Transcript of The Voodoo Steelers, NFC South Comedy, an Eagles Theory, Guess the Lines Round 1, and Jaylen’s Crazy Year With Cousin Sal

The Bill Simmons podcast brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. We are also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I have a new rewatchable is coming for you on Monday night. It's going to be a mailbag. We have not recorded yet. We're actually recording it tomorrow. I want to do it as late to when we're actually putting up the podcast as possible. I hope you checked out the 50 Most Rewatchable Movies of the 21st Century that we did last week. Got a lot of commotion for it. It was pretty It was funny. It played out exactly how I thought it was going to play out. I had a great time doing that pod. I'm glad people enjoyed it. We might have two Rewatchables this week. I think that's in play. We might have a movie coming up on Wednesday, too. I'm going to have a podcast on Tuesday this week as as well as on Thursday and then Sunday, coming off of Pat's Chargers, Yikes, round one, which will be available on Spotify as a video podcast, on all platforms as a podcast, and then the video It will be on Netflix as well.

So stay tuned for that in a week. Just wanted to remind you on that one. Coming up, Cousin Sal and I talk about just... I'm not going to say bonkers, I'm not going to say crazy, just a bizarre day of football. Bizarre two days. So it is all next. We're going to take a break, bring a pro jam, and then goes inside. The Bill Simmons podcast is presented by FanDuel. Fanduel has got it all. Same game parlays, quick bets for jumping in live. They have your way. Go check Go out your way. You can build the bet that fits your play, your way. Plus, don't miss out on the NFL Playoffs, one of my favorite times of the year, all month long. Download the FanDuel app or head to fanduel. Com/bs to get started. We got ready for the playouts. Let's go. Must be 21 plus, President selects states, 18 plus in DC, Kentucky, and Wyoming. Get in and promo call, win a 100 game, or visit rg-help. Com. Call 888-789-777 or visit ccpg. Org/chat.

You can Connecticut. All right.

Sunday night. Just watched the stealers, the voodoo stealers, the garbage stealers, the what the fuck stealers. What are they, Sal? I don't know how they do it. I honestly don't.

They wait around for the top two safeties to butt heads and join the blue tent stealers so you can complete a pass. I don't know what the hell that was.

Every time you have a big play in the first three quarters, it's going to get called back with some penalty or we're going to get some garbage, something. And then it all comes down to they finally goes against them. They miss an extra point, and it seems like the Ravens are going to knock them out. And then guess who misses the kick? The Ravens.

Yeah. Tucker. They got to cut that, Tucker, dude. No, no, no.

I knew that Tucker was going to backfire.

That was on pace for such a shitty game. That was going to be like a 14, 12 game. And then what happened with the safety's gliding, that opened up some pass opportunities for Rodgers. And I think Lamar had what? He had completed four passes before the wide open of Zee flowers. I mean, you You could throw a spaceship or run that through that zone. Is that the second there? Get a hole of Aaron's by Walsh? What was that?

I think I wrote down Lamar had six passes in the first two hours of the game. It was like 4 for 6. It was like 7: 30 at night Pacific Time. Ends up flowers finished with four for 138, both of which were in the fourth quarter. I had all these notes about January Lamar, cold weather Lamar. This is just him just hapazardly going and throwing it off somebody's hand. And then he came to life like he always does. Only this time it actually mattered. And it looked like he was going to shed his whole thing. Rogers comes back down, leads one last great sports movie drive. It seems like he was going to shed this whole washed up thing, and then the Ravens are going to win, and then they don't. Now, we have the Steelers in the playoffs. That's the worst part, Sal.

What? This is for the playoffs? Oh, my God.

We have the Steelers in the playoff, though.

We have to see them again? Yeah, I know. I'm not sure ready to bet against them. They might have some life in them. This is so nuts. With those two safeties colliding, they both had a better opportunity at the ball than the Steelers did. So maybe that's... I don't know if that's by design or what. But yeah, man, he just kept throwing and throwing it. I'm not sure what the play of the game was. Lamar scrambling, getting away from Watt, the first touch down to flowers was remarkable. That pass to likely was insane.

Well, breaking the sack. Yeah, Was it third or fourth down? It was third down. That was- No, it was fourth down.

That was fourth. That was it. That was the play.

And of all the guys, likely, who's always involved in some raven's plot, usually for the worst, it's usually his foot on the end line, him fumbling a pass, him dropping a pass. I don't know if he did this, but dropping it going over the end zone. Texans at Stealers is our game now, and we'll do Guest Alliance later. So we have Rams at Carolina, Patriots Chargers, Texans Stewards, Bears, Packers, Eagles, Niners, Bill's Jags. But the Stealers get Metcalf back. That was the crazy thing about it. You look at Adam Thielen's out there, and Tariko or Collinsworth, one of them is doing the whole thing about, well, Rogers, he wants guys at the line of scrimage, smart guys who are ready to play off him and what he's going to do. I'm like, the one was completely washed up. If that's what he wants, you're in trouble. This is not a good thing to want. And yet in the second half, it actually worked and they were moving the ball. It did help that he knocked out two of the Ravens guys at the same time.

He doesn't want guys leaning into the crowd, picking fights with fans with pompom heads or something. I thought for a while, I was like, wow, the Ravens are only going to advance now because of the Metcalf thing, and they're going to owe that fan like Crapcakes for Life or whatever from Baltimore. That was something else. It was so boring for so long. They harped all the brotherly shove, the two brothers going at it. Then the mother gets involved like, Oh, my God, this game is so bad. We have to watch them. Then it really, I can't believe how it opened up.

Yeah, if you picked a quarterback to look like he was just throwing a turd sandwich for two hours and then was going to pull three of the best plays of the year out of his ass, you would have said Lamar. If you're going to pick a guy who was going to throw a pass that wasn't near his receiver, that then got two two safeties colliding and both having to get carried out of the game in a game stoppage, you would have picked Rodgers. Everyone was online. Isiah, likely he had to be involved. Derek Henry looked unstable and then didn't have the ball for an hour. Deandre Hopkins, that classic Lamar play where he laughted it to him and Hopkins didn't know he was supposed to move, and they're looking at each other. It's cold. The Steeler fans are going nuts. T. J. Watts feeling the part he'd been stabbed in the chest. It was really playing all the heads. The best guy in the field was Gainewell.

Yeah, right. He's unstable. But I mean, I wrote this down. Like T. J. Watt, like two weeks removed from a collapsed, punctured, mutilated lung, playing professional football in 30-degree weather. It makes me feel like such a pussy. I wrenched my back leaning over to grab the Uber Eats bag of falafel left at my front door. And this guy's playing football. It's like, this is what it's all about. My God. And the steal special hit for the second time this year.

Oh, it did.

It only hit in week one and week 18. Opponent to win the first half stealers to win the I had for Ringer 107, just a typical day for me, where I had the Ravens money line tied to the under of 50 and a half.

And it was what? 10 to seven for two hours? Yeah. And then all of a sudden, it turned into the Chargers Dolphins playoff game. This is weirdly the worst possible outcome if you're the Ravens. I'm going to talk about the Stewards in a second. Lamar was just special enough down the stretch there that you can't be like, Yeah, can't win with them. We've maxed out. We got to trade them. In basketball where Trey Young, Ja Morant, Lamela Ball, there are some of these guys that just feel like they've run their course with their teams. And I didn't know if Lamar was heading toward that. And I felt like if this was a stink bob today, where we were texting third quarter on our thread about, would you bring Hunt in? If Lamar is not going to move around, if they're not going to throw with them, what's the point of playing Lamar? So anyway, he's great in the fourth quarter. Now you have to rethink that. But maybe there's a Harbaugh decision. To be made. Harbar was going in the last 30 seconds of this game. He had all three timeouts left. Did he think he was taking them in a OT?

Did the opposite of what Pittsburgh did, using them within before eight minutes left.

Pittsburgh was just burning them left and right. I don't know for the Ravens. Such a weird season. We kept waiting for it to come around, come around, come around. Then it finally seemed like it did, and now they're out of the playoffs. I'm watching it as a Pats fan going, Man, if they win this, they could absolutely knock out Houston, who I don't want to see. Get rid of them in round one because I want to play the Ravens. I don't have a pass rush. I feel like we can outthink these guys. And now they're out, and now the voodoo stealers are in. Houston, who would you rather want to play? Baltimore or Pittsburgh after watching that game?

I think whoever had the momentum, honestly, to be honest with you. I mean, Pittsburgh could be a tough out. They really can. And we don't know that Houston is going to score a bunch of points next week. We'll talk about it later. But yeah, I mean, as far as Lamar goes, it's a dumb comparison. Maybe it's not Kyla Murray. It's not like, all right, Arizona saw what He was their franchise quarterback. Now he no longer is. They can move on from him. Not going to be a lot of bickering about that.

No tears shit.

No, for sure. But Lamar was definitely headed that way. You're going to keep him around. The problem is his parents named him January Lamar, and they did it sarcastically. And so he never really had a chance once the calendar turned.

Yeah, I did forget until the game was starting. I probably should incorporate this, but that it was January and that it was cold. Two things you're thinking in the third quarter when it doesn't seem like he can complete a forward pass. I do think this is one of those games that if they played it 20 times, I think the Ravens probably win 16 of the 20. It felt like there's a version of this game where they're just up 20 to 3 in the second quarter where there's not... Henry has that first long run. There's a block in the back where the guy blocks him in the front. They call block in the back. It's the first time I've seen that call a year. It just felt like a bunch of those moments where they couldn't get over the And then Pittsburgh, as soon as the safety, as soon as Hamilton, who's the best guy in the defense, goes out, Pittsburgh starts moving. You got to give them credit, though. They've won a few of these, and they've beaten some pretty good teams. They beat the Patriots in week three in a game that we turned the ball over five times, including one where the guy was about to run the end zone.

They don't lay down. If they're around in the fourth quarter, it's a mess. They're a hard out for sure. But yeah, I do wonder about Derek Henry. Again, his usage towards the end, not great.

What did he end up with? So he had 20 for 126?

Yeah. He's got to get that magic number is 25. I know they had three gigantic plays in there, so you can't kill him too much. And it's the kicker. It's the January. What's the kicker's name? He's got the January. January Loop. You can't shake it.

Should we do the preemptive? Everybody's going to do this about one o'clock tomorrow on Twitter? Yeah. Of leave Tyler Loop alone. If you're on social media, sitting on some football player that you don't know, that says more about you than him. That's true. Just do this now. Get that over with.

I mean, it does say more about me than him, but I'm going to say it anyway. You chose.

It's a tough one. Listen, there are 12 seconds left. They had a time out. I didn't feel comfortable with how long that field goal was. No. Did you? That guy is his first year in the league. They're like, Yeah, we got it. Just like, Let's bring him out. Pittsburgh is notoriously a scary place to kick, especially for opposing kickers. It's cold out. The crowd's going nuts. Incredible amount pressure. There's a playoff spot on the line one way or the other. I want to get closer. I can use my time out. I'm getting 10 yards closer. But Harba doesn't care.

We're too spoiled. We see the Jags kicker a little, the kick like the blast of 67 yards. It's like, oh, everyone should make 44, but that's not the case.

Gainewell, eight catches for 64 yards. Nobody else, the Stewards had three. So Ravens win. I'm sorry, Stewards win.

You should watch again.

The Ravens go home and the Stewards get to host the Texans who... I don't know. I thought a lot better about them three weeks ago. Definitely. Why are they giving up so many big plays? I thought this defense was like, Oh, my God, Houston's defense. It's like, really? Are we sure? I know the game today didn't mean that much, but it didn't mean nothing either because you wanted to be the five seed. You wanted to play one of these teams.

Yeah.

They were giving up big plays to Riley Leonard.

Yeah, I know. Maybe I give them too much credit here, but I think they were scoreboard watching a little bit. So once Jacksonville was up early, 28-7. In fact, it's probably the only smart thing I did today. When Jacksonville went up 28-7, I live bet the Colts plus 14-a-half. Interesting. They were down 10. So I guess that's how you're supposed to gamble and not take Jack hole teams like the Bengals on money line parlays all the time.

We have it coming for them.

But yeah, no. Houston was a much scarier opponent a month ago.

Well, the other four seed. So we had nobody really wanted the AFC North, and Pittsburgh finally just took it. Nobody really wanted the NFC South either. Literally, nobody wanted it. We had three, eight, nine teams in some weird tie. And of course, it had to end in the dumbest way possible where Tampa beats Carolina in the rain yesterday. Fairly convincing. It was 1910, garbage backdoor, a countdown at the end. And then we have the Falcons today holding off Tyler Shuck and nobody. Literally nobody. I don't know who was on the Saints. I had them on a smaller TV. I don't know who was catching the ball for them. Jowan Johnson caught a couple. I don't know who the other guys were. He's making plays over and over again. He keeps hanging around, hanging around. But the Falcons win, and they celebrated by firing their coach in the GM right after the game.

That was it. Yeah. I think the writing- Carolina is going to the playoffs is the point. Carolina is in the playoffs. Raheem Morris is I think he was out when they lost to the Jets. I mean, had they won that Jet game, they would be in the playoffs, and the Jets would have the number one pick.

What week was that? That was the '27, '24 game?

Yeah, that might have been the Cousins had a shot at the end. It was in MetLife.

I mean, they had six of those. Kuv missed the one in the week one. The Pats game, they missed an extra point. They had a bunch of those. They had terrible special teams, and you could always count them do something stupid. It looked like today would have been the classic.

They look so good Monday night against the Rams. They look so good. Then they beat Tampa in that crazy Thursday game. Then before the game, you hear they announced that Cousins has the flu. He's had the flu since 2021, I guess. That's why he's so bad. The flu was running through the Falcons. That was it. It was just so weird. I don't know. We talked about it on our thread. If you're the Bucs owner, can you give Tyler Shuck an incentive to win? Can you pay him 500 grand extra? All we did was talk about incentives. Oh, Vontor Henry gets over four and a half receptions, but they give him 500 grand. And I get it's like shaky, but if you say, Hey, do a voiceover for my foundation and win the game, and I'll send you 500 grand. I think it's legit if you did that.

Incentivize everybody. I would say probably no part of that's legit.

Really? No part?

Yeah, I don't think so. It feels like a gambling. I mean, there could be definitely in the Trump world, we could have Bitcoin just getting transferred. Nobody knows. So you could get that way. We We actually got an email from Mike from Mar Vista.

Is this true?

Yeah, no, we really did. If I'm the NFL, I absolutely have Panthers division title hats and shirts ready for the Falcons for right after the game. Why would the Falcons say no? That's the only way the NFC South can get more ridiculous. So the Falcons win. They go in the locker room and they put on the Panthers T-shirts. Instead of pouring champagne on each other, they're pouring like Ripple on each other. But they should have considered that, at least.

Yeah, that wouldn't have been bad. Yeah, that It was such a weird... I don't know. In Tampa, a lot of people didn't think they deserved to win Saturday anyway. I had them, and that was a bad backdoor cover, but they got a lot of calls to get them even in.

Oh, my God. It really did feel like that one was called in by the week. There was the rip off the helmet play. There was an offensive PI, which has become the hot call this year, I think, for what the fuck text for our thread. It's like, What was that? You're a tight end. You're not allowed to off one yard off the line. So they finished with three, eight, nine teams. Chris Myers, who I felt bad for because he didn't get to partake in the Panthers to win a winner, eventually gets sent home game on Saturday. But they put him on Falcon Saints. So he's vicariously was the Panthers were living through him. So I thought that was nice. So Ted McMillon became the huge Rook of the Year favorite after this game, even though he was even with Tyler Shuck, who was awesome today. There's no award stuff left except for Coach of the Year, which is down to Vrabel versus Mike McDonald.

What do you mean there's no award stuff left?

Well, I mean, all the other ones are decided except for MVP. Mvp is going to go down to the wire. But offensive Rook of the Year, all that shit's wrapped up except for MVP and coach.

I was looking at Coach of the Year, and I know your boy Vrabel. Why is Ben Johnson 60 to 1? He did the worst of first thing. They're a two seed like the Patriots. He not only brought his team far, but he destroyed the Lions. So I think he should get two votes. He did it with his shirt off like he got the. The Lions case is good.

Yeah, I like that. I don't know. I think more people were convinced that the bears were going to be a lot better this year than the Pats would be one of the things.

What were the over-unders? Weren't they somewhere?

The Pats were 4-13 last year, and they were 14-3 this year. So the 10-win leap is pretty good. I got to say, we were texting about it all week. I just think him not winning MVP would be nuts. We'll talk about that later. Good. Vrabel, I could see the Mike McDonald case. That team was a one seed. That team beat everybody. That team was number one in DVOA. That team came through in big games down the stretch. They had a bunch of different small but really hurtful injuries that never seemed to bother them. To me, it could be either of those guys. Honestly, Liam Cohen would be in there, too, for me. I don't know why Vrabel is the convincing favorite, but we don't understand a lot of these markets.

They were five. I don't think there'll ever be as many candidates. I think we're down to three. Well, now, Shana Hans out. Shana Hans out. We used to spend hours dissecting Shana Hans career. Maybe we should go back to that because it is spectacular how he's like, what's the big one? He's like 1-38 when down seven or more points.

He hasn't had a come back since 2017. Un Unbelievable. Was that it? Yeah, that was exactly it. If he's down more than seven, he's never come back. Listen, everyone's talking about how great their offense was. They scored three points on Saturday night. Right. They didn't have Trent Williams, but they had basically everybody else. Raheem Morris gets fired, which means we now get to live out warm wins over Raheem Morris in real life next year with whoever the Falcons coaches. 8-9. That's good. I like that. Now we literally get to live out warm. I thought yesterday that Panthers Bucks game was just awful. It was raining. Neither quarterback was good. They both threw picks. They had the three-man booth.

I just- You didn't like that.

It's 2026. And on Saturday, we had a three-man booth, and we started this second game with, I could feel it in the air tonight. What year? Give me the year where I could have neither of these things. Neither a three-man... Three-man booth. Orlowski and Riddick are just in a death contest to see who can talk for. Is there a split second of silence? No, I got a point. I'm going to say something. I've never heard... Their usage rate was both Westbrook 2017, both of them. It was like whoever was over half court got to shoot, but the announcing version of it. Chris Fauer is doing play-by-play. I think he said 50 words the whole game. They were just diving in, jumping over him. Who wants that? I love Orlowski. I just don't understand that broadcast at all.

I interview him every year, maybe twice a year, probably not at all after this, after this whole thing. I blame the producers.

I don't blame the people in the booth. Nobody wants to hear people talk during a game. They wouldn't shut up. For 100% of the game.

You don't have to do the Kirk Gibson home run, Vin Scully thing where you're silent for two minutes. But Rytik and Orlowski, they would not shut up. There was so much chatter. You might as well put a mic in the mezzanine and listen to 50 fans discuss the game. I like those guys. I do. But it really was like, it reminded me of like a twin seven-year-old coming home from trick or treating and trying to show you how much candy they got at the same time. It's like, all right, all right. I want another That's fine. Like, neither waiting for the other to keep quiet.

That's a good analogy. Thank you. And it once again proves that the three-man booth. So good example. This year, Stan Van Gundee, who I thought was bad in the three-man booth last year on TNT because every three-man booth is bad. There's been three exceptions in 60 years. Like, literally three. The college guys, the McGuire. Dennis Miller. Not McGuire. No, it was Billy Packer. What was that booth? Billy Packer, Al McGuire, and Dick Embra.

Raffle Oh, and Embra. That was good.

There was probably one good Monday night football booth over there at some point. I can't even think of what the third one was. You don't need three people to announce a game.

Cosell and those guys. Yeah, but that was a million years ago.

That was in 1970s. We didn't know any better. Then it's like, anytime anybody wants to get serious, they're like, We have Buck and Akeman. We have Collinsworth and Tariko. They put Van Gunde on Amazon this year with Iron Eagle, and he's been great. And guess what? Because he's not fighting for air with the other guy during the course of these games. I just don't understand why they don't see this. They feel like if there's one more person, it feels like a bigger game, and it just makes it more cluttered and it makes it worse.

That game deserve no announcement, honestly.

It really did. It got silent. Remember the early '80s when they had the no announcement game?

Yeah, that was great.

It was like Jets to Offense.

It was the perfect- You know what they did? What they featured was graphics because before then, you wouldn't see a score check every 20 minutes, every 20 real minutes. This time they had to without the announcement. They had to put graphics up, and then they're like, Hey, this isn't bad, letting the viewers know what the score is and how much time is left.

Most time in the three-man booth is being at a coffee place working on something, and this loud table sits down next to you and everybody's talking, and eventually you're like, I'm going to move to the other part of the... But this is football for three hours. Anyway, Carolina makes the playoffs. They're hosting the Rams, who were asleep for an hour and a half today and then finally got their shit together against the Cardinals. There was one point where the Cardinals were winning, or then they lost the weed. Then they completed yet another long pass. There was some bogus, I don't know, legal block punter or something that called back a long play, and then the Rams finally got their shit together, and that's it. But we saw that game, and the Panthers beat the Rams in Carolina. I got to be honest, I don't mind the Panthers. I think they can stop their front. They can stop You can't run the ball down their throats. Their games are always a little more low scoring, and the problem is Bryce. Every time you talk yourselves into them, Bryce does Bryce stuff, and you're like, Ah, fuck.

Listen to me. This is not a good team. Don't bet the Panthers. You could say you don't mind them. Please don't bet them. They had a worse.

I didn't say I was going to bet them. I said I don't mind them.

All right. You don't mind them being in the playoff? I think Tampa would have been a worse playoff team because I actually really felt like they were fraudulent. You know what's weird about them? But not often. The September-October version of Tampa was better than most teams were going to see next weekend, wasn't it? And they really didn't have a reason to fall off. Agbuka passed away, I think, in October. That was sad. To the point when he was involved in a play, and I forgot he was on the team.

The guy looked like he was Jerry Rice in September.

Yeah. But listen, Carolina had a worse point differential than the Giants. They don't belong either. And that spread is going to be pretty high, but We won't give it away, but we need a freebie. We need a freebie for sure.

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We're going to play this Detroit team that's playing for nothing, and they're going to dominate us for two hours. There was this moment where Detroit was clearly about to lose and Philly had the ball. But Taylor McKee might have been the worst quarterback performance we've seen in the last four or five weeks. It could not complete anything and just seemed completely Completely out of sorts. And then Philly ends up losing.

This was the day to do it for those garbage quarterbacks. Hey, you could get a nice bag here, a nice contract just with one performance. We see backups every single week. There's already talked about Malik Willis going to the Hall of Fame and stuff, or at least getting a big contract.

He's like a real asset now.

No one really stepped up. Quinn Ewellers did for a minute, but really no one... And it's like then Josh Johnson is like, Hey, it's not that bad. Because you're so used to crap all the time. And then Josh Johnson is out there. It's like they gave you prison food, but they poured A1 on it. It's like, all right, it's a little better. I don't mind that.

The worst version of this was Trey Lance. Yeah. Even if you were doing the Trey Lance is a problem Twitter video of his best play is, I'm not sure you could get the 30 seconds. There was two good scrambles, and he might have completed one eight-yard pass. He's just not accurate. I don't understand how he was the third pick in the draft.

Well, also in the trading- Did he become inaccurate? It That's interesting. They traded three first round. I'm willing. I know you got to let these things breathe and develop, but I'm willing to say that was a bad trade, three first rounders for trading.

Is it too early?

All right, maybe I'll wait.

It's '26.

I'll wait a couple more years. It did have that preseason game where he threw five interceptions. So I'll wait a little bit.

You guys talked about this on the Ringer Gambling Show Friday, but I'm just throwing in my two cents. If Purdy doesn't happen for them, does that trade get everybody fired?

It would have to, right?

How do you come back from that? Or is it just Mac Jones is their quarterback for the last couple of years? Or they're just always able to grab some mediocre guy and turn them into something decent?

Yeah. They wouldn't win double-digit games in that tough division every year. That was miraculous. My team would have been set back. It would be a famous trade. For sure. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know how they did it.

I wrote down, trying to figure out what the Eagles were thinking. Is it possible they just don't want to play at because their fans hate them? Even though they won the Super Bowl last year. They're like, We're better off on the road. The energy when things don't go well for us in the first hour. Fuck it. Let's get out of Philadelphia. We're better off in any other stadium.

Yeah. At least if our fans, if everyone's going to hate us, we can get on a bus afterwards and leave and then have the comfort of that.

We don't have the awkwardness of our family in the stands is people are chaining, You suck, different players.

But honestly, what they doing? There was a point with a minute 43 left. The lines are lining up for a field goal. They're clearly going to beat Chicago. And so Philly gets the one seed. If they win, so they're driving the tie, I'm like, you could put Hertz in there and Brown and everybody. No, they could have been warming up on the sideline. Yeah, to get the two seeds. At some point, it's got to... You don't want to go to Chicago. You don't want to do it. I'm pretty sure. It's not 1963. Someone could tell Seriani in the headset that the lions are lining up for a winning field goal that could give you the two seed.

Well, meanwhile, the bears couldn't score 17 points at home against a dome team that was missing half of their team and had already packed it in. Not a great time for them either.

Jared Goff was wearing oven mitts to throw the ball. I don't know. He just did a good job.

There's a bunch of full of shit home teams in this round one that I don't think anybody is afraid to play. My team might even be one of them with the schedule we played. But I don't think this is one of those, Oh, no, we got to go there. I don't think anyone's feeling that way.

Is this the least confident you are as a better going into the playoffs? Because it sure as shit is for me. I know what you might say because Mahomes isn't in there and a good version of Joe Burrow and everything. But I see major flaws in all these teams.

Yeah, because we'll go into the... I don't know what the Rams line is yet. I somehow didn't see the lines. I mailed you them four hours ago because I was worried I was to see them, but I didn't see them. But you would figure Rams, Panthers, first game of the day, everybody, their brother, their sister, their uncle, and all of their grandparents are going to be teasing the Panthers or putting in a money parlay. The Pan? I mean, the Rims.

Yeah, I don't think so.

That instantly gets my dander up. But playoff manifesto-wise, you're taking Bryce Young against Matthew Stafford. It violates three of the 17 playoff manifestos.

I'm just saying to win two games. Who are you really confident in to win two games? There's no one team.

I feel good about the Chargers matchup for the Pats. I do feel like that was the best team for them to play. I know you do. They have them and then Jags playing the Bills. And the Jags are probably playing the best out of anyone in the AFC right now. I have teams that have actually... Yeah, I think the Pats have played really well, too, but they really haven't played anybody. But you got Josh Allen playing the Jags. You have Josh Allen against Trevor Lawrence. That's a really tough one to be like, Yep, it's Trevor Lawrence. I trust everything I've seen. I'm going to pick him against Josh Allen. But there's a scenario where they either get this pretty limited Bills team in round two if they get past the chargers, or they get a Jaguar team on the road that I I don't trust either. So it lined up pretty nicely for the Pats. It probably lined up the worst for the Broncos as a one seed.

It lined up nicely for everyone because every other team is fine, not great.

I think that's good. With the Broncos, you don't play in round one. That's great. But then round two, you play the worst team that's left, which is almost definitely going to be a five, six, seven team. And those are all teams that might be scarier than the two, three, four teams. Exactly. Or at least the five, six teams.

I'd be scared if anyone came to play me if I was Denver. I mean, it's uncommon that they score north of 20. Just look at the slate, whether the game matters or not.

The MVP battle. Let's do it. I looked at the odds. Have the odds changed at all? This is a big topic all week. Now, it's going to become even a hotter topic. Stafford is up now. He's minus 150. Jake may plus 120. I don't know what to say anymore. They're playing the three-win Cardinals. They're throwing it. They're throwing it inside the five-yard line. They're just trying to get Stafford touch downs. Everybody likes Stafford, and he's a great guy. Apparently, that might be enough for him to win because he's a future Hall of Famer, and this will help. I always thought we should just pick the person that deserved the award. You seem to get Stafford, though.

I did, too. That's why I should be Stafford. By the way, shame on you for not betting over two and a half touch downs for staff because, of course, that's what they were going to do today. It was an embarrassing thing. They didn't want to lose three in a row going into the playoffs. So they were going to keep those guys in as much as they could. And there was the prospect of playing the Panthers or the Bucks. But we could go back and forth. I'm going to say this. I'm going to say I think it's close. And now that I said that, we're going to go at it like the other one murdered the other sister. But I don't know.

I think it's fine to have an opinion either way.

Well, it's close. But that's why I thought it was crazy overreaction led by you and your Boston Beanie Cap last week when maybe went nuts on the Jets and Stafford had a subpar game against Atlanta. It should be the whole year, shouldn't it? And that's why it's close.

But go ahead, let's hear. Let's hear. But listen, anytime you could lead somebody to a five seed. You got to send him the hardware. He got to the five seed.

Congratulations. Do you think he would have been a five seed on the Patriots? Or you think that he would have gone 16 and one?

The strength of schedule thing has already been debunked.

Has it?

Yeah, because There's all this stuff, if you go by EPA, may actually played harder defenses this year than Stafford did.

What do you say? You have top 16.

They always talk about strength of schedule. It's like you're just playing the other team's defense. Yeah, but May is not out there on... He's not playing linebacker, too. The defenses that he played versus the defense Stafford's played was pretty even. Nobody seems to factor in the Pukunaku apart or the fact that he has a our offensive line or the fact that may actually can scramble and use his legs. Do you know he's fourth in rushing this year for QBs? He's rushed for 38 first downs. He's led the league in completion percentage, and yards per attempt. I Can I ask everybody, if you switch these guys, what are the records in the two teams? Just go to that.

Stafford is not worse than whatever your Patriots ended up. He's not.

It's fine. Is Stafford walking in week eight? Have you seen our offensive line? I don't know.

I would ask people, if your guy lost to the Raiders, the worst team in football, should you be even eligible? It was a week one. All right. So what does it count? Throw out week one. These teams practice three times. Count week 17 times five. That's what we should do.

How many teams have led the... How many quarterbacks have led the league in yards per attempt and completion of percentage in the same year. How many quarterbacks have been that? Is it just...

I don't know. How many? Three?

It's two. It's 2001, Kurt Warner, and 2007, Tom braided. Mvp, MVP. So we're just going to throw those out now.

I think there's only one guy I, who's thrown for over 45 countdown passes, who hasn't won MVP. It was breeze in all of history. And two weeks ago, Stafford threw for 4: 57 and three touch downs against that Seattle defense that you were jerking off to yesterday. I don't get it. You had nine touch downs versus the Jets and Dolphins.

Why did you have to tell people I jerked off to the Seattle defense? I was trying to hope that wasn't going to come out.

They were going to find out.

Listen, Drake was going to win the MVP until this tweet. For me, Matt Stafford blew the MVP in the two games versus Seattle, especially the MNF disaster in Atlanta. I don't care how many TD passes he has thrown. Congrats, Drake May. That's from Skip Bayliss. That was the moment Jake May lost the MVP. It's over. Damn it.

Why did he have to get involved? He didn't give it to Shador? I'm shocked. Wow.

Shador threw for 111 yards today.

In your defense, I will say playing on the road during the Shakeys game could be a strike against Stafford. That might be a disqualification. That is not That's the game.

I don't know if Vrabel is the coach of the year. If you said it's Mike McDonald, I would be like, there's great arguments for him, too. I don't feel the same way about MVP. I will say this about Vrabel beyond the 10 wins and the culture stuff. He brought in a lot of the players, which I don't think you should necessarily get credit for as the coach. He's also the front office guy. I don't think that should count. Two things he did in the first part of this season that I think really mattered. I'm going to get emotional here talking about my. Let's do it. Not really emotional. Ramondre Stevenson had that game against the Steelers. Five turnovers in that game. Somehow the Steelers win 21-14, and all the Pats fans are like, Let's waive Ramondre Stevenson. Enough is enough with this. He's been fumbling this. It's never going to get solved. Give this guy a suitcase. Get him the fuck out of here. And Vrabel went out of his way to be like, This is our running back. He's just got to take It's got to take better care of the ball. We're not quitting on him because he fumbled.

That's ridiculous. He's going to do better. We believe in this guy. Same thing happened with the kicker, the rookie kicker they had who missed a kick in the Miami game. Brable brought him back out to make the game-winning kick because he was like, This is my guy. I believe in you. There's something about him that really makes the players believe that he believes in them, and they all talk about it. I don't know. I think it's a really hard place to get to as a coach. That would be my case for him.

I think it does seem like he's caring and whatever. That's a good guy to have around and the players believe in him. But I also thought he looked at the schedule and said, Oh, my God. You see who we have to play? Don't worry about it. You can miss seven kicks in the next two weeks. You could fumble five times in the next three games. You're 11 and six.

We're okay. We've played the Raiders four times. It might have been. Will Campbell said, he interviewed him after the game today, and he was talking about how great he was. He was like, I never want to play for anyone else.

Wow.

Yeah.

What a cyclopat. Did a great job.

We went from having one of the worst coaches we've ever had on any Boston sports team last year to having a guy where the guys on the team were like, I never want to play for another human being.

Do you feel people are hating you guys a little more now? You think you're getting there?

No, I don't think anyone takes them seriously. Oh, really? We haven't beaten anybody. So you got to- Who's the most hateable of all the seeds? It's not New England. The most hateable? I haven't pissed anyone off yet.

I know. That's something else we're really missing. I don't know. I feel like you're The coach is arrogant.

I mean, it's probably Philly because their own fans hate Philly. So they probably have the most people that actually hate them.

They won last year. You have a couple of potential felons on your roster. But yeah, there isn't that one Yeah, the root against Mahomes, root against this one. Lamar would have been fun, too.

I got to say, I genuinely hate the Steelers. They drive me nuts.

Oh, yeah.

Just the Steelers in general, the fucking way they win games drives me nuts. I can't wait to see somebody a steak in their heart, Michael Myers style. Wow. Matthew Stafford, 13, one-yard passing touch downs this year. Set the record.

Fine.

Nobody's ever had more one-year passing touchdowns.

Look, Tom braided thrived on a one-yard pick from the two for years and years. You never said a word.

It's fine. Puukunuku, 166 targets, 129 catches, 1,715 yards, 10 touchdowns, 666 6 yards after the catch, and it felt like 1,200. Adam, 789 yards, 14 touch downs.

I don't know what to say. Someone's got to catch these balls. He's got good players.

Can I praise myself really quickly? Before the air, one of my worst takes was that I thought Trevian Henderson could be like Jimmer. Oh, yeah. Jameer Gibbs. And then he was terrible for five weeks, and it vaulted into the pantheon of dumbest things I ever said.

Do they compare statistically? Oh, no.

945 yards for Gibbs rushing. Henderson finished with 911. Ten rushing TDs for Gibbs, nine for Henderson, 52 for 316 receiving for Gibbs, 35 for 2. 21 for Henderson. Really?

It's that close.

It's pretty close. And he got better every month and really was starting to work in traffic. But I don't think he's Jameer gives, but at least I don't feel like he needs it anymore.

Rushing- Can we go back to it real quick? One What are you going to do? This is more... I mean, what are you going to do? More drink-based stuff?

I just had some quick stats. Do you know who won the rushing title?

Who won the rushing title? It wasn't Derrick Henry. Was it Bijan?

It was James Cooke. Oh, Cook. Yeah. Okay. 1621. Do you know who won the receiving title?

I don't know why. Was it JSN?

It was. I thought it was Puka.

Jsn had- They were very close last week.

1793. Macafry was his winner. So who's our fantasy player of the year? It's Macafry still.

I think it still has to be Macafry. I think he won a lot of league. But I do want to say something about Nakuwa. I feel like all the catches he makes are like, if our fathers watched those in the '70s. They'd be like, This is the best thing I've ever seen. And I'm like, Dad, he had 10 better than that this year, that catch you just saw. And he's like, and they would never believe me, but these guys, and especially Nakuwa, is now able to go up in the air and just grab it with one hand and, I'm not going to say push off, but create enough separation with the other hand that it's an easy interception. It is spectacular to see someone People say, Why do you love football? It's the same thing over and over. It's like, no, I can watch that a thousand times. I still don't know what I'm watching.

I feel like he's the best skill position player we watched this year. I thought JSM was awesome. But when you throw in his block walking, and you always feel his presence in the game. And then he always has two holy shit plays every game. It's amazing. He doesn't have 150 yards a game. It feels like his shit.

The catches are insane. The way he lunges for first downs, extra yardage and stuff. I don't feel like JSN does that quite that much, but he's spectacular.

I like that he's a little out there, too. I feel like we've been missing that lately with our NFL players. We didn't have enough weirdos there for a while. Especially with the wide receiver position. He's the guy to go on the podcast and just say really crazy stuff that starts a two-day news cycle. Quickly, some of the other games, Broncos, Chargers. I just can't describe how bad Trey Lance was. I actually felt like that was a winnable game for the Chargers. Did the Bronco's offense have a countdown drive?

Did they have a countdown drive?

I don't think they did.

Oh, no, because it was a defensive score.

Or maybe until the very end of the game.

Yeah. I looked at that line, Trey Lance minus 40 to throw an interception. This isn't a guy that throws. He throws four times a game. If he has to throw 25, he's going to toss one up. He should have had four today. He had one.

Well, that was the bet. The purdy, Bryce Young will both throw a pick was the bet of the weekend. Oh, yeah. I don't think anyone was offering that. Giants Dallas, Giants win again. What is it in their last three years, they've won half of their games in week 17 or week 18. There's some stuff that was going around today that they screwed up their pick. Your team got a better first-run pick, but you don't have it.

We don't get it. I don't know who that's more embarrassing for that win, the Giants or the Cowboys, but also good for the Giants. I know you hate this, but that's the spirit of athleticism. Just go out there and win. Games played on the field, Simmons, not a-one of your worst takes. Spreadsheet. Why is this a bad take? By the way, you had seven bottom teams. The bottom seven teams, four of them won. One of them The other ones, one of them was Arizona, who hung for a while. One of them was... Who was the other? Oh, Cam Ward, who was up seven, nothing before he got hurt. And then one was the Jets. I'm proud of those seven. I'm proud of this league.

I think it's easier to do when there's no consensus number one pick, and you don't really care where you land in the top seven, probably.

Okay. Remember that for the NBA because I don't know who everyone's going nuts for this year.

What's your final grade for the Cowboy season? Probably don't do the Quin and Williams trading over again if you're Did you do a redo on that one?

I hated a lot of it. I really did. I don't know. I didn't enjoy maybe two or three games, C minus. I mean, imagine they could have... It's so hard to get to 500 with 17 games, and they could have been eight. By the way, they could have been five and one in the division had they beaten the Giants. Imagine we were five and one and didn't make the play out. That would have been... So I'm glad they lost.

So you finished seven, nine, and one.

Yeah.

What was the over under? That went under.

It was eight and a half.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Then we have, what else? What other games there? Oh, Colts, Jags. They ran a double fake punt. Never saw that before. That was the highlight. Did you see that? Yeah. The fake punt, it worked. And then they lined up again to punt. The Jags had 12 guys in the field were completely confused, had a call time out, and they were like, Yeah.

I wish they would have put a camera on Reilly Leonard. They were like, All right. That's where I come out, right? Yeah. That was a strange game.

Browns-bangles, we have to talk about. I really don't want to just kill me. This was the one... I would have won everything today for the actual bets. And this was the one that I had tied to one awesome tease that would have won, except for the fact that the The Bengals, they're down 12 to 6 in the second quarter, and the Browns have 27 total yards. And we're just texting each other like, Of course, why didn't we see this? Joe Burrow looks like he's not even bothered. It looks like he's about to go out at brunch. He's trying to figure out if he wants eggs, Benedict or a Waffle. The whole team looks like they can't decide which one of them wants to quit on Zack Taylor the most. They have Higgins and Chase who are making 30 million combined. None of them run pass routes for more than five yards. They just run outside the sidelines. Nobody's over middle. Nobody's deep. It's like they don't want to get anyone hurt. And yet they're still winning the game. And terrible kickoff as usual with them. And the Browns have to go 30 yards. Shadr finally puts together two plays.

Browns get a field goal. Browns win the game. And during all this, Miles Garrett became our sack king. Yeah, fine. And it was just an egregious loss. I thought he was going to be the first coach fired, but it turned out to be Raheem Morris.

Yeah, maybe by a few hours. I was steaming mad for a long time after this game, this game killed. Because you're right, the body language was awful for both quarterbacks. Joe Burrows, Joe Cool, Joe Too Cool to be playing this game, Week 18, didn't care. Then you have Shador who converts their third first down of the game two and a half hours in and somehow finds the camera and he's like, mugging to the camera. What is going on with these guys? But since he was happy to have three possessions in the second half, there was no urgency. There There's no nothing. So they were either going to go ahead at the end. You knew they weren't going to make the two-point conversion. And I think you made the best point. You're paying these guys all this money, and this guy has to get rid of the ball in two and a half seconds because he can't dodge a sack.

Because they can't block anybody.

Listen, I'm not trying to... I don't want to be emotional here because they lost me a lot of money. He's not in my top four anymore. I don't know who's in the top four.

I'm out as well. He's not there. Yeah, he's out for me as well. I thought he had a terrible year. I didn't understand any of the stuff he was doing as the leader of the team. It was just very strange behavior. It was more NBA than NFL from him. This is the shit people do in the NBA when they're trying to get traded. I didn't get it. I mean, Cleveland wins the game. Sanders is 11 for 22 for 111. Their top rusher is 10 for 32. Their top receiver was one catch for 23 yards. They punted five times. And they got two defensive touch downs, right?

Somehow they had the ball the whole second half But yeah, 12 QBR for Shador today, 18 on the year, which is the worst of any Browns' quarterback ever. Can you imagine be having the worst QBR of any quarterback ever? So they're obviously, they're going to move on from him.

Pretty tough. If you're making the case for him, I guess he lost some weapons. He lost Judkins near the end of the year. And I'm done making the case.

Fanon was out. Sure, that's fine.

But Gareth's our new sack king. I liked when he complained about the direction of the team. After nine months ago, he signed the giant extension with that team or whatever, he did it. It's like you knew what team you were on. This is a quarter century of just them being schmucks. What do you think it was going to be different when you signed the extension? You took the money, you don't get to say anything. It's like when the NBA takes ESPN's money and then they complain about ESPN the way they cover the week. It's like you keep taking their money. You don't have to take their money. But, Gary, it's like, just shut up, dude. You took the money. You can't say anything now.

I think it's all lip service anyway. I mean, he was so happy. That SAC record is basically the Super Bowl for him, honestly. And he got it and he knocked it out and his parents were there and everything. But they really probably should have let him get the record in the first quarter and get it out of the way. Then maybe it was sad.

The bangos, just to try to win the game. Yeah, they would have taken out. They would have taken out a little bit.

I don't know. What a disaster.

He was a maniac in the fourth quarter. It looked like somebody in a video game turned off the offsides penalty. Oh, yeah.

He was lined up middle linebacker. He was trying everything he could to get free. But no, I mean, with that 2. 5 seconds and Barro getting it out in less than that, you're going to throw interceptions. If you have to throw it that quickly, you're going to get balls tipped at the line of scrimage and the freaking are going to run it back, and you're going to lose that way. I don't know what happened to him.

Vegas Chiefs, I guess, was the senior bowl. It looks like Pete Carroll is going to be gone. That stuff is starting to leak out. So once they were locked into their pick, they didn't care. Chiefs didn't care. I don't even know who won the game. Seahawks 9 on Saturday night. I threaded the needle on this one. I went to the Celtics-quippers game. But it felt like the Seahawks had game in hand when we were in the car. I was still watching it before the game, but it was a pretty dominant performance by Seattle. I actually felt like they played... That's another one. They played that game 20 times. I think they probably win convincingly, 15 of them, right?

No doubt. I don't know. I was nervous because you love Seattle. I love Seattle. Darnold had a million and a half dollars in incentives to gain in this game. He went against the team that was 29th in pressures. They had no sacks, last in sacks. I was like, Oh, my God, he's going to be able to do what he wants. Trent Williams is out. I was like, I'm too high on Seattle. I got to check my blood sugar here. And it was like a miracle. It was a miracle that was 10-3 at half. They should have had 30 points in there. So I mean, 28 wins for Darnold is really... You can't really... We like to make fun of him. If you looked at our text chain, it was probably unfair to Darnold, but...

Please don't look at any of our text chains.

Is he outside the top three quarterbacks you trust in this playoff? It can't be, right?

That I don't trust?

That you trust. You'd say Josh Allen.

I don't trust Sam Darnold at all. Can you make a different list? I think the moment they play a good defense, I don't think the Seahawks fans trust him either.

He's got 28 wins. He knows that a win.

I know, but when he's playing the Niners defense, it's one thing. But I do think there's a scenario where he's playing a good defense where you're just not going to feel good if you bet on them or you're rooting for them. It's just shaking off at all times. I get it, 28 and 6. But that was one of the reasons I loved the Seahawks so much in that game because the Niners defense is so bad. Then they have Trent Williams. I actually think, and this might have changed, but this was the case five hours ago, the Niners are 22 to 1 to win the Super Bowl. I don't necessarily think they're going to win the Super Bowl. But I think those odds are a little out of whack just because of what happened the last two weeks. They're going to get Trent Williams back. The receivers are going to get more healthy. Mccaffee is going to get more healthy. I don't know. They could beat anybody.

That defense is what scares me. We saw the bear score on them. No question. Only touch downs. Like I said, Seattle should have scored as much as they wanted, really. It was going to be a nice little thing if they were going to play all their games at home. But again, that's not a team I would bet to win two games. So they play the Eagles.

Yeah, but they're playing the Eagles who can just go a coma offensively for two hours. It's not like they're going to be coming up with any tricks.

Yeah.

I mean, maybe. That's another one where I wouldn't feel good about throwing the Eagles in a tease. Before we do the playoff stuff, got an email from a guy named Kilton.

You haven't read emails in 24 years. I know. I've been going through the thing.

What got him to? Well, it's good. We're trying to spruce up the pod. He said, not really a mailbag question. Pretty much just to thank you for giving guys something to make friendships over. One of my best friends from college became friend because I told him to guess the line for a Giants-Rams game while we were waiting in line for a bar. He called me Cousin Sal, and we discussed your pod for hours rather than chasing women. We still keep in touch weekly, including me sending Joe, not House. This is his friend Joe, a picture of the Shaky's Pizza mug I found in my fiancé's grandparents' cabinet this Christmas. Nice. For a mailback question, could you give us some time travel to what you thought of D-Rose after the 2011 play-offs? Thanks for bringing you guys together, BS. Go, bears. We like Derrick Rose. That's our answer. Anyway, thanks, Kilton. Yeah, thanks, Kilton. I thought Derrick Rose was going to be one of the best players of his generation.

Of course.

Yeah.

But yeah. In college, he was dominant, in Memphis. Yeah. I mean, you'll speak more about Derrick Rose than I can. If someone calls you Cousin Sal again, though, I think that deserves a punch right in the kisser. I wouldn't take that from anyone.

Playout blueprint. Number one buy is Denver in Seattle. They put out the schedule, and we knew what the Shaky's game was going to be. It was no surprise. It was like knowing who's going to win the Oscar two months ahead of time. It's like the lady from Hamlet. It's like, guess what? I'm announcing now she's going to win best actress.

But this is an A-list team they're getting with the ramps, right? Because it had to be... It's weird that it's on an AFC South team, but I understand why it isn't. But they're getting a blue-chip team in the Rams. A lot of people think they could win it.

Well, it's interesting because Stewards Texans normally would be the shakies game.

Right.

But I think when there's an 8-9 playoff team, you throw all the other rules out. I think that's just automatic shakeies. I don't know if they've ever deviated from that over the years. 8-9 shakeies. It's just they go hand in hand. We've seen 8-9 teams win this? What was your favorite of all the shaky games? I was thinking mine was the Tebo game when he threw the 80-yard overtime pass to win.

That was a good one against Pittsburgh.

And then played in midfield for five minutes.

8-9 is in the 6-7.

I think that was my favorite. We actually watched that at Shaky's.

Beast Mode was a Shakeies game.

Beast Mode was a Shakeies game. That was a really good one. That was probably the most entertaining Shakeies game. Yeah.

Otherwise, it was a lot of Matt Shob and a lot of bad stuff.

Was Trevor Lawrence, Herbert, whatever that comeback was, was that a night game? That was a night game. Or was that the Shakeies game?

Yeah, I was out to dinner that night.

Because normally, the key to the Shakeies game is it's Matt Shob, and you can't remember one thing that happened. Somebody went 20 to 10.

So this is going to be a bad game. You don't remember who won. For the most part, this is Probably going to be a lousy game. Probably going to be a good time game. Yeah, they put... Also, they wouldn't... If they didn't get Aaron Rodgers at night, they're going to do that.

I just don't think it's the case. The surprise to me, I sent my guests to you in the morning. The surprise to me was, I thought for sure, Pat's Chargers was going to be the Saturday Night game. I did, too. The Pats have usually been Saturday Night. I don't know if they have a deal with Kraft or whatever. They made Bear's Packers Saturday Night on Amazon. Then Sunday goes Jag's Bills, Eagles Niners.

Cbs, Fox.

And then Chargers at Patriots, Sunday night. We're doing a live podcast. The first one we're doing on Netflix. It's right after that game. It's like they're trying to kill me, Sal.

Do you think that's fixed? Do you think the league fixed that?

I don't know who fixed it. Do I wish the Patriots were playing right before we did a live podcast? I don't. I don't. I was really looking forward to this Saturday. Should I just have a therapist in the room sitting in the chair over there? Just I like it.

Yeah, I have a lot of therapists.

I don't think one is going to do it. I don't know if we've come on live because we've only been doing this for a couple of years where we've been live podcast where you could see us. I don't think we've had a huge Pats game. We had the Bill's Pats game in week six whenever that was. Right. But this is an actual real stakes game.

Oh, and you're so... I'm not going to say, Convinced you're going to win, but this is the team you wanted to face a month ago.

I don't know how much to trust this Pats team. But yeah, do I want to play the team that's missing their left and right tackle? I do. And as a quarterback who has his left hand in a cast, it sounds pretty good. Who got waxed by Jacksonville five weeks ago, that would have been my pick, but I didn't feel comfortable against any of these teams. I just don't want to end up on a chalkboard for the Chargers.

I know. Netflix. It's going to be good.

I will say I don't ever remember the Pats losing the Chargers. I know it's happened. I just feel It's like we've had their number over the years. It's been one of those teams we've consistently beat.

Just set it up. Just set it up. I like it.

I'll put that on the chalkboard. Then Monday night, Stealers, Texans. Just guaranteed that that's a weird game. You can just lock that down now.

What about now? You would rather have chargers than Texans? It's close.

I think I'd rather if you think chargers going West Coast to East Coast, chargers with a pretty shaky offensive line. I think their defense is good, though. They can run the ball. They have a couple of good receivers. It won't It's going to be an easy game, but it's a game that Patriots, a 14 and three team, should take care of business at home.

I love it. I'm so psyched for this. This is going to be good.

But it's a young Patriots team. Sunday night could be cold. I don't know who that helps. I don't think that helps the chargers necessarily. If you're thinking about home field advantage, if you had, say, Patriots, Jags, Pittsburgh on a Monday night, bears on a Saturday night, Eagles, Carolina on a Saturday afternoon, I would say Steelers would have the biggest home field advantage of all those, right?

Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. I mean, it's not the Eagles. They didn't even want to play at home. We saw what they did. It's not going to be the Jags. Yeah. I was wondering, what Who do you think the desired Super Bowl matchup for the league is and for NBC who holds the game? I think there's the one answer.

For the league, it would be, wouldn't it be Josh Allen versus the Rams or Josh Allen versus the Bears?

I still think Bill's Eagles. I think you get the defending champ in there. I think that's A number one.

Really? Does anyone like watching the Eagles?

They're the champs.

I'm going to ask everyone to meet this week if they enjoy watching the Eagles because their own fans don't enjoy them.

Yeah, but watching them get beat would be fun. So you think Ram's bills?

Playoff odds. Seattle and the RAMS have the best odds, plus 440 and plus 490 to win the Super Bowl. Denver's 3, a plus 850. Sots Philly, a plus 850. This is on FanDuel. Buffalo's 10 to one to New England's 11 to 1. Houston's 12 to 1. From a conference bet, New England plus 460. I mean, they're so good at pricing these odds. I don't think any of these are worth it. The only way it's worth it is if you're going nuts and you're doing like, Niners 10: 00 to 1 to win the conference or something.

That's pretty crazy that the Rams are plus four. They're so close to the top there, and they have to play the extra game. They're 490, Seattle is 440. And ideally, they would play each other in the second round unless there was a further upset in there. That's giving the Rams a lot of credit, or they're just giving them a win automatically.

Don't you feel like you can throw the ball on the Rams?

Yeah, I feel like you could do a lot.

I think every playoff team in the NFC can would be able to throw the ball on them, I think. So Denver is plus 280 to win the conference. So two games. So that would be, let's say, first round, they're the one seed. Let's say all the favorites win except for the four or five. So Houston at Denver is probably in the four to seven range.

Well, they'd have to be a pick-up for both games for plus 280 to be worth it, Yeah, that's why they figured these out.

I feel like we had such better stuff here 10 years ago.

I know. I need the Chiefs back.

Ai just ruined gambling. All right, guess the lines, round one.

All right.

Can I clinch the season tonight?

Oh, I think you can.

I'd like to do that. I don't need enough tension. I have enough tension next week.

All right, you went in 10 to 8, and there's only two or three more weeks after this. There's three. So you can clinch a tie, at least.

Rams, Panthers in Carolina. The Shaker's game. I'm happy for the fans of Carolina. Not a lot of good times. With Carolina the last 10 years. I have the Rams favored by seven and a half.

All right. I haven't looked. I had plus eight. It is now ten and a half. So I edge out there.

Oh, my Lord.

I guess they just can't make it. They're not letting you do the two-team Teaser thing with them. It's a little bit high.

How many double-digit underdogs have we had in round one?

This does feel like Seattle, New Orleans was nine, I think.

Not too many others. I thought that was higher. I thought that was nine and a half. Oh, really?

Yeah. I mean, it was nine and a half. It was right in there.

I'm telling you, I know I sound crazy. I mind this Panthers team.

They can run the ball. I still know what you mean by that. You don't mind watching them or you would actually take them in this bet.

I don't think they're as bad as the typical 8, 9, NFC South. I thought a lot of stuff went against them in that Tampa game. Did you see that flea flicker? They kept fighting and come back. Did you see that flea flicker was bad.

Let's get rid of that from the playbook.

A couple of their receivers get open. I don't mind that tremble. I think T-Mack is a legitimate stud now. You always wonder why They just don't chuck it downfield. But the problem is, Bryce could just completely shit the bed and you have no chance. But I don't think their defense is that bad.

They beat them already, right? So they beat them by three, and now they're getting 10 to a half. That is a big number when you look at it that way.

But this is an embarrassing loss. Ramsey fired the special teams coach a couple of weeks ago. They still give up big plays. That Wilson got open on them three times today, got wide open down the field.

Look, I thought they look a lot better these last few weeks. They haven't, but maybe the playoff Rams are different.

So you're putting the Ramsey in a three-team 10-point piece is where we're going here.

With the college stuff, hopefully I'll need it to just win. That'll be that, but I doubt it.

All right, next game. Bayers, home for the packers. I think the packers are going to get a lot of momentum as a popular underdog pick this week. Be my guess, because I think everybody's appropriately scared of the bears. I don't think this line gets to three, even though it's in Chicago, even though the packers are missing a few people. I had bears minus two and a half.

Okay. I said bears minus one and a half. I think they're going to lean heavily into it's hard to beat a team three times. It's packers minus one and a half. That's really dumb.

Wow.

That's really stupid.

Oh, my God. Wow. That changes everything. Now the bears are eligible for nobody believes in us.

What?

This is unbelievable.

What has anyone seen from the packers? When was the last time they played a good game? Holy shit. That's a lot. Yeah, I'm looking at that right, right? Wow.

Well, we We have two Nobody believes in us teams already. As you know, that's the strongest force of round one.

That's right.

When you compare this season to 2008, which is a very smart thing to do because it's very similar in a lot of different ways, including that we don't seem to really have a dominant team. All hell broke loose in round one in 2008, and we had same situation. So we have two home dogs in a row. I think there's another one coming with the Stealers and maybe with the Bills, too.

We're going to see four home dogs here. It'll have been three weeks since you played or Three weeks? Three weeks.

What's the... Jacob's, they rested, so he's probably mostly healthy. Okay. No Parsons. Watson is back. Is their safety going to be back, McKinnie, or is he gone? I don't think he's back. We have to watch the injury report.

Yeah, I don't know why. I mean, is this everything have to do with what the bears did today?

Damn, I love the packers as a dog, but now I'm a little nervous.

Well, now you have the bears on a teaser. There's no doubt you're doing that. Getting most of the touch there. I don't think the bears are very good.

They're like the Stealers where they've had the Horseshoe Up The Ass team, but you could play their schedule a few times and get some 8, 9 results, I think. Yeah. Well, I think that's what they're looking at. And I'm not sure about their defense at all. The Niners game last week, all the yards and all the points they gave up to the Niners who a week later, scored three against Seattle in a must-win game.

I mean, they must be pissed, though. I know you say nobody believes in us, and I don't know how many players follow gambling. I'm sure they all do. They're all going to know they're an underdog to a team they beat twice. That's going to piss them off. So let's see how they react.

The players don't follow gambling, but they all know what an underdog is.

Right.

And then that means all they know is that means people don't believe they can... More people believe they can't win than can win, and then they grasp onto that. By the way, packers, bears in a playoff game. How many times has that happened? Not a lot. Since we've been alive. Does that happen less than five times?

There was that NFC Championship where Cutler was hurt, right? Yeah. That was a disaster. The packers just rolled them. But yeah, it It hasn't happened a lot. Listen, I've been proven wrong. This rivalry has come back to life. Both the regular season games were great. Now, we have a Saturday night showdown.

Well, I couldn't have been more right with my question. How many times do you think they played in the playoffs?

Oh, somebody jumped in?

I just went on StatMuse, which redirects you to some Turkish trafficking site.

Since we've been born? Or is that what...

How about ever? I'll give you ever.

Well, the way you're saying it, six?

Two.

Really?

1941, the NFL divisional game.

Don't remember it.

I'll give you... It's Green Bay at bears. I'll I'll give you the line of... I'll give you... The bears. Bears minus five. Who do you have?

The bears went like 63 to 14 or something.

33 to 14.

Yeah, okay.

Then 2011, the Rodgers ends up- God damn, that was that long ago. They never played a playoff game in Green Bay. Both teams were in Chicago. That's nuts. These teams have been in the NFL for the entire time. They've played twice.

They're ducking each I mean, maybe that's why the bears blew it today.

I was wondering if both the bears and the eagles were afraid of playing the packers, and that's why they were doing the shenanigans, whether they'd want to admit it or not. Were they more comfortable playing the sixth seed.

This was such a terrifying... Did you have a headache by the end of today? We're trying to figure out which coaches are putting which players in. We did that pregame show, and JJ is like, All right, this line opened at seven. And this morning it was 10, and now it's 13. Rahim, why do you think that is? And he's like, because people are losing their minds? I don't know. And then Josh Allen plays for one play, and then he's gone. It didn't matter because.

I can't even believe I survived to it. I'm so glad you brought that up. I forgot to mention that. My least favorite move in sports, the person who keeps the consecutive game streak going by playing one play, which was started by AC Green when he broke his nose or something, and he missed two weeks, and he would just come for a second and then come out to keep his streak going. That's not a streak.

That wasn't even AC Green's most remarkable streak.

No, that was the second most remarkable streak. I don't like when people do this. Yeah, that's still. All right. Next one. Bills Jags. Are we going to have three straight road dogs here? This is in Jacksonville. The Bills have to be favored as well as the Jags have been playing. I don't see a scenario where they're not favoring Josh Allen in a playoff game over Trevor Lawrence in the Jags. I think this is in the tic-tac zone. I have Bills minus one and a half.

I thought it'd be Bills two and a half. I just don't think you would get people to bite on anything less. You were right. It's Bills by one and a half.

Oh, I got one.

Yeah, you nailed it.

So you're up two to one on me.

I like the Jags a little bit. I like the Jags a little bit, too. I don't really want it. I would love a great quarterback to still be alive in the second round, but they're going to be able to run on Buffalo.

The Jags have played well for real for 10 weeks. Tough spot for the Bills.

I don't know that Lawrence has to do a ton.

Which out of these six games, which one do they rig for one of the teams? I think this would be a candidate, Bills Jags.

All of them. Yeah.

Let's get Josh to the next round. Maybe the rounds are against. The Bills win this, then they would be a play, either the Patriots or the Broncos in round two. Yeah, they have to survive. I'd be scared if I were the Jags. Start complaining about the whistles now. Just talk to the Panthers fans about that Bucks game yesterday. Right. Man, that's just a bad line. Every sharp that we know is going to think the Jags are... They probably, Rahim on Gamblech show will be like, I have my formula. I have the Jag's favorite by two and a half on my model. Everyone's going to have their model with the Jag's favorite.

See, they could... I was half joking when I said, at a protest, I'm going to make every line of pick them because nobody deserves to be favorite in these playoffs.

But they have two of them that are basically pick-ups.

They threw a tic-tac at us the last two games, and you still can't get over it. Like, Green Bay, Chicago's one and a half, and Jacksonville, Buffalo, one and a half. Styming.

I mean, this is all you need to know about the 2025 playoffs. We've done three games, and they're our home underdogs. This is the fucking play-ups where the higher seed should have an advantage.

Yeah, no doubt.

Okay. I think we're finally going to have a favorite here. It's the Eagles and the Niners. This was actually the one I had the most trouble with this because you could have told me this was going to be six and a half. And with the way the Eagles have looked, I just couldn't get there, especially with the offense and the backdoor potential and Shana and. I just don't know what to make of this Eagles team. So I went with the Eagles minus three and a half.

Yeah, you nailed It's three and a half. I thought two and a half. I guess the Niners, I should have gone higher. I probably wouldn't have gone higher than three, though. But the Niners did not look good.

I think if you're the Niners defense, this would be the number one team you'd want to play in the play-off, other than the Panthers.

Really?

A team that just does the same thing every drive, move super slow. They'll probably shoot themselves in the foot at some point. You might be able to get off the field, and then you can get McAfree out there and try to have these big drives I'm really comfortable in this game if I'm the Niners. With that said, I could see them losing 40 to nothing.

The coaching battle is similar. The quarterbacks are similar. You don't know what you're going to get from Barkley. Barkley versus McAfree. It's really great on paper.

It almost is a gambling stay away. But I think putting the Eagles in a tease. You got Rams, 10-point tease with the Rams. There we go. And the Eagles. And maybe our next game, get the Eagles to plus six and a half.

Not bad.

So out of the ones we've had, Rams, Packers, Bills, Eagles, and Pats, and still, what is the blowout game? Who wins by 25 points out of these six, if you had to say right now? By the way, you can change your mind in five days in the money you're gambling, but just looking at the line right now. Who's the blowout? Who's the 48 to 20 round one win?

Well, the easy answer would be Rams because the spread is so high and the potential- In Carolina, though, I wouldn't do that. It could be that we just happen to be there factor a little bit. I don't think so, though. I think you're right. I think Bill's Jag's, and I could see it either way, honestly.

That was my pick. I could see Jag's 44 to 28 or something. It's just a lot of points.

Right.

Okay. Two games left. Sunday night. I get Collinsworth for this, too. Yeah. Oh, Mike. Patriots home for the Chargers. I almost put this in the Vegas zone, but I really don't think people respect the Pats that much against better teams. And I went with Patriots minus three and a half.

I said Patriots minus three. You have now won three in a row. You're guessing exactly.

Oh, okay. Three and a half. If that line moved, which way would it move?

I think towards chargers. I already think it's rich. I don't know. Have you earned that yet?

I think it ends at three. What's your ideal weather for this one? Freezing.

Freezing cold? So cold.

Herbert's not sure of his hands. He can't even feel his left hand. Wow. Yeah.

Really cold. Tiny bit of rain. Yeah. You might get it.

A little wet, cold. Although the Chargers have been living in here in LA for the last week, getting ready for this path. That's true. Because the weather's been awful here. Man, what a world. The path's hosting a round one Sunday night game as three and a half point favorites as a two-seed. Can't believe it. Four and 13 last year. It's like 2004. Just fucking up down the stretch when they could have gotten the number one pick and ended up with the number four, and somehow it all worked out. Can't believe it.

So happy for you, really.

Thanks. I knew you'd be really happy. Plus, we have an MVP candidate Jalen Brown.

Is he defensive end?

I can't. At the end, I got to talk about Celtic Scouppers. All right. You just got to give me three minutes. Okay. Texans at the Steelers.

So I can only tie here.

All right. I just can't. I got to look again to make sure the Stealers in the play. Hold on. Let me check the standards one more time. Did they really win the division?

You saw that kick at the end.

Just looking. No, I got to check one more time.

Zee flowers. How did he do it?

Oh, my God. They went 10 and seven. They were plus 10. 397 points, 387 allowed. Just unbelievable. How is that team in the playoffs? How did they win 10 games?

I don't know. I got to guess through their schedule. They laid down against the Browns. The Ravens were one and five and were favorite to win the division. It's been the crazy The easiest roller coaster ride you can imagine for the AFC North.

They won week one, that ridiculous Jets game, 34-32. Week three, they beat the Patriots by seven with five turnovers, including one where the guy was running in the end zone and fumbled. Week 4 in Dublin, they beat the Vikings by three. That was stupid. They beat the Colts on November second, 2720. I have a vague memory of that one being We might have lost money in that game. They beat the Ravens earlier in the year, 27-22. Ridiculous. They won that Crazy Lions game, 29-24. And then they won this game today. Seven of those could have gone the other way.

They beat the Ravens twice. You just never would have thought that with Lamar coming back, right? That was going to be the be all. Okay, how much are the Ravens going to beat Pittsburgh by? Thirty? And they just hung and stayed and missed kicks. And here we are. I don't know.

How can you bring Harba back after that with what's happened the last seven years? At what point do you just have to do something drastic?

That was your hot take. Did you make that official or was that just on a text chain?

No, I had that two, three months ago.

Well, you said what's the biggest Monday surprise?

Oh, Harba. Yeah. I thought whoever lost this game was not going to be the coach of their team next year. I thought it was a legitimate, ratty, Piper, Greg the Hammer, Valentine, Dogcower, Loser Leapstown match. It might be. Poor Roddy. The thing is, if they fired Harba, the Giants hire him five minutes later, right?

I had a similar idea for Tomlin. This screws it up a little bit. But my hot take for 2026, I had three. Tomlin goes to the Falcons. Rahim Mars getting fired was part A of that. And then I thought, he got like, all right, he could win a division at 8, 9, 7, and 10. He wouldn't have to be crucified like he is in Pittsburgh, and he probably wants out anyway. That was one. Number two was, you will have pizza before February ninth. I know you're all no carved up. That was my second take in '26.

Hold in strong.

The number three was at Aaron Trump is going to fight on the UFC card on the White House lawn this summer. Oh my God.

That'd be amazing.

Yeah, they're going to get- Is he old enough? He's seven foot four. They're going to get him a fight against a groundskeeper, and that'll be that. Yeah, he'll win.

I actually I was at the little club where the Clippers game is for the game, eating a hot dog without a bun with mustard on it. I was like, I really hope somebody doesn't take a picture of this and send this to Sal. I knew you'd have been upset.

You got to stop with this. Your weight hasn't fluctuated three pounds in two decades.

Listen, I feel better mentally.

You do? You look terrible.

Thanks. Texans at Stealers. There's just no scenario where the Stealers are going to be favorite in this game, so I'm going to start there.

Wow.

I forgot to guess this game, so I'm doing it on the fly. It's not going to be over three. I think it's going to be Texans minus two and a half in Pittsburgh.

What a comeback for you. What a comeback. You lose the first two. You're rattled. I said Pittsburgh minus one. Maybe I was... I don't know why I was taking them back. You thought Pittsburgh was going to be a favorite?

Just by one. There's no way.

I just didn't think you could make it. This is Houston's It's the first playoff game on the road. All those shaky games they hosted. So this is the first... That's true. Yeah. Like ever? Is it the first wild card playoff game? Whatever. Yeah, it's three and a half this line. Now you're scared.

Well, you're just setting the stealers up to do what they do.

I know.

This is like throwing meat over the cage to the lion. This is all they need. This is how they live. This is how they breathe. Today was the classic stealer. I mean, they played all the hits today, and so did the Ravens. Run up the middle, stuff for three yards, play action pass and second down, tipped at the line of scrimage, Terrible third down pass, punt. That was the entire Raven season. Then all of a sudden, they become this fun team, and you're like, Where was that team the whole time?

Both of them.

There's eight flowers running downfield. Anyway, that line's too high. The Texans should not be favored by that.

The Texans are going to score. So their team total for 39. 5 is probably 21-18. I don't know. If they're supposed to score 21, 21. 5 points, wouldn't you like the Steelers at this?

Plus three and a half. Plus Metcalf comes back?

Yeah, that's big.

The Steelers, do you think they have the plays in the playbook where they're like, All right, we're going to run the friar Mouth play where he's in the back of the end zone and the guy is draped all over him, and I'm going to throw it to him over his head, but it's going to flail up like James Harden and flail into the guy, and the reps will be dumb enough to call this. On two.

All right. Break. You just run straight for the goal post and throw your arms there.

Turn around and do the James Harden into five guys move, and they'll throw a flag. Don't worry about it.

Meanwhile, that was the smartest thing the Ravens could do because then they went for it with two seconds left and a half. The terrible play flipped it left.

Texans minus three and a half. We have four home underdogs out of six teams. The two teams that are favored are the two seed Patriots that haven't done anything in the Eagles who've been half asleep since January or February whenever they win the Super Bowl.

When was the last time we didn't get a home team favorite by four or more in this round?

I don't think ever. No. I'd love to... Our guy, John Ewing, is usually good at this. I'd love to know if we've ever had a play-off where no home team was favorite by four points.

Let us know, John. Otherwise, we're going to have to go to StatMuse, and then that's going to be embarrassing.

Yeah, they might end up in Turkey. Yeah, right. Unbelievable. God. Do we bet next week? Maybe it's just a complete stay away next week.

No, we have to bet. I just the bangles really screwed me so much. I would have had nice tidy something.

You were very upset today.

I was so mad.

I couldn't even- You said some mean things about Joe Burrow.

By the way, we didn't even talk about how we handled our great bet of four teams to come in last place, and the Saints were the only one giving us trouble. And so we hedged. You didn't hedge it?

No, I rode the Falcons. I didn't hedge. I went raw dog on the Falcons.

Holy crap. Really? Kirk Cousins with the flu? You went when you heard that?

I wasn't phased. We had almost three to one on our bet. I was like, I'm raw dog in the falcons.

All right. But me, Hinch and House went plus three and a half. I mean, when the hell is that going to happen? We never middle anything. Oh, you middled it? That was perfect. Yeah, it was great. I didn't know you guys had- But I was so incensed. Yeah, because I was so mad about the bangles. Nothing mattered in life after that.

Because normally you're more excited about a middle.

I know. I couldn't look. We could talk money, but it was a big difference.

We did a bad job on over-unders this year. But I don't feel that bad about it because our best picks all did really well. Patriots, Broncos, Seahawks.

I had the Jags in a division.

You had the Jags. I had the bears. We were both short in the Washington. Right. That was the big one. But the one that killed me and prevented me from... I did really well in the futures, especially on airplane runways in Boston, in Chicago, and Indianapolis, which I'm convinced that they give you extra time. But the KC just- Wait, who gives you extra time? The airline? The airports are working with FanDuel and everybody else. Oh, wow. Yeah. They're like, Can you just stay on the runway for 10 extra minutes? We look like we have a couple of live ones. Interesting. Making runway bets. Yeah, it's so funny. I have a whole bunch of runway FanDuel bets. But they won. Even the Collectors Convention in Chicago. Yeah. And I hit all them. I had bears over, I had all this stuff. But the one that killed me was the Chiefs. I had the Chiefs tied into a couple of awesome ones, like the Patriots and the Eagles to win their divisions with the Chiefs, like shit like that. And the Chiefs, the most reliable bet that we've had for the last seven years, just finally shit the bet.

Well, because that's what we call that. We call that the KCD, like a CD. Like, yeah, they're 6 to 1. Mahomes is 6 to 1 or 7 to 1. Ride those in the next five or six years. It's going to cash. I think we have to walk away from that, though.

I had some other. I had some player prop stuff that was bad, like borough, passing yards, and some of the other ones. But the stuff that we did the best on was the last place stuff. We had all those teams packed, like Tennessee and Saints.

Yeah, those were done. The Browns, right? Those were done like a month ago, although the Browns ended up close with Cincinnati.

I just go figure, but the two South divisions just murdered me this week. I think I went like one in seven in the two South divisions.

We had under-I think I got every team wrong. Would we have under-33 wins? We lost that bet.

I think I had the wrong over under on every team in the South. I think I might have had... I had Houston over. I I think I went one and three in the AFC South.

I stand by the Bucks. I still think if there's a week 19, I think they're going to sneak in somehow.

What a weird thing for them. They celebrate the win, but they didn't win anything. Then they have to watch So they got the flu ridden Kirk Cousins going against Taylor Shuck with no weapons and then get Dictees for three hours and then end up.

So that was a win for the league, right? Because they got the extra game that mattered. I mean, they're constantly searching for games that matter in week 18.

Total win for the week.

They had to put the Tampa Carolina game, whether it was a clincher or not in that early slot Saturday.

Well, that's why people were crying about the refs yesterday because it was in the week's interest for Tampa to win because it set up a better scenario.

Speaking of one thing we didn't hit, I know this is going far afield at this point. Did Lafleur down 16-0 with the spread at 13. 5 call time out with a second left to kick a effing field He sure did. To make it 16-3? Oh, my God. Oh, boy.

This is a weird thing we've seen head coaches do where they don't want to get shut out. Okay. It's something about the shut out leaves them uneasy. But it was one of the three shakiest gambling moments of the year.

You got to go 16: 8 there and then 16: 16. I know with one second left, you can't do that, but you have to score a countdown. That's nuts.

Good luck to Today's Parent Corner, presented by Greenland 2 Migration. If you love this disaster hit film in 2020, well, the end of the world was only the beginning. Jirar Butler and Morena Baccarin are back for the sequel. We're going to talk about that after we finish Parent Corner, Greenland 2, coming soon. My guy, Jirar Butler. Yeah. Then a Thief. Had the most iconic Benihana scene in the history of Benihana. What do you got for Parents Corner?

All right. Do we change it to Aaron's corner? Oh my God.

I just stumbled. I know. I'm already nervous about Pat's chargers being live next week. Why are they doing that to us? Could you have been live after the Romo game?

I thought you were kidding. Live? No. I was hiding in a movie theater.

Could you have been all live after the Romo game?

Just taking a microphone. I'm in the row sobbing in a movie theater in a AMC. Yeah, I have a couple of things that are not great. It was my son, Harrison's birthday, Tuesday, turned 12, and the kid loves fishing. He loves fishing. I don't know where he gets it. His friends love fishing. We have a pier not far from us. They go all the time. They went today in the rain. He blew off watching football with his old man to go fishing with his friends. Whatever. Fine. And so there's this giant bait shop. I can't even call it a bait shop. It's like a big five for fishing, but it's five times the size of a big five. It's called Bass It's in Irvine, and that's where he wanted to go. It's about 40 minutes away. So we take him on his birthday.

I like Irvine, by the way. I like Irvine, by the way. Great U. Irvine is a great sports location. It's my number one used sports location.

Great sports complex.

Weekend stuff. Always stuff to go. Good fields. They have a nice outdoor mall. Thumbs up for a invite.

The mall is awesome. The Bass Pro shop is fine, but not for an hour and a half, not for someone like me. We get there and I'm like, All right, this place is huge, but a lot of it's hunting crap and boats that I know he's not going to buy and giant knives and everything. We were there for 90 minutes and I was like, You've got to be kidding me. I just can't do it. He's buying lores. You need three lores. And he had a gift card to this place.

So he was really exploring.

He's right in there and talking to everybody. And the guy, Well, this is better for carp. And if you're going to hook, just in case you hit a stingray, they're talking about all this crazy stuff. Stop it. After an hour, I'm done. So they have these giant tents that they also sell. I zipped myself up in the tent, laid down on the cot that was in the tent, and watched whatever bowl game I was losing money on. I was like, You let me know when you're done. It was like 45 minutes after that when he finally was ready to cash out.

You just medged out. They didn't say anything to you?

No, I was like, Let's see what happens. It's not like sitting on a toilet in a Home Depot, but I wasn't laying in a tent, so it was nice.

Did you get stink-guied by anybody or no?

I did check before I unzipped to see if anybody was watching, but no, it wasn't too bad.

See, these are the stories when people talk about how technology is ruining everything.

Yeah.

20 years ago, you couldn't have done that. You just would have been wandering around the store like you were in a coma. Now, you just pull your phone out and you're like, Go ahead, Harrison, take an extra 40 minutes. Your mistake, though, I was not...

Capping it?

No, having cousin Jimmy go with you. I feel like he would have gone on that trip.

He did want to go, but he couldn't make it there. Yeah, you're right.

I actually think you should have just taken him or had him go. So paid for the Uber, had them go, just and have Jimmy do all of it. You're right. I think he would have done it. He's that weird. I mean, he's a very strange guy. Yes. I didn't think a major celebrity would go spend the Saturday in an Irvine fish shop, but he would have.

By the way, he's a Critics Choice Award winner. Jimmy came alive. Congratulations. Saw that. Critics could be very critical. So that's the thing about that.

He was the Critics Choice.

He was the Choice of all the Critics. So nice job. Aaron Rodgers won, too. So I guess it's a give and take, but what are you going to do for him?

Did Aaron Rodgers? Oh, he won the football game. I was going to say, he won a critic's choice for the H ayahuasca documentary?

No. So anyway, he ends up with 40 lores. So that was that. The other thing real quick- How much?

Can you tell us how much everything cost?

It's like 275 bucks. And he had like 150 in gift cards and stuff. But we hit Korean barbecue afterwards, so it was fine.

But anyway, my son- You have to do this stuff because there's a whole Hermosa Beach teen gang scene that's pretty crazy. You got to make sure he doesn't get in with some roughians. Yeah, you're right. You got to make sure you keep your father-son relationship.

Should I move? Out of all the six places you live, what's the nicest neighborhood that I can go? I can not have to worry about that. I think you're in a good spot.

I think you're fine.

Well, what it doesn't have, wherever you are, is a Steeler's bar where my son Jack is just getting back, 17 years old. Oh, my God.

Oh, yeah. That was a big win for Jack.

I forgot about that.

Congrats to Jack.

I could hear him stomping around still.

But anyway- I'm surprised he hasn't crashed the pod. I know.

I keep checking because it looks like it's going to be close. But that was going to be a sad night for him. And now next Monday night, he'll be out on a school night. Very weird. But you know I'm stupid, and every year I go through my favorite new person I met in 2025.

I do the same thing. I have a winner as well. You do. Yeah. No, go. You can do yours. Well, no.

I asked Jack, and he rattled off 30 names of these people in this bar that he I was to. So 50-year-old, 17. So that was interesting.

So he counted down from 25 to one? They were all over 35 years old.

He knew it like I was about to ask him. He really said, Are you ready to give yours? You want to give yours?

No, I'm not ready. Oh, you're not going to do it. I pretended I was. Do you have one? I can do one. I feel like every year I made a friend that I like. It's the person you met.

Yeah, it's got to be someone you met for the first time in 2025, and it can't be over Zoom.

It has to be somebody I actually literally met this year. Yes. I need more time to think about who that is.

I would narrow it down from mine to the guy who both fixed and broke our stove three times before he was rounded up by ice, no joke, and didn't see it. Oh, no. Yeah, that's not great. That's horrible. But he was a nice guy. Then secondly, I would say Seth Meyers, who's a big fan of this podcast.

Did you not know Seth Myers at all?

Never met him. Never met him. Seth Myers is a great guy. You've had him on the podcast.

Big win today for Seth Meyers.

Yeah. Good job by him. Good job. Oh, man. Now I have to...

I got to think. I have an answer next week. I really want to think about this.

Who's new with the Ringer that you met?

I got to think about this. I don't want to have the wrong answer. There's a couple of people that I met, but that I thought was this year, but it was probably last year.

Really? Okay.

All right. My parent corner. I have some parent stuff for you about when is it time to let go? Ben's 18 now, and it's been break, and he's always driving away. He's going, I'm I'm bowling with my friends, going to see my girlfriend. It's 12: 30. We don't know when he's coming back. My wife is just like, Well, I can't go to bed until Ben comes back. I'm like, Really? You can't? He's 18 now. He could legally just leave. He's not even legally required to live with us. What is the right age to basically be like, I'm just going to bed. I hope he's here the next morning. Because I was thinking about when I was in after high school, college range, and I just went out, and they would always annoy me when my parents were, When are you going to be back? Or my mom would be waiting up in the kitchen. I'm like, The fuck? I'm 20. Why are you up? Zoe can do whatever. Zoe's almost 21, but Ben is 18. It's like he's right in that zone of, should I still be worried when he's out?

It absolutely depends on the kid. We have friends whose kids, if they went out, they should be sitting on the porch all night long and waiting and making sure that he or she got back.

Ben is not one of those kids.

Ben, I don't think, is one of those kids. Do they wake you up when they get home anyway? Not tap you on the shoulder and wake you up, but them coming through the door. Does that wake you up?

Murphy usually makes a point of pretending that he's guard in the house for five seconds, so that wakes you up. I see. I'll roll over and go back to bed. My wife will then be up watching Heated Robbery or whatever the hell she watches. Right.

I think you're good with Ben. I think until he gives you a reason not to be.

That's been my case, but my wife's still very hands-on. Yeah. That's hard for me to tell him that. She's checking on Life 360 to see where he is. This is crazy.

Yeah. My son is now 20, went back up to Oregon, and we were watching. He has a 14-hour drive, and it was like, the conditions aren't great. And she's watching a video game, just like watching him on, We do find my not Life 3. 6. I'm like, All right, you got to let him be. He's just He's like, Oh, he's 66 miles an hour. You think that's too fast? I'm like, Just please, just let him get there. He stopped hard three times. Exactly. He passed the Costco. What do you think that's about? He loves the hot dogs there.

It is definitely the start of some pay-per-view movie that I would probably rent where somebody's watching their kid on Life 360 and they're just doing a straight drive, and then all of a sudden, the car goes right and just keeps going right. Yeah, right. Then they were like, Oh, my God, where's he going? And all of a sudden, he's in Nevada or Sacramento or something. Yeah, that's a kernel of something.

I had a similar thing with the game changer where you could watch your kid. You could watch a cartoon version of your kid playing baseball.

Hoping he gets a hit. You find out after.

Harrison got hit by a pitch, and it says, Bad or hit by pitch. And so I'm like, all right. And I'm waiting, and I'm like, One minute, two minutes.

Five minutes passes.

Five minutes passed. I can't get a hold of Melissa. I'm like, I don't know if there's a cartoon about to come on the screen and pick them. I'm like, fucking throw the next pitch, please. I'm like, finally, the next pitch was and it was okay. But yeah, that's a similar thing.

Cartoon in was. They got to add that.

Why not?

Ben's out. We never see him. So we went back to college. My wife and I, we went to South of the Clippers last night. We had a great time. She's watching Heated Robbery. She banged out all six episodes this weekend. I guess this is just what happens. I'm just glad we still like hanging out with each other. She watched all six episodes of Heated Robbery in 20 hours. Really? And was sobbing at the end of the six one.

Wow.

Yeah. Do you know this show?

No, I don't. I don't know.

You literally haven't heard of Heated Rival?

I've heard of it, but I don't know why. Is she sobbing? I should like this. You should like this. I mean, you picked Devil Wears Prada as your number one. What the hell?

What happened to you? We're not the audience for Heated Rival. Okay. It's my wife and her friends who have all devoured this, and they've been talking about it for a week. And It's a phenomenon on HBO Max. Does your wife know about this?

Yeah, she does. She was talking to friends, but I didn't think... Now that the bowl games have settled down, maybe I'll watch them and stuff.

From a TV standpoint, this is the worst time for us to jump in anything. There's too much football. Yeah, I know. And there's basketball. There's going to be all kinds of traits. Today's Parents' Corner. Again. I don't think parents in the copy. Well, because they did a typo. Today's This is parent corner presented by Greenland 2 Migration. Where were we? That's right. The sequel, Five years after a comet strike devastated most of Earth. Not unrealistic right now. The Garriety family is leaving the safety of their bunker in Greenland in search of a new home It's a disaster film. It's my guy, Jouard Freacon Butler. What else do you need? Greenland 2 Migration in Theater's January ninth, rated PG 13. The other thing I would have done for Parents' Corner, it's not really apparent, but I went to Celts Clippers last night This has been... I don't think I've missed a Celts Clipper game since I moved here. I think this was my 23rd or 24th game. The Klippers have been playing well. Kauai Leonard, they've climbed back, and it's actually I've been sending you the Pacific division odds because I do feel like there's a chance they could get back into it.

The Celtics have been playing really well. They're three and one on the road trip, and it would have been a nice one. It was going to be a hard game. I think they were one and a half point underdogs. Jalen Brown didn't get player of the month last month. He's been awesome. He's like 30 points a game. I said on Tuesday, I think he's the first time on NBA guy. Kawhi is playing great. We first play of the game. I said to my wife, Jalen's got the freaking USSEC look on his face. This is like, he's going to battle. This is going to be really fun. He's going to go at Kawhi. He guards Kawhi the whole game, shuts him down. He scores 50 points. He's It goes nuts in the second half. He's become, other than Shay, probably the most reliable mid-range scorer in the league. He's really in year 10, has gone up a level and breaks the Clipper spirit. There's probably 7,000 Boston fans there, maybe 6,000. They've designed this arena for Clipper fans. It's Clippers, Clippers, Clippers. There's a wall. It's like bomber's creation. There's all these Boston fans. They're chaining, Let's go, Celtics.

Balmer was so fucking pissed. Really? He was doing this, looking around. He was watching little kids play on his lawn who weren't supposed to be on the lawn. He was doing this. And Jalen's just romping on them, trying to get to 50 points and gets it. And it was honestly one of the best road games I've seen this self-taught play in person. He was unbelievable. And it's a really weird situation because Tatum hasn't played this whole year and Jalen somehow went up a level. And I don't really know what happens when Tateum comes back. Because Jalen's averaging 30 a game. He's been awesome. He's been a half a game out of the two seed. And then Tatum is going to come back. So the good version of this, he just comes back and you give him the Sam Hauser minutes and He's on minutes limit. He's just going to shoot threes and rebound and play defense and be completely additive. But he's coming back to somebody else's team, and I don't know how it's going to play out.

Do you think this is a Snoopuntley situation here? Maybe Tatum Maybe January Tatum sits. Maybe we don't need to see him.

January Tatum. Well, then we did win a title with the old way of doing it.

That was so long ago.

Obviously, Pippen was the comparison in this when Jordan went to play baseball and Pippen was great. He took the Bulls to 55 wins. Jalen has been better than Pippen was that season. Every night, he's 30 plus points. I think he's probably... I saw his fanDuel odds. What is it? I thought, I couldn't believe that they were a as high as they were because I would have him. I think Maxi's the other one. I'm not allowed to bet on this.

Jalen's 80, Maxi's 200.

Yeah, so that's good. The other Jalen, Brunson is 75. And Lucas is plus 450. To me, Cade, Brown, Maxi, in some order, and out at Brunson, fifth. And SGA, first. I wouldn't have Luca in the top five. That's crazy to me.

Yeah, but don't give these out, and then you're going to for Shay anyway. You shouldn't do that.

No, I'm just saying the public perception on what's happening, and maybe it'll become a story this week about how good Jalen's been because they have a pretty easy schedule next five games. They play Denver, no Jokeage. They play the Spurs, no Wemby. Everything's at home. There's a chance they could be 27 and 12, 26, 13 with no Tatum. And they traded Drew Hall today. They have no Porzingis. They have no Horford. This is fucking crazy. What's happening? They started out on three. This is a nuts story, but I don't think Jalen has got enough credit for how great he's been.

But that number is baked into the fact that Tatum is coming back, and then they're going to have to share the team. If Tatum was out-If he comes out, yeah.

That's true. I mean, part of the thing about how well they've been playing is they have the luxury now of Keeping them at a low. Really being careful when Tatum comes back. Even when he comes back, you're on a minute somewhere, you're going to play seven minutes a half. We're going to ease you back.

Like Ohtani didn't have to pitch until he had to pitch because of the same thing.

Yeah, and just be like, Hey, come in and be the most awesome version of Sam Hauzer for a month and get your sea legs. But to watch somebody go up a level in year 10, I haven't seen this before. At least for basketball, it's really unusual. For somebody who was already really good to then now be one of the best seven, eight, nine players in the league. I did not expect this.

I like that Balmer thing. I don't know people know what that arena is like, that Intuit. He's got it all tricked out. It's a weird place anyway. Basically, you have to live through your phone in that thing. He might have locked up on you guys. He presses one button, and you guys will be like...

No, he definitely had a meeting afterwards trying to figure out how this could never happen again. Really? He's so crazy in a good way about having everybody focused on the Clippers in the game. Even when you go wherever to go piss or go get food. There's no TVs. There's no TVs.

You got to get back to your seat.

Everything is driving people back into the seats because he wants as much noise as possible. But the sounds like we're just really, really good. It's a really, really It's a tough team. I don't know. I wasn't between this and the Pats. This is about as good as it's been for two teams at the same time in a while.

And your Red Sox are right there.

It's all good. Red Sox is not right there. How are you feeling about the Mets?

Right now, it's not good. We're not the Dodgers. That's how I feel about the Mets.

My God, it's 10: 25. We got to wrap this up.

Hell, yeah. Let's get out of here.

We're talking about fishing in the South. What do you got to this week.

Nothing. I don't have time. No Ringer Gambling show. Check it out all week long. It's a lot of fun. It's right here on YouTube. We are not abandoning YouTube altogether. We got all that Ringer gambling content on there, and it's going to be fun.

Good time. We have a big week next week. We got two Ringer Sunday pregame shows on Saturday and Sunday before the games. Then we're going live on Netflix next week. Beautiful. This will be our last journey on YouTube. I don't really have any fond farewells or anything for YouTube. We're still going to be putting up shorts and clips my channel, but the live video. And by the way, you can still watch us on Spotify if you don't want to watch us on YouTube. We will be on video on Spotify. Please don't forget that part. Good save. You'll be able to watch us in one of two places.

That's right.

But if you want to watch us on Netflix, we'll be there as well.

They are putting your head up there. I went to watch the Ricky Gervais thing, and I see a silhouette of you.

I got suggested?

You're looking like Ellen DeGenerous, circa 2008. But whatever. It's a plug.

It's good. Ellen Degenera. They should give me something where I look like I'm an erotic thriller from Columbia, where it's me and some secretary. She's got like... Yeah, right. I'm going to tell them to sexy my thing up, make it seem like it's a more provocative show.

You're going to go all Dave Chappelle on sports, right? Next week? Yeah. That's what we're going to do.

Just going to... Yeah, I'm going to try to lose my mind. All right, because I'll see you in a week. As always, good job by you. Good job by you, Thanks to Geha and Eduardo as well. Thanks to everybody for listening, watching, and I have a new rewatchable is coming on Monday. We got a mailback coming tomorrow, so stay tuned for that. I will see you in a couple of days. Must be 21 plus on President's Select States for a Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in President DC, Kentucky or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-100 Gamble or visit rg-help. Com. Call 888-79-7777 or visit ccpg. Org/chat-in-connecticat 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, N-Y or text Hope, N-Y in New.