The Bill Simmons Podcast, brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new Rewatchables on Monday. We redid Speed. Me, Sean Fantasy, Chris Ryan. An epic, epic episode. I think I laughed so hard at one point that we had to go to break. So that happened anyway. What a fun movie. One of the great action movies of all time. And we broke all of it down. Including a ton of nitpicks. Speed, a movie that I love and I've seen a million times, also very fun to nitpick. So we talked about everything. Coming up on this podcast, Tom Pelissero, who we announced yesterday, he's joining The Ringer. He's gonna be Netflix sideline reporter as well. He's gonna come on and talk about a bunch of football stuff, including what's it like to be an info insider, what's going on with the Rams, who has the most pressure on them this year, What's going on in Minnesota with JJ McCarthy, Kyler Murray? We covered all of it. Great to have him aboard. And we're gonna talk about his new gig with us. And then after that, Sammy Koppelman, who I've known since he was maybe even younger than a teenager, he is gonna come on to talk about the Lakers, the Clippers, the Suns, how money has shifted into the NBA and screwed it up in all of these different ways.
Yesterday was one of the craziest LA basketball days, I think, ever, where you had the Clippers battling with the NBA through an ESPN article. You had the Buss family announcing that they're gonna start suing each other. Um, the current Lakers Dodgers owner might be going to jail. Um, he's gonna explain all of it to us. So this is quite a podcast. Football and finance, it's all next. We're gonna take a break and then Pearl Jam. This episode is brought to you by NBA 2K27. We just had one of the craziest off-seasons we've had in the NBA, which is perfect for 2K because every 2K season could be one of the craziest off-seasons. Uh, the whole league shifted in real life. It could shift too in NBA 2K27. The best place to compete with these new look rosters and also try to figure out who's on what roster. You can see how, uh, new teams and new dynamic duos match up. You can play Philly, feel what it's like to have all of their new guys with the old guys. And you can also take a struggling franchise to the NBA Finals if you want, because it'll never happen in real life for a couple of the struggling franchises.
You know who I'm talking about. Anyway, NBA 2K lets you experience every transaction and storyline right from your home. Pick up your copy of NBA 2K27. Right now. All right, announced yesterday, new Netflix sideline reporter for all their NFL games, one of the hosts of the Ring of Honor NFL Show. He's gonna be on my podcast every Thursday. There's gonna be some writing stuff that we'll talk about when we get there. Tom Pelissero, great to have you aboard. What a pleasure.
It is great to be here. Bit of an unusual past month for me. After 23 years of, you know, being in training camps and covering the league, I had a little bit of extra time on my hands, but, you know, you were one of the first people to reach out for— reach out to me once I became available. And I'm just totally thrilled and pumped up to, to be a part of this thing.
The story was even better than that. We saw you the same day when you found out that you were no longer needed at ESPN and you were randomly in LA. Me and Mallory met you that day because we had heard so many good things about you, but in your head. I, I really admired how even keeled you were with it. Cuz I remember when I was in a semi-similar situation, everybody in your life is reaching out, are you okay? What's going on? And your head's just doing 360s, but you were like, yeah, it'll be fine. I'll find something.
I remember you said to me too, you're like, you're, I can't believe how well you're taking this. And I think that that was partly a product of, you know, I find out when I'm standing in the Sky Club about to, uh, to board a flight to LA, right? And I'm like, what do I do? And I'm like, oh, I checked a bag. Well, I guess I should just get on the plane and get the bag. And yeah, I lived my own funeral for like 4 hours. It was probably good to like every call I sent to voicemail, like, I'm on a plane, I'm not available. And right by the time I landed, dropped myself at the, at the hotel, popped over to, to your studio there and got the tour. I mean, it was, it was cool that it all, it all came together. There were a lot of things we had to work through on this. Entire deal. But I mean, The Ringer and Netflix and the synergy between those two, like, I could not possibly have asked for a better spot to be here.
Yeah.
And we had never, even dating back to Grantland, we never had really been on the information side as much because we were always built like we react to the information. And I always thought if we ever had somebody who was in that world, it would also have to be somebody who could kind of do the stuff that we do and the, and the back and forth and You were always a hybrid of those two worlds. When did you, when did you move more toward like, holy shit, I'm getting all this information, I'm getting scoops left and right, like this might be part of my life here?
I, I think it took place over time. Like there's, there's no way that's what, you know, young people who like reach out to me in my, my DMs and whatnot are always asking like, how do you build source and stuff like that? I'm like, I don't know, do it for 23 years and you just kind of amass that. You know, you start out, cold calling people and hoping that you get some calls back. And, you know, it just kind of evolved. I think when I went back to Minnesota in like 2010 and we were launching an ESPN radio affiliate there and I was covering the Vikings, mostly radio shows, 6 days a week, like I had a pretty good run of getting stuff there, which put me on the radar of USA Today and then, you know, to NFL Network. And then obviously the, the brief Disney stop there over the past several months, it's It was funny though, like during the downtime, because like, you know, not to get into the whole thing, but like legally I couldn't do anything. Like I couldn't tweet, couldn't really just— I couldn't do anything that loosely resembled my job.
And so like, I'm finding stuff to do, man. Like, you know, people are calling me within the league and I'm talking, but like, I'm not doing it the same way, right? Because it's like, what am I going to do, work to get a scoop and then I can't put it out? So, you know, by last week and at this point everything was in motion, but there were still some things we had to get through. And like, I went to Spider-Man 3D in the theater with my 12-year-old daughter, and literally like we're 5 minutes into the movie and shit's blowing up, and like I get the text or the tweet alert like, you know, Kyler Murray's been named starting quarterback of the Vikings. So I'm like, well, nothing I could have done about that, you know, whatever world. I would love to think I would be the one breaking that, but I'm like, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna sit back, I'm gonna eat some more popcorn, I'm gonna enjoy this movie, and like I'll be back soon enough. And so we're just now kind of getting into this thing, and you know, the best part, Bill, about the news coming out yesterday, besides the fact that, you know, it's always awesome just seeing, you know, the feedback and all the messages you get and stuff.
But it's that I'm finally not getting the so sorry for you, how are you doing, praying for you calls. Now it's like the, oh, so you're good? All right, fantastic. Now we get back to doing what we're doing.
So that's great.
Glad to be back.
What was the— what's the biggest scoop you ever had? Did you ever have one that was like, it was almost steam coming off it? You couldn't believe? Like, is this true? Like, did you have your version of like, Luka's about to get traded to the Lakers?
There's a bunch of those over time that, you know, stick out just in terms of like trades that come from like, well, you know, a lot of the best scoops, the ones that are most fun honestly are the ones like you're not working on and holding for a month. 'Cause that's unbelievably stressful. It's when someone will be like, you know, like, you know, hey, do you have something about Darren Waller being traded to the Giants? It's like, what? No. And then you make two calls, you're like, oh, this happened. Okay, cool.
Right.
I'd say that like the number one example of that was Jon Gruden resigning because that took place during Monday Night Football. And I had heard, you know, rumblings.
I knew that there was—
I knew that it was at a much higher fever pitch over the previous like 48 to 72 hours in terms of, you know, how the league was feeling about it, you know, where the Raiders were at, the fact that there were multiple, if you remember, multiple stages of these email leaks and it was getting worse. But still, I don't think it was on anybody's radar that he was actually going to step down. And so I got, you know, one call saying, hey, you know, I heard Gruden stepping down, just like, wait, because, you know, he's got to talk to everybody. Just, just hang on and let you know. And then I get a text from somebody who was there going, yeah, Gruden just told all of us he's quitting, he's resigning. And I was just like, oh my God. So I'm calling the first person back being like, I got to go, I got to go. Meanwhile, you know, again, Monday Night Football is on, the whole world's trained on this game. And I think it was right at halftime or right after halftime. And I hit blast on that tweet and it was just like, it was this explosion because that was at that time, Bill, like, no, it wasn't about football.
It was about like social issues and, you know, everything around the game and in society. And, you know, it was a really bizarre situation. But that was one like there's very few times I'm sitting like finger over the button kind of shaking. That was one that I'm like, I'm going to have to go. I got to go. And finally went and then it went into the universe and then, you know, had to get myself suited up and go on TV all night because, I mean, that was one of the crazier things I think that, that's happened in recent NFL history.
What is the NFL version of the Luka trade? I guess probably nothing.
I mean, the fact that it stayed so quiet until you get, you know, a tweet out of nowhere that it's, it's happening. I mean, that, that made it, you know, interesting. I mean, Miles Garrett, I think, probably fits in that category. You'd had rumblings and stuff talked about.
Yeah, I'd say I wasn't— I guess there's no version of it because Miles Garrett was like, holy shit. But I wasn't shocked because it was like Wilson, maybe.
I mean, Russell Wilson was a pretty surprising trade. Like, there have been little rumblings here and there about stuff. That was one that was murder for me because, like, I knew at the Combine it was happening. All that the Seahawks and Broncos were doing for weeks was just horse trading on how many picks. And if you remember, I mean, it was multiple first-round picks and it was players. And then it was, all right, the players haven't been told. I'm like, I know the players. And so then you're calling people, be like, find out if he's been called yet, you know. Um, that, that was a while. But the cool thing, like, in terms of how long I've covered the NFL, is we've gone, Bill, from like the NFL, there were no trades. There were no trades at all. Like, there was no— like, the trade deadline was a non-event. And I'm not talking like, you know, 50 years ago. I'm talking like 10 to 15 years ago. Like, it'd be, yeah, the trade deadline's coming up in late October, but like, nothing's gonna happen. You might get one here or there. Now, both, you know, there's several waves of it.
There's the wave of, you know, February and March, sometimes even in January, if you think about the Alex Smith trade. You get 10, 12, 15 trades that play out from the end of the regular season all the way through, you know, the start of the league year when they become official. You get another wave around the draft. Now maybe you start to see a wave more in these post-June 1 things because that's why the AJ Brown trade happened when it did. That's a factor. It's not the main factor, but it was a factor in why the Miles Garrett trade got done when it did. And then you've got this whole other wave that over these next 10 days we'll see because So many things happened this summer that I think a lot of those, those big ticket items are off the table. We'll get some trades, there's no doubt about it. Over the next, whatever it is here, 12 days until—
Especially if there's tanking teams, 'cause we don't usually have tanking in the NFL, but we might this year. And there's a couple suspects already.
We, you know, we already have, I think, a pretty good idea. Like I was looking at the win over-unders before I came on here. And it's like, I'd say on that one, Vegas is probably at a, you know, probably pretty much right. I mean, you can see the teams now call it tanking because, you know, there's no like NFL equivalent of Mark Madsen jacking up 12-3. It's like there's just, there's no way to do it. You can't like put a defensive lineman at quarterback, but you can organizationally put yourself in a position where it's apparent like you're not playing for right now. The Dolphins are the perfect example of that. And I've had Dolphins fans ask me, you know, just here and there, people I run into about it, I'm just like, just like buckle up, try to enjoy the ride. But like 2028 is what you're looking at here. Yes. Like they went out and they got Malik Willis because he's a great young man who's like, he's got some ability and he's got to be developed. And with Bobby Slowik now calling the offense there, there's a lot of similarities to what he was doing in Green Bay when he had some success.
But like, you know, they've got Davon Achane, who's a good player, but like you trade Jalen Waddle to get a first round pick. You don't bring back some of your other guys. You trade Patrick Although Bradley Chubb's another one that you, you move on from. And they didn't like go out and spend a bunch of money in free agency. They are very much a team that is looking at this as like, all right, we're going to build this the Green Bay way. We got Jeff Hafley and John Eric Sullivan. They're two very intelligent guys and they know like there's no quick fix, especially in a division where you got Buffalo and New England where like, are we really catching these teams in the near term? No, like it's going to take a couple of years. Maybe Malik's the guy. If he's not, you're not overleveraged. I think he's, he's guaranteed like $50 million over 2 years. They're going to be in the running, I would think, again, and this is taking nothing away from anybody involved, but realistically, they're going to be in the running for the number 1 pick.
Well, you look at their, you look at their wide receiver room and it's like, oh, I see what you guys are up to.
Jalen Tolbert's listed as a starter on the depth chart, right?
Malik Washington, all those.
I like Jalen, but like, I mean, yeah, they've got, they've got some significant issues, which also, by the way, complicates the evaluation of Malik Willis. Like Malik comes, he's like, all right, at least they got Jalen Waddle. It's like a week later, it's like, well, we traded Jalen Waddle. Yeah, you're going to be throwing to, you know, the other guys. Um, who are—
so you think Miami, Arizona?
Arizona's another obvious one.
A lot of pulsating flags with them. Cleveland has a lot of talent except the quarterback situation's an F-minus-minus-minus.
So I don't know what you're doing this year is you're trying to figure out, can either of these guys do it? I know this, like, I mean, the coaching staff came away encouraged from the spring. They felt like they got two guys they can at least function with and try to be competitive with in Deshaun Watson and Sha'dur Sanders. But like, if you're asking me, like, what's my guess of who's the quarterback for the Browns week one in 2027? I'd say neither. I'd say it's somebody who's probably in college right now. You know, I don't see them bringing back Baker Mayfield. It could be somebody else who's available via trade. But I think the Browns with two first-round picks, they got the Rams pick now from the Miles Garrett trade. And then the Jets, you know, as much as this year, like, you don't bring in DeMario Davis and David Onyemata and Micah Fitzpatrick if you're thinking like we're going 2-15. You're thinking we need to win some games or there's going to be even more wholesale, wholesale changes than there were a year ago when, remember, they closed out the season. Aaron Glenn takes a few weeks.
There's a lot of conversation. He basically fires his whole staff. He fires his offensive and defensive coordinators. He makes a bunch of other changes here. They know they've got to take a step forward. You go out get Geno Smith to just hoping that you can function. Aaron Glenn's going to call the plays on the defense. You know, they're not going to the playoffs this year. I mean, that would shock me. Anything can happen. It's the NFL. Like, they got to get the 6-7 win, show they're headed in the right direction. If not, with all that ammo, even if they are a 6-7 win team, you got 2 extra first round picks where you can bundle those together. And so that's the big picture story. Yeah, we'll talk about all the contenders and the teams we think are going to be in the Super Bowl. But like, to me, one of the fascinating things here is, and yes, this gets said from time to time, but the people I've talked to within the league, the scouts, the evaluators I respect, they all say if things trend positively, there's always a couple of these college guys with their last year, they fall off.
And a guy we're talking about being a first rounder, like, doesn't get drafted. They're a day 3 pick, the Garrett Nussmeiers of the world. But like, if this, this group holds up the way that these guys think, between Arch Manning, Uh, Dante Moore is going to be in that category. Julian Sayen has fans. CJ Carr has fans. What if Lenore Sellers, uh, revives himself? What about Mensah at Miami? Like, there's, there's all these guys, and you've got like these clear and obvious teams that are all going to be drafted probably somewhere in the top 12 picks, and a couple of them have extra picks. Those are the teams that I'm looking at that when we're talking about, you know, the tank for Arch stuff or whatever the Wait, that doesn't rhyme, but they'll come up with some rhyme for it, right? Something with that. Those will be the teams. Starch for arch.
No, I don't know.
Starch keeps you upright. You need the opposite. You need to lay flat to get arch.
I gotta think about that one. Um, we're gonna do pressure rankings, but I want to talk about Minnesota first just because you're there.
Yeah.
And you have a good Vikings feel, and that is, um, somehow not one of the two most tortured franchises in the league. Even though I think they would argue that they are.
I live here.
Are they—
people here are sufficiently—
they think they're number one. Yeah.
Without, you know, my dad grew up a Vikings fan in the Upper Peninsula, so he's like 65 seasons into this thing. Yeah. All my friends, everybody else, they would all tell you that this is, uh, it's not been an easy road.
It's tough because the Bills, with all the Super Bowl losses, and then this whole Josh Allen ride, who's now I think 30 years old, 29 years old, somewhere in there. Um, the, the, the lows of their losses almost feel like the worst. Minnesota has been steadily just getting kicked in the balls decade after decade forever. But the Lions, like, nothing has happened for them forever until this decade. And they always get left out of the torture combo. Then you have the Browns where nothing good has happened with them since 1964.
I don't know.
I don't know what the rankings are, but Minnesota thinks they're first.
It depends. Like if your definition of the tortured fan base is the one that keeps getting close and can't get over the hump.
The Red Sox. This was Red Sox pre-2004 forever. Every year you think it's the year and then you get kicked in the teeth, right?
Then all of a sudden, you know, you rally against the Yankees and everybody can't believe that this is what's happening.
Right.
Like, you know, the Vikings and the Bills, they're very similar trajectories. Both have lost 4 Super Bowls. If you look at— I think that the— in terms of winning percentage since in the Super Bowl era, the Vikings are like number 6 and every team above and below them has one or more Lombardis.
It's crazy.
They have none. And they're— because they're there all the time. You know, the Bills in recent years. Yeah, they've, they've been there too. But they went through a stretch from what was it like 1999 to 2017 without going to the playoffs. So they had a long drought. Vikings have never had that long of a drought. They never— it's been, you know, under this ownership group, the Wilfs spent a ton of money. They always want to be good. They always want to go for it every year. They never go all the way to the bottom, you know, but then, you know, you're constantly getting close and then you're in a bit of a high wire act from a, you know, a cap perspective and whatnot, right? Able to keep it healthy and, and figure it out. But, you know, they've never had a quarterback. They haven't found their Josh Allen, probably going back to, you know, Dante Culpepper had a pretty good run in like '03-'04. Before he blew out his knee. Since then, it's just been a, you know, 2 years of Favre and you had, you know, Teddy had his moment.
You know, Favre was good that first year and then yeah, absolutely got destroyed in that Saints game and probably was concussed 17 times over the course of 3. I mean, that was one of the bad games, right? Yeah.
He threw one of the worst interceptions ever across his body and then they beg him to come back in 2010. In 2010, I was, I was on the Vikings beat. At that point. And that was one of the biggest disaster seasons, I think, that's ever existed in NFL history. It's not just— yeah, Favre, the most durable quarterback ever, got knocked out of like his last 3 or 4 games consecutively. Corey Wooten hits him on a frozen field at TCF Bank Stadium. He goes down like a chalk outline, like the police would get, like this. And he's just out. Still does his press conference, which the rules changed after that about what you're allowed to do. But that's the year the Metrodome roof collapsed. The Vikings had to play a home game in Detroit. They played the Eagles on a Tuesday night in Philadelphia because of a snowstorm that never came. Percy Harvin left the field in an ambulance that year. I mean, it was, it was an unbelievable calamity. But that's, that's what the Vikings fans go through is every time you have a really good season, it's somehow followed by the season from hell.
That's their own unique torture in this entire thing.
Conspiracy Bill had a lot of thoughts on that Tuesday night game. I always felt like that was the NFL kind of knowing that this, it wasn't gonna be that bad on the Monday, but pushing it to Tuesday just 'cause they were interested to see what the ratings and everything else was gonna be. I will always believe that.
I drove by the stadium. We switched from, on the advice of somebody on the beat who was an idiot, suggested like, we gotta get out of the city. The city's gonna be shut down. So we moved from like the Vikings Hotel, which was the Ritz-Carlton downtown. To like some really sketchy hotel out by the airport. So on the drive there on Sunday afternoon, we're looking— it was supposed to be, you know, the storm of the century. And I'm telling you, there was about this much like kind of muddy— I don't even know if it was snow or if it was just crap on the side. There was nothing. It barely snowed. The Mayor Nutter, I think was his name, had called everything off. The city's shutting down. There was no snow at all. And the Vikings played. I think that was a Joe Webb game, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, you want to talk about just like the weirdness of that year. So gambling starting to— Tuesday game in Philly was— I didn't even make the top 10 of that season.
Give us the mood in Minnesota on the J.J. McCarthy era.
I mean, I, you know, I've gotten to know J.J. a little bit. You're around him for 5 minutes and you get it. You get why this guy's been a winner and why people like him. Like, the locker room really liked him. It's not like, you know, he was this guy and he was, you know, a joke from, from day one walking in. But, you know, he's in that category of people who, especially the quarterback position, they have so much going on for their first couple of years that it's just impossible to know what they could be. And now you're going into year 3, we don't even know if he's gonna be the number 2 quarterback. If Carson Wentz—
is he gonna be on the team, right?
If, you know, well, I mean, you could potentially trade him, but if you're talking about a, you know, a third-string quarterback, like, I wouldn't— if I'm him, I don't want to get traded. To me, if I'm a young quarterback, I don't want in late August to get traded to a team that might be running a completely different system with players I don't know, zero reps, zero time on task to build the rhythm and timing and tempo you need in an NFL passing offense. Then God forbid the starter gets hurt. Everyone's like, let's see JJ, and you get thrown out there. Like, that's the way to end your career, or at least, you know, to go along a path of some of the, you know, the Baker Mayfields and the Sam Darnolds who needed several different spots because everyone was done with them. And then he got stability or, you know, whatever the closest thing to stability for Baker, who has a different OC every year. But you get in the right spot and all of a sudden your career becomes, you know, kind of looking like what it might be. And that could be—
I was thinking it would be the Chargers and Harbaugh potentially being like, we'll take him, third round pick, he's our backup, we'll try to rehab him, rehabilitate him, and then maybe we can flip him.
Other than that, every Jim Harbaugh press conference is basically a love letter to Justin Herbert. I didn't know how many different ways—
He's batting his eyelashes out of—
how much he loves—
loves him.
God, we bring him in though as the backup, like, sure, I could see that, but like, what's that? So I'm gonna give up for a backup at the deadline? Like, if you get a real pick, I don't think that there's an upside to, hey, let's just dump this guy for a 7th rounder or something. Like, right, still, I mean, there's people that like him in Minnesota, but, you know, I remember what I was like at that age, you know, like, I couldn't— I didn't have my life together, you know. Like, JJ, his first year, and he, you know, suffers that meniscus injury, has the surgery. We all saw him on the sideline, you know, he loses a ton of weight and it's a hard year because he's never, he's never really had that type of adversity. I mean, he played and he won almost every game he was in, all the going all the way back to, you know, prep school. So, you know, he has that year off and then last year, like, you know, you saw signs of it. I was at a Timberwolves game, him and Justin Jefferson are sitting front row.
Justin was really encouraging to him. They spent a ton of time together. You saw flashes of it. And then, you know, he comes out second half of that Week 1 game against the Bears and you're like, oh, okay, he's making plays with his legs. He didn't throw the ball a lot in that game. You're like, okay, I see it. Like, they really like the athletic quarterback. He can move. And then, oh, he suffered a high ankle sprain in that game. He's now out, or whatever was the following week. He's out for 6 weeks and all of a sudden he's not there. By the way, after the Week 1 game, his fiancée also has a kid. So now you're a 22-year-old guy, whatever he is, 23. Who's probably not getting a lot of sleep.
You're really selling me on him. This is an incredible job by you.
This is—
it's, it's, I'm starting to buy JJ stock for this.
You're like, I'm just saying, think about that. Like all the different things you're dealing with life-wise, then you come back and then he gets concussion and then he's got a finger thing or whatever it was, wrist. I can't remember the exact nature of the injury, something on his throwing hand. So like the guy's never healthy. You know, guys like that or Anthony Richardson, Trey Lance, JJ played a lot more football and was much more productive than those guys in college, but he didn't throw the ball a whole lot more. I just know this, Bill. I was at the Detroit game. You know, the 9 meme, you know, the thing where he's making the funny face and everybody posts the JJ stuff all over and over again. Like, that's from the locker room in Detroit where I was at that game. He was lights out again. He didn't have to throw the ball a ton, but like red zone timing, he made a couple of tough throws. You know, had a touchdown pass. Like, I was like, watch it going, oh, I get it. So you have seen flashes. If you watch enough of the Vikings, there's flashes there.
But I think at this point everyone's just, you know, kind of like, all right, we've seen it. We've also had a lot of success through the years, whether it's, you know, Favre or Case Keenum or Randall Cunningham with the veteran who's got ability and he comes in in the right time. Maybe that's Kyler Murray who's being coached up differently. They split the reps all through the, you know, through the spring. They tried to make it as 50-50 as they could. But, you know, I was also here back in the spring. Like, you can tell already who's the baller. Like, Kyler's got that. Let's see with a revamped running game and a really good receiver arsenal and an offensive line that Christian Darrisaw is finally healthy. Like, let's see what that ends up looking like in 2026.
It's the most polarizing NFC team from a prediction standpoint. I've seen people really like them. I've seen other people think they're clearly fourth place. I'm still deciding on it. I could see both cases. but it seems like the, you could potentially see them win 11, 12 games if Kyler's good. You could also see them be kind of a train wreck and this could be the final year for KOC. Like that kind of scenario too. They're betting a lot on Kyler Murray, a guy that Arizona was paying and they were like, we're good. We're, please, please take them.
There's layers, there's layers to that.
I, I get it. But Arizona's like, we're good. And now you're betting on this career resurgence. I don't personally see it. I've never been a huge fan. I just think he's like a 500 quarterback who will put up stats, but I think any good defense— he can't throw over the middle. Um, I don't trust his decision-making. I just don't see it. But some people like him.
I think that Kyler probably, you know, if he holds one NFL record, it's most millions of dollars paid by a team who hates you. Like, the Cardinals, from the day they did that contract and the homework clause— and it's not like that was a secret. Like, everybody knew, and everybody knew about Kyler coming out of college. Like, He's not a leader, right? He doesn't hang with the guys like he's kind of to himself. He plays video games and all this stuff. You know, they did have some success early with Cliff. I mean, they went to the playoffs one year, but then, you know, Kyler got killed. Everybody there said like he did grow up over time. The last staff, the Jonathan Gannon staff, really did like him. It just, you know, he gets hurt again last year. He's had a bunch of injuries. Like it just didn't work out with him coming to Minnesota now. They like it for a couple of reasons. One, they don't think they need him to be a leader. Like, K.O.'s going into his 5th year. Like, they've kind of got a locker room that can handle a lot. And yeah, Justin Jefferson, guys like that, Aaron Jones is on the team.
You know, defensively, you do have some veterans you can lean on. Like, Kyler can just come in and be, you know, a functional quarterback. He is being coached differently. They revamped the running game, which that'll be, you know, from a fantasy football perspective, particularly, Bill, will be really interesting because it's going to be Aaron Jones and Jordan Mason kind of splitting it, and then the rookie De'Mond Claybourne, who they really like. There were a lot of questions about him coming out, but like, he is explosive as shit. It's like, how that plays out, that could all take some heat off them. They brought in Frank Smith, who is Miami's offensive coordinator. Keith Carter's the old line coach. Them with K.O. are kind of putting together the run game. They may not have to be stuck in that throw the ball 45 times a game thing. And by the way, even when at times they were stuck with that last year, They still— they might have had the worst quarterback situation in the league last year. You have J.J. coming out in and out of the lineup 3 times. You have Carson Wentz, who played pretty well out of the gate and then bangs up his shoulder.
And by the time late in that second half of that Rams game, it's, you know, every time he's throwing, it's like, remember Rookie of the Year, the old fractured broken shoulder? And it's like, ah, every throw is like, this is the end. His arm is going to fall off. And then you're rolling Max Brosmer out there, who was— that was supposed to be a redshirt year, you know, like he was a project that you were going to have there. They won a game on Christmas, you know, with Brosmer throwing for like 50 yards, you know, like they're so adept. But they went 9-8, like 9-8. They missed the playoffs by a half game. That's why, like, if they can get functional quarterback play— K.O. said it from the moment the season ended, like, we need more talent in the room, we need better competition in the room. And that's why they bring back Carson Wentz. It wasn't because they were thinking he was going to be the number 2 over JJ. It's because they're like, we played, we played 3 or more quarterbacks 2 out of Kevin's 4 years. If we can just have quarterbacks who play to a certain level like everything else, they won 13 and 14 games those other 2 years.
I think I'm not going to give you gambling advice on the over-unders here, but like an 8.5 win total, like, I don't know, history would suggest unless all the quarterbacks, like a nuclear bomb drops on that room, the Vikings are going to find a way to scrap and be in the playoff hunt.
The Cleveland fans and the Vegas fans can't believe you said they had the worst quarterback room in the league last year. They, they need oxygen. They need water. Cleveland's like, what else do we have to do to have the worst quarterback situation? But you're right, it was so bleak in that second half of the season for the Vikings. They were at least on that level. I mean, we had some, some of the worst quarterback situations we've had since I was like growing up last year. Now, now we have Atlanta. This year is the worst one, I think.
I mean, Atlanta's got, you know, everybody's waiting for the competition, but it's like Michael Penix is on his third torn ACL. Yeah, is he gonna be able to play? It's August 18th. I mean, I can't name off the top of my head another quarterback who was in a quote-unquote competition and didn't practice in 11.
We haven't seen him yet in late August.
He hasn't even been out there.
And Tua just shouldn't be in the NFL anymore. I mean, he's just I, I don't understand how— first of all, how he's a starter, and second, why he even wants to play. He looks terrified to get hit. Even you watch the preseason and he's doing like, it's, it's over. So I don't know who the third stringer is, but we're probably gonna see him.
This is part of why I think Mike McDaniel, you know, as much as he, you know, became a meme at times, especially, you know, just because like of who he is, like his personality, the way he dresses and all that stuff, like, yeah, anybody have more of a a tough, a tough role over the last couple of years than a guy who every game plan had to start with the quarterback can't get hit, not sacked, right? Quarterback can't get hit. We can't let him get hit. I know he does, you know, the jiu-jitsu and he's learned all these different things, but like, that's a, that's an uphill climb. But, you know, for, for Atlanta, it was, it was a, you know, a role of, all right, we're going with, we're getting them for the minimum. Miami's still playing Yeah, Tua, like whatever it is, $50 million or something this season. You know, we're bringing him in. It's another lefty. We're building out the protections a certain way. We need to evaluate both these guys. But they're another team that realistically, if I'm guessing who's the quarterback in 2027, I'd say neither of those guys. You can say that for teams, teams right now.
Okay, we haven't even started the season. The teams that I would say their starting quarterback in 2027, probably not even on the 2026 roster. I would say Atlanta. I would say Cleveland Jets. I would say the Jets. And I would say maybe Arizona, although Carson Beck is really fascinating to me, not just because of, you know, what we saw in the Hall of Fame game. Yeah, but, you know, going back to the pre-draft process, like, this dude was— the question was not— in talking to all the scouts and coaches, and I read this lengthy quarterback thing, which will be now part of the Ringer, uh, going into the draft next year, but like getting the real opinions from people within the league, like Carson Beck. He helped himself in the process because all the reports from the scouts were about what had happened at Georgia, like the social media and I don't love football and hanging out with the Cavender twins and like just, you know, driving the Lamborghini, buying a house in the wrong part of Miami and gets robbed like immediately upon moving there, like all this other stuff. But if you talk to people in Miami, they're like, the guy was dialed, like whether it was, you know, real or he was just playing the part like he did take the cue.
He did learn from it and they succeeded with him.
And he took two teams to the college football playoff. You know, he's a big, strong guy. He looks the part. The old Parcells rules where it's like, you know, a certain number of starts and you got to be a college graduate and you got to be a senior and you have to win, you know, win a certain percentage of your games, complete a certain percentage of your passes. Like he's the only guy who checked all those boxes. Like, I'll be really interested to see because if I'm Arizona, I definitely want to see Carson Beck at some point. You're not going to the playoffs with Jacoby Brissett. You may play with him for a good chunk of the season, but like, I would guess we see Carson Beck start some games because you're going to want to go in with all the information you can on, okay, before we draft another guy high, did we find one in the third round and we can pay this guy the minimum for the next 2 years and use a really high first-round pick next year on somebody else or turn that into multiple first-round picks? Monte Austinforth, the GM, has done that.
Before he made the trade with Houston, you know, in the Will Anderson Jr. trade. So that's the best-case scenario for all these teams is take your shots day 2 and day 3 in the draft, find a quarterback that you like. Cleveland's doing the same thing right now with Shedeur, and they were doing it, I guess still are with Dylan Gabriel too, where it's like, you know, take a flyer on him and, you know, realistically 2027 is the year that we're going to— we're going to use that pick.
25/1 on FanDuel for Rookie of the Year. Carson Beck. Another team that will not have the same quarterback next year is the Pittsburgh Steelers. We want to mention that as well. Right. That's a—
although they've got, they've got two guys though. It's another one too, right? They fit in that same bucket. If they hit with Aller. Yeah. Yeah. You drafted Aller this year and you drafted Will Howard last year. But it won't be Rodgers next year. Right. No Rodgers. Right. But like in terms of even being on the roster, they've at least got two guys they think are developmental. Will Howard. Mike McCarthy was out of the league last year, but like Will Howard is one of the quarterbacks he loved in the draft process. So those two young guys and Aaron, from what I've heard, is kind of taking them under his wing, which you can read that multiple ways. But like, he's been very supportive and he's got a good relationship with the young guys. You know, maybe again, maybe you find it. The Steelers aren't— I mean, the Steelers aren't going to have a top 5 pick based on record. I would certainly tell you that, like, they're going to be a competent team. They're going to be a way better offense than they've been in years. Like, they've had a bottom— I think they've ranked 24th or worse in offense 8 years in a row.
Right. Like, that's mediocrity. Like, that's how you don't— you know, every year you're 9-8, you go out in the first round, everybody jokes about it. It's like, it's not because the defense fell off the cliff, it's because your offense has been terrible under several different coordinators. Yeah, let's see.
Not sure it's going to be better this year.
I, I think the fact that I would say they will be a top 10 offense this year, that would be really my prediction. Mike McCarthy, I want to say 13 of his 18 seasons as head coach has had a top 10 offense. He was immediately had a number one offense in Dallas on a team that I don't think anybody was sitting there going, this is the most talented offense in the league. Dak played his best football under him. Aaron's played his best football under him. Now Aaron's not quite the same, like the, the legs aren't there anymore. Like all those plays, like the spectacular Aaron Rodgers stuff where it's getting outside the pocket and throwing, you know, off balance, one foot, you know, backpedaling across his body and throw 50 yards down the field. Like I've seen him try to do that. Yeah, the past couple years he can't do that anymore. But if you can play like, you know, probably the, the closest example if you want to buy the upside on it is, you know, when Peyton Manning was at the end of his career in Denver and they won a Super Bowl with him throwing passes like it was out of a t-shirt.
Noodle arm Peyton, one of my favorites, slowly came down.
Yeah, but it was because he was so mentally fast. They won a Super Bowl with Peyton playing like that. I'm not going to sit here and predict that the Steelers win the Super Bowl, but like they've got a talented defense. They've added on offense, trading for Michael Pittman. They brought in, you know, one of Mike's favorite running backs, Rico Dowdle. Like, I think that they— seems like he won the job. Yeah, they're going to be a better offense would be my prediction than whatever they're being projected.
Problem is it doesn't seem like Aaron Rodgers wants to get hurt anymore. And I still feel like that's part of the quarterback.
He shouldn't. He shouldn't want to get hit.
I want to get rid of the ball as fast as possible. Please don't hit me. We're taking a break. We're gonna come back and do the, uh, pressure rankings really fast. This episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios. The Dog Stars, only in theaters on August 28th. Visionary filmmaker Ridley Scott returning to IMAX with The Dog Stars. In a world shattered by catastrophe, a lone pilot's isolated existence is transformed when a mysterious radio transmission crackles through the silence. Uh-oh. Setting out in the unknown, Higg embarks on a dangerous journey in, in search of something more powerful than survival— hope. Kind of like the hope I have for the Patriots right now. From the legendary director of Gladiator, The Martian, and Black Hawk Down comes the riveting post-apocalyptic thriller The Dogstars, starring Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, Guy Pearce. I like all those people. Based on Peter Heller's acclaimed novel and adapted for the screen by Mark L. Smith. The Dog Stars delivers breathtaking visuals, an extraordinary ensemble cast, a deeply human story about resilience, connection, and the choices that define us. The Dog Stars, only in theaters and IMAX on August 28th.
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All right, pressure rankings.
I only want to do individuals, but we have to mention the Rams at the top, who I think now have the most pressure in the league. Because they're prohibitive favorites. They're 5-to-1 to win the Super Bowl on FanDuel. Nobody else is better than 10-to-1. Um, their over-under is 11.5. I saw a segment last week on, uh, ESPN, your brief employer, that was talking about, uh, could this be the greatest defense of all time? We've lost our minds with this Aaron Donald thing. He's 35 years old. He hasn't played in 3 years. I'm sure he's gonna be awesome. But he's only gonna play 35 plays a game when he comes back. They're really top heavy. They have a quarterback that all but in the summer last year, we were terrified he was gonna get hurt and it was like his back, is he gonna make it? And he made it. Now we're not worried about him anymore. He's 38. There are, I think there's 10 guys ever who have had really awesome seasons at age 38 or later. Not to mention the Puka Nacua stuff, which continues to not seem like it's stabilized. I just have a lot of questions and there's a lot of pressure now that people think they're the favorites.
So what are you seeing as you watch from afar here?
Well, you have to start with like what the Rams have been since they got to LA. Like they have fully embraced like, this is Hollywood. We are always gonna be a story. We are always going to be the team that people are talking about. And they've done that in, in different ways. Yeah. Like everybody wants to just go, it's always bleep, you know, bleep those picks. But like, They're cyclical. They, they push it. Every team is cyclical from a spending standpoint, right? Because you have every dollar you spend hits the cap eventually. It's a real cap. There's ways you can manipulate it, but like it does come home eventually here. And so the Rams went through that phase of like drafting a bunch of guys, the Todd Gurleys and Jared Goffs. They pay those guys. Then that gave way to, all right, now we're going for it. We're going to trade for Jalen Ramsey. You know, we're going to trade for Brandon Cooks. They get to a Super Bowl. They don't quite get there. Okay, now we're going to reboot it a couple of years later. Now we're trading for Stafford and we're going for it there.
Well, then they got to a certain point after they won the Super Bowl in the '21 season where all the cap stuff, all the older players, they had to— all right, we need to start this thing over. So now we're trading away Jalen Ramsey. They had the most rookies on their team. I think it was in 2023. Yeah. Of any team in the NFL. And you saw the growing pains. It's the one season they've had that just didn't live up to you know, what Sean McVay has built. Yeah, but when you have 30-plus rookies on your team, now you're paying some of those guys. Now you're getting to this point. They've obviously were really good. You're toward the end with Matthew Stafford. Now we're back, we're cycling the other way where it's a reboot, right? And they just keep going, they keep going with this. But like, it's not like they're just on the gas all the time. That's hard to sustain because at some point, like, your, your draft picks are your young, cheap workforce. They allow you to balance out the money you're spending on these really high-priced players. At some point you have to have a recalibration with it.
But the way that they've done it this offseason, Bill, for all the wild stuff that they have done, and I know that, you know, Sean McVay and Les Snead and Kevin Devoff and all those guys, like, they love the fact that they're constantly that team that everybody is talking about. But I don't know that they've ever had one that approaches what happened this offseason. Like, let's just take a second here to enjoy the past 6 months. Okay. For the Rams, they make the commitment. Matthew Stafford announced it starts at NFL Honors. Matthew Stafford in his acceptance speech with his daughters on the stage says like, I'm going to be back next year. And I'm in the theater and like the whole Rams section, they all jump up and are like going wild, clapping because they didn't know. He hadn't actually told them he was coming back. So the reigning NFL, NFL MVP gets the trophy. And goes like, hey, I'm coming back for another year. It's like they're, they're over the moon, right? So then over the next several months, they're working on a contract with Stafford. They're not quite getting there. They draft his eventual successor, Ty Simpson, in the first round at number 13 overall, no less, which was something that had been in the motion for months, going all the way back to when Alabama's in the, in the Rose Bowl and Les Snead has Ty's parents over to the facility to essentially talk them into your son should come out Mom asked why, and he goes, because I'm going to draft him at number 13.
So that all comes to roost. I'm just telling you, this is strictly the quarterbacks without getting to everything else. Then they eventually get the Stafford deal done. So now you have on a team that's going for it, your number 1 pick is a guy who, if all goes well, we don't see for a year, maybe 2.
And by the way, there were a couple good guys at 13 that would have helped this year's team specifically. The name—
you're trying to balance this because in the Rams' minds, they're going We're winning the Super Bowl this year, so having the number 32 pick in a draft next year where all these guys are going to go above us, we're not going to get one then. We're not going to get one as long as Stafford is here. So let's take one now while we can catch the rest of the league off guard. And I don't know who else, if anyone, takes Ty in the first round, but in the Rams' minds, they're going, we've got a guy who fits perfectly into the system, who is trained in that style of offense, more under-center snaps than anybody in the NFL. Let's just get him now and we'll figure it out. Yeah. So then they eventually get the deal done with Stafford. It's painted as this, you know, extension, everything. If you look at it on paper, all it does is it buys them more time because of when his contract would have voided. It's still unclear what's going to happen with, with Matthew Stafford in 2027. He'll have a decision to make. Rams will have a decision to make.
But all that, by the way, and physically, we don't know what's going to happen to him.
And physically, he might be right on the cusp. He's played through so much and he's been beat up throughout the course of his career, like Do we see Ty Simpson? We see Stetson Bennett at some point. Like, we don't know how the season is going to play out. Wide receiver, meanwhile, because all that stuff's happening— wide receiver, uh, they work on at one point a trade of Davante Adams to the point that they tell Davante Adams, we're probably going to trade you, or we might trade you, because they're working on a trade for AJ Brown. They eventually back away from the AJ Brown trade there's medical stuff. He's had a long-running knee thing that everybody knows about going back to Tennessee, which is why they traded him way years ago.
What the hell? You're just dropping that on me?
They're trying to trade for AJ Brown. They're trying to trade for AJ Brown. So they tell Davante Adams, we may move on from you. Then the AJ thing goes away. Now Davante, okay, you're back. By the way, Puka is in rehab dealing with some serious personal stuff that he's got to work through. He hasn't been extended yet. So that also is an undercurrent of all this. Defensively, you completely overhaul your secondary. Uh, you bring in the two corners from the Chiefs, you trade your other one for Trent McDuffie and give him a record contract. Yeah, signed Jalen Watson to play on the other side. Uh, and then, oh yeah, you trade for Miles Garrett. You trade your first, second, and third round picks, plus Jared Verse, who's like 24 years old, one of the core guys. Like, I thought the value was really good for the Browns. I get why the Rams did it. I thought the Browns extracted really good value out of that situation. So you basically change everything about how you're playing up front. And we haven't even talked about the Aaron Donald saga, which is a guy who hasn't played in several years.
I know everybody keeps saying— I keep seeing like headlines and people saying like he's not coming back unless he's Aaron Donald. He's not going to be Aaron Donald. Aaron Donald. No, he might be something approaching Aaron Donald, but it's going to be on a limited snap. Type of a basis. I mean, if you go back through modern NFL history, and I had my former employee's research team look this up at one point, the only player in the— basically the only player in the post-World War II era who's in the Hall of Fame who sat out multiple seasons and came back and played was Dion. And Dion came back as like a part-time player in Baltimore for a couple of years because Ray Lewis got him to come back. He still, you know, still made plays. He's Dion Sanders. But He wasn't an impact guy.
Well, wouldn't that comparison be how the Pats used Diggs last year, where Diggs was impactful but he was only playing 40% of the snaps, 45% of the snaps? I mean, with Donald, it would be the same, same thing. Like, they're going to use him strategically, but he's not going to be out there all the time.
That, that part of it's definitely true. Like, I think that what you will see if Aaron Donald decides he wants to play, which I don't think that's coming in the next few days, um, you know, listen, this is August 18th, we kind of need to know soon. They got joint practice with the Saints I think on Thursday Aaron Donald may have shown up for a joint practice with the Saints. So it'll be sometime thereafter if he's going to come back. But the idea, the vision would be third downs, 2-minute late in games, pass rush situations where we're going to roll out Aaron Donald, whatever he is now, plus Miles Garrett, plus Byron Young, plus Kobe Turner. Basically, they're like, figure out who you're going to double. Like, just go ahead and, you know, try us here. That would be the idea of it. With Aaron Donald, but it would add even more of that. Like, it's obviously, it would be like the equivalent of LeBron at this point where LeBron coming to Philly, if he played 22 minutes a game, it's exactly that same thought, which what are you getting out of LeBron? Well, he can facilitate, he can make the other people around him better, even if he himself is not what he was.
But also it's like LeBron chose Philly. Oh shit, like we're going to be in the mix to win this thing right now. Like it makes everybody every day come in, you would hope, And I know that's kind of how the Rams are thinking about this. Like, everybody's gonna be like, man, if he decided to come back from retirement because he thinks this team has a shot to win it, that means every day I gotta show up with the same, the same intensity and vision that he's got.
And you have, you can, if you think you're gonna make the playoffs, which I think they're gonna make the playoffs and barring like a bunch of crazy shit happening, you can kind of steer it toward, hey, what if we get, if we can get the 1 seed, we only have to play 3 playoff games. We steer Donald toward, Can you give us like 2 awesome weeks in a row, bye week, then Super Bowl? Can you play like 70% of the plays just for those 3 weeks? Um, I— if we're rating which things make me the most dubious, Puka's number 1. I want to talk about him in a second. Stafford just holding up at age 38, how much Donald will be able to actually play. Um, all the pressure and hype, which the moment anything goes wrong, it's, oh my God, the Rams are 1-2, and it just becomes And by the way, the whole country watching week one, the first game in Australia, I'll be on the sideline, right?
The whole country is going to watch it. Everybody overreacts to week one. They're playing a tough 49ers team and they're fucking across the world. I had a call with the Melbourne folks yesterday, like the local, the visitor bureau or whatever they are, people did a presentation for us and they were— I asked them like, is there a team that people root for there? And they said, well, no, like the people in Melbourne don't really have a team. But the 49ers are reviving earlier. They're going to be in the community. So we think the crowd will be for the 49ers. Like, the Rams are going to be in at least a slightly, you know, environment where they're challenged. And yeah, it's going to be a weird game. You know, these guys, McVay and Kyle, know each other so well. Like, there's no surprises. Raheem Morris is the former Rams coordinator, is now in San Francisco. Like, there's tons of familiarity. But that game, like, weird stuff always happens in Week 1. If they come back from that, on a long flight back and they're 0-1 and they were the team that everybody said is going to win the Super Bowl.
And now it's 10 days of hearing like that they, you know, they might not be the team that we thought. Like, that, that does have some weight on people, even if it's just one of 17 games.
Puka, who was the best receiver in the league last year, in my opinion, even though I think JSN, he had all the accolades, but Puka just game to game was just ridiculous. The blocking, he was catches in traffic, was just dominant. I don't know what to expect from him. And it, it was like, no, no, he's getting his life back together. And then this story comes out that he ran through a glass door at Michael Rubin's house on July 4th. And it's like, are we sure he's doing great? What about all the legal troubles? And is there something really going on with this guy? So what have you heard on that?
Well, I, I would start by saying, you know, from all accounts, from everyone I've talked to since he got back in the building, which he was back, you know, OTAs in the spring, like he's been, He's been good around the facility, which is like he's in a good spot. Um, and you also can surmise based on the timing of everything, like, he probably didn't have his life together last season when he was the most dominant receiver, or one of the most dominant receivers in the NFL. Yeah. So you would like to think if whatever he's dealing with, he can be in a better spot with that now, maybe the guy can be even better here. His contract was never going to get done early in the offseason. I think this one was always going to take A little bit, but certainly he's going to have a spotlight on him for a variety of different reasons. He's still somehow appearing on podcasts and saying crazy stuff like, yeah, I walked through a plate glass window and cut up my face. Like, I don't know, I guess I've never gone to a white party. Maybe everyone wearing white.
Listen, that's it.
If that was one of my friends or one of your friends, it would be a red flag. I mean, what happened? You walked through a plate glass window? Like, how drunk were you? What happened?
I mean, that is some speed, you know. It's not, uh, not Charles Barkley throwing you through a plate glass window. Like, if you just walked and broke it— I know you're a strong dude, but that's, uh, yeah, that's a lot. Like, listen, I mean, yeah, there's— it'll be something worth monitoring, there's no doubt about it. But like, in terms of on the field and football, like, everything sounds like it's gone well so far. It's just, it's one of the many things we'll have to be keeping tabs on here through the season.
Well, in the last 30 years, only one team has been a giant favorite heading into the season and actually won the Super Bowl, and that was the 2018 Patriots who beat the Rams. So there you go. Um, pressure rankings really quick. Individuals. These are my rankings. I don't think they're the correct rankings. I did not send them to you. The number one person with the most pressure on him this year in my opinion, is going to be CJ Stroud because I think the Texans are really, really, really good and could absolutely make the Super Bowl and maybe should have made the Super Bowl last year except he let them down in New England and was awful. Run game's better. Offensive line is supposedly a little better. Receiver room is better. The defense is the same and probably better, but they brought everybody back. It's all lined up for him. Just give us a C+ and we're going to win 13 games. Can you be a C? Are you giving him a nickname? C+ Stroud? C+ Stroud. That sounds great. I'll start it right now. Just, just a C+. We'll go 12-5. Um, I think he has the most pressure on him.
It's, it's, it's just crazy to think about the arc for CJ Stroud, you know, as the number 2 pick and the entire world decided, you know, about 3 games into that rookie year that he was you know, clearly should have been the number one pick. He's played well enough. He's gone to the playoffs every year, wins a playoff game every year, but then has had bumps like last year. Last year was a roller coaster, man. Like out of the gate, they were bad. I mean, they were 0-3. The offense was really struggling. They were changing schemes because they fired Bobby Slowik. They had Nick Kaley coming in. It's a, it's a different style of offense that he was running. But then over the, in the middle of the season, like they did get better defensively. Matt Burke taking over the play calling was huge for the defense. And then offensively, like you saw them kind of figure some things out, even though, yeah, the running back situation with Mixon out and you got a late, late career Nick Chubb, those things were— it was brutal.
They had the worst running backs in the league.
Yeah. So trading for David Montgomery makes a lot of sense. Like Montgomery still got, you know, with lack of wear and tear over the last couple of years, like he's still got some juice left in his legs. I think that that was a smart move. And pairing him with a young back like makes a ton of sense. Tank Dell is CJ Stroud's favorite receiver. And he's back last year. He's back now because he had a horrific injury in 2024. You know, he's been back out there. I know he hasn't practiced the last few days, but seems like he'll be ready to roll. So like, that's another, another addition here. There have been contract talks between CJ Stroud, his agent, and the Texans. So there's at least a chance, but it's really hard to get a quarterback contract done right now because every agent is looking at this and going next year. The quarterback class of 2023 will all be extension eligible, so that is, you know, Drake Maye and Jayden Daniels and Caleb Williams and Bo Nix. Baker Mayfield potentially is a free agent. That could be another one. Lamar Jackson is going to be due for a new contract that the Ravens have been working on for like 2 years now.
So there's a number where that deal could get done. But if not, I know this: CJ Stroud is totally comfortable going out and playing it out. So is there pressure? Yeah, and the way that things ended last year with like the weird Chuck Knobloch style yips where like he couldn't take a snap, like he couldn't handle the football, that was just weird and out of character. You'd like to think that it's not gonna look like that, but no doubt if he doesn't have a contract, any quarterback, fourth year or rookie deal, there's a level of pressure, especially on a really good team.
So you have the contract, you have the history from last season where he probably single-handedly cost them a playoff run. There's another thing, and it doesn't happen that often in the NFL, But when you have a team that's kind of ready to potentially make a Super Bowl and you have a unit that's the other side of the ball, that's fucking awesome. Yeah. And it's like the defense, if we can just get good enough offense, this defense can carry us and you're letting them down. That's where football becomes like unlike any other sport where it's like the two units working together. But if this unit's letting down this unit and it just compounds itself and you could feel it in that playoff game. And it, to me, it's like a fork in the road for him. Like, he could be, he could salvage whatever, get a big contract out of this, make, win a couple playoff games, or I can see him not being the quarterback next year. Like, it's like a clear fork in the road. I don't know how it's going to play out. Yeah.
And then listen, anytime you're making those commitments, we've seen teams, we talked about some of them, the teams that have made these big commitments to quarterbacks, and you very quickly, like, it's not even second-guessing, it's first guest, and it's like, right, you re-signed Kyler when you just don't like him at all as a person. Tua, he gave him $46 million a year. Tua with the concussion history. I mean, I remember when that deal got done, and like, I understand, like, you know, if you're Chris Greer and that staff, like, you drafted him. Mike McDaniel, like, big part of his pitch to get the job was like, I can win with Tua. Every other coach said you got to get rid of Tua. Mike McDaniel walked in and said, I can win with him. When you do that and you tie yourself to somebody, you're like, all right, well, we're going to pay him. And we want to send a message by paying him. But I had other GMs, as soon as that contract went down, being like, why in the world didn't they just let that play out and then franchise tag him? Like, what are you doing?
Like, what? Why would you pay him now with the history? And obviously it played out that way. So I think that the combination of the fact that, you know, listen, Bill, in like 2013 or '14, certainly in '13, I think still in '14, the highest paid quarterback in the NFL was Aaron Rodgers at $22 million a year. $22 million. He was the highest-paid quarterback for like 2 years.
Then are you counting off-the-table Brady money too from TB12?
I'm just saying money that we know of.
Money, no. Okay.
Uh, that market is now tripled essentially, right? By the time that we get a Lamar deal and whatever Caleb and Jayden and Drake and Bo— we'll see who else is in there— like, it's gonna be, you know, the, the $60 million quarterback, forget that, it's gonna be the $70 million quarterback. And depending how you look at it, like The way that like Josh Allen's deal got redone, that was basically a 2-year, $200 million extension. Like, the numbers are astronomical. The agents have no reason to say like, well, we'll just take a $45 million a year deal. Daniel Jones, coming off a torn Achilles, signed a 2-year, $100 million contract. Yeah, that's just where we are. So if you're committing that much cash and cap dollars to a player, I don't blame the people who are like, let's get all the information we can first. It's why, it's why Bryce Young won't have an extension. Right now. You know, they, they had some very preliminary talks from my understanding, but it was kind of— everybody was under the understanding like, you're not going to pay what the market is, we're not going to take it, so let's just play it out.
You guys get more information, so do we, and let's see where the market is, um, next year. Just— it just creates, you know, ripple effects in this. And maybe we see some of these quarterbacks who in the past didn't get out there and now they do. And maybe quarterbacks toward the tail end of their rookie contracts begin getting traded. There's a lot of different macro things that could happen because you got guys like— I mean, CJ Stroud, on paper, 3 years, 3 playoff appearances, 3 playoff wins. Like, you take that for a young quarterback, but it's like, all right, peel back the layers of why haven't they taken those additional steps? What it looked like at the end of last season, he's going to take it into his own hands, barring a contract getting done before this season. And he going to be a really interesting, um, you know, guy available if in fact they aren't able to get something done.
He has built-in excuses for last year with the line, though, no running game at all, the wide receiver injuries. Like, you could go down the line, but he also wasn't very good. Um, number 2 on my pressure rankings is Josh Allen. We have the whole season to talk about him. We don't need to do that here, but, um, I don't need to lay that one out. 3, 4, 5 I have Herbert, Lamar, and Burrow tentatively in that order. So if, if, if I offered you Justin Herbert, Jackson, and Burrow, who do you think, who would you put with the most pressure of those 3 guys? 'Cause I think it's Herbert because he's getting the MVP buzz. He's 10 to 1, he's got the 4th best odds. We're hearing all this, oh, Mike McDaniel, oh, Harbaugh's blowing smoke left and right about him. He's got the offensive linebackers. They're a little sleepy, but we've never seen him play well in a playoff game ever.
I would say least pressure on Lamar because I think that we all need to— of the three, I'll go backwards here. Least pressure on Lamar because I think we all have to be aware of the challenge that he is taking on here. Declan Doyle was the new OC. He's 30 years old. He's basically the same age as Lamar. He trained under Sean Payton and Ben Johnson, two of the most detail-oriented, brilliant offensive minds that we've seen in the NFL. And from what they did in Chicago, which there's going to be a lot of corollaries to what they're doing in Baltimore with Lamar. Like, if you go back to Caleb in the first 2 months last season, like, it was bumpy because you're trying to take this dude who can be Superman every play and just going, no, we need Clark Kent like 90% of the time. Just Execute and be in rhythm and let your feet, you know, do the work. Connect your feet and your eyes. Have the ball come out on time. We'll worry about getting receivers to hit the landmark. So the ball comes out on time, they're where they're supposed to be.
You got to do your part. I wouldn't be surprised at all if we have some bumps early on for Lamar. I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think Baltimore plays Tennessee in Week 1. You know, Robert Sala will have some things cooked up to try to, you know, make things complicated for him. Um, but Lamar, I think that the fact that you've got a first-time head coach, first-time offensive coordinator— yes, it's Lamar, 2-time NFL MVP, there's always pressure on that team and Lamar himself— but I think there, there needs to be, from our perspective, more of a grace period with Lamar just because there's so much new.
Can I give you the first 5 for Lamar?
Yeah, please. It's at Indy. Indy, sorry, where Lou Anarumo is another one who historically You're going back, there have been, you know, some ups and downs when Lou was in Cincinnati, but he's played them a lot of times.
Home for Saints, at Cowboys in Brazil, home Titans— there's Ursula, there it was— at Falcons, at Browns. It's the first 6, and the Falcons is Sunday Night Football. So the Falcons-Browns will be the easier stretch of that because I think both those teams will not be—
storyline out of the gate to me is going to be the Ravens are probably going to win a majority of those games.
So that's what they look like.
They're going to be 5-1. Good enough. Yeah, right. That'll be the story.
5-1. Why don't we feel good about the offense?
Isn't that like what we've seen in the past? It's not going to. Listen, Declan, the problem the Ravens are going to have is if their offense is good and if they go this direction, which is the plan, like Declan Doyle is going to be a head coach next year, like he's going to be in that, in that type of category just because the way that he's trained from a very young age. Strong name.
I like his name, Declan Doyle. Sounds like a detective. Yeah, it's a good one. Lamar 5, you have Burrow 4.
I would say Burrow probably next because, you know, Joe's just had injuries. That's the biggest thing. Like, yeah, he's got pressure on himself to not get hurt, and the Bengals have pressure on them to not get him hurt. So in the first preseason game where Orlando Brown Jr., who I love, he's a great dude, and, um, you know, but like, he probably gonna, you know, he's got one on tape that he's gonna be like, I should have had that one. And Burrow gets smoked, and every Bengals fan goes, oh my God, it's more of the same. But They are trying to put, you know, the pieces around them. The investment in the defense, like, that's the biggest thing with Joe. Yes, you can say, all right, we just want the defense to be better, and you go out and you trade the number 10 pick for Dexter Lawrence, you sign Brian Cook for a bunch of money, you give money to Boye Mafe, the Seattle pass rusher. But you're doing those things also because if we're not having to throw the ball 50 times, if we're not perpetually in a shootout, guess what happens? Like, Joe doesn't have to be dropping back.
We can actually have a balanced offense. Yeah, we can, you know, we can protect him more because we don't have to get 5 guys on the ropes or trying to come back. That's the idea is the big picture. It's not just, hey, we got to block better. It's like we got to play a better game. There's pressure on Joe only because he hasn't been able to stay on the field. Those things aren't always necessarily his fault. You know, the one last year holds the ball for a long time in the pocket. He suffers a severe turf toe injury like that. You got to be able to get the football out. So yeah, I think that there's some level of him, but it's also, it's everybody else. Joe's a big backer of Zach Taylor. They've gone to the Super Bowl together. Zach's in year 8. Like, there's pressure on the entire operation here, which is why they did un-Bengals things and were aggressive going out and trading a high draft pick for a veteran player. And then with Justin Herbert, I think that there's less pressure, and I've said this before, on Justin Herbert than there is on Jim Harbaugh.
But another situation Where the— you'd have Harbaugh over Herbert for pressure? Absolutely. And I would say because Justin Herbert is still a young— he's still a young quarterback. He also has a new offensive coordinator, of course, with Mike McDaniel, and everybody's got high hopes about what that is going to look like here. But think about this: Jim Harbaugh coming off a national championship at Michigan. And of course, there were a lot of other things that happened before, during, and after that that we won't get into here. But a highly regarded coach who'd won at every stop. He won at UC San Diego. He won at Stanford. He won with the 49ers. He won at Michigan over the course of time, although it took him a while to get there. In San Francisco, his first 2 years were NFC Championship, Super Bowl. His 3rd year was another NFC Championship. It was instantaneous success. When the Chargers brought him from Michigan, the Falcons also interviewed him in that cycle. They ultimately hired Raheem Morris. He wanted to go to LA. That's where, you know, from September, like, I was hearing that he was telling people in the building, like, I'm going to be the Chargers head coach next year.
Like, he had eyes on that job all along. Justin Herbert was a big part of it. But if you told me Jim Harbaugh is one of the highest-paid coaches in the NFL, was going to have— he's already had 2— to have 3 seasons without a playoff win, you'd say that that is a failure for him coming in. So the pressure is on everybody there. To be able to take that next step. With Herbert, he's had to overcome a lot. You want to talk about— I mean, CJ Stroud did have a lot of issues on the offensive line. Not like Herbert. Yeah, Joe Alt and Rashaun Slater didn't get out of camp last year. I mean, it was a constant revolving door and they made changes at the OC position. They made changes at the offensive line coach. So now you got Butch Berry there, who's a very veteran guy along Mike McDaniel. You know, let's see what the whole thing, you know, ends up looking like here. Herbert's had a lot of injuries. He plays through as much as anybody. I mean, that high ankle sprain, I think— I can't remember if that was last year or 2 years ago, but like, he had that thing taped like, you know, it was like 1980s football.
Like, he had the full stack, like his foot was 3 times the size. Like, yeah, he plays through stuff, but he's got to be able to, you know, and organizationally they've got to be able to win. So I'd say Herbert just because we've seen Lamar. Yeah, he hasn't gotten to a Super Bowl. Joe hasn't won a Super Bowl. Herbert hasn't won a playoff game. He was there and had a massive lead on the Jaguars once. That's the closest that they came. But, you know, everybody there involved— again, I still put more pressure on Jim Harbaugh than Justin Herbert, but everybody there has pressure on them in LA just because these are two guys making big-time money in a big-time city where you're competing for attention with the team that owns the stadium. And this is the year where now you've got to be able to take a step forward. You start wondering, all right, How many coaches go into year 4 without a playoff win and you're not talking about really needing to make major changes? It just would, it would raise a lot of questions, as much faith as they have in those guys, about exactly what the path forward is.
Yeah, Herbert, you could do the Stroud thing where there are excuses for what happened last year because of the injuries to the tackles, but there doesn't seem a lot of excuses this year. All right, so I have the Rams, CJ Stroud, Josh Allen, Harbaugh, Herbert together. Joe Burrow, Lamar as the next two. I'm just gonna give you, cuz we gotta go soon, I'm gonna give you 7 names and tell me if any of them have more pressure on them than Joe Burrow or Lamar Jackson. Okay. Jalen Hurts, Mike Vrabel, Dak Prescott, Miles Garrett, Kyler Murray, Jayden Daniels, and Jordan Love.
All right, let's go one by one. Well, just, just which one jumps out? I'll give you— I mean, Jalen Hurts is the one that jumps out immediately. New offense that on paper isn't really geared to his skill set. Sean Mannion's coming in as another young offensive coordinator who's never called plays at any level and is going to be running. You know, he played under LaFleur in Green Bay. He played under Sean McVay or didn't play a whole lot. He was the backup quarterback under those guys. Like that's never been Jalen Hurts' game. It's a precision style drop back under center offense. Jalen Hurts has a lot of pressure, um, just because if they're committed to this style of play and it doesn't click immediately, you're going to be talking about, okay, where potentially would Jalen Hurts be the quarterback in 2027? We're not there yet. They want to see it. But when you don't have the evidence that he can succeed and play at a really high level in that system, I think inevitably there's a ton of pressure that goes into that, especially because he's getting to a point in his contract too, where if everything was going swimmingly in Philadelphia, we'd be talking about Jalen Hurts being up for a new contract as well.
It's an interesting topic with Eagles fans, and I know, unfortunately for me, I know a bunch of them because they still rub the Patriots Super Bowl in my face. Um, respect Hurts because he won them the Super Bowl, right? Big sturdy guy. They're like, clearly, like, they feel indebted to him because he, they did have success with him, but none of them are sure if he's that good. And you can hear when you talk to, they were always like, they just seem wishy-washy.
Pretty damn good in the Super Bowl. He was, he had a great run. He had an unstoppable play in the tush push, but he also, he threw the ball. If you go back to that Super Bowl, the deep shot to DeVonta Smith, it was basically the dagger. You know, he was executing at a high level. It's just, you know, listen, Jalen's another guy who is just, he's more to himself. He's, you know, he's an extremely hard worker. He's unbelievably driven, but he's not, you know, the guy who's going to be the, you know, the centerpiece of the locker room. That's just not his personality. And everybody knew, you know, coming out of Alabama and Oklahoma, that wasn't really him. That's not necessarily a character flaw. I mean, they won a Super Bowl with him. I think we sometimes overlook this. And he became available. He became— if he became available, there would be, you know, a huge price for him. But the pressure comes from, The Eagles, again, on paper, have made a move to like, hey, we're going to run this other style of offense. Yeah, that isn't naturally a fit for you. You know, it would be like if the Patriots, when Tom Brady were there, hired Sean Mannion.
I guess, I mean, it would have been like in his 20s, but like you hire some guy who's going to run the LaFleur offense and Tom would have been like, we're doing what now? We've been running one offense and we've had a ton of success. We won a Super Bowl. Like, why are we changing this? Do something that's completely different from what I do. That to me creates pressure. I mean, some of the other ones, Dak, You know, Dak's been a highly productive quarterback. He's at that point where, you know, the Cowboys have to be thinking about the future, but he's still in his prime. They've got a ton of firepower. I don't think that there's necessarily pressure that goes beyond just— Really?
I totally disagree. I feel like there's— I feel like there's a lot of stuff. Watch out for Dallas in the NFC. They could make the Super Bowl. This is the best team.
He said, we do that a lot. Nobody always overvalues—
You're 11. Like, yeah, I don't think he's made a conference championship game yet. And no, by the way, they're America's team. Everybody talks about them the most.
Even they're gonna talk about them more in the ring in 3 decades. Yeah, he's got the most valuable franchise, everything from business.
When is it going to happen? I mean, you could argue the Parsons trade worked out for them, especially because they turned some of the picks into Williams. And like, I think that's— you look at that holistically, it actually like was smart how they played it.
That— but the weird thing about what Dallas did last year was like, they're the first team that I can remember that basically decided to start building their defense in August and continued through November. Like, you say what you will about Matt Eberflus, but like, he found out a week before, two before the season, we're trading your best player, Micah Parsons. Like, up until that point, it was not totally clear that this was actually going to happen. So you trade Micah And now it's like, well, we have no pass rushers. Then like, well, we got Kenny Clark. It's like, okay, that's great because we need to know it. We need a, you know, a defensive tackle. But like, Kenny's more of a nose. He's not a 3-tech. We don't have a 3-tech. And then get to November, they're like, hey, we got your 3-tech, Quinnen Williams. It's like, okay, cool. We could have used him the past 2 months, right? They traded for the linebacker Logan Wilson. He's like, hey, middle linebacker. Like, the most important positions in that scheme are—
they're doing it on the fly during this season.
Middle linebacker. Yeah, you're just making it up. In the middle of it. But the best thing they did, you know, if they were going to fire Flusche, like going to getting Christian Parker, just getting a young hungry dude, like another one who, if they're good— we're going to talk about Christian Parker as a head coaching candidate this year. I'm really fascinated to see. He comes from the Vic Fangio school. He's unbelievably bright young guy. He's going to have a plan. They're finally— they're steady in terms of their personnel. Um, and obviously, you know, they drafted defense, uh, Malachi Lawrence in the first round, which— that's going to be an interesting one. Because that's a project. You know, they had two first-round picks, used both of them on defense. Like, that's, that's what you want to see. But how quickly does it all come together? That, that to me, I think they're going to be good on offense. I don't think there's a whole lot of doubt. A lot of people like them. Injuries. But I think defensively is where it boils down to.
I got Dak in there. All right. Jordan Love, pressure because he— I anointed him a couple of weeks ago with Mina, the, the new nerd king at quarterback. The nerds are They've moved their attention away from Justin Herbert. Now are they over on Jordan Love, touting the virtues of Jordan Love and how much better he is than people realize? And so he's got the pressure of the nerds.
He didn't care the way for that. Top 10, top 7, like every statistical—
yeah, EPA, name anything, he's really good at it.
Yeah, I mean, I think— I don't know, like, if the Packers ever gone like 3 straight weeks over these— in the Jordan Love era, where like they have the same group of receivers Like every week it's Christian Watson's.
By the way, it won't be this season either.
Well, I mean, Tucker Craft, the fact that he's come back, that's the number one thing that happened to them last year. Look at them playing before the Tucker Craft injury and after. Everybody was losing their minds. I think the week after that, like they, they lost to Carolina or they had a close game against Carolina and they played— didn't play great the following week. It was like, what's going on? It's like they lost a guy like Tucker Craft, this young Travis Kelce, right? He can be that good. It seems like he's on track to play early in the season. I don't know how much. But Jordan Love is— I'll tell you this, like, the coaches there love him. Matt LaFleur loves him, you know, the leader, the guy, the player. They just got to get some, you know, some better consistency. Josh Jacobs was banged up most of last year, too. That was a really big deal for him. So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see. I don't think that there's as much pressure other than, again, you're the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers and you might be in the toughest division in the entire league.
Yeah, I think almost 99% done with my research. It's clear that that's the best division. I think, I think NFC North top to bottom is probably the best.
I don't think who you'd even, who you'd even argue. I mean, the NFC West minus Arizona, but there's no minus.
It's not, it's not even close. Before we go, give me, every year there's a team that comes outta nowhere and makes the playoffs and everybody's shocked. And we're getting better at the Vegas odds with this. Like the Patriots were a huge shock last year, but actually not to people who were studying the schedule and the coaching change, all the— is there anybody in that bottom 10 that you feel like could make a leap that we're not seeing? I'm talking like, I'm talking like the Clevelands, like those kind of teams, the Giants, Arizona. Is there a shitty team that's not gonna be shitty?
Well, the thing is, how many shitty teams are there? Like going into the year we talked about the 4. I, I think that after that, like there's not a lot of teams you think are just gonna be bad.
I mean, you can say everyone in the NFC South might be shitty. You can say Arizona, you can say the Giants and Washington are both going to be shitty.
Jets, Miami, Cleveland. Did you mention John Harbaugh on your pressure list? Yeah, it's year one.
I think that you got a grace period for year one.
John Harbaugh went to the AFC Championship Game in his first year in, in Baltimore. Like, he's coming with more fanfare, one of the highest paid coaches. Like, there's instant expectations now. I mean, people are going to feel different ways about Jackson Dart and Cam Scatman.
Our guy Schrager picked them to win 11 to 12 games. Do you see that? I gotta, I gotta— I don't know, I don't know if he was drinking when he did that. It's like a Puka Nuku'a moment.
Phil Schrager takes off the jacket and has a Skadaboo jersey underneath. He makes a Super Bowl pick. I'm not gonna put too much, uh, all right, too much talking into it. I have my— some of the board that I have, a whiteboard with a bunch of different stuff, but one of them is I have the ranking of, uh, the hot seat going into the year. Yeah, which is like ranked on who's most likely to get fired, 1 through 32. So I'm like looking at the teams of at the top of like who's gonna—
is Bulls at the top?
I would say this, like Tampa, I mean the fact that we were talking about it for a week after the season last year and there wasn't a clear answer and he cleaned out most of his two-thirds of his coaching staff, like yeah, there's pressure on top of this, there's pressure on a lot of different coaches, um, going into, you know, this year. Again, they just, they haven't had stability at offensive coordinator, you know, that's, that's just happened over and over. I mean I think the one team and I might be— listen, I might be dead wrong on this, but like, I could see Washington being good. I think Washington— what is their over-under for wins? It's like 6.5 or something. Yeah, I think it's around 7. I think everybody's looking at that team and listen, Jaden Daniels, I know he was in your pressure rankings. He probably wouldn't have been there up until the whole— Yeah, it's about 7.
People think 7 wins is— 7 wins. It's between 6.5 and 7.5.
Listen, they could be bad again, but like Washington fell into, frankly, a familiar trap coming off of the 2024 season. We're like, I mean, Jaden Daniels was, was lights out that season. They go to the— all the way to the NFC Championship Game. Everybody's, you know, gassing them up. And what did they do? They doubled down on, well, let's bring in a bunch of veterans and trying to put it over the top. So that's where you sign Von Miller toward the end of his career. You bring back, you know, the Zach Ertzes of the world. Um, you know, I'm forgetting some others, but they had a bunch of like— they had one of the The oldest rosters, they had like 15 guys who were age 30 and older. And like, I remember going through there in camp last year for a practice and just being like, it feels slow. Deebo was another one that they brought in. Like, this team just doesn't have a lot of juice. And at the time I chalked it up to Terry McLaurin was holding in and, you know, some other guys weren't out there. But like, you just got that sense.
And I've seen it many times in the past where like, that doesn't work. So what they did this year and they go out and they draft a couple of you know, wide receivers who they think they're going to be able to help them in the near term here. They bring in Diggs. Like, Diggs is an older player, but nobody in the league practices harder than Diggs. He showed last year in what, 51% of the snaps or whatever. He still was a 1,000-yard receiver. And he's a guy who you can play a lot in slot. You know, he can kind of offset some of the things that people try to do to you.
Healthy McLaurin. McLaurin came in. He was battling injuries because he held out or held in whatever.
Another, you know, older player. Like, they do still have some of those older players. On the team and they lost Larry Tunsell. I mean, that's the biggest deal. People aren't— everyone's like, trade for left tackle. It's like, from who? What left tackle is available in August? Like, that's my biggest concern with them. But like, Jayden was— he didn't have the guys last year. Like, all the injuries around him and the holdout with McLaurin, like, they never had— Austin Ekeler, another later-stage player who got hurt. They never had their actual guys out there. Now you give them Diggs to go along with McLaurin, to go along with all these young receivers, like, If you look at their depth chart, like their entire 3 deep at all 3 receiver spots is names you know. They got like, yeah, I mean, Brown back there and like a bunch of players. You're like, I can see all these guys competing. They've gotten younger, they've gotten faster. They invested into the defense. They moved on from a lot of those older players and they moved on, you know, in terms of their offensive coordinator. Again, this is another theme of the season, like David Blough, another one, 30 years old.
I feel like it was yesterday we were watching him. Fill in starting for the Lions on Thanksgiving with the wristband where the flap was broken. So the entire game his play sheet was flapping like this. It was like 4 years ago and now he's an offensive coordinator. Like, we'll see exactly what that ends up looking like. Like Detroit wanted him to come back there and be the offensive coordinator. Like they were really interested in David Blough. If they can find some rhythm, because I don't know that Jayden Daniels was real fired up about the idea of playing a different style of offense. If Jayden's healthy, the pieces around him are healthy. I think that they've got a real opportunity here in a division that I just don't know that there's a single dominant team going into the season. The Eagles are always there. The Cowboys, everyone's expecting a lot from. The Giants, we'll see. I could see them making noise if Jayden is Jayden again in a year where if he plays like he did as a rookie, there's your $60 to $70 million quarterback right there.
They went 5-12 last year. They lost Huntz already. They play the AFC South and the NFC West. So that's basically 2 easy games and potentially 5 or 6 really hard ones. They start out at Eagles, at Dallas, home Seahawks. And if they can somehow get through that 1-2 or 2-1, I mean, it would be, they'll be heavy underdogs. Steal that first one.
Yeah, that would help. One of those.
But if they start out 0-3, then, uh, not great. All right, Tom, um, you're gonna be on the Ring of NFL Show. I don't know when it starts, but it's starting pretty soon, and you're gonna be on there. You're gonna be on here on Thursdays. Uh, we're gonna do a little info segment because I'm gonna change around my Thursday show a little bit, but we're gonna have a fun thing for that. And then, uh, some writing stuff is coming too. But you're back. You're part of the universe. Uh, great to have you. I'm glad we were able to shoot all this stuff. Say hi to everybody in Minnesota. Apologize to them that I didn't have them in the top 2 tortured rankings.
I gotta rethink that.
They're probably, you know what, there is, I'm not gonna rank anyone. There's like a 4 and nobody can be ranked against each other. I apologize.
Everybody thinks they're aggrieved. Yeah, yeah. Eagles fans think they're aggrieved.
Yeah, everybody's aggrieved. Everybody has a grudge. All right. Good to see you. Thank you, my friend. Thanks, Bill. Well, this is a first for BS Podcast history. Sammy Koppelman is here. His father is Brian Koppelman. This is the first ever father-son podcast thing on my pod, and I— and honestly, people are going to compare it to LeBron and Bronny James. We can't— we— it's, it's two separate worlds. I'm not going to do that.
We need to be going for Rick Brunson, Jalen Brunson. That sounds great. Yeah, if I fail, we're looking at Bronny and LeBron. If this is a success, I'm the Jalen, he's the Rick. All right.
So you're into the whole financial world. You're the publisher of Hunterbrook, and you've been following all of these, all these billionaire shenanigans. And we have a ton of them right now. Monday, a quiet sports day, allegedly in mid-August. And then Lakers and Clippers both blew up in all these different ways. And I tweeted that I thought the Lakers situation was 1,000 times more interesting than the Clippers situation because it has all of these other ramifications. Outside of basketball. I was probably doing a little hyperbole with the 1,000 times, but, um, I need you to explain this Mark Walter situation to my audience because it's starting to seem like he's an actual crook. It's starting to seem like he might actually go to jail. He's already, uh, shed himself of the Lakers. He's selling his Chelsea stake reportedly right now, which was like 12.5%. And my guess is the Dodgers are gonna be next. So what is this? Is this like an— are we moving toward like a Bernie Madoff, Ivan Boesky type of situation?
What is this? I wouldn't quite say we're at Madoff. And I do have to say, I've worked with Pablo. Yeah, your buddy, on a couple of those stories having to do with the Clippers. And what's most interesting about that story and this story is it's kind of the same story. Okay. It's about billionaires who believe that certain rules don't apply to them and hate to have to operate within a system where they're suddenly constricted. And so when you look at Walter, what basically happened here is, as you know, in 2012, he buys the Dodgers. And at the time, people are kind of confused. They're like, how's this guy who runs Guggenheim, which is a successful operation, but he's not known as some giant titan of industry, How is he buying the Dodgers for this amount of money? And what was it, like $2.25 billion, something like that?
And then the other bidders were upset. They didn't understand. They had questions about where he got the money and all that stuff.
Yeah, I was looking at this last night. It seems like Mark Cuban was involved. It seems like the next bid was almost a billion dollars shy of Walter's bid. So people were confused. They were like, where is he getting this money? And at the time, people started looking into the question, was he using insurance money, money people had been putting away for their insurance because he owns a couple of insurance companies. And so the question was, was he using that money to buy the team? Which echoes the current scandal and what he's being investigated for by the DOJ, which just to explain it in basic terms, the way this works is if you have a life insurance policy, you're putting money away so that one day when you die, your loved ones have something Or you get paid an annuity when you're old.
So, so our dads get an insurance policy. Basically when they die, we get money and they took care of us a little bit.
Exactly. Like if my dad hadn't started lifting like a crazy person and he died from the obesity he was suffering from.
If your dad wasn't continuing to sell shows, if he had to actually file stuff away anyway.
Yeah, exactly. Um, and so people do that and they take out these life insurance policies and in the meantime, Being an insurer is pretty good because you get to invest that money in what you want to invest it in. And the way it works is usually they're going to go invest that money in safe bonds or in a diversified index of stocks so that your money's safe overall. And they're collecting a vig, and that's no secret. That's why it's a business. But just like when you're sports betting and the betting platform's collecting a vig, that's sort of just like the way it works. What Walter figured out and what a bunch of people have started doing is, well, what if you just start investing that in better assets, assets that are riskier, but you might be able to juice the returns? And one big asset class Walter's obsessed with is sports. And it's not just the Dodgers and then the Lakers. He has invested in Formula 1. We found in one of our investigations that he was invested in American Rodeo, a bullfighting team. He clearly thinks that sports is this incredible asset class. And it's actually, in theory, okay to use insurance money to invest in assets like sports teams if you disclose to people what you're doing.
The problem here with Mark Walter is that you're supposed to specifically disclose something called a related party transaction, which sounds boring, but basically what this means is you can't pay yourself. Like if he took his insurance money and he used it to buy himself a restaurant he wanted to run that was going to go out of business otherwise, that wouldn't be allowed. And so you have to disclose, all right, yes, I invested in the sports team, which I also own, but I think it's a good investment for X, Y, and Z reasons. And what Walter did, according to all of these reports, the reason that FBI agents boarded his private jet and stole his phone and stole his computer, which doesn't happen every day for billionaires, like this. That's a serious, serious thing, is he wasn't disclosing that he was investing in related parties. And one of the insurers he owns had said 3% of its investments were going to related parties. They then corrected their filings to say it was 40%. And so that raises the question, what's he been doing with these billions and billions of dollars Americans have been putting away for their insurance policies?
And it seems like he's been using that money to buy sports teams left and right.
So people like our parents and grandparents are buying it, buying insurance and assuming that it's going to be invested in the safest possible stuff, right? Correct. And he, and he's not the only one who did this because it's like a trillion dollar industry now. But he was like, well, what if I take that money? I'm going to steer it toward some higher risk stuff and they trust me because I'm successful. But then the, the problem is he was investing it in his own shit and reporting it as, oh, it's only— what did he say, it was like $3 billion? Yeah, it was like, oh, it's only $3 billion of that. But it turned out— I've heard reports $16, $20, you're saying $40. Like, this is the question of— the big question is, did he just fail to disclose this, or is this fraud?
And the other big question is Where is all of the money? We know some of it went to these sports teams, but the kind of person who wouldn't disclose that, it raises questions about his firm, Guggenheim. And just give you some color on Mark Walter, because it's kind of fun. Like, you know, it's called Guggenheim, so you probably think it's like the Guggenheim family, like the Guggenheim Museum. Yeah, from Men in Black. Okay, so here's like how Mark Walter made this fund called Guggenheim. There was a guy named Meyer Guggenheim. He died in 1905. His son was a guy named Solomon Guggenheim. Then that person had a daughter named Barbara Guggenheim. Their son was a guy named Peter Lawson Johnston Sr., whose son was Peter Lawson Johnston II. Walter had that guy as a co-founder of his company so he could legally use the name Guggenheim. Wow. And then they got rid of that guy. But it has this air of legitimacy. It has this patina of institutionalism. And that's what Walter's been doing his whole life, is he's a genius at accruing assets, figuring out how to invest in them, levering them, and then getting what he wants from the world.
And you have to give him credit. It's pretty amazing. I mean, this guy owns some of the premier assets in the entire world. And the other key point of all this, the other way he does it is that insurance money is super valuable because historically it was invested in safe stuff, which means from a regulation standpoint, unlike some other stuff that was regulated after 2008, you're allowed to leverage. So like you put away, your dad puts away some money in a life insurance policy, and that's a dollar, and Walter can go invest like 50, $20, $15 for every dollar that was put away. Yeah. And so there ends up being this leverage in the system that compounds. And so you have billions in insurance money, you can buy tens of billions of dollars worth of assets. And that's how this kind of random guy who everyone was surprised bought the Dodgers in 2012 ends up owning a piece of Chelsea and the Dodgers and the Lakers and all these other premier signature assets of America.
Well, I went back, I look back at my notes from last summer, cuz I almost did a thing after, after, uh, he bought the Lakers. 'Cause I couldn't figure out where he got all the money. 'Cause it was a lot of money.
What tipped you off to it being weird? I mean, I followed that you've kind of hinted at.
I went back and looked at all my notes and I sketched out this whole thing and I chickened out and I didn't do it because he went to, what's it called? Mubadala, the, the, he got like a huge investment from them.
Yeah. Abu Dhabi.
And I, people started, there was some whispers about like, Basically, the Saudi money has bought the Lakers here and they're trying to pretend that that's not what happened, but it actually is what happened. And then you go back and you read, he got all this money, but then he also invested in them. And it just seemed like this circle of money going around and it's like, you give me the money and then I'll give it back. And we've invested because the NBA has this rule. You can only invest, you can only take 20% from private equity and that's it. That's the cap. So if you buy, if I buy a team for 10 million, 10 billion, I can only get $2 billion in private equity. So it seemed like he had found some end around, and I went and I, I did it and I was gonna do a whole thing about it. And I just, I, I was too nervous about it. It's not my expertise. And ironically, I was, you went, I was texting with Pablo back.
Could have been like, uh, you and Cousin Sal could have been like Woodward and Bernstein at the end of the day.
No, but you know who I texted? Our friend Pablo. And I, 'cause Pablo's like, you gotta come on the pod. And I was like, I wanna do Mark Walter. And we texted about it and we had never done it, but it would, it never added up to me. I never understood how the money circled back to the people he was getting the investment from. And I don't, the league just is so desperate to make as much money as possible on every franchise. They kind of like, we don't wanna know, which has been part of the problem with the Clippers situation too. But the league's always like, don't tell us, like we don't, nothing to see here. This was crazy.
They'd much rather stay in the dark. Pablo and I are working on a story having to do with Mark Walter. I'm not going to get into the specifics, but I'll just say high level, it's pretty interesting that after he bought the Dodgers in 2012, a couple years later, Magic Johnson ended up being the owner of a life insurance company that he bought from Guggenheim, Walter's firm. Huh. I have no evidence that anything went wrong there yet, but it's the exact same structure we're talking about here. Yeah. And you know, insurance companies are mostly owned by these like great institutions, and in this case they're owned by Mark Walter. And then there's one random insurance company owned by Magic Johnson, of all people. It's strange. I think the big problem here, you mentioned the private equity sort of max. Yeah. Is that teams have just become too expensive. Like, yeah, it used to be that the rich guy in your town could buy your sports team and they were— that worked because they were a fan of the team. And they'd go to every game and they'd want their kids to run the team. But now these teams are worth like $10 billion.
And so there's not that many people who actually can come up with that kind of money. And, you know, Pablo and I and Hunter Brooke, we investigated Matt Ishbia as our first big story.
I want to talk about him in a second. Yeah.
And, and that's another example of, all right, someone had to pay billions and billions of dollars and the NBA had to put that team up for sale in a pretty distressed situation. And it ends up being Ishbia, who on paper has billions of dollars and on paper seems like exactly the person you'd want owning a sports team. He was a walk-on at Michigan State. Yeah. He really cares about basketball. He literally has Isaiah Thomas on the board of his company. Like, this is a true basketball guy. But the problem is the people buying these teams now, they can't really afford the teams on their own. And so that ends up leaving the NBA in pretty tricky situations. Yeah.
When it, when like one-third of the league was basically for sale at the end of the 2000s before they had the lockout, the guy who bought Memphis, Michael Perra, bought it with like, he had this, this company that was doing well, but then as he was buying it, the company was not doing well. Yeah. Robert Perra. Robert Perra. I'm sorry. I confused it with Michael Sayer. Robert Perra. Very different guys, by the way. Totally different guys.
I don't think, I don't think Robert Perra would've been very good in Nick and Nora's Infinite playlist.
No, or this is the end. Um, but people were worried at the time, oh my God, he's not gonna be able to cover the thing. But at that time it was $220 million, whatever he paid for the Grizzlies. Now we're talking about Ishbia paid over $4 billion for the Suns. And if it doesn't work out for them, now you have, like, if he, if, and he just disclosed all, they, they, what did he report? Like $450 million in losses for the second quarter of his company. Yeah, you have to just happen.
You have to give Ishbia credit as a sports team owner. This guy, in my view, basically bankrupted his company, which was the biggest mortgage lender in the country, in order to pay, in order to buy the Suns, right? Which, and to continue running the Suns. I mean, this guy was paying Bradley Beal $50 million a year, right? When he was owning a mortgage company as rates were going up and they stopped making money. And what happened with Ishbia is Truly, he was taking $600 million a year out of the company in this dividend the company couldn't afford. And then to buy the team, he took out what's called a margin loan against his shares in the team, against his shares in UWM. And so what that meant was he basically gave the bank billions of dollars worth of his UWM stake. And so when the shares fell in value, the bank's able to tighten the screws and say, all right, you got to sell shares, you got to put up more money. He was willing to take essentially every dollar he could out of that company in order to keep running the Suns. That's what happens.
He came in to run the Suns. He said he was going to sell super cheap concessions. He said he was going to make it more affordable to watch the games on TV. He was trying to be, I think, a consummate, really good owner. Probably trusted Isaiah Thomas too much, which led to all kinds of problems in my own childhood as a Knicks fan. I could have told him not to do that. The Eddie Curry trade is reason enough not to put Isaiah Thomas on the board of your public company. But ultimately what happened is, um, 2 weeks ago he had to get rescue financing for his company. They had no more money left. They had to dilute all their shareholders and the stock went from whatever it was down to a dollar or something.
Well, you, you understand this stuff better than I do, but from what, how I read it and understood it, he had made a big bet with a big chunk of his company that interest rates were going to go down by a certain time. Right. And that, and that. So he leveraged it in a way like, it'll be fine when the interest rates go down. Only they never did. And it was funny to, like, reading about it, it was very similar to the Kevin Durant trade where he's like, Kevin Durant, we got to get him. We're putting all this stuff in and this is going to be. And it was like this massive swing. He's like, I'm a big swing taker. And it didn't work out. And it didn't seem like this swing worked out either. No.
And, and it's funny, you can actually look at how his company was doing and sort of when he was making these big bets in his company and when he was making big bets on the team. And you'll notice that the Suns went from a taxpaying team to a not taxpaying team, right? After they then traded Durant away. That was the same period of time when he really needed money at the company.
And they bought out Bradley Beal and stretched it out so it could get him under the luxury tax threshold. And now they're not a big spender like they were. Exactly.
My big question reporting on Ishbia over the last bunch of months was, which is he going to pick, his company or the team? Because there were all kinds of ways he could have shored up the company's balance sheet. He could have just stopped paying the $600 million a year dividend and they would've probably been fine, but he wanted to sign some players and he wanted to fund this team.
And he's competitive. Then all these guys are competitive and they're competing against all the other rich guys. Totally.
I guess I'm curious, do you think the NBA seeing this now where there's some owners who it seems like couldn't really afford teams with their own money, like Walter and like Ishbia, and then the owners who are really rich, like Ballmer, become almost impossible to punish or to contain, right? Because the NBA is not going to punish Ballmer, the richest owner in American sports. So do you think at this point they actually end up just saying, all right, whatever, private equity money is fine, Middle Eastern money is fine, We don't really care who is paying.
I think they're so desperate and focused on driving the value of these franchises. Like Vegas, one of the reasons I got a lot of intel about, um, why Iger and Kushner bought the Lakers. The Vegas thing unquestionably is over $9 billion now. Like for the, for the fees, right? And Iger and Kushner were trying to get it. They didn't have the highest bid. They didn't really feel like a Vegas team that we probably need to build a new arena and who the hell knows in Vegas is worth that much. And at some point, Kushner got the idea. He'd been reading about the Walter stuff, and I had thought Adam Silver kind of nudged him there, but I don't think that's what happened. I think, I think he went to Walter directly and was like, yo. So anyway, the point is, these things are going so high. I think that's what the league wants. And when you have somebody like Ishbia who buys the Suns and basically buys the team himself, he still has outs with the team. Like, he could still sell 35% of the Suns to somebody and be like, and if in 4 years, if I sell, you get, you get, uh, first dibs on buying the whole team, which is what Mark Walter with the Bus family.
There's this guy, I think Lucas Walton bought a piece of the Bulls. And now if the Bulls sell over the next few years, he's the first one that can buy in. So Ishbia still has ways to make money. And I think the way, that's the way these rich guys look at these teams where it's like, Once I have the asset, I can skin it any different way I want, but I, I, I just gotta go all in and get it and then I'll figure it out. But the problem is, as you said, these things are too expensive now. Totally.
And it's actually funny, like one thing Ishbia did along these lines is he wanted to buy out his other co-owners. He actually didn't want to have a bunch of minority owners, and so he bought out a couple of his co-owners with shares in his company. Wow. Right before it tanked. So they ended up owning it. And then there were other co-owners of the team who then end up suing Ishbia because he was trying to basically aggressively force them out. And I agree that given that the assets just keep going up in value, it's actually a lot of room to navigate for the people who own them. And so, yeah, I mean, we saw Dan Gilbert, it seems like, is going to sell a piece of the Cavs. It seems like Ishbia could sell a piece of the Suns. And then you do get a couple billion of liquidity, right? But it's also interesting to think what happens if the direction of these team values ever flips. I mean, I have no reason to think that they will. As you said, uh, in one of your recent episodes, it's never been a mistake to buy a sports team.
They're all valued higher than they've ever been. But there's been moments when the teams have gone down in value and people have had to sell, and that's gonna end really badly for the people who had to take on leverage who had to use insurance money, who had to buy these teams when they couldn't really afford them. And I think what's really interesting about Kushner buying this team is he's doing it through this entity Thrive Eternal, right?
Which is his other fund.
The idea is, okay, he's this big investor in AI, OpenAI and SpaceX, and he is like, on the one hand, everything's going to be computer, you know, it's all going to be AI. But then in that world, what are people going to do? What's going to matter? And like sports is one of the only things that people think is going to persist through an AI future. And so you can imagine that all these AI guys with the crazy wealth being created from the SpaceX IPO, but then also it's going to be OpenAI and Anthropic. There's going to be a bunch of new money that's looking to buy the kinds of assets that never go away. And so my guess is that this particular bubble, if it's a bubble or this particular asset class, does keep going up, at which point, you know, maybe every team ends up being owned by Abu Dhabi.
Well, the fear is you go back and you look at the early 2000s, the last time this happened when we had the internet boom. What happened? We had a crash after the boom, and then it kind of readjusted and went. We haven't had the crash with any of this stuff yet. So that's one thing. And then you look at when we talk about the amount of money these guys can be like, like Josh Kushner's rich. He's still not writing a $12 billion check for the Lakers. And what happened yesterday with the Buss family basically reenacting season 4 of Succession and all of the siblings that Jeanie had basically shanked over the years and kept control and kept her governor seat for 5 years, and they finally got their revenge on her. But they got, they wanted to get dragged in the deal, which is what happened with the Celtics too. It's like, oh, that's the price. I'd like to sell mine as well. The Celtics paid over 7 billion, or the Chisholm and those guys paid over $7 billion cuz these guys got dragged in. The Laker people got dragged, the Buss want to get dragged in.
So now Kushner's gotta write, basically he's gotta find $12 billion somehow. Even if he's putting in $2.5, $3, whatever, Iger's putting in $500, they still have to scramble now to find $8 billion more in people to invest. So where do you go? Probably the Middle East, right?
You know what's funny though? This comes at the same moment. When these LIV Tour golfers are not being paid. They're pulling back. Right. But the Saudis are canceling LIV. It's a weird moment for all of this with the Iran war and huge tourism decline in the Middle East and the Middle East tightening its coffers. It's a funny moment to have to come up with and not wanting a sportswash anymore.
Like, like a couple of years ago, they were throwing money at all the American sports and the Premier League, wherever, because they were trying to change the narrative.
Sports washing is a luxury. Like that's something you do when you've got a ton of money and yeah, you want to have the World Cup in Qatar and you want to have LIV Golf and you want to pay Phil Mickelson enough money that he's going to leave the PGA Tour. But suddenly if money gets tight in the Middle East, you're not exactly dying to buy assets that, you know, you could buy again in future years when you have more liquidity. But there is a lot of money sloshing around the system. And I think what Mark Walter shows is that there's pockets of money people don't even realize are entering these sports leagues, because surely this is not the only example of insurance money being used to fund sports teams. A lot of owners across a lot of leagues are tied to all these industries, private credit and private equity and insurance, and they're very, very sophisticated. At figuring out how to take out loans against their assets. So even if in some of these cases, it's not insurance money directly being invested, it's some person taking out money against their insurance company. And so ultimately there's a lot of risk in the system.
And I think what Mark Walter will show is the first couple cracks. And once those first couple cracks are revealed, I think there's going to be a bunch of others across all these leaks.
Well, and you can see with the NBA, like the Blazers, they went for 4, right? And that was the highest bid. But then a couple years before that, the Timberwolves were 1.5, Utah was like 1.6, you know? So we've, we've seen just the smaller market teams are all probably worth 5. The Celtics, they ended up paying over 7 when you, when you include the people that got dragged in, they're probably worth allegedly 9 now. They probably all feel like they made money 'cause this Lakers sets this new figure.
And yeah, were you a little insulted by the delta between the Lakers price and the Celtics price? It hurt. You know, it was, it was a wake-up call for us.
No, but I think the Lakers and the Knicks are the two premier teams you'd want to buy in the NBA. I think even the Celtics fans would admit that.
The difference, the most, the most like mind-bending, nauseating part of all of this is that suddenly Jim Dolan looks like a genius. Exactly who you'd want to have on your sports team. Unbelievable. I spent my entire life resenting Jim Dolan, thinking through ways I could convince people to go buy the Knicks from him. Wanted to stake out Gracie Mansion and get Mike Bloomberg to do it when I was a kid. I wanted to just knock on the door and be like, please save New York. Everyone will love you if you buy the team. And suddenly everyone's going to the Sphere. It stocks through the roof. The Knicks won the championship. He really let guys run the team independently, and he's not one of these owners who's using borrowed money. It's a family asset, which historically it's always been a bit of an eye roll. Like, yeah, I mean, this guy inherited the Knicks. What a joke. But actually there's some continuity that makes that stronger, a stronger foundation than these teams that are being bought with new money or fake money or borrowed money or insurance money or whatever else. As a Knicks fan, I feel pretty good today.
This might be the top for the Knicks. I might be jinxing the whole thing, but I feel pretty with Jim Dolan as the owner of the Knicks.
I've known you since you were a little kid and you were just tortured Knicks fan who was just in basketball hell, and now you're married, you have a Knicks championship, you know, that you can hang your hat on, and your dad's one of the premier powerlifters in America over age 60. So you have a lot going on right now. Totally.
It's a big, it's a big moment. This is it.
This is the peak. Dolan is a great point. He's probably in the best situation. He's like, his whole empire added all together is worth at least $15 billion. He would never sell 'cause he loves it. He loves the juice.
But maybe this is what we do. Maybe you agree to juice the Spotify algorithm so that his band gets some listens. And if his band gets some listens, maybe he'll feel fulfilled enough that he'll sell the team. To someone else. I'm going to— I'll talk to them about that. Dolan's a big winner from this whole thing, and the Knicks are huge winners from this whole thing. Bus family, Bus family losers.
The Bus family are good. They're going to be suing each other for the next 5 years.
I was going to say, I'm not sure that they actually sell. I think that was a pretty weird coup attempt yesterday, but we all know which Bus actually runs the show. I don't think those siblings can get out.
I know, but explain this to me. It's a controlling trust and she quote unquote runs it, but they can all vote on what to do. And if, if they basically have a two-thirds majority, they have to do what the majority is, right? And I guess her vote, the way I understand it, is if it was a tie, she would have the deciding vote. But it's not a deciding vote. It sounds like it was 5 to 1 and they all want to sell because a couple of the kids want to use the money to buy an NBA Europe team. So the problem for Walter is if this gets tied up in court and it keeps going, it could delay the sale. And it sounds like he needs money like ASAP. He needs cash stat.
Like right now. What's your, what's your guess? What happens to Balmer? What happens to Walter? What happens to Ishbia?
Well, I was gonna ask you, I think Ishbia will be fine cuz he'll sell a chunk of the team if he has to. Will the words Mark Walter today pled guilty... Will that sentence be said in the next 2 years? Will the words Mark Walter pled guilty—
I think it's really possible. I also think the Trump administration has not put away very many billionaires, and so I'm sure they work something out. Yeah, but I don't think there's a single safe asset in the entire Mark Walter Cinematic Universe. Like, I think it's potentially all for sale. And I do think that the Dodgers being sold, a piece of the Suns being sold, I think all of this is on the table.
Well, but that's why this is such a bigger story than just the Lakers. Like if he has to sell the Dodgers who spent so much money over the last 7 years that they're gonna single-handedly create the baseball lockout next year. They also won 2 titles. And I think one of the many differences between the Clippers situation and the Mark Walter situation. He's had all this extra money to buy the last two World Series titles. The Dodgers are back-to-back champions partly because of all the fucking money this guy spent. The Clippers have had no success at all. They won basically two playoff series in 7 years with Kawhi Leonard. They did all this stuff, whatever they did or didn't do, who knows? But none of it paid off. They built the OK, Oklahoma City Thunder. Like it was a disaster in every way. It was the opposite for the Dodgers.
Yeah, totally. Say what you will about Walter. He never traded a pick that became SGA. Right. He was a great owner of the Dodgers, and he's been— he was a decent owner of the Lakers. He pulled off one of the great trades of all time under his ownership.
I don't think he— does he get credit for that?
It was in the bridge.
It was right. Yeah, it was right in there. Pre-dated him. Could sort of get credit.
He was a good owner. And look, it's pretty easy to be a good owner if you're spending other people's money.
Right. Okay. So Clippers, this is a harder one because this is now being investigated for a year. Pablo started everything. It's going and going and going, and it doesn't seem like there's a smoking gun. And what we learned yesterday, ESPN had this report. They basically said, we didn't find any real hardcore ev— the NBA hasn't found any hardcore evidence, or the investigator. And now they have to figure out this weird, how are we gonna penalize you? And the Clippers are like, we didn't do anything. And it feels like the Clippers and the NBA are gonna go to war. Al Davis versus the NFL style feels like the outcome here.
I think maybe, but if I were Bomber, I don't think I'd actually want to be in arbitration. I don't think there's gonna be a friendlier judge for this particular matter than Adam Silver. Mm-hmm. And that story yesterday I think was a huge mistake. Clearly the sources who leaked that were the Clippers. I mean, there was a statement the Clippers released when the story came out. On like a beautiful template background where they had a PR ready to go. Yeah. And the NBA, I don't know if you've ever reached out to the NBA for comment, they're like usually, you know, pretty tough to get to comment and they almost never say anything publicly. And after the story came out, the NBA released this statement saying the story had numerous inaccuracies. I think what that was was a leak from Bomber's Camp, like when Samuel Alito leaked the Dobbs decision repealing Roe v. Wade. Where he was like, I want it on the record right now that you guys don't have any findings that could put me away. And to me, it's actually not a close call. It's pretty obvious that Kawhi had sponsorship deals with companies like Daktronics, the Jumbotron maker, and he never did anything for them.
You can't see it. When we worked on that story, we called Daktronics. We're like, can you show me one clip of Kawhi even just saying like, I love Daktronics, hell of a jumbo board, that Halo board. For the Clippers arena. I didn't know that.
I didn't know what Daktronics was, and I go to Clipper games. I didn't even know that was the name of the company.
And you certainly hadn't heard Kawhi advertising it, because by the way, there's not a lot of consumers who are like looking to buy Jumbotron and are going to be persuaded by Kawhi. Like, on its face, it's ridiculous that nothing happened here. But I think, and this goes to the overall point of all of this, the NBA doesn't have much latitude to punish Steve Ballmer. Yeah, because These owners don't work for Adam Silver. Adam Silver works for these owners, and there's fewer and fewer owners who can actually pay for these teams these days, and the assets are getting more and more expensive. And I think having a blue-chip guy like Steve Ballmer, who built one of the great American businesses, is the kind of thing the NBA's not going to get rid of. So my guess on the Clippers is that Ballmer walks away with some kind of punishment and they just make Uncle Dennis the fall guy. I think they're going to say Kawhi maybe never even got this money. That's what I think they're going to try to argue, that Dennis was negotiating side deals. And yes, that might have been cap circumvention, but how much of that money was getting back to Kawhi?
I think that's where the NBA could land, where they can slap the Clippers on the wrist, they can punish Kawhi, but they can blame some guy who, like, you know, in every mob movie ever, Right. Fall on the sword.
So here's what hasn't happened with the Clippers. If you look at the, even the recent Mark Walter stuff, everything started because there was a whistleblower at Guggenheim who was like, hey, this, uh, and the Wall Street Journal wrote about this yesterday, but basically Mubadala, um, there was a whistleblower with the funds with that. And once that happened in Guggenheim, even they They had a spokesman in that Wall Street Journal piece saying, yes, the firm received a whistleblower report in spring 2025. With the Clippers, there's been no whistleblower on the Clippers side, at least not yet. There's been all the people Pablo has found who were, you know, had surface ties, but it wasn't like somebody direct with direct knowledge of all this Kawhi stuff blew the whistle to the NBA or any of it. And I think that's the Clippers are adamant they didn't do anything and it's going, they've really dug in. They, they are adamant nothing happened. And yeah, I mean, I don't know what to believe anywhere in this.
In this case, you have the whistleblowers from those companies who have basically come forward and been like, yeah, I worked at Aspiration and I had to deal with the billings here. And I was like, why are we paying Kawhi Leonard? And everyone told me it was cap circumvention. So you do have people on the other side, but I've been impressed. Bombers close ranks. He's gotten those Clippers people right in line. It's impressive. But I do think he might have flown a little too close to the sun by leaking that story, if that's what happened, because Adam Silver definitely didn't sound happy that that leaked. If you look at the NBA statement, right? And I think that, you know, it's a live ball and ultimately this isn't some court of law with some specific standards that need to be followed. The guy who decides the sentence is Adam Silver. And if I were Ballmer, I'd be pretty careful about upsetting him.
Well, I have 3, the 3 actual things that still make me go, huh, with the Kawhi thing. This is now, we are now a year into this. He never actually did the work for Aspiration but got paid. I've never, I've just never heard an adequate explanation for that. Correct. I don't understand why. That's true.
The Daktronics one too. Yeah. Yeah.
Why are you paying somebody to not do anything? Like not even like one Instagram tweet, nothing. That's weird. Um, Uncle Dennis, by multiple accounts, just asking everybody for under-the-table shit in the summer of 2019, and multiple teams going on the record saying, oh yeah, that guy was fucking asking for ownership stakes. That was weird. And then the third one was the Clippers trading Kawhi to Toronto. I— if you're like, can put it this way, Conspiracy Bill definitely like put a hat on and studied that one because it was like All right. Toronto is the one team with a real, real, real reason to be aggrieved, right? They just won the title. They could have potentially brought— he didn't want to play for the Lakers as it comes out. They could have brought this guy back. They were really good in 2020. They probably would've represented the East and played the Lakers in the finals and all that got pulled away and they have the biggest reason to be pissed and instead they trade him there and now it's like, yeah, all right, I guess we have Kawhi now. It's fine. Um, those are the 3 things that caught my eye.
I've definitely never seen a sponsorship deal in history. And in this case, there's at least 2 where you pay someone to be your sponsor and they don't have to do anything in return. I would love one of those deals, by the way, if anyone wants to make it.
I ask for it every year from Spotify. Yeah. Just, just can people give our podcast money and I don't have to do anything for it? Yeah.
I mean, it, it's deeply, deeply suspicious. But I think the good news is the Walter case is actually going to have real evidence. They've got the phones, they've got the computers. To me, it's completely unclear whether the Balmer situation has had any sort of subpoena power equivalent in the investigation. To the extent they might not have found a smoking gun inside the Clippers, my guess is that when Wachtell, the law firm investigating this, asked for information from the Clippers, The Clippers were like, no. And the information we've gotten as part of our reporting, and we included this in one of the recent stories with Pablo, is emails with Daktronics and the Clippers where Daktronics is like, hey guys, we spoke to Uncle Dennis. And I love that they referred to him as Uncle Dennis. Like everybody, even like cousin with the fake seeming partnership refers to him as Uncle Dennis. Like, hey, can we get Kawhi to sign an autograph? Can we get him to do something? And those emails have all come out to us and all the sourcing's come out to us from essentially other parties. The Clippers have been tight, man. It's been impressive to see.
Yeah, cuz the difference when this happened with Joe Smith in the early 2000s, when Minnesota got nailed for doing the wink wink deal with them, is they actually had a contract for the wink wink deal for like 2 years from now, Joe will get this and here it is. I forget if the whistleblower was on the agency side or the Timberwolves side. I think it was on the agency side. The agent, the situation blew up and the guy had the thing and, and it was just clear evidence that they circumvented this, that they did the most illegal thing you can do was promise somebody a contract 2 years from now. And Stern flipped out and was like, fuck this, we're not doing this. And basically ruined the KG era in Minnesota. I mean, KG's there for another 7 years and it got decimated. With the Clippers, you could argue Kawhi already ruined the Clippers in the 2020s. And I wonder if that factors in at all with the punishment, where it's like, well, these guys are already screwed. Yeah, they're punished enough. They got nothing. They, they built a potential dynasty in OKC. Like, now I'm gonna do— take 5 more lottery picks away from them.
I don't know how it plays out, but I really do feel like it's going to end up with everybody suing each other. I think this is going to be the outcome.
Agreed that this is not going to be some simple outcome. Yeah. The Clippers learned the Stringer Bell lesson from the T-Wolves. Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy? Is the famous Wire quote. And I think that Bomber took fewer notes than some of his predecessors on what he was working out with Kawhi. And so I think Bomber lives to fight another day. Walter, I feel less good about.
When you're, when you're like studying and reporting on all these super rich people, Like one of the things with Ballmer and the Clippers that I was always suspicious of, it never added up, was this was, was so blatant. If he did this right, if the Clippers did this, it was so blatantly stupid and transparent and easily to get caught. Like what's, how is that worth it? Like the Clippers were in an okay situation in 2019. How is it worth risking your professional reputation? Being Joe Smith 2.0, like. Why? Like, Ballmer is supposedly a relatively, you know, one of the smarter billionaires. Like, why would he risk this?
And look, Pablo's done much more of the reporting on this story, so yeah, I'll share my personal perspective on this. Yeah. My view is what Ballmer keeps saying is, I got conned and scammed by this company Aspiration. And I think that is absolutely true because if Aspiration were a real successful company, None of this would've ever been revealed. It was actually a pretty sophisticated plan. The plan was they're going to sponsor our jerseys and we're going to pay— they're going to pay Kawhi and we're going to pay them and it's all going to work out. And they planned to go public as a company. They planned to SPAC with Oaktree actually, which is the same firm that just bailed out Ishbia. Right. And they were going to go public. And if that had happened, if they'd have managed to go public, if the company hadn't been a fraud, Bomber would've been hands clean. He would've been totally fine because they would've gone public and no one would've ever had to find out. And it would've seemed like a reasonable investment for Bomber to have made. The problem is after Aspiration starts going down, that's when Bomber starts looking desperate.
That's where the coverup is worse than the proverbial crime, where in this case they start going down and Bomber realizes, cuz he's smart. "If these guys go down and there's a bankruptcy, it's going to become clear that they were paying Kawhi with money they didn't have, and it would look really strange." That's your theory.
You don't know that for sure, but that's your theory.
Well, what we know is after that period of time, when it became clear the business was failing, Ballmer invested again, and then Dennis Wong invested again.
His minority owner.
Even though it seemed like a failing entity, the exact amounts of money that would cover the payments to Kawhi, And that to me seemed like, and this is my opinion, okay, once you realize that this company's going down, you realize that the big scheme is not going to actually work out. And so you get desperate and you start getting stupid. That's what ends up happening when the walls start closing in Henry Hill style every time. But on this one, I think that Bomber was at least trying to do something sophisticated. When you look at the Daktronics example, which is this other payment, you look at their SEC filings, there's no obvious payment. Here's our payment to Kawhi for marketing that we could see. It was done in a very sophisticated, buttoned-up way. The problem is that he bet on the wrong guys to be partners in a scheme with when Aspiration went under and blew up.
Yeah, I guess the counter would be Aspiration was just spending money like crazy. Sure. Um, with no rhyme or reason to what they were doing. Bomber belatedly found out, oh shit, these guys might go down. They have— they paid Kawhi $28 million. Oh my God, people are gonna think I did this. We gotta help the company. I guess that would be the defense. I don't know what the fuck happened, but I, I do know this. Um, and I'm not a Clipper fan. I've had that— I've talked about it. I've had the Clipper tickets. I go to— I go to 8 to 10 games a year. I always hope that they do well so I can go to playoff games. I don't really care. I'm a Celtics fan. Sure. This franchise, of all the teams this could have happened to, where you like, nothing good ever happens to the Clippers, ever. Even when they have good things, it falls apart. Like the 2014 was their best chance to win the title and the Donald Sterling thing happened like over and over again. This is how it goes. They have Kawhi and Paul George together. Kawhi gets hurt in 2021 when they have the best chance to win the title.
Like, this is just how it goes for them.
And they're like, even with this, even with this Iger thing, like, Iger was a Clippers fan. He could have totally bought the Clippers. It's a great point. Was friends with Chris Paul. And by all accounts, Iger's the exact kind of guy you'd want owning your team. And instead they end up with Ballmer, who definitely, you know, was willing to spend profligately on this team. He's not like a cheap owner. Right. But he's created this total mess for them. And I think in my view, it'll be clear when you look at Josh Kushner, who's like a killer, like, yeah, by all accounts, like, he's, you know, obviously related to Jared and who knows what's going on in that whole orbit. But he's like a serious guy who's going to run the team seriously with Iger, who's a serious guy who's going to run the team seriously. You're going to have that right next door to this complete clusterfuck. Right. And I think the, the salt in the wound is going to hurt even more. Yeah.
Kushner's really well respected for being a smart-ass dude, and he's—
it's pretty amazing that he's laid low amid the Jared stuff. Yeah. Amid everything else and has built this reputation as just like this great investor. I mean, who knows? I haven't done an investigation into Kushner. Anything could happen, but I do think if you were looking for a sports team owner, there's way worse people than Jared Kushner. I'm sorry, Josh Kushner. Jared would be tough. Yeah, Jared would be tough. Josh Kushner and Iger, that's a serious, serious ownership group. And you know, I think the Lakers are going to be in decent hands. Well, here's the thing. Watch out for the Lakers.
Josh isn't going to run the day-to-day at all. Iger's doing all of it. And Iger, 75, could probably put 6, 7 really good years in here, and this is all he is gonna do. And this guy just ran a giant company. It's a completely different job. Like I was joking with Matt Belloni, now, you know, somebody sitting courtside is mad that the chicken fingers aren't warm enough. Iger's like the maître d' of this Lakers restaurant, right? He's taking all the calls from everybody. He's at Disney.
He's talking to 7 people. Iger's going to be good at dealing with, like, the drama of Luca. Like, oh, totally. With actors and actresses. Like, yeah, Bob Iger's dealt with entertainment people. Luca is going to be easy. He'll have Luca on GLPs within 2 weeks.
Well, as long as it's not freedom of speech on a late night TV show. Um, that—
all right, is a huge problem for sure.
Sammy, this was great. I know it delighted your dad to no end. We didn't even tell him we were doing this. This is so fun.
Do you think this was in the Bronny LeBron category?
Hey, you were so, so far ahead of Bronny's best game on the Lakers. This is like, let's go.
This was almost like, you put up Brunson. I'm like Brunson, you know, it's like Brunson first year at Villanova. Little, little nervous, but there's, there's some sparks. You think, you think, you think, you think this could be something?
You hit like 5 or 6 threes. I thought I was impressed with your two-way play. When's your next podcast with episode with Pablo coming? We'll see. We'll see.
We've got to answer these Walter questions, but, um, you know, hopefully in the next month. And, uh, yeah, I'll shamelessly plug, subscribe to Hunterbrook. We do incredible financial journalism. No one does that anymore. Um, you can follow us on all social media, and we will continue to report on all of these sports team owners, which I think is one of the great subplots of sports right now, becoming more and more interesting. Crazy characters who are trying to find money wherever they can, under every couch cushion. And they're doing their best. Um, but you know, there end up being some problems. So thank you so much for having me. This has been awesome.
Great to see you, Sammy. I'll see you in Boston. Sounds good. See you soon. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Tom and Sammy. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well. I think I'm coming back on Thursday with another podcast this week, so stay tuned for that. Don't forget about Rewatchables, the re-speed. It's up. Go check it out. I'll see you later in the week. Must be 21+ and present in select states. For Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, Or 18+ and present in D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-797-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts. Or call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.
Bill Simmons welcomes Tom Pelissero to The Ringer to go through their Pressure Rankings of the NFL ahead of the new season. Then, Sam Koppelman joins the pod to take a deep dive into the financial side of the Lakers sale, Mat Ishbia’s Suns, and much more.
(0:00) Intro
(3:07) NFL preview
(38:51) NFL Pressure Rankings
(01:22:36) NBA team ownership with Sam Koppelman
Host: Bill Simmons
Guests: Tom Pelissero and Sam Koppelman
Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo
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