Transcript of The Bears Go All In, the Brew Wrecking Crew, Yaxel-Mania, a Mega-Mailbag, and Week 8 NFL Picks With Tom Pelissero, Joe House, and Anthony Dabbundo

The Bill Simmons Podcast, brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up a new Rewatchables on Monday. We did A Nightmare on Elm Street to finish Horror Month. October, my favorite month. Halloween's coming. I've been enjoying— my algorithm is just feeding me stuff from the 1978 movie Halloween. One of my 5 or 6 favorite movies of all time. I saw some, they had 20 pictures from the set that was on my algorithm. I went through all of them. The picture of the guy who was dressed as Michael Myers holding the mask next to him and stuff like that. Jamie Lee Curtis trying the mask on. I love Halloween. Always great to have it back. And then my son's birthday the next day. What a run. What a run for me. I wish AJ Brown was healthy. Hey, we're gonna talk football with Tom Pelissero at the top. He broke the Jeffrey Simmons trade today, and he's gonna tell us what else we can expect for the trade deadline and what's going on with Lamar. And then Anthony DeBando came on with me and Joe House to recap a pretty strange end to the baseball season as the Brewers just annihilated everybody and beat Tampa in 5.

All right, we're recording late afternoon Thursday before the Thursday night game. Tom Pelissero's here. You can read his newsletter, The Sweep. You can hear him and watch him on the Ringer NFL Show. Once again, he had a big scoop today, uh, big trade. The Bears Go and they get my brother Jeffrey Simmons. I don't know if you know, we're related. Um, 2 first-round picks and a 4th for a team that I really liked as a Super Bowl contender before the trade. I was really impressed by them in the Pats game. Was that too much? Is that the right going rate for a 29-year-old defensive stud? Did— were you surprised when you heard the terms?

I was. Well, first of all, I was a little bit caught off guard by the trade because I'd gotten the sense in the past few days that the Titans, who had really been in a we're not trading Jeff Simmons mode for years, right through— Yeah. Every year they're, they're kind of the shits and like people call. But this year was like, all right, it would have to be a big package. And so like I knew different teams had called, they were being told it's at least 2 first-round picks, and that, you know, scared some other teams off. 49ers checked in before they traded for DeForest Buckner, the Colts were waiting for an offer from the Bears.

Mm-hmm.

And then it turns out they're starting to turn their attention, uh, to Jeff Simmons. There's just— there's not a lot of trades like this. Defensive players for 2 first-round picks and more. If you're the Titans, like, this is a great haul. It really is. Because not only do you get the 2 ones and the 4th rounder in exchange— they sent a 5th-round pick in 2028 back— but also he's due $57 million guaranteed over the 2027 and 2028 years. So that's a huge chunk. It's about like 8 to 10% of your salary cap was tied up in one guy who's gonna be 30 and 31 these next 2 years. He's still a really good—

And you're going nowhere.

He— you're probably far enough away that one defensive tackle who's at minimum at his peak— he's not an ascending player, he might be descending at this point— he's not going to get you there. So you get all the picks, You kind of reframe the season as, all right, we're rebuilding, at least on, you know, in terms of like the big picture of the team. We want Cam Ward to keep getting better. We want the offense to keep getting better. If you're the Bears, remember they traded—

Can we, can we stay on the Titans for a second?

Yeah, go for it.

To me, this is, uh, it's not gonna happen with Cam Ward. We're gonna be rebooting all of this and let's just start now. 'Cause from everything we've seen from Cam Ward, I don't see it. I don't see anything to be excited about. And I don't think I just don't see the franchise QB thing with him. So you do this partly because you realize even if we hit our draft picks, even if we hit a couple more free agency stuff, are we gonna be any good next year? Probably not with this quarterback situation, 'cause I don't think he's playable.

I, I would say they're more positive in the building than externally, just because like they're seeing like the small steps of Cam Ward getting better. And he is like, he's a guy who nobody, including in the pre-draft process, like no one questions how hard this dude works, how, how much he wants to be great, how he applies it. It's just, they've been a mess. He's had 3 different play callers in a year and a half in the NFL. Like, they've done everything wrong in Tennessee in terms of like getting this guy on track. But now you feel like you're starting to see it a little bit with Brian Daboll calling the offense. It's why they haven't traded Tony Pollard or Calvin Ridley or some of the other guys, because they're like, we want to give them a chance. I, I think that it gives them flexibility. There's no doubt about that. And maybe that involves somewhere down the line you're bundling some of those picks and going up and getting a quarterback. But I don't think they're at a crisis point on that at this point. They're just looking and going realistically, like, how do you turn that down, uh, from the Bears right now?

It was not a surprise. Can I be at a crisis point? It was not a surprise.

Can I be at a crisis point with Cam Ward? Because I think I'm there. I did— like, I just don't see it. I don't think he's good enough. Bears. So they're like, fuck it, let's go. We have a QB on a rookie contract.

Right.

This is the unique opportunity. We have good players. We've made— we've hit on most of our draft picks. Our defense is gimmicky, but it's not terrible. Like, we're doing discount Flores, and now we can throw this guy in there, and who knows? The league's wide open. It's not like there's a team you would point to and say, oh, that— we gotta pass that team. I feel like there's like 5 or 6 teams that feel like they're in the mix, but nobody's stood out to me yet.

Well, it's kind of an arms race too in the NFC with the deals the 49ers and the Seahawks made earlier this week. And now this deal, I was gonna say that the Bears traded another defensive tackle, Gervin Dexter, to the Falcons right before the season. Now Jeff Simmons is coming back in and kind of filling that same spot, but

he

is a, he's a difference maker. He's a really good culture and locker room guy too. That's one of the reasons Tennessee, through all the stuff they went through, he was kind of the one untouchable guy on the roster. So they get a really good football player. They pay a really high price. The one thing I kept hearing from GMs today was, yes, they're in that rookie contract window, but they're at the end of it. Caleb's extension eligible after this season. So now you just committed $57 million cash and cap in the next 2 years to, to a guy who's 30, 31 years old and gave up your next 2 first-round picks. Like, it's a pretty big bet. Ryan Poles has never been afraid to, you know, make big trades, but this is very much a We are Super Bowl caliber and this guy's gonna be a, you know, the guy who potentially puts us over the top.

I mean, he's one of the 5 difference maker defensive linemen, right? He's got 5 or 6. He's on the top 5 list. Yeah. Yeah.

If you take the edge guys out of it, I'd put Jeff Simmons up there. I mean, Jalen Carter, when he wants to be that guy, is certainly capable of being that guy. You know, Aaron Donald before the retirement, it's hard to tell what he is right now, but he would've been in that category. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Simmons is up there. And again, when you have a guy like that who's also like the best guy in your locker room that everybody kind of gravitates toward, that means something. Sometimes these big swing trades go south because like the dude you bring in is not the player who's going to positively influence everybody else. Like Jeff Simmons, his whole reputation is he is that guy. And I love the Ben Johnson, like everything about Ben Johnson, the way that he calls a game, the way that he approaches, you know, his team press conferences, like everything is, we are going big. We don't give a fuck what you think about us. We are going to try to kick your ass in every way possible. This absolutely has Ben Johnson written all over. Like, we'll figure it out with the first-round picks.

Gimme Jeff Simmons right now. Let's go win some games.

And it sets up an incredible Monday night game now. 'Cause I think Seattle and Chicago would be the 2 teams that I still believe if I— they are my bet my life teams in the NFC. to get there. 'Cause I didn't— the San Francisco, how many injuries can they take? And then the Rams just seem like year from hell and I don't really like anybody else but that. And then they, then the, the other team gets Quentin Nelson, right? Seahawks, which you just throw him in there with when they're getting running backs back. And I don't know, it's gonna be pretty fun.

Literally could be blocking Jeff Simmons on Monday night after these trades. This week.

That's like, wouldn't you say that's the game of the year now? Have we had a better like playoff preview? You know, that now we've had enough of a sample size with all the games. It's week 8, kind of have a feeling for who's, who's gonna make a run or not. And I really, those are the 2 teams I'm watching. 'Cause Seattle, as good as they looked on Sunday night, I didn't know how much of that was the Chiefs, which I guess could be the next thing we talk about. The Chiefs kind of— I have them coming later in Ringer 107, and I'm gonna be going the other way. I just don't see it. I don't think they have the firepower. And now what Seattle did last week, but just like, all right, we'll take out Walker. What else do you got? And they didn't have anything. Not to mention the offensive line. What is their offensive line gonna be on the road like we saw last week? What are people in the league saying about the Chiefs these days? Do they think they're gonna make moves or what?

They do think they're going to make moves. I talked specifically about that, that game last Sunday night. I talked to one GM today who would watch the tape, and I'm like, was it just a matter of like they put everything in to stop Kenneth Walker? He's like, no, they were playing quarters. They weren't like playing 8 in the box the whole time. They just, they did what Seattle does and they absolutely kicked the Chiefs' ass. Right. If you're the Chiefs, that's concerning because I mean, look at the defenses that they've faced this season. It hasn't exactly been murderer's row. It's like Is this the real Chiefs where Kenneth Walker can't put up 200 yards every week and then we have no weapons? I mean, it's Xavier Worthy and then you're throwing to Jalen Royals. Like, that's, that's what you're working with. To me, that was the takeaway from the game, which was the Chiefs. And I've reported this this week, like, they've been calling around for like a month and trying to find receiver help. They could get Rashee back. Rashee Rice, he was practicing again this week, but you still don't have like that dominant type of receiver they haven't had since Tyreek Hill.

They need to acquire one. I think that they might actually

be Tyreek Hill

if he can run, if he can walk. I mean, at this point, I don't know that Tyreek's ready to play at all in 2026, but they'll, they'll do whatever it takes to try to fix that spot. I, I believe that they'll go out, they'll trade for one. I don't know if it'll be next week or the week after. Trade deadline's 12 days away, so it's got to be soon. But between, you know, whether it's Brian Thomas Jr., is it Josh Downs, like, they'll get somebody in that'll help mitigate it. Because you can't go into a game and it's like, well, if the run game's not working, we're throwing 100-year-old Travis Kelce or Xavier Worthy who can't catch. Like, that's a bad combination, and that's kind of what they're stuck with right now.

There's no Garrett Wilson possibility, is there?

I don't believe so. I— after the whole, the exchange on the sideline and Geno's there and everything last week, like, that what I was told was absolutely not, absolutely not trade him. The Jets aren't in the phase like they were last year when they traded Sauce and Quinnen Williams. They're not in, we're tearing it apart. I don't think the Jets are gonna be particularly active. I could see them trading some down-the-line guy, but I don't, I just don't see it being Garrett Wilson.

I do like that the NFL's becoming more like the NBA. We're just getting these monster trades now. It feels like every couple months something's happening where I don't know what I usually, these teams were so much more careful, especially during the season. of trading for impact guys and trading picks. And I don't know, it, it, it kind of fits into with the analytic revolution and how coaches are approaching these games. Everybody's like, fuck it, let's go. 4th and 5 from my own 30. Yeah, fuck it. And now it's kind of drifted into the trades, which I think is more fun. 'Cause if, if some of these teams, like, why wouldn't Tennessee trade Jeffrey Simmons? Like, I completely agree with the logic behind it. By the time they're good again, he's gonna be 32.

That's what you're trying to get to is like, you're in or you're out. That's what generates more trade interest. Remember, I mean, the trade deadline was Week 6, like 12 years ago. Yeah. It was so early in the season. Then they pushed it back 2 weeks to Week 8. Then a couple years ago, they pushed it to Week 9. There are some aggressive GMs who would love it to be even later than that. The NFL's always been worried that it ends up like the NBA, and you've got like the 70-win team playing the 13-win team at the end of the season in a game that means something to somebody. And it's just like not competitive. They've never wanted that. But what happened, you mentioned analytics. It was really like, I go back to the Brock Osweiler trade. That's what changed everything. Because if you remember 2017, the Texans had signed Brock Osweiler to an ill-fated contract. He's got, I think it was $16 million fully guaranteed left on the second year of his deal. The Texans have no use for him. The Browns trade for Brock Osweiler and a second-round pick.

Yeah.

And it was solely a true salary dump. They bought a 2nd-round pick for like $16 million. And after that, there hasn't been anything to that scale. But it's the number of times that's happening now where there's teams using money actively to go buy picks. You know, some of the flagrant examples were the Dolphins traded for Aqib Talib one time when he was on injured reserve just to pay him the $5 million, and they got a draft pick. They did it with Ryan Tannehill. The Broncos did it with Von Miller a few years ago where Von helped the Rams win the Super Bowl, but they got 2nd and 3rd round picks because they paid him like $9 million to get the picks. Like,

yeah,

that's become part of the equation. It's not just, all right, we're going to get more aggressive with using future picks because unlike the NBA, you can only trade picks 3 years down the line. It's also, all right, what if we also pay it? Then what would you be willing to give up? There's not many trades like what the Colts did the other day where they made 2 significant trades And they paid $0 for Buckner or Nelson going away. You watch some of the trades that happen these next couple weeks, you'll get the final details to be like, hang on, they're paying how much money to make this guy go away?

Right?

It's all— it's part of the, the broader thinking, which is like, if you can buy picks and we've already allocated that cash and cap to the player anyway, why would we not do it?

Yeah, you did a good job of explaining that on the sweep about what are they paying Nelson, like $900,000 a game, basically. Yeah. So you get rid of them now.

Yeah. It's like, why didn't they wait 2 weeks? It's like, well, that would've cost them to keep Buckner and Nelson, or $4 million, and they could have gotten hurt and you could have been left with nothing. And, you know, everyone says like the comp pick, they're like, oh, you would've gotten a 3rd round comp pick for Quentin Nelson. Maybe not. That would require Quentin Nelson to be healthy, to sign a contract, for you to not sign any free agents that offset that pick. And you don't even know who your GM's gonna be. So like, you take the picks now. I, I thought the Colts got good value.

Also, like, it's Quinn Nelson. Like, somebody falls into the back of his leg on a run play and now he's gone and you're getting jack shit.

30, 31 years old. Like, there's, there's so many things that can happen. Like, take the, take the good deal if you think it's the right value. Take the deal.

One thing that I've noticed with football that I think is, 'cause this I guess happens in basketball too, You know, it's like, oh, DeForest Buckner, Niners got him. It's like, he's not really DeForest Buckner anymore. He hasn't been DeForest Buckner for 4 years. Like, I watched the Colts this year. People are doing whatever they wanted against him. So you're getting a different version of the guy, but it's a name guy.

Right. And that's what a lot of these trades are.

'Cause, 'cause when the Niners got him, it was like, where were the Bears? They needed defense. Obviously they, they thought they could do a lot better than Buckner, but I don't know. I just feel my fear is that, that's gonna be AJ Brown and the Patriots. What I just said about Buckner, you have, you have to look at your text at some point 'cause I had, we did the, you sent me a rundown of, did you get anything yet?

It didn't. No, not yet. But it didn't have an, yeah, you did. I did not have AJ Brown on the list.

Well, this is, I was telling you that the Pats fans are freaking out about AJ. Let's go to the next one. Which is—

I'll just say this with AJ Brown, okay? He, we, he had the known ankle issue. We know that when you hear like the knee is ballooning up, like that's happened to him his whole career. A big part of the reason Tennessee traded AJ Brown to Philly 4 years ago was because they didn't think his knee was going to hold up and he wasn't practicing. He gets to Philly, he barely practiced. He was still a pretty good player. Like, does this cause him— I don't have all the details yet— is this causing him to miss a game or 2 or I don't know yet, but like him popping up, it's like, oh, an issue with his knee? It's like, yeah, the guy's got a knee that he's had to manage basically his whole career.

I thought the Thursday Bears game, I was alarmed by how unfast he looked and how it looked like— oh, we talked about this after the game. You came on. I said about how it looked like he was running on hot cement or something, like he wasn't like pushing off. So Well, we'll see what happens. Hopefully you get a text before the end. Next one, Lamar Jackson. So Ringer 107, he, they, he's gonna come up in a pick. I think he plays this week. I do think it's weird that they never seem to know how healthy he is or when he's gonna play, no matter who the coach is, 'cause now we have a different coach. What's going on with the organization and Lamar and just the communication stuff with them? Because it seems like every year it seems like the weirdest situation in the league. Yeah.

Part of it is Lamar doesn't have an agent. He has nobody that speaks for him or like corrects the record. So like the external stuff, and this goes all the way back to when he was in the pre-draft process and people were trying to, you know, say he should go play wide receiver, whether it was in his contract negotiations and how he handled those. Like his only real advisor is his mother. Like nothing's just like the way it is with every other player. And so you get into these situations where like, all right, you get hurt. Right? Every agent has a protocol. It's, all right, we're going to get these scans. Now we're going to send them to these 3 doctors, get it out. We're going to get second opinions. We're going to gather it. We're going to come up with a plan, be in concert with the team. Like, I'm sure there's some level of that with Lamar, but like, it's not the normal process. Then there's just the reality that Lamar, you know, wants to be 100% if he's on the field. Last year he was out there with the hamstring and wasn't himself.

I didn't think it was the same Lamar. The whole rest of the season.

I agree.

After he had the hamstring in October, he never looked like— it was like Saquon the other night where you're like, is he— what's he doing? Like, he doesn't look like he can open it up. Like, he's slowing down. That was Lamar to me last year. Now he's got the ankle. But where you get into what you're talking about was, so last Thursday he's taking scout team reps, right? And that's because, like, he's just— it's part of his return to play protocol. He does enough that Friday it's like, all right, He's gonna take first-team reps. So he takes the first-team reps on Friday, and I don't know exactly how they structure their practices, but that's probably like your red zone day, and Lamar's taking the majority of the snaps. And then by Saturday, it's he's not playing. So you took all those reps, right? You only probably needed it for the week from Tyler Huntley. You wouldn't do that if you didn't think Lamar is playing. They, they thought he was close. He's taken all the first-team reps the past 2 days. So I'm with you. I think he plays against the Bills. I just— there's always a level of uncertainty because he doesn't have the same support system and advice system around him that other players do.

I don't think it has to do with he's not putting himself out there because he doesn't have a contract. Like, the Ravens have been trying to do a contract with Lamar for 2 years. He's making $52 million. Yeah. He's due another $52 next year. I think it's more so just he's a player who is— wants to make sure that he's 100%. that probably isn't having the same advice around him. And it just leads to some of these situations where things seem weird, even if internally they've got a better handle on exactly where he stands.

So you don't think there's any scenario where they go, not— we don't want to do this anymore?

If it happened, it would be after the season.

Yeah, that's what I meant. But like, this could be the farewell run with Lamar.

I mean, you never know. But all what I do know is they've been staunch in wanting Lamar to be the guy and trying to do a contract extension with him, which is going to be at a bananas number. You wouldn't be doing that if you wanted to trade him. If we get to after this year and he's got one year left on his contract and you can't get something done, then I think you start to explore your options. But I mean, there's like cap, cap considerations. If you, if you were to cut them loose or if you don't do the extension, all this stuff would accelerate. Like, there's all kinds of issues it creates. I'd say we're getting ahead of ourselves on that. Let's see how he plays. But this is— it's been part of the Lamar experience, whether it's in October or December and January. There's just periods where you'd love him to be available. And the biggest question on him coming out, it wasn't just, is he a quarterback or not? It was also like, how's he going to hold up? Like, he's not the biggest dude. He's gotten bigger and more rocked up, but how healthy is he going to stay?

That's been kind of part of the story of Lamar's career, even though when he's on the field, he remains one of the most electric players out there.

Well, spoiler alert, I picked Ravens +3 in, in Buffalo and Ringer 107 coming up. And I think when he's playing, he's still one of the best 4 quarterbacks in the league. And I just feel like he should be able to go up and down the field on Buffalo. But what do I know?

They get, they got a lot of weapons around him too. Like when he's been out there with Declan Doyle, they've been pretty dangerous.

How about Flowers has been, Flowers was always good and they paid him and people are like, whoa, that much money? Flowers has been incredible. I mean, he's been one of the best 5 receivers in the league.

I think I probably watched more Boston College football than any of your listeners, um, as a BC guy.

Yeah,

like I got to meet Zay while he was there. Like, he broke every record. He was unbelievable. Yeah, he is still like— when he's on and getting like the catch-and-run opportunities, like, he is absolutely incredible. He's had a few, you know, catching or ball security issues over the year, and then he'll have— if you're a fantasy player, he'll have those flat games where you're like How did Zay Flowers get 0.9 points yesterday? He'll have those, but like there's some games that he absolutely takes over just 'cause he's such a unique, he's not a big guy. He's very fast. He's very quick in small areas and he can, you know, he can make you miss and give you problems all day.

It's weird 'cause they're different, but he does remind me of like AFC JSN basically where he's, they get him the ball in space and then you're like, oh, they're gonna tackle him. And then he's just still going and then all of a sudden he's cutting the other way and I don't know, he's terrifying. Uh, all right, we're going quickie on the, uh, on the Pick 6 here. Quick questions. Jonathan Taylor, yes or no, is he getting moved?

I would say as of now, no. It's, it's gonna take a lot to get him, you know, in terms of the trade package. It's probably like a little under what Christian McCaffrey went for a couple years ago, which was I think a 2, a 3, a 4, and a 5. Um, it's gonna have to be up there. And it's also teams like, he's due enough money that some of the teams that have other considerations, it's hard for them to do those deals. Like, people keep bringing up the Vikings. I don't see the Vikings making that type of splash. They got a line out the door, the Dallas Turners of the world waiting for extensions. All of a sudden you, you trade your future for Jonathan Taylor when your new GM hasn't even run a draft yet. I, I just, I don't see it. It's always possible injuries happen, something comes up. I don't think right now Jonathan Taylor gets traded.

You know what would be a fun trade, ironically, because they just traded together, but if Ja'Darian Price was in the trade for Taylor, right? They'll spend a first-round pick for him. That, that would be the basketball version of a trade like this, right? We had this young up-and-coming guy on a cheap contract who was pedigree top 30 pick. We'll give you him for Jonathan Taylor and a 5th rounder. Let's call it a day.

Pretty sure Seattle was looking at Jonathan Taylor when they saw how Quentin Nelson was mauling people and decided, let's go ahead and trade for Nelson. He's gonna make the difference. They get, they get Charbonnet back. He should play this week. Price is probably gonna play this week. So like, they're in a pretty good spot.

Yeah, they at least give it a week or two. Uh, next quickie: Eagles trades, no trades? What do they do? Are they done?

I would just say they're 2-5. They're on a 5-game losing streak. Most teams you'd go like, okay, they're gonna do like what the Colts just did. I don't— knowing now how he works, I'd be very surprised if he trades the core dudes like the Saquons, DeVonta Smith. Both those guys are banged up too. Yeah. Like Zach Bohn, I don't see him trading any of those players. He takes so much pride, like he did with Jason Kelce and Fletcher Cox and, and guys like that, of like Brandon Graham, they're one uniform players. Lane Johnson too. Like they, they were here and they were like the glue through multiple eras of Eagles football. Like that's how those guys are.

Yeah.

And they made the playoffs 8 of the last 9 years. Like I, I wouldn't be surprised. Look at their schedule. They got Washington this week. We all get to watch that game on Sunday night. And then they got the Giants the following week. If the Eagles win those 2 games, they'll be like maybe a half game out of the division lead. And at that point, if I'm Howie, I'm like, I might trade for some people. I might just take a run at this. Like, my defense is plenty good. Yeah. My offense can get healthy. Maybe there's even a quarterback out there that can help me if, if Tanner McKee's kind of scuffling. Like, I don't put anything past him. The only thing I don't see Howie doing, he loves to trade. He probably makes some trades, but I just, I don't see him giving guys away just because they're in a contract year. And I really don't see Saquon, DeVonta, Bond, those core guys. I don't see them getting traded.

JJ McCarthy, who is now the, uh, the hero of the Giants fans. So that QB trade worked. Is there going to be another QB that could be moved, or what do we think?

The one that I— and I think you and I have talked about this a couple of times— Cousins. The one guy I still want to know what happens is Kirk Cousins. Yeah, 12 days away, the Raiders are in a 4-game losing streak. One of the factors in the fact that we haven't talked about, you know, like Mac Jones and guys like that, it's like no one's gotten hurt. Guys have had— outside of Jaxson Dart and obviously the Jalen Hurts situation with blood clots in his lungs— every other quarterback that's gotten hurt has missed like 1 or 2 or 3 games. There's been nothing long-term. But Cousins is the one— half the league runs a derivative of the offense that he plays in. He's playing at a really high level, and he's got a $10 million guaranteed roster bonus next March that if the Raiders have the opportunity to offload that money to get a pick for a guy who they're probably going to end up cutting in March and play the number 1 pick— It's hard because you're in the playoff chase. They win these next 2, maybe you're 5-4, and you're like, you know what, let's just ride this out with Kirk.

It's going great. But even like the Eagles, if you're sitting there and you're like, his former backup quarterback Sean Mannion, his good buddy who he kept in the league as a player for several years, is our offensive coordinator. We can bring in Kirk and just go play that offense. Like, maybe we got something here. Like, I just, I would not take that off the table until we get all the way to November 10th.

I can't say he's moving great. He's playing okay. Yeah. But I would say he's moving as the worst he's ever been. So the Eagles at Washington, home Giants, bye week.

Yeah.

Right before the trade deadline. And then they go home Pittsburgh, at Dallas, at Arizona, home Indianapolis. And probably they need to get to, I would say, 9 wins.

It's completely doable. What's their record now? Yeah. They're 2-5.

They don't have a tie, right?

Yeah. Giants are 4-2-1 atop the division. It's completely doable to get to 9 wins.

7 and— what's that, 7-3? Yeah,

7-3 the rest of the way. And then if you get in the playoffs,

so they win those next 2, it's 5-3.

You're 5— yeah, so you're sitting there and now all of a sudden it's like, all right, we can get this. And is there a possibility our quarterback can come back if we make the playoffs?

My counter is the Eagles look terrible and it feels like they're getting worse every week.

I mean, the defense looks so good in the Jacksonville game. Yeah. And then the other night against the Cowboys, it was just like, what happened to Cooper DeJean?

Like, that guy was like in the running to be discussed as like an All-Pro candidate. Doesn't seem like he can cover anyone anymore.

They also lost Reed Blankenship. They had some moving parts on the back end. I think all that stuff kind of plays into it. I mean, DeJean's still a good, good player. Jalen Carter's a, you know, really good player. But like, Jalen Carter wasn't very good in the game against Dallas. It was just It's one of those strange games.

They were awful. I thought they were just terrible in that game.

The defense was bad. Saquon, I mean, Saquon breaks that first run and you're like, oh, here we go. And then he's like parallel with the guy and it's like, nope, not gonna do that. And just kind of like wanders out of bounds. It was like, this, this is gonna be a battle, a battle for it. I mean, credit to Saquon for trying to go, you know, he's close enough, but like you saw all the stuff where he's being like, I'm being smart. It's like, if you can't open it up, you know, that's the home run play that a team with Tanner McKee at quarterback kind of needs. It's just unfortunate.

All right, last one, last quickie one. Steelers-Browns, 5-2 versus 5-2 this weekend. The winner of this game, do they start getting ideas? They start looking at the trade deadline and being like, huh?

I would say both teams have already been looking. Um, I could see the Browns adding, you know, maybe an edge player. There's been so much talk about like trading away Jerry Jeudy. That's possible, but right now he's like making big plays, like one big play a game Jerry Jeudy's making, because they're worried about Denzel Boston and Casey Concepcion. Like, I could see the Browns adding at the deadline, absolutely. And then the Steelers, like, they've been making calls, especially on receivers, for weeks now. They should get Michael Pittman back relatively soon.

Roman Wilson too.

Roman Wilson also should be back in a couple weeks once his window opens. So like, it's not as significant of an issue. But you can imagine if you can go out and add one of these receivers that's available with the way Aaron Rodgers is playing, which is better than I think almost anyone on the planet would've thought 42-year-old Aaron Rodgers was playing. Mm-hmm. Get the 6-2 this week. It's a fun story, man. Like Aaron Rodgers, the final ride back with Mike McCarthy. And it's, it's like a, it's a Disney movie where you don't know if his arm's gonna just fall off at the end or if he's actually gonna, you know, win it all. Like if it'll be like the sad fun ending or the actual good ending. But I, I think they're fun to watch. The Pittsburgh Steelers in 2026 with Aaron Rodgers at quarterback are fun to watch.

They have some games that seem much harder when you looked at their schedule in August than now. Like at Philadelphia, Week 11, that seemed like a terrifying game in August. Now I don't know if that's terrifying. Home for Houston. Oh no, here comes Houston's defense. Well, Houston's defense sucks. They're, they have Carolina at home in Week 16 and they're at Tennessee Week 17. You can kind of pretty easily patch together 10 wins for them even if they don't do anything.

And you get the Ravens twice in the last 4 weeks, which is totally dependent on,

right, who

knows how is Lamar at that point.

But the, if

he's out there, you're, yeah, it's a tough game. If he's not, not so much.

And then Cleveland, who had, I think had one of the 3 easiest schedules in the league even before we knew what some of these teams are gonna be. I didn't have the balls to take them as a playoff team because they're Cleveland. But this, it's, it's a week of great matchups. Like where we're like, there's some fork in the road moments. Yeah. Like you look at Atlanta and the Bucs, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, like some of these, and then we get Seattle and Chicago as a possible title preview. Okay. So you never got an AJ Brown answer from me?

No.

Other than I think Callie Roseman already won the trade somehow. Even though it's not even week 8 yet. Not feeling good.

We'll find out when he uses that first-round pick in 2028 or bundles it to go up and get somebody this year.

Tom Pelisseri, you did it again today. You scooped everybody live, live from the random Thursday morning out of nowhere. You did it.

Yeah. Do you want, do you want the very brief story of how that happened?

Yeah, let's hear it.

I was riding the stationary bike. I don't know what, what if we're sponsored by any company, but a stationary bike with an instructor. finish the ride, like, you know, toweling myself off, like literally, literally getting off the bike still with the stupid shoes on, you know, with like the little things on the bottom. And I get a text about Simmons to Chicago, and my brain is going, there's only one Simmons this can be. It was sort of on my radar.

Bill Simmons.

I knew. I'm just like, Justin, is there a different one? Because it was just like, I, I thought I didn't— those trades don't happen on Thursdays. Yeah, you just don't. And then sure enough, it was real. And it was— then I got another follow-up text, 2 ones and a 4. I was like, oh my God. But it's just like, you don't know. Like, I would've thought— I literally was on the phone with a GM last night being like, oh well, that was probably it for this week, so we'll get going again on Monday. And then right after that trade, he's like, guess not, Thursday morning trades, we're back, baby.

Yeah, 'cause you did the— you did the mailbag with the trade candidates and you had Tennessee, and it didn't even seem like you thought Simmons was in play.

Well, I was asked about Pollard and Ridley. No, I know, but it was— I was saving that for Saturday and then he got traded on Thursday. Oh,

so you thought it was in play?

It was in play. The price was going to be high, but the fact that there was a price— when teams come back going, yeah, it's going to take 2 ones, what that means is they trade— they'll trade them for— Oh, that's interesting.

So if the, if the price is floated, that means I'm receptive?

If a price is clear from the seller team, that usually means they're open to selling them at that price. Otherwise it's no. If it's no, then it's take your best shot, maybe.

So the stages are like, I'm hanging up, fuck you, I can't believe you asked me. Correct. Oh my God, that— you— it would, it would— you'd be a crazy price, we're not even considering it. But then the third level is—

It'd have to be 2 ones. It'd have to be 2 ones and more.

So when there's teams, so when you're just distinct about what it is, that's a wink wink.

That is the sign. I mean, if you put a, you know, a sale sticker on an item in a store, changes a lot versus like it being on this, you know, being like in someone's cart, you know, like it's their child that they brought to the store. The child's not for sale. You put a sticker on it, maybe it is.

So if I call the Jets and I want Garrett Wilson, Absolutely

not. Fuck you, Bill.

They hang up. Okay.

I believe that would be a fuck you. Yes.

Like you call Atlanta and you ask for Bijan Robinson and they're like, fuck off.

Right. And there's only like 50 of those guys in the entire league.

Right.

Like everybody else, like you call, you call Miami right now. I mean, you call Tennessee, like everyone, it's like, well, we'll listen. How, how will you listen on anything if you call him at the Eagles? like, I don't think he's getting 2 first-round picks for Saquon Barkley right now. I don't think that he wants to, you know, he's got his, his core guys. But outside of like, you know, the Josh Allens of the world, Justin Jefferson, like anybody else in this league's available if you're willing to pay enough.

If I, if I got the Garrett Wilson call, I'd be like, oh, there's no way. But it like 2 firsts and a second, we'd have a meeting.

Well, and then if you're the GM who called, and you get the fuck you, you could go back and then just go, all right, I know you said that, but what about 2 ones? No one thinks they're gonna get that for Garrett Wilson, which is part of why you're saying— I

find it hard to believe that the Jets would turn down 2 first-round picks from the Chiefs for Garrett.

Well, they're not gonna get all— they're not gonna get offered that is the point.

Yeah.

Now, if you call, you could try, but right now the answer is absolutely not. They're not looking to trade him. I mean, Sauce Gardner last year, 2 ones. But they also kind of were thinking about it at that point.

Which now seems like one of the worst trades of the decade.

They now have the Colts' first-round pick, which is for a team that's blowing itself up, and the Cowboys' first-round pick that could end up being significantly higher, and their own first-round pick. They could have 3 top 10 picks.

The only problem is there's no quarterbacks to draft 'cause all of them have flamed out. There's,

you gotta, You just gotta pray that some of these guys, please, get some drafts that it doesn't get. Trinidad Champliss has to come out unless he can get a 7th year or whatever it is.

Uh, congrats on another scoop. Good to see you. Listen to Tom on Ringer NFL and read the sweep on Saturday. Can't wait to find out more. Good to see you.

I got an email recently from somebody who said Chang should have to make you a bull penis stew that you have to eat. I thought that— but actually, like, really try to make it delicious. What's your life been like since the stew debacle?

Honestly, I can't believe how much it broke containment. Uh, you know, it was more of a pocket veto than an outright veto. I think people are coming to me like Dave Chang walked up and said, would you please try my stew? Or would you like to try stew? And I said no.

Yeah,

you know, it was more of a pocket veto. Now I'm not defending my honor here. I regret not trying the stew. Um,

you just never got up to try it. It was never offered to you, but you also never went in the kitchen and said, I'm gonna have this. Whereas House went in 6 times.

That's not a distinction. The fucking chef was there. He carried the fucking stew in through the front door with his lumbering, like, oh, he didn't give you a personal invitation? He didn't give anybody a personal invitation.

It was assumed.

He just walked in. He's just a top 5 chef on planet Earth who walked in with a giant thing of food that he had made lovingly days before. That, that was your invitation. When this chef walked in with the food, with carrying

pots of food,

you were invited to eat.

He was.

I got to take a break.

Is that it wasn't like I went to the house anticipating a meal. And I'm not, you know, throwing shade at Bill here, but the text from you said, come over to watch football. I have a seat for you. Yeah. Now I was like, I know House is there, but do I bring my own? Do I eat before? So I ate before. a full breakfast sandwich and a banana bread muffin to the point where I was full. So again, I regret not trying a small piece of it for sure. But this wasn't like I went over to Dave Chang's house to have a meal and then said, I'm good. It was— I didn't even know Dave Chang was going to be there. He walked in. I was like, oh, Dave Chang, nice to meet you in real life. But I will say this too. I won a bet with Tate last week. We bet on the Syracuse-UNC game, tough beat for him, and he owes me a dinner now. Should we go to Majordomo?

Yeah, I think, I think that's a must. Or the, or the place in Century City Mall. One of those 2 places.

My only piece of advice, if you go to Majordomo, bring your credit card.

And don't touch Chang.

No freebies. You're not getting any freebies. Tate might get some freebies, but you will not.

Tate's buying, so it's on him. He lost the bet.

Might get the spit roast. Um, DeBundo, baseball ended. Baseball may never come back. So we thought we'd spend this first segment talking about the World Series, the baseball playoffs, lessons we learned. And when we're going to see baseball again. I don't know. You take the floor.

My current prediction is Memorial Day, and that's with zero inside knowledge or awareness of anything that's going on. Memorial Day. But I have enough friends around baseball who think generally Memorial Day is the expected, because you have to remember they have to sign the agreement eventually, and then there has to be some type of muted or shortened spring training. to get these players ready so they don't all get hurt right away. So yeah, Memorial Day, we would lose about a month and a half.

100 games, like 110-game season,

something like that.

That's pretty good.

By the way, House doesn't mind this because April has the NBA playoffs, NHL playoffs, NFL Draft,

the Masters.

The Masters.

Yeah, that'd be fine. That's a great start to the baseball season.

I'm on

that baseball

Masters with one-handed gymnasts.

Biggest losers are the spring training sites. I mean, Florida and Arizona, so many of those localities probably wouldn't get spring training. They'd probably just do it at their local stadiums and local practice fields once the weather's good enough up north in April and May. But I mean, we're all hoping they come to the agreement. I don't think anybody's optimistic though.

All right. So what do you guys give as a grade for this entire Major League Baseball season? I'm going to give it a B+. I'll start. I really liked ABS. I liked that the Dodgers lost. I thought that was super important. I liked that big teams were in there. I liked that we had some wildcards like Mizerowski outta nowhere. That the Pete Crow-Armstrong was really fun. The World Series, I just kind of wished we had a big market versus a small market. When it's the 2 small markets, It's tough. I don't really know who to root for, and I don't really have a vested interest. But if the Brewers had gone against the Yankees, I would've actually genuinely cared. But that might just be me. Did you care, DeBundo?

I did. I was excited to see the quality of the run prevention machines, which we'll get into the themes of the baseball season. But just these 2 teams who have been at the forefront of winning despite their low payrolls for the last 5 to 10 years. They've been the 2 teams that have kind of bucked the trend of small market teams generally not being as competitive as big market teams. Them along with Cleveland are kind of the exception that proves the rule. But they played baseball in a very different brand than a lot of the critics have complained. So many people, and this is my problem with the people who complain about the size of the markets, oh, we want to have small market teams compete. We don't want to just see the big teams. And then it's the same people who complain about, oh, everybody just hits home runs now. That's all baseball is, home runs, strikeouts, and walks. Well, you have these 2 small market teams who aren't reliant on the long ball, who bunt for hits, and who play great defense, and who run the bases and steal, all that. And then people complained about the World Series anyway.

So you really can't win with that. But it was not a particularly overwhelmingly competitive series where you felt like the series was swinging one way or the other on one pitch. That was not the case. And in fact, the single play that flipped the Brewers' championship odds more than any other happened in the second playoff game. It was Game 2 against the Padres when Churio hit the game-winning single off of Mason Miller. That was their turning point, their biggest play of the playoffs by championship win probability.

Yeah. House, I don't know how into the World Series you were, but it felt like There was so much interest in the first week of the NBA season, and I personally was so interested in it combined with all the NFL and the fact that Sunday NFL is now a 15-hour day. And then we have the Thursday, and it just felt like the World Series was thrown into all this other stuff. But that might just be me 'cause I love the NBA. Where were you? You like the NBA as much as me. Where did you stand?

Yeah, I invested in the series because I fell for the romantic narrative of the Brewers and the Brew Crew. Yeah. And all the references to Euchre like, you know, just all the old school, old guy stuff resonated with me. When I tuned in to watch chunks of games, there was a lot of no scoring. There was a lot of, you know, I just watched 3 innings and nothing happened sections of my life that I wouldn't mind getting back. But I did bet the Brewers at the outset. I bet the Brewers both to sweep the series and at 4-1.

Well, you almost had the sweep.

I

mean, they, they, the guy, The last inning when they were trying to clinch it, the third baseman grounded the throw and you kind of had the feeling.

Joey. Come on, Joey.

I didn't like that there were so many Brewer fans in Tampa for that. I mean, that had to have been the record for most fans of the other team descending on a World Series location. I didn't think that was great for Tampa, but—

Well, that's the history of it, right? I get it. These Milwaukee people wanna be there for history.

I get it. And the Milwaukee, It's awesome. Now they have 2 this decade in 2 different sports. Somehow neither of them are the Packers. And I thought they were, you know, they killed the Dodgers. That was when it was like, oh shit. You know, 'cause it seemed that Padres series was probably the most fun of all the series, right? Was that the best series, DeBando?

Yeah, I think so. That, or maybe if you go all the way back to the wildcard, Philly-Atlanta was really compelling for 3 games, but it was just the wildcard round. I think the one issue with this playoffs is that a lot of the individual games were compelling in themselves, but because Milwaukee just won all of them, because Tampa just won all of them, you ended up with kind of not competitive series. I mean, to only have 2 decisive games, Atlanta-Philadelphia wildcard game 3 and Chicago-Cleveland game 5, neither of which were that interesting either because they were kind of blowouts. Yeah. You never had that tension. I think a lot of people look back at last year's playoffs as one of the best playoffs of my lifetime, certainly.

Yeah.

Where you had that crazy Mariners game, Game 5 against the Tigers. You had a Tigers-Guardians Game 3. Then you had both rounds in the CS with the Mariners and the Blue Jays having a crazy Game 7. Phillies-Dodgers was awesome in that 4-game series. And then of course, the World Series topped it off. So there were so many swings back and forth this year. The 2 best teams kind of just bullied everybody and then the best team bullied the second best team.

Yeah. And the World Series last year just had big famous people in it. And this one had people that aren't famous yet, but probably, you know, became more famous or will be more famous down the road. But it was cool. I always love when the franchise that has either never won or hasn't won forever, when they win, it always feels a little more special. And if the Dodgers had won 3 in a row, people would've been so pissed off. That was probably the biggest win all around, right? If the Dodgers win 3 in a row, then everybody's going, ah, fuck, go ahead, have a lockout. This is— this sport's broken. Fuck this.

They broke the game. The game's over. Why bother? Yeah.

But

instead, I mean, they were preordained, but Milwaukee was better all year,

right?

People just chose to overlook that. And I get why. I mean, Milwaukee, go back to last year, they had all these great numbers and then scored 4 runs in 4 games. But they're better offensively, they're better bullpen, better defense, younger. which is another theory we'll get into. But all of the things that make him great.

Well, then the other

thing is

really special front office, which you and Billy Gilmore were talking about on this podcast before the season. This is basically the Sam Presti baseball team, the, you know, thinking outside the box, even watching somebody like Dustin May, who the Red Sox had last year for a month and just punted to the side. And now all of a sudden he's in these big playoff spots. Any other big subplots that stood out for you before we move on? To basketball football, for baseball, the bando?

I mean, I think there's 2 big things. One is ABS and how that has evolved.

Yeah.

Which was the thumbs up.

Thumbs up, right?

Well, here's my question, and this is going to be the next big question. If we have the technology, do you want it to go the way of tennis where they just automatically do it? Or do you like the strategy of the catcher and the hitters implementing it? Because we did see over the course of the season, that the usage went up more times per game. Teams got more aggressive with challenges.

Yeah.

Catchers were the team— were the players that were challenging more because they realized hitters are pretty bad at it, but catchers are really good at it. They have a better sense of the zone, so they saved them for catchers. They used it more. I think we're going to see more and more usage of this ABS, and I think that's just going to prompt the eventual conversation, which is why don't we just automatically have robots do this all the time and get it right all the time?

House has been for that since we were in college. You sign up for that, House.

No, I actually quite enjoy what they landed upon. I really love the human element. I really love the drama of it. I like it when the umps are right now. I think that—

You root for the umps?

They stumbled into a system where there's genuine moments of dramatic tension. And the way that they use the screen and all the rest of it is just magnificent. It understands. Baseball understands how to capture the fancy of this modern sports viewer. I thought it was magnificent. I wouldn't want to change it in any way, shape, or form.

Well, did you see the video of Yandy Diaz and William Contreras in Game 4 when Yandy challenged, or there was a pitch on the inside corner and Contreras taps his helmet to challenge? Yandy and William stare at each other. They have this little stare-down, and then they both look up at the screen at the same exact time. The broadcast cuts the half image of the zone. It's just inside by a half inch. And then they both stare at each other again and they smile. And this video went viral. It became one of the viral moments of the playoffs. That is exactly what House is talking about. Yeah. I don't want full robot takeover because there still is that moment. And I miss it. I go to the US Open every year. I miss the rhythmic clapping into the, was the ball in or out? Now we just know all the time. And there is an element of like, okay, I mean, I guess it's more right, but you know, the, the umps aren't that bad.

It is fun when there's a terrible ump that just gets the— he's just getting destroyed by the ABS is, is super fun. All right, so no baseball till Memorial Day. Give us, before you go, DeBono, give us your biggest football thing you're watching over the next couple weeks from a gambling standpoint.

Probably how Jeffrey Simmons changes the Bears defense. I mean, that unit is not Super Bowl ready. They're not even, you know, I think ready to compete at the top of the NFC without him. But with him, I think they're, they're going to be much better against the run, which has been something that's held them back this season and last season. So I think that, that group is one that maybe could make the leap into that top NFC tier with, you know, for me, I still have San Francisco, Seattle, and LA rated as the 3 best teams in the NFC. Going into the, into November here.

You know, I broke the news to Haus of that trade. We got a woe from Haus. We were texting. 2 first-rounders seems like a lot for a 29-year-old guy, but Caleb on the rookie contract, I just feel like you have to operate differently. And Haus, I, I said this to you this week, I, I already have the Bears at 14-to-1 to win the, win the Super Bowl just because I was so impressed by how they played in the Pats game. 'Cause I actually thought the Pats played well in that game. And the Bears, the combo of just Caleb being able to pull plays out of his ass, they can get explosives. I think their defense, even though I know it's funky and I know some of the advanced metrics don't love some of the things with it, it's kind of a pain in the ass when they're, they're doing the Flores ripoff stuff. Like, I'm gonna be really interested to see how Darnold handles it this weekend. They, it's something like, I feel like they have an identity. And I think by week 8, I wanna know the identities of these teams, right? What do you do?

What are you good at? What, what are you hanging your hat on? And with the Bears, like, I kind of get what they are and who they are, right? They're built around Ben Johnson and Caleb. They have like this really tenacious defense. They're gonna get explosive plays. And now they have to figure out if they can run the ball better. But I, to me, I would put them in the class with the NFC West. So, Debundo, you wouldn't?

Not with the way their defense looks. No.

Okay. Would you have— would you put it in the vicinity?

I'm willing to change that if their defense looks better.

I'm just going to sit tight. I want to see it against Seattle because it's a great opportunity. Seattle just got healthy in terms of the running back position and they got, finally got a 100-yard rusher and they were able to establish a little play action. We saw that offense finally showing a tiny bit of the rhythm that they fell into last year with Kubiak as the offensive coordinator. That's what that offense is supposed to look like. Not Darnold standing back there, 1.5, 2.5, right? Get rid of the effing ball or panic, Sam Darnold. No, they need to be play action. He needs to get the ball out of his hands. They were able to do that. And the addition of Quentin Nelson to that offensive line— did I say his name right? Quentin Nelson?

Yeah, that's amazing. That's how he's pronounced.

Incredible.

Yeah, good job.

Um, but like, if they, they, and they get both Charbonnet and Price back this week apparently.

No, but Charbonnet is coming off a torn ACL. I don't— people are going nuts for him in fantasy leagues and stuff, and it's like, is he gonna get 6 carries?

The point is, you know, if they establish anything run-wise, right, with the back committee,

I get it.

Yeah, that's all, that's all. So I, I, I already, I told you when you told me about the Super Bowl future that you bought that I had gotten in on the Bears by way of Caleb for MVP bet at 20-to-1. And I prefer to kind of— the Super Bowl is super hard. I

would just rather bet the Super Bowl than the conference because I think at that point you might as well just take the bigger odds. Debundo, do you feel weird that we put you on this Ringer Wise Guys Gambling Show and you have Sal who's just completely falling apart and now House who fell apart this week? We just put you with these old guys that Honestly, I don't know who's going to make it to the finish line. House, tell America what happened to you this week.

Yeah, I've been nursing a toothache really since we were together in Los Angeles. I kind of hid it for some of the incredible meals that we enjoyed together, but I could only really eat with the right half of my mouth. It turns out that I'm what they call a grinder, that apparently when I'm sleeping, I'm doing the thing where I'm grinding and I have a molar on the lower side, and I ground that and it cracked. And it finally—

Maybe you were hungry. Maybe you thought you were eating.

I'm sleeping, dreaming of Dave Chang's stew, obviously. But yeah, the thing cracked and it was a very unpleasant 72 hours. I couldn't sleep for 2 straight nights. And on top of that, I finally went in. I had scheduled an appointment with the dentist for the end of this week. I couldn't wait. I had to get some emergency care. They gave me the drugs. The drugs messed me up immediately, so I had to bail on the Tuesday pod. I couldn't do it. But I'm going to get this thing popped out on Monday and we'll see how it goes.

You know, it's interesting because I was on a text where I sent you and I think Sal or somebody a text like late night, like 11:00 my time. And you responded and I was like, why is House up at 2:15 Eastern time? I didn't know what was going on.

He was grinding.

I figured he was grinding. I thought maybe he was in pain. Coming out of a massage parlor or something. Yeah, I didn't know.

I felt bad complaining, um, considering Cousin Sal's penis, uh, but the mouth pain is, is unrivaled. It's so bad. You like— it's like it's— you get so into your head. Like, it's uncomfortable the whole time if it's like throbbing, vibrating. Like, goddamn it, give me the pain meds right now.

Yeah, I'm still going. I'm still going with penis pain.

Over-under 1.5 members of the Ringer Wise Guys will be on some type of drug for the show tomorrow between 7 and 8.

Sounds amazing.

Yeah. Should I take some?

The guy that does this with Rahim. Rahim's on a natural high at all times.

That's a great point.

House, uh, are we doing Halloween costumes tomorrow?

Oh, uh, nobody said that to me.

I will not. All right.

No,

it's not surprising.

DeBundo, what was your favorite pick this week?

I actually haven't decided yet for the Wise Guys. I gotta think about it, but I'm between the Bucs and the under in the Chiefs game. So

we'll see. All right.

2 good ones.

All right.

The Bucs are still gonna win the South. I'm putting that out there now. Just wanna—

That's great.

Just wanna plant the seed.

Plus 350, I think.

Listen, it would— I have a lot of futures from August. That would be wonderful if they somehow rallied. You can read DeBundo on the ringer.com. You can listen to him on Ringer Wise Guys, and he pops around on all the pods. Good to see you, Dabundo.

Thanks for having me.

See you tomorrow, ED.

All right, time for a mailbag, House. People love the mailbags.

Let's go.

Are you getting good feedback or are people scolding you? What's happening?

Oh no, well, both, obviously. Uh, I just want to say at the top, I, I am on drugs, so if I'm slower than usual— everybody already knows that I'm a little slow.

Somehow everyone I'm doing podcasts with lately is on some sort of medication. First one is from Colin in Portland, Oregon. He said, this idea feels like a good topic for House, which is always a— Okay. Always a buckle up. With the Brewers' recent World Series win, the Packers have moved into the cup chair for Wisconsin professional sports because they have watched both the Bucs and Brewers celebrate championships since their last Super Bowl victory. So he's saying this is like a championship cup chair.

I like this.

He said there are other strong cuck chair examples. For instance, the 49ers, vaunted franchise, have watched the Giants and Warriors win 7 titles and they haven't won anything.

Wow.

He wants to know how you rank the cuck situations. Is it a pure championship cuck situation? Or like in the case of the Seattle Mariners who were in the cuck chair after the Sonics won in '79, but then the Seahawks finally won. But the Sonics had left. So were the Sonics fans in the cuck chair, or did the Mariners stay in the cuck chair? I don't really know how to answer that, but I did— this did prompt me to go through all the cities and who the cuck chair team was. And you know who it is for Washington. It's, it's your, uh, Wizards.

Yes, of course, because Redskins have 3 Super Bowls since the—

since 1978.

Bullets won in '78. Yep. Even the baseball team, the Nationals, the—

The hockey team finally won, so.

Yeah, the Capitals and the Mystics all have championships.

Boston, it's the Bruins. New York City, it's the Jets. They haven't won since 1969. Everyone's cleaned out since then. LA's the Clippers, have never won. Niners for San Francisco. Philadelphia, it's the Flyers. They haven't won since 1975. Everybody

else won.

Wow. Denver's the Rockies. Houston's the Texans. Chicago is the Bears, which is amazing to me because they won when we were in high school. Uh, 2 crazy ones. Miami is the Dolphins. You'd have thought there's no way. How are the Dolphins— they were so good when we were growing up, but it's the Dolphins. And then Dallas is the Cowboys.

Yes.

The Cowboys are the cuck chair.

That's right. Yes, they are. Right where he belongs. He's comfortable with that.

Yeah, he's okay with it.

He's good.

But my favorite is Phoenix has the Suns and Cardinals, double cuck chair. It's like a loveseat sofa.

Do you have to wait? Did, did the hockey team— the hockey team left?

It never won, but it left. It's gone. It doesn't exist. It never happened.

But Diamondbacks won.

Diamondbacks won the Luis Gonzalez year. So we have a double cuck chair situation in Phoenix.

That feels like it makes sense as a retirement community. You can imagine weird shit going down there in Arizona. That's Bianco. I bet Bianco would make sense to him. There's a double cuck chair there.

John in Washington Heights said he's been listening since '08 when he used my stuff to avoid actually working in college. Thank you for that.

Great job.

I wanna thank you and House for the mustard pre-cum talk. I was about to ruin my sad, exhausted father of an infant dinner when the words mustard cum popped in my head, stopping me in my tracks. I would've just starved instead of eating it. So we're doing public service, House.

Okay, good.

Mustard juice. A lot of mustard juice conversation in the last week. Some people are wondering how mustard juice is even a real issue. Why, like, basically, like, you guys are idiots. When you have a mustard, you just shake it. It's—

That's true.

You should know how to do it.

But sometimes people don't do that.

Yeah, sometimes you forget or assume, oh, this is a new bottle. I assume the mustard's gonna come out anyway.

Yeah.

I was right about Utah being the mustard juice team. Utah Jazz, they're mustard juicing all over the place.

Couple more Ls, couple more Ls since, I mean, that's a close competition though

with him.

You think it's Utah versus the Heat? I mean, the Heat are, that's an abomination what's going on there in Miami. I know, but just be patient. Let it work out. Okay.

I watched them. I watched a lot of basketball last night, including those games around. There were some really good early games on Wednesday night. And they, they kind of bullied Atlanta. Okay. You could see the potential. First of all, the number one thing, this is why I was hesitant to ding them too much when I did my Power Poll Tuesday, 'cause they had moves to make before you could really officially panic. And the first one was send Klay Thompson out to pasture, which they did. They started playing Larson way more. So you knew that was coming. And then I think the next thing will be bigger lineups, but The—

they can run the offense through Bam. Bam knows what to do,

right?

Let, let Giannis get downhill. Don't put the ball in his hands until he's ready to come downhill.

I just think Giannis is really hard to play with. I said this last year and, you know, it's, it's this 1-on-5 stuff where he has the ball at the top and he's kind of the point forward, but not really, 'cause he just wants to get to the rim and you can, you need to have certain guys around him. But I, I think the thing that surprised me is that they're, they just haven't been good defensively.

Yeah,

that was when we were arguing about them over-unders. That was what I thought would be the secret sauce for them, would be the defense. And the defense is bad, but

yeah,

yesterday it didn't matter. Uh, Steve from Egmondville, Ontario wants to propose a Cal Hockley Award for the Coward of the Week that we could do in the mailbag based on Cal Hockley in the Titanic cowardly using a child to save himself from the Titanic. I guess that's the Billy Zane character. I don't know who, I haven't seen that movie in a while.

That's deep cut. I would not, I don't remember Cal.

But he said this week's winner should be Kawhi Leonard. Conveniently, after 2 games, his knee swelled and it'll be reevaluated right after the Raptors play the Clippers in Los Angeles. I was thinking this would, it would be great if FanDuel just gave us a goofy bet of the month because that would've been a great goofy bet of the month. Will Kawhi come up with an injury to get outta this Clipper game? What would the odds of that have been? -350?

I'm 98% sure you and I on this podcast had a conversation about whether or not he would play, because the joke included what the welcome back video would look like. I think it was in that conversation.

We did talk about this. You're right.

Yes,

we did pods for 5 hours, so we probably forgot it. But yeah, you're right.

Yeah.

And so anyway, he's missing the game.

Shocker.

Shocker.

Do you think they, do you think they acknowledge him in any— no, no chance they acknowledge him.

I mean, the highlight of the Clipper season would be them doing a Kawhi video. Like,

just nothing would be funnier. They would own the internet for 24 hours.

They might have to start trying stuff like that. I kept my seats, by the way. I forgot to tell you.

Good job by you.

Yeah, I knew you would. Worked it out.

It's the NBA.

You know what it is?

You like to see the NBA.

It's 3 people that fucked this whole thing up, but they have a lot of really nice people that work for the team. And I felt bad. I didn't feel bad for writing the letter, and I thought it was funny, but there's a lot of really nice people that work for the team. And it's like, why do they— why do they have to suffer? It's not like they were the ones funneling money through Aspiration.

One of the very funny bits that the Inside the NBA guys have been doing. And I mean, shout out to Ernie. What an amazing job by Ernie.

Unbelievable. What a— I wasn't surprised, but it still got a— oh, it got one of those for me.

It was touching. I felt the emotion. I enjoyed both the way that he did it and the way that they handled it on the show. And the show's been, I mean, an 11 out of 10 all season.

It's been really good.

But one of Chuck's funniest bits is like, But Ballmer, the, uh, unintended winner of the entire thing, he doesn't have to go watch that basketball team,

right?

Amazing, amazing bit by Chuck.

Apparently he can run the building.

Okay,

so he can—

I mean, it's his money.

He can go to— I think he can go and be involved in things. It just can't be the basketball. So, you know.

All right,

Ernie Johnson. What a run, man. I remember

A+.

TNT, when they started showing the games, what was that, in the early '90s or whatever? And it was Ernie and they would have either a current player or just retired player would do that. And they, they could never figure it out. And then the moment Barkley retired, everything fell into place.

Yeah. And then Kenny turned out to be a tremendous third wheel for them.

Yeah. Kenny's great. Whole thing's, it's a weird one. It did make me feel old though. It was like, wow, we're gonna lose Ernie.

Yeah.

It's the first,

sad,

like the, the 2 big ones were like that Inside the NBA crew together and the PTI guys. Those are like the, yeah, the 2. We lost Buck and Aikman. They're getting divorced. Like we're losing people left and right.

I can live with that.

Maybe people appreciate us. Carl F writes, the Vikings are undefeated. They are +430 to miss the playoffs. Look at the schedule. I really think they could miss. They could go 9-8. Go check it out. So I looked at this. They play the Lions this week. They're not favored.

They are not favored.

They play the Bills on Monday Night Football at home.

Okay,

that could be 6-2. It's

a

tough— next 2 weeks at Packers, and then they play the 49ers in Mexico. They can be 6-4 in 4 weeks.

Sure.

Home Falcons, home Panthers, at the Patriots on Thursday Night Football, home Lions, Commanders, at Jets, home Bears. And I bolded all the games I thought they would lose, and I got to 7. And 7 would be a 10-7. So that means if they lose Falcons, Panthers, Commanders, or at Jets, that would be 9-8.

10-7 makes the playoffs.

10-7, I think, makes it.

Yeah, I agree.

9-8, I don't think— I think it makes it.

I get to 10 as well.

So we, but it would have to be like a, a stupid loss, something. But we've seen this too many times. This team, I know, and, and I've gotten emails from Viking fans wondering why we're not giving them more credit, all that stuff. But I, I just think their offense is terrible. And the JJ McCarthy thing's embarrassing. It's terrible. And they shouldn't have won in week 1. And their defense has covered up a lot of warts. And I just, I'm not a believer. I'm just not. So we'll see. We'll see what happens this week. I did not have that in my Ringer 107 that we have coming up later. Mitch from Illinois wants to know, contracts aside, all 3 of these guys are roughly the same age. Who would you rather have on your team for the rest of their careers? Evan Mobley, Sengun, or Yaxel Lindenburg?

Oh my God. Contracts aside?

I don't think you do contracts aside. So I think we have to include contracts.

Well, if you include contracts, then it's Yaxel.

So if I did a trade value list right now, is Yaxel ahead of those 2 guys? I think he is because of the contract.

Sengun's so good and, and he's in exactly the right place. This is what Houston was missing last season. Sengun's really good. You know, the complaining all season long that people heard from us, we were like wondering aloud, what the F is going on in Houston? Why haven't they done something at the point guard position? Why are they running end-of-game possessions through Sengun? They have Kevin Durant. He's not bad at end of game. Yeah. But this setup where they have the size, they have the point guard and letting him be the best, he really does a great job of bully ball.

So it's probably Sengun. Yeah. Actually, we need to see another month.

Yeah. But what a— I bet him Rookie of the Year. I went ahead and did it. I don't care. I mean, I saw, I saw enough of this week. It was, it was nor— it was still 3-to-1 when I got it.

His second best odds now. Yeah, 3-to-1 on FanDuel, +210 for Boozer. The Rockets, when I did my Power Poll Tuesday morning, they were 19-to-1 and I had them first and I was like, this is a legitimate contender. Like, we have to take this team seriously.

Absolutely.

I think they had the 8th best odds. That's dropped to 16-to-1. They whacked somebody else again last night. I'm taking them completely seriously, but I, I cannot believe how good Yaxel is. Like, did you see Curry last night? Curry went from like he was walking dead, like, oh my God, what did I— like, I— he's like the, the husband who's staying in the, in the worst marriage possible, to all of a sudden he's like, oh my God, like, we can get Jimmy back. We might be able to trade Porzingis. Like, you can see like the spirit of This, this Yaxel thing has unleashed him. And he's—

I want to be respectful.

He's way— I knew he was big coming outta college, but when you see him with the other players, he's a legitimate 6'10.

You know what's so funny? Why did Dallas take Mores over Yaxel?

'Cause, 'cause of the coach. And because Mores, by the way, it was defensible 'cause Mores is, I think, 3 and a half years younger. So, and you have Flag who's 19. Maybe they were worried about the personality of Yaxel with Flagg. I mean, they basically are the same position, so it was a better complementary pick. But yeah, in retrospect, doesn't look awesome.

It's interesting. It's interesting.

And also, if Yaxel went to Sacramento at 7, would, would he have been Sacramento-proof?

No.

Could he have lit the beam?

No, no, definitely not. No, I mean, this is at least a reason Because we're stuck with all of the Golden State primetime games because it, it could be Steph's last season. Thank God. Thank God.

That's okay.

I guess I'm gonna send him a present.

I know.

I wanna send him a— thanking him for arriving in the league with the mindset, the attitude, the competitive fire.

The moment he gave shit to Luka, I was like, oh, what are we doing?

A+. Yeah, that was great.

They play again on Friday. So we have the top 4 rookies. And then we also have Yaxel. And I would say out of the top 4 plus Yaxel, I think Peterson's like the 5th best. Like even your guy last night, you could just see it. That's like, oh, this is—

Welcome to the league. Holy shit. Amazing.

What an exciting night for you with—

Super exciting.

Yeah.

Washington scored almost 70 points in the first half. It was the most beautiful offensive basketball the Washington Wizards have, have played in a decade. It was magnificent. I couldn't believe it. Now they went off of that game plan in the second half of the Cavs. change their defense.

Well, you got a little, you got a little taste of Trae Young in the last 4 minutes of a game.

Yeah. Yeah.

The grenade passes. Yeah. The 3-pointers with 20 seconds left in the shot clock. Team's hunting him. You got, you got the full package.

We've got the full package.

I would, I said this Tuesday, I'm gonna say it again. I would trade Anthony Davis today. Like, no, 'cause he looks healthy and athletic right now. I would trade him before he gets hurt. Golden State. I don't hate it. Any interest?

I seriously don't hate it. I've, I've loved what I've seen out of him thus far. It's clear that he made a commitment to himself and to the team in the offseason, right? Yeah. The stuff they run through him is very successful and he's like out there balling because he wants the league to be put on notice and he's done a great job. I think you're right. His value's not going to be any higher than right now. I have absolutely no problem at all with the idea of moving on.

Adam from Waterloo, Ontario. He's listened to me and the cuz on Sunday night brainstorming names for the return PAT when the defense returns it, what that should be called. I was saying it should be the DeRozan cuz somebody sent that. He wants to know why it's not the 2-point reversion. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Now, I did have a déjà vu of like, I feel like I've done bits on this before, but I couldn't remember.

I agree.

David writes in, on one of your very first Ringer podcasts, October 2015, I wrote in to suggest you call the blown extra point that's returned for 2, failed attempt returned for 2, acronym FART.

Yeah. Okay.

No one has come up with anything better in the last 11 years. I thought I'd run it back. So we just call it a FART.

Fine with that.

The 2-point reversion, AKA the fart.

That's very good. Yeah.

Michael Stein writes in, at the risk of dating myself, is Amen Thompson's block of Wemby from Friday night like when Lex Luger body slammed Yokozuna? Wemby's a freak. I wish him well, but he's now lost that aura of invincibility. I don't know if I agree.

The body slam of Andre the Giant was much more consequential to me. That was the true— when Andre, uh, who, who picked— oh, Hulkster picked him up and bodyslammed him, right?

Yeah, WrestleMania 3. That ended the Hulkster. I think Wembley's fine. Wembley's gonna— that team will— they'll get Tobias Harris back and they'll probably rip off 21 of 22 wins, and Wembley will be the MVP favorite, and that's where it's going. Nick from Long Island actually has a question about Cousin Sal. He said he's won back-to-back weeks in Guess the Line and went 5-0 in his ringer 107 picks last week. It's reminded me of Kurt Angle in TNA Wrestling when he was doing backflips on 15-foot cages on Percocets and we were calling him Perk Angle. My question is, do we call Cousin Sal Cousin Perk or Perk and Sal? Love to hear your thoughts. He's obviously the oxy Cousin Sal.

Perk Angle is phenomenal, by the way. It just kills me. I thought that's so good. But yeah, Sal's not taking Percocet, so we, we can't work Percocet into it. He's taking OxyContin and he's talking about it. Yeah. You know, he's, he's, he's copping to it. This is his only way, means of survival.

I did side text with Jimmy about it and Jimmy's not worried about it, so I'm not gonna worry about it either.

What'd you say? Oxy? What did you call it?

Oxy cousin. So oxy cousin.

Oxy cousin. Yeah. Oxy cousin. Yeah.

I would've been funny if like his picks, if he was just on fire and then he felt like he, it was like the limitless drug he had to keep taking.

He has to stay on it.

He has to stay on it. He's like 20-0 in Ringer 107.

Then he, then that's it. That's the answer. He would do it. He would, there's no question about it.

He would sacrifice everything to have good picks.

He would write that. It would be in his second book or whatever the, uh, you know, the, the what updated version of his book. I wondered about Cotton Sal, not Cousin Sal, Cotton Sal.

Cotton Sal. We'll let him pick. I'll bring it. I'll mention it to him on Sunday night. Dr. Don wrote in. This is, I don't know who Dr. Don is,

but is he a real doctor?

Apparently. He's starting to get over his Luka trade dysphoria. He's a Mavs fan while watching Cooper Flagg ascend. Cooper Flagg. Wow. Did it again last night.

It's great.

He asks, has any other franchise's top 3 players all time in the NBA been white? And he points out Dirk, Luka, and Flagg. That is true. Those, those probably are gonna be their 3 best players ever. 3 white guys. What were the odds of this? I can't even think of one that would have 2 white guys as their, as their best players of all time. Yeah. If you do a top 3 for every franchise,

I'm speechless.

Even the Celtics, just Bird. Who's even in the running? Nobody. I mean, this is—

no, I mean for, for Dallas, like the top 10 Dallas Mavericks of all time.

Mark Aguirre.

Yeah.

I, I mean, that, that's really it.

We're at a loss.

Kyrie.

I know, I was thinking Kyrie. I mean, they wouldn't put him ahead of Luka.

See, Dallas, the Luka trade, by the way, would you rather have Luka for the next 10 years or Cooper Flagg? From

what you said, I mean, it's, it's, it's terrific. It's terrific.

Who would you rather have?

Easy. Cooper.

Yeah, I think it worked out for the Mavs.

Maybe it's not as easy as I'm making it, but I love Luka.

Cooper is one of the best young players I've ever seen in my life, and I cannot believe he's 19. Like, I, I, I just don't understand it. This guy's a freak. This is, this is starting to look like when, not to compare him to Tiger Woods, but when Tiger just showed up and was just giving it to everybody. When he, how old was he that year? '97? He came in in '96, but he was '97. He was probably like 20 or 21.

He was 21. 21, I think. Yeah, I think so.

And we were like, he's not just gonna kick these guys' asses, all right? And then he just started kicking everybody's asses.

My— the only thing that I want to tap the brakes on is, um, we need him to, to be healthy. Like, he— we need his 19-year-old body.

His playing style is not conducive to 8 months a year. I agree with that.

It is not. It is not.

David from Bentonville said he's a Colts fan watching in pain as his team's stripped for parts, but at least I know now that football terrorist Chris Ballard is gone. I no longer have to endure football nerds telling me how brilliant he is as a GM. We can officially deem him the Justin Herbert of GMs, someone that football nerds and writers constantly tell us is good, even though he has no accomplishments whatsoever. Who else would win the Herbert Award for their positions?

Oh my God.

I wrote some down. QB, Justin Herbert.

Fine.

Wide receiver, Jaylen Waddle. We

always

hear how great Jaylen Waddle is. Has he ever been on a good team?

I don't know.

He went to Denver. Nothing's happened since he got there.

In that Miami offense, you know who's a better candidate?

Who?

Well, it's probably not fair.

Who?

I mean, he did, he, he was on a Super Bowl winning team.

You gonna say AJ Brown?

I was gonna say AJ Brown.

Too soon. I think it's Jaylen Waddle. Breece Hall for running back.

Eh, you can't put any Jets on that list.

Who would you put for running back?

That's a hard one. Who, like, I don't know, running backs that, that got drafted highly and never panned out. But

the ballsy pick here would be Derrick Henry, but I'm not gonna do it.

He does fumble his way into—

I don't remember seeing him in a Super Bowl.

Game-changing outcomes. Game-changing outcomes.

I put LaPorta for the tight end and I have Sauce Gardner at cornerback, and I think Trey Hendrickson is at defensive end.

Oh, that's all I have.

Sorry. Who's the coach though? Who's the Justin Herbert, Chris Ballard of coaches? Is it Matt LaFleur?

I, I love that. That's a great call. Okay. It, it ha— I think it is.

Matt LaFleur.

Good.

This comes from DJ in Miami. Every week Pat McAfee gets upset about something, and then a bunch of media people immediately do posts and podcast segments to suck oxygen from whatever happened. This appears to be ESPN's sole reason to have the McAfee Show, unless I'm missing something. You never talk about McAfee. Have you seen his ESPN show? Do you care? Hopefully you'll answer this question with House. And then a couple of blogs will aggregate your response to fulfill their daily McAfee content fix. These people need to eat. As an aside, I live in Miami and getting content outta McAfee has been a miracle for Dan Levitard, who literally stopped watching sports 12 years ago when LeBron left. Maybe he can get a clip outta this too. You're helping other people here, Simmons. That's from DJ in Miami. I don't have a comment on Pat McAfee, but I did wanna start a new segment called Aggregate Me. Where I say something specifically to get aggregated. And here's today's segment on Aggregate Me. The Lakers guy doesn't have the money yet.

What's that mean?

That $12.5 billion that he has to pay to, uh,

yeah,

Mark Walter. Yeah, he's still searching for about $5, $6 billion of it and doesn't have it yet.

Wait, who are you talking about? You're talking about Josh Kushner? Yeah, Kushner and Iger.

Yeah, and guess, here's the other thing. Guess who's not putting in really any money? Bob Iger. He's putting in the minimum. The minimum's like $63 million. That's what he's putting in. So Kushner has to find all this other money, but this is a lot of money and the deadline's coming. And I think they're using the Busch family as scapegoats for why the deal's dragging along, but he can't find the money.

I can find the money. Can you?

Can you find like 4 or 5, billion-dollar guys that will come in and buy whatever percentage he—

You know who could find the money?

Who?

Will McDonough. Oh, Will.

Our guy Willie.

That's it. Yeah. Put him on the case.

Well, he's looking for the— he's looking for a—

I want a percentage.

He's looking for the thing. It's, it's, people think this deal's gonna be done. I don't know if, I don't know. I'm just, I'm— Interesting. Interesting.

It's, it's interesting.

The Celtics hit a spot where it became a little nerve-wracking with the money. And then the Mattel family came in with like a billion dollars. Yeah. And that was like the final thing. This one, they need like 5 Mattels. So we'll see what happens. Connell in Ridgewood, New Jersey, which was where the Simmons family lived, my dad's family, for a while.

Oh, great golf course.

He says, I'm a Nets fan for almost 30 years. About 90% of the Nets fans I know, or the Nets fans I talk to online, are from New Jersey. We'd love to have them back. They need to move back and lean into the Jersey identity, something they never did during the decades they played here. Iconic New Jersey celebs like Bon Jovi, Jon Stewart, and Anne Hathaway, they're all celebrity Knicks fans. They could play at Prudential. They no longer have to play in a swamp near the highway. We have Netflix and Paramount Studios. We held a World Cup final, and the population's been growing. It's time to get the Nets back. I fully support this.

I don't hate it.

I really like it. Yeah. Because it's not like the Brooklyn Arena's a new arena now. It's been around for 15 years. They can have the Liberty play there. They can have concerts, whatever. But bring the Nets back to Jersey I support that.

That's pretty good.

And bring the next jersey without Sean Marks would be my other advice. Don't bring Sean.

That would be the— yeah.

Adam R. from Vancouver, parentheses, always home to the Grizzlies. He said, our fine host BS, I guess that's me, has noted that he bucks all research and knowledge of the safety of seatbelts in exchange for enjoying the feeling of being unencumbered in the driver's seat. I've been wearing my seatbelt for the last few months, just for the record.

Good job.

Yeah, I'm used to it. I get in the car, I put it on.

That's what you're supposed to do.

He says we should recognize and reward the eschewing of common wisdom for a joyous feeling with the Bill Simmons Seatbelt Award every NFL season. This year can go to Sean McVay for shunning any attention to special teams. He wins the Bill Simmons Seatbelt Award. It is true. Sean McVay is like, ah, I'm not buckling up. Let's just go with another weird kicker and let's not, know how to return kickoffs or defend them.

He's basically just talking about unprotected sex, which I certainly endorse.

House.

In most instances.

The medication's kicking in on House. Oh, I had the Cousin Sal special and somebody suggested Baltimore last week would be the reverse Cousin Sal special. You bet on them for the first half to lose the game. Maxim, who's apparently a Bulgarian NBA sicko, he thinks it should be called the Stringer Bell. Stringer Bell looked unstoppable for the first half of The Wire through about 2 and a half seasons. And by the end of season 3, spoiler alert, getting shot by Omar. I like that, the Stringer Bell bet.

It's very good. I mean, you don't want to take the shine away from Cousin Sal.

No.

The Cousin Sal special is still— Pretty important.

Joe Otis in Cherry Hill says, I'm lucky enough to have a job where I can listen to podcasts, so thank you for nearly ruining that arrangement when you suggested Freddy Krueger whacked Epstein on The Nightmare on Elm Street's rewatchables. I had to explain to coworkers why I was laughing uncontrollably. Long overdue episode delivered. Sorry about that. CR no-sold my Epstein Freddy Krueger joke. I'll forgive him like a week from now. Anyway, he says, My question, which says more about where you are in life? An algorithm full of fight videos or an algorithm full of AI-generated videos of obese people getting kicked out of all-you-can-eat buffets and absolutely losing their mind? And if you're getting both, is that good or bad?

Oh no. Oh no.

I've never seen the buffet videos. I have— I do have a lot of fight videos. I'm just getting served NHL fights and fights in Austin, Texas, for some reason.

I'm pretty happy with what I get served, especially on Instagram. There is a ton of nostalgic hardcore punk from my '80s era, and I can't get enough. I always stop and listen to it. I like the freestyle rap guy Harry Mack. I think he's phenomenal. I feel like if you studied that guy— you know who Harry Mack is?

Yeah.

Yeah. If you, you know, in the way that they said that Shakespeare had a vocabulary of something that was like 2 exponents larger than the rest of humanity, there's something going on in that guy's brain I'd love to get to the bottom of. Sorry, Harry Mack. Huh?

Shout out to Harry Mack.

Yeah. Shout out to Harry Mack. He deserves it.

Brian C wants to know if we should start calling the Pittsburgh Steelers the Zombie Steelers because we don't have the Zombie Heat anymore. Hmm. I think if they win the Browns this week, beat the Browns this week, I think there's a case for that. Brian K. in New Jersey wants to know if ESPN should actually be leaning more into the Buck-Troy Aikman dispute. Like instead of pretending it's not happening, lean into it in the broadcast. He suggests Laura Rutledge with the postgame player interview. Dak, that was a great win. What went through your mind when you first heard about the Buck-Aikman feud? It is pretty sad.

Is it a feud? Has it risen to the level of a feud?

You get to call— They had their disagreements. Analyzing the body language of them in the booth and stuff.

It's endlessly fascinating.

Doesn't seem like Aikman's coming back.

Doesn't seem like it.

So Sal and I talked about— I talked about Deshaun Watson and how we needed a dessert-type nickname for him because he's like a terrible meal where the appetizers and the entrees are terrible, and then he comes in with like the most amazing dessert. And that's kind of how he's played football. football this year, right?

Yeah.

I can't tell you how many people emailed and said, how did you miss the happy ending joke with Deshaun? And I wasn't gonna mention it on the pod, but after 430 emails of people making the same joke, I just wanted to acknowledge that those emails were coming in.

It's an acknowledgement. Thank you to the internet.

Derek from Eugene, Oregon. Said he's closely been following the El Cheapo saga, just moved to Oregon.

Hmm.

And it led to him, if they relocated, he had 2 questions. First one is, if the US wanted a new 4-sport city, a city that has no sports at all, where 4 teams could be relocated tomorrow with no tears shed by any of the cities that lost the teams, What would the city be and where would the— and who would the teams be? And he said he came up with the Anaheim Angels, the Pelicans, the Los Angeles Chargers, and the Columbus Blue Jackets as the 4 teams. I'm gonna push back on one of those in a second. But he asked us to come up with an answer. I think it's— I wouldn't have the Anaheim Angels 'cause they, Orange County's a ba— like they, they should have a good team. Yeah. They've had a bad owner.

They get 36,000 people at every goddamn game. They're, they're like always 10th, 11th, 12th in attendance. They get incredible numbers. I've long wondered how, why is there a team in Anaheim?

Nobody cares. 'Cause there's a million people who just wanna go to games.

They love to go to games.

I'm replacing them with the Marlins.

Okay.

Who I think were second to last in attendance and nobody's understood why they've had a baseball team. Sorry, Billy Gil. I, I apologize in advance.

Respectfully.

Pelicans, I think, are the team in the NBA. Great. Chargers are 1,000% the team in the NFL.

Yeah.

And the Blue Jackets, their highlight of the last 10 years was when I made fun of them in a mailbag last year and they got all mad about it. So those would be my 4. I'll offer you the following 3 markets, Haus. Hartford, Austin, or Columbus. We could move all 4 of those teams to one of those cities. You pick.

What do you think?

So Columbus I kept because then they would just keep— they would get the Blue Jackets back and maybe just rename them and just start over like it's a brand new franchise.

I mean, the answer is Austin. Like, the only problem with Austin is they can't build those roads. They're— the infrastructure— I was down there a year ago. Between that, that basically Austin to San Antonio, you have to have KG on. You have to Kirk on Goldsberry so he can explain, like, you know, he's, he's actually living it.

I don't, I honestly don't think they could handle it. I think the traffic would be horrific.

It's one metropolitan area almost now from Austin to San Antonio.

Yeah.

So you would have to like, you know, have the stadiums and stuff in, in places where, yeah, 'cause it, it's crazy now.

So,

but it's an amazing city though. I love, I love Austin so much. It's, I love San Antonio.

Well, if you tweak the question, maybe you would say every— the city that has no teams, maybe you say they have one team. And then you could say Austin-San Antonio as like a place that would have 4. I just can't imagine anyone going to hockey games in Texas. I wanted to make the case for Hartford for a second.

Go ahead, I'll listen. I don't understand why people in Texas wouldn't go to hockey.

Just for Jacko.

Hockey's fun. Yeah, Hartford for Jacko. Let's do it.

Dead center, just far enough away from Boston and New York, right? So not— it's competitive, but not really. And then you have the whole middle Connecticut area, but then you also have the outskirts of Western Mass. You have the, the Western Connecticut where like Stamford, Greenwich, all those places are. And you also have a proof of concept with UConn basketball.

Hmm, that's pretty good.

You have ESPN there. You have a lot of nice places all the way around. There's some businesses. I think it would—

I don't think it's as good of a—

4 teams is a lot. 4 teams is a lot.

4 teams is a lot.

Well, the real answer is no city could accommodate 4 teams, but Hartford's the 33rd biggest Nielsen market. Austin's 34th. But anyway, those would be my 4 teams. And then James from Australia wanted to know if Tampa has a chance to be the defining team of the 2020s, the defining sports city of the 2020s. Here's how he said it. If you look at championships by decades, 1960s Boston, '70s Pittsburgh, '80s Los Angeles, '90s Chicago, 2000s Boston, 2010s Boston, and 2020s, LA and Tampa are in the lead right now. Tampa has 3 titles. They almost just won a 4th. They won 2 Stanley Cups and a Super Bowl. We're halfway through the decade, House.

I was like, how many Stanley Cups?

They won 2. They won back to back with the—

Yeah, they did.

Freaking— what's their team's name? The Lightning?

There's no way for me to expound upon this without being disrespectful to hockey. So I'm just gonna— I'll just be quiet.

Last question's from Brad H. from Pittsburgh. How is Dickhouse not the sponsor of Eat a Big Dick segment? He thinks your dad should record a little outro for the segment where it says, I'm Dickhouse. I'd like to cordially invite you to eat me. He'd probably do that.

Oh, he would definitely do that. He wouldn't— it would require very little.

Did you have— did you have anybody queued up for this week? For this week's—

No, no, I— okay, no, because, you know, my molar— I'd like my molar to eat a fat dick, and that's why it's about to come out of my mouth. And I'm gonna send it away to where it deserves to go.

Good.

By the way, I read that, I read that email last week about how I was the Bills-Berg Steelers, how I was 3-2 or 2-3 every week.

Yeah.

And I was due to go 2-3 and I went 2-3.

Oh, son of a bitch.

So now I'm gonna go 3-2. Apparently this is just what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life.

Yeah. I went 4-1, my best season week of the season.

And Sal went 5-0.

Yeah. Great job, Isa. It's the continents.

I'm taking the Ravens first. Ravens +3. Okay. I'm rolling the dice. Lamar's practiced twice in a row. Yeah. It was 3.5 for a long time. I don't, I think this number might even go down.

Yep. If he's confirmed, it'll be 2.5.

He's full practiced 2 weeks in a row, so I'm, I'm grabbing the number.

Buffalo, I like it.

Buffalo's defense stinks. Yeah. These games are always awesome.

Yes.

I think Baltimore, it's, it's not a kitchen sink game 'cause they're 4-3, but they are in 4th place in the AFC North with 2 teams above them playing each other. And you know, they've had a weird season. with Lamar, with some, some injuries on both sides of the ball, some Henry fumbles. They've blown a couple games they shouldn't have, have lost. And most importantly, these games are just— oh, this game's gonna be awesome. I'm positive this game is gonna be awesome and it'll be back and forth and somebody's gonna win by 3 points.

And yes, I have— Or less.

Yeah. So I'm either gonna push or it's a 1-point or 2-point, I win. Yeah. I think the Ravens are actually gonna win. I don't believe in the Bills at all. Yeah, but it's in Baltimore, so who knows. But I just, I like the spot for them, and I'm gonna take Ravens +3.

No argument. Um, I like the number. I definitely think that Lamar is playing, so the number will be under 3 by the time Sunday rolls around. They'll confirm it on Saturday. Uh, no notes. They're always close games between these 2.

What do you have for your first?

I had a hard time with this week, to say right off the top. I'm gonna go ahead and lay it with Tampa. I think that, you know, anytime you get a defense that's, you know, top 5 in both rush and pass success, Yep. you have an identity. The only thing that undermines that identity is the head coach, and it's a perpetual, you know, state of fear at end-of-game situations especially. But I like the idea of Atlanta. Like, they have a couple statement games now, the Falcons, but they always follow it up with some kind of, you know, just inexplicable disastrous showing. Yeah. Like no showing. They're a no-show team. I like the idea of this Tampa defense getting pressure on Penix. Penix's numbers against pressure aren't great, but it's really the run game of Tampa that impressed me so much last week. And I don't think it's a fluke. It looks like Tampa's going to be healthy on all those skill positions offensively. And I think they can establish the run and I'm just going to go ahead and trust their defense. They are still, this is a must-have. This is really their entire season.

They are in the mix for their division still.

Keep saying that with them.

They are in the mix for their division because they, they, they won their only division game thus far. If they go ahead and beat The Falcons this week, they will be 2-0 in their division even though they'll be 3-5 on their season. I'm gonna go ahead and, and lay the points with Tampa.

I'm sad to report I have them as well, and I think it's too obvious and a lot of people have them. But the, the, the issue for me is this is, it's -2.5 right now, and I think, I think this ends at 3 or 3.5.

Yeah.

The, but the stats with the Bucs defense, like they're, They're top 5 in DBOA.

Yes.

They've held— DeBando had this in his column today— they held Carolina, Pittsburgh, Dallas, and Green Bay to under 20 points in regulation. You're not gonna be able to run the ball on them. That's been the one thing they've shut down. Igboke comes back, and I'm with you. I, you know, I had Carolina last week and Tampa ran all over them, and I thought they found something just in general. Like, it was like they remembered that Bucky Irving was their best player on offense. They didn't ask Baker to do a lot. And they're gonna be home. It's the Falcons outside. And, and I think the Bucs need the game more. And it's just, this is the NFC South in a nutshell. Now, shame on us for betting on the NFC South, but I think this line goes up and I wanna grab it. Yeah. While, while it's at -2.5. And I think the only reason it's not 3 or 3.5 is 'cause Baker Mayfield might have a fucked up thumb. He threw 11 times last week.

Didn't need to throw. Yeah. Didn't matter. A whole nother week for that hand to get healthy.

But I'm fully prepared. I, I, I'm already— this is an ankle grabber. I'm already to get screwed on this one.

As am I. I'm right there.

What do you have for your third one?

It's my second.

Or your second?

'Cause you've given 2. This is the most obvious play of the week and this is the squarest play of the week and I'm definitely Here for it. I'm gonna go ahead and lay the 9.5 with the Jaguars. We went, you know, to the, to the well last week with the moron Texans, and finally we can just cross them off. Yeah. I don't have to, to fiddle with those morons any longer. The lack of preparedness, the lack of execution. I don't want to do the entire litany of disaster areas that the Tex— Houston Texans this season Occupy. Let's talk about—

I have actual hatred for the Houston Texans. None of the human beings on the team, but just them as a whole. They've hurt my feelings. They've cost me money. They've made me feel stupid. They made me feel embarrassed for myself that I trusted them again. Sports shouldn't make you feel this way. They just make me angry.

Is there one person in America that can advance a defense of DeMeco Ryans? Can— is there one? Anyone? No, I, I'm here to listen. Who, who— what's the case for him keeping his job?

I don't understand with all the players they have why they're not a scarier defense. You watch a defense like the Bears and it's like the Bears have at least figured out how to be like a little intimidating. How is this Houston team? You just roll over them whenever you want.

You get pushed around. You can run right down their throat. The Giants out-physicalled them. They kicked their ass. It was awful. They blew 'em off the line of scrimmage.

It's hard to take Houston seriously after that.

They wanted front 4. But you know, I only go on that side tangent for the purpose of observing that that was a pretty obvious play last week and he took it right in the teeth because it was like, look at JJ McCarthy against this defense. Well, JJ McCarthy was up to it. I can't make a case for the Colts. As soon as the, the Jags get up by the 2 scores I expect them to, the game's over. Dimes can't move. It was the handicap coming into the season for taking Colts unders, just being skeptical. I, I was confused, confounded in the entire run-up to the season. The Colts kept saying Jones is gonna be ready. He's gonna be our quarterback. Jones is ready. He's our quarterback. Well, he arrived and he's playing quarterback, but he, he's a third less effective 'cause he can't run.

Right.

So if he can't run, then the, the playbook has to change. Now they do have the injuries in term— in the receiver room.

It wasn't— but doesn't qualify as a year from hell, but nothing went right for them. No. And it was a poorly constructed team to begin with, unfortunately.

And I'll go ahead and take them on the sell-off week. I'll go ahead and fade them in the week, you know, like, oh, that's a go play for Nelson. Yeah, let's go play for Buckner. No, let's, let's, let's let the Jags— if the Jags are legit and serious, and we think that they are, then they should win this game by 10 points. And, and I don't have a problem with them covering margin.

That's fair.

They're home. That also helps. The Colts haven't won down there in 13.

You figure the Jags will have 3 games this year where they win by like 27 points, and I think they've already had 2 of them. All right, I'm doing a tease for this next one.

Okay.

And the first side is easy. It's Patriots -7 in Miami. Now there's a tortured history of the Pats in Miami. They're under .500 even in the last 25 years, I think, for, for, for, I think dating back to whenever they built that stadium. A lot of tough memories. The Gronk failing to tackle the guy on the, on the trick play. Brady blowing the 10-point when everybody and their brother had the 3-team tease with the Pats on Monday night. We've had a lot of bad ones there growing up. I don't feel like we ever won there when I was a kid. So I'm gonna mention all that. It's gonna be humid. It checks some boxes, which I think is why this line is, is at -7. Miami won last week. Miami's terrible. Miami probably won the one game they're gonna win this season, and this Pats team is a perfect matchup for them. They're just gonna throw the ball all over them. This is Drake Maye lights up shitty teams. This is one of the, one of the great things about having Drake Maye. And I just am expecting us to beat Miami by 1 point.

So I'm going to lower it to -1. I feel like we're gonna be prepared for Malik Willis.

It's because you've lived your whole life with this, these Miami games being—

I get it. I don't like betting the Miami game. I don't. I don't.

Why wouldn't you just lay the 7?

Fair question. Um, because that— because they're in Miami and I just think they, they need— they'll win by 3 and it'll be a stupid nightmare of a game.

Okay. Because I, I came— I'm not gonna say anything.

I am. I had 2 choices for who I was gonna tease them with, and I think it's gonna be the Broncos +1.5 against the Chiefs. I'm gonna take the Broncos to 7.5, which reduces my Bo Nix risk factor. Okay. I did really think about Broncos +7.5 with the under of 46.5. Following cases for the Broncos here: revenge game because they were humiliated in Week 1. Their defense, they're 5th DVOA now, even though, um, counting week 1 when they got shellacked by the Chiefs, they're still a top 5 defense. Jonah Coleman's back, who I think's their best running back. But now, now their backfield's in place where they have him, they have Harvey as the 3rd down guy, a little Dobbins. I think they'll be able to run the ball on the Chiefs. Chiefs receivers stink. Bad offensive line on the road, always a good one. Yeah. That's the Chiefs. Mahomes honestly has looked like a C+ for most of the year. Nobody wants to say it, but it's a fact. KC, after week 1, they beat Indy by 3. They beat Miami in that late game where it felt like Miami was not only gonna cover, but maybe even send it overtime.

And then they made a stupid play. They beat Vegas by 3, and then they whooped the Chargers in week 6.

Yep.

I just think the, the Broncos, When you throw in the revenge piece and that they can sheet the Bo Nix thing and just try to take a lead and then not fuck it up. And I think the receivers on the Chiefs are just awful. Yeah. Like really horrible. Like, and I know they have injuries and stuff, but at some point you need guys who can get open and I don't think they have guys that can get open. So bringing them up to 7.5, and I think that'll either be Broncos winning or it'll be a close loss.

They're supposed to get Surtain back, right?

Yep.

Isn't that the— and, and Hufanga is still 50/50.

Surtain's definitely back.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, good. All right. Yeah, I like it. I mean, there's a good case. The spot is, is supposed— you're supposed to play Denver. And a bunch of your observations, I mean, I faded the Chiefs and, and, you know, probably paid a price for it at the outset of the season because I was skeptical about how effective Mahomes was going to be. Well, he hasn't been that effective, And if you look at all of the advanced metrics, what they've been able to do is run the ball. And so the Kenneth Walker—

And then Seattle's like, you, you won't be running the ball today.

Yes.

What's your plan B?

Who can replicate that? Well, Denver would be a team that I think is capable of, of, you know, matching that same kind of blueprint. So I understand the idea of that.

I don't know if this is gonna help the running game as a backup for Walker, but the, the Chiefs signed O.J. Simpson today.

I'm gonna not comment on that.

He's gonna back up Kenneth Walker.

Not gonna comment on that.

What do you have for your next pick?

I'm gonna take, oh gosh, I'm gonna go ahead and lay the 7 with the Pats. Oh, look at you. I just like Drake Maye when he plays shit teams. His track record's tremendous.

Yeah.

over his career, 12-4 against the spread anytime the line is 3 or more. Um, and it's the case that you made about, you know, they're going to throw the ball all over the ball field. And when you, you give Vrabel the challenge, you, you have to stop the mobile quarterback. Okay. I think Vrabel, as opposed to Aaron Glenn, I think Vrabel will have a game plan for that.

Yeah.

The reason that I'm, I'm Especially kind of, uh, bullish on this is like the, the Finns were holding on for dear life at the end of that game. I mean, notwithstanding all of the buffoonery out of the, the Jets masterminds, the Jets were right there. Um, if they'd used their timeouts properly around the 2-minute, um, timeframe, they might've even gotten the ball back. They gave up a 4th and 1, but I think coming off of the high of their first victory, they got to pour water on the coach and celebrate everything. It's back to reality. 7 or less for me is fine. I'm gonna go ahead and lay it with the Pets.

I left out something in my tease analysis of the game that Vrabel used to coach Malik Willis.

Good point. Interesting. Has a perspective.

Yeah. I think he liked him as a guy, but— so for my last pick, I had a couple that I liked, including the Jets -1.5 at home against the Raiders. And I've decided I just don't want to take the Jets. I cannot do the Aaron Glenn thing. I just can't.

Can't.

I looked hard at Browns +3.5 in Pittsburgh. But they've already beaten Pittsburgh. Granted, it was on Thursday night. The stats going around about how the last 2 seasons teams are 0-8 coming back from Europe the next week.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That stat's been too omnipresent and I just couldn't get around Desert Deshaun in, in Pittsburgh. I, I just couldn't get there.

Yeah. Good, good job by you.

Bears, you know, the Bears-Seahawks. Congrats. What?

The Browns haven't won in, in Pittsburgh in 22 seasons.

Yeah, it's just too much going.

There is that.

Bears-Seahawks.

Other than the playoffs, I'm talking about regular season.

Bears-Seahawks Monday night.

Whew.

Bears +3.

Yeah.

I'm gonna wait on this. This might be my Sunday pick. I wanna see if this nudges up to 3.5. I don't think it's gonna go down.

Yeah.

I think the Bears can absolutely win this game. I'm not scared of the 3. To me, these are playoff rules. I think this is an NFC title matchup potentially. And I keep looking at this game thinking Bears with that crazy Flores ripoff defense against Darnold, who only has one receiver to throw to. They're not gonna, they haven't proven yet that they can run the ball and control it. I felt even that KC game, KC, their defense just won the game. They got a lead and the game was over. The Bears are gonna be able to come back on that. I was looking at them as a tease +3, but I, I think I'm gonna wait on it. Okay. So I promised I would do this 2 weeks ago if the pick won. I did the Steimans pick. My friend that bet with, with Jeff, we did it 2 weeks ago. It was like, oh, the classic Steimans pick would be this. And if this wins, I'll start doing it. Then I forgot to do it last week. And if I had done it last week, I would've taken the Dolphins +4.5 against the Jets. Oh.

Which won?

So good.

So I gotta do it. The wor— the worst pick on the board. I can't imagine how anyone would feel good about taking them, and yet I love the zag. Chargers +6.5 in LA against the Rams. Chargers, if you're making the case, throw out Week 1 against Arizona, whatever, caught them by surprise. Week 2 Vegas, not great, can't really defend it. Week 3, Buffalo blew the game. Could've won.

Should've won. Could've, not should've, could've.

Week 4, lost in Seattle and got killed, but then came back near the end. Denver blew it in the 4th quarter, and then KC week 6 got killed. They've had a bye week, 2 weeks off. Why isn't this line higher?

God, that's a great point.

Why isn't this line 8.5?

Why is this line 8.5?

Why is this line 6.5?

Yep. It's a great point.

Chargers coming off the bye.

Yep.

They, they're still alive technically for the season, but they're also in job preservation, job save mode. They have not engaged in the trade market according to Tom Pelissero.

Okay.

They're in LA. There's no crowd. There's gonna be no crowd for either team. It's just gonna be like a neutral site. And the Rams, like, all right, the Rams caught people by surprise last week 'cause they just had their 19 wide tight ends and they ran the ball and did the whole thing. But the Chargers defense has been pretty good.

Chargers defense decent. Yep.

And then from a Ram, there's a lot of injuries on the Ram side. Like McDuffie might not play. It's, it's—

Davante's out.

It's like a shell of a Rams team. And this, to me, this feels like— I'm sure somebody will take this tomorrow on the Friday Wise Guys pod. Uh, as a money line, this is an obvious money line pick too.

I think Cousin Sal's taken the Chargers every week that they've played.

I'm in. +6.5. I was gonna wait till Sunday to see if it went to 7, but I think it's gonna go the other way. I think it's gonna go down.

Wow.

So, uh, Chargers +6.5, that is my Steinman's pick for this week.

What was the email from the reader or the listener? about McVay ignoring special teams. What's, what's that called? Doesn't that have a name?

Oh, the, the seatbelt, seatbelt award. Me not wearing a seatbelt.

Yeah.

The Bill not putting a seatbelt on award.

McVay ignoring the special teams.

That's the thing. Chargers might get a special teams thing.

Who knows? Who knows? Anything's possible.

Who knows?

I don't hate it.

What's your last pick?

You're buying into it. It's a teaser 'cause I gave out Tampa -2.5, Jacksonville -9.5, the Pats -7. Playing all favorites. I mean, that's exactly how you're supposed to do this. Yeah, not at all. Um, for my teaser, I am gonna go ahead and grab the Raiders +7.5. Um, against the Jets. Figure out which side I wanted, right? Raiders traveling cross-country, um, to take on the Jets. I just know that at the end of the day, I'd like to be on the side of Clint Kubiak and Kirk Cousins when I need a cover at the end of the game.

4 straight losses.

Yeah,

Kirk Cousins maybe playing for his job a tiny bit. It's been some—

Or, or continued auditions, right? Like, there are still some teams that could use a quarterback, right? Uh, Minnesota is one of them. I mean, the continued audition of Kirk Cousins, he hasn't looked terrible. He is what he is. He's limited. It's fine. Um, but like I say, when I know that I need a cover, I need a back door, um, Jets winning by margin, I'm perfectly fine with living with that risk, uh, even though they are getting healthy. Breece Hall is back, um, A.D. Mitchell is back, um, and they, they— the Jets are occasionally functional.

No Geno Smith revenge game doesn't scare you at all?

I'll live with that risk. Okay, I'm gonna live with that.

All right, so who are you putting them with?

Raiders are +7.5. Now I had the Broncos sitting here, but I'm not gonna, um,

do it,

copy you. No, I'm gonna go ahead and grab the Vikings. Now I, I know that the Vikings You know, there, there's been appropriate skepticism around them as their last remaining undefeated team. Um, but this is more a factor of my skepticism surrounding Detroit.

Yeah.

Like, what exactly has Detroit done? They have a couple of, of wins. They're, they're, they have 4 wins. Uh, they won by 1, 7, and 3, and then they had the blowout in, in Arizona. Congratulations.

And also they put a— Sal and I talked about it Sunday. They put a shitload on Jahmyr Gibbs already. He's headed for 500 touches. He's gonna get the shit kicked out of him by the Vikings this weekend. They're gonna be blitzing and knocking him over and trying to take him out all the time.

Sun God tweak ankle. Like, you know, the, the, these, these Detroit games, even that they didn't, you know, if they're all of their home games up until this Packers game, was, you know, 31 points at home. Yeah. But the Packers' vaunted defense took them out. I don't, I mean, it's in back-to-back divisional games now. Detroit having the benefit of being home, that's helpful, but I'll go ahead and just take that up to 9.5. Give me, I can't make a case for Minnesota's offense. I won't even bother trying. It's just the idea of Flores and, and, you know, Minnesota swept Detroit last year. In fact, Minnesota was the reason they knocked Detroit out of the playoffs. So maybe Detroit will be revenge-minded. And Goff has been outstanding against the blitz so far this season. I think he's number 1 in EPA against the blitz. That's good. I'm glad to have that walking into— Flores doesn't blitz like other teams blitz. His, you know, the blitz rate is one thing where it's 40 points higher than any other team.

It's like Flores over here. Yeah.

Yeah. But the style, the way that they bring their blitz, The disguises that they use. I like it. The idea of Minnesota inside of, of 2 scores.

Well, you took Kyler Murray in a tease with the QB Whisperer, Kevin O'Connell. What is he whispering? He's whispering in a different language. He's

like, bro, bro, bro, bro.

Drew Brees is back. That's something.

The Whisperer.

I don't know.

He's the QB Whisperer, except for 3 quarterbacks who sucked in Minnesota.

I think that Minnesota loses this football game, but not by 10. So I'm gonna go ahead and put, um, the Vikings +9.5 into my teaser.

As always, I wish you the best of luck with Kyler Murray. All right, so our picks. I took Ravens +3 in Buffalo, Bucs -2.5, which House had as well, Chargers +6.5, the Steinmans' pick, and then a Pats-Kansas City tease. Pats down and basically -1. And I'm sorry, not Kansas City, Uh, Denver. Denver up to +7.5. And then House, not only does he have the Bucs, he has Jags -9.5 to blow out Chris Ballard's Indianapolis Colts. Pats -7 in Miami. A lot of favorites, House. I know. And then a Raiders-Vikings tease. Raiders +7.5, Vikings +9.5. That is today's Ringer 107 brought to you by FanDuel. Download the app now to find all our 107 picks. Make this Your most rewarding season ever. FanDuel player game. Odds subject to change. So when are you getting your thing removed?

Monday. Monday afternoon.

Getting old, I guess.

My only hope is— no, this isn't a getting old thing, I don't think. I mean, I've had, you know, the teeth thing shows up once every 3 or 4 years, right?

Yeah.

At all stages of life.

Well, if you're grinding them at night pretending they're, they're a piece of Parmesan.

Or a giant veal chop. I, I need the internet to help me, root for me because I'm gonna have this procedure Monday, 4 o'clock, and then I want to go to Wizards-Hawks on Wednesday. Wow. I feel like that's enough time.

Yeah.

That's, that will be my introduction to AJ D'Anta.

Yeah.

I'm gonna be in good seats for it. I'm going with our buddy Johnny O, Johnny O-Ran.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, it's going to be a great time, but I need to be healthy by then, so I need positive vibes.

Do you have a take on Jaylen Brown versus Jayson Tatum before we go?

I do not. The whole thing exhausts me. I think I appreciate Jaylen Brown's flair for the dramatic. He really is. He's the one driving this. Oh yeah, he loves it. He does. Yeah. He's got some, some petty in him. I mean, he's got some very strong petty bitch vibes. I, I kind of enjoy it, but I, I don't, I mean, who cares?

He's gonna keep it going till the November 10th Celtics-Sixers game.

He's smart.

Yeah.

He's an entertainer.

Yeah.

I want to tell you, I still like Jaylen Brown. Um, I went ahead and did an NBA future. I don't, I can't, I don't, I can't, I'll have to look at the ticket to look at the price. I did Rockets-Sixers as a, as an NBA Finals matchup.

Rockets-Sixers.

I've seen enough of the Sixers now. It's a bet on who's gonna, you know, how healthy will they be?

Yeah.

But they can definitely beat every team in the East. There's no, I've seen enough. Show me no more. I've seen enough already. If Maxey's healthy and those guys arrive, you know, Embiid and LeBron show up more healthy than not. I think they can beat every team in the East.

This makes me really happy. It's not even November yet. You've talked yourself into Embiid and 42-year-old LeBron. I love it.

No, this is great. I talked myself into Maxey, who should be All-NBA First Team this year.

Oh,

he scored, you know, 10 points in the last 90 seconds of a game that they were messing around in last night.

I've done no futures and somehow avoided disaster. when I ended up not putting a bunch of stuff when I was in Boston on OKC 65+ wins with the Warriors not to make the playoffs.

Thank God.

And since I held back on really pulling the trigger on that, OKC's team completely fell apart. Really sadly.

They fell apart. I mean, it's a bummer.

And then Yaxel rejuvenated the Warriors. It was like a 180 from where I felt on Saturday. I'm still not— I, I think OKC will be okay. I think they need to shake the hangover of, oh my God, I can't believe all that shit happened.

Yeah, it was a catastrophe.

They'll figure it out. They have too much time. Oh, one last thing. The revelation this week was that Portland-Laker game.

Oh my God.

Did you stay up for that?

I saw enough of it. Yeah, I, I couldn't stay up till the end. Although that was one of the nights I couldn't sleep. I wasn't watching.

We did the, when we did the over-unders, we talked about how Portland was the, we don't know what the fuck's gonna happen with this team. And that, that you could have told me anything. What I didn't expect was how good Dame was gonna look. And I think he looks legitimately good. And then with Ja, who they at least have his head on straight for now, he's not the same guy from 5 years ago. They just have all these ways to attack the basket. And the coach has figured out like he just wants everybody going downhill and toward the hoop. And I—

Nobody's better at that than Denny. I mean, yeah.

So I think that's a—

there are players that are better, but you get what I'm saying.

That's a 6 or a 7 seed now.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, totally agree.

Especially if Minnesota, you know, if Edwards is out for 2 months, not a lot of chirping at me the last couple days about me being wrong about the LaMelo trade. Just FYI. I dunno if you've seen his box scores. Really haven't had a lot of noise this week. Or you, you probably haven't heard a lot either, but—

I'm on record.

But Portland could climb into the top 6 if one of those teams fall backwards. I'm a believer. I think whatever they have, it's something.

So we've been super harsh on El Cheapo, and El Cheapo agreed to acquire Ja.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden this team I mean, they are multifaceted. They can definitely play defense. Clingan's been very good.

To me though, Ja's like a luxury. Like, although Scoot was, I know Scoot was horrible the other night, but if Scoot maybe could have played those minutes and given them something close, but I'd rather have Ja because the difference with Ja was he's bringing so much swagger.

That's, that, that team, there you go.

The team had like a, a little oomph to them.

Yeah, I don't know.

I like it. I know it's one game there, it's the Lakers, whatever. But, um, but I— it was, it was the most eye-opening. Everything else I'm not surprised by that we've seen this season, but that was the one thing where I was like, huh, kind of a bitch. All these guys that can just get into the paint go downhill.

That's right.