SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
If you're a football fan, fall and winter can often feel like a soap opera. There's heartbreak. There's rivalry, revenge, falls from grace and, of course, every so often, the brightest, most wonderful, most fleeting joy that you can imagine.
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TOM GROSSI: We made it back to the playoffs. Yes.
DETROW: Tom Grossi has been making NFL content on YouTube for almost a decade. And last season, he started parodying every weekly twist and turn in his "If The NFL Was Scripted" series, where he plays the NFL scriptwriter plus the ref plus every NFL team as himself.
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GROSSI: (As "Don" Rodgers) I believe you need somebody else to win in order for your team to make it to the playoffs.
(As Bengals) Oh, no.
(As "Don" Rodgers) Oh, yes. It looks like I have all the power here...
(As Bengals) I mean, I could just ask the scriptwriter, so...
(As "Don" Rodgers) ...The power to create or destroy.
(As NFL Scriptwriter) I really don't have time for this. Dolphins lose. They retain all their coaches, and Tyreek Hill changes his profile picture to Antonio Brown.
(As Steelers and Buccaneers) Good luck.
(As "Don" Rodgers) And just like that, my power is gone.
DETROW: Well, as the NFL playoffs get underway with wild card weekend, we decided to ask Tom how he thinks it will go down if he were truly the NFL scriptwriter. Welcome to the show.
GROSSI: Thank you so much for having me, Scott.
DETROW: Before we get into the playoffs and how you would script it, I do want to just start with this series. Where did you first get this idea?
GROSSI: So I came up with this Week 2 the 2023 and 2024 NFL season. And it was after Aaron Rogers went down, and that was, like, on Monday night, and the whole air got sucked out of Metlife Stadium.
DETROW: Oh, yeah.
GROSSI: But around that time, like, there was, like, the jokes about it being scripted. So I put out, like, a 7-, 8-minute video, and it blew up. And I was like, you know what? I really think that I could take what's going on within the league and say, hey, I can do kind of this recap while also making it entertaining and funny and kind of putting my own little spin on it.
DETROW: Yeah. All right. So let's put that persona to work. What is the hottest plotline for you, going into the first round?
GROSSI: Listen, you know, when it comes to the Green Bay Packers, of course, I will always, always be optimistic in thinking that they can beat the Philadelphia Eagles. But I think the bigger plotline is going to be what happens with the Detroit Lions, and what happens with, like, the Chiefs? Because the Chiefs, we all know, is the NFL scriptwriters' favorite.
DETROW: Right.
GROSSI: And so it's just going to be a matter of - can the Chiefs finally, finally lose? And if they do lose, what is the reason why? Because the scriptwriter's got to have a pretty good reason for Kansas City not to go all the way. But if the Chiefs were to lose in the Super Bowl, I think just the sigh of relief that would come from a good chunk of the nation watching...
DETROW: (Laughter).
GROSSI: ...Of, oh, we don't have to watch the same team win it three times in a row, would be pretty spectacular. The only other one I think could be beat is if, in the AFC championship game, you have the Bills finally - finally - knock off the Chiefs. They could do it in the regular season all these years, but they can never get it done. And if the Bills or the Ravens could finally get it done, I mean, I don't know if there's a better storyline than that.
DETROW: I trust that you can put your Packers fandom aside as we talk about another NFC team.
GROSSI: Of course.
DETROW: Lions - right? - historically bad - like, decadeslong...
GROSSI: Yes.
DETROW: ...Joke of the NFL. They've had this recent resurgence. This year, it seems to all be coming together. In your nonbiased - again - opinion, what do you think the perfect ending is for a team like the Lions?
GROSSI: I mean, their perfect ending is winning the Super Bowl. And I've talked to a lot of Lions fans. I've talked to Lions fans where they didn't win a single game in a calendar year, which is very bad. Then they went through some really bad coaches. And ultimately, they got Dan Campbell, and they've been drafting well. They won two playoff games last year, and they went to the NFC championship game and almost won that if they didn't blow it in the third quarter.
So this year, the expectations were, OK, we won our playoff game. We won our division. Now we want to be contending for a Super Bowl. And things were looking really good, and then everybody got injured, especially on the defensive side of the ball. Now, for them to go out and beat the Vikings on Sunday Night Football, the last regular season game, their defense looked great. They got some guys back from injury, and now they're supposed to get even more folks back from injury. For their fan base, like, they - it's not confusion, but it's kind of - I don't know what to do with my hands because we have not been in this situation before.
DETROW: I want to ask you about one more big story line for the playoffs, and that's a storyline that people always love, and that's a rookie quarterback, right? We've got Bo Nix and the Broncos; we've got Jayden Daniels and the Commanders - both in the playoffs. Both of these teams have had these real Cinderella-story years. What do you think should happen?
GROSSI: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, for the Broncos, it's just super impressive because they were being considered as one of the worst teams heading into this year. They had a ton of dead cap 'cause they just got rid of Russell Wilson, their former quarterback that they made a big trade for. And to come in with a rookie quarterback and a great defense and to make it to the 7th seed, they arguably have the toughest road ahead because they're going up against the Bills, who are a very good football team. They're going to have to beat their former Super-Bowl-champion former player in Von Miller, who is now with the Bills. So that's a fantastic story line there.
And then, for Jayden Daniels, they're going up against Baker Mayfield. That matchup in of itself - the Commanders versus the Buccaneers - is, hey, you have this rookie quarterback in Jayden Daniels, who is likely going to win offensive rookie of the year - he's been having a great year - versus a quarterback that a lot of people forgot about or kind of wrote off. That's always the entertaining storylines because that - that's the stuff that goes beyond football - right? - because it's like, oh, you would get invested in the people - in the individuals and the players and their story and their journey. And that's what makes this sport, you know, one of the best ones in the world.
DETROW: One other thing I want to ask you in terms of how you think about the stuff you put out - right? - in any given week, half of the fans watching you will have just been crushed by a loss. They might even be in a bad mood.
GROSSI: Yes.
DETROW: How do you think about creating content that's fun, that's friendly, that brings people along in a space where I think you are well aware that is often not the case - right?
GROSSI: Sure.
DETROW: ...When it comes to sports content - football content, especially. How do you think about that? How do you make that work?
GROSSI: The first video I did was in 2015, me reacting to the Packers losing in the NFC championship game against the Seahawks, which, if you're not aware of that game, it is one of the - oh, boy - most heartbreaking games if you're a Packers fan because they were 5 minutes away from going to the Super Bowl. And they just blew it. And two days later, I made a video 'cause I was like, if I wasn't a Packers fan, the amount of things that went wrong would just be funny. And fans were reaching out to me, and Packers fans, and they were like, hey, like, this was the first time I've laughed in a couple of days.
And what I did for all these years is, every single week, I interviewed a fan from the opposing team. And so I talk to Lions fans twice a year. I talk to Browns fans. I talk to Panther fans. I talk to fans who - you know, a good season for them is to have a winning record. And here I am complaining about, you know, when my team loses it in the second biggest game of the year, right? So it kind of gave me this perspective, and I think the other thing that just - when it comes in terms of creating - is just being able to be accurate with how each fan base is feeling. Like, I always wanted to create, like, a very accepting, everybody's welcome - there's just, like, this baseline of, like, don't be that person that's going to ruin it for everybody. Football is just my thing of - I love the game, and I love everything around it because I think it really can create an awesome community.
DETROW: That is Tom Grossi, creator of "If The NFL Was Scripted" and so much other NFL content over at YouTube. Thank you so much for joining us, and enjoy the playoffs.
GROSSI: Scott, really appreciate you. Thank you so much for having me.
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