Transcript of Mavs Fans in Hell, Bleak NFL Situations, an Oscars Recap and RIP Gene Hackman | With Peter Schrager and Wesley Morris

Welcome to the Bill Simmons podcast. Before we get to the pod, I wanted to talk about Kyrie Irving and the Dallas Mavericks in this crazy situation. Kyrie out for the year towards ACL. It came out today. Kyrie, I've had a roller coaster ride with her over the years where I didn't really like him on Cleveland. Lebron showed up, really liked him, didn't like him as much, came to my favorite team, was all in. It couldn't have ended worse. Became probably my least favorite basketball player. Goes to Brooklyn. That goes terrible. It goes to Dallas. You guys are so stupid. Then over the last two years or last maybe year and a half, I really grew to like him as a basketball player. I like how he talked about everything, how he took some responsibility. It was like everything I wanted from an athlete. I really liked watching him, and I grew to respect and like him as a player. They make this Luka trade. It is the least popular, most shocking, most indefensible trade in the history of the league. It's getting worse by the day. The fans are just so angry. They are like scorn lovers, multiplied by 100.

They raised the season ticket prices this week. Everybody goes nuts again. This is the angriest fan base that we've had in a while. Here's Kyrie, Who's, by the way, they're putting crazy minutes on him. He's in the 2010 draft, or 2011 draft. He's been in the league for a while. He's a point guard. He's playing the last six weeks, 38. 7 minutes, which led the league. So they're throwing this huge burden on a guy who hasn't exactly been Cal Ripken Jr. And they're talking about how they rebuilt themselves. This was about a title window. They trade for Davis. He gets hurt in the first game. They put this crazy load on Kyrie. He breaks down. It's after the trade deadline. They have their first-round pick next year. What we've seen with this injury over the years is it's almost a two-year injury. You lose the guy this year, but even when he comes back, we saw this happen with Jamal Murray in Denver. They're not either they don't come back the season after or when they come back, they're not the same person. So you almost have to think you lose a year and a half.

They don't have control of their own pick from 27 to 30. On top of this, they have to watch Luka, who's already rejuvenated. You can see it. When we talk about face of the league, face of the league, like Luka on the most famous basketball franchise we have, all due respect to the Celtics. You can watch Celtic City documentary. But the Lakers, I think, are the premier franchise in the league. The Celtics are the most successful. The Lakers are in LA. They've had the most stars. Luka is in there now. There's an energy that's completely different at these games. And The Maverick fans who already got kicked in the nuts with this trade in the worst way I think we've ever seen in basketball, now they have to watch this guy blossom as their team already just fell apart. I tweeted this earlier today, and I really mean it. I went to those three 2011 Finals games in Dallas when they came back and they beat Miami. They actually lost the first game, which was Dwyane Wade, I think the best game I've ever seen him play. Then they come back, they win game where they win game five.

A big reason they won those games was their crowd was incredible. I don't know where they rank in the best basketball fan bases, but for me, they're in the top seven. I used to love the Warriors fan base even before the Curry stuff happened. There's the Knicks, no matter how bad the teams were. If you went to a game and they liked the team, it was just a great place to see a game. You could feel the love. I really feel like the Dallas fans, everything they had built from 1980 on had gotten to that level. They really loved this team They appreciated Dirk. They really wanted him to come through. Then in those three games, especially the last two, and they started to shift the narrative on Dirk, and you could just really feel the love and the pure euphoria And then Luca shows up, becomes their guy, and they're like, We're in. We have 20-year season tickets for this dude. We'll buy his jerseys. We love this guy. This is our guy. We'll have some ups and downs. Maybe he won't always be in shape, but this guy's special, and we're going to win the title with him, and it's going to be amazing.

The trade pulled that away. They're still pissed about it. Now you have this. This situation is now so bad. We were joking after it happened that the real reason the family that owns the did this is because they wanted to sabotage basketball in Dallas and move it to Vegas, move the team to Vegas, because the Dallas fans would hate them so much that you'd almost have to move. It's almost like there's a precedent of this, like George Sheen and Charlotte Charlotte. His name became so bad in Charlotte that he actually moved the team to New Orleans. It's obviously ridiculous. It would never happen. But the Kyrie injury on top of everything else is the first time where I started thinking to myself, Holy shit. That's actually how bad this might get, where they might have to be like, Hey, can we have the Vegas expansion team instead and we'll just sell Dallas or make Dallas the expansion team, or we'll move operations to Vegas, and you can make Dallas the expansion team and call it the Mavericks and keep it the history. That's how bad this is. I'm really feeling for the Mavs today because the combo of that trade, losing Davis in his first game and then losing Kyrie for a year and a half, probably I honestly can't think of another NBA situation like this where a fan base has taken in the teeth like this.

So shout out to them. I think it's a sad basketball day because Kyrie was playing great. I loved watching them. This really feels like this kills the Mavericks now for the rest of the decade. So wanted to mention at the top, let's get to the rest of the podcast. This episode is brought to you by Nissan. If you're planning on an adventurous 2025, you're going to need a car that can keep up with you and conquer anything in your path. The Nissan Armada Pro 4X is that car with a twin turbo V6 engine ready to propel your adventures up to 8,500 pounds of towing capacity to haul all your favorite toys. And space for eight passengers. This unshakable fortress will chew up and spit out anything you throw at it. Learn more at the all-new 2025 Nissan Armada at nisonusa. Com. Toeing capacity varies by configuration. See, Nissan Towing Guide and Owners manual for additional information. Always secure cargo. I hope you stayed because I have football in the Oscars and Jeanne Hackman coming up next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, put up a new rewatchables on Monday night. We did Rocky.

That's right. The original Rocky, the Oscar-winning Rocky, the movie that made Slice the Loan, an A+ list superstar that created the template for all sports movies. That was me and Chris Ryan and Van Lathen. You can watch that as a video podcast on Spotify. You can also watch it on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel. I also have another podcast this week. We did the episode 3 recap of The White Lotus. You can find that on the Prestige TV podcast. You can find all the clips and videos from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. And you can watch us. I hope you're watching us as a video podcast. We launched the first episode a Celtic City yesterday on HBO. First of nine episodes, you can also watch it on Max. Please check it out. The feedback has been awesome. Thanks to everybody who reached out. If you care about basketball, you care about sports history, my hope of this stuff is you could potentially get sucked in if something is just really well done. I think our thing is really well done. I think the early feedback is that people are like, Wow, I learned a lot.

This is fucking awesome to watch. When's the next one? It's once a week. Check it out, Celtic City on HBO and Max. Coming up on this podcast, I'm going to talk to our old friend, Peter Schrager. What he found out at the Combine, is there draft stuff, free agent stuff? Who has the bleakest situation in the league? We're hitting all that. Then, Wesley Morris comes on to review the Oscars, to talk about the movie year we just had, and really to talk about Jean Hackman, because we had to get in that as well. We did a lot of Demi Morris stuff, too. Then, he's going to give us his favorite TV show at the end. It's all next. First, our friends from ProJab. All right, taping this on a Tuesday morning Pacific Time. Peter Schrager is here. I haven't talked to him in a while. He was just at the Combine. A lot of people are saying he was the one that broke up the Starbucks fight. I don't think you got a lot of credit for that. You were like, third man in, just trying to keep peace at an Indianapolis Starbucks. Combine, crazy place.

You love it. I love it. Is that your favorite week of the year?

It's the best because you see something on TV and you're like, All right, it's a bunch of people in their underwear working out. It's not even 1% of what Combine week is. I would advise any young, aspiring NFL journalist, any NFL And go, go for a couple of days because as much as it's about the on field drills, you will bump into Mike Tomlin at a restaurant. You will see Sean Payton just having a private meeting with an agent out in the open in front of that. Jay W Marriott Starbucks, which, by the way, it's literally going to Times Square and starting a fight when it's at Conway. That's the hub of everything, J. W. So 10 teams are at the J. W. Every media member at the JW. And for that interaction or that altercation or whatever it means to happen at that Starbucks, obviously, the irony of Jordan Schultz's father being the longtime CEO of Starbucks is one thing. But to do it there in that public of a forum, I got text from NFL coach, NFL GM, three agents, four different media members. Oh, there was just something. That is the crossroads of all things.

Yeah. So it was Jordan Schultz and Ian Rappaport, two NFL insiders, for lack of a better word. It would have been funnier if it was because Rappaport made some crack about, your dad caused Seattle the Sonics. It was way more deep-seated, but it just seemed like some insider kerfuffle. The big thing I'm looking at, and there's already been some buzz about the Giants trading up. I don't know. Do you feel like it was true that the Giants could have had Stafford and they had the draft pick compensation? Rich Eisen reported that yesterday. Do we feel like that is 100% accurate, that the Rams were just ready to trade Stafford to the Giants or no?

No, I think that the Giants had the parameters in place and were willing to engage, but the Rams never went down that road in such a formal fashion. So they had conversations. Essentially, Stafford couldn't shop himself to any of these teams. He's not a free agent. So what the Rams did was they gave Jimmy Sexton, his agent, who's big power, he's nick Saban's agent, he's Parcells' agent, a big agent, the ability to go look at what the market would be. And the Giants were obviously interested, and the But not for the first round pick, though, right?

No, no. Probably a second or third? No, no.

It would have likely, and I know it from all angles because of my relationship with McVeigh, but also my relationship with Stafford. So it was, go see what's out there and what fascinations could be possible. And it came down to basically the Raiders being very interested in the Giants. What I think the trade compensation would have been, would have been Giants give up their second round pick, which is the 34th pick, and then the Rams give back a third round, and Stafford. But then Stafford would need to tear up the contract and have a massive contract, which would have been paying him close to $15 million more per year than what he's essentially going to play for with the Rams. At the end of the day, they went down this road, and as it dragged on day by day by day. I think at one point on Wednesday, I was like, wow, it might actually happen, and it might actually be the Raiders or the Giants. But then by Thursday, when I got word that Stafford and McVeer were having breakfast at 6: 30 in the morning in LA, I'm like, it's done. And this conversation started back at Super Bowl, whether that was some of the rumors.

And I got caught in a little bit of shit because I was interviewed and caught off guard and it was like, What do you think about Stafford and the Rams? And I'm like, I just know this, that they're going to have to have conversations and figure out a new contract. But also, I know that McVay loves Jimmy G, and that set off an entire You got aggregated. Got aggregated. But if they were to move on from Stafford, which cooler heads prevailed, they had backup plans. They had Jimmy G, and then all the reports are accurate that Rodgers could have very well been the next quarterback in the Los Angeles Rams.

The Giants are so stupid. What's the point of trading for Stafford? What are you going to win the Super Bowl in the next three years? There's nothing. You're going to give up a possible starter/all pro in a second round because you want to go seven and 10. What's the alternative? What's the alternative?

They think they're a quarterback away from being relevant, and I don't think it's that far off. I look at their team. What? Well, I mean it. They get Andrew Thomas back in offensive tackle. And then last year, Nabors- I didn't realize.

I'm bumping them up to 11 wins. Are they in the same division with Washington and Philly?

They're confident that this team is not that far off and that the quarterback play was a businessman last year. The fuck out of here.

Come on. Well, let's see. You can't believe that.

Why not? They've got first-round picks all over the offensive line. They've got Malik Nabors, and they've got this- What are those first-round picks is Evan Neil, isn't it?

Sure.

So that's a watch, right? So like, Neil's not the guy.

Come on. They have no chance. I would be going the other way and trying to trade guys to get more picks and trying to reboot it. Look at their front four.

You've got Dexter Lawrence, Thibodeau, and you got Brian Burns. They're not... This is a team that everyone's like, Oh, I can't believe they got rid of Saquon. Saquon wasn't going to do anything with the Giants last year, close to what he did with the Eagles. So what they do instead, they invested in their offensive line and they have no quarterback.

And they got a high pick. But this is the point. Then talk yourself into Kam Ward if you think he can be a top three pick. This is why I brought up Stafford, because the stuff has started today about they're going to leapfrog to one, they're going to take them one. It just feels like Kam Ward is going first in this draft.

He very well.

It doesn't mean he's the player. It doesn't mean it makes sense. But there's three teams right now who just have no idea who their quarterback is going to be. The Raiders have the best chance to probably stumble into one because they have all the cap space. The Giants, I don't know how they get one that actually make my case that I just laid out. How are you going to make the playoffs? You're better off betting on a guy who maybe can become the guy.

Here's the case for bringing in a Rodgers at 41.

For the Yes, here's the case.

Hear me out.

Motivated, cheap compared to what?

Motivated. Motivated, yes. Embarrassed. Embarrassed that the Jets said, We're good without you.

Motivated.

Cheap, comparable to a Stafford or to one of these bigger top name clients. It'll definitely be cheap. You've got Brian Dable, who had his name from being Coach of the Year to now being the clown of New York and being considered a joke. Two guys that no football inside and out and let's say, screw it, and let's get him with a giant chip on our shoulder and see.

Now look, when they love to get- That was the case.

Would they love to get to one? Sure, they would love to get to one. But here's the deal. Rogers, as much as you don't like them, as much as Aymel doesn't like him, as much as Cousin Sal doesn't like him, players like him.

His teammates like him. The Jets fans didn't like him. Can we throw them in? Can we throw in how he looked last year where he had no legs and didn't want to get hit and was terrible?

I think he had 28 touch downs, 11 interceptions. I'm pushing the ball up the hill here. I'm trying. But I would say this, the alternatives of, Hey, we could roll out Rodgers and still get a young quarterback, and you have Rodgers as your quarterback for this year, and you're not throwing someone to the wolves and saying, Hey, go out there and play for your first season right out of the gates. That's the argument to make. I would also add that the Titans have the first pick in the draft. Will Levis will not be their starting quarterback week one. I know that's not necessarily out there. I don't see this happening. He gave it a good I don't think the Browns are going to start. The Sean Watson, because he can't physically, but I don't think the Sean Watson is going to have many snaps, if any, again, as a Cleveland Brown in his NFL career. I'll say that. So that's a second team. Then you got the Giants, then you got the Jets, then you got the Raiders.

So this whole- So you have four teams in the top seven, basically, that desperately need a quarterback.

Yes.

Which is why Kim Ward has to go first. And it's not even going to matter whether he should be the first pick. And usually, what is it? It's 50-50 with the quarterback that had. Those are the guys from the last 25 It might even be like 35, 65 for him to be good. Totally. But he still got to do it.

Look, if you're the Titans and you can maybe trade back and still get Abdul Carter and Travis Hunter at three or at That's fine, but you still don't have a quarterback. To me, the Titans, and I've done a lot of work and talked to everybody this week, everyone assumes they're going to go Carter one or Hunter one, or they're going to let someone trade up. No, I wouldn't dismiss Kam Ward at one, get us the quarterback, and then we could figure it out and get a Bridge quarterback if we need. And by Bridge quarterback, I'm not talking Sam Darnold. I'm talking like a Jared Stidham or a Taylor Heineke or like one of those guys because last year, talking to... No, but those are the guys that start off like a Jacobi Berset last year or a Marcus Mariota in the room.

I know, but if you're thinking Kam Ward- This is the Raiders last year, right? Well, Minchou, he'll be a stopgap, and then he's just awful.

Sure, but if you get Kam Ward, you're good, and you got your guy. I talked to Cliff and Adam Peter's a bunch, and it's like, the underrated guy in this whole process for Jaden Daniels was having Mariota there because he had a veteran to learn from who had... That's almost as key as drafting the right quarterback is get in the right room. Last year, Caleb had Tyson Bajent and a couple of undrafted guys and a bunch of second, third options as quarterback.

Drake may had Berset, which I think was a bonus, considering he didn't have a coaching staff, but at least he had Jacobi Berset.

Look at what Drake may has got this year. You now add in Josh McDaniels, you add in Todd Downing, you suddenly have a real staff around him and guys that have been there and done that. Of course, Vrabel is an upgrade head coach as well.

I was texting with Todd McShea about this this morning. Isn't it a likely scenario that quarterbacks go one, two, even if it makes no sense whatsoever? Because nobody's been able to explain to me why the Browns wouldn't take a quarterback. Absolutely. Deshawn Watson isn't playing again. They're absolutely screwed with the cap. There is no possible way they can acquire anybody. And this is their one chance to actually add somebody. There's been the Sanders stuff and the stories about the stories and the narratives behind the narratives. We've gone in nine different directions. Oh, we're just getting started. Anonymous QB coaches. Just wait. Yeah, it's going to get worse and worse. And it's also he's got a famous father who might decide, I want to nudge toward a certain team and is going to know some tricks, some other families don't. Which, by the way, I think that should happen more often. I think that should happen with Cooper Flag in the NBA. You have the leverage. We always talk about player empowerment with the NBA and pick your team. With the veterans, yeah. It's never with the rookie. We saw it with Eli Manning where he didn't want to go to San Diego, ended up with the Giants.

I'm always amazed it doesn't happen more often. But if Deion is like, I want Sanders on Vegas. That's just how this is going to play out. It would be pretty hard for rest of the league to stop that. Anyway, I feel like there's a one, two scenario with the QBs, right? Absolutely.

And Cleveland, very interested in quarterbacks. And you look at the free agent crop right now. I don't have a team for Sam Darnold that's given him 40 million I think Sam Darnold, who had arguably the best 17 weeks of his life, had maybe the most disastrous and financially prohibitive eight days any quarterback has ever had in NFL history You're right.

It wasn't even two weeks. It was eight days. Eight days.

It was that Sunday night.

It's like a Hawaii trip.

It really is. It's like White Lotus. It was like- He had White Lotus season 4.

I've lost $80 billion.

Yes. He was like Isaac's Exactly. Saxon, what a name. You've got the Sunday night against the Lions, then you have an even worse, disastrous performance against the Rams eight days later in Arizona. It went from being potentially lying around the block of teams to this week at the combine, not a lot of Darnold love. So can't go back to the Jets. It's really hard. It doesn't sound like the Giants. I don't think the Raiders are doing flips over Sam Darnold. The Steelers seem to be pretty happy and going for Justin Fields is what the latest I've heard. So Now the teams are rather limited. Are the Browns going to break the bank after already paying to show up and now pay for Sam Darnold? I don't know. So Darnold is number one on that list. And then it's like, very quickly gets to Kirk Cousins and Russell Wilson. And I said Jared Didam, those are the names. It's not exactly previous years where there's this long list of, Well, Baker Mayfield might be a possibility, or we could do... You might be looking for the Browns like, All right, it's Daniel Jones, Carson Wentz, or we draft someone at Two.

When you're at that point, you're like- That's chilling. Let's draft someone at Two.

Which is why the Giants would have to leapfrog the Browns at Two to get Kam Ward, which is why I think Kam Ward is going to be the first pick.

I'm with you. I also think Giants beat the Colts in a insignificant Week 16 game, and Malik Dabr said about 200 yards, and it cost the Giants the top two picks, and now we're here- Are you talking about the Drew Lock game?

That's what it's called now, right? The Pats had the Joe Milton game, and there was the... But Drew Lock was incredible in that game because I bet on the Colts. Drew Lock was lights out. I mean, you could make a case like, Yo, look at that Drew Lock tape. Maybe we have the solution in-house.

Maybe. He's a free agent himself. I think it's a very good possibility that despite the fact that this draft class at quarterback is nowhere near last year's. Those one, two, three pics last year, those guys have been talking about for 12 months, and it was no They were going one, two, three. And it was like, if you can get in the top three, you're getting a franchise quarterback. Now, Bo Nicks was not viewed this way. Michael Pennix wasn't seen as a top 10. Mccarthy. And McCarthy was like this wild card, which still is a wild card. This year, Kam Ward's got huge upside, but despite the great years he's had at Washington State in Miami, he's not viewed in that same category as those top three guys. Then it's a giant drop off from what I gather. Then just viewed as prospects, not necessarily how they turn out, should Shador, Jackson Dard, and then a bunch of unknowns.

So you have Shador next to Jackson Dard, potentially.

Yeah. I think Shador is viewed closer to Jackson Dard than Shador is viewed closer to Ken Ward.

So he could be a drop chip on the shoulder guy?

That's Absolutely. You're talking about leverage that Deanna, I don't know if they have leverage unless they've got an agreement from a team that's like, Hey, no matter what, we're taking them. Don't worry. You guys can...

Can I zag? I'm going to zag.

Let me hear.

Son of a famous person, tough. It seems like he's smart. It seems like the thing that people are worried about with him is the athleticism more than anything. But he's got the toughness and the competitiveness that they like. I do feel like as we get closer, the team starts talking themselves into the pluses because the minuses aren't like, this guy's a wuss. This guy's not a leader of men. They're more like- Not a divo.

Don't reday that shit. He's not a divo. This guy chose to go to Jackson State. Also, I tweeted this yesterday, and I'm sure it was the tweet that signed off a million... No, no one cared. I tweeted this yesterday that the one thing a GM told me, don't sleep on Shador with this, is he is tough as shit. Got the shit kicked out of him the last few years and got up every single time, and they love that.

Leader of men.

Tough. Yeah. You don't love the fact that he's been beating around a bunch, but you do love the fact that he didn't cry about it, didn't whine about it, got He was against an inferior... He was behind an inferior offensive line on a team that was really just like, slapped together in the last couple of years, and they put together some wins early. But this was not the same level of talent that necessarily a Jackson Dard had at Ole Miss or a he was had at Texas. This was Shador. And his point at the combine, to rub people wrong the way he had some bravado at it, is that he changes places when he gets there. So Jackson State, obviously, went from this HBCU that had no resources to suddenly being a national name. Then he goes to Colorado. We had one week where big noon kickoff from Fox and Game Day were there on week two, vying for real estate in Boulder. It happens. The Deon thing is real, but there's also a lot of positives to that in that he's the son of one of the greatest football players ever, and he's seen how to handle yourself as a pro, and he's seen how the business works.

Shadora has never wavered in that he's a leader, and those guys do respect him.

The other piece of that, when you think about quarterback prospects, because there's two versions of it. There's a quarterback who had the weight of the college on their shoulders. Then there's the guy who was on an awesome team where the program was the star, and they were the quarterback of it. Some of the guys that have succeeded, especially recently, Jake May, he stayed North Carolina. He was the whole program. He took all the leadership responsibilities, and it was even though the record came and went, but he was whatever. Bo Nix was in the spotlight in real ways in different colleges. Then Jaden Daniels, same thing. Then he has that OSU year where I just wonder sometimes, is it better in college, you're really the guy, at least for a year? Does that prep you in a certain way? Whereas you look at a Trubisky, I would study if I was a team- Anthony Richardson. Anthony Richardson has 14 starts. Have somebody study the ones that didn't work and what are the common denominators? One of them is not enough starts. That was a Trey Lance thing, too. How big was the spotlight? How much pressure were they under on this limited level?

And how did that go to... How was that going to transfer? Sanders had a giant spotlight on him for three years there, which I think is a positive.

Yeah. I mean, the Colorado years, but also in Jackson State, they really put a lot of resources into marketing that thing. The fact he decided to go there and they brought Hunter there, that was a major story for a lot of reasons.

They were in the limelight. It was those two and Deon. It was a real thing.

Troy Akeman would show up at games, and it became a thing. I think last year might have changed the narrative a little bit. Bo Nicks played 61 games in college. He was older than every other prospect in that draft. He shows up and he was immediately dismissed by a lot of teams because we've seen Bo Nicks, there's no upside. And Sean Payton, who you know I'm going to always talk about if I get an opportunity, was like, I like the fact he's played 61 games, did it in the SEC, and then played at the Senior Bowl, and then was in major college games. I like that fact. So this year, you've got this guy, Tyler Shuck, who's not being discussed at all. Watch, he will be rising off draft boards. He was out of Louisville, but was at Texas Tech before that and somewhere else before that. He's played a ton of college football. He's 25 years old. In the past, he'd be like, We don't want that. Shuck's stock is rising because of all the experience he's had.

Purdy Parallel.

Brock Purdy, same thing. He played all those years at Iowa State. We like that because Kam Ward, we know he went from Washington State to Miami. He started at Incarnate Word. That was his first school. Zero offers anywhere. But he changed that program, went to Washington State, and on a bad Washington State team, competed with all of the Pac-12 heavies and did well, and then goes over to Miami and breaks every school record and ends up with the most touch downs ever thrown in college football. It's like, that's a resume. That is life lessons. That is adversity. That is different offenses.

Going into a new situation, having to meet a bunch of people. I'm going to be the alpha.

I know we're a little bit all over the place, but like- Can we go back to the experience for a second?

Because I think this is actually the case for Darnold, who I think is now an underrated asset. He had 27 games at USC, where he started. Then if you go in as a pro, he started 73 games over the last eight years. He's at 100 career starts now and look great until those last two weeks, is that a Minnesota offensive line issue? Was it a scheming issue? Was it just that he played two great teams? I feel as we get closer to free agency, there's going to be teams tilting it and going glass half full. Because if you can get him for less than the Baker. What's the number? Well, let's say you can get him for 15 to 20. Let's say you can get him to- No, 15 to 20, yes.

The question is, if someone wanted them 30 to 40.

But you're telling me the Raiders wouldn't want to spend 20 million a year on Sam Darnold if they couldn't get the thing? That would be braided just being like, This guy doesn't have it, I'm out.

Yeah, that's what that would be. If that's his number and the raters aren't in, that's braided saying, I don't give my vote of approval on this. Now that we're two months removed, and I think this might have been the case, and I'm making excuses for them. I think that Sunday night game with so much buildup and so much on the line for the Vikings and the lions killed both those teams.

That they-Right.

It was like a regular season Super Bowl.

It was a Super Bowl. They destroyed each other. They knew what was at stake. You had a home field during the playoffs. The number one seat was in the balance as well. It was the most significant football game in the regular season this league has ever seen for both teams. They both just destroyed each other, put everything into it, that they were both completely flat the next time we saw them. The Lions, of course, they lose on the Saturday that follows, but then the Vikings lost the Monday that preceded that. Darnold, those eight days, and everyone I speak to who's negative on Darnold is like, Well, That's what you hoped you never saw again, that he erased it, but there it was.

That was the Darnold thing. I mean, if it's Aaron Rodgers versus Arnold, come on. Kyle is going to turn the TikTok camera because I have a very important Tom braided point.

Okay, let's go.

Tom braided. I love Tom braided He brought me six Super Bowl's, one of my favorite athletes of all time. This is a dangerous thing where you have him running a football team thinking he knows what's best with quarterback because he was a great quarterback. Because all of the evidence with the great players we've ever had, name the sport, mostly they're not good at this. They think they're seeing things that other people don't see, and it's not actually rational. Like Magic Johnson, Lonsal Ball got hurt, obviously. But Magic Johnson took Lonson Ball over Jason Tatum. You have Wayne Gretzky ran a hockey team. How did that go? I'm trying to think.

I don't have much on the coyotes. Were they no good? Was Shane Doe not good enough? I don't know.

But Michael Jordan ran the Charlotte Hornets/Bobcats forever. The big Sean May guy.

Couldn't have been worse.

Steered them toward Kwame Brown, the Wizards, steered them toward Kwame Brown over Pal Gasol and those guys because he liked what he saw from Kwame Brown in a workout. I don't know if I trust the greatest players ever on stuff like this.

That's an interesting take. Is there the argument against that? Because you don't want to argue with it. Or Jerry West is the greatest evaluator the NBA has ever seen.

Jerry West is a positive. There's some that win. I'm just saying it's not a slam dunk, but I think part of the problem is if you and I are in that room with Tom braided, and we're like, Yo, man, we think Darnold.

He might dismiss him right away.

And braided is like, I'm out. I watched that game. He He doesn't have it. I'm out. Are we going to argue with Tom braided? Now, it's this one voice that just sees what he wants to see.

I'm fascinated by the Raiders set up. John Spitek is the new GM. He was in Tampa for years. Before that, and is really a good evaluator. I interviewed him at the Combine on camera for NFL Network, and I said, All right, you got a lot of voices now because it's not just braided. Pete Carroll is going to have opinions. Chip Kelly is the offensive coordinator. Then you've got all these different voices that are now new ownership group. You've got the Melman people. It's like, okay, now we've got all this. Whoever this quarterback is going to be is going to be their first big unveiling of, here's our group decision. That's a lot of pressure on that quarterback. I don't think they're just going to go with a Minchou O'Kunal thing. I think they're going to try to find somebody.

No, they're going to get somebody. Could there be some new owner syndrome with this? Yes. Where they're like, Yeah, let me make a splash. Got to get somebody really good. Got to get Chip Kelly's offense. Got to find the right person. Nice mobile, whatever.

I would go through Freddie's relationships with some of these guys. What's his relationship with Rogers? They've known each other 20 years. They've been competitive. What's his relationship with Russell Wilson?

I can't believe Steve Rogers.

They've played in a Super Bowl together. Is Russell Wilson going to be the quarterback of the Vegas Raiders?

Gino Smith?

Do you trade for Gino, who has a great relationship with Pete Carroll?

If you're the Seahawks and you can get a high second-round pick for Gino Smith and then spend 20 million a year on Sam Darnold for three years and just invest in your offensive line and be like, If we can actually block for this guy with the guys we have, we can actually do this. I would do that.

That's why this is fun. It's such a weird class of quarterbacks because you have these potential Hall of Famers and Hall of Famers at the last stage of their career. I mean, Cousins, we don't even know if he can move anymore, but he's going to be available if someone wants to trade for him.

He's more available for TV.

Yeah, Russell Wilson.

You You might be doing TV for him on Network TBD in about six months. You and Kirk. Don't laugh.

Amy Poehler might have a pod right next to Russell Wilson's if we keep on going down this road. Who knows? This is it.

Who knows?

No joke, though. This is the last stop on the tour, and then you'd hope that you have a young guy that can come in as well. Then there's this middle tier. I keep on saying Stidham's name. I think Jared Stidham is going to make a ton of more money than anyone expects because he's this 28-year-old guy who's been in multiple systems, and when he plays, he plays well.

I need to take a breath.

This is it. Patriots fan.

It's Jared What's it makes more and more than Sam Darnold, what are we doing?

He won't make more than Sam Darnold, but he will be a covited free agent more than you would imagine because of the dearth of quarterbacks available and how important the position is.

At this point, go take a look at Joe Milton's Week 18 game tape and talk yourself into that if we're going down to Jared's Center. Trade for Joe Milton. Don't laugh.

I mean, Joe Milton went... What round was he last year? Fourth, fifth, sixth? Joe Milton could go for a fifth or fourth round pick.

He was really good in that last game. Let's take a break. I got lots more to cover with you. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. It's winter, or it's the tail end of winter. You can now get almost anything you need for the coldest stretch of the year delivered with Uber Eats. What do I mean by almost? Well, you can't get a snowplow delivered. You can get snowpees delivered. Snow angel? No. Angel hair pasta? Sure. Sunshine? That's a no. A bottle of wine? That's a yes. Yes, Uber Eats can I'll get you that along with a side of garlic bread and cream brûlé to top all of it off. A little angel hair pasta bottle one. It sounds great. Get almost anything for your winter delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol in select markets. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. All right, so quick tangent that I'm going to bring back to the NFL. In the NBA, the bleakest situations right now are the Suns and the Sixers, and now the Mavericks who made this catastrophic Luka trade, and then Kyrie's out for the year. You just look at those and you go, wow, this three, four-year window here.

Pretty bleak. Who, in your opinion, especially being around everybody last week, who are the bleak franchises other than the Browns? We're just going to grandfather them in. The Browns have to be number one bleak, but who else is in that conversation?

The Browns is bleak because their star player also is demanding a trade and they don't plan on trading them. So you add on just terrible results in a question at quarterback, and then you have the star player being unhappy. So that's the Browns.

Would you say that's the gold standard of bleak right now? It has to be.

Yeah, but they were in the playoff two years ago, and they do have young talent. So there's always this Hope Spring's eternal. We get the right quarterback to be back on our way.

The Browns fans feeling good all of a sudden. They're like Schraggs. They're in on the Browns.

Yeah, Schraggs. I'm in on all 32, as you know. I think the Jets situation is pretty bleak right now in that they feel like they got the right coach and they feel like they got the right GM. But you've got a bunch of young players who are up for giant contract extensions in the next couple of years, and you do not have a quarterback, and you went down this road with Rodgers. Now it's like, we're a good team with names on the roster, but we have nothing to show for it. We have a complete X-Factor at quarterback, and we're just out of the top five to actually draft one that we could just pick. We'd have to move and be able to do that. To me, I think the Jets will be in on Justin Fields. I don't know if Justin Fields would leave Pittsburgh to go to the Jets. Now, money talks. But even if you get Justin Fields and you like Justin Fields and you think you've seen things from Justin Fields, if you're a Jets fan, are you doing flips over? Okay, we're now ready to take on Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes and Joe Burrow with Justin Fields.

And Drake May.

And Drake May, sorry.

Thanks. Justin Fields. You'd have Jets? Who else? Because I would have to say, at least with the Jets, there's a lot of talent there. There is, but you got to- There's moves.

You've got to pay, Sauce, and Garrett, and all these guys are going to be up for contracts. They had all these first... Breece Hall, Jermaine Johnson, Garrett Wilson. You name it. Then, of course, you mentioned Salt. They all got to get paid if you want I keep them.

Well, they're already letting DJ Reid go, which I thought was shocking. He was good last year.

Dj Reid's a good player. Yeah.

He's going to be a free agent. Come to the pats, DJ Reid.

Don't laugh. I think the pats are going to be very aggressive in free agency, and I think they're going to load up this year.

Wait, hold on. I was going to end with the pats? So Jed's bleak, Brown's bleak. Would you throw the Saints in there?

Yes, because it looks like there's still a question with Carr. Is Carr the quarterback, and they've got salary cap issues?

What's the question? How much do we hate ourselves?

How much do we keep him? It sounds like the comments that were made by Mickey Loomis at the combine was that they're in on Derek Carr still. And I thought he would be in that same boat as cousins and whatever. If you're the Titans and you got Brian Callahan who coached Carr with the Raiders, it's like, All right, well, give us Derek Carr and we'll figure it out. But it sounds like the Saints are all in on Derek Carr, and they still have this bloated salary cap that they can't get out of their son. I think the Saints is pretty bleak.

Wait, when you say he's in the same boat as Kurt Cousins. Are you talking about the Titanic? What boat is that? Is that boat still floating?

We say this, and yet there are teams that are going to convince themselves that, Oh, well, it's better than the alternative, and we'll pay these guys real money. That's That's where we're at.

What happened with the Raiders last year is the point for that. You just don't want to have a season where you're the Raiders and you realize by the third preseason game, like, Wow, our quarterback suck. This is going to be terrible.

You got Desmond Ritterer at quarterback in week 16 on national TV. That's not where you want to be. Saints last year were rolling out Spencer Rattler in big games. It's... Quarterback is everything. And so the Saints, it sounds like they're going still with their That was the comment made, but we've seen these things change. But their Salar Cap situation is no good either.

Would you go bleak for the Cowboys? Semi bleak?

No.

Medium bleak?

Blic in that it feels like the other two teams have surpassed them in their division, and they're still going to have to pay Micah Parsons, and they've got Dack on this contract and CD, and I don't know how they're going to pay all these pending free agents that they have and that it's going in the wrong direction. But gosh, you don't even do a full search, and it's like, We're just going to keep it going with Brian Schontenheimer. It's hard to look at your fan base and say, Well, it's totally going to be different. Well, we just elevated the guy who was number two to Mike McCarthy, and we're not going to have any new, fresh talent besides what we already have, and we missed the playoffs last year. The question is, how does Dak return from injury? Because he's the highest paid quarterback in the NFL.

Well, the offseason, especially this part, and when we had an afraid seat draft, is all about, how do I convince my fan base to be potentially excited about something.

The Cowboys can be like, Hey, Dak's healthy.

We got Parsons. We have three of the best players in the league. We're the Cowboys. I don't know what the case What's the case for the Saints? We have no cap space, and Derek Carr is coming back, and we hired the ninth coach who got hired. We're in the NFC South. Never know.

Yeah. It could happen. You're in a market that... It's a good team with a great tradition and a great city, but it's not like New Orleans is due to by the NFL as the Cowboys or the Giants or one of these premier franchises.

Do you feel like it's less bleak in Jacksonville? It's better. Okay, give me stuff.

Well, it can go... This is like a social experiment in a lot of ways. I went out of my way at the combine to meet a lot of these people that I had never met before. That's always what I like to do. I like to a list down of like, Here are 10 names. They're all going to be in Indianapolis. Get to know them. They're young, they're up and coming, and then you become friendly enough with them, where over the years, you bond a relationship and you form. They hired a 28-year-old offensive coordinator in Grant Udin Eske. 28. And I was doing the math in my head. I'm like, All right, I know how old I am. I know where I was like, When OJ was on the chase and Ewing was playing Olajuwon, he wasn't born yet. And that's where I like,. This is how young he is. Josh McCown tells me he was with them in Minnesota, this kid's brilliant. But that's your offensive coordinator. Your head coach, Liam Cohen, who I've known, he was UMass's quarterback. I wrote a book with Victor Cruz way back when in 2011. When Victor Cruz is like the sensation, his quarterback was Liam Cohen in college.

I got to know Liam then when we were working on this book. I've seen Liam bounce. Liam is a young, really untested head coach, first-time head coach. You got that, too. Then at GM, they hired a guy named James Glad Sandstone, who's 34 years old. He was with the Rams. He was living in St. Louis while the Rams were in LA, and he was doing the scouting from a satellite office, but he was less sneeds, like number two. The Rams gave him a lot of credit for these recent drafts, including Puca Nakuua and including some of these, the Braden Fisk and Jared Verste. That said, you're talking 34-year-old GM, 28-year-old offensive coordinator, first time head coach, and then a first-time defensive coordinator, an Anthony Campanile. To me, it's fun, it's fresh, it's different. It's not hiring Urban Meyer or Doug Peterson. It's a strategy.

We're young. It is different.

Then Shad Khan, whatever. Then Tony Khan, I talked to at the Super Bowl, and he's like, He's talking about wrestling to me. I think that's his priority. He's the AEW, and he's like, Shreggs.

He writes every episode. He writes it. It's amazing.

He's like, Shreggs. His eyes are all darting all over the place talking.

Shreggs, you I should do something where you come into the ring and you get hit with a chair.

Mjf is going to knock you out with a Burberry scarf on.

He's probably trying to book in Rappaport and Schultz to have some Starbucks match. He would love that. They can whip lattes at each other.

Big sponsor, Starbucks, or in this case, maybe Duncan. But I honestly think that it's this football experiment where it's like, let's just do fresh eyes and young and higher guys. Obviously, I love that. I love that. I hate going retread. I don't like the fact that we just typically like, Oh, well, this guy worked for this guy, and then we just hire him. They're all fresh faces, and Jacksonville is fun to me now.

I'm going to give you a possible bleak candidate, and you're going to be upset. Why are we so negative?

Let's be positive.

This is the last one. I'm going positive in one second. Okay. Are the Dolphins in the bleak zone? It was bleak at times. Tyree probably pushing for the trade. Mcdaniel, even though he got an extension, I'm sure he's definitely on first Coast fired watch, I would think. Tua, who knows? Classic salary cap team where they had to pay these guys and now it's all fucked up. They're in a division with the bills. The pats are going to be better. The Jets won't be better. But I wonder if they're on Bleak Watch.

Here's where I would say there's a possible turn in that. First of all, a lot of these teams, they show up at the combine, they do media, maybe Tuesday, Wednesday, they fulfill that and they maybe they'll stay Thursday, then they're out of there. Mike McDaniel, Chris Greer, and Dan Marino were in that Dolphins suite until the bitter, bitter end when the offensive linemen were working out on Sunday, and they were locked in. Dan Marino? What's he doing? Dan Moreno's got an executive role right now with the Dolphins, working with the team. We're talking about former players and Tom Brandy and all this stuff now. Dan Moreno, he's present. He's got a voice. They brought him back into the fold a couple of years ago, and he was at the combine and fully engaged with all of it. Now, last year's draft, they hit with Chopp Robinson.

He was really good for them as a- Yeah, he was good. I liked him.

Jalen Wright, the running back. But to your point, when Tua went down, they weren't ready for that adversity, and things went off the rails. You saw Tyreek Hill and his comments in that final game about it just was desolate, and it was the thing you would never want to hear from a veteran leader. That said, Dolphins, they still have a ton of talent on that roster, and I do think the players still respond to McDaniel. I'm not bleak on the Dolphins.

I'm not sure I think that, but- Well, what do you think on Tua?

They paid him. He was injured again.

I have real concerns about McDaniel. I have real concerns about Tua, and I have real concerns about we're going to wake up three days from now and Tyreo kill is like, I want to be a charger. Let's make that happen, guys.

It would be the Chiefs, not the chargers. He still tweets every other day about how much he loves the Chiefs. It would be the Chiefs? Yeah.

Is that even possible? The Chiefs just have It's an unlimited salary cap. I don't know how to do it. He's like, Hey, we're going to franchise tag our left guard.

Andy's magic. Andy will trade you away. Andy will cut you, and then the players long for Andy. Bring you back. They want to go play for him again. All right. By the way, you saw the John Sena dropping the mic. You saw that? That's Mahomes this year. That's where he's at right now, I think. He's gone villain everyone. Good. I think we're going to have a different- Good.

This is going to be a fun year. An incredibly disappointing season by his standards last year. The Super Bowl was a disaster. I I hope he's motivated. The anti-bleak watch, you go to Combine and these teams are like, it's like the sky has opened. It's after it's rained for a week straight, and all of a sudden it's the first sunny day and everybody's like, I want to go outside. We don't have to talk about the paths. I talk about them too much. We can. We can do that at the very end. But who else is in that? Washington. The skies have opened.

Washington. It is like the angels. Last year at the Combine, I Adam Peter is on camera. He's a GM coming from San Francisco. First-time GM. Super nervous on NFL Network beforehand. What questions are we going to do? And then this year comes in all swagged out. Has like- Right.

Is he wearing the Polinka jacket? No doubt.

He's got the jacket. He's got the custom Jordans. He comes in. He's like, Ask me anything. Let's go.

Let's go.

They trade- Ask me how great she is Daniels in.

Daniels love to talk about that.

They have a ton of salary cap space. Everyone loves their coach. Dan Quinn's got that Andy Reid thing where players just love them. They just trade for Debo. And I do want to say this. I think people misread the NFL. The Cowboys got crushed because they traded a fourth rounder for Jonathan Mingo, and everyone's like, How could you trade a fourth rounder for Mingo? And they trade a fifth rounder and they get Debo. They're taking on Debo Samuel's entire contract. So that's $21 million. It was a salary down.

The Niners, it was basically them cutting them.

That was the team that was willing to take it. And Adam Peters drafted Debo in San Fran, and Anthony Lynn coached him, and Cliff is like, Please bring him. He'll be motivated and we'll make it work.

Can I give you my 30 second Debo take as an intermission?

Mm-hmm.

San Francisco being like, Yeah, we're good. Take them. It reminded me of the Celtics with Marcus Smart. This is where I bring the Celtics into a football podcast. Fine. They knew something. Well, it was in watching him, and this was the case for Cillia and I made on the podcast after that trade. It was like, that dude's body's I've been through a lot. We watched him for the last nine years. He took a million charges. He was on the floor all the time. I think they're getting out a year too early instead of a year too late with his body. What happens? He goes to Memphis, he breaks down, and he has not been healthy ever I think he's playing now? I saw a picture of him this week. He's on Washington. Yeah, he's like a veteran on Washington. I look at Debo, and like you, I watch football every week. Debo took a fucking ton of hits. The way they used him, he was like a crash test dummy. I just wonder if they were like, I think we took this as far as we can go. If it starts to dip, it could be on somebody else's team.

Absolutely. You're right. But in the same breath, Washington knows what they're inheriting. Cliff watched every snap of Debo.

It's like this incredible He's got a little incredible toy for Cliff.

He cannot wait. He's like, please.

He's going to have 40 Debo plays.

Also, he was 20 pounds overweight, whatever you want to say. Now he's going to the final year of his contract. Give me a motivated chip on his shoulder in a contract to your Debo. Sure. It wasn't like it was a false- That was like you on TV last year.

That was the same thing. I just felt like a giant chip on your shoulder. Let's go.

You want to disrespect Debo and Schrager. You're going to get the best of us.

I'll do anything. I'll do anything. I'll do any hit.

Send me anywhere.

Contract here. Let's go. The Washington thing, the vibes are unbelievable. Great coach, great GM, franchise QB, most beloved guy in Washington, even more than Ovechkin. Houses can't even come up somebody on par with him at this point. You have to go back to the Gibbs era. Who else is the Skies apart? Skies. Give me another team. Would you say Chargers, Rosie? Rosie Chargers or not totally?

Season ended weird. That lost to Houston, so there's a bad taste.

Bosa might be out.

Yeah, I wouldn't say Chargers. I'm trying to think. Oh, Denver. Denver, those guys. Denver. They are super high on what they've got. All young players, Bo Nicks. I had a really cool opportunity Friday The Broncos do a team dinner at the Combine, and it's everyone from the team doctor to the head coach to the intern. Anyone who's in Indianapolis, I'd say 60 people. And Sean Payton does a big team dinner. I don't think any other teams do this in this way. And They rent out a room at Prime 47, which is the big steakhouse, and Payton let me come in and just hang with them at the table. When you feel like good vibes, good vibes team, everyone's busting balls, everyone's laughing, everyone is having a great... And They have such confidence in this quarterback that they're like, We're set. This has been the albatross around this franchise since Payton Manning left. We finally got our guy, and they will be active in free agency, and they will get a good running back in this draft.

They have a little more money this year, right?

Yeah, they finally have money. They've had no money. But up front last year, like Zack Allen had a career year when they're paying him, but Alex Singleton was great. Then they've got Sertan, this amazing corner. They're set. They are going to get a running back in this draft, and that's always been Sean Payton's favorite position to tinker with, and they haven't had... He calls it the Joker. It's like the Alvin Kamara, the Darren Sprouls, the Pierre Thomas, that type, the guy that can catch out of the backfield, run in the backfield.

There's good high second-round running back candidates for that.

Yeah, it's loaded. Great running back draft. You can sit there and on day two, pick up a guy who's going to pick up a thousand yards and 60 catches. I'd say Denver and Washington, both based on the young quarterback, and then New England, you don't want to talk about them, but the optimism is sky high around the Patriots.

Also, they become now- And with me and nephew Kyle, and every time we're together. Kyle's waiting for Abdul Carter to fall to four because of some amorphous foot thing, and then he's buying the jersey that day.

It become all of a sudden a desirable place to play, too.

And the free agents- It's funny how that works when you have a good quarterback and a good coach. No doubt. It's funny how that shifts.

No doubt. The fourth overall pick is interesting for them because Hunter or Carter could be there if the quarterbacks do go in the top four. And even if they I think Will Howard is a real possibility. Or, yeah, the lineman from LSU.

Will Campbell.

Will Campbell, sorry. Not the Ohio State quarterback.

But they had the short arms. I was on multiple short arm threats. That's okay. He couldn't even get the 33 inches with his reach. How's he going to hold back Michael Parsons with those short arms?

The other two names would be Mason Graham, who I think you're high on, right? I'm high on. Out of Michigan.

Now, I'm on. Mcshay says there's three elite guys in the draft, and that was how I was feeling anyway, knowing nothing doing all the prep, and it just feels like... But the thing is with defensive tackle, that's the easiest position to get in free agency. There's a million of them. If you're trying to put together a team of assets, which is what they need to do, that's probably not where you go. But I want an all pro in this draft. You have to get an all pro in this draft.

I'm going to put this out here now because his draft stock is slipping because he didn't do anything at the combine. I don't think four overall is so crazy for this trip to Aurora, Mcmillan out of Arizona. Arizona, also known as T-Mack.

I think they like him.

Oh, there's a lot of fans in the league. You're talking about the comparison starts at Drake London, but it can go even higher. This huge wingspan and this huge upside, 6'6 basketball body out of Arizona. Jed Fish was his coach at Arizona, and Jed Fish has a lot of NFL people, and he has been raving about this guy for years. Didn't do anything at the combine, but interviewed everywhere, and apparently he's a great kid. His nickname is T-Mac. I don't see him in the top 10 of any of these mock drafts. I know that everyone loved what Matthew Golden, the wide receiver out of Texas, did, and it's like, he's the guy. I would be shocked if T-Mac falls out of the top 10, and I would think Patriots at four. It might be a little rich, but if you're willing to- No, That's a tradeback.

That could be your guy. You flip pics with the Jets or the Stants or whoever or even Vegas.

Are you scoured by Keanu? What's his name? By Nikhil Harry of going to the state of Arizona for a wide receiver?

The only thing that worries me with T-Mac is the wide receiver class is so bad that when somebody's the best-looking person at a party of ugly people, they look fucking so handsome or beautiful. That was me at the combine. You should see it, dude.

You would walk into one of these steakhouses, you would vomit. It is so ugly. It's all over the country. It's all of us in the media, and everyone's got the same exact look. It's a button down with an ill-fitting blazer and jeans.

It sounds great.

Maybe someone trying to have a cool pair of Jordans doesn't work, but that's the look.

That's what worries me. But if they want him, I think he's in the 8-12 range. I don't know. The team that I could see taking him is Jacksonville at five because it seems like it's their decades mission to just keep spending capital on wide receivers to try to talk themselves into Trevor Lawrence. The Patriots can't block. I'm just going to say that. They can't take Will Campbell at four because we don't know if he's a left tackle or guard. But I think that moving back into the 6-10 range and taking a receiver tackle, it's hard to argue with. But you'd have to move back. You'd have to have a team wanting to move up. That's the thing.

I work for the NFL Network, and I'm going to be doing the draft. It is not the draft class of years prior. You said three blue-chip guys, and I think Mason Graham is borderline blue-chip.

Travis Hunter is awesome. I can see Carter for the paths, though. Oh, dude. I think if there's a scenario where people get worried What's going on in this foot? Or any of that shit, and two quarterbacks go in the top three and Hunter goes. That would be the dream. That's Willy McGinnis, the 96, all over, 95 or 94, whenever he got him, all over again.

Did Willy fall in the draft for Parcells?

No, but we took him like, fourth or fifth. It was like, Hey, this guy is going to be our... This guy is going to go chase the quarterback now for the next 10 years for you guys.

Yeah, Carter would be a home run. It's him and Hunter are the two names. Then you got this other of the quarterbacks where if you're doing an overall players list, they're probably seven, eight, nine, 10. If you want to go that way, they're not. Then it's just the great unknown. It's like, what do you prefer? I mean, truly, after the fifth or sixth pick, it is a complete crapshoot to pick 38, they say, as far as ranking and stacking these players. Not the richest draft class, but it's also the most intriguing.

At the combine, we did bleak, we did happy. What the fuck is that team doing, that people were just gossiping about. They were like, the friend in the neighborhood who was like, What's going on in that house? Just saw some car out there at 3: 00 in the morning.

Cincinnati is a little bit of a question mark just because they have such a big offseason ahead, and it's really going to be a lot of cap gymnastics. But they have told every agent, they have told every team, their goal is to bring all three of these guys back. And that's Jamar Chase, Tee Higgins and Trey Hendriksen.

They've franchise-tagged Higgins already.

They did, but the intention is not to have him play on another franchise tag. The intention for them is to sign all three of these guys to long-term deals. If I was to stack it, I would say Jamar Chase is their first priority. T. Higgins is their second priority, and then Trey Hendriksen, who led the NFL in Sacks and was second overall and defensive player of the year, he would be probably the third priority, which makes him a potential free agent to be signed.

Wow. We always talk about how you can basically Basically, afford three giant guys in the NFL the way the cap is. They want all three. If you can pull off four, well, you got to count Burrow, though. Burrow.

Burrow's got this huge contract.

If you're doing Burrow with the two receivers, that's an insane use of cap. It's insane. They just waved Alex Kappa, too.

They waved Alex Kappa, which was unexpected.

Although, he didn't have a great year, but they're losing guys already.

They're going to have to. They're going to have to wave guys.

You can't build a team around a quarterback and two receivers. They're trying. That's going to They're going to try. And they're cheap. They're like the pats. They're cheap. I mean, Vrabels try to change the pats, but bangles are cheap, pats are cheap. So on top of, at least the chiefs are spending when they try to do this gymnastics.

They would bristle at the cheap thing. I think, historically, they're viewed as cheap. Mike Brown's granddaughter, Elizabeth Blackburn, or Katie Blackburn, no, Elizabeth, is the granddaughter of Mike Brown. She's now taking over a little bit more. It's all about, let's make this team fun, let's make this team marketable, and let's spend money. Let's spend money. We have it. We have to have a cap thing. That's their intention. But Duke Tobin and Zack Taylor have a giant, few weeks ahead of them right now. You already saw that Jamal Chase is posting things and Tee Higgins is posting things.

Well, Burrow will be a dick, don't you think? If it gets to the point. He will be like an NBA star putting pressure on them.

A hundred %. He already has been publicly. You don't do radio row interviews and talk about company business. He was doing that. So I think Cincinnati, a lot of eyes on them because historically, they have this This feeling of small market team, 30-second market. They don't spend money. It's a family-run business. Now you finally have put yourself in this position where you have to pay up. It's not going to be good feelings. It's not going to be money. Are you going to spend the money? Do you have That's the way to use the cap gymnastics.

To that point, they put up 40 points.

They put up 40 points every game last year, and they still lost. If you're focusing all on offense and you're letting the defensive player of the year, the runner up, walk out, is where your priority is at.

That was Louis Ammarillo, Ammarillo First of all, the Higgins chase when they play together with Burrow, the numbers are undeniable. They're undeniable.

They're also the most entertaining team in the league.

Right. But if you're looking at Higgins and Sheil had him as his number two free agent. He had Darnold number one only because there's no quarterbacks. But the Higgins thing would be, well, what about the games without Chase? When you look at those, what happens when the defense is targeted against him I think Tee Higgins is amazing. I think he's unbelievable. If that would be my dream Pats guy. I wouldn't give up the first pick for him, obviously, but the second pick, the second rounder I would do in a heartbeat.

Go watch what he did with Jake Browning last year at the end of the season.

Tee Higgins is fucking great.

They were going to Tee Higgins on every big play against Minnesota on that Saturday game. Higgins is a true number one. If they can get both those guys back, great. Back to Darnold, really quick. If you're in Minnesota and they're not franchised, they're going to let them hit the market. Okay, What does it say to JJ McCarthy if you do bring him back on a 25 to $30 million contract? Does it tell the rest of the league that JJ McCarthy were not... This is the bind with Minnesota. They don't know what they have in JJ McCarthy, and you could read all the positive press. They don't know what they have in JJ McCarthy. He was injured all last year. He was on the sidelines. They haven't seen him play. It's not like they know that this guy- If you take a guy in the top 10, he's got to be your quarterback. Okay. You let Darnold walk out the door You don't say, let's try to hedge this a little bit.

Two for 35?

Yeah.

Two for four. Do you have it out after one year? One of those type of deals?

If you're Darnold, you played your best football with Kevin O'Neill, let me do it one more year, and then I can maybe break the bank. I think they're going to make a very concerted effort to bring him back. I'm Darnold.

I'm like, By the way, I had COVID those last two games. Sorry, guys. I didn't want to tell you. I was under the weather. I can't believe you guys didn't get sick.

Why'd you make me play?

Should it make me nervous that the pats are probably going to spend on Roni Stanley? Because I still don't understand why the Ravens would let Roni Stanley go. Is there a left tackle?

Because the Ravens have a different salary cap situation and different team, and Roni Stanley can still play.

Okay, good. I'm not nervous.

Thank you. If I'm the Patriots, I'm looking at Zach Bohn. If the Eagles let him out. I'm looking at Josh Sweat. I'm looking at Milton Williams.

They said they didn't like Josh Sweat. I think Bohn is a real possibility, though.

Bohn would be great, and Sweat is good, and Milton Williams is good. The other name, I don't know, nick Bolton from the Chiefs. Un Unbelievable linebacker. C'est available? They can get nick Bolton. I mean, it's Robert Spalane. These are real names that can add to this team.

Well, the move is what the commanders did last year. Getting those guys that weren't the A-list guys, but it's almost like the White Lotus cast strategy. No doubt. It's like, We're going to get Kerry Coon. Bring me Kerry Coon. She's a really good… Yeah, Kerry Coon is a really good actress. Washington just went out and got nine Kerry Coons.

Yeah, so I think Zack Earth here, Patrick Schwarzenegger? I think so.

I think that works. Yeah, maybe it does.

Austin Echler, starring as Leslie Bibb.

Austin Echler is Greg Gary, the evil guy.

That guy has been in all three seasons. And just consistently, he doesn't say a word on the episode. It's just, look at the camera.

He has that, and he was the drug dealer in 90210. He's got one of the great IMDPs of all time. Is that right? Yeah. He got Dylan hooked on drugs. Khalil Mack, what are the chargers doing? Bosa Mack? Yeah. A bloated salary.

Could they lose both salary? They could. We'll see. That's why I'm not like, I want to wait and see on that. This is also Joe Horties, who comes from the Ravens. It's his first real offseason. Last year, he was the GM, and they drafted well. But This is now you got to... It's time to make some decisions that might not be as easy as just drafting and signing players.

Last question. Houston is the most interesting offseason team to me because I don't know how far away they are from being impactful. I I thought they were in the mix last year, especially if you look back at how the season went, how they were able to play against the Chiefs defensively, what they were missing feels easy to add. I like their coaching staff. I like their division. They're in a great division. That could easily be a 14-3 team next year.

You were high on them last year.

I was. They had bad luck.

They actually finished strong. No, they finished strong.

I know, but Diggs got hurt. They lost two receivers by the time they got to the play-up.

Diggs will be a free agent, likely. He's going to be gone. Okay. What was really interesting to me was Bobby Sloak was one of the offensive masterminds, interviewing for head coaching jobs two years ago after they had this great seusational season. They didn't think they got enough out of the offense. They fire their offensive coordinator, and then they go to the Rams, and they get nick Kaylee, who was Wunderkind under Sean McVay. They bring Kaylee in. And they also, with this offense, they didn't have, like you said, Stefan Diggs, they didn't have Tankdell. In the last few weeks of the season. They still, in that Chief's game, move the ball up and down the field. If they don't have two botched special tennis plays and a block kick and get sacked eight times, they're in that game.

In retrospect, that was the red flag game for the Super Bowl, looking back, because I still continue to kick myself for not just having the balls take Philly. You've mentioned this on quite a few parts. That Houston game was a bad sign for the Chiefs. No, that game- They hung around like they did with the... I don't know.

Blocked field goals, muffed kickoffss. They got everything from the Texans, and they couldn't put them away until the very end. So there was some red flags there. But what are you going to do? I didn't bet, but I picked the Chiefs to win in Super Bowl, too. And I've heard from Philly fans the entire last month, so it's all good.

We have to go. I have to go talk to Wesley Morris about the Oscars.

Oscars, can I tell you? Probably. Have not seen any of these movies. Now I'll go see one of them. I'll go see Adora.

Great move. Oh, Adora is good. You should see Adora. Is it good? Yeah. Schrags, we'll talk to you before the draft. Great to see you as always.

You're the man, Bill. Thank you.

My old, long-time friend, Wesley Morris, is here. We used to work together at Grantland. He's at the New York Times. Did not talk to him right before the Oscars, although we talked a couple of months ago. We were waiting until after the Oscars, which was a very strange Oscars and was dominated by a movie called Anora. What did you like? I did like Anora. Shalameh did not win. Demi Moore did not win. I'm going to start here. We haven't talked. We've only text a little bit. I was so happy, Mikey Madison won. I thought that was the best performance of any movie I saw, and I did not see the brutalist yet, but I thought she was awesome. Sometimes this will happen in sports, too, where they'll just decide, well, Demi Mor, she's been waiting forever. She's got to win. And that was an important movie. I was just like, what the fuck? Like, Mickey Madison should win. Now, do you agree or disagree with that? Because I feel like you might disagree.

Well, okay, I disagree with everything. First of all, I just want to be clear. I have no deep visceral problem with Mikey Madison winning. I was happy for the surprise of it. Of those five nominees, I wasn't terribly excited about. I loved Fernando Torres, and I'm still here. I think that Demi Moore We can talk about what Demi Moore is doing in the substance that I think made her deserving of an Oscar. But my two favorite performances, or two of my very favorite performances from last year, their movies got no nominations. I just was like, there needs to be an asterisk next to these five nominates.

Who were the two performances?

Nicole Kidman and Baby Girl.

She was really good in that. I can't believe she didn't get nominated, actually, for that.

That is one of the greatest... I mean, this is true of Nicole Kidman in general in the last 15 years, but that performance in Baby Girl is one of the greatest feats of psychological acting I have ever seen. I don't know how... I'm not an actor, and I don't know how you simulate any of the things that Nicole was asked to do, and Harris Dickman, or is it Harris Dickson? Dickinson?

Dickinson, I think.

He is also great. That is one of the top... His performance is one of the top five performances I saw last year.

Would that be a supporting actor for you or actor?

Yes, I can live with supporting. We can talk about category fraud, too. Because two of our winners, total category fraudsters. Anyway, I think that Mikey Madison is good in that movie. My problem with the performance is only that the four guys she is working with in this film are extraordinary. All four of those guys are great. You're a Borislov. I'm so out of practice with these names. I'm going to get some of them wrong. But to single him out is right because he's got the scene at the end in the car, which is her great moment as an actor, too, in this movie. I like Nora. I like it more than fine, but I don't love it.

That's how I felt.

I think that... I'd be curious to hear you talk about what you love about Mikey Madison so much.

I thought it was a very strange movie here. I didn't feel like a lot of stuff jumped out. We always talk about how it's a little bit like sports where you look back years later and like, Oh, what was that year? Oh, that was the year Nora went all this stuff. I just thought I didn't know her really at all other than TV stuff. Once upon a time in Hollywood. Working actress. She was the 11th person in Once upon a time in Hollywood. True.

That's the other thing.

I just felt like I like those movies sometimes where it's I was like, Oh, this person's a star. I'm watching her become a star during the movie. I thought it was a pretty out there performance. It's a crazy movie that I think has some flaws, which we talked about in the past. But I just thought it was a really memorable performance. But I also felt that way about Nicole Kidman. If she had won in that category over her, I still wouldn't have agreed, but I would have understood it.

Here's what I'll say about Demi Moore. There's a shot at the beginning or toward the beginning of this film where she has left the set of her aerobics instruction show, her big fitness show. She's going to the bathroom. On our walk from the studio, I believe, or maybe the executive's, I don't exactly know where the hallway is going to and leading. I know it's going to the bathroom. But anyway, there are all of these photos of various versions of Elizabeth Sparkle, Demi Moore's character in the substance, on the wall. They're all from different periods of this character's life. I just felt like I was also watching the Hall of Demi Moore. All those portraits correspond, at least in my brain, they corresponded to some moment in Demi Moore's cultural life and her movie star life. And then she gets to the bathroom, and I believe there's somebody's cleaning the women's room. So what does she have to do? She goes into the men's bathroom. That is the Demi Moore's shot or sequence, maybe ever. This movie is so dialed in in its way because it's not about America. It's not about... It's set in a fictionalized Hollywood.

We can talk about the Europeanification and the The ways in which non-American filmmakers and ideas have officially made an inexorable mark on the Academy Awards and the Academy itself. It's just not going anywhere anytime soon. We have to think about what the Oscars even are going forward. But anyway, this movie, to me... And once she gets into the bathroom, you have the Dennis Quaid character in the bathroom talking about how over the hill Demi Moore is as an actress, or Elizabeth Sparkle as an actress. From that sequence forward, this movie was as much about the actor playing this part as it was about the character she's playing. The total, I have never seen... To me, more is committed to a lot of parts. I mean, GI Jane being maybe the ultimate strip tease, being an ultimate part commitment. She's never been the strongest line reader. She's never been the most convincing when she has to hit an upper register, anger is not something like verbal anger, verbally expressed anger, but she can make her face twitch. Her eyes can do that like... The Ghost. Yeah, they're like, sizzling a little bit when she's suffering. But her lower register, Suck my dick.

That line in G. I. J. I mean, she can sell those lower register rages. But this was something new for me with Demi Moore. We're like her physical commitment to the part had emotional stakes.

You're bringing in your 40 plus year history with her movies, and that became part of the performance for you.

Yes. I think that might have- I think that's fair.

I get it.

Yeah, but if you're- Can I do my history? Yeah, but can I just real quick? If you're an Iranian voter, do you care about 40 years of Demi Moore?

You don't. You're just doing best performance, which is Great. I went back to be more on General Hospital because I was watching General Hospital in the early '80s. That's where she broke in. Was with her through the Brad pack years. It was amazing to watch her. It felt like she fizzled out and then became a big star. I think she was really under it. We did disclosure for rewatchable. She's just great in that movie. She's just a 10 out of 10, smoking hot, incredibly confident. But I swear to God, I think the best scene of her entire career You're going to laugh, and this is one of my takes that I'll probably take shit for, and I don't really care.

You're used to it.

Go on. When Roblo breaks up with her in a belt last night, and he says he doesn't love her anymore. I honestly think that's the best acting moment of her career. Apparently, he had lived it, and it wasn't in there. But the way she reacts to it, you could just see it go through her entire body. I think she's had some really great acting moments over the years.

I was just about to say, Bill, there are so many moments like that in her career.

Like G. I. James is another one, Disclosures like that. I think she's good in Ghost. I think Insane Almost Fire, she has a couple of moments where you're like, I would run through fiery hell to get this girl to like me. She's a 101 where I don't even know. There's a little Kathleen Turner in there just because of her voice, but she was dropped dead beautiful in the '80s and then transformed over the '90s. We've been there the whole with her. But part of what I thought was interesting about this movie, because you're right, it's a career retrospective of her. I actually feel like her career should have been better. I think she could have made- I love this. I think she could have made better movie choices when she had her peak. You think about even making a movie like Strip Tees. That was like a paycheck movie. That's what we get mad at some actors doing. Right.

But that Strip Tees, wait, let's go back to 1990.

I want to work with my husband. That movie sucks. I don't like that movie.

Wait, wait, wait.

No, that movie sucks.

You're throwing too much at me. I know. You're throwing too much at me. Hold on, wait. Let's go back to Strip Tees. That movie was more than a paycheck movie. I believe, well, it did pay her a lot if memory serves. She became the biggest contract.

That was the biggest salary anyone made in Hollywood.

But it was also at the peak of her demeaness. She had a great 1990s. She was a top five box office draw. She was in Indecent Proposal. She's good in Indecent Proposal.

I'm not arguing the success. I just wish there were a couple of awesome movies in there where she was going for an Oscar, and I don't think that was even on the radar for her.

But I don't think she had that in her is the thing. Think about the Scarlett letter. That's where we disagree.

I think she had it in her.

What do you think happened? Because it's not like she didn't get cuts. I don't think she had the right part.

What if she was the prostitute and leaving Las Vegas instead of Elizabeth Sheer. Probably too old.

No, she's too- I mean, too old when they made that movie. No, I think that that's not it because I bet you she and Elizabeth Shee were the same age. I think- You're right.

They probably are.

I think that Demi Moore, and this is why she's so good in Ghost, by the way, I think that she presents as invulnerable. I mean, her whole Her whole thing when she became a real major movie star where people were paying money to see movies she was in was just about her toughness, right? I mean, she's often the only woman in these movies. A few good men, she's the woman.

Well, It's her worst part.

It's her worst part, and maybe her worst piece of acting because she's seemed secondary to everybody else's priorities. Rob Reiner is a great director of actors, so I don't know what his side is.

Part of the problem is the mid '90s did not have a lot of great female If you go back, even you look at it, you go back and look at the Oscars during some of those stretches. Could she have been Sharon Stone's part in Casino? No. You don't think so? Why?

I mean, I'm sure that... I mean, I can't say no. I definitely would have loved to have seen her play the part. I don't have an argument for why she couldn't have done it. Like, yeah, cast her into Casino. I thought you were going to go with Basic Instinct, which she really could have done.

She would have been too famous for it. But did she She could have been one of the disclosure was basically her Basic Instinct. Could she have been Annette Bening in American Beauty? No. You think she's more unlimited than I do? I feel like there was more there. She also got married to Bruce Willis. They became a giant celebrity couple, and they had three kids. That probably hurt the output of a movie she was making at some point.

This is why I want to go back to Mortal Thoughts, because it's a great combination of the thing I'm identifying about her that I like, which is the with these pockets of vulnerability. You don't believe... The thing about Mortal Thoughts is it's two women. Glenn Headley is the other woman because Glenn Headley used to be a thing. A wonderful actress. The two of them in that movie are wonderful.

She stuck with Mr. Holland even after he almost ran away with a 17-year-old. Still stayed there with him. Yeah, did it.

Did it all. This movie, Mortal Thought, I think... Is it Alan Rudolf directed this movie? Yeah. From 1991, I want to say.

It's a Tubi classic. Tubi just is always trying to get me to rewatch it. I'm like, No, Tubi. No, not biting.

Bill, I fell for it.

You did? Tubi sucked you in?

I have fairly recently I was just throwing the fishing rod at you. I rewatched it, and there's more going on. It does not ultimately work because it's structurally... It should just go chronologically and shouldn't do all this jumping around time that it does. But Demi Moore...

We don't have to spend 10 minutes on Mortal Thoughts.

There's a struggle in here. I know. I'm just thinking through what worked for me and what the surprise was with respect me more. There's a struggle in her, I think as an actor, where she's trying to figure out how to modulate the shell that she moves moves through movies with. In a movie like Mortal Thoughts, some of what's required for that part, she's playing a woman being abused by her husband. They conspire to kill him. I think I'm getting this right. They conspire to kill him, she and Glenn Headley, and then they spend the rest of the movie trying to figure out how to get away with murder.

It's like a bad thumb in Louise.

It's, oh, whoa. You know what's crazy is, yes.

They came around right around the same time.

That was The movie didn't work also because you don't believe them as New Jersey housewives or whatever.

They had their accents. Bruce Wills had a crazy facial hair thing going. It's like, come on, Bruce Wills. What was your favorite To be more performance before this movie? What was your number one? Because my favorites, I loved her in About Last Night, which, as you know, I think is the first modern rom-com. But I thought she was great in that. I thought she was great in Disclosure. I think she's great in Ghost.

I listen to you guys talk about disclosure.

You don't like disclosure.

I don't like it. I don't think she's good. It's not a good use of Demi Moore.

I don't like that. If you're just making a random movie and you're just showing up for 11 days of shooting, it's a good one.

I mean, three straight guys talking about disclosure is just...

That was part of the gimmick.

I know. It just was like...

I'm like, there needs to be... Ghost, she's really good, though.

Ghost, I think, is the number one.

Number It was a monster movie.

Number one answer because that movie is not so secretly strange. It's not just the supernatural part.

It taught us what happens when you go to hell. Goblins come out of the street and they pull you down. They shadow Goblins, and that's it. You're fucking in hell from that point on. They have the code.

But I also love what she and Whoopi Goldberg get up to.

Yeah, they're great scenes.

I love her disbelief that the thing that she's being told is happening is happening to her. I believe her as a woman named Molly, which that's a huge... That's a big deal. I just think that that movie is so... It's so much about Demi Moore's character and the movie's about her. She's so soft in that movie. The moments in which she has to put a shield over herself, they work because you understand the movie has given you enough of this vulnerable woman who just doesn't believe that this magical thing that is about to happen to her is really going to happen. I just think it's strange because in 1990, who were your best actor's harmonies? Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Joanne Woodward, Kathy Bates, who won, and Angelika Houston, I want to say, for the grifters. It's not like she was remiss. Julia Roberts took the movie star part of the movie star nomination for those five people.

Roberts, yeah, you had the five. That was impressive.

I don't know.

That was a loaded year. Jesus Christ.

Any one of those people could have been the best actress.

Holy shit. Then the next year was loaded, too. Then in the mid '90s. Nothing will top her turning on the lights in about last night because Because I think we've been in the dark long enough. Oh, wow. That movie has some grown her lines. You got to watch it. She's really great in it, though.

I haven't seen it in a while. I haven't seen it in a while.

It's really, really, really an enjoyable realm. How did you feel about the best actor?

Well, I mean, the winner or the the nominees, the speech.

Just how it played out. Here's my sports angle on Chalamet. Great career move not to win.

Oh, yeah.

Great career move.

He should not have won.

He should not have won. No. Way better. Now, next movie, this happened to Leo, too. This is, When's he going to win? You want to get into that When's he going to win zone? Because it just helps you with the celebrity of being an actor.

I also don't think it... It's complicated. He's probably going to be one of the last actors to be in this position, right? Where he'll just be nominated maybe two more times before he actually wins. Yeah.

Where you'll be like he'll have to be in the Revenant. He'll have to crawl out of a dead bear. Oh, my God. He'll You have to get the shit kicked out of him.

I'm looking forward to Timothée Chalamey's The Revenant because he definitely has it in him. The question is, is that script ever going to come his way?

Well, here's the thing. Can I throw this theory at you?

Okay.

I think what happened with this Oscar's run and with Chalamey in general, we always... I mean, how many pods did Sean do about who's the next big star? We've done pods about who's the next big actor in Hollywood. Are we ever going to have It's just moving into this.

I love listening to Sean talk about that stuff.

Well, is this ever going to happen again? Does the way the system, the way it's structured now, does it just make it impossible because we just throw some DC comics or Marvel suit on them after they become famous. I think what happened with him, SNL really helped. Going on College Game Day, the way he navigates, you could feel it in the Oscars telecast, too. He was in that Leo spot. They kept going to him. They kept showing him. People were mentioning him, and it just felt like it was his Leo early 2000s moment, right?

This is a great point because I actually didn't even think about DiCaprio in that moment. I thought I went past Leonardo DiCaprio and went to Streep and Nicholson, right? Where he was the person. They weren't even making fun of him at some point. No. It wasn't even Conan O'Brien joking.

It felt like he had clout.

Yes. People were just shouting him out because they thought he was cool.

I think he has about as high of an approval rating of an actor that we've seen in a long time. I think really since Leo, when Leo was in that aviator stage and we were like, You know what, man? This guy, he's handsome. Everybody likes him. He's a really good actor, and he stands for the right things. He wants to work with good directors. He wants to challenge himself. I know Shalameh's SAG speech didn't go over fantastic when he was talking about how he wanted to be one of the greats, but I loved it.

I thought it This is great.

I'm glad he said it.

I mean, as sports people, Bill, I think what we want is a little bit of honesty in terms of people's ambitions. If you think you can go all the way, he wasn't even saying, I'm the greatest. He's like, I want to be one of the great actors.

It was authentic, which is all we want from athletes, celebrities, whoever. Just fucking say what you want. Be yourself. Be yourself. Don't try to be some manufactured, I think people are going to like this version of me, and this will help me if I appear this way. I don't think he's like that.

No. I think there's- At least not yet.

Maybe he'll turn into that.

They don't talk about you that way. I mean, this is not quite fair to the person I'm about to name. But think about a show where they would treat Kieran Culkin this way. I think that there's real belief in Timothée Chalame as more than just an actor. I mean, he embodies something that people seem to like Also, it's important to say that he's just really good at being himself. I don't know what that is, really, but I just enjoy when he shows up on some Canadian talk show hanging out in the record store with the talk show host. I don't know if you saw that. I don't even know where I saw it, but it came to me and I was like, I love this guy. He really went along with it.

He's the guy who is waiting outside MSG for Maurice Stoudermire to sign a fucking jersey for him. He still has that authenticity. I don't know, Hollywood beats that out of you sometimes. I hope it doesn't have with him.

I think the difference between him and DiCaprio also, and this is also important, he seems to be fine with it. Dicaprio didn't like it. I don't know that he likes it to this day.

He liked some of the accoutumance.

He liked the spoils. The spoils, yes.

He liked He liked the spoils.

Right. But he doesn't like the actual... He's not in it for Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O'Brien, poking him in the ribs a little bit. Shalameh, he's like... His skin is thick. He can handle it.

I got to say, I think the way Leo handled his career was brilliant. No notes. I mean, just like, he studied some of the old grades. I don't need to do a shitload of interviews. There needs to still be a little mystery about me. And he kept the mystery for better and worse because that also allows people to, he's doing this. He's at this party. He is a pussy wrangler. That's an actual phrase used with Leo. But let it- That guy is his pussy wrangler.

Keep them on their toes, right? He is willing to be the brunt of some brutal jokes. I'm thinking specifically about Tina Fay and Amy Poehler going at him at the Golden Globes. Yeah. He's like, if this is the price, if the price is having two funny people roast me for some stuff they think I did or the community thinks I did, I'll take it. I still don't have to do an interview.

I like it. Who else I mean, there's been De Niro for a while. He had a real mystery, and then something snapped in the '90s, and we went the other way with it.

What do you mean? What changed?

He just started doing a ton of movies. He started going on SNL. A bit part of De Niro, De Niro was this mythical figure. It's like, Who is this guy?

He relaxed. But does he seem any more known to you?

No, he's actually, ironically, a terrible interview.

Yeah, I mean, He's still mysterious to me.

I don't pretend to know- Wait, because I have a couple of things I want to hit with you. So your best actor was who? Of those five people- No, give me anybody. You know somebody who didn't get nominated. Yeah. Who is the best male performance for you?

I mean, I really... I'm just going to stick with Adrian Brody. I mean, he was the person who, when I saw him in the first in the opening shot of the brutalist, I was just like, well, this is... We're headed into there will be blood territory in terms of what the acting is doing. I just think that this is a guy who... I'm just going to... I don't want to talk about the speech. I can't even I didn't even know what to do with the speech. Yeah, it's his top performance.

Forget it. He's annoying. Whatever.

I a little bit understand where it came from, but then it took a turn, and then I was like, No, you got to just... Anyway. But he was my... Of those five guys, I'll just stay with those five guys. He was my favorite of the nominated performances. He also was the best. It was one of the best pieces of acting I saw last year, period. I think what I loved about it was the restraint. The way he... There's something like an... There's an anchor. It's so different from the pianist performance, where that character seemed to be blowing through the narrative. Part Part of what was beautiful about that performance was just that he was in a silent movie, essentially. You were watching somebody do a Charlie Chaplin, but under the worst possible circumstances for a human being. And He just seemed to keep surviving in an almost tragic realist way. This movie is the opposite, where it's everything about it is in colonel, and how many levers can he keep down on the emotional circumstances, dealing with the guy, Pierre's character, keeping his eyes open. There's a weariness and a skepticism about what this character is up against at all times.

There's that great scene. Oh, you haven't seen it, Bill, have you?

I haven't seen it.

All right. I got to I'm going to tell you about this one scene. There's this one scene. Felicity Jones is his wife. She eventually makes her way over to the United States. They wind up living together in this smallish apartment with her cousin, And these three Holocaust survivors in this little apartment, the husband and wife have not seen each other in a long time. There is an expectation from her that they're going to do it. And this is truly this scene between these two actors and between these two characters is like, I'm getting chills just thinking about it. It is one of the most loaded sexual encounters that also is frated by watching it in 2024, '25, 70 years of history. The history that these characters have with each other, we're like, they're just different people now. The Holocaust has changed them. The time they've spent apart has changed them. Her body's different. His interest in her body is different. I'm I can't be more detailed about the scene because I don't want to read it for people who haven't seen it. I'm going to see it.

I wasn't going to skip it, but I just...

That is one of the best directed, best acted scenes between two actors in a bed that I have ever seen. I will say, parenthetically, not a lot of bed scenes in Baby Girls, so they didn't have a lot of competition.

Yeah, that's true. A lot of hotel room carpets. I want to talk about Hacklin, and I want to talk quickly about White Lotus. Any other Oscar thoughts? Because we're going to take a break.

We can talk about Hackman. No. Well, can I just say one thing? We can save it for after the break. But I want to talk about what these Oscars mean because these are different. Something has changed. It is both promising but also it doesn't feel good based on the way people are talking to me about the Academy Awards. And I'm curious what people in your life in a world are saying?

I mean, we could do this now. I just think we've been talking about the Oscars for a while. I think sometimes things morph over time culturally. When we were talking about All Star Weekend a couple of weeks ago in the podcast. I think it was maybe it was Vanner. I can't remember. I'm sorry. I can't remember who said it, but about whether it just had a cultural expiration date.

Things can just That was bad.

Things can shift and change. I think about people used to care about regular season baseball, and now they just care about their own teams. As you get older, you just see things sometimes run their course with the Oscars, Whether people care about who wins the way they did in 1982, I just don't know if they do. Especially the younger generation. The younger generation was probably like, Did Chalamet win? Would be the way they could... My kids, I have 17-year-old, 19-year-old who are pretty sports culture in the mix, at least a little bit because of me. They didn't care about the Oscars. But when we were kids, I'm older than you, but both of our generations, we really cared who won. I wonder if that's just shifted now.

But it's shift...

But part of it is the NBA issue, right? When they talk about face of the league, and in my whole case is like, when somebody really matters, we won't have this conversation because we'll know something will know that person mattered. If there's another Titanic, there's another big ass movie, or there's another big ass star with an awesome performance, people are going to care if that person or that movie wins. This year didn't have a movie like that. It's always going to suffer when that's the case.

But I also think that those movies aren't... That's just... They're not going to happen. Also, the thing about the old way, and this is not nostalgia speaking, this is just facts, there was a randomness to what the five best pictures wound up being, or the five best picture nominees. There was a healthy movie-going ecosystem, or one that could seem healthy to an Which moviegoer, where there was a lot of movies to choose from. They weren't all trying to win Oscars. Sometimes the ones that weren't trying wound up mattering to a lot of people.

Right, stumbled into it. But we were also making less movies. There was no confusion between, Is this something I watch at home on my TV or do I go to the theater to see it? We had way less TV competition with the high-end stuff. We had all the best actors were just doing movies. Now it's like you might see a really great actor just do a TV show instead. It just feels like it's splintered in a whole bunch of different ways. I still care. I still care about the history and how current stuff relates to it, but I think I'm like an anomaly.

I was going to say we don't count. I don't think.

Yeah, we don't count.

I I think that... But I'm telling you, you're mentioning your kids. I'm talking to people your kids' age, and I'm talking to people older than we are.

Oh, yeah.

Who are also like, I'm out. I can't You all got me to see Conclave and then pull that shit at the end? I'm out. You all are trying to rope-adope me into having feelings I don't want to be having. Now, as a Conclave person, I will tell you that that discount is pretty ingenious. I love the end of that movie.

A concrete supporter. Okay.

You don't like it?

I thought the twist was stupid.

I loved it. It is such...

I thought it was... I I didn't think the movie needed it. I was more interested in the mechanics.

Who did you want to win?

Who did you want to be- I just like being in the world as they try to figure it out and undermine each other. It was just a classic old-school movie. I didn't feel like it needed a twist.

I think that what we're going to call a twist was really ingenious because I think the movie earns it.

I've heard this case. I just personally didn't work for me.

All right, but that's not my point. My point is, I talk to so many people of so many different age ranges, age demographics. Generationally, everybody's out. Nobody feels like the movies are for them. I don't know what to do with that because it's not Sean Baker's fault. It's not the substance's fault. Do you think Nickel Boys was out here trying to win a bunch of Oscars? No. This is the story that Ramel Ross wanted to tell about quote based on Colson Whitehead's novel. There was so much risk taken by these movies, these best picture colonies. This year, they were doing strange, unusual, weird things. I'm saying this as a person who saw Guillermo Del Toro's The Shape of Water, which won best picture, a woman in love with a fish. Strange things happen to best picture colonies or in best picture nominations. But this was the first year where I can understand what it is the public wants. What the public wants is movies that not only have they seen, but they want to have have a wealth of movies, if they're going to be going to the movies to a physical movie theater, they want to look at famous people.

They want movie stars. Like, Deadpool and Wolverine are movies stars. This iteration, this Anthony Macky Captain America to people who aren't invested in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he's important. And we all know what this iteration of Captain America is and does if you read the comic, et cetera. But is Anthony Macky a draw for people? I mean, the movie seems like it's doing okay. But my point, my larger point is, this is just me saying, once again to you, Bill, that the IP is still... I think people are now tired of the IP, even. The IP has worn out its welcome.

We did Rocky for the rewatchables that went up last night. Rocky won best picture.

Wait, you guys have never done Rocky?

We did three and four. Rocky is now a prequel for Rocky 3. That was part of my case. We're not doing it. Rocky 3 is the best movie of the '80s.

I agree. I mean,.

Rocky wins. All the President's men, network, and taxi driver, don't win. Then you go to the best actor. You're just looking at it like, Oh, my God. Granted, it was almost 50 years ago. You're like, Oh, my God. Look at the movies we were making.

Go back to 2014. Was that the year that Gravity? Was that the year of Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, American Hustle?

Yeah, 12 Years as a slave. 12 years of- American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, The Wolf of Wall Street.

That deck was so stacked that Tom Hanks giving one of the best performances he's ever given. And Captain Phillips did not get a best actor nomination.

Right. Let's take a quick break. I want to talk about Hackman. Okay, Jean Hackman died earlier this week, and he was old. It wasn't a big surprise. Hopefully, the details of how he died I've heard some things. Aren't too awful, but I have a feeling they might not be great. But he was somebody that had this awesome, awesome, awesome career forever and then just walked away. We never saw him again. He almost did the Johnny Carson going to Malibu, and I'm out. That's it. I'm done. There was nobody really like him that I can think of. It's like he's a true 101. Even in the rewatchables, we've done, I think we did eight Hackman movies, something like that. You would never think he would be one of the more rewatchable actors, but he just over and over again were popping the stuff. What was interesting watching as his career evolved was how the other actors would talk about what it was like to be in a movie with them. It was almost like you're going against them. I was trying to think of how many actors are discussed that way where it's like, I'm with Hackman.

Got to raise my game today. I'm going to raise my game this week. He reached that part of it, too. There was just nobody like him, but you could go way back. Downhill Racer, which I think fantasy and I are going to do in rewatchables at some point. It's an awesome movie. It's probably the first great modern sports movie, even though it's not totally modern, but he's even great in that. That was, what, 1969? There wasn't a career quite like this. Will we ever have another Jean Hackman?

No, because You know me well enough to know that my taste in men is eclectic. But I'm just going to say for the average person, they're not looking at Jean Hackman and going, Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I'll take it.

You're tapping in a horny hacks already? That horny side? Yeah, we talk about that in the rewatchable sometimes. He gets a little Randy in some movies.

But I think there's something about his average lookingness. He did not wear a toupee. He did not hide the loss of his hair. He It always just seemed like he was perpetually 45 years old. He came to us 45 years old, and when he left, he maybe seemed 60.

I don't know. It was like 58 years old when he left.

Yeah, he just seemed permanently middle-aged, which is a thing that just will never happen now.

But the other piece with that was it somehow allowed him to play all these different parts.

Yes.

That he could be a basketball coach. He could be in a buddy cop movie. He could be the bad guy in a buddy cop movie. He could be somebody that's running a submarine. He could be somebody who's the President. He could be somebody trying to break into the White House. He could be somebody who's trying to figure out the heist, and he's in charge of the heist. Or he could be the person who is working on the heist. He could be the sports movie coach. He could do literally anything.

Anything. I think that his Also, that does speak in some weird way to what America is. I know this sounds cheesy and corny and cheap, but if you are coming to this country for the first time and you One of the many things that tells you that you're in the United States of America, it's probably Jean Hackman. This is a person who, in all of the jobs that he could be doing, seems credible in them. He's not conventionally good-looking. The idea that he and Warren Beatty are supposed to be brothers in Bonnie and Clyde is just one of the most laughable things I've ever seen. Adopted brothers? I don't know. It's comical. There is something also unpredictable about him. It isn't so much that... I think about him in the French connection, right? If you diagram that sentence psychologically, this is a terrible human being. He's a racist cop in New York City, shaking down people in bars just for kicks, basically.

Him and Jack Cates in 48 Hours are my favorite cop characters that are also completely indefensible.

Yeah, but But Popeye Doyle never had an Eddie Murphy to come and give one of the great rebuttals to the racism in the movies, right? Yeah. Or to anybody's racism in the movies. Popeye Doyle stands as a singular character because he's never brought in to heal. Nobody ever wags their finger in his face in a way that means anything because ultimately, he's looking for what a moviegoer will recognize as a narrative justice. He's trying to solve this mystery. The easy, sexy command that he has in that in those bar, in those shakedown scenes. It's just a great, dirty, filthy character. The character works because he's got swag. He could turn that on and he could turn it off, but you really- No Way Out was like that.

That was another one where he's just sleazy, right? But sleazy, powerful, and you could just see it. The other thing with him that I thought was cool, you could just throw him in other great parts, and he makes sense. You can put him in the Godfather. He's just, Just be Tom Hagen. You're going to be Tom Hagen instead of DeVal. It's like, Yeah, Hackman would have been fine.

This is a great point.

Could have pulled it off.

Can I tell you how many years I thought the Tom Hagen was played by Jean Hackman? I sometimes have to remind myself that Robert Duval is not Jean Hackman in that movie.

Could he have Nicholson's all-time incredible in Chinatown? But could the movie have survived if it was Jean Hackman in Chinatown? Probably. It still would have worked. It would have been fine.

Terms of endearment works with Jean Hackman.

Yeah, that's the thing. That's why I think he's so unique because it's almost like a basketball player that could play a bunch of different positions and guard a different bunch of it. It's just like, Oh, when we have this guy, we basically can do anything we want.

But you know what he cannot do? I never really tried. He never did crazy. He did do comedy, and he was pretty... The Birdcage, that's the first thing that comes to mind. Birdcage?

How about are you a heartbreakers person? With Sigourney Waver and Jennifer Love Hewitt. Corny hacks is out in full boom.

I'm already out as like, I'm out of myself as being into Jean Hackman. But it does not take much.

That was really quite a confession.

But no, his Lex Luthor. His Lex Luthor is- That's how I got to know him, by the way.

That was my first Jean Hackman movie.

That was my first Jean Hackman. My first Jean Hackman was Lex Luthor in the '78 Superman. Listen, he's sexy. He is sexy in that movie. I don't know what he knew, but he definitely seemed to understand that Lex Luthor thought he was sexy, and that was good enough for him.

Could he have done Liam Neeson and taken. I think he could have.

Yeah, but wait. But this is my... I was going to say, speaking of which, he never did Crazy. Crazy is the thing he never did.

He never played- So he never did Tommy Lee Jones and blown away just as a crazy Irish terrorist, blown up shit.

I mean, just go back to one of his primes. He couldn't have played Travis Bickle.

No.

You also wouldn't have believed him as Woodward, right? You wouldn't have believed him as Bob Woodward.

No, because I would never think he would not be in control when I see Jean Maclin.

Exactly. He would have flown off the handle way before it was time. There are just some things... This is an interesting distinction that we're trying here, which is that I'm saying he's never played crazy. He's never played a crazy person, like a psychopath. You can say what you want about Little Bill and Unforgiven, but that guy was just... Evil is not the same thing as crazy.

No, you're right. I totally get what you mean. But the other part is, he didn't bring Jean Hackman, the famous celebrity person, into the role. That baggage that some other... I would see Dustin Hoffman or Nicholson. You're always thinking it's Nicholson. You're always thinking it's Justin Hoffman. This is a good distinction, too. Hackman could blend into the different parts. Where it's like, Oh, I love Jean Hackman. But then you'd... Like, any of the States is a good example. He's Jean Hackman. But you're watching, he just blends in. Now, all of a sudden, he's this weird guy. I don't know what he's up to. Is he going to help Will Smith or not? You just forget he's Jean Hackman.

Think about all the people he's mentored, too. Oh, yeah.

Everybody talks about it after. Like, whoa. I went to grad school when I did acting with Jean Hackman.

But what is that, though, right?

Well, I think it's professionalism. Just going on to the set, knowing exactly who you are, like real confidence, a little bit of a charisma. You're not going to back down anybody. I think he had some size to him, too, which I think is unusual for Hollywood.

Was he 6'1?

Yeah, I think he was He definitely seemed substantial.

I mean, this is part of the thing that I got for Jane Hackman is he just seemed meaty. There was often some meat on those bones. He seemed big-boned is really what it was. Not fit at all, but not interested in fitness. Not vain. There's no vanity. Whoever he's playing, it's just there to do the work because often these are working people. All these guys have jobs. And even the guy that he plays in the Birdcage, the senator, the bigoted senator who never changes but keeps going along with the program. And part of the comedy of the movie is you fully expect him to give himself over by showing up and coming out of the... Some crazy plot twist or something. But instead, he's just like, Man, this is the world. It's very Billy Wilder of him the approach he takes in the bird cage. Michael Nichols directed it, so it's not a crazy thing to have a smart performance, like stay in a lane because the director knows the payoff will be there at the end. But there's just- You're crazy.

The crazy point is good because I wouldn't have wanted to see Jean Hackman in The Shining.

He couldn't have done it.

I just wouldn't have bought it. I just don't think it works.

But- He doesn't burn slow like that. He's eruptive.

He's eruptive. What's interesting is he could play the President. He could have played the President's conniving Chief of Staff. He basically could have played every part in the White House, could have played the vice President who doesn't like the President. He could have played the guy, the military general who works for the President. Just go through anybody that is involved with the President. He could probably have played every part. Whereas when Nicholson is the President, you're like, it's Jack Nicholson. Even when Jack Nicholson is in broadcast news and he's good.

Yes.

But you could argue Hackman might have been better in that part, right?

You know what's interesting?

Because he still feels like Jack Nicholson in broadcast news. I'm not buying him as a network anchor.

The thing... Well, he would have been the president of the Network, right?

Yeah, whatever he was.

No, no, no. Nicholson was the anchor. But what I'm saying is Hackman, you would have more believed him as the President. Or the Robert Prasky part.

He was working with Holly Hunter. Yeah, he could have been that guy.

He would not have made sense as any of... He wouldn't have made sense as William Hurt or Albert Brooks. But that same era of Hackman, he has a cameo appearance in Postcards from the Edge. Do you remember this scene?

Oh, yeah.

He's the director of the movie Meryl Streep is fucking up in. The Meryl Streep character, this is based on the Carrie Fisher memoir. She's playing this drug-addicted actress who bottoms out, and she goes through rehab, and her redemption, essentially, is going back into the postproduction studio to do voiceovers. Jean Hackman is her director. The thing that we're talking about with this mentorship, I think a version of what it looks like is this director telling this Meryl Streep character to get her life together and giving her this I mean, it's not another chance. The movie still needs to be looped. She's there to do her voiceovers. It's just this wonderful sequence where you learn something about the movies. I didn't know what that process was until this, until postcards from the Edge, another Mike Nichols movie. But he's so warm and firm and clear about what it is that he needs. But he's also got a sense of humor. I don't know who this character is. He's Jean Hackman. Whatever that means.

One-on-one.

But fatherly in a really touching way.

Well, the other thing, and obviously, we've done almost 375 rewatchables movies at this point. Part of what becomes somebody's legacy is the rewatchability of some of the movies they made. He just had such a great instinct for this great... Then sometimes he thought Hoosers was going to be a bomb. That ends up being the biggest basketball movie anyone's ever made and lives on forever and ever. He was pissed the whole time he was making it. He was like, Nobody's going to see this shit.

No best actor nomination for him in that movie, by the way.

Yeah, I think it was because it took him so long to realize, just turn the ball to Jimmy Chitwood. Don't overthink this. Stop running plays. We don't need four passes anymore. We have a generational star in our team.

Royal Tenon Ball. I would say the last great Hackman performance It was close to the end.

It was one of the last ones anyway.

The thing that you love about... That's the one performance I think anybody's given in a Wes Anderson movie where it felt like Wes Anderson, which is giving him, giving the enterprise over to this actor. I don't know. I don't know anything about anything with that movie. I just know how I feel watching it versus, watching him in it versus watching in anybody else in any other West Anderson movie. That's the one where I felt like, Jean Hackman just, just one, overrode the vision. And, most people, a lot of people think that that's their favorite a Wes Anderson movie, that's the one where I felt like Jean Hackman just one overrode the vision. A lot of people think that that's their favorite Wes Anderson movie. I think in part because Jean Hackman is the one person who's the one of the rare people to act in a Wes Anderson movie who feels differently alive from the dioramic project of the film. And he frequently exists on the streets of that city. He does not exist. He's not in the houses that much. He doesn't live in my memory as being an indoor cat. He's an outdoor cat in that movie.

And like anything outside, Wes Anderson just seems to have less control. He's such a sound stage, interior design-oriented person. And something about Jean Hackman out in those streets. It's just classic. It's very on brand for Hackman and very disorienting for Wes Anderson. And the Ten of Boms is greater for it because there's a tension there that exists between his energy and the movie at Part of his energy.

One great thing about him, he's just in a movies with most of the great stars from three different generations of movies. I think Denzel might be. I would be interested to see what the list is. I was thinking. But we always talk about 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon. It's like one degree of Jean Hackman. You could just go through name a star. Everybody. He's worked with Red Bird. It doesn't matter. You go 50 years or 45 years, however long he was. Can ask who was he? He's going to be in a movie, it'll be like Travolta was paying homage to him. Hackman made so many movies. What was it? Get Shorty was his Travolta movie? Yeah. But you go through and you'd be like, just shout an actor out. Did they work with Jean Hackman? They probably did. Shout an actress out. They probably did.

Sally Field? Am I missing a very obvious one? Because the two of them seem like they just... Sally Field. It just should have worked.

He did a movie with Barbra Streisand.

Oh, that underrated, by the way.

All night long. All night long. Then you go through a bunch of them.

But he and Sally Field seem like they would have had a really good connection.

He did a movie with Richard Gear, Julie Christie, Kate Capshaw and Denzel Washington and JT Walsh. Can you name the movie?

Can you name those names again?

Richard Gear, Julie Christie, Kate Capshaw, and Denzel Washington as Arnold Billings.

What's the year?

It was Lumet Power.

That's right.

I forgot about that. That's early. That's early. That's early.

That's like 1981, isn't it?

No, it's later. It's '86. '86, okay. It It was right when Hollywood was like, Hey, Richard Gere, what's going on here? Why are we making all these? Why are all these bombing? Are you not a movie star anymore?

I know we're not talking about Richard Gere here, but it's funny because to compare Richard Gere to Jean Hackman is interesting, right? Why does it work for Hackman and not for Richard Gere?

Well, this raises the second, where Richard Gere is too handsome. That's part of the problem. But we've When we talked about Richard Gere when he taps into an internal affairs and officer or gentleman, that's Richard Gere. Hackman, as the guy in Pretty Woman, would have been really interesting.

That's the one That's the one they wouldn't make, right?

That's the one they wouldn't make, but that's the more realistic one.

That's the more realistic one.

That's the more realistic one where he's like an older, dirty fucking guy.

What was that original title? Was it called 2000 or 4000? Whatever her fee would have been. I I think that's what the original title was.

Then they tried Whore on the Street. That didn't work. They just kept trying titles. Just kept going for stuff.

I feel like there was some Hackman Money left on the table if he never did a movie with Sally Field because that's a no-brainer to me. Murphy's Romance, sorry, is the Sally Field James Garner movie that got James Garner his only Oscar nomination. I feel But Jean Hackman could have played that.

That could have been a good Hackman. He's making so many movies. Anyway, Jean Hackman, first bow at Hall of Famer. Give me your one minute review of White Lotus through three episodes. Are you caught up?

Here's my one minute, three. I don't know how many words it's going to be. Here's my review of White Lotus Season 3. I'm watching the Pit.

You're watching the Pit.

I'm watching the Pit.

Er is back. I'm not watching- 2025 years.

I'm not watching White Lotus. White Lotus had his chance with me, Bill. The Pit. This show doesn't know what it's about. I'm watching The Pit.

Wow, you're into The Pit that much.

Oh, I'm in the Pit.

You're in the Pit. No, Wiley, you never gave up your stock.

Are you kidding? Did I ever own stock? I was like, I should have bought stock.

No, you had some stock.

I mean, the vesting happening here is extraordinary. Are you watching this show, Bill?

I'm not. Should I be watching? People keep telling me to watch it.

Let me tell you.

It's like the R-Cross with 24.

You all can keep your White Lotus. You can have it. Eat it up. I don't want it. I don't want anymore. I had my fill. You all don't know how to feed me. The Pit. This show, and it's crazy that the most exciting I've gotten talking to you is about this show and not about it. Not about anything else? I do. If we were talking about Baby Girl or Hard Truce, which has the other great performance from last year by Maryanne Jean-Baptiste, I'd be psyched to talk about that. But we're talking about The Pit. It's such a strange viewing experience if you ever watch DR. I actually would love to know how people feel who haven't watched DR ever to watch it for the first time, because within five minutes, you are someplace you know you've already been, even though you don't know where you actually are. Everything about it is familiar. This show is made by John Wells, who is responsible in part for ER. The structure is basically every episode is one hour in this staff, this medical staff shift.

It's 24 across the ER.

Basically, yes. That's it. That's exactly. You said it. It went over my head because I was enthusiastic about you watching the show, but you were 100% correct. Formally, that's the show. I don't know how anything that happens on this show actually happens. What are the retakes like?

You know what?

How many takes do they need to do?

Say no more. I'm going to watch. You don't need to sell me anymore. This is... I'm in. I'm going to watch it.

Noah Wiley giving the TV performance. Nobody's going to do better than Noah Wiley on this show.

Oh, I'm so happy.

Nobody doing better than Noah Wiley on this show. I never gave up on him. I mean, you didn't? Because I haven't seen him since 2001.

He's been doing some good stuff. He was on that... What was that movie with the train, the Crazy Train. I thought he was on that movie that turned into a TV show, Snowpiercer. Is he on Snowpiercer Train?

I think he might have been. On TNT Snowpiercer or the Bong Juneau Snowpiercer?

He might have been. No, he's in the TV version, I think. I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. You're right.

You say so. I'm glad he's back. He was on TV. He might have been that show, actually. You're right. I remember seeing him and being like, I'm glad the checks are still coming in. It's great. I'm glad the checks are still coming in. This is an extraordinary... Everybody on this show, even if the acting isn't good, you have to be present in a really interesting way, a way that feels new to me for television. It is just- The pit. It's thrilling. It's really gross and suspensful, and I love it.

Anything to plug?

Personally?

Yeah.

I'm working on a podcast. I turned in my book, you'll be happy to know.

I don't believe it. Is there video evidence of I mean, there's still a lot of work to do, but we're going to make it really good, I think it's going to work. I can't wait to read it.

But yeah, I'm working on a show, a podcast. It's going to be me talking to people like you at some point.

I can't wait to invite myself on it.

Well, I mean, I would have invited you had you not already just invited yourself. You know you're invited.

All right. Wesley Morris, great to see you, as always.

Nice to see you, too.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Peter Ringer and Wesley Morris. Thanks to Kyle, Gehow, and Sruti as well. Don't forget, Celtic City, you can catch up on the first episode on Max. New rewatchables, Rocky, Prestige TV podcast, episode 3, White Lotus. Check out theringer. Com. A great website. I will see you on Thursday on this podcast..