Transcript of Darnold Does It, Snow Game II: Mile High, Pats-Seahawks, and the Wild Taipei Climb With Cousin Sal

Yeah.

Oh, man.

Super Bowl LX. I'm going to try to calm myself down. We are taping Cousin Sal is with me. We are taping 07: 00 PM Pacific Time. Just watched an awesome Seahawks-Rams game. My beloved Patriots won the AFC title in a blizzard. They did not give up a point for 55 minutes and went 10 to seven. Then we had a really fun football game. I'll let you pick. Sal, what do you want to start with?

They're saying me having to listen to you gloat is perhaps the most courageous- I'm not gloating. It's the most courageous 90 minutes ever aired on Netflix. Calling me the greatest athlete ever. If I could put up with it, I would Yeah, you enduring this versus the guy climbing a giant building in Taipei.

Right. So you're saying it's like 50/50?

I think it's close. It'll both be about an hour and a half, right? By the way, I lost money on that. I parlayed Justin Gechi with the guy to not I bet him to fall, basically. But so anyway, I had to dig out. No, you didn't. No, no, no. It hasn't gotten that bad, Bill.

We got to talk about that at the end. I can't wait to talk about that thing Let's go. We have a Seahawks Patriot Super Bowl, which I think America is going to warm up to over the next two. First of all, the villain patriots are back, even though this is a precocious overachieving team. Pat says the underdog flashbacks to '01. Sam Darnold, Redemption. This is one of the great underdog stories in the history of the NFL, I think. If they win, he's up there with Jim Plunk and all that stuff. Malcolm Butler, Revenge Game, the worst Super Bowl loss What was the worst Super Bowl loss in your opinion? That one or the Falcons 28 to three?

28 to three is so hard to beat. It's not like the Bills dominated the Giants, but that nor would widely, just knowing what happened afterwards in the next three years was bad, too. There have been some bad ones, but 28 to three. Yeah, you're part of almost the whole.

That was the worst collapse. The Butler one was, I think, the biggest, holy shit. Wait, we're not about to win the Super Bowl and we just lost. Yeah. And then the Norwood was, I think, the Probably the hardest kick in the nuts. That's where I would land on those three. Well, we have that. It's a Malcolm Butler revenge game. We have Brable basically becoming Belichick. I mean, this is like watching when Hulk Hogan left WWW and they were just trying to replace him. It would have been like if we had actually replaced Hulk Hogan. Maybe that wouldn't have been a great idea. Then Drake with a chance to position himself as the next guy, even though he wasn't good today, but to emerge. Josh Allen never made a Super Bowl. Burro made Mahomes won a few, but could he move into that path? So what other story lines are in there for you? I don't know.

I think you're dead on with... I was thinking about it. I'm like, Man, this is such a bummer with the Patriots. This is like 30 tuck rules in a row, 30 for 30 tuck rules, the way they got to this position here. But then I'm like, All right, maybe this is the football gods trying to build some heat for the Patriots, trying to make them hated again. They got there with the easy schedule. Mac Holland's proving to be a free game sociopath, and Vrabel is unlikable. I haven't even mentioned the alleged criminals on your team, but it's building heat. You just slam Snook over the head with a coconut. Congratulations.

Kraft interjected himself into the Vrabel postgame game. Vrabel is giving this great speech. He's calling them warriors. He's telling them, basically, we have one day off, then we're about the next game trying to win it. He's about to bring everybody in. Kraft's like, If I can interject, and comes in and does the game ball thing. But Kraft's on the team for 32 years. This is his, I think, 11th AFC Championship because they won in '96, the AFC.

I think it's 13. Isn't it 13 Super Bowl?

I think for Kraft.

Oh, right. Sorry.

This is his 11th trip to the Super Bowl somehow.

This is the team's 13th. Yeah, you're right.

Amazing. Because I remember when he bought the team, we all thought, I was living in Boston. We all thought they were going to move to St. Louis. Then it seemed like he might buy them and move to Hartford. They were the Black Sheep. I've talked about all this.

It was a good purchase. It was probably a smart purchase.

Really worked out for them. It didn't seem as smart this decade after Belichick left, and it looked like we were just going to have a steady stream of Mac Joneses and those type of guys. It was going to be disappointing. We were going to stink, and that's not what happened. Why don't we talk about Seahawks-Rams first? Because that just happened. I have more in the moment thoughts. I'm more prepared for the other game.

It really felt like two different We were watching different sports between the early game. It was like our parents playing pickleball in the morning versus the Aussie open semifinals at night.

I was thinking, did we talk about this last time? I remember talking about this in my podcast with somebody. This weather variable we have for football, which we were just used to. It's insane that a blizzard basically decided this Patriots-Broncos game. Then you watch the next game. I don't know what the weather was like there, but at least the field was clear and people could see who they were thrown to. It was like, Oh, yeah, this is a completely different sport. Yeah.

Why don't we add fire? Might as well add fire to the first game, too.

You have to put a moat in midfield or something. Exactly. I watched this entire game. I had no idea who I wanted the Pats to play for most of the three hours. I was texting. It was multiple Pats fan threads. I was texting with my dad. My dad was just confused. He's like, I don't know what to root for. You got bouncing back and forth. I think ultimately, I'm a little happier that it's the Seahawks because I think all we've done is see them at home. Darnold was incredible today. Now, it's going to have two weeks of Sam Darnold puff and smoke up his butt. But I just thought the Rams were so scary. And honestly, that fourth and four was basically the game, right?

Oh, crap.

Did they get that?

Sorry. Did you see this just came in? Sam Darnold got his right arm caught in the door of the team Bust. They have to...

It's another one?

They have to amputate, but he's willing to play left-handed.

After the Bo'Nicks thing, I'd believe anything.

It's another break for you guys. Good. The Fourth and four.

Well, it felt like these two teams were even, but when you throw in the home field, maybe the Rams were an inch better. But honestly, both these teams are better than the Patriots. For the Patriots, we haven't done guess the lines. I've not seen the lines, but it's at least going to be over a field goal for the Seahawks. But I think it would have been either team. Do you think the line would have been any different depending on who won? Because I don't know. Because I think it probably would have been the same.

I don't know. Unless there was a blowout in this game, and it seemed like there wasn't going to be until... I mean, it could have been two scores, if not for that crazy taunting. I don't know in what order you want to hit this, but no. If you saw a close Seahawks-Rams game, It was probably going to be the same line against the Patriots.

I had a couple of things that I want to hit. We'll start with Darnold versus Stafford. They had that 38-37 game, which was probably the best regular season game of the year, and ironically, swung the home field for this with that crazy two-point play. I can't believe if we had done this in August when we were doing the preseason guest alliance and all the futures and stuff, what would the fandel odds have been for Sam Darnold versus Matthew Stafford will be our best quarterback rivalry in the 2025 season? Oh, wow. Because that's what ended up happening. Those two guys today and in week 16 played two of the most fun games we've seen all year and really seemed like they were elevating each other. The odds of that, when they got Darnold, over the spring-summer, it was like, they turned Gino Smith into Darnled. Do you think they're better or worse? Now, who's going toe to toe with the guy who's probably going to win the MVP?

Well, don't sleep on Stidham against May because that could blossom into a great, great rivalry. We have no idea. We don't know where it's going to go. But both teams were 60 to 1 to win the Super Bowl. You're Patriots and Seahawks right around there going in. So for them meeting up, I didn't even figure out what it would be. But yeah, they're over and there was eight and a half wins, Seattle. I wasn't sold on Darnold. I said, You know what? He really didn't have to do anything last week. That game was over in two plays, which makes it, I think it was five weeks before he had a 200-yard game. The oblique, who knows? He didn't really prove it's not his fault. All they had to do was run. Kenneth Walker was amazing last week. But I was like, Maybe he doesn't have it in him. He was great. I mean, JSN is terrific, too. We can get to all those guys. But yeah, he did not disappoint at all, Donald.

Didn't turn the ball over. I thought he had a couple of superb throws. The throw to Shahid in the first drive. Perfect. Even braided was like, Oh, you got to hit that. And then they showed the replay and he was like, Wow, that was a great throw. That was an eighth throw. Dropped it right over the shoulder. He had that. I thought the shutdown throw right after the kick fumble, I think it was Bobo in the end zone, but he threw it a little across his body at pressure. Thought he stepped around. I didn't see the Sam Darnold panic stuff. I have a good friend of mine, Mark Semeno, who's a diehard Jets fan and has been pissed that they got rid of Darnold ever since they got rid of him. And actually roots for Darnold by proxy because he knows that Jets have no chance. And he's the most indicated of anyone. He was just like, Darnold was good. We destroyed him. We poisoned him. We had him swimming in our poison pool, and he got poisoned, and he got out, and he learned to swim again. It was basically the Sam Darno thing.

But he was really good. So Jets fans bummed out by it, but also Vikings fans, obviously. That's got to be the other team that's watching this going, wow.

Jets fans, a miserable Super Bowl, right? Because you're not going to vote for the Patriots either. No, this is awful. Aside from your friend, I don't know how many are excited about Sam Darnald.

This is the first time the Jets fans have felt awful during a Super Bowl. Oh, no.

That's right. No, wait a minute. Every time.

You're not going to get there. So Darnold was 25 for 36, 346 yards, 3 TDs, and Stafford was over 300, too, with three TDs. But I just thought Darnald was great. The other fascinating thing was McDonald. So remember week one? Because I had the Seahawks for the division. I had a bunch of Seahawks overs, and they lost week one, and he coached scared in that game, remember? Sure. He came on the pod that night, and I was bitching about it. I was like, he doesn't trust his team. You got to be aggressive. They were really aggressive in that last drive. They got that fourth and fourth stop. They had the ball. Instead of being just handy into the line and trying to chew clock. They did some play action. They ran out. They completed some passes. I got the holding call, but that helped.

But yeah, they weren't laying back. That was for sure. No. They came in spurts. Kenneth Walker was great in the beginning. He was great. Then he got lost for a couple of quarters. If you've had Kenneth Walker in fantasy, you had eight weeks where he had under 60 yards. It wasn't pretty. But then JSN steps in. I know we talk about QB1s all the time. Oh, is it Allen? Is it Mahomes? I think we settled on Allen being a QB2 and no QB1. The receivers are really the fun rankings, right? Whether it's JSN or Puka, once in a while, we'll throw Jamar Chase in there. He'll have 15 catches. But JSN is a man. And going over the middle, he got just slaughtered that one shot, that one long pass.

When he jumped in the air, yeah. He also had a couple of catches that didn't count. He caught that ball under the goal That was seven yards out of bounds. He was 10 for 153 with a TD, and Puka was 9 for 165. They're just clearly the two best. And it's interesting because a year ago, you would have said Chase and Jefferson were clearly the two best. These two now, I thought they needed all the catches and all the yards. Puka had a couple... He had played in the first half when he was going out to his right, cutting in like he was going to cut in almost to do a button hook or something. And he had a step on the guy and then he veered in front of him. It was like a basketball move. It's like what you do in basketball when you're on a fast break, you have the big man behind you and you want to put him on your hip. He did that with that guy and then went deep and Stafford hit him. But he does shit no other wide receiver does. And then JSN, same thing. He's doing stuff along the sidelines where you think he's going out of bounds and he's tiptoeing down for another eight yards, catches over the middle, catches in the corner so he can go deep.

Those two guys just can do everything. They're reliable, too.

And they, especially Puk, some D-backs have come out, and I think the other D-backs are mad, saying it's not fair what he's able to do in space. It's unguardable. It's not fair. It's like a Euro step or something, but he's getting open. And Jason, like you said, dragging his feet in the sidelines. He could go over the middle. But I want to get in there. But Cooper Cupp had a huge game. That third and three with five minutes left. And the third, converting, obviously, that first down was huge. So So they really brought it all. It hit his overs. Yeah, all his overs came in.

Four for 36 and a TD and a really big third down catch. It looked like a little more explosive. It's funny because they don't have a backup running back anymore. That guy Halani?

Yeah.

I watch football every week. I'm not positive. I ever remember seeing him. I'm sure I did, but he certainly didn't jump out. Then they have the Bobo and Varner and these dudes. But it's one of those offenses that you never feel You feel like they just shut down the one guy and you'll be fine. And then somehow Darwin's a 346. They also have an awesome punter who I thought had a couple of big ones and was single-handedly responsible for that guy muffing the punt. That thing just kept carrying and carrying and carrying backwards. And he finally just tripped.

He tripped over his own feet. I do feel bad because I cut away to the new special teams coach. And it's like, what the F is that guy supposed to do? He tripped over his own feet. He can't hold him up there. But yeah, that is a It's a tough catch to make from your back. You figured that was it. What's the move?

When you fall, you just have to basically spasm forward and try to avoid it? I think so.

Get out of the way if you can. But I think he was so cooked by then. It didn't matter. I was going to hit him.

You know what's funny? When When I watch football, I'm always thinking of all the things you and I couldn't do when you watch these games. How many times we would just be knocked out or how much certain hits could hurt. Today, Ramondre in the first game was running and he was pushing pile and it stopped. Then Hufanga came flying in from behind and just nailed him in the back. I was like, I would still be down. Pieces of me would be going on three different cards. You watch this stuff and you're constantly marveling. The thing I'm always amazed by is that, or one of the things is that people don't muff these punts more. When you think these giant stadiums with the lights, the high it is, the ball's doing, there's wind, and these guys make it look so easy. Then when somebody actually... Then plus, there's Gunners running at you, trying to fuck with you, like they're going to hit you and then cutting to the side. It's weird. It doesn't happen more often. But the irony of the Ram special teams murdering them in a game, this was the problem with their whole season.

I literally put them in the manifesto. This was rule number 13. Beware of the bad special teams. It should be.

You talk about this game all week, these two games, right? And we did on the pregame show. And it's like, we probably mentioned the special teams out of an hour and a half. We probably mentioned it for 40 seconds. And it was It's a huge... Some things you can't handicap, like miss field goals, who's going to miss, who's got the day. Two weeks ago, miss field goals were bad. But the special teams with the Rams, you can almost guarantee that's going to be one play that screws them or they overcome it.

It's so weird. Mcfay is like, I think everybody considers him one of the four best coaches in the league, right? How does he not fix this? It seems like one of those where you just, you do the roadhouse move and you're like, I'm getting the best cooler in the South. I'm bringing Dalton in. Name your price. I'll pay you a thousand a week.

Or just take everyone off the field. Don't return punts anymore. Just everyone's gone.

That would be interesting. We're not trying to block punts or return them. We're just letting them bounce around. This game had a Great QBs, great receivers. We had multiple goats because we had the Ram's punt return. Then we had Wolen with the taunting penalty, which I want to talk about in one second. It felt like that might flip the game. I thought the announcers were excellent. I thought, braided has come back of the year. Is he eligible?

Oh, really? Interesting.

I think he's been really good. I really do. I think he's last year, and he said it, there was an article written about him this week, and he basically said what we talked about last year on the pod. It felt like he was so overprepared. He was trying to work all this information that he learned all week and was just doing... And now you feel like you're watching the game with him and he's weaving in his experience when he played. The stuff he was doing about... I thought his best points today was the JSN, the shoulder pads. And he was like, when somebody's running and their shoulder pads don't move, usually if their shoulder pads are going like this, they're going deep. If they're lower, they're going to stop. And he's like, nobody can read his shoulder pads, which makes them impossible to read. I was like, holy shit. I've never heard anyone say that before.

I thought he did a really good job. He's like, Shut up, Tom. This is my secret. Don't let that out. But yeah, no, he's good. He's better. He's growing on me. He doesn't get Botox during the games anymore, which I think helps. He could focus now.

Yeah, the halftime probably. He was as good announcing this year as he was bad at running the Raiders. So we'll see if he can pull out both of them next year. But I thought those guys, I thought they had good chemistry. So we had the Cup Revenge game, which you mentioned, and then we had the Darnold coming out of it, out doing the guy who's probably going to win the MVP.

Wait, let me follow. Oh, yeah. Yes, probably.

We had that as well. It'll be weird now if May... But Stafford was going to win it anyway, but May has been just shaky enough in the playoffs and Stafford was good enough that... I don't know.

Speaking of shaky, how embarrassed you and Hinch going off on Stafford, how he sucks, and then, oh, my God, amazing MVP. The Carolina game. The Carolina game. Yeah.

You're just being good fans. That's all I remember. So Seattle threw for 201 yards in the first half, kept it going. Let's talk about the big swing plays, the taunting penalty. What's your take? Because I do feel like they were reffing a lot of this stuff differently in the playoffs than they do in week three. Week three, they're calling that. We're now in the NFC title game. They just got this awesome stop. It's 31-20. They're about to punt. Guy runs over, talks to the bench. Of course, the officiating guy they have in the booth, he's got to agree with it. Thank God we have those guys just to agree with everything. I think those guys were Trying to think of one useful moment. I can't think of any today. Yeah, they had the one on the fourth and 1, Drake may sneak. Nikota, whoever was there for it, nothing. Offered zero.

They could be AI at this point. I mean, you know exactly what you're getting for that. But yeah, the taunting, my thing is who cares? I don't care. The fans don't care. The people getting taunted don't care. There's no way the Seahawks were like, insult it. This is why they do training camp. That's why on hard knocks, they'll sing songs and embarrass themselves and everything, right? So they can get used to getting taunted because emotions are going to run high in a football game, let alone the NFC Championship. So whatever. Flags are going to go one way or the other. If you get a tug on the shirt, you can maybe call holding. But I don't like taunting at all to change a game.

I don't know who it's for. I don't know if they're trying to teach sportsmanship to younger people. They felt like something was going on in a line. Here's where it falls apart from It's the same sport with the same rule that after a turnover or a safety or whatever, all the defenders can run into the other end down and fucking do snow angels and stuff. It's like, that's not taunting, but Wolen getting excited that he just made a great stop and he's in front of the bench, and he gels at a couple of people. I just don't understand why do you have these two different outcomes for things that you're governing completely different.

You could instruct the bench to look away. Don't look at that It's like, you're in a pin zone. There's some stuff going on that you may not like. It might hurt your feelings. They're pretending they're bowling pins right now. You might not be able to get over it.

If you're more than 20 yards away, you can taunt.

Yeah, that's right. Just look away.

Then it's like you can't take off your helmet on play, but yet we see it all the time as the guys are walking off the field, they'll take it off. They don't care. I've stopped trying to figure it out. Did you think the Seahawks were the best team in the NFC?

I thought it was the Rams. I lived and died with them, and I thought, actually, It's like this team, maybe that Carolina road win wasn't great, maybe the bears road win wasn't great. But the fact that they're winning these games means that... I don't know. I just thought they were smidge better than Seattle. But I have no problem with Seattle going to the Super Bowl. It's the other conference that's messy.

Seattle had three... I'm not going to ignore that. Seattle had 396 total yards. The Rams had 479 and lost.

And Stafford was nifty, too. He had that Fernando Mendoza type run, right? To get that first down. He had a weird pass to Nakuwa when nothing was going on left. He was about to get sacked. So it was a different Stafford that we saw.

I was surprised that they were able to run on Seattle like they ended up doing as it felt like as the game went along. What did they go for? Coram was 9 for 55. Williams was 10 for 39. Coram's longest was 19. Williams's longest was 11. It's not like they were getting huge plays. It just felt like they were constantly getting four or five every play. I thought after last week, the reason I picked the Rams in this game, I mean, I'm sorry, the Seahawks. I just thought the bear should have won last week. I didn't think the Rams were good enough. I thought the bears left a ton on the table from a passing standpoint, which the Seahawks bore out this week. It really feels like the Rams peaked in the first, I would say three plus months of the season as an all-around team. Then as the longer we went along, it just became Stafford in the running game in these two receivers. But that was all they had. Everything else was sloppy. Special teams was bad. And I didn't feel like they could get stops.

That's why they lost. It's so close, right? They lost that overtime, that game on the Thursday night. They win that, they're home. Maybe it's a different story. By the way, 30,000 tickets sold at SoFi today for people to just go in and watch on the large screen. 75% Seahawks fans. No, I don't know. I want to get a I know. But would that be more disgusting than actual Seahawks fans showing up to a real game?

It's more humiliating.

I want to count on that. If anyone was there, I would like to know.

Well, if the Seahawks win, this would be the first time they've ever won the Super Bowl.

Yeah, I know. I heard that last week. Good luck to them.

Or the second time. It'll be the second time they've won the Super Bowl because they beat the Broncos 40 to 8 in a game that we bet on. And I forgot last week. And you didn't correct me.

I know. I love Schrager the Suckup blaming me, throwing me under the bus. I started this segment saying three of the four outcomes are rematches of the Super Bowl. What am I supposed to do?

I don't know. Schrager the Suckup.

He knows it. No, it's okay. Just leave Tony Romo alone. These things happen.

I was excited that I apologize last week. A hard thought apology to Danny Kelly and the rest of the Seahawks fans because that really could have come back to haunt me these next two weeks.

Definitely.

You don't even remember we won a Super Bowl, motherfucker.

I don't know. Some people. Mina Kimes is not accepting the apology. A lot of people, Joel McKeel, a lot of Seahawks fans don't want anything to do with your apology.

Tom John just doesn't like me. Tom John? Either way, he's unhappy, regardless. Well, when they played the Broncos, the Broncos were favored, right?

Yeah. It was slight, but yes, I'm pretty sure they were favored.

When they played the Patriots, who was favored in that? I don't want them to speak. I'm going to say we They were favored. I'll look it up as we're talking.

It was like three or three and a half, right?

I think we were favored. They were going to cover...

I don't know.

That was 2015?

Yeah. It was three, wasn't it?

Yeah. I think we were favored. So this will be the first time they've ever been favored in the Super Bowl.

I guess. I'm afraid to say anything anymore. Seattle was minus one against-Oh, that's That's right.

I think it tick-tacked around a little bit. I think the Pats were favored at one point.

And then the other one, Denver was favorite by two, the one that Seattle love.

We watched that Super Bowl in a group of people that will probably never gather again at our cousin Jimmy's house.

The Seattle, the New England one? The Malcolm mother game. That was a really tough watch there. Yeah, anyone, any asshole you can imagine with-We had Affleck and Damon, Tony Cornheiser, Dickey Barrett, Who else was there?

It was just a hodgepodge. It was basically the cast of the Rift.

I think Whitey Bolgers. The Rift. Yeah, Whiting Bolgers was still hiding. He left at halftime.

Yeah, he was still hiding. I think Seattle is really good. I think they've been good all year, and I haven't seen anybody kick their ass yet. Even they have three losses. The Pats sucked in week one against Vegas. They sucked in the second half of the second Buffalo game. They sucked offensively for the entire game today. There are other reasons for that, which we'll get into. But Seattle is a much sturdier team. That's why I was so surprised to see the Rams go up and down the field on them.

I think you deep down, you can't say it now because now you have a lot of negative mojo for Seattle.

No, I'm fine. I think you're happy.

Seattle loves them. I think you're happy that the Rams are out of this. I don't think you wanted to see Stafford. I'll tell you what, I think the Rams' pass rush was a little better than Seattle's today. You know that, too, and you like that, and you don't trust Sam Darnold as much as you do Stafford. So I'm just telling you things.

That's where I landed for most of today, that ultimately I would rather place Sam Darnal on a neutral field than Stafford and Puka and Devante Adams, and their running game. So the Rams, you think the McVay stuff starts in 2017. They lose the wild card to Atlanta. The next year, they win the NFC title on that ridiculous Saints call, although it did go to OT and the Saints did choke. Lose to the Pats, 13 to 3 in a game that nobody could remember four plays from. Can you remember four plays from that game? It was a big wrong play. Jared Goff was bad enough that they had to trade him.

I had the over, so I think I might have napped at halftime. I don't think I even saw the rest.

2020, they lose to the packers and they end up moving on from Goff. 2021, they win the Super Bowl, and they win three straight three-point games against Tampa and braided, San Francisco, and SINSEY. But then there was a couple... They didn't make it the next year. They lose the tough Lion's Wild Card game. Yeah, that one in '23. And then the Eagles game last year when it felt like they were coming on down the stretch and they had a chance to steal it. This has been almost a decade now, McVay. It's been pretty relevant. But one-on-one in the Super Bowl.

So maybe it's the home field. This is a good chance. Sometimes home field doesn't matter. It didn't matter in the AFC game today. But if that game is not in Philly, maybe the Rams do win that. If that game is not in Seattle today, maybe they do win.

Three road games in a row is pretty hard. So the big question, the reason I brought that up is Stafford is going to be 38 next year. He allegedly had a bad back this year, although he seemed fined all year. But I just wonder how long he can keep this train together. Puka takes a million cajillion hits. I have no idea how long his career is going to last, but I'm guessing it's not going to be a 15-year career for him.

Yeah, I don't know.

30 giant hits a game.

If he goes out for any substantial amount of time, this Ram's team, even Stafford at his best is not a 13, 14-win team for sure.

Last thing I'll say before we throw a break, I do like the Seattle fan base in general. It's probably my favorite non-Boston one. I always hate... No, I like those. Their basketball team got stolen. I like the Seahawks fans. They go way back to that Zorn larger poster when they're wearing the terrible jeans. Did you have that one in your room? Yeah, I remember that one. The pleated jeans. But checkered history. And then it all came together in the beginning of 2010s. Then they were the afterthought for most of the season. Everybody was so focused on the Rams. Then it was Rams or Niners. People were picking the Cardinals as a surprise team.

Here they are. You and I made a list of... After that, Caleb Williams crazy to help Mary. That didn't matter. We made a list of the greatest, most inconsequential plays of all time. Caleb Williams on. That's your main curse catch. We forgot about that one in the Super Bowl. That might be one and one A, those two. So, yeah, these poor fans.

Just let them win. There was also three minutes where it seemed like the helmet catch that was an official curse for the Pats. It was like, We're going to lose in the Helma catch and that. We're never going to win another Super Bowl in my lifetime. All right, we're going to take a break. We'll come Talk Pets. The Bill Simmons podcast is presented by FanDuel. Playoff Mode is on. Fanduel has got it all. Same game, parlays, quick bets for jumping in live offers to boost your winnings every game day. You do not want to miss out on the playoff action, the remaining playoff action we have on FanDuel. Download the FanDuel app or head to fanduel.

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21 plus in President Select States or 18 plus in President DC, Kentucky, Wyoming. Get in a problem call 1-800-Gambler or visit rg-help. Com. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg. Org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats, which has become a good friend to me during the football season. Big news, Aldi is now on Uber Eats, and you get 20% off your first grocery order with code new Aldi 26, ALDI 26. So whether your fridge is empty or you're too tired to shop, or you just ran out of essential ingredients in middle of meal prep, don't worry. Fill your fridge in just a few taps and get 20% off your first Aldi order on Uber Eats for orders over $60. You can save up to $20 ends February 28th. Terms apply. See app for details. 2001. Maybe it was January or December. I can't remember. Tom Brady's first playoff win, round two, Raiders in the Snow. The last home game in in the old stadium, which had really had... Why don't you take a talk? I'll just talk to the camera.

Let me say something because I want to let you have your fun.

I just want to give the blizzard's history. You can have your fun and you could gloat, but so that this is-Not gloating.

So that this isn't a completely miserable situation for me. I have brought in a prop here. I have a Rosa Pizza pie from Bianco Pizza. Can you see that? That looks delicious. Well, I know. I wish I had carbs. This is your favorite. I wish I had carbs. Yes, you can't have pizza. My current diet allows for it. So go ahead. You go talk about your snow game, Vinatieri and everything. I'm going to eat some pizza while you do that.

You got the Rosa?

I got the Rosa, right? Your favorite.

Are you going to have a slice? Yeah, eat a slice. I'll do the snow. That looks delicious. That looks really good. So snow game, come back from down, I think 10. Ugly like this one was where they couldn't get any offense going for a long time. John Gruden chokes on, I think, second and short, third and short. Doesn't get a first time, punts it back. We We get the field goal of Vinatari, and everything starts. This was Snow game 2, the Mile High revenge. We'd never win in Denver in the playoffs. We're owned for. Rulon Jones, Jake Plumber, Champ Billy, 2005. Still mad about that one. Two braided Manning losses in Mile High. Then it decides to be a giant blizzard today. They go up 7-0. Jared Stittam makes his only good throw of, I think probably the entire day, hits Mims in Stride. They end up scoring. Five minutes in the game, it's seven nothing. I'm just like, I can't believe this is yet another decade where we're going to get our ass kicked in Denver. Then Denver never scored again. The Patriots won 10 to 7. I'll start with Rable. You didn't like this game.

I'm going to go there. No. From an entertainment standpoint, you didn't like it.

The gig's up. I I didn't like this game.

From an entertainment standpoint, you didn't like it. A lot of people didn't like it. They talked about how bad it was. Let me defend it. Go ahead. If you go back and you look at pro football reference in the playoffs in the '60s and '70s, there were a lot of football games like this where it was like bad weather, field position, making some defensive stops, fourth and one plays, don't fuck up on special teams, like really hard field goals, a 45-yard field goal is not like an easy one anymore. Everything is about positioning and not turning the ball over. It was a chess match, and Vrabel won it. And Payton not kicking a field goal to go up 10-0 was the biggest mistake of the day in either game. Take the points. We couldn't do anything.

Let me say this. First of all, the mix of pistachios and red onion and Parmigiano Reggiano, virgin olive oil. You wouldn't think it's a great marriage, but it really is better than chocolate and peanut butter. And then the back is so charred and crispy. I should review Pizza. That's another key. Does anyone do that for Netflix? I thought Payton I'm not going to say that he was happy with the Bownicks injury. Of course, it was a big bummer. But I think eventually he convinced himself. He's like, This could be my game. This could be my game. I am not a hero. I'm the hero. There's only a certain amount of games, maybe you know of more, where the coach is remembered for the game more than the players. I think Parcells winning Super Bowl 25, the Giants beating the Bills. That was a great game plan. It's Parcells being carried off that. But Payton himself, when the Saints beat the Colts, right? And this could have been another one.

Belichick's first Super Bowl in '01. Belichick's first one, right. It was a Belichick title.

Against the Rams, for sure. I think he thought, he's like, I'm going to do this. I actually believed him when he said, I'm not worried about Stittam, I'm worried about everyone else. That's a great way to give your quarterback confidence and not piss off the rest of the team. But I had a lot of problems with his game plan, mainly that there was no trickery involved because you would need it with Stittam. But you You thought that was like a 90-10 play, like going forward versus kicking? I thought it was close. I thought it was 64.

I could just tell you what my techs were because I think that was a little bit of a break because they had to measure first. I'm watching it going, I pray to everything that they go for this. I have multiple techs to back it up because I thought if they went up to nothing, I didn't know if we were going to be able to come back because their defense, both sides, both tackles were already getting violated. May looks skittish. He looked combination of nervous and he didn't think he had enough time. Boody was just... Patrick Sertan just took him out. First time they threw deep to him, he was running side by side of them. So it's like, All right, cross off that half of the field. I just thought And I just thought, especially with the weather coming, it was like, Man, if it's 10-0, I don't know if we can come back, but I think we can get a stop if it's fourth and one.

But if it's 14-0, it's lights out. Don't you think like that takes all the air out of it?

I didn't guarantee they were going to score TD, though.

I know.

I don't know. Listen, we talk about this all the time in the pod, these fourth and one, and it's like situation says it's 72% of the time, whatever. I think you throw that shit out in a game when there's a fucking blizzard coming in the second half and you have a chance to basically just... Basically, my thing is, what's the final score of the game? How many points do I need? If I'm the Broncos, it's like, I just need to get to 14 to 17 and I win the game. Give me the field goal. I can go away the way with it. Let me go up to nothing. Let me try to get a turnover. That was one mistake. Then the other one was, sit him on that third down, throwing the ball backwards. Why are you putting him in the position to do anything like that? He's your backup quarterback. He hasn't played quarterback all year.

I mean, if a guy is, that's the punth following that punt return of falling down. What are you going to do? He should know to get rid of that ball. By the way, can we talk about that one for a second? There's a couple of plays. Look, he probably deserves to turn it over because it was so awful. Such an awful decision, such an awful But why aren't they stopping that to review it? They first called it an incomplete pass, arm going forward, and everybody has to stop. It should have been, if it wasn't, the Patriots would have scored a TD. I contend- Wait, can I hold you on that? By the way- I'm going to take a bite.

All year, they've been letting the play roll and not calling it dead and then deciding after whether it was a touch down or not. That was one of the only times this year I remember them just calling it dead. When it was in the moment, I was like, I think you threw it backwards. Anyway, go ahead.

Right. Let Let it go. That's fine. Let it go.

We learned that less than this year.

Could they review it? Couldn't they review it? Why is that a lot different? If a guy throws a pass and it's batted down behind the line of scrimage, I know that's more obvious, but couldn't this It had been that? Couldn't the ball have been going forward and it had been deflected backwards? Should we have looked at it for a minute? Can't we just look at it? I think they did, though. It's a play of the game. Oh, come on. They barely.

I thought they did, though. I mean, it was clearly backwards. It was backwards because it was a bigger bummer for It's deflected, though.

If it's deflected backwards, it's incomplete, isn't it? Whatever. It's fine. It didn't deserve it.

Whatever. I thought he threw it backwards. He saw. Well, it seemed like the pats were going to get screwed. And then on second down, May does the QB draw that I was screaming for it because you could see with their defensive line was loaded one way and it was sitting there. My son thought I was clairvoyant.

I was like, run it, run it.

And then he did the QB draw because you could see Denver just didn't have a guy in in the right spot. But those two plays cost them the game because once the second half started, they couldn't move the ball.

They couldn't.

If I had the lead and the pats can't do anything, I'm doing what the Patriots did in the second half. And this is why I wanted to talk about this because I thought of Rable in the second half, he just managed the situation. We have a lead. We don't think that they can go 40 yards. They're not going to be able to kick a field goal that's more than 37, and we don't think they can make plays. I'm not taking He had no chances. They had that third down. It was third and eight, and May just rolled out and threw it out of bounds. They didn't even go for it because he didn't want to commit a turnover. I thought that was so smart. I thought he did a great... I didn't think he did a great job in the first half, but I thought second half, he was great.

It's because he got the version of Jared Stittam that most of us thought he would get this time last week. I was talking about, we're talking on the pregame show. It's like, when there's two games left, you could really convince yourself during the week by over analyzing analysis leads to paralysis. That's, Oh, Stittam's not... Still, Nicks, it's the same thing. What was interesting, though, is he had that 52-yard, 54-yard pass to Mims, whatever, right? And then they call time out. And then, I think, to give him a trophy or something. I don't know what they did. Participation trophy. Exactly. But then they score. In Payton's defense, he must have thought, All right, this guy's got more than one first down left him the rest of the game and not that horrible pass, play, whatever, drop forward that it was.

I wrote in my notes, Stidham sucked them in a little bit, thinking that maybe he could do a little more. I thought you made the key point on Payton. This was a hero ball performance by him. If you're actually just trying to win the game, take the points, go up to nothing, don't have Stitt do anything that could put himself in harm's way for the rest of the game until we have proven that we can do a long drive. Even the beginning of the third half, the second half, third quarter, we have a 10-minute drive to chew up the clock. I'm going to say we I'm on the team. You are. We can't even get a touch down out of it. We had the ball for 10 minutes. We couldn't complete 10-yard passes. I thought their defense was excellent, and we had a lot of trouble blocking them. Really good.

Look, the biggest asset either team had on offense was Drake May's legs in the second half. You're going to scramble for first downs. It looked for a second that Stittam could do the same thing. But what bummed me out about Payton is you guys had that flea flicker, which got you in It did get you in field goal range.

If you would have thought- Yeah, we missed the field goal, but it was a good play.

Yeah. Who's the quarterback that hasn't taken a snap in two years versus who's the MVP caliber quarterback? I think you need some flea flickers in there if you're Denver. I think you need an end around for Mims or something, something Something to juice it up to create a mistackle or something because they had nothing at all in the second half.

Well, they were missing two receivers, which hurt them because Franklin was scratch for the game. Bryant got hurt during the game. So all of a sudden, Humphreys out there in big spots. I think I saw it was Skymore out there? There was a more. Is that Skymore? It is, right?

Yeah, I think it was Demi Moore. Demi Moore. It was a more.

I thought they ran out of guys. It was a good match. They couldn't run the ball. I mean, the big thing for us is the run defense has been awesome. The Patriots defense, I know they're going to take shift for the next week, and that's fine.

Your defense is good.

I like your defense. Defense has given up 26 points in three games. It's good. They've given up two touch downs, one of which was this He touched on the first five minutes of the game. The other was that one in Houston off the Drake May fumbler or whatever it was where they had to go 10 yards. Other than that, 26 points in three games and pretty close to dominant.

I think they had two bad plays in the last three weeks, right? The one, the Mims play. Mims play. The Mims play.

The Gonzales.

One last week, like you said. I don't think any really against the charge. There's no big one.

Yeah. Well, I thought Vrabel... It's funny because Belichick, when he flipped stuff around in the 2000s, and a lot of it was defense, game management, just out thinking the other team, good game plan, strategy. Vrabel, ironically, the last game of Brady's career was that Tennessee game when Vrabel outwitted Belichick. It was like, Oh, my God, the pupil has become the teacher. It was one of those. Now, Vrabel is the coach, and this flipped in a year. We had Jared Mayo last year, who was one of the worst coaches we've ever had in any Boston team. Now we have this guy who... I really felt like MacGyver in this game.

I don't know. They 10 points. They want to give him too much credit. I know. You beat Jared Stitt. You outwit a five-year-old when you put a coin behind his ear and pull it out. Like, Oh, look what I got.

You're on the road in a blizzard, and we didn't turn the ball over.

That's the key, right? I think your first half, what did you have? 48 yards in the first half? It was terrible. They had about the same in the second half. The difference is you guys were locked at seven. You got the points and you didn't...

Then we got the field goal to start third quarter.

But for God's sakes, 28 quarterbacks beat Drake maybe today. 28 beat him last week, maybe 20 the week before. What the fuck is going on?

It was the worst throwing game he's had since the Vegas game in week one. I thought he missed seven open guys and throws that he's made all year. Sertan broke up that one bomb. That was perfect. He threw another bomb. That was a good one. But he did have the naked bootleg to finish the game.

He called it himself, I guess, right?

Yeah, I sent it to you. I thought McDaniels called it. He didn't tell anyone in the team he was doing it. If you watch the clip, Hunter Henry is blocking his defensive end out to try to keep him from coming toward the line of scrimage. Meanwhile, May is running toward the guy, and Henry is blocking him toward May, but May just audibly did. But for the old school Pats fans, the pre-2001, that was the famous Grogan play, which he used to do. He most famously did in the '85 season when they went to the Super Bowl against the Jets. He had this old naked bootleg where he was limping into the end zone. It was always the Grogan play. Then so he does that. This team has pieces of that '85 team.

Did Grogan also have 10 completions in a win? Did he also? I think he probably did.

If you go back to Grogan's stats, they were not good.

I'm sorry. You like bringing up Kobe in game seven against the Celtics. What was he? Seven for 28 or six for 24. I hate to always bring it back to basketball. This is This had Kobe against him.

You always do this. I know.

Go ahead.

He wasn't great. The defense carried him. His legs made a couple of good plays, and then the naked bootleg. But I said this last week. It feels like the '96s and Parcels' last season when it was like, Oh, I guess we're in the Super Bowl. I don't think anybody believed it. I think Vrabel believed it. But when you look back at who they beat, they beat three top five defenses. I think it's the first team ever in playoff history to beat three top five defenses.

He was He wasn't terrible in the three games, though.

He wasn't terrible. He had 15 sacks. He was good in the second half of the chargers game.

He took three interceptions. He took 15 sacks. He wasn't terrible.

He had six fumbles. I'm not going to offend him.

Okay, but you're going to go crazy about what he did against his three defenses. Six fumbles, 15 sacks.

I'm I'm not saying they beat three top five defenses. Now they're playing another one.

Eighteen points a game. I used to have another piece of pizza. I didn't finish the first one.

The happiest you were when you were finishing the pizza. Do I think this is the Super Bowl team? It's hard for me to believe. We had some in the '80s and '90s where it was like, wow, they made it. I love that you're reading. The Titans Ram Super Bowl that year, it's like, wow, the Titans are in? This is weird. But we don't usually have these.

Let's rank the worst Patriot Super Bowl teams. I'll make it quick. Number one is this year's team, a twelve-way tie for the number two. That's all I'm going to say.

The defense is really good.

They are good.

And they've been with Milton Williams. They've been really good this whole year. So I think the recipe would be a little like '01, where they won the Rams game in '01, I think, 2017. It's probably a score like that. Keep it down. There's a really interesting Darnold element to this that I forgot to mention in the previous segment of... The Patriots are basically the team that ended his Jets career So he had that Ghost game. Oh, are they? He never recovered from the Ghost game. Remember that when he said Belichick? And he was like, I was seeing ghosts out there. And it became a week long internet thing about how Sam Darnold was seeing ghosts. And I don't know. He gets revenge on that.

So here's the good fortune. Hold on. This is no good. They're saying Kenneth Walker got run over by a snowmobile, and he's listed as doubtful for the Super Bowl. I mean, all good news for the Patriots always. Not even snowing in Seattle.

Hinching out, we're trying to figure out the highlights for the Patriots in this game, like actual highlights. Fourth and goal stop. Stitt and backward pass. May draw, TD, the QB draw. Flea freaking to Holland, resulted in no points. Leonard Taylor blocked the field goal. I guess he tipped it. A guy that I didn't know he was on the team because they just added him. I literally didn't know he was on the team. The Patriots punter who was terrible today. Really, he would have been the villain of the game if they lost.

That's the guy that angles it out of bounds normally, right?

He was terrible. He skunked one. He was just so bad. His last punt, it was a 33-yard punt with no return when they were in the forward. It was actually like he came up a little bit big, so that was fun. Gonso's interception, then the naked bootleg. It wasn't like a bevy of highlights.

I do think, well, by the way, all those runs of the naked bootleg, all those, the one that they converted that he might not have converted ended up being the biggest run, wasn't it? You kick the field goal after that. They had the eye in the sky. We're never going to I don't know what gets reviewed and what doesn't.

Stedham sucked for the last two hours. If I'm a Bronco fan, I just feel like I would have won that game. He's not the franchise. Yeah, I'm not like, we don't have a QB controversy in August. But I think I would have left that game thinking we win with Nix. Just we win. Nix gets us to... He uses his legs. He probably rushes 10 times. I think Drake was 10 for 65. Right. I think Nix is probably like nine for 40, nine for 50. He probably extends three drives with his legs.

And he's a fourth-quarter comeback quarterback. You could say what you want about him. He might have been able... I did like... You talk about what's cool about the weather. Romo was two minutes left. Pature is like, Better hurry up. You're going to lose the wind in the fourth quarter. I think they did a good job of figuring. Even the sideline reporters were excellent today, I thought.

I thought that was the best sideline reporter performance in a while. When Tracy Wolf said, Watch the snow come into my face. Now watch when I turn. I was like, oh. Yeah.

By the way, they're going to isolate that as what you just said for sure.

What do you mean?

I mean, they're going to make it filthy that people the people who do that thing.

Oh, you think I'm in trouble now with social media?

No, no. Watch the snow come in my face. It's fine. It's good.

I just see what now I see what you think. Oh, man. Somebody's going to film a winter porn with my face in it. You're cooked. Damn it.

Lizard Bill says, Watch the snow.

Come, Lizard. So the defense gave up zero points in the last 55 minutes of the game. I thought I wrote that in my notes. The game was like Game of Thrones because they kept telling us the snow was coming, and I've been rewatching Thrones. It was like, Winter's Coming. That was another reason why I can't believe Payton didn't take the field goal.

Because they knew- In the first quarter, yeah.

They knew around halftime, snow was coming in for real when they did that little stop thing. Anyway, things I have left. I think Drake has to probably play two-thirds of a good game in the Super Bowl for them to have a chance to win, which in the regular season, he would play 75% of an awesome game, but he would always start out slow. I think they have to figure out how to start him and use his legs, get him involved in the game with his legs, and then for some reason, that opens things up for him. Stittam, is that it? Do we ever see him start a playoff game again?

What more do you want to say?

Or do you blame the blizzard? Or do you say it's the blizzard, it was really hard to throw?

No, blizzard made it hard to throw for sure. But I don't think we've ever seen anything like that where a backup comes in and immediately... How nervous were you? Oh, my God. If they If you get to 10 or 14 to 17, we're done. I think the agreement with the defense would have been like, Just let me get 23 points. Just stop them from getting 23. No, you needed less than half of that and still. And then just like nothing the rest of the way. It was actually shocking. Went from this makes sense to, I don't even know what I'm watching anymore.

So you don't think Stitt is spending himself a $25 million contract this? No. I think CBS needs to offer Tomlin $50 million a year to join their halftime show.

Really?

I don't know if you saw the halftime show. Yeah, it's rough. I would try to get Tom on. Sertan, I think, was the only Broncos winner out of that game. We tested him once and it was like, no more.

He was great early on. No, thank you. You never see a D-back have his head turned running for 10 yards with his head turned, which almost definitely calls off the pass interference if you do that.

Pats ran the ball if you include the Drake may scramble, 38 141. And I think the Rams unlocked a little bit of a running blueprint with the Seahawks because I thought they were over and over again able to gash them in the middle and move the ball. So we'll see if that's a thing. So we have two weeks now to think of the Super Bowl. Have you gotten sad yet that the NFL season is almost over or more sad that the Patriots are back?

I don't know. It's very, very hard for me to separate those two, but I don't like that. I can't make a two-team tease or anymore. I guess I could use the total and in the line. And I don't really love the Super Bowl. You're stuck at someone's house. You got your wife's friend's dumb husband asking you what the spread is every four minutes. Can you put a bet in for me? Can I bet one side? You guys want to bet this? I don't know how this works. Can I bet the Seahawks and the Patriots? Then I won't lose, right? Jeez, just killed me. So, yeah, this isn't the best.

We'll take a break for the podcast. We'll keep going here on Netflix. Let's guess the line. All right. I haven't seen it. I don't know what it is.

I swear I haven't. Now, let me just... Let me see. Can I set the stage? Can I build some heat here?

Yeah, build some drama. All right.

So where are we? Okay, so after 21 weeks, you're up 11 to 10. You have the lead. I have an opportunity to tie. Tiebreaker is Zoe Simmons takes penalty kicks on us for three and a half hours until one of us gets lucky and blocks one. Or you could win it right here. Even a tie wins it for you. Let's see what happens.

I have the Seahawks favored in Super Bowl LX by four points.

It's going to be hard for me to win now.

What did you guess? You didn't even tell me. Did you guess four?

I guess four. You win. You're off the hook, Zoe. The actual line.

It was either I almost went four and a half.

Well, that would have won, too. Seahawks minus four and a half over under 46 and a half.

Vegas zone.

Yeah.

Wow, I won another year. You did it again. Now I get to hit you with a rose of pizza. A hard rose of pizza crest.

It is damn good. I'm sending the rest to you.

That looks really good. Well, I had some other stuff I wanted to hit with you before Parent Corner. A new coach got hired for the Pittsburgh Stewards, and it was Mike McCarthy, who was your coach on the Cowboys for a few years. Am I wrong thinking that now he's an underrated hire, Mike McCarthy?

No, I don't think you're wrong. I think there's two ways to look at this. Compared to Mike Tomlin, maybe not better, maybe in ways a little worse. But compared to the pool of coaches that was available, I think he's good. I think he's solid. I think it's weird take a chance on these 35-year-olds. I know you don't want to sign old guys to five-year deals, but I think to get a steady guy in there, it's going to be better than rolling the dice, which the Steelers don't do anyway.

Twenty coaches have 10 plus playoff wins, and only four of them started coaching this century. Mike McCarthy, Harbaugh, Sean Payton, Sean McVay.

His numbers are very similar to Harbaugh. So there's a lot of people who love the Harbaugh. I have Harbaugh. Love the Harbaugh hired.

So McCarthy was 174 and 112, 11-11 in the playoffs and won a Super Bowl. Harbaugh was 180 and 113. It's almost exact. Thirteen and 11 in the playoffs and won a Super Bowl. Payton is now 184 and 108, 11 and 10 in the playoffs, one and 0 in the Super Bowl, and Tomlin's 193 and 114, 8 and 12 in the playoffs, one of Super Bowl. So if you just covered those four guys up, you wouldn't know who was who. And yet everyone's like, Oh, John Harbaugh restoring... It's like he was about to get fired before Lamar became Lamar. Mccarthy was on the packers, kicking ass with Aaron Rodgers, and then eventually it became, Oh, it's only because he had Aaron Rodgers. Why isn't that what we say about John Harbaugh? Absolutely. I don't get it.

Yeah, I think that comparison is good. It's Giants fans just getting excited, I think. I will say this. If he brings Rodgers in, no personal bias. I know that's impossible to think, but I don't think that's a step forward. If he's guaranteed to have to bring Rodgers in, McCarthy, I think that's a couple more years of just nothingness.

It's a tough one. Well, I think it seems like some of the assistants will get poached because there's still some jobs left. Hilariously, nobody wants the Browns job, which I thought was funny. A couple of mailback questions. This came from Jack in Saskatchewan. He suggests a new manifesto rule. Can you picture the QB holding the trophy, the Malcolm Gladwell blink test for when you're picking the Super Bowl? Seattle has the best shot. Picture Sam Darnold holding a trophy with confetti coming down. Can you see it? I thought that was pretty interesting. Sam Darnold looks like Theo Lovejoy.

Oh, we're really not watching this game.

Yeah, I'm really getting in on thrones. But I was trying to think of most unlikely guy who held the trophy. It was probably Dilfer, right?

Yeah, I think so.

Dilfer. We were like, Wow, Dilfer win the Super Bowl. What just happened?

Doug Williams. Yeah, those are some weird ones.

I think Dilfer is probably number one for me. But yeah, so I don't know.

I could see both of them holding it. I could see Maby's wife baking cookies the whole time, handing them out while the trophies going around. I could see both.

The Seahawks fan named Chris was talking with his friend Ryan about signature celebration dances they would do. They're an NFL player. That would be the funiest. They decided it would be the tuck dance that Buffalo Bill did in Silence of the Lambs. Then we're wondering if somebody could do that and would they get a penalty. So you'd have to push your stuff in and do this or maybe put the football in. I feel like it would be a 15-year-older.

Yeah, I think so. You think that's taunting? You think that's something the sidelines shouldn't look at?

I think that'd be taunting. Yeah, you do the tuck dance.

Joe Buck wouldn't like that.

Simon in Australia said that I almost threw a no hitter with my O. J. Simpson Payton Manning comp. But then when I said, what car would he be driving? I didn't make the white Bronco joke that was sitting there. Yeah, right.

Denver. Yeah, with Payton. It's all right.

He compared it to Andres Galaraga's perfect game. That was going great. Blake in Nebraska wants to know, is it time to discuss Josh Allen and the Ewing theory?

Wait a minute. How so?

He does fit all the parameters. Media loves him. He's considered to be one of the best guys in the league. He's never actually wanted anything. So what What would have to happen is he would have to have some injury next year. The backup would have to come in and then basically do Tom braided in 2001. Listen, he is on the Ewing theory watchlist, I think is fair to say.

Well, yeah, that's the big part of the Ewing theory, the actual doing it part of it.

He actually doing it, but I think he is definitely a candidate. Peter Kraus was saying how Ram's Pat Super Bowl would be an uncanny 2001 doppelganger thing where the Ram's would be the favorite But that didn't happen. I don't know if the Seahawks thing is the same way.

I got to tell you, I do think the Seahawks, I think we'll break Netflix records. If the Pats lose the Super Bowl to the Seahawks and we're on immediately immediately afterwards. I think that's going to be like...

You think that'll be Stranger Things?

That'll be like six Chapelle specials lined up back to back. If you love the Ringer, ultimately, it's good for the Ringer. You should root for your team to lose, I think.

How about I'll eat a rose of pizza if the pats a win.

Do it. Let's do it.

I'll just pour some extra glue.

February ninth is long enough.

Seth Morgan sent me this email before the game today. He said he went to a strip mall die bar in Littleton, place where only three guys are at the bar talking sports. Talked about the Broncos, and somebody said, Stidham will be an even more potent threat than next because there's no tape on him. The lack of tape will lead to a 25% Stidem advantage. If he's 20% worse with the 25% advantage, that might actually give the Broncos an extra 5% chance to win the Super Bowl. Therefore, we are better off with Stidem, go Broncos. Then he said, Shout out to the Littleton Colorado bar. Listen, that's the thing that happens in a bar.

I can imagine the Patriots defense. He's throwing it forward or backwards. What are we supposed to do? There's no tape on this guy. He's right-handed? What are we supposed to... Come on, guys. We had no heads up here. He told me he was left-handed. Let's just let it go.

Tim from Westfield, Massachusetts, wants to know if Stefan Diggs can be called the QB whisperer because Kurt Cousins, Josh Allen, C. J. Stroud, all of them blossomed when he was there. I guess today wasn't the day to ask that one. I like it. He's definitely a whisper of something because I think he's on pace for four kids in the past year.

He called them a lot of things.

Yeah, he's whispering something.

You think it's because of the easy schedule? I haven't seen the women, but being able to impregnate them.

If the schedule is harder, it'll be tougher. Miles from Austin via Boston thinks the stars of a line for the Pats to be a generational Nobody believes in us team. Because he sent this before the game. Bad schedule. Are we sure Jake May is good? They're so lucky. The Ram Seahawks Super Bowl just happened. I am saying there's a lot of nobody believes in us.

You didn't say it for Denver, though. That would have been a time to say. I thought that was going to bite you in the ass for not labeling the Broncos and nobody believes in us.

The straight up pick was Broncos. I thought that line was too high, the plus four a half, but I thought the pats were nice.

It's going to be a similar thing here.

Here's a question for you from Connor from Minneapolis.

Hit it, Connor. What is it?

Who was Sal rooting for in Super Bowl L2, a. K. A. Super Bowl 52? I imagine him being in a real bind, knowing that the plurable eagles would win or that he'd have to go in the pot and listen to you go on and on about the greatness of braided. Which team was a bigger nightmare to win for you?

I got to tell you, Connor, and thanks to the question, I have really 8 out of the last 10, 15 out of the last 20 Super Bowl. I'm just a basket case. I don't know who to root for. I had a problem with every play in the Eagles Patriots game. Same with Patriots-giant. I didn't want the Patriots to go undefeated. Definitely didn't want the Giants to win. That was a bad one, too. Yeah, it's disgusting. They had knocked the Cowboys out in one of those years. This is why this is the last good week of football for me.

But you like Seattle, though. You'll just go all in on Seattle. You'll do some parlay with Seattle Money Line with some adjusted under or something. Ruben Silva said, In the Sunday Night pod, we wondered what rule the NFL would change to help Josh Allen make or win the Super Bowl. We forgot. The NFL has already changed the rule for Josh Allen, overtime. After the 13 seconds game. They changed the overtime rule. So that is fair. Last email I'll read from Bill. He said, Listen to you and Cousin to you and cousin Sal discuss the generational disappointment being shared by Bills fans and their children. As an Atlanta native, I'm 47, part of the first generation to grow up as an Atlanta sports fan and pass it down. He said, You mentioned age 9 to 10 as being the critical age for sports disappointment. Consider the nine-year-old that grew up in Atlanta and experienced 28 to 3. I have no idea how that will work them. My nine-year-old cried for 45 minutes in his Matt Ryan jersey while my youngest pro claimed he's not waking up. Obviously, I've saved the video for his wedding. That has to shape a child's character.

Then he says, The small group of Falcons fans are now around 18 years old and will probably have to be studied and monitored. It's a really interesting one. See, they're just permanently damaged.

Yeah, and these people are going into the world, right? They've graduated high school at 18. They're going to probably... Yeah, this September, maybe.

They just don't trust anybody.

Yeah, it's a mess. It's not funny. It really isn't funny what we do to our kids. I mean, it's not fun what you do to them either. Just winter after winter. By the way, I'm looking at this. Mike McDonald arrested for public urination on a playground an hour ago. He was by a sandbox. He sentenced to three weeks in county jet. Tough break again. Good for the Patriots.

Listen, the night's not ever... There was a rumor today on Twitter that got like two million retweets or something where the guy said that Bo Nex actually got hurt in the locker room.

I saw that nonsense.

That had to be fake, right?

Well, we saw him limping around before in the postgame interview and everything.

So Seahawks minus four and a half. The over-unders 46 and a half. That seems high. And then Futures, Darnold plus 1: 30 for MVP, Drake may plus 230, and JSN is 5: 00 to 1: 00, which was when we talked about two weeks ago when he was 18: 00 to 1: 00 for Super Bowl MVP. And if, by the way, who wins the MVP? If that was the Super Bowl today, Seahawks runs, who would have won the MVP? I would argue JSN.

Yeah, I think so. He had too many- It's a tough one.

It would have been a split vote, right? Right, right, right. The fucking one-hand catch, he was amazing.

Maybe the guy who taunted. That was a pretty big play.

Well, with the way the Patriots have been playing, if they won- No, it's got to be maybe.

He was 5 to 1 last Saturday.

No, but it could honestly be like Christian Gonzales at 201 getting two pics or something. It might be one of those. Who was the guy who won in your last Dallas one?

Larry Larry Brown.

He got a big deal with the- They didn't know who to give the MVP to.

With the Raiders after that. Yeah.

Then not really a lot of stuff on. We have a lot of time to talk about this.

Yeah.

Do you like Kenneth Walker? Wow. His rushing, 80 plus rushing yards, Kenneth Walker is minus 102. They have those up already. I want to bet the under on that now. That's the altman, I guess. Oh, wow. Maybe he's... I'm just doing that for you. 40 plus rushing Sheer, it's plus 174.

Yeah, it was so easy today. House was leaning on that. I'm like, that's such a sexy pick, Drake, man. He missed it last week, his over yardage total. But once he got in the 60s, he's like, All right, no Neil downs. I'm going to bring this under. He's good.

Well, that was the old Mahomes thing we used to talk about every year. Right. That they used the legs more in the play-ups. All right, Parent Corner, what do you got?

All right. So my son Jack, he's a junior in high school. He's going to be 18 in a couple of weeks. And I told you, he loves the Stealers basically because of Heinz K ketchup. He loved Heinz K ketchup when he was young. And then they played at Heinz Field for a year before they changed it to Acusher. And then anyway, he took... He's a Stealers fan. So I mentioned that there's a local bar/restaurant that he goes, he wears his jerseys and his terrible towels. And he's become friends with these 50-year-old men and women. So when they lost to the Texans a couple of Mondays ago, He was bummed out. And he didn't come back with any stories. We were doing the podcast, right? We did an extra one that day. So I was like, Hey, you okay? He's like, Yeah, it sucks. It sucks. It sucks. So the other day, fast forward to three days ago, we're on the phone with Archie, my oldest in college, and we put him on speakerphone and he's talking to the whole family. And Jack comes in, and Archie's like, Hey, I didn't talk to you. Sorry about the stealers.

And Jack, it's a quirky kid. I'm going to say it that way. He's a very quirky kid. And he says, Oh, I have a story about that. Like, Uh-oh, here we go. Buckle in. He's like, There was a couple when I was over at the bar sitting next to this table, and I sit with all these strangers who have become my friends. But then there was another table with Stealers fans that we haven't seen before. And someone delivered French fries to their table. And one guy at our table said, All right, the fries are here. Everybody go in. And I thought he was serious. And I grabbed the French fryer from this woman, and I started eating it. And she's like, Oh, you're nasty. Those are my fries. You're nasty. And then the guy was mad at me and he was like, Pointing at me. And I didn't know what to do. So I said, Okay, I'll give you $20. And they were still calling me nasty. And then my friend at the table is like, 55-year-old guy, says, You I don't know what you're talking about. And he ends up giving the guy the finger, and then the guy gives him the finger.

And then the guy punched him in the face twice. And I took my ginger ale and threw it in the guy's face. And then they got thrown out. And I'm like, What the... Well, this is 10 days later. Where is this coming from? You're in a bar fight, kid? You're 17 years old. They're throwing ginger ale on people. What is going on? And Archie's just dying, just dying laughing. And my wife is like, Are you kidding me? This is what we're letting go on here. He can't go anymore. At night. I was like, Did you get thrown out of the bar? He's like, Well, I don't know my status, but I think I'm going to be all right. It was the last game of the year, so we're going to see next year. So this is lunacy, though.

That's the story of the year.

That's it. He threw his ginger ale on the guy's face. His friend got punched in the face twice. Oh, my God.

So Jack goes over to the table and just takes a French fry.

Just grabbed the fry. He thought it was a community fry for the, Where are fans? You're fans.

And they took it that personally?

Yeah, the woman was really pissed off. And they were yelling at the fan. They were not from in town. They were like, Don't come back. Don't come back here again. They said to the woman in our hospital. So, yeah, we may need a new place for Jack to watch dealers' games next year. Probably the basement. I can't believe that.

If everyone in your family to get in a bar fight, clearly, I would have picked Harrison first.

Harrison, it's coming for sure.

He's going to step it up. He would have come over and punched the guy in the nuts. My parent corner. My son's hit that age where we're just rewatching all these great movies from the past. We did Seven earlier in the week, and he watched Fight Club, and now he wants to watch Heat. He's basically just ripping off the classics, and I get to relive the classics through him and all the swerves. He didn't know there's the seven big turn that happens. We haven't done the Mafia ones yet. There's some pressure on some of the ones that are coming because I feel like... And he's like the right one so far. This is right around the age when you really get into movies. But there are a couple that I'm going to get nervous that if he doesn't like them, I'm going to really be upset. About as upset as anything. If we watch The Godfather and he's like, That was slow. Or if we watch Heat and he's like, Man, why hasn't anything happened since the bank shoot out? I'm just going to be like, I don't know. There's a lot of pressure here with reliving this.

You shut your mouth and tell me your apex mountain right now.

Who does Vincent Hayter remind you of?

You got Goodfellers, you got Casino, you got the Deparded. Yeah, we're doing all of those.

We've done everything. He even watched Devil Wears Prada with my wife. Rounders, swingers, all the town, all the classics.

But for the mobster ones, I wonder what the sequence is. Do you show them God My Father first, and then the more contemporary?

I was thinking about that. The sequence, I think, is one and two. I think you moved to Scarface, almost like a Sorbet. Then Goodfellas, which he's seen, we'll watch again, and then Casino. He's seen Bronx Tale, and he's seen Goodfellas. He loved those.

He loved those?

Yeah. But I am worried there's going to be one that he's going to shit on, and then we're going to have some real It's a bit of tension. But every time I think I run out of reasons why it was great to have kids, then it's like you get to relive all the great movies with them, and you're just running it back. You have amnesia for what you experience the first time you watch it, and you get to live through them. So that's been fun.

There's nothing you could do about the slowness of some of these movies, though. There's just nothing you could do. We talked about Rocky 2 and even Rocky. Oh, man.

Three was perfect. Rocky 1 is a really hard one.

Rocky's one's hard. Three is perfect because there's three fights, right? And they get right into each one of them. But then when you go two and one, cinematically, whatever, nicer. But if you got a 16, 17, 18-year-old, they may not appreciate it.

Yeah, my wife's been gone for... Oh, yeah. She She went away. So it's me and Ben. So we're actually hanging. I'm starting to see the finish line because he's going to college next year, and then that's it. You were the genius with having the extra kid.

Not so fast.

That was a great move. That was like signing Jared Sittam to the backup quarterback there.

Wait a minute.

Just in case you need a really good backup.

That's not going to be a first down for the last four years.

That was a great one. The other thing we did last time was we watched UFC at the same time as the Netflix, Building Climb, and also self-exposed was on. So I had the three TVs, and it was just randomly one of the more fun like, Oh, my God, I can't believe these three things were happening at the same time. The building thing I actually think was underrated as one of the craziest things I've... I think it was the craziest thing I've watched that I didn't know was going to be crazy since that David Plane special when he was fucking with all the celebrities, which remember how everybody went nuts when that happened? That was awesome. Then never did it again. Yeah. Get out of my kitchen.

Will Smith and his wife.

But I couldn't believe it. There was a couple... Are you afraid of heights? Because...

Oh, God, yeah. I got a low in this chair in two minutes.

Yeah, I'm afraid of heights. I didn't used to be, but over the course of the century. There was a couple where he's reaching back, where it was like the overhang, so you have to reach back and then pull yourself up where you're just like, this guy's going to die.

Some weird stuff he had to step into. Like, oh, that looks complicated to have to get your foot out of, maybe, if you can't.

But he was so comfortable. Just like, I'm going to take a break and sit on this ledge. It's like there's wind. I just didn't understand what I was watching. I almost broke my brain.

It's great because it's not... First of all, we grew up with Evel Knievel, right? Yes. But there's a lot of buildup for that, and then it's over in a couple of seconds, right? But it's pretty cool if he makes it, if he almost doesn't make it, and he breaks every bone in his body. Short of that, they've had like trapeze artists walk across a tight rope, I think, for like 20 minutes or so. But that's the the same thing over and over. I think scaling a building, you get to see different weird façade. It was extra, extra gnarly, I thought, for sure.

Well, one of the crazy things was there was people on certain floors, like taking pictures and waving to them. I was thinking if you were there, you're the same person who almost ended Jimmy's wedding when the wedding cake was coming out because he saw this chance to push the cake in the baby doll. I was thinking like, that guy, he's climbing up and you just throw yourself into the window to see if you can rattle him.

David Blaine, do you remember- Wouldn't that be murder? Yeah, I think it would be a tank of murder. I think it would be a tank of murder. I think that's murder. Jimmy sent me to New York when David Blaine was in that tank. Remember he was in a tank for four days? He's like, walk up to him with a hammer. I'm like, all right, this sucks. Yeah, I will. I can't break it. I think that's a felony. That's bad. When I walked up to him, we know Blaine a little, to our crazy friend Brad somehow, and he's like, No. That would have been it. But yeah, this climbing thing. I don't know that he's one of the greatest athletes. Everyone's got to make that great jump now that he's the greatest athlete we've ever seen. You're going to throw him there?

I just had more questions than answers. My son was like, what happens if he runs out of... He had that special powder, like that stickum powder. He had that little satchel in his back pocket. It's like, what happens if he's like, oh, shit, I didn't bring enough powder. Now you're like, only four-fifths up the wall. Then when he got on the top, which was amazing, and he was just standing there and he So comfortable. Yeah. Just being like, hey, look at you. I was having an absolute stroke. I couldn't handle it. It's a whole different- I was like, and they were doing these like, I just couldn't handle it. And then it's like, how's he going to get back down? Oh, this is busy. He's just going to rappel down. That seemed terrifying. Every piece of it seemed terrifying.

Yeah. We had a zip. Do you ever go zip-lining?

I have, yeah.

I don't know why I did it. We went when the kids had a game in Hawaii. Catalina? No, it was in Hawaii. And the zip-lining sucks. That was bad for me. I was like, I'm never doing this again. But worse off, there was this bridge that shook back and forth when you walk past it. I laid on that bridge for 40 minutes because I could not move. There's no way it's going to break, but I'm like, I'm not moving. I'm not going forward. I'm not going back. I don't know how people do this.

Did you think he was going to have a little backpack on that would have been a parachute if he fell?

You would think, right? You see all these safety nets or safety something, but some harness, nothing.

I thought it was incredible. When we were kids, I remember somebody tried to climb the World Trade Center or Empire State, one of those in New York on Wide World of Sports. And I I don't remember watching it live, but when they would do the anniversary shows for World of Sports, they would always show. It was like George Willis or a name like that. He climbed up the World Trade Center and like, This is crazy. He didn't have permits to do this. That seemed nuts. I think all this, I don't understand. I don't understand why somebody would want to do this, how somebody could be that calm. It's almost like, is this the right use of this person? If this person is this calm with this much How scary this is. It's almost like Goodwill hunting. And it's like, well, hunting, you should actually work for NASA. You're too fucking smart. This guy, should he be flying the scariest planes we have? Or do we have to teach him to be a pilot? What skills could he add that would be better than just climbing a building.

The parkour guys are especially insane. I would think that you would be nervous that Ben was going to become one of them. He was on his way for a second. Ben was.

Well, yes. Ben was. I was really I'm glad that Ben was scared watching this guy last night. I was looking over. My worst nightmare would have been like, This looks so fucking cool. I'm so jealous of him. No, don't do this. If he had just fallen, would they have cut the feed?

I'm sure they had some plan for it. Yeah, they couldn't just show that. That would be bad times. I think they'd have to cut it.

I'm getting queezy thinking about it now. I can't believe. We had that, and then UFC, we had Gechi going against Patty, and it just turned in, and you had the knockout plus 170. But it was just an absolute sloke fest that seemed like it was going to end every round. It didn't. It reminded me a little of the first Leonard Durant fight where Patty was just trying to fight him. I was like, No, I can beat this guy standing up. And Gece yet again, I don't know how many years now we've been doing it with him.

I think he's 38 now. I would love to. And we had this with- It's like Matthew Stafford. Yeah, he is. He didn't say he's going to be a quarterback for the Rams next year. Remember God, he and Ward? You're like, I just wish we could watch these guys fight forever. I want them to protect Gece's brain because he takes so many shots now. I don't even want to know what that looks like now, but that's the guy I want to watch for the next decade because he just brings it every single time.

It was a little like César Chávez near the end where it was almost like the blows. His brain wasn't even bouncing back and forth anymore when he took a blow. It seemed like at the tail end, he got hurt. The other thing that was interesting was the heavyweight fight was bad. And just what a bad situation the heavyweight division's in compared to where I felt like we were when I started watching it.

Derrick Lewis just holding... I mean, is he still in that ring holding himself? That was scary shit, too.

That was number 5 against number 8, and it was awful. I don't know if giant people just aren't doing MMA anymore or what was going on, but it was interesting paramount weekend because they had the boxing on Friday, and they're clearly trying to lay the smackdown, but it was weird not to pay for a UFC pay-per-view.

I know. They had a few more ads.

It was just like, Oh, this is unparamount.

Yeah, exactly. It's not the way they show the odds is different now. We don't have to get into it, but they've aligned with somebody differently. It's different. But anyway, I love not paying. A lot of people said, This is the first time I'm going to buy. I'm legitimately watching a pay-per-view because everyone steals for years and years and years.

And yet I thought the climb in the building was more was better.

Yeah.

That was good. The Celtics were fucking around with the Chicago Bulls game that would have been a nice back to back. I was just like, watching the building guy, having a heart attack.

Do you think you could watch that? You think you could keep watching? Could they do that once a month and the buildings just get taller and taller? Is there more than a...

I think the next one would have to be not a building. I think it would have to be some summit, right?

Yeah.

It would have to be or some mountain that you're not supposed to climb.

Right.

Where you have to go like, slice the loan.

Yeah.

It goes for hours. Anything else you want to hit for me?

Yeah, I did a couple. First of all, I loved you and Mad Dog. It's the best one he's on. Yes. Can I give you my favorite exchange between the two of you? I'll attempt to do both voices.

I could probably guess what it is.

I've never done this before. I was like, All right, here we go. This first one is going to be you. All right, man, Doug, let's talk about the top 10 quarterbacks of all time. I think Elway is in there. Two Super Bowl wins, but he also had some stink of playoff games. What's your take on Elway? Well, first of all, that is an excellent, excellent job by you, Bill. You remember that John Elway's playoff games weren't always great. Listen, he wasn't always Johnny Unitas out there. So excellent job by you. You did your homework.

Excellent job. And I was trying not to laugh.

I could hear you laugh.

We love Matt Doc so much. He was great. We have him on, and I didn't prep him for anything. And within a second, He's like, well, Otto Graham, 1955. And he just is banging out. 1955, for reference. That was good.

Just to have a plug here. Sal Super Squares on Splash, giving out 25,000 in prizes, 10,000 to the winner of a grand prize. Completely free to enter. Go to splashboards. Com. And also I'm doing a new contest around Bad Beat. Send me a screenshot of your Bad Beat on Twitter. On Twitter. And that's it. Every Bad Beat gets a free play on Splash. There you go.

We didn't talk about the terrible murder of Alex Pretty in Minnesota, but I wanted to mention how awful that was. We tried on this podcast, try to steer it towards sports and be a place that is a little bit of a distraction area. If you want some of the other stuff, go there. I thought that was horrible. I remember when we were kids growing up reading about Kent State and things like that. How did they let that happen? And this felt like that. I just don't know how we got to this spot. So I wanted to mention that. I thought I was horrified about what happened. I don't want to talk- I don't want to talk to everyone in Minnesota.

Absolutely. I'm going to shove pizza in my mouth. I don't say anything wrong. I did Charles Mark. We did a good job summing it up. That was terrible. Whatever he did.

I don't know what we're trying to accomplish in 2026, but I don't like it. That's it for the podcast. Sal, we're going live on Sunday. We're going to be doing Super Bowl props live on Sunday. Probably like seven, maybe like 6 o'clock Pacific Time Ranch.

Whatever you want. I'll have the pizza ready for both of us. That's it.

Thanks to Gehow and Eduardo and Chris, behind the scenes, for helping us out. I'm going to be back on Tuesday on this podcast. Rewatchables launches tomorrow on Netflix. That was on Spotify as well. We have Zodiac. What do you think was longer, the movie or the podcast? The rewatchables. It was 157 minutes.

Oh, man, you went past two and a half hours? I'll go. I'll go to the movie. Was it close?

Our podcast was like 250. I think we went 20 minutes longer.

You're really... Your really packs is just untoppable.

Well, we had to solve. We solved the Zodiac murder as well. Oh, you did? Okay. Yeah, that was another great thing. Yeah, we solved it. So that was good. Anyway, that's coming Monday. It will be on Netflix as well as Spotify as well. Sal, as always, good job on you. Good job on you, buddy. See you on Tuesday. Must be 21 plus on President Select States for a Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus on President DC, Kentucky or Wyoming. Gambling problem, call 1-800-Gambler. Or visit rg-help. Com. Call 888-79-7777 or visit ccpg. Org/chat-in-connect or mdgamblinghelp. Org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelp-line ma. Org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8 Hope, N-Y or text Hope, N-Y in New York.