The Ryen Russillo Podcast
Is the Shedeur Thing That Complicated? First-Round NFL Draft Reactions With Albert Breer. Plus, the Nuggets Look Cooked.
Fri, 25 Apr 2025
Russillo begins by taking about the Knicks, who took a 2-1 lead over the Pistons; the Nuggets, who look like they’re in big trouble against the Clippers; and the Thunder, who had a massive comeback against the Grizzlies (1:18). Then, he chats with Sports Illustrated senior NFL reporter Albert Breer about all the action in the first round of the NFL draft, including the Jaguars' big trade for Travis Hunter and why it shouldn’t be surprising that Shedeur Sanders is still available (23:37). Finally, he and Ceruti close it out with some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:07:07) Host: Ryen Russillo Guest: Albert Breer Producers: Steve Ceruti, Ronak Nair, and Chia Hao Tat The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Get anything delivered on Uber Eats. www.ubereats.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the latest NBA playoff updates?
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Buckle up! We're going for it. All right, tails to the couch, sort of. Just recapping the three games that we had last night. I was thinking about doing something with Apollo, but didn't have time. We'll wait maybe until the offseason. And the NFL draft, round one in the books with Albert Breer. We're going to get into all of it.
Jacksonville's bold move at the top, tight end situations, trade-ins, surprises, things teams like, things teams didn't like. And we will close on the Shador Sanders storyline. And life advice. Enjoy. Three games last night. I think they're still going to play the playoff games tonight despite Shador Sanders not going in the first round. I think the NBA will just operate business as usual.
So we'll get to that draft night. So a lot to keep track of last night. And we start in Detroit, New York up 2-1 after a victory on the road. Little Caesars going off. So a lot of the game two stuff that I talked about was cat or the lack of cat in the offense and his zero field goal attempts in the fourth quarter of game two. I was looking at it again. I think there was like three real touches.
You know, sometimes you get a touch as a center as they swing it and then you're not really in the play. So I think the number was like three real touches. Uh, because Thibodeau had said, no, we did a good job of them.
And it was like, I don't, you know, I don't know that I would agree with that, but sometimes catching the coaches right after not watching the film, they're just going to push back on any question or story building about the game and how things played out. So, uh, Tobias Harris, I would say, for the most part, through the first couple games, had done a good job against Cat.
And that's not a matchup that you would expect to win if you were Detroit. So I also think the Knicks had as much to do with it as Harris did, as we talked about the lack of touches. Fred Katz, who covers the Knicks for The Athletic, had a really good point about how defensive assignments can dictate how Cat plays the game. And it speaks to...
a record here that I was shocked because I knew what I was seeing. But then when I'd read this piece yesterday, I thought it was just pretty thorough and alarming at the same time. If it's a traditional big defending cat, the Knicks went 35 and 12. If it's a non-traditional big.
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Chapter 2: What did the NFL draft look like this year?
And I think it just set a tone for him at least to be engaged because basketball is funny that way. If you don't get to touch the ball and you don't get to shoot early on, it can actually leak into how you just have those moments where you've got to wake up. You've got to wake up in this game. If you get off to a really slow start for scores, for shooters, they can almost... Not talk themselves.
They kind of take themselves out of the game because they've set their own tone by not being very aggressive. So six shots in the first quarter. And again, I think that was a massive carryover from probably how Cat felt about how many touches he had, how... How just not part of the offense he was in that fourth quarter.
Really some good defensive stuff there, too, where New York cranked it up, met the ball right at half court. Some really good stuff from them forcing turnovers and getting out and handling a barrage of hardaway threes early on in this one. The Clippers take out Denver in game three. Denver is in some trouble here. That was an ass-kicking, okay?
Now you may say, well, you know, they were kind of flirting 10 and then 20 points. It was like 20 points forever until it wasn't. Just to put this into perspective, Denver started 8-9 from the floor in this game. They were up 26-19 in the first quarter. So at 3-15 of the first quarter when that's the score, you're like, all right, Denver's making shots and they're figuring this out a little bit.
Um, from that point on with the final score, that means that LA outscored Denver to the end of the game, 98 to 57. Okay. That's balanced scoring from the Clippers, four players between 19 and 21 points. The bench for LA outscored Denver's bench 31 to six. I'm sure that's not shocking to many of you. Um,
Even with what looked like a bad Westbrook game to start, nine minutes, one of five, who knows with him? He could get hot, hit a couple threes. We know the uncontested numbers for him are really good over the course of the season because he's going to have a lot of uncontested looks and just being comfortable and adjusting to how he would play off Jokic. So maybe he would turn it around.
Maybe it was going to be the really bad Russ game. You didn't get either. You didn't even have the option because he left the game with a foot injury. And considering how thin they already are, that's actually a big loss for them. Michael Porter Jr. is 2-9, 1-6 from three. I think the shoulder injury is clearly significant enough. When we saw him go down earlier in the series, it looked pretty bad.
They needed him to get up. And again, he's probably not going to have an inspirational podcast at any point, but When he went down with that shoulder injury and the play was still going on around him, it's like, okay, this guy must be really hurt.
And there was one play in particular where, you know, maybe I didn't understand the severity of the shoulder injury until more of the information after last night's game saying, you know, he'd probably be out multiple weeks here, but they need his body. But there was a play where there was a shot to the right side. He's on the baseline. Harden's behind him. The rebound's carrying me off the rim.
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Chapter 3: Why was Shedeur Sanders not drafted?
They haven't really been able to replace some guys up there. They haven't really been able to fully go in on, you know, fixing the miss on Jedrick Wills. Now we'll see what happens with DeJuan Jones over there who showed some promise at left tackle. And so, like, I think this is like a soft reset for the Browns where it's like, OK.
you know we can kind of focus on rebuilding the guts of our roster as some of the guys that we went to the playoffs a couple times with age out which i think is smart now you're giving up a generational prospect that word gets thrown out a lot like obviously we haven't seen a guy like this so um it is there is risk involved in walking away from that prospect
And then like for the Jags, what's interesting about it is this is generally and look like I think the Rams background of both Gladstone and Cohen plays into it because there is that, you know, willingness to treat draft picks as being expendable. But the Rams did it when they felt like they were close and the Rams did it for veteran players in this case.
Is this telling us the Jaguars think they're closer than maybe the general public would believe and that they're in this go-for-it spot where they can give up capital and they don't have to worry about filling multiple spots over the next couple of drafts? That, to me, is the intriguing part because the timeline thing, that makes sense for Cleveland.
With Jacksonville, at least on the surface, it makes less sense, but maybe their evaluation, the new guys, their evaluation of the roster is a little different. And then as far as the price goes, Ryan,
I'm not surprised it was high because a lot of teams looked at this and I think this was what it was, what was going to make it difficult for the, either the Browns or the giants to trade down from two and three is that, I mean, when you're talking about the fourth, fifth, fifth pick, the sixth pick, a lot of teams looked at those this year and said, that's like having the 15th pick last year or the 20th pick last year.
And so it's, I think the way you have to look at that from a Browns perspective or a Giants perspective is you got to give me a lot because that's not like going down three picks. Like to me, prospect wise, that might feel a little bit more like going down 10 to 15 picks. Yeah.
Yeah, and I love that because it also proves how stupid the value chart is for the draft picks because it doesn't account for the actual depth of each of the drafts. All right, let's talk about your guy, James Gladstone, the GM of the Jags. He's 36, I think, so there's always going to be this ageism with him, which is just the way shit works.
But I'll admit when I saw his first quote after making the trade, I then was like, oh, I want to dig into this a little bit more and watch more of this press conference. So the first line that stood out was he said, quote, for our fans, I'll tell you, don't be scared. This is something I'm uniquely positioned to navigate. we ended up bringing Travis Hunter to Jacksonville.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the Jaguars' trade?
Chapter 5: How did the Knicks perform in their series?
Yeah, and I love that because it also proves how stupid the value chart is for the draft picks because it doesn't account for the actual depth of each of the drafts. All right, let's talk about your guy, James Gladstone, the GM of the Jags. He's 36, I think, so there's always going to be this ageism with him, which is just the way shit works.
But I'll admit when I saw his first quote after making the trade, I then was like, oh, I want to dig into this a little bit more and watch more of this press conference. So the first line that stood out was he said, quote, for our fans, I'll tell you, don't be scared. This is something I'm uniquely positioned to navigate. we ended up bringing Travis Hunter to Jacksonville.
And like I understand, like we got Travis Hunter here, right? But I thought the line like uniquely, I was like, that was kind of a weird phrasing. And that can always be one of those moments, too. It's like if it doesn't work out, it comes back to haunt you. So then I was like, I want to dig into a little bit more.
He has one paragraph here that I'm being totally unfair, but it just reminds me of the guy that nails the interview and is just playing the character. And I know his background with the Rams, so I'm not saying this is even true. I'm saying right now I am being incredibly unfair, but I just can't handle the word choice on some of this stuff.
It feels like corporate buzzwords.
It just feels like a pitch in succession or something where it's like Travis in the same lens.
Yeah.
Here's this line in the same lens. You've heard us mention the idea of adding people who are intangibly rich and Travis, in fact, as a player is rare as a person. He's also rare beyond that. When we say that the idea of inviting people into our ecosystem is who by being nothing more than who they are, elevate the space, is the epitome of what Travis is.
There's a massively great Travis compliment in there. I am just telling you, I had a hard time with it. Like he's opening the kimono? What do I... No, it just was... There were all of these words in that press conference where I'm like, all right, you know, all right. That was like... That was another one. That was another one. That was the other one. And it just, all right, help.
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