There are veteran sports talk radio hosts and then there’s Sports Radio 93.3 KJR in Seattle’s Dave ‘Softy’ Mahler and Dick Fain. The duo hosts the afternoon drive show on the station, Softy and Dick, and have done so since 2018. The two KJR institutions have been with the station, however, since the late 90’s, and had worked together prior to partnering up in afternoons.
While I was very aware of their show, having seen it listed for many years in the BSM Top 20 Major Market Local Sports Radio Afternoon Shows lists, I had never heard more than a small portion of it, so, I was excited to tune in and eavesdrop in on the Friday Dec. 6th edition of the show.
At first, it was hard for me as an ‘outsider’ to tell who was who, as both hosts sound somewhat similar when they’re talking in a passionate manner. And let me tell you, they talk that way a lot. A whole lot.
In fact, of all the shows I have listened to for this weekly feature, this show stands out as the one that sounds the most like real fans of the local teams are hosting. I don’t mean they are always a fan of what is happening, rather they talk about sports in a way that is less like your standard sports talk host and more like you would hear in a group setting with a bunch of guys kicking around the sports topics of the day.
Where the two hosts separate is Fain has some lower gears. Softy, not so much. If he is speaking, he is generally doing so at a high volume and the point he is making will be a passionate one. It’s what makes him who he is and one of the reasons he has succeeded for so long in the market.
A Seattle Time article from 2016 described him this way: “Softy is beloved for his passion. He rants, raves, cries and shouts depending on how his teams — your teams — are doing. Fans relate to him because he cares as much as they do. Sometimes that’s the problem. Among his critics, he can cross the line with personal attacks or rash reactions. Washington State and Oregon fans loathe him, and he gleefully antagonizes them.”
Let’s be honest, every market needs someone in sports talk media who fits that description. Seattle has Dave ‘Softy’ Mahler.
On this ‘Football Friday’ the guys were forced to get their takes in quickly. The station is home to the Seattle Kraken broadcasts and with the team on an east coast road trip, pregame was starting only 90 minutes into what is normally a four-hour show.
The hosts wasted no time getting right into football talk as they pointed out that there are differing opinions at the radio station around why the Seattle Seahawks offense is as bad as it is. The hosts pointed it is most likely a “system failure, with a lot of people to blame, so it isn’t hard to see why people can’t agree on which is the biggest area to blame.”
As Fain gave his opinion, he mentioned something called D.V.O.A. – which stands for Defense-adjusted Value Over Average. He mentioned the team is last in the league in Offensive D.V.O.A. When he did, Mahler cut him off before he got too far. “We have a habit sometimes in this business of throwing stuff out there like that and assuming everyone knows what the hell we are talking about,” Softy said. “So, what the hell does D.V.O.A. even mean for the average schmuck out there, meaning me?”
Fain explained that it measures a team’s efficiency by comparing success on every single play to a league average based on situation and opponent. After talking through it, Softy deduced it is similar to a handicap in golf.
Next up, the veteran hosts did a very veteran move by recalling audio clips from The Ian Furness Show, which airs prior to them. Furness had gotten a couple of educated opinions on the Seahawks offense, both of which mentioned the team’s Offensive Coordinator Ryan Grubb who is in his first season with the Seahawks and first season in the NFL after a successful run as a college coach.
The hosts went back and forth on different reasonings for the offensive struggles and covered the entire topic about as in-depth as possible. They even got into the nitty-gritty of whether or not the offensive line struggles more with run blocking or pass blocking and the hosts showed in that part of the conversation they can disagree a bit and talk through it, so it provides both entertainment and value for the listener, with differing opinions.
The hosts brought in producer Jackson Felts as a third voice and had him give his take on the Seahawks and how they can continue to lose games despite having one of the league’s best defenses.
While virtually no part of the Seattle offense went unscathed in the conversation, it was clear the one place everyone agreed on was the offensive line. Softy added in summation, “We are [usually] tasked here every day with filling four hours of radio and going on the air and saying for four hours ‘the offensive line sucks, the offensive line sucks, the offensive line sucks,’ over and over again is not going to do anybody any good.
“But if we weren’t doing this for a living, and all three of us were just sitting in a bar talking about the Seahawks, having a drink, we would say ‘the offensive line sucks, let’s talk basketball.’ It’d take two seconds for this conversation to be over and we would move on.”
Later, I learned it doesn’t always have to be a topic about local sports that can fire these guys up. As they talked about Bill Belichick interviewing for the head coaching positing at the University of North Carolina and the story being reported that he had asked for his son Stephen to be named head-coach-in-waiting as a condition if he accepted the job, they had the same amount of oomph behind their thoughts.
As the guys pointed out, college football has never been run more like the pros than it is now, so perhaps it is a better fit than anyone would think at first. They talked about whether or not Belichick’s interest in the job is more about the future position for his son or if it could be he doesn’t think he would be able to secure one of the open NFL jobs this offseason.
A partnership with a local casino had the hosts playing ‘Fact or Fiction’ with the audience where they chose the Carolina Panthers, getting 12.5 points against the Philadelphia Eagles as their play of the week. The challenge was to guess if that play would hit and be a fact or miss and be fiction. (Turned out to very much be a fact!). The promotion netted someone a weekly $1,000 prize and a chance at an overall $10,000 grand prize.
That segment of the show was followed up by handicapper Lee Sterling joining the show and giving some of his picks for the week from both college and pro football. They ended the segment with the Seahawks, who were 2.5-point underdogs at the Arizona Cardinals, despite the team having a 9-1-1 record in their last 11 games at State Farm Stadium.
Sterling provided some excellent foresight as he said the Cardinals would be treating the game as a ‘must-win’ for playoff positioning, and historically the team has failed in those types of games. He took the Seahawks and nailed the pick as they won the game outright, 30-18.
Before the show wrapped, the hosts welcomed former NFL quarterback and current football analyst Hugh Millen on. The only negative part of the interview was they eventually ran out of time needing to hit the Kraken pre-game show on time. Millen was hot from the get-go when he was asked about some of the opinions which had been given on the station that day as it related to the Seahawks and, more specifically, the job being done by Grubb. He explained he watches a lot of tape and does in-depth reviews of the Seahawks offense to form his opinion of how the rookie Offensive Coordinator is doing.
“I have to take every ounce of knowledge I have acquired over 50 years to determine what the problem is,” Millen said. “I’m not listening to ‘Wally Website’ who throws out an opinion.” Millen said he only likes to hear the opinion of someone who could draw up football plays on a board and explain them in detail.
“If they can’t give me something that impresses me, I’m not listening,” he added. “Some guy who has an agenda because he loves the quarterback, now he is going to rip on the offensive coordinator, because it fills his narrative about how he loves the quarterback. I’ll pass on that analysis.”
Millen emphatically said about the job of being an offensive coordinator, “I think it’s damn hard.” He added, referring to analyzing the role a coordinator plays in the success or failure of a team, “It’s the hardest thing I do as an analyst.”
Softy Mahler and Dick Fain were cut short on this Friday and when the show finished, they had a lot more to give. They’ll have to hold the rest until after the weekend, although you get the feeling they’ll still be talking sports and giving their opinions of what is happening in local and national sports. That’s who they are and that is exactly what Seattle sports fans have come to expect in afternoon drive each weekday on KJR.
Dave Greene is the Chief Media Officer for Barrett Media. His background includes over 25 years in media and content creation. A former sports talk host and play-by-play broadcaster, Dave transitioned to station and sales management, co-founded and created a monthly sports publication and led an ownership group as the operating partner. He has managed stations and sales teams for Townsquare Media, Cumulus Media and Audacy. Upon leaving broadcast media he co-founded Podcast Heat, a sports and entertainment podcasting network specializing in pro wrestling nostalgia. To interact, find him on Twitter @mr_podcasting. You can also reach him by email at Dave@BarrettMedia.com.
