Seattle Spanks the Patriots, Drake Maye’s Mystery Stinker, and Parent Corner With Cousin Sal

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Cousin Sal LIVE on Netflix to recap the Seahawks taking down the Patriots to win Super Bowl LX (0:31). Then the guys end the show with Parent Corner (50:15). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Cousin Sal Producers: Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Chris Wohlers Bundle and Save Book now. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠⁠⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm pro-football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carried sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit MDDAllies.com to watch my story.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 2:05Bill Simmons?

  You know what? Fuck this, I'm out of here.

• 2:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, you sit down! You sit your ass down, boy!

• 2:13Bill Simmons?

  You gonna go wrestling promo on me?

• 2:15Speaker 04

  It's over. It's over. Let me say my piece. Drake may be, you can't be the one who saves me. That is that. There ain't gonna be no Dynasty 2.0. The reapex, the reapex is dead. A dreadful, despicable performance by Drake maybe and Mike Frabel and the New England Patriots. What a disgrace, a complete no show and there's not a damn thing you or Pat's Nation or Bob Cousy could do about it. The Seattle Seahawks win the franchise's first ever Super Bowl. Is that it? That was their first one, right? I love it. Let's look it up. I'm gonna have a heart attack. Take it away. Take it away.

• 2:59Bill Simmons?

  Is this what you've been reduced to, to lighting and another team's losses?

• 3:03Speaker 04

  You really helped me out here. I would not have cared about this game if not for you. I appreciate it. Thank you.

• 3:10Bill Simmons?

  Silver linings for me.

• 3:15Bill Simmons?

  Number one, by the way, this is the Bill Simmons podcast. I'm Bill Simmons. That's Cousin Sal. We are live on Netflix right after Super Bowl LX, um, which was a Super Bowl L for me and the rest of the Patriots fans. Uh, silver linings for me. Uh, I didn't go. Thank God. That would have been awful. I mean, really, that's why you don't go to the Super Bowl for moments like that. We, I was actually on text threads, like, would you have tried to sneak out early, pretend you go to the bathroom and put, like you almost have to bring a disguise to the game to go out. That's my first silver lining. Second one, um, Darnold, who I thought was good, but missed a couple of throws that this game could have been like 50 to seven.

• 3:55Bill Simmons?

  But this could have been like an absolute shellacking. Like he missed Shaheed on that long pass when he was open. He missed, JSN got, got stuck away when he was under pressure. He missed him on that. But there was like a couple of big plays. The Walker play got called back. They could have had 50 points. 29, what was that? 29, 14?

• 4:14Speaker 04

  Is that a silver lining though? Because they sucked you back in. So that's not great. Cause it definitely sucked you back in. 50 to seven, you're good. You could have left. You could have walked out.

• 4:22Bill Simmons?

  I got sucked back in twice and I hated myself. Um, silver lining number three. You're having a great time. I don't like how much fun you're having.

• 4:30Speaker 04

  Believe there were three. Go ahead.

• 4:33Bill Simmons?

  Uh, maybe in the legend of Drake May down the road. This will be the game, you know, in the two hour documentary about Drake May after he won five Super Bowls.

• 4:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:43Bill Simmons?

  It all started here with the pain of Super Bowl LX. When the Seahawks battered him and he got sacked and he set the sacks record. And he set the, what did he set the sacks record and the fumbles record?

• 4:56Speaker 04

  Everything, you name it.

• 4:58Bill Simmons?

  All the postseason records.

• 4:59Speaker 04

  Garbage time yards, record.

• 5:01Bill Simmons?

  Worst, worst EPA since they've had EPA, since they've understood how to measure that. But there's been other athletes that have had bad moments like this and they've like Kobe had the terrible game in Utah, I think his rookie year or second year.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 5:14Bill Simmons?

  Nobody remembers it now, maybe that'll be Drake May.

• 5:16Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 5:17Bill Simmons?

  Silver lining, I'll keep going.

• 5:18Speaker 04

  That's very exciting.

• 5:19Bill Simmons?

  Christian Gonzalez is really good, want to shout him out. Uh, the, the defense was good for three quarters, I thought we did a good job. And, uh, and this Pat's team, you know, this was a gravy year. We were supposed, this is supposed to be two years from now. We weren't supposed to be in the Super Bowl this year.

• 5:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 5:37Bill Simmons?

  Silver lining.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  I told you that.

• 5:39Bill Simmons?

  Overachieved, overachieved this year.

• 5:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. And the truth is there weren't really any, there were good AFC teams, but that was it. There was no one special. The Seahawks team was kind of special. I thought the Rams were special. I'm not just saying it because of Stafford over May, whatever. But, uh, the Rams scored on this team and I think they have extraordinary receivers and tight ends, and that was the difference. But otherwise Seattle shut everybody down for months. They were a good team and AFC team didn't deserve it. You sent Shador Sanders the pro ball for God's sakes, and that's only because Justin Fields didn't accept.

• 6:11Bill Simmons?

  So the AFC. Flacco went too. I think we sent Shador Sanders and Joe Flacco.

• 6:15Speaker 04

  AFC didn't deserve it. So if you want to add that as a silver lining, do whatever you want.

• 6:20Bill Simmons?

  I have one more silver lining. Thank God Drake made it and win the MVP. We would have had like a Dirk Nowitzki 2007 situation where, you know, he ended up losing by one vote and, uh, and now, now I'm at peace with it.

• 6:32Speaker 04

  It's a big night for Justin Herbert. Yep.

• 6:35Bill Simmons?

  I, well, let's, we'll go back to Boston. We should talk about, uh.

• 6:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, go back to Boston, man.

• 6:40Bill Simmons?

  No, let's go Seattle, it was their night. Um, it was a really good team all year, advanced metrics, said they were great.

• 6:50Bill Simmons?

  I test very good, but the Rams had what 479 yards against them two weeks ago?

• 6:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:56Bill Simmons?

  This was an awesome game for them at the right time and it moved into that pantheon of great Super Bowl defense performances. So you got like 2,000 Ravens, the Legion of Boom Seahawks, 85 Bears. Would you nudge them in that area or this was just a great game by them?

• 7:14Speaker 04

  No, I think so. I think just what I said, some reason the Rams had some voodoo and were able to score points. And even though they lost two out of three to them, they, they were able to move the ball. If you look back, nobody else did it for like 10 weeks. And uh, yeah, I put him right in there. I mean, you know, he ended up with 295 yards, but you really can't go buy that. What you needed is, I'm sure we'll go deeper into the game is, you know, it wasn't a blowout. It was, it was the, the case where you had fourth and two, fourth and three, a bunch of times and you punted and it was the right move because you were only two scores down, right?

• 7:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:45Speaker 04

  And Kenneth Walker was the difference in the first half and uh, you know, whatever, whether he was going to win the MVP or not. It's like this guy, that's what you needed. You needed the running back. You needed the big 15, 20 yard play from the running back to get you out of the field position, uh, mess that they were in.

• 8:02Bill Simmons?

  Well, it was 197 and we got to stop. We got the ball back and then Drake threw that pick. That was just awful.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:09Bill Simmons?

  It was like he was trying to get all 12 points back. It was also weird. We didn't go for the two point. I didn't understand that.

• 8:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. You want to get to 16.

• 8:16Bill Simmons?

  Make it 19 to eight. So it's a field goal and a touchdown. Thought that was weird. Thought, thought some of the two point stuff was weird in this game, but yeah, they sucked me back in. I'm not going to lie. Cause it had the makings of almost like, like the Falcons game where it seemed over, but there was a lot of time left. And when they got the ball back, we're like, wow, there's 12 minutes left.

• 8:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. Super Bowls are weird. It's a, it's really like

• 8:38Bill Simmons?

  They take forever.

• 8:39Speaker 04

  We've seen that. Yeah. We've seen the second half's turn. Like I think you had. I want to say you had five first downs at the very end of the third quarter and then you had like two, you had one through a penalty and then you ran for one or something and so you ended up like with seven through three. I was like, this is not, damn it, this is not over yet. And then he, he connects on that, uh, that touchdown to that, that psych ward escapee, Mac Hollins.

• 9:02Bill Simmons?

  Hollins, Hollins hit all his overs today. It was one of the few bets I won. Yeah.

• 9:06Speaker 04

  He's, he'll be in the league for a while.

• 9:07Bill Simmons?

  He seemed like he was the only guy who was kind of sort of open.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  Very stable dude, yeah.

• 9:11Bill Simmons?

  Well, so you had this defense which, um, you know, and against the Rams, they had one sack and they gave up almost 500 yards, but maybe the Rams were even better than we thought. I guess that's the only thing I can think of because that happened in Seattle. Uh, Collinsworth was all over it.

• 9:27Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 9:28Bill Simmons?

  Being able to rush the Pats with four people, basically do these out of nowhere blitzes, but then I, it seemed like the big thing they were trying to do is make sure Drake didn't scramble at all. And then other receivers seemed like they were open. So it was like all the worst possible things. The Pats haven't, they haven't had a game like that all year. Like even when they, the worst game they played all year was Vegas in week one. And even that game, that was a one score game. They haven't had a game where they got their ass kicked like that in five months.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  No. Well, you're not gonna have the Raiders on your schedule every week. What are you gonna do?

• 9:58Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 9:58Speaker 04

  I'm sorry. I love it. No, they didn't let him scramble and they let him.

• 10:01Bill Simmons?

  The schedule stuff's fair.

• 10:02Speaker 04

  Didn't let him set his feet. Well, the one thing with the, the schedule day, everyone's like, oh, they, he played the same defenses basically as staffers, like, and you can only play the defense, but smart people were actually saying, yeah, you can only play the defense. You're not playing their offense. That's not really like smart people, not you, but smart people were saying, that's not, that's really not true because the bad offenses you're playing give you good field position. So you're gonna score points, right? So that should be factored in, but.

• 10:30Bill Simmons?

  Our defense was really good tonight. Like, I, I thought they were matching everything and at some point you can only make the other team punt so many times or settle for field goals so many times and then do nothing when you have the ball. And it finally seemed like it broke them a little bit.

• 10:45Speaker 04

  When did you think it was over? And when did they suck you back in? Was it when JSN came out when he had like a fight with the blue tent and then he was off to the locker room? Was that like, oh, boy? This is, yeah, this is what we needed. This is.

• 10:56Bill Simmons?

  No, I thought it was over when they went up. What was it 21 to 0 or whatever it was 20?

• 11:02Speaker 04

  21 0.

• 11:03Bill Simmons?

  20.

• 11:03Speaker 04

  No.

• 11:04Bill Simmons?

  What it was the 20?

• 11:06Speaker 04

  22.

• 11:06Bill Simmons?

  I can't remember.

• 11:07Speaker 04

  Right?

• 11:07Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was over and then when May, when they did the stop and they were down two scores and it seemed like they could actually, I felt like they were back in. Then I thought they were out again and then it just was about saving face after that, but they did suck me in. They sucked me in. I think they sucked all the Pats fans. So the defense, that's one. The Darnold redemption. I think will be one of the legacies of this season and especially him doing that against the Patriots, the team that broke him. He kind of passed the ghosts over to Drake May during this game. Probably was watching from the other side. But he missed a couple of big throws. He avoided some sacks. Um, I thought he moved around in the pocket. I thought the pass rush was there the whole game and he never like threw, he almost threw a couple of picks, but didn't.

• 11:52Bill Simmons?

  He never got stripped, like he just was efficient. It was exactly what he wanted. I thought as, when they went up nine, nothing, it was pretty clear probably to them like, hey, we just, we just can't fuck up on offense and we're gonna probably win the Super Bowl here. So let's be a little conservative. So they, they did what?

• 12:07Speaker 04

  I left you alone. I didn't text you guys. I know you Patriots were off texting, fans were texting each other.

• 12:12Bill Simmons?

  I stopped. I stopped second half. I stopped doing my phone.

• 12:14Speaker 04

  I didn't want to give you hell. I, I just, I'd rather give you shit here that I owe America for this. So, uh, so that's that.

• 12:20Bill Simmons?

  What did I do?

• 12:21Speaker 04

  But I would say this, like Darnold, I was thinking, I was like, oh boy, if there's a live line for a Darnold interception halfway through the first quarter.

• 12:28Bill Simmons?

  I was waiting for it.

• 12:29Speaker 04

  It's like, where the hell is this thing? And he just, it never, I thought that alone was gonna win him MVP. The fact that he didn't throw an interception, but yeah, you're right. Like he scrambled and then like he did the hard part and then he had, who was it? It was a, was Barner open? Who?

• 12:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Barner got the TD.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  By the way, Barner, yeah, you called Barner first touchdown. That might've, must've been exciting for you.

• 12:49Bill Simmons?

  Wasn't.

• 12:50Speaker 04

  No?

• 12:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that wasn't.

• 12:52Speaker 04

  God, you're so hard to please.

• 12:53Bill Simmons?

  That wasn't exciting for me. The MVP thing, so Walker won, I thought he should have won.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  Definitely.

• 12:58Bill Simmons?

  Who would you, who would have been your runner up for this? Cause there was a Witherspoon case, I thought. But he was a complete maniac in this game. Byron Murphy was good too, but Witherspoon, like his, those, those unexpected blitzes that he just timed perfectly, combined with the fact that their secondary basically completely locked down all the pass receivers. I thought he was in the mix.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  He was good. It's so, it's almost harder to give a defensive player MVP because there's always two or three, right?

• 13:25Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  It's rare that one guy, only one guy. And I think like Cowboys, Denver, they gave it to Harvey Martin and Randy White. They were like, screw it. We're gonna give it to two here.

• 13:34Bill Simmons?

  Combo, right?

• 13:35Speaker 04

  Like, we can't think of this. The only other one I was thinking was Myers, but I was looking at his odds, his live odds. They never got past 13 to one. I was like, geez, how many field goals this guy have to kick?

• 13:44Bill Simmons?

  But I guess it didn't matter. I actually would have voted for Dixon over Myers.

• 13:47Speaker 04

  Really?

• 13:48Bill Simmons?

  I thought Dixon was awesome the whole playoffs, but he's like, he's just a complete weapon over and over again. Never screws up. It's always like, there was one time when it seemed like we had a chance to get some field position in the first half and he just 51 yard punt, no return.

• 14:02Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 14:03Bill Simmons?

  You know, or if it's like inside the 10, he's gonna actually put you inside the 10. So for the Seahawks, their craziest, most memorable game of this year, when we look back on their season, was that weird two point game.

• 14:16Speaker 04

  Thursday night game?

• 14:17Bill Simmons?

  That's gonna be the Thursday night two point comeback game is gonna be.

• 14:20Speaker 04

  Huge.

• 14:21Bill Simmons?

  It swung everything. It swung home field for playoffs. You have that. You have revenge for the Malcolm Butler game. And then from a legacy standpoint, uh, I hope this isn't the case, but the team that broke Drake May. It's not, I, Drake May will be fine. He's 23, but I, I hope this is the start of some sort of new direction of his career. That they would get to plant their stake.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  I hope it is.

• 14:46Bill Simmons?

  You really hate Drake May.

• 14:47Speaker 04

  Well, it was, look, I had a lot at stake. I have a, I have a crazy reputation in this industry and I labeled him Drake maybe, and I, I, you know, that.

• 14:56Bill Simmons?

  Now you're back?

• 14:56Speaker 04

  Reputation was in jeopardy, Bill. I don't know if you understand, but yeah, yeah, it took a while.

• 15:02Bill Simmons?

  What was your favorite part of the game?

• 15:05Speaker 04

  I thought his.

• 15:06Bill Simmons?

  Imagine me wallowing in my sadness.

• 15:08Speaker 04

  His fumble, I think. That really, really did it, right?

• 15:11Bill Simmons?

  The strip, yeah.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  The strip, yeah. And I don't want to, I, I'm joking for a lot of this, but that, that rush was so damn good. It was so good. But I also feel like, you feel like Vrabel let you down a little bit. I'm not questioning the fourth and twos and everything, but some of the play calls, you ran on third and five early, and then you punted on fourth and two. Like, so I, I felt like you were giving up. I felt like you played a lot of that game up until the fourth quarter. You played a lot of that game as if you were playing Denver in the fourth quarter last week. And that wasn't going to spark any big plays.

• 15:43Bill Simmons?

  I thought the strategy in the coaching was terrible.

• 15:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:46Bill Simmons?

  I read the whole game. I just didn't understand what, what they were doing. Especially like they brought that I formation in once and ran for eight yards. That was like this big formation they had that was actually successful and you kind of needed it the way the Seahawks were playing defense. They did it once and we never saw it again. I, I didn't understand why they weren't getting the ball out fast. Um, why they weren't rolling him out side to side when his legs are so good. Like, why not try to buy him time? I can't tell you, like, people watched today, maybe they didn't watch the Patriots that much. Their offensive line has been this bad all season. Like, this is, he's just, he's navigated this. It's been one, it was one of the reasons I thought he was MVP. Like, there was one guy that voted for Justin Herbert for MVP. He was seduced by the seven seed.

• 16:31Bill Simmons?

  Um, and his case was like, he was running for his life the, the whole season. He didn't have his tackles. And it's like, did you watch Drake May? Was Drake May not running for his life? And, you know, the, the Pats fans threads I'm on are like, did, did he just take too much of a beating this year? Like, could this have been?

• 16:48Speaker 04

  Please.

• 16:50Bill Simmons?

  Well, no, nobody's ever been sacked or probably taken as many hits in four straight playoff games like this. There wasn't one easy half that he had. And it's like, and this was, this was what it was like the whole season. Earlier in the season, he was controlling it, maybe partly because the schedule was easier.

• 17:07Speaker 04

  All right.

• 17:08Bill Simmons?

  But by the time we got to this game, but that was what he was doing all year. He, he always had people around him. He was always like pulling, he had, he had like five wild plays a game. How many wild plays did he have today other than the bomb, the hauls? Like, he really didn't have any.

• 17:22Speaker 04

  I don't know what to say. I mean, maybe that's the case. There are some quarterbacks that take worse beating like Baker Mayfield. I feel Joe Burrow. If you just look at his stats, Stafford over the years, none of those guys were able to get to the Super Bowl, except for Burrow that one year. But I wouldn't say it was his shoulder. That's what I, I don't think that was it. I don't think that was the problem today. I really thought like some bad play calling by the coach of the year and your guy wasn't able to execute and you needed, you needed Remandre or something, someone to break, someone to break a big run or a big screen pass or something. Cause just wasn't there.

• 17:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, there was a couple like that blitz when the play that ended the game, basically when he got hit as he was throwing it and it went right to the defender and the guy ran for a touchdown.

• 18:05Speaker 04

  Too late.

• 18:05Bill Simmons?

  They showed, they showed the all 22 of that play. Witherspoon's leaving, Stefan Diggs is over on the right side. There's nobody on the right side and he runs 15 yards downfield. It's like, you don't see this guy's blitzing? Why don't you run two yards and stop? And then May has like the quick pass. It just felt like they were not on the same page with that. It was like Seattle had stumbled upon, we'll rush four, but then every once in a while we have this blitz and they're not going to have any idea what to do every time we do it. And even in the fourth quarter, they didn't have any idea how to do it. We gotta take one break.

• 18:37Speaker 04

  Don't go away. I don't trust us taking a break because then you, you might not be back.

• 18:41Bill Simmons?

  We'll take a break. We'll see if I'm here after the break, but we're taking a break right now. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. The football season may be coming to an end, but things are only getting started on the court, on the hardwood, on the wood, as some people call it. FanDuel, the number one choice for same game parlays, live betting and much more during the NBA season. Don't forget with FanDuel, you get paid instantly when you win. Download the FanDuel Sportsbook app right now and play your game. 21 plus and present in select states or 18 plus and present in DC, Kentucky or Wyoming. Game, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com, call 888-789-7777 or visit

• 19:22Bill Simmons?

  ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You gotta love a good deal, whether that's a quarterback on a short, low risk contract who competes like a top tier quarterback, like a Brock Purdy once upon a time. Or Expedia's bundle and save feature, which allows you to combine flights, hotels and cars in a one package for impressive discounts. And not just that, but if you're a member, you can book an item now, add select items later and still enjoy bundled savings. For instance, if you're a football fan, you want to go to the championship, conference championship, the Super Bowl, wherever it is, and you don't know your team's going to be in, all of a sudden they're in. What do you got to do? I gotta get a hotel, I get a flight, I get a car. Expedia can do all three.

• 20:07Bill Simmons?

  You never know when your team's going to be in a big game. Use Expedia. Now that is a winning strategy. Book now with Expedia. All right, we're back. I was thinking about this week in Boston, because I was just in Boston. The sports media there, how they're going to react to this. The notoriously fairly negative sports media. And the number one thing they're going to seize on is Drake May.

• 20:32Speaker 04

  Good.

• 20:33Bill Simmons?

  He choked. Is he hurt? Did they lie to us? Is this just Drew Bledsoe all over again, where he got us to the precipice? But this is just who he is. He didn't really play two good halves in any playoff game. He got worse as the playoff. They're going to do the whole thing. You're a part, you're an impartial observer, other than the fact that you nicknamed Drake, Drake Mayby and then had all the Patriots fans.

• 20:57Speaker 04

  But I think it's, I think it's mostly going to be fair. Because if he's going to get all that credit and, you know, one vote away from MVP is a goddamn lot of credit. He should get a little shit for, you know, whatever. What, they have six sacks? I'm not going to say he could have avoided all of them, but I thought he could have done a better job with a two or three. He should have done a better job than Darnold did with your rush, which is just as good. I don't know what this says long-term for me. He's still a great downfield thrower. You don't see that much. I don't want to praise him right now, but I'm sure they'll go over the top a little bit, but yeah, he is to blame.

• 21:33Bill Simmons?

  He was horrible.

• 21:35Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 21:36Bill Simmons?

  I've watched every snap of his career, I think, and that was by far the most frazzled and terrible he's ever been in a game that I've watched. And he missed Collinsworth, they were doing a good job of pointing out, like, he was missing open guys. The defense was really good. The defense, there were still spots and there were guys open and there were plays to make. And he just didn't make the plays over and over again. And at some point, it was like the punters coming out for the seventh, eighth time. And it was usually because he missed a throw, or he didn't see a blitz coming from the right side, or we couldn't block for him, or all three things at the same time. It was just really bad. I didn't, we haven't seen the postgame stuff. I'm sure he would be the first one to say it. Like, I was terrible. I don't know what happened.

• 22:18Speaker 04

  As a fan, you watch every play, whatever. You and I now as a fan, because I need him to fail because of my stupid nickname. But you get in a, you get in a routine of, you know, if his feet are set, that a pass, you kind of don't even need to see the result. Like, you know, like, oh, his feet are set, he's rearing back, he's throwing. There was somewhere he couldn't get to a spot. He like overthrew Booty on a third down, like flying across the middle and everything. But when he was, even when he was setting his feet on that second interception, you're like, oh, that's gotta be complete. He's throwing this with such authority. Didn't even have that.

• 22:53Bill Simmons?

  It was way off. He, he just seemed, it seemed like they sped the game up on him with the pressure that they had. And I think he knew the left side of the line, which couldn't really block all year. I mean, I was saying all year, how are we gonna make the Super Bowl when we can't block? But they figured it out. They patched it together. But something, the accumulation of those four games, or something about maybe the stage, easily the most frazzled he's been. Not only were they got, not, he was missing behind, he was throwing the wrong guys, he was thrown too hard. That was one thing he never really did during the season. Like, he had that one play when, forget if it was Booty or Diggs was over the middle, and he threw like a John Elway cannon. It was like just too hard. The guy was open. But he just could never get the timing down. And then

• 23:37Bill Simmons?

  finally, it felt like he was starting to get into the rhythm in the fourth quarter. And then the sack interception play happened.

• 23:43Speaker 04

  So these guys, it took him three quarters, what it should have, not that he was lights out in the fourth quarter by any means, but it took him three where it should have taken one. Right.

• 23:52Bill Simmons?

  This is the story of the season though. They've, they, especially if you look back, there were all these games where they would just stink for an hour and then all of a sudden he would get, and you could see it happening in real time. It's like, oh, he's, now he's in a groove. Here we go. So he's a young player. Obviously he's achieved more at 23 for an NFL quarterback than just about anybody. But this is how, he's like, how do I get better? You get better by, by starting the game in a way, you know, that, that's not, you're not peaking two hours later. You kind of want to start the game that way.

• 24:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, he's done. So I don't know what, so do you go back to Mac Jones? Like two was available? I'm trying to, you could get lucky in the draft.

• 24:28Bill Simmons?

  Some of his throws today were honestly too-esque. Like they were throws of quarterbacks that we've made fun of, which, you know, again, to see how, Seattle's defense was awesome. It didn't feel like any receivers ever seen that open. They couldn't really run the ball and they took away a scrambling. And that was it.

• 24:45Speaker 04

  What else is Boston gonna say? Well, that's, so that's one.

• 24:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Will Campbell's gonna, it's gonna be a rough week for him. And he, I like, well, Campbell, he's a great guy, but there's gonna be a lot of, is he a bust? Should we move him to guard? That'll, that'll, they'll get a month out of that.

• 24:59Speaker 04

  Right.

• 24:59Bill Simmons?

  Is this guy good enough? Do they need a left tackle? They spent the fourth pick in the draft on a left tackle. Do they still need one? That'll, lock that down. Um, McDaniel's will take hits, I think, for not really scheming anything that seemed to make sense. Um, and it's like, this is why he failed as head coach tonight. We'll hear that. The easy schedule team frauds, that'll, that'll go the whole offseason. Especially as we're talking about what are their over-unders for win totals, their division odds and.

• 25:30Speaker 04

  Right.

• 25:30Bill Simmons?

  They'll, they'll end up being pigeonholed now as like the Washington of this year. It's like, yeah, they overachieved, harder schedule. Are we sure they were that good anyway? They'll get all that.

• 25:40Speaker 04

  Do we want to, well, I guess we'll go over odds separately, but along with what you're saying, it's not just New England, Boston radio that is, uh, is not fond of them in 2026.

• 25:53Bill Simmons?

  True. Yeah. And I think that's, that's, that combined with how weird the Denver game was.

• 26:00Bill Simmons?

  There's gonna be the karma of some of the stuff, some of the off the field stuff that happened. Combined with crafting and the Epstein emails, like people have a field day with that.

• 26:09Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:09Bill Simmons?

  That'll happen. Drake betting on the Patriots, I think will be a deal. The other Drake.

• 26:16Speaker 04

  I asked you last week, I said, what moves the needle for you? Any of these trends or anybody betting? And Drake was definitely number one.

• 26:23Bill Simmons?

  Drake was my number one I was the most scared of.

• 26:25Speaker 04

  Didn't even watch.

• 26:26Bill Simmons?

  And then I think the one that's really gonna have legs is whether Drake was hurt. I think that's gonna, because we always, we never find out until after what was wrong with people. And this was a guy who threw, he completed like 73% of his passes. He was one of the most accurate regular season passers in the history of professional football. And then in the playoffs was not accurate. So what happened? And there's that, that video from two weeks ago, which I've had a lot of people mention to me when they, they were mic'd up. Did you see it?

• 26:56Speaker 04

  Well, I don't know.

• 26:57Bill Simmons?

  In the Denver game?

• 26:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:59Bill Simmons?

  McDaniel's comes over and there's like seven minutes left and, and Drake says to him, this is hard. This is so hard, or something like that.

• 27:08Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 27:09Bill Simmons?

  And McDaniel's like, I know, buddy. I know. Listen, man, this is all gonna be worth it. And the original, original interpretation was that it was playing in the snow was hard. But then there was this next level, it was like, he's saying this is so hard because his shoulder's fucked up.

• 27:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:26Bill Simmons?

  And he's playing hurt and that's why this is so hard. So then he comes out, what did he miss? 10 throws in this game? In the first three quarters?

• 27:33Speaker 04

  When he was 13 for 26, like most of those were, were makeable throws.

• 27:37Bill Simmons?

  Like, three of those guys were probably covered, but it felt like a bunch of those guys were open. So I think that's gonna be the biggest thing coming out of this.

• 27:45Speaker 04

  Well, let me ask you this. If you're an athlete, of course, when you're an athlete, we, we can't relate, right? They're, they're just playing at such a high level. But let's just say as a podcaster, if someone said, wow, Simmons didn't sound good on that pod, do you think he has mononucleosis? Like, wouldn't you rather that be the criticism than?

• 28:02Bill Simmons?

  Did he eat carbs yesterday? What happened to him?

• 28:04Speaker 04

  Great. Wouldn't you rather that be the talk than, wow, he's, he doesn't have his fastball anymore, right? If I'm Drake May, I take that criticism. Like, all right, they think I'm injured. And yeah, of course I wasn't 100%, so I'll take it.

• 28:17Bill Simmons?

  I'd love to know the truth. I was gonna eat pizza tonight, by the way.

• 28:21Speaker 04

  Do it, buddy.

• 28:22Bill Simmons?

  The other thing, this will be the really dark corner of the Boston sports media and then the radio shows, people know who they are, but the Patriots, city of champions, we've won six Super Bowls, we've lost six too. Nobody's lost more Super Bowls than the Patriots. We're only six and six. Somebody, I guarantee you, somebody would do that by Wednesday.

• 28:41Speaker 04

  That's stupid.

• 28:41Bill Simmons?

  We're only six and six, batting 500 in the Super Bowl. Congratulations for making it so many that somebody will do that.

• 28:47Speaker 04

  That's stupid.

• 28:48Bill Simmons?

  Guaranteed.

• 28:49Speaker 04

  I have one more I could add.

• 28:50Bill Simmons?

  Oh, throw it in.

• 28:52Speaker 04

  They tanked the game on purpose. The difference between the 31st pick in the draft and the 32nd pick, you guys, it's a very rich draft.

• 29:00Bill Simmons?

  Their board was 31.

• 29:01Speaker 04

  It's offensive line intensive. You don't need Seattle stealing that pick from you if it's reversed. They tanked.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  What do you got?

• 29:11Bill Simmons?

  I brought some DVDs.

• 29:14Speaker 04

  Are you gonna eat them like I did?

• 29:15Bill Simmons?

  Super Bowl 36. That was a good win.

• 29:17Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 29:21Bill Simmons?

  This was, I think the Panthers, that was a good one.

• 29:25Speaker 04

  Yep, John Casey.

• 29:27Bill Simmons?

  Oh, this was the one about the 21 game winning streak in the third Super Bowl. It's pretty fun.

• 29:32Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 29:33Bill Simmons?

  Good story there.

• 29:37Bill Simmons?

  Oh, really enjoyed this. I think this is third Super Bowl two. The second Super Bowl.

• 29:42Speaker 04

  It's great.

• 29:42Bill Simmons?

  This is the sixth one. I couldn't find all of them, but I got some.

• 29:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's articles.

• 29:48Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna sleep with these tonight and cradle them. Cradle them like a baby as I try to fight off the tears.

• 29:53Speaker 04

  This was such a bad week for Boston. Aside from you doing the koozie thing, which was nice. Honestly, there was so much negative Boston mojo that I thought there's no way it would continue. I thought, oh crap, Belichick doesn't get in the hole, he gets snubbed, Kraft gets snubbed, Brady kinda turns on the team, the fans led by you turn on Brady. I was like, this, this can't continue. This, this means the Patriots are gonna win by 25.

• 30:22Bill Simmons?

  A lot of, you know, they say all great families have dysfunction.

• 30:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, but all in the same week. Oh, and then Jordan wears that shirt? My God.

• 30:31Bill Simmons?

  Oh, the, yeah, she really escalated it with Robert Kraft. Yeah, she wore the T-shirt of a... Of of the spa that Kraft was at.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 30:40Bill Simmons?

  So I when I first saw that, I was like, oh, man, that's harsh. And then I said, that's pretty good. Like, that's kind of in our wheelhouse of comedy. She just goes, Dave, the Super Bowl, just comes out with this stealth spa thing. Cause they obviously bring blame Kraft for not getting into the Hall of Fame.

• 30:56Speaker 04

  So how did that start? You think he's like, hey, you know, it would be good if you wore this shirt? Or was she the brains behind it and says, I'm gonna wear this? And then he has to decide how far he wants to take it. What do you think?

• 31:07Bill Simmons?

  I have a third option. She just did it and he had no idea.

• 31:11Speaker 04

  At what point did he have no idea?

• 31:13Bill Simmons?

  She just, they were out together and he was, she was wearing a T-shirt. I don't, maybe he didn't know what it was.

• 31:18Speaker 04

  Come on, that's crazy.

• 31:21Bill Simmons?

  You don't think so? I think that's in play.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  He doesn't know now, he still doesn't know? When does it go?

• 31:25Bill Simmons?

  I think odds are they were out already. And she's like, by the way, did you notice my T-shirt? And he's like, oh, I thought we were on to the Fanatics party.

• 31:34Speaker 04

  Were there organs of Asia jokes at the roast? I thought that was, he would have to know. Yes.

• 31:39Bill Simmons?

  But maybe she tried to hide it from him until they went out.

• 31:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:42Bill Simmons?

  God only knows that this woman's capable.

• 31:43Speaker 04

  Can you explain the Brady thing to me for a second? Because you, you went on a walk, a brisk walk, and you just, you went off. And I didn't, I didn't really understand it.

• 31:51Bill Simmons?

  Well, here's, which part didn't you understand? He played for the Patriots for 20 years. We have a statue of him outside the stadium.

• 31:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:58Bill Simmons?

  He played with Mike Frabel, won multiple Super Bowls with him. And it's like his legitimate friend, like they would go to like the Kentucky Derby and stuff. He played for, he cared about Kraft and supposedly cared about the fan base, who always kind of stood by him and defended him.

• 32:14Speaker 04

  Well, I think that's the part I didn't understand. Like, we stood by you, you did the flake eight, which is like, all right.

• 32:19Bill Simmons?

  Well, he got railroaded in the flake eight. We defending him like that, no athlete ever got defended more vociferously.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  I know, but it's not like it got nothing in returns. I like Browns fans stepping up for Deshaun Watson. Like, he gave you six Super Bowls. Like, how dare you do this to us?

• 32:32Bill Simmons?

  I know, but he got railroaded. We loved him. We'd love, everybody loved Tom Brady. It's like, you really, you have no dog in the race? I think there's probably a deeper element to it with how he left the team is a theory I've heard from reliable people.

• 32:48Speaker 04

  Really?

• 32:48Bill Simmons?

  Them not giving, I, I think he wanted like two years, 50 million.

• 32:53Bill Simmons?

  Maybe he was thinking he'd get a piece of the team down the road. And I think they, maybe he, maybe there's more going on with him and Kraft than I think we know.

• 33:00Speaker 04

  I think it's human nature. Maybe he shouldn't have said it out loud, but I feel like. You know, I get that he's a phony. I don't believe that he eats Pizza Hut, just like I don't believe that you drink Pepsi, but whatever. It's but so now this is the one time he's telling the truth and everyone's like, whoa, like it's natural to not want your old team to win, isn't it? Like you wouldn't root for ESPN if they had a whole thing about, oh, ESPN's ratings are through the roof and the NBA pregame, whatever you wouldn't, you would not send a an edible arrangement.

• 33:30Bill Simmons?

  But isn't it different though? When the team comes with fans and a fan base?

• 33:35Speaker 04

  I don't know. Maybe he must feel about this Hall of Fame and everything else. And now he's tied to.

• 33:40Bill Simmons?

  Kurt Warner with the Rams were in the Super Bowl, Kurt Warner would be like, I don't have a dog in this race. And I'm trying to think of like compare Ben Roethlisberger with the Steelers or like, it's kind of the Aaron Rodgers would say, and I think that's what bothered people about this Brady thing.

• 33:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:54Bill Simmons?

  Just say, just say, I really love the fans. I had great 20 years there. I would love to see them get another one because I know how much it would mean to them. That's all you have to do.

• 34:02Speaker 04

  I guess. I mean, it's completely tied to Raiders now is the only thing. He's tied to another team. He does announcing like he's supposed to be at least impartial on on a lot of this.

• 34:11Bill Simmons?

  Well, it feels like there's a little more there. So what 2025 team do you think was the most angry watching this game?

• 34:21Speaker 04

  Um, maybe the Rams, I think, like, I almost think Puka could have gotten some MVP votes tonight because of what we just, we talked about a couple of times, just the numbers.

• 34:31Bill Simmons?

  I went with the Texans.

• 34:33Speaker 04

  What? Yeah.

• 34:34Bill Simmons?

  Texans.

• 34:35Speaker 04

  What are they mad about?

• 34:36Bill Simmons?

  Dalton Schultz was at a Super Bowl thing and he got was in getting interviewed by somebody and he was saying, um, I'm still mad about the playoffs. Like, I really felt like we had the best team in the AFC and I just didn't think we played well. And it's still, it's always going to gnaw at me or one of those quotes. And I was like, if I was on the Texans, I probably felt, I would probably feel that way. Like, what happened to us in that game? It was like a way worse version of what happened to Drake May today. But you probably watched the Patriots stand there like, this is why. You know, like, really? We couldn't have, we couldn't have made it in this spot? And I would say the Rams would be the other one, but the Rams legitimately legitimately lost to the Seahawks last week.

• 35:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think they'd be mad. Like, they could say, well, we were just in the wrong conference. We were one of the top two teams. I think that's what they could say. Whereas I think, man, I would want to say who's mad. I really think like five or six AFC teams could say they were like.

• 35:28Bill Simmons?

  Well, Broncos is my other candidate because they could say, if Bo Nix doesn't get hurt, you know, at the tail end of a game, we were winning anyway. You know, and then I think there's a Bills fans.

• 35:40Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 35:40Bill Simmons?

  Would have a small case too. Like, I don't care how good your defense is. Josh would have figured it out. Drake's not Josh. So maybe those four?

• 35:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, throw the Jaguars in there too, if you're gonna throw Houston. They barely lost.

• 35:54Bill Simmons?

  Come on.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  Well, listen.

• 35:57Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. That's it. I'm trying to think, nobody else in the NFC, right? Well, wait, I had one more thing.

• 36:02Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 36:03Bill Simmons?

  Cause I actually think that game ended up in an okay place. It wasn't good, but it wasn't like a F plus or an F minus. Cause the fourth quarter was kind of fun. But I was trying to think of the worst Super Bowls of the last 50 years and I was looking at the list. Trying to think which one.

• 36:19Speaker 04

  I think it was still better than Rams Patriots.

• 36:22Bill Simmons?

  Rams Patriots had on there. The Steelers Seahawks one in 05 was really bad. Had that one. That Broncos Panthers, the Cam Newton game in 2015.

• 36:31Speaker 04

  Right, right, right.

• 36:32Bill Simmons?

  And then Packers Steelers was really bad, even though there were points in that game, but that just wasn't. Those were kind of like my four least favorite, but this is definitely up there from an entertainment standpoint.

• 36:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, well, Seattle killed Denver. I know you don't want to acknowledge it, but 43 to eight. That was just never a game.

• 36:50Bill Simmons?

  But that was like an even more dominant defensive performance than the one today.

• 36:54Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:55Bill Simmons?

  This was dominant, but then also had this weird, what the hell's going on with Drake May subplot at the same time, which is pretty unusual.

• 37:01Speaker 04

  I mean, I guess Tampa, Kansas City. We just wrote it off that Kansas City's offensive line was done and that's why Mahomes couldn't.

• 37:09Bill Simmons?

  Oh, last year was bad.

• 37:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. This year was kind of similar to last year.

• 37:14Speaker 04

  The, what's that?

• 37:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, just like the kind of.

• 37:17Speaker 04

  Oh, and Philly, Kansas City.

• 37:17Bill Simmons?

  One team couldn't block, one team couldn't block the other team.

• 37:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 37:23Speaker 04

  You're taking this well. I would say you're taking it.

• 37:25Bill Simmons?

  Well, I had, I had 20 minutes to recover.

• 37:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, we gotta do that. We should have done this in the third quarter.

• 37:31Bill Simmons?

  There was, uh, did, did you watch any of the pregame stuff or were you like talking to people?

• 37:36Speaker 04

  A little bit, not too much. So Matthew Berry gave us picks. Um, yeah, I don't know. I didn't see that much.

• 37:44Bill Simmons?

  They asked Drake May, they showed this thing about, somebody asked him what the last thing he Googled was and he mentioned some, some bag. This was during Super Bowl day.

• 37:54Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 37:55Bill Simmons?

  It was one of the questions was, what's the last thing you Googled? Then he actually like looked at his phone.

• 38:00Speaker 04

  Some bag?

• 38:01Bill Simmons?

  Like a, some bag that he was looking at for like some travel bag. So my wife said, um, I wonder what the last thing I Googled was. And she looked and it was best hot dog in Los Angeles.

• 38:11Bill Simmons?

  That was fun. That was a lot about my wife. My wife loves hot dogs.

• 38:14Speaker 04

  Good for her.

• 38:16Bill Simmons?

  And then I eventually made her leave. Uh, the bad, the, then she got mad that I was getting mad about the game, which is like, we've been together since 1998. You should know what kind of demeanor I'm going to be in as Drake May's ceiling passes all over the place.

• 38:28Speaker 04

  Did you watch a lot? Was it just you and her or you had a couple of Pat's fans?

• 38:32Bill Simmons?

  Ben was popping in and out.

• 38:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. I, I think that's the way to do it with these games, even if it's not your team. Like I'm, I'm done with, I went to a party for like a half of it and I was just like, the, the questions people were asking and just like, so, all right, wait a minute. So you could bet, you, you don't have to bet the four and a half. Like you could bet a, a team to win and like, like people like demanding an explanation of that. And I just like, I feel like a doctor who's dealing with a patient's like, okay, you say my rash is this, but I read that it's this. Like, you're just like, oh my God. But I'm more important than a doctor, but you know what I'm saying.

• 39:04Bill Simmons?

  What did you think of, uh, the Bad Bunny halftime? Cause I thought, I thought it was awesome. I thought it was really cool how they produced it. I really thought it was memorable. I don't know what the, what my favorite halftime ever was, but I thought this one was really good. I like.

• 39:18Speaker 04

  Oh, it wasn't my favorite, but I like that I cashed.

• 39:21Bill Simmons?

  I like that it was distinct.

• 39:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 39:24Bill Simmons?

  You know what I mean?

• 39:24Speaker 04

  It was like a video. It's like, if that was a video, you're like, oh, my day just kinda just paid for Thriller in 13 minutes, but.

• 39:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 39:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was different.

• 39:32Bill Simmons?

  There was some stealth messaging, which was enjoyable.

• 39:34Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:34Bill Simmons?

  But.

• 39:34Speaker 04

  Like, listen, it's as good as anything that's not in English that I don't understand at all is gonna hit me with, so.

• 39:41Bill Simmons?

  My wife asked me what he was singing about, cause it was all in Spanish. And I said, he's just singing about what the hell is going on with Drake May? Why can't he hit his receivers? That's what he's saying. They said there were subtitles. That's what it would be. Why can't he connect a pass to anyone?

• 39:55Speaker 04

  When he comes out with the football and then does like two routines in a row with the football and you're like, you know it's coming. It's gonna be like Bad Bunny rushing yards versus Drake May rushing yards, you know, it's happening.

• 40:07Bill Simmons?

  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 PNC Bank. In today's sports, everyone is constantly trying to outdo each other. Trick formations, infield shifts, constant rotation changes, yet it's proven time and time again that strong fundamentals are the thing that will lead you to victory. Banking, no different. While everyone else tries to outdo each other, PNC Bank just keeps going right down the middle with steady, calculated money moves and the financial wins

• 40:52Bill Simmons?

  just keep coming. PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865, brilliantly boring since 1865 as a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group, Incorporated. PNC Bank, National Association Member, FDIC. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Whether it's a pumpkin spice coffee that goes splat in your seat or a weekend tailgate that leaves your trunk full of gear and who knows what, you're gonna want WeatherTech in your vehicle. Whether you call it fall, autumn, or spooky season, whether the mess is your fault, the kids, the dogs, or the weather's fault, you're gonna want WeatherTech for American-made floor liners and a cargo liner that laugh in the face of fall weather. Visit weatherTech.com today. Super Bowl bets. So Seahawks covered. The game went under.

• 41:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:37Bill Simmons?

  It was getting creaky there for a second.

• 41:39Speaker 04

  That would have been a shame.

• 41:40Bill Simmons?

  The Pats didn't have quite enough time yet to do the, whatever. What were the Walker MVP odds?

• 41:45Speaker 04

  Six fifty, about six, plus six fifty. Maybe a little more.

• 41:49Bill Simmons?

  So we, we talked, when we did this, we talked about, we thought JSN would be the one if it was the non-quarterback.

• 41:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:58Bill Simmons?

  I gotta say that one of the shocking things about the game today, and I thought the Pats defense was good, but they, nobody's running them like that with Milton Williams. Like they, Walker had, I think a twenty-nine yarder, a thirty yarder, like an eleven yarder and a ten yarder. Like that just didn't happen all season. So I thought he was really good.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  He did it. He kinda did it last week too, though, when he would, you looked like it was, you had him bottled up. And then he would just take it around the edge and he would beat this guy to the edge and be a nine or ten yard run. And then he does like the Le'Veon Bell thing where he kinda like stalls in the hole. And like he's got a lot, he's got a few moves.

• 42:32Bill Simmons?

  He was really good. Yeah, he was really good.

• 42:34Speaker 04

  I, I thought still it was gonna go to Darnold until the last couple of drives there. I was like, I, I looked at historically, like, you know, Eli and Peyton had games where they only threw for one touchdown. Their, their yardage was, you know, pedestrian. They still won. Joe Namath had no touchdowns, won the MVP. I was like, that's all you kinda need from the quarterback, Darnold. But, uh, Walker, Walker definitely deserved it all said and done.

• 43:00Bill Simmons?

  I thought, I thought over under for him was seventy-two and a half. That was one of the props that I liked. I liked the under. So I was like, they're, they're gonna shut him down and make Darnold beat him. And I guess they mostly shut him down, except for he broke a couple, but he was great. The one thing with him, uh, cause I looked this up during the course of two weeks, like, I don't think he had had more than nineteen carries all season.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  Right.

• 43:22Bill Simmons?

  And in general was basically like a fifteen to nineteen carry guy, cause they always had the Charbonne piece. And he had twenty-seven in the game today, plus a couple catches. He had a drop where he got hit, but, um, it was a way bigger workload. National anthem, he went under.

• 43:37Speaker 04

  Under by like six seconds, which was, which moved like three or four seconds.

• 43:41Bill Simmons?

  You could feel it early, like he, he definitely.

• 43:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 43:44Bill Simmons?

  Was going with pace. It was interesting, the line dropped.

• 43:47Speaker 04

  Right.

• 43:48Bill Simmons?

  By like a second and a half as it was going along. During the week, which is usually a red flag.

• 43:54Speaker 04

  My biggest bet, whatever, my biggest bet, I, you know, I have to lose like $500 before kickoff. Otherwise, it's so I lost with heads, I had tails, but to hold the note brave, I had over three and a half seconds that hit and they did it something, the director did something I've never seen before. They usually cut right to the fighter jets. And so you don't even know when officially the, the song ends because you can't hear. They somehow got him ending brave and the fighter jets in the same shot. I was like, wow, we're living in a really cool time now.

• 44:25Bill Simmons?

  So that guy, that guy definitely had the over.

• 44:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:28Bill Simmons?

  He wanted to make sure his bookie saw it.

• 44:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:31Bill Simmons?

  Coin toss was tails.

• 44:33Speaker 04

  No.

• 44:34Bill Simmons?

  I mean, I'm sorry, coin toss was heads.

• 44:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:36Bill Simmons?

  You had, you had tails.

• 44:37Speaker 04

  I know, I put tails in the same game parlay, stupid, kind of ruins it.

• 44:42Bill Simmons?

  First score was the Myers field goal, but first TD was Barner.

• 44:46Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 44:46Bill Simmons?

  And then all the cup overs hit, so cup and Hollins were the ones that everything, if you bet JSN, everything lost.

• 44:53Speaker 04

  Under, right.

• 44:54Bill Simmons?

  Remandre had a TD, so if you had one, that one hit. And then the, the Seattle defensive or special teams touchdown, which I think was like plus eight 50, that ended up hitting.

• 45:04Speaker 04

  That was good. Wait, what was your boys rushing yards? That was like the most bet prop, that and, and Walker receiving yards. Walker over 20 and a half receiving, I think was the most bet prop, but, but May rushing yards, he had 37.

• 45:21Bill Simmons?

  May had 37. No, that's, I think that was over.

• 45:24Speaker 04

  Was it? We're gonna get.

• 45:25Bill Simmons?

  Was he?

• 45:26Speaker 04

  Crushed for this, but.

• 45:28Bill Simmons?

  Stevenson was under.

• 45:31Bill Simmons?

  Stevenson was seven for 23, but then Stevenson had five catches. Walker was under on this thing. And then, uh, it, all the punts and Seattle field goal props hit.

• 45:41Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:42Bill Simmons?

  There was a Seahawks one, it was where you could bet seven points, the kicker had seven points, kicker would have 10 points.

• 45:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:48Bill Simmons?

  You could go up to 13.

• 45:50Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 45:51Bill Simmons?

  And the odds started getting pretty pricey in those. And then if you had Byron Murphy with two sacks, that had to have been like.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  That was uh.

• 45:58Bill Simmons?

  That was probably like 25 to one or something.

• 46:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, we gave out some good winners uh last week.

• 46:03Bill Simmons?

  Well, we did.

• 46:04Speaker 04

  I like Pats over nine and a half second half. Um, more points in the second half than the first. I lost with that. Bad Bunny, no headgear to come out. I like that. The anthem under we gave out brave over three and a half seconds.

• 46:17Bill Simmons?

  Remandre first quarter 10 plus yards.

• 46:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:20Bill Simmons?

  That one hit.

• 46:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, that one.

• 46:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 46:22Speaker 04

  Uh.

• 46:23Bill Simmons?

  You know, it didn't hit was Pats plus four and a half. Lost.

• 46:25Speaker 04

  That was very close.

• 46:26Bill Simmons?

  Loser.

• 46:27Speaker 04

  Cardi B cutaways under, I think, right?

• 46:30Bill Simmons?

  Do we see her once?

• 46:31Speaker 04

  Under one and a half. I don't, I don't think so. And uh, the Gatorade was uh, it was yellow lime green, which opened at plus 250, went to plus 135. Yeah, you got that right.

• 46:45Bill Simmons?

  It fits with the Seahawks, correct?

• 46:46Speaker 04

  I got that wrong. Yeah, that was nice.

• 46:48Bill Simmons?

  Well, did Zane Lowe have a prop? Cause they showed Zane Lowe at one point.

• 46:51Speaker 04

  Who's that? Your NBA guy?

• 46:53Bill Simmons?

  No, my friend from Apple Music.

• 46:55Speaker 04

  Oh, exactly.

• 46:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cause which that would have been a good bet. Cause it was the Apple halftime show.

• 46:59Speaker 04

  Oh, right.

• 46:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they showed Zane Lowe with Bieber, just looking, looking cool. That's Zane Lowe, what a guy. What else hit?

• 47:06Speaker 04

  Uh, thinking my under one and a half yard line touchdown there was bad. My quarterback MVP was bad.

• 47:14Bill Simmons?

  Did we ever have a, we never had anybody inside like the five?

• 47:18Speaker 04

  No, it wasn't really close. Yeah.

• 47:20Bill Simmons?

  We never got that pass interference in the end zone. I thought we were gonna get it on the Pats in the second half.

• 47:25Speaker 04

  Seahawks five plus sacks was plus 450. We mentioned that and will teams, will team score three times in a row? Just seems like so we like you would add that by the second quarter. That's a wrap.

• 47:34Bill Simmons?

  Wow, plus 450, good price on that.

• 47:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. No scoregami, no Brady Russell. Brady Russell, Brady Russell, first of all, he was one of the captains. He was one of the six captains to come out. I was like, oh my God.

• 47:49Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you lost that one.

• 47:50Speaker 04

  They must really like him for him to, I don't know, maybe there's paperwork the captain has to do. Does he have to sign something? I don't know what, why they would have, but he made a tackle on the kick return, but that was it.

• 47:59Bill Simmons?

  Somebody sent me, Eric in Bellingham sent me this long email about how the Patriots had won Super Bowls on the first.

• 48:09Bill Simmons?

  Third twice, fifth, sixth, and the first twice, and then the seventh, it would have been the seventh that they won in the first week of February, wondering if that should now be declared Patriot Nation Week in New England if they won their seventh in February. And we'll never find out because they lost.

• 48:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, and next year it's on Valentine's Day.

• 48:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, what happened with that? Why is it so late next year?

• 48:34Speaker 04

  I don't know why it got moved up. Well, the talk was that that wouldn't happen until they added an 18th game, which is going to happen soon, but.

• 48:40Bill Simmons?

  So the Sunday must be February 8th next year and they.

• 48:45Speaker 04

  No, Valentine's Day is the 7th and the 14th, Sunday, both Sundays, and then President's Day is the day after? Is that what it is?

• 48:55Bill Simmons?

  Why'd they do that?

• 48:56Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 48:58Bill Simmons?

  Odd for next year.

• 49:02Bill Simmons?

  Seahawks plus 750 are our favorites. Rams eight to one, this is on FanDuel. Ravens 12 to one. I'll book that bet. Bills 12 to one, Packers 13, Chargers 15, Eagles 15, Lions 16, Chiefs 16, Patriots 17 to one, Niners 18.

• 49:23Speaker 04

  You're insulted by that. You're insulted.

• 49:24Bill Simmons?

  No, it's the Super Bowl curse is a real thing now.

• 49:27Speaker 04

  Really?

• 49:27Bill Simmons?

  This is, yeah, this is, it's not great.

• 49:29Speaker 04

  I thought you would sever all affiliation to FanDuel because they put you 10th.

• 49:36Bill Simmons?

  Broncos, Jags, and Texans are all 20 to one. Bears are 27. And then if we go to some of the longer shots.

• 49:45Bill Simmons?

  Falcons 50 to one jumped out to me. The new coach. Giants 75 to one, if you feel like they could be next year's out of nowhere team. And then it gets a little crazy. I thought Panthers seemed high to me, 150 to one for the Panthers? They kind of hung with the Rams in the playoffs. That seems high.

• 50:05Speaker 04

  That's bad.

• 50:06Bill Simmons?

  Your team's 30 to one.

• 50:08Speaker 04

  That's bad, too.

• 50:09Bill Simmons?

  If you got another zero, I'd probably start thinking about it.

• 50:13Speaker 04

  How about the Raiders are and even in the bottom seven?

• 50:16Bill Simmons?

  No, they, oh yeah, they're 125 to one. Well, they have the recipe, right? Clint Coobyac coming off the Super Bowl.

• 50:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:23Bill Simmons?

  Mendoza's the QB. Trade Max Crosby for picks. Improve offensive line. They have a bunch of money to spend. The reasons, the difference in the Pat situation and some other ones in the past was they're gonna have a bunch of cap space. And they have like the youngest team in the league and their quarterbacks can be 24 next year. You know, if they spend money, I find it hard to believe they're gonna be not a playoff team.

• 50:46Speaker 04

  They have a first place schedule too.

• 50:48Bill Simmons?

  First place schedule is hard.

• 50:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:49Bill Simmons?

  And also, God only knows what happened to Drake May. God only knows.

• 50:55Speaker 04

  I knew, I knew it. I call, I try to, try to warn you. It's like, this guy sucks. He shouldn't even be in the league, but no.

• 51:03Bill Simmons?

  Completed 73% of his passes.

• 51:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:06Bill Simmons?

  Just went out the window. What else do we have to cover?

• 51:08Speaker 04

  What do we have? Um, let's see.

• 51:12Speaker 04

  Uh.

• 51:14Bill Simmons?

  Cause we can go to parent corner, cause I have a doozy this week.

• 51:16Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, you said you had a, you said you had a good one. Um. Uh, you know, just in general, I'm gonna say, I think there's too much time now between the conference game and the Super Bowl. And I know you can't make it 10 days. You're not gonna make the Super Bowl on Wednesday, but you know, it deserves more than a week, but in this day and age with just getting social media just bombarding you. Every angle, every trend, every prop is debated to exhaustion by like the first Monday, you know, the second Monday or whatever. I mean,

• 51:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 51:46Speaker 04

  You know, your team's in the Super Bowl and you still found 29 hours to dissect the Hawks Jazz trade involving like the fourth best ball brother.

• 51:54Bill Simmons?

  I know. The NBA counter program of the trade deadline led to two, two podcasts.

• 52:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, they should, that should be next week, shouldn't that?

• 52:02Bill Simmons?

  Well, you know what's gonna happen? When it goes to an 18 game schedule, they're going to get rid of that week between the games. So we'll go from right from the Super Bowl. And we'll be at the location by Tuesday and we'll be ready to go.

• 52:14Speaker 04

  Because it just ends up, you know, you, you get some domestic violence cases in there and you get like a terrible Pro Bowl off even worse ratings. It just ends up being negative stuff for the league. Media day is kinda stupid too now.

• 52:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Media Day was on a Monday, yeah, and they did the NFL Honors thing.

• 52:32Speaker 04

  Right.

• 52:33Bill Simmons?

  Which I don't know, I didn't watch the year.

• 52:33Speaker 04

  Nobody can pronounce the winners' names.

• 52:36Bill Simmons?

  Did the, uh, yeah, it does feel like, it felt like forever since the championship thing. So we used to do this where it would go right to the next thing. Cause I remember that Super Bowl 36, I think the next, no, maybe that was 9/11 related. Was that why it got delayed?

• 52:53Speaker 04

  There was a few times when they had to, they had to move it back. It was one week for a little bit.

• 52:57Bill Simmons?

  Cause the Pats won in Pittsburgh and we were like in New Orleans right afterwards, ready to, uh, ready to roll. Um, all right.

• 53:06Speaker 04

  Well, that's it, man. I'm sorry. I think that's, uh.

• 53:09Bill Simmons?

  Let's do parent corner. Go ahead.

• 53:10Speaker 04

  It's a lot of, look forward to.

• 53:12Bill Simmons?

  Let's go.

• 53:13Speaker 04

  All right. I got a couple. First of all, I'm, uh, you know, my middle guy, Jack Romo turned 18 and, uh, we're driving to dinner. It's me, him and my father, Melissa and the other kids was in the other car. Uh, we had to take two cars. So he's with me and my 85 year old father and we're talking about the game. And for some reason he calls them the Patriots. He's always called them the Patriots. It's very weird. It's not a New York accent. It's not a New York thing. He's like, yeah, the Patriots. They have a bunch of criminals. And I'm like, oh, here we go. Like, I want to agree with him for, for your purposes, but not this. So he's like, who's the one, uh, you know, they moved the trial and I was like, whatever. I'm like, uh, Stefan Diggs. He's like, he says Jigs? I was like, no, Diggs. He's like, no, no, no, no, it's not Jigs. I was like, yeah, no, I didn't say Jigs. Diggs.

• 53:58Speaker 04

  He's like, no, no, it's not Jigs. It's someone else. I'm like, I'm not saying Jig. It would end up being like the worst, most infuriating, infuriating round of who's on first. I look back at Jack. I was like, I know it's your birthday, but I, I think we'd all benefit if I just drove us into a ditch right now. But I didn't. So, uh, whether it's Jigs or Diggs, we got to look into that. But the only other thing I'll say is, um, No more picture day for sports. I might have even used it as that apparent corner topic 10 years ago, but now I really mean it. It's not that important to get these kids in uniforms. Harrison's basketball team and drive them to wait in line with other teams when this could easily be done right before a game. You know, it's obviously a money grab.

• 54:41Bill Simmons?

  Like we're digital, we have digital photos and cameras and we could do this right away.

• 54:45Speaker 04

  We all have nice, high tech cameras on our phones. You take a picture, you send it out, grandma and grandpa either don't need the wallet photos anymore because they don't have wallets or they're at the games taking pictures or they're dead. I don't know what it is, but we don't need it. It's a waste of time and money. He didn't even have a game that day, so it was pointless, a costume party.

• 55:05Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I hate when they do that. That, that is an official money grab.

• 55:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's its own day. It's not, it's not even in the, where the thing, it's like, uh, Jackson R is here, but Jackson W isn't, but we could Photoshop him in. I was like, well, as soon as you're talking about photo shopping, this is pointless, so let's stop.

• 55:21Bill Simmons?

  You know what we can do before the first game? Just put all the kids next to each other in front of something and take a picture and that's a team picture.

• 55:28Speaker 04

  No one's sweating.

• 55:29Bill Simmons?

  We need some fancy photographer.

• 55:31Speaker 04

  Thank you. All right.

• 55:32Bill Simmons?

  It's all a giant money grab.

• 55:33Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 55:35Bill Simmons?

  Went to see my mom last week and I was with my wife and my mom, of course, there, there was some wine and some cheese, which I was, I was not having because I think I had a podcast later, but they were. And my mom said, you know, those, those cars that have the breathalyzers when you get in the car to make sure you haven't drank too much. I'm like, oh boy, here we go. Okay. Yeah, we know those cars. She's like, do they have those for computers? And we're like, what do you mean? And she's like, well, you know, at night, sometimes if, if, you know, if I've had some wine,

• 56:19Bill Simmons?

  like I, I've noticed I've made some orders that maybe I, you know, I probably the next day would regret. And we were like, like what? And she said, well, one night I was up and I bought a her and Carrie do French sometimes, like they talk, my wife and I heard they talk

• 56:37Speaker 04

  Really?

• 56:37Bill Simmons?

  French. So she was like, I'm gonna buy some French, they barely know how to talk French. She's like, I was gonna buy some French flashcards so we could have fun. And what came was this deck of cards that was in French and it was like $50.

• 56:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 56:48Bill Simmons?

  She thought she bought one thing and it was another thing. So I was like, all right, yeah, yeah, maybe, you know, maybe market downed it. And then she's like, well, there was another one that I don't really remember. I don't really remember doing this, but it showed up and I didn't know what it was.

• 57:03Speaker 04

  Oh, no.

• 57:05Bill Simmons?

  And.

• 57:07Speaker 04

  Patriots DVD?

• 57:09Bill Simmons?

  They're drink sticks with my face on it.

• 57:11Speaker 04

  Wait, tilt it a little more. Hold on.

• 57:17Bill Simmons?

  Drink sticks with my face on it that for some reason she decided to make. I'm gonna open these now.

• 57:24Speaker 04

  Take it out of the bag. She made them? Oh, she had them?

• 57:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, she made them. She photoshopped. Photoshopped my picture. And there's just multiple things of drink sticks with my face on it that came in the mail and she didn't totally remember doing it. And that was why she was asking if maybe there should be a breathalyzer for her computer. So of course I took the drink sticks and now we have drink sticks of my face that are just the most insane things I've ever seen. And I don't know, I don't even know what the process was that led to her thinking this was the thing anyone would want.

• 58:05Speaker 04

  Well, see, it's good. You take the good with the bad. You lost the Super Bowl, but you got this. This is nice. You got drink. This is picture day I can get behind. This is nice. We all had our drink sticks we got together.

• 58:15Bill Simmons?

  So we lost the Super Bowl. I kind of like this angle more. But yeah, it's both sided too. So in case it's not just facing one side, it's facing the other side too.

• 58:25Speaker 04

  How much did she spend?

• 58:28Bill Simmons?

  Unclear, but it might've, it seems like it wasn't, I mean, there's two bags of them.

• 58:32Speaker 04

  Yeah. You gotta give some of those away. Have a trivia contest.

• 58:36Bill Simmons?

  Should I put them on eBay?

• 58:38Speaker 04

  Give one for the best.

• 58:39Bill Simmons?

  Bill Simmons face drink sticks?

• 58:42Speaker 04

  Put best Boston sports host take most over the top. You'll give him a Bill Simmons drink stick.

• 58:50Bill Simmons?

  Well, so questions that remain are, how did she make this and where did it come from?

• 58:56Speaker 04

  Right.

• 58:56Bill Simmons?

  And do they have breathalyzers for computers?

• 59:01Speaker 04

  We talked about that with Fandel, right?

• 59:02Bill Simmons?

  When you put your passcode in and you just have to blow in to make sure.

• 59:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's interesting.

• 59:06Bill Simmons?

  Then it, because my son is doing this thing. He put this app called Brainrot on his computer.

• 59:12Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:13Bill Simmons?

  And I'm sorry, his iPad and his phone. And it monitors and it's been great for him. He's like, um, so this has been so good for me. I'm never on TikTok anymore. Like I set my settings, it does let me go and.

• 59:25Speaker 04

  It's good.

• 59:25Bill Simmons?

  So we do have stuff.

• 59:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think it would have to be a separate app. I don't think Amazon gives a crap if you're comatose when you're making.

• 59:34Bill Simmons?

  Amazon's probably, probably trying to encourage my mother. Yeah, they're probably like, like giving her extra points.

• 59:39Speaker 04

  Drink up, lady. We're, we got a lot of stuff for you.

• 59:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah. So next time you come over and we have drinks.

• 59:45Speaker 04

  I'm.

• 59:45Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you a Bill Simmons drink stick.

• 59:48Speaker 04

  I might jump in the car right after you'd sign off. That's great.

• 59:52Bill Simmons?

  I should put like three on eBay and see, see if I can get like $20, maybe make the money back.

• 59:57Speaker 04

  I think you will. Yeah, give it to charity. Yeah, they, I mean, we talked about that with Fandel, like people making stupid bets late at night. You made a lot of, you were in Boston, you made a lot of Patriots.

• 1:00:06Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, I had, I had too much of a nest egg from rabble winning coach of the year and stuff. So I ended up doing a lot of Super Bowl. I did do, um, the one bet I was excited about was, um,

• 1:00:18Bill Simmons?

  Hornets playing.

• 1:00:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:21Bill Simmons?

  With Hornets to make the playoffs. You could parlay those together.

• 1:00:24Speaker 04

  You can, really?

• 1:00:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and it was plus 164. So that was like my biggest one.

• 1:00:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:30Bill Simmons?

  And now that's down, that went down a bunch. Cause basically they're, if they're gonna make the playoffs, they're probably gonna do it as a seven or eight seed. So they would have to win the seven, eight game.

• 1:00:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:40Bill Simmons?

  So I thought that was a really.

• 1:00:41Speaker 04

  You wanted, we were gonna do some, uh, props last week, but our, our cousin Jimmy went along with the Billy's penis stories. But, uh.

• 1:00:48Bill Simmons?

  He sure did.

• 1:00:49Speaker 04

  I like, I like, um, the Hornets to make the playoffs went way down, right? It was like plus 180, now it's a minus. I like the Pistons 60 plus wins. And that's still almost three to one. Let me look what it is now. It was three to one, it was three to one when we, when I was gonna do this last week. And now it's.

• 1:01:13Speaker 04

  Plus 230.

• 1:01:14Bill Simmons?

  It probably went down.

• 1:01:15Speaker 04

  It's still plus 230. They have to play like 650 ball. I think they have six games left or five games left against the Nets and Wizards. They're damn good.

• 1:01:24Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:01:24Speaker 04

  Obviously.

• 1:01:26Bill Simmons?

  One of the other ones I did. This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun, sometimes earlier than expected? Sometimes after blowing a 3-1 series lead, but what if you went to Cancun? With Expedia, save up to 30% when you bundle and save. You can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness, though, hopefully your team doesn't go to Cancun. 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. 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.

• 1:02:11Bill Simmons?

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• 1:02:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Bill Simmons?

  One of the other ones I did was Nuggets, Celtics and Cavs all to win 50-plus games. That was basically even. And then, um, did the dark horse Charlotte division bet with San Antonio and the Celtics, which was like 15-1. But the, the, the one I really went in on was that Charlotte bet. Cause I think, as I've been saying for multiple weeks now, I think Charlotte's legitimately good. Like, I don't think it's a fluke. I think they're, I think they're a legitimately good East team. Not like a contender, but they're

• 1:03:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:03:08Bill Simmons?

  An above 500 team now.

• 1:03:10Speaker 04

  What was the stat? Yeah.

• 1:03:12Bill Simmons?

  What?

• 1:03:12Speaker 04

  Well, no, they, they, and they're during this nine game win streak. They didn't have anyone over 28 years old touch the ball or score or something.

• 1:03:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Speaker 04

  It's kind of phenomenal what they're doing, but

• 1:03:21Bill Simmons?

  I like the trade they made too.

• 1:03:23Speaker 04

  Are they still four games under 500? Like, how are they still, I feel like they've been winning forever.

• 1:03:26Bill Simmons?

  Two under now.

• 1:03:27Speaker 04

  Are they?

• 1:03:28Bill Simmons?

  Um, their regular season win total now is.

• 1:03:32Bill Simmons?

  Is it over? Yeah, forty-two and a half now. You know one thing I noticed?

• 1:03:36Speaker 04

  They're twenty-five and twenty-eight. I can't believe they're not at five-hundred yet.

• 1:03:39Bill Simmons?

  I know, they've, they've been winning for three straight weeks. One thing I noticed, I do think the trade deadline, because I went to Celtics, Heat on Friday night. And the Celtics came back from twenty-two, but they, losing Simons was meaningful to them because they always had two guard, two competent guards out at all times. And then all of a sudden, now he's gone. They're trying to figure out Vucevic, how to work him in. And it just, it kind of threw off the team a little bit. Miami kind of sucked in the second half. They came back and won. And the Celtics looked terrible against the Knicks tonight, or today, and got killed by them. But I do think we, that week after the trade deadline, I think we, we kind of forget that that does fuck up good teams sometimes. It just tilts the balance and you got to figure out how to work the new guy in while making up for what happened.

• 1:04:24Bill Simmons?

  Whereas like, I thought Alvarado for the Knicks, like, he fit in right away because he's a bench guy.

• 1:04:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, and there's also, I, I want, when, you know, when the Cavs, I think the Cavs played the Clippers the day after they made that trade, right? The Harden trade. It's like, oh shit, well Harden's not gonna play. Clippers don't have, we know. All right, this is not a play, like, oh, it didn't matter. Clippers, okay, they're just gonna get killed anyway.

• 1:04:46Bill Simmons?

  Right, well then the Clippers somehow beat Minnesota today.

• 1:04:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, they, don't say somehow, it's because we bet Minnesota. They, Minnesota knows, they know.

• 1:04:54Bill Simmons?

  We put some futures on Minnesota, but that's another example. They brought in the new guy, DeSantis. And, uh, and looked like crap. So anyway, yeah, they're, out of, out of the NBA stuff, because this is really all we have at this point.

• 1:05:08Bill Simmons?

  Charlotte was the one that jumped out to me. And then trying to figure out who's not going to be one of the tennis playoff teams feels like there's some opportunity there too.

• 1:05:16Speaker 04

  Well, the Bulls, uh, yeah, I mean, it typically was the same, wasn't it? Heat, Hawks, Bulls? They must have made four of the last five plans.

• 1:05:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:25Speaker 04

  Those three, so I don't know, maybe the Bulls are on the outs. The Bucks really screwed everything up for us.

• 1:05:30Bill Simmons?

  The Bulls are the eleven now, and Milwaukee is also the eleven. Milwaukee did the Cam Thomas Hail Mary signing today, so that was, uh... That was whatever.

• 1:05:39Speaker 04

  You love it. You're fine. You're good with this. You could just move on. You, you know, you get to travel, you interview elderly sports icons. You have Johnny Pesky at Colgate University next week. You're gonna be.

• 1:05:50Bill Simmons?

  Well, so we went, so I went to Jack O'House, went to Celtics Friday. We drive to Holy Cross where I went to college. Three of us went. We drive on Saturday. It's a blizzard.

• 1:06:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:00Bill Simmons?

  And Jack goes in a truck. Kudos to him for having stick shift, by the way. So I was really proud of him. We're in a truck on the Mass Pike. It's barely paved. We're like, oh, God. Get to, get to Holy Cross. It's freezing. There's wind because there's always wind because it's on a hill. The wind's like whipping the snow in our faces and we're like, we're back, baby. Holy Cross. This is, you know, you did this too, because you were in college upstate New York. Like you're in there for, yeah, December, January, February. It's awful.

• 1:06:32Speaker 04

  The no snow days. Yeah.

• 1:06:34Bill Simmons?

  And then like April, there's spring weekend and you're like, this is great, but it's like two weeks, the three months you're there where it's terrible. But it was great to be back. It was great to see everybody and it was just, House and I are walking down from the game after, because we used to do this walk when we played basketball at the time. We're walking down and it's like 30 degree winds. We're almost falling. The wind, the snow's hitting us and we're like, this is, how many times did we make this walk? Like 100? But.

• 1:07:03Speaker 04

  Did anything else surprise you? The energy? Was it the same as you like you remember when you were in college or?

• 1:07:08Bill Simmons?

  Well, they have new, like they, there were two new buildings. That was, there's this huge performance center now where there was a parking lot. And so stuff like that, like, oh my God, the school, Holy Cross is probably 500 people bigger than it was when we were there. But yeah, you notice like the new stuff, like they always add, there's like a new dorm or a new building.

• 1:07:26Speaker 04

  You're like, yeah, wow, there's two new buildings. Like, yeah, thanks, Mr. Simmons. You paid for them. I did? I don't even remember that.

• 1:07:35Bill Simmons?

  Well, we weren't thinking like, like these kids like compared to what some of the stuff we had, like they have this awesome campus center, you know, there's like a pub and there's like, there's like a coffee place where they make like lattes. We're like, oh my God, we would have loved that.

• 1:07:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:50Bill Simmons?

  But, you know, we're in the late eighties, early nineties. This is a million years ago.

• 1:07:53Speaker 04

  We're never getting it. Yeah.

• 1:07:55Bill Simmons?

  We met Jalen Coker. He sat with us, the Carolina guy.

• 1:07:57Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Nice.

• 1:07:58Bill Simmons?

  He was still mad about the Rams loss. He felt like they could have beaten them.

• 1:08:02Speaker 04

  See?

• 1:08:02Bill Simmons?

  Felt like they were like right there. He's right. We felt that way too.

• 1:08:06Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:08:06Bill Simmons?

  So maybe that's the team. What else have we got?

• 1:08:09Speaker 04

  That's it.

• 1:08:09Bill Simmons?

  This is your saddest day of the season, although it's not that sad this time because Jake May.

• 1:08:13Speaker 04

  I know. It helped out. I won some money. You know, you, you know, you and Hench like made this a nice win for me. But, uh, listen, we're gonna, we've got the Ringer Gambling Show. That's not going away. Spotify, YouTube, Fanduel Sports Network. Um, you know, I'll be posting.

• 1:08:29Bill Simmons?

  So we're cutting down probably to Monday. You're gonna be on Ringer Gambling on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

• 1:08:33Speaker 04

  Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

• 1:08:34Bill Simmons?

  During the off football season.

• 1:08:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, lots to talk about. We got it. Baseball.

• 1:08:38Bill Simmons?

  Well, we got March Madness coming. There's golf is starting to heat up.

• 1:08:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:42Bill Simmons?

  Um, NBA, obviously. Women's college. You throw yourself into that.

• 1:08:47Speaker 04

  Right. Yeah.

• 1:08:48Bill Simmons?

  There's some, what's the next tennis tournament? You'll probably go face first into.

• 1:08:52Speaker 04

  I don't know what's next. Yeah, we'll get, I mean, uh.

• 1:08:54Bill Simmons?

  The French at some point.

• 1:08:55Speaker 04

  I lost with Matsuyama. We're gonna have some fun. I'm gonna post, uh, pictures of breasts online. You know, we'll do it all.

• 1:09:04Bill Simmons?

  Uh, hockey? You'll do some hockey? Oh, we have Olympics.

• 1:09:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:10Bill Simmons?

  That was one of the bets I lost. One of my Fanduel bets when I was in Boston. I lost.

• 1:09:15Speaker 04

  What'd you bet?

• 1:09:16Bill Simmons?

  Patriots with the USA women's hockey team to win the gold. The Pats money line with that was four to one. I'm like, I'm in. It's the all Patriot parlay. Patriots didn't hold up their, uh, their end, but I'm definitely betting the hockey. It doesn't make sense to the futures because it's going to be USA versus Canada probably in both games. So you just wait till the final game and bet.

• 1:09:38Speaker 04

  Well, is there, I mean, of course I did something stupid with Canada and US to win their groups. And it's, it's not, it's not flattering odds at all. It's like minus 240, but, um, I, I did it. I did it for, for a while here, for a lot.

• 1:09:52Bill Simmons?

  Oh my God. I did, I was watching the skiing on the, on the plane back yesterday.

• 1:09:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:57Bill Simmons?

  And they have these, I mean, no surprise, but they have these awesome drone cameras now that go with the skier. And I was like riveted. I thought.

• 1:10:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:06Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was awesome. I, like compared to what we grew up with when we're watching the Winter Olympics in 1976 and square TV. And you could barely see anything.

• 1:10:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:14Bill Simmons?

  But it was really cool to watch.

• 1:10:16Speaker 04

  And that was a bummer to wake up to the Lindsey Vonn news. Like I, I couldn't, we, we talked about it a lot on the, the Ringer gambling show. And they're like, well, it's a torn ACL. House is like, you could still, I was like, well, you could still what? You could 85 miles an hour downhill. It's like, yeah, but the damage is done. I was like, I gotta see this. This is crazy. And then unfortunately it has nothing to do with her leg.

• 1:10:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:36Speaker 04

  It's some kind of like the pole hit the butt, whatever. So, I mean, maybe.

• 1:10:39Bill Simmons?

  That's probably had something.

• 1:10:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, maybe she's thinking of other things and stuff, but, but, uh, suck. That, that's incredible feat either way.

• 1:10:46Bill Simmons?

  I like the Winter Olympics.

• 1:10:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:48Bill Simmons?

  So we'll have that. All right.

• 1:10:50Speaker 04

  We're good. Um, we're gonna be all right.

• 1:10:52Bill Simmons?

  All right. Well, you'll come on at some point this spring, right? We'll talk about something.

• 1:10:56Speaker 04

  Let's do it.

• 1:10:56Bill Simmons?

  March Madness.

• 1:10:57Speaker 04

  Lots going on.

• 1:10:59Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. I didn't like how happy you were tonight, but I'll forgive you.

• 1:11:02Speaker 04

  I had to do it.

• 1:11:03Bill Simmons?

  I know, I know.

• 1:11:04Speaker 04

  I got called out by a lot of people. I got called out, like you, you have to step up for America. I don't know if I did the job, but.

• 1:11:11Bill Simmons?

  Well, he, he's, he's still not maybe, but there is now a regular season versus playoffs thing. Like he turns into Drake maybe in the playoffs. Like that door is open for all that stuff now.

• 1:11:21Speaker 04

  That's fine. I'll be fine. Give him an MVP every year if he, if this is how he's going to behave in the postseason. I like it.

• 1:11:28Bill Simmons?

  I really like the Seattle fans. So if I, if we were going to get our ass kicked by a team, that would probably have been one of my number one picks.

• 1:11:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:36Bill Simmons?

  There's a lot worse teams that this could have happened to.

• 1:11:39Speaker 04

  No doubt.

• 1:11:39Bill Simmons?

  Um, all right. Hey, thanks to Pepsi for sponsoring our, uh, our live show here. Um, stop.

• 1:11:48Speaker 04

  Just roll through it. I mean, you know, go ahead. Go. Yeah. Thanks Pepsi.

• 1:11:51Bill Simmons?

  And also I wanted to mention Wednesday night, um, I'm doing a live show at the Wiltern in Los Angeles. But I, I, just for the people who are going to this, make sure you know the movie Heat is all I'm going to say.

• 1:12:05Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:12:06Bill Simmons?

  Heat's going to be prominently involved with the Wednesday night pod, but we have, and then we have new rewatchables coming tomorrow, which is going to be Ace Ventura. So that's all I have going. Thanks to Gao. Thanks to Eduardo. Thanks to Jack Wilson. Cause we did it. This, next year will be our 20th year of Guest the Lines.

• 1:12:24Speaker 04

  That's ridiculous.

• 1:12:24Bill Simmons?

  I think we have to do something special for this.

• 1:12:27Speaker 04

  What do you mean?

• 1:12:28Bill Simmons?

  Like Guest the Lines 20. I feel like we at least need a graphic or something.

• 1:12:32Speaker 04

  Well, Ringer 107 didn't work great. I feel like when we attach numbers to things.

• 1:12:35Bill Simmons?

  We're going back and we're going, you know what I was thinking with Ringer 107 though? I think, I think we have to move the picks closer to Sunday. Maybe you do one pick on your shows during the week, but then Sunday, I'd like to, to time it a little closer. So there'd actually be better picks. Don't you think? Cause I feel like we do a little better as we get closer to the actual games.

• 1:12:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think you're right.

• 1:12:56Bill Simmons?

  Trying to guess that 72 hours for the game.

• 1:12:59Speaker 04

  Our, our bets are better because it's like right on the spot. So.

• 1:13:02Bill Simmons?

  Well, the thing we always talk about is you really have a sense for what's too sexy of a pick.

• 1:13:08Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:13:08Bill Simmons?

  And you don't have that sense on a Wednesday or a Thursday, but by Sunday you're like, that team is now a stay away. Everybody loves them.

• 1:13:15Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:13:15Bill Simmons?

  But everybody loved the Seahawks today. That worked out.

• 1:13:17Speaker 04

  I was going to say that. Other than Drake, everybody, everybody loves Seattle.

• 1:13:21Bill Simmons?

  I asked a, a source at FanDuel, what would be the ultimate result for them?

• 1:13:26Speaker 04

  Win, but no cover.

• 1:13:28Bill Simmons?

  Seahawks by three is the dream scenario.

• 1:13:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:32Bill Simmons?

  And then everything else was whatever, but I think they probably.

• 1:13:35Speaker 04

  No part of that. He could have cut it to 16, but uh, no, it wasn't happening.

• 1:13:40Bill Simmons?

  All right, Cuz. Uh, great job by you this season. Good job by you overall. And the special last one. Good job by you. Good job by you, buddy. Bye, everybody on Netflix.

• 1:13:53Bill Simmons?

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• 1:14:30Bill Simmons?

  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. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys, Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment, and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters November 6. Get tickets now.

• 1:15:15Bill Simmons?

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