Ron Rivera joins GMFB the return. Thank you. So happy to be back. Can you tell us what's the latest? What are you up to. And if you're just seeing the show for the first time, they're like, whoa, coach Ron is there? Yeah. What's going on in your world? Well, for the most part, it's this, there's an opportunity for me to do some work for the NFL network, and I'm going to be a part of this every now and then. So this is kind of cool. Awesome. Right it is. You know, coach, I got to ask. I know you're a big, big fan of football. You love football. You come from football. You've been through a lot of different locker rooms. You're friends with Andy Reid. What's the biggest challenge when it comes to three peating like, oh God, this is unchartered territory. Well, you know, first and foremost, because it is uncharted territory. The biggest thing really is just the focus, being able to keep the guys interested in the regular season don't get ahead of what everybody's expectations are. I heard Montez is not a big fan of the word expectations, which I don't disagree with. But that's what the big thing is, is you got to be able to control what the expectations are going to be. Keep it realistic for your players, what they do in the locker room. That's up to them, nobody else. So the key is really just keeping the players focused on what's important. You know what, what's important this time of the year is training camp getting better? Every rep. But Ryan, it's changed a lot. Yes it has. We love you because you're totally plugged in league now, but you're also old school and you went through training camps as a player in the 80s. What is the difference between those camps, even the ones you coached and the ones happening now? Well, you know, back then you had true, true two a days and you didn't have a ramp up period where you didn't have pads for almost a full week, you went right into pads and you went double days right away. And there really wasn't a limit as far as how much time you could spend inside the locker room. More so than, I mean, on the practice field and in the locker rooms. Now, today there's a limit. You know, you get to that 11 hours in the in the facility. Now the players are out. So there's a big difference as far as those things are concerned. It's a little bit of a different type of team building team bonding. Because once you know, back in the day and you know, this, everybody used to go away. You would go somewhere and spend a month, you know, at some university, like we went to the University of Platteville, Wisconsin, and there everything was different, everything. We were basically in lockdown. Oh my gosh, coach, I don't know if you saw over the weekend social media, Kyle said he's about to run through a wall for this show, and I really want to team up here. Let's talk the bears in the mid to late 80s. Let's go Kyle, let's cook shall we? Yeah, I always want to hear what was Ditka's thoughts on Dan Hampton's podcast back in the day. No, no. So coach, you just said if you were in Wisconsin Platteville on campus. I went there as a fan once as a kid. There you go. So take us back Training Camp Stories when here we go. Media didn't exist. What were you guys getting into getting after at training camp in Platteville? You know, we got into a lot. We really did. And it's interesting because it became a challenge and really one of the great challenges was being able to get away with breaking curfew. Okay, get away with breaking curfew? Yes. What. Oh, buddy. Buddy Ryan didn't have the tape on the door. What do we got here? Well, one of the really great stories that I was part of was one evening, Dan Hampton, Richard Dent and Steve McMichael felt a few of us needed to get out. So we did. You know, Dale hop, defensive line coach. He does bed check. We finished bed check. And then all of a sudden, here come the guys. Let's go. We're going. Next thing you know we're at the VFW, okay? They let us in. We go in, we're playing pool. We're shooting pool. It's about 1130, 1145. You know, we used to be a proper country. Yes. VFW hangs. So now here comes the waitress. She drops off a pitcher of beer. Give her a 20. She goes, oh, no, no, it's from the coach. Oh, yes. Get out of here. Oh, no. A true story. There he is with his group of guys. That's amazing. So my first thought is, boy, we are screwed. Oh my God, we're going to pay. We're going to pay a dear price the next month. So he comes over, puts quarters, stacks them right on the pool table and goes I got next. Yeah, he's got next. So now he's shooting pool with Richard Dent Dan Hampton you know just hanging out with us. And the whole time I'm dreading this just going oh he's going to kill us tomorrow. So he looks at his watch and it's 1:00. He goes, you know what I don't know about you boys, but we got practice tomorrow. So he leaves. We leave. Okay? Now we show up. 830 in the morning. We just finished warm ups. He calls the team together. He looks at each and every one of us, and he goes, you know, if you're going to go out and hoot with the owls at night, you better soar with the eagles during day. One of the best practices we ever had. Yeah. Phenomenal practice. Yeah okay. So now comes the dread. Because usually when you come back to your locker room after the morning practice, that's when all the notifications are up there, whether you're fined or not. There wasn't a pink slip. I love that. So I'm sitting there. How cool the heck. So a couple of days later goes by and I go up to the coach. I said, you know, maybe I'm stupid or something, but you know, you didn't find anybody. And he looks at me and he goes, let me tell you something, Ronnie. What you guys were doing was bonding. Yes, I said he said I had a group of my guys. They were hanging out together just being guys and I thought, that's cool. He goes, but don't let it happen again. Yeah. Oh, I got a great follow up here because there's a bunch of guys who are hanging out being guys in Rhode Island. This summer. And you, you coached all of them. Did you see the pictures from the GMFB Pictures Kuechly McCaffrey Greg Olsen hang the McCaffrey wedding. Did you see the pictures and were you invited coach. No no I didn't get the invite. You know it was it was a limited menu probably for the most part. But what was really cool though was the pictures because when you see those those were guys that you know, when we were together, J stew, all those guys, there's some really cool, cool pictures. I really appreciate him. I thought it was really neat to see these guys because these guys shared a lot. They really did. You know, we went through some really good highs and then a couple of really good lows. But they know what it's like and they were able to bond over that. Well they were sharing it. They really were. Well the cool picture that we got to talk about though is so I'm going to Ron brought something in today. Okay. Years ago Ron, you would have a tradition where you would wear different t shirts at your press conference and they had phrases or whatever, and it was really cool thing you did. So what's a good morning football? We're like, we love Ron. Let's make him some t shirts that are kind of in our brand. One of them in particular, you brought in today, would you want to hold that up to the camera? This this is the one right here. What is this? Unbelievable. This Hey, that is the Ron Roenicke very close to the sun on that one. An album that was actually made in this part right here. Right, right here. And it's not called the Ron Cut. And he still has that from years ago. That was something quite a few of them I really do. You know. And it's really kind of the neat thing about the tradition is, you know, it was to celebrate something like I've got the Olympic one on right now. That's cool. Again, celebrating the Olympics. But you know, like during the, during the election, I'll wear one that says vote. It's important, you know, and because I do believe that messaging is important, use your platform. Absolutely And that's, you know, that's probably the biggest thing too, is today's athlete has a tremendous platform, you know, partly because of social media, which we were joking about a little bit. But it's true. And so again, getting positive messages out there, getting things that need to be said, there's nothing wrong with that. And so that's kind of why I was doing that, just to kind of show a little support. It's awesome. So you used to have you in the fancy box, but now you're with us at the table and it's going to be a weekly occurrence and hopefully more than that. So you'll understand. We really like to strip it down here. You wrote Vet Days on your card here today. Why is that? Well, I was listening to everybody talk about what Andy Reid did. And you know, that's one of the things that you have to be aware of is you have veteran players and especially guys that are important and do make an impact for you. You want to be able to take care of them. It sends the right message to the to the veteran players that, hey, I do care about you, you know? And again, so you know, hey, you got a little bit of groin. Let's don't push through it. Let's just take the vet day. You have to do that especially long way. Yeah. And especially based on what they're trying to do you know you know what it's like because you have these guys that you're going to need and you're going to need in week 12 and 13 and 14, you want to have them around. So at the beginning of training camp in the middle of training camp, you want to be aware, you want to be able to take care of those guys. You know, we took care of the Thomas Davises. We took care of the Luke Kuechly's. We took care of Greg Olsen. You know cam, we took care of him. Cam never wanted to take time off. He wanted to play. Yeah, Christian was another one of those guys we tried to take. No he'd find a way to get on the practice field. Yeah, that makes guys want to run through the brick wall for you, man. Especially if there's a pitcher of beer on the other side. I'm saying, look at this guy. Hey, look at this. Look at you in the office. Oh, yeah, there it is. That's my. That's the one he wore originally. And we love you. He held the Roenicke for when he knew Gmfb was going to become la la. You held it perfect, Ron Rivera, give us some ideas in