It's the Charter, Charter, the Charter, the Charter podcast, the Charter podcast with Ruthie and Clay.

What's up, everyone?

Welcome back to the Charter podcast, brought to you by St. Xavier University.

I'm ruthie

pulensky alongside clay harbor and we are doing this virtually today so apologies for the

delay there on clay's finale to the to the jingle um we are coming to you still in the chicagoland area, but obviously with a lot to talk about as owners meetings are underway in Arizona.

And Clay, I think we have to start with sort of our local stuff. I want to get into everything we've heard from Ben Johnson, some things here and there from

Ryan Poles, even Kevin Warren. And then I also want to get into sort of the main story

that's coming out of owners meetings from a league standpoint, which I think is, number one,

the 18 game season, which is seemingly inevitable at this point. And also this referee lockout that is very, very interesting.

I know you played in 2012 during the last lockout,

so we'll get some of your experiences there as well.

But let's start with Ben Johnson.

And I guess I'll just ask you, Clay,

what was the number one sort of headline that came out of his media availability on, I guess it was Monday morning?

I thought it was very interesting.

Obviously, Caleb Williams, where he saw his growth, how pleased he was.

But the fact that he said, hey, you know, we might have been the ninth

overall offense. We might have had the best run game in the NFC, but there's a lot of meat

left on this bone. And that's what you want to see from the coach. And that paired with the

fact that he's like, you know, around town, I hear people saying how great we did last year,

how great of a season it was. We loved watching this.

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