Change isn't coming. It's already here. Commerce is going digital and tax complexity is multiplying.

Tax rules evolve, rate shift, data floods in. Vertex connects it all.

A global tax compliance platform powered by tax-ready data and intelligence systems.

Smarter tech, continuous tax compliance, built-in confidence.

Learn more at vertexinck.com. This is the athletic football show.

Welcome, the athletic football show.

I'm Robert Mays.

Join me today.

It's my good friend Natey.

How you doing, buddy?

Joining you today for a second time. Second time. We recorded an early show this morning, and this is the Friday show that you guys are listening to that we're also recording on Thursday. So if we run out of gas at any point today, this is a weird product of our offseason schedule. And an early podcast got rained out.

They're making it up with a double header.

That's what you want to do.

You want to do two days in the off season right before you go to the combine for six days.

Hey,

it keeps our Fridays free.

That is the goal here.

But no,

I am doing very well.

I'm excited to talk about this episode because it's just a fun one that we haven't really kind of ever gone to these waters. So I'm excited to talk about it with you. Even doing the pre-show prep, it was pretty fun, just picking the brains. So our brains.

Brains is one of one of those brains was mine. I'm picking my own brain here. But no, I'm feeling, feeling very great right now. Very good afternoon. So the franchise tag window is open. Okay. And when I was thinking about different discussions that we could have today, I was looking at the Duran Payne decision, the news that it seems like Washington is going to tag Duron Payne. And I didn't have a value judgment on that immediately.

It was like, okay.

...