first of all, I’d like to circle back to the CBP One app when we get a moment a little bit later on, and I can describe how all that worked. Okay. But illegally entering, and there’s a difference between the port of entry and between ports of entry. So, first of all, Customs and Border Protection, CBP, that’s what it stands for, has two components of it. Well, three if you add in the planes and the boats and all that for air marines. But you got the guys in green. That was me. We had between the ports of entry. So anything that entered between the ports of entry was an illegal entry, period, end of sentence. No question. Then you got the ports of entry where you’re asking to come in. You’re knocking on the door, as it were. And there are different legal processes that apply to that. But between the ports of entry, never in my 24 years had I ever seen people come through a hole in the fence and stack up in queue and wait for the guys in green to – drive them up to the station to fingerprint them, but it was because we were releasing them on the other end. That’s not happening anymore.
SPEAKER 03 :
So they were literally coming through, and they weren’t just, like in the old days, coming through and hiding from the cops and then blending into our society. They were looking to get found so they could get processed, and then they’d simply be let in.
SPEAKER 14 :
Correct. Yeah, you can find lots of… you know, newsreel from, you know, during the Biden administration. Bill Malusian was one of them. There was another, Allie Bradley, I think. They filmed, you know, these illegal alien camps right there up against the fence, you know, with Catholic charities, blankets, and, you know, tents provided by other organizations. And they were camped out there waiting for the Border Patrol to to kind of, you know, to clear the stalls.
SPEAKER 03 :
By the way, really quick here, and Sarah Carter did some great work on that too. Let me just say this, as a believer in Christ, what Catholic Charities did down there makes me sick to my stomach.
SPEAKER 14 :
It should. They facilitated human trafficking.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, they facilitated human trafficking. And let’s keep in mind that there was also a real financial benefit for them. Not only were they probably getting money up front, right? But let’s say that they brought a bunch of people in and now Catholic Charities has these, you know, a number of people who are here illegally in their pews throughout the country. Those people are working at jobs and donating a percentage of that. Where? To their church.
SPEAKER 14 :
So there’s a whole other couple of segments that we could do on HHS, Health and Human Services, who has a role in this on the back end because of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. And that has to do with something that I’m going to call the pull factor. We talked about this, I think, earlier, some of you and I in a phone conversation, that when it comes to irregular migration, so speaking from an academic perspective, there’s two things that we consider to make someone leave his home country and go to another country. There’s the push factor, which is how bad it’s gotten there. There’s a volcano erupting, murder hornets or whatever. That’s what makes you say, I’ve got to get out of this place. But the pull factor is, well, where do I go? Why do I go to this place over that place? What the Biden administration did effectively, intentionally, is make the pull factor stronger than the push factor. So everybody, they essentially opened up the United States to let the entire rest of the world displace into the U.S.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, so what is it like right now when they try coming to our border? What’s happened?
SPEAKER 14 :
So… To illustrate, to prove a point that this was a completely self-inflicted, manufactured crisis, from the moment Trump took office, he did what I kept saying throughout on different radio shows during the Biden administration. How do we end this? What’s the problem? The problem isn’t manpower. It’s not resources. It’s not bandwidth. It’s policy. all you have to do, you want this to end tomorrow, you tell the chief of the United States Border Patrol three words, do your job. Trump did that, and it was turning a faucet off. Anybody who’d worn the uniform knew that once you tell the Border Patrol, do your job, this faucet gets turned off, and it did. 95% decrease. Yesterday, total apprehensions along the southwest border were 226. That’s next to nothing. I mean, we used to get, during the Bush administration, it wasn’t We hit some high water marks during the Bush administration, too. But, I mean, one station could have that many apprehensions in a night. You know, 226. That’s 2,000 miles of southwest border with Mexico.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, Todd, what do people expect? I mean, for crying out loud, let’s say that you tell all the cops in Aurora. You know, don’t stop violent crime, okay? Don’t stop violent crime. What would happen to violent crime? What would happen to violent criminals? Violent criminals would realize, hey, man, I don’t have to worry about getting caught, prosecuted, shot by a cop because, you know, I tried to shoot them, whatever. I don’t have to worry about that. They would run rampant. We would churn Aurora into downtown Baltimore, okay, overnight. And by the way, sometimes Aurora feels that way, but it’s not nearly that bad. This is what happened. Biden said, don’t do your job. And basically he turned our border patrol into an escort service.
SPEAKER 14 :
I don’t want to say that we were we were more of a concierge.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. Escorting. I didn’t mean you know what I mean. Well, actually, wait. There was a lot of the sex trade going on there, too, though. I didn’t mean that when I said it, but that’s pretty horrible. When I think of all the young girls who have been shipped across during the Biden years, who are now in sex slavery of one sort or another, and they’re probably hooked on drugs. I mean, they’ve destroyed these wonderful young people’s lives. They don’t care. They don’t care at all.
SPEAKER 14 :
I doubt that we’ll ever really know. And that goes into that whole other conversation of the HHS, ORR, and all the NGOs and other nonprofits that got brought in to handle this groundswell of humanity on the back end, right? So Border Patrol was, we’re the front line, right? We’re right up there, literally on the front line, and we’re the intake. So when you break that everything downstream from it breaks also. And I would argue, and I did this in my master’s thesis in grad school a handful of years ago, they were testing this during the Obama administration from about 2012 to 2014 with all these unaccompanied minors, juveniles that were getting deposited on the border. Then again during Trump’s administration, circa 2018 to 2019 with the caravans and all these family units, they were seeing where you could break this process and you just overload the border patrol stations. They did it again, except it was, you know, in concert with the Biden administration, vis-a-vis Alejandro Mayorkas to just come in, get your picture taken, get your fingers rolled. And, and we’re kicking them out the door. I’d never heard of border patrol street releases my whole 24 years. I heard about, I mean, we were doing that in San Diego and a couple other places and, We just there was no place to send them. So we were just handing them a piece of paper and dropping them off, you know, near a trolley station in San Diego.
SPEAKER 03 :
Ridiculous. OK, hey, tell you what, let’s take a break, because after the break, I want to talk about all the troops that have been sent down to the border. I want you to tell me what they’re good for, what they’re what we shouldn’t do with them. Just what’s happening. Sound good.
SPEAKER 14 :
Sure, absolutely.
SPEAKER 03 :
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SPEAKER 06 :
Putting reason into your afternoon drive, this is John Rush.
SPEAKER 03 :
And welcome back to Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560, Andy Pate filling in for John Rush. On the line, we’ve got Todd Watkins. Todd, we’ve been sending a lot of troops down there. What are they doing with them?
SPEAKER 14 :
So you’ve got two different types of troops. Okay. I don’t know how many in the audience know. You’ve got your National Guard and then Active Duty or Title X forces. So throughout my career, I saw lots of different iterations of various National Guards. units come down to the border. It’s mostly a lot of, uh, engineer work or army engineers, you know, uh, fixing roads, repairing the fence, installing more fencing, that sort of thing. The, uh, support infrastructure support type stuff. Uh, we actually, we saw them, uh, plus us up in the world of, uh, ISR intelligence, uh, surveillance and reconnaissance where they would operate some of our towers and, night cameras and all that sort of thing. Well, that’s really helpful. Yeah, it frees up a lot of agents. What I’m seeing now, and we are deploying Title X forces, some from 4th Infantry, some from 10th Mountain, and I thought I saw something about some 82nd troops going down. Looks like a lot of, again, engineers and military police. So this would be new. And part of my Border Patrol career, I was a military liaison out here, actually, in Colorado to Special Operations Command North in Colorado Springs. And this is one of the discussions that was had quite a bit when we had the caravans coming up, was what exactly can active duty military do? And they were loathe to get into the business of handling, transporting, securing anybody that gets arrested because of posse comitatus. I’m speculating now that the fear of that has been somewhat abated in that a lot of these units going down to the southern border are, in fact, military police. So I’ve got to think they’re going to use them to manage some of our detention facilities and transportation, so, you know, secure custody type stuff. Okay.
SPEAKER 03 :
No. And that, by the way, if they take care of, you know, transport and these kinds of things, it totally frees up the border patrol. And that’s phenomenal and really helps. Let me ask you this, though. What about simply having a big military presence on the border like we are now having in dealing with the cartels? I mean, it’s just it’s just kind of helpful just knowing they’re there, because if you’re the cartels, I’d be a lot slower to do anything.
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, there’s the whole notion of projecting force, right? Right. That’s what I’m saying. Yeah, having them present, there’s some psychological deterrence there. You don’t want to tangle. with the best trained, best equipped, you know, military on planet Earth.
SPEAKER 03 :
What about the fact that you’ve got a lot of places where the cartels have more or less run over small towns in America and have really made some intrusions here on the southern, you know, down in the southern end of America? Could the military be helpful in backing up our cops?
SPEAKER 14 :
Yes, I would. This this gets into like operational and tactical deployment type stuff. All right. That probably isn’t a good topic here.
SPEAKER 03 :
But well, I mean, because, you know, Trump has declared the cartels to be terrorists.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah, I would. So in that type of engagement, I would push the military forward. You would not so much backing up the cops as much as you would want them to lead in. Yeah. And certainly declaring. uh… those cartels is uh… you know uh… fto’s foreign terrorist organizations it puts a lot of things on the table uh… not only just direct action but you know intelligence support uh… the tide the type of detention now are these are they amenable to u.s. criminal charges in a u.s. criminal court or uh… i heard were were expanding gitmo so uh… that’s what we did with uh… isis and al qaeda They’re kind of on the table for spending an indefinite amount of time in Guantanamo Bay as potential foreign fighters. And since, you know, it’s a bit of a rabbit trail, but since you brought up the whole terrorist designation.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER 14 :
Now, a lot of these other ancillary organizations and even people in the United States who are transporting, moving, handling anything from them, drugs, people, whatever, money. This is now material support to a terrorist organization. Right. You’re not just, you know, aiding and abetting smuggling. You’re aiding and abetting a terrorist organization. It’s a whole other set of criminal charges against you. And if we, you know, fentanyl is a really big deal, right? Right. So 100% of fentanyl comes across drugs. the u.s mexico border all of it every little bit of it comes across the u.s mexico border at one way shape or form all of the the cartels are the ones who are pressing the pills you know mixing the drugs but all the ingredients for the fentanyl a hundred percent of that comes from chinese pharmaceutical companies right i see china getting sanctioned in this for support to a terrorist organization how do you think this is going to financially hamper the cartels in china I’m probably not qualified to speak as to how it would hamper China. It would have to be a hit if you start actually doing financial sanctions. You could hurt them very badly. I mean, Trump’s pretty good at figuring that one out. The cartels, just shutting down the flow of human trafficking has cost them I don’t know how many billions of dollars. I’m not good with math, but a good number to use. Lots. a $6,000 per head. Now multiply that. However many came through under Biden, 10 million, 12 million, 15 million. Well, that’s how much money they’re, they’re fixing to lose right now.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, Todd, I’m kind of wondering how Catholic charities is being, uh, impacted by this.
SPEAKER 14 :
Uh, I, I hope like hell that, uh, doge and the newly branded fbi are looking into all of the funding streams that went to the these uh ngos catholic charities among them right that are probably the most eminent among them but all the others where did the money go how much did they get what did they do with it and where are all the people that you had where did they go no one kept track of them 385 000 uh juveniles are are missing unaccounted for does that mean that they’re You know, they’re lost in some indentured servitude or sex slavery.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, it’s horrible. Well, okay, Todd, we’ve got about a minute left here. Let’s talk about the wall. What is happening with the wall? I mean, all the pieces that were sold, from what I’ve heard, the new Bronco Stadium will be constructed of those. So at least we’re going to get something out of it. It’s going to be really, really nice. Anyway, what is happening with the wall?
SPEAKER 14 :
they’re going to complete it. Trump said he was going to build it. He listened to us, us being the Border Patrol, as to what we wanted it to look like, what we actually needed. He answered. It’s not just going to be barriers. There’s going to be more infrastructure, surveillance along it. It’ll get finished. But the most critical piece of all this, I really want to hammer this, was the policy change. All you had to do was say, you’re not getting released. You’re going to get thrown back to your country. And that, man, that shut it down. 226 arrests along the southwest border in a day. I don’t know how to express how confounding that is.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, but you know what, Todd? Policy changes, the problem with those, I’m all for it, obviously, but the problem is that changes right back if you get a Democrat in office because they want us invaded. And I don’t know if the Democrats are going to bounce back anytime soon. I think America’s mad. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 14 :
I would hope so. You still have to improve all of the barriers, the static barriers, the infrastructure that allows enforcement of laws. But, man, that policy, he let off with the right punch.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I agree. Todd, thank you so much for joining us today, and we’ll have you back, all right? All right. Thanks, Andy. You bet. You take care. Up next is Veteran Windows and Doors. Hey, they tell you to shop around, then go to them. You’ll see the difference in price and quality, so call Veteran at 303-529-0720.
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SPEAKER 13 :
The best export we have is common sense. You’re listening to Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 03 :
And welcome back to Rush to Reason. Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Andy Pate filling in for John Rush online right now. It’s time for sports with Richard Rush. Richard, how you doing, sir?
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, I’m alive and well. Andy, how about yourself?
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m doing well. Were you in that hockey game where, you know, America beat Canada?
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, I was sort of following it from afar. I didn’t tune in, you know, just kids, lots of other stuff going on. But I was excited, especially considering, you know, their disdain for the anthem and all the other nonsense that they’ve got going on. And then overall, I’ll just say it. I don’t care what U.S. is going on. I don’t care who the president is, anything of that sort. I just enjoy us beating any other country that we can beat at any point in time.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. I mean, I just like the red, white and blue, baby. But you know what? It really gets me, though. I understand they’re really mad because of tariffs. Right. But Richard, we have had every country on this earth. And I think a few countries that aren’t even on this earth put tariffs on us in every way, shape and form. Massive tariffs against America. Did you ever see us throwing fits like this?
SPEAKER 05 :
No, and that’s part of the issue, is you’ve never seen anyone react this way, right, Andy? Right. And I get it. They’re probably more upset about the 51st state deal, which sometimes these people just have to look at it and say, this is just a dude getting everyone riled up. It’s like what Trump did for, I don’t know if you saw that, basically Europe has come out and essentially they’ve said today that They’re basically going to have to increase their spending on defense, which is everything that Trump’s been saying kind of from the start is, hey, we just need to – you guys need to come on par with us to increase your spending because we’re not going to be policing everything anymore, at least on our own. We’ll still help. But we need people to come. And so he just says some outlandish stuff sometimes to get people moving. And sometimes I think he just says outlandish stuff, Andy, to get people riled up, like the 51st State thing. And I think that’s more of a dig at Trudeau.
SPEAKER 03 :
Look, Trump is an international troll. He is. He is?
SPEAKER 05 :
He is, Andy. I enjoy it. He’s the Kansas City fans on the message boards before the big game, telling the Eagles that they’re going to fail in the dire of moments, or the worst of moments once more. And then he comes back when they lose. Oh, I knew that was going to happen. We’ve already won back-to-back. Three of four. It was meant to be. It’s okay. That’s who Trump is.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s who he is. Well, here was something that I knew was going to happen. I’ve got to bring it up real quick. Because remember, I think it was a couple months ago, we talked about Aaron Rodgers, and you asked me if he was coming back next year with the Jets. What did I say? You said no, he would not. I said no, he’s done. Stick a fork in him.
SPEAKER 05 :
I think we both said that, and I think to this point, you and I also talked about maybe a decent landing spot would be Minnesota because I think Sam Darnold is going to be too expensive for them. I think Sam Darnold is probably not a guy I would pay $30 million to, which I think you’re going to have to pay. And I think that the Vikings with J.J. McCarthy, you don’t know how he’s going to come back from this ACL and everything else. There may be worse things. I think it’s a good idea. Go ahead. That’s the thing. To me, depending on the money, it’s kind of like Russ with the Steelers. I actually didn’t think it was a bad deal for the Steelers. He was on the vet minimum, basically. It didn’t cost them a stinking thing to do it. The Broncos were picking up the rest of the tab. If you’re the Vikings or potentially the Titans or maybe even Vegas, Any one of these teams that either got a young quarterback or are going to be drafting a young quarterback, why not take Rodgers for another year? Now, you could argue his play diminished and all sorts of things, and it did. I’m not discounting those things. And I don’t think he’s got much left, to be honest with you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Although he did look pretty good over the second half of the season.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, and the further away it happens, the further away these older players get from Achilles. That’s the biggest thing. I think even Kirk Cousins probably would have, he actually started to play a little bit better as the season wore on. Again, the Falcons have got a young guy in Pennix that they wanted to see how he would do. I think Rodgers can probably come back. He can have a serviceable season. I think he wants to keep playing, whether it be for this year, another year, whatever it might be. I know he’s got kind of some milestones coming up that he probably would like to get in terms of touchdowns, yards, things of that nature. But, yeah, Andy, I’m with you, and you called it. And, honestly, the Jets are probably better for it because they’re really not in a win-now position. And, honestly, I don’t even know if Aaron is a win-now quarterback, to be honest with you, which begs the question maybe he should have stayed with the Jets.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, no, no, no. I mean, look at it this way, though. The Vikings are loaded. OK, the Vikings are one of the probably one of the top five or six talented teams in the NFL. They really are. And I think if there’s a team to go to, he’s never had a set of receivers like that. Yeah, he had Devante, but he never had a set of receivers like the Vikings had. He’s never had an offensive line like they have. He has never had a team around him. I don’t know if he ever in Green Bay had a defense like that. The Vikings have a really good team. And if I’m Aaron Rodgers, look, because of his big payout from the Jets, he can play for next to nothing just like Russell did.
SPEAKER 05 :
And you’re correct. I just don’t… Again, to me, Andy, I think… Well, here’s another one for you. The Steelers, they’re likely moving on from Russ. They’re likely moving on from Justin Fields. Yeah, but they’re not as talented.
SPEAKER 03 :
They’re not as talented, though, as Minnesota.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, but Andy.
SPEAKER 03 :
And also another thing, Aaron’s old and Minnesota’s indoors, which is kind of nice. But go ahead.
SPEAKER 05 :
No, you’re not wrong, but Mike Tomlin’s teams, Andy, we’ve talked about this for years, right? His teams, just because of his coaching and the character of his guys in that locker room and the culture that he’s established, they are always, always in the mix for the playoff spot, whether they should be or not. And it’s just, it makes you think, you know, if you’re the Steelers, and honestly, Andy, the Steelers, since Big Ben has retired, they’ve been trying to find a quarterback, right? You know, they went after Kenny Pickett, and that didn’t work out. And they really should be, you know, trying to find a guy, you know, honestly, maybe the Steelers should be going to get Zach Wilson from the Broncos. You know, see how well that, see if he was able to rehab… From Sean Payton, I just think it’s an interesting thing because you are correct. Outdoors, cold weather, northeast, all those things. But again, Andy, Aaron, and I know he doesn’t get around, but he made his living in Green Bay.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. Well, yeah, but he was younger. You know, when you’re younger, you can do that. Remember when Brett Favre got toward the end? He looked awful in the cold. It’s hard for old quarterbacks to function in the cold unless they got a great team around them, like Peyton Manning did at the end here in Denver. I just don’t know. If I were him, I’m going to Minnesota. It’s ideal. But wherever he goes. You see, Minnesota, it’s perfect because, like you said, they’ve got a rookie second-year quarterback, but he’s coming off a serious injury. They don’t have to rush him back. He can spend a year behind, learn behind Aaron, then he’s ready to go. I mean, it’s an ideal situation. I don’t think Aaron Rodgers, because Aaron Rodgers is not one of these guys who wants to play forever. He’s made it very clear, okay, he is not Joe Montana. He is not Tom Brady, right? But one more year on a really good team, I think he’d love it. And he wouldn’t have any resentment for the young guy because he doesn’t care. You know, I will say, but one thing we have to agree on, Mike Tomlin is the man.
SPEAKER 05 :
Mike Tomlin, it’s interesting, Eddie. Mike Tomlin, to me, is your prototypical… Yeah. Basically, the phrase, right, grass isn’t always greener, right? You don’t know what you have until it’s gone. All of these phrases of, he’s the steady Eddie. No, does he wow you? And do I think he’s slightly overrated because he’s in Pittsburgh? Yes, Eddie, the same way that I think Bill Cowher was overrated because he was in Pittsburgh. However, you cannot argue with the results. And regardless of your feelings on him and being overrated or whatever, that dude just knows how to win, and he knows how to get the most, the absolute most, out of his team no matter what. And, again, you saw what he did with the quarterback for all those years, and I think if you can replicate that, Andy, it would not surprise me if he was able to do more. That’s all I would say.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and like I said, with Pittsburgh, there’s a team that’s probably got to use their top pick on a quarterback, right?
SPEAKER 05 :
Do they go, which Andy, obviously, you’re switching because this is becoming years and years, and you have Walt’s favorite time of the year, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
Right, the draft.
SPEAKER 05 :
The draft is about 10 days or so. So obviously they’re late in the first round, right? They’re next to the Broncos. Which is going to have to be a Jackson Dart, a Quinn Ewers. Right. Or is one of those guys – because I think – we always know this, Andy. You always talk about it. Quarterbacks get overdrafted. And so you’re going to have to take one of those guys in your draft position now. And the last guy they took in the same position didn’t work out, Andy.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, I agree. But one thing I think that’s going to help them is there have been a flood of quarterbacks taken in the first round over the last three years. And what that means is a lot of these teams that are up above them already have their guy. And so you’re going to have, you know, we know about the top two quarterbacks. We know they’re going to go in the top five picks, most likely. And that’s fine, right? But then what you got are you got a bunch of teams in the draft who already got their guy. They’re just young. And I don’t see a lot of these teams really wanting to jump ahead of Pittsburgh or grab that quarterback. I see them needing other things. I could see, I don’t know about the third, but I could see the fourth quarterback possibly dropping to Pittsburgh. And wouldn’t that be ideal for them if they got an Aaron Rodgers for one year? Aaron says, yeah, I’ll do a year there and go off into the sunset. And then they have the next guy ready to go. The only thing is, though, once again, they’re outdoors and a northern team. Yikes for an old guy. And secondly, Minnesota’s just a better team. I mean, all hats off to Mike Tomlin, but Tomlin doesn’t have Minnesota’s talent.
SPEAKER 05 :
No, I agree with you, and you’re not wrong. I mean, I do think that Tomlin would do well with a guy like Rodgers. He would. Again, he just gets the most out of it. The Steelers, again, they’re in the enviable position for a lot of teams. I mean, look at any of these teams that would love to just make the playoffs year after year. Heck, the Broncos up to this last year were that team. They wanted to just make the playoffs. But now they’re in a state, in a situation in which, well, obviously not the case for the Broncos, but for the Steelers, they’ve got to sort of either move up or you’ve got to take that second-round guy, maybe catch lightning in a bottle, like the other team there in Pennsylvania did in the Eagles with Jalen Hurts in the second round. And maybe that is a guy like Jackson Dart. Maybe that is a Quinn Ewers, a guy that can sort of manage the game for you. And I’m still a believer that that’s basically all Jalen Hurts does for the Eagles, but he does it tremendously well. And obviously it’s gotten him to two Super Bowls, 1-1. I think that they’ve got to make some moves, Andy. And I think in this draft, I know we can talk more about it when we come back from break here, I think in this draft… Some teams are going to have to make moves, and it’s going to help teams like your team and my team because I think it’s actually going to allow better players to fall to us at different points in the draft, and I think that’s a positive.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, we’re both in the early 20s, and those picks are going to look like mid-teens. I really think so. Hey, tell you what, after the break, I’m going to put a challenge to you, Richard. Not with names, but with positions. Finish off, finish building the Broncos with the draft when we come back. Sound good? Sounds great. All right, up next is Ridgeline Auto Brokers. When you’re looking at used cars, you want good selection and best inspections. Ridgeline has both, and you’ll find both locations at klzradio.com.
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SPEAKER 03 :
And welcome back to Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560 on the line right now. We got Richard Rush. Richard, there are a lot of Bronco fans out there right now who are pretty excited because not only did you guys make the playoffs, but you are a young, talented team. I believe you’ve got at least as much talent as the Chiefs right now. So fill in the roster. What do they need? Tight end? I mean, what are you looking at?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, so the biggest phrase that Broncos fans are going to hear over the next few months, Andy, is going to be the Joker position, right? Which, no, that’s not the best player in basketball right now that resides in our city, who has been for a number of years. Who, by the way, side note, Andy should probably win his third straight title. MVP, but the guy from Oklahoma City.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m going to be mean here for just a moment. I think the Joker is absolutely phenomenal. But when you look at both ends of the court, I think Giannis has been pretty incredible, but I would give it to the kid from OKC. So I think he plays both ends of the court right now better than anybody in the league.
SPEAKER 05 :
And I’m going to be the Denver Homer here, Andy, and say that you’re just not looking at – yes, you’re correct. Could he be better on the defensive end? Yeah, but that’s not his game. He’s not a shot blocker. He’s not a rim protector. He’s none of those things.
SPEAKER 03 :
Look, he’s not the athlete that you generally have as a defender. And that’s the thing. He’s a poor defender. It doesn’t matter. I mean, don’t get me wrong. He’s awesome. He could be the best center who’s ever played, okay? We’re talking Wilt, Kareem, Shaq, guys like that. I put him in that list, so don’t get me wrong. I think the guy’s freaking phenomenal. But for both ends of the court, I would go in a couple other directions.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, and you’re near the one seed, and as good as Oklahoma City is, SCA probably should. But nevertheless, you’re going to hear lots about this Joker position, right? Which for Sean Payton is essentially a do-it-all type, either at running back or tight end. So if it’s a running back, it’s a guy who can catch passes out of the backfield, who can block. He’s your true three-down back, but not super heavy in the run game, right? Or if it’s a tight end, it’s like… Jimmy Graham or Taysom Hill, right? None of those guys are in the same class. But this tight end who can basically create matchups, he can either pull defenders away or he can really maximize one-on-one matchups.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I think you’ve already got some pretty good young running backs, so they’ve just got to get healthy.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, well, the problem is, Andy, but there’s not really a guy that can really excel. You’ve got Jaleel McLaughlin, who’s really, I think he’s an explosive guy, but he’s not an every-down guy. That’s fair. Maybe six, seven carries, maybe some catches out of the backfield. I think Audrick Estime. I think there’s a chance that Waltz guy, and you and I and Waltz are going to debate this on draft night, that Ashton Gentry could follow them at pick 20, and maybe he’s the pick. To me, the biggest need in…
SPEAKER 03 :
Do you really think he’ll fall that far? I mean, he’s awfully good. I know it’s running back, but he’s awfully good, Richard. I mean, look, I’m just going to say right now, I think you guys should get a tight end, but if Gentry’s there, no, you take him. Forget it. Best player available, you take the halfback.
SPEAKER 05 :
I will say, Andy, to me, honestly, tight end, Andy, I’m not as much as I really like that Tyler Warren kid out of Penn State. Oh, he’s good. He’s not going to be there either. I just think that the draft is actually really deep at tight end. It is. And it’s really deep at defensive tackle. So you can get one in the second round. You can get a guy in the second, even a third round, that in some other drafts may be a first-round pick, right? Just because of how deep it is and then the value that teams potentially or don’t potentially put on that position.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, well, what about this? Looking at the Eagles and how they won. They won with the offensive and defensive line. Are you looking at a big ugly? And maybe you get a tight end in the second or third round because it’s so deep? Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
Something like that. I could see them even going potentially an edge rusher. I think the Broncos have done a really good job. Another one? You guys are good. We talked about this. You can never have too many edge or interior defensive linemen that can get after the quarterback. If a guy falls, like we were talking about, if teams move up to get a quarterback… Maybe they, again, Gentee gets picked. Maybe both of these tight ends, Tyler Warren, Colston Loveland, get picked in the first round before the Broncos. That just pushes other guys back that should probably be drafted higher. And so, yeah, if that gives me the other defensive tackle out of Michigan, not Mason Graham, but the other guy, then, yeah, absolutely I want to take that guy in the first round. I don’t want to reach and grab one.
SPEAKER 03 :
Don’t you love it? It’s kind of nice drafting in the low 20s like both our teams are, but we both already have our quarterbacks, so we don’t have to reach for players that other teams ahead of us will reach for pushing good players to us.
SPEAKER 05 :
Correct. It’s a position, Andy, that Broncos fans for the past several years have been in where we’re like, man, we’ve got to take a quarterback. Let’s study the quarterback. And we’re finally, finally at a place where we can actually study every other position in the draft except for quarterback. We can say, hey, we don’t need to take that guy. We can take literally the best position that falls to us, which is what the Eagles have done for a number of years, Andy, until they got into the position that they were in. They literally just –
SPEAKER 03 :
stacked up on the big uglies and or stocked up i should say and just took the best guy that they possibly could if i were the broncos here is what i wish would drop to me okay and i know it’s not sexy but look you just got your quarterback get yet another killer offensive lineman that’s what i did and i and i already like a lot of your offensive i already like some of your offensive linemen a lot but get another
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, and you’re not wrong. And honestly, for the offensive line, you’ve got several good guys. You could argue you could upgrade the center position, although I think our guy there was serviceable. You could argue that they could upgrade the other guard position that we did a few years ago in free agency. But for the most part, they actually came together. They played really well together. And I don’t know if it’s something that you need to mess with. But as we’ve always known, Andy, you looked at it with the Eagles. We just talked about the defensive side. The offensive side, you can never have enough good offensive linemen. Right. There’s no way about it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, and also, let’s face it, with the QB you guys have now, and by the way, what a great draft pick. When he’s got time, he’s lethal.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, well, and he’s lethal, Andy, and here’s the other thing. You saw it with Jalen. When teams, you know, you get a good running game, you get all these pieces together, and then they sit back and they let stuff happen, well, then you can take what they give you, right? You can run up the middle, as Jalen did, several of those third downs, and Bo can take advantage of that. So, Andy, this draft season, I want playmakers.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s what I want. Okay, you’ve got 20 seconds left. How do you put you guys against the Chiefs next year? What do you think? I think you are right on their level or better next year.
SPEAKER 05 :
I’ll be a little bit more cynical. I think we’re still a step low, but the Chiefs have got some work to do. They’ve got several key free agents. The Broncos don’t have that many key free agents. We’ve got some guys we need to extend, but we’ve got the money to. We don’t have to worry about a $70 million cap hit with theirs. So I think we’re still a step below Andy, but let’s check in in May after the draft and see how close we are.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right, Richard, I’ll talk to you next Monday. Sound good? Sounds good, man. See you. You take care. Folks, that’s it for our number two and our three. I’m going to be talking to Jersey Joe as we watch the left going crazy nationwide. Until then, keep it right here on Rush to Reason, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’m a rich guy
