Is the NBA Too Afraid of Football? Plus, Jets Dysfunction and Million-Dollar Picks With Wosny Lambre, Joe House, and Peter Schrager

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Wosny Lambre and Joe House for an NBA Cup exit survey; they talk about what worked and what didn't, whether Las Vegas is the right place to hold this event, some proposed tweaks, and more (02:22). Then, Bill and House run through the weekend NFL slate before making their Million-Dollar Picks for NFL Week 16 (41:24). Finally, Bill talks with Peter Schrager of NFL Network and Fox Sports about a myriad of NFL topics, including a weird stretch of the NFL schedule, Patrick Mahomes’s injury, the possibly undervalued Ravens, COTY predictions, this year's "nobody believes in us" team (01:10:25), Jets dysfunction, the upcoming coaching carousel, Calais Campbell being released from the Dolphins amid a losing season, Netflix's new ‘Aaron Rodgers: Enigma’ documentary, and more (01:41:47). 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 Uber Eats. It's football season. Uber Eats is delivering deals every game day. This week, get 10 free boneless wings from Wingstop on qualifying orders. Game on, flavor on, Wingstop is here. So if your fantasy league is coming over for some in-person smack talk, order Wingstop on Uber Eats and get 10 boneless wings free. It's the perfect way to keep everyone fed tonight so you can focus on the game. No matter who scores big tonight, you'll score a great deal. Order now and get 10 boneless wings free from Wingstop only on Uber Eats. Offer valid from September 14th to September 27th and from November 2nd to November 16th. Order minimum before taxes and fees is required. See retailer's storefront for details. Taxes, fees, and terms apply.

• 0:45Bill Simmons?

  Product availability varies by region. Exclusions may apply. See app for details. This episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by State Farm. Every football player brings something different to the field. Maybe they have a cannon arm, speed, power. Maybe they have their own podcast. That being said, no two players are exactly alike. And the same is true off the field. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you. So they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where we put up a new rewatchables on Monday night. It's The Gambler with me and Chris Ryan. It was a one for us. We had a great time. 10-minute serial conversation there.

• 1:29Bill Simmons?

  You can find all of it on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel. This Monday coming up, we are going to do a Christmas movie. We did Home Alone 2. It was with Kyle Brandt. It was the first time we'd ever done a podcast together in the same room. So that part was fun, but this is, we had a blast doing this one. So that's coming on Monday. You'll be able to watch that actually on Spotify and you can watch that on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. You can watch all the videos from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. And we just launched a Ringer TV YouTube channel that's got the watch. It has the Prestige TV pod, has a bunch of fun Hall of Fame stuff and like direct to video stuff that we did. We, that's where we did the Landman thing last week. So please go subscribe to that as well.

• 2:14Bill Simmons?

  We're also brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook, where we've been doing these 30-on-30 profit boost tokens every Friday.

• 2:22Bill Simmons?

  I've been boosting 30-point scorers for you. If they get to 30 points and you bet it, you get boosted. I tweet out my picks on Friday. And I was, I did really well the first three weeks. Last week was not well, but it was weird. It was one of those weeks where there wasn't a lot of scoring. So be sure to claim the PBT place your 30 on 30 bet for Friday. Just look for 30 on 30 on the FanDuel Sportsbook app. Coming up, going to talk to House and Big Waz about the NBA Cup. Big picture, did this work? How can we fix it? What should it look like next year? So we did that. And why is the NFL cast such a shadow over the NBA? It makes me mad. Anyway, we talked about that too. Then House stayed for Million Dollar Picks.

• 3:04Bill Simmons?

  Then Peter Schrager came on to talk about dysfunction with the Jets, the weird Christmas schedule and all the strange coaching stuff that might be happening pretty soon. It is all next. First, our friends from ProChamp.

• 3:40Bill Simmons?

  All right, it's 2 PM Pacific Time. Joe House is here because we're going to do Million Dollar Picks in a little bit. Big Waz is here. He was just in Las Vegas for the NBA Cup, which is it still going? Or is it finally over?

• 3:54Speaker 01

  I mean, I was only there for the semifinals. I got back on Sunday, but it's done. The Bucks, I heard the Bucks won and Giannis played well.

• 4:02Bill Simmons?

  Oh, is that what happened?

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:04Bill Simmons?

  So walk us through the Vegas piece of this and whether it's a good idea. Because I really, I really want us, the three of us to help the NBA. I think the NBA needs help in a bunch of different ways with their scheduling and some of their idea generation. But what, what worked for you in Vegas and what didn't work for you?

• 4:23Speaker 01

  I think I like the idea of having two games in one location, sort of an all day kind of basketball extravaganza. Like, I personally enjoyed that aspect of it. The arena is, you know, pretty much up to snuff in terms of any normal NBA arena. So like, just the, the kind of logistics of how it works as a basketball venue is completely fine.

• 4:51Bill Simmons?

  So you felt like it was like March Madness-y a little bit? Like, you go, there's two games in a row, the house is nodding happily.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  100%. Um, I thought that was great. I think, you know, what it reminded me of, honestly, especially early on in these games as they're sort of getting going, was being at the dunk contest and the three-point contest in Indianapolis last year. It's like, you know, I'm here to watch, but like, nobody, it feels like nobody there is very impassioned. It's like, um, you know, neutral observers, basically. Uh, but as the games get going and the result gets closer to being finalized, people got into it. It's just because there's not a lot of partisans there, um, that's, that's the, that's what the atmosphere felt like. It felt like,

• 5:42Speaker 01

  you know, when I was watching the three-point contest last year, until Steph and INSQ got to the finals, there wasn't that much juice watching it. But like, once it's like, whoa, Steph might lose to a WNBA player, the energy sort of got ratcheted up. And I think that's kind of what it felt like being in Vegas. It's like, early on in the game, the crowd is like, everybody's sort of getting settled in. And then when you notice that like, all right, the game's in the balance, people were really into it.

• 6:12Bill Simmons?

  House, the finals, watching on TV, it reminded me, uh, not a little of the bubble.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 6:21Bill Simmons?

  Where the crowd was like blacked out. I couldn't really tell if the audio was bad or if people were just in a coma. I couldn't tell how many people were there. And Giannis was just killing it. Obviously, he killed it the whole time he was there, but it just something about it doesn't work. I'm sure it works if you're there, if you work for the league, if you're in the teams is like, this is great. We're all here. But I feel like there's a better idea. So where'd you stand just on the semis and the finals?

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Well, there's, there's two things at work. In the first place, the games were rock fights. I mean, the shooting across the board in the semis and the finals was bad. And, you know, Oklahoma City going five for 32 from three, that's not pleasing to the eye. They were all unders. If you were gambling on this and playing on the unders, you, you're quite happy with outcomes. But was really hit the key point, which is how can you get the partisans there? How can you get the fans that will show up with the passion? And this is the difference between this year's iteration and last year with the Lakers, where the Lakers had a easy, easy, easy way to import, you know, a bunch of enthusiasm. And it was very cool because it was the first

• 7:32Speaker 02

  one. How can you get that? This is why I was shaking my head enthusiastically around the idea of this being kind of like an NCAA deal. The difference is there's big chunks of, of fanbases that have traveled to that place to root for their, their team. So it's live, it's live from, from the tip. Um, how can you, how can we get that? That's the part BS that I want to.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Part of it for me is like, you know, I, I've read and I've heard all of the hand ringing, like the bottom line is if the Knicks and Warriors were in this final, there would have been an atmosphere. It would have been, you know, a huge deal, but we didn't get that. We got the Bucks and OKC. These are not two national brands. These are not two, you know, um, fanbases that have massive like fanbases all over the country. The way the Knicks and the Lakers do, like, you know, if you've ever been to a Hawks game when the Knicks are playing them, it's half Knicks fans in there. You know, same when you go to. Uh, when, when the Lakers play in places like Phoenix and Denver, it's like a bunch of Laker fans there, right?

• 8:37Speaker 01

  And so, you know, the two teams in there, I think was problematic for me personally. And I'm not somebody who's ever like, you know, given Adam Silver his props. I think the teams played hard. The teams played like as if there were stakes. All the ancillary stuff I think needs to be figured out. But the most important thing that the players cared and tried their best. I think that's the biggest sort of takeaway for me.

• 9:03Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's why I care about this as a topic because fundamentally, the premise behind the tournament worked because the games were more fun to watch. So you start there. You said something that I think is a bad sign for the league and maybe ties into the stuff I did on Tuesday on my pod. Oklahoma City is the best team in the West and they have Shay, who's the fourth best player in the world or the fifth best player in the world, depending on what your rankings is, are. Giannis is the second best player in the world. Maybe the first best player, if you want to have the Jokic Giannis conversation. I don't want to do that here. And is playing out of his mind and is the most fun version of him that he's been in a game. So on paper, it's a great matchup. Oklahoma City, Milwaukee. And yet you laid out like, oh, it's too bad the Knicks weren't in there.

• 9:48Bill Simmons?

  It's too bad the Warriors aren't in there. Maybe that's just what the league is like. And even when I was going back and trying to figure out all the unicorn situations that have happened over the years. Almost every time it's somebody in a big market, right? It's, it's Magic and Bird, Boston, LA. It's Michael Jordan in Chicago. It's Kobe and Shaq in LA. It's, it's Curry and the Warriors happening in San Francisco, in the Bay area. The only real time where we had a marquee kind of thing was LeBron in Miami and Cleveland. And LeBron almost became like his own franchise to some degree because he, he became so big. But how's, just structurally, if we put this, if we put the semifinals in New York?

• 10:37Bill Simmons?

  And either you had both games at MSG or you had one game at Barclays and the other game at MSG and it had to be you could hustle back and forth and potentially get both. And then you had the finals two days later at MSG. And now we have celebrities. Now it's way easier for people to come in and out. Now there's like vibe and energy and we're playing it in the most famous basketball arena we have. Isn't that just better?

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Maybe, um, because we were very, very close to having this be the Hawks against the Rockets. Like Saturday, that was a viable possibility.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  New York fans would have showed up for that.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  I, I, I'm not sure, like, I don't think that, that Vegas is a bad choice as a venue because it, it, it delivers, um, the, the promise of other entertainment. It, it, you know, New York is hard, especially.

• 11:34Bill Simmons?

  Is that what we're calling it now, entertainment? You mean like adult entertainment?

• 11:39Speaker 02

  We're old enough now to, to, to, to talk about these things in ways that, that keep it light.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  But I, I don't know, New York in December, like that, that's a whole thing, right? Like everybody's up in New York right now.

• 11:52Bill Simmons?

  That's fair.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  Cause Christmas time is, is marvelous.

• 11:55Bill Simmons?

  But that leads to the second part of the question is, is December the right time to have the NBA Cup?

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Well, you know. That's a great question, honestly. Um, I think part of the, the thinking is like, we want to really juice and goose, attention on very early NBA games, which traditionally, uh, people just didn't, you know, gravitate towards because obviously, and like, people need to understand that like, no matter what the NBA Cup does or is, it's not going to be as popular as football. Like we need to, we need to let go of that as a, even a concept or an idea. Like Americans love football more than they do basketball. And that's okay.

• 12:35Bill Simmons?

  A lot more.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  A lot more, um, and, and that's okay. I just think it's about. One, the Giannis and Dame thing, I mean, the Giannis and Shay thing, and I've talked about this on, on group chat. Um, I think David Stern's dream of these hyper corporatized, you know, focused group to death athletes, you know, they don't get busted for weed. They don't scare corporate America. They are the perfect corporate automatons. But guess what? People are not attracted to that. They're not compelling figures. Even Nike and Giannis, like selling Giannis as this cute cuddly teddy bear. That's just a mistake. Nobody knows a single thing about Shay Gilchrist Alexander, except that he wears funny clothes.

• 13:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, and he does, and he does interviews with 11 of his teammates.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  That's it. Nobody knows anything about these guys.

• 13:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Giannis had that, had that clip when he, that from 2015, when he, the Bucks and the Bulls had that series and he got mad at Mike Dunleavy and he did the 50 foot charge and just knocked him into the first row. Like Giannis is not like just a cuddly dude. That dude has an edge that they try to pretend he doesn't. I don't know why they would pretend he doesn't.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Well, this, that's the angle to play up. I mean, part of the thing that you guys are talking about is the league's affirmative choice about how it's going to market this, this season, which is, you know, a transition season. And you captured it BS on your pod earlier this week. They have chosen as a, from a marketing standpoint to, to give glory to this exiting, exiting quickly class of superstars that have defined the league over the past 10 to 15 years at the expense of a player like SGA. Like, you know,

• 14:20Bill Simmons?

  Or Tatum, or Tyrese Haliburton, or all these dudes in their twenties that they should be trying to elevate. Yeah.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Yes. Right. Exactly. Um, you know, what's, what's SGA's defining moment? Ask, and we're, we're NBA heads, but ask anybody in an NBA kind of community. Tell, tell me SGA's, you know, the, the, the clutch thing that's happened. Giannis, I love. There's a moment here to really go ahead and lean into where he's at, which is averaging 21 and a half points per game in the paint, which hasn't been seen since Shaq in 99, 2000. We talked about Giannis and his potential of replacing Shaq at that. Let's do that. Let's make that be Giannis. Giannis, we know, Giannis has a ring. Let's go with Giannis.

• 15:05Bill Simmons?

  It's, it just feels like there's two things that they did was that I just, the more I look at it, I just don't like. One is they could have used the Olympics and even like the Netflix starting five show like, just push new people, push like, put the fucking Wagners on starting five. Let's, let's hang out with those goofy Germans and see what their life is like. Like, but let's try to develop new people. And then the Olympics, same thing. Should anyone over 30 even be on the Olympic team? Maybe we should have, it should be all like, you know, younger players or in their prime players or guys trying to have a moment. Cause we were in this situation in the beginning of the 2010s with Durant and Russ. And remember it was the same conversations about, well, who wants to watch OKC? It's a whole bunch of young team.

• 15:49Bill Simmons?

  They should be putting LeBron on and Kobe and the Celtics and Carmelo. And meanwhile, all the real basketball people were like, I fucking love watching that OKC team, right? And then it took a while, it took a while. Finally, 2014, when they played the Spurs, it felt like we had enough history with OKC and they became a thing. But I, I don't know why they don't push the younger guys more, why they're so beholden to the guys who have already done it. And, and to me, it's just about ratings, but the ratings are going down, so it's not working.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, look, I agree with you on the Netflix front. Um, look, sorry, Bill, but Jason Tatum went on that damn show and said, he loves his mom, he loves his son.

• 16:30Bill Simmons?

  I know. I could have told you he was gonna be born on that.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  I mean, that was just misery. Um, in terms of selling this product and being like, these are compelling guys, interesting people, great athletes. This man went up there and said he loves his mom, his son, and he hoops really hard. Like, it's just not gonna work. And, you know, again, and I'll say this again, their most popular young guy was who? Ja Morant.

• 16:54Bill Simmons?

  Right. Yeah, we talked about all this.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  And bottom line is Nike and them did not get their hooks into him and turn him into a corporate product since he was 12 years old, like they have the rest of these guys. These dudes are so anodyne. They don't say or do or look, nothing is interesting about these guys. I enjoy watching them hoop. As people, I'm completely un, like, bro, uninspired. There's, there's just nothing there. And, you know, again, the guys who are willing to be a little bit out there and different, don't comport with how the league sees itself.

• 17:31Bill Simmons?

  Like, how's this guy Kyle Kuzma?

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Hey, Kyle Kuzma is willing to say stuff in public.

• 17:38Bill Simmons?

  That's what I mean.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  I like that about Kuzma. He's willing to say shit. These other guys like, I don't know, man, they're just so afraid.

• 17:44Bill Simmons?

  There's too much money at stake, Waz.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Of any backlash of anything.

• 17:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they don't want to jeopardize it.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  It's just not fun.

• 17:50Bill Simmons?

  So I'm thinking like with the cup, what this ties into another thing that makes me mad. Is they're so afraid of football. It to the point they they take Inside the NBA, which is just the Thursday show. On Thursday nights, I watch the NBA and they're like, we have to move it away from football. Football is eating our lunch. They move it to Tuesdays. Doesn't feel the same. They have this NBA cup. They decide the semifinals are going to be Saturday because it's the one day we can kind of get away with not going against football. And then they keep everybody there for three fucking days because they don't want to go against a Monday night doubleheader. Which by the way, was Minnesota against Chicago and Kirk Cousins' corpse against the shitty Raiders team.

• 18:32Bill Simmons?

  It's like, why are you afraid of that for? Maybe go try to beat them head to head. But they're doing all this stuff where they're just retreating and they're so scared of the NFL. And meanwhile, it's like, maybe, maybe you should try to throw some counter punches. Like, the NFL is going to beat you either way. Like even the WNBA, which we thought it was all crazy. The WNBA playoffs are going head to head against the NFL. Guess what? They did okay. They had fans, like people had, they had their own fan base and people watched that shit. So I'd, House, why are they so scared? I I just feel like when you operate from fear, you're going to lose every single time.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  See, I don't know that I subscribe to the idea that they're operating from fear because they did stick this cup into the portion of the NFL season that is like really, you know, we're deciding playoff outcomes now. And they are on nights of the week when there there isn't necessarily NFL. Now, I don't like the fact that Inside the NBA is on Tuesday and, you know, the Amazon games are are fine. But none of that Thursday night football is must see TV for me. Hold your spot. But here's the real problem, and they're never going to do this. The the stupid season shouldn't start until Christmas. And the NBA cup in February would be effing magnificent because football is diminishing.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  Starting on, you know, Christmas day, basically, we're getting less and less games, the playoffs start. And during the week, you, you have full run to go do whatever you want. So taking the whole thing. And starting in Christmas time, New Year's and put in, let's, let's take over. You know, the, the season as football goes away. That's what makes the most sense.

• 20:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you're talking 70 game schedule instead of starting near the end of October. You're starting maybe like third week in November, you're easing into it and then you really kick into gear in Christmas. Cause one of the things I was thinking with the cup was you made the point earlier, the games are, the games are all really fun. The courts are fun. But we only had four games in this super complicated scoring system. Trying to lead to, oh, and then these four teams made it and this team didn't make it because their point differential was plus 36. How about this? Have more fucking games. Like instead of four NBA cups, let's have six, let's have seven, let's get it so that. It goes all the way through and then we get to January and then the week to do it, in my opinion.

• 20:53Bill Simmons?

  There's that week between the conference title game.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 20:56Bill Simmons?

  And the Super Bowl.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 20:58Bill Simmons?

  Dead week. Nothing's happening. Football has finally calmed down, basically starting Sunday night. And just try to own that week. Right? You have like, you basically have a clean slate. You're going against nothing. You're going against, you're not going against college football. You're not going against anything. And make that the signature week. They're going the opposite way. Not only did they wrap up all this stuff, but the trade deadline is on the Thursday of Super Bowl week. That's another one I don't get. The trade deadline is one of the most fun days of the season. You're, you're just burying it in the Super Bowl when all your media members, all your corporate, everybody is just talking football, football, football. So was I just, to me, there's, this is just easy structural stuff. I don't get.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, the thing about more cup games, it will make it so that it makes it easier for the best teams to actually play in the further rounds to actually advance. And so you probably wouldn't get in Atlanta in there, although I'd love watching Atlanta.

• 21:54Bill Simmons?

  Or would you? Because maybe Atlanta is one of the best teams in the East, Waz. Maybe you would get Atlanta.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Hey, that's fair. And yeah, again, I do think, you know, fixing the window that they put it in. But to me, it's like, it's a promotion issue. Like, Adam Silver needs to get his Don King hat on. Like, this guy's just not a promoter. He does not know. They just don't know. And maybe it's the networks. I don't know. You know what I mean? They don't know how to eventize these products. And that, to me, is the main issue. People don't see these things as essential viewing. They know that they know the season is 82 games long. They know that effectively, a loss in January is just like, ho hum. Who cares? Every single game doesn't matter.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  And the league just needs to be better, more effective at promoting their product. Getting people to feel like this is essential. Because like, the idea that people aren't interested in the NBA, I think, is BS. I think plenty of people are still interested. Obviously, like, the highlights, the recaps, they do numbers online. People still want to know about the results and all of that stuff. It's just the NBA needs to impress upon people that these games are worthy of their time, worthy of their commitment.

• 23:19Bill Simmons?

  Well, House, I mean, we go so far back. We remember when, like, USA and ESPN started showing cable games, right? We were like, oh.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  It was amazing.

• 23:30Bill Simmons?

  All the teams. Oh, my God. That's what a Clippers arena looks like. You just, you had no idea. And then the SportsCenter highlights are taking off at the same time. We were just so starved for any sort of NBA action. Now it's flipped the other way where, you know, it's like having the most full fridge possible. I was telling somebody the other day. I wa- I, I feel like I watch as much basketball as I ever did, but I watch it completely differently now. I don't care if I see the ESPN game on Wednesday night as it's happening. But what I do is I try to watch as many fourth quarters as I can. Or if like, I'll, I'll look at the game recap and it'll be like, oh, Houston did, had a 37 to 10 run in the second quarter on Wemby.

• 24:13Bill Simmons?

  I'm like, all right, I'm gonna watch that and I'll just queue it up. And it's, it's so much more on demand and I, House, I don't feel like that reflects in the ratings. So when they say the ratings are down, I'm not positive I believe it. I do think that they have a star issues, which I talked about Tuesday. They don't, like, we, House and I didn't miss Michael Jordan in the 90s when he played a playoff game. We, it was just, it was non-negotiable. You didn't miss Jordan in the playoffs, period. Unless like, you had a substantial event that superseded it. Otherwise, you watched Jordan. They don't have a guy like that now.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I mean, it's LeBron. It's supposed to be LeBron, except for where we-

• 24:53Bill Simmons?

  It's not, it's not at 8 or 22, and it's not really Curry either.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  That's right, but those are the guys on television. Look at the schedule, look at the, the, the ABC schedule. Um, I, I think, you know, the, the hard thing is nobody sits down and watches basketball games. You don't sit down like, oh, the basketball game's about, let me go get in my, my chair, right? It's not football. Um, and, you know, using linear TV ratings as a, a measuring stick for overall success is, is clearly outmoded, outdated, makes no sense whatsoever. The fact that the league signed an 11-year, $76 billion dollar deal means that those folks who were paying that money have ideas about how to capture eyeballs

• 25:40Speaker 02

  in the interest of those consumers to push their stuff that makes sense to them. And they don't think that people are gonna come, sit down in their chairs and watch a goddamn basketball game in February from the beginning of the game to the end of the game. It's all the ways that we watch it, it's what you and Derek Thompson talked about. People consume the hell out of basketball, but they don't consume it by sitting in a chair and watching it. So it's a little bit of a, of a false, uh, description, to, a false assessment to, to say, well, yeah, but ratings are down.

• 26:14Bill Simmons?

  Well, Waz watches, Waz watches every Hawks game, so he's.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  I kinda do at this point, it's kinda sick.

• 26:20Bill Simmons?

  He's got a Dyson Daniels bedspread.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  So, I'm also like a bit of a radical thinker on the schedule and stuff. One, I think, I don't even think 70 is enough of a cut. I think it should be literally round robin. You play each team one time at home, one time away, two times a week.

• 26:43Bill Simmons?

  So like 60, so when we get expansion, it's like a 62 game schedule, that's it.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  That's it, one and one.

• 26:49Bill Simmons?

  I sign up for that. Everyone I've ever mentioned that who's in any sort of decision-making, ownership, they're all like, don't even talk about that on a podcast, it will never, ever happen. It's too much money, there's no way. And it's like, you guys already made all this money.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  That's, and that's, and that's the point. Like, all of these owners who were told are the most visionary business people ever, because they ran some hedge fund, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They can't figure out how this extra shortfall in money that they got from this big, big ass 11-year contract from all of these networks, as House mentioned, how reducing inventory and making it more scarce, they can't figure out a way to monetize that? I, I find that to be just, just baffling.

• 27:35Bill Simmons?

  It does two things, but it does the competitiveness of, of the games, just there's more urgency because whatever.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Goes with it.

• 27:42Bill Simmons?

  It also makes the end of the regular season more interesting, because if you have like a situation Philly's in now, you might not even make the playoffs. So like every game matters starting game 20, you know?

• 27:53Speaker 01

  100% and also I'm a bit radical on League Pass, I think we should abolish it.

• 27:59Bill Simmons?

  This is my favorite Waz take. I haven't heard this.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is great. If you have to watch the NBA for work, if people say, oh, that's self-serving for you, Waz, whatever. I'm just saying, if people have to watch it for work, all right, we'll give you League Pass. If you want access to it, we're charging you a crazy premium, which to me, that means like whenever people want to watch the NBA, they gotta watch it with the league's partners. Like, I don't see what's so bad about that as an idea. Cause again, I grew up in a context of no League Pass and was completely fine with Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and NBA on NBC. Like, I, I, I don't know. Like I said,

• 28:37Bill Simmons?

  So you're saying like, national games, you get your own team? Like if you live, like House in Washington, he gets to still watch the Wizards.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, you get your own team in your market. Yeah, just like how the Jets and Giants got forced down my throat when I was living in New York.

• 28:52Bill Simmons?

  But maybe you get to pick like three other teams. And then if you want the whole package, it's like a thousand dollars. And it's, it's just like completely prohibitive. I, there's some idea there, they're making it scarce and I, I'm not against that house. Or maybe they're just, that's it. You get your own team. You can pick three other League Pass teams other than that.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  No, we're not giving them three other teams.

• 29:17Bill Simmons?

  So that's it. You're going hardcore.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  You watch your local team and you watch your national team. Okay? There's two days a week that NBA games are on.

• 29:26Bill Simmons?

  Sergeant was. He's laying down the law.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  That's it. That's it. And also they do need to do something about the bootlegs. Um, I was talking to somebody who works in this sort of area, um, in terms of how young people consume sports, specifically the NBA, like, um, how it was explained to me, it's like how people of my age viewed Napster. Where it's just like, once we found Napster and LimeWire and all this other stuff, we literally stopped believing in the concept that we would go to Sam Goody and buy a CD. It's like, no, I get this for free. I'm not paying for it. I don't have a ESPN subscription. I damn sure don't got one at Discovery. Um, I am just pilfering an illegal stream. They need to find something to do about that.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  And I know, I can hear people right now saying, how many people could possibly be streaming stuff this way? I'm telling you, it's a sizable amount of folks.

• 30:20Bill Simmons?

  I think he's right. I remember we did the Juice World doc for HBO and Max. And it was just like, it just got pirated out of control. And that was the first time I was like, oh, wow, this still was happening on like a major level. But you're right, especially as we head to this next era where you're going to need Amazon. You're going to need Peacock, you're going to need cable to get ESPN or whatever the ESPN package is. And you'll have to pay for the League Pass stuff, too. I mean, it's our job, so we get all this stuff, but yeah, I've said it 1,000, 100 times. The schedule is the number one way to fix this, and they won't.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  With a bullet.

• 30:59Bill Simmons?

  They just won't. It would make it more special. The guys would be playing. They'd be healthier. They wouldn't, even what they did recently with this, this weird bye week where there were no games and stuff. It actually made me miss the NBA. It was like, last night, where the fuck is the NBA?

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Dude, and Doc said this in the pregame availability. He said, one of the cooler things about this is we had time to prepare for our opponent. Almost like a playoff game. Again, everything gets better when we're not stuffing all of these freaking games together. Playing three games in five nights in three cities. Like, this is a no brainer schedule. It's a no brainer. Everything would be better with less games.

• 31:44Bill Simmons?

  So maybe they'll get, maybe they'll give some of the money back. 76 million, maybe it's 160.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  I mean, this, this is the issue, right? And I don't have a good solution for it. It's easy for us to talk about less games. There are the 41 home games for places where people actually go to the games, not here in Washington, but in Ben, places, cities where the team is relevant. That's real money. That's revenue in. That's people walking into the door, buying food, buying merch, you know, populating the surrounding restaurants and bars and stuff. It's an ecosystem that, that, that matters. And, you know, how do you walk away from that?

• 32:25Bill Simmons?

  Right. You're right. It's beyond the franchise. There's, Sportico did this thing in the franchise values, which I always think are corny because there's no real way to know. It only takes one dumb person to be like, here's 11 billion. But they had the pie chart of how the Celtics, I think it was Sportico, maybe it was somebody else. They had a pie chart of all the Celtics revenue because they don't own their own arena. And they had it earmarked for the Celtics making $102 million from the playoffs.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 32:54Bill Simmons?

  Assuming they made, you know, got to like four rounds. And you could see, it was like, Jesus Christ, that's a crazy amount of money. But I, you know, that's part of why some of these bigger market teams, they go all in on luxury tax because they feel like it's almost like a bet. You know, can we make that money back the longer the rounds go? I, if, if they put me in charge, I would at least go to 70 games. I mean, you could talk me into the 60 would be even better, 62, but they won't. This is something Steve Kerr has been, Steve Kerr, at one point, I think he like hand wrote a long letter to Adam Silver, like in the last year, like, like it was like the 1840s. Like he's, Dear Adam, it is Steve Kerr. I'm here on the, on the outskirts of Wyoming, writing you a letter with a feather and a pen.

• 33:40Bill Simmons?

  But he wrote a letter like just like basically begging him to cut the schedule down. And I remember talking to Doc about this last year when he got back in and he was trying to take over the Bucks and, and he was just like, we just don't practice. Like, like I just got here with our staff's changed.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, his dogs teams just don't practice generally.

• 34:01Bill Simmons?

  He's like, we still get to practice and I don't get to play as much golf. No, he, uh,

• 34:07Bill Simmons?

  he, uh, but he was saying, and this is something any coach I've ever talked to, they always talk about this. There's these schedule bumps where you just can't work on anything. And you end up like in a hotel conference room in, in some banquet room, running through like, like how you're going to do, how are you going to charge the, uh, the guy with the ball and shit like that? So I don't know. All right. So short term, Vegas next year for this or no, Wes?

• 34:35Speaker 01

  I'm fine with Vegas, but they need to figure out a mechanism by which they can get the, the fans of the actual teams in those buildings. Um, I don't know. I'm like, I haven't really put too much thought as to how they would go about doing this. I'm, again, I'm biased like you guys. I love Vegas. So I think it's a great place to host something like this past weekend. It was also the freaking rodeo championships. Shania Twain had a concert. There were cowboy hats everywhere.

• 35:05Bill Simmons?

  Entertainment.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  It's just a great place to host an event.

• 35:10Bill Simmons?

  So maybe the answer, if they, if they strung it out to six games instead of four. They moved it to January and they really, this is gonna be a direct contradiction of what I said about not being, being wusses about going against football, but you target that week between the conference championship and the Super Bowl, which we know is open every week. We know when it is. So this year would be February 2nd?

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:35Bill Simmons?

  Cause Super Bowl's February 9th.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  We could make the tweak be, if we're gonna spread it out, we can make the tweak be, the semis end up being homes, home arenas and then the final, you know, you make it, not only do you make it, um, you know, the destination or whatever it is, there's enough space because I don't know why the semis and the finals have to be so freaking close to each other. Like they don't do that in the chess league.

• 36:02Bill Simmons?

  How about Tuesdays, the quarterfinals? Then we go to Vegas Friday, Sunday, the week before the Super Bowl. And it's just Friday night, doubleheader. Sunday's the final. Everyone just goes to Vegas one weekend. You're in Thursday or Friday morning, you're out Monday.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:20Bill Simmons?

  You're not going against football at all. You have six games instead of four to determine exactly, you know, you're gonna get the right order probably of the teams in some form. You might have one outlier. And the only thing we would know for sure is that the Washington Wizards won't be there.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  Well, the reason that's great is because the buildup to it is occurring in the month of diminishing football. We're not having 16 games on Sunday.

• 36:43Bill Simmons?

  We get two more, two more in, in January after Christmas that lead up to the quarterfinals.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I, in terms of fans, like how much would it cost, uh, to just, here's 5,000 tickets. If your team makes it, we're gonna give them, you know, we have a five, 5,000 free tickets. Please take the ticket and go. I mean, you're not gonna pay for people to, to go, but where you're at least have access to the arena. It can't be, it can't like really be, you know, cost negative.

• 37:09Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Emirates Airlines could fucking get private jets for everybody. They got the money. They fly out the fans. Yeah. The PJs for the fans.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Oh, the party plane.

• 37:19Bill Simmons?

  The money.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  Okay, okay, see, party plane.

• 37:22Bill Simmons?

  Did we lay it on this for a fix? Six instead of four. Target that weekend before the Super Bowl weekend. And maybe have the trade deadline right after on like the Tuesday.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  I mean, here's the thing. The trade deadline sucks now. They ruined it. The collective agreement.

• 37:37Bill Simmons?

  They aproned it.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  There is no trade deadline that's relevant anymore.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Again, I feel like I'm always bashing Adam Silver. Like, the guy did a good job. He went and got to enrich the players and the owners with this new TV deal.

• 37:50Bill Simmons?

  He did.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  He is an absolute magnet for corporate money. Like, they invented the NBA Cup. The next year, they're like, oh, we got the Emirates. The Emiratis are paying for it. Um, like, he is a master at that. But this whole thing about we want to be like football and have parity. And so let's make it impossible for good teams to stack talent. And trade's just an impossibility now. This was a mistake, guys. It was a mistake.

• 38:22Bill Simmons?

  The Nuggets can't even trade for Jimmy Butler, who would probably be dying to go there. And they, they can't do it with the fucking apron. It's like, well, Zeke Najee has to be in it. And please don't look at Michael Porter's back x-rays, and we have no picks. Yeah, it's really sad. All right, Waz, great to see you. Who, who's winning the title, by the way?

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Um, I picked, I picked the Dallas Mavericks before the season. I don't, I don't know if I've unleashed this take on you. I, I saw the Celtics as the 2016 Warriors, coming off a championship, smoking everybody all regular season. Faced the Cavs in the finals the year before, just like the Mavericks. I think the Mavericks and the, and the Celtics are gonna rematch in the finals. And Luka Doncic, like LeBron before him, is going to find a way to win his first NBA championship, y'all.

• 39:19Bill Simmons?

  What do you think of that?

• 39:20Speaker 02

  I love it. It's incredible. I think that's a good way to give. No, I, I, I mean, as a guy who was an early embracer of that Dallas Mavericks, um, they really changed the entire trajectory of their franchise at the trade deadline last year. Speaking of trades not mattering anymore. They did Daniel Caffrey to PJ Washington, and that's a final. And then they did an incredible job in the offseason, building up around those guys and getting rid of some pieces that, that didn't fit.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  12 and 2 in their last 14, Bill.

• 39:49Bill Simmons?

  I don't, I think unfortunately for them, I think OKC might be their kryptonite team.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:54Bill Simmons?

  That's the one team that just too much speed athleticism. I guess what they have going for them is just Jalen Williams in any game that means anything.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  I need to see the first SBA moment.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  They gonna be in your mentions, Bill. Oh, Lord have mercy.

• 40:07Bill Simmons?

  Just have one awesome game when, when there's a real spotlight on. Come on.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Who?

• 40:12Bill Simmons?

  We all believe in you, Jalen Williams. Jalen Williams.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 40:17Bill Simmons?

  No, he had another one. He stunk in the Dallas series last year. He stunk in the second NBA. I just, I, I have a lot of Jalen Williams stock. I'd like for him to come through. I mean, the other reason they lost, they just couldn't hit a three, which is now happening this early in the league. You think he's gonna be all right?

• 40:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:32Bill Simmons?

  Um, I have OKC, Dallas. I still feel like, uh, I want to see what happens with the Butler trade because see Butler's clearly, this is happening soon.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:42Bill Simmons?

  And if Houston got him without changing too much what I like about them, I'm intrigued by them too. Can you, House, can you imagine Ime and Jimmy Butler?

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Oh my God.

• 40:55Bill Simmons?

  How fucking alpha that team's gonna be if they keep Dillon Brooks? Like that's, it's like, they're like a biker gang.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  It is. It, it's exciting. I do love, I love that. I mean, who knows what the, the outcome would be, um, this season's playoffs, but it would be must watch TV.

• 41:12Bill Simmons?

  They're more interesting.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:14Bill Simmons?

  Ime looked at LeBron and called him a bitch and asked him what he was gonna do. That happened last year.

• 41:21Bill Simmons?

  Put him and Jimmy Butler? I, I just think that's, that's happening imminently. So we'll see, we'll see where he goes. All right, Waz, great to see you.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Lady talk.

• 41:29Bill Simmons?

  We'll take a break, come back with million dollar picks. Sometimes in basketball, 30 points can be worth more than 30 points. Right now you can get a 30% profit boost from The Ringer with FanDuel's 30 on 30 during Friday's NBA action. We've been doing this for the last few weeks with America's number one sportsbook. A 30% profit boost. You either pick a player to score more than 30 points or bet on our new exclusive 30 on 30 special market sign. Like you could bet on both teams to score 30 plus points in the first quarter if you wanted to. Look for 30 on 30 in the FanDuel Sports app or head to fanduel.com/BS for your chance to score a bigger payout on Friday.

• 42:08Bill Simmons?

  I'll be tweeting on my picks on Friday. Had a great first three weeks, didn't do well last week, but hopefully we'll make a little bit of a comeback. It's really fun to bet these. Don't miss your chance to find out how much more 30 can be worth. With FanDuel's 30 on 30. Must be 21 plus and present in select states or 18 plus and present in DC. Opted required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wager amount. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. 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

• 42:50Bill Simmons?

  Ultras and watch Tip Off. Plus, as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting you closer to the action with experiences that make you feel like you're courtside to actual courtside tickets. Enter now for a chance to win at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21 plus. Begins on October 1st, 2026. Ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry. Entry deadlines, prizes and details. All right, House. Week 16 is here. We had a rough week 15. First time I got my ass kicked by a weekend in a while. Lost 510,000 for million dollar picks, but we're still

• 43:33Bill Simmons?

  up for 1.254 million. And I like a lot of the stuff this week. The only thing that really changed for me last week, and I was just wrong, like Pittsburgh, Philly, whatever, like some of the losses, like whatever, I just had the wrong side. I get it. Seattle, Green Bay, I had way wrong. I thought like this is the time Seattle is gonna show everybody that they might actually be like a little sleepery. And instead, Green Bay absolutely kicked their ass. And Green Bay, I almost wish I had gone into that game thinking, one of these two teams is going to emerge as the NFC sleeper. I was shocked by how they got their ass kicked. What did you think of that game?

• 44:13Speaker 02

  So here's my overreaction to the entire week. And it really does, you know, it's expressed most perfectly by that game.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  I will confess just for myself, I got lulled into a sample size that wasn't really reflective with that Seattle defense. And throughout the card in week 15, I chose the defense over the, the, the offense. And in each instance, the superior, the team with the superior offense, beat the crap out of the team.

• 44:44Bill Simmons?

  Like Philly, Pittsburgh. Yeah. Green Bay, Seattle.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  Yes. Tampa went into the Chargers.

• 44:49Bill Simmons?

  Buffalo, Detroit. That was another one.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 44:52Bill Simmons?

  Tampa Chargers. I stayed away from that. Thank God. Yeah. The Seattle defense, they had, they had, uh, done Arizona twice and the Jets and the Niners when they were banged up and it made us, kind of threw us off a little bit. So I was.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  They were, they were good numbers. They were like, you know, look at all the ways that they've improved and they're, they had health and, you know, they were very, uh, it was a compelling case. It, it just didn't hold any water.

• 45:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So when I was going through the games this week, you know, look, if I'm going to lose a week, I'm going to go back to the drawing board. I'm going to, I'm going to get back in the lab, try to figure out how I can get better. And I was really looking back, really trying to go over some of the numbers versus the schedule and who played. And so like we have these Saturday games, Texans, Chiefs. Mahomes isn't playing. Texans are favored by two and a half. Mahomes comes back. It seems like now it's, uh, Chiefs by three and a half in Houston. And the numbers would say, hey, watch out for Houston in this game. They have the number one defense in DBOA. Like they're going to be able to really pressure the Chiefs and

• 45:59Bill Simmons?

  they just haven't played enough good teams and they haven't looked good in the games they played. And I, I'm just looking at this going, are the Chiefs really going to, they're really just going to lose in Houston to this Houston team that can't seem like they can stay out of its own way offensively, that can't really block. And definitely unquestionably has a good defense, but I don't want to say they're the good bad team, but they're kind of one level above that, but below the Chiefs Ravens Bills level. You know what I mean?

• 46:28Speaker 02

  So this game to me was the most confounding and the hardest for me to try and choose a path. And I'm halfway inclined to bet on Houston and grab the Houston money line on the possibility that all of the Mahomes stuff is smoke and mirrors every because Kansas City is smart enough to try and get give itself an advantage on on everything. So part of the advantage would be having Houston's defense prepare for Mahomes and then come out with a Wentz game plan. I wouldn't put it past Kansas City in any way, shape or form. The challenge is the Chiefs defense stinks. Their secondary is bad and they haven't

• 47:11Speaker 02

  been able to do anything since week eight. I mean, it's, you know, look at the numbers. They're a bottom 10 pass defense.

• 47:17Bill Simmons?

  So it's a stay away from you?

• 47:19Speaker 02

  It is. I mean, even though I think in the second half, especially Joe mixing these nuts, Joe mixing these nuts, like that's, that's the pathway. Houston can't score in the second half. So if they get up, you know, 17 to something and then they do what they do, which is score a touchdown or a field goal in the second half, they try and run mixing these nuts, you know, 15 times. That's their, their, their path. And you're up against Carson Wentz. But I, I just don't trust that we're going to see a healthy Mahomes. And I don't like that since that Kansas City defense one bit.

• 47:57Bill Simmons?

  The other thing that worries me about it is just when the team also then has to play on Wednesday, I just don't know what that, we talked about this a little last week. I don't know what that does mentally for like how you have an edge for that game, any of that stuff.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  They're planning, right? They're planning for Saturday and Wednesday. The Chiefs are doing that right now. How can it make sense to have Mahomes in any kind of diminished capacity in the Saturday game?

• 48:23Bill Simmons?

  And yet I don't want to stay away from the other Saturday game because I think we see it the same. The Ravens minus six and a half Steelers. I want to, there's a lot of like stuff with Lamar and watch out if the Steelers own him and.

• 48:37Bill Simmons?

  I think without pickings, I just, I, I just don't see the Steelers getting there. It would have to be

• 48:44Bill Simmons?

  almost the greatest hits of bad Ravens Steelers games from a Baltimore perspective. Miss field goals, Lamar doing something dumb, the, the tipped interception. All kinds of stupid shit, the 50 yard pass interference that the Steelers get to give them a new drive. And as we, we stayed, we stayed at the craps table with the Steelers, I think one week too long last week.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:08Bill Simmons?

  They're 10 and four. I think if they're 10 and five, that's fine.

• 49:13Bill Simmons?

  I don't know.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  The problem for them is that they go to Wednesday against the Chiefs.

• 49:19Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  10 and five. That's hard.

• 49:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but they're still a play. They're making the playoffs and.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  Yes, they are.

• 49:25Bill Simmons?

  And Baltimore lost them already. So now, so if you're taking Pittsburgh, you're saying we're almost taking their touchdown underdog. On top of it, they would be beating Baltimore twice in the same season. They Baltimore be nine and six after this. So they wouldn't, you know, they'd be, be like a six or seven. I don't know. I just think the Ravens win and I don't, I don't want to lay the points. I just want to take their money line and put it with stuff.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, because every trend that's out there says that against the spread, this is a great opportunity to get in on, on Pittsburgh. I don't want to have anything to do with Pittsburgh with no TJ Watt. Let's see what, what like even the diminished TJ Watt. That's their record without TJ Watt is abysmal and every number goes out the window if he doesn't play. Now, it, it seems like he's going to play the practice reports, you know, kind of have him in the mix. But if he's diminished at all, then I don't, I don't love it against this Ravens offense. And like, you know.

• 50:23Bill Simmons?

  It's gonna be cold.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  That.

• 50:24Bill Simmons?

  This feels like a Derrick Henry game.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  The front seven for, for, for Pittsburgh didn't really get home against the Eagles offensive line. I mean.

• 50:32Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's the other thing. They got, they got their asses kicked last week.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  Their asses kicked.

• 50:36Bill Simmons?

  And that's.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  I think the Ravens offense is as good as the Eagles offense.

• 50:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. All right. So we're, we're marking down Ravens money line.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  Ravens money line. That's the way to play it.

• 50:48Bill Simmons?

  So I have news flash for you. I want to do either all money lines or adjusted underdog lines this week and tie them with a couple of games, but let's, let's hit the games really quick. Eagles minus three now against Washington. This is another one where I think I just like the money line.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, great.

• 51:04Bill Simmons?

  I just want to grab the Eagles money line and put it with something else. I don't trust the hook. I don't a hundred percent trust this Eagles team. And I've been in this situation before, as have you, where you bet the Eagles and Jalen Hurts just has a super weird game and has some weird injury that they're not sure how hard, how much he's hurt and he's starting to triple coverage.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Well, he's got the busted finger on the non-throwing hand.

• 51:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this comes down to two things, other than the Philly being way better than Washington. They have the best running attack in the league. Your team is 28th against the run. Washington is the third best running attack in the league. Philly's number one against the run. Your team hasn't looked really that good in six, seven weeks and you've been calling it out week after week, talking about like, yeah, the schedule's catching up to these guys a little bit. They were overachieving early. It's starting to come back to earth. I just don't think they're in the same ballpark as Philly. I don't trust the hook. I don't trust the cheap TD. I'd rather do Philly money line. Anything to make you nervous?

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Your instinct is lined up with, with my instinct because I've seen enough of these Philly-Washington games, even in seasons where there's been dramatic difference, much more pronounced difference in the quality of the team.

• 52:15Bill Simmons?

  Remember that Monday night game that?

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, Washington ended the Eagles winning streak that season. It was just, you know, 2021, I think, uh, whatever, handful of seasons ago. But, um, you know, the, the right way to play is to take the team that has the better players. I want to be as, as reductive as possible that this is.

• 52:35Bill Simmons?

  And that's something to play for. They're playing for a one seed. It's not like they're like, oh, I don't know. Should we try this week? Like they were, they're trying to get a bye week.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  I mean, again, Washington, I'm so happy. I love this team and they did get right. They looked awesome against Tennessee. They kicked their ass. They looked awesome in the first half against the Saints, um, but they still like that defense. It's the thing why when you called me last summer, you were like, can Washington make a run here? And I was like, the only problem is the defense. Uh, now they've made a run. It's really, uh, incredible, but Philly on the money line is the right way to play this.

• 53:08Bill Simmons?

  And you're basically in the playoffs. You just gotta win the Atlanta game or the Dallas game.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 53:13Bill Simmons?

  Those are the two games. Although, taking Kirk Cousins' corpse out of there probably, you're probably sad to see him go.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  I might want to workshop. Can I, is Penix D? Nah, it doesn't work. It doesn't work.

• 53:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Kyle's gonna have to bleep that. Vikings Seahawks in Seattle. And this isn't a reactionary, Seattle sucked last week, so I want to now go against them again, because we really try not to do that. If anything, that's like the worst thing you can do.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  We try. I am a petty better.

• 53:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, me too. And Seattle, I'll be honest, Seattle hurt my feelings last week. I was wounded.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  They weren't in that game.

• 53:51Bill Simmons?

  I was like, the Seahawks hurt my feelings.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  That game was over. I was like, oh, I just lost this. I just, I watched the first seven minutes. You know, this buddy is gone. Bye bye.

• 53:59Bill Simmons?

  It was, it started like four, 1 o'clock, West Coast time. By 1:30, I was like, all right, cross that off.

• 54:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:05Bill Simmons?

  So, I just think this is a horrible matchup for them. I don't like the matchup at all. The Minnesota's defense, the Minnesota's ability to throw, um, with, to either receiver, have explosive plays, mix the running game in. And I also think Minnesota's good. And the line is Vikings by two. I think this is, Vikings are a top five team. Seattle's, we learned last week, is somewhere in the middle. And this is just bad luck. They played Green Bay and the Vikings back to back at home, and those games are just really hard. And I think the Seahawks are gonna lose.

• 54:42Speaker 02

  Well, it would be hard enough if Gino wasn't hurt. You cannot, under any circumstances, countenance even a 5% chance that Sam Howe will be playing quarterback for Seattle.

• 54:54Bill Simmons?

  Or how about, or like injured Gino doesn't sound great to me either. I don't even like 100% healthy Gino that much.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  This is another test of the thesis. We just did this with Baltimore and Pittsburgh. Take the team with the better offense. Minnesota, Seattle. I'll take the team with the better offense. I know who it is. Minnesota secondary, gettable. We've been watching some teams, you know, quietly pass the ball on them, especially in second halves. Seattle can't do it. We haven't seen Seattle's offense really do anything for feels like six weeks now.

• 55:23Bill Simmons?

  You know what happened?

• 55:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:25Bill Simmons?

  Metcalf got hurt and just hasn't looked the same.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:28Bill Simmons?

  Lockett, I guess, is at like a different point in his career. I'm not sure what happened to him. Kenneth Walker got hurt, so now it's like just one running back. And then, you know, JSN's been there, awesome receiver, but that's only gonna take you so far. All right, so we agree. We'll take, the Vikings are minus three, and I don't care because we're gonna use the money line for them too.

• 55:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, fine. Great.

• 55:51Bill Simmons?

  Uh, so we'll pass on the Raiders, pass on the Lions. I looked long and hard at Rams-Jets for the Jets side. I thought, uh, when it was three and a half, the Jets have actually been playing like pretty well lately.

• 56:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:05Bill Simmons?

  Um, I don't trust like the Rams, a lot of momentum behind them going west coast to east coast, but I just don't want to bet on the Jets, especially with all the dysfunction this week that I'm gonna talk about later with Peter Schrager. This athletic story that came out and Garrett Wilson today gives a quote later in the afternoon about, do you think you'd be with the Jets last year? He's like, honestly, I don't know. Like, there's a dysfunction smell from them that I don't like. So I feel like that's a stay away. But what's not a stay away for me is another dysfunctiony team. The 49ers in Miami.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:40Bill Simmons?

  49ers, plus one and a half.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  Which one is the dysfunctiony team?

• 56:44Bill Simmons?

  Both of them.

• 56:48Bill Simmons?

  The Niners, I feel like probably should be favored in this game. As weird as their season's been.

• 56:55Bill Simmons?

  Adjusted on FanDuel to plus four and a half. I think we can get a little frisky with some people I want to put them with, but just fundamentally Niners plus four and a half. Does that sound appealing to you?

• 57:09Speaker 02

  So what's weird is to me, why are you going in that direction? I'd rather lay points with the Niners because I think that they're, but I'd like to be like, do it like Niners minus two and a half, like, you know, something to go in that direction where they underdog. Because right now they're the underdog in that game. The money line is minus 106. It's like, you know, I'm not going to disparage my, my great friend, my, the host of the Sunday pregame show, Ringer Sunday pregame. I'm not going to say that's a JJ underdog money line play. Even though JJ does, you know, sometimes get close to the line in terms of his, his dog. But minus 106 isn't even a dog.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  So let's go, if he's going to get on San Francisco, let's get on them. Let's lay a little points. Let's, let's take it in the direction that we think it's going to go.

• 58:00Bill Simmons?

  San Francisco first half game is plus 165, just mentioning that. Uh, let's see, so minus.

• 58:10Bill Simmons?

  The odds just aren't great for those. It's on FanDuel minus 112 for the minus 2.5.

• 58:17Bill Simmons?

  They don't, well, they, they.

• 58:20Bill Simmons?

  Christian's going to get mad at you now.

• 58:22Speaker 02

  I know, we just can't get any value.

• 58:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, well, they know that's like a smart move to bend it. So they want, they want to keep you. So the money line is plus 106.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  Plus 106. So it moved a little bit.

• 58:34Bill Simmons?

  It moves it a tiny bit, but not enough to me. You're just better off doing the plus 106. But I can also offer you plus four and a half at minus 215 that we could put with Usik. One of the many things I want to put with Usik.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 58:50Bill Simmons?

  That's what I was thinking. Well, I, I, I was going to do this later, but let's just say that, that, uh.

• 58:58Bill Simmons?

  That Niners plus four and a half with Usik is plus 141.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  Cause Usik is like a minus 150 favorite.

• 59:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's like minus 145 range.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 59:07Bill Simmons?

  So, all right, well, we'll come back to them. We both like the Niners. I really like the Bengals, but I refuse. I'm just not doing it. I just not. I don't trust them.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Great instinct.

• 59:17Bill Simmons?

  Just stay away. Good luck today. I know they have a chance to make the playoffs if anything happens with Denver tonight.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  I will tell you, I'll confess right away.

• 59:25Bill Simmons?

  You have the Bengals in a tease already?

• 59:27Speaker 02

  I know I have them in money line positions. I, they are a leg in as a money line.

• 59:31Bill Simmons?

  Well, that was my question. Do we do Bengals money line? I just don't trust their defense.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Oh, you can't trust it. It's.

• 59:38Bill Simmons?

  DTR is the quarterback now for the Browns. I don't know what that's gonna look like.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  Oh, I have an idea. I have a stick of suspicion.

• 59:46Bill Simmons?

  Cards minus four and a half in Carolina. I watched the Cards pretty closely against the Pats. They're not very good.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  I don't like four and a half. That's ridiculous.

• 59:55Bill Simmons?

  Bucks Cowboys, another stay away with that Bucks defense. And then the two big ones for me.

• 1:00:02Bill Simmons?

  The Bills to beat the Patriots. And the Packers to beat the Saints on Monday night. No Kamara, Rattler's gonna put.

• 1:00:11Bill Simmons?

  I think I wanted to vote week 16 to just that being in every bet that we have. Both of them are minus 1100 on FanDuel. And could we use those teams together as swing bets with other money lines that we like? We haven't done this all year.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean, I feel like we haven't done it in five years. This is like, it's an old school, old, like, get the anchor and then you build around the anchor.

• 1:00:35Bill Simmons?

  Old school anchor strategy. So.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  The old money line parlay. Welcome back to my life.

• 1:00:41Bill Simmons?

  Pats home for the Bills laying or getting 14 and a half. DeBundo today on the Ringer and his excellent gaming column. Recommended the Pats plus 14, cold weather, blah, blah, blah. I just don't see any scenario, like Barmer got scratched. I don't see any scenario where the Patriots beat the Bills, like none. Sarah, all they've been doing all week is talk about the coach. And then Packers Saints Monday night.

• 1:01:06Bill Simmons?

  Packers still playing for stuff. Saints, I don't know what they're playing for, but they're, you know, they, you got to watch them firsthand last week. Did, did they impress you in any way?

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  No, no, they, they got, they did a great rope-a-dope by, by having Washington prepare for, boudoir photo Hayner, you know, the guy who, who's, who's real attribute is an NFL quarterback on the pictures of himself. Getting him out and putting Rattler in, it messed up the Washington defense.

• 1:01:34Bill Simmons?

  And you still should have won by 10. You, you had first down in the nine yard line. You could have kneeled three times.

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  I can't really, also the game was 60 minutes and four seconds. So if we're gonna mess with the clock, we're gonna give teams extra time to, to get touchdowns, then, then you're in trouble.

• 1:01:49Bill Simmons?

  All right. So going back to where we were before, Bills money line, Packers money line is the anchor. They were using the anchor strategy this week.

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  Love it.

• 1:01:56Bill Simmons?

  Put that with the Vikings money line, minus 104.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  Okay, that's a nice even money play.

• 1:02:01Bill Simmons?

  Put that with the Eagles money line, minus 120.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  Fine.

• 1:02:06Bill Simmons?

  You put that with Usik, minus 104.

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  Yep. See? We're doing it.

• 1:02:11Bill Simmons?

  And we laid out the Manic strategy with, on Tuesday about Usik, why just, just all in on him. We could also use Usik as an anchor with the Ravens money line. Ravens money line, Usik, plus 121. Niners plus four and a half with Usik, plus 141. Jets plus seven and a half and Usik, plus 128. My bad, Ravens money and Usik was plus 121. So all of those are plus and now we just get to move that shit around. I'm gonna take the Jets off for reasons we discussed, but we do have the other team.

• 1:02:52Bill Simmons?

  So Niners plus four and a half, Usik, plus 141. And then the Ravens money line, maybe that's the move. And I think that's, I think that's it. We just use anchors of Usik undefeated, the best, the best boxer of the last few years. And then Bills Packers money line parlay. And we just go.

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  I mean, this is great. You, we took an unwatchable slate of games on Sunday because it really is one of the worst slates. Uh, you know, of, of the season. And look at all the fun ways we have this split up.

• 1:03:22Bill Simmons?

  Great times. So you don't want to put the Chiefs in with the Bills and Packers?

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  I don't. I mean, I, you know, I, I, I'll take the L for thinking that the Browns were, you know, gonna not turn the ball over six times against the Chiefs at home. I'll take the L for that, but the Chiefs weren't very impressive. Their offense really didn't look great. And that was with Mahomes, you know, most of the game healthy.

• 1:03:45Bill Simmons?

  And you don't, and we're gonna stay away from the Bengals money line.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  I don't know. I, I've already bet.

• 1:03:51Bill Simmons?

  Talk me into it. Make the case right now. It's like cue it up. Make the case for the Bengals.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  The heart wants what the heart wants. And what the heart wants is the Bengals to be in the playoffs. I want the, the Bengals to win out. I want Denver to lose out. I want, uh, both the, the Colts and who's the other team that has to lose a game? I want the Bengals as the seven seed. I want the, the Cincinnati Bengals as a seven seed. I want us to, to, to wake up with them on, on a wild card, you know, weekend up against, you know, the, the, the two seed in the form of who, who's gonna be the, the two seed? Is it gonna be, uh, it, it's either Buffalo or the Chiefs, right? And it's that.

• 1:04:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's, but it could be, yeah, it's Buffalo.

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  It's either Buffalo or the Chiefs. That's an incredible wild card weekend.

• 1:04:38Bill Simmons?

  Buffalo Cincinnati, that's our Saturday night Amazon game.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  Imagine how good that would be?

• 1:04:43Bill Simmons?

  So Cincinnati.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  I honestly think it's gonna be the Chiefs because I think that Mahomes, you know, they're gonna make a decision about it, but in the end event.

• 1:04:50Bill Simmons?

  Cincinnati with Usik minus 102.

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  Great, great, great.

• 1:04:58Bill Simmons?

  All right. So we're putting a lot on Usik. Jesus.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  A lot of Bengals. If these lose, this is on you and Chris Maddox. It's not on me.

• 1:05:09Bill Simmons?

  I, as I, I'm on the record, Usik and Pereira in the UFC, I'm just betting them every time they decide to, to do combat until they lose. I'm doing the blackjack. I'm stacking my bets on those two guys and it's been working for multiple years.

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:05:27Bill Simmons?

  Usik hasn't lost ever and he's been so much fun to bet on.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  This would be the wipeout.

• 1:05:35Bill Simmons?

  Million dollar picks, week 16, we are up 1.254 million dollars, coming off a bad week where we learned some lessons. Looked at the mirror a couple of times.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  Don't take bad offenses.

• 1:05:47Bill Simmons?

  Explain the anchor strategy to the audience one more time, House.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Old school, Bill Simmons cousin Sal, you find a team that you like on the money line and then you start building around them. We have two teams that we like on the money line this week, both Buffalo and Green Bay.

• 1:06:04Bill Simmons?

  Huge money lines, minus 1100 each, massive. So you don't get a lot of value, but on Fanduel you get some value.

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  And then you start grabbing, you know, teams at lesser odds that, that you like, again, just on the money line and try and build up around even money or to a plus side and try and, and, and build up a little bit of bankroll for those last minute Christmas gifts BS. Cause I still got some shopping to do.

• 1:06:29Bill Simmons?

  So we're using two anchors. The first one are the Buffalo Bills just to beat New England in New England. And the Green Bay Packers just to beat the Saints. Two of the worst teams right now, though, the Pats are one of the four worst teams, Saints are one of the 10 worst teams. Putting those two money lines together with the Vikings with their money line. So the Vikings are minus three in Seattle.

• 1:06:54Bill Simmons?

  And we're just gonna, something about the minus three, we're just gonna take the, let's just take the money line on it.

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  Take the money line. Sam Darnold's due to throw a pick. I mean, he's been looking outstanding.

• 1:07:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they might win by one. We're just covered. Just win the game, Minnesota. So that's minus 104. No offense to Seattle. We still have a bunch of bets with them. Nice little hedge against our bets too, though.

• 1:07:16Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:07:16Bill Simmons?

  And then the other one is the Eagles money line, which if you put with the Bills and the Packers, the Eagles just to beat Washington, they're minus three and a half point favorites. You put those three together, minus 120.

• 1:07:29Bill Simmons?

  So we are going to put 200K down.

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:07:32Bill Simmons?

  On those two events. 200K on each bet. Next one, the Ravens money line on Saturday against Pittsburgh. This will probably be a weird, ugly, strange game. We both.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  The weather's gonna be, it's gonna be freezing cold.

• 1:07:47Bill Simmons?

  Bad weather. It's a Derrick Henry game. We don't like the Ravens minus six and a half, just the money line. We're putting that with Alexander Usik, who hasn't lost in his life, as a parlay, plus 121.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  Excellent. Excellent.

• 1:08:03Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna put 200K on that.

• 1:08:08Bill Simmons?

  Niners, plus four and a half, adjusted in Miami. We get to bet against Tua again. What's more fun than betting against Tua and the DJ, Mike McDaniel? It's great.

• 1:08:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:21Bill Simmons?

  Niners adjusted plus four and a half with Usik is plus 141. We'll put 150 on that. Put a little less.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  Fair, fair enough.

• 1:08:32Bill Simmons?

  And then Bengals money line with Usik.

• 1:08:36Bill Simmons?

  That's minus 102. Bengals just to beat the Browns and whoever the hell is on their team this week. No Nick Chubb. They're on their third quarterback. Uh, I don't know if they're trying to tank. I do don't know. They had their first round pick. What do you want to put on that one? 200 or 100?

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  100's enough. Like, let's not really bet on Cincinnati.

• 1:08:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we'll do a little 100K just for fun, because it's Sunday and there's no games.

• 1:08:59Speaker 02

  And it starts the momentum for Cincinnati to get to the playoffs. I mean, we'll, we'll know from the Denver outcome whether or not that's reasonable. Denver, uh, and then Chargers, but.

• 1:09:09Bill Simmons?

  The anchor strategy.

• 1:09:12Bill Simmons?

  You don't want to put Chiefs plus three and a half in this?

• 1:09:16Speaker 02

  Chiefs plus three and a half.

• 1:09:17Bill Simmons?

  With Usyk, little 100K flyer.

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  Well, so that, that, that I will, yes. So that, what's the number? Let's, let's hear the number.

• 1:09:24Bill Simmons?

  All right. I just looked it up and we're doing this house. Chiefs adjusted to plus four and a half. With Usyk to win, plus 112.

• 1:09:36Bill Simmons?

  That's 100K.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  Well, the only thing that, that, you know, gives us any challenge at all with that is, is Carson Wentz. If Carson Wentz ends up being, but the four and a half, that's, that's Wentz protection. We'll call that Wentz protection.

• 1:09:50Bill Simmons?

  You know what's great about that house? I kind of believe in that little redheaded former assassin, Carson Wentz, to be good for one game and to try to get himself like a three-year, $50 million contract as, as next year's Baker Mayfield with somebody. Yeah.

• 1:10:06Speaker 02

  No way.

• 1:10:07Bill Simmons?

  I'd actually be excited if he played. All right. That's our last one. Chiefs plus four and a half with Usyk. 100K on that. Those are the million dollar picks for week 16. So you did a fairway rolling end of the year awards with, with our guy Nate?

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, the rolies. We had a handful of categories. We wanted to sum up the year. Our good buddy Brendan Polrath from the Shotgun Start podcast came on and we just ran through all of the big events. I mean, Bryson as the, as the breakthrough performer of the, we call them the, the comeback because you know, he's been on the outs and look at, look at Bryson, king of the golf world. Our Dirk Diggler, uh, stud of the year went to, uh, I'm pretty sure it went to Xander Schaafle for winning two majors, right?

• 1:10:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I would, I would sure would hope so.

• 1:10:56Speaker 02

  He had that, had that in him. Uh, and then we, we, we had the, uh, Hocktua creator of the year. And we gave that to the Louisville Police Department because that was the viral moment in the golf world. Nobody knows who Scottie Scheffler is, including the Louisville Police Department. The dude's at the front door of the golf course trying to drive in. They don't know who he is. That was the biggest moment in, in the entire world of, of golf. So yeah, we had a good time with the rolies. We gotta get a trophy for it.

• 1:11:28Bill Simmons?

  Did you give the Hocktua, here's my Bitcoin, I'm gonna take all your money award? Or was that, that wasn't handed out?

• 1:11:34Speaker 02

  Well, there are some candidates for that for sure, uh, in golf, but you know, we, we, that, that can make the list for next year.

• 1:11:41Bill Simmons?

  Well, how about the new lib commissioner is the brother of somebody who was our favorite basketball player we ever played with at Holy Cross, Sean O'Neal.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  So, so many great times with Sean O'Neal and every interaction I've had with Scott O'Neal, what a great dude.

• 1:11:53Bill Simmons?

  He's a great guy.

• 1:11:54Speaker 02

  Tremendous.

• 1:11:55Bill Simmons?

  We really, really loved playing with his brother. I wonder, he's gotta be retired at this point.

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  Who, Sean O'Neal?

• 1:12:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there's no way he's still playing his mid 50s. It was so great to just see him and be like, oh man, let's get on Sean's team, let's get on Sean's team. Nice little bounce passes on the break.

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:13Bill Simmons?

  Great stuff.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:14Bill Simmons?

  All right, House, uh, happy gambling. We will see you, I think, next, yeah, we'll be, we'll be here next week for Million Dollar Picks.

• 1:12:22Speaker 02

  Fingers crossed.

• 1:12:23Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Whether it's a pumpkin spice coffee that goes splat in your seat, or a weekend tailgate that leaves your trunk full of gear and who knows what? You're gonna want WeatherTech in your vehicle, whether you call it fall, autumn, or spooky season, whether the mess is your fault, the kids, the dogs, or the weather's fault, you're gonna want WeatherTech. For American-made floor liners and a cargo liner that laugh in the face of fall weather, visit weatherTech.com today. 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.

• 1:13:03Bill Simmons?

  In all fairness though, hopefully, your team doesn't go to Cancun, 1-2-3 Cancun, or if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save, savings vary. All right, we're taping this, it is 2:30 Pacific time. Peter Schrager is in our New York Spotify Ringer Studios, looking super snazzy. Uh, it just, this is the most professional we've felt in a while. Really weird stretch of the schedule right now. We have two Saturday games with teams that are also all gonna be playing on, uh, on Wednesday. Do you think the league will ever do anything like this again? Is this a one-time thing?

• 1:13:40Speaker 03

  I think they're hoping to do this every year. It, it's unprecedented in how it all worked out, Bill. So, when they first thought of this Christmas Day extravaganza, they were like, we'll have two games, and we'll give it to a high bidder. Netflix got involved, obviously, and gave a lot of money. And it was like, all right, we know we have a Wednesday. Game and they're gonna be, you know, premier teams because Netflix is paying top dollar. But how do we account for player safety the best way we possibly can like, well, you can't play Sunday than Wednesday. Let's make it Saturday than Wednesday, which means now four of these teams in the AFC who just so happened to be four of the top seven teams are playing three games in 11 days in late December unheard of.

• 1:14:22Speaker 03

  And it, the way it worked out and we're, we're recording this on Thursday and it doesn't matter who wins tonight. But originally it was supposed to be Bengals versus Browns on Thursday night football and Amazon has the ability to ask to flex out and a month ago, they went to the league and said, can we flex out of Bengals Browns? That's a terrible game. Can we get out of that? And the league said, there's no game to really put there. The only option would be Chargers Broncos in LA, but we can't do it because of league bylaws. The Broncos have already played one road Thursday night game and one of the major rules was you will never play two Thursday night road games. So they go to Sean Payton and they say, look, you, you're gonna say no, but we're gonna present it to you.

• 1:15:04Speaker 03

  And Payton was like, fuck it. Put us on Thursday night. We want to be on prime time. We want to go into that building. I want to play them on a Thursday night. Now, the result of all that a month later is six of the top seven teams in the AFC are going to be playing two games on five days rest and three of the, and four of the top six teams in the AFC are going to be playing three games on 11 days rest. Meanwhile, there's a team up there in Western New York, the Buffalo Bills, who play the Patriots on a Sunday, the Jets on a Sunday and the Patriots again on a Sunday and already looking at that playoff run.

• 1:15:41Bill Simmons?

  Well, and then you have, it works out for the Broncos because he's like, yeah, yeah, fuck it. Let's go. We'll go right in. And meanwhile, the charges are all banged up.

• 1:15:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:49Bill Simmons?

  So you're giving them three less days to, uh, to heal, which I, I thought probably was an unintended consequence. Yeah. Over and over again, it just seems like everything's working out great for the Bills.

• 1:15:59Speaker 03

  This is, this is, it worked out really well for them.

• 1:16:03Bill Simmons?

  But the KC, the whole Mahomes goes down, then Netflix is worried about their Wednesday game. But then Mahomes, I heard Raheem say this on the rear gambling show today where Mahomes is like LeBron, where he gets these injuries and it seems like he's going to be out for six weeks and then he's fine two days later. He's just one of those guys.

• 1:16:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think he's gonna play. I think he's gonna play Saturday against Texans.

• 1:16:23Bill Simmons?

  Well, you know why we know he's gonna play? Cause the line moved six points.

• 1:16:26Speaker 03

  Did it really? Alright.

• 1:16:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:27Speaker 03

  That's been the word out of that place all week that the one seed is very important to them. They're not gonna fake it and say, well, Mahomes is safety. Like, they want that one seed and they want that week off. And I've spoken to multiple sources in that building that, you know, if Pat says he can go, he's going to go. He has earned that from, from the coaching staff and they're not looking to protect him physically. I remember a couple of years back in the divisional round against Trevor Lawrence, he bangs up the ankle. Everyone's worried, what's he gonna do? What's he gonna do? He, he doesn't finish the game, but then he does play against the Bengals in the AFC Championship game and he runs for that first down and he just hobbled through it, but he got through it. I thought we might get a very Carson Wentz Christmas. I think the NFL and Netflix would not have been thrilled. I don't know if Beyonce and Mariah Carey and the rest would have

• 1:17:11Speaker 03

  enjoyed it. Burt Kreischer and Nate Bargatze and the rest. I don't know. But in this case, it looks like you're getting Mahomes and you're gonna get all the, the fixins with it. And it's gonna be Chiefs versus Steelers with, with Mahomes and the stakes couldn't be higher because I think it matters.

• 1:17:26Bill Simmons?

  There's one other stake beyond the one seed and all that stuff. It's, Mahomes kind of lost his spot in line this season, you know? And he, and now he's turned into this, well, when the playoffs come, he's gonna turn it on. But I think from, just from an entertainment standpoint and from honestly a ceiling standpoint, Allen and Lamar Jackson have just been better. Even Burrow's been more fun to watch and Mahomes is just grinding these games out. It always looks like he has seven injuries and he's having one of those seasons you have when you're 37, but he's still in his twenties. And he's, he's played, you know, a lot more games than probably some other quarterbacks the last few years. And the weapons have been in and out. He, the tackle situation has been dicey.

• 1:18:10Bill Simmons?

  I get it, but it's just interesting. Like I just think Allen and Lamar have blown him out of the water during this regular season, but you also feel like when it's the playoffs and Holmes is probably gonna yank it back.

• 1:18:22Speaker 03

  And I think that's why the number one seed is so important. Give us an advantage. Give us something over these teams. Remember the Bills beat them head to head. So if they were to lose, you know, two of the next three games, then they succumb and they have to go on the road and they don't want to do that. They want the one seed. They want the week off. They think it's important. The offensive line has been a disaster and they put DJ Humphries in there for one game. He lasted one game and then Joe Tooney, a guard, is playing left tackle for a team that's the one seed and 13 and one. It's, it's pretty incredible.

• 1:18:49Bill Simmons?

  Not a great sign.

• 1:18:50Speaker 03

  And, and you know, the numbers weren't crazy sack wise, but he was under pressure the entire game last week against Cleveland. And you look at what Houston's bringing this weekend and between Daniel Hunter and Will Anderson, they have the second most sacks in the NFL. That's in Christmas. You, you know, you have this one on Saturday, then on Christmas, you think TJ Watt's gonna play. You assume Cam Hayward and all those guys are out there. Like he's going up against two of the best defensive front sevens in the league over the next two weeks. If they win both of those games though, they get a bye and they can rest week 18 and the next week during the wild card round.

• 1:19:21Bill Simmons?

  So I was, I did a thing on Sunday with Sal about the year Allen's having and how actually it's a bad sign for Buffalo's Super Bowl hopes. When you have these teams with the awesome quarterback having the MVP year combined with a defense that can't really stop anybody. The signs are bad.

• 1:19:40Speaker 03

  You went through the list, I heard.

• 1:19:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I went through it just in general, but then this, this week, Aaron Schatz had a tweet.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  What's he got?

• 1:19:47Bill Simmons?

  About, basically in the last 30 years, 11 teams went nine and five and then made the Super Bowl. And the reason he did it was because for DVOA, which has been an essential part of kind of studying following football, most of the century, the Ravens are nine and five. They're shoved aside a little bit right now, I think, especially as Buffalo's gotten the thing, but 11 out of 30 teams have made the Super Bowl and some good teams like 2016 Atlanta was nine and five, the 2002 Raiders, you go on down the line, 2023 KC last year. And I don't know, the fact that they're number one in DVOA and not being talked about, they have this Pittsburgh game coming up this weekend.

• 1:20:31Bill Simmons?

  They're six and a half point favorites against Tomlin and the Steelers when Lamar struggled against them, you know, for his whole career, basically. But I do wonder if they're starting to get a little sleepy. Like I was looking at their, their title odds, their AFC odds, and maybe they're the undervalued team because everyone's on Green Day now in the AFC. That was, I was a week late on that one. Maybe it's Baltimore in the AFC. What are your Baltimore thoughts?

• 1:20:54Speaker 03

  I love Baltimore this year. I think they got the perfect bye week. They needed it more than ever. They got it. They come out, they beat up on the Giants last week where Lamar throws five touchdowns. And now they're getting healthy and it's, look, the eight of nine, it's real. And, you know, the last Ravens quarterback to beat the Steelers was Snoop Huntley. And a lot of those games, yeah, and a lot of those games were, were decided by one score or less and the Steelers just found a way at the end. Even the last time they played, you remember that Peyton Wilson interception on the sideline with Justice Hill? They still had a chance at the end with the two-point conversion, but there was so much confusion. Lamar afterwards is furious on the sideline and it's like, all right, well, if you can't beat them in close games, like how do we have our faith in the Ravens?

• 1:21:36Speaker 03

  I think since that game, they have gotten healthier and I think the bye week was important. What I think is going to be very interesting on Sunday, which, I mean, you're talking about the greatest sports viewing day, if you're a football fan ever, is this, is this Saturday? I mean, it's right there smack dab in the middle, 4:30 Eastern. You got Brady and Burkhart on the call. Justin Tucker is going to have to make a kick here and Justin Tucker is going to have to come through. And last week he made one and they had a lot of field goals and a lot of touchdowns and it was fine, but like Justin Tucker is going to have to make a kick or two in some inclement weather against the Steelers. And I think it's important that Justin Tucker gets right because that's how they play football and especially against the Steelers team, it's always a one score game.

• 1:22:16Bill Simmons?

  Going against the guy who now has the Justin Tucker championship belt.

• 1:22:20Speaker 03

  He's got the belt.

• 1:22:21Bill Simmons?

  Chris Boswell headed for 200 fantasy points. Yeah, so Baltimore's first in offense, Pittsburgh's seventh in defense for DVOA. And yet Pittsburgh got their asses kicked by Philly last week. And I thought it was a more alarming game than a usual loss because they lost in ways that I wasn't. I just weren't on my bingo card like them just getting manhandled them giving up a 22 play drive to basically finish the game. But if you're a Steelers fan, you look at it and you go, well, we got screwed on that penalty where there was clear video after of the guy Darius like punching our guy.

• 1:22:56Speaker 03

  Darnell Washington, yeah.

• 1:22:57Bill Simmons?

  And then not they're driving down. It seems like they're gonna maybe tie the game and Najee fumbles and it's like, ah, we're a little closer there than you thought. I thought they got pushed around and manhandled and beaten up and now they're heading into these next two games, Saturday, Wednesday. This just feels like this all flipped at the worst possible time. What are your Pittsburgh feelings?

• 1:23:16Speaker 03

  I think your instincts are right that they have dominated in the trenches and Russell has not made mistakes. And like in this game, Cooper Dejean has the fumble. Hertz makes the early mistake. You're like, okay, here come the Steelers. And then they just couldn't close that gap. And then, like you said, in real time, it felt like two hours at the end of the game. It was just, and like, it was such a long drive that like Brady and Burkhardt are doing banter about Belichick during it. Like they just like, yeah, you snuck in like, like empty the bag. We have to find something to talk about because this game isn't in hand right now. That's worrisome if you're the Steelers because their whole mantra has been keep the game close. Russell will make a play at the end and we'll run the ball down your throats and we'll stop you on defense. And they couldn't do that against a more physical team in Philadelphia. But there is a mental edge here. Like Tomlin's

• 1:23:59Speaker 03

  coming into this thing. Like we've won eight of nine with, we've won games with everyone from Duck Hodges to Mason Rudolph to whoever. Like we can beat the Ravens. We have no fear going into this building.

• 1:24:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I, part of me wonders, and I've been riding them the whole time. Part of me wonders if they outkicked their coverage a little bit this season, just in general, you look back at some of the games they won, some of the schedule stuff. Their most impressive win was probably that first Baltimore game, just for really pulling it out and seeming that that it just shouldn't matter this much that George Pickens is hurt. I like George Pickens.

• 1:24:32Speaker 03

  He's their biggest threat, though.

• 1:24:34Bill Simmons?

  But I know, but it just, it shouldn't be just an absolute deal breaker to be able to, you know, because then they're running the ball all the time, but they're running it for three yards a carry because everyone in their play knows they have to run the ball.

• 1:24:45Speaker 03

  Let me.

• 1:24:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Because my, my thought is like, I wonder if this is. Lamar, oh, I can't be Pittsburgh.

• 1:24:53Speaker 03

  No doubt.

• 1:24:54Bill Simmons?

  Here we go.

• 1:24:55Speaker 03

  He had, he's had those games.

• 1:24:56Bill Simmons?

  Pittsburgh loses again and it's like, holy shit. Pittsburgh's in a, I'm trying to think of whatever narrative comes out of that game. And that feels like the likely narrative to me.

• 1:25:04Speaker 03

  And then it's a quick turnaround because four days later Lamar's got to go play the Texans. It's like this crazy round robin, but Kyle Brand and I on Good Morning Football, we always, you know, talk about the most valuable player industrial industry complex. Like we've been in this thing like, starting in week two, it's like, who's the MVP? Who's the MVP? And I put it to bed last week, maybe a little premature. And I was like, Josh Allen's done, like it's over. Like, why even, let's not just do this for the sake of a segment. And the amount of feedback I got from people around the league, not fans of them being like, slow down, Lamar's got better numbers and Lamar's games are all showcase games over the next few weeks. So on Saturday, when everyone's watching, Lamar's going to be able to have that showcase game.

• 1:25:48Speaker 03

  And then on Wednesday, on Christmas, when everybody's watching Christmas afternoon, Lamar could have that showcase game. And by the end of it, we're not going to see Josh Allen on national television for the last month of the season. And you might say, well, who gives a shit about national TV? The people who vote are writers who are usually in press boxes and just looking at box scores afterwards. But on Christmas day and on a Saturday, they will be watching. And if enough hysteria gets going and Lamar can finish this thing out, it is not over yet. Lamar could steal this and get his third MVP.

• 1:26:17Bill Simmons?

  I'm Fanduel right now. Allen's nine to one, basically. He's a nine to one favorite and Lamar is plus 650. And that feels out of whack to me because Lamar having an awesome game against Pittsburgh. And then what you said, every, everything else he's doing is going to be like major games. Josh is going to be on like my top right multi-viewer for the Pats Bills game. And that's about it. Like he's just going to be in witness protection. With that, with all that said, there is another scenario where Lamar sucks against the, against Pittsburgh again. And Pittsburgh wins 18 to 16 and Justin Tucker misses a couple of field goals. The whole thing, speaking of awards, I wanted to ask you this.

• 1:26:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:26:57Bill Simmons?

  I hate when people do interviews and they say, I wanted to ask you this. I should just ask you, my bad. I'm still trying to get better at this.

• 1:27:03Speaker 03

  Forgive, no, you'll get there.

• 1:27:04Bill Simmons?

  Coach of the year.

• 1:27:06Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 1:27:08Bill Simmons?

  Do you know the favorite is? Have you looked at this?

• 1:27:09Speaker 03

  I haven't. I, I would imagine, I'm gonna give it to you, 12 and 2 Kevin O'Connell is probably the favorite right now.

• 1:27:14Bill Simmons?

  So he is. He's the only one with minus odds. He's minus 190. Dan Campbell dropped a little bit because his entire team got hurt. Apparently that was his fault.

• 1:27:22Speaker 03

  But, but hell of a locker room speech at an interview in 97-1 in Detroit.

• 1:27:26Bill Simmons?

  I guess the pregame speeches only go so far. Sean Payton 6 to 1, Dan Quinn 10 to 1, Tomlin 15 to 1, McDermott 30 to 1. And then you have to press the see rest of the bets link to go on FanDuel to go to Sean McDermott 30 to 1, Sirianni Bulls.

• 1:27:44Speaker 03

  Where's Andy Reid?

• 1:27:45Bill Simmons?

  There's Andy Reid at 35 to 1. So is this like a Belichick thing? He's not allowed to win?

• 1:27:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's done. He's three wins away from 300 wins in his career and no one has even mentioned that. They're 13 and 1. All they do is win.

• 1:27:58Bill Simmons?

  How is he not the number two guy to be able to bet? I just don't understand.

• 1:28:02Speaker 03

  He's succumbed any, any respect for any of that. And then we'll see him in January. Like it is, it is, it is amazing how this award is given out. Usually it's a first year guy who gets his team into the playoffs and it's like a quick bump. And we've seen that from McVay and from Matt Nagy and from Stefanski.

• 1:28:17Bill Simmons?

  It could have been Harbaugh this year if they'd gone like 11 and 5 or 11 and 6.

• 1:28:21Speaker 03

  Brian Daboll was that. This year, I think the O'Connell thing is happening because people are just like, they keep on winning. And if you look at their team, it's a bunch of castaways, whether it be Darnold, Aaron Jones, Jonathan Grenard, like you go right down the list. It's all guys who were with other teams last year, but let's not, let's not underestimate just what Andy Reid is doing. Their roster every week.

• 1:28:42Bill Simmons?

  We, we are underestimating it because he's just the 10th best odds on FanDuel right now. And apparently nobody's betting on him.

• 1:28:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. And what's gonna be amazing, we're gonna go through the coaching hires and Spags is not gonna get a single look again. I'm just telling you like it is. No one's gonna interview Matt Nagy and their GM is gonna remain. And the number two GM is Mike Borghansi. I think he's excellent. I don't even know if he's gonna get one of these GM jobs. So it's gonna be like, alright, they do it again and they're just gonna bring everyone back next year. It's this fine, well-oiled machine and they don't get poached. It's incredible.

• 1:29:13Bill Simmons?

  You think like, all the weapons they lost, the fact that they, they had the bullseye on them all year, all the close games they played that they had to pull out. I think he would be my number two choice. I actually think what O'Connell's been doing on Minnesota, that team is so well coached and so well prepared, salvaging Darnold and turning him into a guy that's now probably a 30 to 35 million dollar a year guy in the open market.

• 1:29:37Speaker 03

  He's made it a real, a real decision for them. And I would also say, you know, I work on the Sunday kickoff show on Fox and like early on in the season, Michael Vick, my colleague, who's now the new head coach of Norfolk State, shout out to Norfolk State, Michael Vick was like, you know, Darnold's kind of like a game manager. And then he goes on this run where he threw five touchdowns in a game. He had to take them 90 yards outside in Chicago in overtime, did that.

• 1:30:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:03Speaker 03

  He also, you know.

• 1:30:04Bill Simmons?

  Said a few fourth quarter, like they need the drive here and he's come through. Yeah.

• 1:30:08Speaker 03

  That's not game manager. That is, okay, we're going to put the ball in Sam's hands and like, let's let him lead us the way. Interesting one this weekend in Seattle. I would think they would win. And then they finish up the season with the Lions and the Packers and that's where it's at. It's like, all right, everyone's waiting for that. And those are the two games to end the season. But if the Vikings win out, Bill, they are the number one seed in the NFC and that's incredible.

• 1:30:29Bill Simmons?

  If the Vikings went out, regardless of what happens to anybody else?

• 1:30:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, they are the one seed. They would have all the tiebreakers.

• 1:30:38Bill Simmons?

  I mean, Detroit probably needs that one seed more than any team has needed a one seed in a while. I don't know how much it's gonna help.

• 1:30:44Speaker 03

  I might be off Detroit right now. I don't know, man.

• 1:30:46Bill Simmons?

  Well, did you see that? Somebody had the graphic of all the people on IR by each team. Detroit had 22 guys. I have it here. Detroit, Detroit had 22. Then the next team was the Browns at 18.

• 1:31:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:04Bill Simmons?

  And the Dolphins and Giants at 15. So the Lions had, basically, if you go to like the fifth most IR team, they have almost, you know, 60% more than like the fourth player. I've never seen anything like it. I don't even know, dude, like, I know you have some Lions connections. Do they even have an explanation for how they could have this many injuries?

• 1:31:23Speaker 03

  No, it's, it's, it's, it's heartbreaking.

• 1:31:26Bill Simmons?

  Do you look at the training staff and go, what are we, are we doing something wrong?

• 1:31:29Speaker 03

  I don't think so. I, you know, I remember the 2029ers had something like this. Where like just early on in the season, it was like Bosa's out and then Garoppolo's out and like, but the crazy thing is they're still finding ways to put up points. Now the David Montgomery loss is real. That one sucks. Like Montgomery's very important to them.

• 1:31:45Bill Simmons?

  That was when I closed the door on my Lions one seed bet.

• 1:31:49Speaker 03

  It might be.

• 1:31:50Bill Simmons?

  They could basically do the Buffalo where they just outscore everybody, but now, but what really made them special was that Montgomery Gibbs combo.

• 1:31:57Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:31:57Bill Simmons?

  It was a top three running back situation anyone had. Now they don't have it.

• 1:32:01Speaker 03

  I know. And we had, you're gonna love this. We had Taylor Lautner on our show, Good Morning Football. Taylor Lautner of Twilight fame, who by the way, is a great dude and loves the NFL. And he has a podcast with his wife who appropriately is also named Taylor. And they had Aiden Hutchinson on as their guest because he's a diehard Lions fan. And we're promoting it and like Hutchinson's like, if we make the Super Bowl, I'm back. If we make the Super Bowl, we're back. And that came out the same exact day as Dan Campbell's riveting radio interview. And it's like, on paper, it makes no sense that this team that is down 22 guys, most of them on defense, and are using third and fourth and fifth string players in key positions down the stretch should compete.

• 1:32:42Speaker 03

  And then you talk to anyone there and it's like, why can't we just be one of these teams of destiny? Why can't we be one of these magical teams? And who knows, if you get to the Super Bowl somehow, you get Aiden Hutchinson back. And suddenly you find yourself in New Orleans and you got a bunch of crazy Lions fans who haven't seen a world championship game since 57.

• 1:33:01Bill Simmons?

  The Pats had a year like that where like Troy Brown was playing nickelback and just, it just felt like everything was going wrong the whole year. And they still almost made the Super Bowl, but they had the Brady Belichick infrastructure. It's a little different. Jared Goff, who's never won a Super Bowl and Campbell's never, you know.

• 1:33:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:18Bill Simmons?

  But we've seen like teams, the Colts had years where it just felt like their defense had passed the point of no return. And they were somehow in the AFC title game.

• 1:33:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:27Bill Simmons?

  I'm not willing to rule them out, but that, I gotta say the Montgomery thing. That was the one that made me go up.

• 1:33:34Speaker 03

  It kills.

• 1:33:34Bill Simmons?

  Their defense sucked anyway. Like they were gonna have to win, like Buffalo's gonna have to win.

• 1:33:38Speaker 03

  That Colts team, I think it was the 06 Colts team that won the Super Bowl. They had the worst defense in the league and they'd given up like 250 yards to Ron Dane and Dominic Davis and the Houston Texans like the last week of the season. And then playoffs come and it's like, we need to win three games. Can we string it together? And they did. And the home field always, always matters when you can get it. So if Detroit can find a way to just hold serve and maintain home field, if they win out, they're the number one seed. So.

• 1:34:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but you know what's, you know what's been lost though? I think if they're healthy, I really do think they win the Super Bowl and they're the best team. I think starting the year for whatever their talent was in the situation and the guys at the points of the careers they're at, I think they had the best team. And I think that's why it feels so wide open now because sometimes you just, remember there was that year, the year Brady got hurt, oh eight?

• 1:34:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:30Bill Simmons?

  When all of a sudden we just ended up with that weird Pittsburgh, Arizona Super Bowl. It's like, what the fuck is this?

• 1:34:36Speaker 03

  Arizona, Arizona came in with eight wins on the regular season and then a run.

• 1:34:40Bill Simmons?

  Don't you feel like something weird like that could happen this year? I'm prepared for like any Super Bowl matchup, right?

• 1:34:45Speaker 03

  The NFC to me is so interesting. The AFC, you've got your powers and like they're all, the NFC, like, would you be shocked if Baker Mayfield and the Buccaneers upset, you know, a team in the wild and they, they beat the Vikings at home?

• 1:34:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they just scored 37 on the road against whoever, of course.

• 1:35:01Speaker 03

  They scored, they scored 40 points on the number one defense, the Chargers, and put up 500 yards of offense and didn't punt. And you're like, oh wait, what the hell's going on in Tampa? Like they, they might be the team. So this could be that year and the NFC, like, the Eagles could finish with 13 straight wins and yet, I don't know. Like, does that feel like the Eagles are gonna run away with the NFC? I don't feel that way. I think the Vikings and the Packers can give them a battle and the Lions too. So I'm excited for this year's playoffs.

• 1:35:27Bill Simmons?

  If you're just saying talent now for who's left, it seems like the Eagles have the most talent in either conference, just all sides of the ball. If you're just gonna do a ranking of, you're grading all the players. And yet, I don't even think the Eagles fans, even the Eagles fans have like their guard up with it. And there's always seems to be weird stories popping out and chemistry stuff. And so part of me wonders, is that a red herring?

• 1:35:54Bill Simmons?

  And then the other part of me wonder is like, every time there's smoke like that, it never turns out well for the team. So I don't know what to think of them either. They would, they would have to be the team that if gone through your head, you would pick, but I don't feel good about it.

• 1:36:06Speaker 03

  That 2017 Eagles team, they lose Wentz and I was the sideline reporter for Giants Eagles and like Spagnolo was the quarterback and the coach of the Giants as an interim coach. And everyone was off the Eagles at that point. And then Foles comes in and I remember talking to Foles and Peterson and Brandon Graham and all those guys. And this is right before the dog masks. And it was like, the world is against us. They don't believe in us. We're the underdogs. And like, that really, that really worked. Can you still do it again? And now the thing is, you know, Jalen Hurts throws for a couple, you know, 100 yards to two receivers and then comes up and it's like, is that what you all wanted? And it's like, no, no, no, we didn't do this. The media didn't do this. Brandon Graham, your teammate, went out on a radio interview and said that you guys weren't friends. Like, we didn't do this. And then Sirianni and Clint Hert are having

• 1:36:51Speaker 03

  this really like heated thing on the sidelines where Jalen, Jalen Carter is laughing and it's like, no, no, guys, that, the cameras caught that. Like, that happened. That was real. And it's like, the media is trying to pull us apart. So they find a way to galvanize there in Philly. And I'm sure Sheal and whoever else you have on the Philly special can break it down far greater than I can. But like, they feed off that tension. But there isn't a lot of joy in the Philly fan, like.

• 1:37:15Bill Simmons?

  So that's what's the noticeable thing is.

• 1:37:17Speaker 03

  It's always like tense and stressed. And it's like, it's not, it's not this fun ride.

• 1:37:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, even watching the Eagles, it doesn't seem like a team that's having like the most unbelievable time ever together. And I don't know, you, you notice different vibes from different teams. Maybe they'll, maybe they'll come together. I wouldn't rule it out. But you did make me think of something.

• 1:37:38Bill Simmons?

  And maybe it's like two weeks too early to figure this out. But who is the best candidate for the nobody believes in us team in the playoffs? Cause that Eagles team is a great example. That 2017 Wentz goes down, everyone writes him off. Oh, they're done. And then they, it's, it's the, it's the force that has been kind of the most dominant playoff force year after year after year. Is it Detroit? Does Detroit have the best nobody believes in us case?

• 1:38:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, I feel like everyone's fleeing.

• 1:38:05Bill Simmons?

  We don't even believe in them anymore.

• 1:38:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think everyone's fleeing that bandwagon and Dan Campbell's the perfectly nobody, the perfect nobody believes in us coach and like Chris Spielman's in that building. He's the perfect nobody believes in us guy. I, I feel like they'll feed off that and, and that is your team. And then I think if there's another one of them, like the other one that you would say is the Houston Texans who are gonna easily win their division. They're gonna play the Chiefs and the Ravens over the next two weeks and they might, they might win two of those games, one of those games, and no one's gonna pick them and everyone's gonna say, oh, whatever.

• 1:38:35Bill Simmons?

  Thing with them is they're the, no, no, fuck you. Nobody should believe in you guys, Tim. You guys are barely winning.

• 1:38:41Speaker 03

  I saw you losing to the Jets on a Thursday night in person. No, it's your fault.

• 1:38:45Bill Simmons?

  You can't even score 20 points, you can't block. I would say KC last year was a good example of this when they lost that Raiders game. If people were like, I'm out, I'm out. They're not gonna do it again. It's done.

• 1:38:54Speaker 03

  I'm out. Aiden O'Connell beat them. I'm out.

• 1:38:56Bill Simmons?

  And, and, and I thought they used that to their advantage. Yeah, the.

• 1:39:01Speaker 03

  The Vikings are, Vikings are a candidate, but like O'Connell doesn't have that like deal with him. Like, I feel like you need a coach who's gonna really dig deep. Sirianni does that. Dan Campbell does that. Like, I've heard stories of Sirianni like going really deep with film references and like showing movie clips. And I remember Dan Quinn, when he was back with Atlanta, would call me on a Saturday night just to bullshit before my Fox show and I'd be like, give me something. And he's like, well, I show, I showed a, a Sugar Shane Mosley fight last night because the situation was this. And I'm like, dude, like, like these guys, they go deep, like what can motivate these? Like, that's Campbell, that's Sirianni. Kevin O'Connell's more like, guys, we got this. We can do this. One game at a time. Like, there's none of that hate and none of that toxicity of like us against the world.

• 1:39:44Speaker 03

  It's more, I believe in you, which works also.

• 1:39:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cuz I think Pittsburgh is maybe.

• 1:39:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:53Bill Simmons?

  Entered the waiting room for this convo, especially if they like lost to Baltimore this week. All right, we're done, they're out. Fun run, done. I can't believe you won 10 games. You guys are out. Watts hurt now. And, uh, and then Tomlin feeds off that. But yeah, I would say Detroit has to be the odds on favor for it. Maybe Tampa too, with just not being considered at all. And Tampa's had some good wins. Their offense is excellent. Like they're over 400 points already, you know, and they dropped 40 in the Chargers and.

• 1:40:21Speaker 03

  You think about it too. They, they lost their offensive coordinator from a year ago. He took the job in Carolina. Then Liam Cohen comes in and Liam's put up better numbers with Baker, which is incredible. And what, what's fun with this team is they lost four games in a row. Mike Evans was hurt. Chris Godwin was hurt and everyone wrote them off, but they just went ahead and just kept on winning. So now they're the hot team.

• 1:40:40Bill Simmons?

  You know who didn't write them off? Me and Sal because they were in the, such a bad division. Nobody is allowed to be, even Carolina, you could barely write off. It's seven wins going to be our champ in this division?

• 1:40:50Speaker 03

  What do you need in that NFC AFC South 30? You need less than 30 wins? What was the combined bet you guys did?

• 1:40:54Bill Simmons?

  That's done. Yeah, we're getting that. It was, it's under 30. We're getting that. The, uh, the Penix Cousins thing was coming for a while and I knew when they did that mile an hour stat for Cousins, it was 36 miles an hour was, you could, you could see it the way they called the game with the Raiders where they just weren't going to let them do anything. Is there any way to spin this? Like if, like, let's say I'm Arthur Blank. How are you spinning this to me? That is it? Is it like, hey, look, this is why we had to invest in Penix. Like these are assets. If you go one for two, it's a win. Like what, what do you say to Arthur Blank at this point?

• 1:41:30Speaker 03

  Well, I think the first pat on the back goes to Kwesi Adofunmenso and Kevin O'Connell up in Minnesota who had a franchise quarterback and said, we're going to let him walk out the building, something nobody does without a plan B. We're going to go to the draft and we're going to pick up a free agent. But I remember talking to Kevin, he's like, it's heartbreaking. We love, we love him, but we, he's 36 years old, coming off an Achilles injury. Like we can't give him a hundred million dollars. The Falcons did. And your argument for the Falcons is like, all right, let's see what we get with Cousins. I give him a little bit of credit in that they eventually did pull the plug because this, he's going to make $90 million guaranteed from the Atlanta Falcons for 14 weeks of football. And they're paying him that and they're like, we're not going to just play you because we're paying him that. We're going to then go to the backup.

• 1:42:12Bill Simmons?

  But why didn't they do it before the Raiders game? Why not get Penix that Raider game? I don't understand.

• 1:42:16Speaker 03

  And I reported it on Fox a couple of weeks ago because he looked horrible Cousins for three straight weeks. So like the second week of it, they were playing the Chargers at home and I reported, I'm like, Penix didn't take any first, first squad snaps this week. It was all scout team and they were just like, we're going with Cousins. We're riding this out. It's almost too little, too late. But this does open things up a little bit. Like Zach Robinson's a good offensive coach. I knew him when he was with McVay's staff in LA and he was the quarterbacks coach and he does all sorts of cool like QB waggle, outside the pocket stuff. And I know how excited he was when they drafted Penix because he's like, that's really cool. And down the line, when the time comes, like we'll do really neat stuff with him. I think you're going to see an entirely different offense

• 1:43:00Speaker 03

  over the next three weeks and a lot of stuff with a quarterback that isn't a running quarterback by like Lamar.

• 1:43:05Bill Simmons?

  But he can at least move.

• 1:43:06Speaker 03

  But he can move.

• 1:43:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:08Speaker 03

  Kirk Cousins cannot move. He cannot move laterally. That game against the Raiders on Monday night, I mean, he scored a touchdown early and it was like, pump your chest. Like told you got, no, like he couldn't move. It was a crazy game to watch. And that was the fourth straight week he's done that.

• 1:43:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's weird because week one, he looked like that. And then everybody took the Eagles in week two, which is now looking back, one of the weird results of the season. When the game's over, somehow they don't, and then all of a sudden Atlanta has the ball.

• 1:43:33Speaker 03

  Saquon dropped the pass.

• 1:43:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then it comes flying back down the other way and it's like, Kurt's back. And it turned out he wasn't back, but I, look, we've seen teams get out of these giant awful cap hit things. Russell Wilson, Denver, you know, takes a huge hit with him and they're somehow going to be like a 10 win team this year. So it's not, not awful. I'm to me more interested like this makes the season more fun now that we get Penix.

• 1:43:58Speaker 03

  You suddenly get this new guy.

• 1:44:00Bill Simmons?

  With all these weapons and it's like, what if this guy's good? This could be like, because you know, I have a chance to maybe, maybe, you know, it's not a puncher's chance to maybe catch Tampa if Tampa has a dumb loss.

• 1:44:12Speaker 03

  Can I break a little news here while I'm live on the podcast with you? I just got a text. The Jets have completed. Interviewing Jim Nagy, who is the senior director of the Senior Bowl for their GM position. So they're interviewing a lot of guys, so I'm just interjecting with the text I got from.

• 1:44:27Bill Simmons?

  Is that kind of breaking news or like half breaking news?

• 1:44:30Speaker 03

  It's, it's, it's news.

• 1:44:31Bill Simmons?

  Jets interview news?

• 1:44:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:32Bill Simmons?

  Let's, um, let's take a break and I want to talk about the. No, I want to talk about the Jets after that because there was a crazy article about. All right, quick break. This episode is brought to you by Fire TV. You ever sit down, ready to watch the game, only to search and scroll endlessly? If so, you need Fire TV. It shows your live games from your favorite teams all in one place, right on the home screen. No more searching, just sit down and turn on Fire TV. Separate subscriptions may be required. Feature and content availability may vary. 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.

• 1:45:17Bill Simmons?

  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, FDIC. So a big athletic article today about the Jets and the ownership and the Suns and EA ratings and Jerry Judy, this became an immediate, everybody texting everybody the same thing. It's on every NFL team's Reddit. It's, it just became one of the stories of the year. A lot of anecdotal stuff that I think had been floating around, plus some new information.

• 1:46:02Bill Simmons?

  And guess what? The TLDR was like, hey, the Jets are super dysfunctional, which we knew already. But I think what I didn't realize was how kind of medley Woody Johnson is. And people had always said when he was doing the ambassador thing, it was nice and Woody's out. But then when he came back, that's when it got a little, uh, little crazy again. So in retrospect, like both of us were bullish on the Jets. You were even more bullish than I was.

• 1:46:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:46:31Bill Simmons?

  But this team was so dysfunctional. It's not like we didn't know they were dysfunctional. So what made any of us think that this team was going to suddenly become functional? And is there any way out of this with this owner?

• 1:46:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, that article dropped today and it was like, I got, you know, a lot of, and a lot of that stuff, like, I can't, I can't discredit a lot of it. That's in Diana's article with Mike Silver and Zach Rosenblatt. And like, look, when Woody took that UK ambassador job from President Trump in 2017, his sons, Brick and Jack, were 11 and 9. And it's like, you know, 11 years old and nine years old, he goes away, Christopher Johnson, his younger brother, takes over. And suddenly, like, the Jets building, it was like, all right, they're leaders in social justice. And Christopher Johnson's giving Kelvin Beachum, like, an opportunity to speak on behalf of the team. And it was right through all of, like, this turbulent time in the NFL, and the Jets were leaders in the space. And it was like, gosh,

• 1:47:26Speaker 03

  like, everyone was, was pretty impressed with the Jets organization. And then they hire Sala, they hire Joe Douglas. And then Woody comes back and his sons are suddenly, you know, of high school and college age. And then you go to these Jets games and you see the Suns pregame. And they're like, on the sidelines, and they look cool. Then they got the, the blazer on, and they got the sunglasses on, and they're walking the sidelines. And it's like, these, this is a freshman at Harvard, and a kid in boarding school, and their dad and mom own the New York Jets, and they have all access to do. Like, I don't spite the kids, and I don't spite the owner. But what it is, it is true. Like, these kids are around. And I actually, I feel like bad for, I feel bad for Brick, the older one, because everyone says he's actually a good kid. And it's like, he's

• 1:48:10Speaker 03

  getting lambasted in this article. The Madden thing, I'm not going to discredit that, like, things like Madden ratings could come in, like, I've spoken to sources, like, the Jerry Judy trade wasn't happening because the Cleveland Browns offered something better. And that's why, it wasn't because his Madden rating wasn't what it was. But I will say, you know, I, I don't know if this will be breaking, but like, Joe Flacco was with the team two years ago. And Flacco was a good veteran in the locker room for Zach Wilson. They go in, they get Rogers. And like, the plan was, let's get Rogers. And like, I could tell you that ownership was like, I don't know if we want to go that direction. Like, let's, let's, let's go with Rogers and let's go with Zach and let's figure out else we do. Like, I don't want a big paid job.

• 1:48:50Speaker 03

  Then Joe Flacco goes on to win comeback player of the year. And you're like, and like, little things like that where I, I know the owners, it's true. Like, I know that Woody was like, sometimes in the draft, like, we'll show displeasure if it's a pick he doesn't like. Like, that is fact. I've heard that from ex-employees. And that's a lot of this. There are a lot of ex-employees from the Jets right now.

• 1:49:09Bill Simmons?

  Which is always the most dangerous thing for a piece like this. There's 20 people who are like, fuck it, I don't like that guy. Here's two stories.

• 1:49:15Speaker 03

  What the fuck? I lost my job. Like, it's, you know, the Jets went through a turbulent time in 2014, 2018, and now it's this year. And it's always when they get rid of like, a certain, you know, group in the front office. And then, what do they have to lose? They'll tell stories. And a lot of it's probably their vantage point. And there's half-truths and real truths. But like, the end of the day, this ain't the Pittsburgh Steelers.

• 1:49:37Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:49:37Speaker 03

  You know, this, this isn't the Kansas City Chiefs. Like, there certainly is some, some fissures and, and, and issues with like, some of the ways things go down. But like, I think all they want to do is win. Like, it's not like they're not giving the GM the, the green light to go get Aaron Rodgers or to go trade for Devante Adams. But I, I can't discredit the article.

• 1:50:01Bill Simmons?

  And Wicker Shame and I talked about this last week. Cause I genuinely think one of the reasons Belichick went to college was he was like, it's not the right franchise situation with the right kind of ownership. There's no meddling son of the owner, anybody kind of messing with me. I probably don't want to do it anyway. Right? So, so after I put that pod up, some different people reached out to me. And a friend of mine was saying, you should do something on your pod about the difference between NBA owners and NFL owners.

• 1:50:32Speaker 03

  Okay, I would love to hear that. You know that world. I know the NFL world. Again, I was gonna say,

• 1:50:35Bill Simmons?

  the Jets ownership thing, that's in a lot of buildings, dude. So that's the thing. He was saying like, what's different about NFL owners versus NBA owners? NFL owners, they own these big, giant, billion dollar companies. They're in a suite. They're detached from the fans. They get to do what they want. They'll put their son in charge here. They'll do whatever. But there's still a sense of detachment. Whereas NBA owners, they're in the crowd. They're with the game. Like, they're, they're kind of in the mix for, and the type of people that have been buying NBA teams aren't like these NFL, like just these super rich families passing down the team to different generations. The NBA, a lot of the owners they have are people that either came up with the money themselves because

• 1:51:19Bill Simmons?

  they were rich, or, you know, they thought outside the box, or they were some family that bought in, or there's somebody like that Matt Ishbia, who's like the sub made guy, who's like, I know how to do everything. And it's like, all over the place. And, but the, the point is like, there's so many of these Jets situations in the NFL, and I don't feel like there's the same in the NBA. There's different levels of owner incompetence in the NBA, but it's, it's somehow a different lane than NFL incompetence. The Senate, like, the Jets have been like this for 15 years, right?

• 1:51:52Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, look, I, I think the NFL has a different structure with ownership. So in NBA, you can be a rich finance guy and you can buy a team. With the NFL, A, private equity can only now own up to 10% of a team. They only let six different private equity companies even play a role in that. That's brand new. And, and for the most part, all of the owners are majority owners, and it's been handed down, family, generation, generation, generation. Like, the Bengals ownership-

• 1:52:20Bill Simmons?

  Or they bought it in the 90s or the 80s and got it at a certain price, and they just have all the power.

• 1:52:26Speaker 03

  But like, the Bengals ownership group, like- That's their only, that's their main income, right? Like, that's their business. They own the Bengals. You look around and you go all the way to like the Rams. Like, that's a new owner, right? So the Cronkies, like, they obviously have a whole sorts of real estate stuff and they own all these different teams. But there are a lot of teams where the owners are families and it's handed down generation to generation. And like, the Steelers are one of those teams. But over the years, Jimmy Haslam had a minority stake of the Steelers. Then he goes and buys the Browns. David Tepper had a minority stake of the Steelers. Then he goes and becomes the majority owner of the Panthers. You're not going to be a Johnny Come Lately in this circle and just be like, I got a lot of money, I want to buy an NFL team. That's not how it works.

• 1:53:11Speaker 03

  And like, in New York, like Gary Vaynerchuk always says, I want to own the Jets. Like, and Gary V wants to own the Jets. I think in different leagues, like, that's a possibility, but the Jet, the Johnsons aren't selling this thing. Like, they're just not. And they might give a minority piece to someone here at some point, but like, they'll always be 51% owners, and that's for most of these teams. And the minority piece for it, for these owners, like, if you were to be a minority owner, and, you know, this week we saw Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady are now minority owners of the Buffalo Bills. All right? And Jose Altidore is a minority owner. And Lewis Hamilton's a minority owner. And Condoleezza Rice is a minority owner. And you can go all through, what is that? It's nothing, other than, I could say I own it, I can go to the dinner party.

• 1:53:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, season tickets.

• 1:53:54Speaker 03

  And I get season tickets and I got a spot.

• 1:53:55Bill Simmons?

  I go to a couple of meetings. Yeah, I go to a couple of board meetings and that's it. That, the, this was figured out in the NBA over the course of the last 20 years, because these, these groups would buy franchises, but really, like, one guy was in charge. And you would have these people putting in real money and they're like, fuck, I don't, I'm not in charge of anything.

• 1:54:13Speaker 03

  What do I get? Other than saying I'm an owner? And then someone being like, but you're not that guy? And he's like, yeah, no, no, no, but I am an owner. And there's enough people with egos. You always talk about the rich guy tables, and it's like, there's so few. Of these teams available that to say I'm even a 0.1% owner is is some cachet in a Washington DC Beltway dinner, you know, like there's all these different minority owners of the commanders, like that's that's social equity. It's something like

• 1:54:38Bill Simmons?

  Right, but they still, I think the the newer owners that buy teams like that and have minority groups, they're strategically picked to bring one value thing to the whole equation that they kind of need, well, whoever it is, whether it's somebody who's forward facing, somebody who's really smart, somebody who might know how to build a new arena. I think when I look at some of the NBA stuff, the the family that operates the most like an NFL team, like the dysfunctional generation by generation NFL team that just is the Lakers.

• 1:55:12Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 1:55:13Bill Simmons?

  That's the team where the dad had the team really from the 70s on. He passed it down to his kids. They'll never get rid of it. They don't have the kind of crazy money to, you know, like, basically their money comes through the team.

• 1:55:27Speaker 03

  From the Lakers.

• 1:55:27Bill Simmons?

  But that there's like 10 NFL teams that operate like the Lakers. I think the Giants are like that, even though I know people speak highly of the Maras, like that the Giants have been one of the most dysfunctional franchises for over a decade now, and they don't seem like they have a plan.

• 1:55:41Speaker 03

  Like they they obviously the tissues bought in as well, and that goes generations too. So now you have like multiple generations of tissues and Maras, but I would say, you know, there's a big enough family there where those people do different things outside of football and have like, like the Arizona Cardinals, Michael Bidwell's business is the Arizona Cardinals. Like he was actually a lawyer by trade and his dad passed the team down and now his ownership is the Cardinals and the Spanos family, like they all work there. There's a lot of them. And and I really like John Spanos and I I've grown to become very friendly with Dean Spanos. Like, but that's the family business now. So it's it's this billion dollar company, but it's being operated by families and their family.

• 1:56:23Bill Simmons?

  It's a multi-billion dollar company, but then the other some, some of the people that have come in the last decade, Shad Khan. Tepper.

• 1:56:30Speaker 03

  Tepper Haslam.

• 1:56:32Bill Simmons?

  Haslam, the, uh, and then the Washington, the new Washington.

• 1:56:35Speaker 03

  Josh Harris.

• 1:56:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:36Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:56:37Bill Simmons?

  Which is like the new kind of modern owner where they're buying these franchises, but it's just part of a bigger portfolio for them, right? It's not like.

• 1:56:45Speaker 03

  Harris owns the Sixers too.

• 1:56:46Bill Simmons?

  Living or dying with the success of the team. Who is the NFL owner that was like sitting on the bench like Cuban was with the Mavs forever, right? Arthur Blank.

• 1:56:55Speaker 03

  Arthur Blank was the guy to be honest.

• 1:56:55Bill Simmons?

  One of the biggest companies in the world. And then he just shows up and I'll come down the sidelines, but, uh, it's just, it's funny how the stakes somehow seem lower for the football owners because just owning a team in this league that is like one of the best businesses in the world.

• 1:57:10Speaker 03

  You're gonna make a profit. You're gonna make a profit. I mean, the Jets raised season ticket prices this year. I mean, amidst all this, they, the, the PSL owners were given an email like, hey, the tickets are being jacked up next year despite the season. Look, knowing that process, they're gonna interview everybody for a GM job and I would go in there and my advice to those GMs would be you have to find a way to finesse the egos in the room of, of like, you know, obviously like what he's gonna wanna hear, like what your thoughts are, but you're gonna also have to tell them straight up, like, I can also manage all of this because there is a next generation coming. Like his kids aren't going anywhere. One of them's a freshman in college, the other one's in high school. Like they're only gonna get older and, and more power and more emboldened. And it's like, if that's a problem as a GM, like you need to have the backbone to be able

• 1:57:54Speaker 03

  to say like, I, I can't have that around or I don't want that around. And the same for the coaches. Like that's the truth of it. So.

• 1:58:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:02Speaker 03

  The owners aren't going anywhere. I, I, I find it so naive for all these fans being like, just sell the team. Sell the team.

• 1:58:08Bill Simmons?

  Like they're 100% not selling it. Even Snyder, who they were, they're basically trying to set his franchise on fire and he went, sell the team. What are some good examples of how it should work that aren't just like the Steelers passing a franchise down? Like to me, it seems like the Cronkies with the Rams just realizing like. Hey, we have a good front office and a great coach. Let's just trust these guys. That seems how it should work on paper.

• 1:58:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, so Stan Kronke obviously owns it. His son Josh, who plays a bigger role with the Nuggets and with Arsenal.

• 1:58:40Bill Simmons?

  And everybody likes him. Yeah.

• 1:58:41Speaker 03

  Josh is great and he's in his 40s and he's not, look at me, not, you know, hey, I'm in this, he's just, he's, he's there and he operates and he's very involved.

• 1:58:50Bill Simmons?

  He's, he's the positive upside of a legacy kid. I would say you'd point to him as like, that's a success story of, of a legacy kid.

• 1:58:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I would also say, I would also say Chargers, John Spanos, who works in the front office, like, he's also like, people see him out there and he like, isn't about, look at me and very involved. But the Kronkies though, their front office is interesting. So you've got those guys, then the president is a guy named Kevin Demoff, whose father Marvin was an NFL agent for many years. And Kevin's been there since St. Louis. And then under him, it's your GM Les Snead and this other guy, Tony Pastors, who kind of manages the Kronkies as well. And it's like, they're all swimming on the same thing up, upstream. And it's, Demoff also is the president of the Avalanche and the Nuggets and the Rapids. And it's like, there's a lot of different entities and it's all under this Kronky Sports banner.

• 1:59:36Speaker 03

  But Stan and Josh are never going to come in and tell Sean McVay, I don't like the play call. I can't say that's true for every owner around the league.

• 1:59:44Bill Simmons?

  Right. Yeah, it's funny.

• 1:59:45Speaker 03

  And that's something you can't control. It's, it's, I own the team. I want to have my voice heard, you know?

• 1:59:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because it seems like all these guys have the son who, or in Jerry Jones's case, the daughter that everybody likes, Charlotte, who everybody thinks is good. But everyone has the son for the most part. And then if you ask other people, and I'm talking NBA, NFL, whatever, like, so what's the son like? And it could go one of three ways. They could be like, oh, he's good. He's really good. Like, it's almost like surprising. Or they'll be like, eh, you know, he's pretty sharp, I guess.

• 2:00:19Speaker 03

  Or he's Tommy Callahan. He's Tommy boy.

• 2:00:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, then there's the third one where it's like, what's the son like? And they go.

• 2:00:26Bill Simmons?

  You know. And then you're like, oh, it must be a disaster.

• 2:00:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:31Bill Simmons?

  This guy must be the absolute fucking worst.

• 2:00:34Speaker 03

  Which is why I want to give a pass to Woody's kids who got killed in this athletic article. Bill, they're your, they're your son's age.

• 2:00:40Bill Simmons?

  They're my son's age.

• 2:00:41Speaker 03

  They're your son's age. What are you doing? You're telling the kid. Like I remember before the Super Bowl in Arizona, and I don't know if I should share it, but I will. We're walking around the field. It was a Fox Super Bowl, so I have all access and I'm walking around with, with Michael Vick, Charles Woodson and Sean Payton and Goodell comes over and Jay-Z's there and there's this conversation and I like, eek to the back because I know my place in these things. No one wants to see my dad there. So I'm like, and then like, you know, I see Woody's kids on the field and they're like taking photos with Jay-Z and I'm like, I would do the same thing if I was a 17 year old kid at the Super Bowl and my dad owned the Jets and like, do you spite him for that? No, it's, it's the job of everyone else to say, okay, we need to put up some walls here and see like what we're going to do, but.

• 2:01:19Bill Simmons?

  Well, where it gets dangerous is like the Jaguars where Shahid Khan, who owns a bunch of stuff and he's just got an incredible amount of money and they've spent money in the arena. Football team's a mess. The Suns kind of running the team, but he's also running A W full time.

• 2:01:34Speaker 03

  And a soccer team.

• 2:01:35Bill Simmons?

  And the soccer team. And if you're, if you're Belichick and even if that was a job that was, you thought, oh, if I wait a month, maybe, maybe they'll just give me the car keys. It's like, what is that job? I have a weird ownership situation. I'm in Jacksonville, Florida, and I have no idea if my quarterback will ever be good. And those will be my mid seventies. Like I, the more I think about it, like I, I actually really like that North Carolina job for him because college jobs these days, unless you're in a perfect NFL situation, like I think Harbaugh Chargers, that's like a perfect situation.

• 2:02:09Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 2:02:10Bill Simmons?

  Right. Or the Broncos being like.

• 2:02:11Speaker 03

  They needed him and he wanted them Broncos.

• 2:02:13Bill Simmons?

  And he's in LA, Broncos, same thing. We need you Sean Payton. Here are the car keys. And I just don't think that situation is there for anybody. Like if you're, if you're Vrabel now, and I think Vrabel's the best candidate of all these guys. If you're Vrabel, what's the situation where you're like, oh, oh, that's a no brainer. I gotta do that. It's, is it even Cincinnati?

• 2:02:34Speaker 03

  I, look, I'm going back to Belichick. There could be two truths. I know Lombardi comes on your podcast and we love Mike and I have exchanged texts with him. There could be two truths that A, this was an amazing situation for Belichick to fall back on and B,

• 2:02:48Bill Simmons?

  he had no NFL.

• 2:02:49Speaker 03

  There was no NFL job. And, but also, it, to their self-awareness, there was no job that they wanted. So it's, it's, it was in both ways now.

• 2:02:59Bill Simmons?

  But that's my question. Like, what's the job this year?

• 2:03:01Speaker 03

  But if you're Vrabel, can you be, can you be out for two years? I don't know. Like Peyton took one year off.

• 2:03:06Bill Simmons?

  I'm not talking about him, I'm talking about Vrabel.

• 2:03:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm saying for Vrabel, can you wait two years? Like, and to say, well, I'm gonna be, you know, pick, I'm gonna wait for a better opportunity. I, that's the problem.

• 2:03:15Bill Simmons?

  Well, you're waiting, you're basically waiting for the Pat's job.

• 2:03:19Speaker 03

  You know, for

• 2:03:19Bill Simmons?

  If you're waiting next year, you're like, this Pat's thing's gonna go badly. I'm just gonna wait until it falls apart.

• 2:03:25Speaker 03

  And, and you're walking into a situation where they didn't give you the decency of an interview last time around, when you were a free agent and you were available.

• 2:03:32Bill Simmons?

  The guy five years ago.

• 2:03:33Speaker 03

  And they, and they didn't even go through the process. If you're Vrabel, well, what the, what, you know, and the story I got today that I think went out, that Greg Bedard, who I think is very plugged in, said that you can get a Vrabel, McDaniels, and like, the whole band can go back to New England, when everyone thought that was the crew going, not Vrabel, but everyone thought McDaniels, Patricia, oh, Belichick hasn't hired any of those guys yet. Like, I think they gotta work out contracts with those guys. So you might be able to get the band back together up in New England. I, I, I mean, would you wanna go back there if you're Vrabel? After they didn't even give you the look the first time?

• 2:04:06Bill Simmons?

  I don't think, I don't think it was a slap in the face that they didn't give him a look. I think the Mayo thing had been done for a couple of years. So, that was one of my questions for you, actually, to do a little coach watch.

• 2:04:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:04:17Bill Simmons?

  Cause we have Jets, Saints, Bears open.

• 2:04:19Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 2:04:20Bill Simmons?

  Watching the last three weeks of the season.

• 2:04:24Bill Simmons?

  Peterson, I'm guessing that's a wrap in Jacksonville, right?

• 2:04:28Speaker 03

  Yes, I would think.

• 2:04:29Bill Simmons?

  So there's four spots. Dayball seems like he's coming back.

• 2:04:36Bill Simmons?

  And I, my guess is they'll give him one more year and then the, they'll hire new people for the front office and that's how that plays out, but maybe they won't hang.

• 2:04:44Speaker 03

  Oh, you think the G, I think the GM is safe in New York. I think Joe Shane is safe. I think the GM is safe.

• 2:04:49Bill Simmons?

  So Dayball's not safe?

• 2:04:50Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't know if he's a hundred percent safe. I would think if it's up to the Mariners, they would love to just get the season over with and keep both of them.

• 2:04:57Bill Simmons?

  Okay, well, let's pencil that in.

• 2:04:59Speaker 03

  There have been planes above, you know, MetLife, the last two home games, saying, please end this misery, fire him. Like, that's the one thing, like, the Mariners can't stand, like, when the fans are, you know, not in the building or it's an embarrassment. So it could, Joe Judge was safe 14 weeks through the season, two years ago, and then he ran a quarterback sneak with Jake Fromm and lost it in his press conference. And it was like, we have to fire you. That's, that's where Dayball's at right now, I think. Like, you just can't melt down.

• 2:05:24Bill Simmons?

  That's a big talking point right now with the Pats fans, because if there's, if you really are completely all out on Mayo, and I was a hundred percent out, and then a couple of the players stuck up for him this week. So now I'm like, all right, I'll give it one more week. But Drake May stuck up for him, Dejounte Murray stuck up for him, but he's been just awful.

• 2:05:41Speaker 03

  And he talks, there's this like, there's this meme of like,

• 2:05:45Bill Simmons?

  Oh, the circle?

• 2:05:45Speaker 03

  Gerard Mayo, yeah, he says something, you know, Gerard Mayo makes terrible decision, says something at press conference and then backs it, and then, you know, back, walks it back, but sort of also puts a foot in his mouth. Like, it's been to the back.

• 2:05:55Bill Simmons?

  I think he's had four times this, this year in the preseason, where he said something that everybody's like, wait, what just happened? And then the next day he had to do the, to clarify something I said yesterday.

• 2:06:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:06:07Bill Simmons?

  And I don't know how many more of those he gets. The Arizona game was alarming, but, you know, they got Buffalo this week. They got Buffalo in the last week, which might actually mean something for Buffalo. So, I, to me, Mayo's on the coach watch list, even though I don't think Kraft will fire him after a year.

• 2:06:23Speaker 03

  I don't think they want to either. I think that's a, they would love to not admit a mistake. You know what I mean? And like, they would love to ride this thing out one more, one more season.

• 2:06:30Bill Simmons?

  But the thing is, that's fine that they don't want to admit a mistake and maybe he deserves a second year. The difference is Vrabel,

• 2:06:39Bill Simmons?

  I, I just think Vrabel's a great coach. I, like, if that's going to cost you Vrabel, you're in the same situation like the Jets were in, where they could add Vrabel a year ago, probably, and they brought back Sala and it clearly wasn't going to work. Pierce on Vegas?

• 2:06:53Speaker 03

  Interesting. I mean, look, I've been told-

• 2:06:55Bill Simmons?

  Depending on how the next three games go?

• 2:06:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:06:57Bill Simmons?

  I can't say I'm positive he's coming back.

• 2:07:01Speaker 03

  Same, but I also can't say I'm positive he's gone. I also think it was reported by Ian Rappaport this week, and I know it's accurate on the quarterback spot that Brady's like, not just gonna be a silent owner and, you know, posing for photos, like Brady's gonna have a voice in this and is gonna play a role. And so I know there's no like, great connection, but they are former players and obviously Brady and Pierce have a relationship from their playing days, but like, I think Brady plays a role in this as well, and they're gonna value his opinion.

• 2:07:29Bill Simmons?

  All right, here are the three I gotta get your take on. And I'm watching this for the next three weeks. There's always a surprise. I can't believe they let go of that guy, Coach.

• 2:07:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:07:37Bill Simmons?

  The nominees. Mike McDaniel, my end.

• 2:07:40Speaker 03

  Yep. Yep. They just gave him a huge contract extension, but Steven Ross' money's not an issue. So, okay, go on.

• 2:07:46Bill Simmons?

  Shane Steichen in Indianapolis.

• 2:07:48Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:07:50Bill Simmons?

  Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco. Those would be my three. I'd be shocked if they, if they were let go one day after the season, but I also wouldn't be shocked. And then I guess maybe you could put Zach Taylor in there, but I actually think there's a chance the Bengals could make the playoffs if Denver-

• 2:08:07Speaker 03

  And also, not to talk about finances in that kind of way, but like, the Bengals are not ones- Yeah, they're not, they're not looking to pay two coaches at once.

• 2:08:15Bill Simmons?

  Right. When you, when you decide to have a team of like, half rookies and undrafted free agents, maybe they'll wanna pay two coaches. So McDaniel, Steichen, Shanahan. Rank in order of what would surprise you the most?

• 2:08:29Speaker 03

  Shanahan would surprise me the most. I know it's, it's been, it's a very, very dark year there in San Francisco. Like, knowing Jed very well, knowing John Lynch very well, they're, they're, knowing Kyle very well, they're trying to be upbeat, but like, this season started with the lockouts, which was sour as it was, and then their first round pick got shot. And it was like, okay, that's a major adverse situation, let's try to work through it. Then they proceeded to lose their running back right before the season, that was their offensive player of the year in the league. And then, like, I don't wanna be, you know, like, you've had players have real tragedies in their life, like Trent Williams lost a kid this, this, this season. Like, real dark stuff on top of all these injuries. And it's like, just get to the finish line. And I don't think Kyle

• 2:09:14Speaker 03

  Shanahan's gonna pay the price for this year. It's one of those truly brutal-

• 2:09:18Bill Simmons?

  The official year from hell.

• 2:09:21Speaker 03

  It's the official year from hell team that like as bad as things have been in New York with the Jets, like the Niners, like that's real life stuff and it has been so bad. And they're just trying to stay above it. When they beat the Bears in that game, like there was like a feeling of like great relief and like just that we got a win. And last week was atrocious on Thursday night at home in front of their crowd, losing 12-6 to the Rams. Like it's just get to the end. I don't think Kyle Shanahan, unless he has some major blow up with Jed, which I don't think is happening. Steichen and Ursay, I don't know enough. I know Ursay had it, had his, was just absolutely sick to his stomach over Carson Wentz losing to the Jaguars in a week 17 game a couple of years ago. And it's like, he's out, like get rid of him. Like, but I don't know if that's the relationship with the coach here that he would make a rash decision,

• 2:10:06Speaker 03

  but disappointing season there. And then Mike McDaniel, they gave him a monster, monster extension before the season, but Steven Ross is one of the wealthiest owners in the league and this thing has gone way off the rails and nothing would surprise me because that's the same owner who fired Brian Flores when no one thought that was a possibility a couple of years ago.

• 2:10:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And that goes back to what we were talking about earlier with these, these owners are just so different than the NBA owners. Steven Ross is like, ah, fuck.

• 2:10:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:10:34Bill Simmons?

  How many, how many coaches in my path? Fuck it. I don't care. And just, what does he care? He's got a kajillion dollars. Some of these guys are old.

• 2:10:41Speaker 03

  And that's a really, really attractive job. As, as, as attractive a job as there is, is living in Miami and, and being the coach of the Dolphins because you have an owner with endless money and you have a really nice place to live with no taxes, like these hot coaches, like that's a really attractive place to go.

• 2:10:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I mean, that's for the Pats fans who have been horrified by how sloppy the Pats have been and the terrible strategy and just how awful they look.

• 2:11:10Bill Simmons?

  The thing that a lot of us have focused on is that Kraft's just in his 80s.

• 2:11:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:11:15Bill Simmons?

  And you don't have a ton of these seasons left, right? And you can't be like, yeah, let's see one more year. They're in such a unique situation with Drake May, like on a rookie contract where it's like the, the single best asset you could have in sports. And they have a lot of work to do. And you, do you want to set that back a year? I don't know if you do.

• 2:11:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it's Jonathan plays a big role there. Like Jonathan Kraft plays a major role there. Another son of an owner. And, and I think, I think they really, really were, the way that whole thing went down with, with Belichick at the end, I think they really wanted this year to work out in some way, like, and it has absolutely gone terrible.

• 2:11:56Bill Simmons?

  Off the top of your head, how many teams have benched a quarterback this year?

• 2:12:02Speaker 03

  Benched or injury? Benched?

• 2:12:04Bill Simmons?

  Benched.

• 2:12:05Speaker 03

  Four.

• 2:12:06Bill Simmons?

  10.

• 2:12:07Speaker 03

  Okay. It's a lot.

• 2:12:09Bill Simmons?

  Cousins, Levis, Daniel Jones, Brissette, Fields, Jameis, Richardson, Flacco, back and forth, Bryce Young, Minshew, and I'm counting that Hayner guy. Hayner, Rattler, somebody got benched in that. There's benchings all over the place. That's one third of the league benched their quarterback this year. How are we getting worse?

• 2:12:32Speaker 03

  Not good. Not good. And yet you could say that at the top of the league with Burrow and Lamar and Allen, you've got some of the best quarterback play we've ever seen. There's such a gap between the great and the bad. And it's, it's you have one or you don't. And that's just where we're at.

• 2:12:48Bill Simmons?

  Am I crazy to think Zach Wilson should have gotten one more chance with somebody to at least start a game?

• 2:12:53Speaker 03

  He had that whole year last year and stunk.

• 2:12:56Bill Simmons?

  Is he like 24? I don't know.

• 2:12:57Speaker 03

  He's the third string in Denver.

• 2:12:59Bill Simmons?

  How is Wentz not quarterbacking a team either? That's another one. I mean, even the Chiefs, there's been a lot of dialogue with the Chiefs where they're like, Reed asking Mahomes, like, how is this guy a backup? He's so good. It's like, well, you gotta look at that Indianapolis game. Um, all right, next topic.

• 2:13:18Bill Simmons?

  The Calais Campbell release, we rarely see, so Miami is officially out of it. You rarely see, this happens in basketball, right before like the March 1st deadline. You rarely see a guy get released by a team who could actually hop onto a playoff team.

• 2:13:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:13:34Bill Simmons?

  And have a dramatic impact, but I feel like he could.

• 2:13:37Speaker 03

  He could.

• 2:13:37Bill Simmons?

  Have you heard anything on this?

• 2:13:39Speaker 03

  The last one was like, I think the Chiefs like signed Terrell Suggs at the end of the season. He won a Super Bowl with them back in 2019 and it was like, Sizzles on our team, let's go. Kalais is like the ultimate ambassador of the league, Walter Payton man of the year. And I think he was done right here and I think he will sign with the Ravens likely, which is a team that I think he was.

• 2:13:54Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you think it's the Ravens?

• 2:13:55Speaker 03

  I think it's one of these teams, like he played with the Ravens and was a beloved Baltimore Raven. And if there's a place for him.

• 2:14:00Bill Simmons?

  What if it's the Bills?

• 2:14:00Speaker 03

  Could be the Bills, could be the Bills, but he'll go to a contender and he'll play a role and he'll make a big play in a big game. You know that.

• 2:14:07Bill Simmons?

  What if it's like the Packers? I, I'm just, I'm on pins and needles, wondering where he goes.

• 2:14:11Speaker 03

  Calais Campbell, watch.

• 2:14:12Bill Simmons?

  The hardest asset to just stumble into in week 17 would be a guy in your defensive line that could push it.

• 2:14:18Speaker 03

  Defensive tackle, yeah. And he's a great teammate. I have no insight, I got, I mean, Rosenhaus is his agent, I could probably get some info in a quick moment, but I, as of now, I would think Baltimore to me, always with Calais Campbell. That's where, that's where he was such a badass for them.

• 2:14:34Bill Simmons?

  If he actually wants to win a ring, go to the Chiefs.

• 2:14:38Speaker 03

  Go to the Chiefs.

• 2:14:39Bill Simmons?

  Just go to the Chiefs, just be next to Chris Jones, just bang some bodies around. Um, okay. You watched Aaron Rodgers' entire Netflix doc?

• 2:14:48Speaker 03

  No, just the first two episodes. Did you watch any of it or no?

• 2:14:50Bill Simmons?

  I refuse to watch it.

• 2:14:51Speaker 03

  Why, okay, I know, I know your team Jimmy Kimmel and Cousin Sal, but you won't even watch it?

• 2:14:55Bill Simmons?

  Nothing to it, nothing, I would actually watch it to spite Jimmy. Um, it's my friend. Uh, no, I just don't want to spend, I don't want to spend, you know, valuable TV time with.

• 2:15:09Speaker 03

  But you're a filmmaker, I watched the Gatt Rock doc and I loved it and I texted you, this is a good doc, I'm not trying to.

• 2:15:15Bill Simmons?

  My friend Goff that made it, those guys are really good at what they do. I'm sure it's well done, I just don't want to hang out with Rogers for two hours.

• 2:15:21Speaker 03

  I, I would tell you this. And I know we've had a lot of discourse on the, the player, producing, editorial control. And this ain't, look, this isn't Ken Burns baseball. This isn't an objective look at this thing. It's Rogers' story, but the second episode, he goes on this ayahuasca trip with Jordan Poyer and Adrian Colbert and Poyer's mom. And it's like, it goes to places that I don't know exist and it's interesting. The first episode, it really is good football shit, man.

• 2:15:47Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 2:15:48Speaker 03

  It's, yes, it is a football doc too. Like I am telling you, you go, and you forget how close he was when he was with the Packers and all those games and Packers fans were saying like, no, no, we know. But like, you know, the Giants, they beat him when he was a 15 and one quarterback, 19 straight wins. He loses to the Giants in the playoffs, the Falcons in the NFC championship game, all those 49ers losses, the Buccaneers a couple of years ago. But what was really interesting is that you get into Rogers, like, and he's always searching. He's like seeking for something that I almost feel just a lot of empathy and sympathy. Like he's a single guy in his 40s right now. And he's like, I'm searching, I'm searching, I'm searching. And there's this hole, but he says he wins the Super Bowl in 2011 and his whole life's

• 2:16:32Speaker 03

  goal was proving everyone wrong and proving all those division one schools wrong. And he mentions Purdue said like, you're just not athletic enough for Purdue. And he couldn't win a playoff game and they show a clip of Mooch on NFL Network being like, until Rogers wins a playoff game, he's not one of the elite guys. Wins the playoff game, wins the bowl. And he says he wakes up the morning after the Super Bowl and it didn't fill his cup. And he's like, what now? And that was 2011 and he's still searching. And I feel like I, that's a side of Rogers I haven't seen. And there's no, you know, there's no love lost amongst him and the family. And there's all this sort of stuff that you're like, dude, like it's hard for me to, to really rationalize why you feel this hole in your life. But like, I don't know, it's pretty vulnerable in it. And I think the football shit is pretty good.

• 2:17:17Bill Simmons?

  Jesus. You almost made me want to watch the first part.

• 2:17:20Speaker 03

  Enigma. It's only three episodes too. It's not this seven episode, you know, they like, there's been a lot of bad sports docs. You know this. And a lot of them are like, this could have been a nice 60 minute, 60, 60 minute piece that ran on the NBA TV network. Like, I don't need to watch this, but I'm telling you, this one was well done and you come away and you're like, pretty good football. And whether you like Rogers or not, you're like, that's an interesting deep dive on a dude who gave you all access.

• 2:17:46Bill Simmons?

  Well, so you're saying I should watch this over La Palma, the Norwegian disaster flick, where everything's dubbed, or series that's the number one TV series on Netflix right now?

• 2:17:55Speaker 03

  Is this the number, I don't know.

• 2:17:56Bill Simmons?

  La Palma.

• 2:17:57Speaker 03

  I gotta see it.

• 2:17:58Bill Simmons?

  I like when you start watching those and then five minutes in, you realize their mouths aren't moving with the words. And you're like, oh, it's, we're, oh, now I get it.

• 2:18:06Speaker 03

  I watched one based on like, like the, the guys from The Watch a couple of years ago. It was like 1973 about like German Dutchland. And I'm like, I'm gonna watch this show. And I'm like, I can't do it. I tried. Like Andy Greenwald loved it. What's the show? Do you know what I'm talking about? It was like 72 in Germany. And it was like this show that ran on German television. They're like, the number one show. I'm like, all right, I trust these guys. I like Chris Ryan. I like Green. And then I gave it like a minute. I'm like, I can't. I tried.

• 2:18:33Bill Simmons?

  Those guys love it. They love getting super weird with those. Ben and I were watching, we were both working at the kitchen table last night, watching Halloween 6 with Paul Rudd.

• 2:18:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a classic movie.

• 2:18:44Bill Simmons?

  Just going, he's just going for it, the whole movie.

• 2:18:46Speaker 03

  Went for it.

• 2:18:46Bill Simmons?

  Just really, really, really into Michael Myers. It's just an incredible performance.

• 2:18:51Speaker 03

  The best part about that, Paul was on like, he was like doing like Cider House Rules and like went from Clueless to doing just Broadway and all those things. And he like, did that movie. He did a movie that was like filmed in Japan over the course of two weeks where he had to bleach his hair blonde. And he's like, those are my, those are my movies of like, all right, I'm gonna go for it a little bit.

• 2:19:09Bill Simmons?

  All right, we have to go because my computer's about to run out of batteries.

• 2:19:11Speaker 03

  It was fun.

• 2:19:12Bill Simmons?

  Schrager, great to see you as always.

• 2:19:14Speaker 03

  You're the man, dude. Thanks.

• 2:19:15Bill Simmons?

  All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Peter Schrager. Thanks to Joe House and Big Waz. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Sarudy for producing as always. I'm gonna be back on Sunday live with Cousin Sal. You'll be able to watch it on YouTube as we're doing it. It'll be on Spotify video afterwards as well. Enjoy the weekend. Enjoy the greatest, greatest sports day in a while on Saturday, too. Should be super fun. Can't wait to talk about it Sunday. Have a good weekend.

• 2:20:06Bill Simmons?

  Must be 21 plus and present in select states. For Kansas, an affiliation with Kansas Star Casino. Or 18 plus and present in DC. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-887-897777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling helpline ma.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-8778-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures, WildHorse9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. I like those guys. Star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller

• 2:20:50Bill Simmons?

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