What is up, everybody?

Welcome back to another episode of Stay Hot.

I'm Bladen Kirk, joined as always, by my two favorite co-hosts of all time and Matthew Spineauer and Theo Ash.

Today, we are joined by a very special guest, Mr. Benjamin Solac.

How are you doing?

Welcome to Stay Hot.

What's up, fellas?

How we've been

it's great to have you actually had an

I've actually had an insane crazy day

but I can't get into it because we only have half an hour

but I was in Phoenix

and I was in an airport

and now I am no longer in that airport and I am at my apartment and that is

I really I really thought you're about to be like oh I can't get into it and then you're just

going to get into it anyway well I'm not going to go into the context of like I'd like to hear

yeah I'd like to hear that you can text us about it later it's okay I've been back and forth a lot, but, you know, so it goes.

Well, you might as well hop into some football since week one is right around the corner just over a week away.

And Ben, you've been going to training camp. You know, you've kind of been on a little bit of a training camp tour.

How has that experience been? Has there been anything that you've been able to see that's really been able to shift your thinking or maybe you were already thinking something? And now you're just like, yep, that's absolute. I was right on that the whole time. Yeah. The training camp tour, like, I don't know, I came up in the draft space and so I'm a little bit like, you got to see them live pilled, but you got to see them live. It's, it is helpful. It is good to see players and see teams move in person. To me, that's always been beneficial. Like, I thought George Biggins was a good player coming out of Georgia, but like getting to watch him run routes, like hearing the way he catches the ball.

Just like experiencing it live. It's, it's one of the things where it takes you five seconds. Like, yeah, that guy's different than all the other guys. Like this is not hard. He's the one. The other guys are not the one. Like, there we go, you know. So that sort of stuff is really beneficial. And then also, you know, you want to develop an intuition.

You know, like I think that I've been covering the league writ large for like two or three years. And I still like jump at shadows, right? Like the Chargers get some stars. I'm like, the Chargers are good now. And the realities, the Chargers probably aren't good because they're the Chargers. You like develop an intuition over time, right? It's the same way that like, you know, quarterbacks and players do. So going in person's been beneficial because like I get to feel the vibe of the lions. I get to see how they practice and how Dan Campbell does his thing and whatever. And then I get to watch the Lions play this year and play next year and I get to see how Dan Campbell grows as a a coach and hopefully like I'm consuming this data and like learning how to figure teams out based off of like okay like stats and like additions and whatever but also just like what does it feel like in the building what's the culture like kind of you know some of these buzzwords take on a bigger meaning than they should but they're they're still real things and so it's been very beneficial. I've been lions, Steelers, Colts, and then the Bengals Rams joined practices, which ended with

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