Guess the Lines Week 1, Plus Favorite NFL Futures With Cousin Sal

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Cousin Sal to Guess the Lines for Week 1 before having their NFL futures draft. (0:00) Intro (1:08) Guess the Lines Week 1 (55:33) NFL futures draft Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Cousin Sal Producers: Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Chris Wohlers Enter for a chance to win superior soccer, basketball, and golf prizes at https://michelobultra.com/SuperiorAccess The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit https://fanduel.com/playwithaplan to learn more about the resources and helplines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by PayPal. The holiday rush is coming and you can get ahead of it with PayPal. Shop your favorite online stores with PayPal this season like eBay for collectibles, Fanatics for teen gear, Walmart for tech. Check out the flexibility to pay now or pay later and split your payments with Pay in four with no interest, no late fees. Shop now with PayPal. Paying for subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com slash paying for PayPal, Inc., NMLS 910457.

• 0:39Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by FanDuel. The NFL is here and it's the most rewarding season ever on FanDuel with the all time FanDuel Rewards Club. Every eligible bet can earn you points. Win or lose, you still get points. The more points, the bigger the rewards you can unlock. Head to FanDuel.com slash BS to start earning with FanDuel Rewards Club. 21 plus select states or 18 plus DC, Kentucky or Wyoming. Game prob call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut.

• 1:42Bill Simmons?

  We're back, baby.

• 1:45Bill Simmons?

  Year 20, guest the lines. I'm Bill Simmons, that's cousin Sal.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50Bill Simmons?

  Just wanted to mention four podcasts for me this week. We got Sunday night right now, live on Netflix. Got, uh, I'm gonna do something Tuesday morning and then Wednesday night, Thursday night, I'm gonna be live after both games. Um, so a big four spot and then you're gonna be on the Ringer gambling show now called Ringer Wise Guys. We'll be live on Twitch. We have a whole plan for the big Friday weekend show. The games are starting. Do you like this Wednesday, Thursday thing?

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Three days.

• 2:15Bill Simmons?

  Cause I kinda do.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  It's in three days. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we waited long enough. Eight months of soccer and horseshit basketball. No offense, but we're good. We're good. Yeah, man. Three days, very excited. And this is an emergency podcast because Roger Goodell got extended, right? That's what this is?

• 2:30Bill Simmons?

  Right. He got extended over Christian Gonzalez. I have no idea if I'm gonna have my cornerback for this Seattle game. So, and then we have our fantasy draft on, on Tuesday too. So we got that. We got games Wednesday night, game Thursday night, all kinds of stuff to talk about. We have an action packed, uh, plan for this, by the way. We're gonna guest the lines first. And then afterwards, we're gonna have our annual futures draft, which we usually, we usually do closer to the AFC, NFC thing, but the, the season, I, I can't remember it ever starting this late. I know there are reasons for that with the calendar, but, uh, we're gonna.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, shame on the powers that be. No, don't ever start it this late again. Like we're, we're ready in July. All our research is done.

• 3:11Bill Simmons?

  We have. I really felt ready this week. Like I was ready to get going, but I know with the Labor Day, I was watching college football. I watched college football all day yesterday. UCLA 1-0, uh, dramatic, uh, pulled away from Cal in the second half at Cal. That was fun. The Michigan game. Before we do guest the lines, what was your take on the Michigan game and did you lose money?

• 3:30Speaker 01

  No, I didn't lose money, but I just, you know, my take is, okay, a couple of things. Um, one, a Hail Mary should never be completed. Like it should be like one in a hundred, not one in 10. So play some F-ing defense. That's, that's my big takeaway. Secondly, can we get the stadium clock with the official clock to sync up? Like you and I, if we put our iPhones on a desk, it's gonna go to eight o'clock.

• 3:56Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  At the exact same time, even though if you're AT&T and on Verizon or you got your, your phone wherever and I got my, why can't we get that to sync up? And then all this nonsense goes away.

• 4:06Bill Simmons?

  And Michigan's not that good is the other takeaway, right? Like Western Michigan really took it to them because that's one of the tough games that UCLA schedules. They have to go to Michigan. And then after you watch that yesterday, it's like, ah, the, the feeling less scared of that one.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Oh, Michigan people going crazy. Yeah, we did it. Take that, screw you and the ones. I was like, hey, you have six losses on your schedule, A, and B, you really lost that game because you stormed the field after beating Western F-ing Michigan.

• 4:31Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  That's a loss, sorry.

• 4:33Bill Simmons?

  I also felt like, we watch a lot of these. That was one of the only times I've seen them be like, oh, no, actually there's a split second left, one more play. Usually when that's anywhere near zero, the game's over. Everybody walks on the field, all that stuff. All right. We're doing guest the lines first. So background, if you've never watched this before, because we are doing this on Netflix this year. Um, we guess the lines, we send them to each other. Um, neither of them look. I try to be surprised. You look after I send the lines. Um, and we have done this now for 20 years and it started back when we were working together at Jimmy Come Alive. You were doing it on your own with Parlay Kid. We would sit in an office, we had desks right next to each other and you'd get a USA Today on a, on a Monday.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  USA Today.

• 5:17Bill Simmons?

  USA Today.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  It's a newspaper. Yeah, explain to people what that is. That's a newspaper.

• 5:20Bill Simmons?

  USA Today was a newspaper that back in the day, people would read a newspaper instead of going online. And you would read the lines and I would guess and we would go back and, and then, uh, when I stopped working at Jimmy Come Alive, you just started calling me on Sunday night. We started doing it and then we started doing it one side of podcasts. This is year 20. It's an actual anniversary.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  It's beautiful.

• 5:39Bill Simmons?

  I'm really excited.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  There's a lot of pride involved, even though we really, anyone could cheat at any time because the, every line is available from now until January. So, um, but we really do our best. I don't know. We avoid like seven months worth of people cheating, cheating on our behalf.

• 5:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I mean, people don't believe us. Like we're on gambling threads where, you know, somebody will bring up some and we'll just be like, hey, hey, hey, get that off here.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 6:03Bill Simmons?

  Like we really wanna wait. Uh, I did see the Pats Seattle line early. It was mistakenly, it was on a Pats thing.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:09Bill Simmons?

  Um, so I had told you that ahead of time, so we're just gonna call that a draw. I have not seen any of the other lines until this weekend after I sent you my picks. Cause you know, I wanted to start thinking about them. And, uh, so I looked at some of them for teaser potentials, but I'm gonna pretend to be surprised for most of these.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  And year 20, I think I'm, um, 15, three and one or something over the 19 year.

• 6:33Bill Simmons?

  That you've lost?

• 6:35Speaker 01

  I don't know, probably something like that.

• 6:37Bill Simmons?

  Who won last year? I don't remember.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Isn't that bad? Like we don't even have any stakes, anything. And I'm talking about all this pride and I can't remember. We may have even tied. I think you won. No, you won. You, you clinched.

• 6:47Bill Simmons?

  I think I won. It's like, it's like in wrestling when we just have these title matches, but it just ends up being a count out, like they would do in the seventies and eighties. So cousin Sal has been counted out.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  I keep beating you by count out. I can't take the strap off.

• 7:00Bill Simmons?

  Right. You can't take it. Um, couple of things for week one, just to remember, and we'll talk about this all week on our shows, but the week one divisional home underdogs, usually wanna grab those and we'll see if we have any coming up. Just in general, underdogs over basically a touchdown or more. Pretty favorable. I don't wanna read all the percentages and records because nobody wants that, but it's just two things to keep in mind. It feels like every year, two or three of those, um, two or three of those get you. And in general, the underdogs, it's a little shaded. It's like, what is it like 55%?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  A little bit.

• 7:32Bill Simmons?

  Something like that.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  And it's a bummer too, because the seven plus point underdogs are the teams we hated when we did the over under win totals, right? Like, I don't like the Browns. Well, I'm not taking the Cardinal, you know, and then, but yeah, no, they do cover. They'll necessarily win.

• 7:47Bill Simmons?

  And the big thing we're gonna be looking, whoa, a bunch of things. First of all, there's some great matchups.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:52Bill Simmons?

  But there's also, we, we bookmarked this last year. The game that ends up meaning the exact opposite of what it seemed like after week one. And last year was Raiders, Pats. The Raiders won in New England and it just seemed like, oh, the Pete Carroll, oh my God. And then, oh, the Pats, same old Pats, maybe it was a Mayo's fault. And then by week 10, it seemed like the most ridiculous result of the season. So we're gonna try to figure that out as we guess the lines first. Um, I had a couple of mailbag questions really quick before we go. And I, this is a really important one. Barclay brought this up on my podcast from Kyle Rector. Is Jerry Jones still with us? How many years has he owned the Cowboys and we haven't heard a peep?

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 8:38Bill Simmons?

  So Barclay's theory is he actually likes this team this year and he's scaled back.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  You're talking about Saquon, right?

• 8:47Bill Simmons?

  Um, Charles Barkley.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:49Bill Simmons?

  All right. Jones is like, I actually like what we did. I'm not gonna be a problem this year. Um, have we heard from him? You follow the Cowboys much more closely than I do. Has he had a press conference? Where is he? What's happening with him?

• 9:03Speaker 01

  He's not doing as many. He would do these weekly interviews on the local Dallas stations, not really doing those. Parlay that with the fact that, you know, last August, I think it was really right, right about this time of year, or in September, but he, uh, yeah, he went behind Micah Parsons' agents back and tried to, right? Then he went to the mother of the family, like it was, he was always involved. I think you're right. And whichever Barclay you're talking about, I think he's right too.

• 9:29Bill Simmons?

  Well, the thing is, we always used to have a joke in mid-August that Jerry just would make a decision like, I'm gonna lead first take for three straight days. So I'm gonna do something. I'm either gonna decide I'm not giving an extension to somebody I'm obviously giving an extension to, or I'm gonna get into it with somebody. He just didn't do it this year. Kyle Rector actually said, someone get Pablo Torres to get to the bottom of this. That was funny. He added it as Pablo Torre, big week for him. But, uh, Pablo Torre, that could be a good podcast. If, if Jerry, we don't hear from Jerry by week four. I almost feel like that's an emergency episode of Pablo's pod. Where, where did this guy go?

• 10:05Speaker 01

  I like that. Listen, whatever takes Pablo's, um, attention away from the two of us, I think is a good thing.

• 10:10Bill Simmons?

  That'd be great.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:12Bill Simmons?

  Pablo, I mean, this was this Clippers thing. I, I still can't believe it. Not only was Pablo right, but on top of it, the Clippers, I can't even tell you the text threads I'm on. I talked about a little my pod on Thursday, but the fans are outraged.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:29Bill Simmons?

  Everyone's like, get, get, this is like, get us out of this. It's like being at a restaurant where they tell you, you had a reservation for 7:30 and they're like, sorry, we're not gonna be able to see you to 8:30. And you're just like, just give me my car. I want out, get me out of this. That's every Clipper fan.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Pablo should be the interim owner, I think of the team. I think that should be his prize for cracking this story.

• 10:51Bill Simmons?

  That's a good idea. Make him like the front office guy, him and Sammy Copeland, I would go for that.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  It's so funny. You and I in house, we're talking about, um, Deshaun Watson has any player in the four major sports crippled their franchise for as long as Deshaun Watson has? That contract, that trade, whatever it is. The Browns suck anyway. They would probably screw it up. Yeah. And now it's, now they're one, two. You could pick whoever wants one.

• 11:14Bill Simmons?

  The only other mailbag I just wanted to throw at you because I was like, when people call us out together.

• 11:21Bill Simmons?

  Leo from Pembroke, Mass. called us the Nickname Zars. And he said, I'm gonna throw a literal dart against the Simmons and Sal nickname board and see if it sticks.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:30Bill Simmons?

  Jackson Dart, as we know, is a reckless idiot daredevil, much like Evel Knievel. But he might be, as the kids say, and Sal might say, mid. I give you mid Evel Knievel.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Oh, nice.

• 11:42Bill Simmons?

  It says the Jackson Dart nickname. Mid Evel Knievel.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  It's a thinker. Can I, can we do it? What's this guy's name?

• 11:50Bill Simmons?

  You can workshop it. It's Leo from Pembroke, Mass. You could workshop it if you want.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  I don't want to do anything, um.

• 11:55Bill Simmons?

  Right away?

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yes, because we play the Giants in, uh, six day, in seven days. So I'm, I'm, I'm gonna be, oh, mid Evel Knievel.

• 12:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that throws for four touchdowns. Good point. Yeah. All right. Guess the lines. We make guesses. Whoever comes closest wins. Year 20, Wednesday night. Seahawks, Patriots. Uh, it is in Seattle. The Super Bowl champs are eight, four and three against the spread in, in the kickoff game. I have no idea if my starting all pro quarterback is gonna be playing in this game. It's, it's just the weirdest thing I've ever watched. Like Witherspoon got this giant extension. I think he has the same agent as Gonzalez. It's an argument who's better, Witherspoon or Gonzalez? You can make a case either way, but they're both young, same draft. Um, equally really, really, really good elite cornerbacks.

• 12:43Bill Simmons?

  Seattle immediately paid their guy. New England has not paid their guy and I have no idea if he's gonna play. With all that said, Sal, I'm gonna, I, we, we tied on this already, but it's Seattle, three and a half. I would have guessed, if I hadn't seen the line, probably a whiff higher. I probably would have said four. Did you think three and a half would be the line for this?

• 13:01Speaker 01

  I think I would have said four too. It's weird. It's exactly the same as the Super Bowl, or at least what it opened at. But, um, yeah, why couldn't people go eight months without sending you the line? Isn't anything sacred?

• 13:10Bill Simmons?

  I saw it on Patriots Twitter. I saw one, one of the guys I followed talked about it. I just couldn't avoid it because he did the thing you just did about it's the exact same line as the Super Bowl.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, right, right.

• 13:20Bill Simmons?

  So I try to get amnesia if I see any number, but I, I couldn't avoid it on that one.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  I almost forget. Yeah, that's a tough one to forget, but I almost forget immediately. Did you say eight, four and one? I wrote, I wrote that the defending champ is 17 and four as a designated home team in the last 21. I guess that's before they started doing this Thursday game.

• 13:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I had the kickoff game.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Kickoff game, okay.

• 13:39Bill Simmons?

  I think that's a little different then, because sometimes I would have this on, on Sunday.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  I'm pumped for this one.

• 13:43Bill Simmons?

  I will say this. I think the Pats are a live dog in this one. I'm not saying this as Pat's fan bill. Like, Seattle has some secondary stuff going on. They have, Charbonne is not, you know, not gonna be there yet. They're basically riding this rookie running back. And the Pats have eight months to think about this game and revenge. And I, I don't know. I, I just, I love the Seahawks. I like their overs. We talked about it. We're gonna talk about them more in the futures thing. But I like catching them here instead of week 12, I guess would be my point. I like it in the week one. You know what I mean?

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:14Bill Simmons?

  Like, they don't have their stuff settled. They thought the safety they took in the second round was gonna actually really play for them. He's out for the year. He broke his ankle. I think the cornerback stuff's a, a little shaky with them, so it's a nice spot for the Pats.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Devil's advocate. Devil's advocate. Drake May be, because there isn't as much time in between the Super Bowl and, you know, game one. He's gonna be a little scared again when he sees that defense. Gonna get, do that thing where he drops the ball as soon as he gets it.

• 14:38Bill Simmons?

  I feel like you're just rooting against Drake May now.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  That was so much fun. That was great TV.

• 14:42Bill Simmons?

  I've never rooted against any of your quarterbacks.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  You should try it. It's fun.

• 14:45Bill Simmons?

  Thursday night, the Rams are playing the 49ers and it's in Australia. And both teams have done different travel plans for this. You guys talked about it a little on Ringer Wise Guys on Friday. This has become the most fascinating strategy thing. It's, I, I, I can't, I can't believe how different the two things is. And it's one game. Whoever wins, that will just now become the strategy for the rest of mankind. The Rams have decided to fly in 24 hours before the game and then just get the fuck out right after. And the 49ers are gonna get there. They're gonna try to acclimate. I've asked around. I don't know if you've asked around, but anyone I know who's done this flight thinks this is insane by the Rams. Like, actually objectively insane. What's your take?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  My take is, I wanna write down every week, the big, big three narratives of the week. And if you bet accordingly, how do you do? I bet you don't do, do as well. And this narrative is, like you said, the Rams are getting here too late. It's a little bit of an arrogant move by the Rams. And for the 49ers, it was easy. Let's take it. Let's fly as far away from that cancer box as early as we can, um, on the practice field. But, yeah, I think you need, that flight, this is not like a three hour flight, like, you know, this is like from Philly to Miami or something. This is gonna, I mean, you're gonna wanna stare at the toilet moving backwards for three days before you wanna practice. Like, there's a lot of good stuff to look at.

• 16:09Bill Simmons?

  What's the furthest you've flown?

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Probably Hawaii. Hawaii.

• 16:16Bill Simmons?

  No, we, we.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Oh, no, Europe.

• 16:17Bill Simmons?

  You've gone to Europe. What was that, 11 hours?

• 16:20Speaker 01

  That's right. Yep.

• 16:21Bill Simmons?

  I just don't, 24 hours, and I can't really sleep on planes to begin with, and I feel like I would lose my mind. I heard Pellicero was talking about this on the Ringer NFL Show, because he's, he's gotta go. He's going for Netflix.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 16:35Bill Simmons?

  And it was an interesting, like, uh, watching strategy for this, where some people think, don't watch movies, because movies have this start and finish, and the movie ends, you're like, oh my God, I still have 20 hours. Like, watch TV shows. It's more addictive. So watch a show where you have to be like, ah, I gotta finish it. And try to just go on like an eight episode binge? My point is, like, this is, it's so long, you have to think about shit like this. And I just, I don't understand. And I think it's so arrogant by them to do this.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  The other thing is, like, the 49ers were smart about it, because a lot of those guys, they're banged up every preseason, right? They have 10 guys going in who are questionable, and they're probably like, hey, we gotta get them, if we could leave in June, let's do that. Because who knows if they're gonna survive this flight even?

• 17:20Bill Simmons?

  The 49ers wanted to get away from the practice field. They left in July.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  We may have to get, like, our practice squad guys in there, because I don't know if anyone's gonna make it to the finish line.

• 17:29Bill Simmons?

  They might actually be, become normal human beings again after a week away from the electromagnetism. I can barely speak.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  I mean, this is, this is like, you know, I wouldn't have taken this as the Rams' home game. The Rams forfeited this game as a home game, right? And now it's even less of a home game, because they're getting there late. They're giving themselves every disadvantage they can.

• 17:50Bill Simmons?

  You guys had a really good conversation about this, um, on Friday, or whatever, Thursday, when you did the NFC West on Ringer Wise Guys. Um, and we talked about it too last week. I, I always get a little nervous with the super teams thing. Um, the line is super high. And we'll probably, I, I know I have one in our futures draft. This feels like a nice time to catch them too, at the start of the year with all the hype. Anyway, I have, uh, I did Rams minus four for my guess. What'd you have?

• 18:21Speaker 01

  We split this. I said three, and it's three and a half. See how that works? Right in the middle.

• 18:27Bill Simmons?

  You agree with that?

• 18:28Speaker 01

  I'm trying to think if they had.

• 18:29Bill Simmons?

  Do you think the Australian thing messed it, messed it up at all?

• 18:31Speaker 01

  If they had an actual home game, is it four and a half, five?

• 18:37Bill Simmons?

  If it's in LA?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Four and a half?

• 18:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, five. It's in the Vegas zone.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, they, they may have screwed themselves here. This is the healthiest the 49ers will be all year.

• 18:50Bill Simmons?

  So if you had to bet an underdog between Pats plus three and a half and Niners plus three and a half, like, you don't have to tell us till Friday. But where are you, are you leaning, or do either of those look tasty? Just say one. You don't have to say the team.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  I would say San Francisco, but I really wanna monitor this narrative, this popular narrative thing and see. Like, this is a top three. Like, would you agree this is a top three narrative? The Rams getting there late? Like, we should keep track of the other, other two.

• 19:14Bill Simmons?

  I had convert, like, anytime a narrative can cause me to have a conversation with my wife, I feel like that's a huge win for the NFL. I was like, what do you think of this? The Niners left six days before the games. The Rams are just saying, fuck it, going right in. Which team would you bet on, just knowing that? And she's like, that's crazy. The first day you're there, your head's spinning. Like, you're, you're trying, I, I mean, I was just in Boston for five days. I woke up at, you know, six o'clock today. I didn't know where I was. And I was only gone five days, and it was in the same country.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  You should tell her, like, honey, I took your advice. We, we bet $600,000 on the 49ers. Tell her Friday morning. See, see what she says. Win or lose.

• 19:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, these two games are great. Like, we're two for two. And then the Sunday marquee game.

• 20:03Bill Simmons?

  Which I have is the Texans and the Bills in Houston.

• 20:07Bill Simmons?

  And I think, look, we have two different games. We have the what the fuck just happened game, which we covered with Raiders Pats last year. We'll, we'll come up with some candidates for that. Texans Bills in Houston has all the makings of the overreaction game. Whoever wins this game, it's going to be Sunday night, Monday, Tuesday. This is it. The AFC runs through them and it doesn't matter which one wins. The AFC is going to run through one of them.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  And the other way, well, the loser is in a little bit of trouble here. Look at their schedule. We're going over the loser's schedule. No question about it. Sunday night, right?

• 20:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Cause if the Texans lose, Texans lose, the CJ Stroud conversations start that night, right? When we're doing guest lines on Sunday night, it's CJ Stroud will be involved five minutes. The Bills lose, then you can zag with the McDermott, he was the fall guy, but their defense looked worse and DJ Moore didn't help them.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Josh Allen can only do so much. Yeah, I could hear it. Let's just do that podcast now and then we'll do guest lines.

• 21:08Bill Simmons?

  We'll do all 12 there it is. I had Texans minus one and a half at home.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So this is our first tic tac. I had Buffalo minus one and a half and I'm right. Could tic tac over to your direction, but right now.

• 21:22Bill Simmons?

  Wait a second. The Texans, a Super Bowl favorite.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:28Bill Simmons?

  In some respects, the team that I would certainly, coming out of the AFC, the AFC favorite, I guess. A team that I think will be in the Super Bowl against Seattle.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:39Bill Simmons?

  Is not even a home favorite against the Bills who lost to, who'd they lose to in the playoffs?

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Denver, right?

• 21:47Bill Simmons?

  Denver. Yeah.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Very last minute. Yeah. I just think Houston's going to be in the Super Bowl. They have to make it one and a half.

• 21:55Bill Simmons?

  So if this game was in Buffalo, it would be Buffalo by three?

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess so. I guess so.

• 22:01Bill Simmons?

  Well, I don't agree with this at all. So.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  This is the only week I'm kinda not going to be five points off on a spread because I sort of know, I don't have a model, but the power rankings are kinda right there in terms of over under wins, right? And I think it's a little bit of a break for Buffalo getting this defense before they get in a rhythm. I know you could say the same about an offense, but this is when they'll play Houston on the turf in September. I think same kind of thing. That's when I would sign up for that.

• 22:26Bill Simmons?

  I thought defenses were better coming out of the gate than offenses. Am I just misremembering?

• 22:31Speaker 01

  I don't know if they'll be shut down just, you know, two scores a game like this early on.

• 22:37Bill Simmons?

  That's a, that's a great game. I have two watchables. I think this is also a really good game just from a, I don't know what's going to happen with either of these teams.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  You're going Texans teaser. No question. Putting that north of seven.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  If it stays, if it remains one and a half.

• 22:53Bill Simmons?

  So we changed the rules for Ringer 107 this year.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Wait, is everyone sitting down?

• 22:58Bill Simmons?

  You like the rules, right?

• 22:59Speaker 01

  I like them. Yeah.

• 23:00Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I guess we can announce this right now. This is, this is huge. We talked Fandel, our friends, into giving us a very special price on teasers this year. And I think it's going to be for bets up to $50. We are bringing back the teaser. This is a huge passion point of us. We used to love teasers. The, basically everybody changed the juice on them. And it's a little like what happened in Blackjack where all of a sudden we were, we weren't getting the same price when you get a Blackjack.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Can't find any three to two tables. Yeah.

• 23:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. What happened to three to two? That's, we grew up on three to two. Now you're going to be six to five. So we asked Fandel and we talked to them and we lobbied them and, and we convinced them to, to let us bring back teasers this year. So the juice is going to be minus 110 on every, on any one teaser that you do for the week. You use our little code. We'll, we'll announce all that stuff later in the week. So you're, you're suggesting Texans to plus seven and a half, maybe even take the over under down, put it with another game. And that could be a potential fun one for your first tease.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Far be it from you or I to explain the way to play a teaser, but the experts say that that's the way to do it. If you take the plus six with a plus one and a half, if you adjust at six points, you're crossing the three, you're crossing the four, you're crossing the six, you're crossing the seven, and you like Houston to win this game anyway. So that would be the way. And people say, you announced it like.

• 24:25Bill Simmons?

  Straight up.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  You like Fandel has it at minus 110, big deal. There, everybody else has these at minus 139, minus 140. So it's good. It's good.

• 24:35Bill Simmons?

  One thing with the teaser, the funniest thing with the teaser is like twice a year, House and I tease somebody through the zero and Raheem reacts like we threw a Molotov cocktail in his apartment. It's the most, nothing upsets Raheem Palmer more than cross. So basically if you had like Texans were minus two and a half and I teased them to plus three and a half, that's a good way to basically Molotov cocktail Raheem. He can't recover from that for a half hour. It's the one thing you can't do. You can't tease through the zero ever.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Oh man, you're losing a point. You're losing a point.

• 25:10Bill Simmons?

  It's just gone. It's a five point. It's not a six point. I'll do it again this year. Not going to apologize either. The other rewatchables game we have, or watchables game. It's in Indianapolis. Our first, I guess our second home underdog, I'm guessing it's Ravens at Indianapolis. And I think the Ravens are going to be favored. And I have the Ravens favored by two and a half.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Let me find this. All right. I had four. I thought the Ravens by four and it's three and a half. So I get this by a half a point.

• 25:46Bill Simmons?

  Three and a half?

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 25:48Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I've skipped, I somehow, I'm so out of practice, guess so. I skipped the other one. It's all right. We'll do that one first. Baltimore, three and a half. Indianapolis, a team that I think a lot of people are pretty lukewarm on. Everyone wants to see Daniel Jones. Everyone's excited about the Ravens. Everybody already has them penciled in for six and one, start seven. I have multiple Ravens bets. God, I hate the hook. I hate that this is a three and a half. This makes me nervous. This feels like a classic.

• 26:20Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. I don't like it so.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Don't you feel like just, whether you like it or not, if it's a team you like, if it's a team you picked last week to go way over the total or over the total versus a team you picked to go under, just go with what you have, right? For week one. Like if you have to, if you have to look stupid, then it's on you for wasting research for three months. That, that's kinda what I'm doing here with.

• 26:43Bill Simmons?

  That was my column I wrote, mid 2000s. I wrote the symbotics column and it was basically like, you have the whole off season to figure out who you like and you gotta stick to your guns the first two, three weeks. So.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  It's the only time we're going to be right. And I feel like Daniel Jones, this is another narrative, right? Either he gets buried by the media or praised as the next Sam Darnold. I feel like there's no in between in this game.

• 27:05Bill Simmons?

  I will probably, my guess is I would probably take the Ravens money line and put that with something. Cause the hook scares me.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Tease it through the zero.

• 27:15Bill Simmons?

  Were you up or down on the Colts? I can't remember.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  No, I'm down.

• 27:18Bill Simmons?

  You were under, right?

• 27:19Speaker 01

  It's one of my true unders. Yeah.

• 27:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Okay. The other watchable is an awesome game. Bengals Bucks. Fantasy guys all over the place in this game. It's in Cincinnati. The Bengals just continue to be the sexiest offseason team. Everybody's just all in. People love them. And everybody loves the Bucks at the Ringer too. I heard your NFC South pod. You and I talked about it. You were, you had the NFC South when we did over unders. Everybody going seven and 10. I made an impassioned case why I thought Tampa was great value. Even if you look this weekend, Tampa over eight and a half. So just to go nine and eight in a shitty division, it was still pretty good odds. I think it was like plus 110 just for them to win nine

• 28:03Bill Simmons?

  games. I'm in on Tampa. I was psyched when DeBundo was also in on them because I was waiting for him to make some long impassioned case why they were fool's gold. But I'm like him. I, I like the front seven. I think they're going to score. I think Baker was hurt last year. I'm not scared of the Bulls thing yet. They usually start out fast and then fade as the year goes along. And I don't know. I just like this spot for them. So I went Bengals minus three was my pick. All right. Bengals minus three. Now I lost this. I said Bengals minus three. It's three and a half. So we split it.

• 28:39Bill Simmons?

  God, I haven't hit one yet.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  I don't know, man. I just, I'm really gonna, when you tell me, like, oh, I made all these NFC South bets, futures, I'm like,

• 28:48Bill Simmons?

  You get so upset.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Like, don't tell me, it's like, you're, you're telling me, like, you're cheating on your wife. I'm like, don't even, I don't want, don't tell me, I don't want to hear it. It's, I'm gonna do bad things with that information.

• 28:58Bill Simmons?

  I like that you compare betting on the NFC South to adultery.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  It's worse. It's probably like, some kind of second degree.

• 29:05Bill Simmons?

  Somebody's gotta win the NFC South.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  I know, they just, they hurt my feelings so much, the Bucks. They were better than every team last year.

• 29:12Bill Simmons?

  I know, but they had a ton of injuries.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  I know.

• 29:15Bill Simmons?

  The Bundo made a good point about how bad their defense was. So they were basically 28th EPA the last six, seven games. I can't defend that. Um, I think my zag on that division is it's been so bad and so erratic and so stupid for so many years.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  It's gotta come around.

• 29:31Bill Simmons?

  That it's now scared everyone off from even looking at it logically. And I just think if you look at it logically, they easily have the most talent. Like, it's not even close. And they have, like, their, their draft, they're way better. Baker being healthy, I think, really matters. I like some of their skill guys. I just, to me, they're a live dog in that game.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  And the team they're playing is similar to what you're saying, right? Lot of talent up and down the roster for Cincinnati, at least offensively, you know? I know Zach Taylor always wants to fast forward to week four, because he'll go one and two most years.

• 30:02Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I got some, I got some funny Bengals fan emails.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:05Bill Simmons?

  That were upset that I was so down on their offensive line.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  What? The quarterback is eating through a frog.

• 30:12Bill Simmons?

  It's like, it's not good, but it's not bad. You're wrong. Our offensive line, if you look at stat A, stat B, stat C, um, even Brandon Thorne, who's, who, uh, who is the guy I get most of my offensive line opinions from, because he's the best at this, he studies it. Go check out his Substack if you love offensive line stuff. He DM'd me and was like, they're not that bad. Like, they're not, like, they were a couple of years ago. He, he wasn't saying they were good, but he was like, they're, they're not that bad.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Sacks and pressure rate? Like, how, how deep do I have to look into this? I don't know.

• 30:45Bill Simmons?

  They had, they do have a couple above-average guys on the line. Um, I don't know. It's, are they as bad as Washington? No. Are they as bad as?

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Weren't their first four of the five draft picks defensively, they were awful, too, right? They scored like 27, like 33, two games in a row, and lost, 37, two games in a row and lost both games. So they, between the offensive line and defense, that's what I worry about a little, because they loaded up on defense, but quarterback's no trouble.

• 31:14Bill Simmons?

  I'm still trying to figure out, though, yeah, the whole thing where we made the defense better, because this will make it easier for Joe Burrow.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:20Bill Simmons?

  Okay, so your defense is gonna get off the field more often. So that means Joe Burrow's on the field more often. How does that make it easier for him if you're still not blocking for them? They're, they claim they're gonna block for him. My memory of the Bengals the last couple of years is Joe Burrow just running for his life over and over again and taking huge hits.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. I would love to see the camera on Burrow as they dropped the defense after defense after defense. Because he's saying, oh, like, this is gonna help me. This is great.

• 31:47Bill Simmons?

  You know what helps some, some blockers? Um, anyway, we'll see that one. Bucks is looming as, uh, my favorite one. So with Ringer 107, we're gonna do four picks. I'm doing four picks with House on Thursday night. You're gonna do four picks on your show, Ringer Fantasy, Ringer NFL. We're all gonna make four. And then we're saving the fifth spot for Sunday morning, because we want to get more info. That was our biggest, the thing we're all frustrated with last year is locking these picks on Thursday. And you and House and I would be texting each other on Sunday morning, like, god damn, like, I really like this team. I wish I had them and whatever. And so now that's the way we're doing it. Okay, we're gonna take a break. We're gonna come back. We're gonna finish the guest lines, and we're gonna do the futures draft.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Let's do it all.

• 32:31Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. It's the small moments where we have the most fun sometimes. Like, having a friendly little competition with your friends. See who's the fastest, or who can putt better in the backyard, or who can get to somebody's else's house, or the better route, whatever it is. Even better, if you put some Michelob Ultra on the line, or a refreshing way to up the stakes. Like, me and House are gonna pick games against each other on Thursday. It's the NFL season. Maybe we keep track in ways of, uh, Michelob Ultra six-packs. I'm happy to do that. Maybe Michelob Ultra will make a special BS podcast or Ringer six-packs. And then we could, we could barter them back and forth, whatever it is. By the way, they should do that for us. Superior is worth playing

• 33:16Bill Simmons?

  for. Michelob Ultra Superior Light Beer. Enter for a chance to win superior soccer, basketball, and golf prizes at michelobultra.com/superioraccess. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026. Anheuser-Busch Michelob Ultra Light Beer, St. Louis, Missouri. So, I was telling you on there in the break about my contact one situation. I have these, I have terrible eyesight, as you know, like, really, really awful eyesight. And my contacts have to be, I have to order them in advance. It takes them like four or five weeks for them to make my contacts. I can't just be like, oh, I'll get them online. Like, they actually have to, like, you know, I'm like, minus 10. Um, every six months, I'm supposed

• 33:59Bill Simmons?

  to change them. I thought I'd change them in March, but it was actually January. So I realized this four weeks ago. I'm on month nine with these contacts, and the new contacts are coming this week. And I'm now at the point where I, it's like, I, I can't really read that well anymore. I'm like, it's like Sly Stallone, sitting next to Adrian's bed, trying to read as she's in the coma. Um, it's just like blotchy. So, anyway, that's why I'm squinting and looking, because I have four more days. My contacts are like about, literally about to die in my eyes.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Oh, my god.

• 34:30Bill Simmons?

  There you go. Yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  It takes a, but there's no, there's no temporary fix? Okay, oh, I guess you have the ones in now, right?

• 34:37Bill Simmons?

  I really need, I, I really need to figure out my thing. Hmm. There's, how is, how have they not figured out eyesight better at this point? Like, I, like,

• 34:47Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 34:47Bill Simmons?

  Remember when they were doing the surgery and it was making?

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Lasix?

• 34:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the Lasix. But it's, I'm not eligible for that, because my eyes are so bad. But how have they just not figured out any of this? Anyway, that's the, for my-

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Have you tried pouring, uh, hot water and lemon in your eyes?

• 35:01Bill Simmons?

  Maybe that's what it is. I'll, I'll work on it. All right, guest lines, fairly rewatchables. Detroit is home for the New Orleans Saints.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  He keeps saying rewatchables, like, they're gonna make this a movie.

• 35:11Bill Simmons?

  Well, I can't see. I, I can't see if it's rewatchables or watchables. Fairly watchables, Lions, Saints. Um,

• 35:19Speaker 01

  It's a buddy cop movie with, with Goff, Jameson Williams.

• 35:25Bill Simmons?

  I'm probably too low. I did Lions minus six and a half.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Uh, no, you're right on. I went seven. I went the full seven, and it's six and a half. You got it.

• 35:34Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my first one. Um, this is just, it's a flashing neon sign saying, please tease me. Please, please make us far to your first tease in the Ringer 107. Lions right down to 0.5 points. Um, I really wanted to like the Saints in the offseason. I know we talked about it on the pod, and I just, I don't really like the stuff they did in the offseason. I thought on, on the Wise Guys pod, I think it was Rahim, talking about how Shucks 26. He's like, oh, young QB, finish the year strong. It's like, well, he's gonna be 27 next year. So maybe he kinda is who he is, but, uh, I don't know. This feels blowout-y to me.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  I have written down that this could be, I know you like Tampa a lot, and forget my opinion on the NFC South, but this could be a Shakey's game preview. This could be one of our first Shakey's game previews.

• 36:27Bill Simmons?

  It's a great call.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  If they somehow win that dogly bad, uh, division. All right, next fairly watchable, Bears at Carolina. I have this pegged as another home dog. I had Bears minus two and a half.

• 36:43Bill Simmons?

  You got it exactly. Why isn't this four?

• 36:48Bill Simmons?

  Because I don't think people trust the Bears. I trust the Bears. I have overs for them. They're gonna come up in my future draft later if I can see what I wrote, because I'm just getting blotches, squiggly lids.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  I'm out of focus, you can't read. All right. I, I, I don't know, man.

• 37:04Bill Simmons?

  I should have done the rock. I should have worn my leather, leather jacket and my little cap and just tried, done the reading to Adrian thing.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  You can't see, Bill!

• 37:13Bill Simmons?

  I can't see at all! The contacts still aren't here!

• 37:17Speaker 01

  You're gonna kill ya, you can't see.

• 37:20Bill Simmons?

  This happened to me 10 years ago for different reasons, when my eyesight changed when I turned 45. Remember, Daniel told us that was gonna happen?

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 37:28Bill Simmons?

  And my eyesight changed. I thought I had a brain tumor, and it was just my eyes actually were getting better.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:33Bill Simmons?

  So I went for like a minus 10 nap to a minus 10, but was wearing the stronger contacts.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  And I was like, Why does it take five weeks? Is your supply in Australia with the?

• 37:42Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. It takes five weeks for my contacts and one, and one day for the Rams to go to Australia and play a football game.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  No kidding.

• 37:49Bill Simmons?

  Lions look very tease-worthy. Uh, Bears, Panthers, do not, no, I'm saying Bears, Panthers, oh, also looks tease-worthy if you like the Panthers and you want to pull them to plus eight and a half.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  This is one of those games where I have a big opinion on one and a lesser opinion on the other, and I'm just gonna go with the, I'll tell you, I'm gonna go with the Bears here. But I do wonder, here's another narrative. Is this the, you know, is this one of the team can't stand to play in 103-degree heat game? There's always one.

• 38:19Bill Simmons?

  So glad you brought this up. Lombardi would talk about this every year. Carolina, Tampa, Miami, where's the other one?

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Jacksonville.

• 38:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Those four, you just, you have to look at the weather as it gets within three days. And if any of those are gonna be 80, like, 82, 83 or above, you're gonna have prob, the road team's gonna have problems. And we see it, and they die in the second half, and it's just a thing that happens. So.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  And it's like, yeah, the thermometer says 83, but trust me, it's 177 degrees on the field.

• 38:49Bill Simmons?

  Right. Who's the former, they go to Jay Feely or that, uh, that other guy they have, and it's like, guys, it's so hot down here, I can't even see, yeah. And then you're like, fuck, I bet on the road team.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  His nipples are out, yeah.

• 39:01Bill Simmons?

  That feels, Bears, Panthers feels like a stay with me. Next one is Jaguars, Browns.

• 39:09Bill Simmons?

  I put this as a fairly watchable only because of Deshaun on the road, this weird Jaguars team. This has all the makings of that Raiders-Pats game from last year, where everybody puts the Jaguars. And this looks like a, let's be careful to me game. I have Jaguars seven and a half over the Browns.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, you got it. I said seven. I thought that was enough. It's, uh, it is seven and a half, exactly.

• 39:31Bill Simmons?

  But I'm with you.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  I'm on fire!

• 39:33Bill Simmons?

  Well, yeah. This is bad now, right? What do you have?

• 39:37Speaker 01

  I have three in a row.

• 39:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's six to five? Okay.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:42Bill Simmons?

  All right. But yeah, I just, um, I think this is a must-watch, Deshaun, until, until we've had enough making fun of him.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Couldn't agree more.

• 39:50Bill Simmons?

  I'll put it in the four box in the early weeks left. I didn't tell you this, but my daughter has a game on Sunday.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Should you be saying this?

• 40:00Bill Simmons?

  On Sunday at 11:00 AM PT.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 40:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 40:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. This is for some reason, I think that's happening. So I'm gonna have her game on the big TV. I'm gonna have the red zone on another TV and then probably Bill's Texans. And those will be my three.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 40:24Bill Simmons?

  I can't not put her on the big TV like this is her last season.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  No, you have to watch, but can't they get you could get them to move it. Can't you?

• 40:31Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, I I'm completely outraged by the Emerson coaches on this. Coach Seab and Coach Collins, just an all time outrage to put this against the week one NFL.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  How many Sunday games?

• 40:43Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, it feels like a personal attack.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 40:46Bill Simmons?

  No, it's like, I think it's the only Sunday afternoon game they have. And for some reason, week one head to head against all this stuff. So yeah, I will be by myself. I don't want to be near anyone and and I feel like everything's going to be tied together in some way. I don't know if there's a way to parlay her game with any of those games.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  I love it. Sorry.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  I had to watch this Sean throw four interceptions.

• 41:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's all right. I didn't realize you scored in the second half. The shot was going for his fifth interception. I had to switch it. Jaguars Browns Jaguars look like a stay away. All right. Packers at Vikings.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:25Bill Simmons?

  Think this is gonna be another home dog, Sal. Lot of the Vikings, I think, out of the 32 teams, I think have had the widest array of opinions in all the preseason pods. I people are like adamant that they love the Vikings this year. And then other people are like, that team's gonna suck. They don't have talent.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  I've only heard the former that, you know, this is all that defense. They know what they're doing.

• 41:48Bill Simmons?

  Nobody can name three good guys in their defense, but the defense is awesome.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Such a step up. Yeah, I know. It's like.

• 41:55Bill Simmons?

  Flores doesn't matter who he has. At some point, it matters a little bit who he has.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Flitzing schemes are the best like, yeah, I don't really know how they won those last four games. And Kyler Murray is a step up, but he's also, we talked about last week. By every metric, he's not gonna make Justin Jefferson a superstar yet.

• 42:13Bill Simmons?

  Packers feeling a little, nobody believes in us too. Everybody's kind of kicked them to the curb. Parsons isn't coming back until midway through the year, et cetera, et cetera. I have Packers minus two over the Vikings, probably too high.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  All right, I have to stare at this now. Cause I don't really believe it. I had Packers by one and a half. And it's Vikings by one and a half.

• 42:35Bill Simmons?

  Whoa.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  It's in the Tic Tac. I guess because there's a lot of Kyler Murray buzz. I mean, he hasn't been a one, one point favorite since.

• 42:44Bill Simmons?

  And honestly, a lot of, a lot of, I don't love the Packers buzz too with no Parsons.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 42:49Bill Simmons?

  Their defense without him. Okay, we lost the home dog.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:55Bill Simmons?

  This last one, I've already made the tease with this team.

• 43:00Bill Simmons?

  I put them with a, I put them in a money parlay with UCLA last night. Thanks again to Bob Chesney.

• 43:10Bill Simmons?

  Eagles home for Washington. I feel like this particular matchup has lost everybody significant amount of money over the last 10 years.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 43:20Bill Simmons?

  How many times, like, what has gone right in an Eagles Washington game from a betting standpoint for anyone you know, including us? I can't think of one thing.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I'm usually, you're right. This should be a stay away for sure. And it's like a 425 kickoff, so that there's always a weird one in there.

• 43:34Bill Simmons?

  And Washington has a real aroma about them. And it's not a positive aroma. It's, it's an odor. And the Eagles, you know, they're gonna go 11 and six like they always do. And this just seems like a layup. Why isn't this line gonna be higher than my guess, which is Eagles minus six at home?

• 43:53Speaker 01

  It's not even that high. It gets you, you get the nod here because it's five and a half. And I said four and a half.

• 43:59Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know, man.

• 44:02Bill Simmons?

  That's an absurd price for the Eagles. That that's basically, it's basically, everybody's been burned by this game so many times. You're getting two free points. This line should be seven and a half.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  And you're the very first trend you read off, right? The division opponents getting whatever seven, seven and a half. So they don't, they don't make it that high. That's also a gigantic narrative that, you know, Commander's O line sucks.

• 44:26Bill Simmons?

  It does, because it does suck.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Singing their eulogy, yeah, against this loaded defense. I guess so. I think I'm just too into Jaden Daniels this year. I don't even know why.

• 44:38Bill Simmons?

  Would you make Steelers Falcons a fairly watchable or a poop facto or a rewatchable? Your pick.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  I think it's a rewatchable. It's a, I guess fairly watchable. Cause you have to, I hate them.

• 44:55Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna move it up.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  I'm not putting this on, I'm watching Zoe over this one.

• 44:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, I'll move it up because otherwise we would have had four poop factas.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Could do that.

• 45:06Bill Simmons?

  Steelers Falcons, I do think this is a fairly watchable because I'm really interested to see how bad the Falcons are. I think that's a team that over the course of the month, everybody has turned on. And you could see with the, with the Lions, even, you know, since we talked about it last week, I think the juice has moved even further ahead of them on Fanduel where they have the winning and losing record bets, the losing record bet, there's actually been action on them. They've moved up. I think they're like 12 to one now for that. They used to be like over 20 to one.

• 45:38Bill Simmons?

  There's Mike McCarthy. There's some Steelers could be a little bit sleepery in the AFC as like a 10 and 11 win team. I have Steelers minus three and a half.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  You're gonna nail this one too. I said three. They made it, they made it three and a half. Four, five, six, seven, eight, two, three, four, five. Eight to six for you. Yeah, I don't want to watch this. The Falcons, I read two, 16 and one all time against the Steelers. And they have no one to rush the quarterback, so Roger's gonna look good.

• 46:08Bill Simmons?

  Here, can I give you some reasons to watch other than gambling?

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 46:12Bill Simmons?

  Who's playing quarterback for the Falcons?

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know you hate that.

• 46:17Bill Simmons?

  I'm, I'm literally asking you who's playing.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  It's Penix or Tua.

• 46:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Do you know who's playing? Cause I don't know who's playing.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  They didn't announce it yet, right?

• 46:24Bill Simmons?

  So do you think Penix who's had no training camp or Tua who should be out of the league? And it's gonna be one of those two. With the Steelers, the front seven that is always great. It feels like the first two months and then loses steam as it goes, but.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  So why isn't this higher? Just because you're trying to think of their win totals. The Steelers are eight and a half, right? Atlanta's down, they six and a half? What do we have?

• 46:47Bill Simmons?

  Atlanta is basically six and a half now. Yeah.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:50Bill Simmons?

  Steelers at home, Atlanta outdoors, dome team outdoors.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  Hey, they're ready.

• 46:59Bill Simmons?

  Sal is revenge.

• 47:02Bill Simmons?

  Titans home for the Jets.

• 47:05Bill Simmons?

  I can't say the Titans had a, had a lot of buzz coming out of the preseason.

• 47:12Bill Simmons?

  Can't say there's a lot of excitement about this team.

• 47:16Bill Simmons?

  Jets, a whiff of buzz. Little bit of buzz. I have the Titans as home underdogs in this game. I have Jets minus one and a half.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  This is your worst one, I think, and the one we differ on the most. I said, I said Titans by two and it's Titans by two and a half. So I get this.

• 47:33Bill Simmons?

  Ooh. Okay, well, we'll see. When it usually when I'm off by that many points,

• 47:41Bill Simmons?

  that means I'm gonna, I'm gonna bet.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  Well.

• 47:45Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna bet on myself on this one. I don't think the Titans should be favored against anybody.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Whoever wins, let's just not do the, could they make the playoffs? Could the, let's just not do it. I mean, here's what scares me. House said he looked back over the summer. He has eight week one wagers on the Jets. So maybe they shouldn't let us bet before September.

• 48:05Bill Simmons?

  Jesus.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Let's slip them a 800 number.

• 48:09Bill Simmons?

  That game is more fun than Raiders Dolphins, which is in Vegas. Kirk Cousins, Malik Willis, two teams that have been thrown around the, the number one pick race. I have Vegas minus two and a half over the Dolphins.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  I had Vegas minus two and a half as well, and it's three and a half. By the way, we just put a poll on, a poll up about the, about the Jets Titans. So, because we were, we had such a disparity. All right. All right, Malik Willis, Kirk Cousins.

• 48:41Bill Simmons?

  We'll see what the Netflix people think.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Let me ask you this.

• 48:44Bill Simmons?

  I don't want to really want to watch any of that game.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna ask you, does the US Open men's finals get a bigger screen than Miami Las Vegas and the Simmons household?

• 48:55Bill Simmons?

  No, I don't care about the US Open.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 48:58Bill Simmons?

  I did, I did stay up till over two o'clock when I was in Boston watching Zverev almost blow it in round one, which would have been the first time that's happened as a one seed, losing in a major. It was like in 30 years, the announcers were going nuts and I got sucked in. And then I was up till three in the morning after.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 49:16Bill Simmons?

  Oz.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  I gave tennis a compliment saying the night edition of tennis, an exciting night game. The disparity between an exciting day game is unlike any and any other sport.

• 49:29Bill Simmons?

  I have a hot take and I think Eduardo needs to get ready to clip this out because I feel really strongly about it. I've watched tennis my whole life. I play tennis. I love tennis.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Serena's done?

• 49:41Bill Simmons?

  Tennis matches are too long.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 49:43Bill Simmons?

  We've lost the narrative with this. These guys are too good, the rallies and the points and these games, these matches are four and a half hours routinely now. And I just think it's absurd. And I've talked about this forever. I don't think anything should be four and a half hours, like literally anything. Movies, sporting events, a dinner, anything. I don't want to do anything. Yeah, I don't want to do anything for four and a half hours. That's supposed to be entertainment.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:12Bill Simmons?

  And I just think they really have to rethink this. And all the tennis peers are gonna be like, that's crazy. Fuck you, go fuck yourself. I get it.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 50:21Bill Simmons?

  But I think they should seriously think about changing the sets from six to five for winning the set.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Oh, sick to change in the set. See, I was gonna propose, see, I bet tennis all the time because it's on during the day.

• 50:33Bill Simmons?

  Four out of seven?

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Well, they do two out of three sets for men's when it's not a major. It's like if you're watching the Cincinnati Open on a Wednesday, it's like that's two out of three. The women are always two out of three. You would just go to five instead of six?

• 50:48Bill Simmons?

  Whatever we have to do to not make this four and a half hours. I don't, I just don't think it's that entertaining and I like tennis.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  You were up to three in the morning watching one.

• 50:58Bill Simmons?

  I know. And the whole time I'm like, why the fuck is this four and a half hours?

• 51:04Bill Simmons?

  It's absurd. Like, in baseball, it's when the baseball games got too long, what did we do? We were like, this is too long. Let's get a pitch clock. We gotta fix this. In tennis, it's like, oh, Djokovic is about to have a stroke on the court. This is great. What drama. He's dying. Like, what's fun about this?

• 51:23Speaker 01

  It's a lot when it's during the day.

• 51:25Bill Simmons?

  Djokovic couldn't even like hit balls back in the fifth set.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:28Bill Simmons?

  He was just like letting it, letting serves go because he was trying to save his energy for when he's served. But it's like, once we get to that point, I just think it's much harder to play than it was during the McEnroe Borg era. It just was. It just is.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  They are flying around for every point. I'll give you that. And that's why maybe the night game is better. That's why you won't have to worry about everyone dropping dead from heat stroke. But you'd have to check the ratings. I feel like a lot of people start tuning in in that fifth set.

• 51:55Bill Simmons?

  They'd also tune in if the, if it was five, five games instead of six.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  All right. I don't know. I don't care as much. I'm sorry.

• 52:03Bill Simmons?

  You're, I forgot. I shouldn't have done this to you when you were in football mode. What do you mean you don't care? You bet on all this tennis.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  I know. I brought it up, but I just, I never really thought about it.

• 52:13Bill Simmons?

  Chargers, Cardinals in LA. A rare LA football game where they're not going to be deluged by fans from the other team. Cause we don't know that many Arizona Cardinal fans.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Won't see a lot of Buddha Baker jerseys roaming outside of SoFi.

• 52:28Bill Simmons?

  This is also a classic teaser. Uh, I have Chargers minus eight.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Let me find this. That's a, oh, I had eight and a half. It's nine and a half.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Went way high on this.

• 52:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because they don't want us to tease because they knew we convinced Fandals. All right, those are three poop factists. Sunday night, Cowboys, Giants at New York. You're gonna be favored. You're gonna be favored.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  I'm gonna be favored.

• 52:53Bill Simmons?

  You're gonna be favored in this game. I have Cowboys minus two and a half.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  I had Cowboys minus three, and I was bummed to see that it was two and a half. Not because you got it, because now I have to think about, I mean, this is potentially awesome for you. You get an immediate crack at celebrating my grief minutes after Brandon Aubrey misses a game-winning 72-yard field goal at the buzzer. So I was bummed to see this was three.

• 53:20Bill Simmons?

  I think you laid this smackdown.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 53:22Bill Simmons?

  I do. I, I love the Cowboys this year.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  I know. Everybody does.

• 53:27Bill Simmons?

  I was looking at them for best record in the NFC, like the one seed, all that shit.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:31Bill Simmons?

  Guys are gonna be good.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  We just have to lose to the Giants. Everybody gets off our, our case for a minute. And somehow we've won nine of the last Giants. I'm already a basket case about this matchup.

• 53:40Bill Simmons?

  What did the Bundo say? Seventeen of the 26 guys from last year's defense are no longer on the team?

• 53:47Speaker 01

  For Dallas? Yeah.

• 53:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that should be all.

• 53:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you guys are gonna be good this year.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Yep. There you go. And there's a poll up now on Netflix. Will Sal be shedding tears next Sunday night? I mean, either way, I think it's yes.

• 53:59Bill Simmons?

  I think it was very smart to stay away from medieval Knievel.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  I don't want any part of that.

• 54:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  Talk to me next Monday.

• 54:08Bill Simmons?

  So we have Giants as a, as a home dog, Panthers, Colts, Texans.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  10?

• 54:16Bill Simmons?

  I think I won.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  You're winning 10, nine.

• 54:19Bill Simmons?

  We have four home dogs. I think we're, I think we're both gonna hit this one. This is the most obvious tic tac one of all time. Monday night, Kansas City at home for Denver, and I have Chiefs minus one and a half.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  I swear on my kids, I had Chiefs minus two, and it is two and a half. See how that works, people? See how unsatisfying that it was?

• 54:39Bill Simmons?

  We split? I feel like you cheated.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  We tie week one.

• 54:43Bill Simmons?

  I feel like you cheated.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Eight, nine, 10 to 1, 2, 3.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  10 to 10, including ties. There you go.

• 54:51Bill Simmons?

  Chiefs minus two and a half, huh? What are we missing with the Chiefs here? It's Mahomes, nine months after an ACL.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:59Bill Simmons?

  It's Kelsey, three months after he got married. It's a complete overhaul of, they added all these young people. They have a young secondary. It's a team that I, I feel like is gonna take five, six weeks to be whatever it's gonna be. Week one against Sean Payton and the Broncos, a team that felt like they should have made the Super Bowl last year. That feels like they're better, even though the schedule's not better. I just don't see how the Chiefs are favored like this. This is, feels like a Mahomes-Reid thing.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  I think Fandals throwing their hands in the air a little bit here. Like, the Chiefs would normally be a three-point favorite, right? But, um, what people aren't talking about is this is Bo Nix's rehab game too, right? We didn't see him. He got hurt in the middle of January, so.

• 55:43Bill Simmons?

  That's fair.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Messed up his leg. So it's like, all right, let's see. I mean, they, they pushed it as late as they could, Monday night for Mahomes to rest up. Surprised they didn't play this Tuesday afternoon.

• 55:53Bill Simmons?

  In Australia. All right, so we tied.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  No, I will not be crying, according to our Netflix faithful. 67%. Thanks, guys. Appreciate that.

• 56:03Bill Simmons?

  So they said?

• 56:04Speaker 01

  That's what they say. They're, they're never wrong.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Having uncontrolled eosinophilic esophagitis, or EOE, can mean you're stuck in many ways. Like cutting your food into tiny pieces.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Or stuck, chewing food for a long time.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  Dupixentipilumab, a prescription medicine for patients one year and older weighing at least 33 pounds, can help with that. It's a breakthrough treatment that can reduce inflammation in the esophagus and improve swallowing.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  How about this? Dupixent is not a steroid. It proactively treats EOE, so you can get ahead of it.

• 56:40Speaker 03

  Severe allergic reactions, including skin reactions, can occur. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing, or wheezing, or swelling of your face, mouth, tongue, or throat. Tell your doctor of new or worsening joint aches and pain, or a parasitic infection, or asthma. Don't change or stop other treatments without talking to your doctor.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  Feeling stuck with EOE? Start treating with Dupixent. Talk to your gastroenterologist or allergist today about Dupixent. Learn more at dupixent.com or call 1-844-DUPIXENT.

• 57:07Speaker 04

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• 58:01Bill Simmons?

  Futures draft. It's time.

• 58:05Bill Simmons?

  Let's go.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  Come on.

• 58:08Bill Simmons?

  I'll give you the first pick, since I beat you last year in Guess the Lines, so that enables you to get the first pick.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  You also beat me in this. I looked, I looked back. We gave out 34 futures bets each. Today, we're gonna try for 100 each, but no. Um, but, uh, I thought, I was like, oh, we did well. We both gave out winners, and then superfan Chris Haynes reported Simmons ended up up 3.98 units, and Sal was down 11.94 units. So mind your damn business.

• 58:36Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you were down last year?

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess I was down.

• 58:39Bill Simmons?

  I blame the Chiefs. So part of the art of this is we wanna, we wanna have some winners that are gonna be around even. Plus 110, plus 115.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 58:50Bill Simmons?

  But we wanna have some long shots too.

• 58:53Bill Simmons?

  And we wanna be able to go back and forth and, uh, and have a nice mix of both, but really try to hit. Like, one of the ones I hit last year was Mike Frabel Coach of the Year. And that was like, I don't know, 10 to 1 or 12 to 1.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  Great.

• 59:06Bill Simmons?

  We're putting one unit on all of these, so you hit one of those and it's worth like 10. So the art of this is some long shots, some staples, um, and go all the way around. You have the first pick.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  We say one unit, we recommend one unit is $10,000, but it's whatever you guys want to do.

• 59:22Bill Simmons?

  $10,000 per unit is how we're gonna do this.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Oh, we're gonna do it snake? I go first, then you take two, or we just go back and forth?

• 59:30Bill Simmons?

  I'm fine just going back and forth. It's, it's up to you, though.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  All right, I'm gonna start with my favorite, and I can't believe it involves the Jets doing something somewhat positive, but it does.

• 59:40Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  The New York Jets to come in third place at even odds. I think this hits by three or four games on either side. I think the Pats and Bills are 10 plus. I think the Dolphins are 4 minus. They have not built their team like the Jets have. Their, uh, Jets are actually trying to win, and believe it or not, I have the Jets at six wins. I think this is a lock of all locks, especially if Miami's battling for that first pick in December, late December. Give me Jets third place, plus 100.

• 1:00:10Bill Simmons?

  I had it written down. It's great.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  It's a good one.

• 1:00:14Bill Simmons?

  It's great. Um, ironically, my first pick was gonna be a variation of that.

• 1:00:23Bill Simmons?

  The Falcons, and by the way, you can find all of these on FanDuel, including the, uh, the exact order bets for divisions, but also you can bet on the Jets to be third place. I have a parlay, the Falcons and the Dolphins to both be in fourth place. Plus 343 on FanDuel, at least yesterday, when I did all my work. And by the way, if you want to throw Minnesota in there, which I'm not going to do, plus 1056.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:00:53Bill Simmons?

  But, uh, Falcons Dolphins is my first pick, plus.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  I like that. And don't leave it throw Minnesota. Cause it's like, it's like a two of terror, like two, two had killed or is about to kill, uh, the, both the teams.

• 1:01:03Bill Simmons?

  You're right. It's like a two, a two timer.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it.

• 1:01:06Bill Simmons?

  I honestly can't figure out how either of these teams don't finish fourth. I think your, your roadmap for the AFC East is a lot easier because we're going to have the Jets at least trying for the first few weeks. Dolphins don't seem to be care at all. Falcons, I think the Saints or the Panthers would just have to really stink. But I don't, I just don't see how the Falcons aren't in fourth place. So anyway, that's my first one. What do you got?

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  How about this? Chargers get eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, plus 172. It happened the last three years they've made the playoffs. I think they're going to enter as a three seed. They're going to, uh, screw people up a little bit. They'll enter as a three seed after winning the division and they're going to lose at home. I have them losing to the six seeded Chiefs in round one. Chalk that up as a winner. One way or another, they're losing in the first round.

• 1:01:53Bill Simmons?

  So this is just a Herbert shorting by you?

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 1:01:57Bill Simmons?

  It's pretty.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  It's like how we would bet Mahomes every year and then, okay, every three years they'll win the Superbowl. This is, this is the other version of that. Yeah.

• 1:02:05Bill Simmons?

  So ways you lose, they don't make the playoffs. Or they're the one seed.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:11Bill Simmons?

  All other scenarios you're in play. I really like that. Okay.

• 1:02:17Bill Simmons?

  Oh man. So many good ones left.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  Are you done? You could tap out if you want.

• 1:02:22Bill Simmons?

  No, I have so many. I really love this one.

• 1:02:28Bill Simmons?

  How am I gonna, I'm not going to do Atlanta twice. I'll, I'll do one that, that I love that I've wagered on myself. I have Houston and Seattle, both to make the playoffs. It's plus, plus 112 on FanDuel, basically even odds. And I don't see a world where either of these teams don't make the playoffs instead of something, unless something horrible happens. Now I've learned my lesson from last year because we got burned. We'd had some three team playoff stuff. And what, what, what I took away from that, my mistake and, and my lesson going forward is three teams are just opening the door for weird shit to happen. Two teams, stick with the two you really like. One in each conference. They're not, you know, they're going to be, each be doing their own thing.

• 1:03:12Bill Simmons?

  I just think Houston's defense and Seattle's defense, those are going to be two of the three best defenses in the league. I'd just be shocked if either of these teams didn't win 10. Plus 112, sounds great. Sign me up.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  I like that. I have them both making the playoffs. Why not? Plus money. Yeah. Who, who beat us last year? I, in general, I want to.

• 1:03:30Bill Simmons?

  Kansas City, Kansas City killed us last year.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  And Detroit, did you have Detroit too? I think I had Detroit.

• 1:03:34Bill Simmons?

  But Kansas City killed us. We lost multiple, it, it honestly ruined what should have been an awesome year for me.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:41Bill Simmons?

  But I had all these different Kansas City bets that murdered me.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:45Bill Simmons?

  But.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:03:46Bill Simmons?

  All right, you're up.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  I have, uh, this is my only NFC South bet and God bless you. You're going to have a dozen, but it, it's, it's a cousin Sal special on FanDuel, Bill. You could check it out. On the Ringer specials, right there. All right. It's a combination bet. NFC West to have more wins than the NFC South, duh. And the AFC West to have more wins than the AFC North. So.

• 1:04:10Bill Simmons?

  Say that again.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  I forgot it already. Now NFC West to have more wins than the NFC South.

• 1:04:16Bill Simmons?

  Okay, so that's gonna happen.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they can do that by 10. AFC West to have more than the AFC North. So you have the, you know, you could have three double digit win teams. And if the Raiders are competitive against AFC North, Cleveland's gonna be.

• 1:04:31Bill Simmons?

  You need the Chiefs.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. You need Cleveland not to be good. You, you're hoping Cincinnati is not like an 11 win team.

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  And I don't think Pittsburgh's going to be very good. And that's plus 165 if you put those together.

• 1:04:42Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:04:44Bill Simmons?

  That's a really good one.

• 1:04:46Bill Simmons?

  The AFC part makes me a little more nervous.

• 1:04:50Bill Simmons?

  I think the other one I thought was great, but I like the juice, the plus 165. You mentioned the NFC South. You got me excited, so I'm going to bang this out. Now Tampa to win the NFC South, plus 175. I honestly, this is a miracle that this is still the price. I don't understand it at all. Plus 175?

• 1:05:10Bill Simmons?

  They're by far the best team.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  This is like, you went to the doctor and they say, hey, you gotta stop drinking. And you're like, yeah, yeah, whatever, doctor. And you get to the parking lot, you're doing shots of Jägermeister in the car. Like, why would the NFC South enough?

• 1:05:22Bill Simmons?

  One of the things that's appealing is a different team seems to win this stupid division. Although Tampa won a few in a row, but usually when we have the, the screwed up divisions, a different team wins every year. And it's, oh, who's, who's up this year? Tampa didn't win last year.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:05:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  So what was that? Tampa?

• 1:05:40Bill Simmons?

  Plus 175. Sign me up.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Just to win. Okay. All right. All right. One more Sal special on FanDuel, courtesy of the Ringer. Rams win the West, the NFC West.

• 1:05:50Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Chargers make the playoffs and Cardinals lose their first five. That's just a fun one. Plus 850. Yeah.

• 1:05:58Bill Simmons?

  LSC playoffs, Zona loses their, Zona goes 0-5. They have the most onerous schedule in the league.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  They're at the Giants week four. I feel like that's their best shot. Otherwise they're a 7-10 point dog. Yeah. You go. Pays over eight to one.

• 1:06:14Bill Simmons?

  Eight to one. Oh boy. You really, you did your homework this year. I can tell. That's a pretty good one.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  It always works out. Yeah.

• 1:06:24Bill Simmons?

  All right. I'm going to take this off the board. It's a defensive one. It's, I could probably get this later, but, um, I want to do this. It's not a jinx. As you know, I like winning more than jinxing your teams. I have Dak Prescott to win the MVP.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:06:41Bill Simmons?

  At 18-1. I just like the odds. I think that team, I think one of those two NFC East teams is going to be really good.

• 1:06:52Bill Simmons?

  Especially because of those four Washington Giants games. I just like your team. We talked about it earlier. Jared being quiet is notable. He's got weapons. He's, he's, they figured out the Pickens thing. He's going to be able to, they're going to be able to run the ball.

• 1:07:08Bill Simmons?

  I just like the odds. I don't understand why his odds are 18-1, but Burrow is like five to one.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  So you gotta be, yeah, that, that shouldn't be that wide, but.

• 1:07:17Bill Simmons?

  He should be right in there with the rest of the favorites. If Dallas is 12-5 or 13-4, Dak's going to win the MVP because they, the freaking media machine behind the Cowboys, you know.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:07:30Bill Simmons?

  Anyway, I like the odds.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  Don't make, don't clip that off, Cahill. Don't, don't even bother with that. That's, it's nice and everything. I appreciate it.

• 1:07:36Bill Simmons?

  By the way, we forgot to welcome Tony Romo to the podcast. Yeah.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  He's gonna be, he's over my shoulder here?

• 1:07:41Bill Simmons?

  He's gonna be there all season. Yeah.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Tony's got some time now. He's going to hang with us and, uh, yeah, he's gonna.

• 1:07:47Bill Simmons?

  Always invited on the pod to join us. Okay.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, please, Tony. The real Tony. Um, all right. That's good. I mean, I, I, I like Dak for like most passing yards and passing touchdowns and when he.

• 1:07:57Bill Simmons?

  I just wanted a Dak prop before you grabbed one. Cause I knew, I figured you were going to grab one.

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  That's fine. You know, he's not in the NFC South, right? Are you still okay making a future bet with him?

• 1:08:06Bill Simmons?

  I'm okay.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  All right. This is stupid. You're going to hate this, but Zach Taylor, Coach of the Year at plus 2,700. Now I think.

• 1:08:16Bill Simmons?

  Oh my God.

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  I think he's either first coach fired or Coach of the Year. Nothing in the middle. And our friends at FanDuel are too nice to let us bet for first coach fired. So the 11, 12, maybe 13 win Bengals could get Zach Taylor some hardware. Imagine that. 27 to one.

• 1:08:35Bill Simmons?

  Who do you think is going to be the first coach fired if it's not Zach Taylor?

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Oh. Oh no, it's, it's gonna be Zach Taylor.

• 1:08:41Bill Simmons?

  I feel like we've talked about this.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  But he's gonna have some run.

• 1:08:46Bill Simmons?

  Cause Bowles would be up there if Tampa starts out slow.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:50Bill Simmons?

  But it's less than you think. Right? It's, it's just like, there's less candidates this year because we had 10 new coaches.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  I know. There are fewer. There's usually seven.

• 1:08:58Bill Simmons?

  You have some entrenched ones.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:01Bill Simmons?

  Andy Reid's kind of a fun guess for this.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:09:04Bill Simmons?

  They just stink and they're like two and five and people are like, he's done. Sirianni is a wild card if the Eagles are super disappointing.

• 1:09:13Bill Simmons?

  But it's, it's way less than you think.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  KOC is a wild card.

• 1:09:16Bill Simmons?

  KOC is a wild card.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Potentially.

• 1:09:18Bill Simmons?

  It's all people you would never expect. Aaron Glenn, if, if it's just.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, Aaron Glenn.

• 1:09:22Bill Simmons?

  As awful as it was last year.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. That team has to get an interception. Um, all right. Uh, okay. That was mine. You go.

• 1:09:31Bill Simmons?

  All right. I'm going to take this off the board. Just because I don't want you to have it. Um, price on the Seahawks.

• 1:09:40Bill Simmons?

  Rookie Notre Dame. 750.5 yards rushing. This is over under on FanDuel.

• 1:09:49Bill Simmons?

  He was being drafted like a 25 to $30 running back. If he doesn't get 750 yards, somebody got hurt. Like with the, with the way that that team runs the ball, the zone blocking, which I'm sure they kept and. I seven, it's a 17 game season. 750 yards, that's 45 yards a game.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:10:11Bill Simmons?

  So he'd basically have to get hurt not to hit that. I think they're gonna need him. I know, I don't know if Charbonne is coming back. And the other guys are all third string, fourth string running backs. I think they're gonna use this guy and ride him. And I'm grabbing it. 750. This reminds me of the Ibuka last year, which was one of mine that hit.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:10:29Bill Simmons?

  It hit in like nine weeks. But it was like, who, who else are they throwing it to other than him and Mike Evans? Like we just watched it. So anyway, price 750.5.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  That is a low total. So what is that 40s? If he plays 17 games, it's like 47 yards a game.

• 1:10:45Bill Simmons?

  Ludicrous total. Yeah, I don't really understand.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  I'm right. Price is right for price. I'm gonna write that down over 750 and a half. All right, I'll, I'll stay rookie here since we're doing rookie.

• 1:10:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  I picked this award, your offensive rookie of the year correctly, two of the last three.

• 1:11:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  I'm gonna say two and a half really, cause like Buko, who you brought up was in the driver's seat for like nine weeks before he just disappeared.

• 1:11:06Bill Simmons?

  He got hurt, Baker got hurt. Yeah, and he killed a lot of fantasy teams too.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  Dejounte Stripling.

• 1:11:12Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  For the 49ers, plus 850. You got Kirk out, Ricky Pierce on IR. Who knows with Dayuke, if they sign him, if he plays, whatever. Kittle starts banged up. I think there's plenty of opportunity to catch passes from Purdy, who was like top, I think eight in yards per game. This guy had back to back 800 yards with Ole Miss and Oak State.

• 1:11:34Bill Simmons?

  Mike Evans injury like at some point.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. So you got Evans there. So he had like four catches in the preseason, all over 10 yards. I think he's gonna be, I'm gonna go O'Roy a plus 850. And I think like you could get him for most receiving yards to a plus 470, but 850 for these purposes. This is my pick.

• 1:11:53Bill Simmons?

  And that was 20 to one at one point. It was pretty high. I think, I think that dropped, yeah.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  I know, I'm not getting the best number.

• 1:11:59Bill Simmons?

  So T Mac won last year.

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:12:03Bill Simmons?

  He came on late like a freight train. Normally I'm always afraid of rookie receivers, but the, the two almost won last year. Okay, I have another one. This is. This is the goofiest one. And I can't decide. Ah, fuck, I'm just gonna do it. Okay. This is a parlay with three receivers. This is one of the, one of the only ones. Yeah. Matthew Golden on the Packers to get 600 plus receiving yards. Jalen Coker on the Panthers to get 600 plus receiving yards.

• 1:12:43Bill Simmons?

  And Rashid Shaheed, Rashid Shaheed, 500 plus yards receiving. You put those three together, it's plus 561.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:12:54Bill Simmons?

  And the only way I lose that is if one of those guys gets hurt for half the season. Shaheed is the number two receiver on the, on the, on the Seahawks, basically. And, and if you remember, like they traded him mid-season and they were trying to figure out how to use him, but he's their deep threat. I feel like he's 500 seems low. You could talk me into 750 for him. Coker, who wholly crossed the zone, awesome playoff game last year against the Rams. I think he was like 12 for 140. He was hurt for most of the year, was gonna be the number two receiver. Basically was out of the loop for three months, came back. And then Golden, the Packers went from five receivers to three. So if you think, if you think Jordan Love's gonna throw for 3500, 4000 yards. He's got Kraft and three receivers.

• 1:13:39Bill Simmons?

  All of those receivers should be over 600. So plus 561 for me for that.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  Does make sense, but it's too many overs. Like this is how, this is how we lose money, just bet overs.

• 1:13:50Bill Simmons?

  That's why I said this is my only one of these.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  All right. Let me show you how it's done.

• 1:13:54Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  Puka, under 107 and a half receptions.

• 1:13:59Bill Simmons?

  I love it.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  Now, I know he had 129 last year. And so this would be a big drop off, but not that big if you have to sit two or three games for unforeseen reasons or for foreseen reasons. So he's got some groin stuff going into the season. That's the groin stuff we know about.

• 1:14:16Bill Simmons?

  Least of his problems.

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So 104, 105 catches would still be incredible. 108 over, let's say 14 games is like eight catches a game. I, I, I don't think, like also the starters might not even play the fourth quarter in some of these Ram blowouts. So I really like the under, I don't root for injuries, but.

• 1:14:34Bill Simmons?

  Also, does he come back from Australia?

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the other thing. Yeah.

• 1:14:41Bill Simmons?

  They're, they're going in, they're leaving the next day. It's like 50 50, he's on the plane.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  Arrested for fornicating with a kangaroo, which apparently is illegal.

• 1:14:49Bill Simmons?

  I love this one. That's a great one. Especially, especially if the kangaroo thing happens.

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:54Bill Simmons?

  No, you, you're catching somebody the year after the best year of their life.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:59Bill Simmons?

  Somebody who took a lot of big hits, who already, you know, might have some injury stuff going and definitely has some other stuff going. So I really like that one. Okay. Can't believe this is still on the board. I looked at this as under seven and a half, plus 210. But I'm gonna go one higher, cause I just wanna win this. Washington and Atlanta. Both under eight and a half wins. Eight, nine or worse, both teams, plus 112.

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  It's good.

• 1:15:34Bill Simmons?

  I just don't see either team.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  Why do you gotta put the South in everything, man? Just, just, just open up a Waffle House in your backyard already. What are you doing?

• 1:15:43Bill Simmons?

  Who's going nine and eight out of that combo?

• 1:15:47Speaker 01

  Uh, neither.

• 1:15:49Bill Simmons?

  I had to do that. Plus 112.

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:52Bill Simmons?

  Plus 112. I love it.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:15:54Bill Simmons?

  What do you got? By the way, I should mention with Washington, Atlanta, the two NFC team, we talked about this last week, but these are the two NFC teams. I'm just shorting every way I can.

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  The whole time.

• 1:16:07Bill Simmons?

  I just think both of them are gonna be bad and I still think, feel like the market has not adjusted. I don't really have an AFC team like this that I feel like everybody's off on. I think you could make the cases. Like Indianapolis, I was excited and I think you went under for us. That was one of your favorite picks.

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but I, I, I don't feel like it's a, like I feel like these are sure things.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:16:30Bill Simmons?

  That these teams cannot go nine and eight.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:16:34Bill Simmons?

  I just don't see a world where either team is that, Washington can't block, Atlanta doesn't have a quarterback. And Atlanta has probably the worst front seven in either conference. So I'm, I just, that signed me up for that.

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  Why don't you bet them to go 0 and 5? I'm sure there's odds on that. I don't know where they are, but.

• 1:16:50Bill Simmons?

  I might have the worst record.

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  I mean, you could just parlay, just parlay them losing over and over. All right, this is a bet that you're, you're not gonna like this, but you could do this with any team you like in this division, I think.

• 1:17:00Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  Green Bay to be the two seed at plus 1,000. I have them to win the division. I have them to win the division at plus 280. But I think it's a better bet, and you just do this with the NFC North winner, who should have not as many wins as the NFC West winner. But I think more than the Cowboys Eagles, I know you're high on the Cowboys, and certainly more than the South winner, right? So you got the West, the West team, the West winner is the one seed, and then I think the NFC North is the two.

• 1:17:32Bill Simmons?

  So basically, instead of betting Packers to win the division.

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:36Bill Simmons?

  You're betting them to be the two seed because you're gaming that to be the second best division in the conference.

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  They'll have more wins than your, they basically just have to have more wins than the Eagles or Cowboys or your Tampa Bay Bucks, whoever you have in the South.

• 1:17:50Bill Simmons?

  10 1 odds, pretty good.

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you could have, who do you have? You have the Bears to win that division, right? Like you'll get.

• 1:17:54Bill Simmons?

  I have the Lions.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  You have the Lions. All right, so you'll get the.

• 1:17:57Bill Simmons?

  I don't like it though. To me that, you're afraid of the NFC South, I'm afraid of the NFC, NFC North. Yeah. Okay. I can't believe I'm doing this one. You're gonna be so mad. It's another NFC South bet. What's the matter with you? What happened? Baker Mayfield, 4,000 plus passing yards, plus 340. So I looked at this, I studied it. Two years ago. He threw for 4,500 yards.

• 1:18:37Bill Simmons?

  Last year, he was on pace to do it before seven parts of his body got injured and everybody else got injured. I think their offense is gonna be good. 40, 4,017 a game, that's 200 and what, 230 yards a game?

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  If they play 17 games, yeah. Every bone is body broken last year, but if he goes 17 games.

• 1:19:01Bill Simmons?

  Offensive line, didn't have wherps last year, has his left tackle back. I think they have a top four offensive line. I think they're gonna protect him. I think he plays 17 games and I think he gets this easily. I looked at the 4,500 too, it was 19 to one. Thought about it long and hard, but that was aggressive. But he did do it two years ago.

• 1:19:19Speaker 01

  Did you mention the contract year? I don't remember.

• 1:19:22Bill Simmons?

  Contract year as well, little F you, little F you as well. So there you go. What do you got?

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  The only thing is their defense has, if their defense is better, that hurts their, his numbers a little bit, but. All right, as long as we're talking 4,000 plus. How about Trevor Lawrence? Plus 160, not as good a number, but probably because he had 4,700 last year. And the team led the league in drops, 45 drops.

• 1:19:47Bill Simmons?

  I love this.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  So if you cut that number to 30, which is still really bad.

• 1:19:52Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  He should go way over this number. Like you could escalate it to 4,100, you should be okay there too. But I'm gonna go T Law 4K, plus 160.

• 1:20:00Bill Simmons?

  I love it, and I'm gonna follow it up with another 4K bet.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:20:05Bill Simmons?

  Caleb Williams, plus 210.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  Good one.

• 1:20:10Bill Simmons?

  All the same reasons you said. I actually think they're positioned to throw the ball a little bit more this year than they did last year. Year two of Ben Johnson.

• 1:20:23Bill Simmons?

  I feel like Caleb's going to be better this year. Their schedule's, you know, fairly hard, which I like. You almost want like the, you know, the games that are going to come down the fourth quarter where you know the guy's out there. I think that's what hurt Drake May last year was some of the passing stuff because sometimes the games were done. But is Caleb just never going to throw for 4,000 yards? Like, like he's going to do it at some point, so.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  Just to keep the joke going?

• 1:20:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Want to keep going? Do you have another 4,000 yarder?

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:20:49Bill Simmons?

  Cause I'll go.

• 1:20:50Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know if I have a 4,000 yarder. But similarly, Christian Watson, 10 plus receiving touchdowns is plus 340. So he's never part of that wide receiver slog. He's no longer part with the, you know, they could love could focus on him and read and craft and golden. Like you said, he typically gets between six and seven touchdowns, but I think he ups it to double digits. Gets behind the defense a lot, so do that 10 times, plus 340.

• 1:21:18Bill Simmons?

  Sadly, after having been burned by him multiple times in fantasy, I don't know if I can support any Christian Watson.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  That's fine.

• 1:21:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I can support this bet, though. David Montgomery. Now in the Houston Texans. Thousand yard rushing season. Needs a thousand, 1,001 would get it, just a thousand, give me to four digits. Plus 220.

• 1:21:44Bill Simmons?

  Good defense. He's not sharing it with Gibbs or anything like that. He'll actually, he's going to be a workhorse. I just feel like a lot of 20 for 72, 19 for 75, 22 for 68. Thousand yards, 17 games. That's less than 60 a game. And he's way, way, way better than anyone they had last year. And it was the biggest hole they had last year, so.

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 1:22:11Bill Simmons?

  Plus 220 for that.

• 1:22:12Speaker 01

  Let's take some heat off of Woody Marks. Yeah, I always try to go by his yards per carry, but it's not really fair because he's a goal line vulture. So he's getting a lot of one and two and three yards.

• 1:22:22Bill Simmons?

  He has a move the chains are right. And that's a key point. Like they had him out there inside the four chewing up his, now he's going to actually go. All right, you're up.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  All right, here's a weird one. Vance Joseph, assistant coach of the year. They have this on Fandel. 11 to one.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  One in previous years by Josh McDaniels, Ben Johnson, Jim Schwartz. The Denver defense right up there with Houston.

• 1:22:47Bill Simmons?

  I didn't even look at this one.

• 1:22:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, they 68, 63 sacks the last two years. They had four guys with at least seven sacks, Denver. He came in second last year, Vance Joseph to Josh McDaniels. He, he had like 80 votes, McDaniels had 130 or something. So I think he wins it this year, plus 1100.

• 1:23:04Bill Simmons?

  Was Mike McDaniel the favorite for this? Must have been.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  Yes, I believe he was, yep. Now I can't find it.

• 1:23:11Bill Simmons?

  Who's your Dallas defensive coordinator?

• 1:23:14Speaker 01

  Christian Parker, 34 years old.

• 1:23:17Bill Simmons?

  Could be another one.

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  Good one.

• 1:23:19Bill Simmons?

  If you guys go from like one of the five worst defenses in the league to like 14th.

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. I'm rooting for Vance Joseph, though.

• 1:23:28Bill Simmons?

  All right, go and big upside for this one.

• 1:23:32Bill Simmons?

  I can't believe he didn't take it. It had Sal written all over it.

• 1:23:36Bill Simmons?

  Malik, what you talking about Willis?

• 1:23:41Bill Simmons?

  Thousand yards rushing this year, plus 850.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  I have something like that, damn it.

• 1:23:47Bill Simmons?

  That is the most Sal bet possible, plus 850. He's going to run the ball 10 times a game, maybe 12.

• 1:23:56Bill Simmons?

  He'll break two of them. He might have a game where he's like 22 for 70. I don't know.

• 1:24:03Bill Simmons?

  But plus 850, I couldn't resist.

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  All right, this is the one I couldn't resist. Malik Willis, God forbid, we have, we don't have a Malik Willis future here.

• 1:24:11Bill Simmons?

  So it's a special section.

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  Most quarterback rushing yards is plus 500.

• 1:24:17Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's even better than mine.

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

  No, I don't know if it is, but he's going to have 2,000 yards rushing. Unfortunately, only like 600 or so are going to be from beyond, beyond the line of scrimmage.

• 1:24:27Bill Simmons?

  Forgot about that with the sacks, yeah.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, but no, they don't, they don't count against you, but they, you don't get thing for sacks. So I think plus 500 could work out for him.

• 1:24:36Bill Simmons?

  We haven't seen a lot of them.

• 1:24:39Bill Simmons?

  In, you know, preseason, whatever, it's not like he's playing games, but I do wonder if they're going to be a really funky team to play. Where it's just like a lot of running and weird shit and almost like watching some of the stuff you say he was doing last night.

• 1:24:53Speaker 01

  He'll kill a teaser with a fourth quarter, seven yard touchdown run against us somewhere. Mark it down.

• 1:25:02Bill Simmons?

  I'm marking it down. I'm also going to mark down this one.

• 1:25:06Bill Simmons?

  Seattle and New England together, over eight and a half wins. You like that piece? Cause there's a third piece coming.

• 1:25:16Bill Simmons?

  Rams under 13 and a half.

• 1:25:21Bill Simmons?

  You put those together, plus 145.

• 1:25:25Bill Simmons?

  So Rams go 13 and four or worse. I'm basically going to win because Seattle and New England are both winning nine games. Plus 145.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:25:35Bill Simmons?

  I really like that one. I was trying to figure out different ways to bet against the Rams.

• 1:25:42Bill Simmons?

  And that, I just feel like them going 14 and three seems absurd. With a top heavy roster, with the schedule they have, the Aaron Donald probably playing 30 plays a game for the first three months of the year. Some of the schedule shit, this Australia game, like if they lose that Australia game, are they going 14 and three? So I wanted to figure out something with that.

• 1:26:03Speaker 01

  All right, I feel like an idiot because I did all this research and I'm, I, you know, I fell out with the Rams. I mean, we'll give our Super Bowl pick at the end. Is that what we're going to do?

• 1:26:12Bill Simmons?

  Sure.

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  The last one? Yeah, so, but I, I like the first two. It's hard to believe a year ago, Patriots and Seattle were favored to not make the playoffs. Like going into this, just outrageous. I'm going to do to you what you did to me here with, with Drake, maybe. What do I want to do here?

• 1:26:32Bill Simmons?

  No, you're going to probably.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  Do I want to do 35 plus touchdowns or do I want to do AJ Brown 10 plus?

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  All right, I'm going to do AJ Brown 10 plus receiving touchdowns.

• 1:26:43Bill Simmons?

  I knew I should have taken it.

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  I think that's a really good.

• 1:26:46Bill Simmons?

  I had it written down.

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  You got to read it. It's, it's enough to read it right down. Plus 240. There's a world, I hate to say this, and there's an emotional hedge where maybe throws for 41 touchdowns, 39 touchdowns. And AJ Brown's going to get at least 10 of those, plus 240.

• 1:27:05Bill Simmons?

  It's a great bet. I also looked at the 12 touchdowns for this, which I think was, what was that, like plus 300 something?

• 1:27:12Speaker 01

  More, yeah.

• 1:27:13Bill Simmons?

  A little higher, yeah.

• 1:27:15Bill Simmons?

  So you got it plus 125?

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  Plus 240, 10 plus.

• 1:27:19Bill Simmons?

  Plus 240?

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, get in on that.

• 1:27:22Bill Simmons?

  I wrote down plus 125 for that. I feel like you're cheating.

• 1:27:24Speaker 01

  For 10 or for eight? I mean, his over under is, is like.

• 1:27:28Bill Simmons?

  Did you do eight or 10?

• 1:27:30Speaker 01

  I did 10.

• 1:27:30Bill Simmons?

  10, okay.

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:32Bill Simmons?

  All right, well then I'm going to have to get you back. Myles Garrett, defensive player of the year, four to one.

• 1:27:39Bill Simmons?

  I know it was on your list because I know it was on your list. I know you've been looking at it and you've probably bet it in real life and

• 1:27:47Bill Simmons?

  he will have one of those, he's just going to love being center of attention and being in big games. And here's the other thing with this, because he had 23 seconds. I was looking at his sacks where he'd have like 14, 15, 17. He, they're in these games where they're down by 20 points, you know, in the beginning of the third quarter. He, like, when you have something like that and you're up 10 in the fourth quarter, when you know the other team is passing all the time, that's when people get sacks. So he's going to be in these situations that he's been in four times a year for the last five years. And now it's going to be over and over again where he's going to try to be Mariano Rivera in these games. So I feel like he have like 25 sacks this year.

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  That's easily the smartest thing you've said in the last hour.

• 1:28:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, still trying.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  That's good. I didn't realize, yeah. I mean, how does he get all these sacks for the Browns when the team is just running the ball, trying to hold a lead? And he, and he did it anyway, and now it's the opposite. Good job by you.

• 1:28:41Bill Simmons?

  It's something Lombardi always used to talk about, like these pass rushes. When you have leads, that's when you really want the pass rush because when you know what the other team's going to do. And you have these teams that have a good pass rush, but their offense sucks and they're down 10. It's like, well, what's the point of having a good pass rush? The team's running the ball. All right.

• 1:29:02Speaker 01

  Definitely. All right, I'm going to, I'm only doing one of these because I lose sleep over these when a team like Detroit or the Chiefs doesn't make the playoffs. So I'm, I'm taking teams to not advance to the postseason. I'm taking the Colts, I'm taking the Browns, taking the Giants, I'm taking the Jets, I'm taking the Cardinals. And it's only plus 156. I got to tell you something. I'm not worried about any goddamn one of them right this second. Thank you in advance to Danny Dimes and Dart and Deshaun and Jacoby and Gino. Good Lord, those names, plus 156.

• 1:29:35Bill Simmons?

  So Indianapolis is the one that could screw you here, probably. There's some smart people on the Giants.

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  Smart people on playing for the Giants or on?

• 1:29:44Bill Simmons?

  Stucky was, Stucky was on the Giants, which I was shocked by. Like, like the big, basically using the new coach theory with the Giants, that Harbaugh.

• 1:29:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:54Bill Simmons?

  You know, changing, which I love the new coach there. I just don't know if Harbaugh is an upgrade from Brian Dayball in that way. Maybe I'm wrong.

• 1:30:01Speaker 01

  Old coach, yeah. I don't know.

• 1:30:04Bill Simmons?

  You are a member of the New York Giants. I drive it down Schraddis.

• 1:30:11Speaker 01

  Their playoff odds went way, way up after that.

• 1:30:15Bill Simmons?

  Okay, Vikings, fourth in the NFC North, plus 175 is off the board.

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 1:30:22Bill Simmons?

  I didn't want to parlay that with anything. That's just a straight up, I think they're the worst team in the division. I think KOC is, is an outside chance for, for first coach. I'm just in disbelief with the love for Kyler Murray. I don't get it at all. We'll see, but I'm happy to be wrong. We always need more good quarterbacks, but I just like that team by far the least in that division. So plus 175 sounds great.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  Good for you, man. You did it. I have a couple of these, you tipped me off to these, team X to have more wins than team Y.

• 1:30:55Bill Simmons?

  Love these.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  You know what? Since you did the Vikings, I'll do this too. Chargers more wins than the Vikings. Minus 130. I just did the math. I have the Bolts winning the AFC West and I do not have the Kyler Murray led Vikings at 500. So there you go.

• 1:31:10Bill Simmons?

  Minus 130.

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  Minus 130. Chargers more than Vikings.

• 1:31:15Bill Simmons?

  That's a really good one. Okay, I'll keep the momentum going with, with uh,

• 1:31:21Bill Simmons?

  what do I want to do here?

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  I'll keep the momentum going. 30 second pause.

• 1:31:28Bill Simmons?

  You know what? I don't like your attitude, so I'm gonna take Cowboys over 10 and a half. Plus 500.

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  Take all the time you want.

• 1:31:35Bill Simmons?

  Plus 500? Is that right?

• 1:31:39Bill Simmons?

  Plus 500.

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  Burning, burning money.

• 1:31:44Bill Simmons?

  I like this because instead of betting the division,

• 1:31:50Bill Simmons?

  betting them to go 11 and 6, they'd win the division, but the division odds are plus 170. They go 11 and 6, I get plus 500 for that. Sign me up. Why would I not do that instead of betting them? I'm the division. I'd rather have the 5 to 1, 11 to 6.

• 1:32:07Speaker 01

  I hate this jinx. I'm betting your team, you're betting my team. It's never gonna work.

• 1:32:13Bill Simmons?

  Listen, we're aligned this year in the Cowboys. I have actual money on the Cowboys this year. I'm gonna be rooting for them to win and you just gotta fucking suck it up and get used to it.

• 1:32:21Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:32:21Bill Simmons?

  This is what we're doing. We're both rooting for the Cowboys this year.

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  Maybe you'll be more depressed next Sunday night.

• 1:32:27Bill Simmons?

  We'll both be depressed together. What do you got?

• 1:32:30Speaker 01

  Bijon Robinson, I know you didn't like him. We talked about it at the Ringer Fantasy Draft. If you had gotten the 2 seed or if he had dropped to you, a number 2 pick. I took him. Most rushing yards, plus 750. He was 4th with 1478 last year behind Taylor, Henry and Cook. All 3 are older than he is. I think they're gonna lean on him a lot. If you're right, and Atlanta can't figure out the quarterback thing, this guy is gonna get a lot of carries and he's used to it. So plus 750 for most yards.

• 1:33:01Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna follow that up with Falcons under 5 and 1/2 wins, plus, plus 190.

• 1:33:06Speaker 01

  Wow, it's been that like 90 seconds since you had made it. South pick, good.

• 1:33:10Bill Simmons?

  Plus 190. Falcons 5 and 12 or worse. I think they're, they will have a top 5 pick next year.

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  That's pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty good.

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  All right, how about this? This is a exact finish parlay.

• 1:33:24Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:33:24Speaker 01

  Raiders 4th.

• 1:33:26Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 1:33:27Speaker 01

  Jets 3rd. Already like that. Cardinals 4th, plus 229.

• 1:33:33Bill Simmons?

  Raiders 4th, Jets 3rd. Cardinals 4th, plus 229?

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  Who scores? Who screws me there?

• 1:33:44Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, nobody. It's maybe, maybe the Jets.

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  Good man.

• 1:33:49Bill Simmons?

  That's really good.

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  We'll take it.

• 1:33:53Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna put Seahawks NFC West plus 210 on the board.

• 1:33:59Bill Simmons?

  I just like the odds. I, for the life of me, do not understand why they are such prohibitive underdogs against the Rams. I don't get it. I think both teams are probably 2 of the best teams in the league, but I don't understand why there's a dramatic disparity between the 2. Especially when there's way, way more room for error with the Rams.

• 1:34:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:18Bill Simmons?

  You're talking like 7, 8 guys where 2 go down and it's a different team. They have no depth at all.

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Should be able to bet that week 18 decides it, because it always seems to in that division. It's a fun one. Yeah. All right, as long as you have plus 210 on your mind. This is my Falcons, the Colts, under 6 and 1/2, plus 210.

• 1:34:39Bill Simmons?

  Just don't say it. Colts.

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  Colts in mind, under 6 and 1/2, plus 210.

• 1:34:44Bill Simmons?

  Both of them.

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  No, no, just the Colts.

• 1:34:47Bill Simmons?

  Oh, just the Colts?

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Aren't they regularly 7 and 1/2? Yeah. Think so. Yeah, so there you go.

• 1:34:53Bill Simmons?

  So that's a 6 and 11.

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  6 and 11, you know.

• 1:34:57Bill Simmons?

  Did you tell the bundle you're doing this?

• 1:34:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, he endorses it. He, he covers his eyes and he knows what's coming, because that was ridiculous what Dan, Daniel Jones did and I think he's gonna have the toughest time coming back from this injury. And then what? Richardson's like 3rd string, string.

• 1:35:14Bill Simmons?

  We're skipping over these injuries. Not you and I, but just in general. Like we, everybody is superhuman and just come back right away from ACLs and Achilles and you know, Tatum came back for the Celtics, they ramped them up and he missed game 7.

• 1:35:29Bill Simmons?

  Quickly, Houston to win the AFC South. It's still plus 120. I like them so much more than every other team in that division. And really, it would only be Jacksonville, who is coming off, as we discussed in the over/under pods, like not only is there a regression candidate, but they had an abysmal draft. You know, they lost their first round pick in the Hunter trade. Nobody liked the rest of the guys they took. They lost Travis Etienne. And I just think Houston's better than them. So plus 120 sounds fantastic.

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  I'm with you. Can I piggyback a plus 120 Texans bet too?

• 1:36:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, what is it?

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  The Texans to have more wins than the Eagles. I just look at my, I'd say 12 is bigger than 9. And that's it. I think that's, honestly, I think they can win that by 2 games at least.

• 1:36:18Bill Simmons?

  Well, man, you're gonna be mad at me. I have another one. Houston and Seattle over 9 and 1/2 wins each.

• 1:36:24Speaker 01

  It's all right.

• 1:36:25Bill Simmons?

  Tampa over 8 and 1/2 wins. Plus 422.

• 1:36:31Bill Simmons?

  I need 2 10 and 7s from Houston and Seattle and 9 and 8 from Tampa, plus 222. Sign me up. Sounds great. I have broken my rule of not putting 3 teams in a parlay with over/unders. I just did it.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  You had a really good run.

• 1:36:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you know what? I, I'm not gonna apologize.

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  Not even one commercial break.

• 1:36:49Bill Simmons?

  9 and 1/2 each and then Tampa over 8 and 1/2. I, I would honestly be stunned if they couldn't win 9 games. That just means Baker got hurt or their left tackle got hurt.

• 1:37:01Speaker 01

  I hate to do this as a friend, but I really wanna root against Tampa and for Atlanta now, so that you hate the NFC South as much as I do. And it's the only way this is gonna change.

• 1:37:11Bill Simmons?

  This is the only way I'm gonna learn? Okay.

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:37:14Bill Simmons?

  All right, what do you got? We running out yet? Cause I have a lot more.

• 1:37:18Speaker 01

  No, no. I, I can make another offensive Rookie of the Year pick too, right? Can I have a couple? Or just the one? Jacoby Lane. On the AFC side. USC guy, 3rd round pick for the Ravens. Harbaugh never would start these guys. He would like, these like not first rounders. He was a 3rd round pick, so he would send them right to the special teams.

• 1:37:40Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  But he's getting first string reps with Jesse Minther's version of the Ravens. So I think it's worth it at plus 2200. Jacoby Lane, welcome to team sell.

• 1:37:50Bill Simmons?

  Plus 2200 is nice odds.

• 1:37:55Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Man, I have a lot of good ones left. I'm gonna do this as a tandem. Just because I think it's a tandem bet. So it's 2 bets, but

• 1:38:08Bill Simmons?

  I like the 2 as a combo, because I think it has to be one of these 2 teams.

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:38:13Bill Simmons?

  Baltimore 1 seed, plus 500. Houston 1 seed, plus 750. Think you'd do both? And try to hit 1. So basically, if it's 1 unit each, I'm either out 2 units or I'm up 4 units or I'm up 6 and 1/2 units. But it's basically a bet on Baltimore or Houston will be the 1 seed. FanDuel, if you wanna throw that up as a Ringer feature bet, knock yourself out. But uh, but I think it's those 2. I don't see any other team in the AFC having a better record than those 2 teams.

• 1:38:45Speaker 01

  So you're saying the West battles each other?

• 1:38:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:48Speaker 01

  Their winner is 11 games.

• 1:38:51Speaker 01

  I think it's probably Baltimore. Bills do the same. Yeah.

• 1:38:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's basically, I like the Baltimore for the 1 seed, because of the schedule with Houston as the hedge, plus 750. And that's the move. You kind of enjoyed that one.

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good one. You took me through it.

• 1:39:07Bill Simmons?

  What do you got next?

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  Uh, let me do, let me do Parker Washington over 4 and 1/2 touchdown receptions, minus 122.

• 1:39:19Bill Simmons?

  You motherfucker.

• 1:39:21Speaker 01

  I knew you had it, and I think you're gonna bid

• 1:39:24Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for a 7?

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  $21 on him in our draft.

• 1:39:28Bill Simmons?

  I love Parker Washington.

• 1:39:30Speaker 01

  5 or more touchdowns, minus 122.

• 1:39:33Bill Simmons?

  Oh man, that's a really good one.

• 1:39:37Bill Simmons?

  It's minus 122, though?

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  Minus 122.

• 1:39:40Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  It's alright, could afford.

• 1:39:42Bill Simmons?

  I'll take the other. Where's the other Parker? Isn't there a Parker Washington? Oh, yeah. I have him a thousand yards.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  Yards.

• 1:39:51Bill Simmons?

  Plus 165.

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  Not bad.

• 1:39:54Bill Simmons?

  So we, we both, we both have Parker Washington insurance.

• 1:39:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:58Bill Simmons?

  I thought he was incredible down the stretch last year. I loved him. It's, it was just, he put it together. He was open all the time. Teams knew he was gonna get open and then he would get open and Lawrence found him and he's awesome. I think he's the best receiver on that team.

• 1:40:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. They're, just their pass game in general is gonna be great, I think. Alright, emotional hedge here.

• 1:40:21Bill Simmons?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:40:23Speaker 01

  Hertz, 10 plus rushing touchdowns, plus 145.

• 1:40:27Bill Simmons?

  Hasn't this hit like every year?

• 1:40:29Speaker 01

  It did. I don't think it didn't hit last year, right? I'm pretty sure it took a, took a tumble last year because that whole offense.

• 1:40:38Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:40:39Speaker 01

  Not good. And here I am like singing songs about how, oh, the tush push only worked 64% of the time versus 81%. But he's gonna shove it right up my keister now again. Yeah. Yeah, he had eight last year, 14, 15, 13, and 10 the four years before. They'll hit 10.

• 1:40:57Bill Simmons?

  And they're gonna play with a little more pace this year, too, it sounds like.

• 1:41:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:01Bill Simmons?

  So what'd you get for odds for that?

• 1:41:02Speaker 01

  Plus 145, 10 or more.

• 1:41:05Bill Simmons?

  Alright. Continuing with my Baltimore theme. Last year I hit the coach of the year.

• 1:41:13Bill Simmons?

  And this year I think I'm gonna hit it as well. Jesse Minter.

• 1:41:17Bill Simmons?

  Plus 850 for coach of the year. I think it's a good way to bet the one seed with Baltimore and I probably just should have done that instead of what I did. But they won, I think, they either won eight games or nine games last year. I can't remember. But if they're a 12 or 13 win team.

• 1:41:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:34Bill Simmons?

  Combined with all the stuff we've been reading, which we talked about on the pod last week, about how much the players love him, blah, blah, blah. I just think he's, every year there's a guy that comes in who is the hot assistant, who comes in and he's just, he's an awesome coach right away. Two years ago it was McDonald, last year Ben Johnson, this year it's gonna be him. I just, I think it's gonna be him. So plus 850 for that.

• 1:41:55Speaker 01

  It's a good one. I have Zach Taylor and you have, so it'd be funny if it's one of those two.

• 1:42:00Bill Simmons?

  You have Zach Taylor with way better juice.

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  It's stupid, yeah.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  Dolphins worst record, let me just grab this, plus 220. You wanna win money? How much you wanna win, Bill? You wanna win 22 million? Bet a million.

• 1:42:12Bill Simmons?

  That's a great one.

• 1:42:13Speaker 01

  On, or 10 million on Dolphins worst, plus 220. Way too many young players, way too much dead cap money. We went over it last week, disgusting. Sorry, Malik Willis, but this is what it's gonna be.

• 1:42:31Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one. It was on my list.

• 1:42:36Bill Simmons?

  Did I do what? I did Washington under yet? Have I done that?

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  I don't think alone.

• 1:42:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm gonna do Washington under five and a half wins. Plus 220. I just like the value.

• 1:42:52Bill Simmons?

  Because I have the Atlanta one that I took earlier. That was plus 190. This is plus 220. So basically if one of those hit.

• 1:43:04Bill Simmons?

  I'm up, right?

• 1:43:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:43:06Bill Simmons?

  It's basically a Washington or Atlanta, two to one odds that both, one of them will go five and 12 or worse. And I think, I think, honestly, I think both of them could. But, but yeah, plus 220.

• 1:43:17Speaker 01

  You hate House's team. Thursday nights are gonna be fun.

• 1:43:20Bill Simmons?

  The ironic thing, House is like me. When he, when his team sucks, he'll be the first to tell you. And I think he thinks they're gonna suck.

• 1:43:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, he does.

• 1:43:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:29Speaker 01

  I just feel like we, we called a regression last year, right? Then, I don't know.

• 1:43:35Bill Simmons?

  Did you, do you think we should have called this podcast Harlan Coben's Guest the Lions? Cause it's on Netflix?

• 1:43:42Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:43:43Bill Simmons?

  Harlan Coben or Harlan Cohen?

• 1:43:46Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:43:46Bill Simmons?

  Who's the guy that's on Netflix? We, like, very few people get to put their name in front of the show.

• 1:43:53Bill Simmons?

  Like Tyler Perry gets to do this.

• 1:43:54Speaker 01

  Well, it obviously didn't work because you don't know how to say it. It's Harlan Coben.

• 1:43:58Bill Simmons?

  Harlan Coben.

• 1:43:59Speaker 01

  C-O-B-E-N.

• 1:44:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he puts his name in the front of the shows and they always crush on the streamers.

• 1:44:04Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:44:05Bill Simmons?

  And we could have done Harlan Coben's Guest the Lions, year 20. And I wonder if it would have done better on Netflix. I should have thought about that.

• 1:44:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:12Bill Simmons?

  Really regret that.

• 1:44:14Speaker 01

  Is it too late? Let's put a poll up, see if it's too late. Alright, this is a thinker, but

• 1:44:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  Pats six seed is plus a thousand. I like them to make the playoffs.

• 1:44:25Bill Simmons?

  It's really good.

• 1:44:26Speaker 01

  But not win the division.

• 1:44:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:28Speaker 01

  I don't think they'll have as many wins. It's the two West teams that make it, but still enough to get to the postseason. I like them. I like them for the seven seed, too. But the six seed is plus a thousand. And I do think you could rack your brain and hedge out of it, too. Week 18 somehow.

• 1:44:45Bill Simmons?

  Really smart.

• 1:44:47Bill Simmons?

  I was looking at them at to win the AFC East, plus 140. And I was gonna do it later, but since you just directly attacked me, I'm gonna do it right now. Pats to win the AFC East, plus 140. I said this to you when did the over unders. I have no idea why them and Buffalo don't have the same odds. Nobody can explain it. Buffalo, as gamblers, as people who think about the Lions and the action.

• 1:45:15Bill Simmons?

  When something doesn't add up to what it actually should be, just because a team is popular, or there's narratives that have nothing to do with the actual thing, that's where you wanna be. This Buffalo thing.

• 1:45:28Bill Simmons?

  Everybody just has decided Josh Allen is gonna win 11 games for the rest of his life. And there's, I think there's some real question marks with them. And for some reason, people have way more question marks with the Pats. I'm not saying who's right or who's wrong.

• 1:45:42Bill Simmons?

  But I think to me it's an either or.

• 1:45:44Speaker 01

  They have won 11 games six years in a row, haven't they?

• 1:45:46Bill Simmons?

  I get it, but they just fired their coach.

• 1:45:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:50Bill Simmons?

  And it's like Joe Brady's gonna be great. I don't know, is he? What are your favorite Joe Brady moments?

• 1:45:55Speaker 01

  He could be the new Vrabel. Who knows?

• 1:45:57Bill Simmons?

  Maybe. Mike Vrabel had won, though. He'd gone to the AFC title game.

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  Well, is that a giant?

• 1:46:02Bill Simmons?

  Who's Joe Brady done?

• 1:46:03Speaker 01

  How big are favorites are they for that? For the division?

• 1:46:07Bill Simmons?

  The Buffalo is a slight favorite for the division. They're, they're a minus and the Pats are plus 140.

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:13Bill Simmons?

  I'm saying they should be the same odds, so I'm grabbing the action.

• 1:46:15Speaker 01

  Okay, that's fine.

• 1:46:17Bill Simmons?

  What do you got?

• 1:46:19Speaker 01

  Well, I think you have one of these, but you haven't said it yet. And I think if you give this guy protection and let him sling it. And the Chargers end up with 12 wins, that 11 to one for Justin Herbert for MVP is a, is a fun bet.

• 1:46:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I like it.

• 1:46:37Speaker 01

  I'm too high on the Chargers. Who are you too high on? Ravens? I'm too high on the Chargers.

• 1:46:41Bill Simmons?

  You know, I was gonna be there with you until they, until the center got hurt and the left guard, center, right guard combo, everybody was like, this is gonna be abominable. That really scared me.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  Slater's the key.

• 1:46:54Bill Simmons?

  I have a Herbert one as well that I'm gonna get off here.

• 1:46:58Bill Simmons?

  I think it's slightly better odds than what you just did. And it's basically the same bet. Justin Herbert, 4,500 yards. 12 to 1.

• 1:47:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:11Bill Simmons?

  Now, I looked up because I was like, he's throwing for somewhere around there, right? He threw for 5,000 yards once.

• 1:47:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:47:18Bill Simmons?

  2000, 2021 range. And now McDaniel and they're, they're gonna have actually a healthy offensive line. This is one of my favorite bets.

• 1:47:25Speaker 01

  Let me write that down. What, would you say 4,500?

• 1:47:28Bill Simmons?

  4,500 yards, 12 to 1.

• 1:47:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's great.

• 1:47:31Bill Simmons?

  So you figure he has a 475 yard game and like a 460, right? He'll, he'll get close to 1,000 in two games. And then the rest, like where they, it's just like a shootout, whatever happens. And then I just need to keep him healthy the rest of the way and I'm gonna get my 45.

• 1:47:48Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 1:47:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:50Speaker 01

  I like it.

• 1:47:51Bill Simmons?

  You're right.

• 1:47:51Speaker 01

  Alright, uh, what do I do? So you're gonna hate this.

• 1:47:56Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  But who do you have for comeback play of the year? Cause I have Jaden Daniels at plus 750.

• 1:48:01Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I like it.

• 1:48:02Speaker 01

  Doesn't, doesn't mean he has to win 12 games.

• 1:48:06Bill Simmons?

  So I, I boycott this bet after whatever, when they changed the rules about what constituted a comeback. I just got too confused. But you're right, it's probably something like that.

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  Don't we want something to scream about? Like, yeah, like this is, they, they tell you Aaron Donald is not eligible because you can't be retired and come back. And yet he's sitting there as the third favorite at plus 850.

• 1:48:28Bill Simmons?

  Why can't you be retired and come back? Well, isn't that the definition of a comeback?

• 1:48:33Speaker 01

  I think it is.

• 1:48:33Bill Simmons?

  Football for three years and then I came back.

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, guess who's coming back? Aaron Donald.

• 1:48:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think it counts as a comeback.

• 1:48:40Speaker 01

  A comeback player?

• 1:48:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I, I find it hard to believe Mahomes isn't gonna win this unless he goes like seven and 10.

• 1:48:47Speaker 01

  Man, he's such a big favorite, though. Plus 150.

• 1:48:51Bill Simmons?

  Alright, another favorite of mine.

• 1:48:54Bill Simmons?

  One of my favorite guys in the league. Mallory took him in our Ringer Fantasy Draft right ahead of me. I was upset about it. Tried to, I didn't wanna give her the satisfaction.

• 1:49:03Bill Simmons?

  Brock Bowers, 1,000 yards. Plus 135.

• 1:49:09Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 1:49:10Bill Simmons?

  Couple things for this. One, when he's actually healthy, he gets between 90 and 130 yards. That's one. Two, there's always less late games. And you need stuff to root for in the late games. And most of the time, it's these two shit teams playing each other that you can't believe you bet on the game.

• 1:49:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:49:27Bill Simmons?

  It's really fun to just root for Brock Bowers to make catches, right? That's two. Three, their receivers are, other than maybe Miami, the worst receivers in the league, but Miami doesn't have anyone like Brock Bowers. Like, Kubiak even said, he had a quote last week about, what's that guy's name? Jack Beck?

• 1:49:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Bash, yes.

• 1:49:47Bill Simmons?

  Jack, Bash Harvey say it. And they asked Kubiak, like, has anybody stood out so far in the receiver room? And he was like, nope.

• 1:49:58Bill Simmons?

  The answer is no, they have not. So.

• 1:50:01Speaker 01

  Trey Tucker, whatever, Tucker, yeah.

• 1:50:04Bill Simmons?

  But Bowers, I just think, as long as he doesn't get hurt, and that's the problem with all of these, but how does he not get 1,000 yards? You might play 12 games and get 1,000 yards.

• 1:50:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. That's a good one. Yeah, because Kubiak and, they work well together. Kubiak and cousins traditionally, so.

• 1:50:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:21Speaker 01

  Uh, okay. Yeah, I'm gonna write that down.

• 1:50:24Bill Simmons?

  What do you got?

• 1:50:25Speaker 01

  What do you? Gotta write it.

• 1:50:27Bill Simmons?

  I just did Bowers.

• 1:50:27Speaker 01

  Alright, Bills plus, Bills more wins than the Chiefs, minus 120. Could be a lot more, but I have it 11 to 10. And again, Bills 11 plus wins six years in a row.

• 1:50:38Bill Simmons?

  That's minus, minus 120.

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  Minus 120.

• 1:50:41Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:50:43Bill Simmons?

  I had a bunch of over the Chiefs bets I wanted to do and I got psyched out.

• 1:50:48Speaker 01

  You did?

• 1:50:49Bill Simmons?

  I did. I, I just, I think the Chiefs, I don't think they have the talent. I don't think they're gonna be good. And yet I don't wanna bet against them because the league will be so invested in trying to get them to 10 wins and trying to get them to be good. And I just, I don't wanna be on the other side of that.

• 1:51:07Bill Simmons?

  Just been burned by them over the years. Okay. We're, I'm almost out of things, but I haven't.

• 1:51:11Speaker 01

  You want to speed round five more each?

• 1:51:14Bill Simmons?

  I have.

• 1:51:15Speaker 01

  Three more each?

• 1:51:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I have, well, I'm, I'm running out of ones I really like, but one of them is Bears over nine and a half wins plus 120.

• 1:51:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:51:26Bill Simmons?

  10 and 7, I win. And I still, I'm still a fan.

• 1:51:32Bill Simmons?

  The regression and the harder scheduled thing. I just think that team has a lot of talent and I really believe in Ben Johnson. As we talked about in the over unders last week, I think he is a top 5, 6, 7 coach in the league. And I find it hard to believe he's gonna go 9 and 8 with the weapons that they have. I don't see it.

• 1:51:49Speaker 01

  It's a good one. It's a good one. Caleb Downs, Defensive Rookie of the Year, plus 700. Have to have it. Have to have it on my ledger. God bless this kid. Already a great leader. Maybe the best leader we've ever had through three preseason games.

• 1:52:03Bill Simmons?

  Such a home run pick. The Giants passed on him, right? They took the linemen?

• 1:52:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, they got, yeah. So they, right, they, they went the other way with it. Yep.

• 1:52:14Bill Simmons?

  Just a huge mistake.

• 1:52:17Bill Simmons?

  Just like.

• 1:52:18Speaker 01

  Just show, just show them up.

• 1:52:22Bill Simmons?

  Did we do a Puka 1,000 yards at plus 150 yet? I don't think we did.

• 1:52:27Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:52:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm taking it.

• 1:52:31Bill Simmons?

  I mean, he almost had this in half the season last year.

• 1:52:33Speaker 01

  He's gonna have to do it.

• 1:52:36Speaker 01

  I have a lot of, I, I, now that I know exactly what your fantasy team is gonna look like Tuesday.

• 1:52:42Bill Simmons?

  I'm all for value and I don't understand who else is catching 1,000 yards on that team out of all the receivers they have when Mike Evans isn't on the team anymore.

• 1:52:50Speaker 01

  You're gonna have Baker and all his receivers.

• 1:52:53Bill Simmons?

  Sounds great. I'll take all of them.

• 1:52:54Speaker 01

  You're not gonna have any, you're not gonna have any Falcons. You're gonna have Brock Bowers.

• 1:52:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:01Speaker 01

  How about Stafford, most passing yards, plus 500?

• 1:53:04Bill Simmons?

  Ooh.

• 1:53:04Speaker 01

  Why not? MVP, you know, gets rid of the ball in like a second and a half. I know I went against myself with Puka under, but you know, they throw to like three tight ends, total running backs. Yeah.

• 1:53:20Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna do another David Montgomery bet.

• 1:53:24Bill Simmons?

  Because for some reason you left me both of the good ones. David Montgomery, eight touchdowns. Just eight, minus 102.

• 1:53:32Speaker 01

  That's better.

• 1:53:33Bill Simmons?

  Eight.

• 1:53:34Speaker 01

  Rushing, right?

• 1:53:35Bill Simmons?

  Rushing.

• 1:53:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:38Bill Simmons?

  I think it's just touchdowns.

• 1:53:40Speaker 01

  Is it?

• 1:53:42Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was touchdowns. Either way, I'll take it at eight, minus 102.

• 1:53:46Speaker 01

  All right. Uh, here we go.

• 1:53:50Bill Simmons?

  Who's gonna tap out? Or we do, we forgot to call this the Fogu to Chow draft.

• 1:53:55Speaker 01

  You got that.

• 1:53:57Bill Simmons?

  Tap out.

• 1:53:59Speaker 01

  Daniel Jones, under 18 and a half, touchdown passes, plus 102. You get a plus number for that. I don't think he's good for one a game.

• 1:54:08Bill Simmons?

  Under 18 and a half touchdowns.

• 1:54:10Speaker 01

  Plays 13 games. He's gonna have to get like one and a half a game.

• 1:54:14Bill Simmons?

  What are the odds on that?

• 1:54:15Speaker 01

  Plus 102. It's right there.

• 1:54:20Bill Simmons?

  So, you know, my dad has six brothers and sisters.

• 1:54:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:26Bill Simmons?

  Michael Chuck, who's been, um, topic of a lot of conversation over the years. Love Uncle Chuck. Great athlete, quirky. One of the things with Chuck, eats a lot. Goes out to dinner, overeats, like, combination of Brad, but also like a golden retriever. Like if you just left too much food out and can't stop eating and then is sick.

• 1:54:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:54:51Bill Simmons?

  Stayed with my dad last month.

• 1:54:54Bill Simmons?

  When he stays over, he needs a chair in his bedroom that he can sit in because routinely he eats too much. And he can't lie down, so he has to get up and he wants to sit in a chair so he can digest better. So when they come, when he comes, they have to make sure there's a chair in there.

• 1:55:14Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:55:16Bill Simmons?

  And so they went, they took him like Abe and Louis or something when he was in town. He ate way too much and my daughter was with them too, watching him just in disbelief how much he was eating, like it was Howl Seat style. And then the next day he's like, yeah, I had to sleep in the chair.

• 1:55:33Bill Simmons?

  Uncle Chuck.

• 1:55:35Speaker 01

  Oh my shit, he's my hero. We're gonna make the T-shirts. So he starts in the bed or he starts in the chair?

• 1:55:41Bill Simmons?

  He's in the, starts in the bed, but it's like eventually knows he has to end up in the chair.

• 1:55:46Speaker 01

  Oh, this is Brad. This is our friend Brad.

• 1:55:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:49Speaker 01

  Oh, that's amazing.

• 1:55:49Bill Simmons?

  This is like House happened to go in the phone booth that time that had no phone. Just sitting in the phone booth, Portland.

• 1:55:55Speaker 01

  Uncle Chuck. Fly him out, please.

• 1:55:59Bill Simmons?

  All right, last one. Or last couple.

• 1:56:01Speaker 01

  Well, then we're gonna do a Super Bowl, right? All right, I'll do one more.

• 1:56:03Bill Simmons?

  Oh, what? Am I up? You had Daniel Jones as your rest.

• 1:56:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:07Bill Simmons?

  Okay. So I will bang out.

• 1:56:11Bill Simmons?

  Man, I, I really did everything. Did everything I wanted to do except for.

• 1:56:23Speaker 01

  Come on, Uncle Chuck's waiting.

• 1:56:26Speaker 01

  He's getting sleepy.

• 1:56:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think I'm tapping out.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:56:29Bill Simmons?

  I think I'm, I'm down a Super Bowl pick.

• 1:56:31Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:56:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm tapping out. Oh, I'll do, I'll take a flyer. No, I'm out. I'm, oh, did, do we do, do we do price for Offensive Rookie of the Year?

• 1:56:43Speaker 01

  You did 700 yards or something. No, you did.

• 1:56:45Bill Simmons?

  I'll do, um, yeah. I'm gonna do price, Offensive Rookie of the Year, plus 650. I'm not doing either Cleveland receiver. I looked at that long and hard. I got excited about Boston. I actually had that bet. But the quarterback thing, yeah, the quarterback thing's a disaster.

• 1:56:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, I'm trying to think if there's another category we missed completely, but we're good, right?

• 1:57:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we're good. Um, do your Super Bowl pick. What is it?

• 1:57:08Speaker 01

  Well, my Super Bowl pick is the Rams over Bills at plus 3,050.

• 1:57:16Bill Simmons?

  Rams over Bills.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  And if I, if it turns out to be the exact score, which I have it as, and it will, 31-16 pays 50,700. No, I made that up, but 31-16 Rams beat the Bills in SoFi this year.

• 1:57:30Bill Simmons?

  And what are the odds if that happens?

• 1:57:32Speaker 01

  Plus 30-50.

• 1:57:35Bill Simmons?

  Plus 30-50. So basically 30 to 1.

• 1:57:38Speaker 01

  Yep. Bills finally get there. What are you going with? Don't say the Patriots. Come on.

• 1:57:42Bill Simmons?

  I feel like you've picked the Bills to win the Super Bowl.

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:57:45Bill Simmons?

  At least four times. And when you think about it, there's no dumber pick than picking the Bills when they've never won a Super Bowl. And we talked, I did it last year. And then it's the playoffs and Josh Allen's overthrowing somebody in the end zone and the Bill and Juju come back and it's like, why? Why is anyone betting on this? Like if it happens, it happens, but we shouldn't, shouldn't be something you put money on, but we can't resist.

• 1:58:09Speaker 01

  This could be a good hedge if they make it to the championship game, which they didn't. Well, they didn't do that last year either. I don't know. They, one of these years.

• 1:58:18Bill Simmons?

  My Super Bowl pick is Seattle over Houston. Seattle going back to back.

• 1:58:23Bill Simmons?

  It's plus 53-40. So it's basically 54 to, 54 to 1 odds.

• 1:58:28Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:58:30Bill Simmons?

  I normally avoid the back to back Super Bowl champ. The lack of respect for Seattle, this whole offseason has been truly breathtaking. And if there's ever a team that can be the nobody believes in us back to back Super Bowl champ, I think we found it. People don't believe in Sam Darnold. I even, you guys were talking about the NFC West thing, like he led, he led the division interceptions last year. Are we sure he was even that good in the playoffs? Are we sure their running backs are good? Kubiak with that, now that he's in Vegas, are they gonna be able to run the ball? Their defense is worse. Schedule's harder. The Rams are a super team. This is just, this is the nobody believes in us, like smorgasbord.

• 1:59:11Bill Simmons?

  Is that, they're completely disrespected. They won the title last year, even the Super Bowl, even the line for week one was disrespectful. Three and a half? Playing a team they killed in the Super Bowl eight months ago.

• 1:59:21Speaker 01

  It's because it's Sam Darnold. I mean, let's face it, right?

• 1:59:24Bill Simmons?

  You think that's it?

• 1:59:25Speaker 01

  What quarter, yeah, of course. Cause you wouldn't be shocked after saying all that. And I pose this to the Ring of Wise Guys, if he had like 22 interceptions. And by the way, his interceptions went up last year from the year before. And I think he plays worse defenses this year on paper. But are you gonna be shocked if he becomes like the, the Sam Darnold of the Jets or like a little worse? I don't know.

• 1:59:46Bill Simmons?

  It's more of a bet for me on McDonald's. And the fact that he just might be 2000's Belichick again. This team, even the games they lost, they almost won, you know, dating back to like a year and a half.

• 1:59:59Bill Simmons?

  And I, I just, I love that everybody does not believe in them. It's, it fits my, uh, it fits my profile.

• 2:00:07Speaker 01

  Boy, I can't even tell who you're gonna root for on Wednesday.

• 2:00:11Bill Simmons?

  So what was your, what was your favorite? That's not funny. What was it?

• 2:00:17Bill Simmons?

  What was your favorite of all your things? We did like almost 80, it feels like.

• 2:00:20Speaker 01

  The first one, the Jets. Isn't that sick? Not discussing that the Jets to come in third is my favorite after all this.

• 2:00:27Bill Simmons?

  I think my favorite is Houston and Seattle both to make the playoffs, plus 112. But I also really like Falcons Dolphins. The first two I took, the fourth place, plus 343.

• 2:00:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, your favorite has to be the NFC South, so.

• 2:00:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:39Speaker 01

  All right, that was really fun.

• 2:00:40Speaker 01

  Just so people know the plan. We give these out on Netflix and then we jump in your 2002 Dodge Intrepid and we drive to the Kentucky Tennessee border. And we place these bets, then we drive back hopefully in time for Pat's Seahawks kickoff and.

• 2:00:54Bill Simmons?

  We do that with Harlan Coben.

• 2:00:56Speaker 01

  And with Harlan Coben.

• 2:00:57Bill Simmons?

  The three of us. It's gonna be his next movie.

• 2:00:59Speaker 01

  We do everything by the book. You're gonna wear a seatbelt every day.

• 2:01:04Bill Simmons?

  I've been wearing a seatbelt for the last month. I'm still not, I'm still unclear why people, this made people so upset. Like, like, if I had said I was smoking 10 cigarettes a day, would that people, make people more or less upset than the seatbelt?

• 2:01:19Speaker 01

  I think it's right up there. Let's, let's take Baby Doll for instance. I think this is, this is something I could see Baby Doll, our agent, our crazy agent doing, not you. And by the way, you throw out there that you can't see, you're playing, you're frigging Helen Keller, you're not able to see it.

• 2:01:32Bill Simmons?

  No, I can see far. I can't see close. I see far great.

• 2:01:36Speaker 01

  Isn't a windshield close? Like, yeah, this is shit that goes on that's close.

• 2:01:42Bill Simmons?

  Thanks for making it worse.

• 2:01:43Speaker 01

  No, you're using it.

• 2:01:46Speaker 02

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• 2:01:56Speaker 02

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• 2:02:00Speaker 02

  Dupixent dupilumab, a prescription medicine for patients one year and older weighing at least 33 pounds can help with that. It's a breakthrough treatment that can reduce inflammation in the esophagus and improve swallowing.

• 2:02:13Speaker 02

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• 2:02:18Speaker 03

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• 2:02:33Speaker 02

  Feeling stuck with E O E? Start treating with Dupixent. Talk to your gastroenterologist or allergist today about Dupixent. Learn more at dupixent.com or call 1-844-DUPIXENT.

• 2:02:46Speaker 04

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up require compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 2:03:10Bill Simmons?

  Wow, it's good. Today's parent corner, I'm squinting, is brought to you by Instagram. Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections on by default, built-in content settings for the content teens can see, and I can't see. Contact limits for who can contact them and time management tools like daily time limits and sleep mode. My left eye is so dry. Teens are automatically placed into teen accounts and teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of these settings to be less strict. Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences. I'm so glad they're doing this. I think I read that correctly.

• 2:03:48Speaker 01

  I think in like five minutes, you're like, so hold on, we gotta do, it was Instacart, I read it wrong. It's Interstellar? I don't know.

• 2:03:59Bill Simmons?

  Was it Instagram?

• 2:04:00Speaker 01

  No, it was Instagram. I got that right. Okay, you're up first. All right. All right. I have two beach stories with the summer officially wound down here. So last week, my youngest 12-year-old Harris O and I, we, we're gonna go to the beach. I'm like, we're running out of days here. So he brings his surfboard. We stop at the convenience store, get some fruit, sandwiches, chips, drinks. I'm in heaven. We walk down to the beach. I lay it all out on the blanket. I'm like, let's eat first and then we'll go in the, in the, in the sea and it'll be great. And he says, he's like, no, no, I gotta go, I gotta go. The waves are good. They could go away. Like, they go away? He's like, yeah, it really could get less and, you know, the, it could be shorter waves. I'm like, all right, fine. So now all the food's out. And I'm like

• 2:04:42Speaker 01

  recording him. He's like, get it, actually catching a couple and I'm getting some good shots. And then someone sets up a blanket right in front of me. And so now I can't record. So I have to walk down and record him. I'm just want, I just want a minute of him and then I'll walk back. So I'm recording him. And I just happened to look back and there were 30 effing seagulls on our blanket and they just devoured everything. The sandwiches, the chips, and I go running up there like I'm a madman. They took the tub of watermelon, which is heavy for a bird, these scumbag rat birds, took everything, everything, everything. And a half hour later Harrison comes out, out of the ocean. I'm like, well, we got some bad news. I'm like, the food is gone. He's like, well, how much? I'm like, all of it.

• 2:05:26Bill Simmons?

  Literally all of it. Yeah.

• 2:05:27Speaker 01

  Yes, all of it. There's a like a little scrap of lettuce on the blanket, but a seagull will be there in a minute to get there. All right. So that's that story. Cut to.

• 2:05:35Bill Simmons?

  Can I interrupt you quick on that?

• 2:05:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. That was my fault. Completely my fault. Nothing cute about kids or anything.

• 2:05:42Bill Simmons?

  What do seagulls bring to the table?

• 2:05:44Speaker 01

  No, I know.

• 2:05:45Bill Simmons?

  It's kind of an underrated, they don't get enough scorn bird, I feel like.

• 2:05:49Speaker 01

  Awful.

• 2:05:49Bill Simmons?

  Who has a good seagull story? Anyway, keep going.

• 2:05:52Speaker 01

  I have a good one. My father hated him so much, he would maybe plant Alka Seltzer on the blanket. Yeah. He's a bad dude.

• 2:06:02Speaker 01

  Poof. Not good for seagulls.

• 2:06:05Bill Simmons?

  Oh my God.

• 2:06:06Speaker 01

  Read the back of the, probably shouldn't have said that. Anyway.

• 2:06:11Bill Simmons?

  At least we're not live.

• 2:06:12Speaker 01

  I know. There you go. All right. Okay. So fast forward another beach story to a couple days ago, our friend Brad. How would you describe for our first time Netflix? Actually, he's been on Netflix. He was in that hitchhiker, that, that hatchet wielding hitchhiker thing.

• 2:06:28Bill Simmons?

  Spent on this pod with us. He's been, we've done, done stuff with him.

• 2:06:33Speaker 01

  Go back and listen. He's just a crazy person. He, he fled, he joined the Navy to escape paying gambling debts.

• 2:06:41Bill Simmons?

  He doesn't have a nervous system, I think would be the best way to describe him.

• 2:06:45Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 2:06:45Bill Simmons?

  The way, the way he is day to day, hour to hour, minutes a minute, is like, if somebody came in right now and threw fireworks into the studios, I was doing the pod and I jumped up because I was scared. That's kind of him all the time.

• 2:06:59Speaker 01

  Exactly. And he's loud and he's boisterous and he's very confident, right?

• 2:07:03Bill Simmons?

  Very confident.

• 2:07:04Speaker 01

  He'll go after you.

• 2:07:05Bill Simmons?

  Lot of opinions.

• 2:07:07Speaker 01

  The draft's gonna be fun with him just going after. So anyway, all right. So he's, I have custody of him for a couple of days when Kimmel's on hiatus and he comes out here and he's like, I only want to go to the beach. So you would think if he only wanted to go to the beach, he would bring a bathing suit. But being 53 years old and having lived here a couple of decades, he doesn't own a bathing suit. So I have to lend him a bathing suit.

• 2:07:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Oh, no. Burn that thing.

• 2:07:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it. So I lend him, burn him and the seagulls at the same time.

• 2:07:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:35Speaker 01

  I lend him a bathing suit. I don't expect to see it again. So he goes right for the ocean when we get there and he is getting pounded. He is getting slammed to shit by the, by the waves and he's screaming at the waves while he's getting slammed. He's like, turn it off, turn it off. It's like a lot of it is for show, but he's also getting like thrown around. And he also doesn't know how to, like the drawstring is a foreign concept to him. He just puts it on. I guess he's never had a bathing suit before. And so when he's getting hit by the waves, his, my bathing suit is immediately coming down. So he's nude and he's screaming in the ocean and onlookers watching from the beach, the reaction ranged from somewhere between thoroughly amused and considering pressing charges.

• 2:08:20Speaker 01

  And so after, I'm not getting like 20 minutes of this, my son Jack comes up to me. He's like, hey, we, I think we should get him out. I'm like, all right, let's get him out. I'm, I'm on the thoroughly amused side, but let's get him out. And as I'm coming out.

• 2:08:30Bill Simmons?

  We should mention you're also videotaping this.

• 2:08:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:08:33Bill Simmons?

  Sending the videos later. Yeah.

• 2:08:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I said that to you. And, and like the lifeguard walks up too and he's like, hey, should you get him out? Like, he's asking me if I should get him out. Like, this is a situation, like, he should probably be in there, but he doesn't want to touch Brad. And so, so I'm the one who has to pull him out. He's like, oh, what are you doing? What are you doing? And I pull him out. I'm like, you're nude, you're screaming, you're a menace. I have to get you out. And he's like, motherfucker, I was just having fun out there. I'm like, having fun? You're dying.

• 2:09:05Bill Simmons?

  Then the lifeguard thought he was drowning, right?

• 2:09:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. The lifeguard's like, hey, go get him. He's drowning. It's not a lifeguard thing to do. Anyway, that's that. We've watched the Ray Gun documentary and that was, that was my fourth son.

• 2:09:19Bill Simmons?

  I mean, here's the thing. He can't keep his normal pants on. Everyone in LA has seen his butt crack for 23 years. So putting a bathing suit on him, I don't know how tight the drawstring would have to be.

• 2:09:32Speaker 01

  It's true. Yeah. I should have duct taped it to him. Yeah.

• 2:09:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. You might have, or do the thing where they painted it on.

• 2:09:38Speaker 01

  Well, tis now, so you could figure it out.

• 2:09:42Bill Simmons?

  Brad, I have two stories, both about walks. I went back to Boston for my daughter's first two games, walking to the game. And it's kind of, it's like drizzling a little bit. And we're walking through the city and I'm walking with, my daughter's already there. I'm walking with her boyfriend, the famous Hank, and my son Ben. And I feel like this thing hit my head, which I thought was water, but I was like, man, that felt heavy. Pulled my head up and it's a giant green bird shit. That's just a clump. And I throw it down. So now, now it's on my hand. I'm wiping on the thing. But then, and Ben and Hank are

• 2:10:23Bill Simmons?

  horrified, but I'm like, no, no, this is good luck. This is good luck. This is a big Italian thing. I wrote about this in 2004, when the, when the Red Sox, that whole playoff run, I got shit on by a bird and I didn't wash the shirt because it was good luck. And I have a whole calm about it. So I was like, this is great luck. There's no way Zoe's not scoring tonight. Wish we could have bet on it, but they don't have a lot of D3 women's soccer. But anyway, she did score. It was a good start to the season. I get to the game and people are like, hey, Bill. And I'm like, don't shake my hand. Hold on, I got birds. I walked like an extra 15 yards. So anyway, that was one. The other one is, go to Fenway

• 2:11:04Bill Simmons?

  with my dad and my son and Hank. And my dad takes Newbury, meets us there. And then we're gonna walk back to his place after, which I would say is a 25-minute walk. We leave Fenway, they get killed by the Mariners. It was the one good game the Mariners have played probably in 10 days. And I, I want to mention, just as an aside, I hate the Mariners with the passion of seven hells.

• 2:11:27Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:11:28Bill Simmons?

  We have so many of them on our fantasy team. Cade Anderson, who they yanked around forever, finally brought up, and now he's not even doing as well as we thought. George Kirby, who I would rather quit fantasy baseball than have him again. Josh Naylor, who's been pretty good this year and limped through, he just didn't run out of double play. Where the guy, the second baseman bobbled the ball, throws it, and somehow they still get Josh Naylor in the double play because the whole team has quit on the manager. And then Munoz, the best closer in the L, who's blown nine saves this year. And every time he comes in, he throws 100 miles an hour and people just hit it everywhere. I hate this team. I can't even imagine how Mariners feel. I don't know why they haven't fired Dan Wilson, except there's a theory that they want the Mariners,

• 2:12:14Bill Simmons?

  they want the Mariners fans to feel happy after the year, so they're saving the Dan Wilson firing. Anyway, we lose to the fucking Mariners. And we're leaving Fenway and my dad's like, we should take a cab. Now, it's like this huge mass of people and we're like, no, we'll walk slow. Asked this guy, there's a cab driver there, it's like, how much, we tell the address, he's like, 35. I'm like, we're not paying 35 to go. It's a, it's a short walk, dad, you'll be fine. We're walking, he starts complaining halfway through. My dad's 78. He's doing, I'm 14 months till being 80. We stop at one intersection, he puts his hand on the meter, then he says he has a pulled groin. He's like, I pulled my groin a few months ago.

• 2:12:55Bill Simmons?

  And I, so now we're arguing about his pulled groin on the intersection, but hey, pulled groin, how? Were you like playing pickleball? Get to the house, he's completely wiped out. And then the next day, he's supposed to go to the museum with Ben and, and bails because he was still worn out from the Fenway Park 25 minute walk, which we then argued about for the rest of the way. And he's like, you should be more supportive. I have a pulled groin. And I guess this is just what our relationship is going to be like with our parents for the rest of our lives.

• 2:13:25Speaker 01

  I am a thousand percent on his side with this.

• 2:13:28Bill Simmons?

  With the 25 minute walk?

• 2:13:30Speaker 01

  25 minute walk. First of all, that doesn't even count. All the meatheads who are gonna approach you, yeah, I love what you do, man. Hey, you know what you should do? You should talk about it. And when Tatum and then Brown and that was like, oh, but how do you even deal with that for 25 minutes? 35, who cares? I thought you were gonna say it was like, like-

• 2:13:47Bill Simmons?

  It was a nice day. It was a nice, nice, nice walk. Everyone's going slow anyway. So now you aggravated that. 78. I didn't even know you had a pulled groin. So now I felt like I was like an elder abuser.

• 2:13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's then, then he wouldn't go to the museum the next day.

• 2:14:03Speaker 01

  Wow. That sucks.

• 2:14:05Bill Simmons?

  And then I should mention during Parent Corner, we have a new strategy with my mom.

• 2:14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:10Bill Simmons?

  Because you'll know this, because the Italian side, they want to be invited, but they never want to come.

• 2:14:17Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah.

• 2:14:19Bill Simmons?

  So we now call my mom every time we're doing anything because she'll turn it down. But then she feels like we thought about her and we asked her. Like, do you want to go to this Labor Day party tonight? Starts at 6 o'clock. There's no way she's going. But now she feels, you know, she feels like, oh, they thought of me, they were nice enough to invite me. And you somehow win points inviting them to do something they'll never do. I know you identify with this.

• 2:14:42Speaker 01

  Right, that's good, of course. Are you making her walk? Is that why she's ever going?

• 2:14:47Bill Simmons?

  My mom walks every day. My mom was outraged that my dad wouldn't. He was like, this is why we got divorced.

• 2:14:54Speaker 01

  That's why.

• 2:14:57Bill Simmons?

  See, now he's gonna be mad at me. I don't know.

• 2:14:59Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 2:15:00Bill Simmons?

  Like 20, short, slow 25 minute walk.

• 2:15:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. 78, yeah. I mean, you power walk through the Sistine Chapel. I mean, it's just a foreign concept to you.

• 2:15:10Bill Simmons?

  When we went to the Red Sox game, I didn't see him on the injury report. Like, shouldn't they have put questionable, questionable pulled groin?

• 2:15:17Speaker 01

  You took your Mariners frustration out on a 78 year old man. Very sad.

• 2:15:21Bill Simmons?

  One other thing on Fenway Park, they have the Fenway Frank, which is delicious. But they also have the jumbo Fenway Frank. It's like a fatter, better one.

• 2:15:31Bill Simmons?

  I think it's the best hot dog of, of any stadium or, but it's really delicious. And they have the spicy brown mustard too. I just, I forgot.

• 2:15:38Speaker 01

  Oh, they do have it? Okay, so I think they're like one of four parks that have the spicy brown. There must have been a lawsuit there somewhere because Citi Field has it. Dodger Stadium does not.

• 2:15:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they only have like the gross yellow mustard.

• 2:15:50Speaker 01

  The yellow for seven year old kids, the yellow mustard.

• 2:15:53Bill Simmons?

  Can we make this a passion thing for us for the rest of the year is to push for more spicy brown mustard? It's like, that's what goes with a hot dog.

• 2:16:00Speaker 01

  Of course. The only thing I could think is there was a lawsuit, someone burnt their tongue or some idiot complained and that was that.

• 2:16:07Bill Simmons?

  Oh, like it was too spicy?

• 2:16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so just make a nice spicy yellow.

• 2:16:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I just forgot how good that jumbo dog is. It's great. Had a great time. Anyway, that is, that's Parent Corner for us. It was brought to you by Instagram. Instagram teen accounts come with automatic protections that limit who can contact teens, the content they can see and the time they spend on the app. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts. I pulled it off.

• 2:16:36Speaker 01

  Comes with automatic erections. Protections, damn it. I can't read.

• 2:16:40Bill Simmons?

  I screwed up again. Oh, man.

• 2:16:46Bill Simmons?

  All right, that's it. We did it.

• 2:16:47Speaker 01

  Let me say one thing. I won't get us in trouble, but with the Hank thing. And I just, I, I'm not gonna get us in trouble here, but do you went, the lengths you went through to get rid of your daughter's boyfriend. It was the, that, it was Tony's Sopranosque. I can't believe it.

• 2:17:04Bill Simmons?

  And it, no, I felt the opposite. I love Hank. I didn't want to put Hank in jeopardy.

• 2:17:09Speaker 01

  He fell for it, hook, line and-

• 2:17:10Bill Simmons?

  So you think it was a Tony Soprano move?

• 2:17:12Speaker 01

  Really was. I mean, he's got a work release, he has to get out for three hours to go to a Red Sox game with you? It's very sad.

• 2:17:20Bill Simmons?

  Listen, it was, it was a very funny bit on the podcast last week and it probably, probably colored my opinion on whether it should stay because we're always gonna go for the comedy first.

• 2:17:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:17:31Bill Simmons?

  This week, you're gonna get in trouble because your dad was feeding Alka-Seltzer to seagulls. This is just how it's gonna go.

• 2:17:36Speaker 01

  You fed your dad to the seagulls, making him walk.

• 2:17:38Bill Simmons?

  Apparently I did. His mystery pulled groin.

• 2:17:42Speaker 01

  People are already mad at me. They say I instigated that whole Hank story. And I feel like I, I feel like I'm the guy, I run interference on some of your controversial decisions. Like, remember when you, the time you wanted to come out and brag about tossing your jury summons in the trash? And I'm like, don't, don't do it. You're gonna get in trouble. And you're like, yeah.

• 2:18:00Bill Simmons?

  You made that up. You made that up. That's it for Harlan Coben's Guess the Lines, year 20. Check that out. Thanks Eduardo and Chris and Gahow and Jack and everybody at Spotify. Jack Wilson, just a complete maniac, runs production for us and just went in on, went in today. Just wanted to make sure everything goes right. So thanks for him.

• 2:18:22Speaker 01

  Where'd he go in?

• 2:18:23Bill Simmons?

  He went into work to help produce this.

• 2:18:26Speaker 01

  Neither of us are there.

• 2:18:27Bill Simmons?

  And then we, thanks, thanks to everybody who voted on the polls. Thanks to everybody who's sending mail back. So when we come back on Sunday, it'll be after Cowboys, Giants. It'll either be both of us happy because we have Cowboys bets.

• 2:18:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:38Bill Simmons?

  Or a crestfallen sound, me screaming at you, why'd you let me bet on the Cowboys?

• 2:18:43Speaker 01

  Come on, don't screw me. Give me one week of pure joy.

• 2:18:46Bill Simmons?

  Thanks, Deflix. Cousin Sal, good job by you.

• 2:18:49Speaker 01

  Good job by you, buddy.

• 2:19:11Bill Simmons?

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• 2:20:35Speaker 02

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• 2:21:15Speaker 05

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