Texans legend Andre Johnson was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame over the weekend. Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast discuss it here.
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00:00Um, what'd you think? What'd you think of his speech?
00:02Oh, I thought it was really good. I thought he did a good job of...
00:06His entire speech was thank yous, but instead of just listing off 2,900 names,
00:13he actually just told stories or had little, uh, just a sentiment for each of the thank yous.
00:19So I ended up, I think it ended up being one of the better Hall of Fame induction speeches
00:26by way of getting, getting the people he really wanted to thank all in, but also making it
00:32interesting for the listeners. So I thought there were, and, uh, and it also, I got,
00:37it got emotional for me because every time he would start to thank somebody from his childhood
00:42or something, it was, I would imagine like a young, quiet Andre Johnson. And you know how
00:48hard it is sometimes when you're, when you're a caregiver or a mentor or anything to a kid that
00:54just does not talk is you worry about them all the time because you just don't know what they're
00:59thinking. You don't know what they're going through. And it's really a, you don't know if
01:02what you're telling them is really sinking in. So I felt happy for all of those people from Miami
01:08and everybody from Andre's family that probably, you know, stressed out a lot about just like,
01:15is this kid going to be okay? Cause man, he seems like, is he sad? Is he happy? I don't know.
01:21And I liked it at one, at two different points in his induction speech, he, uh, you know,
01:25specifically said, I'm, uh, I'm, I'm happy as hell. It's as if a nod to him understanding that
01:33sometimes people don't know if he's happy or not. I thought the same thing. I'm like, Andre,
01:37of all the people, like Andre is probably the one who has to tell people that he's happy.
01:43Same thing, dude. I'm like, it's very ironic here. Um, yeah, let's we'll, we'll, we'll play
01:49some of Andre's speech throughout the show. Here was this, the very first one we've got
01:53queued up here is where he talks about the quiet kid from Miami and that he made it.
01:57And I want to thank them to know that that quiet kid, I made it.
02:09Whether it was a teacher, little league coach, or just someone in the neighborhood,
02:13they always pushed me to be great, not just in football, but in life.
02:19My mother made a decision that changed everything for me. Even now, I still tell her
02:26sending me out of my zone district to go to school to Miami high was a game changer.
02:35I thought, man, I thought he was great. I thought the, I thought his speech was
02:40perfection. It really was. It was a, it was a great hall of fame speech. It was very
02:45hall of fame speech. One-on-one, as you kind of pointed out, Seth, the way you just
02:49kind of methodically went about thanking a bunch of people, but did it in a way that was very
02:52thoughtful, sincere at times, funny. Um, it was a perfect length of speech. It was only 14 minutes.
02:58You know, like there, there were a lot of people up on stage where I'm like, okay,
03:02okay. Randy Gratishar. This is how long did he go? Who Andre? Oh, Randy Gratishar. I don't know.
03:09I've got it on my list of things to do today to go back and find the speech times. That's
03:13something that is, you can probably imagine crush the appeals to my sensibilities. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
03:18Crush those fools. Yeah. Yeah. I've got it on my list of things to do. I just know that there were
03:22certain speeches that felt like they went on and on and on and on. And I, I just didn't feel that
03:27way. Like maybe I'm biased because I'm actually interested in everything he had to say. Cause
03:30I'm a Texans fan, but I just thought, I thought he did a fantastic job. And at one point you and
03:35I were texting about this yesterday. I did not realize that at one point, the telestrator went
03:39out during his speech. And he just said, screw it. I'm just going to speak from the heart. He
03:44probably still had his bullet points in front of him. So he had his checklist of who's still to
03:48think, but I never noticed that the telestrator went out in terms of his delivery or anything
03:54like that at the time. But as you pointed out to me in our texts, like, well, there was a point
03:59where he had a very long pause and it, to me, it looked like he was just getting emotional.
04:04Cause the very next person he talked about was his mom after that. So I just thought he was trying
04:08to gather himself before he talked about his mom. But as it turned out, the telestrator went out
04:12in net and then going back and listening, you can tell there's a distinct difference in the delivery
04:18post long pause. Then there was like that cut we just played. It was from before the
04:23telestrator going out. He sounds like he's delivering. He sounds great, but he sounds
04:26like he's delivering a speech after the telestrator went out. He's just like thanking people and just
04:31talking off the cuff. And he was phenomenal. I thought, I thought he did great. The hardest,
04:35one of the hardest things about giving a speech is trying to figure out whether you're somebody
04:40that goes well. I mean, some people, if you're a professional actor and you're reading a script,
04:47you can make it sound incredible. For most people, including really good speech givers at times,
04:53if they try to go off script, it's just not nearly as entertaining as if they're
04:57somewhere between extemporaneous and scripted. Like you just, where you've got your bullet
05:03points and you're going off of it, you know exactly where you're going. And yeah, I think
05:07that's where, you know, they, they try to prepare these guys like crazy for their speeches. I think
05:12just partly, so it's not a disaster. And I think sometimes over-preparation might do some of the
05:19speeches harm. Whereas Andre with the teleprompter going out might've been perfect because he was
05:24probably prepared as hell. Teleprompter goes off and he can just really start to feel what he's
05:29saying instead of trying to stick to a script. Yeah. He, he was, I thought he was great. I,
05:34I didn't notice it. I noticed the pause you were talking about, but I just thought he was
05:37trying to gather himself to talk about his mom. And, um, and he was phenomenal.
05:41Well, yeah, the, the, the parts that, uh, the parts that I got emotional at
05:47were anytime he talked about his childhood. Cause I just kept imagining a quiet, young,
05:51spindly Andre Johnson. I saw all muscly, but lanky and everything and just never saying a word
05:58and people just his worrying about him when, when he thanked his high school coach and his
06:02high school coach started rubbing his face, like he was being overcome with emotion. I was like,
06:06Oh, Oh, I'm not crying. You're crying. Yeah. And then, uh, when he, when he thanked his
06:13Texans teammates and they zoomed to the guys in the crowd, that part, as I started noticing faces,
06:18I was like, Oh, there's that from like guys I hadn't seen in a long time. That was, uh,
06:22that was, that was really cool. He had a good turnout, man. They all had their t-shirts on.
06:26That was, it was cool. Um, it was really cool. I thought the Texan fans did great. I, there were a
06:31ton, there were a ton of Texan fans there. Now by the end, Texan fans were dominating. So some of
06:37that, some of the, like, if they should, they pan back for the, like the, the, the crowd shot during
06:42Andre speech. And if you were just to look at that alone, you'd be like, wow, this is 90% Texan fans
06:48there. Andre went last. So there is a distinct possibility that fans of other teams, especially
06:53because it was a long day. They delayed the thing by a couple hours because of lightning.
06:56I think that, I think the wet from what I was told from people there, the weather itself
07:01chased a lot of people away from the get-go. There were a lot of people that had tickets,
07:04didn't stay because of all the lightning and everything else. People from Chicago had to
07:08get back to the sausage factory. That's it, man. Yeah. Yeah. Probably people have to get
07:12to summer slam in Cleveland. I know at least a few people did. Um, it's an hour and a half from
07:16Canton. Um, but, but by the, I thought the Texan fans showed up really well. And that's what I
07:21heard from people there throughout the weekend. There were a ton of Texan fans in Canton for
07:25Andre's induction. I am a, one of the things that continues to puzzle me about the pro football hall
07:31of fame induction is why the hell they, why the hell they feel it's so necessary to park a bunch
07:40of dudes who have been bruised and battered. And, uh, you know, some of them getting up there in
07:47Park him in the sun in the afternoon for it. I, it doesn't make any sense. I don't get it. I don't
07:52get it at all. Could you please, at the very least just have a pavilion or something or have a,
07:59they just do it at night, do it indoors. It doesn't need to be on that field.
08:04Would that be enough for you to not want to get elected into the hall of fame?
08:08Like that's specifically, specifically why I never played like a hall of famer
08:13was that I never, I just, I would watch that induction Syria ceremony, every training camp
08:17when I was at my most miserable because of the heat and think, Nope, not for me. Nope. Nope. I'm
08:21going to be just going to go out and take this. I'm going to be just good enough to where people
08:26say that guy's a good football player. He was a good football player. Just, you know, just lay
08:31back. They always say about me, like nobody wanted it more than him, except for the damn hall of
08:35fame thing. It was a weird hangup. So it really limited him in his career. He always pulled up
08:40just short of hall of fame performance. It was strange. Here was a, here was Andre Johnson
08:45talking about the Texan fans. So the Houston Texans fans
08:53jump water. Ask me if the Houston Texans were to get the game,
08:58how do you think the Houston fans would show up? I told him you better get ready. Cause we're
09:03going to show up and show up. I'm so appreciative of you guys. You guys have shown me so much love
09:10from the day I came to Houston, even to now, just being around the city. I was walking in
09:16the store the other day, a lady. I don't even know. She didn't say, Hey, Andre. She didn't say
09:22anything. All she said was, I see you in Canton. I love you guys. I appreciate you guys so much.
09:31You guys meant so much to my career. You guys motivated me and I couldn't do a lot of things.
09:38If I didn't have you guys cheering me on, I really appreciate you. Thank you.
09:43It was really good voice. We're getting texts about Andre speech. How about the story about
09:47his sister that he didn't know until he was 21 years old. Yeah. I didn't know if we wanted to
09:52play that until a little later in the show, but yeah, we'll save it. So it's a, it's a, it's a,
09:56it's a heavy one, man. It's heavy. As far as Andre thanking the fans, the thing that struck
10:02me as he was talking about that was that I think Andre might be able to appreciate the level. I
10:10don't want to say a level of fame, but it's kind of the, his standing in Houston differently than
10:16a lot of guys, just because Andre never once struck me as a guy who coveted fame. It didn't
10:24seem to be anything that he was going for or like thought was important in his career or anything.
10:32And because of that, you know, usually people who usually people who desire fame, once they get it,
10:38they realize it's either not enough or it actually sucks in a lot of ways, or they just realize that
10:44it's a double-edged sword and that man, the same people that'll cheer for you will boo you and all
10:49of that. So they get disillusioned where with Andre, I think, because it's not anything I think
10:54he ever really was shooting for desired. He can kind of appreciate it for what it is. And, and
11:01he's got that stature in Houston where I think it partly, partly because his career, partly because
11:07whether he was a football player or not, Andre just commands a certain level of,
11:12I would have to say respect, but it's also a little bit of a fear because he's so, he's just
11:17such an imposing person that I think, I think more than a lot of Hall of Famers, he can really
11:25enjoy it and appreciate it and, you know, see it for the good thing that it can be.
11:30Yeah, I totally, as well put as I totally agree. The mere fact that in that anecdote,
11:34he told he was in the grocery store tells you kind of what type of famous person Andre is,
11:38you know what I mean? He's got an everyman quality to him for sure.