Pod Insights The Bill Simmons Podcast Philly Ruins the Chiefs and Mahomes Craps the Bed With Cousin Sal About this episode The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Cousin Sal to discuss the Eagles trouncing the Chiefs 40-22 in Super Bowl LIX, the Fox broadcast, gambling blunders, legacy watch, stories from New Orleans, NFL futures, Parent Corner, and more!
Host: Bill Simmons
Guest: Cousin Sal
Producer: Kyle Crichton
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Transcript 17,993 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Bill Simmons? Coming up, I went to Super Bowl 59 in New Orleans and I talked to Sal about it and it's next.
0:08 Bill Simmons? This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. And whether it's a flea flicker or a tush push, you need a plan that fits your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and for your budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun, sometimes earlier than expected, sometimes after blowing a 3-1 series lead, but what if you went to Cancun with Expedia? Save up to 30% when you bundle and save. You can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness, though, hopefully your team doesn't go to Cancun. 1-2-3 Cancun. Or if they do, you
0:50 Bill Simmons? go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save. Savings vary. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. I have new rewatchables coming for you on Monday night. It is a very big movie from the 80s. At least it's an important movie to me. You can watch it as well on The Ringer Movies YouTube channel. You can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch all the clips and videos from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. Speaking of The Ringer, big announcement coming from us this week. Very, very, very excited about it. Keep an eye out for it early in the week. We are making an addition to The Ringer Podcast
1:33 Bill Simmons? Network and to Spotify. And I'm pumped. So keep your eyes out. Anyway, coming up on this podcast, I went to Super Bowl 59 in New Orleans. Cousin Sal watched it from home in LA. It was a disappointing game, but it had a lot of subplots. And we're going to talk about all of them next. First, our friends from Pro-Jam.
2:18 Bill Simmons? All right, we're recording about 20 minutes after Super Bowl 59, a true dud. Cousin Sal is here. I was shellacked. My bets were shellacked. Million Dollar Picks were shellacked. I can't wait to talk about something that happened at the end of the game. Mahomes was terrible.
2:35 Speaker 01 Talk slow, Bill. I don't, I don't, I don't want it to end. The season ends after this hour.
2:39 Bill Simmons? I know, you're right.
2:40 Speaker 01 Just talk very slowly. Let's savor the conversation.
2:43 Bill Simmons? I'm gonna talk slow, as slow as that Eagles when they had the interception touchdown.
2:48 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
2:49 Bill Simmons? On the offsides, when the guy just should have basically run back and forth on the one yard line like you would do in Madden. And make one of the Chiefs have to run 70 yards to tackle him.
2:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:57 Bill Simmons? He could have run off like a minute of the clock.
2:59 Speaker 01 You're right. He could have killed the last seven minutes, but uh, didn't matter.
3:02 Bill Simmons? Well, so let's go positive, because there's so many Chiefs angles, but let's go positive. The Eagles, who had an awesome season, who, who had three losses that if like, three plays went different than three losses, they were like an undefeated level team. Nobody kicked their ass. And then the last two games of the season, they kicked Washington's ass. They kicked the Chiefs ass. Um, how good was this team for you?
3:27 Speaker 01 I think they were excellent and they peaked at the right time. And I don't want to take a damn thing away from them. I mean, I'm a Cowboys fan, so this is a nightmare. I mean, just being a Cowboys fan is a nightmare, that part. But I, did you ever, when did you put them in your top three? Because I don't think it's, in the last two weeks, maybe, the three weeks? It's just weird. Like, we should remember this. Like, the best team, we may not even be on our radar until week like 21. But kudos to them. They deserve it. Both sides of the ball dominant. Good for them.
3:57 Bill Simmons? Well, we always felt like Baltimore and Philly were the best on paper teams, but we didn't know what that meant. And then when you think like Baltimore has got to be just absolutely kicking themselves so hard. Where it's like, oh, man, we probably could have done what Philly did to the Chiefs and we just weren't able to get to the game. But, you know, we knew the defense was there. I remember doing the million dollar pick scenario on Thursday. And it was like, there was two games, I felt like. This could be, it could be to be like that awesome pass Seattle game back and forth, Chiefs win in the end. Or it could end up being like that, that Bucks Chiefs game, the 31 to nine game. When they couldn't block anybody, when they were off the whole game. And we talked on a bunch of different pods about, oh, if you like the Eagles, just take
4:39 Bill Simmons? them minus nine and a half, take them minus 19 and a half, just take them in some sort of blowout situation. Cause if it was a close game, the Chiefs history was they're gonna win. You were on Ringer Sunday pregame talking about all the same stats everyone else was. 17-0 in the one score games for Mahomes. 17-3 in the playoffs. The recipe to beat him was to basically beat the shit out of him and blow him out, which is easier said than done. The Eagles did it.
5:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think Mahomes actually may have been smart. He purposely got blown out so that he could still say he's won 17 straight one score games.
5:11 Bill Simmons? His streak's alive.
5:12 Speaker 02 I got the streak going.
5:14 Speaker 01 It was, uh, yes, you're right. I mean, this was the, this was the recipe. And like these, you know, they, they drafted all these SCC guys, right? The defensive lineman, all these Georgia guys. And it's like, ah, maybe the first year or two, they weren't great. A couple of them were, Jalen Carter, you could tell was gonna be great. But it's almost like they had to go to college a second time in the pros to get great for two or three years. And now they're spectacular. I mean, that had to remind you in a bad way of, I mean, it's great because you could brag on Brady now and the Patriots dynasty over the Chiefs.
5:47 Bill Simmons? I'm not gonna do that.
5:48 Speaker 01 I'm sure you don't have a segment for that, but on the other hand, this is how the Giants beat the Patriots. This is how the Giants beat Jim Kelly and the Bills, right? This is how Tampa beat the, the Chiefs a couple of years ago. So, I mean, that's six sacks, six sacks with no blitzes. Like, it's insane. You're, you're, you're toast if that's the case.
6:09 Bill Simmons? It was the worst fear if you're a Chiefs fan, cause you were already nervous about your line. You already felt like you were sneaking by game after game. You have a left guard playing left tackle, which we saw Jeff Saturday on Friday night and we were asking him about it. Just like, how hard is that to go from guard to tackle? And he was, he was basically saying, um, well, when you're a guard, you're a guard for a reason. Your arms are too short. You're not tall enough. You're not quite strong enough. Your footwork's not quite good enough. That's how you end up being guard instead of a tackle. And it's like, when you're playing a guard as a tackle, it's usually a little bit of a dangerous sign.
6:43 Speaker 01 He meant to say it's, it's as hard as going from NFL analyst to head coach.
6:50 Bill Simmons? But so if you're the Chiefs are going into the game and you're going, well, we've gotten pretty lucky in some of these close games. Everyone's taking us. And we do have some holes that the right team could maybe get, but the recipe of this game wasn't what I thought, even though it was the blowout part. Mahomes was awful. Hertz was really good. Hertz didn't just outplay Mahomes. Like he badly, badly outclassed Mahomes, which I thought was, uh, was, was pretty nuts. Um, sorry, my computer's doing some weird stuff. I'm in a hotel room. Um, but yeah.
7:26 Speaker 01 You don't have to go into the detail. Oh, weird stuff.
7:29 Bill Simmons? Well, I was my hands up on YouTube.
7:32 Speaker 01 The whole time I got nervous. Yeah.
7:33 Bill Simmons? Yeah. So Hertz how plays Mahomes and everybody was saying all week, ah, the Eagles have a better team. But you know, QB and coach late game stuff. I gotta take the Chiefs. And then the QB coach saying they didn't get either of them.
7:46 Speaker 01 No, they certainly didn't. And now there's a lot of love and probably deservedly so for Sirianni, right? He only does make the playoffs. Only goes to championship games and won the Superbowl and lost one. But, um, yeah, I mean, I don't know what to say.
8:00 Bill Simmons? He was gonna be fired in September. It looked like he was gonna make it to Halloween.
8:04 Speaker 01 It's really, really weird what goes on. And Mahomes like, I don't want to blame him fully because he's been great and that offensive line just got manhandled. But early on, he didn't help himself out trying to, trying to wedge, you know, get those passes into Kelsey who couldn't bend over to catch them. They were bad throws anyway. And then those interceptions were just abysmal. So we saw about three of the worst jobs. Yeah.
8:26 Bill Simmons? And Hertz was great. Like even Hertz had that on the first drive. He had a perfect throw down in the sideline to A.J. Brown that got called back for a pretty shaky pass interference. And then everybody had the same reaction. Here we go.
8:38 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah. I have all that written down. And that is the one good thing about this. Like we, it didn't come down to that. And I was like, okay, they called the P I on Brown, but the Eagles got it back on that dumb call that even worse call on God. And so thank God, we're not talking about the refs. We're not leading with them. I don't even know why I'm talking about them now. But that's the one good thing about a blowout like this. But I wasn't sure that Hertz was gonna get like MVP until the second half, until he started running. He ran for like two first downs.
9:03 Bill Simmons? He was really good.
9:04 Speaker 01 Cooper Dejean could maybe sneak in. But yeah, they had to give it to him by the end.
9:08 Bill Simmons? Yeah, he was, I thought, I mean, he only had five incompletions. He was 11 for 72 running. He had some pretty back breaking runs at the perfect times. He had some really nice throws. I didn't feel like, other than that pick, which it was a pick, but it also wasn't like the worst thing in the world. The guy got tackled at the two.
9:27 Speaker 01 It was a nice play and they went three and out. I mean, they could not get a first down, um, early on.
9:32 Bill Simmons? Yeah, but you think like Barkley was 25 for 57. The Chiefs were saying, you're not beating, you're not beating us with Barkley. That didn't matter because, you know, Hertz was getting these plays and then Mahomes was just awful. I mean, so I'm looking big picture for the, uh, for the Eagles side of this. Incredible drafting.
9:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:54 Bill Simmons? For a couple of years in a row, which is the key to everything. And this was, as you know, obviously was so focused on that 20 year Pats run. And it always ebbed and flowed with the drafts. They always had Brady and Belichick. And it always came down to, could they get two or three good drafts in a row? And if they didn't, that's when the team started to fall apart. The Eagles had the opposite. They just nailed drafts. They had some luck, like Jalen Carter falls to nine because he had a pretty terrible car ax, uh, car crash incident with one of his teammates and he falls seven spots lower than he should have. Even, even our guy Coop, I mean, he fell to 39. He was the third best defensive back in the draft. The Pats passed on him, traded back, passed on him again.
10:36 Bill Simmons? Um, and, uh, it just over and over again, they're nailing these dudes. And then Barkley was one of the best signings of the decade.
10:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, it really has been just a, a masterclass for the last two, two and a half years.
10:47 Bill Simmons? I could see the pain in your eyes. You're like, ah, it's really been a masterclass. Fuck this shit.
10:52 Speaker 01 Well, like what could be worse for Cowboys fan? I don't want to make it about me, but that, that now, you know, Jaden Daniels.
10:57 Bill Simmons? That's what we do in this pod. We make it about us. What do you mean?
11:00 Speaker 01 Could be around for a decade in the division. Oh, and the Eagles are great after losing the same last six inexplicably last year. And my, my team has gone to shit, but, um, yeah, I mean, I can't say enough about this Eagles team. I mean, really, uh, just, I, I don't know, but then again, if you look at, if you saw 25 for 57 for Barkley, how much more would we have put on the Chiefs?
11:21 Bill Simmons? I know. It's, so you think like even with this, uh, even with the playoffs for the Eagles, right? First round, they played Green Bay, solid game.
11:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:32 Bill Simmons? 22 10, shut Green Bay down.
11:36 Bill Simmons? Offense wasn't great. Some Hertz questions remained. The Rams game. They're up comfortably the whole game. Then at the end, defense gets tired and it felt like the Rams were going to steal the game and there were some signs and it's like Hertz couldn't put them away. It's like huh, what's that? But then those last two games, the Washington and the KC games are about as good. And we've been on the other side of this where we've ridden teams over the years, like the the 2000 Ravens was one of my favorite. That Bucks team with Brady, that was another one. This was another one of those teams that just got better over the four rounds. Had this defense was just felt like they peaked at the perfect time, unlike the Chiefs.
12:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:15 Bill Simmons? We did the opposite of peaking.
12:17 Speaker 01 Because all those games you mentioned, the Eagles won the turnover battle, right? And the Chiefs pretty much won the turnover battle except against Buffalo. But you always thought like, all right, it's not going to be the case that the Chiefs are going to get crushed in turnovers, right? And they
12:31 Bill Simmons? Right.
12:31 Speaker 01 And it was three to one is a crushing and you know, 37 23 for time of possession is even worse. I mean, we, you know, Mahomes ends up with decent numbers, but
12:40 Bill Simmons? No.
12:40 Speaker 01 You can't say enough
12:41 Bill Simmons? We're saving that for next segment.
12:44 Bill Simmons? Couple of things with the Eagles that we should just remember from a playoff manifesto standpoint.
12:51 Bill Simmons? Casey was negotiating for that three-peat.
12:55 Bill Simmons? That story came out during the week.
12:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:58 Bill Simmons? They were negotiating with Pat Riley about the three-peat and how to pay. That's going in the manifesto. I'm putting it next year in the playoff manifesto. If one team is negotiating for what's going to happen after they win the title, that's immediately a fuck you. Like I wish, I can't believe I didn't like factor that into anything.
13:16 Speaker 01 Oh, come on.
13:17 Bill Simmons? You put that, you put that right on the chalkboard. This team's already like negotiating after they think they're going to win. Like you, are we gonna, I, it just, I don't know. That seemed like not nothing. You don't think?
13:27 Speaker 01 Did Pat Riley bet the Eagles? I mean, that would have been a nice hedge because he lost a lot of money on t-shirts and everything else now for this three-peat.
13:33 Bill Simmons? Pat Riley had $5 million on the parlay of Jimmy Butler's first game with the Warriors and a
13:39 Speaker 01 Yeah. I guess it is. I guess there were a bunch of red, red flags, but
13:42 Bill Simmons? There's a revenge thing too, right? Cause they lost to the Chiefs a couple of years ago. So that was in there. But the lesson for me. And this was the single worst game to talk about ever since we've been doing this because everybody, it almost the analysis didn't matter because it all came down to, well, the Eagles are better really everywhere, but you know, you can't go against the Chiefs. Like that was literally including me and including you. It was like that. So now I feel like we're back. Now we can analyze football games correctly again. And now we can actually have takes because the Chiefs have kind of ruined it. Like the fucking Luca trade took over the Super Bowl discourse all week because it was like, it wasn't even fun to talk about this Eagles game.
14:25 Speaker 01 Well, now AD is out a month. And so now it looks like Dallas didn't get a steal. Like everybody was clamoring that they really won that trade. And now though, no, it, um, yeah, you're right. Yes, you're right. We can go back to, I, I just don't think that, I don't know. Well, yeah, I know. We spend like hours talking about, should this be one? Should this be one and a half? Why? Oh, is the number going to flip? It never matters. And you're right. We, we don't have to go, because I felt like anybody, I was just at a Super Bowl party who didn't know a thing about football can come in not watching and be like, oh, it's just tough to pick against the Chiefs. I'm like, shit, that's what I've been saying with Simmons for the last two weeks.
15:00 Bill Simmons? That's what everyone was saying. I was, I've been in the world since Friday. That was everybody's analysis was, well, you can't go against the Chiefs.
15:08 Speaker 01 Nothing else to add. The Chiefs are good. They win the coach, quarterback, and they win close games. So, uh, don't, you know, it's a long off season. I'll feel okay betting the, I didn't want to lose this way though, where, where Mahomes doesn't show up at all and the line gets, there were like no signs that the line was going to get overpowered. Was it like this? I didn't think that was the case. I don't feel.
15:28 Bill Simmons? Why didn't this happen to the Rams? You know, even Washington, like last week, Daniels moved the ball really well against the Eagles. And when you look back at the mistakes that they made, it was nothing that had to do with him. He was moving around. He was, felt like he was in control of the game and then his supporting cast kind of screwed the game up. So, you know, but on the other hand, they had two weeks to prepare. They obviously came in thinking, if we can get a lead. We can, you know, we're going to be able to dominate this game and that's what I did. I was in the, I watched the game. I was in the FanDuel suite, our friends at FanDuel.
16:01 Speaker 01 Look at you.
16:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it was great. It was actually really fun getting some of the insights of, you know, where people had too much money, not enough money, some of the props like that. And everybody, the Barkley, Barkley was under on everything. He didn't score a touchdown. Like, so all those hit. The Kelsey stuff was way under. Mahomes was under for a while. But the big thing they were saying was the line never moved. And even though everybody that we saw all weekend in New Orleans was like KC, KC, KC, KC. The betting was pretty even. And a lot of the sharp money was on Phillies. So the line stayed the same, which, you know, is usually kind of a red flag. So the public all thinks the Chiefs are going to win, but yet the line's not moving?
16:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. And like adjusted lines won, right? If they did take your advice and take the minus nine and a half and stuff like that. And the over, which wasn't looking good for a while, ended up coming in in a big way. So, uh, but I mean, there are some, you know, there are some crazy things. I don't know, like Hertz first touchdown, uh, that you see, you said they got beat on that, right?
16:58 Bill Simmons? Oh, let's talk about that. So Dotson catches a long touchdown.
17:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:03 Bill Simmons? Dotson was 85 to one.
17:05 Speaker 01 Incredible.
17:06 Bill Simmons? To, uh, to be the first touchdown.
17:09 Bill Simmons? They're celebrating. It seemed like a touchdown. Watching from the stands, unquestionably a touchdown. And then they review it. It's like, whoop, not a touchdown. All of a sudden we're tush pushing.
17:17 Speaker 01 Right.
17:18 Bill Simmons? They had Hertz anytime touchdown, Hertz first touchdown was one of the most popular bets. So that was a loss. I had, I had both of those.
17:27 Speaker 01 And I had under one and a half for shortest touchdown. So it was either going to come from Hertz or Barkley or Kareem Hunt or something like that. So that, that was about the only thing I won. But 85 to one, I know they give money back sometimes if a guy gets hurt on the first snap. You should get a little money back if you had Dotson at 85 to one.
17:43 Bill Simmons? Right. It's just some pity money.
17:45 Speaker 01 Eight inch line. Yeah.
17:46 Bill Simmons? Well, I had one of the, cause gambling's legal here in Louisiana. So I did a bunch of Super Bowl bets and that, and you're not going to believe it, but, uh, I didn't do great. But one of the ones I had was, was, uh, Hertz first touchdown with Chiefs to win the game. And it was 15 to one. So Hertz scored and then you go in the app and you can be like, you can get out of this right now. And I'm like, do I get out of this? I don't really like the way the Chiefs like, it's the Chiefs, it's Mahomes. Like to the bitter end. Even when it was, what 17-0 after the pick six, you're going, ah, this is his 28-3. He's gonna come back. And he just never did.
18:20 Speaker 01 It jumps up on the app and like, what, Bill, this is a wellness check. You could get out now. We're gonna give you three more warnings.
18:27 Bill Simmons? Phil, please log off. Let's take a break and we'll come back and we'll talk about Mahomes.
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19:19 Bill Simmons? without the ball. Watch the routes and the action away from the play. I'll change how you see the game. Guess what? He's not wrong. That's the thing about discovery on TikTok. One video can change the way you see the game. You can learn something new or see things in a completely different way. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Visit tiktok.com/discovermore. All right. So with Mahomes, it was feeling at some point, if you were pro Mahomes, pro this is the guy on par with Brady, all that stuff. It was like, could this be his 28-3 game? Including when, when, when Coop got the pick six. It's like, oh, we're now following the recipe for the 28-3 Falcons game. Then it gets to, what was it, 24-0? And it was same thing. It's like, oh, okay. This, this, this would be it. Maybe we're joking in this,
20:04 Bill Simmons? in the suite, like. Oh, maybe he's doing this intentionally. Maybe, maybe he wanted to add this degree of difficulty comeback thing to the whole Mahomes goat legacy that he ends up with a three P with a huge comeback. That was not what happened. So it was not even close to what happened. And I gotta say, he was terrible. He was terrible from the first drive. He had that second down pass to Kelsey. They were moving the ball. They got a first down. They seemed like they had a little momentum. Kelsey over the middle and throws it way behind him. And I, I swear he must add 10 terrible passes. I'm not counting what happened in the fourth quarter. The game was over and the game mattered. He was, he was the worst he's ever played by far.
20:42 Speaker 01 We were like, I don't know if you could bet on something like this, but like, do we hear Tuesday that he had rotator cuff tear or something because the throws were so awful.
20:51 Bill Simmons? Yeah, or like a hip flexor.
20:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:54 Bill Simmons? I don't know. Cause there was a couple of plays where he was scrambling around and it looked like he seems physically a hundred percent.
21:00 Speaker 01 Right. And then that's where it usually hurts you. But yeah, he could not, he could not get it. I, I didn't know what I was looking at. I was like, is it raining in there? Um, is it like, it looked like a bad weather game too. I just hadn't seen him like that. I, I don't know. I don't count that Tampa Bay game. Like when they lost in the Super Bowl to Tampa Bay, you were like, oh, well.
21:19 Bill Simmons? That game was ugly for a couple of quarters. And yeah, they had the Andy Reid thing that happened a couple of days before with his family. And it's just the whole vibe of that game was off. This was different. This was, he was specifically missing guys. Like there was that one when he rolled out and he had Hopkins on the third down and it felt like he could have scrambled for 20 yards or just thrown Hopkins a good pass and he did neither and Hopkins dropped it. But it was like over and over again. He just sucked. It was bizarre. It was like people were like incredulous in the stadium. Everyone was like, what's going on? Is he sick? What's happening?
21:51 Speaker 01 Your boy was giddy too. I mean, I don't think he, I think he went like three minutes without talking, Brady. He was just like giggling in the corner. Good for him.
21:59 Bill Simmons? Well, that's the thing. If it had been on Mahomes, his version of 28 to three with Brady announcing. That would have been great. Instead, this is probably the best moment of Brady's career. Since he retired because it was a lot of Mahomes, Mahomes, Mahomes, is he the GOAT? I don't know if he gets his three P. Brady's never done that. And now he goes down with two Super Bowl blowout losses. Brady's had zero. Brady lost three times in the Super Bowl, all one score games where he had the ball on the last drive with a chance to like steal the game, never got blown out. And then, uh, and then he beat Mahomes twice.
22:34 Speaker 01 That's it.
22:35 Bill Simmons? Two and O in the playoffs. And it's like, can we fucking settle down now for five years with the Mahomes goat stuff? Please. Thank you.
22:41 Speaker 01 I think you did buy yourself at least three years. Five might be a lot. Yes. But because I thought like if he wins four next year, we, you could make a good case for it. But you're not going to like this. I still think his best Super Bowl in terms of grading this legacy versus Mahomes is the one where he beat Mahomes. Now that wasn't with the Patriots. I'm sorry to say, but I feel like that's his greatest claim. That's his greatest claim to him being better than Mahomes.
23:08 Bill Simmons? Come on.
23:09 Speaker 01 Crushing Mahomes. Of course it is.
23:10 Bill Simmons? His best Super Bowls were the Seahawks one and the Falcons. Those were the, those are the ones, the comeback. But then that Seahawks game being down 10, those two drives that he had against Seattle, that was outrageous.
23:22 Speaker 01 Well, I'm saying in terms of comparing them to Mahomes, I think you have to do the head to head, but I know he's beat him in the championship.
23:28 Bill Simmons? The three P was the only thing Mahomes could have done. That surpassed anything Brady did. So now, you know, Mahomes is gonna, it's about to hit his 30s. He's got, he's three and two in the Super Bowl. And the thing about the Super Bowl is it's really hard to actually win the Super Bowl. Brady made it 10 times. He went seven and three. He easily could have been three and seven. He easily could have been 10 and O, you know, but, but Mahomes three and two. So we'll see, cause Kelsey. I think, you know, if they had won the Super Bowl, would Kelsey have retired? I would have bet yes.
23:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:59 Bill Simmons? I don't know what happens with that now. Chris Jones getting older. When we talked about hitting the drafts, they hit that McDuffie, Carl Lafferty's draft. Looks like they hit the worthy pick, but the offensive line is like. Really rough. There's other teams coming. The Chargers are going to be better. We saw Tyreek Hill on Friday. I was trying to get him to come to the Pats. Wasn't happening, but it, it, there was, there was a team.
24:22 Speaker 01 Are you gonna tell him what he said afterwards?
24:24 Bill Simmons? What did he say after?
24:25 Speaker 01 I said, come to the Cowboys and then he did the eyes thing. Like I'm looking at you. I said, you may have to be our running back too. He's like, that's all right. I'm ready. So here we go. That is good news for Dallas.
24:34 Bill Simmons? Well, and then somebody that was with them was like, watch out for the Chargers and walked off. I was like, what do you mean? Can we bet this?
24:42 Speaker 01 I will say though, but everyone's going, oh, the division, the coaches are so great in the division, you know, for the, in the AFC West. Look out. They're still four games better than any of those teams. They're still a month better than the Chargers. Right? So, you know, they're not going away anytime soon. I don't think the Chiefs, as far as Brady goes, if you were in a coma for a year and you came out of it and you said, uh, how was Brady? And I would have told you, oh my God, he had his best year ever. He, he, he took a gigantic leap ahead of Patrick Mahomes. You're like, what do you mean?
25:13 Bill Simmons? By doing nothing.
25:14 Speaker 01 So yeah, now he was a C plus in the booth, but this was his best year ever.
25:17 Bill Simmons? He somehow bought a majority stake of the, bought a majority stake of Vegas for 10 million bucks. He, he's the goat again. The goat almost got taken him. Now he's back.
25:27 Speaker 01 Right.
25:28 Bill Simmons? Um, I thank you for calling him a C plus in the booth, by the way.
25:32 Speaker 01 Is that generous? Yeah.
25:33 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
25:33 Speaker 01 I'd be a good teacher. Yeah.
25:34 Bill Simmons? I didn't, so tell me about this, the broadcast and Brady and how he was talking about Mahomes and was there anything interesting? Cause I was.
25:42 Speaker 01 He was just laughing the whole time. I thought it was embarrassing. It was like pointing and laughing. They cut away to him. Uh, no, I thought he was just fine. I, um, you know, I, I, I'm not one to watch a lot. Uh, but during, I have like 44 bets. I'm not kidding. I like 44 bets and I'm constantly checking on them throughout, but he was fine. And he was like, uh, sometimes this happens and he, it seemed like he blamed the line and praised the Eagles, which he should have, uh, defensively more than getting on Mahomes' case.
26:10 Bill Simmons? Their defense was, their D backs were great.
26:13 Speaker 01 Hmm.
26:13 Bill Simmons? They broke up that fourth and three, that, that guy broke on him perfectly.
26:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:17 Bill Simmons? I was, I was thinking about it from a Pats perspective. Cause just trying to figure out, cause they almost have this blank slate for how to put together a team now, right? Cause they have the coach and the QB. They have basically nothing else except Christian Gonzalez and Farmar if comes back. And it's like, how would you build this team? And it really feels like you just spend everything on the lines. You can figure out everything else after. So there's that Mason Graham, the Michigan defensive tackle. It's like, let's just get that guy. Maybe he can be Jalen Carter and just push the line like that. But it would seem like the sweet spot would just be having these four guys that can just push the pocket. And then you don't have to blitz. You don't have to do any of this gimmick shit. And then you can kind of patch together everything else would be one way to do it.
26:58 Speaker 01 How about the other part of the line? The one that Saquon ran for over 2,000 yards on?
27:02 Bill Simmons? Right.
27:02 Speaker 01 Couldn't get it going with the Giants. Like it's just, it makes a world of difference. If you could figure it out, you know, you don't turn the ball over as much when you own both lines. You win time of possession by 13 minutes, 14 minutes in the Super Bowl. It's a pretty good thing.
27:15 Bill Simmons? That's why I like when the Dolphins, they spend half of their salary cap on Tua and the two receivers. It's like, what do you, how's this going to play out? I thought the Chiefs fan base, I gotta be honest, and I'm sure I say this knowing this will immediately be thrown back in my face. With, because the Patriots fans did the same thing.
27:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:35 Bill Simmons? Just needed a, maybe a 16 ounce cup of settled down juice.
27:39 Speaker 01 Oh, really?
27:39 Bill Simmons? There was, the chests were out. The chests were out this weekend. I'll just, there's a, there was a lot of confidence, rightly so, because they had the best guy in the league. And they win every one of these games down the stretch. And it was a fan base that maybe needed their version of what happened to the Pats in 07. And what happened to the Pats and the Nick Foles, Doug Peterson, Super Bowl and some other great teams where sometimes you need the kicking balls.
28:02 Speaker 01 You should have told Ham to calm down. Say, settle down.
28:04 Bill Simmons? Ham was introducing the starters before the game.
28:06 Speaker 01 That's what I'm saying. It's like, relax. They'll never do that again. They can't have him back.
28:11 Bill Simmons? Isn't Ham a Rams fan for like 40 years?
28:13 Speaker 01 He says, he hasn't figured out that St. Louis, Kansas City thing. Yeah.
28:16 Bill Simmons? No, he's, he was with the Rams when they moved. He jumped to the Chiefs.
28:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
28:21 Bill Simmons? Has anyone, have we litigated that? Do we need to have him on the podcast or really like dive into what's going on here?
28:27 Speaker 01 I'm sure, um, you know, come on, you'll get lost in his eyes and you'll be like, all right, that's good. Good enough experience.
28:32 Bill Simmons? He's so handsome. Um, can we talk about?
28:37 Bill Simmons? Have you ever seen anything like how bad Mahomes was in this game from a great player standpoint? I was racking my brain because there was so much dead time during this game. I was like taking notes of my, wasn't expecting to take this many notes, but like I was thinking like Magic and the 1984 NBA Finals. Sorry, I had to work the NBA in.
28:54 Speaker 01 There we go.
28:55 Bill Simmons? But Magic like just sucked in the finals. Like he cost them a couple of games. He wasn't quite Magic yet though. They had won the 80 and 82 titles, but he wasn't like, he's the best player in the league. Peyton Manning had that New Orleans Super Bowl where he threw the pick six. And he was kind of the, he was either the best player in the league or one of the best players.
29:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:14 Bill Simmons? But I can't really remember somebody who was like, this guy, everyone agrees is the best player in the league and he's in his prime. Sucking this badly. It was almost like, it was like a Greg Norman golf major. Type of, type of performance. Like the amount of throws that he missed and how frazzled he seemed. And then they're doing the stats at halftime and this is the, one of the 10 worst EPAs of the last 50, all that shit. It's like, oh my God, this is the best guy in the league. This doesn't happen ever.
29:43 Speaker 01 Well, I'm trying to think what we're, I mean, you know, you can go like Clayton Kershaw and everything, but I'm not about, not sure about the one game. I mean.
29:51 Bill Simmons? I was thinking Kobe's 6 for 24, the first three quarters of that Celtic game when it, when he just seemed like he couldn't hit anything. And it was like, they won and he came back.
30:00 Speaker 01 You want to tell everybody they won? Yeah.
30:02 Bill Simmons? They did win.
30:03 Speaker 01 I'm trying, Cam Newton won MVP that year, Denver.
30:07 Bill Simmons? But we never thought Cam Newton was the best guy.
30:09 Speaker 01 He was MVP.
30:11 Bill Simmons? I know, but nobody was like, Cam Newton is the road ghost or Cam Newton. It was like, he had a great season.
30:15 Speaker 01 No, I get it. I get it. Yeah. I don't know what to say.
30:19 Bill Simmons? Montana against the Giants one year when they knocked him out, but he got knocked out.
30:24 Speaker 01 If you count just Super Bowls, I think you're, I think this is the best case. I mean, in the seventies, everyone threw for 125 yards and either won or lost. So Elway had some bad ones right before he won.
30:38 Bill Simmons? He did, but it always felt like his teams were so overmatched. This was one where I felt like the plays were there. I, I know their pass rush was good, but he was also missing everything he did. He was missing open guys. And it was one of those things that almost became like the Luca trade. Where you start texting people in the second quarter, like, is he hurt? What's going on with Mahomes? What's, is there something wrong? Is he sick? What does he have? I've never seen anything like this. So.
31:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm looking at all of them now. I really don't think like Carolina scored 10. Wouldn't you say Manning against Seattle? Is that what you're saying?
31:12 Bill Simmons? No, Manning against, Peyton Manning against New Orleans when he threw the pick six to lose the game. But it wasn't like he was like horrific the entire game.
31:19 Speaker 01 Right.
31:19 Bill Simmons? You know, Brady's had, Brady had some bad playoff losses. Like we had a bad loss to the Ravens. There was a weird Denver Broncos game after the third Super Bowl they won when he wasn't great, but it never anything like this where it was just an abomination.
31:34 Speaker 01 Maybe pick some off, but Super Bowls, like the big game, if it's down to one game, this is tough. I mean, Jim Kelly was great and had some bad ones, but this was a class by itself. I'm shocked at this. I really am. I'm like.
31:46 Bill Simmons? Me too.
31:47 Speaker 01 You know, I know we were due for a bad one, right? We had, we had three three-point games in a row. Is that right?
31:52 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
31:53 Speaker 01 And then the Tampa, Kansas City was the last bad one, um, four years ago, but it just makes me sadder because the season's ending and it ends on a, when it ends on a dud like that.
32:03 Bill Simmons? I know.
32:03 Speaker 01 It's harder to take.
32:05 Bill Simmons? Well, I'm sure there's going to be a bunch of pieces the next two days trying to put this performance in perspective historically.
32:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:13 Bill Simmons? At least from a football standpoint, they'll have stats. So, and the, and the, what he did in the last two drives will kind of fuck it up a little bit because it'll make it seem like it was better than it is. So you almost have to do like.
32:22 Speaker 01 Right.
32:23 Bill Simmons? The first three quarters, guys, what is the equivalent in other sports of somebody who's fallen behind 40 to 6?
32:30 Speaker 01 Tom Brady? You're gonna compare him to Tom Brady? He, you start calling, compare him to Marsha Brady. How about that? How about we start there?
32:39 Bill Simmons? Hands flying.
32:40 Speaker 01 I don't want to hear about Patrick Mahomes again. I don't want to hear about it again. That's it. We're done with the goat argument. That's it. I don't want to hear it. I'm done. Get it out. You have to go. Okay, Stephen A. We're done. We're done. I'm sorry.
32:56 Bill Simmons? I wasn't even doing Stephen A. I was doing generic network, network, uh, ex athlete guy.
33:01 Speaker 01 All right.
33:01 Bill Simmons? Could have picked 20 of them. No, I'm sure Stephen A. will, uh, would not be kind to Mahomes. I have some silver linings for the Chiefs now.
33:09 Speaker 01 Hey, real quick, what was it? When I left New Orleans, I left on, uh, Saturday.
33:13 Bill Simmons? We were sad to see you go.
33:15 Speaker 01 Felt like 70, 30 Eagles fans. What was it in the building?
33:18 Bill Simmons? Uh, half and half.
33:20 Speaker 01 Really?
33:20 Bill Simmons? A lot of Chiefs fans. Yeah, a lot.
33:22 Speaker 01 Oh, it didn't sound that way. Wow.
33:24 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it was, the Eagles fans were just louder.
33:28 Bill Simmons? Silver linings for the Chiefs. I think Kelsey comes back now. I don't think he retires on that game. One more year for him.
33:36 Speaker 01 Another dumb narrative that we got killed on. What did he have? Two for 24?
33:40 Bill Simmons? Yeah, so I think he might add a third catch in there. Another silver lining. We could talk about them normally again.
33:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:48 Bill Simmons? They're not Michael Myers anymore. You can't do it anymore. We can't do the, I know there's 17 reasons to pick this other team, but it's the Chiefs. Like, that's done. We can now talk about football games rationally, normally, without these fucking weird fear of this team. Pat Riley doesn't make any money. I think that's great. Terrible 2025 for Pat Riley.
34:10 Bill Simmons? Brady wasn't that popular as an announcer. I think that was a win for the Chiefs.
34:15 Speaker 01 Wait, what? Why?
34:17 Bill Simmons? I don't know. I'm just throwing that in there. These are silver linings.
34:20 Speaker 01 Okay.
34:22 Bill Simmons? They didn't trade Luka Doncic in the last 10 days.
34:26 Bill Simmons? They didn't trade Mahomes for Anthony Davis at a number one and then have Davis get hurt in his first game, right after they gave an interview about how smart they were because they want guys who are in shape, but then mentioned Shaq as one of the guys, the great guys historically, who stayed in shape. Shaq, like famously never in shape ever at any point in his career. That was hilarious. I have no more silver linings unless you can think of any.
34:48 Speaker 01 I don't think there are any for the Chiefs.
34:50 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
34:51 Speaker 01 Not too many, except that maybe they could stun us again, right? So it wasn't even this year. It was last year when they did it all on the road that we were like,
34:59 Bill Simmons? Right.
34:59 Speaker 01 Oh, crap. Oh, they're back and they're a beast and they're better than ever.
35:05 Speaker 01 I don't know if you want to look at next year's Lions yet or if we save that to the end or.
35:09 Bill Simmons? No, I want to. I want to do that next segment.
35:11 Speaker 01 I know.
35:12 Bill Simmons? So if I'm the Chiefs, if I'm the PR, if I'm the Louis K of the Chiefs.
35:16 Speaker 01 Ooh.
35:17 Bill Simmons? And, you know, in my spare time when I'm not just focused on. You know, my three clients that I care about and I spend barely any time with the other ones.
35:27 Speaker 01 Wait, if you're the Lewis, that means the Chiefs are gonna get canceled in like three weeks.
35:31 Bill Simmons? No, the Lewis K of the Chiefs. So Jimmy would be the Chiefs in this scenario because that'd be a client he would actually care about. Unlike some of the others. I'm spinning it. We were never that good the whole time. It was amazing. We got there. Like, look at our record. You saw us in the Super Bowl.
35:51 Speaker 01 Right.
35:51 Bill Simmons? When we played an awesome team, we couldn't hold up. We had no offensive line. We had no explosive playmakers.
35:59 Bill Simmons? Our coaching staff is old. Like, it's a fucking miracle. We made the Super Bowl. We should be getting kudos for that.
36:05 Speaker 01 Interesting.
36:05 Bill Simmons? That would be my spin.
36:06 Speaker 01 That's what, that's what a publicist is supposed to say? My client actually sucks?
36:10 Bill Simmons? Yeah. No, just be like, no, maybe you should spin it the other way. We were pretty good. We're proud of the season we had. Just making the Super Bowl is an achievement.
36:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:18 Bill Simmons? We've made five Super Bowls.
36:20 Speaker 01 Your Patriots won like the first three Super Bowls by a field goal, right?
36:24 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
36:25 Speaker 01 I think so. So that's what we were thinking.
36:27 Bill Simmons? Cause Tom Brady showed up for Super Bowls. Unlike Patrick Mahomes, who hasn't shown up for two. We are fucking back. Drake May, Mike Raible, Tom Brady's the GOAT. We're back. Fuck you, Chiefs.
36:38 Speaker 01 Don't you dare call Mahomes the GOAT.
36:41 Bill Simmons? He is not the GOAT.
36:43 Speaker 01 Take it back.
36:43 Bill Simmons? Get off Goat Island.
36:46 Bill Simmons? We are gonna take a break and then I want to talk about some of the gambling stuff.
36:53 Bill Simmons? This episode is brought to you by NBA 2K27. We just had one of the craziest off seasons we've had in the NBA, which is perfect for 2K because every 2K season can be one of the craziest off seasons. The whole league shifted in real life. It could shift to an NBA 2K27. The best place to compete with these new look rosters and also try to figure out who's on what roster. You can see how new teams and new dynamic duos match up. You can play Philly, feel what it's like to have all of their new guys with the old guys. And you can also take a struggling franchise to the NBA finals if you want, because it'll never happen in real life for a couple of the struggling franchises.
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37:51 Bill Simmons? This episode is brought to you by PayPal. The holiday rush is coming and you can get ahead of it with PayPal. Shop your favorite online stores with PayPal this season like eBay for collectibles, Fanatics for teen gear, Walmart for tech. Check out the flexibility to pay now or pay later and split your payments with Pay in 4 with no interest, no late fees. Shop now with PayPal. Paying for is subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com/payingfor. PayPal, Inc., NMLS 910457. All right, so some gambling stuff from this game. We mentioned the Hertz Anytime TD, first touchdown scorer. We had a, Coop had a pick six.
38:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
38:34 Bill Simmons? What were the odds on the pick six? Do we know? That had to be like 30 to 1, right?
38:39 Speaker 01 Well, it was 15 for, um, I saw 15 that there was a pick six and then it was like 30 or 35 for the Eagles. I think I saw that. So, um, yeah, that was amazing. Although we saw a few in the playoffs.
38:53 Bill Simmons? Was that the greatest moment ever for a white defensive back? Or do we have to go to the 60s? Do we have to go to like Paul Kraus? Paul Craps of the Minnesota Vikings? Did he do anything?
39:04 Speaker 01 Cowboys had a guy named Charlie Waters who did well.
39:07 Bill Simmons? Oh, Charlie Waters.
39:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think that's it though. I think that really is.
39:11 Bill Simmons? Don't worry about comparing Mahomes to their bad performances ever. We would need the white defensive back rankings.
39:18 Speaker 01 In Black History Month, that's very sad.
39:20 Bill Simmons? Did Jason Seahoard ever do this?
39:21 Speaker 01 No, he was, that was, he was in that, on that good team, right? That got blown out by the Ravens. Yeah.
39:29 Bill Simmons? Yeah, so at one point in this game,
39:33 Bill Simmons? Mahomes was, this was a 4:49 left in the second quarter. And it's 17-0. And the Chiefs go two terrible runs, Mahomes sack. And now they're giving the ball back to the Eagles again. Mahomes was 5 for 10 for 24 yards, a pick six and three sacks. And this is 25 minutes into the game. It was just shocking.
39:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
39:56 Bill Simmons? So at that point.
39:57 Speaker 01 We were looking, we, how many over the years, how many times when the Chiefs are losing, do we text each other, the Chiefs live line, right?
40:04 Bill Simmons? Stays are dead.
40:05 Speaker 01 We needed them to get a first down in the end of the second quarter. Like, we all gotta see some life out of them before we even consider it. Thank God they didn't give us that opportunity.
40:13 Bill Simmons? Well, so. Five for 10 for 24 yards. And then we get to halftime and it's not much better. He misses Hopkins on that third and 11. Sal, he ended 21 for 32 for 257 with three touchdowns.
40:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
40:29 Bill Simmons? He hit every over and I'm sitting there. So this is my bad beat gambling story. So a million dollar picks. My biggest bet was Chiefs minus one and a half. That was for 500 fake K. And then the second bet was a parlay.
40:42 Speaker 01 Yeah.
40:42 Bill Simmons? Well, it's fake.
40:43 Speaker 01 I didn't even know. Okay.
40:44 Bill Simmons? Second bet was this 250 K parlay. Eagles take it to half. Mahomes 200 plus passing yards. And I'm rooting and there's a third leg that I'll get to. So the 200 plus passing yards seemed inconceivable. And then they start having these garbage time drives. And when they scored the second touchdown and he, he had like 187, 193, they're inside the 15 yard line. I'm going nuts in the suite. I'm like, oh, he's gonna get it. He's gonna get it. He gets it. The Eagles go three and out. And the Chiefs, and now I'm hustling back to the pod. The Chiefs get the all time garbage time touchdown to Worthy. And it gets to 62. The third leg of my parlay was under 60 and a half.
41:28 Bill Simmons? And the final score was 40 and 22. They scored two touchdowns in the last four minutes to fucking beat. So I lost that one too. I think I had a losing year for million dollar picks because of that last touchdown. So the Chiefs just sticking it to me every way.
41:42 Speaker 01 I love that these, uh, you're with these Fanduel executives. They're, they're watching through their fingers because the, the Hertz touchdown, they're losing tens of millions of dollars. Like I'm losing 500,000 fake dollars. Get me out of here.
41:58 Bill Simmons? Well, you know, House took a shot. Cause uh, Christian, one of the Fanduel execs who loves House. And we're talking about the bets on the Ringer Sunday pregame. And he's like, well, House, he did his usual House move of he took the Eagles in a tease with the over. Like classic House, like kinda getting in, but not totally being in like halfway. I was like, yep, that's House.
42:20 Speaker 01 I have a great story, great House story. I guess we'll talk about Vegas later, right? We're gonna do all that in a minute.
42:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
42:26 Speaker 01 New Orleans. It seemed like Vegas because we were in a casino. Yeah. And that, I have a House, should I tell this a House story now that like just that?
42:34 Bill Simmons? Oh, do it now. Let's hear it.
42:35 Speaker 01 Typifies it. House.
42:38 Speaker 01 We're in the casino. He goes to the ATM because we had a bad run at blackjack and I'm proud of you for making us get out. Like I've known you to sit at the same blackjack table, win or lose, till like 5:00 in the morning.
42:49 Bill Simmons? The vibe wasn't there. This is Friday night.
42:51 Speaker 01 Oh my god.
42:52 Bill Simmons? The three of us, I think, I think I was like 3 out of 15 and bla- house lost like almost every hand. I don't know how he did it.
42:59 Speaker 01 He was, I was like, you're letting us leave. This is great. Like a lot of times I would go to the ATM. I'm like, how many times I have to go to the ATM? Is, am I, is Bill, am I gonna lose his friendship if I don't sit and lose more money with Sir? But anyway, so we lose, leave the blackjack table. House goes to the ATM. He's got like a new card or something. It doesn't let him take money out, so he has to cash advance. So he's not getting the $12 vig that you would normally get on 300.
43:23 Bill Simmons? It'd be $30 to take out cash.
43:25 Speaker 01 It was $344 he had to take out and he had to wait on the long cashier line to get that money out now. He had to show his slip. And then, he doesn't even gamble with us. He didn't gamble.
43:37 Bill Simmons? Never, we're, so we ended up at a craps table with the fantasy football guys.
43:42 Speaker 01 He got vigged out. He said no. After he lost to the ATM, he said no. Like that's responsible gambling. He's like, I can't even beat the ATM. I'm out. I'm not playing.
43:52 Bill Simmons? But for some reason, paid them 40 extra dollars.
43:55 Speaker 01 Right.
43:55 Bill Simmons? Not to gamble. Yeah. So we ended up at a craps table with Craig and Danny, Danny from the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Who were having a great time playing craps. And JJ is there. JJ Jodiszkowski, host of New York, New York, who's had a couple and is dialed up to 10. And it was, he was locked in. He's yelling at dealers.
44:19 Speaker 01 Oh.
44:19 Bill Simmons? He's, he's hitting points going, pay it, pay it!
44:23 Speaker 01 Screaming, screaming.
44:26 Bill Simmons? And then Raheem comes in, also from the Ringer Sunday pregame.
44:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:30 Bill Simmons? And he's not really doing anything. And then all of a sudden, he just bets on the don't come line for the shooter across the table. Cause he thinks the guy looks like a bad bet. And we're all on the come line, which is like on the poker table for other craps table people listening like y'all want the craps table to be aligned betting on the shooter rooting for them. Like there's this weird dynamic that develops Rahim's just shorting it basically guy hits and JJ just gets mad at Rahim, which he should have say, don't take sides against the family Rahim.
45:01 Speaker 01 This is indefensible, indefensible Rahim.
45:04 Bill Simmons? He's yelling at it and I was like, it is, it's indefensible. So Rahim ends up not doing it. So anyway, Rahim became the don't come guy. Uh, but we were there, house is there, van is behind us. We're all pooling bets together because it's a $50 craps table, which is absurd. And we ended up, we were there till almost four in the morning.
45:21 Speaker 01 We were there, we were down to, um, we started like 600, right? We were down to 40 bucks in the tin, right?
45:28 Bill Simmons? Yeah, we just couldn't get momentum.
45:30 Speaker 01 Built it back up to 1400. So that was nice for us and that's real, that's not like million dollar. That's real money. Yeah.
45:36 Bill Simmons? Craig had a nice little run.
45:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:38 Bill Simmons? And then at the end of the night I had like, I just got on a heater and I just wasn't throwing a seven for like 30 minutes.
45:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, right.
45:46 Bill Simmons? But what happens is when you, when you start doing one like that and more and more people come over to the table and people start betting and everyone's betting points and it's like three minutes between throws.
45:55 Speaker 01 I know that's what's up.
45:57 Bill Simmons? I'm hot. Get me the dice back. And this guy's like, give me a hard 10, give me a hard six, give you two on this. And it's, and by the time he, so I, I, I blame the guy at the other side of the table.
46:07 Speaker 01 You know what? I don't, I think it's, I think it's intentional. I think they slow play it because we were pretty conservative. We were playing the pass line and then we were putting odds behind it. And we're playing the cup, but if you get bored and they take forever, that's when you're like, shit, if I have to wait three minutes between each roll, I'm going to play the field. I'm going to play a couple more numbers. I think that's where they rake out. You were getting mad because there was a guy on the other end of the table who was pumping his fist because you were hitting every number except ours, right?
46:34 Bill Simmons? Right.
46:35 Speaker 01 This guy probably made 15 grand off of me, you know, it was like, it's getting crazy.
46:39 Bill Simmons? See motherfucker, you're icing me and making money for me at the same time. Then we finally hit the number and then the best part was there's some bet that the fantasy guys were doing, which is like, you can bet eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, and somebody has to hit all five of those numbers before they throw a seven and it's 30 to one odds. It seems inconceivable. And I was throwing it for so long, only the 11 was left. And then I finally hit the 11 and I've never seen those guys happier. They were like euphoric.
47:06 Speaker 01 First of all, they were arm in arm. You should post that picture.
47:10 Bill Simmons? I should post that picture on Instagram.
47:12 Speaker 01 For like 40 minutes. Whenever they weren't rolling, they were like, come on, we could do this. They were locked arms together.
47:17 Bill Simmons? They were like, when the defensive line is watching somebody about to attempt a game winning field goal. They had their arms around each other, but, but literally for an hour.
47:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, I love it. It was a Danny Kelly, right? That when they, what the, they had a bet. I don't know what the bet was, but between the three of them, whoever lost, I think it was like a season long bet. Whoever lost had to sit in the middle seat coming home and they were on my flight and couldn't be entertained. Couldn't listen to music, couldn't watch TV, couldn't read a book the whole time. And if they fell asleep, they would just wake them up. And Danny was in the middle. They let him watch the map. They let him watch the map on the Delta flight. I was like, these guys are good. This is it.
47:55 Bill Simmons? That's hilarious. Yeah, it was great. It was a good hang. Every, everybody was in rare form, including Raheem, who was trying to short the table for some reason. I'm gonna talk to HR about Raheem. I might have been an HR violation.
48:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, it might have been a little bit.
48:09 Bill Simmons? JJ, JJ was the MVP though, and he blew out my right eardrum and I was covered in spit by the end of the night, but I loved it. It was great.
48:17 Speaker 01 When he showed up, you turned around to greet him and you were about to roll. And so you took the dice over the table a little bit.
48:24 Bill Simmons? Cause I got excited. I didn't know he was there.
48:26 Speaker 01 Violation. I'm like, oh, and then I'm calling it like an announcer. He's got one more dice violation. Then he's out of here. He's gonna have to go back to Bourbon Street.
48:33 Bill Simmons? Foul.
48:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. But then when you roll it and would kick off the table, JJ would yell, same dice, same dice. He'd yell at the, he'd yell at the dealer and the dealer was like, it's not, you're not even rolling. Shut up.
48:45 Bill Simmons? I know.
48:46 Speaker 01 He had the superstition about same dice.
48:48 Bill Simmons? I gotta say, he would, he really did get the energy going. Screaming pay it at the dealer. You're not gonna believe it, but the dealers, they don't, they don't love being screamed pay it.
48:58 Speaker 01 Right.
48:58 Bill Simmons? It's kind of a job.
48:59 Speaker 01 Pay it, pay it. And a dollar for you, bro. Do what you want with this. This is a dollar.
49:06 Bill Simmons? So that casino used to be called Harrah's and I guess technically still is, but now it's a Caesar's. But uh, I've had, I think of the most fun gambling moments of my life. I, for some reason, at least five or six of them have been, it's just the, my favorite place to probably play blackjack or craps. The dealers are all nice. They're all, they're all from here. They seem like they are and they're just like, they move at a pace. So you feel like they're not just trying to rush you out. You know, it seems like they're rooting for you. Like when you bet for them, they really appreciate it and uh, I, I really always really enjoyed it. It's right in the middle of downtown. So you can leave and like just walk to where you're going.
49:42 Speaker 01 I thought it would be packed, by the way. I was there the night before. We could have sat our, any blackjack table on um, Thursday night and then Friday night. Yeah, but $50 is a, you know, in Vegas, that, that's any Saturday night, right?
49:58 Bill Simmons? I guess. Yeah. But it seemed like everything was 50, 100. So I think it was uh, it was scaring off people a little bit. Any other uh, any other gambling stuff? Jake Elliott was way over on, on all his total points.
50:11 Speaker 01 I thought he had a shot at MVP for a minute. I mean, he had um, four extra points and four field goals. Wasn't it? He actually had to kick seven field goals, but with all the false starts and everything. Um, uh.
50:21 Bill Simmons? Hertz MVP was what? Two, plus 280?
50:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, plus 280, but Hertz most rushing yards was like six to one, I think, right?
50:30 Bill Simmons? Oh, did that hit?
50:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, he had 72. Barkley had 57 and then Mahomes had 25. Like that was the highest on the Chiefs.
50:39 Bill Simmons? So that triple crown bet that I stayed away from because it seemed like a, just a trap. It seemed like impossible to hit all three. It ended up being Mahomes passing, Xavier Worthy uh, receiving.
50:53 Speaker 01 And Hertz rushing.
50:54 Bill Simmons? And Hertz rushing. So I wonder what that must have been like 20 to one.
50:58 Speaker 01 I have no idea.
50:59 Bill Simmons? What are the odds of that?
51:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah. At least. Yeah.
51:02 Bill Simmons? Worthy had probably like the sixth or seventh best odds. Triple crown bet.
51:06 Speaker 01 That was bizarre.
51:07 Bill Simmons? I can't recommend it.
51:08 Speaker 01 We both had Hertz touchdown, right? I mean, I guess that's good that we did that.
51:12 Bill Simmons? Um, I don't want to talk out of school, but um, yeah, I, I wouldn't call the FanDuel guys elated that the game went over.
51:20 Speaker 01 No.
51:20 Bill Simmons? Wouldn't say there was high fiving in the suite.
51:24 Bill Simmons? And the Mahomes yardage props going up, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that was a high five special either.
51:29 Speaker 01 No way.
51:30 Bill Simmons? The Kelsey and Barkley stuff, they told me, and I said this on Million Dollar Picks, that the, the most one-sided bet of the week from a prop standpoint was Barkley to score a touchdown.
51:41 Speaker 01 Oh, really?
51:41 Bill Simmons? It was like 99.9% of the bets were on it and the no TD was plus 150 and they were like, it was like $0 on it or like $7 or something.
51:51 Speaker 01 You know, the.
51:52 Bill Simmons? Barkley ended up not getting it.
51:53 Speaker 01 It's his birthday on Sunday thing picked up steam like somewhere around Friday. I was like, I don't think that matters. I really don't. I think if he scores three touchdowns, I don't think we have to say, uh, it's because he turned 28 today. There's nothing to do with it.
52:07 Bill Simmons? I think that's fair, especially it's not like it's like a major birthday. It's like, oh, cool. I'm 28. Um, how do we feel about any other betting stuff that you wanted to hit? What was going on at the Super Bowl party you went to?
52:17 Speaker 01 Yellow was plus 280.
52:20 Bill Simmons? Tails for the coin toss?
52:23 Speaker 01 Tails for the coin toss. Uh, let, let's get rid of the anthem betting because it, it went over, but they're grading it under, I think. Because, um, because he said, um, he repeated a, a line three times. Like just for flair, just to show off.
52:40 Bill Simmons? He said the land of the free because he bet the over, I think.
52:43 Speaker 01 And the land, uh, the land, uh, whatever it was he did.
52:46 Bill Simmons? Why didn't that count? That was his performance.
52:48 Speaker 01 I don't know. You can't do that. Well, you can't like sing the song and then add where you can't launch into American Pie like halfway through the song.
52:54 Bill Simmons? It's how long the performance is. It was two hours, two minutes and whatever.
52:58 Speaker 01 Uh, you can't pay. And then of course it was close and they cut to the fighter jets and you never know when the word brave ends because it's loud, but.
53:05 Bill Simmons? I don't want to hear ever again that John Batiste is the national anthem goat. Get that shit out of here.
53:11 Speaker 01 Was Mahomes listening to the anthem? I don't know. I don't think so.
53:15 Bill Simmons? Was he thrown up by the anthem? Cause there's no other excuse.
53:20 Speaker 01 John Batiste held the ball, would hold a note longer than Mahomes could hold the ball.
53:26 Bill Simmons? I've, Patrick Mahomes, get out of here. Just get out. You gotta leave the nightclub. You're out.
53:32 Speaker 01 Oh shit.
53:34 Bill Simmons? Um, well, Mahomes hit all the overs. He hit his touchdown over. Did he hit? How many rushes did he have? Cause that was another one.
53:42 Speaker 01 He needed what, five and a half, right?
53:44 Bill Simmons? Shit. So he didn't hit any of the rushing stuff.
53:47 Speaker 01 I know. We were counting on the kneel downs. I mean, that's, that's an underrated aspect of the game that we didn't talk about. Like we could, we could kill Mahomes, but they had 24 yards rushing outside of what he did. You could get him a running back at some point.
54:01 Bill Simmons? Hunt, three for nine, Pacheco, three for seven. That was like, one of the reasons I loved all the Mahomes overs. When I was playing the game out of my head was I didn't think the Chiefs are going to be able to run the ball. And it turned out they didn't think so either because they, they started the game and they basically threw the ball every down. It seemed like, and they were trying to keep the Eagles off pace.
54:19 Speaker 01 Seven carries outside of, uh, Mahomes.
54:21 Bill Simmons? Didn't work. Did you have Matt Ariza punting for over 310 yards?
54:27 Speaker 01 No, no, I did not.
54:29 Bill Simmons? Was that even a bet? Did you bet on the total number of punting yards?
54:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think they did. I think they did. So.
54:35 Bill Simmons? It's a pretty good one.
54:37 Speaker 01 Wait, how many did he have? He had six punts? Yeah, three 11.
54:39 Bill Simmons? Six punts for a three 11.
54:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, weird game, man.
54:43 Bill Simmons? Elliott's 50 yard field goal. Oh, you had, uh, people in the suite were congratulating me on your behalf that you, the Devante Smith, that long.
54:53 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
54:53 Bill Simmons? Long pass. That was one of your favorite props.
54:55 Speaker 01 20 and a half. Yeah. I mean, he had killed, um, he had killed this defense, Spagnola's defense. I mean, that's another thing. Spagnola's got to take a hit too. But yeah, his last three games were averaged like 95 yards against Casey.
55:08 Bill Simmons? It's tough though, when, when your offense is such dog shit. I think it has to start affecting the defense at some point because the defense did get a couple of stops. And you know, they got the interception when it seemed like the Eagles might be going up 14, nothing. They got the ball back and then it's just over and over again. They were just getting kicked in the nuts by the offense.
55:27 Speaker 01 Yep.
55:27 Bill Simmons? It's unusual. Let's, uh, we'll take one more break and then we'll talk about your week in New Orleans. Plus, uh, plus some look ahead bets for next season.
55:44 Bill Simmons? This episode is brought to you by Core Power Protein Shakes. You know how we always talk about the little things that separate great athletes? Post-workout recovery is a big factor. Core Power Protein Shakes help you keep going after your workout with high-quality protein to build muscle and electrolytes to help hydrate. It's all you need for your recovery in one bottle. Available in 26 and 42 gram protein options to pick what works best for you. Visit corepower.com to learn more. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. I like those guys. Star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Minnehoshan and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
56:26 Bill Simmons? Set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys. Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9. Only in theaters Friday. Get tickets now. Well, it's the saddest time of the season. There's no football. There's no Guest Alliance for next week. You are Guest Alliance champion. Two legends fell this season, me and Guest Alliance.
57:05 Speaker 01 That's right.
57:06 Bill Simmons? It was always like, well, Simmons, when it gets to the big moments, he'll win and Sal's gonna lose again. You beat me. And then Mahomes, he got kicked off Goat Island. And the Chiefs are now mortal. And now we can actually talk about them rationally again.
57:21 Speaker 01 And we could talk about the refereeing. I was like, it was really getting me mad. You saw like me and Hench going at it. I'm like, these people.
57:27 Bill Simmons? You got mad at Hench.
57:28 Speaker 01 I know, but everybody's got to go crazy with the calls. And it was like, you know, he got Brown.
57:34 Bill Simmons? The A.J. Brown pass interference to start the game.
57:36 Speaker 01 He like, he hit the guy in the face mask three times. Everyone's like, that, you know, when the booth says, oh, man, I don't know if I call that there. That doesn't mean it was a terrible call. Like, why do we have to make that leap from, eh, that could have gone either way to, oh, my God, that was the worst call.
57:51 Bill Simmons? Oh, it's fixed.
57:53 Speaker 01 Calm the hell down, everybody. Jeez, but at least we don't have to worry about that for a minute, I hope. I don't know. It's nice to not have to talk about the referees.
58:03 Bill Simmons? So we have NFL next year. I'm going on.
58:09 Bill Simmons? Going on Fanduel right now. Do you have the odds?
58:11 Speaker 01 I do.
58:12 Bill Simmons? Okay. I'm gonna see if I can.
58:14 Speaker 01 Eagles and Chiefs favored. Wow.
58:17 Bill Simmons? That never happens.
58:20 Bill Simmons? What? Anything surprise you on those odds?
58:22 Speaker 01 I'm seeing 650 plus 650 for Chiefs and Eagles, Ravens 7-1, Bills 8-1, Lions 9.
58:29 Bill Simmons? Ooh, I that Lions 9-1 and Niners 14-1. I'd like to, I'll, I'll book those bets from people.
58:38 Speaker 01 Really?
58:38 Bill Simmons? They want, yeah, I think those are, so we should talk about this with the Chiefs too. I don't think the Chiefs have missed their long-term window, but I wonder like how much rehab, repair they have to do with this nucleus they have. Cause they have a lot of stuff to fix, but they're also, they have money going out in all these different directions.
58:55 Speaker 01 Right.
58:56 Bill Simmons? You know, it's not like, oh, we need a left tackle. Cool. Fucking 12 teams need a left tackle. You're not the only one. You drafted a left tackle last year at the end of the second round. If you missed on that pick, that's what gets into what we talked about earlier with if you start missing these drafts or missing picks.
59:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
59:11 Bill Simmons? Starts to have this cumulative effect. So that the stuff that they need, it's not, it's not like you just go to the store and buy it. Like everyone wants a left tackle.
59:19 Speaker 01 But we talk about the, what do we call it? The KCD? Like it's a CD, like plus 650. You keep pounding it. They'll win once in the next six and a half years, right? So that should, that should be okay. But I also think these other numbers are fair too. Like the Ravens have to be licking their chops a little too. The Bills at 8-1. Your team, I, I got scared. I thought my team and your team were the same. Cowboys 55. Want to guess the Patriots? Don't look.
59:45 Bill Simmons? I just looked, but tell us anyway.
59:47 Speaker 01 150. Fourth from the bottom. Is that fair?
59:51 Bill Simmons? Ridiculous. I promise you, we won't be the fourth worst team.
59:54 Speaker 01 I love this. I love it.
59:56 Bill Simmons? We're gonna go 10 and 7 next year.
59:58 Speaker 01 Wow.
59:59 Bill Simmons? Yeah, we're going 10 and 7 next year. I, I don't know that for a fact.
1:00:02 Speaker 01 If we hit, if we hit the draft. Brady is better than Mahomes conclusively. It doesn't mean the 2026 Patriots are gonna be good.
1:00:10 Bill Simmons? It's not just that Brady is better than Mahomes. Mahomes has to leave Golden Island. Get off. Take a hike. Get your suitcase and leave. Take your wife with you. Take your dad. Take everybody. You're out.
1:00:22 Speaker 01 You could take a ferry. You could swim back. You could jump on a raft. I don't care. Get off the island.
1:00:28 Bill Simmons? You're off Golden Island.
1:00:31 Bill Simmons? You can take down a Kelsey, take her too.
1:00:37 Bill Simmons? But just looking at these blindly Chargers 29 to one jumped out of me.
1:00:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:00:42 Bill Simmons? Commanders 23 to one have to be taken seriously because they laid a nice foundation, have a good QB and a good coaching staff and have some stuff that they could do. In the off season and then.
1:00:52 Speaker 01 What about the Rams at 30? And I wouldn't love them.
1:00:55 Bill Simmons? Well, it seems like they're they're selling off guys though, like they're trading Cooper Cup.
1:00:59 Speaker 01 He ought to do. He was he wasn't. Key to their success. I don't they they almost they kind of played the Eagles better than anybody though.
1:01:08 Bill Simmons? Is Minnesota at 33 to one nuts?
1:01:11 Speaker 01 Hmm.
1:01:12 Bill Simmons? Like, what if J J McCarthy is good next year? With the they.
1:01:16 Speaker 01 Right. I was gonna say, what if I told you Sam Darnold sat in an aisle seat and coached with me on the way back? Does that affect your odds anymore?
1:01:25 Bill Simmons? Did that happen?
1:01:26 Speaker 01 It did.
1:01:27 Bill Simmons? Really?
1:01:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:01:28 Bill Simmons? It's gonna be he's gonna sign like a 50. Well, maybe he couldn't find a flight.
1:01:33 Speaker 01 It was a bad. It was tough flight to to to book if you weren't.
1:01:36 Bill Simmons? Trying to leave New Orleans on a Saturday.
1:01:38 Speaker 01 Saturday. Yeah.
1:01:39 Bill Simmons? Baltimore 7 to 1. Uh, I wish those odds were better because that's a team I would think too, like a in the they were in the 10 to 1 to 12 to 1 range. I'd be excited about it. Green Bay 82 to 1 will be a sexy pick. Uh, I'm not doing it. Houston 27 to 1 with some receivers coming back and a couple more draft picks, maybe. Bad division.
1:02:02 Bill Simmons? I don't know.
1:02:03 Speaker 01 I like the Rams and I like. The Bills again. The Bills also, we didn't talk about them. How pissed must they be that they? Couldn't beat this Chiefs team? Get to the Super Bowl.
1:02:14 Bill Simmons? Or that they couldn't do anything against the offensive line like what the Eagles did. He watched the offensive line this week and you could tell pretty quickly. Because they were doing those designed rollout plays that gave me PTSD to Brady against the Giants that first Super Bowl.
1:02:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:02:30 Bill Simmons? When he was under such siege, he had to like do the. Quick rollouts with extra blockers, plant your feet and then chuck it. And they were running those in the first quarter and I, I thought, I was saying to Tommy, that who I went to the game with, I was like, uh, this is not good if they're running that kind of shit. That means they think they can't block these guys at all.
1:02:49 Speaker 01 Tommy Hearns?
1:02:50 Bill Simmons? Watch Tommy Hearns, Tommy Hearns was the thing. But you could see it. I don't know what I was picking up during the game that, whether the TV was, but you could, you could just watch like the four guys pushing the line and all the other guys kind of coming back and the Chiefs receivers weren't really good enough to get open, you know?
1:03:11 Speaker 01 The greatest advantage in sports, being able to rush a quarterback without blitzing and, and.
1:03:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah. So Mahomes was bad because he missed guys, but I could also, there were other plays where he just didn't have guys. There was nobody to throw to.
1:03:24 Speaker 01 He didn't want to throw interceptions. Real quick, MVP, the look, who do you think's favorite?
1:03:30 Bill Simmons? I would just look. Well, we would have said, we would have said Lamar or Josh.
1:03:35 Speaker 01 Yeah. Lamar plus 450, Allen 500.
1:03:39 Bill Simmons? It's Drake May.
1:03:40 Speaker 01 Mahomes 700.
1:03:41 Bill Simmons? Drake, oh, Drake May, 60 to one.
1:03:43 Speaker 01 He's not on there, is he?
1:03:44 Bill Simmons? Yeah, he sure is. He's right in there with Sam Darnold or Michael Pennix.
1:03:48 Speaker 01 Sam Darnold.
1:03:49 Bill Simmons? Just a whiff of Geno Smith. By the way, Bryce Young is on there too. I went to a, a party yesterday that Shaq was at and Bryce Young and they were talking to each other and it was amazing. It was like Mr. Work and Tattoo. I was like fascinated. He was a foot and a half smaller than, than Shaq.
1:04:08 Speaker 01 Does he, is he smaller? Cause he's smaller. I mean, everyone's smaller than Shaq, but he looks especially small.
1:04:14 Bill Simmons? Bryce Young's 5'8" and Shaq's like 7'1". It was just amazing to see them next to each other and be like, which guy's the professional athlete right now? Shaq is always at any party is, uh, just riveting.
1:04:26 Speaker 01 He's the best.
1:04:26 Bill Simmons? Shaq, he's, he's the best guy. He's like the nicest guy. He's the coolest guy to everybody. He's like, just really a genuinely nice guy, but he's also gigantic. He looks like Shaq. You just see him moving through. You can't not see him. Everybody's looking at him. He handles it great. Like he's just a nice guy.
1:04:42 Speaker 01 He's gotta be the greatest on. Urban street. You can sit on his shoulders. You don't have to deal with the slop and everything. He's a practical joker. He'll slap guys in the ass with beads and look the other way. Like he's the, he's the best athlete to part with.
1:04:54 Bill Simmons? Barkley's also, Barkley's the best celebrity I've ever seen in public, just with how he navigates all the people around him. Cause he's big, you know, he's obviously six, six. So you notice him right away, but he just loves everybody. People just gravitate to him. Shaq's a little like that too.
1:05:10 Bill Simmons? So we have any other future ads? I guess they don't have like who's getting traded wherever. Give me, um, give me some of the New Orleans highlights. You were here doing a bunch of great ringer stuff, including getting hit in the face with a Slim Jim.
1:05:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, that, um, yeah, Paige hit me. I was doing a prop challenge with a bunch of celebrities and sports personalities. And we put a video together and you can catch it. It's all up on the ringer. And one of them we had, we had Paige come over and she's an influencer. I don't know if people don't, people know who she is, right? Um, and we had a bunch of challenges. We listened. Oh, you could hit this golf ball. I know she's into golf. You could catch this roll of toilet paper. Uh, we could do a Slim Jim slap fight and she's like, I want to do that. And so we each hit each other with a Slim Jim and I hit her lightly. Uh, as a gentleman, and then she gets, stands up and smacks the crap out of me in the neck with a Slim Jim and a welt on my neck for the next. I'm like interviewing Marshall Falk with this giant welt on my neck and I'm like.
1:06:08 Bill Simmons? When did the welt go away?
1:06:10 Speaker 01 Like on the play, when you saw me, like it was still, it was dark. So you probably couldn't tell, but, uh, it was staring at me at the craps table. But yeah, so I was like, wow, she has, this has to, it's got over a million. I'm like, how does I make this the biggest thing I've ever done? And my wife not find out about it. It's, um, so anyway, um, that was a lot of fun. There was a lot of great stuff on, uh.
1:06:30 Bill Simmons? JJ said, don't put makeup on that welt, bro. Roll the dice, same dice, same welt.
1:06:36 Speaker 01 Don't go against the family. Don't have, don't ever watch same welt.
1:06:40 Bill Simmons? Can we, can we do a Fando show where just people play craps with JJ after he's had three drinks? I feel like that'd be an amazing show.
1:06:47 Speaker 01 How does he gain steam at four in the morning? Like it's so crazy. Oh man.
1:06:52 Bill Simmons? He's like when you turn. Turn the TV up, the volume up, and it's just going, and that's just the volume. And never, there was no sign at all of him being tired. He, I think he would, he'd still be there if we didn't want to leave.
1:07:04 Speaker 01 The Fanduel ring a party was great Friday night. We had Megan Thee Stallion and Blink 182. I guess they insist on touring together. I don't know. I didn't know, but.
1:07:11 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it was, I couldn't believe they played all those songs together, too.
1:07:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:14 Bill Simmons? We had, we talked to some fun people. We had, I'd never talked to Diana Rossini before and we.
1:07:19 Speaker 01 She's a delight.
1:07:20 Bill Simmons? We talked to her for like a half hour and she's like, seven of your cousins.
1:07:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, she is.
1:07:26 Bill Simmons? So she's an honorary member of your family almost.
1:07:28 Speaker 01 The good ones. Yeah, yeah. I thought, she was great. I thought that Tyreek Hill announcing he's playing for the Cowboys was gonna be the highlight. But she was up there, too. That was a fun one.
1:07:36 Bill Simmons? Yeah, we talked to some fun people. I, you know, I've been to a bunch of different Super Bowls. I hadn't come in a while. There was the one in LA that doesn't count. That was the last, the last Super Bowl that was in LA that I went to was ironically Ravens Niners. I just kind of.
1:07:49 Speaker 01 Is it really?
1:07:50 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I hadn't gone, hadn't gone forever and liked watching the game. I liked doing the pod with you after the game. And I just kind of never, never went. Never wanted to go for the Pats after the second Giants game. Cause it was, it was just so emotionally, it's so bad to be there when your team, like I was feeling for the Chiefs fans. When you're limping out of, out of the stadium, it's the worst. It's, and the other, you, half of the people are the happiest and you're just like in fucking sports hell. It's the worst.
1:08:19 Speaker 01 So last time it was in New Orleans. I, you remember, I had to do a bit.
1:08:23 Bill Simmons? You had to do the bit, yeah.
1:08:24 Speaker 01 For Grant, yeah, it was a Sal hugs fans of the losing team. And I wasn't quite sure who the losing team was, cause we had to leave and set up in a good spot before the last drive. It was Ravens.
1:08:36 Speaker 01 Who was it? Ravens 49ers.
1:08:37 Bill Simmons? Ravens Niners. That was the blackout game. That was Kaepernick.
1:08:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, we.
1:08:41 Bill Simmons? First down and goal from the four and they don't score the go ahead touchdown.
1:08:45 Speaker 01 And people are just zombies walking out of there. Like a lot of people, like get the fuck away from me. I'm not hugging you. I don't know who you are. Get the, yeah, so it's a, it's a, it's a big risk going down there, uh, if your team's playing. I mean, Chiefs fans must be demoralized tonight.
1:08:59 Bill Simmons? Well, the other, so I saw Pats Rams was the first Super Bowl I ever went to, which was like, honestly, one of like the 25 best moments of my life, probably. That whole day was amazing. Um, and then the second game was the blackout game. And so when I had a chance to go to this one, I was like, this is gonna be an amazing game. It's the Superdome. This is just gonna be magical and uh and everything was great except for the game. But New Orleans is the funny thing about New Orleans is it just never changes. Like you go to you go to and I mean that in a good way. It just feels exactly like it did 23 years ago. All the streets are the same, all the lot of the hotels are the same. They don't really, it's not one of those places where there's like 17 crazy new things that are up.
1:09:43 Bill Simmons? They just really keep the soul of the place intact. It's really a special place.
1:09:47 Speaker 01 I love it and it was especially like, I don't want to bum everyone out, but you know, there was a, you know, it was a National Guard presence in the streets. Cause of that asshole last month.
1:09:57 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:09:57 Speaker 01 Um, that, you know, that, that attack.
1:09:59 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:10:00 Speaker 01 Um, so that like, that was a bummer, but the spirit of the city, I mean, it's one of, would you keep it if they said build three or four cities rotating? Or do you just do New Orleans?
1:10:10 Bill Simmons? You said this for 20 years. No, to me it's Miami, New Orleans, Vegas.
1:10:18 Speaker 01 That's it?
1:10:19 Bill Simmons? And I think you could make a case for LA because of uh, because of, but it's like, you know, it's a little spread out. I think if you're just looking for like-
1:10:25 Speaker 01 I was watching the Rose Bowl highlight. I mean, that's my favorite game of all time anyway. 52 17 Cowboys over Bills, but it just looked beautiful, right? With the sun setting and everything like, it's a nice to have an outdoor uh, option too. Yeah, I think-
1:10:37 Bill Simmons? I would say New Orleans, Miami and Vegas for the way the, the city kind of blends in with the game. When it gets like they, they love to have it in like Glendale, but Glendale, people are staying in Phoenix. They're staying in Scottsdale. It's all over the map. It seems like they're getting out of the habit of putting it in cities just because they built the stadium.
1:10:55 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
1:10:56 Bill Simmons? Like when they were in that with Jacksonville and all this other stuff.
1:10:58 Speaker 01 We don't need Atlanta. We got New Or- yeah, I would, I would go New Orleans 10 times over Atlanta.
1:11:03 Bill Simmons? Well, the other thing with New Orleans is um, it's really hard to get hotel rooms here. So the ticket demand, it's almost easier to get tickets than it is a hotel room anywhere near where the game is. So a lot of people-
1:11:15 Speaker 01 Tickets were down lower than face value, right?
1:11:18 Bill Simmons? Yeah, tickets dropped um, and you could get it on the market. Today for face value were lower, but what we couldn't get was a hotel room because there was none. And it's really hard to get in and out, obviously, but.
1:11:30 Speaker 01 But that's why they dropped, right? Because if you get the, if you're not going to get in a hotel, then the tickets drop. It's a fascinating market. Yeah.
1:11:37 Bill Simmons? Did we, Super Bowl in Dallas? Did we do that? Yeah, we did. I went to that one. That was kind of, I thought that was a pretty good one. The weather was terrible, but it was, you know, that was okay. But yeah, wouldn't you say Vegas, New Orleans and Miami?
1:11:52 Speaker 01 Those are the. I would add LA back into it. I really love watching that, those Rose Bowl games. But yeah, those, if you have to go three, I think those are the three.
1:12:00 Bill Simmons? Cause San Diego's out because they don't have a team.
1:12:03 Speaker 01 Right.
1:12:04 Bill Simmons? So they can't have it anymore.
1:12:06 Speaker 01 Yeah. So they try Atlanta. I'm just trying to think of the southern, the hotter cities that we don't need to see in that anymore.
1:12:12 Bill Simmons? Well, one of my things, I really didn't want to, this is a bad city for me. And you've seen it in action, especially like the Super Bowl 12 years ago and NBA All-Star and just bad. It's a lot of bad choices here in New Orleans. It's not a, and I, I'm not unproud of the decisions. It's just like, you kind of lose, it's, it's got food that you probably shouldn't keep eating, but you can't help it. It's got the best dessert. It's got the casino. It's got a bunch of other stuff. It never closes down and you can really make some mistakes. And I tried to be on my good behavior. I was so proud of myself, didn't, didn't have a drunk cigarette.
1:12:52 Speaker 01 No cigarettes. I bet over one and a half cigarettes.
1:12:54 Bill Simmons? No, you lost. That was a hell. Yeah.
1:12:57 Speaker 01 I lost all my prop bets.
1:12:59 Bill Simmons? You lost on that and you lost on Mahomes.
1:13:00 Speaker 01 Beating a goat out of it. And you could forget about going to Santa Clara next year for the Super Bowl. The 29th worst city to have a Super Bowl, by the way.
1:13:11 Bill Simmons? Oh, that's, so that's the other thing we were talking about is like next year is Santa Clara, which is like, I, we did the, we did the WrestleMania in Santa Clara. It was a mess. And that was WrestleMania. Super Bowl is like a way bigger event. It's really hard to move around.
1:13:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:13:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah. New Orleans, great job. It's a great city, great food. Love being here. It's a one of a kind.
1:13:32 Speaker 01 I said Wednesday, I was like, I have to mix a blackened chicken salad into this one, into this rotation. Cause I'm just, I'm just going to die with these roasted oysters with Parmesan. I'm, this is the best thing I've ever had. Never got it. Never got it. So I'm keel over any day.
1:13:47 Bill Simmons? Never happened. Yeah. They're frying just, and they'll fry anything here.
1:13:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:13:52 Bill Simmons? They they just don't care. Anything's possible. Uh, anything else you want to hear from the week?
1:13:57 Speaker 01 That's it. I mean, I have like a parent corner kind of thing, but I don't know. Is that another break?
1:14:02 Bill Simmons? Yeah, no, do a parent corner. We're good.
1:14:03 Speaker 01 Well, uh, well, first of all, you know, I went to a small party. Oh, no, before that, what's the age where you stop buying your kids anything at the airport? When you come home from a city or a game?
1:14:13 Bill Simmons? Or thinking about bringing them home a gift or anything?
1:14:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:14:15 Bill Simmons? I'm gonna say probably age seven or eight.
1:14:18 Speaker 01 Thank you. Okay, good.
1:14:19 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:14:20 Speaker 01 All right. I win that argument. I'm gonna, I'm gonna quote you as the gospel. I don't, I don't know why I have to hear from everybody and bring a gift back. These kids are bigger than me.
1:14:28 Bill Simmons? People make you feel bad? Who made you feel bad?
1:14:30 Speaker 01 Of course. Yeah, the people in this house. Um, the second thing is, you know, I've been down on squares and pools and stuff for Super Bowl, but when I see how excited the kids get and it's like their first, you know, dip in their toe into gambling. I like to pull Super Bowl squares pools at parties now. I really do. And even though it's me collecting at the last second and drawing the numbers like while they're kicking off and everything, it's terrific. I hate putting it together. And then I see like kids like, no, I know I have two, one, but oh no, oh my, they're going for two point conversions. Like eight year olds screaming at each other, whether they should go for two points or one. So, um, I'm back in.
1:15:09 Bill Simmons? Well, this one, the zero, zero two is the final. Could not have been on a lot of, uh,
1:15:13 Speaker 01 Zero two, not good. Yes, that's not something you would buy in Fanduel. Yeah.
1:15:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah, seriously.
1:15:19 Speaker 01 But, uh, my, my oldest kid who's in Oregon won because I put his name in and he's like, uh, he's like, you know what? Just give it to all the little kids at the party. And I was like, well, you're no son of mine. I would never do that, but sure, I'll do that. So that's that. Um, that's really the parent corner. I'm, I'm, I'm back in on squares. But also is this the biggest Venmo day of the year?
1:15:40 Bill Simmons? Oh, that's interesting. That would be a good Venmo ad. That should be a Venmo Super Bowl ad. Biggest day of the year. We won't tell anyone if you don't tell anyone.
1:15:50 Speaker 01 It's what happened. Oh, what happens in Venmo stays in Venmo.
1:15:54 Bill Simmons? That should be their strategy.
1:15:55 Speaker 01 Right.
1:15:56 Bill Simmons? You know, I, we forgot to talk about the halftime show, by the way. The, uh, the Kendrick thing where I knew he was playing not like us because I was tipped off, but they, they teased it. So that it was like, am I gonna do it? Am I gonna do it? And then they did it and the whole crowd, at least part of the crowd was singing the chorus and it was, uh, it's pretty great. I, I, I mean, he had already decisively won the beef. And then this was like, you know, almost like going for two and running the Philly special when you're up 52 to seven with two minutes left and just like the all time F you exclamation point. It was pretty great.
1:16:33 Speaker 01 Did people love it? I feel like on, on social, it's getting killed a little bit.
1:16:39 Bill Simmons? It was exactly as polarizing as I think he wanted it to be. Like he, he didn't play off like here are my five best songs. He didn't do the usually thing and it was all leading.
1:16:47 Speaker 01 Something else that
1:16:48 Bill Simmons? Visually it was pretty cool.
1:16:49 Speaker 01 Wasn't as polarizing. Kanye had a fricking commercial on Fox.
1:16:57 Bill Simmons? What?
1:16:57 Speaker 01 I'm not joking.
1:16:59 Bill Simmons? What was the commercial?
1:17:00 Speaker 01 I don't even know what the hell it was. We were all staring at each other like, what the, what is going on? He seemed to be in a dentist chair. He was just saying gibberish and this is after an insane week on Twitter. Um, yeah, I, you know, we don't have to get into it, but we, we live in a really messed up time.
1:17:16 Bill Simmons? He went after everybody. It's probably gonna go after us.
1:17:18 Speaker 01 Yeah. It was like in Fox let him buy a spot. Unbelievable. Yeah, kick him off the island too. But that was the biggest shocker. That and, uh, the Chiefs losing by 35 points, whatever it was.
1:17:30 Bill Simmons? You know, you know, it wasn't a great, wasn't a great year so far for the, the gambling. Didn't do well on any of the Chiefs bits. Million dollar picks got killed in the playoffs. Just not, not great, but, um, my mom's text about what the hell is going on during the halftime show made up for 90% of it. She didn't know what was happening. Is that it should almost be like its own social media channel of old people trying to understand the Super Bowl halftime show act, which I think is part of the point of the halftime show act. Right?
1:18:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:18:02 Bill Simmons? To just, to just make, make like at least one third of the country go like, what's going on? What's he saying?
1:18:09 Speaker 01 Um, yeah, that should be the ratings. That should be like, hey, how many mom texts were sent? Uh, what the hell is going on?
1:18:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah, this is terrible. No, I don't think anyone over 60 enjoyed it.
1:18:19 Speaker 01 Right.
1:18:20 Bill Simmons? Um, I don't necessarily have a parent corner. I have a wife corner and you kind of know this story, but I'm going to tell it again just for the pod. So, uh, you guys are all here and House is here and House posts a picture of him and Paige Sperenek on, on his Instagram. It's him and Van and Paige Sperenek and
1:18:42 Speaker 01 I took it.
1:18:43 Bill Simmons? Arms around them. You took the picture. So my wife that night is like, hey, what's going on with House? And I'm like, what do you mean? And she's like, did you see his Instagram? I'm like, no, I didn't. What happened? And, uh, she shows me and like, this is crazy. Like his wife's like, what's, is it, is, his wife's gonna like, like put all his stuff outside. Like, how do you do this? If you did this, I would fucking kill you.
1:19:07 Speaker 01 Really?
1:19:07 Bill Simmons? And I'm like, and I'm like, this, that's Paige Sperenek. So now I have to walk her through the whole, this isn't just like, I took a picture with like an attractive blonde. Like this is actually like somebody in the golf community. She's got four million followers on Instagram.
1:19:22 Speaker 01 You showing her the Instagram pictures?
1:19:24 Bill Simmons? I, I went, I brought her on Instagram. I'm like, this is who it is. It's a celebrity. It's actually a very smart move by House for social media to take a picture with her. Like this will probably be like the most looked at Instagram post. Joe House, a man in his mid 50s is probably going to have this year. So he has to do the post and
1:19:43 Speaker 01 Correct.
1:19:43 Bill Simmons? So now I'm explaining to her this whole, you know, cottage industry of, of, uh, of what, what Paige, like leveraging social media.
1:19:53 Speaker 01 Boy, I wouldn't think leading your wife to Paige's Instagram page would, would be the move, but it, this worked?
1:19:59 Bill Simmons? No, she, she was pro Paige. She was like, oh, I get it now. I get, I see it. Yeah. More power to her. She just didn't, she didn't understand why House was doing that. She thought it was like some sort of, like midlife crisis. My marriage is in the tank thing. So I had to walk her through it. And then also introduce her into the world of social media and sports and how
1:20:19 Speaker 01 Right.
1:20:19 Bill Simmons? It takes some twists and turns. It was very exciting. So when you, when you said later that your wife might not have been thrilled about the Slim Jim, like, you know what? We're all just trying to
1:20:30 Speaker 01 That's it.
1:20:31 Bill Simmons? Stay relevant here in the old, uh, sports media world.
1:20:34 Speaker 01 It's all about clicks. I could, I'm not going to end up probably with that woman. Yeah, I don't think, you know, I'm not interested in her. It's fine. It's
1:20:41 Bill Simmons? But you know, Joe House, not a Not a polarizing guy. I've never had a fight with him in 37 years.
1:20:47 Speaker 01 Of course.
1:20:48 Bill Simmons? I'm one of the highest approval rating people of anybody who I'm friends with and beloved by my wife. And it was like the first time she's ever been mad at Joe House.
1:20:57 Speaker 01 I
1:20:58 Bill Simmons? Didn't last, but it was like shocking.
1:21:00 Speaker 01 For taking money out of an ATM and not gambling. Like that to me is a worse offense than than any of the page.
1:21:06 Bill Simmons? Knocked him out of Goat Island.
1:21:08 Speaker 01 My wife today, um, the Chiefs are down. I don't even know what the hell score it was. And she comes up to me and I obviously have a lot of money on the Chiefs and um, and she's a, and she says, boy, Chiefs are getting beat bad. This is not what I expected. Is this what you expected? And I'm fucking
1:21:23 Bill Simmons? Oh, no.
1:21:24 Speaker 01 Hemorrhaging money at this point. And so I think I just, uh, I think I ran to the bathroom and cried. So.
1:21:30 Bill Simmons? You have no belt for your pants anymore. You've lost, you've lost everything.
1:21:33 Speaker 01 Still there.
1:21:35 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it's weird. Like dead wrong about the game. Don't even feel that bad about it. It's like, what are we gonna do? Like the Chiefs did this over and over again. It was idiotic to go against them. And I just didn't want to do it again. After that Ravens game last year, I just don't, I just didn't want it. So now, now we can treat a football season normally.
1:21:54 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:21:54 Bill Simmons? Now we can just bet against them. Now we don't have to talk about this mystical thing that whatever. Just have some opinions.
1:22:01 Speaker 01 And now there's room on the island.
1:22:03 Bill Simmons? Now the room, the island is back. The suite, the penthouse suite is opened up on Goat Island. Tom Brady's back. Um, that's it. All right, Sal. So this is it for, uh, yet another football season for us. This is season 07 to 16. I think this is season 19 for us.
1:22:21 Speaker 01 Unlike Sirianni with the anthem.
1:22:23 Bill Simmons? Next year's our 20th season for Guess the Lines.
1:22:26 Speaker 01 Oh, it is. Oh, we gotta do something. Yeah.
1:22:28 Bill Simmons? Yeah, cause we started in 07 and next year is, oh no, is it? No, it's our 18th.
1:22:34 Bill Simmons? I can't count.
1:22:35 Speaker 01 Maybe nineteen.
1:22:35 Bill Simmons? This is twenty twenty four season heading into twenty five, but yeah, so.
1:22:38 Speaker 01 We're gonna do like an SNL thing, like do like a retrospective, have all the great music that's played. Everything.
1:22:44 Bill Simmons? Well, this is about as bad as I can remember doing the playoffs in a while. Just never had a feel for it this year.
1:22:50 Speaker 01 The playoff, oh, yeah.
1:22:51 Bill Simmons? The play, the playoffs in general, but uh. But we're gonna do some basketball stuff. You still got uh against all odds and you still have the.
1:23:00 Speaker 01 Against the odds through the ringer.
1:23:02 Bill Simmons? Tate show, yeah.
1:23:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:23:03 Bill Simmons? But you're gonna come on a couple of times and then we're go, we're doing masters. We're bringing baby doll to masters this year. And that's the most important sports moment of the year for everybody. We got basketball coming. Got the NBA, now you can watch NBA. Now you can care about NBA.
1:23:17 Speaker 01 I'm excited. Uh, I can't believe the AD didn't work out.
1:23:21 Bill Simmons? We can bet on the draft. We got draft props.
1:23:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, we'll be right there. Yep.
1:23:25 Bill Simmons? Shador Sanders, Shador Sanders over unders?
1:23:28 Speaker 01 Pro day in a few days, we'll find out who won the next gen stat uh prop on Fanduel, the fastest player.
1:23:35 Bill Simmons? Wouldn't that be worthy? Worthy had to have gone the fastest, right?
1:23:37 Speaker 01 I guess so, yeah, with that. Yeah, I don't know. Yes, it's, it's got down the field pretty quickly too. Anyway, yeah. Well, I'm gonna miss you. This is always bittersweet for me. I would like them to go out on a win.
1:23:50 Bill Simmons? We can always just call each other on the phone and or just see each other in person. There's that.
1:23:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:23:55 Bill Simmons? Um, all right. Thanks to uh Steve Sarudy, Kyle Crichton and Gahow as well for uh producing this. All the way through. We did not do YouTube Live this week because I'm in New Orleans, but um. But uh, we had a lot of fun doing that too. Thanks to everybody for spreading the word for us. And I got new rewatchables coming tomorrow night too. So it's a big movie, big movie from the eighties. Any guesses?
1:24:18 Speaker 01 Really?
1:24:18 Bill Simmons? Big famous eighties movie.
1:24:20 Speaker 01 Oh, I'm gonna guess wrong.
1:24:22 Bill Simmons? Haven't done it yet. Well, I won't tell you. Now there's a couple left. This is a big one. Very excited about it. Um, it's SNL related.
1:24:30 Speaker 01 Coneheads.
1:24:32 Bill Simmons? It's not Coneheads.
1:24:33 Speaker 01 Oh, forget it.
1:24:34 Bill Simmons? Blues Brothers. We did the Blues Brothers.
1:24:36 Speaker 01 Oh, that was close.
1:24:37 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it was time. Uh, anyway, that's coming on Monday night. So Sal, last time of the year. Good job by you. Good job by you, buddy.
1:25:10 Bill Simmons? Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas and 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 gamblinghelplineMA.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.
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Previous Part 2: NBA Trade Team Grades With Rob Mahoney and Wosny Lambre. Plus, Super Bowl LIX Million-Dollar Picks. Next Mavericks Fans Revolt, ‘SNL 50’ Guesses, Oscars Watch, and Super Bowl Leftovers With Bryan Curtis and Matt Belloni Page updated November 4, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated