A Round 2 Roller-Coaster Ride, Denver’s QB Plight, and Josh’s Lost Weekend With Cousin Sal

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Cousin Sal right after the Rams-Bears OT nail-biter to recap the divisional round of the NFL playoffs (1:15). Then they guess the lines for the conference championship games before ending with Parent Corner (01:03:59). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Cousin Sal Producers: Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Nick Kosut Post your job today at https://www.linkedin.com/simmons The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠⁠⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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

• 0:25Speaker 01

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

• 0:37Speaker 02

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

• 0:57Speaker 01

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

• 1:24Speaker 02

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

• 2:05Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast, presented by FanDuel Sportsbook. We're also presented by The Ringer Podcast Network. We have new rewatchables coming up on Monday night. So we did just one of the guys.

• 2:15Speaker 04

  Oh, that's a great one. Yeah, I love it. I love it.

• 2:19Bill Simmons?

  It's one for us week because we go to Netflix next week. And we wanted to bang out a couple. I'm turning off my hide self view. There we go. Yeah, we wanted to bang out a couple before we started. Anyway.

• 2:31Speaker 04

  You should flash. You should flash everyone at the end. I mean, that was the big thing, right?

• 2:34Bill Simmons?

  That's what I should have. I should have pulled my shirt off at the tail end.

• 2:37Speaker 04

  There's still time.

• 2:38Bill Simmons?

  Coming up, Sal and I are going to talk about an unbelievable weekend of football right after this. Cousin Sal is here. Best Super Bowl draft. Here are the Super Bowl nominees, Sal.

• 2:51Speaker 04

  Wait a minute.

• 2:51Bill Simmons?

  May versus Stafford, May versus Darnold, Stidham versus Stafford or Stidham versus Darnold? What are you the most excited about?

• 2:59Speaker 04

  I like Stidham, Darnold. I mean, I've been rooting for that all year. You know me, I'm not a front runner. That's the one I had targeted all year, Stidham and Darnold. And it looks, really looks like it's going to happen.

• 3:10Bill Simmons?

  Unbelievable. Stidham has one career win?

• 3:13Speaker 04

  Man, how do you do it? How do you do it?

• 3:16Bill Simmons?

  Don't even start. Can we talk about Rams Bears first?

• 3:18Speaker 04

  I'm hoping we can talk about Rams Bears to a point where you forget about your team. Maybe we can go the whole hour and a half if you want.

• 3:25Bill Simmons?

  How dare you. Rams Bears. Would it have been the Cole Komet game or the Caleb Tecmo Bowl game for you? Because that was the original Tecmo Bowl offense of just running backwards 25 yards and heaving it toward the end zone. And then the guy catches it. But how would you have remembered that?

• 3:40Speaker 04

  Na na na na na na na na. Yeah, everything's the Caleb Williams game at this point. It really is. I mean, the guy, yeah, because he, I don't know if he's the best fourth down quarterback we've ever seen in our lives. How many does he have to have? How many miraculous fourth down plays does he have to have? He's got like nearing a dozen now, but the fact that on that play, he was able to weave his way back and create a hail Mary where he had a third of the end zone to himself, one on one. Is, I just don't know how he does it.

• 4:13Bill Simmons?

  He threw it, what, 46 yards? It was a 14 yard touchdown pass that actually went 46 yards in the air. Look, he is replicated the best I've ever seen out of any quarterback. The experience of watching a really fun NBA player who's all over the map from game to game in a playoff series. You just never know when he's going to get hot, when he's going to bank in a three. He could be six for 22 and then make the last seven shots of the game. I think, I think this season's been a massive win for him. I didn't know what to expect from him, you know, heading into this year is like, didn't think it was going to be a bust, but was he going to be one of those disappointing, was he going to be passed by Daniels, passed by Drake May? Now I think he's the most exciting game to game quarterback. You just don't know what to expect.

• 4:58Bill Simmons?

  You don't want to go, you don't want to leave the room when he's on the field. I don't know what he's going to do. You always feel like there's more there, like he could just run around and run for 20 yards whenever he wants. He can uncork any throw. The balls go all over the place. That Rams interception in overtime, we should have known was going to happen. Cause every time you, you start getting settled in and feeling like, okay, I trust Caleb. And then he veers the other way. I just, there's nobody like him.

• 5:22Speaker 04

  It's an incredible phenomenon locally and broadly nationally, but at least in Chicago, you have like 60 year old truck drivers, like Teamsters, painting their nails black for this guy. Like what the hell's going on over there? Really? You got Collinsworth with the next gen stats. I don't know what my sperm count is anymore with this guy. But it's just, it's a, it's phenomenal to see. And it's like, yeah, you don't know when you're going to get it, except that it's definitely going to be in the fourth quarter at a crucial time. But then he could turn it over again. Yeah.

• 5:51Bill Simmons?

  I wrote down in my notes that they can't feel the blood in their body until they're down seven with like less than five minutes left. And as soon as they're down 17, 10, they can get a stop. You just assume, all right, here they go. This is who they are. They left a lot on the table during this game. But so did the Rams. And I thought the Rams really tucked their tail between the legs a couple of times, especially late. They just seemed. Very safe, like uncharacteristically safe. And then when they got that interception, I think McVeigh rightly said, what are we doing?

• 6:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:24Bill Simmons?

  Let's go. Let's, let's turn it up here.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  Should probably give credit to most of the defenses that played this weekend, right? Because now, now otherwise, it's just, we're just gonna crap on the quarterbacks and the play callers. Like, I don't have a high opinion of myself as a play caller, but I think I could have done better in three of the four games we saw, for sure. McVeigh and Ben Johnson looked like they threw out the playbook. Like, McVeigh had like six passes inside the 30 in the go ahead drive. And then like to kill the clock, all I needed was a first down on third and seven, I think. And it's just like, yeah, weak run up the middle. Like, I don't know. I, I don't know. They're flipping coins back there or what was going on. And Ben Johnson, like you, you were all over it today. Like, just, just unsure of himself. Yeah.

• 7:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah. It, uh, the third and ones and the fourth and ones and, uh, just like the really predictable, like Collinsworth kept talking about what a gunslinger he was and this Ben Johnson, look out. And then it would just be like the most generic plays possible. I, I didn't think that Caleb used his legs enough. I thought that same way about Drake May too, in the game before. But then you think about yesterday where Peyton does a design rollout with Bo Nix and the guy breaks his ankle. So maybe that's why they're afraid to let these guys kind of run around and do their stuff. But I thought the Rams were incredibly fortunate for a couple of reasons. But mainly because if the Bears had just gone for two with 18 seconds left, I just feel like they would have gotten it.

• 7:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:49Bill Simmons?

  I have no evidence. Throw out the math. I, I, it's, it's just pure. I know the nerds say momentum doesn't happen, but you have that play, you get a touchdown. And I at least show like, I'm gonna pretend I'm gonna go for two and make the Rams panic and see. You, I don't know. I just feel like they would have gotten it. At that point, it felt like the bird with the angel was on their shoulder and they were gonna get it.

• 8:11Speaker 04

  Birds, angels, everything. I mean, everything's stacking up on this. Yeah, bird shit. I'm with you. I don't go by the nerds in that situation. I go by the opposing team's fans. We always talk about this, right? So what do Rams, Rams fans think? They're all Rams fans, right? What a Rams fans like there's a collective sigh when we see the extra point team come out to tie it up.

• 8:32Bill Simmons?

  Right. You, you had $28,000 in the Rams. So what did you want the Bears to do? I bet you want to hire, you wanted them to kick the extra point.

• 8:40Speaker 04

  Hell yeah, of course.

• 8:42Bill Simmons?

  You were like, let me take overtime. Let me have Matthew Stafford against up and down Caleb. I'll take my chances.

• 8:47Speaker 04

  By the way, both teams kicked off, lost. And we could talk about that. I think it was worse in the Bills game, but another, another stupid thing. Got a tired defense out there. Take advantage, get the ball.

• 8:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And we just don't have enough of a math sample size to know what we should or shouldn't do in this situation. But it feels weird to me to kick off.

• 9:07Bill Simmons?

  Wouldn't you just want the ball and want to lay the smackdown and want to try to score? And especially if you had the momentum of scoring at the end of the previous quarter, I just feel like that's what I would want to do.

• 9:15Speaker 04

  You have to count momentum in that scenario because momentum comes with it. It's like, these guys are playing and now what is it 10 degrees by the time it's 11 o'clock at night or whatever it is at 10. But uh, yeah, and you gotta take advantage of that. You're giving them like three free timeouts if they're playing defense second. And really what's the benefit of, I get the whole, oh, we want to see what we have to do thing. When does that matter unless they score and then you score like it's then, then the top of the second favors them. Because they're going to get the extra possession and they can win there.

• 9:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't, I just feel like the longer we watch football, the more we get confused by stuff.

• 9:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:53Bill Simmons?

  I still don't know what a catch is. We argued about, we'll talk about the Buffalo game later. We argued about that for 12 hours.

• 10:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, we have 40 inches of text arguing about that.

• 10:05Bill Simmons?

  Devonte Adams had a similar play, but and we were like, no, no, he held it longer. Like there's no rubber reason, any of this. The more football we watch, the more confused I think we get by, by all of it. But it did feel like that the big lesson to me during that game was it felt like the teams were really even.

• 10:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:20Bill Simmons?

  And I don't know. If we value enough the weather stuff with these matchups and just in general, I feel like we, it's like a variable. We talk about the same way we talk about like the Rams don't have a, have a good run game and the Bears don't have a very good run defense. They have this and it's like, maybe we just throw all of it out. And it's like, is the weather going to be bad? Cause the game's probably going to be close or in Houston's case, is the weather going to be bad? Cause they can't block and I don't trust their quarterback and maybe I don't need to know anything else about the matchup. Maybe that's it. But I, I don't know. Do we, do we discount the indoor, outdoor and all the weather stuff?

• 10:57Speaker 04

  I think we did. Well, a lot of times the weather report is wrong. Like they'll show something in the, in the morning and you'll see snow like, oh my God, how fans are even going to get in that stadium. And then it's like all cleaned up and everything and it just looks cold. So I don't, I don't try to live and die by it, but I know one thing we could throw out the performance we saw last week. Like maybe we don't know what a catch is, but we don't know what to think of these. Like both defenses played really good yet today, right?

• 11:21Bill Simmons?

  Bears especially.

• 11:22Speaker 04

  Rams had nothing of that against Bryce Young, you know? Uh, Jordan Love could have probably put up 40 points against the Bears in the, in the first half if he wanted to, but they really, uh, they really hit hard.

• 11:33Bill Simmons?

  Well, Dan Collins were said at one point, like the Rams were having trouble with the footing and the receivers were having trouble with the footing. And, and you think like, and I, I obviously I'm biased and you know, anyone who roots for an East Coast team is kind of biased on this one, but um, playing outdoors and what it does for your stats and your ability to do stuff on offense versus being in a dome indoors. I think it's a real thing. Like I look at the breeze stats and Manning stuff in Indianapolis. Um, I just think it's an advantage versus like, if you're, you're somebody like Brady, who is not sound like a Brady defender, even though as you know, I am, but he's in the AFC East. He's playing at least 12 games a year outdoors. Then a lot of the playoff games outdoors. And I just think it's harder to put up stats. You saw the Rams,

• 12:18Bill Simmons?

  like Puka's been the best receiver, not only of this year, but of the last couple of years.

• 12:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:23Bill Simmons?

  And he seemed a little more mortal today when you throw him outdoors, although he did end up making the biggest play of the game. But I, I think there is something to that though. These warm weather dome teams. Outdoors, like you really have to count that.

• 12:34Speaker 04

  You can see the stats on the splits for home and away with if your home is in a dome. Most of the time it does make a difference. I'll tell you, I, I, I think that we set a record this weekend for passes that were just behind the receiver. You know, like a doomsday, was that a doomsday in the first quarter? Like, oh, he should have had it. But like, I felt like we saw like 40 of those all weekend and we'll, we could talk about it.

• 12:55Bill Simmons?

  Strada made a couple in the game before that too.

• 12:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:58Bill Simmons?

  So we had the Bears down seven, huge drive. They go all the way down. They can't get it. Rams giving them the ball back. Caleb prayer.

• 13:09Bill Simmons?

  And then we go to, like, it was so much happened, but the bottom line is the Rams scored, what? 10 points in the last three hours of the game?

• 13:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's true.

• 13:16Bill Simmons?

  And if I'm the Seahawks, I'm probably rooting for the Bears as I watched that game, right? But I'm a little less afraid of the Rams.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's a rubber match, right? So.

• 13:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, third time.

• 13:30Speaker 04

  I don't know. I guess McFay is going to have it out for them more, but um, yeah, for sure. For sure. It's a coin toss now going forward, except for your fricking team. It's going to go all the way.

• 13:39Bill Simmons?

  Well, on Fanduel now.

• 13:42Speaker 04

  Well, don't look, don't look.

• 13:43Bill Simmons?

  No, no, I'm not going to look at the Lions. I'm going to look at the, the futures. Yeah, Seattle's plus 150 now.

• 13:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:52Bill Simmons?

  Pat's plus 220. Rams plus 220, Broncos 13 and 1.

• 13:58Speaker 04

  What happened with the Broncos? Did I miss something?

• 14:01Bill Simmons?

  They're in the final four.

• 14:01Bill Simmons?

  They were looking so good.

• 14:03Speaker 04

  Why are they 13 and 1?

• 14:04Bill Simmons?

  So the NFL's best case scenario is May versus Stafford, the Rams rematch, McVay getting his revenge against the Patriots.

• 14:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:11Bill Simmons?

  May in his second year making the Super Bowl. If you're just talking like, big picture storylines, that's probably the coolest.

• 14:16Speaker 04

  For sure. Yeah.

• 14:18Bill Simmons?

  May versus Darnold, we would just see the Darnold ghosts, the clips of that one Jets-Pats game. That would just be two weeks of that. Right?

• 14:26Speaker 04

  Well, or Malcolm Butler, right? That's the rematch of that.

• 14:29Bill Simmons?

  Oh yeah, that's the Seattle revenge game.

• 14:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think three of the, three of the four are Super Bowl rematches, right? Yeah, New England Rams, which was a lousy Super Bowl, uh, Seattle, New England, one of the best ever.

• 14:40Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Seattle, New England is the best one because Seattle's never won a Super Bowl.

• 14:43Speaker 04

  You can't go wrong.

• 14:44Bill Simmons?

  And they would be getting their revenge on that. Then when we move into the Stidham territory, now you have to start talking to yourself. I have this written down. The, the backup QB.

• 14:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:55Bill Simmons?

  Kind of being heard from either in the conference championship or the Super Bowl. The best that's it's ever worked out was Hostetler and Nick Foles. Who talked shit today about the Patriots. I didn't appreciate that, Nick Foles.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  I love it. What does he have to lose? That's terrific.

• 15:10Bill Simmons?

  Fuck off, Nick Foles.

• 15:11Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 15:12Bill Simmons?

  Nobody wanted to hear from you.

• 15:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. You know what? It's all good.

• 15:17Bill Simmons?

  So backup QBs, so we had that Brady Bledsoe thing where then Bledsoe came into the AFC title game in 2001 after Brady had taken his job and kind of held the fort. Earl Morrill, going way back on the Colts, but they ended up not winning. Tony Easton, sort of the 85 Bears, 40th anniversary of the Bears-Pats shellacking. But Grogan had been the starter and then Tony Easton, Grogan had his job. And then Tony Easton basically took it back for the Super Bowl, but it felt like it was Grogan's job. But it's really not a lot of examples.

• 15:49Speaker 04

  Did you say Hostetler? You said Hostetler or no?

• 15:52Bill Simmons?

  Hostetler, but yeah, Hostetler is the most famous, I think.

• 15:55Speaker 04

  Right. Yeah.

• 15:56Bill Simmons?

  Stidham having one career win, I think this would be the new standard if he was able to win two more games.

• 16:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is one career win. He hasn't thrown a pass in like almost two and a half years, right?

• 16:09Bill Simmons?

  I kind of like him.

• 16:10Speaker 04

  He's a preseason guy.

• 16:12Bill Simmons?

  I can't say I feel awesome about, like, if there were some other backup QBs, some of the ones we watched on and tried to bet against during this season.

• 16:19Speaker 04

  Really?

• 16:20Bill Simmons?

  Where I'd be like, oh, my God, we get to play this guy. This is amazing.

• 16:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:24Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. Stidham's not horrendous. He's kind, he can kind of sling it a little bit. He's one of the highest paid backups in the league. Right?

• 16:33Speaker 04

  I'm calling bullshit on this. I, you know what? Show me your text, your, with your Patriot fan text. And shame on you and all your incorrigible asshole chums on your Pats chain. I'm sure you celebrated the second, the second you found out Bo Nix was out. Go ahead. Read me some.

• 16:48Bill Simmons?

  We try to, we try to be magnanimous and we try to celebrate everybody else's wins.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm sure you try.

• 16:55Bill Simmons?

  We just play who's in front of us.

• 16:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:57Bill Simmons?

  So do you feel better or worse about the Rams after that game?

• 17:01Speaker 04

  Um, no, I, I agree with you about Seattle. I think, uh, they should feel better about their chances, you know, they were gonna, I don't want to ruin the line anyway, but you said they're favorites to win the Super Bowl and there's a reason. So I, I just in general, I think Seattle is just like, we're trying to beat us here. You saw what we're all about.

• 17:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, do, let's talk about that game really quickly and then we could circle back. The, uh, the Sam Darnold injury rope a dope. I fell for it.

• 17:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:28Bill Simmons?

  I had all these Seattle bets. Schefter, I don't know. Not trusting that guy anymore with info. It really made it seem like, like Darnold was, it's gonna be a miracle if this guy can, can throw a pass and then the game starts and he seems fine. The line moved from seven and a half to six and a half. And, uh, they just.

• 17:47Speaker 04

  Well, it was seven most, it was seven and a half.

• 17:49Bill Simmons?

  Well, I'm saying seven and a half start of the week.

• 17:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:52Bill Simmons?

  Settled at seven. My game time was six and a half.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, Darnold was fine.

• 17:57Speaker 04

  I had San Francisco plus seven, so I don't think I could do much, uh, bragging here, but it wasn't because of Sam Darnold's oblique. Like you could, because you could read every Adam Schefter or Jay Glazer, whatever sports doctor report on the injury and you could read one number on Fanduel Sportsbook. And if that number didn't go from seven to three and a half, there was no chance of him like throwing pregame and be like, you know what? I can't make a, I can't make a go of it. And I looked it up and oblique isn't even a, a body part, by the way. I think it's a font. I'm not sure.

• 18:28Bill Simmons?

  It only matters in baseball.

• 18:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:29Bill Simmons?

  Somebody can put their oblique in baseball there for six weeks. They just have the flat, red flag next to them in fantasy baseball forever. Well, this was one of those where I had people, I had a couple of people over to watch the first game and they were leaving and came back in and the Seahawks were celebrating and they were up seven, nothing. I didn't even see the first, it was one of those where it's like, oh, it's gonna be one of these games. They have no chance. Um.

• 18:52Speaker 04

  I missed it too. I, I felt like I was still seeing, you know, cause I have knucklehead friends reporting on Bo Nix. I'm like, this isn't true. Like I was checking Twitter so much that I missed the first play, the, the, the first and only play that mattered.

• 19:05Bill Simmons?

  My big, I mean, I want to talk about the Seahawks in a second, but the, the most damning thing I think all weekend is the Eagles who didn't even play.

• 19:16Speaker 04

  Right.

• 19:17Bill Simmons?

  And they lose last week to that Niners team that just seemed so depleted and overmatched this week. I mean, they didn't have Kittle, but it was mostly the same team. And if I was an Eagles fan, I would be even madder than I was a week ago. And I was thinking, is this a playoff, is this a possible playoff manifesto ad? Um, don't take any playoff team that had a miserable season, doesn't seem like they liked each other. It seems like, it seems like they might be excited to be in the Bahamas in a week over round two.

• 19:46Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 19:46Bill Simmons?

  I'm just going to remember them with the Eagles because clearly it was a rollover by them. It's fucking embarrassing. They should be, they're the champions. What kind of title defense was that?

• 19:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:56Bill Simmons?

  In the playoffs. If I was an Eagles fan, I'd be furious. Like, really? We lost to that fucking team? Who was the guy, who was the receiver who had 100 yards? DeMarcus Robinson? You didn't have a catch yesterday?

• 20:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:08Bill Simmons?

  What the hell were you doing in Philadelphia?

• 20:10Speaker 04

  Forget about Eagles fans. What if you're Eagles management? What if you're Howie Roseman? Like, like, you know, they didn't fire Sirianni, right? He survived the week. He must, Sirianni must have been like, oh, thank God. All right, I'm good. Big Dom, let's go out and get some chicken parm. We're going to be fine. Then Howie Roseman sees that. I would, I would think twice now about keeping him around based on the next game that the Niners played. What are you looking at?

• 20:34Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 20:34Speaker 04

  What are you doing?

• 20:35Bill Simmons?

  I'm asking, no, I'm asking you how if we have to take a break after this.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 20:39Bill Simmons?

  I listened to everything you said though.

• 20:40Speaker 04

  That's all right. Doesn't matter. Yeah.

• 20:42Bill Simmons?

  No, I heard everything you said.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  Do we have to take a break?

• 20:45Bill Simmons?

  No, not yet.

• 20:48Speaker 04

  You want to do the intro again?

• 20:50Bill Simmons?

  Can I have another crack at it or are we live?

• 20:54Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Seattle's now 15 and three and they have the top six best DVO of all time right now.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:59Bill Simmons?

  They've beaten the Niners twice. They beat the Steelers, the Jaguars, Houston, Carolina, and the Rams. Lost to the Rams and the Niners both close. And, um, really look good. Yeah. I mean, that's like, if you're a Seahawks fan, this is as good of a chance as you've ever had. You made the Super Bowl in oh five. But did, who'd you have in that game Pittsburgh, Seattle?

• 21:23Speaker 04

  Pittsburgh, yeah.

• 21:24Bill Simmons?

  Which one?

• 21:24Speaker 04

  Oh, that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I had Pittsburgh. Yeah.

• 21:28Bill Simmons?

  Pittsburgh had that crazy Colts game?

• 21:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, we did the show in Detroit. Yeah.

• 21:32Bill Simmons?

  Pittsburgh had that crazy Colts win when they stopped Manning and then Betts fumbled on the one yard line. And Roethlisberger made that crazy tackle, basically saved the game. And then they end up winning and they end up winning the whole thing. The Seattle fans still pissed off about the calls in that game.

• 21:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, defensive holding. Yeah.

• 21:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And like a couple of years later, got their NBA team stolen. So they, you know, they're, they're a little edgy.

• 21:55Speaker 04

  All right. And then what you guys did to them with the Malcolm Butler thing. Yeah, I think like, I was surprised that both them and Denver didn't come out rusty. Like, you know, the two bye teams, right? It used to be four bye teams, whatever, but both teams were right on it. Denver scored what 20 in the first half. Josh Allen helped that. But Seattle, what was that? Two plays and the game was over? Like you had the kick return and then you had San Francisco on fourth and one. With that fullback option to McCaffrey, who's checked to McCaffrey is like, oh, this is, this is way over this game. Like. Donald could throw, I think he threw for 106 yards. He didn't probably have to do that much to win.

• 22:30Bill Simmons?

  Tough party game too.

• 22:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I wonder if McCaffrey, do they start treating him like the Clippers treat Kawhi or something?

• 22:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:38Bill Simmons?

  Where you just try to get like 10 games. If you're trying to like actually win a couple of playoff rounds and then do you try to just get 10 games out of him during the season? Kind of stagger his minutes.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  You know, it's funny, I was looking at him play and I know the Seahawks were swarming and they had more energy anyway, but I was like, oh, even McCaffrey doesn't look fast. He didn't look like the blaze that we were used to with CMC. And then I saw this stat, it said next gen stats. Their average top speed this year was 12.81 miles per hour. The 49ers, that was sixth slowest in the NFL. And Dee Winters, the linebacker is the only one to reach 20 miles an hour. So they, I was like, oh, finally some, some useful.

• 23:17Bill Simmons?

  I mean, that actually is pretty useful. Yeah. I like that. All right. So we're going to take, I think a break.

• 23:24Speaker 04

  All right.

• 23:24Bill Simmons?

  And then we'll come back and, and we'll hit the AFC games because they, those were, well, there was one game that was the most interesting game of the week. So we'll be back in one second.

• 23:36Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by FanDuel. FanDuel's got it all. Same game parlays, quick bets for jumping in live. They have your way. Go check out your way. You can build the bet that fits your play your way. Plus, don't miss out on the NFL playoffs, one of my favorite times of the year all month long. Download the FanDuel app or head to FanDuel.com/BS to get started. Get ready for the playoffs. Let's go. Must be 21 plus, present in select states, 18 plus in DC, Kentucky and Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit RG-Help.com, call 888-789-777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn.

• 24:19Bill Simmons?

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• 24:53Bill Simmons?

  You know, I was, I felt like I was really good last week. I was on it. The Pats game took a lot out of me today, cousin Sal. Really? How so? Yeah. Yeah. It was, that was kind of a heart attack game.

• 25:08Bill Simmons?

  You, you're home, the weather's bad, the other team's quarterback throws four interceptions in the first half. And all of a sudden, it's a one-possession game and we feel like we have no momentum at all. And there's about 20 minutes of that game. It got pretty dark and I don't think I was the only Pats fan who felt that way. It was like, really? This is how the season's going to end? Where we lose to a team whose quarterback? Had such dear in the headlights that at halftime, the argument was whether they're going to replace him with the backup in a round two playoff game. When was the last time that happened?

• 25:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 25:40Bill Simmons?

  1984?

• 25:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:42Bill Simmons?

  The Marcus Spears, I think it was the right point. Are they going to bring in Davis Mills? Cause we were texting about it and then Ryan Clark came and you can't do that. This guy's your quarterback. He got round to that. All of a sudden they're having first take in the halftime show. And I was like riveted because I was like, I think they should play Davis Mills. I think Stroud's a sunk cost.

• 26:00Speaker 04

  Three games, right?

• 26:01Bill Simmons?

  I mean, what are you going to do?

• 26:02Speaker 04

  How many interceptions and fumbles? Eight? What? 10? Well, how many are you going to allow before your, your season's over?

• 26:08Bill Simmons?

  My dad and I were texting, both of us were like, I hope they don't bring in Mills. I hope they keep Stroud in, please.

• 26:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:13Bill Simmons?

  So anyway, the, the third quarter starts and then all of a sudden the Pats can't do anything and the Texans have momentum and it looks like we can't block Will Anderson anymore. He's just going by Campbell. It took a lot out of me. I can't lie. We're getting older. These are, these are tough.

• 26:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know. Well, this isn't the bragging I was expecting. That's for sure. That, um, I really thought you were going to tell me how this is the best Pats team of all time. That throw to

• 26:40Bill Simmons?

  It's definitely not.

• 26:41Speaker 04

  Kayshon Booty was, uh, I mean, that's the one nice thing I'll say about this Patriots team. That I think was the catch of the year and we see millions of them. We see Puka going up with one hand, but to do it in the snow, whatever else was going on with one hand and you know, really put a stamp on that game, right? Like you, you were nervous until then, right? Then that was that.

• 27:01Bill Simmons?

  I felt they were driving and looked like they were going to get a field goal and I didn't think the Texans could get 11.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  So that would have been a lot.

• 27:08Bill Simmons?

  Booty like he basically ended the game. What's interesting is that was like every Drake May game this year where it's a little choppy for the first 45 minutes of the game or, or you know, in real time, 45 minutes. So it's just not, and then all of a sudden it clicks in and he's off. And in this game, he did that. And then the third quarter, all of a sudden he was, you know, that seemed off again. And then kind of rallied back, but every, every game this season, he's had a perfect 35, 40 yard throw like that. This time the guy had to make an amazing catch on it, but they've hit that throw. It feels like every week was waiting on it, was waiting on it and then finally did it. And it ended the game. They like they, you knew they weren't going to get two touchdowns.

• 27:50Speaker 04

  That's all he should do is throw long passes. He shouldn't bother with the short side. He's great at throwing long passes. As soon as he tries to throw over the middle, he holds on to it too long. He gets sacked. He fumbles. He's subpar quarterback. You want to call him an MVP? That's fine. Just throw long every time.

• 28:04Bill Simmons?

  Subpar is a little strong.

• 28:05Speaker 04

  Rear back and throw it.

• 28:06Bill Simmons?

  Um, I think he was holding it a little too long considering Will Anderson was

• 28:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:12Bill Simmons?

  in the backfield in about four seconds every single play. They didn't use his legs that much. I think that fumble kind of freaked them out. I thought they were going to be rolling them out. Due to design rolled out. The stuff that swung the game was the I formation.

• 28:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:24Bill Simmons?

  When they kind of went bigger and really started to try to run the ball. Remandre was out for a while. That wasn't open either. That booty catch. I know I, I didn't want to tell you I was doing this. I wanted to be surprised because I knew how excited he would be.

• 28:38Speaker 04

  Go ahead.

• 28:39Bill Simmons?

  Best Patriots playoff catches ever made a list. I'll just go in descending order.

• 28:46Speaker 04

  Um, to the biggest one. Gronk versus the Chiefs in 2018. What? How many are you doing? What is this?

• 28:53Bill Simmons?

  No, this is just six. Gibbons versus the Panthers, second Super Bowl. Gronk, fourth and 10 against Denver, AFC title game down the middle. They end up losing that game, but that was an hour. He's double covered, 40 yard pass down the center. This is my favorite Gronk play. Edelman, third and 14 against Seattle, when he's basically concussed during the play and keeps going. And then claimed he wasn't concussed. Amendola against Jacksonville. And then, uh, Edelman in the, in the Falcons game, the, the dive, the whatever, when it seemed like, wait, did he catch that? When he caught the deflection, which is still the best Patriots catch we've ever had.

• 29:29Speaker 04

  So you're not putting this in the top.

• 29:30Bill Simmons?

  I think this might be this, I would put this fourth.

• 29:36Bill Simmons?

  Now, if they don't win anything, if they don't end up winning the Super Bowl, maybe it drops. But, um, but yeah, it clinched a round two playoff game. It sent them to the AFC title game. All my texts today were basically like, we can go CJ Stroud in the snow, Stidham, Sam Darnold, and we win the Super Bowl. It's like we were just sending it back. Like, nobody could believe, like, this was the path. Um, we can only play who's in front of us, Sal.

• 30:00Speaker 04

  I know, I know, I know. It really just gets worse and worse. And like, you get great news that Josh Allen's knocked out of the playoffs, and then four minutes later, you get news that Bo Nix is out of the playoffs. And then, no, Chargers with no offensive line, Texans with no Nico, Broncos, you know, I, I feel like if the Venezuelan opposition leader presented the Patriots with the Lombardi Trophy, that, do you accept it? Does Kraft lower himself to accept it? It's not really.

• 30:28Bill Simmons?

  God only knows with Kraft these days. Well, we were missing guys. We didn't have Matt Collins.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:33Bill Simmons?

  It's been huge for us. Might get him back next week.

• 30:36Speaker 04

  I can't believe this.

• 30:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'll just, I know everybody's gonna make the joke. Hey, everyone's gonna joke about the schedule. It's just how we're gonna do this the next couple of weeks, especially if they beat Denver. They'd be like, oh, how do I bet on the Pat's Super Bowl MVP being the schedule? Like, we know we're gonna hear the jokes. We only play who's in front of us. Do you know who the 2019 Chiefs played in Mahomes' first Super Bowl title? Do you remember who they played?

• 31:00Speaker 04

  You want me to list all the teams?

• 31:02Bill Simmons?

  Well, I'll give you the playoffs.

• 31:03Speaker 04

  Playoff teams? Good.

• 31:04Bill Simmons?

  They played the crappy Texans. They played the Titans and Ryan Tannehill, and then they played the Niners and Jimmy Garoppolo, and they won the Super Bowl. And nobody was like, who'd they play?

• 31:12Speaker 04

  Right. And they were down 10.

• 31:14Bill Simmons?

  Who was it? I, I don't know why we pick and choose the who'd we play thing.

• 31:18Speaker 04

  Well, this is extraordinary.

• 31:19Bill Simmons?

  That Josh Allen fucking choked in the, in the, on Saturday, which he did.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  There we go.

• 31:24Bill Simmons?

  For him. Yeah. He's supposed to be the best player in the league. He didn't play well enough. Like, that's not the Patriots' fault. We're waiting for him. He's not there.

• 31:30Speaker 04

  I think the Stroud thing is extra damning because he's supposed to be decent and he put out one of the, well, two of the worst playoff games of all time combined, right? And they still won like, you know, five and five and five plus interceptions and five plus fumbles in a single postseason, the first one to do it. Four plus interceptions in a single playoff game, which puts him in good company. He tore that Kate Stover's ACL throwing a pass to him. It was a non-contact. It was not, I hope he didn't tear, I haven't looked up though, I hope not, but I've never seen that before. He just like kind of twisted himself to get back to a awful pass, so I don't know what happened.

• 32:07Bill Simmons?

  And then it felt like five more, we almost caught or could have caught. And then four that were just completely uncatchable, the guys that seemed like they were open.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  He doesn't like getting hit. He doesn't like getting hit and he especially doesn't like getting hit in the cold and that's why that pick six happened, which was really the game changer, I felt.

• 32:25Bill Simmons?

  Well, he almost had a full Delo himself.

• 32:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know, it's close.

• 32:31Bill Simmons?

  For the newer listeners or people of the pod, way back when Jake Delome, I think he had five picks, including a pick six, or maybe it was five picks and a fumble, whatever it was, we called it the full Delome. This was just a Delome, it wasn't a full Delome.

• 32:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 32:46Bill Simmons?

  He needed one more, I was waiting for him to get it and he, he couldn't do it. But it was, there was like a half decent, how much can you actually blame him debate? Because clearly he deserves a bunch of blame and he was, he was terrible.

• 32:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:59Bill Simmons?

  But didn't have Nico Collins, the running game wasn't there, the Pats just took that down. Schultz got hurt early.

• 33:06Speaker 04

  Right.

• 33:07Bill Simmons?

  I don't know, it's, he lost his right tackle.

• 33:10Speaker 04

  Lombardi trophy, all this goes on your, your trophy, yeah.

• 33:13Bill Simmons?

  But I'm just, because they're already talking after the game, like, would you give this guy an extension?

• 33:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 33:19Bill Simmons?

  You know, he had last two seasons, including the playoffs, 26 picks, 42 touchdowns. There was a legitimate, should they start his backup in the second half of a do or die playoff game combo?

• 33:30Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:31Bill Simmons?

  I would be nervous to give him the extension. I, I thought he took a step back this year.

• 33:35Speaker 04

  I would too. I think we for sure thought he was the best quarterback in that division, right? And now we reluctantly have to give it, who was it? Trevor Lawrence? Wait, where are we? Trevor, yeah.

• 33:47Bill Simmons?

  I think it is Trevor Lawrence.

• 33:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think that's where we are.

• 33:52Bill Simmons?

  Sitting there for Cam Ward.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  Cam Ward could get it too. Yeah. And you know, to your point, like it helps if you could in these cold weather miserable games. If you could run the ball, right?

• 34:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 34:01Speaker 04

  I would think and Woody Marks was what 14 for 17 with a fumble. You're just not gonna get it that way.

• 34:07Bill Simmons?

  In the first half, not only do we have the four takeaways in the pick six, they forced 22 plays of zero or negative yards would set the record for this century for a first half in a playoff game.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:19Bill Simmons?

  They had the run defense in the Chargers game, this game combined 30 carries for 61 yards. Like, and this is what I was saying last week before the Chargers game, like the, the stats with Milton Williams plays versus when he doesn't, it's like night and day. They have all their D linemen back. And they're really good at stopping the run. The Texans, I thought had a pretty good game plan. Like they kept picking on Carlton Davis, who's the, that's the cornerback. All the Pats fans are scared of, right? He's always in the middle of feels like a P I or a possible P I every time. He had two picks, he had a couple of P I's.

• 34:49Speaker 04

  He went out at the end, right?

• 34:50Bill Simmons?

  And he got hurt at the end. Yeah. Um, but they went after him, but I think when Schultz went out, I think that really screwed with them because they weren't going to be able to run the ball. They didn't have like that eight yard guy over the middle and let's be honest, like I, they just were never good enough offensively this year. I think to match whatever the defense was. And then I'll say this about the defense, which was admittedly awesome in a couple of stretches, but the Pats had three like full touchdown drives on them.

• 35:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:19Bill Simmons?

  It wasn't like you watched and you're like, oh, they had these intercept that it, they had three drives to score, including to like end the game and the Texans didn't stop them. So like when people were talking about them compared to the 2000 Ravens, like settle the fuck down.

• 35:32Speaker 04

  All right, but three touchdown drives for 193 yards, nine other drives for two total yards. I think you had seven first downs after three quarters. Like if you just isolate that.

• 35:42Bill Simmons?

  I agree.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  C J Stroud should be ashamed of himself for not beating that, you know?

• 35:46Bill Simmons?

  I didn't love the play calling. I thought may, um. Really took a while to get going. Um, and there's it's, it's a real thing. These young, young quarterbacks in the playoffs. Cause we saw it with Caleb too. They're just all over the map. They're not consistent enough yet. But he ended up, he had, you know, three touchdowns. Thought he had some really good throws. I think next week will be easier. I, are you like wildly impressed by the Denver defense? Cause I'm not.

• 36:11Speaker 04

  I don't think it's going to be as good as what we saw today.

• 36:14Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 36:14Speaker 04

  Maybe they'll play with a chip on their shoulder.

• 36:17Bill Simmons?

  So, all right, give me the unbiased, just watching the Pats. Do they seem like a Super Bowl team to you? Cause to me, I feel like it's a year early.

• 36:24Speaker 04

  What, what do you mean?

• 36:25Bill Simmons?

  What I'm watching.

• 36:26Speaker 04

  Will they advance to the Super Bowl?

• 36:27Bill Simmons?

  Like, is this, like, as you watch them, is it like, holy shit, this is a team that belongs in the Super Bowl? Cause to me, it feels like, we had this in Parcells's last season. The 96 team, which just felt like a year from now was going to be the awesome team. And then all of a sudden they made the Super Bowl and it's like, all right, I guess we're ready. And that's kind of how I feel about this team.

• 36:47Speaker 04

  I mean, probably not, but what, you know, when Denver's the number one seed and Jacksonville's fighting for the number two seed by the, you know, by the last year, by the last week and Buffalo shaky. You might as well be, yeah, yeah, sure. And that scenario, I think you are, and you're, you're right there. I'm not, I really have to say something nice about this team?

• 37:07Bill Simmons?

  Well, I tried to trap you and you wouldn't do it.

• 37:09Speaker 04

  I'm not doing it.

• 37:12Bill Simmons?

  Knew a few people who were at the game and they said, uh, the electricity was a hundred percent back.

• 37:17Speaker 04

  Really?

• 37:18Bill Simmons?

  It was.

• 37:18Speaker 04

  Paid the bill.

• 37:19Bill Simmons?

  Two thousands level, like just, everybody loved it.

• 37:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:22Bill Simmons?

  It was old school, like a feisty D doing the whole thing. So the Pats go to Denver, were there 0 and 4 in the playoffs in my lifetime. All games that were memorable for some reason. The Rulon Jones safety on Tony Eason.

• 37:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 37:38Bill Simmons?

  Um, up, down three with the ball and somehow fucking Tony Eason gets sacked for a safety. Never forgive that dude. Um, the Plummer Champ Bailey game. Plummer's like one good playoff game. I guess he had one against Dallas too. Um, and then, uh, the Champ Bailey, when Ben Watson ran basically, I don't know. They didn't have the next gen stats for that. He was probably like 32 miles an hour.

• 38:01Speaker 04

  He's off the charts, Bill. We can't even measure that.

• 38:05Bill Simmons?

  And, uh, ball goes out at the one.

• 38:10Bill Simmons?

  I thought it went out of the end zone. That's the one, apparently for Brady, that's the Super Bowl. That and 07 are the two that bother him the most that they didn't get. Yeah, cuz I think they, they might have been the best team in 05. 2014.

• 38:25Bill Simmons?

  That was the year Hernandez's stuff went down right before the season and then TJ Ward.

• 38:30Speaker 04

  That didn't bother Brady? That, that stuff didn't bother Brady?

• 38:33Bill Simmons?

  I, they tried to play on and then TJ Ward took out Gronk. So we went into Denver without both of those guys, lost that one. And then the last one was the noodle arm Peyton Manning season. The 20 to 18 loss.

• 38:45Speaker 04

  Two point conversion.

• 38:45Bill Simmons?

  Two point conversion, didn't get it. I think Brady was concussed like for that entire game. So anyway, my point is they've never won there. I have a vague memory of that way beating us 20 times. I don't think the stats back that up, but this has been mostly a house of horrors for the Pats. And now Jared Stidham awaits.

• 39:02Speaker 04

  But the good news is there's not one player associated with any of those years anymore on either team. So you're good.

• 39:07Bill Simmons?

  So you don't believe in the laundry baggage?

• 39:09Speaker 04

  I don't know. I might if Bo Nix was quarterback. I, I, I mean, we're gonna get into that game, but uh, I just can't believe it, man. I just can't believe it.

• 39:19Bill Simmons?

  I'm ready to get into that game right now.

• 39:21Speaker 04

  Let's do it.

• 39:25Bill Simmons?

  Where do we start? You wanna start on the Denver side or the Buffalo side?

• 39:28Speaker 04

  Do the intro, talk about, um, just one of the guys.

• 39:30Bill Simmons?

  Should I do the intro again?

• 39:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:33Bill Simmons?

  Just one of the guys coming on the rewatch, what did I?

• 39:36Speaker 04

  Well, I think we gotta, we gotta reluctantly kill Josh Allen for this.

• 39:43Bill Simmons?

  Two picks, two lost fumbles, including

• 39:47Bill Simmons?

  a fumble before the end of the first half that cost them three points. That was something like Shadur Sanders or pick a rookie quarterback. It was a rookie quarterback play. It was inexplicable. Missed Knox for the game winning touchdown, down three, 20 seconds left. Missed Hardman and OT when they're driving, they would have been in field goal range. He just threw him a grounder.

• 40:07Speaker 04

  Bad throw.

• 40:09Bill Simmons?

  And then the Bills fans fixated on those three calls. The bottom line is Allen missed a ton of throws. Their defense was up four with four minutes left. And had a chance to close the game out and they didn't do it. And then they had to hold an OT and they couldn't. And they gave up the two PIs, which by the way, were both PIs. I'm sorry.

• 40:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm proud of you. I'm good. Well, I know you're gonna have the anti Bill slant anyway, but yeah, it was it was Josh Allen's fault. You could, you know, at this point of year, like, I feel like I'm, it really gets taxing, like defending referees and Tony Romo. It ends up being like 22 hours of my day. So, um, but the referees are gonna make calls. They're not gonna make calls. Say what you will about those pass interferences. The game could have ended 30-30. There was a hold in the end zone. If you want to be like that, it could have been 32-30 Denver on the safety. That would have been that. So.

• 41:00Bill Simmons?

  It was 100% a hold in the end zone that they let go and they missed calls both ways the whole game.

• 41:05Speaker 04

  Of course. And guess what? They're not trying to keep Josh Allen out of the Super Bowl. This is, that'd be a great story for them. That's what they want. So this one is, and I feel like the others maybe weren't all on Josh Allen. I feel like this is 70, 80% on him. The others, you know, it's a kicker that misses. The Chiefs were better. We can, but it's just like, this is, this is just, uh, it's rough for him. It's rough to see him cry. And both locker rooms are crying because of the result. But, um, you know.

• 41:32Bill Simmons?

  It was a brutal loss. Allen was 0 for 9 on passes 20 yards downfield, including the two picks. He just wasn't good enough and he should be able to win that game. Because I thought his defense was good enough. Kept him around and it really felt like the way Cook was running the ball. If he had a normal Josh Allen game, I think they win. So you go through like, he's eight and seven in the playoffs now. And he's had four horrific playoff losses, which was the first one was the 2019, that Houston overtime loss.

• 42:03Speaker 04

  Right.

• 42:04Bill Simmons?

  They were, they blew a 19-point lead in that. They lost to KC by 14. I mean, they had a couple, couple normal playoff losses, but they had that OT loss that was not his fault, the 13 seconds game in 22. They had the loss last year by three. When they basically went four downs and out when they had a chance to close the game. And then they had the one this year. He's had in his last three playoff losses. For three of his last four. He's had the ball. With a chance to close the game and he didn't do it. And he hasn't done it yet and they haven't made a Super Bowl yet. And I think he's the best player in the league, but I don't know if you can say that anymore. If he, if this keeps happening. I think this was the first, I've been on that corner since August.

• 42:48Bill Simmons?

  This is the first time where I'm like, I don't know if you can say it anymore. That was bad.

• 42:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. How about this? He's QB2. And there's no QB1. But he's not QB1. I just don't know.

• 43:02Bill Simmons?

  So it's like, it's like the WWE title is vacant because there's somebody got injured?

• 43:06Speaker 04

  I'm fine with that for this year.

• 43:08Bill Simmons?

  I'm fine with that. I don't think there's anyone top of the mountain right now.

• 43:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. And your guy could jump.

• 43:12Bill Simmons?

  I think it's vacant. My guy could do it. My guy's not ready for that either.

• 43:16Speaker 04

  Hmm. Yeah. I mean, this is six divisional round games. 0 for 6, can't get past it. I think six overtime games. He had the ball and a chance to win in five of them. He has, he's put up three points in those six games. It's, uh, it's rough and it's really, it's really rough. And, you know, we talked about all the weather that went on this week and the bad stuff like, well, a good running game could disguise bad quarterback play. You never thought you'd have to disguise Josh Allen's quarterback play. But the Bills had the most rushing yards this weekend out of anyone. They had 183 yards. That was such a bonus for Cook to be on fire. What do you have like 117? The terrible fumble. Um, I mean, it was reminiscent of the Jacksonville last week who was up 7-3. They didn't fumble, but they missed on the fourth and one.

• 44:00Speaker 04

  This week Buffalo's up 7-3 and about to go 14-3 and Cook fumbles. But the difference is you have Josh Allen. You should be able to overcome that.

• 44:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And if you're going to make excuses for him, and we, we haven't talked about the call yet, but we will. But if you're going to make excuses, like depleted receiving corps. Right? So he had Cooks involved in multiple huge plays who wasn't on a football team seven weeks ago.

• 44:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 44:24Bill Simmons?

  He had Hardman, who I don't even think was on the team a month ago.

• 44:27Speaker 04

  Right.

• 44:28Bill Simmons?

  He's out there in important spots. Shakir is like, basically they're using him like he's Shury Brown in 2001. But. There's been other great quarterbacks who've been in situations with like inferior receiving like Brady won his first Super Bowl with Jermaine Wiggins and David Patton and I think David Givens. I can't even remember who the receiver Troy Brown was the best one. But then you go on through like oh six when they almost beat the Colts in the AFC title game, the Pats, that was the Rashad Caldwell, Jabar Gaffney, Benjamin Watson. Like this happens sometimes when you're paying your quarterback 55 million.

• 45:03Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 45:03Bill Simmons?

  And you have some bad luck. You you know, you might end up with this.

• 45:06Speaker 04

  You can't have everything. He has his tight ends are very good. His tight ends are very good.

• 45:10Bill Simmons?

  And his offensive line is good.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  His offensive line is good. He had 18 touchdown passes to non receivers. So that's pretty. He's been able to figure out how to make it work between throwing to running backs and tight ends for sure. But Brandon Cooks, boy, my God, what a frustrating player. I mean, this guy was on what like a half a dozen teams before age 25, something ridiculous.

• 45:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, including the Pats.

• 45:33Speaker 04

  You're right. And he's supposed to be a speedster and Allen barely overthrew him like three times and then he takes a little off of it and he actually catches it, but not long enough because I actually didn't think that was Allen's fault because he has to on the throw this guy he's overthrowing because it can't catch his speed. But you thought you thought no catch. I thought I thought they should have looked at it for God's sakes for longer than what they did.

• 45:56Bill Simmons?

  I was shocked that people it was a good argument because people felt strongly about it both ways. I didn't think it was a catch. I didn't remotely think that was a catch. Because he's catching and he hits it and people freeze frame. And if you freeze frame it, great, but that's not how football goes. It's like a continuation.

• 46:14Speaker 04

  But why is it? Why? Why can't it freeze frame? We freeze frame pass interference as they call if there's a slightest tug of a jersey.

• 46:21Bill Simmons?

  But you have to catch it and you've hit the ground and you have to survive the catch at least a little bit. He lost the ball immediately. And if the Bronco wasn't there, it just would have been incomplete, but he lost it right to the Bronco.

• 46:32Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 46:33Bill Simmons?

  And I I don't I thought like immediately. I was like, oh shit, that's an interception.

• 46:37Speaker 04

  Really?

• 46:38Bill Simmons?

  But as we talk about over and over again, the definition of a catch seems to change week to week. And people can bring in plays from the past and be like, here's the play when they called that a catch for the receiver.

• 46:49Speaker 04

  No doubt.

• 46:49Bill Simmons?

  I never thought he had the ball.

• 46:51Speaker 04

  We could instantly find five examples.

• 46:53Bill Simmons?

  He lost the ball in one one hundredth of a second. It was out of his hands.

• 46:56Speaker 04

  What's the answer? Does it have to be six 100? Who decides? You? Me? Like, who decides how long it has to be?

• 47:01Bill Simmons?

  It can't be incomplete because it never hit the ground.

• 47:04Speaker 04

  It never hit the ground.

• 47:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, right.

• 47:06Speaker 04

  So, yes, yeah.

• 47:06Bill Simmons?

  One of the two had to catch it.

• 47:08Speaker 04

  Right.

• 47:09Bill Simmons?

  He, he took two steps, hit the ground, immediately lost it. And in any other scenario, they would have said he didn't, he didn't continue to catch. It's not a catch.

• 47:18Speaker 04

  But McMillan has one hand on the ball.

• 47:20Bill Simmons?

  It went to the Broncos.

• 47:21Speaker 04

  So at what point can they be like, all right, hey, it's not long enough, guys. Let's, five of us come in here and swarm that ball out. Is it two seconds? Is it a half a second? He doesn't need to make a football move at that.

• 47:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, well, maybe a half a second would have been nice. I agree that they should have looked at it longer. It was kind of a big play to not be like, hey, we're gonna look at this for a minute here.

• 47:39Speaker 04

  They spent 10 minutes looking at spots, fourth down spots, like third down at one. Like, they could look at this, McDermott's like, uh, I'm gonna call a timeout. Maybe I'll call all my timeouts here because I really think you guys should look at it for 40 seconds. And we still don't know what that eye in the sky and go to New York and booth review like. We're, we're still unclear about that, but there should have been some explanation about it. That's all I'm saying.

• 48:02Bill Simmons?

  I agree. I don't think it was a catch. I thought it was a weird call that you're, we saw this even in the Rams game today where it was before the field goal to win the game. They just took two shots at the end zone for no reason. It's like, why aren't you guys getting closer? Why are you so comfortable with?

• 48:18Speaker 04

  Right, I know.

• 48:19Bill Simmons?

  A 48 yard kick at, uh, what was it like 10 at night?

• 48:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:24Bill Simmons?

  In Chicago, freezing cold? Why are you so happy with this?

• 48:27Speaker 04

  Special teams have been great, so I think they got.

• 48:31Bill Simmons?

  Well, so I was doing a, you know, I was nervous about the game and I was doing a bunch of research about Allen. And I was thinking,

• 48:40Bill Simmons?

  this might be the best version we've ever had of the QB, the great QB that can't get over the hump. Cause when we were in high school and college, it was Marino, no way.

• 48:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 48:52Bill Simmons?

  And, and they were like the yeah, but QBs where we would be like, ah, they're so great, but, and especially Marino, cause Marino really peaked 84, 85 and 86. When he led the league in yards and TDs every year, they made the Super Bowl. And it just seemed like he was gonna rip through the league and it, he never really matched it. But he lost the Super Bowl to Montana. He lost the AFC title at home and to the 85 Pats, lost to Jim Kelly twice. They blew a 21-6 lead to San Diego 95. Then he became pretty immobile. And it just kind of, that was it. I still think he's one of the 10 best QBs. Since the merger, he's one of the best QBs I've ever seen. He didn't win.

• 49:30Speaker 04

  Me too. I show my kids highlights of him and I'm like, come on, isn't that, isn't that great? Doesn't that look different than a lot of what we see? And they're like, yeah, that's good. I mean, I don't know, he wouldn't be top five, top four today. I'm like, oh, god damn it. Of course he would. I promise you he would.

• 49:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, if you factor in like people are diving at his knees and hitting him after he throws it and you know, all the things that you had against you. So he was star crossed, but I don't think even close to Josh, like year after year with these horrible losses. Not to mention the Buffalo Bills history. And all the stuff, all the baggage that comes with being a Bills fan, all the terrible things that have happened. And now you have this guy who's the best player in the league and every year something happens. Elway was the other one.

• 50:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:12Bill Simmons?

  And Elway was from 83 to 96, seven and seven in the playoffs, got blown out in the Super Bowl three times. Had that huge choke against the 96 Jaguars. Did you have them in a parlay?

• 50:23Speaker 04

  Yes, I did.

• 50:24Bill Simmons?

  The Brunel game? I forgot. I looked up that game. They're up 12, nothing at home.

• 50:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:28Bill Simmons?

  And then the Jags scored 23 straight points and then ended up knocking them out. But then he flipped it and they won in 97, 98. They went back to back Super Bowls and it was moot after that. And then the other one was Peyton Manning, who the first eight years of his career was three and six in the playoffs. Lost to the 99 Dolphins, lost to the Pats twice in a row, lost to the 05 Steelers, his big favorites. And that's probably the doppelganger for this. Allen and Manning. And Manning won in 06.

• 50:59Speaker 04

  Minor league version of that, I'd put my guy in there, Romo. You can say what you want about him, but he has, they had some really good years. They had 13 win years and 12 win, you know, so that there's.

• 51:08Bill Simmons?

  The other one is Phil Rivers.

• 51:10Speaker 04

  And Phil Rivers, I would say, how long was Breeze before he, before he went over the top?

• 51:14Bill Simmons?

  He got his early, because they won in 09.

• 51:18Speaker 04

  Against the Colts. Yeah.

• 51:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he'd only been on the Saints for a couple of years, so he doesn't count. Then I was going back to the eighties and there's like Dan Fouts, people like that who had little mini runs. This is crazy because he's clearly the best quarterback in the league. But now there's this playoff thing hanging over it and we see this, this happened in basketball more than football. Like this was like the old Karl Malone thing and people like that where they couldn't get over the hump, basically.

• 51:44Speaker 04

  Couple of things make this worse. Social media, right? Because within four minutes of the loss, you see Josh Allen come January and there'll be a picture of Aaron Judge in a Bills uniform, you know, so that's awful. The second thing, he just, he just falls to pieces during these press conferences. Like, man, this, I don't know that it meant that much to Dan Marino that he was losing. I'm sure it hurt.

• 52:05Bill Simmons?

  But Dan Marino, he just yelled at people.

• 52:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 52:08Bill Simmons?

  Would have excoriated an intern.

• 52:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, get out of my face and I'm not talking to anyone until September, kind of thing. And Josh Allen is just even on the sideline, just broken up and just, it's miserable.

• 52:19Bill Simmons?

  There's something with the baggage. Like I was talking about it with a couple Red Sox fan friends about, and I wrote about this 100 times when I was writing for ESPN about the mentality of a fan base. When you just feel like you're getting kicked in the nuts at the end of every season.

• 52:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:33Bill Simmons?

  And we hit, you know, from our generation, from that, the Pedro era through the Aaron Boone game. It was just like, I don't know if I should follow sports anymore. Like it gets the darkest of dark. You're just like, why do I do this? Like, should I do this? Do I want to give this team to my kids? And I think the Bills, the combination of everything that's happened to them, really since the, I don't know, eighties.

• 52:59Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 52:59Bill Simmons?

  Late eighties into whatever, combined with the fact that they have this guy and they had this season where by far, he would have been the best quarterback left.

• 53:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:09Bill Simmons?

  Right? And now on top of it, you get to watch the Broncos advance and Bo Nix is out and you have Jared Stidham. Like they're probably like, couldn't that Bo Nix injury have happened like 20 minutes earlier? Like we could have Jared Stidham. It's really brutal. It's as bad as it gets.

• 53:26Speaker 04

  I went to college in upstate New York. Everyone was a Bills fan. Some of them were bearable, some of them not. But the core fans are just, they're, they're great fans up there. And I think now I know why they dive through tables because they want to get concussed so they can forget about all this nonsense every year.

• 53:42Bill Simmons?

  It's really bad. Yeah, so they they were fixed it in the call McDermott played it big, but I just thought they blew that game in a bunch of different ways. And honestly, he's got to hit Knox like.

• 53:54Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 53:55Bill Simmons?

  You just have to. You want to. I had my best QBs since the merger. Brady, Montana, Mahomes, Manning, Elway, Rogers, Marino, Favre, Young, Allen. I think those are the best 10 QBs since 1970. And then you can throw Stafford, Breeze, Rivers, Kurt Warner, Bradshaw, Staubach.

• 54:18Bill Simmons?

  I just think Young and Allen were better than all of those guys. Favre has to be above them. Like when you throw him stats in a Super Bowl. But it's weird. Allen is the only one that,

• 54:29Bill Simmons?

  I guess Marino would be the other one that doesn't have that. Marino only played in one Super Bowl and lost.

• 54:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, it's phenomenal that he's 0 for 6 in this round.

• 54:38Bill Simmons?

  And lost to Mahomes over and over again is the other problem. That's like his biggest rival from his generation and lost to him every time. This was bad because Nix, I think, is the worst quarterback he's lost in.

• 54:51Speaker 04

  I think so. I mean, I know you were down on Nix. I don't know that. I think he probably played better than every quarterback this weekend. Like who played better than him this weekend?

• 54:59Bill Simmons?

  We know that he threw the the key PI throw. He had a broken ankle, it seems like, when he threw that last pass.

• 55:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:05Bill Simmons?

  But.

• 55:05Speaker 04

  How about this? You know, you don't have to worry about a call, ticky tack call. If you if you have some safety help there. If it's a one on two and you Eli Manning and it and you under throw it, the refs are less likely to call a pass interference if it's an uncatchable ball like that.

• 55:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 55:22Speaker 04

  I don't know. Don't leave it up. Where was the help on any of that stuff? He was like, kind of smart, Nix, throwing it like that.

• 55:28Bill Simmons?

  We've talked about it forever that this, who was the, was it Rivers that was doing it for a couple of years there or Flacco?

• 55:35Speaker 04

  The Flacco.

• 55:35Bill Simmons?

  Somebody was doing this in the way 2010s where this Roethlisberger tried to do it. This offense where he's like, ah, maybe we'll get one. There's three outcomes. Two of them are good for us. Let's just keep doing this.

• 55:45Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 55:46Bill Simmons?

  But they, though, one of them was clearly designed to get a PI. Like that last one he threw was like, almost like a hail Mary moon ball.

• 55:54Speaker 04

  Right.

• 55:54Bill Simmons?

  To drop down and try to get the D back to collide into him. White was pissed off. I thought it was no question that was a PI.

• 56:02Speaker 04

  I thought so too. The second one for sure. First one was eh, but.

• 56:07Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. I get it. If I'm a Bills fan, I'm making excuses for my guy. I'm fixating on that call. I understand all the stuff they're doing, but they they blew the game. Like, there's no other way to say it. They blew the game. They should have won and they should have won and should have won 34-30. He should have hit Knox. The game should have been over.

• 56:23Speaker 04

  Is it like this in basketball, would you say, where the officiating is scrutinized 500% more in the playoffs than it is the regular season? I guess because-

• 56:32Bill Simmons?

  NBA is pretty bad, too, but it feels like the calls are bigger in football.

• 56:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 56:37Bill Simmons?

  You have these calls that literally swing games. In basketball, you have the foul baiting and some stupid stuff, but it's hard to swing a game with a call in basketball.

• 56:45Speaker 04

  And I've always said it's tough to officiate. Like, otherwise, it's just a practical joke on all us fans, right? Like, no, no, we're gonna make the officiating in every sport bad. It's like, no, these guys are fast. It's hard to see. It's hard to make calls. But in the case of the Cooks catch where you could review it, that's where I think they need to get it right, or they need to explain, or they need to do something different than, you know, on-the-spot call, which you can't review.

• 57:09Bill Simmons?

  Well, the Broncos win. It's one of the great, I mean, they've won Super Bowl, so you can't say. It's one of the great non-Super Bowl playoff wins, probably. You defeat Josh Allen, this great home win. It seems multiple times, it seems like you're gonna blow it. And then 15 minutes later, we're all getting the text from each other. Whoa, oh, my God, Knicks. It's like, did he get hit by a car? What happened? It's like, no, he broke his ankle. How'd he break his ankle? I watched the whole game. Would he break the ankle after the game?

• 57:40Speaker 04

  Well, then it was like, it was a little bit weird because most of the reports were that he got it kneeling down, which wasn't the case, right?

• 57:47Bill Simmons?

  Right, and the kneel down. Yeah. It was that little design rollout thing. So, they had an incredible amount of luck this year and then get a bad break at the worst possible time. I still think the Stidham thing, they're home, they have a really good defense. You saw this Pats offense could be a little, the blocking could be, I would say, sketchy. Will Campbell, Hensh texted us, they have that, he was watching the video when Rabel stands in the tunnel and he hugs each guy after. When the guys, the Patriots come in and each guy does the handshake and the hug. And he said, Will Campbell looked like he had just gotten back from like a tour of duty and some military site and just like just deer in the headlights. I mean, he got, he has not done well as the left tackle and now you have this Denver team that's going to load up on him.

• 58:33Bill Simmons?

  They're gonna, you know, they're gonna try to prevent the Pats from running the ball.

• 58:37Speaker 04

  I'll tell you why I'm not buying this, um, this woe was me thing with the Denver thing, because if you are to lose to Denver, you're definitely listing your top seven Patriots playoff losses next year and you're putting this in the top three. We're not gonna have to worry about it because it's not gonna happen, but I'm just telling you that's what would happen.

• 58:55Bill Simmons?

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• 59:39Bill Simmons?

  It's the start of NBA season. I can't wait to get together with friends, share some Michelob Ultras and watch Tipoff Plus as the official beer sponsor of the NBA. Michelob Ultra is getting you closer to the action with experiences that make you feel like you're courtside to actual courtside tickets. Enter now for a chance to win at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents, 21 plus. Begins on October 1st, 2026, ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes and details. This episode is brought to you by Workday. Guessing is for game shows, not your business, especially when your margin for error is zero.

• 1:00:24Bill Simmons?

  Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance and IT, with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission aware, giving you accuracy 24/7 and the ability to not just get work done, but get it done right. It's a new Workday. This will be pretty tough with the way it's lined up now.

• 1:00:48Bill Simmons?

  To play Darnold on a neutral field as the prize, who I still feel like, and I think our defense is good. I felt like people were sleeping on it. I think they can at least get pressure on him, make him try to work. I think Gonzalez could take out JSN. And we'd match up pretty nicely with them. And I'm excited to watch some Malcolm Butler clip for two weeks. But the Pats have to get there first and they have never, ever won a playoff game in Denver.

• 1:01:14Speaker 04

  You could hire Pete Carroll as like a consultant, right? Like they've done that.

• 1:01:18Bill Simmons?

  Like right now?

• 1:01:19Speaker 04

  Going into that game.

• 1:01:20Bill Simmons?

  The Denver conciliary?

• 1:01:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, no, not Denver, for the Seattle game. Yeah, like, hey, here's that.

• 1:01:26Bill Simmons?

  Oh, for the Seahawks?

• 1:01:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, because he was there since last two years.

• 1:01:29Speaker 04

  He was the guy, yeah.

• 1:01:30Bill Simmons?

  I thought you were going to say the Denver game because Vegas played them twice.

• 1:01:33Speaker 04

  Oh, that's true, too.

• 1:01:34Bill Simmons?

  I think Pete was only there in spirit.

• 1:01:36Speaker 04

  Yeah. Did you see Vegas' Raiders record? And not the record, but the scores against these playoff teams? Like, you know, you guys lost.

• 1:01:43Bill Simmons?

  Before that or left?

• 1:01:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. Unbelievable. Like they either won or lost by three. Football's weird.

• 1:01:49Bill Simmons?

  That was when I really was concerned about Stroud. When I started him that week in fantasy in the playoffs and he played Vegas.

• 1:01:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:58Bill Simmons?

  And he was terrible. And I was like, it's like, what's up with this dude? And then that was the guy that showed up today. Well.

• 1:02:08Bill Simmons?

  We've guessed the lines and we have two.

• 1:02:11Bill Simmons?

  Is this where you get sad?

• 1:02:13Speaker 04

  I'm already sad.

• 1:02:14Bill Simmons?

  Before we do guess the lines, how'd you do in the gambling?

• 1:02:16Speaker 04

  I did okay because I had teasers all over the place. I have a ton, way, way too much. Like, I'm gonna have to pull my kid from college if the Hoosiers lose tomorrow because I had a bunch of-

• 1:02:26Bill Simmons?

  Tied to some of these games, yeah.

• 1:02:28Speaker 04

  Bills plus seven and a half, Seattle money line tied to Indiana. So, fingers crossed I get over the finish line there, across the finish line. But how'd you do? You did well, right?

• 1:02:38Bill Simmons?

  I did well. I would have done awesome if I hadn't panicked and done some Niners protection stuff.

• 1:02:45Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:02:46Bill Simmons?

  I got really scared.

• 1:02:47Speaker 04

  Sue Schefter. You should sue him.

• 1:02:50Bill Simmons?

  I got really scared. I did some, but I had my favorite one. I did like a four-team, seven-point tease. That's like, two to one odds are close.

• 1:02:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Bill Simmons?

  And I took both sides of the Bills-Denver game because I was like, that game's gonna be close. I'm just betting on that one. And I had the Seahawks and then the Bears plus 10 and a half today.

• 1:03:09Speaker 04

  When they were down 23-10, you were scared. I was nervous too with having the Bills plus points, 23-10. Then you look up, it's like, how are they winning this game 24-23? What did Denver do?

• 1:03:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's the, that was the weird thing was, it was a little like the Stroud game where Allen was bad enough that it's, that all of a sudden the Bills were in a power position in the game. And it's like, I don't understand how this happened.

• 1:03:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:33Bill Simmons?

  You know? It was weird. They didn't use Sutton enough. Thought some of the Sean Payton play calling I thought was a little, little, little iffy. I don't, I don't really remember that much about Stidham. I don't think he can move like Knicks could, obviously, but I think he throws a good deep ball.

• 1:03:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:50Bill Simmons?

  So I don't know if they're gonna try to just do heavy run and then play action with Stidham. And if they do that, that's perfect for the Pats because they eat up the run.

• 1:03:58Speaker 04

  I can't. Well, why don't you check out his preseason games? I'm sure there's tape of it because he started every, every preseason, first two preseason games every year.

• 1:04:05Bill Simmons?

  It's the 34 strings. It's a great spot for Drake. We'll see, you know, I don't think he was probably happy with those first two playoff games and especially the ball protection stuff. They got lucky. There was one fumble that really would have hurt them and they, the Pats were able to get it back. But I think they, they need to start rolling them out away from- Pressure. I just can't, I can't believe with the way this team blocks that they're in the final four.

• 1:04:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:32Bill Simmons?

  When uh, it just doesn't seem like he has more than three seconds ever.

• 1:04:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:37Bill Simmons?

  You know?

• 1:04:38Speaker 04

  When do you think uh, Donald gets hurt? Like, is it like washing his car?

• 1:04:42Bill Simmons?

  Oh my god.

• 1:04:42Speaker 04

  You just like uh?

• 1:04:43Bill Simmons?

  See, we went through this with the Celtics two years ago. With all the teams, the Celtics played that year and it was like asterisk, asterisk, and then they beat Dallas.

• 1:04:50Speaker 04

  This is especially, this is incredible though. This is just every week, right? Even the, when the good teams don't show up.

• 1:04:57Bill Simmons?

  Right, if you, but if you had this situation with uh, your guy Tony Romo in the late 2000s, you would have loved it.

• 1:05:04Speaker 04

  Of course I would have loved it. You have to love it. Yeah, but you're gonna get it.

• 1:05:08Bill Simmons?

  We knew this was gonna be a weird year. We were saying this in October. We were like, get ready for fucking weird playoffs. Like, none of these teams are that good. Who are the good teams?

• 1:05:17Speaker 04

  I'm just saying, don't accept the trophy. That would be like a bold thing to do. It'd be like, you know, like the fans of Massachusetts fans would be like, and people would be like, alright, I'm okay with them now.

• 1:05:28Bill Simmons?

  Just, you know.

• 1:05:29Speaker 04

  I bet maybe at five to one for MVP, for Super Bowl MVP. I did it on the pregame show today. I was like, enough is enough. Throwing in the towel.

• 1:05:37Bill Simmons?

  How much was it?

• 1:05:38Speaker 04

  I'm Duke and Rocky IV. Five to one odds. That was this morning. It's gotta be updated. It's gotta be less than that now.

• 1:05:46Bill Simmons?

  So, do they have the Super Bowl MVP odds or no?

• 1:05:49Speaker 04

  That's what I'm saying. Yo, up right now?

• 1:05:51Bill Simmons?

  Do they have all of them up? Oh yeah, they do.

• 1:05:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:54Bill Simmons?

  Donald's plus 250, May is plus 280, Stafford plus 330, JSN 14 to 1, Puka 17 to 1, and Walker 21. I think there's a real JSN case.

• 1:06:07Speaker 04

  Really?

• 1:06:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah. Cause if the Seahawks won and we've seen receivers, we just had it happen with Cooper Cup a couple of years ago. We've seen receivers win MVP when they, the quarterback stats aren't that good and the receiver's like 10 for 122 with a touchdown or whatever. Sometimes they'll win it.

• 1:06:26Speaker 04

  I'm predicting you put a hundy on Christian Gonzalez at 225 to 1. No doubt about it.

• 1:06:31Bill Simmons?

  He was good today.

• 1:06:32Speaker 04

  You got that.

• 1:06:33Bill Simmons?

  He was, he was excellent today. It really helped them that Nico Collins wasn't playing, obviously, but um.

• 1:06:40Bill Simmons?

  I don't know what to tell you. We have Stidham versus an aging Matthew Stafford versus Drake May versus Sam Darnold, and that's our final four of QBs. What were the odds of that, you think, in August?

• 1:06:54Speaker 04

  You couldn't get it.

• 1:06:55Bill Simmons?

  Is it like a million to one?

• 1:06:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, you couldn't get it. The Stidham part.

• 1:06:59Bill Simmons?

  And if I told you Stidham was starting in the AFC title game at home, you would have thought Bo Nix got hurt in like week four and Stidham did like a Nick Foles.

• 1:07:09Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I guess that would be the only way to do it. Oh, man. It's fricking Patriots.

• 1:07:17Bill Simmons?

  All right, guess the lines.

• 1:07:18Speaker 04

  So bummed. Go ahead.

• 1:07:21Bill Simmons?

  So I don't even know. Do we know what's the first game? What's the second game? I'm assuming Pat's Denver is first game, right?

• 1:07:27Speaker 04

  You think you're the night game? You should. They should send your game to Europe. They should play that in Ireland somewhere at three in the morning.

• 1:07:35Speaker 04

  Of course you're the first game. You should have been the first game Saturday if not for Houston and the rest.

• 1:07:41Bill Simmons?

  They moved our game to Saturday.

• 1:07:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:45Bill Simmons?

  I went Pat's. So Pat's in Denver. I went Patriots minus one and a half.

• 1:07:52Speaker 04

  Wait a minute. Really? That's what you did?

• 1:07:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:56Speaker 04

  I said Patriots minus five and it's Pat's minus five and a half. Are you crazy? I was wondering why you were so worried. You got this, buddy.

• 1:08:08Bill Simmons?

  So if Nix was the QB, what would the line have been?

• 1:08:11Speaker 04

  I think it would have been a Tic Tac with you maybe favored by one and a half.

• 1:08:16Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 1:08:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:08:18Bill Simmons?

  Did anyone see our offensive line today?

• 1:08:21Speaker 04

  Well, I don't know. You've been power ranked higher all year than than Denver, right? Haven't you? How do you think it's one and a half? This guy hasn't thrown a ball in years.

• 1:08:34Bill Simmons?

  You're saying Bo Nix is worth six points to the line? Like he's Patrick Mahomes? That's ridiculous.

• 1:08:41Speaker 04

  If New England was favored by one and a half, this would be four to the line.

• 1:08:45Bill Simmons?

  I don't think we would have been favored by one and a half in Denver against Bo Nix.

• 1:08:48Speaker 04

  Well, who's betting Stidham?

• 1:08:50Bill Simmons?

  So people have to decide, are we good or are we not good? Cause everyone's like, oh, it's schedule, schedule, schedule, schedule. But then we should be favored in the AFC title game? Like what, which is it?

• 1:08:59Speaker 04

  Well, I think you have to decide because you obviously don't think enough of your team that you, I mean, you have a four point gift here. You should bet a lot on Denver.

• 1:09:06Bill Simmons?

  We can't block.

• 1:09:09Speaker 04

  Man.

• 1:09:10Bill Simmons?

  Will Anderson almost had seven sacks in that game.

• 1:09:13Speaker 04

  You are.

• 1:09:16Bill Simmons?

  They had to keep a third tight end next to our left tackle so we could have our quarterback have two seconds of time.

• 1:09:22Speaker 04

  Hundred percent you're betting the Patriots.

• 1:09:24Bill Simmons?

  We've never won a playoff game in Denver. I'm not betting this game.

• 1:09:27Speaker 04

  In the Ringer 107, there's no question you're betting the Patriots.

• 1:09:30Bill Simmons?

  Well, I'm gonna do that. I mean, I'm gonna do that. What am I gonna take the Broncos? I'm gonna go against my team.

• 1:09:36Speaker 04

  But that's what everyone's saying. Oh, what are we gonna take the Broncos? Like this is teasers. They gotta move this to eight. Who knows?

• 1:09:44Bill Simmons?

  I'm positive you are going to tease the Broncos to like 11 and a half.

• 1:09:49Speaker 04

  No way. No way. I can't bet bad quarterbacks. I'll bet you're a bad quarterback. That's it.

• 1:09:56Bill Simmons?

  I gotta look at the manifesto and see what's going on. There are a couple of quarterback rules in the manifesto.

• 1:10:01Speaker 04

  Just go to the letter S under Stidham.

• 1:10:06Bill Simmons?

  Bad offensive lines usually don't travel. And from what we saw of the Pats offensive line, it was pretty sketchy. I mean, May in two playoff games, I think got, were stripped from behind as he was throwing five times? Five or four? Four or five? That's not a good sign for us. Denver's got a good defense, or at least I thought they did before the Buffalo game.

• 1:10:28Speaker 04

  I didn't look at these before I guessed, but some people are saying, so Denver's the first home underdog in a conference championship game since?

• 1:10:35Bill Simmons?

  Pats Colts?

• 1:10:36Speaker 04

  2015. No, Denver, New England, 2015.

• 1:10:39Bill Simmons?

  Oh, nude arm.

• 1:10:40Speaker 04

  2018. What was that, two and a half, three? And this is the biggest home underdog. Any one seed has been in a conference title game since 1970.

• 1:10:49Bill Simmons?

  All the sharps are gonna take the Broncos.

• 1:10:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. There you go. All right. So I win the week and go within one if I get this or if we tie.

• 1:10:58Bill Simmons?

  Manning was good in that AFC title game. Even though he was noodle armed that whole year, he actually was pretty good in that game and he hurt us.

• 1:11:07Bill Simmons?

  Rams Seahawks in Seattle.

• 1:11:14Bill Simmons?

  I have the Seahawks favored by three and a half.

• 1:11:19Speaker 04

  Wait a minute. Who gets this? I said one and a half. It is two and a half. So we tie.

• 1:11:25Bill Simmons?

  So you won the week.

• 1:11:25Speaker 04

  I win the week and it is now 10 to nine. Oh no, it is now.

• 1:11:31Bill Simmons?

  I'm still up by one. So you can tie for the year.

• 1:11:34Speaker 04

  Oh, what a, what a great treat that would be if we tie. Take, Netflix really did the right thing.

• 1:11:41Bill Simmons?

  I like when we tie because then you're in a better mood.

• 1:11:44Speaker 04

  If we tie, if we tie, let's go to penalty kicks and Zoe, we're, we're the two goalies and Zoe kicks against us.

• 1:11:54Bill Simmons?

  That'd be great.

• 1:11:54Speaker 04

  Let's do it.

• 1:11:55Bill Simmons?

  She'd probably love that. Zoe could probably hurt either of us.

• 1:11:58Speaker 04

  I know. It's all right. I deserve it.

• 1:12:01Bill Simmons?

  Seattle, two and a half, huh?

• 1:12:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I would have thought.

• 1:12:06Bill Simmons?

  I felt that should be higher. I think, I, I haven't been that impressed by the, by the Rams.

• 1:12:12Speaker 04

  You think going into this week it was lower?

• 1:12:14Bill Simmons?

  Kind of thought they should have lost today. The Bears were at midfield in overtime. Like that felt like that game was done.

• 1:12:22Speaker 04

  What would you have made this line, um, Friday night or whatever?

• 1:12:26Bill Simmons?

  Probably two and a half.

• 1:12:27Speaker 04

  Two and a half?

• 1:12:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:30Speaker 04

  Instead of three and a half. Yeah.

• 1:12:33Bill Simmons?

  I have a couple of emails from Bills fans.

• 1:12:37Bill Simmons?

  This is from, uh, Brian. I'm a lifelong Bills fan. I have two sons. Our 10 year old has completely bought in. He's watched every game in the past four seasons. I've done everything I can to warn him about how the season will end. After the loss to the Broncos, he went full Brad. I guess that's now a verb, our crazy friend Brad. He went full Brad, was inconsolable and launched into a fallen asthma attack. 30 minutes of hysterical crying, purple lips and wheezing. I tried explaining that like the masters, this is a tradition like no other. And the Bills NFL finding a way to absolutely gut punch us. The most resilient fan base in the NFL. I felt nothing. They've crushed my insides.

• 1:13:20Bill Simmons?

  Do I have an obligation as a father to completely disavow the Bills? That's from Brian. It's pretty bleak.

• 1:13:27Speaker 04

  That's for child protective services to figure out.

• 1:13:30Bill Simmons?

  You want to get that on the record.

• 1:13:31Speaker 04

  Knocking at your door, you're lucky Bill didn't say your last name. That sucks. That sucks though. We could laugh and everything, but that absolutely sucks.

• 1:13:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Unfortunately, your kid inherited the team and he can't switch. He's stuck with the team. Did you, that's nine and 10 are the worst times for, to have a loss like this. Those were the, nine was the, twice I've cried from sports and those were the two times when I was nine.

• 1:13:53Speaker 04

  You know what? You didn't have to worry about.

• 1:13:55Bill Simmons?

  Yours was in 2006 when you were in your mid 30s.

• 1:13:59Speaker 04

  And also, but like going to school for you, you all like sympathize, you're all together, you're all in it together. Like I was a Cowboys fan in New York, you know, the Mets is a different story. All my friends were Met fans, were Yankee fans and they hated the Mets. But yeah, that's, that's an extra hurdle you have to, you have to get over.

• 1:14:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we had the Yankee playoff game and then we had the

• 1:14:21Bill Simmons?

  too many men on the ice against the Canadians, I think within six months of each other. I think my parents got divorced in the middle of that.

• 1:14:28Speaker 04

  Oh no.

• 1:14:28Bill Simmons?

  As a mess. I think I might've had a 30 minute asthma attack.

• 1:14:32Speaker 04

  Wait a minute, your parents got divorced because there were too many men on the ice?

• 1:14:35Bill Simmons?

  No, it's just, I was just taking, I was just taking losses left and right.

• 1:14:41Bill Simmons?

  Shale from Columbia, Maryland asks, the NFL famously changed the rules on how defensive backs could cover receivers to get Peyton Manning a ring. This is true, by the way. Which rule are they going to change to get Josh Allen over the hump? Could it be that QBs don't count against the cap anymore? They did change the rules for Manning. That was 100% happened.

• 1:15:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:07Bill Simmons?

  I don't know what rule they would change.

• 1:15:09Speaker 04

  If your wife has been nominated for an acting award, you'd start every-

• 1:15:14Bill Simmons?

  10 million more on the seller cap?

• 1:15:15Speaker 04

  Start every possession at the 45? I don't know.

• 1:15:19Speaker 04

  What it is.

• 1:15:20Bill Simmons?

  There were a couple kickoff spots during these playoffs that I like. You down in the end zone, you throw one 15 yard pass and you're over midfield. I can't get used to it. I can't wrap my head around some of the spottings. Where you're like, wait, we're on the other team's 45 already? What's happening?

• 1:15:39Speaker 04

  This is why I want to get rid of kicking fantasy.

• 1:15:42Bill Simmons?

  Colton asks, you've talked a lot about how it could be Josh Allen's year. You forgot to mention how good his life is going. He's married to Hailee Steinfeld. They have a baby on the way.

• 1:15:51Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 1:15:52Bill Simmons?

  He's not hungry enough. One of the main reasons Tom Brady was so good, especially in the last few years of his career is because his personal life was teetering on the edge of collapse. Do you think Allen misses those throws against the Broncos if his personal life was collapsing? I think not.

• 1:16:06Speaker 04

  Wow. You know, do you think that matters?

• 1:16:09Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. It's a theory from Colton. It did make me think like Brady met Gisele in the mid 2000s and we didn't win a Super Bowl for like eight years.

• 1:16:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:17Bill Simmons?

  And then he started ripping them off near the end and now she's married to her jujitsu instructor.

• 1:16:24Speaker 04

  Brady was hungry, but I think it's because he was dedicated to carrot and ginger soup.

• 1:16:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he was hungry for, he was like literally just hungry because he was eating almonds.

• 1:16:32Speaker 04

  You gotta be hungry to be hungry.

• 1:16:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he was actually hungry.

• 1:16:37Bill Simmons?

  And then Alan asks, he said, I'm a hardcore NBA fan, a casual NFL fan. Is there a modern NBA equivalent to the Buffalo Bills and Josh Allen? A proud but tragic small market team that's never made it over the hump. I don't, I don't think any, you can compare another sport to what happened to the Bills in the 90s.

• 1:16:54Speaker 04

  No way. No.

• 1:16:55Bill Simmons?

  I don't think, but you could say like the Pacers last year, but then seven other horrible things would have had to happen to them.

• 1:17:02Speaker 04

  So they hit six divisional round games in a row without winning a Super Bowl. This Bills team has hit six in a row without getting to the, getting to, getting to the Super Bowl. But yeah, that was, that was absolutely brutal. Those force.

• 1:17:17Bill Simmons?

  And they hit the lottery with the, I mean, you go back at that draft and how it worked out where we're, that was such a weird draft where we were trying to decide who the good quarterbacks were going to be out of it. And there were all those choices. And then they ended up getting the one you would wanted.

• 1:17:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:17:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I was thinking that, that, uh, that Caleb, if Caleb had made the next round and we would have had Caleb, Drake and Jaden Daniels all in the conference title game in the first two years of that draft and they went one, two, three. I don't, I don't know if that even has happened in the NBA where we went one, two, three like that. I don't think it has. We've had like top fives where there were three guys, but not like one, two, three, all of the guys were awesome.

• 1:17:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think it takes less time for a football team to change their fortune than a lottery pick basketball player, probably.

• 1:18:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:18:07Bill Simmons?

  Do you want to do some parent corner?

• 1:18:09Speaker 04

  Let's do it. I mean, I feel, I mean, that's, those, that was a parent story. That was really, that's going to be tough to top. Poor guy.

• 1:18:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was sad. I mean, he did create the word full Brad.

• 1:18:22Speaker 04

  He doesn't know what he's talking about.

• 1:18:24Bill Simmons?

  I guess, remind me to send you, I have, I have video of Brad trying to get himself and somebody else to Mountain Dew Soda at Shakey's from two weeks ago.

• 1:18:32Speaker 04

  Himself and someone, oh, someone at the table? Yeah.

• 1:18:35Bill Simmons?

  It didn't take a short amount of time. I'll just spoiler alert.

• 1:18:40Speaker 04

  It's the simple tasks. It's really, I think.

• 1:18:42Bill Simmons?

  It was an eight second task that took two minutes.

• 1:18:47Speaker 04

  This is a, not a parent corner thing, but we took him to a yogurt land a few weeks ago. I took him with the boys and he had never been to one. And he was screaming at the people behind the counter because he didn't realize you have to do it yourself. Right? Like you have to put the yogurt in and then you add the toppings and he didn't think that was right. And he was wondering what they were doing behind the counter that they couldn't do this. Oh, I gotta do this? Oh, I gotta do this myself? Oh, really? What do I get? What do I get? Like eight bucks an hour? What do you get? I'll take half what you get.

• 1:19:18Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Jesus. Just eat your chocolate swirl. Let's get out of here. We might have to have him on the Super Bowl props podcast when we do that two weeks from now. Can we have him on? Is it possible for him to be on a Zoom?

• 1:19:29Speaker 04

  I think so. Yeah, I mean, uh, it's gonna take a lot to install a camera in this.

• 1:19:35Bill Simmons?

  I gotta talk to Netflix. I don't know if he's allowed on Netflix.

• 1:19:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're right. It's too controversial for Netflix.

• 1:19:40Bill 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. All right, quick break. This episode is brought to you by Fire TV. You ever sit down, ready to watch the game, only to search and scroll endlessly? If so, you need Fire TV.

• 1:20:24Bill Simmons?

  It shows your live games from your favorite teams all in one place, right on the home screen. No more searching. Just sit down and turn on Fire TV. Separate subscriptions may be required. Feature and content availability may vary. What do you have for our parent corner?

• 1:20:40Speaker 04

  All right. Well, my parent corner involves my wife, who, I guess she sees me as a child, so it counts. Although I feel like I'm very mature in this situation. So she's in a, uh, baseball moms fantasy league, right? So all the moms of Harrison's 12-year-olds, um, right there. And she does the draft in September and she, I give her a nice grid. I was like, hey, go running back, wide receiver, running back, wide receiver, maybe wide receiver, running back. I don't care. But for those first four, do that. Just keep doing that and do it through six rounds. So she, for some reason, waits until the fifth round, take running backs, despite the fact that I gave her a nice grid, telling her what to do. And she ends up with like James Connor and Dobbins, all this crap for running backs.

• 1:21:23Speaker 04

  And they're gone early. So she can never catch up. She has some bad luck. She goes two and 12 and she blames me. And because I can't dig her out of the hole, she's like, you watch football, you watch every single play. You can't help me here. I'm against mothers. I'm like, sweetheart, it's all luck. Fantasy's all luck. So.

• 1:21:39Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:21:39Speaker 04

  Turns out there's a punishment for last place. She was in two and 12. Yeah, there's punishment for last place. So she says the other day to me. Um, she's like, hey, so and so is going to come by. She's dropping off the sign for the lawn. I was like, what sign for the lawn? So it's a sign that says, uh, it's a fantasy football sign. It says, I suck at fantasy football. And it has to go on our lawn for a month. Like, that's not going on our lawn. She's like, yes, it has to. There's nothing I get it. And the kids are like, no way. No, we're not doing that. Cause then that looks like someone in this house, you know,

• 1:22:09Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:22:09Speaker 04

  Then it'll look like I suck at fantasy football, right? It'll look like, uh, you know, my kids are like, they'd rather fail all their classes than have someone think that they suck at fantasy football at this. So. She's like, well, the alternative was, get this, I'd have to walk up and down the pier with a sign that says, I give great BJ's. And I was like, ah, Jesus Christ, what kind of league is this? Even my league is frank.

• 1:22:31Bill Simmons?

  What is this like the ice storm league?

• 1:22:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:22:34Bill Simmons?

  This league, I would have, I would have great BJ's.

• 1:22:36Speaker 04

  I would have tried harder if I knew this was what's that state, you know? So, and but then I'm thinking like, all right, she carries that sign. That makes me look better at least, but I, I get why she doesn't want to do it. But, uh, so we're like, we're fighting about this. So we have to put this sign in our yard. And, uh, I was like,

• 1:22:54Bill Simmons?

  Hey, she lost. You gotta do it.

• 1:22:56Speaker 04

  I, you gotta put your face on it. I was like, I, we have to, people have to know. She's like, no, no, no. I don't want people knowing my, I'm like, why? You walk the dog. People see you out every day. It doesn't matter. It's like, no, no, I'm not. So now we're, it's like, what do you think we should do here? Like the kids, we're all fighting about this.

• 1:23:12Bill Simmons?

  So it should say, the sign should be, I'm Melissa and I suck at fantasy football, something like that.

• 1:23:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it's already here. It just says, I, I should make a new sign. I should just change it.

• 1:23:21Bill Simmons?

  Or put her face on it.

• 1:23:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:23:23Bill Simmons?

  Put a picture of her face on it.

• 1:23:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. Do you have a picture of her from the other night? I don't have pictures of her. Yeah.

• 1:23:30Bill Simmons?

  I like this. I think it should go on your front line. And I think it could apply to the whole family.

• 1:23:36Speaker 04

  I know.

• 1:23:36Bill Simmons?

  How many leagues did you win this year?

• 1:23:37Speaker 04

  I love that. I like telling them like, oh sweetheart, it's all luck. And then I'm like, no, I'm like, we're not putting that on the day. If it's all luck, I shouldn't have a problem with it, right?

• 1:23:47Bill Simmons?

  My, uh, my parent corner is, so my son, my son is in college or he's in high school, but got into college. And it's one of those things where you still have the second semester.

• 1:24:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:01Bill Simmons?

  And you've still got to put in the work, but he's already in.

• 1:24:04Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:24:04Bill Simmons?

  And it struck me that this is all the times when we have kids, when they're younger and you have to lie to them about the repercussions of things. Right. And it peaks with Elf on the Shelf. Which, when we started doing parent corner, we talked a lot about Elf on the Shelf and how ridiculous it is that these elves, we move them around every day. And if the kid doesn't obey, that elf gets mad, they might not get Christmas presents and they're stupid enough to believe this. I feel like this is the last, this is the last stage of Elf on the Shelf. It's like, if you, if you, if your grades go down, they could, you might, they might rescind your application and you're not in there. And, but meanwhile, you could probably Google that and I don't know if that's true, but

• 1:24:47Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:24:47Bill Simmons?

  This, this threatening your kid with something that deep down, they probably know isn't that true. So now, now I'm just guilt tripping. Like you gotta finish strong. You became such a good student. Like, like you gotta finish this now. You got one semester left. Like do this for pride. The, the point is lying to our kids doesn't work anymore. I think they've just have completely figured this out by age 18, right?

• 1:25:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, it certainly doesn't work now that you're telling the story and someone tells him.

• 1:25:12Bill Simmons?

  Cause he knows.

• 1:25:12Speaker 04

  Oh, he does. Okay.

• 1:25:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:15Bill Simmons?

  He, he already read me. So it's, it's.

• 1:25:17Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's a good point.

• 1:25:18Bill Simmons?

  I'm basically, we're going back to past with our kids and they know exactly what offense we're in and where the receivers are going. And it's just, I, I don't, I don't think we can slip anything by them. But I wonder what age that is when that ends.

• 1:25:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 1:25:31Bill Simmons?

  Fifteen, fifteen, sixteen.

• 1:25:33Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. I think that's it. The only thing you could do is like you, you could have a story attached to it. Like, look, for the most part, this doesn't matter. But my friend Joe House, he was in.

• 1:25:42Bill Simmons?

  Right, his son, yeah.

• 1:25:43Speaker 04

  No, him. He was in Notre Dame. He got in and whatever. And he was in, he was, uh, and then like tell a story.

• 1:25:49Bill Simmons?

  He was in Harvard Law and they, they saw his grades and pulled it. Yeah.

• 1:25:53Speaker 04

  He got rowdy at a bar and something happened and then he had to be out two weeks. Yeah. I try that, see if it works.

• 1:25:59Bill Simmons?

  I should have said that. Well, one thing is I know he's probably not watching.

• 1:26:03Bill Simmons?

  Not watching this anyway. Uh, that's it for Parent Corner. Anything else we got to hit before we go?

• 1:26:07Speaker 04

  I want to hit a couple of things here. First of all, we, uh, most of our, beginning of the year in August, we hit, we did our futures bets, right?

• 1:26:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:14Speaker 04

  Um, what the good news or the bad news?

• 1:26:17Bill Simmons?

  Well, we did the, we did over unders, which was disappointing.

• 1:26:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:26:21Bill Simmons?

  And then we had a futures draft of all of our futures.

• 1:26:24Speaker 04

  Yes. I'll tell you what. The good news is we hit 12 bets. Six each. The bad news is we gave out 53.

• 1:26:34Bill Simmons?

  But some of those were high end.

• 1:26:35Speaker 04

  Okay. Yeah. So your best.

• 1:26:37Bill Simmons?

  What am I like? I had like a Denver to make the Super Bowl. Like I have some ones that have like pretty big odds.

• 1:26:44Speaker 04

  You did better than I did and we still have three left. You have Rabel for coach of the year, which is going to win. That's about seven to one. I have Sal for assistant coach of the year and I have like Penny Sewell for protector of the year, which I haven't seen an update since August on that. But anyway, your best was Seattle plus 500 to win the division. Good job by you. New Orleans, Cleveland for last place, plus 158 and Denver or Green Bay, number one seed, plus 550. Those were your best. Yeah.

• 1:27:10Bill Simmons?

  Well, the thing is, we throw a bunch of these out. We try to hit 10 because they have the big odds.

• 1:27:15Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:27:16Bill Simmons?

  But I think my issue was I tied, tied KC to all of these.

• 1:27:20Speaker 04

  KC killed us.

• 1:27:21Bill Simmons?

  KC just murdered us.

• 1:27:23Speaker 04

  What the hell? What happened? Dumbass team. Now we're close to playoffs. The other thing is, I listened to your Friday show and Schreger mentioned the Bill Simmons reapex, which is great. I mean, he just, he loves to kiss your ass. My God, my God, Schreger. I love Schreger, but could you give it a rest? You got the Friday spot locked up. You're gonna, you're gonna be fine. I love you, Schreger. But anyway, the example he used, and I'll admit it's a great scenario. Was it, was it an email or just a scenario he came up with? If, how does it go? If there's an OJ type Bronco chase in 2026, who's the most compelling current or former athlete to be?

• 1:28:01Bill Simmons?

  Who would be the 2026 equivalent to pay it to OJ Simpson if that happened now? And you had to have the surprise factor, the likability of the celebrity and the fame?

• 1:28:14Speaker 04

  That everybody's in, now, now everybody.

• 1:28:16Bill Simmons?

  Everybody's like, oh my God, I can't believe this. Yeah.

• 1:28:18Speaker 04

  Peyton Manning's not in the top 20. Why is he number one?

• 1:28:22Bill Simmons?

  Who do you have?

• 1:28:23Speaker 04

  First of all, if it's the same scenario as Travis Kelsey, because that means he would have killed his wife, Taylor Swift, of course, that's gotta be the answer. You can't think of that. Yeah. Josh Allen.

• 1:28:35Bill Simmons?

  That's true. He would have killed the, yeah, anybody who's married to a celebrity, it's a bigger, it's a bigger deal. That's a pretty good point.

• 1:28:41Speaker 04

  Even Josh Allen.

• 1:28:42Bill Simmons?

  But that's not equal then. That's a higher thing. OJ was a married to a celebrity. So it has to be.

• 1:28:48Speaker 04

  Oh, it's gotta be equal. I'm saying, I mean, I think like Shohei Ohtani would be big. You'd be like, oh, that guy was gambling. He's running from his butt. He had to kill somebody like that.

• 1:28:57Bill Simmons?

  That's pretty good.

• 1:28:58Speaker 04

  LeBron, Katelyn Clark, Steph Curry, we kind of know his wife, right? All these.

• 1:29:03Bill Simmons?

  But it has to be a retired athlete, though.

• 1:29:06Speaker 04

  It had to be retired?

• 1:29:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Cause OJ was retired. You're trying to fit the box of like, former athlete, moved into a second phase of his career. Everybody liked him, did commercials, dabbled in TV stuff or movie stuff.

• 1:29:21Speaker 04

  All right. So Travis Kelsey next year.

• 1:29:23Bill Simmons?

  Somebody, there was a couple of emails, actually, people pushing Michael Strahan.

• 1:29:29Bill Simmons?

  Saying that that's actually the closest because like OJ went into TV after trying to crossover, was on the Regis and Kelly show and is on the ABC show. So means something to like the female audience, kind of like OJ was in the Hertz commercials. So Strahan was interesting, but I don't think Strahan's is like as OJ was.

• 1:29:49Speaker 04

  Well, Brady then for sure, for sure would be up there. How about this one? Cause we know the, the wife, Triple H. Triple H should be good.

• 1:30:00Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. I think a wrestler, everybody's kind of like they're 20% not surprised.

• 1:30:04Speaker 04

  They know the McMahons. Al Michaels would be ironic. That would be fun since he called the original.

• 1:30:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Al Michaels on the run from Piscano's after he just put down a meal chop.

• 1:30:16Speaker 04

  That'd be good.

• 1:30:17Bill Simmons?

  Riding through Brettwood, the same streets.

• 1:30:19Speaker 04

  He's crazy. It's what happens when you don't eat vegetables. You lose your mind.

• 1:30:23Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one. The more I thought about it, I think Serena might've been the answer.

• 1:30:28Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, that's a good one too.

• 1:30:29Bill Simmons?

  Cause it switches over. Everybody loves Serena. Nobody ever in a million years would have thought anything would happen with her.

• 1:30:36Speaker 04

  And that's good.

• 1:30:37Bill Simmons?

  I think the shock value, I think my wife would care the most versus like Michael Strahan, people like that.

• 1:30:43Speaker 04

  That's a good call.

• 1:30:44Bill Simmons?

  But yeah, but Manning is kind of fits the OJ profile of almost in some ways feels as big as he did when he played from all the stuff he's up to.

• 1:30:53Speaker 04

  Right. I know we're missing one. I wrote down Bowen Yang, but I don't know if that's the same.

• 1:30:58Bill Simmons?

  He must have.

• 1:30:59Speaker 04

  I'm forcing a Bowen Yang joke in every, every Netflix podcast.

• 1:31:06Bill Simmons?

  I watched, by the way, I watched the Kill Tony show on Netflix.

• 1:31:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, I haven't got.

• 1:31:10Bill Simmons?

  And that guy, Cam Patterson came in and just absolutely crushed.

• 1:31:13Speaker 04

  He loved it.

• 1:31:14Bill Simmons?

  Uh, on there. Yeah. I like the Kill Tony show. It's like, kind of like Gong Show crossed with Don Barris's Ding Dong Show crossed with, crossed with like a Jeff Ross roast. I don't know. It's all over the place. I like that show. Um, all right. Anything to plug? Bring your game to show out?

• 1:31:29Speaker 04

  Oh, all week. I'm on with Tate, the Bundo, House, High Fitz, great group of fellas. We do it over again, Sunday morning on the pregame show. And you know what?

• 1:31:37Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:31:37Speaker 04

  I'm gonna give 10 people $50. I gotta change my mojo. If you had a bad beat, hit me up at the cousin Sal on Twitter.

• 1:31:46Bill Simmons?

  Oh, look at you.

• 1:31:46Speaker 04

  Show me, show me a, a copy of your ticket stub, whatever. I'll give 50 to the 10, first 10 I see. Had to be a bad beat in the Buffalo game or this other stupid one we just watched.

• 1:31:57Bill Simmons?

  Well, we almost had the Rams with the overtime cover. Felt like it was in play on those last two throws.

• 1:32:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:03Bill Simmons?

  It's almost like he had him. Um, all right. So two rewatchables coming this week. Double rewatchables. We have, uh, just one of the guys on Monday and then I'll tell people what the Wednesday movie is. Uh, on the Monday pod. So we had that. We're gonna be on Netflix all week on this pod. Rewatchable starts next week on Netflix as well. And cuz I will see you in a week or big debate about whether my dad's gonna come out for this Pats Denver game.

• 1:32:28Speaker 04

  Oh, really? What's the debate? He's gotta do it.

• 1:32:31Bill Simmons?

  Talking about making the fight. Yeah, we've watched a lot of these. You never know after we had that last Pats Chiefs one. In 2018, which I think we watched together. Now that we're back, I think he might come out for this one. So I don't know if that's gonna help my luck or not. I could have him as I'm doing the pod. I can just have him sitting in the seat behind me, just probably in a coma from the game.

• 1:32:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. And you know what? You should say to him, you know, dad, remember senior year, you told me I have to give it my best second half. You were full of shit, right?

• 1:33:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you lied, didn't you, dad?

• 1:33:03Speaker 04

  Look at us now.

• 1:33:05Bill Simmons?

  Thanks to Gahan Eduardo as well. Cuz as always, good job by you.

• 1:33:09Speaker 04

  Good job by you, buddy.

• 1:33:10Bill Simmons?

  We'll see you next week live on Netflix, but check out the BS pub Tuesday and Thursday as well. See you in a couple of days.

• 1:33:19Bill Simmons?

  Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino. Or 18 plus and present in DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game prompt, call 1-800-GAMBLER. Visit rg-help.com. Call 888-797777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. Or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org. Or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts. Or call 877-8HOPENY or text HOPENY in New York. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures, Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. I like those guys. Star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh.

• 1:34:04Bill Simmons?

  Writer-director of The Banshees of Minnehoshan and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island, Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys, Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters November 6th. Get tickets now. This episode is brought to you by Core Power Protein Shakes. You know how we always talk about the little things that separate great athletes? Post-workout recovery is a big factor.

• 1:34:46Bill Simmons?

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