NBA Panic Rankings, NFL Draft Guesses, and a Michael Jackson Movie Review | With Todd McShay, Steve Muench, and Van Lathan

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons catches up on Tuesday's NBA playoff matchups before taking a look at the panic teams (3:00). Then, Todd McShay and Steve Muench join Bill to preview the NFL draft (25:05). Finally, Van Lathan joins to give his thoughts on the new Michael Jackson biopic, ‘Michael’ (01:36:27). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Todd McShay, Steve Muench, and Van Lathan Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo Shop your favorite local grocers on Uber Eats! https://www.ubereats.com/brand/kroger The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠⁠⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Sony Pictures Classics. A perfect crime film, says the Daily Beast. John Torturo gives a career best performance. Don't miss the acclaimed new thriller, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. Torturo stars as an aging master pickpocket, whose latest score puts him in the crosshairs of a ruthless crime family. It's also starring Giancarlo Esposito, Tatiana Maslany, Will Price, and our guy, Steve Buscemi. See the film that the LA Times calls instantly classic, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, now playing in theaters nationwide.

• 0:41Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast brought to you by FanDuel. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new rewatchables on Monday. We did Kindergarten Cop. It is available on Netflix as well. Next week, Ghostbusters, which you can also watch on Netflix. That's coming with me and Van Lathan and Chris Ryan. We have some Ringer stuff for you. Sean Fantasy, you might have heard from him, host of The Big Picture. I've worked with him since 2012. He put up a new newsletter today that you can subscribe to about movies. Did it with The Ringer and Substack and Spotify. It's called Projections. He'll be writing about movies at least once a week. If you like Sean, I'm pretty confident you're gonna like the newsletter. He's gonna be on here Thursday to discuss it.

• 1:24Bill Simmons?

  Jordan Kahn, who's been with us since Grantland, came to us along when we started The Ringer. One of the best long form writers in the country. He has a new book that came out today called American Men. It's excellent. If you like reading books, I would recommend it. And then Legata, the third episode of that podcast, which I told you, if you like Scarface and Miami Vice and 80's cocaine, all that stuff, this is the podcast for you. Legata, third episode is up now. On this podcast, I'm gonna be reacting to all the basketball tonight, plus the basketball yesterday at the very top of this. And then I have Todd McShay and Steve Mensch. We taped earlier today, whole bunch of NFL draft stuff, all of our thoughts.

• 2:08Bill Simmons?

  I threw some crazy stuff at them. Are there going to be any crazy wrinkles? What's going to happen in this draft? Covered it all. And then last but not least, Van Lathan came on because he saw the Michael Jackson movie and he thought it was abominable. And we talked about the movie and the state of biopics and documentaries and all the stuff that seems to be going in the wrong direction these days. So that's all coming up next. I'm going to join you right after the break. First, Pearl Jam. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. The NBA postseason is here and FanDuel knows the only thing better than watching your favorite team win is winning along with them. FanDuel, the best place to bet the teams, players and plays during their playoff run. Build a same game parlay or try live betting and jump in after tip off.

• 2:52Bill Simmons?

  Don't forget with FanDuel, you get paid instantly when you win. Download the FanDuel Sportsbook app now and play your game. 21-plus select states or 18-plus DC, Kentucky or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat.

• 3:36Bill Simmons?

  All right, I am taping this top part of the podcast. It is 10:23 Pacific time on Tuesday night because I stupidly stayed up until the end of this Lakers Rockets game, thinking something spectacular would happen. And it was spectacular if a rock fight that almost injured people in the first couple rows of the seats were spectacular with all the bricks and airballs and, oh my God, it was so bad. I'd like to apologize to Gahan Eduardo, who are my behind the scenes team. I made them stay up late and now they have to put this podcast up because I thought it would be worth it. It wasn't worth it. We should have done this two hours ago. KD came back, so that was a wild card. He had nine turnovers, four, four or five in the fourth quarter.

• 4:22Bill Simmons?

  Partly his fault, but also like A, why is he out there? B, why is he doing so much? Cause he clearly didn't seem 100%. Reed Shepard, this might have been it for Ime and Reed Shepard. I think he played, what do I have here? 10 minutes, 0 for 4 for Reed Shepard, the number three pick of the 2024 NBA draft. One pick ahead of Stephon Castle. Houston, they changed some stuff up. They pressured a game late with that idea. When you have Marcus Smart, LeBron James and Luke Kennard bringing the ball up. Why not pressure those guys 94 feet, Jaden McDaniels style? They didn't do that. I looked it up. They, nobody has ever been fired during a series before. So I think Ime Adok is safe probably until after the series, but they're down 0-2.

• 5:06Bill Simmons?

  And the big thing for me, the fact that they didn't trade for CJ McCollum at any point during the season before Atlanta got him is just bonkers. It felt like the natural thing that was gonna happen after Van Vliet got hurt. And the salaries kinda lined up. Houston has a bunch of extra picks. Washington basically, you know, they, they, they were ready to give away McCollum. They finally ended up putting him in a Trey Young deal, which really they're taking Trey Young off Atlanta's hands. McCollum goes and he's one of the stars of the, of game two and one of the potential stars of the playoffs. He's almost becoming a villain for, on MSG with the New York fans, even though as he said after the game, I'm the least villainy guy possible.

• 5:52Bill Simmons?

  I don't know why Houston didn't trade for him. I don't get it. They thought they're, they were good with the team, like they like having Van Vliet around. Van Vliet can't play till next year. Like worst case scenario, he could just opt out of his contract. You can re-sign him, but it's weird to me that they didn't do anything. And Ime clearly doesn't trust Reed Shepard. So can the Lakers actually pull this off? Cause we got info today, maybe Luca wouldn't be around until round two. That maybe, maybe Reeves was actually a better option to come back. I'm looking at the playoff odds right now. Houston, wow, Lakers minus, they're up 2-0 in the series with game seven at home and they're minus 120 on FanDuel. Because everybody's like, well, maybe Houston's gonna turn it around. I don't know, the team I watched tonight.

• 6:38Bill Simmons?

  I don't see it. I mean, just to come back from 2-0 in a series, the percentages are against you, but the way they, the chemistry in the court, Durant and I look at 100%. Shingun looks like he's already on red fan, looking at Milwaukee houses for the inevitable Yanis trade that I'm starting to feel like could happen. Could the Lakers do this?

• 7:04Bill Simmons?

  And I don't know why I'm excited about it because I hate the Lakers, but it would just be more fun to have them in the next series if Luca can come back against OKC. By the way, OKC, big winner of round one, right? Like Wemby, Wemby gets concussed, which we'll talk about in a second, but that series looks like it's going to go longer. Denver, Minnesota is going to be a war. Meanwhile, OKC is going to cruise through round one and then they're going to get one of these two teams in round two. Holy shit. Panic rankings. I wanted to take you into the NBA panic room really quick. I have the Rockets now number one because if you lose this series to,

• 7:42Bill Simmons?

  if you lose this series to this Lakers team, you gotta be kidding me. Honestly, you gotta be kidding me. That would be just one of the dumbest playoff losses I can remember. Your 41-year-old LeBron, Luke Kennard, who anybody could have had, Marcus Smart hitting corner threes, Jackson Hayes is out there?

• 8:04Bill Simmons?

  I just can't believe it. How many lottery picks does Houston have? I think out of the, I think they had five or six guys who were taken like in the top five of the lottery. Oh, my God. Anyway, I have Houston number one. And, and I blame Houston for the fact that it's 10:27. I'm doing a podcast right now. Anyway, number two, the Spurs. Wemby gets concussed on the night that he is given the Defensive Player of the Year award, and it looked bad immediately. It was not great. And In football, the concussion protocol is like at least a week. Who knows with basketball? He's definitely not going to be in game three, but maybe he comes back for game four. But at the very least, Portland steals one.

• 8:49Bill Simmons?

  If you're San Antonio, there's some questions that come out of that game that I had already been thinking about. Wemby comes out of it. Obviously, he's their best offensive player. But my fear with them all along was like shot creation in half court. When you're in a playoff atmosphere and you've got to create shots. And really, it was just Fox. Fox was the only, everything was on Fox and Portland, Portland could kind of shut it down. And then it comes down to Drew Holiday, who had 16, 5 and 9. Classic Drew, winning basketball. Gets the block in the corner. Gets the go ahead basket on the, on the put back on an air ball. Like always in the right place, right time. That's why they traded for him. And then this Scoot Henderson game, 31 points. So Nick Wright texted me this.

• 9:34Bill Simmons?

  He now has 10 more career playoff points than Wemby. I feel like I'm still in it with Scoot. Can't give up yet. I thought Scoot was awesome today. Now he had one rebound and zero assists, but the defense and the fearlessness and the athleticism was what we thought it might be when, when, you know, I was arguing him versus Brandon Miller. And I conceded to K O C, sorry, Kevin O'Connor. I conceded to you two months ago that you won the Brandon Miller versus Scoot argument. Now I feel like I'm alive. I just climbed out of the coffin. And congrats to Portland owner El Chepo, who, who the guys after the game, they were pouring tap water on each other because he probably didn't have alcohol in the locker room. But El Chepo gets a win. Now they goes back to Portland for game three.

• 10:18Bill Simmons?

  No T-shirts for those fans because those T-shirts are expensive.

• 10:24Bill Simmons?

  Anyway, the Spurs, I have them at the top here in the panic because if they don't have Wemby for either of these Portland games. I think Portland's legitimately good. Like Toronto bogus five seed, just bogus with a capital B. Houston bogus five seed. Not capital B bogus, but bogus. Portland frisky seven seed. Like I, I think Portland's a better playoff team than either Houston or Toronto. So you're going to Portland. Um, the energy is going to be amazing. El Chepo is going to be shooting out, um, probably used T-shirts out of 15 year old cannon, uh, T-shirt candidates. I can't wait for, for this weekend, but we'll see. What do the Spurs have in them without Wemby? They signed Luke Cornet over the summer, who is one of the best free agent signings of the summer.

• 11:10Bill Simmons?

  Um, big game for him, obviously game three, game four. They're going to need a lot more from him. But as crazy as it sounds like Portland, this could be a long series and I don't think Portland's going to go away. This is a team that knows who they are, really good defensively. Kamara, I thought did a great job down the stretch and, uh, little feistier of a series. I think, I think San Antonio was minus 1400.

• 11:37Bill Simmons?

  Heading into the series. So it's a one, one going back to Portland. We're definitely not going to have one be for game three. We'll see. That is my number two panic team. So Houston, San Antonio. Number three is Detroit. They're playing tomorrow night. They got their ass kicked at home in game one and they've lost 12. 11 straight playoff games. This would be the 12th that they lose game two. Orlando has a ton of confidence. They're catching this Orlando team that just did a 180 that hit rock bottom, crawled out of it. We talked about it on Sunday night.

• 12:06Bill Simmons?

  And might not give a shit anymore. It might just feel like, fuck it. Maybe we're better than these guys. This is a Normandale and Hoosiers moment for JB Bickerstaff and the Pistons. This is JB looking at these guys. Maybe they're right about us. Maybe we weren't a one seed. He's got to start challenging them a little bit. I think this Detroit Orlando game Wednesday night, a must watch. I think it's going to be violent. I expect like, I don't know if you're watching the hockey, but Bruins Buffalo almost had two different bench clearing brawls. It brought me back to 1988 when I really loved the Bruins the most of 70s and 80s.

• 12:47Bill Simmons?

  And we played Buffalo and I think it was 600 plus penalty minutes in a six game series and multiple bench clearing fights, guys just fighting every game, the same guys like Jay Miller. I think that we had Willie Platt. I think they had Clark Gillies. I forget they had another fighter, but just every game, the same guys were fighting. I don't think Detroit Orlando is going to be like that, but I think it's going to get feisty tomorrow. I think this is one of those Detroit's going to lay the smackdown, try to give the physicality. I think Orlando likes when it gets physical. They like that kind of action and that's a must watch. But I would be really nervous if I'm Detroit because Orlando, you know, there's two kinds of upsets. There's the Philly kind that we'll talk about in a second against Boston game two.

• 13:31Bill Simmons?

  And then there's the, we actually belong on the court, might be better than you guys upset. And I felt like Orlando in that one. Now they're, they're nine point underdogs in game two, which I think is too high. There's a lot of data going for if the home team gets blown out into game one as a big favorite. Then SAC talked about that on Sunday, but I think Orlando can play with these guys. So Detroit's my number three. The Nuggets are number four. First Nuggets lost yesterday in 33 days. I have multiple concerns come out of the game. One, Aaron Gordon not healthy. I thought he got banged up in different ways in game one, and then game two just didn't look like himself. So you lose rim protection. You lose the crazy athleticism. You lose the reckless threes in the corner that go in, all that stuff.

• 14:17Bill Simmons?

  I didn't think he seemed like the same guy. Not his fault. I just think he's banged up. I think he's been banged up all year. Second biggest thing, Jokic's threes, which we've seen come and go in the playoffs. If you really put a beating on him, which Minnesota did, Minnesota had Randall beating on him. They had Gobert beating on him. They had elbows, Nas Reed's beating on him. And they just tried to wear him down. And it got to the point, it felt like they were leaving him open a little bit. And I think he was one for seven. A lot was made out of the Gobert one on one defense against Joker. I didn't think that's why they won. I thought they won because the physicality of all four quarters combined with the third thing I want to mention. McDaniels, you know, you could see what the game plan was in game two.

• 15:00Bill Simmons?

  It was like McDaniels is going to hound Jamal Murray 94 feet. And I don't know why more teams don't do this when you have a Jaden McDaniels. But I thought Murray was just gassed in the fourth quarter because McDaniels was just wearing him down and in his T-shirt, which is, I think he wears the T-shirt instead of inside the jersey, which I support.

• 15:24Bill Simmons?

  I thought he wore him down. So you have McDaniels 94 feet. You've Gobert, the one on one D. You have Ant with the rim protection. You have Randall and Nas Reed being super physical. And then you have DiVincenzo with some big ball shots. And you have Bones Island as just a random Dion Waiters. We might have to rename Dion Waiters on rewatchables. And then you have on offense, everyone attacking the rim. Because they know if Gordon's a little compromised, Joker's not really a shot blocker, they're going. So when I think about upsets,

• 15:55Bill Simmons?

  I said this after game one to Zach, even though Minnesota didn't play that well. I felt like they, the physicality, they seemed very comfortable. And I, and I thought it was a little concerning after game one. They didn't play that well, but they still were in the vicinity of winning the game. Game two, super comfortable. And it's a team that thinks they're better than Denver. So if I'm a Nuggets fan, A, I'm more concerned than I was four days ago that I was getting out of this series. They were three to one to win the series. Now I'm concerned. I'm also concerned, what happens if I get out of this series? Because now I'm playing San Antonio, I have a lot of miles on me from round one. And, and then I still have OKC waiting for me in round three.

• 16:35Bill Simmons?

  And they're going to do all the same physical, beat you up stuff that, uh, that Minnesota's doing. Now, this was the case, I thought Denver was going to make the finals. The case against it was the road is too hard. And the way this is playing out, that case might have been right, I might have been wrong. I thought Minnesota was alive, potential, could put it together for four rounds. But Ant, who didn't even seem like he was 100% healthy all the time yesterday, combined with McDaniel's coming back from injury, I just didn't think they were going to be able to put it together like that. But man, they looked like a conference finalist last night. So, um, the, these two, either of these teams playing San Antonio is going to be an incredible series.

• 17:18Bill Simmons?

  And I thought last night, I thought that was like watching a game five of a conference finals level quality of basketball. I loved it. I'd be nervous if I was Denver. I wouldn't be quite as nervous if I'm the Knicks, but I'm a little nervous because game two against Atlanta, it picked some scabs for me, right? There, are we too Brunson centric? Are we sure Mike Brown is a good coach? Is McHale Bridges playing tonight? Oh, he's played 32 minutes? I didn't realize it. Oh, he took the last shot of the game with five seconds left? I forgot he was on the team. They had a bunch of that stuff going, the backup guards, McBride was bad.

• 17:57Bill Simmons?

  Shament was bad, so they got nothing really from their bench, other than Clarkson made a couple of plays. And the Towns piece of it, now, my Knicks fan friends were like, why didn't Towns get the ball more? Or what, you know, why were we so Brunson centric? Kamika was doing a good job on, on Towns. So I think it was a combination of he was being really physical with them. They found something with that small ball lineup. And if I was the Knicks, and I, I rooted for the Knicks, that they now make me the most nervous, other than Josh Hart was the best player on my team in game two.

• 18:29Bill Simmons?

  I would be nervous that Alexander Walker and Jalen Johnson. Alexander Walker didn't really play well in either game. And Jalen Johnson did not shoot well in the second game. And it's one to one and they're going back where I think they're pretty good in Atlanta. So I'd be nervous that Alexander Walker hasn't gone going yet. And then the CJ McCollum piece. He was doing, getting to whatever spot he wanted. You have these two wings. And it'll be in bridges that you've traded all this capital and big contracts to. And over and over again, he was just getting away from those guys and trying to repeatedly get Brunson on him. McCollum's like having, this is a moment for him.

• 19:10Bill Simmons?

  Right? This is the afterthought in Portland, Dame's teammate, put a million trade rumors. He even got mad at me publicly a couple of times. Kind of bounces around, ends up in Washington, becomes such an afterthought that Houston doesn't even trade for him. And now he's, he's wearing it now. He's ready to, to, to be the foil in a Knicks series. So I would be, I wouldn't be crazy nervous if I was the Knicks. What are the odds in this series? They are.

• 19:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, minus 174 on Fanduel. That seems about right. I, I thought the Knicks were going to win in six. I still think that. But the CJ piece was unexpected. We'll see if he can keep it going. And then the last one for a panic team, the Celtics. So I would have ranked on the bottom here. First of all, in game twos, I don't know what happens to them. They're five and five in their last 10 playoff home game twos. They lost to the Knicks last year, Miami and Cleveland in 24. The Miami game was one of the dumbest losses of all time. They lost to Miami in 23, then they lost in eight. Philly did exactly what I thought they were going to do. They shot a bunch of threes. Edgecombe got hot. I think he was six for 10. He had a 30 and 10 was super comfortable. And then Maxey got going a little bit.

• 20:22Bill Simmons?

  The Celtics were playing this just insanely dumb drop coverage. That I didn't understand for the life of me. And, uh, and giving up, I think it was 91 89. Boston has the ball about to take the lead. Tatum jacks up a bad three. And then Maxey, I think hit two straight threes on that stupid drop coverage.

• 20:43Bill Simmons?

  So the Celtics were 13 for 50 from three. And Sean Grandy, my friend, who does the radio for the Celtics, said, regular season and playoffs, that's the 12th time in the last 161 games, the Celtics have failed to shoot better than 26% from three, and they've lost all 12, including game one and game two against the Knicks, and then this game last night. So the question is, total aberration, or are they starting to look a little like Knicks series Celtics last year? I will say, the two things that scare me a tiny bit, Derrick White has really been bad from three since January 1st. He's under 31% from three now, he's two for 10 tonight.

• 21:28Bill Simmons?

  And the Knicks seem, the Sixers seemed totally fine with him shooting from three. Whereas I think in November and December would not have been as fine. It got to the point, I was wondering if they might take him out and put Shireman in, which was the second thing I didn't understand. Shireman only played 11 minutes. He's been a super sub for the last couple of months, indispensable. And that led to the third thing I didn't understand, the move seemed to me, go small with Tatum at the five, because you could still get the rebounding from him, Tatum, Brown, Shireman, Pritchard and White, or take White out and put Hauser in. I just, I didn't really understand the lineups. I voted for Joe for Coach of the Year, I did not think he had a good game today.

• 22:13Bill Simmons?

  And the Vucevic thing, I just don't get. I know offensively, he had decent stats, but I think he really hurts them defensively. And I thought the Sixers took advantage of him. I don't think he's fast enough to jump out on three-point shooters. He's not really a rim protector. And if I'm playing the Sixers and there's no Embiid, and I'm playing Bona and Drummond, like, I'm fine going small against them. Let's go small against them. What are they gonna do? Post up one of those guys? So playing Tatum at the five seems like the move. It did worry me a little that they looked like game one, game two, 2025. Knicks, I did get some flashbacks, some PTSD. My daughter and my dad were there and my daughter was furious after the game.

• 22:56Bill Simmons?

  I was very proud, but she was excited that they showed them on the Jumbotron. And my dad wasn't looking and she was hitting him to look. And multiple people texted me about this, that it was like watching a little sitcom with my dad and my daughter. So, congrats to them. Wish I had been there. I'm not nervous about this Celtic series yet. Right now, the odds are Celtics minus 510. So FanDuel is not nervous either. The Portland odds, Portland is plus 410 to win the series now. San Antonio is minus 550. The only series, the two series seem like a rap. Phoenix, OKC and Toronto, Cleveland. And it's unclear, Toronto should have just passed on the playoff invitation. Like when you get invited to a wedding and you send your regrets and you send a gift.

• 23:41Bill Simmons?

  I kind of wish Toronto had done that with the playoffs. All right, that's the, that's, that's the panic, the NBA panic room heading into tomorrow night. Can't wait to watch Orlando and Detroit. Again, I'm sorry to everybody at The Ringer that I made you stay up tonight. We're gonna take a break. We're gonna go backwards in time. I'm gonna talk to McShay and Mensch. Big, long convo about the NFL Draft and I'm gonna look a lot more awake in one second after this break. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. The NBA playoffs are here. Everything's on the line. Every possession matters. Every bucket swings the game and tonight is your shot. Boost your bet. That's right. All customers get a profit boost tonight.

• 24:23Bill Simmons?

  So when the moment hits, your win gets bigger because that's how profit boosts work. Lock in your bets, boost your odds, make the playoffs pay off with FanDuel, official sports betting partner of the NBA. Head to FanDuel.com/BS to get started. FanDuel, play your game. 21-plus select states or 18-plus DC, Kentucky, Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.FanDuel.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut.

• 24:51Bill Simmons?

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• 25:31Bill Simmons?

  Orders of $30 or more save up to $25, ends April 30th, 2026. See app for details. All right, McShay and Menture here. They are here all week doing the Todd McShay Show, the McShay Show, which is behind us. You like that little fancy thingy?

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:51Bill Simmons?

  So we're using your set.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 25:53Bill Simmons?

  Last time I talked to you, we weren't, I wasn't that excited about the draft and then you kind of.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  45 minutes later.

• 25:58Bill Simmons?

  You fluffed me a little bit? Yeah, you got me a little excited about it.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  He's a great fluffer.

• 26:03Bill Simmons?

  Barely excited by the end, now I'm way more excited.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  It's a, there's, there's never a bad draft, man.

• 26:10Bill Simmons?

  That's the thing.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Even the.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  For entertainment value, there's never a bad draft. There's bad drafts where there's no players.

• 26:17Bill Simmons?

  Right, yeah. But it's like Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving is always gonna be good, cause at some point there's gonna be food to eat.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  And it always gets hectic, there's always family drama before Thanksgiving. It's the same thing here and then, and like I got lied to, I think about the Jets pick and that's okay, I'm here for it.

• 26:33Bill Simmons?

  You got lied to?

• 26:33Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 26:34Bill Simmons?

  I did see you did a little switch.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Arbel Reese.

• 26:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And by the way, like the draft's not here, we'll, we'll see what happens. But I get the strong sense that the Jets worth getting that out there. I always get nervous about, cause I was the only one saying Arbel Reese, so. And then a couple other people a little bit, but I always get nervous when everyone all of a sudden on a Monday after a weekend talks, are saying the same thing. So the Jeremiah Love thing, I just, I worry about that at number, uh, number three. But it looks like Bailey, they're doing a good job of being really quiet about it, even though there's really no reason to be quite outside of.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Hey, everyone thinks we're taking Bailey.

• 27:15Bill Simmons?

  But who are they trying to fake out?

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Listen, David Bailey, I, I, I actually had to have this internal conversation with myself.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  David Bailey's been kind of what everyone in league circles has kind of assumed, right? For a while. Let's throw out there, we might take Arvel Reese and see if someone's more interested in Reese. And get the, you know, because there's people talking about Arizona. We're going to move, whichever pass rusher doesn't go to, go to, we, you know, the pick is open at Arizona at number three. Why not, why not us get the phone calls? I have a feeling that that's what was going on.

• 27:50Bill Simmons?

  The only thing I don't like about this theory is it's the Jets.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:53Bill Simmons?

  That involves foresight, a plan.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Understanding of what's happening, yeah.

• 27:58Bill Simmons?

  Like chess moves, moving around.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and if, if it's true, what I'm kind of surmising, then I, I think, I think Daryl Muji is, is doing a pretty good job of managing this thing.

• 28:11Bill Simmons?

  If there are two guys who play the same position, basically, and people are arguing about which one's better. I'm, I'm, I always parachuting the draft every year, basically knowing nothing and trying to learn on the fly. Why wouldn't you should take the guy who's two years younger?

• 28:26Bill Simmons?

  Is that just too obvious or am I nuts?

• 28:27Speaker 01

  It's actually not, you, you would be, I don't think you'd be surprised, but it's, it's surprising how much, um.

• 28:33Bill Simmons?

  Cause Reese is two years younger.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Emphasis is put into the, the age for a defensive prospect specifically.

• 28:41Bill Simmons?

  But if it was me, I would take the younger guy. He is two years, it's like getting a car from 2024 versus 26 or something.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  But it's a five year lease. It's a five year lease, you're not going to keep it for the life of the car, you know what I mean? So if you like the car better and you get a better lease, then take the lease.

• 28:57Bill Simmons?

  But nobody can agree which one of these guys are better. So why wouldn't I just take the younger guy?

• 29:02Speaker 01

  I would take Arvel Reese, but I've got to have a defensive coach. If I'm the general manager, I've got to have a defensive coach that can lay out what exactly is the plan to show me how it's going to work.

• 29:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Because this guy's more talented.

• 29:14Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  The talent isn't quite developed, he's a one year starter at Ohio State. He started.

• 29:19Bill Simmons?

  That means higher, higher talent, higher bust potential.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:22Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Someone brought this up on X, I want to, I actually meant to run this by you before we even got on here, but we're talking about the Jets again. So if you have a plan for this kid, that's great. Is Aaron Glenn gonna be their head coach next year?

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:34Bill Simmons?

  Or is, or in October?

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, or in October, like exactly. So then, then the plan's out the window. And if you're, if you're Muji, are you thinking to yourself, I don't know who's gonna be the head coach next year. I'm gonna take the, the guy who's been playing edge his whole life.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  The, the information I got 10 days ago, I think it's 10 days now. It was, it was the Sunday before this past Sunday was, what's your football sense? If you want the sure thing and that Daryl Muji is, is a, a human risk aversion. I, I compared it yesterday. Along came Paulie, then, then still, right? Like, just a human, uh, risk aversion corporation, like walking down the street, like everything's about risk. And apparently that's, that's kinda his DNA and his makeup. Um, I, I would argue the better player who the fallback is, I'm getting Devon Lloyd. It, that to me is, is less risk than drafting David Bailey.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  And maybe he's just the DPR, designated pass rusher. And he's not very good versus the run. So like,

• 30:32Bill Simmons?

  It's true.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  But this guy we know can rush the quarterback better than anyone in this draft. And yes, it's with speed and yes, he's gotta kinda get stronger and all that. But let's go with the guy that's proven as a pass rusher. Cause that's the most important thing you can do in this league outside of being a quarterback.

• 30:50Bill Simmons?

  FanDuel has Reese minus 130, Bailey plus 115 on Tuesday afternoon as we record.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Did that flip from yesterday?

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. This morning I looked, this morning I looked and it was like, it was still plus 160. And then I looked four hours ago and it was minus 110. So it is shifting rapidly. Yeah.

• 31:12Bill Simmons?

  Betting on the draft is like betting on roulette while doing cocaine.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  It's insane.

• 31:17Bill Simmons?

  The odds are just, oh, oh, it's just going crazy at all times. I would, I, I'd never do draft bets. The only one that seems like it hits every year is like the more offensive lineman than we thought.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:30Bill Simmons?

  Seems like every year I say, no, it's gonna be seven. No, actually it's 10.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 31:33Bill Simmons?

  Cause we get in the draft and everybody's like, oh, fuck, we need a right tackle.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  I would bet it's at eight and a half. I haven't looked, but I would bet it's at eight and a half.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  I would take the nine.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  There's gonna be a second guard that sneaks in.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Right. Like a Keelan Rutledge from Georgia.

• 31:47Bill Simmons?

  Seven and a half. See, that seems like he fucking banged that one, right?

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Pound it right now.

• 31:52Bill Simmons?

  It's gonna be at least nine.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Take it right now.

• 31:55Bill Simmons?

  I laugh whenever I see.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  There's gonna be at least eight. There's seven tackles and one guard.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  I think nine, but yeah, you're right. It's gonna be eight's the safe number.

• 32:01Bill Simmons?

  The Patriots could take somebody.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Ianacho is still sitting there at 31?

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah. You putting that in right now?

• 32:08Bill Simmons?

  No, I'll do it after. I have a bunch of questions tied to the draft, but this is my favorite one. What do the Giants do at number five? Cause they also have number 10.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:19Bill Simmons?

  If the first four picks.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Yep, okay.

• 32:22Bill Simmons?

  Mendoza, Reese to the Jets, Arizona says fuck it and takes Love.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 32:30Bill Simmons?

  And then Sala and Tennessee go fuck it and they take Styles. So it goes Mendoza, Reese, Love, Styles. Now the Giants are on the clock. What happens?

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Bailey.

• 32:40Bill Simmons?

  You think they would take Bailey anyway?

• 32:42Speaker 01

  With Bailey. I was told by somebody that, cause even if you flip flop and it's Bailey, it's Bailey at two and it's Reese at five, sitting at five, either way.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  I was, I was told, but I don't believe it, that they would, they would take the edge rusher, best available and, and Kayvon Thibodeau would be traded.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  That was a sneaky, that was a little nugget in Shefter's article. He had all these trade guys. These are guys that could be traded and all of a sudden you see Kayvon Thibodeau and I was like, I haven't heard that name.

• 33:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  That was last year's trade that was gonna happen, remember?

• 33:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, well they'll, they'll drop that.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  All of a sudden it was in there. I was like, that's, that jumps out to me. So if they, they could get rid of one of them.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  The Giants are fascinating, right? Because the Giants are sitting there at five and now they've got pick 10.

• 33:24Bill Simmons?

  Which was an awesome trade. I didn't talk about that trade on the podcast. I, that was like, I was staggered by that trade.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:31Bill Simmons?

  You're trading a defensive tackle? I know he's good and he's late, late twenties, he's expensive.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  And doesn't, yeah, doesn't want to be there.

• 33:37Bill Simmons?

  And now I just get to reset with the 10th pick in a draft that basically has 12 good guys and then drops off. Like, that's like, that trade's a miracle.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:44Bill Simmons?

  I thought the Giants would have had to throw in at least like a third to even the seesaw on that.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Something about the Ravens, like the Ravens, like Ozzie Newsome and down to Eric DeCosta now, it seems like they, they sit back, they're patient, they, they exploit other teams. And now Harbaugh comes from the Ravens, exploiting other teams for being overly eager in a moment. Who's stopping the run for the Giants? I mean, they have, I mean, they were like giving them five yards to carry last year.

• 34:09Bill Simmons?

  That might be the 10th pick.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  There's no defensive tackles there.

• 34:12Bill Simmons?

  You don't, you don't like Fox just reaching or maybe trading back five spots?

• 34:17Speaker 01

  But they, they picked 35 in the second round. Yeah, they'll get a guy there. They'll get a good guy there. They'll get a guy there.

• 34:22Bill Simmons?

  I thought for the Bengals that, I interrupted you, but the Bengals, that trade was insane. You're paying like 110 million a year to a quarterback and two receivers. You have holes all over the place.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  And I give her 28 million.

• 34:34Bill Simmons?

  Your defense is terrible and it's like, well, we're going to get this guy. We're going to bring him in. He's, he's the best defensive tackle in the league. Cool. Now he's going to be double teamed the whole time.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:40Bill Simmons?

  You have nobody else in your defense. It's like, as an AFC fan of the Patriots.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:45Bill Simmons?

  I was like, great trade, guys. You did it.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:48Bill Simmons?

  You're going to be a fucking mess.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  But the Giants sit there at five, right? And a week ago, we would have said Caleb Downs is one of the players they'd like to safety from Ohio State. Jordan Tyson is one of the players. They don't, they don't conceal their interest in players. Like Joe Shane goes, they, Shane and Harbaugh were already at the Arizona State pro day where Jordan Tyson didn't work out.

• 35:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  And then Shane went back out for the, the, the Jordan Tyson workout, which was just like 30 something routes and catching the ball.

• 35:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was a don't get hurt workout.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:20Bill Simmons?

  With injury prone guy working out.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 35:23Bill Simmons?

  Just run a straight line and turn around.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  But everyone loved it. It was a great workout.

• 35:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  And then has, I think dinner with Tyson or, so we know there's interest there. But I don't know, a week, 10 days ago, we would have said, you better take Downs at five and, and you can get Tyson at 10. I honestly think with, um, with sitting at seven would be a possibility of, although I think Dan Quinn is, is going defense there. He's pushing with Adam Peters to go defense and it could be Sonny Stiles. If not Stiles, Caleb Downs at seven. But eight is, eight is New Orleans and that could be a spot, um, where, where Jordan Tyson goes.

• 35:59Bill Simmons?

  Um, that sounds like a disaster.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Kansas City.

• 36:02Bill Simmons?

  Jordan Tyson, New Orleans. Sounds just sounds awful.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Why? What do you mean? Not in their eyes, but yes.

• 36:09Bill Simmons?

  Don't they have like a top three worst medicine, training, recovery like situation, them and the Pelicans?

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Chris Alave, that's what's worked for him, right?

• 36:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  And he's old.

• 36:19Bill Simmons?

  That makes me nervous.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  So regardless, my point is I don't know that Tyson gets there. And so Caleb Downs is much more likely to get there, but may not get there either. So, and then you hear about-

• 36:29Bill Simmons?

  But there's no, there's no scenario where they can end up with Downs and Styles, the Giants?

• 36:34Speaker 01

  They don't want Styles, apparently.

• 36:35Bill Simmons?

  Cause they signed Edmonds.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  They signed Edmonds.

• 36:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Honestly-

• 36:39Bill Simmons?

  That deal's not huge, though.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  It's not huge.

• 36:44Bill Simmons?

  I mean, that's the Mac Daddy move. Cause I was looking at the Giants' odds. First of all, seven and a half wins, over/under for that, like, all the signs for them are they're gonna be this year's Patriots, right?

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:55Bill Simmons?

  If Darns healthy, fourth place schedule, new coach, like, just, they're checking all the boxes. Seven and a half wins seems too low, plus 280 for the playoffs, plus 550 for the division. That seems too high.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:07Bill Simmons?

  If they got two blue chip, blue chip, blue chip, five and 10 guys, and then hit the second round pick, you're good right away.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:15Bill Simmons?

  Cause they already had a bunch of good players and they underachieved last year. You know, they, how many times do they have the lead in the second half of a game?

• 37:22Speaker 01

  What if Jeremiah Love is still sitting there at five?

• 37:25Bill Simmons?

  You love this. You wanna give love to everyone, but yeah, I get it. Scat was not gonna stay healthy. No, I hear you. Well, so if they got Love and Downs, and you got the best running back in the draft by far, and then you have a safety, and I wanna talk about Downs in a second. You just get the two best guys in the position who, four years from now, could be like all pros.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:47Bill Simmons?

  Or three years from now, whatever. But the Downs thing, I was just on Tailgate, I stopped by there for a second. We do this with the draft every year, I've talked to you about it before, where everyone knows Downs is gonna be awesome.

• 38:02Bill Simmons?

  He's gonna go like 10th and then three years from now we're gonna do the redraft and it's like number two Caleb Downs.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  Kyle Hamilton.

• 38:10Bill Simmons?

  Ed Reed crossed with Kyle Hamilton. He's just amazing and wow, what a great pick. It's like, but we knew that before this draft that he was gonna be a great pick. So how do you go 10th?

• 38:19Speaker 01

  It's the position value thing and then you add to position value. He didn't run. We know he's not like, his miles per hour is equated like to 4.5 type 40, not as long as, so she got all those things working against you, but, but why not? He's not gonna.

• 38:36Bill Simmons?

  Same thing for Hamilton, right? It's like, what is he?

• 38:38Speaker 01

  He didn't run a 40.

• 38:39Bill Simmons?

  Where's he? What position is he?

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Is he a hybrid? Well.

• 38:42Bill Simmons?

  Turned out, turned out great.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, really great. So I, I think you could go as high as seven, maybe five, but um, but it was, I don't know. The Giants are fascinating and also there's like hard, this, you don't pay Harbaugh, what 100 million to, to be the guy without letting him be the guy. Um, and, and that's the indication I get, but there seems to be.

• 39:05Bill Simmons?

  That makes me nervous too.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:07Bill Simmons?

  He was on pace to getting fired the first Lamar Jackson year.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:12Bill Simmons?

  And then Lamar Jackson saved his ass. Last couple of years weren't awesome. And then it's like, here are the car keys. Make all the decisions for us.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  And then you got, do you see what Zay Flowers said?

• 39:22Speaker 01

  What?

• 39:23Speaker 02

  The practices, that's why we had so many injuries. The practices were too hard. He didn't know how to manage our workload. He doesn't do well with the, the current players. Like he just doesn't know how to pull back a little bit. And that would be interesting. And he's got a bunch of all gas, no brakes guys in scataboo and dart and you kind of want those guys to maybe pull back a little bit and it's not like the Giants have been staying real healthy. It's.

• 39:46Bill Simmons?

  It's a good point.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, well, I mean, I just, I'm fascinated which way they go because of the first pick there. You get the sense this is Joe Shane's last is the GM, but I don't know, you know?

• 39:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Um, he, he had a tremendous management of a draft last year, but the last time they had two top 10 picks, it was what? Um, Hibdo and, and another Evan Neil, maybe? I think it was Evan Neil. And so are we gonna repeat history with that? So. And the offensive tackle, are you waiting to 10 to get an offensive?

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, no offensive tackles were off the board in that scenario, right? It was.

• 40:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's the other thing. We lived through this with the draft every year where it's like, yeah, I don't think they'll go to nine or 10 and then they go six. And teams get in there and they just panic.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:29Bill Simmons?

  They can't figure out who to pick and they just go with size. How high, what's the highest downs could go that you would be, either of you, that you would be actually kind of shocked by? Like Arizona is out of the question.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Top four would be anywhere in the top four. So Tennessee, but he's not going there. So.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it wouldn't shock me if he went fifth, but I wouldn't do it. And I just heard you guys say all those things about it, but give me a top eight offensive tackle in the league versus the best safety. Like that's, that's gonna win games.

• 40:58Bill Simmons?

  I get it. I was doing all the research for running backs. Cause this ties into the love conversation. And it feels like top five is just too high for certain positions, even though we know we redo the draft.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:10Bill Simmons?

  But six to 10 is not too high. So if you go through all the running backs, basically the last 20 years. The two, two, two and three were Ronnie Brown, Bush, Reggie Bush, Barkley and Trent Richardson. So I'm going to say those first four, three of them, no way that team does it again.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  No.

• 41:29Bill Simmons?

  Barkley, Barkley's still defensible.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Yes. A hundred percent.

• 41:34Bill Simmons?

  He was incredible, right? And it was, and who was the next pick? It was a quarterback. It was like Trubisky or somebody.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  I don't remember.

• 41:42Bill Simmons?

  It was a quarterback.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  Trubisky was 13th overall, but yeah.

• 41:45Bill Simmons?

  No, Trubisky was third, remember?

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Oh, no, he was third.

• 41:48Bill Simmons?

  It was some sort of QB, so.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 41:51Bill Simmons?

  But anyway, so two, two, two, three, we went one for four, even if you count Barkley as a hit.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  He's a hit. It was their problem.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  And you go count Reggie Bush, right?

• 42:01Bill Simmons?

  I don't.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  I don't either. He won a Super Bowl.

• 42:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, no, I don't.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  But Pierre Thomas was the better running back in that, in the Super Bowl, in that year.

• 42:07Bill Simmons?

  So four, four and six, Leonard Fournette, Darren McFadden and Gentey last year.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  That was, by the way, that was.

• 42:14Bill Simmons?

  I think, I don't think any of those teams do that again. Even Gentey, who I thought had some moments, but I just don't think the Raiders would have done that if they could redo that. I think they would take alignment.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:26Bill Simmons?

  But now we go to seven, eight.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  I think he's gonna have a good year this year, but yes, I agree with the premise.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Now you're getting into like the Bijon and.

• 42:32Bill Simmons?

  Peterson, seven, McCaffrey, eight, Bijon, eight.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:36Bill Simmons?

  Pretty good value. And then CJ Spohr nine, Zeke Elliott 10, Gurley 10. All right. So this is a fucking random sample size, but what I learned from that is maybe wait till six to 10. To take love because history says you go earlier. That's a mistake.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it probably indicates teams that are a little bit better than the trash at the time, you know?

• 42:58Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  You know, teams picking it's like the Chiefs are picking at nine, you know?

• 43:05Bill Simmons?

  Right. You're going better. Peterson was in a good situation pretty immediately in Minnesota.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Right. So.

• 43:10Bill Simmons?

  Whereas like Gentey goes to the Raiders and it's not a good situation.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Typically four doesn't go to the Superbowl. Pick four doesn't go to the Superbowl. That's not a normal, you know, occurrence like we saw with the Patriots last year. So I, it's all about where they wind up landing. All, all positions are dependent upon to a certain degree. Quarterback, absolutely. But running back, I would argue maybe the most dependent upon what you have in front of you and, and how you can, how you can block it up. And the Raiders weren't ready. And all those teams you mentioned weren't ready for that guy.

• 43:41Bill Simmons?

  So did you guys like the Bengals trade for the Bengals or no?

• 43:44Speaker 01

  The Bengals trade for Lawrence?

• 43:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  No.

• 43:47Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:48Bill Simmons?

  I just wanted to make sure.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  I, here's the thing. I don't like it in a lot of drafts. I don't hate it as much in this draft. I really don't because he, he's by far the best defensive tackle in this class. If he was to be there, like, who are you getting at 10 that's better than Dexter Lawrence?

• 44:01Bill Simmons?

  So you'd rather have four years of Lawrence versus the 10th pick in this draft?

• 44:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  The only part of it.

• 44:06Bill Simmons?

  You're paying more and then.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  I know. That's, but that's where I, that's, that's a blind spot. That's a weakness for me that I, I like, the cap guy figured that out for me. But I hear you. You're right. You gotta factor it in. I know.

• 44:18Bill Simmons?

  Well, what's a part of it that they had the cap space to, to grab the extra money to fit in? And so basically instead of paying the 10th pick this, they could pay the 10th pick this.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:27Bill Simmons?

  I just would never do it. I would rather trade. First of all, the Bengals needed players. I'd rather trade backwards and try to pick up more stuff. Yeah, true.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  There's a problem. The problem is urgency that is created by situations. And that's why I started this with the Ravens. The Ravens are, have always been good at this, this thing. And some organizations are really good at, there's going to be an opportunity by an organization that, that is going to be presented to us because they're desperate. And if you've got Joe Burrow and the injuries and the timeline and, and now the contracts with the wide receivers, you are desperate to win that.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  And, and I think this is a desperate move. And honestly, it almost never pays off. If you go look at the history, these desperate moves almost never pay off.

• 45:14Bill Simmons?

  I wonder if somebody could run a football team and just stick to like, like somebody hires me as the GM and I'm just like, I only have seven principles, guys. I'm never paying two receivers a lot of money.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:26Bill Simmons?

  I'm good in the draft, I'm just taking alignment on one side of the ball, the other, that's all I'm doing. Um, I'm gonna try to get us a quarterback, like just very, I'm always gonna trade back if I can't decide what to do. And these are my seven tenants and I'll leave everything else to my scouting department.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:41Bill Simmons?

  I'm just saying this, doing this.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  They can, no one can stick to it, though. They always fall in love with a player, you know?

• 45:46Speaker 01

  If I ever got a GM job, if I ever gone that route and taken some opportunities, I like, I've always said, there's a couple of people in my life I would hire, full time.

• 45:55Bill Simmons?

  The common sense guys?

• 45:57Speaker 01

  The common sense guys who are paying, like Pete Woodford works for Major League Baseball.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Pain in my ass, my whole life since we were like 10 years old. Always does the right thing, sticks by the, you know, and like.

• 46:07Bill Simmons?

  So you're the Jets GM and you call Pete and you're like, Reece or Bailey, what would you do? And he's like, what the fuck?

• 46:12Speaker 01

  No, I'm hiring him and he's.

• 46:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you're hiring?

• 46:15Speaker 01

  And he, and I'm gonna give him like four or five things that he's allowed to overrule me on because my emotion or, or the situation or.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  No way, you would never give anyone that power.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  I'm telling you, there are certain things that are blind spots for all of us, including general managers in the NFL. And there are certain principles, if you just stick to them, it's like playing, um, it's like playing blackjack, like over time. But like, who has the patience to play?

• 46:39Bill Simmons?

  So you wouldn't let him overrule you on like three things? You wouldn't hire him?

• 46:42Speaker 02

  I think I'm off the list after the Dexter Lawrence thing.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  There are a couple of things.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  I think I just got cut.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  He's a good, he's a good, we bounce off of one another well, but I don't think there's anything hard.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  Is that what we're calling it, bouncing off one another? Argue.

• 46:55Bill Simmons?

  That's really cute, guys.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks.

• 46:57Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna get this all week?

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 46:59Bill Simmons?

  Through the draft?

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Check us out on Netflix, live for the first and second night of the NFL Draft, we'll be bouncing off one another.

• 47:05Bill Simmons?

  It is funny, like we, Jalen Rose and I, when we were doing the Countdown Show in 2013, we did this, this gimmick called the interview.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 47:13Bill Simmons?

  And we, we went to the lottery combine or wherever and we interviewed every person. We spent 15 minutes with each one in like a, we had cameras.

• 47:22Speaker 02

  Just rapid fire?

• 47:23Bill Simmons?

  Get a feel.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  The players?

• 47:24Bill Simmons?

  For each person.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 47:26Bill Simmons?

  And I can totally see how the how the people can get enamored with certain players.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:31Bill Simmons?

  Now ironically, the ones we got enamored with actually turned out to be good. Like, we love CJ McCollum.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:38Bill Simmons?

  Really, this guy's great. Like, he seems really mature, like, and then his tape, and we're like, I would bet on this guy.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:44Bill Simmons?

  But the reality is you're spending fifteen to twenty minutes with somebody and you're overrating the reaction. But it's hard not to, it's human nature.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Right. And it's amazing what goes into this. And how many, think about how many people and how many flights and how many car rides and how many visits? And how many people in the cafeteria to the training room, to all that? You have these NFL scouts and the salary money and everything that goes into this process, right? And you're handed as a general manager, this basically a portfolio, if you will, of everything you need to know in this human being.

• 48:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  And then your analytics department comes in and tells you all the things you can and can't do and all that. And then you've got the, whether it's AIQ or different intellectual testing. And then you have the psychologists and psychologists and all that. It's amazing to me that we get to this point in the process in like the last month. And the private jet gets, you know.

• 48:35Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  And four or five of the people who are the most influential people go and they have dinner with. They, um, they meet with family agent. They go and they throw some passes out in the, you know, out in the side field or they put them through a test. They get them on the board and they wind up, not necessarily disregarding, but that kind of trumps. Now, all that information is used to kind of to shrink the pool, right?

• 49:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  And so it's down to four or five.

• 49:04Bill Simmons?

  They're just grabbing tidbits every place they can.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  But that, that twenty-four hour interaction, maybe over two, whether it's a coming to our facility, we go out to you in your, your college town. Like, I don't know, ten to twenty hours worth of interaction typically winds up trumping a lot of other stuff.

• 49:21Bill Simmons?

  Would you trust what the coach said? Cause I wouldn't really trust it that much unless the coach was so psychotic about how much he loved the guy.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  It has to be earned. Like, it has to be something that he's told you in the past about a player.

• 49:34Bill Simmons?

  He has a track record with it.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Right, of telling you that, like, you cannot do it right out of the game. And tell them about Jamarcus Russell and all the, the SID at LSU, tell them about.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Were you talking about your own coach or the coach from the school?

• 49:46Bill Simmons?

  Oh, the coach from the school.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I meant, yeah, yeah.

• 49:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Unless it's negative or like you said, a track record.

• 49:51Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  The interesting one is your own coach.

• 49:54Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  That dynamic, but.

• 49:56Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I wouldn't trust my own coach that much at all.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Well, you've got to make sure it fits the scheme or else you're giving them.

• 50:01Bill Simmons?

  I know, but NFL coaches last three to four years, barring like.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 50:06Bill Simmons?

  I would be really interested in the parent interactions. Cause I do think like you could, you could learn a little something. My favorite story of all this stuff was. This might be apocryphal, but it was when the Celtics had the Markel Fultz, Jason Tatum, that when they had the number one pick.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:22Bill Simmons?

  And they brought Markel Fultz to Boston to meet him for the weekend. And he, he was really shy and but they, he apparently he asked. If, uh, if Boston had Chick-fil-A. Like if they had Chick-fil-A franchises in Boston and they're like, no, it's not, we don't have it in Boston. And he was like crestfallen. And they were like, uh-oh, like.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a red flag.

• 50:45Bill Simmons?

  Set off some sort of red flag that he was like. You don't have Chick-fil-A and.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 50:49Bill Simmons?

  I have no idea if the story is true, but it's so good. I almost can't think it'd be made up. But that's the kind of thing that I'd be like, oh shit.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  I could have Chick-fil-A in Philly then either.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 50:58Bill Simmons?

  On the other hand, I love Chick-fil-A, so I can see it from his side too.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I see it from both sides.

• 51:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but those, that was his big Boston question. So they're like, huh?

• 51:06Speaker 01

  You're judging us now, huh?

• 51:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Are you gonna fit here?

• 51:11Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 51:12Bill Simmons?

  All right. So Giants at five and 10 is the most fun team in this draft. Arizona's kind of the most pathetic. They're just wearing a cocktail dress at the bar like, anybody want three?

• 51:23Bill Simmons?

  Anyone? Guys want to have a drink? Three, three down, anybody?

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  And I don't know, you can create your own analogy to it, but, but also. I'm gonna stay.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  Here we go.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  There's also an element with the ownership where you're not, you're, you're out at the bar by yourself, but you're still being controlled by who's making that decision. And I'm, depends on who you, you listen to now there. There's been a lot, just talking to people in the league, there's, there's been talk of maybe ownership wants Jeremiah Love at three and, and.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  That's a whole nother factor, man. These owners that come in like, this is the guy I want.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  And, um.

• 52:02Bill Simmons?

  Hey, Arizona needs so many things. I didn't even know what they need. If I was doing the team needs, I'd be like, ah, players.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  Have you looked at the Dolphins roster?

• 52:10Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's, I mean, that's the saddest situation.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  It is.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  It's beyond.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  I mean, at least they have a lot of picks, so it's interesting, but I mean, it's bad. I'm bad.

• 52:18Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's, it's weird when you trade Jalen Waddle for 30. And then you see all the receivers are going to be available at 30 and.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:25Bill Simmons?

  Their best case scenario is to be maybe as good as Jalen Waddle.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Right, like a notch, a notch below.

• 52:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  They need so much. I don't know that I've ever been this late in the process studying rosters and really diving in and felt more helpless about, about a roster. I actually believe in Miami.

• 52:43Bill Simmons?

  Miami, yeah.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  I believe in John Eric Sullivan. I believe in Jeff Halfley. I like, I think they're the right people to stabilize this thing. Um, but it's going to take more than a minute to get this thing turned around. They've got.

• 52:56Bill Simmons?

  I think that would be fun to just, you have no pressure because you need so many things. It's like, all right, this is like blank slate time.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  And we hear BPA, best player available all the time. Like they literally can just sit there like legs up.

• 53:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Where's our board? Okay, there it is. Um, yeah.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  Call it in.

• 53:14Bill Simmons?

  Who's number three?

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, they take them.

• 53:17Bill Simmons?

  Whereas like, I think the Chiefs have an incredible amount of pressure. I would say the Giants have the most pressure.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:23Bill Simmons?

  Cause you, you gotta nail these picks, but then Chiefs at nine and they're 42. But they they had this Mahomes window that I watched it and you watched it with Brady.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:33Bill Simmons?

  You watched it as well.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:34Bill Simmons?

  Where the draft just ebbed and flowed, the Brady arc. And there were years, cluster drafts where they just missed drafts.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 53:42Bill Simmons?

  Doesn't it feel like And that cost them Super Bowls.

• 53:43Speaker 02

  They're going into that, that era of they're gonna go, they're gonna be very competitive for seven or eight years, but they're not gonna win a Super Bowl. That's what it feels like to me with the Chiefs.

• 53:50Bill Simmons?

  Comes down to the drafts.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  Mahomes will keep them in it.

• 53:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  But now it's the roster turnover. The early Patriots dynasty was a totally different roster than the later Patriots dynasty. Kelsey moving on, Chris Jones is still playing unbelievable level, but he's getting older.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  They've been in that for two years.

• 54:07Bill Simmons?

  I think you felt that last year.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  We're already there.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  I felt it the year before, to be honest with you, and I think Mahomes, but you know what I mean? I felt, I honestly, the years, the last year they went to the Super Bowl and lost.

• 54:17Bill Simmons?

  I think getting overpowered by Philly.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  I think about the comp all the time. The one thing that's really interesting is Andy Reid's not as young as Belichick was when they went to the first three.

• 54:24Bill Simmons?

  And he was terrible last year. I thought they were really poorly coached last year and everyone's afraid to criticize Andy Reid, but they were badly coached.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  He self assessed it.

• 54:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  In, in, you know, in so many ways, like he, he's reinvigorated, like he, he, I think he recognizes it was.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't know, he's three, four years left to coach.

• 54:42Bill Simmons?

  Also, they really, and Belichick did this too. And we've seen teams do this, like really explored the capacity of how many iffy guys can we bring in? Guys with baggage.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 54:54Bill Simmons?

  When

• 54:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:55Bill Simmons?

  Belichick, sometimes these guys can have so much success and these teams can have so much success. I'm like, ah, it's fine. It's one misdemeanor.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:02Bill Simmons?

  You know, or it's like, no, no, he's mostly on time.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 55:05Bill Simmons?

  And I remember, who was the, Josh Gordon was a classic.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  Josh Gordon.

• 55:09Bill Simmons?

  But Belichick just went in that mode, like it'll be fine. We'll bring him in. We'll figure it out. The Chiefs had a lot of those and I think they were probably at capacity.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  Yep, I think they were.

• 55:18Bill Simmons?

  What do you think they need at nine? Cause the easy one would be like, take the best corner. It's right.

• 55:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:22Bill Simmons?

  In the vicinity of where he'd go.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  I think they're gonna get a corner. They pick, they pick at nine and 30, right?

• 55:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  29. Uh, 29.

• 55:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  And Miami's at 30 and then Patriots 31 and obviously Seattle.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  The interesting element is that in this is I think they want they if they were to get aggressive, which I would I would not do, but I would understand it would be to move up for a pass rusher like.

• 55:48Bill Simmons?

  So the the Reese Bailey leftover guy can we get up there and grab him?

• 55:53Speaker 01

  Conversations have been made that doesn't there are a lot of conversations have been made that things we never even knew about, you know, and you find out after the fact. Um, it doesn't mean a trade's gonna happen. I don't moving up from nine to three costs a lot and I don't think they're in the.

• 56:07Bill Simmons?

  Would you trade nine and 40 for three in this draft? Cause I would rather just stay at nine and take 40, right?

• 56:13Speaker 02

  You're gonna get a pretty good player for it.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you could get a Ruben Bane, you get a Ruben Bane. So there's that edge rusher. They need it. They need a wide receiver they can count, right? So there's that element of it. Then there's this Andy Reid, like my understanding is Andy Reid is like, we've got to get another offensive lineman. And I don't know where you get that.

• 56:33Bill Simmons?

  Which you could take at nine.

• 56:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  But you can't take it at 29. You can't count on that being there at 29. Now, maybe you maybe move up from 29 to 24 and it costs a whole lot less or something like that. So.

• 56:45Bill Simmons?

  See, I wonder if they're gonna do that with tight end.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  Siddiq?

• 56:49Speaker 02

  At nine?

• 56:50Bill Simmons?

  No, at moving up to like the

• 56:53Speaker 02

  Gotcha.

• 56:53Bill Simmons?

  Low teens or high twenties if they feel like they have a chance to swoop in and get him.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  If they love him, they could. Brett Veach is not afraid to pull the trigger.

• 57:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  But I just I the manage managing the element of we need an edge rusher. We need a we need a wide receiver. We need a replacement for um, Kelsey.

• 57:13Bill Simmons?

  They need a tackle.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  And we need a tackle and Andy really wants us to get a tackle.

• 57:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  And there's only seven of them and that might not get to 29. So we need those three things. We're not in the business of giving away picks to go move up.

• 57:26Bill Simmons?

  Also tough when you already use draft capital to draft the tackle, but now you've decided that's not the tackle.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:32Bill Simmons?

  That's where the Patriots got in that spot a couple of times.

• 57:35Speaker 02

  I don't know if they decided that, but he's missed 19 games in the last two years. I just don't know how you're going into this. And the right tackle, Jalen Morris started, I think, five or six games at most in a season. I would have, I would have.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  I would have.

• 57:48Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 57:49Speaker 02

  Pissed on X about you can't use that pick on a guy who's not gonna be a starter. I was like, what are you talking like this guy's probably gonna start like.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  I want you to think about how much money these organizations spend, right? Simmons is so talented as a left tackle. I would. I'm not going to make any incident. I would have whatever care team that was necessary. Whatever that would be, okay? To be like round the clock, let's get, let's make sure this guy has everything he needs because he is the personal protector of the most of the number one.

• 58:22Speaker 02

  Like Ricky Williams at Texas, do you remember that S L story that came out where he was like dropping banana peels behind him and someone would pick him up and throw him out for him?

• 58:28Speaker 01

  It's just because that guy.

• 58:30Speaker 02

  Ricky Williams, like I always think about that stuff.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Cause there's no salary cap on support.

• 58:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  That guy's your answer.

• 58:37Bill Simmons?

  Coaches and, and support are the two things you could just spend whatever you want to.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Right. So I would get that guy right.

• 58:44Bill Simmons?

  I think it might be over for them.

• 58:48Bill Simmons?

  I mean, at least for this window of it.

• 58:50Speaker 02

  Is that you just being hopeful as a Patriots fan or are you?

• 58:52Speaker 01

  Two years ago, this is, this is they are.

• 58:54Bill Simmons?

  Mahomes coming off.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Now, I'm pretty, pretty devastating injury. It's, the only reason I mentioned this is they have the seventh best odds to win the Super Bowl right now, and that seems crazy to me.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  They.

• 59:06Bill Simmons?

  Think about all the things that would have to go right for them to be a Super Bowl team.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  That's because, that's because there's a lot of people who would put money on it because it's the Chiefs and.

• 59:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I get it, but I'm saying, but it's instructive because that's the perception is they're going to flip the switch and be fine this year. And I feel the opposite.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  I don't think.

• 59:22Bill Simmons?

  I'd be really surprised. I mean, they're going to have an easier schedule.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  The unknown, obviously, is how, when Mahomes comes back, is it?

• 59:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, what's he going to be like?

• 59:29Speaker 01

  What's he going to be like?

• 59:29Bill Simmons?

  Brady wasn't, when he came back in oh nine, the offense was good, but I really felt like it took him like an extra year to be Brady.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was a famous Belichick clip of like follow through, man, like follow through.

• 59:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. Cause you, you get all these guys going around your legs and I don't know, I just felt like it took a while for him not to think about that.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  It's in your brain. Like when you spend the entire offseason recovering and rehabbing and you're worrying about like one thing, really? Yeah, truly, that's the one thing. And then so you get out there and you're protecting that one thing. So it takes a minute to get over it.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  What was always the knock on that Patriots run was the AFC East was just garbage every year. And the, the AFC West with Knicks being hurt.

• 1:00:07Bill Simmons?

  Never agreed with that.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  You know, I know, I hear you, but if you're going off the argument, the Chargers, I think are the, I think the Chargers are coming, man. I think they are coming on and you're going to have a tough time in that division.

• 1:00:18Bill Simmons?

  That's the team. I think they're the one I'm the most afraid of in the AFC is the Chargers.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 1:00:22Bill Simmons?

  Cause I just felt like last year they probably would have.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  But why can't they?

• 1:00:26Bill Simmons?

  Been right in there and just had dumb tackles who weren't playing.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  Why do we talk about San Francisco's injuries? I swear to you, I've been, I've been doing this for 26 years. I swear to you, I've been talking about the Chargers injuries for a good 18 of those years.

• 1:00:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Some organizations.

• 1:00:37Bill Simmons?

  But they don't have an electromagnetic button next to that.

• 1:00:40Speaker 02

  I love that they're doing stunnies on it.

• 1:00:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  It's in their head now.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  But every year, it seems like the Chargers, oh, they could have, they'll get those guys back from injury and it'll be just fine. So I, I hope, I hope so. It would be great to see. Um, but they're frightening if they stay healthy.

• 1:00:56Bill Simmons?

  Right, yes.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they, what are their odds? Yeah, so they have the fifth best odds. That makes sense to me. 15 to one.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01:04Bill Simmons?

  Better, slightly better odds than the Pats. Um, the Giants being 71 is pretty crazy. Cause that seems, I just think though, I think that'll be 30 to one by the time the season starts. They're gonna have enough talent with the schedule and we just have seen this every year that there's no way that they're not gonna be in the mix somehow.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  This isn't a draft thing, but spending this amount of time, like really diving into these rosters?

• 1:01:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  I mean, obviously the Seahawks have what they have, the Rams have what they have. I don't know that there's an organization with a better roster, let's just say in the AFC, top to bottom roster wise than what Nick Casario has built in Houston.

• 1:01:41Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  The quarterback element of it and what is really going on there. And there's been speculation and rumors and all like, and you drafted him that high and he was that good as a rookie. You know what I mean? If, if they get him right, and I don't even mean right, like playing his, but like three quarters of what he was playing as a rookie.

• 1:02:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:02:04Bill Simmons?

  20 to, 20 to one for them.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  They're frightening.

• 1:02:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  But, but that's the biggest if in sports.

• 1:02:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Like, their rosters, oh, like, some teams with needs, it's like the first two are really important needs. The second one, we need to get some depth. The third, you know, or the third, the fourth and, but. For them, like they, there's, yes, their offensive line, let's continue to build that, but they don't have a lot of, like, they're loaded with deep and wide receiver and running back.

• 1:02:34Bill Simmons?

  They're receivers coming back this year.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Their defenses.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  The Rams are up there too, man.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  No, I said the Rams in Seattle have what they have.

• 1:02:40Bill Simmons?

  But I mean, I was gonna talk about the Rams with one of the pressure teams at 13, because the Puka thing's a huge story. It's been one of those kicked under the rug.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:49Bill Simmons?

  This guy's had a lot of personal shit going on publicly. And then finally went into rehab and this was the best receiver in the league?

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Bill Simmons?

  And we have no idea what we're gonna expect from him this year now? Or what was going on with him? Or is it gonna get better? And they're one of the teams that's just like, we're probably taking a receiver, probably taking a receiver, like so blatantly that I almost don't trust it.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  I don't think they are at 13. I think they're gonna take a receiver in the second round.

• 1:03:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  There's like, I wore you out with this, like, attraction is different, right? Like, you know, like one person you'd be attracted to, everyone's beautiful and all that.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  Like blondes are brilliant, that's right, yeah.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. For the Rams, they, with their system specifically, they're not attracted to a lot of the fastest, tallest, all those receivers. They're attracted to one type, and that one type is a physical, son of a bitch, blocking, contact balance, toughness up. And we're gonna scheme you up and we'll get you open. And all you gotta do is break that first tackle and just ram, you know? And keep it rolling and block for our run game. And so, I can get that in the second round. There's Dejounte Stripling from Ole Miss, there's Jeremy Bernard from Alabama. There's even the third round. So, I think Les Snead is the biggest wild card in this first round of the draft.

• 1:04:15Bill Simmons?

  They seem like a downsy kinda team to me.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  I, so here.

• 1:04:19Bill Simmons?

  Like moving up like a couple spots and just swooping in and getting them.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  They have guys there. I don't know if, you know, like, they have players.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  It's one of two things, right?

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  I just, I don't envision less and Sean sitting back at 13 and we'll take a guard or we'll take a

• 1:04:34Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  It's either we are all in as all indicators are pointing.

• 1:04:40Bill Simmons?

  They have to be all in in general because Stafford's got two years left max.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Right. We're all in and like we really don't like if we want to give up 2027, we're not, we're not that worried about it. We can give up a second next year or something like that and go move up and target a guy. Jeremiah Love is fascinating to me if he starts to fall. Six, Cleveland.

• 1:05:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I mean, can we stop? Can we, can we make a rule that he can't go to Cleveland?

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm saying trading.

• 1:05:08Bill Simmons?

  I'm just saying like, that's my worst case scenario for him or for most of the guys in the draft.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:14Bill Simmons?

  But yeah, so you're saying Rams switching goes 13 to 16.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  Something like that would be, would be something to look out for.

• 1:05:21Bill Simmons?

  Like a little, like Todd Gurley 2.0 action for them?

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  But then what if it's a total pivot and it's like, yeah, we're going to be here beyond Stafford and let's, we're, we're doing a deal now with Matthew and we're going to keep him happy. But, but we are in love with Ty Simpson and so we're just going to take him at 13.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  We can move on. Don't ask more questions. We don't have to dwell on it, but I'm just saying, I said it.

• 1:05:41Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Okay, next.

• 1:05:42Bill Simmons?

  Holy mackerel. Wouldn't you at least trade back to do that?

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  He's going higher than you think.

• 1:05:49Bill Simmons?

  That was one of my, uh, one of the questions I had for you because I, I was watching, uh, one of the channels this morning. They were talking about is 21 too high to take Ty Simpson for Pittsburgh? And I'm like, what are you guys talking about? He's definitely, the question is, will he be there at 21 for Pittsburgh to take? Cause somebody is going to shoot their wide and take him in the top 20 would be my prediction.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  I, that's the information I'm getting and I don't definitively know. I throw the Rams out there because I'm getting information definitely. And I know the Rams at one point really liked Ty Simpson. Like that's, that's. Firm.

• 1:06:22Bill Simmons?

  His Fanduel draft position is 29.5 under.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Because even if you're the, even if you're the Cardinals, you are, you're worried that there's another team or I don't.

• 1:06:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:34Bill Simmons?

  You can't wait.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm, I'm told that the Jets do have, have interest, but I'm also, I was told that the Jets.

• 1:06:40Bill Simmons?

  Jets at 16?

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  No, no. Um, at 33 could take him. I think.

• 1:06:46Bill Simmons?

  He's not getting out of the first round. Like I just don't see it.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  We're saying the same thing.

• 1:06:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, plus you get the extra year. That's the secret sauce to all of this. You get the fifth year if you take him in the first round.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  You talked about Pittsburgh. Is Aaron Rodgers gonna make an appearance and say he's coming back in front of the tens of thousands of draft fans there? And then what were their reaction?

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  No, cause Aaron Rodgers wants it.

• 1:07:06Bill Simmons?

  He's milking this.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  Aaron Rodgers, how many times are we getting put, I don't even understand why like Schefter and, and those like, why people are out there and I know that he and those two have a thing and I love it. Right. Um, but I don't even understand why there's the, this like, you know, you should tell the organization this stuff. We get, it's every year. It's the same thing. It's just the human being, the human being. Aaron Rodgers wants this and he would like nothing more. Going out there gives closure and then we're still not talking about it through the second day of the draft.

• 1:07:34Bill Simmons?

  Him and Jerry Jones are the two that like, how, how can I get attention?

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  Right. This is gonna be going on in late March.

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  But the draft being in Pittsburgh.

• 1:07:42Bill Simmons?

  Late, yeah, late, late. No question.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'll be going on June.

• 1:07:46Speaker 02

  In Pittsburgh, he can go out in front of all the fans and soak it up.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  He wants us all to be like, is Aaron here? You know?

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I'm here for it though.

• 1:07:54Bill Simmons?

  Kind of the sad thing about that is nobody's doing that.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. It worked the first season.

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  Oh, that's what I mean. Like, does he come out and be like, I'm coming back? And all the Pittsburgh fans are like.

• 1:08:02Bill Simmons?

  It's like, oh, cool.

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  Great. Great. He's going back.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  You know, like it's not the response that he thinks it's gonna be.

• 1:08:08Bill Simmons?

  Also, I, I said this to you last year. I just think people get amnesia with NFL seasons and we throw ourselves in the draft and free agency and then it's the summer and then we get to August and people just don't remember what happened the year before.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  There's a reset.

• 1:08:22Bill Simmons?

  We left last season and be like, yeah, Aaron Rodgers, probably not winning more than one playoff round at most with Aaron Rodgers as you could be at age 42.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  And it's like four months off and everyone's like, Aaron Rodgers.

• 1:08:33Bill Simmons?

  Could they get him?

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, Aaron Rodgers.

• 1:08:35Speaker 02

  They got Will Howard right now, so I don't know.

• 1:08:38Bill Simmons?

  Well, we finally made it. The NBA playoffs, no more tanking discussions, at least for a couple of days. We get to watch the best players and teams compete every day when the stakes are highest. And when I watch, I like to bet on FanDuel. FanDuel is a brand I trust, easy to build, buy bet. I know I'll get my winnings instantly. I love looking at the odds there. So this week, I still feel like Orlando is being overlooked. They were like plus nine, something like that. I think that's a 50 50 series potentially. I also like Denver and Minnesota. I think Minnesota is a really good road team, but you could also get them in Minnesota. Those would be the two I would look at. I'm gonna have at least one more set of picks over the weekend. I'm gonna put on Twitter. Check out my picks in the FanDuel Sportsbook app and on my Twitter feed.

• 1:09:23Bill Simmons?

  Don't forget to boost your potential winnings before you place it. FanDuel, play your game. So we think, so Rams are off the board. We have no idea what they're gonna do. And then the Philly thing is the other weird thing about this draft.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  Why?

• 1:09:37Bill Simmons?

  We talked about this before we started with this AJ Brown trade that is apparently happening. And yet, unlike in the NBA where you say, we've agreed to a trade. We can't become official till July 15th in the NBA.

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:50Bill Simmons?

  NFL, it's like, well, they can't trade him until June 1st because then they can split his cap. So it would have to happen after June 1st. It's gonna happen. Is it happening or is it not happening?

• 1:10:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:10:02Bill Simmons?

  And then all the variables that could change this happening, including like a wide receiver ending up for either the Patriots or the Eagles that they get excited about. AJ Brown feels like he has leverage and says, well, I need a contract extension if we're gonna do this. Like, I'm just glass half empty on this AJ Brown thing.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  Is this the Patriots fan speaking or just in?

• 1:10:22Bill Simmons?

  Patriots fan speaking.

• 1:10:23Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah. Is this trauma from when the Red Sox didn't get Aaron?

• 1:10:26Bill Simmons?

  Trauma from when we didn't get everybody, Alex Friedman, four months ago. He's coming for 150 million, then he wasn't.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:34Bill Simmons?

  I just don't, when you get agents involved and just outside factors, I just don't trust anything until. It happens.

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  If you're someone, a receiver gets hurt or something happens where you think someone needs it and all of a sudden they're in the market and they're calling Philadelphia.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, but AJ Brown's wife is is calling about dance classes in Brookline or something like that, right?

• 1:10:52Bill Simmons?

  I mean, he did grow up a Patriot fan.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:10:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  No, I I understand.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  It's almost too good.

• 1:10:58Bill Simmons?

  What if, what if he's in Vegas and Jalen Hurts is there too and they're like, let's, let's have dinner.

• 1:11:03Speaker 02

  Let's hash it out.

• 1:11:05Bill Simmons?

  Two hours later, it's like, hey, we're good. AJ wants to stay.

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:09Speaker 02

  So. The only problem there is Howie's like, well, I just traded for Wicks and he brought in this other guy.

• 1:11:13Bill Simmons?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  We're gonna draft someone and yeah.

• 1:11:16Bill Simmons?

  So they're picking 23.

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, the.

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  Beagles.

• 1:11:19Speaker 01

  But they, but they're not gonna pick 23. It's Howie Roseman. Howie's got, he has to move around. And they need an offensive tackle. And what's gonna happen is we're gonna have, we're gonna have, um, Francis Mouni from Miami and Spencer Fano from, from Utah. And somewhere in that top 10, 12 range, right? And then it, there's this like second wave of, and I think it starts at 17. There could be a team in between. Uh, the Ravens could go off and could go guard and Benga Ywanay from Penn State. But then 17 is Detroit and everyone knows that they've put in more work than every other organization, these offensive tackles. So the Jets are at 16, Tampa's at 15. They're already getting phone calls.

• 1:12:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  From organizations like the Steelers, the Eagles, the Texans, the, um, who are the other, um, the Texans, the 49ers.

• 1:12:13Speaker 02

  The Bears.

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  The Bears are a possibility. So all those, you got this murderer's row of teams that need offensive tackles from 17 to 30. I mean, Miami, if they don't get a tackle at 12, they could use one. So.

• 1:12:26Bill Simmons?

  I can't say, I can't say the Patriots don't need a tackle.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  No, it's 31. Sorry, 31. Yeah, absolutely 31. So 17 to 31, there's about eight teams that need an offensive tackle and there's at that point only five remaining.

• 1:12:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  So there's gonna be movement there.

• 1:12:42Bill Simmons?

  That's why seven and a half over.

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:45Bill Simmons?

  Do you wanna hear the Patriots excuses I've talked myself into?

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  Oh, here we go.

• 1:12:48Bill Simmons?

  Since Super Bowl?

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  Why they lost?

• 1:12:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:12:52Bill Simmons?

  Drake was hurt.

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:12:53Bill Simmons?

  Just, I just, I don't know if that's true or not, but, well, we think it's true. Yeah.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:12:58Bill Simmons?

  I did see him throwing the mini footballs at the basketball game a couple weeks ago. I don't know if you saw that.

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  It was good?

• 1:13:02Bill Simmons?

  Studied that.

• 1:13:02Speaker 02

  I did see that actually, yeah.

• 1:13:03Bill Simmons?

  Thought he was snapping it again.

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:13:05Bill Simmons?

  Drake was definitely hurt. That's one thing I say. Uh, Will Campbell definitely playing on a bum knee.

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:11Bill Simmons?

  Cutting it out. It, you know, he was a whipping boy during the playoffs. Now he's a hero to me. He's played through pain.

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:17Bill Simmons?

  God only knows what kind of suffering he had.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  Wasn't great either, by the way. Like, I mean, everyone talks about Campbell, but Jared Wilson.

• 1:13:22Bill Simmons?

  Our whole line got destroyed. The, the, Seattle didn't even know which side to go after.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  Did I tell you about the, him and Elliot Wolf?

• 1:13:29Bill Simmons?

  Oh, no.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  We, we had, uh, we had Elliot Wolf and we did the GM series.

• 1:13:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  And, um, and we had Elliot Wolf and I, I had, I had met him before, but I didn't know him well. And Mensch got in late the night before. We got in Indianapolis, all sorts of weather in New England. You don't deal with it out here anymore, Bill.

• 1:13:46Bill Simmons?

  I don't.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  And I know. Um, and, and so we hadn't had a chance to really talk about it. We sit down. I asked a couple of questions. I'm talking about like, Elliot, what's it like, you know, Ron, you're with your dad and like the bowels of, of Lambeau Field and you're watching tape as, you know, I'm kind of getting him warmed up, right? The fluffers.

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  The fluffing. Yeah.

• 1:14:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  Fluffing, yeah.

• 1:14:03Bill Simmons?

  Lot of fluffing from him.

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  Question three goes from Mensch. I could kind of feel him like, he's like, Will Campbell, I, you know.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  I thought it was early.

• 1:14:12Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you did tell me this story.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  Will, Will Campbell, I, I know. I saw the short arms on tape. We saw it in the playoffs and I'm like.

• 1:14:21Bill Simmons?

  He's going for it.

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  I was like, you guys moving to guard? I was like, I didn't say it that way, but I was like, everyone wants to move to guard.

• 1:14:25Bill Simmons?

  It would be a great guard.

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  He was awesome. He looked back, he goes, he is absolutely our last tackle.

• 1:14:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  You're moving.

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  He was great about it.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  He was great.

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  But I felt like I had to ask. I mean, I've been ripping Campbell all, like now he's going to be on our show and I'm not going to say anything.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  It was the time.

• 1:14:39Bill Simmons?

  The only thing I worry about him is I think he's such an intense, committed, competitive, crazy, all about the football team guy. Like the moment he got drafted, he's like, I am now Drake May's bodyguard.

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  I'm gonna die for him.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:51Bill Simmons?

  And I really wonder mentally how he handled just getting his ass kicked in the playoffs, you know? Like, he's probably been successful at that position at every stage of his life, dating back to like age four.

• 1:15:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Bill Simmons?

  You know?

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Some of the stories too are he's, he's, he's as intense as he can get.

• 1:15:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Like the team worries about him a little bit, taking the job home.

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  Taking the job home.

• 1:15:12Bill Simmons?

  So I just, I hope, I hope he got through that because we've certainly seen some Boston athletes over the years that.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:18Speaker 02

  Kind of wilted.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Fuck.

• 1:15:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that had that, well, that, yeah, that had the bad moment and they were kind of.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  I can't remember an offensive tackle having that kind of moment, that kind of.

• 1:15:27Bill Simmons?

  Plus now Ruben Bain is the new short arm guy.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:30Bill Simmons?

  He passed his torch. He's like, here, Ruben. Everyone can talk about your arms though.

• 1:15:35Speaker 02

  There's an offensive tackle from Utah I love and he's got shorter arms than Will Campbell and everyone's like, what's the deal, dude? How can you? How can you like one over the other?

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  It's different tape.

• 1:15:43Bill Simmons?

  So the other thing I, the other path stance I have now is we just should have lost in Denver and it would have been fine. Like lose there in a blizzard, they score and with five minutes left.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  First year.

• 1:15:55Bill Simmons?

  We don't have to go to the Super Bowl and get this huge ass kicking.

• 1:15:58Speaker 02

  No one wins in Denver.

• 1:15:58Bill Simmons?

  It turns out right, it turns out right after the game Drake May was actually hurt the whole time.

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:02Bill Simmons?

  And we're just like, great. Okay. Great season. Let's move.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  Building.

• 1:16:06Bill Simmons?

  It's like getting that Super Bowl ass kicking just made it so much worse.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:11Bill Simmons?

  I really wish it hadn't happened.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  It's not a good thing.

• 1:16:13Bill Simmons?

  Right. And then you think about all the bad signs for this year and the bad juju that comes with this.

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:19Bill Simmons?

  The AJ Brown thing, 2022 and 23, his first two years when he got traded from Tennessee to Philly. 303 targets in those two years, almost 3,000 yards and 18 TDs. He's all, he's gonna be 29 this season. There's good, pretty good track records with people moving that age.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:39Bill Simmons?

  And.

• 1:16:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:42Bill Simmons?

  It seems good. Something scares me about it and I don't know. I didn't like the way he looked last year. And I'd love to know more about why did he look that way?

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  I agree with that. I also think fresh start, like I think everyone kind of looked that way on the offense for the Eagles last year. There was a lot going on. So I'm hope, I would be.

• 1:17:00Bill Simmons?

  Like they were just going to work like this sucks.

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  Scheme problems.

• 1:17:03Bill Simmons?

  Hate my job.

• 1:17:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. With all the reports, I, I think it was just a drain and obviously he wears his emotions on his sleeve and it's very public about everything that he's dealt with. And I think it just, it, he hit a point.

• 1:17:14Bill Simmons?

  Is there a receiver that doesn't wear their emotions on their sleeve?

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  Very few.

• 1:17:18Speaker 02

  Like Fitz was one, that's it?

• 1:17:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:22Bill Simmons?

  That's be part of his Hall of Fame case.

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:24Bill Simmons?

  Never wears emotions on his sleeve.

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  First ballot.

• 1:17:27Speaker 02

  Unlike any other receiver.

• 1:17:28Bill Simmons?

  Actually literally didn't wear sleeves. He was sleeveless the whole time.

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  I just think about Drake with his development, getting him that. He doesn't have that. He's never had anything close to that.

• 1:17:40Bill Simmons?

  Well, Mina said on NFL Live yesterday, which I was watching, that the Pats had man to man defense, the highest number of any team in the league.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:51Bill Simmons?

  Cause you could feel it watching the game, cause every defense was like, eh.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:55Bill Simmons?

  We, we, what are we worried about? Let's just play up on all of these guys.

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:59Bill Simmons?

  And AJ is like, by all these advanced stats, the best guy against man to man defense. And this will be a game changer.

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:18:06Bill Simmons?

  So I get it.

• 1:18:07Speaker 02

  The thing was interesting about the ESPN article that came out about the Eagles and Jalen Hurts calling his own plays. And did you hear, did you read this?

• 1:18:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:15Speaker 02

  So he was changing all the play. If you're an office coordinator and you're game planning for a guy, if you have a talent like AJ Brown and you're like, we're game planning in this way. And all of a sudden your quarterback is changing everything that's no longer making him the focal point of the offense.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  On certain plays at least. And then you have an opportunity to go to play for Josh McDaniels, who's gonna like, that's what he does.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:18:34Bill Simmons?

  Well, they'll also play with pace, which is the thing I never understood with the Eagles. I know they, it seemed like this was an actual strategy for them to limit the minutes in the game because of possessions, because of the math of this. I don't think the Pats think that way at all. So they, they would be more like, oh, we'll put pressure on you and we have AJ out there and you're gonna have to be constantly worried and keep your defense on the field.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  And our quarterback can run if you turn, you know, so.

• 1:19:00Bill Simmons?

  Hopefully he can run and throw on like the last two games of the season.

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:19:05Bill Simmons?

  I assume he'll be able to roll out and throw again.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  You're wearing the scars. I don't know if they will.

• 1:19:11Bill Simmons?

  When we were calling the Drake may rolls out and whips a, whips a line drive play. I was like, he's fucking hurt. Like you can't tell me he's not hurt at this point.

• 1:19:19Speaker 01

  It wasn't even.

• 1:19:20Speaker 02

  The arc and the velocity were just different. One of the Patriots taking a tight end. They're gonna need a tight end, right? I feel like people aren't talking.

• 1:19:26Speaker 01

  Twenty eight of them invited to the combine.

• 1:19:28Speaker 02

  Talking about tight end enough.

• 1:19:29Bill Simmons?

  It'll be some third round guy.

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, or maybe four.

• 1:19:31Bill Simmons?

  They signed a blocking tight end. They were all excited about.

• 1:19:34Speaker 02

  Julian.

• 1:19:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Julian, somebody.

• 1:19:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:36Bill Simmons?

  Julian Bell. Um, okay. Last thing. Well, second to last thing. So Zona and Cleveland are the trade down teams.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:19:47Bill Simmons?

  And you think Saints Cowboys have 12 and 20 and like getting attention. Jets at 16. Rams at 13. Are there any other trade up teams?

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  I'm trying to sit here. I don't wash. Washington's not going to. Uh, Cleveland we talked about.

• 1:20:10Bill Simmons?

  I think that's the list.

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's probably the list.

• 1:20:12Bill Simmons?

  I was trying to figure out.

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  When we get to the, the offensive tackles, I think when we get to like Philly and some of those teams, I could see a move up.

• 1:20:18Bill Simmons?

  A little like quick moves back. Four or five, yeah, four or five spots.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:22Bill Simmons?

  I was trying to figure out, like, somebody is on the board at nine that Jerry gets all excited about because he's 98 years old. Like Jeremiah Love falls to nine, some or or down, somebody Dallas loves.

• 1:20:35Bill Simmons?

  Something we can anticipate, right?

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  You know.

• 1:20:37Bill Simmons?

  And could there be a, they have 12 and 20?

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:20:41Bill Simmons?

  And the Chiefs have nine and 40. Could there be like a? You take our 12 and 20, we'll take back nine, 40 and a third, one of those type of trades.

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, the problem, the problem with that theory is I'm told the only reason that the, um, the Cowboys would move up is for an edge rusher. And if there's an edge rusher worth taking there, I, I think the Chiefs would take, that would be Ruben Bain.

• 1:21:03Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  We do this, we talk about, you talk about the amnesia in the offseason, the NFL, there's amnesia every year with the Cowboys in the draft.

• 1:21:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  You know that they've had 34, 37 picks, I want to say, somewhere in the mid to high 30s of picks in the first three rounds dating back to 2014. And one time they have moved up, and that was DeMarcus Lawrence in 2014. Since then, that nothing.

• 1:21:28Bill Simmons?

  So it's a lot of chatter about moving up.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  Oh, Jerry's going crazy.

• 1:21:31Bill Simmons?

  Well, it worked on me because I.

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  No, I know. We do it every year, but this year it actually would make sense as long as it doesn't require pick 20. They've got to pick, I think, 92 overall, the third round. I could see that. Uh, but that's not getting up to three. That's moving up a handful of spots to, to go get an edge rusher. I just don't know how feasible it is unless you're giving away next year or something, which I think. I, I, I said it's a fireable offense.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  Now.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  Kind of walked it back, by the way.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  I haven't.

• 1:22:01Bill Simmons?

  I like fireable offense is one of my favorite phrases and would be a good blog name.

• 1:22:06Speaker 01

  But yes.

• 1:22:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  It would be.

• 1:22:07Bill Simmons?

  It'd be even a good band.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:09Bill Simmons?

  Going to see fireable offense today.

• 1:22:11Speaker 01

  It's got a ring to it, right?

• 1:22:12Bill Simmons?

  At the Garden.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So a fireable offense is trading a first round pick from next year. That class is going to be, and it's not just the quarterback. So, but.

• 1:22:20Bill Simmons?

  Has Mitch already started his work on the class of 27 yet?

• 1:22:23Speaker 02

  Hmm. The quarterbacks we know pretty well. Not, not, not a lot of the other players.

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  I got a mock draft coming out on, yeah, way too early mock draft for next week.

• 1:22:32Bill Simmons?

  I love those.

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  Taking the show on Monday.

• 1:22:34Bill Simmons?

  I mean, it's.

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're the problem.

• 1:22:36Bill Simmons?

  But you know what would be, you know, the good podcast is, is reviewing the way too early mock drafts.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  Oh, they do it.

• 1:22:42Bill Simmons?

  In like February. No, you guys doing it.

• 1:22:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, we should do that.

• 1:22:46Speaker 02

  That's, that's a great idea.

• 1:22:47Bill Simmons?

  Couple of quarterbacks way up there.

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:50Bill Simmons?

  But that's the thing with the draft. It's so volatile.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  Thanks, Bill.

• 1:22:54Speaker 02

  No, you're right.

• 1:22:55Bill Simmons?

  You're guessing with 20 year old kids.

• 1:22:57Speaker 02

  Close, Nick. Yeah.

• 1:22:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. My son's 18 and he's had five zags just in the last seven months. Like I'm just, these are teenagers and young dudes. Who knows?

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we saw some zags this fall.

• 1:23:09Bill Simmons?

  Well, the.

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  With the quarterbacks.

• 1:23:11Bill Simmons?

  Our Alar, you're out on him?

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  I, I wasn't in on him last year.

• 1:23:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was never.

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he's going to go probably in the third round. There's some teams that like him.

• 1:23:19Bill Simmons?

  Nussmeyer?

• 1:23:19Speaker 02

  He loves Nussmeyer.

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  I like Nussmeyer. Yeah, I think there's, I think there's a shot.

• 1:23:23Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  You give me Nussmeyer in the third round, the right system?

• 1:23:25Speaker 02

  Doesn't have a ton of starts. He gets hurt. He's small. I don't, I don't, I don't see it.

• 1:23:29Bill Simmons?

  I didn't see it either. All right. Um, wild card, crazy. I'm looking at the Fanduel odds. Is it Bailey or Reese? There's no chance anyone else goes to?

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:23:41Speaker 02

  What if it's a trade? There didn't think there was going to be a trade last year.

• 1:23:44Bill Simmons?

  Everyone else's odds are 125 to one and up. So it's really, everybody's decided these are the two.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's definitely.

• 1:23:51Bill Simmons?

  Number three, Reese is the favorite at plus one thirty, Bailey's plus two sixty, Love is plus three thirty.

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  Say them again.

• 1:24:01Bill Simmons?

  Reese plus one thirty, Bailey plus two sixty, Love plus three thirty. Which I thought was fairly enticing.

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  Bailey's assumed to go the second overall pick, so that makes Reese the favorite. The problem with the Arizona pick is that there's a legitimate chance that a team moves up to three and Arizona takes a below market.

• 1:24:20Bill Simmons?

  But if they move up to three, who are they taking the other?

• 1:24:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:23Bill Simmons?

  All right, four.

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  What's Sonny Stiles' number for four?

• 1:24:27Bill Simmons?

  For four?

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:29Bill Simmons?

  Well, Love is plus one fifteen, the favorite. Bailey's plus four ten and Stiles is plus four ninety.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  That's interesting. I think Stiles could be, I'm not saying he will. What I've been told for Tennessee is it's if one of those edge rushers does get there, let's say Arizona takes Jeremiah Love at three.

• 1:24:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  They would take Reese, let's say. If not, Sonny Stiles, Robert Sala views it differently than most. That middle linebacker is like, that's equivalent of getting an edge for him.

• 1:25:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  That's the, you know, Fred Warner, that's their, so that's something to look out for.

• 1:25:07Bill Simmons?

  I could see Stiles going for it too. I also didn't mind Tennessee's running backs last year. But you'd have to really love Love, but it makes me nervous spending all that capital on a QB and a running back.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:19Bill Simmons?

  Right? You're gonna, the fourth and the first pick in back to back drafts.

• 1:25:24Speaker 02

  The thing about Tennessee's run game, when I started looking at it, Pollard's a pretty good back. I mean, thousand yards for like five or six seasons in a row.

• 1:25:30Bill Simmons?

  Money down the stretch last year.

• 1:25:31Speaker 02

  He's good.

• 1:25:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he was like winning fantasy drafts.

• 1:25:33Speaker 01

  Spears.

• 1:25:34Speaker 02

  But Spears can't stay healthy.

• 1:25:35Speaker 01

  Stay healthy, yeah.

• 1:25:36Speaker 02

  So they had the third fewest carries, you have a rookie quarterback and they have the third fewest carries in the league. They gotta get, it doesn't have to be Love, they gotta get another back that they can, they can get more committed to the ground game. Like, they just have to.

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  What I'm interested in is you're sitting there at four.

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  You have to take styles at four, or you try to bait up a team to get, come get Jeremiah Love. And the Giants putting out, all of a sudden in the last 72, it's tough to manage all this, man. Cause you're, I'm having conversations with people who are actually making decisions. And we're talking about all 31 other teams and what they could do and what they're hearing, what scouts are hearing.

• 1:26:15Bill Simmons?

  And they're kind of using you to find out what you're hearing.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:26:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  And I'm using them to find out what they're hearing. And it's, you know, and so we're kind of, and we're doing the like, you know, the tap dance.

• 1:26:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:28Speaker 01

  And then you get off the phone, you get on the next call. So there's just a lot of, but I always get worried in the last 72 hours, to like 150 hours of, why is this, this message is coming, it's resurfacing, or this is the first I've heard of this, you know?

• 1:26:44Bill Simmons?

  Right. Is this late developing news? Or is this a purposeful steer?

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  The decisions are basically made, so, but all of a sudden the Giants, it's like, oh, if Love is there, they'll take him. But wouldn't, if Love's there, isn't that like, come, come move up, come move up and get it? What they don't know is maybe that might drive the market up for Tennessee to get a good deal to move out of four. Now, Stiles is probably going to go seven, so where would that be too? But, um, but yeah, I would just keep an eye on that.

• 1:27:12Bill Simmons?

  Tennessee, I wouldn't mind moving back a couple of spots and picking up something, cause I just need people. Fifth pick, the odds, Stiles is the favorite at plus 185. Tyson's plus 280.

• 1:27:23Speaker 01

  I'm told it's not Stiles.

• 1:27:24Speaker 02

  Take the field on that one.

• 1:27:25Bill Simmons?

  Love plus 380. Caleb Downs, plus 550.

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  What about Tyson?

• 1:27:34Bill Simmons?

  Tyson was plus 280.

• 1:27:38Speaker 01

  I think Tyson's in play. I mean, I know Tyson's in play, but do they think they can get him at 10? Same thing with Downs. Jeremiah Love's the wild card.

• 1:27:46Bill Simmons?

  Taking Tyson at five would be kind of insane, I think. That seems too high.

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  Cause of the injuries?

• 1:27:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, cause of the injuries. I want my receivers to be in the field. Yeah.

• 1:27:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:59Speaker 01

  It, it becomes this balancing act of, all right, now we've fallen in love. And but where should, where do we really truly think we should be able, we should be able to take him versus where can we take?

• 1:28:10Bill Simmons?

  Why did the Giants need another stud receiver, by the way?

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  Well, Malik Neighbors, they don't even know, they're worried about when he's coming back to full strength, like the start of the season, there's part of that. You've got a quarterback that needs another weapon. Honestly, it reeks to me. Jordan Tyson feels like if we can get him at 10, 10, awesome.

• 1:28:29Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  But the information, for what it's worth, is saying that they might, they could take a swing there.

• 1:28:36Bill Simmons?

  Can I give you my five types of receivers?

• 1:28:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:28:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:28:40Bill Simmons?

  Speaking of Jordan Tyson, the injury prone stud?

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:28:43Bill Simmons?

  Really tough one.

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:44Bill Simmons?

  Really, I have to have a lot of meetings about that. High floor ceiling guy, but something leaves you a little cold? Carnell Tate? Like, yeah, he's gonna be awesome, but it's, well, why aren't I more excited to take him?

• 1:28:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:57Speaker 02

  Well, because he was the second best receiver on his college team.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  So was JSN?

• 1:29:01Speaker 02

  I get it, but that was the same thing on JSN, was this guy gonna be?

• 1:29:04Bill Simmons?

  High floor ceiling leaves me a little cold.

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:29:07Bill Simmons?

  Physical in traffic wins every ball guy? This guy just goes either way.

• 1:29:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:12Bill Simmons?

  Like, he just, I, you know, this was like the, the DeAndre Hopkins was a great example of this.

• 1:29:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:29:19Bill Simmons?

  The Patriots have had guys like this. Um, other times, the guy just can't get open.

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Who's the, it depends on the scheme.

• 1:29:26Speaker 02

  Kelvin Benjamin for the Panthers, wasn't he a big guy?

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:29Bill Simmons?

  So Denzel Boston is the version of that this year.

• 1:29:32Speaker 02

  I like him.

• 1:29:33Bill Simmons?

  Um.

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  We know.

• 1:29:34Bill Simmons?

  The inside outside guy that everyone calls Twitchy?

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:38Bill Simmons?

  That's Casey Concepcion?

• 1:29:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:29:40Bill Simmons?

  Twitchy's a good one. So the Pats had Kyle Williams last year who's Twitchy.

• 1:29:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:44Bill Simmons?

  Twitchy.

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:45Bill Simmons?

  He'll beat you out of him.

• 1:29:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:47Bill Simmons?

  And then a slot stud, which is my personal favorite, that's Lemon.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  But yeah.

• 1:29:51Bill Simmons?

  I like when it's just like, you know what this guy is, he's an awesome fucking slot guy, and he's just gonna get open and he can block. That sounds great. I'll take that guy.

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  Well, then you take-

• 1:30:00Speaker 02

  How early though?

• 1:30:00Bill Simmons?

  The second round.

• 1:30:01Speaker 02

  Cause that's the, yeah, second round. There you go. Right.

• 1:30:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you'd love Jeremy Bernard. You'd love Dejounte Stripling. Omar Cooper Jr. At one point, we thought was gonna be second, but probably, but it's gonna be first. Um, those, those are those guys.

• 1:30:14Bill Simmons?

  And then there's the other, there's the sixth type, which is the guy, what's his name? Brazil Jr.?

• 1:30:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:22Bill Simmons?

  It's one of those like-

• 1:30:23Speaker 01

  Chris Brown was the third.

• 1:30:25Bill Simmons?

  Fall in love and, or you're getting fired. One of those picks.

• 1:30:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:28Bill Simmons?

  Depending on how high you go.

• 1:30:29Speaker 02

  It's a lottery ticket. Yeah.

• 1:30:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. But he's just seems, the highlights for him are awesome.

• 1:30:33Speaker 01

  Awesome. Yeah.

• 1:30:34Bill Simmons?

  You're like, whoa.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  And then the, the Trey Lance's brother is another one like that. Tall, four threes, all of it. Yeah.

• 1:30:40Bill Simmons?

  The one guy I would never take is just a, this dude's super fast and we'll figure out the rest.

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:45Bill Simmons?

  The Pats took that guy 20 times.

• 1:30:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:48Speaker 01

  Well, the, the Raiders used to take him every year. Then there's the, the Bengals, John Ross.

• 1:30:53Bill Simmons?

  Yep. That was a good one.

• 1:30:55Speaker 01

  Was it Devin? What was the name of the?

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  Dante.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  The Jets. The Jets took one.

• 1:30:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, in the eighties, this guy used to go all the time.

• 1:31:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:02Bill Simmons?

  They used to, the Raiders and the Jets. Who was the guy the Jets had that one time? They took him in the top four.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  Oh, shoot.

• 1:31:09Bill Simmons?

  Remember him? It was Johnny Lamb Jones.

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah. That's great pull.

• 1:31:13Speaker 02

  That's insane.

• 1:31:15Bill Simmons?

  It's like, he's really fast. Isn't that it?

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. We've had those.

• 1:31:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there's a lot of those. I think we're getting better at not taking those guys too high. It was like, oh, he runs a four two. Cool.

• 1:31:26Speaker 02

  Historically, they don't do.

• 1:31:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:28Speaker 02

  They just don't do well.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  The fastest guy at the combine is like, is like one, is like 10% chance of you hitting on where they actually get drafted.

• 1:31:34Bill Simmons?

  Who's your chip on the shoulder receiver this year? Cause that guy hits 100% of the time. The guy who's just angry that he's not being mentioned with better guys and produced everywhere he went.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  It could be Jeremy Bernard.

• 1:31:45Speaker 02

  It could be.

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  The Alabama guy. Wasn't even the best receiver by, by everyone's measure at Alabama.

• 1:31:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  Um, you had Ryan Williams just disappeared.

• 1:31:54Bill Simmons?

  Could we get him in the second round?

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:57Bill Simmons?

  Jeremy Bernard?

• 1:31:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't, I, I just don't get it. Cause all I hear about, it's, it's the same conversation. We had these conversations and talk about how speed isn't as important as you think when you get down to that, that range. And like Jeremy Bernard, all he does is make plays on tape, man. Like all he does is make plays.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:12Speaker 02

  He's best player on that team last year. I mean, and people are like, eh, I don't know. I don't know. He's not-

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  Dynamic.

• 1:32:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, he doesn't make-

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  He isn't, but if, if you, if you fit him right in the right system, he's got a chance to be. You know, eighty catcher year guy.

• 1:32:26Bill Simmons?

  If I was the wide receiver draft specialist, I would just want guys that got open on the tape that I was watching.

• 1:32:31Speaker 02

  And caught the ball.

• 1:32:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:32Speaker 02

  Get open.

• 1:32:33Bill Simmons?

  Did you get open? Did you catch it when they threw it to you?

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  It sounds so easy.

• 1:32:36Bill Simmons?

  It sounds so easy.

• 1:32:36Speaker 02

  It's so overcompensating.

• 1:32:37Bill Simmons?

  Those guys about like, he's amazing in traffic. It's like, cool. No thanks.

• 1:32:41Speaker 01

  Antonio Williams is one from Clemson. He just gets open.

• 1:32:45Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  Gets open.

• 1:32:46Bill Simmons?

  Is there a beloved running back for you in the second, third, fourth rounds that you're just to commit?

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:32:53Speaker 02

  Maurice Jones Drew. That's what he's built like. He is a short, low to the ground.

• 1:32:58Bill Simmons?

  I love those guys.

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  He dances too much. Like, yeah, he danced behind a Washington offensive line that wasn't great and I get... Joe, he just, he... His twitch and his build and his contact balance, like, I think he's gonna be a really good pro.

• 1:33:13Bill Simmons?

  Second round?

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  Fourth.

• 1:33:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:15Bill Simmons?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:33:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:17Bill Simmons?

  And who's your, who's your Tyler Shuck this year?

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  Cole Pate.

• 1:33:21Bill Simmons?

  McShay fucking nailed that last year. Oh, yeah, you talked about him on my pod. So you're still with him?

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you might be able to get him late third, early fourth.

• 1:33:28Bill Simmons?

  Are you in on this?

• 1:33:29Speaker 02

  No, not at all.

• 1:33:31Speaker 01

  And he looks like Tebow.

• 1:33:32Speaker 02

  McShay will sit there all year long and tell you about how important snaps are. We're getting like,

• 1:33:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:36Speaker 02

  texts from everyone. Stanford Steve is busting his balls all year long about like, how many snaps though, McShay? How many snaps? And then we get into the process and Garrett Nussmeier is the greatest even though he doesn't have that many snaps. And he pulls this guy out from the FC, the watered down FCS.

• 1:33:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:52Speaker 02

  Where all the guys have left for better teams and, and Bryce Lance, who's the best athlete on the field, is running around like it's backyard football. And this lefty who was playing running back two years ago was all of a sudden gonna be the next, the next great quarterback. He called him better than, um, Carson Wentz, right? You said he was a better prospect than Carson Wentz?

• 1:34:08Speaker 01

  I think, I think, yeah, I think he has better traits.

• 1:34:10Bill Simmons?

  Sometimes you can just get a lot of confidence after you hit one of these. Like, this might be your heat check moment. Post Shuck?

• 1:34:17Speaker 01

  I'm rolling.

• 1:34:18Bill Simmons?

  You're just trying to make the magic happen again.

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  Yep, Dart and Shuck last year.

• 1:34:21Speaker 02

  Give me Taylor and Green.

• 1:34:23Bill Simmons?

  I love Shuck. I don't know how many years he's gonna play because he takes huge hits and doesn't care. Starts the same way.

• 1:34:29Speaker 02

  The history's not good either.

• 1:34:30Bill Simmons?

  Shuck gets up every time.

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:34:32Bill Simmons?

  Or at least he did last season, but I liked him.

• 1:34:34Speaker 01

  He's a tough, he's a tough... I just, I, yeah.

• 1:34:38Bill Simmons?

  All right, so your plan this week?

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:34:40Bill Simmons?

  We are gonna be doing shows all week. We're gonna be live on Netflix.

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:34:44Bill Simmons?

  During the first round Thursday night.

• 1:34:45Speaker 01

  Oh, I wanted to run this by you.

• 1:34:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:47Speaker 02

  No, here we go.

• 1:34:47Speaker 01

  Not my idea. It actually came from Rich Eisen. I'm just gonna be honest. The, instead of the chime from ESPN, the

• 1:34:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  What a point of players picked.

• 1:34:58Bill Simmons?

  Oh, dude, the Netflix noise?

• 1:34:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:35:00Bill Simmons?

  That's a good idea.

• 1:35:01Speaker 01

  Right? You like it?

• 1:35:02Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. We'd have to find out from the guys. I'm looking in the control room.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  They were, they were working on it, but I just wanted to.

• 1:35:06Bill Simmons?

  That's a really good idea.

• 1:35:07Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:35:08Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:35:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the NFL draft is live on Netflix.

• 1:35:11Bill Simmons?

  I feel like I'm about to watch a true crime documentary, but no, it'll be the next pick.

• 1:35:15Speaker 02

  With all the stuff that he asked you, were, were you worried when he said, I want to run something by you on your show?

• 1:35:19Bill Simmons?

  I mean, with McShay, you, you gotta hold on to your seat at all times.

• 1:35:22Speaker 02

  Right, like, yeah, this should be good.

• 1:35:24Bill Simmons?

  Where we're going.

• 1:35:25Speaker 01

  It's fair.

• 1:35:26Bill Simmons?

  No, the Netflix chime is good, though. That, that actually is pretty doable. So we got Thursday night, Friday night live, then we'll do a Saturday, like,

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:35:33Bill Simmons?

  wrapping up the whatever, and then.

• 1:35:35Speaker 01

  And then we're in Sunday, we do a, the big 32 team, so it lasts the offseason, so you can kind of, yeah, get, get the deep dive in that.

• 1:35:44Bill Simmons?

  All right.

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  And Monday, we're in taping the way too early mock draft, and then we're out, we're out of your hair.

• 1:35:48Bill Simmons?

  Don't forget to do the redo of last year's mock draft.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  Hey, Dan Colmer, you got that?

• 1:35:53Speaker 02

  In the lead up, right? Not, not now, but in the lead up.

• 1:35:56Bill Simmons?

  No, like, just when you need evergreen content for when it's kind of dying in the spring.

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's great.

• 1:36:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 1:36:02Bill Simmons?

  All right. Good to see you guys. Thanks for coming on.

• 1:36:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks.

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:06Bill Simmons?

  And now it's time for today's with the assist segment presented by State Farm. On the court, you can't expect everything to go as planned, but that's when your teammates come in. Because when you know someone's there, you have the confidence to take on whatever comes next. And we've seen some pretty iconic teammate combinations. My favorite was Bird and McHale in the eighties for the Celtics. Three titles, 81, 84, 86. The best forward combo I think we've ever had. Compliment each other perfectly. Both guys' bodies broke down by the late eighties, but we had an incredible ride for them, and they really complement each other perfectly. Life's no different. Unexpected things happen. You want to know someone's there to help. Like how Larry Bird was there to help Kevin McHale. That's where State Farm comes in. They've got easy to use digital tools,

• 1:36:50Bill Simmons?

  like the State Farm app and Neighborhood State Farm Agents when you want to talk to a real person. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there with the assist. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state.

• 1:37:03Bill Simmons?

  With Van Lathan, we're in the Ringer tailgate set. You saw the Michael Jackson movie last night. We did rewatchables together. We taped rewatchables for next week. We did Ghostbusters. And then you left to go see Michael Jackson, a movie that ends in 1989.

• 1:37:17Speaker 03

  With Bad, yeah, with Bad, with a live performance of Bad in London. I'm gonna try not to spoil as much as movies you guys can go out and see the movie for yourself.

• 1:37:26Bill Simmons?

  Well, we know what happened to Michael Jackson.

• 1:37:28Speaker 03

  We do, we do. But, you know, there's still some things in there that I think people are gonna be interested in seeing.

• 1:37:33Bill Simmons?

  Like what?

• 1:37:34Speaker 03

  Uh, the performance of Jafar Jackson in the movie is a revelation. He's phenomenal as Michael Jackson.

• 1:37:41Bill Simmons?

  Is there any relation? I know nothing. I've read nothing. I know nothing. Okay.

• 1:37:44Speaker 03

  Jermaine's son. So Jermaine's son, Jermaine Jackson's son plays Michael Jackson, which in some ways probably some like weird cosmic justice for Jermaine Jackson, you know? There wasn't always a-

• 1:37:56Bill Simmons?

  Did he need justice?

• 1:37:57Speaker 03

  What? No, he didn't. But what I'm saying is that they, at times Jermaine and Michael didn't have like the best relationship or whatever. But, you know, they're brothers, so that's what happens in family. Um, but yeah, so he plays Michael Jackson. He dances like Michael Jackson. He embodies the spirit of Michael Jackson. And honestly, he nails it. When I say he nails it, he nails it to a degree that like a Hugh Jackman Wolverine type nailing it. He really nails Michael Jackson in the movie. And it's a shame because the movie is an abomination.

• 1:38:25Bill Simmons?

  Abomination?

• 1:38:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:27Bill Simmons?

  Well, okay, so what?

• 1:38:29Speaker 03

  So I have to, I have to, uh, you guys know me, I always start in love. Homer Domingo, great. Neil Long, great. Jafar Jackson, great. It's not a serious movie. It's not a serious movie. It's a movie about somebody who we all love to pieces. Love Michael Jackson to pieces, right? He is almost like a mythical character, not even like a human being. And that's the way the movie treats him. The movie treats him like a mythical character.

• 1:38:57Bill Simmons?

  Don't all these music hagiographies treat the, the people that way? Like Elton John, Freddie Mercury, like I'm kinda used to this with my, with my biopics for movies.

• 1:39:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, to a degree. You're not wrong, which is why I realized something while I was watching Michael. The biopic is dead. The biopic, as to me, the biopic and maybe even the biographical documentary as a storytelling tool, I think is gone.

• 1:39:28Bill Simmons?

  I would say both are, I've been saying this for a while. We saw this happen with books. Books used to be, they would do biographies about people that people participated in. And sometimes it'd be pretty hard hitting. You know, maybe the person would have regretted participating at all. And then eventually that shifted to the autobiography. And almost every time when somebody does the autobiography, it's like, all right, I'm going to take this with an entire salt shaker of salt, not just one grain. I'm going to just assume this is this person's version. It's going to be very flattering to them. They're going to remember the things they want to remember, not be that candid about the things maybe they don't want to talk about. And that's just what I'm getting. And in documentaries for a while, they felt pretty, you could, you kind of felt like

• 1:40:12Bill Simmons?

  you were getting all the sides of the stories and something shifted with that in the last 10 years.

• 1:40:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the streamers had something to do with it in terms of the amount of people that were doing biopics on themselves while they were still around, I think.

• 1:40:24Bill Simmons?

  Or the estate that controlled.

• 1:40:25Speaker 03

  Estate that controls it. When you look at this movie though, there's like right off the bat, there's a storytelling issue here. The movie has no story. There's no story to the movie.

• 1:40:35Bill Simmons?

  Well, wasn't the famous, the story was that they did it a certain way and the estate made them change everything, right? I mean, this has been a long time.

• 1:40:42Speaker 03

  I want to make sure people understand, I am not complaining about this movie or down on the film because the movie didn't go into some of the more controversial aspects of Michael Jackson's life.

• 1:40:52Bill Simmons?

  Controversial?

• 1:40:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:54Bill Simmons?

  So, hey. That's the word where it is, okay?

• 1:40:57Speaker 03

  The sexual assault allegations against.

• 1:40:58Bill Simmons?

  Oh, we can say that as well.

• 1:41:00Speaker 03

  Let's say that. I'm not, I'm not tripping because the movie didn't get into that because I didn't expect it to. It's that, it doesn't really interrogate anything about Michael Jackson really that seriously. Like the, the movie, the, what you were supposed to come away from is that Michael Jackson is like.

• 1:41:20Speaker 03

  Divinely touched, extraordinarily good.

• 1:41:25Bill Simmons?

  I thought that anyway.

• 1:41:26Speaker 03

  Uh, well, but what I'm saying is.

• 1:41:28Bill Simmons?

  Maybe as a musician or a person?

• 1:41:30Speaker 03

  No, no, no, as a person.

• 1:41:31Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:41:31Speaker 03

  Like, as a person, the movie goes through a great length, great lengths to saint him, to make him look like an every, every time there's a kid, Michael Stasur, the kid, every time. And you see people looking at him as he's doing these good works. And they seem to be like arrested by his purity. It's really laid on thick. Now, look, once again, the same magical space that Michael Jackson exists in for a lot of people, he exists in that space for me. And I understand that, that that's, people wanna kinda live in that. But like, you gotta give me something, right? You gotta give me, you, you gotta give me a real analysis of where the genius and the drive and all of that stuff came from. And the movie just doesn't take any of that seriously.

• 1:42:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, let's, alright, so if the estate's like, here's all the stuff that's off limits, but you can make a movie anyway. I'd be, I'd probably have focused it thriller to when his hair gets caught on fire and he starts getting weird. And he becomes so famous that he basically can't do anything. He becomes a recluse. Um, on top of the fact that the hair thing seemed like it was really damaging to him.

• 1:42:38Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:42:38Bill Simmons?

  Like, he got burned, he felt like he was disfigured. Led to a lot of the stuff that, his, his skin changing, all, all, all the plastic surgery. That seemed to be the tipping point moment. Combined with the victory tour when him and his brothers went out and they bankrupted the Sullivan family, basically. But that, just that whole era, I just would've centered it there versus, hey, stopping in 1989 is insane, Bill. What, like, why would, why was that the stopping point?

• 1:43:04Speaker 03

  I think you know why. I mean, if you, if you.

• 1:43:06Bill Simmons?

  Well, why not stop in like 1987? Why'd they pick 89?

• 1:43:09Speaker 03

  Well, if you go to 1997, you can't not talk about.

• 1:43:12Bill Simmons?

  But I'm saying, why not just stop in 87? Just stop with bad.

• 1:43:15Speaker 03

  Stop before bad. Like, they, they get to, they get to him, uh, on a, on a world tour. It's like him doing a solo world tour, which was a big deal for him. He wanted to do a solo world tour, so they stopped with him doing the bad world tour. Here's a frustrating thing. Everything that you just talked about, that's all in the movie.

• 1:43:31Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:43:32Speaker 03

  All of it's in the movie. His plastic surgery stuff is in the movie. Vidoligo stuff is in the movie. Um, the burning of the hair is probably the thing that they, that the movie gets the most right, right? Interesting. Because of the reason why he's doing that commercial, obviously at the behest of his father. Um, he's, wants to go back out on tour with his brothers, like what it cost him. And how him being burned actually starts his, uh, relationship with, uh, with painkillers and stuff like that, which we all know would eventually take his life. So that sounds interesting to me. But it doesn't, it, it just, it's just on the screen. Yeah. Okay, it's, it's, it's, there's nothing, so it's just like, hey, like, I have Vidoligo, I have to take this medicine for it.

• 1:44:14Speaker 03

  Like, Michael, at one point says he doesn't like his nose, the next thing he comes home and he, and he's had a nose job. Yeah. Right? There was a movie called The Jackson Family and American Dream, a mini-series from the early nineties, right? I saw it. Okay. That movie treats Michael Jackson as a real fragile wandering mind of genius in a real serious way. There's a scene of him looking in the mirror, talking about the fact that his face is breaking out, talking to his mother about his nose. And you get the feeling of how displaced he felt in his body at some time, right? And it's a serious scene, it's like a real scene.

• 1:44:55Speaker 03

  And, or when Motown 25 is about to happen and Michael goes, I'll do it with my brothers, I'll perform with my brothers, but I want a solo spot. It's a powerful moment of him like stepping away. This movie just can't get to any of that stuff. It's, it's on the screen, but not really interrogated in any, in any way. But I do know what is interrogated. A weird scene with Miles Teller as the lawyer. Right. Where Michael Jackson is. Miles Teller in this movie? But, bro, as, as the fucking, I'm sitting next to Jomi, I'm like, we're watching the scene and there's this weird scene where all of these guys are sitting around and, uh, he fucking talks to Miles Teller's character and he's like, everybody get out the room. You stay, you're my guy.

• 1:45:37Speaker 03

  And then there in the movie, and I'm like, yo, whoever that guy is. Right, he, he greenlit this movie. He has something to do with this movie because this scene doesn't make any fucking sense to be in a movie about Michael Jackson. Now this guy pops in and you got an A-list star playing him, it didn't make any sense whatsoever. And then at the end of the movie, I'm looking and it says, yeah, look, producer, John Bronco, or whatever his name is, whatever. So like. I don't mean to trash it because there are, I think that people are gonna enjoy it because you're gonna take a trip down memory lane. But it's just, it was just like glossy bullshit.

• 1:46:12Bill Simmons?

  Right. Well, Antoine Fuqua was the director.

• 1:46:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:46:17Bill Simmons?

  So when he probably signed up for something that he felt like was gonna be a completely different movie and now has to pretend this was the movie he made, which is clearly not the case.

• 1:46:26Speaker 03

  I mean, the movie isn't poorly made. I mean, it's got all, it's got like.

• 1:46:29Bill Simmons?

  It's well done gloss.

• 1:46:31Speaker 03

  Well done gloss, but like, I don't know. People are gonna hear this and they're gonna be like, how could Van be this upset about it? Because Van is the one that year after year goes into the theater to watch some of the most ham-handed superhero shit that's ever existed, right?

• 1:46:53Speaker 03

  It occurred to me.

• 1:46:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:56Speaker 03

  I held out a difference, or I made a distinction here. This is the MCU-ification of a biopic. This is the, we know that we have you, so we don't have to do anything else. Which is the criticism about the MCU that exists now, about superhero movies that exist now.

• 1:47:15Bill Simmons?

  You signed up for this, so it's not our fault.

• 1:47:17Speaker 03

  Hey, you're in here to watch action figures fly around.

• 1:47:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:21Speaker 03

  And that's all we gotta give you. Earlier on, I think the exciting thing about like those movies was that they did not do that. They played around with genre. They took chances. They did other stuff. But it got to the point where they knew they had us, and so we were gonna watch whatever it was, and now there's a lot of people that are disillusioned with them. When I go to see a movie about this type of person at that, this type of impact, you wanna come away feeling like you know what made that guy tick.

• 1:47:46Bill Simmons?

  So what would be the perfect IP that you would wanna sign up for, for Michael Jackson? Because for me, it would be like a 10-hour documentary that was like warts and all. Like, let's go. Let's dive into this dude.

• 1:47:57Speaker 03

  There are two different movies. One movie would be. This same movie, but just about the making of Thriller.

• 1:48:03Bill Simmons?

  Hmm, so you confine it to like eighty-two to eighty-five, that's it?

• 1:48:07Speaker 03

  Just about the making of Thriller.

• 1:48:09Bill Simmons?

  By the way, that's what they should have done.

• 1:48:10Speaker 03

  Right, like when I say just-

• 1:48:11Bill Simmons?

  Cause that takes them off the hook with everything that happens in the nineties.

• 1:48:14Speaker 03

  You can flashback to stuff that happens. We really don't necessarily need the whole Jackson Five journey. It is one of the most famous journeys that's ever existed in Yeah. in Superstardom. But the making of Thriller is very special. It's a special time in music, it's a special time in culture, and it's a special time where this, this person like reaches their zenith, like an athlete, like was, was the season that Michael Jordan just became the guy that everybody was waiting for Michael Jordan to become? Like, that doesn't happen in

• 1:48:45Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:48:46Speaker 03

  culture as much as we think that it does.

• 1:48:47Bill Simmons?

  They tried to do that with the Springsteen movie and it was weird. They picked Nebraska, which, I'm a Springsteen guy.

• 1:48:52Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:48:53Bill Simmons?

  Nebraska was a really interesting choice, but it was basically, they told the whole story to set up what happens with Born in the USA, which they then don't go into.

• 1:49:01Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:49:02Bill Simmons?

  So it's like, we assume you already know what happened with Born in the USA. This part's more interesting. It's like, eh, you know what would have been really interesting? Born in the USA.

• 1:49:10Speaker 03

  Well, with that, and, and if you go granular, if you get deep into like what Michael had to sacrifice, uh, what he was going through, the pressure he was under, you see how-

• 1:49:21Bill Simmons?

  Oh, child star.

• 1:49:22Speaker 03

  That piece of art-

• 1:49:23Bill Simmons?

  He's in the seventies cocaine era, he's at Studio 54.

• 1:49:26Speaker 03

  All of that stuff.

• 1:49:27Bill Simmons?

  Everyone's trying to get in with him.

• 1:49:29Speaker 03

  And just after, and what it means to be like the biggest star in the world. That's one. Number two, an interesting story that no one talks about is the just ridiculously amazing story of how Michael Jackson came to control the Beatles catalog.

• 1:49:45Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:49:46Speaker 03

  Like, not just, hi, I'm cool with Paul McCartney, Paul has the idea, Michael is shrewd enough to go and, and work him on the idea, just everything that had to happen. For him to get that because that ends with a deal for him.

• 1:50:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:04Speaker 03

  To like have to perform in Australia, right? And him performing in Australia, one of the accusers.

• 1:50:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:11Speaker 03

  Ended up, so there's a whole bunch of things that happened. I mean, you'll necessarily have to get into that. There's a whole bunch of things that happened with that. And it's one of the more, that is a story about the genius, the business genius and the cultural genius of Michael Jackson.

• 1:50:24Bill Simmons?

  I would also throw in the Lisa Marie Presley wedding. It's the third movie I want to say. I just don't know what happened with that. That was one of those, nobody knew what was going on the entire time.

• 1:50:34Bill Simmons?

  We still don't know what happened.

• 1:50:35Speaker 03

  We don't. And I remember they came out on MTV and it's like, no one thought this would last. And my dad was like, it hadn't lasted. Like, what are you, like, what are you talking about? It hadn't lasted yet.

• 1:50:45Bill Simmons?

  I think with some of these things, the biggest things we've ever had, which is basically like Elvis, the Beatles, Michael Jackson. These things come around content wise every few years. Like it happened on the Beatles a couple of years ago when that, that thing, the behind the scenes Peter Jackson documentary, that was awesome.

• 1:51:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:02Bill Simmons?

  And it was like, oh, the Beatles are having a moment again. And then it goes, and then six years later, something else will happen. I think that's happening with Michael Jackson now. I know everybody doesn't like the movie, but I think it's going to be the catalyst to a reexamination of all the stuff he did. Cause what, what really happens is the new generations who don't, you know, like my son, when my son was like five. He didn't know backstory of Michael Jackson. He just knew he liked the songs.

• 1:51:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:28Bill Simmons?

  And the kids get into it and it's a generational thing that never stops. And I think this goes to a bigger point, which we were talking about with, when Kanye was here at SoFi a couple of weeks ago about people being able to separate the art from other stuff that may have happened.

• 1:51:45Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:51:45Bill Simmons?

  And how you can compa, if you like the music, you like the music and you can just put it there. And you can kind of push the other stuff this way. And that whole dialogue about whether that's something we, should we be that way? With the heart, what the heart wants.

• 1:52:01Speaker 03

  We'll have any choice. I mean, just if we're being honest, when I say we don't have any choice, what I mean is, is like, I can choose if I want to not to, uh, listen to Michael Jackson music or to whatever. What I can't do with him specifically, not all the artists that have been involved in fuck shit are like this. But with Michael Jackson, it's so tied to the most formative years of my brain.

• 1:52:28Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:52:28Speaker 03

  That if I see him or I hear the music, my body reflexively does something.

• 1:52:33Bill Simmons?

  Right. You hear Billie Jean and your leg just starts moving.

• 1:52:35Speaker 03

  There's nothing you can do. Now, you can make this decision to talk about things responsibly and make sure you hold space for victims and make sure you have these conversations with the gravitas and the weight that they deserve, right? You can do all of that.

• 1:52:47Bill Simmons?

  Nobody wants to do that when they're on Spotify on a walk at two in the afternoon or working out. And they're just like, fuck it, I'm gonna put my Michael mix.

• 1:52:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, it's, it's true. And so the reality of all of this, and by the way, I just wanna say this real quick. And this is, you know, people can feel how the way, the way I want about this. I worked at TMZ for a very long time.

• 1:53:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:05Speaker 03

  Worked at TMZ for a long time. So the people that I know that have looked into, uh, Michael Jackson's various cases, the people that I know have looked into them in a really granular way, like in a really detailed way. Looking at his situation is interesting because I'd have to be real, real observation.

• 1:53:29Speaker 03

  The people that I know, the deeper you get into all of the stuff that happened with him, the more questions you actually have about whether or not he ever was actually guilty of something. I, the news director at TMZ back in the day, just like, wasn't, I'm not talking about, he's not from South Baton Rouge like me. He was a white boy from Orange County, swore up and down. He's like, man, I have all of these documents. He didn't do anything.

• 1:53:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:52Speaker 03

  All of this stuff. And so there is, there is this thing with him and all of his cases. He beat it in court. There's this thing with him to where the more you get into it, of people that I know that really have deep knowledge of everything that happened, they look at it and they go, they don't think that he did anything. Now, maybe that's me coping. That could be me coping. But the reality of the situation is that is true for people that I know that have really looked into it.

• 1:54:18Bill Simmons?

  That's how I feel about Mike Frabel.

• 1:54:26Bill Simmons?

  Look man, the guy just wanted to rest.

• 1:54:30Speaker 03

  The other six people, they were there.

• 1:54:32Bill Simmons?

  It's a great resort.

• 1:54:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a great resort.

• 1:54:33Bill Simmons?

  It's like a relaxation weekend.

• 1:54:36Speaker 03

  But to your point though, the movie, the first thing I did when I got home was put on Michael Jackson shit on YouTube. The first thing I did, but even that, if you do a biopic about Michael Jackson and Jafar Jackson, once again, in the performance and in, in, in, in the dancing, it's great. If you do a biopic about Michael Jackson, the best parts can't be like making Thriller or performing on stage. Cause if I want that, I could just go to YouTube and watch that. So there has to be other parts of the movie that aren't oriented around the music and around someone doing a Michael Jackson essentially an impression. Uh, and that movie, this movie just doesn't have that.

• 1:55:17Bill Simmons?

  Apparently there's an incredible Elvis documentary right now that somebody spent a lot of time on, Bosnian Man, I think.

• 1:55:22Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:55:23Bill Simmons?

  And it was like behind the scenes Vegas, they found all this footage and it's amazing. And if that had come out in like 1989, it felt like it would have been the biggest movie in the world. Now it's 2026, Elvis has been dead for 49 years. I don't know if he has the same hold on people under 50. I think like people in their seventies and eighties might care. I wonder when Michael Jackson's gonna hit that point. I would argue with like in the Spotify era where people are just downloading music, it might not hit that point for like 40 more years.

• 1:55:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:55:52Bill Simmons?

  Where people are just like, there might be some five year old right now in a car on the way home from school, they're listening to Thriller. And they don't know any better. They don't, they don't know anything other than the songs they're listening to.

• 1:56:03Speaker 03

  You know, and this might be the old man talking, but

• 1:56:09Speaker 03

  and Elvis is a, you know, ridiculously important American pop culture figure. It just feels different with Michael Jackson. I don't, I don't know.

• 1:56:17Bill Simmons?

  I think, I think that's generational though.

• 1:56:18Speaker 03

  It probably is. Everything is, everything culturally expires. Everything culturally expires.

• 1:56:23Bill Simmons?

  Because it's the same thing for like Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, um Frank Sinatra. There are these people that had these runs, but then as the years pass, there's nobody there to kind of keep the torch going with the flames. You know what I mean?

• 1:56:36Speaker 03

  Ain't none of them people got a thriller though.

• 1:56:38Bill Simmons?

  That's true. Elvis was way up there though.

• 1:56:40Speaker 03

  Elvis is.

• 1:56:41Bill Simmons?

  I mean Elvis was the biggest star we had in the world.

• 1:56:43Speaker 03

  I know, but.

• 1:56:44Bill Simmons?

  For years.

• 1:56:45Speaker 03

  But that's how we thought.

• 1:56:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:48Speaker 03

  Then the biggest star came into the room. It's just different.

• 1:56:51Bill Simmons?

  You don't have to tell me. I was there. Michael's the biggest, he, he's the most talented, biggest star I've ever seen in my life.

• 1:56:57Speaker 03

  Right, a- and.

• 1:56:58Bill Simmons?

  Like him doing the Motown 25 was like probably the greatest non-sports TV moment I've ever had.

• 1:57:04Speaker 03

  And so I remember watching that just over and over and all of the videos. Michael has so many different eras. Like you can't really put it all in one biopic because it's like, his life was like, it had like three or four sequels, right? Until he, until he passed on, but.

• 1:57:19Bill Simmons?

  And a lot of analysis too, like just long conversations with friends in high school about what does Mama Say, Mama Say, Mama Puss Say mean?

• 1:57:27Speaker 03

  Mama Puss Say, yeah, like.

• 1:57:28Bill Simmons?

  Whatever, whatever that, what, what do they mean?

• 1:57:31Speaker 03

  To, to me, to me, to me, that genius, like, not just deserves, but it requires special.

• 1:57:42Bill Simmons?

  Real examination.

• 1:57:43Speaker 03

  Examination.

• 1:57:44Bill Simmons?

  But Ezra did that with Prince and we're never gonna see that either.

• 1:57:46Speaker 03

  Right. But look, once again, I, I think that we're, we're out of the era of biopics. If we think, what are the best biopics? Ray was a great biopic, right?

• 1:57:55Bill Simmons?

  I actually, I kind of liked the Queen one. I watched it again.

• 1:57:58Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:57:59Bill Simmons?

  And I, and why is it good? Because in the last 25 minutes, it just is the live aid show, which I could watch on YouTube, but it was really fun to watch as the movie. Usually it's the performances that make it.

• 1:58:11Speaker 03

  Outside of music biopics, you want to relive the music and you want to see how people embody the character. But like, when I think about movies like Malcolm X, like X with Spike Lee, obviously different.

• 1:58:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:21Speaker 03

  But that's a guy that's a cultural deity to me. The movie does not deify him at all.

• 1:58:27Bill Simmons?

  The Johnny Cash movie doesn't deify him. That one I think is one of the best ones.

• 1:58:31Speaker 03

  Cole Miner's Daughter is really good. Like, like, these movies are about people who have genius.

• 1:58:37Bill Simmons?

  But usually, they're, they work the best when it's people who have genius, but also have a flaw, or two flaws.

• 1:58:42Speaker 03

  Have a flaw, or have a relationship that doesn't work, or it are, like, marry the wrong person, fall in love the wrong way, or like, whatever. Something that humanizes.

• 1:58:52Bill Simmons?

  Tina Turner one was good, too.

• 1:58:53Speaker 03

  Right. That, that, that one was phenomenal.

• 1:58:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:56Speaker 03

  That is probably.

• 1:58:58Bill Simmons?

  That might be the best one, actually.

• 1:58:59Speaker 03

  That's the best music biopic that I can remember. It's phenomenal.

• 1:59:02Bill Simmons?

  But it had a villain.

• 1:59:03Speaker 03

  Had a villain. This one has a villain. Joe Jackson is the villain.

• 1:59:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he seems, Joe Jackson seems, not a great guy.

• 1:59:08Speaker 03

  But even in this movie, it's made by his family, and you can tell, you can feel the conflict in this movie.

• 1:59:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:16Speaker 03

  The estate makes the movie. They're telling this story. You can feel them holding back.

• 1:59:22Bill Simmons?

  Well, it was heavily reported. They had to change just about everything about the movie.

• 1:59:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:59:26Bill Simmons?

  As they're making.

• 1:59:27Speaker 03

  But even in this version, like, okay.

• 1:59:29Bill Simmons?

  You think Miles Towers is like, "Hey, Miles, heard you have a new movie out." "Yeah, well, yeah, I guess. Filmed it a long time ago."

• 1:59:37Speaker 03

  I'm just saying, man, if you, like, when you do it, commit. Like, you, you know, Blood on the Dance Floor. Show, show how hard it was. Show the road he had to climb.

• 1:59:50Bill Simmons?

  We agree, but this will be the number one, when it ends up on Amazon or wherever. This will be the number one rental for like, five straight weeks.

• 1:59:57Speaker 03

  I'm probably gonna see it again.

• 1:59:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:59Speaker 03

  I'm probably gonna see it again, just because like.

• 2:00:01Bill Simmons?

  I can't wait till the seventh time you see it, when you talk yourself into it.

• 2:00:04Speaker 03

  I, I'm probably gonna see it again. Do you know why? You really know why?

• 2:00:06Bill Simmons?

  Higher Learning?

• 2:00:07Speaker 03

  No. I missed Michael Jackson. I missed him.

• 2:00:12Speaker 03

  Like, I, you guys, I'm just a regular person. So you guys get mad, whatever. I missed Michael Jackson.

• 2:00:17Bill Simmons?

  You missed the genius.

• 2:00:18Speaker 03

  I missed him. Like, I, like, I, I had missed him.

• 2:00:20Bill Simmons?

  This was the secret of The Last Dance with Michael Jordan.

• 2:00:23Speaker 03

  Same thing.

• 2:00:24Bill Simmons?

  You know what? I really miss this guy.

• 2:00:25Speaker 03

  Yep. Like.

• 2:00:26Bill Simmons?

  That's why the biggest documentary right now that's sitting there, if it was done correctly, is the Kobe doc. But it'll never happen, because I think, I think his wife just will never let it happen the way it could happen.

• 2:00:36Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:00:37Bill Simmons?

  But I think that would have the same impact. So many people love Kobe, that if they did that correctly, it would be the same thing. You're like, you know, I'm gonna watch that a fifth time. I really miss this guy.

• 2:00:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. And more to the point with Michael Jackson.

• 2:00:52Speaker 03

  I missed the version of Michael Jackson that existed before I had to consider any of the others.

• 2:01:00Bill Simmons?

  Eighties Michael Jackson.

• 2:01:02Speaker 03

  I miss that guy. I miss just being able to have, I miss the feeling of unbridled joy that exists with me being dumb and not knowing. And like, just not, I'm, I, that, that's super.

• 2:01:14Bill Simmons?

  Hulk Hogan, another one.

• 2:01:15Speaker 03

  Hulk Hogan. Like, I used to, I used to, I used to rip the shirt being a Hulk, and this is, and everybody. I was a Hulk, everyone was a Hulk maniac. Now, he was a.

• 2:01:27Bill Simmons?

  He would not have liked you.

• 2:01:28Speaker 03

  He would not have liked me at all. He would not have liked me. He would have said it. Or he would have liked me until I tried to take his daughter out.

• 2:01:35Bill Simmons?

  Would have flipped.

• 2:01:36Speaker 03

  And then he would have flipped out. Anyway.

• 2:01:38Bill Simmons?

  I see what you mean about, my wife says this all the time, where she'll be watching some movie or TV show that she's seen seventeen hundred times, and she always is like, I miss my friends.

• 2:01:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:48Bill Simmons?

  Devois Prada, I miss my friends. I'm gonna hang out with them again. The Michael Jackson experience, same thing. I, I'm definitely gonna see it. I won't see it in the theater, but I'm gonna, when it's out on rental, I'm gonna rent it.

• 2:01:59Speaker 03

  No, you should go see it in the theater.

• 2:02:00Bill Simmons?

  You think?

• 2:02:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, go see it in the theater. I like, it, it, everyone that had any interest in the movie, because the reviews have been brutal. I have to keep it real.

• 2:02:10Bill Simmons?

  The reviews have been hilarious.

• 2:02:12Speaker 03

  They've been, yeah.

• 2:02:13Bill Simmons?

  People are furious.

• 2:02:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:02:14Bill Simmons?

  They really hated it.

• 2:02:15Speaker 03

  They, but at the same time, the people that feel super connected to Michael Jackson are going right into defense mode. I'm sure some of those. People will be mad at me. I'm encouraging people to go see the movie in the theater because I think I saw it in IMAX. I think it plays best in the theater because you want to be a part of the concert experiences and things like that. But yeah, not as not, not to me, a serious attempt at trying to tell a real story about somebody as consequential as important.

• 2:02:40Bill Simmons?

  So what's your Roger Ebert, four stars. How many do you go?

• 2:02:43Speaker 03

  One and a half.

• 2:02:44Bill Simmons?

  One and a half?

• 2:02:44Speaker 03

  One and a half.

• 2:02:45Bill Simmons?

  All right, Van Lathan, good to see you.

• 2:02:46Speaker 03

  Peace.

• 2:02:48Bill Simmons?

  All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to McShay and Mensch. Thanks to Van. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well. I'm going to be back on this podcast on Thursday night after the NBA playoff games. We're going to be recording. I think Rob Mahoney is going to join me. Don't forget about Sean Fantasy's newsletter, or Jordan Khan's book, or Legata, or the Rewatchables, Kindergarten Cop, which is up, or Ghostbusters, which is coming next Monday. And I will see you on Thursday.

• 2:03:38Bill Simmons?

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