The Frisky Cowboys, the Next Stafford, KC’s Houdini Act, an NFL Thanks Session, and Guess the Lines With Cousin Sal

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Cousin Sal to recap Week 12 before giving thanks for various things around the NFL (2:15). Then, they guess the lines for Week 13 before ending with Parent Corner (01:09:10). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Cousin Sal Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo Michelob ULTRA Courtside could get you closer to the game! michelobultra.com/courtside The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun? Sometimes earlier than expected, sometimes after blowing a 3-1 series lead. But what if you went to Cancun with Expedia? Save up to 30% when you bundle and save. You can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness, though, hopefully your team doesn't go to Cancun. 123 Cancun. Or if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save. Savings vary. The Bill Simmons Podcast, brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network, where I have new rewatchables coming for you on Monday night. We're gambling again. We're doing two for the money.

• 0:40Bill Simmons?

  20 year anniversary, Matthew McConaughey, Al Pacino, Rene Russo. It's just a guilty pleasure. It was on a lot. CR and I kept circling it. We kept circling it. Finally, we decided to do it in person with Cousin Sal, who's coming up on this podcast later. So that is coming at some point tomorrow night. I'm not sure about the schedule this week for this podcast. I know we're doing Tuesday. I know I'm popping on Zach Lowe's podcast tomorrow to talk about Chris Paul. And then after that, I just don't know. I don't know when we're doing NFL picks. Might only have two podcasts this week. If I do any sort of Thanksgiving, Ringer, 107, whatever, and it's not on a podcast, it will be on my YouTube channel, the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. So you know where it is.

• 1:25Bill Simmons?

  I put up a, actually a hot take today from the sauna about Will Campbell. You can check that out. You can check out my Instagram as well. So yeah, schedule a little up in the air. You know what's not up in the air? The Patriots have won, I think, eight straight games? Nine? Can't even keep track. They're 10-2, the first 10-win team. But some bad stuff happened today. Some good stuff happened for Cousin Sal's team. We're going to talk about all of it next. We went live on YouTube. We're going to take a break, Pearl Jam, and then Cousin Sal. This episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by State Farm. Having insurance isn't the same as having State Farm. It's like needing the protection offensive guard on the football field, but getting an elementary school crossing guard. Sure, they're both guards, but you can only trust one to keep your quarterback

• 2:10Bill Simmons?

  safe when the game is on the line. So don't settle for just any insurance. When you can have State Farm, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 2:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, happy 500th broadcast, Chris Collinsworth. We gave you a terrible game. We gave you an awful Bucks Rams game and Cousins Dallas here. We are on a Sunday night slump that dates back to Packers 40, Dallas 40.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, you guys must just hate me to give me that. I mean, I just, what, what, what do I get? I get seven points out of the Bucks and a shrimp cocktail? What, what kind of cheap, what, when a free entry into Matthew Berry's Guillotine League? What a bunch of cheapskates this is. Give me a break.

• 3:19Bill Simmons?

  Thanks for the turn the punch bowl, Mike. Green Bay 40, 40 came three weeks after Buffalo 41, Baltimore 40. Two really good ones. Next week was Pat's Bills. That was okay. After that, Chiefs Lions, Chiefs won by 13, Niners 20, Atlanta 10, Green Bay Pittsburgh 35, 25. Eh, Seattle kills Washington, Chargers kill the Steelers, Eagles Lions stink fast. And then this week, what's going on?

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Monday night, not, not a whole lot, not a whole lot better. Thursday night, not great either. I'm not sure.

• 3:52Bill Simmons?

  I would say Thursday night's been the best night out of the three.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Has it?

• 3:55Bill Simmons?

  We've had some good ones, like Bill's Texans was pretty good on Thursday.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Your team won. That's true. Yeah, that's true. That came back to be a good game. A lot of these games are just mostly unwatchable and then close at the end. You know what I mean?

• 4:07Bill Simmons?

  Well, we had a really nice early game, uh, lightning round window near the end. We have Thanksgiving, three games on Thursday. We have Black Friday, mid, uh, noon, which is somehow an awesome game, Bears, uh, Bears Eagles. Then we got Sunday, then we got Monday. So we got a lot of football coming up. Uh, Rams. It feels like Stafford is now a prohibitive MVP frontrunner, but that's not what I want to start with. They, they now, we talked us-

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Of course it isn't. Yeah. Why would you?

• 4:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, we're going to talk about your team.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  All right. Oh, I see. Okay. That's good. That's fine.

• 4:41Bill Simmons?

  Let's start with your team. Rarely do we get to come on a Sunday night pod

• 4:46Bill Simmons?

  with some Cowboys, the five, five and one resurgent Cowboys. What's happening, Sal?

• 4:51Speaker 01

  I don't know. I really didn't want to fall for this. I didn't because I know how it is. The media, you're, you're a member of the media, right? They want to get you excited. Yeah. You're the, they want to get you excited about the Cowboys so they could tear them down. Like, I get it. I get the whole roller coaster ride you're going. So it's like feeding a, like a child peas, but here comes the airplane. But you tricked me into eating peas and, uh, I wasn't buying it. And then when they were down 21, nothing, I'm like, F you to anybody who said they can win this game. Because we beat the Raiders. We're going to get excited about that. No.

• 5:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  And then Simmons, we really stepped up defensively.

• 5:25Bill Simmons?

  I did.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  107 yards on the last eight drives. Okay. Eagles were stupid. Lot of penalties. I think they had 14 penalties. So, um,

• 5:33Bill Simmons?

  They're terrible.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  My God, uh, there's so much to, to like about this team. There's so much, that Pickens, Pickens like that, is that the best trade of all time? Like, forget Herschel Walker. This, I think, is the best trade of all time for a third-rounder. Franchise tag the man. Do it now.

• 5:49Bill Simmons?

  Isn't he in the top five in, in receiving yards now, or even maybe even higher?

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, top five. Yeah, for sure. I think, uh, where is he now? He was nine for 146 today. He has more receiving yards than the whole Steelers team combined. So,

• 6:04Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, looking good. Fine. Good, good move. Maybe by accident, Jerry, but good job by you.

• 6:09Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. Kind of give Jerry, maybe Jerry this whole time. Maybe he just knew. Maybe he knew what was happening. Yeah.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  Well, I said plus 520 to make the playoffs and I'm not by, until they beat the Chiefs next week. I know I'm going to be vomiting up, uh, corn pudding next week when I could have just been rolling my eyes at the TV screen. After we lose by 17, but whatever. Let's see it happen. Let's do.

• 6:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Pickens is the only, uh, there's only 2,000 yard receivers right now. He's one of them.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  JSN.

• 6:38Bill Simmons?

  Smith and Jigmo is the other one. Yeah. Uh, I'll say this about your team. I watched them when I flew to New York on Monday. I watched every play of that game, which was one of the reasons I bet on the Browns today. So I just thought the Raiders were so bad on Monday night. It also made me think the Eagles were going to win today. But your team, two guys who can always get open. You can run the ball a hell of a lot better than you did last year. And then Dak, who was a little up and down the last few weeks. When he's on.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:07Bill Simmons?

  And you can see it right away and he's threading those long ones. So you have that. And then the defensive line is definitely a little different. Like you can stop the run. I mean, granted they made, they traded a lot for Quinn Williams, but it's, uh, it, it looks a little more like a real defense. The part I don't understand is why team, why guys aren't wide open all over in the secondary. That's one. And then the other, the Eagles, like where was Barkley today? You must've been doing backflips every time they didn't give Barkley the, the ball on anything.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, we held him in check, in check, whatever. The first game, I, I think he's a little slowed down. I don't, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's injury, but you're, we're not seeing the same Barkley we saw last year for sure. Right?

• 7:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  And then our defense is a little better. I would say better than it was beginning of the year. I just, we got some guys who want to play for this coach. And by the way, he's got his faults, like every other coach, like how they turn that ball over from that two yard line. They didn't run on second and third down when Javante Williams was scoring from that part of the field.

• 8:06Bill Simmons?

  They were like four minutes left.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  But just, you could tell guys are going, you watch that Elijah Clark play on that punt, number 38, right? He's a, he's a free agent rookie from Syracuse. He gets chucked all over the field and then chases down and forces a fumble. Just like stuff like that, we've been missing for a while.

• 8:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And the Nealon thing, I was watching some of the clips after the game on Monday night, which, you know, he was getting choked up thanking the team after and talking about them on Monday night. But, you know, sports are weird. Sometimes something like that galvanizes a team. You only need like a couple of these little momentum things to push a season in a certain direction. But beating the Eagles, you know, especially coming back 21-0. I'm watching the game. I didn't lie about it. I didn't put my money where my mouth was in any capacity, but unlike with this Rams game today where the Rams took the lead, it's like, this is done.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:00Bill Simmons?

  It never feels done when the Eagles have a lead because we've seen this before. We've seen them do it. They've done it multiple times this year. There's something about the pace of what they play, the way they call plays. You never really feel like they put the game away. And I'm sure the way you throw the ball, you felt like you were in it. When it was 21-7, you're like, oh, we're still in it. We can get this.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Definitely. Especially the way we scored in like 40 seconds to tie it, right? Down 21-14, then we tie it. I thought the Eagles, like everyone did, this thing set a record, especially in that four o'clock window. I'm like dizzy. I felt like I was tripping my face off on Molly, watching all the dumb decisions, the quarterback decisions and coaching decisions. But yeah, the Eagles were doing stupid shit too. Like, I think it was a two minute timeout, third and two. All you have to do is not get sacked there, Hertz. You know, you're going on fourth and one or fourth and two. He loses like nine and they're out of it. They're punting. Like what? We're getting the ball back here? So we got a little lucky.

• 9:55Bill Simmons?

  Tight end right over the middle too. Just kinda, kinda held the ball. Yeah, we had some good, we had some good bad coaching going on. The Jags Cardinals game was like a bad coaching Super Bowl. I guess the Cardinals lost. That was awful. And then the Saints Falcons was pretty brutal too. But all right. So the Eagles final seven possessions, five points, a fumble, missed field goal.

• 10:20Bill Simmons?

  That's how they ended it. Is anyone in the NFC good? Cause we were saying last week, I said to you, I thought the Eagles defense was the best unit in the NFC.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:30Bill Simmons?

  Cowboys, you know, when coming back and beating them, maybe that's not sure anymore. The Rams seem like the most buttoned up. Like when I compare the Rams to like my team, like, you know, they get inside the 10 yard line. You know, they're going to score. They're going to run really smart plays. They're just gonna, they just have that little extra gear they have. They can kind of the killer instinct that I don't feel like the Patriots have had in the red zone. Is there anyone else? It's almost the Rams by default, right?

• 10:58Speaker 01

  No, and I know we changed our mind. I hate to be a prisoner of the moment because we just saw Chris's 500th game and it turned out to be a blowout, but they're just incredibly well balanced, especially in today's NFL, right? Like not going to be too many coaching brain farts or Stafford's just phenomenal. And like Collinsworth tried to explain it like the Puka Nakua phenomenon. Like he's basically like two players because he plays like LT and just how he opens up, opens up zones. But I don't want to, again, like, is this Kurt Warner's Rams with a better defense? Just are they just going to blow through the playoffs? I'm looking at them at plus 220 for the NFC. Not a great price, but for God's sakes, who beats that team?

• 11:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm not ready for that yet. The thing that I like about them, they have these multiple options on like third and four, third and eight, and then they can go big. Like they can, they can change their look depending on who they're playing. They can put in all those tight ends. They can try to air it out. They can run the ball. So offensively, it's, it's probably the most, most complete team. And then you have the Stafford piece, who's now at 30 touchdowns and two picks. Your camera's like, I don't know if your camera can handle the Cowboys.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  I'm very excited. My camera's getting, it's getting an erection from the Cowboys is what's going on.

• 12:17Bill Simmons?

  Is that what's happening? Is Jerry Jones filming?

• 12:19Speaker 01

  It should be okay now. I don't know.

• 12:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Stafford's 30 TDs, two picks, headed for 4,000 yards and probably looking decent for him to be the one seed. And this is, we talk about MVP every week. This is the first time where it feels like there's like a prohibitive favor now.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, and now there's clips of him throwing no look touchdowns to the tight ends and stuff. So that just adds to it. But his numbers are just too good. What'd you say he was? 27? Uh, no, he had 27 before today, right?

• 12:48Bill Simmons?

  He's 30 total.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  30 touchdowns now.

• 12:50Bill Simmons?

  Did they put that, did Fanduel put the awards back up? Yeah, they did.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  I saw minus 200.

• 12:55Bill Simmons?

  220.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  220 now? Yeah.

• 12:57Bill Simmons?

  I think that's fair. You could talk me into a three to one. Cause now it's like a two horse race. Cause May's plus 220 and everyone else is 21 and up.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:05Bill Simmons?

  We'll talk about the Pats later, but May lost his left tackle today for at least a couple of games. I don't, he's been okay the last couple of weeks. I don't think he's been fantastic. Stafford's been fantastic.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  A nickname? He's okay. What else? What's, don't do any names.

• 13:21Bill Simmons?

  Don't do it. The Pats fans are already mad. Although the Pats fans have moved all of their anger towards Stephen A. Smith. So I think you're off the hook.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Good, good. All right. Yeah. Well, we have so much in common. Yeah.

• 13:29Bill Simmons?

  So I was thinking with Stafford.

• 13:33Bill Simmons?

  The first 12 years of his career, he was 0-3 in the playoffs, right? And then famously goes to the Rams, puts together those rounds, wins the Super Bowl. He's only finished, what do you think for MVP finishes in his career? How many top 10 and how high did he get? If you had to guess?

• 13:50Speaker 01

  I don't think, it was just last week where he ended up over 500 for his career, right? So how many top, I don't know, based on the criteria.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  How many years has he been in?

• 14:04Bill Simmons?

  He's like year 17, he's like 37 years old at this point.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Four?

• 14:09Bill Simmons?

  One.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 14:12Bill Simmons?

  He finished eighth in 2023, as far as I could tell from my three minutes of research.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 14:18Bill Simmons?

  Two Pro Bowls and that's it. And then when you look at the old QBs that have won MVP, Brady won when he was 40, Rogers 38, 37, Manning 37, and then Rich Gannon and Y. Tittle 37. So he doesn't turn 38 till after the season. So he would be one of the oldest ever to win. But it's just pretty, I was trying to think of other, other athletes and then other possible situations where this could happen. Like that this is, if Trevor Lawrence was better, Trevor Lawrence 10 years from now, if he ended up on a good team and we were like, wow, he was good all along. But Stafford was always better than Trevor Lawrence. I don't even know what the comparison is.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think you can make it. Like, I guess if Geno Smith had gone a little further last year or two years ago, we know.

• 15:04Bill Simmons?

  What may have happened for him in the UFL or whatever the.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. I think you're right. Like Elway, Elway was like kind of steady. You know, the stats weren't great, but how old was he when he won? I guess he was.

• 15:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but he made multiple Super Bowls. So he was probably in the MVP for.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:22Bill Simmons?

  A while. But yeah, I don't, I don't really, I can't think of another comparison to this.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. I wish I had given it some thought. I don't know.

• 15:29Bill Simmons?

  There's certainly no NBA player that peaked in their mid to late 30s like for the first time, went up a level. But just week after week, he's looked like he's the best quarterback. I don't, you know, Mahomes kind of came on a little bit today. Allen took a step back on Thursday. May, the last couple of weeks, I think it's been a little off, although we had an awesome game today. But yeah, and then, you know, when you look at going forward with the, with the way this goes, Seattle might be the second best team in the NFC if Philly can't figure out their shit. I don't really understand what's going on with Philly other than that. It seems like Groundhog Day every week with them. They're unhappy. There's

• 16:09Bill Simmons?

  some griping. They're fine. They win. See, we're fine. All the naysayers, take it over here. Then they have another, it's like a rinse, lather, repeat situation.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:20Bill Simmons?

  And that they won the Super Bowl last year. So you can't bitch about them too much, but it's, something does seem a little off. But I can't really place it. I watched that whole Cowboys game and I thought that, you know, they just seemed like they were gonna score every time they had the ball.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  And when AJ Brown scores, right? And he's like spiking the ball on your face and everything like, oh, man, that's it. Like that, if that guy's right, if they're in sync with him, that's all it needs really, right? But you got the lineman out, you know, I don't know. I don't know what it is. What? You think it's Big Dom? You think these players owe Big Dom a lot of money?

• 16:54Bill Simmons?

  I think the lineman might be a piece of it. And you made a key point, like Barclay doesn't look like he did last year. And he had, what did he have, like 450 touches or something last year? He like shattered the curse of 370. I don't know. It's all I know is this is the team, Philadelphia. This is the perfect team for the, for the city, for the fan base. Good record, they can complain. They lost this Dallas game. Multiple Eagles fans in my life, like just the entire week now ruined, might carry over into Thanksgiving. This Black Friday game looming, it's the Voodoo Bears. Who the hell knows? But I don't think you can catch some.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  But also they're gonna be fine. They're gonna be fine, right? Like if I still had a gun to my head, I go Rams Eagles. I don't know how the seedings match up, but that would be my NFC Championship. The Lions certainly didn't look great. Not sold on the Packers now with Bucks and Baker. Like that was my Super Bowl team. That sucks him going down. I hope he's not out too long, but that was his bad shoulder from, from before. What was that play even? I don't even know. I know he was trying to throw a Hail Mary, but how did his left shoulder get banged up? He fell on it?

• 18:02Bill Simmons?

  He threw it and it seemed like as he was throwing it, something happened to the shoulder that he wasn't throwing the ball. Or he was already hurt. You know what's interesting about that Bears Eagles game next week? Potentially for the two seed, which is crazy because the Bears every week win by three points. It comes down to the last two minutes. You never feel great about it. And then Ben Johnson has a video after and does this whole thing. But Philly and the Bears are both eight and three. That's the two seed because it's either Rams or Seattle and then the other one would be the five seed. Green Bay's seven, three and one. It feels like they have at least two more losses than them. Other than that, I don't, I don't really see anybody. So.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  I don't know what to do with the Bears anymore. Right? Like they, they just get it done. I know, like, you know, Ben Johnson could maybe pre-tape those, uh, post-game speeches because.

• 18:56Bill Simmons?

  They reran the one. It was a repeat today.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  That was a repeat?

• 18:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It was like when they used to re- repeat the 80's sitcoms.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  It's like SNL. Yeah. It's on vacation.

• 19:04Bill Simmons?

  That wasn't a live one this week. They, they, the camera wasn't working. They just ran it back.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  I mean, you're not going to like this, but you know, well Caleb hasn't thrown a pick in five weeks. So that's great. And they, they pick up turnovers at the right times, it seems all the time. But they're also having Patriots-esque luck wise as to which quarterbacks they're facing. It's like Rudolph McCarthy, Dart, Flacco, Huntley, I wrote these down, Rattler, Gino. These are all either first or last year quarterbacks or worse.

• 19:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And Caleb, it's okay. If you actually watch the game, there's missed throws. There's some, like I think he had 26% of his passes today were uncatchable was the stat. But, uh, but didn't, didn't turn the ball over. Has a couple of really nice scrambles and just uh, like hangs around just enough for them. So it's okay. Unlike J.J. McCarthy. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. This Thanksgiving, FanDuel, introducing a brand new way to parlay together. Oh, I like when we parlay together. It's called pass the leg. Here's how it works. Start a group, add your pick, pass it to your friends. Almost like you're passing them, I don't know, stuffing. And then they can add theirs.

• 20:17Bill Simmons?

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• 21:02Bill Simmons?

  Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. The NBA Cup is back. It's sure to be thrilling as always. I think the one thing I was like with the NBA Cup. What team is going to come out of nowhere and kind of plant their flag? And make us believe in them going forward because a big spotlight, national TV, good crowds. Who's going to kind of step up in the playoff atmosphere? The best moments are served cold, just like Michelob Ultra. Or a refreshing beer with only 95 calories. Plus Ultra is also helping you see all the excitement up close and in person with a chance to win courtside tickets.

• 21:46Bill Simmons?

  Michelob Ultra, superior is worth playing for. Enter now at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 25 to 26, no purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents, 21 plus, begins on October 1st, 2025, ends on June 30th, 2026. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes and details. There's a bunch of games to talk about. You want to give some thanks? As we head toward Thanksgiving, anybody you want to thank?

• 22:13Speaker 01

  I got a few to thank, yeah. Well, I want to thank, looking ahead, the NFL, you know, we crap. We, you know, most of our hour and a half is like talking about what, how bad everything is. But it's an amazing slate of Thanksgiving games, right? Detroit, Green Bay, Dallas, KC, Cincy, maybe Borough, but probably not at Baltimore. It's my favorite day of the year.

• 22:33Bill Simmons?

  It's going to be Borough.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  You think he's, that's what he saved it for?

• 22:35Bill Simmons?

  I think it will be Borough.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  They know what they're doing, huh? Yeah. I just love Thanksgiving so much and what the NFL does. Like I hate birthdays, I think you do too now. Like they're kind of grim, you don't want to celebrate them, right? But Thanksgiving, I feel like, oh, I made it to another Thanksgiving and the NFL is going to show its appreciation by entertaining me all day while I stuff my face with cranberries and Coke zeros. I love it.

• 23:02Bill Simmons?

  But there's a problem with this Thanksgiving.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Go ahead.

• 23:04Bill Simmons?

  The football's too good.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  I know. No, no.

• 23:08Bill Simmons?

  Three must watch games. I mean, you could argue there's one, two.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  No, they're all, of course, they're.

• 23:17Bill Simmons?

  There's six. There's six good games out of the 15 this week. And three of them are on Thursday. Like, what are they 50% of the games?

• 23:25Speaker 01

  And one's Friday. Yeah.

• 23:27Bill Simmons?

  Lions, Packers, Chiefs, Cowboys. I mean, Chiefs, Cowboys, I don't think they, they hit the jackpot with that. That's one of the most entertaining matchups we could come up with. Then Ravens, Bengals with the Borough comeback. And then right next day, like noon the next day, uh, we got Eagles, Bears. So it's a noon ET or noon PT? I can't remember.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Noon PT, I think. I don't know. I think, but you know, yeah, we should have known better. I'm not saying anything's set up or anything, but we should have made Dallas money line parlay with KC. Because they're both relevant now. They're both coming off wins. It's exactly what the league wanted. They have a chance to break the 50 million mark. I think the record was 42 million, like three years ago, Cowboys, Giants on Thanksgiving. It's if I put it at 46 and a half million, you go over or under?

• 24:19Bill Simmons?

  That 50 million seems high. So who, is that Fox or CBS for that game?

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Uh, Fox gets the morning, right?

• 24:27Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah. Fox gets Green Bay, Detroit, Kansas City, Dallas is CBS. Okay, Jim.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 24:33Bill Simmons?

  50 million viewers.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Let's do it. Very exciting. So that's my thanks. The NFL. Who do you thank?

• 24:41Bill Simmons?

  I'm going to thank the Giants and the Jets for not hiring Mike Vrabel.

• 24:46Bill Simmons?

  Okay. I really appreciate it, guys. Uh, you both needed coaches.

• 24:52Bill Simmons?

  The Jets brought back Sala last year when it was clear he, he didn't have the magic anymore. And Vrabel was available and they're like, eh, let's, let's see what we have with Sala one more year. Maybe it'll be different this year. Nope. And then the Giants could have hired him two years ago. And then they've decided to bring back Dayball this year.

• 25:13Bill Simmons?

  Passed up Vrabel again. Not that, at that point, I think Vrabel thought he had a chance to get Drake May. But, uh, I'd like to thank all the teams that passed up Mike Vrabel.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Damn, this all really worked out for you.

• 25:23Bill Simmons?

  12 and 5 one year, who made the AFC title game another year, who never had a competent quarterback better than like Ryan Tannehill and uh, you know, was coaching the Browns. What was he doing for the Browns last year? He was like, special game management coordinator, just like.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  He sold luxury suites. Yeah. I don't know what he did.

• 25:41Bill Simmons?

  He's working on draft day too.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  He might have, he might have passed on them too, though, right? Like they might have, the agent might have sent it along.

• 25:50Bill Simmons?

  I think he roped it up the Jets a little to make Kraft worried that he was going to sign with the Jets.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Right. That makes sense.

• 25:55Bill Simmons?

  You know, it's like, if you and I were potentially like top seven NFL coaches and we were going to take a new job, our one chance to, to redo our destiny, to show everyone how awesome we were as a coach. I want to know I have a QB. That's the only, I'm not even coming back until I have the QB. So I'm going to Dallas, I'm going to New England, I'm going anywhere where it's like I have somebody I can build around. And Rabel, like that's what he told everybody that I know who knows Rabel was like, I went there because of Drake May. It was like, that's cool. I played for the Patriots, whatever. It was like Drake May was the reason I went there.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  I think you're so right. And the luxury you have being fired as a coach or leaving and you have like a year off. If you're still a football junkie, you get to, like we do, watch those 1pm games. And never does it stand out more that you need a quarterback than from 1 to 4 Eastern, right? So yes, I think you're right. That was the next step.

• 26:50Bill Simmons?

  And I don't think the Bears were on the table because they were fired up from, for Ben Johnson. But if, if he had a choice between Caleb and Drake May, that would have, well, maybe we'll find out 30 years from now. We would have taken, I have another thanks. I'd like to thank Sean McFay for saving Matthew Stafford. All those years ago. Um, because we just don't have enough good quarterbacks. Matthew Stafford was on Detroit. Getting the shit kicked out of him year after year, a couple of good receivers. Now you get to see him, this awesome offense that's been really fun to watch for half a decade now. So, uh, thank you to him and I hope there's another QB. I don't know who the next Stafford is, like who the next savior QB is.

• 27:33Bill Simmons?

  Cause he really checked a lot of the boxes. I don't think there's another one sitting there.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  I don't think there's anyone. So what you'd have to look at is, oh, who's stuck up? What, who's a great quarterback stuck on a bad team? I guess Herbert had a shot for a minute, but they would make the playoffs though, right? Like, so I don't know.

• 27:48Bill Simmons?

  It's had some success. Lawrence is, Lawrence is, I think, checks the most amount of boxes, but he's not Stafford. But you could say, oh, he had that Urban Meyer year. He's always been in a bad situation, blah, blah, blah. And you could talk yourself into it. But Stafford, you know, for years it was always like, oh man, if only that guy could find a good team. I feel so bad for him being with that fucked up plan.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Think about those miserable Thanksgiving games that he had to start and just get his ass beat every, every year. It wasn't his fault, but.

• 28:19Bill Simmons?

  What's your next one?

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Uh, you know what? I'll thank Collinsworth, 500 telecast.

• 28:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Right? Why not? It's gonna probably take him another 500 before he figures out how to pronounce pass rush. But I love the voice. I love the insight and I'm going to miss it if he ever hangs it up. Like we, you know, I, I watched that Cowboys documentary and the one thing that stood out to me, or one of the things is Madden and Summerville. How big they made a game, right?

• 28:42Bill Simmons?

  I know.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Vin Scully in baseball, and then these guys go away. And I don't think AI is going to be ready yet to just throw their voices in the booth after they move on. That would be pretty cool, but I don't know if we'll ever, we'll ever get there. So, uh, good job by you, Chris Collinsworth.

• 28:57Bill Simmons?

  Buck and Aikman and Collinsworth probably have the pedigree of like, this feels like a bigger game. Cause these guys are doing it. We have some good guys on the horizon though. I think J J Watt's been really good this year.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  Very good.

• 29:10Bill Simmons?

  Olson's been really good for a while. I, I gotta say, I thought Adam and Maine and Drew Brees were good today.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  I couldn't hear them.

• 29:16Bill Simmons?

  I think Adam Amin's good. I don't know. They did one of the, I think one of the later games.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:21Bill Simmons?

  But, uh, wait, I have it written down. Cause I, I, did they do, oh, they did Saints Falcons.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Oh, the Falcons.

• 29:28Bill Simmons?

  They did the Saints Falcon disaster. Adam Amin.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  Just to stay awake, I give him kudos. Yeah.

• 29:35Bill Simmons?

  Adam Amin bounces back. The Sanchez thing happens. It's like, am I going to have a partner? And Drew Brees comes.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:42Bill Simmons?

  Comes finding. All right. I'm going to thank, uh, I'm going to thank the guy who came up with the idea that we should start videotaping the locker room post-game speeches.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Smart.

• 29:53Bill Simmons?

  This has really been a breakout year. I now actively look for them after games. I can't wait for the Ben Johnson one. Brable, I feel like has been kind of mailing them in, to be honest. He's just kind of, I, I think he knows they're videotaped. I don't think he wants to say anything crazy. Ben Johnson is now doing like late eighties ultimate warriors. Like, when I see you at the Nassau Coliseum, brother. Like, he's like fucking really going for it. I enjoy him. I enjoy your coach. I think he's been really good. He can get, he can start screaming, then he can go low, but, uh, I, I, I've really enjoyed them all the way around. I think they've been great.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  I think it's like the best part of Hard Knocks, right? Like when the coach.

• 30:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this is all we have left.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  And we get it every week. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. These guys, I don't know. We talked about this like last year, like may, is it, do they consider this for coach of the year? Like, I don't know. I think this kind of, it kind of sticks in your head.

• 30:49Bill Simmons?

  Win losses, then locker room speech.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like this guy's making a difference. Yeah.

• 30:53Bill Simmons?

  Stefanski had a really good one today for the Browns.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:56Bill Simmons?

  He went through and he went, this guy, and then he's like, how about Shador in his first start? Just immediately went going to the next guy.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 31:03Bill Simmons?

  He didn't like give him a game ball or nothing because he wanted to get to Myles Garrett. Cause Myles Garrett has 18 sacks.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  But, uh, yeah.

• 31:10Bill Simmons?

  But yeah, I, I think the next evolution of this is I think we need to also see the losing speeches now.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Oh, that's true. Yeah.

• 31:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 31:18Bill Simmons?

  We, we need to see like Sirianni after that Eagles game. Like, all right, guys.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 31:23Bill Simmons?

  Can't win them all. Uh, no game balls today. I'll see you Tuesday. Like. I don't even know, but then we never get to see those.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  In three hours. Yeah. Sorry, guys. Yeah. I feel like, you know, the NCAA does that. You know, when they have their March, when they have the, they reveal the brackets, they'd show the teams going crazy. They don't show the teams that are upset anymore. Nobody wants to show negative stuff anymore. But I think you're right. Yeah. Bring that back. I got a couple more.

• 31:48Bill Simmons?

  Anyone else to thank?

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Well, you brought up wrestling. I don't want to thank Bret the Hitman Hart. I mean, WWE Hall of Famer, gossip columnist extraordinaire. Look it up if you have to. Yikes. Sorry to do that. I want to thank.

• 32:02Bill Simmons?

  Let's talk about it.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  We can. All right.

• 32:04Bill Simmons?

  He went on a podcast and, and it seemed like he was serious. He said that the Montreal Screw Job, the origins were that Vince McMahon and Shawn Michaels had a love affair.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:15Bill Simmons?

  And that's why Vince McMahon was trying to do right by Shawn Michaels. And the host of the, it would seem like a live show. The host thought Bret Hart was kidding.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:24Bill Simmons?

  And Bret Hart's like, I'm not kidding. I'm serious.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  He's so angry.

• 32:28Bill Simmons?

  He's still mad.

• 32:32Bill Simmons?

  So there's a whole new meaning to the Montreal Screw Job. I had no idea.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Right? Like, you just didn't have it that night? Like, come on. But, uh, all right. But that's good, though. It's fun. Um.

• 32:43Bill Simmons?

  It was crazy. What else you have?

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Brandon Nimmo traded, uh, is a great Met. I know you're gonna laugh at that, but.

• 32:48Bill Simmons?

  You're switching sports on me?

• 32:50Speaker 01

  I'm sorry. 13th pick in 2011. Stayed with this. How often does a guy stay 14 years? Almost 1,000 hits. Big home run against the Filthy's last year. Played hard. Likeable dude. And I thank him mostly for sticking around so my kids could wear his jersey year after year, like not replace it. So save me a little money. Uh, we'll miss you, Brandon Nimmo. Go ahead.

• 33:11Bill Simmons?

  Bob, Bob Nemo? What was his name?

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Brandon Nimmo, huh?

• 33:16Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. I was just being a dick.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Stop it. Come on.

• 33:19Bill Simmons?

  My, we're about to hit a free agency winner where the Red Sox aren't gonna actually do anything. Um.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Who do you have?

• 33:27Bill Simmons?

  I have a, I have bad coaches, I'd like to thank, you know, we lose a Brandon Staley, we lose an Antonio Pierce, we lose a Gerard Mayo. And one of my favorite things is to watch somebody just completely botch, you know, either a fourth and two type of situation, a last two minutes of a half, some sort of game management thing. And, you know, deep down, I want to live in a world where we have six to eight coaches each year who will just fuck this stuff up. And then you have Aaron Glenn, down three points in the second half to the Ravens on his own 42 and a fourth and two, with maybe the worst offense in the AFC. I don't know, it's in the top three.

• 34:08Bill Simmons?

  And he decides, yeah, you know what, we're going to go for this and doesn't get it. And all of a sudden it's 17-7 and the game's over. You have that. You have all the stuff Jonathan Gannon did. You have even your coach who's done a good job this year, just completely fucking up all the stuff that happened in the last three minutes when they're inside the five yard line.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Did you say Liam Cohn, the down, a fourth and two, they could go up six?

• 34:32Bill Simmons?

  The Jags guy was my favorite. I was, I, that was, so what was it? There was two minutes left, playing Arizona. They have a quarterback who's already had four turnovers. There's no pass or run play on that fourth and two that I think was going to work for the Jaguars that I can come up with, having watched that entire game.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  And it was fourth and two. It wasn't even fourth and a half, fourth and one. We could entertain a quarterback sneak. It's that play where the quarterback rolls right and the tailback releases. And if they pick up the tailback, you are screwed because now you got nowhere. And they threw it deep to the end zone. The guy's like, it's twisting around and it didn't work. Yeah, that sucked. That was real. By the way, you have a kicker who could nail a field goal from Tucson and you pass up on it. You know, it only would have been a 45 yard field goal anyway.

• 35:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, it speaks to how little faith they had in the special teams. Because it's like, if we go up six, we're going to kick the ball off and they're going to have the ball at the 40, go 60 yards and beat us.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:31Bill Simmons?

  If we get this, we can win. The problem was that Lawrence was very close to five turnovers.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:39Bill Simmons?

  Any other ones you want to thank?

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Not really. I want to thank, I want to thank my dynamite legal team I've assembled to sue Pablo Torre. I'm not, I'm not sure what my claim is going to be. I'll figure it out later.

• 35:52Bill Simmons?

  He has done a podcast about you.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Whatever.

• 35:54Bill Simmons?

  It's a preliminary.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  I just want to let him know I'm suing him.

• 35:57Bill Simmons?

  You proactively going to sue him before he does anything?

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Thanking my attorneys at a time. Yeah.

• 36:01Bill Simmons?

  I'd like to thank, uh, everybody who hires old coaches from now on, going forward, any head coach that's 74 and over. I think if somebody hires them, the comedy that's going to come from that's going to be great. Like the Raiders today fired Chip Kelly, their offensive coordinator. He lasted 11 weeks. Somehow all of this was his fault. But, uh, between that and Belichick going four and seven, I think we might, uh, we might have.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  That's sad.

• 36:30Bill Simmons?

  We might have hit a wall here with old coaches. Yeah. I think mid seventies politicians and head coaches. That might be it.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Cause they want another year at them. Yeah. The Chip Kelly thing is interesting. Tate and I predicted this in the beginning of the week and now he's probably.

• 36:41Bill Simmons?

  You did?

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like he's going to be gone. Like they have to get rid of somebody and I think they want, they want, uh, Pete Carroll stay, stick around another year and Chip Kelly will probably get one of these big college jobs. Who knows? Florida? Who knows where, where he'll go. But yeah, that's just, uh, I, I, I felt for, um, I felt for Gino today, right? Like 10 sacks for minus 77 yards. Give me a break.

• 37:05Bill Simmons?

  But you could see it coming from the Monday night game. Your entire defensive line was in the backfield every, every time. Um, yeah. The, I don't think Gino's moving like he did five years ago either, which is another.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Five months ago. Yeah.

• 37:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Or maybe he's taken some, some hits. I feel bad for Pete Carroll though. This is, I guess how it ends. We've seen a lot of, a lot of great head coaches over the years. Either they stay to one year too long or they take that one last job. Like people don't remember when Joe Walsh came back. Um, when, uh, not Joe Walsh.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Joe, Bill Walsh?

• 37:38Bill Simmons?

  Um, I think I'm getting old. Joe Gibbs. When Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh came back, no, Joe Gibbs, Jimmy Johnson came back.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:49Bill Simmons?

  Parcells had that last run in the Cowboys, but it seems like that last, that last go around.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Even then, I think you could maybe pull it off with Parcells and Jimmy Johnson. The players are just so different now and the salaries and every other structure thing and the not allowed to practice. And I feel bad, especially bad for Carol, cause he's not one of these guys that's collecting a paycheck. Like after their fifth sack, there was a TV timeout and he ran on the field. He's like, we can't have another sack. It's like, well, there's gonna be five more.

• 38:19Bill Simmons?

  Sorry Pete.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, but uh, yeah, it's a mess.

• 38:22Bill Simmons?

  Get ready. All right, let's talk about some of the other games. Chiefs Indy is the, uh, the big one that we didn't talk about yet. Chiefs are down 20 to nine, threatening to go five and six for the season. Offense looked a little choppy and two things happened. Rice got going. I think Rice had 111 yards. I think that might all been in the second half, but Indy ended the game with four straight three and outs. Last four times they had the ball, including overtime, three and out. They went 10 first downs for the game, the 11 penalties. In a 68 minute game, they only had the ball for 25 minutes, 255 total. They're on the road outdoors. This was the scenario that we wanted to see with the Colts and they couldn't do anything.

• 39:04Bill Simmons?

  And I, I, I do think it meant something because this was like, if you're gonna tell me you're gonna do the 99 Rams and you're just gonna be indoors the entire time or the 09 Saints. We're never gonna have to worry about you outdoors, in cold weather, having to do something. It's one thing, but I don't think they're gonna be a one seed. And, uh, it didn't seem like they trusted Jones. And, and they couldn't run the ball and put the game away like I, I thought they could. What did you see, uh, in that second half?

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Well, I want to give, I'll start positive. I want to give the defense credit. I mean, you went over it, KC, but they held Indy scoreless in the third quarter, the fourth quarter and in overtime. Right? So Spags really stepped up and he had to. But yeah, I thought, I loved the Chiefs today and they didn't cover, but I thought the Colts, I was like, well, this is gonna be a game like when they went to Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago and it was like a must win for Pittsburgh and they kinda no showed and they got pushed around. It wasn't that at all, like they jumped out at that and Mahomes. He's definitely a little off, right? Like he's, he's not bad, but he's not exceptional. He's not, he's, he's, I guess you're not supposed to roll left as a righty and complete a 30-yard pass in the middle of the field, right? So now he's just like overthrowing guys a little bit,

• 40:15Speaker 01

  but he's getting it together. You said, you said those receivers stepped up and that's what they need. Whenever they need like a big run out of Kareem Hunt on third and three or whatever, they get it. So, um, and they won a one score game, which they haven't. So maybe this gets them going.

• 40:28Bill Simmons?

  Doesn't seem like he's connecting on those deep balls just anymore. It almost feels like, it's now surprising if he hits one. He's moving really well though. Like his scrambling is still really good. I think I thought he had a couple of big scrambles today and you know, the, the inside, either the red zone 10 or zone 10. Just weird shit has happened with them this whole season. Like the turnover today. Yeah. You know, that, these are like Trevor Lawrence type of turnovers that I just don't remember seeing from him before. But you know, I thought that was a good win for the Chiefs, but I thought that was a horrible loss for the Colts. They really could have, especially like with what happened with the Patriots today and some of the injuries to the offensive line that the Colts could have, they could have locked down

• 41:11Bill Simmons?

  potentially a one seed and the momentum for it. Cause they win the tiebreaker against Denver. You know, the Pats, who knows when Will Campbell's going to come back, but, um, and instead it's going the other way. We were texting middle of the week about Colts to miss the playoffs was what? Plus 720? Something like that? Plus 710? And the scenario was just who they have the rest of the way here because there were, so now they're eight and three.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Well, they have both against the Jags and both against the Texans left. Like that's the weird part, right?

• 41:41Bill Simmons?

  Houston next week. Yeah. They, they play the, they're four rivals four times and they're at Seattle and they're home for San Francisco. And we were saying like, what if they go one and five?

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:54Bill Simmons?

  You know, what, what if they only win one more time? Could nine and eight, is that even a playoff team? Um, I guess they'll win two, but they're not leaving themselves enough error for a team that, enough room for error for a team that seemed like they were going to be the guaranteed.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  What's the, what's the, it's asking a lot that they don't make the playoffs, I think, at this point, but the division.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  The Texans at 7-1, they have some work to do though, right? They, but you talk about impressive units like that. Texans defense is the most impressive unit in that division for sure.

• 42:26Bill Simmons?

  So they're 7-1 in the division now and the Jags are plus 270. The Jags are the worst of the three. I don't think there's any question. They're just a ridiculous team. But they, I will say this with Houston and I was glad I listened to your show with the bundle of hyphens on Friday. I felt the exact same way.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:43Bill Simmons?

  I do think we overreact to the Thursday games.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:47Bill Simmons?

  Cause I was, I was flying back from New York. So all the shows were on, I was watching Get Up. There were six people on Get Up at one point.

• 42:55Bill Simmons?

  Schrager is just, he was like Tom Castaway, just drawing help in the sand. As Bart Scott talks for a minute straight, followed by another two-minute Orlovsky monologue.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Schrager got his pocket picked. He lost his wallet and there's no telling who, cause just so many people on set. There's no telling where, who got it.

• 43:13Bill Simmons?

  Can't find it. But I was watching the, those shows for, I had just had them on, on, on JetBlue.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:20Bill Simmons?

  And you would have thought Buffalo blew their season. It's like, dude, they, they played, they had three days rest. They were going into Houston, playing the best defense in the league. And FYI, they were on the 10 yard line trying to score. Like they almost won the game.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:34Bill Simmons?

  And I know Allen got sacked and he didn't look great, but I just, I, I just, we can't overrate those Thursday games. Like the Rams lost to the Mac Jones in overtime on a Thursday. The Thursday games are stupid.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  They are dumb. And more than that.

• 43:47Bill Simmons?

  Be careful.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, you can't count the Bills out. Like it was only, it was a couple of years ago, they won six in a row, right? Didn't have to win six in a row against tough teams down the stretch to make the playoffs. So as long as Josh Allen is healthy, um, you know, it's just a slap in the face for people who count these teams out.

• 44:03Bill Simmons?

  They have the same problem they had a month ago, where I don't really know what they're doing on third and eight. We've talked about it, I feel like multiple times on the pod, but they don't have that one, like Devante Adams, what he's become on the Rams, what Diggs has been for the Patriots all year. They don't have that one guy, I know where they're going, but you know, Josh Palmer's like, they're easing him back in because he was injured. I wonder if maybe he, I'm just, I'm not even close to counting that team out yet.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  That's a great defense, that Texans defense.

• 44:33Bill Simmons?

  So the Chiefs. Amazing. Basically saved the season today, although I think maybe seven losses is it. So that would have been six today, but now they have to play Thursday. They have to play your stupid team.

• 44:47Bill Simmons?

  And your team's going to throw the ball on them.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know what to expect. Honestly, I just, I know I'm going to have odds of watching that game, but I don't know if we have like a 10-point lead and blow it or how it, how it turns out. But I think Spagnola is going to pressure Dak and that's what we haven't seen too much from a lot of these teams. And whether, whether he could withstand that is, is going to tell if the winner or not. I don't know. It's probably going to be a close game. We'll go over the spread, but it surprised me.

• 45:16Bill Simmons?

  Brutal. Lions.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Chiefs are minus 240, by the way. I think I texted you like when they were down five. I was like, they're minus 102 to make the playoffs. And now everything's right in the world. Minus 240.

• 45:29Bill Simmons?

  Lions survived the Giants. They won in OT and they basically won because Jake Gibbs had a 59-yarder. 10 regulation.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Did he?

• 45:39Bill Simmons?

  That made it by like, it made it by like this much. It just got through and then they win in OT. Lions, seven and four.

• 45:49Bill Simmons?

  Now Laporta's out for the year.

• 45:53Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. I, it doesn't, something's missing with that team. I thought the Giants should have won. That was the most interesting game to me where it's like the Giants clearly should have won. Fucked it up, left the game on the table, but uh.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Did you talk about that coach too? Did you see that? That was a terrible thing and I liked him too. Like he had these trick plays. I was like, this is a guy, Kafka wants a job next year. This is what you do. You don't sit there like a lame duck, you know, like you, but he could have taken three points from the six yard line. That would have put them up six with a couple of minutes left. It's a little too maverick there. I think that's kind of sealed the deal for him getting hired. I don't think, I don't think it's happening now.

• 46:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it almost seemed like he felt good, even if they didn't get it, that golf would have to go basically 70 yards. And guess what? Detroit went 70 yards. I uh.

• 46:44Bill Simmons?

  I feel like we have this podcast, this exact podcast discussion every year. I just feel like Jameis has to be one of the 32 starting QBs. It might have to be like a law.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:56Bill Simmons?

  We watch like there's six shitty QBs every week. It's just that needs to be a law that Jameis has to be one of the 32. He's too much fun. He's fun for both teams. Today, 366, he caught a TD. He did a weird TD dance. He threw multiple, almost picks and just did, it was the full Jameis. I loved it.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  I was watching Mahomes and Jackson struggle Lamar and I was like, all right, it's one thing if the great quarterbacks want to take a week off, a couple of weeks off, whatever, but one of the bad quarterbacks going to turn the ball over. Like Jameis didn't really do it until the end.

• 47:29Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  And he had 10 receptions of 10 catches of 20 plus yards. Like that's insane against that defense. How does the Lions defense look so soft at home after a win?

• 47:41Bill Simmons?

  You know, we have the good, bad teams.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:44Bill Simmons?

  I always talk about it. It's probably Jacksonville this year. I think the Giants are the bad, good team. They're two and 10. I have them in five either war games and they lost all five. They've blown five double digit leads on the road. They've played the Lions, they played tough, the Packers, the Bears, the Broncos, they played tough, the Chargers, they played tough, they played your team tough. And they've had a bunch of injuries too, but they, I don't know, they're out of all the bad teams. That's the one, I was even nervous about putting the Lions in a parlay as it got closer to Sunday, thinking about like, ah, why did I trust the Lions so much? Are we sure they're even good? And then it turns out.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  They have this graphic where the Giants lost all these games and it'll show like one game they're up 17 with six minutes left. One game they were beating the Cowboys with like 40 seconds, like, oh my God, when it's looks side by side, it's crazy. But the good thing about them is the little Patriots ask and that, you know, they're going to be, there's, there's promise for next year, right? You get neighbors back, you get scat about back, you get Dart back, you got that good front seven for the most part, you know, they pressure the quarterback. So I see, I could see, well, who is it though? That's what they, they deserve a good coach and I think a good coach will bite there. So that's, that's what's going to be interesting.

• 49:05Bill Simmons?

  It's a little different than last year where Vrabel and Ben Johnson were clearly the best.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:10Bill Simmons?

  Two guys last year and this year I don't feel like there's people like that.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Coordinator wise, yeah.

• 49:14Bill Simmons?

  It's a pretty good job though. Guy like Dart, you just have to tell Dart to not uh try to run into seven guys at once. They have some good blue chippers on both sides of the ball, but yeah, the Lions, we'll find out this week. They're playing the Packers. You know, the Bears keep winning and it's turning into a, if the Bears just they, it's just gonna be one of those goofy seasons where they go like 12 and 5 and nobody understands how. Then that means it's Lions versus Packers for one playoff spot. So.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Here's what I think.

• 49:41Bill Simmons?

  The Spurs that could decide it.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Going for them, the Lions? They have the best player in the division. I mean, Jameer Gibbs is phenomenal. Like, I don't want to compare him to Barry Sanders, but he's that electric, you know?

• 49:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  And you could tell within a second if he's gonna score from the 40 yard line. I went against him in fantasy. He had 69.8 points. I mean, that.

• 50:02Bill Simmons?

  Oh my god.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  They should cap it. It should never be 6, 70 point.

• 50:05Bill Simmons?

  Like just 50?

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's like when you're golfing, like, ah, you can't get a 12 on this hole. Everybody gets, it's just not fair. But I, I think he needs to touch the ball every three plays and you could, you could convince me that it's every play, honestly.

• 50:18Bill Simmons?

  264 all purpose for him.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:21Bill Simmons?

  And then the Bears out voodoo the uh, the voodoo Steelers. Pittsburgh, they got the fumble TD. They, they were playing all the hits.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:30Bill Simmons?

  The fumble TD, they got another dumb turnover. They ran for 186 yards. They're running these stupid plays. You're like, oh my god, how did that work? Mason Rudolph's the quarterback and then the Bears ended up pulling them off and, and uh, 8-3. The Bears fans are pumped. I'm happy for the Bears fans. I think even they know like this is a little smoke and mirrorsy, but at some point in the NFL, this is what happens during a season.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 50:54Bill Simmons?

  You start winning these week after week, you start believing you're gonna win them.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  It worked out. They got the good coach. They got the quarterback who's not screwing up. Then uh, they're right there. They're in a, you know, they're, they're, division is wacky this year, right? This was, we thought for sure this was the best division in football. And now week to week, we don't know which team is gonna survive January.

• 51:15Bill Simmons?

  It was the best division in football.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:17Bill Simmons?

  The problem is they have one stinky team in the division. And it's a stinky team because they just completely missed on this quarterback.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  My god.

• 51:25Bill Simmons?

  McCarthy was 12 for 19 for 87 today, two picks, five sacks. And Lombardi always used to talk about this with, uh, when you stay with the QB, who clearly you can't win with, and you move into that, you could lose the locker room territory. Where all these guys, football is this violent, brutal sport, you're just week after week, you're just killing yourself to get out there and you're lifting and you're just taking these hits and playing with concussions and injuries, all these different things. And when you have a shit quarterback, it's just, it's not like in basketball where it's like, oh, our point guard's kind of a shithead. Like, alright, fine, I'll just shoot some threes. Like in football, you can't. And he's so bad. I, I actually, I didn't bet the Vikes this week, but I did, uh,

• 52:09Bill Simmons?

  I did put small money line parlay on them. Just, I was, I was just curious, like, oh, what happens if he is good? This was the week where it's like, this guy, I don't see it, it's, it's probably never happening.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Can I tell you, speaking of shitheads, what I did? Like what? You know, I can't really make fun of these coaches for making dumb decisions. When I do the same, as a, as a better, as an avid gambler, I'm making the same dumb moves every week. Why take the Raiders minus three and a half against anyone? I don't care if they're playing Austin B, right? Short week no less, you know? Why take the Saints? Oh, everyone's got the Saints. You like shock? Okay, everybody was on the Saints, they lost. I had Minnesota on a three team teaser, plus 16 and a half. They lost 23-7. I'm, I'm the biggest idiot in the NFL.

• 52:55Bill Simmons?

  10 first downs. He, uh, he's completely murdered Justin Jefferson's fantasy, uh, season and maybe his life for, as a fantasy guy.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Addison too, nothing, yep.

• 53:08Bill Simmons?

  What was on a scale of one to 10, 10 is Larry Fitzgerald for like three years on the Cardinals?

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:14Bill Simmons?

  Jefferson's like an eight because it's the combo of not only you're not going to make big plays and this guy's your quarterback, but he also might like to capitate you.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 53:22Bill Simmons?

  Like that second pick he threw, if the guy wasn't going to pick it, he was going to completely lay out the receiver. If that guy was going to catch it, but uh.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Can I read you the best J J McCarthy stat that actually would have saved those receivers? J J McCarthy would have had a higher passing rating, a passer rating, if he would have just spiked the ball on every play. He would have had a 39.6 versus the 34.2 he carried. He should try that next week. Who knows? Maybe it'll work.

• 53:53Bill Simmons?

  I sent you that locker room. That's, that's brutal. I sent that locker room clip of him after week one.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:59Bill Simmons?

  This guy will follow him. It's like, uh oh.

• 54:05Bill Simmons?

  A quarterback who uh, I don't know what's going on with this zombie Lamar Jackson.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:13Bill Simmons?

  He just, it looks like he's been replaced. It was like that story of the lady who's, who claims she saw people on the airplane. Remember that story?

• 54:21Speaker 01

  Right, right, right. Yeah.

• 54:23Bill Simmons?

  She's like, they're there. And everyone thought she was nuts. And then she gave an interview three weeks later and she's, she looked different.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:29Bill Simmons?

  And people thought she'd been replaced. I'm in the Lamar might have been the replace, replaced. Doesn't even, it might be Tavarez Jackson. I don't know. Like one of those type of backups from over the years. I don't know who it is.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  There are a lot of popular names. Lamar Jackson. Yeah. I don't know, man. This is one of those games where I scratch my head like, and I was saying on another text chain, like maybe these teams we're hoping are good, just won't get there. Right? Like there's a chance, right? The Ravens and the Chiefs and the Bills are just not two out of three.

• 54:58Bill Simmons?

  I've been saying that with the Ravens. I don't think they have it. I really don't. I don't think they're good enough this year. Cause I have some Pats fans in my life are like, oh, this is going to suck if we get

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:08Bill Simmons?

  two seed and the Ravens get the seven. I'm like, what good game have the Ravens played this year? Like at some point it's, it's Thanksgiving. We haven't seen them play good yet.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  They are not good. When he can't scramble and when he can't do his thing, they're not good. Their receivers are idiots. Zay Flowers getting knocked over by passes that are hitting him in the chest. And yet they're like, I'm looking now, they're minus 425 to win the division. This team was my, they were one and five and they're gonna have this division wrapped up before Thanksgiving? You kidding me?

• 55:37Bill Simmons?

  They won five straight.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:41Bill Simmons?

  Well, they're, one of the teams they're going against is the Jaguars who beat Arizona in OT. We talked about it earlier. Lawrence had the full deloam in play. He had four turnovers, including a fumble TD. I could remember if a deloam was, the full deloam was, there has to be a defensive TD and it has to be five turnovers total.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:59Bill Simmons?

  And it could be four picks and a fumble or five picks, some combination, but it has to get to five.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:03Bill Simmons?

  So he had the full deloam was in play for a good hour, but he got out of it with only four turnovers. The announcers, at one point, like he threw, he threw another terrible pick and they cut to Liam Cohen and he was like, doing this, like he thought there's a flag, but it wasn't. He was like, what the fuck did he just see?

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 56:24Bill Simmons?

  And that pick. So they come back, they get the ball again and he throws a completion. And the announcers are praising Lawrence. It's like, now that's a pro right there. You gotta shake off that last pass. Trevor Lawrence shook it off. And I'm thinking like, who has more experience shaking off a terrible pass than Trevor Lawrence? The guy's got 10 years of experience of shaking it off.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  The pass after his interception, he hits 65% on that one pass. But then it goes back, he'll throw another one. But yeah.

• 56:56Bill Simmons?

  Of course he shook it off. He throws interceptions all the time.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Shake your hair out. I think he, if we, if we put aside the first year quarterbacks or the quarterbacks who are completely washed, I think he makes the worst decisions out of any quarterback. Right? Right? If you're not in that new quarterback or just done quarterback bin, that's the nicest thing I could say about him, honestly.

• 57:17Bill Simmons?

  I had him in Ringer 107, I had the Jags, plus I bet on them.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:21Bill Simmons?

  And it's just a roller coaster ride for three hours.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:25Bill Simmons?

  Every time he goes back to pass, you don't feel like anything good's gonna happen.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:29Bill Simmons?

  So I was thinking about him versus Jameis.

• 57:34Bill Simmons?

  Lawrence's career record now is 29 and 42. Jameis is 36 and 52. Lawrence has one playoff win. Jameis has zero playoff starts. Lawrence has 83 TDs, 54 picks. Jameis has 154 TDs, 112 picks. And that, and Lawrence has 6.7 yards per attempt.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Jameis was in tougher divisions, I think, right? Wouldn't you say? He was in that AFC North for a while. I guess the Saints.

• 58:04Bill Simmons?

  Jameis's career was longer. I think he was more entertaining. But he, they're basically the same QB is my point.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:14Bill Simmons?

  And I didn't realize that until I was watching both of them today. And I was like, what's the difference between these two guys? Something really good might happen. Something really terrible might happen.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  Well, Jameis is more entertaining.

• 58:24Bill Simmons?

  Better hang.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. When the good thing does happen. But yeah, this, I hated this game. I was like, how is this game still going on? I know we don't have cross offs for coach of the year, but I'd like to guide my Sharpie right through both these guys' names. Unbelievable.

• 58:40Bill Simmons?

  Well, Gannon might get fired.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Liam Cohen, pretty tough. And then the, the only other one was Saints Falcons. Where, uh, we, everyone had this on Thursday. And by Sunday, it became clear that something horrible was going to happen. Everybody loved the Saints. The Saints missed two field goals. They fucked up two different first and goal from inside the two situations. So they actually left 20 points on the table. And, uh, and Kirk Cousins, who, you know, was mostly Kirk Cousins, but did have a couple of good plays. Here's my question, Sal.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:16Bill Simmons?

  Is this our first cross on, our first uncross off the Falcons?

• 59:21Speaker 01

  For who?

• 59:22Bill Simmons?

  So we crossed them off. What do we do?

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Because of the Baker thing?

• 59:26Bill Simmons?

  Mayfield might be hurt.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  I know, I know.

• 59:28Bill Simmons?

  They're four and seven. They're two behind Tampa. They're two behind Carolina, who plays San Francisco tomorrow night. They play the Jets in New York next week. Atlanta plays home Seattle, at Tampa, at Zona, home Rams, home Saints. They might get to eight wins. Could eight and nine win the division?

• 59:49Speaker 01

  I think they're one of those teams that for years and years, you just shouldn't pay attention to them. Don't bet on them. Don't bet against them. It's like a dog, like a neighborhood dog, you know, could be, has a few bites under his, you know, in his repertoire. And you're like, just don't make eye contact with them. Stay away, but.

• 1:00:05Bill Simmons?

  It's like my dog, Murph.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I, I, boy, I mean, cause if Baker's out, you got that division Teddy two gloves. Two gloves, Cousins, mother shucker, and Bryce Young, who before last week, had three straight games under 150 yards. I can't believe this division now.

• 1:00:23Bill Simmons?

  Well, Carolina plays Tampa twice.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  They have it tough. Yeah.

• 1:00:29Bill Simmons?

  Teddy, if Teddy Bridgewater is the Tampa QB the rest of the way, I think all bets are off with this division. And right now it says, is this right?

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  Panthers are a half game up now, right? Or they're even right now. No, they're even. Yeah.

• 1:00:44Bill Simmons?

  It says on Fanduel, it says Tampa's minus 360.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  Oh, they have odds.

• 1:00:48Bill Simmons?

  Carolina's plus 310. And Atlanta's 55 to one? How's that possible? Like eight, nine might win the division. They could get to eight wins.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  With the Falcons. So Kirk Cousins would have to win. I mean, House and I were saying.

• 1:01:03Bill Simmons?

  I would bet it.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  55 to one. It is.

• 1:01:06Bill Simmons?

  55 to one.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Upside down division. Yeah. I was thinking this was his last start ever before the game. House and I were talking about it, but nope. Looks like he's a top two quarterback in that division now.

• 1:01:18Bill Simmons?

  All right. Well, let's, let's play it out. Tampa loses to Arizona next week. They're six and six. Carolina loses in San Francisco and home to the Rams. They're six and seven. And then Atlanta wins in New York against the Jets. They'd be five and seven. They'd be. A game back.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  They're right there.

• 1:01:39Bill Simmons?

  And by the way, Penix wasn't any, any hot shit. It's not like he was awesome. I didn't like betting on Penix. I think I've lost more money on Atlanta this year than all the other teams combined. I think I'm like one and eight on Falcons games this year.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  They're the a whole neighborhood dog. Don't look at them. Just don't even, don't make eye contact. Yeah. I mean, Drake London being out is rough, right? Like you don't want to pair, uh, all of a sudden introduce Kirk Cousins to an offense that doesn't have its best receiver. But yeah, you're right.

• 1:02:11Bill Simmons?

  It should have been a red flag when all of us like the Saints, like pretty much everybody who picks games bets on them.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:18Bill Simmons?

  We all love the Saints. They're two and eight and they had Tyler Shuck as their quarterback and we're just like Saints lock it in. What could go wrong?

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:28Bill Simmons?

  Lot of stuff.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  You know, it's, it's cute to have Tyler Shuck when it kicks off at 10 a.m. on the West Coast. But when he's down like 10 points in the third quarter, like, ooh, boy, this is a, this couldn't be more done this bet.

• 1:02:40Bill Simmons?

  You're excited to see Taysom Hill.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42Bill Simmons?

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• 1:03:25Bill Simmons?

  Whether it's a pumpkin spice coffee that goes splat in your seat or a weekend tailgate that leaves your trunk full of gear and who knows what? You're going to want WeatherTech in your vehicle, whether you call it fall, autumn or spooky season. Whether the mess is your fault, the kids, the dogs or the weather's fault, you're going to want WeatherTech for American made floor liners and a cargo liner that laugh in the face of fall weather. Visit weatherTech.com today. Browns Raiders, we talked about this, uh, just quickly on Shador, cause he was terrible last week. We talked about it. He came in cold. He, he had a couple of good plays today.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  He did.

• 1:03:58Bill Simmons?

  Uh, a couple of bad plays, but I thought for the most part. Was a little more encouraging than Dylan Gabriel because there was at least a little bit of explosiveness. He had a bad pick, missed a couple guys, but uh.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  That 50 yard pass was great. The touchdown they keep showing is like, that might've been backward pass. I don't know, but.

• 1:04:19Bill Simmons?

  The screen pass, yeah.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  So, um, but no, it's, uh, look, he didn't, he didn't get sacked as much as, uh, his counterpart did and that helped.

• 1:04:28Bill Simmons?

  That was nice. And then, uh, Seattle held off Tennessee.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Bill Simmons?

  In a game that everybody had in a tease.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:37Bill Simmons?

  So I watched a little of this, um, just because I had tease interest. Cam Ward reminds me a little of what Drake was like last year on just an awful team with a, with an interim coach, basically. And play, having to play from behind, but makes like good throws and you can see the seeds of, oh, like I could see like a really smart, good coach being like that. I'm going to, I want to back that guy. We could put some weapons around this dude. I don't know. I thought, I just like how he's played the last couple of weeks, even though they're losing.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  He was good today. I bet them over 13 and a half points, which I thought was like a home team, 13 and a half, uh, the total points scored, but he has that play and he's done it a few times now, which makes me think it's actually in the playbook where he rolls right, his right foot is almost out of bounds and he slings it deep across the middle and uh, and he hits on it. So.

• 1:05:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  He's fun too.

• 1:05:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. JSN 1313 receiving yards, 2,000 in play. The record is 1964 for Megatron. So that's.

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  80 receptions.

• 1:05:42Bill Simmons?

  So they have six games left, 687 yards. It's like a little bit doable.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  He is, uh, I think he's plus 130. I don't know if the odds went away for offensive player of the year. Do you give it to him or do you give it to Taylor?

• 1:05:57Bill Simmons?

  Taylor's slipping.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:00Bill Simmons?

  Gibbs has to be in there too. Uh, and then the only other thing is we have 12 cross off teams because we're adding Minnesota is officially added today.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  Good.

• 1:06:12Bill Simmons?

  Unless you want to uncross Atlanta. Do you want to uncross Atlanta?

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  I don't like uncrossing it. That's a bad precedent. It's not a good example for the kids.

• 1:06:20Bill Simmons?

  All right. So we have 12 cross off teams, Jets, Browns, Tennessee, Miami, New Orleans, Vegas, Giants, Arizona, Washington, Cincinnati, Atlanta, and Minnesota. 20 teams still in the mix, 10 in each conference. Your team has the worst record of 5-5-1, but you have Tampa falling toward you. Basically, there's going to be one in that division. Then you have to hope Detroit, Green Bay, one of those falls.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Lots of hope, lots of hope.

• 1:06:46Bill Simmons?

  It's going to be tough. Yeah, you're going to need probably a Niners collapse after that. You need them to beat Carolina and then collapse. Some things need to happen. All right. Guess the lines.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Who I won last? Hold on. Did we skip a game?

• 1:06:59Bill Simmons?

  What did we skip?

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  A pretty important game in your life.

• 1:07:03Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, I guess we did.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  I'm fine with it. I'm okay.

• 1:07:08Bill Simmons?

  I didn't really want to talk about it.

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  Really? That's a win. You said you liked the adversity.

• 1:07:16Bill Simmons?

  I don't know how long our left tackle is out. We lost the entire left side of the line today, but before halftime and the Will Campbell thing looked bad. And if he's out for the year, that the team doesn't, there's no way.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  They're sprains though. Aren't they sprains? I thought they already said.

• 1:07:32Bill Simmons?

  But I don't know. We're taping this. It's 9:18 Pacific time. It was really dark today. It was the worst. It was one of those like your team wins, but you just have a pit in your stomach. They're not going to be able to block without those guys. And I don't know how long Campbell's going to be out. They might have banked enough wins to get the one seed, but.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Listen to you. You're really down on this.

• 1:07:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, the offensive line was like barely good to begin with. It was probably like a C or a C minus offensive line with Campbell, who was the best guy on the line.

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:01Bill Simmons?

  And, uh, you know, it's just, they didn't have any injuries.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  He did okay in the fourth quarter without him. Not great, but he converted some third.

• 1:08:10Bill Simmons?

  Cincinnati has a terrible defense in that. You know, they left a lot of stuff on the red zone. It wasn't a great Patriot game. They were, they weren't lucky. They deserved their better team, but you know, it's a game they should have won double figures.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  When, when Drake threw the interception, you went down seven or 10, actually. I was like, all right, I could be snarky here.

• 1:08:33Bill Simmons?

  No, it was fine. They've done that all year.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm, I'll be right about Drake maybe for the next 45 seconds, or we could be smart and live bet the Patriots at minus 102. So I did that.

• 1:08:44Bill Simmons?

  I mean, you're, you're, he's, he does things that the other quarterbacks don't do, like third and 11 from his own seven. He'll throw long downfield, but a high percentage pass. Like, he's not afraid. And the next play, you threw a long, like pass interference, and now you're on the five yard line. So you could get, you can get, you can move down there. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. The play to, that throw to Pop Douglas, which was the best play of the game that he had. See, there's basically three people. He has like this one little window to hit him in. He hits him perfectly. And then the next play was a touchdown. The interference was actually a great interference because it ended up like screwing them up. And I think they had to settle, I think they might've had to settle for a field goal instead of a touchdown, but it was like, it was clearly going to be a touchdown.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  Was that when they didn't QB sneak him? Or was that the other way? No, that was.

• 1:09:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they finally did QB sneak and then they didn't get it. So I, after all the complaining I did, they, they have to figure out the short yardage thing by, by January. And I don't know how they're going to figure it out.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  Did they maybe retire the quarterback sneak under, in Brady's honor? Like, we'll never do the quarterback because he was, no one was better than him at it, you know? I just.

• 1:09:48Bill Simmons?

  Henshaw and I talk about this all the time. It was, it was, I think he was like 842 for 845 on QB sneaks, Brady. So like some crazy stack. God only knows what it was, but.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  It's like, in wrestling, they, they, they said wrestlers couldn't do the chop anymore in honor of Ric Flair. Remember that? Like the chop went away? It's like, oh, that seems like a pretty aggressive stance there.

• 1:10:12Bill Simmons?

  They got to figure it out because it, it's going to cost them one of these games when it actually matters. When they can't get these third and ones or third, third and goal from the one yard line, fourth and two, they're just not getting them. But yeah, the Will Campbell thing, not great. And they, then they lost a guard too. They lost the whole left side of the line.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  Geez, you're so down.

• 1:10:30Bill Simmons?

  An hour into the game. I was bummed.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  You got 14 wins. You're gonna be fine.

• 1:10:35Bill Simmons?

  10 and 2 officially hit the other over.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:39Bill Simmons?

  So we hit that one.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's gonna be adjusted overs. It's gonna hit a lot of them.

• 1:10:44Bill Simmons?

  All right, guess the Lions. I won last week.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is not.

• 1:10:47Bill Simmons?

  I'm up for the year. What is it? Seven to four?

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  Uh, it's more. It's eight, four.

• 1:10:52Bill Simmons?

  Eight, four.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  Week 13.

• 1:10:54Bill Simmons?

  Week 13, Thanksgiving. Lions home for Packers. Uh, this will be under three.

• 1:11:01Bill Simmons?

  I, I have, uh, Lions two and a half.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  Nope. I hit it exactly. I said three. And, uh, that's what it is. Yeah. Vegas hasn't been trusting Green Bay. Not sure they should trust Detroit after that game, but.

• 1:11:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think that ends at two and a half.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  I don't want to touch it. I mean, I, I know it's impossible not to have money on the first game, but I'm looking at this for 20 minutes. I was like, I don't, I'm not gonna take either team, I don't think.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:11:32Bill Simmons?

  I just feel like it's such an advantage to be home.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:36Bill Simmons?

  On that early, early Thanksgiving game, if the teams are even and each team played on Sunday, I don't know. I'm probably, I'll probably lean Detroit. This next game though, I have no idea. Chiefs at Dallas.

• 1:11:49Bill Simmons?

  And you know, this will be either Chiefs by three or Chiefs by three and a half.

• 1:11:54Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna say Chiefs by three.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  Nice. That's what I said. It's three and a half.

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  Well, let's think about this. So they were home to the Colts in three and a half and at Dallas, three and a half. I think this will go down. Don't you?

• 1:12:11Bill Simmons?

  I like your team. I think this should be, I mean, honestly, this should be Chiefs two and a half with the way the Chiefs have played this season.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. The Cowboys money will come in. The Eagles were three and a half all week and then it changed this morning, so to three.

• 1:12:25Bill Simmons?

  Ravens are home for the Bengals. Joe Burrow will be the QB. Uh, I'm not sure that's gonna affect, it seemed like it affected the line, two points for the Pats. When Burrow was gonna play, it was five and a half. When it became, when it became, uh, Flacco was seven and a half. I think the Pats have played Joe Flacco like 80 times, by the way. I just feel like every year we somehow play him twice.

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  The league's got your back. I mean, they played, they're like, all right, we're not taking the training wheels off Patriots just yet. They get the Bengals, but no Joe Burrow. Oh, and we're gonna suspend the, the best receiver for spitting in the playground.

• 1:13:00Bill Simmons?

  Don't spit in somebody's face.

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  And then, uh, I don't, I don't think that's, I don't think that's good advice to give out. And then T. Higgins gets a concussion. Give me a break.

• 1:13:08Bill Simmons?

  That was tough.

• 1:13:11Bill Simmons?

  I have the Ravens favored by nine over the Bengals.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  I said eight and it's seven and a half.

• 1:13:18Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:13:21Bill Simmons?

  It's a little low. Not a lot of respect for the old Ravens. Maybe they deservedly.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  If they don't solve that, their offensive woes this week, I don't know if it's gonna happen, to be honest.

• 1:13:34Bill Simmons?

  Black Friday. Eagles, Bears. It's in Philadelphia.

• 1:13:41Bill Simmons?

  I can't think of a better candidate for the Vegas zone. I put this Eagles five and a half at home.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  That's what I had. It's seven.

• 1:13:49Bill Simmons?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  They went the full seven here.

• 1:13:52Bill Simmons?

  Oh, all right. Well, so we got a little teaser with, uh, I can't put the Ravens on a tease.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  It's all right. There's more during the weekend.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  There's some big numbers.

• 1:14:04Bill Simmons?

  The Cowboys, three team, seven pointer.

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  You gotta settle it. It has to settle Thursday. What do you do? It's just, you're gonna quit betting after that?

• 1:14:14Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm trying to tie in the Black Friday. Eagles, Cowboys 10 and a half, Bengals 14 and a half.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Oh, you're going three teams. Oh, boy.

• 1:14:26Bill Simmons?

  Who blows that?

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  Don't put McCarthy on it.

• 1:14:30Bill Simmons?

  McCarthy's on the D N B list.

• 1:14:34Bill Simmons?

  If they had Sam Darnold, what would their record be?

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  I think he could, but he'd be in this mix to take them to the playoffs. Like, that's a, I'm not gonna say it's an underrated F up because now everyone's talking about it, but.

• 1:14:46Bill Simmons?

  Cause they also had the Wentz games too.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 1:14:51Bill Simmons?

  I mean, a lot of this, remember they kept that the, the high ankle sprain for McCarthy? It's like, wow, that's a long time for a high ankle sprain.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:59Bill Simmons?

  Now it's clear like they were like, fuck, should we bring him back?

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:02Bill Simmons?

  And then Wentz got hurt, but they obviously knew.

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  He wouldn't have 10 interceptions for this team, I don't think.

• 1:15:08Bill Simmons?

  Too watchable. Oh, by the way, the other thing with McCarty, I, I think he might hold the ball the longest of all the guys who holds the ball too long.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Right.

• 1:15:17Bill Simmons?

  Like he has a shattered internal clock in his head. He goes back and he's just like, hey, oh, that guy.

• 1:15:25Bill Simmons?

  And then he just gets nailed.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  He needs a father, like yelling or a family member yelling from the sideline or something now. Or now, you know, you know, when you do that with your kid, like swing or, or, you know, or, yeah, go kick it. Yeah. I don't know what you would do, but he needs somebody.

• 1:15:39Bill Simmons?

  They'd have to turn the headset off, right?

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But like a really loud family member.

• 1:15:44Bill Simmons?

  Could he wear an Apple watch and they like, they hit some alarm where it's like, all of a sudden the alarm goes off. It's like, ah, like Manchurian Candidate?

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  Or maybe one of those silent disco, um, headphones. Anything, anything would help, honestly.

• 1:15:59Bill Simmons?

  Sunday marquee game. This might be the first time we've had a Sunday marquee game in the AFC South. Since like 2009. Colts Texans.

• 1:16:10Bill Simmons?

  In Indianapolis, big stakes all the way around. Best defense in the league against a very good offense.

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  It's a fun one.

• 1:16:17Bill Simmons?

  Do we see CJ Stroud?

• 1:16:20Bill Simmons?

  Davis Mills is three and out.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  I know. It's not bad. If you look at his career numbers, they're not bad either.

• 1:16:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:26Speaker 01

  But I say if Stroud's ready, yeah, he's right. He's in.

• 1:16:30Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:16:32Bill Simmons?

  It's Indianapolis and I have the Colts by three.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  All right, we split it. I said four, it's three and a half.

• 1:16:39Bill Simmons?

  Can't hit any of these.

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  I was thinking about, we talked about the Shaky's game and if there's three AFC South teams, like Shaky's is not going to know what to do. They may have to just close for the day. There's three AFC South teams.

• 1:16:53Bill Simmons?

  What, so three AFC South teams are in the playoffs. Shaky's has to close on Saturday because it's just too much for them.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  So, yeah. The customers are just going to lose their minds. Can't have chaos.

• 1:17:07Bill Simmons?

  What do we do with, we've made all these shaky's jokes over the years, but shaky's is like spending all this money. They've had this reinvention rejuvenation.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:17:15Bill Simmons?

  Do we need like a new, a new depressing place to go? Cause I don't know if shaky's is depressing anymore.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  Oh no, it's still disgusting. And I say it in the, in the nicest way possible.

• 1:17:25Bill Simmons?

  The one we have in Hollywood.

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  They gotta clean that joint up a little bit.

• 1:17:30Bill Simmons?

  Well, we went to the one in, uh, what was it on Sunset last year?

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  That wasn't bad, right?

• 1:17:36Bill Simmons?

  It wasn't bad.

• 1:17:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Sometimes you look at these and the Mojo potatoes are crawling on the floor. It's like, is that being, is that being carried by a rat? I don't know.

• 1:17:49Bill Simmons?

  Two watchable escapes.

• 1:17:52Bill Simmons?

  Rams Panthers in Carolina.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  How did this happen?

• 1:17:58Bill Simmons?

  It's, it's, uh, the Vegas onious Vegas game I can imagine. I have Rams by four and a half.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Well, I should get two wins for this. I saw them annihilate a team today and I put them at seven and a half and it's nine and a half.

• 1:18:13Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:14Bill Simmons?

  Is that the most I've missed a game?

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  I think so. I think so.

• 1:18:22Bill Simmons?

  Well, every time this happens, I always say that line's too high.

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good.

• 1:18:27Bill Simmons?

  That's ridiculous. And then the team covers. So it was high for a reason. So if I'm off five points, maybe we should just start betting when I'm that far off.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:34Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Vegas knows.

• 1:18:35Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, it's like you, you built in a whole teaser for yourself there.

• 1:18:39Bill Simmons?

  I mean, it's outdoors. It's in Carolina where weird shit always happens. It's coming off of an awesome win. It's going to be a whole week of Matthew Stafford MVP stuff. This is like, this checks 19 be careful boxes.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  I guess.

• 1:18:56Bill Simmons?

  Everyone's gonna have them in a parlay.

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  They could get tripped up. Short week for the Panthers, but.

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  A little high.

• 1:19:04Bill Simmons?

  Do you think? How many days could Aaron Donald, Aaron Donald be ready to play?

• 1:19:11Bill Simmons?

  Like if he was like, I want to come back for week 16.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  You saw what they, when they showed him?

• 1:19:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:19:18Bill Simmons?

  What if he's like, I'll come back for five weeks, try to win this Super Bowl with you guys?

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:19:22Bill Simmons?

  Like they're not hanging up.

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  Right. I think he would need three weeks though, still.

• 1:19:28Bill Simmons?

  So he starts right now, comes back for like week 18.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know. Some of these guys are lunatics. They just, um, right? They're just, they're training like they're still playing. So maybe it wouldn't matter.

• 1:19:39Bill Simmons?

  Be funny if McVeigh just talked to him all the time and he's like.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  I'm ready.

• 1:19:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I mean, our D is so fast. I mean, I don't even know if you could play with these guys now. Like starts doing like.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:49Bill Simmons?

  Starts fucking with them. Yeah. I mean, it's just different than when you played. Cause these guys are just really locked in now.

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:56Bill Simmons?

  Another road dog, I think it's going to be Pittsburgh hosting the Buffalo Bills. For, uh, this is another matchup where I feel like these teams play every year. I have the Bills favored by one and a half.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  No, it's higher than that. I said four and I believe it's four and a half.

• 1:20:14Bill Simmons?

  Wow, I'm off. That's usually a bad sign for my gambling.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, four and a half.

• 1:20:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, I don't think the Bills should be favored by four and a half in Pittsburgh. They, what's, what have you liked about the Bills?

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  Nothing, really nothing, other than that they just have to start winning. That's really it, but I guess the Steelers are in the same boat. The Steelers, what are they? They have, they have the Ravens twice. They have the Bills and the Lions.

• 1:20:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  They really screwed this up today.

• 1:20:45Bill Simmons?

  Fairly watchables. Niners at the Browns.

• 1:20:53Bill Simmons?

  You know, this Cleveland where they're, uh, Cleveland at home is like a different animal, but I still feel like this is the, on the higher end of the Vegas zone for me. I got Niners by five and a half.

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  All right, you get it. I said five. It's, uh, sorry, it's six and a half.

• 1:21:08Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  I don't know. They're pretty damn good on the road today, Cleveland. I guess, I guess the Raiders are just everyone's.

• 1:21:14Bill Simmons?

  I guess, yeah.

• 1:21:15Speaker 01

  Get right game. Yeah.

• 1:21:16Bill Simmons?

  Put their defense against a team that can't block.

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:21:19Bill Simmons?

  Has Geno Smith and an offensive coordinator is about to get fired. Bucks Cardinals, that's in Tampa. Oof. I mean, we don't know. Is that, is there even a line on this?

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  Hold on, let me change mine because I did this before the game. I'm not going to look.

• 1:21:37Bill Simmons?

  I, I dropped mine by three and a half points.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  All right, go ahead. What do you got?

• 1:21:41Bill Simmons?

  I, I had seven before the Baker injury. Now I have Bucks three and a half.

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  I had eight and a half, so I went to five and it is

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  two and a half. You get it. Oh, wow. Wow. That sucks for them.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  That's rough for them. I feel bad for that team.

• 1:22:04Bill Simmons?

  They've got the borderline year from hell from them with the injuries. Doesn't feel like they've been healthy for two weeks. I hit the Ibuka over last week. The, uh, I bet on his receiving yards in like early August. It was like 674. It hit.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 1:22:21Bill Simmons?

  It hit on like November 15th.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  That's my.

• 1:22:25Bill Simmons?

  It's the only prop I did the whole year.

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  It is? Really?

• 1:22:29Bill Simmons?

  The only player prop? Only player over under prop I did was Ibuka.

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  Oh, I did.

• 1:22:34Bill Simmons?

  So I want to know, batting a thousand.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  I only did like 93, 94 player props. Yeah. Well, I'm right behind you, but I have him for offensive rookie of the year. And the longer dart sits out, the, the better off I am, I guess.

• 1:22:47Bill Simmons?

  Seahawks home for the Vikings is another fairly watchable and I just think Seahawks defense against McCarthy. It has to be at least eight and a half. So I'm going to go eight and a half.

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  Wow. I said seven and a half. It was eight and a half. It moved to nine and a half.

• 1:23:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 1:23:08Bill Simmons?

  This is a Seahawks defense could win your fantasy week, single handedly kind of matchup.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. If Minnesota wins this game, I might be done watching football. I'm just telling you now.

• 1:23:19Bill Simmons?

  So we do Seahawks, Seahawks money line.

• 1:23:25Bill Simmons?

  Eagles money line.

• 1:23:28Bill Simmons?

  Cowboys adjusted Cowboys like eight and a half.

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. You could just put 10 on everybody.

• 1:23:32Bill Simmons?

  That's fine. Okay.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  Who wins? So this is a Sam Darnold bowl, right?

• 1:23:37Bill Simmons?

  So my mailbag, somebody, we were talking about Sam Darnold nicknames for when evil Sam Darnold shows up.

• 1:23:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:43Bill Simmons?

  And a reader or a listener suggested Benedict Darnold.

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  It's good.

• 1:23:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  It's good for this game especially. Yeah.

• 1:23:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Poop fact of four games. Jags at Tennessee.

• 1:23:56Bill Simmons?

  I really wanted Vegas on this, but I bumped it right above. I have Jags minus six.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  Uh, I said eight and a half and it is six and a half. Damn.

• 1:24:07Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I'm coming back.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  Hold on. What's the score here? Seven to.

• 1:24:11Bill Simmons?

  Like four in a row.

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's seven, seven, including the ties.

• 1:24:16Bill Simmons?

  Dolphins, Saints, Miami home. They should never be favored by six points against anybody in the league, but I'm going to say Dolphins by six.

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  Get it again. I said seven. It's five and a half. Oof. Come on, the Saints on the road aren't getting a touchdown. Yeah, break.

• 1:24:34Bill Simmons?

  That was one of the first, I've, I've talked about this before, but one of the first gambling rules I ever remember. In Gus's picks pool, which you're in.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:43Bill Simmons?

  Which he had since he was at Rollins College in the eighties. His friend, John Oaks, anytime there's a team that was favored by seven or more. And he didn't think the team was good. He was like, I just blind have to take the other side. That, no, but that team should never be favored by seven or more against anybody. So Gus would call it the Oaks rule.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  So Oaks will take the Saints here?

• 1:25:04Bill Simmons?

  No, because it's not seven, but I think this does get to seven by Sunday. I think this gets to Dolphins minus seven. And they should never be favored by seven over everybody. So this is an Oaks rule game. Falcons at the Jets, Kirk Cousins. Maybe scouting his team next year.

• 1:25:22Bill Simmons?

  This has Falcons minus three written all over it.

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  You get this one too. I had Falcons one and a half. It's two and a half. I mean, this doesn't sneak into the Tic Tac Zone?

• 1:25:34Bill Simmons?

  No, the Jets are pretty awful.

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 1:25:38Bill Simmons?

  The Jets can look good for about an hour.

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:42Bill Simmons?

  What eighties, what eighties wrestler are they? Like SD, Special Delivery SD Jones?

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:25:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  That's an insult.

• 1:25:49Bill Simmons?

  They can throw a couple, they can throw the guy in the ring a couple of times.

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:54Bill Simmons?

  That's about it.

• 1:25:56Bill Simmons?

  Chargers home for the Raiders.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  All right, I'm going to get this.

• 1:26:00Bill Simmons?

  So I forgot to ask you this earlier. The Raiders are the worst team in the league, right?

• 1:26:05Speaker 01

  They have to be.

• 1:26:07Bill Simmons?

  They're number 32 now?

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  It just, so they beat the Titans is the only thing, right?

• 1:26:15Bill Simmons?

  I think they're the worst team in the league.

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  I trust, as far as gambling goes, I trust Tennessee more than the Raiders.

• 1:26:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so I think this, I had Chargers by seven and a half here.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  Okay, I get this.

• 1:26:26Bill Simmons?

  Did I?

• 1:26:26Speaker 01

  I said, no, I said 10 and a half, it's nine and a half.

• 1:26:29Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Vegas is done with the Raiders.

• 1:26:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so that kind of proved my point.

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  Odds wise and probably proximity wise.

• 1:26:40Bill Simmons?

  So what's the score now? Are we tied?

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  I think you're up one, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, three, eight, nine, eight, two left. And I was pretty close on these.

• 1:26:52Bill Simmons?

  All right. Broncos at Washington.

• 1:26:56Bill Simmons?

  I think, is it Jaden Daniels? Do we get him? Maybe?

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  I think it's just a maybe.

• 1:27:04Bill Simmons?

  Well, I factored that into my guess. I have the Broncos by five and a half, Vegas owning it.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  Ooh, I get it. I said seven, it's six and a half. We're tied.

• 1:27:15Speaker 01

  I was off one point on the last one.

• 1:27:19Bill Simmons?

  I think I'm gonna hit this.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:27:21Bill Simmons?

  Monday night, Patriots home. Probably without Will Campbell.

• 1:27:27Bill Simmons?

  Against the Giants. And I had the Patriots by 10 and a half.

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  Eight and a half is what I said, and it's only seven and a half.

• 1:27:38Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:27:40Bill Simmons?

  Wow, they really factored the lousy offensive line.

• 1:27:43Speaker 01

  There's your teaser. Let's see how much you like Jameis.

• 1:27:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I want to see who my left tackle is.

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  Man, those Sunday, those night favorites really look good. Denver and Patriots. I'm gonna lose so much money this week. I can't wait.

• 1:27:59Bill Simmons?

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• 1:28:39Bill Simmons?

  All right, quick break. This episode is brought to you by Fire TV. You ever sit down, ready to watch the game, only to search and scroll endlessly? If so, you need Fire TV. It shows you are live games from your favorite teams all in one place, right on the home screen. No more searching. Just sit down and turn on Fire TV. Separate subscriptions may be required. Feature and content availability may vary. Let's see, parent corner, what do you got?

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  No sponsor? We don't have a sponsor this week?

• 1:29:06Bill Simmons?

  All right, I guess we don't have a sponsor this week.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  So my son Harrison plays flag football. He's played since, uh, he's 12. He's played since he was five. And the team won the flag championship. And this league is, uh, it's Friday nights. There's crazy. There's a DJ there blasting rap music and it's sponsored by Snoop Dogg and TJ Houshmandzada. And, uh, yeah, so he plays for this team. They won. They played six seasons together. They have three titles in the last four years and they just wrecked everybody they played this year, right? So it's flag football, but they're pretty good athletes. They don't drop balls. Like, that's why I watch on Sunday. I'm like, how would they play dropping? I know it's a different thing, but so they win the game. They win by like 24, 25 points. And the coaches tell me, hey, we're gonna give Harrison the

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  MVP award and we're gonna present it, uh, him with it. And I'm like, uh, really? And they're like, yeah, yeah, why? I was like, well, you don't have to do this. They're like three kids more talented than he is. And he would tell you, like, they have better stats. And they said, no, no, no. And they both said this. They're like, you don't understand. He makes our job simple. He does all the little things. He's the easiest to coach. He's a great teammate. He has tremendous field awareness, breaks off his route without flooding the zone. He does a million little things. Uh, and like that, I felt good because I was like, well, he watches games with me and my stupid instruction based on, you know, playing high school football and watching. On TV for a hundred years, it kind of paid off, right?

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  So they give him this giant gold necklace like Snoop would. Snoop would think this was tacky, I think. He wears a giant gold necklace and this ring and he's taking pictures and everything. And our cousin Jimmy was there and Jimmy takes a picture of him and our little cousin, Michael, who was also on the team is a stud flag puller. And he texted to Snoop and he's like, this is there in your league. This is cool. Like, well, this they've won three out of four years. So I'm not sure if Snoop responded. I'm not sure if he even knows he runs a flag football league, but that's it. So congrats to Team Bolt Up 12U and thanks to Jamie and Bruce, the coaches. They're great. Either one of them can coach the Arizona Cardinals right now. So good job by them.

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  And if they did this just to get on parent corner, it worked. There you go.

• 1:31:23Bill Simmons?

  Now, see, you should have had the necklace.

• 1:31:25Speaker 01

  Oh, right. I could run and get it.

• 1:31:31Bill Simmons?

  My daughter came back today. So my wife was in Hawaii. I was in New York City and then my daughter was, was in college, but came back today. So each day, somebody new has come home for my dog Murph. And I was trying to think like, what do dogs think when people just come and go? Cause he's gotten to the point like I was packing on Monday to go to New York. And he got, he gets really bummed out when he sees the suitcase. He thinks that's going to be bad. The suitcase is here. That means I'm going somewhere. So he just gets really sad. And then when I come back and I have the suitcase and I bring it up, he's like, oh, you brought it back up and now you're taking the stuff out of the suitcase. Like, I think he gets it.

• 1:32:12Bill Simmons?

  But then when Zoe comes home out of nowhere, I, I just wonder like, do dogs have a long-term memory?

• 1:32:18Speaker 01

  What does he do? Does he lose his mind?

• 1:32:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, he gets, yeah, he goes crazy. He's so excited she came back. Did he think she was ever coming back? Like, did he forget about her? Like, he goes and sleeps in her room sometimes.

• 1:32:29Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:32:30Bill Simmons?

  But he must like, hope she's gonna come back. But he also has an IQ of like 30.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:32:35Bill Simmons?

  So I just, I just would love to know what's going on in his, in his brain.

• 1:32:40Speaker 01

  I think about it because they look so sad, right? When they're just laying there and like, so Melissa goes away for the weekend. The dog will just sit there and look sad. And I think, I'm like, oh, man, he's sad because she's gone. And then I'm like, no, it's a dog. What's he gonna do? He can't have that. He can't have like a Jameis Winston type life where he's just dancing around, right?

• 1:32:57Bill Simmons?

  So he hangs, he hangs out in the window and looks out in the street and waits for people to come back. So he clearly is like, yeah, if I hang out here long enough, somebody's gonna come back. So I have that.

• 1:33:10Bill Simmons?

  And then I have some texts from my mom.

• 1:33:12Speaker 01

  Oh, let's hear it.

• 1:33:14Bill Simmons?

  My mom's been just on fire the last couple of weeks. This is her review of Beastin' Me with Claire Danes.

• 1:33:23Bill Simmons?

  She said, I'm already finished with Beastin' Me, really good. Do you think whenever a part comes up for an emotionally imbalanced substance abuser female? Everyone shouts Claire Danes exclamation point. The lesbian part was new at least. That was her review of Beastin' Me.

• 1:33:40Bill Simmons?

  Then she said, tell Chang, I already ordered the book by the 11 Madison Somay. Chang should take over the Andrew Mac Bon Appetit wine videos. My favorite, he loved to be a winemaker. Chang could do a wine food segment, which he is great at. So that's her career advice for Chang.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  Good.

• 1:33:58Bill Simmons?

  She saw the story about Bill Maher not wanting to stand up comedy tours and texted me back. Narcissistic phony. Never watched him after his big dinner with Trump. Unfollowed him on social media and YouTube, dead to me. So that's her take on, on Bill Maher. And then, and then this is the coup de grace. She, she watched Frankenstein on Netflix. I can't believe I'm even reading this one. She said, my biggest disappointment in Frankenstein was that he didn't get a monster erection in the scene when Elizabeth first finds him and starts touching him from the face moving downward. Then she goes, ha ha.

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  So what do you, what do you write back?

• 1:34:40Bill Simmons?

  How about I've not responded to yet? Yeah.

• 1:34:46Bill Simmons?

  But anyway, those are some of my mom's texts.

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  That's great. She should get a job writing on page two. I think these are good observations.

• 1:34:55Bill Simmons?

  Page six, page two.

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  Six, one of pages.

• 1:34:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so listen, so Claire Danes got some props, Chang needs to do videos, Frankenstein needs an erection, and Bill Maher's dead there.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  Oh, poor Bill Maher.

• 1:35:05Bill Simmons?

  That's what I got. My mom's on fire. And then, and then my dad hits the big seven, eight on, on, on.

• 1:35:13Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:35:14Bill Simmons?

  I think on Thanksgiving, yeah.

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  Are you, is he out here or, uh, no?

• 1:35:18Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:35:18Speaker 01

  You have to see him soon.

• 1:35:20Bill Simmons?

  He does. My dad does this new thing where he has these secret medical procedures and doesn't tell me.

• 1:35:25Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:35:26Bill Simmons?

  And then my stepmother mentions them in passing and is like, well, your, your father got that shot in his neck. Like, what shot? Oh, he had arthritis in his neck. He's having injections. My kid didn't tell me. She's like, well, he didn't want to, he didn't want to worry you. It's like, well, what, what is this with the parents when they don't want to worry us? Like, how about, just give me the information. Let me decide if I'm going to be worried or not.

• 1:35:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:48Bill Simmons?

  Like, what is the point of hiding medical shit from us?

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  It's so funny. There's like nothing in between, right? Either they're over the top, gonna bother you or me in this case with medical stuff, or they keep it from you. It's really weird that there's no, uh,

• 1:36:02Bill Simmons?

  I feel like when we get older, I'm gonna want to worry my kids all the time.

• 1:36:06Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah.

• 1:36:07Bill Simmons?

  I don't, I would, I would want them to be thankful because otherwise they're probably not going to think about us. And they're like, yeah, I gotta go to the doctor.

• 1:36:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:13Bill Simmons?

  We'll see. Could be bad.

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  Right. And also maybe you've heard of like a solution that they haven't run by, right? So, why don't you send him a sauna and a, and a t-shirt? That could help.

• 1:36:30Bill Simmons?

  Maybe I should. I don't know if my dad would make it in a sauna. All right, that's it for, uh, Parent Corner. Anything else we got before? Before we go, other than, other than the Cowboys are, are 2-0?

• 1:36:41Speaker 01

  No, that's it. They're 2-0. What do you mean?

• 1:36:43Bill Simmons?

  With, with Cleto, like he had the going back to Vegas.

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 1:36:47Bill Simmons?

  Two wins this week? I don't know.

• 1:36:49Speaker 01

  Really magical comeback. Keep it going, Cleto. Doing a good job with these Cowboys. Yeah. And, uh, that's it. Yeah. We're gonna have a Ringer gambling show. We're cramming a lot of shows in the first three days. Tate and I are gonna go over the massive college football games coming up. House and the bundle. We're gonna make fun of each other, on Wednesday. The 107 picks. I think we need to spice this up a little. Everyone's in first and last place.

• 1:37:13Bill Simmons?

  This week, we need to put, I think we need a booby prize and we need some sort of actual press.

• 1:37:18Speaker 01

  I had for, yes, I think a booby prize, because this ends around February, the loser has to stand in Bourbon Street, for a whole day.

• 1:37:28Bill Simmons?

  I heard you say this. Why Bourbon Street?

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  Well, because only because.

• 1:37:31Bill Simmons?

  That's not near here.

• 1:37:32Speaker 01

  No, I know. So what? Why, you don't have to make it easy for.

• 1:37:34Bill Simmons?

  But I was at a prize where you get flown to New Orleans.

• 1:37:37Speaker 01

  It's not a prize. This is the last place. They have to stay in the street, the filthy street, for a whole day without moving. I don't know. We'll, we'll come up with better. It has to be something.

• 1:37:46Bill Simmons?

  Am I allowed to fire House after 12 weeks or no? Am I stuck with him the whole year? I don't know. I, I feel like he, I don't know.

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  He said you wanted him to take, uh, New England or something.

• 1:37:57Bill Simmons?

  We did. They didn't cover by a half point. It wasn't like it was a bad pick. They won.

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:38:02Bill Simmons?

  House was, but his big pick was New Orleans.

• 1:38:04Speaker 01

  Oh, we all had New Orleans.

• 1:38:06Bill Simmons?

  Mad at House.

• 1:38:07Speaker 01

  So bad. So bad. Oh, and I think I'm doing something with you tomorrow. Are we allowed to say?

• 1:38:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we're doing rewatchables. We're doing two for the money.

• 1:38:15Speaker 01

  Okay. All right. I know. Uh, yeah. That's gonna be fun.

• 1:38:18Bill Simmons?

  I've watched it twice in the last four days. It's really just a wonderful, wonderful movie.

• 1:38:22Speaker 01

  I watched it one and a half times. I'm like, this movie sucks. I have to watch it again. I was so excited. Anyway, we'll talk about it.

• 1:38:30Bill Simmons?

  I don't know why there are more sports game movies. All right. I'll see you tomorrow. Cause good job by you.

• 1:38:34Speaker 01

  Good job by you, buddy.

• 1:38:35Bill Simmons?

  Uh, thanks to everybody on YouTube. Thanks to Eduardo and Gahal as well. And, uh, I will see you later in the week.

• 1:38:56Bill Simmons?

  Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18 plus and present in DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com, call 888-797777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut, or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org, or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 877-8HOPENY, or text HOPENY in New York. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy

• 1:39:37Bill Simmons?

  Award winner Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Inisherin and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys, Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment, and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters November 6. Get tickets now. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. Fall is here, and Whole Foods Market has everything you need for cozy meals, seasonal treats, and easy entertaining. Elevate your

• 1:40:22Bill Simmons?

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