Transcript of NFL Over/Unders, an Oscars Preview, and a Brady-Pats Feud | With Cousin Sal, Sean Fennessey, and Seth Wickersham

Of Tamaris punkt.

Com.

Perfect Verdich und jetzt auch ver een Tamares. The Bill Simmons podcast is presented by Sam's Club. We are also presented by the Ringer Podcast network where we put up a new Rewatchables episode on Monday night. It was the second movie of CR month. Me, Chris Ryan, Kyle Brandt. We did Fargo, 30th anniversary of the movie this week too. So it was fun timing for that one. Had a great time. Next movie that's coming Monday night is going to be To Live and Die in la, which if you have not seen it, just an all time 80s movie. If you liked Heat, if you like these gritty crime dramas, highly recommend. So you have a few days to check that one out. We have an action packed podcast on this one. Cousin Sal and I are going to break down all the NFL over Unders that just came out on Fanduel and our instant reactions to that Sean Fennesee. We're talking Oscars because the Oscars are Sunday night he's going live on Netflix and we had to talk about Best Actor and some of the other subplots that popped up. And then if that's not enough in this action packed gigantic podcast, our old friend Seth Wickersham came on to talk about Brady's bizarre relationship with the Patriots and everything we've learned about the quarterback position which he covered in his book American Kings.

So we have NFL over Unders, we have the Oscars, we have the Patriots and quarterbacks all coming next. We're gonna take a break, Pearl Jam and then Cousin Sal. This episode of the Bill Simmons podcast is presented by Sam's Club. It is that time of the year when you just gotta get in your car and go somewhere. I've done that plenty of times in my life. Nowhere gets you ready to go quite like Sam's Club. Snacks, the gear, super low prices on gas. They got a bunch of stuff that keep you and the whole crew rolling. And here's what you got to do. You got to join the club of yes end@samsclub.com yes. And you must be 18 years or older to purchase membership. A membership is subject to qualifications. Visit samsclub.com yesend for details. All right, recording this part of the podcast. It is 2:45 Pacific time. We got word today, cousin Sal, that FanDuel sportsbook was going to release Stanley NFL over unders for win total yes. Which we love. I I basically begged them to wait. I was going to do this live on Netflix, but they had The World Baseball Classic.

And they. They couldn't accommodate us. So we're just doing it. We're doing it live here. We're going to run it as fast as possible.

You did text me this weekend. You like, you're on call. This could happen. You could be Bethune Cookman to win some shitty conference tournament. And we're just going to have to do this. We're going to have to go through these.

Be ready. I can't wait. So they mailed them to us. Now you've done some ringer gambling shows where you've tried to guess some of the. Some of the. On the other markets, some of the lines that come out. I have intentionally avoided everything. I know nothing. All I know are the super bowl odds for each team. So you have all the odds that are going to come out on FanDuel. We're going to try to guess. We did this last year. And here's what I learned from last year. My reaction, if it was too bad one way, was actually probably. Probably I'm the one that's wrong because the Niners was the one that jumped out last year. Like, oh, my God, that's crazy. I can't wait to bet that. And the Niners, we couldn't believe they were favored. They were ten and a half.

They were favored to win the division and were like, there's no way they were going to win the division. We were right about that. Except they won 13 games, so we nailed it.

Except for the four losses the entire year. Yeah, there was a couple that seemed low, like the Patriots. I remember we were like, huh?

Right.

Like there's. They got vrayball already. There's some signs. So anyway, I factored that into all my guesses. What we're gonna do is you have the document, we're gonna go through each team, I'm gonna present my guess, and then you're gonna give us the answer and tell you if you thought it was high or low. So you wanna just do divisions?

Let's do it. Let's start with yours, right?

All right, we'll do AFC East. And I had. So the AFC east is playing AFC west and NFC north, which I think is in the running for save eight games against those two divisions. NFC west of Vegas is decent. All of those games could be tough. And then NFC north, same thing. Like Minnesota might be the only easy game. So from what we learned last year with this game, maybe it skews a little low. First one is Buffalo. And I guessed 11 and a half wins for this so, okay, I think

that'd be a good guess because based on their past, you know, they're a 12 win team. Normally. They were a 12 one team last year. They have a new head coach. Fanduel is setting them at ten and a half.

Ooh, okay, so that's part of the schedule thing then, right? That they don't like that they're a second place schedule. They're 11 to 1 to win the Super Bowl. The new coach, I can't tell if that's. That might just be a wash. Right, Right.

Yeah, I think, look, you know how it is with Josh Allen. You're not going to want to get against him even if he has seven wins in November, you know, like they could still get to 12 or 13. I will tell you, ahead of the AFC east and the NFC south have the hardest schedules.

Right.

I'll put that out there.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, in this case, they play the jets twice and Miami twice. Two teams that. There's a lot of signs. Guess what? Either of those teams might not be good. My team, the New England Patriots, 18:1, they have a first place schedule. So this is just classic, perfect, perfect storm of an awesome easy schedule last year. And now we're going to get hard this year. And I still went ten and a half, but I might be a win high. You're.

You're going to get hard. You're going to go real soft real fast because it's nine and a half. And that is exactly what you're talking about. This schedule is tough. You play a first place schedule and you're going to play all those AFC west and NFC north teams and I don't know, they waited for Romeo Dobbs, which you're going to have to throw in 13 million just for the giant helmet alone. That's a lot of hard plastic.

I do. It was the first thing I thought of was I went and I researched the concussion. So he had two during the 24 season, one near the end and then one two months later when he was wearing the concussion helmet in the playoffs. But the price is fine. I mean that's that, that 15 to 20 million range for a receiver. I don't think he's a number one receiver, but he's kind of an elevated number two, good playoff guy. And they got very. I like that better than A.J. brown.

You didn't want oversight charge Ray J.

Brown.

You wanted Pierce, I think.

Right. Really wanted Pierce and it. And I don't know what happened with that, whether that was possible or not, but it's I mean Pierce was on McAfee the moment all the signings were being announced. Like I never wanted to leave. So maybe that wasn't realistic. I. The Vera Tucker thing, they signed two guys. That worried me from a durability standpoint. The schedule worries me. We. We still don't know if how healthy Drake May, what happened to him in the playoffs. Super bowl hangover. Those stats are bad. Harder schedule. There's a lot to be nervous about.

So they are one of two teams whose win total projected is four and a half games lower than what they presented last year. So they're nine and a half. They were 14. They had 14 wins.

I'll just start making excuses. Yeah, I'm going to start making excuses now, Skip. This year I'm going to go glass half empty for six months and then, you know, if anything good happens, there we go.

Roman Anthony, he's good.

Jets five and a half. I went.

Good job by you.

Okay. Exactly.

Yeah.

Coming off a three win year. Is this what took FanDuel so long? They want to see if Geno was coming back for sure.

They probably bumped them down a win. Yeah.

No kidding.

Yeah, I mean it's just the hits keep coming for jets fans. I actually I thought Malik Willis would have been an interesting one for them and I thought when Miami paid Miami's next, we'll just do them now, I guess. Four and a half for Miami.

Good. Right on. Okay. Right on. And I think that's fair. I feel like they're trying a little. I mean that is where Malik Willis went. What he get 68 million for three years. So that's a lot to pay a backup if that's the plan to get that rich quarterback draft in 26.

Right. Right. Well, didn't you. I thought he was going to. I thought it was going to start with a three. I predicted that last week when I had the Danny son. Maybe there wasn't as big of a market. I mean just four and a half is the right price. When you think they bought out Tyreek, they're bought out Tua. I mean that's one of the worst contracts in the history of the league. So they're paying Those guys what, 70 million combined just to go away for this season. I don't know what the cap hit is, but it's not great. And who's Malik Willis throwing to? Just Jaylen Waddle and whoever they get in the draft.

It's bad news for sure. I do think though the jets do you want to do like for each division if preliminarily. Which what sticks out at you because the jets is the one that I would go under. I don't want to go under on a four and a half.

You'd go under?

I'd go under on the job. Yeah. I mean Gino, look, someone's pointed out Gino got Seattle, Sam Darnold, he got the Raiders, Mendoza and he's going to get the Jets. Arch Manning, like it's, it's kind of ridiculous. Like they traded for Minka Fitzpatrick which would have been a huge deal even a year ago.

Right?

Yeah. The guy had one interception which is more than everybody combined on the Jets. But what are they trying. I don't think this, the effort, you know, is worthy of a five and a half win season.

It's funny, in my head I was thinking about all the other games they blew and it's like well now that they have a new coach. And then I was like oh no they didn't, they didn't get rid of the coach. He's coming back with the worst quarterback situation.

If you're Aaron Glenn, you're like just fire me now. I have to. I'm have 27 losses after two years. That's not good for my future.

Hugh Jackson wants them to keep him. So his two year record is intact. Yeah. So out of those, I mean so if you combine those, that's 11 and a half, nine and a half. That's 21. So they're saying 31 is the over under for wins in division. So that's gotta be in the running for second worst division.

I got 30, isn't it?

Can I just add. Oh, I'm adding the wrong things. You're right.

Yeah.

So 10 and a half not. Yeah, 30. That is not great there.

I don't want to give it away but there is a, there is a worse division.

Oh, I know what the worst division is by the way. The listeners aren't going to be surprised.

We can't.

I like none of these picks just for the record. I mean we're not going to be doing guess the lines for the over unders until late August which makes me super sad. I did get sad today thinking about how long a long way football is.

It's a lot.

I was really far away. It's like five and a half months. Yeah, it's like. I mean we might. I'll be dead by then. AFC North, AFC north, easy schedule combo for the AFC north teams. They play the AFC south and the NFC east which I would say shades on the Easier side, right.

Do they play the nfc? Why do I have NFC south written here for the NFC North?

Did I already make a mistake? We're only not even 10 minutes in the pod.

This is why we're taping.

Oh, I did write that wrong. You're right. So nfc, AFC South.

Right.

AFC South, NFC south, both Souths, which is typically. I'm so fired up I made a mistake this early. So that's a pretty good combo. Baltimore is the first one. Baltimore's odds are plus 950 to win the Super Bowl. On Fanduel new coach, the big Max Crosby trade. So they cashed in on their first round pick. I had ten and a half.

I think ten and a half would have been closer to the truth. They have him at eleven and a half. They have him favored to win the AFC. Wow, 11 and a half number. Yeah, there's. I don't want to give it away, but there's not too many eleven and a halfs out there. You know, Crosby's great. They lose Linderbaum, they lost a couple linemen. They lost another edge rusher. They lose some defensive players.

Derek Henry, a year older. Lamar. Lamar either is healthy the whole year or he's playing five games. Right. And that. So that's my first one. I would. I'm going to, I'm going to put a slight under it. But some of that has to be the division and the schedule. 12 wins would be a great, a great season for them. Yeah.

Coming off last year and five borough will be a little better. Who knows what Pittsburgh, but they always split anyway. I don't know. Yeah, that division is tough but somehow with that schedule, I mean they're coming off at 8. They're not going to get 8 again. No, I'm not going to go so crazy about Crosby.

Cincinnati, third place schedule for them. Baltimore was second place schedule. By the way, I forgot to mention I had a trouble with this one. It was either a seven and a half or an eight and a half. They spent some money on some defense. They're going to have a top 15 pick. But I went eight and a half for them because of the schedule.

I think in real life they're eight and a half but Fanduel made them nine and a half because everybody pounds their over. Everybody thinks there's a playoff team every year. Double digit wins. They came off what, six last year.

Yeah.

And you know that they're expected to come in second in division.

So was this because of the Joe Burrow, Jessica Alba rumors that have already been Debunked.

They're debunked. Wake up, Burrow. You're not dating Alba. But you will have to face Crosby, Garrett and T.J. watt six times this year.

Oh, Jesus. I mean, if T.J. watt can look like T.J. watt again, that's. That's six tough ones, but yeah, that's a good point. Miles, Garrett and Crosby for four times. I mean, the thing with Baltimore, I did like that trade. There's some horrible histories for giving up two first rounders for a guy it's basically own 14. Unless you want to give one to Stafford for saying that was success. But they also, as part of that trade, dumped golf in the trade. Right, Right. So I don't even know like, if his value was the first rounders. I was just looking at this. Did you see this list of all the guys? It was Sauce Gardner, Micah Parsons, Russell Wilson, Matthew Stafford, Laramie Tunsil, Jamal Adams, Khalil Mack, Jalen Ramsey, Jay Cutler, Ricky Williams, Keyshawn Johnson, Jeff George, Eric Dickerson and Herschel Walker.

So it's like, is this Dancing with the Stars?

What is this? All guys who've been traded for two first rounders in the last 40 years and the only one you can say was a legit win so far was Stafford, but Goff was in that. Right. So you're doing this, you're like, this is just. You're trying to buck history. But I love the idea of Crosby on a good team. We used to talk about him all the time on this pod. Like he's just every game you're like, holy shit, that guy's amazing.

He's for sure great. But yeah, back to the two first round picks. It hurts even more when you say goodbye to one of the best offensive linemen in the game. Like, you can't even replace Linda Brown because you don't have first round picks now for. Right, for a little while. So that's what. That's why I think, I don't know, maybe, maybe it's right around 11 or 12 anyway. But I wouldn't go over here.

It's a lot of money for a center. It's like we've reset the center market. You haven't just reset it, you've blown it up and recreated it. But I do wonder if they're. One thing I noticed with the free agency spending, if it seems like if teams feel like they can get a top five or six guy at the position, they value that more than whatever we normally valued the position because the Kenneth Walker contract was like that Too. He basically got premium money, but it's like, well, he is probably one of the six or seven best running backs now. So if you're going to do it, you might as well pay for somebody like that. Yeah.

Yeah, I think so. If you weren't going to get Jeremiah Love, because people like getting them a running back on a rookie deal. Right. So if you're. If your draft range falls outside of that, you kind of do have to scramble and make a move. Like Kenneth. Kenneth Walker.

Yeah. McShay had a thing in his newsletter today about could he just slide out of the top 10 even though McShay thinks he's the best guy in the draft.

Interesting.

Usually the history of the draft is the best guy never kind of makes it past seven, eight, no matter how much of a non need position it is. But in this case, you know, now that, now that Kansas City's out, who's going to be the team? Could it be like Tennessee? Could it be Washington? Like, I don't know, Pittsburgh. I had this at seven and a half. Remember they're playing the first place schedule too. On top of the fact that I guess Aaron Rodgers comes back, new coach. What'd you have for this?

You nailed it coming off 10 wins last year.

You're right.

Seven and a half is the over and so now we're just. They're not even making it eight and a half. It used to be eight and a half for Tomlin every year. Like, oh, this is fun. This is a fun little game. Let's keep up. If he goes nine and eight or, or gets under there though. But Mike McCarthy has cut a little less slack there. Seven and a half. And yeah, absolutely, it's the schedule that's

going to hurt them in Cleveland. Has to be among the lowest. I had four and a half for Cleveland. This is high.

Six and a half. I got to check this again.

Six who? Wait, so that said to Sean Watson, bump.

I have to check this. That's crazy.

So fanduel saying, to win your over on Cleveland, they have to go 7 and 10. What are the odds of that happening?

Six and a half the overs plus 1 35. So it's juice to the under minus 1 60.

But yeah, that should be. That should be at least one win lower because when we did this last year, some of this stuff really moved. Like I remember the Pats jumped up one. A couple of them dropped one. I don't think any. Your Dallas one dropped. I don't think any drop two. But they usually go up or down one.

So that would be the one you jump on now. So I would go jets under and Cleveland. Cleveland. I mean you gotta have to look at it being it for a while with Cleveland under.

Well, don't. Do they have. Do they have two first round picks or one. They have the. They have the sixth pick in the draft. No, they have one in the, in the twenties too. Whose do they have? They do. I don't know. They have one in the 20s. That's what I have in my notes. So maybe they think they can boost up with the draft. All right.

Ten picks in the 2026 draft. Two first sound selections.

Oh, they got it from the Jacksonville trade. That's what it was. The Travis center trade. Right, Right. Oh God, yeah. And then Mason Graham was good last year. Desean back. They're easy.

Schedule that Cincinnati game to end.

Fourth place schedule. Yeah, they hung around some home games.

Defense is good.

I'm not going to say that's a. All right. AFC south, they're playing the AFC north and they're playing the NFC East. Including your team. I had nobody in this division at ten and a half. The first one I had was Houston. Nine and a half exactly. Right. Okay.

Coming off they had 12 wins, right?

Yep.

Off nine and a half they're favor to win the division plus 165. Nine and a half seems fair. Seems fair. This division on the whole probably overachieved last year.

Feel like late May. We're probably talking ourselves into the over.

Yeah.

C.J. had a bad playoff game. He's fine. Some good tank Del Buzz. Just be going. Jacksonville, I had eight and a half because first place schedule combined with no first round pick this year. Cause they gave it away in the Hunter trade. So eight and a half seemed.

They left them at nine and a

half I think because I don't know,

there's only a few handful of teams that are of a four and a half difference between their wins and losses. You know, wins from last year and projection. So they had 13. It's tough.

I don't know.

We go back and forth praising Trevor Lawrence. Not so much praising him, but we thought he came off his best year. So it'll probably be a battle between those two teams.

Indianapolis, another team that doesn't have first round pick who just spent a lot of money on Alec Pierce and then had to trade Pittman. Daniel Jones coming back from the Achilles third place schedule because they fell apart near the end. I had them at eight and a half exactly, right?

Eight and a half. Yeah.

Same today.

Eight last year obviously tanked towards the end because the quarterback went out. But the Pierce signing is pretty.

What'd he get?

4 for 114. 26 years old.

I really wanted him for the Pats. I just feel like the guy had nine quarterbacks in four years. Just put him with Drake. Let's see how it goes. And then Tennessee was one that I had circled as one that I might want to have some action on the over because they're fitting a lot of the profile. They're getting weapons. They have a high pick. I think Salah as the coach combined with some of the stuff they did to try to put some support around Cam Ward. I thought it was a. I just thought they were so poorly coached last year. You put anyone relatively confident, that's gotta be worth a couple wins anyway. I guess six and a half. Really?

So you got. You might want an over at six and a half. I thought you were going to guess

five and a half.

It is six and a half. Okay. But that to me is similar to the Browns. Like, I know they play a last place schedule, but there are some of these teams that are there every year struggling to get their fourth win in December, you know.

Yeah. They spent some money in free agency too. Yeah. Frank Myers. And they kept a couple good guys from last year's team. Like they never traded Simmons. You know, where it felt like that was the most obvious thing ever for them to finally trade him. And they just didn't. Came Ward. Year two feel like that's like probably a mid July podcast segment. Could the Titans be this year's Patriots?

Well, then you got to think someone's going to fall off then.

Right.

So what are you. You're leaning Jacksonville because you always are.

It's okay. Indianapolis, I think would be another one where you're just putting a lot on Dana Jones next year.

Right.

And you have the. The entire organization is probably in blow up land if things don't go well next year after that Sauce Gardner trade Jacksonville, who knows? I thought ETN was really good for them last year. Like I was surprised that they let him go.

He's gone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And went to the Saints.

Yeah, yeah. I'm. Look, this is remarkable for this division that you have two teams projected for nine and a half. Those are over 500 indies. Over 500.

Right.

Yeah.

Huge win.

We've really. We've really grown with the.

It's not even like Tennessee is three. They're six and a half. They're right in there.

I have planted my Flag on Brian Thomas Jr. Trade island for the Patriots.

Oh, interesting.

Did a lot of recon on him.

Okay.

His rookie year, I think he was the fourth guy who had a thousand plus yards and 10 plus TDs. And the other ones were like Beckham, Randy Moss and Jabar Chase. And then last year was like just, you know, awful. But if a year ago that guy you, you could offer them two first round picks, they would have said no. Right?

Yeah.

So could you steal them? I guess would be the question. Right.

But yeah, I'm intrigued by him. It's crazy because I like Jacksonville to win the divisions. One of the few things I got right last.

Yeah, you did, you nailed it. Whatever.

But most of the conversation centered around Travis Hunter and Brian Thomas Jr. And one of them literally didn't show up for most of the season. The other one didn't, you know. So it was what Jacoby Myers trade that really got them going.

Yeah, well, and Parker Washington too, coming out of nowhere. So I wonder if he's expendable. Waiting on that. Okay. AFC west, they play the AFC east and the NFC west, which if the Pats are good, that could be five really good teams on your schedule. But at least four Chargers, second place schedule for them. Lot of injuries last year. They to me feel like I don't know how they win less than 10 games. So I had them at 10 and a half.

So Fanduel has them at nine and a half. This is one of the few that Fanduel is off from other books. Don't ever go to other books. Yeah, you wouldn't do it. But I just do have to point it out. If you like the under, go somewhere else. If you like the over, which I think you do, take the nine and a half. Now they're an 11 win team from last year.

They spent some money. They got a few of those like lower level, not splashy free agents. But the guys on that next tier, they have guys coming back. I still think their offensive line could be really good. They kept Khalil Mack, which I was surprised by. Right.

You know,

and then we get to talk about is this the best team Justin Herbert's ever had? Is he ever going to come through when it matters? I'm excited for those conversations. Football's going to be back, Sal. We're going to be back. It's happening. Five and a half months, baby.

This time last year, KC was what I think the rest of the division, one of my bets was even odds to win the division instead of kc. Now it's all bunched up. It's nice.

I'll tell you the one thing I'm not doing this year and we have a lot to prove with our. With our over unders. We had. Did not have great years last year off year. But we, we also knew it. We knew like I. We knew last year was off. I didn't love it. There were only a couple ones I felt strongly about. We had a lot to prove next year. But I like this Chargers team. Kansas City. I thought this was really hard. You could have told me seven and a half, eight and a half or nine and a half. Seems like Mahomes is going to be back. They signed Kenneth Walker. They had the ninth pick in the draft. There was a moment when they did that McDuffie trade when I thought are they. Is this a tank season? But maybe not. Maybe they just didn't want to pay McDuffie. They got I think the 29th pick in the first round back. So they'll be able to put in two rookies. It's kind of the chief's way of like let's try to patch together some D back stuff, take some chances on young guys.

Kelsey's coming back. I went all the way up to nine and a half. Sal.

Bill, you could have gone to ten and a half. No. And I would have said you're a. Okay. Yeah. And this is the biggest difference in terms of positive progression. I guess it would be because they won six games last year. Ten and a half injuries, ten and a half. They're favorite to win the division. A plus 165.

Oh my. And they're ten and a half. I'm stunned by that.

It's a lot.

We don't. We haven't even seen Mahomes walk it.

Isn't this the Bengals thing though? Too? Like nobody. Everyone's betting these two teams to make the playoffs. You got to keep the Chiefs in double digits because when they're healthy, you know, you just figure that they're going to win those one score games again.

Right. If.

If he is walking like we think.

Well, we talked a few times last year about how sloppy the Chiefs were last year from a coaching standpoint and that Andy Reid and that whole coaching staff was starting to feel a little gamey. And then stuff's come out since the season. Like they brought Eric sleeping with the enemy shout out to Chris Berman. They brought him back as the OC Again. I don't. I think he was as shocked as anyone. But they brought him back to try to have a Little more tough love in the locker room and stuff. But from the way that team was coached last year, 11 wins, seems ambitious. Not to mention some, some shakier character. Guys just trying to be fair. Yeah, a little on the shaky side. Never really kind of know what's going to happen with the Chief. Well, I liked it at nine and a half. I don't think I like it at ten and a half.

Yeah, it's tough. I mean it's just like this is just a darling pick so that Fanduel doesn't want to get burned either way. And you're right. The AFC east, if the Patriots are good again, who knows? And the Bills and then you got three NFC west teams are very good.

Denver, first place schedule. I have them at nine and a half.

It is nine and a half. I would have thought it was higher. I would have thought ten and a half. This is another four and a half game regression.

Right.

They won 14 last year. This is the most disrespected team in the NFL. Like you see why the Patriots could come down four and a half games. The schedule is all different. Denver was pretty good last year for the most part. You may not love their quarterback, but for God's sakes, that defense was good. And for them to be slated for third place in that division at plus 2, 20. Yikes.

Well, some of that is Vegas is not going to be a pushover this year. Combined with the first place schedule, combined with they play Buffalo, the Patriots and all the NFC west teams. Just a harder road. So it makes sense to me. But I wouldn't have been surprised by ten and a half. All right, Las Vegas, I didn't feel great about it, but I went six and a half because of the money they've spent in the draft picks and the draft capital. And Mendoza being able to play right away, potentially six and a half seemed fair.

Yeah, I mean, look, I would have said six and a half if I knew. Cleveland was six and a half and Tennessee was six and a half. But FanDuel has them at five and a half. And there's a lot to get excited about for Vegas, obviously with Mendoza and he's going to be putting his hand on Linda Baum's took us there to take snaps, but the coach. You got it all. I just don't know.

I don't know. Wow. So they have, they have the Raiders a win below Cleveland and Tennessee.

Right.

And what about jets and the. And the jets were five. Yeah, yeah.

I don't know. Again, I get burned every year Taking the Raiders to make the playoffs or do something stupid.

But yeah, that was your worst one last year. But who knew that Pete Carroll was done with coaching four years ago?

If you look at Geno's numbers, it wasn't that the contract was bad, but his numbers the last three years, like if you cover up the name, he had like Baker Mayfield type numbers, you know.

And then last year was just really unplayable.

Awful.

Yeah, man, that feels low to me. Especially when you throw in the fourth place schedule and who knows with the Chiefs and. But I guess, I guess they're just afraid of the AFC West. All right, so the highest, highest over, under we have, amazingly is Baltimore at 11 and a half, right?

For the AFC.

Yep.

No doubt.

That does not add up to me.

Buffalo's right there.

Does that add up to you that they, they. They feel like they're going. The odds on one seed in the AFC according to this is going to be the Baltimore Ravens. Right.

With only 12 wins.

Yeah, I don't.

Very strange. I don't think they know what to do.

So if you had to bet on a one seed, who would you bet on? Like knowing what we know now, looking at this whole thing laid out

just

your, your east has so many. It's really tough because you, yeah, you

might have four wins with those two games.

The east is playing 74 wins and the north is playing 63 wins. Taking out first place and everything. I might, I might for fun take the Chargers right now.

So funny you said that. That was one of the ones I was like, I think that Chargers 1 goes up to 10 and a half and especially if we see what they do over the next couple days post the draft. I think that's my favorite one. Chargers nine and a half.

Yeah, it's a moderate risk, I think. I mean we have enough to go on to know that they're going to be decent and compete.

So we like the two that we like the most are Chargers over and Vegas over five and a half are the two favorites.

It's tough to have two in the same division like leaning on both overs. But I'm also on. On the jets under there.

Oh you. The jets under five and a half. You still like it? I really.

That I know playing 20 games this year.

Did they move that?

I don't know.

I still feel like by probably like with that little. When there's that little siesta between the NBA Conference finals and the finals, we have like four days and we've already figured out who we're taking in the finals and then we start looking at the over unders. I feel like that's when I'll make my Cleveland under bet.

Cleveland under.

Yeah, that's. That's what I'll be like, what am I doing? They're not winning seven games. But something scares me about, like, why

would it be six and a half with Cleveland? Yeah. Which quarterback?

You excited?

You excited about Watson coming back?

Oh, Watson's coming back. It's like, yeah, Watson's coming back. Is that good, right? I don't know.

If you were to say how many three touchdown games or two touchdown games will Watson have for the rest of his career and count on 0 or 1 fingers.

I think at this point we will take a break and then we're going to go to the NFC in your favorite division. The nfc.

Oh, yeah.

This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. March is here and Uber Eats is delivering deals all month long every game day. And we got some games coming up. Score big savings on all the delicious food you need to turn your couch into center court and fuel your fandom as there's some tournament games coming. Whether you're ordering in or hosting the whole crew, Uber Eats is serving up deals on wings, burgers, pizza from your favorite restaurants, plus game day snacks from top stores. Bracket busted. Still holding strong. Cinderella story of top seed. Well, however the madness unfolds, these deals will keep going all month long. Visit the game day hub on Uber Eats for all the latest deals. Start saving today. So the NFC East I think has the hardest combo that anyone has, NFC west and AFC south. Because all the NFC west teams except for Arizona are scary. I don't know what to make of the AFC south, but even like at Tennessee could be kind of a scary game. But just in general, I'm not a huge fan of that combo. Philadelphia, first place schedule again. I went ten and a half.

You have to.

They're just ten and a half every year. It's like the new Pittsburgh being eight and a half, right?

It's ten and a half. You want to play with the other teams in division, it's fine, but you can't make it. I mean, I'm not on there over right now as we speak in third week in March, second week in March. But the way they knuckle ball their offense to 11 wins, I think it would be a miracle. Almost like it was this year. But it has to be 10, 9.

If they traded AJ Brown for a low first and like a third or two seconds or whatever, would that make you More or less likely to like that over.

I think the more draft picks they have, the better I would like.

That's how I feel.

So that is the one thing they do well, right? They draft and ignore A.J.

brown.

That's the other thing they do well.

And I still feel like. I just feel like the Pats. AJ now it's 3:15 Pacific Time.

You think it could still happen, huh?

I do. I. I think it's still realistic. There's too many. Too many intertwining things going on, and maybe it doesn't happen till later, but I just. Nobody's been able to explain to me why Philadelphia would want to run it back with 50 million for Jalen Hurts and 60 million for the two receivers when they have this GM who's great at drafting everybody and bringing in guys year after year, and a draft that people seem to like the wide receivers a little bit more as we get in the second, third round.

Right.

I just can't imagine they're going to be like, let's run this back. He'll be definitely happier this year. He's not going to be happier. Yeah.

No, I'm with you. And it's still not even one of the top five. I don't think receiver rooms in terms of. In terms of pay like the Bills. We laughed at the Bills. Wide receivers forever. And they're still like, oh, oh, Shavers. Do we pick Shavers up?

Right.

They're second. They're the second most expensive. I guess they got rid of Samuel now. So maybe they cut. Well, they added DJ Moore, but they added DJ Moore.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it's just weird. And obviously Cincinnati first, Dallas third on that list.

So Washington third place. Schedule for them. Ton of injuries last year. Some. Some cap stuff that I think they're still sorting out.

We called this.

This was. Yeah, this is one of our better ones. We don't get a lot of Pats on the back for last year. I have seven and a half for them.

That's exactly right. Coming off five wins, but you can't make it six and a half.

Right.

Still a very good quarterback. They signed oh, who had 10 and a half sacks with the Chargers, So that's a good, good signing there. So I wouldn't touch it right now. I was. I was more against them last year.

Let me ask you this. If they pick Jeremiah Love with the seventh pick.

Yeah.

Does that go up to eight and a half? Could he be worth a win?

No, nothing's worth the win. There's not one move that's Worth the win right now.

Right. I'm just trying to picture playing that team. If Daniels is healthy and they add love, who all everybody loves just, you know, like for McShay to have him as is the top player in the draft, I think that's pretty significant.

Did Genti move the Raiders a half a win or a win? No.

Well, they couldn't block, so. And then Geno Smith just throwing the ball to the other team.

That's true.

Pete Carroll doing the Joe Biden on the sidelines,

but.

But yeah, a healthy Daniels with love with some of their receivers like McLaren will be healthy. Like he had his classic like held out got hurt season last year. Right.

Yeah, that's.

That seems that maybe it didn't even

have to be love. Like, I also thought Kenneth Walker could have helped them. It can get like somebody. You know, there's a couple scary names out there, so wouldn't be that bad.

Your team, the Dallas Cowboys.

Let's do it.

Second place schedule. It's funny. I have them ahead of Washington. I have Dallas at eight and a half because I just think they want to win and we don't know all the moves they're going to make. But when I say they want to win, it's like at the expense of any sort of anything down the road. Like, I've just prepared for anything with them trying to figure out how do we fit Trey Hendrickson in here? How do we trade up for this guy? Like, they're just so wind now because their owner is 120 years old, that eight and a half feels like the right number. That's it.

That's eight and a half. You can't make it any higher. You can't make it lower because everyone's going to bet Dallas right when the bachelor party in Vegas, whatever. Out of spite. So they could be mad at him. But, yeah, listen, I can't go too crazy, but we're under the cap now. We restructured CD Lamb, Dak Prescott broke up with his lady. There might have been some bachelor bachelorette party weirdness going on, but whatever. He's got to put that in the rear view mirror. We signed Javante Williams, who everyone laughed at, like, oh, that's going to be the toughest 600 yards you'll ever see. You know, 302 for 20, right?

Something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so we got, you know, it's not Derek Henry, but it's good. So you're right. That Hendrickson piece would be gigantic. You know that Garrett, that feels like

the most predictable Cowboys move of all time. Yeah. The Cowboys have agreed to terms with Trey Anderson and then they can take a victory lap about. We traded Parsons for two firsts and he got hurt. And then we were able to turn one of those into Williams. And now we have Hendrickson and we're

smarter than you, more than Jerry being 120 years old and freeing up this. He's got some drinking money now. He's under the cap. He's got to prove that this Parsons thing didn't kill him.

Yeah. So Hendrickson, you throw money at. And then the other thing that's definitely 100% happening is the George Pickens holdout. That can last.

Yeah, that'll be fun.

It's gotta last until July 1st, two weeks of August. So we can lead first, take like five, seven times. Who's going to blink? Jerry's done with this guy. I'm ready for. We just know how that's going to go.

Yeah.

Okay. The New York Giants, new coach, high draft pick, QB coming back, a lot of talent. We all thought they may be underachieved with the roster. They have neighbors coming back, neighbors coming back. Who knows, Maybe they trade for Brian Thomas Jr. I probably went too high, but I threw down the seven and a half for this.

Good call. I would have gone lower than that. Seven and a half is right. Coming off a four win season. And this is a sexy pick right now. And I think Fanduel recognizes that.

Well, everybody, we always worry when this happens and we. It's not like we invented this because a lot of people are on it. But that fourth place, easy schedule, new coach, new qb, whatever. Two of the three are all three. And it became a really good way to get great value. Like with the Patriots last year, which. Yeah, I felt the strongest about the Patriots last year of anything we talked about because I don't understand how we're not going to be better. We had the worst coach team of all time. I don't understand how the Giants won't be at least four wins better with everything they're doing and having a competent coaching staff. I guess the question is how competent is Harbaugh? He's about to get fired. When Lamar got there, Lamar kind of covered up a bunch of stuff. I always thought he was a good coach, but I didn't like the last couple years.

Yeah, it's like, is he gone? Well, let's bring Max Crosby in now because we can do something right.

We don't want to get him credit for this.

You sure he's gone?

Yeah.

Man, look, he's. He's coming into a night. Boy, the Giants are like so weird, right, with their quarterbacks. Like we knew very early on. Jackson darts the guy, right? And he's a good, like he's a personality also. And then you don't want to sit him the last month of the season because he got dinged up a little bit, but you don't want to sit him totally. But he changes his game completely. He's not the same quarterback. So it was a very strange Giants win. Scatterbo gets hurt, neighbors gets hurt.

Right.

Their defense maybe didn't perform like we thought they signed Isaiah likely. That could be good, right? Like, you know, I like that one.

I like that better. He also needed to leave the Ravens. It felt like he was just involved in too many controversial plots for them in games.

Right, right, right.

Yeah, for sure.

So, yeah. So Harbor's got his guy there, so. Yeah. But seven and a half to. To double your wins is. Is tough though, right? So you got four.

I have it.

You love it. I haven't locked it in.

Go ahead.

No, I'm not going to lock it in, but I do like it. I do think they fit well. Two things that would have to happen is your team would have to be not as good as people think. And Washington, same thing.

Yep.

But there's a chance. We talked about this a lot last year with the NFC west and we were pretty right that we thought there was could be three playoff teams that came out of that and that division turned out to be, you know, that division in the NFC north basically carried the conference. This division is definitely better than Washington

did two years ago. Yeah.

Yeah. NFC north, easy. NFC south and the AFC east are their two divisions the easiest out of all. So you're basically getting all of those weird NFC south teams, plus the jets of Miami. Yeah, that's just six winners. And if you're Minnesota, you get the fourth place schedule too. So they're another candidate. Like what if they figure what if Kyler Murray goes there? What if somebody else goes there? What if they figure out quarterback combined with some of the talent they're to have anyway, Green Bay, I just. They're a blind ten and a half for me with all the talent. Second place schedule for them too. So I went ten and a half.

Yeah, ten and a half is right. Coming off a nine win year. There's. Well, I won't tell you what their odds are for the division because you figure out maybe Detroit from that. But I like them this year. I feel like they're Chicago from last year. They had so much, so much had to go wrong for them to lose the two games they did to the Bears. And they had, you know, they were unlucky the rest of the way.

Are they just the team that we like every year? And every year they let us down and we're like, I like them. I still like them. And it's just for seven years. They're going to let us down.

The Bengals with the lighter colors.

Maybe. Yeah.

Yeah, maybe that's it.

So they lost Dobbs to the Patriots today. They waved Jenkins, which I was surprised by because I always thought he was one of the. One of the highly respected interior alignment in the league. We'll see what they do in the draft. I'm sure they'll. They'll end up with two more receivers. I don't know. Did they miss the golden pick? We never really heard his name last year.

Right. Well, he's banged up for a while and just to me that they were the unlucky team of the year, so I agree.

Well, a team that was not the unlucky team of the year was the Chicago Bears. Right. First place schedule this year lost their center who abruptly retired. So they got to figure that piece out. They traded DJ Moore and just a lot of talent. And I thought they got a great year from Caleb. I went nine and a half.

Yeah.

Is that it?

That's it. Okay. That's exactly it.

I like the over for that.

You like the over? I do.

I think the Bears. I, I don't know. I, I'm, I'm pro Bears. I don't, I wouldn't put it down as a lock, but I, I'd be hard to believe that they're just not a playoff team anymore.

So you must not like the Lions or do you think they're the Lions?

I do not like the Lions. I know there's some good signs with them with the third place schedule and maybe getting healthier. I had nine and a half for the Lions.

So they're ten and a half and they're favored to win the division. Only slightly over Green Bay.

I don't get that at all.

And then the Bears.

So what's the case for that?

I think it's exactly what you said. Third place schedule, how long we're going to keep Dan Campbell down. Maybe they see Montgomery leaving as a goes what to Houston? I think they see that as a

positive for the sign Pacheco today to be the Montgomery. Right. Yeah. I don't know if that's going to work.

I don't know. You know, they still had a lot of injuries. So when you say they're. They're. They're an unlucky team also. But I'm going to give them one more year because I think.

But when you say the Lions have a lot of injuries, isn't that every year with the Lions just. I kind of have to factor that in at this point. And the offensive line, I think, is a lot different. That was one of the cases. We forgot to mention this with Cleveland, like, their offensive line, which I think was at one point really good and then was pretty good. But I think every guy from that offensive line is gone heading into the season. Right. Like, all five guys are gone. I think with the Lions, the offensive line they had two years ago is not going to be there in the same way. So I don't know that. To me, I could see that team Raheem loves the alt unders and the alt overs where we just go like four or five wins. That could be an alt under team for me. Yeah.

I mean, that's all scheduling. Right. So if that's a third place schedule, they'll play everyone in the bid. They'll play. What was Dallas third?

I mean, all of those.

Washington was. Yeah, yeah.

San Francisco. They'll get.

Yeah.

Those kind of teams.

Maybe it's not so easy.

So you. It sounds like you like the Lions.

You think they have another year left.

Yeah. You want to see.

You got to talk me off the Lions. You got to. You're going to have to do my ass. I don't love the Bears, but what's going to be interesting is the Vikings. So what is it? Is it. Is it Rogers or Murray at this point?

Mac Jones.

Rogers, Murray, Mac Jones, Cousins. Could it be four?

Let me see what pick they have. So could it. Or could it be like a draft pick? Do they go back to the. Well, really? Yeah. So they're in like the low teens. Yeah. That doesn't. It sounds like the McCarthy thing is headed toward a conclusion.

Definitely. But I don't know if they want to admit failure that much to just draft somebody.

I think you do if you feel like you're going to lose your job if you don't admit failure.

Right.

Pure o'.

Connell. I guess so. Yeah. The GM was. Although they.

Yeah, they got rid of the gm.

Yeah.

O' Connell must have been like, I told you not to get rid of Sam Darnold. They were like. But wait, you were telling us. You were on the phone every Day for an hour with JJ.

Right.

I have the number seven and a half.

Yeah, so it's eight and a half. So this entire division is over 500 or I guess eight and a half would be 500. And then Chicago's nine and a half and Green Bay, Detroit ten and a half.

All right, so let's really capture this moment because we mentioned that they have the easiest other two divisions that they're playing. This is what happened last year with the NFC west. And all the overs ended up hitting and were like 2, 3 wins lower than what the overs were. So here we have Green Bay 10 and a half, Chicago nine and a half, Detroit 10 and a half and Minnesota eight and a half. I mean that they're basically saying that's a 39 win division. It's a lot when you. There's one division every year that gets into the 40s. Last year was the NFC West, I think. Right, but that's not a good.

Well, think about. So I mean, are they just saying two, two and oh, across the board against the Dolphins and Jets. Is that two free wins for everybody? Somebody will get tripped up.

I mean we don't. I'd love to know the Minnesota quarterback is.

Yeah, I know that would help, I guess do Rogers.

Who are we rooting for?

Rogers. That, that's, that's a fun division.

If it's Rogers. Better than going back to Pittsburgh, I think.

I like the idea of Rogers going back there and being in the NFC north one last time and playing the Packers.

Doing the Favre thing. Exactly. Farve thing.

Yeah. Literally the farthing NFC South. They play the two north divisions. So one of my predictions before we do anything, I did not have a single team over seven and a half in this division. So I'm just going to flag that for you now. Atlanta Falcons, third place schedule. They, they did the impossible. They went, they went from cap space in the eighth pick to Kirk Cousins overpaying him, coming off an Achilles, drafting Michael Pennix super early to everybody's complete shock and dismay. And now they're buying out Cousins. Panix got hurt yet again, which I think is his fourth one. And the recipe for all of this was signing Tua, who's just done as a productive quarterback. There's no scenario where he's ever going to be good again. It's impossible. I don't see it. That's who you bring in. What are you doing?

I appreciated NFL Twitter really, really stepped up yesterday. I mean there were like great memes, like when Tua signed. They show Like Falcons and free agency, they show guys picking up trash, like throwing it in, like just rapid fire picking up trash. And Tua put his house up for Sal and in Miami and it's a blue tent going for $72,000. Like, I love it. Like two, you know, maybe mentally challenged lefties throwing a football to each other. I saw that one.

That was pretty good.

Okay, there's a quarterback room for Atlanta. I love it. I don't know what Stefanski thinks of this. He's like, man, send me back to Cleveland. At least we knew there was no plan there. But what the hell? Also, you're in the NFC side, why

not just bring back Cousins? Yeah, I guess the money, it's easier. I saw they, if they get rid of them before the date, it's 22 million dead cap this year and 12 million next year. And they just figure that's easier. But any scenario where two is not my quarterback is the scenario I'm picking because that guy's not a competent starting quarterback anymore.

Speaking of incompetent, like, we laugh at Tapa, like the Carolina. I mean they won. They ended up winning the division somehow. We laugh at that owner. Well, what is Arthur Blank doing? What is going on? Like Jerry Jones must be like, hey, what about. Come on, let's go with the senile jokes here.

Seriously. And they lost Algier, who I liked, Algeria and Bijan together, they didn't even lose him for that much. Anyway, I said seven and a half for this.

Seven and a half is right. Coming off eight wins. Seven and a half.

We forgot to mention they traded their first round pick in this year's draft to the Rams.

Oh yeah.

Which is now going to be the 13th pick for James Pierce, who is in one of the worst non football news stories that we've had in a couple years. Just, you know, if you believe the alleged reports. Seems like a absolute maniac. And that's who they lost their first round pick to. So this was not, I'm going to say not a strong two years.

I thought it was the best coaching job out there just because of the division and how little is it expected of the winner.

Right. Couldn't agree more.

You're going to be close with your prediction here, but. Yeah, but I don't know.

Seven and a half for them. I had seven and a half for Tampa, who just lost Mike Evans.

So they're eight and a half.

Don't agree with that at all.

I don't know why. I mean they, it looked like they could have 11 wins last year at some point. And then they just decided not to play football anymore.

But who was the running back? They got. They got. Was it Gainwell? Oh, did they?

They did get Gainwell. Right?

I like that. I thought Gainwell was a good. I was hoping the Pats would get him. I thought he was like the best player of the Steelers offense last year. Every time their offense would fall apart, they would just throw him like a screen and he'd go for 14 yards.

He was good.

Knock three guys a guy.

He scored a little bit. He was fine. I mean, that could, could. It could complement Bucky Irving pretty well.

Carolina, I also had seven and a half.

So the division winning Carolina Panthers are at six and a half. Oh, I would have had them at seven and a half, too. Yeah, I think that might be my.

Oh, they do have the first place schedule, I guess.

Yeah, they sign Jalen Phillips and Devin Lloyd, but the Jalen Phillips one was a good one.

So they. Do they have a draft pick this year? Yeah, they do. Yeah, they. So they're in the low teens with their draft pick. I like. I, I thought the. I thought. McMillan. That was a home run. That pick turned out Coker, who missed the first half there. Holy Cross. His own Jalen Coker. He's back. I don't. That seems really low. I don't know.

Can we talk about Kenny Pickett, who they signed to.

Why teams keep giving him jobs?

Five teams since 2022. He's drafted in 2022. He's drafted four years ago. He's been on five teams.

What about that is.

That's remarkable. Like you have to not suck and not be good like he is.

Right where you have to be. I don't.

I don't think we'll see this again. 5.

So you think you have to be terrible, but also tantalizing.

Yeah. Think about it like in any other. I don't know, in any other industry this would work because you have a resume. That's not good.

You know, I thought the weirdest one of all the signings, and it wasn't a major signing, but when the Chiefs got minshot back for one year, 8 million. Minshew back for one year, 8 million.

Did they get him back?

I thought. I thought that was the sign. Or the Cardinals signed him. Who signed him?

I think the Cardinals took mistakes.

I screw that up, leave that in because I want people to see that even their heroes can make mistakes.

Yeah. One year for the Cardinals.

To the Cardinals.

Yeah.

So is he going to start? Did they watch Tape of him the last couple years. I mean I was like the biggest minshot guy and even I like gave up on it.

Right, right.

Remember he started that Chiefs game last year? He was just awful.

You gave up on figuring out what team he's on.

Yeah. Listen, there's a lot of moving parts. 32 team league. Anyway, that's my favorite one that Carolina over. I don't care. First place schedule, NFC North, AFC north, like whatever. How is that team not going to win seven games? They have a lot of talent. They were right there with the Rams. They went. They threw some punches in that playoff game. That's true.

They'll play the Eagles. They'll play the. Who is NFC north champ of Chicago, I guess. And then they'll play the Rams.

Right. I like that team. I thought they were pretty well coached too. Yeah. Cause Atlanta. Atlanta was going to be my sleeper for that division. And then TUA was just like, listen,

we don't have to. It's annoying enough that we're even talking about this division. Like and let's.

Yeah, let's move on. Let's.

Until November. I'll make a pick on it.

Here's one. Here's another. Fourth. Fourth place to first candidate. The New Orleans Saints. Six and a half is my guess for them. Is that right?

That's exactly right. Plus 350 to 1 division. I thought there was a little bit. They signed Fant at the end we mentioned. Not bad. Quarterback's a gamer. If you want them to cover.

I'm a fan of Shuck as we. As we discussed over and over again last year. I like the ETN signing. That means to me they're probably going to trade Camara. We'll see if they bring Olave back. They have. They have their first round pick. I mean honestly, you put these four teams together and it's like who can I get the best odds on to win the division? You'd probably just bet that team.

Yeah. I think they're the best plus three. 50 or better out there for a division.

What are. What are they now for the division?

They're plus three. 50. I mean your Bears are plus 380 too, but.

So I thought Vegas at 20 to 1 caught my attention for a split second.

Always. Always 20 to 1.

It's like Jesus. I mean the Patriots are 20 to 1 last year.

Yeah.

Yeah. New Orleans. I guess the downside for New Orleans would be worst run team in the league where the most medical staff situations really almost like a negligent ownership and probably won't be spending a lot of money. So that would be reasons not to take them.

Well, you got teams that can't get out of their own way in Tampa Bay and Atlanta with their front office move, you know, with their moves, free agency moves. And Carolina wrote a fourth place schedule, so yeah, you know, could get lucky.

NFC west, they're playing the NFC east and the AFC West. Some tough ones in there. Seattle, first place schedule for them. I wanted to go 11 and a half and I just couldn't get there. I did ten and a half for them.

You're right and you're wrong. It's eleven and a half on FanDuel. You want to go somewhere else? You could find a ten and a half. Jacked it up.

Okay.

This is one of the four or five that they're different with some of the main books, but yeah, coming off 14 wins. So. And that's kind of what you need to win this division.

Seems they got some guys plucked. Right. They kept Shaheed over Kenneth Walker, which I thought was really interesting. If you could only have one and they were around the same money. Shahid was like 2 million more, 3 million more. Would you have kept Walker? Charbonnet is coming off acl, right?

Yeah.

So they're going to have to address running back somewhere. And it wasn't in free agency yet. But I was surprised they didn't bring back Walker. It almost made me wonder, like, what did they know?

There might be a little trade in there coming up there right in day four of, of coming up. But I, I like Shahid for both. They get him for like 50 million for three years.

I, he was on my Patriots list. Cause they were just kind of figuring out how to use them too. And, and to try to make those like weird, explosive like flip passes and stupid shit with them. Devastating returner. 11 and a half. So they think that Seahawks go 10 or 12 and five with a first place schedule. Okay.

They jacked these up like they, it was like kind of a reverse of what they did with the NFC south with these lines.

Well, Rams. So that means I got the Rams. Right. Because I had them eleven and a half.

That's right, yeah.

Second place schedule for them.

So that's. I don't think you're going to get eleven and a half for the Niners.

Right.

So that's how many. Eleven and a half. So is that three total? It's just the two in the west, three in the Ravens.

Yeah, that's it.

I feel like typically we have more

and the rams did the McDuffie trade. They basically spent. We didn't love their D backs last year and thought that was one of the reasons that they. They didn't make it to the Super Bowl. And they didn't like the D backs either because they spent real capital trying to replace everybody.

Adam's coming back in special teams in order. Just do that. Yeah.

They should have spent free agent money on a special teams coach.

That's it.

Adam's coming back for one more year. We'll see. Stafford. I'm sure we'll hear 49 different stories about his body and he might want to retire. And he'll be back. San Francisco. I had a hard one, hard time with this. It was either nine and a half or ten and a half. I landed at ten and a half. Third place schedule for them, it's nine and a half.

Coming off 12 wins. It was ten and a half last year when we freaked out. Nine and a half this year. But again, Mike Evans, three for 60. It's a tough one.

Lot of guys coming back on injury. They basically, they. I mean, they didn't dump iuk. He had dumped himself. I guess they're going to let Jennings go. So you're basically replacing IUK and Jennings with Mike Evans, who, as anyone who had him in fantasy knows, he's just going to miss four to five games a year somehow at this stage of his career. Right. You're not getting four straight months out of Mike Evans. Now you have McCaffrey, who's another one. Like if four straight months from him is a miracle. Brock Purdy was hurt last year. Pierce hall got shot last year. Yeah, I can see the nine and a half. It makes sense. It does.

And Evans, you know, first of all, that's not a guy who needs to be speedy. I guess you lose your speed in their 30s, whatever.

Right?

Makes sense. But he gets the 50. 50 balls a lot.

Right.

So speed might not matter as much, but those hamstrings is definitely a deal at 32. Also, you have bad injury luck. Do you want.

I was going to say you're bringing his ham. His hamstrings next to the electromagnetic factory. I didn't even think of that.

Kidding.

Oh, no. You should have gotten the most durable guys ever on that free hc. What are you going to make Evans for?

We.

We get shit on every day. Let's move under a pigeon, Cooper. Let's do test 10. Fate. Yeah, that's something.

That's like if we signed our friend Daniel and moved him right next to a sports bar

or any Bar.

Yeah. All bars

love it.

Last one is Arizona. I slapped the five and a half on this.

Yeah. Well you want now that you know they have Minshew. What are you.

I'm going to keep it there. Five and a half. Still fourth place scheduled for them too.

Obviously they have it at four and a half. It's so weird that they won't move these teams off. Well I mean I guess just because they. They're looking at 1 and 5 against Rams, Seattle, San Francisco unless something drastically weird happens there.

So you think Fanduel was in the over unders war room and they wanted to go five and a half and somebody said I think there's going to be a Jacoby Brissette Minshew QB battle. And they're like I drop it one four and a half. That's what it is.

Minchu gets to bring his clipboard in that battle. Still won't win. Yeah. 30 to 1 to win that division.

Wow. So we don't have a favorite NFC one or. It sounds like yours. You. You don't. Detroit ten and a half isn't your favorite one?

No, no, no way. I you know I. Green Bay I think would be mine. I know nobody likes Green Bay.

Ten and a half. Like I've been burned by them before.

750 to 1. I like that more at the the the the conference taking a shot at them at like 8 to 1 or 7:50.

I'm probably leaning toward Carolina or New Orleans. Six and a half. One of those being maybe even with the south with these frickin Southern and 10.

Stop it.

Stop it. Shuck can't get seven wins. The guy was incredible last year. They're riding him. I would stay away from NFC west because I think they did a good job with those. Yeah good job. Good job by Fando there with the NFC west.

They Mike, they really really nailed it.

Nailed it.

They nailed it to the point. 5 Mike. NFC North Chicago 1 Still I need to know more about what Chicago did but that nine and a half still feels like there could be some action. And then I guess the Giants, I guess by default at seven and a half might be my favorite one. Yeah, I have that as a semi lock.

It's a good one. I would get it in. That could go up because I just think more and more people are going to like like the Giants. I mean they.

That's another way to look at this. What. What's going to go up? What is the get in now price because the Patriots last year when we did this Was clearly like that's going up.

Yeah.

Chargers nine and a half to me is going to go up. I think that ends at ten and a half, right?

Yeah.

That takes nine out of ten a half. That's going to jump. Giants probably doesn't go to eight and a half. So you might be fine waiting that one out. But that Carolina or New Orleans at six and a half just seems low to me still. So maybe those are the get in early.

It's a lot that that. I mean that's just. Have we seen that low a number? NFC south is 29 wins. 29. We bet that then we bet like under 32 or something. We did 29. That's nutty.

Remember again, remember when we bet the Clippers would make the playoffs and the warriors weren't going to make the playoffs? That's looking good.

Is that going to happen?

Steve Kerr is complaining about the schedule now. I'm feeling great. Yeah, Clippers look good last night. Nice win last night by them.

I do like that.

Unfortunately we lost most of our bets. We lost most of our NBA futures because we had Milwaukee tied to half of them.

I said the other day to the fellas, I think the east is going to be crazy. I think you could pick four conference finalists and you'll get them wrong. I'll give you four. I'll give you a shot. Go ahead.

Yeah.

Who's going to be in the conference finals?

The Celtics were the big disruptor. Right? Right. The funny thing is there's four teams and Charlotte, it's probably a year away and then I would say it's four teams and then Miami and maybe Charlotte as the all time wild cards for the.

You watch to crash the party. Orlando gets in there against the Celtics or something dumb. I mean we with Miami as an eighth seed.

Right.

Weren't there an eight seed with Butler?

Yeah. Orlando just all of a sudden figures it out for four weeks.

Crazy.

Yeah, I'm prepared for anything. Okay, so your. Your single favorite over under was.

I. I'm sticking with it. I'm going Cleveland under. Sorry, that's too. Too many. Too many at this point my single

favorite is Chargers nine and a half over. But we'll see. We'll see more signings to come, more draft picks to be made.

Yeah, we touched on it. But do you think there's any single move that would move these aside from just natural momentum of gambling? Any move in free agency or draft that would move a number one game?

You mean a move along the lines of Shams reporting 18 minutes ago that Tyrese Maxey will be reevaluated in three weeks.

Yes. Like, something like that. Like, does that move the Eagles line even though he's a stitcher?

Three weeks.

They now no longer have Maxi, Joel Embiid and Paul George.

They're battling for minus 450 to make the play in. That's nuts. That's a six seed right now.

So maybe Milwaukee's not dead. We might not be dead with our Milwaukee one yet.

I know. Yeah, you're right.

I think the one that could move the needle to answer your question is if Washington picks Love seven Love. Okay, I could see that and then do a couple other smart moves, and at some point, we look at the finished product and we're like, oh, it's kind of potentially explosive team here. They got no offensive coordinator. So that would be mine. Is there any other one that you would go with?

But no, no, there's no respect. It would have to be Rogers Cousins. I don't think any of those guys. Murray. I don't think any of them do it. Maybe.

What about Harry Styles, that linebacker? Is it the singer? Harry Styles?

Is it Harry?

What's that style?

He's fine. Yeah.

People that nobody TR for him is going to move the lines.

Can I make a recommendation with these combine numbers? The fastest. Have you looked through the history of the fastest wide receivers from John Ross to. Oh, yeah, Xavier Worthy's the best of them. It's like. It just. It's. It's disgusting.

Like, you.

You don't want to be the fastest guy. You're like, run with an anvil in your pants or something. Right.

You want to be. You want to have a 4, 5 and be good at, like, the cone drill. Yeah, right.

Exactly. And I don't think.

Coach.

I think teams are onto it, too. Like, oh, yeah, you're the fastest dude.

All right.

Not taking you to the fifth round.

You know who wasn't on to it was Bill Belichick. For years with the Patriots, he would always get seduced. He liked it over and over again. All right, cuz.

All right.

I'm glad you're hanging in with. No, let's do it.

Look, we got March Madness coming. We're going to do something at the Kimmel Club. Fanduel sponsoring this.

Right.

March 26th, when this is sweet 16 week. Yeah. The Bundle will be there. Tate Frazier will be there. Simmons is plus 850 to make an appearance. Get in on that now.

50s. Yeah. It might even be. Might even be 10 to 1.

Oh, come on. All of a sudden you hate Vegas. What's the matter with you?

Hate Vegas. I'm about to. Right after you were talking to Sean Fennesee about the Oscars and the Michael B. Jordan numbers are he's now a minus. I bet him for best. You did it already. Okay.

Yeah.

I'm wondering if it's just a Leo backlash vote, but we're going to talk about that with Sean Fantasy. Second cuz we can find you on the Ringer gambling show Monday, Wednesday, Friday and then I'm sure you'll pop on when we get close to the draft on this pod. Good to see you. Good to pop on.

You won't even know it. I'll pop on. Good job by you, Billy.

Hey, every Wednesday I've decided to look through the NBA slate and make a parlay. And there's no rules for these parlays. I can do anything I want. I hit the first parlay last week. Hopefully you didn't miss out. If you did, you have a brand new chance this week to get in on the action. I'll be tweeting my parlay out on Wednesdays. But. But just so you know, I am looking at Minnesota and the Clippers because I went to the first Minnesota Clipper game in LA two weeks ago. The Clippers didn't have a point guard. Garland was a back get. They still hung around thinking about parlaying that with Charlotte at Sacramento because Sacramento's tanking for the year and Charlotte is on a two game skid and needs a win. So there you go. That's. That's at least two of the legs I'm looking at. The bet will be live in the FanDuel Sportsbook app on Wednesday. Don't forget to use a profit boost token to increase your potential winnings before you place it. We call it the PBT fanduel. Play your game. All right, Sean Fantasy is here. We're taping this on a Monday afternoon, actually a day before the podcast, we just did Rewatchables.

You're part of CR month. We did To Live and Die in la, which we recorded for next week. Been very fun. But Oscars is this week and we have a live big picture which you're gonna do right after the Oscars on Netflix but also on Spotify. But we're doing that. The show will end and you'll be on there. Will you be surprised by something major that happened during the telecast on that live show?

So I think so. The last two weeks has been very, very fun and the previous three Months of Oscar prognostication and awards tracking I think has been kind of boring. And then the race got very, very quickly, which leads me to believe that we're going to have a very fun and interesting Sunday. However, I haven't made my predictions yet. I'm about to make them on the pod later this week and I'm starting to lean towards a lot of chalk and I'm look, I've looked at the betting favorites, I've looked at every precursor. I've looked at the history and the precedents here. And I'm starting to bore myself a little bit with what I think is going to happen.

That's never how it plays out though. There's always one shocker.

But you know, I gotta say, Amanda Dobbins has been pointing this out on the Big Picture like the last few years. Very early in the season, everybody just decides what the movie is. And that movie tends to dominate for long stretches of time. Everything, everywhere, all at once. Oppenheimer, Honora, those movies were betting favorites for long stretches of time. So one battle after another has been the betting favorite for a long time and it has adequately, it is steamrolled the competition at all precursors. So, you know, we'll see.

Well, if you had to bet on anything that would seem like a safe bet. It would be one battle and PTA winning.

I think PTA for director is Locked. Yeah. Picture is not locked because Sinners. You know, what you're hearing a lot about is the vibes in the room at the SAG Awards when Michael Jordan won and when the cast won best ensemble, people in the room were like levitating. They were so happy because that cast is so loved. That movie is so loved. It's the most nominated movie of all time. 16 nominations. But if one battle loses, it will be probably the most unprecedented upset in Oscars history just based on what it has done so far. Now, that doesn't ultimately matter because the voting window is short and people might just be really thinking about Sinners and loving Sinners right now and voting for it. But a movie has never had the collection of. And these aren't just like critics awards, these are awards from the guilds, which is a lot of people that vote for the Academy Awards. The producers, the directors, sag, the editing group, the cinematography group. Like One Battle's won everything there. And also Sinners has won best film at zero award shows and at zero precursors. So you're talking about a.

It would be a pretty historic upset if Sinners win.

We have to Take a quick detour because you've triggered something that I've been meaning to say to you.

Great.

You know, I always talk about how we need a sports czar. We also need a culture czar.

Okay.

Which I'd like to nominate myself for. I don't know if I'm qualified enough.

I think you're probably exactly who we should pick.

Thank you. Too many award shows now. Yeah, we just have too many. And I don't know where we went wrong. And it just feels like people are getting dressed up week after week after week. I feel like Seth rogen has given 40 speeches where he's just thanked whoever and he can't believe he's up there. And it's like you actually can believe he's up. You're up there because you've been giving a speech every Saturday night since, like, September. Yeah, I've just had it. Like, can we just go back to Oscars, Emmys, Grammys? I'll give you the Golden Globes as, like, the fun wild card. And then the rest of the stuff, let's not televise them anymore. Let's just stick with four.

So I think that the number of televised award shows has not increased dramatically, but I do think that the Oscar machine has gotten noisier. So, for example, there's a lot more attention paid in the kind of, like, Oscar media, movie media, to things like the Producers Guild and the Director's Guild Awards. Those shows are not on television. They're not televised at all. I went to the Directors Guild Awards this year. It was really, really fun. And you can see why people like doing this, why this is such a cottage industry unto itself. Because it's a nice night out. You get dressed up, you see lots of friends.

Great.

I've been to a bunch of them.

Yeah, it's a good time. But to me, the real Devil's work is March 15, Academy Awards. Way too fucking late. There's just. This should be. I firmly believe this should be the week between the championship games and the Super Bowl. Like, it's the end of January. Yes. And it's like, force the Globes to move up. I realize that. That's the Grammys. The Grammys should pick another date. The movies are getting really far from people's minds. We're 11 months since sinners was released in theaters. That's a long time. Mid March is way, way too late for the way the culture operates.

So how did we end up in March? Weren't we in February?

For a while, it has fluctuated Last year was in early March. Sometimes it's later in March, sometimes it's later in February. Historically it's all across that kind of two month corridor. My theory is, is that this is good for business. It's good for the business of the awards industrial complex. Yes.

Video on demand, hbo, Max.

It's good for media. You know, it's good for us. I mean for the pods. Like people want to hear us talk about the Oscars. That's consistently like it's a horse race. So there's something exciting about it. But I don't know, just covering it, like it's just the same conversations over and over again. It's the same people at the same parties.

Just a lot of redemption.

And I was laughing. You were doing igs of each movie, counting down. And I was like, I'm pretty sure I know where SEAN stands on F1. And you've been talking about these movies for a year.

I know. You know, I'm a little bit sick of it. Obviously it's gotten exciting because there's more unpredictability, especially in the acting races, which has been cool. But this is, this is just too long. It's too long.

I like your February idea. So we at super bowl, which it seems like they're going to drag out the super bowl now too.

If the super bowl is like February 8th, make this Oscars February 1st, that would be great.

Right? Either do it the week between championship, super bowl or the week after. I would expect perennially has been like the NBA All Star Game has kind of tried to grab that and some other stuff in general. Everybody's just getting way better at the calendar.

Yes.

And I've talked about this on my pod before about ufc, wwe, all of these different play, like, oh, third week in August, there's nothing we'll target there. You're seeing it with World Baseball Classic right now and some of these other things that we just didn't have 20 years ago. But the Oscars should be signature OG should own the Weeknd.

Yeah, I'm with you.

That March feels late. I saw Sinners. I saw it with Van. It was like over a year ago.

It came out in April. It was an April 2025 movie. So it just feels a long time ago. And that's not the only reason. There are plenty of movies in Oscar history that have come out earlier in the year, but just pushing it deeper and deeper kind of sucks. But there is like a whole complex around the baftas. There's a whole complex now around the actor awards. Because they're on Netflix. Like, all of this space has been made because the Oscars keep deciding to be in March and they are the most powerful awards show. It is still the second most watched thing in most Americans homes after NFL football. The Oscars, even though it has shrunk a lot in the last 10 years,

it still is awesome.

Yeah, it's great.

Yeah.

Well, we have the biggest one and we could talk about the movies and who we think should win, which you've already talked about many times, so I know your answers. But the most interesting one is the best actor, where Chalamet, if he had just been kidnapped by gypsies and brought to New Zealand for four months, would just be running away with the award. And it's this old Hollywood story of, first, you can do too much. Second, you could say a couple things that people can go onto, and at some point you hit this mode that I always call the, ah, fuck this guy mode. And it's hard to get to, and you need to have some success and you need to do just a couple things that make people basically stop rooting for you. And I don't want to say start rooting against you, but they stop rooting for you. And I think he's hit that point now where people are like, all right, enough, let's break it down.

He wins the actor award last year and he gives the speech about pursuing greatness for his performance in A Complete.

Which I kind of enjoyed.

I loved it. Yeah, it was a very swaggering, athlete style speech. He called out who he thought the greats were in acting, and he wanted to be just like them, which is,

by the way, his kind of spiritual backbone is sports and music. And he's generationally. This is the people that he loves talk like this.

Yeah, he's a New York kid. Talk your shit. Like, that's the kind of guy that he is. I love it. I've always liked it about him as like kind of a Persona that also was basically the soft kickoff of the Marty supreme marketing campaign, because everything he did in the run up to the release of Marty supreme was like a stunt to show how swaggy he was. And I think that some people found that a little eye rolling, but it obviously worked because the movie did really well, despite being a period piece about a ping pong player. And so if you take all that stuff away, a lot of that stuff that I think was annoying some of these voters, potentially, the movie doesn't get to 100 million. And if the movie doesn't get to 100 million, then he doesn't have that same primacy as, like, the guy of his generation as a movie star, because this was the last step. Open an original movie by yourself. So he pulls that off, but then as soon as he pulls off, that's

the first time he did that, right? It is, yeah.

Because, I mean, he did Wonka and Dune and other movies that are all based on ip. This was an original movie, and nobody does that anymore. It's really hard to do. So he got that. But then the price to pay for that was you're overexposed. People think you are this guy, instead of it being a part of the marketing strategy. And you add on top of that that the academy historically doesn't really like young guys anyway.

I would also throw in he's involved in the extended Kardashian universe, which some people have a visceral reaction to.

They do. So he's got some marks against him if you're talking about a subjective, objective opinion. He's obviously an insanely talented actor, and he's very comfortable carrying movies on his shoulders. I love Marty Supreme. Marty supreme is not the most likable character in the world. There are a lot of people who tend to vote by which characters they like and not just whether or not they think a performance is good. So that's a factor. I don't know what the hell's going on in this race, though, because even though Michael B. Jordan is the favorite, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around him winning because he also has won nothing all the way up until the actor Awards. And it almost felt like he won in part because there's so much affection for the movie. And he's an industry veteran now.

Right.

He's pushing 40. And also it's a sort of a. Like, a not Chalamet vote. There's a little bit of that going on.

So I thought Leo was going to be the Not Chalamet vote. And like, even FanDuel has that prediction app. There's Gold Derby. There's some different ones. MBJ is basically, as we're taping this on a Monday afternoon, he's a slight favorite.

Yeah.

And Chalamet is in the Plus140,150 range, which is crazy because he was, like, a prohibitive favorite for a while.

He was.

And Leo is, you know, he's 13, 1, 14, 1 range there.

It's weird because there's also not a lot to support either of these predictions. So this just shows you how kind of at sea. I am on this category in particular, but I haven't ruled out Leo or Wagner Mora for my picks.

I just, I think, oh, yeah, make the Mora case.

The Mora case is that we've got a much more International Academy.

20 to 1.

He's very, very well liked in the industry and he is also very personally well liked by pretty much anybody who comes across him. I interviewed him seven years ago. One of the most genuinely charismatic and thoughtful guys that's ever been on the pod. He's also been laser precise in campaigning with the Academy, as opposed to just like, oh, did you win the Golden Globe or not win the Golden Globe? Or did you win the Critics Choice Award or not win the Critics Choice Award? He hasn't given as many speeches as you'd want to, but one, you've got to consider that Brazil has a stronghold in the Academy voting. Two, he's a overseas actor who has done a lot of stuff in America and in the English language. He was in Narcos, you know, like, he's very well known. Three, there's a lot of admiration for the Secret Agent. There's not a ton of data that supports this take, but I've kind of been hanging on it for a while that if he's standing up there, I'm not going to be stunned. I think it's.

Plus, how about that? You have four of the five actors. You wouldn't be stunned. When was the last time we had

a category like that, a major acting category? I can't remember the other thing, too, about sag. I shared this with you over the weekend. SAG for Best Actor and Best Actress has only been predictive in three out of the last six for the Actor Awards. That's kind of a shaky category. SAG is a weird group of people. It's like, it's a huge body and, like, less than 5% of the people who are in the body vote for the Academy Awards. So it doesn't really tell you, like, a ton about who's going to win all the time.

It wasn't nothing, though.

It wasn't. Well, he gave a great speech and Viola Davis had that awesome moment of giving it to him. So it was very memorable. So if, like, members were watching, they clocked that and they saw that, they probably felt it the way that we did. It was such a cool win for the Actor awards.

Well, also, how many Best Actor black actors have won?

Not very many.

It's less than five.

It's three, I think. Three? Yeah. I think it's Denzel Sidney Poitier and Forest Whitaker.

He checks the boxes from the. This kid's been in Hollywood for a while. He's paid his dues, he's done all kinds of things. You got a taste of it with Fruitvale. I think he's really well liked.

He is. He's the opposite of Chalamet. We don't really know anything about Michael B. Jordan. He's not a very.

He's done a good job of.

His Persona is very modest. So people like that. They like when they don't know anything about the person. Daniel Day Lewis has won this award three times.

Right. I mean, Frances McDormand won three times. I don't think she campaigned any of the three times. Right.

So that to me, what you just said there is the case for Leo, which is that Leo has been more present this year. He's very, very admired across the industry, obviously, in part because he always picks good projects and people really respect that about him. He's in the movie that is the best picture, prohibitive favorite.

There's a world where also people love him in this movie.

He's great in the movie.

Yeah.

And he's not like he wasn't at the actor awards. Cause he's just making a movie with Scorsese. Cause people are like, he's about love of the game. That's his thing. That's what he's into. He loves making movies. He wants to make movies with great filmmakers. His next movie after this, he too, with Michael mann in his 80s, you know what I mean? He only.

I think I'll still believe it when they're filming it.

So I don't.

There's also some fun Leo vs Timmy stuff here where you're talking about the last guy who was able to get to. Every time I release a movie, it has a. It's almost like what I was talking about with the NBA where how many guys in the league guarantee you 46 wins no matter who's on the team? And Leo was the only guy who could guarantee you a release forever. And now Chalamet may be the next guy.

Can you believe Brunson is one of those guys? Now the Knicks are about to have their third consecutive 50 win season.

Well, they have a really good 40 years. Expensive team though.

What? Come on.

Don't yum. Like even Giannis doesn't guarantee you 46 wins anymore. It's not even going to be 500.

It's true. I'm giving Brunson all the credit.

Like right now. It's probably Jokic and Anthony. I don't even know. Ant might not even get to 46 wins this year. Jokic might be the only guy who guarantees you 46 wins, no matter who's on his team.

Okay.

Leo is one of the shows. Yes.

I'm trying to think of a scenario, what kind of movie he'd have to make. So Body Eliza's probably the last one he did that didn't do that well. And since then he's been Jay Edgar. Jay Edgar. Oh, Jay Edgar. That was a bad decision by him.

But it was Clint Eastwood.

I mean, I know, but that wasn't a good.

Not. Not a great choice.

It wasn't a good choice by him.

But that's. I mean, it's so rare. There's like three or four movies you can point to over the last 30 years where you're like, eh, I don't know about this one.

It's funny because I saw one battle and there were people in the theater really laughing throughout the movie. There were some people that thought it was just absolutely hysterical. I didn't laugh once, and I didn't get that part of it.

I'm so blown away by that.

Yeah. I was like, all right, you've only

seen it one time, right?

We've only seen it one time at

him in sensei's apartment on the phone, trying to get the password. Is the funniest fucking scene of the year when he's yelling at Comrade.

Didn't get with me for some reason

because, you know, we don't always share taste, but stuff like that, we always. I don't. I feel like we're always on the same page with that sort of thing.

I do have to see it a second time. I've seen Sinners, like, four times. Sinners was my favorite movie of the year. I don't know why.

I mean, different ways you talked about on the rewatchables.

No, I know. I really, you know, I just. I. I just thought it was just really cool, and I did. It took me for a ride. I didn't know where I was going. I probably saw one battle a little bit late, so the hype was already there, which I do think can affect you when you see it, but it was also, like, fucking exhilarating and awesome. And if it wins, there's this whole PTA piece too that I think is going to be pretty Great.

Yeah. He's 0 for 11 in his career at the Oscars, so he is more than overdue. He's also widely revered in the Academy as Like one of the greatest living filmmakers. If you talk to most filmmakers under 40, his name comes up in the top five of their favorite directors.

Among most people, he's a 10 to 1 favorite. Coogler, I think, is the only one who could take it. Coogler's 8 to 1, apparently on FanDuel. I'm sure this stuff will change, but with Coogler, it's one of those things that if he won, it would be shocking, but I wouldn't be like, oh my God, I can't believe that just happened. It would be shocking. But I do think, like, people really like that dude. And sometimes the Oscars comes down to some popularity contest. True.

I think to me, the more likely outcome is One Battle wins best. No. Is that PTA wins Director and Sinners wins Best Picture than the inverse. I think it's very unlikely. The Coogler wins Best Director and One Battle wins Best Director.

I mean, what's going to actually happen is it's going to win One Battle, won both.

Probably. The director thing feels pretty tight to me because he pta, won a dga.

He's due.

He's been all the way through. Yeah.

People want him to get one. Coogler's time is coming. He's younger.

Yes. Also, One Battle is dedicated to Adam Sumner, who is his longtime AD and was a producer on One Battle and is a really a very widely liked person. And he passed away last year. He was the AD on many Steven Spielberg movies. Like, this is an industry award. Like, you got to remember that, like, these people, A lot of these people have worked together. They know each other. This isn't like voting for the NBA MVP where it's like a lot of people in different cities just watching TV and deciding or watching games and deciding. You know, even though there's a fraternity of journalists, it's not the same as when with people that work in the film industry. So I think it's One Battle, but I don't. I don't feel confident.

Do people really think, like, if MG MBJ won, people would be surprised. But do you think that's considered a great performance or a very good performance?

I think it's considered very good. I think there's a case for it is very great because it's two performances. Obviously, because he's playing Smoke and Stack, so he's doing a lot there. I did point out when we did our Secret Agent revisit last week, though, that Wagner Moore is technically playing three people in a way in the Secret Agent. He's Playing the same guy, but one guy before witness protection and another guy after witness protection. And then he's also playing his son in the future. And he also gives a very layered, deep, complicated performance that shows you like which guy is which in certain ways. Mbj, I think he's just not as showy an actor. And I think he's also at his absolute best in Coogler movies. And he's given some uneven performances in other movies. So I think some people are a little resistant to him at times.

I think that helps his case for this, though, that it's a little bit of. I didn't know you had that in you, which is how I felt. I thought I had figured out, like, whatever his ceiling was as an actor, and he went above it in this movie. It's also just that he. He was fucking awesome.

Him and Coogler together is just a great thing in movies. It's just cool when you get a pair like that where they come along and they're doing that Scorsese De Niro thing where you know they're gonna make at least three or four more movies together. You know, he's gonna evolve as an actor where he's gonna start to be more like Delroy Lindo than Michael B. Jordan. At a certain point, he's gonna take on like, old guy supporting parts. So just the. I just. The idea of that union, I think makes people who love movies the idea there's two guys who are under 40 who are doing that right now in the biggest movies of the year as really exciting.

Best actress, Jessie Buckley. It's a wrap.

It's a wrap.

It's not even gonna bounce off her that she was in a bad movie.

She was just in one of the biggest bombs in the last 10 years and no one cares. She's gonna win in a walk. There's a story going around that she doesn't like cats. You hear about this.

I like her even more.

She forced her husband to re home his cats when she moved in with him. And I don't care. I throw my life away for her. She's the greatest.

She's the best. There's video of her singing and bars and all kinds of crazy stuff.

Oh, yeah. Did you go back to her? Like talent show competition days on YouTube. Great voice, just an amazing singer.

I don't know if I've given you this take. I thought it was the best male or female performance this decade.

You did. I did share Cate Blanchett and Tar with you as a counterpoint.

I thought Hamnet was incredible. The first hour or whatever.

Is it your number two movie of the year?

I thought the last. So there's two different conversations. Right. It's like the movies start to finish, but then almost like extended moments or long scenes or stretches where. I think this movie year had a lot of great, memorable, iconic stretches. You know, like even in Sinners, when the vampires finally get in. Into the bar. Like, just that whole run where you're like, oh, my God. It's like what we call in rewatchable stuff. Okay, Motherfucker. Like, classic. The one battle when we. They had a bunch of them, like when we were with Del Toro, but then really, the car ride will be. That's going to be the ultimate. I thought what she did in that big final climactic scene was as good as I've seen. I just got. It was really. It was way more moving than I thought. I just thought she was just incredible and at a whole other level with some of the great actors ever.

Yeah, I agree. I really held the first hour of that movie against it, though.

Yeah, that. That's. It's almost like the. It redeemed itself and then some.

Yeah. I just. I can't pretend it didn't happen. Like, that whole approach to that world, the performances, what Paul Mescal's doing in the movie, the. Like, the. The. The patience that it makes you have to get to them having a family, which is something that we know. Walking into the movie that we're waiting for, I just felt like it was really, really, really languid in a way that I didn't really vibe with at all. But I don't. I. I've been saying it since I saw it over the summer, that the final 40 minutes is tour de force shit. And part of it is, like, they're performing Hamlet. It is Hamlet. Like, Hamlet is captivating. And watching someone be captivated by Hamlet and having this personal catharsis with it is really cool.

But I was also upset that he didn't get nominated, but it was a deep year. But I thought Paul Mesco was. I thought, especially in the last half hour, I thought he was really good.

I think the script does him a little bit of a disservice. In the movie. He does the to be or not to be thing while standing on the ledge. I was like, this is a little on the nose for me, just putting that out there.

Did you interview Chloe?

I didn't, and I never have.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah. Okay.

Well, she's going to win. I told you I couldn't Stand the Rose Byrne movie. Least popular movie in the Simmons house this year.

I enjoyed it, but I specifically understood what it was trying to accomplish, which is, I think, like, alienate some people and show you how alienating it is to feel like that character.

I didn't like it. Okay, Best supporting. So Sean Penn is like basically a two and a half to one favorite at this point.

Do you think this is going to happen?

Skarsgard is plus 350 and I'm surprised Del Toro didn't get more momentum, but I think because he's already won. Whatever. Delroy Lindo. At 9 to 1, Del Toro is

only in 12 minutes of one battle after another.

I have thought Skarsgrd was gonna win for a while for a variety of reasons. He fits the Oscars profile in a lot of ways of the old guy. Let's get him one had a stroke four years ago. He's really good in the movie. He's got his son and very fun Hollywood family situation total. And I think people would be fired. Sean Penn's won a couple times.

He's got some zany takes out there.

Sean Penn, he's got some takes, a

bit of a character.

This could be a little. Fuck that guy in there. Who should win.

It's a complicated question because Skarsgrd to me is a lead and Sentimental Value is an amazing film. And it is a film that makes you think it's about Renata Rheinzeva, but I think it's just as much about him. And I think he is asked to do the most. And he's making a film in Scandinavia where his career launched, and he's made so many great and important international films. I always liked him as an actor. Good while hunting, you know, he's elite. Fields Medal winner. I what what Benicio is doing in one battle, though.

Oh, take your Fields Medal, Sean. You can have it.

It's convenient that I'm named Sean.

Yeah.

Benicio is pretty sick, you know. It was really good. I really did not like Benicio del Toro's Frankenstein. But Jacob Elordi is incredible in that movie. And what he does as the creature is really unique. And he brings something really new to this like 100-year-old character.

It's interesting because nobody really liked that movie that much.

Yeah, it's got its defenders for sure. I've not been one of them, but

because I was thinking when we were doing rewatchables 20 years from now when I'm in a nursing home and you guys are coming in to film with me. I'll be like, lordy, how did he get in there? Why didn't.

You're gonna be nursing home in 20 years?

I don't know. Maybe. Hopefully not 50 years.

I hope you're okay in 20.

Elordi will be the one that we're kind of like, wow, how'd that get in there? Nobody's talked about that Frankenstein movie for 20 years.

Yeah, but I don't think it's a bad nomination at all.

I think the Euphoria cast just giving us him and Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney, like three of the biggest under 35 stars we have.

I mean, don't forget, it's like impossible. Colman Domingo, who's way more famous now, an Oscar nominee. Austin Abrams, who was just in Weapons and is about to be the star of the new Resident Evil movie. I just saw Faces of Death the other day. The star of it is Barbie Ferreira, also from that.

Oh, she's back.

And Maude Apatow, who obviously was known before that because of her father and just directed her first movie that's coming out later this year. So when's the last time a show threw off legitimate movie star potential like that? That's like 78.

I don't think that's happened with the cast that Tell me lies. All due respect to them.

No, I don't think so.

So I would bet on Skarsgrd for this, and I think he's gonna win anyway. Sean Penn was mesmerizing in the theater. It's a little cartoony.

You gotta remember that in this particular category, the Academy loves villains. This is Anton Chigurh from no country for Old Men. This is Heath Ledger's Joker. You know, this is like. This is where the Academy likes to be to award its bad men. So that's the case for Sean.

I think this is 50, 50. And then best Supporting Actress feels like we're gonna be surprised. Somebody.

I don't know. I don't know what the fuck's gonna happen.

Amy Madigan feels like that this happens with the Oscars every year with the older actor. Everybody's like, it's gonna be her time or his time. And then they just get kicked in the teeth on Oscars.

Yeah. Glenn Close has been getting her head blown off for decades now. I think I'm gonna predict Amy Madigan. I don't know. I remember vividly I was at the Telluride Film Festival in the fall, and I was sitting next to a person who was an award strategist.

What A job that is a real job.

And I said to them, I think there's a really good campaign to be made for Amy Madigan because she's really liked in the industry. She's had a 40 year career. She's a real professional. And this movie is a big hit. A lot of people saw it. And she's doing a very dramatic thing. A lot of makeup, a lot of a transformation. The Academy loves a transformation. And I remember him going, hmm, interesting. Now, I'm not saying I inspired that this was gonna happen no matter what, but it's come a long way from her being like, wow, this is a weird horror movie that Amy Madigan shows up in for 10 minutes to potentially Academy Award winning part. I think I'm gonna pick her. She also gave a great speech at the Actor Awards and people remember that stuff.

I mean, she went field of dreams

35 years ago at the PTA meeting. Yeah. Talking about book banning.

It's great in that movie. I always liked her. Stayed with Ed Harris. They're still together.

Yeah. They famously did not stand for Elia Kazan when he won his honorary Oscar. Very memorable Oscars moment.

All right, so if you had to predict a Holy shit, I can't believe that happened category, which one is it?

Wagner Mora winning Best Actor would be Holy shit. Okay. That would be crazy. The odds are like 3%.

I have to bring this up just because it's been such a big part of my column from way back when about the hammer for the Oscars.

I shouted memorial last week about this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's something I was always fascinated by. And then it's become a. They've kind of blown that segment out. Sometimes they have people singing to it. There's been times when there's too many celebrities, too many famous ones that died where they have to. They almost can't have the hammer. And this year, I think, is the biggest Oscar year of famous people that I can remember. Where we have Redford, we have Rob Reiner, Duvall, Diane Keaton and Gene Hackman.

Did Hackman.

Hackman count?

Was he at the end of last year's podcast?

I can't remember whether he is or isn't that. We still have at least like four major heavy hitters. Four crazy ones. And my guess is that they're going to do little segments and the show will probably be a little longer than it normally is.

Gosh, I hope so.

My guess would be they would have to do four special segments for those four and then do the In Memoriam for the Rest.

I would be so happy with that. As somebody who loves clips and learned about loving movies from watching award shows and learning about what other movies people were in, I think that's a great way to kind of slide people into movie history. Also.

Four people that are worthy of it.

Oh, no.

I mean, they have to.

It happens in there. All five of them are. They're iconic figures. They're incredibly important to the evolution of movies from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, into the present day. There is a dead giveaway about this, though.

Well, that they're announcing these special people. They're doing well.

That Barbra Streisand's gonna perform.

Yeah.

And probably gonna perform Memory, and that would make Redford the Hammer.

But I think that's gonna be its own segment.

Okay.

They already said Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan are going for Rob Reiner. Okay. And Rob Reiner should get his own segment.

Totally agree.

All kinds of reasons. And then if you're gonna do that, you also have to address the Duvall and Diane Keaton, and maybe you could say those are the focal points of the memoriam. Diane Keaton, I think for her stature and just as one of the best actresses of the last 50 years, it'd be weird to be like, let's just celebrate the guys and skip over Diane Keaton.

Her and Jane Fonda are the signature stars of the 1970s.

Yeah.

So I hope they do that. That would be. Honestly, be great. It's obviously terrible that we've lost all these people, but I don't know. The Oscars is tricky with this. Sometimes they just forget people in the Memoriam. It's not foolproof. So I hope they devote a lot of time to it.

After Duval died, I banged out Tender Mercies. My wife, who had no idea what was going on. I was like, we're putting this on. I want to watch a Duval movie. And it was on Tuesday.

Do you like it?

It's fucking great.

It's a beautiful movie.

And I called my dad the next day to check in, and I was like, I watched Tender Mercies last night figuring that he would like it because it checks a lot of his boxes. And he was like, just watched it two days ago. It's one of my Alzheimer's. Really loves it.

Wow.

And it's a movie that didn't do that well when it came out. But I thought one of the things that was so interesting about Duvall was how many kind of different people were lurking in his body where he also had this, like, Texas, you know, country western singer. Alcoholic domestic abuser trying to turn his life around. Just quiet movie guy. But was also Tom Hagen in the Great Santini.

Yes.

And the guy from Colors. And the crew boss in Days of Thunder.

Yes. Apocalypse Now.

Yeah, and the Apocalypse now guy.

So the movie that I watched the night that he died is called the Eagle Has Landed, which is a World War II. World War II thriller seen through the eyes of the Nazis. It's about a complicated scheme, and in the movie, he plays a German lieutenant. The cast is mostly English actors playing Nazis, and he's an American actor playing a Nazi. So he affects a German accent in the movie.

Oh, it's interesting when that happens.

And all the English actors are just doing English accents. So it's a very odd movie to watch. Like, Michael Caine's in it, you know, like, he did a lot. He was like. He played Stalin in an HBO movie. Like, he had a really big, weird career.

He also just comedy stuff in the 2000s.

Oh, yeah. Kicking and screaming. Yeah. But he also, like, pretty much never bad in a movie. You've never been like, oh, that was a lousy Duvall performance. Like, could you think of one movie where you're like, he sucked in that? It doesn't really work that way with him, which is pretty special.

Yeah.

I'm hard pressed to think if Hackman counts for this year, if we've had a more impactful five.

I don't know. You probably got to go back to when that first generation, that 30s and 40s generation of actors were dying. And if there was a moment they

were dying young, though.

Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. In the 70s, there might have been Douglas Fairbanks and people like that who were passing away all at the same time. But for us, since we've been alive, this feels like it's the most loaded.

Before we go, we have to. Goldman's book is next to you, to the left.

Yeah.

Goldman, the number one champion of show us the fucking votes. Did we ever figure out how we can't find out what the votes are?

No, man. You know my latest idea for this, right?

What is it?

I don't know if I've done this on the show before. If I have, tell me. It's not just that we should know the votes, but I think that the show should be a series of a sequential reveal.

This is a good one.

So every 20 minutes, we learn another film has fallen out in the Best Picture race. And then if you want to be.

It really only works for the Best Picture race, where we drop Four and we end up with like. Or five. We end up with four at the end.

Yeah, I think.

Yeah, I like that.

But that would be really exciting now, this year, which is really like a two horse race. It's not as interesting, but just for the viewership. I think it would be for the, the common viewer who doesn't follow this stuff closely when like F1 goes out first, you know, you'd have a lot of people be like, oh, Fuck, I like F1. What's wrong with these people? You know, I don't know. I just. I think that'd be really fun if they tried that.

That's a really good idea.

And I'm really wondering if, if the oscars going to YouTube, if they will make any modifications in a few years.

Is that this year it's 28.

It's going to be a few years. 20. Maybe 29. It might even be 29.

I thought it was an awesome movie year. It was really memorable. I think part of it had to do with we didn't have Covid anymore and we finally were back and actually making movies. And we also had good filmmakers making movies and we had good actors and actresses in those movies. So we just felt, it felt like Covid feels very far away now for movies. Yeah, now we just need to make better ones.

It felt like a nice balance of the industry, making franchise movies that were not based on previous movies. Like, you had your Minecrafts and your F1s, but then you also had auteurs making big kind of tent poly movies like One Battle and Sinners and the industry rewarding them, you know, and being like, this is what it should be. Guys, like give $100 million to really creative people and let them try something new. That's what makes Hollywood special.

So that would be the positive spin then the glass half empty spin would be, yeah, Ryan Coogler and pta. We had some real ass people making movies. That's not going to happen every year.

Well, this year we got Christopher Nolan and David Fincher. You know, like, it happens. It can happen every year. If we want the year after that we got Steven Spielberg. This year we got Jordan Peele in 2027. Like, this is. We're fine. Greta Gerwig's putting a movie out this year. Like, we can do this. It's fine.

Do we need dynamic pricing for movies?

Ooh, it's been pitched. Was it. Is it Barry Diller who's been pitching this? Somebody had this idea pretty strong.

I just think the Odyssey should. It's Almost like maybe just in LA and New York, but it should just be like, it's a fucking free for all. You could easily name your price.

You could easily charge 50 bucks to go see it at the CityWalk and people would pay to see it in that IMAX.

I think you'd go to higher.

Yeah, yeah.

Especially because they only have like 2 or 3 IMAX theaters.

I don't really want this though.

Oh, I don't think that I don't want it either. But if it's a way to help save movies, I'm ready to at least entertain all suggestions.

Yeah, movies are just. They're a mass communion event and they're like a regular. They're an every person art form. That's part of what's so great about them is it's the same ticket price for everybody. It's not like you get to sit in the orchestra and you get to sit over here. We're doing it together. That's the whole beauty of the thing. So I don't. I'm a little. I want movies to be saved, but I'm not.

Maybe we just have one. Maybe one theater. That becomes the free for all theater where it's like the, the 7:30. Like best IMAX possible for the Odyssey. And it's like, should we open that? You know what, Name your price.

Yeah, well, that would be a good business.

It's $730 a ticket for Dead Center.

You gotta have really good sound and a good screen in there if you want that to work. It's gotta be the best ever.

That's been the other thing that's happening where even like the shitty screens are really nice. Like where it's like, oh no, I'm in the laser theater. It's like, all right, I'm still having a great time.

You know, I took Eileen and I took Alice to see Hoppers yesterday at the AMC at the Americana. And we sat in the Dolby Room, which was like a nicer premium thing, but not the nicest room. And it was like being in a fucking amusement park. The seats are huge. It's incredibly comfortable. You feel like you're in your own world. Like, if you're willing to pay for it, movie going can. Can be way more comfortable than it was when we were kids. Like we were sitting in these rickety old chairs and everything. And the floors were sticky. Like it can be nice. Especially, I mean, in la we're very spoiled because we have so many options.

Although we don't have the arclights, still

no it's fucking bullshit. Such bullshit.

It's an absolute disgrace. I blame everybody. Just keep naming people. Let's blame them too.

Just reopen it.

Politicians, like, there should just be things that should never disappear in different cities, right? Boston has their stuff, New York has their stuff, LA has their stuff. The Arc Light, the Chinese Theater here, I agree, are just like, should never go away.

Well, Well, I mean, one really good thing that Netflix did was that they came in, they bought the Egyptian and they completely refurbished it and that's now a beautiful movie theater. We did a live show there last year. It was awesome. We watched Inglourious Basterds there. It was amazing. And to me, I think you're right that the Arc Light, which is a historic movie theater, should be a civic landmark. And they should make it honestly put it in the hands of the government for all I care and have it be an open and active movie business all the time.

That's when I really had it going, like Pre Kids Summer 2004, just writing three columns a week for ESPN. And then I'd finish something and I would just tell my wife, like, yeah, one o', clock, Arc Light. I might play two. You might see me at six. Not sure yet.

You're going to run out there for Collateral and Cinderella Man. I'll see you on the other side.

I could talk myself into a second one. Who knows? We'll see how it goes. Yeah, it's really the days.

I'm still doing that and I have a kid. It's a perilous lifestyle.

Well, the best was in the 90s in Boston when I had nothing to do. So it was like the movie we've talked about, the sub rewatchables, the movie releases. Sometimes it was like, holy shit, I might be able to do three.

Can I run Jade three times in a row. We.

We only had like two really good movie theaters. I mean, that's the other thing, the movie theaters. We're doing a good job of having good movie theaters.

LA is amazing right now. I mean, there are lots.

Austin has a couple good ones. I mean, I know New York City does the biggest one.

If you're not in a major city, it's a lot harder now because a lot of the smaller stuff is closed. I feel bad for a lot of people out there who really want to go see movies that have to drive a long way. There's a little bit of like an IMAX epidemic where there are not enough IMAX theaters. They should really open more and build more because people want them to. I know. I think it's Chicago. You have to drive like a long way to get to an IMAX screen. Yeah. Yeah. So there's some issues with that stuff. But, I mean, when we worked at Sunset Gower, that was the shit that was like, we're going to the ArcLight every Friday. Every Friday after work. That's what we walked over there. It was the best. So, yeah, I really miss it.

Movies good year. A minus.

Yeah.

I hope The Oscars are 5Aminus. Even though it was over two and a half months ago when it ended.

Yeah. It's just too late, dude. It's just way too late.

All right, well, have fun on the. On the live show.

Thanks.

On Netflix probably around 7:30 PT, 10:30 ET. Are you gonna wear a tux?

I am.

Are you really?

Yeah. Spoiler alert.

What's Amanda going to wear? Is she going to get dolled up?

Yeah. We decided to go super black tie this year.

Oh, wow. This is really exciting.

Pretty excited.

All right, congrats.

Thanks.

Now it's time for the with the assist segment presented by State Farm. In basketball, the best players don't just go it alone. They lean on teammates, coaches, even fans to push them to be better. And we've seen some pretty iconic assists over the years. You got Bird and Mikhailo, you got Magic and Kareem. You have Pippen and mj. Lately we have Jokic and Murray, who won a title together, probably could have won a second one if Murray hadn't gotten hurt. And this year are having their best combo individual stat season ever. And Denver's been struggling. They've been like 500 for basically two months because the supporting cast got injured. But if anything happens for them in the playoffs, it's going to be the magical combination of Jokic, one of the best players of the last 50 years, along with Murray, who's having the best season he's ever had and has made the all star team as a potential hall of Fame player. And how those guys use each other in a playoff series where you only have to go four and three to advance to the next round. So Jokic and Murray, that's one of my favorite combos.

And like basketball, life is easier with great assists. State Farm is here to dish one your way. A little like Jokic to Murray, they're not just an insurance company, they're a teammate who's on your bench ready to listen, assist, and help you get the right coverage when it matters most. State Farm with the assist Coverage options are selected by the customer availability and eligibility vary by state. All right, Our friend Seth Wickersham is here. He has been writing for ESPN for a lot. How many years now for you, dude?

25 years.

25 years. Oh, my God.

25 years.

Website, magazine. Website. In the magazine, there's really. The magazine has become the website. Okay. And you have a book that came out a few months called American Kings, which it's basically a deep dive on the quarterback position, a position that we have just not figured out. And I want to talk about that in a little bit. But what we want to talk about first was Tom Brady, a guy that you have covered and written about and just has a bizarre relationship with the Patriots that I don't feel like has gotten enough attention since he's the greatest QB of all time and the greatest Patriot of all time and brought six Super Bowls. So Max Crosby gets traded. They have a bunch of suitors. The Patriots are allegedly one of the suitors. And it comes out in their porting after they traded to Baltimore for two first rounders that the one team Brady said there's no way we're traded in. There is the New England Patriots. This is on the heels of him saying he didn't have a dog in the race in the Super Bowl. And just some general vibes of his relationship in New England.

Even when he came back, when they did the statue, I heard that he got paid to come back because he wasn't coming back for free. What happened the last seven years to flip this, and is it worse than we thought between him and Kraft? Because I am endlessly fascinated by this.

Well, it's totally weird. And I think that the other thing that makes this kind of Brady aspect interesting is that one of the reasons that Max Crosby wanted out of the Raiders is because of our old friend Alex Guerrero, who, of course, depending on the way you look at it, either caused a bunch of problems in New England or was just somebody that Belichick didn't want around. And so he banned him from the building back in 2017. And so there are all kinds of aspects of it that kind of are Patriot centric here. But I think that when it comes back to Brady and the Patriots, I think Brady and Belichick are a different thing. But I think when it comes to Brady and the Patriots and Kraft, there were a slew of things that I think happened. You know, we're starting, you know, back in 2010 when Kraft and Jonathan. Robert Kraft and Jonathan Kraft had to get involved in Brady's contract negotiation. We're talking about 2017 when Brady unveils the big TB12 brand runs into a bunch of problems with Belichick in the off season. You know, basically tells Kraft that he wants to go to a different team, and Kraft has to figure out a way to keep it together.

And that's in Garoppolo range too, where Garoppolo is the backup and they're wondering if he's looming as the next guy.

Exactly. And then you have. They beat the Rams in the super bowl for the second time in 20, 19, 19. And then he comes back, wants his contract redone, Really a statement that he'll retire a Patriot. Remember, he wanted to play until he was age 45 and he did. And really what the Patriots gave him was a one year deal with a little bit more money and an opt out to be an unrestricted free agent. And remember, he put his house on the market the day after that deal was announced.

And so I think, and everyone in the Brady camp was like, it's no big deal. It's just a coincidence. But none of this is a coincidence.

It's never a coincidence. And I think that's how Brady talks. You know what I mean? He's never going to hold a press conference and, you know, do what Kobe Bryant might have done. You know, I mean, this is how he talks to the public. And I think that at the end of the day, Belichick opened the door for Brady to walk out. Kraft backed him, and, you know, Brady went on to win a Super bowl with another team. And so I think that, like all that stuff is wrapped up in it. I mean, remember like, Joe Montana was traded from the 49ers to the Chiefs and it took like a decade for the ownership to try to get him back involved after Eddie D, you know, had kind of flamed out and had to give the team to his sister. I mean, some of these great athletes just hold these epic, legendary grudges. And you know, you see a little bit with Brady in a cute way, like how he wasn't following the Patriots on Instagram and that that broke, you know, super bowl week also. So I think that's the gist of it. But we can go deep on any of those things.

Peyton Manning and the Colts, that was another interesting one. Brent Farvin, the Packers, another interesting one. So normally, you know, maybe a 50, 50 chance that it doesn't end awesome with the, with the team in the qb, if they feel like the QB who's established himself as like this incredible alpha dog. I've done everything as the Skills start to decline. You get the wrong coach in there, the wrong gm, something weird with the owner, a cheaper owner, whatever, and it goes sideways. I wonder if this was as simple as this was about money and Belichick and Brady, a relationship that you were reporting about. And I didn't want to believe it for years. I remember getting mad at you a couple times. But clearly, clearly some stuff happened in the 2010s that they worked together for too long. They started aware on each other's nerves. Belichick was, who's a pretty logical guy, or at least he was in 2010s. He's basically playing this like the Seattle Seahawks non timeout before the Malcolm Butler play where he's just like, I'm playing the odds here. Nobody's playing quarterback till 45. I want to still coach, I want to still win Super Bowls, and it's unrealistic for this guy to go past 40.

I need alternatives. And meanwhile you have Brady going, I'm playing till I'm 45. I'm doing this. And then you have Guerrero in there who's like this weird shaman doing whatever. You have TB12, whatever. The deal Kraft made with Brady to build that whole center there. And it just became a Molotov cocktail, ending with them not committing a long term deal to him in 2019, heading into the 2019 season. And that feels like, like that's why I wonder if him and Kraft, it's a little deeper rooted than maybe we knew where he felt like, hey, yo man, your team is 10 tupled in value since I showed up, maybe 22. You've won the most valuable franchise in the league. You were the black sheep of the Boston sports scene for decades. Now you're the role model of the entire city and you're the role model of the league. I did that. Belichick did that. And now you're telling me to basically take a one year deal and walk off into the sunset. Fuck you. I wonder if it's as simple as that.

Well, and I think that there's a collective aspect of, and this is, I think Brady actually is underappreciated. Look, it's hard to find anything in Brady's life that he's underappreciated for. But I think that like when it comes to eating shit and his capacity to eat shit, it's really kind of remarkable because there's no way that Dan Marino is, or John Elway or Aaron Rodgers would put up with some of the stuff that Brady put up with. And like, look, in 2010, Brady wants a new deal. And even though he had always taken below market deals, he was willing to do it again, but he didn't want to do it quite as drastically. And the Patriots actually wanted. So Kraft ends up getting involved because months and months go by and nothing happens on the Belichick front. The Krafts get involved, and this is in training camp. And the Patriots wanted to sign Brady to a longer contract actually than he wanted. And the reason why he wanted a shorter one was because he knew that Belichick loved to trade guys as soon as they got a little bit older and a little bit expensive.

So forget about like age 45. We're talking about like age 35, 36.

Yeah.

And so the Patriots ended up caving and he got the short term deal that he wanted. They sweetened it in and extended him in 2013. And then once they went, you know, five, six Super Bowls, Brady saying, like, you know, look, I have, we've. What we've accomplished is unprecedented for a coaching quarterback. Like, I want to retire here. And Bill was just never on board with it. Remember, he presented Kraft with a study once that showed how quarterbacks dropped off the cliff after age 36, which, by

the way, is accurate or was accurate at the time.

And Brady keeps defying the odds, and then he still can't get that long term deal. And then in addition to everything else, you know, he's still, you know, Belichick mocked him after the AFC Championship game against the Jaguars when, you know, he had his hand sliced open and he's like, you know, we're not talking about open heart surgery here. I mean, Belichick, it was so hard for him to give an inch when it came to public displays of affection for Tom. And, you know, that was the world in which he was raised. I mean, he was raised in a loving family. And I think that, like, he always kind of wanted Belichick's not only approval, but just kind of like, hey, we're in this together and we're going to write it out and go down as the greatest ever by far.

I wonder if Deflategate had anything to do with this too, where Belichick basically ran for the hills when Deflategate broke. Right? He seemed way more concerned about, I don't know what the fuck was going on over there. I wasn't involved at all. And I don't think that went over well. So you have that. You have Garoppolo two years later looming as the next kind of.

You have Garoppolo replacement. You Have Alex Guerrero.

Yeah. And then Guerrero piece. But I understand the Guerrero piece though, because when you're, I'm sure Vrabel's like this now with the Patriots, where you have this team, everyone's aligned, the medical staff, the coaches, everybody's like one thing. And the Guerrero thing was kind of over here. And then some of the other Patriots started drifting over. I thought, I, I, I thought Brady maybe didn't see that, that that was not awesome for the Patriots. But there's a, there's another thing here and, and it ties into what's happening right now is we're taping this on a Tuesday morning with Kraft, who I don't wanna call him cheap, but let's just say he hasn't been extravagant these last 10 years. Right. And there's been some, I think Philly has been a good example of a team that has really smartly used the NFL salary cap to their advantage. Where you spend, spend, spend, spend. The cap keeps going up and you're basically treating it like this dinner check that you can just keep ordering and you don't have to pay the check. Kansas City's done this too. Kansas City gave that giant long contract to Mahomes a few years ago and they restructured that this year.

And they restructured it and all of a sudden they can sign Kenneth Walker. The Patriots never did that with Brady. They never did the 10 year, $320 million deal, whatever, that you can pay somebody a lot up front and then basically redo it, restructure it. And you're basically borrowing from this Brady contract atm, like what the Chiefs did with Mahomes. And I've never got a good answer for why they didn't do that.

And I think it was philosophically Belichick also. Look, look, there's, there's few ways that especially Belichick tweaks Kraft that hurt a little harder or cut more to the core than when he talks about cash spending. I mean, it really bugs Robert Kraft. And, you know, in a lot of ways you can't blame him. But I think the other aspect of that is that the Patriots are always about the next year. So they didn't want, you know, they always wanted to do what was best for the latest iteration. And like when you had Brady at the end of his career, he wanted to be more involved in personnel. Remember, he took that, he took that, that sort of below market deal, but it was an extension in 13. And then they let Welker go. Right. And so he was pissed about that.

Yeah.

Even Though they ended up, you know, that let Edelman grow into a good player and it ended up working out. But he was upset about that. And at the end of his career, he was really interested in personnel. And, you know, Belichick was never going to quarterback, have that kind of say. I mean, I think he involved Brady in a lot of really interesting and unique ways, but there was no way that he was going to have Brady in on these scouting meetings. And I think that was interesting because, remember, the Belichick method is to take young guys and give them all kinds of football work in this great football education and let them in the room and then, you know, have them funnel information to Bill who ultimately makes a decision. And here Brady was, having been in the NFL for 20 some years, he wanted to try to have a say in some of these things. And that, you know, wasn't going anywhere in New England.

I wonder first if they had done the long contract like what the Chiefs did with Mahomes. I wonder if that flips this completely. And the other thing, I wonder if they had done something near the end where it's like, finish your career here and you'll get a piece of the team at the end on a discount. Basically, what the Raiders got with him, they never did that either. And from what we know from the crafts, you would have had to pry even 1% from his, from his sweaty hands. It just never would have happened so near the end. The two most, they weren't underreported, but they were kind of underappreciated stories. Was him looking for an escape hatch during his last PAT season with either Miami or New Orleans. There was a lot of reporting about this and it was kind of a crazy story that I never felt like, God, it's just due. And I think all the Patriot fans were like, I love Brady. I'm going to kind of look the other way on this one and pretend this never happened. The Miami thing was a real thing that it seemed like he had going during the last Patriots season as he's in the same division with Miami.

And that fell apart at the end. But what did your reporting say about that?

Well, and like, look, Ben Vaughan of the Boston Globe did a really good job of reporting on this and so did Jeff Duncan down in New Orleans. I mean, the other interesting piece is that Sean Payton was in the middle of both of those and they're both represented by Don Yee, who's a, you know, fantastic agent. But those were his two biggest, you know, high profile clients. So you have Sean Payton, who, as he told me, you know, felt like he could never get a jump ball in New Orleans, either from like a free agent or especially the league office. The type of things that the Crafts kind of enjoyed for a long time. And then you had Brady leaving, and for a while, Peyton walks away from the Saints and he's all set to go to Miami. Now, the question I have, and I never was able to figure this out, is if Brady. Well, rewind in 2000, Brady's looking. He's a free agent, and the Saints looks like it's going to be the place that he either strongly considers or

ends up in what, 2000, what year? 2000?

20. 20.

20.

2020. And so he. I think San Fran was a number one on his list. He would be close to his parents. He could play for Kyle. At the end of the day, you know, the Niners were really interested in him, but they just felt like they couldn't do it to Jimmy coming off a narrow super bowl loss.

Right.

So Brady turns his attention and New Orleans is really interested in him. It looks like Breeze is going to retire, and Sean desperately wants to coach Tom Brady. Breeze ends up coming back, and that blows that entire thing up. Brady ends up in the Bucks and of course ends New Orleans season in the playoffs. And then you have two years later. So remember, Brady retired for a period after his second year in Tampa, and I think he was so frustrated with the way that things were going. You know, look, I think there were some personal issues going on at that point, too. But the Bruce Arians Tampa Bay Buccaneers were nowhere close to the Bill Belichick New England Patriots. I mean, it's like going from Harvard to Florida State. And so he retired and was looking. It looked like everything was going to come together in Miami. Now, I think he was going to be an executive there because the Buck still held his rights, I think. And so I think he was going to go to Miami. Sean Payton was going to be a coach and he was going to be an executive there.

But Brian Flores and his lawsuit ended that. And so that's how we ended up, you know, with Brady, you know, looking and looking at the Raiders and of course, Sean Payton in Denver.

But wasn't there also the scenario near the end of his pat's career where he was looking at Miami and maybe Sean Payton jumping to Miami? And that was. I mean, that was the thing I remember from his last year. Yeah, there was going to be some sort of combo thing that they never really figured out.

Right. Well, remember some of the, the, the meat of the Flores lawsuit was tampering charges against the Dolphins involving Brady. And so, yeah, that was a key element of it also. You know, again, like that entire situation just kind of.

But I mean, basically. Cause the alternate universe is they just keep giving Brady a 10 year deal and keep rolling the money over and he just plays with the Patriots for 25 years and gets a piece of the team after and everybody's happy. Instead he's in Las Vegas where he gets a small piece of that team and he's in charge of. Seems like in charge of front office stuff. Combined with these announcing games on fox, which I thought he got a lot better last year. I actually really enjoyed him by the end of, by the playoffs last year. I thought he was excellent.

Me too.

Yeah, but.

And the other thing about. Yeah, but the other weird thing about the Raiders is he's on the headset for the coaches during games. I mean, like there's people at the smarter teams around the NFL who saw him on the headset. I think our friend Peter Schrager was the one who pointed it out during the Monday Night Football broadcast who just loved it. I mean, that speaks to a level of dysfunction.

Well, and the Guerrero thing too, that came out too. That was. The athletic wrote about that. They thought he was like Brady's spy in the locker room, basically. It was crazy.

Well, not only the spy, but they're advocating a certain methodology when it comes to helping players prevent injuries and recover from them that, you know, Brady is the lone shining, you know, testament to. Yeah, and there's a lot of, you know, passing of traditional principles of western medicine within that. And in the center of it is Alex Guerrero, who really doesn't have a lot of credentials other than he's Tom Brady's guy and he was Willie McGinnis guy. And so that I think is the problem. I mean, these are professional athletes and I think that they had a big issue with him in all of those ways. I mean, remember he has this vague title. I think it's wellness coordinator.

Right.

And you know, part of it is because there are rules about who can work with players. And I think that, you know, the reason why he doesn't have, you know, I'm making this up, a chief medical officer as a title is because of that he doesn't have those credentials.

Right. Well, they check a lot of boxes for the fourth place to first place team with the fact that they traded Crosby for the two picks. They have Mendoza, maybe he's good right away, that Kubiak from Seattle. They spent a lot of money in free agency this week and we've just seen this recipe before. We saw with the Patriots last year, we saw it with the Commanders two years before and. But the, the dysfunction around the team makes me wonder should we start looking for another fourth place to first place team? I don't know. We have six months to stare at it. I can't get over that.

Well, really quick, what do you think, what do you think about Mendoza? Like, do you think Brady looks at him and sees part of himself reflected in him?

Very possibly. I know he was, he was a little fascinated by him. Right. But the thing is like, I think my thing is he's going to go first. The people like the draft experts, like the guys we have, like McShay and Danny Kelly, people like that, they don't feel like he's the best par in the draft, but he's in the vicinity, which I think is okay. I think when teams get in trouble is when they take the 13th best guy in the draft first. Seems like he's, he could have him wherever in the top seven, but he's. least he can kind of sniff the number one spot, which makes it a little more palatable. And there's also nobody else in the draft, which is the other thing. But yeah, he seems like a Brady kind of guy. Really smart, got better every year in college, like really driven. Just seems like the kind of guy Brady would have responded to. I don't, I don't know if Brady would have been. I just like he, I don't think he would have been a raw tools, lower IQ type of qb. I don't think that would have been Right.

Do you agree with that?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting because in one sense you have Mendoza who's, you know, he faced a couple crossroads in his career in college where this easily could have gone the other way. And maybe he doesn't really have much of a college career and I'm sure that Brady can relate to that in his own way. And yet another aspect of it that I find interesting and Brady has talked to me about this over the years and he's, I think he's mentioned it elsewhere is just like how lucky he was to be under the radar at a young age. The fact that when he was a rookie nobody was paying any attention to what he was doing when he was out there with the practice squad guys after practice, throwing balls in the dirt and cussing up a storm.

Right.

And how much respect he has for Guys like Peyton Manning and Elway and these guys who were the. Had so much attention and pressure and accolades and, and eyeballs on them and that they were able to. To make it work, and they were able to live up and maybe even exceed those expectations. Like, those two dynamics are really fascinating to me because there's no way that the Raiders are drafting a quarterback that Brady doesn't like. I mean, I don't think that's. We could just say that. And I'd be really curious, like, which part? Again, the biggest question in sports is like, how do you find greatness in a quarterback? Brady completely turned that question. Whatever theory we had for it, Brady's career turned it on its head. And I'm curious, like, what parts of it he sees in himself and what he doesn't.

Well, one thing we've learned from football and basketball is that great players don't necessarily have that skill set to figure out. If anything, they're. They're probably a bad judge because either their expectations are too high or they look at it as like two glass half full versus like just a cold evaluation of it. So I have no idea if he has that skill set or not. I wonder with Kraft, if you had to do this over again. I feel like he would just run it back the way it played out with the Pat sucking for four years, but ending up with Drake May Rabel showing up and them not being beholden to Brady, him not giving an ownership piece to Brady, even though it was clumsy and weird. And it's led to a very strange relationship with Brady and the team. I don't think Kraft probably cares. And in general, like, it's a weird one because the team does not spend like other teams would in the position they're in now. And you could even feel it a little bit in free age. So you could feel it in the way they didn't take care of some situ, like they.

They lost Tonga to the Chiefs, who they could have just spent money on in November and December, and they had a little contract thing with them and they ended up not doing it, and then they lose them. It's a little stuff like that that you don't see. Like the teams like Philly and the Rams, they just spend the money and that's who they're competing against. So they got to the super bowl last year, and a lot of it had to do with schedule and the luck of the weather in Denver that day. And Stidham, I don't know if they were a Super bowl team, but they got Some good breaks.

But.

But going forward, they have this incredible chance with May on a rookie deal, and I just wonder if they're going to blow it or not.

I mean, remains to be seen. But, like, I think going back to what you were saying, I think it hurts Kraft that Brady stealth identifies as a Raider. And I think that, like, you know, I mean, going back to 20, so I don't know if he would do it exactly the same. I mean, going back to 2010, you know, Brady's paranoid that Bill's going to trade him the moment that, you know, he starts to see a decline. And, you know, Kraft told him, look, I'm not going to tell Belichick what to do, but if he decides that he wants to move on from you, I'll give you what you need to have some agency over your next destination, whether that's, you know, letting you pick your trade partner or just being an unrestricted free agent, whatever that is. And so, you know, that ended up playing out in 2020. But I just think that, like, it hurts Kraft deeply that Brady goes and wins the super bowl in the as a buck, and that he comes back to New England and beats them as a buck. And, you know, he's sitting there with Belichick as they're slogging through these losing seasons, getting madder.

Madder, where they're losing games, like, 10 to 3. Right?

Yeah.

And then, you know, as soon as Kraft has a chance, he has Brady back at the stadium. I mean, I think he's doing anything he can to remind Tom Brady that, you know, these people love you. And I think that Brady knows the fans love him, and he'll always have a good relationship with Kraft, but, you know, he has that.

I don't see. I don't know. I think when. I think that was re. A really important moment when he said he didn't have the dog in the race. I know for a fact. I think that crafts were like, what the fuck? You know, Vrabel is caught up in coaching for the game, but Vrabel is, like, his buddy. Like, they had this whole extended crew. They would go to the Kentucky Derby. All these different places, like Vrabel, West Welker, Izzo, all these guys. Vrabel is one of the guys, and so is Brady. Like, that's his real friend. That would be, like, if Joe House was coaching for the Super Bowl. And I was like, yeah, I don't have a dog in this race. I thought it was really, really weird. And kind of, to me, it said something A little bigger about his relationship with the team.

Absolutely. And I think that, like, Brady might look at the fans one way and the crafts the other, whereas he can love them and he knows that he cosmically won, but he won't forget that they allowed him to walk out of that building. I mean, you know, these are.

At some point, it's. Six years later, you have a statue like you're a patriot. But I. That's the point. It's like, I don't think he thinks that way anymore.

No. But, you know, Joe Montana does a documentary where he starts criticizing George Seaford, and this is 30 years after the fact.

Right.

John Elway does a documentary where, you know, Dan Reeves, who is deceased, can't even defend himself, and they crap all over Dan Reeves in that documentary. You know, I mean, I think that, like, the level of scar tissue that the greats, you know, accumulate over the years, even though we intellectually know it, we still kind of are surprised by how deep it goes.

Yeah. As you're saying that, I was thinking, if I did a documentary, would I take shots at Skipper and Walsh or not? I might. Who knows? All these years later? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe I'd be bitter about something. Yeah. The Brady thing's really weird, though, and just that him being in Vegas, of all places. Anyway. All right, while you're here, you did. You're basically, like, psychologically profiling the quarterback position, which is impossible. And as the years have passed, we are exactly the same at either. It's basically 50, 50, having no idea who's going to be good, who's going to be not. And as I get older and I look at this stuff, the only thing I really. That I've really landed on is fit combined with competitiveness seems to be the two things that give you the best chance. Caleb was somebody you spent a lot of time on in the book. I read the book, I don't know, five months ago. So I'm remembering from retroactively, Caleb's somebody that I really feel like could have gone either way and ended up in this awesome situation. With the right coach, the right season, you could see him growing.

I don't want to say he was changing, but it was just stuff was bubbling to the surface with him, and now I think he's an incredible spot. Whereas, like, if he had just gone to Arizona from day one, been on a, you know, a typically crappy Cardinals team, developing bad habits, running for his life every play, there's a version where it just goes, Kyler Murray Land. So is there anything else I'm missing other than fit and competitiveness?

Yeah, I mean, context matters so much. I mean, where you go ends up so much. You know, it just mattered. And I think that, like, one of the most interesting aspects that I think about, and this is one of the reasons why I think someone like Mendoza will probably be a good pro, is I spent a lot of time with Kevin o' Connell for the book. And remember Caleb Williams, I reported in the book, wanted to play for Kevin. I mean, they loved each other. During the draft process, it was never going to happen, but Caleb kind of fantasized about it. And so kfc, he's a four year starter at San Diego State. He ends up getting drafted by the Patriots. He figures he'll sit behind Brady for a year and then you take what he learned to another team and start for 10 years and have a great career and he never could catch on. I mean, his career was over in like, in a year. And that, that devastated him. And so when he was first, you know, giving up on his dream of playing and getting into coaching, he went back and he looked at all the game winning drives from Elway and, and Dan Marino and Joe Montana and Tom especially, and wanted to know.

It was very autobiographical. He's wondering, like, what he lacks. And when he watched them, he realized that all of these unbelievable throws that you see Elway make, these kind of highlight reel throws were never really in those situations. Like, those situations were dominated by them doing the mundane, simple stuff at the highest level. Like if you watch Joe Montana against the Bengals In Super Bowl 23, I mean, almost every pass on that last drive was a check down. When Kevin o' Connell was trying out for teams, he was trying to make that John Elway throw. And he realized that was like the very worst thing you should do. And I think that like, the ability to take what's there and to not get sacked and, you know, just keep the chains moving while you're learning how to play, I think is one of the most kind of hidden factors in, you know, quarterback development. It's one of the reasons why I think that like Brock Purdy has done well is because he knows, he knew to do what the coaches told him to do until he had like developed enough knowledge on his own where he could make decisions a little bit more for himself.

Now, a lot of quarterbacks struggle with that. I mean, Caleb Williams spent his entire life making those highlight, real throws where he runs left and throws from his ankle and it goes 70 yards in the Air. But those situations hardly ever come up in the NFL. It's really like embracing the mundane that I think is the prelude to being an effective NFL quarterback.

Decision making efficiency, I think toughness is a huge part of that. Like, I really, I really grew to like Tyler Schuck last year. I thought he was good. He had some of the stuff you're talking about, but he was also like a tough motherfucker. Like, he took big hits, he'd run out of the pocket, he just kept getting up. And that was one thing. There were two things that stood out in those early Brady years. Cause I was in right away. I was living in Boston that year. Brady versus Bledsoe became the only thing anyone talked about. And I was always team Brady because I felt like there was inefficiency with how he did everything. Whether it was play action, just the ball was always in the right spots. And he was tough. And he took some big hits those first couple seasons that there's some good Instagram or YouTube clips of just him getting popped. He would immediately get up and he was just a tough motherfucker and you just knew it. And he did everything really well, Nothing great. And then the greatness came. Probably, probably four years in, I really felt like the third time they won the super bowl, the Pittsburgh playoff game, that was the one.

Was like, wow, this guy's like, you know, we were hoping he would be like basically the Bill Russell to the Manning Will Chamberlain. But somewhere in that third super bowl, seems it was like, wow, this guy. Holy shit, where's this going to go?

He's incredibly tough. And I mean, like, I remember when they played the chargers in the AFC championship game during the 07 season, the undefeated year. And they play that game. It was an ugly game. Chargers easily could have won, really, if Philip Rivers had been healthy. And Brady gives his press conference. And I was there and I was watching him when he exited. And there's like a step that they step down. And when he did, his leg buckled. I was completely stunned. And he limped around a door so fast. And I think that like most people there kind of missed it because they were hustling to get into the locker room. And then it comes out that, you know, he had this high ankle sprain in the super bowl and still went out and played. Got his ass kicked in that game, but fought like hell. Throws a 67 yard pass with seconds left that really Moss could have, if he had made more of an effort on, maybe he catches that. I think that like, when you talk About Caleb Williams, like, one of the things he showed me as a rookie was that he was tough as hell.

I mean, he got sacked a lot and hit a lot, and a lot of it was his fault. But there was a game, and I think they were playing the Lions on Thanksgiving Day, if I remember right. But he ran to the right and he got hit on the borderline of it being legal right on his knee. And I mean, it looks like one of those hits where you're like, this guy's done.

Yeah.

And his season's over and he got right up. And I think that, like, the things that Caleb's proven is that he's got that magic, which, you know, nobody can predict. And then he's also just tough as hell. And I think that, like, the, The. The ways that he'll grow as a quarterback will be, you know, incrementally when he learns to, you know, take the easy throws and keep the chain moving and. No, that'll come with time. But I think you're right. And the toughness factor is something you can't know until you know, because there's no way to replicate how hard these guys get hit in the NFL.

There's also the damage you get from the first couple years you might not be able to bounce back from. You start getting the eyes in the back of your head and once your head's on a swivel. Lombardi always used to talk about the eye contact drops down toward the line instead of looking over the line. That was a fear with Drake May that first year when he was just getting the absolute shit kicked out of him. This year it wasn't much better. And then in the playoffs, he just got annihilated. And I still feel like he was what. They'll never tell us how hurt he was. Cause they were probably lying on the injury report. But I think it was the accumulation of all those hits combined with the fact that he's such a tough guy. It really felt like he was breaking down by the end of the year. And that's where you don't want. Because three years from now, that's not going to be headed in a good place if they don't fix that.

Yeah, there was that clip of them that went viral. That was NFL films. And Josh McDaniels is telling him on the bench, like, you know, I know it's hard, but, you know, you're never going to forget this feeling. You have a chance year. And I bet you anything he was talking about not, you know, battling through them.

Yeah, Or. Or the snow.

I think it was because his shoulder was really, really bothering him. And I'll be interesting to see. I mean, like, what do you think a bad game like Drake may had at the super bowl can derail a guy sometimes? I don't think it will with Drake, but, I mean, does that concern you with him?

Yeah, I. I think the Pats fans, it was the combination of all the hits he took, the four games, the fact that he just didn't seem like the same guy by the time we finished the Super Bowl. And they weren't even running plays they normally ran for him. Right. He used to be so good on the run to his right. They just stopped doing that, which really made me think he was hurt. His guys weren't getting open anymore either, which was the other thing. I think they cut ties with Diggs partly because he kind of peaked in that Bills game in Buffalo and after that was never really the same and never really open in the same way. So I. It's. It's a fast. Anyone. Much tougher schedule, the offensive line that they got Vera Tucker. But I, you know, they really have to hope that Will Campbell's better. We don't know how hurt he was, but I only think you have so many seasons in a row where you're just getting hit like that. He and they. I think Vrabel was telling him, like, when you're. When you're scrambling, you have to just go down.

You have to slide because you could see it all year. He was not reckless. And that's the same thing Harbaugh will do with Jackson Dart this year. But long term, you know, you look at what the Chiefs were able to do with Mahomes for those first couple years where they. They were just able to kind of protect him in the formative years. And that's what Chicago wants to do with Caleb. Right. They lost their center this week or last week. He retired suddenly. They had a really good offensive line to begin with. That's what Denver was able to do with Bo Nix. Just block for our guys. So Vegas Brady's like, I'm going to overpay. This is by far the most we've ever paid a center in the league. But I want to make sure that this guy doesn't get his ass kicked in year one. So I do think that's part of it. We had Jim Plunkett when I was growing up in New England, who was just discarded to San Francisco, you know, after a few years because he just got the crap kicked out of him took him years to come back and

he was like the first of those guys that you see now with anyone that the jets pick, you know, where like in mostly, you know, until Caleb with the Bears where, you know, he looks like a bust and then he goes to a different team and he has phenomenal success. And it shows that context matters. Truth.

Well, that's the Sam Darnold thing too, right?

Exactly. And Gino, you know what I mean? Baker Mayfield, to an extent, I think that, like the only question I have about Drake is I would like to see him perform a little better in two minute situations against like the best teams. Like, I remember that second Bills game where, you know, New England really just, they couldn't stop him and they couldn't stop Josh and you know, they were at home, they needed this game and Drake got the ball and I, I think they went boring out if they didn't. It was pretty close to that. And this wasn't like a very dynamic Bills defense that he was against. You know, I wonder, like, again, I think Drake's going to be a phenomenal player, but like Caleb and Bo Nicks have been better in those absolute clutch situations, I think, than him so far.

And the start of games too was another thing that was. He would kind of settle in by the second quarter. When you were working on this book, the big draft was the three guys, May and Daniels and Caleb, that we all had a chance to, we all felt like they had a chance to be special and Drake was the one people seemed to be the most split on. So I'm sure you were talking to teams like, yeah, he's. We don't have him in the top 10. We don't see it. He's too erratic. And then other people that love the

them and I spent a lot of time with him and his family. And I mean, the one thing I loved about Drake, if I were looking to draft him and it reminded me of Brady, was that he came from an incredibly loving yet really competitive family. I think that like when he. A key moment for him that's kind of overlooked is when he decided to not go to Alabama and he decided to go to unc because being a May who goes to UNC is not just a normal decision because he was risking something worse than, you know, having a losing season or not panning out. It was that at Thanksgiving he would look with, sit with the table with his brothers and he'd be the one who hadn't, you know, done what they had done. And instead he ends up becoming you know, a phenomenal prospect. I thought the most interesting thing with, with Drake coming out of the draft was Belichick's opinion of him because, you know, he was really, really dismissive of Drake in some ways, especially when it came around, you know, how young Drake was and how little experience he had.

I mean, that was pretty clear. He liked, you know, Drake's arm, but he really didn't think that he was seasoned enough to maybe be picked that early. And, you know, I always wonder, like, how much of that is him giving an honest assessment and how much of that is where Drake ended up going.

I never really bought that one. That felt, that felt like a little vindictive by him. As you studied all these quarterbacks and talked to all these people, was there anyone in the last 20, 25 years that people were like, still don't understand why he didn't make it. Still don't understand what was missing. Not sure this guy's the outlier or was there a reverse of like, I can't believe this guy made it. I still don't understand. You can't replicate what happened with this. Maybe Purdy was the guy for that.

I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, Brock stands out, but Brock was so, you know, he was Mr. Irrelevant. And so, you know, nobody was talking about him really that much. I mean, people are thinking he's going to be an unrestricted free agent. I think the thing that's interesting is just that, like, you had that series around the turn of the century where you had like Kurt Warner and Brady and Jake Delome and Mark Bulger to a certain extent. You had these, these guys who were coming, you know, low draft picks, coming out of nowhere and leading their teams to these phenomenal seasons. And then things kind of settle down. Like, we didn't want to admit it quite as much, but just about like every good player as a quarterback who ended up panning out was a first round pick. I mean, there's a couple exceptions, but for the most part they were first round picks. And so I think that like, even though. And now we're so bad at this.

Yeah.

And now, now we're back on the other side of things. But. But, you know, I think that, like the weirdest thing about college is just that you can't trust, you know, statistics at all. It's like the equivalent of like performance inflation and grade inflation where it's like Mike Leach and how Mummy created these dynamic offenses that opened these huge windows for quarterbacks that just don't exist in the NFL. And they help you win games. Bailey Zappi, your boy owns the touchdown pass record for most touchdowns in the season in college. I mean, he can barely hang on in the NFL. And so, you know, I think that that's the most interesting thing. It's just like you cannot trust any statistic for a quarterback coming out of college.

Yeah, you can't even. Accuracy was always a good one. But then there's been some guys like, like the Josh Allen types where they're like, yeah, we fixed it. He's now accurate. And it's a little like with, in the NBA was shooting where there were guys over the years like Kawhi Leonard was a good one. He fell out of the lottery because he couldn't shoot three pointers. And then the spurs are like, yeah, we fixed it. And then he was fine. So yeah, to me, the competitiveness, the efficiency, toughness. And then, you know, obviously the Johnny Menzel types where it's like, this guy might not be able to handle success.

Yeah, total training.

This guy might not be able to handle being the focal point of a franchise.

And I wrote about it in the book, but Sean Payton, you know, developed this kind of analytics formula that he did on his own, which was like a failure metrics where he looked at negative plays that college quarterbacks had and divided them by attempts and came up with a certain number to see, you know, how often they had negative plays. And so, you know, Sean looks at sacks as a quarterback stat. He doesn't look at it, it as an offensive line stat. If you look at Russell Wilson in Denver, he, through his first 50 starts, he was sacked like maybe three times higher, more than Bo Nix was in his first 50 starts. And in that draft class, Bo Nix had the best or I'll say the lowest failure index. And that's originally, look, he knew he wasn't going to get Caleb, but everybody else might be in play. And because of Nick's, you know, because he took so few sacks, high completion percentage, hardly ever fumbled despite playing in, you know, rainy weather. Sometimes he felt like, okay, this guy processes quickly and it's just one team. But that's a way that he tried to take analytics about the hardest thing possible in judging a quarterback, which is quick thinking and processing speed and try to project it forward.

And so far it's worked out okay. I mean his, his, his Mahomes was I think by far the best ever at his formula.

Yeah.

But generally speaking, it's worked and I think it's held up pretty well in

the NFL last Thing when after your book came out and people read it, was there one comment from anybody in the league that read it that about something in the book that made you go, oh, I didn't realize I was onto something there? Was there anything that surprised you?

The coolest thing about it was that, like I played. I'm not trying to be the Uncle Rico of Alaska here, but I played quarterback in high school and you know, I failed at it and it wasn't great. And you know, those, those things, you know, I always was curious about it, but you know, I wrote it for quarterbacks of all different kinds. Like at some point I wanted any quarterback who read it to feel like maybe there was a phrase where their life felt it intersected with it. And the coolest thing was just like Steve Young, Alex Smith, like some of these guys who read it and I chatted with them, is just how much of themselves they saw in the book, even in moments where I wasn't writing about them. So that was, I think that was the interesting.

Well, Steve Young was a good one. Right. Because he's somebody that. But if he wasn't wired the way he was, it just would have been too much too soon. USFL was a mistake, never got a chance. And then he has an eight year career and he's out of the league and it's like, oh man, remember Steve Young, he was so talented. What happened to that guy? But he just kind of wouldn't let it happen.

He's a great philosopher, like quarterback philosopher, like Dan Marino doesn't know a day in most of his life where he can't throw the ball wherever he wants, whenever he wants. Right. And Steve had to work at it. And so few of these guys, like you go back to what we were saying earlier, where the greats often can't coach because they can't explain the things that they did.

Yeah.

Whereas like Steve can actually explain it in really fascinating, honest, kind of vulnerable terms. And you know, that's. He's just a great guy to shoot the shit with about quarterbacks because he sees where other people see analytics or reads. You know, he kind of sees cosmic powers, which I think is really fascinating.

Well, it's like I remember Dilfer, like the. Maybe the third year I had my podcast he was on, it was the Mark Sanchez draft. There were a bunch of quarterbacks and Dilfer said on the pod about if you had all these guys together and we're headed somewhere and I needed somebody to drive the car, I would toss the keys to Sanchez and I Was like, oh, the car keys test. I like this.

But he was like, turkey stuff.

That, that's, that's the kind of alpha Sanchez is now. I mean, these days you probably wouldn't want to toss the keys to him. But no, he, he, I. It made me wonder, like. Cause I always thought charisma had to be a piece of this too. This is the last thing we'll say and then we'll go. But like, you're. You're in. You're in a huddle with these dudes. It's a 70,000 seat stadium. There's an incredible amount of pressure. Half of the guys in the huddle are bigger than you. And at some point they have to believe. And this was what I saw happening with the Patriots with Drake during the year. The little anecdotes of the way they were talking about him was like, oh, this is good that they're talking about. Well, when we have our guy, we have a chance against anybody. There has to be some sort of bigger belief in the guy for the season. And you kind of know it when you have it and you know it when it's not there too. So I feel like that all ties together somehow.

Yeah. Dilfer called it dude qualities. Like, I once when, when I was interviewing Steve for the book Steve Young, I asked him, like, what are all the hats you have to wear as a starting quarterback for an NFL team? And I mean, he leaned back in his office and he just starts going, so matinee idol field general spokesperson for a multibillion dollar organization. You know, chief cheerleader. Breathtaking asshole. At times. Like, you know, all of these things.

Wide receiver therapists, like, these wide receivers, like, you constantly have to make sure they stay invested. And you're going to get the ball this time. And I'm sorry I missed you. And you're just constantly like massaging.

Daycare manager.

Yeah, totally. Just trying to keep them happy so they don't check out.

Exactly. It was like all of these hats that had nothing to do with making reads and throwing the football. And I think that's why, you know, I wanted to write the book. Because when you decide to be a quarterback back, you're not just doing it because you throw the ball well. You're taking on all of these other identities and qualities that you know can help form you can help destroy you later in life. Like all of these things that I wanted to write about.

Yeah.

But are essential for playing quarterback at the highest level.

All right. It's called American Kinks. Got Father's day's coming up down the road. Mother's Day's coming up, but something to read as we miss football all the time during the off season. What are you working on? Anything big? Any big story coming?

You know, I spent the entire playoff run with Sean Payton in the Broncos. I had full access, so I wrote about the fourth down. I kind of.

That story was great. I love that story. Yeah. Cause he blew the game. That one decision cost him the super.

You loved how it ended.

Yeah, I did. I loved how it ended. But it was also interesting.

But I had never done this before where I was spending like 14, 15, 16 hours in every meeting watching every decision get made. And so I accidentally reported an entire book on that. I don't want to write a book, but it's going to be a really good story, I think, on ESPN when. When I get it done.

Nice. All right, cool. Good to see you, Seth. Thank you.

Good to see you, man.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to the cuz, thanks to Wickersham, thanks to Fantasy, thanks to Gahal and Eduardo, as always. And I'm going to be back on Thursday with one more episode of a very fun sports week. Don't forget Fargo up for the new rewatchables. And I will see you on Thursday. On the wayside. Must be 21 plus on President select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 in President in D.C. kentucky or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-Gambler 1-800-My reset. Call 888-797-7777 or visit ccpg.org Chattinconenetic or mdgamblinghelp.org In Maryland, Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24. 7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8-HOPE NY or text HOPE NY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.