Two firsts and a ladder

[cold open. Eleven seconds lifted from 1:29 of the same stream. No setup.]

Sikkema: — if it has a lid on it you have built an oven. You are standing in a apron next to an oven in your driveway telling people you grill.

Rogers: On the Cleveland episode.

Sikkema: Wherever it comes up, brother.

[both laughing. Hard cut to the opening bell graphic.]

Sikkema: Welcome to the opening bell of the NFL Stock Exch — damn it. Every single week. Every week I do that. Welcome to the opening bell of the NFL Stock Exchange podcast, Trevor Sikkema, that is Connor Rogers, chef is back there somewhere, and it is game week, which means I have slept about four hours and I have a lot of opinions and roughly none of them are ready.

Rogers: You look terrible.

Sikkema: I look like a man who watched Jacksonville tape until two in the morning, which is what I am. Also, my air conditioning, and I want to say this on the record because the chat was on me about it last week, my air conditioning is fixed. The guy came. It was a capacitor, apparently, which is a thing that costs four hundred dollars and is the size of a soup can. I have thought about that soup can every day since.

Rogers: Congratulations.

Sikkema: J Whack says I will get to it in forty minutes like always and I want it noted that J Whack has been right about me more times this year than I have been right about anything. He called Stribling. He called Stribling in a chat message in March and I read it out loud and did nothing about it and then I put Stribling at 41 and he went in the second round, so, you know. The agenda was correct and I was late to my own agenda.

Rogers: He was in your replies about it too.

Sikkema: He was in my replies about it and he was polite, which is worse. Anyway. Trivia at the break, the category is punters, and I mean it this time, Tyler has the graphic done and everything.

[11:52 · “Football Starts Here”]

Sikkema: Okay. So. Cleveland. Denzel Ward is a Pittsburgh Steeler and the Browns have two first round picks for him, one in twenty-seven, one in twenty-eight, no swaps, no conditions, and I have been staring at that for a week and I still think it is more than the market said that player was worth. Twenty-nine year old corner, the biggest defensive back contract there has ever been, and the whole league knew he wanted out, which normally takes about thirty percent off the price. It did not take thirty percent off the price. That is a real thing that a front office did.

Rogers: It is a real thing that a front office did. It is also Pittsburgh paying retail because they have needed a corner since 2022 and everybody in football knew it. That is a Pittsburgh story as much as it is a Cleveland one.

Sikkema: Sure. Yeah. I mean, yeah, both of things are happening at once, but somebody still has to pick up the phone and ask for two ones and be willing to hear no. I have talked to, like, four people who have sat in those rooms and every one of them said the same thing, which is that the ask is the hard part. Not the value. The ask. Because if you ask for two ones and they laugh at you, now you have to trade him for a two in November with everybody knowing you asked for two ones and got laughed at. So most people ask for what they think they will get.

Rogers: Mhm.

Sikkema: And I keep coming back to that because that is not a scouting thing. That is not tape. That is a guy in a chair being willing to be embarrassed on a Tuesday. And I did not know if he had that, and now I sort of think he does, and I have to say so because I said the opposite in March.

Rogers: When did you say the opposite.

Sikkema: March. On this show. I said he would hold Ward into November because a first-time GM does not have the standing to eat that headline in September, and the clip is up, you can go find it, somebody in the chat has already found it. Hi, Blake.

Rogers: Punter trivia when.

Sikkema: After the read. Okay, so, where I land on the trade, and then you can go, because I know you have been sitting there for eight minutes. Where I land is, the boards were good, I have said the boards were good since January, I read the 2023 one again in April and it is two hundred and forty players with a paragraph on each of them and it is better homework than mine. And now the first professional thing he does that is not a draft pick is also good. That is two things. And I still think this team loses thirteen games, because the interior of that offensive line cannot hold up and it does not matter who is carrying it.

Rogers: Thirteen?

Sikkema: Twelve, thirteen. Somewhere in there.

Rogers: Okay. So I want to be careful here and I don’t want this to be about me, and I’m going to make it about me for ninety seconds, and then I’ll shut up.

Sikkema: Go.

Rogers: The boards are good. I read them before he was anybody. I have said that on this show, I said it on television in January, I’ll say it again. Fine.

Sikkema: Thank you.

Rogers: I wrote UDFA profiles for a Jets blog for free for two years. Two years. Then I drove three hours each way to be a research assistant. Six hours in a car, every day, for somebody else’s show. And I did it because that was the road, that’s what the road was, and there were maybe fifteen of us doing it at the same time and I know what happened to all fifteen because I still text four of them.

Sikkema: I know.

Rogers: So a kid emails me in February, twenty-two, writing prospect profiles nobody reads, asks me how you get in. And I have been giving that same answer for eleven years and in February I got halfway through it and heard myself.

Sikkema: What did you tell him?

Rogers: I told him the road. Because it’s still the road. But if you’re him, and you’re twenty-two, and the answer is a guy uploaded videos and got both chairs, then what was any of it for. That’s the question. Two ones off Pittsburgh does not touch that question.

Sikkema: No. It doesn’t. And I’m not going to sit here and pretend it does, and I also think, and this is where you and I never get anywhere, that seven years of watching two hundred and forty players a season on top of a job is closer to what you did than you want it to be—

Rogers: It’s not the same road.

Sikkema: I didn’t say the same road.

Rogers: You said closer, which is the same road with a nicer word on it.

Sikkema: Okay, that’s fair. That’s fair, that’s fair. I’ll take that. Look, all I’m saying is, I got laid off in March. Right? I had the job, I had the credential, I had the badge at the combine, and on a Tuesday a company got sold and I did not have any of it. And I loved that job and I loved the people and I want to be clear I am not bitter about it. But I did eleven years to get that badge and then a company got sold on a Tuesday and I did not have it, and I have a hard time telling anybody that the road pays.

Rogers: That doesn’t help the twenty-two year old either.

Sikkema: No, it doesn’t.

[eleven seconds of nobody talking. Chat is moving fast.]

Sikkema: Falcons ATL asks who wins Sunday and that is the correct question and it is also what we both keep sliding off. Jacksonville is thirteen and four. Trevor Lawrence was the best quarterback in the conference for the last six weeks of last season, and they were first in the league against the run, and it is going to be ninety-four degrees, and Cleveland is starting a rookie center and a rookie right tackle in front of a quarterback with ten interceptions. A good trade is a Tuesday. Sunday is a completely different job and he has not done that one either.

Rogers: Delpit in the big slot is what I want to watch.

Sikkema: Delpit agenda.

Rogers: He’s a dude. He’s always been a dude, he’s just never had a job that fits him. Put him on a tight end at the third level and let him hit somebody.

Sikkema: Third level in two high, and that is what I keep saying about what Rutenberg is going to do with Savage on the boundary, because if you are asking a safety to play press against Brian Thomas in week one, you are asking — hang on. Was I muted? Chat, was I muted for that? The chat so rudely informs me I was not muted, so I have no excuse.

Rogers: You weren’t muted. You just said “third level” four times.

Sikkema: I say what I see, brother.

[1:44:20 · Super Chats]

Sikkema: Twenty dollars from Porky Tim, thank you sir, and the answer is everybody says the staff did it. That is already the answer. That was the answer on Tuesday. I saw four people with jobs at real outlets write within an hour that the pro personnel director ran the calls, which, maybe he did, I have no idea, and neither do they, and the reason they wrote it is that they need a version of Tuesday that does not require them to say a nice sentence about him.

Rogers: That’s not entirely fair. Front offices do run calls.

Sikkema: They do. And when Cleveland reaches for a tackle at nine, nobody writes that the pro personnel director ran that one.

Rogers: That’s true.

Sikkema: The corgi exchange rate was never rigged, you receive two digital corgis, I receive nine million euros, that is a fair and stable market and I will not be relitigating it. Also we did not do punter trivia. Kevin, I am sorry. Tyler made the graphic. We will open with it next week and I will not forget, and if I forget, put it in the replies and be polite about it, like J Whack.

[2:09:40 · Outro]

Rogers: Same time Sunday night?

Sikkema: Sunday night, live, right after the late window, and we will have watched the same three hours you did, so come argue with us about it in real time. Appreciate everybody with the Super Chats today. Wednesday we are doing Summer Scouting corners for next year, which is going to be a nice quiet week for me personally. Thanks, folks.

Description Trevor and Connor open Week 1 with the Denzel Ward trade, the two first-round picks, Shedeur Sanders as the starter, and five rookies against the league’s best run defense. Plus Super Chats and Trolling Trevor. #NFL #Browns #Jaguars #NFLDraft

Edited by Tyler Cook. Chef out.