Transcript of The Broken Chargers, Mahomes 3.0, Zombie Deshaun, the Masked Backup, First Coach Fired, and Guess the Lines With Cousin Sal

The Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by FanDuel. The NFL is here and it's the most rewarding season ever on FanDuel with the all-time FanDuel Rewards Club. Every eligible bet can earn you points. Win or lose, you still get points. The more points, the bigger the rewards you can unlock. Head to fanduel.com/BS To start earning with FanDuel Rewards Club. 21+ select states or 18+ DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This stream is brought to you by The Farmer's Dog, the official pet food of the NFL. The Bill Simmons Podcast live on Netflix. I have a new rewatchables coming tomorrow, Law Abiding Citizen with Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler will be coming tomorrow. So stay tuned for that. Sal and I are up here. It is almost midnight on the East Coast. Chiefs Colts went forever. And the irony of this, because Sal was listed as questionable on the injury report all weekend. Kidney stone. Kidney stones or kidney stone? Is it one stone or multiple stones?

I think it's one. Under the microscope, they found that it's one 10-centimeter stone, which is impossible to pass through your penis, which I don't know why it has to go through that anyway, but I am flying high.

Not your other orifices.

Yeah.

So you're on medication. Yeah. Chiefs Chiefs-Colts is going into overtime. It just keeps going. It keeps going. We have a long review. It almost becomes the Laquan Treadwell game, but then it doesn't. The Colts kind of blow it. And then once the Chiefs get the ball back, you know what's gonna happen next.

I gotta say, I knew it was gonna happen anyway. Well, like, it's all right. It's either 30-27 final or 33-30. You know Daniel Jones's record in primetime games now?

It's 1-16.

1-16. Yeah. So we didn't have to watch that last 20 minutes. It's fine. We know how it goes.

So they get the overturn, they have all the momentum.

Yeah.

And then just do the most predictable 2 run plays in a row possible. Set up like a 3rd and 13. Mm-hmm. Jones scrambles for 5, gets hit right as he is going outta bounds, which that's like the demarcation of how famous of a quarterback you are. He didn't get the call. I think there's like 5, like Josh Allen's getting that. Mahomes is getting that. The best quarterbacks in the league are getting it. Lamar's getting it. And then 4th and 8, call timeout. And then it seemed like they were gonna go for it. Did you, did you want them to go for it there? Because I was like, you might as well, the Chiefs are gonna score anyway. Yeah. But then you think like, well, your quarterback's Daniel Jones, you can't do this. I didn't know how I felt.

He felt that way too. He's like, I'm Daniel Jones, I can't do this. I don't know what I'm sent out here for. By the way, it was the worst trying to draw someone offsides. attempt I've ever seen. He was 7 yards in the shotgun looking around. He had his hands on his hips. It wasn't— it was no weird cadence or anything. But if you kick off in overtime, isn't that the point? You don't want to give the Chiefs the 3rd possession. You don't want to give the other team the 3rd possession. And yeah, by kicking a field goal, you're doing exactly that with 3 minutes left, which is way too much time.

I mean, the bigger point is you're on the 17, you're in 4-down territory at that point.

Yeah.

And you've gotta get a little more creative. They had the game. The Colts are now 0-2. Chiefs are 2-0, and Mahomes, who had the ACL surgery 9 months ago, did not look good, I didn't think, on Monday night.

Mm-hmm.

I thought he looked way better today, and it seems like he has more of a cannon than he's had in a couple years. So I, I know he had the, the ACL reconstruction, but I wonder, like, do you think he's in better shape? Do you think he was like getting a little dad body-ish, like on the down low the last couple years? 'Cause 'Cause he, he has like a cannon again. I, the Chiefs are kind of dangerous offensively now. I think they're really fun to watch again.

Would you call it a cannon or a piss missile? That's, that's what Brady called Dak, Dak, one of Dak's throws today, a piss missile.

Yeah. Brady was wearing PG-13 today.

This is Andrew Dice Brady today. I don't know what the hell is going on here. It's all over the place. No, he looks good. He is, he is slinging the ball. And it definitely helps. I don't know if it was the defense, the weird zone defense that the Colts were throwing at the Chiefs, but when Kelce is free to run, you know, just roam like a man, like a 2019 Kelce.

Yeah.

Then it's a whole different game and they're gonna score 30.

How many first downs do you think they have in that game?

The Chiefs?

Yeah.

26.

29.

Oh.

When you're close to 30 for, for, I know it was an overtime game. They had 523 yards. But yeah, Mahomes looks better than he, I think he has in a couple years and just seems like he has the arm strength back in a different way. And Kelce, they talked about it and Kelce even admits, I will, I'm in much better shape. I did this, I did that. Yeah. And it looked like he was a player on his way outta the league last year. Now he looks fine. Walker has given them a completely different element, which as long as he stays healthy.

Right.

So I don't, I don't know. I, I have some regrets. I had, I had the Chargers in that 7 seed before the year and, and obviously would, Wish I could flip that one. And then from a Colts standpoint, they're 0-2, which is usually a death sentence, but I don't mind them offensively. The big thing with them was they lost Alec Pierce in the first quarter, right? I don't really love their weapons to begin with. So now it's like Josh Downs, Treadwell was out there, Tyler Warren's their best guy other than Taylor.

Taylor still runs hard. They seem to have a nice pass rush. I mean, on, on Tex, you're really attracted to that Colts owner. You couldn't, you would not shut up about it. My God, you love the way she's— Pretends to say nothing.

It's like, I said nothing about Cali or C. Johnson, whatever her name is.

Keep it in your cargo shorts, Simmons. We have a podcast to do.

I didn't say one thing. We do have a Netflix poll though. Should the Colts have gone for it on 4th and 8? Oh, 77% said yes.

All right.

On Netflix, a reputable survey service.

Should we take a break so I can vote? I wanna be part of this.

Now that we know the Chiefs won the game, my vote is yes. Sure.

That's pretty easy now.

As we were texting about it when it was happening, I was like, ah, Daniel Jones, I don't know. Maybe if you had Pierce, but all right. So the other thing I had from this game was Kelce scores a touchdown and they cut to, they do the Taylor Swift replay and she's pointing to her ring and going, that's my husband.

Yeah.

I didn't know how I felt about that one. I don't wanna enrage the Swifties, but I, I'm trying to think of any, any other celebrity who could have gotten away with that. I almost feel like she's pushing the line to see what can I get away with? How obnoxious can I be in the box without there being a backlash? And I think that's about as close as we're going to get to the line.

I like what celebrity could get away with it. That's my husband. Yeah. You don't think Leslie Jones could pull it off? I'm trying to—

I don't know. Leslie Jones.

Who the hell in the world doesn't know that's her husband?

Put it this way.

Most famous marriage in history.

Justin Herbert, if she was engaged, if he was engaged to Madison Beer and he threw a touchdown and it cut to the box and she was like, that's my husband. What would the internet reaction have been the next day? Right, right, right. I'm guessing she would've taken some shit.

But Taylor, Taylor, Taylor, uh, I have to say, you must not have watched the Emmys 'cause Colbert's wife did the same thing.

Evie Colbert.

She did. Turned into a ring when he won the award. Like, that's my husband. I was like, are you kidding me? Is this happening?

No, she was probably surprised. He campaigned for Jimmy with 9 hours to go in the voting.

Congratulations, it all worked out.

So 2-0 teams: Buffalo and Seattle. Yeah. Kansas City. Cincinnati, now -460 to make the playoffs. Wow. Philadelphia is -290. San Francisco's 2-0. Minnesota, -158 now to make the playoffs. They're 2-0. And the Las Vegas Raiders, 2-0, +215 if you want to take them for the playoffs. So if we have to say at the end of the year which of those teams aren't going to be in there, we'll cross off Vegas. Would you have Minnesota as a 7— one of the 7 playoff teams now? I want to talk about that game later.

I'm not going to say yes yet because— but I'm always wrong about them.

So you're more open to it?

Yeah, of course. Yeah, if they're gonna win games like that.

Buffalo, Seattle, sure. Cincy, it's starting to look like it's definitely their year, plus a great schedule coming. San Francisco, unless they have a million injuries. Philly would be the one I would worry about at the -290.

Yeah.

We'll talk about that game in a second. 0-2 teams. So now we have the Colts, we have the Dolphins, Titans, Falcons, Washington. We have Tampa Bay. Can't wait to talk about that game. We have the Chargers. who are -300 now to make the playoffs.

Wait a minute, they are?

I mean, I'm sorry, to miss the playoffs.

Oh wow, even that moved. Okay.

Yeah, -300. And then, uh, the Houston Texans are now -124 to miss the playoffs.

Wow.

A team that, uh, with that, I'll just say that would be bad for me. I have some Texans futures.

Bad for me too.

Would be awesome.

It's so funny. when they were reviewing that call with Treadwell, I was like, I know they give games to the Colts, the refs or whatever, but I don't think they're— the Chiefs are, but they, they don't, they have a bunch of 8-9s in there that are some suspect squads in the AFC. They really need the Chiefs to be good.

Right.

This year. And, and they did stick with it because of teams like that, like the Chargers and the Texans and everybody we have money on. What the hell is going on?

So that wasn't an— I don't think— I thought that was a catch and a fumble, and I don't think the guy touched him in time. But I think if we slow it down to 1/1,000,000th of a second, right, and it's like we're doing the Six Million Dollar Man speed, yeah, and it's like he's glancing it during— we can freeze frame when it seems like the guy had control, but I don't think he did. And I thought that should have been a fumble.

For the next time the Chiefs get a call. But yeah, white glove on the white hip pad or whatever it was. It's like, all right, it was like a brush.

Yeah. So Washington, Miami, Atlanta, Tennessee, and the Chargers all to miss the playoffs. If you put that all together as a parlay on FanDuel, even odds. Oh wow. You add the Jets, it's +110. Washington, Miami, Atlanta, Tennessee, Jets, Chargers, no playoffs. Who ruins that parlay?

Washington, Atlanta.

Washington, Miami, Atlanta, Tennessee, Jets, Chargers. I would actually say I would be the most afraid of the Jets. Really? 'Cause I think the Chargers are done.

I think, you know, it's funny, I have Chargers written -178. I know you're right, it says -300. There's a lot of money just on the Chargers to not make the playoffs in the last hour. It's insanity.

Oh wow. Yeah. So that, I did all that an hour and a half ago, so maybe some stuff moved.

No, I mean, you got, we, we'll go over the Chargers schedule, but you know, we could say they could be 0-5 or we could say they're gonna be 0-9. with that offense if they're gonna put up 16 points a game or 14 points a game or less.

You wanna talk about that game first?

Yeah, we might as well.

What, uh, Herbert, Herbert today gave me 1999, 2000 range Drew Bledsoe vibes. And it's year 7 for him. Yeah. And it's funny, I saw this tweet from, uh, not to single out somebody who covers the team, but, uh, or talks about the team, but this, I think this is the general sentiment of Charger fans. This person said, I'm at the point where if a team like the Vikings wants to throw a godfather offer for Justin Herbert, just do it. Restart, get a QB this year, start over. If the Chargers aren't going to support him in his development, then just get as much as you can for him. That's where I'm gonna push back.

Support him in his development.

They've drafted their left and right tackle were both first-round picks. Yeah. Quinn Johnson was a first-round pick. I think McConkey was a second-round pick. Their running back Hampton was a first-round pick. They went and spent money for Harbaugh. They went and overpaid Mike McDaniel, who's done nothing for 2 weeks.

Right, right.

I, I, I feel like he's been as supported from an asset standpoint as any franchise QB who's invested more capital in their offensive line and skill position guys. Now, whether they picked the right guys, obviously Johnston I think is almost a bust. He's like 80% a bust. He was really bad today, but the 2 tackles were the right picks. The running back was good today. At what— I don't understand why everybody is so terrified to just point the finger at Herbert, who has been awful this year. It is very weird.

Maybe they like his girlfriend. I'm not sure how it goes, but they, they really— yeah. I mean, that's one thing with if the offensive linemen are getting injured and they can't protect them and, you know, that's, that was last year and maybe a couple years ago, like, right, Slater and Alt, but Yeah, no, this year, and especially with McDaniel, who I'm stumping for, for to be the first coordinator fired.

This fan—

Fandel, put those odds up already for first coordinator fired or assistant coach fired.

I thought it was gonna be the Denver OC was gonna be the other one.

Oh man.

Unless Payton took the play calling at halftime.

Oh, it's a sprint to the finish. But yeah, they are just, I, I really want, I mean, what'd you say? Minus 300? I just want the $300,000 win at the $100,000, sit back and collect. when they have their 7th loss on Halloween.

So for people who missed that game, the Chargers fumbled 5 times and recovered all 5 fumbles, including Herbert getting strip sacked basically on his goal line where he just had the— was holding the ball like Michael Jackson holding the baby off the balcony.

Yeah.

And somebody just took it and it somehow ricocheted forward 10 yards right to a teammate and they kept it.

Right.

And it was becoming one of those games you're like, oh my God, this is like an all-time horseshoe. I've never seen a team fumbled 5 times to get all 5 back. Then the 6th one finally got 'em.

Yeah.

When they were driving, the running back fumbled. But, and then Herbert near the end just had a really, really truly horrific interception for the nail in the coffin. Followed by, they come outta commercial and, and we all saw it on our thread. We, 'cause House took a picture of it. But it was McDaniel talking to Herbert and both of them seemed bummed out. and it almost seemed like watching 2 people on a park bench breaking up when you're like walking your dog in a park. You're like, are those people breaking up? Um, the energy was just terrific. Herbert did not have a 20-plus-yard pass in this game that he completed. Yeah, and they're playing the Raiders. It's not like they're playing a good team. They're play— I guess the 2-0 Raiders, kudos to them, but come on.

I saw something great, said the Chargers are the 2nd team in NFL history to lose back-to-back games by double digits with both coming at home against teams that had sub-.200 win percentages the previous season. The other was the 1926 Racing Tornadoes, who I lost a teaser. I don't know if you were on the teaser with that, but no. Yeah, they— and they played just one more game before folding.

I think I stayed away from the Tornadoes that game.

Racing Tornadoes.

What the weird thing is, now we knew the middle of the line was going to be suspect because we argued about this before the year. You like them. I was I would, they made me nervous. Joe Alt today, 3 false starts allowed a safety. Not great. After the game, they asked Khalil Mack what Harbaugh said to them. This is his quote. You tell me if this is alarming at all. Honestly, I blacked out the whole time. I don't really know. My mind was on the game steal still, but I feel like it had something to do with picking up the pieces and getting this thing right. That was Khalil Mack's recap of Jim Harbaugh's speech.

He blanked.

I blanked out the whole time. So we got first coach fired. I mean, we have some doozies. We have Harbaugh, we have Todd Bowles, who's 3-10 in his last 13 and lost today after— well, I can't wait to talk about that. And then Dan Quinn, who got his quarterback injured for the year. We have 3 really good candidates now, right?

Quinn, I think, is favored right now. Harbaugh was like 50-to-1 on, you know, wherever you could do this stuff. going into the year. But yeah, they're not even listening to the coaches. I don't, I don't know what it is like. Yeah, when you say like all false started 3 times, like McDaniel, I know he's— I wanna make fun of him 'cause he's fun to make fun of, but also let's make fun of him. This has gotta be his thing, right? 'Cause they have protected him with everything else going into this. This doesn't resemble anything that looked like when Herbert was successful.

Yeah, there were good stats offensively for him in Miami, but then you think back you know, like, like he was doing that kind of gimmicky offense with Tua. Mm-hmm. But they had Tyreek, they had Waddle, who was great today. They always had fast running backs and, you know, maybe the talent made him look better than he was.

Well, the home crowd loved what they saw. You gotta give 'em that.

So many Raider fans.

Unbelievable.

Somebody sent me a, a video of after the game, they're in the bathroom and it's all Raider fans chanting.

Wow.

And there's some guy, some poor guy in a Herbert jersey taking a piss and they're like kind of taunting him. And the guy leaves and he kind of files out hoping he's not gonna get punched. And the guy goes in with the phone to pee and there's a Chargers jersey in the urinal. And that was the end of the video. But that's where we are. We're also getting—

Charger fan there. A Chargers jersey there. Yeah.

Also, they're receiving emails like this one from Owen from Richmond. After watching Herbert throw a late-game interception and fall 0-2 to a JV Raiders team, I've come up with a new nickname for our former nerd king QB. Justin Yeah-But. Because whenever the nerds try to defend this perennial loser, they always defend with, yeah, he's never won anything, but— before giving you a litany of excuses. He's the player equivalent of Lane Kiffin.

Okay.

Pretty good.

That's not bad.

Pretty good.

Justin Yeah-But.

Justin Yeah-But. It's because we need— because you, you might be winning the Drake Maybe argument with the way he's playing. Might be.

Yeah.

Raiders are now 2-0 with no Brock Bowers basically, and they're playing in New Orleans last week. And I test-wise, 'cause we're in the, we're in the PT over here, so there's only 4 games today. There was 5, but I, I feel like I've watched every snap of, of the Raiders and the Chargers.

Yeah.

I didn't like the Chargers at all. I didn't have the balls to take Raiders +6.5, but I really talked on multiple pods. I was just like, they're not good. They're slow. I don't think they're well coached. They, they, they look like they don't have it. Raiders, I don't know. I, I kind of wanna see it. Yeah. Cousins was flinging it around like he, he, he had like 8 or 9. It felt like, like real long passes and he missed a couple too of guys that were open, but I don't know. They were fun to watch. I enjoy, I kind of enjoyed them.

He has 6 touchdown passes to wide receivers no one has ever heard of in their lifetime.

And none of 'em are starting in any fantasy league. Maybe Tucker will next week start.

I don't, yeah, nobody like even drafted any of these guys. There is a little bit of viewing theory, right? With this Brock Bowers as he, as he shaves his heel bone or whatever the hell's going on until he gets back in there. Yeah, they're not bad right now.

They're not bad. They do the 2 teams before the year that fit the profile I always look at for worst to first, replacing a bad coach with maybe a better coach where were them and, and the, uh, and I'm blanking. Nobody else? No, no. And then the Giants.

The Giants. Yeah.

And I couldn't get there with either of them, especially the Raiders, 'cause it just didn't seem like they had enough talent.

But well, you know, the division is loaded. You figure the Chargers are gonna win 10 games. So how many wins are you gonna give the Raiders? Right. Denver Chiefs are gonna be good too.

And there was at halftime of the Denver game, they looked like they were going 0-2. So I don't think, I honestly don't think it's overreaction to say the Chargers season is in real, in real trouble. Like they're -300 or whatever it is for a reason. I, I, I think there's a talent issue. I don't think they can block. I don't, the coach seems like they're tuning him out.

Yeah.

And I do think there's a chance he doesn't make it through the season now. We talked about it last week. It's like, huh? I even asked Tom Pelissero about it if, if it was conceivable. Now I think it's like legitimately conceivable.

Well, it's, and you know, if they had the Raiders every week or, you know, if they were in the AFC South, maybe, but I'm gonna look at their schedule. I didn't write it down, but the next, you saw the next 7, right?

It's, well, these were the 2 easy ones, right?

This is, what does it look like?

So they go, they're playing the Cardinals and the Raiders to start and you're like, well, they'll go 2-0 and then they're gonna dip. Well, now they're 0-2 and now they're hitting the hard part, but they play Buffalo and Houston on these days.

5 of the next 7 are on the road. At Buffalo, at Seattle, home versus Denver, at KC, at the Rams, home versus Houston, at Baltimore. Come on.

They're gonna win 4 of those. So do you think Harbaugh is coaching by the end of that?

I think he is. I don't think, I don't know why. I think they kind of res— they'll respect him enough to keep him around and—

I would see, I would do the— you, you're not looking at this correctly though. I'm not just talking from a Chargers side.

Mm-hmm.

I'm talking from a Jim Harbaugh, fuck this, I'm out.

Oh, oh, if he sticks around. Yeah, right.

'Cause we've seen him, he looks like he looks around, you know, the moment everything's not going his way, he'll start sniffing around. That's true. 'Cause he's gotta get another job outta this one.

So McDaniels takes over as McDaniels the head coach. That would be fun.

I would not recommend that one.

Interim.

So we have 3 retroactive week 1 games. that we have to look at that we didn't know what they meant.

Yeah.

And now I think we know. Arizona beat the Chargers. It was very hard to handicap that Arizona-Seattle game this week. Like we had Tony Tokens on, on Ringer Wise Guys. He loved Arizona. Rahim took Seattle. But the thing was like Arizona was awesome in that Chargers game. They put together 6 long drives. Like they were really, really impressive offensively. And then the flip side was like, well, what if the Chargers suck and that's why they look that way? Well, now the Cardinals play Seattle this week and they get murdered.

Now we know.

So now we know the Chargers suck. So that's, I think, one. Isn't it great?

Before, let me just interrupt you. The psychology behind this, like week 1, we could overreact and, and people could call us out on it, but so what? It's clickbait and it's great. Yeah, we can keep going. Week 2, we're even more experts, bigger experts, right?

We know everything now.

Now we have, oh, now we have, we've watched 2 whole games, right?

Okay. Well, the, the second one was Pittsburgh barely beating Atlanta. And you and I on that Sunday pod that we did last week, and I was just like, I, I watched that game. I, I think Pittsburgh's offense is terrible, but you know, and Atlanta looked a little friskier than— I don't think Atlanta's good. It's a bad time for— anyway.

People got mad at us, by the way, after that.

People, they mad. They're like, oh, Rodgers, he was taking chances downfield. They were like 4.8 a play.

Yeah.

They were lower today. So the—

We, we, we were accused of not watching that. The Steelers went over the mighty Falcons last week.

They, they— Yeah, I did watch it and I didn't think they were good and I didn't think they could run the ball.

Couple passes. It's fine. Yeah. Yeah.

And I didn't think Rodgers wanted to get hit, which is true. 'Cause we saw it again today. So the lesson from that one is what if maybe we overrated Pittsburgh? I know I did. I had them 10-7. So now we know with Pittsburgh.

Oh yeah.

And then the last one was Philly barely beat Washington. It's like, what does this mean? Is that a fluke or is maybe Philly's not that good? And then you watch today, they barely beat Tennessee. Now granted, it's 170 degrees on the field or whatever, but I think, I think our suspicions were confirmed on Philly too, right?

So mad at that team. Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna say they're not very good forever and they're gonna be like 14-3 because just the, that's just how they played ball. But, and the Titans money line was one of my best bets on Ringer Wise Guys. So I was so angry after this. I challenged Big Dom to a fight on, on Twitter. I said, once I get this kidney stone passed, I'm gonna get in shape and he's in trouble. I could tell you that much.

But mailing you my kidney stones.

Yeah, that's it. Throw my, toss my stone at his face. Yeah, that, I, I don't, that, what are they really good at? They don't, they don't, they're even, they don't even block as well as they used to.

Wait, I gotta find that game. Turf temperature, 157 degrees. Is that real? Cleats were melting, which sounds like a fake thing, but I, my daughter played a soccer game once where that happened to multiple kids on the team.

Really?

Like, it really does where it was like, I don't know how hot it was in the turf, but it really, I have seen it happen. Hurts was a monster on the last drive. And in general, it feels like the DeVonta Smith-Hurts thing, there's something something there to hold onto. But running 33 for 89, 2.8 a carry against the fucking Titans. Barkley got hurt early. I, the, the big, like big picture question for me is, did Barkley, is he just another victim of the big usage, too many touches season?

Yeah.

And this is, and they got the contract, but this is, we've just, how many times have we watched this now?

Yeah. And that's why it's frustrating when Tank Bigsby and fricking Will Shipley are leading the way in the backfield on the road. I mean, this is really one that Salah could have stolen, but really tough one.

Admirable tease under, which a couple people on Ringer 107 had.

Yeah.

Tease the Eagles down to -1, tease the under up. That did hit. But for the most part, this Rams-Giants game tomorrow is so fascinating because That the Giants really could take that division if they can emulate what they did last week. And just, that could kind of be what their identity is, right? Keep Dart and Scatterbaugh healthy. We're gonna take a break and then we have to talk about the Bermuda Triangle game of the Browns and Bucs, which we're gonna talk about right after this. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. Monday Night Football just got a lot more rewarding on FanDuel. Giants-Rams and a reward escalator. What happens on the field can unlock even more profit boosts. Bet Monday night's game with a reward escalator token. You'll find it. If both teams score in the first half, you'll get a 25% profit boost. If any player goes for 100 or more receiving yards, you'll get a 50% profit boost. And if there's a defensive or special teams touchdown, you'll get a 100% profit boost. This is a tough game to handicap. You really have to, um, You have to figure the Rams 0-1 playing the Giants, the Rams with a ton of rest, they'd be in a good spot.

I would almost go like Rams with like a -9.5, put it with some Stafford stuff, go nuts and do a profit boost, or go the other way and bet the Giants money line. I need a lot more time to look at this game, but regardless, download the FanDuel app. Make this your most rewarding season ever with FanDuel. 21+ select states or 18+ DC or Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. It's the small moments where we have the most fun sometimes, like having a friendly little competition with your friends, see who's the fastest or who can putt better in the backyard or Who can get to somebody else's house or the better route, whatever it is. Even better if you put some Michelob Ultra on the line or a refreshing way to up the stakes. Like me and House are gonna pick games against each other on Thursdays this NFL season. Maybe we keep track in ways of Michelob Ultra 6-packs. I'm happy to do that. Maybe Michelob Ultra will make a special BS Podcast or Ringer 6-packs.

And then we could, we could barter them back and forth, whatever it is. By the way, they should do that for us. Superior is worth playing for. Michelob Ultra Superior Light Beer. Enter for a chance to win Superior soccer, basketball, and golf prizes at michelobultra.com/superioraccess. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026. Anheuser-Busch Michelob Ultra Light Beer. St. Louis, Missouri. So the game of the day, for a variety of reasons, was a game that I lost on a couple teases, but I did hit on a 13.5, 13-point tease with the Bucs to +4.5. Don't ask.

But ridiculous.

The Bermuda Triangle game, Browns-Bucs. We thought this was our last chance ever to bet against Deshaun Watson, the embattled Browns quarterback who was playing the guy that they gave up to basically trade all these picks and sign him. Tom Pelissero did a great newsletter about it this week in The Sweep. And then Deshaun comes out and legitimately outplays Baker Mayfield.

Right.

And ends up, even though he was only 3.7 air yards per attempt, but he was 24 for 30 for 238 and kind of hit a groove in the second half. Like he was just going back 4 steps, just quick passes out. He was completing third downs. He hit Boston for a nice run and catch touchdown. And all of a sudden the Bucs are down and everybody on the planet has the Bucs in the tease.

Mm-hmm.

Now they're driving, they're over midfield, they're 2 minutes left and they're like, oh, we have to stop the game. It's lightning. Which happened yesterday too. The North Carolina game.

Oh yeah.

Baker's driving. Did you feel like Tampa was gonna score? 'Cause I, I personally did.

You did?

And, and all the make— I did. I thought they were going down. I thought this was— the weather wasn't that bad.

What point in the afternoon? Before, before, before it was called? No. Yeah.

I was like, no, no, we, we got this. Baker's just being a dick. There's no way he's losing to the Browns. Do you? So you felt like it was a loss?

Yeah. 'Cause I, when they did go to the break, they were at our— so it's 2nd and 4 at the 28 with 2 minutes left for like 2 and a half hours. And it kept staring us in the face. The live line was Tampa -148 or something.

Oh, I didn't think they were gonna win after the break.

Oh, after you didn't think? Yeah.

I didn't think it was— No, I'm saying before when they were going down, I, I just thought they were gonna win.

Oh.

And then it stopped.

I think that screwed them. Yeah. Interesting.

It felt like divine intervention. Shades of 2016 World Series when the Cubs got the miracle rain delay.

Right.

Deshaun got the miracle rain delay to keep his job.

Okay. But, but I thought it should have favored them. They got to the— they, we can go over the play calling after the— they came back. And by the way, that delay, when we have, we have money on the Bucs, that was like you're playing blackjack and the dealer holding a 6 and she can't flip the card for 2 hours because the guy next to you doubled down or split and is waiting for a marker. It's like, oh my God, the pit boss has to go over. Yeah, this is my winning bet. Can I just— I have other bets that depend on this. And we stared for 2 and a half hours to decide if we wanted to hedge.

And it was so long that I missed it. You, you guys were texting, the game was over, and I was like, I've been waiting for it to come back. They gave us— it just disappeared. It was gone for 2 and a half hours.

Good for you.

At a pivotal point, I was all excited to put it on my multi-view. And then it was just over. And then, so I rewound it and watched it and, you know, guy drops a touchdown in the corner and it was really like, wow.

Yeah.

To me it was, it was, if they had kept Mike Evans, they win the game 'cause he would've caught that pass in the corner and they would've won. They'd be 1-1, but they let him go. They had a rookie who missed it and then he misses Igboke wide open right over the middle for the winning touchdown. I mean, he was terrible.

Second and 4. So terrible. They, they have the advantage here. Like the defense is stuck in mud if you're gonna run. They, they have new cleats, they have clean socks. Bucky Irving runs for 3 on 2nd and 4, easy 3. 3rd and 1, he runs for 6. And now they use a timeout. They have him reeling, and Baker throws like a 6-yard pass, then incomplete to Hurst, way off, offensive holding. So now you're back at the 23. Baker runs out of bounds and sails, and he was sailing balls all over the place, and ball splashes and hits the mascot. It just sucked. I don't, I don't understand.

He's also— there's the good version of him, but the bad version of him is just terrifying to gamble on, right? You know, there's traffic, he's good enough to move around even though there's like guys all around him, but then he's also just dangling the ball around and you're just, you're convinced he's gonna get strip sacked for 5 seconds or from behind. I thought he was really bad.

They are such a tough watch. I begged you not to bet an NFC South winner. I begged you.

I just— not only did I bet them the last 2 weeks, I have futures on them. They're 3-10 in their last 13, which I wish I had thought of. There was an incredible Twitter video, I think I mailed to you, of this guy in the corner waiting for them to walk. Yeah, to the runway after the game. And he's like, I'm gonna yell Baker when he comes. And then Baker's coming, he said, Baker, you suck, you suck! They're just yelling at both.

It was great. I, by the way, I'm fully on board with that. That poor bastard and others were there for 7 hours to wait to see Baker blow that drive. I think they should be allowed to even go in the locker room. You know when like victims' families get to yell at the defendant? Like, I think that's how it should have been.

Baker, for 2 and a half hours I sat in the concourse.

Look at Baker's face, he's showing no remorse, and that's why he should never play again.

A reader, a listener named Brian Gaddish wrote in, Todd Bowles was dead man walking at the end of last season. How could you have had such faith in Tampa going into this season? You're usually all over these things. He's right. I usually am all over these things. Why did I like Tampa? I think I was just thrown off by how bad the division was. Wow. They stink. They can't block either, which is the weirdest thing to me. the Browns were kind of in their business. Yeah. And I got, I gotta say, like, I thought that was a pretty encouraging win for the Browns. You know, they're on the road, it's super hot, the weather's bad. It was, everybody thought it was Deshaun's last game. Monken, after the game, he was saying Browns are gonna Browns, fuck that. Which was, he was talking about the Tomlin quote.

Tomlin, right.

Yeah. But it seemed like that galvanized them.

I, I mean, after 2 weeks, the, after the first week, they could claim they won the Myles Garrett trade. Right? Because if Carr gets hurt after the second week, they could claim, oh, we made the right decision for moving on from Baker. Like, in a real— I'm being sarcastic, but for God's sake.

No, you're, you're not wrong.

And Jared Verse like didn't do anything. Like, I think he had like one pressure. But you're right, they were in on every play. Like, if Baker couldn't step up through the pocket and run, that was just gonna collapse on him and, uh, and be a disaster.

Pete C. from New Jersey wrote in, I know we all lost money on that inexplicable Bucs, inexplicable Bucs game. But should we all be secretly thanking Tampa? By losing to Cleveland, they bought us at least 2 more opportunities to bet against Deshaun and recoup our losses, including Week 4 Thursday night at home against the Steelers. That has all the makings of an all-time national hate watch. Did they do us a favor? I did think about that. Is there a Ponzi scheme move? Just keep going against the Browns week after week. Yeah, I did. I did think he was pretty good in that game. I was—

he was all right.

I'm saying it.

And they play the Panthers this week. Yeah, this Practical Joe continues. with Deshaun Watson.

Well, you would say we were, we were texting with House about this. We were, you'd think the Bucs 0-2, 15% chance to make the playoffs when you start out 0-2. And yet you look at the NFC South.

Well, you're right on the Falcons. You're right on the Falcons.

Falcons, we can cross off Carolina 1-1, New Orleans 1-1, and Tampa 0-2. You might've been right. You did that whole thing about 7-10, 7-4, 7-10 teams. Yeah, 7-10's gonna win this division. Yeah, it's looking pretty good.

We'll see. I could be right about one thing from August. Yeah.

Some, some other things maybe not as right.

Is Atlanta a real cross-off or are we waiting? It's too early.

Who's the first? No, I think Miami's the first cross-off.

We're ready to do it. Yeah.

Okay. That's our first cross-off. The Miami Dolphins.

Yeah. Yeah. They're horrible.

I mean, that, they, that San Francisco game, it was -13.5 and you just had to treat it like a college game and not be afraid of it and just bet it right. Like UCLA last night was -14 against Purdue, which was a push, and Purdue's a lot better than Miami is. But that, I think like 5 weeks from now we look back and think that that line should have been 19.

Yeah, well, I'm a jackass because I took Miami as one of my Ring of 107 picks only.

Yeah. What was your rationale? That was a time zone thing.

It's a time zone. They didn't care about this. They could win this game by 10. And then you look and it's like they have 1 Pro Bowler versus 54 combined for San Francisco. Right. That's like you do with the points. You know how you evaluate team, you give points like, all right, yeah, that's all you just need to do. I, I'm trying to find Outscored 62-19 in 2 games, and it feels like much worse.

So did we learn that this time zone thing might actually be overrated? That if you're flying in a huge jumbo jet when everybody's got really comfortable seats and all this football team shit, maybe, maybe it's not that bad?

I guess so. I mean, what the Rams did wasn't, wasn't smart, right?

But no.

Yeah.

Well, San Francisco has real wide receiver issues though. 'Cause Robinson got hurt today. Evans is already banged up. They lost all their other guys.

You know, why did they play guys? They know they're the 49ers and have to sacrifice 3 bodies a game. So why is Evans in there in the third— was it the third quarter or fourth?

That's true. They should have told Evans, you're playing 10 snaps. Yeah, get outta there. Most interesting game that's gonna seem like sour grapes for me because I, I took a huge position on Texans before the year. I was all in on them, picked them to make the Super Bowl. I was underselling the Bengals, did not believe all the hype, the schedule stuff. And the Bengals beat the Texans, and on the face of it, it was a legitimate win. I'm not taking the win away from them, but I also watched the entire game and it was a really stupid game.

You were popping off about the lopsided stats.

Oh my God. The Texans, they fumbled a field goal snap. which happens once a month. How many times does the holder fumble a field goal snap? Is that a once a month, just any team? Yeah. Like if you, if I gave you like in October, -0.5 fumbled snaps from the holder in the entire, in every game in October, would you go over or under?

Oh, I think I'd go over in October. It's getting a little colder, but yeah.

Okay.

This week.

All right.

Yeah.

It's, it's a rarity. I'll say that. Mm-hmm. They have enough, so that's inside like the 25. They have another horrible 4th and 1 call, which is like a Texans Groundhog Day thing where it's just 4th and 1. Let's run a really slow developing kind of 45-degree angle run and the guy will get tackled. And they kind of controlled the first half. I thought it's 0-0 forever. And then Chase makes just one of the best catches of the last couple years.

Yeah.

And I have no fucking clue how he caught this. And all of a sudden it's 7-0 Bengals and you, you kind of know the game's over. Houston rushes for 14 carries, 18 yards. Stroud throws for 353 with no Nico Collins.

Right.

And Burrow honestly sucked in the first half and I thought turned it on in the second half and was better, but he was in duress. He got sacked 5 times. He was maneuvering out like he was being chased. They only had 12 first downs. They got outgained by 107 yards. Sal, they punted 8 times.

Yeah.

So their defense is definitely better, but I, I, I'm still not 100% sold yet. I'm sorry, I can't get there yet.

I'm trying to figure out how much we would've bet on the Texans if we knew that they would win the first downs 22 to 12 and they would hold Burrow to under 200, or maybe at 207 including the sacks, maybe goes under. But, and at 10—

What about 8 punts?

8 punts. 8 punts. And I don't think it's Stroud's fault. Like they had 18 rushing yards, like you said, from their running backs.

Yeah. Thought he was really good in that game. I really, I thought, I thought that was like the best I've ever seen him play. I didn't even know who he was throwing to.

Right.

It's like Booty. It was whatever the receiver they took last year who didn't have the torn ACL. Noel.

Right. Yeah. And who, who ran the ball too. Like he was one of the better running backs.

'Cause I, I had it on the T— I had it on the, the permanently on the lower left TV, but no sound. So I didn't even know who he was throwing to half the time. I was just like, oh, there's another guy. Um, but the Bengals—

the problem is a lot of smart people, and also Anthony DeBundo, picked Nico Collins as Offensive Player of the Year. So if he's not— and I know that clicked a little today, but if he's not in that offense, it is going to be tough sledding some of these games, right?

So we have the Bengals week 1, they get 4 fumbles from a Tampa team that then proceeded to take a huge dump the next week against Cleveland. Then this game They beat the Texans, no Nico Collins. They kind of just didn't beat themselves was how they won. Let the Texans kind of beat themselves. I hate to be a dick when they're 2-0 and their defense is clearly better. Like their defense is clearly better. They have like a little more of an identity. There's no question. But I would not put them as a contender at this point.

Well, I mean, it helps when the Ravens lose dumbass games like they do, right? And we don't like the Steelers, so Um, it'll probably be decided the last game of the year. But yeah, I, I think like they still have trouble protecting Burrow, which is always gonna be a problem. And I don't know, I read into the narrative too. Like he was like throwing lefty in practice, screwing around, but he also had like a really tight back and, um, it looked like he might not even play. Dumb on us.

The best way to put it, would you do the bet again? I, I, I think I might if like you're just running that back. No, I just feel like if they played that game 10 times, I think they probably each win 5. Whereas like the Tampa game, I had huge regrets from like within an hour.

Right.

Oh my God, this team's a mess.

Ravens, you got a lot of money. You could keep losing on losing bets. I mean, you could, you would do the bet again. It's fine.

Ravens, Ravens-Saints, Baltimore. This was the annual September game. I was texting with Mahler about it. It's It's, it's, I don't even know what, what other September traditions do we have? I guess Labor Day.

Labor Day. Fantasy football drafts.

Survivor comes back. Fantasy football drafts. The Ravens losing a stupid game. Saints are down 14-3 at halftime. Didn't matter. Never turned it off. Was waiting for them to make a run. What's the nickname for them? Would you go with the Big Never Easy?

For the Saints?

Yeah.

Well, I was thinking I was putting it more on Tyler Shuck because we try to come up with a nickname for him, but I think every game is going to end with a Tyler Shuck comeback and then announcers are going to be like, oh, did he get in? Did he not get in? All right, it depends what they, what they ever called on the field. It's, that's going to be, it's like, so I think we need to come up with a name for, for when he's right on the goal line and the game hangs in the balance and we wait on the booth review.

Just a Tip. Just a Tip is good.

I was trying to do Shuck. Shuck Around and Find Out. Like, we gotta, we gotta find out. We gotta figure out.

Motherfuckers.

Yeah, the motherfuckers.

He leads, he leads the NFL in passing. Do you have any explanation for why Derrick Henry had 5 carries after halftime?

So I know the lineman went out, that was big. But yeah, they scored 3 points in the second half and he had 5 carries and it's awful shit what they do. Like, this is their 11th home loss when winning by more than a possession in the last half dozen years or something. Like, this is really weird.

I thought the line was too high. I did not take Saints for Ringer 107 because they played overtime last week and that always scares me. But losing the 2 receivers— Rashad Bateman, who was, you know, who had a big game today but was available in every fantasy league.

I had—

did you finally pick him up the last—

I did. I'm one of them. Yeah, yeah.

Like, on Thursday and Friday, he was just sitting there for anybody to take because we've all— I think we've all had him at this point. Right. Marlon Humphrey said after the game, there's consensus among the team that everybody is tired of seeing us doing what we just did.

Mm-hmm.

And Lamar, we should mention, had a singularly atrocious end of the game pick.

Right. Really bad.

Really, really, really awful.

Yeah.

But it's September and they're missing Zay Flowers, and I'm not, I'm not gonna overreact to this.

Well, and, and you wanna kill quarterbacks 'cause that's just the way, the way this goes. But people get mad at the Allen-Lamar comparison and it's like, here's how you can compare 'em. Their defenses cannot get stops in the 4th quarter in big spots. They really, it's almost the same for both of 'em. So maybe this wasn't a Harbaugh thing. Oh, I gotta think Harbaugh was just loving this, that if, if they're gonna lose anyway, no question.

He had a great time.

Double-digit lead. Yep.

He had a great time. I will say this about the Saints who I've enjoyed the last 2 weeks.

Mm-hmm.

Shuck is, he's definitely a heat check QB. Like he, you can see it as he's starting to feel it. The 2 receivers are just good. Olave and Vele are, are both good. They get open, they can catch in traffic, they have speed, and the tight end's good. Johnson. Mm-hmm. Right. And then now when they have Kamara and, and Achane, we're supposed to call him now.

Yeah. Yeah.

They have just a lot of explosiveness. So I think any game like that where they, where they're big underdogs, I almost think like they're an automatic Pick at this point for me. Or they're getting more than a touchdown. Yeah. Or second half, they're a cheap touchdown team, but they move the ball. I, you know, I don't really, are they gonna make the playoffs? I don't know. They're not gonna go 9-8 or 10-7, but they don't need to. 8-9 might, might be good enough.

7-10.

Vikings-Bears.

Hmm.

I wasn't really focused on this game 'cause it really felt like nothing was ever happening.

They didn't want us to look. Yeah.

I don't know if you, I don't know how much you watched of this, but I did have it on one. It just felt like it was 3-3 or 6-3 for 3 hours.

This was opposite of Detroit Buffalo, right? Where every SGP in this one like just burned in hell. It was just bad. And then the, I don't know, like when Ben Johnson's like saying we're gonna break the points record, he's gotta remember that it's, he's a coach of a team that we're, the weather's awful for their, all their home games, you know? Right, in September. So, um, I don't know, it's a bummer. We all like Caleb, 4,000 yards plus and ring of wise guys. I think he was our favorite quarterback this year. I know he's not done for the year, but, um, this is—

Yeah, but here's the thing, it just— we, we have like Achilles PTSD at this point, and the way he went down, it just seemed like it was Achilles for 10 minutes. Um, and they showed the replay, there was an unbelievable— somebody had a Twitter video of a cameraman just no announcers, but somebody who was on the sideline taking the video. And Caleb goes down, the crowd, he's scrambling and the crowd's going nuts, right? Because they think he's going to— it's like, and then he gets tripped. It's like, oh, and then he rolls over and the crowd goes, oh, wow. And then he tries to get up and rolls over and it's like a third.

Oh, it's like a Simpsons episode.

They're just getting kicked in the nuts. But it was like 70,000. I don't mean to make fun of it. It's like really crazy. Right. The crowd like reacting to this and slowly realizing that he was hurt. And yeah, it seemed like he was out for the year and he's crying, he's got the towel over his head, and then it turns out it's a hammy.

Then there's one 40 minutes later where they're all on their phone checking Twitter like hamstring.

Oh, oh, backup delayed. I thought Tyson Bagent was gonna win it for them. I like him. He's my, he's one of my favorite backups, but he was terrible when he came in. Yeah. So they go 59 points last week, 3 this week. And Colton Loveland is officially— is it him or Drake Maye for fantasy murder of the year so far? Not of non-injured guys.

Well, Loveland was 1 for 3 today, right?

And, and 0 points last week. 1 for 3. He was going for $20, $25 in fantasy leagues, right? Second or third tight end.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say Loveland, and it doesn't seem to get better. But I, I guess we can give credit to the Vikings defense, right? They kept the Bears under 300. 300 yards at home after, like you said, 59. But I think it's like, just get out of our way, Carson Wentz. Just complete 10 or 11 passes and let Brian Flores work his magic.

Brian Flores has to get a job in the National Football League. You're gonna be seeing that a lot this week. Yeah. Carson Wentz, 11 for 20, 143 yards. No touchdowns, no turnovers. Minnesota, 11 first downs. It was enough. They scored 9 points. Did what they had to do. But that's a— that one's kind of smart for the Bears. I feel like you gotta win that one at home against Carson.

Carson, they had 14 plays in the red zone. The Vikings had 1. It was that fumble. Was that— was it Swift that fumbled?

That was—

yeah, they were right there.

So then the other quarterback injury was a little more serious. Jayden Daniels, who has now been injured in 4 of his last 5 starts. Yeah, this one was a bad one. It led to the re— they're showing the replay and Tom Brady screaming, oh shit.

Yeah.

On national TV. So we injured QBs so far: Daniels, Caleb, Darnold, and Herbert psychologically, and maybe Drake Maye as well. Daniels is the only one who seems like he might be gone, gone. Right. I don't, I don't, I don't know what the prognosis is on that, but I think—

This is the one he had last year, right? And he got injured and he came back and then he had it again. And if you look at it, it looked bad. Like it's, it's bad. We're used to seeing that with legs and everything, but there was extra whatever hanging from his arm. And like, you know, I'm a Cowboys fan, but you can't root for injuries. You just can't. I, I don't know who I'm talking to right now, but when you look at it, it's like you're talking people outta rooting for injuries. You're doing public service. Yeah. Please don't root for injuries because then you get, you get Bagent and you get Cooper Rush and you get Jack freaking Strand and Carson Wentz and Marcus Mariota and Justin Herbert. No, but it's, it's week 2, and what's this gonna look like? What's this gonna look like in a month?

Not only, not only do you get Jack Strand, you get fans cheering when Jack Strand comes in 'cause he's a better option than the guy you just had to watch for 2 hours. Washington 0-2, the season's over. You could, you easily could have talked me into making them a crossover team. The, they might be in the hunt for the number 1 pick. You gotta think about it.

Yeah.

'Cause Daniels is gonna be a huge extension after this year and it's like he's played 1 of 3 seasons, you know?

That's a bummer for them. I mean, they could have won that game even if he doesn't throw that, whatever. If that pass goes incomplete, they were gonna win that game. Like the, the Cowboys defense, you felt that way? They allowed 20 points, but it could have been another 40. I mean, Daniels did overthrow, right?

Yeah.

He had wide open guys overthrown. And there was a couple drops. This defense is just, they hit hard, which is fun, but they get, there's like 6 guys moving from a 4-3 to a 3-4.

Yeah.

And you just, I don't know, they just look way outta place.

So I'm not gonna win my Cowboys over 10.5 wins bet.

It's just gonna be a dumb team again. I think I'm just glad I got, House owes me a Fogo de Chão dinner 'cause, or side bet that I'll get excited for, but not that much.

Can I, can I come to that?

Yeah, that you can come to.

Yeah. Thanks. I wrote down in my notes, Mariota is like the Masked Singer. I can't believe we're still doing this. I don't even know what that means.

What?

But it's like season 15 of the Masked Singer.

Oh my God. Yeah.

It's another, it's another 8-game starting stretch for Marcus Mariota. Like, who wants this at this point? Washington fans don't want it. I don't wanna bet for or against it. Nobody wants it on their fantasy team. He doesn't even seem like he wants it. Who, who wants him to start NFL games?

It was like that. You don't know who the backup is and then they come in and they take the mask off.

Oh, that would be good.

That could go too.

Yeah. The mask backup.

Right.

Oh my God, it's Deshaun Kaiser. What's he doing here? All right, so you're not enthused by your team. My team, as you know, nothing good happens when you play the Pittsburgh Steelers. Just guys get injured, dumb fumbles happen, people lose confidence, penalties. You just never feel good after.

We lost on— Not the no sweat game for you though, that you had a, I mean, you, you only needed one explosive play.

We lost on Wenner though. We lost probably like our—

Oh, and Wenner. Oh, the—

Our right guard. It's probably our most consistent lineman. TJ Watt rolled up on him. Right. Post-Sedona Vrabel. You use that post-Sedona? Not— I wouldn't say he's as crisp. There's some, there's some clock management stuff that he missed today that I was like, oh, Vrabel doesn't usually miss that stuff. Um, our DBs were decimated by the end of the game, and it didn't matter because Aaron Rodgers was on the other team and he was really, really, really awful, and we were hitting the shit out of him, and I had a great time.

Yeah, why not? Nothing's changed for that team, right? How long has this team been the exact same way? Like 7 years?

The Steelers? I feel like it's grimmer now that like Rodgers was 39 for 187 today and then took some big hits.

39. Oh, for 187.

39 attempts for 187 total. Yeah. Metcalf's a mess. Gonzalez, like, I, I don't know what the final stats were, but he guarded him most of the game and defended him and followed him around the field. And Metcalf was just got crushed. The biggest thing to me, and, and I know Dowdle got hurt during the game, but I, I thought the same thing last week. They can't really run the ball either. They're not— at least last year with Gainwell, they had this, um, pass-catching running back kind of angle. This year they don't even seem to have that. So they have no running game.

Right.

It's really just Metcalf and Friermuth. This guy Jeremy Bernard had a couple plays today, but, um, I would say from a skill position standpoint, It's one of the grimmest situations in the league, right? Yeah. It's bad. Whose skill, which would you want Pittsburgh's guys over any, anybody else's guys?

Well, the Raiders without Bowers, except they're making—

But you get Gente though.

Yeah.

I get Gente and Bowers.

That's true.

The Raiders.

Dolphins.

Miami. I get Achane.

Achane. Yeah.

Right.

Etienne. I think he wants to go by Etienne now.

Oh, he's, he flipped, he flipped the other way.

Yeah. They, they switched. Yeah.

Yeah. Chargers. I get Omara Hampton and I get, I get McConkey.

I love that. We got the Chargers. Rodgers are in this conversation now.

But I'm trying to think like, who has worse skilled guys than Pittsburgh? And you're right, you've seen the pregame. Tomlin was like, yeah, it's really hard. Like, he, he, he had to vibe like, I'm glad I got out.

I do have to read some— I'll read an Aaron Rodgers stat because he still remains the only quarterback who accused my cousin of being in the Epstein files. So if there's another one, I'll read this. All right, so Aaron Rodgers has attempted 12 passes 20-plus yards downfield over the first 2 weeks. without a completion. It's the most deep attempts, uh, in a 2-game stretch without a completion in 4 years. And the Pats blitzed him. This seems to be the, the thing to do, just blitz him. On 18 dropbacks, their most in a game since 2024. Good job by them figuring it out. He had 43 yards passing on the blitzes, 8 pressures, 2 sacks, 1 interception. It's pretty easy.

I hit this one on Ringer 107. I thought the line was a little too low, and I thought the defense could win.

Yeah.

By itself. What I wasn't counting on was McDaniels, who had his second straight horrific play-calling game.

Oh yeah, you didn't like that.

I just don't know what he's doing and I don't feel like he has a feel for the team. But there's like a real Drake Maye conversation now. Like every Pats fan text thread I'm on, my dad is probably the most upset about it. He doesn't understand what's happening. He's like, this is what happened to Mac Jones. I'm just like, don't say that. Don't utter those words.

But I'm gonna call him after this. I know it's gonna be late by him, but I'm gonna call him.

Drake Maye's been a mess. He just has. And, and like, even when they've hit big plays, he's been short on the throws. He was short on the flea flicker in week 1. He was short today to Dobbs. That should have been a touchdown. He knows he's not playing well 'cause he said in the postgame press conference, like, he was like really like, seemed like he was bummed out.

Why don't you just stick with the injury thing? Like, I would even buy it. I think now he doesn't throw the same ball as he did last year, right?

No, he's got— there's some Happy Feet stuff happening with him. It's— he was so awesome last year, and I don't know how they get him back, how they get his confidence back, but he does not look like the same confidence. He has a little bit of the yips. Yeah, he does. Now that— now if you're defending him, you're gonna say they play Seattle in week 1, who just dismantled Arizona too, and might have the best defense in the league. Pittsburgh's front 7 is excellent, right? Yeah. He lost AJ Brown in the first hour of the season. They don't really have another, they don't have, they don't have Diggs from last year. They don't really have a receiver you trust. But this is why, like, they, they nailed this second tight end, this Reardon. They took him in the third round. He's made big plays in both games.

That's right.

He's an excellent blocker. I don't know why they don't play him and Henry together more and just go bigger and try to run and use more play action. And just try to get Drake more confidence. But over and over again, it just seems like he's rolling out and, and just, I, I don't get it.

You'll be okay.

He's supposed to be better this year, not worse.

You'll put up 40 against the Jets or the, against the Dolphins. And who else? There's some, there are a couple cupcakes on there.

I'm concerned. I didn't like when my dad texted the Mac Jones thing. It made, upset me, set me off, knocked me backwards. Broncos-Jags. This was interesting because about halfway through this game I was like, holy shit, should we look at AFC title odds for the Jags? They look like a juggernaut.

Mm-hmm.

And all of a sudden their offense stopped doing anything. Their defense is not good. And Denver did the thing that they used to do last year where they start out slow and then all of a sudden they put together a good hour and you're like, holy shit, they're winning.

Yeah, when you look at Bo Nix's stats, like, how did he get to that? He was so bad.

298 yards. I watched the whole game.

Yeah, nuts. It looked like another game they were just gonna give up, and they're not scoring a lot. And Vance— but Vance Joseph's defense was good. I guess we couldn't expect it to go sour 2 weeks in a row. They needed to show up, and they did. They're also down 2 running backs now. They have that rookie Coleman now, got a bunch of carries. So maybe that's the offense. But the most promising thing for Denver, I thought, was Working Waddle in there. He had 8 grabs for almost 140.

Yeah, he's really good. Their defense looked like they actually remembered to tackle this week. Yeah. Denver for the year, 6 for 22 on 3rd down. They're 1 out of 4 first and goal actually scoring. Not, not great. But I, I thought it was an important win for Denver because if they're 0-2 and Nyx isn't good, there's some real stuff now. You, and then everyone's gonna talk about the play caller. Should Peyton take the play calls back. Like, it's just another week of that. The Jags could kind of get away with this, but I, I thought they had a nice chance here, and now I have more questions than answers with them, especially with the defense. I— the reason I didn't think they were a playoff team was 'cause of the defense, and you saw it in the second half, right?

Yeah.

They really— September, it's altitude.

I get it. Root— I'm— I don't love the Rootin' Tootin' deal. Anybody have like 65 yards? I don't, I don't think like He seems like a backup. But they need like a 3rd and 4 or something. It's still gonna be heavy on Lawrence's shoulders.

Seattle and the Cardinals. I wrote down Mike McDaniel, Mike McDonald. He's like a jacked Belichick. Did you see him?

Oh yeah.

On the sideline.

He's something. Hard Knocks. He's big.

He's wearing like the medium t-shirt, just like doing this whole thing. He's, yeah. But they, they looked awesome. I gotta be honest, I can't really tell the difference between Drew Lock and Sam Darnold.

Mm-hmm.

When I'm— at least against a lousier team. But I thought Lock was, I thought legitimately good, legitimately solid today.

It's interesting. I had like a reverse thing. I said, I wonder if it was like the Seahawks said, hey NFL, we're giving you Drew Lock to feast on for 2 weeks. If you can't figure out how to beat us, then we're just gonna steamroll everybody now. And he had 235 yards to Brissett's 95. Brissett was trailing the whole freaking game.

My one red flag with them is the short yardage stuff.

Yeah, until—

I know Charbonnet's coming back, but when it's like 3rd and 1, 4th and 1 stuff near the goal line, I don't— they don't have that one battering ram guy. Um, it's a lot of like finesse running backs. They get in the word, man.

The, the JSN— I know it's a I'm not inventing anything.

He was incredible.

I wonder if he's like an actual seahawk. Like, I don't even know if that's real, a bird, but his routes are ridiculous. The way he glides and he like fakes and doesn't even have to plant his foot. He like, he doesn't slow down to deke the defender. He's just before, before he had— this is before he has the ball. He has 17 receptions and 4 touchdowns this year with Drew Lock throwing to him.

There was a great clip of him When he, how he got open on that 82-yard touchdown.

Was that the one with the—

he made it like he was going to the right, but he used his head.

Yeah.

And by his head he made the guy move. And it reminded me of like those old Magic Johnson clips where Magic Johnson would do the no-look and he would just be going, his body would be going in different directions from the ball and you're like, what's happening?

Yeah. Well, that's what I was thinking.

I can't imagine, would he be the number one person you'd be terrified to try to defend?

Oh yeah. Yeah. Not like today, but just to be embar—

just to be embarrassed. I think as a receiver, I think he would be the one I'm most afraid of.

Yeah. It's still Aaron Hernandez is first, the most terrified, but smart.

Yeah, I like that. I know what you're saying. I have Mac Jones, Drew Lock, Stetson Bennett, Tyson Bagent, and I think Mariota 5th. That's my backup QB list right now. my backup QB power rankings.

Oh, interesting. Yeah.

I don't know if you, there's any others you'd like.

I didn't look.

I feel like Mac Jones and Locke are the only ones that could actually come in and keep steering the car straight on like an 11-win team.

Right. Let me look through over here. Yeah. I mean, we might be seeing Trey Lance soon enough.

I did not have Trey Lance in my top.

Who the hell knows? Might get there.

I'm not counting out Arizona yet. I think that was a different in class, but I think there's, I think for 3/4 of the league, I think they're gonna be able to move the ball. The big story of this game, Chris Myers was the play-by-play in this game.

You don't say.

Yeah, I got some emails about it. He, he, this is Ben in Guadalajara said, I'm guessing this is the first time ever a defending Super Bowl champ has had Chris Myers call their game the following year.

That's a compliment.

Yeah. And then Rick in San Diego said, biggest upset of the day. Imagine Chris Meyer's surprise when he found out he'd be calling the defending Super Bowl champs instead of Atlanta-Carolina. It is, it is amazing he didn't get Atlanta-Carolina.

It's true.

'Cause it feels like they— Fox tries to torture him with the worst game every week, but they actually threw him a bone. They sent him to Seattle this time.

I think the biggest upset is that you got an email from a from Guadalajara and the guy's name is Ben.

Speaking of Panthers-Falcons, Cooper Rush, your guy, 10 for 17 for 86 yards, 2 picks and a fumble, and benched for a guy named Jack Strand who got a big ovation from the crowd because everybody was excited it wasn't Cooper Rush.

Minnesota State's Jack Strand is here.

Jack Strand.

Chris Myers isn't here to see it.

Yeah, there's some good stats about how bad the Falcons are, but, um, there's only been 4 teams ever that had no red zone plays in the first 2 games of the year. You saw this?

Yeah, I did see that.

'08 Rams, '97 Lions, and the '92 Pats. Uh, a team that really, really got my gambling to go to another level because they were so bad, I had no team.

Oh yeah.

'92, that was like the first year I was like, I got I gotta have some rooting interests and I think we went 1 and 15.

It was really bad. Well, let me ask you this. Outta those teams that didn't have a red zone possession in 2, 2 games, did any of 'em have 3 primetime games in a row following week 2?

That's coming.

'Cause that's what the Atlanta effing Falcons have. That's coming. What is going on? What happened?

I looked up why didn't the Falcons keep Cousins, and it was because if they did, he, his salary would've been a big $67 million cap hit for 2027. Right. I still would've kept him. Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know what the cap hit would've been otherwise, but he might just be too annoying. But yeah, there's some interesting Bryce Young stuff going on. If you go back to Week 18 last year in the wildcard game, in these first 2 games where he's 250+ pass yards, 4 straight games, good fantasy stats, throwing the ball 35 a game. You watch them and it's like McMillan and Coker and Darren Waller, like they, they're, actually have weapons. And Bryce, I thought was good again.

I'm laughing because of what we did to Heifetz. You, you remember, right? Tell the story. Yeah. Well, we, Danny Heifetz, who runs the Ringer Fantasy League, he's very, very, very much into it. And he passed and passed and passed for 10 rounds on a quarterback.

And he did the, I'm so smart, I'm gonna get my quarterback later move.

And so we're like, hey, you know what we'll do? There's, there's 14 quarterbacks taken. Let's each take a quarterback in the next you know, uh, 24 picks or whatever. So Heifetz doesn't get one.

We left him. He was the end of the round, so he wasn't coming back for 22 picks, right?

So he— we basically picked the top 25 quarterbacks and left them with Bryce Young.

Yeah.

Now he has the last laugh. 6 touchdowns, 600 yards plus for Bryce Young.

Bryce Young. He— Cam Ward was left. Yeah. Brissett.

Shuck wasn't even there. Brissett was taken.

I think I took Jackson Dart. That was really fun. Yeah. We'll take another break for the podcast, but we'll keep going here live on Netflix. Guess the lines. You beat me in week 2. We tied in week 1. Thursday night is a class. Put it this way, I am not gonna be taping live after the Thursday night game this week. Why? I'm gonna, I'm gonna, Bank the podcast and just put it up because it's Packers-Falcons and I'm not staying up late to watch that.

Okay.

And do a podcast. I'm just gonna do my podcast normally during the day. It won't go over till Halloween if you're worried about that. Yeah. And again, as you mentioned, Packers this week for them, Saints Monday, Ravens Sunday. We have to watch this team 3 weeks in a row. Penix might be back and they're making this seem like, well, Penix might be back. It's like, Penix was one of the 6 worst starting quarterbacks in the league last year, right? You can't be this excited about Penix being back.

Well, I know you saw a lot of stats and everything, but the one that I like was, I think their quarterback rating is 38 and it would be 39 if they just spiked the ball on the turf every time. Did you see that? That's, that's not even, I'm not making that up. Maybe that stat, that trend should go away, that metric. But maybe, maybe we're just saying that's a bad metric.

But yeah, they're calling it the kidney stone offense. Um, Sunday's marquee game, I think this is what it is because the match—

We didn't pick, we didn't guess.

Oh, you're right. So part of the, part of Guess the Lines is we have to guess the lines, which I just didn't do right there.

Skip the lines, we'll call it.

Yeah, my guess was Packers -7.5.

All right, you're gonna get it. I went 9.5. It is only 6.5.

Oh, oh my God. That's a lot of credit to Michael Penix.

Hear ye, hear ye, get your free teaser leg here. It's the Packers.

You just made me realize I accidentally skipped the Jets game.

You might have skipped that one.

In my notes. I just had a lot of— no, that was the biggest one I skipped.

Yeah. Um, Well, when we get to the line.

Well, 'cause, 'cause the Packers being favored in this game.

Yeah.

If you watch that Packers-Jets game in a rainstorm, I know the Packers ended up winning. I did not leave that game remotely impressed with the Packers who had 199 yards, 16 first downs. They were 1 for 9 third down. Their running backs were 18 for 63. They had 14 penalties. And I don't know how the Jets lost that game. They had it.

Yeah.

There was some incredible clock management near the end with Aaron Glenn. He did something near the end that, um, I don't even really fully know how to describe.

But he explained himself.

He, well, he wanted to give them the ball in overtime, not knowing who was gonna win the coin toss.

Right.

Was that what he said? I didn't really even, he explained it. I didn't understand it.

We didn't wanna be pinned back because we wanted to set up for overtime. or something.

He had— it was 4th and 2. There was like 58 seconds left and he could have called timeout and tried to get the ball back. Now in his defense, he has Geno Smith as a quarterback and maybe he just wanted to get to overtime, but he let them run the clock all the way down, take a delay of game. Mm-hmm. Do this whole thing where all of a sudden the Packers got to try a Hail Mary, which wasn't successful, but right, there was no scenario where they should have been in any sort of touchdown danger whatsoever.

Yeah.

They should have declined the delay of game. It was all like basic Madden shit. And all of a sudden the, the Jets are in danger with a Hail Mary for a second. Then they get to overtime and it's just as bad. But yeah, the point is the Packers are not good, I don't think. Do you think they're good?

Well, they became the first team since 1941, the year my father, a giant Jets fan, was born, to lose a game. The Jets holding an opponent to less than 200 yards, having opponent with 100+ penalty yards. And a positive turnover margin. No, they're not very good. I was wrong about the Packers.

6.5. That, that is proof that they're not. It's a Thursday night game against one of the 3 worst teams in the league and they're not even a touchdown favorite. Still, there's your answer.

Yeah.

I think if the Jets won that game, I wonder what happens with LaFleur. I know he got an extension, but you're talking about a pretty big—

Looking bad. I know Jayden Reed went down. It's big. He seems to be okay. But yeah, they could not move the ball. Their offensive line looked really bad.

Offensive line's bad. I don't really like any of their running backs. They do have the Nerd King, Jordan Love. Sunday marquee, Jaguars home for the Patriots. This is a really good game. One of these teams will be 1-2 after the game and the other one will be 2-1.

Wow. Is that right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I just looked that up.

Can they tie? All right.

I have the Jaguars -2.5 against the Pats.

Oh, I had 1.5. It is in fact 2.5. You get that.

Yeah, I figured that's what it would be. We'll see with the weather. There's some weird nor'easter stuff happening on the East Coast this week, and I don't know. I don't know.

Really? Already you have a weather report?

Yeah, it's gonna be a nor'easter on the East Coast, but, uh, I think that's a nice matchup for the Pats because the Jags defense is bad and that's kind of what they need. They need to go against a defense that's not that good.

Oh, you just crushed your Cardinals hopes.

Yeah, I'm just saying, they kind of need to be in a shootout where Drake May, our quarterback Drake May, you could say it, can make some plays.

It feels good to say it.

I have 5 watchables. Yeah, the first one would normally be a fairly watchable, but because the Chargers are 0-2 and they're playing in Buffalo, um, and Josh Allen is on a rampage, I think it has to be a watchable. Buffalo and the Chargers in Buffalo. I have Buffalo -7.

Oh, oh, so you cheated today. I see.

It's— you know I don't cheat.

I said 6. Fandel is sick of Chargers shit. They're just like, yeah, this is 7.

I made a mental note from a year ago when we did Week 3 that they do with the 0-2 teams. I think they bump it a little bit toward the 0-2 teams expecting our season's on the line kind of shit. Yeah. I think normally this should be like 8.5, but 'cause the Chargers are 0-2.

Oh, you think it would go interesting?

So I thought it was like Week 15. I, no, I think it would be higher. Chargers are bad. Yeah. Next, it's 100% chance I'm putting the Bills in a tease.

Bills-Packers. Good. Don't even worry.

It won't be the Packers and it won't be the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Next one is the Lions and the Jets. Lions are home with their terrible defense. The Jets are on the road. Probably a good idea to get away from their fans. And I can't believe, I think this is less than 7, but I have Detroit at home favored by 6.

Uh, we split it. I said 7 and it is 6.5. Hmm. I won't— that's fair. That's fair. The Lions are weird. Yeah, I, I just, I, I don't think if you're using them in an eliminator, there's no team I'd be comfortable using the Lions against in an eliminator, just the way they play, even though they're better than most teams.

It just— not their secondary. I didn't think Geno looked bad today, especially in, in bad weather. It was kind of a Geno recipe for him to do dumb shit, but didn't happen.

He had 2 3rd and long conversions early on and then he ran for one, like 3rd and 7 or something. He converted. Yeah, I thought it was good. It was like 2:47 or something. Touchdown.

Wasn't bad. Bengals are at Pittsburgh. Not a must-win for Pittsburgh 'cause they're 1-1, but this is, this will be a nice test for the Bengals 'cause the Steelers front 7 was getting there.

Mm-hmm.

Not that the Pats have the best offensive line, but I have the Bengals as a road favorite. I have the Bengals by 2.5.

All right, good. I get this. I said 3. It is 3.5.

Oof.

Wow.

When's the last time the Steelers have—

It's just not a lot of scoring, right? Like, this is— their games are always 18-16 against the Bengals, it seems.

In the Tomlin era, this was an automatic, I'm taking the Steelers. I don't even care. I'm not even looking at the injury report or the weather. It's like there's no way they're not covering the hook. 3.5. We'll see with Joe Burrow. Uh, Niners are home for the Cardinals. I probably shouldn't have put this in the watchables, but, um, with the Niners with their weird receiver situation, I think the Cardinals can hang with them. Um, I have the Niners by 8.5.

Oh, come on. I got it exact and I wanted it for myself. It's 8.5. That's what I had.

That's a tease.

That's your teaser? Yeah.

No, I'm saying it's a possible tease. I'm a little afraid of the Cardinals though. I like their running backs. It's weird 'cause it's so stupid to triple down on a position that the NFL has decided is pretty dispensable. But I, I do like all their running backs.

He's so inconsistent. Brissett, he didn't have a pass over 10 yards or complete a pass over 10.

That was 2004 Brissett today. Yeah. Last one. We're going to Brazil. Yeah, your team, your dumb team playing the Ravens.

You're sending me and Mallory, right?

I mean, she'd go. I'd definitely talk her into it.

She's having a tough time between the Ravens loss and the Herbert's her quarterback. She's a pick-me-up.

Herbert's her quarterback.

I forgot.

I have a— I gave Ravens -1.5 for this.

All right, let me see. Okay, that's what I had and it was wrong. It is 3. Oof.

So this will be a big topic this week. I'm going to read an email from a Brazilian listener named Kai. C-A-I. He said, I want to warn you about the condition of the Maracanã's field, the stadium where the Cowboys versus Ravens game will play in week 3. I hope I said that correctly. The soccer teams that play there complain about the condition of the pitch. after every single game. It's honestly embarrassing for Brazil considering Maracanã is one of the temples of soccer. Tell Sal, that's you.

Yeah.

To expect a game with lots of slipping and possible injuries to his team.

Oh, great.

Because this game is going to be played on a pasture. Oh, and please, whatever you do, don't bet on this game. That's from a Brazilian listener just begging us to stay away from this game. One of my— I might add this to the gambling manifesto. When a, when a podcast listener from Brazil begs you to stay away from a game being played in Brazil, stay away.

I think that's smart. Also, Brandon Aubrey's gonna be slipping. All our best players gonna be— it's gonna be missing extra points and shit.

Oh, sounds terrible.

You know what? I'm not going.

What was that game? What was it, 2 years ago? It was Eagles-Packers, maybe on a Friday night. It's like in Rio or somewhere. And it was the same thing. The field was an abomination.

Yeah. Yeah. There was one that canceled because the field wasn't ready. It was at Mexico.

Yeah.

We'll have to reach out to our—

maybe that's what it was. Mexico. Yeah. All right. Fairly watchables. I probably put this in the wrong category. This should have been a watchables after knowing what we saw with the Colts tonight, but Texans are at Indianapolis. Hmm. 2-0-2 teams. Is this a loser leaves town match, Sal?

Oh, wow.

Although the Texans did make it last year after going 0-3.

Yeah, I mean, the Colts were 8-2 and they didn't make it, so I, I don't think you could say one way or another for this division. I hit this exact. I think you could do it too.

I had Texans -2.5.

That's it. That's exactly right.

I'm doing way better this week.

You are. Better feeling when you get the lines ahead of time. I think it's probably It's a can't miss.

I don't appreciate that. Texans -2.5 Colts.

That I might stay away from that. I don't care what the field conditions are there. I don't love that at all.

How many D-backs are Indianapolis even gonna have for that? Okay, next one is in Washington. It is the Seahawks at Washington. I feel like these 2 teams play every year, not in the same division. Mm-hmm. I, I wanted to push this above 7 and I couldn't get there because of Drew Lock. So I said Seahawks by 6.5.

Oh, come on. Push it. Push it above 7.

Push it.

Push, push.

What is it?

You said 6.5.

That's what it is.

Yeah. I said 7.5.

So what is that with Darnold? 8.5? See, we're 2 points.

I was looking the other way. It's Mariota against this defense.

Right. That's gonna be awful.

That's pro— that's probably a teaser game.

Mariota kind of killed the quarterback show. I didn't, I never watched an episode of it, but that Netflix show with the quarterbacks.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

It's so— Mariota was like, his experience wasn't going well and he basically bailed near the end. Like in the most interesting part.

Well, he's a Masked Singer guy, so he can't, he can't control all the shows.

The Masked Singer part is Mariota. Oh my God. Uh, oh, it's Joe Milton! The Mass Backup. That would be unbelievable. That'd be so exciting to see the Mass Backup come out.

That would be good. Yeah. Is that Andy Dalton's music?

Oh my God, Andy Dalton! Take his keys. Um, Bucs-Vikings in Tampa. Please don't let me bet on this, Sal.

I'm off 5 points. I'm already skeptical what the hell's going on here.

It's in Tampa. Chance of really weird weather. I just tic-tacked it. I did Bucs -1.5.

I said Bucs 2.5. It's Vikings -2.5. No, no, it really is. Wow. They're all in on Carson Wentz and this defense.

Holy mackerel. You're telling me Carson Wentz is a 2.5-point favorite on the road against a team that's not one of the 5 worst teams in the league?

Well, I have to say, now that I think about it, if the Browns had so much success pressuring Baker, if Brian Flores just does the same, is Baker gonna complete a pass. I don't know what to expect.

Brian Flores deserves a chance to be a head coach. It should be all— there should just be an ESPN channel where it's just, they just rotate guys in with a suit where the— right, it's really tight in their neck and they're just yelling at us even though everyone's afraid to say no.

It's not true.

I'm not in charge of an NFL team. You're yelling at me. I'm just on my couch. Uh, poop facto, we have 4 games. Panthers are at the Browns.

One of these 2 teams is gonna be 2-1.

I mean, honestly, I should have put this in the rewatch and the watchables, and you could have even talked me into Game of the Week because we never thought Deshaun was gonna start this game, and now he's gonna start, and I have no idea what the fans are— I'm— this definitely isn't a multi-view for me, 100%.

Can I tell you what happened with the Panthers-Falcons to me today? Well, I had, so I, all right, so I, I do the 3 games. I, I have a big screen that splits into 4 and that's not obnoxious. Everyone could have a big screen right now. The, the, it's the one thing that has gone down in value. Like it's gone down $1,000 in the last year.

It's crazy. TVs are, are, yes, 5 times cheaper than they ever used to be.

Don't buy bread, buy bigger TVs. So that's it. So it splits into 4 boxes. So I, I, I have the 3 games I'm betting on the most. on 1, 2, and 3, and then the 4th one I have in a YouTube TV 4 box. So now I have 7 games covered. The shittiest game goes on my computer monitor, and it was Carolina-Atlanta, and it wouldn't let me load. And I was like, this is, this is karma for all the shit I talk about, about the NFC South. It's not letting me watch it. And I was like, you know what, I'm fine. I won't watch that game at all. I was so—

Guess what? You didn't miss anything.

I didn't miss anything. And I'm gonna do the same with this. one that you're calling the game of the week, the Browns and Panthers.

I've never figured out whether I like the red zone or not with the multiple TVs.

The red zone?

No, because there was 8 today and I wanted to have 6 and I had the red zone in the top left 'cause of the, yeah, 2 smaller TVs and the big TV. But then the red zone is always like, it's either a little ahead or a little behind with one of the other games. Of course. And they kept going to the Pats game and they were a little ahead of the Pats game, which, you know, I'm focused on, on the TV. I'm at, and now I'm doing this and I was, so I got it out.

Yeah.

And I did what you did.

That's it. That's it. You'll be in a straitjacket by the end of the 3 hours. Yeah. Like trying to sync up everything.

Well, speaking of straitjacket, you're gonna be in a straitjacket if you bet on Panthers-Browns. I have the Panthers in Cleveland favored by 3 points. All right.

I think you're gonna beat me this week. I had 1.5. It is 2.5. Hmm. You get that?

I've been pretty good this week. I have a good feel. Yeah.

You're winning 9 to 5.

I would've done really well with bets this week. if it wasn't for, uh, Tampa not—

yeah, no kidding—

against the Cleveland Browns. I still did, I still did good.

I, I, I love— it's one of those rare weeks where I lost money, but I'm not mad because I could have, I could have lost a ton. I could have, right? I could have had the, all those teaser teams. The Chargers— I only had Tampa, but the Chargers were one that lost. Who else? Who was another one? Who was the other one?

Chargers, Baltimore, Tampa.

Yeah, yeah, the, the—

yeah, Fando, I bet. Fando They're calling whatever, whatever date Thursday was, that Bills-Lions is apocalypse day. 'Cause they lost every same-game parlay you could have possibly put together on Thursday.

Right.

But I think they probably did a little bit better today.

Yeah. They'll get back.

Chiefs at Miami.

Wow. I'm saying this for the first time.

I picked Chiefs minus 8. Might be too low.

I said 8.5. It is 10.5.

I made that guess before they put up 33 points on the Colts. Oh, I hope I don't choke now. I had to send my picks to Eduardo like 2 hours ago, so I can't even cheat. They're popping up on, on the screen. I can't, I can't even change my guesses as we go.

Wow.

That's—

Accountability is a sad thing.

I know. I know. 3-team 10-pointer with the Chiefs. Yeah. Is it my future?

Yeah, it's gotta be. Now we have to look at 3-teamers.

You know, it turns out Malik Willis isn't that good.

He was fine against the Raiders.

It seemed like, it seemed like a great idea based on this extremely small sample size in December of a couple good games he had.

Yeah.

But it turns out maybe he's not that good. And there's a reason maybe Tennessee gave up on him after a couple years.

Yeah, but the Dolphins are okay with it. They're—

Yeah, they, they're fine. They're doing what they need to do. Giants-Titans. I mean, we have no idea with the Giants 'cause that game's tomorrow night. It's in New York. I had Giants by 4.5. I probably missed that one.

All right. I had— now you gotta— you're closer than I am. I said 3.5. It is 6.5. 6.5.

Jesus.

They just don't score, the Titans. I mean, they essentially scored on, it wasn't a pick 6, but it was run all the way back.

They're in a weird spot with Cam Ward. I don't know what I would do if it was my team.

Mm-hmm.

Where I, I don't feel like he's the answer, but you also watch something like Bryce Young and you think like, oh, maybe, maybe this'll, yeah, maybe this is like a soufflé. It's gotta stay in the oven for a while. Right.

But if you lose to 2 New York teams in 3 weeks, everything has to be reevaluated.

Saints-Raiders. This shouldn't have been the Poop Factor. I should have put this in fairly watchables. It's in New Orleans. I think this will be a fun game. I'm excited to watch it. And I have the Saints by 1.5.

Let me find it. Saints by 1.5 is what I had also. Saints by 3 is the number.

So I beat you.

Yeah. Yeah. We'll still do the other 2.

We're tied for the season. I'm gonna take out my starters.

3. Okay.

I'm putting in my, my mass backup quarterback.

Here's what's weird about this game.

I'm putting in Gino Toretta.

Which Masked Singer are you putting in? It's a 425 start and the Saints are home. Like if it was in Vegas, I could see, but So how many late games do we have?

I think they did the 8-5. I think they finally listened to us.

5-1-1-1. I think so. I think so.

So we have 2, 3, 4. Arizona, San Francisco, Minnesota, Tampa, Baltimore, Dallas, and Vegas.

There's 4.

That's good. We just need 4 for the multiview.

So, but it's funny that that's the one they would add to the 4 o'clock.

I like it. Thank you, NFL. All we want is 4 in the late games. Just give us 4.

We do. And I want 'em all start at 4:25. I don't like this 4:06 crap. 4:06, 4:05, 4:06, and then 2 start at 4:25 and I'm going through the thing and I, but, but I can't add the 4:25s until it actually turns 4:25. And then there's always an overtime game anyway that they're not gonna click at 4:25. It's fine. 4:25, we'll still have 20 minutes before the late game.

Well, I'm the chief multi-view officer of the Sunday Ticket, so I'll get my, your complaints back.

Put in a word.

My other complaint is if you stay on Packers-Jets, but that game is turning into the next, like the Cowboys-Washington, sometimes they'll move, even though you're on the Packers-Jets, they'll move it to the Cowboys-Washington game. And then you have to like scramble and sometimes, yeah, the game will just be gone. Like something gets screwed up.

Yeah.

I don't want that to happen anymore.

Right. Well, that's why I had to do Tampa. I had to have Red Zone on for my TV, my computer. Yeah. Because I'm like, I don't know when this game's coming back. And I lost it on the— you can't retrieve it because they've gone to another game.

Yeah, I'll bring it up in our, in our Monday multi-view meeting. Okay, Sunday night, Rams at Broncos. I thought the Rams should be—

wait, did you forget Vikings-Bucs, or did we do that?

Uh, we did it. Vikings -2.5.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Okay, Sunday night, Rams-Broncos. I made the Rams as little of a favorite as possible. Rams -1.5.

I said 2 and it is 2.5, so I get that one. That's a fun one.

I mean, Puka, we don't even know if he's playing tomorrow, right?

I don't think he is.

No Miles Garrett.

Isn't he definitely out? Yeah, I— well, that line went down a point too.

6.5. The Rams line did.

Yeah.

Monday night, Eagles at the Bears. No Caleb Williams. Freaking tough, lucky, tough beat.

Lucky ass bitches. Hate it.

Yeah, the Eagles could be 3-0 with like the flimsiest 3-0 of all time.

Yeah.

And their fans will do the thing where they, they pretend they don't think the team's that good, but like in their little side chats, and then they'll be shocked if they lose. If we could just be 11-1, we'll get, we get this guy back and Howie will do something and they'll do their whole thing, right?

So they get Jayden Daniels first game off the injury, they get whatever Cam Ward version of that that was today, and now they get, uh, Tyson Bagent.

Yeah, I wanna look at— I wanna look at the rest of their— Yeah, so they have at Bears, home Rams. I'm sure Puka will be on the IR by that point, right? At Jacksonville, home Carolina, home Dallas, At Washington, first 8, they'll be like 7-1. So I have Eagles -1.5 at Chicago.

Wow. I said 5.5. Well, I guess we tie. It's 3.5. Well, I said 6.5. Yeah. All right.

So I win that one. We didn't tie. I won that one.

You get that one.

Give me the W for my stats.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13.

13.

Big one for me. Yeah.

Big win for me. Interesting week next week. There's, I love week 3. It's really, you're really getting it from some of the 0-2 teams. This is like, this is it. We're, there's no going back if we lose this one. All right. Today's Parent Corner brought to you by PayPal. In parenting and in sports, the best game plan is having the right tools at the right place. That's why the new PayPal app brings shopping, paying, earning rewards, and managing your accounts together in one spot. Plus offers, deals, and stackable rewards show up every time you open the app. You're up.

I know PayPal very well with my kids. Let's go— how I get that money. All right, so my middle guy Jack is a senior in high school, and we're figuring out the driving thing with him. He's not there yet, but so for now I drive him to school every morning, um, except for Fridays when we do the Ring of Wise Guys early, we have to be seated. We have to go over the outline for a while. It takes, it takes a while. So I drive him to school. He took this super early class, so he's home by 1 every day so that he can get a job. Although I see no evidence of that happening soon. So, so my wife's busy. She's making sandwiches for the boys while riding a SoulCycle. I don't know what she's doing, but she can't help. So it's, it's, I, he goes, but when I can't drive him on Fridays, He's late every time. I was like, hey, you got to leave the house. If you're walking, you have to leave the house by 7:10. If I drive you, we could leave by 7:17 and you could, you can make it by 7:30, but you have to leave by 7:10.

He's not out the door at 7:10 and he's late. And I keep getting emails every time. Now there's been like 3 Fridays.

Tardies.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's tardies. It's imperative that your child be in class on time. The school may take disciplinary action if this becomes habitual. If you feel your student was marked tardy in error, Please have them speak to their teacher to clear up any confusion. Thank you. So I get mad at this. I'm like, these are stupid emails. What are you— he's like, well, when I walk, there's a light at the top of the hill. What do you want me to do, cross against traffic? And I'm like, no, now this is my problem. And so, no, I don't want you to cross again. I want you to leave at 7:10 and so you can make it. I don't get these emails. So now I call him Tardy Marty, and he hates it.

Tardy Marty.

I'm like, oh, here comes Tardy Marty. Even if he made it to school 5 days in a row on time, like, Tardy Marty. He's like, I don't like that at all. I was like, you know how you could stop that? Stop being so tardy. And then I'm like, what do I care? You know, like, why am I getting so worked up? Like, there, there are no real consequences here. He's not gonna get thrown out of school. They push everyone to graduate, right? Not gonna do shit. He's gonna graduate. He's not, you know, it's not—

Maybe he could leave. He could lead the league in tardies this year.

Yeah, get something. I'm sure you get like a plaque for that or something, but it's like, You know, is he not going to win a Nobel Prize because he's tardy? Like, it's— this is his problem if there are consequences, and there are none. So I'm not going to care anymore, Jack. You can go to school at 2 o'clock if you want. And I'm gonna also— I'm gonna make a blanket out of all the tardy emails. I'm gonna print them out and make a blanket out of them. So that's, uh, that's what Tardy Marty gets for—

I thought for sure your Parent Corner was gonna be kidney stone related. Oh, well, You've been playing in pain on the podcast since when? Thursday?

I've been playing since Thursday. I had to get it checked out. I'm flying high right now with this kidney stone thing, but I'm timing out my pain meds like a, like a meticulous scientist. And they're dynamite pain meds. They're really like, I have, I have a newfound respect for Brett Favre. I might, I might send you a dick pic actually after paracord, but I don't know what I'm gonna do. But yeah, I have to get this taken out.

It's too big.

It's 10 centimeters. It's not going to pass through my urethra or whatever. And so they have to zap it. They have to put you— they have to put like a camera and something up there and they zap. I know it's not good. It's not good. But, um, and it's painful. It's painful now, but it's supposed to be even worse if it passes. Maybe you'll—

maybe you'll come out after they— from the anesthesia and you'll find out they traded CeeDee Lamb.

That's right.

That was a big moment. For Tee Higgins and a second rounder.

Oh, I can't go under. You're right. That's when bad things happen.

You have your wife be like, is CeeDee Lamb good? He just got traded. Right.

It's Jack Tardy. What's going on?

It's one of my worst nightmares. So what did you do wrong? I think you have to look in the mirror. Usually when you get kidney stones, it means you didn't drink enough water.

I don't know. Yeah, they always say to drink water. It is weird to me that just a piece of one of your organs could break off and just float around, and you could be in trouble because you have to get rid of it. I don't know what I did wrong. I'll drink some more water.

I took Ben to the UCLA game yesterday, which is— they played at 8:00. They played Purdue. We hadn't really hung out for, like, a long stretch in a few weeks. I've been busy. His girlfriend was leaving and the whole thing. So we haven't really hung. And so take 'em. It's an 8 o'clock game. It's in, uh, the Rose Bowl is for people listening who don't know where it is. It's in Pasadena. It's in this bizarre—

Yeah.

You don't even understand it. The Pasadena's got this really nice stretches and neighborhoods and you just would not imagine like, oh, take a right there and a right. And then there's this huge football stadium. Make— makes no sense. It's like the opposite of Lambeau. You go to Lambeau, it's like, take a right at the Target. And then you take a left at the grocery store and, you know, it just feels like—

Yeah.

Rose Bowl makes no sense. It's beautiful. There's so much energy around the UCLA program. Wearing a hat.

Yeah.

Our guy Bob Chesney. They haven't been good in, I think since like the Jim Mora era. And they hate USC and USC's got Lincoln Riley and now they're like, you know, and they were favored. It was, I think 7+ wins was even odds basically.

Right. Yep.

Well, they win this, they're 3-0. They have Oregon and Michigan on their schedule, both which seem scarier games for road games than I think they do now.

They'll score 40 against both.

Good teams, but both beatable, right?

Definitely.

And they have this running back that he took from JMU who's like gonna be like a Heisman contender if he keeps scoring 3 to 4 touchdowns a game. So anyway, good energy, great back and forth game. And my son and I got to like basically go on the sidelines for, which I'd never done before. And you can be in like the 20-yard line to the end zone on either side, right? So you can go and then if the ball goes to the other end, you race to the other side and you basically, and they're right there and the team's right there. And it was like incredible. And my son was having a great time.

It was like Michael Irvin of the UCLA. Yeah. Taking selfies in the corner of the end zone.

So, so, and it's an awesome game. It's back and forth and UCLA goes up in the 4th quarter and it, it's like, it's, they might have it in hand, but we're having a great time. And my son's like, hey, I'm gonna bounce. I gotta, I gotta go to this thing at, but I've had an awesome time. It was great. I was kind of, I was kind of crestfallen.

Wow.

Because we hung out for like 6 hours, but one of his friends was in town and he's like, we're gonna go to his recording studio. I gotta go and I'm just gonna— but I had an awesome time. And then, uh, then he ditched me with 10 minutes left. But it's— I almost got a full football game out of him. That's just where we are with our kids at this point.

No, you got a full foot— that was a 5 and a half hour game.

It was a 5 and a half hour hang. Yeah, we left the house at 5. The game was running long. It was like at 11, but it was still You know, did you know he had this plan?

Did you drive together?

What did you do? Yeah, we drove together and then he Ubered out. I had no idea. It was the classic thing that our kids do where they don't— they tell us half the story. Yeah, I'd love to go. They don't— we don't know that they have this other thing happening. Um, but so I was psyched that we got to spend so much time together and UCLA won 3-0.

But that's good.

I did get dumped in like the 7th inning.

It's an official game, I think.

I was like, I don't know if I can do better than this. We're on the sideline of an awesome game with an undefeated team and it's like, I got, I got I got this recording, recording thing.

So anyway, uh, Rose Bowl, Schmoes Bowl. Tommy's laying some tracks down. I gotta get the hell outta here.

That's what it's like to have kids. Uh, that's today's Parent Corner brought to you by PayPal. More security is always a win, and the new PayPal app has you covered with passkeys and biometric security, plus purchase protection on eligible items, all working together so you're safe every step of the way. Download the PayPal app to get started. See paypal.com/protection. terms. PayPal is what I use on eBay. Forever.

Yeah. It makes sense.

I've had PayPal, I don't even know how long I've had it at this point. Like I've had, when you start thinking of some of these things that we've had our whole, like I've had Amazon since 1998.

Right.

And you can go back and you can look at all the things you bought. Can you really? Oh yeah. You can go back and look at every single thing. And the first thing I bought were a bunch of DVDs in 1998, like actual DVDs.

I might do that right afterwards after I call your father.

Yeah. You'll be blown away. For me, it was like DVDs and, and books for like 5 years on Amazon, and then they started adding stuff.

But— Can you do that with PayPal too? I'd love to see who I gave money to.

PayPal would be a lot more interesting. Yeah. Wait, I, I don't remember giving my son $200. When did that happen?

Right. Well, he had to take an Uber to get away from me.

Uh, all right, so what's your kidney stone plan?

All right, Tuesday, that's it. Somewhere Tuesday or Wednesday. These offices aren't open tomorrow for whatever reason, and, uh, and that's gonna do it. But I'm gonna plug away and then we're gonna get that thing zapped. Maybe I'll show it to you. Maybe I could pull it up next Sunday.

Yeah, I mean, the more details and the grosser it gets, I think, I think people would want that.

But we got Ringer Wise Guys gave out a bunch of good bets today, uh, this weekend. Yeah, our Ringer Wise Guys and, um, Oh, if you had a bad beat, take advantage of FanDuel's Bet Protect program. And I have a new site. You think this is ridiculous, but betaches.com, where you could show your losing ticket. And if you had a horrific football loss like Baltimore or Tampa Bay moneyline and you show enough anguish, I'll reimburse you. Betaches.com. Did you see Vanderbilt, NC State? Could we talk about that for a second? That ending?

I had never seen an ending like that. I think ever.

What the hell? NC State up 3, getting 3.5 points, 6 seconds left. They go to take a safety at the 2-yard line. The quarterback—

Why didn't he just run outta the end zone?

What's the big deal? He feels that he needs to bleed the whole clock. Yeah, I think that's the only thing. I mean, he could've just run outta the end zone, then there's 3 seconds left and then he, they punt it, whatever, sky high in the air. No, he drops back, he gets— right before he goes down, he gets strip sacked. And, uh, and it's a touchdown for Vanderbilt who kicks the extra point and covers.

I still think the Pasarchik one is the best one ever of these.

Yeah.

'Cause that completely changed how they played football after that. They put the 2 guys behind and they were so terrified that was ever gonna happen again.

Right.

And then it just never happened. Ran a pass, became famous. It was like a famous, the Giants are terrible moment. that looked at them until they finally got good. But this one was pretty great. Did people— the only thing is, do people actually bet on NC State versus Vanderbilt? Sure. Did you know people who had bets on that?

Yeah, yeah, I've already—

Did you have a bet on it?

No, I didn't have— I, I stayed away from it. But you— it's funny, you said the Pisarczyk thing. I think you replied to my thing like, Pisarczyk is the worst, the, the fumble. And people are like, you're too young, you guys are too young to know Pisarczyk. Like, uh, actually we're not.

They said we were too young. Yeah, it's like, that was a huge deal.

We're too old.

That was the only way we knew Herm Edwards for like 20 years, and all of a sudden he was a coach. It was like, the Pisarczyk guy's a coach? Do you think he got that job because of that? I don't know. That was nuts. That was such a weird moment.

Flores had a Pisarczyk moment. Would he be a head coach right now? I don't know.

He needed it. Yeah, we had that. We had the guy do the snowplow to open up the—

oh yeah.

piece of turf for the Patriots in the Pats-Dolphins game in the early '80s.

Right.

We had, we had the, uh, the game where there are no announcers, it was just whistles, right? You could hear the crowd. Um, and that's what's so weird, graphics either.

I think they added a couple graphics just to be nice or something.

Yeah, we remembered we had 3 TV channels back then.

We saw this a lot. Yeah.

Um, all right, thanks to Eduardo and Gahau and Chris from, uh, The Ringer side. Um, I don't know if you saw, but we, we're adding the What Chaos Hockey Pod that they're launching with us.

Uh, oh great.

End of September. They're the best hockey pod. So they're coming to us in time for the season. Uh, very excited to have, have them aboard. So shout out to those dudes.

They gotta give us, they gotta give us 2 winners, over-unders or, or, oh, that's a good idea. Division winner or something. Yeah.

We should make them do something. Um, yeah. Okay.

You feel good about your Red Sox, I guess, but this, we talk next. I mean, they're playing the Yankees almost definitely, right?

Yeah, that there was a case for the Red Sox to potentially tank and try to be the 6th seed, which I felt like they were doing 'cause they kept pitching Patrick Sandoval every 5 days. So it was like, are we trying to tank? He's, I think he's 0-7 in his last 8 starts. But, but no, I, I, we'll see if they can get the actual team that we're supposed to have back in time for a Yankee series. But now no Judge.

Judges gone, but you'll still be an underdog. You wanna beat the Yankees in the first round as an underdog. That's the best.

Well, so we have Toly and we have Suarez and we have Gray who all can get to the 7th inning against those guys. And then if it becomes a— I mean, Chapman of course got hurt right down the stretch, but I don't know about the bats. It's, you know, when you just watch a baseball team too much and you, you're just putting in, like, when we get into like fucking nut crunch time in like October. Do I trust this guy? Do I trust this guy? We don't have a lot of guys I trust.

Yeah. So, well, this is the year. I mean, the American League has what, 4 teams over .500? You can get, you can get to late October with that.

Well, I mean, the Texas-Houston division, Texas is in the lead now. They're .500.

Yeah.

Houston seemed like they were headed toward having it wrapped up, and now Tex— and Texas had Quantrill pitching his ass off.

Right.

And he just got put on the injured list.

Believe me, I'm looking there, -170 to make the playoffs.

I'm thinking their bats have been hot for like 5 weeks.

Yeah.

Then White Sox-Indians, hard to take either. I like, to me, the Rays, like we played the Rays on Saturday and they beat us in a classic, like stupid Rays game where, right, you know, Caminaro hit one off the catwalk and he got to get another at-bat to get a single. And then, you know, we have a passed ball and then they get a dink hit and they win. And it was just like, okay. We had a guy get thrown out at third. Like, they're just good at all these little things. And I watch a team like that and I'm like, these are the fucking kind of teams that win, right? Like, just like smart plays, timely catcher throws out somebody at third base.

Great 7th inning guy, right? Pitchers that aren't even expected to go past 4 innings. It's— I, I don't even know what to compare it to, like Princeton basketball or something. I don't know what it is.

Yeah, all their starters can get to the 6th inning. They have a really good closer. Yeah. Caminaro's terrifying. I think he's out of all the guys I watched this year, he's the second scariest guy other than Alvarez, who's the most terrifying. But yeah.

It's gonna be fun.

Yeah.

We're gonna— good spot of the season here.

Well, the ultimate revenge, right, would be if it was Tampa and the Brewers and that was our last World Series before we had like a 2-year lockout.

Oh, right, right, right. Yeah. Just small market.

Yeah.

I'll root for that.

All right, Sal, good luck with the kidney stones. We'll listen to you on Ringer Wise Guys. Good job by you.

Good job by you, buddy.

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