Transcript of America’s NBA MVP Drought, Rookie Receiver Mania, and Million Dollar Picks With Kirk Goldsberry, Danny Heifetz, and Joe House

Coming up, I got some NBA, I got some football. I got some million dollar picks. Next, we're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast network. If you missed it, scary month has started on the rewatchables. We did Blair witch project on Monday. I'm going to tell you the movie for this upcoming Monday because it's a good one and you should watch it. And it's a very famous horror movie, poltergeist. So you can find it. It's on the streamers. And by the way, speaking of movies, yeah, the cat's out of the bag. That live show we're doing in New York City on Monday night, October 7, we are doing silence of the lambs. So everybody who's going to that show, go watch that movie because it would be weird to just go to our live show and not having seen silence the lambs in a while sounds the limbs is the movie. There you go.

Hey.

Rob Harvilla relaunched 60 songs that explained the nineties. Now it's colon the two thousands. And he did Mister bright side by the killers as his first episode. So if you love that podcast, it's back. Rob's as weird as ever. The first ten minutes, he's really going for it. Congrats to him. Check out that podcast or just resubscribe, refresh it, whatever you need to do. You can listen to everything from this podcast and watch it on the Bill Simmons channel on YouTube. And if you'd like to rewatchables, our YouTube channel for that is Ringer movies. On Sunday, cousin Sal and I are going to be live on YouTube doing guess the lines for week six and recapping week five. Coming up on this podcast. Kurt GolDsberry, Mile Grantland teammate we're talk NBA trends heading into the season. Then Danny Heifetz is going to tell us about the five fantasy guys you should be thinking about kind of trying to steal in fantasy football. And then last but not least, million dollar picks with Joe House, which all of this was taped before Atlanta Tampa Thursday Night Football was debating about should we wait till after the game?

And then I was like, you know what, Kirk Cousins, Baker Mayfield. I'm not waiting so we could talk about that game on Sunday with Sal if anything crazy happens. But everything else taped on Thursday afternoon. Let's bring in our friends from Pearl Jamden. All right, we're taping this on a Thursday afternoon. Our old friend Kirk Goldsberry is here. We used to work together at Grantland I don't know how many million years ago when was that 1999?

2015 is when my date. My notes say we ended that.

Yeah, that. Same for me. I still have. You did a Grantland heat check map for me that I still have in my office. That's really cool. Basically, it was. The entire map is just hot. It's like a Steph Curry crossed with 19 other great superstars. But I always appreciated that I should come on and do five trends as we are now. Within two weeks of the NBA season. Somehow, which I feel like just ended a week ago, five trends are gonna play five favorites going backwards from five to one. But before we do that, you've. You've been on the sidelines for what, a year with basketball analysis?

Yeah, I've been taking some time off to myself. I put a book out called Hoop Atlas in. When was that? May during the playoffs. But, yeah, I guess we have some. Some news to share.

Bill, what was the. What was the biggest. What was the biggest thing you felt like you missed out on? Just talking about just in the content cycle, what was the thing? You're like, oh, fuck, I wish I had a platform right now.

I think it was, you know, the rise of your team sort of emerging from, you know, a team that could never get over the hump to the most dominant team we've seen in a long time by some metrics, and clearly establishing themselves as the best team in the league ahead of the playoffs and then just pounding everybody all throughout the playoffs. And so I think that Celtics run was pretty impressive, and I wish I could have had a platform to really share it.

Yeah, it's a weird one because on the one hand, all the advanced numbers, metrics, everything was just like, this is one of the best teams of the last at least 35 years, but the itest wasn't totally matching it. And it was even confusing for me as a Celts fan. But I think that the 2015 warriors were like that a little bit too, where the metrics were incredible and the eye test, we were like, I feel like somebody could take these guys. It just didn't quite match.

Yeah, that was. That's a great analogy. Nobody believed in that team. Ironically, the nobody believes in us. Warriors was eight years before that. But yeah, that warriors team, nobody believed it until the confetti had fallen. Your team. I think we were ready for that by the time that Mavs series had started. But it was like a four year arc to get there and just an incredibly. And one of the sort of interesting things I think, with that team is Brad Stevens has become one of the best executives in the league. But the depth of that roster they were able to put together really just was unlike anything else in the league last year.

So you're in Texas. Wemby just dropped from the earth like an asteroid and hit that team. They put basically one of the worst supporting casts in a while around him and he was somehow just holding them in some of these games. Then up with two more lottery picks, they trade one of them. But what, what is the Wemby Texas? You're in Austin and Austin's kind of like the adopted San Antonio in some ways. The spurs, they'll play, they're going to play a game there this year. And just what is the Wemby Texas relationship like?

It's incredible. I mean, Wemby is, is the best basketball player we've had here in, in the San Antonio market for a long time, since Kawhi left. I think that's safe to say. And he is the best prospect the spurs have had, I would say, of all time. And I say that with all due respect to David Robinson and Tim Duncan, who are absolute icons and led this franchise to the greatest places it could possibly go. But it's very exciting. I think the Olympics, Bill this summer even increased it because he brought Team USA to the brink of a huge upset in Paris. I had some of my friends at the spurs describe it as the perfect outcome for the summer because he got close, he got a taste. He proved to the world that he's that good. And we're just getting ready for this rise, which I can't wait to cover and I can't wait to, to watch from the front row.

Well, he had that, that last game. What did he end up with? 26 some of the best players. He looked nervous in the first couple games, like he was trying to do 90 things at once. But by the time we got to the last two rounds, it felt like he was starting to. It also helped that they got Gobert out of there and that helped with the spacing. It seemed like, yeah, totally.

He's the best, he's the best defensive player in the world right now and he's really.

You think that?

Oh, it's not close. I mean, I think he's. This year, this year. Last year I think Rudy had a really strong case for defense player of the year, don't get me wrong. But as we enter year two, I think we're going to see that he is clearly the most impactful defensive player at the end of the season. Last year, when he was on the court, his on off numbers with the spurs. They were a top five defense with him on the court at the end of the season, and they're terrible. Like he said, when he came off the court, they descended right back to that lottery level defense that we expected from them for the last few years. So he's, he's already there.

It was fun watching him slowly figure out during this season how tall and unstoppable he was, you know, and it's like, oh, seems like good things happen if I'm closer to the room. Oh, it seems like I can challenge everybody shot and probably have an impact. And as he started putting the pieces together, the last 20, I mean, Rosillo, I think, voted for him for defensive player of the year, which a few people did. I couldn't do it with being on a bad team, which is just one of my weird award quirks. But, you know, by the end of the year, it did feel like he was the dominant guy. All right, give me, give me trends. We're going to go backwards from five to one. Give me your number five trend that you're studying heading into the season.

Yeah. The offensive explosion in the NBA, Bill, is the scoring explosion we've witnessed over the last ten years going to continue or nothing? There's some really interesting evidence suggesting it won't, but the last ten years, we've seen just an insane amount of offensive efficiency growth in the best basketball league in the world. And I have a few stats that I think prove it. It just jumped off the page. So that's my first one. Will this offensive efficiency explosion continue into 2024? 2025?

So what? Give us a couple reasons why this has happened. Beyond the usual, everybody's just better at shooting from 25ft than they.

Well, everybody is better at shooting. But dude, what I'm about to say, I'll give you two. That really just grabbed me last year and was like, oh, my God. So the 73 win warriors of 2015 to 16, they ranked number one in the offense in offensive fish in the NBA, averaged 113.5 points per 100. All right, that team last year, that number would have ranked 21st in the NBA, just below the Chicago Bulls, the offensive juggernaut of 2023 24, and the Rockets. So in other words, the 73 win warriors. Not old school, by the way. We're not talking about the nineties Bulls or the eighties Celtics. And then if you look at the KD Steph warriors the next year, that broke the record for offensive efficiency in NBA history. That team would have ranked 16th in the NBA last year below the Lakers Darvin Ham's offensive juggernaut in Los Angeles. So that's how fast the goalposts have moved to where we are now, where we're scoring for the first time in league history, Bill, over 115 points per 100 possessions. And that is like the Al Gore inconvenient truth graph, the hockey stick graph. That's what the offensive efficiency graph with in the Adam Silver has really looked, looked like.

So reasons other than that, the shooting got better, the pace of the game picked up, they did a couple of rule changes for that. Right? We got rid of some. Some of those giants tall guys who were just kind of clumsy and hogging up space, and the league moved a little bit away from those guys. And, you know, I think the small ball thing was a little overrated the last couple years, but at the same time, some teams were able to do it and they could. It seemed like there's more variance with the lineups. And then the only other thing I can think of is that we just had, for whatever reason, and this happens in Hollywood, it happens in comedy, it happens in music. It's not, you know, for whatever reason, we had just a more of a cluster of good players. Like, we just had more good offensive players than. If you go back and you look at, like, 2013 and you just compare the creators versus, like, then it just feels like we have way more guys, and I don't really have an explanation for that.

Yeah, I think a couple things happened. I think you nailed it. Everybody can shoot now. So in a league of 500 guys, I think about 400 of them can make a corner three. And I don't think we were saying that in the Grantland era. I don't think we would say, hey, there's 400 guys in the NBA, Bill, that could make a corner three in 2014. I don't think that was true. There was Roy Hibbert. We'll talk about him later. Those guys have faded out. You pointed that out. And then I think the combination of players getting sort of really smart and analytical on their own and coaches really embracing it and just sort of spamming plays over and over again and just understanding how to run an offense. And then I think, again, your celtics really embody this. When you watch Missoula ball, right? Like it is four dudes spacing the court, a guy with the ball, they can all shoot a three. Al Horford learned to shoot threes. So it's play selection and then constant sort of analytical supervision of everything we're doing, what's working, what's not working, who's shooting well, who's not, and all that stuff.

Well, we should mention you were working in a front office for a few years there with the spurs, as that was really shifting. And one of the things was the technology got way better. You could just look at every single pin down you ran from January, February, March, and all of a sudden, that's like this. We didn't really even have that stuff in the same way, I would say, ten years ago, but it just seems like the intelligence went way up.

Yeah, I think that's a huge part of it. And again, like, every coach has an eye, a guy with an iPad behind him now, telling them which pick and roll coverage is better, which. Which pick and roll plays are better, who's shooting well from where, and I think that's right. I think we just have a lot more information in the player tracking data than we've ever had. And these guys are using it. Um, and then do you think the.

Players are using it, too? Because that seems to be another theme as the players are embracing some of this info now, where I'm not sure they did 1213 years ago.

One of the sneakiest things that's happened, uh, is there's a machine called the NOAA machine in all the practice facilities, and it just doesn't tell you if you made it or missed it. It tells you where in the ring the basketball went. So guys are knowing what the arc was of their shot and whether it was short or long or left and right. And certainly not all the players are using this information, but a bunch of them have become really competitive with each other in the practice setting to get better at shooting threes. They know what these sort of fancy machines can tell them. It's sort of analogous to the velocity revolution in baseball. Like, when we were kids, only a few guys could throw 95 or 100. Now everybody can, in part because of this technological revolution in practice. So I think that's a huge part of it, too.

That makes sense. All right. Did we hit everything on that, or you want to move to the second one?

Yeah, the second one is sort of related, dude. Honestly. And this one, I can't wait to hear what you say about this physicality is back. And I think, and I think Rosillo and I were two of the people who were shouting and moaning and groaning the loudest last winter about the scoring explosion and about part of that being officiating driven and player foul baiting driven. And one of the most fascinating trends of the middle of the year, last year we saw was offensive efficiency actually went down and went down dramatically between January and April of the regular season. That's not something we've ever seen before. And it wasn't an accident. If you recall, as players were scoring 70 over and over again and game scores were getting very high. Bill, a lot of people complaining and putting stuff on social media, and then something happened. And you can talk to your friends, or our friends in the gambling world and they noticed it, and you can talk to friends who study the game really analytically. But the officials started, say, swallowing the whistle more.

We noticed that. I remember it was like the second Sunday pod we did after all star, and it was a topic for us because we were like, does these games feel different? What's going on here? It's like all of a sudden prison rules are back and they never really wavered away from it.

The prison rules are bad, maybe. I don't know if we hope so. That's what I wanted to ask you about. But Carlisle this week had a great quote. He said, predicting what it's going to be like this year. It's going to be much more physical this year. Games are going to look a lot more like FIBA than they did the old freedom of movement NBA. And so for those of us who watched the Olympics, look, I worked for Team USA in 2016, and one of the things I remember coach K teaching our group and getting the guys around and trying to help us understand what the difference between FIBA and the NBA was, he's like, look, guys, in the NBA, the offensive player gets the benefit of the doubt. In FIBA, the defensive player gets the benefit of the doubt. Around 2016, something else happened. People like Lou Williams, people like James Harden started really cashing in on that benefit of the doubt a lot. And that drove a lot of efficiency. We saw, especially from three point shooting fouls and jump shooting fouls, and a lot of shooting fouls that Harden withdraw. So I'm really curious.

Tricking referees became in, in the mid 2010s.

It became in, in the mid two thousand ten? S. And it took like eight years for this really to sort of have this backlash. And so I think this physicality thing and like, look, this has real consequences. This isn't just some minor thing. If the games are going to be called differently, teams like the Minnesota Timberwolves or Boston Celtics with great physical defenses are going to get better and some players and teams are going to get worse. James Harden, notably, I think would be on that list. And apologies to our Nuggets friends, like anybody who watched Jamal Murray play FIBA basketball this summer. If Carlisle's right, if games are going to look more like fever, some of the players are going to struggle in that environment.

Joker, I would throw in too, because Joe Joker was just getting hit by a two by four for four straight months and, you know, his stats were around the same, but his three point shot was gone by the time we got to round two. Right. He couldn't make anything for 25ft. Then it all of a sudden it became, now let's just take our chances. Go ahead and shoot that, you know, and he and his three point shoot never really came back. And I always felt like that was the physicality that at least was a piece of it.

Yeah, for sure. And again, like our friends in the, in the gambling world, like they're going to be watching this trend very closely because it's going to affect scores of basketball games, it's going to affect player props, it's going to affect, you know, voting for all NBA because certain players markers are going to change. You know, I think it's really interesting, the league is a really interesting point in the mid 2020s here. Do we try to emulate FEMA basketball more or do we continue this like, chicks dig the long ball philosophy of just letting scores and box score video game numbers become in real life numbers?

I don't think anyone likes it, at least nobody that's in my life or anyone I've talked to that. Just these soft, giant point totals that we can't really put in a perspective with the past of the game. I don't know how good that is. But on the other hand, like, I think it's going to be really hard for somebody like Brunson this year if the game's going to be super physical, the way they called it the second half of last year in the playoffs, you're taking like these, you know, Brunson's, what, 6ft tall, huge offensive burden to begin with. But now also you're going to be able to bang them around a little bit. That's going to be really hard to do for nine months.

Yeah, he did pretty well in the playoffs, obviously, but I'm really interested in how that's going to happen to some players and who's going to respond. Well, like, is Jaden McDaniels now going to be like a very important Bruce Bowen type player for the Minnesota Timberwolves?

Do you think front offices were thinking about this as they made moves this summer?

I think a lot of people, when we started to see that downtick and obviously rule change, they couldn't call them rule changes, Bill, because that's against league rules, to quote unquote, change rules in the middle of the year. So they had what they call points of emphases added to the officiating. But, yeah, for a lot of us, I think we're watching this from a personnel perspective and some players becoming more valuable than others with a new regulatory environment. And I will say I agree with you anecdotally. Nobody likes what we were saying. I vibed on it. You, obviously. But the NBA at some point showed me some focus group data that pointed out that people actually just love more and more points. Give us more and more points.

That's good. Focus group data. Sounds great. Let's make everything dumber. Let's just think. Let's make our coverage dumber. Let's make the games dumber. Let's just get dumber. I want to take a quick break and then we'll go through your last three trends. All right. Come back with Goldsberry. One other thing on that fiscal day thing I was thinking was that Memphis has a lot of the different pieces that could go one way or the other. Right? Like they have Ja, who has always been a really hard guy to officiate. Cause he flies into the basket, bounces off people. Right. They're also like a tenacious defense team and they have that piece. They also have Zach Eady as the big guy that's going to be really, really hard to officiate. And I'm really, I'm just really interested to watch them this year. They're getting a lot of buzz. I was talking to somebody this week who was like, you really think they're in the inner circle of teams that could potentially win the west? And I was like, I actually do because Ja was one of the ten best players in the league two years ago.

And if he's back and Smart's healthy and Jaron Jackson's healthy and Ed does what we think and Brandon Clark can come back. Like, I just like their team, but I'll be interested to see how the physicality stuff affects them.

Yeah, I agree. I think jaw like driving when he was playing at his best, he was an undersized, high flying rim attacker in sort of the Adam Silver era of the NBA. That's great. But in the David Stern era of the NBA, those guys didn't always get treated well once they got there. And I don't think we're ever going to see the Laimbeer clotheslines in the paint ever again or the Andrew Bynum ones for a more recent version of this. Yeah, I'm very interested. Like, if guys are even just allowed to be a little more physical on the perimeter with players like John Moran, is he going to be able to get to the paint? I think that's one of the areas we should watch for.

For sure.

Bill and Zach eat favorite to win rookie of the year.

Obviously justified. Yeah, I actually. I think you could argue he's going to have the most impact on a team that's decent or better, but I'm sure there's going to be somebody who's awesome that we're not seeing.

They're the hardest team to predict in the NBA, in my opinion. And he. He's hard to predict himself because I just don't know. I don't know if it's going to work on defense, if he's fast enough laterally to stay in front of Stephen Curry or Fred.

Well, you're not invited on Edie island. Not sending you an invite.

All right.

We're building property down there. You're not. You're not going to get the brochure. I'll be really good. I think he's going to be an absolute bitch to guard.

Do you really?

I do. I think he's got good hands and size and good footwork, and he's just awkward. He makes every free throw.

Yeah.

I think he's going to be a weapon. He's just weird. We haven't had a guy like that in a long time. What do your third best friend.

Parity, parity, parity and parity. And your team might ruin this. But there's some incredible numbers. And as the Internet's resident basketball historian, Bill, you know that this league has, has been driven by dynasties and legendary runs.

Top heavy is always the best. Yeah.

Boston. Los Angeles in the eighties, the Shaq and Kobe Lakers in 2000, the spurs. They sort of split that, obviously. Jordan in the nineties. LeBron goes to the finals eight years in a row. Last decade, the warriors always in the finals. It got kind of annoying. This year we're not seeing this decade. We're not seeing that we have had five straight years in the west with five different champions. Your team, the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat, are the only team halfway through the 2020s that have been to the finals more than once. This is very unusual, and this is an interesting trend, and it's not an accidental trend. It's been engineered by the league office with the collective bargaining agreement. Parity is being engineered. And I think going into the second half of this decade, specifically this season. It'll be interesting to see if it continues, but it's undeniably one of the dominant trends of the. Think there's two teams that have a chance to end it?

Let me guess.

Yeah, guess.

Celtics. Because you cheated on that. You tipped that off already.

Yeah.

OKC has to be the other one.

Yeah. I think OKC could go on a run where they're going in the west three of the next five years. You know, for the next five, I.

Feel like they could. Especially if this Clippers picks hits, which is the underrated NBA story right now, is they can just swap with the Clips who have the third worst odds in the west right now to make the playoffs on top of all the other assets they have. They just have the ability to keep either doing those giddy Caruso type trades or kind of going all in with these different picks and just upgrading at spots when they need somebody. It's like, let's get a way better Lou dort. Here's two picks. Here's Lou Dork. Give us a better version of him.

So I think Brad Stevens and Sam Presti both deserve credit for winning the earlier of the new CBA regime. Like this new time. They. They've. They've positioned themselves very well. But you're right. The only reason I would only say three of the next five is I have so much respect for the other teams in that conference.

And the Wemby. The Wemby shadow Wemb coming. Obviously, he's the best player in the league a year from now. Luca Jokic. Yeah, they're, most of the best players in the league are on that side of the league.

And. Yeah, Minnesota, let's not forget, like, there's, there's a lot of. There always has been competition. The west has been a bear. Like, LeBron would not have made the finals eight years in a row if he's in the west.

You're right. You know, the moment we're talking this out, if you're going to say next five years, Western Conference titles, OKC over under two and a half, it's a pretty good argument, I think, over. Because I think they're going to. I think these Clipper picks are going to be like, freaking, almost like their version of what the Celtics had from the KG trade in the mid 2010s. They're just going to get all of a sudden these incredible picks on top of all the guys they already have. Yeah.

And they draft well. They, they don't screw up the draft and then obviously they can stack a bunch of those together, as you said, to either get incredible role players like we just seen them add with Caruso and Hardenstein here, which is just unfair, or to go get another superstar, like, if Kevin Durant wants the symbolic sort of return home, they are the one team that's positioned to be like, we could actually do this pretty easily. So I think there's a couple of tools in their toolbox that they have that nobody else has on top of arguably the deepest roster in the west right now.

You know, I got to give a shout out to the Knicks because the more information that came out about the trade they made, like we did the Saturday podest, we didn't even know all the details. We're just reacting to what that is as a basketball thing. And even Mahoney and I did Tuesday. But then once the trade was official, all their cap mechanics that they did, where they gave the three guys slightly over the minimum. The big reaction we had on Saturday when I talked to Austin was about why now? Why didn't, why not wait? This trade would be here. And as you read about, it's like, the reason, it's why now is because once the season started, the trade is gone. They have really no salary capability to make a trade like this unless Mitchell Robinson was in it. And from all the reporting, it was like the Knicks were offering. It seems like they were offering Randall and Robinson for two straight months. Hey, any, any word on the Randall Robinson offer? And Tim Connell's like, nope. And then finally they, they, they bent and put Defensenzo in, but I thought that was realistic.

But it really seems like they played it smart. If you look at, I was talking to Jason contepsion about this today. If you just look at what they did from a higher up level, just the stupidest version of it, they just made two, two for one trades and then traded a bunch of picks, God only knows, for bridges. And that's the kind of stuff you're not allowed to do in a fantasy league or on two k they got, they end up getting three players for all these other assets. So I still think towns is a 50 50, but I, you gotta hand it to them. I'm kinda kind of moving toward their vision for it. It took like five days.

It's risky, obviously.

The super risky.

Yeah, it's risky. I don't know if I trust towns in New York. I don't know what.

Me neither.

As the primary defender in the interior of your basketball court, which is something he didn't have to do in Minnesota.

Or to stay healthy. I mean, injury stats with him are pretty alarming, but I get it. There's a million things we could point to, but talent wise, they're trying out those five and all those guys are healthy. And towns doesn't self combust in New York. Like, I get it. It's just the, the flip side of that. If it doesn't work out. But, you know, I get why they did it.

I get why they did it. Minnesota did. I can see why Minnesota did it, too. Clearing that. Clearing the decks off of that second or third big contract and sort of opening it up. Because I think Randall comes off with an option as soon as the end of this year, depending on if he takes his option.

There is. I don't know if you have any of these people in your life, but there's a couple of Knicks fans in my life now who are like, this Randall stuff's ridiculous. Randall's good. He's fucking tough as hell. People don't realize, like, this guy was second team all NBA. It's not like this was some bozo that got thrown in. This guy's a really good basketball player and now he has a chip on his shoulder. And just please don't undersell the Randall piece of this. I want to see it. I think the spacing is going to be super weird. But, you know, he was on pace to make all NBA, what, three years in a row?

Yeah. And he's. He. The way I look at the game analytically, he is one of the more enigmatic guys to pin down because one year he is unquestionably a great offensive player and then the next year his shot just goes away and he. He takes really tough shots sometimes and you're just. He's just a hard guy to pin down. I think we're going to see the best version of him. For the point you just made, he seems like a guy who will play better with a chip on his shoulder. He seems like a guy who'll be able to channel that into and I told you so sort of season.

And I think also a physical guy, going back to your physicality point, like super physical. This is the way the league is now, is good for him.

Great passer. I feel like that team got a personality transplant and I feel like he's going to make them tougher in a way, with Carl going out and him coming in, I think that's, that's good for Minnesota, too. And I think him. It has a chance to really vibe with ant and I think that culture and Jaden McDaniels and really sort of coalesce into a really gritty, tough group, a defensive minded group. And Tim Conley could win this trade. He could.

So you mentioned the parody piece, and then we'll move on. But I agree with you, at the top, there's more contender parity than we've had in a long time. Usually there's somebody, even if you go back to the two thousands you had, the Pistons were in the mix for like six years in a row in the east, right? The Lakers had two different runs. There's always people that have runs. I was looking. Cause we're taping the over under spot in two weeks, and I was looking at the east. You can come up with the first seven in the east, the rest of the teams in the east. It's brutal. There's actually feels like there's potentially more bad teams than we've had in a while. You could potentially get up to ten bad teams in a 30 team league, which I thought, I can't remember that. And some of them are bad by design. Other of them are just kind of too young or they're poorly designed. But it feels like the bottom part of the league is going to be really bottomy this year.

Yeah, I agree with that. I think, you know, you have the Nets, the Wizards, no offense to our friend Joe Toronto, Raptors, the Hornets, the Bulls, the Pistons, maybe the Hawks. The Hawks are freaking weird, and it skews to the east, which means your team and the Knicks or the Pacers, whoever really clicks below the Celtics line is going to have a lot of easy wins, too. So I think that this is good for the Boston Celtics because this is distributed on the eastern half of the bracket and means a lot. Regular season wins. You can rest Porzingis, you can rest your guys, you can defend your title. It better because you're going to have a lot of games in Charlotte, Chicago and Detroit and Toronto to win with, you know, two of your guys resting. And I think that's going to lend itself. So if I had to predict the parody thing, I think your team is in really good position in Boston to be favored not just this year, but the next few years to come out of the Eastern Conference. Barring any drama up there, Kirk, that.

Makes me super happy. I'm glad you think that. Yeah. Fanduel, Philly, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Orlando, Indiana, Miami, Knicks. Right, you got. You got those seven. Then it quickly goes into Toronto, Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit, Washington, Brooklyn as the make the playoffs. Odds descent, Brooklyn is 40 to one to make the playoffs on Fanduel. Right. But then you go up to Atlanta, they're plus 152 and that's as an eight seed. So even Fanduel's like, we don't fucking know who's going to be the 8th seed. Like, so it tells me one of those teams. And that's what I have to figure out. We do the over under. One of those teams is going to be a, oh, this team's a little better than we thought team. And I don't know who that is yet. Like, it might be Charlotte. I don't know.

I like Charlotte there, but yeah, I don't know if those odds account for the Ben Simmons workout videos that we all saw a couple of weeks ago.

Feeling great. I read an article yesterday that it's starting point guard is. It's a battle between him and Schroeder. We don't know. We're just going to have training camp to figure out who grabs it. I'm going to bet on Schroeder. Just. I'm going to put that money down now.

Do I will say if Ben Simmons comes back to 78% of what we've seen from Ben Simmons, it could be Brooklyn just by default. What you just listed there like that. He would become one of the better players in that group of. Of troubled eastern conferences.

But didn't they do the thing where they. They did that? They did the trades over the summer because they wanted. They basically were saying, we want our pick to be bad, I to be good this year, and we want to own it. So that makes me suspicious. The win for them would be to be able to trade Ben Simmons. Right. To deal with an expiring and be like, hey, look at this guy. Used to be an all defense guy. What's your fourth trend?

My fourth trend is american superstars Bill Simmons are washed.

Oh, boy. Washed.

It's been six full years since a hardworking american has won the NBA MVP award. Bill. Wow. Six years. It's, as an american myself, it's one of the most alarming trends in basketball. Growing up, watching Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, this was our game. This was our sport, and it was represented at the very top of the league. Now if you look at MVP odds or you look at who's going to be first team all NBA, you see a bunch of guys who weren't born in our country. And I kid a little bit here, but this is remarkable. This is basketball becoming soccer. This is a global sport.

It's been. I don't feel like you're kidding. I'm about to start humming God bless America, but there's a path where there's.

Not an american MVP in the we're on it and we're on it through this season unless somebody like Jalen Brunson, Jason Tatum upsets the other five guys who are in front of them for MVP, who are all foreign born, including Sga. A lot of people take credit for him in our country. He's canadian. But I think it is one of the more interesting trends. We saw it in Paris. We narrowly escaped a Serbia game with one of the best olympic rosters we've ever put together. We narrowly escaped a french game with that same roster. This game is global now and it's showing up at the top. The top is top award that we give out in pro basketball.

Fando has Luca as the favorite at plus 380, Jokic four to one. Shea five to one, Embiid plus 750, Giannis plus 850. And then Brunson's ten to one Edwards is eleven to one. So there's not an american player with single digit MVP odds anyway.

It's crazy.

It's crazy. And as we've said three times on this segment already, it's like Wemby's still coming. I don't think he's going to be a factor this year. But when we look out in the trend space, deeper into the think the Wemby MVP futures for 2028 are relevant in 2029. And I really think we could see a full decade. Bill Simmons and this is where I put book a basketball bill up on here. This is remarkable, dude. This is an american league for the last 80 years for the most part. And. And one of the biggest trends is it's no longer the case.

Yeah, I'm trying to think, like, we haven't even seen the best version of Luca yet. No, he has not won an MVP. There's no scenario where he doesn't win an MVP this decade if he doesn't get hurt. Jokic is still in his prime. Wemby's coming and you're looking at Edwards and Tatum, there's like a maybe. Keep your fingers crossed for John Morant having like a 2011 Derrick Rose season, lifting up a team, you know, maybe ten wins higher than they should be.

But Devin Booker, maybe. Yeah, it's. It's. It's slim Pickens. Yeah. And, you know, maybe it's Cooper. Cooper flag is our is. But who knows what it's going to be, dude. But it is remarkable and it's one of the biggest trends again since we were working together at Grantland. This is crazy.

Yeah.

Before 2019, only three international players had ever won the award.

Should we just claim and beat? I mean, he did claim for Team USA. Maybe we can claim him.

Yeah.

I put this on my instagram, and I have the flags of all the nationalities of the guys, and a bunch of people in the comments were like, dude, Embiid's American. He played for Team USA Today. I'm like, well, I don't know if the people in Cameroon would claim he's american, but I. Yeah, I think. No, and be all kidding aside, American born. Yeah, we don't need charity. We're a freaking America. Like, this is crazy.

I love this. This is most excited I've been since Rocky IV was on two nights ago and I watched the loan and the cold war again. What's your last trend?

My last trend is related, and it's related again to the decade. It's the center position is back. The center's big men are back. And we sort of alluded to this earlier with the physicality segment, but, you know, Roy Hibbert was an all star and then out of the league in two years. Draymond Green had revolutionized the center position, and now we see a league full of Embiid's poor.

That's not fair. You can't credit Draymond. It was Ante Zizich. Wasn't that his name?

The Hawks. Yeah, the Hawks.

The Hawks guy.

Yeah, Mike. Mike Boudenholzer ended Roy Hibbert's career in the playoffs.

They spotted that big, bulky, whatever country that dude was from, and he started hitting threes, and it completely upended the playoffs.

That's the great. That's a great scene for the european big documentary that we should make is. Yeah. Zizich taking down Roy Hibbert.

Is that who it is now? I got to look this up.

I might perrontage.

That's who it was. I couldn't remember his name. Pero ontic.

I can't believe I did it. But, yeah, bud deserves credit for saying, hey, guys, our center should be able to shoot, too. And if your center can't shoot and can't defend in the pick and roll and can't pass, like, time's running out. And the credit goes to Giannis Porzingis and Bede and Jokic for bringing skills to the five Mandev and saying, look, size is still the most important thing you can have in this dumb game we're all obsessed with. But if I can dribble past and shoot two, I'm going to be a problem. And so big men are back, and I think more valuable than ever if they can put it together. If you can dribble, pass and shoot in that position group, and obviously rebound, you are among the most valuable players in the sport. And I don't think that's what we were talking about five years ago, seven years ago when we were chasing Roy Hibbert out of the NBA and when Z bo stopped posting up and Draymond was running up and down the court at six. Six being a center.

Yeah.

So I think that another big trend is like, yeah, the return and revenge of the girth, as I like to say. Center position is back.

Yeah. It feels like it would be really hard to win a title unless you at least had an answer for an awesome center at some point in the four rounds.

The Celtics are so big. Right?

Yeah.

That's not small ball. Small ball is not going anywhere. Yeah. You need, you need Giannis, you need Jokic, you need Porzingis. Yeah. You need these guys that can bang around and rebound. And you, again, as the historian of the game, know that this league was owned by these guys for his first half.

For better and worse, I think they won big centers, like battling like, two dinosaurs against each other as everyone else stood around.

It was for worse. It was, and we opened up the game with a three point shot, and that led to a crisis at the center position. But instead of going away peacefully, they learned how to dribble, pass, and shoot and get a little quicker, and they didn't go quietly. In fact, they're winning MVP's. And I think the last three MVP's, last four MVP's are centers because Jokic has won three and indeed is one four. And we haven't had a decade, Bill, with four centers winning the mvp since the seventies.

Wow.

So they're not only back, they're back in a way that, in my lifetime is unusual at the very top of the league.

Two other things, I think with that one is the curry generation influence and just these big guys coming up shooting threes when they were kids or teenagers and just being more comfortable for it. But, I mean, the greatest guy to look at for this is Al Horford, who I think until, like, 2016, I don't think he took any threes. And then if you go look at his basketball reference, there's all of a sudden this one year, and it just flips. And from that point on, he's completely reinvented himself as this different type of guy. So that's one thing. And then the other thing is, I think as our stuff got more sophisticated with where people were scoring and not scoring, what plays worked and didn't work. You watch, and I. Obviously, during the summer, I'm watching old basketball sometimes. Cause I just miss basketball. And you watch some of the offense they ran back then. It's unbelievable now to watch. They're just dumping into some big guy. There's no spacing at all. There's two guys on his side of the court. He's immediately swarmed. He tries to do, like, a drop step anyway in traffic, and we were just kind of doing basketball ball incorrectly.

Yeah, I think that. I think we just solved that, and that probably helped the centers. Yeah.

Opening up the game. I mean, Dirk is another person who really just sort of led by examples like, oh, guys, I. I'm pretty good at. At rebounding and blocking shots, but I'm very good at shooting the ball, and nobody can block it, and I can space the floor and open it up for Jason Kidd to do whatever he wants over here on offense. And I think that changed a lot of things. Brooke Lopez and Al Horford revolutionized their games on the fly.

Lopez is another one. He never shot threes.

Yeah, both Lopez and Horford were all stars without ever making threes and then became NBA champions and extended their careers and made a lot more money because they were like, you know, Bud was involved with Brooke Lopez, too. He started that in Brooklyn, but when he got to Milwaukee, obviously spaced the floor for Giannis to just govern him, pummel people with a basketball. So I think that's a huge part of it, dude. For sure.

Well, Buds, now. Nurkic is his biggest project yet. He's probably got Nurkic. Just, can you make these two shots from these two spots for me? Because this is my thing, man. Please do.

I can tell you a little insider stuff there with the Suns. They are trying to get Nurkic to shoot threes. Whether that will work or not is one of the more interesting things we'll get to witness early this season, maybe even the preseason. But I wouldn't be surprised to see Nerk trying to shoot threes in preseason basketball. So, yeah, Bud has revolutionized that, too. He obviously had Al Horford in Atlanta, as well.

Kirk Goldsberry, without spoiling anything next week. It's good to have you in our universe and look forward to hearing more from you on different places that might involve the ringer.

Oh, man, that would be great. Let's try to make it happen. Bill, thanks for being all right.

We'll try. I'm going to work on it right now. Kirk, good to see you. All right. Danny Heifetz is here for the Ringer. He is one of the hosts of the Ringer fantasy football show, an excellent show that I really enjoy. He also writes for the Ringer.com dot. He's also a diehard Giants fan. And neighbors made it four games, but it was an incredible four games. I don't understand. They're playing the Seahawks. House and I are going to talk about this later. A million dollar picks, they're like, plus six, plus six and a half. Neighbors was their whole offense, and he's almost definitely not playing against Seattle. I don't understand. What is the case for the Giants now?

The giants could go one and three.

I don't know.

I don't think there's ever been an offense. I'm serious. I don't know if there's an offense in NFL history that relied on a rookie so much immediately out of the gate to be not just like, touches, but the design. I mean, even though Del Beckham had a great rookie year, didn't play the first four weeks of the season, I don't think he even was active. And so I think it's like Adrian Peterson, like a running back in zero seven. So the idea without him, I don't know. It is sad how much this guy, who is 21 years old, not playing is like. It feels hopeless.

But on the other hand, when he was playing, there was hope. Like he was that good. I was like, I figured he would be in the near the top of targets. And I looked it up, and he had nine more targets than anyone else in the league. Through four games, he had 52. The next guy was 43. But eye test wise, it felt that way. It felt like every series they were just, how can we get him the ball? How can he just get a touch?

I mean, he's. Yeah, he's number one receiver in fantasy right now, basically for a reason. But, yeah, you watch that Cowboys game. It's funny cause I think Daniel Jones had 29 completions, 23 of them were two neighbors and Wandale Robinson. But the reality is all the Wondale ones are basically checkdowns because neighbors has doubled. It's all second and 18. He gets eight yards, it's third and eight. He gets seven, it's third and five. He gets three. It's all just. They double neighbors. They throw it to Wandale. It's not like Wandale just becomes a number one Wandell's. Five foot eight. The plan is to throw it to Wandale and they'll tackle him short. It's not an offense. So, I mean, without neighbors, it's funny how many receivers in the NFL right now, if they missed a game, would move the spread more than neighbors because I don't think it's five, more than five or six players.

Such a good point. And it was such a. Such a weird pick because you could go either way in it, right? It's like, well, the Giants can't block. Like, you should just take the other left tackle. You're always good there. And don't take a wide receiver when you don't have a quarterback. And yet they really thought, it seemed to think he was special, which, you know, I know you did a bunch of ringer draft shows, and that was a big argument. Could he actually be better than Harrison? And then you watch him out there, especially at the age he was at, it just. I didn't know who to compare him to. House and I were talking about, it's like Tyree kill, but with size and just craftsmanship. And I was just blown away by how good he was. And it was such a shame he got hurt at the end of that Dallas game. The game was like, basically, you know, almost over.

And then he got such a weird injury, too, because Al Michaels, who, I don't know if Al even wants to be doing those games anymore. And he just was like, oh, neighbors hurt. I'm like, yeah, I think he got knocked out trying to make hotel catch. They barely addressed it. But then, yeah, no, to your point. I mean, the joke we made on the fantasy on the draft show last year, and it wasn't really a joke. I kept asking if Marvin Harrison was still Marvin Harrison's son, but he just was named Trent or Robert or something. That wasn't Marvin Harrison. Would we just have Malik neighbors hire? Because that's really the argument, is that neighbors actually is. He would have been number one in last year's receiving class and before that, too. And. And so I think he's a special player. There's an argument they should have just taken JJ McCarthy or whatever, because you're. It's so rare to get an. Get a quarterback that high that when you're that high, just take it. And you should just do that every year. However, I mean, look, it's hard to watch the first four weeks of the season.

I think that was a bad pick.

Well, it's also watching all these guys. Cause I think Brian Thomas Junior is awesome.

Oh, my God. He's.

And I don't know how many times Lawrence has missed him in the first four games, but it's been at least a handful. But he seems like every time they go wide and somebody's running, it just seems like he's open by three yards. Dunsay is probably the fourth. I mean, he's been a little banged up, but he's easily probably the fourth best out of those four guys, at least coming out of the gate. Harrison has had moments, but neighbors is clearly, if you're doing this over, you're doing a redraft. He's clearly the first guy, right?

He's. He's unbelievable. And I think that's the key. Is he based. Malik, neighbors, I'm serious when I say this. I'm obviously biased fan brain at work here, but I really think, I don't know if there's ever been a receiver in NFL history who was as focal, like, the point of every concept they're running is to get the ball to him immediately. Like the first four weeks of the season. I don't know if there's ever, like, even the Cardinals with Marvin Harrison, Greg Dorch was picking up a lot of defenses were showing respect to Marvin Harrison, but the Giants, it's like, if Malik doesn't have the ball, the play is not going to work on half the plays. And he just turned like 21 years old. I don't think that's ever happened before.

But I say this in a semi insulting way. It's like watching a high school team that has one awesome player and the coach is just like, we just gotta get. We gotta get Johnny the ball. Johnny. We get. The scouts are here and that's the thing is, but what's the psyche of the Giants fans with this? Because on the one hand, hard knocks was a disaster. The Saquon thing was a disaster. The team has been the worst team in the league for the last eight years, and it really feels like there's going to be a total house cleaning. But on the other hand, this pick was amazing.

The pick was amazing. But I think the Giants Finns, there's optimism around everyone. I think Giants Finns are out on Daniel Jones, and Giants fans are sad about Saquon and Giants fans are optimistic about the offensive line being. I mean, you got to understand, this is still better than what we're used to on offensive line. Nabors is clearly awesome. The other pieces, Wondell Robinson, Jalen Hyatt, Darius Slate and fit well around neighbors when he's healthy and the defense, enough talent on the defensive line that you think that you can eventually fix the secondary. But I knew this season was in a weird spot when your buddy Hershey, who's a Giants fan, and my mom, who is the reason I'm a Giants fan, I can't believe this happened verbatim. The same text message to me after watching the first hard knocks. And Hershey and my mom have never met, and they both texted me after the Saquon episode aired where they called Saquon and said, thanks. No thanks. This is so fucking depressing. It's verbatim from both. And I was like, that's a terrible sign. But every giant spit I knew watched that was like, how bad was everything else that that's got aired?

Yeah. And how do you even let cameras in the building if you're just completely inept? All right, so you're going to do, I asked to do five favorites, your five favorite fantasy assets in distress that you would actually trade for these.

Yeah.

Yeah. These are, they haven't started out great. Maybe the person who has these guys, these five guys is starting to panic. That thought they overpaid. They read it wrong. So there's a chance you swoop in and grab it, or you have one of these guys and it's just stay calm, stay calm, stay calm. So we're going to go in reverse order from five to one. So give us number five.

Oh, give us. Oh, you want to go number five?

Okay. Yeah, I want to go. I want to end with number one.

Okay, well, in that case, then I'll give you the fifth one. I'm cheating a little. The fifth one. This isn't even a trade thing. This guy's on waivers. But I want to do it because nothing's happened yet. But Ad Mitchell for the Colts. And this is, you know, maybe not the most exciting one to lead with, but Ad Mitchell is a rookie receiver for the Colts at a University of Texas. He's done nothing. And you don't have to, like, he's on waivers. You don't even have to add him right now. Ad Mitchell, though, has the best ass in the league, and by ass, there's a stat, fantasy points. It was a great website. Shout out to Scott Barrett and them at fantasy points. They have this great stat now called ass, which is average separation score. And it's, honestly, it's like a breakthrough.

I've seen this because Jalen Polk is good at this. He's at the number three.

Jalen Polk is an incredible ass. We've been telling you through the whole draft season. But what it really is is just, you know, if you get right now, you know, the player tracking, it's like, oh, you're really open five yards from the defender. All right, well, if it's third and 20, who, and you're ten yards away from the first, who cares if you're open? You know, like, that's, the defense is giving it to you, so. But if it's third and ten and you're twelve yards downfield, that's hard to get open. So average separation score. They do a really good job of actually looking at watching tape and player and like, looking at the coverages and being like, how hard was it to get open, though, really? Were you open because of the coverage breakdown and they made a mistake or did you do something and they assign you a score? It's really good anyway. And you look at the metric and you know how it is with stats where it's like, you do want the stats to match the eye test and you're like, all right, minimum 50 routes this season. The best asses are, you know what is.

Chris Olave is really high up there. Jameson Williams, Brandon Ayuk, Mike Evans. And number one ass in the NFL. September is ad Mitchell for the Colts.

Wow.

Number one. So here's the thing. He's not playing a ton right now because he's a rookie. He's mercurial, I think, as a prospect. And there's frankly a lot of little details. He's got to get right. Lining up snaps when he starts playing. I don't even need to see him have any catches or yards when he actually becomes a regular member of the rotation. We see this all the time with rookie receivers. We have all these expectations. And then September, like, you didn't do anything yet. We get impatient. November and December, the rookie receiver, the rookie wall is a myth. It's not like, oh, they don't play 17 games and they get tired. It's the opposite. September, they don't do anything. And then, like last year, Rashid Rice didn't do anything for three months. And then he was a top six receiver for the end of the season. And so that's where a guy like Ad Mitchell, I think you gotta keep him in mind. He's a great ass.

You know what's interesting on that? I picked up Josh Downs in all three of my leagues last week or yesterday, I guess so. I watched that entire Colt Steelers game and he was open the entire game and they were looking for him and throwing it to him. He's making big catches. He was hurt the first couple of weeks. Pittman also had a big game. You're telling me about. Mitchell Pierce has made a couple big, long plays. Like, I actually really like their receivers. And I do wonder, like if they just said, hey, Anthony, Richard Richardson, no offense, but we might, we actually might have a chance to do some stuff. Is it okay if we play Joe Flacco? Because Flacco, the moment he came in and I had the Steelers, I was like, oh, no, this is. And he was hitting dudes, but I like their weapons. Taylor was really good, too, before I got hurt.

Chris Ryan came on our show, the ring fantasy football show last or a couple weeks ago and talked about how all these quarterbacks are probably still just playing too early and the money bolification of these rookie contracts, where it went from. Oh, it's cool that the Seahawks had Russell Wilson. He was being paid less than long snapper, but now it's become arbitrage. The rookies throw money in the fire at all costs. Throw them to the Wolves. It's like the thing about Richardson, still like the youngest quarterback, you know what I mean? He's like two years younger than Jaden Daniels. And so, yeah, it's like Joe Flacco probably is more prepared to play. But it's also funny that you like the Colts receivers because your basketball brain more than any GM in the, in the NFL. Chris Balor, the Colts GM, has said, I want my receivers to resemble a basketball team.

Interesting.

So I think subconsciously I think, yeah, you were drawn to it.

I thought, you know, they hit a couple of third and tens against the Steelers, which is no small feat because the Steelers have an excellent defense. But I felt like they had guys open that whole game and I don't know, I was intrigued by them. I went from thinking they sucked after two weeks to kind of not thinking maybe they could steal the division if used to go south. All right, who's your number four?

Number four on the rookie trains, just Roma Doon's a and Xavier Worthy. I'm doing both. But just the rookie train, O'Doomse and worth, because that wasn't sure if the admission really counted or not. But Roman Doomsday and Worthy O'Doomsday obviously went to the Bears in Chicago with Caleb Williams and then the Chiefs. Somehow the Buffalo Bills allowed the Chiefs to trade up and get Xavier Worthy, the fastest player in the history of the NFL combine. And those are also guys where Xavier Worthy had that great week. One hasn't done a ton since, you know, recorded this Thursday. So maybe, you know, Worthy has a great week. But I look at both those guys as of the same ilk where you were really excited to have them and then you're like, damn, they're not doing anything, dudes. They had one great week against the Colts of, and then otherwise it's like one catch for eleven yards, two catches for 30 yards, one catch. Dude, he's open, man. Or doomsday is open. Like, Caleb has missed some throws. Belichick keeps saying Caleb's missing, but I look at like last week against the, the Ramsey just got tackled by a defense by the slot quarterback because he was going to have like a 40 yard touchdown.

And you see that stuff like that. And Caleb's missing throws to DJ Moore. I think DJ Moore could have a lot of do really well this week, but I look at O'Donsey as like the eight, like the archetypical receiver that we thought would be good and we gave up on. And then in December you look up and you're like, oh, he's the number three receiver in all fantasy since Thanksgiving.

And there's always two rookies that do that, too, every year.

And so I think that's how I would start this segment, is that every year for the last, really? Since the College of vacation of the NFL in last five years, every year there's two or three rookie receivers that just flip the switch somewhere between Halloween and Thanksgiving and you find those dudes, you know, those old commercials, you'll save the cheerleaders, save the world. It's like find the receiver, win your league. O'Doomse is like the best example I've seen in years where it's like, yeah, rookie quarterback, rookie receiver. He's already getting open by week four. It's like, yeah, you're trying to think about week nine and beyond O'Doomsday and then also worthy is perfect for it.

So this week they're playing the Panthers, who they're going to be able to throw on. And if Caleb can't have an at least like a good game against them, I think there be some concerns about what's going on. Cause I'm with you. I felt like, it feels like he's missed throws every game that I've had on one of the tvs. The Panthers can't stop anyone. They can't, they can't rush the passer. Right. He's actually going to have time to look around. So I guess we're going to find out. Worthy, I think a lot of people are on because of the rice injury.

The rice injury ruins worthy.

Yeah, it's like, obviously he's going to get it. I wonder, like, who's, who's the stealth chief now? The stealth stealth chief receiver that is just going to, like, Smith Schuster. The Pats waved in early August like he couldn't move. And so, like, some people, like, I'm seeing him on, like, the roster trends, like, people picking him up and it just feels like he's washed. But it's going to be somebody. They always find somebody.

They do. Shout out to Justin Watson, who actually my fiance's mom taught him in high school, convinced him to take AP calc. So there you go.

Penn Watson.

Justin Watson. Pengrad Justin Watson. We actually were watching the first ever Amazon Prime Thursday football game was Chiefs Chargers. That was the one where Herbert's insides got liquefied and she was like, oh, she's like, I taught it and Justin Watson and in my head, I'm like, he's not going to play. He's not going to do anything. 3 seconds later, he catches an 80 yard touchdown.

Oh, my God.

It was like, oh, wow.

There you go.

Jesus. All right, number three.

Number three, Josh Jacobs, the running back for the packers. He's a buy. Look, at the end of the day, people, I think most people probably just look at their player and they click on the little window and open it up and they're like, 13 points. Eleven, nine points, five points. And that's what they see with Josh Jacobs. And I think they get frustrated. I get why people would be, he hasn't scored a touchdown this year. I think people look at that and like, that's insane. The touchdowns are about to come in bunches for Josh Jacobs. The Packers haven't scored. They haven't. The packers haven't played a normal game yet this year. Crazy week. One game in the Brazil with that weird field, and then weeks two and three were with Malik Willis. And last week, the packers went down 28 to nothing. Cause George Love thought he had to do a Brett Favre impression. The packers are one of the better teams in the league. They're gonna have one of one of better offenses in the league. And then you're gonna have Josh Jacobs. He's, the touchdowns are going to come. He's the main guy.

Emmanuel Wilson. I think a lot of the people who played are red herrings. And I think Josh Jacobs is the last really good running back on a really good team that you can get for a fraction of what he really is going to be worth down the stretch.

Rams defense 28th against the run.

Yeah, I'm worried. Yeah, I. This week, that's the thing. I know this is coming up Friday. I think you got to get that done soon because I look at Josh Jacobs, I'm going to just call my shot here. Josh Jacobs has never scored a receiving touchdown. He actually somehow has the most catches in the history of the NFL without a touchdown. And I think Josh. Yes, he has like 210 catches on crazy. Has never caught a touchdown. I think it will happen this week with Josh Jacobsen.

Wow. So my version of that house has been on this on the Rainier gambling show. Mixon was awesome in week one and the Texans were clearly trying to have this kind of power running game mixed with being able to throw and then mixing goes out and, you know, we haven't seen him again. I wonder what he's going to look like week eight, week nine, when he's healthy, when their offensive line, you know, they get their offensive line healthy, tunsils back, they figured out the receivers. Tank Dell comes back now you spread the field more and they're just pounding with him because I think that's what they wanted to do. So he's another one that I feel like you can maybe steal for nothing.

Tank Dell was. Tank Dell was literally 6th on this list. I literally was debating whether to talk about Tank Dell or not. But Mixon, I agree, too. Mixing. I think Mixon's smart because the Texans want to run. Whether or not there's a whole, you know, we could, there's a whole argument in the nerdiest corners of the football Internet about whether you need to run to his, to do run fakes and play action. Do you actually need to do run plays to do play action? Whether or not that's true, the Texans believe it. And the Texans very. They've looked this way the whole time from all that. We got ourselves in a tizzy over the Stefan Diggs trade. The reality is the Texans have wanted to run on first and often second down for the entirety of the Stroud time. And honestly, a lot of the games this year, they kind of did look like this last year, too. We just did. They didn't look in the wild card round, but yeah, they have been like winning ugly the whole time with CJ Stroud. It didn't really look that way at.

The time, but disjointed.

Yeah, they want to give him a lot of carries to Joe Mixon. That's their identity.

I think that Texans bills is a stay away. I don't know what to expect from that Bills defense and the Texans, to me, feel like the Lions did last week. I love the Lions offense last week. Everybody's like, the Lions, what's wrong with them? It's like, we played three games. The Lions are going to be fine. They just need to pound the ball and run and that'll set up the pass and they'll be fine. And I want the Texans. I really feel like they're going to hit that point. I just don't know what week of the season going to be. It could be like week eleven.

I do think, schematically there's a world, I mean, again, you can't let Nico Collins beat you. So there is actually a world where the bill where Stefan Diggs really does have to step up. I also, you know, little spoiler, but I'm going on the wise guys on the great Sunday pregame show we got.

Oh, that's the best pregame show there is on YouTube.

The best pregame show there is on YouTube tv. And I'll spoil it right now, but my little long shot of the week is Stefan Diggs to score a touchdown this week is like two to one. Stefan Diggs to score two touchdowns is 13 to one.

The fuck you Stefan Diggs game.

The fuck you Stefan Diggs game. And if you want to parlay the fuck you, Stefan Diggs game versus the bills, and the fuck you, DJ Moore game versus the Panthers, and DJ Moore and Diggs both score two touchdowns versus their former team. I put down $5 in that. DJ Moore and Diggs to both get fuck you two touchdown games.

Why can't we have fuck you, Sam Darnold in there, too? I can't.

We can do that. Digs and Darnold is, uh, $5 to win $1,200. So if we threw in Darnold into.

That, to throw DJ Moore the triple fuck you. I like that. I'm going to throw that at house. When we do million dollar picks. Like house would love nothing more than saying fuck you to three people.

We might walk away with equity and Fanduel if we put all three. That'd be quite.

Try to work on that. All right, who's number two?

Number two is the Miami Dolphins.

All of them.

Again, value.

You can't.

You can't spell value without ew. And like, it's, you know, I don't think any team in recent memory has where we thought they'd be to how disgusted we are by them in four weeks. I mean, a year ago, the Dolphins, they had the 70 points versus the Broncos last September. They had 35 points in each half of a game. The Dolphins have 25 points in each of the last three weeks. They went at a nine quarter stretch where they had nine points. And so you, you wrote like, in a column like 20 years ago that for to do a fantasy trade, you have to get someone who wants to shake things up. They're owing for the one in three. Got to shake it up. If you have Tyree kill, you're probably thinking about benching him for, like, Darnell Moody. You know what I mean?

Like, like, right. You have, you have the skeletons in the closet of Larry Fitzgerald twelve years ago and these receivers that just got stranded with no QB, and you remember how that went and you're giving up.

Exactly. And so you look at Tyree kill and Waddle's unplayable. And he, I mean, he looks like he doesn't really want to play out there. And so you have Tyree killed and you actually can make a true win win trade if you're 40 or three and one in your league or whatever record you have after this weekend, if you think you're going to make playoffs. And the people who have Tyree kill probably are not in position to make playoffs, give them something like a win now, player win now running people always. And my friends this week made, someone made a trade this week. They traded Tyree kill for Zack Moss. And I looked at that, I know, but I'm like, well, they're one in three. I get it. How's Tyree kill going to help you? And, like, no one want that thing. No one wanted Tyree kill. It was crazy. And so, like, the, it's not like just an imaginary buy low. People with Tyree kill are panicking. So if you're 40 or you're three and one, or if you're five and, oh, after this, and you're gonna make the playoffs, imagine if you can get, if two is coming back week eight, probably Adam Schefter saying Tua might is targeting week eight.

If Tua comes back and is even 80% of his former self, you just have Tyree kill in your flex for a playoff run. That's crazy. And so I think that that is as calculated of a risk as you could possibly take.

What about the vil chap a chan?

I think a chan's right there, too. Waddle. I'm too weird on waddle, but I think Tyree kill and Devon H and together are the two people I would target. And those are the guys. Again, those are the people who can flip a season because for the most part, a lot of fantasy is luck. But usually at the end of the day, for all the analysis we do, oftentimes getting to the championship or not depends on like five people. Like there are five people that just swing that just having them on your team makes you three or four times more likely to have made the championship. And it's always like two or three people that you drafted and it's like one or two people could have gotten lucky.

Irving, you picked up in week three and he's.

Exactly. Or Covid year. Josh Kelly just replaces Eckler because he has Covid has 30 points. And this year if you trade for Tyree kill and he comes back and he's Tyree kill after Thanksgiving, you know, that might just be that simple. So him and. Hm.

Can I, can I do a counter, please? I don't think Miami was good this year and then they were doing, became a red herring because they shouldn't have beaten the Jags in week one. I said this on, on Tuesday in the Tuesday pod to Dubundo should not have beaten the Jags. And really it was two throws by two and they in the middle and then Buffalo kicked their ass until two got hurt. They had three points. So the offensive lines, worse. They lost Wilkins. They've had a bunch of injuries already. They just lost another one today. Like it's they. I think they're going to suck either way. And they can't trade Tyreek because they just sign no extension. But there's also a world where they suck. Like we're going to find out after this. Pat's Dolphins game. That's probably the race for number 32. Oh, I think whoever loses, right. Who's worse than those two teams?

I think the Dolphins without they're right now the worst team in the league, I think, without especially. I mean, they just lost Jalen Phillips. I agree. If anything, the two injury actually took away, I think, from how much heat would be on Mike McDaniel right now. Because I, I like and appreciate that Mike McDaniel tried to be an authentic leader and do things his way. Having said that, the schtick is really wearing off and it's impossible not to juxtapose, juxtapose how poorly he's done with the backup quarterback with all these other guys. But to your point, with Tua, honestly, that game, the Bills, I think, I really think they could. The Bills in that game really wrote the book on Tua and just this, this system of.

Right.

They built it in a way that's very fragile. But, yeah, even with that, it's not a very versatile team. I totally agree. Yeah, the.

Well, yeah, Mike Lombardi was calling. He's calling Mike McTano the dish jockey now. He's the inventor of the clapper nickname, one of the great nicknames in the history of football, calling Jason Garrett the Clapper. So he calls Mike McTeno the disk jockey now. Like how he said he had this whole rant about how he's just spin his spinning vinyl and has no idea who's in the club or what, who wants to hear what songs. And I was thinking about that during the Tennessee game because he brings in Huntley. Right? And it's like, oh, so you guys going to do what LaFleur did with Malik Willis? It's like, no. We're going to try to run the exact same offense and it's going to be a complete disaster. He's just spinning. He's got his headphones on and he's like, doing. I don't know, I think he's been exposed to. I think they were pretty gimmicky and people have figured out the gimmick.

So I still think he's a. I think he's a really good coach. I think the GM, Chris, Chris Greer, who has been there forever, I think that that's. I would put him on the hot seat, but I agree. McDaniel, man, when you get the nickname, this jockey's tough.

Has never won a playoff game. Well, they haven't gotten kicked by the Chiefs last year. I don't know.

Shout out Steven Ruiz, who pointed out, I mean, for all this stuff about McDaniel versus Flores, I mean, Flores has won almost just as many games as Mike McDaniel has as Dolphins coach in less time.

Flores is like the assistant coach, star of the first month of the season. That's like him going against Aaron Rodgers in London house. I'm going to talk about that in a second. That just seems like the absolute worst possible matchup for Rogers, who's already complaining that he can't move. All right, number one is what?

Brandon Iook, the receiver for the 49 ers.

Oh, wow. I forgot he was still in the league.

You forgot he's still in the league.

Gave his jersey increase to Juwan Jennings.

Why did you forget? Is it because he has fewer receiving touchdowns than Jared Goff this year?

Yeah, I just watched him play the Patriots and I don't think. I think they mentioned him twice.

I think he. And again, this is the definition of a by low. Because this is a player who was paid $30,000,000.30 days ago. And everyone's like, brendan, you gotta pay him. He's amazing. And then has done nothing. Like, he's just been almost invisible and. But he's a by low because everything about the situation is perfect for the 49 ers right now for IuK, specifically because you got, I mean, kittle and debo are banged up. Christian McCaffrey is in and out of Germany, which, I mean, you were joking about that ten years ago. And now it's like, actually happening. Like his achilles tendonitis is spreading. Like it's contagious. They're talking about it like it's.

I don't know, that injury. Yeah, you're right. It really did almost feel like it was a staph infection as an Achilles strain. I didn't even understand it, the way.

They talk about it. It's like Game of Thrones. They're talking about grayscale. They're like, he's got the rot. We have to cut it off. And I'm like, how is this? Spread your other leg? I'm like, I'm not a doctor, but I've never heard of that. So you got all that. So the passing game is wide open and then on top of it, look, Brandon Ayukis looked rusty, but he's dropped passes. He dropped touchdowns. He looks like someone who missed all of trading camp. He did miss all of camp. It's September. He's a classic by low. And also on top of all of it, Brock Purdy is playing. Unbelievable, frankly. Brock Purdy is playing right now. Like the way we like. Brock Purdy's playing like Patrick Mahomes used to play.

Yeah.

Like, really? Like he's the way he's scrambling out of the pocket. He's the last quarterback in the world. Pushing the ball downfield out of the pocket. You know, back in my day two years ago, that happened all the time. And so purdy, just the combination of all that's perfect for Ayuk. And so I look at Ayuk as he's the most of all the people who. You could tell me what unexpected player could be like the number one receiver in fantasy for the next, like six weeks.

Like just going to tear like it was like the four weeks for his preseason. Now he's back.

Yeah. I'm like, are you kids, like, how many? How many not even. How many games would it take for you to believe it? How many catches? Like three. You're like, oh, he's back. He's mad. They figured that out.

Well, through four weeks, the top four quarterbacks in fantasy were Jaden Daniels, Lamar Jackson, Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold. And Justin Fields was 6th. So I don't know. I don't know who saw that one coming. For running backs Camara, Henry Barkley and Kyron Williams. Jordan Mason fifth. And then for receivers Nico Collins, Jaden Reed, Justin Jefferson and Malik Nabors and Juwan Jennings fifth. Why do we do this? I was, you know, what's the point of fantasy football? Why do we even, like, why did you guys do 100 episodes leading up to the season and that's the outcome?

I don't know, man. Sometimes I really don't know. I don't. It's a crap shoot. Do you know what's the only thing that makes me feel better about the idea that, oh, our job's to, like, predict all the, predict the future. And every week you just feel so stupid is everything you just listed. The only thing that makes me feel better is the people who actually have to do this for the teams are just as bad as us and maybe sometimes worse, where everything you, every player you just listed, Nico Collins was the third round pick. Now he looks like the best player in the NFL. Justin Jefferson was the fifth player in, fifth receiver in that draft. Taken it like the Eagles were going to take Justin Jefferson, talk themselves out of it. And the quarterbacks you listed, Brock Purdy last. Every team could have had him, and even the Niners were arguing about taking him. And then Darnold and Baker and all these guys were flipped by other teams. Like, no one can figure any of this out. That's the only thing that makes me feel better. But no, fantasy is pretty dumb.

Well, but the thing is, like, a lot of the conversations you guys were having, you know, you talked about Daniels a lot, Daniels versus Caleb, and could one of these guys make it? And I think all of us saw, like, okay, there's a world where Daniels could do this. So I think at least fantasies advanced to. Yeah, there's, like, Brock Bowers right now, somehow the third tight end, even though he is 23 points total in my league. But there's a world where Brock Bowers is awesome. Like, we knew this in April. He might make a huge leap down the stretch, I think, where the, the part that got super confusing for me was the quarterbacks this year, and it just seems like there's no rhyme or reason to it. And I don't at this point, I don't know why you would spend more than a dollar on a quarterback in an auction? I think that's where I've landed mentally.

It's really simple. You have, I think, the simplest way to do it, you have to get a quarterback who runs or just don't take, or just don't take a pocket passer. There's no point to spend money to a pocket passer on, in my opinion. Like, you get a quarterback who runs because it's more predictable, it's more stable, and, you know, who runs. Like, there's no, it's not like Matt Stafford is going to suddenly run for nine to.

Those guys also get hurt, which is why you should just take five $1 quarterbacks. Maybe, maybe my strategy of 28% of my roster being quarterbacks, maybe I was onto something.

Why do you, why do you have four or five? You carry more quarterbacks on your fantasy team than real teams carry on their real.

I don't anymore. You guys wean me off of it. It really killed me. We had a guy in our league this year, Brad, who's kind of insane in a good way, but he took eight running backs. He has a team of his 18 spots and he has eight running backs. And guess what? Some of them are doing really well.

You know what's so funny? I increasingly think that if you're in a league where you actually can make trades, that that's probably just the best idea because you, you go in the league and you have all these receivers. You know what everyone wants to do. Three weeks in, I'll give you a receiver if you give me a running back.

Right? There's a million Josh Downs type. Like, yeah, he's starting crazy Brad. He's starting James Cook and Josh Jacobs this week. He also has Brian Robinson, Najee Harris, Aaron Jones, Tony powered Ramondre Stevenson and Rashad Whitehead.

Yeah, you could trade all kind of teams. Receiver.

Yeah, you could literally trade seven of those guys. Maybe not Rashad waite. He didn't make your, he didn't make your list of comeback guys, Rashad.

No, I think Bucky Irving's a better runner than him. I think that's a problem.

I think he's, he's kind of jumped out of the tv the first couple of weeks. I'll say like Remondre, that's a sell to me because he's fumbled four straight games and the Pets have no offensive line left. I don't see a scenario where he starts.

But anyway, the problem with Remondre is that Gerard Mayo just said they might bench him. And again, most of fantasy, again, the last thing you're right about the shakeup. The only other question with fantasy, with actually making trades, it's all about the blurb test. If you play on a site Yahoo. And if the Yahoo blurb is remandre might get benched. And it's like, well, nope, can't. That guy's not going to take Remondre.

From your stay away.

Yeah.

I find the roster trends are just have way too much of an impact on the way I think about this stuff. It's the stock market.

It is just like, oh, man, it's like green, right? It's like if you want to trade for, if you want to trade for like, you know, say Brandon, but next week he's got a green matchup. It's like, yeah, half your, a third of your brain just thinks about the green red. You know what I mean? Like, yeah.

Like right now my league, which we had ad jobs yesterday, but Jeremy McNicholz is the number one roster trend and he's up to 44%. It's like what's going on with that guy? It's like super Trey Sermon, Trey Tucker. You just see these dudes and it just makes your, your brain churn. I'm glad we had that. As I've told you many times, you missed the days when we just had one guy reading the USA Today scores, compiling them by hand, xeroxing for ten people a score sheet and then mailing them out. And you would find out on Thursday if you won.

The idea that you actually had a friend who would sit there with a calculator or one of those calculators that had the actual paper on it and sit there and type on a Monday numbers from a box score for all of your leagues that just call you and inform you of what happened.

Heres the other funny thing, you had to get the Monday USA Today. There was a couple times where he would call a couple of us and be like, yo, the Monday USA Today sold out. Can you guys get it and do it for me and ill owe you. And that was it. If you didnt get the Monday USA Today, it was done. This was only like 34 years ago. Its not like this was in the 18 hundreds. It wasnt that far away. But this is how we did it.

It was the previous millennium, which is how it'll be remembered.

That is true. That's fair. All right, Danny Hifitz, who do you like more on the podcast this year, Craig or Danny? If you had to get to drop one of them good son style.

I would die for Danny Kelly. I love Craig and Craig. I actually think Craig is having Craig. Craig's peaking.

Craig's having a good year. Interesting. Like a Brock purdy. He's just steps it up a level.

Yeah. Bay Area, when we first met him, we're like, I don't know, is this guy just assistant thing? We're like, damn, now, this guy's really good now. Yeah, I think, you know, just cult following. But no, Danny, I. Danny, it was his birthday this week, actually. DK.

I know. Well, it's been fun to watch the show grow. What is it, five years now?

Yeah, we got our own feet in 2020. You slapped DK and I together seven years ago. I guess I forget the exact crucial.

Move was we realized immediately both of you couldn't be Danny on the show.

Well, yeah, I guess. The Dante football podcast, it wasn't great for SEO, considering Google thought it was a typo, so. But now Ringer fantasy football.

Yeah.

One of the many things we learned put fantasy in the title of a fantasy football show.

And we have the. And we have the instagrams and tick tocks now. So Ringer fantasy football is our handle on Instagram. Follow us there. And the tick tock. Ringer fantasy football, that's our handle, too. And we also do the ringer NFL YouTube. We do our power hours. Episodes come out. We have Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday shows, the power hour we do on Wednesdays, where we have a lot of fun. But we actually do that live on the ringer NFL YouTube on Tuesdays as well, so.

All right. Yeah, it's a very good show. Good to see you. Hi, Fitz.

Thank you, Bill.

All right, million dollar picks is here. Week five is ahead of us. We didn't do that well last week, but we also kind of were expecting a weird, wonky week, so we scaled back, which was smart. We're still up $197,000 for the season.

Good.

I have good news for your house. I really like week five. I liked week one. We did well. I liked week three. We did well. And I like week five.

Okay. We're on odd weeks. You like the odd weeks?

Maybe I do. I have two stayways. Four games. I'm intrigued. And then five games I marked down. So the stayways to me. And I think you like this game as Bears, Panthers, Bears minus three and a half. And my instinct is, oh, that bears shouldn't be favored by that much up against anybody, but. And there's really good Panthers d stats for the Bears. I get all of it I just don't trust the Bears. I don't. I'm staying away.

Yeah, I've had 24 hours, you know, as the week goes on and we're on the podcast, we did the East coast by show that was on Fanduel tv, and I really liked the Bears. I'll confess that I've lost some of my enthusiasm because the numbers for the Panthers offense, especially their ability to establish the run, are very good. And that is, if you're looking at that Bears defense, the reason I really, you know, felt strongly about the Bears earlier in the week was because that defense, I think, is legit. I think they're going to prove out to be a top five defense over the course of the year. Really good stats with them, their weaknesses, the run. And the Panthers have a good effing offensive line and can run the ball a little bit with my guy, chubba hubba. So I'm, I'm fine with the stay away now.

The there's a world where Caleb has an awesome game. Like the Panthers are bottom three and literally every pressure stat. The 32nd red zone, 26 yards per play, their defense. But I want to see it, so I'm staying away. BRoNcos Raiders I really wanted to take the Broncos.

Me, too.

I think the Raiders stink.

They do.

They were super lucky to win last week. The Browns. Deshawn was the second, like most efficient quarterback last week, had two big plays pulled back. I just don't think they should have won that game, and I don't think they're good, but I really don't want to bet on Bo Nicks. I know coming off a 60 yard game where it feels like if he sucks this week, he'll get benched in the first half. It just, it feels like a stay away.

So I don't, I don't think that's going to happen. And the reason to take Denver is because they have, they also have what might turn out to be a top five defense. I mean, the performance that they had against the jets last week at MetLife was so effing impressive, and that was right on the heels of a very good performance in Tampa. Two road games that defense is traveling. It's a badass defense. And if what you're saying is that the defense is the, the deciding factor against the Raiders and it's not a huge line, then you do it. But I'm kind of with you. It feels like a little early now.

I feel like you could talk me into it. Denver's d first in yards per play, third and third down second and red zone. Second in sacks and hits. I'm 30 pass.

I know.

And here's the other thing. The Raiders can't run the ball. They're 31st against the run. Whites hurt. They're playing Madison a little bit more, who I don't think is very good. And there's a world where they just fall behind. Seven nothing and the game's over. You could maybe talk me into a little Denver first half Denver game if you put, like, two drinks in me. All right, so maybe. Maybe we'll revisit that. All right. Intrigued. We're not going to do this because I'm so happy for you with, with everything that's happened with Washington, your team, to see where it's.

And.

They are such an obvious zag to take the Browns plus three. Nobody wants to take the Browns. Nobody. Not one person. And everyone's on the Washington bandwagon. It was just a week of hugs and high fives and congratulations and champagne being popped, and I don't like any of it. I think this is the most dangerous game I've seen in five weeks. Dudes, stay away.

It's.

At very least, it's a stay away.

I mean, I'll make the case on, on our rigor pregame show on Sunday. I mean, you just have to bet the Browns. It's an auto bet. The Browns. There's no scenario under which this look ahead line was Cleveland minus three in summer.

Six.

A six point swing in favor. And that's because, properly, the whole world is celebrating the arrival of the beautiful rookie, Jaden Daniels. It's a wonderful thing, the new president. President of something. I'm looking forward.

We don't even know where Biden is. I think Jaden Daniels is our new leader in Washington.

Daniels and Kingsbury for 20, you know, 24. But, I mean, the line is preposterous. And the Browns defense has the potential to really flummox this. This Washington offense. I mean, it will be by quite a bit the best defense. Look at this. Look at what you show me.

The MJ can't hear it, but I did a good luck dream team MJ cup because we need wins this week.

Yeah, let's do it.

We'll stay away, but I'll take the Bruce.

All right. All right, fine.

Next one. Texans. Bills. Texans are 1.5 dogs at home, and everyone's off them. It's very similar to the Lions last week. Everyone was off the Lions. Well, we've seen three games. The Lions offense isn't good anymore. It was the one thing I was really right about last week. I was, I'm not giving up on the Lions offense after three games and Seattle can't stop the run. They're banged up. I think they're, I think the Lions will run amok. There's a case with the Texans, but I credited you earlier when talking to Heifetz. You made the point about how awesome Mixon was in week one against a Colts defense that seemed like it was hot garbage and has actually been a little better as a season's going along. But are they this power rushing team that hasn't figured out their identity yet? I wish this game was like six weeks from now with Joe Mixon, and I would take, I would take them as home dogs against this Bills team because I don't think the Bills defense is good and all right, go backwards. They beat Arizona week one. Well, now after four weeks, that seems less impressive.

They killed Miami in week two. Well, Miami was bad even before the two injury. And I don't know, I kind of like the Texans, but I just don't want to bet against Josh Allen. That's where I landed.

Yeah. The case for the Texans, and I think it's a decent case, is they are in control of putting an end to defeating themselves. They're one of the most penalized teams in the NFL, and like, the net penalty yard differential, if you look at, you know, how many penalties they have and the yards they've been penalized compared to other teams, it's bad. And it has the effect of putting CJ Stroud in these third and long situations again and again and again. And it's super hard to get first downs on third long. Now, they do have the best receiver room in the NFL.

Well, but that Dell has been hurt.

Yeah. So that's, that's one, one of the considerations.

But I.

The version of what we just saw, Baltimore, due to that, to the middle of the bills defense, you think that Houston could be taking some instruction from that, but I'm fine with, with staying away from it. But I think the case for Houston is compelling.

It's a pix pool pick. I don't know if it's a put money on it pick. I'd even be afraid to throw them in a tease, even though they're dying for us to do that, too, because every tease is lost all year. I was so excited on Monday night as I was chasing bets and winning, and I put the Titans in a couple teases and they actually, like, came through and they won. Handle it. But of course, I could have just bet them straight up same thing would have happened. So I'm not giving up on the Texans yet. I just don't love the spot. But I also wouldn't be surprised if they had their shit together. There's also the Stefan Diggs. There's the revenge angle there. You know he's going to do something. I don't like that. Bills. I thought that Bill's defense was just annihilated last week, and I also thought they couldn't block the Ravens. Now, that might be because the Ravens are really good, but I think the Texans can pressure Allen. So I do like them. I think by Sunday I'm going to talk myself into them. I'm not doing it now.

Next one. Pats Dolphins. Pats somehow favorite in this game, which I don't fully understand when you think about what is the line now? Yeah, Pats are minus one and a half. Their offensive line was bad to begin with, and now they've lost 80% of the offensive line included in their center. Who was the one good guy in the line. It's. They've lost guys on defense. They've lost Barmore. They traded Judah. They lost their one good linebacker, Bentley. And the guy who's replaced every, Kyle and I, we watched the Pats. The guy who replaces Bentley McMillian is one of the worst pats we've had in a while. No offense to him. They lost Duggar, and they're just a mess. And this really seems like it's a race for the 32nd spot in the league. I almost want to take the points, but Miami was so bad last week, and now they just lost another guy, and I. I don't know, is this like a best player in the field game? You just ride Tyreek?

I mean, maybe, but thankfully, we don't have to bet every game on the slate. This is a classic.

We're not bad teams.

Yeah, this is a classic. Sometimes the best bet you make is the one you didn't make or whatever. I messed it up, but, yeah.

Do you want, you want to try? What were you trying to say there? Want to talk through it? We're both old.

Sometimes the best bet in a situation is the one you don't make.

I don't know.

There's a version of that.

You almost landed the plane.

There's less words you can.

We're not getting drunk house today. We're getting drove my. Just drove my kid to basketball practice.

House, which is laid out.

Yeah.

Little. Little flustered, little flummoxed. We're good.

Part of me wanted to do the this part after the Falcons game tonight and just tell you to just have three drinks because people like drunk house. All right, so one thing I was thinking about Miami game was Miami, first half Miami game is plus 165. It's just too many weird seven nothing. Three nothing. It's probably over. All right. Last game that I was intrigued by. I feel like you're going to rope me into this and I'm already pissed off about it. Jaguars. Jaguars minus two and a half at home against the Colts. The Jaguars are owned for. They have some of the worst metrics of any team in the league for some of the advanced stuff. They're 30 their defenses, 31st against the pass, 28 again in the red zone, 26 1st down. Their offense is 29th yards per play, 31st or the pass. Somehow their bottom two passing both sides, they're last in turnovers, they've committed the most, and they force the least every, and they're the dumbest team we've ever seen. They're eleven for 44 and third down. They, they just suck in every absolute respect. Indie's defense is quietly 50 yards per play now, which I think we left after week one thinking they were a disaster.

And yet I kind of like the Jaguars, who've cost us money over and over again this season.

If you have to make a play, it is the Jaguars. They are, you know, the situation is perfect for them. They haven't lost at home. They both covered and won straight up against the Colts for eight years running now.

Eight.

No, against this.

You're trying to rope me into a Jaguars bet. You were doing.

Let's not do it. Let's not do it.

Why did you send me that? Why did you send me that text?

I wanted to say it out loud. I wanted it to be said out loud that this is a great spot for Jacksonville. I really like Jacksonville. Here's the problem, though. If the Colts start Joe fucking Flacco, I want. No, thank you.

That's why I'm out. We're not deciding that on Thursday. I talked to hyphens about that before they start flacco, I think the Colts, I'm afraid.

Yeah.

And then when he came into the Pittsburgh game, I was mad.

We go with, that was it. We were cooked. That was the end of it.

So the Colts are plus 440 to win the division on Fanduel right now. Do you know that?

I did not know that. I haven't checked the Colts number.

Yeah. So what, what's their, their two and two, right?

Yep.

Then Houston is three and one.

Yes.

There's a world where they're tied after week five. And I don't understand the Indianapolis thing, but they do have some talent. Like, Taylor was running really good last week before he got a little dinged up.

They have a good offense. They have a good offensive line. That's why.

Yeah, they. Last week especially. They're well coached. But I was thinking like that, plus 440 if Buffalo beats Houston and Indianapolis beats Jaguars, drops down to like plus 120. Just a thought. I'm not going to do it.

All right.

Just the thought. All right.

Their defense is pretty beat up. The Colts right now. They've got a bunch of guys. Buckner. Yeah.

Let's talk about the games we like. So there's a London game.

Yes.

We get Rich Eisen back in the play by play. I know he's one of your play by play favorites. Vikings minus two and a half against the jets in London.

Yeah.

And I kept thinking this line was a mistake, and I didn't understand why it wasn't three or three and a half. And I get it. The Vikings are four. No. Against the spread. They're kicking ass all season. Brian Flores, he got his mojo back after two, cut his knees out. Minnesota's first and dBA DVOA after four weeks, which ain't nothing. The jets are 20th. Minnesota's defense is second against the run. The jets offense is 27th, and I think Bruce hall is dead. Minnesota is first in sacks, second in QB hits, first in QB hurries, second, and tackles for a loss. Oh, and they're fourth and scoring points. And they've bet their offense has been good all year. And then you have the jets, who can't run the ball, who have just a bad coach by NFL standards. He's one of the five worst coaches. They had a big loss last week, Salah.

It could be either one, right? You take your pick. It applies to both of them.

And Rogers got the shit kicked out of him last week and then admitted afterwards that he's banged up.

Yeah. And five sacks. Five sacks he took.

So normally I would say this looks too easy. Vikings, they're too hot. This is that. We've seen this. Stay with London. Don't bet on the London game house. This just looks to me like the worst case team for jets, for the jets to play, for Rogers to play when they already can't really block. And you're going to have Flores just going after Rodgers. I don't think he wants to get hit. And I like the Vikings.

Yeah. I'm in the same place. And it does feel like kind of a, we're buying the Vikings at the top of the price market here. And I looked at the look ahead. What do you think the look ahead was for this game, preseason? What do you think it was coming?

It had to have been what? Jets by four and a half?

Four jets by four. Right. So this is a six and a half point swing, but I think it's entirely appropriate on both sides of the ball. And the fact that it's less than three is, to me, enticing. And really, the point you made about Flores and his ability to bring the blitz is what's got me, more than anything, bullish about this. Because Flores has gone up against the Shanahandhe, you know, sort of coaching tree that's been all their game so far. He plays Shanahan and he beat him, you know, and now he gets the worst of them in Hackett. And I know that they're going to blitz. They're going to blitz a lot. And the Denver just showed us how to do that. The other thing is, I'm wondering quietly if the jets defense is. Is overrated because we've seen them shut down the Broncos and Bo Nicks. We've seen them shut down the Patriots, and we've seen them shut down the Titans.

They played three horrific quarterbacks, and now they're going against Darnold in a revenge game. And we're going to do the revenge parlay later. But now they're going against a team that's shown they can run the ball and throw the ball. And the other thing with Minnesota, like some of the advanced stats, because now we're in like week four, we're through four weeks, so we actually have stuff to look at. And the Minnesota Stats got kind of fucked up by that weird packers comeback. They're up 20 nothing. They're killing them. And then the guy muffs upon all 28 seven. Now they're changing their defense. Cause they're just trying to protect the lead. And all of a sudden the packers make a couple plays, and that game was stupid. Minnesota is dominant. And I'm a believer. I'm a believer in their defense and that, you know, the jets are averaging 18 points a game. They have no explosive plays at all. They're talking about trader for Devontae Adams all week. Rogers and Salah, people are talking about that. This almost feels like a salad. They leave them in London game.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. I would rather bet early. This is like a worst case scenario jets game. Now we've seen weird shit happen with the London games.

Yes.

And that's the only thing that scares me.

Well, the pushback to that is the favorites now are like 34 and ten, some incredible number for favorites in, in, in London games. So if you were, like, on the fence at all. Yeah, I'll dig it up.

And we're taking the Vikings.

I can source that. I can source that. I know it.

I don't, I don't know what's happened. Like, the jets lose that Broncos game. I know the weather was bad. It's one of the worst losses of the year when you have a, you're playing a team at home that cannot move the ball and you still lose. Wow.

They took a beating. That's, that's the part of it that, that, you know, to take a beating like that at home and then the whole organization has to get on airplanes and fly over to the place with the crazy, you know, different time zone. Let's, let me not, I'll take the team that I feel like is going to show up prepared and organized.

Well, here's another one. This one jumped out at me to Ravens Bengals, Baltimore at Cincy. And this has you talk yourself into the case for Cincy home. Dog I, to me, this is, I get all the trends and stuff. This is a nightmare matchup for the Bengals. The Ravens are first and run their offense. First and run stopping on defense. The Bengals can't run the ball and they can't stop the run. This is the worst possible team for them to play. You can throw anything else to me, and I just like, fundamentally, Ravens are gonna be able to run the ball and the bagels won't be able to run the ball, and that's it. How do, how do the Ravens lose this game? I can't figure it out, except for.

They'Ve, they've lost two games already, and we, there was no world in which you could come up with the pathway for them to lose to the Raiders. But they throw it.

I get it. Throw away week one, because week one, there's no preseason. Week two, they're winning, the game's over, and then all just blow it to a dumb Raiders team. That, that's going to be the dumb results of the year. And now they, look, I'm in on this Ravens team. Did you see that clip of Lamar and Derrick Henry?

It was great. It was great. I did.

I was like, oh, I'm betting these guys.

Yeah. So here's the reasons to be cautious with, with the Ravens, that the price is as high as you're going to get right because everybody just watched them on that national stage humiliate the bill.

But it's under a field goal still.

I know. So that, that, that is attractive. But, you know, the look ahead was Cincy minus one and a half. So it's moved, you know, all the way up to two and a half. For Baltimore, it is a divisional game. But let me ask you what you think the line would be if Cincy had closed out that game against the Chiefs? They should have won that Chiefs, that Chiefs game. They had the Chiefs game one. They would be two and two sitting here right now ready to host, you know, the crucial divisional game. What would that line be?

Probably a point less.

Yeah. So ball, still Baltimore probably favored because of the way that they looked against Buffalo, right?

Yeah. But I mean, we do this with NBA, too. I just think Ravens regular season Ravens is been the best, one of the best bets of the league. The last.

It's a great call and they're just.

Built to win these games. You go against them like fuck.

Yeah.

You know, we can't run the ball at all and they're running all over us. And I'll tell you the justice Hill piece of it, too, where they, Henry's just a battering room. Then Hill comes in and Hill's been really good for them. I think the Ravens, I think they've figured out who they are, and I was trying to think of a way they lose this and it's probably just the Bengals chucking it downfield, getting a couple of PI's, one big play. Tucker misses a field goal like I see it, but I just think the Ravens are just better.

Yeah, well, I mean, look, they, the Ravens have the blueprint for stopping Joe Burrow. He's, he's one and three. In their last four games over the past two years, the Ravens have no problem going into Cincinnati. They're four and two against the spread. Lamar, games like this, I agree with you. Lamar's five and two against the spread in his last seven games in Cincinnati. So it's not like they're right. 10th. They know what to stake. This is really a chance to knock Cincinnati out of the race for the AFC north. Right.

It's such a good point. Yeah. They're Pittsburgh's three and one. Baltimore's two and two. Cincy would be one and four if they lost this game and they are left. And you, if you're Baltimore, you're hoping Pittsburgh somehow loses the Dallas. But even if they don't, that's the other thing. It's not like Baltimore's four. No. Like they actually need this game. They'd be two and three if they lost. I'm in on Baltimore. I was so impressed by them against Buffalo last week. I just thought they looked like bullies. I'm fine with going along with October. I want to see a team that's just like, we're bullies. We're going to bully people.

I just want to acknowledge how public the play is and that the lines inflated.

Is it, though? Because I feel like a lot of people are on the. Oh, you don't give Joe Burrow points at home. And, and I feel like I've been hearing that even on the ringer, the Ringer gambling show this week.

Okay.

Is the theme. You think they're too public?

Buffalo? I mean, Baltimore? Yes, I do.

Packers, Rams. Speaking of public, this is the most.

Public game of the week. Well, and I'm having that punt in Washington.

That in Washington, packers minus three against the Ramse. The Rams should be owen four. They should have lost that niners game.

They could also be two and two. At least they could have beaten Detroit. That was a coin flip game, right?

They could have. I guess ot.

They could have beaten Chicago. Like that was, you know, there was crazy turnover variants there. And they, they did beat San Francisco. They could be three in one.

Their defense is atrocious. Forget about the receiver injuries, 28th against the run. 31st. And quarterback hits 28th in the red zone, 29th. And completion percentage, which I think is. I'm becoming more and more enamored with that scat stat. Like, if you're just letting somebody throw complete. That was Arizona last week against your team. He's just like, oh, yeah, please complete 90% of your passes against us. To me, the packers. So they're plus one. Oh six to make the playoffs. I was really surprised that those were plus odds. Cause, like, let's come up with the seven NFC playoff teams. Right. You go one from the NFC east. Right. You wouldn't go to.

I would stay with one.

You won in the south or would you go two?

I think it's reasonable to imagine two out of the south.

So we'll say one and a half. One and a half in the south. Two and a half in the north and two in the west.

Two in the west. Yeah.

Seattle, San Francisco.

Yes.

I don't see how the packers aren't one of the seven best teams. Like, throw away that stupid Philly game in week one. QB gets hurt. They played Minnesota in week four. We haven't seen them just in a normal situation. They're gonna be in LA, 38,000 Packer fans here and their offense is fucking loaded. I mean, so multiple receivers, they can run the ball. Josh Jacobs we haven't got heard from. Heifetz was big on him this week. Kraft, the tight end has been like kind of a revelation for them. I just think they're going to move the ball all game in the rims.

I totally agree. My favorite bet by far, and I'll just jump right to it, is Green Bay over team total 26 and a half. That's my absolute, absolute jump in. Load up, get on it. But their defense quietly sucks. I mean, the Vikings jumped out to 28 to nothing. That was my best bet on the ringer pregame show this past Sunday. Minnesota team total. It was a ridiculous number. It was like 21 and a half or 20 and a half was like, what are you talking about? Where is this line coming from? Why is this Green Bay defense that was really good.

Getting that was one of your better ones.

Thank you for that. Thank you. But I don't know what it is about the Green Bay defense that has people think that they're going to be in a position. I think this game is perfectly lined up for a shootout kind of game script. I mean, I don't think that that Green Bay defense is going to put pressure on Stafford. And it doesn't matter to the Rams who the, who their receivers are. We. The guy Whittington is out there running great routes. The Marcus Robinson, I think he's dinged up, but if he plays, it just doesn't matter. It's next man up McVeigh and Stafford is the, is the key thing there. And if, if Stafford has time, he's going to throw the ball to open receivers.

So you would rather do packers over 26 and a half.

Lay the points? Yes.

At the packers minus three?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't like laying all those points.

That's really interesting.

I do think they're going to be able to score. I'm not worried about that part of it.

Yeah. So if they lose, it's like a 30 27 type, right, right. Kind of like that. I think the Rams defense is awful. So. Well, it packers 26 and a half. They're all in the hospital over and the Aaron Donald's probably watching this going, thank God I got out. Having a great time. All right, Packers 26 and a half. I like that house.

Thank you. Trying.

Saints Chiefs, that's a Monday nighter. Saints are getting five and a half points against the Chiefs. And first of all, Casey going five and, oh, with all the shit that's happening, them would be incredible. Second, New Orleans offense has been really good. Red zone, third downs. You know, they had that one one week when Taysom Hill didn't play against Philly. That was just a weird game. Casey's defense is also really good, but New Orleans defense has been pretty good, too. No Pacheco, no Rasheed Rice, no Hollywood Brown, new left tackle, which they tried out last week, and this line just seems two and a half points too high to me. Yeah, so the case is you bet on the Saints, and the Chiefs are just rushing up the middle and Derek Carr's discombobulated and you're betting on evil Derek Carr. You're betting on Dirk Carr, his evil brother. That's the only way I'm covering. You also have cheap touchdown potential, even if they're down ten, but the Chiefs don't take big leads on anybody.

No, I know it.

I know it's like a three point. I feel like I'm getting two and a half free points. I like the Saints plus five and a half. I think they'll be able to move the ball.

I think they'll be going to be able to move the ball as well. I mean, want to make sure that, you know, all of the guys that are dinged on offense are all, you know, showing out right on the injury reports and everything. But the aspect of it that I'm impressed by, I think that the Saints defense is legit. I think the Saints, especially in this condition that Kansas City finds itself in, um, I'm probably going to play the Saints on the money line, to be honest with you, because I do think that there is a pathway to the Saints, you know, taking advantage of the disarray Kansas City's offense is in, and that defense just producing, you know, the win, and you're only asking for enough out of Derek Carrhenne. It doesn't. If you look at the, the game totals of the, the chief games, it doesn't take a ton to beat them. It doesn't take.

They've scored less points every week.

Right?

They started at 27 and they've just gone down to your point, Saint Steve. Fifth against fifth on lowest first downs, first in the red zone, seven against the rush, and you have the Chiefs with. They. I guess they're punting on Carson Steel and just doing, um, a lot of Kareem Hunt, some pea rhine.

We're going to see. Yeah, we're going to see a lot of P R. I.

Listen, I'm sure the Chiefs are going to win. They're just going to win by one or two.

It's what they do.

I want to, I want to take the points. So we both like that. And then two other ones. So Seattle is taking on the Giants. And Heifetz and I talked about how important neighbors has been for the Giants, 52 targets, which is nine higher than anyone else in the league. And just over and over again, they're just figuring out how to use them. I don't think he's going to play. Yeah, he's got a concussion. He didn't practice today. We're taping this on a Thursday and it seems dicey. That is going to play. And even if he plays, sounds like it was a pretty bad concussion. Seattle's offense, you know, they, Gino's been really good. We know they could throw the ball. And then the Giants offense, even with neighbors, was 24th in yards per play, 30th, 30th rushing.

Yuck.

One thing with the Giants, this is an interesting stat. House. Their second worst in completion percentage for their defense. So you just, just guys are open all over the field. That sounds great for the Seahawks. So I'll give you some options here. Cause I like the Seahawks. I think we're, we're taking them somehow. We can put them in a tease and try to lose our four tease in five weeks. Or we could just bet Seattle first half, Seattle for the game, minus 140 and just lay the juice.

I kind of prefer the latter. I think I prefer to lay the juice yf around with, with the tease. Let's just put it in the hands of Seattle. We recognize that the Giants are coming in with extra rest. We recognize that Seattle is coming on short, rest its own self. And we recognize that that was a tough game against Detroit. That was, you know, explosive on both sides of the ball. Take all those things into account. And that's why we're not going to ask Seattle the latest six and a half, but come out of the first half with the lead, any lead will do, and then just win the game. Yeah, I like that.

I've been trying to get our friends at Fanduel. I thought they were our friends. Thought they were our friends.

Oh, no.

I really wanted to do, every week, do a first half slash game, just a little bit of a boost. Right this minus 140. Just let us every week for all of our friends, try to boost that to like a minus 120. So I'm, I'm, I'm badgering them. I'm guilt tripping them. And hopefully by next week that could be, I want to own my own version of a parlay for us for million dollar picks where it's like, oh, what's their first half slash game going to be this weekend? Like, come on, Fandom.

We can come up with a name for that.

All the good stuff we've done for Fanduel, they can't, they can't give us the first half gamer. By the way, they should pat in the south, the Steelers one, you know, that's hitting again this week.

Oh, I mean, hopefully we get a chance to talk about it.

Yeah. Well, so then the other one I was looking at for this was Niners first half. Niners game is minus 170. You could do the over against the Cardinals, bring that down to 40 and a half. And all three of those together is minus one on one. What were your thoughts? Cause I don't, I don't see the, the Cardinals, their defense and I don't know, I want to talk myself. Oh, Cardinals, you don't want to give them that many points, but I think they have a lot of trouble throwing the ball. But kind of, I was really surprised last week against Washington.

He didn't even get, did he get to 165 yards? I don't know. He only ran. Kyler Murray had around 165 yards passing and ran for under five yards. I don't know what the game plan was for Arizona going against that. I mean, literally across the board. The Washington defense is in the bottom three of every metric and for whatever reason, Arizona was not able to exploit that. And they have great skill, guys. It makes me nervous, though, to be honest with you, coming into this one where we just watched the San Francisco. Yes. And San Francisco looks so good against the Patriots and we would lose if the Cardinals, by some dumb fluke got the first half. Like, you know, went into halftime up something stupid. Right. Like 1716 or something.

Seems like it's like an IQ test when you play Kyler, if you don't let him get outside.

Yeah.

And you just keep him in the middle. It really seems like it's hard for him to move the ball against, against decent and good defenses if you let him kind of move around and do stuff different. And the way that I thought Washington did a really good job against him last week just kind of kept him in the middle of the field and you could see they were really struggling with it. They also, you know, every time you have the ball.

Well, that's true. Another reason it does help. It does help guys come in first.

So you want to you want to punt on this Niners game?

Just because I don't like. Yeah, I want to punt on it. I want to punt on it.

I'll tell you this, I was on a couple of pats threads where we kind of felt like if they played Drac Drake May, we might have either won the game or come close last week.

Wow.

Again, bad Brissette. Washington. He's. He's so bad. He's so bad.

It's fine.

He seems like a great guy. Like I'm rooting for him. I really want career backup.

Now he's a backup quarterback. It's not his fault.

All right, so we'll move on those. Last one is Steelers. Cowboys, the night game. Steelers minus one and a half. Yes. Cowboys just lost. Just lost. What's his face, the second receiver, Brandon Cooks.

Oh, he's. He's confirmed out.

Yeah, he's out.

They go.

Lawrence or Parsons.

They do not.

Two best players.

They don't. They don't.

The Steelers, I felt like could have won last week. They had the ball down three at like the 35 with three minutes left. The snap hit fields in the face for some reason, and then that was it. They have some, they have offensive line issues. They've, they've now lost two starters. Name some running back issues. But Steelers minus one and a half? Come on.

I'm here to tell you, in the first place, this is a perfect spot for Pittsburgh coming off of a loss of a game that they think they should have won. They're at home in primetime with a chance to embarrass one of the other legendary franchises of the NFL. But I'm also here to tell you that Justin Fields, Deez nuts, is really improving. And when we talked about Pittsburgh last week, we talked aloud the idea of, like, you know, what if Justin Fields starts having some Justin Fields games? Well, he kind of just had one.

His decision making snap, hitting his helmet in the biggest play of the game.

Of course. Of course, that's a Justin Field, Steve's nuts play. But I love the way he's using his legs. He's choosing it at the right time. And it's clear that he and Pickens have some chemistry. I mean, you know, they. Part of the, the loss to the Colts included Pickens fumbling in the effing end zone. So I'm, I'm. I think this number is crazy short, and I adore Pittsburgh every which way. TJ Watt against poor Dak, against that poor offensive line with the one dimension that the Dallas possesses, which is they might be able to throw the ball to Ferguson a little bit, but it's just cd. I think that Pittsburgh's defense will be able to figure it out. And even with the injuries on the Pittsburgh offensive line, they still have their slotting in some guys. I actually think that they're kind of adequate. They're not good, but I didn't know.

You were an offensive line scout. Now, this is exciting.

I mean, I have a couple more.

Things for you, too.

Let's hear it.

Dallas's offense is 32nd running.

Yes.

Nobody is a worse running offense than them through four games.

Nobody.

Pittsburgh's defense is third against the run. So how is Dallas going to run the ball at all? They won't.

They won't.

And then on the other side, Dallas's defense hasn't been awesome. Right? 28th in the red zone, 25th yard per play, 27th against the run. And Najee is healthy.

Yeah.

Corduroy Patterson might play 50 50, but I do think they're going to be able to run the ball on these guys. And to me, this feels like a. It's a night game. I think this feels like kind of a sad Dallas game. My fear would be when we've seen Dallas in the situation a few times, Pittsburgh, big lead early, and then all of a sudden that's like the Green Bay, Minnesota game where you're like, why am I sweating this out? This game was over.

So I think there's some weather potential. And I, you know, it is. That's good for outdoors. Yes, exactly right.

And Dallas outdoors hasn't been great either.

Yeah, cousin Sal doesn't like it when I talk about. Badly about Dallas outdoors, but, uh. And they did beat the crap out of the Browns in week one, but the weather was perfect for that. I think there's some potential for precipitation, and if that comes to pass, I especially like Pittsburgh. I already like Pittsburgh every which way. Uh, in that game. One of my favorite bets of the week.

All right, we have six bets we really like this week.

Wow.

We're going to up this up to 200,000, right?

Yeah, this one's a 200,000. I mean, I. If you want to do 250, it's okay by me.

We're, we're upping it.

I like, I like. I like Pittsburgh that much. If you want to do some other ones at 201, at 150, that's fine. But I'm just telling you, Pittsburgh is, is probably my favorite bet of the weekend. All right, Justin fields these nuts.

That brings us to the million dollar picks for week five. We are up $197,000 we deliberately scaled it back last week because we did not like week four. We really like week five and we're going to bet $200,000 on the following games. Vikings in London against the jets. We accept all the red flags. London game, Vikings 40 against the spread. Lot of people on the bandwagon by week next week. This is a Vikings defense against Gimpy Aaron Rodgers not feeling great. This is a really top five coaching staff on Minnesota side versus big shot Bob Sal and Hackett. This is the jets not being able to score ten points against Denver, not being able to beat a team that only threw for 60 yards. And this feels like a miracle that this line is two and a half. I don't get it, House. You don't either?

It's. I don't either. It's just the, you know, the way the look ahead worked out. But I love it so much.

Ravens minus two and a half at Cincinnati, we talked out all the variables with this one. Yeah, Ravens are a little public, but best run defense, best running game going against the team that can't run the ball or stop the run. We're just going to settle with those two. Ravens win by three. Are we going to be sweating this out in the fourth quarter when 31 to 14 and then Burrow hits Jamar Chase for 80 yards and people are two points and yeah, I get Ravens minus two and a half. Packers at the Rams. Packers are minus three, but House wanted to zag on this little. And you know what? You've been doing this every week. You've been pretty reliable. Even if you did talk me out of the Bears and Raiders last week. Packers over 26 and a half against an absolutely atrocious Rams defense. Yeah, we figured they scored 27 and up and then we don't have to worry about Matthew Stafford getting super hot down the stretch and or a push, any of this.

No. No weird outcomes. Exactly right.

Saints plus five and a half at Kansas City. Just felt like this. Lines two and a half points too high.

I'm playing the money line. I'm playing Saints money line.

Oh, why didn't you bring that up earlier?

I did. I said it when we talked about it.

Would you rather do Saints plus five and a half or Saints moneyline?

Oh, Saints plus five and a half for this. For these purposes, there's a much, much smaller wager on the money line.

For me, this feels like another one score game. The Chiefs are going to be the first team ever that wins a game by a half point. It's never happened. You can't even calculate points. It's like the Chiefs have won 26 and a half to 26. How'd they do that? We have no idea. This is a three point game and you also have cheap touchdown potential. We take the Saints plus five and a half, knowing full well that third quarter, Derek Carr's evil brother Dirk is getting his ass. Jones and we're testing each other, going, why do we bet on the Saints? All right, here's, here's a first half gamer special that fanduel just won't name after me and let me do a boost every week. Seattle first half over the Giants, who won't have Malik neighbors, we're guessing. We don't think he will play on Sunday. Seattle game, that's minus 140 on fandor. You know what, we're just going to lay the juice. A great 1st 280 to win 200.

I want a name for it. A great first half, great game. It's like, is that, is that, is that the massage parlay? Like what, what's the right name for that? What's. We got to come up with a name?

The B's massage.

If you, I don't know if you have to bleep that. If we have to cut that out, but why don't they cut it out? I don't know. That's true.

Massages are fine.

Yeah. The first half is your upper back, your neck and stuff. We're on your front and then there's the end and it's great.

The massage parlay, the Joe house massage. The first half game, yes. -140 we're putting 200 on that. If we lose, we lose $280,000. We accept those risks. And then last but not least, first time we've done this. You sure you want to do this? We're going to target an extra little. All right.

Trying to win money.

We've done this in five weeks. Trying to win Steelers, who we picked every week, who have gone three and one for us. We are going to take them minus one and a half over the Cowboys for $250,000 of the million dollar picks because Cowboys can't run the ball. Steelers love stopping the run. Cowboys only have one receiver. Cowboys aren't good.

Cowboys are good.

Another reason the Cowboys aren't good.

This feels to me very similar to that ravens, where they are only favored by one and a half going down into Dallas in a must win scenario. These games for Pittsburgh, we keep talking about it, are must win games because their schedule is going to get bad. Bad. So they got to go kick ass when they can and this is a kick ass spot for them.

They're home. It's a game you should win. You go four and one, you hope Baltimore somehow chokes against Cincinnati and you have a two game lead against everyone else division. But Pittsburgh's in a pretty good spot for to start the season. So those are Steelers little extra Vikings, Ravens, packers over 26 and a half Saints plus five and a half Seattle first half game. The massage parlay. All for 200, Steelers for 250k. Those are the million dollar picks for week five. House, congrats again on having a quarterback.

I can't believe it. Let's make it one more week. Upright.

It totally makes up for the Alex AR pick.

Who's that? I don't know who the hell you're talking about.

All right, see you next week.

See you next week.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Kirk Goldsberry and Danny Heifetz and Joe House. Don't forget you can watch clips and full episodes of this podcast on Bill Simmons YouTube channel where you can watch me and Sal do our podcast live on Sunday night after the Sunday night game. Right after we go right on. There we go live and you can watch it. So there you go. Rewatchables. Don't forget we're doing Poltergeist next Monday so you can watch that ahead of time. And we will eventually be throwing that up on the Ringer movies channel as well. And I will see you on Sunday night. Enjoy the weekend. Must be 21 plus and president select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and president DC gambling problem. Call 100 GAMblER or visit rgh dash help.com, call 1887-8977 or visit ccpg.org slash Chatinconneticut or visit md gamblinghelp.org. in Maryland, hope is here. Visit Gamblinghelp line ma.org or call 803 2750 50 for 24/7 support Massachusetts or call 18778 HOpE NY or text Hope NY in New York.