Transcript of NFL Week 5 Picks And Preview, The Bucs Are On The Board, Anthony Rizzo In Studio Talking Playoffs + Fyre Fest Of The Week

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On today's Pardon My Take presented by DraftKings, it is the Week 5 NFL picks and preview. We go through every game. We also have playoff baseball. It's been incredible. We have Anthony Rizzo in studio, marathon runner Anthony Rizzo. That's what he'd like to be referred to. He's running the Chicago Marathon on Sunday. We have Fyre Fest, and then we're going to recap The Bucs get their first win of the season. We're going to talk about everything, and it's brought to you by our friends at Pepsi. No game day spread is complete without the great taste of Pepsi Zero Sugar. Ready for it?

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Hey, football guy.

Patino. AWM.

Barnum and Minton.

Yeah.

Barnum and Minton. Yeah. Barnum and Minton.

Yeah.

Barnum and Minton. Yeah, part of my take. Welcome to Part of My Take presented by DraftKings. The crown is yours. Today is Friday, October 9th, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers gotta win, boys. I was gonna start with the Cowboys, but you know what, first win of the season. Zach, how are you feeling? That was a win that no one saw coming, including Hank and I who put the Cowboys in our Survivor League. How are you feeling, Zach?

Season's back.

Season's back?

Yeah, look, the boys are good today. That was good team chemistry. Season's all the way back. I had about 5% left in my hope tank. Hope tank's unfortunately filled like 3/4 tank right now.

Wow, that's good to know. So even though it looks like Baker's gonna be out an extended period of time, Jalen Daniels showed you enough.

Next man up, you know.

Is he the guy?

Next man up for right now. He's doing— he had— I mean, he had a Bounds of improvements from last game.

Oh, he looked great.

He started out kind of on fire.

He played great. Like, he didn't turn the ball over. He, he commanded the offense.

He took a few shots earlier. Like, he got, he got pounded in the first opening drive. And then I think he realized, I can't do that.

But he did enough. What he did— well, the Cowboys defense, we'll get to the Cowboys. They're poo-poo. But he did enough to make it so that you had to at least respect his arm. And then Bucky Irving was phenomenal.

Yeah.

And the Bucs defense played great.

Bucky broke a big one. He picked up the big yards we need to. Bucky's feet didn't stop moving the entire game. Yeah, he did. He went still way after the whistle just to let you know, I could have got 2 or 3 more if I needed to. And then Daniel was able to just like extend a couple of plays with his legs, like, oh, okay, if you're going to give me the space, I'll take it. He'd take it, pick up 2 easy first downs. It was nice.

Yeah, I thought—

refreshing, man.

I thought Todd Bowles looked so relieved at the end of the game.

Oh yeah.

When it came down to make that decision whether or not to kick a field goal or go for it on 4th down. He always has this look on his face when he has to make a decision, and it always looks like he's, he's in the smelliest room, like somebody just farted next to him. His, like, nose crinkles up. I think he's trying to do math in his brain, and that's never a good place for him to be.

Yes.

And he always— I don't know how he does it. It's actually remarkable. I don't think he's ever made the correct decision on whether to go for it or not. That's one of the cases where, like, old conservative Todd would have done a good job just kicking a field goal, go up by 17 points.

You said it exactly when it happened. You're like, Todd Bowles will never do this again.

And so now the fact that he made— he made the wrong decision by going for it. They didn't get it. And now Todd Bowles, forget about it. He's never going to go for it on 4th down ever again.

Do you know what I think? What happened to Todd Bowles in that situation? I think he just like— he's like, I see all these young bucks going for it. Yeah, I'm going to do it. I'm going to be the guy. But it's like the one time you shouldn't.

Yeah.

The Bears had it last week where they were— we had like 4th and 4 in the red zone. And Ben Johnson said after, he's like, yeah, When you can go up 17, you go up 17. Like, what was he doing?

It makes no sense. He gets so confused. I think he gets dizzy when he tries to do math.

You can see the decision-making going— confliction going on in his head. And then every time, last second, he'll just look to whoever's directly to his right or left, hoping they have something to say. Yeah, completely indecisive every time. And somehow it's not— a lot of the times, never the right call.

He's like looking around and he's like chuckling a little bit to himself. He's like, I got myself in this pickle once again. What am I gonna do? He's hoping that somebody's gonna like authoritatively come up to him. Anybody. It could be anybody that's sitting next to him and just go, hey Todd, you got to kick it here.

Yeah.

He's like, yeah, I was about to say, yeah, we should, we should probably definitely kick it. All right, take the points.

It's, uh, it's awesome though, Zach, because you do— you, you are like— your season is— I know it's only one win, but you have a game against the Steelers next week and then you have 2 division games. So if you go If you can win those 2 division games, like, you're all the way back in this season.

Whole different script.

Yeah, I'm saying this was a scheduled loss. Like, even, even with before the season, you thought you might lose this game on a short— I mean, I just, I was so impressed with Jaylen Daniels. I actually think that, like, I, I did a bad job of saying he played, uh, good. He played great given the circumstances. Short week, going to Dallas on the road, like, knowing going into the game that Dallas's offense is explosive and you have to play Not perfect, but close to perfect. Jalen Daniels was awesome.

Yeah.

And no, did the— I mean, did the Cowboys have a good game? No. But does that take anything away from what they were able to do as a team?

Well, you know, but he was like— he was decisive. He was— he had a quick release. He was accurate. Like, that's— he did exactly what he was trying to do.

There's, there's 2 things that happened to the Cowboys. One, we all knew, and they just suck on defense. They're so bad at tackling. They're just so— like, the ball control the Bucs were able to exhibit was insane. Felt like the Cowboys just didn't have the ball. The second is you expect their offense to be awesome. CeeDee Lamb, I know he got hurt. He was, he, he was nothing when he was out there. Jake Ferguson, like a couple balls off him, including the end, the game-sealing interception off his hands. Dak never got into a real rhythm other than like hitting George Pickens. Their offense has to be perfect because their defense is so bad.

Dak sucked tonight.

He did.

Like playing simple.

He got in a rhythm a little bit in the, when they were down 24-10. Right, right.

That, that last drive was, was good. Um, but Dak sucked tonight.

Yeah.

This is a bad game, especially compared to how he's been playing this year, where he's played like close to MVP-caliber football through 4 games. Um, but I mean, if you follow the Cowboys for any period of time, you know that this is going to happen. This is just— that's just what they do. This is, this is Dallas football. There's a, a 31-year track record of it happening again and again. They're going to look awesome. People are going to say, oh, maybe this is the year for the Cowboys. And then you're going to realize, oh yeah, this is an extremely flawed football team.

Well, yeah, like going off a huge win against Houston where they come back and all that and all the vibes and they're like, oh, we get to play an 0-4 team at home. The Cowboys are about to roll.

A good team at least finds a way to win, even if it's a Thursday night and the other team plays like their hair is on fire.

Their defense is— defense is really bad. It's, it's actually— I I'm going to say something that is going to sound crazy. I actually feel bad for Cowboys fans because watching a defense that cannot get off the field is a torture that, like, we've all experienced at some point. You can't, you can't describe the torture that it feels like when you just cannot get off the field and the other team just possesses the ball and they just get, you know, first down, 5-yard run, second down, even if it's an incompletion. Okay, we'll get it on third down. The Bucs had the ball for 40 minutes tonight. 40 minutes.

That our longest drive since 2007.

Yeah.

In terms of time, you took up like the entire half of the first quarter. The second half of the first quarter was— it was just Bucs going on a 90-yard drive.

Yeah, it was one, one possession each in the first. And then for most of the game, we had them play our game. Yeah. Like we had a decent amount of control.

7 for 13 on third down. Like, yeah, the Bucs, listen, I'm not going to say that they're good, but Your season at least has life.

Anything's better than what it's been for the entirety of the season.

So are you— how many— are you a Steelers win? So if you win next week away from starting to get really mad about the first 4 games, because you know that could like retroactively happen where you're like, goddamn it, how did we not win one of those?

If we— if we pick up both the divisional games, I'll look at like weeks 1 and 2 like What's going on?

Yeah, what the hell are we doing here? Because we talked about it, uh, what I think it was last week, the difference between 1-4 and 2-3.

Psychologically, it's massively different.

So, but you guys are back again. The Cowboys, there's just something beautiful. As much as I feel bad for their fans, there's something beautiful about watching Jerry Jones just have a meltdown in his, uh, suite on national television.

We, you know, one thing that we didn't get I don't know if this is like an Amazon deal, if Jeff Bezos made a special bargain with Jerry Jones. We didn't see the sad Cowboys fans.

No.

They didn't do the traditional pan through the crowd.

You're right.

Where you see people crying, you see like the guys wearing the giant jean shorts, like burying their face in tears on their girlfriend's shoulder. Like you usually get something very funny or like a, a sad Cowboy fan kid. We didn't get any of that tonight and it felt very off-brand. Usually it's like that's a must-have shot at the end of any loss.

Yeah. Yeah, it's true. We were robbed of that. We were absolutely robbed of that.

How long has it been since the Bucs covered?

They covered last week.

Last week.

Yeah.

People were throwing around the stat trying to like— it was almost— I saw a couple of people tweeting it like they haven't covered in 13. It was almost like they decided they were going to do the stat to get some impressions. They covered 3.5 last week.

Okay.

Yeah, they lost by 3 to the Packers. So now they're on a streak.

Doubled up. 12 is in the past. 2 covers in a row.

Yeah, I'm talking about an outright win as an 8.5-point dog. Hank, are you—

you're mad.

Never the Cowboys again. No.

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's, that's survivor pools, though.

That's—

it's always—

I looked at mine and there was like 15 of us left. I think 9 of us had the Cowboys.

Yeah, that's, that's the NFL.

Yeah, the Cowboys are allowing—

Thursday night, though, any, anytime there's a, there's a 7 or more point favorite on a Thursday night. But this, I feel like this happens every year.

I know this one was so, so hard to take though, because you had the unknown really of Jaylen Daniels.

Well, moneyline, yeah, but the spread was—

The Cowboys are allowing 6.4 yards per play, worst in the NFL. The most rush yards per game allowed in Dallas Cowboys history. The first was in their inaugural season of 1960, 186.8. Second place is this year, 168.8. They just don't tackle.

No.

Caleb Downs, I think, is the only guy that knows how to tackle on that team.

They take the worst angles.

Bad angles. And their linebackers just arm tackle.

Yeah.

And they plant their feet just really, really bad. But also watching that as a, uh, a division foe. I told Max, even the, even the Eagles have a chance to win the division this year.

Eagles are favorites in the division.

I know, I know.

Uh, all right, you said that seriously though, not as a bit.

No, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, I was telling you that like even though you're rebuilding, you should win the division.

They are +130 to win the division.

Yeah, and you, and you, you should. The Cowboys should not win the division. I'm not saying—

I had to fight with everyone in the cave about how That was so disrespectful for you to even say. Like, it was like, you, Max, you still have hope. You can, you can, you can do this when we're favorites to win.

I don't know if he said it like that.

Yeah, no, but then I was fighting with everyone else about like, oh yeah, you're going to blow— the whole team's blowing up. You're rebuilding, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, we're favorites.

Well, okay, you are rebuilding, but there's been a lot of talk of rebuild the last couple of days.

By fans.

I'm telling you, the Eagles should—

the Cowboys are not the best team in that division.

I don't know who's the best team in that division. It's not a good division.

It's not a good division, but even the Eagles can win. Yeah.

Hear that, Max?

You got this, buddy.

We're going to fucking scrap right in your guys' face.

Don't scrap in my face.

Scrap in your face. No, before we talk it up right in your face. So much muck.

Before we talk playoff baseball, 2 updates to our preview because we did it earlier in the day. One, Sean Payton is now fully taking control of the play calling. When we did our preview, it was a collaborative effort.

I think the collaboration lasted 4 hours.

So who was it? Was it Davis Mill?

No.

What was his name?

Webb.

Webb.

Yeah.

Webb. That sucks for him. He basically— it's like the reverse of being the hot coordinator. Yeah. It was 4 weeks like, yeah, you're dogshit.

And you don't really know how much is his problem and how much is on Bo Nix. But You have to know if you take that job that the very first thing people are going to say is, hey, why isn't Sean Payton calling the plays, right? Like, you have one of the best guys ever to do it. Why isn't he? So it's— it was kind of like he was set up to fail unless it was a perfect offense.

I also don't know, like, couldn't Sean Payton just call the plays and not say anything?

That's what I was thinking he was gonna do, is just secretly— yeah, yeah.

Uh, and the other update, uh, this one sucked for the Bears. Kyle Minogue has turf toe. I don't know what— if he's good. I think he's gonna try to play. But when we get to Bears-Packers, I talked about how I expect them to dominate. Kalman Angai not playing. If he doesn't play, that changes things a little bit because DeAndre Swift has had fumble-itis. We also— I've said, we said this a million times— need a new word for turf toe. It is so much more painful than it sounds. When you see the words turf toe, you're like, dude, just— you're fine. Like you stubbed your toe.

Yeah.

On the turf. You're fine. But it's way more painful.

His foot is fucked.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's bad. OK, playoff baseball. Let's start with Wednesday night. The Yankees are a joke. The Rays are really, really good. The Yankees are a joke, though. All they do is get to the ALDS or ALCS. And then we have a bunch of our coworkers who are diehard Yankees fans tweet helplessly saying you need to change everything. You need to trade. Yeah, blow it up. Get rid of Cashman, get rid of Boone, and nothing changes. I feel bad for them because they are just helpless in the fact that they cannot They just— every year is the same tweet.

And then that same tweet was kind of vocalized by Aaron Judge after the series and the interview that he gave after the series, talking about how, like, they've got— they need to figure out what the holes are and they have to fill them. He was talking like a guy that played in the series. Yeah, it was kind of shocking. It seemed like, like if you listen to him talk, you'd think this is a guy that just went out there and hit like .400 and, and 4 home runs in a 5-game series and they lost. The way he's talking about how to, how to rebuild the team after this.

Yeah.

Kind of shocking to hear that from him. But he's also not wrong. No. But I mean, I don't know what you're going to do. They're, they've been doing the exact same strategy for the last, it feels like, 7 years. They always have 1 or 2 innings in big series, crucial series that they just fuck up with errors. Bad, bad night in the field last night.

Yeah.

From, from the Yankees.

Hey, can I ask a question?

Yes.

Can we put on the playoff baseball instead of a golf tournament that's taking place? Who, what are they playing? How's their golf on right now?

It's the Bay Current Classic. They're in Japan.

Can we put on the playoff game? The White Sox have 2 on in the bottom of the 9th, down 9-5.

Sure. And led off the inning with a homer.

And led off the inning with a homer.

Game is over.

How are they playing golf still?

Bay Current, man.

Can you get— can you change it?

And so you're going to put it on here?

Yeah. No, no, no, no.

Can we get baseball?

They want to watch baseball. Dude, are you serious? We're watching fucking Joe Bridgman. He just rolled his eyes about the Bay Current Classic.

That's— that's an insane eye roll.

Here's what I'll say before I, before I change this.

For what?

Golf should not be played in October.

No, but this is so performative because like I could have just turned—

like if I didn't turn the TV on, you guys wouldn't be like, oh, Hank, why is he in the locker room?

Big Cat said something and then what did I immediately— he said that the White Sox led the inning off with a homer. I was following it. Big Cat was following it.

I was following it on my, on my computer. I was like, oh, watching it.

I've got, I've got the, the play-by-play on right now.

Same. I was like, this is actually something we should monitor.

But you didn't say anything when we walked in the studio.

Because it was— because it wasn't—

but now it's a thing.

Yeah, it's become an elevated situation.

You didn't have to knock the Bay Current class.

I just can't believe there's golf still.

It's also 11 o'clock at night. How the fuck is there golf on?

Where is this being played?

It's Japan.

It's delightful. It's in Japan.

Who is playing?

Everyone's playing. Max Homa's fucking dialed.

All right, go Max. Go, Max, go! Oh, Gavin Williams is in the game. He's going to be their starter on Saturday.

I hope he's going to double play right now.

All right.

I just— you know, that was an unnecessary ricochet.

You could have just said, could you please put the White Sox game on? That was not a ricochet. That was a direct shot.

Yeah.

Unnecessary golf on in October at 11 p.m. at night on a Thursday.

Sports podcast, I guess not sports. International sports podcast.

It's not like we told you to turn this off to watch Dancing with the Stars.

But like dancing is sport.

The Bay Current Classic. Who could forget?

No respect.

It's the 6th major.

No respect. Yeah.

Is that even—

that's early game.

Is that the PGA Tour? No.

Yeah.

No. What is it? How?

It is the PGA Tour.

How is it Japan?

Yeah, it is FedEx Cup.

PGA Professional. Is that not PGA of America?

No, that's a different— that's a different league.

How is—

how is it the PGA Tour?

They do events in the fall.

In Japan.

Events in Japan.

Yeah.

In October.

Yeah.

That's weird.

Good, good. Had a fall event until the Callaway stuff.

What happened with them?

All right.

Yeah, the Yankees are— I mean, the Rays are just really good. So it's more about the Rays. Like, they were really good all year. They are a perfect— we'll actually talk about it with Rizzo. He gives us some good insight into like the Rays organization and how they work. Small ball, small ball and just coaching. But the Yankees are a joke. The Dodgers—

Before we— before that, what? I don't want to call for people's jobs.

Yep.

Whoever is the VIP ticketing person for the Yankees that stuck Dua Lipa next to Marlins Man, one of the worst. Like, I felt so bad for Dua Lipa.

I think what, like, absolute night—

like, Dua Lipa will never go to a Yankees game again.

I saw that.

Ever!

And my thought was the ticket salesman—

It wasn't a salesman, that's like the VIP. Like, that's like—

Dua Lipa is not paying for tickets.

They're like, oh, we got 2 tickets for you.

We got VIP coordinator Marlon. My thought was they know exactly.

Uh, that's that, but that's evil.

That's evil.

Even worse. I agree.

Would you guys like to know what, uh, Marlon's man texted me?

Please. Not really, but please.

Well, he texted me Go to Twitter, search Marlins Man, hit latest.

Yeah.

Smart.

Humble. Humble as ever.

Like our humble king.

Marlins Man. I, I've noticed, and I don't, I don't want to say anything disparaging about Marlins Man because Lord knows he would not do that about us. Marlins Man seems to be paying less attention.

No.

Than he did in the past.

Don't say that.

Like he's always on his phone.

Don't say that. PFT.

Always. Like it's not, it's I don't—

he—

I think he watches like 6 pitches a game now.

No, it can't be possible.

Have you not noticed that?

Oh yeah, yes, dude.

I was locked in.

I was, I was like, well, I know because he used to watch like half the game.

He's not— he left early. Wow, he left early.

His crypto buddy and him.

Nope, Hank, not a double play. All right, White Sox down to their last out in game 4. Dodgers win again. Do you see the Dodgers like the way they celebrate? It's like basically winning a series in the middle of July. Yeah, they're just—

What do you think, Scooble? Like, I saw that where it's like Scooble and has to just act like he's been there before, even though he hasn't.

Well, they did a— no, he didn't get to a CS, did he? No, he was— he pitched in the—

in the DS.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He—

yeah, there was butts out in the Dodgers. They're just— dude, they just do it. Like, we were talking about Quique Hernandez having 17 home runs. We didn't mention Max Muncy hit a home run. Did he hit a home run last night? Yeah. You know, Max Muncy has 19 postseason home runs. Do you know Max Muncy is— he, he is the 7th most postseason home runs. All right. The game's over.

Yeah.

The Guardians.

We just missed like Colin O'Rourke making par for that.

All right, get it back on. Get the Baycrest back on. No, no, I want the Baycrest— Baycurrent back on. The Dodgers have 3 guys who are in the top 20 of baseball all-time postseason home runs: Freddie Freeman.

Yeah.

Max Muncy and Kike Hernandez. And I will say this, I can't— I, I can't stand what the Braves did on Wednesday night. Now, there was an error that was a brutal error to tie the game up. But Tyler Maul was pitching like great. He gave up an unearned run in, in like whatever it was, the 2nd inning. He was at 85 pitches and they pulled him. I don't know why managers do this. He was pissed too. Did you see him when he's getting taken off the mound?

Mm-hmm.

He was like, what the fuck? And then the game just fell apart after that.

Yeah, I mean, the pitching, not great. They just didn't hit for shit, though. That's the thing. Like, the Braves sucked on offense throughout the postseason, and it's been a recurring issue with them going back the last— like, ever since they won the World Series.

Here's the stat.

They won the World Series, which, by the way, they did without Acuña.

Yeah.

And it was a bunch of guys that were like filling in. I said at the time, like, are the Braves better without Acuña? Just to fuck with Braves fans. It turns out I was right about that. Um, that was the best that they were ever going to get. They never approached that level in the postseason. Acuña, probably he might not be a Brave next season. Um, there'll be teams lined up, I would imagine, for that name, even though he doesn't produce in the postseason. Uh, but yeah, they're not, they're not happy with their offense down in Atlanta.

Braves fans are not happy with Ronald Acuña.

No, he sucks in the postseason.

He got booed so hard. Did you guys see this stat? If you saw it, don't answer, but They had— the Braves had 23 opportunities with runners in scoring position against the Dodgers. How many hits did they get?

One.

I did not see this.

One.

Yeah, 1 for 23. It's the, it's the 2nd worst batting average with runners in scoring position in a postseason series in MLB history, behind only the Dodgers in the 1966 World Series who were 0 for 22. Yeah, that's insane. 1 for 23 with a guy on second or third base.

We don't talk about Braves fans' misery a lot because they do— they make the postseason like every year. Yeah, they always— they're always a good team. They always somehow they win the division or they get the wild card. They're always there. And they did win a World Series back— was that 2021? I think. But the life of a Braves fan is like you win a World Series once every 30 years. And in between, you just get kicked in the dick every October.

Yeah.

And it's never really close. Yeah. So this is just more of the same.

Yeah. And the Dodgers are the Dodgers. And now we have this all-time NLCS with Dodgers and Brewers. Brewers win the series, which was— is what— who did the, the closest for— was it Mike Greenberg when the, when the Lakers got swept? He's like, it was the closest sweep ever.

That was the, the Nuggets and the Lakers.

Yeah, Lakers. That was the closest 3-1 series win you could ever have because the Padres were right there. But the Brewers just— they were the better team. They got bigger hits.

I mean, play better defense.

Yeah. Sal Freilich is a stud. I— it's going to be awesome watching the Dodgers and Brewers, best 2 teams in the NL all season long and going head to head. I think we're going to get a different series than we did last year when it was a sweep by the Dodgers.

I'll say it. Best, best 2 teams in baseball.

Best 2 teams in baseball.

This is the real World Series.

The Rays are good.

The Rays are— the Rays are— it's probably because I'm an NL guy, not an AL guy. Even watching that, that Rays-Yankees series, I just looked at that as the Yankees fucking suck. Well, I know the Rays are good.

The Rays are good.

They're so boring.

And we just— we continuously overlook them.

Yeah, but it is— it's the best—

I'll continue to overlook them.

It's the best team in baseball by record and how they played all regular season in the Brewers. And then the team that was like, you knew they were just going to be there and they have the highest ceiling in the Dodgers.

Is Tampa having a moment right now? That's a sports town.

Maybe some are saying. Yeah.

Yeah.

And the Brewers have home field advantage now. They didn't last year, right? They might have.

Did they last year?

They might.

100%.

Definitely.

The Dodgers didn't even get a bye last year.

Yeah, they definitely did.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So kind of weird stat. We just looked this up the other day. June 6th, 2025, the Brewers were 34-29. Me and Arian threw out the first pitch since then, 172-102.

They're really good.

By far best record. But they've been really, really good. The point is, for the last like year and a half, they have been the best team.

They got to get there, though.

They just have to beat the Dodgers. I think everybody's rooting for them to beat the Dodgers.

Nope.

You're not?

I don't like the Brewers.

You'd rather have the Dodgers?

Yeah, I don't care.

I'm rooting hard for the Brewers.

Yeah, I'm just being honest. I'm not going to be like, go Dodgers, go. But I would like the Dodgers to beat the Brewers. Brew Crew.

Yeah.

Brew. And the Brewers just own the Cubs right now. I can't, I can't handle it. I'll be honest with you. They, they, they, they fuck us up every single year. Drives me nuts. And at least I could just be like, oh, the Dodgers spend so much more money. That's why they won. The Brewers win. It's like, what's the Cubs' excuse? There is none.

I'd root for any team in baseball, maybe except for the Yankees.

Oh, I think every Cubs fan's rooting for the Dodgers in this. Yeah. I was asked that on Waddle and Silly today and they all were like, yeah, 100% Dodgers.

Yeah, no problem.

Any team in baseball over, over the Dodgers, the Yankees. I would root for the Dodgers over the Yankees. That's the only exception I'd make.

I was rooting for the Dodgers over the Braves in this series.

But yeah, that's the same thing. Yeah, exactly. If you have a division rival, you're going to probably just be like, fine, just let the Dodgers win and just be like, oh, baseball's broken. It's an easy way to go to bed at night to just be like, baseball's broken.

So if the Dodgers win the World Series, if it's, if it's Dodgers, I will not be rooting for the Dodgers in the World Series.

That's for sure. But I would definitely be rooting for the Rays. over them. If it's Dodgers versus Dodgers, White Sox, I'll just be like, I'll just be like, whatever. I don't care. Like, whatever happens happens. If it's kind of remove myself mentally from it.

Dodgers-Rays, that is the ultimate, like, which way is going to be the future of baseball? Because everyone's going to make it mean something. So if the Rays win the World Series, it's like baseball's not broken.

Yeah.

Small market teams, they can win too. owners will be like, we don't have to spend that much. Look at what the Rays do. If the Dodgers win, then the owners will be like, baseball is broken.

Lockout.

Yeah.

Yep.

We're going to get a lockout anyway. Oh, although we do have new rules that we're taking away baseball games, which actually I'm fine with that.

154.

154. Yeah. And then what would it be? You can pick your own opponent. So basically reseeding, which they should have been doing forever because I think, I think basketball should do this too.

Yeah.

Pick your own opponent is fun. Yeah. Because that great bulletin board, right?

You're calling them out and like it gives the teams at the top a reason to like fight towards the end too.

And is it also the DS would be 7 games? Was that the other change?

Yes.

Which I agree with that.

I agree too.

Yeah, that's way better.

Well, yeah, that— if you're doing less games. Yeah, yeah, that's good.

Yeah, you'll start the playoffs like a little bit earlier in September. Um, yeah, I'm cool with that.

Sounds good to me if we ever get there.

Yeah. Uh, and then the last one, Guardians Tie the series 2-2 with the White Sox. It felt like the Sox just ran out of— like, their, their bullpen just ran out of gas because they've been going bullpen, just throwing their bullpen at the Guardians. And they had one horrific inning that just sunk them. And now we're going to a Game 5. And I don't know, I mean, I think these 2 teams are pretty even, but it's just like, how much, how much do the White Sox have left in the tank? when it comes to like their pitching at this point. But again, their pitching wasn't even like— their pitching was, was a problem. But that one inning where they just— I know, I know they weren't technically errors, but there was a missed ball in right field and then you can touch it, you can catch it, touch it, you can catch it. And then a kickball at second base and it just kind of all kind of unraveled from there.

Yeah. The 6th inning.

Yeah.

The guard. I mean, I don't— I still don't know if the Guardians are good, but they— listen, they came to— that's an intimidating place to play. The White Sox, like, Wrigley Field looked awesome. They did the blackout. They brought back the Pirates of the Caribbean intro, which is cool. And they went in there and they took 2 games and now they get to go home and play a Game 5.

There's something fun about like the White Sox stadium when everybody in the crowd in the wintertime or in the fall is wearing you know, black or dark colors. It looks like an EPL game.

Yeah.

In the stands.

No, it's intimidating, but it wasn't intimidating for the Guardians.

The Rays have to be—

Yeah. Cheeked up.

Cheeked up, got hit right in the ass. Bases loaded, hit by pitch. And that's the second game in a row he's had that.

Cheeked up.

I think that's the first time in baseball history that somebody has had back-to-back hit-by-pitches RBI bases loaded.

Yeah. And I also think— well, I think we said that Jose Ramirez was just doing nothing in the first 2 games. He showed up for these 2 games. in, uh, Chicago because he hit, he hit, uh, I think he went 2 for, he went 2 for 4 on Wednesday night with 2 RBIs. Then he hit a big 2-run homer to go up 3-2 tonight. So he's been, that's, that's, he's been looking a lot better. Uh, yeah, he, yeah, he had another big night. So I'm excited. Game 5, elimination game.

Like this, this series, is it just going to be a series of like the last 2 games are just gonna be nothing but bullpen games?

Well, no, Gavin Williams is still— I mean, he pitched tonight in the 9th, but Gavin Williams is, is going to probably pitch for the Guardians, start for the Guardians.

He's going to start even though he pitched.

Yeah, I think that was his scheduled bullpen day. He threw 11 strikeouts in the first game. He was awesome. OK, so the Guardians are going with starters. It's just the White Sox have just been throwing everything they have at them. And again, they just kind of ran out of gas, but they get an off day. And we'll see. Saturday night will be fun.

I guess they have been going with starters, but, but Messick, he was there for like 2 innings tonight, right?

Yeah. Well, he didn't have it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He looked like shit. He actually— I think he still had like 6 or 7 strikeouts, but he just didn't have it. He was kind of all over the place. OK. Yeah.

Cleveland had 8 pitchers. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

OK. Yeah.

Just before we sign off, Max Holm. Max Holm. I ever heard of him? Is playing in the Bay Current Classic. And since we started recording this podcast, he's birdied 3 holes in a row.

And what is he in first?

He's in 7th.

Are they playing? Have they played them on the broadcast?

Yeah. You saw him? You're looking at your phone right now. It seems like you didn't see him.

No.

Do you happen to have a tournament?

Yeah.

Okay.

Max Homa.

Hank, should you just keep doing the podcast by yourself until Max Homa doesn't?

Max Grace Birdie.

I'm maxed out, Max. Real Max.

You love our—

not fake Max.

You always love our guys.

I do love our guys. I love Max.

Okay.

Love you too, dude. Let's kick it to ourselves.

Max, have LeBron do it tonight.

Not Christopher.

You didn't put— you didn't insert LeBron into the Wizards.

You just did that because you want to talk about the Wizards.

I literally don't want to talk about the Wizards.

Look at yourself.

Oh yeah, I guess. Yeah, I guess we did beat the world champions. Okay, so I guess that makes us world champions. It's preseason there, little feller.

A leading question. Hey, what about the Sixers?

No, I was asking about LeBron. I was asking about LeBron, if you had any LeBron updates.

Oh, all right, let's kick it to ourselves. Week 5 picks and preview, and then a great interview with Anthony Rizzo and Fyre Fest. Okay, before we get to Week 5 NFL picks and preview, we are brought to you by our friends at DraftKings. The football season is heating up and every week feels bigger with DraftKings. DraftKings Sports app is now live in all 50 states. That means from Texas to California to Florida. Every fan is in on the excitement. Follow the teams you love, keep up with the biggest games, and experience the excitement of football all week long. No matter which game you're watching, you're always connected with one app. One app, every sport, all 50 states. New DraftKings customers sign up with code TAKE, spend just $5 and get $150 in rewards within 14 days. Includes all markets. That's code TAKE in partnership with DraftKings. The crown is yours.

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Nationwide based on sportsbook predictions and free-to-play sports contest availability. Varies by state. And the week 5 picks in preview are brought to you by our friends at Reese's. There's something for everyone when it comes to Reese's. I think someone put these on our desk and they are the White Ghost and the Pumpkin Reese's. It is about to be the best time if you are a parent of a child, or maybe you're in college and you love Halloween for that reason as well. Reese's is the absolute best. It's the best candy out there. It's candy season. It's Reese's season. Reese's is the official candy partner of Barstool Sports. Go get Reese's wherever you shop. It's the 1-1 pick. When my kids go around and trick-or-treat and, uh, they hit a house with Reese's, I'll always say, little dad tax, I'll take one out of there. So make sure that you're the house that's giving away Reese's because it is the number one candy. It's the best candy out there. Reese's is the official candy partner of Barstool Sports. Go get a Reese's wherever you shop today. All right, boys, week 5 picks and preview. Week 5, almost a third of the way through the season, which is kind of crazy.

It feels like we just started. I know.

And it's like a second.

We're just getting started.

If you look at the, the numbers out there, if you look at the records of some of these teams, there's a lot of good 2-2 teams.

There's a lot of bad 2-2 teams too.

And a lot of good 2-2 teams.

Yeah, can go both ways.

There might even be a good 0-4 team.

Yeah, I mean, I'm— I, I've been preaching by, by Chargers, Texans. No, definitely not the Chargers. Absolutely not the Chargers. Uh, all right, let's, let's get into it.

Maybe the Chargers.

You think the Chargers are good?

Absolutely not.

Yeah, okay, good. I was gonna say, like, we need to check you for something. Is it like give you a concussion? We should actually—

bolted—

we should have like a concussion blue tent for takes. Yeah, like, hey, you, you said the Chargers are good. We're gonna need you We got the spotter here. We're going to need you to go into the tent real quick.

I mean, the entire podcast should be done out of—

yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Speaking of 2-2 teams and whether they're good or bad, we will start with the international game. Yes, we're doing an international game again. Fuck you, Hank.

Fuck yeah, bro.

The Eagles +7.5. I think it's all the way out to—

Oh, yep.

Love it.

Over-under 41.5. Max has been doing— Max has been basically going back and forth. Where the season was over, the team stinks now. And I like this, I appreciate this from Max. He's now getting mad at all the disrespect the Eagles are getting, that people are saying the season's over. And he's come all the way back around, he's like, we're gonna fucking win this game.

Well, now it's a different outlook on the season.

Yeah, tell us.

Now it's supposed to do it.

The last time the Eagles were 7.5-point favorites, I don't have the stat, I'm gonna go with 8 years ago.

Okay.

The last time, or 7.5-point dogs. There's the outlook towards the future of the Philadelphia Eagles this season is no longer what it was at the beginning of the season.

It's bad.

It's bad. People think that they're going to be bad now. And I love it. I'm ready to scrap. I'm ready to scrap the Cam Jurgens trade. He was a great player for us for a long time, helped win us a Super Bowl.

Thank you.

Also, thank you, Cam Jurgens, for everything that you've done for the Eagles. great haul in return. Yeah, didn't really lose that much. Drew Kendall had replaced him at center and has had done a better job than him.

If you were—

if you just look at the stats of the last 2 years, Landon Dickerson is going to be coming back from IR soon. So there was a chance that Cam Juergens wasn't even going to start and you got a 2nd round pick for him.

Yeah, yeah, you, you— the trade goes Howie Roseman spent a 2022 1st and 2nd rounder on AJ Brown and Cam Jurgens. They won a Super Bowl, key pieces to a Super Bowl in 2024. Then he flipped them for a 1st and 2nd rounder in the 2028 NFL Draft. That's good business.

That's good business.

That's good business.

And I'm happy. And I don't think that— a lot of people have said, all right, it's a hard rebuild, hard rebuild, hard rebuild. Disagree. This team is still going to scrap, and the team is going to cover 7.5 this weekend. I'm I'm very, very much looking forward to the Eagles competing this weekend in London.

Soft rebuild.

Soft, yes. I'm, yeah, I'm all right with a soft rebuild.

We're doing a soft rebuild. I told Max this yesterday and actually, you know what? Take your headphones off, Max. This pisses me off so bad because the Eagles are absolutely doing a very, very smart thing by entering rebuild mode now. So many, so many bad franchises and I root for many so I understand what they look like. would see a team like this and say, we're still in our window. Let's just keep doing what we're doing and let's do it harder. We still got a chance to win. Why are we— no sense in giving up on this season. The writing's on the wall. Howie Roseman sees it immediately and he's like, okay, rebuild mode. We're going to start, if anything, maybe a little bit early on the rebuild and we're going to reload. And by the time that other teams would just be entering really their rebuild, they'll be ready to win again. And it pisses me off. Not only that, he understands that.

Yeah, you're right. Not only that, but But you can already tell Max has been— you can actually put it back on for this. You can put it back on. Max has been freed from the shackles of expectations.

Yeah, they got to make him play quarterback.

Yeah.

And yeah, yeah. But Max has been freed from the shackles of expectations. He is now entering a world where he will not— if the Eagles lose a game, he'll be like, well, we're not— we're rebuilding. And if they win a game, he's the scrappy underdog. I kind of hate this for us. I know, you know, he no longer is going to be— there's no longer the Eagles have the best roster in football and this team is built to win a title. No, they're, they're in transition. Their offensive line is going to be remarkably different. Uh, Lane Johnson is a big loss. They have a young receiver core outside DeVonta Smith they're trying to work in. Saquon is hurt. Max gets to play underdog.

I know, it's exciting. I haven't been able to play underdog in a while, and I think it's gonna be fun. Mr. Commenter?

Yeah, I have a question, uh, Mr. Max. Is it interesting at all that Howie seems to be focusing on loading up on 2028 assets?

No, that's also good business. We have 2 years until we can get out of the Jalen Hurts contract. You're loading up on 2028. You need to see what you have in-house up until then because 2028 could be a big transition year. Jalen Hurts still has all the ability to prove that he is the long-term answer at quarterback. In Philadelphia.

It kind of seems like Howie's made up his mind that 2028, we're moving on.

2028 is a decision where you can move on. So why wouldn't you build for that year? And if you don't need to move on, then, oh, oh no, now we have assets that we can build around Jalen Hurts. It's a win-win.

Who would you rather be your quarterback going forward, Joe Burrow or Jalen Hurts?

Jalen Hurts.

Okay, that's a lie.

Yeah, I mean, I don't— I mean, are the Bengals trying to move on from Joe in 2028?

There's just a question about Joe Burrow this year. If the Bengals don't go to, you know, the playoffs now, the Eagles have better playoff success. No, no, but wait, I'm not— I just asked the question, would you rather have Joe Burrow or Jalen Hurts?

Yeah.

Answer the question.

Yeah.

Okay.

But you don't get paid for what you've done in the past, right?

Then Patrick Mahomes is nothing.

I guess Vlad Jr.

You could—

Patrick Mahomes was just born.

Yeah.

Today.

Patrick Mahomes is the most underplayed person, I think, in the world.

I like that idea that we're just judged. Literally nothing you have done.

Nothing's happened.

Every day is a brand new day. It's the first day on earth.

There's just as much of a chance that Patrick Mahomes wins the Super Bowl as I do as a quarterback.

We don't know.

It hasn't happened yet.

All right. So Eagles are going to look totally different. I actually kind of agree that like the line has gotten a little out of hand. The Jaguars are really, really good. The Jaguars are inching closer and closer to like, hey, this team— I mean, I think we're, we're already there as a podcast, and I don't know if the national media will ever get there, but like, they've just been consistently extremely good for a large sample size now.

Mm-hmm.

And their defense, like, is— has been really good, uh, red zone defense, taking the ball away. Travis Hunter looks like A shutdown corner now that he's playing only corner. And Liam Cohen's a great coach and Trevor Lawrence is playing great. Are the Jaguars playing back-to-back London games?

They are, yes. And they're going to be the home team in both of them, which rarely happens. They usually make them be the road team in one. So it's weird. They're going to be playing, I believe, in 2 different stadiums in London, but they're going to be the home team both times.

As much as I would like to take the Eagles +7.5, the thing— the fact that they're flying on Friday scares me. It is.

It's very strange that they're doing that.

But Willie Lampkin is starting at left guard, and his nickname in practice so far this week has been a bowling ball of knives.

So that has nothing to do with him flying on Friday.

But he's still a bowling ball of knives.

But I said Friday, they're flying on Friday. You said, but Willie Lampkin.

Yeah.

Can you question—

bowling ball of knives is a good nickname.

He's the shortest offensive lineman in Philadelphia in 68 years, I believe.

Not functional at all.

What? Yeah, it wouldn't roll. If you tried to roll a bowling ball full of knives, either the knives would all break off or the ball would stop.

Oh, I didn't think about rolling it. I thought about throwing it at someone. Oh, yeah.

I mean, I guess.

Yeah.

Bowling balls roll. Bowling ball.

Yeah, they roll.

What?

How hard can you throw a bowling ball?

Don't really have to. It's full of knives.

Yeah.

Maybe you can't throw it.

I wouldn't even have to throw it.

Skimpy little bitch.

How would you throw a bowling—

What did you just say? Catch. It's just a bowling ball. How would you throw it? Oh, what do you mean? I'll just throw it.

You've never done a med ball toss. This is a guy who's never done that.

Well, if he's never done a med ball toss with knives, he had knives all over, you wouldn't be able to grab.

I would assume there'd be a place where—

yeah, there's no—

so then you just catch it there.

So it's not full of knives. There's a bowling ball.

How would you—

a lot of knives on it.

But no, no, dude, where your finger— I could throw a bowling ball.

Hand-eye coordination, dude. Read a book.

I'm with Hank. It doesn't sound like it's functional.

I sound— it sounds like Hank would die if I toss him a bowling ball full of knives.

No, I would just catch it where you—

we got to make a bowling ball full of knives.

Yeah, we do.

Same as the watermelon video. You guys did. Yeah, we're going to have to make a bowling ball.

Zach, get on it.

And I get to throw it at Hank and he gets to catch it.

Yes.

You can't bring a bowling ball full of knives on an airplane, though, with handles.

Well, but they're leaving Friday.

Yeah, but you can't fly.

I know.

Carry on.

It's just Friday.

I'll just stand 20 feet away, Max.

Maybe check it and hope they don't— they don't examine the luggage.

It's a practice aid.

You don't get to stand 20 feet away on the line.

That's also true. A lot of good football points are being—

but you couldn't throw like— what's— how fast could you throw something 1 inch?

Pretty fast. Yeah, really fast.

That's— I would just block your arm.

Hank, you're losing this part of it. When he wound up, you had a real strong point when you were talking about the physics of it.

Now, yeah, Max has got his thumb covering them all.

Yeah. Scrap. I'm ready to scrap. Scrappy underdog Philadelphia Eagles.

Okay, let's get out of England. We'll go to the US and we'll start with Bears-Packers. Packers are right now +1.5, over-under is 45.5. I'm excited and also nervous for this game. I'm nervous because I do think the Packers have an advantage in the fact that they are the desperate team. And like, given what happened at the end of last year, there might be an extra— there was a lot of quotes coming back like Tucker Kraft talking about let the pads talk.

Mm-hmm. They're—

the Packers have finally— I don't think they realized they were in a fight until Ben Johnson Shoved them in a locker and said, fuck the Packers last year. Now they know they're in a fight. How does that look?

You probably know the answer to this, but maybe some people don't. Do you know the last time— I'll ask Hank. Hank, do you know the last time that the Bears were favored at Lambeau Field?

1999.

No, it's got to be like—

that's in 2006. It was, I believe, week 1 of 2006. And that year, what did the Bears do?

Went to the Super Bowl.

Went to the Super Bowl. So yeah, it's been a while. The rivalry does feel like it's even now, like it's anybody's game. I mean, I don't hate the fact that Ben Johnson picked a fight.

No, he should.

It's good.

It's—

I think it's good for him. It's good for his team. He clearly likes having a chip on his shoulder. My question coming out of that, do you think the chip on Ben Johnson's shoulder has gotten too big now?

No. How so?

I was just thinking back to like, he got— he was mad that somebody reported that Tyson Bagent was going to start. So he was like, I'm going to show the media what's up. So I'm going to put 2 quarterbacks on the field. I don't think Matt is listening too much.

No.

And finding disrespect where it doesn't exist.

No. His point was like, everyone decided for me who our starter was. So I'm showing you how ridiculous the media is.

Yeah. But what I'm saying is like, does— is he listening too much to things? I don't think that's— if he's gone to those depths.

No, because I think, listen, Like, I don't see that as him listening. Everyone was reporting that it was going to be Tyson Pagent. I don't think he's like tuning into radio and TV. Like everyone was saying it, right? He was just like, okay, Case Keenum is. But he also said it was like a passing of the torch.

But I think most coaches would just be like, okay, well, they, yeah, they know. And he wouldn't like roll 2 of them out there.

Yeah, it was one play. I, it didn't, it didn't. register as anything more than one play. Okay.

Yeah.

I don't think he's thinking about it. One play didn't— if he like had been like, we're going to start Case Keenum for a quarter just to try to stick it to people, that would be weird.

But it was—

yeah, because I like, I like the chip on his shoulder. I just want to make sure he doesn't have too many chips.

How many people do you think on Facebook have shared the Ben Johnson AI video of him crushing a Coke can being like, this is the Packers and the Bears in my hand? Because I saw it yesterday. I was like, this is going to get a lot of people.

I haven't seen that.

There's got to be at least They're actually— I think so. There's, uh, elections are coming up. I really wish we could get that as a question on like the, the Illinois election sheet. When you show up, you're like, did Ben Johnson crush a Coke can?

Is this real?

And then anyone who says yes, we just don't count their vote.

How realistic?

Can you find it, Max? Max isn't listening. He's done.

He was literally like—

Max was like looking like he was gonna make out with memes. He had his full body turned to memes.

What's going on?

I was looking at The bet percentages of the Eagles.

Okay.

Jaguars.

You—

I'm sorry. Okay.

Can you find the Coke can video? Just do Ben Johnson Coke can. It's the most AI video. And I think it's a lot of people on Facebook, 60 plus.

Sounds like you might have fallen for it.

No, I— Hank, watch this video and tell me if you thought this was real for a second. You got to turn on the—

Looks like he's at a press conference.

You got to turn on the sound. Go back. You're doing a terrible job. What are the Bears' expectations versus the Packers this week? Hey, so this is the Packers and my hand is the Bears. Hey, hey, that's a banger on Facebook.

Next question.

You think that I thought that was real? Hey, that's the fakest video ever.

I've seen faker. Okay.

The whales.

That was real. Uh, have you seen the videos of the people jumping off of like 100-foot helicopters on trampolines, then bouncing back up?

Those are real.

That's cool. Or the guy who has like pounds and pounds of popcorn, he drops it into an active volcano and shoots out popcorn.

That was—

that's real. Are you guys— what do you guys think about this game? Are you taking the Packers?

Home dogs, man. Right. Home division dogs rivalry, like, is tough to not take. And if you're an underdog connoisseur.

Yeah, I think I'm going to take kind of like a system play.

No offense.

It makes sense.

No, I'm not offended by that. I'm a little nervous about this game. And one, the Bears defense has looked a lot better, but it also— the home-road splits last year were stark. This year, they're— it's only one road game, but they still gave up a lot of points. The Panthers looked good the last 3 weeks, haven't really played great quarterbacks when Geno, Carson Wentz, and Jalen Hurts. So how's it going to look when you play a real offense, real quarterback? And then also, there is a— when you have a backup quarterback, and it's no knock on Tyson Bagent or Case Keenum, but when you have a backup quarterback, you can win a game. The first game you can win. by kind of doing something different. Then tape comes out and it's like, oh, these guys are backups for reasons, you know?

Right.

So it does— it makes it a little bit harder.

I'm going to believe in the Bears offense until proven otherwise. It doesn't matter who they're starting under center. It could be whoever the emergency backup quarterback is going to be. I don't know who your, your 4th stringer would be in this case, but I'm going to believe in them until I see a clunker of a game come out. So I guess all that's to say, I don't know what it's going to look like, but I do think there's going to be a lot of points. I would say I think the over is Yeah, is where I'm going to be leaning. The Packers, they've looked like doo-doo, but at home they tend to score points still. Um, and the Bears obviously give up a lot of points on the road, and the offense is going to look good until further notice. So I'm, I'm going to trust in Ben Johnson's offense, and I am going to, uh, believe that that's gonna— that part of the game is going to be efficient for the Bears. But I, I still don't know about the defense on the road right now.

Yeah, I, I, I'll leave— I'll end with this. I, I am in— it's a weird spot to be in that like I expect the Bears to win this game. So I'm not like emotionally hedging, being like, oh, we probably won't win. It's— no, no, I expect the Bears to win this game. I think the Bears are the better football team. If they do not win this game, I'll be wildly, wildly disappointed. So I expect them to win this game.

Yeah, I hope that they win. I placed— I'm in your hole, Big Cat. I officially came in Big Cat's hole this week. Took 2 bets, futures on the Super Bowl. The Jaguars, like I alluded to earlier in the week, I full-on believe in the Jaguars now. And the Bears, watching what Ben Johnson's done with backup quarterbacks tells me that he's got it. He's got it going on. Like there's something that he's doing that's working. He is dialed in right now. When Caleb gets back, it's going to be even better. And then I do think that with the defense, even though it doesn't look great, they've turned the ball over a little bit, which is good. But I think they've got such a— they've got a good coach on defense.

Yeah, no, Dennis Allen's great on 3rd downs, great in the red zone.

And my theory is that As the weather turns and they, they have the consistency of that coach, they're— the defense is going to improve as the season goes on, not get worse. So I, I think that the Bears are legitimate Super Bowl caliber team right now.

We'll see. Yeah, I mean, I have a future on them as well, a very large future. I believe in them. I believe in Ben Johnson. All right, Texans, uh, Titans. Yuck. What do you guys make of this game? Titans are 7.5-point underdogs, 38.5. Titans have— or Texans have to win this game, right? And win it handily.

They have to. They have to win this game. I don't— so the line, I believe earlier in the week it was even like Texans 6.5. Okay, so the, the bets have come in now. They're, I think, 7.5-point favorites.

Tank Dell might be back right now on the road.

So that's, that's the big part is Tank Dell might be back and the offenses look pretty good. So DeMeco Ryan says that he is going to take back defensive play calling this week. Oh, which that tells me like, okay, the bad man's back. Like the real principal is here. I don't know what you guys did when the assistant principal was running things, but I do trust in DeMeco Ryan's defense.

Yeah, I, I found a quote. I agree with you. That's also— is it too early to hit that button? I don't know. They ran out of time. They have to do it.

Yeah. I mean, no, it's— I think it, it feels like it is early because it's only 4 games, but it's not because— but it's not— if you think it might be too late. Yeah, right. They did it. And that was your strength. And I think we also talked about this on Monday, but giving up that many catches to CeeDee Lamb at some point.

Yeah.

You're an elite defense. You have to make some sort of change. And that, I think, told DeMeco Ryans, okay, well, it's time for— time for me to take it back.

I got no interest in watching the Titans play football. I know that's mean, but it's just the facts. They're just a bummer. Uh, I also found Robert Saleh had a quote, uh, on par with Hank saying that he is, uh, was gonna dunk or get a 6-pack. Robert Saleh, when asked about whether an 0-4 team can make the playoffs in today's NFL, he said, I think anything is achievable.

Okay.

Maybe actually, now that I'm saying it, maybe the reporter was asking him about the Texans. They're like, hey, Bob Saleh, do you think the Texans can still make the playoffs?

What was the context?

That is achievable. The Titans making the playoffs is not achievable.

What was the context? Did the reporter just say like a hypothetical 0-4 team?

But how funny would it be if he's like, hey, I know you— I know we're here to talk about your team, but what do you think about the Texans? Could they make the playoffs?

Yeah.

After they beat you this weekend?

The worst would be if it was just like, do you think an 0-4 team can turn it around? And in his mind, he thought that they were asking about the Texans. He's like, oh yeah, that team. Yes, absolutely. They definitely can. Yeah.

I don't know. Yeah, I just— they're a bummer to watch. I think this will be— we have set— we have 7 games. So this will be on one of the small TVs. This, this is— it would actually be nice if the Texans could just beat them handily and we don't even have to look at this game.

8 games.

8 games.

8 noon games.

8 noon games.

The Weather Channel dunked on this game.

What'd they say?

It was like the NFL memes account or whatever. They're like, they should flex this game to the Weather Channel. Oh, and the Weather Channel said, uh, no thanks. Oh, the Weather Channel turned it down. And let me just say, like, I know weather— like, people like the weather. There's a bunch of weather freaks out there. You think you're bigger than the NFL? You think you're bigger than football weather?

Yeah, you take this game. Yeah, you take this.

You take this game in a heartbeat.

Uh, Cam Ward with, uh, he has 3 touchdown passes this season. 3 touchdown passes. His 3 touchdown passes this season When he was down 20 with 2:42 left versus the Jets, when they were down 12 with 5:35 left versus the Giants, and when they were down 14 with 1:12 left against the Ravens. Those are his 3 touchdown passes.

Yeah, not great. Yeah, not great. I think, I think Saleh and DeMeco Ryans are probably maybe the 2 closest friends that have to coach against each other twice a year. Ooh, like Shanahan and McVay. I, I think there's like a frenemy kind of thing, but like mutual respect also. Uh, but those 2, I feel like they're, they're close, close friends. Yeah, like they're probably— I wouldn't be surprised if Saleh calls up DeMeco Ryans to ask him for advice. Yeah, this week going against the Texans.

Actually, uh, Ben Johnson and Dan Campbell might be in that group.

Are they still close? Yeah, they're good.

Okay. I mean, he speaks— you actually saw after the I think anyone from the Lions day for Ben Johnson. After the, uh, Jets game, he went up to Aaron Glenn, was like, I love you. You guys are, you guys are close. Like, you could tell he was, he was showing respect by running the ball out at the end of the half, right at the end of the game. Um, okay, next game. This one I have no idea what to make of it. It is the Bengals and the Dolphins. The Bengals and the Dolphins. The Dolphins are +6.5, uh, that's +100, so it's probably a 7. Over-under is 42.5. I don't know, I, I really don't know what to make of the Bengals. I think they're good, but the last 2 games have been very frustrating to watch. Uh, I know what to make of the Dolphins, the fact that they suck, they're young, but they've also shown a little bit more fight in the last 2 weeks versus the Chiefs and the Vikings than the first 2 weeks this season. So I don't know, I, I kind of like the Dolphins in this game. Is that crazy?

Also, they're going to be— the Bengals will be in the sun. You know, early, early Miami games.

We got a temperature? I don't know.

Temp check? I'm going to guess hot. Can we get a temperature? Probably going to be hot.

91.

That's hot.

That's going to be hot.

They're going to put them in the sun.

That's going to be very hot. I think that it's not crazy to believe a little bit in the Dolphins because the defense does look pretty good. They've got a lot of really young players on defense and a couple of really young, good players on defense. So this is a great thing that the Dolphins are doing this year. They're doing it the right way. This is— they've got, they've got a plan in Miami. And usually when you put in a plan like that, you will end up winning a couple of games against good teams. And so this does feel like— you said 7.5 now?

7.

At 7 exactly. If it was 7.5, I would say yes, I would take the Dolphins. At 7, it's kind of close. I probably still would because, yeah, it's a home game. They played pretty good. And I don't know if, if Ja'Marr Chase is going to play. Do we know?

I don't think he is.

I'd also like to further clarify the weather. The real feel will be 104.

Whoa.

At Hard Rock Stadium.

Wow.

How do they do real feel?

Humidity, I think.

Is it just a guy that goes outside? He's like, yeah, it's, it's about 104.

Yeah.

Guy walks out and he's like, oh, I need a coat. It's 52.

Yeah. He walks outside, immediately takes his shirt off. That's when you know it's 100.

Mm-hmm.

Stan, you got to get— you got to get a little sunlight when you get outside. Otherwise you get tricked by the shade. That happened to me the other day.

Do you think it's cool?

Yeah, I know. I went for a walk around my neighborhood and I wore a jacket because I thought it was cool.

Yeah.

Got on the walk way too hot.

The sun hits you.

Yeah, it's different. So then I had to put my jacket around my waist like a, like a little Princeton preppy. Yeah, it's kind of a weird move, you know?

Do we know if Miami is necessarily that bad? Because all their— all the teams that they've played against. Yeah, they have great records.

I think they're—

yes.

Bad.

All right. We're just— hey, Hank, we're having this discussion.

Hey, it's a free-flowing adult conversation here. I think they're— I'm closer to what PFT is saying. I think they're bad, but not as bad as we think.

The reason I would have a lot of hope if I was a Dolphins fan is number one, you're not going to fall into the like 7-10 trap this year.

Nope.

You're going to be bad. But again, you're playing a lot of really, really young players. Your coach seems to understand the assignment. And so far, even though it's, it's early on in the season, they're a bad team, but they're playing hard.

They're, they are a bad football team. that could cover spreads north of 7. They've only covered once, but I think that they could cover spreads north of 7. And like that Chiefs game, they lost 24-10. I think it was 17-10 in the 4th quarter, like right at the start of the 4th quarter. So it wasn't, it wasn't just like a total dog walking.

This is as close as we'll get to like an ethical tank job.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, they, they went out and, and got a $60 million quarterback. Yeah, new coach. Yeah, they're like, hey, we just suck.

They're doing it the right way.

All their entire defense is young guys. Yeah, they are doing it the right way. Congrats to the Dolphins, an ethical tank job.

Yeah, doing it— they get the Doing It the Right Way of the Year award.

Yeah. Uh, all right, so Ja'Marr Chase, do we have an update? I think he's not— I think usually it takes a little bit of time in the concussion protocol when you're I don't think that he is.

It would be my guess.

Where is he in the concussion protocol list? Uncertain for Sunday.

Yeah, I don't remember the last time a guy was uncertain with a concussion and then it was like, oh yeah, he's fine.

It just depends on where he is in the protocol. But I feel like most of these concussions now, it's like one, at least a week injury.

Yeah.

You know, okay, next game, Raiders.

Yeah.

And Patriots. Hank. Oh, by the way, the Dolphins, we said this stat on Monday, but they're the first team through 4 weeks to score 14 or less points.

Yeah.

In a game since the 2019 Dolphins. Yeah, that's really bad. Hank.

Yes.

Raiders-Patriots. Patriots -3.5, over-under 45.5.

Drake Maye never lost as a 3-point or more favorite.

Is that true?

Yeah.

12-0.

12-0. That's an impressive stat.

Yeah, it is.

Best of all time, Super Bowl era.

Is it really?

I believe so.

That's pretty crazy.

I'm riding high, very excited for this game. And obviously the Raiders are a good team, surprisingly. But this does feel like a letdown, a letdown spot. I'm excited. I feel like we're going to— for the Patriots.

Oh, okay. I thought you were going to say for the Raiders.

Like, no, we're riding high. We're riding hard. We beat the Bills and we— that last year that vaulted us into the Super Bowl. Feels like that could happen again this year. But I'm just a little worried we're riding a little too high.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. The ups and downs of an NFL season for sure. And Kirk Cousins is He's been playing really, really good.

And Max Crosby scares, scares me a lot.

Oh, he should scare the fuck out of you.

Well, their head coach also might have a blueprint.

Yeah.

Super Bowl.

Super Bowl.

Yeah.

Clint Kubiak.

Yeah.

Do we have, do we have anything from Glenn?

No, no.

Okay.

Now Hank made it pretty clear that like he's not a fan of Glenn. And doesn't like his sense of humor or whatever. So I don't know, Glenn's kind of going through his feels right now. So I think he's focused.

Glenn's getting lazy.

Way to go, Glenn or Hank.

You ruined Glenn.

He's not.

Yeah, I didn't.

Yeah.

You said you didn't think it was funny. I thought it was funny.

Glenn is— I think he's—

again, I said, I literally said it's a subjective thing. I appreciate that people enjoy it and they're allowed to think it's funny. I personally don't. That was not me just saying don't do it.

I think, well, listen, Glenn takes—

Glenn can't take a little criticism. Grow the fuck up.

Grow the fuck up. Glenn has an issue.

You think people don't like what I say on this show?

I'm still here every, every, every Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday.

There you go.

I'm not scared of some criticism.

There you go, Hank.

Yeah, Glenn just has an issue. Like, he listens too much. Tuesday, Thursday.

Yeah, that's when we record.

I know, but the people only hear it Monday, Wednesday, Friday. But yeah, go ahead.

He's, he's also got an issue with, you know, some people hating on him, and sometimes he gets in his field— in his feels, and, uh, he retreats. And I think he's got a country music album that's like kind of jelly rollers coming out. So I think he's just kind of focusing on, on the side quests right now because it seems like people online—

Honestly, this feels like one of those, like, you— there's like a pump and dump. Like, you— Glenn was asking for subscribers and for people to pay for his services and shit, and then he just stopped making content.

He's clearly not a fraudster. That was very clear in the last video. So just because he owes some people money that he's actually working on paying back right now doesn't mean he's a fraudster. And he'll sue you. But yeah, no, he's just— he's focusing on the music right now.

It would be really funny if it was actually— it was like, remember that Bears-Jaguars Super Bowl?

I bet I—

that was— I got it from Glenn through the people.

Oh yeah.

Well, you're not Glenn, so I'm not—

no, I don't know who—

Max would have done that.

Max would have done—

Max would have done—

if anyone, he's Max. But I think Glenn's his own guy and he's got— yeah, he's got— so actually, I listened to—

How do you know he doesn't have anything coming out?

Because he tweeted about it today.

Hey guys, no film breakdown this week.

this week. Unfortunately, there's too much negativity in this world. So diving back into my rap/country album coming out soon, Numbers Lie, Women Lie, But the Tape Never Does. Thanks to all the Film Junkie tier subscribers. Hopefully get back soon to all 22.

They didn't subscribe for your stupid country album. They subscribed for whatever.

He's hot too.

You can—

yeah, I mean, take it up with, with Glenn. I don't know what to tell you. The song is kind of a banger.

Ah, let's hear it.

What?

Have you seen the schedule this year?

Yeah.

Why?

Have you seen the Graph Talk schedule?

No.

No.

Oh, let's hear Graph Talk with Hank.

Yeah.

Now that Glenn's out, it would just—

this—

that was my favorite Glenn content till the end of it. I like that. I like this. He'd still be running the first half, second half. Schedule's a trigger for you, but the word schedule, it's, it's reverse Graph Talk reverse.

Oh, the Patriots Uh, oh fuck, I gotta find it.

I gotta be right.

I gotta be right.

I'm gonna give a stat.

No, I—

from my friends at Sports Info Solution, the Patriots run game, uh, is going up. Their bottom 3 zone rushing success rate against a top 10 Raiders defense so far. Rhamondre Stevenson possibly out, right? So that could be something to watch, especially if the weather's bad. Raiders are good.

Yeah.

Raiders are— I don't know if the Raiders are gonna win this game because I also think the Patriots are good, but the Raiders are not like— I, of the surprise teams in terms of like, will they last, let's just do it real quick. Browns, Raiders, Giants. I would probably say Raiders. They now— it might— they might— it's easier to make the playoffs in the NFC, but I think the Raiders are More likely to be in to win more games than the other 2.

Yeah, I'd have to look at what their schedule is.

Although the Browns do have a good schedule.

But I don't think that there's— there's no like trickery going on. The only, the only trickery that's going on is like Kirk Cousins is healthy.

I think it might actually—

Cousins is old and healthy at the same time. And how long is that going to last?

And it also might just be— I did a confusing way of saying I strongly believe in Clint Kubiak.

Mm-hmm.

And I think he has proven right away his worth and how they've raised the floor of this organization.

They've scored at least 26 points in every game this year.

Yeah, he's good. He's a good coach. Hank, did you find it?

Yeah. 2 things. One about Josh the Schedule Allen. He— their wins have come against teams with a combined record of 2-10. This one's a little bit confusing. It's a graph. So saying it might not make the most sense, but the Patriots have played the hardest schedule so far, but they have the easiest schedule going forward based off of teams this year.

Based on what teams' records are at the present is what you're saying. They've got an easy schedule moving forward.

Those 2 things don't Don't— those don't work together.

How so?

You just— your first point was the Bills are a fraud because they played nobody.

No, Bills and Bills— the Bills wins are nobodies.

Okay, but then you're like, but your win against the Bills is something.

Yeah, don't— let's not—

I'm talking about graph. I'm not— I'm not— it's not— it was not— it was not a— it was not a— that the— that was not subjective. The graph is just a graph.

The graph is a graph. I can't push on you like the Patriots—

the Patriots being at the top of like hardest schedule so far. That's the graph, right?

But also the Bills have played nobody.

So let's see.

No, the Bills win.

They beat nobody.

The wins are against nobody. The Bills schedule has been easy, but also the Patriots have played the hardest schedule per the graph.

Strength of schedule, Patriots.

You see how I was confused?

Yes.

Yes.

But that you understand.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I got it.

Remaining games and that the higher you go up, the easier it is.

Hard, easy. This is really confusing.

Yeah, you guys, it's not, it's not for the weak-minded.

Remaining games season so far. So what is— why is it top left?

Yeah, just hard so far, easier going forward. Okay.

Hard so far, easier going forward. Okay.

So the—

oh, that's bad news for everyone. Oh no, no. Chiefs are on the other side.

Yeah.

Okay. All right.

Got it. It means that the teams that are more likely— now here's where it gets tricky, Big Cat, because you'll notice that with the exception of like the Buccaneers, pretty much every team that's in the bottom right quadrant is a team that has a good record.

Right.

Meaning that, that, that's going to be 1 out of 4 of their opponents' games being a loss. So the teams that they've played have bad records because they won that game.

Right.

Yeah.

You're forgetting a big one in the bottom right of easy so far, hard going forward.

Zach noticed.

How are we?

How are we 0-4?

Well, he said that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Did you say Bucs?

Yeah.

I missed, I missed the Bucs part.

Yep. That's the only one. Packers, Packers, not that great. But yeah, it's okay. It's early. It's early to be doing schedule talk.

Yeah. Hank, you're obsessed with schedule.

I think it's just a trick. It's like a trigger word for him.

Well, no, Glenn, Glenn, Glenn mentioned it. That, that did make me bring it up.

That made you—

I am, you know, I'm a graph head though.

Glenn Freeh in your head.

Also, this, this is basically summed up Pretty easily in the fact that, like, have you played the bad teams in your division yet is essentially what the graph is. Yeah, because the Patriots haven't played the Jets or the Dolphins. Have you played the bad teams yet? No, right? Like, have the Colts played the Titans? No, they're still on their, their schedule.

But yeah, I'm, I'm very excited for this game. I think it's gonna be a battle. Uh, I think it's gonna be close. But I think if we win, it's, it's, it's where the division's ours.

It's yours. Oh, so this is if you win this game, things are—

it's going to feel like the division's ours. I'm not calling the division over yet.

You just said if we win this game, the division's ours.

That's where my head will be. That's where my head will be at.

Okay.

It'll be ours to lose.

You'll be, you'll be thinking dap.

Yeah.

Who, if you were to pick one guy in the Patriots, like what's happening? What's the missing dap?

One guy on the Patriots.

Drake Maye.

Drake. Drake.

You've never got to dap him.

Yeah.

I think he's going to try to dap him on Thursday Night Football.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That'd be a good— yeah.

He's going to do a dap.

Max has a question. Yes, Max.

It's a question. I got memes ever dap? No, memes would not. Memes never dapped.

Is the division ours? Is that combined with the Bills loss to the Rams?

I think he's assuming that.

Yes.

Yes.

No.

Oh, so yours to lose, but you would still be behind the Bills then.

Yes, but eventually we're going to play them again, Max. And if we win that, then we'll have the advantage, idiot.

Oh, you just said it's ours to lose when you're not in first place.

But you understand that we're going to play them again, right?

I do understand that.

So then when we win that game, that's it.

But if their record is still better at that time, time, it's still not yours. No, that you— what you guys aren't understanding is the Patriots are obviously going to beat the Bills the next time they play each other. That's Hank's whole point. He's counting that as a win already.

Got it.

Yeah, that hay's in the barn. Are you following?

Are you following that it's the Bills to lose because they're in first place?

He's not following.

It's the Bills.

The Bills have one less loss when we— even if they win every single game from here on out.

Now look at it from their standpoint, you fucking idiot. They are in first.

It's theirs to lose if They, they can say the same fucking thing as you, but they will lose. Uh, but Hank, do you control your own destiny? Yes.

No.

Yeah.

Do the Bills?

No.

Bills do.

But if you beat the Bills again—

Yes.

No, they both technically, they both control their own destiny.

Yeah. That's impossible.

We all do.

No, the Patriots. Yeah, we control our own destiny. So do the Bills.

Stop saying no.

Stop saying no.

The Bills control their own destiny as well.

They're in first.

Max, I don't know what you're having such a hard time understanding.

I mean, the Jets control their own destiny.

Yes, we do.

If they beat— if they win the rest of their games, they would absolutely win the AFC East.

Yeah, autopilot.

Okay, both are true, but, but it's ours to lose.

Yep.

Are you worried about Drake Maye saying he doesn't, uh, talk— he's talking about moon conspiracy theories?

We talked about this.

No, no, not at all.

Not at all? No.

Not even a tiny bit?

No. It's the moon conspiracy. It's the most cookie-cutter, like That's what I'm saying.

Like, I would much rather my quarterback being—

it felt like Drake Maye is not like a controversial guy.

I felt like he was holding something back because that's the one that people go to when they try to do gotcha journalism.

No, gave him nothing.

I think that Drake was holding back because like, that's the one that people say when they don't want to reveal what they actually believe. It's like, oh, what's the safe one? Oh, I can— what's the one that's not going to get me banned by Robert Kraft? Oh, it's going to be— I'm going to go with the moon landing. The one landing is—

I'm not worried about it. To answer your question, no, I am not worried about it at all. I'm sure him and Mack Hollins, I'm sure has some fucking crazy ones.

Is Mack Hollins hurt?

Yes.

He's out for—

I don't know how long, but he's hurt.

Okay.

AJ Brown though, practicing.

I also think Mike Vrabel might have gotten his swag back and I have a reason for it. What? What are you going to say?

He just—

I just said, yeah.

Okay. I think Mike Vrabel got his swag back because we talked about on Monday, CeeDee Deuce going after Efton Chisholm, talking about practice squad player. Mike Vrabel then defended Efton Chisholm and said, for a guy that's been on 8 teams, talking about CeeDee Deuce, 8 teams in 4 years, I mean, I guess he knows the drill. That's a ballsy move for Mike Vrabel to take a shot at CeeDee Deuce, who will say anything. Yeah, about anyone. So I think Mike Vrabel might be back being like, that's in the past, I don't care. Because he basically like almost dared him, like, go say something about me and what happened this past year.

Yeah, CeeDee Deuce is, uh, that's what he does. He's very good at it, but he's also a good player. Yeah, like if you're that much of a headache off the field, you would not have had the career that he's had if he also wasn't really good. So he's good when he's out there. That felt like a little He was being a bitch after the game. He was like, I can't believe we lost. So I'm going to have to make fun of the guy that caught the game-winning pass.

Yeah. But the Vrabel part of it, do you agree, Hank? Like him, him saying that he's opening himself up to have a shot back at him from CeeDee Deuce and he's okay with that.

Yeah. Because then they'll just use that.

Yeah. So I think he's, I think he might be back. Okay. Vikings-Saints. Saints plus 2.5. Over-under is 41.5. This is going to be a tough one for our boy Shock. The Saints need a win, uh, very badly. Vikings 4-0, bad offense, incredible defense. What are we thinking? Also, here's the problem. Here's what the Saints is in concerning this game. The Saints are so bad in the first half, and if you get in a hole against the Vikings, they're going to just tee off on you. So I'm very nervous about the Saints in this game. They're 1-9 against first half spread at home since the start of last season. Kellen Moore feels like he has not been able to get the team going early and get them on, you know, off on the right foot. That's a problem for a team like the Vikings who love playing with the lead.

So the Vikings, the question is their offense. What is their offense going to— we know what the defense is going to be. They're just going to blitz 80% of the time, maybe more. But on offense, I believe they have the last ranked offense by yards.

Yeah, they're 32nd in yards per play.

In yards per play, which is obviously Terrible. They did sign Odell Beckham this week, who's taken on number 9. He's the new 9. We felt like they gave that out like a little early. I don't know. You have to wait like a respectful amount of time. That felt disrespectful to JJ. But I guess the offense can't get worse. And my thought with them is that Kyler is going to get more comfortable in the offense as the season goes on.

Yeah.

As he gets more reps in, more games in, it should in theory get better. So I think—

Is it though?

What?

Well, I'm just asking questions.

I mean, in theory it should get better. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

So Mike Zimmer was a coach that was not— he wasn't— no, he's not a QB whisperer coach, right? When he coached the Vikings.

Oh no, he would, he would have rather won games without a quarterback at all, I think.

Right.

So Mike Zimmer coached the Vikings for 8 seasons. How many times in those 8 seasons did he have a game where a regular season game where they did not score a touchdown? Anyone want to guess? 8 seasons, not an offensive explosive, explosive coach. How many games?

2.

8.

4.

4 times in 8 seasons. How many times has Kevin O'Connell Had his Vikings teams not score a touchdown. He is an offensive coach, a QB whisperer. 8, 9. That's a lot. I don't— I want to say that the Vikings will get better offensively. I don't know if they will.

I think they should, because it can't get worse. It quite literally cannot get worse.

Well, I mean, they, they could just keep winning games like this. Like, I'm not saying they're going to be bad as a team. I just don't know if it's gonna I just don't know.

32nd. They can't do any worse.

I—

it has to get better. Kyler Murray has— he has some talent. That's not a question. I think he just has to get familiar with it.

Will the NFL let Brian Flores coach again?

Yes.

Head coach?

Yes.

He should be a head coach.

Well, the real question is, will there be an owner that will hire him right now even though he's actively engaged in a lawsuit? Because that might be the real question. I don't think the old guard owners would do that. But there might be one out there that says, yeah, I don't care. He should.

He should.

Yeah. He's been awesome. I mean, he's a— is he a better coordinator than coach though? I don't know.

Might be.

It might be. That does happen where a guy is really good, really awesome at one side of the ball. And then when he has to control everything, it's a little out of his hands.

But a lot of times when that happens, that guy will get a second chance.

Yeah.

No, I agree.

I think it's like Josh McDaniels, case in point. He flamed out in Denver and then he found there were 2 teams that were like, yeah, let's give him a second chance. Maybe he learned from his first time as a head coach. I don't know that Brian Flores is going to get that shot, but he, he probably should.

Yeah. Tyler Schecter said they're going to start the emphasis on this week on starting faster. Are we, are we laddering?

Every time.

They're going to be, they're going to be down in this game.

Maybe we do live ladder.

Ladder against Brian Flores.

Oh no, because live ladder, because if they're down, then it'll— his number will go up.

I don't know.

We have to ladder against Flores. It's kind of—

someone's got to be open when you're blitzing, right?

Yeah.

Mini ladder.

Stepladder.

Mega ladder. Little stepladder. A little squatty potty.

Are we gonna go— are we gonna go cherry picker? Are we gonna go like bucket truck?

I don't know what that is.

You don't know what the stair— the cherry picker is? Where you The thing you like, fix power lines. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

That's Mega Ladder.

Yeah.

Mega thing that Donnie convinced all of us that he knew how to use and then used it. And you got the hot dog off the ceiling.

The Brian Kelly ladder.

That was a great day.

That was a great day.

We don't talk about that day enough.

We really don't. It's an incredible day.

I believe that was a scissor lift.

Oh, that was a scissor lift.

Yeah.

Gotcha. Yeah. The Brian Kelly.

You know what, you're right. Someone's got to be open. Someone's got to be open. Listen, you blitz, you blitz Tyler Shuck at your own risk, right?

That's what I'm talking about.

And you know what, you blitz him until he makes you pay, and I think Shuck's gonna make him pay.

He's gonna make him pay. Uh, okay, Browns-Jets. Let's go, memes, win a football game. I'll keep it quick.

Rain.

Okay, great.

So the rain's every Fucking Sunday in New Jersey. So the rain is, is on your side? I don't think so.

No, I don't think so. I think it's a negative.

This is, this is bullshit. You already have to watch a bad football team every Sunday.

Yeah.

And you also have to watch them in the rain.

I agree with that.

Spill the dome.

Jets -1.5, over 39.5.

I've—

it's ridiculous that Browns fans are calling this a trap game. It's really You're not favorites. You're underdogs. The Jets are favorite. It's impossible to have a trap game where the other team— that's how you can tell Browns fans are. And listen, they deserve to be happy, and I'm glad that their team is playing well. But I guess I'm directing this singularly at Dom.

Yes.

You're not the favorite. No, it can't be a trap game.

And also, you're the Browns. Yeah. You have to like— you don't lose being the Browns just because you started 3-1.

Right.

You got to earn not being the Browns.

Yeah.

Process. It's a trap game.

Ugly rain.

Rain, ugly trap game.

If it rains so much, why don't you— why don't you build the team in a way that is optimized for the rain?

They would not.

Why would they do that? That would be smart. Yeah. All right.

Fucking bodies there.

Yeah.

They should have— they should just build the O-line, have a beast running back.

Never throw it.

That's it. You know what? I went at Dom a little bit hard there. I see the logic kind of behind it that they have the Ravens afterwards. So if we go Steelers—

Well, then it'd be a look-ahead spot, not a trap game.

Right.

But if you go Steelers, Jets, Ravens, Browns fans have— and the team probably looks at the Steelers and Ravens games a little bit differently.

Yeah.

But you're right. Look-ahead, not trap.

The Browns are— They have a schedule coming up that like they could make some, especially if Lamar's out, if they can win this game, I, we could be looking up and saying, oh shit, we're the Browns. They play the Jets, the Ravens, maybe without Lamar at the Titans, at the Steelers, at the Saints. It's not Murderer's Row.

How good do you think Deshaun Watson has to play this season for him to win Comeback Player of the Year? Have we thought about that?

I think he has to put— I think he has to play— I think he has to play MVP level, and they're like— I think it has to get to a point where they're like, we can't give him MVP.

Yeah.

So we'll have to give him Comeback Player of the Year, and they'll have to change it to like, in the official announcement, it will have to say for bouncing back from 2 Achilles injuries. Yeah, they have to— they will have to label it as such, clarify.

Yeah, he'll have to play so good that everyone would be like, that guy should be the MVP. Yeah, but we can't possibly do it.

He's un-MVP-able.

Yeah, but oh, Patrick Mahomes is eligible. That's, that's a runaway.

They'll have—

it should be Kittle.

They'll have a nice out.

Kittle should get talked about more. The fact that he came back in less than a year and is dominant. Like, he, he tore his Achilles 9 months ago. It's fucking crazy.

Yeah.

All right. Meebs, you think you're gonna win this game? You can win this game. Can you win this game?

I hope so. Because if you win this game, you get, you get the cavalry back the following week. Oh, cavalry's coming.

Yeah.

Who's in the cavalry? A.D. Mitchell, who had a mystery broken finger 2 weeks ago. Omar Cooper, Breece Hall, and our left guard. Everyone's coming back. Cavalry. But you got Braylon Allen 4 plays, 26 yards.

Yeah.

Hopefully he does that again. Hopefully it's a Braylon Allen game.

I still don't understand that tweet. It's been a week.

So I think I figured it out. Teams have the social media quotas they have to hit because they sell ads against the interactions they have against the impressions against the follower count. So they have to, they have to tweet something out. And that was the, they can run a mean pick 6 of the Jets where it's like, we got to get something out. Let's just do a screenshot of this. Honestly, you would take 4 yards or 4 plays, 26 yards all day. That's, that's a nice little, nice little series. Great 4 plays. Yeah, he's got a nice little rhythm. But the fact that, yeah, it was highlighted is—

While the Jets were down. It was the 3rd quarter.

And you know what? The flex emoji too. Yeah, the flex.

I think that's, that's what it is.

That made it worse. I think you—

yeah, Joey Langone. Shout out Joey Langone, one of our, our guys who works for Barstool. He's a great behind-the-scenes guy. His tweets be banners. We should make it.

Yeah, we should. That's a good banner. Yeah, good idea, Joey.

All right, Colts-Steelers. We got 2 more games in the early window. Colts-Steelers. Steelers are -2.5, over-under 44.5. I really want to bet the Steelers because the Colts— I do not believe in Daniel Jones. The Colts are coming back from England, no bye. Going on the road, it just feels like it's an absolute mess in Pittsburgh right now. Do you know how easy it is for Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers to just give cliché answers like, yeah, we're competitors, you know, in the heat of battle we're gonna have that type of, uh, back and forth, but we respect each other and we're always on the same page? That is so easy to lie like that, and they hate each other so much they couldn't even do that.

They can't. Well, it's Partially they hate each other. Partially they're just too familiar with each other. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, they'll air all the dirty laundry because they've done it before. They've done it again. The more I think about it, the more it would be— it would be if Mike McCarthy has any balls. He came back to take this job to ruin Aaron Rodgers.

Well, how? Yeah. Remember we talked about that theory?

It would be—

it would be to retire.

Yeah.

Mike McCarthy.

He's got all the power.

Doing it.

And he doesn't know it.

Just to retire Aaron Rodgers.

Yeah. The Count of Monte Cristo.

What?

We talked about this theory.

Yeah. Whatever the chances Aaron Rodgers would just say no.

And just no out on the field.

Yeah.

High. Like he'd go like, yes, 100%.

Like Mike McCarthy tries to bench Aaron Rodgers. Aaron Rodgers says no.

It would be, it would be constitutional crisis in Pittsburgh. It's like, who has the power?

Yeah.

And Aaron Rodgers would try to rally the guys around him. And then Mike McCarthy would be like, I'll cut you if you don't follow what I'm saying. It would, it would actually be fascinating to watch.

Who does Aaron— who does Will Howard listen to if Aaron Rodgers says no? Like Aaron Rodgers— Mike McCarthy says you're in. Aaron Rodgers says no, you're not. What does Will Howard do?

I think he just cries. I think honestly, he sits down and cries.

I think he cries while taking the field to take the job from Aaron Rodgers. And meanwhile, Drew Allar, 6'5, 245, stands resolute on the sidelines. Refuses to take Aaron's job, refuses to even participate in that, and thus gains the respect of the entire city of Pittsburgh. Then Mike McCarthy at the end of the year is fired. Drew Allar, quarterback in waiting. He's the true quarterback of that team. He refused to divide it in half.

I think there would be too many men on the field situation.

Yeah.

Like, I don't see a world where Aaron Rodgers is like, I'm coming off of this field.

And I don't think that he deserves to be benched.

Like, he's—

yeah, he's I don't know. The offense has looked okay in spurts this year.

Yeah, that was the nicest way you could put it.

Oh, I'm grading on Steelers offenses.

Oh, Steelers offense, I think it's actually looked explosive.

Yeah. So, so I don't think that they're even close to thinking about that. It's just funny that they do openly just like take snipes at each other like, like they're an old married couple.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That is the one thing you could say about Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers if you grade it on the last few years of Steelers offense, whether it be Kenny Pickett, Russell Wilson, Justin Fields, in whatever post-Ben iteration of Steelers offense has happened, this is the greatest show on turf. Yeah, they, they have looked way better, again on a curve, to every other offense they've had in the last few years. They're still bad.

Yeah, and I do, I agree with you. I, I think I like the Steelers in this game.

I do too. The last time the Colts— this is, this is one of those sneaky one side owns the other series. The, uh, only Colts quarterback to win in Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl era is Peyton Manning. He did it once in 2008. It's kind of crazy.

That is. Yeah.

Yeah, they just don't win. They're 2-14 all time in Pittsburgh.

I think back to that playoff game with the liquored-up kicker Vanderjack.

That was in Indy. Yeah.

Yeah. Bob Sanders.

He missed it.

Fumble. Jerome Bettis, who was on the Steelers, not the Rams. And yeah, missed it at the very last second. Don't roll your eyes.

I saw that. That was a heavy eye roll.

Such a sassy eye roll, Hank. It wasn't—

yeah, whatever. No one— like, of all the dumb things that have been said on this show, first of all, Max said it. Second of all—

Yeah. So why are you rolling your eyes?

Because it's, it's the most overblown thing that you guys like beat into the ground.

No, there's a—

that's not true. Yeah, that's also—

but it is.

It is not even close to true. Not even close to true.

Not even close.

It is not even top 10.

You want to talk about live dying?

People forget.

Yeah, you can talk about live dying.

Yeah, buddy. We haven't even started the NBA season yet. Yeah. Okay. So, hey, there's a lot of meat left on a lot of bones.

Can I ask a real quick question? Maybe we could talk to our lawyers. Like, could we buy the IP to LIV and just make it a YouTube channel of us golfing?

No, it's going to be— do you see that? It's going to be a billion-dollar company.

Okay. All right. Well, we'll talk about that.

Teams are valued at $100 million.

So, yeah, they shed— they just shed all their good players' salaries.

They knew that was coming.

That was part of the plan.

So that was part of the plan.

Every penny that comes in, you guys don't know finance.

All right. Last afternoon.

Wait, there is one thing because you mentioned it earlier. The teams that play the week after an international game, with no bye are 27-21. And the teams that take the bye coming back from international games, 36-39-1. So it's actually the track record is way better for teams coming home with no bye.

Oh, that is—

You wouldn't think that that was the case. Yeah.

Well, that also could be they put it into the spread. That's against the spread or straight up?

No, that's straight up.

Oh, okay. Yeah, that is. Yeah.

Yeah.

Huh.

Interesting. All right. Last early game, Giants-Commanders. Commanders -3.5, over-under 41.5. Jayden Daniels full go.

Jayden Daniels full go. The thing I'm concerned about in addition to him having his elbow just exit his body like SpongeBob and say I'm out is possibly the handoff situation. Because if there's one, if you have a bad elbow and he is elite and he is great at handoffs, But like kind of seriously, if you hand off to your right as a quarterback, use your left arm. The brace he's going to be wearing is going to theoretically keep it in place and prevent it from popping out. But straightening it, I think, is probably still going to be very painful. So a lot of times quarterbacks will then hand off with their right hand.

Yeah.

As they go to the right, like backhanded, which I was concerned about that. I asked Arian about that yesterday on Macro Dosing and he was like, yeah, I have one experience with that. Eric Ainge hurt his finger. And so he had to hand off backhanded. It was against Florida, first handoff of the game, fumbled, they recovered, touchdown, we lost. I was like, well, that's not what I wanted to hear.

Yeah.

That's not what I wanted to hear at all.

So I don't know.

I don't know what the handoffs are going to look like. But I'm back in, like, if he plays well, I'm fully back in on the season because I still think he's got a very, very bright future ahead of him in the NFL. But I'm all— every time he gets hit, and I'm hoping that he won't get hit much on that side where he's falling down to his left. You don't want to take hits on the right shoulder if you're a quarterback that throws with your right arm anyways. So hopefully he'll protect it a little bit. But to say that I'm not confident in the way it's going to go would probably be an understatement.

Are you worried about getting Jameis'd?

Definitely. Jameis has been really, really good against Washington and he's feeling himself.

He's kind of back.

Yeah, he's big time back. We had the full Jameis Winston experience, but part of the Jameis Winston experience is when you get a game that's the full-on Jameis experience, the next game tends to not be. So I'm hoping that we catch him on the bottom of roller coaster. But yeah, he is— historically, he's, he's owned the Commanders. And we— it would be kind of nice to see Marcus Mariota against Jameis. Yeah. One last time for old time's sake.

What, uh, where are you feeling if the Commanders win this game? Season back on.

In what, in what way? What way, what way do we win it? Uh, because there's a couple different ways.

Not a blowout, but let's say, let's say you win by 10 and it's, uh, no, you know what, you win by 7. Giants score a field goal to make it 7 towards the end, so you were up by 10. Uh, not like a crazy impressive, but also not— I— we were— you never thought you were gonna lose the game.

A workmanlike victory.

Yeah, like, give me a stat line from Jaden. Jayden Daniels went 15 for 22 for 215 and a touchdown.

Any rushing yards, rushing touchdowns?

He had no rushing touchdowns, but he had 4 rushes for 35 yards.

Okay. I'm going to feel average about that win.

Okay.

But then on Monday, I'm going to go back and cherry-pick his best throws and I'll say Jayden's fully back, the rest of the league's in big trouble, and I'll talk myself into feeling great about what should not be a great feeling win.

Got it.

That's where I'll be with that performance.

And if you lose this game, season over?

Season over.

It's a big game.

Big game.

Big game. Uh, there's a lot of— there's a lot of big games this podcast going on at the noon slate. Yeah, like happiness and sadness and just everything in between.

I think a lot also has to do with if, if Terry's going to be playing.

Is he?

Don't know. Don't know. That sucked. He hurt his quad in practice on Friday before the London game.

Okay.

Because like the, the Commanders offense is a different team for sure. But I guess good job getting Stefon Diggs because the offense was not the problem. I don't think last week. Yeah, it was, it was the referees. I blame the refs.

And it was also England.

It was England.

It was England's fault.

It was the king. Prince Andrew's fault and it was the referees.

Absolutely. Okay. Before we do afternoon games, Twisted Tea. It's football season. We're— we've never been more ready for game day. We're bringing Twisted Tea along for the ride all season long. Twisted Tea is a refreshing hard iced tea made with real brewed tea and 5% alcohol. The Twisted Tea Party Pack has a little something for everyone with original, half and half, raspberry, and peach. It's got that refreshing taste, a little kick, no carbonation. It goes down smooth. Making it the perfect drink to keep the good times going at the tailgate all day long and all football season long. Whether you're tailgating at the stadium, crushing teas in your man cave, or grilling out with friends, Twisted Tea is there to turn your day up a notch and make a good time a great time. We love Twisted Tea. Grab a Twisted Tea today. Uh, keep it twisted with Twisted Tea. The original, the half and half, the peach— my personal favorite. I'm gonna have a Twisted Tea sitting on my back patio watching ball this weekend because it's gonna be beautiful out. Twisted Tea, the most refreshing drink out there. It is the best. It's Twisted Tea.

Keep it twisted. Okay. Afternoon games, boys. The NFL did it to us. Only 3 afternoon games.

It's about time.

It's about time.

Too good for too long.

Too good for too long. 3 games. I will say one of them does feature the Lions defense, so that should be at least points.

Yeah.

But the first game, Broncos at the Chargers. Chargers are +3.5, home division dog. This is the week. Let me— let's talk about over 41.5. This is the week that Sean Payton has decided to take back— well, I shouldn't say take back. He's collaborating. He's collaborating on play calling. I do expect them to look better because they have looked so bad. They're ranked 27th in points and 17th in defensive points per game. The Broncos have been like— the conversation has been a lot about the Chargers or the Texans. The Broncos have looked remarkably average for a team that everyone thought was going to be a good team and build on last year's AFC Championship, especially the first half, right?

First 3 quarters really of games. So yeah, it's— Sean Payton was very clear, this is not a demotion.

Okay.

It's not a demotion. It's a collaborative play-calling effort, like Ringo Starr collaborated on writing all those number one hits with John Lennon.

Yep.

It's pretty much an equal position. Denver is not panicking. They also want to make that clear. Not a panic move that they're doing.

Okay.

So I believe them. And if you look at the stats going into this, Denver has not been good against the spread in its last 5 divisional games. It has actually been bad. I don't think that they've won a single one out of those 5. And on the other hand, Harbaugh is— if you thought he was desperate last week, yeah, this is about as desperate as it's going to get. I do think that there's probably going to be some sort of move made if they lose this game.

Yeah.

I don't know what moves he has. I guess McDaniel is there.

I don't—

he doesn't seem like a guy that would move on so quickly.

Well, the question would be, do they start trading guys?

Yeah.

They also, the Chargers offensive line is very banged up. There's a chance they're going to start 4 rookie offensive linemen this Sunday. So I don't know how that's going to look. That makes me scared, Hank, because I want to take the Chargers, but 4 offensive linemen, 4 rookie offensive linemen.

Herbert's used to it.

He is.

That's true. And also you're bad already. So maybe like switching it all out won't be—

I mean, he's been getting his ass kicked. It's been bad. Just pressure in his face all the time. He hasn't been playing well either. So it's a combination. Before, he was getting his ass kicked and he was still good for getting his ass kicked.

Yep.

This year he's getting his ass kicked and he sucks, which is— you can't, you can't have both of those at the same time. And I don't know. Yeah, they could be looking to make some moves if they fall into an even deeper hole. With Justin Herbert, kind of put it in perspective. There's one quarterback that has had more passing yards without a playoff win through their first 100 games. Because I think this is either his 100th game or he has played 100.

Without a playoff win?

Without a playoff win. There's one quarterback.

Oh boy.

Who would that be?

Can you guess?

Hold on. One quarterback with more passing yards without a playoff win. Tony Romo.

In their first 100— nope, not Tony.

That was a good guess.

Very good guess.

Really good guess. Dak Prescott won a playoff game early, didn't he?

Yeah, he's won wild—

I think Peyton Manning.

Nope.

What era?

Modern era.

Modern era.

Modern era. Yeah.

Okay. Modern era. Passing yards.

Philip Rivers?

No, not Phil, because he won playoffs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hmm, what conference? Uh, I'm gonna do division next.

Okay.

Oh, Jay Cutler.

Nope, no, Jay won a playoff. Oh yeah, NFC, NFC, NFC. Andy Dalton.

What team?

AFC.

AFC. That's AFC. Come on, get it.

Wait, he's at it now.

Don't say team. Don't say team.

I'm not gonna tell you.

Don't say team.

I won't tell Can we hear the stat?

Yeah. So can we get the— can you tell us the country of origin as well?

Okay. United States. The question, memes, is there's one quarterback that has more passing yards than Justin Herbert through his first 100 games.

So how mad are we going to be?

No, I don't think you'll be mad.

Okay.

So Justin Herbert is— I think this is his 100th start. There's one quarterback that has more passing yards without a playoff win through their first 100 starts than Justin Herbert has.

I think I'm going to be mad. Kirk Cousins?

Nope.

Sam Bradford?

Nope.

All right, tell us.

Oh, come on.

Older or younger than you?

Get in the game, man.

Older or younger than you?

Get in the fucking game.

100 games.

Oh, Matthew Stafford.

That's correct.

Yes.

Ah, I knew we'd get it after 75. We knew it all along.

Cut the rest of them. Just say you got it right away.

Yeah.

Wow.

You guys are—

hey, fucking dude perfect. First try. Matthew Stafford. Whoa.

We did it. It is crazy to think that me and Big Cat are 3 years older than Matt Stafford. And we talk about—

I need you to say that.

We talk about him like he is the oldest person on planet Earth.

Goddamn it. Goddamn it. Yeah. I mean, Rodgers retiring is going to be a problem. Yeah, that's it. LeBron. LeBron and Rodgers and then maybe like a kicker. Nick Folk.

No, we're older.

We're older than Nick Folk, which is crazy. Actually, that makes me— that part makes me feel better.

Nick Folk is, is like way younger than I thought. Oh no, we're all— we're younger than Nick Folk. Thank God. All right. Nick Folk is 41 years old, but he was born in 1984. So that is— stick around, Nick Folk. All right. You're going to— do you want to say what you're thinking about? I'm not going to hold you to the hungry dog. But what are you thinking about Hungry Dog?

Chargers, Giants are pretty, pretty much locked in. I actually think I— and Colts.

Oh, so you're not touching the Packers?

I—

that's—

I put this in. I've— I sometimes will do combinations of Hungry Dogs. I'll only tweet out one official Hungry Dog. I have already put in Colts, Giants, Chargers.

Straight bets?

No.

Oh, okay.

And I'm guessing so it's either going to be Giants-Chargers-Colts or Giants-Chargers-Packers. I can say that with confidence.

Okay. All right. Next game, the fun game, just because the Lions defense are featured. Lions -5.5, over-under 54.5 against the Cardinals. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what to make of the Lions in terms of like their defense. They just have to get healthy, right? Like, they're just so bad right now. They're so bad.

They— I think help is on the way.

Okay.

I heard that Brian Branch might be practicing.

Okay.

So they are going to get healthier. And the defense is at a spot where it's like historically bad. So I expect that it's going to maybe round into form and just be average bad.

They're, they're last in every category. And so Points per game, yards per game, passing yards per game, uh, third down defense, fourth down defense. Their third down defense, they're giving up a first down 52.8% of the time, and they are, uh, 100% of the time when a team has gone for fourth down, they're 5 for 5, uh, have gotten it. And this is the one that's really bad— the most first downs allowed. The second highest is 96. The Lions have given up 113 first downs.

Mm-hmm.

113 first downs over 4 games.

Yeesh.

So they need to— it's bad, but bad also means good because when we have 3 games in the afternoon slot and all 3 are stinkers, that sucks. I feel like the Lions are like— I looked at this line and I was like, hey, is this when I should bet on the Lions? I just don't know with that defense if you can win by 5.5 points. I think the Lions will win this game, but like, think about it. If they're up a touchdown at the end of the game, The Cardinals can go score.

I think you have to count on, on Jacoby Brissett giving one back.

Yeah, but even 10 points— let's say this, 10-point game, 4 minutes left, Cardinals have the ball. Do you feel confident in 5.5?

No, no, not— no, if it's that close and they have the ball, no, it's gonna be backdoor, right? 100%, yes.

So that's the tough part when you're betting on a team with that bad of a defense.

Jared Goff has, has won 9 straight against the Cardinals.

Okay, so it's foreign to him to lose a game I do think the Lions are going to win this game. The Cardinals are going their black alternate uniforms this week. Does that mean anything to you?

Yes. It means that they're, they're probably listening to Metallica in practice.

And no, the Cardinals.

Oh, the Cardinals.

Yeah, the Cardinals.

Cardinals.

Are they playing that? Are they wearing that during the game as well?

Yes.

Yeah, I think, I do think that that's more at home for Dan Campbell.

Do you think Cortez is going to match that? He has to, right?

I think Cortez, does he, he doesn't switch uniforms. I don't know.

He might not.

I think he's just got the standard old school 1980s helmet, the super baggy jersey. I don't think he wears like the splattering one that he wore the other, that the team wore the other week.

Yeah.

I don't think he does. He messes around with rivalry jerseys or throwbacks or color rush or anything like Cortez is who he is.

Why don't the Cardinals play Carson Beck?

Because Jacoby Brissett.

Okay.

Yeah. I think I figured out why Jacoby Brissett gets such a long leash in this league. Besides the fact that he seems like a good guy.

Yeah.

He seems like the man.

He's the man. He's a very, you know, he's an average backup quarterback, I would say. But like people will give Jacoby Brissett a lot of chances in this league. And I'm happy for him. Did you know that he was like best friends with Bill Parcells growing up?

No.

So yeah, like when he was in high school, Bill Parcells was around him. It was like, there's this high school quarterback, Jacoby. He's really good. They used to— they used to go to breakfast together like a few times a week.

This does sound vaguely familiar. Yes.

So like Bill Parcells is like his mentor, kind of. So there will be an endless supply of coaches in the NFL that are willing to give Jacoby Brissett a job.

I mean, Parcells still has the cachet.

And I'm happy for it too. Like, Jacoby Brissett seems like the kind of guy that you would want to have an endless supply of jobs.

And if you catch Jacoby Brissett in the right, like, 5-minute span, he can look really good.

Yeah.

If you watch the whole game, no.

I would even say it's half-by-half basis with Jacoby.

It's like, let's go quarter-by-quarter.

Okay. Yeah.

Quarter-by-quarter.

Let's say quarter-by-quarter feels right because he can go good quarter, first quarter, bad quarter, bad quarter, good quarter.

Yeah.

Lose by 20. All right. Last game. This is going to be a great game in the afternoon window. 49ers at Seahawks. This is a fun game because it's Seahawks -3, over-under 45.5. How good are the 49ers? That is what this game is to me. I don't even know if they have to win the game for me to come away from it being like they're really good.

I think just don't allow a kickoff return for a touchdown in the opening kick.

Yeah.

And we got progress.

And how does your offense, which is unbelievable look against the Seahawks defense. And listen, the 49ers, uh, defense has played good ball in the fact they don't give up explosives. And you know that, that Sam Darnold is going to want to try to push the ball downfield. I'm very excited for this. Yeah, very excited.

Is it, uh, the 49ers win this game, let's say Brock Purdy hypothetical stat line, um, 2 touchdowns, no interceptions, 280 yards. Is Brock Purdy your MVP through 5 weeks?

I think he is right now anyway.

I think he is. Yeah, I think he is. I think need to have a discussion just as, as Americans. We need to prepare ourselves. Like Brock Purdy, he is the MVP right now.

Will he get sacked?

I think so.

I think he's gonna get sacked this week.

McDowell's too good.

Yeah, because he hasn't been sacked so far. It's pretty fucking awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm excited for this game. Big time excited, especially with what happened last year where it was just not even a competitive game in the playoffs. This is going to be This is going to be a fun one.

Do you think the Seahawks miss Kenneth Walker?

Yes, especially with all the injuries now. So they didn't— they brought in Joe Mixon but then said nah.

I guess so. So he had mystery foot.

Someone— I saw someone start a rumor that he shot his own dead foot.

He had a mystery foot.

Someone said he shot his own.

That's what happened to me.

Yeah, it turns out the Seahawks decided not to go, uh, sign veteran running back Joe Mixon to their practice squad after he underwent a physical for the team. Per league source, Mixon remained free. Do you think they just took off his shoe and they're like, hey, did you shoot your foot?

Yeah, they were like, gross.

Yeah, that's, that's just a rumor, by the way. It's not actually real.

I don't think he might just have funky feet.

It's true.

And they're like, oh, no, no thanks. But yeah, the whole, the way that it went down in Houston was very strange to the point where like, I think we probably don't want to know all the details behind everything. Mm-hmm. Because they were so weirdly secretive about it. So yeah, he got an invite out to Seattle. It sounded like they're not going to fly him out if they're not going to sign him. Right. And then they did the physical.

Yeah.

And they said, no, we can't, we can't do it. But I think that they do miss Kenneth Walker a lot.

A lot.

I don't know if they regret— I mean, the way that it worked out, he— all he did was get Super Bowl MVP and then probably increase the price of the sale by like $100 million or more.

Yeah.

And then he left because they were like, no, we can't give you any money. We don't really have any. But thank you for making us all that money this year.

Not a credible source. Wyatt's World. No offense to Wyatt's World.

Content creator for Bills Mafia.

Oh, okay. Yeah, he said, I'm hearing rumors that Joe Mixon literally shot himself in the foot and blew his toe clean off. What's sad is that it's a very, very believable story. But you're the one reporting it.

Algo Stellar also said not a rumor, wasn't his toe either. And it was, it was the middle of his foot.

So he blew the middle of his foot off.

So we got Wyatt's World and Algo Stellar.

That's such a brutal— to be like, I shot, I shot myself in my foot.

You can't really— you can't really blow off the middle of your foot, can you?

No.

That's like pretty— if you blow off the middle of it, you blow off the whole foot.

Yeah, the whole thing's gone.

Yeah.

Degenerate foot issue is what doctors are saying. Oh, there is a bunch of people saying that he did this. Oh man. All right, Joe Mixon, maybe you got to come out and do like a foot reveal.

Nah, you got to make people pay for that.

What is it? What's it? Only feet?

Tootsies. Tootsies.

Is there a website? Foot Finder. Foot Finder. Joe Mixon just does a foot reveal on Foot Finder. Number 1 offense according to DVOA versus number 1 defense according to DVOA. Excited.

Yeah.

Do you guys have a lean in this game? I kind of want to take the Niners.

Seahawks.

Yeah, I was thinking Seahawks too.

Okay.

But no, I hope the Niners win.

It feels like it's probably going to be a field goal game one way or the other.

Yeah.

All right. Last game, Sunday Night Football, Ravens-Falcons. Ravens are +3.5. Over-under is 43.5. Tyler Huntley. So Lamar's injury is enough that he's going to be out for a couple of weeks.

Tyler Huntley, mid-ankle sprain.

Mid-ankle sprain.

Yeah, it's not high. It's not low.

So it's like a lame ankle sprain.

I don't know. When somebody says like, I'm not tall, I'm not short, that means that you're short.

Mid ankle.

So it might be more lower than it is mid.

I, I, uh, all right. So let's start with this. Falcons have been awesome. Awesome. They also are wearing their red jersey, black pants combo on Sunday Night Football. So they're going to, they are, they have been awesome. They're going to look awesome. The primetime Falcons have been a thing this season. I think I'm going to bet the Ravens just because it's such a sell-high spot on the Falcons. Falcons could win the game by a field goal. Like, Tyler Huntley isn't— he's going to keep them in the game-ish, right?

I wonder what's going to happen. You think Cam Juergens is going to play?

I doubt it, right?

Well, because, you know, yeah, why not? Remember we talked about the guy that had been filling in for him?

Yeah.

Like they had a, they had a guard that never played center before, a rookie that was trying to snap the ball. So I feel like they probably are going to try to get him to play.

Yeah, you might be right.

I don't— Max, he's been playing for the Birds, right?

You're gonna have to ask me again.

Juergens.

Oh, Juergens. He's been playing left guard. He's been bad. He's been the worst, worst ranked player in the NFL because he's a center. But he was also bad in his first game as a center and also bad last year as a center. But I like Cam Jurgens.

I'm just thinking we're trying to figure out if he's going to play or not.

He's not going to play. He has— he's in concussion protocol.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Glad we went to you.

He got traded. My bad. My bad.

Are you in concussion protocol, Max?

I could be. I was looking at— hand up. I've had a bad— I haven't been locked in on this episode. Hand up.

What happened?

I don't know. We start— I started thinking about my bets for tonight and then I started playing.

He was on his phone.

Yeah, I was. I just—

I just think—

and I just took White Sox, White Sox -105 for tonight. I like the White Sox tonight.

OK, that'll be really good for when people get to this portion of the episode.

But yeah, Cam Juergens is not going to play. It looks like he's going to make his debut next week for the Ravens.

OK, OK. This is— I'm glad that we went to Max on this one.

By the way, Harold Perkins Jr. for the Falcons, been— that was a home run pick through 4 weeks. He's been awesome. He's obviously— remember the guy who popped his— I think it was his freshman year at LSU and then had not— maybe not a great couple of years after that, but he looks awesome. And that like when you get a draft pick like that, not a top draft pick who plays well, that's a big bonus for their team. And I know the Falcons have some injuries on defense that they're still dealing with, but I think they might be good. I don't know.

This is like, I mean, they, yeah, they got some injuries, but they're, they're very, very good against the run. Yeah. On defense.

Yeah.

I'm saying they're going to get healthy. That's kind of more like this is, they should get stronger and stronger. And it sucks that we can't do Lamar Jackson versus an NFC team because that's free money. Can't say free money, but he wins all the time against NFC.

It's very cheap money.

Yeah. Now, Huntley, Snoop Huntley, he's a Pro Bowler.

Good, good backup. And this happens all the time. He's— it's not like a surprise that he's going to have to play.

Yep.

This is a mildly boring stat, but maybe you don't remember, but the Ravens selected Hayden Hurst. in the draft originally, and they took him before they drafted Lamar Jackson. Remember that?

I do.

And then now he is a Falcon.

Wow.

So revenge game.

So they got— the Falcons got a player better than Lamar Jackson.

They have. Yeah, they have a better— maybe 2 players that are better than Lamar Jackson.

Per draft order. Okay.

Do you want to— is their offensive lineman going to play?

Who?

Why?

Oh, Jake Matthews.

Jake Matthews. Jake Matthews. It's going to be like his, what, 200th start?

200th start. There's only been a few guys have done that. That in a row. Let's see.

News.

Jake Matthews. Jake Matthews.

They did Jake Matthews and Za'Darius Smith were estimated as DNPs yesterday are both on the field going through stretches.

All right. Practice. He's going to play.

Okay.

Good for him. 200 starts in a row in the NFL is insane, especially at lineman.

Good for him.

Who started 200 games? I know Favre, obviously.

Eli.

NFL, maybe Eli.

AI mode.

I'm gonna go AI mode. Guys started 200 NFL games. Nope, I got it wrong.

It doesn't have—

it doesn't give it to me the way I need it. Consecutive. Max, get me consecutive.

I said scored.

Scored 200 games in a row.

Stupid. And I didn't even say NFL. I'm panicking.

Kromar.

I'm having a bad—

oh, all right.

I got it.

Brett Favre, 297. That's insane. Jim Marshall, 270. Phil Rivers, 243. Bill Romanowski, 243. Bruce Matthews, Jake Matthews' dad. That's pretty insane to have both of them. London Fletcher. Eli Manning was 210. Peyton was 208. So there's a good list. There's like 20, 25 guys. Pretty insane though to be able to do that.

London Fletcher maybe should be in the Hall of Fame.

Fame.

Yeah. Ronde Barber, 215. Yeah. Wait, what is his name? London Fletcher Baker.

He changed it to London Fletcher Baker for 1 or 2 years and then went back to London Fletcher. But if you look at London Fletcher's all-time, like, his tackles. Yeah, he's— all of his stats are right up there with Ray Lewis, except Ray Lewis has 2 Super Bowls and 1 obstruction of justice charge, and London Fletcher has 1 Super Bowl.

Yeah.

Jeff Fiegels, 200. It shouldn't count kickers.

No kickers.

That's not— that's not real.

All right.

Do we have Jerry's Fantasy Minute? Jerry, by the way, I saw his video the other day of his shirt off. He looks awesome.

Oh, he knows it too.

Yeah, he's looking really good. Okay, here he is. And it's 1:01. So you got to cut it short. Okay, doing some breathwork, doing some energy work. Because we need some good energy out there from Jacoby Brissett. We're starting Woody Marks and Juwan Johnson. We need 50 points from them. Okay, start the music, meme. Start the music. Here we go. We are going to sit Max and LeBron for being in the deep state. People who are in a deep state say they're not in the deep state. So Max, you saying you're not knowing what the deep state is means you do know what the deep state is. We're going to start Hank for giving me a plug in my new streaming show, The Stream from Hell. on Prime Video. Shout out Kaisanat Andruski. Hank, you're my number one fan. Also shout out Hank, there's a new plane lady doing Randy things to herself, a crazy plane lady. So we're gonna start you for that.

We love that.

Look at the video, it's pretty cool. We're gonna start Stella Blue Coffee, which is on Amazon. We're gonna also, uh, sit Big Cat for making believe he's an ICE agent. Uh, stream Jacoby, stream, uh, stream, uh, the Cincinnati Bengals defense because they're playing Miami and they stink. Fuck you, Big Cat. Fuck you. All right. It's perfect.

Perfect. Really?

What is he doing?

It looks like he's got some crystals on his body. Yeah, he's doing the Hollywood stuff. You know that.

Do you think like the woman who has to do the massage had to do that video? Is it like— that's worse than what Robert Kraft did.

If anyone's in the deepfake, it's him.

The what?

Deepfake. Oh, he— classic. He's pretending he doesn't even know The, the deep—

it's him. Look at him. He's doing the—

Yeah, but you just called it deepfake so that we'd be like, oh yeah, you really don't know the deep state. You called it deepfake.

I said deep state.

You said deepfake. You need to lock in, Max.

I think— yeah, no, I'm, I'm gonna have to watch the All-22 on my performance today, but I don't think it's good coming off of first impression.

No, it's all right.

It's all right. Hey, we'll regroup. Long season.

Yeah.

Get better.

Yeah, gotta get better.

It's a week-to-week league.

It's a week-to-week league.

It's a week-to-week league.

Okay.

Okay, let's do our picks. We'll do our parlay and then we'll do all of our picks. I am so bad right now. DraftKings football season heating up. Every week feels bigger with DraftKings. DraftKings Sports app is now live in all 50 states. That means from Texas to California to Florida, every fan is in on the excitement. Follow the teams you love, keep up with the biggest games, and experience the excitement of football all week long. No matter which game you're watching, you're always connected with one app. One app Every sport, all 50 states. New DraftKings customers sign up with code TAKE, spend just $5, get $150 in rewards within 14 days. Includes all markets. That's code TAKE in partnership with DraftKings. The crown is yours. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. 1-800-MY-RESET. Connecticut, call 888-789-7777. Visit ccpg.org. On behalf of Boot Hill Casino in Kansas, bed tax pass-through may apply in Illinois.

Void in Canada.

Bet with DraftKings Sportsbook to get bonus bets that expire in 7 days, or trade with DraftKings Predictions to get Predictions Dollars that expire in 1 year. Event contract trading involves risk of loss. Predictions offer void in New York. Non-withdrawable rewards issued as $50 click-to-claims every 7 days for 14 days. Terms at dkng.co/offer. Limited-time offer. Nationwide based on Sportsbook predictions and free-to-play sports contest availability. Varies by state. Okay, boys, uh, PMT parlay, who's up? I mean, I technically lost this, but Max did.

All right, I'll go out.

No, you go in.

Why was it technically you?

Because I said Kittle and he's like, nah, he's not going to score 3 weeks in a row. And then he did. So I then went to Amon-Ra.

I mean, you can let him in, but you know, he's just going to take Kittle.

Is he?

Yeah.

Okay, Max, go ahead. Your pick.

I'll go Kittle.

Okay.

PFT and Hank?

I was actually going to do that.

Should we say Kittle for 3 scores?

Give me RJ Harvey.

Okay. Okay. I'm going to go, I'm going to go chalky. I'll take Bijan.

Okay.

I think he's the best running back in football right now.

Yeah, let's leave him one of us, one of them, one of them for the night. Okay, picks. Who goes first? PFT?

I think I know.

Yeah. All right, I will go with the one game we didn't preview. I'm going to take the Rams -3. My picks have been really, really bad. Got to get better.

I'll take the Chargers +3.5.

Lions, Cardinals over 54.5.

Yeah.

I am going to take the Texans, Titans under 38.5.

Good pick.

Good pick.

I'm going to take the Falcons -3 in the Ravens game.

Okay. It's 3.5. No, it's 3.

You're right.

I'm going to take The Bengals-Dolphins under 42.5. And I'm also going to take the New England Patriots minus 3.5.

Have you taken the Patriots every week?

No, just last 2.

And the first one?

Did I take it for week 1?

Maybe.

No, I don't think I did.

No, because it was a Wednesday game.

game.

Yeah.

Zach?

I'm gonna take the over in the Browns-Jets game.

If I was picking with my head, I would take the Jets, but because I'm picking with my heart, I'm gonna take the Eagles +7.5.

Okay.

But just so you know, your head says Jets.

I like the Jets.

I will take—

well, me, I mean, wow, doesn't exist. Wow, memes can't exist.

Pretty fucked Wow. Memes, would you like to go, sir?

I would like to go.

I will take the Bears -2.5.

Okay. Line should be -10.

Love that.

I mean, there's a chance. I think there is.

It's gonna be skullfuck.

I think it could be a skullfucking. I'll be upset if it's not a mini skullfucking.

I will take the over in Browns-Jets. Weather isn't real. Zach just told You took the over?

Wow. Zach and me have a ratio.

I'll take the under in Browns-Jets weather. It's going to be really bad weather.

I love that. I love that play by you.

You know what that is? That's a natural fade.

Yeah, natural fade.

Like, that's a great pick, actually. I just heard—

I heard him say Browns-Jets. I assumed he took the under because it's going to be like a hurricane.

I will take the under.

And you're calling him dumb for— you didn't listen to him pick and now you're like, he's really dumb for that pick.

No, I was going to take the same pick.

All right.

I will take myself the under in the Jags-Eagles game, 41.5.

Don't hate that.

I just—

I don't hate that.

I don't really want to pay attention to this.

You know what we call that?

The Lunder.

Is it?

Yes.

In London.

Yeah.

Oh, oh, Rome's going to be at the game.

I like that.

He's going.

Yeah. Oh, hell yeah.

D'Angelo.

Angelo Pallantoni saved the season.

He's going to save the season.

All right.

Let's get to Anthony Rizzo in studio talking baseball and then we'll finish with Firefest of the week.

Before we get to Anthony Rizzo, he's brought to you by our great friends at TickPick, the no-nonsense ticket app. Ovi has officially announced his retirement. That means ticket prices for the Caps this year are going up, especially the final regular season home game. I plan on going to a couple of Ovi games this year, going to see the Caps on the road when they're in Chicago and maybe stop by, see him at home as the season winds down as well. What do you guess the cheapest ticket is right now for Ovi's final home game?

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Okay, we now welcome on a very, very special guest, recurring guest, World Series champion. Anthony Rizzo in studio because you're a psycho, dude. Why are you running the marathon? You have a World Series ring. You never have to buy a beer again in Chicago. You had an incredible baseball career. You're now doing, uh, baseball analysis on NBC. You had an aw— you have an awesome podcast that you released with David Ross, uh, this past season that you guys are going to continue. There is literally no reason to run a marathon. What are you doing?

I wanted to tell everyone the best part about running a marathon is that you get to tell everyone that you're running the marathon.

But that doesn't apply to you because when you— if you meet someone, you tell them I'm a World Series champion.

No, no, you have to play humble on that card. Now that I'm a runner, which I claim I'm a runner, I'm running the marathon. So I know Dave has strong—

Yes, yes.

Opinions on the marathon. I saw you just ran the Tunnels of Towers, but Emily ran New York.

Your wife?

Yeah.

A few years ago. So that seeing her training and doing all that in running, they say if you run slower, you end up running faster. It's like, all right, I can try that, right? So I go out and run a slow mile. I'm like, oh, this doesn't feel too bad. And then I just got into it. And then with the 10-year anniversary, I was like, all right, let's, let's raise a lot of money for our, our foundation and try to run this thing. What, what better city to do it than in Chicago? The last like 2 months, I've regretted my decision heavily. But yeah, now that we're on the end of training and ready to go, I feel good.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, it is funny for you to like— because, you know, you have a young child and like you're now going into the next chapter of your life. I do like the idea of you like going to like a parent-teacher function or something and someone being like, are you an athlete? And it's like, no, I just ran a marathon, and not mentioning anything about through the Major League Baseball career, having them figure that out later.

I can't wait to wear my medal, you know, in the airport. Like, I'm going to be wearing it everywhere.

Sticker.

The what?

26.2 sticker.

You got to get a sticker.

Yeah.

Oh, your bumper sticker. Yeah.

You don't know about the sticker?

No.

That's the only reason you run a— that's the only reason you run a marathon.

Yeah.

Get the bumper sticker.

I'm going to put it on my laptop for our show.

Yeah. Get it tattooed on you.

Yeah.

26.2. No big deal.

Yeah.

Yeah. No, I mean, that's going to be Very, very impressive. What you're doing now though is smart because you're also getting the congratulations before you run it.

Yeah.

So you're doing like the pre-marathon announcements.

Yeah, it's like a whole—

yeah, exactly. Afterwards you'll take the victory lap.

And everyone's like, oh, what's your time? What's your time? Like, listen, I'm gonna run this thing as fast as I can. I've never been fast in my life, but I have the built-in excuse. I'll just stop and take pictures with fans. Yeah, you know what I mean? I'm gonna enjoy it.

Uh-huh. So what's your mile time down to now?

Shorter miles, I could probably bust off like 9-minute—

Wait, what do you mean shorter miles?

Like, oh, if you're doing 3, 5, 10 miles.

But I thought you were saying like, like, you know, half a mile. Yeah, I could do like a 9-minute half mile.

Yeah.

But the longer runs, those, I don't know. I was, I ran 20 miles a few weeks ago and I was on mile 17 and I was so desperate. I stopped at a hot dog vendor in New York and I just started drinking a Coke. I was like, I don't even know what else to do.

Training's going well.

I don't even like Coke, right?

Oh, that's awesome.

Big Cat brings up a good point though, because I, I've heard that too, that you'll never buy another beer in Chicago. Do you— have you bought a beer since 2016?

I—

that—

people take care of me very, very nicely here. They treat me kindly. But that is a very big myth. I've paid for a lot of beers. But there is a lot of perks of winning. But I remember, you know, you have this dream, right? The imagination of never paying for anything again. I'm not kidding. Literally our first dinner we went to after we won the World Series, I still have the receipt. I won't call the restaurant out. They gave me just like a 20% discount.

Oh no, that's crazy. That is exactly when, especially like the week after, you need to just be like, these guys don't pay for anything, right?

Yeah.

So, but you should do like a video like in 10 years being like, I'm like going to bars and just being like, do you know who I am? I'm not paying.

I thought I'd go to bars and I would, I would order one beer and then I'd just look around and just wait and see if anyone's going to get it. Yeah. And then if no one gets it, you leave.

Yeah.

Go back to that place.

Yeah. Just walk out and not pay the tab. They come and get me. I'm like, really? You're going to make a scene here?

I was told I wouldn't have to pay for any more beers.

Yeah. All right. Can we talk about the playoffs this year? So Dodgers-Brewers set for the NLCS. Do the Brewers have any chance of beating the Dodgers? It feels like— and you could tell me if this is just the Dodgers we were talking about the other day, Kike Hernandez. says, like Andy Pies, they have their 7th, 8th, 9th best guys will come up with clutch hits. They don't even need Shohei. And for— I mean, Freddie Freeman was great too, but they don't even need their best players. They can just have their, their, their bottom of the lineup guys get big hits. It feels unstoppable.

They feel unstoppable. I mean, their pitching is banged up. That's their one kind of Achilles, especially their starters. If their starters can't go deep, it just puts a lot of pressure on their bullpen. But that lineup, man, I, I was— I talked about it with Rossi on our show. Uh, Kike Hernandez is a blend of Shohei, Aaron Judge, and Babe Ruth.

Yeah.

In October.

Yeah.

It's, it's like, at this point, it's just, it's a joke what he's doing.

Yeah.

So Max Muncy's hitting 6th. I think his first game he's hitting 8th.

Yeah.

Um, but they're— the only thing is they're pitching, right? If, if Blake Snell and Glassnow can't go deep, they're gonna really rely on on Skubal and Yamamoto, which, I mean, right, you know what I mean? So I do— the Brewers, I— the Brewers brand of baseball is so good.

Yeah, what is it about them where they're just always putting pressure? Like, is it just— does that get in your head when you're playing a team against like the Brewers where it's like you just know they're gonna bunt or run, be aggressive on the base path? How does that change how you, how you like play against them?

I mean, defensively, you just know you have to be clean. You know, they, they busted down the line. They're fast. They have speed. They're going to steal bases. They do the little things right. And their bullpen is dominant.

Yeah.

So, I mean, the Brewers have to get off to a fast start. Whether they win or lose game 1, as long as their guys settle in and get hits, Cheerio keeps doing what he's doing, Contreras keeps doing what he's doing, I think it'll be a better series than people think. But I, I just I think the Dodgers are too good.

Yeah.

There've been a lot of discussions this postseason about tipping pitches and the White Sox and the Guardians, they had a little, uh, like, are they tipping? Are they not? There was the Brewers game the other night. Um, so like every team's always looking for an edge. How, how real is the edge that you get as a, as a batter if a pitcher is tipping pitches and you've got a guy on second?

That's huge. I mean, in the wildcard game, I found out afterwards Cam Schlitter was tipping his pitches.

Oh, really?

I don't know if the Red Sox picked up on it or not, but you go back and look and sure enough, he's doing what someone said he was doing. So it's— as a hitter, I— it's all I ever looked for. All I ever looked for was how they— a guy put the ball in the glove, what they do with their mouth, what they do with their hand positioning, because they— all these pitchers, they're pitchers at the end of the day. That's what I— I never give them too much credit. They call themselves athletes. I don't call them athletes. They're pitchers. But they have to, you know, some guys grip the split and they go into their glove and they switch in their glove. So I think it's great for the game. I think it's a great part of the game.

Yeah, he's picking up. Yeah, he's picking up.

Yeah, but that stuff's real.

So, so when you, if you're, if you're like prime Anthony Rizzo and you just know that it's going to be like he's tipping pitches and you just know it's going to be a fastball, like you just have that much of an advantage, right? Like that's the— if you're going to always hit, basically get good contact on a pitch that you know what style it's going to be.

It's, it's like if, if they were tipping, if I knew it wasn't a changeup versus a righty, that's a whole different game plan I have. So if he does something fastball slider and then he does something, I know it's not a changeup. I can gear up for the fastball and see the, the slider or curveball pop. So yeah, it's things like that. The Reds, Cincinnati Reds used to always set up early inside on me. Always. So I'd have someone from the dugout just scream, come on, Riz. And then I would just run the numbers in my head saying, what's the count? And pretty much if you're setting up early on me, in early on me, early in the count, it's a fastball, right? So I could just sell out, right? So it's things like that where, look, you guys got to clean up your end. Obviously we're not stealing signs like back in the day, right? They were doing. But it's just all gamesmanship, in my opinion.

Yeah.

But again, I feel like as long as electricity doesn't come into it, it as long as eyes, ears, that's, that's fine. That's fair game. If you, if you don't want to get caught doing it, get a better way to grip the ball and make sure that your hand's hidden in that glove. That's on you as a pitcher.

No doubt.

It is. It's fun to see like the back and forth of that. And then the Brewers with their pitcher, uh, Miz, just throwing like absolute gas, 103, 104 miles an hour. When that speed of a pitch is coming in, how long do you actually pick Do you know, or are you just guessing, hey, this is probably going to be a fastball every time?

He's, he's just, he's like a build-a-player. Honestly, he's a creative player. It's— he has the most extension in the league. And I'm not a big analytical guy, but that means he's releasing the ball closer to you than everyone else already. And it's 105. So I didn't, I didn't face him. I think the hardest I faced was 102, 103. Um, I do think velo, at some point it's just velocity, right? It's a very big difference between 100 and 105. You got to get ready for it. But it's the breaking stuff that's so much harder to hit. It's just so much sharper. And that's why you look— see guys looking like just idiots swinging sometimes, because you're up there playing defense sometimes on offense.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, so it's not the, the 105, it's the fact that everything else looks so different from 105.

And then it's 105, and then he's going— his slider's 92, his changeup's 90. So that's a 15-mile-an-hour difference, right? Sometimes he's throwing pitches in the 80s. So it's like you're gearing up for 105 every time, and then he breaks off something else and you're like, oh my God, this is— he's cheating.

And the late-breaking stuff, that makes— that's pretty much impossible. Like, if it's gonna be a slider, if it's a fastball, it looks exactly the same on the way in.

Yep.

Are guys just guessing up there? Because there's no way that they can pick that up, Right.

It's pretty much you, you have all the numbers on what these guys like to do, the scouting reports. Um, but at the end of the day, these pitchers, man, like, you got to just watch the game because as much as the numbers will tell you, oh, in this count he's going to throw you this, these guys are so good and they, they keep you on your toes. So it's the pitching right now is, is something I've— it's, it's insane. It is.

It—

I watch everyone's like, oh, the game gets easier when you're done playing. I watch, I'm like, there's no chance I could hit this stuff anymore.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it is pretty nuts to watch some of these guys. I mean, it's basically my biggest complaint about like the current iteration of the Chicago Cubs is like, we just don't have a bunch of guys who are throwing like 100 plus. And it feels like if you don't have that, you're just at an extreme disadvantage. Like you have to have guys coming out of the bullpen who are throwing that.

You have to.

Yeah.

Even the starters. Yeah. You look at every team right now, still in every starter's throwing 97 to 100.

Yeah.

Right out of the, right out of the get-go.

Yeah.

It's like, here you go, boys. I, I, I've— this game, it's— the game's in a good spot though. I mean, the competition, you have the White Sox are still in it, the Guardians, the Rays, the Brewers, right? It's the only big market team in it is the Dodgers.

Yeah. I mean, the, uh, the, the Rays were so overlooked going into these playoffs and, uh, Um, they're just a good team. Every, every small market team should look at the Rays and say, that's how we want to build our, our franchise. Whatever they're doing, let's copy it because they're, they're, they're making do with a payroll that's a fraction of the amount of the big boys. Um, so from your perspective, how have they been so dominant? I mean, it's been one series against the Yankees, but over the course of the season, they were best team in that division and just swept the Yankees. So like, what are they doing that stands out to you that's different from everyone else?

It's, it's the pretty much the same brand of baseball as the Brewers. They do the fundamentals Right. They, they pitch, they play defense, and they put the ball in play. They've struck out twice against Cam Schlittler this year, or in that series, which is the lowest of his career striking out a guy. He led the league, I think, or it was up there in the league in strikeouts. So they just put pressure on putting the ball in play, making you make plays. They're fast, they steal bases, they have power, they have guys who hit for average. It feels like they just keep producing pitchers too, and arms. And they go and get Brian Baker from the Orioles, who was an okay reliever there. They turn him into an elite closer now. So it's— I always say it's, it's almost like a known thing in the league. If you're a struggling pitcher, you want to get to the Rays organization, they'll fix you.

It's that good.

And if you're a struggling hitter, you want to go to the Dodgers organization, they'll fix you. That's kind of—

It's that good.

Yeah, that, that's what it seems like. Yeah, so many guys get revived their careers when they go to these 2 organizations.

And I, I think maybe this is just a stupid thing that we think as fans, but like when it comes to coaching, you— it matters that much at that level where it's like you're still tweaking things constantly and getting, you know, like how many times in your career would you have your hitting coach be like, hey, try this, and then it would unlock something? Like PCA's MVP season, it feels like his swing, the load on his swing changed How many of those tweaks would happen during the course of a season?

I'd probably say— this might sound crazy— like 50 to 70. That's— I mean, you're always tweaking, right? Like, you're always messing with things. Your hands don't feel right.

It's—

you're just always trying to get that feel as a hitter. So yeah, there's— I mean, guys go day to day, right? Honestly, I was like, guys are messing with stuff every single day. To our eye, you can't really see it, but coaches will always— it's, it's very small, it's very subtle. So it's not like you're changing everything about you. But for young players that are still trying to make it and stay in the big leagues, the influence on them, I think, is a lot bigger than veterans.

Yeah.

Where veterans, just small little adjustments that you're making daily, where these young players, they go to these organizations and, you know, you get the power of belief or a guy like Brent comes in and says, hey man, we believe in your slider. This is why you should throw this more. Or like Freddy Peralta is throwing his changeup more. This is why you should throw it more. And he's been night and day better of a pitcher than he was with the Mets and then with the Rays. So yeah, it's things like that where you just can't quantify it.

Yeah.

Has the ball ever looked bigger to you?

When? Now?

No, like when you're, when you're playing.

Yeah.

If you're in the zone, have you gone on like a hit streak and you're like, yeah, the ball looks Yeah, it's, it seems like, yeah, on those, when you're hot, it doesn't matter what they throw you.

It seems like you swing at a ball out of the zone, you break your bat, it's a hit. Everything they're pitching you, they're missing over the plate more. Yeah, sometimes it feels like a beach ball and then sometimes it feels like a sunflower seed.

So how much of hitting is confidence at that point?

It's pretty much all. If you can feel like you're in a good spot going in, And then the thing is, it's such a game of failure, right? You fail 80% of the time, 70% of the time, and you're good. So if you can, if you can just have the positive outlook on not failing, which you're gonna fail, and just enjoy the ride and put yourself in a position to hit, that's what was for me. Like, look, I went up there, I did my best, I was either good or bad, and you move on with it.

When was the last time you, uh, stood in the box and hit?

Game 5 of the World Series.

Okay, so it's been that long because I, I tried to— our schedules didn't work out, but I wanted you to be in our home run derby. We got Jason Kipnis instead, and it was funny because Jason Kipnis had— he had not swung a bat since he retired, and it took him like, I don't know, maybe like 15 swings where he— like, if you were watching, you're like, this guy doesn't even know what he's doing. And then he hit one And then the rest of the night it was like every single ball was out. And he's like, yeah, I just— it takes a little— like there's a little bit of time when you're facing live pitching and then you just got it again. So you could— we got to get you in that next time.

I'm actually terrified to do that stuff.

Well, it was slow. It's not fast. What was it? You said— Not live pitching. Yeah, but it was— it was like going like 60. So you could have done it. You could have been fine.

The thing is, everyone expects you to hit a home run every time, right? And you haven't hit The offseason going into 2025 after the World Series, I was telling teams, yeah, I'm in great shape, which I was working out, but I didn't, I didn't touch a bat. But I was telling everyone, yeah, I'm hitting all this. But no, I didn't touch a bat since that World Series. I swing now in the living room with my son just to show him the swing because he loves it.

Yeah.

So that's about it.

What about you ever play like 16-inch softball?

No, but I've been been tempted a little bit to go out and mess around with it.

You're welcome to join the Pugs.

You can join our team. Now, if you're a ring-chasing kind of guy, we are reigning champions.

We just won.

I, I had a team here. I sponsored a team for years here, Tony's Kids.

Okay.

Yeah, I don't know if they ever won the championship, but I never, I never made a cameo on the softball.

Come to the Pugs.

You coming out would be pretty fun on the Pugs.

It's not content. It's just, just dudes playing softball.

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe when we play Quackenballs next year.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Where do you guys play? Lincoln Park?

Yeah, we play North Abfields.

Nice.

Yeah. Max, you have any questions for Anthony as a lefty? Lefty Max was this Matt Stairs of the CIA.

Yeah, I love Matt Stairs.

Yeah, that's—

you're looking at—

well, yeah, I gave myself that nickname, but he did play for Hofstra.

Power hitter. Lefty hitter.

Pinch hitter. Pinch hitter. Power hitter. Yeah, I'm not going to lie. I did not. Come prepared with a question.

I have a question for the two of you.

You could ask. This is like, because yeah, the Italian lefty hitters, you got everything together.

Yeah. Max, you got hit by a lot of pitches, right?

I did. That was the thing that I, I took a lot of pride in my game is I never got out of the way. I was a pinch hitter. I think I got like the 12th most at-bats on my college team. I think I was 2nd in hit by pitches.

I love that.

Yeah, it's pretty good.

Where'd you go to college?

Hofstra.

Okay.

Where's that?

Long Island.

Long Island.

Yeah.

Did you have any tips on like how to get hit by pitches better?

Just—

I was asking.

I got— well, I got hit.

You just don't move.

I was gonna say, do you think that you— if you were played in ABS, do you think that you would accidentally challenge a pitch that hit you?

I think someone would challenge a pitch.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, because you— Rizzo did it multiple times where he would swing while getting hit.

5 times a year minimum. And I would always play it off. I was so embarrassed.

It was the best. He'd take a full swing and it would just hit him.

I think— look, I'm the, I'm the number 1 left-handed hitter of all time hit by pitches.

That's such an awesome stat.

I think if people have Hall of Fame votes, that should be in the Hall of Fame, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Just eat them.

What was the hardest that you ever got hit?

Or Aldis Chapman, 2017, he hit me in my forearm like 98. It was in April. We ended up playing a 17-inning game. I got x-rayed during the game and I was like, my arm's broken. And it wasn't. And then I had a decision, do I stay in or do I get pulled? And I stayed in, um, and ended up hitting a double. So that was like, all right, I was rewarded for staying in. But that, that hurt.

That's pretty cool. What— yeah, what I think most people when they get hit by a few pitches they naturally take a couple steps back and they kind of change where they stand. That never occurred to you?

I would get closer. Yeah. Yeah.

No, you were, you were always right there.

Especially versus division rivals. If they hit me early in the game, they can't hit me again, right? You can't hit the 3-hole hitter twice. So I would pretend to be annoyed if they hit me early. I'd be like, what the fuck? You know, it was all a show. Because then if they're trying to come inside again and they miss just a little bit because they know they can't— if they missed, it's, it's hitting me.

Yep.

Then it's advantage me. So that was my mindset, whether that worked or not. I think I believed in it.

I think it did. You're right. Because if they hit you again, it's like they're going to get thrown out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's just how it's going to go.

Not to bring up bad memories, but we were talking about it because of the Yankees game 2. Yeah, game 2, where they had more errors than hits.

Oof.

Walk us through the World Series. You could bring it up if you want.

It's all right.

What happened? And also, what's— what's— how many errors were in that inning?

It was 2, maybe.

Yeah, but it was like just the ball was getting kicked around and it was just—

Drop fly ball.

Yeah.

Something at first.

What gets said in the dugout after an inning like that? Does anyone try to make a joke?

No, it's more positive. Like, come on, guys, we got this. You have to refresh me. We either had the lead or we just— we took the lead again.

Yeah.

So after that inning, we still took the lead. We had the lead in that game after that inning, which I think goes unnoticed. But yeah, the drop fly ball in center, and then there's a ground ball to me, which Garrett didn't cover first.

That's right. He just never moved, which, like, I don't Which he was gassed.

So, I mean, he was, he was at the end of his line on pitch count, but everyone knows me notoriously. I make the pitchers go over because the one time you need them to get there, they don't cover. And it was just a weird spinning ball. So, and I had 2 broken knuckles on top of that. So it was just a play that wasn't made and then we end up losing. So that gets magnified. And then now every time an error is made with the Yankees, it's like, what's going on?

Yeah.

That, that game recently was was, was pretty sloppy.

It was pretty, pretty like sloppy and just kicking the ball around.

The, the broken knuckles that you had, it, it made me think like we always hear what the injuries are in football at the end of the season. Nobody's healthy going into the playoffs in baseball. Is everybody dealing with something at that time of year?

Yeah, for the most part, it's, it's, you're on fumes, but like obviously broken bones is not something you really play through. I was getting injected every game and numbing it and all that good stuff multiple times a game. So, but credit to our doctors and our staff for getting me to be able to play. But yeah, guys, you're always banged up. I mean, you're banged up the first 2 weeks of spring training and then it's just kind of figuring out the rest of the way. So it's who's healthiest or who's least banged up going into the playoffs.

Yeah. Did you, did you earn your pinstripes?

No, I didn't win a World Series.

That's the only way to get it, right?

I think Ben Rice might have his pinstripes.

I mean, I was the only one who showed up. Yeah. You know, I always— guys, when I played there, were always pissed at me because I never got booed there. And I always said I'm unbooable. I was like, well, I don't understand. You never get booed, right? Because everyone gets booed as a Yankee.

Yeah.

And I'm like, yeah, because I'm Italian. I play hard.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Like, it's the name for sure.

Yeah, right. So me and you Yankees fans had a, I feel like a special connection, but, um, I don't know. I love playing there. It's, it's, it's a pressure cooker every single day though.

I just found out yesterday that the Cubs actually had pinstripes before the Yankees did. That's really the first team to have them. And then they kind of let them go. 2 years later, Yankees picked them up and they just made them permanent.

So yes, and I did earn my pinstripes with the Cubs.

Yes.

Yes.

100%. Definitely earn your pinstripes.

100%.

Also, Max pulled up the video This is you getting, getting hit by a pitch and the umpire telling you stay your ass at home plate. It's right there.

Yeah, this was bullshit.

That's just getting hit in the right spot, but it's gonna hit you no matter what. You lean in to get hit in the ass.

No, that's off a lefty too. So, and I was— who's that? DJ Rayburn, I believe, the umpire. And I was like, DJ, I go, what? I go, what the fuck, DJ? I go, you know me. I go and I, I think it was a slider or something. And on sliders off lefties, if you're on the plate, you can't move, right? Because if they break back, you have to hit it. So then when you know you're about to get hit, you start bracing for—

Yeah, sure.

Impact. I have no armor on, right?

Yeah, facts.

And he called— look, I'm touching on my shirt, bro. I got suspended for that.

That's Italian again. Yeah, you can touch.

But right away he's saying I leaned in and I'm Are you crazy? That's why you see the reaction there.

He kind of showed you up too, a little bit. Like he put a little extra sauce on the pointing.

Right.

Yeah.

I'm like, DJ, I lead the world in getting hit by pitches.

Yeah.

You think I leaned into that?

You shouldn't be, you shouldn't be criticized for just being tougher than everyone.

Well, most of the time I didn't see it, to be honest.

It doesn't hurt.

I know.

Can't even touch your body. All right. So the podcast game, you guys did the Lovable Reunion podcast. You and David Ross was awesome going down memory lane. All the guests. like just sitting down with all the guys. Now you guys are going to do Ross and Rizzo Unfiltered, uh, all year round. Was it— was it like when you were looking back 10 years— first of all, it's kind of crazy it's been 10 years. I kept on saying that to myself. I was like, what the fuck, 10 years? Like, that went by so fast. But was there any, uh, story or moment you're like, I totally didn't know that, or holy shit, how did we survive this? Because it was obviously a magical season, But there's a lot that comes out as the years go along.

Yeah. I think one was Miguel Montero pinch hitting versus Joe Blanton in the NLCS. He just got an epidural that day and wasn't supposed to play.

Loudest Wrigley's ever been.

We were in the bleachers for that.

It was just a shower of beer.

Insane.

Yeah.

So I didn't know that story until later on. And then Michael Montgomery talked about how he never threw a curveball for a strike. And it was always a thing with his dad. And then it came full circle where he's in in the 7th inning versus the Indians to close out the game. And both pitches he threw was a curveball. So you hear, you know, we live the stories, but then when you hear the perspective from everyone else, especially the guys that, you know, were more role players.

Yeah.

It's like, whoa.

Yeah, that's pretty cool to hear.

Yeah.

It takes like everyone in the— I mean, I think the hearing a lot about the makeup of the of the, of the team and like the type of guys that Theo and Jed tried to get. I think that, that actually speaks— speaking of, of current playoffs, like the White Sox, they're— it's a little different because they're probably a little younger. They haven't gone through it like 2015 the Cubs went through it, but it does feel like they have that energy of guys getting along and playing for each other that I would imagine just matters a ton when it comes to playoff baseball.

No doubt.

They—

it I've been getting asked a lot about the White Sox. They look like they love each other.

Right.

You heard Sean Burke say, it's like I got the pick of this team of my friends to play with. So that's real, right? I don't think they have necessarily nearly the talent that we had in '16.

No.

But in '16, we loved each other. I mean, Dan, you've been out with— you were out with them multiple times, right?

Dinners and karaoke.

Yeah.

Stanleys.

So guys were hanging out all the time.

All the time. And that's what this White Sox team looks like. And a lot of teams are not like that, right? When you go home, you have your families. It's that '16 team was— we want it. It was almost like at the end of '16, we were so gassed because it started in '15 and all of the, the parties and the afterparties and hanging out that when we won, we were fine. Like, oh my God, we get to go home and rest now. Yeah.

Yeah.

The— I always think about the being invited. I mean, you were so gracious and invited me to a bunch of the stuff, but going to John Lester's house, I think it was after 2015. And, uh, after beating the Cardinals, and Eddie Vedder, I don't think had showered in like 2 weeks. He had just been partying, having the best time ever. He was playing guitar and he's just like, he smelled like, like champagne and just whatever. But that was, that was it. He was just like, fuck it, I don't care, I'm having the best time ever.

Yeah, I mean, that's literally what our team was. And that's why when you see this White Sox team, I'm like, they're pretty easy to root for, right? Looks like that's what they're doing.

Yeah, I'm not rooting for them, but they are fun. They're a fun watch, I'll say that. That's like, that's like, that's As a sports fan, they're fun watch.

Yeah. The game last night was electric.

Yeah.

You were there.

Yeah, it was that. That's because the way that park is built, it's on top of you.

Yeah.

Like it's just vertical. So I don't think anyone sat down for the first 3, 4 innings, especially when they had the lead.

Playoff baseball is— it's so, it's so much fun. And it's so like even being last year, like going back to Wrigley for the— they, the Cubs hadn't been— had a home playoff game in a while. You could just feel the energy. It was just so—

Wrigley looked insane last year.

Yeah, it was so much fun.

There's nothing better than it.

No.

I think, uh, Zach's gonna ask a question. I, I have one more about 2016 though, uh, because you're talking about the podcast that you're doing, kind of reminded me about all the talk going into that was like everyone was talking about the Cubs being cursed, which is like not really a thing. But at some point, does all the curse talk get in your head and you're like, well, we have to go up against a curse too?

When Rajai Davis hit that home run, I sit in there at first base and I go, this fucking curse is real. Like, what the hell happened? Right? And you get talked about a lot. I, for me, my always, my outlook always on it when people or fans would be like, oh, we got to beat this curse. I'm like, look, this, this curse ain't my fault. I've only been here for 5 years.

Right.

Okay. Don't blame this on me. Well, like, we'll get it done. But you know, it's there, the pressure of it, the fans. I think the best part about being a Cub is you have that interaction with the fans because of Wrigley because of how close everyone is there and you playing in a neighborhood and the Cubs fans are so passionate. So you hear all the stories, but the only time it really, really crept in my mind like this is real is, uh, Rajai hit that home run.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But then the reverse is Trevor Bauer flying a drone and cutting off his finger.

Yeah, that helped us. My dad would— my dad one year brought a goat goat, like wanted to bring a goat into Wrigley to like reverse the curse. I think Theo, Theo got wind of it, like, Mr. Rizzo, you can't do that.

What are you doing?

Uh, all right, uh, Zach has a question. Rowback question, rowback.com, promo code TAKE, 20% off your first purchase. Q-zips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts. rowback.com, promo code TAKE. Zach, take it away.

Sir, uh, being South Florida born and raised, uh, if you have one, I was curious if you could share with us your go-to Publix Subway order.

Zach is a Florida guy.

Public sub order.

Yeah.

Chicken tender sub all day, every day.

Toasted or untoasted?

Uh, untoasted. I like the cheese to melt naturally on it.

We talking, uh, yellow American, white American?

Yeah, I'll take you through the whole order. This actually might be a psycho order, but I like it. Chicken tender sub, mayo, American cheese, lettuce, onions, salt, pepper, oregano.

What do you think, Zach?

That plays all day. Yeah, it's a great sub.

Right. But a lot of people do the buffalo chicken tender. Yeah.

What about that was a psycho order? I thought that was—

and then the mayo on chicken tenders. I don't know. I love mayo.

I feel like, I feel like that's, I feel like that's pretty standard order.

That's a good order.

You have them do one side or both sides of the bread?

Oh, I, I am a whole— I make sure because some people do extra. I make sure they do the perfect amount. And if they don't, I have them add more.

And then you're doing white wheat or the, the seeded bread?

Usually the— usually the white.

That's a good sandwich.

Pub subs are where it's at.

Yeah.

Zach, when we were down in Florida for Grit Week, we— I think we ate them like 3 days in a row.

Oh yeah.

Started to get a little sick of them. They're just— they're heavy. Like the buffalo chicken one Zach got. I got like the big one. It was like 3 meals.

Well, the cold cuts too, like turkey and stuff like that.

They do a good job.

Yeah, really good job.

All right.

All right, Anthony, you're a psycho still for running the marathon. Congratulations in advance. You have to give us the congratulations back if you don't finish.

No, no, I'll finish. I'll finish. But I will give you a congratulations.

Might be a lot of pictures you have to take on the course.

Yeah, we're gonna track it.

Yeah.

Also, I mean, you do still pay for your own beers and stuff in Chicago, but the fact that you got your number in the year as your bib number for the marathon shows that you still can get anything you want. 4416 for his bib number.

Yeah, he got some.

It's pretty cool. Yeah, that's pretty fucking cool.

They— they— Bank of America has taken care of us, our foundation, so they've been great. It's going to be fun. I'm terrified.

No, it's not. You know what you should do? You should just shit your pants. That would actually be good. You should put your podcast QR code on your ass and then shit your pants and then that go viral.

That would go very viral.

Yeah, I'm just telling you. If you're in the podcasting game, way to go.

But I do—

you're the man. And thanks for stopping by, man.

Thank you, guys.

Anthony Rizzo is brought to you by our great friends over at Bluechew. Part of My Take is sponsored by Bluechew. Guys, football season's here. If you want your Saturdays and Sundays free, you're going to need to show your girl a good time on Friday. Bluechew Gold is going to help you cover that spread with 2 ingredients for arousal and 2 for harder, longer-lasting erections. Bluechew Gold will make sure that you're performing well into the 4th quarter and even overtime. Gold is up to 3 times stronger, 5 times faster, and 8 times longer-lasting than the other options. That's not a 2-minute drill, that's defense with a capital D. There's a reason Bluechew is the number one brand for better sex. Experience it yourself at bluechew.com. We have a special deal for our listeners right now. When you buy 2 months of Bluechew Gold, you get the 3rd free with promo code PMT. Promo code PMT. You will also receive an additional 10% off off and free overnight shipping on your first order. Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. We thank Bluechew for sponsoring the pod and the bedroom. Firefest of the week is going to be brought to you by Morgan and Morgan, America's number one injury law firm.

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Okay, fire fest of the week, Henry.

Yeah.

Let's do it.

En route.

Henri.

Oh, I'm in.

Oi, bro.

Hey.

Hey.

Nothing. I got nothing. Yeah, I got nothing.

Good.

Having fun? You just doing it?

Just doing it. Nice week. Good weather.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cheating in golf.

Well, what is it? Was going to be my Fyre Fest. Because I did say on the show the other day that Donnie— Chef Donnie—

This isn't— this isn't— this isn't out. This is— this was taped. I guess I can put some of it out, but it's not.

I just want to say that I said on the show that Chef Donnie was a cheater at golf, and I feel awful about it because I talked to Chef Donnie afterwards and I heard the facts from Chef Donnie, and I feel like I might have just slandered his good name, which is like— that's a tough one to come back from, that you cheat at golf. And I'd like to take accountability and say I'm not— I don't think that Chef Donnie does cheat at golf, and I regret saying it.

This is unintentionally good promo. We did film a 9-hole video that I'll be putting out.

Oh, that's deep state.

It's all planned.

Jerry was right.

Trust the plan.

And then people can judge for themselves who cheats.

Somebody cheats.

I didn't cheat. Donnie May or may not have. It's up to— it's up to the viewer to decide.

Wow.

Is there such a thing? Choose your own adventure.

I think it's— it's— it's got, you know, golf people are psychopaths.

I—

the way any normal person plays, it's not cheating. By letter of the law, it is cheating.

Is there any cheating with the golf video with foreplay?

Was there?

I don't know, but it's out today.

Oh, oh, oh, that's good promo, Max.

That's a good one. We play— we— me and Big got good in that one.

Yeah. By the way, the running challenge we do in these golf videos, it fucks me up for like days.

2 minutes of running.

Yeah, but I'm not—

But you're also swinging.

I don't do that.

I know.

I don't do that.

I understood. I was just laughing. Yeah, I was like, that's going to be so sore tomorrow. I was like, that was literally 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

It was like 400 yards.

Uneven terrain.

Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you, Zach.

Mine was just a par 3, and I just knew that I— if I had sprinted, it was going to be UNC all over again.

So you intentionally lost your ball?

Well, spoiler.

Yeah. Way to spoil it.

Big time spoiler. No, I did not.

Is that cheating?

It was just a happy accident that I lost the ball. I'm glad that I did. I'll put it that way.

If you lose your ball, is it cheating?

If you enforce the rules too hard, is that also cheating?

I don't know.

I think so. I think so.

Oh, interesting that Hank said that. Go watch Hank and Donnie's video on it.

I heard Hank cheated.

There needs to be like 2 sets of golf rules. Yeah, like PGA, and then there's got to be like the boys having fun, but those need to be set in stone as well because people go back and forth between the 2. Yeah, do you know what I mean?

It's like it's everything in the world. It's just people online. I feel like every normal person plays golf a certain way, and then online people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, like breakfast ball? Like you're picking up putts and not putting them in the hole? Like, yeah, this is not real golf. It's like, who— no one plays like— no one plays like that.

Yeah, we need the standardized format though, because people are just applying the PGA rules, but no one plays like that. We need to have a standardized regular guy rule.

I think the regular guy rules have kind of evolved for themselves where like, you, you know what to do, where it's like, yeah, there should be a breakfast ball. If you lose it in the woods, you know, like you can take a drop. You don't have to like measure a club length all the time. Like people know what casual golf rules are. Yeah, except for Hank. He doesn't know.

What are you gonna say, Max?

Nothing. Just tune into both, both golf videos to find out.

Great promo.

Great. I was gonna say something, but it would spoil too much. So I don't want to say—

Oh, okay.

Okay. Okay.

Got it. All right. So no Fyre Fest.

Trying to think now. It was a good, good week. I mean, the pods— pods lost.

Yeah. Podhead.

Okay.

PFT.

Yeah.

No, Fyre Fest, that you bullied a guy off Twitter, a film guy. Oh, you don't have any regrets about that?

I didn't even tweet about Glenn Tape Watch. So that, like, I, I guess my Fyre Fest is like I I was starting to kind of see the vision and like, you know, he was starting to win me over and then he just cowered out and quit.

That's weird because my Fyre Fest is that I actually just did see a video from Glenn Tapewatch. By the way, he does have a video.

For the people at home, we taped this— what we're taping now is 5 hours after we taped this morning.

That's not—

and PFT got in his feels. And I guess made the video.

That's not true.

That's actually not true.

That's actually not true.

PFT didn't make any video. Glenn Tapewatch.

Glenn Tapewatch made a video and Glenn Tapewatch stayed up until about 2:30 a.m. last night.

Yeah.

And 2:02 p.m. Got it.

I think Glenn Tapewatch probably— and I don't know Glenn Tapewatch. If I had to guess, I'd have to guess that Glenn Tapewatch maybe just didn't have his video done when we taped earlier in the morning. But after lunch in the Yak, maybe he had his video Done.

Glenn Tapewatch spent about 6 to 7 hours, maybe bit off a little bit more than he could.

That feels more like—

because it's a long video.

It's not even loading.

It's not even loading. That's how long it seems.

So long.

It's not loading.

Yeah, it's, I believe, 5 minutes is what I'll do.

Yeah.

Do you guys— do you guys like Shredded Wheat or like Frosted Mini-Wheats?

Yes.

I've been eating a lot of those. I'm just shitting like 6 times a day. It's not— you can't do it. Do you eat those?

And I think that's good for you.

Yeah, I know, but it's not— but it— yes, I think it's good for you, but it's also like, that's a pain in the ass to just be like, gotta go poop again. So I gotta, I gotta quit the shredded wheats and the Frosted Mini-Wheats. They're so delicious.

If you eat it wheat side down, it's good for you.

I eat the regular shredded wheats.

Oh, without the frosting?

Without the frosting.

That's insane.

Yeah, because sometimes we don't have— my kids just pound the Mini-Wheats and we have the regular ones. And I'm trying to be a little healthier because football season gets away from me. So, but the problem is I'm just— just guys be pooping.

Yes, we do.

I guess that's just what it is.

The non-frosted, that's psycho shit.

I'm trying to be a psycho health nut.

You're a pussy. No, you're— you're— you would hate Hate what you're saying to yourself right now.

You know who's not gonna hate it? Me in, in 4 months when I don't gain the football 15.

And then you can eat all the frosted.

Yeah.

Gotta just pick your spots.

Yeah. I still do frosted.

I remember I said I wanted to eat a salad on football Sunday last year and I got fucking—

Yeah, well, that's right. Yeah, that's crazy. Instead, we moved the food away from us and it's helped us big time.

That has helped.

There's been no bigger change to our diet.

Also, Jack's just been doing a shitty job of organizing. In general.

Yeah, I've kind of liked some of the— we've had some bad ones.

Yeah, we've had some bad ones. So yeah, he's doing that. He's actually helping us out. Okay. This is from Glenn Tapewatch.

This hot off the presses just came out.

I'm excited. Hank, tune in.

I literally cannot.

Hey, well, imagine that. Or what if—

wait, wait, timeout, Max. What I thought was really nice about Hank is that he said like Glenn Tapewatch was really finding his stride. And he saw the vision and he was like excited to see a new one, which I said I was starting to. That's awesome that Hank is like kind of a believer.

You might be.

You're Glentleman.

You're Glentleman.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

Yeah, you are starting, starting. Let's see what Glenn has to say.

Hey, well, imagine another What If Wednesday. It's me, Glenn, NFL Tips. Yeah, thanks all of you for showing up for another week. High stepping into the Glenn Zone. It is the annual week for annual awards. You guys have been waiting for that. You're voting, voting. This is the only awards show that recognizes the best performances in the NFL through Week 4. The Glint BB of Week 4 of the 2026 NFL season, Drake Maye. And we're going to get to some more details on Drake, but he had an outstanding performance against the Buffalo Bills, and I have reason to suspect he might have seen the tape. He might be a glint-o-mint just like you. And the second award is our annual award, the Comeback Player of the Year Award of Week 4, and it is awarded once And for all those who are asking, it is that time of year. We are doing the Salvation Damar Army fundraiser to help raise awareness of Damar Hamlin and how he was able to not die. My personal MO is the way, probably the best way for you to donate to the Salvation Army, or as we say, the Salvation Damar Army, are the upcoming Damar Showtimes.

So we have one more award to give out. It's for the Fraud of the Year Award, and this one would be dedicated to Hank Lockwood and really all of Patriots Nation ballpark. The whole crew, because I was listening to part of my take last week. Shout out to the guys for shouting me out. I do agree with Hank that PFT is kind of almost bullshit right now, big-time hater, and I don't really understand some of the stuff that he says as references. It's very, very strange. I'm a Hank fan as well. Um, and Hank, if I'm losing you right now, man, just like a little joke, uh, to try to win over your sense of humor, which as you said is a little bit different. Um, I guess if I was from Massachusetts, I'd be like, no, no, Mr. Wahlberg, no, stay off my porch, don't beat me up, sir. Ah, you're gonna kill me. You almost killed several Well, people, keep the mood a little bit light for heck. I hope you enjoyed that joke. So without further ado, the frauds of the year of week 4 in NFL Circles War is the Buffalo Bills.

I know, I know, you all expect me to say the Patriots. You expected me to talk something about Drake Maye, but no, we have to call things fairly. The New England Patriots last year had the easiest schedule in the NFL. We talked about it all season long. People got sick of hearing about it, but we were right. The Buffalo Bills are this year's New England Patriots. Let's look at who they've beaten. You beat the Houston Texans week 1. They haven't won a game, Jack. Then you went on to beat the Detroit Lions, owners of maybe the worst defense in NFL history. Oh, and by the way, you only beat them by 10 bites. Then you had the Chargers come to town and you beat them by 8 points, and they still hadn't won a game, Jack. Next up, you got the Patriots come to town and you lose to the first real team that you run up against, the Bills. They are frauds with a capital F. So there you go. I called fair the New England Patriots, not frauds of the year. They are 2-2. They've beaten— it's not like last year they've beaten— like, I guess they beat the Bills.

Alright, anywho, let's get to the tape. Let's look at what Drake Maye did well last week. Numbers lie, women lie, but the tape never does. Like I suggested, you need to check out the page for the Tommy DeVille And boy, did he ever. It's getting kind of weird.

Um, you know, it's every week in the NFL.

You know, there's weeks that you want to, you know, forget about it and move on.

There's weeks you want to build off of, and last week was definitely one we want to, you know, move on from and know that, you know, we got a tough challenge ahead.

But there's weeks that you want to, you know, forget about it and move on.

There's weeks you want to build off of, and last week was definitely one we want to, you know, move on from and know that, you know, we got a tough challenge ahead. Huh.

Hmm.

So that's why I think Drake Maye might be a follower of this page. It's almost like he went out of his way To talk and sound exactly like Tommy after the game. Now let's look at the bad. So if you do have a youngster in the room right now, it might be the time to ask him or her to leave and not watch this because it could be devastating. Alec DeBlois-Fonua then said that when players run over people on the sidelines, the NFL should do a new segment, You Just Got Helped Up. You just got helped up. Russell Wilson, king of the help-ups. Deshaun Watson, see what you are about the guy, he might rub you the wrong way, but he's helping a lot of single moms out there off the field. You, sir, you just got Got jacked off. Now, as for Sunday, when we watched the tape, we all saw it happen in real time. Maybe there was something that we missed. Drake Mays Rambles runs the sideline and he absolutely cremates this elderly gentleman who's standing there minding his own business. And does Drake even stop for a second? No.

He's still going.

He's still running.

Break that to the huddle. Absolutely incredible. Does not see what we now see on the alternate too, is this guy's leg Is folded up like a table in the parking lot outside. Do I blame Drake for this? Absolutely not. I blame Jayden Daniels, the signal caller for the Washington Commanders. He had his elbow bent backwards just like this guy's knee the other week, and since Jayden's such a bad leader, none of his teammates even thought to stick around and help him up before halftime. So because Jayden was such a bad leader that his friends wouldn't even check on him, Drake Maye saw that, he thinks to himself, Oh, I guess compound fractures aren't that big a deal. Let's just all thank our lucky stars it wasn't Drake there that night in Cincinnati when Damar got hit. You kidding me? He would have been strolling his way back to the huddle whistling Dixie. Hey boys, don't even worry about that guy, he's probably gonna be okay. Remember Jaden? Some things should be bigger than sports, Drake. He could have been someone's grandfather. Hell, it could have been A police officer. Does Drake main hit cops? Sure looks like it.

It could have been a woman. It could have been tomorrow. It could have been tomorrow, and tomorrow might have been dead, but Drake would never know because he didn't think for a second about anyone but himself. Forget about Drake Maybe for this week. He's Drake Me. Hey, well, imagine another what-if.

Fantastic job by Glenn.

If I were to make one critique of that, it felt like like, uh, the 2026 Week 4 Awards of the Year and the Drake May thing were probably 2 different videos he could have done. Oh, but, but that's okay. But that's all right.

I, I'll say this.

I wish I was Asian so I could cancel you.

That, that you— that might be cancelable right there.

Get Stephen Che.

Yeah.

Do you want—

do you want to know why I heard maybe why Drake—

why, uh, why Glenn was up until 2:30 working on this video?

Why?

Instead of sleeping? Because he had a TV show in the morning. Um, I heard that maybe it's because, uh, for some reason the filter that he uses when he uploads the videos, uh, took his voice and made it sound extremely stereotypically Asian.

Ah.

And he was trying his very, very best to figure out how to undo that and get back to the other filter that he always uses. And it just made it worse the more that he tried. Um, that's, that's what he said. At least I'm a member of, uh, I'm in the Hut Hut Hike program. So I get, I can text with him back and forth. I have his number, but that's maybe why it was a little bit late coming out.

I'm pretty sure watching that video, fantastic video by Glenn, by the way, PFT would never put Jayden Daniels getting injured in that video. So it's clearly not PFT.

And he even said he didn't like me.

Yeah. He said that. What do you think, Hank?

Yeah. I mean, I, it's good to know that one little chirp and then he went, went into the lab in the time we went to record and made this video. That's, that's good to know.

What about, what do you think about—

I don't believe anything that he just said.

What do you think? Well, Glenn did point out, what if that guy that Drake Maye ran over was a woman?

Yeah. Ifs and buts, you know, whatever. We're, we're applesauce. Like, I'd be a bicycle.

Yeah, that's the saying.

He did. That guy looked like it was bad. That was a violent collision.

That was a Bills staffer. He's fine. Happens every week.

That—

oh, dude, me personally, if I ran somebody over, I would at least Like, try to help him up. I mean, you saw Lamar when he did it.

You didn't help Rico up.

I did turn around and go back. No, no, no, no. Well, that's because I stood over him. Yeah, that's because I meant to do it.

Got it. What if he was a woman?

So did Drake Maye mean to do that?

I would never mistake Rico for a woman.

Drake Maye did not mean to do that.

It is a bad look.

It's not a bad look. It's an extremely commonplace play that happens every week. Drake Maye and every, and every What are we looking at here?

It was good. There's good pictures.

Yeah, I got them pretty good.

Definitely not, not helping him up.

No, I did turn around for a second. Yeah, I mean, I, I guess I didn't— I missed that, the severity of it when I watched it live. I did notice that he knocked a poor guy over and just kind of Like, seem to be like, oh, you're beneath me. But that's why he had a great game last year. You know, he was a really good quarterback. He's back on the right track.

Hell yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. I love Glenn. I'm a Glentleman. I'll say that right now.

I think we all are.

Mark me down. Well, no, Hank is not.

I'm first team all Glentleman.

I'm actually not because he doesn't like me. So fuck him.

But you are part of the— you can touch with him. The Hut-Hut hike.

Yeah. Well, that's— I mean, that's what makes it so, so hard. It's like, I love the guy and he just absolutely can't stand me.

Gentleman or no? How can you say you love a guy but you're not a gentleman?

Well, I did love him until he started to go after me. Like, it—

So as of this video that you just saw, unrequited love.

It's a tale as old as time. I love Glenn, and for some reason he just won't give me the time of day.

So you don't love him anymore and you're not a gentleman?

I love him. I will always love him. But now I'm like a spurned lover where I don't know, it makes me mad to even think about that guy. You're probably right, he probably didn't work on it all night last night. Mm-hmm. Son of a bitch.

Mm-hmm.

Zach.

My Firefight This Week, uh, I've been having this thing going on where I've been back— I've been fighting. I've been fighting with my apartment. My shower's been wet. My shower's been really wet recently.

Should be.

I got that solved. Oh, all right, my shower's been wet with another man's water.

What?

Yeah, that makes sense. Coming from the, from the up top. So he's been watering my shower. I've been getting in the shower, it's already wet.

You know, he's pre-wetting your shower.

That's for me to wet, not for him to wet. Oh, that makes more sense.

Yeah.

Okay, I'm getting in and it's already wet. We climbed this objection. And then now my washing machine's wet, but it's— I think it's going from my, my other side supply. Wait, I'm getting invaded wet both sides.

But they're all— they're all— you're getting invaded wet both sides, but they're Neither. Wet is landing in places that wet goes.

Water I didn't put there.

Right.

That's not my water.

But it's my way of putting this water in my shower.

Up top and to the right. We solved up top. But 2 days after we solved up top, we're getting flooded from the right.

It shouldn't be coming in from the right. It's that— that's concerning to me.

Yeah, it's coming in from the right. But I think it's my, my washer, but it's coming through the right. So I think that is my supply. Up top wasn't my supply. Other than that, great week.

Should maybe think about looking into the water coming in from the right. Yeah, there might be some water damage.

Yeah, there's definitely like some yellowing going on, but we'll make some calls. All right. But the only frustration there is like, you use all your towels.

Yeah, you can't—

you don't have any towels.

You can't have another man wetting your shower.

That's for me to wet.

You know, that's crazy.

Kind of an invasion of privacy.

Damn.

Other than that, great week.

All right, good, good week, Zach. Max, memes, anything?

Bad show.

Memes has been weird.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I can't put my—

I don't, I don't know what it is.

I think I know what it is.

What?

What? It's hate week. No, Dom already—

Dom already conceded.

Oh, okay.

Didn't realize that.

Yeah. Are you sure? So hate week. Me and Zach put him in a group chat last night. Tell him congrats after every time the Guardians scored. Is it because he did that? He did that to us during the finals, which was quite infuriating.

So he was doing that intentionally?

Yes. Oh, 100%.

So now we're doing it. He's like, why are you doing this?

He's like, okay, fine. I'll trade the Browns-Jets game for a Cleveland win yesterday.

He'll be at the game tonight. I bought him tickets, him and Zoopy tickets to the game. So Are you guys gonna troll him?

It's only fair.

Maybe.

Okay.

He started it.

He did start it.

That's right.

It's a low, low stakes troll-off going on. All right, numbers.

10.

3.

80. 61.

You know, the 8.

44.

Where'd you get the 8 from?

Dom did clean up, uh, my side over. Did you clean up your side?

Uh, no, I didn't.

He just took all my stuff and put it in a box, which I appreciate. So it's just—

That's a good cleanup.

Yeah, really good.

Would it be all right if Zach did that to your side too?

Oh, Zach?

Yeah, I did it.

I didn't do that. I don't touch personal piles moving forward. I'm down to put it in a box if you prefer.

Yeah, you could put anything in a box.

Okay. I thought behind the desk was kind of like—

don't touch my shit. 86, 69, 15.

Let's get a 69. Let's get Colton.

31.

31. Oh, who cleaned? Dom said he didn't clean this. Did anyone else? Stole your shit.

I didn't do it.

Kings Hawaiian people, maybe. 73.

73. No way.

Happy birthday to Penei Sewell. Happy birthday to George Kittle on Friday. Happy birthday to Mike Singletary. Happy birthday to Renee from the Cubs 50/50 lottery.

Hell yes.

Happy birthday to Ben Shelton. On Saturday, happy birthday, Vinny Pasquettino, the Pasquatch. Happy birthday to Andrew McCutchen, Troy Tulowitzki, to Courtland Sutton, Geno Smith. Happy birthday on Saturday.

Oh.

To Brett Favre and happy birthday to Dale Earnhardt Jr. Also on Sunday, I believe, and this is a look ahead, so I'm not 100%. I think it's TJ Watt's birthday on Sunday. So I will be betting TJ Watt to have a couple sacks. Birthday sacks. First session. Yeah.

All right.

Love you guys.