Transcript of Texas Toast, Fantasy Murderers, Drake Maybe Back, Guess the Lines and MLB Playoffs With Cousin Sal

This is the Bill Simmons Podcast presented by FanDuel. Make every NFL week more rewarding with FanDuel Rewards Club. You heard me. Just bet like you normally would, earn points on eligible settled bets, win or lose. Keep collecting points, level up, and unlock bigger rewards. So keep an eye on your Rewards Club progress and see what you can unlock. This is your most rewarding season ever, and it's with FanDuel. 21+ select states or 18+ DC or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. The Bill Simmons Podcast. We are live on Netflix with Cousin Sal and his kidney stones. Uh, want to mention we have a new rewatchables coming tomorrow night, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I guess could have doubled for Texas Cowboys today, but the 1974 one, not any of the remakes. So yeah, me and Sierra are breaking that one down. We made producer Craig watch it. It was super fun. All right. We just came off of probably the worst Sunday Night Football game in a while, and yet it was wildly entertaining and there were 900 yards and zero turnovers and lots of points, but it was kind of fun to watch Collinsworth and listen to him do a bad game, right?

Yeah, it's true. They, they kind of protected him a little bit with this Lions defense. I feel like they, they lucked into this schedule-wise. Like the NFL, if they have to put a shitty NFC South team in primetime, tomorrow is the exception. But if they have to do that, the Lions defense is a fun option, right? So they're always gonna be, they should always be the must-play for the NFC South teams cuz the D is gonna make you look magnificent. That their defense is the Zepbound of the NFL. It makes everyone look great. It really does.

Well, they almost blew the game. There was a lot of weird strategy stuff going on. At various points, I was wondering which coach was good on both teams and what the hell was going on. But really weird near the end. Campbell, he's down 13. It's 4th and 10 inside the 15. Collinsworth's not talking about it. Goff just takes a delay of game. Campbell doesn't call timeout for some reason. 4th and 15. Then they get a false start. Now it's 4th and 20, and then they just go for it on 4th and 20 from the 25, which I would say has like a 3% chance. You're basically hoping for a PI.

Stupid.

They don't get it. They get the ball back, touchdown. They get the ball back again, but now they're— they need 6 instead of 3. They need 7 basically instead of just being down 3 if they had kicked the field goal and they lose. And Collinsworth like didn't want to hear the argument for it. It was weird.

I'm just so medicated, right? I can't believe they stuck me with the Panthers, Bill. I just— that's stuck in my craw there. No, you're right. There was 7 minutes, 10 seconds left. They were down 13. And like you said, they're getting pushed back. So in Campbell's mind, He's gotta have at some point, it's not worth it, right? If they take false starts all the way to midfield, he's not gonna throw a Hail Mary, right? So no, to me and you, we were on this text chain, I'm like, 4th and 20, just kick it.

And yeah, go down 10 with 7 minutes left. It's fine.

Yeah. And Anthony DeBondo, who's my co-host, Ring of Wise Guys, like, they're not getting the ball back twice again right now between that and the ra— what the Raiders did with the point. I wouldn't hire DeBondo to coach my dog to his bowl to eat at this point, but But guess what? They got the ball back twice. I don't know. I don't know if that would've made a difference, but there's nothing wrong with being down 10 with 7 minutes left.

Nah, it was a, it was just a weird game in general. They ran outta Ted McMillan kind of stuff to do by the 3rd quarter. He just kept catching passes. It seemed like he was the only guy on the team. Anytime they needed a play, he made it. Bryce was really good. Bryce, it's not like the NBA where it would be, we'd be going, oh my God, who's gonna sign him? 7 teams need a quarterback 'cause they can just franchise tag him, which I just think is less fun. It would be fun if he was just a restricted or unrestricted free agent at the end of the year. But he's been really good now since the last couple games of last year. He didn't have Coker tonight. He didn't have Leguette, who they spent a high draft pick on. It was basically just McMillan and, and, you know, Hubbard and, and a bunch of guys you never heard of.

Yeah, I'm trying to look because I knew you would do this, but I stay— I stand by my, the Lions defense makes everyone look good. thing, you know.

Well, you might be right.

I mean, I don't know, he wasn't that great against the Browns. His yards were up there. I guess he was good against Atlanta. It's better than the last year's version of— Right?

Like, like, your guy today was great against Houston. He was just awesome.

He has a name and it's Dak Prescott.

Dak Prescott. Yeah. Stafford in those last 2 drives when the, you know, Stafford was bad for 2 and a half hours and then those last 2 drives showed up. My guy showed up like that. There's like that high level Then there's that middle level of like, they can do it every once in a while depending on the situation, the defense. And I think Bryce is at least there.

That's fine.

And then there's that lower level of like that Jameis Jacoby Brissett 5-interception masterpiece we watched at Giants Stadium. Then there's a level below that.

Oh.

That I think is just Cam Ward and Malik Willis and the Rutgers guy that came in today.

Calick Mackin.

Whatever that Rutgers guy was. But yeah, so Bryce Young is at least in that second level now, which I don't think we would've said halfway through last year.

All right, I'll give you that. I mean, there's a lot you hope— you put a lot of guys in that second level then. So you're gonna put Bo Nix and Trevor Lawrence and—

I think Trevor Lawrence is top level for me now.

He's top. All right.

Yeah, I think he's been really good. The question is where Herbert is now, 'cause he's definitely not in the top level and— Oh, it's probably in the middle level. And if you watch that game today, all his stats came in garbage time stuff. Big picture with Lions-Panthers, I don't know where we're gonna get any competition for the 7 NFC playoff teams. If you go with the 3 NFC West.

Yeah.

Probably your team in the NFC East would be the safe bet. The Bears, just 'cause of Ben Johnson, it just seems like he's gonna scotch tape and duct tape them to 10 games. So there's 5. The NFC South has to send a playoff. They, they still have that rule.

They do.

There's 6. So then that 7 spot comes down to Philly, Detroit, 4-0 Minnesota, who, who scored 1 touchdown in the first half.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, is that— no, that's not the stat. What's that? Denver scored 1 touchdown in the first half.

Minnesota's like 7th.

Minnesota's other terrible offensive stats. So I guess it would be Minnesota, but no, I don't, I don't feel good about Minnesota.

We don't have to pull the plug on Minnesota yet. I, I just, from my takeaway from this week and what, win or lose, I think we're dead. And you know, injuries could really screw this up. I think there's 3 NFC West teams in the playoffs. Again, we're gonna see that, right?

And then like, when you say injuries screw that up, like San Francisco just loses guys every game. Starting their fullback today, got his knee, it seemed like his knee blown out or hyperextended, whatever. And it was like their 15th injury. It just doesn't matter. They just keep plowing ahead. I don't, you know, Mike Evans was out there with what, broken ribs or broken bone in his back, whatever he had today. It just doesn't matter.

Yeah, it, that, it's true. It doesn't matter. It didn't really matter last year, I guess, either. They had a shot to get the 1 seed in Week 18. But yeah, I'm saying like, if the, if their quarterback doesn't go out, I would think NFC West is a lock for, for 3 teams. And I think the North will get 2. And then I, I still think there's one in the East. I still think, and I'm not sure that it's my team. I know we'll talk about it.

But if the, if the North gets 2, that's either Minnesota or Detroit. 'Cause I think Green Bay's terrible, which we'll, we'll go into later. I, the interesting thing about the NFC is it feels like the 3 NFC West teams are the best teams.

Yeah.

And then maybe your team is 4th just 'cause of how you can move the ball. You know, you got, not only do you have the best offense in the league through 4 games. You have statistically one of the best offenses of this century through the first 4 games. I don't know if it's gonna last, but that's— and this is without getting really anything from Pickens.

It's points per drive. But if you watch the defense, it's, you know, the other side of the ball is magnificently bad. I mean, Joey Porter Jr. kind of helps out because they— I don't even think they tested him today, um, in terms of targets. So that's good. How's his back?

Is he using like NormaTec on his back? What was he doing?

He's fine. Listen, they've sat him They purposely sat him to core power yoga to stretch out his back yesterday. I got some stuff for him if he needs. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know. We'll get into my team, but I just, this Vikings team, I guess, I guess we'll just gonna have to get used to them going like 14-3 and they're gonna have like a dozen touchdowns on the year and that's gonna be them. We're gonna have to go all the way down to my Vikings-Miami notes.

The Dolphins covered Yeah. Thanks to Hockenson going down on the 1-yard line.

Mm-hmm.

Which feels like it needs a name. Who was the first person to do that? Brian Westbrook. I forget who invented that when we were all— it, it absolutely blew everyone's brains. Might've been him. Yeah. I think it was Brian Westbrook said it was like on a Monday night. It had fantasy implications. It had gambling implications. All kinds of shit was in play. And he went down and the announcers were talking about how smart it was. And everybody else was like, what just happened? I feel like I've been shot by a cannon.

Yeah. The Hawkinson.

I think it was him.

He should steal it though. If he does it like 2 or 3 more times, we could call it the Hawkinson and then it becomes like 100 years from now. Everyone, no one's gonna know what the hell it is, but right. It's gonna sound like Parkinson, but, or something like that. Well, they have a Parkinson too, the Rams. But anyway, yeah, that would've been, I guess he made the right move there. I mean, first of all, if you would've sat with somebody for those 4:00 PM games and bet on every game, they would've been for the first time ever, if like you had like a, a cousin in from like Barcelona or something and they like, oh, you never bet. Let's just bet these 4 4:00 PM games Eastern. They would be like, they would look at you after, it was like, what the fuck? You do this every week?

Are you kidding me?

Right? This is ridiculous. They always—

You tease the Broncos and they gave up a George Kittle half-field touchdown with 2 minutes left for no reason.

And at least that guy scored. There are some guys trying not to score 'cause they don't wanna go up 12. with 2 minutes left. My— yeah, I just— and your wife stays with you like through all this? Yeah, it was a, it was a tumultuous 4:00 PM ending.

The funniest thing was, it's not— I don't think Kyler Murray has a lot of touchdowns in him this year.

Okay.

So Hockenson sliding down and costing him one of the few touchdowns he's gonna have, he had to be bummed out. The— I also wrote down $20 million a year for Malik Willis now feels kind of hilarious. I've, I've unfortunately watched some Dolphins. Is that what he's getting? I guess.

Yeah. Yeah.

I thought he got $70 million for 3 years.

They paid like 2 guys and he was one of 'em. Yeah.

He's not that guy. I know he doesn't have a lot of weapons. Alex from Minneapolis sent us an email. He said he's a lifelong Vikings fan. Couldn't be more thrilled about his 4-0 start. Heard a stat that since the most recent playoff expansion, no team that started out 4-0 has missed the playoffs. playoffs.

Wow.

But he asks, considering how putrid their offense is, could the Vikings be you and Sal's first ever 4-0 cross-off team?

Wow.

Did you, did you think about crossing them off at 4-0?

Oh, that's really good.

I'm gonna say no. I, I value the 4 wins.

Mm-hmm.

But it did make me pause for a second because their offense is just abysmal. And I don't understand this blitzing thing, how the, how it's gonna work when they actually play Yeah, a really good team. It's a gimmick. They're getting away with it. But I, I don't, I don't, do not take the Vikings seriously.

Like a Brock Purdy. I'm looking at their schedule. The problem is everyone who I thought was good is now maybe not so good. So there's a stretch there for them where, yeah, a couple weeks they're at the Lions versus the Bills, at the Packers versus the 49ers. Let's see, let's see if they, what they do. I mean, those are good quarterbacks, so let's see how they get out of that. But yeah, man, I don't know. I mean, the Dolphins, you can't learn anything from them. Do they have a game where they've scored more than 13 points?

They do not.

Okay.

So Minnesota beats Green Bay week 1, 39 to 22 in the game that Green Bay's up 22 to 10 and the entire game completely craters on them. There's that weird drive that seemed like the, the game was fixed for Minnesota and yeah, all kinds of dumb shit. They beat Chicago in week 2 in the game with the 20-mile-an-hour winds where Chicago scores 3 points and the weather, it was just a perfect game for Minnesota. Last week they beat Tampa barely in Baker Mayfield's last start, and now we know Tampa's terrible. And then they beat Miami by 5 today. So they're just gonna be the team, and we know who it is every year by usually November. And now we know it, that now they're probably gonna go 13-4, and we will not wait to, we will not be able to wait to bet against them in round 1.

Yeah.

Is how the, is where we're heading with the Minnesota Vikings. I like their fan base. God bless them. They've had a lot of agony and pain over the year, but Kyler Murray is terrible. Like, you're not, you're not doing anything if he's your quarterback. It's hard for me to believe they traded McCarthy. That may, that means he must be awful. And I don't really know what they do.

I don't know what they do either. I don't know if they're looking for like a Sam Darnold type resurgence outta Kyler Murray. You know, Jefferson's out too. So I don't know if you wanna give him a little, little bit of a break there. His stats weren't awful. But again, it's against the Dolphins. I mean, I guess we should be happy they finally had positive yards in a matchup that they won. They're 4-0, but it is about the worst 4-0 team I've seen.

I think kudos to them. Well, one of the weird things about this season so far is we have how many 4-0 teams? Like more than usual, right? Minnesota, San Francisco, Chiefs, and Kansas City. So we still have 3 4-0s. And then conversely, which is the part that gets super weird, we still have 5 0-4 teams.

Mm-hmm.

And all the stats and trends of like week 3, 0-2 teams, watch out when they're underdogs. And then week, week 4, 0-3 teams, look out. None of 'em worked. The Texans are 0-4. They could have won 3, maybe even 4 of those games. They had the lead. In 3 of the 4. They had the lead today against your team. Stroud was, I thought, really good. They did everything you could have asked offensively from a team that can't run the ball at all. And then once again, I was texting you guys, they are the equivalent of Munoz on the Seattle Mariners.

Mm-hmm.

It's a great 8 innings, and then fucking Munoz comes in and walks the first guy and starts giving up rockets. And you're like, this guy throws 101 miles an hour. How is he not getting a save? And the Texans have all these All-Pros, all these dudes all over the place. And this is 2 weeks in a row where, and then you go back to week 1, same thing where all they had to do was just close out a drive and they win the game. They weren't able to do it in their own 4. And this is what's supposed to be the strength of their team.

Right. 3 out of the 4 games that their defense played horribly in there, they still had a shot with the last drive and couldn't, couldn't put the hammer down.

And their offense got the go-ahead score.

Yep.

to set up the defense to finish the game, which it then did not.

Yeah. I love that you're invoking this Munoz guy. I really hope this goes like through basketball. Like you get— he's just— he's like Munoz. What? Let it go.

I'm just gonna compare Munoz to everything.

Yo, Keeper League, you lost 6 months ago.

Trump's new legislative act. It's like Munoz.

These midterms.

Yeah.

Not voting for Munoz. Tell you that much.

Well, so that Lassiter who had, who dropped the game-winning pick in the first game, so that just single-handedly costed them a win. Then this game he got torched. The stats were like unbelievable. I think, I think when they targeted him, he gave up 200 yards. Your guy CeeDee Lamb had 17 catches.

Woo!

And had one of the best receiver games of this decade and dominated them and dominated them on the final drive when all Dak was doing was throwing to CeeDee Lamb and it didn't matter. And he was just getting open and making plays. And I don't understand it. I don't know what happened to Pickens this year. If you have him on a fantasy team, you're not doing backflips. It's, it's very CeeDee Lamb-centric, but it's working.

I love it. I mean, this is maybe how it should have been last year, but not just one of the greatest. 17 for 189. Is he the greatest wide receiver you've ever seen? I'll hang up and listen to your response off the air.

No, but he throw— he's thrown his hat in the ring this year for Receiver of the Year.

Right. It's good. It's, you know, I'll take it. I'm not gonna overreact at all, I promise. But let's just split the heartbreaking results, right? We lost to the Ravens. We couldn't lose this one to the Texans too. And you know, you, like I said, Joey Porter is a positive. The defense still lets up. We have guys on the field that shouldn't be, but the fact that we had lost like 4 years worth of road games when we were down double digits in the second half and we, we kicked that streak to the curb, that's nice. That's fine. I'll take that.

What do you think your odds are to make the playoffs?

I saw it already. It's the same as the Eagles. It's about even, right? -110 or something.

It jumped up 'cause of that Detroit loss today. You're now -132 to make the playoffs. Oh, really? There's juice against you.

Wow.

+112 to miss it on FanDuel.

The bet, the bet of the year was the Chargers a week ago. Yeah.

When we did that, they were like -650 to miss it. And just put those with 2 other terrible teams and you have the makings of a parlay. I might've actually done this when I was in Boston, but now they're like minus $1,200.

Oh, there are 5 0-4 teams you said, and 2 of 'em are the Titans. 2 of 'em we crossed off already, the Titans and the Dolphins. The other 3 are the Texans, the, the Bucs, which we won't cross off 'cause they're in the South divisions, right? And then the Chargers. And the Chargers. I think, I think we're closest to Chargers than any other team right now. I, I would, might, you could convince me to do it right now this week.

I have a different cross-off team for this week.

Really? That's not 0-4. All right.

I think it's the Arizona Cardinals.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

If the goal of the cross-off, and so far we've crossed off Miami and Tennessee, and Eduardo is doing a really cool Instagram.

I like it.

Post of it where it's like a notebook and the teams are written. So we, so we need a 3rd team. What are the odds Arizona's gonna make the playoffs in that division? You would need, I think, 2 of the quarterbacks to get hurt. They have this crazy schedule coming up. They won that first game against the Chargers and we went, oh my God, Arizona, what are, what did we miss? And then we talked that day, I think we talked on the pod, this could be one of the ones we look back at like around week 12 and go, oh, that was the crazy result.

Yep.

And it was a crazy result because we thought the Chargers were good and the Chargers suck. And the Cardinals threw us off their scent for a week and they've lost every game ever since.

I'm fine with that. I mean, they had 270 total yards. Oh, I, I started this, we started talking about how the NFC West, it's almost a foregone conclusion. They're gonna have 3 playoff teams, so they're not gonna have 4. You know, I mean, to me it's like they went to Trey McBride like 15 times in the red zone and, and couldn't get it done against the Giants. So And the ref is telling him to fuck off multiple— I, I think they're telling— the ref's telling him to fuck off. Well, I think we could tell him to fuck off. We could cross him off if you want.

I mean, we're on Netflix. We can say he said fuck you twice to Trey McBride.

He did.

The, the end zone judge.

And he actually did. Right.

An incredible video. Like, does that guy get fired? What happens to him?

He, he's got a year to talk into Bill. You can't throw an F-bomb.

Like, this guy thought he was in a Tarantino movie.

What are you doing? Take it easy, Scarface. Come on, just let us know when the quarter's over.

He, uh, yeah, I would have the Cardinals. So you agree with that?

Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it.

Okay. They played the Giants today and, uh, that's—

It is weird we're taking them even though they beat the Chargers, a team we won't cross off. But we're, we're, we are. I'm, I'm game. That's fine.

Well, here's why I don't wanna cross off the Chargers and we should talk that. By the way, the, the Cardinals gave up a walk-off pick 6 that if you tease the Cardinals, so sorry, it murdered all the teases. That seemed like one of the safest ones. A hilarious game in general though.

Mm-hmm.

Jameis is just throwing it. He's just, it's almost like he's peaked past being where Jameis was when he was 30-30 Jameis.

Yeah.

And now he's an erratic older version of the same Jameis and you just don't know what's gonna happen play to play. It's magnificent.

I love the attitude. I love the, I, I think that's the best version we could ask for, for him. Like 18 for 29, 3 touchdowns.

Yeah.

2 interceptions. Press conference during the week, he's freaking out on the reporters saying that— they're like, you're the backup, so as a backup you're doing it. And he's like, hey, I'm not the backup anymore, stop calling me the backup, right?

It's like, all right, insulting me.

As soon as Jaxon Dart gets that knee fixed up, there's like Rosie O'Donnell saying, stop calling me a guest host on Jimmy Kimmel Live, I'm the host of this show, I'm hosting the show right now. Who knows if he'll ever stop fishing, but that's, uh, that's it. So that's Jameis in a nutshell. I like watching it.

I asked Noah, who's been working with The Ringer for a while, who's a Giant, diehard Giants fan. I was like, Dave, yeah, I know you watched this entire game. I had it on and as ATVs are going away, like, what were your takeaways? And he said, I don't understand how we've picked in the top 10 for an entire decade and Malik Nabers is our only blue chip player.

Right.

It's a pretty good take. Everyone was talking about how awesome and loaded their defense is. Now Burns got hurt.

Yeah.

But all these guys they had that are allegedly like just a nightmare to go against and oh my God, their front 7 and their defense stinks. And, and then you look on the other side and it's basically just Nabers. And it is a little weird that they've had all those.

They got Nabers over 100 yards, which was nice, right? 'Cause you don't want your blue chipper, you know, 4 for 38 every week. Right. So Jameis was good enough to get him to that point. But yeah, you're right. Now the haters are gonna be like first place. shut, uh, they're gonna, you know, Trey McBride us with the fuck yous, I think.

Well, first place and their over-under, I think on FanDuel is still 7 or less, right?

7.5.

Is it 7.5?

Yeah, yeah, I think that's what it was. Hold on, I could, I could look at it here for wins. Yeah, their updated win total is 7.5 is the— I mean, they have, they have a million that you could bet, but yeah, over +115.

So I'm not willing to officially cross off the Cardinals yet until we talk about the Chargers.

No, no.

Well, I'm 95% there, but let's talk about Seahawks-Chargers really quick.

Okay.

Herbert just got pounded for 2 straight hours. It was 27 to 6 at one point. He had 26 pass yards in the first half. They started garbage timing it up near the end and they did something really interesting. They were down 21. I had, I was on the treadmill watching 4 games at once, so I was really concentrating 'cause this treadmill makes everything go slower. And they had like an 8 or 9-minute drive down 21 where they're running the ball. You would've thought they were up 3 and they put this long drive together against an increasingly disinterested Seahawks defense. And Herbert actually did get his mojo going a tiny bit. And then they came back and got it in a situation where they lose by 7. And you know, this game was 7 in a lot of markets all week.

Mm-hmm.

So they got the push. I just think he looks like a complete mess. They, they showed him on the sideline a couple times and he, he just had a different look. He used to have kind of that glaze, kind of glazed, you know, I'm, I'm from Pacific Northwest. I kind of have this vibe to me.

Yeah.

He just looked beaten down. And in general, when you looked at the sideline with them, that was the only team I saw the whole day that seemed disconnected. unhappy, like where, where you watch these games, you're like, ah, there's something wrong with that team. It was the only one out of all of them. And it's not like everything was going great for everybody, but that team looks— I, I would say broken would be the word I would use.

He looks like he's dating the, the Frankenstein version of Madison Beer. Like the— like she's got—

he's in The Bride Part 2, the skin burned off in a terrible accident.

That game sucked. Yeah, it was awful. First of all, It, it seems slow on the treadmill because there were 280 penalty yards. There were 30 penalties in that game. It's like 15 or 17 for one and 13 another.

Yeah. Seattle had 14 penalties and somehow didn't lead the team in penalties that day.

Yeah. That game. Yeah. Insane. And then now like, all right, the linemen who this was supposed to be last year's excuse, Joe Altum, Rashawn Slater, are injured again.

Yeah.

And they're always injured. They're always injured together. like 2 seniors in high school calling sick, like, oh, did they go to the beach again? Like, why do they always have to be injured together? So I don't know.

In the middle of their line just collapses. Seattle was just pushing through the middle, which was the thing I was worried about all year. Their receivers don't always make plays. It feels like they started to give up on the rookie running back. They started playing Mitchell more, especially in the second half. I said last week it felt 2000 Blitzkrieg to me. Definitely feels that way. I wonder with Harbaugh, 'cause we found out last week, we theorized, could he go to college? But he can't 'cause of the NCAA rule violations.

Right.

I just feel like his MO is to get outta this. I could see him resigning or saying like he's going through physical stuff or, Whatever. He— the way House has been calling him Grandpa Harbaugh on Hot Pot and on Wise Guys.

Yep.

He just looks like he's out there. He looks like the last 2 years of Biden, like the clips of Biden just kind of wandering around like, oh, right? Uh, he looks like he's out of it. DJ Mikey Mack is just prowling up the sidelines. He looks like he's, you know, in— wearing his Jon Holmes Boogie Nights outfit. Um, and doesn't seem like anybody talks to him. They just seem like a mess. There was stuff after the game, like there's anonymous Chargers quotes coming out. So I have my eye on that. I, I, that's the only reason I wonder if they're not a cross-off, because what if they fire Harbaugh and have like a resurgence with the new interim coach or something?

I mean, the schedule's still brutal. It's, uh, it is the next 6 weeks. It's Broncos, Chiefs, Rams, Texans, Ravens, your team. You know, the Niners are in there too. Did you see the press conference after the game with Hardball. They asked him about the vote of confidence for Mike McDaniel. Yeah. You know, I don't know if he heard the question or he is just so spacey at this. Maybe he's dreaming of college, going back to college like you said, but they had to ask him a second time. He is like, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. We'll just, we're gonna do some things. We're gonna figure it. Yeah, we'll do it.

All right.

Okay. So his job is in jeopardy. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I didn't say that. I didn't say that. It's, it's a, it's an all-around mess there.

Yeah. 'Cause the, the thing with him was always he didn't do one side of the ball or the other. Mm-hmm. He was like a culture motivation, you know, alpha dog type guy that would come in and these guys, he was just like a leader of men.

Mm-hmm.

And maybe he's just not anymore. Sometimes that just goes away. And if you don't have that other thing to fall back on, but you know, everyone's gonna make excuses for Herbert over and over again. He had 2 picks and a strip sack today. He just looks terrible. And there was a lot of garbage time stuff, but, I don't know. I did my fan—

Well, fuck your team. I mean, you're, you know, this—

No, we're gonna do that after the break.

Well, I'm just saying nobody has to, no, nobody has to be bad forever. Right. And we saw that with your, your guy. So maybe he can—

I know. But the difference with my team was that they could have and probably should have beaten Seattle in week 1 and just torched the game in the 4th quarter and started throwing the ball away. They beat Pittsburgh in week 2. Right. Then they sucked last week. But you know, they, they've at least shown something over the course of this.

Chargers were only good against the Bills for the first 2 and a half quarters.

Right. Again, and then turned the ball over a bunch. My fantasy murderer all-stars through 4 weeks.

Yeah.

Herbert, I think has to be the QB, right?

Mm-hmm.

Drake, Drake Maye was in there until today, but he was probably on everybody's bench, so he might still be murdering him.

Yeah.

I think Saquon's the running back.

Good.

Ekubuka, Jefferson, and Harrison. Which 2 would you take?

Well, you're not counting injuries. I mean, AJ Brown is, is the, is the killer.

I don't, I can't count the, like, I, I can't blame, it's, to me it's worse the guys that either are playing and not doing it or are sort of playing, get hurt, come back, then they're hurt again. So maybe Jefferson and Harrison is fair.

Jefferson went earliest outta those 3, right?

Yeah. And then, and then Loveland has to be the tight end.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. I didn't even check. He was going close to—

what'd he do today?

Nothing. I've given up on him completely. I didn't even look.

Yeah.

But that has to be, and then Texans defense, which was going, you know, in auctions, people were going $3, $4, $5 for them.

Mm-hmm.

And then probably, I mean, really everybody on Philly.

That's good. I have all that, all everyone you named. I have 'em somewhere sprinkled on my 6 or 7 rosters I have.

Yeah. We're gonna take a break and we're gonna talk about your team in a little more detail and my team, because it's rare that both of our teams win in the same week.

We should have done this at 4 o'clock. Why are we making it hard on ourselves?

I know. Well, we get to savor more.

We had to wait to lose insane money on that 4:00 PM games. But all right, you're right.

It's better. We're gonna take a break.

We'll be back.

This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra, the official beer sponsor of the NBA and legitimately my favorite beer. I was drinking them at Fenway Park actually recently. It's tip-off and I can't wait to see in person. The best thing for me is when the new guys come in the league and you get to go check 'em out for the first time. Like when Wemby came in a couple years ago. We have a great rookie class this year. I wanna see Cam Boozer in person. I wanna see Dibansa in person. I wanna see Darren Peterson in person. I'm excited for all of these dudes. And I think that's my favorite thing about when the season starts, those first couple months when the newer guys start coming in and then getting to see the old guys too, your old friends. Like Curry is a, is a can't miss. I gotta go see him in person every year. So I think it's reuniting with old people you loved watching and then seeing the new blood too. But when I'm at the game, Nothing better than watching one with a Michelob Ultra, uh, a superior light beer with a distinctly smooth taste.

Uh, gets nice and cold. Just good times. Good news for fans, Michelob Ultra giving you a chance to watch the game you love this season in person with courtside tickets and more. So enter now at michelobultra.com/courtside and maybe, maybe you'll luck out. Mick Love Ultra Courtside 26 to 27, no purchase necessary, open to US residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2026, ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at mickloveultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. All right, so during the break, Eduardo, our beloved social media slash producer, uh, uh, Chargers fan, San Diego guy, um, He begged us to just cross off the Chargers and put himself out of his misery. I'm happy to do that if we wanna make Chargers our 3rd cross-off.

What does that do for Eduardo? Does he think maybe that gives his team hope?

'Cause we're giving up on him. Well, then he can just concentrate on the Padres. He doesn't have to— we've crossed off his football team. Wow.

He has a lot of faith in us. This has gone sideways, Eduardo. So maybe, look, they're not, they're not making it. They're not making it.

Let's cross 'em off. I think symbolically, I think it's more fun to cross them off. Who knows with the Cardinals? The Niners keep getting guys hurt. The NFC, it might be 9 wins. We'll keep 'em in. All right. We'll cross off the Chargers. So long. Bills-Patriots. Drake may be back.

You like what I did there? Yeah, I like it. Yeah. Yeah.

Drake may be having his mojo again.

I like it all. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. What? What? Oh no. Oh no. Oh, don't do it.

Well, listen, I had to buy the win today by putting the Bills not only in a Ringer 107 tease, but in all the teases I did. Yeah. At least in the early games. I did not think the Patriots would win today. I thought today could potentially be rock bottom and then they would turn it around next week. And what I did not count on is I, the guy who really got his mojo back was Vrabel.

Hmm.

And I noticed it in the first quarter, not to sound like I saw this coming, but I did notice in the first quarter, you know, I love the sidelines when the guys are jumping off and you could just see like the energy. It just felt like everybody was locked in. It was the first time I've felt this way all season. Every time they showed Vrabel, he looked like last year Vrabel. All the guys on the sidelines are just going up and down. They're going nuts. And they were really aggressive with the play calling. It was almost like, it was like they were trying to inject Drake Maye with testicular fortitude. Everything they were doing, all their decisions, the end of the game where I think in the first 3 games of the year when they have the lead at the end, you gotta, you know, basically keep the Bills from getting the ball back. I just think they would've run the ball and, and gotten tackled and then they would've punted. And this time they went for it. They went for it on second down. They didn't get it, stopped the clock. And then they did it again and got it with Hunter Henry and basically ended the game.

And it was, it was just, it, it was a fuck you game from start to finish. And of course at the end they did the, the Patriots, the, on patriots.com where they have the locker room speech.

Mm-hmm.

And it was Vrabel and it, it, it felt like last year. So now I'm thinking this was all a bad dream. The offseason, everything that went happened first 3 weeks, malaise. Everyone in the city's mad. They're wondering if Drake, whatever. Clearly not his shoulder 'cause he was firing it around today. He looked great. You know, he was a little sloppy with the ball a couple times, but his shoulder seemed fine. He ran the ball 8 for 54. He was zinging it. And a couple times he aired it out like 60 yards. So it wasn't his shoulder, it was his head. And I think this whole week was about building him back up. They didn't have Gonzalez, they didn't have Barmore. And I think they were just like, nobody believes in us. And it was like, The Pats are back. I don't know if it's going to last, but I think that's what happened today. Thank you.

Are you done? Are you done?

Yeah, I'm done.

I know how this works. This has to be the video breakout that we put on the ringer tomorrow. So I let you go for 2 minutes, 4 minutes, whatever you need. But if you want to praise Sedona Senzai Vrabel, that's fine. But you didn't mention Efton Chisholm, who bailed you out.

I had more material. I just— that was my opening salvo.

Okay. All right, all right. Here's— first of all, I spent— I was in New York, and everyone— people don't like Drake Maye there either. But I'm like, I would spent the whole week defending him. I'm like, he's not done.

Oh, thanks.

I, I just know he's not done unless it is like a shoulder injury and he's afraid to say it, in which by now he should say it. But yes, we saw a lot of great throws today. We saw a lot, a lot of, you know, bailout throws. This is why I was telling you the Patriots are not a cross-off, but, but I feel like I'm kind of dialed in on 'em and I think you may have I think every snap is still an adventure with him. I really do.

I don't disagree.

I think it— you're going a little more towards Baker Mayfield. I don't want to call him Draker Mayfield, but you're going a little more towards Mayfield. It's a little bit of, you know, what's gonna happen now kind of thing, you know. But you're back on track. That was a huge game for the franchise.

Some texts with my dad today when Dobbs did well. I texted him, Dobbs, always liked him. We've been bitching about Dobbs for a month.

Right.

My dad said, was so happy we got him. But then Drake had that fumble.

Mm-hmm.

And my dad just texted, May is a rollercoaster ride. That's it. And I said, you might be too old to, you might be too old to handle him anymore. He's like a playoff hockey game every quarter. And that's kind of where we are. You never feel 100% safe because that's great. For some reason he's a little sloppy. So it's like these playoff hockey games where you're just like, Oh, oh, oh, oh. And you're just doing that for 3 hours. But he looked like he— today he looked like he did last year.

Definitely.

So we know there's not a shoulder thing. And that was kind of the intel behind the scenes, not just from insiders with the NFL, but even like the team and the little birdies around the team. And it was like, we just gotta get his head straight. Like he got his ass kicked in the playoffs and he sucked in the Super Bowl. And then, and obviously it affected him. Good for you. So I think they build him back.

Good for me. You get to talk football for a little longer. Yeah.

I'm back, baby.

Yeah.

In the locker room speech, he gave out the 4 game balls and then the last one was to Drake. And you could just tell by the way the team, like the team was really trying to pull him back.

Mm-hmm.

'Cause I think he, I, I just think there's different types of athletes and he's one of those, I internalize it when things aren't going well. which is weird when it's the leader of the team, right? He's— and you forget he's still young. He hasn't had a lot of things.

So anyway, maybe this is 100% back on. This is unbelievable.

Well, I said to you last week, well, when we were— no, we were talking about Trevor Lawrence and I was like, think about the fucking dips and turns and ups and downs with that dude, how many times we wrote him off. And I really like Trevor Lawrence now. I think he's good. So I think this is part of the process. But the bigger issue is Or, or the bigger thing that helped today was Josh Allen kind of sucked.

Yeah.

The game is there for him to take.

Yep.

They got, they score the touchdown, they go up 5, they have the 2-point. I would've bet my life the Bills were getting the 2-point, right?

Mm-hmm.

I don't know what happened that play. They don't get it. And you know, when 27-22, whatever it was, they're up 5 and it's like, uh-oh, this is, this, then the Pats go down. Drake makes a bunch of big plays and then Chisholm makes the play of the year for the Pats. This is a guy who's been an August preseason hero, but never thought you'd see him in a game like this and—

Catch of the year.

Makes the best play of his life.

Yep.

So Drake was 22 for 37. New England rushed the ball 36 times. And this is something Mike Lombardi always talks about, completions plus rushing attempts. It's 58. You get over 50, that means you, you've controlled the ball or you have a situation like, what was the Bears today? They had like 78 completions and runs or something. Yeah. But it looked a little more like what, what you would've wanted to look. And yet Buffalo got the ball back. I thought for sure Josh was going down and scoring.

I did too. I don't know what it is with him. I thought last week was his weird, I'm like, you know, you get, you get really spoiled with Josh Allen, right? But now he has 1 touchdown and 3 interceptions in the last 2 weeks. I know he runs for touchdowns. He's gonna break like Earl Campbell's record, whatever. But yeah, I just, I, it, it, something seems wrong and they're not running away with the division and he's not running away with the MVP. Like you got, I was looking at it, I texted you and I was like, there are like 730 votes between Drake Maye and, and, and Stafford that are not going to those 2.

Yeah.

And they might not go to Josh Allen who's still favored according to FanDuel to win MVP at +230. And then Brock Purdy is +450, 15-to-1 2 weeks ago. That was when to get him.

But, um, meanwhile, the best 2, the guys I would bet, Lawrence at 10-to-1 or Prescott at 14-to-1, I think are the best kind of odds, right? 'Cause, well, and we'll talk about the Jags later, but I, I thought they were really good today and I think your guy's been excellent. So this too, and Purdy was not that good today. Now they had some offensive line stuff and he was missing weapons, but it was the first time he looked a little bit mortal. And yet I still think he's a top 5 quarterback in the league. I wrote down, does Josh Allen wanna be the guy or not? 'Cause after that second game this year, we were all like, he's the best player in the league.

Yeah.

There's nobody like this guy. And then last week kind of sucked. This week, let the Pats beat him at home. Let the Pats off the hook.

Mm-hmm.

Where this AFC's competitor who's like reeling and, you know, missing dudes, missing Gonzalez, missing Barmore. And it was like, this is missing AJ Brown. This is a fucking godsend to have these guys come in and you lose the game. I, as a Pats fan, I don't know how the Buffalo fans felt about this, but we couldn't tackle James Cook.

Right.

And he only had 12 rushes for 75 yards. But my dad and I were texting like, why don't they just give Cook the ball all the time? He's going for 7 of 15 yards a pop.

Right.

But they just, they wouldn't do it.

He just tries to do too much. I love this. I love how over your skis are. You are now.

This is just— I'm not. I, listen, they saved the season. Brabel said that afterwards. This was a do or die game. If you think, if you wanna be in the hunt, you had to win today. I didn't think they could.

So you are betting $188,000 to win $100,000 that the Patriots make the playoffs. Good for you. No, I'm not. I like that.

I'm not. I don't like the injuries and There's some things I worry about. Vrabel said— this is another thing with Vrabel that I think he's doing intentionally. He said, Josh, in the postgame press conference, Josh Allen is unbelievable, but I felt like Drake went toe-to-toe with him. This is what they've subtly done all week with him where they're trying to build him up and be like, you're one of the best guys in the league.

Mm-hmm.

Like, let's go. Like, you're our guy. Let's do it. And they're just, I think, doing everything they can to, to basically give him his confidence back. We'll see if it works.

I think that's what's extra special about this game is not only 'cause it was an AFC matchup, it puts you right back in the thick of things, right? Not only is it against your rival now, the Bills, it's against the team that kind of started that cover 6 against Josh Allen. They kind of, maybe there was a team before them, but they, that when they beat them in the regular season last year, it was last year, right? They, that's what they employed. And that was like that they were going around to the rest of the league and then everybody used it in the playoffs. It didn't work today. It really didn't work today because there were guys open all over the place.

Well, for the, if you're a Bills fan, you got an awesome Keon Coleman game. He made a couple huge catches and you still lost at home. So I'd be bummed about that. And then your team, Texans-Cowboys, we didn't talk about the Texans piece that Nico came back and made a huge difference for them.

Yeah.

And they still lost and they just can't run the ball. They're 19 for 64. I thought Montgomery, I had Montgomery in 2 fantasy leagues. I thought he was gonna have a big game. gonna make a huge difference for them.

He's right up there too. Yep.

He just hasn't. And their defense, they had 13 penalties on both sides of the ball and they gave up 28 first downs to your guys. So I don't know. And then your team, you got Tampa at Green Bay, at Philly, Arizona, and at Indy next 5. That feels like 6-3.

It's fine. I mean, I honestly still think 9-8 can win this division. I really don't think we'll talk about Philly and how they blew that game to the Rams. But you know, the Cowboys are gonna just, they're gonna fold against some of these teams. The coaching's gonna be stupid. I, I think they depend on Aubrey and Dak too much. We have to get to a point where we don't depend on both those guys too much. When Aubrey's lining up for a 65-yarder after getting a kick blocked and you know, it's easy for Hugh. I mean, that was a huge 6-point swing.

Yeah.

It ended up not being huge because we won the game, but that easily could have been something that's, Exactly the kind of thing that makes us lose games. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Over 9.5 wins for the Cowboys, -120.

It's right there.

For the division, +130, same odds as the Eagles. And I don't understand how anybody could watch those 2 teams today and think they should have the same odds. I don't know what the Eagles do well. I really don't. And I, I look forward to the Philly special when Steele and those guys really break it down in detail. You know, their pass rush was better today. I guess that was a bonus. That was it.

Yep.

But offensively, like Saquon has just had trouble staying on the field. He left the game early today. They didn't have DeVonta Smith, obviously. They had guys, this Cooper guy was somehow important for them, but it was so hard for them to move the ball. And yet the way the Rams were playing, I wrote down Philly got every break for 2 hours. And Stafford stunk. And yet the Rams stole the game basically with 2 drives. They just took the game. And, and the, the anti-Sirianni thing is the worst it's ever been.

Yeah, he deserves it too. And I got, I got a little scared because I, I love the Rams, one of my favorite bets. And then I had a bet, you know, you hear Lane Johnson's out. I think we heard that early this morning, right? I love the bet even more. Hate the Eagles anyway.

It popped up, right? Did it end at 3.5?

Yeah. Yeah. It ended up 3.5. And then the game starts and you see the rain on the lens of the camera from the quarterback's perspective. You know, when they have the camera, like Fox will have the camera and you'll see like the raindrops on them. Like, oh crap, that's no good for Stafford. 'Cause then he has happy feet. And it's like, and then what? The Eagles had like 100 yards of offense, maybe 110 at half, and they're up 10. And I said, God, they're gonna lose this game. This is a typical Eagle game. This is how they're gonna do it.

Yeah.

And somehow they didn't—

didn't happen.

They didn't convert a 3rd down in the— in a game and a half or something, right? This is spectacular what we're watching.

So I wrote down that they were 0 for 6 on 3rd down in the first half, and then at the end of the game they're 0 for 12. They just put 2 0 for 6s. Yeah. Um, they were 68 yards net passing on 31 dropbacks, and, uh, I just don't think they're good in that. It might take the Lions 2 more weeks to adjust to it, but I don't see it. And then as there's rumors now, Lane Johnson might just be done. Who knows? The Rams had a 98-yard drive that got it going. Puka was 9 for 125. Williams, who was awesome, was 16 for 80 and 10 for 67 catching.

Yeah.

So he had 28 touches. They had 26 first downs. The Eagles had 12. They almost, they more than doubled their yardage. Another thing with the Rams that is gonna kill them unless they fix it is the special teams. They had 2 more things today that were bad. So, you know, there was a moment there, it was like, wow, this team's 1-3 and then Stafford has like a broken pinky for 2 games. Like, there's a path for them not to make the playoffs, but they righted the ship and they—

I mean, just keep playing the Eagles. I mean, I love the, the, I love the stats. They're at 68 net passing yards for Hurts on 31 dropbacks. Do you realize how bad that is? That, that's 172 total yards offense, lowest in a dozen years. Love it. Keep it coming.

How mad were you, and were you as mad as I was in the— I think it was in the first half when the Rams had the pick in the end zone and the guy kind of mistimed his jump, whiffed it, and then tipped it to the guy behind him who caught it for a touchdown.

Cooper, who grabbed that? The tall—

Yeah. And it was like, oh, we're doing this with the Eagles. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

This is the bullshit that's gonna happen.

Yeah. But did you say, were you over the Philly sports in the last 2 weeks? Because it's, it's dismal. Flyers aren't good. Eagles lost too. Penn State lost. Philly's obviously bow out in 3.

It's pretty bad. Well, LeBron said he came to Philly to help Joel Embiid win a title.

Okay. That's bad too.

That was definitely his number one reason he went to Philly.

He's bald too.

Yeah. When he got, when he got together with Rich Paul this summer is, what do you wanna do? And they made the pro-con. Number one was, I wanna help Joel Embiid, a guy I barely know, win the NBA title.

All right, well, that's on the upswing again.

Chiefs-Raiders was awesome. The rare moral victory for the Raiders didn't win, but they kind of did win because the, the stadium was the most electric it's probably ever been. They hung with the team. It was an either-or game, no question. They proved that they could hang with them. They, and They really had a chance to win. And strangely, it came down to that long bomb to Ty Thornton, who used to be on the Pats. We got rid of him and then he turned into this awesome speed threat. And right when the Raiders felt like they were gonna take control of the game, blitz on Mahomes. He makes an— Mahomes has been, I think, really fun to watch this year. Awesome long pass to Thornton who gets tackled and breaks his ankle and they stop the game for 10 minutes.

Terrible.

He comes out.

Yep.

Chiefs score, fumble by the Raiders, Chiefs score again, and the game's over. And like, 5— we went from, oh, they're gonna do this, to, oh my God, that guy broke his ankle, to, wow, they just scored twice in a minute. And that was it for the Raiders. But, uh, but I, I thought it was a win for them for the most part.

Yeah, I feel bad for the agony anyone who bet this game went through, right? So like the— oh, Chiefs score, they don't get the 2, but then they get the Turnover right away and they score, the Raiders score, and then they do get the 2.

And it's just like, you know, you should mention it was Chiefs -4.5, right? Right, right. And it's just, it's just dancing back and forth between 5 and 3 potentially for an hour and a half, right?

4-6, 5-3. It's still, and you know, we had a problem with this, like with the Raiders not taking the points. They got a field goal and they took it off the board. And then they didn't, you know, they ended up getting nothing out of that. And then the second time around, Kubiak goes for the field goal, takes the points. Definitely don't mind him doing that the second time. I just, I don't know. I don't think this is the 2020 Chiefs that are going to score 45 points. So if you're up on them with 7 or 8 minutes left, take it, take the points.

It's young coach stuff. I remember this was happening with McDonald in Seattle early on with this stuff too. I think they just have to slowly get a feel for what to do in those situations. The positives, the tight end combo is fantastic.

Yeah.

Like they can go big with these, you know, and I know a lot of the teams are doing the 12 now, but they have the 2 guys to really do it. That Bowers is basically a receiver and then Mayer too. And they can be physical. It's weird though, they don't run the ball like I thought they were gonna run the ball. Gente's been kind of middling as a fantasy guy who was going, you know, the question was whether he's gonna be healthy or not.

Mm-hmm.

But they haven't run the ball like that. And then on the KC side, they haven't had a sack in the last 3 games. And then they just lost their deep threat. So they're heading into the bye week. But I, I, you know, I, I certainly wouldn't say they're like a juggernaut like we would've in the past. And do you feel the same? Like when it was in the old days, you would always text me Chiefs, -120 when they're down 4 with 4th quarter. Do you feel like this is just a different era for them?

I tried it a couple weeks ago. No one bit. I don't know if you know it. I put it on our text chain and I, they ended up winning obviously.

Yeah.

I didn't think they were gonna lose that game today at any point. Did you? I, I, I felt the, I felt they had it like that. Definitely not at the end.

I did feel like, I did feel like with the Raiders with the lead in the 4th quarter where we don't get to see Max Crosby in that situation a lot. I thought maybe he'd make a play and they could get a stop. I don't know. I didn't know what to expect. The crowd was way more— I know there were a lot of Chiefs fans too, but the crowd was loud for the Raiders. I, I really thought they had a home field advantage.

That surprised me too. You're right about the tight ends. I think Cousins had 365. I do think he's gonna need to stretch the field. The tight end thing is great. And then most of those yards went to the tight ends.

But who are you stretching with? Like, you know, their receivers.

It's like Trey Tucker and Cody White. Like, he's gonna— Cousins is gonna need something to break up that, that mid-range stuff. But I can't say enough about this Kenneth Walker. Like, I say this Kenneth Walker like we haven't seen him. Yeah, I know. I felt like the Super Bowl confetti dropped from the sky covering him and the MVP trophy, and the other 31 teams said, yeah, I don't want that guy. And he's just perfect for this offense at 179 yards combined and, and 2 touchdowns. So I think you have to start thinking like Who's gonna get the 1 seed if it's not a team like the Chiefs? Is it the Jaguars? Are those the 2 teams battling for the 1 at this point? I know we're a quarter of the way through the season.

I know, but I thought the same thing. Like, after 4 games, we usually have a favorite, and I don't know who the favorite is in the AFC. Yeah, I would say that the team I probably feel the best about is Jacksonville, and I don't know if it's sustainable, but just for being able to do stuff on both sides of the ball, being able to run the ball, being able to throw the ball, multiple targets If I'm down 3 late in the game, I, I might be able to move the ball. I can protect leads.

Yeah.

I have a little bit of a home field advantage. That's probably the one, but I don't feel great about it, but I think that's the one I would probably trust the most.

All right. Maybe it's too early. I mean, that's, that's not—

Me, it's too early. Yeah. Well, the Chiefs are gonna have to figure out how to replace Thornton 'cause I don't think he's coming back. They said he dislocated his ankle, but that's at least a couple months. But I, I would assume that's probably the season.

Yeah.

And then the Tyreek Hill stuff's already started.

Yeah.

You know, which wouldn't be till November, but they could fit back in. He's the kind of character guy they love. Yeah. And would replace them as a speed threat. So who knows? Yeah, I, I agree with you. Does anybody get to 12 wins in the AFC?

I had to take my earbuds out. I was losing you there. You can hear me, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. I, I don't, I don't think it's 12. I don't think it's, I don't think it's 12. And that's why I—

So it's a lot of 10 and 7, 11 and 6.

Yeah. Right in there.

Did you forget to charge your earbuds?

No.

Right. 88. It's like a Dan Campbell situation. 88%.

Maybe it's the medications taking effect and there's nothing wrong with the earbuds at all.

We, I was steering us toward 49ers Broncos. And we thought the Broncos might be, you know, if it wasn't gonna be the Chargers, it would be the Broncos. I don't know if it's gonna be the Broncos. And they got both of their cornerbacks got hurt during this game. I don't know how long Surtain's gonna be out. Their offense, they've scored 13 points total in the first half.

Mm-hmm.

You love Bo Nix. What's going on? 'Cause this doesn't feel sustainable. I don't know.

I like the backdoor Bo. I like that they, you know, they're, they're behind in every game in 15 games or whatever, and then they come back. But You know what? I, I think that was a good old-fashioned defensive game. Nobody was— it was a good chess match and nobody was gonna let anybody do anything and look good offensively. And there was good pressure on both sides. I had Denver +2.5. I know you had them on a teaser, so it was disgusting how that ended up.

But, um, I had the catch-up teaser to make, make up for the Buffalo thing and it just, nah.

Yeah.

Wasn't, wasn't a good day for me. I might have to ask you for a loan.

Yeah, I'll get it to you. But there's a, yeah, I don't, you know, I, you, you're gonna tell me they're, they're gonna win 6 games? I would say no way. But I'm, they're not, they're not 11, 12 win caliber team anymore.

The Broncos doesn't feel like he has a feel for what his team is. Like even if you look at what is their over-under now, so their regular season wins, 9.5 still. Uh, yeah, but the juice is on the under. So yeah, so people still feel like this team can win 10 games. I don't know if I see it, but I do wonder if it's all leading toward he takes the play calling back from the guy they brought in, uh, or the guy they promoted over the summer. And Webb.

Right.

And, um, I don't know, does some sort of new— like, they, they don't use Waddle like I thought. Sutton is mysteriously missing. And none of their running backs seem to be impactful in any way. And then Nix is all over the map.

Yeah, Waddle scored. That was his first one. So you think they would wake up a little bit there. The running, the running game is still a little iffy. It's very weird. There's no one to rely on.

And sometimes I want, I really want RJ, I really want RJ Harvey to be good. And I don't have him on any fantasy teams. I have no stakes in it. But you watch him sometimes, you're like, Feels like there's something here. Why can't this— why can't he become a guy? And then it just never happens.

It would be nice. It would be nice.

There's—

this is a good exercise. I think I'll do this with the Ringer Wise Guys. There's like 5 teams that are— oh, their over-under is 9.5, including your team, including my team, including Denver. There's another one. Like, who do you believe in out of these, uh, out of these, you know, double-digit capable winners here?

Well, then you have the Niners. who I guess Shanahan just give it to him now, this Coach of the Year. How many guys are they gonna lose?

Yeah.

This is unbelievable. It's not, it's not like McCaffrey's jumping out of the TV in these games, you know? This is like a different, it feels like a different version of him. They allegedly had no pass rush for this game 'cause they had so many injuries, a game that had crazy heat in Santa Clara, right? So you think in the second half, They're gonna lose their pass rush. They didn't. They were still able to get some pressure, and the Bo Nix situation was not great. But this, to be honest, this game came down, it was 3-3, just felt like a slog forever. And it became a who's gonna fuck up first game. And Denver's punt returner fumbled, Niners get it. All of a sudden it's 10-3, and it felt like the game was over.

Yeah.

It was like whoever was gonna make that first mistake was gonna be the one that, That was gonna lose.

And then you're right about Shanahan. McCaffrey's not even in on 3rd and goal a lot of times. Like, it's very strange the way they run their offense, and yet it always seems to work. They're 4-0, and that, that was a double-digit win.

Bengals-Jags was the other one we have to talk about. Um, I mentioned before, I think the Jags are legit good. I watched this game closely. I had the Jags. Um, that was my last 2nd Sunday Ringer 107 pick.

Mm-hmm.

Had some other interests, but it felt like one of those games where the gods were against them. They had 10 first half penalties.

Yeah.

And it wasn't just first half penalties. They had shit like Hunter got a pick, got called back 'cause of a roughing the passer after Burrow threw the ball. They had that crazy face mask on Chase that actually probably helped them win the game 'cause he had to leave. They had a 40-yard touchdown run that got called back. They had a first and goal inside the 5 and got a holding penalty and all of a sudden were, So it was like, it just felt like one of those games. And then they had 3 TDs called back and then they're up 13-3 anyway. And they were making Burrow do dumb stuff. And, and they can move the ball and do, and they can run or throw. It feels like they, if it's a 3rd and 9, they can get it. If it's a 3rd and 1, they can get it. I think they're really good.

I thought they were good too. And I had a whole thing written up about how scary the Jags defense is and, and And Hunter had one of the best defensive games you could have at that position.

He was all over the TV, wasn't he?

Nuts. Yeah.

Yeah.

And then, well, he's on my iPad because that, that was a separate game, but I know what you're saying. Yeah, I know. But I, I read a whole thing up about how scary their defense is and I'm like, wait a minute.

They gave up 400 yards.

Yeah. 428 yards for Burrow without Chase Higgins and Brown. Chase Brown had 22 receptions. They did hold them the 23 yards rushing, and I bet the under, so I was good with all of it. 22-17. But I don't know if, uh, I guess anytime you go in Cincinnati and win on the road, it's, it's a good one for an AFC South team. So, uh, I don't know if I'm ready to like bet them to win, to make the— get the 1 seed though.

I'm not either. I— they're ahead of— I had them, what was it, 8.5 before the year? I was under on them. I, I didn't really feel like they added anybody. The biggest thing they added was that Hunter is now an impact guy on defense.

Yeah.

But they're, they, since he run was 17 carries for 23 yards. But then you have the Burrow piece of this. So he threw 2 picks. He threw that 3rd one that got called back by the ref and the, the passer, but he'd already thrown the pick. So he lucked out on that. And he lost Chase on the most egregious face mask of the season. It was like a 9 outta, like the 10 outta 10 will always be when Warren Sapp did the face mask on Jerry Rice and blew out his ACL. That's the worst face mask of all time. This was like an 8.5. It was really bad. Like he, he really like yanked his head sideways as he was getting hit and, and he got knocked out of the game.

Bounced his head off the turf. Not good. Not, not something you wanna see. Yeah.

But man, so that they're up 22-10 Jacksonville.

Mm-hmm.

And I just don't think Burrow can come back. Like I wasn't worried. He just doesn't do it. not what he does. And that, I know he put the stats up, but my question for you is, is, is he starting to drift toward being a good stats, not that good of a team guy?

Yeah.

Is that where we're going with him?

Certainly. But again, I don't wanna chase, yeah, they had a game plan, that whole thing around Chase being out, you know? So maybe they scored in the 20s if he's there. I mean, he's that impactful player, he's top 3 or 4 receivers. So, but I'm, I'm with you. I don't have any confidence. I mean, talk about like a confidence meter. I might put the— your, your team above the Bengals. I put the Bills above them. I have to put the Jaguars above them and the Chiefs and maybe another AFC team, maybe Denver at this point.

Bears-Jets. The Bears ran— there were 30 plays in the first quarter and the Bears ran 26 of them. They had 34 first downs. They had the ball for 43 minutes. They had 54 rushes and 25 completions. And the Jets had the ball for 17 minutes. So that's it for the Jets being good. I don't think we have to have that conversation anymore. And the Bears, Ben Johnson's just— there's 5, 6 great coaches in the league and he's just one of them. Doesn't seem to matter who his quarterback is. Packers-Bucs.

Well, wait, we're only allowed to cross one team off a week? Is that how it goes?

Yeah, one week. It's one week.

Hold on, we're not— are we gonna get there that way? 17? Oh, we will get there. Yeah, that— I mean, I don't know how you're— you have 15 pass attempts with— when you're down double digits almost the whole game. Aaron Glenn says they're gonna have to look at the tape, but to see what went wrong. But that was disgusting.

Packers-Bucs, Tampa finally covered, although today the line went down to 2.5, so technically they didn't cover.

They didn't. 13-0.

They covered for the whole week, so I don't know how we litigate that. There were a million Green Bay fans in Tampa, which was depressing. And Jaylen Daniels, there were flashes. I really wanted it to happen for him. He kind of had it set up for him. He just wasn't quite good enough to, to pull it off. But my big takeaway was both of these teams suck.

Yeah, I think I was texting you some F-bombs about the Packers. I'm like, are they really gonna blow this game?

Like, how are they gonna do this? They tried, they did everything they could. Ugh, just, they were dying to blow it.

And Jaylen Daniels, this, that's, that's what a rookie quarterback's gonna do in his first start, right? Like 19 for 20, 19 for 20 was actually a pretty good percentage, but 148, a touchdown, 2 interceptions. He had over 50 yards rushing. But yeah, that's, that's not a good win for the Packers at all. I also think it's a lot of Daniels. It's Jaylen Daniels, it's Jayden Daniels.

I don't know if there's too many Daniels. We need like a Daniels.

Yeah. Jason Daniels, a Jackson Daniels. I don't know how many there are, but Ravens-Tennessee, Titans somehow covered.

Cam Ward now $318 as the starter. We don't need to talk about that game. Colts-Washington was another fuck you London game. just terrible. The, uh, Mariota goes out almost immediately. We get the Rutgers guy comes in.

Yeah.

And yet Quinn is up 6-nothing. It's 4th and 1 near midfield.

Yeah.

Colts haven't done anything. It's in the late in the 2nd quarter and he just says he hurries up this run play, gets stuffed, swings the game, and, uh, the Colts end up scoring and they never look back. And it was really brutal.

It was a perfect London game, right? Yeah. It was 2 teams that are probably not gonna make the playoffs. One's gonna start with a backup and then that backup's backup's gonna come in and he's gonna have a name that most Americans can't pronounce 'cause he's a 7th round from Rutgers or— Ortspell. And then the team with all the backups, like you said, is gonna have the lead momentarily until their coach does something dumb and the score will end up lopsided. Perfect, perfect London game.

You forget when they show the 4th string quarterback, who's usually the backup tight end, and they have to go through his backstory. Right, right.

Of course.

I'm not gonna tiptoe around this anymore. I, and I know it's been a topic the last couple weeks. I think the owner on the sidelines taking notes is fucking nuts. I think it's nuts.

I, I think you wouldn't respond. I was pretending you had a crush on her, which I completely made it.

I, I think it's bonkers. I can't believe she does this, and I can't believe people in her life haven't talked her out of it. And now there's this push of like, oh, no, no, she's really into it. If a male owner was doing this, we would be ridiculing this guy till the cows came home. This would be like when Vivek was celebrating the Summer League title in the NBA, and we thought that was so funny.

Right.

We would think it was so fucking funny if some you know, rich guy male owner was on the sideline with a notebook like hovering over and giving advice to the coach. We'd be like, this guy, even Jerry Jones wouldn't do that.

Right.

And, and Irsay's daughter's doing it. We're like, oh yeah, well, you know, she cares about the team. Why are we making excuses for how weird this is?

I don't know why we are. I'm not gonna make any excuses. I like, I prefer the, the, you know, you see the, you know, Jerry for years was on the sideline. Remember, no matter how cold it was, it was, yeah. And oh, and Fox and CBS would love that shot of him after they lost the a close game in the snow and he's, he's, you know, and, and now it's like, yeah, let him put him in the luxury box. Let's just pretend we know how many scotches and sodas he's had. And that's how I like my owner, not checking up on these coaches. That's, I don't think—

It was weird when Cuban sat on the bench for the Mavericks. I always thought that way. I used to make fun of that when I had my column, right? Like, why are you on the bench? You own the team.

But he's not hovering over the coaches, right?

Just to say, maybe there was some hovering from her today.

Yeah. A lot of hovering.

That's just very strange. I don't understand. There's nobody in her life that could be like, look, this is, this is not, not the move. Go in the luxury suite like everybody else. I think we are.

I think we're in her life. Ridiculous. Listen to us, Carly.

That's her name, Carly?

Yeah, yeah. Carly Rae Jepsen, right? Something like that. I don't know.

Carly, go in the suite like everybody else does. Week 5, guess the Lions. We have a bye week.

Yeah, we do. 2 teams.

You aware of this?

Only 2 teams.

Yeah. We have the Chiefs are in a bye week and then we have the Carolina Panthers. We don't have to worry about them. So from a fantasy standpoint, not the biggest disaster on the planet.

This was creative for the Chiefs, right? Mahomes, they didn't know how he was gonna feel coming back. They gave him a cupcake schedule for the first month. Oh, and you're gonna get a bye in week 5. This is Good for you, Chiefs. And we have to put another team in there, so it's the Panthers.

I mean, if you're saying there was a conspiracy to make this as cushy as possible for him, you'd give him the Monday night game, right, against a team that doesn't seem to care about the preseason and the Broncos. So that was a good start. Uh, 4 games ending with a bye week heading into Week 5. Yeah, I would say this worked out pretty well for them.

Yeah, not bad. Not bad.

Thursday night, your team's playing.

Let's go.

Were you aware of this all week? Did you know you have to do this again on Thursday night?

I was. And it's interesting 'cause, well, I'll get to it later in, in Parent Corner, but this is a, this is gonna be a big night for me. This could be like, well, how, what you found out about Jaylen Brown. This is right when I'm getting my stuff done. Thursday. Yeah.

Yeah.

Under the knife for the Thursday night game.

What time Thursday?

Well, it's gonna be early, but I mean, I might be out of it. You know what I mean?

On the meds?

Yeah.

So you don't wanna pop on the pod with me and House on Thursday night?

Maybe I will.

Maybe I'll, uh, drugged up.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's your drunk owner time.

Thursday night, Cowboys home. For Jaylen Daniels and the 0-4 Bucs. Congratulations. What a spot for you.

It just— this is not when I want to play them, but okay. You wouldn't want to play them Thursday night, right? No, these Thursday night games are dumb.

I went too low. I've beaten you the last 2 weeks. We're 2-1 and I'm 2-1-1 for the season. I went too low. I don't know why I did this as a pick. I did Cowboys 5.5 over the Bucs.

Oh wow.

Yeah, that's too low. I went too low.

I don't know. I don't know why I said 8.5. It's 9.5.

Yeah, I, I just almost feel like that was a typo. But that's, that's what I sent to Eduardo, who made us kill off his Chargers before.

Right.

So, all right, you're up 1-nothing. Cowboys-Bucs, 3-teamer, 10-pointer.

Looking good so far. You gonna put it with UCLA +20.5?

The Bucs don't have a pass rush anymore.

Yeah.

And they don't really score anymore, but you score. What's the minimum points you're gonna score in this game? 27?

Yeah, I would say so.

So I guess there's like a backdoor cover for Daniels, but man, if you don't win this game. I'm glad you brought up UCLA 'cause that's Saturday night. Our friends at FanDuel wanted us to preview Oregon-UCLA. UCLA going for 5-0. There were 2 hard road games for them during this season that before the year was like, well, their over was like 6.5 for wins, started 4-0. It was like, ah, well, they are, they're gonna lose in Oregon, they're gonna lose to Oregon and they're gonna lose in Michigan. Now those teams both look super vulnerable. What is the line right now? It's Oregon's favored double digits, right?

I saw 11.5, but the look ahead from like August was like 14.5. So you've already made some great strides and you've, you know, you're gonna win your bet. What was it, over 6.5 wins, 7.5?

Yeah, I'm gonna win that. But I, I think UCLA can win this game, especially with the, with the bye. I would, I like the over as well because they've scored crazy points in every game.

Yep.

So my, my dream scenario here would be UCLA, maybe even an adjusted, adjusted line of like 4.5, something like UCLA +4.5 with something with the over. Wow. What I would do.

Look at you. Yeah, yeah. Oregon really only had one good defensive game. They got the backup quarterback who throws a nice ball in there, so I, I could see it being high scoring, but I would not take them laying 11.5 for sure.

You know what you're gonna hear during the game? A lot of respect between the 2 coaches.

Oh yeah, that's right.

A lot of respect. Is their quarterback going to be back, you think, for this?

No, I don't think so. I don't think so.

That line's too high. Yeah, I think UCLA can win the game. What's the money line?

You're alive, you're a live dog here, +360. But that's a tough place to win. Don't think it— you should go. Let's go. No, you're gonna be in Boston.

I'm not going to that game, but I do like UCLA and the over is +733. UCLA money line and the over, +733.

Wow.

Okay. You know what else those 2 things have in common?

What's that?

California and Oregon. FanDuel's available in both places.

I know.

Yeah, that's what I heard. So FanDuel nationwide this football season. Get in on the action if you haven't already. All right, rest of guest lines.

Georgia, Alabama.

Georgia getting one on Sunday. So I got Saturday, I got UCLA Saturday night. Got a London game on Sunday and it's actually a good game. Jags-Eagles. This is a strong one. I have Jags -3. I think I hit it exactly.

Ooh, this one went up. Is there an injury? You're gonna get it anyway. I said 2.5. When I, when I looked before the pod, it was 3.5. It is now 4.5. Jaguars are favored.

Oh man, that's one of those you bet the Jags or you're rooting for the Jags, but you oversleep the first 20 minutes and you wake up and it's Eagles 10-nothing.

Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Lawrence having trouble getting going.

That's a lot of points. My God.

I think so. It's effectively a neutral field, but it's not because the Jags play there. Yeah, I think they're 4-point— they should be 4-point favorites over the Eagles on a neutral field from what I've seen this season. You don't agree?

No, I think you're right. It just looks weird, right? Like, I, I— yeah, we combined red 18 terrible offensive trends for the Eagles. You're right, they did have a little bit of a pass rush today, but otherwise it's, it's kind of same old Philly and more injuries. And now I don't know what, who's carrying the ball for them. But yeah, you're right.

Little Tank Bigsby action.

It's Bigsby. Yeah. Shipley and Bigsby. I don't even know who's hurt anymore. Take care of business in front of your home fans, Jags. You owe them. Just do it.

Sunday marquee game is clearly Seattle home for the 49ers. Seahawks found something with Emmanuel Wilson today, and hopefully you found him on your fantasy team if you had Ja'Darian Price. I have him in, uh, in our league and in my other league with my college buddies. I picked up Wilson, who then had a way better game than Price has ever had. But I thought Wilson was good today, and they threw him the ball out of the backfield. He, uh, he had a lot of touches and That was the one concern I had with them. Still feels like the Seahawks are like one receiver short, very JSN dependent. Yeah. Even more so than last year. And I didn't think Darnold looked like he did last year.

He wasn't sharp early on.

Was not sharp for sure.

And yeah, you're right. Unless JSN's getting like 175 yards, you need something else. So that, that running back comes in handy there. That was—

I thought, I thought it would be Barner or just, I thought they'd have a second guy that would emerge with Shaheed with a full offseason, but they just don't. They use Shaheed in like, uh, some running stuff that I thought was fun.

27-yard run. Yep.

So I have Seattle at home favored by 2.5.

That's what I had. It is 3, so we split that.

I like the Seahawks.

It's where they make their move in the division.

Amon-Ra was all over the place today. Like, they would— today they felt a little Seahawksy finally, their defense. Um, I know they gave up some stuff at the end, but it was garbage time. Watchables.

Purdy's the MVP favorite if he pulls this off somehow.

Definitely. Yeah. Watchables. Pats-Raiders, I think, is a watchable. It's in New England. Kirk Cousins coming to town. I gotta say, Cousins had some really good plays today. Um, they— he had some in traffic where last year and the year before he was turtling when there was pressure, and this time he was kind of moving around and buying himself like an extra second or 2 seconds. I thought he was pretty good.

Well, that touchdown, the COVID the backdoor was a miracle. He was, yeah, really just, I couldn't even see him in the fray. And then he got out and yeah. Yeah, he was good.

I have the Patriots favored by 2.5.

What's going on here?

What is it?

Why 2.5? You're gonna get it because I said 5.5. It's 3.5. What?

Come on, come on, Pat's come— I don't like the spot coming off the big win and everybody's like, we've righted the ship, and then, no, it's the Raiders. We'll be 3-2 after we beat the Raiders. And the Raiders are, I think, a good team. I don't think they're a great team, but I think they're good. They can rush the passer, you know, they can— they have Bowers is uncoverable, and he's gonna be a nightmare for the Patriots. We don't have anybody to cover him. Wow.

Isn't there something still with West coming East And isn't there something still with the Raiders?

I think that's done. Like, the Rams went to Philly today and beat 'em.

Well, the Rams are a good— all right.

I, I, like, in our picks poll, I put in, I doubled on the Rams today.

Mm-hmm.

And, and our buddy Gus was like, oof, West Coast going to East Coast in the early game. Yeah, that's, that's risky. And I, I don't know if that's mattered in the same way the last couple years.

Maybe it's an old thing. Maybe it's old.

The planes are better, or it matters when you go to Australia.

Yeah.

Well, this is it. The vibes are good with the Pats. The vibes are good with the Raiders. Long storied history. 50-year anniversary actually yesterday of when we beat them 48 to 17.

Yeah.

In 1976. Steve Grogan ran amok. I put the video on Twitter. It was the first really good Patriots team of my life. And the Raiders were the big bad Raider. Like, you know, they were no chance ever beating them. We killed them. And it was the first time everybody in Boston was like, holy shit, the Pats are, they're good. Like, I vividly remember this being a kid and being like, oh my God, the Pats are good. And then they beat us in the playoffs on the Sugar Bear Hamilton.

I watched it. It was Musburger doing the call on the video. Yeah, right. Yeah. And look at Steve Grogan now. Not only looking at like, like he was, this is the first time this happened. 287 yards passing. But watch this, watch this. He runs for a touchdown. He had like a 4-yard touchdown run.

He looked like Lamar when you're watching his clips. He's flying around. The guy who posted that, what's his name? Kevin Gallagher?

I think so.

Yeah. He's been posting the Cosell halftime highlights.

Yeah.

I feel like the NFL Network should just run these from like 2 to 4 every day. He was so into it. He was having such a good time. Just like, and then Billy White Shoes Johnson brings the Falcons within 3. How about this?

A Howard Cosell channel.

You get the, you get the boxing, you got boxing, Monday Night Football, baseball, baseball.

You get the, the superstars, right? The Battle Network stars.

Battle Network stars.

Yeah.

Yeah. All the wide world of sports.

You get all the— yeah. The Co—

that should at least be a fast channel. Just call it CoSell.

Yeah. Buy the rights.

We killed the Raiders. We should have won the Super Bowl that year. Oh well.

Well, this is also revenge for last year, right? This was the outlier game of the, of 2025. I, I feel like this line's too low. This is dumb. Hmm.

I feel like their inability to run the ball this season and the fact that they don't have a scary receiver other than Bowers, we should be able to game plan for it, but we'll see. Packers are home for the Bears. I put this as a watchable because, um, of the, of the history of this matchup where neither team We never seem to have both of these teams good at the same time. But I put it as a watchable 'cause I feel like Caleb will be back for this game, right?

I can't say anything because, well, you put your guess in already, right?

No, I, I bet I made my guess assuming he's coming back. So I made the Packers as low of a favorite as possible. Packers -1.5.

It's exactly what I had. And we should have gone lower 'cause the Bears are favored by 2.5.

So, okay, so he must be coming back.

Completely counting on him coming back. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, if that's the case, I'm betting the, uh, I can guarantee I'm taking the Bears for Ringer 107.

Really?

Because I think they're 3. Yeah, I think they're just talent-wise just better than the Packers.

They are right now. I don't like seeing this game this early. I want it to be miserably, brutally cold. They play again on Christmas. They should play 2 weeks before Christmas or something.

It's too early. Lions, Lions are at Arizona. I had the Lions, I put this in the Tic Tac Zone, Lions -1.5 in Arizona, which is probably too low.

Oh, you went, you went way too low. Yeah. I said 5.5, it's 4.5.

Yeah. You know why I went too low? 'Cause I don't think the Lions are good. How about that? I don't think their defense, I think their defense sucks.

We crossed off the Cardinals. Didn't we cross them off? Oh no, we crossed off the Cardinals.

I think the Lions defense sucks. Yeah, like the Cardinals should be able to move the ball up and down on that team.

It's true.

They should be able to run the ball, they should be able to throw the ball.

This is where Brissett goes for 440. Nothing's easy with the Lions. Like we said this last week, like if you have an eliminator pick to use, like you're gonna sweat out the Lions. Doesn't matter who they're playing, if they're home. I feel like Campbell gets flustered when it gets, uh, when the, when it's noisy, even when it's home and noisy. He needs—

I like that theory.

It's like he's, uh, competing in the French Open or something. He needs it silent.

Also notable, file this one away, Gibbs, who was 15 for 46 today and 4 for 31, but, um, did not seem to have the same oomph that he normally has. They put a shitload of touches on him, right? He was on pace for like 500 touches and he did not normally do that. I wonder if that wore him down a little. I like the Cards in that game. I think that's— what do you call the underdog on the Wiseguy Show? The man's best bet.

Man's best bet. Yeah, the dog.

Yeah, that, that would be— somebody will have the Cards. Fairly watchables, Vikings at the Saints. The Vikings are prohibited from being anything higher than fairly watchables because their offense is an absolute clusterfuck to watch. I have them as -1.5-point favorites in New Orleans.

The Vikings, I had the same thing. And that's exactly what it is.

Okay. Tyler Shook on pace to lead the lead everything in fantasy points this year if he has a big game tomorrow again, right?

Yeah.

Just lighting it up. Jets-Browns in Jersey. I have the Jets favored by -1.5. I don't feel good about it.

You should. That's what it is. I said 2.5. I don't know when I went so high. I wasn't buying this Browns thing, but it is 1.5. You get it.

So why aren't you buying the Browns thing? You talked about it a little on Friday.

I don't know why, you know, I don't know why. And they have the rest advantage and they have their, they're going to the Jets who miraculously have an interception now. I don't know. You tell me, why don't I like the Browns right now? I just think this is a, this is a clown show with Watson. He can't, this can't be happening, right?

I know, but he's been competent for 3 weeks now.

Okay.

I think the thing with the NFL is if you hit 2 drafts in a row, you just have to throw out anything you think you thought or knew or anything. It's just so easy to vault up if you have these 9 to 10 young guys that are above average at position, or in their case, like they nailed both of the receivers. You know, I don't know, there's some energy around them. I think they could beat the Jets.

Oh yeah, they could. I mean, I think that line switches.

I think that ends up being Browns favorite in that game. Um, next one, this could have been a poop-fecta game. Steelers-Colts in Pittsburgh. I really don't want to watch this. This will not make a TV for me. Um, I'm gonna be with House next Sunday.

Oh really?

Where? House is coming in. House is coming to LA. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're all gonna be with him.

Don't you say that. And you know what? Yeah. Steelers-Colts will not be on the TV for Hal tonight and they, I won't have to convince 'em. All right. I have Steelers -2.5.

Yeah, you're gonna get it. I don't know why I was going, I was way going way over on these. I said 3.5. Colts, another team I don't believe in. It's 1.5. So you get it. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 7 to 5 including ties.

Do you think when it gets closer to, when it gets, starts to get really cold, And, uh, Carly. Yeah, Carly's on the sideline, like, probably bigger, like a parka at that point. Yeah, leather jacket. What's, what's the wardrobe at that point?

I don't know. Can she write?

Can you write with the mittens?

Mittens? I don't know if she gets screwed.

Maybe you have to do voice text. She could be like my wife when you walk with my wife and my wife's doing these voice texts. Tell Krista that I'll meet her at 4:45.

Right.

Because my wife doesn't want to type anymore. Maybe, so maybe she goes to voice text.

That'd be great. And then the coaches have to respond the same way.

So there's a headset to voice text her back.

And a Carly headset too. Wow.

Somebody's got to talk to her. It's like she really cares. Can you, I mean, can you imagine when Steichen, he must have like 2 drinks and they're like with, he's with his buddies. It's like a, it's like his day off.

Right.

What's the deal with your owner? Like, does she talk to you during the games?

Yeah.

She's got the team.

Yeah.

I don't—

I— it's— oh, you ran, you ran on 3rd and 9. That's the old ball and chain if I ever heard. I know what's going on here.

She's like, she's like, Shane, come over. I was just, I was looking at our tendencies on 3rd down. He's like, trying to coach the game. My offensive coordinator's talking to me.

Why do you think, do you think in job interview, she told him like, I'm gonna be on your ass. And he is like, yeah, no, I get it. No, we, we all wanna win. It's like, no, no, no, I'm gonna be like bringing you pictures and stuff to look at.

I wanted this to— can this happen in baseball? Can they just go in the dugout?

Oh, that's funny.

Sit next to, sit next to the manager.

What are we doing here?

Are we hitting and running? Okay. Broncos-Chargers is in LA and this is gonna be a grim Chargers game because the Broncos fans travel well.

Mm-hmm.

I think there's gonna be 35,000 to 40,000 Bronco fans in this game. There's gonna be boo birds if it starts out slow. It's gonna be a bad week. I'm sure there'll be trades and maybe even a firing before we get to this. I have Broncos -2.5.

I don't know what's wrong with me. Of course it should be around.

I know what's wrong with you. You have kidney stones and you're on heavy medication. I'm just cleaning up every sense you have the kidney stones.

I had 1.5. Of course everyone should Give the Chargers— it's not even a home field. You're right, it's 3.5, so you get it.

Okay, 3.5. Sorry, Kobe, it's—

I've failed them again. Yep.

I mean, think how embarrassing that is if you're the Chargers.

Mm-hmm.

The Broncos, who have 13, 13 points in the first half this year, one first half touchdown.

Yeah.

They're coming to your place. You need the game. Your season's on, your season's over, but I guess it's technically on the line and you're not even like 3-point underdogs.

I mean, this has to be a 6-point swing from like the look-ahead. Oh, the look-ahead. Yeah. And it's not even like Denver's great, right? Like this is a 6-point swing and it's all Charger-based.

Does anyone love the look-ahead line more than Raheem?

Oh, they love it. He and the Bundo. Like if it, if, if, if the—

In October, the look-ahead line on this was Chargers -4.

And what's really happened since then? Well, they're on the third string quarterback.

Yeah, well, the Chargers got hit by the plague. Um, poopfecta, 3 games. First one is Texans-Titans. Texans going for their first win. Here comes Cam Ward, 3-18 for the year, and, uh, Robert Saleh and Brian Daboll. Saleh and Daboll. I have Texans I couldn't go higher than 7.5. I have Texans -7.5.

We, we say— I don't even get that. We split it. I said 5.5. It is 6.5.

That is humiliating if you're the Texans. You can't even be favored by a touchdown over the Titans. Did you see some of Cam Ward's plays today?

Oh yeah.

Did you see the one when he was scrambling and tried to do the Paul Crew lateral to the side to the guy who had no idea he was being lateraled?

Yep.

Yeah.

Wow. Yeah, everyone. Yeah. And then the press conference, he was very mad 'cause people weren't punctual. So, but one of these teams is gonna be 0-5. If the Texans are 0-5, I don't have a good feeling about this game. I don't know.

I'm not— I'll tell you this, listen, I'm not putting them in a tease.

Me neither. Yeah. Let's, let's, let's blood brothers do it. I mean, I don't, I'm not doing it.

Is there a DeMeco Ryans conversation to be had? The game management's been crappy.

Mm-hmm.

The defense is underperforming wildly, and that was supposed to be, you know, the thing that he was good at. When I watch them, I never feel like they have their shit together. They have dumb penalties and penalties the whole game. And the other team's QB always seems pretty comfortable.

Mm-hmm.

Like, this was all the stuff he was supposed to be good at when he was at DC and the stuff he was good at even last year. I don't understand why they went backwards this much other than expectations.

I don't either. I, you know, you just—

I really don't get it.

You don't wanna, you don't wanna pull the plug on him 'cause, right, he usually, he does make the playoffs. He's got a nice little record for making the playoffs if that's the, the goal in that junk division mostly. But some guys really need their specialty to shine, right? So if his defense is gonna be anything but Forget about elite. Just don't give up some 27, 30 points a game, 31 points a game, and, you know, 3 of the first 4. It's not good.

Bengals-Dolphins in Miami. This has all the makings of a 5-touchdown Joe Burrow game. Pad the stats. You do have my permission to put the Bengals in the tease.

I think I will.

I have Bengals -7.5.

Damn it. Come on, let me get one on you. What is it? That's what I had. That's what it is. 7.5.

That's a teaser. I, you know, I realized when you and I both had Bills-Seahawks today that the one of those teams was gonna fuck us.

Right.

I tweeted it, I texted you, and of course it was the Bills. So your team.

Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe we have to have a coin flip for the Bengals.

Let's figure it out. They could be down, like Higgins was, was banged up too, right? Are they gonna be down both those guys? Just gonna throw it to Gesicki the whole game?

I sadly watched both Dolphins games 'cause I watched them last week against the Chiefs 'cause we were Zoe's boyfriend. He was a Chiefs fan. And then I watched them today 'cause it was one of the 4 games. They're not terrible. I mean, Willis is pretty terrible, but for the most part, I, they're not like, they make stops, they run the ball. Like Ollie Gordon was pretty good today. They have wide receivers. You don't even know who they are, but they occasionally, they'll make a play. They play hard. They seem like they're pulling for each other. It's not, it's not as awful of a team as I thought they'd be.

Right. They're, you wanna uncross 'em?

No, no, they're awful.

I'm just saying like, they're not, no, they'll, they'll, they'll break off like a 30-yard run somewhere.

Yeah.

And some, they'll like, they'll like, oh, I can't, I can't turn that game off and put the baseball on a full screen. Yeah.

It's a bunch of guys who have something to prove at least. Who either have never done anything before or they're getting a chance they might not normally get. And they, they do play hard. Like, I— they were in that Minnesota game. They were really trying to take it.

Right.

And Minnesota had to work for it and make a couple plays in the 4th quarter, but they hung around.

Yep.

Washington's home for the Giants. This is another game that will not make it TV. And I have Washington favored by 2.5.

Ooh, do I get this? No, I don't. I said 4.5. It's 3.5. We tie.

I factored in Daniels 'cause I assume he's back next week. Um, I think he is.

I don't— yeah, if it's 3.5, you think they're, they're thinking he's back?

Well, Washington's not good. Uh, I don't know if you saw him today.

We're falling for the Giants thing again.

Not falling for anything. I'm not betting on that game. Okay. Sunday night, Ravens at Atlanta. Atlanta can think about the 7 times they had a chance to get Lamar Jackson and just didn't. Uh, I have Ravens by 3.5.

All right, I get this one. Not gonna matter, it's 4.5. That's what I had.

I think this could go up if the Falcons suck tomorrow against the Saints.

Their third— this is it, right? This is their third primetime game. Second one's tomorrow.

Yeah, because you think like the Falcons, we, we said to ourselves, this team is awful.

Mm-hmm.

Then they had a Thursday night game against the Packers who stink, right? They beat the Packers. Then we're like, the Falcons are back, panic.

Mm-hmm.

I'm still gravitating toward the Falcons are terrible.

Yeah.

So we'll see what happens tomorrow.

He definitely plays, right? Lamar. I know he has an ankle thing, but he'll play.

He plays Monday night. If you notice, the slate was a little late. It's 'cause the Chiefs aren't a bye.

Mm-hmm.

And because this game is the Monday night game, Rams-Bills, great game in LA.

Mm-hmm.

I could be talked into going to this.

That's true. Yeah, why not?

Not, not against going to it anyway. Uh, I have Rams by 3.

I said 1.5, it's 2.5, so you, uh, you complete the crushing here. Oh my God, I don't even want to ask.

Kobe's got to be Sorry, Jacoby.

Don't listen. If you haven't listened this far, Jacoby roots for me.

I, I feel like this is— I'm basically beating the third-string QB. Like, I just beat the Rutgers QB because you're on all these meds, you're in pain.

Yeah.

I don't feel like this is like— these are like real wins.

I'll get with it. I gotta get rid of this thing though. You're right. It's enough. It's enough now. You won. It's fair and square. So what is this, 3-1-1 now through 5?

I'm 3-1-1.

I, I can come back. I got a thought.

Uh, today's Parent Corner is presented by Workday. Part of parenting is setting the rules and guardrails. You create them, and then your kids immediately try to find the loophole. I know your kids do this, but when it comes to work, you can't afford to have loopholes. Workday's expertise in HR and finance means their Gentiq systems are compliant, permission-aware, and operate within enterprise controls, delivering 24/7 accuracy to not just get work done, But get it done right. So you were in Brooklyn.

Yeah.

Not to step on your parent corner, but our cousin Jimmy had shows in Brooklyn all week.

What a fun time.

You went back and you were with a lot of family.

A lot of family out there. A lot of people who claim to be family, and then you're just like, all right, I must be your cousin. That's fine. A lot of loud talking over music after the show and everything. I'm not conditioned to that.

Hmm.

But I came back. I haven't seen the kids, right? 'Cause I was there all week. And then I come back and to add insult to whatever injury I have, it's 98 degrees here and I have no air conditioning 'cause we're told living a few blocks from the beach, you don't need it. Guess what? We need it. I'm done. I'm, I'm fighting the permits. I'm getting it done. So I, I told the kids, I'm like, I'm putting a fan on myself. I, I had a fan on myself until like from the 3rd quarter of the London game, like all the way until now basically. And I said, you guys fend for yourself. And so that's what they did. So I didn't really see them. So my kidney stone is my, um, which is like a kid and it's got the word kid in it. So that's, that's my parent corner, uh, cuz I'm carrying like a baby here. So it's too big to pass and they're gonna zap it, right? Uh, and then after that—

So when they say zap it, what does that mean?

So they put some kind of, they put some kind of, um, I don't know what it is. I wouldn't even know what to call it, but they put it on my abdomen, which is where it is now. And they shoot as many as 2,000, for the lack of a better word, lasers into it to break it up. And if that doesn't—

Through your abdomen?

Yes, through the abdomen. Now, I'm out for all this, which is good, I think. And if that doesn't work, and they'll be able to tell right away, then they put something in my penis hole and then they zap it that way. And then I have to pass it. Then the fun stuff begins. So that's it. So the pain, you know, right, right now, because I can't pass it, that's good. But the pain comes and goes because I still feel it and I'm heavily medicated right now. I can't even speak. So I'm basically a combo of like Brett Favre and Robert Downey Jr. in their prime. So that's good. At least it's in their prime. But my favorite moment in Brooklyn is Friday after the show. I get to meet the Mets owner. Steve Cohen comes to the show.

Wow.

It's very exciting, you know, and, but it's nerve-wracking too because I'm like, all right, I have to delete like 200 tweets just in case he looks up or his son looks up, looks me up here. And I don't know what to say to him. So, but we hit it off.

It was great.

Met with him. I'm fixing the 2027 roster with him. We're talking memorabilia. And then all of a sudden, here it comes. Here comes the pain. I'm like, motherfucker, I gotta, I gotta get out of here. I have to. I'm not going to— I'm gonna pass this stone that they tell me I can't pass. It's gonna be embarrassing. Not like he's not used to embarrassing situations, but I'm dying. He's gonna sign the kidney stone to play first base. I don't know what the hell's gonna go on. So I half make up an excuse that I have a red-eye to catch, which I did, but it was like 4 hours later. But I basically, in the middle of him speaking, I'm like, very nice to meet you. I have a red-eye to catch.

I get the hell out of there.

And he must think I'm a basket case for ending the meeting there and, and getting out.

So you were right at the point where you were about to get all this Mets info from him?

Yeah, of course.

So how has this not happened on a podcast other than your earbuds didn't work and we had to go to an emergency break?

What do you mean?

Like the kidney stones. Like, why didn't you have pain like this as we're doing a podcast?

I just— I— because I timed it perfectly. I timed the medicine. Now, now I could time it pretty well. The other day I couldn't time it. I don't know why I didn't, but, uh, maybe it was the excitement of meeting him. I've met you a bunch of times. I'm not as excited, but that's it. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, so that's it. I had to get out of there. Uh, sorry, Steve Cohen and Josh, your son, but, um, it was, uh, really nice meeting you.

What were the other highlights from Brooklyn?

Um, what do we do?

So Babydoll, for some reason, went to Italy for— yeah, yeah, yeah. Even though everybody is there. He wasn't there until Wednesday night, but he claimed it wasn't his fault or something. Was it his fault? Is that just negligence? Is Baby retired?

I think he's retired. We had the staff party Thursday after the show, and there's a long line. He's like paying people to get him drinks. And this assistant, Jimmy's assistant, gets him an Aperol Spritz, and he's like, who's better than you, Baby, aside from me? You know, he's always got to be like, so there's a lot of that stuff. There's a lot of bragging about how much he paid for his trip to Italy.

To Italy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I didn't have to bend his arm at all really to get the $90,000 number out of him. So that's it. But yeah, there you go.

Yeah, he told me that number as well. Well, we had a highlight with Babydoll there. We There was this video on YouTube of the 1989 William Morris Christmas party that was an hour and a half long.

Right.

And we got to see baby Babydoll in his office. He's like 27. I think he was smoking. His assistant was smoking. And he's just in there for a half hour. And we just were like in disbelief.

Unbelievable. There's footage of baby Babydoll. They knew I was in the mailroom back then, but they knew I had superstar potential, baby. I mean, look at me. Look at that hair, by the way. They knew.

I was caring. Uh, I couldn't believe that— the shocking thing to me was how much he hated Ari Emanuel's book. He's really trashing it.

Yeah. I know.

Did you hear that?

I hope he doesn't get in trouble for that.

He's like, why did he— he's like, why did he write this? What kind of ego trip is this guy on?

He really should keep those things to himself.

He said it was poorly written. He thought the stories were lame. He just didn't like any part of it.

I wouldn't wipe my ass with this thing. Yeah, yeah, very graphic.

He said he read half of it, he left it on the plane.

He insisted the stewardess take it it away.

He didn't really do this.

Yeah, I know. Look at him, he doesn't care. You know what, say what you want. What are they gonna do to me? Fuck them.

I already did the deal. Uh, how much pizza was brought to the, uh, to the show for Jimmy? So every pizzeria in Brooklyn just gives him pizza?

Yeah, because he'll like, he'll thank somebody on Instagram or something, then the floodgates open. So then it's like just a, it's like 47 pizza boxes, all different kinds. It's good, man. I just, I'm like 80% black and white cookie right now and the rest pain medication. But yeah, Thursday it gets done. I'm gonna do a podcast with Tate. We're gonna go over UCLA, Oregon. We're gonna go over, we're gonna go over Georgia, Alabama. We're gonna do Cowboys, Bucs, and I'm gonna tag Raheem and they're gonna finish up the rest of the podcast. Then I get Go and get this done Thursday.

I don't really have a parent corner this week other than I've seen my daughter a couple of times and I don't— tell me if your wife does this. My daughter really loves going out to eat. She loves like lunch, dinner, anything. But she goes online and looks at the menu and decides and basically goes through the whole process that you go and you sit down and the waiter's like, here's our menu. And you look at it and you're like, oh, I didn't realize you have buffalo chicken dip. And she does it all ahead of time and plans almost like McVay planning for what his first 15 plays are for the Eagles. She knows everything that's on the menu, and she's like, I can't wait to try the fried pickles. I'm going to do the Caesar. I'm going to tell them. And she basically plans it out. And I can't decide how weird this is.

I do that. You do it? Yeah.

So you look and you think about it?

Yeah.

I like the element of surprise.

I know, I used to be like that. I think this is only in the last decade or so, but because we have such access to pictures too, I'm always looking at pictures. And if it looks like sloppy or something, I'm like, yeah, no, I'm gonna pass on that. I really think it's like, it's very— it's, it— I'm sad if I make the wrong choice, you know what I mean?

So you wanted— so ahead of time you want to make sure you're covered that you're gonna make the right choice.

And I feel like I'm always led astray asking the waiter or waitress what they— because you ask them and it's what they like. It's not what you like. So I gotta, I have to, I do my research ahead of time.

Well, as a, as a veteran of the, of the, uh, food service industry, worked in a few different places.

Yeah.

The move for the waiter, it can't be what you like because everybody's different. It's, it's much better to tell people what's popular in the restaurant. Like, people really love— oh my God, they love these little chicken meatballs we have. I don't know why. It's the most popular thing on the menu. Everybody, they come in, they specifically— I want intel like that. I don't really care that you like the branzino, you know, 'cause you might just like branzino. The worst is when they say they don't eat certain things, but still wanna give it, like—

Right.

Well, I'm a, I'm a vegetarian, but I really like the asparagus.

Yeah, my boyfriend likes this.

Yeah, yeah.

Or something like that. Yeah. And then you also learn sometimes they push what they have a lot of left. Like the manager will be like, hey, let's get rid of the Penne alla Vodka. It's loaded up, but we're, you know, back up.

We got to sell 20 more branzinos. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that's her Biggest food quirk other than she really loves pickles.

Pickles are good. Yeah.

Yeah, she has. So my mom sends her pickles and she just eats pickles, like all kinds. There's a place in the Grove that sells pickles. Like she's really like a pickles connoisseur with like the honey mustard one is her favorite. And my mom will send her stuff of pickles and different dips. And then she'd be like, my stomach hurts. And it's like, well, you had, I just watched you have 9 pickles. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder why it thinks, but—

I think a lot of young girls, 'cause they're not fattening, right? You could eat a ton of 'em. By the way, someone bought me a pickle of the month club. If you wanted, you know, Christmas is coming up. If you wanna hit Zoe with it, it was a, it was a great year.

Yeah, but here's the weird thing.

Mm-hmm.

When my wife was pregnant with Zoe, my, you know how the, when people are pregnant, they have like cravings, food cravings. Mm-hmm. One of my wife's things was pickles.

Mm-hmm.

So do you think that because she craved pickles, that got transferred to Zoe, or Zoe craved pickles in her stomach and was telepathically telling her to eat pickles 'cause she, for her entire life, loved pickles? It's like a chicken or an egg thing.

It might be the second. I mean, Ben doesn't eat pickles, right? He was, he was in that stomach, as you say.

No, he does not eat pickles.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. I don't think it's, uh, Maybe the telepathic thing. Yeah, pickles are good.

Ben has been, uh, working out for like 4 weeks and is the most jacked person I've ever seen in my life.

Really?

You know these people that could just put on muscle like overnight?

Yeah, yeah.

It's like he looks like the— like Marky Mark when he was doing the whatever that song Marky Mark sang when he's wearing the jeans and he's— yo, what was that song called? I'm blanking. The pod's officially getting in a weird spot. Good Vibrations.

Good Vibrations.

No, Good Vibrations. It's not that.

Yeah.

Yeah. He's got like the Mark Wahlberg Good Vibrations body after like a week and a half. So really, I don't know what to tell you.

It's not pickles, right?

Yeah.

Curls.

I really need to adopt another kid or get another dog to beef up my parent corner. My kids are too old.

You're good. It's fine.

You, you still have Harrison. He's got, you got a nice little run with him coming up. Yeah.

Have a kidney stone. It's just as good.

Just like parenting, work works better when you have rules, guardrails, and controls in place. Workday is the enterprise platform for HR, finance, and IT that gets work done right. It's a new workday. Yeah.

So Next Gen Stats brought to you by Workday.

So, so apparently don't get Ari's book 'cause Baby really hated it.

You have to have him on to explain himself. How can one person hate a book so much?

He said he didn't even finish it though. Maybe it got better in the second half. Yeah. Um, in all seriousness, Bellini interviewed Ari on The Town.

Yeah.

And it's one of the best podcasts we've had on The Ringer in like 5 years. Really? They're just, they're just going at it for the entire time. But it's like, it's almost like professional wrestling. They're not actually mad, but it sounds like they're mad the whole time. But it's like watching Ric Flair against Shawn Michaels, just like doing falls all over the place and beating the hell out of each other.

Oh, I gotta listen. And Baby Doll's not mentioned though.

Babydoll was not mentioned. Yeah, well, because Babydoll retired. Yeah. Um, okay, what do you got to plug?

Anything? Well, you want to talk baseball real quick? I mean, you were right.

Let's talk baseball real quick.

You were right about the Red Sox.

I tried to tell you and you didn't believe me.

I know, it's just, uh, we can't score runs. It's very weird. I mean, the Cubs were the same way. You, you had 2 teams, gigantic fan bases, and I think you scored— you both scored 3 runs in 2 days.

But, uh, well, we had the biggest thing that happened this whole week was the go-ahead homer or tying homer or whatever it was hitting the roof and becoming it out.

It would've been over. Yes, it would've been a go-ahead homer. Now I don't want, I don't usually like piling on the obvious narrative, but what the fuck? It's the dumbest shit in the world that there's a guardrail up there. I mean, when the punter would almost hit the Cowboys scoreboard, that was like a big thing. This is really stupid. It's probably stupid that the roof was closed anyway in Milwaukee. It was 61 degrees. Yeah. And the best part of playoff baseball for me is the directing, like pitchers blowing on their hands and fans with smoke coming outta their mouths. And it builds so much drama. And although I guess you couldn't get more drama than the ball hitting the top of a guardrail and no one knowing what the hell it is.

And the guy catching it, just like—

and the guy catching it. Yeah.

Adjusting. But I mean, this happens in Tampa all the time. The Red Sox lost a game last month when this happened.

Mm-hmm.

When, uh, the, the raise hit a thing and it bounced down and the guy got a second chance and then we ended up losing 1-nothing. So it's just kind of, it, to me it's like part of the park, but yeah.

Well, obviously, but then they have to find out. But what stops it? Yeah, go ahead.

You hit a home run that's clearly gonna be a home run and it hits the side of the thing. And, um, it ha— it can't have happened that many times though, right?

I don't think it has. And they say, you know, they're like, well, that would've been out at Fenway and in Houston, or they had like 2 parks where it would've been out. I'm like, you don't know what the— I mean, the thing's still rising forever. That, that was a shot, right? I think like, yeah, really, you might be off by 4 feet the way you're— any metric we have looking at this. And then you have to figure out if it was gonna be fair or foul. Like, that's what the umpires are talking about. I'm like, all right. Yeah. Good luck.

Yeah.

You got it. 'Cause if it's foul, it's a dead ball.

Here's my Yeah. Here's my question. We have ABS and all this other stuff. Why don't we have the technology that they could just figure out from the trajectory and the miles per hour if it would've been out if it didn't hit the roof?

Yeah.

Like they could easily figure that out, right? Well, figure out everything else.

They claim they did afterwards and that it wouldn't have been out. But what does that mean?

Really?

Like maybe it hits the wall, like maybe it hits the top of the wall or something. Maybe the game's still being played.

Gus and I were texting about, I've been friends with Gus since 1982 and we've had baseball the whole time. We were texting about how fucking weird playoff baseball is now with these— how it just has to be a bullpen game.

Right.

And it's getting to the point where we take Sonny Gray out when he's had 14 outs and he's like one of the 5 best pitchers in the American League.

Yeah.

And we take him out so we can bring in the lefty that blew the game the game before.

Stupid.

Because somehow that's a better option versus leaving Sonny Gray in. 'Cause God forbid it's gotta be the 3rd time around in the lineup. And it just feels like everybody's overthinking it. Oh, it's only missing Carly Hersey just with notes next to the manager telling them what to do.

Where is she? Oh my God. She'd be on the lineup card every, every, there'd be a change every 2 outs.

It's, I think Sonny Gray's had 14 outs. It's by my notes.

This is enough. All right. You bring up a great point. And last, so last week you asked me my World Series pick. I'm going Brewers over the Rays and that pays 10-to-1 on FanDuel. But okay, your point is taken. Like, it's ridiculous. Tonight the Braves beat the Dodgers 3-2. That's a low-scoring game. How many pitchers do you think were used?

Oh my God, it would— it was, it was at least 8, right?

Combined? Yeah, 13. 6 for the Braves, 7 for the Dodgers. The Dodgers starter is Blake Snell. So you hear, oh, Blake Snell, Blake Snell, Blake Snell. He doesn't get out of the 4th even though he is not even really in trouble. They take him out. Yeah. There's 13 pitchers. So how are we supposed to pick a winner? That, that's my winner. But if there's gonna be 13 pitchers a night, who the hell knows how this works out?

I just don't like it. I really liked having starting pitchers. It feels like we zagged too hard.

Yeah.

You know, and it's never gonna be like Jack Morris putting the Twins on his back and winning the Game 7 and throwing 700 pitches, whatever he did. But I definitely don't, I don't love it. I mean, other than that, I think the baseball's been really good. The pitch clock's been fun.

Sure.

The matchups are good. The, the one thing that's amazing to me is how fast everyone throws and just how fucking hard it is to hit baseballs. And you watch, like, I'm sure you follow a couple of these Twitter accounts too, but you watch like even somebody like Seaver who is, probably the best National League pitcher of the '70s. He's not throwing 101 miles an hour. You know, he's using all these different pitches. He's out there for 140, 150 pitches, some starts. And part of the art of starting pitching was trying to hold on when you didn't have your best stuff anymore. And now it's just gone. And then the next guy comes in, he was throwing 99.

Yeah.

And I don't know, I guess it's the equivalent of when basketball with the 3-pointers, It's very different.

It slows the game down. It's not, there's nothing like it because it's not like, like we see in the regular season, right? Where is there such a departure in the regular season to the postseason in any other sport? There's nothing even close to how they manage pitching staff.

Well, could they make a rule like you could only use 5 pitchers for the first 9 innings or something?

Or that'd be great.

Like unless there's an injury. That'd be great.

I don't know.

'Cause they, they tweaked it so that it had to be at least 3 batters before you could switch. Like maybe there's more they can do. I don't, I, the Red Sox to, first of all, the stats seem to think it is good to just keep throwing new looks and new pitchers and different, you know, different arms.

Yeah.

Over the course of 3 hours at the other team because it's harder for them to get in a groove.

Mm-hmm.

But it's just less fun for fans.

It's less fun. And like you said, with Jack Morris and the workhorses going to the 10th inning and the best now you could hope for is like a Yamamoto pitches the 10th inning on 2 days rest. You know what I mean? But just that inning. And so it just, how you watch it, it, it just changes how you view the sport.

So you had Tampa and Milwaukee?

Yeah. Milwaukee to beat Tampa is 10-to-1. I like, I think Milwaukee's like the best in, in baseball and has been for a while. And the Rays are gonna have 100 wins probably after tomorrow. And they, they're the really only team with a home field advantage at 56 wins at home.

I like that 'cause I, Tampa was the best team I watched all year in the American League.

Yeah.

You know, they, if it's a 1-0, 3-2, 2-1, they're just winning. They do all the right things. And Caminaro is terrifying. And then they have these other guys, you're like, this guy's good. And then he'll just get a single or a double.

But Yandy Diaz, right?

Yeah. They were in an interesting situation with Rasmussen yesterday where it felt like he was gonna take a no-hitter into the 9th, but he was over 100 pitches. So that's only happened twice, right? Yep. The, the no-hitter in the postseason, in the playoffs. Yeah. And I, it's a weird conundrum of it's better for the team probably to take him out and for him for the rest of the playoffs. But this is twice ever in the history of baseball. Like you kind of have to go for it. So I don't, I bet they would've gone for it.

It's a great moment. How many do you have? So was, they got a, a hit in the 8th?

He was at like .104.

Yeah.

But he still had one more out to go.

Oh, in the night.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah.

And this fucking Austin Wells, by the way, as you know, I'm in this Alekeeper league where we finished second. This guy was hitting .150 for like two-thirds of the year and now all of a sudden his rope and line drives.

Right.

Makes me mad.

Doesn't know how to run the bases, but does know how to run the bases. Definitely helped him out. Yeah. And then also the Rays have Freddie Peralta, who's a Met and is now sticking it up our keisters. And when I say our, I mean my, me and Steve Cohen, 'cause we're kind of run the team now.

I know. Well, when they traded for him, it was like, eh, yeah, he's, he's sucked this year. But then people go to the Rays and they get miraculously rejuvenated. Yeah. WNBA, I have a, I bet on the Aces to win the title after, after round 1. Mm-hmm. Golden State beat them. I didn't watch the game 'cause football was on, because WNBA hates casual fans and they just wanna schedule all the games. They easily—

what are they gonna do though? Every, every, every day's tough.

No, you know what they could have done? They easily could have scheduled one of the 2 games for nighttime.

Oh, okay.

So that at least you're only going against one NFL game and the rest of the baseball game, but you're in the, you're in the mix as one of the 3 games.

Nope.

They just put 'em back to back against 14 NFL games, right? That's just idiotic. So I'm with you.

Maybe send these games to Europe and then have them on at like 2 in the morning for us, and then it's really not up against anything.

This Golden State thing, they're an expansion team like 2 years ago. Yeah, they're the best defensive team in WNBA. They're going against Asia, who's the best player in the history of the league and is just on a heater, and they win in game 1 and they still have You know, it's a longer series in round 2, but it's pretty good.

I lost a lot of money betting them based on the, oh, but they're an expansion team. So I think for, for a couple years, the first couple years, but yeah. Solid.

All right. Any plugs?

Yeah. So Ring of Wise Guys, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday is a big preview show.

The Friday show's been fantastic.

It's a lot of fun.

It's really great. I listened to it at 1.25 speed.

Nice.

The one this week was 2 hours. It was a good hour and a half of my walk around 100-degree LA. Really?

Yeah.

I had a great time.

We try to speed it up and then I'm like, all right guys, if we don't want this to be an hour and 50 minutes, we have to do like 5 minutes a game. And they're like, we don't have to. I'm like, great, that's fine. Okay, we'll try to go, we'll go fast. But otherwise, if it's a 2-hour show, that's just how it is.

Every time you think it's speeding up, Raheem goes, you know, the look-ahead line for this game in August was -3.

Yeah, we do a lot of looking back. Before we look ahead.

But it's a lot of reflection.

Yeah. Lots of bad beats this week. Go take advantage of the BetProtect on FanDuel. And don't forget, if you're on the losing end of Iowa under or any of those 4:00 PM endings in NFL, the picks 6 by the Giants that Simmons talked about, you could be eligible for $50 reimbursement and reimbursements. Betaches.com, B-E-T-A-C-H-E-S.

How sent us some bet Bears. The exact order for NFC North: Bears, Vikings, Detroit, Green Bay. Ooh, is 9 to 1.

Bears.

Is that the bets? Is that now? That's pretty good.

Did he just send us this?

I don't know whether he made that a while ago or that's a bet he wants to do now, but that was pretty good.

What chain? What chain? Well, hold on. This Maria Taylor outfit is not allowed within 500 feet of a school. Oh no, that's not a, That's, that's Hench. Okay. No, I gotta— where is he?

He said, yeah.

All right.

So that, that would be, let me see what this is now. Bears. What was the second team? Vikings?

Yeah.

Lions.

Bears, Vikings, Lions, Packers.

Okay. And that would be 9 to 1. 9 to 1. Jesus.

Not bad.

Plus 883. That's pretty good.

So bummed about the Packers. What a dumbass team.

I think that's the right order.

You did it, House. You got it.

Great job, House. You helped America. All right, thanks to, uh, Cahal and Eduardo and, uh, Chris and Jack Wilson on our end. Um, Sal, good luck on Thursday. America's rooting for you. We'll see you, uh, hopefully We'll see you in a week.

Good job by you, buddy.

Good job by you. Thanks, Netflix. Must be 21+ and present in select states for Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino. Or 18+ and present in DC or Wyoming. Gaming problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-797-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelpline.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.