Transcript of Luka’s Revenge, NFL QB Roulette, and Tales from 'White Lotus' With Sheil Kapadia and Dave Bernad

The Bill Simmons podcast, presented by FanDuel Sportsbook. I am recording this right after Lakers maps, just the very top here. Four things I wanted to hit coming off that game. Number one, the Luka Donchis trade is now seeming stupid for Dallas. Oh, wait. It was stupid immediately when it happened. This is just a disaster. I can't believe Nico Harrison actually went to the game. They weren't going to chant, Thank you, Nico, at him for two and a hours. If I was him, I would have pretended to have COVID, the flu, bronchitis. I don't know what, but I would not have wanted to be in the building. That's just nuts. All right. Three actual takeaways. One, this is already the best rivalry in the NBA. I'm the most interested in every Lakers-Maverex game from now on. We didn't even have Anthony Davis tonight. We didn't have Gaffer. We didn't have Lively. There's going to be a version of this game, at least for this season and next season, I would guess, where you You have this big Mavericks team with a bunch of size, and then you have this weird Lakers team that's playing small, but they're not small because their frontcourt has 800 pounds of guys.

Then Luka trying to get revenge against his old team and just a lot of different stories lines that I think are great. We had this in the 2000s, the seeds of it when Shaq went to Miami, but Kobe's Lakers team wasn't good enough. We had the seeds of it when Durant went to Golden State in 2016, and then there is going to be an OKC Golden State rivalry, but Golden State was just way better than OKC. This has a chance to be a really fun back and forth. Every time they play, it's going to be a fun game like the one tonight, and I'm looking forward to it. I would say for the rest of the 2020s, this is our best bet for an awesome NBA rivalry. Boston, Cleveland, maybe that'll get there. I doubt we're going to have all the story lines and the baggage that this one has. I don't know, Minnesota, OKC. Sure. Sga, Anthony Edwards, that'll be great. Can't wait to watch those guys battle, but it's not going to have the baggage in the history of this rivalry. Depending on how long LeBron is able to play at this level, this is the best we're going to do.

Could we get this as a 2-7 matchup in the NBA playoffs? Lakers right now, 35 and 21. Two-seed is conceivable for them. Dallas right now is the eight-seed. There's a bunch of teams tied in between seven and 10. They're getting some guys back soon. If you want to get good ratings, NBA, I would rig a two-seed in Lakers-Dallas, I think would be the way to do it. Anyway, this is an awesome rivalry. That was my first takeaway to night watching this where I'm just like, this is must watch TV every time these two teams play. The second one is the Lakers who Roussel and I talked about on Sunday night. I think they're a wild card contender. They're not one of the four contenders to win the title, but they might be fifth. They're definitely the, I I don't know what the ceiling is of this team yet. They're 15 and 4 in their last 19 now. They've been top five net the whole time. Rui at center, which they've done from time to time when AD was out, but they're doing it by necessity now because the Mark Williams trade got canceled. He's a little Carl Anthony Towns as chair at times, and I mean that in a good way.

He's got size, he could stretch the floor, and he's just big enough that he can push against a post-up player, not the not a rim protector, neither as towns. But when you watch them, and it's their crunch time today, and I think their crunch time just going forward, Reeves as the point guard, even though he's not a point guard. Rui as the center, even though he's not a center. Then LeBron and Luca and Finney Smith as the wings. They're all just really smart basketball players who can fill in the blanks and not totally get burned. The rim protection is not going to be perfect. There's going to be guards like Kyrie tonight that they're just not going to be able to stay in front of unless it's a team defensive concept. I think it works. I'm bullish on this Lakers team as a contender. Everyone's like, Oh, you hate the Lakers. You hate the Lakers. When the Lakers are good, I'm going to admit it. We were admitting it. We were doing pods all the way up until COVID happened in the 2019-20 season, saying the Lakers, Clippers are the two best teams. I think the Lakers are a legit contender.

I think they can get away with these goofy lineups because they're really well coached and their best two players are really smart and know where to go and what to do. That's my second takeaway. Ironically, Luca is not in any of my big three takeaways because we know how talented he is, we know how good he is. It was interesting. You would have bet, if you're betting on Fandil, you're doing the same game. They had the Parlay Boost token. The obvious bet would have been, oh, Luca, revenge, points. And it never works out that way. He just did the classic other version of a Luka game where he filled out every part of the box score. I got a triple-double, but he did not have the 40-point game, which I think when you think about revenge, it wasn't what we saw at a night, but he played a really smart offensive game and really controlled it and did a lot of good stuff. But that leads to the third thing. Watching LeBron reinvent himself on the fly, and I think this is his 22nd NBA season at age 40, when we thought we had seen every version of whatever was happening with I didn't think he ever had a chance to compete for a title again.

Almost immediately, he has figured out how to coexist with Luca, how to let Luca have the ball way more than we've ever seen LeBron be comfortable with with the teammate since 2011, Miami, playing off the ball and figuring out how to affect the game in all these different ways. Then when he gets the ball, doing LeBron things. This is a hybrid of 2011, Miami, that first year, when it was still Wade's team and he was easing his way into it. He was still getting his stats. But there was a lot of time when Wade was cooking because Wade was one of the three best players in the league. He's deferring to to Luke, at least what we've seen so far, while also trying to figure out all these different ways to fit in. He'll get these sneaky offensive rebounds. He only had two assists today because he didn't have the ball that much, but he still ended up with, I think he had 25 and 12, got some big rebounds. And then defensively, the first What, two months of the season, he was just atrocious defensively, and all the advanced metrics backed it up. He's been way more active.

I'm just really impressed. The defense, the rebounding and the off the ball stuff is about as high a as it gets. We were working on the Ringer 100 stuff. After the second month of the season, I didn't think there was any case for him to be a top 25 player anymore. I don't think there's nine players playing better than him right You go Jokuj, SGA, Yannis, Tatum, those four. Luka from a pedigree has to be still a top 10 player. Mitchell, Brunson, Edwards. Then it's LeBron and Cade are probably the 10 best players in the league right now. There's been some injuries. We've lost some guys. But LeBron has to be in the top 10. I think he's the second team on the NBA guy the way this is going. He's been awesome. At this point in his career, when he's done pretty everything you could do, and we see a lot of the old superstars. Doug Collins always used to talk about how hard it is to coach an old superstar. He seems like he's completely bought in to, Hey, we might actually have a chance to win. What do I have to do?

It doesn't seem like there's a lot of ego stuff, which you see with a lot of older players. Just how do I fit in? How do we win? How can I chip in? It's really interesting to watch. I'm taking the Lakers seriously. Those are my big takeaways from Lakers. Nabs. We have a lot more on the podcast coming up. Hey, don't leave the podcast now. I still got football and White Lotus for you next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast Network, where I put up a brand new rewatchables on Monday night. Me and Van Lathen and Joanna Robinson did crash the 2006 Oscar winner. It's the 20th anniversary of that movie. We rarely do this on the rewatchables where we just bring a movie on just so we can pick nets with it for an hour and a half and make fun of it and do a whole bunch of things. I had a really good time. I thought this was a very entertaining episode. Every once in a while, we just got to do this to keep the muscles fresh. Anyway, you can watch that as a video podcast on Spotify.

You can go to the Ringer Movies YouTube channel and watch it there as well. You can get all the videos and clips from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. Then last but not least, Celtic City on HBO. Sunday night, March third, HBO Max. It's going to be once a week. It's nine episodes. It's one of the coolest projects I've been involved with, and I'm really psyched for everybody to watch it. So mark it down. I know there's a lot of good TV on these days, but mark down, Pacific City. It's coming. I'll talk more about it on Thursday's podcast. Coming up for the rest of this podcast, Shio Capati and I are going to talk about the quarterback situation in the NFL right now. A lot of teams that need one, a lot of teams that can't find one, some guys might be moving teams, some top 10, possibly top five, possibly top three, quarterback prospects that are going to make the draft more interesting. We're going to cover all that. Then my friend Dave Barnad is going to come on who is an ERP of White Lotus and has been a producer for a long time.

His story is interesting. His story is about White Lotus and just what it's like when you see somebody as an executive producer of a scripted TV show, what is that job? What do they do? We're going to dive into all of it. I promise you you're going to like it. That is what's happening.

First, our friends from Pearl Jip. All right, Shio Capotia from the Ringer is here.

A roller coaster ride of a month for him. The Eagles win the Super Bowl in about as convincing a fashion as we've had in a while. Then on the flip side, the Sixers have spiraled into a fiery pit of hell. Do you care? Does anyone in Philly even care about the Sixers right now?

A little bit, but you can't wipe the smiles off everyone's faces. It usually just goes back to the Eagles and the Super Bowl, and then rooting now for the Sixers to just hold on to that pick one through six. I think that's what it's returned to here.

Yeah, it's going to be... If they end up in the sixth spot and it's a top 6 protected pick and you're just holding your fingers crossed that nobody leapfrogs them. I think ending up at seven after how devastated the season would have been, that would be an all-timer. The Eagles thing, I'm still kicking myself for not picking them. I have so many regrets. I talked to you that first week before we got into the Super Bowl week. I'm like, I'm taking the Eagles. I'm taking them. I really think they have a better team. Then by Wednesday, the Mahomes Kool-Aid had washed over me. The fear of just being wrong and having Mahomes. I'm like, God. It just that was it. That was the only reason. I'm never doing that again. If all the evidence is on one team like that, I'm just never doing that again. I'm never buying into this whole amorphous, Well, you got to do it. They win all the time. This is the stupidest thing you could do. Why did we do it?

I picked the Eagles.

No, I know you did. I'm saying that all the Oklahoma Homes pickers.

It came down to, yes, great quarterback versus great team. I think we knew the Eagles had the better team, numbers 2 through 53. I don't know anybody that picked the Eagles to blow them out in that fashion, though, the way they did. No one does that to the Chiefs. I mean, really, it was an all-time performance. That's why everybody still Anywhere you go still has the Eagles gear on and is not ready to turn the page to any of the other teams right now.

So all the Eagles fans have told me the Pat Super Bowl because it was the first one of two generations, basically, was a more emotional, better one. But this was in a lot of ways more satisfying, especially the Jalen Hertz piece of it, which I think as we get away from that game and the days pass and it's just weren't really sure what you had with that guy. Then he was really awesome. I was watching some of the inside the NFL type stuff after that game. He was just great in that game. That's one of the better QB performances. Going forward, for the money you're paying, all right, it's like, all right, we can win the Super Bowl with this guy. This is good. What is the shelf life for the Seagles team with all the stuff they've done with the cap because I know they were maneuvering and getting a little creative, but at some point that runs out, right?

Yeah, I think you and I talked about like, quarterback analysis before, and has it gone too far? Where now we don't care as much if the guy is winning. It's more about the film and the analytics. And Hertz has been a throwback where all season long, I know we had conversations. It's like, all right, it's a little up and down. Then the two biggest games of the year, he comes through and is fantastic in the NFC Championship game and the Super Bowl. So I'm with you. I think it changed his legacy and the way he's viewed, at least locally, but also nationally. In terms of the window, they're in a good spot. You mentioned it, 2017, it was like that was magical for everyone because they had never done it before. This feels like it's built to last. They've got young guys in the secondary. They've got young defensive linemen. They're going to bring back 10 of 11 starters, at least on offense. They're in a very good spot where I would expect this. You never know if you get to another one or win another one. But the window is more open than it was, I think, the last time they won one.

Yeah, you figure it's four or five years for the window. That was certainly the Pats had three different windows during the braided era. As we've discussed in the past, all them hinge on if you can nail a couple of draughts in a row, which is the Eagles did that. They're probably the best example of that, the drafts that they had the last couple of years. And then looking out with that linebacker who now is going to become one of the top three agents. A couple of really shrewd signings where you pay X amount for somebody, and then he It turns out to be an A-lister. It's really impressive. You don't think there's an unexpected trade with them, though, right? There's no, Hey, here's the time to trade A. J. Brown right now for draft capital so we can get... They're going to do anything crazy?

I don't think they're going to trade a core player. If there's an unexpected trade, if Miles Garrett gets dealt and it's a position of need and you say, Hey, we're not going to be drafting high in the next couple of years anyway, and this is a premium position, an elite player to add to best defense in the NFL. That, to me would be a Howie Roseman move. I don't know that it's going to happen, but when I look at the list of teams that I would say I could actually see them giving up a haul for Miles Garrett, I would put them on that list of two or three teams.

You don't think Parsons gets into play this year, right?

I don't think. I think this is the Cowboys being the Cowboys. Let's get ourselves in the headlines for three months over some nonsense, and then we'll end up making him the highest paid defensive player in NFL history. I don't know how you take yourself seriously and trade like a generational defensive player like that. But I guess who knows?

Well, it's the thing where you've already committed to these other guys money-wise, and it's almost like you've made the mistake of doing that, and now you compound the mistake by doing the second thing. It's almost like the Embed extension, the Sixers did, where it's like, Well, we're all in. Okay, here's the extension, and you're just making things worth. So, Eagles plus 6: 50 on FanDuel to win the Super Bowl again. They're the favorites. Kc 701 which I thought was ambitious because that's an aging team in a lot of respects. I don't know. They have the same offensive line problems that half the league has. They can't be like, Well, we need a left tackle. Well, cool. 15 teams need a left tackle. Kelsey, don't even know if he's coming back or not. I thought that was pretty ambitious to have them tied with the Ravens. The Ravens are 7: 1, too. I probably would have had the Ravens as the favorite at coming out of the AFC. Detroit's down to 9: 1, San Francisco is 12: 1. Buffalo plus 750. Then we get into some intriguing teams. When you go into the longer shot, it's like Texans 28 to one jumped out to me, a whiff.

Vikings, 32 to one if you can make a case for McCarthy to be good next year, but they have a lot of cap space, too. I thought that was interesting. And then really, nobody. Is there anybody else you were thinking long shot-wise? That you're like, I want to see what happens with their draft and free agency and there might be value now?

The packers you didn't mention in there, I don't think. Did I miss the pack? I might have missed the packers.

21: 01 packers.

Okay. They're a team that I think just had a weird year where I think there's a path to them being in the mix and being really good next year.

Well, they're trying to ban the push-push, so they're already getting on it right now.

That has made Eagles fans much more angry than anything the Sixers are doing. They've turned their wrath to the packers and they're like, Those losers, they want to ban this play that they So that's interesting. And then I think a team that we'll get to here and talk about quite a bit, the Rams. We don't know what they're going to do, but if you look at the Eagles Super Bowl path, who was the one team that really played them tough in the snow, and it came down to the final possession. It was the Rams. And you can really look at the Rams the last two years and be like, if you played every season out 10 times, there's definitely a scenario where I think they get to the Super Bowl each of the last two seasons. So they're another team that stands out to me a little bit as well.

They are so fucked up, everybody who was going against the Eagles the last two rounds, because they really came on like a freight train in the Rams-Egals game. And that was the worst the Eagles looked the whole playoffs just for that fourth quarter. I brought you on to do a little quarterback roulette. Usually, teams, we go into the offseason and teams need quarterbacks, but it feels like it's an unusual amount of, this could go this way, this could go this way, this could go this way. I wanted to go through all the scenarios, but we should start with the Rams before we go through the draft pick teams. The Rams, they have Stafford, they have the 26th pick, they have 44. 3 million in cap space. There's some weird Stafford stuff where if they trade him, they take a massive cap hit for this season. They save like $4 million, something like that. But long term, dead cap, $45. 3, and they would save $4. 3. The new team that takes him, he'd count for 27 million, $4 million guaranteed this year and 31 million next year. Is it realistic to you that he gets traded?

We don't usually see this with a team trading an expensive quarterback and taking cap hit, and then another team absorbing a big contract? Do you see him getting traded?

I think it's the biggest story in the NFL right now. It's the biggest domino to fall. I think it really goes back to last offseason where they were at ahead, Matthew Stafford and the Rams, with this contract. Ultimately, the Cams gave in a little bit. It didn't happen, I think, until the first day of training camp where finally they came to an agreement. But it's pretty clear that Matthew Stafford wants to cash in and feels like all this big quarterback money that's getting paid out there, he feels like he's playing better than those guys. I think Peter Schrager, throughout $50 million per year, is what he's seeking. So this isn't just a new thing that's crop. That's what makes me think there's some legs to it and he could get traded.

Now, having said that- Hold on on the $50 million a year because Tua is making that Hertz is making that. So if I'm Matthew Stafford, I'm like, I'm worth $50 million a year. Look at that guy and that guy.

Yeah. And even last year, Kirk Cousins, often Achilles, similar age, got 46 and a half million dollars per year. So I get that aspect of it, and I get the aspect of the Ram saying, Dude, you're going to be 37 years old. We've paid you a lot of money over the years. You're under contract. We can't commit to three more years of Matthew Stafford because we just watched Kirk Cousins and Aaron Rodgers and old quarterbacks around the NFL when When the cliff comes, it comes pretty quickly. I think that's what this is about with the two sides. I don't know. They've given Stafford and his agent permission, Hey, go negotiate with other teams, see what you can get, and then the Rams can decide, Hey, is that compensation worth it? I think what's going to happen is everyone's going to take a deep breath and the Rams are going to say, We are a good team with Matthew Stafford. We have a chance to make noise in the playoffs. We want him back. Stafford is going to say, Do I want to go chase something with New York giant. It's not going to be as good of a situation wherever he goes.

If he's thinking, Hey, I want to win. I want to have that Hall of Fame resume maybe when my career is over, there's no better situation than Los Angeles. If I'm making a prediction, it's that eventually they reach some type of agreement and he's back with the Rams. But given that it's the second year in a row and there could be hurt feelings and it could get personal, all those things, you never know.

Well, and there's a lot of posturing through the press, which always makes me suspicious. The more posturing publicly, the more I usually think this is just people rolling up their sleeves, showing some biceps, but nothing's actually going to happen. I looked at all the scenarios for trade teams for him, and people were mentioning the Giants. Like you said, I have no idea why he'd want to do that. He already took an insane amount of punishment when he was on the Lions, the first half of his career. He's 37. I also think... Kyle, turn the TikTok camera on. I was thinking about how LeBron and braided have ruined our with guys in their late 30s to the point now that... Lebron looks great. I think LeBron might be a second-team All-MBA guy at this point, the way he's playing and how much he's invested in defense, especially the last month and a half, where he's been one of the top 10 guys in the league for two months now. Then you have braided playing until he's 45, but there's really no other examples. You go like, Oh, look at Chris Paul. He's still doing really well in the Spurs.

It's like, Yeah, he's 10 and 8. I would be so nervous with the Stafford thing. If I'm the Giants, I'm not trading a third pick for him. Maybe it's the third for the Ramsey, the 26 for the 26 in Stafford. Then I'm using all my cap space for Stafford. Where am I going? I'm going to be I'm in the same division as the Eagles. How does that make me better? The only team I think makes sense is the Raiders. The Raiders have almost 100 million in cap space. They have Carroll. They have some blue chippers on both sides. I don't think it's inconceivable that they could be pretty good next year if they had Stafford and then didn't give up the six pick in the trade. Is there any other team? Do you like that Raiders fit for him?

We are 100% on the same page. Can we just pour cold water on the Giants thing a little bit more for a second? I'm with you. They stink. This is one of the dumbest ideas. They would be just making a desperate move to save their jobs. And all of a sudden, Matthew Stafford is going to go across the country at 37 years old, and they're going to rebuild their offensive line, and they're going to add more pass catching help, and they're going to improve a defense that was bottom five in the NFL, and Stafford is going to look as good without Sean McBed. All those things are going to happen, and this is going to work out beautifully for the Giants. And cold weather instead of a dome. Give me a break.

And the Eagles twice a week, or twice a year, and Parsons twice a year. And Washington. Come on. Thank you.

Terrible idea. So we're on the same page there. I thought I was going to surprise you with the Raiders is my wild card. That's the one I can see, because I can see Tom braided go, like you just said. Dude, Matthew, come here. I can show you some ways to stay healthy, extend your career. You are one of the smartest quarterbacks in the NFL. I don't want these young guys. They're dummies. They can't get to the third read on the back. No, I know you can play quarterback. We're going to bring you in. Pete Carroll, he's like, I'm not trying to rebuild anything here. Let's go get a quarterback who I know I can win with right away. So I don't love the roster. You're probably a little bit higher on the roster maybe than I am.

Don't mistake me high on the roster. I'm just saying they have a couple of good players, and they have Capspace.

Yeah, they got Brock Bowers, Max Crosby, and then they would need to rebuild things. But again, he's playing in a controlled environment indoors there.

They have Wilkins, too. They have three Blue Chippers.

Yeah. So they have three guys there. So that's the one I looked at and I thought, I could see the Raiders if there's a team that says, We're willing to go there. 50 million a year, two years. Let's go. Let's win right now. We'll give you maybe a second round pick or whatever to the Rams. And Stafford says, Hey, Pete Carroll, Tom braided, that sounds pretty good to me. I want to get paid what I'm worth.

Well, a thing that you and I both love when we're doing the futures in the offseason is new coach replacing an incompetent coach, which I think is the case here with the Raiders, and then way better QB replacing a bunch of shit QBs. They fit that recipe, too. There's some Washington parallels with them. None of us had the balls to pick Washington as a team that potentially make the NFC title game or even the playoffs. But there was a recipe we all looked at. We're like, Man, they need too much help. But they did have the new coach who was way better than the old coach and the QB that could come in and potentially be way, way better than what they were getting in QB. Both those things happened. They hit some draft picks, they hit some free agents. I don't feel like the Raiders are that far away from that recipe. I don't think the Patriots are either. Those are the two teams that I think you have to take seriously. But for them, if they were to keep that six pick, get somebody awesome, trade for Stafford, nail one more pick, get two more guys in free agent, and then all of a sudden, you hope the Chiefs go backwards, you hope the Chargers stay where they are.

You can talk yourself into it, I guess, is my point.

Yeah, it's tough in the AFC. I don't see a path, really, for them to get to the Super Bowl, but it's not about that for every team. Yeah. Can they win 10 teams? Can they be competent again? Yeah. Can they sneak into the playoffs and have a moment where they've just been such a beat-down franchise? I think that is within the realm of possibilities there.

Well, Carroll and Stafford over Garner-Minshuh, Antonio peers. That's five wins. I don't even care who else is on the team. You have to be. I'm just making that a plus five. All right. We got to go through some of these teams.

I spent all morning, by the way, Bill, just placing team with quarterback. What do I think is going to happen? What's the most interesting thing? So I'm ready for this. You know what?

We've built up so much We got to take a break. Let's take a break. We'll come back. Qb roulette. This episode is brought to you by Audi, the all-new, fully electric Audi Q6 e-tron. A huge leap forward featuring effortless power, serious acceleration, and the most advanced tech of any Audi ever. Experience technology that puts you center stage, the panoramic digital stage, plus an optional screen for front seat passengers. That sounds fun. Perfect for watching the latest sports documentary. Maybe I made it. The Q6 e-tron is not just a new EV, it's a new way to experience driving. Learn more at autiusah. Com. Always pay careful attention to the road. Do not drive while distracted. You know the games tip it off, but did you know the NBA action is just beginning on Fandle, America's number one sportsbook, My friends, Fandil, your home for NBA Live betting. Even if you missed the first few minutes of the game or you want to bet on a fourth quarter comeback, you can make your pics from the first whistle until the final buzzer. Sometimes there's some good stuff in the fourth quarters. You never know what the threes.

You can jump in, somebody's down 15. Screw it. Jump in on their money line and ride the wave when they make a big comeback. You can combine your live bets in the same game part for a shot at a bigger payout. However you want to play, now is the perfect time to join. I still love the futures. When I was in Boston recently, all the playoff stuff, who's going to make the playoff, you can parlay stuff together. I'm on the airplane, we're about to take I'm still making teaming playoff bets together. Great stuff. New Fandil customers get started with $150 in bonus bets. If your first $5 bet wins, visit fandil. Com/bs to join today. Fandil. Com/bs for your shot at $150 in bonus bets. Make every moment more with Fandil, official sports betting partner of the NBA. You must be 21 plus in President Select States or 18 plus in President DC. First online real money wage or only $5 for a deposit. Required bonus this year. That's One, draw a bonus bets, which expire seven days after receipt restriction supply. See terms at sportsbook. Fender. Com. Gamble a problem, call 1-100 Gamble or visit rg-help.

Com. All right, the Titans are on the clock at number one. They have $51 million in cap space. They have the same coach. They have the first pick in the draft, and they have Will Levis, a quarterback who I think we can all agree it's not happening. There's two separate questions here. Why wouldn't they just take Kam Ward? I know you're starting to do your draft prep. People I do not think he is the best player in this class. I think there's consensus. Mcshea had his great newsletter this weekend. Our draft guys are talking about it, too. You can say there's either two or three elite players in the draft. Abdel Carter, Travis Hunter. Then I personally, and as you know, I don't watch a lot of college football, but I prep for this draft a lot. It seems like Mason Graham, to me, is a home run pick and an elite guy. Those three guys, Kam Ward is not better than any of them, but QB matters the And if you can hit with the guy in the working scale, that's the best thing you can do. Two questions, why wouldn't they just take Kam Ward?

And if they didn't, why wouldn't they trade back to a team that wanted to take Kam Ward? Because I think he should be the first pick. What are your thoughts on that?

I think the reason why they wouldn't is because teams are overconfident in their ability to evaluate quarterbacks, and we see it every year. This time last year, this time last year, we're talking about Jaden Daniels, but we're pointing out all the No one, I don't know that anyone had to take that he's going to come in and turn around the franchise right away and be the guy. No one was that confident. We see it year after year with the way these guys get drafted high, they don't pan out. Other guys get drafted later in the first round or the second round. So I think it's fair to look at Kam Ward and say there are some questions there, but I'm with you. If you see the upside, and I think by all accounts, the people who have already studied this, and I still have to look at it a little bit closer, but they say he has the tools, he has the upside. He has the athletic traits, he has the arm. So if you have those things, sometimes you just have to take a swing. And it's different to take a guy with the first pick than to trade three first round picks to get up to the top five.

If you're the Titans, you draft Kam Ward, You keep him for two years. It's not really working out. He's not the guy. You're just back to where you are now, but with good players, because hopefully you've added pieces to the roster. It's not like you're a complete dumpster fire of a franchise and you have to come up with all these solutions. So I think that they should look into taking him if they reach the threshold of, Hey, he has the upside, and we got to find a quarterback. I'm not convinced that they're going to do that just because they've been a train wreck of an organization. Let's call it what. I mean. They can't figure out which way the wind blows. Who do they want the GM to be? Who do they want the coach to be? What's their plan? They spend big in free agency.

It seems like a top five worst owner right now. I agree.

Yes.

To be like, Yeah, Raible is not our guy. Let me back the GM who I'm going to fire a year later. Exactly. It just tells me you don't know what you're doing.

Exactly. So I lean towards them being safer and just drafting the best possible player and maybe saying, Hey, Kam Ward is not perfect, so let's go in a different direction. And I wonder if other teams look at Ward and say he's good enough where we want to give up draft capital to move up to number one, or maybe we hang tight and see who falls to us.

So there's two possible moves for them if it's not Kam Ward. One is you flip pics with the Giants, one to three. If you think the Giants are fired up for are worried that they're not going to get him, that he's not going to fall to three, that somebody's going to trade above them, they just want to lock it down. I mean, would you trade down two spots if you could get a Giants' future first out of it? I wouldn't do it for the second rounder. I think that's too much. The history of the draft is if you're trading up for a quarterback, you've got to have another first in the deal. That's how it's gone. If I'm the Titans and I need help everywhere in I could go from one to three, and I know I'm still getting Carter or Hunter at number three, and I'm getting a Giants pick, which I would really want because I don't think they're going to be good anytime soon. I would do that. I don't know if I would do it if I was the Giants because I We discussed earlier, I don't know where I'm going.

If I'm the Giants, I just want a good player. But that's the only trade that makes sense to me for them.

Yeah, I'm with you. I think if you're the Titans, I would absolutely do that. Move down two spots and get a future first. Sure. That'd be smart business. The Giants would have to really... Now, the Giants are an interesting team because they are in job preservation mode. And these are the teams that act the most recklessly because they don't really care what's happening three years down the road.

Yeah, I'm getting I'm getting fired next year if this doesn't work out.

My favorite GMs for content, these are the best team. So maybe they do it. I feel like that might even... I don't know that they'll like him that much to say, Yeah, we'll give up next year's first to move up two spots.

Yeah, content MVPs, brand new owners, and GMs who need to do something desperate because if it doesn't work out, they're getting fired anyway. Just the MVPs for 25 years for me. I don't really see any other moves up to the one spot unless it was the Raiders, and they dangled six, and a future first, and maybe even took a bad contract from the Titans because they have the cap space to actually absorb something. That's the only other one. The draft order is Titans, Browns, Giants. The Pats aren't trading up for Kam Ward. Jacksonville is not trading up for Kam Ward at number five. So it would really just be the Raiders. There's a jet scenario I know that. I think there's a more interesting version of this, but they have the seventh pick. If Garrett Wilson was on the table with the seventh pick to move up to one, I'm at least having a meeting about that if I'm the Titans, but I'm probably not doing I think the Jets need to be in just relax mode, reset everything.

I don't think this is the year for them to take a big swing on something like that for a quarterback, just rebuild the culture, add to the roster in the draft. That would surprise me a little bit. The Raiders, a lot of links between Shador Sanders and the Raiders, where he and Tom braided have a relationship. He and Mark Davis, I think, have a relationship. That one's interesting to me because I think we mentioned Stafford, but let's say Stafford is not on the table, they might look at it, and Pete Carroll is not going to be afraid to play a young quarterback. He's done that before, obviously, with Russell Wilson. And if Tom braided is like, No, trust me. I just feel like whoever Tom braided wants, that's going to be the quarterback of the Raiders. Maybe that's wrong, but every time I'm looking at some of the options, I'm like, Tom braided is not going to want Sam Darnold for $30 plus million a year. And I'm like, Stafford, I could see it. Shadr Sanders, I could see it. And then maybe if those don't pan out- Gina? Or are they the Aaron Rodgers team?

Where, again, he would look at it and say, You know what? He's a veteran, but he can still play. He's going to be good in this system. The Raiders might be the most interesting of any of these teams that need a quarterback.

We'll go back to that top of the draft. I'm just going to give everybody the possibilities. Here are the quarterback possibilities, if you're looking for one. Kam Ward, who's going to be a top four pick. Shador Sanders, who I think is going to be, I would say top eight pick, maybe top nine pick. He's going to go in the first nine. I just don't know where, and we're going to know. Did he go to the combine or did he skip it?

I don't think he's participating in the combine.

Because there's some athleticism stuff with him that's funny because his dad's DM. But I think everyone talks about he's tough, he's smart, he processes everything. But, athletically, he's not actually as athletic as you would think he is. I'm sure that at some point people are going to want to see it with their own eyes. Then there's the Jackson dart, late first round, early second Could he have a bow-necks rise out of nowhere? That's it for guys who could actually start for a team next year. Then you have Stafford. We talked about all the Cap stuff with him. Sam Darnold, Garoppolo, Rodgers, Russell Wilson, the Corpse of Kirk Cousins, Jameis Winston, Justin Fields, and my guy Joe Milton, who I don't know if you've seen. Don't look at who's on Buffalo's team Week 18, just look at what Joe Milton is doing. Don't look to see if there are any starters on the field. Joe Milton, is he worth the first-round pick? Probably.

Egle's version of that is Tana McKee, by the way. There are a couple of those guys who the fan base of that team is like, Would you take a first for this guy? I don't know. You probably want to hold on to him.

Is there anyone else? I've listed all those QBs. Is there anyone else you had that is like, I could see that guy starting.

All right. Do you want a little wild card that I don't think is going to happen?

Do I need to buckle Should I put my seatbelt on?

Buckle up a little bit. The Pittsburgh Stealers call the Indianapolis Colts and say, We will give you a third round pick for Anthony Richardson, a quarterback who you guys know, you don't like him anyway. You benched him last year. You brought him back in. The vibes were terrible. You want to admit your mistake. You're not going to get a first for him, obviously, at this point. He's been injured and he hasn't done anything yet. But we'll give you a third round pick, and then you decide what you want to do a quarterback. So Anthony Richardson goes to Pittsburgh under the Mike Tomlin umbrella. They get a young quarterback. They get a new culture. They run the football with him. And the Indianapolis Colts Bill, they are your Sam Darnold team. They say, You know what? We're going to give Sam Darnold 35-ish million dollars per year. We're going to admit our mistake with Anthony Richardson and take the third-round pick. And this is going to be the trade that shakes up the NFL this offseason. How do we Wow.

The Colts have 30 million in cap space right now, and they have the 14th pick. If they traded Richardson, I would assume there's some cap hit to it, but not that much because he's on a rookie contract. So maybe that gets them into Darnold range. What's Arnold worth for you? Before I tell you whether I like this idea or not, because the franchise tag for him would be 42. 4 million franchise tag. Because people People were thinking, Oh, you could see the Vikings franchise. That would be insane for them to do that. I personally think they have 60 million in cap space. You're just going to use all of that to franchise tag them and then hope you can trade them? Why would they do that? So what's he actually worth? Because he's not worth 44.

Yeah, I'm with you. That's the posturing you mentioned earlier with the Stafford. I think that's the Darnold stuff. Give me a break. They're going to franchise tag him and then trade him and keep a $40 million cap hold. I don't see any team is going to give up.

We've never seen anyone do that.

No, I wouldn't see it. I think the comp is the Baker Mayfield deal from, was it last year or two years ago, where he got, I think it was 33, 33 and a half million dollars per year. It was like a three-year, $100 million deal. I think that's the best case scenario for Sam Darnold. If there's a team that says, You know what? I know it didn't end well for him, but we like him. He can play well for us. We're going to pay him real starter money. I think that's the number because the weird thing about the NFL is there's no middle ground for these contracts. The only quarterback making between 15 and $30 million per year is Gino Smith. So it's either you're a bridge quarterback or a backup, and you're under $15 million per year, or it's, no, we believe in you as our starter, and you're making between $30 and $60 million per year.

It's almost like Hollywood Actors, where you have your Tom Cruise types, and then you drop majorly to the next level of like, Yeah, we can put that guy in a It's a poster, but you don't really have to spend a lot of money for it. I personally think 30 million for Darnold's too high, but I can't shake the last two games. I don't know how you get past that if you're running a team and you're thinking about... If the goal is to actually try to win the Super Bowl, there might be some other teams that just their goal would be competency. Then maybe it makes sense, but Mayfield, at least Mayfield had done He had pulled the brands. He'd won a playoff game. There was some history. Then he had a really good comeback year, and there was some stuff you could point to. I don't know. I'd be really nervous about that. You think Colts potentially for him? I don't see it with the Raiders. The Steelers would be the other one just because they have the cap space. If they could get him and sell him on the culture and be like, 60 million for three years, make him a $20 million guy, maybe.

You seem suspicious.

I look at it and yeah, my Richardson trade was more team content, and I don't expect that to happen. I'm with you. So I think you look at it, the Steelers, when I was just going through all the teams, they were one of the teams left where I said, Okay, I don't have a place for Sam Darnal. In that sense, I could see it. Is he the type of guy Mike Tomlin wants, though? He's going to probably.

I don't know what Mike Tomlin is. Mike Tomlin is like your buddy who just dates all kinds of girls. You have no idea what his type is. Because he's been all over the map. I mean, think of all the QBs, they've running and out of there. He's trying to talk himself into Trubisky. Is he Russell Wilson? Great. Justin Fields? Does he have a type?

Yeah. No, that's a good point. You're right. I don't know what it is. I don't know that they would want to pay that money for Sam Darnold. Would they rather just take a one-year flyer on somebody? Are they in Aaron Rodgers' team? Potentially, the Steelers.

How about that? Can I ask you this? Are you in Aaron Rodgers' team? Would you want to do a year with Aaron Rodgers? I'm out. There's no way I'm going near that dude. From what we saw last year, he doesn't want to get hit anymore. He doesn't have legs anymore. I just don't see it.

I agree. And all the stuff that comes with it. I would want nothing to do with it. The Steelers just sit back and look at who's left there. So that's why I threw them out there for him. With the Titans, if they don't draft a quarterback at one, who's playing quarterback for the Titans? Would they look at Sam Darnold or somebody like Derek Carr and say, let's just get a short term option for a couple of years while we build up a roster?

Derek Carr, I'm out. I'm blind out. Can I throw a name at you that I feel like his stock is too far down compared to what it should be? Garoppolo. Terrible Raiders here, right? Immortalized in the Devante Adams' wide receiver show, just him being pissed off the whole year. But we've also seen he's had success, and there was a while where the biggest criticism for him would be like, Well, when he's on the field, he's good, but he keeps getting hurt. He keeps getting dinged up. He takes hits. It's the durability would be the question for him. Now we've moved into this phase of he's just not good at quarterback, and I'm not sure I believe that because the Niners came pretty close to winning a Super Bowl with him, which is a lot more than we could say about anyone else we're talking about on this list except Rogers, who's washed up. I'm just like, if I'm going to pay 30 million for Sam Darnold I would rather pay 5 million for Garoppolo and try to build an offensive line around him so he's not taking big hits. And do that because I've seen him do it before.

I don't think he can do it if he doesn't have a line. But if you're actually blocking for him, it's not inconceivable to me that he'd be good. You agree or disagree?

No, I think you're right. If you have the infrastructure in place, I think the problem with a lot of these teams we're talking about and look at, do they have a good offensive line? Do they have good wide receivers? Do they have a good play caller? Now, you could have those caveats for a lot of the quarterbacks we're discussing here as well. But I do agree with you. I would rather take a flyer on Jimmy Garoppolo for under 10 million than commit to Sam Darnold on that Baker Mayfield contract than to have all the stuff that comes with Aaron Rodgers at this age. I would rather just buy some time because I think you're right. When he's on the field, he will give you a baseline level of competency where you will be able to run your offense, your other players will get their touches, you build up the roster, and then you see where you're at a year from now. So yeah, I don't think that's a wrong way to look at it. The Rams, if they were to trade Matthew Stafford, would they just say, Hey, Garoppolo has been here. Let's do a year with I think they were.

Then we'll figure it out after that?

I think they would. Yeah. If the Seahawks chartered Gino, which we'll talk about in a second, and they were like, We're going to bring in Jimmy, cheaper price, I'd be like, That's a bad idea. You guys can't block. Jimmy is going to just take a lot hits and run for his life, and he's going to suck like he did on the Raiders. But if it was a team that had a little more stability, I actually think the Stealers, if they can get their offensive line healthy next year, it's a good offensive line, potentially. They've certainly invested in it. He seems like more of a Stealers type to me. Going backwards. Brown's at two, no QB and Watson out for the year of the Achilles thing. This is another team. It's like, why wouldn't they take Kim Ward if he was sitting there at two? They're never going to have another chance to sign a QB, trade for one. They're in this Watson hell. Everyone's like, well, do you see them take Hunter or Carter? I don't understand why they wouldn't take a quarterback if they liked Ward. Why wouldn't they?

I'm with you with these teams. You only get so many chances at drafting a quarterback. It's not that the likelihood is high that you're going to hit, but it's what happens if you do actually hit. It totally changes you. Especially for a team like this that is in Cap-Hell, that has signed the worst contract of any player You're in NFL history with Deshaun Watson, and there's no way out of it. I see the rumors that, Hey, go get Kirk Cousins. Where does that leave you? 37-year-old Kirk Cousins.

Much rather have Garoppolo than Kirk Cousins. Kirk Since I think he's going to retire and be on TV next year, it would be my prediction for him. Interesting.

Maybe.

Because he's getting paid either way. He's getting most of the Atlanta money. Why does he want to keep playing? He's had a great life. He's made a bunch of money, and he'll be an immediate... I I think, an aggressive TV candidate.

Okay. I like that. I hadn't thought about that. I was looking at where Kirk Cousins might end up. But I'm with you. Basically, we're on the same page with the teams at the top of the draft. I think too often teams are like, This isn't an Andrew luck type prospect. No, this isn't whoever. We can't take them because it goes back to the job security thing because they're like, If we miss on this, we're not going to get a chance to draft another quarterback. I do think that's a big deal. We talked about the Eagles at the top. Howie Roseman can make mistakes. They signed Bryce Huff last year for $17 million per year, and he was inactive in the Super Bowl. Guess what? It doesn't matter. He's allowed to take those risks. They had Carson Went on a huge deal, and they were able to trade him. Other organizations that don't have stability, their GMs are making decisions based on, is this potentially going to get me fired? And they can't get that out of their head, where if you had a guy who knew he had the job for the next 15, 20 years, I bet they'd be more likely to say, hey, Kim Ward is not perfect, but we like him.

Let's take a flyer on this because look at what the other options are.

It's such an important point. The psychology of the people making the decision never gets factored into these mock drafts. If I'm running the Titans or if I'm running the Browns and I I'm going to take Kam Ward, and then he goes to the Giants at three and he's awesome. I'm getting fired. If I take Kam Ward, I'm buying two years. I'm in the same spot like with Griegson on the Colts with Richardson. Where you take the guy, you're not really going to get criticized no matter what happens for two years. There's always the illusion of hope with the QB you took, right? With Kam Ward, I'm buying the illusion of hope for two years. Now I'm secure with my job. Same thing if the Giants were able to get him a three. That's why I think there's no scenario where he's not one of the top three picks. And I'd be really surprised. I don't understand why the Browns would pass on him when they are just completely fucked with this Watson thing. And I also think Is it inconceivable, Ward could go one and Sanders could go two? We'd be like, Oh, my God.

We've seen Mitch Trubisky go second in a draft. The closer you get to these drafts, everybody thinks Kim Ward isn't as good as the top three quarterbacks in last year's draft They don't even maybe think he's as good as Pennex was last year. But when you're in these drafts and people need quarterbacks, all of a sudden the value just skyrockets for these stupid reasons. I think the Browns, they're so screwed. I don't know how they take a quarterback with one. Oh, cool. We have Travis Hunter. Great. I have nobody to throw the ball to him, and our defense is going to be in the field all the time. I'll probably get hurt. Giants at three. No QB except Drew Locke, third pick, 38. 7 million Capspace. And this seems like another QB spot for me. Could you trade three for Stafford in 26? You could, as we covered. I don't know how it makes sense.

I think their best case scenario is to stay put and those quarterbacks don't go one and two, and you take a quarterback. They're like the team that has to. They have to make a move. I don't even think they have a quarterback on the roster right now. And they're not going to be like, Oh, let's sign a Bridge guy like Garoppolo, again, for what we just talked about, because there are jobs on the line, so they have to take a swing. They seem like the Kam Ward team if he doesn't go one or two. And if he does, I think you have to maybe look at Shadr Sanders there.

It could be a Russell Wilson team, too. There's a case Russell Wilson for a team like that, where you say, Hey, he made the playouts last year. He's pretty good for the Stealers, right? We get him for cheap because he's still on that giant contract. He's in New York. He knows how to handle the city. You could talk yourself in another We're going to suck anyway. Why am I spending money on a quarterback if I'm not drafting one? Raiders at 6. 6 pick, 99. 5 million cap space. There was stuff online as we were taping this morning about Pete Carroll talking to the Seahawks guy. A lot of people wonder if Gino might get traded. What is Gino worth to you? Let's say the Raiders are like, Gino is our guy. We're going to get him. We're going to give him a new contract. This is the guy we want. He's competent enough. He can throw the ball. He's had some success. This is who we like. Is it a second round pick for Gino? Is it, We'll give you the six for Gino in the 18? What's the My initial gut went to second-round pick.

I don't think you're getting a first-round pick. For Gino Smith at his age, you're also going to have to redo his contract, so you're making a financial commitment to him. He's going into the final year of his deal. That's interesting. Sixth for 18.

Gino in 18. Would you do that if you're the Seahawks? And then you use the money and you sign, I don't know, Sam Darnold?

I wouldn't do that if I were the Seahawks.

I don't think I would either. How about this? I wouldn't trade Gino Smith if I were the Seahawks.

I wouldn't either. Yeah, I wouldn't either. So I don't know that this- How about this?

Draft an offensive line for him. Add a couple of people who can block because that was why you lost last year.

Yeah, it's true. I mean, if they had a great offseason where they were able to upgrade just the offensive line and not do anything else, we might be on here in August saying, Hey, we like the Seahawks to win the NFC West. I mean, they won 10 games last year with a bad offensive line, with a defensive coach implementing a system for the first time. I think their defense is going to be pretty good next year. So I'm with you. Yeah, I don't know if they give him an extension. In terms of an extension for Gino, it's either the floor is probably that Baker Mayfield deal we talked about, 33 million per year. But he might look at it and go, Give me a break. I'm playing better. Like you said, behind this offensive line, the salary cap has gone up. I want over $40 million per year. And then at his age in his mid-30s, if you're the Seahawks, are you comfortable doing that?

He's like, Look at all my come from behind wins. And then they're like, Let's throw in the Cardinals tape of some of the throws you made in that game. Jets at seven. Oh, by the way, with the Raiders, we feel like Stafford is a real possibility there. That's our favorite Raiders move, right? Or taking Sanders Yes. There's one more Sanders piece that I forgot to mention during the Raiders part. If Sanders is at four for the Patriots, I don't know why they wouldn't flip picks with them at that If the Patriots, Sanders is still there and the Patriots signal, We're trading out of this pick because we have a bunch of people that want Sanders. You could just move up and take them. But give us your first next year. Four and six. We'll flip, give us next year's first, and we'll throw in our third-round pick next year. I'm doing that in five seconds if I'm the Pats.

If you're the Pats, yes. These quarterbacks, I don't know that the league thinks as highly of them that they would say, I'm giving up a future first. Now, I think there's a trade there to be made. Move from four to six.

So second? Would you do four and six for the second?

Something like that? Sure. Yeah, I would think about something like that. When we're doing these, it's Like, yeah, you're old. Who would say no? The Patriots, I think, are still saying yes to that, whereas the other team, the Raiders might be like, I still don't know if I want to go that high. But yeah, I think if they like Sanders and they want to go get him, I would have no issue with them making a move that.

Yeah, because if they're at six and they're basically talking themselves into Mason Graham or the best left tackle at that point, who, unfortunately, people aren't positive he's a left tackle, which makes me nervous. Will Campbell. It's like, Well, he's almost definitely a tackle, but he doesn't have short arms. He might be a guard. It's like, well, if he might be a guard, I'm not taking him in the top six. I'm just not. You can't spend a top six pick on somebody who might be a guard.

I like him. He literally played left tackle in the SEC. Then And then we start measuring the arm length, and I'm like, no, he's not going to play that.

I like him, too. Do I have to take him with the fourth pick? Do I have to take him with the six pick? Can I just move down and take him at nine?

Yeah.

Jet7, no QB, seventh pick, 11 2. 2 million in cap space. Another possible Sanders spot. Can I test drive you through a pats trade the four to the jets for Wilson in the seven scenario, just for fun, just for shits and giggles? Can you give me a who says no on that one? I know I got Nuffy Kyle's attention.

Jets are a no. I mean, Gareth Wilson on his own traded, I believe, would get a first-round pick in return. If you look at wide receivers, I mean, AJ brought all these guys who got rated in the last five years who have been young wide receivers who are very good get first-round pick.

So I don't know- I didn't say it was a fair trade for the Jets. I just wanted to walk you through the scenario. What about four and Our third, which is high up in the third round for seven and Wilson? Is that more interesting to you? And the Jets take Sanders. I'm not doing that. We have to put our second in that for you to do it.

Yes. And even then, if I'm the Jets, why am I trading Garrett Wilson? We're like, hey, we know he's been a- Because he's miserable.

He doesn't want to be a Jet anymore.

Listen, this is why you hire Aaron Glenn.

Come to Jake Bane. Come to Jake Bane.

Let him get Aaron Glenn in a room with him, and he may change his tune. That's why you hire Aaron Glenn to get through to some of these guys who have just been like, Man, it has been miserable being a jet. Well, it's not going to be miserable anymore. So I wouldn't trade number one wide receiver on rookie contract.

Okay. Seventh pick in the draft, does Sanders fall below seven? Because I don't see how the Jets don't take him at seven. I don't see any scenario where that doesn't happen.

I don't think he falls below six. I feel like if he's there when the The Writers draft. Yeah, so I'm with you. I don't think he even gets to seven.

It's interesting. We definitely have Hunter, Carter, who now they're talking about how his shoulder is not 100%, which could knock him out of the number one pick. Come to the Patriots. Be our Willie McGinnis of this generation Mission. Carter, Hunter, Graham, the two QBs. And then it gets like when you start talking about who do you think is going to be the six pick in this draft or in top six, you'll get different answers from different people. Some people would say it's Campbell, might be the cornerback from Michigan. For the Jets, if they're just sitting there and both quarterbacks are gone at that point, they're taking anybody. A couple more teams. Saints, they have the ninth pick, no cap space, and Derek Carr and Spencer Rattler. Good luck. No ability to trade, no ability to really do anything. Colts, we mentioned whether they move on from Richardson or not. Steelers, no QB, whatsoever. 21st pick, 60. 2 million in cap space. I'm not saying they're not a Stafford team. They could fit the contract in. Would you trade the 21st pick for Stafford if you're the Steelers? You have to feel like you could win the title if you're doing that.

It's a good one. It was another name that I had written down for him. I would have to think strongly about doing that if I'm the Steelers. When you look at their quarterback situation in recent years, and Like you said, they made the playoffs last year. It's not like they have a terrible team. They had a good defense. Things fell apart down the stretch.

Hey, idiots like me were saying they were the best team in the AFC at the end of November. They really looked that way, and then they completely died. Have we found T. J. Watts' body yet? What happened to him?

Yeah. Where'd he go? So offensively, it's not the greatest spot for Stafford when you look at just the supporting cast, but you have pick-ins. Maybe you can add a piece in the draft here in the later rounds. I would have to think about that if I were the Stealers and given their other options.

Would you trade 21 for Gino Smith? Wow.

I actually think if I'm the Stealers, I like that. I would do that.

I think I would, too.

I think I would do it. I'm pro-Gino. I know I said second-round pick.

Yeah. A couple more teams, then we'll go. The Niners, Purdy, one more year left on this deal, but this is the time when you blow up the deal, you give them the giant extension, and you have to decide, how much is Brock Purdy worth? Probably more than a Mayfield contract, maybe less than a Tua contract, but Tua got the contract he did, and that made me think he's probably worth the Tua contract.

Yeah, I say more than the Tua contract.

I mean- Jesus, really?

Yeah. Oh, God. If I'm Purdy, maybe this... I mean, if Tua is getting 53 million per year and now the cap has gone up, how are you taking anything under than $55 million per year? I mean, that's just what the price is for. They have the leverage. Who is not better than Birdie? I don't think.

But they have the leverage of... How about you take 85% of that to a deal, and then you have the security. Whatever happens this season, you know you have the contract. What if this season goes badly? This is a pretty big financial decision. You're locking it up. Do it now. That would be the psychology you try to use against them, I guess. Look at what happened the second half of last season. You fell apart. We're not going to have Debo Samuel next year. God only knows how long we're going to have McCafree. God only knows how long Trent Williams is going to be healthy. You sure you don't want this now?

I guess. But I think with the agents, I would be like, okay, cool. I'll play up the final year of my deal. Then you're going to tag me next year for what? $45 million per year. You're not going to be able to make any other moves. And then after that, I'm a free agent at the age of what? He's going to be in his late 20s. And I just saw what Kurt Cousins got on the open market. So unless I have a career-ending injury, I'm going to be just fine with I don't know. I think that's probably the floor. Now, they could wait. The 49ers could wait, say, play out the final year of your deal, maybe tag him. Do you want some more information before you commit that money to Brock Purdy? I think that would be reasonable, even if it cost you a little bit more in the long run.

He should hire Kirk Cousins as his advisor.

Yeah.

Just to scare them. Seahawks, we mentioned, Gino in the 18th pick. They're over the cap, so they basically have to figure out the Gino thing. Trading him is not going to really buy them flexibility. And then the last one is the Vikings. Jj McCarthy, year two. Darno will be the 44. 2 million franchise tag. They have the 24th pick, and they have 60 million in cap space. And their team, we mentioned them earlier when we talked about the Super Bowl odds. That's a team where the odds could shift pretty dramatically. 32 to 1 right now, they do a couple of moves and a couple of things. All of a sudden, I could see them getting the bump. I'm watching them. Green Bay is the other one that I think we just have to see how March and April go for these teams.

Yeah. It's like with Darnold, if you look at it on the whole, he probably performed statistically like the 14th or 16th best starter in the NFL. So that's the bar you need JJ McCarthy to clear. You don't need him to be a top five quarterback. It's like with that system, with a good offensive coach, with Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, can you upgrade aspects of the offensive line? Your offense really could be better next year than it was this year. And then you just put your faith in Brian Flores on the defensive side of the ball. So that's the whole point of drafting McCarthy is that he's on a rookie deal. You don't have to pay Darnold anymore. You can upgrade other areas of the roster.

Well, one question with him is, would he be the number one pick in this draft if teams knew he was 100% healthy? Because I think people like McCarthy... Last year, McCarthy as a draft prospect, seems like it's higher than Cam Ward or Sanders this year. We're talking about how Cam Ward has to be in the top three. My guess would be... So you have to almost think of that way for the Vikings. We used this capital last year with this great season, didn't end the way we wanted it, but now we have Capspace and this guy who's coming in who would be the number one pick in the draft, potentially.

Yeah, you're right. I think he probably would be. I think everybody, the people I've heard and like and respect who do this stuff have mostly said that the quarterbacks this year would certainly go below the top four guys from last year. So I I think you're right.

Can I give you one more crazy wild card trade, and then we'll go? Please. Just for your reaction. Jj McCarthy for Herbert. Wow.

The Chargers say no.

Oh, I think they say no. I just wanted to talk it out. I love it. Yeah. Harba was like, I love what I got from my guy last year. You know who won me a title? Mccarthy. I I'd have some cap space. I'm really interested in what the Chargers are doing because it seems like Bosa is out of there. That's not as big of a deal as it probably is on paper, because if you've watched him the last couple of years, I don't think he's been Mr. Reliable. But it's a big foundational piece for them that didn't totally work out. You think about what happened with them last season, where a lot of things lined up schedule, some of the pieces they had. Now, I don't like their scenario nearly as much this year. They got to figure out the Herbert piece. Cleo Mack, too.

He's a free agent. They don't have a ton of talent. They've got good offensive tackles. They've got Herbert, they've got McConkey. That's a nice foundation, I guess, for the offense. I don't know if you trust Greg Roman to make the most out of those pieces. And then defensively, it has to be all coaching unless they can really add some upgrades here this offseason.

So you're working on your annual 50 best free agents ever for the season list?

That's right. I got the tab up right here.

Tee Higgins has been number one on a lot of lists. He's my number one guy I want the Patriots to get. Is there a scenario where the Bengals keep Tee Higgins at a huge price and pay Chase and pay Burrow and have a competent football team? Because I don't understand how they would do it.

You can do it. Joe Burrow has talked about, Hey, the Eagles did it. We can figure it. There are ways you can do it where you pay big money up front, you spread that cash out over the course of the- The Eagles have way more money than the bagels.

The bagels are cheap. You can't do it if you're cheap.

Yeah. I do love, though, Burrow is actually acting. He's doing an NBA player impersonation. Have you noticed that? He's going out being like, We need to do this. We need to pay this. He is taking control of the team, putting pressure on ownership and the front office that if you guys don't do this, it's on you. I'm telling anyone who puts a microphone in front of my face what I think we should be doing with this organization. I think it's been cool, and I don't know that you see a lot of quarterbacks go out there. Usually, they're like, That's not my job. I like him, but it's a business. The Josh Allen personality. Yeah. So that's been a pretty fun storyline for me over the last, whatever, two, three months.

Well, I'm sure he's looking at it like, Dude, I want Jason Higgins. We're going to be awesome if we just have the three of us and we'll figure out the rest. But you still like the Eagles, they have a great owner who's perfectly willing to spend money, spend money up front, That's the game you have to do if you're going to play it that way. The bangles have been cheap. I'm dealing with this right now with the Patriots. The Patriots have been cheap for the last 10 years. They have some real opportunity now, cap space with the Drake May rookie contract to spend aggressively. Are they going to do it? Are they going to actually show out the cash? They haven't done it for a decade. We'll see. I'll give you my dream scenario for the past, then we'll go. Trading back from 4-6 with the Raiders and either getting a future first or the Raiders a second and a fourth, something like that. Then taking Mason Graham or the left tackle who's ever left. The left tackle might be a guard, might be a tackle, whatever. I'll take either of those. We just need good players.

Tee Higgins. Signing him. You're a linebacker. I'm taking him. Is that okay? Are you okay with him being a pat next year because he's coming?

I don't know. I think if the Eagles make one move, they're going to try to keep him. But I'm listening. They could overpay, like you said.

What's the price?

I think the floor is probably around 14 million. And if a team wants to blow him away with a contract, it's going to be up around 18 million, I would say.

Good. Come to New England. And then I'm best player available after that in the draft because we need players everywhere. That would be my dream scenario. Get an asset from the Raiders because the Raiders feel a little gamey and desperate to me and go all out for Higgins, all out. Then if Parsons actually in the table, I think they have to investigate that one. If it was even with the fourth pick, I don't really like trading top five picks for guys in their mid 20s who are making big money. I don't know if that's an awesome NFL recipe, but for Parsons, I think you have to think about it, right?

Yeah. Parsons, it's like that Khalil Mac deal back in the day. It might be the biggest trade since the Ricky Williams trade or something if he were actually to get dealt When you're talking about a Hall of Fame player, premium position in his prime, pretty much 31 teams would be interested.

But Garrett makes me more nervous. Older, a little erratic as a guy. I think there's been some weird stuff over the years. The team doesn't seem to ever be that good with him. Just to give up a top five pick for that and to have to pay him all that money, is that really changing my destiny? I don't see it.

I think he's the final piece for a team that can contend... Like your team. The Bills, the Eagles, the Commanders, a team that's like, Hey, we're trying to win right now. The age is the only thing, really, for me. I think he's been durable. He's been productive. He's been on some bad teams. But I would say at least a first and maybe a second that turns into a first, something like that is what I think the price would be.

What's Parsons' worth if Dallas calls the pats and says, We're ready to move on Parsons. We need your fourth pick plus blank?

It starts at two first-round I think. It might get to three first-round picks. It might get to two first-round picks and two second-round picks. I'm not even having a conversation without two first-round picks. And again, it's just bad management by the Cowboys, I think, to even be considering something like that. When you locked in to... The thing with the Cowboys, sorry, I got to go on one last rant. They get Dak Prescott in the fourth round. They get a number one wide receiver in CeeDee Lamb outside the top five. They get Micah Parsons, maybe the best defensive player in football outside the top five. They've They nailed the hardest things to nail, and they can't figure out the other stuff. And that's why the cowboys are the cowboys. But I'm with you, Jerry Jones, still actor of the year for that performance in Landman. Did I tell you my story on that, Phil?

You did win the army. No, you did not.

We were watching. My wife actually paused the screen, looked at me to be like, he could have been one of the greatest actors of this generation.

He could have been Marla Brando. Amazing stuff. Sheil, when's your free agent piece coming I think it should be out Monday morning next week, Top 50 Free Agents. Is Higgins first? You don't want to spoil it?

I'm going to do it based on who's going to be the most expensive to least expensive. That's my plan this year. You got to take in positional value. And maybe a quarterback we just talked about to differentiate the Ringer's content might be first on my list.

All right. Great tease. We can listen to you on the Ringer NFL show as well, and the Philly Special, a show that I've been trying not to listen to because I like when... Actually, I'll start listening again because I like when the Philly fans are unhappy. I don't want to hear a happy Philly fans. I like Philly fans freaking out about Paul George's podcast and Embiid having to have a bone taken from his hip to put in his... That's the Philly content I want. Good to see you, Sheil.

Good to see you. Thanks.

All right. My friend Dave Bernat is here. He is an executive producer of the White Lotus and a bunch of good stuff. Jury duty. What else? Do your credentials really fast.

Sure. Immaculate. Sydney Sweeney movie I'm very proud of, came out last Superstore. Superstore. Very successful. Whitehouse Plumbers, Woody Harrelson, Justin Thoreau, Underappreciated series. Bill wasn't... He was like, Ah. Bad Trip on Netflix, Eric Andre, Andy Hanish movie. Right. Seven Days in Hell, Andy Sandberg, Sports Mocumentary on HBO.

That was one of your first things, right? Do the quick backstory of how you got into this because you didn't start as a producer.

No. I was 14, grew up in Washington, DC. I'm walking through a mall, come across a movie set, classic movie, First Kid, Sinbad. I somehow thought- Was that a movie?

Yeah, First Kid. First Kid with Sinbad? I don't know if I saw that one. Should we put that on rewatchables or no? Okay.

It's Sinbad as a secret surface agent. The first kid gets kidnapped and Sinbad rescues him. It's a great movie. Wow. That sounds great. Great movie. I smooth-talked my way past the PAs, and I met Sinbad, met the director, like I was sitting in these chairs. I sat in the director chairs, and I'm like, this is what I want to do when I grow up. So I started in the mail room at UTA and hustled and delivered it.

I forgot this. You're a mail room guy. Yeah.

I was very obsessed with starting at the bottom. I'm like, what's the lowest level I can start at?

It's like, Brawny James is like that.

I always think of myself as I'm the Brawny James of producers. It's really how I view myself. And I started off in the mail room. And that's where I read my first Bill Simmons column. I think I had a friend of mine at UTA who was in the mail room with me who kept telling people that he had signed you, Ryan Hayden at UTA. And we were like, wow, you signed Bill Simmons. We were like 23. That's true. Because I was a huge Paradise Hotel fan. Yeah. And you would write about Paradise Hotel and the Celtics, obviously, in sports. And I was obsessed with your columns. And I met Mike White when I worked at UTA, and that was 20 years And so we've been working together ever since. Mike and I had a company together. At one point, he came to me and he's like, I'm wasting your energy. You're way too ambitious for me. Just go start your own company. You can always work with me, but you're too ambitious for me. So I started my own company.

You went from UTA Maileram, worked your way up a little bit, but then eventually landed with Mike White, and you opened a company with him.

Yeah, I was his assistant. And this is right around when Funnier Diet started and all these digital websites.

Great times. Yeah, early 2010s. Yes.

And I started producing digital shorts, and I did a lot of the first Funnier Diet videos. I did this because I was obsessed with the Hills. Mike and I were both obsessed with the Hills.

Who wasn't?

One of the best shows ever made, honestly. We did a spoof of The Hills with James Franco and Mila Kunis. And that's the first thing I ever produced was basically I sat in an office and I transcribed two Audrina Justin Bobby scenes. Wow. James Franco played Justin Bobby.

I remember I remember this, actually.

That's the first thing I ever produced. I drove around West Hollywood looking for a bar to let us shoot at it. Not Delilah's. It was a bar called... I can't remember the name. It was a bar on Santa Monica Boulevard, and they let me shoot there for free, and everyone showed up. And that was the first thing I produced. And then I was just hustling. I was always really ambitious as an assistant. At one point, Mike came to me as his assistant. He goes, I just got a show picked up at HBO called Enlightened: The Pilot. He's like, Do to produce it. And I was his assistant. I was like, yeah. Laura Dern. Laura Dern. I was like, 27, 28. And I would show up to these rooms, Mike Lombardo and Sue Nagel and Laura Dern. And I didn't realize how young I was at the time. I just was like, yeah, I deserve to be here for whatever reason. And they were probably looking at me like, who's this kid that's in the room? And I produced the show, and yeah, I was the only producer.

And that's how it got going. That's how it got going. So what are the tricks before we talk to the history of White Lotus which is fascinating. What are the tricks you learn with producing a TV show that the common person wouldn't understand? Because people just see producer. It's a name that gets thrown around when you live in LA, you're like, what do you do? I'm a producer. People are like, oh. And they don't really know what that means or what you do?

It's embarrassing how many people say it really is embarrassing. But I played basketball. My high school basketball coach, Mike Hibbs in DC, who coach at the MAAFA, one of the most famous high school basketball programs in the country. So I was the glue guy. I was the guy taking charge. I was a Kurt Rambis of my team. That's how I view producing. Really, I'm the glue guy. We're having trouble closing the production designers deal. I will step in and close the deal. Casting locations, deal with the network, deal with notes, deal with release date, deal with marketing. I think the best producers know where there's an issue, and they step in, and they take over an issue or prevent issues from coming. But on a day-to-day level, I can't tell you what my day will be. Things will present themselves. And again, I think the best producers can put their ego aside and step in and handle any situation.

So you're a glue guy problem solver. Yeah. So it's a little more important than Finnie Smith. Yeah. Almost like Andre Agudala, mid-2010s warriors range.

I would take that. But I like to think of myself more like an Austin Reeves guy. If I need to, jury duty for for example, was an idea that I originated with another producer, Todd Schulman, and we were figuring out how could we... Todd worked with Sasha, and I worked with Eric Andre, did Bad Trip, and we were like, How can we take what we did and put that in TV? And we came up with this idea of JuryDuty, we hired the writers and originated it and was really creative, was really the engine creatively. And then on something like White Lotus, Mike White is a genius. That's Mike White's creative vision. And my role in that is really to be there by his side and do whatever Mike needs me to do. So I like to think I can do both things. I can originate things creatively, like Jury duty or Whitehouse Plumber is something I originated. Or if it's something like Superstore or White Lotus, I can step in with a creator and help them get their vision made and hopefully make it as good as it can be.

What's the right number of projects to have going at the same time? Because this is part of the problem is if you start doing well, then you start grabbing and all of a you're doing 10 things and you're not doing any of them well.

I have trouble saying no. I have trouble with boundaries. But that's a good question. I haven't found the answer to that yet. But the problem with our business is you never know what's going to get made, what's not going to get made, and why it gets made. And that's part of the white Lotus story, which I'll get into. I maybe have too many projects, but again, you never know what's going to actually come to fruition. And producers only get paid in success. So you have to have a lot going to make a living.

The timeline of it is always so fascinating to me when people get a deal done. It's crazy. Just getting the deal done. You have to have the meetings. You have to talk people into it when you do it. How many months is that? That's like four to It just closed a deal this morning.

That took eight months. Why it took eight months? It could have taken two weeks. If people just got on the phone and go, Here are the issues. That's eight months. I couldn't tell you why eight months.

Best case scenario, four months. Probably. Somewhere four to eight months, maybe even a year.

Well, I wouldn't against the White Lotus story. It actually proves it could be a week. It could be a week.

But that's where the case where HBO loves creators. They love Mike. He had an idea and they're like, done, go do it. Let's go. That's an anomaly.

Yes, it is an anomaly. It usually takes 4-8 months to get a deal done for whatever reason.

So you get the deal done. So let's say 4-8. Now you got to start writing outlines, scripts. That could be like another It could be another year.

It could be another year. Then the studio network will sit on it. Mike turned in lights in on a Friday. That's the first show I produced. They green-lit it on a Monday. And I was like, Oh, this business is super easy. This is how it works.

It's like when the rookie wins the Super Bowl title in the first year and thinks they're going to be back every year.

Exactly, yeah. And I'm like, Oh, this is easy. And that is the anomaly. It usually can take a month, two months, three months for a studio network to read something, do the internal economics budget it, and then goes- So and so is on vacation.

We got to push this to January because Bob's away.

Yeah. June, July. It's June, July for whatever reason, it's when kids are out of school, vacation. It's August. August is Toronto. There's a bunch of stuff in August.

Meeting gets canceled. I thought we were meeting Wednesday. We got to push it. When's your next availability? I can't do it. And then that's 10 more days. Right.

September is Cannes, whatever. There's South by, whatever it is. So then it's October. So things take so much longer than you think it's going to take.

It's the most incompetent system I've ever seen, the way it's done and how hard it is just to get balls going. But then when you actually get going, now you're in the outline process. Then they have to approve that. Then you're in like, all right, now it's like the giant advanced outline. They have to prove that. Then it's like the first possible pilot script and that goes. And this could be like another year and a half, right?

A hundred %. And then at some point you go, wait, what are we making? Why are we in this, and you hope after a year and a half, you're still excited about the idea you sold. And the idea still makes sense and are still relevant, were still viable, because that's part of the problem. Culture shifts, things happen, things that were interesting a year and a half ago, aren't interesting anymore. Whitehouse Plumber was an idea. My dad's from Hungary, he's an immigrant. He ended up in DC, a doctor. He would call me with this idea for, I'm not exaggerating It was five years, he called me. And I would go to Whole Foods on Santa Monica, and I'd fill up my food after work. And he just would pitch me this idea. I put him on mute. I wouldn't listen. And finally, to get him to shut up, I'm like, okay, I'll come to DC. I'll meet this guy who has some interesting story. Because everyone has an interesting story, right? So I was on my way to Montreal to shoot something else. I literally land. I left the airport. I gave myself two hours. When I met this guy, and he tells me the story of the White House plumbers.

This is probably 2016. And I leave the hospital. The guy was in the hospital. I was like, This is an incredible story.

My dad was right.

I fly to Montreal. I think about it for a year. I finally start meeting with writers.

So do you think about it like, what's it like as a movie? What's it like as a scripted? You're trying to figure out the best model for it.

It's funny. It actually comes back to White Lotus Season 3, which is I'm on a flight. I see this movie, Death of Stalin, which is an incredible movie, Armando Iannucci. And I'm like, oh, my God, this is a... Because the story of the White House Plumber's in Nixon Watergate is a comedy. It's a tragic comedy. And So I'm like, oh, this would be so funny in this tone. And then I saw Jason Isaacs, and I was like, Jason Isaacs is brilliant. And that comes back later in White Lotus. Jerry West? Jason Isaacs? Yeah.

No, didn't he play Jerry West? No, no. Who played... Oh, that was Jason Yeah. Jason Clarke. Jason Clarke. Yeah. Got my Jason screwed up.

But this is 2016, right? So then Whitehouse Plumbers, I pitch it to writers. We pitch it to Woody Harrelson, signs on, pitch it to Justin Thoreau, signs on. We sell it.

Do you feel like it's a party when the first star comes on, then it just becomes like dominoes?

Yeah, because you're like, once you get the first person on, it's easier to get the second. You're like, oh, yeah, what do you use coming to this party?

It's way- That's what everyone does with 30 for 30. We got Barry Levenson, and he vetted the whole... Once we had him, it made the next five people easy, but we had to get him to get it going.

I think I'm like 0 for 70 with my 30 for 30 pitches at some point.

I don't control it anymore. Sorry.

This is 2019. We to HBO. They're like, We're making this. Covid happens. It's pushed, 2021, 2021, 2022. And then all of a sudden, an idea that has never been made in 40 years, I get a call. You know this Julia Roberts, Sean Penn Project, called Gaslet, that's getting shot the exact same time I'm shooting Whitehouse Plumber, which is the exact same story. And so this idea I've been thinking about for six years, which has never existed. All of a sudden, my show comes out two months after the exact same show, which is something I can't control. So then at that point, it's like, oh, we're the second Watergate show about G. Gordon Lydie and Howard Hunt. And that's just the difficulty of producing. It's like, that's something that's so out of my control. You put all this energy into something, and then by the time my show comes out, it's an afterthought. We've already seen that show, saw it on stars.

What's your best thing that you had that fell apart, but it still haunt you at night? The same way like the 1985 finals haunt me for the self-ex.

That's a great question.

You don't have to say what the project exactly was, but was there one that you're just the one that got away? Yeah.

I have several that slip through my fingers. You think about those for years. I have probably two of those that I'm like, I just moved a little quicker or just put a little bit more energy into this. Do they die or do they just go in a coma? What happens is people get busy. If you a window with people, then they're off doing other things. And I had a show that had three elements that then went off to become massive stars, but I had them before their thing. It was in the world of music, which is the world I love, and I'm trying to figure out a show or movie in. And it just was about to come together, and someone hesitated, and I didn't push. And then all three of those elements have gone off to become big stars. So you can't get the band back together.

It's just too hard. It's like having the OKC Thunder in 2010, but when they're on rookie contract. That's it.

You make them... Yeah, it's literally... It's exactly it. And I just hesitated and made... I probably put my energy towards the wrong thing, and then it went away.

Is there a moment when you know things are going well because people are now approaching with projects in a way? Can you feel that happening in real-time? Yeah.

We have a mutual friend.

I'm not going to name him.

When you start getting certain invites to things, you're like, Things must be going well. We're getting those invites.

Right.

Yeah. But yeah, I think it's a momentum business. I think people love to chase momentum. And as you start to build momentum, it becomes slightly easier, but not-It's It's never totally easy. It's never totally easy. It's always hard because you always have to have the right idea at the right time, the right configuration of elements. And that momentum makes it easier to get your calls returned or get people attached. But it always comes down to the writer. It always comes back to that. Yeah, but yes.

The ways it can go wrong, because we see this when I do the rewatchables research, and it's always so interesting with the casting what ifs or this movie fell through, and then they revitalize the years later. It was the same idea, but it's with totally different people, a different director. The ways it can go wrong, like your music scenario where you have the people, you have the right people in your head, but then too much time passes and you lose them and you just can't find the next batch of people. Or you have it built around a star. There's a delay in the production. Something bad happens. You lose the star, and now the studio doesn't want to make it. Then the other one that's the famous one is the person who backed it on the studio side or the Hollywood side, they switched jobs or they got fired. And now the new guy or new lady comes in. It's like, Well, that wasn't my project. I don't want to do this.

I'm going through that right now. I had a project that we had nine bidders on, sold it to a studio, a movie, and now to Paramount. And now we're going through, could you have predicted two... No, it's probably three years ago now that the entire company would be turned over and going through this merger. But yeah, that's really it. Or the star of your movie is going through a divorce And there's so many elements that come in to making things on set, and they're not focused. And you're in production, you have the perfect script, the perfect director, but the star is distracted. So they're not giving them the right performance. But I learned my lesson. So I did this movie with Sydney Sweeney, Immaculate. And basically, euphoria was starting. This is 2023. And they're like, euphoria starting February 19th. And you have a moment, you're like, okay, we have a six-week window with Sydney. The script's not ready. Do we try to rush it into production or do we wait till after euphoria? And I'm like, I'm not waiting because after euphoria, who knows? And by the way, so we rush into production. And I'm very proud of the movie.

I think the movie turned out great. Yeah. But then euphoria doesn't get shot for two more years. So I was talking about this with Sydney yesterday. I'm like, now they're finally back into production two years later. But we rushed into this thing and she killed herself. She worked six to eight weeks. Then she goes to do the movie with Glenn Powell, works six to eight weeks to get it in before euphoria, and then euphoria doesn't happen for two years. But I learned my lesson. I'm never going to just wait. You have to burn the hand, you got to take it.

Yeah, because you also see this stuff where, like what happened with Stevenson on that show where he starts to do the idol. Then the idol becomes this whole thing that ties up. And then that entourage, I'm not entourage, euphoria cast. They're on hold. They lose the momentum from the series. But that also happens with all these other projects, too, where you think, oh, we're going to start as soon as they're wrapped up with season four. And then it's like, oh, no, they're actually not going to be wrapped up. You have a whole set and a whole system in place that now is on hold. Then you have to decide whether you want to punt on the actor or not, right?

Exactly. Do you replace them? I think it's an imperfect science, Hollywood. On the rewatchables, you're watching these movies, and it's funny. People are like, how do they make... It's so obviously bad, or how do they make such a bad movie? I think having made things that aren't as good as they probably should be, I think there's a great quote from Project Runway, and I always think about it. It's from the first couple of seasons where Tim Gunn is like, when you're in the monkey house for too long, you stop smelling the shit. Sometimes you're just like... That's great. You're just in it. I think about it all the time. You're in it and it's like, you're so deep inside of it. You're not seeing what feels obvious from the outside. You can watch them maybe 10 years later and go, why didn't they realize the third act didn't work or this is such bad casting, but sometimes you're so deep inside of it, you stop seeing the shit. That's why it's a tough business.

One of the things that I'm always obsessed about, Especially, we've talked about it on the podcast a bunch, is why there's so many cooks in the kitchen with these projects, especially when you're talking TV. In the entire history of TV and what's worked and what's not worked, it's usually like one vision. It's like a couple of executives trusting the person who had the vision and everybody clearing out and letting them do their thing. That's been most of the great shows we've ever had. I don't understand why Hollywood just doesn't obey this.

Because Mike and I talk about all the time. There's three producers on White Lotus. There's Mike, there's me, and there's Mark Kamine, who's our line producer. And what happens is the star of the show has a manager. So that manager is a producer. The star is a producer. It's based on a piece of IP, that IP has a producer attached. The writer of that piece of IP is attached. They bring it to a non-writing producer who has a deal at X Network or Studio. There's two people that work at that company. So all of a sudden, you're on notes calls with seven people, right?

When When the Zoom is so big, you can't fit everyone on your phone, something has probably gone wrong.

Yes, and that's probably not going to turn out well. Then you have seven people who have seven ideas, who have seven interpretations of what good is. And all of a sudden, you have a writer who's trying to service seven different people. It's never going to end up well. In all the things I've done that have been successful, all have one clear vision, and you're all in service of that clear vision. I think when there's too many egos and too many people weighing in, it just weighs everything down.

We see I see that on the documentary side, too, with a lot of the stuff I've been involved with. The more people weighing in, and one of the things I try to do as a producer of those, and it doesn't always work, is you try to funnel the notes through one person, so at least they only hear from one voice. But when this Celtics thing I just did, which I'm really proud of, I think it turned out great, but we had the Celtics. It's their IP, they have notes. You have the NBA, they're going to weigh in with their notes. And then we had our production side, and it's If you can pass a tipping point, especially if somebody is just in the abyss with whatever they're working on and they're just hearing all these different things and notes are conflicting, it can really fuck them up. It seems like every showrunner, director, or whatever, you're going to hit this dark place with what you're working on, and you need at least one person to be like, I got you.

And that's my role with Mike on my list. But also that's a role that I try to... It's a role I try to service in every production I do, which is trying to push on bad notes and trying to help creators, writers, directors, filter opinions. What do I think in my own taste? What do I think is a good idea? What do I think is a bad idea? And I think that's really...

And Picking your battles, right?

Picking your battles, always.

Maybe give them this one because it's not worth fighting about because I really need to win this one later.

A thousand %. And what is a marginal move? What is like... Because it's all tastes, right? Producing is all tastes. All It comes down to opinion. And what's a lateral move that you can give to a network or studio or whomever to then buy back later on? We have a great story from Enlight where the network was hammering us on this one episode, and there was a piece of dialog that Mike just loved. It was so lateral. Whether it was in or not didn't really matter. For some reason, HP was hammering us. And And we sent them back a cut with it taken out to make them feel good about it. But then we were like, we're going to deliver the line in. So we pretended that we had taken it out. We deliver it with the line in. And then they didn't notice, of course, because they're probably doing eight different things. They're giving notes. And then we go to the premiere in the network. Hbo was like, we should premiere that episode. It was the episode that we had switched out the dialog. So we're like, holy shit, they're going to notice in the premiere.

And So we played it. And Mike and I are sitting next to all the HBO executives that had given us those notes, and they never noticed. They didn't remember. And then we sent them all T-shirts after the premiere with the line of dialog. And by the way, they were like, What does that mean? They have no memory of it. But that's a good example. It's like, we're getting these notes from people and it's a Monday morning for them. Tuesday morning, they probably forgot what they said. And ultimately, you got to trust your creative instincts. And by that episode, one of our best episodes we ever did in that line that we took out, I swear, is so often quoted from Enlightened.

Wow. Part of the problem is people feel like sometimes they just have to give notes.

Always.

Or else it doesn't look like they gave a shit or watched it or did their job or cared. So it's like, so here's six extra notes just because I want to make sure my email is long enough.

Or you have 19 people on the Zoom, right? And every person is like, if I don't say something, I feel like I'm a loser. So then everyone has to weigh in with something that is Yeah, just to weigh in. And I've been in those positions where you're on these Zooms, and you don't really have anything to add, but you feel like you have to. Otherwise, you look like a total loser. It's a weird process.

One of the best behind the scenes experience I had was when we did the Andre the Giant Doc because they just trusted us. Jason was the director who's great. I don't know if you met him, but we just figured out the framework and it just went smoothly. It was one of those things where after I was like, Man, I wish that's just how it went. It was just a couple of people figuring it out. Everyone else trusts those people, and there you go. We'll talk about how unique White Lotus is, but we'll take a quick break, and then we'll talk about this is a unicorn It's a different type of show.

Anyway, break.

Okay, so White Lotus, which you were involved with intimately from the very beginning, the perfect TV show from a production standpoint in a lot of ways. You're not relying on a star because you can change the cast whenever you want. You have one person writing the entire show almost as an eight-hour movie. You have a network that completely trusts that person. You have a blank canvas to be like, All right, we have this hotel. Here's the premise. We're going to dive into this. We can change locations every year. It's a show that I'm sure you probably thought was going to be a one-year show, and now you can potentially do eight or nine seasons of it. You guys are controlling it, and they trust you. This is impossible. It never works out this way. So why does it ever work out this way?

The reality is White Lotus happened because of a confluence of events that could never be replicated. And I give HBO immense credit for trusting Mike. And I mean, it's funny. It feels like one of those bands, and you're like, oh, you're a one-hit wonder, overnight success, and you've been grinding for 15 years to make it.

Yeah.

And so Mike first pitched me a version of White Lotus, probably 2008. We were in together. 2008. We were walking in Tarifa, Spain. I'll never forget it. And he pitches me. We're just walking. And we were there... Paramount... Paramount was paying Mike to write School of Rock, too. And Mike was like, I don't want to... And I was working with Mike's assistant. He's like, I don't want to be in LA. Why don't we just go to Spain? I'll write it. You can do whatever you want, and I'll just sit and write and you can live in Spain. I'm like, I'm single. I'm in my 20s. It sounds amazing. So we went off to We were just walking one day and he pitches him this idea about a hotel show, upstairs, downstairs hotel show. The central relationship is a couple that's on a honeymoon. And one is rich, one is marrying into money, and the show starts with the groom returning, and the bride is not there, and you don't know what's happened. I'm like, That's incredible.

Wow. So that's 2008? Yeah. Because the whole premise of, We're starting this show, but something If something weird happened, you're going to eventually discover what happened. That's like a very late 2010s premise.

And then it's also an anthology series. We go into HBO, we pitch the idea, and the feedback was, Anthology series are not a thing. It'll never be a not interested.

I wonder why. Why would they say that?

Because at that point, it really hadn't been a thing.

Because it's like they're talking about the... I'm trying to think some of the stuff they did. I guess, the hitchhiker.

This is before the True Detective. So this is True Detective was really the thing that I broke open anthology series.

Right. So it's 2013 range.

Yeah. And I get from their perspective, it's like, you're going to start a show. The hardest thing is a pilot, right? Like getting people engaged and interested in characters. And then to replicate that every season is really hard and get people reengaged.

It's almost impossible. But the funny thing is the model you laid out earlier where you then don't have to rely on a fancy famous cast member, it's actually like a better model.

It's incredible. Well, the star of White Lotus is Mike White. That's the star. So the HBO passes, and it's an idea just sitting out there. One of the executives at HBO who heard it then goes to Amazon and goes, Oh, what was that at Honeyoon idea? Blah, blah, blah. Why don't we try and do that here? So Mike goes, great. We go. We talk to them about this Honeyoon show. And at that point, it was a show about this couple that's traveling from... And I think Mike was inspired. He had gone on a trip, and Phil Jackson was actually... It was actually Phil Jackson who inspired it. The Zen master?

Yes.

Mike is not a sports guy. I can't remember which country he was in, but he went from this great hotel to that great hotel to another great hotel within the same country. And Phil Jackson was on the same. He was like, Oh, we must have the same travel agent who had booked us into the same exact hotels. So Mike kept seeing him at every hotel. So he was like, okay, this honeymoon couple, basically, he's going to travel to different hotels, and they're going to see the same couples or same people, the same travel agent. So we go and Mike is in Sri Lanka. He's working on this honeymoon show when everyone Amazon gets fired. And then they replace Roy Price, who was running Amazon at the time, with another executive. And that executive just didn't get the show. The show dies.

So you're calling it the Honeyoon Show, and the new guy is like, the Honeyoon, what the fuck is this? He's out.

Gone. So now is our second strike, right? So that's 2015, 2016. Oh, my God. 2019 comes. We had met Jennifer Coolidge in 2006 doing a movie called Gentlemen Broncos. Great movie, underappreciated. Fox Search maybe with Jared Hess. And Mike and I, I'll never forget it, we didn't know Jennifer all the time. We go in to have dinner and we see Jennifer at the same restaurant, and she's literally sitting at this restaurant and she has her menu this close to her face. She's staring at the menu. And we're looking at her across a restaurant. We're like, who is this person? And Jennifer has terrible eyesight. The only way she could read the menu is, I'm not joking, literally, it's this close to her face. And she just shamelessly reading the menu like this. And we just fell in with her, and we became great friends, the three of us. And Mike was always inspired about writing a show for her. So 2019 comes and Mike has this idea for a show called St. Patsy, and he writes four episodes of the show. And we go out in 2019, we pitch this show called St. Patsy, which was about Jennifer Coolidge playing a version of Tanya McQuad, version of a celebrity actress who's going to accept an award in Sri Lanka, and there's a murder mystery.

Everyone passes. Everyone passes. And we're basically told Jennifer is not a TV star, whatever it is. So now we have The Honey Moon show, Mike was thinking about. We have the couple murder mystery show. We have Jennifer in Sri Lanka. Those three elements we have simmering.

And Mike is being pigeonholed now as incredibly creative guy but can't have a giant show. Exactly. He's not a big taste guy. He's like a small, Critics Love 'Em type of guy.

Exactly. Classically, he's an underdog, really. And everyone looked at him like, oh, he's brilliant, but not commercial. And Mike and I had been working together at this point for 15 years. We'd made a lot of amazing stuff together, but nothing had really broken through yet. 2020 comes, Mike writes this great script that is set in Sweden. That was a road trip comedy with him and Aubrey Plaza that Mike was going to star in with Aubrey. And we get the financing. Covid happens. Financing falls apart. It's July of 2020. Mike is despondent. He goes on a road trip by himself. I go on a road trip to Colorado, and HBO calls out of the blue. It's July of 2020, and they go, We don't have any programming. Is there anything that is COVID.

Yeah, COVID, by the way.

Is there anything you can do in a COVID bubble that you can do quickly, cheaply, that can be on the air in 2021? It was over email. Mike goes, Yeah, I got it. And they go, Great, it's green-lit. Just like that. Mike literally didn't know what it was, but he had been thinking about these three different shows over the last 15 years. And he combined all those elements, and that became White Lotus. We basically had one- It's Honeynoon Show, Jennifer Super Coolage. And it's a Honeyman show. It's a show that was in Sri Lanka. In some location.

Yeah.

And I'll never forget. It was probably August of 2020. We get on a phone call with HBO, and they're like, You have 30 days to make this. Good luck. And And Mike's like, I'm not going to... At this point also, we had two weeks to find a location. What people don't know is originally we were going to do it in Australia. And basically, we found a hotel in Australia, but we couldn't get our COVID vaccines, vaccinations, visas in time. So we basically were like, we pivoted to Hawaii because it was the one place that we could get in. And God bless Four Seasons Maui. It's the only hotel in the world that said, yeah, come shoot this during COVID.

Good career move by the Four Seasons, Maui.

By the way, great career move. Mike was like, I'm not going to Hawaii. I'm shooting this in 30 days. There's no way I'm doing a season in 30 days. And I said to him, I go, this is what we're going to do. I've never said this, and Natureo doesn't know this. I go, we're going to show up in Hawaii. We're going to get them pregnant, as they say in Hollywood. We're going to get them invested. They're going to spend enough money that we're going to go, Actually, we need another 15 million to make the show. And he said to me, he goes, if you're wrong about this, I'll kill you. This is what he said to me, I will kill you.

That's going to be season two. Exactly.

And so we went to Hawaii. Mike had one script, and he didn't even know what the ending was. Mike wrote the scripts without knowing where it was going because we got there in September of 2020. We had to shoot by the end of October. We had basically six weeks for Mike to write the season, cast the season, hire a crew, scout it, and shoot it because we had to be done by Christmas to get it on the air, 2021. We arrived and Mike just started writing. We were in a 14-day quarantine, and Mike wrote almost the entire season in those 14 days.

So he's like Bradley Cooper in Limitless, just cranking it out. Yeah.

Basically, it just poured out of him. But it was really... He had been thinking about the show for 15 years. It had been really those elements of things he'd thought about. I remember we got to a point where we had 30 days to shoot it, we needed 48 days, and I had to call HBO and go, Hey, we're 18 days over budget. It's a lot of money. To their credit, they go, We'll give it to you. Just go and do it.

Well, at that point, they probably had two things going because nobody could film anything.

As I had told you, strategically, they had spent enough money where I knew it was like a sunk cost. They're like, okay, we got to give them this money to get something out of it. And I think that was the hardest production I've ever been through because in Hawaii, that point, if you got COVID, you go into a hotel room for 14 days. So during that production, we had so many people get COVID. And that was also a point where if you were close to that person, you go get COVID. So we had actors getting COVID that would go away for 14 days. And we would have to rejuggle the schedule. We would have to shoot seven days. We had to do everything humanly possible. And another thing people don't know is we actually never finished. It was two days before we wrapped, and I was like, Okay, we're going to make it through. I got a phone call from HBO that someone has tested positive for COVID. And it was Jennifer Coolidge's assistant who was basically in the room with her every single day. And we were out shooting that famous boat scene where Jennifer is dumping the ashes, she's crying.

And I had to call the boat. I wasn't on the boat. I had to call them the AD and go, Jennifer, basically, it's like a close contact. You need to come back. Jennifer is going to go into a hotel room 14 days. We're going to have to shut down right before Christmas. And they turned the boats around. And I'll never forget Jennifer's face coming off the boat. It was heartbreaking because she knew she was going to have to miss Christmas and New Year's and basically be stuck in a hotel room. And we shut down and never finished. And we basically, which was a gift because then Mike goes and edits the show. And we eventually found a five-day window in February, the next year, to bring everyone back. At that point, too, we knew what we were missing. We did some reshoots. It was like a gift. Honestly, at that point, it was the worst thing that could happen. It ended up being a gift. We got everyone back somehow and the rest is history.

You skipped over the casting piece of this when you're doing the thing that fast. Obviously, the show has really good casting, but who does that come from? Is it a team thing or did you hire an awesome casting person or is it just people you and Mike like?

Well, Meredith Tucker, who's our casting director, Mike and Meredith went to Wesleyan together. So they're old friends. Got you. She's amazing, and we have a great... We've all worked together now for a long time. But it was so quick that we had to cast people we know. And for me, Sydney Sweeney I met her in 2019, and I had only seen her in your floor, and it's a really specific character. She comes in and she actually pitches me a TV show that I passed on, which I regret. And I met her in this meeting and I was like, holy shit, she's so different from her character. You meet her in in person. And I think people don't understand how good of an actress she is. Because if you meet her in person, you go, every character she's playing is so different from who she is. We were casting apart, and it was against type, right? Because at that point, she'd only played this character in euphoria, who was very dramatic, not funny. I meet her in this meeting, she's so bubbly, she's so personable, she's so funny in person. And I'm like, she would be so smart in that role because it's unexpected.

And so that's how that happened. Connie Brittany someone that we were friends with, and Mike knew for a long time, Mike could work with her before. We knew she'd be perfect. Steve Zahn was Mike's brilliant idea. He pulled that out of nowhere. We were having trouble casting apart, and he's like, What about Steve Zahn? Brilliant. Marie Bartlet, we weren't familiar with. And that's Mike's brilliance. Murray Bartlet auditioned, and out of 100 people, he identified Murray. He just saw it. He knew it'd be great. Alex Adario came in the first second we saw her audition, she just nailed it. She was amazing. Jake Lacy, thing audition. We had to do these things really fast. Natasha Rothwell, it's actually a great example of I'm really close to Natasha's agent, and I wasn't familiar with Natasha. Shanna, her agent, called me and was just hammering me, hammering me. Send me some stuff on Natasha. I was like, oh, she's brilliant. She won't audition. And we're just like, fuck it. Let's just go. We had to pull the trigger. She ended up being brilliant. And so it was really a combination of people we knew in just quick decision It's great.

You're thinking this is a one and done. We're out of here. How do we pull this off? This is finished.

Not only that, but the budgets of White Lotus season one were minuscule compared to some of their other traumas. We were also like, this could just never air. At that point, it was like a COVID experiment. They gave us a bunch of money to go shoot a show in a bubble.

By the way, there were some awful COVID experiments. This was by far the most successful one, I think.

But it really was. This show never happens, if not for it, honestly, in the COVID bubble.

Oh, thank you, COVID.

Thank you, COVID. But I think that if you had told me then, and Mike and I were talking about this the other day, if you had told me five years later, I would be in Bangkok at a Marvel guys premiere and we're walking out in front of 5,000 people yelling our names, I would tell you that's impossible.

So you finish the show. Hbo loves it. I started hearing about it well before it came out like, hey, there's this show we have. It has a chance.

Yeah, I knew because the show is so different, right? It's so out there and it's really just a lot of conversations around a table. There's not a lot of plot until episode five, and then that robbery happens. Nothing really happens.

But there's two genius things, though. One is that you don't know where it's going, and you want to see. But the other thing that plays into the COVID piece, you got to go on vacation in Hawaii, which was great. You just You had to go somewhere that wasn't like your house with the same family or friends that you were just staring at for the last nine months.

And just being completely honest, we didn't think the murder mystery element would be a thing. And we were cutting the pilot and we got a note actually about... Because in the pilot episode, you introduced this idea, Jake Lace is there talking about the dead body. We got a note, maybe bring that back at the end to call it back. And I remember we were talking about, well, people aren't going to really care about the murder mystery. So calling it back would feel... It's not really about that. It was just a creative thing that happened and people latched onto it. For me, it was really exciting because it was a way into what was ultimately a story about existential ideas and being a human and just complexity of life. And I knew... I made the show, and I also I've never talked about this, but I went to show three friends of mine, and they were the first people I showed the show to. And I showed them a locked version of a pilot that had temp music. And my friends were like... And they're three filmmaker friends. I trust them. And they look at me and they go, This show is not good.

And then I go, They're just not good. I go, What do you mean? They're like, Yeah, this is not a good show. They're like, What are you going to do? And I remember I laughed and I was disheartened. And one of my friends called me, and he's definitely going to listen to this interview. He knows who he is. And he's like, The show's really not good. It's not a good show. And I don't know. And I'm just like, I didn't really listen to him. Then the only thing that changed was the music. And that's the show we locked and we that air. And I still make fun of my friends, obviously, to this day about it. But I knew the show was going to work when we would show people, agents first, agents of clients. And they would call me and they go, Give me the next one. I need the next episode. I was like, Okay, I'll see you next time. And they're like, Give me the next episode. I need the next episode. At that point, I was like, Oh, there's something here that people are hooking into. And We could never have predicted it would be a success, and let alone we could do three seasons and a fourth season.

And feel very fortunate that HBO trusted us. And they just trusted in Mike. And there was no notes in the creative process because there was no time. They just said, go make it. We went off and made something and brought it back to them. And Casey and Franny and Norris Skinner at HBO, they've just known us for a long time, and they deserve great credit for just trusting in the creative process.

I remember texting Casey about it. We're season 2, and he's like, Mike's never doing a season 2. There's no way. I was like, How do you not do a Season 2? Just go to a different location. He's like, Yeah, we know, but Mike, that's not how he operates. He's not going to do it. So what changed?

I think the response to the show, and I think we just had fun. The show really comes out of Mike's passion for travel. He was on Amazing Race. He just loves to travel.

Was he a survivor, too? He was, right?

Yeah. I mean, so much of the show is survivor.

I was going to ask you about that. It does feel like survivor and White Lotus are not even cousins. They might be siblings.

Well, there's a great story of how Mike ended up on... Well, I mean, originally Mike and I applied to CBS for Amazing Race. We were wearing matching blue velour jumpsuits. We shot a stupid video running around Brentwood. I drove down to El Segundo. I dropped it in the box because Mike and I both love the show, and I was Mike's assistant. We had this idea of it would be funny if we went on the show together. Cbs called two weeks later, and they recast me. They're like, your dynamic is to Hollywood. We don't really like the dynamic. And eventually Mike ended up with his dad going on Amazing Race. But it was through that experience, he ended up on Survivor because he's like, Mike is really competitive in a great way. And I think he didn't win Amazing Race, and And she's like, I'm going to win survivor. But I think at the end of season one, we just had such a great experience making the show. And like I was saying before, Mike is really the star of White Lotus. And I think the anthology dynamic allows Mike to be the star and allow us not to be beholdent to anyone else's schedule.

And it's all on Mike in the writing. And Casey came to us, to Casey's credit, and said, I want to make anything you want to make next. And Mike said, let's do Season 2 of White Lotus, and they greenlit it without hearing Mike's idea.

Again, full- They didn't know location?

We didn't know location. I mean, I get asked all the time of the locations. The location process is really organic.

But it was a lot easier for season 2, I'm guessing. Well, yeah.

No, I mean, yes, easier to find places to give us hotels.

To be like, Yeah, come here. But it was still hard.

I thought we were going to shoot in France, and we went to Italy as a courtesy to HBO because it was an other country that had a great rebate, better rebate than France. We go and we basically saw these crazy heads everywhere in Sicily and Palermo. And this guy told us the story of what these heads meant, this Tessa DeMuros. And they tell us a story about this guy who was having an affair and the woman chopped his head off. And Mike got inspired by this idea of doing a show about sexual jealousy, and Sicily ended up being the perfect place.

That would have been a good title, Sexual Jealousy. That's a good title for a Cinemax movie.

You and I sell that. But I mean, season three is-It's like a Shannon Tweet right now in 2025. Just go with us. But I mean, season 3 was actually amazing. We were going to shoot in Japan, and we went to Thailand as a courtesy to HBO. It's the only other country in Southeast Asia that had a rebate that was film friendly. We We're in Chiang Mai in the north, and Mike got bronchitis, and he went to the hospital, and the nurses there took such great care of him, and he fell in love with Thailand. They put him on this thing called a nebulizer, and it's this really strong steroid. He was up for two nights and he hallucinated. And he hallucinated season three of White Lotus. And he gets in the van the next day and he pitches me what he hallucinated, and that's what we shot. What? Yeah. We were like, we're shooting in Thailand. By the time we left Thailand, we to Japan, we knew we were shooting in Thailand. And Thailand itself was like such a witchy place.

You were there for how many months? Almost a year. Jesus. But I love it. That was when I got to know you a little bit. You were just out of it. You couldn't follow sports in the same way? Like, nothing.

I mean, do you remember one of our first Zooms? I thought my dad, I don't know if you remember this. We had a 5: 00 AM Zoom because it was the only time that worked for all of our... The first time we ever met. And I woke up to a message that my dad My dad was in the hospital. I don't even remember this. And I get on the Zoom, we were meeting for the first time. And like I said, I'm a huge fan of yours, and I was so excited to meet you. So I didn't want to cancel our Zoom. And I had woken up three minutes before our Zoom, and I get on, and I'm really shaken. And you're like, We can reschedule. Deal with your dad. My dad was okay. But yeah, I think that was a tough year for all of us. Just the time zones and being away from family.

Mosquitos?

And the mosquitoes were insane. We all got Denge shots, and a couple of people got Denge. At that point, you're like, it's a crapshoot. Will you get Denge? Will you end up in the hospital? I would go to work like I was in the 1980s, Lakers. I would have socks up to my knees. I feel like Michael Cooper.

Exactly. Honestly. So you're worried about monsoons, mosquitoes. There's always the tsunami thing, which is, by the way, not a theme. Always a thing. Season 3.

But it's coming. Yeah. So now it's coming. But I've been watching sports the hardest because I'm a diehard Lakers fan. I would be on set. And this is the build up to the playoffs, like Nuggets series. And I didn't miss a Lakers game. I had VPN. I got the ticket. I watched every single Lakers game on set, regular season, play-offs. And I would be at the monitors, and I'm a really vocal fan. So I'm there and watching the Nuggets series, Joker's hitting these fucking ridiculous shots over his head, three pointers, falling out of bounds. And I'm yelling on set. I'm not joking. If you ask any actor from White Lotus Season 3 about this, I'm literally at the monitor. Dave's a maniac? Oh, yeah. I'm at the monitors with my iPad, watching what's shooting, watching both at the same time, yelling uncontrollably at Jamal Murray, who I fucking hate, as a Lakers below that series. I should have won that series. But yeah, I mean, sports, I would wake up at all crazy hours. Wouldn't miss a Lakers guy.

And the problem solving. So it sounds like Italy was probably the easiest the three seasons. Yeah, but that was- Why is the hardest? And then Thailand is just a wild card every day.

Wild card, yeah. Why was the hardest? Just because of COVID. Also, you didn't know what COVID was at that point, how dangerous it was. And I'm a producer. I'm not an epidemiologist. People are looking at you like, Oh, you're a producer. You should have the cure for COVID or no. So people are coming to me for COVID advice, plus producing advice. So it was a very tough spot to be in. And in season three, where it got more into a groove, just the elements of Thailand, the heat, mosquitoes.

You said it's your favorite season.

It's the best season. I'm really excited for people to watch it.

Your three friends think it's another shady season.

Yeah, of course. It's really slowly paced. It really sucks. By the way, our dear friend, Michael Lasker, who I love, he called me last night and he was like, I love the season. I'm on a text thread with people. They're talking about how slow it is. I'm like, One, why are you telling me this? You know Lasker, you can't help him. Uncontrollably, you can't help him.

He's got opinions. Yeah.

But it's annoying to hear people go, Oh, it's so slow, because each season is paced the same way.

But what I- By the way, it's not slow. You need to watch. Unfortunately, and we have to do this for the recap pods, you have to watch them twice to absorb everything that's in there because it's this dense, all this hidden shit going on, and you can't just watch it while you're on your phone.

Because honestly, I love you. I love The Ringer. I listen to all the reviews of the things I do. It's true. And so you texted me and you're like, Oh, I watched the first episode three times. I told Mike White that. I'm like, Okay, people are going to like it. Bill watched it three times means something's going on. But I'm really excited for people to see where it goes because it is completely unexpected. It's a little demonic. That's what Mike and I talk about. It's the most demonic of all the seasons in the best way possible.

Well, I mean, see, we don't have to spoil episode three, but snakes, fires, and tsunamis are some of the dream visuals going on in the third episode.

That's what's exciting is the plot hasn't even really kicked in yet. There's so much unexpected stuff to come. And I love the cast, like Patrick Schwarzenegger, Jason, Parker, the three women. Everyone is just great people. It was a really, really, really amazing experience.

So you're almost doing the Belichick salary cap move where you're just getting these awesome veterans to be the middle linebacker, but you don't to shoot your wad on Ryan Reynolds.

Because ultimately it comes back to what we were saying before, Mike is a star. It's like OKC. They have this culture that they built. I was talking about this with someone the other day, honestly, with or our mutual friend. It is like, OKC has built an incredible culture around that team and people buy in. That's what we've tried to build with White Lotus, which is this is a show- You don't think LeBron has built that culture?

Why don't you use LeBron as an example?

No comment. And I think it's like, Mike is a star. It's Mike's show. And people are signing up and they're coming to do this show because they're believing in what we're making. And everyone is at MFN. Everyone's getting paid the same. Everyone has the same trailer. Everyone has the same exact status. And across the board, all of us. Everyone is choosing to be there because they want to make a great show, not because of the money, not because of anything else. And you feel that on set. It's funny. Body language Bill is my favorite thing I've... I was thinking about that as it relates to actors in White Lotus. In the casting process, you can feel people's body language.

Really? Yeah. Like that they're there because their agent told them to be there because they know it's a good show, but they don't actually watch it.

Why they're there and how hard they're fighting for those parts. It's funny on set, I was thinking about body language says so much. I remember, I'm a dire Broncos fan. I remember going to see Jay Cutler play live. I just remember he threw a pick in the end zone. And I remember his body language walking off the field. I'm like, oh, he fucking sucks. And I remember when they traded, I was so happy. The body language says so much about people. And I was thinking about that as it relates to this season. This was a really hard show to make with the elements in Thailand. People were so committed, and the body language and the energy every day was so good. And I think that comes through in the show, and it comes through in people's performances. And I think it comes through. By the end of the season, I hope people agree with me, but I do think it's the best season we've done.

And Mike's no help. He's right in every single line.

Every single line. Mike's the genius.

It was funny because at one point when they were during one of the... I forget when the writer's strike was and one of the things they were talking about how, oh, this one, they don't have a writer's room. It's like, yeah, because it's like an eight-hour movie. He doesn't need a fucking writer's room.

But also this is a thing. I've been working with Mike for 20 years. Mike Mike is authentically himself. I think the key to being successful, I think as a producer or writer, is knowing your strengths, knowing your weaknesses. Mike's weakness is being in a room with writers. And Mike's weakness for him That's just not how he approaches the creative process. And he's not critical or judgmental of anyone else's process. But the thing, he had a mental break. The last time he ran a room, he had a mental breakdown and ended up in a mental hospital. And he talks about it a lot. And that was because of the process. For him, he just doesn't exist in that process.

Why wouldn't people just think of it as a seven-hour movie, which is what it is?

Yeah, of course. What Mike is saying is, Anyone can do whatever they want. I just need to do my process. And he was like, I'm never returning to TV. And he returned to TV to do Unliked In because HBO said to him, You don't need to have a writer's room. You can do it on your terms. And that's how I was able to do it. And so I think Mike... What he does, I don't know how he does it, And again, he's a genius.

The two people I don't know how they do it are him and Taylor Sheridan. Yeah, I don't know. I don't understand how Taylor Sheridan is producing this much content.

I don't know.

It really does feel like, I made the limitless joke before, but he really does feel like the limitless, like we're going to find out. He found some something.

That or he has an Adderall addiction and he's going to go to rehab at some point in the next five years. I don't know how he does it.

Or his body naturally produces Adderall. Exactly.

There's something going on with him. But Mike focused on one thing. He wants to do one thing really well. He doesn't want to spread himself thin. And I think that all saying no, we're talking about at the beginning, is a superpower of his. He knows his limits and he has to focus on one thing. And he pours. That's the thing that people don't realize. He pours every inch of his life into making White Lotus at the cost of personal friendships, family. And he cares about every... We'll be in a mix in episode four of the season, and he will hear something and he will... He's so focused on the attention to details that nobody else is thinking about.

So is the number one thing that happens to you at the show, people suggesting locations for the next season? Yeah, of course.

That or My other favorite thing is- Because if my wife came in right now, she'd be like, Why don't you guys do a skiing season?

By the way, because Mike- Go to Switzerland.

Mike doesn't like the cold. That's why we'll never do it. I feel confident we'll never do a season in the cold. You're not going to do a ski season? Mike is not built for... He's a California guy. He's not built for the cold. But never say never, but I would be surprised. But yeah, I think part of the best part or one of the best parts of my job now is hotels are calling me Because Mike says, I got the runoff.

Mike says, no. Definitely work with that Italy hotel. It became one of the hottest hotels in the world.

But I'm telling you, every hotel is now offering to fly us to see the hotel. So I get Mike's runoff. Mike, they'll offer to Mike, Mike will go, And they go, who's second? Okay, let me go down the call sheet. So I'll get the phone calls and they'll be like, we'll send a plane, we'll fly you to X city.

You're like a VIP at a casino. They're sending you the private plane so you can come gamble there.

Honestly, I love to travel. So now it's like, how do I say yes to all these things? And I think the next couple of months, I'll be flying all over the country, all over the world, looking at hotels.

And do you figure out the location first or do you figure out the idea?

And that's what I was saying about the Thailand story. I think there's a First is the theme. We knew season 3 wanted to explore Eastern philosophy and bigger existential religious ideas. We knew it had to be Asia, and we didn't really land on the series until we landed on Thailand. I'm not exaggerating Mike hallucinated the season. It came very organically. I think season 4, I know what the themes are. I won't talk about it.

I know we have- Oh, so you know it? Okay. Yeah. Don't tell us.

We have a general concept, and then We will go scout cities that could make sense for that general concept. I think the season will present itself once we land in sea hotels.

Mike could be like, Season 4 is about adultery. That's what I'm excited about. Okay, Let's think about locations that would be a good adultery location.

Exactly. But it's funny though, because Mike, part of his genius as a writer, he's always paying attention. For example, we were in Bangkok and I went and had drinks with someone. We were scouting And this person was talking to me about these bald guys who come to Thailand and they're dating these young women. And she's like, we call them LBHS.

You're just filing it away.

Yeah. So I go in the van the next day and I'm like, so funny, I met with this girl. I was out. She was talking about LBHS, Losers Back Home. And I just say it as a funny anecdote. Mike files that away, and then it pops up episode one, the LBHs. He's always paying attention and he's always just observing. There's so many things that happen in the show that I'm like, I think maybe somehow I unintentionally or somebody in our group unintentionally inspired it, and whether he's making fun of us or unclear, So if he does season four, there's a podcaster, we'll feel like he's making fun of maybe this podcast we're doing right now in some way. You never know. Somehow, some character will end up on a podcast. Me. That's what I'm saying. He'll have a general concept, we'll go travel, and then ideas will sprout, and it'll focus where we're heading and what he's writing.

This is the part of the podcast where I pitch a White Lotus character for some season, and it's awkward, and you end up not doing it. I just feel like an NBA player going on vacation is the all time just sitting their idea, which then you could really get involved with. I don't know if Mike cares, but I was thinking about it during an All-Star break. All these guys went away and they went... A couple of guys you could see were almost a little sunburn, but I was thinking, this is where I would love White Lotus to go one year is have a basketball star, and we could all try to guess what pieces of stars you took to make this star.

What did you see the video of Luca banging three? He took all-star break to go off and just start banging three.

He went to Cabo, right? Yeah. Just banging three.

It's funny because no matter how successful I am in Hollywood, film, TV, meeting an athlete, any athlete is still the thrill of my life. I love this idea as an excuse to cast-Just to hang out with an athlete.

Yeah. Then it's like, do we get a real athlete? Do we get a fake athlete? Because the other one I was thinking was quarterbacks would be a good one, too. They're in the offseason and they go away. They go away, they bring whoever and you could have the guy brings his wife, but also his girlfriend staying somewhere else in the hotel, and you got that whole thing going.

Well, I'll tell you a funny story, which is season one, my lowest, we're in Maui, four seasons. Maybe you know this, maybe you don't, which is that is like the Lakers Hotel. Now, I'm never going there. But I want to say Magic Johnson is my idol. I grew up writing letters to him. When he retired, I was inconsolable. I had to, I think I skipped school. He is my hero. And if I had to liken myself really to a basketball player as a producer, it's Magic Johnson.

Unselfish.

Unselfish. So we are at the Four Seasons, and I think somehow we hear that Magic Johnson is staying at the hotel. And I tell Natasha Rothwell, and I tell Jennifer Coolidge, Oh, Oh, my God. Magic Johnson. My little brother is there, and my little brother knows better than anyone, John, how much I love Magic Johnson. So they're like, You're going to meet Magic Johnson. And I'm like, I don't know. I'm walking to the hotel, I see him with Cookie. They're walking to the lobby, and I freeze up. I can't do it. The next day, I'm on set and I get a call from Jennifer Coolidge, and she goes, Magic just left the hotel. He tipped everyone. The staff love him. They just told us he's leaving. They're like, You need to come down here, come to the lobby, You're going to meet Magic Johnson. And I'm wearing all the COVID mask. I have long hair because we haven't got our hair cut. I run down the lobby. I'm just sitting in the lobby now. And I'm like, this is my one moment to meet Magic Johnson. And there comes Magic Johnson with Cookie, and he's with the manager who I've gotten to know.

And so I go up to him, I go up and I introduce myself, and I'm now the 11-year-old version of myself. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, great to meet you, Magic. I love you so much. And I'm a producer. And I basically tell him how much he's changed my life and how much he means to me. And I'm just like a moron. And he goes, wait a second. Who are you? What do you do? And I basically tell him, I'm producing a show, White Lotus. At this point, no one knows who White Lotus is. And I basically tell him how much he means to me. And he's like, do you want to take a photo? I take a photo with him. And of course, it's now framed on my wall. And I think to this day now, I'm like, I wonder if he's seen the show.

Oh, I promise you he's seen the show. Magic watches all the TV.

But he must be like, because he must have been like, who the fuck is this idiot, a grown man talking to me like he's a little boy.

But by the way, this happens to Magic every day, seven times a day. So I watched it a bunch of times.

But it was amazing.

People melt into puddles when they talk to him. It's incredible. Plus, he's gigantic. I mean, you're tall, but you just can't believe he's 6'9 and he's right there.

But it's also like, I think I reflected on I said to him. I'm like, wow, what an idiot. I'm like, I produce the way you play basketball. But anyway, but point is, we're going to get an athlete season 4. I'm going to figure that out. You've inspired me.

I don't know what the right sport is, but I feel like it has to be NBA or football.

Well, I take so many means of that because, again, I want to do something with athletes. I've been trying to talk Travis Kelsey into something. I'm like, that's my That's my dream is to do a show or a movie with an athlete.

Well, our friend Tommy, Tommy Alter, who people know from this podcast, he was involved with it for a long time. But he said from the moment Travis Kelsey did SNL, he's like, this guy's going to be a A-list action movie star. I'm calling it now. He planted his flag. He was the first one who pointed his flag.

Oh, yeah.

Because I feel like we need it. Like, Carryon, I know a crush for Netflix. I didn't really love Taron Edgerton as the lead. We're missing these guys that I grew up with in the '80s these. A little bit of unintentional comedy, but can act just barely good enough, but they're also physical and awesome.

I'm doing a movie with John Senna next. John Senna is that, but what's annoying is I'm a season ticket to the Broncos, I love the Broncos. Of course, I know very well about Travis Kelsey. He's been killing us for 15 years. Ca calls me, they go, Come meet with Travis Kelsey. This is before his dating Taylor Swift. I'm like, Obviously, he's like, We'll meet with you in Kansas City. You have to come out for a game. I'm like, Obviously. In between then and when I finally go out, he's now the biggest star in the world. I feel like I missed that a little bit. But Travis Kelsey is so funny, so charming, so personable. When he's ready to focus himself with acting, he's going to be a big star.

It would have been funny if you caught him during White Lotus Season 1, and he was just working for Murray Bartlet. He was the 20th guy in White Lotus, just came down to Hawaii to hang out.

But that's actually one thing I feel like now it's It's so obvious, but I feel like I was a little early, and then I missed that boat a little bit, but Travis Kelsi. But I think when he wants to, he'll be a big star. He'll be John cena. John cena is so funny, so talented, and has that physicality of the stars that were '80s, '90s.

Did we hit everything? Yeah. That was like an hour. He always come back. People like White Lotus Season 3. They're happy with it, except for your three buddies, those fucking assholes. Yeah.

Our Rotten Tomatos is- Rotten.

Come Come on. You don't look at Rotten Tomat, do you?

I know. It's pathetic how much I consume response to the show. I don't know. I will sit on Twitter. I will read all the comments. Don't do that. I can't help, but I'm also really... I'm actually really interested in people's theories on what happens this season. I'm consumed by people's theories because it's really fun.

It's like- Well, that's why we did the pod the way we did it this year because- I love that. The one at a time, that's the only way do it. You really have to like, Oh, I think, and then an episode later, you're completely wrong.

I'll be honest with you. And I mean this genuinely. I really value your opinion. Oh, thank you. I do both on sports, but also on film and TV. And so I was really nervous to listen to the first episode, your episode about White Lotus. Other people listened to it and I asked, I was like, is it positive or negative? I wanted to know it was okay because I care about what you think. So I was very excited to know that you liked the show.

I like going on vacation with shows and people being in the right hands of creators. This show is perfect because I've never been to Thailand and I'm never going, especially after hearing some of the things that happened to you when you were there. I'm just never going. I told my wife, she's reconciled it. She could take my daughter.

What's cool is you get to see a lot more of the country as the show goes on this season. Maybe we'll seduce you by the end.

There's no safari. That's not on the list, right? African safari. We talked about that.

We talked about that as a potential.

Yeah, because that's the great thing about the show. You have all these locations. You have fucking 10 seasons. It's a dream.

But also it's like, where do you want to live? Lifestyle is part of the decision making because you're there for a year. We talk about different continents and...

Nothing in America, though.

Maybe we'll come back. We talked about at some point...

Could do Yellowstone, but then it's cold.

Yeah, it depends on time of year. But what's really fun, what's been fun about this season is also Thailand is a place that people don't really know, and they're familiar with it from the hangover. It's been really amazing seeing the response and broadening the understanding of Thailand and Thai culture beyond the surface level, beyond full moon party or sex tourism or whatever it is, which is an element of Thai culture, but it's not Thai culture. It's been really great to see a country that needed the exposure. They've really responded to that. They've been so warm to us. Mike told me yesterday, he met the Prime Minister and came. Jesus. He was like, if I asked him for a passport in assistantship, I feel like they'd give it to me. But it's been really exciting to put a country on the map that hasn't really had that exposure. That's maybe part of our calculus going forward also. It's like, what's an undiscovered gem and what are places that people aren't that familiar with?

All right, we'll leave on these two things. One, Luca. Yeah. You must be over the moon.

I remember. Like everyone, it was like, midnight, I got a text from my little brother, and he texted me something. I was like, did the Lakers die in a plane crash? What happened? He just sent me basically, he's like, wow, Lakers. I was like, what does this mean? I go on ESPN, and it took a second because I love Anthony Davis, and I think he's so underappreciated it.

The Anthony Davis zag. I like this.

No, no, no. But I mean, the last, it was against the Nuggets game, you're like, Oh, yeah, this team is going to be good. Also, He's like Magic Johnson. He just plays in the same way. That was bad.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Which I love. He's already skinnier. It took a week. It felt like he already lost five pounds.

Which I love. It's like the ultimate, it's like Liam Neeson in Takin. He's basically like, I'm So the next 15 years, he's basically going to fuck the league up. As a Lakers fan, as someone who goes to games, I am so excited to see him play. I had tickets to that Saturday game where we thought that Liko was going to play, and I had canceled all these plans. I I had tickets and I was ready to go. And then the last second, they moved his first game to the 10th, which was the White Lotus premiere. And for five seconds, I'm like, Do I skip my own premiere to go see Luka play? Is that something I do? But I'm very excited about Luca. It's exciting to be in LA for them.

So your life is basically people talking about the Luca trade with you, people suggesting White Lotus locations, and then people trying to set you up. That's it. Those are your three things.

Honestly, that's it. That's genuinely But like consuming way too much-But White Lotus is a hot show.

You're probably getting some good offers for setups. I've heard rumors.

No comment. That's a nice one to drop at a party when you're talking to somebody.

What do you do? I've been ERP on White Lotus.

I have good friends who somehow seem to work that into every intro. My whole identity now is the White Lotus producer. That is my identity going forward, which I can't complain, which I'm very fortunate.

It's a nice hook for you. All right, Dave. Good luck with the rest of the season. Thank you for having me. Nice to see you. Thanks for coming over. Of course. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Sheil and Dave. Thanks to Kyle and Sruti and Gehow. As always, don't forget, you can watch this as a video podcast on Spotify, and you can also watch on our YouTube channel, the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. New rewatchables as well, if you missed it. Crash, that's up there. Then White Lotus, if you're in on that show, we've been covering on the Prestige TV podcast, me, Mallory, and Joanna doing the recap pods. Then after words, during the week, Rob Mahoney, Joanna Robinson with their Deep Dive Theory podcast. We have all that going. I love that show, and I'm glad Dave came in. Anyway, I will see you in this podcast on Thursday. Must be 21 plus in President Select States for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in President DC. Gambling problem? Call 100 Gambler or visit rg-help. Com. Call 188-789-7777 or visit ccpg. Org/chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp. Org in Maryland.

Hope is here. Visit gambling helpline ma. Org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-8778 Hope, NY or text Hope, NY in New.