Transcript of Guess the Lines Week 1, Plus Favorite NFL Futures With Cousin Sal

Meine Zehen bringen mich um. Diese Schuhe sind viel zu eng.

Trägst du immer noch diese spitzen Dinger?

Ich meine, sind nicht alle Laufschuhe so geformt?

Nein, du brauchst Altras.

Altra?

Altras sind geformt wie deine Füße, mit einer fußförmigen Zehenbox. Einfach viel bequemer. Bezwinge deinen Lauf mit Hallenzehen.

Okay, das klingt traumhaft.

Mehr Komfort, Kraft und Dynamik. Alles durch die Passform. Altra versteht das einfach. Ultra, stay out there.

The Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by FanDuel. The NFL is here and it's the most rewarding season ever on FanDuel with the all-time FanDuel Rewards Club. Every eligible bet can earn you points. Win or lose, you still get points. The more points, the bigger the rewards you can unlock. Head to fanduel.com/BS to start earning with FanDuel Rewards Club. 21+ select states or 18+ DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. We're back, baby. Year 20, guest alliance. I'm Bill Simmons. That's Cousin Sal. Yeah, just want to mention 4 podcasts from me this week. We got Sunday Night right now, live on Netflix. Got, uh, I'm gonna do something Tuesday morning, and then Wednesday night, Thursday, I'm gonna be live after both games. Um, so a big 4-spot. And then you're gonna be on the Ringer Gambling Show, now called Ringer Wise Guys. We'll be live on Twitch. We have a whole plan for the big Friday weekend show. The games are starting. Do you like this Wednesday, Thursday thing?

3 days.

I kind of do.

I like it. 3 days. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we waited long enough. 8 months of soccer and horseshit basketball. No offense, but we're good. We're good. Yeah, man. 3 days. Very excited. And this is emergency podcast because Roger Goodell got extended, right?

That's what this is, right? He got extended over Christian Gonzalez. Wait, I have no idea if I'm gonna have my cornerback for the Seattle game. So, and then we have our fantasy draft on, on Tuesday too. So we got that. We got games Wednesday night, game Thursday night, all kinds of stuff to talk about. We have an action-packed, uh, plan for this, by the way. We're gonna do Guess the Lines first, and then afterwards we're gonna have our annual futures draft, which we usually, we usually do closer to the AFC-NFC thing. But the season, I can't remember it ever starting this late. I know there are reasons for that with the calendar, but we're gonna do Guess the Lines first.

Yeah, shame on the powers that be. Don't ever start it this late again. Like, we're ready in July. All our research is done. We have—

I really felt ready this week. Like, I was ready to get going, but I know with the Labor Day, I was watching college football. I watched college football all day yesterday. UCLA 1-0, dramatic, pulled away from Cal in the second half at Cal. That was fun. The Michigan game, before we dig into the Lions, what was your take on the Michigan game and did you lose money?

No, I didn't lose money, but I just, you know, my take is, okay, a couple things. One, a Hail Mary should never be completed. Like it should be like 1 in 100, not 1 in 10. So play some effing defense. That's, that's my big takeaway. Secondly, can we get the stadium clock with the official clock to sync up? Like you and I, if we put our iPhones on a desk, it's gonna go to 8 o'clock, right? At the exact same time. Even though if you're AT&T and I'm Verizon, or you got your, your phone wherever and I got my— why can't we get that to sync up? And then all this nonsense goes away.

And Michigan's not that good is the other takeaway, right? Like Western Michigan really took it to them. 'Cause that's one of the, tough games on UCLA's schedule is they have to go to Michigan. And then after you watched that yesterday, it's like, ah, feeling less scared of that one.

Oh, Michigan people going crazy. Yeah, we did it. Take that. Screw you. And the ones I was like, hey, you have 6 losses on your schedule, A, and B, you really lost that game 'cause you stormed the field after beating Western effing Michigan.

Right.

That's a loss. Sorry.

I also felt like we watch a lot of these. That was one of the only times I've seen them be like, oh no, actually there's a split second left. One more play. Usually when that's anywhere near zero, the game's over. Everybody walks on the field, all that stuff. All right, we're doing Guess the Lines first. So background, if you've never watched this before, 'cause we are doing this on Netflix this year, um, we guess the lines, we send them to each other. Um, neither of them look. I try to be surprised. You look after I send the lines. Um, and we have done this now for 20 years, and it started back when we were working together at Jimmy Kimmel Live. You were doing it on your own with Parlay Kid. We would sit in an office, we had desks right next to each other, and you would get a USA Today on a Monday.

USA Today.

USA Today.

That's a newspaper. Yeah. Explain to people what that is. That's a newspaper.

So USA Today was a newspaper that back in the day, people would read a newspaper instead of going online. And you would read the lines and I would guess and we would go back. And then when I stopped working at Jimmy Kimmel Live, you just started calling me on Sunday night. We started doing it and then we started doing it once I had a podcast. This is year 20. It's an actual anniversary. It's beautiful. I'm really excited.

There's a lot of pride involved, even though we really— anyone could cheat at any time because every line is available from now until January. So, but we really do our best.

I don't know.

We avoid like 7 months worth of people cheating on our behalf.

Yeah. I mean, people don't believe us. Like we're on gambling threads where, you know, somebody will bring up some and we'll just be like, hey, hey, hey, get that off here.

Like, right, right, right.

Like we really want to wait. I did see the Pats-Seattle line early. It was mistakenly, it was on a Pats thing. Okay. So I had told you that ahead of time. So we're just gonna call that a draw. I have not seen any of the other lines until this weekend after I sent you my picks. 'Cause you know, I wanted to start thinking about 'em and so I looked at some of 'em for teaser potentials, but I'm gonna pretend to be surprised for most of these.

And year 20, I think I'm 15-3-1 or something over the 19 years.

That you've lost?

I don't know. Probably something like that.

Who won last year? I didn't remember.

Isn't that bad? Like, we don't even have any stakes, anything. And I, I'm talking about all this pride and I can't remember. We may have even tied. I think you won. No, you won.

You, you clinched it. I think I won. It's like, it's like in wrestling when we just have these title matches, but it just ends up being a countout like they would do in the '70s and '80s. It's like, 'cause it's how it's been counted out.

I keep beating you by countout. I can't take the strap off.

Right. You can't take it. Couple things for week 1, just to remember, and we'll talk about this all week on our shows, but the week 1 divisional home underdogs, usually wanna grab those and we'll see if we have any coming up. Just in general, underdogs over basically a touchdown or more.

Mm-hmm.

Pretty favorable. I don't wanna read all the percentages and records 'cause nobody wants that, but it's just 2 things to keep in mind. It feels like every year, 2 or 3 of those, 2 or 3 of those get you. And in general, the underdogs, it's a little shaded. It's like, what is it, like 55% this century, something like that.

And it's a bummer too, because the 7+ point underdogs are the teams we hated when we did the over-under win totals, right? Like, I don't like the Browns.

Why do I—

I'm not taking the Cardinals, you know? And then, but yeah, no, they do cover, don't necessarily win.

And the big thing we're going to be looking— well, a bunch of things. First of all, there's some great matchups. Um, yeah. But there's also, we, we, we bookmarked this last year, the game that ends up meaning the exact opposite of what it seemed like after week 1. And last year was Raiders-Pats. The Raiders won in New England and it just seemed like, oh, the peak arrow. Oh my God. And then, oh, the, the Pats, same old Pats. Maybe it wasn't Mayo's fault. And then by week 10, it seemed like the most ridiculous result of the season. So we're gonna try to figure that out as we— Guest lines first.

Yeah.

I had a couple mailbag questions really quick before we go, and I, this is a really important one. Barkley brought this up on my podcast from Kyle Rector. Is Jerry Jones still with us? How many years has he owned the Cowboys and we haven't heard a peep?

Interesting.

So Barkley's theory is he actually likes his team this year and he's scaled back.

Nothing.

You're talking about St. Paul, right?

I'm Charles Barkley.

Okay. All right.

Jones is like, I actually like what we did. I'm not gonna be a problem this year. Have we heard from him? You follow the Cowboys much more closely than I do. Has he had a press conference? Where is he? What's happening with him?

He's not doing as many. He would do these weekly interviews on the local Dallas stations, not really doing those. Parlay that with the fact that, you know, last August, I think it was really right about this time of year. Or in September. But he, yeah, he went behind Micah Parsons' agent's back and tried to talk, right? Then he went to the mother or the family. Like it was, he was always involved. I think you're right. And whichever Barkley you're talking about, I think he's right too.

Well, the thing is, we always used to have a joke in mid-August that Jerry just would make a decision like, I'm gonna lead First Take for 3 straight days. I'm gonna do something. Yeah. I'm either gonna decide I'm not giving an extension to somebody I'm obviously giving an extension to, or I'm gonna, get into it with somebody. He just didn't do it this year. Kyle Rector actually said, someone get Pablo Torres to get to the bottom of this, which I thought was funny. He added an S. Pablo Torre, big week for him. Um, but, uh, Pablo Torre, that could be a good podcast if, if Jerry— we don't hear from Jerry by week 4. I almost feel like that's an emergency episode of Pablo's pod. Where did this guy go?

I like that. Listen, whatever takes Pablo's, um, attention away from the two of us, I think is a good thing.

That'd be great.

That's the point.

Yeah.

Yeah. Pablo, he, I mean, this with this Clippers thing, I, I still can't believe it. Not only was Pablo right, but on top of it, the Clippers, I can't even tell you the text threads I'm on. I talked about it a little in my pod on Thursday, but right, the fans are outraged.

Yeah.

Everyone's like, get, get, get, this is like, get us outta this. It's like being at a restaurant where they tell you you had a reservation for 7:30 and they're like, sorry, we're not gonna be able to seat you till 8:30. And you're just like, just gimme my car.

I want out.

Gimme outta this. That's every Clipper fan.

Pablo should be the interim owner, I think, of the team. I think that should be his prize for cracking this story.

Oh, that's a good idea. Make him like the front office guy, him and Sammy Koppelman. I would go for that.

It's so funny, you and I and House were talking about, um, Deshaun Watson. Has any player in the 4 major sports crippled their franchise for as long as Deshaun Watson has? That contract, that trade, whatever it is, they would probably screw it up. Yeah, and now it's— now they're 1-2. Uh, you could Pick whoever wants one.

Um, the only other mailbag I just want to throw at you, because I always like when people call us out together. Leo from Pembroke, Mass. called us the nickname czars, and he said, I'm going to throw a literal dart against the Simmons and Sal nickname board and see if it sticks.

Okay.

Jackson Dart, as we know, is a reckless idiot daredevil, much like Evel Knievel. But he might be, as the kids say, and Sal might say, mid. I give you Mid Evil Knievel.

Oh, nice.

It's a Jackson Dart nickname. Mid Evil Knievel.

It's a thinker. Can I— can we do it? What's this guy's name?

You can workshop it. It's Leo from Pembroke, Mass.

You could workshop it. Leo, I don't want to do anything, um, right away.

Yeah.

Yes, because we play the Giants in, in, uh, 6 days, in 7 days. So I'm, I'm, I'm gonna be, oh, Mid Evil Knievel.

Yeah, that throws for 4 touchdowns.

Good point. Yeah.

All right, guess the lines. We make guesses, whoever comes closest wins. Year 20, Wednesday night, Seahawks-Patriots. Uh, it is in Seattle. The Super Bowl champs are 8-4-3 against the spread in the kickoff game. I have no idea if my starting All-Pro quarterback is gonna be playing in this game. It's, it's just the weirdest thing I've ever watched. Like Witherspoon got this giant extension. I think he has the same agent as Gonzalez. It's an argument who's better, Witherspoon or Gonzalez. You can make a case either way, but they're both young, same draft, equally really, really, really good elite cornerbacks. Seattle immediately paid their guy. New England has not paid their guy, and I have no idea if he's gonna play. With all that said, Sal, I'm gonna— I, we, we tied on this already, but it's Seattle 3.5. I would've guessed if I hadn't seen the line, probably a whiff higher. I probably would've said 4. Did you think 3.5?

I think I would've said 4 too.

It's weird.

It's exactly the same as the Super Bowl, or at least what it opened at. But yeah, why couldn't people go 8 months without sending you the line? Isn't anything sacred?

I saw it on Patriots Twitter. I saw one of, one of the guys I followed talked about it. I just couldn't avoid it because he did the thing you just did about it's the exact same line as the Super Bowl.

Yeah, right, right.

So I try to get amnesia if I see any number, but I, I couldn't avoid it.

I almost forget. Yeah, that's a tough one to forget, but I almost forget immediately. Did you say 8-4-1? I wrote, I wrote that the defending champ is 17-4 as a designated home team in the last 21. I guess that's before they started doing this Thursday game.

Yeah, I had the kickoff game. Kickoff, I think that's a little different then because sometimes they would have this on.

I'm pumped for this one.

I will say this, I think the Pats are a live dog in this one. I'm not saying this as a Pats fan, Bill. Like, Seattle has some secondary stuff going on. They have Charbonnet's not, you know, not going to be there yet. They're basically riding this rookie running back And the Pats have 8 months to think about this game and revenge. And I, I don't know, I, I just, I love the Seahawks. I like their overs. We talked about it. We're gonna talk about them more in the futures thing, but I like catching them here instead of Week 12, I guess would be my point. I like getting them Week 1. That's fair. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like they don't have their stuff settled. They thought the safety they took in the 2nd round was gonna actually really play for them. He's out for the year. He broke his ankle. I think the cornerback stuff's a, a little shaky with them. So It's a nice spot for the Pats.

Devil's advocate, devil's advocate. Drake Maye, because there isn't as much time in between the Super Bowl and, you know, game 1, he's gonna be a little scared again when he sees that defense. Gonna get— do that thing where he drops the ball as soon as he gets—

I think you just root against Drake Maye now.

That was so much fun.

Like this.

That was great.

I never rooted against any of your quarterbacks.

You should try it. It's fun.

Thursday night, the Rams are playing the 49ers and it's in Australia, and both teams have done different travel plans for this. You guys talked about it a little on Ringer Wise Guys on Friday. This has become the most fascinating strategy thing. It's almost, I, I, I can't, I can't believe how different the two things is. And it's one game. Whoever wins, that will just now become the strategy for the rest of mankind.

Yeah.

The Rams have decided to fly in 24 hours before the game and then just get the fuck out right after. And the 49ers are gonna get there. They're gonna try to acclimate. I've asked around, I don't know if you've asked around, but anyone I know who's done this flight thinks this is insane by the Rams. Like actually abjectly insane. What's your take?

My take is I wanna write down every week the big, big 3 narratives of the week. And if you bet accordingly, how do you do? I bet you don't do it, do as well. And this narrative is, like you said, the Rams are getting here too late. It's a little bit of an arrogant move by the Rams. And for the 49ers, it was easy. Let's take it, let's fly as far away from that cancer box as early as we can on the practice field. But yeah, I think you need that flight. This is not like a 3-hour flight. Like, you know, this is like from Philly to Miami or something. This is gonna, I mean, you're gonna want to stare at the toilet moving backwards for 3 days before you want to practice. Like, there's a lot of good stuff to look at.

What's the furthest you've flown?

Probably Hawaii.

Like Hawaii? No, we, we, oh no, you're, you've gone to Europe. What was that, 11 hours?

That's right. Yep.

I just don't— 24 hours, and I can't really sleep on planes to begin with, and I feel like I would lose my mind. I heard Pelissero was talking about this on the Ringer NFL Show because he's, he's got to go. He's going for Netflix.

Yep.

And it was an interesting, like, uh, watching strategy for this where some people think don't watch movies because movies have this start and finish and the movie ends. You're like, oh my God, I still have 20 hours. Like, watch TV shows.

Mm-hmm.

So it's more addictive. So watch a show where you have to be like, ah, I gotta finish and try to just go on like an 8-episode binge.

Yeah.

My point is like, this is the kind, it's so long you have to think about shit like this. And I just, I don't understand. I think it's so arrogant by them to do this.

The other thing is like the 49ers were smart about it cuz a lot of those guys, they're banged up every preseason, right? Yeah. They have 10 guys going in who are questionable and they're probably like, hey, we gotta get them if we could leave in June, let's do that, because who knows if they're going to survive this flight either.

Wait, they— the 49ers wanted to get away from their practice field. They left in July.

We may have to get like our practice squad guys in there because I don't know if anyone's going to make it to the finish line.

They might actually become normal human beings again after a week away from the electromagnetic magnetism. I can barely speak. I mean, it's just—

this is like, you know, I wouldn't have taken this as a Rams home game. The Rams forfeited this game as a home game, right? And now it's even less of a home game because they're getting there late. They're giving themselves every disadvantage they can.

You guys had a really good conversation about this on Friday or whatever, Thursday when you did the NFC West on Ringer Wise Guys. And we talked about it too last week. I always get a little nervous with the super teams thing. The line is super high and we'll probably, I know I have one in our futures draft. This feels like a nice time to catch them too at the start of the year with all the hype. Anyway, I have a, I did Rams -4 for my guess. What'd you have?

We split this. I said 3 and it's 3.5. See how that works right in the middle?

You agree with that?

I'm trying to think if they had—

do you think the Australian thing messed it, messed it up at all?

If they had an actual home game, is it 4.5, 5?

If it's in LA, yeah, 4.5. Yeah, 5. It's in the Vegas zone.

Yeah, they, they, they may have screwed themselves here. This is the healthiest the 49ers will be all year.

So if you had to bet an underdog between Pats +3.5 and Niners +3.5, like, you don't have to tell us till Friday, but where are you? Are you leaning, or do either of those look tasty? Just say one. You don't have to say—

I would say San Francisco, but I really want to monitor this narrative, this popular narrative thing, and see, like, this is a top 3, like Would you agree this is a top 3 narrative? The Rams getting there late. Like, we should keep track of the other—

oh, other 2. I had convert— like, anytime a narrative can cause me to have a conversation with my wife, I feel like that's a huge win for the NFL. I was like, what do you think of this? The Niners left 6 days before the games. The Rams are just saying fuck it and going right in. Which team would you bet on just knowing that? And she's like, that's crazy. The first day you're there, your head's spinning. Like, you're, you're trying I, I mean, I was just in Boston for 5 days. I woke up at, you know, 6 o'clock today. I didn't know where I was, and I was only gone 5 days, and it was in the same country.

You should tell her like, honey, I took your advice. We, we bet $600,000 on the 49ers. Tell her Friday morning, see, see what she says. Win or lose.

Well, these 2 games are great.

Yeah.

Like we're 2 for 2. Very exciting. And then the Sunday marquee game. which I have as the Texans and the Bills in Houston.

Mm-hmm.

And I think, look, we have 2 different games. We have the what the fuck just happened game, which we covered with Raiders-Pats last year. We'll, we'll come up with some candidates for that. Texans-Bills in Houston has all the makings of the overreaction game. Whoever wins this game, it's gonna be Sunday night, Monday, Tuesday. This is it. The AFC runs through them and it doesn't matter which one wins. The AFC's gonna run through one of them.

And the other way, well, the loser's in a little bit of trouble here, right? Look at their schedule. We're going over the loser's schedule, no question about it, Sunday night, right?

Yeah, 'cause if the Texans lose, Texans lose, the CJ Stroud conversations start that night, right? Right, right. So when we're doing guest lines on Sunday night, it's CJ Stroud will be involved 5 minutes. The Bills lose, then you can zag with the McDermott. He was the fall guy, but their defense looked worse and DJ Moore didn't help him.

Josh Allen can only do so much. Yeah, I could hear it. Let's just do that podcast now and then we'll do guest lines.

We'll do all 12 narratives. Yeah. I had Texans -1.5 at home.

Yeah. So this is our first tick-tack. I had Buffalo -1.5 and I, I'm right now. I could tick-tack over to your direction, but right now—

Wait a second. The Texans, a Super Bowl favorite, Yes. In some respects, the team that I would certainly, coming outta the AFC, the AFC favorite, I guess.

Mm-hmm.

A team that I think will be in the Super Bowl against Seattle.

Okay.

Is not even a home favorite against the Bills who, no, lost to who they lose to in the playoffs. Denver, right?

Denver.

Yeah.

Very last minute. Yeah. I don't think you think Houston's gonna be in the Super Bowl. They have to make it 1.5.

So if this game was in Buffalo, it would be Buffalo by 3.

Yeah, I guess so. I guess so.

Well, I don't agree with this at all.

So this is the only week I'm kind of, I'm not gonna be 5 points off on a spread because I sort of know, I don't have a model, but the power rankings are kind of right there in terms of over-under wins. Right. And I think it's a little bit of a break for Buffalo getting this defense before they get in a rhythm. I know you could say the same about an offense, but this is when they'll play Houston on the turf in September. I think Same kind of thing. That's when I would sign up for that.

I thought defenses were better coming outta the gate than offenses. Am I just misremembering that?

I don't know if he'll be shut down just, you know, 2 scores a game like this early on.

This a, that's a great game. I have 2 watchables. I think this is also a really good game just from a, I don't know what's gonna happen with either of these teams. Real question, you're going, you're going Texans teaser, no question, putting that north of 7.

If it stays, if it remains 1.5.

So we changed the rules for Ringer 107 this year.

Wait, has everyone seen that?

You like the rules, right?

I like 'em. Yeah. I, well, I like—

Oh, I guess we can announce this right now. This is, this is huge. We talked FanDuel, our friends, yeah, into, um, giving us a very special price on teasers this year.

Yeah.

And I think it's gonna be for bets up to $50. We are bringing back the teaser. This is a huge passion point of us. We used to love teasers. The, the, basically everybody changed the juice on them. And it's a little like what happened in blackjack where all of a sudden we were, we weren't getting the same price when you get a blackjack.

Can't find any 3-to-2 tables. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What happened to 3-to-2? That's, we grew up on 3-to-2. Now you're gonna be 6-to-5.

Right.

So we asked FanDuel and we talked to them and we lobbied them and, and we convinced them to, to let us bring back teasers this year. So the juice is gonna be -110. on every, on any one teaser that you do for the week, you use our little code. We'll, we'll announce all that stuff later in the week. So you're, you're suggesting Texans to +7.5, maybe even take the over-under down, put it with another game, and that could be a potential fun one for your first tease.

Far be it from you or I to explain the way to play a teaser, but the experts say that that's the way to do it. If you take the +6 with a +1.5 If you adjusted 6 points, you're crossing the 3, you're crossing the 4, you're crossing the 6, you're crossing the 7, and you like Houston to win this game anyway. So that would be the way. And people say you, you make just bets straight up. You're like, Vandal has it at -110, big deal there. Everybody else has these at -139, -140.

Right.

So it's good.

That's good.

Interesting.

One thing with the teaser, the funniest thing with the teaser is like twice a year, House and I tease somebody through the zero.

Mm-hmm.

And Raheem reacts like we threw a Molotov cocktail in his apartment. It's the most up— nothing upsets Raheem Palmer more than cross. So basically if you had like Texans were -2.5 and I tease them to +3.5, that's a good way to basically Molotov cocktail Raheem. He can't recover from that for a half hour. It's the one thing you can't do. You can't tease through the zero ever.

Oh man, you're losing a point. You're losing a point.

Oh, it's just gone.

It's a 5-point.

It's not a 6-point. All right, I'll do it again this year. Not gonna apologize either. The other rewatchables game we have, or watchables game, it's in Indianapolis. Our first, or I guess our second home underdog. I'm guessing it's Ravens at Indianapolis, and I think the Ravens are gonna be favored, and I have the Ravens favored by 2.5.

Let me find this.

All right.

I had 4. I thought the Ravens by 4 and it's 3.5. So I get this by half a point. 3.5.

Yep. Oh, I've skipped. I somehow, I'm so out of practice. I skipped the other one.

That's all right. I skipped the other one.

It's all right. I'm gonna do that one first. Yeah. Baltimore 3.5. Indianapolis, a team that I think a lot of people are pretty lukewarm on. Everyone wants to see Daniel Jones. Everyone's excited about the Ravens. Everybody already has them penciled in for 6-1, start 7. I have multiple Ravens bets. God, I hate the hook. I hate that this is a 3.5. This makes me nervous. This feels like a classic. I don't know. I don't like it.

So don't you feel like just whether you like it or not, if it's a team you like, if it's a team you picked last week to go way over the total or over the total, versus a team you picked to go under. Just go with what you have, right? For week 1. Like if you have to, if you have to look stupid, then it's on you for wasting research for 3 months. That, that's kind of what I'm doing here with Baltimore.

That was my column I wrote, I mid-2000s, I wrote the Symbiotics column and it was basically like, you have the whole offseason to figure out who you like and you gotta stick to your guns the first 2, 3 weeks.

So, it's the only time we're gonna be right. And I feel like Daniel Jones, this is another narrative, right? Either he gets buried by the media or praised as the next Sam Darnold. I feel like there's no in-between.

Right.

Okay.

I will probably— my guess is I would probably take the Ravens money line and put that with something 'cause the hook scares me.

Tease it 3-0.

Were you up or down on the Colts? I can't remember.

No, I'm down.

You were under, right?

Yeah. It's one of my true unders. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. The other watchable is an awesome game. Bengals-Bucs. Fantasy guys all over the place in this game. It's in Cincinnati. The Bengals just continue to be the sexiest offseason team. Everybody's just all in. People love them. And everybody loves the Bucs at the ringer too. I heard your NFC South pod. You and I talked about it. You were, you had the NFC South when we did over-unders, everybody going 7-10. I made an impassioned case why I thought Tampa was great value. Even if you look this weekend, Tampa over 8.5. So just to go 9-8, in a shitty division, it was still pretty good odds. I think it was like +110 just for them to win 9 games. I'm in on Tampa. I was psyched when Dabundo was also in on them 'cause I was waiting for him to make some long impassioned case why they were fool's gold. But I'm like him. I, I like the front 7. I think they're gonna score. I think Baker was hurt last year. I'm not scared of the Bulls thing yet. They usually start out fast and then fade as the year goes along. And, um, I don't know.

I just like this spot for them. So I went Bengals -3 was my pick. All right.

Bengals -3. Now I lost this. I said Bengals -3. It's 3.5. So we split it.

God, I haven't hit one yet. I don't know, man.

I just, I'm really gonna, when you tell me like, oh, I made all these NFC South bets, futures.

I'm like, you get so upset.

I like, don't tell me. It's like you're, you're telling me like you're cheating on your wife. I'm like, don't even, I don't want, don't tell me. I don't wanna hear it. It's, I'm gonna do bad things with that information.

I like that you compare betting on the NFC South to adultery.

It's worse. It's probably like some kind of second-degree.

Somebody's gotta win the NFC South.

I know. They just, they hurt my feelings so much. The Bucs, they were better than every team last year.

I know. What do you say about 'em this year? They were better. I know. And the Bucs made a good point about how bad their defense was. So they were basically 28th EPA the last 6, 7 games. I can't defend that. I think my zag on that division is it's been so bad and so erratic and so stupid for so many years.

Gotta come around.

That it's now scared everyone off from even looking at it logically. And I, I just think if you look at it logically, they easily have the most talent. Like it's not even close. And they have like their, their draft, they're way better. Baker being healthy, I think really matters. I like some of their skill guys. I just, I, to me, they're a live dog in that game.

And the team they're playing is similar to what you're saying, right? A lot of talent up and down the roster for Cincinnati, at least offensively. You know, I know Zach Taylor always wants to fast forward to week 4 'cause he'd only go 1-2 most years.

Oh, I got some, I got some funny Bengals fan emails.

Yeah.

That were upset that I was so down on their offensive line.

What? The quarterback is eating throws.

They're like, it's not good, but it's not bad. You're wrong. our offensive line, if you look at stat A, stat B, stat C, um, even Brandon Thorne, who's, who, uh, who is the guy I get most of my offensive line opinions from because he's the best at this, he studies it. Go check out his Substack if you love offensive line stuff. He DM'd me and was like, they're not that bad. Like, they're not like they were a couple years ago. He, he wasn't saying they were good, but he was like, they're, they're not that bad.

Sacks and pressure rate, like, how, how deep do I have to look into this? I don't know.

They had— they do have a couple above average guys on the line. I don't know. It's, are they as bad as Washington?

No.

Are they as bad as—

Weren't their first 4 outta the 5 draft picks defensively? They were awful too, right? They scored like 27, like 33, 2 games in a row and lost 37, 2 games in a row and lost both games. So they, between the offensive line and defense, that's what I worry about a little 'cause they loaded up on defense, but I'm still trying to figure out though.

Yeah.

The whole thing where we made the defense better, 'cause this will make it easier for Joe Burrow.

Right.

Okay. So your defense is gonna get off the field more often. So that means Joe Burrow's on the field more often. How does that make it easier for him if you're still not blocking for them? They're, they claim they're gonna block for him. My memory of the Bengals the last couple years is Joe Burrow just running for his life over and over again and taking huge hits.

Yeah, I would've loved to see the camera on Burrow as they drafted defense after defense after defense. Was he saying, oh, this is gonna help me, this is great?

Yeah, you know what helps? Some, some, some blockers. Um, anyway, we'll see that one. Bucs is looming as, uh, my favorite one. So with Ringer 107, we're gonna do 4 picks. I'm doing 4 picks with House on Thursday night. You're gonna do 4 picks on your show, Ringer Fantasy, Ringer NFL.

We're all gonna make 4.

And then we're saving the 5th spot for Sunday morning 'cause we wanna get more info. That was our biggest, the thing we're all frustrated with last year is locking these picks on Thursday and you and House and I would be texting each other on Sunday morning like, goddamn, like I really like this team. I wish I had them and whatever. And so now that's the way we're doing it. Okay. We're gonna take a break. We're gonna come back, we're gonna finish the guest alliance and we're gonna do the futures draft after this.

Let's do it all.

This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. It's the small moments where we have the most fun sometimes, like having a friendly little competition with your friends to see who's the fastest or who can putt better in the backyard, or who can get to somebody else's house or the better route, whatever it is. Even better if you put some Michelob Ultra on the line, or a refreshing way to up the stakes. Like me and House are gonna pick games against each other on Thursdays this NFL season. Maybe we keep track in ways of, uh, Michelob Ultra 6-packs. I'm happy to do that. Maybe Michelob Ultra will make a special BS Podcast or Ringer 6-packs, and then we could, we could barter them back and forth. Whatever it is. By the way, they should do that for us. Superior is worth playing for. Michelob Ultra Superior Light Beer. Enter for a chance to win Superior soccer, basketball, and golf prizes at michelobultra.com. slash Superior Access. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026. Anheuser-Busch Michelob Ultra Light Beer. St. Louis, Missouri. So I was telling you during the break about my contact lens situation. What up? I have these con— I have terrible eyesight, as you know, like really, really awful eyesight.

And my contacts have to be— I have to order them in advance. It takes them like 4 or 5 weeks for them to make my contacts. I can't just be like, oh, I'll get them online. Like, they actually have to like You know, I'm like minus 10. Um, every 6 months I'm supposed to change them. I thought I'd change them in March, but it was actually January. So I realized this 4 weeks ago. I'm on month 9 with these contacts and the new contacts are coming this week. And I'm now at the point where I, it's like, I, I can't really read that well anymore. I'm like, it's like Sly Stallone sitting next to Adrian's bed trying to read as she's in the coma. Um, it's just like blotchy. So anyway, that's why I'm squinting and looking, because I have 4 more days. My contacts are like about literally about to die in my eyes.

Oh my God. Yeah, it takes up— but there's no, there's no temporary fix. Okay. Oh, I guess you have the ones in now, right?

I really need— I, I really need to figure out my thing. There's got— how is— how have they not figured out eyesight better at this point? Like, I don't know. Remember when they were doing the surgery and it was making— Yeah, yeah, the Lasix.

But it's—

I'm not eligible for that 'Cause my eyes are so bad. But how have they just not figured out any of this?

Anyway, that's— Have you tried pouring hot water and lemon in your eyes?

Maybe that's what it is. I'll work on it. All right, guest lines. Fairly rewatchables. Detroit is home for the New Orleans Saints.

And I keep saying rewatchables like they're gonna make this a movie.

Well, I can't see. I can't see if it's rewatchables or watchables. Fairly watchables. Lions-Saints.

I am.

It's a buddy cop movie with, with Goff and Jameson Williams. Yeah.

I'm probably too low. I did Lions -6.5.

No, you're right on. I went 7.

Oh, I am.

I went the full 7 and it's 6.5. You got it.

Oh, my first one. This is just, it's a flashing neon sign saying, please tease me. Please, please make us part of your first tease in the Ringer 107. Lions right down to 0.5 points. I really wanted to like the Saints in the offseason. I know we talked about on the pod and I just, I don't really like the stuff they did in the offseason. I thought on, on the Wise Guys pod, I think it was Raheem talking about how Shucks, 26.

Yeah.

He is like, oh, young QB finished the year strong.

Yeah.

And it's like, well, he's gonna be 27 next year. So maybe he kind of is who he is, but I don't know, this feels blowouty to me.

I have written down that this could be— I know you like Tampa a lot, and forget my opinion on the NFC South, but this could be a Shakeys game preview. This could be one of our first Shakeys game previews.

It's a great call.

They somehow win that doggedly bad, this, uh, division.

All right, next fairly watchable: Bears at Carolina. I have this pegged as another home dog. I had Bears -2.5.

You got it exactly. Why isn't this 4?

'Cause I don't think people trust the Bears. I trust the Bears. I have overs for them. They're gonna come up in my future draft later if I can see what I wrote, 'cause I'm just getting blotches, squiggly lines.

I'm outta focus. You can't read. All right. I, I, I, I don't know, man.

I shouldn't have done the Rocky. I should have worn my leather, leather jacket and my little cap and just tried done the reading to Adrian thing.

You can't see, Bill.

I can't see at all. The contacts still on here.

You're gonna kill you. You can't see.

This happened to me 10 years ago for different reasons when my eyesight changed when I turned 45. Remember Daniel told us that was gonna happen?

Right, right, right.

And my eyesight changed. I thought I had a brain tumor and it was just my eyes actually were getting better.

Yeah.

So I went from like a -10.5 to a -10, but was wearing the stronger contacts and I was like, why does it take 5 weeks?

Is your supplier in Australia with the— I don't know.

It takes 5 weeks for my contacts and one, and one day for the Rams to go to Australia. earlier and play a football game.

No kidding.

Lions look very tease-worthy. Uh, Bears-Panthers do not. No, I, I'm saying Bears-Panthers, oh, also looks tease-worthy if you like the Panthers and you want to pull them to +8.5.

This is one of those games where I have a big opinion on one and a lesser opinion on the other, and I'm just gonna go with the— I'll tell you, I'm gonna go with the Bears here. But I do wonder, here's another narrative, Is this the, you know, is this one of the team can't stand to play in 103-degree heat game? There's always one.

So glad you brought this up. Lombardi would talk about this every year. Yeah. Carolina, Tampa, Miami. Where's the other one?

Jacksonville. Jacksonville. Yep.

Those 4, you just, you have to look at the weather as it gets within 3 days. And if any of those are gonna be 80, like 82, 83 or above, You're gonna have pro— the road team's gonna have problems and we see it and they die in the second half and it's just that thing that happens.

So yeah, it's like, yeah, the thermometer says 83, but trust me, it's 177 degrees on the field. Right.

Who's the former kid? They go to Jay Feely or that, that other guy they have and he's like, guys, it's so hot down here. I can't even see. Yeah. And then you're like, fuck, I bet on the road team.

His nipples are out.

Yeah. That feels Bears-Panthers. Feels like a stay away to me. Next one is Jaguars-Browns. I put this as a fairly watchable only because of Deshaun on the road, this weird Jaguars team. This has all the makings of that Raiders-Pats game from last year where everybody puts the Jaguars in. This looks like a let's be careful to me game. I have Jaguars 7.5 over the Browns.

Yeah, you got it. I said 7. I thought that was enough. It's, it is 7.5. Exactly. But I'm with you.

I'm on fire.

What? Yeah, this is bad now, right? What do you have?

I have 3 in a row.

Yeah, it's 6 to 5. Okay. Yeah.

All right.

But yeah, I just, I think this is a must-watch, Deshaun, until, until we've had enough making fun of it.

Couldn't agree more.

I'll put it in the 4 box in the early slate.

I didn't tell you this, but my daughter has a game.

On Sunday. Oh, should you be saying this?

On Sunday.

Yeah.

At 11:00 AM PT.

Oh no. Oh no.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is for some reason a thing that's happening. So I'm gonna have her game on the big TV. I'm gonna have the Red Zone on another TV and then probably Bills-Texans, and those will be my 3.

Wow.

I can't not put her on the big TV. Like, this is her last season.

No, you have to watch. But can't they get— you could get them to move it, can't you?

Honestly, I, I'm completely outraged by the Emerson coaches on this. Coach Sub and Coach Collins, just an all-time outrage to put this against the Week 1 NFL.

How many Sunday games?

It feels like, honestly, it feels like a personal attack.

Yeah, of course.

No, it's like, I think it's the only Sunday afternoon game they have. Oh wow. And for some reason, Week 1 head-to-head against all this stuff.

So Yeah.

I will be by myself. I don't wanna be near anyone. And, and I feel like everything's gonna be tied together in some way. I don't know if there's a way to parlay her game with any of these games.

Maybe there is. Sorry.

Oh, it's Hank.

I had to watch Deshaun throw 4 interceptions today.

Yeah.

Sorry.

I took, I didn't realize you scored in the second half. Deshaun was going for his 5th interception. I had to switch it. Jaguars-Browns. Jaguars look like a stay away. All right, Packers at Vikings.

Yep.

I think this is gonna be another home dog, Sal. A lot of the Vikings, I think out of the 32 teams, I think have had the widest array of opinions in all the preseason pods.

I—

people are like adamant that they love the Vikings this year, and then other people are like, that team's gonna suck, they don't have talent.

I've only heard the former. that, you know, this is, oh, their defense, they know what they're doing.

Nobody can name 3 good guys in their defense, but the defense is awesome.

Such a step up. Yeah, I know.

It's like Flores, doesn't matter who he has. At some point it matters a little bit who he has.

Blitzing schemes are the best. Like, yeah, I don't really know how they won those last 4 games. And Kyler Murray is a step up, but he's also, we talked about last week, by every metric, he's not gonna make Justin Jefferson a A superstar again.

Packers feeling a little nobody believes in us too. Everybody's kind of kicked them to the curb. Parsons isn't coming back until midway through the year, et cetera, et cetera. I have Packers -2 over the Vikings, probably too high.

All right, I have to stare at this now because I don't really believe it. I had Packers by 1.5 and it's Vikings by 1.5.

Whoa.

So it's in the tick-tack, I guess, because there's a lot of Kyler Murray buzz.

I mean, he hasn't been a 1-point favorite since, um, and honestly, a lot of, a lot of I don't love the Packers buzz too with no Parsons.

Yeah, right.

Their defense without him. Okay, we lost the home dog.

Yep.

This last one, I've already made the tease with this team. Um, I put them with, uh, I'd put them in a money parlay with UCLA last night. Thanks again to Bob Chesney. Eagles home for Washington. I feel like this particular matchup has lost everybody significant amount of money over the last 10 years.

It's true.

How many times, like what, what has gone right in an Eagles-Washington game from a betting standpoint for anyone, you know, including us? I can't think of one thing.

Yeah. No. Unusually, you're right, this should be a stay away for sure. And it's like a 4:25 kickoff, so that there's always a weird one in there.

And Washington has a real aroma about them, and it's not a positive aroma, it's, it's an odor. And the Eagles, you know, they're gonna go 11-6 like they always do, and this just seems like a layup. Why isn't this line gonna be higher than my guess, which is Eagles -6 at home?

It's not even that high. To catch you, you get the nod here because it's 5.5 and I said 4.5.

Oh yeah, I don't know, man. That's an absurd price for the Eagles. That, that's basically bait. It's basically everybody's been burned by this game so many times you're getting 2 free points. This line should be 7.5.

And you're the very first trend you read off, right? The division opponents getting whatever, 7, 7.5, so they don't They don't make it that high. That's also a gigantic narrative that, you know, Commanders O-line sucks.

Every beat writer, it does, 'cause it does suck singing their eulogy.

Yeah. Against this loaded defense. I guess so. I think I'm just, I'm too into Jayden Daniels this year. I don't even know why.

Would you make Steelers-Falcons a fairly watchable or a poopfecto or a rewatchable?

Your pick. I think it's a rewatchable. It's a, I guess, fairly watchable. 'Cause you have to, I hate 'em. I hate this stuff.

I'm gonna move it up.

I'm not putting this on. I'm watching Zoe over this one.

Well, I'll move it up 'cause otherwise we would've had 4 poopfectas.

Could do that.

Steelers-Falcons. I do think this is a fairly watchable because I'm really interested to see how bad the Falcons are. I think that's a team that over the course of the month everybody has turned on. And you could see with the, with the Lions, even, you know, since we talked about it last week, I think the juice has moved even further ahead of them on FanDuel where they have the winning and losing record bets. The losing record bet, there's actually been action on them.

They've moved up.

I think they're like 12-to-1 now for that.

Right.

They used to be like over 20-to-1. There's Mike McCarthy, There's some Steelers could be a little bit sleepy in the AFC as like a 10 or an 11-win team. I have Steelers -3.5.

You're gonna nail this one too. I said 3. They made it, they made it 3.5. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 to 6 for you. Yeah. I don't wanna watch this. The Falcons, I read 2-16-1 all time against the Steelers and they have no one to rush the quarterback. So Rodgers is gonna look good.

Here, can I give you some reasons to watch other than gambling? Sure. Who's playing quarterback for the Falcons?

Yeah, I know you hate that.

I'm, I'm literally asking you who's playing quarterback.

Yeah.

Do you know who's playing? 'Cause I don't know who's playing.

They didn't announce it yet.

Right. So it's either Penix who's had no training camp or Tua who should be outta the league. And it's gonna be one of those two with the Steelers, the front 7 that is always great. It feels like the first 2 months and then loses steam as it goes.

But so why isn't this higher? Just 'cause you're trying to think of their win totals. The Steelers are 8.5, right? Atlanta's down, are they 6.5? What do we have?

Atlanta's basically 6.5 now.

Yeah. Yeah.

Steelers at home. Atlanta outdoors. Dome team outdoors. Right. I did already. Sal is revenge. Titans home for the Jets. I can't say the Titans had a, had a lot of buzz coming out of the preseason. Can't say there's a lot of excitement about this team. No. Jets, a whiff of buzz, a little bit of buzz. I have the Titans as home underdogs in this game. I have Jets -1.5.

Yeah, this is your worst one, I think, and the one we differ on the most. I said, okay, I said Titans by 2 and it's Titans by 2.5, so I get this one.

Ooh. Okay. Well, we'll see when it usually, when I'm off by that many points, that means I'm gonna, I'm gonna bet. Well, I'm gonna bet on myself on this one. I don't think the Titans should be favored against anybody.

Whoever wins, let's just not do the, could they make the playoffs? Could the, let's just not do it. I mean, here, here's what scares me. House said he looked back over the summer, he has 8 Week 1 wagers on the Jets. So maybe they should let us bet before September.

Jesus.

Let's slip 'em an 800 number.

That game is more fun than Raiders-Dolphins, which is in Vegas. Kirk Cousins, Malik Willis, 2 teams that have been thrown around the, the number 1 pick race. I have Vegas -2.5 over the Dolphins.

I had Vegas -2.5 as well, and it's 3.5. By the way, we just put a poll on, uh, poll up about the, about the Jets-Titans. So, 'cause we were, we had such a disparity. All right. All right. Malik Willis, Kirk Cousins.

We'll see what the Netflix people think.

Let me ask you this.

I don't wanna really wanna watch any of that game.

I was just gonna ask you, does the US Open men's finals get a bigger screen than Miami, Las Vegas, and the Simmons household?

No, I don't care about the US Open finals.

Oh wow.

Okay. I did, I did stay up till over 2 o'clock when I was in Boston watching Zverev almost blow it in round 1, which would've been the first time that's happened as a 1 seed losing in a major. It was like in 30 years, the announcers are going nuts and I got sucked in and then I was up till 3 in the morning after. It's great.

Watch the Oz. I gave tennis a, a compliment saying the night edition of tennis, an exciting night game. The disparity between an exciting day game is unlike any in any other sport.

I have a, a hot take and I think Eduardo needs to get ready to clip this out 'cause I feel really strongly about it. I've watched tennis my whole life. I play tennis. I love tennis.

Serena's done.

Tennis matches are too long.

Ooh.

We've lost the narrative with this. These guys are too good. The, the rallies and the points and these games, these matches are 4.5 hours routinely now.

Yeah.

And I just think it's absurd. And I've talked about this forever. I don't think anything should be 4.5 hours. Like literally anything. Movies, sporting events, a dinner, anything.

I don't wanna do anything. Flight to Australia.

Yeah, I don't want to do anything for 4 and a half hours that's supposed to be entertainment.

Yeah.

And I just think they really have to rethink this. And all the tennis purists are gonna be like, that's crazy, fuck you, go fuck yourself. I get it.

Whoa.

Um, but I think they should seriously think about changing the sets from 6 to 5 for winning the set.

Oh, sick. Changing the set. See, I was gonna propose— see, I bet tennis all the time because it's on during the day.

Do the 4 out of 7.

Well, they do 2 outta 3 sets for men's when it's not a major. It's, and like this, if you're watching the Cincinnati Open on a Wednesday, it's like, that's 2 outta 3. The women are always 2 outta 3. You would just go to 5 instead of 6.

Whatever we have to do to not make this 4 and a half hours. I don't, I just don't think it's that entertaining. And I like tennis and I'm sure people are—

You were up at 3 in the morning watching one. You did.

You went and do things during the day.

I know.

And the whole time I'm like, why the fuck is this 4 and a half hours? It's absurd. Like, in baseball, it's when the baseball games got too long. What did we do? We were like, this is too long. Let's get a pitch clock. We got to fix this. In tennis, it's like, oh, Djokovic is about to have a stroke on the court.

This is great.

What drama.

He's dying.

Like, what's fun about this?

It's a lot when it's very tight.

Djokovic couldn't even, like, hit balls back in the 5th set.

Yeah.

He was just like letting that, letting serves go cuz he was trying to save his energy for when he served. And it's like, once we get to that point, I just think it's much harder to play than it was during the McEnroe-Borg era. It just was, it just is.

They are flying around for every point. I'll give you that. And that's why maybe the night game is better. That's why you won't have to worry about everyone dropping dead from heatstroke. But, and it, you'd have to check the ratings. I feel like a lot of people start tuning in in that 5th set.

They'd also tune in if the— if it was 5 games instead of 6. All right.

I don't know. I don't care as much. I'm sorry.

Yeah, you're— I forgot. I shouldn't have done this to you when you were in football mode. What do you mean you don't care? You bet on tennis.

I know I brought it up, but I just— I never really thought about it.

Chargers-Cardinals in LA, a rare LA football game where they're not gonna be deluge by fans from the other team. Yeah. 'Cause we don't know that many Arizona Cardinal fans.

Won't see a lot of Budda Baker jerseys, Roman, outside of SoFi.

This is also a classic teaser. I have Chargers -8.

Let me find this. That's a, I had 8.5, it's 9.5.

Hmm.

Went way high on this.

Yeah, 'cause they don't want us to tease 'cause they knew we convinced fandom.

Mm-hmm.

All right, those are the 3 poop factors. Sunday night. Cowboys-Giants at New York. You're gonna be favored.

You're gonna be favored.

Favorite.

You're gonna be favored in this game. I have Cowboys -2.5.

I had Cowboys -3, and I was bummed to see that it was 2.5. Not because you got it, because now I have to think about— I mean, this is potentially awesome for you. You get an immediate crack at celebrating my grief Minutes after Brandon Aubrey missed the game-winning 72-yard field goal at the buzzer. So I was pumped.

I think you lay this smackdown.

Oh really?

I do. I, I love the Cowboys this year.

I know everybody does.

I was looking at them for best record in the NFC, like the 1 seed, all that shit. Yeah.

We just got to lose to the Giants. Everybody gets off our, our case for a minute and somehow we won 9 of the last 10. I'm already a basket case about this matchup.

What did DeBundo say? 17 of the 26 guys from last year's defense are no longer on the team for Dallas.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That should be all.

Yeah. You guys are gonna be good this year.

Yep. There you go. And there's a poll up now on Netflix. Will Sal be shedding tears next Sunday night? I mean, either way, I think it's yes.

I think it was very smart to stay away from medieval Knievel.

Good. I don't want any part of that. Yeah. Talk to me next Monday.

So we have Giants as a, as a home dog, Panthers.

Wait, did you win?

Do I have a chance?

Texans 10.

I think I won.

You're winning 10-9.

We have 4 home dogs. I think we're, I think we're both gonna hit this one. This is the most obvious tick-tack one of all time. Monday night, Kansas City at home for Denver, and I have Chiefs -1.5.

I swear on my kids, I had Chiefs -2. And it is 2.5. See how that works, people? See how unsatisfying that it was?

We split. I feel like we cheated.

We tie week 1. I feel like you cheated. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 to 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10 to 10 including ties.

There you go. Chiefs minus 2.5, huh? What are we missing with the Chiefs here? It's Mahomes 9 months after an ACL.

Yeah.

It's Kelce 3 months after he got married. It's a complete overhaul of— they added all these young people. They have a young secondary. It's a team that I, I feel like is gonna take 5, 6 weeks to be whatever it's gonna be. Week 1 against Sean Payton and the Broncos, a team that felt like they should have made the Super Bowl last year, that feels like they're better even though the schedule's not better. I just don't see how the Chiefs are favored like this. This feels like a Mahomes-Reid thing.

I think FanDuel's throwing their hands in the air a little bit here. Like the Chiefs would normally be a 3-point favorite, right? But what people aren't talking about is this is Bo Nix's rehab game too, right? We didn't see him. He got hurt in middle of January.

So that's fair.

Messed up his leg. So it's like, all right, let's see. I mean, they, they pushed it as late as they could Monday night for Mahomes to rest up. Surprised they didn't play this Tuesday afternoon in Australia.

All right, so we tied.

No, I will not be crying according to our Netflix faithful, 67%. Thanks, guys. Appreciate that.

Is that what they said?

That's what they say. They're never wrong.

Deine Füße mit einer fußförmigen Zehenbox. Einfach viel bequemer. Bezwinge deinen Lauf mit Hallenzehen.

Okay, das klingt traumhaft.

Mehr Komfort, Kraft und Dynamik. Alles durch die Passform. Altra versteht das einfach. Altra. Stay out there.

Futures Draft. It's time. Let's go.

Come on.

I'll give you the first pick. Since I beat you last year in Guess the Lions. So that enables you to get the first pick.

But what we're gonna do— You also beat me in this. I look, I look back, we gave out 34 futures bets each. Today we're gonna try for 100 each. But no, but I thought, I was like, oh, we did well. We both gave out winners. And then superfan Chris Haynes reported Simmons ended up up 3.98 units and Sal was down 11.94 units. So Mind your damn business.

Oh, you were down last year?

Yeah, I guess I was down.

Oh, I blame the Chiefs. So part of the art of this is we wanna, we wanna have some winners that are gonna be around even, +110, +115.

Yep.

But we wanna have some long shots too.

Mm-hmm.

And we wanna be able to go back and forth and, and have a nice mix of both, but really try to hit, like one of the ones I hit last year was Mike Vrabel. Coach of the Year. And that was like, I don't know, 10-to-1 or 12-to-1. Great. Putting 1 unit on all of these. So you hit one of those and it's worth like 10. So the art of this is some long shots, some staples, and go all the way around. You have the first pick.

We say 1 unit, we recommend 1 unit is $10,000, but it's whatever you guys wanna do.

$10,000 per unit.

Okay.

Is how we're gonna do this.

Oh, we're gonna do it snake. I go first, then you take 2. Or we just go back and forth.

I'm fine just going back and forth.

Okay.

It's up, it's up to you though.

All right, I'm gonna start with my favorite.

Okay.

And I can't believe it involves the Jets doing something somewhat positive, but it does.

Okay.

The New York Jets to come in 3rd place at even odds. I think this hits by 3 or 4 games on either side. I think the Pats and Bills are 10+. I think the Dolphins are 4-. They have not built their team like the Jets have. They're— Jets are actually trying to win. And believe it or not, I have the Jets at 6 wins. I think this is a lock of all locks, especially if Miami's battling for that first pick in December, late December. Gimme Jets 3rd place +100.

I had it written down. It's great.

It's a good one.

It's great. Ironically, my first pick was gonna be a variation of that. The Falcons. And by the way, you can find all of these on FanDuel, including the, uh, the exact order bets for divisions, but also you can bet on the Jets to be 3rd place. I have a parlay, the Falcons and the Dolphins to both be in 4th place.

Mm.

Plus 343 on FanDuel, at least yesterday when I did all my work. And by the way, if you wanna throw Minnesota in there, which I'm not gonna do, +1056 for that. Wow. But Falcons-Dolphins is my first pick.

Plus, no, I like that. Don't need to throw Minnesota in there.

Plus 343.

'Cause it's like, it's like a 2-0 terror, like 2-0 killed or is about to kill both the teams. Yeah.

You're right. It's like a 2-0 2-timer.

Yeah, that's it.

I honestly can't figure out how either of these teams don't finish 4th. I think your, your roadmap for the AFC East is a lot easier 'cause we're gonna have the Jets at least trying for the first few weeks. Dolphins don't seem to care at all. Falcons, I think the Saints or the Panthers would just have to really stink, but I don't, I just don't see how the Falcons aren't in 4th place. So anyway, that's my first one.

What do you got? All right, uh, how about this? Chargers get eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, +172. Wow. In the last 3 years they've made the playoffs. I think they're gonna enter as a 3 seed. They're gonna screw people up a little bit. They'll enter as a 3 seed after winning the division and they're gonna lose at home. I have 'em losing to the 6-seeded Chiefs in round 1. Chalk that up as a winner. One way or another, they're losing in the first round.

So this is just a Herbert shorting by you?

Yeah, right.

That's pretty good.

It's like how we would bet Mahomes every year and then, okay, every 3 years they'll win the Super Bowl. This is, this is the other version of that. Yeah.

So ways you lose, they don't make the playoffs. or they're the 1 seed, right? All other scenarios, you're in play. I really like that.

Okay.

Um, oh man, so many good ones left.

Uh, are you done? You could tap out if you want.

No, I have so many. I really love this one. Am I gonna— I'm not gonna do Atlanta twice. I'll, I'll do one that, that I love that I've wagered on myself. Um, I have Houston and Seattle both to make the playoffs.

Okay.

It's plus, plus 112 on FanDuel, basically even odds. And I don't see a world where either of these teams don't make the playoffs instead of something, unless something horrible happens. Now I've learned my lesson from last year because we got burned. We'd had some 3-team playoff stuff. And what, what, what I took away from that, my mistake and, and my lesson going forward is 3 teams, you're just opening the door for weird shit to happen. 2 teams, stick with the 2 you really like, one in each conference. They're not, you know, they're gonna be each be doing their own thing. I just think Houston's defense and Seattle's defense, those are gonna be 2 of the 3 best defenses in the league. I'd just be shocked if either of these teams didn't win 10. +112 sounds great. Sign me up.

I like that. I have 'em both making the playoffs. Why not at plus money?

Yeah.

Who, who beat us last year in general?

Kansas City. Kansas City killed us last year.

And Detroit. Did you have Detroit too?

I think I had Detroit. But Kansas City killed us. We lost multiple. It, it honestly ruined what should have been an awesome year for me. Right. But I had all these different Kansas City bets that murdered me.

Yeah.

But all right. All right. You're up.

I have, this is my only NFC South bet and God bless you. You're gonna have a dozen, but it's, it's a Cousin Sal special on FanDuel, Bill. You could check it out. Uh, on the Ringer specials right there.

Okay.

All right.

It's a combination bet. NFC West to have more wins than the NFC South.

Duh.

Okay. And the AFC West to have more wins than the AFC North.

So, okay. Say that again.

I forgot it already. No, NFC West to have more wins than the NFC South. Okay.

So that's gonna happen.

Seattle. Yes. That's gonna happen by 10. AFC West to have more than the AFC North. So you have the, you know, you could have 3 double-digit win teams. And if the Raiders are competitive against the AFC North, Cleveland— Yeah. Yeah.

You need Cleveland not to be good. You, you're hoping Cincinnati's not like an 11-win team.

And I don't think Pittsburgh's gonna be very good. And that's +165 if you put those together.

Wow.

That's a really good one. The AFC part makes me a little more nervous. Yeah, I think the other one I thought was great, but I like the juice, the +165. You mentioned the NFC South. You got me excited, so I'm gonna bang this out now. Tampa to win the NFC South, +175. I honestly, this is a miracle that this is still the price. I don't understand it at all. +175. They're by far the best team.

This is like you went to the doctor and they say, hey, you gotta stop drinking. And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, doctor. And you get to the parking lot, you're doing shots of Jägermeister in the car. Like, what, what, why would the NFC NFC South enough.

One of the things that's appealing is a different team seems to win this stupid division. Yeah, although Tampa won a few in a row, but usually when we have the screwed up divisions, a different team wins every year and it's, oh, who's, who's up this year? Tampa didn't win last year.

Okay.

Yeah.

So what was that?

Tampa plus 175. Sign me up just to win.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right. All right. One more Sal special on FanDuel courtesy of The Ringer. Rams win the West, the NFC West.

Yep.

Chargers make the playoffs and Cardinals lose their first 5. That's just a fun one. Plus 850. Yeah.

LA City playoffs. Zona loses their— Zona goes 0-5. They have the most onerous schedule in the league.

They're at the Giants week 4. I feel like that's their best shot. Otherwise they're a 7-10 point dog. Yeah, you go. Pays over 8-to-1. 8-to-1.

Oh boy, man, you really— you did your homework this year, I can tell. That's a pretty good one.

It always works out. Yeah.

All right, I'm gonna take this off the board. It's a defensive one. It's— I could probably get this later, but, um, I want to do this. It's not a jinx. As you know, I like winning more than jinxing your teams. I have Dak Prescott to win the MVP.

Oh.

at 18-1. I just like the odds. I think that team— I think one of those 2 NFC East teams is gonna be really good, especially 'cause of those 4 Washington Giants games. I just like your team.

I—

we talked about it earlier. Jerry being quiet is notable.

I checked.

He's got weapons. He's, he's— they figured out the Pickens thing. He's gonna be able to— they're gonna be able to run the ball. I just like the odds. I don't understand why his odds are 18 to 1, but Burrow is like 5 to 1.

So you gotta be, yeah, that, that shouldn't be that wide, but he should be right in there with the rest of the favorites.

If Dallas is 12 and 5 or 13 and 4, Dak's gonna win the MVP 'cause they, the freaking media machine behind the Cowboys, you know?

Right.

Anyway, I like the odds.

Don't, don't make, don't clip that off, Kyle. Don't, don't even bother with that. That's, it's nice and everything. I appreciate it.

By the way, we forgot to welcome Tony Romo to the podcast.

Yeah, he's gonna be, he's over my shoulder.

He's gonna be there all season. Yeah.

Tony's got some time now.

He's gonna hang with us and yeah, he's gonna always invited on the pod to join us.

Thank you.

Okay.

Yeah, please, Tony. The real Tony. All right.

Okay.

That's good. I mean, I, I, I like Dak for like most passing yards and passing touchdowns and when he—

I just wanted a Dak prop before you grabbed one. Yeah. 'Cause I knew, I figured you were gonna grab one.

Oh, that's fine. Okay. You know he's not in the NFC South, right? Are you still okay? Making a futures bet with him.

I'm okay.

All right, this is stupid. You're gonna hate this, but Zach Taylor, Coach of the Year at +2,700. Now I think— Oh my God. I think he's either first coach fired or Coach of the Year. Jesus. Nothing in the middle. And our friends at FanDuel are too nice to let us bet for first coach fired. So 11, 12, Maybe 13-win Bengals could get Zach Taylor some hardware. Imagine that, 27-to-1.

Who do you think is going to be the first coach fired if it's not Zach Taylor?

Oh, oh no, it's, it's, it's Zach Taylor.

I feel like we've talked about this.

Mo's gonna have some run.

'Cause Bowles would be up there if Tampa starts out slow. Yeah, but it, it's less than you think, right? It's, it's just less, there's less candidates this year because we had 10 new coaches. I know, there are fewer. Usually you have some entrenched ones. Andy Reid's kind of a fun guess for this. Interesting. They just stink and they're like 2-5 and people are like, he's done. Sirianni is a wild card if the Eagles are super disappointing. But it's, it's way less interesting.

KOC is a wild card.

KOC is a wild card potentially. It's all people you would never expect. Aaron Glenn, if, if it's just—

Oh yeah.

Aaron Glenn, as awful as it was last year.

Yeah. Yeah. That team has to get an interception. Um, all right. Uh, okay, that was mine. You go.

All right, I'm gonna take this off the board just 'cause I don't want you to have it. Um, Price on the Seahawks.

Hmm.

Rookie, Notre Dame, 750.5 yards rushing. This is over-under on FanDuel.

Mm-hmm.

He was being drafted like a $25 to $30 running back. if he doesn't get 750 yards, somebody got hurt. Like, with the, with the way that that team runs the ball, the zone blocking, which I'm sure they kept, and I'd— 7— it's a 17-game season. 750 yards, that's 45 yards a game, right? So he'd basically have to get hurt not to hit that. I think they're gonna need him. I don't, I don't know if Charbonnet's coming back.

Yeah.

The other guys are all third-string, fourth-string running backs. I think they're gonna use this guy and ride him, and I'm grabbing it. $750. This reminds me of the Igboke last year, which was one of mine that hit, and it hit in like 9 weeks. But it was like, who, who else are they throwing it to other than him and Mike Evans? Like, we just watched it. So anyway, price $750.5.

That is a low total. So what is that, 40? If he plays 17 games, it's like 47 yards a game.

Ludicrous total. Yeah, I don't really understand.

All right, I'm right. Price is right for Price. I'm gonna write that down. Over 750.5. All right, I'll, I'll stay rookie here since we're doing rookie. Yeah, I picked this award, Offensive Rookie of the Year, correctly. 2 of the last 3. Yeah, I'm gonna say 2.5 really, 'cause Ekubuka, who you brought up, was in the driver's seat for like 9 weeks before he just disappeared.

He got hurt. Baker got hurt. Yeah, he killed a lot of fantasy teams too.

De'Jon Stribling. Oh, for the 49ers, +850. You got Kirk out, Ricky Pearsall on IR. Who knows with Aiyuk if they sign him, if he plays, whatever. Kittle starts banged up. I think this is plenty of opportunity to catch passes from Purdy, who was like top, I think, 8 in yards per game. This guy had back-to-back 800 yards with Ole Miss.

We might have the Mike Evans injury like at some point.

Yeah, right. So you got Evans there. So he had like 4 catches in the preseason, all over 10 yards. Uh, I think he's gonna be— I'm gonna go O'Roy at +850. And I think like you could get him for most receiving yards too at +470, but 850 for these purposes, um, is my pick.

And that was 20-to-1 at one point. It was pretty high. I think, I think that dropped.

Yeah, I'm not getting the best number.

So T-Mac won last year.

Yep.

He came on late like a freight train. Um, normally I'm always afraid of rookie receivers, but The 2 almost won last year.

Okay.

I have another one. This is, this is the goofiest one and I can't decide. Ah, fuck. I'm just gonna do it. Okay. This is a parlay with 3 receivers. This is one of the—

Do this.

One of the only ones.

Yeah.

Matthew Golden on the Packers to get 600+ receiving yards.

Mm-hmm.

Jalen Coker on the Panthers to get 600+ receiving yards, and Raheem Shaheed, Rashid Shaheed, 500+ yards receiving. You put those 3 together, it's +561.

Wow.

And the only way I lose that is if one of those guys gets hurt for half the season. Shaheed is the number 2 receiver on the, on the On the Seahawks, basically. Yeah. And, and if you remember, like, they traded him midseason and they were trying to figure out how to use him, but he's their deep threat. I feel like he's— $500 seems low. You could talk me into $750 for him. Coker, who Holy Cross is on, awesome playoff game last year against the Rams. I think he was like 12 for 140. He was hurt for most of the year. He was gonna be the number 2 receiver, basically was out of the loop for 3 months, came back. And then Golden, the Packers went from 5 receivers to 3. So if you think, if you think Jordan Love's gonna throw for 3,500, 4,000 yards, he's got Kraft and 3 receivers. All of those receivers should be over 600. So +561 for me for that.

Does make sense, but it's too many overs. Like, this is how, this is how you lose money, just bet overs.

That's why I said this was my only one of these.

All right. Let me show you how it's done.

Okay.

Puka under 107.5 receptions.

I love it.

Now I know he had 129 last year, and so this would be a big drop-off, but not that big if you have to sit 2 or 3 games for unforeseen reasons or for foreseen reasons. So he's got some groin stuff going into the season. That's the groin stuff we know about.

It's the least of his problems.

Yeah, exactly. So 104, 105 catches would still be incredible. 108 over, let's say, 14 games is like 8 catches a game. I, I don't, I don't think— like, also the starters might not even play the 4th quarter in some of these Ram blowouts. So I really like the under. I don't root for injuries, but—

Also, does he come back from Australia?

Yeah, that's the other thing.

Yeah.

They're, they're going in, they're leaving the next day. It's like 50/50 he's on the plane.

Arrested for fornicating with a kangaroo, which apparently is illegal.

I love this one. That's a great one. Especially, especially if the kangaroo thing happens.

Yeah.

No, you're catching somebody the year after the best year of their life.

Right.

Um, somebody who took a lot of big hits, who already, you know, might have some injury stuff going and definitely has some other stuff going. So, um, I really like that one. Okay. Can't believe this is still on the board. I looked at this as under 7.5 +210, but I'm gonna go one higher 'cause I just wanna win this. Washington and Atlanta, both under 8.5 wins, 8-9 or worse, both teams +112.

It's good.

I just thought, see, either team—

Why you gotta put the South in everything, man? Just, just Just open up a Waffle House in your backyard already. What are you doing?

Who's going 9-8 out of that combo?

Neither.

Do they play each other? They probably play each other.

Yeah.

+112. I love it.

Okay. I like that. What do you got?

By the way, I should mention with Washington-Atlanta, the 2 NFC teams, we talked about this last week, but these are the 2 NFC teams I'm just shorting every way I can.

The whole time.

I just think both of them are gonna be bad and I still think, feel like the market has not adjusted. I don't really have an AFC team like this that I feel like everybody's off on. I think you could make the cases like Indianapolis. I was excited and I think you went under for us. That was one of your—

Everybody's.

Yeah.

Yeah. But I, I, I don't feel like it's a, like, I feel like these are sure things.

Wow.

That these teams cannot go 9 and 8.

Yeah, I know. Yeah. 7 and 10.

I just don't see a world where either team is not— Washington can't block, Atlanta doesn't have a quarterback, and Atlanta has probably the worst front 7 in either conference. So I'm— I just— that signed me up.

Why don't you bet them to go 0 and 5? I'm sure there's odds on that. I don't know where they are, but I might have the worst record. I mean, you could just parlay, just parlay them losing over and over. All right. This is a bet that you're, you're not gonna like this, but you could do this with any team you like in this division, I think.

Okay.

Green Bay to be the 2 seed at +1,000. I have them to win the division. I have them to win the division at +280, but I think it's a better bet. And you just do this with the NFC North winner who should have not as many wins as the NFC West winner, but I think more than the Cowboys, Eagles. I know you're high on the Cowboys and certainly more than the South winner, right? So wait a second. The West team, The West winner is the 1 seed, and then I think the NFC North is the 2.

So basically, instead of betting Packers to win the division, yeah, you're betting them to be the 2 seed because you're gaming that to be the 2nd best division in the conference.

They'll have more wins than your— they basically just have to have more wins than the Eagles or Cowboys or your Tampa Bay Bucs, whoever you have in the—

10-1 odds. Pretty good.

Yeah, but you could have— who do you have? You have the Bears to win that division, right? Like, you'll get—

I have the Lions.

You have the Lions. All right, so you'll get the—

I don't like it though. To me, that— you're afraid of the NFC South, I'm afraid of the NFC North. Yeah. Um, okay. I can't believe I'm doing this one. You're gonna be so mad. It's another NFC South bet.

What's the matter with you? What happened?

Baker Mayfield, 4,000+ passing yards, +340. So he does. I looked at this, I studied it. 2 years ago, he threw for 4,500 yards.

Yeah.

Last year he was on pace to do it before 7 parts of his body got injured and everybody else got injured. I think their offense is gonna be good. 40— 4,017 a game. That's 200 and what, 230 yards a game?

If they play 17 games. Yeah. Every bone in his body broken last year. But yeah, if he goes 17 games.

Offensive line didn't have Wirfs last year. He has his left tackle back. I think they have a top 4 offensive line. I think they're gonna protect him. I think he plays 17 games and I think he gets this easily. I looked at the 4,500 too, was 19-to-1. thought about it long and hard, but that was aggressive. But he did do it 2 years ago.

Did you mention the contract year? I don't remember.

That's his contract year as well. Little FU, little FU as well.

So there you go. What do you got? The only thing is their defense has— if their defense is better, that hurts their— his numbers a little bit. But, um, all right, as long as we're talking 4,000+, how about Trevor Lawrence? Plus 160. Not as good a number, but probably because he had 4,007 last year. And the team led the league in drops, 45 drops.

I love this.

So if you cut that number to 30, which is still really bad.

Yep.

He should go way over this number. Like you could escalate it to 4,100. You should be okay there too. But I'm gonna go T-Law, $4K, +160.

I love it. And I'm gonna follow it up with another $4K bet.

Okay.

Caleb Williams, +210.

It's a good one.

All the same reasons you said. I actually think they're positioned to throw the ball a little bit more this year than they did last year. Year 2 of Ben Johnson. I feel like Caleb's gonna be better this year. Their schedule's, you know, fairly hard, which I like. You almost want like the, you know, the games that are gonna come down the 4th quarter where, you know, the guy's out there.

Yeah.

I think that's what hurt Drake May last year with some of the passing stuff, 'cause sometimes the games were, were done. But is Caleb just never gonna throw for 4,000 yards? Like, like he's gonna do it at some point.

So just to keep the joke going. Yeah.

You wanna keep going? Do you have another 4,000 yarder? Of course. 'Cause I'll go.

Oh, I don't know if I have a 4,000 yarder.

Okay.

But similarly, Christian Watson, 10+ receiving touchdowns is +340. Wow. So He's never part of that wide receiver slog. He's no longer part with the, you know, they could, Love could focus on him and Reed and Kraft and Golden. Like you said, he typically gets between 6 and 7 touchdowns, but I think he ups it to double digits, gets behind the defense a lot. So do that 10 times, +340.

Sadly, after having burnt, been burned by him multiple times in fantasy, I don't know if I can support any Christian Watson bets.

It's fine.

Yeah, I can support this bet though. David Montgomery, now on the Houston Texans, 1,000-yard rushing season. Just needs 1,000. 1,001 would get it, just 1,000. Get me to 4 digits. +220.

Hmm.

Good defense. Um, he's not sharing it with Gibbs or anything like that. He'll actually— he's going to be a workhorse. I just feel like a lot of 20 for 72, 19 for 75, 22 for 68, 1,000 yards, 17 games. That's less than 60 a game. And he's way, way, way better than anyone they had last year. And it was the biggest hole they had last year.

So I like that.

Plus 220 for that.

Let's, uh, take some heat off of Woody Marks. Yeah, I always try to go by his yards per carry, but it's not really fair 'cause he's a goal line vulture. So he's getting a lot of 1 and 2 and 3 yards.

He's a move the chainser. Right. And that's a key point. Like they had him out there inside the 4 chewing up his— now he's gonna actually go.

All right, you're up. All right, here's a weird one. Vance Joseph, Assistant Coach of the Year. They have this on FanDuel, 11-to-1.

Oh, what?

Won in previous years by Josh McDaniels, Ben Johnson, Jim Schwartz, the Denver defense right up there with Houston. I think—

I didn't even look at this one.

Yeah. They, 68, 63 sacks the last 2 years. They had 4 guys with at least 7 sacks, Denver. He came in second last year, Vance Joseph, to Josh McDaniels. He, he had like 80 votes. McDaniels had 130 or something. So I think he wins it this year, +1,100.

Was Mike McDaniel the favorite for this? He must have been.

Yes, I believe he was.

Yep.

Now I can't find it.

Who's your Dallas defensive coordinator?

Christian Parker. 34 years old.

It could be another one.

Good one.

If you guys go from like one of the 5 worst defenses in the league to like 14th.

Yeah, that's true. I'm rooting for Vance Joseph though.

All right, going big upside for this one. I can't believe you didn't take it. It had Sal written all over it. Malik, what you talking about, Willis? 1,000 yards rushing this year, +850.

I have something like that. Damn it.

That is the most sow bet possible. +850. He's gonna run the ball 10 times a game, maybe 12.

I like it.

He'll break 2 of 'em. He might have a game where he's like 22 for 70. I don't know. But +850, I, I couldn't resist.

All right. This is the one I couldn't resist. Malik Willis. God forbid we have— we don't have a Malik Willis future here.

Yeah. So I have a special section.

Most quarterback rushing yards is +500.

Oh, now that's even better than mine.

No, I don't know if it is, but he's gonna have 2,000 yards rushing. Unfortunately, only like 600 or so are gonna be from behind the— beyond the line of scrimmage.

Forgot about that with the sacks. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But no, they don't— they don't count against you, but they, um, you don't get that thing for sacks.

So I think +500 could work out for We haven't seen a lot of them in, you know, preseason, whatever. It's not like he's playing games, but I do wonder if they're gonna be a really funky team to play.

Mm-hmm.

Where it's just like a lot of running and weird shit and almost like watching some of the stuff UCLA was doing last night.

He'll kill a teaser with a 4th quarter 7-yard touchdown run against us somewhere. Mark it down.

I'm marking it down. I'm also gonna mark down this one. Seattle and New England together over 8.5 wins. You like that piece? 'Cause there's a third piece coming. Rams under 13.5.

Ah.

You put those together, +145. So Rams go 13-4 or worse, I'm basically gonna win 'cause Seattle and New England are both winning 9 games. games, +145.

Interesting.

Um, I really like that one. I was trying to figure out different ways to bet against the Rams, um, and that I just feel like them going 14-3 seems absurd with a top-heavy roster, with the schedule they have, the Aaron Donald probably playing 30 plays a game for the first 3 months of the year, um, some of the schedule shit. This Australia game, like if they lose that Australia game, are they going 14-3? So I, I wanted to figure out something with that.

All right. I feel like an idiot 'cause I did all this research and I'm, I, you know, I fell out with the Rams. I mean, we'll give our Super Bowl pick at the end. Is that what we're gonna do?

Sure.

The last one. Yeah. So, but I, I, I like the first 2. It's hard to believe a year ago Patriots and Seattle were favored to not make the playoffs. Like going into this, just outrageous. I'm gonna do it to you what you did to me here with, yeah, with Drake. Maybe, what do I wanna do here?

No, you're gonna probably shoot me.

Do I wanna do 35+ touchdowns or do I wanna do AJ Brown 10+? All right, I'm gonna do AJ Brown 10+ receiving touchdowns.

I knew I should have taken it.

I think that's a really good call. Goddamn it.

I had it written down.

You gotta read it. It's not, it's not enough to read it and write it down. +240. There's a world, I hate to say this, and there's an emotional hedge where maybe throws for 41 touchdowns, 39 touchdowns, and AJ Brown's gonna get at least 10 of those. +240.

It's a great bet. I also looked at the 12 touchdowns for this.

Yeah.

Which I think was, what was that, like +300 something?

More. Yeah. A little higher. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Uh, but so you got it +125?

+240, 10+.

+240?

Yeah, get in on that.

I wrote down +125 for that. I feel like you're cheating.

For 10 or for 8? I mean, his over-under is, is like—

Did you do 8 or 10?

I did 10.

10.

Okay. Yeah.

All right, well then I'm gonna have to get you back. Myles Garrett, Defensive Player of the Year, 4-to-1. I know it was on your list. 'Cause I know it was on your list.

Okay.

I know you've been looking at it and you've probably bet it in real life. And he will have one of those, he's just gonna love being center of attention and being in big games. And here's the other thing with this, 'cause he had 23 sacks. I was looking at his sacks where he'd have like 14, 15, 17. He, they're in these games where they're down by 20 points, you know, in the beginning of the third quarter. He like, when you have somebody like that and you're up 10 in the 4th quarter when you know the other team is passing all the time, that's when people get sacks.

Right.

So he's gonna be in these situations that, right, he's been in 4 times a year for the last 5 years. And now it's gonna be over and over again where he's gonna try to be Mariano Rivera in these games. So holy shit. I, I feel like he could have like 25 sacks this year.

That's easily the smartest thing you've said in the last hour. Thank you. Yeah.

No, that's still trying.

That's good. I didn't realize. Yeah. I mean, how does he get all these sacks for the Browns when the team is just running the ball trying to hold a lead? And he, and he did it anyway. And now it's the opposite. Good job by you.

It's something Lombardi always used to talk about, like these pass rushes. When you have leads, that's when you really want the pass rush, right? 'Cause when you know what the other team's gonna do and you have these teams that have a good pass rush, but their offense sucks and they're down 10, it's like, well, what's the point of having a good pass rush?

Mm-hmm.

The other team's running the ball. All right.

Definitely.

All right.

I'm gonna, I'm only doing one of these 'cause I lose sleep over these ones. a team like Detroit or the Chiefs doesn't make the playoffs. So I'm, I'm taking teams to not advance to the postseason. I'm taking the Colts, I'm taking the Browns, taking the Giants, I'm taking the Jets, I'm taking the Cardinals. And it's only +156. I gotta tell you something, I'm not worried about any goddamn one of them right this second. Thank you in advance to Danny Dimes and Dart and Deshaun and Jacoby and Geno. Good Lord, those names.

+156. So Indianapolis is the one that could screw you here, probably. There's some smart people on the Giants.

Smart people on playing for the Giants or on the—

Stucky was on, Stucky was on the Giants, which I was shocked by. Like, like the big, basically using the new coach theory with the Giants that Harbaugh, yeah, you know, changing, which I love the new coach theory. I just don't know if Harbaugh is an upgrade from Brian Daboll in that way. Maybe I'm wrong.

Old coach. Yeah, I don't know.

You are a member of the New York Giants. I drive a Dodge Stratus.

Their playoff odds went way, way up after that.

Okay. Vikings 4th in the NFC North, +175 is off the board.

I like that.

I didn't wanna parlay that with anything. That's just a straight up, I think they're the worst team in the division. I think KOC is, is an outside chance for, uh, for first coach. Um, I'm just in disbelief with the love for Kyler Murray. I don't get it at all. We'll see. I'm happy to be wrong. We always need more good quarterbacks. But, um, I just like that team by far the least in that division. So +175 sounds great.

You're good for you, man. You did it. I have a couple of these. You tipped me off to these. Team X to have more wins than Team Y.

Love these.

I'll— you know what, since you did the Vikings, I'll do this too. Chargers more wins than the Vikings, -130. I just did the math. I have the Bolts winning the AFC West, and I do not have the Kyler Murray-led Vikings at .500.

So they're -130.

-130 Chargers more than Vikings.

That's a really good one. Okay, I'll keep the momentum going with, with, uh, Which— what do I want to do here?

I'll keep the momentum going. 30-second pause.

You know what, I don't like your attitude, so I'm gonna take Cowboys over 10.5, plus $500.

Take all the time you want.

Plus $500, is that right? Plus $500.

Um, burning, burning money.

I like this because instead of Betting the division, betting them to go 11-6, they'd win the division. But the division odds are +170. They go 11-6, I get +500 for that. Sign me up. Why would I not do that instead of betting them on the division?

That's fair.

I'd rather have the 5-to-1, 11-6.

I hate this. Something like that. Jinx. I'm betting your team.

It's not a jinx.

I'm betting my team.

It's never gonna work. Listen, we're aligned this year on the Cowboys. I have actual money on the Cowboys this year. I'm gonna be rooting for them to win, and you just gotta fucking suck it up and get used to it.

Wow.

This is what we're doing. We're, we're both rooting for the Cowboys this year.

Maybe you'll be more depressed next Sunday night.

Yeah, we'll both be depressed together. What do you got?

Bijan Robinson. I know you didn't like him. We, we talked about it at the Ringer Fantasy Draft. If you had gotten the 2 seed or if he had dropped to you, number 2, pick. I took him. Most rushing yards, +750. He was 4th with 1,478 last year behind Taylor, Henry, and Cook. Yeah, all 3 are older than he is. I think they're gonna lean on him a lot if, if you're right and Atlanta can't figure out the quarterback thing. This guy is gonna get a lot of carries and he's used to it. So +750 for most yards.

I'm gonna follow that up with Falcons under 5.5 wins, +190.

Wow. It's been like 90 seconds since you had made a South pick. Good.

+190 Falcons 5-12 or worse. I think they're, they will have a top 5 pick next year.

That's pretty good.

Yeah, that's pretty good.

All right. How about this? This is an exact finish parlay. Oh, Raiders 4th. Yeah. Why not? Jets 3rd. Already liked that. Cardinals 4th, +229.

Raiders 4th, Jets 3rd, Cardinals 4th, +229.

Who scores? Who screws me there?

Honestly, nobody. It's good. Maybe, maybe the Jets.

Good, man.

That's really good.

We'll take it.

Um, I'm gonna put Seahawks NFC West +210 on the board.

Hmm.

I just like the odds. I, for the life of me, do not understand why they are such prohibitive underdogs against the Rams.

I don't get it.

I think both teams are probably 2 of the best teams in the league, but I don't understand why there's a dramatic disparity between the 2.

Which we can—

Especially when there's way, way more room for error with the Rams, right? You're talking like 7, 8 guys where 2 go down and it's a different team. They have no depth at all.

Yeah. Should be able to bet that Week 18 decides it 'cause it always seems to in that division. It's a fun one. Yeah. All right. As long as you have +210 on your mind, this is my Falcons, the Colts under 6.5, +210. Just don't take Falcons, Colts, Colts minus under 6.5, +210.

Both of 'em?

No, no, just the Colts.

Oh, just the Colts.

Yeah. Aren't they regularly 7.5?

Yeah. Yep.

I think so.

Yeah.

So there you go.

Wow.

So that's a 6-11.

6-11. Yeah.

Did you tell Dabundo you're doing this?

Yeah, he, he endorses it. He, he covers his eyes and he knows what's coming because that was ridiculous what Dan— Daniel Jones did. And I think he's gonna have the toughest time coming back from this injury.

And then what?

Richardson's like third screen string.

We're, we're skipping over these injuries. Not you and I, but just in general. Like we, right. Everybody is superhuman and just come back right away from ACLs and Achilles. And, you know, Tatum came back for the Celtics, they ramped him up, and he missed Game 7. Quickly, Houston to win the AFC South, it's still +120. I like them so much more than every other team in that division. And really it would only be Jacksonville who is coming off, as we discussed in the over-under pods, like not only is there a regression candidate, but they had an abysmal draft. You know, they lost their first-round pick in the Hunter trade. Nobody liked the rest of the guys they took. They lost Travis Etienne. And I just think Houston's better than them. So +120 sounds fantastic.

I'm with you. Can I piggyback a +120 Texans bet too?

And that is— Yeah, what is it?

The Texans to have more wins than the Eagles. I just look at my— I'd say 12 is bigger than 9.

Right.

And that's it. I think that's honestly, I think they can win that by 2 games at least.

Oh man, you're gonna be mad at me. I have another one. Houston and Seattle over 9.5 wins each. It's all right. Tampa over 8.5 wins, +422. I need 2 10-7s from Houston and Seattle and a 9-8 from Tampa, +422. Sign me up. Sounds great. I have broken my rule of not putting 3 teams in a parlay with over-unders. I just did.

You had a good, you had a really good run. Yeah.

You know what? I, I'm not gonna apologize.

Not even one commercial break.

9.5 each. And then Tampa over 8.5. I, I would honestly be stunned if they couldn't win 9 games. I would— that just means Baker got hurt or their left tackle got hurt.

I hate to do this as a friend, but I really wanna root against Tampa and for Atlanta now so that you hate the NFC South as much as I do. And it's the only way this is gonna change.

Like, this is the only way I'm gonna learn.

Okay. Yeah. Oh, fair.

All right, what do you got? We running out yet? 'Cause I have a lot more.

No, no, no, no. I, and I can make another Offensive Rookie of the Year pick too, right? Can I have a couple or just the one? Jacoby Lane on the AFC side. USC guy, 3rd round pick for the Ravens. Harbaugh never would start these guys. He would like these, like not 1st rounders. He was a 3rd round pick, so he would send them right to the special teams.

Right.

But he's getting 1st string reps with Jesse Mithers. version of the Ravens. So I think it's worth it at +2,200. Jacoby Lane, welcome to Team Sal.

+2,200 is nice odds. Okay, man, I have a lot of good ones left. I'm gonna do this as a tandem just because I think it's a tandem bet. So it's 2 bets, but, um, I like the 2 as a combo because I think it has to be one of these 2 teams.

Okay.

Baltimore 1 seed +500, Houston 1 seed +750. I think you do both and try to hit one. So basically if it's 1 unit each, I, I'm either out 2 units or I'm up 4 units or I'm up 6.5 units. But it's basically a bet on Baltimore or Houston will be the 1 seed. FanDuel, if you wanna throw that up as a ringer future bet, knock yourself out. But, but I think it's those 2. I don't see any other team in the AFC having a better record than those 2 teams.

So you're saying the West battles each other?

Yeah.

Their winner's 11 games. I think it's probably Baltimore. The Patriots and Bills do the same. Yeah. Yeah.

It's basically, I like the Baltimore for the 1 seed 'cause of the schedule with Houston as the hedge. +750. And that's the move. I kind of enjoyed that one.

Yeah, that's a good one. You took me through it.

What do you got next?

Let me do, let me do Parker Washington over 4.5 touchdown receptions, -122.

You motherfucker.

I just, I knew you had it and I think you're gonna bid.

What do you have for a reception?

$21 on him. In, uh, our draft.

I love Parker Washington.

5 or more touchdowns, -122.

Oh man, that's a really good one.

Let's go.

It's -122 though?

-122.

Okay.

It's all right. Could afford it.

I'll take the other— where's the other Parker? Isn't there a Parker Washington? Oh yeah. I have him, uh, 1,000 yards.

Yards.

+165.

Not bad.

So we, we both, we, we both have Parker Washington insurance.

Yeah.

I thought he was incredible down the stretch last year. I loved him. It's outta, it was just, he put it together. He was open all the time. Teams knew he was gonna get open and then he would get open and Lawrence found him and he's awesome. I think he's the best receiver on that team.

Yeah. They, they're just, their pass game in general is gonna be great, I think. All right. Emotional hedge here.

Oh boy.

Hurts 10+ rushing touchdowns, +145.

Has this hit like every year?

It did. I don't think it didn't hit last year, right? I'm pretty sure it took a, took a tumble last year 'cause that whole offense, right? Not good. And here I am like singing songs about how, oh, the tush push, only worked 64% of the time versus 81%. But he's gonna shove it right up my keister now again. Yeah. Yeah. He had 8 last year, 14, 15, 13, and 10 the 4 years before. He'll hit 10.

They're gonna play with a little more pace this year too, it sounds like.

Yeah.

So what'd you get for odds for that?

+145. I like that. 10 or more.

All right. Continuing with my Baltimore theme, Last year I hit the Coach of the Year, and this year I think I'm gonna hit it as well. Jesse Minter, plus 850 for Coach of the Year. I think it's a good way to bet the 1 seed with Baltimore, and I probably just should have done that instead of what I did. But, um, they won— I think they either won 8 games or 9 games last year, I can't remember. But if they're a 12 or 13-win team, yeah, combined with all the stuff we've been reading, which we talked about on the pod last week about how much the players love him, blah blah blah, And I just think he's, every year there's a guy that comes in who is the hot assistant who comes in and he's just, is an awesome coach right away. 2 years ago was McDonald, last year Ben Johnson. This year it's gonna be him. I just, I think it's gonna be him. So +850 for that.

That's a good one. I have Zach Taylor and you have, so that'll be funny if it's one of those 2.

You have Zach Taylor with way better juice.

It's stupid.

Yeah.

Okay.

Dolphins' worst record. Let me just grab this. +220. You wanna win money? How much you wanna win, Bill? You wanna win $22 million? Bet a million.

Great one.

On, or, or $10 million on Dolphins' worst. +220. Way too many young players. Way too much dead cap money.

Yeah.

We went over it last week. Disgusting. Sorry, Malik Willis, but this is what it's gonna be.

That's a good one. It was on my list. Did I do what I did? Washington under yet? Have I done that?

I don't think alone.

Yeah, I'm gonna do Washington under 5.5 wins plus 220. I just like the value because I have the Atlanta one that I took earlier. That was +190. This is +220. So basically if one of those hit, I would— I'm up, right?

Right.

It's basically a Washington or Atlanta 2-to-1 odds that both— one of them will go 5-12 or worse. And I think, I think, I honestly think both of them could. But, but yeah, +220.

You hate House's team. Thursday nights are gonna be fun.

The ironic thing, House is like me. When he, when his team sucks, he'll be the first to tell you. And I think he thinks they're gonna suck.

Yeah, it does.

Yeah.

I just feel like we, we called the regression last year, right? Then, I don't know.

Did you, do you think we should have called this podcast Harlan Cohen's Guess the Lines? Because it's on Netflix. Oh, is it Coben? Harlan Coben or Harlan Cohen?

I don't know.

Who's the guy that's on Netflix? We hit it like very few people get to put their name in front of the show. Like Tyler Perry gets to do this.

Well, it obviously didn't work because you don't know how to say it. It's Harlan Coben.

Harlan Coben.

C-O-B-E-N.

Yeah, he puts his name in the front of the shows and they always crush on the streamers.

Interesting.

And we could have done Harlan Coben's Guest Alliance Year 20, and I wonder if it would have done better on Netflix.

I should have thought of that. Yeah, you're right.

Yeah, I really regret that.

Is it too late? Let's put a poll up, see if it's too late. All right, this is a thinker, but Yeah. Pats 6 seed is +1,000. I like them to make the playoffs.

It's really good.

But not win the division. Yeah. I don't think they'll have as many wins as the 2 West teams that make it, but still enough to get to the postseason. I like them, I like them for the 7 seed too, but the 6 seed is +1,000 and I do think you can rack your brain and, and hedge out of it too, week 18 somehow.

Really smart. I was looking at them at, uh, that to win the AFC East, +140, and I was gonna do it later, but since you just directly attacked me, yeah, I'm gonna do it right now. Pats to win the AFC East, +140. I said this to you and did the over-unders. I have no idea why them and Buffalo don't have the same odds. Nobody can explain it. Buffalo As gamblers, as people who think about the lines and the action, when something doesn't add up to what it actually should be, just because a team is popular or there's narratives that have nothing to do with the actual thing, that's where you wanna be. This Buffalo thing, everybody just has decided Josh Allen is gonna win 11 games for the rest of his life. And there's, I think there's some real question marks with them. And for some reason people have way more question marks with the Pats. I'm not saying who's right or who's wrong, but I think to me it's an either or.

They have won 11 games 6 years in a row, haven't they?

I get it. But they just fired their coach.

Yeah.

And it's like, Joe Brady's gonna be great. I don't know. Is he?

Okay.

What are your favorite Joe Brady moments?

He could be the new Vrabel. Who knows?

Maybe. Mike Vrabel had won though. He'd gone to the AFC title game.

Well, is that a giant?

What's Joe Brady done?

How big of favorites are they for that, for the division?

The Buffalo is a slight favorite for the division. They're, they're a minus and the Pats are +140.

Yeah. All right.

I'm saying they should be the same odds, so I'm grabbing the action.

Okay, that's fine. What do you got? Well, I think you have one of these, but you haven't said it yet. And I think if you give this guy protection and let him sling it, Hmm. And the Chargers end up with 12 wins. That 11-to-1 for Justin Herbert for MVP is a, is a fun bet.

Yep.

Yep.

I like it. I'm too high on the Chargers. Who are you too high on? Ravens? I'm too high on the Chargers.

You know, I was gonna be there with you until they hurt, until the center got hurt and yeah, the left guard, center, right guard combo. Everybody was like, this is gonna be abominable. That really scared me.

So Slater's the key.

I have a Herbert one as well that I'm gonna get off here. I think it's slightly better odds than what you just did, and it's basically the same bet. Justin Herbert, 4,500 yards, 12-to-1.

Oh yeah.

Now I looked up 'cause I was like, he's throwing for somewhere around there, right? He threw for 5,000 yards once.

Yep.

2000, 2021 range. And now McDaniel, and they're, they're gonna have actually a healthy offensive line. This is one of my favorite bets.

Let me write that down. What would you say? 4,500?

4,500 yards, 12-to-1.

Yeah, that's great.

So you figure he has a 475-yard game and like a 460, right? He'll, he'll get close to 1,000 in 2 games and then the rest, like where they, it's just like a shootout, whatever happens. And then I just need to keep him healthy the rest of the way and I'm gonna get my 45.

I like that.

Yeah. All right.

Don't like it. You're, you're right.

All right.

What do I do? So you're gonna hate this.

Okay.

But who do you have for Comeback Play of the Year? 'Cause I have Jayden Daniels at +750.

Oh, I like it.

It doesn't, doesn't mean he has to win 12 games.

So I've, I've boycotted this bet after whatever, when they changed the rules about what constituted a comeback, I just got too confused. But you're right, it's probably something like that.

Don't we want something to scream about? Like, yeah, like this is— they tell you Aaron Donald is not eligible because you can't be retired and come back, and yet he's sitting there as a 3rd favorite at +850.

Why can't you be retired and come back? Well, isn't that the definition of a comeback? I didn't play football for 3 years and then I came back.

Yeah. Guess who's coming back? Aaron Donald.

Yeah. I think it counts as a comeback.

The comeback player. Yeah.

I, uh, I find it hard to believe Mahomes isn't gonna win this unless he goes like 7-10.

Man, he's such a big favorite though, +150.

All right, another favorite of mine, one of my favorite guys in the league. Mallory took him in our Ringer Fantasy Draft right ahead of me. I was upset about it, tried to— I didn't want to give her the satisfaction. Brock Bowers, 1,000 yards, +135.

That's good.

Couple things for this. One, when he is actually healthy, he gets between 90 and 130 yards. That's one. 2, there's always less late games and you need stuff to root for in the late games. And most of the time it's these 2 shit teams playing each other that you can't believe you bet on the game.

Right.

It's really fun to just root for Brock Bowers to make catches. That's true. Right. That's 2, 3. Their receivers are, other than maybe Miami, the worst receivers in the league. But Miami doesn't have anyone like Brock Bowers. Like, Kubiak even said, he had a quote last week about, what's that guy's name? Jack Beck?

Yeah. Besh. Yes.

Jack Besh, however you say it. And they asked Kubiak, like, has anybody stood out so far in the receiver room? And he was like, nope. He's like, basically, he's like, the answer is no, they have not.

So Trey Tucker, whatever Tucker.

Yeah. But Bowers, I just think as long as he doesn't get hurt, and that's the problem with all of these, but how does he not get 1,000 yards? And we talked about, he might play 12 games and get 1,000 yards.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. 'Cause Kubiak and they work well together. Kubiak and Cousins traditionally.

So yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I'm gonna write that down.

What do you got?

What do you Got it right.

You're up. I just did that one.

All right. Bills plus— Bills more wins than the Chiefs, -120. Could be a lot more, but I have it 11 to 10. And again, Bills 11+ wins 6 years in a row.

That's why. -120.

-120.

Okay. I had a bunch of over-the-Chiefs bets I wanted to do and I got psyched out.

You did?

I did. I, I just, I think the Chiefs, I don't think they have the talent. I don't think they're gonna be good. And yet I don't wanna bet against them because the league will be so invested in trying to get them to 10 wins and trying to get them to be good. And I just, I don't want to be on the other side of that. Just been burned by them over the years. Okay. We're, I'm almost out of things, but I have—

You want to speed round 5 more each?

I have—

5 more each.

What do you want? Yeah, I have, well, I'm, I'm running outta ones I really like, but one of them is Bears over 9.5 wins +120.

Okay.

10-7, I win. And I still, I'm still a fan. The regression and the harder schedule thing, I just think that team has a lot of talent and I really believe in Ben Johnson.

Okay.

As we talked about in the over-unders last week, I think he is a top 5, 6, 7 coach in the league and I find it hard to believe he's gonna go 9-8 with the weapons that they have. I don't see it.

It's a good one. It's a good one. Caleb Downs, Defensive Rookie of the Year, +700. Have to have it. Have to have it on my ledger.

Really nice.

God bless this kid. Already a great leader. Maybe the best leader we've ever had through 3 preseason games.

Such a home run pick. Is that the Giants passed on him, right? They took the lineman.

Yeah. Well, they got, yeah. So they, right. They, they went the other way with it.

Yep.

Just a huge mistake.

Just let, just show, just show 'em up.

Did we do Igboeka 1,000 yards at +150 yet? I don't think we did.

No.

Yeah, I'm taking it. I mean, he almost had this in half the season last year.

He's gonna have to do it. I have a lot of, I, I now that I know exactly what your fantasy team is gonna look like Tuesday.

I'm all for value and I don't understand who else is catching 1,000 yards on that team out of all the receivers they have when Mike Evans isn't on the team anymore.

You're gonna have Baker and all his receivers.

You only mentioned one. Sounds great.

I'll take all of them. You're not gonna have any, you're not gonna have any Falcons. You're gonna have Brock Bowers. Yeah. How about Stafford most passing yards plus 500? Ooh, why not MVP? You know, like it gets rid of the ball in like a second and a half. I know I went against myself with Puka under, but you know, they throw it to like 3 tight ends. Throw it all over the place. Yeah.

I'm gonna do another David Montgomery bet because for some reason you left me both of the good ones. David Montgomery, 8 touchdowns, just 8, minus 102.

That's better. 8 rushing, right? Rushing. Yeah.

I think it's just touchdowns.

Is it?

I thought it was touchdowns. Either way, I'll take it at 8 minus 102.

All right. Uh, here we go.

Ooh, who's gonna tap out? Or we do— no, we forgot to call this the Fogo de Chão draft.

We got that.

It's like, tap out.

Daniel Jones under 18.5 touchdown passes, +102. You get a plus number for that. I don't think he's good for one a game.

Under 18.5 touchdowns.

Plays 13 games. He's gonna have to get like 1.5 a game.

What are the odds on that?

+102. It's right there.

So, you know, my dad has 6 brothers and sisters.

Yeah.

Michael Chuck, who's been, um, topic of a lot of conversation over the years.

Love Uncle Chuck.

Great athlete. Um, quirky. One of the things with Chuck, eats a lot, goes out to dinner, overeats.

Like, love it.

Combination of Brad, but also like a golden retriever. Like if you just left too much food out and can't stop eating and then is sick.

Right.

Um, Stayed with my dad last month. When he stays over, he needs a chair in his bedroom that he can sit in because routinely he eats too much and he can't lie down, so he has to get up and he wants to sit in a chair so he can digest better. So when they come, when he comes, they have to make sure there's a chair in there.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What?

And so they went, they took him like Abe and Louie's or something when he was in town. He ate way too much. And my daughter was with them too, watching him just in disbelief how much he was eating. Like it was house eat style. And then the next day he is like, yeah, I had to sleep in the chair.

Uncle Chuck. Holy shit. He's my hero. We gotta make the t-shirts.

The chair.

So he starts in the bed or he starts in the chair?

He's in the, starts in the bed, but it's like eventually knows he has to end up in the chair.

Oh, this is Brad. This is our friend Brad. Yeah. Oh, that's amazing.

This is like House happened to go in the phone booth that time that had no phone. He's just sitting in the phone booth in Portland.

Uncle Chuck. Yeah. Fly him out, please. All right.

Last one or last couple.

Well, then we're gonna do a Super Bowl, right? All right. I'll do one more.

I'll do one. Yeah. Oh, I do. I, am I up? You had Daniel Jones as your last one. Yeah.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So I will bang out. Man, I, I really did everything. I did everything I wanted to do except for—

uh, come on, Uncle Chuck's waiting. He's getting sleepy.

Yeah, I think I'm tapping out.

Really?

I think I'm, I'm down on a Super Bowl pick.

All right.

Oh yeah, I'm tapping out. Oh, I'll do— I'll take a flyer. No, I'm out. I'm— oh, did, did we do, did we do Price for Offensive Rookie of the Year? I don't think we did.

700 yards or something. Yeah. No, you did.

I'll do, yeah, let me do Price Offensive Rookie of the Year +650.

Okay.

I'm not doing either Cleveland receiver. I looked at that long and hard. I got excited about Boston. I actually have that bet. They're gonna have 4 touchdowns.

Yeah.

The quarterback thing's a disaster.

Yeah. I'm trying to think if there's another category we missed completely, but We're good, right? We could always—

yeah, we're good. Do your Super Bowl pick. What is it?

Well, my Super Bowl pick is the Rams over Bills at +3,050.

Rams over Bills.

And if I, if it turns out to be the exact score, which I have it as, when it will, 31-16 pays $50,700. No, I made that up, but 31-16 Rams beat the Bills.

And what are the odds that that happens?

+3050.

+3050. So basically 30 to 1.

Yep. Bills finally get there. What are you going with? Don't say the Patriots. Come on.

I feel like you've picked the Bills to win the Super Bowl.

I know.

At least 4 times. And when you think about it, there's no dumber pick than picking the Bills when they've never won a Super Bowl.

And we talked about this.

I did it last year. And then it's the playoffs and Josh Allen's overthrowing somebody in the end zone and the Bills come back and it's like, why, why is anyone betting on this? Like, if it happens, it happens, but we shouldn't— shouldn't be something you put money on.

But we can't resist. This could be a good hedge if they make it to the championship game, which they didn't. Well, they didn't do that last year either. I don't know. They've— one of these years.

My Super Bowl pick is Seattle over Houston. Seattle going back to back. Mm-hmm. It's +5,340. So it's basically 54 to 1 odds.

Wow.

I normally avoid the back-to-back Super Bowl champ. The lack of respect for Seattle this whole offseason has been truly breathtaking. And if there's ever a team that could be the nobody believes in us back-to-back Super Bowl champ, I think we found it. People don't believe in Sam Darnold. I even, you guys were talking about the NFC West thing. Like he led, he led the division interceptions last year.

Yeah.

Are we sure he was even that good in the playoffs? Are we sure the running backs are good? Kubiak with that, now that he's in Vegas, are they gonna be able to run the ball? Their defense is worse. Schedule's harder. The Rams are a super team.

This is just— What a sell this is.

This is the nobody believes in us, like smorgasbord. It's that they're completely disrespected. They won the title last year, even the Super Bowl. Even the line for week 1 was disrespectful, 3.5. Playing a team they killed in the Super Bowl 8 months ago.

It's 'cause it's Sam Darnold. I mean, let's face it, right?

You think that's it?

What, what quarter? Yeah, of course. 'Cause you wouldn't be shocked after saying all that, and I pose this to the ring of wise guys, if he had like 22 interceptions. And by the way, his interceptions went up last year from the year before. And I think he plays worse defenses this year on paper. But are you gonna be shocked if he becomes like the, the Sam Darnold of the Jets or like a little worse? I don't know.

It's more of a bet for me on McDonald and the fact that he just might be 2000s Belichick again. This team, even the games they lost, they almost won, you know, dating back to like a year and a half. And I, I just, I love that everybody does not believe in them. It's, it fits my, it fits my profile.

Boy, I don't, I don't, I can't even tell who you're gonna root for on Wednesday.

So what was your, What was your favorite of that? That's not funny. What was it? What was your favorite of all your things? We did like almost 80.

It feels like the first one, the Jets. Isn't that sick? Isn't that disgusting that the Jets to come in third is my favorite after all this?

I think my favorite is Houston and Seattle both to make the playoffs, +112. But I also really like Falcons-Dolphins. I, the first 2 I took, the 4th place, +343.

Yeah. Your favorite has to be the NFC South. So Yeah. All right.

That was really fun.

Just so people know the plan, we give these out on Netflix and then we jump in your 2002 Dodge Intrepid and we drive to the Kentucky-Tennessee border and we place these bets. Then we drive back, hopefully in time for Pat's Seahawks kickoff.

And we do that with Harlan Coben.

And with Harlan Coben, the 3 of us, it's gonna be his next movie. We do everything by the book. You're gonna wear a seatbelt every day.

I've been wearing a seatbelt for the last month. I'm still not— I'm still unclear why people— this made people so upset. Like, like, if I had said I was smoking 10 cigarettes a day, would that make people more or less upset than the seatbelt?

I think it's right up there. Let's take Babydoll, for instance. I think this is, this is something I could see Babydoll, our agent, our crazy agent, doing, not you. And by the way, you throw out there that you can't see, you're freaking Helen Keller, you're not able to see anything. No, I can see far.

I can't see close.

I see Isn't the windshield close? Like, I— yeah, there's shit that goes on that's close.

Thanks for making it worse.

No, you're using it. Meine Zehen bringen mich um. Diese Schuhe sind viel zu eng.

Trägst du immer noch diese spitzen Dinger?

Ich meine, sind nicht alle Laufschuhe so geformt?

Nein, du brauchst Altras.

Altra?

Altras sind geformt wie deine Füße mit einer fußförmigen Zehenbox. Einfach viel bequemer. Bezwinge deinen Lauf mit Hallenzehen.

Okay, das klingt traumhaft.

Mehr Komfort, Kraft und Dynamik. Alles durch die Passform. Altra versteht das einfach. Altra, stay out there.

Wow, it's good.

Today's Parent Corner— I'm squinting— is brought to you by Instagram. Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections on by default, built-in content settings for the content teens can see and I can't see. Contact limits for who can contact them and time management tools like daily time limits and sleep mode. My left eye is so dry. Teens are automatically placed into teen accounts and teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of these settings to be less strict. Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences. I'm so glad they're doing this. I think I read that correctly.

I think in like 5 minutes you're like, so hold on. We gotta do— it was Instacart. I read it wrong. It's Interstellar. I don't know. Was it Instagram?

No, it was Instagram. I got that right. Okay, you're up first.

All right, all right. I have 2 beach stories with the summer officially wound down here. So yeah, last week my youngest 12-year-old, Haris, and I, we, um, we're gonna go to the beach. I'm like, we're running out of days here. So he brings his surfboard. We stop at the convenience store, get some fruit, sandwiches, chips, drinks. I'm in heaven. We walk down to the beach. I lay it all out on the blanket. I'm like, let's eat first and then we'll go in the, in the, in the sea and it'll be great. And he says, he's like, no, no, no, I gotta go. I gotta go. The waves are good. They could go away. Like, they go away? He's like, yeah, it really could get less and, you know, the, the, it could be shorter waves. I'm like, yeah. All right, fine. So now all the food's out and I'm like recording him. He's like, get it. Actually catching a couple and I'm getting some good shots, and then someone sets up a blanket right in front of me. And so now I can't record, so I have to walk down and record him. I just want a minute of him, and then I'll walk back.

So I'm recording him, and I just happen to look back, and there were 30 effing seagulls on our blanket, and they just devoured everything. The sandwiches, the chips. And I go running up there like I'm a madman. They took the tub of watermelon. Which is heavy for a bird. These scumbag rat birds took everything, everything, everything. And a half hour later, Harrison comes out of the ocean. I'm like, well, we got some bad news. I'm like, the food is gone. He's like, well, how much? I'm like, all of it.

Literally all of it.

Yeah. Yes, all of it. There's like a little scrap of lettuce on the blanket, but a seagull will be there in a minute to get there. All right, so that's that story. Cut to—

Can I interrupt you quick on that?

Yeah, yeah, that was my fault. Completely my fault. Nothing cute about kids or anything.

What do seagulls bring to the table?

No, I know.

It's kind of an underrated— they don't get enough scorn— bird.

I feel awful.

Who has a good seagull story? Anyway, keep going.

I have a good one. My father hated them so much he would maybe, um, plant Alka-Seltzer on the blanket. Yeah, he's a bad dude. Not good for seagulls.

Oh my God.

Read the back of the, uh, probably shouldn't have said that.

Anyway, at least we're not live.

I know. There you go. All right. Um, okay, so fast forward another beach story to a couple days ago. Our friend Brad, how would you describe for our first time Netflix? Actually, he's been on Netflix. He was in, in that hitchhiker, um, that, uh, that hatchet-wielding hitchhiker thing.

He's been on this pod with us.

Yes.

He's been— we've done, done stuff with him.

Go back and listen. He's just a crazy person. He, he fled. He joined the Navy to escape paying gambling debts.

He doesn't have a nervous system, I think would be the best way to describe him. That's good. The way, the way he is day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute is like if somebody came in right now and threw fireworks into the studio as I was doing the pod, and I jumped up because I was scared. Right. That's kind of him all the time.

Exactly.

I would say.

And he's loud and he's boisterous and he's very confident.

Right. Very confident.

He'll go after you.

Like, a lot of opinions.

The draft's going to be fun with him just going after. So anyway, all right. So he's come— I have custody of him for a couple days when Kimmel's on hiatus and he comes out here and he's like, I only want to go to the beach. So you would think if he only wanted to go to the beach, he would bring a bathing suit. But being 53 years old and having lived here a couple of decades, he doesn't own a bathing suit. So I have to lend him a bathing suit. Yeah. Oh, no.

Burn that thing.

Yeah, that's it. So I lend him— burn him and the seagulls at the same time. Yeah, I lend him a bathing suit. I don't expect to see it again. So he goes right for the ocean when we get there and he is getting pounded. He is getting slammed to shit by the, by the waves. And he's screaming at the waves while he's getting slammed. He's like, turn it off. Turn it off. It's like a lot of it is for show, but he's also getting like thrown around.

Yeah.

And he also doesn't know how to— like, the drawstring is a foreign concept to him. He just puts it on. I guess he's never had a bathing suit before. And so when he is getting hit by the waves, his, his, my bathing suit is immediately coming down. So he's nude and he's screaming in the ocean and onlookers watching from the beach, the reaction ranged from somewhere between thoroughly amused and considering pressing charges. And so after, I'm not kidding, like 20 minutes of this, my son Jack comes up to me. He is like, hey, we, I think we should get him out. I'm like, all right, let's get him out. I'm, I'm on the thoroughly amused side, but let's get him out.

And as I'm coming out— Oh, we should mention you're also videotaping this.

Yes.

I'm sending the videos later.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

On video, I sent it to you. And, uh, and like the lifeguard walks up too and he is like, hey, uh, Should you get him out? Like, he's asking me if I should get him out. Like, this is a situation like he should probably be in there, but he doesn't want to touch Brad. And so, so I'm the one who has to pull him out. He's like, oh, what are you doing? What are you doing? I pull him out. I'm like, you're nude, you're screaming, you're a menace. I have to get you out. And he's like, motherfucker, I was just having fun out there. I'm like, having fun?

You're dying. But then the lifeguard thought he was drowning, right?

Yeah.

The lifeguard's like, hey, go get him. He's drowning. Which is not a lifeguard thing to do. Anyway, that's that. We've watched the Ray Gun documentary and that was, that was my 4th son.

I mean, here's the thing. He can't keep his normal pants on. Everyone in LA has seen his butt crack for 23 years. So putting a bathing suit on him, I don't know how tight the drawstring would have to be.

It's true. Yeah. I should have duct taped it to him. Yeah.

Yeah, you might have. Or do the thing where they painted it on.

Well, it is now, so you can figure it out.

Brad, um, I have 2 stories, both about walks. I went back to Boston for my daughter's first 2 games, walking to the game, and it's kind of— it's like drizzling a little bit. We're walking through the city, um, and I'm walking with, um, my daughter's already there. I'm walking with her boyfriend, the famous Hank. and my son Ben. And I feel like this thing hit my head, which I thought was water, but I was like, man, that felt heavy. Pull my head up and it's a giant green bird shit that's just a clump. And I throw it down. So now, now it's in my hand. I'm wiping on the thing. But then— and Ben and Hank are horrified, but I'm like, no, no, this is good luck. This is good luck.

Yeah.

Uh, this is a big Italian thing. I wrote about this in 2004. when the, when the Red Sox, that whole playoff run, I got shit on by a bird and I didn't wash the shirt because it was good luck. And I, I have a whole column about it. So I was instantly like, this is great luck. There's no way Zoe's not scoring tonight. Wish we could have bet on it, but they don't have a lot of D3 women's soccer. But anyway, she did score. It was a good start to the season.

Yeah.

I get to the game and people are like, hey Bill. And I'm like, Don't shake my hand. Hold on. I got burnt. And then I walked like an extra 15 yards. So anyway, that was one. The other one is, um, go to Fenway with my dad and my son and, and Hank. And my dad takes an Uber, he meets us there, and then we're gonna walk back to his place after, which I would say is a 25-minute walk. We leave Fenway, they get killed by the Mariners. It was the one good game the Mariners have played probably in 10 days. And I, I wanna mention just as an aside, I hate the Mariners with the passion of 7 hells. Wow. Wow. We have so many of them on our fantasy team. Oh, Cade Anderson, who they yanked around forever, finally brought up, and now he's not even doing as well as we thought. George Kirby, who I would rather quit fantasy baseball than have him again. Josh Naylor, who's been pretty good this year and limped through, he, he just didn't run out a double play where the guy, the second baseman bobbled the ball.

Throws it, and somehow they still get Josh Naylor in the double play because the whole team has quit on the manager. And then Munoz, the best closer in the AL, who's blown 9 saves this year, and every time he comes in, he throws 100 miles an hour and people just hit it everywhere. I hate this team. I can't even imagine how Mariners feel. Uh, I don't know why they haven't fired Dan Wilson, except there's a theory that they want the Mariners— They want the Mariners fans to feel happy after the year, so they're saving the Dan Wilson firing. Anyway, we lose to the fucking Mariners. And we're leaving Fenway and my dad's like, we should take a cab. Now it's like this huge mass of people and we're like, nah, we'll walk slow. Ask this guy. There's a cab driver there. It's like, how much would you tell the address? He's like, $35. I'm like, we're not paying $35 to go. It's a, it's a short walk, Dad. You'll be fine. We're walking. He starts complaining halfway through. My dad's 78. He's doing the, I'm 14 months till being 80. We stop at one intersection, he puts his hand on the meter, then he says he has a pulled groin.

He's like, I pulled my groin a few months ago. And I— so now we're arguing about his pulled groin on the intersection. Hey, pulled groin?

How?

What were you, like, playing pickleball? Get to the house, um, he's completely wiped out. And then the next day he's supposed to go to the museum with Ben and, uh, and bails because he was still worn out from the Fenway Park.

Wow.

25-minute walk, which we then argued about for the rest of the way. And he's like, you should be more supportive. I have a pulled groin. And I guess this is just what our relationship is going to be like with our parents for the rest of our lives.

I am 1,000% on his side with this pulled groin.

25-minute walk.

25-minute walk. First of all, that doesn't even count all the meatheads who are going to approach you. Yeah, I love what you do, man. Hey, you know what you should do? You should talk about it when Tatum and Brown and— I was like, oh, my. How do you even deal with that for 25 minutes? $35? Who the frick cares? I thought you were gonna say it was like—

It's a nice day. It was a nice, nice, nice walk. Everyone's going slow anyway. So now you're aggravated.

78.

I didn't even know I had a pulled groin. So now I felt like I was like an elder abuser.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, it's— then he wouldn't go to the museum the next day.

I don't know. Wow, that sucks.

And then I should mention, during Parent Corner, we have a new strategy with my mom.

Yeah.

Because you'll know this, because the Italian side, they want to be invited, but they never want to come.

Oh, yeah.

So we now call my mom every time we're doing anything because she'll turn it down. But then she feels like we thought about her and we asked her, like, do you want to go to this Labor Day party tonight? Starts at 6:00. There's no way she's going. But now she feels, you know, she feels like, oh, they thought of me. They were nice enough to invite me. And you somehow win points inviting them to do something they'll never do. I know you identify with this, right?

That's good. Of course. Are you making her walk? Is that why she's never going?

My mom walks every day. My mom was outraged that my dad wouldn't. He was like, this is why we got divorced.

That's why.

See, now he's gonna be mad at me. I don't know.

I love it.

Like 20 short, slow, 25-minute walks.

Yeah. Oh, 78. Yeah. I mean, you power walk through the Sistine Chapel. I mean, it's just a foreign concept to you.

When we went to the Red Sox game, I didn't see him on the injury report. Like, shouldn't they put questionable, questionable pulled groin?

You took your Mariners frustration out on a 78-year-old man. Very sad.

One other thing on Fenway Park, they have the Fenway Frank, which is delicious, but they also have the jumbo Fenway Frank. It's like a fatter, better one. Mm-hmm. I think it's the best hot dog of, of any stadium or— but I, it's really delicious. And they have the spicy brown mustard too. I just, I forgot.

Oh, they do have it.

Okay.

So I think they're like one of 4 parks that have the spicy brown. There must have been a lawsuit there somewhere because Citi Field has it. Dodger Stadium does not. Yeah.

They only have like the gross yellow mustard.

The yellow for 7-year-old kids, the yellow mustard.

Can we make this a passion thing for us for the rest of the year is to push for more spicy brown mustard? It's like, that's what goes with a hot dog.

Of course. That— the only thing I could think is there was a lawsuit, someone burnt their tongue, or some idiot complained, and that was that.

Oh, like it was too spicy?

Yeah. So just make a nice spicy yellow.

Yeah, I just forgot how good that jumbo dog is. It was great. Had a great time. Anyway, that is, uh, that's Parent Corner for us. It was brought to you by Instagram. Instagram teen accounts come with automatic protections that limit who can contact teens, the content they can see, and the time they spend on the app. Learn more about Teen Accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts. I pulled it off.

Comes with automatic erections— protections! Damn it! I can't read!

I screwed up again!

Oh man.

Um, all right, that's it. We did it.

Let me say one thing. I won't get us in trouble, but with the Hank thing, and I just— I, I'm not gonna get us in trouble here, but Dude, you went the lengths you went through to get rid of your daughter's boyfriend. It was the— it— that— it was Tony Soprano-esque. I can't believe it.

And it— No, I feel the opposite. I love Hank. I didn't want to put Hank in jeopardy.

He fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

So you think it was a Tony Soprano move?

Really was. I mean, he's got work release. He has to get out for 3 hours to go to a Red Sox game with you. It's very sad.

Listen, it would— we— it was a very funny bit on the podcast last week, and it probably, probably colored my opinion on whether it should stay, because we're always going to go for the comedy first, right? This week you're going to get in trouble because your dad was feeding Alka-Seltzer to seagulls. This is just how it's going to go.

You fed your dad to the seagulls.

Apparently I did. His mystery pulled good.

People are already mad at me. They say I instigated that whole Hank story. And I feel like I, I feel like I'm the guy— I run interference on some of your controversial decisions. Remember when you, at the time, you wanted to come out and brag about tossing your jury summons in the trash? And I'm like, no, don't do it. You're gonna get in trouble. And you're like, yeah, you made that up. You made that up.

That's it for Harlan Coben's Guess the Lines, year 20. Check that out. Uh, thanks to Eduardo and Chris and Gahal and Jack And everybody at Spotify. Jack Wilson, just a complete maniac, runs production for us and just went in on— went in today, just wanted to make sure everything goes right. So thanks for him.

Where'd he go in?

He went into work to help produce this.

Um, oh, neither of us are there.

And then thanks, uh, thanks to everybody who voted on the polls. Thanks to everybody who sent in mailbags. So when we come back on Sunday, it'll be after Cowboys-Giants. It'll either be both of us happy because we have Cowboys bets.

Yeah. Or crestfallen Sal and me screaming at you, why'd you let me bet on this?

Cowboys.

Come on, don't screw me. Give me one week of pure joy.

Thanks, Netflix. Cousin Sal, good job by you.

Good job by you, buddy.

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Diese Schuhe sind viel zu eng.

Trägst du immer noch diese spitzen Dinger?

Ich meine, sind nicht alle Laufschuhe so geformt?

Nein, du brauchst Altras.

Altras?

Altras sind geformt wie deine Füße, mit einer fußförmigen Zehenbox. Einfach viel bequemer. Bezwinge deinen Lauf mit Hallenzehen.

Okay, das klingt traumhaft!

Mehr Komfort, Kraft und Dynamik. Alles durch die Passform. Altra versteht das einfach. Altra. Stay out there.