Pod Insights The Bill Simmons Podcast Mavs Fans in Hell, Bleak NFL Situations, an Oscars Recap and RIP Gene Hackman | With Peter Schrager and Wesley Morris About this episode The Ringer's Bill Simmons sympathizes with Mavericks fans after the report that Kyrie Irving will miss the remainder of the season with a torn ACL (0:00), before he is joined Peter Schrager to discuss the NFL combine, Matt Stafford remaining with the Rams, Aaron Rodgers’s next team, several QB-desperate teams, possible scenarios at the top of the NFL draft (8:55), as well as worst-situation NFL franchises, newly optimistic teams, the Bengals' quest to pay all four of their star players, and more (36:20). Finally Bill talks with Wesley Morris about the Oscars (01:07:35), before remembering the great Gene Hackman (01:45:06).
Host: Bill Simmons
Guests: Peter Schrager and Wesley Morris
Producers: Kyle Crichton and Chia Hao Tat
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Transcript 26,504 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Bill Simmons? Welcome to the Bill Simmons Podcast. Before we get to the pod, I want to talk about Kyrie Irving and the Dallas Mavericks in this crazy situation. Kyrie out for the year, tours ACL, came out today. And Kyrie is, I've had a roller coaster ride with over the years where didn't really like him on Cleveland. LeBron showed up, really liked him, didn't like him as much, came to my favorite team. Was all in. It ended, it couldn't ended worse. Became probably my least favorite basketball player. Goes to Brooklyn. That goes terrible. Goes to Dallas. You guys are so stupid. And then over the last two years, or last maybe year and a half. I really grew to like him as a basketball player. I liked the, I liked how he talked about everything, how he took some responsibility.
0:43 Bill Simmons? It was like everything I wanted from an athlete. I really liked watching him and I grew to respect and like him as a player. And they make this Luka trade. It is the least popular, most shocking, most indefensible trade in the history of the league. It's getting worse by the day. The fans are just so angry. They are like scorn lovers multiplied by a hundred. They raised the season ticket prices this week. Everybody goes nuts again. This is the angriest fanbase that we've had in a while. And here's Kyrie, who's, by the way, they're putting crazy minutes on him. He's in the 2010 draft. Or 2011 draft. He's been in the league for a while. He's a point guard.
1:25 Bill Simmons? He's playing the last six weeks, 38.7 minutes, which led the league. So they're throwing this huge burden on a guy who hasn't exactly been Cal Ripken Jr. And, and they're talking about how they rebuilt themselves. This was about a title window. They trade for Davis. He gets hurt in the first game. They put this crazy load on Kyrie. He breaks down. It's after the trade deadline. They have their first round pick next year. And what we've seen with this injury over the years is it's, it's almost a two-year injury. You lose the guy this year. But even when he comes back, we saw this happen with Jamal Murray in Denver. They're not, either they don't come back the season after, or when they come back, they're not,
2:05 Bill Simmons? you know, not, not the same person. So you almost have to think you lose a year and a half. They don't have control of their own pick from 27 to 30. And on top of this. They have to watch Luca, who's already rejuvenated. You can see it, who, when we talk about face of the league, face of the league, like Luca on the most famous basketball franchise we have, all due respect to the Celtics. You can watch Celtic City documentary, but the Lakers, I think are the premier franchise in the league. The Celtics are the most successful. The Lakers are in LA. They've had the most stars. Luca's in there now. There's an energy that's completely different at these games. And the Maverick fans, who already got kicked in the nuts with this trade in the worst
2:49 Bill Simmons? way I think we've ever seen in basketball. Now they have to watch this guy blossom as their team already just fell apart. And, you know, I tweeted this earlier today and I really, I really mean it. I went to those three 2011 finals games in Dallas. When they came back and they beat Miami, they actually lost the first game, which was Dwyane Wade, I think the best game I've ever seen him play. And then they come back, they win game four, they win game five. And a big reason they won those games was their crowd was incredible. I don't know where they rank in the best basketball fanbases, but for me, they're in the top seven. And, you know, I used to love the Warriors fanbase even before the Curry stuff happened. There's the Knicks, no matter how bad the teams are.
3:33 Bill Simmons? If you went to a game and they liked the team, it was just a great place to see a game. You can feel the love. And I really feel like the Dallas fans, everything they had built from 1980 on, like had gotten to that level. They really loved this team. They appreciated Dirk. They really wanted him to come through. And then in those, those three games, especially the last two, and they started to shift the narrative on Dirk and you could just really feel the love and, and the pure euphoria. And then Luca shows up, becomes their guy. And they're like, we're in, we have 20 year season tickets for this dude. We'll buy his jerseys. We love this guy. This is our guy. We'll, we'll have some ups and downs. Maybe he won't always be in shape, but this guy's special and we're going to win the title with him and it's going to be amazing.
4:18 Bill Simmons? And the trade pulled that away. They're still pissed about it. Now you have this. And this situation is not so bad. We were joking after it happened that the, the real reason the family that owns the team did this is because they wanted to sabotage basketball in Dallas and move it to Vegas. Move the team to Vegas because the Dallas team, the Dallas fans would hate them so much that you'd almost have to move. It's almost like there's a precedent of this, like George Sheen in Charlotte. He, his name became so bad in Charlotte that he actually moved the team to New Orleans. It's obviously ridiculous. It would never happen, but that, but the Kyrie injury on, on top of everything else is the first time where I started thinking to myself, holy shit, like that, that's actually how bad this might get where they
5:03 Bill Simmons? might have to be like, hey, can we have the Vegas expansion team instead and we'll just sell Dallas and maybe, or make Dallas the expansion team, or we'll move operations to Vegas and you can make Dallas the expansion team and call it the Mavericks and keep it the history. That's how bad this is. And I'm really feeling for the Mavs today because the combo of that trade, losing Davis in his first game and then losing Kyrie for a year and a half, probably. It's, I, I honestly can't think of another NBA situation like this where a fan base has taken in the teeth like this. So shout out to them. I think it's a sad basketball day because Kyrie was playing great. I loved watching him. This
5:46 Bill Simmons? really feels like this kills the Mavericks now for the rest of the decade. So wanted to mention at the top, let's get to the rest of the podcast. This episode is brought to you by Nissan. If you're planning on an adventurous 2025, you're going to need a car that can keep up with you and conquer anything in your path. The Nissan Armada Pro 4X is that car with a twin turbo V6 engine ready to propel your adventures up to 8,500 pounds of towing capacity to haul all your favorite toys and space for eight passengers. This unshakable fortress will chew up and spit out anything you throw at it. Learn more at the all new 2025 Nissan Armada at NissanUSA.com. Towing
6:31 Bill Simmons? capacity varies by configuration. See Nissan towing guide and owner's manual for additional information. Always secure cargo. I hope you stayed because I have football and the Oscars and Gene Hackman coming up next. This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun, sometimes earlier than expected? Sometimes after blowing a three, one series lead, but what if you went to Cancun with Expedia? Save up to 30% when you bundle and save. You can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness though, hopefully your team doesn't go to Cancun. One, two, three Cancun. Or if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save savings vary. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network.
7:14 Bill Simmons? Put up a new rewatchables on Monday night. We did Rocky. That's right. The original Rocky, the Oscar winning Rocky, the movie that made Sly Stallone an A plus list superstar that created the template for all sports movies. That was me and Chris Ryan and Van Lathan. You can watch that as a video podcast on Spotify. You can also watch it on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel. I also, another podcast this week, we did the episode three recap of The White Lotus. You can find that on the Prestige TV podcast. You can find all the clips and videos from this podcast in the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. And you can watch us, I hope you're watching us as a video podcast.
7:56 Bill Simmons? So we launched the first episode of Celtic City yesterday on HBO. First of nine episodes. You can also watch it on Max. Please check it out. The feedback's been awesome. Thanks to everybody who reached out. You know, this is, if you care about basketball, you care about sports history. My hope of this stuff is you, you could potentially get sucked in if something is just really well done. And I think our thing is really well done. And I think the early feedback is that people are like, wow, I learned a lot. This is fucking awesome to watch. When's the next one? So it's once a week. Check it out Celtic City on HBO and Max. Coming up on this podcast, I'm going to talk to our old friend, Peter Schrager. What he found out at the combine?
8:41 Bill Simmons? Is there draft stuff, free agent stuff? Who has the bleakest situation in the league? We're hitting all that. And then Wesley Morris comes on to review. The, uh, the Oscars to talk about the movie year we just had, uh, and really to talk about Gene Hackman because we had to get in that as well, though we did a lot of Demi Moore stuff too. And then he's going to give us his favorite TV show at the end. It's on next. First, our friends from Pro Jap.
9:24 Bill Simmons? All right. Taping this on a Tuesday morning, Pacific time. Peter Schrager is here. Haven't talked to him in a while. He was just at the Combine. Um, a lot of people are saying he was the one that broke up the Starbucks fight. I don't think you got a lot of credit for that. You were like third man in, just trying, trying to keep peace at an Indianapolis Starbucks. Combine, crazy place. You love it. Is this like, is that your favorite week of the year?
9:43 Speaker 01 It's the best. It's the best because you see something on TV and you're like, all right, it's a bunch of people in their underwear working out and like, it's not even 1% of what Combine week is. And I would advise any young aspiring NFL journalist, any NFL fan to like, go, go for a couple of days because as much as it's about the on-field drills, like you will bump into Mike Tomlin at a restaurant. You will see, you know, Sean Payton just, you know, having a private meeting with an agent out in the open, um, in front of that JW Marriott Starbucks, which by the way is, it's like literally going to like Times Square and starting a fight when it's at Combine. That's like the hub of everything.
10:23 Bill Simmons? Right.
10:24 Speaker 01 JW. So like 10 teams are at the JW. Every media member is at the JW. And for that interaction or that altercation or whatever it needs to happen at that Starbucks, you know, obviously the irony of Jordan Schultz's father being the longtime CEO of Starbucks is one thing, but to do it there in that public of a forum, like I got texts from, you know, NFL coach, NFL GM, three agents, four different media members that like, oh, there was just something. So, uh, that is the crossroads of all things.
10:54 Bill Simmons? Yeah. So it was Jordan Schultz and Ian Rappaport, two, uh, two NFL insiders, for lack of a better word. And it would have been funnier if it was because Rappaport made some sort of crack about your dad cost Seattle the Sonics. And that was like, it was like way more deep seated, but it just seemed like some insider kerfuffle. The big thing I'm looking at, and there's already been some buzz about the Giants trading up. I don't know, do you feel like it was true that the Giants could have had Stafford? And they had the draft pick compensation. Rich Eisen reported that yesterday. Do we feel like that is 100% accurate that the Rams were just ready to trade Stafford to the Giants? Or no?
11:31 Speaker 01 No, I, I, I think that the Giants had the parameters in place and were willing to engage, but the Rams never went down that road in such a formal fashion. So they had conversations. Essentially Stafford couldn't shop himself to any teams. Not a free agent. So what the Rams did was they gave Jimmy Sexton, his agent, who's, you know, big power, he's Nick Saban's agent, he's Parcells' agent, like a big agent, the ability to go look at what the market would be. And the Giants were obviously interested and the trade.
11:59 Bill Simmons? But not for, not for the first round pick though, right?
12:01 Speaker 01 No, no.
12:02 Bill Simmons? Probably like a second or third?
12:03 Speaker 01 And I know it from all angles because of my relationship with McVay, but also my relationship with Stafford. So it was, you know, go see what's out there and what destinations could be possible. And it came down to basically the Raiders being very interested in the Giants. And what I think the trade compensation would have been, would have been Giants give up their second round pick, which is the 34th pick, and then the Rams give back a third round and Stafford. But then Stafford would need to tear up the contract and have a massive contract, which would have been paying him close to $15 million more per year than what he's essentially going to play for with the Rams. And at the end of the day, like they went down this road and as it dragged on day by day by day, I think at one point like on Wednesday, I was like, wow, it might actually happen and it might actually be the Raiders
12:45 Speaker 01 or the Giants. But then by Thursday, when I got word that like Stafford and McVay were having breakfast at 6:30 in the morning in LA, I'm like, it's done. Like, and this conversation started back at Super Bowl, whether that was like some of the rumors. And I got caught in a little bit of shit because I was interviewed and caught off guard. And it was like, what do you think about Stafford and the Rams? And I'm like, I just know this, that they're going to have to have conversations and figure out a new contract. But also I know that McVay loves Jimmy G. And that set off like an entire like.
13:14 Bill Simmons? You got aggregated.
13:15 Speaker 01 Got aggregated, but. If they were to move on from Stafford, which cooler heads prevailed, like they had backup plans. They had Jimmy G and then all the reports are accurate that Rogers could have very well been the next quarterback of the Los Angeles Rams.
13:29 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I, I mean, the Giants are so stupid. What's the point in trading for Stafford? What are you going to win the Super Bowl in the next three years? Like that's, there's nothing you're going to give up a possible starter slash all pro in the second round because you want to go seven and 10.
13:43 Speaker 01 What was the alternative?
13:44 Bill Simmons? Alternative like at.
13:45 Speaker 01 They think they're a quarterback away from being relevant and I don't think it's that far off. Like I look at their team. I, I, well, I mean it. They, they get Andrew Thomas back at offensive tackle and then last year neighbors.
13:54 Bill Simmons? I didn't realize bumping them up to 11 wins. They are in the same division with Washington and Philly.
14:00 Speaker 01 They're confident that this team is not that far off and that the quarterback play was a dismal last year.
14:04 Bill Simmons? Come on.
14:05 Speaker 01 Well, let's see.
14:06 Bill Simmons? Believe that.
14:07 Speaker 01 Why not? You've got, I've got first round picks all over the offensive line. They've got Malik neighbors and then they've got this.
14:12 Bill Simmons? What are those first round picks is Evan Neil, isn't it?
14:14 Speaker 01 Sure. So that's a wash, right? So like, like, like Neil's not the guy.
14:17 Bill Simmons? Come on, they have no chance. I would be going the other way and trying to trade guys to get more picks and try to reboot it.
14:23 Speaker 01 Four, you've got Dexter Lawrence, Thibodeau, and you've got Brian Burns. Like they're not, this is, this is a team that everyone's like, oh, like I can't believe they got rid of Saquon. I can't believe they got rid of Saquon wasn't going to do anything with the Giants last year, close to what he did with the Eagles. So what they do instead, they invested in their offensive line and they have.
14:39 Bill Simmons? And they got a high pick, but this is the point. Then, then talk yourself into Cam Ward if you think he can be a top three pick. I mean, so that this is why I brought up Stafford because the stuff has started today about they're going to leapfrog to one, they're going to take them one. It just feels like Cam Ward's going first in this draft.
14:55 Speaker 01 He very well might.
14:56 Bill Simmons? I, I, it, it doesn't mean he's the best player. It doesn't mean it makes sense, but there's three teams right now who just have no idea who their quarterback's going to be. The Raiders have the best chance to probably stumble into one because they have all the cap space. The Giants, I, I don't know how they get one that actually make my case that I just laid out.
15:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:17 Bill Simmons? How are you going to make the playoffs? Like you're better off betting on a guy who maybe can become the guy.
15:23 Speaker 01 Here, here, here's the case for bringing in a Rogers at 41.
15:28 Bill Simmons? For the Giants?
15:29 Speaker 01 Yes, here's the case. Hear me out. Motivated, cheap compared to what? Motivated, yes.
15:36 Bill Simmons? Okay.
15:36 Speaker 01 Embarrassed, embarrassed that the Jets said we're good without you.
15:39 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
15:42 Speaker 01 Cheap comparable to a Stafford or to one of these, you know, bigger.
15:46 Bill Simmons? It'd definitely be cheap.
15:48 Speaker 01 And then, and you've got Brian Daboll, who has had his name from being coach of the year to now being the clown of New York and being considered a joke. Like two guys that know football inside and out. And like, hey, let's, let's say screw it and let's get him the giant chip from our shoulder and see. Now, look.
16:04 Bill Simmons? That was the case.
16:06 Speaker 01 Would they love to get to one? Sure, they would love to get one, but here's the deal. Rogers, as much as you don't like him, as much as Kimball doesn't like him, as much as Cousin Sal doesn't like him. Players like him. His teammates like him.
16:18 Bill Simmons? The Jets fans didn't like him. Can we throw them in? Can we throw in how he looked last year where he had no legs and didn't want to get hit and was terrible?
16:24 Speaker 01 I think he had 28 touchdowns, 11 interceptions. I'm pushing the ball up the hill here. I'm trying, but I would say this, the alternatives of, hey, we could roll out Rogers and still get a young quarterback. And you have Rogers as your quarterback for this year and you're not throwing someone to the wolves and saying, hey, go out there and, and play for your first season right out of the gates. That's the argument to make. I, I would also add that, you know, the Titans have the first pick in the draft. Will Levis will not be their starting quarterback, week one. I know that's not, that's not necessarily out there. I don't see this happening. I don't think the Browns are going to start the Sean Watson because he can't physically, but I don't think the Sean Watson's going to have many snaps, if any, again, as a Cleveland Brown in his NFL career. I'll say that.
17:08 Speaker 01 So that's a second team. Then you got the Giants, then you got the Jets, then you got the Raiders. So this whole.
17:13 Bill Simmons? So you have four teams in the top seven, basically, that desperately need a quarterback.
17:17 Speaker 01 Yes. So Cam Ward.
17:18 Bill Simmons? Which is why Cam Ward has to go first and it's not even going to matter whether he should be the first pick. And usually what is it? It's 50 50 with a quarterback that high. Those are the odds from the last 25 years. It might even be like 35 65 for him to be good.
17:32 Speaker 01 Totally.
17:32 Bill Simmons? But you still gotta do it.
17:34 Speaker 01 And look, if you're the Titans and you can, you know, maybe trade back and still get Abdul Carter and Travis Hunter at three or at five or at two, or that's fine, but you still don't have a quarterback.
17:46 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
17:46 Speaker 01 So, so to me, the Titans, and I've done a lot of work and talked to everybody this week, like, everyone assumes they're gonna go Carter one or Hunter one and they're, or they're gonna let someone trade up. No, like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't dismiss Cam Ward at one. Get us the quarterback and then we could figure it out and get a bridge quarterback if we need. And by bridge quarterback, I'm not talking Sam Darnold, I'm talking like a Jared Stidham or a Taylor Heinecke or like one of those guys, because last year, talking to, no, but those are the guys that start off, like a Jacoby Bursette last year or a Marcus Mariota in the room. I know, but if you're thinking Cam Ward.
18:23 Bill Simmons? Last year, right? Well, Minshew will be a stopgap.
18:25 Speaker 01 Sure. And if you get Cam Ward.
18:28 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
18:28 Speaker 01 You're good. And you've got your guys. So, um, I talked to Cliff and Adam Peters a bunch and it's like, the underrated guy in this whole process for Jaden Daniels was having Mariota there because he had a veteran to learn from who I think, so like, that's almost as key as drafting the right quarterback is getting the right room. And last year, Caleb had Tyson Bajent and a couple of undrafted guys and, and like a bunch of like second, you know, third options as quarterback coaches.
18:54 Bill Simmons? Drake May had Bursette, which I think was a bonus considering you didn't have a coaching staff, but at least he had Jacoby Bursette.
19:00 Speaker 01 And look at what Drake May's got this year. You now add in Josh McDaniels, you add in Todd Downing, you suddenly have like a real staff around him and guys that have been there and done that. And of course, Vrabel is a, is an upgrade at head coach as well.
19:15 Bill Simmons? Is there, I was texting with Todd McShay about this this morning. Isn't, isn't a likely scenario that quarterbacks go one, two, even if it makes no sense whatsoever? Cause nobody's been able to explain to me why the Browns wouldn't take a quarterback.
19:28 Speaker 01 They absolutely should take a quarterback.
19:30 Bill Simmons? Isn't playing again, they're absolutely screwed with the cap. There is no possible way they can acquire anybody and this is their one chance to actually add. Somebody. So I don't, what was the, I mean, there's been the Sanders stuff and the stories about the stories and the narratives behind the narratives. We've gone in nine different directions and anonymous QB coaches.
19:50 Speaker 01 Just wait.
19:51 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it's going to get worse and worse. And it's also, he's, you know, got a famous father who might decide, I want to nudge him toward a certain team and is going to know some tricks, some other families don't, which if, by the way, I think that should happen more often. I think that should happen with Cooper Flag in the NBA. Like you have the leverage, like we always talk about player empowerment with the NBA and pick your team.
20:13 Speaker 01 With the veterans, yeah.
20:13 Bill Simmons? Like it's never with the rookie. We saw it with Eli Manning where he didn't want to go to San Diego, ended up with the Giants. Like I'm always amazed it doesn't happen more often. But if, if Deion is like, I want Sanders on Vegas. That's just how this is going to play out. It would be pretty hard for the rest of the league to stop that. Anyway, I feel like there's a one, two scenario with the QBs, right?
20:32 Speaker 01 Absolutely. And Cleveland, very interested in quarterbacks. And you look at the free agent crop right now. I don't have a team for Sam Darnold that's giving him $40 million. I think Sam Darnold, who had arguably the best 17 weeks of his life, had maybe the most disastrous and financially prohibitive eight days any quarterbacks ever had in NFL history.
20:58 Bill Simmons? Oh shit, you're right. It wasn't even two weeks. It was eight days.
21:01 Speaker 01 Eight days. It was that, that Sunday night.
21:03 Bill Simmons? It's like a Hawaii trip.
21:04 Speaker 01 It really is. It's like White Lotus. It was like a Sunday.
21:07 Bill Simmons? He had White Lotus, season four. I've lost $80 billion.
21:11 Speaker 01 Yes. He was like Isaac's, uh, yeah, exactly. Saxon, what a name. So you've got, you've got the Sunday night against the Lions, then you have an even worse disastrous performance against the Rams, eight days later in Arizona. And it went from being potentially lying around the block of teams to like, this week at the combine, not a lot of Darnold love. So can't go back to the Jets. Doesn't sound like the Giants. I don't think the Raiders are doing flips over Sam Darnold. The Steelers seem to be pretty happy and going for Justin Fields is what the latest I've heard. So now the teams are rather limited. Are the Browns gonna break the bank after already paying and now pay for Sam Darnold? I don't know. So Darnold's number one on that list. And then it's like,
21:53 Speaker 01 very quickly gets to Kirk Cousins and Russell Wilson and, and I said Jared Stidham, like, those are the names. And it's not exactly previous years where there's this long list that, well, Baker Mayfield might be a possibility, or we could do like, you might be looking at for the Browns, like, all right, it's Daniel Jones, Carson Wentz, or we draft someone at two. And when you're at that point, you're like,
22:16 Bill Simmons? That's chilling.
22:17 Speaker 01 Let's draft someone at two.
22:19 Bill Simmons? Which is why the Giants would have to leapfrog the Browns at two to get Cam Ward, which is why I think Cam Ward is gonna be the first pick.
22:26 Speaker 01 And I'm with you. And I also think Giants beat the Colts in a non insignificant week 16 game and Leek Devers had about 200 yards and it cost the Giants the top two picks.
22:36 Bill Simmons? Are you talking about the Drew Lock game? That's what it's called now, right? We had, the Pats had the Joe Milton game and there was the, but Drew Lock was incredible in that game. Cause I bet on the Colts. Drew Lock was lights out. I mean, you could make a case like, yo, look at that Drew Lock tape. Maybe we, maybe we have the solution in-house.
22:54 Speaker 01 Maybe. He's a free agent himself. So it's, it's, I think it's a very good possibility that despite the fact that this draft class at quarterback is nowhere near last year's. Like those one, two, three picks last year, it, those guys, those guys we've been talking about for 12 months and it was no brainer. They're going one, two, three. And it was like, if you can get in the top three, you're getting a franchise quarterback. Now, yeah, Bo Nix was not viewed this way. Michael Pennix wasn't seen as a top 10.
23:22 Bill Simmons? McCarthy.
23:23 Speaker 01 And McCarthy was like this wild card, which still is a wild card. This year? Cam Ward's got huge upside, but despite the great years he's had at Washington State and Miami, he's not viewed in that same category as those top three guys. And then it's a giant drop off from what I gather. And then just viewed as prospects, not necessarily how they turn out. Shador, Jackson Dart, and then a bunch of unknowns.
23:46 Bill Simmons? So you have Shador like next to Jackson Dart potentially?
23:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think Shador is viewed closer to Jackson Dart than Shador is viewed closer to Cam Ward.
23:56 Bill Simmons? So he could be a drop chip on the shoulder guy?
23:58 Speaker 01 Absolutely. And you're talking about leverage that Deanna, I don't, I don't know if they have leverage unless they've got an agreement from a team that's like, hey, no matter what, we're taking him. Don't worry, you guys can like, I don't.
24:08 Bill Simmons? Can I zag? I'm gonna zag.
24:11 Speaker 01 I'm here.
24:13 Bill Simmons? Son of a famous person. Tough. Seems like he's smart. It seems like the thing that people are worried about with him is the athleticism more than anything. But he's got the toughness and the competitiveness that they like. And I do feel like as we get closer to the team, start talking themselves into the pluses.
24:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:31 Bill Simmons? Cause the minuses aren't like, this guy's kind of a wuss. This guy's not a leader of men. You know, they're more like.
24:38 Speaker 01 Not a diva, don't, don't, don't read any of that shit. He's not a diva. This guy chose to go to Jackson State.
24:42 Bill Simmons? Right.
24:43 Speaker 01 Also, I tweeted this yesterday and I'm sure it was the tweet that, that sounded a million, no, no one cared. Um, I tweeted this yesterday that the one thing a GM told me, don't sleep on Shador with this is he is tough as shit. Got the shit kicked out of him the last few years and got up every single time.
25:03 Bill Simmons? Right.
25:03 Speaker 01 And they love that.
25:05 Bill Simmons? Leader of men.
25:06 Speaker 01 You don't love, yeah, you don't love the fact that he's been beaten around a bunch, but you do love the fact that he didn't cry about it, didn't whine about it, got up. He was against an inferior, he was behind an inferior offensive line on a team that was really just like slapped together in the last couple of years. And they put together some wins early, but this was not the same level of talent that necessarily a Jackson Dart had at Ole Miss or a Quinn Ewers had at Texas. This was Shador. And his point at the combine, and it rubbed people wrong, the way he was, had some bravado at it, is that he changes. Places when he gets there. So Jackson State obviously went from this HBCU that had no resources to suddenly being a national name. And then he goes to Colorado and we had one week where big noon kickoff from Fox and game day were there a week two vying for,
25:51 Speaker 01 you know, real estate in Boulder. It happens. And the Dion thing is real, but there's also a lot of positives to that in that he's the son of one of the greatest football players ever. And he's seen how to handle yourself as a pro and he's seen how the business works and Shador has never wavered in that he is a leader and those guys do, do respect him.
26:08 Bill Simmons? There's the other piece of that, when you think about quarterback prospects, because there's two versions of it, right? There's a quarterback who had the weight of the college on their shoulders. And then there's the guy who was on an awesome team where the program was kind of the star and they were the quarterback of it. And some of the guys that have succeeded, especially recently, you know, Drake May just, he stayed in North Carolina. He was the whole program. He took all the leadership responsibilities and it was even though the record kind of came and went, but he was whatever. Bo Nix was in the spotlight in real ways in different colleges. And then Jaden Daniels, same thing. And then he has that OSU year where I, I just wonder sometimes, is it better to, in college, you're really the guy, at least for a year.
26:53 Bill Simmons? Does that prep you in a certain way to, whereas you look at like a Trubisky, like I, I would study if I was a team.
27:00 Speaker 01 Hey, Anthony Richardson.
27:01 Bill Simmons? Anthony Richardson's another one. Have somebody study like, like the ones that didn't work and like, what are the common denominators? And one of them is like not enough starts. Like that was a Trey Lance thing too. What, how big was the spotlight? How much pressure were they under on this limited level? And how did that go to the, how is that going to transfer? Sanders had like a giant spotlight on him for
27:23 Speaker 01 Huge.
27:23 Bill Simmons? Three years there, which I think is a positive.
27:26 Speaker 01 Yeah. I mean, the Colorado years, but also in Jackson State, they really put a lot of resources into marketing that thing. And like the fact he decided to go there and they brought Hunter there. That was a major story for a lot of reasons.
27:36 Bill Simmons? In the limelight. It was, it was to a Dion. It was a real thing.
27:39 Speaker 01 And Troy Aikman would show up at games and they had like, it became a thing. I think last year might've changed the narrative a little bit. Played 61 games in college. He was, you know, older than every other prospect in that draft. He shows up and he was immediately dismissed by a lot of teams because well, we've seen Bo Nix, like there's no upside. And Sean Payton, who you know, I'm gonna always talk about if I get an opportunity, was like, I like the fact he's played 61 games and did it in the SEC and then played at the senior bowl. And then was in, you know, major college games. Like, I like that fact. So this year, you've got this guy Tyler Shuck, who's not being discussed at all. Watch, he will be rising off draft boards. He was out of Louisville, but was at Texas Tech before that and somewhere else before that.
28:24 Speaker 01 He's played a ton of college football. He's 25 years old and in the past it'd be like, we don't want that. Shuck's stock is rising because of all the experience he's had.
28:33 Bill Simmons? Pretty parallel.
28:34 Speaker 01 Brock Purdy, same thing. He played all those years at Iowa State. Like, we like that because, you know, Cam Ward, we know he went from Washington State to Miami. He started at Incarnate Word. That was his first school. Zero, zero offers anywhere. But he changed that program, went to Washington State and on a bad Washington State team competed with all of the Pac 12 heavies and did well. And then goes over to Miami and breaks every school record and ends up with the most touchdowns ever thrown in college football. And it's like, that's, that's a, that's a, that's a resume. That is a, that is life lessons. That is, that is, that is adversity. That is different offenses.
29:11 Bill Simmons? Going into a new situation, having to meet a bunch of people.
29:15 Speaker 01 And I'm gonna be the alpha.
29:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
29:17 Speaker 01 I know we're a little bit all over the place, but like.
29:19 Bill Simmons? No, can we go back to the experience stuff for a second? Cause
29:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:22 Bill Simmons? I think this is actually the case for Darnold, who I think is now an underrated asset.
29:27 Speaker 01 He has.
29:27 Bill Simmons? He had 27 games at USC, right? Where he started.
29:32 Speaker 01 Yep.
29:32 Bill Simmons? And then if you go in as a pro, he started 73 games over the last eight years. He's had 100 career starts now. And look great until those last two weeks. Is that a Minnesota offensive line issue? Was it a scheming issue? Was it just that he played two great teams? Like, I feel as if we get closer to free agency, there's going to be teams tilting it and going glass half full. Because if you can get him for less than the Baker.
30:01 Speaker 01 What's the number?
30:02 Bill Simmons? Well, let's say you can get him for 15 to 20. Let's say you can get him to.
30:04 Speaker 01 No, 15 to 20, yes. The question is, is someone willing to go 30 to 40?
30:09 Bill Simmons? But you're telling me the Raiders wouldn't want to spend 20 million a year on Sam Darnold? If they couldn't get the thing? That would be Brady just being like, this guy doesn't have it. I'm out.
30:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's what that would be. That would, if that's his number and the Raiders aren't in, that's Brady saying, I don't give my, you know, vote of approval on this. Look, I, my, now that we're two months removed, and I, I think this might have been the case. I'm not making excuses for them. I think that Sunday night game with so much buildup and so much on the line for the Vikings and the Lions, killed both those teams that they.
30:37 Bill Simmons? Right. It was like a, like a regular season Super Bowl.
30:41 Speaker 01 It was a Super Bowl. They destroyed each other. They got, they were, they knew what was at stake. You had a home field during the playoffs. The number one seed was in the balance as well. And like, it was the most significant football game in the regular season this league has ever seen for both teams. And they both just destroyed each other, put everything into it that they were both completely flat the next time we saw them. And the Lions, of course, they lose on the Saturday that follows. But then the Vikings lost the Monday that preceded that. So Darnold, those eight days. And everyone I speak to who's negative on Darnold is like, well, that's, that's what you hoped you never saw again, that he erased it, but like, there it was. That was the Darnold.
31:18 Bill Simmons? 35 and 12. I mean, if it's Aaron Rodgers versus Darnold, come on. Kyle's going to turn the TikTok camera on because I have a very important Tom Brady point.
31:26 Speaker 01 Okay, let's go.
31:27 Bill Simmons? Tom Brady, I love Tom Brady. Brought me six Super Bowls. One of my favorite athletes of all time. This is a dangerous thing where you have him running a football team thinking he knows what's best with quarterback because he was a great quarterback. Because all of the evidence with the great players we've ever had, name the sport.
31:48 Bill Simmons? Mostly they're not good at this. They see that they think they're seeing things that other people don't see and it's not actually rational. Like Magic Johnson, Lonzo Ball got hurt, obviously, but Magic Johnson took Lonzo Ball over Jason Tatum. Right? You have like Wayne Gretzky ran a hockey team. How did that go? I'm trying to think, uh, who was?
32:10 Speaker 01 I don't have much on the Coyotes. Were they no good? Was Shane Doan not good enough? I don't know.
32:14 Bill Simmons? But Michael Jordan ran the Charlotte Hornets slash Bobcats for forever.
32:20 Speaker 01 The big Sean May guy.
32:21 Bill Simmons? Couldn't have been worse. Like steered them toward Kwame Brown at the Wizards, steered them toward Kwame Brown over Pau Gasol and those guys. Cause he liked what he saw from Kwame Brown in a workout. Like, I don't know if I trust the greatest players ever on stuff like this.
32:35 Speaker 01 That's an interesting take. Are there, is there the argument against that?
32:38 Bill Simmons? Cause you don't want to argue.
32:39 Speaker 01 Jerry West, Jerry West is the greatest evaluator the NBA has ever seen.
32:42 Bill Simmons? Jerry West, so there's, so Jerry West is a positive. There's some that wouldn't, I'm just saying it's not a slam dunk, but I think part of the problem is if you and I are in that room with Tom Brady. And we're like, yo, man, we think Darnold, like, look at these for 17.
32:55 Speaker 01 Right away.
32:55 Bill Simmons? And Brady's like, I'm out. I watched that game. He doesn't have it. I'm out. Are we going to argue with Tom Brady?
33:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:01 Bill Simmons? So it's just you now, you be, now it's like this one voice that just sees what he wants to see.
33:06 Speaker 01 Fascinated by the Raiders setup and John Spytek is the new GM. He was in Tampa for years and before that Denver and is really a good evaluator. And I interviewed him at the combine on camera for NFL Network. And I said, all right, you got a lot of voices now because it's not just Brady. Pete Carroll is going to have opinions. Chip Kelly is the offensive coordinator. And then you've got, you know, all these different voices that are now new ownership group. You've got, you know, the Melman people. It's like, okay, now we've got all this. And whoever this quarterback is going to be is going to be their first big like unveiling of like here's here's our group decision. Um, that's a lot of pressure on that quarterback. I don't think they're just going to go with a Minshew O'Connell thing. I think they're going to try to find somebody.
33:50 Bill Simmons? No, they're going to get somebody. Could there be some new owner syndrome with this?
33:53 Speaker 01 Yes.
33:54 Bill Simmons? Where they're like, yeah, we make a splash. Got to get somebody really good. Got to get Chip Kelly's offense. Got to find the right person. Nice mobile, whatever.
34:05 Speaker 01 And I would go through Brady's relationships with some of these guys. What's his relationship with Rogers? They've known each other 20 years. They've been competitive. What's his relationship with Russell Wilson?
34:12 Bill Simmons? I can't believe.
34:13 Speaker 01 They've played in a Super Bowl together. Is Russell Wilson going to be the quarterback of the Vegas Raiders? Like?
34:17 Bill Simmons? Geno Smith?
34:19 Speaker 01 Do you trade for Geno who has a great relationship with Pete Carroll?
34:23 Bill Simmons? If you're the Seahawks and you can get a high second round pick for Geno Smith and then spend 20 million a year on Sam Darnold for three years and just invest in your offensive line and be like, if we can actually block for this guy with the guys we have, we can actually do this. I would do that.
34:40 Speaker 01 That's why this is fun. It's it's such a weird class of quarterbacks because you have these these potential Hall of Famers and Hall of Famers at the last stage of their career. I mean, Cousins, we don't even know if he can move anymore, but he was going to be available if someone wants to trade for him.
34:54 Bill Simmons? Available for TV.
34:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, Russell Wilson.
34:58 Bill Simmons? You might be doing TV for him on network TBD in about six months.
35:02 Speaker 01 Don't laugh. Don't laugh. Amy Poehler might have a pod right next to Russell Wilson's if we keep on going down this road.
35:07 Bill Simmons? Who knows?
35:07 Speaker 01 This is it.
35:08 Bill Simmons? Who knows?
35:09 Speaker 01 No joke though, like this is the last stop on the tour and then you'd hope that you have a young guy that can come in as well. And then there's like this middle tier. I keep on saying Stidham's name. I think Jared Stidham is going to make a ton of more money than anyone expects because he's this like 28 year old guy who's been in multiple systems and when he plays, plays well.
35:25 Bill Simmons? Take a breath.
35:26 Speaker 01 This is it. Patriots fans.
35:28 Bill Simmons? If Jared Stidham makes more money than Sam Darnold, what are we doing?
35:32 Speaker 01 He won't make more than Sam Darnold, but he will be a coveted free agent more than you would imagine because of the dearth of quarterbacks available and how important the position is.
35:41 Bill Simmons? At this point, like go, go take a look at Joe Milton's week 18 game tape and talk yourself. Into that if we're going down.
35:47 Speaker 01 Trade for Joe Milton. Don't laugh. I mean, Joe Milton went, what, what draw was he last year? Fourth, fifth, sixth? Joe Milton could go for a fifth or fourth round pick. Like.
35:55 Bill Simmons? He was, he was really good in that last game. Let's take a break. I got lots more to cover with you. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. It's winter or it's the tail end of winter. You can now get almost anything you need for the coldest stretch of the year, delivered with Uber Eats. What do I mean by almost? Well, you can't get a snowplow delivered. You can get snow peas delivered. Snow angel? No. Angel hair pasta? Sure. Sunshine? That's a no. A bottle of wine? That's a yes. Yes, Uber Eats can get you that along with a side of garlic bread and creme brulee. To top all of it off, a little angel hair pasta, a bottle of wine. It sounds great. Get almost, almost anything
36:40 Bill Simmons? for your winter delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol in select markets. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. All right. So a quick tangent that I'm going to bring back to the NFL. In the NBA, the bleakest situations right now are the Suns and the Sixers and now the Mavericks, who made this catastrophic Luca trade and then Kyrie's out for the year. And it's just, you just look at those and you go, wow, this three, four year window here, pretty bleak. Who, in your opinion, like especially like being around everybody last week, who are the bleak franchises other than the Browns? We're just going to grandfather them in. The Browns have to be number one bleak, but who else is in that conversation?
37:22 Speaker 01 Well, the Browns is bleak because their star player also is demanding a trade and they don't plan on trading him. So you add on just, you know, terrible results and a question at quarterback and then you have the, the star player being unhappy. So that's, that's the Browns.
37:35 Bill Simmons? That's, would you say that's the gold standard of bleak right now? It has to be.
37:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, but they were in the playoffs two years ago and they do have young talent. So it's like, there's always this like, you know, hope springs eternal. We get the right quarterback.
37:45 Bill Simmons? Oh, the Browns fans feeling good all of a sudden. They're like Shreigs. They're in on the Browns.
37:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, sure. I'm in on all 32, as you know. Um, I think, I think the Jets situation is pretty bleak right now. That they got, they feel like they got the right coach and they feel like they got the right GM. But you've got a bunch of young players who are up for giant contract extensions in the next couple of years. And you do not have a quarterback and you went down this road with Rogers. And now it's like, we're sort of a good team with names on the roster, but we have nothing to show for it. And we have a complete X factor at quarterback and we're just out of the top five to actually draft one that we could just pick. We'd have to move and be, and be able to do that. So to me, I think the Jets will be in on Justin Fields. I don't know if Justin Fields would leave Pittsburgh to go to the Jets.
38:32 Speaker 01 Now money talks, but even if you get Justin Fields and you like Justin Fields and you think you've seen things from Justin Fields. If you're a Jets fan, are you, are you doing flips over? Okay, we're now ready to take on Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes and Joe Burrow with Justin Fields.
38:46 Bill Simmons? And Drake May.
38:47 Speaker 01 And Drake May, sorry.
38:48 Bill Simmons? Thanks. Justin Fields, so you'd have Jets, who else? Cause I would say at least with the Jets, there's a lot of talent there.
38:57 Speaker 01 There is, but you gotta.
38:58 Bill Simmons? There's moves.
39:00 Speaker 01 You've got to pay Sauce and Garrett and all these guys are going to be up for contracts. And they had all these first, you know, Breece Hall, Jermaine Johnson, Garrett Wilson. You name it. And of course you mentioned, they all got to get paid if you want to keep them.
39:14 Bill Simmons? Well, they're already letting DJ Reed go, which I thought was kind of shocking. He was good last year.
39:19 Speaker 01 DJ Reed's a good player and he's going to be.
39:21 Bill Simmons? Come to the Pats, DJ Reed.
39:23 Speaker 01 Don't laugh. I think the Pats are going to be very aggressive in free agency and I think they're going to load up this year.
39:27 Bill Simmons? Wait, hold on. I was going to end with the Pats. So Jets bleak, Browns bleak. Would you throw the Saints in there?
39:34 Speaker 01 Yes, because it looks like there's still a question with Carr, like is Carr the quarterback? And they've got salary cap issues.
39:40 Bill Simmons? What's the question? How much do we hate ourselves?
39:43 Speaker 01 How much do we, do we keep him? It sounds like they have, you know, the comments that were made by, by Mickey Loomis at the, at the combine was that they're in on Derek Carr still. And I thought he would be in that same boat as Cousins and whatever. And you could, if you're the Titans and you got Brian Callahan, who coached Carr. It, it with the, with the Raiders, it's like, all right, well, give us Derek Carr and we'll, we'll figure it out. But I, it sounds like the Saints are all in on Derek Carr and they still have these, this bloated salary cap that they can't get out under. So I think the Saints is pretty bleak.
40:11 Bill Simmons? Wait, when you say he's in the same boat as Kirk Cousins, are you talking about the Titanic? What boat is that?
40:19 Bill Simmons? Is that boat still floating?
40:20 Speaker 01 We say this, we say this, and yet there are teams that are going to convince themselves that, oh, well, it's better than the alternative and we'll pay these guys real money. Like, that's just where we're at.
40:29 Bill Simmons? What happened with the Raiders last year is the point for that. You just don't want to have a season where you're the Raiders and you realize like by the third preseason game, like, wow, our quarterbacks suck. This is going to be terrible.
40:41 Speaker 01 You've got Desmond Ritter at quarterback in Week 16 on national TV. Like, that's not where you want to be. Saints last year were rolling out Spencer Rattler in big games. Like, it's quarterback is everything. And so the Saints, they're going, it sounds like they're going still with Derek Carr. That was the comment made, but we've seen these things change. But I
41:02 Bill Simmons? Would you go?
41:03 Speaker 01 Their salary cap situation's no good either.
41:05 Bill Simmons? Would you go bleak for the, for the Cowboys? Semi bleak?
41:10 Speaker 01 No.
41:11 Bill Simmons? Medium bleak?
41:12 Speaker 01 Bleak in that it feels like the other two teams have surpassed them in their division and they're still going to have to pay Micah Parsons and they've got Dak on this contract and C.D. And like, I don't know how they're going to pay all these pending free agents that they have and that it's going in the wrong direction. But gosh, you know, you hire, you, you don't even do a full search and it's like, we're just going to keep it going with Brian Schottenheimer. It's hard to, it's hard to look at your fan base and say, well, it's totally going to be different. Well, we just elevated the guy who was number two to Mike McCarthy and we're not going to have any new fresh talent besides what we already have and we missed the playoffs last year. The question is, how does Dak return from injury? Because he's the highest paid quarterback in the NFL.
41:52 Bill Simmons? Right. Well, the offseason, especially this part, and when we had an afraid to see draft is all about, how do I convince my fan base to, to be potentially excited about something?
42:03 Speaker 01 And, and to pay out.
42:04 Bill Simmons? And the Cowboys can be like, hey, Dak's healthy. We got Parsons. We have three of the best players in the league.
42:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:10 Bill Simmons? We're the Cowboys. I don't know what the case, what's the case for the Saints? We have no, we have no cap space and Derek Carr's coming back and we hired the ninth coach who got hired. And we're in the NFC South. Never know.
42:28 Speaker 01 Yeah. And you're in a market, and you're in a market that, you know. It's a good team with a great tradition and a great city, but it's not like New Orleans is due to by the NFL as like the Cowboys or you know, the Giants or one of these premier franchises.
42:41 Bill Simmons? Do you feel like it's less bleak in Jacksonville?
42:45 Speaker 01 Oh dude.
42:46 Bill Simmons? Or we're just, it's better. Okay. Give me, give me stuff on this.
42:48 Speaker 01 Well, it can go, this is like a social experiment in a lot of ways. I went out of my way at the Combine to meet a lot of these people that I had never met before. That's always what I like to do. I like to put a list down of like, here are 10 names. They're all going to be in Indianapolis. Get to know them. They're young. They're up and coming. And then you become friendly enough with them where over the years you bond a relationship and you form. They, they hired a 28-year-old offensive coordinator in Grant Udinski. 28. And I was doing the math in my head. I'm like, all right, I know how old I am. I know where I was like, when, when OJ was on the chase and Ewing was playing Olajuwon, he wasn't born yet. And that's where I like, that's in my head. Like this is how young he is. Josh McCown tells me, he was with him in Minnesota. This kid's brilliant, but that's your offensive coordinator.
43:33 Speaker 01 Your head coach, Liam Cohen, who I've known, he was UMass's quarterback. And I wrote a book with Victor Cruz way back when in 2011. And when Victor Cruz was like the sensation, his quarterback was, was Liam Cohen in college. So I got to know Liam then, when we were working on this book and I have seen Liam Bowser. Liam is a young, really untested head coach, first time head coach. So you got that too. And then that GM, they hired a guy named James Gladstone, who's 34 years old. And he was with the, he was with the Rams and he was living in St. Louis while the Rams were in LA. And he kind of was doing the scouting from a satellite office, but he was less sneezed like number two. And the Rams gave him a lot of credit for these recent drafts, including Puka Nakua,
44:17 Speaker 01 and including some of these, the Braden Fisk and you know, Jared verse. That said, you're talking 34-year-old GM, 28-year-old offensive coordinator, first time head coach, and then a first time defensive coordinator in Anthony Campagnil. So to me, it's like, It's fun. It's fresh. It's different. It's it's not hiring Urban Meyer or Doug Peterson.
44:39 Bill Simmons? It's a strategy. We're young.
44:41 Speaker 01 It is different. And then, you know, Shad Khan, whatever. And then like Tony Khan, I talked to at the at the Super Bowl and like, he's talking about wrestling to me. And I think that's his priority is the AEW. And he's like, Shreks.
44:52 Bill Simmons? He writes, he writes every episode. He runs it.
44:54 Speaker 01 It's amazing. He's like, Shreks, his eyes are all darting all over the place, talking.
44:58 Bill Simmons? Shreks, you should do something where you come into the ring and you get hit with a chair.
45:02 Speaker 01 MJF is gonna knock you out with a Burberry scarf on. I'm like, yeah, no.
45:06 Bill Simmons? He's probably trying to book Ian Rappaport and Schultz to have some sort of Starbucks match.
45:10 Speaker 01 He would love that.
45:11 Bill Simmons? They can whip lattes at each other.
45:13 Speaker 01 Big sponsors, Starbucks, or in this case, maybe Dunkin'. But like, I, I, I honestly think that it's like this football experiment where it's like, let's just do fresh eyes and young and hire guys. And like, obviously, I love that. I love that. I hate going retread. I don't like the fact that we just typically are like, oh, well, this guy worked for this guy. And then we just hire him. Like, they're all fresh faces and Jacksonville's fun to me now.
45:36 Bill Simmons? I'm gonna give you a possible bleak candidate and you're gonna be upset.
45:40 Speaker 01 Why are we so negative? Let's be positive.
45:42 Bill Simmons? This is the last one. I'm going positive one second.
45:44 Speaker 01 Okay.
45:45 Bill Simmons? Are the Dolphins in the bleak zone?
45:49 Speaker 01 It was bleak at times.
45:50 Bill Simmons? Tyree probably pushing for the trade. McCar, uh, McDaniel, even though he got an extension. I'm sure he's, he's definitely on first coast fired watch, I would think. Tua, who knows? Salary cap, classic salary cap team where they just, they had to pay these guys and now it's all fucked up. Like, I, I, and they're in a division with the Bills. The Pats are gonna be better. The Jets won't be better. But, uh, I wonder if they're on bleak watch.
46:15 Speaker 01 Here, here's where I would say there's a possible turn in that. Like, first of all, a lot of these teams, they show up at the combine, they do media, maybe Tuesday, Wednesday, they fulfill that and they, maybe they'll stay Thursday, then they're out of there. Mike McDaniel, Chris Greer and Dan Marino were in that Dolphin suite until the bitter, bitter end when the offensive linemen were working out on Sunday like and they were locked in.
46:41 Bill Simmons? Dan Marino, what's he doing?
46:43 Speaker 01 Dan Marino's got an executive role right now with the Dolphins, working with the team. And, and as we're talking about former players and Tom Brady and all this stuff now, Dan Marino's, he's present, he's got a voice. They brought him back into the fold a couple of years ago and, and he was at the Combine and fully engaged with all of it. Now, last year's draft, they, they, they hit with Chop Robinson. He was really good for them as a rookie.
47:06 Bill Simmons? Yeah, he was good. I liked him.
47:07 Speaker 01 Jalen Wright, the running back. But to your point, when Tua went down, they weren't ready for that kind of adversity and things went off the rails and you saw Tyreek Hill and his comments in that final game about, you know, I, I, it just was like desolate and it was the kind of thing you would never want to hear from a veteran leader. That said, Dolphins, they still have a ton of talent on that roster and I, I do think the players still respond to McDaniel. So.
47:31 Bill Simmons? Okay.
47:32 Speaker 01 I, I'm not bleak on the Dolphins and.
47:34 Bill Simmons? I'm not sure I think that, but.
47:36 Speaker 01 Well, what do you think on Tua? Like they paid him. He was injured again.
47:40 Bill Simmons? I, I have real concerns about McDaniel. I have real concerns about Tua and I have real concerns about, we're going to wake up three days from now and Tyreek Hill's like, I want to be a Charger.
47:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
47:49 Bill Simmons? Let's make that happen, guys.
47:50 Speaker 01 Yeah. It would be the Chiefs, not the Chargers. He's still like, he tweets every other day about how much he loves the Chiefs.
47:54 Bill Simmons? The Chiefs?
47:55 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah.
47:56 Bill Simmons? Is that even possible?
47:57 Speaker 01 Yes.
47:58 Bill Simmons? The Chiefs just have an unlimited salary cap. I don't know how they do it. It's like, hey, we're going to franchise tag our left guard.
48:03 Speaker 01 And Andy's magic. Andy will trade you away. Andy will cut you and then, you know, the players long for Andy.
48:07 Bill Simmons? Bring you back.
48:08 Speaker 01 Yeah. They want to go play for him again.
48:10 Bill Simmons? Uh, all right.
48:10 Speaker 01 By the way, you saw the, you saw the John Cena, you know, dropping the mic. You saw that?
48:15 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
48:15 Speaker 01 That, that's Mahomes this year. That's, that's, that's where he's at right now. I think like he's gone villain. Like everyone just.
48:21 Bill Simmons? Good.
48:21 Speaker 01 I think, I think we're going to have a different.
48:23 Bill Simmons? Good. He had an incredibly disappointing season by his standards last year. The Super Bowl was a disaster. So I, I hope he's motivated. Um, the anti-bleak watch, the, you go to Combine and these teams are like, it's like the sky has opened. It's after it's rained for a week straight and all of a sudden it's the first sunny day and everybody's like, I want to go outside. We don't have to talk about the Pats. I talk about them too much.
48:47 Speaker 01 We can.
48:48 Bill Simmons? Well, we can do that at the very end, but who else is in that?
48:51 Speaker 01 Washington.
48:52 Bill Simmons? The skies have opened.
48:53 Speaker 01 Washington. It is like, it is like, huh, like the angels. And last year at the combine, I interviewed Adam Peters on camera. He's a GM coming from San Francisco, first time GM, super nervous on NFL Network beforehand. What questions are we going to do like, uh, and then this year comes in all swagged out, has like,
49:10 Bill Simmons? Right.
49:11 Speaker 01 You know,
49:11 Bill Simmons? He's wearing the Palenka jacket.
49:13 Speaker 01 No doubt. He's got the jacket. He's got the custom Jordans. He comes in, he's like, ask me anything. Let's go.
49:19 Bill Simmons? Let's go.
49:20 Speaker 01 They trade, uh,
49:21 Bill Simmons? Ask me how great Jada Daniels is. I'd love to talk about that.
49:25 Speaker 01 They have a ton of salary cap space. Everyone loves their coach. Like Dan Quinn's got that Andy Reid thing where like players just love him. And, you know, they just traded for Debo and I do want to say this, I think people misread the NFL, like, the Cowboys got crushed because they traded a fourth rounder for Jonathan Mingo and everyone's like, how could you, how could you trade a fourth rounder for Mingo? And they trade a, a fifth rounder and they get Debo. They're taking on Debo Samuel's entire contract. So that's $21 million.
49:52 Bill Simmons? The Niners, it was basically them cutting him.
49:55 Speaker 01 And that was the team that was willing to take it. And Adam Peters drafted Debo in San Fran and Anthony Lynn coached him. And Cliff is like, please bring him. Like he'll be motivated and we'll make it work.
50:05 Bill Simmons? Can I give you my, can I give you my 30 second Debo take?
50:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, let's go.
50:08 Bill Simmons? As an intermission.
50:11 Bill Simmons? San Francisco being like, yeah, we're good. Take them. It reminded me of the Celtics with Marcus Smart. And this is where I bring the Celtics into a football podcast.
50:20 Speaker 01 Fine. They knew something.
50:21 Bill Simmons? Well, it was, and watching him, and this was the case where Silla and I made on the podcast after that trade. It was like, that dude's body's been through a lot. We watched him for the last nine years. He took a million charges. He was on the floor all the time and I think they're getting out a year too early instead of a year too late with his body. So what happens? He goes to Memphis, he breaks down and he has not been healthy ever since.
50:44 Speaker 01 I think he's, where's he playing now? I saw a picture of him like this week.
50:47 Bill Simmons? Yeah. He's like a veteran of Washington. So I look at Debo and like you, I watch football every week. Debo took a fucking ton of hits. The way they used him, he was like a crash test dummy. And I just wonder if they were like, I think we took this as far as we can go. Let if it starts to dip, it could be on somebody else's team.
51:06 Speaker 01 Absolutely. You're right. But in the same breath, like Washington knows what they're inheriting. Like Cliff watched every snap of Debo's.
51:13 Bill Simmons? It's like this incredible toy for Cliff.
51:15 Speaker 01 He cannot wait. And he's like, please. And also.
51:17 Bill Simmons? He's gonna have 40 Debo plays.
51:19 Speaker 01 Yeah. And also, he was 20 pounds overweight, whatever you want to say, like. And now he's going to the final year of his contract. Give me a motivated chip on his shoulder and a contract year, Debo. Like, sure. So like, it wasn't like it was a false.
51:30 Bill Simmons? It was like you on TV last year. That was same thing. I just felt like a giant chip on your shoulder.
51:34 Speaker 01 Let's go. You want to disrespect Debo and Schrager. You're gonna get the best of us.
51:39 Bill Simmons? Um, I'll do anything. I'll do any hit.
51:43 Speaker 01 Send me anywhere.
51:44 Bill Simmons? Contract year.
51:45 Speaker 01 Let's go.
51:46 Bill Simmons? The, uh, so the Washington thing, the vibes are unbelievable.
51:50 Speaker 01 Unbelievable.
51:50 Bill Simmons? Great coach, great GM, franchise QB, most beloved guy in Washington, even more than Ovechkin. House is like, can't even come up with somebody on par with him at this point. You have to go back to like the Gibbs era. Uh, who else is the, the skies have parted?
52:05 Speaker 01 Skies.
52:06 Bill Simmons? Another team. Skies. Did you say Chargers, Rosie, Rosie Chargers or not totally?
52:11 Speaker 01 Season ended weird, that loss to Houston. So there's kind of like a bad taste and also like.
52:16 Bill Simmons? So it might be out.
52:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, I wouldn't say Chargers. I'm trying to think and go, oh, Denver, Denver, those guys.
52:22 Bill Simmons? Denver.
52:22 Speaker 01 They are super high on what they've got. All young players, Bo Nix. Uh, I had a really cool opportunity Friday night. Um, the Broncos do a team dinner at the combine and it's everyone from the team doctor to, to the, the head coach, to like the intern, anyone who's in Indianapolis, I'd say 60 people. And Sean Payton, you know, does a big team dinner. I don't think any other teams do this in this way. And they rent out a room at Prime 47, which is the big steakhouse and Payton, you know, let me come in and just hang with them at the table. And like, when you feel like good vibes, good vibes team, it's everyone's busting balls. Everyone's laughing. Everyone is like having a great, and they have such confidence in this quarterback that they're like, we're set. Like this has been the albatross around this franchise since Peyton Manning left.
53:06 Speaker 01 We finally got our guy and they will be active in free agency and they will get a good running back.
53:12 Bill Simmons? And they have so little more money this year, right?
53:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, they finally have money. They've had no money, but like upfront last year, like Zach Allen had a career year when they're paying him, you know, but Alex Singleton was great. Like, and then they've got certain this amazing corner. They're set. They are going to get a running back in this draft, and that's always been Sean Payton's like favorite position to tinker with, and they haven't had, he calls it the Joker. It's like the Alvin Kamara, the Darren Sproles, the Pierre Thomas, that type, the guy that can catch out of the backfield, run to the backfield. So
53:39 Bill Simmons? And there's good like high second round running back candidates for that. Yeah.
53:43 Speaker 01 Great, great running back draft, and you can sit there and on day two, pick up a guy who's going to pick up 1,000 yards and, you know, 60 catches. So I'd take Denver and Washington, both based on the young quarterback. And then New England, you don't want to talk about him, but like, the optimism is sky high around the Patriots. And also they become now-
54:00 Bill Simmons? And with me and nephew Kyle, and every time we're together, Kyle's like, Kyle's waiting for Abdul Carter to fall to four because of some amorphous foot thing. And then he's buying the jersey like that day.
54:10 Speaker 01 It's like, it become all of a sudden a desirable place to play, too. And the free agent-
54:15 Bill Simmons? Funny how that works when you have a good quarterback and a good coach. It's funny how that shifts.
54:19 Speaker 01 No doubt. You know, the, the fourth overall pick is interesting for them because Hunter or Carter could be there if the quarterbacks do go in the top four. And even if they don't, I think Will Howard's a real possibility, or yeah, the, the lineman from LSU.
54:33 Bill Simmons? Oh, Will Campbell. Yeah.
54:34 Speaker 01 Campbell, sorry, not the Ohio State quarterback.
54:36 Bill Simmons? No, but they had the short arms. I was on multiple short arm threats.
54:40 Speaker 01 Okay.
54:41 Bill Simmons? He couldn't even get to 33 inches with this reach. How's he gonna hold back Michael Parsons with those short arms?
54:47 Speaker 01 The other two names, Odi Mason Graham, who I think you're, you're high on, right?
54:51 Bill Simmons? I'm high on.
54:51 Speaker 01 At Michigan. Now-
54:52 Bill Simmons? I'm on, McShay says there's three league guys in the draft, and that was how I was feeling anyway, knowing nothing but doing all the prep. And it just feels like, but the thing is with defensive tackle, that's the easiest position to get in free agency. There's a million of them.
55:05 Speaker 01 True.
55:06 Bill Simmons? If you're trying to put together a team of assets, which is what they need to do. That's probably not where you go, but I want an, I want an all pro in this draft. You have to get an all pro in this draft.
55:17 Speaker 01 So I'm gonna put this out here now because his draft stock is slipping because he didn't do anything at the combine and all that. I don't think four overall is so crazy for this Tretorora McMillan out of Arizona, also known as T Mac.
55:30 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
55:31 Speaker 01 Oh, there's a lot of fans in the league and you're talking about the comparison starts at Drake London, but it can go even higher. This huge wingspan and this huge upside, six foot, six basketball body out of Arizona. Jed Fish was his coach at, at Arizona and Jed Fish is a lot of NFL people and he has been raving about this guy for years. Didn't do anything at the combine, but interviewed everywhere and apparently is a great kid. Nickname is T Mac. I don't see him in the top 10 of any of these mock drafts. And I, I know that everyone loved what Matthew Golden, the wide receiver out of Texas did. And it's like, he's the guy. I would be shocked if T Mac falls out of the top 10 and I would think Patriots at four might be a little rich, but if you're.
56:13 Bill Simmons? No, they, that's a trade back. That's you flip picks with the Jets or the Saints or whoever and you, or the even Vegas.
56:20 Speaker 01 Are you scarred by, by, uh, Keanu, uh, what's his name? By Nikhil, Nikhil Harry of going to the state of Arizona for a wide receiver?
56:28 Bill Simmons? The only thing that worries me with T Mac is the wide receiver class is so bad. That when somebody's the best looking person at a party of ugly people, they look fucking so handsome or beautiful.
56:40 Speaker 01 That was me at the combine. You should see it, dude. You would walk into one of these steak houses, you would vomit. It is so ugly. And it's all over the country. It's all of us in the media and everyone's got the same exact look. It's a button down with an ill-fitting blazer and jeans and like.
56:56 Bill Simmons? It sounds great.
56:57 Speaker 01 And like maybe like someone trying to have a cool pair of Jordans doesn't work, but like that's, that's the look. Yeah.
57:03 Bill Simmons? Well, but that's what worries me. But if they want him, I, I think you, he's in the eight to 12 range.
57:09 Speaker 01 Uh, I don't think.
57:10 Bill Simmons? They can't take, they, well, the team that I could see taking him is Jacksonville at five, because it seems like it's their decades mission to just keep spending capital on wide receivers to try to talk themselves into Trevor Lawrence. The Patriots can't block. I'm just gonna say that. They can't take Will Campbell at four because we don't know if he's a left tackle or guard, but I, I think, I think that moving back. Into the six to 10 range and taking a receiver tackle. It's hard to argue with, but you'd have to move back and have a team wanting to move up.
57:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:40 Bill Simmons? That's the other thing.
57:40 Speaker 01 It's also like, and I work for the NFL Network and I'm going to be doing the draft. Like it is not the draft class of years prior. There are.
57:48 Bill Simmons? No.
57:48 Speaker 01 You said three blue chip guys, and I think Mason Graham is borderline blue chip. Like Travis Hunter is awesome.
57:53 Bill Simmons? I can really see, I can see Carter for the Pats though.
57:55 Speaker 01 Oh dude.
57:56 Bill Simmons? I think if there's a scenario where people get worried about, well, what's going on with this foot? Or any of that shit and two quarterbacks go in the top three and Hunter goes at like.
58:06 Speaker 01 It's Carter.
58:07 Bill Simmons? That would be the dream.
58:08 Speaker 01 It's Carter.
58:08 Bill Simmons? That's Willie McGinnis, the 96, although 95 or 94, or whenever he got him all over again.
58:13 Speaker 01 Did Willie, did Willie fall in the draft for Parcells?
58:15 Bill Simmons? No, but we took him like fourth or fifth.
58:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
58:17 Bill Simmons? And it was like, hey, this guy is like going to be our, this guy is going to go chase the quarterback now for the next 10 years for you guys.
58:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, Carter would be a home run and it's him and Hunter are like the two names. And then you got this other bucket of the quarterbacks where if you're doing an overall players list, they're probably seven, eight, nine, 10. Like if you want to go that way, they're not. And then it's just the great unknown and it's like, what do you prefer? And it's, I mean, truly after like the fifth or sixth pick, it is a complete crap shoot to like pick 38. They say as far as like ranking and stacking these players. So not the richest draft class, but it's also the most intriguing.
58:52 Bill Simmons? At the combine, we did bleak, we did happy. Who's the, what the fuck is that team doing team? That people were just kind of gossiping about. Like they were like, you know, the friend in the, the friend in the neighborhood who were like, what's going on in that house?
59:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
59:11 Bill Simmons? Just saw some car out there at three in the morning. What, what?
59:14 Speaker 01 Cincinnati is a little bit of a question mark just because they have such a big off season ahead and it's, it's really going to be a lot of cap gymnastics. But they have told every agent, they have told every team, like their goal is to bring all three of these guys back. And that's Jamar Chase, T Higgins and Trey Hendrickson.
59:30 Bill Simmons? Franchise tagged Higgins already.
59:32 Speaker 01 They did, but the intention is not to have him play on another franchise tag. The intention for them is to sign all three of these guys to long-term deals. And if I was to stack it, I would say Jamar Chase is their first. Priority, T. Higgins is their second priority and then Trey Hendrickson, who led the NFL in sacks and was second overall in defensive player of the year. He would be probably the third priority, which makes him a potential free agent to be signed.
59:56 Bill Simmons? Wow. So we always talk about how you can basically afford three giant guys in the NFL. The way they want all three. And if you can pull off four, well, you got to count Borough though.
1:00:05 Speaker 01 Borough. Borough's got this huge contract and Borough.
1:00:08 Bill Simmons? So if you're doing Borough with the two receivers, that's an insane use of cap. It's insane. And also they just waved Alex Kappa too.
1:00:17 Speaker 01 They waved Alex Kappa, which was unexpected.
1:00:19 Bill Simmons? Although he didn't have a great year, but, but it's, they're losing guys already.
1:00:22 Speaker 01 They're gonna have to. They're gonna have to wave guys.
1:00:25 Bill Simmons? You can't build a team around a quarterback and two receivers and expect that's gonna work.
1:00:29 Speaker 01 They're gonna try.
1:00:30 Bill Simmons? And they're cheap. They're like the Pats. They're cheap. I mean, Brave was trying to change the Pats, but Bengals are cheap, Pats are cheap. So on top of, at least the Chiefs are like spending when they try to do this gymnastics.
1:00:39 Speaker 01 They would bristle at the cheap thing. I think historically they're viewed as cheap. So Mike Brown's granddaughter, Mike Brown's granddaughter, Elizabeth Blackburn, who's, or Katie Blackburn, no Elizabeth, is the granddaughter of Mike Brown. She's now taking over a little bit more and like it's all about, let's make this team fun. Let's make this team marketable and let's spend money. Like let's spend money. We have it. We have to have a cap thing. So like that's their intention. But Duke Tobin and Zach Taylor have a giant, giant few weeks ahead of them right now. And like, you already saw that Jamar Chase is posting things and T. Higgins has posted things.
1:01:11 Bill Simmons? Well, Borough would be a dick, don't you think? Like if it gets to the point, he will put, he will be like an NBA star putting pressure on them.
1:01:18 Speaker 01 A hundred percent. He already has been publicly. You know, you don't do radio row interviews and talk about company business. He was doing that. So I think Cincinnati, a lot of eyes are on them because historically they have this, this feeling of, you know, small market team, 32nd market. They don't spend money. It's a family run business. And now you finally have put yourself in this position where like you have to pay up. There's nothing left. It's, it's not going to be good feelings. It's not going to be, it's going to be money. Are you going to spend the money and do you have a way to use the cap gymnastics? And to that point, they put up 40 points. They put up 40 points every game last year and they still lost. So if you're focusing all on offense and you're letting the defensive player of the year, the runner up walk out is where your priorities at.
1:01:57 Bill Simmons? That's Luis Amorillo's Amorino spot.
1:02:00 Bill Simmons? The Higgins chase when they play together with Borough. The numbers are undeniable. They're undeniable.
1:02:08 Speaker 01 They're also the most entertaining team in the league.
1:02:11 Bill Simmons? Right. But if you're looking at Higgins and Sheil had him as his number two free agent. He had Darnold number one, only because there's no quarterbacks. But the Higgins thing would be, well, what about the games without Chase? And you look at those, what happens when the the defense is targeted against him versus? I think T. Higgins is amazing.
1:02:32 Speaker 01 I think he's unbelievable.
1:02:32 Bill Simmons? That'd be my dream Pats guy. I wouldn't give up the first pick for him, obviously, but the second pick, the second rounder I would do in a heartbeat.
1:02:38 Speaker 01 Go watch what he did with Jake Browning last year at the end of the season.
1:02:41 Bill Simmons? Higgins is fucking great.
1:02:43 Speaker 01 They were going to T. Higgins on every big play against Minnesota on that Saturday game and like Higgins is a true number one. And if they can get both those guys back, great. Back to Darnold really quick.
1:02:53 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:02:53 Speaker 01 If you're Minnesota and they're not franchise time, they're gonna let it hit the market. Okay. You, what does it say to J.J. McCarthy if you do bring him back on a 25 to 30 million dollar contract? Does it tell the rest of the league that J.J. McCarthy, we're not? Like, this is the bind with Minnesota. Like, they don't know what they have in J.J. McCarthy. And you could read all the positive press, like, they don't know what they have in J.J. McCarthy. He was injured all last year. He was on the sidelines. Like, they haven't seen him play. So it's not like they know that this guy.
1:03:21 Bill Simmons? If you take a guy in the top 10, he's gotta be your quarterback.
1:03:25 Speaker 01 Okay. So you let you let Darnold walk out the door. You don't, you don't say, let's try to hedge this a little bit.
1:03:31 Bill Simmons? Two for 35?
1:03:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:03:33 Bill Simmons? You have it out after one year? Like, one of those type of deals?
1:03:37 Speaker 01 And if you're Darnold, you know, you played your best football with Kevin O'Connell. Let me do it one more year and then I, then I can maybe break the bank. Like, I think, I think they're gonna make a very concerted effort to bring him back.
1:03:48 Bill Simmons? If I'm Darnold, I'm like, by the way, I had COVID those last two games. Sorry. Sorry, guys.
1:03:52 Speaker 01 I was sick. I was under the weather.
1:03:53 Bill Simmons? I can't believe you guys didn't get sick.
1:03:55 Speaker 01 Why'd you make me play?
1:03:57 Bill Simmons? Should it make me nervous that the Pats are probably gonna spend on Ronnie Stanley? Because I still don't understand why the Ravens would let Ronnie Stanley go as their left tackle?
1:04:07 Speaker 01 It's the Ravens have a different salary cap situation and different team and
1:04:10 Bill Simmons? Okay, good. I'm not nervous then. Thank you.
1:04:12 Speaker 01 Yeah. I mean, if I'm the Patriots, I'm looking at Zach Bond. If the Eagles let him out, I'm looking at Josh Sweat. I'm looking at Milton Williams.
1:04:21 Bill Simmons? They said they didn't like Josh Sweat. I think the, I think Bond is a real possibility, though.
1:04:25 Speaker 01 Bond would be great and Sweat is good and like Milton Williams is good. The other name, I don't know if, like Nick Bolton from the Chiefs? Like unbelievable linebacker.
1:04:33 Bill Simmons? Is he available?
1:04:34 Speaker 01 Oh, he's, they can get Nick Bolton. I mean, it's Robert Spillane. Like, these are like real names that can add to this team.
1:04:40 Bill Simmons? Well, the move is what you, what the commanders did last year.
1:04:44 Speaker 01 Veterans.
1:04:45 Bill Simmons? Getting those guys that weren't the A-list guys, but they were like, it's almost like the White Lotus cast strategy.
1:04:50 Speaker 01 No doubt.
1:04:51 Bill Simmons? It's like, we're gonna get Carrie Coon.
1:04:52 Speaker 01 Bring me Carrie Coon.
1:04:54 Bill Simmons? Yeah, Carrie Coon's a really good actress. Washington just went out and got like nine Carrie Coons.
1:04:58 Speaker 01 Yes, would that make Zach Ertz your Patrick Schwarzenegger? I think so.
1:05:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah, maybe it does.
1:05:03 Speaker 01 Austin Eckler starring as Leslie Bibb.
1:05:06 Bill Simmons? Yeah, Austin Eckler is Greg Gary, the guy, the evil guy.
1:05:11 Speaker 01 I mean, that guy's been in all three seasons and I mean, just consistently doesn't say a word on the episodes, just looks at the camera.
1:05:18 Bill Simmons? Has that and he has, he was the drug dealer in 90210. He's got one of the great IMDBs of all time. Yeah. He got, he got Dylan hooked on drugs. Khalil Mack, what are the Chargers doing? Bosa and Mack?
1:05:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, a loaded, a loaded salary. They could, they could. We'll see. That's why I'm not like, I want to wait and see on that. And this is also Joe Ortiz, who comes from the Ravens. It's his first real offseason. Last year he was the GM and they drafted well, but like this is now, you gotta, you know, it's time to make some decisions that might not be as easy as just drafting and signing players.
1:05:50 Bill Simmons? Last question. Houston is the most interesting offseason team to me because I don't know how far away they are from being impactful. I thought they were.
1:06:01 Bill Simmons? In the mix last year, especially if you look back at how the season went, how they were able to play against the Chiefs defensively, what they were missing feels easy to, easy to add. I like their coaching staff. I like their division. They're in a great division. Like that, that could easily be like a 14 and three team next year.
1:06:20 Speaker 01 You were high on them last year.
1:06:21 Bill Simmons? I was.
1:06:22 Speaker 01 And they actually finished strong. No, they finished strong and they.
1:06:25 Bill Simmons? I know, but they, Diggs got hurt. They lost two receivers by the time we got to the playoffs.
1:06:29 Speaker 01 Diggs will be a free agent likely. Like he's gonna be gone. Okay. What was really interesting to me was Bobby Slowik was one of the offensive masterminds interviewing for head coaching jobs two years ago after they had this great, sensational season. They didn't think they got enough out of the offense. They fired their offensive coordinator and then they go to the Rams and they get Nick Calley, who was, you know, wonderkind under Sean McVay. They bring Calley in and they also, with this offense, like they didn't have, like you said, Stefan Diggs, they didn't have Tank Dell in the last few weeks of the season and they still, in that Chiefs game, moved the ball up and down the field. If they don't have two botched, uh, special teams plays and a block kick and get sacked eight times, like they, they're in that game.
1:07:13 Bill Simmons? In retrospect, that was the red flag game for the Super Bowl, looking back, as I still continue to kick myself for not just having the balls to take Philly.
1:07:20 Speaker 01 You've mentioned this on quite a few pods.
1:07:22 Bill Simmons? That Houston game was, was a bad sign for the Chiefs.
1:07:26 Speaker 01 No, that game.
1:07:27 Bill Simmons? They hung around like they did with the, I don't know.
1:07:30 Speaker 01 Blocked field goals, muffed kickoffs, like they got everything from the Texans and they couldn't put them away until the very end. So there was some, some red flags there, but what are you gonna do? I've been, I, I didn't bet, but I picked, I picked the Chiefs to win in that Super Bowl too. And I've heard from Philly fans the entire last month, so it's all good.
1:07:47 Bill Simmons? We have to go. I have to go talk to Wesley Morris about the Oscars. We'll let you know.
1:07:51 Speaker 01 Oscars. Can I tell you proudly? Have not seen any of these movies. Now I'll go see one of them. I'll go see Nora.
1:07:56 Bill Simmons? Great move. Oh, Nora's good. You should see Nora. Yeah. Shreks, we talked to you before the draft. Great to see you as always.
1:08:02 Speaker 01 You're the man, Bill. Thank you.
1:08:04 Bill Simmons? All right. Quick break. This episode is brought to you by Fire TV. You ever sit down, ready to watch the game, only to search and scroll endlessly? If so, you need Fire TV. It shows you your live games from your favorite teams all in one place, right on the home screen. No more searching. Just sit down and turn on Fire TV. Separate subscriptions may be required. Feature and content availability may vary.
1:08:26 Bill Simmons? This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Excitement is in the air. That's right. It's the start of NBA season. I can't wait to get together with friends, share some Michelob Ultras and watch Tip Off. Plus, as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting you closer to the action with experiences that make you feel like you're courtside to actual courtside tickets. Enter now for a chance to win at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21 plus. Begins on October 1st, 2026. Ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry. Entry deadlines, prizes and details. My old, longtime friend Wesley Morris is here. We used to work together at Grantland.
1:09:11 Bill Simmons? He's at the New York Times. Did not talk to him right before the Oscars, although we talked a couple of months ago. We were waiting until after the Oscars, which was a very strange Oscars and was dominated by a movie called Enora. Shalhoub did not. I did like Enora. Shalhoub did not win. Demi Moore did not win. I'm gonna start here and we haven't talked. We've only texted a little bit. I was so happy Mikey Madison won. I thought that was the best performance of any movie I saw and I did not see The Brutalist yet. But I thought she was awesome. And this whole, sometimes this will happen in sports too, where they'll just decide, well, Demi Moore, she's been waiting forever. She's got to win and that was an important movie. And I was just like, what the fuck?
1:09:56 Bill Simmons? Like, Mikey Madison should win. Now, do you agree or disagree with that? Cause I feel like you might disagree.
1:10:02 Speaker 02 Well, okay, I disagree with everything. I think, what do, okay. First of all, I just want to be clear. I, I have no deep visceral.
1:10:16 Speaker 02 Problem with Mikey Madison winning, I actually was, I was happy for the surprise of it. Um, of those five nominees, I wasn't terribly excited about, I loved Fernanda Torres. And I'm still here. I think that Demi Moore, we can talk about what Demi Moore is doing in the substance that I think made her deserving of an Oscar.
1:10:39 Bill Simmons? Okay.
1:10:39 Speaker 02 But my two favorite performances are two of my very favorite performances from last year. Their movies got no nominations. And I just was kinda like, there needs to be an asterix next to this, uh, next to these, these five nominees.
1:10:56 Bill Simmons? Performances?
1:10:57 Speaker 02 Nicole Kidman in Baby Girl.
1:10:59 Bill Simmons? Yeah, she was really good in that. I can't believe she didn't get nominated actually for that.
1:11:03 Speaker 02 That is one of the greatest, I mean, this is true of Nicole Kidman in general, uh, in the last like 15 years, but that performance in Baby Girl is one of the greatest feats of psychological acting I have ever seen. I don't know how you, I'm, I'm not an actor and, um, I don't know how you simulate any of the things that Nicole Kidman, uh, was asked to do. Um, and Harris Dickman, or is it, is it Harris Dixon Dickinson?
1:11:40 Bill Simmons? Dickinson, I think. Yeah.
1:11:42 Speaker 02 He is also great. That is, that is one of the tops, that's, his performance is one of the top five performances I saw last year.
1:11:48 Bill Simmons? Hmm. Would that have been supporting actor for you or actor?
1:11:52 Speaker 02 Supporting, I, I can live with supporting. We can talk about category, category fraud too.
1:11:56 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:11:56 Speaker 02 Because two of our winners, total category fraudsters. Um, and I, anyway, I think that Mikey Madison is good in that movie.
1:12:07 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:12:08 Speaker 02 My problem with, with the performance is only that the four guys she is working with in this film are extraordinary. All four of those guys is great. And, or all four of those guys are great. And you know, Yora Borislav, I, I'm so out of practice with these names. I, I'm gonna get some of them wrong. But you know, to single him out is right because you know, he's got the scene at the end in the car. Which is, which is her great moment as an actor too, in this movie. I, I, I like Enora. I, I like it. I like it more than fine, but I don't love it.
1:12:50 Bill Simmons? That's how I felt.
1:12:52 Speaker 02 I think that, I, I'd be curious to hear you talk about what you love about Mikey Madison so much.
1:12:59 Bill Simmons? I thought it was a very strange movie year. I didn't feel like a lot of stuff jumped out and I, you know, we always talk about how it's a little bit like sports where you look back years later. And like, oh, what was that year? Oh, that was the year Nora won all this stuff.
1:13:15 Bill Simmons? I just thought, I didn't know her really at all other than TV stuff and, um, you know, she was-
1:13:20 Speaker 02 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
1:13:22 Bill Simmons? Working actress. She was like the 11th person in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
1:13:27 Speaker 02 True, that's the other thing.
1:13:29 Bill Simmons? I just felt like, I like those movies sometimes where it's just like, oh, this person's a star. I'm watching her become a star during the movie. I thought it was a pretty, pretty out there performance. It's a crazy movie. That I think has some flaws, which we talked about in the past. But I just thought it was a really like memorable performance, which, uh, but I also felt that way about Nicole Kidman. I, if, if, like if she had won in that category of her,
1:13:56 Bill Simmons? I still wouldn't have agreed, but I would have understood it.
1:13:59 Speaker 02 Here's what I'll say about Demi Moore. I, there's a, there's a shot at the beginning or toward the beginning of this film, where she has left the set of her aerobics instruction, uh, show, her big hit, uh, fitness show. She's going to the bathroom and on our, on our walk from the studio, I believe, or maybe the executives, I don't exactly know what, where the hallway is going to and leading. I know it's going to the bathroom. But anyway, there are all of these photos of, of various versions of Elizabeth Sparkle, Demi Moore's character in The Substance, on the wall. And they're all from different periods of this character's life.
1:14:44 Speaker 02 And I just felt like I was also watching like the Hall of Demi Moore. And it like all those portraits correspond, at least, at least in my brain, they corresponded to some moment in Demi Moore's cultural life. And her movie star life. And then she gets to the bathroom. And I believe there's like, somebody's cleaning the women's room. So what does she have to do? She goes into the men's bathroom. That is the Demi Moore's shot or sequence maybe ever. And this movie is so dialed in, in its way, because it's not about America. It's not about, it's like set in, in a, in a kind of fictionalized Hollywood.
1:15:26 Speaker 02 We can talk about the kind of Europeanification and the, the sort of, the ways in which non-American filmmakers and ideas have officially made an inexorable, um, mark on the Academy Awards and, and the, and the Academy itself. That I don't, it's just not going anywhere anytime soon. So we have to think about what the Oscars even are going forward. But anyway, um, this movie to me, like, and when she gets into the bathroom, you have the Dennis Quaid character in the bathroom, talking about how over the hill Demi Moore is as an actress. Or, you know, Elizabeth Sparkle is as an actress.
1:16:05 Speaker 02 And I, I, from that sequence forward, this movie was as much about the actor playing this part as it was about the character she's playing. And the, the total, I have never seen, Demi Moore is committed to a lot of parts. I mean, G.I. Jane being maybe the, the ultimate striptease, being an ultimate like part commitment. She's never been the strongest line reader. She's never been the most convincing. When her, when, when she has to hit an upper register, like anger is not something like verbal anger, verbally expressed anger. But she can make her face twitch. Her eyes can do that, like, um, you know, like they're, Ghosts.
1:16:47 Speaker 02 They're, yeah, they're, they're like sizzling a little bit when she's, when she's suffering. Um.
1:16:54 Speaker 02 And but her lower register, you know, you know, suck my dick. That, that, that line in G I Jane, I mean, she can sell those lower register rages.
1:17:05 Speaker 02 But this was something new for me with Demi Moore. We're like, her physical commitment to the part had emotional stakes.
1:17:11 Bill Simmons? You're bringing in your 40 plus year history with her movies and that became part of the performance for you.
1:17:17 Speaker 02 Uh, yes, and I think that that might have.
1:17:20 Bill Simmons? I think that's fair. I get it.
1:17:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, but if you're, I'm sorry.
1:17:23 Bill Simmons? Can I, can I do my history?
1:17:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, but can I just real quick, like, if you're an Iranian voter, do you care about 40 years of?
1:17:29 Bill Simmons? You don't. You're just doing best performance, which is.
1:17:32 Speaker 02 Right, right, right.
1:17:34 Bill Simmons? I went back to, to be more in General Hospital because I was watching General Hospital in the early eighties. That's where she broke in.
1:17:40 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:17:40 Bill Simmons? Was with her through the Brat Pack years. It was amazing to watch her. It felt like she fizzled out and then became a big star. I think she was really underrated. Like, we did Disclosure for rewatchable. She's just great in that movie. She's just a 10 out of 10, smoking hot, incredibly confident. But I swear to God, I think the best scene of her entire career. You're gonna laugh, and this is one of my, one of my takes that I'll probably take shit for, and I don't really care.
1:18:08 Speaker 02 You're you. You're used to it. Go on.
1:18:10 Bill Simmons? When, when Rob Lowe breaks up with her in About Last Night.
1:18:15 Speaker 02 Oh.
1:18:16 Bill Simmons? And he says he doesn't love her anymore. I honestly think that's the best acting moment of her career. The way, and apparently he ad-libbed it, and it wasn't in there, but the way she reacts to it, you could just see it go through her entire body. I think she's had some really great acting moments over the years.
1:18:33 Speaker 02 I was just about to say, Bill, there are so many moments like that in her career.
1:18:36 Bill Simmons? But G I Jane's another one, disclosures like that. I think she's good in Ghost. I think in Saint Amos Fire, she has a couple of moments where you're like, I would, I would run through fiery hell to get this girl to like me, right? And she's a one on one, where I don't even know, there's a little Kathleen Turner in there just because of her voice.
1:18:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:18:55 Bill Simmons? But she was drop dead beautiful in the eighties and then kind of transformed over the nineties. So we've been there the whole time with her.
1:19:04 Bill Simmons? But a part of what I thought was interesting about this movie, because you're right, it's a career retrospective of her. I actually feel like her career should have been better. I think, I think she could have made.
1:19:14 Speaker 02 I love this.
1:19:15 Bill Simmons? I think she could have made better movie choices when she had her peak. Like you think about even like making a movie like Strip Cheese. That was like a paycheck movie. That's like what we get mad at some actors doing.
1:19:24 Speaker 02 Right, but that Strip Cheese, wait, let's go back to 1990.
1:19:28 Bill Simmons? That's like, I wanna work with my husband. That movie sucks. I don't like that movie.
1:19:32 Speaker 02 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
1:19:33 Bill Simmons? No, that movie sucks.
1:19:34 Speaker 02 You're throwing too much at me.
1:19:36 Bill Simmons? I know, I am.
1:19:37 Speaker 02 Hold up, wait. Let's go back to Strip Cheese. It, it, that movie was more than a paycheck movie. Like, it was, I believe, well, it did pay her a lot if memory serves.
1:19:48 Bill Simmons? She became the biggest, biggest contract. That was the biggest salary anyone made in Hollywood.
1:19:53 Speaker 02 But it was also at the peak of her, of her demeaness, right? She had a great 1990s. She had, I mean, she was, she was one, she was a top five box office draw. She was in Indecent Proposal. I mean, well, just we can go in order.
1:20:06 Bill Simmons? She's good in Indecent Proposal. I, I'm not arguing the success. I just wish there were a couple of awesome movies in there where she was like going for an Oscar. And I don't think that was even on the radar for her.
1:20:16 Speaker 02 I don't think she had that in her is the thing. Like, think about the Scarlet Letter.
1:20:20 Bill Simmons? So that's where we disagree. I think, I think she had it in her.
1:20:23 Speaker 02 You, what do you think happened? Cause it's not like she didn't get cuts.
1:20:28 Bill Simmons? What if she was the, what if she was the prostitute in Leaving Las Vegas instead of Elizabeth Shue?
1:20:33 Speaker 02 You wouldn't have believed that.
1:20:33 Bill Simmons? Probably too old.
1:20:34 Speaker 02 It wouldn't, no, she's too.
1:20:37 Bill Simmons? I mean, too old when they, when they made that movie.
1:20:39 Speaker 02 No, no, I think that that's not it. Cause I bet you she and Elizabeth Shue are the same age.
1:20:45 Speaker 02 I think that there's.
1:20:46 Bill Simmons? Yeah, you're probably, you're right, they probably are.
1:20:48 Speaker 02 I, I think that Demi Moore.
1:20:53 Speaker 02 And this is why she's so good in Ghost, by the way. I think that she presents as invulnerable, right? She's, I mean, her whole, her whole thing when she became a real major movie star where people were paying money to see movies she was in, was just about her toughness, right? I mean, she's often the only woman in these movies. A few good men, she's the woman.
1:21:16 Bill Simmons? Well, that's her worst part.
1:21:18 Speaker 02 It's her worst part and maybe like her worst piece of acting because she's kinda seemed secondary to everybody else's priorities. And so, I mean, Rob Reiner is a great director of actors. So I don't know what his side of the story is.
1:21:29 Bill Simmons? Part of the problem is the mid 90s did not have a lot of great female parts. If you go back, even if you look at, you go back and look at the Oscars during some of those stretches. Like, could she have been Sharon Stone's part in Casino?
1:21:40 Speaker 02 No.
1:21:41 Bill Simmons? You don't think so, why?
1:21:43 Speaker 02 I mean, I'm sure that, I mean, I can't say no. I definitely would have loved to have seen her play the part. Um, I don't have an argument for why she couldn't have done it. Like, yeah, like cast her in Casino. I thought you were gonna go with, um, Basic Instinct.
1:21:58 Bill Simmons? Could.
1:21:59 Speaker 02 Which she really could have done.
1:22:00 Bill Simmons? Too famous for it. But she could have, she could have been one of the, Disclosure was basically her basic instinct. Could she have been Annette Bening in American Beauty?
1:22:08 Speaker 02 No. No.
1:22:09 Bill Simmons? Oh, so you think she's more limited than I do. I, I feel like there was more there. She also got married to Bruce Willis. They became a giant celebrity couple and they had three kids. So that, that, that, uh, probably hurt the output of movies she was making at some point.
1:22:23 Speaker 02 This is why I want to go back to Mortal Thoughts, because it's a great combination of the thing I'm identifying about her that I like, which is the strength with these, um, pockets of vulnerability.
1:22:36 Bill Simmons? Hmm.
1:22:37 Speaker 02 You don't believe, and the thing about Mortal Thoughts is it's two women, Glenn Headley's the other woman, because Glenn Headley used to be a thing.
1:22:44 Bill Simmons? Right.
1:22:44 Speaker 02 Um, and wonderful actress. Uh, the two of them in that movie are wonderful.
1:22:48 Bill Simmons? She stuck with Mr. Holland even after he almost ran away with a 17 year old. Still stayed there with him.
1:22:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, did it. Did it all. And this movie, Mortal Thoughts, I think, is it, is it Alan Rudolph directed this movie?
1:23:03 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:23:03 Speaker 02 Uh, from two, from 1991.
1:23:05 Bill Simmons? It's a Tubi classic. Tubi just is always trying to get me to re-watch it. I'm like, no, Tubi. No, not biting.
1:23:12 Speaker 02 Bill, I fell for it.
1:23:13 Bill Simmons? You did? Tubi sucked you in?
1:23:15 Speaker 02 Fairly recently.
1:23:16 Bill Simmons? Tubi was like, just throwing the fishing rod at you.
1:23:19 Speaker 02 I re-watched it and there's more going on. It does not ultimately work because it's structurally, it's structurally, it should just go chronologically and shouldn't do all the sort of jumping around in time that it does. Um, and, but to me more.
1:23:39 Bill Simmons? We don't have to spend 10 minutes on Mortal Thoughts.
1:23:41 Speaker 02 There's a struggle in here. I know, I'm just thinking through like what, what is what worked for me and what the surprise was with respect to Demi Moore. Like, there's a struggle in her, I think as an actor, where she's trying to figure out
1:23:56 Speaker 02 how, like, what the, what, how to modulate the, the shell that she sort of moves through movies with. And in a movie like Mortal Thoughts, I mean, some of what's required for that part, she's plays, she's playing a woman being abused by her husband. They conspire to kill him. I think I'm getting this right.
1:24:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:24:16 Speaker 02 They, they conspire to kill him, she and Glenn Headley, and then they spend the rest of the movie trying to figure out how to get away with murder.
1:24:23 Bill Simmons? It's like a Bad Thum in Louise.
1:24:24 Speaker 02 It's, oh, whoa. You know what's crazy is, yes.
1:24:27 Bill Simmons? And it came around at the same time. Yeah.
1:24:29 Speaker 02 Um, and that was, the movie didn't work also because they, you don't believe them as New Jersey housewives or whatever.
1:24:37 Bill Simmons? Oh, that was where they had their accents. Bruce Willis had a crazy facial hair thing going. It's like, come on, Bruce Willis. So what was your favorite Demi Moore performance before this movie? What's your, what was your number one? Cause my favorites, I loved her in About Last Night, which I, as you know, I think is the, the first modern rom com. Um, but I thought she was great in that. I thought she was great in Disclosure. I think she's great in Ghost.
1:25:02 Speaker 02 I listened to you guys talk about Disclosure.
1:25:03 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I know. You don't like Disclosure. I don't want your takes.
1:25:06 Speaker 02 I don't like it. I don't think she's good. It's not a good use of Demi Moore.
1:25:10 Bill Simmons? I liked it. If you're just making a random movie and you're just showing up for 11 days of shooting, it's, it's, it's a good one.
1:25:17 Speaker 02 I mean, three straight guys talking about Disclosure is just.
1:25:22 Bill Simmons? That was part of the gimmick.
1:25:23 Speaker 02 I know. It just was like, I'm like, there needs to be.
1:25:27 Bill Simmons? But Ghost is, Ghost is really good though.
1:25:29 Speaker 02 Ghost, I think is, is the number one.
1:25:31 Bill Simmons? That movie was a monster movie.
1:25:33 Speaker 02 Number one answer because that movie is like not so secretly strange, right? It's not just the supernatural parts.
1:25:42 Bill Simmons? It tell, it taught us what happens when you go to hell. Goblins come out of the, come out of the street and they pull you down. They shadow goblins and that's it. You're fucking in hell from that point on. They have the code.
1:25:55 Speaker 02 But I also love what she and Whoopi Goldberg get up to.
1:25:59 Bill Simmons? Um, yeah. They have great scenes.
1:26:01 Speaker 02 I love her disbelief that, that the thing that, that she's being told is happening is happening to her.
1:26:07 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:26:07 Speaker 02 Um, I believe her as a woman named Molly, which, you know, that's a huge, that's a big deal.
1:26:14 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:26:14 Speaker 02 Um, and I just think that that movie is so, it's so much about Demi Moore's character and the movie's about her. Um, and there's just, she's so soft in that movie. And the moments in which she has to like, put a shield over herself, they work because you understand. The movie has given you enough of this, like this vulnerable, um, you know, woman who just doesn't believe that this magical thing that is about, is it about to, that's about to happen to her is really going to happen.
1:26:50 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:26:51 Speaker 02 Um, I just think it's a, I mean, it's strange because in 1990, who were your best actress nominees? Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Joanne Woodward, Kathy Bates, who won and Angelica Huston, I want to say for the Grifters. I mean, it's not like she was remiss. I mean, Julia Roberts took the movie star part, the movie star nomination for those five people.
1:27:14 Bill Simmons? Roberts, yeah, you had the five. That was impressive.
1:27:17 Speaker 02 Um, I don't know.
1:27:19 Bill Simmons? Loaded, loaded year. Jesus Christ.
1:27:21 Speaker 02 Any one of those people could have won best actress.
1:27:23 Bill Simmons? And then the next year was loaded too. And then in the mid nineties, uh, nothing will top her turning on the lights in About Last Night. Because I think we've been in the dark long enough.
1:27:34 Speaker 02 Oh, wow.
1:27:35 Bill Simmons? That movie has some groaner lines. You gotta watch it. It's, she's really great in it though.
1:27:39 Speaker 02 I haven't seen it in a while. Haven't seen it in a while.
1:27:41 Bill Simmons? It's really, really, really an enjoyable romp. Uh, how'd you feel about the best actor?
1:27:47 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, the winner or the nominee?
1:27:51 Bill Simmons? Just how it played out. So here's my sports angle on Chalamet. Great for a great career move not to win.
1:27:58 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
1:27:58 Bill Simmons? Great career move.
1:27:59 Speaker 02 He should not have won.
1:28:00 Bill Simmons? Way better. Now, next movie, this happened to Leo, too. This is, oh, when's he gonna win? You want to get into that when's he gonna win zone? Because now it just helps you with the celebrity of being an actor.
1:28:11 Speaker 02 I also don't think it, I also, it's complicated, right? He's probably going to be one of the last actors to be in this position. Right? Where like he'll just, he'll just be nominated to maybe, maybe two more times before he actually wins.
1:28:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah. It's gonna be like he'll have to be in the revenant. He'll have to crawl out of a dead bear.
1:28:31 Speaker 02 Oh, my God.
1:28:32 Bill Simmons? He'll have to get the shit kicked out of him.
1:28:34 Speaker 02 I'm looking forward to Timothy Chalamet as the revenant because he definitely has it in him. The question is like, is that script ever gonna come his way?
1:28:43 Bill Simmons? Well, here's the thing. Can I, can I throw this theory at you?
1:28:46 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:28:49 Bill Simmons? I think what happened with this Oscars run and with Chalamet in general. We always, I mean, how many pods did Sean do about who's the next big star? We always would, we've done pods about who's the next big actor in Hollywood? Are we ever gonna have one? It's just just moving into this.
1:29:03 Speaker 02 I love listening to Sean talk about that stuff.
1:29:05 Bill Simmons? Well, is it, is this ever gonna happen again? Does the way this?
1:29:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:29:09 Bill Simmons? Does the way the system, the way it's structured now? Does it just make it impossible? Because we just throw like some DC Comics or Marvel suit on them after they, after they become famous. I think what happened with him, SNL really helped. Going on college game day, the way he navigates, you could feel it in the Oscars telecast, too. He was kind of in that Leo spot. They kept going to him, they kept showing him.
1:29:33 Speaker 02 Oh.
1:29:33 Bill Simmons? People were mentioning him and it just felt like it was kind of his Leo early 2000s moment, right?
1:29:38 Speaker 02 This is a great point because I actually didn't even think about DiCaprio in that moment. And I thought I went, I went past Leonardo DiCaprio and went to like Streep and Nicholson, right?
1:29:50 Bill Simmons? Right.
1:29:50 Speaker 02 Where he was the person, they weren't even making fun of him at some points.
1:29:54 Bill Simmons? No.
1:29:55 Speaker 02 It wasn't even Conan O'Brien joking.
1:29:56 Bill Simmons? It felt like he had clout.
1:29:57 Speaker 02 Yes. People were like just shouting him out because they thought he was cool.
1:30:02 Bill Simmons? I think he has about as high of an approval rating of an actor that we've seen in a long time. I think really since Leo and the early, when Leo was in that aviator stage and we were like, you know what, man, this Stan, this guy is, he's handsome. Everybody likes him. He's a really good actor and he stands for the right things. He wants to work with good directors. He wants to challenge himself. I know, I know Chalamet's SAG speech didn't go over fantastic when he was talking about how he wanted to be one of the greats, but I loved it.
1:30:31 Speaker 02 I.
1:30:31 Bill Simmons? I thought it was great. I'm glad he said it.
1:30:34 Speaker 02 I mean, as, as sports people, Bill, I think we just, what we want is a little bit of honesty in terms of people's ambitions.
1:30:41 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:30:41 Speaker 02 And if you think you can go all the way, he wasn't even saying, I'm the greatest. He's like, I wanna be one of the great actors.
1:30:48 Bill Simmons? It was authentic, which is all we want from athletes, celebrities, whoever. Just be, just fucking say what you want. Be yourself.
1:30:55 Speaker 02 Be yourself.
1:30:56 Bill Simmons? Don't try to be some manufactured, I think people are gonna like this version of me and this will help me if I appear this way. Like, I don't think he's like that.
1:31:05 Speaker 02 No. I think there's, I mean, I think.
1:31:06 Bill Simmons? At least not yet. Maybe he'll turn into that.
1:31:08 Speaker 02 They don't talk about you that way. I mean, think, I mean, this is not quite fair to the person I'm about, I'm about to name, but think about a show where like they would treat Kieran Culkin this way, right? I think that there is, there's like real belief in, in, in Timothy Chalamet as more than just like an actor. I mean, he, he embodies something that people seem to like. Also, it's important to say that he, he's just really good at being himself. And I don't know what that is really, but I just enjoy when he shows up, you know, on some, you know, Canadian talk show.
1:31:50 Speaker 02 Like hanging out in the record store with this, with the talk show host. I don't know if you saw that, like I, I don't even know where I saw it, but it came to me and I was like, I love this guy. He really went along with it and.
1:32:02 Bill Simmons? He's, he's the guy who was waiting outside MSG for Mario Stotterbauer to like sign a fucking jersey for him. Like he, he still has that authenticity and I don't know Hollywood beats that out of you sometimes.
1:32:14 Speaker 02 And the difference between, yeah, I think the difference between him and DiCaprio also, and this is also important. He seems to be fine with it. DiCaprio didn't like it. He, I don't know that he likes it to this day.
1:32:27 Bill Simmons? Well, he liked, he liked some of the accoutrements.
1:32:29 Speaker 02 The spoils, the spoils, yes.
1:32:31 Bill Simmons? He liked the, he, he liked the spoils.
1:32:34 Speaker 02 Right. But he doesn't like the actual, he does not, he's not in it for, you know, Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O'Brien, kind of poking him in the ribs a little bit.
1:32:44 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:32:44 Speaker 02 Shalameh, she can roll, he, he's like, uh, his, his, his skin is thick. He can handle it.
1:32:51 Bill Simmons? I gotta say, I think the way Leo handled his career was, was brilliant. Yeah. I mean, you could.
1:32:55 Speaker 02 No notes, no notes.
1:32:56 Bill Simmons? I mean, just like, he, he studied some of the old greats. I don't need to do a shitload of interviews. There needs to still be a little mystery about me and he kept the mystery. For better and worse, because that, that also allows people to, you know, he's doing this, he's at this party. He is a pussy wrangler. Like that's an actual phrase used with, with Leo. Oh yeah, that guy's his pussy wrangler.
1:33:19 Speaker 02 Keep them on their toes, right? Like, I mean, let, he is willing to be the brunt of, of some brutal jokes. I'm thinking specifically about Tina Fey and Amy Poehler going at him at the Golden Globes.
1:33:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:33:31 Speaker 02 Um, he can, he just, he's like, if this is the price, if the price is having two funny people like roast me for some stuff they think I did, or like, like the.
1:33:41 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:33:42 Speaker 02 Community thinks I did, I'll take it. I still don't have to do an interview.
1:33:46 Bill Simmons? I like it. Who else? I mean, there's been De Niro for a while. We, he had a real mystery and then something snapped in the nineties. And, uh, and we went the other way with it, but.
1:33:58 Speaker 02 What do you mean? Like, what, what do you think? What changed?
1:34:01 Bill Simmons? He just started doing a ton of movies. He started going on SNL. A bit part of De Niro, like De Niro was this mythical figure. It's like, who is this guy?
1:34:09 Speaker 02 He relaxed, but does he seem any more known to you?
1:34:13 Bill Simmons? No, he's, he's actually ironically a terrible interviewer.
1:34:16 Speaker 02 Yeah. I mean, he's still, he's still mysterious to me. I don't, I don't pretend to know.
1:34:21 Bill Simmons? Cause I have a couple of things I want to hit with you. So you, your best actor was what, was who?
1:34:27 Speaker 02 Of those five people.
1:34:29 Bill Simmons? Joe, no, give me anybody. You even know somebody who didn't get nominated. Yeah. Who'd you thought? Who was the best male performance for you?
1:34:35 Speaker 02 I mean, I really, I'm just going to stick with Adrian Brody. I mean, he was the person who, who, when I saw him in the first, in the opening shot of The Brutalist, I was just like, well, this is, we're, we're headed into there will be blood territory in terms of what the acting is doing. Um, I just think that this is a guy who I'm just gonna, we, I don't want to talk about the speech. I can't even, I didn't even know what to do with the speech.
1:35:04 Bill Simmons? Forget it. He's, he's annoying. Whatever.
1:35:06 Speaker 02 I, I a little bit understand where it came from, but then it took a turn and then I was like, no, you gotta just, anyway. But he was my, he, of those five guys, I'll just stay with those five guys. He was my favorite of the, of the nominated performances. And he also was the best. He was the, it was the, one of the best pieces of acting I saw last year, period. And I think what I loved about it was the, the restraint. Um, the way he, the way his,
1:35:36 Speaker 02 there's something like an, there's an anchor. It's so different from the piano, from, from the pianist's performance, right?
1:35:41 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:35:42 Speaker 02 Where that character seemed to be blowing through, through the, through the narrative. And part of what was beautiful about that performance was just that he was in a silent movie essentially. And you were watching somebody do was like a, like a Charlie Chaplin, but under the worst possible circumstances for a human being. And he just seemed to keep surviving in an almost.
1:36:07 Speaker 02 Tragic realist way. And this movie is the opposite where it's everything about it is internal and how many levers can he keep down on the emotional circumstances, you know, dealing with the guy Pierce's character, um, keeping his eyes open, you know, there's a wariness and a uh, skepticism about what this character is up against at all, at all times. Um, there's that great scene. Oh, you haven't seen it, Bill, have you?
1:36:45 Bill Simmons? I haven't seen it.
1:36:46 Speaker 02 All right. I gotta just, I'm gonna tell you about this one scene. There's this one scene. Felicity Jones is his wife. She is, she eventually makes her way over to the United States. They wind up living together in this, in this smallish apartment with her cousin and these three Holocaust survivors in this little apartment. They haven't, the husband and wife have not seen each other in a long time. And there is an expectation from her that they're gonna do it. And this is truly, this, this scene between these two actors and between these two characters is like, I'm getting chills just thinking about it. It is one
1:37:29 Speaker 02 of the most loaded sexual encounters that also is created by, you know, watching it in 2024, 25, you know, 60 years, you know, 70 years of history. And the history that these characters have with each other were like, they're just different people now. This, this, the Holocaust has changed them. The time they've spent apart has changed them. Her body's different. His, his interest in her body is different. It is, I'm not even gonna, I can't be more detailed about the scene because I don't want to ruin for people who haven't seen it.
1:38:07 Bill Simmons? I wasn't gonna skip it, but I just.
1:38:09 Speaker 02 That is one of the best directed, best acted scenes between two actors in a bed that I have ever seen. And I will say, as a, you know, parenthetically, not a lot of bed scenes in Baby Girls. So they didn't have a lot of competition.
1:38:23 Bill Simmons? Well, that's, yeah, that's true. Lot of, lot of hotel room carpets.
1:38:29 Bill Simmons? And I want to talk about Hackman and I want to talk quickly about White Lotus. So any other Oscar thoughts? Cause we're gonna take a break.
1:38:35 Speaker 02 Um, we can talk about Hackman. Uh, no. Uh, well, I, can I just say one thing?
1:38:40 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:38:40 Speaker 02 We can save it for after the break. But, um, I want to talk about like what these Oscars mean. Cause this felt, these are different. There's something is, something has changed. I don't, it, it kind of is both promising, but also not, it doesn't feel good based on the way people are talking to me about the Academy Awards. Um, and I'm curious of what people in your life and world are saying.
1:39:05 Bill Simmons? I mean, we can do this now.
1:39:07 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:39:07 Bill Simmons? I just think, we've been talking about the Oscars for a while. I think sometimes things morph over time culturally. You know, like when we were talking about All-Star Weekend a couple, couple, uh, weeks ago on the podcast, and I think it was, maybe it was Van or I can't remember. I'm sorry. I can't remember who said it, but about whether they're, whether it just had a cultural expiration date. And
1:39:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
1:39:31 Bill Simmons? Things can just shift and, yeah, things can shift and change. I think about, people used to care about regular season baseball. Now they just care about their own teams. Like as you get older, you just see like things sometimes run their course with the Oscars. You know, whether people care about who wins the way they did in 1982. I, I just don't know if they do. I don't, especially the younger generation. The younger generation was probably like, did Shalhoub win? Would be the way they could, that, like my kids, I prompt, my guy, I have a 17 year old, 19 year old who are pretty sports culture, like in the mix, at least a little bit because of me. They didn't care about the Oscars.
1:40:12 Bill Simmons? But when we were kids, and I'm older than you, but both of our generations, like, we really cared who won. And I just, I wonder if that's just shifted now.
1:40:20 Speaker 02 But it's shift, ah, man, you know.
1:40:22 Bill Simmons? But it, but a part of it is like the NBA issue, right? When they talk about face of the league and, and my whole case is like, when somebody really matters, we won't have this conversation because we'll know something bad, you know, we'll know that person mattered. Like, if there's another Titanic, there's another big ass movie, or there's another big ass star with an awesome performance. People are gonna care if that person or that movie wins. This year didn't have a movie like that, and it's always gonna suffer when that's the case.
1:40:48 Speaker 02 But I also think that those movies aren't like, that's just, they're not gonna happen. And also the thing about the old way, and this is not nostalgia speaking, this is just, you know, facts. You know, there were, there was a kind of randomness to what the five best pictures wound up being. Or the five best picture nominees. And, you know, there was a healthy movie going ecosystem, or one that seemed healthy to like an average, could, could seem healthy to an average movie goer, where like, there was a lot of movies to choose from. They weren't all trying to win Oscars, you know, and sometimes the ones that weren't trying wound up mattering to.
1:41:28 Bill Simmons? Right, stumbled into it.
1:41:29 Speaker 02 A lot of people.
1:41:30 Bill Simmons? But we were also, we were making less movies. There was no confusion between, is this something I watch at home on my TV? Or do I go to the theater to see it? We had way less TV competition with the high end stuff. We didn't, we had all the best actors were just doing movies. And now it's like, you might see a, a really great actor just do a TV show instead. So it just feels like it's splintered in a whole bunch of different ways. I still care, I still care about the history and how current stuff relates to it, but I think I'm like an anomaly.
1:41:59 Speaker 02 I was gonna say, we don't count, I don't think.
1:42:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah, we don't count.
1:42:01 Speaker 02 I, I think that, but, but I'm telling you, you're mentioning your kids. I'm talking to people your kids age, and I'm talking to people older than we are.
1:42:12 Bill Simmons? In their, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:42:14 Speaker 02 Who are also like, I'm out, I can't, y'all, y'all got me to see Conclave and then pull that shit at the end? I don't, I'm out, like, y'all trying to rope a dope me into having feelings I don't wanna be having. Now, as a Conclave person, I will tell you that that, that, that dismount is pretty ingenious.
1:42:34 Bill Simmons? Conclave supporter. Okay.
1:42:36 Speaker 02 I, you don't like it?
1:42:38 Bill Simmons? I thought it was, the twist was stupid.
1:42:40 Speaker 02 Oh, I loved it. It's, it is, it is such.
1:42:46 Bill Simmons? I thought it was, I didn't think the movie needed it. I was more interested in.
1:42:51 Speaker 02 Who did you want to win? Who did you want to be?
1:42:54 Bill Simmons? I just like being in the world as they tried to figure it out and undermine each other. Like it was just a classic old school movie. I didn't feel like it needed a twist.
1:43:02 Speaker 02 I think that that, like what we're gonna call a twist was really ingenious because they, I think the movie earns it.
1:43:10 Bill Simmons? I've heard this case. I'm not, I, I just personally, didn't work for me.
1:43:14 Speaker 02 All right, but that's not my point. My point is, I talked to so many people of so many different age ranges, like age demographics, right? Generationally, everybody's out. Like, nobody feels like the movies are for them. And I don't know what to do with that because it's not Sean Baker's fault. It's not the substances' fault. Do you think Nickel Boys was out here trying to win a bunch of Oscars? No. This is the story that Morel, Morel Ross wanted to tell about, like, based on, like, you know, quote, based on Colson Whitehead's novel. Like, he, there was, there was so much risk taken in these, by these movies, these Best Picture nominees.
1:43:58 Speaker 02 This year, they, they, they were doing strange, unusual, weird things. And I'm saying this as a person who saw Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water, which won Best Picture, a woman about a woman in love with a fish. Like, you know, strange things happen to Best Picture nominees or in Best Picture nominees. But this was the first year where I can understand what it is the public wants. And what the public wants is movies that not only have they seen, but they want to have like a wealth of movies if they're gonna be going to the movies, like to a physical movie theater.
1:44:37 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:44:38 Speaker 02 They, they wanna go look at, they wanna look at famous people. They want movie stars like Deadpool and Wolverine are movie stars.
1:44:48 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:44:48 Speaker 02 Like this iteration, this Anthony Mackie Captain America to like two people who aren't invested in the Marvel Universe, Marvel Cinematic Universe, like he's important and we all know like what this iteration of Captain America is and does, if you read the comic, et cetera, et cetera. But like, do people, is Anthony Mackie a draw for people? I mean, the movie seems like it's doing okay, but my point, my larger point is, this is just me saying once again to you, Bill, that the IP is still, I think people are now tired of the IP even, right?
1:45:23 Bill Simmons? Well, we did.
1:45:25 Speaker 02 The IP's worn out its welcome.
1:45:27 Bill Simmons? We did Rocky for the rewatchables that went up last night and Rocky won Best Picture.
1:45:34 Speaker 02 Wait, you guys have never done Rocky?
1:45:36 Bill Simmons? We did three and four. Rocky is now a prequel for Rocky III. That was part of my case for not doing it. So Rocky III is the best movie of the eighties.
1:45:43 Speaker 02 Uh, I agree.
1:45:44 Bill Simmons? But.
1:45:45 Speaker 02 I mean, sort of.
1:45:46 Bill Simmons? Rocky wins. All the president's been network and taxi driver don't win. And then you go to the best actor and it's just, you're just looking at it like, oh my God. And granted, it was almost 50 years ago. We're like, oh my God, look at the movies we were making.
1:46:04 Speaker 02 Bill, go back to 2014.
1:46:07 Bill Simmons? Right? Yeah.
1:46:08 Speaker 02 Was that the year of the gravity and was that the year of, of Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, American Hustle?
1:46:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah, 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, The Wolf of Wall Street.
1:46:24 Speaker 02 Ah, that deck was so stacked that Tom Hanks giving one of the best performances he's ever given and Captain Phillips did not get a Best Actor nomination.
1:46:35 Bill Simmons? Right. Let's take a quick break. I want to talk about Hackman. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything and whether it's a flea flicker or a tush push, you need a plan that fits your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and for your budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Minneh Sharon and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island.
1:47:20 Bill Simmons? Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys. Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters Friday. Get tickets now. This episode is brought to you by my old friend Amtrak. Being a sports fan can take you pretty far, even across state lines for game day, but with Amtrak, the trip can be part of the fun. Skip the driving, settle into your own seat, connect with other fans, and arrive ready for the action. The Amtrak Northeast Regional and the Acela connect major cities across the Northeast corridor, making the journey part of the experience.
1:48:05 Bill Simmons? I've taken this train many, many times. Visit amtrak.com/spotify to plan your next trip. Okay, Gene Hackman died earlier this week, and he was old. It wasn't like a big surprise. Hopefully, the details of how he died. I've heard some things. Aren't too awful, but I have a feeling they might not be great. But, you know, he was somebody that had this awesome, awesome, awesome career forever, and then just walked away and didn't, we never kind of saw him again. He must have did Johnny Carson, "Going to Malibu and I'm out. That's it, I'm done." There's nobody really like him that I can think of. It's like he's a true 101.
1:48:51 Bill Simmons? And you know, even like we in the rewatchables we've done, I think, I think we did like eight Hackman movies, something like that, where and you would never think like he would be one of the more rewatchable actors, but he just over and over again with popping the stuff. And what was interesting watching as his career evolved was how the other actors would talk about what it was like to kind of be in a movie with them. And it was like, almost like you're going against them. And it's, I was trying to think of like, how many actors are discussed that way, where it's like, I'm with Hackman, gotta raise my game today. I gotta raise my game this week. Like, he reached that part of it, too. There was just nobody like him. But you could go way back, like downhill racer, which I think Fantasy and I are gonna do in rewatchables at some point. It's an awesome movie. It's probably the first
1:49:34 Bill Simmons? great modern sports movie, even though it's not totally modern, but he's even great in that. And that was, what, 1969? So, there wasn't a career quite like this. Will we ever have another Gene Hackman?
1:49:50 Speaker 02 No, because, I mean, here's, you know, you, you know me well enough to know that my taste in men is eclectic. But I'm just gonna say for the average person, they're not, they're not looking at Gene Hackman and going, oh, yeah.
1:50:08 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:50:09 Speaker 02 I'll take it.
1:50:10 Bill Simmons? You're tapping in a horny hack, horny hacks already?
1:50:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:50:14 Bill Simmons? That horny side? Yeah, we talk about that in the rewatchable sometimes. He gets a little randy in some movies.
1:50:19 Speaker 02 He is, but I think there's something about the, his, his kind of average lookingness.
1:50:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:50:26 Speaker 02 Like, you know, he, he did not wear a toupee. He did not hide his, his loss of his hair. Um, he always just seemed like he was perpetually 45 years old.
1:50:41 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:50:42 Speaker 02 Um, he came to us 45 years old, and like, when he left, he maybe seemed 60? I don't know.
1:50:48 Bill Simmons? Like 58 years old.
1:50:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, he just, he just seemed permanently middle aged, which is a thing that just will never happen now. Um, I think the-
1:50:57 Bill Simmons? But the other piece with that was it somehow allowed him to play all of these different parts.
1:51:02 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:51:02 Bill Simmons? That he could be like, he could be a basketball coach. He could be in a buddy cop movie. He could be the bad guy in a buddy cop movie. He could be somebody that's, you know, running a submarine. He could be somebody who's the president. He could be somebody trying to-
1:51:17 Speaker 02 FBI agent.
1:51:18 Bill Simmons? He could be somebody trying to break into the White House.
1:51:20 Speaker 02 Movement like-
1:51:21 Bill Simmons? Yeah. He could be somebody who's like trying to figure out the heist and he's in charge of the heist. Or he could be the person who is like working on the heist. And that he could be the sports movie coach, like he could do literally anything.
1:51:34 Speaker 02 Anything. I think that his, also that kind of does speak in some weird way to what America is. And I know this sounds like cheesy and corny and cheap, but like if you are coming to this country for the first time and you wanna, you like, one of the many things that tells you that you're in the United States of America. It's probably Gene Hackman, right? This is a person who in all of the jobs that he could be doing, seems credible in them. He's not conventionally good looking, like the idea that he and Warren Beatty are supposed to be brothers in Bonnie and Clyde. It's just one of the most laughable things I've ever seen. Like, yeah, adopted brothers, I don't know, I just, it's just, it's comical.
1:52:19 Speaker 02 There is something also like unpredictable about him. And it isn't so much that, you know, I think about him in the French Connection, right? One of the, if you think of, if you diagram the psyche of, you've diagrammed that sentence psychologically. This is like a terrible human being. He's a racist, like racist cop in New York City, shaking down people in bars just for kicks, basically.
1:52:44 Bill Simmons? Him and Jack, him and Jack Cates in 48 Hours are my favorite cop characters that are also completely indefensible.
1:52:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, but you know, Popeye Doyle never had Eddie Murphy to come and give one of the great rebuttals to the racism.
1:52:59 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:53:00 Speaker 02 In the, in the movies, right?
1:53:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:53:02 Speaker 02 Um, or like to, to anybody's racism in the movies. Popeye Doyle stands as a singular character. Because he's never, he's never brought in to heal. He's never, nobody ever like wags their finger in his face in a way that means anything. Because ultimately, he's looking for what, you know, a moviegoer will recognize as, as a kind of narrative justice. Like, he's trying to solve this mystery. And the command, the like, easy, like, kinda sexy command that he has in that, in those bar, in those shakedown scenes. You know, he just, it's just a great, dirty, filthy character.
1:53:43 Speaker 02 Who, and the character works because he's got swag, you know?
1:53:49 Bill Simmons? Right.
1:53:50 Speaker 02 And he didn't, he could turn that on and he could turn it off, but you really.
1:53:55 Bill Simmons? No Way Out was like that, that was another one where he's just kinda, kinda sleazy, right?
1:54:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:54:00 Bill Simmons? But sleazy, powerful, and you could just kinda see it. The other thing with him that I thought was cool, you could just throw him in other great parts and he makes sense. Like, you'd put him in The Godfather, he's just, just be Tom Hagen. You're gonna be Tom Hagen instead of Duval, and it's like, yeah, Hackman would've been fine.
1:54:15 Speaker 02 This is a great point. Can I tell you how many years I thought that Tom Hagen was played by Gene Hackman?
1:54:22 Bill Simmons? Right.
1:54:24 Speaker 02 I sometimes have to remind myself that Robert Duvall is not Gene Hackman in that movie.
1:54:29 Bill Simmons? Like, could he have Nicholson's, you know, all time incredible in Chinatown? But could the movie have survived if it was Gene Hackman in Chinatown? Like, probably.
1:54:37 Speaker 02 It would've worked.
1:54:38 Bill Simmons? Would've been fine.
1:54:39 Speaker 02 Terms of Endearment works with Gene Hackman.
1:54:41 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that's the thing, and that's why I think he's so unique, because it's almost like a basketball player that could, could play like a bunch of different positions and guard a different bunch of it, and it's just like, oh, when we have this guy, we basically can do anything we want.
1:54:55 Speaker 02 But you know what he cannot do? And never really tried. He never did crazy. Net, well, he did do comedy, and he was pretty, The Birdcage, that's the first thing that comes to mind.
1:55:05 Bill Simmons? How about, are you a Heartbreakers person?
1:55:07 Speaker 02 Ooh.
1:55:07 Bill Simmons? Sigourney Weaver, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Horny Hacks is out in full bloom.
1:55:12 Speaker 02 This is, I mean, I, I mean, I'm already out as like, you know, I'm out of myself as being like into Gene Hackman, but.
1:55:18 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:55:19 Speaker 02 It does not take much. But no, his Lex Luthor? His Lex Luthor?
1:55:26 Bill Simmons? That's how I got to know him, by the way. That was my first Gene Hackman movie.
1:55:28 Speaker 02 That was my first Gene Hackman. My first Gene Hackman was Lex Luthor.
1:55:31 Bill Simmons? Who's this guy?
1:55:32 Speaker 02 In the 78 Superman, and listen.
1:55:36 Speaker 02 He's sexy. He is sexy in that movie. And there's like, and he, I don't know what he knew, but he definitely seemed to understand that Lex Luthor thought he was sexy. And that was good enough for him.
1:55:49 Bill Simmons? Right. Like, could he have done Liam Neeson in Taken? I think he could have.
1:55:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, but he, oh, wait, but this is my, I was gonna say, speaking of which, he never did crazy. Crazy is the thing he never did. He never played-
1:56:03 Bill Simmons? So he never did like Tommy Lee Jones in Blown Away, just as a crazy Irish terrorist, blown up shit.
1:56:09 Speaker 02 Go back to like one of his primes, like he couldn't have played Travis Bickle.
1:56:14 Bill Simmons? No.
1:56:14 Speaker 02 Um, you also wouldn't have believed him as, as Woodward, right? You wouldn't have believed him as Bob Woodward.
1:56:21 Bill Simmons? No, cuz I would never think he was, I would never think he would not be in control when I see Gene Hackman.
1:56:26 Speaker 02 Exactly. He would have flown off the handle way before it was time. And there, there are just some things, like, this is an interesting distinction that we're trying to make here, which is that I'm saying he's never played crazy, right? He's never played a crazy person, like a psychopath. You know, you can say what you will, what you want about Little Bill and Unforgiven, but that guy was just, evil's not the same thing as crazy.
1:56:53 Bill Simmons? No, you're right. I, I totally get what you mean. But well, the other part is, he didn't bring Gene Hackman, the famous celebrity person, into the role, that kind of baggage that some other, like, I would see Dustin Hoffman or Nicholson. And you're always thinking it's Nicholson. You're always thinking it's Dustin Hoffman.
1:57:11 Speaker 02 This is a good distinction too.
1:57:12 Bill Simmons? Hackman could kind of blend into the different parts. And where it's like, oh, I love Gene Hackman, but then you'd kind of, like Enemy of the State's a good example. He's Gene Hackman, but you're watching, he just kind of blends in and out. Now, all of a sudden, he's this weird guy, I don't know what he's up to, and is he gonna help Will Smith or not? And you kind of just forget he's Gene Hackman.
1:57:30 Speaker 02 Think about all the people he's mentored too, right?
1:57:33 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah.
1:57:34 Speaker 02 I mean-
1:57:35 Bill Simmons? And everybody talks about it after, like, whoa. That was, I, I went to grad school when I did acting with Gene Hackman.
1:57:42 Speaker 02 But what is it, but what is that though, right?
1:57:46 Bill Simmons? Well, I think it's professionalism.
1:57:48 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
1:57:49 Bill Simmons? Just going on to the set, knowing exactly who you are, like real confidence.
1:57:53 Speaker 02 Mm hmm, mm hmm.
1:57:54 Bill Simmons? A little bit of charisma. You're not gonna back down anybody. I think he had some size to him too, which I think is unusual for Hollywood, you know?
1:58:03 Speaker 02 Was he six one?
1:58:04 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I think he was, you know, he was.
1:58:07 Speaker 02 He said, he'll definitely seem substantial, right?
1:58:09 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:58:10 Speaker 02 Like, there was, I mean, this is part of the thing that I've got for Gene Hackman is he just seemed meaty. Like, there was some, there was often some meat on those bones. Like, he seemed big boned is really what it was. Like, not fit at all, but not interested in fitness, not vain. There's no vanity, right? Um, he just, whoever he's playing, it's just there to do the work. Cause often these are working people. All these guys have jobs. And even the guy that he plays in the, in the birdcage, the, the senator, the kind of like bigoted senator who kind of like never changes, but keeps going along with the program. And part of the comedy of the movie is you fully expect him to like, give himself over
1:58:55 Speaker 02 by like showing up in, you know, coming out of the, some, some crazy plot twist or something. But instead, he's just like, man, this is the world. It's very Billy Wilder of him that, that, the approach he takes in the, in the birdcage. Michael Nichols directed it, so it's not like, it's not a crazy thing to have a smart performance, like stay in a lane because the director knows the payoff will be there at the end. But there's just.
1:59:21 Bill Simmons? Well, your, your crazy point is good because I wouldn't have wanted to see Gene Hackman in The Shining.
1:59:26 Speaker 02 He couldn't have done it.
1:59:27 Bill Simmons? I don't think, I just wouldn't have bought it. I wouldn't, I just don't think it works, but.
1:59:31 Speaker 02 He doesn't burn slow like that. He's eruptive. He's eruptive.
1:59:35 Bill Simmons? Um, he. Well, what's interesting is like, he could play the president. He could have played the president's conniving chief of staff.
1:59:42 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:59:42 Bill Simmons? He could have played, he basically could have played every part in the White House. Could have played the vice president who doesn't like the president. He could have played the, the guy, the military general who works for the president. Just go, go through anybody that is involved with the president and he could probably have played every part. Whereas like if, when Nicholson's the president. You're kind of like, eh, it's Jack Nicholson. Like even when Jack Nicholson is in broadcast news and he's good.
2:00:11 Speaker 02 Yes.
2:00:12 Bill Simmons? But you could argue Hackman might have been better in that part, right?
2:00:15 Speaker 02 You know, you know what's interesting?
2:00:16 Bill Simmons? Cause he still feels like Jack Nicholson in broadcast news. I'm not buying him as like a network anchor.
2:00:22 Speaker 02 The, the thing, well, he would have been the president of the network, right?
2:00:27 Bill Simmons? Or yeah, whatever he was.
2:00:29 Speaker 02 No, no, no. I mean Nicholson was the anchor, but what I'm saying is Hackman, you would have more believed him as the president of, he couldn't have been William Hurt.
2:00:35 Bill Simmons? Or like the Robert Prosky part, like he was like working with Holly Hunter. Yeah, he could have been that guy.
2:00:39 Speaker 02 He would not have made sense as any of, he wouldn't have made sense as William Hurt or Albert Brooks. Um, but you know, that same era of Hackman, he has a, he has a cameo appearance in Postcards from the Edge. Do you remember this scene?
2:00:55 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah.
2:00:56 Speaker 02 He's the director of the movie Meryl Streep is fucking up in. And the Meryl Streep character, this is based on the Carrie Fisher memoir. Um, she's playing this, this, this drug addicted actress who bottoms out. And she goes through rehab and she, her redemption essentially is going back into this, into the post-production studio to do voiceovers and Gene Hackman's her director.
2:01:21 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
2:01:22 Speaker 02 And he, the thing that we're talking about with this mentorship. Um, I think it, a version of what it looks like is this director telling this Meryl Streep character to get her life together. And you know, giving her this, this, this, I mean, it's not another chance. The movie still needs to be looped. Um, and she's there to do her, do her voiceovers. And it's just this wonderful sequence where you learn something about the movies. I didn't know what that process was until this, until Postcards from the Edge, another, another Mike Nichols movie. But he's so warm and firm and clear about what it is that he needs. But he's also got a sense of humor. Um, that, and he's not, I don't know who this character is. He's Gene Hackman.
2:02:07 Bill Simmons? Right.
2:02:08 Speaker 02 Whatever that means.
2:02:10 Bill Simmons? One on one.
2:02:11 Speaker 02 Like, but, but fatherly and in a, in a really like touching way.
2:02:15 Bill Simmons? Well, the other thing, you know, and obviously we've done almost 375 rewatchables movies at this point. Part of, part of what becomes somebody's legacy is the rewatchability of some of the movies they made. And he just had such a great instinct for this great, and then sometimes like he didn't, he thought Hoosiers was going to be a bomb. That ends up being the biggest basketball movie anyone's ever made, right? And lives on forever and ever. He was pissed the whole time he was making it. He was like, nobody's gonna see this shit.
2:02:42 Speaker 02 No best actor nomination for him in that movie, by the way.
2:02:46 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I think it was because it took him so long to realize, just turn the ball into Jimmy Chitwood.
2:02:54 Bill Simmons? Don't overthink this. Stop running plays. We don't need four passes anymore. We have a generational star in our team.
2:03:00 Speaker 02 Royal Tenenbaums. Yeah. I would say the last great Hackman performance.
2:03:07 Bill Simmons? It was close to the end. It was one of the last ones anyway.
2:03:10 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
2:03:10 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
2:03:11 Speaker 02 And one, I mean, the thing that you love about, that's the one performance, I think, anybody's given in a Wes Anderson movie where it felt like Wes Anderson was just giving, giving the enterprise over to this actor. I don't know, I don't know anything about anything with that movie. I just know how I feel watching it versus watching him in it versus watching anybody else in any other Wes Anderson movie. That's the one where I felt like Gene Hackman just, just won, overrode the vision. And, you know, most people, a lot of people think that that's their, that's their favorite Wes Anderson movie.
2:03:53 Speaker 02 I think in part because Gene Hackman is the one person who's, the one of the rare people to act in a Wes Anderson movie who feels differently alive from the sort of dioramic project of the film. And he frequently exists on the streets of that city, right? He does not exist, he's not in the houses that much, where he doesn't, he doesn't live in my memory as being an indoor cat. He's an outdoor cat in that movie. And like anything outside, Wes Anderson just seems to have less control.
2:04:28 Bill Simmons? Right.
2:04:29 Speaker 02 Right? He's such a soundstage, interior, does like interior design oriented person. And something about Gene Hackman out in those streets is this classic, is very on brand for Hackman and very disorienting for Wes Anderson. And the, and the Tenenbaums is greater for it because there's a tension there that exists between his energy and the, the movie at large's energy.
2:04:53 Bill Simmons? One great thing about him. He's just in movies with most of the great stars from like three different generations of movies.
2:05:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:05:03 Bill Simmons? Right? He, I think Denzel might be, I'd be interested to see what the list is.
2:05:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:05:08 Bill Simmons? But we always talk about six degrees of Kevin Bacon. And it's like one degree of Gene Hackman. You could just go through, name a star. He's worked with like Redford, like it doesn't matter. You go 50 years or 45 years, however long he was. And he's gonna be in a movie, like it'll be like, like Travolta was paying homage to him. And it was like, I, Hackman made so many movies. What was it? Get Shorty was his Travolta movie?
2:05:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:05:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah. But you go through and you'd be like, just shout an actor out. Did they work with Gene Hackman? And they probably did. Shout an actress out, they probably did.
2:05:40 Speaker 02 Sally Field?
2:05:43 Speaker 02 Am I missing a very obvious one? Because like, the two of them seem like they just, it just should have worked.
2:05:50 Bill Simmons? He did a movie with Barbra Streisand.
2:05:51 Speaker 02 Oh, that underrated, by the way.
2:05:53 Bill Simmons? All Night Long.
2:05:54 Speaker 02 All Night Long, underrated. But he and Sally Field seemed like they would have had a really good connection.
2:06:03 Bill Simmons? He did a movie with Richard Gere, Julie Christie, Kate Capshaw, and Denzel Washington. And JT Walsh. Can you name the movie?
2:06:13 Speaker 02 Can you name those names again?
2:06:15 Bill Simmons? Richard Gere, Julie Christie, Kate Capshaw, and Denzel Washington as Arnold Billings.
2:06:21 Speaker 02 What's the year?
2:06:23 Bill Simmons? It was, uh, Lumet, Power.
2:06:26 Speaker 02 Ooh, that's right.
2:06:28 Bill Simmons? Tubi, throw that shit on the main screen.
2:06:31 Speaker 02 That's like 1981, isn't it?
2:06:33 Bill Simmons? No, it's hot, it's later. It's 86.
2:06:35 Speaker 02 86, okay.
2:06:36 Bill Simmons? It was, it was right when Hollywood was like, hey, Richard Gere, what's going on here?
2:06:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:06:42 Bill Simmons? Why are we making all these, why are all these bombing? Are you not a movie star anymore?
2:06:47 Speaker 02 I know we're not talking about Richard Gere here, but like, you know, it's funny because Lu, like to compare Richard Gere to, to, to Gene Hackman is interesting, right? Like, why does it work for Hackman and not for Richard Gere?
2:07:00 Bill Simmons? Well, this, well, this raises the second, well, Richard Gere's too handsome. That's part of the problem. But we, we've talked about Richard Gere and what he taps into in Internal Affairs and Officer Gentleman. That's Richard Gere.
2:07:12 Speaker 02 Yes, yes.
2:07:13 Bill Simmons? Hackman as the guy in Pretty Woman would have been really interesting.
2:07:21 Speaker 02 That's the one that they wouldn't make, right?
2:07:23 Bill Simmons? That's the one they wouldn't make?
2:07:24 Speaker 02 That's the R. E. one that they originally wanted to make.
2:07:27 Bill Simmons? That's the more realistic one, where he's like an older, dirty fucking guy.
2:07:31 Speaker 02 What was that original title? Was it called 2000 or 4000, whatever the, the, her fee would have been? I think that's what the original title was.
2:07:38 Bill Simmons? Then they tried Whore in the Street. That didn't work. They just kept trying titles.
2:07:47 Bill Simmons? Just kept going for stuff.
2:07:48 Speaker 02 I mean, I feel like there was some Hackman money left on the table if he never did a movie with Sally Field. Cause that would, that, that's a no brainer to me. Murphy's Law, instead of, instead of, um, or Murphy's Romance, sorry, is the Sally Field, James Garner movie that got James Garner his only Oscar nomination. I feel like Gene Hackman.
2:08:07 Bill Simmons? That could have been a good Hackman. He's making so many movies. Anyway, Gene Hackman, first bout Hall of Famer. Give me your one minute review of White Lotus through three episodes. Are you caught up?
2:08:18 Speaker 02 Here's my one minute, here's my one minute free, I don't know how many words it's gonna be. Here's my review of White Lotus, season three. I'm watching The Pit.
2:08:28 Bill Simmons? You're watching The Pit?
2:08:29 Speaker 02 I'm watching The Pit.
2:08:31 Bill Simmons? E R is back.
2:08:32 Speaker 02 I'm not watching White Lotus. White Lotus had his chance with me, Bill. This show doesn't know what it's about. I'm watching The Pit.
2:08:41 Bill Simmons? Wow, you're into The Pit that much?
2:08:42 Speaker 02 Oh, I'm in The Pit. I'm in.
2:08:44 Bill Simmons? You're in The Pit. No wiley. You never gave up your stock.
2:08:47 Speaker 02 Can't, oh, I, are you kidding? Did I ever own stock? I was like, I should have bought stock.
2:08:53 Bill Simmons? No, you had some stock.
2:08:54 Speaker 02 I mean, this would have, I mean, the vesting happening here is extraordinary. Are you watching this show, Bill?
2:09:01 Bill Simmons? I'm not. Should I be watching? People keep telling me to watch it.
2:09:04 Speaker 02 Let me tell you.
2:09:06 Bill Simmons? It's like E R crossed with 24?
2:09:08 Speaker 02 Y'all can keep your White Lotus. Y'all, you can have it. Eat it up. I don't want it. I don't want anymore. I had my fill. Y'all don't know how to feed me. The Pit. This show, and it's crazy that like the most excited I've gotten talking to you was about this show and not about.
2:09:25 Bill Simmons? Not about anything else?
2:09:25 Speaker 02 I, I do, if we were talking about Baby Girl or Hard Truths, which has the other great performance from last year by Mary Ann John Baptiste. Um, I'd be psyched to talk about that, but we're talking about The Pit. And I, it's such a strange.
2:09:41 Speaker 02 Viewing experience if you ever watched ER. And I actually would love to know how people feel who haven't watched ER ever to watch it for the first time because within like five minutes, you are someplace you know you've already been, even though you don't know where you actually are. Everything about it is familiar. It's this show is made by John Wells, who is responsible in part for ER. And it's the structure is basically one hour, like every episode is one hour in this, in this staff, this medical staff.
2:10:18 Bill Simmons? It's 24 across of ER.
2:10:20 Speaker 02 Basically, yes.
2:10:21 Bill Simmons? That's it.
2:10:21 Speaker 02 Exactly. You said it. I it went over my head because I was enthusing about you watching the show, but you are 100% correct. Formally, that's the, that's the show. I don't know how anything that happens on this show actually happens. What are the retakes like?
2:10:40 Bill Simmons? You know what?
2:10:41 Speaker 02 How many takes do they need to do?
2:10:42 Bill Simmons? Say no more. I'm gonna watch. You don't need to sell me anymore. This is, this is, I'm in.
2:10:47 Speaker 02 The characters.
2:10:48 Bill Simmons? I'm gonna watch it.
2:10:49 Speaker 02 Noah Wiley giving the TV perform, nobody's gonna do better than Noah Wiley on this show.
2:10:54 Bill Simmons? Oh, I'm so happy.
2:10:55 Speaker 02 Nobody doing better than Noah Wiley on the show. I mean, you didn't? Because I haven't seen him, I haven't seen him since 2001.
2:11:01 Bill Simmons? He's been doing some good stuff. He was on that, that, what was that movie with the train? The crazy train? I thought he was on that movie that turned into a TV show, Snowpiercer? Yeah, Snowpiercer Train? I think he might have been.
2:11:13 Speaker 02 On TNT, Snowpiercer? Or the Bong Joon-ho Snowpiercer?
2:11:15 Bill Simmons? He might have been. No, he's in the TV version, I think. Maybe. I don't know. You're right.
2:11:21 Speaker 02 You say so.
2:11:22 Bill Simmons? I'm glad he's back.
2:11:23 Speaker 02 You know, he was on TV. He was on, he was, might have been that show, actually. You're, you're right. I remember seeing him and being like, well, I'm glad, I'm glad the checks are still coming in.
2:11:31 Bill Simmons? It's great.
2:11:32 Speaker 02 This is more than a, I'm glad the checks are still coming in. This is an extraordinary, everybody on this show, even if you're not, even if the acting isn't good, you have to be present in the, in a really interesting way, like a, like a way that feels new to me for television. And it is just.
2:11:50 Bill Simmons? All right, the pit.
2:11:51 Speaker 02 It's thrilling. It's really gross and suspenseful, and I love it.
2:11:56 Bill Simmons? Anything to plug?
2:11:58 Speaker 02 Personally?
2:11:59 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
2:12:00 Speaker 02 I'm working on a podcast. Uh, I turned in my book, you'll be happy to know.
2:12:04 Bill Simmons? I don't believe it. Is there video evidence of it?
2:12:09 Speaker 02 I mean, there's still a lot of work to do, but it'll, we're gonna make it, we're gonna make it really good. I think it's gonna be, it's gonna work.
2:12:15 Bill Simmons? I can't wait to read it.
2:12:17 Speaker 02 Uh, but yeah, I, I'm working on a show, a podcast. It's just, it's gonna be me talking to people.
2:12:22 Bill Simmons? I can't wait to invite myself on it.
2:12:24 Speaker 02 You, well, I mean, I would have invited you had you not already just invited yourself. You know you're, you know you're invited.
2:12:30 Bill Simmons? All right. Wesley Morris, great to see you as always.
2:12:33 Speaker 02 Nice to see you too.
2:12:35 Bill Simmons? All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Peter Schrager and Wesley Morris. Thanks to Kyle, Gahow and Sir Rudy as well. And don't forget Celtic City. You can catch up on the first episode on Max, new rewatchables, Rocky, Prestige TV Podcast, Episode Three, White Lotus. Check out the Ringer.com, a great website. And, uh, I will see you on Thursday on this podcast.
Previous Talking Basketball, NBA, and Hoops With Ryen Russillo Next The 2025 NBA Worst Contracts Draft With Joe House and Wosny Lambre Page updated November 4, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated