Comedian Adam Ray Talks Seahawks & New Netflix Show with Rich

Adam Ray walked into the Seattle Seahawks facility in full makeup as coach Ron Donnelly, addressed the defending Super Bowl champions after practice, and roasted them.

Mike Macdonald set it up a day early, telling the team Adam Ray had to cancel but that a replacement coach had been found. Ray was miked up, standing on the outside of a huddle he described as genuinely terrifying.

"They are massive, and they're all coming together around the middle," he said.

Then Macdonald invited him in, gave him a two-second pause, and Ray realized that was his cue. He opened by congratulating Macdonald on a second child on the way, then noted the coach still has the face of a guy who thinks girls have cooties.

The material got harder from there, and Ray came prepared with a list.

On Sam Darnold, a quarterback he has known for eight years and who told him to bring it: "It'll always be funny to me that we won a Super Bowl with a quarterback that looks like special Ed Sheeran." Also that Darnold is the palest hardworking man alive, and will be the first quarterback in NFL history to hit injured reserve with a sunburn.

On Jaxon Smith-Njigba: the only people he scares more than cornerbacks are white announcers who are not totally sure how to pronounce his last name. Also that he looks like every 25-year-old playing a high school student on the Disney Channel.

On Cooper Kupp: he looks like every guy who has offered to clean Ray's windshield at a red light.

And back on Macdonald, twice. Every ring bearer at a woman's second wedding. And a little boy who made a wish to be big, and it just kind of worked.

Whether any of it makes Hard Knocks is out of Ray's hands, and he knows it. The episode was heavy, weighted toward injuries and the rookie talent show, which is internal in a way an outside comedian is not.

He is at peace with that, and the reasoning is the most professionally useful thing he said.

"Once you get going in this business, there are so many things out of your control. So you have to truly do it for the experience."

The experience included Dino's, the bar across from the facility that functions as the organization's watering hole, where deals get done and everyone hangs out, which Ray described as a sports bar out of a Cheers-style show. They went in full makeup afterward and had cocktails.

This was his fifth roast of this kind, after a Big Papi roast where he first met Chris, then the Steelers, then the Seahawks two years ago in Macdonald's first season, then the Mariners. The résumé matters to him, because if somebody eventually roasts Tiger or LeBron for Netflix, he would like to be in the conversation.

Then Rich brought up the reason this segment exists, which is that the last time Ray sat in this chair, they manifested a championship.

That visit came before the divisional round. Rich walked him through it live: beat the 49ers, take the Rams, go to the home of the 49ers and win it against the Patriots to exorcise the ghost.

All of it happened exactly that way.

So they ran it back for the follow-up season, and Ray started with the honest read on where Seattle sits. He does not think Arizona threatens the division. The schedule is not ideal but comes loaded with television games, which is what happens when you are the champion.

What he cannot get past is the framing.

"I hear this more often than not, that the Rams lost it, we didn't win it," Ray said. "That feels like a wild take."

He also thinks this team plays better without the attention, and recalled telling Darnold last season that nobody seemed to be discussing what was happening. Darnold's response was that they loved it, because expectations are when things get tricky.

Then the reverse engineering began.

The NFC Championship has to go through the Rams, which Ray accepted as par for the course, and he wants it in Seattle rather than a second straight game at SoFi.

For the Super Bowl, Rich pushed him past the obvious rematches. If you beat the 49ers and Rams again, how do you make it more special than last year?

Ray thought about it and landed somewhere that changed the whole conversation.

"The Steelers."

Super Bowl 40. That is the one still lodged in there, and Ray's memory of it is vivid in the way only real sports damage is. He watched it with his college girlfriend's family, and it was the first time he can remember losing it completely, blinders on, unaware of who was in the room.

"There is a game going on, Nana. Sit down and shut up."

Rich saw the architecture immediately. Back-to-back titles won in the buildings of both division rivals, against the two teams that beat them before. All family business settled, as he put it, like the end of The Godfather.

Ray was careful not to overclaim. Last year did not erase 2014. Nothing erases that. But it chipped away, and at some point a fan base with three has to stop insisting it should have been four.

The part he wanted noted was John Schneider, who now has two championships with two entirely different teams, which Ray raised over drinks at Dino's and calls a Hall of Fame case without qualification.

The current odds put Seattle third at 11 to 1, behind the Rams at 5 to 1, with Buffalo at 10 to 1.

Ray declined the Bills scenario, with affection. Nothing against Josh Allen, no beef there. He simply wants Super Bowl 40 settled first.

The segment's other revelation came from the coffee machine. During a commercial break, unprompted, TJ leans over to Rich while microwaving his tea and says the Cowboys are winning the Super Bowl.

He will not say it on air with conviction, Rich explained, because he believes a football god is listening and will slap him down for it.

TJ, given the chance to say it into a microphone, declined.

Chris was less careful about anything. Asked whether he enjoyed a 13-4 season, every Sunday mattering, the family gathered around the television, he said it kind of sucked to lose the Super Bowl. Asked how many rings he would trade, he offered all six of them for a 19-0 season, and then extended the same offer regarding 2004.

Ray's tour runs through Hawaii, San Diego, Anaheim, Seattle, Philadelphia and Chicago before he shoots his special this fall, and includes a homecoming he clearly cares about: headlining the Washington State Fair on September 23rd, the fair he took an hour-long bus ride to as a kid from Lake Forest Park to see Third Eye Blind, Hootie and the Blowfish, and Barenaked Ladies.

It is also where, in seventh grade in 1995, he and a friend waited two hours at the gate for two girls they had met at a bar mitzvah, before finding them 45 minutes later at the clown game with two other guys.

"When did you guys get here?" she asked.

Ray, who now handles hecklers for a living, had nothing.