So, Rive, it's Patrick.

Where are you right now?

This is an audio-only medium.

Please describe the background scene that I'm looking at, and I think I know what it is, but where are you?

What's around you?

I am in Arizona right now.

I think we're the only family on earth that spends only July in Arizona.

We do it backwards from everybody else, but I am in my office.

Ryan Fitzpatrick's job is quarterback for the Washington football team, and he's played in the

National Football League since 2005.

So I've got all my helmets. I have actually 22 shelves doing a very good job of filling them up

right now. I've got some Harvard helmets. I've got a high school helmet. And then all the teams,

except for Cincinnati because I was too cheap at that point to buy a helmet.

Wait a minute. Hold on, Ryan. You were too cheap to buy a Bengals helmet, and so your collection is just missing this, I would say, significant stop in your trajectory.

Yeah, I need to contact the equipment manager ASAP and get two helmets for my two years I spent there because I'm a little less cheap at this point.

I first encountered Ryan Fitzpatrick in the fall of 2003 back when he was a thrifty, clean-shaven college junior, and I was an involuntarily unbearded freshman.

But only now, many moons after being taken in the seventh round of the 05 NFL draft,

is Fitzmagic at the peak of his powers, charming Miami last year,

and about to become the first quarterback in history to start for nine different NFL teams.

So today, a long-awaited sit-down with the new leader of the Washington football team, who, despite all the turnover and turnovers, has become a special kind of football success story,

one that neither of us was insane enough to imagine.

I'm Pablo Torre. It's Monday, July 19.

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