Transcript of 2026 NFL QB Rankings, the Villain Dodgers, MLB Trade Deadline Lessons, and SummerSlam 2026 With Mina Kimes, Billy Gil, Anthony Dabbundo, and David Shoemaker

The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new rewatchables on Monday. We did Karate Kid Part 2. Is it Karate Kid 2 or Karate Kid Part 2? I can't even remember. Me and Kyle Brandt had a fantastic time. And as I said before, um, we really had to do this just to pave the way for Karate Kid 3. So you can check that out. Um, we have a lot of good movies coming up for the rest of this month, and I think we're doing 2 episodes next week. Um, it's looking like The Italian Job and About Last Night, the Rob Lowe, Demi Moore About Last Night. So, um, that's on Netflix. Italian Job is on every streamer, so you can go check those out. But I think those are gonna be the next 2, and they're both gonna be next week. We have an absolutely loaded podcast coming up for you. Um, I wanted to do quarterbacks with Mina Kimes. Uh, I meant to do it last week, but We're, uh, we're doing it this week. I wanted to go through all my, my QB point system and a lot of good quarterback questions, um, tying into the 2026 NFL season.

So this is like the first real Summer Pod. We're moving into NFL mode. I'm in week 4 of prep, feeling good. Uh, after that, Billy Gill, Anthony DeBundo, we wanted to talk about the, uh, baseball trade deadline and one of the weirdest pennant races ever. Even my dog's barking about it in both leagues. Um, and all the ramifications of that. I've announced a soccer team. I announced my soccer team on that. We talked about a whole bunch of goofy stuff. And then last but not least, David Shoemaker has a new book out about Hulk Hogan that you should get. But we talked about, uh, SummerSlam last weekend and the new Hulk Hogan book and how we're feeling about, um, how weird the Hulkster's last 20 years were, um, and why he wrote the book. So that is all next. We're going to take a break., take a break, Pearl Jam, and then Mina Kams. This episode is brought to you by SAP. Hello, midsize business. We see your big ambitions, but how do you achieve the wins you want when your technology is holding you back? Hmm, I wonder. Well, how about SAP Grow? It's built to grow with your business no matter its size, with AI embedded at its core, working across every system.

All ready to go from day one so you can hit the ground running. Bring it with SAP Grow AI Cloud ERP for any size business. All right, our friend Mina Kimes is here. She's done a lot of Ringer stuff lately. She was on the Hitch Rewatchables, she was on the Fantasy Football Show as they finished their rankings of the hot QBs. I guess Jalen Hurts just ran away with this, wasn't even close.

Well, spoiler alert, because some folks might not have listened to it, although I, I feel like at this point anyone other than Hurts would have been a big upset. Um, he has the crown. He has Jimmy G's crown. It was easy. It was not controversial. There was really no debate about it. Uh, kind of like Patrick Mahomes circa 2020. We were all just like, yeah, that's, that's fine. It's time. But number 2 was divisive, contentious.

Who, who was number 2? Who won?

Okay, I guess I'll spoiler alert. Don't get mad if you haven't listened to it. Josh Allen over Joe Burrow. I was surprised. Interesting. Yeah.

I'll have to listen to it. I'm sure I'll have thoughts at some point. This is a great topic though, because one of my theories with quarterbacks, which we're about to talk to— talk about, um, quarterbacks' charisma. A lot of times they're handsome, they're just the coolest guy in the room, and it feels like part of the job. Um, I try to rank the quarterbacks every year, which we're gonna go through, and I asked you to go through this with me because I have this weird point system that I rank the teams with. And in the point system, quarterbacks go from 1 point to 9. It's the only position that's even over 5 because they're that important. But I had some— before we go through the rankings, um, I had some, some quarterback questions for you in no particular order. The QB you're buying for 2026, even as everyone else or most people are selling, the guy you just can't quit.

This is an easy one for me, I think, because I feel like everybody's overreacting to the postseason. Not Drake Maye, because I don't think anyone with an actual brain is selling Drake Maye. CJ Stroud, I think people have gotten way too low on. Um, Mike Zanow just put out his quarterback tiers, which is great. I wish he took it out every year. He surveys, you know, coaches around the league. Stroud was like 21, I think, below 42-year-old Aaron Rodgers, and I understand that it was one of the more dismal playoff performances, not just one game, right? A couple games. But if you go back to the, actually the regular season, and not only look statistically, Stroud during the regular season was like a 9th through 12th ranked quarterback in most metrics.

Yeah.

But then if you really dig into it, his circumstances were atrocious. Zero run game. Offensive line was as bad as it's been. The offense was completely hamstrung by the lack of an offensive line. Injuries constantly, skill players in the postseason, no Nico Collins, play caller kind of still finding his legs. So I— young receivers, young receivers, kind of an incomplete group, missing tight end. So I, I just think he's gotten way too much flack, uh, mainly because I feel like the postseason overreaction and then people saying, well, he's not as good as he was that rookie season, and kind of hanging on to that.

He's the one I struggled with the most where to put him. For all the reasons, and we talked about this on your pod, because I'm really bullish on Houston, especially with the continuity on defense. But you got— when I look at why a quarterback had a bad season, usually it's like, did your offensive line fall apart? Was your play caller a little shaky? Did you have a run game? What was up with your receivers? He was like 0 for 4. I mean, they had the worst run game in the league.

Horrible.

I like Montgomery. I don't think he's a superstar, but Montgomery is at least better. Their receivers are going to be a year older. Tank Dell was awesome for them. We'll see if he can come back from one of the worst injuries of all time. Offensive line is still— it's a little better, but it's not— I wouldn't put it— it's probably a bottom 6 or 7 offensive line still. So that would be the question. And then it seems like people love piling on him. Like even that, that video last week of him walking in, it got like 12 million views and everybody's like, yeah. And it was like, look at this guy, no swag at all.

So I don't know.

I always try to put myself in January if something happened, like something good, like the Texans being really good and CJ Stroud just being good. And we're looking back and we're like, oh yeah, we should have seen that. So I'm open to it. With that said, he was awful last year. So to me, he's— to me, he's the highest ceiling basement guy. His building is like 40 stories, and you can get me to the 35th floor in his building, or you can bring me down to like the bottom 10 floors, and I don't know where he's going to land.

It's a little bit of a risky buy for me because of everything you said. Like, they remade the offensive line again. Okay, it's different, it should be better. And I do think, like, Braden Smith, they had— there's competent players. Maybe Ursarian left the left side a little bit better. But it's like you said, it's not— it's probably still a bottom of the league, bottom half at least, unit. So the idea that he's going to be in, like, these dramatically better circumstances, I am a little apprehensive of. I just think people are way too low. And I think kind of we do that generally with postseason. Yeah, like, I've seen that with Bryce Young a little who was awesome in that Rams playoff game after being really up and down over the regular season, and everyone just keeps referencing that one game.

I feel like generally, and I know this is a hot topic for you with New England, everybody only remembers the last two games they saw or have just complete amnesia like we do with Justin Herbert, where he's terrible in the playoffs and it's 9 months later, it's like, did he make the playoffs last year?

I don't remember.

Um, give me the QB that we are collectively most likely to quit on in 2026? Last year was Kyler Murray.

Okay, most likely to— we're all just like, we're out, we're completely out. Um, I mean, there's a lot of options here. The Atlanta ones, I think this could be it for Tua.

I feel like I've already quit already.

Okay, we're already out on Tua. Okay, so you want like somebody who's a little bit divisive.

Um, I, I could give you some candidates.

Okay, give me the candidates. I'm gonna pull up my list.

Um, well, there's the— there's Malik Wilson on Miami.

Oh, Willis.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry, but he's such a horrible situation, right? But there was— the staff were crazy for him last year. I know, it's like, oh my God, they might have gotten a sleeper and we might decide after 4 games.

Ugh.

Um, Jackson Dart, I think it's one where I, I feel like there's there's a lot of hot air coming behind him, but I'm not sure he earned any of it. And I could also see him just getting hurt in 3 games because he runs around like a maniac. Daniel Jones would be another one who really hasn't been good his whole career and then had 2 good months before he got hurt, basically. But you look at his stats and I don't know, plus coming off a major injury. And then here's the one I was really looking at is Daniels. Like, if Daniel— if he stinks again this year, he's hurt or is brittle, like, if he has another brittle Daniel season, do we just be like, whoa, this is RG3 all over again?

Yeah, well, I think you did something wise, which is most of those quarterbacks you picked are in kind of iffy situations.

Yeah.

And so they're not going to be booed necessarily by their surrounding cast. I mean, Jones, you could argue, is the best, but Alec Pierce, they're— they chose him to be the wide receiver one, let Pittman walk. He's hurt.

I mean, it sounds like he's gonna be back early season, but 60% as much as Zay Flowers. I mean, he makes a ton of money.

I like Zay Flowers. I think $35 million a year, that's just how much— like, what did I say? $35 is the new $25. Ask Leo.

That's an insane contract. Uh, the only other one we could mention is Jalen Hurts, who I feel like people are really ready to toss aside as an elite quarterback. Like this, like if it doesn't work out this year after the AJ Brown trade.

Well, he'll always have the ringer hot quarterback, right?

He has the hot quarterback title. Maybe he's got nothing else to play for.

Um, okay, well, you gave me a bunch of good names. I, I think Daniels is one to monitor because I am a little apprehensive of that situation. Like Terry McLaurin's your wide receiver one after that major lack of wide receiver depth.

I think the offensive line is pretty good, but new play caller, first time below average running backs, could we say average, below average, somewhere, somewhere in that mix.

I like Bill, but, but you know, the offense, when they talk about it, it's not totally clear to me how it's all going to come together. It's so different from the Cliff Kingsbury offense. It's more of the Ben Johnson style under center, you know, condensed formation. So I, I just kind of think it might be a little bit— there might be a little bit of growing pains there. Jones is an odd one because Daniel Jones, all offseason I've been hearing, ah, he's coming back week 1, they did the contract, and I'm thinking Achilles. Like, every quarterback we've seen come back from this injury has taken forever.

2-year injury.

But those guys were old and he's young and athletic, and everybody's saying he looks the same. So I guess the science has evolved. The one thing I'll say about him is I was just pulling his numbers because I was doing an AFC South preview You mentioned like 2 months, and that's an important distinction because he was like the best quarterback in football for 8 weeks. But then if you split it and look at the like 5 games, it started to really go off the tracks a bit. So I think that's one where I, I do think he's absolutely a competent starting quarterback, but I do think probably what we saw in the first 2 months of the season wasn't, you know, what we're going to see moving forward.

QB that you personally, Mina Kimes, make the most excuses for?

Everybody knows it's Lamar.

Still, I just— yeah, so we planned on doing this 2 days ago, and I didn't know the Sandoz thing was coming out today. And there was some interesting— the Lamar section in that piece was, was pretty interesting, where people are basically like, this, this is the fork in the road year for him as a superstar because his running stats are way down. And if, if he's just not going to move around in the same way, then, then are you a top 5 QB anywhere?

I think— well, okay, so there's a good distinction. I, I actually thought there was a little bit of nuance to some of the comments I read where someone said he's still a very good pocket passer. So I think we've moved past the idea, at least anyone who should be taken seriously, that Lamar Jackson has to have, you know, an ex— a very strong rushing component to his game and to Otherwise, he's not elite, a very good passer. I think the question is, is he an elite, like, top 3 guy without that? And I think that's actually a fair debate to have in the— because of the way his rushing ability changes the way defenses play him and opens up opportunities. And I think that's completely fair. But I would also counter, his wide receiver 1 is 5'9". I know I just defended him.

$35 million, eh?

5'9" also feels generous. I looked that up. I was like, really? 5'9"?

I don't know.

I might have to get a picture next to him next time in Baltimore for reference.

Oh, as you know, I love nothing more than heights with athletes and actors. You're a true passion.

A truther?

Are you?

No, I love it. There's nothing— I love any famous person. I love trying to stand next to to get a real feel. And there's some people, like, they're— like, Affleck doesn't— Affleck's tall. He doesn't lie about it.

Well, but okay, you know I'm sneaky tall.

I know you're, you're in the sneaky tall all-stars. It's the Chuck Klosterman all-stars.

It's 'cause of the perspective, right? Because I work with 6'5" and 6'6" guys or whatever.

So I really appreciate it. That's like Steve Nash is another one. You'd think Steve Nash is like 5'5".

Yeah. I, I, I mentioned this to the Ringer, the fantasy guys. Brock Purdy is not like in real life. If you met him on the street, you'd say that's a tall man.

Yeah.

But because he plays in the NFL, he looks tiny. He's 6'2", right?

I think.

Right. Kyrie Irving's like this too, where he might even be like a half inch taller than me, but he plays point guard and you think of him as a little guy and he's just not.

I will say, I think Zay Flowers is actually just really interesting.

He might be 5'8". So LaMelo's still your guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I just think, yes, the body of work at this point, the unique skill set, the throwing ability. I've seen so many games where he's just been so electric as a passer. The one where he went toe-to-toe with Matthew Stafford lives rent-free in my mind because those quarterbacks kind of remind me of each other with their throwing styles.

Yeah.

And I just think, um, you know, I'm all like— I, I, I, I— so while I do feel whether he has diminished rushing ability is worth discussing, it's pertinent, we saw that last year he was not as willing to run and also had a lot of trouble avoiding sacks, that matters. But I do think he was a little banged up and I think he'll be fine.

The question is, is that just who he is now? A little banged up every year or a lot banged up, or—

I mean, I think it's fair. I think it's why him and Joe Burrow are in a different tier from Mahomes and Allen for me right now. The injuries.

Do you think there will be a QB resurrection this year along the lines of Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield, and Jared Goff in the past?

And 8 weeks of Daniel Jones.

The cut and the 8 weeks of Daniel Jones and the likely suspect candidate here is Kyler Murray and the Minnesota Vikings.

Yes, he is the most, most likely one. I don't really— there's no one else who really jumped out to me as a contender other than Kyler. It sounds like he's winning the job in camp. I know it's been a little bit up and down. That's another one where I think it could look a little bit iffy early on as him and Kevin O'Connell kind of feel each other out. But the thing about Kyler, and you know this, is like, even in his like, quote, down years and everything that's happened since, you know, his like, I think 2020 was when he was being talked about as an MVP candidate. He's been statistically an average quarterback since then. There's been times where he's been higher, he's been inconsistent, but it all nets out to like average. And that's such an obvious improvement from what they had last year.

JJ McCarthy was Zooming with him every day, going through the offense, getting him ready for next season. That's my favorite.

The Sando had a quote about McCarthy. He had some, he had some brutal quotes. I think the quote was, playing football looks hard for him, was one of the defensive coaches said, which was maybe the meanest quote in the—

it was a really tough hit for all the Michigan people I know.

Yeah.

'Cause all of them were like, you out of anyone will love J.J. McCarthy. He's got it. He's got the intangible. He passes all the things you talk about. And then he came out and was just brutal.

Michigan fans love to be like the most tribal college football. They follow their guys into the NFL and totally stick with them, I found. Um, but yeah, Kyler is a good one. I, I think I'm really interested in seeing like where the deep ball went with Kyler because you remember when he was younger, like it was so good early in his career and then that kind of went away. But I think some of that had to do with the wide receivers or lack thereof. This is an offense in Arizona that ran through McBride, the tight end. So I'm curious to see Also Justin Jefferson, who I maintain, like, maybe the one of the most psychologically impressive performances of the 2025 season was him not losing his mind over the course of the year. Great leader.

That should be an award, the Larry Fitzgerald Award for I'm just completely screwed by this quarterback situation, but I'm gonna be a pro.

Yeah, I, it's, I mean, especially given like the nature of the wide receiver position and the stereotypes around it to see him like week after week just, and he wasn't perfect. I had some drops and whatnot, but I think he deserves a ton of credit. And it— I'm interested in seeing if like Kyler can kind of get the deep ball back with Addison Jefferson.

I'm completely out. Just so you know, you're completely out on Kyler.

You don't think— no chance.

I just think he's at best a .500 quarterback. I just don't see it.

But this is a team that was .500 last year with J.J. McCarthy.

I, I just don't see it. Um, your top 4 bleakest quarterback situations. In order from most bleakest to fourth bleakest. What is the worst quarterback situation? I can give you the options.

Easy, easy one for one.

Yeah, Malik Willis, just no offensive line, no, no receivers.

And the line's actually improved a little bit, but I would love to go right to a man on the street in any city outside of Miami with the receivers. Freak. In Miami and ask people to name 2 Miami Dolphins receivers.

Billy Gil is coming on after you. I'm gonna ask him if he can name the wide receiver crew. Probably can't.

It's insane. Um, it makes me wonder, and it's so weird, Bill, because like, I think everything they're doing kind of makes sense, right? Like, they ripped it up, rebuilding, they bring in the entire Green Bay, Halfley and the GM. Everybody gets it except Malik Willis. I feel like they signed him to like a middle-class quarterback contract and then immediately traded Jalen Waddle. Like, those— right, it just didn't really make sense to me. Like, if I'm him and this is my shot to be a starter, why not, I don't know, Atlanta? There just feels—

maybe I would have gone to Atlanta.

Atlanta, yeah, I just don't get it.

So maybe they offered twice as much money as everybody else. I listen, I agree with you that Miami finally did the right thing, but I also can't congratulate a team for auto-blaming after one of the worst contracts of all time, which was the Tua contract, which made no sense when it was happening. It was a complete disaster. It turned out even worse than everyone thought. And now you're like, okay, now we got it. Now, now we've got our shit together. It's like, do you? You just did the Tua thing 2 years ago. When he was already on like 6 concussions. All right, so you have Miami 1. Who's 2?

Uh, I'm tempted by— they're not— Raiders fans aren't gonna like this, but Raiders— wow, name their wide receiver 1.

It's tough.

Yes, I know the answer is Brock Bowers, but like at a certain point you also need wide receivers. And there's anything about the Raiders, like A bunch of tight ends.

Yeah, lots of tight ends to throw to. A lot of short ones over the middle.

How would you stack the Raiders offensive line last year?

Isn't it a—

it's, it's better this year. I think that's one of those, like, 5 offensive lines that definitely got better, and they're one of the 5.

They signed Linderbaum, they gave back Colton Miller, but the right side is the same.

But last year they couldn't block at all, so they're at least better than that.

So I'm apprehensive of the entire right side of that offensive line and the receiving group.

Raiders too, real— I mean, I'm shocked that you have anybody over— I had Atlanta as the single worst situation.

Drake London, Bijan Robinson.

I'm just talking about their quarterbacks are Tua and Penix.

Oh, I thought you— I thought you were asking me to rank like the situation that the quarterback is in.

Oh, my bad, I completely misunderstood that enough.

I'm so sorry.

Okay, no, that's fine. I, I like that. I like that. Wait, the way you did it is almost a better question. Uh, yeah, you're right, because Atlanta has a ton of skill guys, but they have the worst actual quarterback skill guys.

Yeah, if I was, if I was ranking actual quarterback situation, it would have been Cleveland with a bullet.

So you'd have Cleveland over Atlanta?

Uh, yes, yes, dude.

Last time we saw Deshaun Watson play, I just think Sanders is gonna win the job. I don't think we'll see Deshaun. I think, I honestly, I honestly think I would rather have Sanders than either of the Atlanta guys. I don't think Penix can play 3 games in a row, and I don't think Tua can either. And I, I don't know who the third string quarterback is, but I, I would bet that he plays more games than both of those guys.

I think it's Cooper Rush.

If I might be wrong, I think Cooper Rush will play the most games of the Falcons. Tua is just— Tua has like 4 starts left in his NFL career, max. There's no way. He takes one more hit, his career's over.

All right, well, when healthy, I would take both Tua and Penix over the Browns.

But the when healthy is like not happening.

No, it's fair. It's totally fair. And I want— and I want to go back to what I said, the Dolphins fans, if I'm actually ranking quarterbacks, I like Malik Willis. I just hate his situation. I think he's—

well, that's a good one though. So you think the two worst situations—

okay, yeah, worst situation.

Yeah. And who'd you have for the second one?

I picked Vegas. Maybe that's too harsh.

But you still have Bowers for 1,500 yards, dude.

Outside of him, it is rough.

Are we sure Pittsburgh isn't one of the worst situations for a QB? What's good about their situation?

Uh, I think Metcalf, Pittman, and then whatever— who's the wide receiver 3, Bernard or whoever— is pretty good. I think the— okay, offensive line is decent. The interior is really good. Kind of figure out the tackle position. Running game, good run game. I think it's a good run game. I think, um, tight ends are good.

You like that more than Tennessee?

Yeah, 100%.

Do you like it more than Arizona?

Um, yes, because of the offensive line, but Arizona's not bad, although Arizona randomly has like every running back on Earth.

Yeah, it was weird when they were— the coach was touting, uh James Conner. It's like, you guys just spent the 3rd pick on a running back. Where's James Conner? What's he doing in this?

I don't understand. I think Arizona, the offensive line could be better, but they were pretty bad last year.

So my bottom 3, just for actual quarterbacks— Actual quarterbacks, yeah, sorry. —situations, the only ones that got a -2 for me, where in the team rankings you actually get negative points, were Cleveland, the Jets, and Atlanta. Yeah, I agree. Your guy Geno, I'm sorry, he has to be a -2 unless we see something different. Yeah. But I didn't have many other minus, minus ones. That was it. Um, all right, I have one more question and then we'll take a break and go to the rankings. This is really important. Eduardo, get ready to cut this.

Oh no, Eduardo, get ready to cut this.

Okay. No, cut this for social clip. Yeah, I know, I understand. Has Jordan Love replaced Justin Herbert as the football nerd king of the quarterback position? Has this finally— has, has this been a subtle shift that we didn't acknowledge, but it's happened?

I feel like I'm walking into a trap, like you laid an elaborate, like, Saw-style trap for me. I did. There's no way out. Because you already know I love Jordan Love, and the way you set that question up, is— makes it look like I'm falling for it. But yeah, he's, he's a really good quarterback and he has this like reputation as being this incredibly irresponsible interception machine. Yeah, that's not substantiated by reality. And I think— and the nerds of all, we, we had a quorum We got together. QB Nerdapalooza. We had a, we had a, we had a little summit in the offseason to discuss. First, we did our giant Justin Herbert presentation and everybody, you know, had major— we'll put up slides about how we can defend him this year now that the circumstances are better.

Somebody was sobbing at the podium about he lost both of his tackles, he lost both of them.

Ruiz had to take like a 5-minute break. But Jordan Love, and this was widely discussed at the summit. Yeah. Like actually not a high interception rate, I believe bottom 10 or something in football. I, I posted this at one point. The problem is that when he does turn it over, it looks so unbelievably goofy. Yeah. That it sticks in people's minds and has a disproportionate impact on like the public imagination. That makes people think he turns it over all the time.

So you're, you're talking about the concept of loud turnovers? Yes. So in basketball, I always called this the 90/10 guy, where everybody's 90% really good at basketball, but they're going to be 10% not that good at stuff. And when it's somebody like Russell Westbrook, you really notice the 10%. And Love is a 10— that Love 10%, for whatever reason, seems just the worst.

He's also like the anti-Westbrook in that all of his rate stats are unbelievable. Like, when you go back and you look at everything— and I know everyone's always arguing about which quarterback stats matter, and my answer to that is it doesn't. You can literally take any quarterback stat, DVOA, EPA, QBR, passer rate, whatever you want. He is like top 5 or better in all of them. Like, he, he is both from the film— you talk about the film nerds, The film nerds and the stat nerds both love him because he's been so good, right? And yet people talk about him like he's— I don't even— I think like they kind of talk about him like he's like late-stage Brett Favre or something.

Yeah, they don't take him seriously.

It doesn't make sense to me.

Well, so last year, uh, what loses Kraft? The wide receivers are, you know, Watson gets hurt every year, but in general, like the wide receivers were a mess. Top 4 pressure rate against him. So all these QB stats, you can go, you can overrate any of them. I think pressure rate's a really good stat. It just tells you what quarterback was under duress the most. He was in the top 4. And EPA, I mean, you have all these different ones, but his EPA was 0.24 per play. It was like in the top 4. Um, I, here's how I would, this is why I think he took the title from Herbert. Okay. I think, I think the nerd community is scolding us the most about love. And I think scolding is a huge part of this, where people are like, you don't understand. Yeah, you guys are wrong. This guy's really good. And here's some things you have to—

I feel like you're inadvertently right now making some profound political commentary and why we might be in the situation that we're in, but I'm gonna put that to the side. Um, okay, so teach me how to be a Jordan Love enthusiast in a way that doesn't alienate the everyman. I want to, I want to be better. I want to, I want to defend him in a way that's not annoying to people.

So here, here's the thing. This is just like, you almost have to go overboard with the look. Either follow the NFL or you don't. If you don't see the Jordan Love thing, I can't help you. Because he's that good. And if you're gonna say he's not, then enjoy your Sundays, watch 5 games at once, eat chicken, chicken fingers, have beers with your buddies, and don't actually watch the games. Because that, because that's where you are if you don't see it.

You're, you're veering dangerously close to watch the tape, which people don't. But he has tape and stats. And when are you backing into being a Love defender?

I am a Love defender. To me, Love has a better case than Herbert because at least we've seen him play well in the playoffs. Like, he's He had a really awesome playoff win. Herbert does not. Yeah, we've seen Herbert fall apart in the playoffs, and Love has not, as I don't think has. I always feel like he's in the mix.

Let me ask you a question: are any of his receivers better than Zay Flowers?

Well, I think Kraft was a top 4 tight end before he got hurt. I thought he was always open, and he looks like Gronk-ish to me. He's not obviously not Gronk, Um, the receivers. I like Golden. I don't know what happened with him last year. I had him on two fantasy teams wondering why they weren't throwing it to him. Maybe he's not good, but where they drafted him and what they wanted from him feels like he's the key swing guy for them this year.

They have a lot of guys I like. Like, I think Watson's good when he's healthy. Yeah. I think Golden has potential. Reed is a fun piece, but The point I'm making, and I think this is another thing we can add to our Jordan Love public service announcement that we're putting together here, is like, we just made fun of Baltimore for their wide receiver 1 being, you know, meana-sized. Yeah, he would be easily the best receiver, right, in Green Bay. So like, why doesn't Jordan Love get some credit for that as well? He ain't throwing to Puka Nacua and Ja'Marr Chase and JSN, you know. So I, I just feel I mean, I'm like, I have his numbers too. He's top 3 against the blitz, top 3 on third down, top 3 on third and long. Like, what does it take? What does it take?

I don't know. He's won the title. It's official. All right, we're gonna take a break. We're gonna go through the rankings. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Imagine you're running a professional sports team. Nice. That would be a dream of mine. Imagine the player contract report is due today. Not so nice. You've got performance notes from the coaching staff, you got a salary spreadsheet from your analyst, 3 rounds of back and forth emails with the agent, and all of it is scattered absolutely everywhere. Well, that's where ChatGPT Work comes in. It's a new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. Give ChatGPT Work access to your apps and files and can create real work documents. For instance, spreadsheets. Slides, structured reports. You can bring all those to your next meeting when you don't need answers, you need help just getting the work across the finish line. Guess what? ChatGPT Work can move your projects forward while you stay in control. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started. Just go to chatgpt.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus, And pro plans. All right, all right. Highest you can get is 9 points at the QB position, and it can only be one person, the alpha.

And then we go down, and I have for the alpha the second year in a row Josh Allen as my 9-pointer. Um, 12+ rushing TDs each year for the last 3. Um, I don't need to do his stats. The playoff win is the one thing that people are going to point to. And I gotta say, like, I don't think he choked in the playoffs last year, but it wasn't not a choke. Not great. Not great. It wasn't great for the Allen thing. And like Sando did his QB tiers and had Mahomes in the 1 spot, which we'll talk about in a second. To me, yeah, Allen is clearly still the best quarterback in the league, at least if we're just doing regular season only. And if we're gonna go into who do you want for one game, that's a different category. Do you think DJ Moore changes anything?

I do. Okay. And that's not me saying DJ Moore is 2021 DJ Moore, or that he's going to suddenly become a top 10 receiver in the NFL, but they just have such— had such a lack of receiving option who could win on the boundary, who could beat man coverage, who can threaten man coverage in any way. So if even DJ Moore is even like a top 20 receiver, I do think that makes things a lot easier for Buffalo.

Would you be scared if you're a Buffalo fan that the Bears fans were ready to drive him to the airport?

I would be more mad about the deal. Like, my objection to that was less trading for DJ Moore and more what they gave up for him and the contract part of it, which I thought didn't make sense.

So two teams where he didn't seem like it went totally perfect behind the scenes or with everybody. They, like, two teams that seemed like they were pretty happy to move on, which I think to me is a red flag. Um, we'll see. I mean, the, the new coach Who is a little more offense-oriented, maybe that helps, but I don't know. Josh is just, he's the scariest guy to go against. He's the scariest guy to bet against, and I don't think that's changed. So I have him at the top. Do you agree with that or no? Would you have Mahomes there?

No, I think that's fair. I also think Josh Allen just doesn't get hurt. Like, I, I, no, that matters.

Durability matters. I keep saying this.

It's, I mean, he is literally like a linebacker. Out there. And the fact that he's become unbelievably accurate and smart on top of that is ridiculous. Um, I think when you compare him to Mahomes, it's a little tricky for me because even though I, I know I just said, uh, the Bills don't have a receiver who can beat man coverage, they've had such a great offensive line and such a dominant run game. And Mahomes is— we'll talk about him— been in such crappy circumstances, so it's kind of hard, you know, to compare. But I do think it's fair to put out in there now.

Top 7 favorite celebrity relationship for you?

Uh, we had a long aside about this cuz you know, both him and Herb are dating or married to pop star. Herb's not got married yet. I, and I, I made the argument that I think they're a big part of the reason why Alan rose so high in the ranking, their Fantasy Guys rankings, is because he's such a wife guy, which women love.

Good couple pictures of them too. Yeah.

There was a clip of him like tearing up talking about their baby daughter. That went around.

You can't have better publicity than that. Next category is the, uh, the blues. These are 8-pointers. Okay. And I have 5. And I'm gonna do them in the order I have them. It's brave. Stafford, I have second. I don't have Mahomes second, and I'll explain why. Okay. I, I wanna watch, is it okay if we watch a couple games with him with the repaired ACL? Just see how it looks. Can I just, can I just see like 2 games before I move, start moving them up the ladder? Um, especially somebody who has to, in big games when I don't love their receivers and neither do you, Kelsey's just got married, he's in his mid-30s. Um, over and over again when they play somebody good, he has to use the fact that Kelsey just got married.

Well, yeah, I don't know, I don't know if he's his eyes on the prize.

He just had a wedding of 1,200 people. 1,200-person wedding. I don't know if he cares about the season.

Almost all of these guys are married.

Yeah, but it's just big wedding. I don't know, I don't know where his head's at. Um, uh, but if Mahomes has to use his legs to save games and quarters for them—

yeah, more relevant, very relevant.

I don't know if he can. I just want to see it. So I have him third. Stafford, stats-wise, was ridiculous, and Young, you know. All right, let me pause and ask you a question. Best year since '21. And the question for me with him, 38 years old. Yeah.

Was that the peak? I got a question for you. Yeah. Those two quarterbacks, if you switch their circumstances this year, it'd be terrible for Stafford.

Yeah.

Well, that's why I think, I think by week 4, imagine Mahomes behind the Rams offensive line with the Rams run game, Sean McVay, Puka Nacua, Davante Adams. Like, what would that look like?

That's fair. So you would have Mahomes second?

No, not necessarily. I would, I would, yes. But, and Stafford, amazing. I don't think it's crazy. He's— I would probably put him third right now. Can I give you a—

maybe you— this is good for you. I went on your pod and I was saying I thought Seattle had the most talented team. Which apparently was like a hot take, dude, because the Seahawks fans were like, finally somebody else said it other than us.

They were like delighted. There's like no Seahawks, barely any in the NFL 100, which I know is an absurd sentence to use that as some kind of— it is the players though. Devin Witherspoon, who's like best DB, didn't crack the 100.

Yeah, but that— do you take that top 100 list seriously? Because I do not. I did my rankings in Seattle. I had it 38 points, which was the highest I've ever done in 4 years on a daily NFL show.

And it's July. Yeah, I do take this.

Okay, I just— if he's not on it, what list is that? I know. Anyways, and Cooper— Cooper was— I think I saw today he was like 45th. Does anybody think Cooper Jean's better than Witherspoon?

At least it's like— Cooper Jean's pretty awesome. Yeah. 45 and not being on the list is crazy.

Yeah. Anyway, I made, I looked this up, I did some research for this pod. Okay. QBs, 38 years or older, 38+ QBs. Yeah. 10 wins, 4,000 yards, 25 TDs, 7 yards per attempt. Seem solid numbers for a high-end QB, right? 4,000, 25, 7. It's only happened 9 times. 6 of the guys were Tom Brady, Brett Favre in '09, Manning in '14 on Denver, and Rodgers '21 on Green Bay. So Stafford just putting up those numbers, it would be the 10th time it's ever happened at that age. 4,025 and 7, which isn't even remotely close to what he did last year. It was 4,707, 46 TDs. And it just— I just wonder. He's got a lot of wear and tear, a lot of injuries, knee stuff, back stuff. I don't know. I think he will be fine.

His arm strength has not diminished at all, clearly. However, that Rams offensive line is not deep, and if they were to lose one of those tackles— and potentially a suspension might be, you know, on the left side for one of them that's when I start worrying about Matthew Stafford. Yeah, because that's where the age starts to show the pressure.

Well, and when you have a top-heavy team, it's tough to— yeah, be good everywhere too. We'll see. Uh, anyway, Mahomes, third. His peak year is now 4 years ago: 5,250 yards, 41 touchdowns, and 8.1 yards per attempt. And I guess the question is, was Was that the peak? Will he reach those heights ever again? He's in his 30s now.

I don't think he will unless they actually find a wide receiver one.

That's—

do they have a single wide receiver you completely trust?

No. Do you have a—

they have a wide receiver you partially trust?

I trust Rashee Rice against zone coverage. But that's such a— like, I think he's, he's a totally useful receiver.

I think I trust him on a football field.

Yes, specifically zone coverage between the two lines. Uh, I do not— I know I talked, like, I talked about how the Bills and like man coverage, you know, everyone could win. Well, now they have DJ Moore, who at least is like competent. Yeah, I don't see that in Kansas City. So I, I also like the, the Kelce thing.

I mean, he's Hall of Fame player, just got married, just got married. Big 1,200-person wedding at Madison Square Garden.

Doesn't that mean though, that's now, now that's off his mind and he's, his mind is clear. The wedding's over. That's how I felt after I got married. I was like, oh, I never have to think about that again.

Football, football has a life or death element to it that you kind of have to throw yourself into. You know, sometimes these guys, who knows? I, the thing I wrote down from Mahomes, Brady had this after he tore the ACL in '08 and then '09 and '10, they didn't make the Super Bowl either of those years. And he kind of moved and he's still statistically was great, but it felt like he needed like a second prime to start. And then it finally started in '11 where he had like his second run. So the question with Mahomes is, is there gonna be a second run or was it just that amazing first peak that was historic and all that? But that's gonna be where we landed. Like almost like a Pujols thing.

It's the circumstances that'll determine it for me. And we can do the analog with Brady and what, what happened.

They drafted the two tight ends in 11, in, in 10, and that led to the second prime. The two tight ends. Well, the one, the second one was good for a couple years.

It's funny the way you do it.

And then turned into a multiple murderer.

Uh, no, but like the, the thing, right? So. It feels like Kansas City, there needs to be a total refresh. I think Andy Reid and the brain trust there, there needs to be some evolution on that offense, particularly the run game, particularly because of the injury. And I'm not just talking about— I'm specifically talking about this season. You talked about, let's see, Mahomes and the ACL. His ability to run was so important. Obviously it's always been important and it's always been especially important in the postseason. But earlier I mentioned like they can't— they don't have anyone who could beat me in coverage. They did have one person, his name was Patrick Mahomes, because defense would turn their back to him and he would just take off on third down. If he can't do that, if you're defense, you're not afraid of that anymore, and they don't have any receivers who you're scared of playing man, you're golden. So I just— and he was like, they're leading, right? So they messed a lot on the run game this offseason, but that's something like I feel like everything around him has to get better for a second golden age to happen.

They missed a couple picks too over the last couple years, which is always bad. You met— you miss first or second rounders, and this is what happened with Brady down the stretch, where it was like they just missed some drafts and you can't recover from that. Um, the Walker thing, getting Kenneth Walker, having a real running back— the running back stats were really, really putrid last year. I mean, some of the worst advanced stats for them anyway. So I have Mahomes third, but I'm ready to move him second as soon as I see him run around. I have Drake May fourth, which I think people would think is high. Um, he made the Super Bowl last year and had crazy stats.

Wait, you have Drake May over Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson?

I'm gonna explain why in a second.

I'm a Drake May guy. You're testing me.

Okay, Mina, you know what I like? Results. Drake May went 17-4 last year. And he had crazy stats. It's not like it was like some sort of fluke thing. And they added AJ Brown, who is either the 7th, 8th, 9th, or 10th best receiver in the league. They added Dobbs. They improved the offensive line. Why isn't he a top 5 QB again? I, I— why isn't he a safer bet than Lamar Jackson, who's like 6 years older than him?

Because Lamar's done it for 7 years. I just watched one year, dude. Tell that to the Texans fans. I'm all in on Drake. I mean, I have taken my slings and arrows for my MVP vote, which I will still stand on and defend, but like, I don't think you can credibly, after just one season, rank him above those guys. I just did it. He's okay. All right. I love him. I think he's so good.

But Lamar, 349 yards rushing last year in 13 games. He's never been under 50 yards a game rushing until last year.

He was injured.

EPA per play last year, 0.07, just slightly better than Jackson Dart and Mason Rudolph.

You need to take away your EPA privileges.

3 playoff wins career, which is the same as Drake Maye had last year. He's 30 years old. And, uh, I don't know, I would just rather have Drake Maye. I'm just telling you as a Patriot fan.

Oh, that's good. I think Oh dude, if we're talking about building like from ground up, I'm saying for this year, if it's one year only, I'd rather have Drake. No, I'm saying if it was more than one year only, I would absolutely take Drake May. Okay. But I'm not gonna take him for one year only over the two-time, should have been three-time MVP.

You know what, if Molly Rubin's watching and listening to this, I don't care. And I had Burrow last in this group, so I had, I had five in this group. Here's the thing with Joe Burrow that I don't love. So I have basically Stafford, Mahomes, May, Jackson, and Burrow.

So not Lamar for all the reasons that—

No, Lamar I just had in there.

Oh, it's also— sorry, Jackson, Jackson.

I have Lamar 5th and May 4th, Burrow 6th. Okay. Um, Burrow's played 3 seasons and 3 half seasons and he hasn't won a playoff game since 2022. Yeah, I think that kind of matters. And I don't know if his offensive line it's allegedly a little bit better. Who knows?

I maintain it's better.

Their schedule is super easy. Um, everybody loves them. There's been a lot of action on their over, and I don't know, he's had a lot of wear and tear already. He's had some real injuries, not like fluky dumb injuries, like real injuries. And I just kind of want to see it.

I think the injury thing is where you got to start. It's the most credible reason to doubt both him and Jackson, but more him. He's been hurt more. Yeah, which sometimes I feel like is not talked about in the same way. Um, and it's a good reflection of how like getting injured doesn't— it, it's not necessarily correlated to, you know, being— I think sometimes people say the dual threat quarterbacks, y'all get injured a lot. It's like, actually, your, your pocket passer here— I know he has scrambling ability, Joe Burrow. Yeah, had some pretty weird injuries along the way. Um, you know, when he's been on the field I think top 4 or 5— 4 is probably— top 4 is where I would put him. Um, but he also, again, to go back to circumstances, has been in pretty damn good circumstances. I mean, he's probably got the best one-two punch receiver in the NFL. I do think the offensive line has gotten better. Um, so I, I think that's fair. I think Burrow versus Jackson is a debate most people have. I'm higher on Lamar personally, but I think you could argue both ways.

Let's see it.

Um, it's all set up for him this year. The two easiest schedules in the league are Cleveland and Cincinnati. And if he, if he's a 10-win quarterback and can stay healthy this year, I don't understand how he wouldn't win 10 games with the talent he has. All right. Next category is the light blue. We can move through these fast. Prescott. Who I guess I have as my 7th best quarterback. Year 11 for him. He's got 2 playoff wins total. I think he has the mantle right now of would I rather have this guy as my fantasy QB or my real QB. We have this from time to time.

You, you wouldn't want him as your real QB. I mean, I mean, if I'm trying to win the Super Bowl, but you have him 7th. That's pretty high.

I know. I know. Okay, I'm just saying, is his legacy going to be fantasy— he won some people some fantasy titles, or he actually won some NFL playoff games?

It's funny how he used to be like the most divisive quarterback in the NFL. Yeah, he's right.

Like, someone kicked everyone away.

Yeah, he— remember, like, press conference?

You guys cover the Dallas Cowboys more. They're not talking about the Cowboys at all. I don't understand.

You know what, I'm on NFL Live today and we have zero Cowboys segments. So touche.

Yeah, you did it.

Starting with the Ravens, Zay Flowers. Um, I— but it is funny, right, that he— now everyone just kind of accepts that he's in this tier that you have him in. Like, everybody accepts that he's in that, I would say, 6 to 9 range, 6 to 80.

And yet if we got to a playoff game and he was like a 3.5-point favorite at home I'd be nervous to bet on him.

I wouldn't be nervous because of him.

Yeah, I have Love right after him for all the reasons we talked about. Love it. And then, uh, Herbert is the last person in this group. The playoff stuff is horrific. Um, I really thought he was a noble season by him last year though, with, with how bad the line was.

Noble.

And yet not noble enough for you to have him over.

He's just running for his life. The question for him, and I think this goes for Burrow too, is Yeah. Can you take too many hits? Yeah. Can you— That's fair. Can you run for your life too much? Is there residual damage from it? Okay.

That's a fair— Speaking on behalf of the greater Justin Herbert supporters film nerds alliance, I feel I'm qualified to be the emissary. That's a fair criticism. I think— because I get worried about— I actually have a little— theory that I've been banding around, which is when these quarterbacks have these meltdowns in the postseason— him, he was awful in that game. Stroud, awful. I sometimes feel— and honestly, like, nay, at the end, to a lesser— to something— he was terrible. He was bad. I do feel like there's something to be said about the accumulation of those hits and bad offensive line play building and building and building, and then a quarterback just kind of imploding at the end of the year. Like, there's only so long you can shoulder a terrible offensive line. And I kind of think, and that's why I genuinely believe that's why those quarterbacks and some of the other quarterbacks like end up being the worst at the end. It's because of, like you said, the accumulation of all the bad things.

Yeah, you're talking about it could be during a season. It could also be a career. Like, when I was a little kid, we had Jim Pickett, who was the first pick in the draft and just got the shit kicked out of him for 6 years. Ended up getting traded to San Francisco, waived, and then took like 2 years to recover and then went to the Raiders and actually won a Super Bowl.

But it's hard. It's, I mean, his line, it's not even just that they allowed a lot of pressure. It's the way they allowed pressure, which was like right up the middle. It felt like a jailbreak every other play.

Well, I have good news. I had them in, I had them in the top 8 for offensive lines. Now that they have their tackles back, their guys back, both of their guys are back and they spent, they spent money on it too. I think their line is actually, then the McDaniel piece, he's the one that I could see. I think he's the stealth MVP, but yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of sides though that he's planning a wedding during the season.

Did you factor in, when is the wedding? I don't know, after the season, I presume. I don't like it. Maybe it's gonna be— it might be on his mind. I don't like it.

He's preparing for like the Patriots game and his fiancée is like, oh, my mom is being such a jerk, she wants us to invite my uncle.

Um, um, anyway, I have the totally stealth MVP.

I totally agree with that. So 7-pointers: Prescott, Love, and Herbert. And that— I like it. That actually is our top 9. I like it. Which leads to the next question because now we're in the reds, which are 5-pointers. And I have Darnold, Goff, Purdy, and Caleb Williams in this group.

Darnold, Goff, Purdy, and Caleb Williams. In that order?

So that was the tentative order. My question for you, because one of these guys I think is clearly the 10th best quarterback in the league, because I think that top 9 is pretty set. Yeah, I think that's good. Who is the 10th best quarterback in the league? I can offer you Darnold, Goff, Purdy, or Caleb Williams with 6 fourth-quarter comebacks and, uh, okay, pretty, pretty kind of basic stats except for like how good he is when his back's to the wall.

I would throw in another quarterback into this group. I would, I would put Stroud for consideration, but I understand Some hesitation.

We're not even close to getting this Stroud yet.

I would put Trevor Lawrence in this group personally, and I, as someone who just went back and rewatched Trevor Lawrence for a podcast.

Um, so I had, I had Trevor Lawrence as a 4-pointer, and my question for you was gonna be, do you believe in 2026 last 8 games Trevor Lawrence? Yes. Or what we saw in the playoff game Trevor Lawrence?

I believe, well, he wasn't even that bad. First of all, I believe in it. Because circumstances stay the same for the most part.

Okay, so you want me to move them up a point? You want to make a 5-pointer?

Okay, I'm gonna listen to you. So awesome.

I agree with you.

I just didn't know if it was some of those— the Broncos. I mean, okay, so, but of the guys you mentioned, um, I'm gonna parse this out. One year— if it was multiple years, I would put Caleb there, but it's not multiple years.

I know, I know, this season I'm putting Jared—

I would put Jared Goff there personally. Okay. I've— Jared Goff is one of those quarterbacks where my estimation has grown over time, uh, and I think he's gotten better over time, so that's a big part of it. I feel that like the Lions, obviously incredible skilled players, you know, we all know that. I do feel like a little bit lost last year was an appreciation of some of the struggles of that offensive line and what he was dealing with. And we— and that's, that's partially, that's his sensitivity, like that he is much better kept clean. All quarterbacks are, but the immobile ones, shall we say, are more. But I just think he's— his toughness and his ability to keep that offense, that passing game going with some pretty bad line play, maybe was a little bit slept on.

His stats are really good. Like, his last 3 years per 17 games would be 4,634 TDs, 8 yards a pass.

Um, last year without Ben Johnson, by the way, he still was good. Yeah.

The question with him is always, all right, if he didn't have elite skill guys, where are we? Right. Yeah. He's got Gibbs, he's got Laporta, got St. Brown. Everyone you mentioned though, right?

Purdy, Darnold.

I think he has the best skill guys out of all these guys in this group. Yeah. All right. So Goff, I still have Darnold. I had him 10th, but I'm happy to move him to 11. 28 wins plus Super Bowl, and he was 31-7 the last 2 years. We don't have to talk about him. You've talked about him enough. But, um, Purdy is— Purdy's my guy that I defend. I talked about this on your pod. I just like Purdy. Like, when Mac Jones was pretty good for the 49ers, people like, see, Purdy, yeah, it could be anybody. It's like, I just don't agree. I think Purdy's good. Um, question for him is the receivers, and then Um, the electric, whatever the fuck that thing is.

They lost a PureSole. Like, I—

taking things out.

I, I don't know what you do at this point.

So it's crazy. This— I'm a big believer in July and August setting a tone for shoving a team one direction or the other. I have not liked that. I think the Shanahan car accident is like just a terrible thing that happened before this season for a variety of reasons, but just a weird kind of strange variable to put in versus what you have with some other teams who are like, yeah, things are going great, we're happy about this and this. And you have the Niners who were dealing with all the—

I don't know, I just, I was so, I was so high on the Niners like offseason, the moves they made. Yeah. When we did our Power Hour, I was like, look at this roster. And then you take a step back and you're like, wait, all of these skill players are either older, coming off an injury, or have almost all of them have injury history. So why am I— like, it felt like hubris to assume— this is before Piersall got hurt, right— that they would all be fine. So I, I don't feel—

at some point it ends for Evans. This is becoming unrealistic for a number one, kind of a somewhere between a one and a two receiver depending on how healthy he is. But at some point you can't— he's hitting his mid-30s, which is—

yeah. Um, but yeah.

Kayla. So I think out of Caleb, he's the one I could see jumping to a 7 or maybe even an 8 this season if he's just awesome. But maybe he's a year away. I like him though. I really feel like he really won me over last year, and he's a good example of like sometimes you just need a good coach and good people around you. Like, I think there's another version of his career where he's just basically like a more talented Kyler Murray and it never happens. But I, I don't know, I, he kind of won me over and then we talked about Lawrence. So, all right, that's the 5. Then we move into the light reds where I do not have CJ Stroud. These are all 4-pointers. Jalen, Jalen Hurts, Baker Mayfield, Jayden Daniels, and Bo Nix. Um, question for Hurts, would you bet on this being a resurgence year or a holy shit, we gotta get outta this contract year by like December. Where does this go?

I'm more positive than we gotta get out of the contract. I am. I do fear that it might take a minute to look good though, because it's just, you know, such a new offense. Yeah. In Philadelphia. And I do worry that the criticism is going to be so intense those first few weeks if it doesn't look great immediately. Right. Um, I— this has been a tough one for me because, you know, I talked about Daniels. Like, I kind of just want to see him in it before I come to any conclusions. Because again, you know, when you talked with Eagles fans about the fact that Hurts doesn't really throw over the middle of the field and he struggled against certain zone looks, and that they'll say, well, you know, the scheme was so bad. And the scheme was bad, so they're not wrong. But also, you kind of want to see him do it, throw with anticipation, maybe make some riskier throws. So I, I'm a little apprehensive of it. But I'm never gonna be fully out on him because he does have like a really legitimate and unique skill set. Like he throws a beautiful go ball.

He's a really good athlete.

I wish he ran more, but, and, and he's won, he actually won a Super Bowl. My question with him that I can't, and he is 57 and 25 as a starter, by the way. My question with him is why do they seem like they're hiding stuff with him? Like that, what do you mean? Like I always thought the pace of play that they played with Where they just very deliberate, like they're trying to shorten the game, you know? And they, they kind of talked about it. They're like, yeah, we think we have better players than everybody else. We wanna shorten the game. That shortens the variance. And it's like, eh, yeah, I don't know. It feel, feels like you're hiding Hurts a little bit. Like you don't want him to have 10 cracks.

I would defend him by saying I think they were hiding the offense as a whole last year. Like they knew that the offense was a disaster by their standards.

But they, they had a top 5 or 6 line. They had Barkley, they had 2 really good receivers. They'd got hurt. Like, what are they hiding? Why are they, why do they think their offense isn't good?

Because it was bad. I mean, the run game was awful. The line was hurt. Doesn't make sense. No, I know.

I'm just saying like, it wasn't like a Patriots line though. I know.

But I think that they were very aware of how bad the offense was and that they would, they had to win games with their defense, which by the way, remains awesome. So not great. Yeah.

Um, Mayfield, I feel like should be a 5, but his body is just so banged up and this feels like a make or break year for him. I know they were doing the basically short-term deal, which is what they did. He's played 120 games as a starter, is 58-62. When he's healthy though, he's really good. I just, he's a, he's a smaller guy and I just wonder if this is who he's gonna be every year. By the end of last year, he had like 4 different injuries.

He was injured. He was— I think they put too much on his shoulders last year. Like, the run game was bad. Their offensive line was also really banged up. And I think if they want to get things back to 2024, they need to calm things down, bring down the depth of target, get the run game going again, play action. He is a quarterback you can absolutely win with. I think though, whether he's like a quarterback you win a lot of games because of is probably what's holding them back from doing a long-term deal too.

And can you keep him healthy? And then Bo Nix, who knows. Um, why did they game manage with him so much? There's— like, why were they always behind? Why were they always scrambling in fourth quarters to— you know, why, why, why were they basically a 10-minute team offensively? He's got way better weapons this year and should be better, but I have no idea. But I, I think he's a 4 because they won games with him. All right, going into the 2s quickly. Okay, the pink. The pink chippers. Hmm. I have CJ Stroud, Daniel Jones, Jackson Dart, Tyler Shook, and Bryce Young. And I'm happy to move any of those back and make them zero-pointers instead of two-pointers. Is there anyone who does not belong in that group? Doesn't belong in that group. Um, Stroud, Jones, Dart, Shook, and Bryce Young. You could talk me into Dart the most because we really just haven't seen him play Yeah, 2 months in a row.

I thought so. I've gone back and rewatched all the rookie quarterbacks. I thought Tyler Shook was the best of them.

I loved him. You could have talked me in right now into making him a 4-pointer.

I fucking love that guy, dude. You came on my pod and you were like touting him and you were like, yeah, and Bailey.

And I kind of got hurt, Bailey.

I was like giggling. And then when I went back to watch the Saints, I was like, oh my God, there was a game in like week—

it was a stud for 2 weeks.

It was like the best wide receiver. Yeah, in football. Um, No Cam Ward consideration here? Not yet. Horrible, horrible situation. I mean, just abysmal last year.

I'm ready to entertain it after I watch a couple games, but I think for now he's got to be a zero.

I felt like watching him, it reminded me of watching— they're different quarterbacks in some ways— but Caleb Williams, his rookie season, where there was something there, some really exciting plays, needed to learn how to play on time in bad situation. And then Caleb Williams got Ben Johnson. And then I look at Tennessee and I'm like, okay, well, you got Brian Daboll, it's better, but is it? And it's not, it's not, he didn't get the like Chicago glow up. So I, I don't know if we're gonna see—

And they drafted Tate, who I like. Yeah, I think he was last year's— would've been a good 2-minute Twitter video of all of his great throws and be like, Cam Ward was a problem. And he just had like, what, like 10 incredible throws? And that was really—

it was like weirdly unbelievable against Seattle and Kansas City.

Yeah, there's something there. I'm in on Cam Ward. I just think for the exercise of this year—

no, I get it.

And I had, I had to have— I had 9 quarterbacks that were a 0 or a -2 because I feel like if you're getting— if you, if you don't have— if you're in the bottom 25% of the position with your quarterbacks, I can't give you points. Um, anyway, CJ Stroud, here's the thing with CJ. I know And he might be a 4 or 5 pointer by the end of the year. Here's the thing, and we talked about this when I did your pod, this is the best defense in the league. Yeah. There's a real case that they could just run through and the, and if he could just, can he drive the car 58 miles an hour on the highway? I don't even need you to go 60, just keep it straight. Yeah. And you're gonna have the lead. Your defense is gonna, you're gonna be up 10-nothing. 13-nothing. It's a little like the Seahawks in a lot of the games last year where—

Yeah, for the entire second half of the Seahawks season, 13-3, 14-0.

You're just— don't screw it up. And I think he'll gain confidence as the year goes along because of how good the defense is.

So my hope is that he doesn't come back from the playoff disaster with too much of a just ride the car mentality. Like, I don't want him to be too conservative, you know what I mean? Because of the, like, every—

so you want him in the carpool lane every once in a while, just airing it out? Nico Collins, man.

And he throws like a beautiful deep ball. Like, I just think he has to find that balance. I mean, the postseason was insane, but I don't— he's not a game manager quarterback. I really don't think he is.

Like, I, I feel— so you think he's a hitter? He's like a 3-point shooter in basketball. Like, he's— I think he's a heat checker.

I think If I was ranking him, where'd you have him? 20? Yeah, I had him—

25 or something? No, I had him higher than that.

Okay, sorry. So I would put him in, personally, he's in my like 12 to 15 range.

Wow. So you really— I'm high on him.

I think he's really talented.

This is good. I like this. So you dumped Herbert for love and CJ Stroud is now— Dumped Herbert. I'd still keep Herbert. CJ Stroud is now your rescue QB.

He is my rescue. That's a great term.

I've adopted CJ Stroud. I love that. Yes, I will. I'm CJ Stroud's foster mom.

We need to post one of those videos where there's like a time-lapse video of like me giving him a bath. That's weird. Um, Daniel Jones, I don't know. That's a hard one with the injury.

Jackson Dart, who knows. Uh, Bryce Young, is he a 2 or a 0 for you, man?

I don't know. I hate— I, I hate talking about— I don't hate talking about the Panthers, but They were such a psychotic team last year, right? Like he would get it up for the Rams more than once. Yeah. And then look abysmal against divisional opponents. And I don't know where the truth is.

Maybe the worst guy to bet on or against game to game last year.

You just stay away.

Like fucking potluck. No. Mm-hmm. There was a lot of buzz about him in the training camp. Now I should mention the Panthers training camp. It's like they moved that thing outside the San Francisco practice field and moved it to Carolina. They've already had like 5 injuries. Horrible vibes. Yeah, horrible vibes. That's— they are on my bad vibes list along with San Francisco so far. Um, okay. And then for the zeros, Cousins, Mendoza, Kyler. I have Rodgers as a zero. I, I think he can fool you a couple games, but I just think over the course of 17 games, I, I don't see it. Um, could he go 9-8 and sneak in the playoffs? Sure. Malik Willis, Cam Ward, Brissett, who had the successful hold in, congrats to him. Um, I have them all zero. I don't, I can't give points for any of those. And then the minus twos were Watson, Sanders, uh, Geno Smith, and then Tua Penix were the three.

Someone on Sandoz's thing had Rodgers as a Tier 1 quarterback. Yeah, I know.

There were just games where he couldn't physically do anything.

I, I just, the funny thing about him is like I feel like he's— he actually still can throw it downfield at times, or, and make difficult like seam throws and whatnot. He just so clearly doesn't want to get hit. So that's why, you know, the average depth of target is like right lowest in football. Yeah, he's gonna— he's either gonna dirt it or throw it away if pressure's coming. And it's just so— it just affects the entire offense. I do think they've improved the circumstances around him, but I think you're— that's fair. I, like I told you, I'm higher on Ward. Willis is a bummer because if he was in a better situation, I would, I could make an argument for him, but it's hard.

The Rodgers thing, anytime they went against a good defense, it just felt like they just played up on the line knowing that he wanted to get rid of the ball in 2 seconds or less. It was a little like the 2 on the Dolphins, and there was no plan B if he couldn't find the— and it was so frustrating. Like, I remember the Pats lost to them, and it's like, just, he's just gonna get rid of the ball in a second.

Like, I know, just, you just gotta tackle. Literally, when you're, when Steelers games last year, I'd be like, just somebody tackle. And if they played, it was, if they played defenses that were bad at tackling, they could move the ball. If they played defenses that were good at tackling, it was nothing. And that was pretty much it.

Who's your favorite backup QB before we go?

Like the best?

Who's your favorite? Who's your like, I've been quietly stockpiling stock on this guy just in case. Mine is Davis Mills.

I can't do that. Um, I mean, I know I'm not using this to detract from Purdy because I do think there's a difference, but Mac Jones was legitimately quite good last year when he played. That's fair. Where are you? Like, yeah, I was gonna say, like, did— have you gotten over it? Are you ready to root for his success?

I always root for Mac, but it's just— it's— listen, this is the problem with this position, is you can be in the wrong situation and it's like going to the wrong high school in an '80s movie. It just can just go horribly from day one, or you can be in an awesome situation and everything's, everything's peachy.

The funny thing with the Niners is like, I mean, it was just Kyle. Like, they were losing guys too when Mack was out there, but it didn't matter because Shanahan's so good. I think you're right. That's one of the sneaky biggest things to mo— is like, how's Shanahan this season? Because he's such such a difference maker for them. Um, yeah, that was a bummer. Mac, Mac is my choice. Is there someone you like better?

Do you have a backup crush? Mine, David. I've always been a Davis supporter.

Um, sticking your neck out for Davis. There's still—

I, I still have some Tyler Huntley stock. I know he's bounced around and had some swings, but I don't know, there's, there's, there's been— he's had moments where I always wonder Does Mendoza count as a backup right now? When do we see Mendoza? Sooner rather than— you think it's gonna be like a Drake May thing?

Drake May thing? It's literally every first round quarterback.

Drake May was like, yeah, we don't know, and then it was like week 4.

Every time. When does that not happen? Yeah, right. Like, I, I just—

I think Mendoza would be a plus too. I think he'll be better. I like him better. Um, coming out of the gate because he's older and, you know, smart guy. All right, Mina Kimes, are you doing Rams preseason games?

Not doing the Rams preseason. I am traveling some for— now that we're with NFL Network, I'm on the boots on the ground. I'm actually going to Seattle on Friday. Speaking of backups, I'll see— there's some Jalen Milroe hype, so I'll evaluate that firsthand. I like him. Um, but I've done You came on my pod for the Power Hour. People should check that out. It was really fun. Got the Simmons bump. Oh, Simmons bump. A real legit— it looks— you can see it in the little charts. Uh, me and Comic Show featuring Lenny, we're wrapping up our division previews and then we start, start our season coverage. And then also, yeah, check out the Hot Quarterbacks Ranking, even though we spoiled it for you. Sorry.

I was trying to do a rewatchables in Seattle because I love Seattle and just the theaters are taken for like 3 years. I don't know what's going on there.

They do a lot of—

Hey, Seattle, we try, we tried to do a rewatchables, but you have nothing available ever. So sorry. Make it happen, someone.

All right.

Good to see you, Mina. Thank you. I'll see you soon. All right, we're gonna talk baseball. Billy Gill is here. Anthony DeBundo is here. Before we start, Billy Gill just talked, uh, football with Mina for an hour. She claims that if you went on the street in Miami and asked people to name 3 wide receivers in the plans for the Dolphins, people wouldn't be able to do it. So I figured, you're right here, can you name 3 Dolphins receivers who might have 30 catches this year?

Oh, who might have 30 catches? I was just trying to name 3 Dolphins wide receivers.

Yeah, uh, can you name 3 Dolphins wide receivers?

Malik Washington is on the Dolphins still, right? Uh, Tutu Atwell, right? Didn't they just sign him?

Yeah, they have Tutu, right? All right. Oh, oh man, this is— the bundle— this is amazing. They have completely shorted the wide receiver position in an attempt to get the number 1 pick.

Well, here's the thing, I only know because I did AFC East prep first this year. Yeah, on Friday on the game.

It's the 3rd one. Give me a 3rd one.

Malik Washington's on the, on the Dolphins. He said it already. That was the one. Oh, you said him?

2-2. Atwell, Tolbert. Tolbert. Jaylen Tolbert.

Yes, Jaylen Tolbert. Oh, Dolphins.

Bill's getting his book.

He's getting the book out. My Warren Sharpe here that I've been doing. Steelers research earlier today.

Jaylen Tolbert. Okay. All right, we're talking, uh, we're talking baseball. Trade deadline yesterday. Um, this is the farewell baseball season until it comes back in 2031. Are the Dodgers ruining baseball? I have thoughts on this, but this has been the big topic since the Schubel trade, that this is now unfair and we almost have to have a lockout to regroup after this. DeBundo, you think no.

I do think no.

I think we've all gotten a little bit out of control here. I mean, if you want to argue that the Dodgers have certain advantages that could be legislated out, I would probably agree with that. But why? Because they traded some prospects for Tariq Schubel? Other teams had opportunities to do that. And if your argument is that they're ruining the competitive balance of baseball, did we not watch the last two playoffs? Like, even though they were seen as the best team, they were the 3 seed in the playoffs last year. They had to win a wildcard series. They won a toss-up series with Philly. They needed a miraculous comeback to win the World Series. Two years ago, they were down 2-1 and had to pitch a bullpen game in Game 4 against San Diego because they had no pitching. And right now, I understand in hypotheticals they might have the best playoff rotation of all time, but right now Ohtani's not pitching, Glasnow's not pitching, Snell's not pitching, and they're starting Eric Lauer, you know, regularly. So it's not like they didn't have a need, and I understand why.

And my team just swept them, right?

They've lost 4 in a row since they broke the sport.

It's crazy, Billy. My thing with baseball, it's not like basketball where it's like, oh We signed this guy to a max deal and the guy's usually good. He's one of the top 40 guys in the league. In baseball, like, the Mets have been spending money like crazy and it doesn't matter at all. And a lot of times you get these dudes and they're somewhere between 28 and 32, you give them a ton of money and their career's already peaked. So I—

well, I mean, it's kind of what's happened with Kyle Tucker this year, right?

Like, he is not worth like $60 million or whatever annually.

It's not kind of, he got booed at the game I went to on Saturday.

Well, I listen, Dodgers fans have no right to boo anything. Okay. Like the idea that they think that they should be upset about anything and they should be entitled to boo people is absolutely insane. Because what is his, what is his salary actually? Right. Cause like his is also like prolonged. So it's not $60 million they're paying him. They're probably paying like $2 million. Like he's fine for a $2 million a year player. And to answer your question that you didn't ask me. Yeah. They're ruining baseball. Yeah. So you're ruining.

So you're, and you're in Florida where the Marlins have. You know, you did win 2 World Series, but you're also, you've been sellers a lot and then you've been buyers and you've been sellers again. But so you hate this, you're in the same league with them too.

Well, I mean, so I hated the Yankees and I thought the Yankees ruined baseball growing up as a child because they would always go get whatever free agent was out there and it was like, okay, this is not fun. This is not fair. They can just do whatever they want. Right. They didn't actually ruin baseball. I mean, they went on their run, they had their dynasty there in the middle. And then it kind of just all fell apart when George went away and Cashman hasn't really been able to figure things out. And the Yankees aren't really the Yankees they were when I was growing up. Like, the Dodgers have now become the new Yankees, but the Dodgers— the problem with the Dodgers is that they don't really have a weakness that we can find in terms of, like, how they're running their organization because they have a great farm system. They have all of the money in the world. They can throw the money at people, but if it doesn't work out, then they could just trade away pieces and they're still loaded and they can go out and get more people. Analytically, they're looking ahead of other teams.

Like they just, there's no way around it. And I don't know if you guys have seen this. So like one of the things that's been going around is because we're trying to figure out like, well, how are the Dodgers doing it? Clearly they're cheating one way or another. Jun Lee had this video that he put out in the offseason that was detailing what an advantage the Dodgers have with their TV deal that other organizations don't, because it went, it goes back to the McCourt, like bankruptcy of the Dodgers. So the Dodgers declared bankruptcy. They then had agreed to sell the team and they reached a deal with Major League Baseball because they had declared bankruptcy where instead of paying the, you know, standard, like 33% of revenue sharing from their TV deal, they would only pay around 10%. And that would be for the duration of their TV contract. So they ended up signing a massive TV deal that was something like $8 billion over 25 years or something. So instead of paying, you know, the 33% of that, which would amount to like $95 to $100 million a year, they end up paying closer to $30 million.

So they're already having $60 million that they would not— just goes to Kyle Tucker. Yeah. Well, it goes to Kyle Tucker and they'll pay him that in like 2040 or something. And here's the problem.

Well, but they also have the Japan money too, because they're, they're basically like a double team. They have a whole Japan fan base and a California fan base.

This is going to collapse at some point, right? Like it will be in like 2039, 2040 when now their TV deal runs out. They have to have a new deal. They're going to go to the 33% instead of the 10%. So they lose that extra $66 million. And then, by the way, I think this season have like 55% of their salaries deferred. They're going to be paying all of these guys like 2035 to 2040. And at a certain point, if there is a lockout this year, which everyone will blame the Dodgers for, if there's a lockout and then there's a salary cap imposed, which I don't see how they're actually going to do that, even though people want that. But if they do in fact impose a salary cap, this will blow up in the Dodgers' face at some point in time because they're going to owe all of these people all of this money. And I don't know how they're going to be able to keep up with this. Because when Ohtani retires, which, you know, is way down the road, then unless they have like a pipeline where they keep bringing in Japanese talent, there's this increased interest.

That's a possibility. In Japan. I mean, it is, it is possible.

But they become the team you go to if you're an awesome Japanese player.

But we thought that about the Mariners, you know, 15 years ago when Ichiro was there. Right. And it didn't actually end up panning out that way. Like Ichiro was kind of like this unique guy. And then when Ohtani went to the Angels, we thought like, oh wow, this is going to be great for the Angels, but it's the Angels. So they mismanaged that situation entirely. Including not getting anything for him and just letting him walk away, like down the street to his, you know, crosstown team. It, it's insane. I don't know if we're going to get to the Angels. I don't understand the Angels as an organization.

We're going to get to them later. I'm going to give you my take. They're old too. The Dodgers. Yeah, they're old now. Well, I mean, so my, here's my take. I don't mind it. I like having super teams. We see it in soccer too. I think a lot of the times it doesn't work out. I think the only sport where it can really be damaging is if we had this in the NBA, which we briefly had, and then they put in all the second apron stuff. But I think half the time these deals are too long. You end up getting a guy who has all this pressure on him, who's all of a sudden making this crazy amount of money, and he goes sideways. Like, Tucker, even like the Mookie trade, which is the worst trade of my lifetime, Mookie has how many years left to bundle? Like 7, 6, 7 on his deal. Quite a few. And he's not— he hasn't played well for like a year and a half, right? And they're, they're paying him $30 million, $35 million down the road. But I, in general, I like having the team you have to beat where it's like, here's the superpower, we have to take them down.

This was the Yankees in the 2000s. And by the way, they didn't win until 2009. I think in baseball you can beat these teams, so I'm okay with it. I like complaining about it.

The thing that's not fun though is that they're so smart and they have the young talent that they can kind of just plug in or whenever they have a hole, if it doesn't work out, like Kyle Tucker didn't work out and he got booed and what? It doesn't matter. Like they'll still be favorites to make it to the World Series. Mookie, by the way, is under contract with the Dodgers until 2032. Like he becomes a free agent in 2033. So there's still like 7 years, 6, 7 years of Mookie left. Right. And then Dodgers Hall of Famer or Red Sox Hall of Famer?

Dodgers. Yeah, he's one more, he's one more World Series with the Dodgers. Um, 3 now, maybe 4.

Mookie's 33, Muncie's 35, Teoscar's 33, Ohtani's 31, Freddie 36.

By the way, really fun team to go see in person, which is like every guy that comes over like, hey, that guy, oh, that, you know. Um, and when we, I went Saturday night, but when, when the Red Sox swept them, it felt like a real achievement. It's like, yeah, we've— the Saturday night game, which the Red Sox kind of tried to throw away because they, they thought that was the game they were gonna get smoked. And then all of a sudden, because Contreras was out, and they beat them, and it felt like a real achievement. Next question, the, uh, the Adley trade the Red Sox made, where you have this guy you're trading for and they gave up a bunch of prospects. There's some debate about how great those prospects actually were. There was only one guy and Keith Laws, top 50. But, um, you're trading for a guy who you have for this year and then next year, and then he's a free agent. There might not be a next year. So you're trading all this stuff for a guy, it might be 2 months, and then next year might not even happen.

Would you— the bundle— would you even have gone all in on these guys when you don't know if next season's even happening?

Uh, I talked to a couple of front office people. They said that that led to a lot more controllable guys getting dealt this offseason— this trade deadline, rather— because they felt that those medium-term deals might not have the kind of value they normally would have, and thus they were more likely to move them. And I think that was especially the case with Rutschman, where one, he's already kind of getting pressed out for playing time. Yeah, Pacio coming up and maybe being better. Two, He hasn't been very healthy the last few years, and he's played through injury and missed time. And 3, like, did he want to re-sign with the Orioles even if there was baseball next year? I'm not so sure. So, like, I understand why Orioles fans are upset, and I wrote about this for The Ringer. Like, yeah, it feels like they're asking us to trust the prospects again and pushing the can down the road. But I'm not sure what Adley's actual value was to Baltimore anymore, but I think it's very clear what his value is to Boston.

Well, he's a, but if he's healthy, he's a top 5 catcher, which was the single worst part of the team. Billy, what happens? The Marlins have done this a few times, the rebuild, but then it's another, the rebuild's supposed to pay off and it doesn't. So now you're in the re-rebuild.

What do we call this?

I mean, this is called my life as a baseball fan. So this is how it works is you go out, you get these guys, you develop them, it doesn't end up working out. So then you say, you know what, these pieces just don't fit together. But like, we're like, trust us, we're going to, we're going to really make it right this next time around. And then it just becomes like an endless cycle where you kind of trust them. And then what, in my lifetime, what happens is then the, you know, owner eventually sells the team, makes a giant profit, they leave, the new owner comes in and says, you know what, none of this is going to work out. Trust us, we're new to town, we're going to fix this situation. And then they end up going and they end up trading people. Do you guys think, to go back to your question that you ask about the trades and, you know, whether it's worth it or not, do you think there's teams that made trades taking on contracts thinking, you know what, maybe I don't have to worry about this contract next year. Like I could be taking on money that I may not have to pay if there is a lockout.

And it led to teams thinking like, let's be overly aggressive because this felt like a very aggressive trade deadline compared to past years where teams were going for it, or teams were saying, you know what, I think the weirder part where the team's kind of like right on the fringes there of like the third wildcard spot, they're like, ah, I'm not going for it anymore. Like, I'm going to just take some prospects.

We're 2 games out, 3 games out. It's not worth it.

That was the Luis Castillo trade. Because on paper, and I, we're in first place in our AL Cooper League. So I'm, Castillo was one of the 40 pitchers we've been studying. Like Castillo's kind of washed, and he was making, you know, I think he was making like $22 million this year. Next year, they actually— the Mariners got a prospect back, got them to dump, got them to take the entire contract. It's like, that's crazy, you're taking 2 years of Castillo. But then, like what Billy said, yeah, maybe you're taking 2 months of Castillo, right? And there might not be baseball next year, and then you're not paying anything.

Well, for the White Sox fans too, I think that trade was more like look, we're, we're going for it. Even though like Luis Castillo is not gonna probably be a difference maker. He would not have been on my list. Oh, I mean, he's been on my fantasy team and it's been a disaster, but like, he's a guy that's a name. So it's kind of like if you're a White Sox fan, you're going through all these years of hell as a White Sox fan, you're like, wow, like this is a guy that they're getting. Like, I'd recognize this name. He was good once. Maybe, you know, a change of scenery will do it for him.

Right. I, I like the Adley trade, but the, Prospect of a lockout followed by having to give him like a crazy amount of money after the lockout. It's a little concerning.

But, but I, I feel like you, you gotta push chips in though.

We have to.

Look at the American League right now. We have to.

This was gonna be my next question. The Red Sox could go from being the worst team in the American League to being the AL champs in a 4-month span. Right now on FanDuel, they have the 3rd best odds to win the AL. They're 6-to-1. By the way, the Yankees are the favorite at +220. We might not see Aaron Judge again this year. This has been the elephant in the fucking room, right? And the way they talk about it is like, no, no, it's, it's progressing. It's like all this like Goobly-Dook with it. Like, it's just, yeah, he's, he, it should be good. He's progressing well. He's got like a major rib injury and he's a 6-foot-7 guy who weighs £280. And I don't, I don't I don't think we're gonna see him again.

Do you, Debundo? Jacko doesn't either.

He was tweeting about it. Jacko is convinced that they're lying about this. They're hiding. He's more hurt than, than they think and all that. I mean, the Yankees still have the 3 starters, or those guys are back now, and that's still the scariest thing in the American League is those 3 guys in a row in a playoff series.

But they're bottom 10 in offense. Judge got hurt, right? And they didn't push any chips in, right? Every player that they went for They didn't do the bullpen upgrades, which you normally would do if you were pushing in for this year. Yeah, they got two players who are going to be on the roster next year with Garcia and Ramos. It felt like a little bit of a let's not burn our prospects chasing 2026 if we don't know that Aaron Judge is going to be back. Maybe he's back for the playoffs, but how healthy is he, right? In theory, he'd have missed 4 months by then, right? He hasn't done any baseball activities.

So I, I think the Yankees' actions speak a whole lot louder than their words with regards You weren't excited about Luis Garcia Jr.'s home run yesterday earning his pinstripes?

First game, I actually slapped Ben Glickman and then 5 minutes later the bullpen gave up 5 runs.

That was one of the games of the year. They were up, they were down 6-nothing, came back, took 7-6 lead and then gave up 7 runs in an inning.

And the same pitcher got lit up right after. He was terrible.

Um, this Yankees-Red Sox, so the Red Sox, the thing flipped when they swept the Yankees at the end of June, right? And then Contreras got into it with the Nationals, and all of a sudden it's going. I will say this because this Red Sox thing has made no sense as it's happening, and I've actually been watching the entire time as this has been happening, and I— it doesn't— I was even— I went with— I took my wife to the Dodger game, and I'm like, yeah, this guy Monasterio, like, he'll have a big hitter in this game. I have no explanation for it. This guy's 29 and his He's got like a 190 batting average career. But their bullpen's really good. And they, they got the Giants lefty, which they finally gave up on Marcelo Meyer, which I think Red Sox fans had already given up. But this, this Red Sox, they have this bullpen now that if they can just get to like the 6th, 7th inning, they did this against the Dodgers, they can just keep bringing guys out that hold the lead if they have a one-run lead. I'm actually, Billy, I'm, I'm, I'm weirdly optimistic.

I can't explain it. If you still feel the way you once felt about the Red Sox, especially like with the Yankees, like, do you still hate the Yankees the same way?

That just with every bone in my body. Really? Yeah. Like I have the Yankees on, I'll have the 3 TVs. I always have the Yankees on a TV to root, hoping they lose and hoping, like yesterday was a dream. Just this guy's just getting bombed. They leave him out. The crowd's going nuts. Another guy comes up, another 2-run homer. It was awesome. But, um, I do think—

matters too, Bill. You got the wildcard race here.

Well, here, this is maybe a division race. This is one of the questions I had for you. Like, who do you like in the American League? I know you— I know you guys are both National League guys, but you go through and like, the White Sox are +950 to win the pennant. No, Texas is 16-1. And probably they tried to sell, right? Cleveland's 11 to 1, Seattle's 8 to 1. That, like, everybody thought they might completely gut the team. Really, it's a 3-team race with a wild card that might come out of nowhere between Seattle, Houston, young White Sox. Cleveland kind of dabbled around the edges. I don't know about them in Texas, but if you had to pick a team to bundle, who would be the out of nowhere team in August and September?

It's still Seattle if you base off priors. All my Seattle buddies have given up. They were— they kind of soft sold with Castillo, but again, I thought they were just dumping salary there. And then they, they have prospects that can call up. Your guy Cade is in waiting to probably come out of the bullpen and potentially save their, their middle relief in the playoffs because they're really shorthanded there. This offense, I mean, it's, it's like looking around at Josh Naylor. Hey man, you gonna hit anytime soon? Cal Raleigh, you gonna do something.

All-time flip season.

Although he had, he almost like, that's the team. And the way the bracket sets up, Tampa Bay, whoever wins the division is going to be the 1 seed, then 4 or 5 is going to be the other 2, Boston, New York probably. So they're on, going to be on one half of the bracket. So you have one of the winners of the West or the Central has to be in the ALCS, and I'm not sure any of them are any good. I mean, again, Texas tried to trade DeGrom Yeah, the White Sox feel like a year early. They've had a great season, but I don't think their, their bullpen is, is competitive long-term in a playoff series. It's like Cleveland, maybe, because they've done it before.

They have an ace and a closer, Cleveland, at least.

So I don't like anybody except maybe Seattle.

I had Seattle too. I was surprised the odds were that high. The Kade piece is a wild card. Kade's having like one of the great minor league seasons in the history of baseball. He— Keith Law made him the number 1 prospect on his revised list last week, and he said it was the first time he's ever had a pitcher first, which seems notable. And he's gonna come in, I think, August 15th. He's on our keeper team. We really need him. And it seems like they're just gonna use him as that— this guy that will come up every once in a while in the playoffs, the young phenom guy who doesn't start but has these big innings, like, you know, and, and just is in the mix. And it seems like they're saving him for that, but they still have to actually get to the playoffs. Billy, is it, is it fair to be scared of Texas even though they're 16-1? Um, like, they're bad. They've had some injuries. They have a— I think they play 12 of their next 19 at home. Texas in August is always a nightmare. They have Evaldi, they have DeGrom.

Like, I, I still have my eye on them as like a sleeper.

I mean, it's hard to trust them when they have a -40 run differential, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I guess things could turn around, but they're only a couple games out of the wildcard, but not that run differential is, you know, end-all be-all, but it is kind of telling. It's like, if you're that much of a difference, how much of this is kind of like you've been getting lucky here that you're in the position that you're in? You know what I mean? Like, if you go down, you look at a team like the Tigers, Tigers are +63. They're only a half game behind them, but there's so many teams. I mean, the AL really, like you were saying, has a couple teams at the top and then it's somewhat wide open. The rest of the way, and it's gonna kind of be like, who wants it more? You see what Skip Schumacher did the other day, by the way, since we're talking about Texas manager of the Texas Rangers, he was going out there, it was a game against the Astros on Sunday and it was the 7th inning. They ran out of challenges so they couldn't, you know, challenge the strike zone anymore.

Goes out, starts arguing with the umpire, but it's the 7th inning. Take me out the ballgame happens, whatever. Then God Bless America starts. Oh, so Skip Schumacher And the umpire both, you know, turn, take off their caps respectfully, sit through God Bless America. Then they go turn back around, put the hats back on and go right back at it. Got 'em tossed outta the game immediately after.

That's awesome. I love baseball, man.

Only in baseball can these things happen.

Yeah.

I took the Phillies wanted a walk-off ABS last night.

It was great. Ooh. Yeah. I took my wife Saturday. We hadn't been to a baseball game in a couple years and we did the Take Me Out to the Ballgame. First of all, she had a great time. It was a great date. But to take me out to the ballgame and she was just like, is this the best tradition in any sport?

Does she do the 1, 2, 3 strikes you out? No, we did the hand.

We do the, we do, we yelled Red Sox when it's a, and it's root, root, root for the, for the Dodgers. We, we yelled Red Sox. Red Sox. Yeah. She did not do the hand for the 1, 2, 3. No. But it, I was wondering, does basketball need this? Could there be at the 6-minute timeout, could there be something that unites the crowd?

Do they need like their own mini song?

Yeah, something. Let's see. Could something happen there? Just something more organic though, right before crunch time. Just something.

I guess not. I think it's better if it's team specific. Like we saw this at the World Cup, even like certain teams had their songs or their moves or their— yeah, the drumming or the rowing or whatever.

Wonderwall was revived. Um, right. By the way, I really missed the World Cup. It was like a real void. Then the next, like, when there weren't games every day, it was, it was like withdrawal almost.

I'm getting an MLS bill, doing it for the first time in like 10 years. I'm, I'm, I've been locked in. The Union have won 3 in a row. Trying to, trying to fill the void somehow.

I don't see this thing. Um, I've made a decision on the Premier League, by the way, because I am getting back this year. Yeah. I'm gonna announce now, or should I save this? Uh, I'm gonna go back to Tottenham. Let's go! Yeah, yeah. I had my buddy David Nyman who lives out here, is a huge Tottenham fan, and he sent me— he's, and he's like a very nice, like, gentle, congenial guy, never gets mad. He sent me a long text, he's like, what the fuck, you can't switch teams, you picked a team. You have to come back. We'll watch games. This will be great. And I was like, all right. So I'm doing some— I'll be leaning on you, Debundo, but I'm doing some recon. I will be going back. This is my official announcement, Billy. I will be returning to Tottenham Hotspur.

Honored to have been here for this. Sound the alarms, baby. It's celebration time. This is it. The first biggest problem is they don't have any stars right now. They need another star to galvanize around. It was Kane, it was Son, it was Dele. Now it's like, I don't know, Richarlison and, uh, well, they need me this year.

They need some, some star power. Need more celebrity fans. Who else do we have? Who are the celebrity fans right now? Uh, other than me and the Bundo? Adele. Steve Nash still into it? Adele? I think he is. Adele, like a real fan or a fake fan?

That, that's up for interpretation. I know someone could ask who.

Rich.

I could ask Rich. I'll ask him. Does Adele still care? I mean, she, she lives here now, right? Anyway, I'm back.

What's their, what's their coach situation? You guys happy with the coach, Billy? You wanna bring in a coach of your own now that you go to Tottenham and say, you know what, like, I, I have my eye on the soccer situation. I got some pull here as a celebrity fan. I'm gonna save this organization and bring in a coach.

Yeah. Who do I suggest, DeBundo? Who's my guy? I'm sorry.

The, the coach that Tottenham fans would want back has just signed a 4-year extension Yeah, with the US men's national team.

So we are—

oh, I saw that Pochettino was our guy for many years. Now we have De Zerbi. He's an— he's a very intense Italian man. Uh, he doesn't take shit from anybody. He's been known to accost his players in training, and that has run him out of a couple of jobs in the past. But, uh, he's a damn good coach, so we're happy about that.

National jobs are like full-time jobs. Like, you can't go coach, you know, like in the NBA.

Like, you can't coach another team. I agree. I thought that was weird. I don't know how that's his only thing that he does. Like, what does he do for the next year? Yeah, just looks at under-17 footage.

That's weird.

They're supposed to, like, travel around to see the players in person. It's like a— it's like when you want to take a vacation but you still want to get paid lots of money, you go coach an international game. And so we've actually seen a lot more of the club guys, especially since there's fewer top club jobs open. They just are like, well, you know, I'll go coach Brazil or I'll go coach England or I'll go coach the USA, for example.

Now Pacho signed on for 4 more years. Yeah, it was, it's funny going through the entire World Cup and getting excited about America and be like, ah, and then it gets to like the last few games and the skill level is so dramatically better. It's like, oh my God, what were we thinking? Like Spain, Spain's connecting on 58 passes in a row. It's like, what were we even thinking? We had a chance against anybody.

Why aren't we good as a country at soccer? Like, why can't we be better?

The Chinese Communist Revolution, Billy Gill.

I get it. All right. No, that's, that's what Chuck Close told me. That was hysterical. I got a great email that I really want to dive into at some point for real. Um, and I, I, I can't remember who sent it, but I'll, I'll give them credit when we do it about, do we designate one of the 50 states as a soccer-only state? All they have is soccer. And like, if you're good at soccer, you actually, so it's like South Dakota. It's just like, we've designated South Dakota as our soccer state and that's it. There's no other sports. You can't play basketball. You can't play football. All you have to do is play soccer from day one. And do we, and then that becomes like our little mini country within the United States. That's soccer. Billy's, I can see Billy's wheels turning on this.

I mean, I'm kind of wondering what like the ramifications might be if we're like, you know what, also no schooling. It's just soccer in this state. Like, this is what you're going to learn. There'd have to be a lot of money like thrown at, at them, right? Or do they not have a choice? Like there's just no option. You literally can't play any sport but soccer.

I don't think it's a not a choice. No, no, you, it'd be soccer only, but you could do it with a small state too. Like you could just pick Rhode Island would be tough because the weather, but you could go smaller state and just be like Rhode Island or Maine or Delaware, one of those.

But, but I, I, so we're sending kids there or are we bringing them up through this?

Yeah, this is getting problematic.

No, we're pretty crazy.

Families, it's like hockey.

Families are moving there. It's like in, in Canada how the people move to different cities. But I thought as a half-baked idea, I thought it was tremendous. Um, back to baseball.

We must. What a tangent. That was great.

Well, I had one more big baseball thing for you because you, you talked about this in, in the piece you wrote for The Ringer, Debundo. There's like 5, 5 playoff teams in the NL and you could see their odds. For Fanduel to win the pennant, the Dodgers are -115. Goes all the way through, it's Milwaukee, Atlanta, Chicago, Phillies 10-1. And then the 6th best odds are San Diego at 35-1. So we have a 5-team race basically in the National League. Is that just where we're going to end up, or is there going to be an out-of-nowhere team?

No, I think that's very much where we are. That's it. And that's what I think that kind of informed the deadline. It's like, you know, I know Billy is persona non grata on Marlins Twitter now because he's not happy with the team.

Is that true?

I upset Marlins Twitter because I wanted their manager Clayton McCullough to be fired after he took out Yuri Perez during a perfect game. It was a whole thing. I really, really upset them because this is like right when they were, you know, getting hot on their nice, you know, month of June where they were kind of showing everyone like, wow, this is like the real team. Everybody ignored the first couple months, like June, that's, that's the real team. Then there was a 12-game losing streak that like, you know, kind of derailed that whole thing. But like in the process to getting 10 games over .500, which is not common accomplishment down here for the Miami Marlins, particularly that point in the season, I was very upset at the idea of pulling Yuri Perez during an attempted perfect game. How many pitches? He had 92 pitches, but their whole thing was it was his third start back from injury, but it was a leg injury and I have lived my existence as a Marlins fan with the excuse making of we need to save these arms for October, knowing full well October is not guaranteed for the Marlins and like longevity of these players' career, as bad as this may sound, is not of my utmost concern.

Like I don't really care if they have a long and healthy, prosperous career that will get them traded to another team. I would like to see a no-hitter or perfect game. This is why I hate Don Mattingly. And Debundo, I'm sure you love Donnie Baseball because he's coming in—

no, no, really?

Yeah, you hate Don Mattingly?

I don't think I've ever disliked a Philly fan because I like to dislike Don Mattingly's managerial of the Philadelphia Phillies right now. Really still feels the same way we've discussed this on the Philly special. He— I mean, it's like a reverse nepo. His son is the GM sort of. It's a very weird power trip.

Nepo!

Yeah, hold on a second. He came in and he completely turned around your season.

Oh, they conveniently fired Rob Thompson the day before Zack Wheeler came back from injury and has pitched like a Cy Young. And, you know, all the players started playing better. I, I think, uh, that would have happened with or without the great Donnie Baseball. You know what, though?

I was gonna say, the Red Sox manager Tracy, who took over for Cora, and he's like a scramble for runs guy, which we haven't had forever. Like somebody will double and he'll, he'll bunt the guy over. Like we're like a suicide squeeze threat.

Small ball's back, Bill. It's really fucking fun.

'Cause Cora, I love it. Cora was very holier than thou about all that. And, and this guy will just be like, we're bunting people over. We, we've won games with like sacrifice, you know, 3 sacrifice bunts in, you know, the last 4 innings. And it's really fun. It's, it's energetic.

I enjoy it. There's more variance in baseball now. Bill, Ben Lernberg wrote about this, like Brewers have broken clutch hitting. Tampa Bay like invested in a bunch of dudes who hit the ball really hard but on the ground or line drives, not homers. Right. And it's worked for them. And like, you know, you got the Red Sox doing this. So there, there is more, there's more variants. The Phillies just traded for a haul for Luis Arraez who never strikes out.

And he's Billy. What would be your strategy? Would you be an all-line drives guy? Would you be a home runs and strikeouts GM?

What would you be? I like small ball. I like the stolen base. I think it's fun. Like I like the idea of a triple. Or, you know, like something happens and whoa, could we get an inside-the-park home run here? Like the home runs and the strikeouts, like they're fine, right? But like, I like the, it, it's kind of like instant gratification with the home run. Like you immediately have that feeling and then it's gone. Where like a stolen base or like a triple, or, you know, you have a team that, you know, like anything can happen here. Like this guy's gonna be like a demon on the base paths. I like that kind of baseball. That's why I don't understand why, like, why do games go beyond the 10th inning when you start with a runner on second base? With no outs. Like, it's very easy. Just move them over, bunt them over, sacrifice fly, and you score a run. But we have games going beyond the 10th all the time because there's no, like, they said just stop teaching small ball. And it's coming back now, thankfully. But we had like a generation of people who are just discovering that you can steal bases and bunt people over.

It's incredible.

You also had people when they're bunting looked like they had never attempted a bunt in their entire life. And this felt like it was like for 15 years. Just people would be like, yeah, it's second and first, no outs. They're gonna bunt 'em over. And the guy would be like holding the bat like it's like a broomstick.

Well, I mean, with the shifts, you would have like everybody on one side of the field and it's like you literally just have to put it down the third baseline and you could hit a double here. And, and nope, sure enough, you hit like right into the shift. And then there, if there is a bunt, now we have the opposite where no one knows how to field a bunt. So like if you're gonna bunt it, you're probably gonna get on because they haven't been teaching people how to—

Freddie Freeman's the only one who knows how to. Do a bunt anymore. Do you hate the Aries deal?

The bunto? I'm very lukewarm on it.

Really? Well, they moved Bryce Harper to the outfield, so for comedy's sake, it's going to be amazing.

It's literally like, all right, what position do you want to play now? You'll play third, play first, play right field. Uh, Aries adds on-base value to a team that's 28th in on-base percentage, so like, that's exciting. I'm excited to watch him hit. He's like annoying to play against and fun to have on your team. He's gotten better defensively. But like you said, you know, Bryce Harper hasn't played outfield in 5 years. He got injured last time he played the outfield. That's why he stopped playing the outfield.

This is the Aaron Judge problem too.

Yeah. And he wasn't a good outfielder in 2021, and I don't think he's going to be a very good one in 2026. And some of the metrics already say the Phillies are the worst defense in the league.

I think— I can't wait. Again, they make it a TV for me. I can't wait to watch them play defense.

I went down an Aria's rabbit hole yesterday for you to Bundo, but I wanted to save it to talk to you today because I don't like, what is this guy's deal that no team wants him? He's about to win. He potentially could win if he keeps his average up his 4th batting title for his 4th different team. Like he just is constantly moved because all he does is get on base and that's essentially it. I was like, how in the history of baseball, how many people do you think have won 4 batting titles that are not in the Hall of Fame? Do you, do you know off the top of your head? You wouldn't know that.

No, I would be amazed if there were.

I used to know things like this. So how many have won 4 batting titles for 4 teams?

I don't think that anyone has. That has to be a record. So there's one guy that has 3 batting titles that is not in the Hall of Fame, and that's Pete Rose. But I don't think it has anything to do with his play. And then there's a guy that has 4 batting titles, not Pete Rose.

Fuck yeah, all these guys should be in. This is ridiculous. What's the point of the Hall of Fame? I say this all the time.

Watching the history, you're watching the history of baseball here by not including There he is.

Please come on.

Put like, make his plaque like— separate wing. Yeah. Make his plaque, put on the plaque what he did. Like we want our kids to learn about the past.

We're gonna pretend he didn't happen. Like he's in there.

He just doesn't have the plaque. I like the punishment. I'm very unpopular on this situation, but like the fact that like, I know this eats at Barry Bonds and I know this eats at Roger Clemens. Like I kind of like it. You know?

Why can't we put it, why can't we have like a basement and it's not nice. Ah, the lighting's not good. You're like going in a dungeon. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Cheaters. Yeah. Wait a minute.

And gamblers. I have an idea. Yeah. What if we put up their plaques like in an infirmary? You know what I mean? Like if somewhere inside the Hall of Fame there's like a first aid station where you can go and you can get like all the drugs or whatever. And then in there there's like a whole wall with like the Palmeros and the Maguires and everyone. But like you have to go into like, a place where they're gonna sell you drugs or give you like medication. Can I go one step further?

Put 'em in the bathrooms. Oh, there's like 15 guys, there's 15 bathrooms. Each bathroom, there's just like the Barry Bonds plaque next to where you dry your hands.

But like in the bathroom, or like would you put a plaque like as a urinal in the toilet?

Yeah. Like over the urinal?

Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Like in the urinal, like the urinal casing that catches it so it doesn't like splash back. It's like all of Barry Bonds' stats or whatever.

You know, I think there's something here. Listen, Barry Bonds is the best left fielder I've ever seen in person. I can't believe he's not in the Hall of Fame.

It bothers him. It's fine. Look, he cheated, right? Like, we know he cheated. He did it. He got the stats, which is what he wanted. He got the money, which he was going to get anyways. Why not take this little thing from him knowing that it's just going to drive him crazy that it can't go in there? Like Pete Rose. Pete Rose is obviously like an extreme situation because like it was literally all he cared about. And then he died. So it's like, he's never going to see this now. Yeah. And then immediately after being like, you know what, maybe it's time for Pete. It's like, ah, guys, this doesn't mean anything to Pete anymore. Like, he's gone. He's not going to be there signing autographs anymore. Anyways, back to what I was telling you. There's one guy that has 4 batting titles, not in the Hall of Fame. It's this guy, Bill Mad Dog Madlock. Do you know him?

Oh yeah. The Cubs. Yeah.

So he wins 4 batting titles. He has a career .300 average. He was good. He has World Series that he won with the Pirates. He didn't even get 5% of the Hall of Fame vote and was gone off the ballot after one year because apparently he was so difficult with the media and he was such a jerk to like umpires that I guess they sent him this point. I mean, he has over 2,000 hits, but it was like 1,800 games. So it's not the best, but in a baseball season now where you have like 5 guys hitting over .300, the idea that you have a career .300 hitter with 4 batting titles that didn't even make the second year ballot in the Hall of Fame is crazy. In 1996, so '93 was when he was up. They, they, he didn't make it past. In '96, the, like veterans committee or whatever, the Baseball Writers Association, they got together and petitioned for him and like 3 other guys, including Larry Boa, who didn't make a second year after, a second year of, of election. They wanted to put like 5 guys back on the ballot who had gotten the 5%.

They approved it, then the ballot came out and they changed their mind. They just left him off the ballot. So they said, you know what, we approved this, but no, we're not going to ever vote you into the Hall of Fame.

Garvey's the biggest miss for me. When I was a kid, Garvey was the best first baseman for like a decade. I don't understand how he's not in. Well, Don Mattingly's not in either, right?

He's another guy. He didn't—

his peak was— he had the great peak, but his career I don't think was long enough. I had another topic for you guys. I watched 4 Red Sox games when they played the A's in Sacramento. I love that. I kind of loved it.

I love Sacramento and I love— it was really fun. I love when they played in Las Vegas and everything was flying out.

Like, that stadium was— there was parts of the outfield where the ball would fly out and then other parts where you had no chance. And it just, it felt like more of— it felt like, honestly, like a AA game. It was crazy to watch on TV. On like a, you know, a nice widescreen TV in HD. And it was like, it seemed like people were at like the park and not like at a baseball game.

When they would hit the home run, it would be so like hilariously over the fence that it's like, yeah, like this ball just went 480 feet somehow and it went 2 parking lots over.

It kept you on your toes every single at-bat. 'Cause it was like literally anybody could hit a home run. But I don't know, I kind of, I kind of enjoyed the vibe.

The other funny thing is where the clubhouses are located. Yeah. Is different from a normal, like, Major League setup. So last year when Katsai got thrown out of a game, he had to do, like, the walk of shame down the third baseline. So he, like, milked the walk. He's, like, walking super slowly because he just wants to make his point clear that he shouldn't have gotten thrown out. And then he, you know, he went, he veered off down the left field line, I guess, where the, the, the medical, the clubhouse is. It was so funny.

It was such a weird series because we had we traded for Curtis Meade, and then he got hit the second time he went up on the hand. He had like a suit of armor on. It was, it was like 3 inches of his body where a ball could have actually hit his flesh and somehow ends up breaking the wrist. So it turned into the Aaron Rodgers Jets game of Aaron Rodgers coming out with the flag and getting— that was it. He's gone. That was our big, one of our big trade deadline moves.

The, the Sacramento crowds are also kind of great because they're not really invested. Like, they're going out and they really like it. Yeah, they're hanging. A's mean nothing to them. So they're going out. Out there just to have fun. The perfect game that I was telling you about, Yuri Perez, that I upset Marlins Twitter. So they take him out of the game. This is in Sacramento. The A's fan or the road team that's being no-hit and hasn't even gotten on base is just letting the Marlins manager have it for the rest of the game. They're all in unison just chanting shame at him over and over again. So the game's going on and you just hear chants of shame, shame, Shame. And they're like pointing at him and he's like on the top step. Eventually he's like, I gotta like get back in the dugout here. But they were letting him have it for 3 straight innings cuz they're just there to have a good time as long as they have baseball there.

I like it. I think it's been a bit— Sacramento probably shouldn't have a Major League Baseball team. Yeah. But I do like when cities get a cameo for a year. Like, yeah, here's what it's like. Yeah. I don't know who the next team would be, but I think the Vegas thing's gonna be bizarre.

It is going to be weird. I don't think— like, it's not like football where it's a destination, or like basketball even where it could be a destination, or hockey where they have their own team. Like, baseball— like, you know, of all the places to travel to go watch your baseball team, are you gonna pick Vegas?

There's too many games. Like, for even—

you're not gonna have a home field advantage at all. It'll be like a road tourism environment. And then like, yeah, in the middle of June, who's going to Vegas to watch their team play the A's?

All right, so before we go, is there an out of nowhere team these last 7 weeks? I know we, we talked about a couple candidates. You know, it's gonna happen. It's August 4th. We know somebody's gonna get hot. So who is it? Hmm. And it could be either league. My guess would be the NL just 'cause the NL has the top 5 and then everybody else, and the everybody else seems suspicious to me.

I don't think, well, you're saying like come outta nowhere to do what? To like win the pennant?

Just to make a run and be like, what's going on with these guys? It always happens. I don't know if they'll win the pennant, but somebody throwing their hat in the rain that we're not expecting.

I mean, the crazy case would be that Detroit's only 2.5 games out.

A little school, school bullying theory.

Mm-hmm. And they metrically, like they are underrated. They've got a bunch of younger players coming through that have, that have popped for them of late. Um, they, you know, there was a little bit of malaise early in the season, and I do wonder how much of it was related to the fact that the clubhouse was just kind of pissed off that Skubal didn't get paid, and they were pissed at ownership and pissed at kind of the inability to negotiate this situation. So just getting him out of the picture, of course it hurts their pitching staff, but just getting him out of the picture helped them. Now, you know, you, you're not dealing with a ton of starting pitching anymore, but we've seen Detroit do this before. Two years ago, yeah, they were dead, dead in the water and got hot. And managed to, to pitch their way into the playoffs. Uh, it wouldn't be shocking just because I just don't really believe in any of the teams in the American League Central.

Honestly, I would have kept them. I think for what they got, because you get— if he leaves as a free agent, you get draft picks and it's okay. It's not, not getting two top 60 prospects, but at least you get something. But then it, it gives you a chance for, uh, I don't know, for some sort of playoff run. Plus, you know, next year's gonna be a lockout anyway. I don't know, I just— I, if I was running the Tigers, I would have kept them.

I mean, it's 2.5 that they're out too. It's not— they have to jump like 5 teams right now to get into a playoff spot because everyone's so tight. But like, you did kind of punt on the whole Scooball thing. And, and like, we haven't talked about it, but doing it before the deadline was weird. Like, it— yeah. I know that we don't want to say that the Dodgers have ruined baseball, but like, something's fishy here with that situation because now he goes to the Dodgers and now they're already probably starting the contract negotiation situation. And I wonder how much, like, he, do you think he's motivated with the impending idea of a lockout with a salary cap to let me extend before this season's over and just get a ton of money? Before there isn't a ton of money to be gotten. So like, I'm happy to be going to the Dodgers. I would have wanted to go there anyways. They'll have a lot of money they can give me. Like, let's do this either like during the season or right after the season. And let's not risk the idea of I can't get paid because the problem with the salary cap is the salary floor.

Like, in my thoughts, everybody says, I guess it's going to be great. All of the bad teams and they're going to have to spend $150 million. But what ends up happening is the bad teams end up spending that money in the dumbest way possible. And you get—

it happened in the NBA. Remember 10 years ago, the cap spike and all of a sudden Portland and the Nets, all they like— Allen Crabbs making $71 million for 4 years. Yeah.

Guys have no business making the money that they're making, just getting thrown money because they're the free agent at the time and the team that's bad, that's not going to reach the salary floor. Is afraid of getting, you know, like a slap on the wrist or whatever from the league. So they just throw dumb money at players.

You're almost better off not spending the money. Yeah. Right. You're almost better like, yeah, penalize me versus me having to go get Luol Deng. I, so you said it was fishy that he went to the Dodgers.

To me, there is a weird angle there too.

No, but to me it's beyond fishy. I think the rest of the league just assumed he's signing, he's signing with the Dodgers this way. Like, to me, it reminded me of the Giannis situation where Giannis said, I'm either going to Boston or Miami. Other teams could have traded for Giannis, but he had already said, I'm— I want to go to these two teams. I think Scooble was just going to the Dodgers, like, you can trade for me, but you'd be renting me, basically. He must have made it.

But teams have traded for rentals before. I mean, the Rays and the Brewers are the two teams everybody is kind of pointing the ire at.

Well, so the Brewers were the team that felt like they should have gone after him. Yeah.

You know, teams have traded for rentals. The Dodgers just paid 2, 2.5 prospects, 2, 3 prospects to get him early, right? Yeah. For one more playoff run. Why didn't Milwaukee do this? Why didn't Tampa do this? The conspiracy that I am open to is from a pure politics angle. Oh, it feels very rare that like the, the negotiation politics, not, you know, politics, uh, from a pure negotiation angle, like the fan— fans are very split and very angry about this. And a lot of them are going to side with the owners because they're mad at the big bad Dodgers. So there is a theory of like, if you're the owner of the Rays or the owner of the Brewers and you want to sell—

Thrilled that this happened.

You're thrilled that everybody's pissed at the Dodgers. It's like, yeah, yeah, get mad at them so we can try to get a salary cap, which is what all of them probably want, uh, because they get to cap the earnings of their labor, which is ideal in an environment where you have, you know, the billionaires fighting against the millionaire players. So that I am open and sympathetic to the idea that not everybody loses from the Dodgers being seen as this unbeatable behemoth, even if they're not.

I'll tell you this, first of all, it's so much more fun to go to baseball games now. I just can't— it can't be said strongly enough that you're just in and out in 2 and a half, 2 hours 45, and you're not just sitting there watching somebody grab his groin and step out of the batter's box and They have a song you could sing.

It's just seeds.

It's so much more fun to go. With that said, if they do have a lockout and baseball disappears, it is just not going to— like when this happened in 1981, this was— I was, I was 11. It was catastrophic. Like we didn't have nearly enough other stuff to do. So just taking baseball away, even in '94 when it happened and it was awful, there was slightly more stuff to do. Now there's so much stuff. I just think people move on to different things and, you know, it could go away for a year and it'd be terrible, but I don't think it would have the same impact that it did 40 years ago. I just don't.

But does that then benefit the players? 'Cause like, I think it does. The owners are gonna be the ones that are gonna be more incentivized. So like, we cannot have this be a prolonged lockout and lose kind of the momentum that the sport has had the past couple seasons.

It's the other way though, because for the owners, And these are all the people that buy teams now, and we're seeing it in basketball and football right now, especially. They're all these rich dudes. These teams are assets to them. They're not— they don't have a connection to the city or the fan base. They're these things they buy the same way they would buy companies or whatever. And if they could hold the asset for a year, not have to spend any money, they get to write off all this stupid shit for it, try to break the players a little bit and get a cap. Like, they're gonna, they're gonna do that. They're not going to care about the fans. I don't, I don't feel like these professional sports teams care about the relationship with fans in the same way that they used to.

It's not just fans. I mean, think about how much of the local economy is, is, you know, between stadium workers, right? It's devastating employees to the, the fact that it's, you know, smaller US cities around the country have 80+ events every year that are guaranteed to provide local broadcast rights, local TV, like it goes way beyond Billionaires, the one thing you'll say is, "Oh, you're choosing the billionaires over the millionaires when you side with the owners," which is true, and I'm pro-labor, but there's labor beyond just the millionaire players that go into the entire baseball ecosystem, and people leave them out of the mess. They're not the ones that are actually the most impacted out of anybody. If Bryce Harper doesn't get paid next year, he'll live. But if stadium employee number 326 loses their job, you're talking about massive ramifications.

Well, and you also think about all the bars around the stadium, all the restaurants, all the stores that are around there. Yeah, you're, you're decimating these different locations.

Well, and then people will have to turn to the Savannah Bananas, and we can't have that be something that overtakes Major League Baseball.

I will make that my mission in life, to make people— I feel like I had a little bit of an impact on pickleball because it feels like people, you know, just a tiny bit. If I helped in any way, great. But, um, people are down on pickleball now, which I'm delighted by. The Savannah Bananas are next.

What do you think? I don't know about that, Bill.

Anecdotally, pickleball is alive and well.

What are your biggest like pop culture, like places where you have kind of flexed your muscles? So how was that? You got the UCLA coach fired or fired, I should say. Yeah.

You got the UCLA coach fired. I mean, that's, that's gonna be my legacy. Yeah.

You've, well, hold on. You've contributed in your mind to the downfall of pickleball.

No, just small, just a small contribution. Just, okay, just a little. If I was able to help in any way, great. I think people are annoyed by pickleball now.

Just takes a little cut and all of a sudden the reflecting pool is green, you know? You just need a little thing to kind of get the ball rolling downhill.

I think the, the one thing that I feel like I actually really helped was Friday Night Lights, weirdly, the TV show. I think it was going to get canceled and I wrote the ESPN The Magazine piece about it And they decided not to cancel it. And Peter Berg— and I don't know if this is true or not, but Peter Berg, the creator of the show, like genuinely believes that the column saved the show. So who knows if that's true, but I'll take that one. We never would have had Landry and Tyra accidentally kill the guy outside the bar. You know, the show just would have been gone. I don't know if you guys watched that show. DeBundo doesn't seem like he did.

Do you know why they did that? No, I never watched it start to finish. I've seen episodes. Just watch season 1.

It's great. Do you know the impact that you're going to have when you do these things?

Or do you just like find out after the fact? Like when you go to sit down the Friday Night Lights thing, you're like, you know what, this is going to do it. And you sit down and you say, this is how we save the show.

That just happens.

That was literally the column was I need to help save the show. This is the best show on TV. That was 1,200 words of me being like, please, please watch this show. Um, yeah. So, so what is my new, what's my new thing now? The Savannah Bananas.

Yeah, you got to stop the Savannah Bananas from taking over Major League Baseball's, you know, if they, if they go into a lockout, it's really dark. It'll go to the bananas.

It's really, it's really wonderful.

I was at a bar the other night and I was tempted to ask the bar to just put something else on because it was on, but I literally went through the guide and I was like, there's nothing else that I could even recommend right now. Like, the Phillies weren't playing. I was like, man, this is, this is dark. Not the banana ball.

I will say ESPN feels like it's reverting back to the 1980s with some of the stuff they're showing. They've had— they had the Pillow Fight Championships last weekend. I don't know if you guys saw this. This is the summer.

This is summer programming. There's like flag football on the other day.

Flag football. Our friend Kyle Brandt was, was the color guy in the flag football. Really? Under-18 championships. Yeah. It feels like— I don't know whether they lost rights to different stuff, but it feels like they're definitely throwing stuff against the wall lately.

What's the basketball league with the trampolines? Slam ball. Slam ball. Slam ball. That was on last summer and my buddies and I were at the bar like kind of getting into it for a second.

Yeah. It's back. My question for any sport is, my question with all of these things is, will the Bundo bet on it? Will the Bundo and Sal actually think about wagering on this? That's when you know you've arrived. I don't see that with the Savannah Bananas.

Saturday night I was in, uh, an, an airport delay in Dallas for 2.5 hours getting home from Montana. And, uh, my friend and I sat down and there was USL, which is second division American soccer on, and it was Louisville versus Tampa Bay, and Louisville was up 3-0 at the half, and Tampa had this crazy comeback. They won 5-4. And I will say, I did check to see if they had betting odds up. They did not. So there were no wagers placed. But it was, it was a curiosity thing. But yeah, I have never bet on slam ball, never bet on pickleball.

This is the dark days of gambling, August.

No. Yeah, I take some time off. It's nice.

Yeah, because we have no No golf majors yet. The FedEx Playoffs is here. All the tennis stuff is done. There's just baseball.

The US Open's coming up. US Open's coming up.

No, but I mean, for right now, there's nothing. Yeah. There's some— Preseason football, which is like— preseason football is a clear indication whether you have a gambling problem or not.

Well, you see, Bill the Sharp people will tell you that's where they find their big edges. See?

I don't know. Exactly. That's—

you just proved my point. It's a lot of work, and its payoff has never been clear to me.

Even I don't bet preseason football. Like, that's like— Yeah, that's like a next level thing. All right, guys, this is fun baseball. I'm actually paying attention and watching and I care. So we'll do— we'll have to do this again. Billy Gale, how's college football tailgate going?

We're gearing up for a couple of weeks away, right? We're like less than a month at this point before we have actual games going on. So exciting stuff. Exciting times.

The Bundo, we'll talk more about Tottenham.

Come on, you Spurs, Bill. Come on, you Spurs. We are ready. 17 days till the opener.

All right. Thanks guys. Good to see you. All right. My friend David Shoemaker is here. We've been working together for literally 15 years since year one, Grantland, all the way through the ringer. Um, did you go to SummerSlam last week? You must have. I didn't go. I didn't go.

It was my first one I missed in a while, but I've been moving and doing all this kind of stuff and, you know, no Minneapolis for you. Yeah. I spent a couple of summers in Minneapolis growing up, so I don't, I'm not anti-Minneapolis, but it prob— I heard it was one of the most fun SummerSlams in a while in terms of just, you know, the hanging out and the vibe and stuff. So yeah, I wish I'd been there, but I didn't go this year.

Did we definitely need a two-night SummerSlam? Just curious. Is that a thing that needed to happen?

I appreciate the shorter shows, you know, like each night. I appreciate that my, like, 7-year-old can stay up and watch the main event, you know, and it not be 3 in the morning or whatever when it finally drags out, because they were getting to a point Some of those WrestleManias before they went to two nights were just slogs.

The New York one was the longest one. I, I actually think I might still be there with my son. Yes, I think— I don't know if we've ever left. I think we entered the seventh circle of hell. And they—

well, and they had like four really dramatic main events in a row at the end, so like, and they were all long. The big thing this year is there was just a ton of ads and the matches weren't that long, and, and if you were just there for the wrestling, you know, it was a nice fast-moving show or whatever, but, um, there's just a lot of other content. They could have fit it all into one night. I don't know if they could have fit all the ads into one night, but they could have fit the content. And there were a couple of matches— like, I'm a big Danhausen fan, but that Danhausen/Dom match would have worked a lot better as like the third to last match in a, in a really long show, you know, kind of the popcorn match, right? As opposed to sort of trying to hold its own. So anyway, they, they could have done with Maybe a little less time.

I, uh, I zoomed through both of them after the fact, after they happened, and the ads were an issue, which I get. We all have ads, like, but it was just different than the old pay-per-view experience of just being able to rip through it. But the one I cared about the most was the Lesnar match, which was, you know, in the, on the first night, and one of the, you know, I, I thought was the main event. Yeah, yeah. I thought it was the single most compelling storyline. Like, how many times can Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns have to have some sort of reckoning? This was like a clear torch pass to have a new guy in this whole legacy of, you know, going back to Andre the Giant, then Undertaker, Lesnar, now Obafemi. Like, the, the big unstoppable force. So it feels like they finally found that, right?

It does. I mean, I was going through the list myself, and I mean, there's a little bit of a, you know, blurry line between the, the next big thing monster edition and just sort of the next big thing, you know, like where do you put Diesel in this conversation, I guess. But like, you know, you can definitely put Sid Vicious in that category. Oh, that's a good one. Diesel's good too, by the way. Yeah. When Drew McIntyre debuted, this was his gimmick. He was the next big— he was the chosen one, you know, he was Vince's thing, but he was really slight. Like he wasn't the same Drew McIntyre he is today. Right. Um, but, but it's been You know, and you can put a little bit of Bobby Lashley, a little bit of Randy Orton, a little bit of even John Cena, Roman Reigns. You know, those guys are in that category as like, we have our eye on you. We know, like, you know, contract negotiations be damned. We're going to say out loud that you're our next star, you know? Um, and it's, it's a really— it's a huge moment, you know?

Like, I've known Obafemi to talk to him, to say hey to him since his NXT days, obviously. And, um, and he's just a really great dude, man. I mean, just really, he's like, he's a true believer. He's the exact kind of guy you'd want in that spot. And it's really amazing to see how quick his rise has been and how justified it's felt.

Well, and from a real life standpoint, 6'5", 6'4". Oh, he's a big dude. 6'6".

You know, he's probably 6'0". He's probably 6', like legit 6'5". Like he was, he was, you know, noticeably bigger than me. And that's not usually the case when I'm hanging out with wrestlers.

Well, in wrestling he's 7'3", 7'2".

Exactly.

7'2", £500.

I said the, the NBA agents should send their players just to go hang out with wrestlers all the time during the pre-draft stuff. Let's check that. Because according to the, according to the tape, they're all like 7.5 feet tall now.

But what did Hogan was? 6'6", 6'5"?

Sure. Hogan in his prime was probably a legit 6'5", 6'6". I mean, he was a really, really big guy. And by the time that, you know, I interviewed him on Cheap Heat back at Grantland, by the— and certainly by the time that we interviewed him for the Vince doc, he was, he was declining in size a little bit.

Yeah.

He got a lot of both hip surgeries. I think both hips replaced a couple of times and I think some back stuff too. I mean, he, and, and that's just, you know, and just general shrinkage, you know, he had, he had come down quite a bit.

Andre was listed at 7'4". Was probably like 6'10", 6'11" at his peak. And then after like the vertebrae started going on him, he probably ended up at around 6'7". But yeah, but the Big Show, probably 6'9", 6'10".

And he's keeping it together for the most part. A lot of these big guys have leg— have, have not just knee surgeries, but like Kevin Nash just had a corrective leg situation a couple years ago. He got a lot of like blood patlet plat, whatever, like shot up into his knee in Mexico. He's a whole new man. I mean, obviously Andre turned down some surgeries that could have prolonged his life pretty significantly along the way. So, I mean, and that's a medical condition as opposed to— well, I think Big Show has it a little bit, but there's a lot more you can do to keep the— keep going, you know, to like stop from curving over or whatever.

The more fun is when they try to anoint the next giant unstoppable guy, but the guy's terrible, like Giant Gonzalez. Oh my God.

There, I mean, even all the way up to like, I was Vladimir Kozlov. Like there's so many just like weird, gigantic, like scary dudes who we just thought were gonna be, but you know, during the Hulk Hogan era, there were so many feuds. It was just Hogan versus a monster and you had to keep finding people who looked physically imposing next to a guy who was already the biggest dude, you know, in the business. All, you know, one of the biggest dudes in the business. So yeah, there were a lot of. He— I think Hulk Hogan is responsible for skewing the, the size charts for, for a whole generation, right? You know, like in any other promotion, Hogan— it's a guy of Hogan's size would have been the heel, or they would have kept the 5'10 guy that they were calling 6'1 as the hero, you know. And, and it— but, but it all got thrown.

Well, that was the irony, is Hogan was one of the best— like, when Hogan was heel, he was one of the best heels ever. Big John Studd was kind of the underrated one from that whole era. He, I love two different runs. He was, but he, he was legitimate. Like if you saw him in person, he seemed like a legitimate 6'10", 6'11".

Yeah. I think with a lot of these dudes, it's, you get the impression of their size even in person. Yeah. Even if the, even if the size is fake, like John Cena and Stone Cold Steve Austin, I'm probably an inch taller than both of 'em, but both of them feel twice as big as me in person. Right. Right. You know, and, and, and, you know, Giant Gonzalez, I'm sure did not feel like as tall as he was. He's a very wispy 7-footer.

Um, and then you get like the CM Punk guys who are like shockingly not as big as you'd think they are.

Yeah. But Punk is also tall. I mean, like he strikes you as tall in person too. He, he's, and he's gotten into crazy good shape over the past, yes. You know, several years or whatever. Um, but yeah, it's just the, it's when you've just carried around all that muscle forever and then it just sort of congeals into asphalt as you become an old man, you know, those, right. Those guys are like— I don't think— I think I could work out for 5 years and not be able to pick up Steve Austin off the ground. He's just— the guys like that are just so intimidating.

Where WWE is, this is right after the hot streak, which has happened a few times in history where it's like we had this incredible run, everything's going great, and then it's like, it's right after. You're still sustaining it, but you kind of know it's not the same, and it feels like a little bit of a lull right now.

Right. So I wrote my book, Why Hulk Hogan Matters. I have to wave it around. That's my job. But Hogan was the— for people of our generation, Hogan was the original apex, right? It was the rock and wrestling. The Hulkamania era was so big, and at the time it seemed like it'll be like this forever. But of course, we know now what every wrestling promoter prior to Hogan knew very well, which is wrestling is incredibly cyclical, right? It's like boxing where you got to have the right fight, but it's just, it's a broader, almost like it's hard. It's inexplicable, you know, it just goes up and down and up and down. And I think that for if you're running a wrestling company, the real— I mean, there's basically like two knobs that you can control. One is delay gratification. Put it off as long as you can. The way Cody Rhodes lost his first WrestleMania match against Roman Reigns. Right, right. And two is just keep— try to drag out the top for as long as you can. That's why we had Hogan-Andre at WrestleMania and then Hogan and Andre again at the first SummerSlam.

You know, they found ways to keep the thing going and going and going.

Well, then they made Macho Man the champ, but Hogan was still the biggest draw.

Yeah, that, that's Ultimate Warrior comes in, get him.

They did the squash matches with Andre the Giant all over the place to build him up. Mm-hmm. But yeah, by '91 they kind of ran outta moves.

They, yeah, there's not, there's only so much you could do. And so right now, yeah, I think we're in the post-peak from the moment that we were all saying, I can't believe it's this big again, with Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes relatively new to WWE and CM Punk very new to WWE. That was the real peak. Um, and then, and, and I'm sure that I guarantee, like, you know, the folks at the TKO headquarters are not saying, well, we all know it's a cycle, but, you know, they're, they're saying, how do we stay this big forever? How do we get bigger? Yeah, but it's just now a man— you're kind of riding the wave, and it's really— it's going to be interesting to see, like, how far it goes down and how far and how quickly it can start going back up. It's not in a bad spot right now at all, but I think it's, I think it's notable that we had CM Punk versus Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns versus, uh, Seth Rollins at SummerSlam. These are two like WrestleMania matches and they're just saying, let's just put it all out there and let's see what we can do.

They also very smartly are picking weekends better now. Like this last SummerSlam weekend, nothing's going on. Right. You can really kind of own ESPN, who, when I was there and I'm doing Running Diaries, and they— I think I was the only wrestling coverage they had in the mid-2000s. Now they're doing 3-hour pregame shows before night 1 of SummerSlam. It was on ESPN proper, the, the number 1 ESPN, for 3 straight hours leading up to the pay-per-view. So, um, I Obviously happy that wrestling is getting more mainstream coverage. As we both— this has been a big part of our lives, less a part of mine lately. But, um, it's weird when it's on ESPN. I cannot get used to it. I just, well, I, I just, we used to— it's just weird.

You used to watch like the, the, like the old World Class stuff and AWA stuff on ESPN News or whatever, like, like decades ago, right? Like that was the last, that was the last time. No, that was on ESPN One.

It was AWA. Yeah.

84, 85. Yeah. Uh, and so, I mean, that, that was, that was the last time. And, and it never, it never, so it never really felt out of place to me. But I get everybody saying, I can't believe it. I mean, you know, when I talk about media stuff on Press Box with Brian, it's all in the context of everything being a show, right? It's all, yeah, it's all like, like every, everything filmed in a studio, sports or news or whatever, it's all kayfabe, you know? It's all, we're all doing a job here, you know?

And, and that's funny. They're using the ESPN's infrastructure the way they talk about like the NFL. And we're watching like Joe Tessitore with our old friend Rosenberg, and it's like, what would this mean to Roman Reigns? And it's honestly like watching NFL Live.

It's just weird. Well, and you have Lee— I mean, you have a, you have an army of former ESPN producers running WWE's, you know, production wing now, which is, which has predated their ESPN relationship. Right. So for the past several years, fans like me have been watching saying, oh, now that's a college football camera angle. Or like, that's a, that's a pregame thing they would have only done on real sports. You know, and these things start trickling in. And so now it's all sort of the same thing. But you're right when it's like you're watching ESPN and the weirdest part is that it doesn't seem totally out of place just because the production is so high, right? You know, and, and, and, and, and also it's just like you see these wrestlers just wandering in and out of the set of like Get Up and First Take. Like there's so much weird synchronicity there, like synergy that like it's, it's almost hard to process. I mean, when you were there, You remember that people were in the highest seats of power who would have just quit over WWE being a WWE story being on the homepage of the website, you know, and now it's just seamless.

It's, it's all part of the product.

It was a great opportunity for us 15 years ago, right? When, when we were covering wrestling and really throwing ourselves into it, there was nothing else going on. So do you feel—

I remember, I remember very well the first time we talked at Grantland and you and You called me on the phone and we were just like, what does a wrestling column look like? Like, I, like, we didn't know what the, what the world would want, you know, or like what, what could even happen. And so, you know, we've come a long way, I guess.

So do you think the ESPN thing's helped?

Or it's neutral? I think, I think it's helpful. I think, oh, I think more than anything, it's, it's thrown a lot of these questions into stark relief. You know, it's like now every single insider wrestling conversation is like trying to read tea leaves about how. Excited ESPN is and or unexcited or how pleased or unpleased they are with the numbers they got last month. I think if it weren't ESPN, it probably wouldn't feel quite as dire every time new numbers come in or whatever. But yeah, you know, acquiring WWE is an interesting move for ESPN and I think it's worthwhile, but it's always been very transactional. All of their various, you know, over-the-top, you know, homes. It's always been, you know, they had the WWE Network and then when they went to Peacock, it was like because Peacock, because the Olympics got canceled., you know, because of COVID And suddenly Peacock was like, how do we get more like built-in subscribers? And WWE, WWE at that point came with like 1.5 million like diehard fans that would follow it anywhere.

You know, that's the same for Netflix, the way it always— Monday Night's Netflix. Yeah, exactly. We're doing live. This is a good fit for us. Yeah. They're always in the right place at the right time.

But, but I think that actually in terms of just like, like the synchronicity affecting the bottom line, like does the ESPN-WWE partnership like make increase WWE's numbers in any sort of crazy way. We haven't really seen evidence of that so far. I think it's—

I think the audience is always the audience. Yeah, that's why I said neutral. I just think the audience just moves to wherever the product is and that's it.

Now, I think if the product, you know, if something— if it catches fire again, if the cycle, you know, goes back up quicker than maybe we would guess, I think it being on ESPN is a huge help just because people know where ESPN is, right? They're like, they're more likely to stay potential fans are more likely to stumble across it, you know, in places like ESPN and even Netflix, um, than just being on TV like in the old—

the biggest thing they need to figure out with Obafemi is, are— if you're going to be the good guy, unstoppable guy, that's really hard to pull off.

So hard. It's incredibly hard. It's way easier to be—

yeah, it's way easier to be the I'm actually— there's a darkness to me. I'm a bad guy, and that I'm a bad guy who is unstoppable, and you just keep throwing these babyfaces at me and I'm just gonna keep nailing them. And I wonder long-term how they play that with them.

I think you, you see this in the way he's been booked already. They had him win the King of the Ring tournament because he was the most deserving, I guess, in terms of what people thought backstage. But the winner's supposed to get a title shot at SummerSlam, and they just had to say Yeah, forget about that stipulation. Let's have him fight Brock Lesnar instead. I mean, the Brock match is a bigger match. Yeah, but I think, I think the distance from now till at least WrestleMania, the entire booking strategy has to be keep Obafemi away from the title, right? Because it's, it's because you're right, it's hard once he gets the belt, you know, I mean, The Undertaker got that title run early in his career when he won from Hogan, you know, and Tuesday in Texas or whatever, you know, lost it back immediately. Sorry. And, and. But that wasn't that in the Hogan era. It was really hard for someone to feel anointed, you know. Now this is a real anointing, you know.

This is also, if he's the biggest attraction you have or potentially going to be, that you don't necessarily need to give him the title anyway.

No, you don't. But, but it's, you know, it's just harder and harder to come up with reasons for him to go out and fight it right at big events when the title is not involved. So it's just a matter of, like I was saying before, it's delayed gratification or whatever, you know, you have to figure out a way to stretch it out.

Here's what I would do. As you know, I'm an amateur WWE booker. I think he needs, I think he needs a little bit of a group. I think he needs to, like, I still feel like that Four Horsemen type of, type of thing. Like he needs unstoppable people around him where he's the leader of it. And then you could kind of flip him being a bad guy, or he could be the guy He wants this so badly. He wants to own WWE and be the power, and these are his people. But now that his sidekicks are starting to push the envelope a little too hard, is this who he wants to be? And like, I would go that direction. I like when somebody like him is flanked with other people.

I agree. I mean, listen, you're kind of describing what Roman Reigns has figured out that worked over the past, you know, 5 years or whatever. Right. So it's, but I think you're absolutely right. I mean, the, you said Four Horsemen. The worst legacy of the Four Horsemen is that anytime four wrestlers get together on screen, people say like, oh, it's like a new Four Horsemen, but not as good. Right, right. But like, three, four, like, four competent wrestlers being friends seem— is— should just be a renewable resource, right? You know, just like, let's put these guys together.

It would have to be somewhat genuine.

Yeah, but I think so. I mean, listen, they sowed the seeds of him being a Paul Heyman guy last night. So, you know, maybe, you know, Heyman had the Dangerous Alliance. There's always opportunity.

AEW just kind of over here now. Is this a battle anymore? What's going on?

I don't think it's a battle. I mean, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a, I don't, I don't mean, listen, I don't know a lot of people that don't have, that choose not to watch one or the other because of time, but I'm sure that's a real thing for people. I don't really know what the battle would be. AEW has really good product and they're, they're still doing things that WWE is not doing. Yeah. And I mean, I just think that, that, you know, the ceiling didn't quite come off the industry in the same way, but AEW's making a lot of money from Turner. And, and, you know, I think their next contract negotiation will be interesting because I don't put it past WWE to try to somehow like get in between the two parties or, you know, whatever. But, but that's more of a business thing. That's not about like content. I think AEW does really, really great stuff. And I, but I think that, that both companies kind of are where they are right now, you know? Like, I don't— people talk about ratings all the time. I really couldn't care less if like, no, it's worldwide beat AEW or like what.

I mean, it does, it's just, it's, it's just a vibes thing.

You're right. I watched, so I did watch the Reigns, um, the Reigns-Rollins match. We watched that, Ben and I. I got— I roped Ben into watching at least some of it. He's too cool for all this stuff now. Um, it'll— he'll, he'll circle back because this is what's happening to age 24. I feel like he'll come back a little. But, um, I, you know, I did have Dean Ambrose in the back of my head as a— as the big surprise, and I don't think I was alone. And The Shield coming back, and, uh, but that didn't happen. There was no big— in the, in the 2-day SummerSlam, there was no big holy shit, oh my God, this guy— it didn't happen, right?

Uh, like crazy comebacks or whatever.

I mean, he's back, or this guy's back, or whoa, this guy.

Raw last night, Raw last night, we had Big Cass. I think they saved that. I think the Raw after SummerSlam is now just as, you know, big a thing as the Raw after WrestleMania. But no, SummerSlam didn't have those moments, and I think that was because they wanted Reigns and Rollins to feel final, you know, to feel like, you know, like a real serious thing. And by the way, he'd had a post— Reigns, after he won, did like an interview outside the ring, just like he's a real, you know, like a real athlete would do, like a basketball player would do. Um, but they— but yeah, I mean, the Dean Ambrose thing, my, my co-host on the Masked Man Show, Kaz, was— came, came away saying there's no way they would have done that if they didn't think that Dean Ambrose might come back. Dean Ambrose, by the way, is wrestling under a different name as Jon Moxley in AEW and seems very happy be there.

Uh, he's repeatedly said how happy he is there.

He would never come back and all this kind of stuff. I mean, uh, you never say never in pro wrestling. Um, I don't think that what we saw at SummerSlam when they were winking at him, doing his moves, you know, doing all referencing him vaguely on air, I, to me that was less of a, you know, of WWE having a secret deal with him and, and probably more of a sort of long-term contract, long-term like wooing process. You know, it's just like, hey, just so you know, we haven't forgotten you. So if you ever want to come back to do, you know, WrestleMania 50 for like a billion dollars, we'll be here, you know. And, and I think that's always going to be on the table.

A Shield reunion would be a big deal. It would be huge. Yeah, that's about it. That's the biggest thing I feel like they could do. Um, all right, so, so why'd you write this Hulk Hogan book?

So, Why Hulk Hogan Matters. I mean, you listen, you and I are, you know, are both writers who don't write a whole lot anymore. Um, but when I wrote about, I mean, obviously I've been writing about wrestling for 20 years and, and, and been writing about dead wrestlers from the very beginning. Um, and, and sort of what the wrestlers mean to me when they die. And when I wrote Hulk Hogan's obituary, I was just sort of floored thinking like, well, it was a lot to get out, but it was also a lot to think like, this is the last time I'm ever going to write about Hulk Hogan. It. And so the idea came up to write a book. Our friends at Harper, um, Sean Desmond, who's edited a bunch of Ringer books, who was willing to take a shot on this. And so just sort of cranked it out. Um, it was a lot of a— for me, it was like, like, I think for a lot of wrestling fans, there's so much that he did late in his life that I just hated, you know, that like really just killed me. But it killed me because of how much I loved him in the '80s, you know, how much he was, how meaningful he was to me.

And, uh, you know, the title I think is deliberately a little bit of provocative, just like in the reverse way that Dead Wrestler of the Week was provocative back in the day, right? Like, people saw the title and they thought I was going to be offensive. It's like, no, I'm talking about how much I love wrestlers. And this is why— and so why Hulk Hogan matters to me is both exploring why he's really meaningful to me and, you know, through much, so much of his career, and, you know, kind of coming to grips with the, with everything that happened in his post-wrestling life and, and, and what it means when like one of your idols can break your heart like that.

Yeah, I went to that. It's the night before the fires, the first Raw at, uh, on Netflix in LA. Yeah. And Hogan came out and the response from the crowd was like one of the most shocking things I've ever been in an arena for. Couldn't believe it. Like, people were fucking furious and booing him. He didn't know how to audible in the moment to it. And the old Hulk would have immediately been like, oh, I'm going to be— I guess I'll be a heel for this and just figure it out. And he was too old and couldn't, but was really like mostly despised. Now, this is LA, like, you know, maybe that wouldn't happen every state, but then the fires happened the next day and it— and, you know, out here. But I just felt like that was such like a weirdly big deal that Hogan got treated like that. But that was where it had gotten to with the last 20 years of his life. People were just fucking out on him.

Yeah. I mean, listen, he never— I think there's a lot of people who rightly believed he never really apologized for his racist video, the video of him saying racist stuff, whatever. And there was a point where he famously came back to have a talk with the locker room when WWE was letting him back in. And instead of saying, I'm sorry for what I said and I'm a changed man, he said, be careful of video cameras, right? You know, because, you know, just like the worst advice. And the fans knew about it too, you know, because all that stuff gets out. But I really think for me, the icing on the cake was him coming back on that episode of Raw and instead of saying, I love this business, I just want to wish you guys good luck, he said, buy my beer, right? The whole thing was like a promo for real American beer. And I think that was just— that was just the bridge too far. Jimmy Hart waving the flag behind him. And you can't really audible a heel turn when you're like hawking your new alcohol endeavor, you know? Yeah, you got to stay it was, it was really, really rough.

And, and it's crazy that it happened. It's crazy that nobody, him or WWE, saw that coming, you know? And, and, uh, it's, it's just one of the most surreal experiences for a longtime wrestling fan. And especially that being the last time we really saw him. Seriously, you know what I mean? Like, that was like, that's, that's like The Ultimate Warrior, who had just as, I mean, almost as turbulent of out-of-the-ring life, you know, he's not a great dude by a lot of estimations. Came back when he got, you know, put in the Hall of Fame and the fans, myself included, went absolutely bonkers cheering for him. And then he passed away like the night after Raw. Like, it was right, it happened right away, but he went out on a high, comparatively speaking. And, you know, Hogan's was, Hogan just got booed out of the arena.

Like, like literally. It's pretty tough in wrestling to turn a mass audience off with any behavior when there's been so many shaky people over the years. Behavior that people experience. So many. So many. Yeah, it's pretty, uh, well, going back to the '80s, I mean, we do these movies sometimes in the rewatchables, but that whole popcorn hero era. And I, to me, Hogan was right there with Stallone and Schwarzenegger. Yes. And, um, everything he stood for was also happening in the movies simultaneously.

Yes. That's, it's funny because you, he, you know, he never reached the success and I write about that in the, in the book, but he, he never reached the success in Hollywood, obviously, of Stallone and Schwarzenegger, despite being lumped in with them all the time. Um, but, you know, looking back, Hogan was more of the, the American icon than the bigger stars were. I mean, he represented this country more, you know, as you look back and we've had these conversations for years, right? You look back and it's like, like, you know, the Reagan era or whatever. Hulk Hogan was the Reagan era. You know, Hulk Hogan was like everything that we aspired to be at that time.

Well, and how full of shit everybody in the '80s were. It's like, take your vitamins. And meanwhile, he was like doing more steroids than everybody. That was the '80s. That's it.

He's the most, he's the most quintessential American icon of that decade. So part of what I'm, when I was writing Why Hulk Hogan Matters, the thought process is like, am I just sad that he's not like me now? Or actually, does he say more about me now than I want to admit? You know? Right. Is he still what America is? Um, but yeah, I mean, honestly, that, that, that '80s, the popcorn movie era was just, it's incredible. I mean, you talk about rewatchables, there's like, there's never a time where you say no to a, Schwarzenegger movie or, you know, an '80s Schwarzenegger movie or Stallone movie when they pop on.

Yeah, it was weird that Hogan never was able to put the puzzle piece together for a movie career because I think he was so big of a personality on the wrestling side, you couldn't kind of buy him playing a character where Schwarzenegger didn't matter.

Yeah, Schwarzenegger. And the thing, the, the stunning thing is when you look at how bad Schwarzenegger was at acting in the beginning, like, could somebody not have held Hulk Hogan's hand through a movie like this or whatever.

But think about Thunderlips is probably a better 5-minute scene than any scene Schwarzenegger ever had in a movie. But Hogan couldn't figure it out.

But here's, but here's the thing. I think Vince Sr., Vince's dad, who told Hogan he couldn't be in Rocky III. Yeah. Uh, was kind of right. I think wrestlers at the, on the scale of Hulk Hogan, we just feel like we know them too well. And it's harder even than with an actor to see them play another role. I just, I just think there's a weird disconnect there that like, and that's part of what I came to why, you know, a lot of why Hulk Hogan, why wrestlers in general can affect you so, can affect me so much. It's because you feel like you know him. It's because you feel like even though he, we, I logically know he's playing a character, I feel like Hulk Hogan is like a figure in my life, you know? Yeah. And, and it makes it hard for him to be a, to be a movie star.

Yeah. It's weird. This has happened in, in professional sports too, where there's guys that were Everybody idolized who were some of the best people ever played, and then they just turn out to be pieces of shit. And it's like, well, how do you reconcile? Like, Pete Rose was the most famous baseball player when I was growing up. And then it's like, oh, he's actually a piece of shit. And it's like, well, what does that mean when the Reds won 2 World Series in a row? And you just kind of have to move the pieces around your head. But it, it never feels great. And I think with Hogan, just, and it's not even just the racist and all, all of that side of it. He really seemed to be reviled by all the people behind the scenes for how selfish he was and how he always put himself over other guys.

Yeah. I mean, listen, I always say that he was— for fans like me who were on the internet during those days, stories about Hogan is how we learned about backstage politics. All the weird stories about Hogan refused to do this job. At the same time, you had Ric Flair refusing to do jobs. Everybody refused to do jobs. But Hogan became like the icon of it.

Well, he had the famous quote, that's not going to work for me, brother.

That's what we say all the time. And when he— and yes, when he was doing the NWO, like he had a, he had a contract, a piece of his contract that said he had creative control. Right. I mean, that generally is a thumbs up, thumbs down. Part of me thinks that like, you know, people that had the champions had had de facto creative control forever. You know, if back in the day, I mean, you didn't have to show up. You know, like you want to hold the belt, like, you know, you can do whatever you want. But, um, but I do think that things were moving too quickly in the, in the, in the Monday Night Wars era and those sorts of like, I'm not losing to that guy happened. That doesn't work for me, brother, was happening like 20 minutes before showtime. Right. You know, and like they're live all the time. And so this becomes such a huge problem. And also when you're like, when you have that kind of power, you can't see the forest for the trees. You can talk about how, you know, that all you want to do is make money and and, and get and build the business.

But like, it's hard. You're, if you're the one making the calls, you can't, you can't tell, you can't tell what's working. You, you're always going to be selfish.

Well, it was, and it was a LeBron-like career where you have the whole long peak, right? Which is the '80s and early '90s for Hogan. And then you have the NWO heel turn, that whole thing, which I think is the greatest moment in the history of wrestling. In terms of impact, shock value, the crowd reaction. I, I just think that's number one. But then you have that last thing, which maybe for LeBron will be the Sixers if they win the title. But when Hogan has the great match against The Rock and then finally ends up winning the title and has this one last kind of moment that I think seemed inconceivable, you're talking at that point, that's, that's almost a 3-decade career of him being relevant. Um, which for wrestling is really unusual.

If you, I mean, I don't disagree about the turn, about the heel turn. Uh, it's certainly, you know, a top 2 or 3 moment of, of our lifetimes. I mean, and, and could very easily be number 1. Hogan versus The Rock. I mean, you wouldn't have to bend yourself too hard to say that's like the best wrestling match of all time. Now, it certainly wasn't the best like technical wrestling match by a long shot, but like—

And then him versus Andre is the biggest wrestling match.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's— and yeah, in terms of what wrestling, pro wrestling can accomplish, um, you know, I mean, the fans were such a part of that, that, that Rock match, you know. I mean, that, that's, that is peak wrestling to me. Yeah. You know, to have the fans that, that involved in it. And, and, um, yeah, I mean, he's, he's obviously one of one in terms of his impact on the business. And it's just crazy to think that, like, you know, for the last decade of his life, he just wasn't really a part of it.

Also, I don't think anyone ever held on to a receding hairline better than Hulk Hogan. Like, to the bitter end, he was like holding off the cliff, dancing, just like, I'm not gonna give up, brother.

When they did the book cover, I was like, just make sure we get an angle that doesn't expose the hairline. Um, Bruce Prichard, you know, who's a, who's an exec over at WWE, was their big producer for a while, said that they would spend like tens of thousands of dollars back in the '80s trying to find the camera angles that didn't show his bald spot until Vince realized how much money they were spending. And he was like, stop doing that. But like, but it is, it is incredible, man. I mean, it is, you know, there was a, there were a couple of periods I feel like in WCW where he had a hairpiece and it was like, it was, he was doing it for a movie, but he was also sort of like the Jason Alexander, like, I'm also sort of trying this out for like the real life.

Um, he bandana, we really settled on the bandana, which I guess would have been super glued on there.

Well, when he, when he, when he sued Gawker and put them out of business and that whole, that whole travesty happened, uh, you remember he, there was a whole thing about whether he could wear a bandana bandana in court and they eventually allowed him. They said like the black bandana is like the formal bandana. You know, that one was amazing.

It's like, we know you're bald, dude. Just shave your head.

Yeah. Look, I'm not wearing my baseball cap for this, for this conversation. So if I can do it, Hogan can do it, man.

Well, it was, it was quite a career. There'll never be certainly another one with the ups and downs that that one had. I will say, I mean, he's, we said this, you came on after he died and There's just no question he's by far the most significant wrestling figure in the history of the business. And doesn't mean he was the best wrestler, doesn't mean he was the greatest champ, but he had the biggest impact. And that's just, it's kind of inarguable, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's absolutely true.

I mean, we come from, from, from our generation, if you want to like put our generations together, you know, there's some memory for people a little bit older than us of the, of the big names of like the East Coast, you know, of like the, you know, the, the big MSG icons before Hulk Hogan, but even before Backlund. And but, but really for, for, for our generation of fans, we get— we've got to see a lot of giant stars. And so it's tempting to be like, Stone Cold was bigger than Hogan, The Rock was bigger than Hogan, or like, you know, whatever. But in terms of just the lasting impact and the whole arc of the career, I mean, it's totally feasible that wrestling might not exist the way it does today without The Rock or without Steve Austin. Yeah. But to get to them, Hulk Hogan was necessary. Yeah. And the heel turn was another huge thing. Heel Hogan, I think, was really necessary for those casual fans because when he turned heel and the casual fans were like, oh, we're all in on the joke together. I want to be— like, they're wrestling.

Outsiders always think wrestling takes itself seriously, and they— we don't, you know. And that— and, and so I think Hogan was great in the '80s because he was silly. Like, there was no way you could watch Hogan and say, like, wrestling is real, you know. Like, that's what made it— that's part of what made it so accessible, you know, because then everybody's like, oh, wrestling gets it. And I think there was a sort of reverse of that too when he turned heel. He was just so— he changed everything, like, you know, two different times.

And he, for pro wrestling, and he couldn't have a friend in wrestling because that friend was always going to turn on him, usually in the ring with a clothesline to his back.

I, I write about that in Why Hulk Hogan Matters. There's a whole chapter called Hogan the Bad Friend. He, it was Hogan's fault, man. All those guys stabbed him in the back. Yeah. But if you go back and watch it, like, Hogan was in the wrong every single time.

The first one was Zornendorf, which was shocking, but then it just kind of kept going and going.

And Zornendorf had a match with that he wanted Hogan for his partner, and he called Hogan and the assistant said Hogan can't come, he's lifting weights. Right. Like that. Come on, Hogan, like, get on the phone with your best friend Paul Orndorff.

Yeah, it's a little like Daniel-san in the Karate Kid series. Like, you look at it further away, it's like maybe Hogan was the dick the whole time. Maybe all these people had the right to turn on him.

I mean, maybe that's why the heel turn worked, because we're just like, yes, thank you, thank you, you finally embraced it this whole time.

He was definitely a little inappropriate with the Macho Man and, uh, Miss Elizabeth. No question.

More than a little.

Yeah, there was some blood on his hands. Anyway, all right, name of the book Y-Ho Kogan Matters. It is available everywhere. You can, you can get it on your, on your iPad. You can buy it in a bookstore. You can get it online, whatever you want. And you can listen to Shoemaker on the, uh, the Ring of Wrestling Show. How's Kaz doing?

Kaz is great, man. Kaz is still in the Knicks afterglow, man. I mean, when he was there, he went to the Raw after, um, after the Knicks won and he had Jalen Brunson and Roman Reigns like hugging him and letting them hold the title, the trophy. So it's like he's done. Like he's done. Yeah. All right, good luck with the book.

Go buy it, everybody. Uh, thanks, Shoemaker. Thank you, man.

I'll talk to you soon.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Shoemaker and Mina and Billy and Debundo and Gahal and Eduardo. As always, uh, remember Karate Kid 2 is up for rewatchables, and we might be doing 2 next week, so you might want to prep for Italian Job and About Last Night, 40-year anniversary of About Last Night. Uh, just an incredibly important '80s movie. Um, so that's all coming up. I don't think I'm gonna have another podcast this week unless something crazy happens, so I will see you again on Sunday. Must be 21+ in President Select states for Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ in President DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelpline.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 877-8-HOPE-NY, or text HOPE-NY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.