Preseason News and Tailgate Tips

Football is officially back, and the preseason is heating up! In this episode, we’re breaking down the biggest stories from training camps and early preseason matchups — from standout performances to fierce position battles, surprise roster moves, and some early injury concerns that could impact the regular season.

We’ll talk about:

• Who’s making waves in camp and turning heads with strong performances
• Key position battles that could shake up depth charts
• The kind of injuries and roster changes that can shift team momentum before Week One
• Why preseason matters more than you might think for players fighting for a spot

Then we shift from the field to the feast — your Week One tailgate menu. I’m sharing my go-to game-day appetizers and mains, including:

• Creamy, spicy Buffalo chicken dip
• Bacon-cheddar or cream cheese jalapeño poppers, plus a popper dip variation baked in wonton cups
• Fall-off-the-bone ribs with a caramelized dry rub finish
• Mac & cheese, baked beans, and flame-kissed Homestyle Foods Hot Smoked Sausage (watch those flare-ups!)

Whether you’re here for the football or the food (or both), this episode will get you ready for the season in style.

Next episode preview: We’ll keep tracking preseason action, make some early Week One predictions, and mix up a few cocktails to go with your tailgate spread.

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Transcript

0:09

Welcome to Huddles and Heels where football finally makes sense, and no one's yelling at you for asking questions. I'm Cindy Chiropractor boy, mom and football fanatic. If you've ever sat through a game completely confused, but really wanting to understand it, then you are in the right place. Each week, I'll help you learn the rules, the plays and the lingo, but without all the mansplaining. And yes, we'll also talk about the game day snacks, cocktails, and the cute outfits too. Whether you're here for the highlights or the halftime show, this is huddles and heels. Let's get into it. Hello, hello, hello and welcome to Huddles and Heels. My name is Cindy and I'm the creator of Huddles and Heels. And I wanna thank you for joining me for our sixth podcast. And this podcast I have titled Preseason Pressure and Tailgate Treasures. So in today's episode, we are just gonna start talking a little bit about some of the preseason action some of the games that have started. What has happened, some of the injuries, who to watch out for that sort of thing. And we're also gonna start talking about tailgating and getting ready for those first few weeks of the season and planning your tailgate menu and drinks and all that sort of thing. So first we're gonna start talking about some of the headlines throughout training camps, injuries, those players that are. Coming out of the woodwork or just getting a lot of news, for some amazing play and just for surprising everyone a little bit. So first we're gonna talk about a player that we actually talked about on last week's episode, Rashaan Slater. He is a offensive tackle for the Chargers, and in our last episode we talked about how he had just signed a really amazing contract extension, and Chargers fans were super excited because that meant he was gonna be there for several years to come and just kind of. Giving a little stability to their offensive line and their team in general. And unfortunately, he tore his patella tendon this week, and that means he's out for the entire season. And so Chargers fans are just absolutely devastated. And this story makes me think of a friend of mine who always talks about how as soon as a player signs a big contract, they always get heard. And so, Mike, when I heard this, I instantly thought of you 'cause that is a conversation that we have had so many times, but hopefully that won't happen to too many other players this season. So hopefully Rashan will get a speedy recovery and be back to normal next season. Additionally we have for the Indianapolis cults, a couple of significant injuries. Their cornerback, Justin Wally, suffered a torn ACL during practice and that is a pretty big blow to their depth chart. Additionally, their quarterback, Anthony Richardson, he suffered a dislocated pinky in his throwing hand. Initially, there were reports that it was broken. Now they're saying it wasn't broken, it was just dislocated. You can look it up online and there are pictures of it, and it looks pretty, pretty messed up. It's pretty gross. I mean, I actually kind of think it's fascinating, but most people think it's gross. You can see his pinky on his right hand about halfway up is facing a different direction. It's not supposed to do that. Looks like it doesn't feel great. But yeah, that is something that they're gonna be monitoring. Hopefully since it's not broken, it won't have him out for too terribly long. He's a quarterback. It's his throwing hand. You definitely use your little finger in those sort of situations. So they will be keeping a close eye on that. Next we have Najee Harris. Najee Harris is a running back for the Chargers as well, and he is still not practicing after suffering an eye injury from a fireworks incident. So he has not practiced all of training camp hasn't been involved at all. And this needs to be a lesson. Kids, ladies, gentlemen, kids, everybody. Anybody don't play with fireworks? Haven't we learned this lesson between Jason Pier? Paul blowing off some fingers. Now we have Najee Harris missing. Time due to an eye injury. Due to fireworks. Like let's just leave the fireworks alone. There are plenty of places that you can go to for these holidays that put on spectacular fireworks displays. Let's leave it to the professionals. Okay? And just put the fireworks down. Don't play with fireworks there. I said it. Another injury, for the Green Bay Packers is safety. Xavier McKinney. He has a calf injury and so they are keeping a close eye on him and actually they're probably going to have him pretty limited throughout most of this pre-season in order to just try and make sure that he is ready and rearing to go for their week one opener. So those are some of the key injuries. There are several others throughout the league, a lot of kind of pulled hamstrings and sore this and sore that. It's a little disconcerting all of the different injuries that are happening and some of the major injuries with some of the blown out knees and things like that. As a chiropractor, it has me a little frightened for some of these guys. I feel like they need to do a better job of stretching, not only now, but also during their off season. If those muscles are nice and loose, they are much less likely to inju and not as likely to have tendon, tears and ligament tears. That sort of thing doesn't completely avoid it, obviously, but, it definitely makes it more likely. So let's get out there and do some stretching boys. But as far as some of the highlights from different players in the trading camps, one of the players that actually was out the majority of last season due to a broken, tibia and fibula in his leg is Aiden Hutchinson. Aiden Hutchinson plays for the. Detroit Lions and he's a defensive end and he was having an amazing year last year. He was actually, could have been on track and could have easily, maybe not easily, could have broken the single season sack record last year had he not. Broken his leg in game six. But he's back this year, actually sooner than expected. Playing in full on in training camp this year, so that is a great thing. However, maybe not for the Detroit. Lions offense. Cause even though you know it's practice and they're playing against their own team and that sort of thing, they have implemented something that they call the Hutch rule because he is so fast at being able to get around that offensive line and. Beat them and get back there and be prepared or, you know, be in a position to sack a quarterback or get a tackle on a running back. Obviously it's, they're playing against their own players. They're not actually sacking the quarterback. It's more of a touch football situation in that sense. But they have now created the Hutch rule where if he gets past the offensive line and he is going to sack the quarterback, they just keep playing. They pretend like it never happened. I mean, they acknowledge the fact that he did it, but ultimately they're saying that it is happening so often He. Just so fast and he's doing such an amazing job that if they stopped every single time, he was essentially, sacking the quarterback, they would never actually get any plays accomplished. So that is pretty cool. So he is a player to definitely keep a close eye on during this season. I'm excited to watch him. I think that's a really exciting position. Exciting players usually play defensive ends, so some other kind of. News throughout the league. Tonight actually, I am recording this on Friday, August 8th, and tonight the Cleveland Browns have their first preseason game and Chador Sanders, is set to start this game. So that is interesting because there have been. A lot of rumors and things about the Cleveland Browns quarterback room. They seem to have a lot of people in their quarterback room. Everybody in their uncle seems to be playing in quarterback for the Cleveland Browns this year. But some of them have injuries and things like that. So URA is getting the start. This. Week in their first preseason game. So I'm sure his father, Dion Sanders will be on the sidelines watching that. But it will be very interesting to see whether or not this is something that they are doing purely because of injuries. It was thought to be that he was maybe in the fourth position on their depth chart, but. Who knows, maybe he's been doing so well during training camp that they moved him up. Maybe it's due to injuries, maybe it's just that they wanna give an opportunity to see what he can actually do. Who knows? But it should be interesting to see him play this evening. Also as far as quarterbacks go, tanner McGee, who is the Eagle's backup quarterback, he had a great game against Cincinnati and he did really well. Tanner was the six round draft pick in the 2023 draft, and he has been a backup. He was a quarterback out of Stanford. He played college ball at Stanford and he had a great game. He went, passing 24, 25, over 250 yards. He had two touchdowns and a rushing touchdown. So just like Jalen Hurtz, their Super Bowl winning quarterback, he is a quarterback that can not only throw the ball into the end zone, but he can also use his legs to get there. So he's getting a lot of attention, a lot of positive attention on him. Buzzing around the internet is even some things about the possibility of trade rumors and what other team could maybe have him as a starting quarterback. So I don't know if that is something that the Eagles would consider, but it is definitely something that is getting thrown around out there. So those are just a few things that I wanted to talk about that are happening throughout training camp with some players and injuries and just people to keep an eye on every week. We'll go over some updates throughout the league, and especially right now during training camp as players are trying to earn spots, trying to earn a place on the team, let alone a starting spot. And those injuries definitely play a role in all those things as well. When some of those players get taken out with major season ending injuries or injuries that are gonna leave them out for several weeks at a time. Now, some of these guys that maybe weren't gonna make the team or were on the bubble now, they probably have a much better chance. And so that is always exciting to watch. So the other thing that we are gonna talk about this week is one of my favorite things about football season, and that is tailgating and tailgating, food and tailgating menus. So today I wanted to give an example of what our standard, most common tailgating menu may be. Kinda my favorite things for planning a tailgating menu. And you wanna make sure to have multiple different things. I mean, you wanna make sure to have some appetizers, you wanna have some main dishes and your main meal. And then of course you need some cocktails to go along with it. So yeah, we always make sure that we have appetizers because we set up all our tables and our tents and our chairs and our TV and our music and all that stuff. And by the time everybody does that, you started to get hungry, but the rest of your food is not gonna be ready for quite some time. So you gotta have something to snack on right away. And with our group, usually that involves, a handful of things, but two of the most common things that are almost at every single tailgate. Unless we're doing like a breakfast themed tailgate, but most of our tailgates, we will have some buffalo chicken dip, which that is just a standard party appetizer, tailgating great, but almost any type of party. Some Buffalo Chicken Dip is an excellent choice. It is my personal number one go-to. It is something that I could make in my sleep. I personally think I make really good buffalo chicken dip and my trick is that I melt the cream cheese and throw in the buffalo sauce and some ranch dressing and some cheddar cheese and any other little spices or seasonings. I melt all of that up first and then I add my chicken and it just makes it really creamy, smooth, make sure that everything's evenly distributed, all of that sort of stuff. It also lets me play around with kind of how spicy I want it. Um, I do not measure anything. It drives my mother crazy, she asked me for the recipe and I'm like, I don't know, mom. It's a little this and a little of that. And you just gotta measure with your heart and you know when it's, you taste it and when it's good, then you leave it. But yes, sometimes I'll add more wing saws. Sometimes I'll have less. It may depend on who's there, may depend on what I'm feeling. All those sort of things. It's probably never made exactly the same twice. So, but that is a standard tailgating, appetizer. It's great you compare it with, the little scoops, chips, Fritos, regular tortilla chips, celery, carrots, veggies, all of that sort of thing. It is a tailgating staple, that's for sure. One of the other things that we have a lot, which is appetizers, is jalapeno poppers. I personally love jalapeno poppers. Jalapenos are just like this fantastic little vessel that you can do all sorts of things with. A standard jalapeno popper can be cream cheese, cheddar cheese, some hot sauce, maybe some garlic powder, onion powder, all those sorts of things. You can wrap it in bacon. You can cook the bacon and chop it up in there. I tend to think those are a little bit easier to eat if you actually cook the bacon and chop it up instead of wrap it. You can use, ground sausage, all sorts of things you can put in there. You can even, if you wanna have a little. Fancier. You wanna be a little bougie with your tailgate. You can make a jalapeno popper into a little wonton cup. Take your jalapenos, your cream cheese, all of the ingredients, just mix it up, throw it in a little wonton cup, in a muffin tin, throw it in your oven, bake it. Super good, looks cute, and taste fantastic. So when we get to our main menu items, my favorite thing to have at tailgating, and when I think of tailgating, this is what I think of, is some ribs. I love some just nice yummy, a little sweet, a little spicy fall off the bone ribs. I am somebody who does not like when I have to sit there and hold the rib and chew it, chewed all the meat off the bone and half it gets stuck in your teeth and half of it's still on the bone. And that's just annoying to me. I love a rib that you just go to pick it up and the bone just falls out, that sort of thing. My favorite way most of the time to make them, in order to allow that to happen, partially because we're outside and tailgating. I don't wanna be getting my fingers all gross and nasty. Like I'd rather honestly just eat it with a fork. It's easier. I know that not everybody agrees with me, and that may be weird for tailgating for a lot of people. It's just my personal opinion and I think a lot of women feel that way. I think men are more likely to eat 'em with your fingers. I think women, we tend to be. Not wanting to get as gross in those sort of situations. I don't know. But most of the time, I mean sometimes I end up getting up at the wee hours of the morning in the middle of the night to throw some ribs on our PPA smoker. But honestly, a lot of times what I do in order to save some time is I get those ribs, I put the dry rub on that. I let that marinate for, a good 24 to 48 hours, and then I end up getting up at probably 5:00 AM. The day of a one o'clock game, and wrap them. Have 'em wrapped in a couple layers of tinfoil, throw 'em in the oven, just leave them in the oven for a little bit, a few hours, warm, not hot, not a super low temperature, but not a hot temperature. So it's gonna start to cook them a little bit, but not all the way through. And that way, once you get out to your tailgating location, you can. Put them on your grill, on your smoker, whatever you're cooking on out there. Take the foil off, let 'em get that little crust and caramelization on the outside. That's when they're super, super yummy. And those are just the best ribs in my opinion. In addition to ribs, you always have to have a couple side dishes, some things that just jump off the top of my head, when you're having ribs, it's some nice creamy macaroni and cheese, some. Smoky baked beans, those types of things. A lot of times we will bring out, I have a big crockpot thing with the party crockpot with three different containers in it. One will be. Macaroni and cheese and one will be baked beans and one will have the buffalo chicken dip in it That way we'll just plug that into our generator. We're good to go. Don't have to worry about those little things that you light up, that go under the trays. I hate those things. We have too many kids sometimes that come and go at some of these tailgates. I'm afraid we're gonna light the park on fire and you know you're gonna see us on the news that we burned down Al Lopez Park in Tampa. That's not gonna be good. The other thing that we like to have at our tailgating that is often a part of our tailgating menu when we can find it in the grocery store, is our favorite hot sausage. Let me tell you, if you have not had the Homestyle foods hot smoke sausage, you need to go out and find it. It is delicious. We have had dozens and dozens of different brands, of different types of sausage, but the homestyle foods, hot smoke sausage is the best. We try and buy it in bulk when we can. Sometimes we have to ask our grocery store to buy it specifically for us, but whenever we can get it, it is so good. Usually we'll have a couple packages of that, throw a couple of those on the grill, and we just chop it up into bite-sized pieces and everybody grabs a few as they're walking around and talking and drinking. It's delicious. The only thing that you have to be careful of when you're cooking those hot smoked sausages is. That you are paying attention to your grill because the little grease will drip off of that sucker and flame up your grill major and you'll have burnt sausage or if your ribs are on there as well, you have burnt ribs. 'cause that flame from the sausage just really fired up. So be careful. No stand too close to that. That's not good. So the other thing that we need to make sure that we have at tailgating is cocktails, right? So of course when it's hot, you're getting ready to watch a game, all that stuff. Everybody thinks of beer when they think of tailgating, right? That is, that's kind of a given. Lots of different types of beer. Get whatever's your favorite, make sure that it is icy cold. That's the important thing. But in addition to that, sometimes we like to have something that's a little more refreshing, a little lighter, maybe not so heavy. That's when we stir up a batch of our favorite margaritas. So we often have our large Gatorade cooler, like high school athletes. Even the NFL athletes, they have those big Gatorade things on the sidelines with the little spouts on 'em that they fill up the little cups. We have that, but we use it for margaritas or some sort of beverage one of our favorite recipes for margaritas is where you actually go into the freezer section and you break out one of those old cans of frozen limeade. When I first saw this recipe, I was like, oh yeah, my mom used to make like orange juice with those things when I was little. I didn't even know they still made that stuff. But you take one of those cans of. Frozen Limeade, and I'm just gonna give you the recipe here for one batch. Usually when we're making it, it is many batches, but just one single batch, which would probably be like a picture full or something, is one can of frozen limeade. Then you fill up that can with water and pour it in, and then you fill that can up with Sprite. Or if you really wanna make it low calorie Sprite, zero. Or low sugar, and then you also fill it up with tequila. So you know, like with some of the food earlier you measure with your heart with these things. So you know, if you want something to be a little stronger drink, then you add a little more tequila than just the can. If that's too strong for you, then maybe don't fill a can quite up and use whatever type of tequila you want. It is your drink. Use whatever you want. And then the last thing is that you put a bottle of Corona Light in there, or we use Corona Light. You can use regular Corona too, but again, we're trying to make it a little lighter, a little more refreshing, but. That is, it's so delicious. It's so good. It's so refreshing. You know, it's enough alcohol in it that, you feel good afterwards, but you're not wasted, which is what we want. So a few little tips to get you ready for football season and get you ready for tailgating. Some of these things maybe are common sense, but I just wanted to share them because it is things that we have learned over the years. Number one, go to Sam's if, I should say if you are planning on. Attending or cooking for multiple tailgating sessions or football parties throughout the season. Then go to Sam's or Costco and pick up a thing of the foil pans, whether it's the. The smaller ones, the bigger ones, that sort of thing? Either one, both of them. We have stacks of both usually. And in addition to the pans, get the lids that go with them. Those lids are amazing. They work way better than regular aluminum foil. Not only do they hold the seal on the pan way better, but it makes it so that you can stack things on top of one another. If you just have regular aluminum foil and you try to stack another pan on top of it, it's just gonna, crumble in and it's gonna rip the aluminum foil, that sort of thing. Random tip here. Also don't forget cutlery. We have been at tailgates before where nobody brought any cutlery, nobody had any forks, spoons, anything like that. Again, go to your favorite warehouse store and pick up a big container where they have, I don't know, hundreds or a hundred or a couple hundred of fork spoons and knives. I can guarantee that you will go through all of your forks and you will have barely made a dent in your spoons and your knives. But then the next time you just pick up forks, you don't have to pick up all of them, but you wanna make sure that you have any cutlery available that is necessary in addition to just regular cutlery that you eat with. You wanna make sure that you have serving spoons or serving utensils. 'cause the thing that you don't want. At a large group tailgate is for somebody to be eating off of their fork or their spoon, and then they go to get more food and they put that utensil that they just had in their nasty mouth and putting it into food to scoop up more. That's just gross, and so you wanna make sure that you have extra serving spoons. My recommendation is head down to the dollar store. They have all sorts of lovely serving utensils there. We go through several a year that end up either accidentally getting thrown away or somebody else takes them home, or they sat too close to the grill and they melted. All sorts of things. So go there, grab cheap serving spoons. Also, you wanna make sure that you have paper towels, wet wipes for your hands. You wanna have Clorox wipes or whatever cleaning wipes that you feel are necessary to clean up your tables because. People spill crap all over the place and it just gets gross. And also make sure that you have hand sanitizer so people can use that. Where we are, you can walk down to an actual bathroom where they have running water and all that sort of things, but sometimes that's closed or sometimes you're in places where you don't have that. So making sure that you have hand sanitizer. We are looking at possibly upgrading and actually have a hand washing station, one of those camping type of things, but. Fingers crossed, we have to find one. We gotta find a good deal on one. So if anybody knows a good deal on a hand washing station, please DM me. So that was just a little bit of some of the news and things that are going around the league. I just wanted to share with you some of my favorite tailgating food and recipes and experiences I will have on our website. Some of the recipes that I use for some of the food items that I mentioned, or the Margarita recipe. Again, with these things keep in mind, measure with your heart with it. A recipe is a guideline. It is not set in stone. Okay. But additionally on our website, we also will have the link for the Fantasy Football Playbook. So if you're still looking for some tips and tricks on drafting and preparing for your Fantasy Football league, you can pick up that free download there, or you can even. Sign up to join us for our Huddles and Heels Fantasy Football League. So we're just gonna have a no pressure league where you can learn a little bit more and we'll walk you through it. It's free to join we're gonna have some prizes, but just low drama and low pressure just to help you learn a little bit more and help you understand football and grow your love for football. So I am excited about that. Next episode, we are gonna talk a little bit more about some of the things that are happening throughout the training camps and from the games. By the time I record next, all these first. Preseason games will be done with, so we'll be able to talk a little bit more about what happened in those. We'll start talking about some of these predictions for week one, when the actual season starts. Preseason games are great, but they really don't mean anything. A lot of times the starters are not even getting dressed. So they really can't be a true prediction of what's gonna happen throughout the season or how good a team is gonna be throughout the season. But you start to see. Some trends and you start to put together who's gonna make the team and who surprises people, and it helps you start to make some of those predictions for week one. And later on throughout the season we'll talk some more about some tailgating ideas and we're even gonna start talking about some outfit ideas and some fashion. As much as it is a great time to watch the game, you wanna look good doing it right ladies? So we're gonna get some ideas about some fashion things and some great places to find some of the, standard football outfits and the team attire, but also some of the other. Fun outfits that ladies put together. Try to look super cute. It's always more fun then. I wanna thank y'all for joining me again for huddles and heels. I will see you next time, but for now, wear your heels. Rock the jersey, and don't be afraid to yell at the tv. Bye ladies.