Ben Johnson

What was your tone with him in the exit interview just setting him up for what he can expect in the future?

Yeah, very similar to the other guys.

Went through the season.

The next meeting, we also want to know what they need from us to help them be successful.

But real positive conversation with DJ and really everybody on the roster.

I would say only in a pinch.

We like him.

That's where we'd like him to play next year.

You gotta win the first one, right?

You gotta get started.

But what are you willing to sacrifice to do that?

There's some things you can do, and you all have seen that before I got here.

You can accelerate it, and then after, it goes away pretty quick.

So we gotta balance both.

Unfortunately, that's not reality in terms of

you know, picking it and do you want to go all in and hurt yourself on the road?

Our mindset is to do both, win now and then be able to sustain that and have flexibility.

It's not going to be easy, you know what I mean?

Like I can guarantee you, you know, we've been really good with that money at some point that's going to go up too because that's just the nature of playing this out over a long period of time and having tough decisions to make.

How much do you keep up with it internally?