Transcript of The Unflappable 49ers, Bad Coaching Galore, Drake Maye’s Rally, Tua’s Rough Cameo, and Guess the Lines With Cousin Sal

This is the Bill Simmons Podcast presented by FanDuel. Make every NFL week more rewarding with FanDuel Rewards Club. You heard me. Just bet like you normally would, earn points on eligible settled bets, win or lose. Keep collecting points, level up, and unlock bigger rewards. So keep an eye on your Rewards Club progress and see what you can unlock. This is your most rewarding season ever, and it's with FanDuel. 21+ select states or 18+ DC or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. The Bill Simmons Podcast. We are live on Netflix. Cousin Sal is here. Tua is going to be here in a second. He's going to throw a podcast ending pick.

He's coming by. Wow.

Yeah, he's coming by. Uh, new rewatchables for me coming tomorrow. We're doing horror movies this month. I don't know if we're gonna do the whole month of them, but we're doing Friday the 13th, the original, 1980. Some people think it's a Jason movie. It's not. Turns out there's a little twist in there. But anyway, that is coming tomorrow, and then we'll have another one next week. Okay. Week 5, which lasted 14 hours and 19 minutes. That's how long week 5 was. It just kept going and going and going. It went into overtime with Baltimore and Atlanta. We got overtime.

If you would have said— I'm trying to think of what movie, what Halloween movie you would compare it to? Like, all right, all of that, this was all 10 in a row. It's gonna be a 14-hour day and it's gonna end with Tua throwing interceptions. Like, oh, that's, that's Godfather 3, or what is that, Halloween 6? I don't know, or somewhere.

No, it, it, it had the makings of Halloween 4, and then when Tua showed up, it became Halloween 5 or Halloween 7. Um, and also for Atlanta, it was shaping up to be one of the great weekends in Atlanta history because you had, uh, you had the dream making the WNBA Finals. I don't know one person who had money on it. And they, it was such a surprise that they don't have a place for them to play because there's a concert happening. So they're figuring that out, but still exciting. Angel Reese is becoming the Queen of Atlanta. You have this Falcons resurgence, you have Michael Vick in the house and Sunday Night Football.

They just announced they're playing that game at a Waffle House in Buckhead.

So it's— I think that's about how big it's gonna be. It's gonna be 3,500 people. How did they not figure this out? How does— like, this, this league has so many obstacles against it. Anyway, Tyler Huntley is now 8-9 career over 7 years as a Ravens backup, and we watch terrible quarterback play every week, and somehow he can't get a job. I don't understand it. Explain it to me.

He was good. I don't know if it's this offense, but I love this team this week. I was more against Atlanta. I was like, are they really gonna win all 3 primetime games? Like, you could have gotten like 10-to-1 odds on them, like, just running the table and blowing everyone out in primetime. And, you know, aside from that defensive touchdown, which a little bit his fault, sure. But I, I, I just, I just like them. I like them. I, I just, it's amazing though that we had to watch 31 coaches before one of 'em made a good choice. And that was Jesse Minter. It's like taking the ball in overtime and like, I don't know, like Collinsworth seemed to be against it, but I'm always like, What the hell? It's— you got the bruising, the most physical running back in football against a tired defense, and you could get the ball twice. Of course you're taking the ball.

You just went down the field on 'em. Yeah. You're playing a team that the most traumatic moment in the history of the franchise happened after they— a team came back and got a touchdown and a 2-point against them to talk— to go into overtime and then got the ball. Huntley put together an 8-point drive in the last 3 minutes, and I think there were some stats online about how rare that was, especially for a backup QB. But that— the Atlanta thing for me, um, we can talk about Baltimore in a second, but it felt the whole game, it felt like it last week, and it felt like it in the weird Thursday night game against Green Bay. Like, like they had stumbled into something with Penix.

Mm-hmm.

Who I think we had all written off mentally as this guy they took number 8 when they'd already just signed Cousins. He'd had a couple ACL, now he had a 3rd ACL, and it just seemed like a sunk cost pick. I thought he was excellent this entire game. And, and I thought he was zinging the ball around. I thought the Ravens were doing really good stuff defensively against him. And then finally they got him at the end and they nailed him. And it seemed like he actually got hurt. Tua is looming over the game as soon as he's down on the ground. If you're a Falcons fan, you're like, oh my God. So I'm watching with House. It goes into overtime. Baltimore scores. Falcons defense is dead. We're debating whether they should go 1 for 2.

Yeah.

Or for 1 or for 2. But it's clear Tua's coming in the game. We're like, oh, just go for 1. Like, Tua's gonna throw them a pick. We're waiting for it. House and I are arguing about the rules. If you catch the interception, does the game end or do you have to go down? 'Cause I was like, no, no, no, no. If you catch it, the game ends. Oh, you thought so? Really? Well, you can't go for a pick 6 'cause the game kind of is over once you get the interception.

Interesting.

You just go down and it's over. And I was like, I don't know if you have to go down. House was like, no, no, you have to. And as we're arguing about this, he throws a pick and the game ends.

He did it and it ended.

Yeah, we're arguing about his pick. that he hasn't even thrown yet, and he throws it during the argument because that's what—

You think he heard you?

Yeah, he might have.

He might have. I mean, it really— because he came in for the one play, and then Penix tried to come back in right before, before that, and he completed the pass. I was like, this could be the greatest Tua performance of all time if he came in 1 for 1 and then just bailed, and somehow Atlanta won this game in overtime. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, uh, yeah, I don't know if you might be right about that. So if he fumbled that ball and the Ravens ran it in, it wouldn't Wouldn't matter that interception.

I don't know. I think the game ends, but I'm probably wrong. Listen, don't, don't, I don't know if I'm right. I feel like I saw it. Atlanta had 0 turnovers today until that pick. They were 9 for 17 on first down until that final drive. They're moving the ball against a team that I thought was pretty well coached. And Baltimore takes it. They're 4-1 now. They have 13, 13 wins in the AFC North for 5 weeks. Turns out we have that division and we have the, the NFC West. Seems like the 2 divisions.

Pretty good. Yeah.

Yeah.

I underestimated the AFC North for sure. I think I overestimated the NFC North and then underestimated the AFC North. I can't even say the words, but yeah, I, I think, I, I don't know, it was at a point where the Ravens maybe could have run away with it after that Cowboys win, which is not so important now. And now Right now, everybody's bunched up, including Deshaun. I'm not even counting Deshaun out yet.

It's weird. Can we get a kidney stones update for you before we keep going?

Yeah, I hate it though.

America wants to know. It's not great.

I had a procedure the other day and it wasn't very successful, so I have to go through the more invasive one this week, right through the penis hole. And so now I have— it's supposed to be blasted into many, many dozens of small pieces that I could pass. But instead it was only blasted into 2 pieces that I still can't pass because they're too big. So it's just—

So this has been pain medication for 2 and a half weeks and you're doing pods and stuff?

Yeah, this is an easy job. I'm sorry, I don't want to— you know.

You do have like a sly smile on your face that I don't remember seeing. Really? You're just kind of like, hey, I do.

I feel for people because it's easy to get hooked on this stuff. I don't want to minimize it really, but I'm—

Oh, Jesus.

I'm tingly right now.

Sounds great. I felt tingly from 14+ hours of football. Okay, big picture. I guess we have, we officially have a cross-op team. We were debating last, last week between Arizona and the Chargers. We took the Chargers.

Yeah.

And Arizona this week, Arizona all week. I took them in Ringer 107 on Thursday, which I'm not gonna apologize for. I didn't know they were punting on the season. I take them on Thursday, +4.5 against Detroit. I thought they would, be able to move the ball back and forth against Detroit. And then they just put Marvin Harrison up for auction on Saturday.

Right.

And trade him, but make him inactive. And it turns out he's going to Houston. And it's just like, oh, I guess, I guess we're punting on the season now.

Yeah.

And Detroit whacks them. So anyway, I think Arizona—

We're reporting that he's getting traded, but whoa, who to? Well, don't worry about that. He's just go— like, I hadn't seen anything like that before. Like, Schefter could do that. Now we could do that. We could just like—

Well, our guy Pelissero started it 4 Saturdays in a row.

Yeah.

He said something that got the news going.

Nice.

And it was, it was a mess. I think we what happened is Houston's like, we're in on this trade, but can we just make sure we beat Tennessee? Right.

That's exactly right.

If we lose to Tennessee, trade's off.

Yeah.

So they're like, all right, all right, we won't announce it. Won't announce it.

'Cause if they're 0-5, that 2nd round pick all of a sudden is a little, little pricier, right? It's like a little, little more appealing. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. I don't know if that would've been my first choice in the grocery store if I'm the Texans GM to get another receiver.

Yeah.

Like I, I might've looked at running back or tackle.

Right, right, right.

Before I looked at the receiver thing. But anyway, so we have for cross-offs Miami, Tennessee, Chargers, Arizona. I think for the best 3 teams in the league, I think they're all in the NFC West. 'Cause, and we'll talk about the Seahawks game in a second, but their, their hole is running back, but they'll be able to fix that before, before the trade deadline. The Niners are playing the best of anyone in the league and the Rams have the highest ceiling. And I think I think it starts with those 3. Is there anyone else you would put near them? I would not.

I guess if the— man, what happens if the Bills beat the Rams? Then you kind of have to— they have to jump the Rams then, right? Yeah. Then they're tough.

I don't know if they jump the Rams with their defense.

They would if they win by double digits on the road.

I think that— I think they nudge the Rams out and then it just becomes San Francisco 1 and probably Seattle 2.

Yeah.

That was a great— Baltimore in there. I'm looking like the playoff stuff right now. If you just look at the standings, it would be Buffalo, Baltimore, Jacksonville, KC as the division champs, Giants, Vikings, Panthers, 49ers. Those would be our 8th division champs right now. I'm gonna, I'm gonna bet that's not gonna last.

So funny we don't have the Chiefs. You have the Chiefs in your top 5 at least? The undefeated Chiefs? Yeah.

Okay. Absolutely.

Yeah.

I had the Chiefs in top 5.

Okay.

Let's talk about one of the funniest games in NFL history. Giants-Washington. Oh, absolutely.

Why are you laughing?

Tour de force. I was lucky enough to watch this with Joe House and a few others, including Dave Chang, who came over. Oh, that's right. Redskins fan who made some stews. And I'll talk about him in a second. But it ends up, if you were gonna pick any game this entire season to end with a tie, you probably would've said this. It ends with Scadaboo fumbling when they're just running out the clock to go kick the game-winning field goal. Somehow he fumbles. And then watched it comes back down and everybody knows what happened at this point. But I think one of the single craziest, it was a little reminiscent of Dak in that playoff game.

Oh, I thought we were gonna have fun here for a few minutes.

All right. This was way worse 'cause it was clear some, something got lost in the translation. He thought they had a timeout or he brain farted. They didn't tell him they had a timeout and the clock just runs out. And I think my thing is maybe the guy misses the field goal anyway, but holy mackerel. So the Giants get this free tie. And the only, you know, if you go to win totals from before the year, it doesn't— if you had like the Redskins -7.5 or over 7.5 for a win, you don't get it. It just doesn't count. But this was— has there been a dumber game?

No, I don't think so. I just think like with these coaches, like I, I think AI has infiltrated the brains of all the coaches, but specifically the NFC East coaches, like in a negative way, eating at the medulla or whatever. And it, it could spread to the NFC North if we don't do something about it now. But Yeah. And Dan Quinn is a Cowboys coach, so he can't help it formally. But I don't know, like, it's so funny. They interview these guys afterwards. They interviewed the backup tight end, some linemen, and you know, they all say something different. It's probably Jayden Daniels' fault. It's probably like he has to get rid of that ball immediately.

So if you did power rankings, he's one.

Yeah.

Probably the OC and the coach. Tomlin said before, or at halftime, he was saying that's gotta go in the headset. you gotta tell 'em, yo, yo, yo, just remember to get it in the right hash mark and call.

Well, get rid of it immediately. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you got guys in the end zone that are never gonna get back to the line of scrimmage. And the guys that are interviewed are like, you know, I don't know, it's, we just gotta, and the, the coaches are all like, I gotta do better. Like how many times are we gonna see the same interview from 10 different coaches? Like, I, we gotta do better. We have to communicate better.

We, we agree. You definitely have to do better. It was one of those, it, You know, when we were growing up, there was always that video of Jim Marshall running the wrong way for the Vikings for the touchdown and celebrating, and then it turned out he ran. So there's been moments like that. I felt like this was up there.

Yeah.

That just somebody would— they have 55 seconds left, they ran one more play and easily could have felt like the Giants couldn't believe it. They're celebrating. It's the first time anyone celebrated a tie like that. Yeah. And they end up, they're 3-1-1 in the division. Somehow they're in the lead. But, uh, but for Washington, I— we'll see tomorrow. I— do you think that's it for Quinn?

I think they keep him unless they— I, I think Daniels is going to take internally the blame here. And if I were one of these players that's getting interviewed, I'd be like, listen, it's definitely one guy's fault. Um, I'll give you a hint, it's a dude. That's all I'm gonna say. I'm not throwing anyone, anyone under the bus, but of course it's someone's fault, you know. That's the same, same one over and over. They weren't close to If they had like 9 more seconds, they wouldn't have gotten that playoff.

Everything about it felt weird as you were watching it with like 20 seconds left. Like, it was like, what are— what's going on here? What are they gonna— wait, wait, wait, what? Oh, 3 seconds too. They're trying to— and it's over. Yeah. Chris Myers.

Well, I don't know. Your boy Chris Myers was giddy. He was like on top of it. He's like, I don't think they're gonna get this. No, it's over. It's actually over.

They say Chris Myers went from just being relegated to the NFC South to now calling some of the stupidest games ever that go into overtime. He's there for 4 hours.

I think we could find you a worse game, Chris.

We're gonna—

we need to get you outta Carolina for this week or whatever.

Well, we had Jameis going 36 for 54 for 306. No, no interceptions somehow. It was the full experience. In the first half, it looked like he was gonna get pulled. Yeah, it— he was all over the map with his throws and it just felt like, you know, is J— is it JJ McCarthy time? We're getting close.

Mm-hmm.

And then he kind of rallied. And then Nabers, who was targeted 20 times, was 11 for 121. He was good in this game.

Right.

And I, I thought Daniels was pretty exciting for somebody who had a giant left elbow thing. He ran for 2 touchdowns, but in, in general kind of had the same feel he had 2 years ago. The weather wasn't great.

I did too. I felt bad for him with that. I really did. Like that, that's not how that should have ended. I'm not— now I'm a little— I'm sorry, I haven't looked at the NFC East. I don't even know why I'm crucify myself here. Yes.

Well, I have, I have an email from TJ in Denver.

Yeah.

He asked if there's ever been a more embarrassing week for a football division. Oh, your team lost at home on a Thursday night to a winless Tampa Bay team with an undrafted QB that nobody heard of. Right.

Yeah.

Your QB got heckled leaving the game.

Yeah.

By somebody who I guess got fired. Philly lost even though they took a lead with 8 seconds left. And then the Giants and Washington would shat out whatever the hell happened in that game for a tie. That is about as— the NFC South even can't say. I feel like you did this.

I did it. Yeah.

You'd made so much fun of the NFC South that you turned your own division into the NFC South.

You know what, Bill? I have to communicate better. I have to communicate with my sources and the division leaders and everybody else. But yeah, I think you're right. I think I might've done this. All right. TJ from Denver. Sorry, we don't all get to play the Chargers every week, but Yeah, it's disgusting. What do I wanna say? It's, it's embarrassing. We joked on the Friday show, like maybe the Commanders and Giants will tie. That's how nobody gets wins in this division. Everyone keeps tying. But yeah, really bad. How do you pick a winner? Dallas is favored +135.

Stupid. How— sadly we were in California and couldn't live bet this appropriately, but House was convinced it was gonna end with a tie when we were doing the coin toss.

Oh really?

Yeah. He was like, oh my God, this is the easiest tie call ever. But we thought it was gonna be 30-30 tie. We didn't, we didn't realize.

A field goal each in overtime. Yeah.

We didn't realize nobody was gonna score. Yeah.

How do you not have a car that goes 450 miles an hour that can get us to the Arizona border to bet these legally in FanDuel and then back in time for the Lakers?

Pretty soon we'll have air cabs. Good poll results. First Coach Fired on Netflix. They just did this. Quinn, 41%. Harbaugh, 32%. And then Sirianni, I guess, had the rest of that.

Huh. But do you think that's fair?

I think Harbaugh should be fired. He's the— that is the worst coach, worst run, most dispirited team. We talked about this last week, the week before. I feel like we've done podcast segments every week. I have them coming up later. I gotta talk about Primal Fear, Dave Chang. Okay.

Yeah.

So remember in Primal Fear, Ed Norton played this normal stuttering nice guy, but then he was also this evil guy. Sorry, spoiler alert.

Right.

Movie came out 30 years ago.

Yeah. Yeah.

Chang has decided he wants Washington to keep losing to get the number 1 pick.

Oh, I hate that.

So he's watching the game, getting mad when good things are happening, but then near the end when it seems like they might win, he's rooting for Washington. And he's just going back and forth, rooting for Washington and then rooting against them. And either way, he's upset. I've never seen anybody navigate this before, where they never have joy no matter what happens.

Yeah.

He's upset when it's not going well, but then he's also upset when it goes well.

Right.

So, you can imagine— so, at the end, it was like basically this primal fear test for Chang. How is this gonna play out with this crazy ending? Which is one of the dumbest endings we've ever seen in the history of football. And does it, and he's screaming at the TV how stupid Washington is. I can't believe we blew it. And it's like, you— it, it, it was— I, I can't even describe it. It was like—

You were fine with this. Yeah.

You were all over the place.

Yeah.

So basically, I think, I think Chang needs sports therapy. We have therapy for real things we don't ever talk about. Maybe, maybe you need to take some time out and talk to somebody.

Mm-hmm.

I think he needs it with the Washington Commanders slash Redskins. I think he needs to talk to somebody and figure out where his head's at. 'Cause it's all over the place. And I'm honestly a little worried about him.

I think it's a real thing. I honestly, people are gonna laugh at that, but whatever upsets you, right? There are dumber things that upset people that they go talk about in therapy that no one would make fun of. Right. But if sports is really what gets you angry for 3 days a week or whatever, you know, and Chang doesn't even have like, well, he does have fantasy and stuff in pools and stuff like that. And bets.

He's in pools. I didn't even know about it. He's in pools with you that you guys didn't even invite me in. And I introduced introduce you to Chang.

How dare you?

I didn't, you know, hey, I feel like I should be mad about this.

All right, you got me back by not inviting me to your house today, so it's fine.

You couldn't have come. You have fucking kidney stones.

It would've been funny.

You're allowed to drive.

If I would've shot that thing right into Chang as he was deciding if he, if he like loved or hated the Commanders, I was gonna go off on, on House tomorrow and be like, listen, this is, this is your division to lose. You have the best team right now in the NFC East. I still think that.

House is a good, good Washington fan. He roots for them. He roots for Jay Daniels. He does not really like Dan Quinn that much. But it feels like they're headed for a house cleaning.

Yeah.

1-3-1's really bad. The Giants, 3, 3, they're a say what you, say what you want about dot dot dot. You know how people do that about teams, people?

Yeah.

Entertainers, whoever. Well, say what you want about dot dot dot. The Giants being 3-1-1 is definitely— that'll get a— they'll get a lot of that this week. Well, say what you want about the Giants, but yeah, you know, they're in the right place that, you know, you only need 9-7-1, probably gets them in. That might be enough to win the division. Yep.

They're not losing. Well, I mean, Harbaugh crystallized it. What did he say? He's like, uh, it's not a win and it's not a loss, it's a tie. And that's what I told my guys. All right.

Did he— is that what he said?

Yeah, he's like, he basically essentially said that. Yeah.

You could make up a Harbaugh quote after every— yeah, it'd be like, what did he say this or not? And I would really have a lot of people do that.

That should be a Netflix poll. Which one of these 4 are actually a Harbaugh quote?

Does Primal Fear Chang need to talk to somebody about his relationship with Washington?

Get that up there too.

Yeah. So we have that.

So what are they, 7.5? So FanDuel straddles this. It's 6.5 or 7.5 for the Giants.

And that's for the win total. For the win total, they have 3 wins already.

Overs -160, over 6.5.

What's the division? All right, now you got me excited. Look at this. So the division, your stupid team is still favored to win the division.

So dumb.

Eagles are second, Giants are +380, and the Commanders are now +800. You're +135. And then Philly, who Let's talk about them 'cause that's the third coach in the— Let's do it. Who, or that's at least the second coach in, in the who should get fired. So the London game, it's just guaranteed you wake up at 7:15 and you know, you know, shit's gone down. There was a fight with Jeremiah Trotter getting kicked out. They had Jacksonville went flying down and scored a touchdown early and then they got the ball back and it just felt like they were gonna go up 40 to nothing. And then all of a sudden the Eagles are back. Anyway, I, I wrote down, don't bet on the London game, volume 54. And all of it ended with an absolute miracle teaser cover. I was one of many people who had the Jaguars and the Texans, and it was a what could go wrong? And you know what could go wrong? Everything the Jaguars did. They had 408 yards to 232 for Philly. They had 13 penalties for 100 yards. Of course the backup snapper came in, 'cause I think that happens once a year in the London games.

We get a backup snapper or some sort of wild or a backup kicker.

Mm-hmm.

There's always sort of backup you don't expect. And, and they did everything they possibly could do to lose this game.

That holder was great, by the way. I don't know if there's a holder of the month or holder of the week or something. Do you think they should do that? Yeah, maybe. And like, did they give him the State Farm holder of the week? They give him the game ball and he is just like, I, I don't wanna touch anything. Just leave it alone. I'm, I'm diving to, to place this damn thing. But yeah, no, he was, he was great.

And what did Hench text us that he was just like, Every step is gonna be high, guys.

Yeah. Just expecting the worst.

This will never have any variance. You're gonna be like this at every step. But anyway, they end up, they, they finally somehow fall behind with 8 seconds left and get the kickoff. And Sirianni took shit for this. He apologized for it after. I 100% support the kick it off and run time. when they don't have timeouts. Get a fucking stop with your kick return. How about this? Don't give up 50 yards to the kick returner. That was not the wrong move. That was not what happened with your team. What if you had done that?

What if you did give up, you had given up 50 yards on the opening kickoff and it was only, you lost half.

Just tackle him. That's the whole point of be— of coaching a team and having a preseason and you've had 4 games already. This, this is it. This guy has to go 40 to 50 yards for them to have a chance. How does he do it? How do you let that up? Like, if, if I'm putting my hands, it's like, we win this game unless this guy returns a kick for 50 yards. I feel good about that bet. So anyway, he does it.

Well, no, the other thing is, so you're right. So if he kicks it into the end zone, they get it to the 25, and then you're talking about 35, 35, and then, then you're talking about like a 30-yard pass, 25-yard pass gets it. Then that's, that's doable in 5 seconds.

So we've seen it. We saw it 2 weeks ago. It's a 15-yard pass to the 49.

Yeah.

And then Little comes in, by the way, that kick he made, that would've been good from, sure, from '70.

So I don't know. Yeah.

I'm kicking off, I'm making Amir Abdullah beat me, and I'm gonna bet on all these guys I have on this allegedly talented team that somebody's gonna be able to tackle him.

But that wasn't the shitty part. Like, they should have killed clock before that. It shouldn't have even been mad at it. But that was, that's what I got mad at with Sirianni. And he, he's another one that says they have to communicate more. Everybody said they have to communicate more. It's weird.

These guys have headsets on and they're not communicating enough.

No, that's not the way you need, like, skywriting. You need the a plane to fly in or something. You and I used to joke, and it wasn't even a joke, about Madden. Like, these guys should have to play 1,000 hours of Madden, right?

We were joking about that in the 2000s, late 2000s.

Yeah. And so, yeah, well, I think we settled on there should be a Madden specialist. What is it, like a 16-year-old kid or something on the sideline to tell you what to do? Now I think it's the full-time gig. It's just like, it's the coaching. It seems to be like 50% of the job is figuring out these endings. They're all the same. Like, we're better than these coaches at figuring out how to kill clock. Even in the first half, the end of the first half with Cohen screaming to add a second, they, they snapped the ball with 5 seconds. Like, you don't get to add a second, scream about a second being added when, you know, Lawrence is hesitating and then throws, sails it through the end zone, uh, snapping it with 5. Like, you're lucky you got another second and they, they didn't, they didn't do anything anyway. But it's really—

Well, Liam Cohen was equally terrible. Yeah. I I've been talking about this for 20 years since the famous Belichick 4th and 2. You can bring the math into it, but the play also has to make sense too. Like, you know, the Jags, they who were inside the 5-yard line, it felt like for 12 plays during that game, you know? And they, there was one 4th and 1 where they decide to do the, the wide receiver running quick handoff sweep that I think works 1 outta 10 times.

Yeah.

That gets stuffed and it's like, oh man, they went for it. The math said to go for it. It's like, did the math say to do the dumbest play possible?

Mm-hmm.

When you have 6'6 Trevor Lawrence who could just sneak and fall forward. So they did that. And then they did the same thing when they were in there the second time. They got to the first, they got to first and goal from the 1. All of a sudden they're bringing the Wildcat in and then somebody false starts. It's like, just bring your 6'6 quarterback and have him fall forward 3 times. He's gonna get a yard.

No doubt. Yeah. Every coach—

I don't understand it. It's like they're trying to impress us. It's like, oh, Liam Cohen, unbelievable. First and goal from the 1 play, wide receiver sweep. Wow. Yeah, really smart.

Good play. And then like, you know, they say, all right, the first 3 weeks the offensive line has to gel. They didn't play together in preseason, a lot of 'em. So you're gonna see some shitty football. Like the coaching just never gets better. It really doesn't matter what week it is. Like, I, I really feel like, like 20 of these guys were Just god-awful today. You asked what, what's the poll for those? Like, those 3 should all get fired at once. It should be like, remember like the first Hall of Fame induction in baseball? It was like, they had like, oh God, we have a class. Yeah. Ty Cobb, Ruth, and Cy Young, whatever.

Yeah.

So that's good.

I thought Bowles should have been fired Thursday night when he went for it up 14, right? When he went for it on, or what was he up, 14 or 17?

14. They were at the 1-yard line.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and field goal ends the game. You turn the TV off if they're up 17. He's like, nope. Watch this.

I said that I'm gonna go for it. It was exactly that. My theory was that some Amazon executive got in his headset and said, hey, I like it. People are gonna tune out if this is a 3-score game. We'll give you $100 grand if you just—

Andy Jassy's like, make the call.

That's right.

Make the call.

Yeah.

I thought, I thought it was a truly, truly atrocious Liam Cohen game. Yeah. But I'm willing to give him benefit of the doubt 'cause it was in London. Yeah. 'Cause I think people go to London, they just, they lose their minds. Jalen Carter was incredible in that game for 2 hours. You knew it wasn't sustainable and then he finally slowed down. Hurts had a couple good throws, but for the most part, this Eagles offense, what do you think they are on 3-and-outs this year?

How many? I know going in—

Percentage.

Oh, I don't know. Going into the week they had the most, but—

3-and-outs, if you—

25.

From 0% to 100%.

I'll say 25. So you could, you could, I could say wow after you give your answer. Go ahead.

25.

Oh, 45.

45. Higher.

Wow. All right.

That seems unremarkable. I don't know.

45 is not a lot.

45%. All right. I listen, if you played 5 games of professional football and almost half the time you've had a 3 and out.

Oh, 45 of your drives. I'm sorry. I missed it.

45%.

Oh yeah. That's bad. Yeah, that's bad.

Well, we made this joke a couple years ago. I talked about it with House on Thursday. It, I think it was Doug Pederson.

Mm-hmm.

We had a listener, somebody made the, I think it was a listener emailed in a joke about that Doug should, or maybe we came up with it, that Doug should have to ride. He gets fired in London and then they send him for a middle seat home and he's just riding coach in the middle.

Was it Lombardi? Yeah.

Maybe it was Lombardi.

It was Lombardi, yeah.

Middle seat Doug. And that became a thing. And I felt like Sirianni could be middle seat Sirianni.

Oh yeah, yeah.

It's like, hey, yeah, that's it. And listen, you're not gonna be on the team playing. Here's your ticket. Virgin Airlines, it's coach.

Sorry. Now, does he ride with Big Dom or Big Dom is free of— No, he stays around.

I mean, Big Dom gets involved, it might end up being like Tommy walking into thinking he's getting made.

That's right. The plastic's on the floor.

Big Dom's gonna take you out for a nice dinner. Oh great, where is it?

Yeah, he doesn't sit in that middle seat. Yeah.

A miracle teaser cover though. Miracle.

I think you texted after the Eagles field goal, you're like, this, this is my worst loss in 3 years or something.

Right?

Yeah.

I felt that way.

Yeah.

I was like, I, I don't, they've dominated this game.

Really?

They're gonna lose it. We're gonna take a break and then we're gonna talk about the 3rd coach that is in major trouble. Jim Harbaugh, right after this. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. It is your most rewarding season ever on FanDuel. How rewarding are we talking? More rewarding than an 18-point comeback, maybe even more rewarding than an O-lineman catching a touchdown. I always enjoy when that happens. In this NFL season, that feeling doesn't stop on the field. Look out for the all-new FanDuel Rewards Club, exclusive offers, surprises, and more. I was just in Boston playing around with this stuff. Somehow I'm level 4 in the Rewards Club. Thank you, FanDuel. That's great. Every week, check the FanDuel app to see what's waiting for you. Make this your most rewarding season ever with FanDuel. Download the app to get started. FanDuel, play your game. 21+ select states or 18+ DC or Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra, the official beer sponsor of the NBA and legitimately my favorite beer. I was drinking them at Fenway Park actually recently.

It's tip-off and I can't wait to see in person. The best thing for me is when the new guys come in the league and you get to go check 'em out for the first time. Like when Wemby came in a couple years ago. We have a great rookie class this year. I wanna see Cam Boozer in person. I wanna see D'Vonza in person. I wanna see Darren Peterson in person. I'm excited for all of these dudes. And I think that's my favorite thing about when the season starts, those first couple months when the newer guys start coming in and then getting to see the old guys too, your old friends. Like Curry is a, is a can't miss. I gotta go see him in person every year. So I think it's reuniting with old people you loved watching and then seeing the new blood too. But when I'm at the game, Nothing better than watching one with a Michelob Ultra, uh, a superior light beer with a distinctly smooth taste. Uh, gets nice and cold. Just good times. Good news for fans. Michelob Ultra giving you a chance to watch the game you love this season in person with courtside tickets and more.

So enter now at michelobultra.com/courtside and maybe, maybe you'll luck out. Mick Love Ultra Courtside 26 to 27, no purchase necessary, open to US residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2026, ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at mickloveultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. So Chang made, uh, he made a sweet beef stew and then he made a, like, more of a Korean spicier beef stew. And it was delicious. And we ate it at lunch, and then I ate it 2 hours ago. And I'm like you, you're on medication. I feel like I've been medicated by beef stew and David Chang's yelling, the combo, screaming at the TV.

I'm pulling the curtain back here. You took some shine off because you're still sweating off the stew, but I like it.

Yeah, no, it was— I forgot to put the AC on in the studio. I did. I'm less shiny now, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, very youthful.

Yeah.

Thank you. Chargers-Broncos is our other coach in peril. Denver stinks through without getting anything from Bo Nix.

Right.

It's, it feels like a miracle when he completes a 3rd and 8. Today he had 16 for 27 for 123. They were 1 for 12 on 3rd down. Waddle and Sutton, 4 for 37 combined. These were guys, what did Waddle go for? High 20s in fantasy?

Oh yeah.

31. Something like that. And Sutton was, you know, also a good—

Have we figured out which plays Sean Payton's calling? Did he announce which ones? It's the only—

the ones that they scored on or something good happened.

The ones that work. Yeah.

Yeah. So Denver's 3-2 and just hanging around with no offense whatsoever. I don't understand it.

And then not even the second half comeback. And you know how I know that? 'Cause I had Denver minus, plus a half in the second half and they lost by 1 in the second half and still won the game. It's so stupid. But I, I, I don't, I don't know. I mean, you might be right about this hardball thing. Does he want out?

Well, first on Denver really quick.

Yeah.

They just don't seem like they have it. I don't know what the fix is for them. Mm-hmm. They're just not explosive enough. They don't seem like they know what their offense is. Nix just doesn't throw the ball over. Like, they thought they got Waddle because partly 'cause he was really good at like catching balls over the middle and slants, and he was gonna— and then Sutton would be on the outside with the other guys they have, and they would have this inside, and they don't have it at all. And the running game's like pretty blah. They have this really good offensive line that they can't seem to protect them.

Right.

I just don't get it. I don't know. The team just does not feel— a lot of the stuff that happened last year, what we're learning with this season, feels like you just throw it out the window and it's like a reset button and a completely new season. Set of teams.

But I, I, 'cause I looked at this too, were they the same team last year but just scored a few more points? 'Cause it's one of my favorite stats that they were behind in 15 games last year.

Well, I think the schedule was worse for them last year.

Yeah.

But I mean, who was worse for them than playing the Chargers this week with 5 backup linemen and, you know, the, the 6th, 7th, and 8th receivers on the team? I can't imagine they played many worse teams than that last year. They barely won this game. Like, this seemed like they were gonna blow the game for 2 hours and then— Yeah.

Oh, I know.

Snuck it out. So, and they were favored by 3.5, right?

Yeah.

It was 3.5. Didn't seem like—

Yeah.

Didn't seem like they were gonna cover that one for a while. They finally did. Herbert was sacked 5 times. They had 3 turnovers and it felt worse than that. He just was getting the shit kicked out of him. It really feels when you're watching like it's gonna be his last game of this season that something bad's gonna happen and he's gonna take the wrong hit. And then it finally happened in this game. Yeah. Got up, kept going. And you know, when I was growing up in New England, we had Jim Plunkett. That was like the first quarterback I knew who just got the shit kicked out of him for, right, the first 7 years of my life. To the point that, you know, they traded him to the Niners. The Niners waived him. Like he was almost outta the league because he just got hit too much. And it feels like Herbert's heading to that.

Plunkett won a Super Bowl though, didn't he?

He, he got left the league. Like he was out, went back to the Raiders, was a backup. Yeah. had this career resurgence. Not saying that's how it's gonna play out for Herbert, but you can take too many hits. It happened with Bledsoe in 1999 and 2000. You know, it changes how you quarterback after a while.

I don't feel like we defend him a lot, but I might be done like even giving him a shred of defense. And I, I get the offensive line like Slater and Ault, they're, they're, they never play, they do play, but he's, the throws are just bad and it's just, I, I know the, the talent's not there really anymore, but I, I just, he reminds me of this guy Munoz on the Mariners.

I don't know.

We gotta get that in every week.

All right. I'm glad we kept the streak alive. They're 0-5. They play at KC next week, bye week at the Rams, Houston.

Yeah.

Really does not, it feels like that is probably 0-8 and even worse, their Arizona's only win and now Arizona is tanking. So that hurts. McDaniel, I think I wrote down he's gonna be either in the Big 12 or the Patriot League in 10 months. And then Harbaugh's legacy, I think we all thought he was an incredible hire, and I know I did. Incredible hire. Yeah. Change— culture changer. And now his legacy is starting to shift to guy who got banned from college football, who the guys from the Ringer Fantasy Football Show compare him to Joe Biden.

Wow.

And that's, that's, that's where he is in 2026. They cut to him on the sidelines and it looks like he's trying to catch flies in his mouth. He's just like—

It, you're right. It doesn't help the Biden comparison when, when they ask him, oh, it's still going. Has he got any, did he get any flies?

It's just, he's just out of it.

And they asked him what, all right, when you're 0 and 5, what's the message? And he said, I don't know. I don't know. He doesn't know.

But that's like, is that, is that his dad? No, no, that's actually Jim Harbaugh. He's, he's just flatlining on the sidelines.

Is it worse that the fact that he could have won 3 of these games? They could have won 3 of these games, right?

I don't, I never felt in any of them they were in position to win, but I, I never felt this week, I never ever felt watching like it almost was, was more the other team like, oh man, are they really gonna screw this up?

Yeah.

It wasn't like the Chargers were doing anything magical or great or anything.

I don't know. You know what's good about it? Like even the announcers aren't— I like Ross Tucker a lot. He was with Ian Eagle and he's like, yeah, he's good. He's, he's very good. And he's like, he, he has that like Aikman, like just disapproval, like disappointment. Yeah. Disgust is like, yeah. Oh man, look, look at this line. The offensive line, they have no idea what they're doing right now. They have no idea what they're doing right now. And he says, Herbert, yeah, this is like, no, he's just gonna do a hard count. Like, Like everyone's disgusted with the Chargers.

Well, they had 4 rookie offensive linemen.

Yeah.

And instead of simplifying the offense, like they came out in the second half and they ran this thing where, where Herbert was pretending to throw to the left and then whirled around and threw this bubble screen and like into like 5 guys and it worked, but wasn't exactly great. I got an email from Jabbar from Massachusetts who wonders if We're watching the sequel to Obsession happening with Justin Herbert, that he did the one wish willow to start dating Madison Beer because he's a shy guy and really wanted to date her.

Wow.

And he said, I wish Madison Beer would love me more than anyone else in the world. And now he's condemned to never win a football game. It did make me think. It made me ponder. I do like that movie.

They should ask Harbaugh about that. He would know.

I don't even— like, with Herbert, If they did put him on the trade block, which they won't, but if they did, I, I don't even know what his value would be.

Hmm. That's a good question. And Trey Lance is out, right? Like, I'm trying to think of like, even like, like benching him at this point.

Well, no, clearly he'd be worth a couple first-round picks as a reclamation project. But heading into this season, yeah, you had Jordan Love, Herbert, Purdy. Sure. Were kind of all together. You would've said, you could've argued about which one do you think is the best one? Who's gonna have the best year this year?

Mm-hmm.

Everybody liked those guys in fantasy. And now he feels like he's, you know, free-falled backwards. And the only thing you can say in his benefit is like, we have watched this with people like Trevor Lawrence.

Mm-hmm.

Where, you know, where there were moments where it just seemed like it was never happening.

Oh no, no. Trevor Lawrence, clearly, you think clearly a couple number 1 picks at this point. I mean, it just gets worse and worse. I mean, you really have to buy into this offensive—

I don't know about the contract stuff.

It's offensive line. You really have to 100% buy into if he has a decent offensive line, he's gonna be gangbusters.

I'm not sure that's— Well, his receivers are bad too.

Yeah, that's no good either. That's the other thing Russ Tucker said. Yeah, he is like, how is he gonna come back with these receivers with 1 minute left?

No, and the one time Vidal had that one explosive play, And it was almost like you forgot that they could have explosive plays. There are moments when he's like turning the corner, like they ran a design draw with him at one point. He turned the corner, he was running like a gazelle. Yeah. And, and then, you know, 5 plays later he's just staring down somebody, throwing right to the cornerback.

Yeah. He's not afraid of the position. There are a few guys that seem, you know, a little out of it.

Taking too many hits and his confidence is shaken. And that's that. You know whose confidence is not shaking, Sal? Go ahead.

Oh, here we go.

Drake Maye. Drake Maye, you owe an apology.

Oh, stop. I'm not doing this week to week.

Drake Maye, you should recant your words. Drake Maye, you were wrong. 26 for 34, 374 yards, 4 TDs, 4 25-plus passes. And, uh, my take, which I said last week and I'm gonna triple down on this week, I think he was having a confidence issue. And I think Vrabel and McDaniels completely changed the personality of this team last week and this week.

Mm-hmm.

And they're going for 4th downs until the cows come home. And basically until his balls dropped back to where they were before. They were just like, we're gonna be aggressive. You don't have a choice. We're doing this. They ran a lot of motion with him. last week. They did some this week and they're just basically trying to make him stop thinking and just start playing again. He threw the best collection of deep, intermediate, and short. Like he was just awesome. He was so good. Love this scrambling, everything. I was very proud of him.

I'm excited for you. 5 touchdowns, 400 yards, 5 touchdowns total. He's back. No matter what happens the rest of the year, he is back, back, back.

Look at that. 43 fantasy points.

I love this last week. What was the line? Like 2.5, 3.5, I guess 5.5. I was like, this is stupid. It should be 5.5. Enough with the Raiders. You got revenge. You have a very underrated home field advantage.

Missing both of our starting cornerbacks.

They're listing names of guys you would— no one's ever heard of some of these cornerbacks.

I was worried about this game.

Yeah, I don't know. How do you get the Raiders and Jets back to back after coming in first last year? What is going on here?

3-1 Raiders.

Yeah, it's still— it was, you know, I don't know. He still does take some dumb sacks. I don't think it's as magical as, as you remember it.

I listen, he was gunslinging it again and he has his confidence back. That's all that matters. And the team in general just seems to now feel like the last year's team again. I don't know if it'll be last, but this team had a malaise in the offseason, the first 3 games of the season where it just felt like—

What happened in the offseason?

They were the year from hell candidate.

Yeah.

That has now been passed to somebody else and now they're 3-2. And if the Bills lose tomorrow night, They're gonna be in first place in the AFC East. Now granted, it's mid-October and there's a lot of football to be played, but they're, they're looking good. They lost Will Campbell today. They lost Tre'Von Henderson. I don't know how badly hurt Will Campbell is, but the first-round pick came in and was kind of lights out. Yeah, at left tackle. Right. So we'll see.

Campbell's a knee thing, a knee strain or something?

It was like either knee or ankle. They were pretty quiet about it after.

All right.

And then, uh, Henderson. And then AJ Brown should be back at some point pretty soon.

So it's good. You have no excuses. You gotta go, you gotta get to the Super Bowl again. I don't see how it doesn't happen.

I will say this.

What's your total here?

Yeah, I am— that's— I don't think you could look at a single AFC team and say, I'm scared of those guys.

Sure.

Like, that's just the conference this year.

Yeah.

You know, the best teams are in the NFC West. But whatever the case, they did a great job the last 2 weeks rebuilding him. 'Cause it was bad. It was bad in Boston. I was in Boston. It was bad. But this was all anyone talked about. What the fuck happened to this guy? And sometimes that can move in a direction that you can't get back.

10.5. Did you ever think 3 weeks ago, like how much would you have bet on under 10.5 3 weeks ago? 'Cause now it's even odds.

I mean, their playoff odds to make it. Yeah. I think we're plus 150, something like that, 2 weeks ago.

Right.

140. They were definitely positive. Chargers, I think we can lock them into 4th place. They're -400 on FanDuel. To come in 4th place.

Yeah.

I could give you KC, Denver, Vegas, Chargers as the 1, 2, 3, 4, and that's +145. Or I could give you KC, Vegas, Denver, Chargers, and that's +338. Which one do you like?

Uh, well, I'll go KC-Denver. I, I predicted this would be the slide for Vegas. This is what's gonna happen. I just think, you know, the 2 tight end thing is nice, but you don't— I mean, Gente had what, 27 yards rushing? I think that's gonna be a problem the rest of the way. They had like 38 yards rushing the whole game.

And he has— I have him in fantasy. He has the red flag next to him every game.

Yeah.

And you just don't know if he's playing or not. You just have to look the whole time and make sure you don't start Mike Washington. I can't, I can't say it's great. Um, so you're not gonna apologize to Trick May? That's fine.

We're gonna do this every week.

You beat the Raiders.

I'll apologize if they beat the mighty Jets next week.

I, I felt like, because Stephen A had to apologize 2 different times this week. Yeah, yeah, I feel like I have to apologize. Like, you know, I wanna, I wanna be like a, like a brother to him. Like, you know, we're in the same business.

Yeah.

All right, so I talked in Texas Chainsaw Massacre Uh, we were talking about serial killers, and I did a whole thing about how I thought Ed Gein was overrated.

Mm-hmm.

'Cause he, he only has 2 murders. And it's like, if you're a serial killer, you know, I want you to put up numbers. Ed Gein, I discounted your murder total, and I have to live with that. You have only 2 documented murders. Mary Hogan, 1954. And Bernie's word in 1957.

What the hell?

But it's clear, talking to many, many people over the last 72 hours, that Ed Gein killed many more people than that.

Okay.

There were many unsolved murders in the 1950s that Ed Gein almost definitely did.

So I'd like to apologize to Ed. You know what? I don't think it's enough. I don't think it's enough. I don't accept the apology. I don't think anyone on social media is gonna accept that apology. Okay. You have to go face to face with Ed Gein.

Ed Gein, I'm just, I gotta rethink this. All right. More games. Packers-Bears. Speaking of quarterbacks that we were worried about, Jordan Love, the Mad Bomber. Amazing. 25 completions for 367. Mm-hmm. 4 40-plus-yard passes. And the Bears-D-Backs got crushed in Lambeau, a game that a lot of sharps liked. I stared— I— we needed our 5th ringer 107 pick today, and I did not like anything left on the board and stared at all these different games and couldn't— just couldn't. And finally I was like, fuck it, Bears, Ben Johnson, I'll ride with him. I don't like how the Packers look, and almost immediately regretted it.

But, um, it's so weird because if you blur your eyes, this was an easy game. right? But I, I can get why people don't trust the Packers, but the backup, or maybe the backup to the backup coming into Lambeau, you know, Packers lost in foolish ways against the Bears last year. And all you're really hanging it on is Ben Johnson and that handshake at the end of the game. So I thought, I thought we could keep, we could see this coming.

I didn't see 5 turnovers coming, but I'd also like to apologize to Ed Gein because I, this kind of cradle robbing, like, like going into the graves, grave, grave robbing, whatever it's called.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I said it was, you know, it was really weird and I considered that to be more of like just a weird thing, but it is possible he was robbing bodies that he had murdered.

Okay.

So again, I'd like to apologize to Ed again. Tyson Bajan and Lambo.

Ed Too Tall Gein is getting a lot of, a lot of airtime today.

I said I discounted the guy. Tyson Bagent and Lambeau. I think he lost Tyler Huntley, grabbed his favorite backup. Who are the favorite backups now? Mariota, who just gets hurt all the time.

Yeah.

Tyler Huntley, who every once in a while plays and looks like a spitting image out of a factory of like a Lamar replacement. And who else do you like?

Well, I like Tua. What do you mean like, like for different, like the—

oh, Tua.

I mean, Tua is fun. Tua is really fun.

Tua, Tua, you like?

Shedeur Sanders is always fun. I don't, You know, we'll get there with some of these guys.

So you took nothing from that Packers-Bears game?

No, I just, uh, that offense was, you know, Marshon Lloyd, I know his numbers weren't great, but the just seeing him get in the end zone, like you talk about, like a confidence builder, like that's fun. He did that twice. These 50-50 balls to Watson and Golden, like I don't know what's real. Like that secondary seems so bad this week. I don't think you would see that again. But yeah, Love was 360, plus and 2 touchdowns on winners. I'm just, this was a huge game, huge game for Green Bay. They have, they have it, they still have it tough the next 5 or 6 weeks. They have at the Lions, at the Pats, at the Rams, the Bills. That's all in the next month and a half.

It turns out predicting stuff is hard.

Yeah.

'Cause the same logic you would use for the Packers, like they can't be that bad again. This is a great spot for them. They need this game, blah, blah, blah, is the same logic you would use for New Orleans who got their ass kicked by Minnesota.

You know what we need? We need like a howl or somebody like, as soon as we get over our skis about something, as soon as we say like, oh, Dak, look at Dak at 14 to 1 for MVP. Like we need someone to nudge us. Like if your wife has, has like 4 Negronis at dinner and you're double dating and, and she starts talking about like her, how wild she was in college. Like, all right, hey, come on. Don't, don't, this is gonna come back to haunt you.

Something that's happened to you?

What?

No, no, no.

Nothing like that.

4.

The girl.

Brewster, Brewster was talking shit about her college days.

No, we need someone to nudge us to not stop talking about, 'cause we went too far ahead of ourselves with the Bears and, and underestimated the Packers.

Well, they can stop us right now because here are things I wrote down about Brock Purdy. Yeah, clearly the MVP, top 5 QB I trust right now, maybe top 3, reaching Mahomes levels. These are things I have in my notes. Yeah, so maybe Gahow can tase me.

Tase him, Gal. I mean, this is, uh, this is Ed Gein part 2, I think, for you.

Yeah, I don't know. I'd like to apologize to Brock Purdy. No, he was— goddamn, Purdy's good.

Yep.

I had Seattle -3. They're up 26-21 after completely fucking up the first half, including doing a zone block handoff with 13 seconds left at the end of the first half from their own 1 that took forever to develop, and the guy fumbled it. All of a sudden it was a touchdown in the end zone. It was the dumbest fucking other than all the other stuff we've already talked about today. Just sneak, go forward 2 yards, sneak again, kill some time and punt. And yet they're up and Purdy and Mike Evans just started cooking and you just couldn't, you just felt in the moment watching it, you're just like, fuck, they're not gonna be able to stop these guys. There's not a lot of QBs that make you feel that way.

I was looking at Mike Evans' injuries going into this week and I was like, I'm betting his under total yards. Like what? We might as well take advantage of these 49ers injuries when we can. I know you can't bet like, yeah, under snaps for a tackle or something, but they lose like 4 guys.

He's a miracle.

He's like 33. He's been doing this forever and he does the same thing. It's like he's, like he's posting up an 11-year-old, you know, the way he makes these catches. Like, yeah, just get me the ball. I'll tip it to myself with one hand. It's, it's stupid. But now Purdy, we said this, if they won in Seattle, he'd be MVP, the lead guy. He's +250.

Allen +350. +250. I'm not allowed to— oh no, I am allowed to bet on it. What? I was kidding. 'Cause NBA, I can't pick.

Oh, I see.

Yeah. He's been the guy that jumped out the first 5 weeks from a consistency standpoint.

No doubt.

Other people have had good games, but I think every game you watch, I haven't seen him have a bad game yet. Goff's been really good too. I think, I don't think Goff's thrown a pick this year. Isn't Goff like 12 touchdowns, 0 picks? Yeah.

That might be right. I mean, they were, they were fantastic today. That was their best Lions game, I think, since the Barry Sanders days. What we watched today.

So if you're a Niners fan, I think you're starting to feel a little team of destiny-ish. This is outrageous. Like this Purdy thing where you get him with the last pick in the draft and then it becomes this big conundrum of how much do you pay this guy? What's his ceiling? The guy has gotten better every single year.

Yeah.

Like he, he's one of the best quarterbacks in the league. It's not arguable anymore. And you hit the jackpot with that. So you don't have to worry about that. You signed Mike Evans, who, you know, you put together this Mike Evans, Deebo, McCaffrey injury-prone team that on paper seems like all of them are getting hurt. Evans has been unbelievable. He even taunted the guy at the— you saw that at the end when he went to look at the guy's jersey.

Yeah.

Who was taunting him.

Dibs. That was great. Yeah.

And it, every game they lose somebody, it just doesn't matter. It just bounces off them. Next guy comes up. They have beaten 3 of the 4 conference champions from last year already in 5 weeks that we had the Final Four teams.

Nuts.

And, and they win all kinds of games. Like this game today, they said 38 points off turnovers, most since 2017 in an NFL game. And of course the Niners are gonna win. They'll win. They remind me of some of the early Belichick Pats teams we had in the '03, '04, the 2nd and 3rd teams where it's just like if the game's close, you feel like the, you start to feel like they're gonna win it. And I don't know, I'm just amazed. And I should have known. I said to House on Thursday, I was like, I just don't wanna mess with them anymore. I don't wanna have the opposite side. But I didn't like enough games this week. Took Seattle -3 and they did not take care of business.

Well, I think like we got, we have to get rid of the, get, get the injury name outta our mouths with the not, it just doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. As long as the MVP leader is in there, He'll figure out. And he got sacked today. Like, they got to him a couple times. They did. Doesn't get, doesn't get fazed at all, you know. He really is, uh, he puts it all together. I mean, he and Darnold had almost identical stats if you reverse the touchdowns and interceptions, but I had so much more confidence in Purdy.

Oh yeah.

And, you know, and yeah, Darnold has the better receiver there too, but it didn't matter.

I wrote down Seahawks Sam Darnold panic level right now has to be like 7.2.

Yeah.

Where you just feel like you hit lightning in the bottle. We saw this happen when we were in college. Mark Grippin was really great for one year.

Right. Remember?

Sure. One year where he was just, just completing everything.

Killed everyone. Yeah.

And just was like the mad bomber for, and then it was gone.

Mm-hmm.

But if I'm a Seahawks fan, I had that stupid end zone fumble. We, we gave 21 first half points. They had 31 total yards of drives and got 21 points out of it. So that was stupid. JSN, who I thought got— I don't know if he got concussed, but I thought he definitely hit his head on that final drive.

Yeah.

And took a hit. Didn't seem— didn't seem great, but they stayed in and then ends up dropping that pass that he's caught all the time.

And I was like, of course, of course this guy's not 100% right now.

He catches that in his sleep.

He's gotten, he's gotten too good because he's expected to catch everything now. He would've had to climb the ladder like 6 feet. And everyone's like, how did he drop that? Like, that, that would've been a great catch.

Well, very similar to the Wes Welker catch in the 2nd Pats-Giants Super Bowl when Brady threw it and he had to jump up and you do that thing with your hand and you're up in the air. It's a really hard catch. Oh, okay.

That's about Wes Welker. All right.

Well, I had to bring up the Pats. Yeah. But then Cooper Kupp seems like he gets the first down. And now we have this rule. I thought I knew all the rules, but this new one where you're jumping outta bounds but the— there's this invisible window in the sideline, and if the ball crosses the sideline, it's out where it was. But I've also seen them call it the other way. I don't know what to believe anymore.

Is there really no way soccer's just got better technology on this than we do?

I thought we had chips in the ball.

Yeah, it should be something with the— where the— I don't know, like a pillow sideline where it would be, because I guess that's how he got it. I did too. I, I don't know what you would call it on the field. I, I get that it's Maybe hard to overturn, but I thought he got it too. I would've said he got it.

Well, the guy was 10 feet away facing the play.

Right, right.

And had no idea if he got it or not. But he was like, he didn't get it. And that was it. It was done. So if I'm a Seahawks fan, I'm mad where we are and I'm worried about Darnold, but ultimately like, let's just get a running back. What are we doing?

Yeah.

You know, Wilson, Hulani, like hoping Zach Charbonnet comes back from a torn ACL. Like, let's just trade for Tyler Allgeier. The fucking Cardinals are having a fire sale right now. Let's just go get him. We just need one battering ram running back for situations exactly like the one that cost them the game today when they're on the 1-yard line and they have to hand the ball to Hulani, who's, you know, 5'7, £140. Yeah. So just go, go get Tyler Allgeier. Give him the 5th rounder.

What about Ed Gein? Is Ed Gein available?

Get him.

He has some tough carries.

Do you want me to apologize to Ed one more time? I don't know if he's watching.

I'll apologize for him when he makes the practice squad of the Seahawks.

Yeah. I just, I, I feel like I don't want Stephen A. to be the only one that apologizes. Oh, God forbid. The, oh, we have Steelers-Colts.

Yeah.

Pittsburgh's now 3-2, well on their way to being a mediocre 7th seed in the AFC. Can't wait. Can't wait to see Rodgers in the playoffs again. Colts 2-3 on their way to being 7-10. And Jaylen Warren was great and this game really wasn't worth discussing. The Colts just aren't very good.

I don't think they are either. I, Jaylen Warren was great. I, that's the only thing I'll say. He's great. Like if he could bust out in these games, it's sort of a different offense. He had 188 total yards the last 3 weeks. He's had over 300 on the ground. So, but I don't, I'm with you. I don't think the Colts are very good. I didn't see Carly Rae Ursae there. Was she on the sideline eating Pramantis or didn't see her?

That became a whole thing. People, people love to pull other narratives into that story other than that. It's just weird that an owner's online on the sideline taking notes.

Yeah.

standing next to her coach. Like, I'm gonna think that's weird, whoever it is.

You're not gonna apologize for that. It's all— it's Ed Gein.

Apologize to Ed Gein. That's, that's one.

You'll have like, those will be like cross-offs.

Yeah.

I wonder if like she approached Steichen and said, hey, Coach Steichen, hey Shane, we have more first downs, more passing yards. We're winning time of possession. We haven't turned the ball over and we're losing by double digits with no time left on the clock. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I'm just trying to learn. I just wanna, I just wanna learn.

Shane, we're down 16 and the game ended.

Yeah. It's all over.

Lions-Cardinals. Lions are now 3-2 with a bye next week and their DBs are coming back. Yeah. Oh, I wrote this down. Goff's 1,485 yards, 12 TDs, 0 interceptions. And, and they're, it's funny watching them, especially in blowouts. They're clearly trying to get different records for Gibbs, which is great if you have 'em in fantasy.

Right.

Anytime they're within the 4, 3, 4 yards. He's getting the first carry every time. In garbage time, they keep him in.

Their starters were in 3 drives too many.

Like, he's trying to get 50 points, trying to send a message. So that was fun.

I like it. I mean, it's an enjoyable watch.

I like it too.

Like, they're, they're, it was amazing. They were expected to beat a bad team by almost a touchdown and they actually went above and beyond expectations and they did it.

Did a nice job.

Fantasy watch.

I do wanna, and then you have Yeah, I know the Cardinals who gave up 148 points in 4 games. So there you go.

Well, can we just say Jeremiah Love, dumb pick. You definitely wasted this year, probably gonna waste 2 years. So congratulations getting the extra year, whatever that signing, but stop doing that, teams. You're not, you're not ready to get a running back in the first round. Don't do it.

Yeah, you, you, you probably would've been good with, with James Conner and signing Allgeier and you've been okay.

Yeah.

The real problem is that they blew the Harrison pick apparently, 'cause they, they traded him. This game did lead to the single greatest moment in Ringer Gambling Show slash Ringer Wise Guys history. Love it. 3 years ago when we were doing the Sunday show, I texted you that we had to come up with a crazy parlay.

Oh, this was your terrible idea.

Damn. Yeah. I'm gonna take credit for it.

Yeah. If you wanna apologize for anything, it's this. Yeah.

It was like, everybody should pick a prop. We'll put 'em together and, and then you guys decide to call it the family meal. Everybody brings something. I think we did it for Thanksgiving first.

Yeah.

Touchdown score.

Yeah. Yeah.

Touchdown prop. Everybody brings it. You try to hit it and the goal would be it has to be at least 20 to 1.

Mm-hmm.

And you guys have done this for 2 and a half years and not hit any of them. And then today the first 3 go down really quickly. All we have left is Trey McBride. On the Cardinals touchdown and it's 43 to 1 touchdown. White guy who looks like a tight end on the Cardinals.

Yep.

No, it's Quinteriano.

Tegan Quinteriano.

Quinteriano touchdown. Oh, that's not Trey McBride.

Big buff white guy. Yep.

Later, another white tight end touchdown. Oh, he did it. No, it's Quinteriano again, whatever his name is. 2 touchdowns for him.

Yeah.

And then, uh, Arizona's down 100 points. McBride's still in the game for some reason. And tell them what happened next.

Just like a, a, I don't even know what you would call the, the route because McBride's back was completely to us somehow, but the ball was thrown from the middle of the field and he makes the catch. It's 4th down. It's our only goal.

30.

Yeah. They throw it. 2 minutes left. Yeah. By the way, McBride screwed us last week. Otherwise we would've had a 30-to-1. Otherwise we went 3 for 4 and he gets it. He makes a— I don't know that I've seen it. He, his body turned completely. He climbed the ladder. He tipped himself, grabbed it, somehow got his feet down. I was like, they're gonna call one of his feet out even if though they were in. God bless. 40-to-1 odds. We hit it. We, we made up almost 2 weeks worth of, 2 years worth of losing with that one parlay. It just goes to show you gambling's the best.

Gambling's the best. This is like in the, when they make the movies where people gamble and they win and everybody celebrates.

Yes.

Like they're in the control room at Apollo 13.

Right.

The thing is on FanDuel, when you do those profit boosts, if you did like $25, $10, whatever, and you did that bet, that's like a 70-to-1 bet and you hit 3 of 'em. It wasn't even 11 o'clock AM yet. And I think you had 2 or 3 of 'em anyway.

Yeah.

It was very—

Bowers and Gesicki was the family meal.

We finally ate. We finally ate in a family meal. We finally did it.

Yeah.

Yeah. Browns-Jets really quickly was terrible. God decided Cleveland wouldn't be, wouldn't be 4-1. Browns missed an extra point. Browns are still up 2 with 4 minutes left in the bad weather. Botch a punt snap. Jets end up winning. This game had 15 punts and the botched snap was the 16th. Right. So we're not gonna talk about it because if you have 15 punts in a game, well, I'll just say it's so funny. We're ignoring it.

We listed the coaches to be fired. Aaron Glenn is vindicated for a little while now. Like, Is it because the defense is decent now?

I was thinking about how we make fun of coaches every week, and I did the single worst coaching decision I think I've ever done in fantasy football this week.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was on the plane flying back from Boston last night, and I, it's a, it's always longer to go east from west, and I'm just tinkering with my lineup and looking up stuff, and I become convinced that Roman Wilson is gonna have an unbelievable day against Indianapolis. I'm real, I'm Googling, I'm watching Celtics-Sixers preseason, I'm watching college football on my iPad, and I'm Googling Roman Wilson and Googling quotes about him and getting more. And then I'm Googling Parker Washington, who I also have.

Right.

And it's like not same targets. They're having trouble. They're spreading the ball around. Philly's good against receivers. I do the all-time overthink. I decide to start Roman Wilson, who gets hurt in the first quarter of the game. And to make matters worse, the game before, Jags-Eagles, Parker Washington had 28 points.

Oh yeah.

And I ended up losing by 20 and I would've won if I just kept Parker Washington in. And I was so— but this must be how Sirianni feels.

Yeah. But it's all clock management that hasn't, you know, you weren't, you weren't asked to land the plane and make this decision to, you know, I would say this was worse.

I started Roman Wilson over Parker Washington. Why did I do that?

Let me ask you, when you look at the projected, because that's what you ultimately look, look at, right? Projected score.

Yeah.

And if it's 5.6 to 5.8, how many times outta 10 are you going with 5.8 regardless of anything?

Right. Well, this one was like 9.4 and 6.8 or something. Washington was higher and I just—

Oh, that's, that's stupid then. Yeah, you deserve it.

Yeah, no, it was really stupid. Yeah. And I, and I lost a hench. Speaking of stupid, I wrote down this joke for Joe Burrow who had 180 yards, 4 touchdowns today against a terrible Miami team. About how he loves putting up good stats against bad teams. Joel Embiid.

Oh wow.

Oh yeah. You know, he always lights up like Washington.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like that. I don't mind that.

He looks great against these bad defenses.

He threw to 9 pass catchers. I guess that's the best you could say about it. But yeah, he had under 200 yards and, and that chase catch was 40 of the yards, right? Yeah. Ridiculous. Like it's off his shoulder pad. But on the other side, I, I, I, I'm now feeling completely bad for Malik Willis, and I have to hand it to him. I think he's trying his best. You know, it's like a fancy tight end.

By the way, they almost covered. The guy hit— fucking hit the upright.

It's a— it was a push.

Yeah, it was a push, but it was 6.5 all week, so, you know. Uh, okay, and then Minnesota-New Orleans. Uh, I don't know what to say about it. Minnesota's 5-0. Congrats. I don't— I just looked a little better this week. The Saints looked so bad on Monday, so bad, and then people love them this week, and I, I couldn't get there. But I also didn't want to take Kyler Murray. I love it. I stayed away completely.

I love the Saints. I, you know, I finally had to break down and show my wife the new, like, household budget. I keep a ledger. I'm very detail-oriented, you know, so I like to see what's set aside for each category. So it's like $1,200 a month for people, food, $600 a month for dog food, couple grand for insurance, Little League fees, all that tutoring. I try to sneak it by her. $33,000 a month betting against the Vikings. And I was like, I'm sorry, this is just what it has to be. It's gonna, someday it's gonna pay off. Good teams will beat them.

What the hell? Vikings Ponzi scheme.

I keep going against them.

Stay away.

Stay away. Just bet against them every week. Sick.

You're gonna be 15-0. Oh, you're gonna be addicted to OxyContin. It's gonna be terrible. Guess the Lions. Oh, do you wanna talk about your stupid team? You did already talked about it on the Wise Guys.

Oh, I thought we could, no, I already talked about it. I don't know. I mean, all right, let's not, I don't even know how to rank these anymore. Like the worst, most embarrassing. Yeah, like this, this is 3 a month. So we're terrible and we're favored to win the division.

I went to lunch with Zoe and her boyfriend at halftime 'cause the game was terrible and it's like Dallas is screwing around. They're gonna win. But we kind of had it on the phone. We get to the restaurant and Bucky Irving had already busted his one long. All of a sudden it was, it went from what, 10-7 to 21-10 or whatever.

Yeah. And Dak is bouncing balls.

He's getting— So glad I'm not watching this 'cause I would've been mad 'cause I had jail.

Yeah.

And something. Anyway, guess the lines. You've been, ever since you got kidney stones, you've fallen apart.

No excuses. 3-1.

3-1.

Is that what you are?

Yeah, that's what it is.

Okay.

We have 4 bye weeks that, uh, will have some fantasy implications. Miami, Cincinnati, Minnesota.

Good.

Detroit.

Thanks, guys.

So we lose Cincy and Detroit this week from fantasy.

Right.

I'm really excited not to watch Miami, but we have a, we have a half-decent Thursday night game. Seattle is at Denver.

Yep. I got exactly I'm more— you did? Oh no, I didn't. It changed. All right, go ahead.

So I guessed the lines on the plane after I researched all of Roman Wilson's last 14 months of his life.

On the plane yesterday, you guessed the lines?

I, I did a preliminary guess the lines. Okay. And then I tweaked it at 5 o'clock before sending them to Eduardo.

All right.

And this was one of the ones I tweaked initially. I had Seahawks -3. After watching them today, I downgraded it to Seahawks -2.5.

All right, good. I like hearing that. That's good for me because I had 2.5. And it was 2.5 and it went to 3.

Oof.

So we tie. You should have stayed with it.

I overthought it like Roman Wilson.

Roman Wilson, part 2.

Roman Wilson, 0 catches and a red flag next to his name a half hour into the game.

Well, maybe Ed Gein will murder him and it won't be your problem anymore.

Parker Washington, 27 points. Sunday's marquee game. Mm-hmm. It, it's not a great week. I wrote down Bills-Raiders for this.

It's not. Oh really? Oh yeah. Oh yeah, you're probably right. Well, if we don't include the night games, right? Oh no, you're right. Even if you do.

All right. I'm ready. Bills, assuming they'll probably lose to the Rams, 3-2, need a win. Raiders trying to avoid going back to even. 2 pretty lousy defenses that you can throw on. I think it'll be a fun game. I have Bills -6.

You can't say 6. Don't you have to say a half something?

No, I said Bills -6.

I said 6.5. It's 5.5.

You get it. Hmm. They Vegas zoned us.

You're teasing that bad boy. You're going through the zero bye week.

I think that goes up. Yeah. I worry about a lot of Bill Smiths. Do you have a top 5 NFL players you just worry about when you watch them week to week? 'Cause Brock Bowers is on my list.

Worry about that he's not gonna go against the fantasy.

I just worry about it. Yeah. They're just He's, they're throwing the ball all the time to him.

Yeah.

He's taking big hits. He's trying to extend plays. It's, he's like, it just feels like, I, I wouldn't say from a longevity standpoint, when you watch him, you're feeling great about it.

The guy who's had to have his bones shaved, you're feeling, you're feeling worried. Yeah.

He's already had his meniscus shaved. Yeah. I wonder if the Bills, if the Raiders lose this game, are we in Mendoza range at that point? And do you think about trading Cousins?

Oh, I don't think so. Okay, so wait, I mean, you know, you just said they're gonna come in second in the division, right?

Is Mendoza just not gonna play this year? Like, I, I never really believed that, that when they were saying that was what was gonna happen.

I know everything I read and listened to, they say that was— that's the plan. They're totally fine with not playing him.

Another London game. Goddamn, I might bet this one too.

Wait, what was the rule you circumvented? No teasing the London game?

Oh, that's, that was the rule. No tease in the London game. All right. But the tease did win this week.

They did.

Jacksonville hosting the Houston Texans and Marvin Harrison. So they got to hang out there. Houston got an easy game against Tennessee and now flying to London. Yeah. And I think the Jaguars are gonna be -2.5-point We didn't even talk about that game.

We completely skipped Texans.

Did I skip that one?

Yeah, I thought you did it on purpose.

Oh, Texans-Titans.

Texans-Titans.

It was just terrible.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, once you saw the teaser was coming in, you got it. 2.5 is right.

I said 1.5. Well, the thing with the Texans, Jags in London this week, bye week, Giants, home Chargers. So they— this is 4-4 just sitting there for them, right? Cam Ward, 5 games, 3 touchdowns, 3 picks. And the Titans have scored 58 points this season.

That's— see, I don't know if you put Saleh in there for first coach, but there's no way he survives this year, right? He's, he's completely a one and done. They get a new stadium next year. They get— what else do they have? They—

Well, they just fired a bunch of people that worked for the team. Like a bunch of higher-ups got fired last week.

Last week.

Yeah. This, this is another one where some, where somebody's kid inherited the team and doesn't seem like they know what they're doing. Right, right.

He wasn't a Madden player like us. Yeah, he wouldn't have.

He would've started Parker Washington. Watchables. I only have 2. Next week's really bad.

Yeah.

Falcons-Bears. Uh, I sent this pic to Eduardo before I watched the Falcons game and pet it.

You gotta go with it. There's a nice graphic underneath. You can't, you can't, ooh. turn up.

Well, do we think Penix— like, we think he broke ribs?

What happened? Oh, I guess that's true.

Yeah, I picked Falcons -2.5. Is there a line?

Oh, all right, well, I'm gonna win anyway. I said Bears -1.5. It's Bears -3.5.

Yeah, but is that because Penix is out?

Well, I kept my original line and you were—

I'm just saying. Yeah, Michael Penix.

I mean, it seems like he would be out and, uh, injury. Caleb Williams would be in.

Uh, oh, a rib injury ended his night, but it's nothing season-ending.

Mm-hmm.

So there you go. You know what was season-ending? Uh, Tua.

I was just gonna say, they begged him to come back.

Jesus. Falcons. All right, so you win that one. That'll be an interesting game. That, that could actually be a really good offensive game potentially.

That'll be fun.

The other one I had for watchable, which probably isn't a watchable, but, uh, I like when Cleveland's home. I think their games are fun when they're home. They're home for Baltimore. I don't know if Lamar's coming back or not. I assume he probably is. And I have the Ravens -3.5.

All right, I get this. I hit it exactly, 4.5. Yeah, now every AFC North game's kind of interesting.

That'll be a fun game. Yep. 5 fairly watchables. Patriots home for the Jets in New York.

Mm-hmm.

I have the Patriots -6.5.

I hit it exact, 7.5.

Wow, you're killing me.

Tease it. Let's go, let's go.

I don't know, man. I'm probably not teasing this.

Oh, come on.

Uh, probably.

Are you kidding me? Are you with all the—

What's your record on teases? Uh, for, for a ring around the—

I only lost one.

I'm 2 and 3.

I only lost one.

Yeah. Damn.

I lost last week with the— who do we both have? Buffalo, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I think Vrabel— here's, here's the case for—

you have to like this on a teaser. You just did 10 minutes on you making me apologize for Drake Maye and the offense is back and everything else.

Well, I wanna see what the injuries are. I think one of the cases is that Vrabel talked to the Jets and the Pats before he picked the Pats, and it felt like there was, he was a little annoyed by the Jets 'cause I remember this came up last year. So, okay. Eagles-Panthers. I guess this could have been a watchable. I don't, although I don't think the Eagles are watchable, and I would think their fans would also argue they're unwatchable.

Right.

So maybe fairly watchables is right. Eagles-Panthers in Philadelphia. Should be, should be a fun, friendly, supportive crowd.

Always. They were almost all Eagles fans today, and they seemed like they were rooting for their team, unlike the, um, stateside Eagles fans.

They did a thing that I don't like for announcing, because this happened with the Pats with JJ Watt too, where they— you have the announcer who has just an incredible amount of ties with the team involved in the game. And in this case it was Jason Kelce with, with the Eagles. And it just, I always feel like it's a bad sign if I have the other team, if I pick them or have fantasy guys.

Oh really? Interesting. Yeah.

I'm just like, oh man, now I have the announcer rooting against my team.

That's a Joe Davis knock on the Dodgers when he does the Dodger games. Yeah.

What's the knock?

Well, he's a, he's their regular announcer. And then he does the Fox games and, you know, everyone's like, how could he? God forbid he says anything good about him.

In baseball, you just can't seem to win whoever the announcer is. Right. You just get accused of hating everybody else's team. Yeah. With that said, I really felt like Joe, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver hated the Red Sox in the mid-2000s. Who didn't? I always think that.

Wait, what'd you have for this?

I have Eagles -2.5.

Yeah, you're gonna get it. I said 3.5. It is 1.5.

Imagine that. Eagles can't move the ball.

That's so weird. I guess like it, it, it's like a really, really statistically bad offense. Yeah. But CeeDee Lamb apologized. Doesn't that mean anything to you? He did apologize. Maybe they'll communicate better.

Like he said, I thought that made it worse.

This was my fault.

This was on me. It's like, it wasn't your fault. You weren't out there trying to tackle Amir Abdullah, right? For 50 yards. Like your guys should be able to get a tackle.

It's true.

Bucs-Steelers in Tampa.

Bucs-Steelers.

All right. So Baker Mayfield says, I'm ready to go. What do you do? Baker Mayfield's ready to go. He's like, I'm ready to go. Yeah, I'm ready to go. I can start. I'm ready to play.

You book him a nice massage and like, oh, what time?

Hey, how about one more week?

It's 1:00 PM on Sunday. Sorry, you gotta be there. Maybe you'll come in late. Yeah.

I think the Bucs are favored in this game. I have Bucs -1.5.

Oh wow, I got it exactly. Steelers -2.5.

Yeah, I was wrong. Wait, did I read that right? Yes, even the best can be wrong. I don't think the Steelers should be favored in this game.

They're such a weird team. I don't think, uh, I don't think it's possible to pick this correctly.

Yeah, this This is like the gambling problem. The gambling problem ad should be next to this game, just under the line.

Yeah.

Please, please talk to somebody.

It should have its own 1-800 number.

Yeah. It should be the Steelers minus 1-800 minus 205. Rams against the Cardinals. I guess this could have been a Poopfected game. It's in LA. Oh man. I should have gone higher on this. I have Rams -10.5.

That's exactly what I had. It's 12.5.

Yeah, they're not— they're gonna make you earn it on the 3-team 10-pointer.

Short week though. Brissett, due for a backdoor. I don't know.

You know who's not great? Jacoby Brissett.

Oh really?

We were talking about— how's that? I was talking about that today. He's He's better on— like, he was really good in that Chargers game, but it turns out everyone's good against Chargers. But there's a reason he's bounced around and started a bunch of games for a bunch of different teams. Like, he was, he was pretty bad today in the game.

He took some weird shots, right? Yeah. It seemed like he could do more for them.

Does some really strange things. Chiefs-Chargers is our last one. I probably went too low on this too, but I guess it is a kitchen sink game for the Chargers. Every week's kitchen sink game. Chiefs in Kansas City. I have Chiefs -8.

Oh, you got it. I said 6.5, it's 8.5. Let me add these up.

They don't want us to tease this.

6-6 including ties. Wow.

4 games left.

I'm probably taking the Chargers. It's why I can't hit an upset, you know, on the Friday show we call it Man's Best Bet. I cannot, I can't shake the Chargers. I'm gonna take 'em again, I think.

Chargers are 0-4-1 against the spread. Wow. Still have not covered a game.

Seems worse than that.

Poopfecta. Colts-Titans in Indianapolis.

Ugh.

Carly's gonna be writing notes down like, is Cam Ward— are we sure he's a starting quarterback? I'm gonna ask Shane this after the game.

Carly, Carly, you can leave your clipboard home for this one, I think.

Carly, hey Carly, just, just bring your iPad.

You have bigger problems if it's not going.

You can probably watch a shoulder in this game. The Colts aren't good either though. I, I put this right in the Vegas zone. It's in Indianapolis. I have Colts -4.5.

I got it exactly.

6.5 is the answer. Ooh, that's too high. I don't think the Colts should be favored by that many points.

Yeah, but are we in, um, are we in Dolphins territory where the Titans are just like, let's just—

It's an automatic +6.5.

That might be.

They're pretty bad.

Yeah.

Giants-Saints. I'm sorry, this is a poop-fecta game. It's in, it's in New Jersey.

They're gonna win again.

I have Giants -1.5.

So that's what I had and that's what it was. And it flipped, the tick-tacked, and it's Saints -1.5. Hmm.

There's not a lot to like about the Saints. Like they lost their left tackle. Kamara, they lost, but he's also pretty washed.

Mother Shucker, not impressive. 96 yards today.

Well, they can't block for him, right? Defense is a mess Sunday night. So you're up 1, uh, 'cause I think I'm gonna hit this next one.

I think I'm up 1. Yeah, go ahead. Yep.

Sunday night. This is actually a good game. Green Bay at home against the Dallas Cowboys.

Mm-hmm.

We haven't seen your team in 3 days. It'll be another 7, and sadly for you, it won't be another 10 after that. Oh, Packers at home. I have -2.5.

Oh, I got it right on. It's 1.5.

Oh, you beat me. Yes, you did it for Jacoby.

Back on track, Jacoby.

Did it. Packers -1.5.

I saw it opened at Dallas -1.5, and then I think people are like, no, that's really, really dumb.

Is it just the resting?

I guess. I, I was impressed with that Packers performance. I think they could bump that.

Well, they seem like they've fixed the offensive line a little bit. They did lose Hargrave today, who seems like he might be out for the season. So that's not good. But, um, but it seemed like their offensive line is in better shape. And Watson, who's this guy I feel like all of us have had in fantasy, is finally becoming like a top 5 or 6 receiver now. So every game he's making 2 big plays, like 1.5.

Watson and Golden are gonna be so open in the end zone next week. They're gonna be— it's gonna be like they're, um, receiving kickoffs almost.

Well, that's why I thought it was gonna be 2.5.

Yeah. They don't get respect there, the Packers.

Monday night, Niners home for Dan Quinn, Primal Fear Chang, and the Washington Commanders in San Francisco. I put this in the Vegas zone, -5.5 Niners.

Oh, well, we actually split it 'cause I said 9.5 'cause they're the best team in football and it's 7.5. I don't know if, uh, I don't know. Niners and Patriots done. We're good.

I just, with the, I just wanna know how many people are hurt on the Niners at this point. Just wanna see the injury report.

Doesn't matter.

Yeah.

Chang, what do you think a therapist would tell Chang? Like, you have to pick a side. Like it would, you would, you, it would behoove you to pick one side and stay with it for a year.

I think the therapist would say, David, I think you're using the Washington Commanders to trigger different emotions that you have as an outlet to just be mad. I think that's what you're trying to do.

You should sit with Dr. Melfi. That'd be good.

Chang, go to visit Dr. Melfi. It would be amazing. You tell me, you—

what do you think the Commanders should do? That's a good muffin.

Today's Parent Corner brought to you by PayPal. Holiday rush is coming. You can get ahead of it with PayPal this holiday. Shop your favorite online stores with PayPal, like eBay for collectibles, Fanatics for team gear, Walmart for electronics. Choose to pay now or pay later at checkout. Plus, with Pay in 4, you can split your purchase into 4 payments with no interest, no late fees. Shop now. With PayPal. What do you got?

Well, um, yeah, this is just more about the Icono money pit here. So my youngest Harrison, Harrison as we call him, 12 years old, his friends all surf out here and he kind of surfs but not really. He's a decent boogie boarder and that's what I try to push him towards. I'm like, oh man, you're such a good boogie boarder. But he knows what I'm doing. I'm so— he's like, shut up, Dad. I know he wants to because surfing is expensive, as I'm about to learn. So there's a surf team here at his school, and he's not good enough to be on the team, but the coach says he's gonna let him, Harrison, and a couple friends train or practice with them. And I'm like, all right, what's, what's this gonna cost me? Is this gonna be more or less than the Vikings fund that we, we set aside each month? Yeah, I have a feeling it's gonna be more. So my wife's like, oh, well, he needs a, he needs a fiber. Like, what's that? It's like fiberglass board. They call it fiber. Um, I'm like, all right, she won't tell me how much.

So that's scary when she won't even tell me how much those are. And I'm like, uh, all right, well, we're gonna have to pay for him to be on the team even though he's not on the team. She's like, no, no, he doesn't have to pay. I'm like, I guarantee for insurance purposes these kids are not going to hit their heads. Like, he has to be connected to the team even though he's not on the— oh yeah, you're right, you're right. Actually, that did— you know, we're gonna pay. So that's more loot. All right. Uh, when are they doing this? Like 3 days a week from 5 AM to 7 AM. I was like, all right, so let me get this straight. We have to pay God knows how much for this fiber, right? Tack on the insurance, and now we have to get him there at 5:00 AM so he's exhausted before school and work, and we're exhausted.

He's—

and he's not even on the team. What kind— this is an unbelievable deal, and we can't say no. Like, my father would say no to this. I wouldn't even get the word fiber out. I wouldn't get the first syllable of fiber out.

Fi.

Fi.

Yeah. Fi.

Foe gone.

That's it. That's it.

It's just a money grab. You just have to say yes because then you're the friend that's not included. And God forbid you sleep in 3 days a week. So mad about this money grab.

Well, so when I did the Parents Sports Podcast, surfing wasn't even a thing. It didn't even occur to me that to wake up at 5 in the morning with— to put your son's expensive fiberglass surfing board in the car and then drive him somewhere And then what do you do? Go get coffee?

Yeah.

Use a porta-potty? Like, you just have to stay there?

No, you go see Dr. Melfi and cry. That's what you do. She opens the doors early.

Damn. So you got roped in.

It's so early. It's so— and I, you know, you see the tides here around us, around like the— there's like tsunamis coming. This is gonna be terrible.

There needs to be a store that for high-end, seemingly high-end sports like this. Yeah. You know, like tennis rackets or, you know, it's like, oh, well, you gotta get it. Everyone else has it. But it could almost be like when you buy the fake diamond ring for somebody.

I like that.

Where it's like, no, no, this is a fiberglass one, but it's not. It's like some sort of knockoff fiberglass thing that you got in, you know, somewhere downtown LA.

I like that a lot. They should do that. You think Karen Bass will put that on her platform?

I think, I think she might. I think it's a good idea. Um, I mentioned last week about my daughter and her weird eating habits and how much she loves pickles. Yeah. And, uh, my wife— so going backwards, my wife, when she was pregnant— oh, did your wife have food fetishes for anything when she was pregnant?

Yeah, I don't know. I think it— I don't like think it hit pickles, but ice cream was definitely a big Yeah, so one of my wife's things were pickles.

So this led to a whole debate of, was it because Zoe in her belly loved pickles and was telepathically— so we were talking about that. It was— we were talking about pickles a lot.

Yeah.

She calls me, she's all excited, calls me. She's like, you're not gonna believe this. This pickle company that's in LA, Kalan and Kalan, that's the one I mentioned in the Grove, They were all excited. We talked about pickles, and they reached out to Zoe and like, we hear you love pickles. That's so great. We want to throw you a pickle party when you're in LA.

What?

And serve her all these different pickles. And you would've thought, like, she got pulled out of The Price Is Right crowd, be like, Zoe Simmons, you're now on The Price Is Right! And she's running up to hug Bob. So anyway, she comes home for Thanksgiving, and— Like, it's seeing us as like number 2, and potentially having special pickles or whatever is gonna be her number one thing.

Wait a minute. What does the pickle party entail? They just send a bunch, or is it an event? I don't know.

They're gonna have a whole thing of pickles. They want her to pick her up. She can try— I don't even know. I didn't really understand it. And I hope it was a real thing and not somebody impersonating a pickle place.

Does she have friends that like pickles too, or is this gonna be just her at this party?

No, I think she has a couple friends that like pickles. My wife will probably— could get talked into a pickle or two. Anyway, pickles.

Pickles are just— Well, can you find out for me?

Pickles can unite America.

Does Kalen and Kalen make surfboards?

Fiberglass pickle surfboards?

Just add a pickle. I mean, it's the same shape, kind of, right? So just go big with it.

Yeah. That was today's Parent Corner. It was brought to you by PayPal. Get ahead of the holiday rush. Enjoy the flexibility of checkout to pay now or pay later with no interest, no late fees. When you split your purchase with Pay in 4, shop now with PayPal. Set yourself up to shine this season. Pay in 4 subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com/payin4. PayPal Inc., NMLS 910457. I forgot to mention my dad's dog.

What happened?

Did you see the movie, the movie Room where the lady's held captive? We've talked about it. So this, my dad got this puppy and And just kept the dog like in the kitchen with gate around, you know, the kitchen. And then now she's allowed in one other room and she's basically in 2 rooms. And then they'll walk her outside every once in a while. But she's not— but she— I wouldn't say she's had a lot of life experiences 'cause, you know, my dad's a little bit older.

Right.

And Zoe has decided that he's basically like— we're like, oh, can we take Ruby out for a walk? No, no, she's afraid of trucks. You can't. There's always an excuse why Ruby can't be alone with everyone else. So Zoe started calling my dad Ruby's captor, and you can't take the dog away from the captor. And this dog now who's afraid of trucks and all these other things, 'cause the dogs. So we were arguing about this the entire time I was in Boston with my dad.

Oh, that's great.

Does the dog need more life experiences?

All this stuff. I remember you were bummed when he took on a puppy to begin with, right?

Really, really upset. He did admit that we were right and they probably shouldn't have.

Oh, really? They do love the dog.

It is a really sweet dog.

Well, invite the dog to the pickle party.

Just does not like dump trucks or trucks or anything like that.

Dump trucks.

All right, so before we go, we have to talk about our friend Paul Kohurst. I'll give you the floor.

Yeah, so I mean, this is not gonna be easy. We have this dumb fantasy league, which a lot of you are familiar with. It's me and Bill and Kevin Hench and Jon Hamm and our friend Damashek and our friends Tony and Brad. and our friend Paul Kohorst. And so usually you and I would report on who got voted out, right? So the winner every year gets to kick out somebody and it happens at the draft, right?

So this was your dumb idea that you came up with.

Great idea.

20 years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just a brilliant idea. But so we didn't make a big deal. Usually we announce and we have a story about what happened. We didn't make a big deal out of it because the guy who won last year is our friend Paul Kohorst. He had pancreatic cancer for 6 years and he announced this year That he's voting himself out. So he didn't feel like he had much time left, and that was his wish. And not nearly as funny as years past. So we were all devastated. He insisted. We were like, we don't even want to go on with it this year, or who knows, we'll see what happens. He's like, no, he insisted we continue and he wanted to follow along. So I made him my partner. This poor bastard hasn't been through enough, so he's got to now partner with me for my team. So. Um, so he, uh, he passed away this week and, um, we're all like just walking around in a haze. And, um, you know, he was the best dude. We met him as a writer's assistant at Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2003, right? He was right there from the very start, right?

Yeah, we had 2 writer's assistants. He was one of them.

Yeah.

Um, the nicest guy. Like the meanest possible comedy writers, like making fun of each other all day and And he was always a little bit hands-off because he was just such a good guy. I was like, not even, you know, he's just always nice and in a great mood. We nicknamed him the Dutch Mook.

The Dutch Mook.

And, and then it just became the Mook, and that's just— Yeah.

What happened. Yeah, we don't— I don't know how people think of writers' assistants' jobs. Maybe it's different, but this, this was— a lot of these guys were coming off The Man Show, and a lot of, a lot of jaded, crazy personalities, and the writer's assistant has to—

Big personalities.

people on schedules. So it's not a desirable position for a 2003 Jimmy Kimmel Live. But you're right, everyone enjoyed him immensely. The fellas immediately were amused by him. He did have like Dutch descent, so we call him the Dutch Mook. It just seemed to flow. The girls all wanted him to be their staff boyfriend. Remember we had staff boyfriend, girlfriend and everything?

Yeah.

He was number one. Like they used to— my cousin Mickey said we used to call him number one. We'd call him to his face, number one.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I'll say a few things about the Mook. He, he loved his team, is from the Bay Area. He was a 49ers fan. They won for him today. Good job by them. He loved the Warriors, the Sharks. In fact, he named his fantasy team the 49er Golden State Sharks. I think it was like 5 different things.

Golden State 49ers Sharks.

So we had to do, he went to the University of Oregon, would not have been happy with their performance. So he was always very cool and just very likable. And he was always like ahead of the curve with stuff. Like even Sudoku, right? Like the dumb puzzle. Like he was like, he like got people involved. He's like, no, no, no, you got to play it like this. And he like had such a funny way about him and we would make fun of him. You remember Trapped in the Closet? I had forgotten about this. The R. Kelly, when, when it was okay to talk about R. Kelly. Remember he had those videos and like, yeah, he was the one who discovered it for us. Like, he's like, you got to see this R. Kelly Trapped in the Closet.

Right.

Jimmy did a bunch of parodies. It was good. I could say a million things. He collected pictures of floss picks, like dental floss, those dental floss picks. And he would spot them everywhere. And he was endlessly entertained and confused as to where he would find them. He'd be at an ice skating rink and he'd find a floss pick on the ice and he would take a picture and then he'd want to talk to you about it. He'd be like, how did it get there? Were you skating with your gal and you remember, oh wait, I have a poppy seed stuck in my bicuspid. I gotta get it out. And he was always like so interested in such dumb stuff and we'd love him endlessly. He was a—

Also loved golf, was an excellent golfer and loved golf and all the dialogue and Tiger's run was happening when we were there.

He would win tournaments. He would, as a golfer himself, he probably could have been like a club pro at some point.

So we had that golfer personality of, yeah. Yeah.

And he wrote golf books. He ended up working for golf.com. He started me off betting player props with golf. He is like, that, that was when like Tiger was like even odds, -300 to win tournaments. Like, no, no, but you gotta bet him in the 3rd round 'cause Saturday's when he hates. I'm like, what is this? And then next thing you know, I'm watching golf all day Saturday. He'd come on Against All Odds. He'd give his picks. His analysis was excellent.

Popped on Fairway Rolling a couple times. Yeah.

We'd go on Fairway Rolling. He would take a major His best— his favorite bet was for a major to go to a playoff, which paid like +350. You know, if it's tied in regulation after 72 holes, 19 majors in a row didn't go to a playoff. I'm like, Mook, what are you doing? You're getting +350 for something. He's like, I'm telling you, it's gonna happen. Thankful. Finally it happened.

Sounds like one of your bets.

Yeah, I know. Exactly.

Well, he was also— he was a spectacular fantasy player.

So talk about that.

He's won the league 4 times since the last time I won. And I feel like he invented the tripling down. on an offense that I like move. Yeah. Before a lot— now a lot of people do that, but he— his team was always good. And you, you'd like see him and you'd be like, oh man, I'm going against the Mook. Yeah. You didn't want to see him. But yeah, he ended up winning last year when he, when he wasn't even 100%. Yeah. But he was just— so we had this league, you know, some of us are good friends, other people are in the league or passed around. And, you know, like Like we had some people leave. We had a, there was in the mid-2000s, there were people that made a trade that it ended up that part fell apart. But for the most part, it's, it's been this group I think for 15 years or so. Yeah. And us talking about it on different pods and voting each other out and stuff like that. And he was probably the single most unlikely person on the planet to feud with Brad.

Oh yeah.

But that's, that's where this went to another level. So you can— It really was great.

I mean, yeah, I have 4 titles in the last 14 years. I look back on, today. He made the playoffs in 5 of the last 7 years. He's the greatest fantasy player, if that's possible, that I've ever met. And this is not an easy league. Like, after week 2, everything's gone off the way.

We have the same sleepers, everything.

Exactly. But with the Brad thing is, you're right, it took it to a different level. And Brad always like a very abrasive personality. And Paul was, uh, it was, it was, it was kind of friendly, but then Brad would always send one shitty email and that would be like, Paul's like, well, if I win this year, then I'm voting you out. And sure enough, He kicked Brad out 3 times. 3 times he kicked himself out this year, but he kicked Brad out 3 times and it provided the most entertaining moments in the league's history. Like Brad would be incensed. This happens at the draft. So Brad's excited to pick. He'd be incensed and confused and he'd walk out the wrong door or he'd spill on his way out. He'd spill everyone's beer.

We have a couple videos of it.

Yeah, we have videos. I think we have a picture. We're showing pictures of Paul. There might be a picture of Paul.

Awesome. Long email change of him insulting us, insulting everybody in the league. He'd be furious.

Yeah. If we were doing the draft at someone's house, he'd scream at the neighbors on the way out. So, like, I was thinking about, like, Brad and Paul were inadvertently, like, the greatest comedy team of all time because of this.

They certainly brought you as much enjoyment as anybody I remember. One time Brad was so mad, he left the restaurant and thought he was walking down the stairs and was out by the fire escape balcony after Paul voted him out. And we thought he slammed and he left. And then we heard some banging, and then he came. Then he's knocking to get back in. He comes back in. Goddamn it, it was the fire escape. He's just storming up.

I can see the Mook smile just waiting for him. Yeah. Brad didn't want to be embarrassed and take the walk of shame through again, so he waited like 10 minutes. I don't know, like we weren't going to be paying it. We were going to be gone or something. Yeah. And you know, towards the end, I, I talked to him last week and he was confused. First of all, I, I, he couldn't find our podcast and I was like, yeah, no, it's on there, Mook. And I sent him the link and, and, and he was confused 'cause we shared a team for a few weeks if we had won or lost. And I think the medication, I was like, we, we lost to Hench. He is like, no, no, we won. Right? And then I'm like, yeah, yeah, we won. I felt like Rocky talking to Mick and, and, and 3.

Yeah.

You know, like, yeah, man, we won. So He got us these rings, you know, when he was on Zoom with us at the draft. He did show up on Zoom and he got us these replica Super Bowl rings. And when we all saw them from our favorite teams, so he bought one for me and you and Hench and Damashek and Tall John. And I don't even wear a wedding ring anymore because my fat ring finger swells up, but I'm going to force myself to wear the Mook's '95 Cowboys replica. And, uh, listen, I, you know, I'm, I'm gonna— I'm not gonna sum it up better than his wife, uh, Molly did. So, and this girl's the rock of all rocks, and, uh, I don't think she'll mind me quoting her Instagram post. She said, Paul was magnetic. He drew people to him, all of us, and he drew the best out of us, all of us. He reflected back to us our goodness until we remembered it ourselves. So, um, uh, yeah. So find a, a floss pick and take a picture and say a prayer for the Dutchman.

Well said. I'm doing the thing where I can't say anything.

Good for you.

No, it's just you, you did a good job. Uh, he was a great guy.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, they missed. All right, that's it for the pod. I'm glad we did that though.

Yeah.

All right, so you're doing—

now it seems stupid to talk about Ringer Wise Guys tomorrow. Microbet Monday. Me and the Fundo are showing up and we're gonna turn halftime Rams-Bills and Rays-Guardians.

So, yeah. All right, we'll end the pod. Yeah.

You know what? I have Mookie Wilson. I'm in honor of the Mook and the 40-year anniversary of the Mets. I'm interviewing Mookie Wilson on Tuesday.

Oh, nice.

There you go. A lot of Mook stuff.

All right. Thanks to Kyle and Eduardo and Chris and everybody at the Ringer. Um, Sal, good job by you.

Good job by you, buddy.

We'll see you on, uh, on Netflix next Sunday, and I will be doing my pod. We have the Over/Unders with Zach and House coming on, uh, on Tuesday. So thanks for watching. Must be 21+ and present in select states for Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ and present in DC or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat. In Connecticut, Or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 877-8-HOPE-NY, or text HOPE-NY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.