With Eddie taking the day

With Eddie taking the day off after working the end of last week and the weekend from Vegas, Dave Jagler had Cedric Maxwell as his co-host and the two of them ran a pretty clean show. Angels color analyst Rex Hudler joined the show via phone, and as Maxwell correctly pointed out, Hundler sounds exactly like Bill Walton on the air. John Holt hosted the McDonough Group and was joined by Ron Borges. With the Big O, Glen Ordway on vacation (an annual rite, just before the football season gets into full swing) Pete Sheppard filled in and was joined by Michael Felger and Steve DeOssie. Football guys talking Red Sox trades. Sheppard endorsed a Trot Nixon for Livan Hernandez trade. They had a discussion about conditioning drills. DeOssie said that in minicamp in March, the players run their drills. Then in July, if they cannot equal or better March’s performance, they fail – this is what happened to Antowain. So Antowain could be the most well-conditioned athlete, but if he loses one tenth in his 40 since March, then he fails. (Maybe this is how it went on teams DeOssie was on, but I don’t think this is the case with the Patriots. Everything I’ve read has the players having to run a certain distance within a certain time according to their position.)

DeOssie also gave an amusing anecdote that when he was a young player, he was all proud of himself when he outperformed the veterans in March’s drills. He later realized they were just giving a half-hearted effort so as to “lower the bar” for themselves in July.

Michael Smith and Nick Cafardo were on NE Sports Tonight on FSNE, and Cafardo spent some time criticizing Bill Belichick. Cafardo said Belichick embarrassed Antowain Smith and the others who failed the conditioning test by making them run in front of the fans and their teammates. He said Smith did so much for this team last year that he shouldn’t be subjected to such humiliation. He made it clear he disapproves of such action from the coach and indicated that he shouldn’t be getting such a free ride around here.

John Molori’s latest Media Blitz column has some pretty strong words by Sean McDonough about WEEI and the testy relationship between the two stations. Allegations that have flown back and forth between the stations are addressed by parties on both sides. From Saturday, Len Pasquarelli has a glowing article about the Patriots front office and way they do business.