NFL season preview, Bucs extend Baker and Kings sign Ben Simmons

Shaun Holkko (0:30)

Hello, hello, hello, how's everyone doing? Another week, another episode. This is Stats Over Politics. As always, I'm your host, Shaun Holko, alongside my guys, Mr. Kevin Dent, Mr. Jaevon Totty, and Mr. Jaevon Totty has a special guest with him, none other than Valentino Totty, joining us here on the podcast. How are the Totties doing?

Jaevon Totty (0:49)

Hey, we're chilling.

Valentino Totty (0:52)

You guys are probably wondering, why did it? What happened to Mako? Did he go into a time machine and make them smaller?

Jaevon Totty (1:02)

Yeah, we're kicking it right now.

Valentino Totty (1:04)

Another Niner fan, Kevin, sorry. We were ready to inform you.

Jaevon Totty (1:08)

Got another Niner fan. I don't know what kind of basketball player he's gonna be, but he can... He can be a Kings fan.

SPEAKER_4 (1:15)

I'm not tripping on that.

Shaun Holkko (1:17)

I mean, Totty, you're wearing the Kings jersey right now. He better be... You wanna race in Sacramento?

Valentino Totty (1:22)

You got me. You got me, man.

Kevin Dent (1:23)

You gotta use your jersey and wipe your camera real quick. You're kinda foggy.

Valentino Totty (1:27)

Okay.

Shaun Holkko (1:30)

And so while Totty defogs himself, Kevin, how are we doing today?

Kevin Dent (1:34)

You know, man, it's been a while since I've been on the podcast. We've had a lot of things go wrong in the Dent household when it comes to Wi-Fi, when it comes to new jobs, new opportunities. So it's been a lot of a struggle, but I'm happy to be back now. And by Shaun's face, I don't think I'm truly back.

So we will just figure out the technical difficulties as we go.

Shaun Holkko (1:55)

Well, you're doing well right now. And so I think that's a positive and we will move forward with the positive. I know Valentino's happy about it as well. So guys, let's not waste any more time. Let's get right into it here on episode number 197 of Stats Over Politics, where we got a loaded episode, plenty of topics, not enough time to get to them all. And so let's dive right into it. Starting with the NFL on today's episode, we're three away from 200 guys. I cannot believe it, but on today's episode, we will be previewing the 2026 NFL season. And if you've been with us for 197 episodes, you know we started this in the 2022 NFL season. So now that brings us into our fifth NFL season here on Stats Over Politics. But before we get to our season preview, we got to talk about some news that just hit today and it just hit across the NFL. And that was the news of Baker Mayfield signing a contract extension with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He signs a three-year extension to stay at Tampa Bay. As we all know, Baker Mayfield was once a Cleveland Brown. They took him with the number one overall pick. It didn't work out in Cleveland. He goes to Carolina briefly. Then he has a Thursday night football game in LA for the Rams, beating the Raiders. Then suddenly, he's a Tampa Bay Buccaneer and that is where he has remained for his entire career since he got there.

Kevin, what do you think about two-time pro bowler, Baker Mayfield, signing a three-year contract extension with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers?

Kevin Dent (3:24)

Like Shaun said, have you been tuning for 197 episodes? I'm surprised Shaun just said it regularly around. Here we go, Baker Mayfield.

I'm happy to see the man get paid. I watched a little bit of Adam Schaffer talking about it. He deserves to be paid. Shaun mentioned he was a journeyman. He took the slight payday before, after his Rams tour. And every year he's taking him to the playoffs.

They don't go to the Super Bowl anymore, but coming to after Tom Brady, this is the kind of guy that you want to lead your franchise. Baker is a leader of men. No matter where he's been, he's always been a leader. He's always been someone that's very well-liked. And at the quarterback position, you have to be a well-liked individual. So as they move into this next realm of their franchise, what does that look like? You know, day ones, like Mike Evans are no longer around. Chris Godwin's a year off of breaking his leg. You have Emeka Abouka, you have Ted Johnson, you have Bucky Irby. Like they're in the mix of, when we used to talk about the Golden State Warriors of two timelines. Do they commit to Baker and just play the two timeline game? Or do they wait and just kind of see how it plays out? Possibly get a new quarterback. This is a very loaded quarterback draft. And I know Totty would have been mentioning it if he was on camera right now, how loaded this class is. We saw them all play in week one of the college football season. There's a lot of good quarterbacks coming out. So for them to commit to Baker shows a lot. So I'm really happy that they signed him. He deserves to be in the place. And I don't know if you watch quarterback this season, Shaun, but it was really nice to see Baker and the true human aspect of Baker. Throughout his career, you know, it's been the progressive commercials and him in the media. But now that Baker has become a father, he's become a different kind of man like the father that just joined us now. So Baker Mayfield, I'm really happy to see him back there.