Transcript of The Smashmouth Giants, Bumbling Chargers, Stumbling Packers, Week 1 Overreactions, and Guess the Lines With Cousin Sal

Meine Zehen bringen mich um. Diese Schuhe sind viel zu eng.

Trägst du immer noch diese spitzen Dinger?

Ich meine, sind nicht alle Laufschuhe so geformt?

Nein, du brauchst Altras.

Altra?

Altras sind geformt wie deine Füße, mit einer fußförmigen Zehenbox. Einfach viel bequemer. Bezwinge deinen Lauf mit Hallenzehen.

Okay, das klingt traumhaft.

Mehr Komfort, Kraft und Dynamik. Alles durch die Passform. Altra versteht das einfach. Ultra, stay out there.

The Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by FanDuel. The NFL is here and it's the most rewarding season ever on FanDuel with the all-time FanDuel Rewards Club. Every eligible bet can earn you points. Win or lose, you still get points. The more points, the bigger the rewards you can unlock. Head to fanduel.com/BS to start earning with FanDuel Rewards Club. 21+ select states or 18+ DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This stream is brought to you by The Farmer's Dog, the official pet food of the NFL. The Bill Simmons Podcast, live on Netflix. I'm here with Cousin Sal. Wanted to mention we have new rewatchables coming tomorrow night. We did Rambo: First Blood Part II. Me and Kyle Brandt. That's happening tomorrow. You can watch some people get shot. Listen, we just watched Giants-Cowboys Sunday night. Cowboys minus 3-point favorites in Giants Stadium. New look Giants. A lot of people loving the Cowboys. A lot of theories that Jerry Jones has been quiet this year because he has a really good team finally. Uh, explosive offense. A lot of high hopes. And unfortunately for them, you jinxed them on Wednesday with all of your Drake May ranting.

Oh no, I didn't.

I heard all of it. Yeah, you did.

Oh no, I didn't. You did.

I didn't. No, you did. You did. You, you, you were mean about Drake May.

You were mean last Super Bowl. Drake May has nothing to do with this.

You were mean this week. You got a little on your high horse and now it all backfired with Camp Scataboo just scattered all over your body.

Oh crap. First of all, I didn't, I was nice about Drake May when they lost the game. You were never nice.

I tweeted his, you were never nice. I tweeted his names in capital letters and exclamations.

points. Like, what, what more? How much nicer could I be?

I would've felt bad for you tonight, but after you said Drake maybe 330 times over the course of the week—

It's more than that.

Yeah.

How about maybe the Cowboys could've stopped the same play over and over again?

All right, put 'em up. Put 'em up now.

Oh, oh wait, are you gonna run another swing pass to Singletary? You haven't run that for 2 plays, you motherfuckers. You can't get over the side and stop somebody.

So bad.

You hit the ball, you hit the ball once. for 2/3 of the second half. And this defense, this vaunted defense that was supposed to be, you know, ready to roll, a new defensive coordinator, all these new changes, and you got steamrolled by a bunch of oversized white guys. Let's be honest.

They all look—

I didn't even know who was who. It's like number 45, 44, 41, guys are moving around and you just got, you got bulldozed.

Okay. I didn't know we were gonna inject racism into the podcast. I'm looking at the rundown now. It's not on there anyway. We're gonna edit it out. Most Futures we regret.

Cam Scadabo. It's like he, he's, no, he's gonna be running the ball here. There's 3 minutes left. I know he's gonna run for 13 yards anyway.

I can't argue. Well, I can't argue with any of it. The only thing I, I, I see, I didn't jinx it 'cause I refused to give those, those nicknames that readers, readers, followers, watchers, viewers, listeners wrote in and gave, you know, Jackson Dart. And I was like, no, no, no, I'm not falling for that. I'm not doing that because I'm gonna come up here upset. Right. And there was some other ones too. We kept, but, you know, first of all, this is unfair that I couldn't do the Wednesday night show with you. Why can't, why can't I do tonight's podcast?

You got to do the Super Bowl after me, after we lost by 30 points. You got to come on and take a Drake Maybe victory lap.

You weren't in the Super Bowl. Come on.

We were in the Super Bowl. I don't know. It's New York Football Giants, 29 first downs, 6 incompletions.

That was it. 6. I don't remember.

6, 6 incompletions, 29 first downs.

How many third down conversions? I only—

100. It felt like 100. He, he was doing third and nines, third and thirteens. That was the most in control Darts been. Anytime there was about to be a turnover that it felt like you might get, you either, you didn't get it or they didn't throw it or fumble it. And, and then offensively it felt like you guys were on autopilot the whole game. I didn't really understand the, the, I didn't see the urgency in the first half.

Right.

I thought the end of the first half was really weird when Dak just throws it up for grabs. All of a sudden they're coming down for more points. I didn't like the coaching. I didn't really like anything I saw from Dallas. I know it is, it is week 1. I guess this is a bummer excuse.

It's such a bummer because I did like them. I really felt like I'd have reason to like them going into this year. There was not, not the nonsense and they signed all the players they needed to and the rookies were playing well and they looked prepared. And yet they looked so unprepared tonight. So unprepared. The corners were a mess. Were no better defensively. You have like Darnell Mooney and all right, Isaiah Likely's a nice player, but he's not, he's not going to Canton anytime soon. He's open by like 20 yards. Looks like they're playing with 9 defenders. You got Christian Parker in there, by the way. This guy could be an Eagles spy. We got him from Philadelphia, so he could be a double agent, you know?

Oh, like a Ramiro Mendoza. Yes. When you got the Red Sox got Romero Mendoza and he tried to torpedo our season.

That's it. You're gonna read about it. It's gonna happen.

Yeah.

But like last year it was like missed penalty, missed tackles and dumb penalties and, you know, guys would get beat. But this is just like blown assignment, completely whiffing on assignments. I know we had young players out there, we had rookies all over the place, but just totally unprepared. I'm bummed with Schottenheimer. Christian Park, I don't love. No adjustments at all. I don't even know what to say. Like you said, yeah, the offense was flat. I don't think we would've won that game anyway. I can't give my enemy any credit. Yeah. I just have to put my own team down. You understand that, right?

9 penalties for 90 yards. So that didn't change from last year.

Yeah.

I thought the Giants played a great game and both you and I were shorting the Giants heading into this season. And one of the reasons was I thought Harbaugh was overrated with what he did with Baltimore and et cetera, et cetera. There was a moment in this game when they had a lead late and then the Cowboys come back and they score and it's like, oh, I used to watch Harbaugh do this on Baltimore. He's gonna do it again. Right. Then your guy taunts, your guy gets the first touchdown taunting penalty in like 3 years.

Yeah.

It's like, oh, oh really? You can't hold the ball out as you're running into the end zone? Like they call that every time. Yeah. Aubrey misses a PAT and then all of a sudden you, it feels like you never get the ball back. But listen, the Giants, they did remake their team. They looked like a professional football team. I, I don't like the Giants either. I gotta give them credit.

Super physical.

They put their quarterback in positions to succeed. He wasn't like running around taking huge hits. He really only took one big hit.

It was a hard-hitting game too, by the way. Yeah, I mean, it was not really for him, but it was a late hit, I think, somewhere in there. Yeah, I, I, here's the thing, I just, I don't want to give him— I'm so pigheaded with this, but I kind of look at them like, who's the pitcher on Brewers? Mizzou Roski, right? Like, oh my God, this is amazing when things are going good. But would you be surprised if it just stopped One day just because of his style, because he throws 104 miles an hour, like 75, 70, 80 pitches a day. Yeah. I feel like the Giants play battery ram football, look great tonight. Wish I would've been playing 'em in week 4.

Well, the question with the season and the reason, one of the many reasons we went under with them was because I didn't think Dart or Skattebo would last for 4 months. Yeah. But you caught them tonight, the whole team was healthy and they actually looked pretty good. Gotta hand it to him. I can't remember the last fun Cowboys-Giants game. Now I know that wasn't fun for you, but in general, like a pretty compelling game. I thought the strategy and the coaching, and I thought the Giants played really well. You guys have fun players on offense. It's like I had a good time.

That was fun.

I don't remember the last time I had a good time watching a Cowboys-Giants game.

I'm glad you had a good time. I felt, well, I, I felt the same way.

We both lost our, our Ringer 107 picks.

Oh, I know. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, I felt I said the same thing with the Seahawks Patriots. I'm like, I can't remember the last time these 2 teams played and I had a good time. Oh wait. Oh no, no. In February too.

Oh, see, this is— now you're gonna go 6 and 11.

I don't know. Can I just say, like, setting up, I was so excited for today, right? Yeah. And then you, you have to get used to physically watching 8 screens at once. So I had to actually take Advil because, you know, I'm not like the, the red zone rejects. I don't mean to, whatever, however you watch games, it's fine. But I have to watch, I like to watch. Red zone rejects.

I like that.

Like the red zone Booger Eaters.

It could have been worse, you know?

Yeah.

But I said Red Zone Rejects. But yeah, I like watching the body language and drive.

Yeah.

Stalling and stuff. You know, you're the same way, right? You like watching all the games. So that's the physical part of it. But I forgot the mental part of it, how angry I get over the course of 6 hours. This is before my team even played.

I'm like, 6 hours, dude. This took, it was like 11.

Yeah, I know. But from 9, yeah, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Adding this game. But, but I'm like, oh man, I'm pissed off at 12 different things here.

Yeah.

It's only a couple hours. I gotta get back in this. It's so much fun. I know eventually it'll be fun again.

Well, there, you're right. There's stuff that you gotta get in the habit of. Like there's 4 or 5 moments where you go, why'd you do that?

Yeah.

You start talking to a TV like that. Like Javonte Williams today holding the, holding the taunting. You're just watching like, why?

Right.

Why are you doing that? Or the best one today was the, the Jared Goff backward pass. Oh, that they called back because it wasn't a backward pass because his motion, even though his motion ended up throwing the ball backwards, intended to throw it. And look, I know people are gonna be like, oh, tuck rule, same thing. But the tuck rule is a thing that they've called over and over again, whether you liked it or not, for years and years before they finally tweaked the rule. I've never seen that play ever.

And I don't remember—

Like last year with the Broncos, Stidham had a similar play where he threw the ball backwards when he was trying to throw it this way and somebody hit his arm and they just said that was a backward pass. And you know why they said that? Because it was a backward pass.

Yeah.

That's just like today. Jared Goff threw the ball backwards. There wasn't— I don't care what he mentally his intent was. Right. It was like, we talked to Jared and Jared decided that he was throwing the ball forward. So incomplete pass.

Yeah. We gave him a lie detector test, put some truth serum in it.

Jared looked us in the eye and told us and But anyway, that just, I, I, I would've said that you have those, right?

If the refs had said, because I hadn't seen that before either, but if the refs had said, all right, look, we're just, we're, we're changing the rule and there's nothing you could do about it. We're changing it right now. I'd be like, oh, okay. All right, that's fine. Right. Don't tell us this is how it is.

Pereira comes on and he is like, that was the correct call. It's like, I've never seen that call in my life. We watch football every week. So you have those, you have the, the, the rollercoaster of fantasy. Like if you had Loveland today in the Bears, they have 59 points and he has zero fantasy points. This is a guy who is the 3rd tight end taken everywhere and you're betting on this offense and him being unleashed and he just has a goose egg. There's no reason for it. Or you go the other way, you have DeVon Vele on the Saints who I have in 2 of the leagues who all, you know, all of a sudden if you started him. So we have the roller coaster with that. I'm gonna waive all the gambling stuff.

Next week, I'm gonna write this down. All, all things I got angry at in the, from, uh, 10:00 AM to 3:00. Just, I'll just do the 2, uh, afternoon windows there. Do you, and I wanna be, I wanna put it in tiers, like my wife cheated on me angry. Um, you know, uh, the DoorDash screwed up my lunch angry.

Yeah.

Or whatever. I just stubbed my toe angry. You know, I, I'm gonna put 'em in tiers, but I, I bet it's like 30 things cuz we text each other all day and it's just like, it becomes enormous.

Yeah. What tier would've been, I wish I had more money against Deshaun Watson. There's only like 1 or 2 weeks left for this. 'Cause that, I mean, that was, I had that, we brought back teasers on, on FanDuel, which was I think successful.

Thank God.

If the Broncos hit tomorrow, I think, I think we did really well with our teasers. But I had the Jaguars in the tease and you, you're watching that game and Deshaun just immediately throws a pick. The body language is terrible. I know people look at his stats at the end of the game and be like, ah, it wasn't that bad. It was like, it was terrible. They, they were down 24-nothing in 5 minutes. Yeah. And you're watching it going, why the hell didn't I— Jacksonville's home, it's humid and hot. The Browns quarterback, the coach after the game, Monken, had some crazy quote like, yeah, it wasn't that fun, but you know, for me, I've never been a head coach before, so that was great.

Mm-hmm.

It was like, what was— nothing was great. You could have no superlatives about what we just watched.

But, uh, I just, I, I thought to myself, Deshaun throws that interception, it's like 10:20 our time, 10:25, 1:20 Eastern. And I was like, that's it. Like the early slate of games doesn't officially begin. The season doesn't really start until he throws an interception. He's like a groundhog. He's like the, our grabby little creepy groundhog comes out and throws interceptions.

That should be his nickname. The groundhog.

The groundhog, the intentional groundhog. And we have 22 more weeks of football.

So I was gonna make an inappropriate joke, but I'm not going to.

Go for it.

Well, the Jets won today too. So you have New York, you have 2 football teams from, from the New York area.

Yeah.

Because they both play in New Jersey.

All right, well, let, let it be this weekend, if any. That's fine.

One more. I know. Yeah, that was nice that it was this weekend. So the Giants were, I think, the big, oh, this might be real in the NFC. And then I think the, the Bengals could make the case for the AFC. Like, we got, we got some hype, some people are behind us, 'cause it was same thing for the Giants. There was some worst to first, like they were probably the obvious pick from the 8 divisions. If, if you're going all in on a worst to first team, that was probably the team. You and I stayed away.

Yeah.

The Bengals. So they beat Tampa, and if you just looked at the stats, you would say the Bengals defense, 4 turnovers and I don't know, man. Like, I, I thought all of those turnovers were just awful by the Bucs. They were all like really stupid plays by Mayfield, by Bucky Irving. There was one like, you know, a swipe from behind, but Baker was also, you know, running the ball with the, with the dangling the ball out.

Yeah.

I thought they got some, some fortunate breaks and I just thought the Bucs were super sloppy. I, I, my jury is still out on the Bengals defense 'cause I thought the Bucs were going up and down on them.

Oh yeah. Oh, it's gotta be. Yeah. I mean, Baker plays Savannah banana football basically. It's like, all right, well this is funny.

Right.

Oh, that's funny and effective. That's fun. But yeah, someone, someone said Burrow throws a pick 6, Chase has what, like 12 total yards?

He got shut down.

And the Bucs never punted. And, and yet Cincinnati won.

Yeah.

Really almost by double digits. But you know, Tampa scores at the end. They really out-Bengaled the Bengals, I think. Tampa Bay.

Baker, he actually, if you look at his stats, had a good game, but he did like 4 egregiously dumb things. Yeah. And that's what ended up getting them. But I, I actually think this might be the overaction game. And we'll talk about other possible candidates.

Both ways.

Yeah, both ways. 'Cause I think Tampa's a little better. I'm not just saying this 'cause I like Tampa heading into the season and, and like Cincy less. I just felt like that was an either-or game and Tampa just They had to be in the locker room after going, what the fuck? How did we not— what are we doing?

Yeah.

How do we turn the ball over 4 times and yet almost— and we barely lose?

You know, they still really can't protect him though. Like, but both teams, it's weird. They have a good line.

I don't know. That's the weird thing is they have one of the better O-lines.

Yeah. It's like the battle of the teams who can't protect their quarterback. Bengals are like, all right, big Bucks are like, all right, we'll show you. We got Baker the Bone Breaker. Right. And you know, they just, that's just what you gotta get from them every week, I think.

The Bengals, I will say, like obviously their defense, they have more pressure than I ever remember them getting. And they had a little energy and a little, hey, we feel different. But I don't know, I, I, I thought either team could have won that one. I had a weird day today because I, I mentioned this last week, but my daughter had a, had a soccer game at 11 o'clock PT. And so I was debating all these, I was gonna put it, I had the TVs, I was gonna put her on the bottom so I could have the, you know, get all the games and then By the time her game started, I was so excited to watch her. I ended up putting her on the big screen. I had a 4-box and Bill's Texans on the other TVs. And I, I wish my wife had gotten video. I was standing in front of the TVs.

Oh wow.

So I could see everything. Like, really looked like a madman. Like, and then they were playing the number 2 team in Division 3 and they took a 1-nothing lead.

Oh.

And it felt like a, and she drew the penalty kick. And, and I was like, here we go, man. This is gonna be like the greatest day. And then they gave up 3 goals.

Oh, and I know I live bet them the draw when they were down 3-1. Yeah, I know. It sucks. Yeah.

I forgot to tell you this too. Live bet them the other way. But yeah, you know, it's weird because, but yeah, so it was, it was hard. My focus was all over the place. It was tough.

But normally it'd be okay 'cause the early slate stinks. But we had 6, no, 20+ really good games, teams at half. Yeah. Like, let me ask you, is 1:00 PM Eastern football back?

I thought so. NBC did something really interesting with Tomlin, and I thought Tomlin at halftime was excellent. I don't know if you saw it.

Yeah, I did.

It was just him and Maria Taylor, and they set him up and it was like, you're going to rip through these, your 4 favorite talking points over the next 5 minutes. It was the first good NBC halftime show, NBA or NFL, I think, ever. I was really like, this is really interesting. But his main point was that, 'cause she was asking him why, why there were so many points, why the offense was so good. And he was like, I was watching this happen over the course of the last few years 'cause we're not allowed to hit in August. You know, we don't, we, we have like very soft practices and the defenses need time to get in a rhythm of just banging bodies, shedding blocks, just hitting people. And he's like, I'm not surprised that this is the result at all.

Interesting.

And I was like, that's, I wish he had told us that before the games when we could have bet some of the overs. But, but you could feel it. It was like so many defensive breakdowns like that. Bucs, I mean, I, I'm sorry, the Ravens-Colts game, just fuckups all over the place. Guys wide open.

Yeah.

And that's what those 1 o'clock games were. Bucs, Bills, Texans. Texans have the best defense in the league. Their defense sucked today.

I think that was the most disappointing unit that I saw. Today and this week. The Rams offense, say what you will about that game, but the Texans defense and maybe the Chargers offense was awful. Like the Bills had more sacks and they had 8 yards per play. So I know it's the Bills and Josh Allen could do his thing, but I, I don't want to have money and we do have money on the Texans if they're gonna give up even more than 20 points a game.

Well, according to the Tomlin thing, maybe, maybe we need a couple weeks with them.

That's true.

The, the Bills did feel different. Like DJ Moore, he had 100 yards.

Yeah.

It said Allen had 11 passes that he completed that were 10 or more yards in the air, which is unusual for him. As I think that was a record. Houston had the ball for 36-plus minutes. They had 26 first downs and they lost. So you can't really say, oh, Bills defense.

Yeah.

This game, like, I don't know if, if the people watching this saw the game, but Allen threw a pick that was gonna end the game and Lassiter dropped it. Yeah, that's true. And he's, he's one of the best defensive backs in the league. And it was basically him backpedaling. He should have had it. He drops it. The next play, the Bills get a long touchdown. But that's why, like, so we'd be like, oh, Josh Allen, Bills, here they come. And it's like, they should have lost in that play.

It's always, it's one thing. It's always one thing with the Bills. Either works for 'em or it doesn't. And I know it's like you have to watch football for a year. I shouldn't be surprised. Well, for years. Shouldn't be surprised. But yeah, 334 passing yards, 4 total touchdowns. He was just like, get outta my way. If our defense blows it at the end, so be it.

Right.

But I like the, the idea that a lot of people I know didn't start Allen in fantasy.

Really?

Our friend Brad in our league, Brad bid $30 for him. He, he doesn't spend $30 on anything except for like Orange Crush and tobacco, chewing tobacco. But that's Yeah. So yeah, they're, they're gonna be good. They're gonna be all right. And they play the Lions next week.

I got an email from Ryan in Buffalo who said Josh Allen now has 9 career games with at least 2 passing and 2 rushing touchdowns in the same game, 5 more than any other player in the history of the NFL. Should that stat be called the Josh Allen?

Oh, interesting.

Or should we call it the Josh? And who could even threaten to break it? He wonders if If Drake Maye would have the best chance.

Oh yeah, that's why I brought that up.

I don't know if he's trying to antagonize you.

Yeah, yeah.

He also has the 20th most rushing touchdowns of any player ever as a quarterback, Ryan says. I like the idea of, of calling it the Josh Allen if you have the 2 touchdowns from running, passing in the same game.

Yeah, that's good.

That's good.

He has more than anybody. 5 more than anybody. Is that what you said?

5 more than anybody. He has 9 total.

Yeah, he has more rushing touchdowns than Earl Campbell. I saw the list. I already forgot it, but I know like there's some gigantic names on there.

But that was the classic Allen game, right? He was incredible. He was awesome. He had multiple superhero plays and the guy on the other team dropped the game-winning pick.

Yeah.

And then you have CJ Stroud come back down and CJ was, for the most part, his stat, he was 274, 2 touchdowns, didn't have a pick. And then they're in the 20, they have like about what, 30 seconds left. They gotta score a touchdown. One thing you can't do is take a sack. He takes just an awful sack. and then gets a strip sack where he fumbles and they lose and—

Right.

And that's it. So it was, if you're a Texans fan, you feel better about CJ Stroud than you did in January, but you still aren't high-fiving.

Yeah. But it's that defense that I'd be a little worried about.

Yeah.

'Cause that has to be great. It has to be as great as it's been for them to go as far as they do, even with Stroud playing well. So I don't know. And Joe Brady went shirtless after, so, you know, he's hard. That's a hard push for Coach of the Year.

I saw it was a hard push for coaching locker room moment of the year. Yeah. So you had the Bills in that game and in Ringer Wise Guys on Friday, you were the only, everyone was zagging toward Texans. I would say the Texans and the Cowboys were 2 of the most popular picks this week, right?

Yeah.

And both of them, both of them fell. Chargers were in a bunch of survivor pools and that didn't happen either. There's a lot to cover from today. We're gonna take a break, we're gonna come back, and we have to talk about the weirdest game of the week and probably the season. Packers-Vikings. That's coming up next.

Another killer.

This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. It's the small moments where we have the most fun sometimes, like having a friendly little competition with your friends to see who's the fastest or who can putt better in the backyard or Who can get to somebody else's house or the better route, whatever it is. Even better if you put some Michelob Ultra on the line or a refreshing way to up the stakes. Like me and House are gonna pick games against each other on Thursdays this NFL season. Maybe we keep track in ways of Michelob Ultra 6-packs. I'm happy to do that. Maybe Michelob Ultra will make a special BS Podcast or Ringer 6-packs. And then we could, we could barter them back and forth, whatever it is. By the way, they should do that for us. Superior is worth playing for. Michelob Ultra Superior Light Beer. Enter for a chance to win Superior soccer, basketball, and golf prizes at michelobultra.com/superioraccess. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026. Anheuser-Busch Michelob Ultra Light Beer, St. Louis, Missouri. We're just talking fantasy. I have a chance to somehow win this week in our league, even though AJ Brown is now out for 6 weeks.

Really hurt my feeling, but I need— so we were talking 23.6 points for Rashee Rice and Kenneth Walker. That would be what beats me.

You just gotta keep them under that.

Yeah. Yeah.

The good news is I won't pay close attention to every freaking snap in this one. Submarine my night tomorrow.

Zoe's not playing a Monday nighter.

No.

Thank God. Thank God. No more games for her.

Packers-Vikings.

Green Bay goes up 22-10 with 20 minutes left in the game. Kyler Murray has been knocked out. He threw a pick and then he got concussed. He's gone. Carson Wentz is in. I thought McCarthy was coming in. It was just weird to see Carson Wentz. I forgot that McCarthy wasn't even the number 2 quarterback.

Right.

He comes in, he looks like Carson Wentz. There's a couple moments where it looks like he's actually maybe physically breaking down. 22-10 feels pretty good. What happens? They don't— Green Bay doesn't score another point. The Vikings score 29.

Yeah.

So Green Bay loses. They outscored them 419 to 219. They had Minnesota at 132 passing yards. This was the 6th straight loss for Matt LaFleur, including blown leads of 21-3, 21-3, and 22-10. If you include the playoffs last year.

That's right. This was 5 to end it. Yeah.

This, we try not to overreact to week 1. This was an abominable, abominable loss. And I, if I'm a Packer fan, I'm losing my mind. This is not like the Patriots-Seahawks game. This is like, how the fuck did we lose this game?

No doubt about it. And I was gonna be so mad. This is my best bet of the day. Packers minus, plus the 1.5. So there was some Tic Tacs in there. The Bills were a Tic Tac. Yeah. This one was a Tic Tac. So And I was gonna be really mad if they lost by 3. They made the 2-point conversion, Minnesota. You gotta be kidding me with this. And by the way, I deserve it 'cause I interviewed Justin Jefferson, the lovely man, and then picked the Packers to blow them out. So, right. But what the F happened? Like, I, I don't, I don't understand how a, a, a defense could be working so well and then just salivating with Carson Wentz. I think the big play was, I think they would've gotten out of the drive, but That body-to-body thing where you put too much weight on somebody when you sack like a guy like Carson Wentz and they got called for the penalty. Did you see that?

Whoa.

And that kept the drive going. Did I see it?

Yes.

There were, they had 3 penalties kept that drive going.

Yeah.

Including that one. Yeah. Listen, this is, so my buddy, my buddy Chip, college roommate, diehard lifelong Packer fan.

Oh yeah.

He said, can you please read this during the podcast? I'm gonna do that 'cause I've known him since 1988. 2 third-down stops and an interception, all overturned by insane penalties. In a few years, we'll find out this game was part of a gambling scandal.

Wow. That's the first one of those. I love it.

From my old college roommate Chip.

Yeah.

So I don't think Packers Nation is happy about the results, but they could listen. Minnesota blitzed Love. The final number was 78.4%. That's how many times they blitzed him today. The Packers offensive line was a sieve, right?

Right.

Their defense, they, they, without Parsons, they just have no pressure at all.

I know.

They couldn't get any stops and they ultimately couldn't stop Carson Wentz, who by the way, hit Jefferson on that long one. Like that was, I don't know if Murray would've hit him on that. I, I guess my question is, were, were the Vikings maybe one injury away from being a decent team? 'Cause you and I both, we are not Murray fans. You pull him outta that game, I, I feel like they lose that game if he's the quarterback.

I kind of did too. And he, he threw a bad interception, right? Bad. To before he went out and then he had a couple decent ones, but he got crushed. Like, I hate saying that honestly. Like, yeah, it's like that. It's like, all right, I'm watching the wrong sport here. I'm gonna put the tennis on for a little bit. But so yeah, no, but no, you're right. So 78% blitzing and I think they got home 58% of the time. I think their, their pressure was 58%. And it just seemed to pick up in the second half. Like, I don't see any adjustments from LaFleur at all. Yeah. I guess if you're winning, you don't have to make too many adjustments, but just—

Well, in the first half, in the first half they were blitzing on everything.

Yeah.

And then the second half they started mixing it up. Love ended up with 387 passing yards. He was hit 15 times and blitzed 78% of the time. And I don't know if you saw this, but Kenny Atkinson announced that analytically he thought Jordan Love won the game.

Oh, did he really? He did? Yeah. He's still doing that.

He looked at the stats. Yeah, he looked at the stats. He thought Jordan Love won. But so we had him, Nerd King Jordan Love, the new Nerd King, going head to head against former Nerd King Justin Herbert. And it was perfect 'cause Herbert was just atrocious in the Cardinals game. Whereas with the part of the Nerd King package is the nerds have to make excuses for you after you lose the game. So in this case, it's like, actually Jordan Love was amazing with the way the Vikings were blitzing him. That was one of the best games of his career. They lost by 17. But that'll be the nerd argument this week because he's our new nerd king, Jordan Love.

He's the one.

Yeah. Justin Herbert, who's now been dumped, who's left Nerd Village, and he's, he's left the country like Meghan and Harry.

Yeah.

And now he has nobody to defend him when he plays like complete dog shit against the Arizona Cardinals.

Not only that, Madison Beer left. She's on the market for all you single fellas out there. I know she, she's seen enough. She's like, I can't be with that. Yeah.

She was like, I thought I was gonna be in the suite and being shown in the suite the whole game. I had like 4 touchdown dances with my, with my beer.

Thanks a lot.

Didn't happen.

Yeah. They, that, that was my big loss. Not even my best bet, but I would've had a nice day had they come through on a— that was your moneyline parlay.

Yeah.

Yeah. Plus they killed like 30% of eliminator pools and like 60% of my voice for screaming obscenities at Mike McDaniel most of the afternoon. Yeah. Well, it was disgusting.

Also, it was a karaoke LaFleur game. They gave up a 69-yard kickoff return, right? Packers special teams lock it down. Terrible blown coverages. Like TJ Hockenson was just wide open at one point. They had the penalties, they had the bad offensive line, they had the play where he took the field goal off the board to set up the sneak that didn't work.

Right.

Which leads me to my next question.

How did he not make that sneak? I'm sorry. I just like, like, oh, he made it. They're gonna review that. Like, oh, goddammit. He didn't make it. He wasn't even close. Stupid.

First coach fired.

Oh, here we go. I could give you LaFleur.

Mm-hmm. I could give you Todd Bowles. Could I give you Jim Harbaugh? Could I interest you in that one?

Wow. That's a good one.

That was the one of the worst coaching. I think that might've been the worst coached team I watched today. It's the Chargers. No life, stupid shit. Doing the same dumb stuff over and over again. Really, really egregious coaching stuff. Like they, they're down, what were they down? 9 or 12? There's 4 minutes left. They have a 3rd and 30 and they, they have like 2 timeouts left. They call timeout. So, right, because they, they don't wanna have a delay of game on 3rd and 30. What are you guys doing?

Right.

You're on your own 10-yard line.

Yeah.

What are you calling, what are you calling timeout for? You, and then later it's like, well, they only have one timeout left 'cause they had to use that to save the delay of game, to save the delay of game so that on 3rd and 30 they could throw an 8-yard pass and punt.

Right.

Like, that's just bad shit. I don't know.

Yeah, it was bad. He, I would say he's top 3 or 4 at this point. I mean, the team's supposed to win like double-digit games, right? I mean, we'll go over our our big regrettable futures in a minute. But yeah, that was— talk about like missed assignments. Like we were led to believe, all right, when Joe Alt comes back, wait till you see, nobody's gonna get within 15 yards of Justin Herbert. He's gonna be able to do whatever he wants.

Right.

Sean Slater, whoever else is in there. Not the case. Just overthrows bad. And I know McConkey went out, but that, that game was lost before then.

McConkey went out 'cause, 'cause Herbert threw him a hospital ball. I don't know if you saw it.

Yeah.

He led him right over the middle and he got absolutely killed. And it was, then I remember DJ Mikey Mack is the offensive coordinator who has the hospital ball in his offensive play sheet.

Should we give someone credit? We'd never, I know we don't give anyone credit, but Arizona was, they were decent. I looked at like, yeah.

Oh, I wanna talk about Arizona. Hold on. One, one more thing on the Chargers just quick. Because I do wonder if this is the week 1 overreaction game, but you love the Chargers heading into the season.

Oh yeah.

I was with you for most of August and when they lost their center and the left guard, center, right guard combo were all like F-minuses, I got scared off. Did you see the play when, when they blitzed, they sent 3 guys hit Herbert, right? The 2 tackles both blocked their guys and the other 3 guys were, were blocking 1 guy.

3 guys are blocking 1 guy. I love it.

3 guys are like blocking 1 guy. 3 other guys are hitting Herbert. And the other 2 guys are creating the pocket. And I was like, I hope that's not a metaphor for the Chargers season. 'Cause it kind of felt like it was. And defensively, they couldn't get stops. They, they couldn't cover anybody. They didn't get any pressure on Brissett. I, I thought the, the Cardinals kind of dominated them.

They really couldn't get stops. The Cardinals, if you look at their drive charts, like they, they had like 6 good drives where they kept the ball away from, I think. Yeah. The Charge— the Chargers had like 3 possessions in the first half or something like that. And then like really like 1, the 2 in the 3rd quarter. It wasn't a lot. I, I get on Mike McDaniel, like they, they were terrible by the goal line and everything else. But yeah, the, I'll, I'll give the Cardinals, like, I can't believe it. Brissett like made some big 3rd down plays and they moved the ball and Love scoring early on was big even though he didn't do a ton after that.

I wonder with Brissett, he's at least the new Flacco, right? Because when he was on the Patriots, he was unplayable 2 years ago. Like he was really awful. And now I watch him and he's got McBride, he's got Wilson and Harrison. He had, who was that other guy who had 7 catches today? That third receiver, I'm blanking on his name, but that guy was catching balls.

Yep.

And Brissett was like, you know, methodically moving down the field, making all the right reads. He only had one Brissett play. He like threw it up for grabs. 4 guys had a chance to get a pick. None of 'em got it. But I'm with you. I was watching that game and this is why I think this was the week 1 overreaction game because I left that game thinking like the Chargers aren't bad. I mean, the Cardinals aren't bad.

I know.

I actually think, and there was a case for them. Who was on it on Wise Guys, the Bundo or Raheem? Said about last year how they were like, there were 8 one-score games and they were always in the mix.

Oh yeah.

The Cardinals, like they had a lot of injuries. Yeah. But I don't know.

I didn't, I, I have a buddy that works in the organization. He's like, he said before today, he's like, they're really rallying behind Brissett. They've playing with a chip on their shoulder. They like LaFleur, by the way. This LaFleur won, the other one didn't. But right, there's like some bulletin board material, like tickets today were $18 at SoFi. Did you see that? Like the cheapest tickets?

Yeah.

So, you know, I think they were like pumped. They're playing in front of Chargers fans in SoFi, which is unheard of. So. They really went out there and kicked their ass.

I thought it was interesting LaFleur's parents were there.

Mm-hmm.

But their other son was playing too. But I guess it's 'cause the one son is the—

it's the first game.

First game.

Yeah.

But it did make me think if you had 2 sons that were NFL coaches and like, let's say you're retired and you could just go to the games, like you, you really have to manage some egos in that one, right?

Well, I think you just do like with Zoe, like what if you had 2 Daughter's playing soccer. Like, who gets the bigger screen? You stay at home. You gotta just stay home.

I gotta watch both of you at the same time. Um, so Brian from Everett wrote in, since the start of Thursday Night Football, no NFL team has played all their games on a Sunday until the 2026 Arizona Cardinals.

Wow.

Um, I don't think we talk enough about the futility of this franchise. The NFL didn't want to put them on Thursday night. against the Raiders in Madagascar. Instead, they punish us in the late afternoon window every Sunday. And yet this franchise went on the road and beat DJ Mikey Mack and Justin, greatest, best ever quarterback to open the season. He's right. And we were talking about, first of all, we did, we did the futures. Should we just do that now?

Yeah. If we're gonna go through all these idiots anyway.

Yeah.

One of your favorite futures was the Cardinals would start at 0-5. There was a case for them to start at 0-11 if you looked at their schedule. It was like they didn't have an easy win forever. Not anymore. And, and yet they took it off the board. Let's do it. Let's, what's your most regrettable? All right. So we did the future draft last week and we did what, 60 futures combined? Something like that?

Yeah. Yeah. Let me pull up. All right. I'll, I'll just start, bro. You have to go with the injured guys first, right? So Dijon Stribling to win Offensive Rookie of the Year.

That's a wrap.

Plus, plus 850. Yeah, that's no good. You know what? I'm gonna treat this like a yard sale. Like everything must go. Like I'll sell this +850. I'll give you, I'll give it to you for 100 to 1. Like that's it. So I quickly looked at the list you sent and you're like, all right, here's your list. I was like, I have 30 of 'em. You have 30.

Should I just read this?

Yeah. I was like, shit, I'll just read all of 'em. But that's my first one. So go ahead.

Oh, then mine would be Brock Bowers, 1,000+ yards at +135. That is, that is in the front of my store with a 50% off sign right now. They shaved his meniscus, but he might be ready for week 2.

What?

They shaved his meniscus? What did they use, a straight razor? What the, what the fuck is that? He's fine. No, no, they shaved it. It's fine.

I wonder though, if he is back for 15 weeks or 14 weeks, he can still get the $1,000.

Go to the front of the counter. You can bring it up. What's your next one?

Okay. I mean, AJ Brown, 10+ touchdowns, same sort of thing. He's out a month, 6 weeks. I don't know. Was it high ankle sprain? Who knows what these things—

Yeah. You have, you have no chance at that.

Gross.

And I have no chance at Myles Garrett Defensive Player of the Year for +400. I'm gonna cross that one off. Tom Pelissero breaking the story today.

Great. So that was fun.

Yeah, that was fun. Shout out to him. But yeah, Myles Garrett, who, when you watch that game on Thursday and you're like, wow, is Myles Garrett in the game? And they're like, no, no. He said he's number 95. He's out there just doing nothing. And now it turns out he was hurt.

So, right. What's your next call? All right. Well, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Giants, Jets, and Arizona, no playoffs was +156. I gotta be a little nervous. 3 of those teams won. Giants, Jets, and Arizona. So I'm gonna, I would sweat that out. That's, yes, I'll put that in the front of the store too. I won't even, you don't have to, I won't sell it. If you wanna steal it, just take it.

I'm putting Dallas over 10.5 wins, +500 in the, what? In the front of the store.

Yeah.

So they, they'd have to go 11-5 to beat that. I watched multiple guys on your defense leave during this game. Nobody seemed like they were in shape. Overshawn got hurt again, and that guy just can't seem like he can play 5 games in a row. And I kind of regret having that one. What's your next one?

I mean, that's not right. I have some Patriots futures. I wasn't gonna use those.

That's fair.

I didn't know we were playing like that.

Bring, bring 'em, bring 'em.

I have On the show I said Herbert MVP.

Oh, I'll, I'll, I'll do Herbert 4,500+ yards, 12-to-1. Yeah, let's, let's, let's put them together as a package.

All right, we'll couple that. That's nice. We'll sign those too.

We'll just sign those. Yeah, we'll sign that.

It's a combo.

2-for-1, 2-for-1 special.

Stafford most passing yards. I mean, we haven't talked about, it's not even an indictment against Stafford, but I mean, they were, they were really bad the other night. But I, I think Caleb Williams is just gonna go nuts with this one, you know? So I don't like 5-1.

One of us had Caleb, I think, for 4— I had him for 4,000 yards.

4,000 yards? Yeah, that was you. That's a win. He'll get that by week 3.

We talked about the Rams, the super team stuff, how high the numbers were, how bad of a sign that was for them based on the history. I don't know, man. I could see them missing the playoffs. I, I don't even think that's like a crazy week 1 overreaction because we were all signing up for this team that had Myles Garrett just running amok on defense. And then Aaron Donald coming in and now it's like, well, Aaron Donald's gonna play 25 to 30 plays and Myles Garrett has a bad knee.

Right.

Right. And now they have, this is my fear in general with them is when you have these top-heavy teams, now you're one more injury away from being the Chiefs last year.

Right. Yeah.

Now it's like Puka has a hamstring pull or something. Now I'm looking at 6-11 and not 12-5.

So, it's interesting 'cause that game, first of all, everyone was right about it. Like, yeah, they should have flown in earlier. And it's like, that did seem like what it was. The 49ers were much fresher. Garrett was outta breath. Like the Rams were way outta sync. It had to be part of either that or the Niners are way better than the Rams. So I don't know, but I don't wanna mix games here 'cause we're still doing regrettable futures. But is there a 10+ win team that you had that you're throwing out the first game that lost that you're okay with? Like that, like that's actually not too many lost, right? It's just, it's just the Chargers and the Rams.

I feel pretty good about the Pats. And you're, I gotta be honest, I'm not like, I think, yeah, I think the Pats are gonna be okay. And they, you know, they're playing in Seattle. Seattle's really good.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm not panicking about that.

All right.

I wasn't gonna panic for the Rams, but it's not, it's not great at all. They, they do have to fix that defense.

I think the 11 and the 11.5 over-under is an official panic.

You're good.

I wouldn't want, I wouldn't want to have to bet on the Rams having to go 12-5. My last regrettable one is I had Washington, Atlanta under 8.5 wins for +112. And I mentioned how the 7.5 was like +400 or something.

Oh, you're—

And I didn't have the balls to do that one. I did the easier one. It's like there's no chance either of those teams is winning 9 games.

Right.

Like zero.

I'll couple that with, he wasn't awful today, but Jayden Daniels Comeback Player of the Year, +750. Just doesn't, he just looks like a quarterback who's coming back from an injury.

And you know, so who's gonna win that then?

Well, we have to see Mahomes. We have to see who else was on that.

Was Mahomes on it? Burrow on it?

I can't tell. No, Burrow was on it.

Damar Hamlin's back on it. He just wins it every year.

Just really just anybody.

Except for, uh, wait, we have to rip through a couple more games really fast.

Yeah, go ahead.

Um, Ravens-Colts.

Mm-hmm.

Lamar looked back like in a real way. Daniel Jones did not. Daniel Jones and give House credit. I gotta give House credit every once in a while. He was on this the hardest of anyone. Like this guy, he's gonna, is he gonna be moving around the same way as last year? What do you think Daniel Jones's rushing stats were in today's game?

Oh, I don't think I saw one. I don't know.

One rush, one rush for 4 yards.

Wow.

This was a guy who, his legs last year was such a big part of those first 8 games. And their defense, I didn't see pass rush. I didn't see a team that could cover either. And Jones just looks like a guy recovering from a really major injury. Baltimore, 506 yards. Indianapolis, 251. The problem Flowers got hurt and Bateman got hurt during the— and not Bateman.

Lane, right?

Lane.

The rookie Lane. Yeah. Yeah.

He had a hurt wrist. We don't know what happened, but Flowers actually looks like he's gonna be out for a couple weeks.

I think so. Also, I also had Jacoby Lane for Offensive Rookie of the Year. So that's a good one. Yeah. Ravens -9.5 was my bet. Not my best bet, but the best bet I made.

That was a great bet. Yeah. I love that one.

They just, yeah, their offense looked amazing. and Zay looked so fast and like we were talking on the chain like, oh my God, he's worth every penny. But Derrick Henry, 24 for 144, 3 touchdowns. Like, when is this guy done? Honestly, like 2033-ish. When—

We were all texting about it. The, the bigger question for me now is when does the GOAT start coming into play with him?

Yeah.

Like, when does he become eligible for that conversation? And when have we ever had a guy who we never thought ever had a chance to be the best running back of all time. But now we're sitting here after all these years and like, wow, if he does this for like 3 more years, we've never seen this ever. Like, we've seen running backs peak for 5, 6 years.

Yeah.

But not, not just stay steady like this forever, basically. It feels like— I, I don't even know how old he is anymore.

He's 32, and I think you nailed it. So 3 more years, he'd be at 35 doing this, and it doesn't seem like it's that old compared to other athletes we're about to talk about.

But like, it's a position where you're done in 7 years. I think Riggins had over 1,000 yards.

It might've been one more at 35 years old. So if he keeps this going, like, I think he's like the greatest older player or athlete of all time. Like, you could say Brady, but Brady doesn't take hits. Like, Henry gets tackled on every time he gets the ball, almost every time he gets the ball. So I think you almost have to go to the pugilistic sports like Foreman and Bernard Hopkins.

Oh, that guy Bernard Hopkins is a good one.

Yeah.

Yeah. 'Cause they're taking abuse, you know? Yeah.

So I don't know, he's That's a great one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What's crazy about it is he still is physically dominant and overpowering the same way he was at his peak.

Yeah.

Nothing has changed about how he plays. It's not like, like when Jordan got older and he did, it's like, oh, now he has a fadeaway. Now he's figured out like the mental game and he's not gonna try to dunk on you all the time. Derrick Henry's the exact— you could watch Derrick Henry highlights this year and they're the same highlights as Derrick Henry in 2019. Yeah, it's the same guy. I don't— right, I don't know how he does it. He must be like one of those Versa Climber LeBron, like wakes up at 5 in the morning workout guys, because there's no other explanation. But like Emmitt Smith, your guy, he comes in 1989 draft. By what year was he like, oh man, Emmitt, he's kind of starting to look like a shadow of himself? It was like 1998? Yeah, right, '97.

'95 they win. So it might even been '96. Yeah, it might've been right in there.

This is a 7 or 8-year position for great guys. I mean, McCaffrey's defying a little bit too, but he's also missed giant chunks of seasons.

Sure.

And yeah, Henry has not. So phenomenal. We both, we both like the Ravens. I like them more than you heading into the season. I had them as a possible 1 seed. I liked everything I saw today. And what was interesting about today was everyone was on Indy. And oh yeah, that line moved from 3.5 to 3. It was the sexy pick. DeBundo, you know, he's young, he's a precocious gambler for us, but he made a big deal. This was the first ticket I got this summer was Colts +3.5. Shane Steichen. So tough one for him.

Well, he has a— he's a Colts fan. He has a shiny blue jacket and everything, but that's it. Not gonna get them any wins.

I think your, your take was probably more closer to the right take, which is you thought they had a chance to be the worst team in the AFC.

I said that? I'm spoiled. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't realize. But you know, like the bigger takeaway is like Daniel Jones is not right. It wasn't a matter this game really, I don't think. But no, we don't, we can't take it for granted that these guys are just gonna come right back. You know, Jayden Daniels was fine. No, whatever. So tomorrow is interesting, right? That's a little bit of a rehab bowl between both of 'em. Right. Mix and Mahomes.

So I agree. Yeah. Cousins, who I thought looked pretty good today for him.

Mm-hmm.

Makes you wonder why Atlanta just didn't keep him when they're paying him anyway. And then the Bears were the other offense, 59 points. Ben Johnson, Ben Johnson wasn't kidding when he was saying he thought they could have the best offense. 6 rush TDs. They might be the best NFC North team even though they can't stop anybody. Carolina, the Bears defense gave up 478 yards, 24 first downs, and Bryce threw for 361. It's not like the Bears defense did anything, but the offense was so good.

A lot of it was garbage time. But yeah, it was, but is it, by the way, that was a scoregami, 59-37. And they're gonna be the most exciting NFC North team for sure. They're gonna be a slugfest every week. And you mentioned Ben Johnson saying he wants to break the points record. Yeah. We talked about this on Ringer Wise Guys. I almost think like he gives the defense a bonus for giving up short touchdowns, like touchdowns that don't take a long time so that he could break this record. He is like, yeah, let's just defense, just get off the field.

Oh, like he sells out.

Yeah.

He's like running, running crazy blitzes. Doesn't really care.

Could they do it? They have, so 6-0-6 is the record and they had 5, so they now need 5.47 in 16 games. They need 34 a game. I mean, that's doable.

Especially if the defense is bad. Who do you think is the favorite in the NFC North? On FanDuel right now. FanDuel, where we have saved the 6-point tease.

It's got, I think it's the Bears. The only reason I, I, I looked at MVP and he's like 4th, so Is it the Bears?

It is still the Lions at +155. The Bears are +230. Not a lot of action in Arizona at 40-to-1 for the, for the NFC West. And then the NFC South, which went 0-4 today, Tampa is still the favorite at +165.

But you know, I predicted that the winner would go 7-10, and I think I was just a little bit generous there. I, I redid the math.

Could be 6-11.

Could be 4-13. The winner of the NFC South could be actually 4-13. Everything would have to fall right.

But so we have the Bears with a super fun offense. We have the Giants with a competent team again. Like, stuff's starting to shift.

Yeah, right.

In the NFC. Lions-Saints. Shuck was reprehensible for an hour, hour and a half, 2 hours, and then did the thing he does where all of a sudden he's just roaring back and making plays and He almost has to taste his own blood and be down 15 to start playing well. Luckiest Lions win. First of all, the Saints, yeah, I think they won the coin toss in OT, but they, they decided to go second, which most teams do. But the Lions just were like, thanks. Right. Went right down and scored. And then the Saints— I hate that move, by the way.

Yeah.

You're, you're just gonna go first or second?

Yeah.

Your defense is tired. You don't wanna put 'em on the field. Give 'em, 4, 6 minutes of rest there.

That's how I felt. But it didn't work out for Detroit 'cause the Saints came back down, made a bunch of crazy plays. They score and then they run the worst 2-point conversion play probably of the year. Yeah, would be my guess.

Yeah.

I know they had all their receivers on one side. It was so clearly gonna be like a quick flare out to Olave. They read it and he didn't know what to do. It ends up throwing it outta bounds.

Yeah.

Shocking. And you lose by—

Or something was gonna be, you know, I had a half a, as the game went to overtime, I had like a half a page of notes written. to, to give you about how Dan Campbell sucks. This biting kneecap bitch, the, let him be the first coach fired. And, and then you know what? He was, he gutted it out in overtime. So he's really great again. I, I, I don't know what's with this team. 21-nothing at home. Like, why did they struggle? I, this is a team, if they don't have 35 points in the 4th quarter, I'm like, oh, something's, something's wrong. Like, I could get 35. So.

Right. Well, they, but you're right.

That, that defensive touchdown was everything. Saints should have won the game.

Their secondary is gonna be really bad until they start getting guys back, and it's just something to file away. The other thing I didn't like for them, Gibbs, who now has 51 touchdowns in 50 games, he's in this 50-for-50 club that I didn't know about until 5 hours ago. He had 29 carries for 156 today. He also had 6 catches, so 35 touches total. I don't know.

Too much.

Putting 35 touches on Gibbs against the Saints in Week 1 is not a good recipe in my opinion. Right. So now he's on pace for 600 touches this year, and I, I don't, I just don't think that's sustainable.

Might be smart to buy a little bit. Yeah.

Yeah. And then we have Eagles-Washington. I just wrote down for this game, Philadelphia sucks the life outta both fan bases for 3 solid hours every week. I don't have any other notes.

It's pretty good.

It's just everybody's bummed out. People who bet on the game, the other team's fans, right? Philly fans. Who has a good time during an Eagles game? Nobody. Not one person.

No, you're right. I, I mean, I did a little bit 'cause I, I'm not afraid of their offense. Not that my team's gonna contend really, but it's not fixed in any way. They had 10 first downs. Not scared of that. So I don't know. I, they, they could—

Did you think they, did you think they were protecting as well as they used to? I felt like Washington, who's not exactly the '85 Bears, I, I thought was kind of beating them on the line of scrimmage.

I was surprised.

Yeah.

No doubt about it. Yeah, I thought, you know, and then like just really they, they screwed up. Like David Blough's throwing up a shuffle pass to a blocking tight end. This is the 2-point conversion. That's not gonna be good.

Well, we know who the guy who's gonna go $29 in your fantasy draft auction week 1 is gonna be. It's gonna be Dontayvion Wicks.

Oh yeah.

'Cause I don't think anybody has him. Right, right.

Yeah.

$29 for him. I wouldn't do it.

It's fine. Look, I, I don't love that offense.

McLaurin had 2 catches. He sucked last year. We blamed it on the contract holdout. He never seemed to be open in this game. None of their receivers ever seemed to be open. And Washington's gonna be bad. Raiders-Dolphins.

Let me just say one thing about Stefon Diggs because he's— might be one of the goalposts, humping the goalposts, costing them a penalty and a 2-point conversion attempt. And I'm sorry to go after your boy Brady, but he and Burkhardt don't mention it. At all until the fact that they don't mention the fact that it, it prohibited them from going for a 2-point conversion until they're bumping into commercial. And then they couldn't, they're like, oh, oh, by the way, they couldn't go for 2 there because of the penalty. We'll be right back. Getting drowned out by widespread panic, whatever music they have going into the break there. But come on, guys.

I'm gonna hold about 10 Brady jokes. Raiders-Dolphins.

Here's a good Brady joke. The Raiders won. Yeah.

Raiders-Dolphins. They're like, who do we get for this game? How about Chris Myers? He's back. Chris Myers. He hasn't retired. And they're just, he's gonna be doing Raiders-Dolphins until he dies. This was Malik Willis against Kirk Cousins. It was everything advertised. It was only one of the 4 games we had. And the big takeaway for me in this one is Ashton Gente. Who I think I have in every fantasy league. Really? I think we got him for, I got him for $28 in our league. He was going for like in the $50s before he got hurt. He looked really good.

It's good.

Yeah, he looked, I think he's, they didn't look bad. They, now they're playing Miami who's really awful.

Yeah, they shouldn't look bad.

But I bet they looked a level higher than Miami.

Miami didn't look awful. We like Willis. I bet Willis would throw an interception. That was my only thing on this game. But they just didn't score points. He wasn't, he wasn't, he wasn't that bad.

I think that's a good bet every week is a Willis interception because none of their receivers can get open and he's not opposed to throwing the ball into traffic.

I wrote down the receivers in this game. Did you hear me go through this whole routine? No. The receivers in this game, I think, were the worst batch of receivers in a non-strike season on both sides. The top 3. were Malik Washington, Chris Bell, Caleb Douglas, Trey Tucker, Jaylen Naylor, and Jack Besh. Besh, how do, how are we even saying that?

Scored touchdowns.

I know he scored. I know he scored. Yeah. Do you get worse than that? No. No.

No.

Okay, good.

All right.

I don't think, try, like, I'm trying to think of a good offensive matchup. I don't think they see the field. They're probably the 6th receiver on, yeah, right. On a good offensive team. Cleveland-Jacksonville, we mentioned Deshaun, more depressed than ever. And, and then Falcons-Steelers, we gotta talk about because this line moved 3.5 points, moved to 6.5.

Mm-hmm.

Tua, do we ever— is— do you think we ever see Tua again? Like, in all seriousness?

Well, will he be healthy enough to get— they have to put him in if he's healthy.

Do you think he plays another down of football? Ever.

Well, you think Cooper Rush is just like, he let it, I don't know. Yeah.

I just thought that, that House has a conspiracy theory that, oh, that maybe, no, no, that maybe, uh, it's like, yeah, say you're injured, but maybe he's not playable.

Oh, I know they want Penix in there. I know they're like, they're propping him up and everything. Yeah. This was, this was bad. I mean, they combined for the 1,069th ranked total EPA out of 1,097 games offensively.

Wow. It felt worse. Yeah. Steelers offense, I didn't think this would happen till week 6, but about late in the second quarter it became, let's try to get a PI. That became the offense.

Yeah.

Right.

Rodgers was 5.5 yards per attempt, rushing attack 21 for 58. I would not call it explosive. I don't wanna say too much 'cause the Patriots play them next week, but hard to, Hard to overstate how punchless they looked and how unthreatening they were. And Rodgers did not want to get hit ever. All his decisions were based around, I don't want to be hit once in this game.

Yeah. So, and Mike McCarthy must be like, God, this doesn't resemble any kind of offense I've ever been a part of. And that's my thing is offense. What the hell do I do?

Right.

Are we gonna play the Falcons every week? And you know what, Michael Pittman, did you see him?

his—

he caught a few catches for like 60 yards for— did you see his postgame interview? I don't know if you saw it. He said, he is like, you know, he came over from the Colts and he said he's looking forward to this marriage with Rodgers, but he just needs to fuck other teams first. He didn't say that. I'm sorry. Did he say that? Someone find— I'll find that interview.

DK Metcalf said he feels like he's lost the intimacy he had with Rodgers last year.

Yeah.

Who says that?

Jets-Titans. Saleh's revenge ended up being a 1 out of 100 on my revenge scale. Tennessee had 195 yards of offense. The Jets had an easy win. They somehow did not get a turnover.

No interception, 18 in a row.

Yeah. And that's about it. I, I really wanted to make the Jets my 5th Ringer 107 pick on Sunday, and I just couldn't pull the trigger 'cause I, I, I just kept thinking about betting them or picking them and then having to watch Geno and the humidity and just doing Geno. I just couldn't do it. I didn't want any part of that game.

I think, you know, is it a wild card to say Saleh could be a first coach fired? Could this be like week 11 if he's like 0-9 and there's a bye in there somewhere and they're like, you know what, We screwed up. This is not gonna get better. You weren't good with the Jets. You're not gonna— it's just not gonna work here. So.

Jeremy in Hudson, New York wrote in. He's a longtime Jets fan. After watching Robert Saleh shit the bed for years with the Jets, then somehow shit the bed against the Jets on Sunday, I found myself wondering, what is this guy actually good at? In light of the one thing he's demonstrated, sustained high-level production. I'd like to nominate a new nickname for him, Successful Semen Salah. Enjoy. Wait, he has 9 kids.

Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah.

I guess Jeremy's saying that's the one thing he's been successful at is reproducing.

Okay. That's good.

I don't know if Successful Semen Salah is going to catch on, but we'll have to watch Peter Schrager's show tomorrow and see if he takes it.

Oh, good.

All right.

Yeah, we'll cover that.

Spitzen Dinger?

Ich meine, sind nicht alle Laufschuhe so geformt?

Nein, du brauchst Altras.

Altra?

Altras sind geformt wie deine Füße, mit einer fußförmigen Zehenbox. Einfach viel bequemer. Bezwinge deinen Lauf mit Hallenzehen.

Okay, das klingt traumhaft.

Mehr Komfort, Kraft und Dynamik, alles durch die Passform. Altra versteht das einfach. Altra, stay out there.

Before we get to guest alliance, we have to talk about, first of all, can I, can you gimme 20 seconds on the Mariners?

No, I don't know.

You, you just—

20 seconds. Oh, oh, you take 'em.

Yeah.

I wanna take 20 seconds. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't have 20 seconds.

Yeah. So Hench and I, we haven't won our Ale Keeper League since the mid-2000s.

Uh-huh.

And we had our best chance this year. And unfortunately we have multiple Mariners on the team, including George Kirby, who we traded for midseason, Munoz the closer, uh, Cade Anderson, who we've been waiting for them to call him up for 3 months. They finally did 3 weeks ago when it was far too late to help us. And Josh Naylor, who is supposed to have homers and steals and has had 1 homer since the All-Star break. And just in general, I feel like I've been sucked into the vortex of this Mariners season. One of the guys we're competing against has Brian Wu, who is the only competent pitcher they have right now for some reason.

Oh no.

We have Munoz as the closer. He was the best closer in the AL. He has 10 blown saves and 6 losses this year. And today, when we're finally having a good day and it was a make-or-break day for us, Munoz comes in against the Athletics in Sacramento. And this is after George Kirby, yet another atrocity on Friday night. Just the A's beat George Kirby 2 times in a row. The A's have like, everybody's heard of the A's. They play in Sacramento. It's a bunch of dudes you've literally never heard of in your life. And they're just beating the Mariners over and over again. Munoz comes in with a 1-run lead, proceeds to walk somebody, which he does every, every single time he comes in. It's like, it's just, they should just put the first guy on first base. Then Lawrence Butler comes up who's hitting like .200 and has, I don't know, 9 homers. And it's just like, I know Munoz is either gonna give up a double or a home run here. So he goes 3-1 on Butler. Butler walk-off Roy Hobbs homer off Munoz for his 10th blown save.

Oh wow.

So instead of, And so we get the -1, we get our ERA, and it's just like, we're gonna have to bench Munoz 'cause he's that much of a disaster when we're trying to win. And so between that and all the other guys in this team, I just, I hate the Mariners. I really, I hate their guts. And I've been tweeting about them and the Seattle Mariners fans, they love it 'cause they're like, finally somebody other than us have noticed what a fucking dumpster fire this team is. They, The Mariners fans hate their manager, they hate the general manager, they hate all the guys on the team. It's like, it's like this is the most unlikable baseball team this year, and somehow I got sucked into them with the fantasy team. And I can't tell you how much anti-joy they brought me this year. And they can fuck themselves and go to hell.

Well, and Seattle, just the city of Seattle has to be on top of your shit list, right?

Well, that's— I like the I feel bad for them 'cause they took the Seahawks. No, they took the Sonics.

Well, I mean, just whatever.

The Seahawks, I empathize with them. I, I just can't believe this team was favored to win like 93 games.

Yeah. Yeah.

This is one of the World Series favorites. Wow.

You know, that might've been longer than 20 seconds. I wasn't timing it, but yeah. Sorry, Zoe. I was watching Munoz blow a save.

My bad.

I had to put Seattle on the big screen.

I didn't see, I didn't see that corner kick. Munoz put you guys on. Um, and then the only other thing I had was the scheduling stuff this weekend, uh, where we have the US Open. They have the men's final, which is an awesome final. It's Shelton against Zverev. Everybody's rooting for Shelton on the planet, and they put it on during football.

Mm-hmm.

And there's just no way this is the right solution. Could you put it at night as like, uh, 8 o'clock ET? Maybe you go head-to-head against the Sunday Night Football game. Debundo is suggesting, or somebody on our thread was suggesting, maybe move everything a day back and the men's final is Saturday night and the women's is Friday.

Do 'em both Saturday. Do the men's and women's Saturday night. It's fine. It's good.

Just, it's— so do the women at like 2 and then that goes right into the men's.

You got 2 weeks to figure out the days off and everything, but just putting it so we see an hour and a half of football finally back and then someone's supposed to remember that there's a tennis match, the best, the biggest tennis match of the year is on that. I, I want to, I know you wanted to be like Sports Tsar, Years ago, I think you—

yeah, I, I'm still, I'm still available.

I just wanna do the scheduling. Just get me scheduling. I'll, I'll do, believe me, I, I won't put golf up against anything stupid. Basketball, I'll, I'll, I'll line it all up. And then you had a whole thing with the WNBA, right? Yeah.

If we, so if we were the Sportsars and WNBA came to us and they were like, hey, thinking about folding the season for 3 weeks near the end of August when there's no football or anything going on, when we actually have people's attention other than baseball. And we're gonna have momentum heading toward the playoffs. What we were thinking of doing, we're gonna shut everything down for 3 weeks and we're gonna send everybody to some World Cup tournament and that nobody even knew was happening. I, I, I'll pay anybody $5 who knows who won the last 10 Women's World Cup FIBA tournaments. I don't even know where, what, what, what was this? All of the best players go over there and then they play France today. I actually watched the semifinal yesterday against Spain. I did. I was, I enjoyed it cuz it was fun to see. who the lineups are gonna be. They went with the vets. Like, I like these players. And so today it's going head-to-head against football. Wasn't ever watching that. Apparently we won and they stopped the season for this.

What time was that? Was that afternoon? Late afternoon or—

No, it was at 11 o'clock PT. But my question is, wow, what's the point of stopping the season for a tournament that nobody knows is happening? And it was on TNT or TBS, one of those. Maybe it got a decent rating, I don't know. But they had so much momentum with the season, and now they have to come back and be like, okay, the season's back because we're back from the World Cup. We won. It's like, cool, I didn't even know we had a World Cup for women's basketball.

All right. Yeah. And so now they have to finish the season against football gearing up, right? College football, baseball playoffs. Like, this is— they really screwed themselves on that end too.

Can you imagine if the NBA, it's like late March, And they're like, yep, gotta shut the NBA season down for 3 weeks here because we have the FIBA World Cup.

Right.

We're just gonna stop it. We'll, we'll be back. Just hold, hold it. Just remember where the standings are. Like, everybody'd be like, what are you guys doing?

You would have to go back.

It's about the World Cup.

You would have to go from 14 NBA podcasts down to 11 a week.

Seriously.

When they shut down.

Yeah.

I like the Olympics. The World Cup is fine if it's in the offseason, but during the season.

Ridiculous. Yeah, I know. No, but put us in charge of scheduling. We'll do it for nothing. We'll pay you, whoever.

Also, Steve Ballmer, before we came on today, said he wasn't gonna sue the league because—

Really?

Didn't have a case.

Yeah.

But, but he said that we want to move on, move forward. We want to rebuild our relationship with our fans.

You know how he told Maria Taylor this?

This is— no, he— they put out a thing from the Clippers account.

Oh, okay.

You know how they could rebuild relationship with the fans? Offer us refunds for season tickets and tickets. Give us a chance to get out of the relationship, and then that would rebuild the will. Because I promise you, there would be some people that wouldn't keep season tickets or tickets they bought this year.

That's true.

So maybe do that. That would be a good way to rebuild some will. Okay, guess the lines. We tied last week.

Yeah, we did. Now what ends up happening, I'm gonna pull the curtain back a little bit. We tie, and then you decide that we didn't tie, and Jacoby's like, Sal, you should have won, or whatever. And, and you're like, He didn't win. He didn't even tie.

I'm like, what?

I know.

I went back. I thought you cheated me out of a win, but I went back and listened.

You did.

Never.

I would never. I'm gonna lose this week though.

Thursday night. This is unbelievable. Detroit has to play on Thursday night in Detroit. I mean, I'm sorry. Buffalo has to play on Thursday night after that pretty physical Houston game. They're playing the Lions who just played an overtime game.

Yeah.

So good luck. Welcome to the NFL season, everybody. And it was in the new stadium, right?

Yeah.

Home opener.

Yeah.

I put this in the Vegas zone. I had Bills -4.5.

Okay, good. I had 4 and it's 3.5. Yeah.

Well, I don't agree with that at all, but I accept the result of the, of the books.

No, that's good. You're not gonna, you're gonna pull—

No, I'm not gonna contest. I'm gonna accept the result and move on and try to rebuild relationships with my fans. From what I saw of the Lions secondary, this should be a really nice Josh Allen game, would be my guess.

Yeah, they're not as good. I guess they played at a level of competition. Is that what we, the best thing we could say about the Lions? But they're not as good as them.

Does a new stadium opening help or hurt or have no effect?

It didn't work for the Cowboys. I know they lost in the last-second field goal to the Giants. I don't know.

I don't think it matters.

I don't think it works.

I don't know. They do this in TV too when they have a new set. Mm-hmm. And they're like, look at our set. Hey, new set. I remember when I was doing Countdown, we had, had to do a whole thing about we had a new set.

Right, right, right.

People don't care.

And then people see it and it's like, oh yeah.

People are like, oh cool. So yeah, there's light and you have a desk and there's a TV behind you.

Well, what's it gonna do anyway? It's supposed to get the fans— you don't have a crazier group of followers than the Bills anyway, right? They're cracking their skulls open in the parking lot.

Right.

You already got the best fans.

Sunday marquee game, pretty clear it's Texans-Bengals in Houston.

Yeah.

A semi-must-win for the Texans who did not want to go 0-2. Bengals trying to capitalize on some momentum. I don't think they'll be getting 4 turnovers again. This game is in Houston and I put it in the tic-tac zone of Houston -1.5.

You get it. I said 1. It's 2.5. Okay.

So maybe the books agree with our not getting too excited about the Bengals yet.

Yeah. Well, I mean, Coach Taylor, don't forget. I mean, he went, he went 2-0 last year, but so I guess it's possible.

We forgot that that was probably his most convincing week 1 victory ever.

Yeah, for sure.

Coach Taylor, right?

He didn't get it. It's like, what? Why are you carrying me?

3 watchables. We should mention there's a lot of like good team against a not as good of a team matchups, which lead to more fairly watchable and poop-fucked games. But 3 watchables. First one is in Denver, Broncos home for the Jaguars.

Yeah.

Tough one 'cause we didn't see the Broncos yet. We don't know how Bo Nix is gonna look. I have Broncos -2.

All right, I got it exact. It's 2.5. Ah, okay. That is tough.

So tough to learn anything from the Jags today other than that Parker Washington, uh, picked up where he left off last year.

Yeah, he was fun. Um, you know, they got turned over twice, Cleveland. One was an awful interception. Yeah. But I don't know what else to say about 'em.

Only thing I noticed from the Jags is I don't love their running backs and I'm not sure they fixed the Etienne, now Achane.

Achane, yeah, leaving.

Um, it was Tootin and Chris Rodriguez was out there and just all like backup fantasy running backs, right? Those are just their running backs. So I don't know, right?

That's a third. Those are your third and 2 guys. I'm not, I'm not sure if that's gonna work.

All guys you don't really want starting in your fantasy.

Should I change my name to Achane too? Cousin Achane?

I think you think about it.

I think it's time for shake things up a little bit.

Chicago is home against the Vikings. Okay. And I guess Carson Wentz. I can't imagine Kyler Murray's, 'cause Kyler, that poor guy was doing the fencing position.

That's usually 2 weeks.

Yeah. We won't see him. I have Bears -3.5.

Ooh. All right. I thought I would lose it here. I had 3.5 also. It's 5.5.

Carson Wentz.

Tie there. You know, you're thinking teaser. You're gonna tease through the zero slightly.

I don't know if the, from what we saw from the Bears defense where the, they should be put with other teams.

Right.

To me, if you're gonna do the money line with them, you do it with the over.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Just like ride on. Although, man, I, I had the Cardinals one. I almost did them for Ringer 107. I had a tease with them.

and the over, but they're over 41.

And the final score, final score was 26-14.

14.

Chargers didn't score in the second half. I thought I nailed that game perfectly.

Anyway, football's back, baby.

It's back. It's self-loathing and regret. We're back. Pats-Steelers is our last watchables. It's in New England. I can't go higher than 2.5 for this.

Wow. Really?

Yeah, I can't. What is it?

I win this. I said 3.5 and I was a point off. It's 4.5.

Vegas, son.

Come on, you gotta like, that's, I mean, you would be, you wouldn't be shocked if they lost, but you'd be pretty, if that's not a one-score game, you're not gonna give Aaron Rodgers trouble.

They beat us last year. No AJ Brown. We also don't have Booty, so now we don't have a deep threat. We have Dobbs, who was so bad last week, it's still a topic of conversation back home.

Hmm.

Kyle Williams, who I guess is the deep threat now, who 1 out of every 10 times it's like an awesome pass to him, and then the other 9 times it seems like him and Drake Maye both thought it was a different play. Henderson might not be healthy.

I don't know. I love all the negative talk, but if, if TJ Watt doesn't get his big mitt on that pass, Cooper Rush beats the Steelers today.

This is the stupid Steelers though.

Yeah. Okay.

Fairly watchables.

I got 4.

Bucs-Browns in Tampa. I'm probably too low. I had Bucs -7.

No, you're gonna get it. I was too low. I said 6.5. It is 7.5.

Now we're talking teaser.

We're talking turkey teaser.

That is, that is looking tease-ish.

Yeah.

This is a kind of game though, you will absolutely hate the Bucs even if you win, 'cause they'll, they'll screw with you a little bit.

As I said earlier, you know, when, when you have loved ones that might not be around for a lot longer and you go visit them, you know, like an uncle or a grandparent. You said this to me 20 years ago when we were sitting next to each other. 22 years ago, we're sitting next to each other at Jimmy Kimmel Live because we shared an office and our desks were right next to each other.

Yeah.

And we had a lot of spare time, and your brain was moving 100 miles an hour back then, and you would just ask me these weird questions that would break my brain. And one day you asked me, How many times did you think I would get to see my dad for the rest of his life?

I was so much more funny. What do you mean?

And you were like, just the rest of your life. How many more times do you think you'll see him? He lives in Boston. You live here. How many more times? And then you moved on and you started another conversation. I was just sitting in a world of—

There's no way I moved on. I demanded a number. I must have demanded a number.

I think, I think you had somehow calculated your parents because your parents didn't live here yet.

And you're like, I know. And then they moved out.

You, you were, you were thinking maybe 68 more times and now it's been 680.

I know. It would've been plenty. No, no, I love 'em. I love 'em to death. Anyway, it's not gonna happen. I mentioned that too. So what does this have to— why?

As a segue, 'cause I, I feel sad. We only have so many more times to bet against Deshaun Watson.

Oh, I see.

I got you. This might be it. This might be it.

This is the last week.

I'm gonna have multiple bets. I mean, this is like the goodbye. We're taking him to hospice after this.

It's also— we'll never play again. Baker, Baker's gotta hate this team a little.

Oh yeah.

Right? Yeah. Yeah.

This is, this, this line will be 9.5 in 2 minutes. Baltimore's home against the Saints. I, I put -7 for this one because of the, the late touchdown potential of the Saints and the Ravens defense, which seems like it would love to give up a late touchdown. I don't think it could be much higher Than 7.

I said 8. It is 8.5. Oof.

It's a little pricey.

Yeah, I think they just, they just think the Ravens—

You're beating me this week. I'm a little off. I'm like 0.5 off.

5 to 3, 5 to 3 including ties. Yeah.

Cowboys home for Washington. I put this in the Vegas zone. I have 4.5 for the Cowboys.

My God, we tie here. Yep. What is it?

4.5.

Oh, we both got it. Yeah, we both got it.

Yeah, I know I'm gonna put them in a money line.

I have some very bad ones. I have some 2 that are 3 off. So you're gonna— 3 that are 3 off.

This was the hardest one for me. This next one, Packers are at the Jets. I tried this in a bunch of different ways. It was, I was like, when you get ice cream and you get the little spoons.

Yeah.

I was like, can I try the banana cream pie? Right. Can I try that almond? I tried Packers -1.5. I tried Packers -1. I tried Jets -1.5. I put, I wrote down pick 'em. I landed at Packers -1 against the Jets.

You gave it too much thought 'cause you weren't even close. It's 4.5. I said 4.

Packers 4.5?

Yeah.

Really? At the Jets?

Must, mustish win.

Right.

Mustache.

From what you saw from the Packers today, I know they can't— their running backs are probably bottom 5 out of all the running backs in the league without Jacobs.

Mm-hmm.

They can't block and their defense gave up multiple big plays. They have real special teams issues. Their fans hate their coach. Why would they be favored on the road against a Jets team that, I don't know, is coming off a win? And I don't get that one.

I gotta be honest, I saw the least of, of the Jets. I had it on my computer screen. I, my biggest takeaway is with the, is that Aaron Glenn should keep the towel. I know it was sweltering hot, but he should like turn into Tark from UNLV. Like he won with it. Don't, don't let that go. But otherwise, yeah, it was a lot of guys just not moving the ball for hours. I thought one of the—

I'm proud to say I didn't see any of it. You did? It was one of the sacrifices.

Yeah.

There's 8 games. I'm not watching all 8 games.

Yeah.

So that was a pretty easy sacrifice.

I don't know. I, I just think it was, I guess it would've been before that.

My bigger point is, before that, my bigger point is I don't think the Packers are good.

Right.

And I don't think that's a week 1 overreaction.

All right.

I think that's 29 straight points to Carson Wentz to lose today.

Could this be— there is always one where there's a team that's 0-2 and team that's 2-0, and neither has business being the other, you know. This could be the one.

I don't, I don't like them on the road or at home.

Poop Fecta.

Panthers are at Atlanta, and I have the Panthers in the Tic Tac Zone as a -1.5 favorite.

All right, that's what— wait, I had +1.5, so I had Panthers -1.5. It's Falcons -1.5. Yeah. So we're both off 3 points. Jesus.

So Falcons, not even knowing who their quarterback is, gonna be 1-1.

That's insane. So, so yeah.

So no matter what happens in that game, the AFC South cannot be 0-2 next week.

Right. Oh, that sucks. Yeah, you're right.

Sorry.

Oh, I know it had to end. Can I just say, there's no way either team should lay points in this game. They should both get 4.5 points. Is that possible? Both teams are getting 4.5? Or does that make it too easy for the bettors?

You tease them each way?

Yeah.

I mean, you could do that with this game, but for this game, you could tease it.

Oh my God.

You could have the Falcons +4.5 and the Panthers +7.5 and just try to middle it with a close terrible game.

That is the worst.

I might do that. Eagles are at the Titans. I'm sure of very few things, but I'm betting anything this is in the Vegas zone. I'm gonna say Eagles -4.5.

Oh, I'm gonna beat you this week. I had 6.5, it's 7.

I'm, I'm off all over the place.

What's going on with you, Bill?

Yeah, I'm off.

Is it your sight? Are you not able to see?

No, I got new contacts. I can see.

Oh, they came in.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right.

Pretty happy.

Yeah.

Weird. No, finally see you again. Eagles minus 7, huh?

AJ Brown Bowl.

Titans thing. 'Cause they looked, I mean, they, they had the same yardage and everything as the, as the Redskins.

That might be another teaser game.

Seahawks are at Arizona. I think I hit this one exact. Seahawks, no Sam Darnold. So Drew Lock. Cardinals looked awesome. It's in Arizona. The fans are gonna be excited. I have Seahawks -3.5.

All right. Yeah, I was off by 3 points here. It's 5.5. Oh, it's definitely Drew Lock, right? They're all but ruled him out.

Darnold's out for this week, so I, I at least got that one right. I'm off by 2 points every game.

Yeah.

Cards kind of, kind of a sexy home dog there.

I'm just trying to think. So they have the rest advantage, right? Seattle.

Yeah.

They didn't come from anywhere stupid. Yeah, I think it's just, boy, that you talk about a backdoor cover potential. That's the one.

Yeah. Chargers home for the Raiders. They will be a lot of Raider fans in this game. And I have Chargers -8.

I had 8 also. It's 7.

So the Chargers had a really hard schedule, especially from a rest advantage standpoint, which was about as unfavorable as it's ever been in the history of the league. But they were supposed to go 2-0 to start the season, right? So they lose the first game. Now they have this Raiders game where the Raiders actually looked semi-competent. So who knows?

Well, if you need 15 points to beat the Chargers, then fine. No one's out of it.

I forgot to tell everybody, everyone who had all the, all the negativity toward my guy Drake Maye Wednesday and Thursday.

Mm-hmm.

I really hope that kept the same energy for Justin Herbert over the next 24 hours. 'Cause he was worse than Drake Maye was. He was awful.

No, by— Worse.

He was 100% worse than Drake Maye was. Are you kidding me?

Maybe threw 3 picks in his last 3 passes. That's a cardinal.

He was in Seattle against the Super Bowl defense. Justin Herbert was playing the fucking Cardinals, a team that had an over-under of 3.5 games. It looked like he was playing— he looked like he was playing the Seahawks. I know he was way worse than Drake Maye and almost killed McConkey.

Yeah, that's true. Drake Maye didn't kill McConkey.

Yeah, Drake Maye didn't kill anyone. Um, last one, Niners home for the Dolphins. I'm just operating as the Dolphins have to be double-figure underdogs against everyone they play. I have the Niners -12.5, and I think this goes up.

You were smart about it. I, I said 10.5. It's 13.5. Hmm.

Now it should go higher than that.

But what, man, I just think that Australia thing has to screw with— now, now I'm, I'm really into these time zones and everything. Yeah.

I feel like we learned so much about time zones.

I'll screw up everybody.

Am I down 2? Do I have a chance?

4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 10 to 8. Is there 2 more or 1 more?

2 more.

Okay. I was off by 2 on one and I was off by 1 on this game.

Sunday night, Kansas City, home for the Colts.

Mm-hmm.

I Vegas own this. Chiefs minus 5.

I get this. 5.5 for me. It's 6.5. But there's no way to know.

Beat me.

Yeah, baby.

Now I have the— you and Jacoby texting as celebrating.

Here we go, Jacoby. Here we go.

You always start out early and then you fall apart.

I know.

Monday night, Rams home for the Giants. So before tonight's game, I had this in the 8.5 range, and as I'm watching the Giants, I lowered it. I have Rams -6.5.

Oh, wow. So I thought I was gonna miss. I missed by 2 points. I said 7.5. It's 9.5.

Oh, that's stupid.

Destruction.

That's stupid.

Let me see if they changed it. Maybe I'll give this one to you because I did change the first one.

No miles, Garrett.

Yeah.

I, that, there's no way it's 9.5. It's gotta be lower than that.

No, it's 7.5. It went to 7.5 now.

Oh, so I won that one.

I still get, no, I said 7.5. You said 6.5. Fine. See, this is what happens.

Jesus.

You could lose. You're all right. 12 to 5. Yeah, I'll take it.

Big win for you.

Let me win something.

Before we do Perrin Corner, UCLA 2-0.

Yeah.

2 big second halves. I watched the entire Ohio State-Texas game. I've watched more college football. I'm on an incredible college football pace.

That's good.

Premier League has not been great.

Yeah.

I picked a team that doesn't score and I've already lost interest. You, man, you, they don't score. No, I have Tottenham. They haven't, they don't, they don't score goals.

Right.

And I don't know, I'm, I wouldn't say I'm Mr. Soccer, but I like soccer. I know soccer pretty well. Like one of the goals of soccer is to score goals. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They don't, they don't score goals.

Yeah.

I like to see goals. They don't score them. So I'm losing interest and I'm moving toward college football.

This week's a great one. You have LSU, Ole Miss, so they're gonna be pissed.

Do they criticize the college football coaches like they do with NFL? 'Cause I thought Ohio State— I, no, when, no, during the games, like the announcers.

Oh, maybe not. Yeah.

I thought Ohio State completely blew that game. I couldn't believe it. The, the 3rd and 4 where they basically throw the 35-yard lob pass in the corner, right? You know, to their best receiver. It's like, okay, that's fine, but that's not the play you needed there. You just need to get 4 yards. You're probably winning the game. You need to get closer. They throw that play, it doesn't work. And then they missed the field goal setting up Texas coming back down. But it's like, You have 3rd and 4 on the team, other side of the field, like, and you have the team you have, like that game should be over.

They depended on Jeremiah Smith too much, I thought.

Way too much.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I don't know. I, I thought Arch would move up in the, in the Heisman there, but—

Did you feel like enough people were running toward him after he won? It felt like he was running around like Jim Valvano style, looking for somebody to hug. Everybody was gravitating toward other players.

Yeah, he almost gets run over by the steer.

Yeah. Mehr Komfort, Kraft und Dynamik. Alles durch die Passform. Altra versteht das einfach. Altra, stay out there.

Yeah.

Today's Parent Corner brought to you by PayPal. In parenting and in sports, the best game plan is having the right tools at the right place. That's why the new PayPal app brings shopping, paying, earning rewards, and managing your accounts together in one spot. Plus offers, deals, and stackable rewards shows up every time you open the app. Parent Corner, you're up.

All right, here we go. So my wife flew out with my son Archie to set him up for his senior year. So he and his friends moved from a, like a nice apartment to a house. And she was not happy with this because it's a nice apartment. And now it's a house that is, it's got like a used, it was like an auto body shop on one side and then behind it and down a little is a dispensary. So she's not happy with this location. And like, I think like college kids, it's more important to have a dispensary close by than even like your classes, right?

Right.

Close, right. Yeah. So they wanna have parties, so they're gonna have parties. Now, my wife was freaked out because as she's like setting up his furniture and stuff and whatever, they, they make that crazy Target run. There's a tweaker outside and he just wanders the neighborhood. And it freaks her out. And like, they all kind of like know him in the neighborhood, but he can get like ornery too. So he'll like steal like DoorDash orders, but just parts of them. Like if somebody orders like a, like a raspberry lemonade or something, it'll just be gone. So they know to like order extra because it's going to be stolen, even if they have their eye on it. So, and the cops will come by, but they don't do anything. They get, just give them like granola bars and stuff. So, um, so she is really messed up about this guy. She's like, he's going to kill everybody. He's got, but And he also, like, he hung 2 branches in the tree right in front of their house. 2 branches and wire and, like, phone cables to ward off evil spirits, which I think is nice. Like, trapping evil spirits.

Yeah, that's neighborly.

Yeah. Yeah. I wish someone would do that around here. Keep some of the evil spirits away from me taking the Chargers, you know? But it drives her bizarre. And she was mad that, like, I'm not getting mad about it. And she's like, put it on Parent Corner. and see what Bill thinks. I was like, Bill doesn't allow his 88-year-old father to take a cab home from Fenway Park.

He's fine.

He's gonna be fine with it. He lives on the edge. He doesn't wear a seatbelt. So he's gonna say, let the tweaker move in. So, I don't know. I think it's fun to tough it out. My apartment's got worse and worse through college, like my sophomore to junior to senior year.

Yeah.

I think it builds character unless you're murdered, then you have like zero character in that case. But I don't know what to tell her. I think it's fine. What do you think?

I think from ages 21 to 24 are probably going to be the worst apartments you live in.

Yeah.

With the— there's— it's just not going to go perfectly. Right. So I think this is how you learn about life. This is it, right? The counter would be unless you were murdered as you were sleeping would be the counter.

Yeah. Don't get murdered. It'd just be, don't get fired, right?

What about aluminum baseball bat under the bed just in case?

Yeah, you know what?

I, I will, uh, just go to, yeah, just go to, uh, Dick's Sporting Goods or something. Just get that. I'd go for the aluminum 'cause the wood could break. The aluminum, you get some good swings, maybe get like a, you know, he figures out what, what he could get like 3, 4 good whacks in.

I like that. But then maybe he's one of the evil spirits. My son is with the aluminum bat that it's being warded off. I don't know, it gets complicated. I know what you're saying, though.

My parent corner. So we've been talking a lot about getting another dog, and it's, you know, because Ben's going to college in January, and then when he goes, he's got first semester, second semester's over in the summer in London, third semester, like, he's just gonna be gone. And then Zoe's gonna be graduating and probably staying in Boston. So it's like, if we're ever gonna bring another dog in, this might be around the time. And my wife doesn't wanna do it, but then every time I look over, she's on like Petfinder looking for rescue dogs and all this stuff.

Yeah.

So I had the, the, we got, we got Murph. We, we have multiple rescue dogs, but we got Murph from a breeder 'cause we wanted a golden retriever.

Mm-hmm.

And so that same one, we're talking about maybe getting another golden retriever because even though Murph's a sociopath, he's been a great dog for the most part. We love Murph. And, hey, what do you have? Do you have a litter? So there was a litter that was allegedly coming and we've been arguing about it the whole time because I'm like, well, if she has a litter, we could get a girl and then Murph would have a playmate and 2 goldens. And, uh, my wife's like, that, No, we'd have another Murph. This would be the worst thing we ever did. We'd end up getting divorced. This would be a nightmare. So we just argue about it, and then we go back and forth. So anyway, it turns out the litter— the puppy never got pregnant.

Oh.

So there's no litter. So we thought, like, maybe in December. So we're like, okay, that was God deciding we're not getting a dog. So what happens over the next, I don't know, 5, 6 days? I've noticed my wife a few times, like, checking out Instagram stuff. There's this dog she wants. So now she's like, if we get a dog, it has to be a rescue dog. And I was like, well, we got these 2 other rescue dogs, and I feel like we did our rescue dog. But she's like, no, we got to do that again. That's got to be what it is. And this is kind of all we talk about now is about whether we get a dog or not. And I don't know if this is what happens when your kids go to college, but— This is just, it's just a nonstop, never-ending argument about whether we should get a third dog or not.

Why don't you want to rescue? Why? What's your con against the rescue?

Obviously great to rescue dogs.

I'm all for it.

And we, and we've had a couple.

All right.

Yeah.

Yeah. Go ahead.

Yeah.

The counter is sometimes the body language isn't great.

Hmm.

And the, you, you kind of assume the body language in the house of the rescue dog, right? Like, the rescue dog has— it's always like, are you leaving? Is this going to be it? Are you coming back?

Yeah.

Whereas, like, the dog that's been there since it was a puppy just is like— Murph thinks he's as much owner of the house as we are. Like, he's just like, hey, I'm going to bed. I'll just lie, like, right in the middle of the bed. Whereas the rescue dogs are always just a little nervous, like, they might get abandoned again. And you've had it. You've had a bunch of them.

We have one too. My My dog, rescue dog won't eat unless my wife is in. And if she's out of town for the weekend, it's like, all right, he's not eating. I'm like, all right, stupid, I'm the one who walks you. Why are you just, you know, you should be— anyway, you're right. Emotionally, they're a little—

But the rescue dog thing is the right thing to do. And I think that's what we'll end up doing because there's so many dogs that need a home. So, right, we're kind of gradually getting there, but, but I think it has to be a puppy so that at least we can get them early and try to See, to me, that's the dilemma.

The puppy. That's the pain in the ass.

This is my wife's case. She's like, are you going to be getting up? Are you going to be the one getting up at 3:00 in the morning? It's like, well, I don't have a job.

The puppy could cause a divorce more than even just the whole, do you get a rescue or not?

Well, then there's this thing where you send the dog away for, like, 3 weeks so it gets trained, and everybody who does it says it's the best. But that kind of feels like cheating. Like we wouldn't do that with humans. Like we've had a, we had a daughter, we sent her away. We, we get her back when she turns 2.

It's 3 weeks. That's not that bad. You get, so you immediately send them, you get to know them for like a couple weeks and then send them.

No, here's what's, yeah, that's what happens. But here's what's gonna happen. We're not gonna end up getting the third dog.

Oh.

And I, I just know how it's gonna play out. It's not gonna happen. And we'll just ride it out with Murph and Jesse. Jesse's like 13. But in great shape. But at some point, if Jesse, you know, if that, if Jesse, it goes in the wrong direction and we only have one dog, my, this is all my wife will, there's no way we will, we'll have one dog.

Right.

So I think that's how this plays out. But my point is we spent a lot of time and I just wasted a whole Parent Corner talking about it, and I don't even think we're getting a dog. We're, we're just like, we're like the, we're like the, uh, Chargers sideline.

We're calling timeouts and we, we've run outta timeouts and we don't even have Um, you'll get one within the next 2 years, I'm sorry to say, but—

Well, the dog I really want, and a dog that's— you can't really adopt because it's too hard to— nobody— there's no rescue versions of these, at least that I don't know. But I really love Newfoundlands.

Oh yeah.

And we've argued about that a lot. I've always wanted one, but they drool and they have like— they, you know, and that's kind of— and my wife's like, well, Yeah, you, you'll like it until he drools all over your shirt right as you're about to do a podcast. It's always about like ruining a podcast. Like, look how I'm dressed now.

Right, right.

But I've always liked those dogs. I've always, I've always wanted one. That's kind of the—

My cousin Katie has one and it is just nonstop drool. They will walk, it won't, it won't fall a lot of times. They'll walk with it around the house and, you know, it's just— Yeah, it's like on a string. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of cool.

So does she like it?

Yeah, yeah. But she has 3, 3 dogs too. Gigantic dogs. So they're just in it to win it.

3 gigantic ones.

Yeah. Why don't you just buy the Mariners?

Maybe, maybe that's what I'll do instead.

Talk to her about that after this.

Maybe I'll buy the LA Sparks. I'll get involved in an ownership group, try to save them.

There you go.

Either that or Newfoundland, one or the other. That was today's Parent Corner brought to you by PayPal. More security is always a win, and the new PayPal app has you covered with passkeys, biometric security, plus Purchase protection on eligible items, all working together so you're safe every step of the way. Download the PayPal app to get started. See paypal.com/protectionterms. Emmys tomorrow night.

I was just gonna say, yeah, come on, let's just win one for Jimmy Kimmel Live. Everyone within the sound of my voice, vote for Jim. Although these people can't vote. No, the votes are in.

Let's just vote on the long end. Yeah. Is he favored, do you think?

Oh no, no, no. No, they, well, the technical Emmys are a precursor and Colbert won most of those. And if you look on some of these sites or whatever, yeah, it's a, it's a long shot, but the, the voting's weird this year and he could tie or something. You could share the award. Maybe that's more of a possibility, but he's not favored.

Share the award? Who? That's ridiculous.

It'd be a tie. That's very, I don't know.

I get it.

It's, it's a long, it's a long thing.

But so tomorrow night, is he doing this? Is he doing his show too tomorrow?

No, no, they're off tomorrow.

No show.

All right. Yeah, yeah, the Emmys are at 5 Pacific.

So, well, good luck to him. You're gonna be on, you're gonna be on Ringer Wise Guys. What days this week?

Tate, Raheem, Tony Tokens, Joe House, and myself for tomorrow, and then Tuesday and Thursday, and our big Week 2 preview on Friday. Always fun.

The first preview was great.

Oh, you liked it? Okay, good.

Yeah, it was good. I actually liked having it more on a Friday than you guys doing it on Sunday. Yeah. Yeah. Liked having, you know, 40 hours to kind of—

that's nice.

Listen to it. It was interesting though. House was basically doing the same bits he did on the Thursday night pod with me.

The same bits.

It was like watching the, the Bob Backlund, John Studd match in New York where the backbreaker, and then it goes to Boston and I saw the same match. So I don't know, he's gotta work on that. I don't know if he could have the same ending for the match.

Well, it might be a different audience. So much like the wrestling. Yeah, I used to love that too. Didn't— weren't we just talking about that? Andre the Giant and the Ultimate Warrior, they did like that.

Yeah, the squash matches.

The squash matches.

Yeah. 'Cause Andre couldn't wrestle, so they would just go around the country and Warrior would beat him in 90 seconds.

Same 3 moves.

Yeah. And every, every time it would be this new thing in the city, but nobody knew. I was thinking, if I was in the mid-'80s, if you had told me all the wrestling would someday be available in basically like a TV that looked like this, right, that I could just hold up and watch every match from the '80s on my command, like, what my reaction would have been. I think I don't— I, I just would have had so many more questions.

Yeah.

Like, is there basketball too? Are football games on there? What about Letterman episodes?

Everything.

Yeah.

And then everything. But you'll probably get involved in a, you know, you're stuck in a dog adoption algorithm and then that's what you end up watching. Yeah.

We're just not going to end up getting one. It's going to have to be, I'm kind of glad I put it out there because then maybe somebody will hear and be like, oh my God, But your poor neighbor has a litter of Newfoundlands coming.

Yeah.

And there, there's 2 left. You can get in on it.

Yeah. Get a junkyard dog. Get a British Bulldog. Get a Bulldog Buzzsaw Bear.

Short Fat Dog the Dynamite Kid. Yeah. Um, all right. That's it for the pod. So thanks to, uh, Gahal and thanks to Eduardo. And that, I always forget Forget to thank Chris Wallers, who's unsung MVP at The Ringer. He's the best. Yeah, he's really— we have a great, great, awesome crew behind the scenes. But, uh, thanks to him. Thanks to Jack Wilson, who's probably working tonight even though he's pretending he's not.

He's the second best.

Yeah, we have a lot of bests. We have a lot of great people at The Ringer. Uh, Sal, I will see you next Sunday after whatever the NBC game is. As always, good job by you.

Good job by you, buddy.

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Trägst du immer noch die? Diese spitzen Dinger?

Ich meine, sind nicht alle Laufschuhe so geformt?

Nein, du brauchst Altras.

Altra?

Altras sind geformt wie deine Füße, mit einer fußförmigen Zehenbox. Einfach viel bequemer. Bezwinge deinen Lauf mit Hallenzehen.

Okay, das klingt traumhaft.

Mehr Komfort, Kraft und Dynamik. Alles durch die Passform. Altra versteht das einfach. Altra. Stay out there.