In 20 minutes, you'll hear something that Joe Witt said at his press availability that has me very,

very excited about what element of this defense. Before we get there, though, it's welcome

on a good friend of mine. I haven't talked to this guy in a long time, so I'm excited to catch

up. Nick Ashu is on with us. You'll hear Nick a lot more around here locally. I know he's doing

overtime this week on 106-7, the fan. Nick, what's up, my friend? How are you? You know, I didn't even have to promote myself. You did it for me. I appreciate that. You know, pros, pro over here. That's where I like to call myself. Yeah, you know, it's good to kind of get out of, as you know, I can say this as best I can.

Sometimes you've got to be on the sidelines for a little while.

It's nice to kind of come out of that, come out of the shadows and be back with you guys somewhat.

So it'll be more as time goes on for sure.

Speaking of the sidelines, we're all watching this Terry situation unfold from the

sidelines. We're not in the game. We don't know how these negotiations are going outside of

the random tidbits of information that people will tell us. What has been your perspective on where

this is going and how it's gotten to where it's gotten? This is so expected. Look, I understand that this, and I include myself when I say this, this is a fan base that's scarred. It's scarred from a lot of trauma with this organization for a long, long time. So you're going to see this situation, and, you know, let's look at it from a surface level first, because you see so much of these reactions from people all over social media and i know it's dangerous to start like gauging everything

with social media but let's just look at it for a minute so many people are are frustrated

and angry saying take take care of terry look at what he's been through look at how important

he's been to this organization all of those sentiments are are true. They're all real. But at the same time, this is that business aspect of sports that people don't like, but it's a reality. It's going to be there. It's always going to exist. And I've called this sort of the contract negotiation checklist. I need a shorter name, but for now, that's the name that I've got for. And we'll work on the branding you and I maybe later and we can come up with something a little bit better. But like, you go through the history of holdouts in the NFL and contract negotiations this time of year. They all look exactly the same. I mean, Micah Parsons basically jumped in the minute Terry decided to ask for a trade. Micah's like, me too. No, I want to trade. I don't want to be here anymore. You just go down the list and we've seen this every single year. Debo Samuel was there in 2022. I know Adam Peters wasn't the general manager in San Francisco, but he was a part of that front office. There are steps that are taken that are very standard within this whole path to getting a new contract for star players.

And Terry McLaren is just a part of that now. And you know, you were talking about this earlier.

And it's, you know, again, it's, I do believe there's a little bit of a staging that's going on

there because nothing's real anymore. Everything's fake and social media is either AI or somebody

staged it. You know, the whole scene, Harris and dapping him up and making sure that he's showing everybody. Hey, I'm not mad at the organization, but I want to get what I want to get. I don't blame him. And I also don't blame Terry McLaurin for wanting to maximize his income now, right? Like, one, I'll never spend my time blaming an athlete for maximizing their income period, but we're at that spot where this probably is, and you brought this up too, so I'll give you credit for this. Like, this is probably the last big contract given the age for Terry McLauran, which is crazy to think. I mean, he's about to turn 30. You know that in the NFL, it's not as much with running backs, but even wide receivers, you start thinking about what's that long term going to look like. There's a reason why so many star receivers over the years in the NFL have now been traded and then gotten a new deal because other teams have maybe been willing to pay that money as opposed to the team that actually drafted him. So it's, it's a frustrating situation. I understand why the fan base is upset with the way that it's been.

But in the end, I have full confidence that this is going to work itself out.

Because one, this organization knows how important he is. And two, they're not looking to rebuild.

This is a team now with Super Bowl aspirations already, which is just crazy to

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