October 24, 2023 • 52 mins
In what’s far and away the most fun story of the week, Peter goes on a deeper dive to get to know Bears rookie QB Tyson Bagent. Peter is joined by Bagent’s college coach, Shepherd University (WV) HC Ernie McCook. Coach McCook dazzles us with stories of Bagent’s absurd college exploits on the field, as well as some of the intangible magic he has off of it. He also tells us about the Bears QB’s incredible work ethic, and what it’s like training and preparing at a DII school as opposed to a Division 1 power. Coach McCook says that no Division I school offered Bagent a scholarship and how being in his life since he was a teenager helped him land the recruit of a lifetime. Finally, he tells us which NFL legend he compares Bagent to and sheds light on how Bagent got prepared for a 2023 NFL season in which he was no guarantee to make the roster.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
The Season with Peter Schreeger is a production of the
NFL in partnership with iHeartRadio. What's Up, everybody, Welcome to
another episode of the Season with Peter Schreger. We're entering
(00:27):
week eight of this NFL campaign and we're coming off
a week where the Patriots beat the Bills, the Vikings
beat the forty nine ers, and the New York Giants
got back on track beating the Washington Commanders. There was
so much intrigue going into this week about the Detroit Lions,
and then the Baltimore Ravens absolutely walloped them in Baltimore
(00:50):
and did so physically, like watching Ronnie Stanley block poor
Kirby Joseph. I think he's in the stand somewhere. He
threw him around so hard. And it's just week to week,
you know, it's hard to do like power rankings, and
this is the MVP because things change week two week,
and that's the beauty of the sport. I'm joined here
by Aaron wan Kaufman, our producer.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Aaron.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
I'm still thinking about the Sunday night game though, and
what the Eagles did to the Dolphins. Did did you
watch that game?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Oh? Yeah, yep. I was texting with one of my
friends who's a writer, who is a huge Eagles fan,
and the difference in our emotion, like me having watched
the Bills game earlier in the day and him currently
watching the Eagles game. I mean, it was it was.
They were very good. It was it was like strength,
they were speed, and.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
It was.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Your friend's a writer. What's he writing?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
And he writes for NFL writing, He works at ESP Nation.
What's his name, Ben Nathan?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
What's up? Ben? You gotta read his stuff here. All along,
I thought you were my buddy and that you and
I are the ones texting, And now you've got this
other side. Check Ben Nathan at esp Nation that you're texting.
It's like finding out your wife is as a whole
other thing going on with some other guy in the
same exact line of work.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
All right here, I got a workshop my takes before
I bring them.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I got it.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I gotta be ready.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
I got it. I got it. And if I start
seeing my takes on Ben Nathan's by the Eagles win
was huge and they'll continue to roll and we'll see
them in the playoffs. On this thing, I wanted to
use the Eagles as a Peg because I made the
comment on Good Morning Football on Monday morning, like, my
big takeaway from that game is that AJ Brown is
(02:31):
an absolute force and this dude is a is a beast,
and in a world where my kid wants to be
Tyreek Hill for Halloween and his friend wants to be
Justin Jefferson because he does the gritty and Tyreek does celebrate.
Like AJ Brown's as good as both those guys this year,
if not the best wide receiver in all of football.
(02:52):
And the stat that came out since he had like
a little sideline blow up on what was that a
Thursday night game against the Vikings, he and Jalen Hurts were,
you know, going back and forth. He's had one hundred
and twenty five yards or more in every single game.
That's five straight games. And the stat that ESPN was
showing it was first NBC, but then ESPN all day
(03:15):
yesterday on Instagram and it was made the rounds that
he and Calvin Johnson are the only receivers this century
to go for one hundred and twenty five yards or
more five straight games. Now, I am going to take
ninety nine percent of the credit here, but one percent
of this did come from a Twitter follower who sent
this to me and was like, you need a nickname
(03:37):
for aj Brown whatever he's got, and to use the
word John in the nickname. I thought of it and
I went with it on the air. Mega John, Mega John.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I like that a lot. That's very good.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
So the stat that came up was the only two
players to go for one twenty five or more and
five straight games was Mega John and Megatron okay, which
then led my beautiful mind, crazy brain, sick, neurotic, where
the hell does my brain go to? The Are they
the only guys to do it? So I asked my
(04:15):
producer and Good Morning Football, nice dude named Rich Goldberg.
He works out of Mount Laurel, New Jersey. I think
he's in like uh, like he lives at the facility
because anytime, at any hour I'm texting him. He's like
deep in the NFL film's archives, like going through tape.
And I said, is there anyone else who did this?
Because it keeps on saying since two thousands, since two thousands,
So who did it in ninety nine and ninety eight?
(04:38):
And the answer was Pat stud Still did it in
nineteen sixty six. I said, who the is Pat stud Still.
So I I'm like, we gotta do a deep dive.
Who is Pat stud Still? I don't know. I know
Lance Alworth, I know Jerry Rice, I know Steve Largin,
I know Randy Maws. I even I could tell you
(05:02):
a lot about Ernest Givens and Curtis Duncan and Webster Slaughter.
I mean, do so many names. Rob Moore on the
Cardinals had some good year, Ricky prol on the Cardinals,
ZERI we can go through all of the most random
wide receiver big breakout seasons, from Tory Holt to Aza
Quem to Isaac Bruce to Rod Smith. Let we go
to that. My brain works that way. Stud Still I
(05:23):
did not know that name. I'd never heard of that name.
So I'm like, who is Pat stud Still? So we
start doing some research. Let me tell you about Pet
stud Still. This is how most podcasts start. In week
eight at twenty twenty three, they say, let's go into
a Pet stud Still deep dive. Studstill was an undrafted
player out of Houston goes to the Detroit Lions, where
(05:44):
he is primarily a kick and punt returner for the
first several years of his career. Nineteen sixty six, he
goes and has one of the great wide receiver seasons
of all time. And this is back when they used
to have the you know, the goalpost at the front
of the end zone and they would play like twelve games.
Sixty six stud still went for sixty seven catches twelve
(06:06):
in sixty six yards, which is like, you know, it's
like in today the milk. The price of milk, you know,
back then was straight down, so now it's all that
The equivalent is like if a guy randomly I didn't
know where this year, came out and had like two
hundred catches and four thousand yards, Like that's what the
numbers were for pet studs still, so I'm like, what
the hell? Like who what did it?
Speaker 2 (06:27):
For?
Speaker 1 (06:27):
The Lions? Like a bad Lions team. He had a
ninety nine yard catch in that game, So I'm like,
all right, So what was the rest of his career?
Heard his hamstring didn't do much. The rest of his
career at wide receiver was kind of irrelevant. But in
sixty six, in addition to being the punt returner and
the kick returner, he picked up punting duties for the
(06:48):
Detroit Lions and was their full time punter. This wasn't
the thirties when guys played both ways or the forties
where it's like we have seven running backs and a
million dollar backfa year old. This is like late sixties,
like Lombardi was coaching and Hank Stram was coaching, like
this was like relevant. He was the team's number one
wi receiver and their full time punter. So that was
(07:11):
sixty six. They trade him to the Rams. He then
goes and has six more years in his NFL career
just as a punter. I'm like, who the hell is
this guy? Why has that not been a documentary on
Pat stud Still? This is incredible. Led the league in punts,
led the league in punts yardage, like the stat that's crazy.
Sixty two he leads the NFL and punt return yards,
(07:31):
sixty six, leads the NFL in receiving yards, and then
in like sixty seven, he leads the NFL in most punts.
Was a two time pro bowler. Eventually retires in seventy one,
and then Aaron because this is just Pat stud Still
and who he is. Then he goes on to become
a very successful actor and he's in Dukes of Hazard
(07:54):
and he's in two hundred different commercials, not two commercials,
two hundred different commercials. And in nineteen seventy four, Burt
Reynolds and the guys who put on the original Longest
Yard movie tapped Pat stud Still to work on the movie,
and he was the guy who did all the technical
football stuff. He was their guide. So on all these
sports movies, they'll have a technical guy to come on
(08:15):
and be like, well, you wouldn't throw the ball that way,
and the line of scrimmage would actually be a little
bit lined up this way. The guard would be stud
Still worked on the set for all those days on
the Longest Yard production goes on, has this awesome acting career.
I had never heard of Pat stud Still. He eventually
passed in twenty twenty one. I was reading his obituary today.
(08:36):
They also said he was the last guy to resist
wearing the Ridell face mask, So he was wearing one
of these old school helmets with an old school face
mask when the rest of the NFL was already moving
on in the sixties and seventies. I say all this
to say the following. I've seen the docs. I've seen
(08:59):
the thirty for thirties I've seen the Football Lives. We
know everything you could possibly know about Deacon Jones, about
Tim Brown, about OJ Simpson, about Dion Sanders. I think
we need to executive produce a Pat stud Still documentary. Aaron,
(09:20):
are you in ongoing deep on the life of stud Still?
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah. We talk about stud Still as like the the
origin of positionless players. Yeah, we get we get Debo
in there, we get yeah Hill, Yeah, no, I love it.
And then then after that we force each of them
to re enact Dukes of Hazzard scenes too, to just
show out. I mean, I can't believe to do those
(09:45):
different positions and then also break into acting. Is that's
a wild ride?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yeah? Well, the big story out of Kansas City this
past week was a little mentioned in Dave tab the
Special Teams coordinators press conference that you know with Tommy
Townsend hurt. Pat Mahomes is our backup hunter, and it
was like, oh my god, dude, this guy was returning punts,
returning kicks, playing why receiver and he was also in
sixty six. He was their full time punter. So he's
leading the NFL and receiving cards and was the best
(10:12):
punter in the sport. Gets hurt, and then it was like,
all right, I'm not going to play receiver anymore. I'll
just be a punter. We've probably spent four minutes too
long on Pat stud Still. But if if you're a
fan of the season with Peter Schreger, you know this
is the stuff you're here for. And it's knowledge like
that and my quest to learn and my desire to
(10:32):
become an expert on things like Pat stud Still. That
makes me a wonderful contestant on Jeopardy, Aaron, can I
talk about it one more time if the listeners didn't
watch or listen last week, I am appearing on Celebrity
Jeopardy this week and it's airing on Wednesday, October twenty
fifth at eight pm Eastern. It is on ABC, it
(10:52):
is in prime time. I am a contestant. It is
of the celebrity version. We discussed the celebrity aspect of
it last week. How uncomfortable I am with that word,
and yet I will wear it because it got me
onto the show. I would have never been able to
compete with the actual people who are on Jeopardy. I'm
not smart enough for that. But the celebrities, they are dumb,
so I can. I can compete with celebrities. When you're
(11:16):
busy looking in the mirror most of your life and
not searching Wikipedia and reading encyclopedias, you can get on
celebrity Jeopardy. So I competed. We recorded in August. I
have not revealed anything. I was wavering. I was like,
do I go big and talk about it or do
I just let it kind of appear. We talked about
it last week. I've gotten so many responses, people being
(11:38):
blown away. I posted a photo on my Twitter feed
of me at the Jeopardy podium. What do you call it?
A podium? Were like, and I showed how I wrote
my name and I went capslock first name. A couple
of people were like, how do you not go shregs?
How do you not go Schrager? That's what people call you.
(12:01):
Went with Peter in capslocks. It's the name my parents
gave me. And I'll say this, we're twenty four hours
from it airing or about that. We're recording this on Tuesday.
It's a showdown, bro. It goes to the wire and
it is epic and it's one of the best episodes
that program. And it's one hundred years I've ever had,
(12:22):
very proud of not only myself, but my two contestants,
my opponents. They all did very well. It would be
Mira Sorvino, who I have not spoken to since, and
Adam Rodriguez, who I have not spoken to since. That's blood, bro,
That's what it is like. Once you we left it
on the field. I honestly I thought walking out of
that that they I'm like, all right, these where the
three of us are gonna be connected for life, Like
(12:43):
we're gonna have store. I haven't talked to either one
of them since, so maybe after the show airs, we'll
rekindle the magic and the chemistry we had on the show.
But it's an hour long. It's Celebrity Jeopardy. If you've watched,
there is not only regular Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy, there's
Triple Jeopardy, so there's three different portions of it, and
then there's Final Jeopardy. I think I'll save some of
(13:06):
the recap stuff till next week. I will just say this,
it's the coolest thing I ever got to do professionally.
And I've been on the field at Super Bowls and
I've interviewed everyone from Tom Brady to Patrick Mahomes, and
I've gotten to meet crazy, cool and interesting people being
at that that set which they also film Wheel of
(13:26):
Fortune next door, which I didn't even know, like Merv
Griffin birthed them both. I guess like they're they're in
that same studio. Childhood memories and memories of all the
you know, great hours of my college days spent on
the couch but watching Jeopardy. But then also like the
celebrity Jeopardy spoofs on Saturday Live with Will Ferrell and
(13:48):
Norm McDonald and you know, all of it, it all
comes flashing back, so very cool emotional experience and also
just an awesome, awesome thing to say I have done.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
And especially because last week you were saying how as
a kid you would be sitting at the dining room
table watching Jeopardy with your family.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
I wish kitchen table, table, kitchen. There was no dining
room that we dined.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
At, Sorry New York. Yeah, it's the same.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Thing, kitchen, kitchen, table with a little TV free Old
New Jersey, and it was my dad would walk in
the door like six fifty seven, we'd sit down, there'd
be like a slice of candle lope we'd eat that.
You probably have some London broil, and then it's oh, yeah,
we've started a little Candleope, maybe a little grapefruit I
can get.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
That's a little starter there. And then we would watch
Jeopardy for a half hour, and then my brother and
I would scurry off into like another room and say
three your computer. Yeah, playing in the computer. That's what
we do. Uh. Wednesday night, October twenty fifth, eight pm
Eastern Celebrity Jeopardy And now, with no further ado, our
(14:56):
guests for the for the episode, I'm I don't know
where it's going to go. I'm recording this whole thing live.
We're gonna get the guest on in a second. So
I don't know if he's a big personality. If he's
a big personality, but I need to know more about
Tyson Bagent, who I'm just starting to scratch the surface on.
And I got his head coach from his college days
(15:17):
on the podcast. The Great Ernie McCook is joining us
right after this, all right, So I spent Sunday afternoon
watching the Bears and Raiders game, and I'm watching Tyson beagent,
an undrafted rookie free Agent out of Shepherd in West
(15:37):
Virginia Division two school, become the first quarterback to be
an undrafted rookie at a Division two to win a
game since nineteen fifty. And I'm reading everything I can
possibly read about the guy because I'm fascinated about his
path and his journey, and time and time again, I'm
reading awesome quotes and awesome stories and great encouragement from
(16:00):
his college coach, the great Ernie McCook out of Shepherd.
So what we're doing the podcast this week? I'm like,
what's the story of the week, what's it's I'm asking Aaron,
who should we talk about? What if he's kept down?
Coming up? Tyson Pagent, Tyson Bagent, Tyson Vagent. So with
no further ado, let's get his college coach on the podcast,
Ernie McCook. Welcome to the season with Peter Schrager. Man.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Peter, it's great to be with you today, and we're
going to talk about probably two of my favorite things,
Sheppard University football and Tyson Beaging.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Let's start with Shepherd University football. So you're a coach
for a few years now. You had history with this
program before bouncing around a little bit and then coming
back to the school, what is Shepherd University? And I'm
not being insulting as an NFL guys being out of it.
Where are you guys enrollment all the stuff? And then sure,
(16:47):
what has this done for the program?
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Yeah? Our address is West Virginia. The campus sits right
on the banks of the Potomac River. We're literally from
one end of a football field to the other end
of the football field from the state of Maryland. We're
hour and fifteen minutes out of Washington, DC and hour
and fifteen minutes out of Baltimore. So we are able
to recruit as you're probably familiar with the DMV. Yeah,
(17:11):
we recruited from Richmond to Baltimore off that ninety five corridor.
And we want to recruit in state to be especially
locally in state. And we've had a lot of opportunities
to track some really good football players along with Tyson Beaging.
You know, we've had some really guys that have gone
on and done some really good things playing at the
(17:34):
next level, but nobody has had quite the first game
like Tyson had on Saturday versus the Raiders.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
And no one is invited to the Senior Bowl, and
you had multiple guys invited to the Senior Bowl last year,
and I know you were there and you brought a
whole cast of guys down there to Mobile. We'll go
backwards and start from the start with Jijan, but I
think just just that experience when you go to the
Senior Bowl out of Division two school and Jim Nagy,
who runs that thing, gives you guys the call. I
(18:02):
loved it because I heard it. I was listening to
an interview I do my reaching for the podcast. You
had about four different coaches with you. Guys were finding
your way to the field. You're going to support your guy, Yeah,
did you have any doubt that he would be able
to light it up and do just fine against that
Division one talent?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Well, I got to tell you a story about when
Jim Naggy called me. Right. So, I'm sitting right here
in my office, it's probably eight or nine o'clock at night,
and you know what, I take it back. It was
the call for Joey Fisher, the second guy to get
called up. So I see this Arizona phone number and
I'm thinking, man, it's probably Scout wanting to come to practice.
(18:39):
So I get him a call back. He goes, Hey,
he said this, Jim Naggy is Senior Bowl coach. I
just wanted to tell you we're going to invite Joey
Fisher to join Tyson Baiging at the Senior Bowl. And
he goes, just so you know, this will be the
first time in the history we think of the Senior
Bowl that will have had two Division two players from
the same team being playing the same game. And so
(19:03):
then he kind of he said, I kind of took
it all in and I said, you know, Jim, you're
gonna make me have to come to this game. Yeah,
and then he was like, You're not gonna come just
for Tyson. And then I thought about how bad that
sounded on you too, and yeah, I mean it takes two.
You got to take two of my guys, and that's
(19:24):
not true. But so I was really excited at that point,
and I thought, Jim Naggy, you know, if you think
about Tyson's kind of climb. Uh, he took the first
real shot on Tyson Baging given him an opportunity to
play in the Senior Bowl. You know, there's a lot
of great quarterbacks out there. He went out on a
limb and took a Division two guy, and I think
(19:45):
Tyson played extremely well in that game. Uh, it was
it was a lot of fun. We're sitting in the
staff meeting. We're a low budget football team, Pier all right,
So where we're in the staff meeting and we we
have some recruiting things going on, and I tell I
tell our coaches like, Hey, I'm going to go to
the Senior Bowl, but I'm going to drive. So we
drove Westford, Gia to Mobile, right and I said, we'll
(20:11):
pay the football pay for the hotel room and the
rental car. You guys are on your own for your
meals and drinks. And we had five people volunteer, so
we loaded up in the suv. We made the trip
down to Mobile and of course being able to watch
Tyson practice on the field there at South Alabama with
(20:31):
all the other guys. That was awesome. And it was
the Senior Bowl, I think is one of the greatest
events you could be a part of. And that may
have been as a proud of moment I had having
a chance to see Mike get our guy, our guy,
and the Senior Bowl represent Sheppard University with the ram
Horns on and playing what I think is the most
(20:53):
prestigious college All Star game there is.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Oh, it absolutely is. Let's go way back, though, because
it's not a necessarily it's it's a great Division two program,
but it's not an NFL hotbed. So you're the coach
here when you start recruiting Tyson out of what's the
town he's from.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
It's in West Virginia, Martinsburg High School, and here in
West Virginia about seven miles.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Away, so it's close. It's in your backyard. He's probably
this high school star. Like, how's that recruitment process going?
Did you know when he was a junior and senior
that this kid could have a future.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Absolutely even better than that. I've known. I've watched Tyson
grow up. Our families go to church together, and I
will tell you from the time he played for the
Charlestown Razorbacks. Okay, I'd be sitting in the pew, him
and his dad would walk by, w we're going up
for communion, and he would nudge me he's going to
(21:43):
be the man at Shepherd one day. You know, if
you get a chance to talk to Travis, he'll tell you.
And one time he told what he used to tell me,
You're going to build a bronze statue of Tyson one day,
and of course you're in church, You're like, hey, that's awesome.
Maybe great.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
You know, you know he's ten years old, eleven years
old at the time. Yeah, he was.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Probably eleven years old and just slinging around Charlestown and
everything like that. But you know, having known their family
and watch Tyson grow up, he is a special, special
person man. He is something I just can't say enough
great things about him as a human being. I mean,
just as a man. We're going through the recruiting process
(22:22):
and you know, I knew that he was a division
I thought he was a division one guy FBS, and
we're kind of going through it. I'm thinking he's going
to get something. But if he doesn't get something, you know,
he'll have a spot with us if this is what
he wants. And the only offers he really got were
(22:42):
SCS offers. He got an FCF Albany and I want
to say Robert Morris and some other D two's and
stuff like that. Well, in twenty fifteen we played for
a national championship, and so I think he just looked
at it and said, hey, I get a chance to
stay at home play highly competitive football at the Division
(23:04):
two level. I get a chance playing in front of
family and friends. Like his grandfather, God Rest his soul
passed away last year, was really close to him. He
would sit in the stands and watch practice. His dad
would come and watch practices. I mean, it's just a
family affair here for the beagents at Shepherd University playing
football here and Tyson, I can tell you he'd sent
(23:27):
me a text. I texted him after the game this
weekend and he and I said, hey, man, we're proud
of you. We watched the game as a team, and
he goes, he said, hey, thanks to a support coach
really appreciated. I love Shepherd football, you know. And it
was just like here's a guy playing at a high level,
achieving some of the goals that you know, dreams, dreams
(23:49):
that we all have, and he still has love for
this program that he was a part of and an
instrumental part of where we are today. So that, I mean,
that was that was kind of a cool deal.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
When you get when you get this guy in there,
he come like, give me some of the exploits, because
how you get to the Paul Bunyan tall tail. Was
it just all right, here we go. This is Steve
McNair at Alcorn or one of these types of guys
at a different level of school. Just tear it up
the league.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Well, you know what his first game it was against
Nerdame College. Okay, it was a true freshman and Julia McLoughlin,
the running back at with the Broncos.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Right now goes yeah, Youngstown State, sure, Well before.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
That he was at Nerdame College. Him and Tyson, both
their college stars, were in the same game. I think
Julil rushed for almost three hundred yards. Tyson threw for
five hundred yards. Two guys that right now are are
up and coming guys are had shows some things in
the NFL. When recruiting Tyson, I can tell you his dad.
(24:49):
His dad's hardcore.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Now his dad is arm wrestling champion, the arm.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Wrestling champion, the whole deal. Yeah, we're going through the
process of the recruiting before he commits to US. I
told you I go to church with him. Here's a
fun story for you. So Christmas Eve, my family and
I were getting late. Okay, so there's only a couple
of seats in the back of the church right and
my family and I slide into the pew, and of
(25:14):
course I'm I'm a football coach, and I want to
recruit Tysonvaging even on Christmas Eve at church all right,
because he's he was an All state player, He's the
best player in state West Virginia. And so I'm looking around.
I'm looking for where he's at, where he normally sits,
the whole deal. And then I look up, you know,
we're up for a hymnal and I see where him
(25:34):
and his dad are sitting. And then I see right
behind the pew is empty. There's nobody sitting in the
pew right behind him. So without even I didn't try
and even tell my wife anything, I just walked out
of arm keew.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Let's go. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
I walked around, went right down the middle of the church,
and our pastor, our priest, was like, I was wondering
what you did until you sat down. You know, he goes,
what the hell? He was probably like, what is Ernie
doing walking up here to the altar? But no, I
was walking in. I slid right in behind Tyson and
his dad, Travis, put my arm around him both, and
(26:08):
I said, hey, God, meant for us to be together.
And so then he and so his dad without missing
a beat, said hey man, it's about time you got here.
We've been saving that ce for you for twenty minutes.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Let's go. It's so good.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
That was a lot of fun with that. I tell
that story quite a bit, so, you know, back to
the serious part. So Tyson commits. So he signs with
us his senior year in high school, wearing our spring practices. Right,
we have fifteen spring practices. Tyson is standing behind the
offensive huddle for every practice. He would he was at.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
As a high school senior.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
As a high school senior knowing I'm coming to Sheppard University,
I know I'm going to play and I'm going to
compete to be the quarterback, and he was taking it
all in. He was he was doing everything he could
do to learn, and so he's ready when he would
get to camp in August. And the guy is absolutely
nomenal with his work ethic and his competitiveness. He's somebody
(27:10):
that you know won I can tell you Chicago Bears,
the fan base, they will be proud that that dude
is a Bear. He's going to give everything he can
to help that team win. And I think I told
somebody else an interview. If he's on their practice squad,
all right, he's going to give the best look for
the Justice. He's going to be the best Justin Herbert. Yeah,
(27:33):
but for this weekend that the Bears defense will see
and tell you see Justin Herbert, you know. But the
fact that I think he worked his way into being
the backup and he prepares like nobody else does. After
OTA's this year and the summertime we get back. His
first day back, we were having our program, our team
(27:54):
golf outing, so he played in it. He came and
played in it with a couple of his teammates and
my son was who's coaching with us now. He and
Tyson were roommates. They're really close friends. So he said, hey, Michael,
I need you to guarantee you'll be with me at
every workout. So Michael would go to the workouts with him,
(28:15):
but Peter, they would practice, Michael would read the script
to him through the cell phone into his ear the
long play call. He would then be out in the
middle of our football field in the stadium, just the
two of them, by himself. He would walk into an
imaginary huddle, do the play call, walk up to the
line of scrimmage, put people in motion, practice the checks,
(28:39):
everything like that. He did it in June and July.
I did it for six weeks.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
So we got one hundred degree weather in the middle
of West Virginia in July, and your son his former
wide receiver in his roommate.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
It was a fool back, guy back.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Whatever it is. Sorry, I'm making up history because I'm
trying to do the movie script in my head. He
plays he plays a wide out in the movie. He
calls on a cell phone from where's your son? Is
he there with the Is he like in the stands?
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Whereas no, he's standing on the sideline. So just like
like so he would have a script right now out
here like this, and he would go.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
As if he has the helmet, oh.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Yeah, like Deuic's right.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Yeah, he's reading Luke Getzi's playbook. He's got the Bear's playbook.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
He's got to play a bear's play call. So what
he's doing is he is simulating the mental preparation of
the length of a play call, because the play calls
are unbelievably long.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Sure, yeah, And then like you know, and.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
I'm you know, talking to Tyson and all I'm learning
a bunch of myself, like the different checks, how they're
checking things, the things they look for. And but when
a guy is doing that, think about this one for
a second. You're an undrafted free agent. You don't even
know if you're going to make the team.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
You know, unlikely you would, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Especially at the quarterback puisition. He goes and he's doing
this all summer long. So if my son went to
the beach on family vacation, they did it by telephone, right,
And so your son.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Is at the beach being like a slug o snake, right,
name call, and Tyson's on an empty field in the
middle of West Virginia just going through the Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
And then when Tyson went to the beach, he would
go probably go out on the beach and practice it,
through with it. He did this religiously, you know. So
the guy is a film room junkie. I to you know,
I read the social media. But one of the one
of the Chicago stations asked me who I thought he was, Like,
who do you think you know? And everybody wants you
(30:43):
to say Tom Brady, They want you to say Brock Party,
they want you. They want that, right, they want that
to me. From what I've learned and studying football, Tyson
beagent is Drew Brees go on because the reputation Drew
Brees has for the tireless film study, the unbelievable work
(31:06):
ift that you have to prepare for any situation that
you get. That's who Tyson Beaging is. He will prepare
and work. He's going to physically train his body. When
he talked about shredding life way and crossfitfit, yeah, that's
one hundred percent accurate. Like, if you're ever in this area,
you need to come visit Shepard University because behind our
(31:28):
locker room, his high school history teacher has got it
lives back there, right, and they have a man cave
CrossFit training that they do. I mean it's like all natural,
like you're taking a log and your bench press on
a log fifty times. Then you're running to the river
with a weighted backpack and back and this they do.
(31:51):
That's the kind of stuff he does. They they they
hollowed out We're right on the banks of the Potomac River.
Tyson and his roommates hollowed out a stream for to
make it a cold bath.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
A homemade cold tub, a homemade.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Cold tub on the Potomac River, and they they would
go down there in February. I mean, we're not talking
July where they're pulling off. They're going down there and
really going through it. I mean, just the things, like
the natural things that happen.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Well, even you mentioning that, you know, I'm thinking about
Alabama and LSU's facilities in the amount of millions, of
the fact that it's his high school. His high school
teacher leaves behind the facility and he's I mean, you
can't make the stuff up.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
You can't. And his high school teacher played basketball here, right, Okay,
saw the Earth guy just a tremendous person, human being,
And of course he's a good hope for us to
have because when you know, we recruit somebody from the
high school, we're getting inside scoop on them, you know,
like what kind of with their hearts, like with their
who they are inside? And you know, of course he
(32:58):
the guys that we've gotten from Tyson's high school, and
because of Tyson have been tremendous players for us. But like,
here's an other thing, how competitive Tyson is? All Right,
So his junior year, the year he won the Harlan Hill.
Right after every practice in summer camp, all right, mostly
of summer camp. You know, we'd be walking off the field.
(33:22):
Enticon are one of our athlete trainers as a gymnast, right,
and they would have a competition, who on who could
walk on their hands the farthest, and they were doing
fifty to seventy five yards walking on their hands. I
mean literally, I wish I had video of it, you know.
And I'm just sitting there thinking, and I can't tell
(33:43):
the dude stop because he's just competitive. He's not gonna
you know, no, I'm not gonna let her beat me.
And you know, but she's now an athlete trainer in
another school. When we talked about it before the game. So,
but that's who the kid is. I mean he is.
He is a special guy. He's as grounded as grounded
could be. He has an impeccable work ethic. He you know,
(34:07):
not only was he the best player on our football
team for five years, he was the best teammate, the
best teammate. You could have never wanted anything extra. You know,
he threw he threw a milestone touchdown, right and we're
at Millersville University and he goes, he comes up to me,
(34:27):
he goes, and this is his junior year. He goes, coach,
that was like hundred touchdown passed. He goes, can I
have the game ball?
Speaker 1 (34:37):
You know, first time, right?
Speaker 3 (34:39):
And I was like, yeah, you can have whatever you want, tyson,
but do me a favorite. Just give it to the
manager to give to your dad, because I don't want
to draw a lot of attention to giving game balls
away because they're seventy millonuns apiece.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
You know, we need that money.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Man.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
That's so good.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
And then that night his dad sent me a video
of him giving that game ball to his grandfather who's
passed away. He was really close to him.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Jeez, I'm gonna cry. That's amazing. The on the field exploits,
I mean, the leadership stuff, that's all off the charts. Yeah,
was this guy tearing up the vision two I you know,
obviously we started seeing footage, the grainy footage, and we
don't even know the start of it. You lived it.
What was it like having him as your quarterback? And
what kind of stuff did he do?
Speaker 3 (35:20):
Well? This is a story I'd like to tell. His
freshman year as the starter. All Right, we're playing the
last game of the season. We're seven and two, and
we end up losing the game. All right, And you
know we're in a small stadium. You can hear people
heckling you. You can hear people giving you grief. People
(35:40):
are yelling at the quarterback. You know, you know he's
taking a sack. I'm wondering why he didnt get rid of
the ball, Like, what'd you see? Because Coach, that was
on me. We couldn't run the football through this whole time.
Everybody's pointing fingers. But one guy, Tyson Beaging. He is
a team first guy. He'll own everything that happens to
(36:01):
the team and put it on his shoulders, his back.
And I realized that that's the kind of we have
to go and put the best players around them we
possibly can. And that was our goal from there on out.
Make sure he had the receivers that he needed, the
O line that We tried to do everything we could
do to build that team. Every team we've had since
(36:22):
his freshman year around Tyson Baigent and his strengths and
what he could do. And I thought we did a
pretty good job of that. We were able to win
a lot of all games. He broke a lot of records,
and he's done with multiple receivers. The guy has an
uncanny ability to make people around them better. We had
(36:44):
a receiver going from his freshman year had eight catches
to ninety nine catches the next year because he worked
all summer with Tyson Baging and they had a great
connection together. So going it's a ninety catch difference because
Tyson believed in them, and he believed in Tyson and
they were on the same page. I mean, want just
(37:07):
one of many examples he made. He made alignment better,
he made running backs better, he made tight ends better,
wide receivers better, he made our defense better, the whole deal.
And it's all game to him too, Like it's a
competitive everything's a competitive game. We do a blitz pick up, right,
We do like to start practice off once a week
(37:27):
and a blitz pickup. And he just would love to
do the dummy cases.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Get me in there.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Yeah, he went, he put, he would go, I would
stay up, he standing right next to him, go ready,
and then he would look at and go, ah, there
you are, Mike, Mike six, Mike six, and you know,
and but it was a it was a challenge for
him that every challenge he wants that he'll he'll accept.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
All right, So we go to the draft process. Senior
Bowl is amazing, he plays well, he's with you know,
he's in front of the Bears staff gets he's there,
all this stuff. But then the draft comes along and
he goes undrafted. Was that a great disappointment? Were you
guys surprised? And I'm sure sure you spoke to thirty
two NFL teams.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
You know what, I'll tell you what our tackle who's
on the practice squad with the Steelers, Joey Fisher. Yeah,
and that after that draft happened, I mean immediately after
it ended, I said, if these two, either one of
these two guys don't get drafted, we'll never get in
by drafted. Yeah, and that that's really how I feel.
But I also understand, like when you get to the
(38:30):
later rounds, the sixth and seventh round, sometimes you're better
being a free agent because you get a chance to
pick you and your agent picked the best spot for you.
And that's what happened. You know, I think we're we're awful.
We're fortunate that Tyson didn't get drafted, was able to
sign that free agent deal with the Bears because he
(38:52):
seems to be in the right place at the right time. Obviously,
luketzk the Bears offensive staff knew who he was from
the Senior Bowl, had confidence in him, and you know,
I just think he's in I think he's in a
good spot.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Yeah. And to take it full circle, in a couple
of days, Chris Collinsworth and Mike Turrico are going to
be saying his name and calling it. I mean, is
this not surreal? That that that that a year ago
at this time he was playing with you guys going
up against Bloomsburg, and now he's got you know, Joey
Bosa and Khalil Mack and Derwin James staring down at
him with Tarico and Collinsworth on the call.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Well, like I told you, I got a chance to
watch the first half. You know, we did it as
a team and before we started our team meeting and
on Sunday, And I can tell you when I watched
that game, I kept finding out where Crosby was. I
was like, because I didn't want that dude to get
a free shot on my guy.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
Man, I was really impressed with the Bear So I
thought they did a great job. I thought, you know,
they Tyson handled his role the right way. The running
game that they had. Uh, the one catch that I
thought it was DJ Moore had it was a ball
that was kind of sailing on Tys. I thought that
he made a great catch. I was really happy for Chicago.
(40:05):
And of course I'm I'm a Bears fan now, so
I gotta I'm all in with the Bears.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Sorry, Ravens, it it's not your year. Yeah, this is
going to be a Bears fan and I am.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
I am a Ravens fan.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
I'm sure you are. I'm sure you are. In closing,
talk about your school, your program, and not only what
Tyson has brought as far as the national spotlight goes
with some of the great stuff that you guys are doing.
Because this isn't a flash in the pen. You guys
are winning, franchise, winning program. It happened for years.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Shepherd is a special place. We can really attract a
lot of really good players to come to Shepherd because
of the culture of our program. You know, we battled
the portal and division one offers with both Joey and Tyson,
and you know, I know it's my job to create
a culture where guys don't feel they have to leave.
They only can leave if it's a much better situation
(40:57):
for him. But you know when I want to you know,
we just had homecoming last weekend, and when you get
a chance to look at all the former players that
come back that you've had opportunity to coach, you realize
that we just have a really good spot here where
football is important to our administration. Football is important to
the local area. We get tremendous support, like our environment
(41:21):
for our home football game as the two greatest days
on our campus our graduation in a home football game
and graduations number two. So I mean, it's it's an
exciting day on our campus when we play at home,
and we have a tremendous fan base. We have a
unbelievable access to a lot of really good players within
(41:41):
a two and a half hour raineus of our campus,
And you know, it's fun for me and I think
our coaches to work somewhere and coach the game where
it's important to a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
You got Bloomsburg this weekend. Give us a little preview
on the season with Peter Schreger. We're all going to
be checking our phones, give us a preview. What have
they got? Who are you and who are we looking at?
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Well? You know what right now, bloom is we're going
to be on the road, so it's a tough place
go play. Uh. You know, if you were to look
at the tap, if you look at just stats and
stuff like that, you would think it's going to be
an easy victory for us. It's not. We're gonna have
to play well. We're gonna have to what I'd like
to say, make the ordinary play extraordinary. You know, they
(42:23):
just do the little things right the bank things will
take care of themselves, handle adversity when it comes, because
we're gonna have some type of adversity, and just play
with each other and don't look at the scoreboard, don't
look got just play the game and make the ordinary
play and I think we'll be just fine.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Now I'm gonna tell you something. I'm gonna give you
some advice here. And this is me as a media
guy and a big talking head in a New York
hot shot. You guys finished that game against Bloomsburg. Coach,
I don't know what money you got in the piggy bank.
You gotta fly out to la, you gotta watch your
boy in person Sunday night. Can we get there?
Speaker 3 (42:57):
There's no way because we got we got a big
one the next week, and we're gonna be in the
office Sunday morning. But but my last night, my wife goes,
She goes, well, I said, it's Sunday night football. Well, no,
we're going to try and hit one one of our
seasons over. But she was like, we should have a party.
I said, we can't have a party. No, we can't
(43:20):
have a party. And she kind of says, well, I'll
just invite my girlfriend's over. So my wife is going
to probably have a little watch party herself, but everybody
will be excited. You know. The best thing, Tyson's brother, Ezra,
is a cool freshman quarterback in our program. Really yeah,
and he had a great career in Martinsburg as well,
and he's here with us. And I called his dad
(43:42):
about midweek once I realized that Tyson was going to start,
and I said, hey, make sure you take Ezra out there.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Yeah, missed the game to go. He went and did both.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
No, he played the game, played in the game, actually
got its first college completion on Saturday. Let's agent. Yeah.
And then after the game, went to the airport, flew
and men his parents and family in Chicago and was
there with Tyson and the family and friends.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Yeah, they're just an awesome family and you know what,
they're easy people to root for. I promise you that one.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
So are you, my friend, Ernie. This was so cool,
Coach Ernie McCook Shepherd University. What an amazing world when
this has been And yet you sound as natural and
as non surprised as it could ever be. It seems like,
not to get too religious with you, but it feels
like this was in the stars and you kind of
saw this happen in a long time ago.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
You know, I truly believe in the blessings of life
that we have. And I do a radio show on
Thursday nights, and two weeks ago it was West Virginia
playing Houston and I'm sitting there and of course the
one guy is a West Virginia longe that does the
radio show, and I said, man, there's my favorite West
Virginia coach of all time. And you know that's like
(45:00):
sacriligious there if it's not don Kneeling, you know, looked
at me sideways. I said, yeah, Stana Holderson.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Yeah, yeah, but I said he's my favorite because he
didn't offer Tyson baiging coming out of high school.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
There you go, that's a great way to do it.
I was like, Dana, he's a good coach. Okay, go on,
it's yeah, that's a great story. Yeah, that's a great story.
You're a follow them dude. This is awesome, Ernie. Thank you,
get back to practice. Loved having you on the season.
Peter Shager, and good luck this weekend against Bloomsburg.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Thank you very much. It was a lot of fun, Ernie.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
But Cook, I mean, that's that's interesting. And when he
starts talking about weightlifting logs and building your own cold
tub in twenty twenty one out of the shores of
the Potomac, like, this is what I'm here for.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
That was one hundred percent not what I was doing
in the woods when I was in high school.
Speaker 3 (45:49):
I can guarantee you that I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
No. It was actually college, which is even crazy, like
the fact that he's in college and he's still it's
still as like and it's nothing against the Division two program.
It's not Alabama, it's not Ohio State. It's like, go
walk on your hands and challenge the trainer. I want
to make it bigger than he it is, maybe because
these are sophisticated programs and there he won the Heisman
of the Division two, but like it is really, really,
(46:15):
really big, long shot stuff when you're going from Division
two undrafted to starting in the NFL and on Sunday night.
So as much as we saw mister Irrelevant last year,
brock Birdy was a superstar in the state of Arizona
and started Iowa State for four years, this guy's story
is way crazier.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
And he won with the Bears. I mean, like, it's
that just here's a UDFA who started a game because
of injury. It's a UDFA who wound up making the
team and then took them to a victory, which I mean,
you know, Josh Allen didn't take his team to a
victory this week, So.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
No, you're right, Sky's the limit for him. That was cool.
Ernie McCook I like him. As we are wrapping up
with him, he like it was like, here's my Twitter handle.
I'm like, yeah, Ernie, let's go, let's take the best.
We got to maximize this moment. Barn They're my official
Division two teams, So Arizona is my official Division one team.
Checking on Arizona. I know they took USC to the
(47:07):
wire then I think they won one against Washington State.
What's Arizona's record? How are we looking with Jed Fish's boys.
Jed's been a great friend of the pod and his
clip went crazy viral and was a great episode if
you go back as a coach at Arizona. What do we got?
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Their overall is four and three, they're two goal team.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
Who'd they play this past weekend? Or were they on the.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
By this past weekend? They played Washington State and they
won forty four to six. They won, they lost, they won,
they won? Yes, I think it was USC.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Was it two weeks ago?
Speaker 2 (47:40):
The four? Yeah, that's they didn't do anything this weekend?
Speaker 1 (47:43):
They buyed all right? So who do they got this weekend?
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Oregon State?
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Any good? Click on?
Speaker 2 (47:47):
Oregon State? Beavers are six and one. They're the eleventh
ranked team. So Arizona is currently a one score underdog
versus Oregon State.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
So here's our viewing. Okay, are you ready for this?
You and I are going to stream Bloomsburg Shepherd in
the early afternoon. We're going to get in on. It're
gonna rot for coach McCook. We're gonna get some Ezra
Bagent fantasy numbers up and going. And then I assume
Oregon State Arizona is one of these late night affairs.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Yeah, we we have plenty of time. The Bloomsburg game
is at noon and uh, Oregon State Arizona is at
ten thirty pm.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
So I mean that's it retailgate and we're getting after
it or I'm sure there's other stuff in between, but
the big ones for us, we're gonna book end it
with Bloomsburg versus Shepherd. I'm going with Shepherd. Shepherd big
because coach said, you know, on paper, we're gonna they
look like we're gonna kick their butts. But no, no,
that means you're gonna kick their ass. We're gonna take
Shepard and I got Arizona upsetting Oregon State late at night?
(48:48):
What's it on ESPN or Packed twelve network? What do
we got to say that in network?
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Pack twelve pac twelve? Uh?
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Did you see the clip that was going viral of
the seedw game that you wudn't c was playing Virginia?
Do you see that or no, So UNC is playing
Virginia on the seed W and you know they do
the inn game promos and only so the announcer, the
play by play guy, very seriously, He's like, all right,
and it's fourteen seven Virginia.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
Are you watching the show f Boy Island?
Speaker 1 (49:20):
And I think James Bates is the color guy who
I know. And James like, he's like, well, everyone else
is f Boy Island on the CW. You can't make
it up? All right? Time for our Uber Eats segment.
They are our sponsors the season with Peter Schrager is
delivering results presented by Uber Eats. And I'm gonna tell
(49:42):
you who I think delivered results last week, and that
is Lamar Jackson. I think Lamar Jackson had his best
game as a pro this season. He was unbelievable. He
was calm in the pocket and he looked like an
MVP candidate. What the Ravens did to the Lions completely
shifted the narrative and not only the AFC, but the
NFC as well. We were riding a bandwagon and we
(50:02):
were all up on board of what Detroit was doing
that had suddenly come to a halt in maybe a
derailment based on what exactly Baltimore did to them, and
a lot of it is what Lamar is doing in
Todd Munkins offense. The week before, a lot of drops
by his receivers. This week, Mark Andrews showed out on
National tight Ends Day. Agalore was all over the field.
Bateman was making big plays. Say Flowers of course was
(50:24):
everywhere and you'd love to see Odell Beckham a part
of the offense. So kudos to Lamar. Let's see if
the Ravens can keep it going. That was delivering results
presented by Uber Eats, where you can get almost almost anything.
It's the official on the man delivery partner of the NFL.
You can order now. Scheduling reminder Aaron Wan Kaufman. We've
(50:46):
got Jeopardy Wednesday night. It's at eight pm Eastern. I
want everyone to watch. I want everybody to tweet. I
want everybody to cheer me or my opponents on. Just
put up the eyeballs, let's go and please. If you
enjoyed this podcast, many thanks to coach Ernie McCook. Tell
your friends about it. Let's keep it wrong. It's the
only podcast in sports media that goes from stud Still,
(51:07):
to Ken Jennings, to Ernie McCook, to Lamar Jackson. At
the very very end, Aaron wan Kaufman, thank you for joining.
Jason English in the House is always from iHeart and
the NFL network, folks on the West Coast. We appreciate
all the support. Let's keep this thing rocking. The goal
is to become the number one sports podcast. The secondary
goals become the number one NFL podcast. The third goal
(51:29):
is to get a trip to the Super Bowl for
everyone so that we can do a live show. We're
working on it uber eats. If you're listening, please we'll
take whatever you got, always almost almost anything you got.
All right, guys, until next week. This is the Season
with Peter Scheger. The Season with Peter Schrager is a
(52:02):
production of the NFL in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you
get your podcasts.
The Season with Peter Schreeger is a production of the
NFL in partnership with iHeartRadio. What's Up, everybody, Welcome to
another episode of the Season with Peter Schreger. We're entering
(00:27):
week eight of this NFL campaign and we're coming off
a week where the Patriots beat the Bills, the Vikings
beat the forty nine ers, and the New York Giants
got back on track beating the Washington Commanders. There was
so much intrigue going into this week about the Detroit Lions,
and then the Baltimore Ravens absolutely walloped them in Baltimore
(00:50):
and did so physically, like watching Ronnie Stanley block poor
Kirby Joseph. I think he's in the stand somewhere. He
threw him around so hard. And it's just week to week,
you know, it's hard to do like power rankings, and
this is the MVP because things change week two week,
and that's the beauty of the sport. I'm joined here
by Aaron wan Kaufman, our producer.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Aaron.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
I'm still thinking about the Sunday night game though, and
what the Eagles did to the Dolphins. Did did you
watch that game?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Oh? Yeah, yep. I was texting with one of my
friends who's a writer, who is a huge Eagles fan,
and the difference in our emotion, like me having watched
the Bills game earlier in the day and him currently
watching the Eagles game. I mean, it was it was.
They were very good. It was it was like strength,
they were speed, and.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
It was.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Your friend's a writer. What's he writing?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
And he writes for NFL writing, He works at ESP Nation.
What's his name, Ben Nathan?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
What's up? Ben? You gotta read his stuff here. All along,
I thought you were my buddy and that you and
I are the ones texting, And now you've got this
other side. Check Ben Nathan at esp Nation that you're texting.
It's like finding out your wife is as a whole
other thing going on with some other guy in the
same exact line of work.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
All right here, I got a workshop my takes before
I bring them.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I got it.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I gotta be ready.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
I got it. I got it. And if I start
seeing my takes on Ben Nathan's by the Eagles win
was huge and they'll continue to roll and we'll see
them in the playoffs. On this thing, I wanted to
use the Eagles as a Peg because I made the
comment on Good Morning Football on Monday morning, like, my
big takeaway from that game is that AJ Brown is
(02:31):
an absolute force and this dude is a is a beast,
and in a world where my kid wants to be
Tyreek Hill for Halloween and his friend wants to be
Justin Jefferson because he does the gritty and Tyreek does celebrate.
Like AJ Brown's as good as both those guys this year,
if not the best wide receiver in all of football.
(02:52):
And the stat that came out since he had like
a little sideline blow up on what was that a
Thursday night game against the Vikings, he and Jalen Hurts were,
you know, going back and forth. He's had one hundred
and twenty five yards or more in every single game.
That's five straight games. And the stat that ESPN was
showing it was first NBC, but then ESPN all day
(03:15):
yesterday on Instagram and it was made the rounds that
he and Calvin Johnson are the only receivers this century
to go for one hundred and twenty five yards or
more five straight games. Now, I am going to take
ninety nine percent of the credit here, but one percent
of this did come from a Twitter follower who sent
this to me and was like, you need a nickname
(03:37):
for aj Brown whatever he's got, and to use the
word John in the nickname. I thought of it and
I went with it on the air. Mega John, Mega John.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I like that a lot. That's very good.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
So the stat that came up was the only two
players to go for one twenty five or more and
five straight games was Mega John and Megatron okay, which
then led my beautiful mind, crazy brain, sick, neurotic, where
the hell does my brain go to? The Are they
the only guys to do it? So I asked my
(04:15):
producer and Good Morning Football, nice dude named Rich Goldberg.
He works out of Mount Laurel, New Jersey. I think
he's in like uh, like he lives at the facility
because anytime, at any hour I'm texting him. He's like
deep in the NFL film's archives, like going through tape.
And I said, is there anyone else who did this?
Because it keeps on saying since two thousands, since two thousands,
So who did it in ninety nine and ninety eight?
(04:38):
And the answer was Pat stud Still did it in
nineteen sixty six. I said, who the is Pat stud Still.
So I I'm like, we gotta do a deep dive.
Who is Pat stud Still? I don't know. I know
Lance Alworth, I know Jerry Rice, I know Steve Largin,
I know Randy Maws. I even I could tell you
(05:02):
a lot about Ernest Givens and Curtis Duncan and Webster Slaughter.
I mean, do so many names. Rob Moore on the
Cardinals had some good year, Ricky prol on the Cardinals,
ZERI we can go through all of the most random
wide receiver big breakout seasons, from Tory Holt to Aza
Quem to Isaac Bruce to Rod Smith. Let we go
to that. My brain works that way. Stud Still I
(05:23):
did not know that name. I'd never heard of that name.
So I'm like, who is Pat stud Still? So we
start doing some research. Let me tell you about Pet
stud Still. This is how most podcasts start. In week
eight at twenty twenty three, they say, let's go into
a Pet stud Still deep dive. Studstill was an undrafted
player out of Houston goes to the Detroit Lions, where
(05:44):
he is primarily a kick and punt returner for the
first several years of his career. Nineteen sixty six, he
goes and has one of the great wide receiver seasons
of all time. And this is back when they used
to have the you know, the goalpost at the front
of the end zone and they would play like twelve games.
Sixty six stud still went for sixty seven catches twelve
(06:06):
in sixty six yards, which is like, you know, it's
like in today the milk. The price of milk, you know,
back then was straight down, so now it's all that
The equivalent is like if a guy randomly I didn't
know where this year, came out and had like two
hundred catches and four thousand yards, Like that's what the
numbers were for pet studs still, so I'm like, what
the hell? Like who what did it?
Speaker 2 (06:27):
For?
Speaker 1 (06:27):
The Lions? Like a bad Lions team. He had a
ninety nine yard catch in that game, So I'm like,
all right, So what was the rest of his career?
Heard his hamstring didn't do much. The rest of his
career at wide receiver was kind of irrelevant. But in
sixty six, in addition to being the punt returner and
the kick returner, he picked up punting duties for the
(06:48):
Detroit Lions and was their full time punter. This wasn't
the thirties when guys played both ways or the forties
where it's like we have seven running backs and a
million dollar backfa year old. This is like late sixties,
like Lombardi was coaching and Hank Stram was coaching, like
this was like relevant. He was the team's number one
wi receiver and their full time punter. So that was
(07:11):
sixty six. They trade him to the Rams. He then
goes and has six more years in his NFL career
just as a punter. I'm like, who the hell is
this guy? Why has that not been a documentary on
Pat stud Still? This is incredible. Led the league in punts,
led the league in punts yardage, like the stat that's crazy.
Sixty two he leads the NFL and punt return yards,
(07:31):
sixty six, leads the NFL in receiving yards, and then
in like sixty seven, he leads the NFL in most punts.
Was a two time pro bowler. Eventually retires in seventy one,
and then Aaron because this is just Pat stud Still
and who he is. Then he goes on to become
a very successful actor and he's in Dukes of Hazard
(07:54):
and he's in two hundred different commercials, not two commercials,
two hundred different commercials. And in nineteen seventy four, Burt
Reynolds and the guys who put on the original Longest
Yard movie tapped Pat stud Still to work on the movie,
and he was the guy who did all the technical
football stuff. He was their guide. So on all these
sports movies, they'll have a technical guy to come on
(08:15):
and be like, well, you wouldn't throw the ball that way,
and the line of scrimmage would actually be a little
bit lined up this way. The guard would be stud
Still worked on the set for all those days on
the Longest Yard production goes on, has this awesome acting career.
I had never heard of Pat stud Still. He eventually
passed in twenty twenty one. I was reading his obituary today.
(08:36):
They also said he was the last guy to resist
wearing the Ridell face mask, So he was wearing one
of these old school helmets with an old school face
mask when the rest of the NFL was already moving
on in the sixties and seventies. I say all this
to say the following. I've seen the docs. I've seen
(08:59):
the thirty for thirties I've seen the Football Lives. We
know everything you could possibly know about Deacon Jones, about
Tim Brown, about OJ Simpson, about Dion Sanders. I think
we need to executive produce a Pat stud Still documentary. Aaron,
(09:20):
are you in ongoing deep on the life of stud Still?
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah. We talk about stud Still as like the the
origin of positionless players. Yeah, we get we get Debo
in there, we get yeah Hill, Yeah, no, I love it.
And then then after that we force each of them
to re enact Dukes of Hazzard scenes too, to just
show out. I mean, I can't believe to do those
(09:45):
different positions and then also break into acting. Is that's
a wild ride?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yeah? Well, the big story out of Kansas City this
past week was a little mentioned in Dave tab the
Special Teams coordinators press conference that you know with Tommy
Townsend hurt. Pat Mahomes is our backup hunter, and it
was like, oh my god, dude, this guy was returning punts,
returning kicks, playing why receiver and he was also in
sixty six. He was their full time punter. So he's
leading the NFL and receiving cards and was the best
(10:12):
punter in the sport. Gets hurt, and then it was like,
all right, I'm not going to play receiver anymore. I'll
just be a punter. We've probably spent four minutes too
long on Pat stud Still. But if if you're a
fan of the season with Peter Schreger, you know this
is the stuff you're here for. And it's knowledge like
that and my quest to learn and my desire to
(10:32):
become an expert on things like Pat stud Still. That
makes me a wonderful contestant on Jeopardy, Aaron, can I
talk about it one more time if the listeners didn't
watch or listen last week, I am appearing on Celebrity
Jeopardy this week and it's airing on Wednesday, October twenty
fifth at eight pm Eastern. It is on ABC, it
(10:52):
is in prime time. I am a contestant. It is
of the celebrity version. We discussed the celebrity aspect of
it last week. How uncomfortable I am with that word,
and yet I will wear it because it got me
onto the show. I would have never been able to
compete with the actual people who are on Jeopardy. I'm
not smart enough for that. But the celebrities, they are dumb,
so I can. I can compete with celebrities. When you're
(11:16):
busy looking in the mirror most of your life and
not searching Wikipedia and reading encyclopedias, you can get on
celebrity Jeopardy. So I competed. We recorded in August. I
have not revealed anything. I was wavering. I was like,
do I go big and talk about it or do
I just let it kind of appear. We talked about
it last week. I've gotten so many responses, people being
(11:38):
blown away. I posted a photo on my Twitter feed
of me at the Jeopardy podium. What do you call it?
A podium? Were like, and I showed how I wrote
my name and I went capslock first name. A couple
of people were like, how do you not go shregs?
How do you not go Schrager? That's what people call you.
(12:01):
Went with Peter in capslocks. It's the name my parents
gave me. And I'll say this, we're twenty four hours
from it airing or about that. We're recording this on Tuesday.
It's a showdown, bro. It goes to the wire and
it is epic and it's one of the best episodes
that program. And it's one hundred years I've ever had,
(12:22):
very proud of not only myself, but my two contestants,
my opponents. They all did very well. It would be
Mira Sorvino, who I have not spoken to since, and
Adam Rodriguez, who I have not spoken to since. That's blood, bro,
That's what it is like. Once you we left it
on the field. I honestly I thought walking out of
that that they I'm like, all right, these where the
three of us are gonna be connected for life, Like
(12:43):
we're gonna have store. I haven't talked to either one
of them since, so maybe after the show airs, we'll
rekindle the magic and the chemistry we had on the show.
But it's an hour long. It's Celebrity Jeopardy. If you've watched,
there is not only regular Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy, there's
Triple Jeopardy, so there's three different portions of it, and
then there's Final Jeopardy. I think I'll save some of
(13:06):
the recap stuff till next week. I will just say this,
it's the coolest thing I ever got to do professionally.
And I've been on the field at Super Bowls and
I've interviewed everyone from Tom Brady to Patrick Mahomes, and
I've gotten to meet crazy, cool and interesting people being
at that that set which they also film Wheel of
(13:26):
Fortune next door, which I didn't even know, like Merv
Griffin birthed them both. I guess like they're they're in
that same studio. Childhood memories and memories of all the
you know, great hours of my college days spent on
the couch but watching Jeopardy. But then also like the
celebrity Jeopardy spoofs on Saturday Live with Will Ferrell and
(13:48):
Norm McDonald and you know, all of it, it all
comes flashing back, so very cool emotional experience and also
just an awesome, awesome thing to say I have done.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
And especially because last week you were saying how as
a kid you would be sitting at the dining room
table watching Jeopardy with your family.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
I wish kitchen table, table, kitchen. There was no dining
room that we dined.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
At, Sorry New York. Yeah, it's the same.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Thing, kitchen, kitchen, table with a little TV free Old
New Jersey, and it was my dad would walk in
the door like six fifty seven, we'd sit down, there'd
be like a slice of candle lope we'd eat that.
You probably have some London broil, and then it's oh, yeah,
we've started a little Candleope, maybe a little grapefruit I
can get.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
That's a little starter there. And then we would watch
Jeopardy for a half hour, and then my brother and
I would scurry off into like another room and say
three your computer. Yeah, playing in the computer. That's what
we do. Uh. Wednesday night, October twenty fifth, eight pm
Eastern Celebrity Jeopardy And now, with no further ado, our
(14:56):
guests for the for the episode, I'm I don't know
where it's going to go. I'm recording this whole thing live.
We're gonna get the guest on in a second. So
I don't know if he's a big personality. If he's
a big personality, but I need to know more about
Tyson Bagent, who I'm just starting to scratch the surface on.
And I got his head coach from his college days
(15:17):
on the podcast. The Great Ernie McCook is joining us
right after this, all right, So I spent Sunday afternoon
watching the Bears and Raiders game, and I'm watching Tyson beagent,
an undrafted rookie free Agent out of Shepherd in West
(15:37):
Virginia Division two school, become the first quarterback to be
an undrafted rookie at a Division two to win a
game since nineteen fifty. And I'm reading everything I can
possibly read about the guy because I'm fascinated about his
path and his journey, and time and time again, I'm
reading awesome quotes and awesome stories and great encouragement from
(16:00):
his college coach, the great Ernie McCook out of Shepherd.
So what we're doing the podcast this week? I'm like,
what's the story of the week, what's it's I'm asking Aaron,
who should we talk about? What if he's kept down?
Coming up? Tyson Pagent, Tyson Bagent, Tyson Vagent. So with
no further ado, let's get his college coach on the podcast,
Ernie McCook. Welcome to the season with Peter Schrager. Man.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Peter, it's great to be with you today, and we're
going to talk about probably two of my favorite things,
Sheppard University football and Tyson Beaging.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Let's start with Shepherd University football. So you're a coach
for a few years now. You had history with this
program before bouncing around a little bit and then coming
back to the school, what is Shepherd University? And I'm
not being insulting as an NFL guys being out of it.
Where are you guys enrollment all the stuff? And then sure,
(16:47):
what has this done for the program?
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Yeah? Our address is West Virginia. The campus sits right
on the banks of the Potomac River. We're literally from
one end of a football field to the other end
of the football field from the state of Maryland. We're
hour and fifteen minutes out of Washington, DC and hour
and fifteen minutes out of Baltimore. So we are able
to recruit as you're probably familiar with the DMV. Yeah,
(17:11):
we recruited from Richmond to Baltimore off that ninety five corridor.
And we want to recruit in state to be especially
locally in state. And we've had a lot of opportunities
to track some really good football players along with Tyson Beaging.
You know, we've had some really guys that have gone
on and done some really good things playing at the
(17:34):
next level, but nobody has had quite the first game
like Tyson had on Saturday versus the Raiders.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
And no one is invited to the Senior Bowl, and
you had multiple guys invited to the Senior Bowl last year,
and I know you were there and you brought a
whole cast of guys down there to Mobile. We'll go
backwards and start from the start with Jijan, but I
think just just that experience when you go to the
Senior Bowl out of Division two school and Jim Nagy,
who runs that thing, gives you guys the call. I
(18:02):
loved it because I heard it. I was listening to
an interview I do my reaching for the podcast. You
had about four different coaches with you. Guys were finding
your way to the field. You're going to support your guy, Yeah,
did you have any doubt that he would be able
to light it up and do just fine against that
Division one talent?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Well, I got to tell you a story about when
Jim Naggy called me. Right. So, I'm sitting right here
in my office, it's probably eight or nine o'clock at night,
and you know what, I take it back. It was
the call for Joey Fisher, the second guy to get
called up. So I see this Arizona phone number and
I'm thinking, man, it's probably Scout wanting to come to practice.
(18:39):
So I get him a call back. He goes, Hey,
he said this, Jim Naggy is Senior Bowl coach. I
just wanted to tell you we're going to invite Joey
Fisher to join Tyson Baiging at the Senior Bowl. And
he goes, just so you know, this will be the
first time in the history we think of the Senior
Bowl that will have had two Division two players from
the same team being playing the same game. And so
(19:03):
then he kind of he said, I kind of took
it all in and I said, you know, Jim, you're
gonna make me have to come to this game. Yeah,
and then he was like, You're not gonna come just
for Tyson. And then I thought about how bad that
sounded on you too, and yeah, I mean it takes two.
You got to take two of my guys, and that's
(19:24):
not true. But so I was really excited at that point,
and I thought, Jim Naggy, you know, if you think
about Tyson's kind of climb. Uh, he took the first
real shot on Tyson Baging given him an opportunity to
play in the Senior Bowl. You know, there's a lot
of great quarterbacks out there. He went out on a
limb and took a Division two guy, and I think
(19:45):
Tyson played extremely well in that game. Uh, it was
it was a lot of fun. We're sitting in the
staff meeting. We're a low budget football team, Pier all right,
So where we're in the staff meeting and we we
have some recruiting things going on, and I tell I
tell our coaches like, Hey, I'm going to go to
the Senior Bowl, but I'm going to drive. So we
drove Westford, Gia to Mobile, right and I said, we'll
(20:11):
pay the football pay for the hotel room and the
rental car. You guys are on your own for your
meals and drinks. And we had five people volunteer, so
we loaded up in the suv. We made the trip
down to Mobile and of course being able to watch
Tyson practice on the field there at South Alabama with
(20:31):
all the other guys. That was awesome. And it was
the Senior Bowl, I think is one of the greatest
events you could be a part of. And that may
have been as a proud of moment I had having
a chance to see Mike get our guy, our guy,
and the Senior Bowl represent Sheppard University with the ram
Horns on and playing what I think is the most
(20:53):
prestigious college All Star game there is.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Oh, it absolutely is. Let's go way back, though, because
it's not a necessarily it's it's a great Division two program,
but it's not an NFL hotbed. So you're the coach
here when you start recruiting Tyson out of what's the
town he's from.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
It's in West Virginia, Martinsburg High School, and here in
West Virginia about seven miles.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Away, so it's close. It's in your backyard. He's probably
this high school star. Like, how's that recruitment process going?
Did you know when he was a junior and senior
that this kid could have a future.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Absolutely even better than that. I've known. I've watched Tyson
grow up. Our families go to church together, and I
will tell you from the time he played for the
Charlestown Razorbacks. Okay, I'd be sitting in the pew, him
and his dad would walk by, w we're going up
for communion, and he would nudge me he's going to
(21:43):
be the man at Shepherd one day. You know, if
you get a chance to talk to Travis, he'll tell you.
And one time he told what he used to tell me,
You're going to build a bronze statue of Tyson one day,
and of course you're in church, You're like, hey, that's awesome.
Maybe great.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
You know, you know he's ten years old, eleven years
old at the time. Yeah, he was.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Probably eleven years old and just slinging around Charlestown and
everything like that. But you know, having known their family
and watch Tyson grow up, he is a special, special
person man. He is something I just can't say enough
great things about him as a human being. I mean,
just as a man. We're going through the recruiting process
(22:22):
and you know, I knew that he was a division
I thought he was a division one guy FBS, and
we're kind of going through it. I'm thinking he's going
to get something. But if he doesn't get something, you know,
he'll have a spot with us if this is what
he wants. And the only offers he really got were
(22:42):
SCS offers. He got an FCF Albany and I want
to say Robert Morris and some other D two's and
stuff like that. Well, in twenty fifteen we played for
a national championship, and so I think he just looked
at it and said, hey, I get a chance to
stay at home play highly competitive football at the Division
(23:04):
two level. I get a chance playing in front of
family and friends. Like his grandfather, God Rest his soul
passed away last year, was really close to him. He
would sit in the stands and watch practice. His dad
would come and watch practices. I mean, it's just a
family affair here for the beagents at Shepherd University playing
football here and Tyson, I can tell you he'd sent
(23:27):
me a text. I texted him after the game this
weekend and he and I said, hey, man, we're proud
of you. We watched the game as a team, and
he goes, he said, hey, thanks to a support coach
really appreciated. I love Shepherd football, you know. And it
was just like here's a guy playing at a high level,
achieving some of the goals that you know, dreams, dreams
(23:49):
that we all have, and he still has love for
this program that he was a part of and an
instrumental part of where we are today. So that, I mean,
that was that was kind of a cool deal.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
When you get when you get this guy in there,
he come like, give me some of the exploits, because
how you get to the Paul Bunyan tall tail. Was
it just all right, here we go. This is Steve
McNair at Alcorn or one of these types of guys
at a different level of school. Just tear it up
the league.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Well, you know what his first game it was against
Nerdame College. Okay, it was a true freshman and Julia McLoughlin,
the running back at with the Broncos.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Right now goes yeah, Youngstown State, sure, Well before.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
That he was at Nerdame College. Him and Tyson, both
their college stars, were in the same game. I think
Julil rushed for almost three hundred yards. Tyson threw for
five hundred yards. Two guys that right now are are
up and coming guys are had shows some things in
the NFL. When recruiting Tyson, I can tell you his dad.
(24:49):
His dad's hardcore.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Now his dad is arm wrestling champion, the arm.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Wrestling champion, the whole deal. Yeah, we're going through the
process of the recruiting before he commits to US. I
told you I go to church with him. Here's a
fun story for you. So Christmas Eve, my family and
I were getting late. Okay, so there's only a couple
of seats in the back of the church right and
my family and I slide into the pew, and of
(25:14):
course I'm I'm a football coach, and I want to
recruit Tysonvaging even on Christmas Eve at church all right,
because he's he was an All state player, He's the
best player in state West Virginia. And so I'm looking around.
I'm looking for where he's at, where he normally sits,
the whole deal. And then I look up, you know,
we're up for a hymnal and I see where him
(25:34):
and his dad are sitting. And then I see right
behind the pew is empty. There's nobody sitting in the
pew right behind him. So without even I didn't try
and even tell my wife anything, I just walked out
of arm keew.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Let's go. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
I walked around, went right down the middle of the church,
and our pastor, our priest, was like, I was wondering
what you did until you sat down. You know, he goes,
what the hell? He was probably like, what is Ernie
doing walking up here to the altar? But no, I
was walking in. I slid right in behind Tyson and
his dad, Travis, put my arm around him both, and
(26:08):
I said, hey, God, meant for us to be together.
And so then he and so his dad without missing
a beat, said hey man, it's about time you got here.
We've been saving that ce for you for twenty minutes.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Let's go. It's so good.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
That was a lot of fun with that. I tell
that story quite a bit, so, you know, back to
the serious part. So Tyson commits. So he signs with
us his senior year in high school, wearing our spring practices. Right,
we have fifteen spring practices. Tyson is standing behind the
offensive huddle for every practice. He would he was at.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
As a high school senior.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
As a high school senior knowing I'm coming to Sheppard University,
I know I'm going to play and I'm going to
compete to be the quarterback, and he was taking it
all in. He was he was doing everything he could
do to learn, and so he's ready when he would
get to camp in August. And the guy is absolutely
nomenal with his work ethic and his competitiveness. He's somebody
(27:10):
that you know won I can tell you Chicago Bears,
the fan base, they will be proud that that dude
is a Bear. He's going to give everything he can
to help that team win. And I think I told
somebody else an interview. If he's on their practice squad,
all right, he's going to give the best look for
the Justice. He's going to be the best Justin Herbert. Yeah,
(27:33):
but for this weekend that the Bears defense will see
and tell you see Justin Herbert, you know. But the
fact that I think he worked his way into being
the backup and he prepares like nobody else does. After
OTA's this year and the summertime we get back. His
first day back, we were having our program, our team
(27:54):
golf outing, so he played in it. He came and
played in it with a couple of his teammates and
my son was who's coaching with us now. He and
Tyson were roommates. They're really close friends. So he said, hey, Michael,
I need you to guarantee you'll be with me at
every workout. So Michael would go to the workouts with him,
(28:15):
but Peter, they would practice, Michael would read the script
to him through the cell phone into his ear the
long play call. He would then be out in the
middle of our football field in the stadium, just the
two of them, by himself. He would walk into an
imaginary huddle, do the play call, walk up to the
line of scrimmage, put people in motion, practice the checks,
(28:39):
everything like that. He did it in June and July.
I did it for six weeks.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
So we got one hundred degree weather in the middle
of West Virginia in July, and your son his former
wide receiver in his roommate.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
It was a fool back, guy back.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Whatever it is. Sorry, I'm making up history because I'm
trying to do the movie script in my head. He
plays he plays a wide out in the movie. He
calls on a cell phone from where's your son? Is
he there with the Is he like in the stands?
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Whereas no, he's standing on the sideline. So just like
like so he would have a script right now out
here like this, and he would go.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
As if he has the helmet, oh.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Yeah, like Deuic's right.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Yeah, he's reading Luke Getzi's playbook. He's got the Bear's playbook.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
He's got to play a bear's play call. So what
he's doing is he is simulating the mental preparation of
the length of a play call, because the play calls
are unbelievably long.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Sure, yeah, And then like you know, and.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
I'm you know, talking to Tyson and all I'm learning
a bunch of myself, like the different checks, how they're
checking things, the things they look for. And but when
a guy is doing that, think about this one for
a second. You're an undrafted free agent. You don't even
know if you're going to make the team.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
You know, unlikely you would, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Especially at the quarterback puisition. He goes and he's doing
this all summer long. So if my son went to
the beach on family vacation, they did it by telephone, right,
And so your son.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Is at the beach being like a slug o snake, right,
name call, and Tyson's on an empty field in the
middle of West Virginia just going through the Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
And then when Tyson went to the beach, he would
go probably go out on the beach and practice it,
through with it. He did this religiously, you know. So
the guy is a film room junkie. I to you know,
I read the social media. But one of the one
of the Chicago stations asked me who I thought he was, Like,
who do you think you know? And everybody wants you
(30:43):
to say Tom Brady, They want you to say Brock Party,
they want you. They want that, right, they want that
to me. From what I've learned and studying football, Tyson
beagent is Drew Brees go on because the reputation Drew
Brees has for the tireless film study, the unbelievable work
(31:06):
ift that you have to prepare for any situation that
you get. That's who Tyson Beaging is. He will prepare
and work. He's going to physically train his body. When
he talked about shredding life way and crossfitfit, yeah, that's
one hundred percent accurate. Like, if you're ever in this area,
you need to come visit Shepard University because behind our
(31:28):
locker room, his high school history teacher has got it
lives back there, right, and they have a man cave
CrossFit training that they do. I mean it's like all natural,
like you're taking a log and your bench press on
a log fifty times. Then you're running to the river
with a weighted backpack and back and this they do.
(31:51):
That's the kind of stuff he does. They they they
hollowed out We're right on the banks of the Potomac River.
Tyson and his roommates hollowed out a stream for to
make it a cold bath.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
A homemade cold tub, a homemade.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Cold tub on the Potomac River, and they they would
go down there in February. I mean, we're not talking
July where they're pulling off. They're going down there and
really going through it. I mean, just the things, like
the natural things that happen.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Well, even you mentioning that, you know, I'm thinking about
Alabama and LSU's facilities in the amount of millions, of
the fact that it's his high school. His high school
teacher leaves behind the facility and he's I mean, you
can't make the stuff up.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
You can't. And his high school teacher played basketball here, right, Okay,
saw the Earth guy just a tremendous person, human being,
And of course he's a good hope for us to
have because when you know, we recruit somebody from the
high school, we're getting inside scoop on them, you know,
like what kind of with their hearts, like with their
who they are inside? And you know, of course he
(32:58):
the guys that we've gotten from Tyson's high school, and
because of Tyson have been tremendous players for us. But like,
here's an other thing, how competitive Tyson is? All Right,
So his junior year, the year he won the Harlan Hill.
Right after every practice in summer camp, all right, mostly
of summer camp. You know, we'd be walking off the field.
(33:22):
Enticon are one of our athlete trainers as a gymnast, right,
and they would have a competition, who on who could
walk on their hands the farthest, and they were doing
fifty to seventy five yards walking on their hands. I
mean literally, I wish I had video of it, you know.
And I'm just sitting there thinking, and I can't tell
(33:43):
the dude stop because he's just competitive. He's not gonna
you know, no, I'm not gonna let her beat me.
And you know, but she's now an athlete trainer in
another school. When we talked about it before the game. So,
but that's who the kid is. I mean he is.
He is a special guy. He's as grounded as grounded
could be. He has an impeccable work ethic. He you know,
(34:07):
not only was he the best player on our football
team for five years, he was the best teammate, the
best teammate. You could have never wanted anything extra. You know,
he threw he threw a milestone touchdown, right and we're
at Millersville University and he goes, he comes up to me,
(34:27):
he goes, and this is his junior year. He goes, coach,
that was like hundred touchdown passed. He goes, can I
have the game ball?
Speaker 1 (34:37):
You know, first time, right?
Speaker 3 (34:39):
And I was like, yeah, you can have whatever you want, tyson,
but do me a favorite. Just give it to the
manager to give to your dad, because I don't want
to draw a lot of attention to giving game balls
away because they're seventy millonuns apiece.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
You know, we need that money.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Man.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
That's so good.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
And then that night his dad sent me a video
of him giving that game ball to his grandfather who's
passed away. He was really close to him.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Jeez, I'm gonna cry. That's amazing. The on the field exploits,
I mean, the leadership stuff, that's all off the charts. Yeah,
was this guy tearing up the vision two I you know,
obviously we started seeing footage, the grainy footage, and we
don't even know the start of it. You lived it.
What was it like having him as your quarterback? And
what kind of stuff did he do?
Speaker 3 (35:20):
Well? This is a story I'd like to tell. His
freshman year as the starter. All Right, we're playing the
last game of the season. We're seven and two, and
we end up losing the game. All right, And you
know we're in a small stadium. You can hear people
heckling you. You can hear people giving you grief. People
(35:40):
are yelling at the quarterback. You know, you know he's
taking a sack. I'm wondering why he didnt get rid of
the ball, Like, what'd you see? Because Coach, that was
on me. We couldn't run the football through this whole time.
Everybody's pointing fingers. But one guy, Tyson Beaging. He is
a team first guy. He'll own everything that happens to
(36:01):
the team and put it on his shoulders, his back.
And I realized that that's the kind of we have
to go and put the best players around them we
possibly can. And that was our goal from there on out.
Make sure he had the receivers that he needed, the
O line that We tried to do everything we could
do to build that team. Every team we've had since
(36:22):
his freshman year around Tyson Baigent and his strengths and
what he could do. And I thought we did a
pretty good job of that. We were able to win
a lot of all games. He broke a lot of records,
and he's done with multiple receivers. The guy has an
uncanny ability to make people around them better. We had
(36:44):
a receiver going from his freshman year had eight catches
to ninety nine catches the next year because he worked
all summer with Tyson Baging and they had a great
connection together. So going it's a ninety catch difference because
Tyson believed in them, and he believed in Tyson and
they were on the same page. I mean, want just
(37:07):
one of many examples he made. He made alignment better,
he made running backs better, he made tight ends better,
wide receivers better, he made our defense better, the whole deal.
And it's all game to him too, Like it's a
competitive everything's a competitive game. We do a blitz pick up, right,
We do like to start practice off once a week
(37:27):
and a blitz pickup. And he just would love to
do the dummy cases.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Get me in there.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Yeah, he went, he put, he would go, I would
stay up, he standing right next to him, go ready,
and then he would look at and go, ah, there
you are, Mike, Mike six, Mike six, and you know,
and but it was a it was a challenge for
him that every challenge he wants that he'll he'll accept.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
All right, So we go to the draft process. Senior
Bowl is amazing, he plays well, he's with you know,
he's in front of the Bears staff gets he's there,
all this stuff. But then the draft comes along and
he goes undrafted. Was that a great disappointment? Were you
guys surprised? And I'm sure sure you spoke to thirty
two NFL teams.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
You know what, I'll tell you what our tackle who's
on the practice squad with the Steelers, Joey Fisher. Yeah,
and that after that draft happened, I mean immediately after
it ended, I said, if these two, either one of
these two guys don't get drafted, we'll never get in
by drafted. Yeah, and that that's really how I feel.
But I also understand, like when you get to the
(38:30):
later rounds, the sixth and seventh round, sometimes you're better
being a free agent because you get a chance to
pick you and your agent picked the best spot for you.
And that's what happened. You know, I think we're we're awful.
We're fortunate that Tyson didn't get drafted, was able to
sign that free agent deal with the Bears because he
(38:52):
seems to be in the right place at the right time. Obviously,
luketzk the Bears offensive staff knew who he was from
the Senior Bowl, had confidence in him, and you know,
I just think he's in I think he's in a
good spot.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Yeah. And to take it full circle, in a couple
of days, Chris Collinsworth and Mike Turrico are going to
be saying his name and calling it. I mean, is
this not surreal? That that that that a year ago
at this time he was playing with you guys going
up against Bloomsburg, and now he's got you know, Joey
Bosa and Khalil Mack and Derwin James staring down at
him with Tarico and Collinsworth on the call.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Well, like I told you, I got a chance to
watch the first half. You know, we did it as
a team and before we started our team meeting and
on Sunday, And I can tell you when I watched
that game, I kept finding out where Crosby was. I
was like, because I didn't want that dude to get
a free shot on my guy.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
Man, I was really impressed with the Bear So I
thought they did a great job. I thought, you know,
they Tyson handled his role the right way. The running
game that they had. Uh, the one catch that I
thought it was DJ Moore had it was a ball
that was kind of sailing on Tys. I thought that
he made a great catch. I was really happy for Chicago.
(40:05):
And of course I'm I'm a Bears fan now, so
I gotta I'm all in with the Bears.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Sorry, Ravens, it it's not your year. Yeah, this is
going to be a Bears fan and I am.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
I am a Ravens fan.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
I'm sure you are. I'm sure you are. In closing,
talk about your school, your program, and not only what
Tyson has brought as far as the national spotlight goes
with some of the great stuff that you guys are doing.
Because this isn't a flash in the pen. You guys
are winning, franchise, winning program. It happened for years.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Shepherd is a special place. We can really attract a
lot of really good players to come to Shepherd because
of the culture of our program. You know, we battled
the portal and division one offers with both Joey and Tyson,
and you know, I know it's my job to create
a culture where guys don't feel they have to leave.
They only can leave if it's a much better situation
(40:57):
for him. But you know when I want to you know,
we just had homecoming last weekend, and when you get
a chance to look at all the former players that
come back that you've had opportunity to coach, you realize
that we just have a really good spot here where
football is important to our administration. Football is important to
the local area. We get tremendous support, like our environment
(41:21):
for our home football game as the two greatest days
on our campus our graduation in a home football game
and graduations number two. So I mean, it's it's an
exciting day on our campus when we play at home,
and we have a tremendous fan base. We have a
unbelievable access to a lot of really good players within
(41:41):
a two and a half hour raineus of our campus,
And you know, it's fun for me and I think
our coaches to work somewhere and coach the game where
it's important to a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
You got Bloomsburg this weekend. Give us a little preview
on the season with Peter Schreger. We're all going to
be checking our phones, give us a preview. What have
they got? Who are you and who are we looking at?
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Well? You know what right now, bloom is we're going
to be on the road, so it's a tough place
go play. Uh. You know, if you were to look
at the tap, if you look at just stats and
stuff like that, you would think it's going to be
an easy victory for us. It's not. We're gonna have
to play well. We're gonna have to what I'd like
to say, make the ordinary play extraordinary. You know, they
(42:23):
just do the little things right the bank things will
take care of themselves, handle adversity when it comes, because
we're gonna have some type of adversity, and just play
with each other and don't look at the scoreboard, don't
look got just play the game and make the ordinary
play and I think we'll be just fine.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Now I'm gonna tell you something. I'm gonna give you
some advice here. And this is me as a media
guy and a big talking head in a New York
hot shot. You guys finished that game against Bloomsburg. Coach,
I don't know what money you got in the piggy bank.
You gotta fly out to la, you gotta watch your
boy in person Sunday night. Can we get there?
Speaker 3 (42:57):
There's no way because we got we got a big
one the next week, and we're gonna be in the
office Sunday morning. But but my last night, my wife goes,
She goes, well, I said, it's Sunday night football. Well, no,
we're going to try and hit one one of our
seasons over. But she was like, we should have a party.
I said, we can't have a party. No, we can't
(43:20):
have a party. And she kind of says, well, I'll
just invite my girlfriend's over. So my wife is going
to probably have a little watch party herself, but everybody
will be excited. You know. The best thing, Tyson's brother, Ezra,
is a cool freshman quarterback in our program. Really yeah,
and he had a great career in Martinsburg as well,
and he's here with us. And I called his dad
(43:42):
about midweek once I realized that Tyson was going to start,
and I said, hey, make sure you take Ezra out there.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Yeah, missed the game to go. He went and did both.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
No, he played the game, played in the game, actually
got its first college completion on Saturday. Let's agent. Yeah.
And then after the game, went to the airport, flew
and men his parents and family in Chicago and was
there with Tyson and the family and friends.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Yeah, they're just an awesome family and you know what,
they're easy people to root for. I promise you that one.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
So are you, my friend, Ernie. This was so cool,
Coach Ernie McCook Shepherd University. What an amazing world when
this has been And yet you sound as natural and
as non surprised as it could ever be. It seems like,
not to get too religious with you, but it feels
like this was in the stars and you kind of
saw this happen in a long time ago.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
You know, I truly believe in the blessings of life
that we have. And I do a radio show on
Thursday nights, and two weeks ago it was West Virginia
playing Houston and I'm sitting there and of course the
one guy is a West Virginia longe that does the
radio show, and I said, man, there's my favorite West
Virginia coach of all time. And you know that's like
(45:00):
sacriligious there if it's not don Kneeling, you know, looked
at me sideways. I said, yeah, Stana Holderson.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Yeah, yeah, but I said he's my favorite because he
didn't offer Tyson baiging coming out of high school.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
There you go, that's a great way to do it.
I was like, Dana, he's a good coach. Okay, go on,
it's yeah, that's a great story. Yeah, that's a great story.
You're a follow them dude. This is awesome, Ernie. Thank you,
get back to practice. Loved having you on the season.
Peter Shager, and good luck this weekend against Bloomsburg.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Thank you very much. It was a lot of fun, Ernie.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
But Cook, I mean, that's that's interesting. And when he
starts talking about weightlifting logs and building your own cold
tub in twenty twenty one out of the shores of
the Potomac, like, this is what I'm here for.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
That was one hundred percent not what I was doing
in the woods when I was in high school.
Speaker 3 (45:49):
I can guarantee you that I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
No. It was actually college, which is even crazy, like
the fact that he's in college and he's still it's
still as like and it's nothing against the Division two program.
It's not Alabama, it's not Ohio State. It's like, go
walk on your hands and challenge the trainer. I want
to make it bigger than he it is, maybe because
these are sophisticated programs and there he won the Heisman
of the Division two, but like it is really, really,
(46:15):
really big, long shot stuff when you're going from Division
two undrafted to starting in the NFL and on Sunday night.
So as much as we saw mister Irrelevant last year,
brock Birdy was a superstar in the state of Arizona
and started Iowa State for four years, this guy's story
is way crazier.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
And he won with the Bears. I mean, like, it's
that just here's a UDFA who started a game because
of injury. It's a UDFA who wound up making the
team and then took them to a victory, which I mean,
you know, Josh Allen didn't take his team to a
victory this week, So.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
No, you're right, Sky's the limit for him. That was cool.
Ernie McCook I like him. As we are wrapping up
with him, he like it was like, here's my Twitter handle.
I'm like, yeah, Ernie, let's go, let's take the best.
We got to maximize this moment. Barn They're my official
Division two teams, So Arizona is my official Division one team.
Checking on Arizona. I know they took USC to the
(47:07):
wire then I think they won one against Washington State.
What's Arizona's record? How are we looking with Jed Fish's boys.
Jed's been a great friend of the pod and his
clip went crazy viral and was a great episode if
you go back as a coach at Arizona. What do we got?
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Their overall is four and three, they're two goal team.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
Who'd they play this past weekend? Or were they on the.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
By this past weekend? They played Washington State and they
won forty four to six. They won, they lost, they won,
they won? Yes, I think it was USC.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Was it two weeks ago?
Speaker 2 (47:40):
The four? Yeah, that's they didn't do anything this weekend?
Speaker 1 (47:43):
They buyed all right? So who do they got this weekend?
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Oregon State?
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Any good? Click on?
Speaker 2 (47:47):
Oregon State? Beavers are six and one. They're the eleventh
ranked team. So Arizona is currently a one score underdog
versus Oregon State.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
So here's our viewing. Okay, are you ready for this?
You and I are going to stream Bloomsburg Shepherd in
the early afternoon. We're going to get in on. It're
gonna rot for coach McCook. We're gonna get some Ezra
Bagent fantasy numbers up and going. And then I assume
Oregon State Arizona is one of these late night affairs.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Yeah, we we have plenty of time. The Bloomsburg game
is at noon and uh, Oregon State Arizona is at
ten thirty pm.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
So I mean that's it retailgate and we're getting after
it or I'm sure there's other stuff in between, but
the big ones for us, we're gonna book end it
with Bloomsburg versus Shepherd. I'm going with Shepherd. Shepherd big
because coach said, you know, on paper, we're gonna they
look like we're gonna kick their butts. But no, no,
that means you're gonna kick their ass. We're gonna take
Shepard and I got Arizona upsetting Oregon State late at night?
(48:48):
What's it on ESPN or Packed twelve network? What do
we got to say that in network?
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Pack twelve pac twelve? Uh?
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Did you see the clip that was going viral of
the seedw game that you wudn't c was playing Virginia?
Do you see that or no, So UNC is playing
Virginia on the seed W and you know they do
the inn game promos and only so the announcer, the
play by play guy, very seriously, He's like, all right,
and it's fourteen seven Virginia.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
Are you watching the show f Boy Island?
Speaker 1 (49:20):
And I think James Bates is the color guy who
I know. And James like, he's like, well, everyone else
is f Boy Island on the CW. You can't make
it up? All right? Time for our Uber Eats segment.
They are our sponsors the season with Peter Schrager is
delivering results presented by Uber Eats. And I'm gonna tell
(49:42):
you who I think delivered results last week, and that
is Lamar Jackson. I think Lamar Jackson had his best
game as a pro this season. He was unbelievable. He
was calm in the pocket and he looked like an
MVP candidate. What the Ravens did to the Lions completely
shifted the narrative and not only the AFC, but the
NFC as well. We were riding a bandwagon and we
(50:02):
were all up on board of what Detroit was doing
that had suddenly come to a halt in maybe a
derailment based on what exactly Baltimore did to them, and
a lot of it is what Lamar is doing in
Todd Munkins offense. The week before, a lot of drops
by his receivers. This week, Mark Andrews showed out on
National tight Ends Day. Agalore was all over the field.
Bateman was making big plays. Say Flowers of course was
(50:24):
everywhere and you'd love to see Odell Beckham a part
of the offense. So kudos to Lamar. Let's see if
the Ravens can keep it going. That was delivering results
presented by Uber Eats, where you can get almost almost anything.
It's the official on the man delivery partner of the NFL.
You can order now. Scheduling reminder Aaron Wan Kaufman. We've
(50:46):
got Jeopardy Wednesday night. It's at eight pm Eastern. I
want everyone to watch. I want everybody to tweet. I
want everybody to cheer me or my opponents on. Just
put up the eyeballs, let's go and please. If you
enjoyed this podcast, many thanks to coach Ernie McCook. Tell
your friends about it. Let's keep it wrong. It's the
only podcast in sports media that goes from stud Still,
(51:07):
to Ken Jennings, to Ernie McCook, to Lamar Jackson. At
the very very end, Aaron wan Kaufman, thank you for joining.
Jason English in the House is always from iHeart and
the NFL network, folks on the West Coast. We appreciate
all the support. Let's keep this thing rocking. The goal
is to become the number one sports podcast. The secondary
goals become the number one NFL podcast. The third goal
(51:29):
is to get a trip to the Super Bowl for
everyone so that we can do a live show. We're
working on it uber eats. If you're listening, please we'll
take whatever you got, always almost almost anything you got.
All right, guys, until next week. This is the Season
with Peter Scheger. The Season with Peter Schrager is a
(52:02):
production of the NFL in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you
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Host
Peter Schrager
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