Transcript of An Official Celtics Funk, Plus Todd McShay and Million-Dollar Picks

Coming up, The State of the Celtics, Todd McShay Million Dollar Picks. All next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast Network. I put up a new Ringer Movies mailbag on Monday. We have another episode coming this coming Monday. If you love the Oscars, go check out the big picture of Sean Fentacy and Amanda Dobbins' Reacted to all the Oscar nominations today. You can watch that on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well, where you can watch the rewatchables. You can watch all the clips and videos from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel where Cousin Sal and I are going to be live right after Chief's Bill's on Sunday night doing this podcast. If you haven't watched us do the pod live, guess what? It's just like us doing the podcast because that's what it is. Fanduel, I'm doing those 30 on 30 pics every Friday where we try to guess who's going to score 30 plus points on the Friday NBA slate. They do a little profit boost action for you. Check out on my Twitter account, I will be tweeting out who I think is going to get that on Friday.

Coming up, the State of the Celtics. I saw them back to back nights, Clippers, Lakers. I have a lot of thoughts. That's at the top. Then Todd McShad Today, he comes on because he's doing a show for us on The Ringer, The McShea Show. Very good podcast. An essential listen during the college football season. We're going to talk NFL playoffs, college football draft, a bunch of things. Then last but not least, diehard Washington Commanders fan, Joe House. He's going to do million dollar pics with me. He's out of his mind. It's colonoscopy, Juice House. That's who's on the pod today. We'll explain when he comes on. That's it. First, our friends from Pearl J. All right, so earlier in the week, I told myself, Celtics Clippers, Wednesday night, Celtics Lakers, Thursday night, both in LA. I'm going to go to both games, and then I'm going to come home and I'm going to do a little monolog at the top of the Thursday podcast, no matter what happens. My worst case scenario was that the Celtics were going to be alarming in both games, and that we're going to have real questions now about what's going on with this team?

Because it's beyond a funk and it's beyond an on-off button issue. There's something a little bit deeper happening. I was fortunate enough to sit pretty close to the core of both games. I was behind the Celtic bench for the Laker game, which was just embarrassing and really awful. I think we're at the point now where we have to ask ourselves, is this Celtic team just different than it was last season? All right, well, what's different about it? Let's start with Jalen Brown, who He isn't shooting as well as he did last year. I'm not going to do the thing where I just read you a bunch of stats. You can look up all these stats. He's not shooting as well. Three-pointers, two-pointers. He's clumser with the ball. He's closer to where he was two years ago than where he was last year, where last year, it felt by the end of the season, Tatum was 1A and Jalen Brown was 1B. Tatum is clearly better than Brown this season. There's no the 1A, 1B thing is out the window. I don't really understand what's happening here Studying it in person for the last two days, he seems jacked.

He looks like he's filming Rambo: First Blood Part 2 or Predator with Stallone in the '80s. He's really jacked to the point that I'm starting to wonder if it's made him a little more stiff. There were some really weird Clipper moments on Wednesday night where they're playing against the role players and the scrubs and the Clippers because the Clippers rest everybody. They're furious with the league, that the league rescheduled the fire game, and it was six games in nine days. They're like, We're throwing away the Celtic game. As soon as they did that, I was like, Watch this. I bet they hang around somehow with this Celtics. They were very well coached, and they really exploited some of the Jalen stuff that's been going on this year. What was fascinating about the Clipper game, Van Gunde, who's the defensive coordinator on the Clippers, was just devising all these different ways to mess with the Celtics. They were trapping Jason Tatum 45 feet from the basket as he was trying to do his 0. 4 stuff. They were trying to dive at Jalen's dribble, which a lot of smart teams do. They're also trying to trap him at the end of games and just basically make him make dumb plays, which he was, for whatever reason, really happy to do in that Clipper game.

They were exploiting the fact that this year, unlike last year, you can go buy all the Celtic guys. You saw it in the Clipper game with guys like Derrick Jones and Kevin Porter was doing it until the Celtics brought in Jaden Springer. The Lakers tonight, how many times did Reeves go buy somebody? The Celtics, one of the things, the best things about them last year was the white holiday combo and the fact that those guys could lock down basically everybody in the other team. Tatum as a two-way player, Jalen Brown, who's defense, especially in the playoffs, was great. And this year, they don't lock anybody down. Anybody in the league can go buy them and get to the rim, which goes back to, is this an on-off button issue or is it just something different than last year? This is not an old team. These guys are all in their 20s. These guys are all in their prime or about to hit their prime. It's sloppy stuff that you could blame the fact that they had a 100-game season last year, that Tatum played in the playoffs, that White... I'm not in the place. In the Olympics, that White and Halley were in the Olympics, that Horford's older, that they didn't have Porzingas for the first two months.

There's all these things you can blame, and I'm perfectly fine with doing that. But it doesn't explain why Jalen is He wasn't as good as he was last year. I test over and over again, game after game, does not seem like the same guy as he was last year. Why isn't the defense as good as it was last year? Well, you can look at the advanced metrics, and it seems fine. Even If you look at the last 19 games, they're 10 and 9. If you look at their net rating on mba. Com for the last 20 games of the season, not counting today at Lakers, their second and defensive rating. There's all these advanced things you can look at and be like, No, they're fine. But I'm telling you, if you're watching them every night, if you're going to the games, they don't really look fine. They don't lock teams down with defense the way they did. They're never up 20, 25. Last year, they felt like they were up 20 in 75 to 80% of the games. This year, that feels like they're down 15, down 10, down 12 in the first half of a lot of these games.

If you go back, you think they were 21 and 5, and now they're 31 and So they're 10 and 9 in their last 19. I watched all the games they lost, and I went to two of them or went to one of them. The 10 and 9 thing starts with the Bulls. They lose because Laveen is just the best guy on the floor. He's 36. He just beats them. He plays better than everybody in the Celtics. Fine. That's one game. They lose to the Magic, who were missing guys because they couldn't hit threes. They were 8 for 33 for threes. If you watch that game, the Magic just played really hard. They played harder than the Celtics. Six did. And you go, All right. Well, on off switch, fine. Sixers Christmas, same thing. Sixers wanted the game more. You chalk that one up. Well, the Sixers, they had all their guys. It was national TV. They have a losing record. They wanted the game where it was their Super Bowl. I can chalk that one up. Just making excuses time after time with this. Pacers. They win the first game against the Pacers by a million points.

You know two days later, the way this works with these where you played the team two times in three games, you just know Pacers are going to do better in the second game, which, of course, they do. But the Celtics shoot 54 threes and they lose. So you leave that game. You're like, Too many threes. They didn't go to the basket enough. So again, excuses. Okc was the first sign of slight alarm because they played really well for three quarters. They were going toe to toe with the team that they might be seeing in the finals, assuming they have a chance to get there. Then Drew Stunk SGA was the best guy in the game. In the fourth quarter, in nut crunch time, which was really good for the Celtics down the stretch last season, especially in the playoffs, OKC just outplayed them and stole the game from them. Slate, sounds of alarm for that one. They have a home no-show against the Kings, who just changed their coach. Drew and Derek White just looked ancient in that game. 3 for 12. Coming back from a little road trip, where they look pretty good. Well, let that one slide.

Again, excuses. They lose to Toronto, who's not good. Toronto shoots 51% and Jalen's off. It was 4 for 16. Another bad song. They choke against the Atlanta Hawks. This was Drew. This was one of the worst. This is probably the worst game he played against Boston. They screwed up the game. The game was going to be over. They screwed it up. They blow it. Not the thing that was happening last year, Fine. Then we go to this LA trip in these two games where Clipper's game, just take care of the game. They're playing all their scrubs and their role players. Just knock them out. The last year's team would win the game by 40. This year's team, it's a struggle the whole time, and somehow it goes to overtime. They put Miles on Tatum, they put Miles on Brown, they put Miles on White when they're playing the Lakers the next night who are arrested in a TNT game. Basically, they took so much effort to win that Clipper game, but now they're going to this Lakers game, and they're a mess. Back to the Jalen Brown thing. Last year, Brown and Tatum just had a really good thing going where there was games.

If Tatum didn't totally have it, Brown would be able to lift it They just had a nice yin-yang thing that they just haven't had in the same way this year. Jalen's offense has been really rough to watch. I could give you a million stats, you can go look them up. But his two-point shooting's way down, his three-point shooting's way He's added a couple of things to his game that I just don't love. There's this flat-footed fall away he has now at the foul line. I can't stay in that one. Does these weird drives to the basket where... Sometimes I'll try to elevate and dunk on guys. Other times, he's doing this flat-footed, keeping low to the ground scoop into traffic thing that the Clippers were eating up last night. The alarming thing with Brown, back to the Van Gundi thing. The Seltzer They're up like six points, four points, whatever in the last minute of regulation. They're trapping the Celtics. They're doing all these things to try to get the Celtics to screw up. They basically target Jalen Brown. There's this one possession where Van Gundi is telling them because we could see it. We're watching Van Gundi is running a huddle.

It was amazing to watch. He's telling the guys something. They come out and the Celtics swing the ball and they swing it. The Clippers are trying to get them to swing it to Brown, and do. They trap Brown. He throws it away. Clipper score. Clippers come off and they're all fired up and they're pointing at Van Gundi. It was like, You told us that was going to happen. I'm sitting there going, This is a bad sign if Van Gundi is just reading us like he's the defensive coordinator in a football game who knows our plays. He's steering us to the play that we don't want to happen. It just wasn't great. They were really, really outcoached in that Clipper game, which I did not love. But in general, he just... You He'll hit some threes. The stats are fine. He can fool you unless you're actually watching game after game. He just hasn't been as good as he was last year. Derek White is another one. Derek White, who the first six weeks of the season, it was like, this guy is going to make the All-Star team. This guy is one of the best 30 assets in the league.

His three-point shooting has dropped by the month. 47% first month, 40%, 35%, 30 this month. The game today, he was the 19th best player in the game. Obviously, he's not, but he's just not impactful. Then holiday, who comes and goes, and he's older, and he's clearly saving himself for the playoffs. First half of the game, nonexistent. Second half of the game, they come out, they're pissed against the Lakers, and they're now playing defense, and holiday is guarding everybody and has this little five-minute stretch that reminded you, this is why this team is pretty special. When they can unleash Drew as this defensive weapon, Tatum and Brown and poor Zingas with his height, This is it. This is the team we're used to seeing. And then missed a couple shots. The Celtics were just so awful the night. I don't know how many layups they missed, how many shots around the rim, but it felt like it was at least 20. They just couldn't buy a basket. They were just a complete mess. The brown thing is concerning, the white thing is concerning. How they is older. I'm going to chalk it up to that. The on/off switch thing, understandable.

We've seen it happen a bunch of times with teams that won the title. But as we talked about before the season, the pods we've done, it could go one or two ways after you win the title. You either have the on/off switch, where you have the chip on your shoulder because the bullseye is on you and everybody's coming after you. You can take that personally and be like, You know what? We're going to kick everybody's asses again. That is not this Celtics team, at least so far. They got outcoached in a few games, especially recently. The OKC game, the Kipper game last night, which they ended up winning, but definitely outcoached in that one. Lakers game tonight. I don't know what the lineup. They're playing Twin Towers. It's like you're doing the Lakers a favor when you're playing size. You want to use your athleticism. Last year, one of the reasons they blew them out was they were building everything around their wings. Tonight, they're playing Cornet. They're doing Horford and Porzingis together. They didn't play Jaden Springer at all, even though his defense was so impactful yesterday. I didn't really understand anything they were doing.

I wanted them to put Jaden Springer on LeBron or Reeves, try to take those guys out and try to win the game with defense. They did the opposite, and the Lakers made everything they took. There is no real roster flexibility for trades. They're a second-apron team. They have a bunch of big contracts and a bunch of small contracts and nothing really in between. Springer at 4 million, Pritchard at 7 million. I don't even know what the move is. The move is to hope that the light bulb goes off with these guys because right now it's not going off. I mentioned holiday with the age 43% shooting from three last year, 35% from this year. They're just less special. They have these funk games now that they just weren't having even in the first six weeks of the season. As I look at the state of the Celtics, conversations I have with my friends, with my dad, with everybody I know who likes the team. Nobody is like, It's fine. It's okay. We're good. Nobody thinks that, but nobody is really in full panic either. It's more like, No, it should come back. I'm not sure the defense is going to come back in the way that we really need it to come back unless Jalen can get back to where he was last year.

That's the guy I'm watching because I feel like Tatum actually made a slight step up from last year as a two-way guy, as a point forward, as a reliable guy night after night after night. With that said, Last night is a really good example of the difference between Jokuj, Yannis, SGA, Luka when he's healthy, and then every other really good player in the league, including Tatum. Because last night was a night where it's like, you're playing all your role players in your scrubs, I'm going to have 43. I'm going to just ice this game myself. This is what SGA does over and over again. What do you have, 55 against Utah? Over and over again, he's just dusting teams. Tateum, as good as he is night after night after night, and the best thing about him is how consistent he is as a two-way guy, he's just not a, I'm just going to dust the other team and just get on my back, everybody guy. It's the collective shit that has to make this team special. If Jalen is not quite where he was last year, if White is not quite where he was last year, if Holodey is a little older, if Horford is a little older, if you're moving Porzingis back in, the only guy who's gone level is Pritchard.

Then on top of it, the league's better. The West is better, OKC is better, Cleveland's better, the Knicks are better. It's just everybody's deeper. It's a lot harder. You don't have 11 teams tanking yet. You have nights like you lose to Toronto because you fucked around. When I think about the trade deadline coming, and also it's not just the trade deadline, but the team is being sold. The bids were in today to get through the first round. There's at least five bidders. Everyone's expecting this to go to six billion. There's some instability within the organization, which is understandable because they're about to change hands from this great ownership and this great infrastructure they've had for the last almost 20 plus years to the unknown. You have an organization that's a little more unstable than it was. You have a team that's not quite as stable as it was. The team I saw tonight against the Lakers, This is the thing that concerns me the most. The camaraderie/connection with the guys doesn't seem the same right now. It might just be like, they're like an older married couple that they've done this, they've been together, they don't need to do it.

But there's a lot of plays where it's just five guys on the court, like when they're shooting foul shots. It's five guys on the court who just seem like they're not connected in any way. There's plays where somebody makes a shot and gets fouled, and it's going to be a three-point play, and not all the guys come over and do the fist bump with them. It's little tiny stuff like that. It's the way the bench is reacting to certain things in the game. Not the same as last year. Last year, the bench standing up, going nuts. The personality of the team, you could just feel it. When you're in the building, when you're on TV, you don't feel it in the same way this year. In the Clipper game yesterday, Jaden Springer, because he out of nowhere and everybody likes him, and he just had an awesome game. He was great. He swung the game for them. It really ignited the bench. The bench was into it. They were psyched for him. He made a big three in the corner when Harden was talking shit to him as he shot it, and he made it, and he ran off, and they were all going nuts.

Then tonight in this Laker game, it just felt like they all just wanting to go home. I'm both concerned and not concerned because I still don't know if there's three teams better than them. I don't think there's three teams more talented than them. I think they should There's no real reason that I can see that they can't make the finals again. But the way this is going, they're not going to have the one seating the East, and they're not going to have a home court advantage in the finals if OKC gets in and maybe even a couple of other teams. Now you're looking at a situation where maybe even Denver can finish with a better record than them. This is a question, and this is what makes trying to go back to back so great. We've seen so many teams try to do it and not be able to do it, and there's always reasons for it. You always hit a point like this where you have to look in the mirror and decide, do we really want to defend our title or not? What I'm seeing lately with the Celtics is a team that seems like a zombie version of itself that doesn't seem to have that same chip on its shoulder that doesn't seem to be treating a back-to-back title as a life or death experience for them.

There's too many games now where the other team is playing harder than them and too many games when they're not solving issues that are pretty obvious as you're watching, like tonight. Just take out Reeves. Just play hard defense on LeBron. Guard him full-court. Just make sure you're not giving up open threes to people like Hachimura. That's another thing with the Celtics team. The open threes that they're giving up this year, it makes you want to rip your hair out. Again, it's not even February yet. A million things can change. One thing I'm looking for the rest of the way, and this is what I'll leave you with, is they have to have a win streak at some point. You have to put together three, four weeks of winning basketball night after night after night, where there seems like there's something special about your team. Even Dallas last year, And Dallas was an unexpected party crash that made the finals. But Dallas had this stretch up to the All-Star break, where for 25 games, they just were kicking ass and playing really well. The Celtics have not had a real stretch like that since the start of the season.

As this regular season goes on, they're not going to do that. And this just becomes a night-to-night, I don't know what I'm getting from these guys' situation. I don't think they're going to make finals. It's not urgent yet, but I'm flagging it. I didn't like what I saw the last two nights. One of those two games should have been good, neither of them were. Honestly, they should have lost both games. We'll This is a nice test for Joe Missoula. This is a nice test for the roster, whether they want to tinker around it, maybe get a little more athletic, especially on the wing. It feels like they're an athletic wing short. Then Jalen Brown is the guy to watch going forward. What are his numbers? What is his impact? Can he be the 1B again? Because right now he's not. He's a 2. He's not a 1B. If he's a 2, the ceiling of the Celtics team has to drop a little bit. I like what I've seen from Porzingas. I think the pedigree of this team is going to be there when it actually matters. They're going to have a home court when it actually matters.

There's going to be a good crowd for them. But it's pretty alarming because the Lakers crushed them tonight, and I don't think the Lakers are good. That was my takeaway was, Uh-oh, this says way more about the Celtics than it does about the Lakers. Anyway, we're going to take a break and bring back Todd McShay. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fanduel. From the first whistle to the final drive, FanDuel takes the NFL playoff to the next level. Right now, new customers can bet $5 to get 300 bucks in bonus bets if you win. That's $300 in bonus bets if you win your first $5 bet. The FanDuel app gives you everything you need for live bets Game Parlay. So much more. Plus, when you win, you'll get paid instantly. Just visit fanduel. Com/bs to join today and get started. With $300 in bonus bets. That's fanduel. Com/bs. My initials. Make the playoff season with FanDuel, an official sportsbook partner of the NFL. You must be 21 plus in President's select states or 18 plus in President DC. First online real money wage or only $5 for a supply is required. Bonus issued as non-metrable bonus betch would expire seven days after receipt.

Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook. Fanduel. Com. Gamble problem call, 100 Gambleware, or visit rg-help. Com. All right, taping this early Thursday afternoon Pacific Time. Todd McShay is here. I hope you've been listening to the McShay Show, which we've had on the for the last couple of months during a very action-packed college football season. Lots to get to. First of all, welcome to the Ringer belatedly. Great to have you on the pod.

Yeah, man. It's been fun. I appreciate it. I appreciate your support in all of it. We're having a good time. It's been a whole different world. I didn't know anything about this world, but we've enjoyed it. And now we're turning the page. We have the NFL playoffs and then the NFL draft, and so we're hitting our sweet spot.

Well, I have a vested interest in this draft, which we'll get to later. Did the right team win the college football Championship?

Yeah, they did. And what's wild, too, is all the complaints about the 12-team playoff and all the adjustments we have to make, and the seating is a mess, and it should never be conference champions. But at the end of the day, Ohio State wouldn't have been in it in the previous four-team playoff structure. And Ohio State was clearly the best team, and it took them going on a run. The Michigan loss is Michigan thing for Ohio State. It's not reflective of the program and what they are. I mean, that's almost a head space that they're going to have to deal with. But that was the best team. Everyone talked about, well, they bought a $20 million roster. Well, they just use a lot of that 20 million to keep the guys there that were there on the defensive side. They added a running back in Quinchaud Jenkins, and their quarterback, Will Howard, was a really good fit for what they do. But ultimately, the vast majority of that team was there, and they just a lot of guys from going to the NFL and having to take pay cuts to do so.

Right. You were one of the rare college and NFL guys. Rusillo is like this, too. There's a few of them. Gun to your head, which one do you like more? If you could If you were to be stuck with one for the rest of your life, which one would you pick?

Gun to head, I would say college football.

Okay, so why? Why college football? What is it?

I guess I grew up on it. My grandfather worked with Bo Schembeckler, and I grew up in Boston, outside of Boston, Swanscott, small town north of Boston. But he had worked. He lived in Ohio and helped the recruiting area of Northeast Ohio. I was around that Michigan program and just understood, you always see the pageantry, but it's just how important that is. It was weird growing up here because it's all pro-sports here in New England, all pro-sports.

Except Not for the one fluty run. We had that little fluty intersection, and that was a bad end for college football. Right.

Just being around that, I was introduced to something that was different than what we grew up around living in this area. I don't know. I just have always I love going to games and the tailgating and how important it is and the flags flying as you're driving through a town and the crowd and the atmosphere. It's just home to me. It really is. But the personnel part, I became obsessed with in my 20s when I started in this business, just evaluating, all right, which of these guys can actually go play at the next level and building a roster. So that's how it all developed for me.

Well, so last year we had these three quarterbacks, and it was so much fun to talk about them. Everybody agreed, ceiling-wise, Caleb has to be first. That was what everybody came with. This guy, he's Mahomes-ish. There's some leadership stuff, potentially. There's some immaturity stuff. But he's got to be the pick. Yet there were some other people were like, check May, it's a little Josh Allen. Then Jaden Daniels was the other one. The reason people seemed to be down on Daniels was the frame. Could he be durable enough? Could he handle it? But then everybody was pointing to last year and saying, This guy was amazing last year. If this guy can do in the pros what he did in college, this guy is going to be an amazing quarterback in durability. It's a question, did this exceed what you even thought, whatever you as the ceiling for Daniels coming in? What's happened this year? Did you see any version of this happening?

Not this version, man. I'll go back to what I said last year before the draft. If you're dropped on this planet and you could only base your evaluation off of one year of tape, like the 2023 season. Jaden Daniels was clearly the better prospect, right? Yeah. But throughout the process, there was Jaden Daniels at Arizona State, which He was this running around, backyard football, all about his legs. Occasionally, he'd pop a pass down the field. And then he got to LSU. And even early on there, I remember being on the field with Brian Kelly before the Tennessee game. And Tennessee came in, big favorites, and they wound up blowing out LSU in that game. But I remember being on the field with him and watching Jaden and having to watch his tape and just saying, What do you see in practice that I'm not seeing because it looks like he can make all the throws, but he just doesn't seem to trust it, and the anticipation isn't there and all that. He said, Watch the first play of this game. Just watch because we're forcing him to make this throw. I'm not going to tell you where it's going, but we're going to force him to make this throw because we're trying to prove to him that if you just trust your read and your eyes and you get the ball out on time, you're special.

You're different than anything we've been around or seen. And so the first play of the game comes, and of course, I'm on the side of it, like piquing over, and it's a deep comeback route to the left side. And he gets back top of his drop and just rips it. And if it gets picked, it's a pick six. And at that point, he hadn't thrown an interception. And Everyone in the local media was just, Oh, this Jaden Daniels is great. He hasn't thrown an interception through five games. How good has he been? And Brian's point was, I can't wait for him to throw an interception. It's driving me fucking crazy. The media is talking about the interception thing, but the reason he's not trusting is he's so concerned about throwing a pick. Anyway, ball comes out, perfect throw, right on time, completion. You saw it there. That was the first step in his confidence of like, You know what? If I trust what I'm seeing in my instincts, I can build from here. He just kept getting better. Then the following season was 2023, and he just took off.

It's funny that I'm in my mid-50s now, and it still doesn't feel like we've figured out evaluation of the best basketball prospects, quarterbacks. I think when we get to like Abdukart or pass rushers, we have a pretty good sense of, Yeah, this guy's probably going to come in and be really good. But the quarterback thing, so much of it seems to depend on situation, what your college experience was, where are you going into, who your coach is when you get there the first couple of years. And I think of the situation Daniels was in versus what Drake May was in, where he was like, F minus offensive line, no receivers, the worst coach as possible. He's just running for his life for four quarters. Then Daniels, who had an overqualified offensive coordinator, a good head coach, a lot of veterans around him, a team that trusted him, he had five years in college and all that led to something really good. But then he got hurt, what, five weeks, six weeks in, he took a hit. Didn't seem like he was the same for fighting. I was like, Well, this is why we were a little nervous.

Could his body hold up? Now I'm thinking about picking them to beat the Eagles. He looks that good compared to what we're watching, and I want to talk to you about what's going on with Hertz, too. But it does feel realistic that he could just win three straight playoff games in a row. For a rookie quarterback to do that, is that inconceivable to you?

It is inconceivable because history says it's almost impossible to happen, right? What he's doing now, Bill, is so far beyond what you can... That you're allowed to expect from a rookie quarterback. I went back and looked. No rookie quarterback has ever led his team to a Super Bowl, right? There have been five others who have led their team to a conference championship. And I want to I want to rip off these names for you. Sean King, Ben Rothsberger. I want you to think back when they actually were rookies.

His game manager, Ben Rothsberger. Correct.

Joe Flacko, same deal. Mark Sanchez, Purdy. Now I want you to think about what we just saw last week. Then there's a whole other list of guys in their second year. Six of them since 2000 in their second year as quarterbacks have led their teams to a Super Bowl. Braided, Rothsberger, Kaepernick, Russell Wilson, Joe Burrow, and Purdy. I would say of that group, Burrow probably carried more of the offensive load on his shoulders than any of those other guys. He didn't braided back then. We were protecting braided.

You It was all- He wasn't close to braided in 2001.

No. Then you think about what Jaden's doing and under pressure, and not just beating the pressure with his legs, but with his arm. Then you think about the vast majority of the run plays, too. I think this goes unnoticed. In the NFL, with how quick the defenses are and how fast the action of play is, he's having to make reads in the run game, too, with his own read option and all the possibilities there. Every snap, he is making decisions that a rookie quarterback usually doesn't have to have that much load put on them. And he's doing it at such a ridiculous level. That's why this is by far, I think by far in my lifetime, the best rookie quarterback performance I've ever seen. And C. J. Stroud, it was awesome. But this is different, man. And the supporting cast is not to the level that it should be for a rookie quarterback to have this success. And honestly, I like Washington. I'm going to go with him. I think I am, too. I think something special is happening. Here's the weird part. I trust him more than I trust Jalen Hertz.

I have this playoff manifesto with all these rules. One of the rules is you really got to look at the quarterbacks. Look at both sides. Imagine betting on the game and just going down the four quarters with each guy. I want to talk about Hertz in a second because the stuff that's going on with him There were some really good videos and pieces about it in the last week. The Daniels piece, we talked about this last week on my pod, just like the braided 2001 and Mahomes, his first full year. I think the Mahomes, his first full year is the only real comparison that I can remember. Honestly, with Moreno, who was amazing, but in the mid '80s, he was probably on TV three times when we were in football. I can't say I was a Dan Moreno expert. He would play the or the Jets, and you would get one of those games, maybe. But Mahomes, we were there for, and he was good enough to win the Super Bowl that year, and they got really lucky. The D-Fords jumped off sides or the Pat or Katie throws an interception, the Pats lose that game.

Mahomes We're going on the Super Bowl that year. Burrows, another one that I think felt like he was arrived and ready to go, and he was going to be in our lives for the next 15 years. I just think Daniels hit that point even before the Detroit game. It was just clear he was going to be in our lives. The part that was amazing to me is that it felt like Detroit could have run for 10 yards of carry. I'm sure they're looking at the tape going, How did we lose that game? How did we ever not score a countdown every time we had the ball? Now I look at Philly and it's like, All right, are they just going to rush for 300 yards. Maybe Hertz doesn't have to do anything. But I don't like trusting QBs who are playing like shit. And he's playing like shit.

He is. It's going to be interesting. I don't want to go too deep in the mud But like- Please do.

We're here to go in the mud.

Philly lives on first down running the football. I think I've read like 71% of the time on first down, they've run the football in the postseason, and it was damn near that close in the regular season. It's all about staying on schedule. I think in part because they don't trust their quarterback, right? Because if we're in third, they're one for 11 on third down conversions in the postseason when it's seven or longer. What does that tell you?

You know what I mean? How about the explosive plays he's missed in the two games? Where he said, AJ opened deep and just either threw it out of bounds or was laid on the throw. That safety he took against the Rams in the second half was one of the worst quarterback plays of the year. It was unbelievable that that happened. That's what would happen if it's somebody who's replacing Deshaun Watson on the Browns, that level, quarterback. This Jalen Hertz has been a super Super Bowl. The one thing and the other time when he knocked him out of field goal range because he took a sack. This is basic QB shit. Don't make your situation worse. Just get out of it. He can't even seem to do that. I think the Eagle fans are really aware of it, but also feel like they can rush for 330 yards on Sunday. Right.

And they could. I mean, they could. But I also... Washington has gotten to the point where they're one of the top teams in the NFL the last second half of the season and in the postseason with a run blitz on first down. I It could become a war of, all right, when does Philly take a chance, play action first down, and can Jalen cash in?

Yeah.

Again, if you're betting on Jalen, is that the bet you want to make?

Well, So if you're making the case for Washington, and I think I'm going to make it when I do Million Dollar Picks.

What's the spread in that game, by the way? Is it eight?

It's up to six and a half. Oh, six and a half. It'll probably be seven. Who knows? But you figure it be the same recipe at the day against Detroit, where each side is going to have seven possessions. We're going to take our time. We're going to move the ball down the field. Every fourth and two, fourth and three, we're going for it. We're going to complete 70% of our passes. The clock's going to be moving, moving, moving. We'll hang around. Maybe we're up 10, seven in the second quarter. Philly has a turnover. Now we have the ball again. Now it's 17, 7, 13. Now Hertz has to start making plays. That's their scenario to win the game, which is very similar to the Detroit scenario. The equals scenario was just we're up 10-0. We're We're running the ball, we're chewing up clock. Daniels comes out, we get one stop, we rush through the middle. Now all of a sudden it's 13, nothing. Now we can just run the ball, run the ball, run the ball, play action. We're home. So I see the two sides. I just feel more comfortable with the Daniels side.

Yeah, especially with that number.

Yeah, because it feels like either team can win the game. So if that's the case, I'd rather just take the six and a half.

I'd love to see Washington jump them early.

Yeah.

A quick strike early in the game, knock Philly back on its heels. Yeah. I just think momentum's crazy. Confidence is so much of this, and we've lived through it our whole lifetime. When teams get on a run, forget the seeds, forget the Vegas spreads. There's something about that momentum and the belief in what we're doing, and it just feels like Washington Washington has that. Now, again, they could walk into a buzz saw. Philly Jump gets out and has a big play early on, and now they can run the football and get a lead. But I don't know. Something special is happening in Washington, and I don't want to be on the other side of it anymore.

Well, were you in Massachusetts during the '01 Pats run?

'01?

The first Super Bowl.

Yes. I just moved back from New York. I went to school in Richmond, lived in New York for two years. I came back. Just honestly, I think five, six months before, so I was there for the whole run.

Yeah, it felt like it was a little similar. It was a little similar where it was an out-of-nowhere thing. It seemed improbable. They were big underdogs each. They were even bigger underdogs than Washington is. The snow game was the one that officially flipped the narrative. It's like, Wait, what's going on here? Then they went into Pittsburgh. They got a couple of special teams plays. There were some Pittsburgh turnovers. It was just chip on their shoulder. The only people that believe in us are in this locker room. Washington definitely has some of that. I think the difference is Daniels is just way ahead of where braided was. Braided, game manager, really smart, didn't turn the ball over, but he wasn't really braided until, I think, 2005, '06 range when they really started leaning on him. This Daniels thing, to lean on a rookie where he's basically the offense is hinching on him, it's pretty unusual. I will say, though, Echlor being back and them having two running backs now. Huge difference. It just feels like they run the ball a little bit.

And Echler looked like he had juice, right?

Yeah, no question.

Like a couple of years ago when he was in his, I don't want to say prime, but when he was at his peak, a couple of his runs, I was like, Oh, shit. Echler's back.

Right. Well, we were talking last week on the show and we were trying to figure out could Washington win this game. They had a really weird season where they looked really good the first few weeks. Then they had Daniels got hurt, had a couple of injuries, the Hale Mary game was lucky. They weren't stumbling through the middle of the season, but they looked like they were like a rabbit team, the team that looks good for the first two, two and a half months. But then the last month of the season, they went back to where they were in September December, and then it just kept going and going and going. You could think that. You could also think Baisley could have lost the Tampa if Tampa just converts a second and one and makes three more plays and is up four with two minutes left. But I'm with you. Sometimes with football, you get this momentum that's going. I guess the question for me in the other conference is, does Buffalo have that, too? Where Buffalo has had... The turnover stats with them are nuts, where they've never had a game where they've had more turnovers than the other team the whole season.

Everyone else has done that as one of the Super Bowl. The game last week, they just have a habit of the other team just shoots themselves in the foot as they're playing them. I wonder, maybe it could be a Buffalo Washington. Yeah, you should have seen this all along. But this is what we've done all year. Why didn't you believe in us?

The Josh Allen thing, it's his time.

You're going there because I think I'm picking KC.

Good. I want everyone I'm not going to get to. You know what? It's like when your mom says to the kid, How many times are you going to burn your hand on the stove? Or how many times... As life went on, I think I've come to realize I'm going to be the one who's going to burn my hand more.

Going against the chiefs, you mean?

Yeah, and so maybe it's a me thing. But I don't know. Here's what the tangible thing that I think is different is the turnover aspect for Josh Al. I talked I was going to talk about this with our guy, Ryan Rasello.

Yeah.

Right after it happened, what was it? Week 11, was it? Kansas City, Buffalo? Right.

30-21, they beat him.

I remember watching that game and waiting to see because they were up four. Buffalo was up It's like every time an opponent has a lead over Kansas City in the fourth quarter, there's always that middle of the fourth quarter or a little bit past the midpoint of the fourth quarter, they get a drive. The opponent does. And there's some level of conservative play, whether it's playing for a field goal, whether it's dialing it back, not being aggressive. The mentality has to be, we're down for. And that's what Buffalo did. It was Remember, they've lost three games to them in the playoffs. They've found ways to lose. They've had games pulled away from them, all of it. I saw the switch in the mentality in that week 11 game. Where we've got the ball. I forget exactly when they got it, maybe like six, seven minutes left in the fourth quarter. They're down by four. But if you didn't know the score, you'd say, oh, they're up by four. But if you didn't know the score, you would have said they're down by four points in this game. Because not by three. No, they're down by four is the mentality they had because they had to score a countdown.

And they drove the field. They drove the field, they went forward on fourth downs, they were aggressive the entire time, and they put the game away. Because what teams do all the time in that fourth quarter drive is they take for granted. It's assumed. It absolutely has to be assumed that when Mahomes gets the ball, it doesn't matter how much time's left, they're going to score, and they're going to score a countdown. So if you play with that math... It was important for that game, but I also think it showed that the Bills get it. They get that we can't turn the ball over, we can't give them extra possessions. And in the fourth quarter, we are full steam ahead, most important drive to save our season, even if we have a lead. And I just think the way Josh is playing, I think we're witnessing the best of Josh Allen in this moment, and the best of one of the most talented players to ever play the position has got to be good enough eventually, right?

Are there Manning-Brady mid-2000s parallels for you with this? When it seemed like Manning couldn't get over the hump against the Pats and then finally was able to do in the AFC title game after a regular season win, but then he had to in the playoffs, then he finally did it.

Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. It's impossible to say I'm confident or I have any confidence in it with Mahomes, and we know what they do. And like every good organization, they get their quarterback, and they have drafted defense after defense after defense. And if you put a great defense on the field, which is what has been Brett Veach, their GM, and Andy Reid, their philosophy. The second they got Mahomes, and realized he was the guy. If you go back and study their draughts, it's like four of the first six picks defense, three of the first four, five of the first seven, six in a row defense. And they've loaded up on that side because the quarterback is going to take care of all the problems on the offensive side. So we got to have a great defense because we don't have a fixer on that side. And so that's how they built this whole thing. But I look at Buffalo, and Buffalo, defensively, they're not as great as Kansas City is, but they've done a lot of the same things. They've sacrificed their offensive playmakers for their defensive talent. I think they're better up front in the defense than they maybe have been in previous matchups.

I don't know. I think it's their time.

So I was thinking about, I should have said this on the pod we did Sunday night after the game. I blew it. There was 93 seconds left when they went for the two-point. If Andrews catches it, it's 27, 27. We left the game, and, Oh, my God, he dropped it. He blew the game for them. Josh would have the ball with enough time to go 40, 45 yards and set up some field goal. I almost wonder if that would have been a better outcome for the Bills as we think about the game going forward. Instead of how they won it, where the narrative after the game becomes, Oh, my God, Baltimore. Lamar, he didn't come through in the first half, and Andrews fumble and drops the two. It was like, Baltimore blew it, Baltimore blew it, Baltimore blew it. If Allen had just come down and got in the game-winning field goal or whatever in those last 93 seconds, I feel like we'd be talking about this Chiefs game differently. And by the way, he probably would have.

Yeah, but I think Buffalo almost wants it that way, right?

Right. They do seem like they're chip on the shoulder. They were doing a lot of Nobody believed in us. I think they knew what the line was. I thought Baltimore was the best team in the week, and I still feel that way. I don't regret picking them last week. They lost, but I just thought they were really good, and all the errors were self-inflicted. The punch out on the Andrews fumble, that was a great play by Buffalo. Yeah, that was. The two mistakes in the first half by Lamar were terrible plays by him.

Like, really plays you can't make. He's good for those in these moments. That's been the problem.

That's been the problem. That has been the problem. For Allen, it's fun when a quarterback gets to this point. We've seen it throughout the course of history where he has to win this year.

He has to win this game.

This is the season. This happens in basketball, too. You have a season where a lot of stuff aligned. This is it. I just really like the Chiefs. I still think they're really good. I don't feel like... With the team that they were in the first 12 13 weeks, I think they've solved some of those issues. They're a little more explosive than they were in September, October, November. They can run the ball a little better. I still believe in them at home. I just think they're being so hard to beat.

Kelsey is the whole deal. Totally. Kelsey is the whole deal in this game. If you go back and look, he clearly has not been the player this year that he has been in the past. But you go back and look at those wins, the three times that the Chiefs have beaten the Bills. He's averaged nine catches per game 96 yards and almost two touch downs in those three games. The week 11 game that we were talking to, I want to see it, two catches for eight yards.

Well, they keep them in the garage during the regular season now. No, I get that. They put the cover over him. They put him in the heated garage.

Especially this year when he was not... I took a lot of heat for it, but I know him, right? He was not in the shape that he's been in a lot of other years. It just wasn't there. They were getting him to this point. Had an awesome game with 117 last week. So, Terrell Bernard did an amazing job in coverage on him. So that's going to be the matchup you want to watch in this game. The linebacker for the Bill is the first time around. He also had the interception in that game.

But they have some secondary issues this game. There's some guys who may, may not play, and their secondary was already not incredible to begin with.

Yeah. To me, because when Mahomes gets in these games in these types of situations, it's I think that we've got a burner and Xavier worthy is here. All these other bells and whistles and all the things we want. But he's going to rely on himself and Travis. I mean, it's been proven. He would rather He would rather extend the play and dance around and do some things and wait for Kelsey to find a soft spot versus in those moments, in the big moments, if you really watch, he'll turn down opportunities with other guys and say, I I can create a little longer. I'm going to wait for Travis because we have to. When he has to have it, that's what he tends to do. I think Kelsey is going to be the key to this game. It's not breaking news, but I think we got lulled to sleep. They're winning games, and Travis hasn't been huge this year.

No, they wanted three games from him. That was it. I think that was the deal before this season. Are you going to be ready for the three games at the end of the season?

Yeah.

Are you going to be a nine for 99 with a countdown each game? We'll take a break. I want to keep talking quarterbacks. All right. My guy, Drake May. I know you've been watching him. I just got a shoehorn just because you're here. I got a shoe in a shoehorn, three minutes of content. I'm on a lot of Pats tech threads. We watched what happened in Washington this year, where very similar to the Pats right now, where they drafted the franchise QB, they brought in a new coach, they brought in new leadership, They made a bunch of smart free agent signings, they did well in the draft, and they just basically patched together a playoff team that now has a legitimate chance to make the Super Bowl, and it'll happen in a year. The paths, they have May. You think of last year's May season as Daniels at LSU, basically, that same thing. Now, he's going to have his first real season, hopefully on a real professional team. Easy schedule. They have a ton of cap space.

The most in the league.

I assume they're going to spend money The crafts really haven't spent money the last 10 years, but we'll see if they do it this year. Fourth pick in the draft, top of every draft going down. They have two third-round picks. Why can't this be them next year? What are the reasons that can't happen?

What Jaden has done is unbelievably unique and special, but it's Drake's second year, and he has shown he's different. That last year's quarterback class, man, when you go back and look at it, I'm just excited to see it develop, but Pennex look pretty good. Bo'nicks, there's a cap on Bo'Nicks.

But he's definitely an average to above average starter.

Yeah, and it's the perfect situation for him with Sean. But the whole group, and now Ben Johnson comes to Chicago, and that's a whole different conversation. They're set up for that success. I'm not saying make a Super Bowl run, but they are set up to be a surprise play-off team.

To maybe be a 10 win team.

To be a surprise play-off team next year from a team that was a game away from having the first overall pick to maybe potentially making a run. Here's the hard part. I just talked about the defense and And Vrabel certainly will have his finger on the pulse and make the final decisions. But he will be pushing towards building a great defense with a great young quarterback.

I figured he'll do the lines. He'll be like, Let's start with the lines and we'll build out from both sides of the line of scrimmage.

And we'll park a receiver here. We'll grab a retread running back there, and we don't need to put a ton of money in that right away unless they go out and get one of the top free agents or make a trade a wide receiver. I don't even know that that's going to be their MO, but we'll see. But at the end of the day, what we saw from Drake May was all you needed to see to be resuscitated as a Patriots fan. They have two assets in the entire organization. I said it. It's Drake May, and and Gonzales, a cornerback.

And Vrabel now. Now, we have three assets.

I'm saying before the move, before they changed over, they had two assets, and I was screaming, Protect your assets. Don't play them in that final game. You and I were texting, they should never have had the coach coach that game. Gerard Mayo should never have been in that position. But here we are. Now you've got the fourth pick, and it's not all going to come down to the fourth overall pick. If Abdul Carter was the follow-up for it, it would be I don't want to say a miracle, but the odds are it's not going to happen. They desperately, in my opinion, need one of the quarterbacks to fall to them, Kam Ward.

Yeah, so let's talk about that because right now it's a three-player draft unless Sanders can move up and get people excited and wet people's appetite and make it afford. Because it seems like Ward's higher than Sanders and then Carter and Hunter. But right now, it's a three-player draft, drop off. People start arguing who the fourth pick should be, which is bad for the Pets, I think.

Yes and no, because you're sitting there for. Tennessee has a quarterback need, Cleveland has a quarterback need, and Giants have a quarterback need.

But Tennessee said they're taking the best guy. They said like, now who knows? That might be posturing, but...

Bill, How long have you been in this game? I'm not saying that they won't, and maybe eventually they will, but since when does a team come out with the-In mid-January? And said, If it's a generational talent, we're going That's NFL speak for, Hey, come and get the pick. If not, we'll take your guy. They want out of that pick, just like the Patriots would have wanted out of that pick because they realized there is no Drake May in this class. There's no Jaden Daniels in this class. There's no Caleb Williams in this class, right? So let's try to get out of this pick and let's build it like the rest, like Detroit had built it. The Eagles have built it. Like San Francisco did. The Ravens continue to do. All the organizations building on defense and offensive lines. And so I think Tennessee is going to try to follow in those footsteps and try to follow the blueprint and try to get out of that pick and get more picks in a draft where, yeah, those are the top three and they're elite players. But even in recent drafts, you could say there's better at those individual positions.

Yeah, but usually the quarterbacks drift up. And they will. There's this weird phenomenon that happens, and then all of a sudden, you've got two guys in the top four, even though there's been like the Trubisky year was a good example when that happened. The more people stare at the list and the quarterbacks and think about how important the position is, all of a sudden, you start looking at the strengths instead of the weaknesses of the guys, and the guys climb up. So I would assume that might happen.

Yeah. One of two things is going to happen. Either both the quarterbacks are going to go to one of those three spots, and Abdul Carter will go. Then Travis Hunter is your pick at number four, unless you can move out of that to get additional picks.

It doesn't seem like a variable pick.

It doesn't, right?

They need a left tackle. They have to come out of the draft with a left tackle or a pass rusher, and It has to be for the paths. It has to be one of those two. They need people who can block for Jake May. He's the only asset they have.

Tradeback with Vegas at 6 or the Jets at 7. You know what I mean? Or the Saints at 9 Sure. If one of those two quarterbacks falls, right?

Yeah. That would be the dream scenario.

I think the worst scenario is Kam and Shadr go in the top three picks, and Abdul Carter is gone as well.

And now you're staring at Hunter who you don't need.

Who's a wonderful... He is a generational type talent, but you're only getting him on one side of the ball for the vast majority, right?

You have him as a cornerback, right?

I think he's actually a better wide receiver than he is cornerback. But if you're going to try to play him and get value from him on both sides, you better play him as a cornerback and then put in some packages for him.

That's going to be super fun if somebody decides to do that. I'm just glad that player exists because I remember after college or even during college when Deion Sanders, when I was in college, and Deion had that capability of just coming in and playing series on offense, it was the most exciting thing. I Oh, my God. This is amazing.

I looked it up.

Wasn't that many players?

I think he had like, 61 receptions his entire career.

Deion did, yeah.

Deion, and that was the most... Like, Champ Bayly had like Six. Charles Woodson had like, two. There's not a history of someone actually being consistently that productive.

Yeah. Last year's draft, It seems like it was almost a unicorn draft, the way we're going to look back at it, where there's just star players all throughout the first round. We ended up with five starting quarterbacks. We ended up with potentially two Maybe generational quarterbacks, maybe three, if Caleb can get his shit going. Then this year's draft- We haven't seen anything from JJ yet who's got, arguably, the best coach to develop them. Then this year's draft, you look at Kam Ward, you look at Sanders, Where did they go in last year's draft with the tape they have and the grade they have for this season? Are they in that Pennex, Nix level? Are they JJ level? Are they below Pennex? Where are they?

I think the conversation starts at four with JJ. There's no conversation with Caleb, Jaden, or Drake. I think it starts at four. Most teams had JJ. Mccarthy is the fourth. Some teams were higher on him than others and believe that he was maybe the second or third best quarterback in the class. I thought he was the fourth best. The interesting part is this. The best pure passer in this draft is Shador. Layered the ball, ball placement, good instincts as a passer, processes things real quickly, doesn't have a great arm. The weird part is he's Coach Prime's son. He's not a great athlete. He extends plays, but his instincts in the pocket get him in a lot of trouble. And then you've got Kam, who doesn't... I don't want to say he doesn't process it as quickly, but he's been in these systems where he hasn't had to go through all the reads. I don't think he can get himself out of trouble as a rookie in terms of understanding where to go with the ball. He's not as consistent with his accuracy. He makes more poor... He'll make a player to a game where you're like, Oh, no.

Will Levis type shit, right?

Oh, no.

Yeah.

The Levis word.

But But he's a better athlete than Shador. He extends plays. His arm angle is the way he's able to get the ball out. He's got a much better arm than Shador. So traits-wise, Kam is the guy if you can develop him. But if you're asking, compared to last year's class, I think it may go JJ McCarthy four. And then I would say Kam Ward-Pennix, and then Shador, Bo'Nicks, in that range.

So if Darnold had been really good down the stretch. Let's say they lost in round two, but he was good in that game and it wasn't his fault. It turned into a situation, Oh, Minnesota should resign him. They should actually bring him back and trade JJ. That's a smarter move. You think JJ has the talent that you could have traded one of the four picks in the top four for JJ, and that's a good trade compared to who's in the draft?

Yeah, I think so. I think it could have happened that way But I don't know that Minnesota would have even gotten rid of him. I think they would have sat on both. Had he played great down the stretch. I'm actually frustrated because it was shaping up to be one of the most fascinating personnel decisions you could ever make.

Yeah, it was like a poor man's young versus Montana type of situation, right? It's like, what do we do? We have two guys.

But the problem is with the salary cap, you're now preventing your organization from building everywhere else by keeping But then are you going to... You have this sure thing. If he goes and plays well, like you said, two playoff games, they lose, but he's through for 260, 270, and everything is fine.

He's 27 years old or whatever he is. It's like, all right, we got a guy.

We got our guy. That would have been unbelievable to watch. It's amazing what two games did to his value.

Now he's going to be like, Giants, Tennessee, some stop gap somewhere else.

It'll be interesting to see how much money he lost, too.

That was the most wrong I've been about anything all season. I completely believed by week 17 with the Vikings. I was like, I'm in on this team. I believe in Darnold. This team is going to beat Detroit.

Why is everyone overlooking him? No one wants to talk about me. I was the same way.

I saw that video of them carrying him, picking him up in the locker room after I was like, I'm all in. You've won me over. Then he just turned into a pumpkin. It was unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

Your mock draft has come in February 10th, your first one?

I think so. That's what we're looking at.

Not that far away. No. We could spoil one thing in the mock draft. Is there a surprise guy for you that you're higher on than everybody else that you feel like you're going to be right and people just don't see it yet. Do you have one of those guys yet?

I don't want to bore you with an offensive tackle, but- No, let's hear it. Josh Connerly from Oregon. Everyone's talked about this Will guy who's a guard tackle from LSU, and Kelvin Banks, who's a really talented player from Texas. I think Josh Connerly might wind up being the best left tackle.

And for some reason- You ask like I haven't studied these guys copiously, hoping the paths are going to take a left tackle. Are you Josh Connerly, that high?

I think he's up there. I think he- Wow. He's unbelievably athletic. The way he moves, he's gotten better with his hands. I think he's got a chance to be a star from this class, and I haven't heard or talked to anyone who's quite as high on him as I am. Keep an eye on Conor Lee.

Were you high on Cole Strange a couple of years ago or no?

Not as high as the Patriots were.

Okay, good. We traded out of the McDuffie pick and then took him one pick in front of Carlaffis. I know. Was the rare double whammy, Belichick down the stretch. So your dream scenario for the Pats would be somehow move out of that four pick get into the 9 to 11 range and take Conorland. You think he goes that high?

I think more like, I think he winds up going mid-first. But if Mid-first. Okay. If people see what I see, then maybe he goes somewhere around 10.

And the receiver class is a disaster this year compared to last year, which was a pretty historic run of dudes.

We had a historic almost decade run of wide receivers. Every year, four and five first round, almost surefire, a lot of them. But all those Alabama guys, when you look at them and then Ohio State guys and the LSU guys, all from five programs of the best majority. It's not like Teterola McMillon from Arizona is really talented, but I wouldn't put him up. He's not like Jamar Chase. I see him mocked four or five, and I have a hard time going that high. Luther Burden is a burner, but drops a lot of passes, inconsistent. The best wide receiver in the class is Travis Hunter. After that, I think there's a lot of guys you like late in the first and second round, but I don't see the value where you're going to have to pick for them. I just don't see.

Last year was nuts. Even think like Bowers, who is probably going to be the best tight end of his generation if he doesn't get concussed 17 times because he tries to take on nine tackers every time he catches the ball. But that guy is going to be the next guy, it feels like.

Yeah, he is the next guy.

Yeah.

And how about Lad McConkey?

Yeah, right. Pat's out of that pick. Pat took the 10th wide receiver to not receiver draft. It was great. Although, don't you feel like... I watched what Washington did where they basically they got this coaching staff and they overpaid for their assistance. They got overqualified dudes and they coach guys up, whereas the pats went the other way and had a terrible coaching staff. But aren't some of these guys... Is Polk really like, he's just not going to ever be an NFL player? He's not salvageable at all. Can you lose your confidence that degree? Because he was good last year. Nobody thought he was going to be a bust. I just don't understand the concept of, can a coach or a coaching staff, resuscitate a guy back to life? Is that even possible?

Yeah, it's possible. It's possible, but damage gets done as a rookie. It really does. It's hard to overcome that. Sometimes it takes a change of scenery, and sometimes that's not even enough. What Adam Peters did at Washington, from the hire of Dan Quinn to the coordinators to... Jaden was the easiest decision he had to make. How about Mike Sandrastrow?

Right.

Two interceptions, drafting him as a rookie.

Yeah. What round was He went up going second.

Yeah, he went up going second. Yeah.

Yeah, the Daniels one. I mean, obviously, that was a huge topic with the Pats fans wondering what... Because it seemed like there was a stretch there where it seemed like Washington might take Drake May, and then it's like, Okay, I'm going to talk myself into Daniels, and he's a little older, and he's maybe not durable, but holy shit. People in my life who love college football and Van Lathen who loves OSU was like, Daniels is incredible. If you guys got Daniels, it'd be a miracle. So you had that.

The conversations I had with a lot of NFL teams was, you guys in the media are missing. I remember in about this time last year.

They you guys, you?

You guys us. Oh, no. You guys, me. Yes. We're having real conversations and fights in our draft room. When we get together on meetings, we just had a January meeting. It's a war in our room about Jaden versus Caleb. Wars. And a lot of teams I talk to at the end before they saw the product on the field this year. So it's not like revisionist history. We're like, yeah, we would have taken Jaden.

So now if it's a redraft, is Caleb third on everyone's board or is he second? He's third, you think? I think he is 10.

I do.

Probably Daniels has to be first.

Daniels first, May, second, then Caleb.

Daniels has won this argument, at least for now. Now he's in this different argument of who would What do you want with the ball with five minutes left in a playoff game? It's not Mahomes. Is he Daniel's second, third, or fourth?

Is there a fifth quarterback in the NFL that you would take over Jaden? I saw that conversation the other day.

Would you have that Burr or Jay Danos. We're talking Herbert or Jay Danos. Yeah, he's already graduated.

There is the second-year thing. Stroud grinded through it, didn't have as much protection, all that. They've got to avoid the second time around. Teams having a offseason to study his tendencies. If he gets through his second year and is playing at this level, then we're in the clear.

You don't worry about him physically at all over the course of 15 years, or is it like a Lamar thing? Of course I do.

Do me a favor at some point when you have a Freeman moment on your hands this week. I think I told Saru to you about this, too. You got to go on Twitter. There's just like, do a Jaden Daniels Looney tunes. Someone put together a great reel of him as like a looney tune.

Of all the time Because he just got popped?

It's one thing to get popped, but the way his body parts are just flailing everywhere because he's so lean and long, it's hysterical. It's worth a laugh. Yeah, it concerns me.

We were always worried about Lamar, but Lamar always seemed like he knew how to take a hit. Then some guys just know how to do it.

Jaden pops up so many times. He's so flexible, and that's just who he is. But he hasn't learned that yet.

You know Who was bad at that initially was braided. Braided took some smacks his first couple of years where he just got... And Drake May last year took three or four horrible ones.

Then braided got flexible. Yeah, braided got flexible. Yeah, that's the whole thing. It's flexibility. That's why the braided Quinz and the guys who are like Tebo's. Will Levis. The dudes who look awesome with their shirt off and look like they can outbench Rosillo are the ones I really I agree about.

Nobody can out bench Rosillo. What are you talking about? Yeah, I know. Have you seen him lately? He's fucking massive.

Just ask him.

Jesus. Do you think braided screwed up everything for all these old quarterbacks going forward where we decided this was realistic because Tom braided did it, and now we're just going to have this generation of guys in this Roger's cousin stage in their late 30s where they just suck. We're like, No, Tom braided did it. I really feel like he fooled even me. I picked the Rogers to win the AFC East this year. Now it's like, Oh, yeah. It's really hard to play quarterback when you're 39 and your body's breaking down.

I went to that Patriots Jets game. I brought my son. To see him live in person now compared to what he was two years ago, the MVP-level version of Aaron Rodgers, it was scary. To see Drake made before the concussion and how mobile and in control he was, it was Oh, so that's next, and that's done. That's my two takeaway. That's next. That's done.

Yet somebody will probably sign Rodgers, I'm guessing. Why? There'll be one more year, I feel like. He's going to be like one of those boxers that needs to get knocked out two more times before they finally hang it up.

Yeah, I could see him wanting to. Why would you invest that and bring in that?

I'm not saying I would. I just feel like, how many dumb teams do we have? We just watched the Jaguars do two weeks of coach interviews and then fire their GM. This is like seven, eight, just horrifically managed franchises. So yeah, I think Rodgers could play somewhere.

I'm not saying he won't. I agree with you. I'm just saying, why would you? With everything that comes with it, too. I don't know.

Yeah, that's the other piece. All right, Todd McShay, first mock draft, February 10th. You can listen to the McShay show. We're heating up toward the draft. Can't wait for all your takes, all your thoughts. Good to see you. Thanks for coming on, finally. All right, my man.

I'm glad to join you. I appreciate you having me in this Ringer gig. I'm loving it.

It's been great. We love to have you. Thanks. Thanks, man. All right, taping this part late Thursday afternoon. Joe House is here. He is dressed almost like a Washington Commander's NASCAR driver. There's this Washington stuff everywhere. You're getting a colonoscopy tomorrow. You're drinking the colonoscopy juice. There's been of fireworks in the house house. This is the most action-packed million dollar picture we've ever had. Your team might make the Super Bowl. It's in play.

First of all, you see all this gear, what I have on, what's behind me. You're going to see none of that when I'm in Philadelphia this weekend. This is the last time you're going to see any of this stuff because I am not catching any hands when I'm up there. I'm not looking for it. I'm too old for that smoke.

We're too old to wear the visiting team's merchandise. We can't do it.

Definitely not in Philly.

You support the team. There we go. Root silently and hope you don't get punched. Also, if you do get in a fight in the stands, though, make sure it's to somebody who's below you. This is the Cilo technique. The guy in the higher ground always wins in the football thing. Anyway, don't punch house. He's a great guy.

I'm going to try my best not to get punched. I mean, if beers get poured on me, that's fine. I'll go with that. But I will tell you on the subject of the procedure, my screening procedure, this health path that we're on, you can tell how unimaginable it was that I would have something football-related in my life this weekend. I mean, I scheduled the colonoscopy months ago, right? Because I look at the calendar like, Oh, sure. It's Conference Championship Weekend. That's fine. I mean, I'll be- Yeah, you're not playing Conference Championship.

No. This turned out to be the Dan Snider colonoscopy. You're releasing all the Dan Snider feces and toxins out of your body.

The toxins, yeah. That's symbolic. Really? Yeah, it really is. All of it's coming out. I can tell you that much. In fact, we might have to take a break 10 minutes in here.

All right. Well, the listeners/viewers will never know. We'll just do a nice clean edit and you can come back with a nice happy look on your face.

As clean as my colon, hopefully.

We didn't do well on a million dollar pitch last week. We lost $585,000, but we were still up $1. 282 million for the year. I'm okay with what happened last week. I would take Baltimore again And your team, we had to see it. I wish I took last in. I didn't have the balls. I just didn't. I didn't have the balls to take a rookie QB against a team that felt like they were going to run all over you, which they basically did. But it didn't matter because they turned the ball over five times. Turnovers are the story of this last round. There might even be turnover in your pants. There's so many stories this week about turnover battle, like the Bills, 21 straight games where they haven't lost the turnover battle. It hasn't happened since 1960. There's all these good metrics for if you look like this Bills team just with turnovers, you end up winning the Super Bowl. Chiefs haven't turned the ball over in two months. This round, the last four teams, none of them have a turnover. I wish I wasn't saying it this way, but it's almost as reductive as, at least with the Chiefs Bills game, whoever doesn't turn the ball over is probably going to win.

I feel stupid saying it, but I think it's true. No.

Well, the two aspects of it for sure that all four of these teams have an advantage is taking sacks, these quarterbacks not taking sacks, and these teams being on the correct side of the turnover margin. Both Washington and Philadelphia arrive for their matchup plus six, the exact same number through these playoffs. And nobody would have forecasted this for Washington, I don't think. I mean, that's what's truly remarkable. And for sure, I think the handicap that Now, by the time on Sunday on the Ringer pregame show in advance of the divisional games- A YouTube TV in the handle. Yes, indeed. I thought that nine and a half points. I finally had the balls to say it. The Detroit favorite by nine and a half was goddamn disrespectful.

You didn't have the balls to say it when we did Million Dollar Picks.

Oh, good. I couldn't remember.

No, you did not? No, you were like...

Well, we teased it. You were being cute.

You were being cute about it. I think you deep down knew your team had a real chance. I'm a little annoyed. Five. I know. Five. There he is. Well, let's go backwards because you haven't been on the pod since Washington wins this game. Top five sports moment of your life?

Absolutely.

Yes. Unquestionably?

I would say unquestionably because of how far we've come, how unexpected it was. I feel now like it's a bad analogy coming on here every single week and saying to you that if we wrote this script out, if you wrote real life as it's occurring and said, this is a script about a football team, every production house would turn it down, say this is trash.

Like a sports movie, they dumped their terrible owner who hated the fans who almost ruined football in an entire city that loved football. And then the new guy comes in, new coach, new GM, new QB, and they just go on a winning streak.

Well, not just new QB, possibly the greatest rookie in the history of the football game. I know.

There was a few of those stories this week. We were there for Moreno. Moreno was pretty great. Now, granted, we only got to see him a couple of times. But yeah, with the I was adding the playoff wins to it. Pretty nuts. There's a lot to cover with this game. The Washington piece, I can't shake. There's some 2001 Pats Paralels. Oh, interesting. And watching your excitement with this. The Pats, they were like five and five after 10 games, and then they didn't lose again. At some point, weird shit started happening, leading to the snow game, which was like, that was when they finally pulled us in. None of the Pats fans wanted to believe. And it's like, no, believe. We had weird braided Bledso stuff. Bledso got hurt. It was an up and down season. We had that with the defense and the coaching. You have it with your offense. But you guys are 14 and five. He has won eight straight games. It's not like, Oh, my God, what's Washington doing here? At some point, Washington is just good. I'm really leaning toward taking them in the game, not just with the points, but outright.

I really think they can win. We'll get into the Philly stuff in a second, but let's just get that out of the way. I don't think this is fluky. I think that Daniels has been that good. The coaching has been that good. The guys, over and over again, you've had these semi-miraculous wins, these comeback wins, these fourth-quarter wins. There's a mojo that develops that I think devises magicians. I picked against Washington the last two rounds. Understandable. I'm tired of doing it. At some point, you got to accept what's going on and something is going on.

It does feel like something is going on. I can't view it in an unbiased way. For sure, the sum of all of these guys together believing is greater than the parts because you can't sit down and do Xs and O's, you can't do advanced metrics. You can't use any of those things to truly capture the spirit of this team and the way these guys believe. They just believe, and that belief in each other. I mean, it's an incredible combination of veterans and rookies and the veterans, some guys that have been there before. Bobby Wagner has been there before. So for a defense that by all metrics, it's the worst unit on the football field come Sunday. But somehow or another, we keep getting Ws. They just keep getting Ws, Bill Simmons.

Yeah, you have... It's like the 30th defense, DVOA against the run. Your defense is basically what the '01 Pat's offense was. Every week we were like, How are we going to score points? We have Jermaine Wiggens as a tight end. Our only good offensive player is Troy Brown. We have a rookie QB who they're terrified to have him really do anything. Each week we would just patch together points. The same thing is happening with your defense, where it's like, how is this defense going to stop anybody? And you're just getting turnovers. But the thing is, it was like Detroit. Yeah, they had five turnovers. There were some bad plays. Washington also made some good plays. That guy jumping the post route on the TD in the end zone. That was a good fucking play.

Outstanding. Yes. The rookie Mike Sandr still had two interceptions, and I feel very proud of myself in one of my threads with actually a guy with the team. I said, this is part of the revelation. This guy, Sanra, is still the kid from Michigan. He's been unbelievable, but he is for sure benefiting from the overall gravitas of this defense. Dan Quinn can coach up a defense. He's got the spine. You have Jeremy Chin playing safety. You've got Franky Louvou and Bobby Wagner where they are, and they just really do believe. Look, they held Tampa to 20 points. We watched that Tampa defense, I mean, offense go out and just post points on everybody. Now, it did feel like if Detroit had stuck with the run, that they might have been able to run for 250 yards in the second half, and they might have won that football game, but they chose not to. And that kid who had at least some role in it is now going to be the head coach of the Chicago Bears. So good luck to them.

Yeah, he got to stay in your conference.

Their conference.

Well, You're the Washington Conference. The bears, Ben Johnson. You get to play them. The Washington piece of this, big picture. If they could actually win this game, where do the Eagles rank on most hated Washington opponents? They're not number one, but they're in the top three, right?

Well, because we hate everybody in the NFC East.

You hate Dallas the most, though.

Yes, hate Dallas the most, for sure. It's mutual hatred amongst all of the franchises in the NFC East, and each team has their own which one they hate the most. I think the Giants hate the Eagles the most. I think the Eagles hate Dallas the most. I don't know, but for sure, Washington hates Dallas the most. Philadelphia Let's be real about it, wasn't really on the radar for a long time.

Well, you've only played them once in the playoffs. It's like the weirdest rivalry that's not actually a rivalry. It felt like the last couple of years, it was more fun because you guys would have some good games. You beat them last year.

Well, I'm not that surprised that Washington and Philadelphia have only faced each other in the playoffs once. That means both teams have to make it in in their previous iteration.

Well, when you think they've been playing football for 80 years, one time seems low.

Sure.

Daniels is the most popular Washington athlete since I've known you. It's either him or, it's either him or George Merson.

I mean, your all-time greats are John Riggins and- The Hawks. There are several generations of Washington fans that didn't have football in their lives. Alex Obechkin ranks pretty high up in terms of Washington icons. But Daniels is in the conversation. Let there be no doubt. Some old heads like me, like Weston Seld and Elvin Hayes, but that's old head shit.

Finishing last, Andre Blatch.

All right.

To get to I'm at a point where I want to have the balls to take Washington. No, N'Cobi Dean. That's good.

Yes.

Here's the big thing. Do your thing about how you think Hertz is hurt, because this is the number one reason to take Washington is there is something wrong with Jalen Hertz. The stats back it up, the eye test back it up, and his knee got bent backwards during the game, and they've been tight-lipped about it. I don't think they tell us if he was, sir, but do your thing.

Yeah, and we watched it. It was a It was a bad stretch, and it was bad enough that I wondered in the moment whether that was a tear, whether that was a ligament tear. It turned out it clearly was not a ligament tear because that would have been announced on Monday. But the discussion all week has been, we presume that Jalen Hertz is going to play. We expect Jalen Hertz to play. We watched the way that that knee bent, and they definitely shot him up with something because his behavior here in the interview after that game when he was with Saquad, that was a version of Jalen Hertz that is not your standard issue post-game. He had a aura. Let's just put it at that. But look, if Washington only has to stop Saquon Barkley, preposterous task that's in front of them, If Jalen Hertz isn't going to throw the football down the field, it takes him too long. We've been watching this now, and I know you have the stats to back it up, where for throws that are 10 yards or longer down the football field, it's just taking too long for him to get the ball out of his hand, and they're not throwing the ball anyway.

I think he had- And he's taken Sacks, which he didn't take before. There was a great Twitter thread of all the worst plays he had in that last game. It was just video after video, and it was like, Jesus, he looks like freaking Dorian Thompson Robinson. Like, what's this dude doing? I really thought long and hard about the matchup because my instinct was take Washington, and I didn't have a good week last week. I kept coming back to the total yardage, which I sent to you. There was most rushing yards ever in the NFC Championship Game, the NFC Championship Game. The case for the Eagles, which I'm not against, is that they're going to run the ball down Washington's throat. They're going to control the game, and they're just going to have the ball time. You're only going to get six possessions, One bad thing, you won't get a fourth and two. Maybe there's a tip pass turnover, and all of a sudden, the Eagles are up 10, and they went. The thing that's interesting to me is how few times in the title game, a team has just run the ball down somebody else's throat.

I sent this to you. Just in the last 40 plus years, only one team in the NFC title game has gotten a 200 plus yards rushing. That was the Niners against the Packers in 2020. Other than that, we're talking 81 Eagles, 71 Cowboys, 80 Rams, 73 Vikings, 97 packers. Then you get into that 169 to 196 range. There's some more modern teams there. The lines last year, the Seahawks in January 2015, the bears. But my point is it's really, really historically unusual to rush for 200 plus in this second-to-last game of the season. My The question to you is, how many yards are the Eagles going to have in this game when you factor in Hertz as throwing for 130 to 150 yards a game? That puts them in the low 300s, which you get every week.

The crucial thing for what you just shared in terms of Philly's approach is if Jalen Hertz can't run, go ahead and set Saquon Barkley's over and under at 199 and a half yards. If Washington can hold them under 200, I like Washington's chances.

But 200, that would be one of the two best performances of the last 45 years. How about set it at 150?

Well, it's Saquon. He's been on He has. He rips off 70-yard runs. But to me, the larger point is if that dimension of Jalen Hertz is not on the table, and we'll know within the first series, we'll see how he moves. If he is not authoritative threat to run the football down the field, then that changes things immensely. Washington is run defense.

That long, breakdown run he had in the first quarter last week.

Take that away. If that threat isn't there, then it changes things. It tilts things for the Washington defense.

In the AFC title game, nobody ever, no team has ever rushed for 200 plus yards. The last team in the last, the 99 Broncos rushed for 178 It makes sense. The 2015 Pats ran for 177. It's important to remember, Oh, Saquon is going to run all over them. Well, when we get to the final four, that's usually not happening in the way you think it's going to happen. Then if Hertz is going to look throwing the ball like he has the last few weeks and really the whole season. I really liked watching him all season. It seems like you look at the stats and the advanced stats for him the last three years, it's not that far off. But then like, the bundle wrote a great piece for the Ringer today about the Eagles's passing game, and it's like they basically just punted on it and maybe try to take two shots a game, but a couple of Dallas Goddard plays. But for the most part, they're just trying to run the ball and control the clock The question for me, though, if you can hang around, what we saw from the Eagles in that fourth quarter against the Rams, where it just felt like the front forward died, they started to get tired, and the Rams are just moving the ball down the field on them.

Their receivers are getting open. That's what Daniel, that's what he does.

Well, and here's the thing, Washington, from the minute that they get the ball in the first quarter, is going to be playing no huddle up-tempo offense. Right.

And four down offense, too. Any fourth and two, fourth, three, they're going for it.

Going for every single one of those. Every series that Washington possesses the ball will be a four down series in the sense that they're going to try. If they're close at all and they're not on the wrong side of their own 30 yard line, that they'll go for it. At some point, the cumulative effect of that on a defense. This is why the Jalen Carter piece is significant. Washington lost his best offensive lineman. Yeah, make his ass tired. We just watched it, but We lost Sam Cosby. Now, Washington, in its own shrewd way, is being coy about how they're going to play this. There is a thought that Andrew Wiley might slide from the left side over to the right side, and he has played some right guard for Kansas City, but it was several years ago. They have talent on this offensive line, but really, it's a Kingsbury scheme thing that's been most impressive. It's a huge loss to lose Cosme. But the Jalen Carter piece, yeah, man, he got tired. He made the play of the game, I would say, on a really bad play call. Mcvay said that there was a miscommunication that led to the play of the game.

I always watch for that from a live standpoint, these teams that have these awesome pass rushes the first two hours of the game. In that fourth quarter, it gets a little different once the guys have been out there for three hours.

Another time we saw it, the last time Washington played Philadelphia. When Washington came back from down two scores.

Right, he scored 36 points.

Yeah, the most points anybody scored on this Philadelphia defense all season.

So, McShay and I talked earlier about how there's been three Washington seasons, basically. You had that first stretch in the beginning where it was like, Oh, my God, what's going on? Daniels got hurt. You had some injuries. Echor got hurt. Then all of a sudden, you had your full team again, and it came on. But you go back to that, you lost to Philly in week 11. From that point on, Dallas, week 12, you put up 412 yards. Tennessee, 463. Saints, 326. Eagles in week 16, 368. Atlanta, week 17, 412. Week 18 against Dallas throughout because that wasn't- Marriott.

It was a Marriott.

Tampa, Wild Card, 350, and then last week, Detroit, 481. If you're taking a team on the road, I want to make sure they can move the ball. Everyone's like, this Eagles's defense, it's really good. It's the best defense in the league. But I think Washington can move the ball on them because we've seen them do it. Then the question is, how special is Daniel? That becomes the narrative out of this. Can he get there? There's a couple of playoff manifesto rules in play. Rule number three, beware of the nobody believes in us team, but don't try to talk yourself into one either. I'm not sure they qualify anymore because it seems like this week there's some good discourse about people believing in them. Last week, definitely nobody believed in them.

The funny thing is that I feel like from the national NFL media perspective, there's a lot of believers in Washington, but the market does not believe in Washington because this line opened at four and a half and it got plammed all the way up to its present six and a half spot.

Yeah, and I think the general consensus is egos are going to run all over them. Their defense will shut them down. This was a nice... Congratulations, Washington, for making the NFC title game, but it's time to go home. Rule number six, never pick an underdog unless you genuinely believe that it has a chance to win. I believe. I honestly think either team could win. With the plus six and a half.

I believe.

I think they could win. I don't know if they're going to win. I believe. I think they're going to win. Rule number 14 was, I'm aware of any team that reminds you of the 2007 Giants. I'm going to add the 2001 Pats to this list.

Okay, go ahead.

Because I think there's something that happens with teams that get thrown together over the course of a season when they can get hot like this and some funky stuff happen. But when you think about You go backwards, you think about the four and a half months with Washington and the Hale Mary and some of these games you pulled out of your ass. At some point, you develop these winning scars, almost. I agree with this. Even though I do. If they're hanging around in the fourth quarter and they're down three, I'm going to be mad if I bet on Philly.

Yeah. Go ahead. Do you have any more manifesto things? Yeah.

Rule number 16. Take one last look at the quarterbacks. Remember, there's plenty of time to bet against any QBR coach. This would really apply to Hertz because if it's like, wait till next round to bet against Hertz, that would go. But I mean, not only is Daniel is the best quarterback in this game, he has been He's out of control. I mean, 70% of his passes. Even if you look at his last seven or eight, he's like 20 TD, 6 picks. He'll have the one throw a game. Sure. But he completes 70% of his passes, and every fourth down in two and every fourth down in three, you just feel like he's going to get it.

And incredibly, he just doesn't take sacks. He just doesn't take... Washington just doesn't get that setback thrown at him. Now, I do want to, if I can have a moment.

Pour some water on some stuff.

Pour some settle down juice on the whole situation, right?

Let's hear it.

We're talking about an absolutely unprecedented outcome. First of all, this is Washington's fourth road game coming up here.

It's not unprecedented. Well, I guess the Pats played their first game at home in '01. But the Pats were 13-point underdogs against the Steelers and then 14 against the Rams.

The starting point is fourth road game Fourth-row game in a row. In a row. It's own unique challenge. But here's the stuff. It's the rookie quarterbacks in conference championship games.

You talked about this last week.

I went five straight up, only one and four against the spread. Also, teams like Washington that were underdogs in the first two rounds and covered both of those rounds, one and five straight up, two and four against the spread when it comes time for the conference championship. And this one also underdogs in divisional rematches. So Washington is the underdog. It's a divisional rematch, 0 and 4, straight up, one and three against the spread. I mean, that's your settle down juice, right? There's no precedent for a team in Washington's position to actually win this game?

I think you can win. There's two scenarios. There's the scenario we laid out earlier where the eagles just run the ball down your throat. You don't get a fourth and two. There's one turnover, you're down 13. You know by the third quarter. Great run, guys. It could be. Then there's the other scenario where the Eagles can't throw the ball at all. Washington is just loading up on Saquon. The fans are frustrated You get one turnover, one strip-sack, something. Maybe you get a special team, something, and you're just hanging around, hanging around, and it can get to the fourth quarter where it's either tied, you're up three, you're down three, but you're in the mix of exactly where the Eagles fans don't want to be with this Eagles team. That's it. It's one of those two scenarios. I got to say, I'm leaning toward Washington plus six and a half. We'll take a break, and then we'll talk KC Buffalo. All right, coming back. House, the colonoscopy juice has not really kicked in. That's a good sign for Washington, I I was thinking about the last 20 minutes we just did is going to be hilarious if you lose like 45 to 10.

It could happen. Remember the hope? The hope in their eyes?

It would still be fine. I'm beyond any reasonable hope or expectation for this team, the franchise, what they've done, those moments of joy. I mean, I hate that Washington did what it did to Detroit of all franchises. I bear no ill will towards Detroit, but they did shut that stadium up. I mean, it was silent in there, and nothing would be more beautiful than doing that to the Philly crowd. But look, Philly might come out and just put us on our backs and run the road sled right over us. It is possible. They have the best offensive line. It's an incredible offensive line that Philly possesses.

What was the demeanor of Washington after the game? Was it like they won the Super Bowl or was it like two more?

Something in between those two because there could be- I just want to make sure it wasn't like, We did it.

Oh, my God. And then you- There's a lot of enthusiasm.

Those guys, they believe in each other, so they're coming out of both the Tampa game and that Detroit game. There's a swaggerer, but there's also, for sure, some exuberance. Let there be no doubt.

If you could take your colonoscopy juice stained underwear and mail them to Dan Snyder without getting arrested, would you do it?

Oh, I mean, first of all, right now, they're small stains. I sent you the picture. I mean, I would send Dan Snyder. Wouldn't be those. They're not nearly foul enough. He deserves so much worse.

Cole and Askew juice house. We've had drunk house, buzzed house, sober house, and now we have Cole and Askeby juice house. Chief's bills. I just don't have a lot of... It's stupid to even talk advanced numbers of this game. I don't really know what to say other than the Chiefs just win these games all the time. They've lost three times in the playouts with Mahomes. We went through the losses last week. The only one where they really got their ass kicked was the Super Bowl. They should have beaten the Patriots, and we lucked out. Even the Patriots fans would admit that. The bangles game where Mahomes clearly got concussed near the end of the first half, that was what it was. Otherwise, they just win these games. The line is disrespectful. Everyone's disrespected. The Bills are disrespectful from last week. They're trying to get the nobody believes in us. It's like, Well, the Ravens were the best team in the league. There's a reason they ended up being favored.

It's going to- The bills really are a nobody believes in this team. Do you agree with that, at least? Nobody believes in the bills.

I feel like a lot of people are taking them this week.

Okay. I mean, that line hasn't moved. Open Open at one and a half, stuck right there at one and a half.

But that, to me, says the bills aren't a nobody believes in this team. They're playing on the road against a team that's been to four of the last five AFC title games, so they're only plus one and a half.

Fair enough. I will say this. Let's see what happens when the public wakes up Sunday morning or Saturday night going into Sunday, because right now, this is just a professional market, right?

Buffalo's secondary looking a little banged up.

Not only looked, they are banged up. Both Christian Benford. I don't know if he practiced. He had a concussion on the last play of the game against the Ray, and Taylor Rapp was questionable with a hip injury. There's serious issues in their secondary.

There's a working case for a Buffalo pick, and there's a working case for a Chief's pick. The Chief's case is partly what laid out about this is just the infrastructure of what they do. This is the best mini-dynasty we've had since the Pats, combined with the fact that there's really two KC's now, trying to play this 20-game season where every year they're playing 19 or 20 games. They're one way in the regular season, and they're barely scraping by. Then around late December, they start. Then in January, they become a different team. That's why it's almost like you can't look at the numbers. But they're home. It's just a game they should win. They hate the Bills. There's all of that. And I really like their team. I think this is the best they've looked the last couple of weeks. The case for the Bills is just Josh Allen grabs the torch from the host. And that's it. Because that's the only way they're winning. He could do it. He got to fucking grab the torch.

He could do it.

Takes him, walks off a la Payton Manning in 2006.

One of the things that the Texans showed us last week is that there was a bunch of supportive numbers for the idea that Kansas City's run defense was a dominant run defense. And then Joe Mixon got the ball, and the Texans, the weakest unit of that Texan's team is their offensive line. And somehow they established the run, and Mixon was really effective. And the Texans out yardage the Chiefs by quite a bit. If the Texans- That was a weird one, though, because they had the long kick return, so they had like, and then a three and out, but they still scored three points.

I don't know.

Okay. I'm talking only about the ability to establish the run. No, I know they had more yardage. But I'm saying they established the run. Buffalo's offensive line is good. If James gets cooking, and you know Josh Allen, one of my favorite props of this week, especially with the quiet rush yards game that Josh Allen had. Now, he did get to 10 attempts, over eight and a half attempts last week. That was a giant cash for everybody. I hope everybody listened to the Ringer pregame show. But he was way under his yardage number. I do not expect him to be under his yardage number this week. This is a by any means necessary. Pull it all out, pull out every stop, pull it right out of your butt hole. Nice and clean, Josh Allen. I think he's going to rush. I think 50 is a great number.

So I guess my question is, I really feel like Buffalo should have lost to Baltimore last week. I know that pisses the Baltimore fans off. It used to piss me off as a Pats fan when we would beat somebody in the playoffs, then people are, You shouldn't have won. You looked out, blah, blah, blah. It's like, Yeah, well, we didn't fucking turn the ball over, and they did, and we forced turnover, so fuck you. So I get it.

It's a fair answer.

I just think Buffalo this whole season has looked a little better than they actually are, and the Chiefs have looked a little worse than they actually are until recently. One team, I think has a little higher ceiling than the other team. Unless, Josh Allen just says, watch this.

He could.

That's why the line is one and a half. That's why you get one and a half for being at home. It's a perfect matchup. I just like the Chief's infrastructure. There was that moment in the Houston game last week when all of a sudden, Spag's dialed up all those funky blitzes. He's waiting, waiting, waiting. He's like, Bam. And he just went after Stroud and fucked up a whole Texan's drive. There's some institutional knowledge of how to win these playoff games that I just don't want to bet against. And if Buffalo beats them, so be it.

I totally agree. I mean, that has to be the approach, right? Why would we put ourselves through the mental gymnastics to get to a spot where we say, definitively, affirmatively, yes, the bills are going to win this game and the points and all. We'll grab the points and the bills is a case to make. You have to work so hard. It's a simple case. It's the case you just made. Josh Allen does the thing, does the superlative, superior thing, and that would be awesome. I'll be fine with losing my money if he does it. I'm not kidding. Me too. But I'm not betting against the Chiefs. Just not going to do it. Not at this number. Not at this number that they've won and covered every single time in the playoffs where it's been under three in this neighborhood. Yeah, sign me up.

We talk about this. Well, we did it last year. We bet against the Chiefs, against the Ravens in the AFC title game. It was a never Never again.

Never again. Lesson learned.

It was for me, at least as long as Mahomes is in his prime and as long as the Reid coaching infrastructure and they have a good enough team and they have Kelsey or somebody like him, I just I didn't like the feeling of being like, Why the fuck did I bet against the Chief? They're going to have to lose before I stop doing it. It's a little bit of us staying at the blackjack table too long, but Mahomes is in his late 20s.

No, I Yeah. And respectfully, it wasn't we. You didn't have me on million dollar pics for that Ravens chiefs game.

But you also had the Ravens.

Oh, no, I did not. I definitely did not.

You had the chiefs? Did you zag it?

It was four and a half or five points. It was preposterous. Yeah, that line was crazy talk.

Playout manifesto. Really nothing unless we want to create a manifesto rule for the Chiefs.

They might deserve their own rule.

Rule number 17 is don't try to be a hero, just try to win money. That really applies the Josh Allen thing. It's like the Josh Allen scenario. It's like, Don't try to be a hero. Are you really ready when it's third quarter and it's 19 to 17 Chiefs and they have the ball and they're driving or you're going to be kicking yourself? There was a rule I proposed last year that I didn't really adopt, but maybe I should. New rule, what does the NFL really, really, really want to happen?

This is very funny in view of what we watch out of the referees in that Houston game. Wow.

It's been a big topic.

Has it?

They really love the Chiefs. On the other hand, with a Buffalo-Washten Super Bowl or Buffalo... I just feel like the one Super Bowl matchup that everybody's going to be like, What the fuck is KC Philly? That'll be the one where we're like, We already did this.

Come on. That was still pretty good, though. I know, but we did already do it. It was still pretty good.

Every other matchup, super fun, though. Washington Buffalo, Washington, Kansas City, Buffalo, Philly. Every version of that is fun. The KC Philly is, both of them have won Super Bowl within the last 10 years. They've already played each other. I just can't get that excited about it. I still don't like watching Philly's offense. But as fun as Barkley is, it's really like a slog watching the 39 seconds of play.

You know who agrees with you?

Ajay Brown.

What's going on here? He's also not healthy, by the way. That's another guy. He might come out and look with a A spring in a step, but we haven't seen it. And those drops last week were big time.

I had a couple of prop bets for you before we get to the pics.

Yeah, I have some for you. Let's hear him.

What do you have? I'll hear yours first if you want.

No, no, no, go ahead.

Daniel's No Interceptions, minus 104.

I don't love it.

I wish the ads were better.

I don't love it only because of what you I've observed was possible earlier, which is- It's like the tip pass of the line of scrimmage. That defensive line for Philadelphia. He gets hit as he's throwing it.

All right. Mahomes, over four and a half carries minus 128. Which is it just feels like this line should be six and a half because you know he's going to scramble four times. There's the kneel down possibility.

It's the same number as last week, and we really didn't sweat that at all. At this stage, match of the playoffs, those two guys are running the football. Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen are running the football.

So that juice on that, that's minus 120 on our fan. Fine. Josh Allen to score a breakdown is minus 115. I love the odds, but it just feels like if they're on the goal line, you could even see it last week against the Ravens. They were just doing the traditional QB draw play over and over again.

He's a bad ram. He's a bad boy. Him in the end zone makes a lot of sense to Then, Kelsey hitting is over, which is 67.

5, and Casey to win is plus 2. 02. I feel like those two are-Corelated?

It's correlated.

Yes, I agree with this. I marked that one down. Casey and Washington to be the Super Bowl is plus 518. Here's my favorite one, though. This is a five member, same game parley.

Wow.

Kelsey, 50 plus yards.

Okay.

Yes or no? Yes or no? Sure. Yes.

That's a yes. That's a yes. That's a yes.

Matt Collins, one catch. He's got a catch every week. He only gets one? Just one. Just one catch from Matt Collins. He always gets a catch.

As long as he doesn't get kicked out of the game because he's a psychopath. As long as he doesn't get kicked out, then I like the idea of one.

Daniel's 250 plus passing rushing combined.

That's an advertising because I- He's way over that every game.

He would basically have to get hurt not to get that.

He's in the 50 to 75 yard rush without really- At least 200?

Yeah. All right. Dallas Goddard, 25 plus yards.

That's one of my favorite props of the entire... I'm on Goddard every which way this game.

All right, so you're with me for those first four?

Those four are on the target.

I will let you I choose who is the fifth here. I have two options. Diamy Brown, 40 plus yards, would make that five-thing parlay plus 380. Or McLaren, 70 plus yards, that's plus 437 if you throw that one in.

Does it have to be a Washington receiver for the fifth leg of this thing?

It does. I needed one Washington. Why? You don't want it to be a Washington receiver?

Well, the numbers are all over the place. It would be McLaren. I would feel much much, much, much more comfortable with the idea of McLaurin, especially because it could come by way of what we watched against Detroit, which is a really smart play, a bubble play, a wheel route. Something that is unconventional- Who's catching the ball for you? Something that McLaurin is going to be catching. But really, it's Austin Eckler and it's Zack Ertz. That's who's catching the ball for Washington. Those are your ball control guys. That's how you matriculate the ball down the field. That's how you possess the ball and have 8 to 12 play drives and play and drives that take seven to nine minutes, which is absolutely the pathway for Washington to potentially win this game. There's an alternate Echler rushing receiving, where 25 plus is minus 470 and 40 plus- He's going to get that receiving. He's going to get that receiving.

40 plus is minus 165. So you want to put that in instead of receiving yards. Austin Echler gets 40 plus rushing receiving yards.

Yeah, I'm fine with that. I mean, I don't think he's going to get a ton of touches in terms of the running game, but he is such a crucial outlet for Jaden. He factors into Every time Jaden is under pressure, Echler is the guy that gets the first look. And no, Nekobi Dean is such a big deal for Philly. That would be the dude that I would worry about taking away the Echler option, but I don't worry about that in this game. So I love the idea of Echler. He's going to touch the ball a lot in my estimation.

All right, so we're going to do Echler as the fifth, and I'll give you the odds when we actually do a million dollar picks. Let me write that one down. What were your props that you liked?

Dallas Goddard. I'm not sure exactly where the number is at the moment, but I had him over 38 and a half yards. There's an incredible case to be made. He has at least 47 rushing receiving yards in the last three games. He's got a full-time role in the offense.

So would you go 40 plus yards for him and not 25?

I'm fine with 40 plus. I mean, I'm sure that ramps up the odds. I think that he's going to be a big time priority for Hertz, especially if he's hurt, which is a terrible thing. But he is the safety valve for jail in Washington against tight ends of season, 26 sixth in DVOA. He's the guy that occupies a short area, so he'll get the touches. I like him over his receptions, which I think is three and a half, and I like him over his receiving yards as well.

I really have enjoyed betting him over the last few years in the playoffs because when he's actually healthy, he gets the ball, and he gets the ball in big spots, and I always feel good about having him in there. What else do you have?

I love Mahomes' longest pass completion over 34 and a half yards. We talked a little bit about how the Bills have those injuries in the secondary. Since week 14, and this is not tied to injuries, Buffalo is 29th in dropback EPA. So teams are able to pass the ball. We watched this with our own two eyes with Lamar Jackson and that Baltimore offense. The bills have allowed the fourth most passing yards since week 14. Third most per attempt on throws of 20 yards or more. And Lamar had... He went three of five on 20 yard or more pass attempts. Both Rashaad Bateman and Isaiah likely had catches over 35 yards last week. What I especially am keying in on here is Mahomes with the complement of receivers that we haven't really seen them. This is an element of the Chief's offense we haven't really seen. And we know, we intuit that the Chief show up to a game like this with a wrinkle that we haven't really seen. I think he's dying to get the ball down the field. What is it? 34 and a half? 34 and a half. It was minus 108 on FanDuel when I typed this in.

Wow, I really like that one, House. House, good job. Thank you. Go take a dump and come back and we'll do a million dollar pick. No, I'm kidding. All right, so we have some good ones. Is there anything else? Is there any kicker stuff we want to do? Nothing. No.

I don't know. So Jake Elliott to miss a point after. Yes, that mother effort. I mean, that was a difference between the six-point non-spread and the seven-point cover. Got to do Josh Allen over rushing yards at 47 and a half. I think you have to play that.

I always feel like I lose on those. Do you like the unders in both of these games, or is it just me?

I think Kansas City and Buffalo have the potential. Could get frisky. They could, yeah, for sure. Because Buffalo, I think, will be able to run the ball.

So that's 40 and a half, that over, and then the other one, Philly, Washington, it's 47 and a half.

So that Kansas City Buffalo number moved. It was 47 and a half earlier this week. So people are catching onto this over.

I think both these games are going to be very similar with these teams methodically going down and trying to keep the other team's offense off the field. Could be. All right, let's do it. Last but not least, do you like Washington plus 6. 5 with juice? It's minus 120 on Fando or Washington plus five and a half even onts.

I'm much prefer six and a half to five and a half. Okay. 6 is a key number as we just watched on Sunday.

We did just watch it on Sunday. All right, it's time. The Million Dollar Picks. Conference Championship Weekend, trying to rally. We lost some last week. We lost $585,000, still up. This is why you build the nest egg during the season. Still up, $1. 282 million for this season. Joe has been helping out a lot of the time. He's decked out in Washington all his gear. We're going to take the Chief's money line or minus one and a half?

However you like. Could do both. Both are fine by me.

You choose. The money line is minus 126, and the minus one and a half is minus 112. I would just rather take the... You want to lay the point. It's fine. Then they win 24, 23.

Okay. I'm laying the money line.

I'm paying the juice. That's fine. Chiefs minus 126. We are not betting against the infrastructure. I did it last year, a million dollar pick in the AFC title game, and I just said, never again, never again, Over again, at least while they have this iteration of them. Chiefs minus 126 over the bills. 300k?

Yeah. Yes. Okay.

Then, houses, Washington, He officially said it's okay to call them the Commanders.

I'm saying it. They are the Washington Commanders because they took that name from the colonoscopy Jews toilet and they propped it up. This name belongs to this guy right here, number 5 over my left shoulder. And he is the commandant of the Commanders. This is the Washington Commanders. I'm here for it. Hale to the C-words.

We are banking on a close game, and we are grabbing Washington plus 6. 5 at minus 120. This feels to both of us. House has been very respectful of not veering too hard pro-Washten. Even there was a couple of weeks where I felt like you were intentionally not in them because you were bearing jinks rules.

Could be.

I just feel like either team can win this game. There's cases for both. I wouldn't be surprised if the Eagles went by 28. Me either. I wouldn't be surprised if Washington went by 10. I'm prepared for anything. That means take the points, putting 300K on We are going to do some 25K props, including Mahomes. Longest pass, 34. 5 yards. 35 yards Mahomes pass, we win. Mahomes over 4. 5 carries minus 28. Josh Allen TD minus 115.

Love it.

We're doing 25K on Kelsey, 68 plus yards with KC to win, plus 202.

Great.

And Then the Mac Daddy one. I'm putting 50K on this one. It's a five. Now, let's put 33K on this one, actually. Great. Just for good luck. Yeah. Shout out to the legend, Larry Bird. Kelsey, 50 plus yards. Hall Collins, one catch. Daniels, 250 pass, rush, combined. Dallas Godert, your guy, 40 plus yards. Eckler, 40 plus yards rushing, receiving, combined. That is plus 5, Two. Over 5 to 1 odds, boom. And then just for the hell of it, I'm putting 25K on a KC Washington Super Bowl. Wow. Plus 518. Just because we built this nest egg all year, I'm not at the craps table. I'm just throwing shit all over the place. Why not? If you have a seat for house in a pro Washington suite, which there's probably two of them in Philadelphia, hit his Twitter.

He's available. I will be there. I I am definitely available. I will be at this football game by hook or by crook. I haven't yet figured out how I'm going to get through the turn style. I will not be wearing any identifying Washington garb. I can tell you that much, but I am available.

Maybe some Washington underwant.

You have a spot for me. I promise I won't eat all of the food in the suite. I promise. I promise.

Nobody's allowed to punch house. House is old.

Left hand up.

Those are the million dollar pics for week... What week is this? '21? Week '21, Conference Championship. House Good luck. We're all room for you.

Thank you, buddy.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to McShea and House. Thanks to Cerruti and Kyle and Gehow. As always, don't forget, you can watch videos and clips from this podcast on the Bill Simmons' YouTube channel. We also had Kevin O'Connor doing Fake Trades with me on Wednesday, if you missed that podcast. So we put up two in 24 hours. I will see you on Sunday night, right after Chief Bill's live Bill Simmons' podcast. Go check it out on the Bill YouTube channel. Have a great weekend. Must be 21 plus in President's select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas or 18 plus in President DC. Gambling problem, call 100 Gambler or visit rg-help. Com. Call 1-88-789-7777 or visit ccpg. Org/chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp. Org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling helpline ma. Org, or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support, Massachusetts, or call 1-877-8 Hope, NY or text Hope, NY. Ny in New.