The Bears Go All In, the Brew Wrecking Crew, Yaxel-Mania, a Mega-Mailbag, and Week 8 NFL Picks With Tom Pelissero, Joe House, and Anthony Dabbundo

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Tom Pelissero to discuss the latest NFL trade news before diving into six NFL topics heading into Week 8. Then, Anthony Dabbundo and Joe House come on to talk about the end of the MLB season and House’s tooth problems. Finally, Bill and House answer some mailbag questions before making their Ringer 107 picks for the week. (0:00) Intro (2:32) NFL trade news and Lamar Jackson (23:42) Pick Six with Tom Pelissero (38:24) The end of the MLB season (55:24) House’s tooth problems (58:28) Mailbag (1:34:50) Ringer 107 Picks, Week 8 (01:59:59) NBA thoughts Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Tom Pelissero, Joe House, and Anthony Dabbundo Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit https://fanduel.com/playwithaplan to learn more about the resources and helplines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Carhartt. We spend a lot of time talking about football, the players, the coaches, the big plays, but there's a whole other team we rarely think about, the people who make the game possible, the workers building stadiums, paving parking lots, growing the grass, welding the goalposts, even making the footballs. They're committed to their craft and they're doing the work long before kickoff. Carhartt is proud to outfit those crews. So next time you're watching a game, take a second to appreciate the people behind it. Learn more at carhartt.com/jointhetrades.

• 0:37Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast, brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up a new rewatchables. On Monday, we did a nightmare on Elm Street to finish horror month, October, my favorite month. Halloween's coming. I've been enjoying, my algorithm is just feeding me stuff from the 1978 movie Halloween, one of my five or six favorite movies of all time. I saw some, they had 20 pictures from the set. That was on my algorithm, I went through all of them. The picture of the guy who was dressed as Michael Myers, holding the mask next to him and stuff like that, Jamie Lee Curtis trying the mask on. I love Halloween, always great to have it back. And then my son's birthday the next day. What a run, what a run for me. I wish A.J. Brown was healthy.

• 1:21Bill Simmons?

  Hey, we're going to talk football with Tom Pelissero at the top. He broke the Jeffrey Simmons trade today and he's going to tell us what else we can expect for the trade deadline and what's going on with Lamar. And then Anthony Dabbundo came on with me and Joe House to recap a pretty strange end to the baseball season as the Brewers just annihilated everybody and beat Tampa in five. And we're going to talk about lessons learned and whether baseball is going to come back. And we're also going to talk about the beef stew debacle with Dabbundo, that comes up too. House and I did a long mailbag, lines were crossed. And then last but not least, House and I have Ringer 107 picks for week eight. It's all next, we're going to take a break, Pearl Jam, and then Pelissero next. This is the Bill Simmons Podcast, presented by FanDuel.

• 2:04Bill Simmons?

  Make every NFL week more rewarding with FanDuel Rewards Club. You heard me. Just bet like you normally would, earn points in eligible subtle bets, win or lose, keep collecting points, level up and unlock bigger rewards. So keep an eye on your Rewards Club progress and see what you can unlock. This is your most rewarding season ever and it's with FanDuel. 21-plus select states or 18-plus DC or Wyoming, game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut.

• 3:03Bill Simmons?

  All right, we're recording late afternoon, Thursday before the Thursday night game. Tom Pelissero, so you can read his newsletter, The Sweep, you can hear him and watch him on The Ringer NFL Show. Once again, he had a big scoop today. Big trade, the Bears go and they get my brother, Jeffrey Simmons. I don't know if you know, we're related. Two first round picks and a fourth. For a team that I really liked as a Super Bowl contender before the trade, I was really impressed by them in the Pats game. Was that too much? Is that the right going rate for a 29-year-old defensive stud? Were you surprised when you heard the terms?

• 3:41Speaker 01

  I was, well, first of all, I was a little bit caught off guard by the trade because I'd gotten the sense in the past few days that the Titans, who had really been in a, we're not trading Jeff Simmons mode for years, right? Through every year, they're, they're kind of the shits and like people call. But this year was like, all right, it would have to be a big package. And so like, I knew different teams had called, they were being told it's at least two first round picks and that scared some other teams off. 49ers checked in before they traded for DeForest Buckner. The Colts were waiting for an offer from the Bears. And then it turns out they're starting to turn their attention to Jeff Simmons. There's just, there's not a lot of trades like this, defensive players for two first

• 4:25Speaker 01

  round picks and more. If you're the Titans, like this is a great haul. It really is because not only do you get the two ones and the fourth rounder in exchange, they sent a fifth round pick in 2028 back, but also he's due $57 million guaranteed over the 2027 and 2028 years. So that's a huge chunk, it's about like 8 to 10% of your salary cap was tied up in one guy who's going to be 30 and 31 these next two years. He's still a really good player.

• 4:54Bill Simmons?

  And you're going nowhere.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  You're probably far enough away that one defensive tackle who's a minimum at his peak, he's not an ascending player, he might be descending at this point, he's not going to get you there. So you get all the picks, you kind of reframe the season as, all right, we're rebuilding at least on, you know, in terms of like the big picture of the team, we want Cam Ward to keep getting better, we want the offense to keep getting better. If you're the Bears, remember they traded Gervin Dexter.

• 5:20Bill Simmons?

  Can we stay on the Titans for a second?

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, go for it.

• 5:23Bill Simmons?

  To me, this is, it's not going to happen with Cam Ward. We're going to be rebooting all of this and let's just start now. Because from everything we've seen from Cam Ward, I don't see it. I don't see anything to be excited about and I don't think, I just don't see the franchise QB thing with him. So you do this partly because you realize, even if we hit our draft picks, even if we hit a couple more free agency stuff, are we going to be any good next year? Probably not with this quarterback situation because I don't think he's playable.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  I would say they're more positive in the building than externally, just because like they're seeing like the small steps of Cam Ward getting better. And he is like, he's a guy who nobody, including in the pre-draft process, like no one questions how hard this dude works, how much he wants to be great, how he applies. It's just, they've been a mess. He's had three different play callers in a year and a half in the NFL. They've done everything wrong in Tennessee in terms of like getting this guy on track. But now you feel like you're starting to see it a little bit with Brian Daboll calling the offense. It's why they haven't traded Tony Pollard or Calvin Ridley or some of the other guys because they're like, we want to give him a chance. I think that it gives them flexibility, there's no doubt about that.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  And maybe that involves somewhere down the line, you're bundling some of those picks and going up and getting a quarterback. But I don't think they're at a crisis point on that at this point. They're just looking and going realistically like, how do you turn that down from the Bears right now? It was not a surprise.

• 6:48Bill Simmons?

  Can I be at a crisis point?

• 6:49Speaker 01

  It was not a surprise.

• 6:50Bill Simmons?

  Can I be at a crisis point with Cam Ward? Because I think I'm there. Like, I just don't see it. I don't think he's good enough. Bears, so they're like, fuck it, let's go. We have a QB and a rookie contract. This is the unique opportunity. We have good players, we've made, we've hit on most of our draft picks. Our defense is gimmicky, but it's not terrible. Like, we're doing discount Flores and now we can throw this guy in there and who knows? The league's wide open. It's not like there's a team you would point to and say, oh, that, we got to pass that team. I feel like there's like five or six teams that feel like they're in the mix, but nobody stood out to me yet. Would you agree with that?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Kind of an arms race too, in the NFC with the deals the 49ers and the Seahawks made earlier this week and now this deal. I was going to say that the Bears traded another defensive tackle, Gervin Dexter, to the Falcons right before the season. Now Jeff Simmons is coming back in and kind of filling that same spot. But he is a, he's a difference maker, he's a really good culture and locker room guy too. That's one of the reasons Tennessee, through all the stuff they went through, he was kind of the one untouchable guy on the roster. So they get a really good football player, they pay a really high price. The one thing I kept hearing from GMs today was, yes, they're in that rookie contract window, but they're at the end of it. Caleb's extension eligible after this season.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  So now you just committed $57 million cash in cap in the next two years to, to a guy who's 30, 31 years old and gave up your next two first round picks. Like, it's a pretty big bet. Ryan Poles has never been afraid to, you know, make big trades, but this is very much a, we're a Super Bowl caliber and this guy's going to be, you know, the guy who potentially puts us over the top.

• 8:30Bill Simmons?

  I mean, he's one of the five difference maker defensive linemen, right? He's got five or six, he's on some sort of list.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, if you take the edge guys out of it, I'd put Jeff Simmons up there. I mean, Jalen Carter, when he wants to be that guy, is certainly capable of being that guy. You know, Aaron Donald before the retirement, it's hard to tell what he is right now, but he would have been in that category. Yeah, yeah. Jeff Simmons is up there. And again, when you have a guy like that who's also like the best guy in your locker room that everybody kind of gravitates toward, that means something. Sometimes these big swing trades go south because like the dude you bring in is not the player who's going to positively influence everybody else. Like Jeff Simmons, his whole reputation is he is that guy. And I love that Ben Johnson, like everything about Ben Johnson, the way that he calls a game, the way that he approaches, you know, his team, press conferences, like everything

• 9:19Speaker 01

  is, we're going big, we don't give a fuck what you think about us, we are going to try to kick your ass in every way possible. This absolutely has Ben Johnson written all over like, we'll figure it out with the first round picks, give me Jeff Simmons right now, let's go win some games.

• 9:33Bill Simmons?

  And it sets up an incredible Monday night game now. Because I think Seattle and Chicago would be the two teams that I still believe, they are my bet my life teams in the NFC to get there. Because I did, San Francisco, how many injuries can they take? And then the Rams just seem like you're from hell and I don't really like anybody else. But that, and then they, then the, the other team gets Quentin Nelson, right? Seahawks, which just throw him in there with, when they're getting running backs back and I don't know.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Literally could be blocking Jeff Simmons on Monday night after these trades this week.

• 10:11Bill Simmons?

  Wouldn't you say that's the game of the year now? Have we had a better like playoff preview? You know, that now we've had enough of a sample size with all the games. It's week eight, kind of have a feeling for who's, who's going to make a run or not. And I really, those are the two teams I'm watching. Because Seattle, as good as they looked on Sunday night, I didn't know how much of that was the Chiefs, which I guess could be the next thing we talk about.

• 10:38Bill Simmons?

  The Chiefs kinda, I have them coming later and Ringer 107 and I'm gonna be going the other way. I just don't see it. I don't think they have the firepower and now what Seattle did last week, but just say, all right, we'll take out Walker. What else you got? And they didn't have anything. Not to mention the offensive line. What is their offensive line gonna be on the road like we saw last week? What are people in the league saying about the Chiefs these days? Do they think they're gonna make moves or what?

• 11:04Speaker 01

  They do think they're gonna make moves. I talked specifically about that, that game last Sunday night. I talked to one GM today who would watch the tape and I'm like, was it just a matter of like, they put everything into, to stop McKenna Walker? He's like, no, they were playing quarters. They weren't like playing eight in the box the whole time. They just, they did what Seattle does and they absolutely kicked the Chiefs ass.

• 11:22Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  If you're the Chiefs, that's concerning because I mean, look at the defenses that they've faced this season. It hasn't exactly been murderers row. It's like, is this the real Chiefs where Kenneth Walker can't put up 200 yards every week? And then we have no weapons? I mean, it's Xavier Worthy and then you're throwing to Jalen Royals? Like that's, that's what you're working with. To me, that was the takeaway from the game, which was the Chiefs. And I've reported this this week, like they've been calling around for like a month and trying to find receiver help. They could get Rashi back, Rashi Rice, he was practicing again this week, but you still don't have like that dominant type of receiver that they haven't had since Tyreek Hill. They need to acquire one, I think that they will.

• 12:00Bill Simmons?

  Might actually be Tyreek Hill.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  If he can run, if he can walk. I mean, at this point, I don't know that Tyreek's ready to play at all in 2026, but they'll, they'll do whatever it takes to try to fix that spot. I, I believe that they'll go out, they'll trade for one. I don't know if it'll be next week or the week after. Trade deadline's 12 days away, so it's gotta be soon. But between, you know, whether it's Brian Thomas Jr., is it Josh Downs? Like they'll get somebody in that'll help mitigate it because you can't go to into a game and it's like, well, if the run game's not working, we're throwing to 100-year-old Travis Kelsey or Xavier Worthy who can't catch. Like that's a bad combination and that's kinda what they're stuck with right now.

• 12:37Bill Simmons?

  There's no Garrett Wilson possibility, is there?

• 12:40Speaker 01

  I don't believe so. I, after the whole, the exchange on the sideline and Geno's there and everything last week, like that what I was told was absolutely not. Absolutely not trading. The Jets aren't in the phase, like they were last year when they traded Sauce and Quinn and Williams. They're not in, we're tearing it apart. I don't think the Jets are gonna be particularly active. I could see them trading some down the line guy, but I don't, I just don't see it being Garrett Wilson.

• 13:04Bill Simmons?

  I do like that the NFL is becoming more like the NBA. We're just getting these monster trades now. It feels like every couple of months, something's happening where, I don't know what, I, usually these teams were so much more careful, especially during the season, of trading for impact guys and trading picks and, I don't know. It, it, it kinda fits into the analytic revolution and how coaches are approaching these games. Everybody's like, fuck it, let's go. Fourth and five from my own 30, ah, fuck it. And now it's kind of drifted into the trades, which I think is more fun. Cause if, if some of these teams like, why wouldn't Tennessee trade Jeffrey Simmons? Like I completely agree with the logic behind it. By the time they're good again, he's gonna be 32.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  That's what you're trying to get to is like, you're in or you're out. That's what generates more trade interest. Remember, I mean, the, the trade deadline was week six, like 12 years ago. It was so early in the season. Then they pushed it back two weeks to week eight. Then a couple of years ago, they pushed it to week nine. There are some aggressive GMs who would love it to be even later than that. The NFL's always been worried that it ends up like the NBA and you've got like the 70 win team playing the 13 win team at the end of the season in a game that means something to somebody. And it's just like not competitive. They've never wanted that. But what happened, you mentioned analytics. It was really like, I go back to the Brock Osweiler trade. That's what changed everything because if you remember 2017, the Texans had signed Brock

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Osweiler to an ill-fated contract. He's got, I think it was $16 million fully guaranteed left on the second year of his deal. The Texans have no use for him. The Browns trade for Brock Osweiler and a second round pick.

• 14:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  And it was solely a, a true salary dump. They bought a second round pick for like $16 million. And after that, it hasn't been anything to that scale, but it's the number of times that's happening now where there's teams using money actively to go buy picks. You know, some of the flagrant examples were the Dolphins traded for Akib Talib one time when he was on injured reserve, just to pay him the $5 million and they got a draft pick. They did it with Ryan Tannehill. The Broncos did it with Von Miller a few years ago where Von helped the Rams win the Super Bowl, but they got second and third round picks because they paid him like $9 million to get the picks. Like, that's become part of the equation. It's not just, all right, we're gonna get more aggressive with using future picks. Cause unlike the NBA, you can only trade picks three years down the line.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  It's also, all right, what if we also pay it? Then what would you be willing to give up? There's not many trades like what the Colts did the other day where they made two significant trades and they paid $0 for Buckner or Nelson going away. You watch some of the trades that happen these next couple of weeks, you'll get the final details to be like, hang on, they're, they're paying how much money to make this guy go away?

• 15:49Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  And it's all, it, it's part of the, the broader thinking, which is like, if you can buy picks and we've already allocated that cash and cap to the player anyway, why would we not do it?

• 15:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you did a good job of explaining that on the sweep about, what are they paying Nelson? Like $900,000 a game basically?

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:06Bill Simmons?

  So you get rid of him now and, yeah.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  It's like, why didn't they wait two weeks? It's like, well, that would've cost him to keep Buckner Nelson or $4 million and they could've gotten hurt and you could've been left with nothing. And you know, or it's just like the comp pick, they're like, oh, you would've gotten a third round comp pick for Quentin Nelson. Maybe not. That, that would've required Quentin Nelson to be healthy, to sign a contract, for you to not sign any free agents that offset that pick. And you don't even know who your GM's gonna be. So like, you take the picks now. I, I thought the Colts got good value.

• 16:36Bill Simmons?

  Also like it's Quentin Nelson, like somebody falls into the back of his leg on a run play and now he's gone and you're getting jack shit.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  30, 31 years old, like there's, there's so many things that can happen. Like take the, take the good deal. If you think it's the right value, take the deal.

• 16:51Bill Simmons?

  One thing that I've noticed with football that I think is, cause this I guess happens in basketball too. You know, it's like, oh, DeForest Buckner, Niners got him. It's like, he's not really DeForest Buckner anymore. He hasn't been DeForest Buckner for four years. Like I watched the Colts this year, people are doing whatever they wanted against them. So you're getting a different version of the guy, but it's a name guy.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Right. And that's what a lot of these trades are.

• 17:16Bill Simmons?

  Cause pay, cause when the Niners got him, it was like, where were the Bears? They needed to defend, obviously they, they thought they could do a lot better than Buckner, but I don't know. I just feel, my fear is that, uh, that's gonna be AJ Brown and the Patriots. What I just said about Buckner. You have, you have to look at your texts at some point, cause I had, we did, you sent me a rundown of, did you get anything yet?

• 17:39Speaker 01

  It didn't, no, not yet, but it didn't have an, yeah, you, I did not have AJ Brown on the list.

• 17:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, this is, I was telling you that the Pats fans are freaking out about AJ. Uh, let's go to the next one, which is.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  I'll just say this with AJ Brown, okay? We, he had the known ankle issue, we know that. When you hear like the knee is ballooning up, like that's happened to him his whole career. A big part of the reason Tennessee traded AJ Brown to Philly four years ago was because they didn't think his knee was gonna hold up and he wasn't practicing. He gets to Philly, he barely practiced. He was still a pretty good player. Like, does this cause him? I don't have all the details yet. Does this cause him to miss a game or two or four? I don't know yet, but like him popping up, it's like, oh, an issue with his knee? It's like, yeah, the guy's got a knee that he's had to manage basically his whole career.

• 18:25Bill Simmons?

  I thought the Thursday Bears game, I was alarmed by how unfast he looked and how it looked like, oh, we talked about this after the game. You came on. I said about how it looked like he was running on hot cement or something. Like he wasn't like pushing off, so, well, we'll see what happens. Hopefully you get a text before the end. Next one, Lamar Jackson. So, Ringer 107, he, they, he's gonna come up in a pick. I think he plays this week. I do think it's weird that they never seem to know how healthy he is or when he's gonna play, no matter who the coach is, cause now we have a different coach. What's going on with the organization and Lamar and just the communication stuff with them?

• 19:10Bill Simmons?

  Because it seems like every year, it seems like the weirdest situation in the league.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Part of it is Lamar doesn't have an agent. He has nobody that speaks for him or like corrects the record. So like the external stuff, and this goes all the way back to when he was in the pre-draft process and people were trying to, you know, say he should go play wide receiver, whether it was in his contract negotiations and how he handled those, like his only real advisor is his mother. Like nothing's just like the way it is with every other player. And so you get into these situations where like, all right, you get hurt, right? Every agent has a protocol. It's all right, we're gonna get these scans, now we're gonna send them to these three doctors, get it out, we're gonna get second opinions, we're gonna gather, we're gonna come up with a plan, be in concert with the team. Like, I'm sure there's some level of that with Lamar, but like, it's not the normal process.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Then there's just the reality that Lamar, you know, wants to be 100% if he's on the field. Last year, he was out there with the hamstring and wasn't himself. I didn't think it was the same Lamar the whole rest of the season.

• 20:08Bill Simmons?

  I agree.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  After he had the hamstring in October, he never looked like, it was like Saquon the other night where you're like, is he, but what's he doing? Like he doesn't look like he can open it up, like he's slowing down. That was Lamar to me last year. Now he's got the ankle, but where you get into what you're talking about was, so Thursday, last Thursday, he's taking scout team reps, right? And that's because like he's just, it's part of his return to play protocol. He does enough that Friday, it's like, all right, he's gonna take first team reps. So he takes the first team reps on Friday and I don't know exactly how they structure their practices, but that's probably like your red zone day and Lamar's taking the majority of the snaps. And then by Saturday, it's, he's not playing. So you took all those reps.

• 20:47Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  The only practice he did for the week from Tyler Huntley, you wouldn't do that if you didn't think Lamar is playing. They, they thought he was close. He's taken all the first team reps the past two days. So I'm with you, I think he plays against the Bills. I just, there's always a level of uncertainty because he doesn't have the same support system and advice system around him that other players do. I don't think it has to do with, he's not putting himself out there because he doesn't have a contract. Like the Ravens have been trying to do a contract with Lamar for two years. He's making $52 million. He's doing another 52 next year. I think it's more so just, he's a player who is, wants to make sure that he's 100% that probably isn't having the same advice around him. And it just leads to some of these situations where things seem weird, even if internally

• 21:33Speaker 01

  they've got a better handle on exactly where he stands.

• 21:35Bill Simmons?

  So you don't think there's any scenario where they go?

• 21:42Bill Simmons?

  Not, we don't want to do this anymore.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  If, if it happened, it would be after the season.

• 21:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's what I meant. But like, this could be the farewell run with Lamar.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  I mean, you, you never know, but all, what I do know is they've been staunch in wanting Lamar to be the guy and trying to do a contract extension with him. Which is going to be at a bananas number. You wouldn't be doing that if you wanted to trade him. If we get to after this year and he's got one year left on his contract and you can't get something done, then I think you start to explore your options. But, I mean, there, there's like cap, cap considerations if you, if you were to cut him loose or if you don't do the extension. All this stuff would accelerate. Like, there's all kinds of issues it creates. I'd say we're getting ahead of ourselves on that. Let's see how he plays. But this is, it's been part of Lamar experience, whether it's in October or December and January. There's just periods where you'd love him to be available. And the biggest question on him coming out, it wasn't just, is he a quarterback or not?

• 22:34Speaker 01

  It was also like, how's he gonna hold up? Like, he's not the biggest dude. He's gotten bigger and more rocked up. But how, how healthy is he gonna stay? That's been kind of part of the story of Lamar's career, even though when he's on the field, he remains one of the most electric players out there.

• 22:47Bill Simmons?

  Well, spoiler alert, I picked Ravens plus three in Buffalo and Ringer 107 coming up. And I think when he's playing, he's still one of the best four quarterbacks in the league. And I just feel like he should be able to go up and down the field on Buffalo. But what do I know?

• 23:03Speaker 01

  They got, they got a lot of weapons around him too. Like, when he's been out there with Declan Doyle, they've been pretty dangerous.

• 23:08Bill Simmons?

  How about Flowers has been, Flowers was always good and they paid him and people were like, whoa, that much money? Flowers has been incredible. I mean, he's been one of the best five receivers in the league.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  I think I probably watched more Boston College football than any of your listeners as a B C guy. Like, I got to meet Zay while he was there. Like, he broke every record. He was unbelievable. He is still like, when, when he's on and getting like the catch and run opportunities, like, he is absolutely incredible. He's had a few, you know, catching or ball security issues over the year and then he'll have, if you're a fantasy player, he'll have those flat games where you're like, how did Zay Flowers get point nine points yesterday? He'll have those, but like, there's some games that he absolutely takes over just because he's such a unique. He's not a big guy. He's very fast. He's very quick in small areas and he can, you know, he can make you miss and give you problems all day.

• 23:57Bill Simmons?

  It's weird because they're different, but he does remind me of like AFC JSN, basically. Where they get him the ball in space and then you're like, oh, they're gonna tackle him. And then he's just still going and then all of a sudden he's cut it the other way. I don't know. He's terrifying. All right, we're going quickie on the, on the pick six here.

• 24:17Bill Simmons?

  Quick questions. Jonathan Taylor, yes or no? Is he getting moved?

• 24:21Speaker 01

  I would say as of now, no. It's, it's gonna take a lot to get him, you know, in terms of the trade package. It's probably like a little under what Christian McCaffrey went for a couple of years ago, which was, I think, a two, a three, a four and a five. It's gonna have to be up there. And it's also teams, like, he's due enough money that some of the teams that have other considerations, it's hard for them to do those deals. Like, people keep bringing up the Vikings. I don't see the Vikings making that type of splash. They gotta line out the door, the Dallas Turners of the world, waiting for extensions. All of a sudden, you, you trade your future for Jonathan Taylor when your new G M hasn't even run a draft yet? I, I just, I don't see it. It's always possible injuries happen, something comes up. I don't think right now Jonathan Taylor gets traded.

• 25:02Bill Simmons?

  You know what would be a fun trade, ironically, because they just traded together, but if Judarian Price was in the trade for Taylor?

• 25:12Bill Simmons?

  Right. They just spent a first round pick for him. That, that would be the basketball version of a trade like this, right? We have this young up and coming guy on a cheap contract who is pedigree, top 30 pick. We'll give you him for Jonathan Taylor and a fifth rounder. Let's call it a day.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Pretty sure Seattle was looking at Jonathan Taylor when they saw how Quentin Nelson was mauling people and decided, let's go ahead and trade for Nelson. He's gonna make the difference. They get, they get Charbonne back. He should play this week. Price is probably gonna play this week. So like, they're in a pretty good spot.

• 25:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they at least give it a week or two. Uh, next quickie. Eagles trades, no trades? What do they do? Are they done?

• 25:48Speaker 01

  I would just say they're two and five. They're on a five game losing streak. Most teams, you'd go like, okay, they're gonna do like what the Colts just did. I don't, knowing now how he works, I'd be very surprised if he trades the core dudes, like the Saquans. Devante Smith, both those guys are banged up too. Like Zach Bond, I don't see him trading any of those players. He takes so much pride. Like he did with Jason Kelsey and Fletcher Cox and, and guys like that of like Brandon Graham, their one uniform players. Lane Johnson too, like they, they were here and they were like the glue through multiple eras of Eagles football. Like, that's how those guys are. And they made the playoffs eight of the last nine years. Like, I, I wouldn't be surprised. Look at their schedule. They got Washington this week. We all get to watch that game on Sunday night.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  And then they got the Giants the following week. If the Eagles win those two games, they'll be like maybe a half game out of the division lead. And at that point, if I'm Howie, I'm like, I might trade for some people. I might just take a run at this. Like, my defense is plenty good. My offense can get healthy. Maybe there's even a quarterback out there that can help me if, if Tanner McKee's kind of scuffling. Like, I don't put anything past him. The only thing I don't see Howie doing, he loves to trade. He probably makes some trades, but I just, I don't see him giving guys away just because they're in a contract year. And I really don't see Saquon, Devante, Bond, those core guys. I don't see him getting traded.

• 27:11Bill Simmons?

  J J McCarthy,

• 27:14Bill Simmons?

  who is now the, uh, the hero of the Giants fans. So that QB trade worked. Is there gonna be another QB that could be moved or what do we think?

• 27:24Speaker 01

  The one that I, and I think you and I have talked about this a couple of times. The one guy I still want to know what happens is Kirk Cousins. Yeah, 12 days away. The Raiders are in a four game losing streak. One of the factors and the fact that we haven't talked about, you know, like Mac Jones and guys like that, like, no one's gotten hurt. Guys have had, outside of Jackson Dart and obviously the Jalen Hurts situation with blood clots in his lungs. Every other quarterback that's gotten hurt has missed like one or two or three games. Has been nothing long term. But Cousins is the one, half the league runs a derivative of the offense that he plays in. He's playing at a really high level and he's got a $10 million guaranteed roster bonus next March.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  That if the Raiders have the opportunity to offload that money, to get a pick for a guy who they're probably gonna end up cutting in March and play the number one pick. It's hard because you're in the playoff chase. They win these next two, maybe you're five and four and you're like, you know what? Let's just ride this out with Kirk. It's going great. But even like the Eagles, if you're sitting there and you're like, his former backup quarterback, Sean Mannion, his good buddy who he kept in the league as a player for several years, is our offensive coordinator? We can bring in Kirk and just go play that offense? Like, maybe we got something here. Like, I just, I would not take that off the table until we get all the way to November 10.

• 28:41Bill Simmons?

  I can't say he's moving great. He's playing okay. Yeah, but I, I would say he's moving as the worst he's ever been. So the Eagles at Washington, home Giants, bye week.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:56Bill Simmons?

  Right before the trade deadline. And then they go home Pittsburgh, at Dallas, at Arizona, home Indianapolis. And probably they need to get to, I would say, nine wins.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  It's completely doable. Yeah.

• 29:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they didn't, they don't have a tie, right? Yeah.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Giants are four, two and one atop the division. It's completely doable to get your nine wins.

• 29:18Bill Simmons?

  Seven and, what's that, seven and three? Yeah.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Seven and three the rest of the way. And then if you get in the playoffs.

• 29:27Bill Simmons?

  So they win those next two, it's five and three.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  You're five, yeah. So you're sitting there and now all of a sudden it's like, all right, we can get this and is there a possibility our quarterback can come back if we make the playoffs?

• 29:39Bill Simmons?

  My counter is the Eagles look terrible and it feels like they're getting worse every week.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  I mean, the defense looked so good in the Jacksonville game.

• 29:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  And then the air night against the Cowboys, it was just like.

• 29:50Bill Simmons?

  What happened to Cooper DeJean? Like, that guy was like, in the running to be discussed as like an all pro candidate. That's the way you cover anyone anymore.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  They also lost Reid Blankenship. They had some moving parts on the back end. I think all that stuff kind of plays into it. Yeah, I mean, Dejean's still a good, good player. Jalen Carter's a, you know, really good player, but like Jalen Carter wasn't very good in the game against Dallas. It was just, it's one of those strange games.

• 30:13Bill Simmons?

  I thought they were terrible in that game.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  The defense was bad. Saquon, I mean, Saquon breaks that first run and you're like, oh, here we go. And then he's like parallel with the guy and it's like, nope, not gonna do that. And just kind of like wanders out of bounds. It was like, this, this is gonna be a battle, a battle for. I mean, credit to Saquon for trying to go, you know, he's close enough, but like, you saw all the stuff where he's being like, I'm being smart. It's like, if you can't open it up, you know, that's the home run play that a team with Tanner McKee at quarterback kind of needs, unfortunately.

• 30:41Bill Simmons?

  All right, last one. Last quickie one. Steelers Browns, five and two versus five and two this weekend.

• 30:49Bill Simmons?

  The winner of this game, do they start getting ideas? They start looking at the trade deadline and being like, huh?

• 30:57Speaker 01

  I would say both teams have already been looking. Um, I could see the Browns adding, you know, maybe an edge player. There's been so much talk about like trading away Jerry Judy. That's possible, but right now he's like making big plays, like one big play a game. Jerry Judy's making, cause they're worried about Denzel Boston in case he can set CEO. And like, I could see the Browns adding at the deadline, absolutely. Then the Steelers, like they've been making calls, especially on receivers for weeks. Now they should, they should get Michael Pittman back relatively soon.

• 31:26Bill Simmons?

  Roman Wilson too.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Roman Wilson also should be back in a couple of weeks. Once his window opens, so like it's not as significant of an issue. But you can imagine, if you can go out and add one of these receivers that's available, with the way Aaron Rodgers is playing, which is better than I think almost anyone on the planet would have thought 42 year old Aaron Rodgers was playing. Get the six and two this week. It's a fun story, man. Like Aaron Rodgers, the final ride back with Mike McCarthy. And it's, it's like a, it's a Disney movie where you don't know if his arm's going to just fall off at the end, or if he's actually going to, you know, win it all. Like it'll be like the sad fun ending or the actual good ending. But, um, I, I think they're fun to watch. The Pittsburgh Steelers in 2026 with Aaron Rodgers at quarterback are fun to watch.

• 32:06Bill Simmons?

  They have some games that seem much harder when you looked at their schedule in August than now, like at Philadelphia, week 11, that seemed like a terrifying game in August. Now I don't know if that's terrifying. Home for Houston, oh no, here comes Houston's defense. Well, Houston's defense sucks. Uh, they're, they have Carolina at home in week 16 and they're at Tennessee, week 17. You can kind of pretty easily patch together 10 wins for them, even if they don't do anything.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  And you have the Ravens twice in the last four weeks, which is totally dependent on

• 32:40Bill Simmons?

  Right, who knows with Lamar.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  How is Lamar at that point?

• 32:42Bill Simmons?

  But the

• 32:42Speaker 01

  He's out there, you're, yeah, it's a tough game. If he's not, not so much.

• 32:46Bill Simmons?

  And then Cleveland, who had, I think had one of the three easiest schedules in the league, even before we knew what some of these teams are going to be. I didn't have the balls to take them as a playoff team because they're Cleveland. But this, it's, it's a week of great matchups. Like where we're, like there's some fork in the road moments. Like you look at Atlanta and the Bucks, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, like some of these. And then we get, uh, Seattle and Chicago as a possible title preview. Okay. So you never got an AJ Brown answer for me?

• 33:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 33:15Bill Simmons?

  Other than, I think Callie Roseman already won the trade somehow. Even though it's not even week eight yet, not feeling bad about it.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  We'll find out whether he uses that first round pick in 2028 or bundles it to go up and get somebody this year.

• 33:28Bill Simmons?

  Tom Pelissero, you did it again today. You scooped everybody.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Live, live from the

• 33:34Bill Simmons?

  Random Thursday morning out of nowhere, you did it.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Do you want, do you want the very brief story of how that happened?

• 33:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, let's hear it.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  I was, uh, riding the stationary bike. I don't know what, what, if we're sponsored by any company, but a stationary bike with an instructor. Finished the ride, like, you know, towel myself off, like literally, literally getting off the bike still with the stupid shoes on, you know, with like the little things on the bottom. I get a text about Simmons to Chicago and my brain is going, there's only one Simmons this can be. It was sort of on my radar.

• 34:06Bill Simmons?

  You were like, Bill Simmons?

• 34:07Speaker 01

  I knew, I'm just like, Justin, is there a different one? Cause it was just like, I, I thought, I didn't, those trades don't happen on Thursdays. They just don't. And then sure enough, it was real and it was, and I got another follow up text, two ones and a four. I was like, oh my God. But it's just like, you don't know. Like I would have thought, I literally was on the phone with a GM last night being like, oh, well, that was probably it for this week. So we'll get going again on Monday. And then right after that trade, he's like, guess not. Thursday morning trades, we're back, baby.

• 34:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Cause you did the, you did the mailbag with the trade candidates and you had Tennessee and it's, it didn't even seem like you thought Simmons was in play.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Well, I was asked about Pollard and Ridley.

• 34:44Bill Simmons?

  No, I know, but it was

• 34:45Speaker 01

  I was saving that for Saturday and then he got traded on Thursday.

• 34:48Bill Simmons?

  Oh, so you thought it was in play?

• 34:50Speaker 01

  It was in play. The price was going to be high, but the fact that there was a price, when teams come back going, yeah, it's going to take two ones. What that means is they trade, they'll trade them for two ones.

• 35:01Bill Simmons?

  So if the, if the price is floated, that means I'm receptive.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  If a price is clear from the seller team, that usually means they're open to selling them at that price. Otherwise it's no. If it's no, then it's take your best shot, maybe.

• 35:19Bill Simmons?

  So the stages are like, I'm hanging up, fuck you. I can't believe you asked me.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 35:25Bill Simmons?

  Oh my God, that you, it would, it would, you'd be a crazy price. We're, we're not even considering it. But then the third level is

• 35:33Speaker 01

  It'd have to be two ones. It'd have to be two ones and more.

• 35:38Bill Simmons?

  So when you're So when you're distinct about what it is, that's a wink, wink.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  That is the sign. I mean, if you put a, you know, stale, a sale sticker on an item in a store, changes a lot versus like it being on this, you know, being like in someone's cart. You know, like it's their child that they brought to the store. The child's not for sale. You put a sticker on it, maybe it is.

• 35:59Bill Simmons?

  So if I call the Jets and I want Garrett Wilson.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Absolutely not. Fuck you, Bill.

• 36:05Bill Simmons?

  They hang up. Okay.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  I believe that would be a fuck you. Yes.

• 36:09Bill Simmons?

  Like you call Atlanta and you ask for Bijon Robinson and they're like, fuck off.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Right. And there's only like 50 of those guys in the entire league.

• 36:16Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Like everybody else, like you call, you call Miami right now. I mean, you call Tennessee, like everyone, it's like, well, we'll listen. How, Howie will listen on anything. If you call him at the Eagles, but like, I don't think he's getting two first round picks for Saquon Barkley right now. I don't think that he wants to, you know, he's got his, his core guys, but outside of like, you know, the Josh Allens of the world, Justin Jefferson, like anybody else in this league is available if you're willing to pay enough.

• 36:44Bill Simmons?

  If I, if I got the Garrett Wilson call, I'd be like, oh, there's no way. But it like two firsts and a second, we'd have a meeting.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Well, and then if you're the GM who called and you get the fuck you, you could go back and then just go, all right, I know you said that, but what about two ones? No one thinks they're going to get that for Garrett Wilson, which is part of why you're saying, no.

• 37:06Bill Simmons?

  I find it hard to believe that the Jets would turn down two first round picks from the Chiefs for Garrett Wilson.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  They're not going to get, they're not going to get offered that is the point.

• 37:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Now, if you call, you could try, but right now the answer is absolutely not. They're not looking to trade him. I mean, Sauce Gardner last year, two ones, but they also kind of were thinking about it at that point.

• 37:26Bill Simmons?

  Which now seems like one of the worst trades of the decade.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  They now have the Colts first round pick, which is for a team that's blowing itself up and the Cowboys first round pick that could end up being significantly higher and their own first round pick. They could have three top 10 picks.

• 37:43Bill Simmons?

  The only problem is there's no quarterbacks to draft because all of them are flamed out.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  You gotta, you just gotta pray that some of these guys hit the draft that it doesn't get. Trinidad Jambless has to come out unless he can soon get a seventh year or whatever it is.

• 37:58Bill Simmons?

  Uh, congrats on another scoop. Good to see you. Listen to Tom on Ringer NFL and read the sweep on Saturday. Can't wait to find out more. Good to see you.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Thanks, man.

• 38:06Bill Simmons?

  We'll be back with, uh, House and DeBundo after this. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. Who's going to be FanDuel's hardwood hero? All it takes is one player having a huge scoring night to unlock another reward on FanDuel. Here's how it works. Use your 50% profit boost on any eligible NBA bet. And if any player across the NBA drops 40 or more points that night, you will get another 50% profit boost. Here's the fun part, doesn't have to be a player you bet on. Check it out on the FanDuel app to get started. Make this your most rewarding season ever with FanDuel. 21 plus select states or 18 plus DC or Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com.

• 38:47Bill Simmons?

  Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. All right, recording this 2:30 PT. It's about seven hours after game six of the WNBA finals ended. Joe House is here as always on Thursdays. We have Anthony Dabbundo joining us because it's the end of the baseball season. And also it's only fair that you defend yourself after, um, two and a half weeks of just beef stew rhetoric allegations. I get an email every day about it. I got an email recently from somebody who said Chang should have to make you, um, a bull penis stew that you have to eat. I thought that, but actually like really try to make it delicious. Uh, what's your life been like since the stew debacle?

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Honestly, I can't believe how much it broke containment. Uh, you know, it was more of a pocket veto than an outright veto. I think people are, are coming to me like Dave Chang walked up and said, would you please try my stew or would you like to try stew? And I said, no.

• 39:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  You know, it was more of a pocket veto. Now I'm not defending my honor here. I regret not trying the stew.

• 39:54Bill Simmons?

  You just never got up to try it. Is, it was never offered to you, but you also never went in the kitchen and said, I'm going to have this, whereas House went in six times.

• 40:03Speaker 03

  That's not a distinction. The fucking chef was there. He carried the fucking stew in through the front door with his like, you know, lumbering. Like, oh, oh, he didn't give you a personal invitation? He didn't give anybody a personal invitation.

• 40:16Bill Simmons?

  It was assumed.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  He just walked in, he's just a top five chef on planet earth who walked in with a giant thing of food that he had made lovingly, you know, days before. That, that was your invitation when this chef walked in with the food.

• 40:31Bill Simmons?

  With carrying pots of food.

• 40:33Speaker 03

  You were invited to eat it.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  The other thing is that it wasn't like I went to the house anticipating a meal. And I'm not, you know, throwing shade at Bill here, but the text from you It told me to come over to watch football. The text from you said, come over to watch football. I have a seat for you. Now I was like, I know House is there, but do I bring my own? Do I eat before? So I ate before a full breakfast sandwich and a, a banana bread muffin.

• 40:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  To the point where I was full. So again, I regret not trying a small piece of it for sure. But this wasn't like I went over to Dave Chang's house to have a meal and then said, I'm good. It was, I didn't even know Dave Chang was going to be there. He walked in, I was like, oh, Dave Chang, nice to meet you in real life. But I will say this too. I won a bet with Tate last week. We bet on the Syracuse UNC game, tough beat for him. And he owes me a dinner now. Should we go to Major Domo?

• 41:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think, I think that's a must. Or the, or the place in Central City Mall, one of those two places.

• 41:29Speaker 03

  My only piece of advice, if you go to Major Domo, bring your credit card.

• 41:33Bill Simmons?

  And don't tell Chang.

• 41:35Speaker 03

  No freebies. You're not getting any freebies. Tate might get some freebies, but you are not.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  Tate's buying, so it's on him. He lost the bet.

• 41:41Bill Simmons?

  Might get the spit roast. Dabbundo, baseball ended, baseball may never come back. So we thought we'd spend this first segment talking about the world series, the baseball playoffs, lessons we learned and, uh, and, and when we're going to see baseball again. I don't know. You take the floor.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  My current prediction is Memorial Day. And that's with zero inside knowledge or awareness of anything that's going on. But I have enough friends around baseball who think generally Memorial Day is the expected. Cause you have to remember, they have to sign the agreement eventually. And then there has to be some type of muted or shortened spring training to get these players ready. So they don't all get hurt right away. So yeah, Memorial Day, we would lose about a month and a half.

• 42:25Bill Simmons?

  Hundred games, like 110 game season?

• 42:28Speaker 02

  Something like that.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  That's pretty good.

• 42:29Bill Simmons?

  By the way, House doesn't mind this because April has the NBA playoffs, NHL playoffs, NFL draft.

• 42:36Speaker 03

  The Masters.

• 42:37Bill Simmons?

  The Masters.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, that'd be fine. That's a great start to the baseball season. Own that, baseball.

• 42:43Bill Simmons?

  Masters with one handed gymnastics.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  Biggest losers are the spring training sites. I mean, Florida and Arizona, so many of those, you know, localities probably wouldn't get spring training. They probably just do it at their local stadiums and like local practice fields. Once the weather's good enough up north in April and May, but I mean, we're all hoping they can come to the agreement. I don't think anybody's optimistic though.

• 43:06Bill Simmons?

  All right. So what do you guys give as a grade for this entire major league baseball season? I'm going to give it a B plus. I'll start. I really liked ABS. I liked that the Dodgers lost. I thought that was super important. I liked that big teams were in there. I like that we had some wild cards like Mizerowski out of nowhere. The Pete Crow Armstrong was really fun. The World Series, I just kind of wished we had a big market versus a small market. When it's the two small markets, it's tough. I don't really know who to root for, and I don't really have a vested interest. But if the Brewers had gone against like the Yankees, I would have actually like genuinely cared. So, but that might just be me. Did you care, Dabbundo?

• 43:49Speaker 02

  I did. I was excited to see the quality of, you know, the run prevention machines, which we'll get into the themes of the baseball season. But just these two teams who have been at the forefront of winning despite their low payrolls for the last five to 10 years. They've been the two teams that have kind of bucked the trend of small market teams generally not being as competitive as big market teams. They're them, along with Cleveland are kind of the exception that proves the rule. But they played baseball in a very different brand than a lot of the critics have complained, right? So, so many people, and this is my problem with the people who complain about the size of the markets. Oh, we want to have small market teams compete. We don't want to just see the big teams.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  And then it's the same people who complain about, oh, you know, everybody just hits home runs now. That's all baseball is, home runs, strikeouts and walks. Well, you have these two small market teams who aren't reliant on the long ball, who hit, you know, bunt for hits and who play great defense and who run the bases and steal all that. And then people complained about the World Series anyway. So you really can't win with, with that. But it was not a particularly overwhelmingly competitive series where you felt like the series was swinging one way or the other on one pitch. That, and that was not the case. And in fact, the single play that's, that flipped the Brewers championship odds more than any other happened in the second playoff game. It was game two against the Padres when Churio hit the game winning single off of Mason Miller.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  That was their turning point, their biggest play of the playoffs by championship win probability.

• 45:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you know, House, I don't know, we, I don't know how into the World Series you were, but it felt like there was so much interest in the first week of the NBA season. And I personally was so interested in it, combined with all the NFL and the fact that Sunday NFL is now a 15 hour day. And then we have the Thursday. And it just felt like the World Series was thrown into all this other stuff. But that might just be me because I love the NBA. Where, you like the NBA as much as me. Where did you stand?

• 45:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I invested in the series because I fell for the romantic narrative of the Brewers and the Brew Crew and all the references to Uker, like, you know, just all the old school, um, old guy stuff resonated with me. When I tuned in to watch chunks of games, there was a lot of no scoring. There was a lot of, uh, you know, I just watched three innings and nothing happened. Sections of my life that I wouldn't mind getting back. But I, I did bet the Brewers at the outset. I bet the Brewers both to sweep the series and, and at 4-1.

• 46:25Bill Simmons?

  Well, you almost had the sweep. I mean, they, the guy, no, the last inning when they were trying to clinch it, the third baseman grounded the throw and you kind of had the feeling.

• 46:36Speaker 03

  Come on, Joey.

• 46:37Bill Simmons?

  I didn't like, I didn't like that there were so many Brewer fans in Tampa for that. I mean, that had to have been the record for most fans of the other team descending on a, a World Series location. I didn't think that was great for Tampa, but.

• 46:50Speaker 03

  Well, that's the history of it, right? That's these Milwaukee people want to be there for history.

• 46:54Bill Simmons?

  And the Milwaukee, it's, it's awesome. Now they have two this decade and two different sports. Somehow neither of them are the Packers. And I thought they were, you know, they killed the Dodgers. That was when it was like, oh shit, you know, cause it seemed, that Padres series was probably the most fun of all the series, right? Was that the best series, Dabbundo?

• 47:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so. That or maybe if you go all the way back to the wild card, Philly, Atlanta was really compelling for three games, but it was just the wild card round. I think the, the one issue, you know, with this playoffs is that a lot of the individual games were compelling in themselves. But because Milwaukee just won all of them, because Tampa just won all of them, you ended up with kind of not competitive series. I mean, to only have two decisive games, Atlanta, Philadelphia, wild card, game three, and Chicago, Cleveland, game five, neither of which were that interesting either because they were kind of blowouts. You never had that tension. Whereas, you know, I think a lot of people look back at last year's playoffs. It was one of the best playoffs of my lifetime, certainly.

• 47:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Where you had that crazy Mariners, uh, game, game five against the Tigers. You had a Tigers Guardians game three. Then you had both rounds in the, uh, in the CS with the Mariners and the Blue Jays having a crazy game seven. Phillies Dodgers was awesome in that four game series. And then of course the World Series tops it off. So there were so many swings back and forth. This year, the two best teams kind of just bullied everybody and then the best team bullied the second best team.

• 48:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And the World Series last year just had big, famous people in it. And this one had people that aren't famous yet, but probably, you know, became more famous or will be more famous down the road. But it was cool. I always love when the franchise that has either never won or hasn't won forever, when they win, it always feels a little more special. And if the Dodgers had won three in a row, people would have been so pissed off. That was probably the biggest win all around, right? If the Dodgers won three in a row, then everybody's going, ah, fuck, go ahead, have a lockout. This is, this sport's broken, fuck this.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  They broke the game, the game's over, why bother? But instead, they were preordained, but Milwaukee was better all year.

• 49:00Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  People just chose to overlook that. And I get why, I mean, Milwaukee, go back to last year, they had all these great numbers and then scored four runs in four games. But they're better offensively, they're better bullpen, better defense, younger, which is another theory we'll get into, but all of the things that make them great.

• 49:17Bill Simmons?

  Really special front office, which you and Billy Gitt were talking about on this podcast before the, uh, before the season. This is basically the Sam Presti baseball team. The, you know, thinking outside the box, even watching somebody like Dustin May, who the Red Sox had last year for a month and just punted to the side. Now all of a sudden he's in these big playoff spots. Any other big subplots that stood out for you before we move on to the, to basketball, football? For baseball, Dabbundo?

• 49:45Speaker 02

  I mean, I think there's two, there's two big things. One is ABS and how that evolved.

• 49:51Bill Simmons?

  Thumbs up, right?

• 49:52Speaker 02

  Well, here's my question, and this is going to be the next big question. If we have the technology, do you want it to go the way of tennis where they just automatically do it? Or do you like the strategy of the catcher and the hitters implementing it? Because we did see over the course of the season that the usage went up more times per game. Teams got more aggressive with challenges. Catchers were the team, were the players that were challenging more because they realized hitters are pretty bad at it, but catchers are really good at it. They have a better sense of the zone. So they save them for catchers, they use it more. I think we're going to see more and more usage of this ABS. And I think that's just going to prompt the eventual conversation, which is, why don't we just automatically have robots do this all the time? And get it right all the time?

• 50:34Bill Simmons?

  House has been for that first since we were in college. You signed up for that, House.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  No, I actually quite enjoy what they landed upon. I really love the human element. I really love the drama of it. I like it when the umps are right now. I think that.

• 50:51Bill Simmons?

  You root for the umps.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  They stumbled into a system where there's, there's genuine moments of like dramatic tension. And the way that they use the screen and all the rest of it is just magnificent. It understands, baseball understands how to capture, you know, the, the fancy of, of, of this modern sports viewer. I thought it was magnificent. I wouldn't want to change it in any way, shape or form.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  So did you see the video of, of Yandy Diaz and William Contreras in game four? When Yandy challenged, or there was a pitch on the inside corner and Contreras taps his helmet to challenge. Yandy and William could stare at each other. They have this little stare down and then they both look up at the screen at the same exact time. They, the broadcast cuts the half image of the zone. It's in, it's just inside by like a half inch. And then they both stare at each other again and they smile. And this video went viral. It became the, one of the viral moments of the playoffs. That is exactly what House is talking about. I don't want full robot takeover because there still is that moment. And I miss it. I go to, you know, the US Open every year.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  I miss the rhythmic clapping into like the, was the ball in or out? Now we just know all the time. And there is an element of like, okay, I mean, I guess it's more right, but you know, the, the umps aren't that bad.

• 52:08Bill Simmons?

  It is fun when there's a terrible ump that just gets the, he's just getting destroyed by the ABS is, is super fun. All right. So no baseball till Memorial Day. Give us, uh, before you go, Dabbundo, give us your biggest football thing you're watching over the next couple of weeks from a gambling standpoint.

• 52:24Speaker 02

  Probably how Jeffrey Simmons changes the Bears defense. I mean, that unit is not Super Bowl ready. They're not even, you know, I think, ready to compete at the top of the NFC without him. But with him, I think they're, they're going to be much better against the run, which has been something that's held them back this season and last season. So I think that, that group is one that maybe could make the leap into that top NFC tier. With, you know, for me, I still have San Francisco, Seattle and LA rated as the three best teams in the NFC going into the, into November here.

• 52:59Bill Simmons?

  You know, I broke the news to House of that trade. Got a whoa from House. We were texting. Two first rounders seems like a lot for a 29 year old guy. But Caleb on the rookie contract, I just feel like you have to operate differently. And House, I said this to you this week, I, I already have the Bears at 14 to one to win the, win the Super Bowl just because I was so impressed by how they played in the Pats game. Cause I actually thought the Pats played well in that game. And the Bears, the combo of just Caleb being able to pull plays out of his ass. They can get explosives. I think their defense, even though I know it's funky and I know some of the advanced metrics don't love some of the things with it. It's kind of a pain in the ass when they're, they're doing the Flores ripoff stuff.

• 53:45Bill Simmons?

  Like, I'm going to be really interested to see how Darnold handles it this weekend. They, it's something like, I feel like they have an identity and I think by week eight, I want to know the identities of these teams, right? What do you do? What are you good at? What, what are you hanging your hat on? And with the Bears, like, I kind of get what they are and who they are, right? They're built around Ben Johnson and Caleb. They have like this really tenacious defense. They're going to get explosive plays and now they have to figure out they could run the ball better. But I, to me, I would put them in the class with the NFC West. So, Dabbundo, you wouldn't?

• 54:16Speaker 02

  Not with the way their defense looks, no.

• 54:18Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Would you, House? Would you put them in the vicinity?

• 54:21Speaker 02

  Willing to change that if their defense looks better.

• 54:25Speaker 03

  I'm just going to sit tight. I want to see it against Seattle because it's a great opportunity. Seattle just got healthy in terms of the running back position and they got, finally got a hundred yard rusher and they were able to establish a little play action. And we saw that offense finally showing a tiny bit of the rhythm that they fell into last year with Kubiak as the offensive coordinator. That's what that offense is supposed to look like. Not Darnold standing back there, one and a half, two and a half. Get rid of the effing ball or panic Sam Darnold. No, they need to be play action. He needs to get the ball out of his hands. They were able to do that. And the addition of Quentin Nelson to that offensive line. Did I say his name right? Quentin Nelson?

• 55:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's, that's how he's, that's how I was pronouncing it.

• 55:08Speaker 03

  Incredible. I can't believe it. But like, if they, they, and they get both Charbonne and Price back this week, apparently.

• 55:16Bill Simmons?

  No, but Charbonne is coming off a torn ACL. I don't. People are going nuts for him in fantasy leagues and stuff. And it's like, is he going to get six carries?

• 55:27Speaker 03

  The point is, you know, if they establish anything run wise.

• 55:30Bill Simmons?

  Right. With the bike committee. I get it.

• 55:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's all. That's all. So I, I, I already, I told you when you told me about the Super Bowl future that you bought, that I had gotten in on the Bears by way of a Caleb for MVP bet at 20 to one. And I, I prefer to kind of, the Super Bowl is super hard.

• 55:49Bill Simmons?

  I would just rather bet the, the Super Bowl than the conference. Cause I think at that point, you might as well just take the bigger odds. Dabbundo, do you feel weird that we put you on this Ringer Wise Guys gambling show? And you have Sal who's just completely falling apart? And now House who fell apart this week? We, we just put you with these old guys that I honestly, I don't know who's going to make it to the finish line. House, tell, tell America what happened to you this week.

• 56:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I've been nursing a toothache really since we were together in Los Angeles. I kind of hid it for some of the incredible meals that we enjoyed together, but I could only really eat with the right half of my mouth. It turns out that they, I'm what they call a grinder. That apparently, you know, when I'm sleeping, I'm doing the thing where I'm grinding and I have a, a molar on the lower side and I ground that and it cracked. And it finally.

• 56:40Bill Simmons?

  Maybe you were hungry. Maybe, maybe you thought you were eating.

• 56:44Speaker 03

  I'm sleeping dreaming of Dave Chang stew, obviously. But yeah, the thing cracked and it was a very unpleasant 72 hours. I couldn't sleep for two straight nights. And on top of that, I finally went in, I had scheduled an appointment with the dentist for the end of this week. I couldn't wait. I had to get some emergency care. They gave me the drugs. The drugs messed me up immediately. So I had to bail on the Tuesday pod. I couldn't do it. But I'm going to get this thing popped out on Monday and we'll see how it goes from there.

• 57:15Bill Simmons?

  Interesting. Cause I, I was on a text where I sent you and I think Sal or somebody a text like late night, like 11 o'clock my time. And you responded and I was like, why is House up at 2:15 Eastern time? I didn't know what was going on.

• 57:29Speaker 02

  He was grinding.

• 57:31Bill Simmons?

  I figured he was grinding. I thought maybe he was coming out of a massage parlor or something. Yeah, I didn't know.

• 57:38Speaker 03

  I felt bad complaining considering Cousin Sal's penis. But the mouth pain is, is unrivaled. It's so bad. You like, it's like, it's, you get so into your head, like it's uncomfortable the whole time. If it's like throbbing, vibrating, like, God damn it, give me the pain meds right now.

• 57:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm still going, I'm still going with penis pain.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  Over, under one and a half members of the Ringer Wise Guys will be on some type of drug for the show tomorrow.

• 58:09Bill Simmons?

  Sounds amazing. Should I take some for fun? Brahim, Brahim's on a, on a natural high at all times.

• 58:17Speaker 03

  That's a great point.

• 58:18Speaker 02

  House, are we doing Halloween costumes tomorrow?

• 58:21Speaker 03

  Oh, uh, nobody said that to me. I will not.

• 58:24Speaker 02

  All right. I was thinking about surprising you.

• 58:26Bill Simmons?

  DeBundo, what was your favorite pick this week?

• 58:29Speaker 02

  I actually haven't decided yet for the Wise Guys. I got to think about it. But I'm between the Bucks and the under and the Chiefs game. So we'll see.

• 58:36Speaker 03

  It's two good ones.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  All right. Bucks are still going to win the South. I'm putting that out there now. Just want to.

• 58:40Speaker 03

  That's great.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  Just want to plant the seed.

• 58:42Speaker 03

  Plus 350, I think.

• 58:43Bill Simmons?

  Listen, I have a lot of futures from August. That would be wonderful if they somehow rallied. You can read DeBundo on the ringer.com. You can listen to him on Ringer Wise Guys and he pops around in all the pods. Good to see you, DeBundo.

• 58:56Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me. See you tomorrow, Ed.

• 58:59Bill Simmons?

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

• 59:44Bill Simmons?

  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 just keep coming. PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865. Brilliantly boring since 1865 is a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group Incorporated. PNC Bank, National Association Member, FTIC.

• 1:00:29Bill Simmons?

  All right, time for a mailbag, House. People love the mailbags.

• 1:00:32Speaker 03

  Let's go.

• 1:00:33Bill Simmons?

  Are you getting good feedback or people scolding you? What's happening?

• 1:00:36Speaker 03

  Oh no, well, both, obviously. I just want to say at the top, I, I, I am on drugs. So if I'm slower than usual, everybody already knows that I'm a little slow.

• 1:00:46Bill Simmons?

  Somehow everyone I'm doing podcasts with lately is on some sort of medication. First one is from Colin in Portland, Oregon. He said, this idea feels like a good topic for House, which is always, always a buckle up. With the Brewers' recent World Series win, the Packers have moved into the cuck chair for Wisconsin professional sports because they have watched both the Bucks and Brewers celebrate championships since their last Super Bowl victory. So he's saying this is like a championship cuck chair. He said, there are other strong cuck chair examples. For instance, the 49ers, vaunted franchise, have watched the Giants and Warriors win seven titles. And they haven't won anything.

• 1:01:27Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:01:28Bill Simmons?

  He wants to know how you rank the cuck situations. Is it a pure championship cuck situation? Or like in the case of the Seattle Mariners who were in the cuck chair after the Sonics won in 79? And, but then the Seahawks finally won, but the Sonics had left. So are the Sonics fans in the cuck chair? Or did the Mariners stay in the cuck chair? I don't really know how to answer that, but I did. This did prompt me to go through all the cities and who the cuck chair team was. And you know who it is for Washington. It's, it's your Wizards.

• 1:02:02Speaker 03

  Yes, of course, because Redskins have three Super Bowls since the.

• 1:02:07Bill Simmons?

  Since 1978.

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  Bullets won in 78. Yep. Even the baseball team, the Nationals, the.

• 1:02:13Bill Simmons?

  The hockey team finally won.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  Yep, the Capitals and the Mystics all have championships.

• 1:02:17Bill Simmons?

  Boston, it's the Bruins. New York City, it's the Jets. They haven't won since 1969. Everyone's cleaned out since then. LA's the Clippers have never won. Niners for San Francisco. Philadelphia, it's the Flyers. They haven't won since 1975. Everybody else won. Denver's the Rockies, Houston's the Texans, Chicago is the Bears, which is amazing to me because they won when we were in high school. Uh, two crazy ones. Miami is the Dolphins. You'd have thought, there's no way. How were the, they were so good when we were growing up, but it's the Dolphins. And then Dallas is the Cowboys.

• 1:02:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:53Bill Simmons?

  The Cowboys are the cuck chair.

• 1:02:55Speaker 03

  That's right. Yes, they are. Right, right where he belongs. He's comfortable with that.

• 1:03:00Bill Simmons?

  He's okay with it.

• 1:03:01Speaker 03

  He's good.

• 1:03:02Bill Simmons?

  But my favorite is Phoenix has the Suns and Cardinals double cuck chair. It's like a love seat sofa.

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  Do you have to? Wait, did, did the hockey team, the hockey team?

• 1:03:13Bill Simmons?

  Hockey team left and never won, but it's gone. It doesn't exist. Never happened.

• 1:03:18Speaker 03

  Diamondbacks won, so.

• 1:03:20Bill Simmons?

  Diamondbacks won, but Luis Gonzalez is here. So we have a double cuck chair situation in, in Phoenix.

• 1:03:25Speaker 03

  That feels like it makes sense as a retirement community. You can imagine weird shit going down there in Arizona. Ask Bianco, I bet Bianco, it would make sense to him. There's a double cuck chair there.

• 1:03:35Bill Simmons?

  John in Washington Heights said he's been listening since 08, when he used my stuff to avoid actually working in college. Thank you for that.

• 1:03:43Speaker 03

  Great job.

• 1:03:44Bill Simmons?

  I want to thank you and House for the mustard pre-cum talk. I was about to ruin my sad, exhausted father of an infant dinner when the words mustard come popped in my head, stopping me in my tracks. I would have just starved instead of eating it. So we're doing a public service, House.

• 1:03:58Speaker 03

  Okay, good.

• 1:03:58Bill Simmons?

  Mustard juice. A lot, a lot of mustard juice conversation in the last week. Some people are wondering how mustard juice is even a real issue. Why, like, basically like you guys are idiots. When you have a mustard, you, you just shake it. It's.

• 1:04:13Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 1:04:14Bill Simmons?

  You should know how to do it.

• 1:04:15Speaker 03

  But sometimes people don't do that.

• 1:04:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, sometimes you forget or assume, oh, this is a new bottle. I assume the mustard's gonna come out. Anyway.

• 1:04:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:24Bill Simmons?

  I was right about Utah being the mustard juice team. Utah Jazz, they're mustard juicing all over the place.

• 1:04:31Speaker 03

  Couple more L's, a couple more L's since, I mean, that's a close competition though.

• 1:04:37Bill Simmons?

  With who?

• 1:04:37Speaker 03

  You think it's Utah, um, versus the Heat? I mean, the heater, that's an abomination what's going on there in Miami.

• 1:04:45Bill Simmons?

  I know, but.

• 1:04:46Speaker 03

  Just be patient, let it work out. Okay.

• 1:04:48Bill Simmons?

  I watched them, I watched a lot of basketball last night, including, um, those games around. There were some really good early games on Wednesday night and they, they kind of bullied Atlanta. You can see the potential. First of all, the number one thing, this is why I was hesitant to ding them too much when I did my power pull Tuesday. Cause they had moves to make before you could really officially panic. And the first one was send Klay Thompson out to pasture, which they did. They started playing Larson way more, so you knew that was coming. And then I think the next thing will be bigger lineups, but the.

• 1:05:21Speaker 03

  They can run the offense through Bam. Bam knows what to do.

• 1:05:24Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:05:25Speaker 03

  Let, let Yanis get downhill. Don't put the ball in his hands until he's ready to come downhill.

• 1:05:28Bill Simmons?

  I just think Yanis is really hard to play with. I said this last year and, you know, it's, it's this one on five stuff where he has the ball at the top and he's kind of the point forward, but not really. Cause he just wants to get to the rim and you can, you need to have certain guys around him. But I, I think the thing that surprised me is that they're, they just haven't been good defensively.

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Bill Simmons?

  That was when we were arguing about them over unders. That was what I thought would be the secret sauce for them would be the defense. And then the defense is bad, but yesterday it didn't matter. Uh, Steve from Eggmanville, Ontario wants to propose a Cal Hockley award for the coward of the week. That we could do in the mailbag based on Cal Hockley in the Titanic, cowardly using a child to save himself from the Titanic. I guess that's the Billy Zane character. I don't know who, I haven't seen them in a while.

• 1:06:17Speaker 03

  I would not, I don't remember Cal.

• 1:06:19Bill Simmons?

  But he said this week's winner should be Kawhi Leonard. Conveniently after two games, his knee swelled and it'll be reevaluated right after the Raptors play the Clippers in Los Angeles. I was thinking this would, it would be great if Fandel just gave us a goofy bet of the month. Because that would have been a great goofy bet of the month. Will Kawhi come up with an injury to get out of this Clipper game? I would have, like, what would the odds of that have been? Minus 350?

• 1:06:46Speaker 03

  I'm 98% sure you and I on this podcast had a conversation about whether or not he would play. Because we, we, the, the joke included, um, what the, you know, welcome back video would look like. I think it was in that conversation.

• 1:07:04Bill Simmons?

  You're right.

• 1:07:04Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:07:04Bill Simmons?

  We did pods for five hours, so we probably forgot it. But yeah, you're right. Yeah.

• 1:07:09Speaker 03

  And.

• 1:07:09Bill Simmons?

  So no, he's missing the game.

• 1:07:11Speaker 03

  Shocker.

• 1:07:12Bill Simmons?

  Shocker.

• 1:07:13Speaker 03

  Do you think they, do you think they acknowledge him? And I, no, no chance they acknowledge him.

• 1:07:17Bill Simmons?

  I mean, the highlight of the Clipper season would be them doing a Kawhi video. Like.

• 1:07:23Speaker 03

  Nothing would be funnier. They would own the internet for 24 hours.

• 1:07:26Bill Simmons?

  They might have to start trying stuff like that. I kept my seats, by the way, I forgot to tell you.

• 1:07:33Speaker 03

  Good job by you.

• 1:07:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:34Speaker 03

  I knew you would.

• 1:07:35Bill Simmons?

  Worked it out.

• 1:07:35Speaker 03

  It's the NBA.

• 1:07:36Bill Simmons?

  You know what it is?

• 1:07:37Speaker 03

  You like to see the NBA.

• 1:07:39Bill Simmons?

  It's three people that fucked this whole thing up, but they have a lot of really nice people that work for the team. And I felt bad. I didn't feel bad for writing the letter and I thought it was funny, but there's a lot of really nice people that work for the team. And it may, it's like, why do they, why do they have to suffer? It's not like they were the ones funneling money through aspiration.

• 1:07:59Speaker 03

  One of the very funny bits that the inside the NBA guys have been doing. And I mean, shout out to Ernie, what amazing run by Ernie.

• 1:08:08Bill Simmons?

  Unbelievable. What a, I wasn't surprised, but it's still got a, ah, it was, got one of those for me.

• 1:08:14Speaker 03

  It was touching. I, I felt the emotion. Um, I enjoyed both the way that he did it and the way that they handled it on the show. And the show's been, I mean, an 11 out of 10 all season.

• 1:08:23Bill Simmons?

  It's been really good.

• 1:08:24Speaker 03

  But one of Chuck's funniest bits is like, Ballmer, the unintended winner of the entire thing. He doesn't have to go watch that basketball team.

• 1:08:33Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:08:34Speaker 03

  Amazing, amazing bit by Chuck.

• 1:08:36Bill Simmons?

  Apparently he can run the building.

• 1:08:39Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:08:40Bill Simmons?

  So he can.

• 1:08:40Speaker 03

  I mean, it's his money.

• 1:08:41Bill Simmons?

  He can go to, I think he can go and be involved in things. It just can't be the basketball, so it is.

• 1:08:48Speaker 03

  All right.

• 1:08:49Bill Simmons?

  Ernie Johnson, what a run, man. I remember.

• 1:08:52Speaker 03

  A plus.

• 1:08:53Bill Simmons?

  TNT, when they started showing the games, what was that, in the early 90s or whatever? And it was Ernie and they would have either a current player or a just retired player would do that. They could never figure it out. And then the moment Barkley retired, everything fell into place.

• 1:09:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then Kenny turned out to be a tremendous third wheel for that group.

• 1:09:15Bill Simmons?

  Kenny's great. Whole thing's, it's a weird one. It did make me feel old though. It's like, wow, we're gonna lose Ernie.

• 1:09:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:22Bill Simmons?

  It's the first, like the, the two big ones were like that inside the NBA crew together and the PTI guys. Those are like the, the two, we lost Buck and Aikman, they're getting divorced. We're losing people left and right.

• 1:09:38Speaker 03

  I can live with that.

• 1:09:38Bill Simmons?

  Maybe people appreciate us. Carl F. writes, the Vikings are undefeated. They are plus 430 to miss the playoffs. Look at the schedule. I really think they could miss. They could go nine and eight. Go check it out. So I looked at this. They play the Lions this week. They are not favored.

• 1:09:56Speaker 03

  They are not favored.

• 1:09:57Bill Simmons?

  They play the Bills on Monday Night Football at home.

• 1:10:01Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:10:01Bill Simmons?

  That could be six and two.

• 1:10:03Speaker 03

  It's tough.

• 1:10:03Bill Simmons?

  Next two weeks, at Packers, and then they play the 49ers in Mexico. They could be six and four in four weeks.

• 1:10:10Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:10:11Bill Simmons?

  Home Falcons, home Panthers, at the Patriots on Thursday Night Football. Home Lions, Commanders, at Jets, home Bears. And I bolded all the games I thought they would lose and I got to seven. And seven would be a 10 and seven. So that means if they lose Falcons, Panthers, Commanders or at Jets, that would be nine and eight.

• 1:10:34Speaker 03

  10 and seven makes the playoffs.

• 1:10:35Bill Simmons?

  10 and seven, I think makes it.

• 1:10:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:10:38Bill Simmons?

  Nine and eight, I don't think makes it.

• 1:10:40Speaker 03

  I'd get to 10 as well.

• 1:10:42Bill Simmons?

  So we, but it would have to be like a, a stupid loss, something, but we've seen this too many times. This team, I know, and, and I've gotten emails from Viking fans wondering why we're not giving them more credit, all that stuff. But I, I just think their offense is terrible. And the JJ McCarthy thing's embarrassing and they should have won in week one. And their defense has covered up a lot of warts and I just, I'm not a believer. I'm just not. So we'll see. We'll see what happens this week. I did not have that in my Ringer 107 that we have coming up later. Mitch from Illinois wants to know, contracts aside, all three of these guys are roughly the same age. Who would you rather have on your team for the rest of their careers?

• 1:11:24Bill Simmons?

  Evan Mobley, Shangoon or Yaxel Lindemburg?

• 1:11:28Speaker 03

  Oh my God. Contracts aside?

• 1:11:33Bill Simmons?

  I don't think you do contracts aside. So I think we have to include contracts.

• 1:11:37Speaker 03

  Well, if you include contracts, then it's Yaxel.

• 1:11:39Bill Simmons?

  So if I did a trade value list right now, is Yaxel ahead of those two guys? I think he is. Cause the contract.

• 1:11:46Speaker 03

  Sengun's so good and, and he's in exactly the right place. This is what Houston was missing last season.

• 1:11:52Bill Simmons?

  Sengun's really good.

• 1:11:54Speaker 03

  You know, the complaining all season long that people heard from us. We were like wondering aloud, what the F is going on in Houston? Why haven't they done something at the point guard position? Why are they running end of game possessions through Sengun? They have, uh, uh, Kevin Durant. He's not bad at end of game.

• 1:12:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:11Speaker 03

  But this setup where they have the size, they have the point guard and letting him be the best. He, he really does a great job of, of bully ball. So.

• 1:12:22Bill Simmons?

  So it's probably Sengun. Yeah. Actually, we need to see another month.

• 1:12:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. But what a, I, I bet him rookie of the year. I went ahead and did it. I don't care. I mean, I've saw, I saw enough.

• 1:12:31Bill Simmons?

  What is it now?

• 1:12:33Speaker 03

  It was, it was, it was still three to one when I got it.

• 1:12:36Bill Simmons?

  His second best odds now. Yeah. Three to one on Fanduel, plus two 10 for Boozer. The Rockets, when I did my power poll Tuesday morning, they were 19 to one and I had them first. And I was like, this is a legitimate contender. Like we have to take this team seriously. I think they had the eighth best odds. That's dropped to 16 to one. They whacked somebody else again last night. I'm taking them completely seriously, but. I, I cannot believe how good Yaxel is. Like, did you see Curry last night? Curry went from like, he was walking dead. Like, oh my God, what did, like, I, he, he's like the, the husband who's staying in the, in the worst marriage possible. To all of a sudden, he's like, oh my God, like we can get Jimmy back. We might be able to trade Porzingis. Like you could see like the spirit of.

• 1:13:21Bill Simmons?

  This, this Yaxel thing has unleashed him and he's big. He's way, I knew he was big coming out of college, but when you see him with the other players, he's a legitimate 610.

• 1:13:32Speaker 03

  You know what's so funny? Why did Dallas take Morris over Yaxel?

• 1:13:38Bill Simmons?

  Cause, cause of the coach. And because Morris, by the way, it was defensible because Morris is I think three and a half years younger. So, and you have Flag was 19.

• 1:13:48Speaker 03

  I don't go with any of that.

• 1:13:48Bill Simmons?

  Maybe they were worried about the personality of Yaxel with Flag. I mean, he, they basically are the same position. So it was a better complimentary pick, but yeah, in retrospect, doesn't look awesome.

• 1:13:59Speaker 03

  It's interesting. It's interesting.

• 1:14:01Bill Simmons?

  And also if Yaxel went to Sacramento at seven? Would, would he have been Sacramento proof?

• 1:14:08Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:14:09Bill Simmons?

  Could he lit the beam?

• 1:14:10Speaker 03

  No, no, definitely not. No, I mean, this is at least a reason because we're stuck with all of the Golden State primetime games. Because it could be Steph's last. See, thank God. Thank God. Like I thought I would have sent him a present. I want to send him a, thanking him for arriving in the league with the mindset, the attitude, the competitive fire.

• 1:14:32Bill Simmons?

  The moment he gave shit to Luca, I was like, oh, what are we doing?

• 1:14:35Speaker 03

  A plus.

• 1:14:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was great. They play again on Friday. So we have the top four rookies. And then we also have Yaxel and I would say out of the top four plus Yaxel, I think Peterson's like the fifth best. Like even your guy last night, you just see it. It's like, oh, this guy's.

• 1:14:52Speaker 03

  Welcome to the league. Amazing. Thank you, AJ. Super exciting. Yeah. Washington scored almost 70 points in the first half. It was the most beautiful offensive basketball. The Washington Wizards have, have played in a decade. It was magnificent. I couldn't believe it. Now they went off of that game plan in the second half of the Cavs. Changed their defense.

• 1:15:11Bill Simmons?

  Well, you got a little, you got a little taste of Trey Young in the last four minutes of a game.

• 1:15:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:15:17Bill Simmons?

  The grenade passes, the three pointers with 20 seconds left in the shot clock. Team's hunting him. You got, you got the full package.

• 1:15:25Speaker 03

  We've got the full package.

• 1:15:26Bill Simmons?

  I would, I said this Tuesday, I'm going to say it again. I would trade Anthony Davis today.

• 1:15:31Speaker 03

  Now.

• 1:15:31Bill Simmons?

  Cause he looks healthy and athletic right now. I would trade him before he gets hurt. Golden State. Any interest?

• 1:15:37Speaker 03

  I, I seriously don't hate it. I, I've, I've loved what I've seen out of him thus far. It's clear that he made a commitment.

• 1:15:46Speaker 03

  To, to himself and to the team in the off season, right? The stuff they run through him is very successful. And he's like out there bawling because he wants the league to, to be put on notice and he's, he's done a great job. Uh, I think you're right. His value is not going to be any higher than right now. I have absolutely no problem at all with the idea of moving on.

• 1:16:07Bill Simmons?

  Adam from Waterloo, Ontario.

• 1:16:11Bill Simmons?

  He's listened to me and the cuz on Sunday night brainstorming names for the return PAT. When the defense returns it, what that should be called. I was saying it should be the DeRozan because somebody sent that. He wants to know why it's not the two point reversion. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

• 1:16:29Bill Simmons?

  Now, I did have a deja vu of like, I feel like I've done bits on this before, but I couldn't remember.

• 1:16:34Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 1:16:35Bill Simmons?

  David writes in, on one of your very first Ringer podcasts, October 2015, I wrote in to suggest you call the blown extra point that's returned for two. Failed attempt, return for two acronym fart.

• 1:16:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. Okay.

• 1:16:53Bill Simmons?

  No one has come up with anything better in the last 11 years. I thought I'd run it back.

• 1:16:59Bill Simmons?

  So we just call it a fart.

• 1:17:00Speaker 03

  Fine with that.

• 1:17:01Bill Simmons?

  The two point reversion, AKA the fart.

• 1:17:04Speaker 03

  That's very good. Yeah.

• 1:17:07Bill Simmons?

  Michael Stein writes in, at the risk of dating myself, is Amen Thompson's block of Wemby from Friday night? Like when Lex Luger body slammed Yokozuna? Wemby's a freak. I wish him well, but he's now lost that aura of invincibility. I don't know if I agree.

• 1:17:24Speaker 03

  The body slam of Andre the Giant was much more consequential to me. That was the true, when Andre, uh, who, who picked, oh, Hulkster picked him up and body slammed him, right?

• 1:17:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. WrestleMania three. That ended the Hulkster. I think Wemby's fine. Wemby's gonna, that team will, they'll get Tobias Harris back and they'll probably rip off 21 of 22 wins. And Wemby will be the MVP favorite and that's where it's going. Nick from Long Island actually has a question about Cousin Sal. He said he's won back to back weeks and guessed the line and went five and O in his Ringer 107 picks last week. It's reminded me of Kurt Angle in TNA wrestling when he was doing backflips on 15 foot cages on Percocets and we were calling him Perk Angle. My question is, do we call Cousin Sal Cousin Perk or Perk and Sal? Love to hear your thoughts. He's obviously the oxy cousin Sal.

• 1:18:14Speaker 03

  Perk Angle is phenomenal, by the way. It just kills me. That's so good. But yes, Sal's not taking Percocet. So we, we can't work Percocet into it. He's taking Oxycontin and he's talking about it, you know? He's, he's, he's copying to it. This is the only way, means of survival.

• 1:18:30Bill Simmons?

  I did side text with Jimmy about it and Jimmy's not worried about it. So I'm not going to worry about it.

• 1:18:35Speaker 03

  Oxy, what did you call him?

• 1:18:37Bill Simmons?

  Oxy cousin Sal. Oxy cousin.

• 1:18:38Speaker 03

  Oxy.

• 1:18:39Bill Simmons?

  The oxy cousin.

• 1:18:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:41Bill Simmons?

  It would be funny if like his picks, if he was just on fire and then he felt like it was like the limitless drug he had to keep taking.

• 1:18:48Speaker 03

  He has to stay on it.

• 1:18:49Bill Simmons?

  He has to stay on it. He's like 20 and O and Ringer 107.

• 1:18:54Speaker 03

  Then he, then that's it. That's the answer. He would do it. There's no question about it.

• 1:18:58Bill Simmons?

  He would sacrifice everything to have good picks.

• 1:19:00Speaker 03

  He would write that. It would be in his second book or where the, uh, you know, the, the, what updated version of his book. I wondered about Cotton Sal, not Cousin Sal, Cotton Sal.

• 1:19:10Bill Simmons?

  Cotton Sal? We'll let him pick. I'll bring it. I'll mention it to him on Sunday night. Dr. Don wrote in, this was, I don't know who Dr. Don is, but.

• 1:19:18Speaker 03

  Is he a real doctor?

• 1:19:19Bill Simmons?

  Apparently. He's starting to get over his Luca trade dysphoria. He's a Mavs fan while watching Cooper Flag ascend. Cooper Flag. Wow. Did it again last night.

• 1:19:28Speaker 03

  It's great.

• 1:19:30Bill Simmons?

  He asks, has any other franchises' top three players all time in the NBA been white?

• 1:19:38Bill Simmons?

  And he points out Dirk, Luca and Flag. That is true. Those, those probably are going to be their three best players ever, three white guys. What were the odds of this? I can't even think of one that would have two white guys as their, as their best players of all time. If you do a top three for every franchise?

• 1:19:57Speaker 03

  I'm speechless.

• 1:19:58Bill Simmons?

  Even the Celtics just burned, but then the other ones would be, nobody. I mean, this is.

• 1:20:03Speaker 03

  No, I mean for, for Dallas, like the top 10 Dallas Mavericks of all time.

• 1:20:06Bill Simmons?

  Mark Aguirre.

• 1:20:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:11Bill Simmons?

  I'm in that, that's really it.

• 1:20:13Speaker 03

  We're at a loss.

• 1:20:15Bill Simmons?

  Kyrie?

• 1:20:16Speaker 03

  I know, I was thinking Kyrie.

• 1:20:19Bill Simmons?

  Amazing stuff.

• 1:20:20Speaker 03

  Put him ahead of Luca.

• 1:20:21Bill Simmons?

  See Dallas, the Luca trade, by the way, would you rather have Luca for the next 10 years or Cooper Flag, from what you've seen?

• 1:20:27Speaker 03

  It's terrific, it's terrific.

• 1:20:29Bill Simmons?

  Who would you rather have?

• 1:20:30Speaker 03

  Easy, Cooper.

• 1:20:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think it worked out for the Mavs.

• 1:20:33Speaker 03

  Maybe it's not as easy as I'm making it, but I love Luca.

• 1:20:38Bill Simmons?

  Cooper is one of the best young players I've ever seen in my life, and I cannot believe he's 19. Like, I, I, I just don't understand it. This guy's a freak. This is, this is starting to look like when, not to compare him to Tiger Woods, but when Tiger just showed up and was just giving it to everybody when he, how old was he that year, 97? He came in in 96, but he was 97, he was probably like 20 or 21.

• 1:21:04Speaker 03

  He was 21, I think.

• 1:21:06Bill Simmons?

  And we were like, he's not just gonna kick these guys asses, are, and then he just started kicking everybody's asses.

• 1:21:12Speaker 03

  My, the only thing that I want to tap the brakes on is, um, we need him to be healthy, like he, we need his 19 year old body.

• 1:21:21Bill Simmons?

  His playing style is not conducive to eight months a year. I agree with that.

• 1:21:25Speaker 03

  It is not.

• 1:21:26Bill Simmons?

  David from Bentonville said he's a Colts fan watching in pain as his team's stripped for parts, but at least I know now that football terrorist Chris Ballard is gone. I no longer have to endure football in there. It's telling me how brilliant he is as a GM. We can officially deem him the Justin Herbert of GMs, someone that football nerds and writers constantly tell us is good, even though he has no accomplishments whatsoever. Who else would win the Herbert Award for their positions?

• 1:21:53Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 1:21:53Bill Simmons?

  I wrote some down. QB, Justin Herbert.

• 1:21:57Speaker 03

  Fine.

• 1:21:59Bill Simmons?

  Wide receiver, Jalen Waddle?

• 1:22:02Bill Simmons?

  We all say how great Jalen Waddle is. Has he ever been on a good team?

• 1:22:05Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:22:06Bill Simmons?

  He went to Denver, nothing's happened since he got there?

• 1:22:09Speaker 03

  And that Miami offense, you know who's a better candidate?

• 1:22:11Bill Simmons?

  Who?

• 1:22:12Speaker 03

  Well, it's probably not fair. I mean, he did, he was on a Super Bowl winning team.

• 1:22:16Bill Simmons?

  You're gonna say AJ Brown?

• 1:22:17Speaker 03

  I was gonna say AJ Brown.

• 1:22:18Bill Simmons?

  Too soon. I think it's Jalen Waddle. Breece Hall for running back?

• 1:22:24Speaker 03

  Eh, you can't put any Jets on that list.

• 1:22:27Bill Simmons?

  Who would you put for running back?

• 1:22:29Speaker 03

  That's a hard one. Who, like, I don't know, running backs that, that got drafted highly and never panned out.

• 1:22:34Bill Simmons?

  The ballsy pick here would be Derrick Henry, but I'm not gonna do it.

• 1:22:38Speaker 03

  He does fumble his way into.

• 1:22:40Bill Simmons?

  I don't remember seeing him in the Super Bowl.

• 1:22:43Speaker 03

  Game changing outcomes.

• 1:22:44Bill Simmons?

  I put Laporta for the tight end, and I have Sauce Gardner at cornerback.

• 1:22:52Bill Simmons?

  And I think Trey Hendrickson is at defensive end. That's all I have, sorry. Who's the coach, though? Who's the Justin Herbert, Chris Ballard of coaches? Is it Matt LaFleur?

• 1:23:03Speaker 03

  I, I love that. That's a great call. I think it is.

• 1:23:06Bill Simmons?

  Matt LaFleur.

• 1:23:07Speaker 03

  Good.

• 1:23:08Bill Simmons?

  This comes from DJ in Miami. Every week, Pat McAfee gets upset about something, and then a bunch of media people immediately do posts and podcast segments to suck oxygen from whatever happened. This appears to be ESPN's sole reason to have the McAfee Show unless I'm missing something. You never talk about McAfee. Have you seen his ESPN show? Do you care? Hopefully, you'll answer this question with house, and then a couple of blogs will aggregate your response to fulfill their daily McAfee content fix. These people need to eat. As an aside, I live in Miami, and getting content out of McAfee has been a miracle for Dan Lebatard, who literally stopped watching sports 12 years ago when LeBron left. Maybe he can get a clip

• 1:23:50Bill Simmons?

  out of this, too. You're helping other people here, Simmons. That's from DJ in Miami. I don't have a comment on Pat McAfee, but I did want to start a new segment called Aggregate Me, where I say something specifically to get aggregated. And here's today's segment on Aggregate Me. The Lakers guy doesn't have the money yet.

• 1:24:12Speaker 03

  What's that mean?

• 1:24:12Bill Simmons?

  That 12.5 billion that he has to pay to, uh, Mark Walter? He's still searching for about 5, 6 billion of it, doesn't have it yet.

• 1:24:21Speaker 03

  Wait, who are you talking about? You're talking about the Kushner?

• 1:24:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:26Speaker 03

  Kushner and Iger?

• 1:24:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and guess, here's the other thing. Guess who's not putting in really any money? Bob Iger. He's putting in the minimum. The minimum's like 63 million dollars, that's what he's putting in. So Kushner has to find all this other money, but this is a lot of money, and the deadline's coming, and I think they're using the Bus family as scapegoats for why the deal's dragging along, but he can't find the money.

• 1:24:50Speaker 03

  I, I can find the money. I, you and I both.

• 1:24:52Bill Simmons?

  He needs to find like four or five billion dollar guys that will come in and buy whatever percentage of the team.

• 1:24:58Speaker 03

  Find the money?

• 1:24:58Bill Simmons?

  Who?

• 1:24:59Speaker 03

  Will McDonough. Call Will.

• 1:25:01Bill Simmons?

  Our guy Willie?

• 1:25:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, put him on the case.

• 1:25:03Bill Simmons?

  Well, he's looking for the, he's looking for, uh, he's looking for the thing. It's, it's, people think this deal's gonna be done.

• 1:25:11Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if, I don't know. I'm just, it's, it's interesting. The Celtics hit a spot where it became a little nerve wracking with the money, and then the Mattel family came in with like a billion dollars, and that was like the final thing. This one, they need like five Mattels, so we'll see what happens.

• 1:25:28Bill Simmons?

  Canell in Ridgewood, New Jersey, which was where the Simmons family lived, my dad's family for a while.

• 1:25:34Speaker 03

  Great golf course.

• 1:25:35Bill Simmons?

  He says, I'm a Nets fan for almost 30 years. About 90% of the Nets fans I know, or the Nets fans I talk to online, are from New Jersey. We'd love to have them back. They need to move back and lean into the Jersey identity, something they never did during the decades they played here. Iconic New Jersey celebs like Bon Jovi, Jon Stewart, and Anne Hathaway, they're all celebrity Knicks fans. They can play at Prudential, they no longer have to play in a swamp near the highway. We have Netflix and Paramount Studios. We held a World Cup final, and the population's been growing. It's time to get the Nets back. I fully support this.

• 1:26:11Speaker 03

  I don't hate it.

• 1:26:12Bill Simmons?

  I really like it. Because it's not like the Brooklyn Arena's a new arena now. It's been around for 15 years. They can have the Liberty play there, they can have concerts, whatever, but bring the Nets back to Jersey is, I support that.

• 1:26:23Speaker 03

  That's pretty good.

• 1:26:24Bill Simmons?

  And bring the Nets to Jersey without Sean Marks would be my other, my other advice. Don't bring Sean.

• 1:26:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:26:30Bill Simmons?

  Adam R. from Vancouver, parentheses, always home to the Grizzlies. He said, our fine host BS, I guess that's me, has noted that he bucks all research and knowledge of the safety of seatbelts in exchange for enjoying the feeling of being unencumbered in the driver's seat. I've been wearing my seatbelt for the last few months, just for the record.

• 1:26:50Speaker 03

  Good job.

• 1:26:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I'm used to it. I get in the car, I put it on.

• 1:26:54Speaker 03

  That's what you're supposed to do.

• 1:26:55Bill Simmons?

  He says, we should recognize and reward the eschewing of common wisdom for a joyous feeling with the Bill Simmons Seatbelt Award every NFL season. This year could go to Sean McVay for shunning any attention to special teams. It's the Bill Simmons Seatbelt Award. It is true. Sean McVay's like, ah, I'm not buckling up. Let's just go with another weird kicker, and let's not know how to return kickoffs or defend them.

• 1:27:21Speaker 03

  He's, he's basically just talking about unprotected sex, which I certainly endorse.

• 1:27:27Bill Simmons?

  House.

• 1:27:28Speaker 03

  In most instances.

• 1:27:30Bill Simmons?

  Ventication's kicking in on House. Uh, oh, had the Cousin Sal special, and somebody suggested Baltimore last week would be the reverse Cousin Sal special. You bet on them for the first half to lose the game.

• 1:27:45Speaker 03

  Amazing.

• 1:27:45Bill Simmons?

  Maxim, who's apparently a Bulgarian NBA sicko, he thinks it should be called the Stringer Bell. Stringer Bell looked unstoppable for the first half of The Wire through about two and a half seasons.

• 1:27:58Speaker 03

  Great.

• 1:27:58Bill Simmons?

  And by the end of season three, spoiler alert, getting shot by Omar. I like that, the Stringer Bell bet.

• 1:28:05Speaker 03

  It's very good. I mean, you don't want to take the shine away from Cousin Sal.

• 1:28:11Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:28:11Speaker 03

  The Cousin Sal special is still pretty important.

• 1:28:14Bill Simmons?

  Joe Otis in Cherry Hill says, I'm lucky enough to have a job where I can listen to podcasts. So thank you for nearly ruining that arrangement when you suggested Freddy Krueger whacked Epstein on the Nightmare on Elm Street's rewatchables. I had to explain to coworkers why I was laughing uncontrollably. Long overdue episode to deliver. Sorry about that. CR no sold my Epstein Freddy Krueger joke. I'll, I'll forgive him like a week from now. Anyway, he says, my question, which says more about where you are in life? An algorithm full of fight videos, or an algorithm full of AI-generated videos of obese people getting kicked out of all-you-can-eat buffets and absolutely losing their mind? And if you're getting both, is that good or bad?

• 1:28:58Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 1:29:01Bill Simmons?

  I've never seen the buffet videos. I have, I do have a lot of fight videos. I'm just getting served NHL fights and fights in Austin, Texas for some reason.

• 1:29:10Speaker 03

  I'm, I'm pretty happy with what I get served, especially on Instagram. There is a ton of, uh, like nostalgic hardcore punk from my eighties era. And I just, they just, I can't get enough. I always stop and listen to it. I like the freestyle rap guy, Harry Mack. I think he's a, he's phenomenal. I feel like if you studied that guy, you know who Harry Mack is?

• 1:29:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. If you, you know, in the way that they said that Shakespeare had a vocabulary of something that was like two exponents larger than the rest of, of humanity. There's something going on in that guy's brain. I'd love to get to the bottom of. So I get Harry Mack, huh?

• 1:29:48Bill Simmons?

  Shout out to Harry Mack.

• 1:29:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. Shout out to Harry Mack. He deserves it.

• 1:29:53Bill Simmons?

  Brian C. wants to know if we should start calling the Pittsburgh Steelers the Zombie Steelers because we don't have the zombie heat anymore.

• 1:29:59Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:30:01Bill Simmons?

  I think if they win the Browns this week, I beat the Browns this week, I think there's a case for that. Brian K. in New Jersey wants to know if ESPN should actually be leaning more into the Buck Troy Aikman dispute.

• 1:30:14Bill Simmons?

  Like instead of pretending it's not happening, lean into it in the broadcast. He suggests Laurel Rutledge with the post-game player interview. Dak, that was a great win. What went through your mind when you first heard about the Buck Aikman feud?

• 1:30:28Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:30:30Bill Simmons?

  It is pretty funny.

• 1:30:31Speaker 03

  Is it a feud? Has it risen to the level of a feud?

• 1:30:35Bill Simmons?

  You get people analyzing the body language of them in the booth and stuff.

• 1:30:40Speaker 03

  It's endlessly fascinating.

• 1:30:41Bill Simmons?

  Doesn't seem like Aikman's coming back.

• 1:30:43Speaker 03

  Doesn't seem like it.

• 1:30:45Bill Simmons?

  So Sal and I talked about, I talked about Deshaun Watson and how we needed a dessert type nickname for him. Because he's like a terrible meal where the appetizers and the entrees are terrible. And then he comes in with like the most amazing dessert and that's kind of how he's played football this year. Right?

• 1:31:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:04Bill Simmons?

  I can't tell you how many people emailed and said, how did you miss the happy ending joke with Deshaun? And I wasn't going to mention on the pod, but after 430 emails of people making the same joke, I just wanted to acknowledge that those emails were coming in.

• 1:31:21Speaker 03

  It's an acknowledgement. Thank you to the internet.

• 1:31:24Bill Simmons?

  Derek from Eugene, Oregon,

• 1:31:27Bill Simmons?

  said he's closely been following the El Chepo saga, just moved to Oregon.

• 1:31:33Bill Simmons?

  And it led to him, if they relocated, he had two questions. First one is,

• 1:31:40Bill Simmons?

  if the US wanted a new four sports city, a city that has no sports at all, where four teams could be relocated tomorrow with no tear shed by any of the cities that lost the teams, what would the city be?

• 1:31:54Bill Simmons?

  And where would the, and who would the teams be? And he said he came up with the Anaheim Angels, the Pelicans, the Los Angeles Chargers and the Columbus Blue Jackets as the four teams. I'm going to push back on one of those in a second, um, but he asked us to come up with an answer. I think it's, I wouldn't have the Anaheim Angels because they, Orange County is a bait. Like they, they should have a good team. They've had a bad owner.

• 1:32:17Speaker 03

  They get 36,000 people at every goddamn game. They're, they're like always 10th, 11th, 12th in attendance. They get incredible numbers. I've long wondered how, why is there a team in Anaheim?

• 1:32:27Bill Simmons?

  Cause there's a million people who just want to go to games.

• 1:32:29Speaker 03

  They love to go to games.

• 1:32:31Bill Simmons?

  I'm replacing them with the Marlins.

• 1:32:33Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:32:34Bill Simmons?

  Who I think were second to last in attendance and nobody's understood why they've had a baseball team. Sorry, Billy Gill. I, I apologize in advance.

• 1:32:41Speaker 03

  Respectfully.

• 1:32:42Bill Simmons?

  Pelicans, I think are the team in the NBA.

• 1:32:45Speaker 03

  Great.

• 1:32:45Bill Simmons?

  Chargers are 1,000% the team in the NFL.

• 1:32:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:49Bill Simmons?

  And the Blue Jackets, their highlight of the last 10 years was when I made fun of them in a mailbag last year. And they got all mad about it. So those would be my four. I'll offer you the following three markets house. Hartford, Austin or Columbus? We could move all four of those teams to one of those cities. You pick.

• 1:33:10Speaker 03

  What do you think?

• 1:33:10Bill Simmons?

  So Columbus I kept because then they would just keep, they would get the Blue Jackets back and maybe just rename them. And just start over like it's a brand new franchise.

• 1:33:19Speaker 03

  I mean, the answer is Austin. Like the only problem with Austin is they can't build those roads. They're the infrastructure. I was down there a year ago. Between that, that basically Austin to San Antonio, you have to have KG on, you have to, um, Kirk on, uh, Goldberry. So he can explain like, you know, he's, he's actually living it.

• 1:33:43Bill Simmons?

  I honestly don't think they can handle it. I think their traffic would be horrific.

• 1:33:47Speaker 03

  It's one metropolitan area almost now from Austin to San Antonio.

• 1:33:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:52Speaker 03

  So you would have to like, you know, have the stadiums and stuff in, in places where, yeah, cause it's crazy now.

• 1:33:59Bill Simmons?

  So.

• 1:34:00Speaker 03

  It's amazing city though. I love, I love Austin so much. I love San Antonio.

• 1:34:04Bill Simmons?

  Well, if you tweet the question, maybe you would say every, the city that has no teams, maybe you say they have one team. And then you could say Austin, San Antonio as like a place that would have four. I just can't imagine anyone going to hockey games in Texas. I wanted to make the case for Hartford for a second.

• 1:34:22Speaker 03

  Go ahead. I'll listen. I don't understand why people in Texas wouldn't go to hockey.

• 1:34:26Bill Simmons?

  Just for Jacko.

• 1:34:27Speaker 03

  Hockey's fun. Yeah. Hartford for Jacko. Let's do it.

• 1:34:31Bill Simmons?

  Dead center, just far enough away from Boston and New York, right? So not, it's competitive, but not really. And then you have the whole middle Connecticut area, but then you also have the outskirts of Western Mass. You have the, the Western Connecticut where like Stanford, Greenwich, all those places are. And you also have a proof of concept with UConn basketball.

• 1:34:53Speaker 03

  Hmm. That's pretty good.

• 1:34:55Bill Simmons?

  You have ESPN there. You have a lot of nice places all the way around. Um, there's some businesses. I think it would, I don't think it's as good of a.

• 1:35:06Speaker 03

  Four teams is a lot.

• 1:35:07Bill Simmons?

  Four teams is a lot. Well, the real answer is no city could accommodate four teams. For Hartford's the 33rd biggest Nielsen market. Austin's 34th.

• 1:35:16Bill Simmons?

  But anyway, those would be my four teams. And then, uh, James from Australia wanted to know if Tampa has a chance to be the defining team of the 2020s, the defining sports city of the 2020s.

• 1:35:30Bill Simmons?

  Here's how he said, if you look at championships by decades, 1960s, Boston, 70s, Pittsburgh, 80s, Los Angeles, 90s, Chicago, 2000's, Boston, 2010's, Boston. And 2020's LA and Tampa are in the lead right now. Tampa has three titles. They almost just won a fourth. They won two Stanley Cups and a Super Bowl.

• 1:35:53Bill Simmons?

  We're halfway through the decade house.

• 1:35:56Speaker 03

  I was like, how many Stanley Cups?

• 1:35:59Bill Simmons?

  They won two. They went back to back with the.

• 1:36:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, they did.

• 1:36:02Bill Simmons?

  Freaking, what's their teams name? The Lightning?

• 1:36:05Speaker 03

  There's no way for me to expound upon this without being disrespectful to hockey. So I'm just gonna, I'll just be quiet.

• 1:36:12Bill Simmons?

  Last, the last question's from Brad H. from Pittsburgh. How is Dick House not the sponsor of Eat a Big Dick segment? He thinks your dad should record a little outro for the segment where he says, I'm Dick House. I'd like to cordially invite you to eat me.

• 1:36:28Bill Simmons?

  He'd probably do that.

• 1:36:30Speaker 03

  Oh, he would definitely do that. He wouldn't, it would require very little.

• 1:36:33Bill Simmons?

  Did you have, did you have anybody queued up for this week, for this week's?

• 1:36:37Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 1:36:38Bill Simmons?

  Invitation? Okay.

• 1:36:39Speaker 03

  No, because you know, my molar, I'd like my molar to eat a fat dick. And that's why it's, it's about to come out of my mouth. And I'm going to send it away to where it deserves to go.

• 1:36:48Bill Simmons?

  That's fair. This episode is brought to you by Workday. Guessing is for game shows, not your business, especially when your margin for error is zero. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance and IT with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission aware, giving you accuracy 24/7 and the ability to not just get work done, but get it done right. It's a new workday. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Excitement is in the air. That's right. It's the start of NBA season. I can't wait to get together with friends, share some Michelob Ultras and watch Tip Off. Plus, as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting you closer to the action

• 1:37:31Bill Simmons?

  with experiences that make you feel like you're courtside to actual courtside tickets. Enter now for a chance to win at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to US residents 21 plus. Begins on October 1st, 2026, ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes and details. Okay. Ringer 107. It's brought to you by FanDuel, our friends. Make this your most rewarding season ever. Download the FanDuel app to check out all of our 107 picks and boosted teasers every week this season. I go first this week.

• 1:38:14Speaker 03

  Good.

• 1:38:14Bill Simmons?

  By the way, I read that, I read that email last week about how I was the Billsburg Steelers. I was three and two or two and three every week. And I was due to go two and three and I went two and three.

• 1:38:26Speaker 03

  Oh, son of a bitch.

• 1:38:28Bill Simmons?

  So now I'm going to go three and two. Apparently this is just what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.

• 1:38:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. I went four and one, my best season, week of the season.

• 1:38:36Bill Simmons?

  And Sal went five and oh.

• 1:38:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. Great job. I saw. It's the contents.

• 1:38:43Bill Simmons?

  I'm taking the Ravens first. Ravens plus three. I'm rolling the dice. Lamar's practiced twice in a row. It was three and a half for a long time. I don't, I think this number might even go down.

• 1:38:55Speaker 03

  Yep. If he's confirmed, it'll be two and a half.

• 1:38:58Bill Simmons?

  He's full practice two weeks in a row, so I'm grabbing the number.

• 1:39:02Speaker 03

  I like it.

• 1:39:02Bill Simmons?

  Buffalo's defense stinks. These games are always awesome.

• 1:39:06Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:39:07Bill Simmons?

  I think Baltimore, it's, it's not a kitchen sink game because they're four and three, but they are in fourth place in the AFC North with two teams above them playing each other. And, you know, they've had a weird season with Lamar, with some, some injuries on both sides of the ball, some Henry fumbles. They've blown a couple of games they shouldn't have, have lost. And most importantly, these games are just, oh, this game's gonna be awesome. I'm positive this game is gonna be awesome. And it'll be back and forth and somebody's gonna win by three points and.

• 1:39:40Speaker 03

  Or less.

• 1:39:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So it may either gonna push or it's a one point or two point I win. I think the Ravens are actually gonna win. I don't believe in the Bills at all. But it's in Baltimore, so who knows? But I just, I like the spot for them and I'm gonna take Ravens plus three.

• 1:39:55Speaker 03

  No argument. Um, I like the number. I definitely think that Lamar is playing, so the number will be under three. By the time Sunday rolls around, they'll confirm it on Saturday. Uh, no notes. They're, they're always close games between these two.

• 1:40:09Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for your first?

• 1:40:11Speaker 03

  I had a hard time with this week to say right off the top. Um, I'm gonna go ahead and lay it with Tampa. I think that, um, you know, anytime you get a defense that's, you know, top five in both rush and pass success.

• 1:40:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:27Speaker 03

  You have an identity. Um, the only thing that undermines that identity is the head coach. And it's, it's a perpetual, uh, you know, state of fear. At end of game situations especially, but I like the idea of Atlanta. Like, they've have a couple of statement games now, the Falcons, but they always follow it up with some kind of, you know, just inexplicable disastrous showing, like no showing. They're a no show team. I like the idea of this Tampa defense getting pressure on Penix. Penix numbers against pressure aren't great, but it's really the run game of Tampa that impressed me so much last week, and I don't think it's a fluke.

• 1:41:11Speaker 03

  Um, it looks like Tampa's gonna be healthy on, um, all those skill positions offensively. And I think they can establish the run and I'm just gonna go ahead and trust their, um, defense. They are still, this is a must have. This is really their entire season. They are in the mix for their division still.

• 1:41:30Bill Simmons?

  We keep saying that with them.

• 1:41:31Speaker 03

  They are in the mix for their division because they, they, they won their only division game thus far. If they go ahead and beat, um, the Falcons this week, they will be 2-0 in their division, even though they'll be three and five on their season. Um, I'm gonna go ahead and, and lay the points with Tampa.

• 1:41:49Bill Simmons?

  I'm sad to report I have them as well, and I think it's too obvious. And a lot of people have them, but the, the, the issue for me is this is, it's minus two and a half right now, and I think, I think this ends at three or three and a half. But the stats with the Bucks defense, like they're, they're top five in DBOA.

• 1:42:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:42:08Bill Simmons?

  They've held, Dabbundo had this in his column today. They held Carolina, Pittsburgh, Dallas and Green Bay to under 20 points in regulation.

• 1:42:17Bill Simmons?

  You're not gonna be able to run the ball on them. That's been the one thing they've shut down. Ibuka comes back and I'm with you. I, you know, I had Carolina last week and Tampa ran all over them. And I thought they found something just in general. Like, it was like they remembered that Bucky Irving was their best player on offense. They didn't ask Baker to do a lot and, um, they're gonna be home. It's the Falcons outside. And, uh, and I think the Bucks need to gain more. And it's just, this is the NFC South in a nutshell. Now, shame on us for betting on the NFC South, but I think this line goes up and I wanna grab it. While, uh, while it's at minus two and a half. And I think the only reason it's not three or three and a half is because Baker Mayfield might have a fucked up thumb. He threw 11 times last week.

• 1:43:02Speaker 03

  Didn't need to throw. Didn't matter. A whole nother week for that hand to get healthy.

• 1:43:06Bill Simmons?

  But I'm fully prepared. I, I, I'm already, this is an ankle grabber. I'm already to get screwed on this one.

• 1:43:14Speaker 03

  As am I. I'm right there.

• 1:43:15Bill Simmons?

  Uh, what do you have for your third one?

• 1:43:18Speaker 03

  It's my second.

• 1:43:19Bill Simmons?

  Or your second?

• 1:43:20Speaker 03

  Cause you've given two. This is the most obvious play of the week and this is the squarest play of the week. And I'm definitely here for it. I'm gonna go ahead and lay the nine and a half with the Jaguars. We went, you know, to, to the, to the well last week with the moron Texans and finally we can just cross them off. I don't have to, to fiddle with those morons any longer. Um, the lack of preparedness, the lack of execution. I don't wanna do the entire litany of disaster areas that the Tex, Houston Texans this season occupy. But let's talk about.

• 1:43:55Bill Simmons?

  I have actual hatred for the Houston Texans.

• 1:43:58Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:43:59Bill Simmons?

  None of the human beings on the team, but just them as a whole. They've hurt my feelings. They've cost me money. They made me feel stupid. They made me feel embarrassed for myself. Um, that I trusted them again. Like, I, like, sports shouldn't make you feel this way. They just make me angry.

• 1:44:16Speaker 03

  Is there one person in America that can advance a, a, a defense of D'Amico Ryan's? Can, is there one? Anyone?

• 1:44:23Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:44:23Speaker 03

  I, I, I'm here to listen. Who, who, what's the case for him keeping his job?

• 1:44:29Bill Simmons?

  I don't understand with all the players they have, why they're not a scarier defense. You watch a defense like the Bears and it's like the Bears have at least figured out how to be like a little intimidating. How is this Houston team? You just roll over them whenever you want.

• 1:44:44Speaker 03

  Pushed around. You can run right down their throat. The Giants out physical them. They kicked their ass. They blew them off the line of scrimmage.

• 1:44:51Bill Simmons?

  It's hard to take Houston seriously after that.

• 1:44:53Speaker 03

  They wanted front four, but you know, I only go on that side tangent for the purpose of observing that that was a pretty obvious play last week and he took it right in the teeth. Um, because it was like, look at J.J. McCarthy against this defense. Well, J.J. McCarthy was up to it. Um, I can't make a case for the Colts. As soon as the, the, the Jags get up by, um, the two scores I expect them to, the game's over. Uh, dimes can't move. It was the handicap coming into the season for taking Colts unders. Um, just being skeptical. I, I was confused, confounded in the entire run up to the season. The Colts kept saying,

• 1:45:35Speaker 03

  Jones is gonna be ready. He's gonna be our quarterback. Jones is ready. He's our quarterback. Well, he arrived and he's playing quarterback, but he, he's a third less effective because he can't run.

• 1:45:46Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:45:46Speaker 03

  So if he can't run, then the, the playbook has to change. Now they do have the injuries in term, in the receiver room. Um.

• 1:45:55Bill Simmons?

  It wasn't, doesn't qualify as a year from hell, but nothing went right for them. And it was a poorly constructed team to begin with, unfortunately.

• 1:46:01Speaker 03

  And I'll go ahead and take them on the sell off week. I'll go ahead and fade them in the week, you know, like, oh, that's a go play for, um, Nelson. Let's go play for Buckner. No, let's, let's, let's let the Jags. If the Jags are legit and serious and we think that they are, then they should win this game by 10 points. And, and I don't have a problem with them covering margin.

• 1:46:24Bill Simmons?

  That's fair.

• 1:46:25Speaker 03

  They're home. That also helps. The Colts haven't won down there in 13.

• 1:46:30Bill Simmons?

  You figure the Jags will have three games this year where they win by like 27 points and I think they've already had two of them. All right, I'm doing a tease for this next one.

• 1:46:40Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:46:41Bill Simmons?

  And the first side is easy. It's Patriots minus seven in Miami. Now, there's a tortured history of the Pats in Miami. They're under 500 even in the last 25 years, I think. Um, for, for, for, uh, I think dating back to whenever they built that stadium. Lot of tough memories. The Gronk failing to tackle the guy on the, on the trick play. Brady blowing the 10 point when everybody and their brother had the, a three team tease with the Pats on Monday night. We've had a lot of bad ones there. Growing up, I don't feel like we ever won there when I was a kid.

• 1:47:17Bill Simmons?

  So I'm gonna mention all that. It's gonna be humid. It checks some boxes, which I think is why this line is, is at minus seven. Miami won last week. Miami's terrible. Miami probably won the one game they're gonna win this season. And this Pats team is a perfect matchup for them. They're just gonna throw the ball all over them. This is Drake May lights up shitty teams. This is one of the, one of the great things about having Drake May. And I just am expecting us to beat Miami by one point. So I'm going to lower it to minus one. I feel like we're gonna be prepared for Malik Willis.

• 1:47:53Speaker 03

  It's because you've lived your whole life with these, these Miami games being.

• 1:47:58Bill Simmons?

  I get it. I don't like that in the Miami game. I don't.

• 1:48:00Speaker 03

  Why wouldn't you just lay the seven?

• 1:48:05Bill Simmons?

  Fair question. Um, cause that, cause they're in Miami and I just think they, they'll win by three and it'll be a stupid nightmare of a game.

• 1:48:15Speaker 03

  Okay. Cause I, I came, I'm not gonna say anything.

• 1:48:21Bill Simmons?

  I am, I had two choices for who I was gonna tease them with.

• 1:48:29Bill Simmons?

  And I think it's going to be the Broncos plus one and a half against the Chiefs. I'm going to take the Broncos to seven and a half, which reduces my Bo Nix risk factor. I did really think about Broncos plus seven and a half with the under of 46 and a half. Following cases for the Broncos here, revenge game because they were humiliated in week one. Their defense, they're fifth DVOA now, even though um counting week one when they got shellacked by the Chiefs, they're still a top five defense. Jonah Coleman's back, who I think is their best running back, but now now their backfield's in place where they have him. They have Harvey as a third down guy, a little Dobbins. I think they'll be able to run the ball in the Chiefs.

• 1:49:09Bill Simmons?

  Chiefs receivers stink. Bad offensive line on the road, always a good one. That's the Chiefs. Mahomes honestly has looked like a C plus for most of the year. Nobody wants to say it, but it's a fact. KC after week one, they beat Indy by three. They beat Miami in that late game where it felt like Miami was not only going to uncover, but maybe even send it overtime. And then they made a stupid play. They beat Vegas by three. And then they whipped the Chargers in week six.

• 1:49:36Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:49:39Bill Simmons?

  I just think the Broncos um when you throw in their revenge piece and that they can cheat the Bo Nix thing and just try to take a lead and then not fuck it up. And I think that the receivers and the Chiefs are just awful, like really horrible. Like I don't know they have injuries and stuff, but at some point you need guys who can get open. And I don't think they have guys that can get open. So bringing them up to seven and a half. And I think that'll either be Broncos winning or it'll be a close loss.

• 1:50:07Speaker 03

  They're supposed to get Surtan back, right?

• 1:50:09Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 1:50:10Speaker 03

  Isn't that the and and Hufanga is still 50 50?

• 1:50:13Bill Simmons?

  Surtan's definitely back.

• 1:50:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. All right. Yeah, I like it. I mean, there's a good case. The spot is supposed to you're supposed to play Denver and a bunch of your observations. I mean, I faded the Chiefs and you know, probably paid a price for it at the outset of the season because I was skeptical about how effective Mahomes was going to be. Well, he hasn't been that effective. Um, and if you look at all of the advanced metrics, what they've been able to do is run the ball. And so the Kenneth Walker.

• 1:50:39Bill Simmons?

  And then Seattle is like, you you won't be running the ball today.

• 1:50:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:43Bill Simmons?

  What's your plan B?

• 1:50:44Speaker 03

  Who can replicate that? Well, Denver would be a team that I think is capable of of, you know, matching that same kind of blueprint. So I understand the idea.

• 1:50:53Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if this is going to help the running game as a backup for Walker, but the the Chiefs signed OJ Simpson today.

• 1:51:02Speaker 03

  I'm gonna not comment on that.

• 1:51:05Bill Simmons?

  He's going to back up Kenneth Walker.

• 1:51:08Speaker 03

  Not going to comment on that.

• 1:51:11Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for your next pick?

• 1:51:13Speaker 03

  I'm gonna take, oh gosh. I'm gonna go ahead and lay the seven with the Pats.

• 1:51:20Bill Simmons?

  Oh, look at you.

• 1:51:21Speaker 03

  I just like Drake May, when he plays shit teams, his track record is tremendous.

• 1:51:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:26Speaker 03

  Over his career, 12 and four against the spread anytime the line is three or more. Um, and it's the case that you made about, you know, they're going to throw the ball all over the ball field. And when you you give Vrabel the challenge, you you have to stop the mobile quarterback. Okay, I think Vrabel, as opposed to Aaron Glenn, I think Vrabel will have a game plan for that.

• 1:51:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:50Speaker 03

  The reason that I'm I'm especially kind of bullish on this is like the the

• 1:52:00Speaker 03

  Finns were holding on for dear life at the end of that game. I mean, notwithstanding all of the buffoonery out of the the Jets' masterminds, the Jets were right there. Um, if they'd used their timeouts properly around the two minute um timeframe, they might have even gotten the ball back. Um, they gave up a fourth and one, but I think coming off of the high of their first victory, they got to pour water on the coach and celebrated everything. It's back to reality. Uh, seven or less for me is fine. I'm going to go ahead and lay it with the Pats.

• 1:52:32Bill Simmons?

  I left out something in my tease analysis of the game that Vrabel used to coach Malik Willis.

• 1:52:39Speaker 03

  Good point. Interesting. Has a perspective.

• 1:52:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I think he liked him as a guy, but so for my last pick, I had a couple that I liked, including the Jets. Minus one and a half at home against the Raiders, and I've decided I just don't want to take the Jets. I cannot do the Aaron Glenn thing. I just can't.

• 1:53:04Speaker 03

  Can't.

• 1:53:05Bill Simmons?

  I looked hard at Browns plus three and a half in Pittsburgh. But they've already beaten Pittsburgh. Granted, it was on Thursday night. The stats going around about how the last two seasons, teams are 0 and 8 coming back from Europe the next week.

• 1:53:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:53:21Bill Simmons?

  That stat's been too omnipresent and I just couldn't get around desert to Sean in in Pittsburgh. I just couldn't get there.

• 1:53:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, good. Good job by you.

• 1:53:34Bill Simmons?

  Bears, Bears Seahawks.

• 1:53:36Speaker 03

  What? The Browns haven't won in in Pittsburgh in 22 seasons.

• 1:53:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's just too much going.

• 1:53:40Speaker 03

  There is that.

• 1:53:42Bill Simmons?

  Bears Seahawks.

• 1:53:43Speaker 03

  Other than the playoffs, I'm talking about regular season.

• 1:53:46Bill Simmons?

  Bears Seahawks Monday night.

• 1:53:48Speaker 03

  Phew.

• 1:53:48Bill Simmons?

  Bears plus three.

• 1:53:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:52Bill Simmons?

  I'm going to wait on this. This might be my Sunday pick. I want to see if this nudges up to three and a half. I don't think it's going to go down.

• 1:53:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:54:01Bill Simmons?

  I think the Bears can absolutely win this game. I'm not scared of the three. To me, these are playoff rules. I think this is an NFC title matchup potentially. And uh, I keep looking at this game thinking Bears with that crazy Flores ripoff defense against Arnold, who only has one receiver to throw to. They're not gonna, they haven't proven yet that they can run the ball and control it. I thought even that KC game, KC, their defense just won the game. They got a lead and the game was over. The Bears are going to be able to come back on that. I was looking at them as a tease plus three, but I I think I'm going to wait on it. So I promised I would do this two weeks ago if the pick won. I did the Steyman's pick.

• 1:54:43Bill Simmons?

  My friend that bet with with Jeff, we did it two weeks ago. It was like, oh, the classic Steyman's pick would be this. And if this wins, I'll start doing it. Then I forgot to do it last week. And if I had done it last week, I would have taken the Dolphins plus four and a half against the Jets. Which one?

• 1:54:57Speaker 03

  So good.

• 1:54:57Bill Simmons?

  So I gotta do it. The worst, the worst pick on the board. I can't imagine how anyone would feel good about taking them. And yet I love the zag. Chargers plus six and a half in LA against the Rams. Chargers, if you're making the case, throw out week one against Arizona, whatever, caught them by surprise. Week two Vegas, not great, can't really defend it. Week three Buffalo, blew the game, could have won.

• 1:55:25Speaker 03

  Should have won, could have, not should have, could have.

• 1:55:28Bill Simmons?

  Week four, lost in Seattle and got killed, but then came back near the end. Denver blew it in the fourth quarter and then KC week six got killed. They've had a bye week, two weeks off. Why isn't this line higher?

• 1:55:42Speaker 03

  God, that's a great point.

• 1:55:43Bill Simmons?

  Why isn't this line eight and a half?

• 1:55:45Speaker 03

  Why is this line?

• 1:55:46Bill Simmons?

  Why is this line six and a half?

• 1:55:48Speaker 03

  Yep. It's a great point.

• 1:55:51Bill Simmons?

  Chargers coming off the bye.

• 1:55:53Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:55:55Bill Simmons?

  They, they're still alive technically for the season. Um, but they're also in job preservation, job save mode. They have not engaged in the trade market, according to Tom Pelissero.

• 1:56:06Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:56:08Bill Simmons?

  They're in LA. There's no crowd. There's going to be no crowd for either team. It's just going to be like a neutral site. And the Rams like, all right, the Rams caught people by surprise last week because they just had their 19 white tight ends and they ran the ball and did all the thing. But the Chargers' defense has been pretty good.

• 1:56:24Speaker 03

  Chargers' defense decent. Yep.

• 1:56:27Bill Simmons?

  And then from a ramp, there's a lot of injuries on the Rams side, like McDuffie might not play. It's it's.

• 1:56:32Speaker 03

  Devante's out.

• 1:56:33Bill Simmons?

  It's like a shell of a Rams team. And this, to me, this feels, I'm sure somebody will take this tomorrow on the Friday Wise Guys pod uh as a money line. This is an obvious money line pick too.

• 1:56:45Speaker 03

  I think Cousin Sal's taking the Chargers every week that they've played.

• 1:56:48Bill Simmons?

  I'm in six plus six and a half. I was going to wait till Sunday to see if it went to seven, but I think it's going to go the other way. I think it's going to go down.

• 1:56:55Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:56:55Bill Simmons?

  So uh Chargers, six and a half. That is my Steyman's pick for this week.

• 1:57:02Speaker 03

  What was the email from the reader or the listener about McVeigh ignoring special teams? What's that called? Doesn't that have a name?

• 1:57:11Bill Simmons?

  Oh, the, the seatbelt, seatbelt award. Me not wearing a seatbelt.

• 1:57:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:16Bill Simmons?

  Bill not putting a seatbelt on award.

• 1:57:18Speaker 03

  McVeigh ignoring the special teams.

• 1:57:20Bill Simmons?

  That's the thing. Chargers might get a special teams thing. Who knows?

• 1:57:24Speaker 03

  Anything's possible.

• 1:57:25Bill Simmons?

  Who knows?

• 1:57:26Speaker 03

  I don't hate it.

• 1:57:27Bill Simmons?

  What's your last pick?

• 1:57:28Speaker 03

  You're buying into it. It's a teaser because I gave out Tampa minus two and a half, Jacksonville minus nine and a half, the Pats minus seven, playing all favorites. I mean, that's exactly how you're supposed to do this. Not at all. For my teaser, I am going to go ahead and grab the Raiders plus seven and a half.

• 1:57:46Bill Simmons?

  Against the Jets.

• 1:57:47Speaker 03

  Figure out which side I wanted, right? Raiders traveling cross country to take on the Jets. I just know that at the end of the day, I'd like to be on the side of Clint Kubiak and Kirk Cousins when I need a cover at the end of the game.

• 1:58:00Bill Simmons?

  Four straight losses.

• 1:58:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58:02Bill Simmons?

  Kirk Cousins maybe playing for his job a tiny bit. Spend some.

• 1:58:06Speaker 03

  Or, or, or continued auditions, right? Like there are still some teams that could use a quarterback. Minnesota is one of them. I mean, the continued audition of Kirk Cousins, he hasn't looked terrible. He is what he is. He's limited. It's fine. But like I say, when I know that I need a cover, I need a backdoor. Jets winning by margin, I'm perfectly fine with living with that risk, even though they are getting healthy. Breece Hall is back. AD Mitchell is back. And they, they, the, the Jets are occasionally functional.

• 1:58:38Bill Simmons?

  Geno, no Geno Smith revenge game doesn't scare you at all?

• 1:58:43Speaker 03

  I'll, I'll live with that risk. I'm going to live with that.

• 1:58:45Bill Simmons?

  All right. So who are you putting them with?

• 1:58:47Speaker 03

  Raiders are plus seven. I had the Broncos sitting here, but I'm not going to.

• 1:58:51Bill Simmons?

  Do it.

• 1:58:51Speaker 03

  Copy you. No, I'm going to go ahead and grab the Vikings. Now, I, I know that the Vikings, you know, there, there's been appropriate skepticism around them as their last remaining undefeated team. But this is more a factor of my skepticism surrounding Detroit.

• 1:59:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:09Speaker 03

  Like what exactly has Detroit done? They have a couple of, of wins. They, they're, they're, they have four wins. They won by one, seven and three, and then they had to blow out in, in Arizona. Congratulations.

• 1:59:22Bill Simmons?

  And also they put a sound I talked about it Sunday. They put a shitload on Jameer Gibbs already. He's headed for 500 touches. It's going to get the shit kicked out of him by the Vikings this weekend. They're going to be blitzing and knocking them over and trying to take them out all the time.

• 1:59:37Speaker 03

  Sun God tweak ankle, like, you know, the, the, these, these Detroit games that they didn't, you know, if they're all of their home games up until this Packers game was, you know, 31 points at home.

• 1:59:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:51Speaker 03

  The Packers vaunted defense took them out. I don't, I mean, it's a back to back divisional games. Now Detroit having the benefit of being home, that's helpful. But I'll go ahead and just take that up to nine and a half. Give me, I, I can't make a case for Minnesota's offense. I won't even bother trying. It's just the idea of Flores and, and, and you know, Minnesota swept Detroit last year. In fact, Minnesota was the reason they knocked Detroit out of the playoffs. So maybe Detroit will be revenge minded and golf has been outstanding against the blitz so far this season. I think he's number one in EPA against the blitz.

• 2:00:29Speaker 03

  That's good. I'm glad to have that walking into Flores doesn't blitz like other teams blitz. He is, you know, the, the blitz rate is one thing where it's 40 points higher than any other team.

• 2:00:39Bill Simmons?

  Over here. Yeah.

• 2:00:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. But the style, the way that they, they bring their blitz, the disguises that they use, I like it. The idea of Minnesota inside of, of two scores.

• 2:00:51Bill Simmons?

  But you took Kyler Murray in a tease with the QB whisperer.

• 2:00:56Bill Simmons?

  Kevin O'Connell. What is he whispering? He's whispering in a different language. He's like.

• 2:01:03Speaker 03

  Jared Mason's back. That's something.

• 2:01:05Bill Simmons?

  The whisperer.

• 2:01:06Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 2:01:06Bill Simmons?

  He's the QB whisperer, except for three quarterbacks who sucked in Minnesota.

• 2:01:11Speaker 03

  I think that Minnesota loses this football game, but not by 10. So I'm going to go ahead and put the Vikings plus nine and a half into my teaser.

• 2:01:18Bill Simmons?

  As always, I wish you the best of luck with Kyler Murray. All right. So our picks, I took Ravens plus three in Buffalo, Bucks minus two and a half, which House had as well. Chargers plus six and a half, the Steyman's pick. And then a Pats Kansas City tease, Pats down and basically minus one. And I'm sorry, not Kansas City, Denver, Denver up to plus seven and a half. And then House, not only does he have the Bucks, he has Jags minus nine and a half to blow out Chris Ballard's Indianapolis Colts. Pats minus seven in Miami. A lot of favorites House. And then a Raiders Vikings tease, Raiders plus seven and a half, Vikings plus nine and a half.

• 2:02:00Bill Simmons?

  That is today's ringer 107. I'm brought to you by Fanduel. Download the app now to find our 107 picks. Make this your most rewarding season ever. Fanduel, play your game. Odds subject to change. So when, when are you getting your thing removed?

• 2:02:14Speaker 03

  Monday, Monday afternoon.

• 2:02:19Bill Simmons?

  Getting old house.

• 2:02:20Speaker 03

  My only hope is, no, this isn't a getting old thing. I don't think. I mean, I've had, you know, the teeth thing shows up once every three or four years, right?

• 2:02:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:29Speaker 03

  At all stages of life.

• 2:02:32Bill Simmons?

  Well, if you're grinding them at night pretending they're, they're a piece of Parmesan.

• 2:02:37Speaker 03

  Or a giant veal chop. I, I need the internet to help me root for me because I'm going to have this procedure Monday, four o'clock. And then I want to go to Wizards Hawks on Wednesday. I feel like that's enough time.

• 2:02:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:52Speaker 03

  That's, that will be my introduction to AJ DeBonsa.

• 2:02:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:56Speaker 03

  I'm going to be in good seats for it. I'm going with our buddy, Johnny O. Johnny O ran.

• 2:03:00Bill Simmons?

  Oh, nice.

• 2:03:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's going to be a great time, but I need to be healthy by then. So I need, I need positive vibes.

• 2:03:07Bill Simmons?

  Do you have a take on Jalen Brown versus Jason Tatum before we go?

• 2:03:11Speaker 03

  I do not. The whole thing exhausts me. I think, I, I, I appreciate Jalen Brown's flair for the dramatic. He really is. He's the one driving this. And I kind of, I, he does. Yeah. He's got some, some petty in him. I mean, he's got some very strong petty bitch vibes. I, I kind of enjoy it, but I, I don't, I mean, who cares?

• 2:03:35Bill Simmons?

  He's going to keep it going until the November 10th Celtics Sixers game.

• 2:03:38Speaker 03

  He's smart. He's an entertainer.

• 2:03:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:41Speaker 03

  I want to tell you.

• 2:03:42Bill Simmons?

  I still like Jalen Brown.

• 2:03:46Speaker 03

  I went ahead and did a NBA future. I don't, I can't, I don't, I can't, I'll have to look at the ticket to look at the price. I did Rocket Sixers as a, as an NBA finals matchup.

• 2:03:57Bill Simmons?

  Rocket Sixers.

• 2:03:58Speaker 03

  I've seen enough of the Sixers now. It's a bet on who's going to, you know, how, how healthy will they be?

• 2:04:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:06Speaker 03

  But they can definitely beat every team in the East. There's no, I've seen enough. Show me no more. I've seen enough already. If Maxie's healthy and those guys arrive, you know, Embiid and LeBron show up more healthy than not, I think they can beat every team in the East.

• 2:04:23Bill Simmons?

  This makes me really happy.

• 2:04:27Bill Simmons?

  It's not even November yet. You've talked yourself into Embiid and 42 year old LeBron. I love it.

• 2:04:33Speaker 03

  No, I talked myself into Maxie, who should be all NBA first team this year. He scored, you know, 10 points in the last 90 seconds of a game that they were messing around in last night.

• 2:04:45Bill Simmons?

  I've done no futures and somehow avoided disaster.

• 2:04:50Bill Simmons?

  When I ended up not, not putting a bunch of stuff when I was in Boston on OKC 65 plus wins with the Warriors, not to make the playoffs.

• 2:05:00Speaker 03

  Thank God.

• 2:05:00Bill Simmons?

  And since I held back on, on really pulling the trigger on that, OKC's team completely fell apart, really sadly.

• 2:05:08Speaker 03

  Fell apart. I mean, it's a bummer.

• 2:05:09Bill Simmons?

  And then, and then Yaxel rejuvenated the Warriors. It was just, it was like a 180 from where I felt on Saturday. I'm still not, I, I think OKC will be okay. I think they need to shake the hangover of, oh my God, I can't believe all that shit happened this week.

• 2:05:26Speaker 03

  A catastrophe.

• 2:05:27Bill Simmons?

  They'll figure it out. They have too much talent. Oh, one last thing. The revelation this week was that Portland Laker game.

• 2:05:35Speaker 03

  Oh my God.

• 2:05:35Bill Simmons?

  Did you stay up for that?

• 2:05:37Speaker 03

  I saw enough of it. Yeah. I, I, I couldn't stay up till the end.

• 2:05:43Speaker 03

  Although that, was that one of the nights I couldn't sleep? I wasn't watching.

• 2:05:46Bill Simmons?

  We did the, when we did the over unders, we talked about how Portland was the, we don't know what the fuck's going to happen with this team. And that, you could have told me anything. What I didn't expect was how good Dame was going to look. And I think he looks legitimately good. And then with Ja, who they at least have his head on straight for now, he's not the same guy from five years ago. They just have all these ways to attack the basket and the coach has figured out like, he just wants everybody going downhill and toward the hoop. And.

• 2:06:17Speaker 03

  Nobody's better at that than Denny. I mean.

• 2:06:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So I think that's a.

• 2:06:21Speaker 03

  There are players that are better, but you get what I'm saying.

• 2:06:22Bill Simmons?

  That's a six or a seven seed though.

• 2:06:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I'll totally agree.

• 2:06:26Bill Simmons?

  Especially in Minnesota, you know, if Edwards is out for two months. Not a lot of chirping at me the last couple of days about me being wrong about the LaMelo trade, just FYI. I don't know if you've seen his box scores.

• 2:06:39Bill Simmons?

  Really having to have a lot of noise this week. Or you, you probably haven't heard a lot either, but.

• 2:06:45Speaker 03

  I'm on record.

• 2:06:45Bill Simmons?

  But Portland could climb into the top six if one of those teams fall backwards. I, I'm a believer. I think whatever they have, it's, it's something.

• 2:06:54Speaker 03

  So we've been super harsh on El Chepo and El Chepo agreed to, you know, acquire Ja.

• 2:07:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:02Speaker 03

  And all of a sudden this team, I mean, they are multifaceted. They can definitely play defense. Klingon's been very good.

• 2:07:10Bill Simmons?

  To me though, Ja's like a luxury, like, although Scoot was, Scoot was horrible the other night, but if Scoot maybe could have played those minutes and given them something. Close, but I'd rather have Ja because the difference with Ja was he's bringing so much swagger.

• 2:07:27Speaker 03

  That's.

• 2:07:27Bill Simmons?

  That the team, the team had like a little oomph to them.

• 2:07:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:07:31Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. I liked it. I know it's one game there. It's the Lakers, whatever, but, but I, it was, it was the most eye opening. Everything else I'm not surprised by that we've seen this season, but that was the one thing where I was like, huh?

• 2:07:44Bill Simmons?

  Kind of a bitch. All these guys that can just get in the paint, go downhill.

• 2:07:47Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 2:07:47Bill Simmons?

  All right, House. Good luck on Monday. Good luck with your bets.

• 2:07:49Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 2:07:50Bill Simmons?

  We'll see you on Ringer Wise Guy tomorrow. Thanks for coming on. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Tom and House and Dabbundo and Gahow and Eduardo and Jack and Chris from Spotify as well. Don't forget, I'm going to be live with Cousin Sal on Sunday night after the NBC game. I can't even remember what the game is, but we're going to be live right afterwards and we'll be doing guest alliance for week nine. Enjoy the weekend. Go Emerson. Please beat Babson for the love of God on Saturday and I will be back on Sunday night. Enjoy the weekend and enjoy Halloween. It's a great day.

• 2:08:47Bill Simmons?

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• 2:09:29Bill Simmons?

  877-770-7867. 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 Minnehoshan and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. 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

• 2:10:12Bill Simmons?

  and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters November 6th. Get tickets now.

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