You're back for another episode of Paper Route. I'm Corey Holmes. I got Ashton Nicole Moss with me. I got Brandon Marshall with me. And we got Steven Stack Jackson on today. How are we feeling? Good people?

Hello. Oh, look at this four box manderville for the win. Looking smooth. Why am I the shortest? Because you're the shortest. You might actually be a shortest. Look at Stack. Stack got his light on today. Got them. What you win? What you got on your feet? You got on some J's or you got on some flip flops? What you doing?

Uh, uh, unions. What's unions? Oh, Jordan, Jordan unions, uh, man, you're not Jordan. You in unions unions unions, you know, I'll show you. Show me. What's that? Please, bro? You're gonna make me. Yeah, you got. Yeah. He got no swag. I'm one of which ones. You don't know the Jordan. Oh, yeah, pulling back. Oh, them them. They just came out.

How old are those? These are the new. How much are those? These are the new unions that just dropped.

Those are tough, too. Bro, bro, what size you wear? The new unions, they got the. Oh, not the. Nike. I wasn't. You can change. You can change the colors. They got different colors. You can change them. See, they got union written in there. That's what I was wondering. Are there words? There's words underneath the Nike sounds, too, right? Yes, sir. How much are those shoes?

I don't know the retail values have my head. Are those like exclusive? Are those hard to get? Yeah, they're definitely. I mean, any type of Jordan like that is a little bit of a little bit of a hard get. If you know, be gentle, the right people, which stack does. So stack where you were. You're like a 15, bro. 14. Fort. Oh, that's me. Oh, God. I should never told that man. I like the first ones you pulled up. I don't know what those was. Them Jordans. You know, he's the first joins. Yeah, them was nice, bro.

I got you to show good people. We got some. We got some good stuff on Katie. He's making his return tonight. We'll talk about that a little bit later and stack. He's actually going to give us his top five tough as players to guard in the NBA. So stay tuned for that one. But first, more in the Lamar Jackson saga. Right. So it was just a day after Lamar Jackson had announced he requested trade from the Ravens back on was at March 2nd. He sent out a few tweets yesterday defending why he didn't play in last year's playoff game. Let's take a look at those tweets.

He said, I don't remember me sitting out on my guys week one versus the jets to week 12 versus the Broncos. How come all of a sudden I set out because of money in which I could have got hurt at any time within that time frame. When we know the Super Bowl been on my mind since April 2018. Let's get real. I'd rather have a hundred percent PCL then go out there and play horrible forcing myself to put my guys in a bad position or situation rather. Now that's selfish to me. Actually, like should Lamar Jackson even be

having to defend himself in a situation? No, but it's the nature of the landscape of sports. Right. And I think with the situation with Lamar Jackson being as polarizing as it is, you know, everyone seems to have an opinion about what he should do and what he shouldn't do. And if he deserves this, if he deserves that. And it seems to be, I mean, you see it all the time when it comes to contract talks and guys getting paid. You always have people on one side of the spectrum or the other. So I don't think that that's at

normal. But I think what we're seeing with Lamar is abnormal because I don't think we've ever had to see a quarterback, at least for my recent memory, have to work this hard to prove his worth. And I think that's kind of like why everybody's looking at it from different perspectives and have so many different years in this conversation. Because it's, you're looking at a quarterback who, yes, does he have shortcomings in his game? Yes, does he have things he can improve on in his game? Yes. But,

when it comes down to it, I think he's proven enough about not only his value to a franchise, but his value as an individual and as a player. And yet it still seems like he's having to prove that. And I think it's been a while since we've seen that. And I think that's what makes this conversation so different. So while it's unfortunate that he has to defend himself, I'm not surprised that he's doing it because there seems to be a lot of people who are against Lamar and against him.

I'm getting paid. Then I feel like I've seen in a very long time. Well, on that note, on that note, Brandon, I'm going to come to you next, Atlanta Falcons owner, Arthur Blountt yesterday. He told a group of reporters at the 2023 owners meetings that Lamar Jackson situation is, and I quote, very different from Deshan Watson's a year ago. Blank mentioned that there are concerns with Lamar Jackson's playing style and how he can hold up long term. He even went on to say that, well, and bring up the games that he's missed in the past two seasons. And he said, and I quote,

each game counts in this business. Now, Brandon, like, I mean, just what's your reactions to that? And what's next really for Lamar, you know, after hearing that? First off, anything coming out of the league side, owner side, it's all a distraction. Don't get distracted players. Don't get distracted fans. None of that matters.

This conversation, this situation is so much bigger than just a contract. We're going to look back five years from now, 10 years from now, this is going to be a stain on the NFL. This is not going to end the way Lamar Jackson wants it to end, like how he wants it to end, and it's not going to end the way to NFL wants it to end. This is all about power. This is all about using Lamar Jackson as the example.

To reset the market or put the players back in position. Go back to 2020. 2020 for the first time ever. We saw NFL players stand together.

Stack, we've never seen that in the NFL, y'all do it in the NBA all the time. NFL players never stand together and say, this is what we doing. Hell, you go back to 2010, when we were negotiating new CBA, we had to pay drew breeze, just to stand with the players because the big time players like Tom Bray, turned the Tom Brady's of the world and the Peyton Manning's of the world. They was off doing their own thing. They were good.

They're set. They had the relationships in the league office. They had the relationships with the Gatorades and the Nike's of the world and the Reeboks of the world. They didn't care about the rest of the players.

Lamar Jackson is being used as an example right now. Why is that? Because how are we going to give Lamar Jackson a fully guaranteed contract? It ain't even really about the fully guaranteed contract. It's really about his value.

Lamar Jackson, he represents himself. Players taking power, getting leverage. We did that in 2020. That's why I brought that up. Now we're moving it forward. So forget the civil rights movement. Let's put that to the side. Now now we're talking about business.

We're always able to control the player when the player is put on the side and we're told we teach the player to be quiet institutionalized. Be quiet Lamar Jackson, be quiet football players, basketball players. Don't go out and speak. Let the narrative do what it's supposed to do in the media. Let ESPN do what they supposed to do with it.

This is not going to end well for the NFL. This is not going to end well for Lamar Jackson. I think we're going to look back in a few years stack. And it's going to be like, wow, this was a big deal. You got the Joe Burles of the world, the Patrick Mahomes, the Jalen Hertz, the Justin Herberts, the Trevor Lawrence of the world, the Dak Prescott of the world. They should be standing alongside their brothers saying, look, if he can get it done, then he's going to break through for everyone else.

How dare you NFL go out there and offer him not NFL, but I got to say the NFL, because it's definitely could collusion for sure. I got to say, I got to say the NFL, because you don't think the NFL owners got together said, we can't let this happen. Forget the Sean Watson, because the Sean was about to, this is going to be a trickle down effect to Lamar, to Justin Herber, to all the other quarterbacks to come. He's just the example.

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