The Patriots Are Pathetic, Detroit Crushes Minnesota, Plus Wild-Card Guess the Lines With Cousin Sal

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Cousin Sal to discuss the Lions' 31-9 win over the Vikings to end the NFL regular season, the solidified playoff picture, the Rams giving up the 3-seed by losing to the Seahawks, Steelers-Bengals, the Bucs taking the NFC South (01:08), the Patriots surrendering the no. 1 draft pick by beating the Bills, the Dolphins and Bengals missing the playoffs, and some end-of-season observations (23:27), before guessing the lines for Wild-Card Weekend (53:00), and closing the show with Parent Corner (01:12:30). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Cousin Sal Producers: Kyle Crichton and Chia Hao Tat 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?

  Coming up, a whole lot of Week 18 NFL stuff happened and the Patriots blew it. And I'm really upset and I almost didn't want to host the podcast. That's next. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. It's football season. Uber Eats is delivering deals every game day. This week, get 10 free boneless wings from Wingstop on qualifying orders. Game on, flavor on, Wingstop is here. So if your fantasy league is coming over for some in-person smack talk, order Wingstop on Uber Eats and get 10 boneless wings free. It's the perfect way to keep everyone fed tonight so you can focus on the game. No matter who scores big tonight, you'll score a great deal. Order now and get 10 boneless wings free from Wingstop, only on Uber Eats. Offer valid from September 14th to September

• 0:43Bill Simmons?

  27th and from November 2nd to November 16th. Order minimum before taxes and fees is required. See retailer's storefront for details. Taxes, fees, and terms apply. Product availability varies by region. Exclusions may apply. See app for details. This episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by State Farm. Every football player brings something different to the field. Maybe they have a cannon arm, speed, power. Maybe they have their own podcast. That being said, no two players are exactly alike. And the same is true off the field. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 1:26Bill Simmons?

  We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network, where I have new rewatchables coming for you on Monday night. It's a movie we've already done. That's the only hint I will give you, but it's coming on Monday night. You'll be able to listen to it on any podcast platform. You'll be able to watch it on The Ringer Movies YouTube channel, where you can also find on YouTube the Bill Simmons channel, which has all the videos and clips from this podcast. It's where we go live every Sunday night. Cousin Sal is going to join me in one second. Thank God I'm in a better mood than I was five hours ago, but we're going to get this rolling. First, our friends from Pearl Jam.

• 2:25Bill Simmons?

  All right. Well, it's a bad sign, Sal, that we're starting a podcast before Sunday night game ends. I had so, so high hopes for Lions Vikings.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:35Bill Simmons?

  I, I, I, Mike, I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened, Mike.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Oh, Bill, I, you know, this game, these two teams saved the NFL because it was a shitty beyond shit slate for us in week 18. And then one team forgot to show up. Football's funny.

• 2:54Bill Simmons?

  So many things to get to.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:57Bill Simmons?

  I guess.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Hey, we won, man. We're winners. That's the big thing. We had the Lions, one seed. It's great.

• 3:03Bill Simmons?

  Well, and then hedged it, hedged at least some of it with the Vikings to use that didn't work out too great.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, always.

• 3:09Bill Simmons?

  So, big takeaway from this game. Do you want to go, we shouldn't have been sleeping on the Lions this whole time? Or do we want to go, are we ready to write off the Vikings after that game as a real contender? Because I am not. I actually think they just had a bad game where a bunch of shit went wrong. And I'm not ready to be like, nope, that's who they are. Like, I just think it was one of those games. And I, and if anything, I want to buy in on them in the playoffs now because now I think, I think everybody's off now. It's like, oh, Sam Darnold, there he is. Oh, the Lions kicked their ass. Oh, you just have to rush them. And, and I've watched them all year. That was a really good team. I just think they suck tonight.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  I'm with you, but you know, it was a really good team, that Detroit defense. Like, that was fucking phenomenal. That is the wild card. You didn't expect that to show up, right? Like, nothing. All right. So, they, you, you can go both ways, right? Like, Donald missed a lot of throws in the first half, open guys. I know you thought they should have run the ball down low instead of turning it over twice.

• 4:11Bill Simmons?

  Instead of seven, seven straight pass plays?

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, in a, in a way, that was the difference. But man, that Lions defense and Anzalone being in there and just stuffing that middle. I mean, that was just a great physical game. Every third and three call was met with like hard hits and lots of good coaching decisions, like high level QB play mixed in with some curious throws. But that makes me think both these teams are going to be good in the playoffs, but especially the Lions, obviously.

• 4:35Bill Simmons?

  Well, we didn't know even this morning, I don't think officially that Anzaloni was coming back.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:41Bill Simmons?

  And he had a big impact. Some of the play calls had a big impact. Darnold just reverted into pre-Minnesota Darnold, which I think the Lions defense had a lot to do with. But that, the thing I love, we talked about this last week, the thing I liked about the Vikings and the Bengals was their ability to play pitch and catch with their receivers when they really needed to. Where was that tonight? They couldn't do it at all. Where was that on third and seven? Where was that around the end zone? Even Jefferson had some one characteristic drops. They never got like the 30-yard pass interference. They never got the Addison just busting loose for a 40-yard play. Akers was the only one that had like the monster play, but I'm torn because, you know, one of my best friends, Jeff Gallo, huge Vikings fan, he's texted me in the second quarter. He's like, this

• 5:25Bill Simmons?

  is classic. Here we go. This is the Vikings that I've had in my life for 50 years. You know, turn it over on downs inside the five. They're going to play all the hits. And he was right. It was when they kicked it out of bounds right before the end of the first half. It's like, here we go. Classic Vikings. This is what we do.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  That was bad.

• 5:43Bill Simmons?

  But the thing is, I didn't feel like this was a classic Vikings, this is what we do team. They were the opposite of that. So I'm still, I'm not ready to sell on them yet. I think they just suck tonight.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna either. And let's, I think both of us thought that the Lions needed this more, right? Like, I felt like the Lions defense wasn't going to be able to travel on the road. I don't even know about that first game. We'll get to that when we guess the Lions and stuff. But I thought they had to be a one seed, right? So they needed it more. They went in there and they bullied them. And Campbell really bullied K O C, I thought, too. Like, he had some great, like, really, like, Mr. This shit going on, like, fourth and two, definitely should have kicked the field goal to go up three scores, went to draw them offsides. And you kind of have to bite because he actually could go. He's like the one guy who could go on fourth and two. So I think they were kind of bullied on all, in all facets. And that crowd was great and everything else. But I'm not gonna, I, look,

• 6:39Speaker 01

  we were too in on Sam Darnold. Well, we're gonna look like hypocrites. We gotta, I still think he's a big contract guy. I don't think it's the pumpkin Cinderella thing, whatever they want to say there. But I think they're all right with Sam Darnold, Minnesota fans.

• 6:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and the Minnesota fans for three, four hours are just gonna be in funk and all the PTSD is gonna come back. Eventually, they're gonna look at this game and be like, probably was an intentional grounding in the end zone on Goff. We dropped a pick six. You know, we dropped multiple plays that would have either extended drives or Jefferson. Uncharacteristically, it seemed like he should have had a touchdown. He dropped that. You just go through and it's like, ah, actually, we were right there with those guys and Goff was putting the ball up for grabs just as many times as Darnold did in this game.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Gibbs was the best guy in the field. Not shitting on anybody, but um, I do, I feel like both these teams could do pretty well and they could meet in two weeks. So we could see a totally different game.

• 7:32Bill Simmons?

  At halftime, there was no scenario in my head that was somebody was winning by 20 plus.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  I know.

• 7:38Bill Simmons?

  I felt like, and that's what I was telling my buddy. I was like, you're gonna have the lead in the third quarter. It's fine. Then they start driving. Akers has that big run. They're down four.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Is he still your buddy? Have you checked?

• 7:46Bill Simmons?

  He's fine.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  You can't make proclamations like that.

• 7:49Bill Simmons?

  Doing this with him for 40 years. He's, Akers is guy that, it seems like he's just gonna score. They catch him. And then they have to, uh, you know, it's just, they never got the lead. It felt like as soon as they got the lead, I wanted to see what that Lions team. The other thing that the, I mean, to the positive stuff of the Lions, defense looked way better. The home field advantage there is just, you know, they were talking about it before the game, how Tony Dungy, I think he says this every year, no matter where they are on location. He's like, guys, I've never heard a place louder than this in my entire career. I think he just does it every year, wherever they are. But that place was super loud. Now you have to go through there to win. Their defense is getting better. Maybe they get Hutchinson back by round three.

• 8:31Bill Simmons?

  The thing that I was the most surprised by was without Montgomery, I was worried, could they hold leads? Could they keep leads? You know, would they be able to get these third and three? Would they be able to just keep drives going? And uh, didn't feel like they missed them that much.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  He's so quick, Gibbs, right? They also look faster than everybody too. So uh, once he turns a corner, it's uh, he's in no man's land. You're just not gonna catch him. Are you comfortable with them being the Super Bowl favorite right now? Three to one odds?

• 8:58Bill Simmons?

  Is that what it is? I was gonna actually look that up. So they're, they're the favorites?

• 9:02Speaker 01

  They're the favorites. Chiefs plus 350, Ravens and Bills six to one, and then the Eagles seven to one, and the Vikings bounce all the way down to 14 to one. So if you want your value, 14 to one, it's right there, except they have to win four games now. So I guess that could make sense.

• 9:17Bill Simmons?

  Hmm. You know,

• 9:20Bill Simmons?

  Them and the Ravens, same situation, right? Where we, this season's so long, we have all these advanced metrics we can look at. And you just kind of talk yourself out of anybody's defense being able to do a turnaround. And both of those defenses are playing better. That's probably who I would pick at this point. As much as I hate going against KC, I think that Baltimore, Detroit would be the life on the line pick. But the wise pick would be KC Detroit, which was, I think what our Super Bowl, was that? That was the one we bet on, right? Or you bet on the seeds?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  I had the one seeds.

• 9:53Bill Simmons?

  You bet on the seeds.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  God bless, I collected 26 to 1 odds on the one seeds. But my Super Bowl was Buffalo. I know, I know.

• 9:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, we did our futures draft. You won the futures draft single-handedly with the 26 to 1.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, but how about you 27? Then we'll stop jerking each other off here. But what were you, 27 and 5 with the preseason picks?

• 10:12Bill Simmons?

  The over unders. Houston and Arizona both hit today, so 27 and 5. And all five were like giant losses.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  That's ridiculous.

• 10:20Bill Simmons?

  It was like, I didn't come remotely close to the five. It was like Jacksonville, Minnesota. It was all like, but everything else I hit.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, you should probably get minus 6 for the Jets, betting the Jets over. But no, 27 and 5, it all counts.

• 10:32Bill Simmons?

  The crazy thing is, I really almost took Buffalo. It was a seesaw for me that whole summer. And I just, I just got sucked in with the Rogers.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Figure out why we want, why we want to bounce Buffalo from the AFC East spot every August. Top spot, because we do, we look forward. And it's just never there.

• 10:53Bill Simmons?

  All right, so here's what we got for playoffs. Well, first of all, we do this every year. And one of the things is I was trying to figure out the league before the year. And I was trying to figure out, well, we have to have six new playoff teams. That's just the rule. And I couldn't get there. And I think I only picked four or five.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Were there six?

• 11:09Bill Simmons?

  No, there was, there's four new playoff teams.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:12Bill Simmons?

  So we lost Cleveland, we lost Miami, we lost San Francisco, and we lost Dallas.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Oh, shit.

• 11:19Bill Simmons?

  We gained Denver, the Chargers, Washington, and Minnesota.

• 11:26Bill Simmons?

  And that's it. So usually it's six, sometimes seven. There might be the occasion where there's five. Four is like a crazy non turnover year.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Four is fine. Yeah. Let's get the Cowboys back in and then we'll stick to four the rest of the way.

• 11:43Bill Simmons?

  Well, there was, there was some, you know, like the fact that Pittsburgh made it back in and stuff like that. Like some of the weaker teams somehow ran it back. But anyway, we have a.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  They can't be flexed out Pittsburgh, right? We checked on that. They just after their performances last month.

• 12:00Bill Simmons?

  How do you go from 500 plus yards against Cincinnati to not being able to get a first down four weeks later with all the same guys on your team? And all the same guys on since then. I didn't get that. So our one seeds are KC and Detroit. We have Denver at Buffalo in the two, seven Pittsburgh Baltimore three, six Chargers at Houston, four, five. The shaky's game. This was on Twitter. Uh, this is the eighth time Houston has been in the shaky's game since 2011.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Is that playoff purgatory? They're eight for eight in those.

• 12:31Bill Simmons?

  We just call it the shop classic now, right? The shaky shop classic.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Shaky shop. I like it.

• 12:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Shaky shop. Uh, and then Green Bay at Philly, Washington and Tampa, Minnesota at the Rams is the four or five. And that's going to be, um, is that the, that's the Sunday night or a Monday, Monday night?

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Mini at the Rams. We sent each other what we thought the schedules would be. You, you made an amateur mistake. The Monday has to be a four or five because they have to know before then where they're sending that the winner of that game. So yeah, Minnesota at the Rams. It's so five is Monday.

• 13:04Bill Simmons?

  Well, Amazon is the big winner because they got Pittsburgh Baltimore on Saturday night, which is a great game. The two best games are Green Bay, Philly and Pittsburgh.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Are you surprised that NBC didn't get Green Bay at Philly, Sunday night? That was like my big, I was like, wow, they're, they're going with Tampa Bay and Washington. It's interesting.

• 13:24Bill Simmons?

  I think Fox big boy did.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  They must have. They must have been able to protect it.

• 13:29Bill Simmons?

  I think CBS and Fox each get to protect one of them. Right? So if you're, although it is interesting that.

• 13:39Bill Simmons?

  CBS probably would have wanted Pittsburgh Baltimore, right? I can't, I guess Buffalo is the most public around one team because of Josh Allen and the fans and you get to go there and people are jumping through tables. So maybe, maybe they wanted that, I don't know.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it hurts less to jump through tables in a morning game than it would at night, I guess.

• 13:57Bill Simmons?

  So the biggest surprises for me, just big picture today, other than that Minnesota, I really thought Minnesota was at least going to show up. I thought that was going to be a come down to the last five minutes game. Detroit was great. Gibbs was awesome. The biggest surprise for me today was that the Rams didn't care if they were the three seed or the four seed.

• 14:17Bill Simmons?

  And it was explained to me multiple ways. I get it, they haven't had a bye week since week six.

• 14:25Bill Simmons?

  They, they wanted a rest, they didn't really care where they played, they're going to play everyone anyway.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:33Bill Simmons?

  I, I, I just, I don't know. I just would much rather be the three seed that now they have to play Minnesota next week versus playing Washington. It's no contest. I would much rather play Minnesota than Washington. So I don't know, was it worth it?

• 14:48Speaker 01

  I get it. Isn't it so weird, like the different philosophies, like McVeigh is like, you know what, we, we're injured, I've seen what this team looks like injured, we want to make sure we're in good shape next week, whoever we play. And Dan Campbell's like, screw it, this game means nothing, we're starting everyone against the 49ers. I don't care if we have 20 guys on IR. It is so bizarre that everybody is so different and you can't like go too crazy about one, one, you know, philosophy over another. But even with that, they almost won that game, the Rams. Like, they were winning. Jimmy G wasn't bad.

• 15:21Bill Simmons?

  No, he wasn't.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  They'd sent guys after him and then eventually it caught up, but they were right there in that game.

• 15:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I thought if they had won, he would have looked like a genius and he was really involved on the sidelines. So McVeigh is like the number one.

• 15:38Bill Simmons?

  Does the, I'm doing a fist pump for people listening. He just, he's doing around, he's got the one move and he just goes through it. He's like, he's like a fist with like a, like a overbite face.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:50Bill Simmons?

  It's like the guy, what movie is that where the guy's like the one guy in the dance floor, his one move is to roll in the dice? When he's on the dance floor and all he can do is the dice move. Oh no, he's gonna do the dice move. That's McVeigh's fist.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Well, he had a guy that was supposed to hold him back. Didn't he have a get back guy for so many years?

• 16:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, then he got married. He didn't need to get back guy anymore. So yeah, so they're, now they're playing Minnesota in the four or five, which I think is just brutal because you could make a case that that, that game we just watched, knocked up, so Rudy says, that's the dice move.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, right.

• 16:24Bill Simmons?

  You could make the case, the game that we just watched, those were the two best teams in the league.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:29Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if you'd make it after watching Darnold for four quarters, but that, especially the first hour of that game, the hitting, how people flying around, it was like, Jesus, we've been watching ship football all day. And these guys are like, it looks like they're on the all Madden level watching this.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then you got Tomlin, who was thinking like you were thinking, like, oh, maybe we don't want to play the Ravens. It's much easier to go against the Texans in the shaky game. And they just couldn't get it done, but uh,

• 16:55Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  177 yards offense before that last drive, but.

• 16:59Bill Simmons?

  We're bouncing around, obviously. I had that coming later, but I'm happy to talk about it now. I, I really felt like there was a Fields play in that game.

• 17:10Bill Simmons?

  That just to shake it up, try something different, just to throw the game out of whack a little, considering that Wilson wasn't doing much anyway. Um, and Pickens, I don't know what's happened to that dude the last month, but it felt like, hey, just bring Fields in for one series and just like show them this. Let's see what it looks like. And I don't know. They've just seems like they've completely punted on Fields and it's like Russ. This is it, but I felt like they really could have run the ball on Cincinnati and they just couldn't. They just chose not to.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, hustle and bustle, taking bad sacks and everything. And you're right, they did drop a lot of balls. I think Pickens was like at 900, 100 yards away from a thousand yard season and ended up with 899. Like it was ridiculous what kind of day he put forward. He was dropping everything that was thrown to him. But I don't know, man, I go back and forth with Tomlin. I'm like, this guy, I don't know, you know, all right, he's just gonna be around nine wins every year, 10 wins, one round and out in the playoffs. And then I'm like, holy shit, I haven't liked his quarterback in a decade. Big Ben's last few years. How is he even doing this, getting it going? But you're right. Yeah. Why can't we see fields on a gadget play somewhere in there?

• 18:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it felt like the first half of the season, they were way more experimental with that stuff. And then as the season went along, no. Yeah, Tomlin, you, sometimes you wonder like if he just, he's like the guy at work who, once he hits his bonus, he just say, yeah, I'm not going to go in today. I got my bonus. Like Tomlin's like, I got the 10 wins. I'm good.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's also, yeah, it's an arrogant organization too. Let's face it. Like they, they bragged about spending less than $3 million on these two quarterbacks, right? Denver still played, paid most of Russ's salary. And it's like, no, eventually you gotta do it. I think like they looked at their division, like we can go out and sign a Lamar or try to get like someone like Lamar or look at Joe Burrow, but they were terrified of what happened with Watson. So they looked, they took the bad example in their division and ran away from it and eventually catches up to you.

• 19:06Bill Simmons?

  I don't mind it. I'd love to know what happened to Pickens because he was such a key part of everything that was working for them and to just lose him completely in your offense. It's pretty easy to stop.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Well, the cover, that was one of the ridiculous covers of the year too. Steelers getting two and a half.

• 19:22Bill Simmons?

  I loved it.

• 19:26Bill Simmons?

  The other big thing that happened today was this NFC South battle, which I'm proud to say I had no dollars on.

• 19:34Bill Simmons?

  It just seemed like a complete stay away. And I was, I was just living vicariously through the texts of you and some others who had fallen into the friendly fire of those two games. And it ends up with the, with the Bucks squeezing it out. There was like 14 points during both games where you thought the other team was going to win or something bad was going to happen. It was the best moment of Bryce Young's NFL career. He was super fun to watch and it really seemed like New Orleans was going to beat Tampa Bay. And then Baker, who Sal, I gotta say, I think he's number three for me for MVP behind, behind Josh Sonny Mar, I'd put him over Burrow. His team won 10 games. He threw 41 touchdowns.

• 20:18Bill Simmons?

  He, he over and over again, made plays with his legs. There was a whole month where he just had no weapons at all. He had a rookie running back. I don't really love his coaching staff. I just felt like he dragged that team to 10 wins and over and over again, came through for them. So he was amazing and he did it again.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Definitely top three fun to watch. And our friend Hench points out, like, when does a guy get legs in his seventh season? If you look at his rushing yards this year, compared to the first six, whatever it was, just spectacular, but I wasn't able to enjoy it. But I had so much money on Tampa Bay to win the division and all sorts of money line parlays with Tampa Bay on them. I really felt like Pesci being led to the basement, like halfway through the second quarter, when the Saints were up two scores, I looked down to see if the floor was covered in plastic and I was like, oh no. Okay. But Baker fought for me. It was beautiful.

• 21:06Bill Simmons?

  He really did. And then the game's over and they're like, wait, we gotta get Mike Evans this bonus. It's like, what are you guys doing? It's not like it was week 14. It's like you're trying to get to the playoffs. I'm, I like Mike Evans. I like records, but that was, and it really seemed like they're clearly throwing it to him. I don't know why New Orleans, like the moment the ball wasn't snapped, why aren't you just running a straight line? Why don't you have two guys on Mike Evans? Like you actually have a chance to get the ball back.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  How about eight guys? That's the only reason they're snapping the ball and not taking a knee is.

• 21:35Bill Simmons?

  To throw it to Evans. Put, come on, Clogger. The crowd's cheering. They're chanting for Mike Evans. My fucking nine guys. Catching a screen. Of course it is. So, yeah, those incentives. I played Madden with, uh, with Ben this weekend and he was Miami and he just kept trying to throw to Tyree Kill. So eventually I just brought another guy over and I was just, I, I was like, I know you're throwing Tyree Kill, but now I'm going to put this guy here. The Saints should have had four of those guys just trying to, you know, maybe they get a tip or something. Um, so they win and at the same time, Atlanta is about to go into overtime with Carolina, but then realizes that the dream is dead and Carolina wins in OT, but, uh, it was a roller coaster ride. You know, who didn't deserve to be in the playoffs though?

• 22:20Bill Simmons?

  Atlanta. Yeah. Like some of these teams that worked out, like Miami didn't make the playoffs. You know, who should have made the playoffs? Miami. You know, who deserved to make the playoffs? Cincinnati. So I feel like we landed in the right place with. I think you're right. Who's the worst playoff team for you? Well, right now, just the way they're playing. Probably Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh? Yeah. Just the way they're playing, but I know that's going to be, that's going to be a close game probably in the fourth quarter. Oh yeah. Houston. I don't trust too much either. One of those AFC teams, I think. Yeah. Atlanta, Roger Goodell must hate Atlanta because we didn't realize it. I don't think, because we did the podcast right after that Atlanta, Washington game. They fucked up four games this week. There would have been four games that what meant something, including the Rams game. Right.

• 23:02Bill Simmons?

  Including their game, you know, Carolina and, uh, what a, uh, the Washington game would have mattered too against Dallas. Like Goodell must have a Raheem Morris voodoo doll. No one's happier that Atlanta's not in than Roger Goodell. Well, I don't understand how they picked the games yesterday.

• 23:18Bill Simmons?

  I don't understand how Baltimore, Cleveland was one of the games. Baltimore ended up, well, they were like a 21 point favorite. Yeah. Right. There was no world where, I'm like my stupid team that we'll talk about later. There was no world in Cleveland is ever threatening to ever win that game for one second. So you have, you have these two Saturday games and the first game is just abysmal. You know, it's like Billy Zappi, what has he got going? Um, and I don't know, I would have put, I think I would have put Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Miami Jets as the two Saturday games. And then both of those teams are still alive technically and then you go into Sunday and then Denver has to take care of business either way, but I think that was the way to do it.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Sometimes maybe I think they screw with the fans and like, let's see, this is a meaningless spread. It's gonna be the biggest of the year. Let's see how many eyeballs we get on this game. Oh, good. Football still works. Everybody watched.

• 24:12Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you think it's like, it's like a test tube situation? Or like, God, I was just mad at, who had the game yesterday? It was ESPN?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, good.

• 24:21Bill Simmons?

  He's like, you're putting Orlovsky and Riddick in this game? Oh, my God. I'm giving you Baltimore Cleveland.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Right. We're gonna serve a three day old meatloaf at the school lunch. See if, see if people still buy. Oh, wow. They're hungry around noon? Interesting.

• 24:34Bill Simmons?

  That was nuts. Well, anyway. This episode is brought to by WeatherTech. 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 gonna 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 gonna want WeatherTech for American-made floor liners and a cargo liner that laugh in the face of fall weather. Visit weatherTech.com today. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Excitement is in the air. That's right. It's the start of NBA season. I can't wait to get together with friends, share some Michelob Ultras, and watch Tip Off Plus as the official beer sponsor of the NBA. Michelob Ultra is getting you closer

• 25:15Bill Simmons?

  to the action with experiences that make you feel like you're courtside to actual courtside tickets. Enter now for a chance to win at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2026, ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. 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

• 25:55Bill Simmons?

  and turn on Fire TV. Separate subscriptions may be required. Feature and content availability may vary. Today, it seemed like the early games were gonna be the least amount of fun possible. And then all of a sudden, complete chaos. And unfortunately, my team.

• 26:15Bill Simmons?

  One of the most devastating days in the history of the franchise.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Come on, come on.

• 26:22Bill Simmons?

  Maybe it wasn't. No, but it was, when I think of like the dark dumb days in the history of the team since I became a Patriots fan with Jim Pukin and Mac Haren and everybody when I was like four years old, this has to be in the top eight or nine. It's just a complete organizational collapse, disgrace. It made no sense, made no sense as it was happening. Every other team, the fucking Chiefs knew had a tank, right? The Chiefs were like, here's, here's Carson Wentz just handing the ball off and then we're going to bring in our third string quarterback.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  I don't know what to tell you.

• 26:59Bill Simmons?

  So I don't know, I don't, I, we had the first pick and now we have the fourth pick. We moved back three spots every single round.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:09Bill Simmons?

  And one of my friends texted me, it was like, we traded the first pick for the fourth pick and got nothing in the trade.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:19Bill Simmons?

  And we moved back three spots every round. It was, and we gave up all these potential assets that came with the pick. And the thing that kills me is they fire the coach right after the game. They knew they were going to do that for at least a week. So you're letting this guy make the, basically he's trying to win and the offensive coordinator, they're trying to win because they don't know if they're going to be there. They're trying to coach for their jobs. You gotta get rid of those guys if you know you're going to get rid of them after the game. Why not get rid of them before the game? Why not put this decision in the hands of people who care about the big, long-term picture of the franchise instead of trying to win the game?

• 27:56Speaker 01

  All right. I mean, I'll give you that. Maybe they should have fired him before the game, but I, I just, I know people who root for bad teams and then they just never end up rooting for their team. They just end up rooting for draft picks year after year and they just never get to root for their team.

• 28:09Bill Simmons?

  This is three hours. It's three hours of my life that I never have to think about this game again.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  The whole last month you were thinking about it.

• 28:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, what was the year Lovey Smith did this? What was it? Two years ago?

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:20Bill Simmons?

  I think it was. When he was just like, yeah, fuck it. And he ends up.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  And he was gone.

• 28:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah, and he was gone and that he left that team with a nice shining turd on the sidelines.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, let's put a pin in this already. Like, tanking kind of just doesn't exist in the NFL. Because like, first of all, three teams were in line for the number one pick in the last three weeks.

• 28:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  And they all won.

• 28:38Bill Simmons?

  The other Tennessee.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  The Giants and the Patriots. No, but in the last three weeks, all those teams.

• 28:43Bill Simmons?

  I know, but Tennessee knew the job today. Cleveland knew the job yesterday. It's three hours.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  I don't think it happens.

• 28:49Bill Simmons?

  Look good for a quarter. It's like, all right, you gotta go.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Joe Milton's your guy. How many quarterbacks do you think you have? Joe Milton's your best quarterback. Kyle already won the jersey.

• 28:57Bill Simmons?

  Joe Milton was fantastic. I would have started both rookie receivers, the guys who have had no catches all year. Drake May, they at least figured that out, but that took five days for them to figure out. But here's how I would explain it to somebody who didn't know anything about this. If you owned a company and you had, I don't know, hundreds of people that worked for the company, and you had the single biggest decision of the year for that company that had the most financial and business implications possible. And you gave it to, I don't know, let's say your friend Harry is the president. And you're like, I know I'm firing Harry next week.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  It's getting good. Yeah.

• 29:34Bill Simmons?

  I know I'm gonna fire him on Sunday night. And this decision is gonna be Sunday morning. Should I just let Harry make this decision for the company right before I fire him? Or should I try to figure out with other people who are gonna be here next year, what the best decision is? You know what? I'll let Harry do it and then I'll fire him right after. It makes no sense. No normal business operates this way. You don't turn over the biggest decision of your year.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Business. It's not.

• 29:59Bill Simmons?

  This was normal. You just have to lose the game.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  You shouldn't have hired Harry in the first place, is what I would say to you. But it's like, and you got people paying to watch this business on a given day.

• 30:09Bill Simmons?

  All of them were rooting for them to lose.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  I don't know. I don't know. Now Kyle, he's got the Joe Milton jersey.

• 30:14Bill Simmons?

  Kyle was devastated. Kyle was the most upset of anyone I was texting with during the game, other than my dad.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Now you have to trade Drake May. Of course he's devastated. Yeah.

• 30:24Bill Simmons?

  They had, they were in the cap bird seat. They already have a franchise QB. They're gonna have the number one pick, but like by, within two hours, we were like, wow, the two QBs, nobody even likes them that much in this draft. Maybe we couldn't have gotten that much for them anyway. It's just, it just speaks to what this whole season was like, which was owners who don't know what they're doing, a front office that don't know what they're doing, and a coach who had no idea what he was doing and contradicted himself over and over again, starting in August, when he was like, it's gonna be a competition for this job, then starts to reset, even though May was better. And then four weeks in, he's like, well, May was playing better, so he's gotta start. It's like, well, wait, you, you actually said that wasn't what we were, but now, and it was just contradictions left and right, and he deserved to be fired.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Listen, that's fine, but now you have three coaches in the last three years. You're like the Panthers with the one and dones. Congrats, you root for the, the New England Panthers. And now it's like, you can't talk about Patriot lore, and well, we have, we have grit, and we're gonna go, we have staying power and all that.

• 31:22Bill Simmons?

  They left with Brady, unfortunately. I know, we're like everybody else. But we had a chance to have a franchise QB and the number one pick in the draft.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  You got, you got the pick.

• 31:31Bill Simmons?

  It's three hours out of your life. Like, we do this all the time in basketball. It's like, oh, these two weeks are gonna suck, but it's all gonna be worth it, because we'll be in this spot after it's done. This was three hours.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  I think it's very difficult to get tanking to work in the NFL. I think you have to have the coaching staff, the players, and the front office on the same page. Maybe the Giants did it today. They didn't do it, they didn't do it in the last two weeks. In the NBA, it's as easy as checking in at the scorer's table. This is, it's just different. It just is.

• 31:58Bill Simmons?

  But you just, you just laid out exactly what the problem was. You need to have the players, the coaching staff, and the front office. Well, the players are gonna do whatever. They're trying.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  They're always gonna play, they're not gonna do it. They're always gonna try, yeah.

• 32:09Bill Simmons?

  You need the coach, the front office, and the owners, all to be on the same page. And when they're not on the same page, dumb shit like today happens, because you have coaches who have different motivations for what's best for those three hours than the front office and the owners. And my- So some people are like, do you think he fired Mayo because they were supposed to lose that game and they didn't? I think they knew they were firing him the whole week. They had like this long statement ready, you know, an hour and a half after the game. But this is just, this is what the whole, really the whole year has been like dating back to the Apple doc, dating back to this process of hiring a coach that was never a coordinator before, not really hiring a GM, not spending money.

• 32:53Bill Simmons?

  And this was the worst team in the league that somehow doesn't have the worst pick.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  But take me through it. What's involved in losing today? Like the Bills play Josh Allen one play, right? Or one series, whatever.

• 33:03Bill Simmons?

  So the Bills bring in Trubisky. Trubisky is like actually pretty good and they're like, all right, gotta get, the Bills wanted us to win. They bring in Mike White and they're just handing in the ball up over the middle so they can give the ball back to us.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  So it's a staring contest. So like maybe, I don't know, you, you know, it wasn't like you started everybody, you were throwing bombs every play. It was just a weird, weird game where both teams.

• 33:24Bill Simmons?

  Well, Joe Milton was great. And by the way, kudos to Joe Milton. He was awesome. This was his one chance to shine.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's your guy.

• 33:29Bill Simmons?

  And he was really good, but this is really why you need a fourth quarterback. This is where you need a Bailey Zappi.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  I mean, I guess you could just take a knee. You could take a knee every play, but whatever.

• 33:41Bill Simmons?

  Well, but this is when the offensive coordinator is not on the same page and it's like, just, can you just keep handing the ball off and have guys run it to the middle line? Can we just keep doing that for a while?

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Week 18 sucks. Let's just say that. We could just agree to that.

• 33:54Bill Simmons?

  And every year I'm like, I'm never betting on this again. And then I bet on it. I had Buffalo. I also had Houston because I loved Houston. You lost, you lost your wise wager.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I sat my starters. I bet Tennessee. I was like, they're two and 14 against the spread and that's why I gotta warm up for the playoffs. So I'm not starting anyone good. But I felt like today was like a little bit of an out of body experience. We're used to the 1pm slate being kind of shit, right? But we saw so many backups today. It reminded me like of a high school reunion where you're like in the corner of the room, like you're sipping cheap wine and staring at name tags like, oh, there's Marcus Mariota and Trey Lance. Oh, wow. Jimmy G, what's he up to?

• 34:33Bill Simmons?

  Jimmy G, I'm gonna go over and talk to him.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jimmy.

• 34:36Bill Simmons?

  Jimmy G, you still, you still living in Los Angeles?

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. What's, uh, what's up with the divorce? And then like, uh, Davis Mills corners you and spends like 20 minutes showing you pictures of his vintage Chevy and you're like, all right, I'm good. I'm good. Let's get to the playoffs already. This sucks.

• 34:50Bill Simmons?

  Who is the Bailey Zappi?

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the whole weekend. This is great. Oh, Shefter's reported, there's a trade.

• 35:01Bill Simmons?

  The Pats have traded down from the first to the fourth pick and they've dropped three spots and every round after that in return for Jack shit. Got nothing. Got zero to do that.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  I haven't seen the specs on Jack shit. I'll have, is he a linebacker from the quarterback?

• 35:19Bill Simmons?

  He's a quarterback, undersized, scrappy.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  There's your fourth quarterback.

• 35:23Bill Simmons?

  Kyle, should I get you a Jack shit jersey? That's what we traded the first pick for.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 35:30Bill Simmons?

  One thing I was thinking, I mean, at least they realized that they don't have the coach and they got rid of, uh, poor Mayo, who, you know, was put in an impossible spot. He didn't know how to be a head coach. Um, but I was looking at the coaches who made the playoffs. Andy Reid, Kevin O'Connell, Tomlin, Bothar Boss, Peyton, McDermott, Dan Campbell, Matt LaFleur, D'Amico Ryan's, and then Dan Quinn, Todd Bowles, and Sirianni as the last three. Those are probably the shakiest three out of all the playoff coaches. It's a pretty good batch. Just makes me think like, coaches and QBs, what, if you could just figure out those two things, you're probably good.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good, that's a good starting point. I'm hoping Love is 100%. I'm hoping Hertz is 100%. So we don't waste a couple of games in there. But, uh, yeah, it seems like all the quarterbacks, most of them will be solid. Got Herbert in there.

• 36:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think Vrabel is probably the favorite because he was Patriots Hall of Famer and I think he wants a job and he has a relationship with Kraft and he's a fucking awesome coach. And I can't believe nobody, I can't believe he's available. I don't know why somebody hasn't already hired him, but.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  You think he used the Jets to nudge the Patriots to get that firing today?

• 36:43Bill Simmons?

  No question.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Well, that's probably the bigger reason they fired Mayo then, today.

• 36:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cuz he's five teams are gonna want him. Flores would be interesting, too, because he has Patriots DNA, was with the team, really good coach, coached somewhere else. So would it be his first job? Those would be my top two, but Vrabel, I always thought, I just always thought Vrabel was a top seven, top eight coach.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  He'll be in good shape if you get him. Jack Shit's high school coach is, his name is in the hat.

• 37:11Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's the thing. And once you have Jack Shit, do you get Jackson's college coach?

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Doesn't matter who coaches.

• 37:16Bill Simmons?

  Bring him on. So Denver edged out Miami and Cincinnati. That was another thing. Thanks partly to the Chiefs, who wanted to make it clear from the first minute, we have no interest in competing in this game. I actually kinda like the Chiefs plus 11 and a half. I think I put them in a tease.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Once that went north of 10, I'm like, oh, the books know more than we do here. They, they know more. Cuz it becomes more about more than Carson Wentz wants to try out for his next team. It's like Carson Wentz is with the third string, everything, you know? Carson Wentz isn't throwing to, you know, all, all these, all the studs. So it doesn't matter.

• 37:53Bill Simmons?

  He's throwing to wide receivers. Steelers Bengals the day before, and we all got to get excited about the Bengals one last time. I realized the Bengals just existed for content and that's about it. Fun to talk about, get a Borough MVP conversation out of it. Talk about T. Higgins, is he gonna be back? Could replay the montage of all the games they almost won. You'd be like, you don't wanna see them in the playoffs, but ultimately they had no chance cuz the Chiefs had no real reason to compete in that Denver game. So we just got free content for a week for nothing.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Right. You talk to your kids about the fantasy studs and everything, but you know, although I will think, you know, as Borough, as great as he is, I was looking at their eight losses. I think Mahomes and Allen won a couple of those. I, I think that's kinda the difference.

• 38:41Bill Simmons?

  He almost lost the one yesterday, Saturday.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. It would've been a perfect Bengals game and a perfect Steelers game if not for the end.

• 38:49Bill Simmons?

  Well, he definitely seemed like he got concussed during that Steelers game. They, they get really loosey goosey about some of these. When a guy lands face down, there's a giant thing of turf, he stays down for a while, and then they show him on the sidelines after the commercial and it looks like he thinks he's in like Antarctica. Yeah, I'm pretty sure something made the something happened that maybe the blue tent didn't accurately capture.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, Goodell is fired, the director who took the shot him on the sideline and like, let's not, that's one too many. We don't need to show this guy's.

• 39:21Bill Simmons?

  Lingering on him like that.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Eyes are rolling the back of his head. Show some terrible towels. People chewing on terrible towels enough.

• 39:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So big picture with the Bengals, you know, they're gonna be in the same spot. Some of these other teams are in it. They bring back T. Higgins, you're paying 40% of your salary cap for a QB and two receivers. We just watched Miami do this. I don't think it works. I don't think it's sustainable. Miami completely fell off a cliff this week. Now, they started to realize during that Jets game, I think that that ship had sailed for them. The Tyree Kill stuff was super weird after the game and has been kind of weird all season. He's a little bit of the NFL's Jimmy Butler in some ways where it never seems like he's happy for more than two months and there's weird press conferences

• 40:12Bill Simmons?

  and sometimes all of a sudden he's not playing. But then after the game, he just seems like he's out of there. So.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Seems like no one goes off like he did, right? Like I want, I want out of the, didn't he say, I want out of this place? Like this is, um, yeah, he had a weird year. It would have been nice. How about Miami? I know they knew their season was over. How about win a game in cold weather? So people could shut up about it for a second. Yeah. It wasn't just Tua, like it's a whole team, like just melts ironically, but oh, I'm saying that Shefter said the Pats traded a second round pick for Mike McDaniel. That's pretty good. That's not bad. That's not bad.

• 40:52Bill Simmons?

  You're torturing me. I got to understand how upset all the Pats fans are.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  A little bit.

• 40:57Bill Simmons?

  I thought, is Mike McDaniel, has he coached Jack shit or no?

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:01Bill Simmons?

  The Tyree thing's weird because they gave him that extension, which makes him harder to trade. He's in his 30s now. I don't know if he's the easiest guy year to year. And I don't know what his market would be. And we've watched receivers over and over again. They hit this stage of their career and it's like, whoa, Tyree Kill's available, but it's like, okay. What does that mean? It's like, ah, Devonte Adams is available. Okay, cool.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, nothing against Tyreek Hill, one of the best there's been in the last five years, whatever.

• 41:29Bill Simmons?

  One of the best of the last 10 years.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  You watch college football, you're like, wow, there's studs all over the place that anyone could grab in the third round. And look at the backlog for Hall of Fame. Like, there's a ton of, like, really good wide receivers who aren't going to get in the Hall of Fame. So.

• 41:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Um, that might not be the position to, uh, you know, stage a protest.

• 41:46Bill Simmons?

  I think the difference with him was, um, we left last year and I think he was the guy at receiver. And really for the last, for probably the last two or three years, like Lombardi always just called him the tilt the field guy. He was like the number one tilt the field guy. I think that's gone now. And it's partly not his fault because of what happened with Tua and the QBs, but, um, it feels like Chase kind of took that spot this year. And Chase's stats, I was looking at some of the league leader stuff. Chase was over 1,700 yards, had 17 TDs.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:21Bill Simmons?

  And you just felt him in every game, you know, and that, that's where Tyreek was. The league leader stuff is interesting. Nobody threw for 5,000 yards, even though we had 17 game seasons. Burrow came the closest, 49, 18. Saquon was the only 2,000 yard rusher. Henry and Cook both had 16 rushing TDs. Chase had 17 passing. And then interceptions, we had a tie. What happens for, with the bets with ties?

• 42:46Speaker 01

  It's a dead heat. I think you just split the, you split the look, like half your bet wins and half of it loses, so.

• 42:52Bill Simmons?

  So Cousins and Mayfield, ironically, my number three MVP, 16 interceptions for him. Boswell had 41 field goals.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 43:01Bill Simmons?

  40 plus field goals is, that's, that's nuts. It's like two and a half a game. And then, uh, Hendrickson led the league in sacks, so 17 and a half. My Hutchinson bet tied.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Hendrickson leads in sacks, triple crown for, for, uh, Chase at receiver and Burrow has the most yards. Terrific.

• 43:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  And Chase Brown got hurt, otherwise, you know, whatever. I'm looking at your, um, Tyreek Hill. In terms of, you, you figure like, he always had a long of 45, at least if not every game, every other game. He had an 80 yard catch in September 8th, game one. After that, his long was 30.

• 43:38Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 43:39Speaker 01

  And he did it twice. Yep. I'm looking at these.

• 43:42Bill Simmons?

  Wow. I wonder, do you think defenses started to figure him out a little bit better?

• 43:47Speaker 01

  It must be. I don't know. I mean, it's not like he got a lot of pass interference calls for him. It was a weird year for him.

• 43:54Bill Simmons?

  Well, speaking of Tyreek, it's time for today's player bundle segment presented by our friends at State Farm. Though it's tough to crown the best player in football history. No one can deny the magic when the right two players work together to pull off the unexpected. Like the play that led to you becoming a crazy Cowboys fan. Right?

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Oh, the stallback and Drew Pearson?

• 44:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  All right. I'm gonna go with that.

• 44:21Bill Simmons?

  Did you watch that one?

• 44:22Speaker 01

  I did.

• 44:23Bill Simmons?

  Like, were you watching it live?

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I've seen it. I feel like there's a lot of crap there. I don't think he pushed off. You think that was a push off? Watch it again.

• 44:32Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. I think everyone was assaulting each other back then. So it's hard to say. Pretty physical. I remember it's definitely one of the first ones I saw. I'm trying to think the synergy with the two players that played for my team was Moss and Brady that one year. I've never seen anything like that. There was a couple of regular season games when it just, it felt like they could have had like seven, seven TD connections each one. So I think those are my favorites. You know what else is better together? Better than Moss and Brady? Bundling your home and auto insurance with personal price plan from State Farm. Personal price plan lets you call the play so you can choose the right coverage at a price that's right for you.

• 45:12Bill Simmons?

  Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can bundle and save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Who's your favorite neighbor?

• 45:22Speaker 01

  My favorite neighbor is Andy, the fireman next door.

• 45:26Bill Simmons?

  No, wrong answer. Your favorite neighbor is State Farm.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Oh, damn it. Oh.

• 45:30Bill Simmons?

  Prices are-

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Number six, but okay.

• 45:33Bill Simmons?

  Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Okay. My favorite neighbor is Jack Shit. He lives on Main, like 512 Main Street. He's right there. He's a good guy. Barbecue.

• 45:49Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Workday. Guessing is for game shows, not your business, especially when your margin for error is zero. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance and IT with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission aware, giving you accuracy 24/7 and the ability to not just get work done, but get it done right. It's a new Workday. 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

• 46:31Bill Simmons?

  now, then book the rest later. In all fairness, though, hopefully, your team doesn't go to Cancun. 1-2-3 Cancun. Or if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save. Savings vary. End of the year stuff.

• 46:48Bill Simmons?

  Only five teams were within a half game of their actual over/under.

• 46:54Bill Simmons?

  Usually I always feel like Vegas has like half of them nailed exactly. It wasn't that case this year. The biggest, the biggest under/unders were Cleveland and San Francisco are both 5.5 wins under their under.

• 47:08Bill Simmons?

  Jets and Jacksonville are 4.5 and the Bears were 3.5. So whatever Vegas thought 3.5 was. For the overs, Minnesota was, ended up 6.5 wins over. Yeah. Washington 5.5, Denver 4.5 and KC and Philly 3.5. And so what about the biggest outlier game of the year? It has to be the Raiders beating the Ravens? Yeah, or the Pats beating the Bengals in, in week one. Some of the, some of the September ones. Yeah. I think we have to make a mental note next year. Just first two weeks, just put a giant salt shaker on your shoulder. Yeah. Don't, don't overthink it too much. How could you say salt shaker on your shoulder so easily? And Collinsworth still

• 47:52Bill Simmons?

  can't say pass rush. I can't say Collinsworth. Yeah. How is that possible? Shaw, he's Shaw shake. Yeah. He's got some Shaw shakers on his shoulder. I have a, I made an end of the year rock bottom rankings for you.

• 48:08Bill Simmons?

  Rock franchises rock bottom. Who's the deepest rock bottom right now? I think it's the Browns. Number one. They uh, three and 14, they lost their last five. They lost eight more games than they lost last year.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:22Bill Simmons?

  Their last three games, they scored 16 points. They have two more years of Deshaun Watson.

• 48:29Bill Simmons?

  And they have a top two pick, which they kind of stumbled into and didn't seem conceivable. But now they have the, the second pick in this draft that everybody's already like, I don't know about these quarterbacks.

• 48:43Bill Simmons?

  And they're gonna have to take one, right? Or you think they're gonna have to trade back?

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, they have to just keep trading picks. They have to say, sorry, fans, we fucked up. We're gonna be bad for the next three years. It's our fault. It's not yours. You'll still have to pay top dollar to get into these games, but we're gonna have to do some maneuvering to, to get these draft picks back, to get some capital back. I, I really feel that's the way to do it. They're not a quarterback away from winning. And they're, they're already paying a ton to keep the terrible one.

• 49:10Bill Simmons?

  So how many teams would actually trade into this draft? And do you like, some of the stuff I was reading the last week, as I was trying to figure out what the Pats could get for number one before we traded down to take Jack shit.

• 49:25Bill Simmons?

  The, like Diana Rossini had a thing about the quarterback saying how.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:30Bill Simmons?

  If Sanders and Cam Ward were in last year's draft, they would kind of been in that pen X Drake may reign. So if that's the case, that makes me think they're probably not going one and two. Because usually we see teams reach for QBs, but not if people, not if the grade for them is like mid first round, early second round. I'm so glad we have Todd McShay this year, plus our Ringer Draft Guys. I'm sure this is gonna be a huge topic. But I, I just, we, we rarely see teams reach like that for quarterbacks that people aren't even positive are gonna be above average starters.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  I don't think there's gonna, I don't think the buzz is gonna grow for Shador Sanders. In fact, there are some experts who think he's like mid second round at this point. But I think like whatever personal momentum he has is carried, that's it's gonna plateau. And so by that regard, I don't know if that's, you know, Travis Hunter's a nice player. Cam Ward, again, a little bit shaky, but as far as you're gonna go for a quarterback. But I don't know who I'm looking like Kelvin Banks. They talk about the Patriots taking an offensive lineman. Nobody's clamored for these guys. Yeah, it's like it's fine. I'm sure these guys are good players and everything, but it's not like it's been in years past. Like when the Cowboys started winning and I was like, all right, I don't know what the difference between 10 and 17 is at this point. Still gotta get.

• 50:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, sometimes there's this draft where you get the number one pick. Like we had at the year we took Ken Sims, it was like for the 1981 draft. We sucked the whole year and it just turned out to be a year where Ken Sims was the number one pick. Need this to say, um, not a lot of Ken Sims jerseys still around. Then you end up with another year like last year where he goes Daniels and May and Caleb Williams in the top three. And it's like, holy shit, you know? And then you go through that, I mean, that's gonna end up being iconic draft.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 51:20Bill Simmons?

  You look at the first round of that draft, there's like 15 potential all pros in it.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it could be a lull. This could be the year.

• 51:27Bill Simmons?

  Could be a low draft.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Jack shit will go, I hope Jack shit isn't mean to his girlfriend. And like if she's looking at her cell phone when he's drafted, like he's not gonna, I'll bow her unnecessarily.

• 51:38Bill Simmons?

  So we both think Browns are one. I was thinking for a rock, for true rock bottom, not having a coach or a quarterback. I think is that that's when you're really rock bottoming. So Tennessee, I think has to be second.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:53Bill Simmons?

  Um, three and 14. I don't know what they saw from their coach this year, which makes me think he's the coach. Levis is so bad that they started him because they knew he would give them their best chance to lose. I wish we had had Levis today. Joe Milton's like a hundred times better than Levis. Um, so there too, but at least they have the first pick in the draft. But as we said, it's a down draft. Um, Giants, I would have three. They're in the same boat, except they're bringing back Dayball.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  And then Shane, yep.

• 52:23Bill Simmons?

  Would you, would you put New England, Jacksonville, Indianapolis and the Jets? Who would you put next?

• 52:29Speaker 01

  I think the Jets have to show me something before I.

• 52:31Bill Simmons?

  A coach or a quarterback?

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Until then, they're a joke of the franchise that everybody claims they are. And the win today over Miami is not showing me something. Sorry. It's just not there.

• 52:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So then, I mean, I honestly think Indianapolis would probably be fifth and then you would have Jacksonville and New England right after that. Cause Indianapolis, I don't think they have a quarterback and I don't think they have a coach. But the season, would they finish like eight, nine or seven, eight, nine, I think? Seven and 10? They're somewhere in there, seven or eight wins. Which fools you into thinking, oh, maybe we're not that far away, but I actually think they are far away.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, far away from what, I mean, that's the division you want to be in if you need to grow, right? Yeah. Indianapolis was eight, nine. So they ended up like two games behind the division winner.

• 53:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  But you and I, I think are both a little hesitant on backing that quarterback.

• 53:22Bill Simmons?

  Is there anybody you would throw, anybody else you would throw in that?

• 53:27Bill Simmons?

  For rock bottom? Cause like the Bears have Caleb Williams, the Pats have Drake May, like there's at least things you can grab onto.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  The only reason I put the Bears in there is because I think the Packers, Vikes and Lions are going to be good for a little while here. Don't you? Like you kind of have to look where they reside and um.

• 53:45Bill Simmons?

  Like they resided, they murdered our exact order pick.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  I know. We should have just gone under eight and a half and uh, and to not make the playoffs. That was.

• 53:53Bill Simmons?

  It was plus 150.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Shit. So stupid.

• 53:58Bill Simmons?

  Couple of my friends were asking, cause we were talking about how we did so well in the over unders. Like was there juice on those? When, um, when we picked them, for the most part, they were always like minus 150, minus 120. If there was crazy juice, we probably mentioned on the podcast, like.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:14Bill Simmons?

  I remember Pittsburgh under had a lot of juice. The Bears under had a lot of juice. It's the Cowboys under had a lot of juice. Going the other way because they didn't want you to bet it. So there's probably like 10, but for the most part, they were around even.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  We didn't cherry pick the minus 180s. I don't think that were that many anyway.

• 54:29Bill Simmons?

  I don't think there was, yeah. And there was some cases where we probably went the other way. Speaking of the rock bottom rankings, fantasy, who's been on fire all year, there's Jets tweets. He tweeted, uh. During the Jets win today, an unlikable Jets team winning a pointless final game of the season weakening draft position before a vast regime change while an arch rival prepares to hire the coveted coach that never had a chance at. A tale as old as time.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  They might be bottom five. I'm telling you. You'll have Giant and Jet fans. You could have like a three hour podcast of Giant and Jet fans just arguing who's in worse, worst spot.

• 55:08Bill Simmons?

  Who's angry about their situation.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Where's a point of pride?

• 55:11Bill Simmons?

  Well, that was the worst possible editing for Jets fans where they're, they're basically dancing on Miami's grave. Miami checks out and Rogers all of a sudden is like firing touchdowns and moving around and you know, he's back, but against this team that had checked out. And I guess that's the highlight tape he would send this, this spring. Just trying to get hired. Hey, did you see my week 18 game?

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 55:37Bill Simmons?

  Four touchdowns.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's add an episode of Enigma. That's going great.

• 55:41Bill Simmons?

  We, we, we, we beat Miami. They're trying to make the playoffs. I threw four touchdowns on them.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  He probably does think that. He does think like that. I might throw the Raiders. Did you mention the Raiders?

• 55:52Bill Simmons?

  Oh, did I not have the Raiders in there? Oh, my apologies. Oh, the Raiders are definitely top four.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, they have to be. I mean.

• 55:59Bill Simmons?

  I thought I had the Raiders. I must've copy pasted them and accidentally taken them out. Yeah, they're top four.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Three double digit win teams in their division and you know, I don't know. I mean, I know Tyree Kill went nuts after the game. I feel like Brock Bowers is about to waste a bunch of years in that offense.

• 56:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. What do Brock Bowers' friends and family tell him? Can he hold out now? Has anyone ever held out after year one?

• 56:21Speaker 01

  That'd be great.

• 56:22Bill Simmons?

  All right. So final rock bottom Browns one, Tennessee two.

• 56:28Bill Simmons?

  Giants three Raiders four.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  That's fine. As long as you have Browns number one. I don't care where anything else is. Yeah.

• 56:37Bill Simmons?

  All right. That's enough foreplay.

• 56:40Bill Simmons?

  Guess the Lions.

• 56:43Bill Simmons?

  Round one. Saturday. What's the records by the way? You're, are we tied?

• 56:49Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 56:49Bill Simmons?

  We're tied, right?

• 56:51Speaker 01

  Nine, eight, one. You're up. Nine weeks, nine weeks for you, eight weeks for me. One week tied.

• 57:00Bill Simmons?

  The Shaky's job game.

• 57:04Bill Simmons?

  Saturday, only two games on Saturday. The Chargers. Are traveling to Houston.

• 57:13Bill Simmons?

  To play the Texans. I feel like there's probably some AFL version of this game when. What was Houston Titans?

• 57:22Speaker 01

  The Oilers? What do you mean?

• 57:25Bill Simmons?

  No, somebody was the Titans.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Oh, well, the Jets were the Titans, right?

• 57:28Bill Simmons?

  Oh, the Jets were the Titans. Was he? Yeah. So Houston Oilers. And what were the, the, I guess they were the San Diego Chargers?

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:36Bill Simmons?

  They must have had some sort of AFL playoff game in the sixties, but that was some iconic game that.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  This is it. Was Shaky's around in the sixties?

• 57:44Bill Simmons?

  Shaky's Pizza. It was probably a piece of pizza that tastes now as like it came from 1960s.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:53Bill Simmons?

  I guess the Chargers minus two and a half in Houston.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  We both did. And it's three.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  It's pretty fair, I guess.

• 58:02Bill Simmons?

  A compelling start.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  No, it's down to two and a half. So we got it. We got it exactly.

• 58:07Bill Simmons?

  Oh, we got it exactly. Wonderful.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 58:10Bill Simmons?

  So I'm trying to figure out who's the fuck job. Game out of these six games where everybody's just on one side. Chargers are a candidate.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 58:22Bill Simmons?

  Who was the game last year? What was the Cleveland Houston game last year?

• 58:25Speaker 01

  It might have been Cleveland and Houston. Might have been the very same one, but we loved Stroud then. We're a little down on that offense right now, right? And maybe a little, oh, Harbaugh is going to want to win and, you know, get. Keep it going and go, they'll go to Kansas City. Well, it depends what the other teams do, but. We might fall in love too much with Harbaugh and Herbert. Over the weekend, forget about that. The Texans are the home team and how they screwed us last year.

• 58:51Bill Simmons?

  I'm trying to think how much of a home field advantage Houston would be.

• 58:56Bill Simmons?

  That's a crowd that's probably getting nervous pretty immediately.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:00Bill Simmons?

  Uh, no Tank Del, no Stefan Diggs.

• 59:05Bill Simmons?

  I guess they could try to run on them. I like the Chargers team though. I think they're pretty talented.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  When did the Texans, when was that last game? Like you're like, oh wow. All right. This team's got it.

• 59:13Bill Simmons?

  Oh my God. It's been since like September, right?

• 59:16Speaker 01

  It's a ton, right? Yeah.

• 59:18Bill Simmons?

  Didn't they have a good?

• 59:19Speaker 01

  I can count. They beat the Dolphins 20 to 12, the Jaguars. Oh, they beat the Cowboys 34 10. That was it. That's how you know they're good.

• 59:28Bill Simmons?

  We didn't talk about the Cowboys. Jerry Jones had a cameo in Landman in episode nine, the newest episode.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  I'm not going up. Yeah.

• 59:36Bill Simmons?

  He pops in and it's like one of the better three, four minute cameos I can ever remember from a sports person on a TV movie thing.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  Oh, you're being serious?

• 59:48Bill Simmons?

  I'm being a hundred percent dead serious.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  I didn't know that.

• 59:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I, I texted you about it last night and I was like.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  I thought you were fucking around. Yeah.

• 59:57Bill Simmons?

  He was not fucking around. He's really good. He gives a whole speech to, uh, one of the characters and it's fucking good. It's like shockingly good. I couldn't believe it.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Oh, I gotta catch up now.

• 1:00:08Bill Simmons?

  No, it's, it's great. Like you're kind of like, whoa, are you an actual actor?

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  No, he is. He's the best actor in sports if you add it all up, right?

• 1:00:17Bill Simmons?

  He added to, he's at least as good of an actor as like, uh, he's Pesci, De Niro and those guys. Like he's easily could have been the Irishman. It's really good.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Teams could win a Super Bowl in his lifetime.

• 1:00:28Bill Simmons?

  I swear he gets choked up during it for real as he's giving the speech.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:00:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's crazy. He's really good.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  To watch. Yeah.

• 1:00:35Bill Simmons?

  Sunday, three games. First one, Buffalo.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  No, it's, uh, Saturday night.

• 1:00:40Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I'm sorry. We didn't do Saturday night. Saturday night, Amazon. You knew they'd get a good one. Ravens Steelers.

• 1:00:49Bill Simmons?

  In Baltimore. Third time we've had this game.

• 1:00:55Bill Simmons?

  I sent you my guess and I think it's too low, but I'll stick with it just out of honor system. I had Ravens minus six and a half.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  Good for you. You're an honorable man and a loser in this case. I said seven.

• 1:01:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  And it's nine and a half. Oh, Jesus. I was gonna, I would have changed it to seven and a half. I don't know why I went low, but all right. I feel like I'm gonna get smoked on this game. Like, I'm gonna be so mad at myself a minute in.

• 1:01:22Bill Simmons?

  So seven point teaser takes the Chargers to plus four and a half. The Ravens under three and then we just need a third team and we're good to go.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  I mean, but I don't, look, you think this is gonna be, I mean, every time they play, it's 18, 16, but you don't see it?

• 1:01:43Bill Simmons?

  I, listen, can we, so you'd want a 10-point teaser, your money parlay?

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  I might be going the other way. And you know how bad I've been in the playoffs, but the Steelers could stay in this, maybe. Maybe we'll buy low on the Steelers.

• 1:02:01Bill Simmons?

  It feels like their defense has like a good hour in it where they look like the Steelers from the first two months, but it doesn't seem like they can sustain it anymore. And I'm not really entirely sure what happened.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  I know they killed the Browns. They covered a 20-point spread, which is admirable in 2024. The Ravens did. But there was a whiff of, oh shit, the calendar turned to January and Henry early on wasn't breaking, busting out for 15 yards. And it's still gonna, has to be Lamar on third and seven, trying to scramble for a first down. Ah, Bill, I just, I don't know.

• 1:02:38Bill Simmons?

  I mean, we have been in this situation with Lamar as a big favorite.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Bill Simmons?

  And then about 40 minutes into the game, be like, oh no, I feel like I've bet on this game before.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  Why is this 13, 12? Yeah.

• 1:02:51Bill Simmons?

  Unless the Steelers have just been playing awesome for a month.

• 1:02:56Bill Simmons?

  That's the only thing I can think of that would make me think that they could hang in this game because it just doesn't seem like they can score more than 20 points anymore. So what you laid out with 18 16, that would have to be the game. It has to be 18 16, 16 13, 17 16, that's it. So I think if Lamar-

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  But it's always a Ravens team that averages 30 points, but can't score more than 17 against the Steelers. It's always, it's kind of always that, right?

• 1:03:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, or it's the other way where they blow them out 38 10. Cause, and I gotta go through the playoff manifesto again and go through all the rules and try to figure out what might apply, but this, this has all the makings of Ravens blow out round one.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:03:37Bill Simmons?

  It's finally it. They've got it. And then round two, they scored 13 points.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Right. Listen, we'll, we'll have them on a money line parlay, I'm sure. I'm not that stupid yet.

• 1:03:46Bill Simmons?

  I'll tell you this, if Lamar loses this game.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Go ahead.

• 1:03:50Bill Simmons?

  He now enters Marty Schottenheimer territory for, I don't know if I can trust you anymore laying points in the playoff game.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  Was he a bad quarterback, Marty Schottenheimer?

• 1:04:00Bill Simmons?

  The Marty Schottenheimer teams. Remember how many times, how many teases and parlays? His teams blew over the years?

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're probably right. They probably have this win in them. And then it's the following week. What are they now? Three seed? So it's Buffalo.

• 1:04:15Bill Simmons?

  For the Steelers, it just feels like Friar Muth over the middle for 12.

• 1:04:21Bill Simmons?

  Pickens no longer makes any plays for whatever reason.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:24Bill Simmons?

  Najee Harris breaking seven tackles and getting 12 yards. Maybe Austin over the middle one time for like 22 yards, but I didn't, the explosive plays are just gone. So they might have to go back to the Flacco P I offense, just try to get pass interference. It could be the other way to do it.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Turn Lamar over a couple of times too. That would have to be in the equation.

• 1:04:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the move might be to stay away. I have a nice nest egg still for million dollar picks and I don't, I'm just so afraid of Lamar in the playoffs. He's really gotta, gotta win me back.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  Well, it's fake money, just so you don't have to worry.

• 1:04:59Bill Simmons?

  Oh, it is. You're right.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't be so afraid.

• 1:05:01Bill Simmons?

  Wow, real money too. Sunday, three games. Bills, Broncos is the first game. And these guys have got here early and they're going, they're jumping through.

• 1:05:15Bill Simmons?

  Broncos, good, bad team for you or somebody that's a little lively for this game?

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think their defense is just good enough that maybe um, they, couldn't they force a game like the Patriots played, not today, but a couple of weeks ago?

• 1:05:31Bill Simmons?

  The other game. Take the lead early, couple of long drives.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  That was a nice game plan.

• 1:05:36Bill Simmons?

  10-0.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  I'm sure your manifesto doesn't say great things about rookie quarterbacks on the road in the playoffs.

• 1:05:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:44Bill Simmons?

  So rookie quarterback against the MVP of the league also probably not a scenario I would love.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:05:51Bill Simmons?

  I guess Bills by 10 and a half over the Broncos.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  All right. I swear I hit this exactly. Eight and a half.

• 1:05:59Bill Simmons?

  Eight and a half?

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  They get slow, huh?

• 1:06:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:04Bill Simmons?

  Only because they're, I mean, that's like an easy tease. I'm gonna tease that tonight.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Their defense is pretty good. Like the Bills, I'd be surprised if they scored 40 on them. So if they score 30, then Denver has to get to 22.

• 1:06:19Bill Simmons?

  Just feels like anytime they need to play, they get to play.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Bill Simmons?

  The Bills.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 1:06:24Bill Simmons?

  We've only, they had that week four game, they got their asses kicked against Baltimore. They've had some shaky hour-long stretches, but for the most part, I, I like their offense at home in the playoffs. I just trust it. You trust their offense at home or the Ravens offense at home?

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's see that game, right? Don't we want to see Baltimore Buffalo? How about neither of you guys screw up? Don't mess this up. Get past these junk teams. Sorry, Denver. And uh, see in a divisional round.

• 1:06:52Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's the thing. If we get, if we can just kind of push everybody to round two, we could potentially have

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Great week.

• 1:07:01Bill Simmons?

  KC against the Chargers, Buffalo Baltimore,

• 1:07:07Bill Simmons?

  Detroit, Minnesota rematch.

• 1:07:10Bill Simmons?

  And then Philly versus Washington or Tampa, two teams that love playing Philly.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  It's too good to be true.

• 1:07:16Bill Simmons?

  Tampa beat them. Those are four great games. I like all of those games.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 1:07:22Bill Simmons?

  Um, okay. Next game.

• 1:07:28Bill Simmons?

  In Philadelphia Eagles Packers.

• 1:07:33Bill Simmons?

  And I can't imagine the Packers are psyched that it played out this way when they could have potentially not played the Eagles.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  Um. They almost pulled the boner of the decade with the love getting hurt today coming out. And then it's like, chapter's like, he's questionable to return. I'm like questionable. Why would he ever return? If his grandmother's on fire at midfield, he shouldn't return. Like this is nuts. Why? What? What's the point? So the Bears win. Who cares?

• 1:08:03Bill Simmons?

  Well, we forgot to talk about this at the top, which was my fault, but it seemed like Washington was just ready to lose that game 17 times. And once again, they have a cardiac kids win, but um,

• 1:08:17Bill Simmons?

  but now they now they get to play at Tampa. Anyway.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  Speaking of Jerry, I thought that was gonna backfire. The, the, the talk is that Cooper Rush was about to hit his incentive at 55% of the snaps. He was at 52.

• 1:08:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  And that's why they put Trey Lance in. I'm like, watch this MFer throw for four touchdowns and then Jerry's gonna have to pay him $60 million next year.

• 1:08:38Bill Simmons?

  That did not happen.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Nope, not even close. So.

• 1:08:41Bill Simmons?

  He had a couple of plays when he runs around and creates time where you can see it. And then he throws the ball and it's just two yards short of a guy or it's sailing over somebody. So he's just not accurate.

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  Perfect preseason week three quarterback. We'll keep him there.

• 1:08:55Bill Simmons?

  It's crazy how many picks and stuff the Niners gave up for him when.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Bill Simmons?

  I guess just on pure potential and how he looked in a couple.

• 1:09:05Bill Simmons?

  Really nuts. They almost seems like they don't take enough shit for that. And they stumble into Purdy with the seventh round pick, but.

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:09:11Bill Simmons?

  Wow. Um, Eagles, I have minus four over the Packers.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  You're gonna get this one. I had three. It's four and a half.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  So I'm up three, two with two left.

• 1:09:24Bill Simmons?

  It's a nice spot for the Eagles.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess, you know, is it weird that what's now it's been a few weeks for Hertz, right? This is kind of like a fighter that we haven't seen fight like a year and a half now.

• 1:09:38Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:09:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they get to a two seed. They get to play this Green Bay team that feels like they peaked four weeks ago. If they win it, there's a, you know, a really good chance they could get the Bucks in round two, which is nuts, a team that we didn't even, weren't even sure was going to make the playoffs at 12:55 PM today. So they could basically, um, I don't know.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  They should move it to Brazil. This is where it all started.

• 1:10:10Bill Simmons?

  Nigga, go back. Let's get it. Can we get that grass back?

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:14Bill Simmons?

  Next one, Washington against the Bucks in Tampa. I have Washington. I, it's funny. I had the Bucks favored in this for, as when I was doing Guess the Lions and then I just switched it. I was like, you know what? They're going to Washington favorite. So Washington minus one and a half.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  Shouldn't have switched it. Shouldn't have switched it. I had Tampa minus one, mostly by default. Tampa by three and a half.

• 1:10:39Bill Simmons?

  Oh my, um, wow.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  So how many rookie quarterbacks?

• 1:10:44Bill Simmons?

  That's pretty rare for me for the playoffs. That's, makes me want to bet the Bucks.

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  I think they're into your manifest though. Yeah, right? With the rookie quarterback on the road, although they didn't, they didn't kill Knicks as much.

• 1:10:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but I would argue, I'm going to look at the Bucks.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  It's tough. The Bucks played so poorly for 40 minutes today in a must win. It's hard to like them, but Washington didn't play great either. Let's face it.

• 1:11:11Bill Simmons?

  So Tampa, they lost to your team. I guess their best win is the Chargers.

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  Is that it?

• 1:11:20Bill Simmons?

  And they beat Philly in week four, Detroit in week two. So their best win since September is the Chargers. Those, those two wins in September are really good.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  They beat the one and two seeds. Yeah.

• 1:11:34Bill Simmons?

  Since the bye week, they beat the Giants, Carolina, Vegas, the Chargers, lost to Dallas, beat Carolina, beat the Saints.

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  Think it's a little steep?

• 1:11:46Bill Simmons?

  You, so you would want to lay points with Tampa?

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  At this point, they have playoff experience, right? They're kind of a playoff veteran team. Right? Or Washington, I'm not going to say they're just happy to be there, but there might be an element of that.

• 1:12:01Bill Simmons?

  I don't mind taking the points with that.

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  Biggest over under two, 49 and a half.

• 1:12:05Bill Simmons?

  I think being up by five points is some sort of sign. If I was seeing it that way, I should probably trust my gut. Monday night, Vikings at the Rams and I had the Vikings by one and a half in LA.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  All right, you crushed me here. It doesn't matter because I'm going to beat you overall. I had four and a half. It's two and a half. Minnesota minus two and a half.

• 1:12:27Bill Simmons?

  You had Minnesota by four and a half?

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, stupid. So you get it. But I went 4-3.

• 1:12:35Bill Simmons?

  Oh, man. So we're tied now?

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  We are tied. Now, what do you think the look ahead line would be for this? Like, I was probably closer if, like last night, if we would have guessed the line for this, right?

• 1:12:49Bill Simmons?

  Which one? The Minnesota?

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:51Bill Simmons?

  We guessed it 24 hours ago?

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I mean, there is a chance that Sam Darnold's a little iffy against a tough, tough-nosed defense, you know?

• 1:13:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I don't know. I, why would you think it would have been?

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  There was such a streak, on such a streak of scoring 30-plus points, right? So, um, I thought it would have been four and a half. I shouldn't have, I should have moved it based on today.

• 1:13:15Bill Simmons?

  FanDuel has odds for the number one draft pick. Cam Ward is minus 125. Sanders is plus 105. Hunter is 10 to 1. And then everybody else is long shot.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Your guy Kelvin Banks right there, 50 to 1.

• 1:13:31Bill Simmons?

  He's not going to be the first pick though, right?

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  I don't see Jack shit. I don't see odds on Jack anywhere.

• 1:13:37Bill Simmons?

  What about that Abdul Carter at 60 to 1?

• 1:13:41Bill Simmons?

  If somebody just wanted to go defense.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, these guys could move around. So what do we see? We see a pro day. We see Wonderlics. I don't know. I guess these could move, but some of those guys I don't think.

• 1:13:50Bill Simmons?

  It's weird that everybody's so heavy. All right. Anything else you want to hit? Little NBA?

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  On this?

• 1:13:57Bill Simmons?

  Jimmy Butler trades?

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  Oh, Mike McCarthy to the Pats.

• 1:14:01Bill Simmons?

  Come on.

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  Schefter. This is interesting.

• 1:14:03Bill Simmons?

  I do in this movie. This is such a traumatic day for me. I'm like a shell of myself today. So spend the whole year watching this fucking team. And they somehow they're the worst team in the league and they don't get the worst pick.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  You finally have a great quarterback in Joe Milton. I'm proud of you. It's good.

• 1:14:20Bill Simmons?

  You think, would you take Joe Milton?

• 1:14:23Bill Simmons?

  If, like, how many teams would actually take Joe Milton over what they have right now?

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  Where did he get? Who, who was it?

• 1:14:29Bill Simmons?

  Would you rather have him than anyone on Cleveland?

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  Oh, at this point, I think so. What did you draft him?

• 1:14:35Bill Simmons?

  He's like a fifth, sixth rounder. What's weird is he sucked in the preseason, I thought, because he was one of those guys. He was throwing everything 140 miles an hour. But he had like real touch today. He was good. He was moving around. He evaded some sacks.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  You hated it.

• 1:14:50Bill Simmons?

  Well, I was happy for him because he, everybody says he's a great guy, but at the same time, it was ripping my intestines out of my body. I just couldn't believe it. You gotta be kidding me.

• 1:14:59Speaker 01

  You don't even know who you were going to trade for in this draft. So yeah, like it's fine. Get some wins. It's nice. It's nice for the team.

• 1:15:06Bill Simmons?

  Well, we already traded it. We got Jack shit.

• 1:15:11Bill Simmons?

  The Butler trade's going to happen this week. I was telling you with the NBA, I was telling you about, um.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Houston, right?

• 1:15:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then Houston beat the Lakers tonight, although it was a, it was a good game. It was tight, but.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  But I think I said, well, let's wait a few games, right? I think, oh no, you said their January is hard.

• 1:15:26Bill Simmons?

  I said their January was about to get hard.

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 1:15:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Cause I was looking at, um, I really think there's a chance San Antonio can make the playoffs. And House, I talked about it on Thursday. Oh, so now they're plus 350. So it's right around what we talked about. They don't have the odds for Houston today, but San Antonio would have to jump either the Lakers or Houston, basically. And the thinking is Wemby's now a top seven guy and maybe they make a trade and.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:15:55Bill Simmons?

  So we were looking at that for.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  Well, don't we want to wait a little bit? Like they have, I think they have like.

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  Tough games coming up. I think we'd get better odds. They have the Lakers twice, they're at the Bucks.

• 1:16:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  They're at the Bulls.

• 1:16:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we can win. I'm monitoring. What do you got for parent corner?

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  Uh, all right. So my oldest was here, right?

• 1:16:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  Big Oregon fan, Ducks, went to the Rose Bowl, saw his team get destroyed. And, uh, like people like, you going? Why aren't you going? I'm like, I don't know. It's for the kids. At this point, it's for the kids. I'm not going to be one of these idiot fathers because I paid tuition like I sent my kid. And so now I'm the big, I'll root for them. I'll root for him. And I was trying to convince him that getting blown out is so much better. He just didn't want to hear it when he got home. Like, he's very much into, this is the big cause he's taken on, like that the Big Ten is better than the SEC. It's like, F the FCC. I can't stand it. It's like, and I guess as a parent, this is a little less stressful than if it's cause involved, like protesting for or against causes in the Middle East. So, all right, yeah, good.

• 1:16:59Speaker 01

  You hate, hate the SEC all you want, but anyway, uh, he was really bummed they lost and he's gone now. He went back to school, but he went back on Friday and his mother was furious and despondent. Like he went back a day early and like, none of his friends were going to be there. And it made her feel bad.

• 1:17:16Bill Simmons?

  Kind of wanted to get away from everybody?

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  I think so. And he just wanted to get back to no one. And I was like, listen, I, I try to put myself in that position. I was like, I think I would have liked this, like, right? If you could have gone back to college and had like a day to shop or whatever, just lay around and do nothing with no one there. Like, I think I would have liked that. That's fine. And the other thing I was thinking is, you know, we spent the entire weekend and entire holidays complaining about our, our parents, like Melissa and I, like the gift card, they lost these gift cards and they're arguing about who got more or less. And hospital visits and getting them to and from, like, maybe that's not smart. Maybe we have to have a, like a poker face, like, yeah, because then I think they feed off this, right? Like, uh, he doesn't want to be, it's like, oh, all right. It's all right to hate your parents.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  Good. You gave me the okay. And now I'm going to do that. Now I'm going to leave early for school. So there's not really a story attached to it, but I just think like, I think you have to be careful when you think you're being cool, making fun of your parents. I think it kind of. Sets a different tone with your kids potentially. Know what I'm saying?

• 1:18:19Bill Simmons?

  Well, you made me think of how they talk about how inside the NBA is too critical about the NBA product.

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  The league.

• 1:18:25Bill Simmons?

  This theory.

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:18:27Bill Simmons?

  And that makes people more critical because they're just following the leader. So it's a similar type of thing.

• 1:18:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:32Bill Simmons?

  Whereas in the NFL, everybody's like, you know, praising everybody at all times on those studio shows. We're doing like long interviews, but everything's like positive and

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:43Bill Simmons?

  pushing, pushing the product.

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  We have to be less Barkley and more

• 1:18:47Bill Simmons?

  But how would you push the product, how would you push the product of your own parents?

• 1:18:51Speaker 01

  I think it's just like, you know what? They raised me well and I'm glad I'm in a position I, I'm in to help them.

• 1:18:57Bill Simmons?

  So glad they're still healthy. Yeah.

• 1:18:58Speaker 01

  Things like that. They're still healthy.

• 1:19:00Bill Simmons?

  So lucky to have them around.

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  I would never leave a day early to, to be away from them. I don't know. Something like that.

• 1:19:08Bill Simmons?

  I definitely did that in college. I remember my junior year.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:12Bill Simmons?

  I went back, I just went back and stayed and cause we had an apartment. I was like, you know what? You know what's great? The apartment. Nobody's gonna be there. I went back. So I see it.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:22Bill Simmons?

  Kudos.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  What about now? How about you? Don't you like being like in an office, like getting away from everything for a few hours or something?

• 1:19:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  It's nice. Yeah.

• 1:19:29Bill Simmons?

  Well, Zoe left. She, she left today. She went to go, uh, hang out with her boyfriend and who lives in Florida.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  Does she have school tomorrow?

• 1:19:38Bill Simmons?

  No, she doesn't have school for another week.

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:19:41Bill Simmons?

  So we were kind of like, you're leaving now. And she's like, well, I've been here for two weeks. It was like, yeah.

• 1:19:47Bill Simmons?

  I don't know.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  You complaining about your parents?

• 1:19:51Bill Simmons?

  So what do you think they're gonna complain about with us?

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  Well, that's the scary thing.

• 1:19:55Bill Simmons?

  10, 15, 20 years from now?

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  Like I'm already, you know, there's that commercial where you, like you're training people not to ask people about the weather and stuff. I forget it's a, it's, I won't say it's another insurance. I know we have our good friends at State Farm, but uh, yeah, I don't know. I'm already writing shit down, like what to avoid. Like just

• 1:20:16Bill Simmons?

  Dad, dad's going nuts about week 18.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 1:20:19Bill Simmons?

  All the playoff scenarios. What a fucking lunatic. He's 93 years old.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, my dad's rooting for the Patriots to lose for 35 straight years now. What the hell? Get over it.

• 1:20:31Bill Simmons?

  Just once he wants the first pick again.

• 1:20:36Bill Simmons?

  My, my parent corner. So we hooked up, my son has a PS5 and we hooked up a PS4.

• 1:20:47Bill Simmons?

  On a different TV so I could play Fortnite duos with them.

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 1:20:52Bill Simmons?

  Which led to me making a Madden comeback.

• 1:20:57Bill Simmons?

  And playing some Madden with him and realizing how much worse I am now at video games than I used to be.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:21:05Bill Simmons?

  Especially Fortnite, which I was okay in Fortnite at the end of the 2010s when we, when we were playing and I actually won a couple of times, but I was always like strategic and trying not to get into too many gunfights. Now, when I'm playing these video games, they're coming so fast. It's the number one thing I've done that's made me feel old in a lot, in probably this whole decade. I'm like, I'm doing plays in Madden and the clock's ticking down. I'm like, wait, I'm still trying to figure out what play I'm going to call on single back. There's like seven seconds left. So I realized like, I need to start playing video games to, I, I need the speed of it. I want to get the hang of it.

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:42Bill Simmons?

  So, uh, I'm going to play more video games, but I was driving down. I had a good drive.

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  That's your resolution to play more.

• 1:21:48Bill Simmons?

  No, well, I was, I was bonding with my son who never wants to hang out with me. And I was like, this is, I guess this is what it's going to have to be. I'm going to have to play some video games. So we'll hang out. But, um, but my son was like, you know, you're pretty good. You should, you should stream some of this. And I'm like, what do you mean? And he's like, should stream some of the games, like so people can see like what you're playing. I'm like, I'm definitely not doing that. But it's, this is just his generation now just wants to show everything at all times. Uh, I wouldn't do it mostly because I'd be so embarrassed, but, um, the reason I'm telling you this, cause Sam Darnold, when he was running around and he was under pressure the whole time and he was running to the right and chucking it up. That's basically my Madden offense now.

• 1:22:30Bill Simmons?

  And, um, you know what? I'm not gonna, I, I feel like I have another run in me. I think I can come back.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:22:36Bill Simmons?

  I just need some practice. Yeah. So I'm going to start, I'm going to play one game, one game at least every night. And, uh, anyway, I told this to my wife and she was really, really horrified.

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  Oh, she's not happy with it?

• 1:22:48Bill Simmons?

  Not happy at all. Not happy at all. She's like, what? I thought you were just going to do that over the breaks, but then I'll say, no, I might start playing a little more again. It's good for my brain. It's good for my reflexes. I'm older and she, and it was kind of one of those, oh, and I could tell. This is like right going into the memo for the divorce layer.

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  She's talking to her friends about it right now. Retained an attorney.

• 1:23:10Bill Simmons?

  You know, Bill's playing video games, but then I have some people my age, like my friend David Nyman plays Fortnite. I think he like a lot, like he plays like competitively. So there's some people that just, this is how they like unwind.

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  Well, could you get to a spot where you would actually stream it? Like if you got good again, would you consider streaming it or no?

• 1:23:31Bill Simmons?

  I mean, as you know, once upon a time I was one of the great video football game.

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:23:36Bill Simmons?

  Players ever. I mean, I don't want to brag, but that's what everyone was saying.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  It's okay.

• 1:23:42Bill Simmons?

  No, I want to get to the point where I could play my buddy Gus. Cause Gus still plays all the time and we were playing in the, we were playing in television in the eighties. So I want to see if I can get my mojo back. But I gotta say like so many plays now, we almost made these games too complicated. Like, do I need a 1,200 play playbook?

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't think, I don't know that NFL coaches, I know that most of them would be terrible with the time management at the end, the video games. I just absolutely know it, but as far as, yeah, you're right. I wonder if it is too many plays for them. I wonder if they'd call the same.

• 1:24:16Bill Simmons?

  Maybe that's what it is. Maybe, maybe I'm, I feel like Gerard Mayo. Well, another reason I brought this up. So I started a franchise season and I had the Patriots and I immediately traded for T Higgins.

• 1:24:29Bill Simmons?

  Put him with Drake May. And then it's when you're the owner, it gives you the option to fire your coach. So I'm going to fire Gerard Mayo at the end of the year. I want to get through the first season and then I'm going to fire him and try to hire somebody.

• 1:24:39Speaker 01

  That's good. Yeah. You should fire him every game. That's what the, that's the Patriots way now.

• 1:24:44Bill Simmons?

  This is another thing with Madden. They made, they made, they, they made it like way more complicated to be the owner. Like I've got to like hire and fire scouts.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 1:24:53Bill Simmons?

  And I got to decide about renovations for the stadium and all this shit. I'm like, can I just?

• 1:24:59Speaker 01

  You can spend 40 minutes before you kickoff.

• 1:25:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Just going in and out of that stuff.

• 1:25:04Bill Simmons?

  It's like, oh, you have a chance to upgrade the cover skills of your fifth cornerback.

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:25:09Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. They definitely overthought this. I think video games were at their peak was 20 years ago. College game apparently has passed it.

• 1:25:14Speaker 01

  It's even worse though with that, with like, with scouting and recruiting and NIL and shit like that. It's like real, it's really, you should like Lombardi is, Lombardi would be like, this is too hard.

• 1:25:26Bill Simmons?

  This is harder than actual real life.

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go sell insurance.

• 1:25:31Bill Simmons?

  The other thing with Fortnite, hey, do you know anything about Fortnite?

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  Not too much. I know the kids play it.

• 1:25:36Bill Simmons?

  Cause you can build stuff and the better the people are, you can build like little stairs to climb up wherever. Uh, you could build a little house around yourself to protect yourself. So the people that got really good at it, they're just maniacs. Like they're just building stuff and people like us that go in, they're just, we have no chance. So my son was like, you should play no build Fortnite. I'm like, what's that? It's like, well, nobody, it's the same game, but you can't build anything. So you can't do any of that stuff. And I was like, so it's kind of like the, it's like the G League for Fortnite. He's like, yeah. I was like, put me in there. Put me in there, Bronny James.

• 1:26:16Bill Simmons?

  Oh, right there.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  You're the Bronny of Fortnite. That's great.

• 1:26:19Bill Simmons?

  So anyway, 2025, uh, we'll see how long video games last, but, uh, I hope, I hope it gets.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  Do you have jack shit as your tailback?

• 1:26:27Bill Simmons?

  Jack, I'm gonna create jack shit.

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  Do it.

• 1:26:29Bill Simmons?

  If you're, if you're randomly playing me and mad at me, so you're running back, that's jack shit. That's me.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  That's you.

• 1:26:34Bill Simmons?

  So we'll see if it brings me and my son closer together.

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 1:26:37Bill Simmons?

  We'll find out. I am taking him to Rotten Borough. So we are, we are father, son bonding a little bit.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  You are? Nice. Okay. That'll be good.

• 1:26:44Bill Simmons?

  First, first Raw after 32 years, changing networks.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  Can you play Fortnite on your phone while watching Raw? No.

• 1:26:52Bill Simmons?

  We'll find out.

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  We'll say it's a matter.

• 1:26:54Bill Simmons?

  All right. That's it for parent corner. We got to plug.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  Oh, we'll be hanging out this week a little bit. We're going to be hanging out. We got the crew coming in, right? The ring of pregame show. Everybody's flying in. House from Washington, JJ from New York and Rahim has like 17 homes. I don't know exactly where his flight's going to originate. Probably Vegas, but they'll be out here. We'll be watching the games together and cutting sounds winning weekend against the odds through the ringer. All on the ringer podcast network and Fanduel TV. Also, I should announce I'm holding a press conference tomorrow. To address the rumors that while working at Fox, I had sex with Jason Whitlock and I did not.

• 1:27:33Speaker 01

  I did not in fact do that. Was I attracted to the men? Of course, of course I was, but what's being alleged is not, did not take place. I promise you that.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  I'm not doing it.

• 1:27:48Bill Simmons?

  Rahim texted me asking if I had a burner guest room. I didn't know what that meant.

• 1:27:53Speaker 01

  Well, he has one. There was a lot of talk about when he goes to Vegas, if he.

• 1:27:57Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm kidding.

• 1:27:59Speaker 01

  Oh, I see. I got you. All right.

• 1:28:02Bill Simmons?

  It should be great. I'm sad Miami's not in the playoffs though. I don't, we're not going to have the JJ Chuck.

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  I know. I was saying that today. I was like, all our teams suck. How did, how was it that everybody, even the bundle was on? I was like every, he's a Colts fan.

• 1:28:15Bill Simmons?

  House is the only one who has the team now.

• 1:28:17Speaker 01

  He was really hoping that he could see a game at SoFi, but somebody didn't do their job. Well, I guess the Rams didn't do their job. Otherwise he might've had a chance.

• 1:28:26Bill Simmons?

  All right. This was produced by Sir Rudy and Gahal and Kyle. You can follow everything we do on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. I'll be back on Tuesday with a pot of new rewatch was coming on Monday and you can catch salad all the places he saw. We will be back next Sunday live. We'll see. We, how much, how much fatter will we be next week?

• 1:28:48Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. I think let's go over four and a half pounds gained. I would say that's good. Hey, we do two pods next week, right? I think we did it last year like that. Well, because there's a Monday game. We can't guess one of the lines.

• 1:29:02Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We do like a, you do like a 25 minute appearance on the Tuesday pod.

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:29:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:29:08Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's good.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:09Bill Simmons?

  I, you know what? I just liked when it was three and three.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  I know. Yeah, they get, they get stupid with this, but.

• 1:29:15Bill Simmons?

  I don't understand why they did it that way. Anyway, all right, Sal. Good job, buddy.

• 1:29:18Speaker 01

  Good job, buddy.

• 1:29:44Bill Simmons?

  Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in DC. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-887-897777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-8778-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. This episode is brought to you by Core Power Protein Shakes. You know how we always talk about the little things that separate great athletes? Post-workout recovery is a big factor.

• 1:30:27Bill Simmons?

  Core Power Protein Shakes help you keep going after your workout with high-quality protein to build muscle and electrolytes to help hydrate. It's all you need for your recovery in one bottle. Available in 26 and 42 gram protein options to pick what works best for you. Visit corepower.com to learn more. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures, WildHorse9, John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. I like those guys. Star in the Sharp Witted Comedy Thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Minnehoshan 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.

• 1:31:12Bill Simmons?

  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 Friday. Get tickets now.