Is the NBA Too Afraid of Football? Plus, Jets Dysfunction and Million-Dollar Picks With Wosny Lambre, Joe House, and Peter Schrager
02:23:18 Share

This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Wherever you like to watch the game, at the arena, the bar, home, wherever. Enjoy every moment of the NBA season with an ice cold Michelob Ultra. And, you know, we've done some stuff with them. So they'll send me the Michelob Ultra. I'll put it in the fridge. It's really interesting what happens. People come over, they want a beer. They go, oh, Michelob Ultra. Or, I've never tried one of these. I've heard you talked about it.

100% approval rating every single time. Keep it nice and cold. It's delicious. There's only one way to watch your favorite teams drop buckets, and that's with a bucket of Michelob Ultra. Stock up on Michelob Ultra for the NBA season. Michelob Ultra.

a superior light beer. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2024, Anheuser-Busch, Michelob Ultra, registered light beer, St. Louis, Missouri. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. It's football season and Uber Eats is dropping undefeated deals on all your game day favorites. This week's score, buy one, get one free six-piece boneless wings from Buffalo Wild Wings now on Uber Eats. And if you're craving even more, we've got you covered with game day deals on pizza, burgers, tacos, and more.

all season long. Uber Eats, official on-demand food delivery partner of the NFL. Order now for game day. Terms, taxes, and fees apply. See app for details. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where we put up a new Rewatchables on Monday night. It's The Gambler with me and Chris Ryan. It was a one for us. We had a great time. 10-minute serial conversation there. You can find all of it on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel.

This Monday coming up, we are going to do a Christmas movie. We did Home Alone 2. It was with Kyle Brandt. It was the first time we'd ever done a podcast together in the same room. So that part was fun. But this is, we had a blast doing this one. So that's coming on Monday. You'll be able to watch that actually on Spotify and you can watch that on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. You can watch all the videos from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. And we just launched the Ringer TV YouTube channel that's got the watch app.

It has the Prestige TV pod, has a bunch of fun Hall of Fame stuff and like direct to video stuff that we did. That's where we did the Landman thing last week. So please go subscribe to that as well. We're also brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook, where we've been doing these 30 on 30 profit boost tokens every Friday.

I've been boosting 30 point scores for you. If they get to 30 points and you bet it, you get boosted. I tweet out my picks on Friday.

And I did really well the first three weeks. Last week was not well, but it was weird. It was one of those weeks where there wasn't a lot of scoring. So be sure to claim the PBT, place your 30 on 30 bet for Friday. Just look for 30 on 30 on the FanDuel Sportsbook app. Coming up, going to talk to House and Big Waz about the NBA Cup. Big picture. Did this work? How can we fix it? What should it look like next year? So we did that.

And why is the NFL cast such a shadow over the NBA? It makes me mad. Anyway, we talked about that too. Then how stayed for million dollar picks. Then Peter Schrager came on to talk about dysfunction with the jets, the weird Christmas schedule and all the strange coaching stuff that might be happening pretty soon. It is all next. First, our friends from Pearl Jam.

Alright, it's 2 p.m. Pacific time. Joe House is here because we're going to do Million Dollar Picks in a little bit. Big Waz is here. He was just in Las Vegas for the NBA Cup. Is it still going or is it finally over? I mean, I was only there for the semifinals. I got back on Sunday. But it's done. The Bucs, I heard the Bucs won in Giannis' game.

Played well. Oh, is that what happened? Yeah. So walk us through the Vegas piece of this and whether it's a good idea, because I really I really want us the three of us to help the NBA. I think the NBA needs help in a bunch of different ways with their scheduling and some of their idea generation. But what what worked for you in Vegas and what didn't work for you?

I think I like the idea of having two games in one location, sort of an all-day kind of basketball extravaganza. Like, I personally enjoyed...

that aspect of it the arena is you know pretty much up to snuff in terms of any normal nba arena so like just the the kind of logistics of how it works as a basketball venue is completely fine so you felt like it was like march madnessy a little bit like you go there's two games in a row the house is nodding happily 100 um i thought that was great i think

You know, what it reminded me of, honestly, especially early on in these games as they're sort of getting going, was being at the dunk contest and the three-point contest in Indianapolis last year. It's like, you know, I'm here to watch, but, like, nobody, it feels like nobody there is very impassioned. It's like, you know, neutral observers, basically. Yeah.

But as the games get going and the result gets closer to being finalized, people got into it. It's just because there's not a lot of partisans there. That's what the atmosphere felt like. It felt like, you know, when I was watching the three-point contest last year, until Steph and INS School got to the finals, there wasn't that much juice watching it. But like once it's like, whoa, man.

Steph might lose to a WNBA player. The energy sort of got ratcheted up. And I think that's kind of what it felt like being in Vegas is like early on in the game. The crowd is like everybody's sort of getting settled in. And then when you notice that, like, all right, the game's in the balance, people were really into it. How's the finals watching on TV? It reminded me not a little of the bubble.

Oh, interesting. Where the crowd was like blacked out. I couldn't really tell if the audio was bad or if people were just in a coma. I couldn't tell how many people were there. And Giannis was just killing it. Obviously, he killed it the whole time he was there. But it just something about it doesn't work.

I'm sure it works if you're there, if you work for the league, if you're in the teams is like, this is great. We're all here. But I feel like there's a better idea. So where do you stand just on the semis and the finals? Well, there's there's two things at work. In the first place, the games were rock fights. I mean, the shooting across the board in the semis and the finals was bad.

And, you know, Oklahoma City going five for 32 from three. That's not pleasing to the eye. They were all unders. If you were gambling on this and playing on the unders, you you're quite happy with outcomes. But was really hit the key point, which is how can you get the partisans there? How can you get the fans that will show up with the passion? And this is.

The difference between this year's iteration and last year with the Lakers, the Lakers had an easy, easy, easy way to import, you know, a bunch of enthusiasm. And it was very cool because it was the first one. How can you get that? This is why I was shaking my head enthusiastically around the idea of this being kind of like an NCAA deal.

The difference is there's big chunks of fan bases that have traveled to that place to root for their team. So it's live. It's live from the tip. How can we get that? That's the part, BS, that I want to say. Yeah, part of it for me is like, you know, I've read and I've heard all of the hand-wringing. Like, the bottom line is if the Knicks and Warriors were in this final, there would have been an atmosphere. It would have been, you know, a huge deal. But we didn't get that. We got the Bucs.

And OKC, these are not two national brands. These are not two, you know, fan bases that have massive like fan bases all over the country. The way the Knicks and the Lakers do like, you know, if you've ever been to a Hawks game when the Knicks are playing them.

It's half Knick fans in there. Yeah. Same when you go to when the Lakers play in places like Phoenix and Denver. It's like a bunch of Laker fans there. Right. And so, you know, the two teams in there, I think, was problematic for me personally. And I'm not somebody who's ever like, you know, given Adam Silver his props. I think.

I think the teams played hard. The teams played like as if there were stakes. All the ancillary stuff, I think, needs to be figured out. But the most important thing that the players cared and tried their best. I think that's the biggest sort of takeaway for me. Well, that's why I care about this as a topic, because fundamentally the premise behind the tournament works because the games are more fun to watch. So you start there.

You said something that I think is a bad sign for the league and maybe ties into the stuff I did on Tuesday on my pod. Oklahoma City is the best team in the West and they have Shea, who's the fourth best player in the world or the fifth best player in the world, depending on what your rankings are. Giannis is the second best player in the world, maybe the first best player if you want to have the Yoko Giannis conversation. I don't want to do that here. And he's playing out of his mind and is the most fun version of him that he's been in a game. So,

on paper, it's a great matchup, Oklahoma City, Milwaukee. And yet you laid out like, oh, it's too bad the Knicks weren't in there. It's too bad the Warriors aren't in there. Maybe that's just what the league is. Like, and even when I was going back and trying to figure out all the unicorn situations that have happened over the years,

Almost every time it's somebody in a big market, right? It's Magic and Bird, Boston, LA. It's Michael Jordan in Chicago. It's Kobe and Shaq in LA. It's Curry and the Warriors happening in San Francisco, in the Bay Area. The only real time where we had a marquee kind of thing was LeBron in Miami and Cleveland.

And LeBron almost became like his own franchise to some degree because he, he became so big, but house just structurally, if we put this, if we put the semifinals in New York and either you had both games at MSG or you had one game at Barclays and the other game at MSG and it had to be, you could hustle back and forth and potentially get both. And then you had the finals two days later at MSG.

And now we have celebrities. Now it's way easier for people to come in and out. Now there's like vibe and energy and we're playing it in the most famous basketball arena we have. Isn't that just better? Maybe. Um, because we were very, very close to having this be the Hawks against the Rockets like Saturday. That was a viable possibility. New York fans would have showed up for that. Yeah.

Um, I, I, I'm not sure. Like, I don't think that that Vegas is a bad choice as a venue because it, it, it delivers, um, the, the promise of other entertainment. It, it, you know, New York is hard, especially what we're calling it now. Entertainment.

You mean like adult entertainment? We're old enough now to talk about these things in ways that keep it light. But I don't know. New York in December, like that's a whole thing, right? Like everybody's up in New York right now. That's fair. Yeah, you're right. Because Christmas time is marvelous. But that leads to the second part of the question is, is December the right time to have the NBA Cup?

Well, you know, that's a great question. Honestly, I think part of the thinking is like we want to really juice and goose attention on very early NBA games, which traditionally people just didn't, you know, gravitate towards because obviously and like people need to understand that, like, no matter what the NBA Cup does or is, it's not going to be as popular as football.

Like we need to we need to let go of that as a even a concept or an idea like Americans love football more than they do basketball. And that's OK. A lot more. A lot more. And that's OK. I just think it's about.

One, the Giannis and Dame thing. I mean, the Giannis and Shea thing. And I've talked about this on group chat. I think David Stern's dream of these hyper-corporatized, you know, focus group to death athletes. You know, they don't get busted for weed. They don't scare corporate America. They are the perfect corporate automatons. But guess what? People are not attracted to that.

They're not compelling figures. Even Nike and Giannis, like selling Giannis as this cute, cuddly teddy bear. That's just a mistake. Nobody knows a single thing about Shea Gildress Alexander, except that he wears funny clothes. Oh, and he does. And he does interviews with 11 of his teammates. That's it. Nobody knows anything about these guys. Yeah. Giannis had that, had that clip when he, that from 2015, when he, the

The Bucks and the Bulls had that series and he got mad at Mike Dunleavy and he did the 50 foot charge and just knocked him into the first row. Like, yeah, this is not like just a cuddly dude. That dude has an edge that they try to pretend he doesn't. I don't know why they would pretend he doesn't.

Well, that's the angle to play up. I mean, part of the thing that you guys are talking about is the league's affirmative choice about how it's going to market this season, which is, you know, a transition season. And you captured it, BS, on your pod earlier this week. They have chosen, from a marketing standpoint, to give glory to this exiting, exiting quickly season.

of superstars that have defined the league over the past 10 to 15 years at the expense of a player like SGA. Or Tatum or Tyrese Halliburton or all these dudes in their 20s that they should be trying to elevate. Yeah. Yes, right.

Exactly. You know, what's what's SGA's defining moment? Ask and we're NBA heads, but ask anybody in an NBA kind of community. Tell me SGA's, you know, the clutch thing that's happened. Giannis, I love there's a moment here to really go ahead and lean into where he's at, which is averaging 21 and a half points per game in the paint.

which hasn't been seen since Shaq in 99, 2000. We talked about Giannis and his potential of replacing Shaq at that. Let's do that. Let's make that be Giannis. Giannis, we know. Giannis has a ring. Let's go with Giannis. It just feels like there's two things that they did was that I just, the more I look at it, I just don't like.

One is they could have used the Olympics and even like the Netflix starting five show, like just push new people, push, like put the fucking Wagner's on starting five. Let's let, let's hang out with those goofy Germans and see what their life is like. Like, let's try to develop new people. And then the Olympics, same thing. Should anyone over 30 even be on the Olympic team? Maybe we should have,

It should be all like, you know, younger players are in their prime players or guys trying to have a moment because we were in this situation in the beginning of the 2010s with Durant and Russ. And remember, it was the same conversations about, well, who wants to watch OKC? It's a whole bunch of young team. They should be putting LeBron on and Kobe and the Celtics and Carmelo.

And meanwhile, all the real basketball people are like, I fucking love watching that OKC team. Right. And then it took a while. Took a while. Finally, 2014, when they played the Spurs, it felt like we had enough history with OKC and they became a thing. But I I don't know why they don't push the younger guys more, why they're so beholden to the guys who have already done it. And to me, it's just about ratings. But the ratings are going down. So it's not working. Yeah.

Yeah, look, I agree with you on the Netflix front. Look, sorry, Bill, but Jason Tatum went on that damn show and said he loves his mom, he loves his son. I could have told you he was going to be boring. I mean, that was just misery in terms of selling this product and being like, these are compelling guys, interesting people, great athletes. This man went up there and said he loves his mom, his son, and he hoops really hard. Like,

It's just not going to work. And, you know, again, and I'll say this again, their most popular young guy,

Was who? Ja Morant. Right. Yeah, we talked about all this. And bottom line is Nike and them did not get their hooks into him and turn him into a corporate product since he was 12 years old. Like they have the rest of these guys. These dudes are so anodyne. They don't say or do or look. Nothing is interesting about these guys. I enjoy watching them hoop.

As people, I'm completely uninspired. There's just nothing there. And, you know, again, the guys who are willing to be a little bit out there and different don't comport with how the league sees itself. Like how's this guy Kyle Kuzma?

Hey, Kyle Kuzma is willing to say stuff in public. That's what I like that about Kuzma. He's willing to say shit. These other guys, like, I don't know, man. They're just so afraid. There's too much money at stake. Any backlash. Yeah. They don't want to jeopardize it. It's just not fun. So I'm thinking like with the cup, what this ties into another thing that makes me mad is they're so afraid of football.

To the point they take inside the NBA, which is just the Thursday show. On Thursday nights, I watch the NBA and they're like, we have to move it away from football. Football's eating our lunch. They move it to Tuesdays. Doesn't feel the same. They have this NBA cup.

They decide the semifinals are going to be Saturday because it's the one day we can kind of get away with not going against football. And then they keep everybody there for three fucking days because they don't want to go against a Monday night doubleheader, which by the way, was Minnesota against Chicago and Kirk Cousins' corpse against the shitty Raiders team. It's like, why are you afraid of that for? Maybe go try to beat them head to head. But they're doing all this stuff where they're just retreating and they're so scared of the NFL.

And meanwhile, it's like, maybe, maybe you should try to throw some counter punches. Like the NFL is going to beat you either way. Like even the WNBA, which we thought it was all crazy. The WNBA playoffs are going head ticket against the NFL. Guess what? They did. Okay. They had fans like people had, they had their own fan base and people watch that shit. So I house, why are they so scared? I just feel like when you operate from fear, you're going to lose every single time.

See, I don't know that I subscribe to the idea that they're operating from fear because they did stick this cup into the portion of the NFL season that is like really, you know, we're deciding playoff outcomes now. And they are on nights of the week when there isn't necessarily NFL. Now, I don't like the fact that inside the NBA is on Tuesday and.

You know, the Amazon games are fine, but none of that Thursday night football is must-see TV for me. Hold your spot. But here's the real problem, and they're never going to do this. The stupid season shouldn't start until Christmas. And the NBA Cup in February would be effing magnificent because football is diminishing starting on, you know, Christmas Day, basically.

We're getting less and less games. The playoffs start. And during the week, you have full run to go do whatever you want. So taking the whole thing and starting in Christmas time, New Year's, and let's take over the season as football goes away. That's what makes the most sense. Yeah, you're talking 70-game schedule instead of starting near the end of October.

You're starting maybe like third week in November. You're easing into it. And then you really kick into gear on Christmas. Because one of the things I was thinking with the cup was you made the point earlier, the games are, the games are all really fun. The courts are fun.

But we only had four games in this super complicated scoring system trying to lead to, oh, and then these four teams made it. And this team didn't make it because their point differential was plus 36. How about this? Have more fucking games. Like instead of four NBA Cups, let's have six. Let's have seven. Let's get it so that it goes all the way through. And then we get to January and then the week to do it, in my opinion, there's that week between the conference title game and

In the Super Bowl. That's right. Dead week. Nothing's happening. Football has finally calmed down, basically starting Sunday night and just try to own that week. Right. You have like you basically have a clean slate. You're going against nothing. You're going against you're not going against college football. You're not going against anything and make that the signature week. They're going the opposite way. Not only do they wrap up all this stuff, but the trade deadline is on the Thursday of Super Bowl week. That's another one I don't get.

The trade deadline is one of the most fun days of the season. You're just burying it in the Super Bowl and all your media members, all your corporate, everybody is just talking football, football, football. So I just to me, this is just easy structural stuff I don't get. Yeah. The thing about more cup games, it will make it so that it makes it easier for the best teams to actually play in the further rounds to actually advance.

And so you probably wouldn't get an Atlanta in there, although I love watching Atlanta. Or would you? Because maybe Atlanta is one of the best teams in the East. Maybe you would get Atlanta. Hey, that's fair. And yeah, again, I do think.

you know, fixing the window that they put it in. But to me, it's like, it's a promotion issue. Like Adam Silver needs to get his Don King hat on. Like this guy's just not a promoter. He does not know. They just don't know. And maybe it's the networks. I don't know. You know what I mean? They don't know how to eventize the,

these products. And that to me is the main issue. People don't see these things as essential viewing. They know that they know the season is 82 games long.

They know that effectively a loss in January is just like ho-hum. Who cares? Every single game doesn't matter. And the league just needs to be better, more effective at promoting their product, getting people to feel like this is essential. Because like the idea that people aren't interested in the NBA, I think is BS.

I think plenty of people are still interested. Obviously, like the highlights, the recaps, they do numbers online. People still want to know about the results and all of that stuff. It's just the NBA needs to impress upon people that these games are worthy of their time, worthy of their commitment. Well, House, I mean, we go so far back. We remember when like USA and ESPN started showing cable games, right? We were like,

Oh, it was amazing. All the teams. Oh my God. That's what a Clippers arena looks like. You just, you had no idea. And then the sports center highlights are taking off at the same time. We were just so starved for any sort of NBA action. Now it's flipped the other way where, you know, it's like having the most full fridge possible. I was telling somebody the other day,

I, I, I feel like I watch as much basketball as I ever did, but I watch it completely differently. Now. I don't care if I see the ESPN game on Wednesday night as it's happening, but what I do is I try to watch as many fourth quarters as I can. Or if like, I'll, I'll look at the game recap and it'll be like, Oh, Houston did had a 37 to 10 run in the second quarter on Wembley. I'm like, all right, I'm going to watch that and I'll just cue it up.

And it's, it's so much more on demand. And I house, I don't feel like that reflects in the ratings. So when they say the ratings are down, I'm not positive. I believe it. I do think that they have a star issue is which I talked about Tuesday. They don't like we did house. And I didn't miss Michael Jordan in the nineties when he played a playoff game. We, it was just, it was non-negotiable.

You didn't miss Jordan in the playoffs, period. Unless like you had a substantial event that superseded it. Otherwise you watch Jordan. They don't have a guy like that now. Yeah. I mean, it,

It's LeBron. It's supposed to be LeBron, except for where LeBron at 40. Come on. It's not LeBron at 40. You're 22. And it's not really Curry either. That's right. But those are the guys on television. Look at the schedule. Look at the ABC schedule. I think, you know, the hard thing is nobody sits down and watches basketball games. You don't sit down like, oh, the game's about, let me go get my chair, right? It's not football.

And, you know, using linear TV ratings as a measuring stick for overall success is clearly outmoded, outdated, makes no sense whatsoever. The fact that the league signed an 11 year, 76 billion dollar deal means that those folks who are paying that money have ideas about how to

capture eyeballs in the interest of those consumers to push their stuff that makes sense to them. And they don't think that people are going to come sit down in their chairs and watch a goddamn basketball game in February from the beginning of the game to the end of the game. It's all the ways that we watch it. It's what you and Derek Thompson talked about. People consume the hell out of basketball. But

but they don't consume it by sitting in a chair and watching it. So it's a little bit of a false description, a false assessment to say, well, yeah, the ratings are down. Well, Wise watches every Hawks game, so he's pretty bad. I kind of do at this point. He's kind of sick, actually. He's got a Dyson Daniels bedspread. Yeah.

so I'm also like a bit of a radical thinker on the schedule and stuff one I think I don't even think 70 is enough of a cut I think it should be literally round robin you play each team one time at home one time away two times a week so like 60 so when we get expansion it's like a 62 game schedule that's it one in one so

I sign up for that. Everyone I've ever mentioned that who's in any sort of decision-making ownership, they're all like,

Don't even talk about that on a podcast. It will never, ever happen. It's too much money. There's no way. And it's like, you guys already made all this money. And that's the point. Like all of these owners who were told that the most visionary business people ever because they ran some hedge fund, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They can't figure out how this extra shortfall in money that they got from this big, big ass 11 year contract from all of these networks.

as house mentioned how reducing inventory and making it more scarce they can't figure out a way to monetize that i find that to be just just baffling it does two things but it does the competitiveness of of the games just there's more urgency because whatever goes it also makes the end of the regular season more interesting because if you have like a situation philly's in now

you might not even make the playoffs. So like every game matters starting game 20, you know? 100%. And also I'm a bit radical on league pass. I think we should abolish it. This is my favorite Woz take. I haven't heard this. Yeah, this is great. Look, if you have to watch the NBA for work, if people say, oh, that's self-serving for you, Woz, whatever. I'm just saying, if people have to watch it for work, all right, we'll give you league pass.

If you want access to it, we're charging you a crazy premium. Which to me, that means whenever people want to watch the NBA, they got to watch it with the league's partners. I don't see what's so bad about that as an idea. Because again, I grew up in a context of no league pass and was completely fine with Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and NBA on NBC. I don't know. So you're saying national games...

You get your own team. Like if you live like house in Washington, he gets to still watch the wizards. And then maybe you get your own team in your market. Yeah. Just like how the Jets and Giants got forced down my throat when I was living in New York. But maybe you get to pick like three other teams. And then if you want the whole package, it's like a thousand dollars. And it's just like crazy prohibitive. I think there's some idea there. They're making it.

I'm not against that house. Or maybe they're just, that's it. You get your own team. You can pick three other league pass teams. Other than that, just enjoy them. No, we're not giving them three other teams. So that's it. You're going hardcore. You watch your local team and you watch your national team. Okay? There's two days a week that NBA games are on. Sergeant Wise. He's laying down the law. Yeah, that's it. That's it. That's it. And also, they do need to do something about the bootlegs.

I was talking to somebody who works in this sort of area in terms of how young people consume sports, specifically the NBA. Like how it was explained to me, it's like how people of my age viewed Napster. Where it's just like once we found Napster and LimeWire and all this other stuff, we literally stopped believing in the concept that we would go to Sam Goody and buy a CD. It's like, no, I get this for free.

I'm not paying for it. I don't have a ESPN subscription. I damn sure don't got Warner Discovery. I am just pilfering an illegal stream. They need to find something to do about that. And I know I can hear people right now saying how many people could possibly be streaming stuff this way. I'm telling you, it's a sizable amount of folks. I think he's right. I remember we did the Juice WRLD doc for HBO and Max.

And it was just like, it just got pirated out of control. And that was the first time I was like, Oh wow, this still was happening on like a major level. But you're right. Uh, especially as we head to this next era where you're going to need Amazon, you're going to need Peacock, you're going to need cable to get ESPN or whatever the ESPN package is. Um, and you'll have to pay for the week past stuff too. I mean, it's our job, so we get all this stuff, but, um, yeah, it's,

I've said it a thousand hundred times. The schedule is the number one way to fix this. And they won't. They just won't. It would make it more special. The guys would be playing. They'd be healthier. They wouldn't. Even what they did recently with this, this weird bi-week where there were no games and stuff. It actually made me miss the NBA. I was like last night, where the fuck is the NBA? Yeah.

Dude, and Doc said this in the pregame availability. He said one of the cooler things about this is we had time to prepare for our opponent. Almost like a playoff game.

Again, everything gets better when we're not stuffing all of these freaking games together, playing three games in five nights in three cities. Yeah. This is a no brainer schedule. It's a no brainer. Everything would be better with less games. So maybe they'll get house. Maybe they'll give some of the money back.

76, maybe it's going to be 60. I mean, this is the issue, right? And I don't have a good solution for it. It's easy for us to talk about less games. There's the 41 home games for places where people actually go to the games, not here in Washington, but in places, cities where the team is relevant. That's real money. That's revenue in. That's people walking into the door, buying food, buying merch, you know, uh, it's,

populating the surrounding restaurants and bars and stuff. It's an ecosystem that matters. And how do you walk away from that? Where's the replacement for that? You're right, it's beyond the franchise. Sportico did this thing in the franchise values, which I always think are corny because there's no real way to know. It only takes one dumb person to be like, here's 11 billion. But they had the pie chart of how the Celtics...

I think it was Sportico. Maybe it was somebody else. They had a pie chart of all the Celtics revenue because they don't own their own arena. And they had it earmarked for the Celtics making $102 million from the playoffs. Wow. Assuming they made, you know, got to like four rounds. And you could see it was like, Jesus Christ, that's a crazy amount of money. But, you know, that's part of why some of these bigger market teams, they go all in on luxury tax because they feel like it's almost like a bet.

you know, can we make that money back the longer the rounds go? If they put me in charge, I would at least go to 70 games. I mean, you could talk me into the 60 would be even better, 62, but they won't. This is something Steve Kerr has been. Steve Kerr at one point, I think he like hand wrote

a long letter to Adam Silver, like in the last year, like it, like it was like the 1840s. Like he's dear Adam, it is Steve Kerr. I'm here on the, on the outskirts of Wyoming writing a letter with a feather and a pen. Um, but he wrote a letter, like just like basically begging him to cut the schedule down. And I remember talking to doc about this last year when he got back in and he was trying to take over the box and

And he was just like, we just don't practice. Like, like I just got here with our staff's change. I don't. His dog's teams just don't practice. Generally. He's like, we still get to practice and I don't get to play as much golf. No, he, he, but he was saying, and this is something any coach I've ever talked to. They always talk about this. There's these schedule bumps.

where you just can't work on anything. And you end up like in a hotel conference room in, in some banquet room running through, like, like how are you going to do, how are you going to charge the, uh, the guy with the ball and shit like that. So I don't know. Um, all right. So short term Vegas next year for this or no was, uh,

I'm fine with Vegas, but they need to figure out a mechanism by which they can get the fans of the actual teams in those buildings. I don't know. I'm like, I haven't really put too much thought as to how they would go about doing this. Again, I'm biased like you guys. I love Vegas. So I think it's a great place to host something like this past weekend. It was also the freaking rodeo championships.

Shania Twain had a concert. There were cowboy hats. Entertainment. It's just a great place to entertainment and event. So maybe the answer, if they, if they strung it out to six games instead of four,

They moved it to January and they really, this is going to be a direct contradiction of what I said about not being, being wusses about going against football. But you target that week between the conference championship and the Super Bowl, which we know is open every week. We know when it is. So this year would be February 2nd.

Yeah, and we can make the tweak be, if we're going to spread it out, we can make the tweak be the semis end up being home arenas. And then the final, you know, you make it, not only do you make it, you know, the destination or whatever it is, there's enough space. Because I don't know why the semis and the finals have to be so freaking close to each other. Like, they don't do that in the Champions League.

How about Tuesdays, the quarterfinals? Then we go to Vegas Friday, Sunday, the week before the Super Bowl. And it's just Friday night doubleheader. Sunday's the final. Everyone just goes to Vegas one weekend. You're in Thursday or Friday morning. You're out Monday. Yeah. You're not going against football at all. You have six games instead of four to determine exactly, you know, you're going to get the right order probably of the teams in some form. You might have one outlier.

And the only thing we would know for sure is that the Washington Wizards won't be there. Well, the reason that's great is because the buildup to it is occurring in the month of diminishing football. We're not having 16 games on Sunday. We get two more in January after Christmas that lead up to the quarterfinals. Yeah. And in terms of fans, like how much would it cost –

to just here's 5,000 tickets. If your team makes it, we're going to give them, you know, we have a 5,000 free tickets. Please take the ticket and go. I mean, you're not going to pay for people to go, but where you're at least have access to the arena.

It can't be, it can't like really be, you know, cost negative. Maybe Emirates Airlines could fucking get private jets for everybody. They got the money. The PJs. Yeah, the PJs for the fans. Oh, the party plane. Got the money. Okay, so. Okay, see, party plane. Did we land on this for a fix? Six instead of four.

that weekend before the Super Bowl weekend and maybe have the trade deadline right after on like the Tuesday. I mean, here's the thing. The trade deadline sucks now. They ruined it. The collective agreement is lost. They aproned it. There is no trade deadline that's relevant anymore. By the way...

Again, I feel like I'm always bashing Adam Silver. Like, the guy did a good job. He went and enriched the players and the owners with this new TV deal. He is an absolute magnet for corporate money. Like, they invented the NBA Cup. The next year, they're like, oh, we got the Emirates. The Emiratis are paying for it. Like, he is a master at that. But this whole thing about...

We want to be like football and have parody. And so let's make it impossible for good teams to stack talent and trades. Just an impossibility. Now, this was a mistake guys. It was a mistake. The nuggets can't even trade for Jimmy Butler who would probably be dying to go there and

And they can't do it with the fucking apron. It's like, well, Zeke Nagy has to be in it. And please don't look at Michael Porter's back x-rays. And we have no pics. Yeah, it's really sad. All right, Woz. Great to see you. Who's winning the title, by the way? Um...

I picked the Dallas Mavericks before the season. I don't know if I've unleashed this take on you. I saw the Celtics as the 2016 Warriors, coming off a championship, smoking everybody all regular season, faced the Cavs in the finals the year before, just like the Mavericks. I think the Mavericks and the Celtics are going to rematch.

in the finals and Luka Doncic, like LeBron before him, is going to find a way to win his first NBA championship, y'all. What do you think of that? I love it. It's incredible. I think that's a good way to give.

No, I mean, as a guy who was an early embracer of that Dallas Mavericks, they really changed the entire trajectory of their franchise at the trade deadline last year. Speaking of trades not mattering anymore, Daniel Caffer to PJ Washington. And then they did an incredible job in the offseason building up around those guys and getting rid of some pieces that didn't. 12-2 in the last 14, Bill.

I don't, I think unfortunately for them, I think OKC might be their kryptonite team. That's the one team that just too much speed athleticism. I guess what they have going for them is just Jalen Williams and any game that means anything. Oh, I need to be the first. They're going to be in your mentions, Bill. Oh, sorry. Just have one awesome game when, when there's a real spotlight on. Come on. We all believe in you, Jalen Williams. Jalen Williams. Yeah, right.

We're not here. Another one. He's stunk in the Dallas series last year. He's, he's stunk in the second NBA. I just, I have a lot of Jalen Williams stock. I'd like for him to come through. I mean, the other reason they lost, they just couldn't hit a three, which is now. You think he's gonna be all right. Yeah. Um, I have okay. See Dallas. I still feel like, uh, I want to see what happens with the Butler trade. Cause he butlers clearly this is happening soon. And if Houston got him without, uh,

changing too much what I like about them, I'm intrigued by them too. House, can you imagine Imei

And Jimmy Butler, how fucking alpha that team's going to be if they keep doing Brooks. Like that's, it's like, they're like a biker gang. It's exciting. I do love, I love that. I mean, who knows what the outcome would be this season's playoffs, but it would be much more interesting. Yes. I looked at LeBron and called him a bitch and asked him what he was going to do. That happened last year.

Put him and Jimmy Butler? I just think that's happening imminently. So we'll see where he goes. All right, Waz, great to see you. We'll take a break, come back with million dollar picks. Sometimes in basketball, 30 points can be worth more than 30 points. Right now, you can get a 30% profit boost from the ringer with FanDuel's 30 on 30 during Friday's NBA action. We've been doing this for the last few weeks with a

with America's number one sports book, a 30% profit boost. You can either pick a player to score more than 30 points or bet on our new exclusive 30 on 30 special markets line. Like you can bet on both teams to score 30 plus points in the first quarter if you wanted to. Look for 30 on 30 in the FanDuel Sports app.

or head to FanDuel.com slash BS for your chance to score a bigger payout on Friday. I'll be tweeting out my picks on Friday. Had a great first three weeks. Didn't do well last week, but hopefully we'll make a little bit of a comeback. It's really fun to bet these. Don't miss your chance to find out how much more 30 can be worth with FanDuel's

30 on 30. Must be 21 plus in present and select states or 18 plus in present in DC. Opt-in required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wage or amount. See terms at sportsbook.fando.com. Gambit problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLE or visit rg-help.

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. State Farm helps you score an affordable price when you choose to bundle home and auto insurance with the personal price plan. Bundling home and auto? That's a pro move. Just another way you can save on your insurance needs. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can bundle and save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state.

Coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. All right, house. Week 16 is here. We had a rough week 15. First time I got my ass kicked by a weekend in a while. Lost $510,000 for million dollar picks, but we're still up for $1.254 million. And I like a lot of the stuff this week.

The only thing that really changed for me last week, and I was just wrong, like Pittsburgh, Philly, whatever. Like some of the losses, like whatever. I just had the wrong side. I get it.

Seattle Green Bay had way wrong. I thought like this is the time Seattle is going to show everybody that they might actually be like a little sleepery. And instead, Green Bay absolutely kicked their ass. And Green Bay, I almost wish I had gone into that game thinking one of these two teams is going to emerge as the NFC sleeper. I

I was shocked by how they got their ass kicked. What did you think of that game? So here's my overreaction to the entire week. And it really does, you know, it's expressed most perfectly by that game.

I will confess just for myself, I got lulled into a sample size that wasn't really reflective with that Seattle defense. And throughout the card in week 15, I chose the defense over the offense. And in each instance, the team with the superior offense beat the crap out of the team. Like Philly, Pittsburgh, Green Bay, Seattle. Yes. Tampa went into the Chargers. Buffalo, Detroit. That was another one.

Right, right, right. Tampa Chargers. I stayed away from that. Thank God. Yeah, the Seattle defense, they had done Arizona twice and the Jets and the Niners when they were banged up and it made us kind of threw us off a little bit. They were good numbers. They were like, you know, look at all the ways that they've improved and they had health and, you know, they were very, it was a compelling case. It just didn't hold any water.

Yeah. So when I was going through the games this week, you know, look, if I'm going to lose a week, I'm going to go back to the drawing board. I'm going to, I'm going to get back in the lab, try to figure out how I can get better. And I was really looking back, really trying to go over some of the numbers versus the schedule and who played. And so like we have these Saturday games, Texans chiefs, my homes isn't playing. Texans are favored by two and a half.

Mahomes comes back. It seems like now it's a chiefs by three and a half in Houston. And the numbers would say, Hey, watch out for Houston in this game. They have the number one defense and DBOA, like they're going to be able to really pressure the chiefs. And they just haven't played enough good teams and they haven't looked good in the games they've played. And I I'm just looking at this going, are the chiefs really going to

They're really just going to lose in Houston to this Houston team that can't seem like they can stay out of its own way offensively that can't really block. Um, and definitely unquestionably has a good defense, but, um, I don't want to say they're the good, bad team, but they're kind of one level above that, but below the chiefs Ravens bills level, you know what I mean? So this game to me was the most confounding and the hardest for me to try and, and, and choose a path. And, um,

I'm halfway inclined to bet on Houston and grab the Houston money line on the possibility that all of the Mahomes stuff is smoke and mirrors. Because Kansas City is smart enough to try and give itself an advantage on everything. So part of the advantage would be having Houston's defense prepare for Mahomes and then come out with a Wentz game plan. I wouldn't put it past Kansas City in any way, shape, or form. The challenge is...

The Chiefs defense stinks. Their secondary is bad. And they haven't been able to do anything since week eight. I mean, look at the numbers. They're a bottom 10 pass defense. So this is a stay away from you. It is. I mean, even though I think in the second half especially, Joe mixing these nuts. Joe mixing these nuts. Like that's the pathway. Houston can't score in the second half.

So if they get up, you know, 17 to something, and then they do what they do, which is score a touchdown or a field goal in the second half, and they try and run mixing these nuts, you know, 15 times, that's their path. And you're up against Carson Wentz. But I just don't trust that we're going to see a healthy Mahomes. And I don't like that Kansas City defense one bit. The other thing that worries me about it is,

Just when the team also then has to play on Wednesday, I just don't know what that does. We talked about this a little last week. I don't know what that does mentally for how you have an edge for that game, any of that stuff. They're planning, right? They're planning for Saturday and Wednesday. The Chiefs are doing that right now. How can it make sense to have Mahomes in any kind of diminished capacity in the Saturday game?

And yet I don't want to stay away from the other Saturday game because I think we see it the same. The Ravens minus six and a half Steelers. I want to, there's a lot of like stuff with Lamar and watch out at the Steelers on him. And I think without Pickens, I just, I just don't see the Steelers getting there. You would have to be,

almost the greatest hits of bad Raven Steelers games from a Baltimore perspective, miss field goals, Lamar doing something dumb, the, the tipped interception, all kinds of stupid shit, the 50 yard pass interference that the Steelers get to give them a new drive. And as we, we stayed with, we stayed at the craps table with the Steelers, I think one week too long last week. Yeah. They're 10 and four. I think if they're 10 and five, that's fine. Um,

The problem for them is that they go to Wednesday against the Chiefs. Right. Ten and five. That's hard. Yeah, but they're still a play. They're making the playoffs. Yes, they are. And Baltimore lost them already. So if you're taking Pittsburgh, you're saying we're almost taking their touchdown underdog.

On top of it, they would be beating Baltimore twice in the same season. They'd Baltimore be nine and six after this. So they wouldn't, you know, they'd be like a six or seven. I don't know. I just think the Ravens win and I don't, I don't want to lay the points. I just want to take their money line and put it with stuff. Yeah. Because every trend that's out there says that against the spread, this is a

great opportunity to get in on Pittsburgh. I don't want to have anything to do with Pittsburgh with no T.J. Watt. Let's see what, like, even a diminished T.J. Watt. Their record without T.J. Watt is abysmal. And every number goes out the window if he doesn't play. Now, it seems like he's going to play. The practice reports, you know, kind of have him in the mix. But if he's diminished at all, then I don't love it against this Ravens offense. And, like, you know... It's going to be cold.

This feels like a Derrick Henry game. The front seven for Pittsburgh didn't really get home against the Eagles offensive line. Well, that's the other thing. They got their asses kicked last week. They got their asses kicked. I think the Ravens offense is as good as the Eagles offense. Yeah. All right. So we're marking down Ravens money line. Ravens money line. That's the way to play it.

So I have newsflash for you. I want to do either all money lines or adjusted underdog lines this week and tie them with a couple of games. But let's, let's hit the games really quick. Eagles minus three and a half against Washington. This is another one where I think I just like the money line. Yeah. Great. I just want to grab the Eagles money line and put it with something else. I don't trust the hook.

I don't 100% trust this Eagles team. And I bet in this situation before, as have you, where you bet the Eagles and Jalen Hurts just has a super weird game and has some weird injury that they're not sure how much he's hurt and he's throwing a triple coverage. Well, he's got the busted finger on the non-throwing hand. Yeah. This comes down to two things. Other than the Philly being way better than Washington. They have the best running attack in the league. Your team is 28th against the run.

Washington is the third best running attack in the league. Philly's number one against the run. Your team hasn't looked really that good in six, seven weeks. And you've been calling it out week after week talking about like, yeah, the schedule's catching up to these guys a little bit. They were overachieving early. It's starting to come back to earth. I just don't think they're in the same ballpark as Philly. I don't trust the hook.

I don't trust the cheap TD. I'd rather do Philly money line. Anything make you nervous? Your instinct is lined up with, with my instinct because I've seen enough of these Philly Washington games, even in seasons where there's been dramatic difference, much more pronounced difference in the quality of the team. That Monday night game that yeah. Washington ended the Eagles winning streak that season. It was just, you know, 2021, I think, uh, whatever handful of seasons ago. But, um, I,

You know, the right way to play is to take the team that has the better players. I want to be as reductive as possible. And that's something to play for. They're playing for a one seed. It's not like they're like, oh, I don't know. Should we try this week? Like they were trying to get a bye week.

I mean, again, Washington, I'm so happy. I love this team. And they did get right. They looked awesome against Tennessee. They kicked their ass. They looked awesome in the first half against the Saints. But they still like that defense. It's the thing why when you called me last summer, you were like, can Washington make a run here? And I was like, the only problem is the defense. Now they've made a run. It's really incredible. But Philly on the money line is the right way to play this.

And you're basically in the playoffs. You just got to win the Atlanta game or the Dallas game. I agree. Those are the two games. Although taking Kirk Cousins' corpse out of there, you're probably sad to see him go. I'm trying to think. I'm going to workshop. Can I? Is Penix these? No, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. Yeah, Kyle's going to have to bleep that. Viking Seahawks in Seattle.

And this isn't a reactionary Seattle sucked last week. So I want to now go against them again because we really try not to do that. If anything, that's like the worst thing you can do. We try. I am a petty better.

Yeah, me too. And then Seattle, I'll be honest, Seattle hurt my feelings last week. I was wounded. They weren't in that game. I was like, what's wrong? I was like, the Seahawks hurt my feelings. That game was over. I was like, oh, I just lost this. I just, I watched the first seven minutes. You knew. This buddy is gone. Yeah, you knew. Bye-bye. It was, it started like four, one o'clock West Coast time by 1.30. I was like, all right, cross that off. Yeah. So I just think this is a horrible matchup for them. I don't like the matchup at all.

The Minnesota's defense, the Minnesota's ability to throw with to either receiver have explosive plays, mix the running game in. And I also think Minnesota is good. And the line is Vikings by two. I think this is Vikings are a top five team. Seattle's we learned last week is somewhere in the middle.

And this is just bad luck. They played Green Bay and the Vikings back to back at home. And those games are just really hard. And I think the Seahawks are going to lose. Well, it would be hard enough if Gino wasn't hurt. You cannot under any circumstances countenance, even a 5% chance that Sam Howell will be playing quarterback for Seattle. Or like injured Gino doesn't sound great to me either. I don't even like 100% healthy Gino that much.

This is another test of the thesis. We just did this with Baltimore and Pittsburgh. Take the team with the better offense. Minnesota, Seattle. I'll take the team with the better offense. I know who it is. Minnesota secondary gettable. We've been watching some teams, you know, quietly pass the ball on them, especially in second halves. Seattle can't do it. We haven't seen Seattle's offense really do anything for feels like six weeks now. You know what happened? Metcalf got hurt.

and just hasn't looked the same. Lockett, I guess, is at like a different point in his career. I'm not sure what happened to him. Kenneth Walker got hurt. So now it's like just one running back. And then, you know, JSN's been their awesome receiver, but that's only going to take you so far. All right. So we agree. We'll take the Vikings are minus three and I don't care because we're going to use the money line for them too. Yeah, fine. Great.

Uh, so we'll pass on the Raiders pass on the lions. I looked at long and hard at Rams jets for the jet side, uh,

I thought when it was three and a half, the Jets have actually been playing like pretty well lately. Yeah. I don't trust like the Rams, a lot of momentum behind them going West Coast to East Coast, but I just don't want to bet on the Jets, especially with all the dysfunction this week that I'm going to talk about later with Peter Schrager, this athletic story that came out and Garrett Wilson today gives a quote later in the afternoon about, do you think you'll be with the Jets last year? He's like, honestly, I don't know. Like there's a dysfunction situation

smell from them that I don't like. So I feel like that's a stay away. But what's not a stay away for me is another dysfunctiony team. The 49ers in Miami. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. 49ers plus one and a half. Which one is the dysfunctiony team? Both of them. The Niners, I feel like probably should be favored in this game. As weird as their season's been, adjusted on FanDuel to plus four and a half. I think we can get a little frisky

with some people I want to put them with. But just fundamentally, Niners plus four and a half. Does that sound appealing to you? So what's weird is to me, why are you going in that direction? I'd rather lay points with the Niners because I think that they're the best. I'd like to be it like do it like Niners minus two and a half. Like, you know, something to go in that direction where they underdog

Because right now, they're the underdog in that game. The money line is minus 106. It's like, you know, I'm not going to disparage my great friend, the host of the Sunday pregame show, regular Sunday pregame. I'm not going to say that's a JJ underdog money line play.

even though JJ does, you know, sometimes get close to the line in terms of his dog. But minus 106 isn't even a dog. So let's go. If we're going to get on San Francisco, let's get on him. Let's lay a little points. Let's take it in the direction we think it's going to go. San Francisco first half game is plus 165. Just mentioning that. Let's see. So minus 106.

The odds just aren't great for those. It's unfan to a minus 112 for the minus 2.5. They don't. Well, they, they, Christian's going to get mad at you now. I know, we just can't get any value. Yeah, well, they know that's like a smart move to bend it. So they want to, they want to keep you. So the money line is plus 106. Plus 106. So it moved a little bit.

It moves it a tiny bit, but not enough to me. You're just better off doing the plus 106. Yeah, for sure. But I can also offer you plus four and a half at minus 215 that we could put with Usyk, one of the many things I want to put with Usyk. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Well, I was going to do this later, but let's just say that that...

That Niners plus four and a half with Usyk is plus 141. Because Usyk is like a minus 150 favorite. Yeah, he's like minus 145 range. Okay. So, all right. Well, we'll come back to them. We both like the Niners. I really like the Bengals, but I refuse. I'm just not doing it.

I just not. I don't trust them. Great instinct. Just stay away. Good luck today. I know they have a chance to make the playoffs depending on what happens with Denver tonight. I will tell you, I'll confess right away. You have the Bengals in a tease already? No, I have them in money line positions. They are a leg as a money line. Well, that was my question. Do we do Bengals money line? I just don't trust their defense. Oh, you can't trust it. DTR is the quarterback now for the Browns. I don't know what that's going to look like.

Oh, I have an idea. I have a sneaky suspicion. Cards minus four and a half in Carolina. I watched the cards pretty closely against the Pats. They're not very good. I don't like four and a half. That's ridiculous. Bucks, Cowboys, another stay away with that Bucks defense. And then the two big ones for me, the Bills to beat the Patriots and the Packers to beat the Saints on Monday night. No Camara, Rattler's going to play.

I think I wanted to vote week 16 to just that being in every bet that we have. Both of them are minus 1100 on FanDuel. And could we use those teams together as swing bets with other money lines that we like? We haven't done this all year. Oh, I mean, I feel like we haven't done it in five years. This is like, it's an old school, old, like get the anchor and then you build around the anchor. It's an old school anchor strategy. The old money line parlay. Welcome back to my life.

Pats home for the bills laying or getting 14 and a half to bundle today on the ringer and his excellent gaming column recommended the Pats plus 14 cold weather, blah, blah, blah. I just don't see any scenario like Barmore got scratched. I don't see any scenario where the Patriots beat the bills like none. All they've been doing all week is talk about the coach and then Packers Saints Monday night. Packers still playing for stuff.

I don't know what they're playing for, but they're, you know, they, you got to watch them firsthand last week. Did, did they impress you in any way? No, no, they, they got, they did a great rope-a-dope by, by having Washington prepare for a boudoir photo hater, you know, the guy who, who's, who's real attribute as an NFL quarterback or the pictures of himself, uh, uh,

Getting him out and putting Rattler in, it messed up the Washington defense. And you still should have won by 10. You had first down in the nine-yard line. You could have kneeled three times to win the game. Also, the game was 60 minutes and four seconds. So if we're going to mess with the clock, we're going to give teams extra time to get touchdowns, then you're in trouble.

All right. So going back to where we were before, Bill's money line, Packers money line is the anchor that we're using the anchor strategy this week. Love it. Put that with the Vikings money line minus 104. Okay. That's a nice even money play. Put that with the Eagles money line minus 120. Fine. You put that with Usyk minus 104. Yep. See, we're doing it. And we laid out the main X strategy with, uh, on Tuesday about Usyk, what just,

Just all in on him. We could also use Usyk as an anchor with the Ravens money line. Ravens money line Usyk plus 121. Niners plus four and a half with Usyk plus 141.

Jets plus seven and a half and Usyk plus 128. My bad. Ravens, Bunny and Usyk was plus 121. So all of those are plus. And now we just get to move that shit around. I'm going to take the Jets off for reasons we discussed, but we do have the other two. So Niners plus four and a half Usyk plus 141.

And then the Ravens money line, maybe that's the move. And I think that's it. We just use anchors of Usyk, undefeated, the best boxer of the last few years. And then Bill's Packers money line parlay.

And we just go. I mean, this is great. We took an unwatchable slate of games on Sunday because it really is one of the worst slates of the season. And look at all the fun ways we have this split up. This is great. So you don't want to put the Chiefs in with the Bills and Packers? I don't. I don't.

I mean, I, you know, I, I, I'll take the L for thinking that the Browns were, you know, going to not turn the ball over six times against the chiefs at home. I'll take the L for that, but the chiefs weren't very impressive. Their offense really didn't look great. And that was with the homes, you know, most of the game healthy. And you don't, and we're going to stay away from the Bengals money line.

I don't know. I've already bet Bengals money. Talk me into it. Make the case right now. It's like, queue it up. Make the case for the Bengals money line. The heart wants what the heart wants. And what the heart wants is the Bengals to be in the playoffs. I want the Bengals to win out. I want Denver to lose out. I want

both the Colts and who's the other team that has to lose a game? I want the Bengals as the seventh seed. I want the Cincinnati Bengals as a seventh seed. I want us to wake up with them on wild card weekend

up against, you know, the two seed in the form of who's going to be the two seed? Is it going to be, it's either Buffalo or the Chiefs, right? And it's that. Yeah, it's, but it could be, yeah, it's Buffalo. It could be the Buffalo or the Chiefs. That's an incredible wildcard weekend. Buffalo, Cincinnati. That's our Saturday night Amazon game. Can you imagine how good that would be?

So I honestly think it's going to be the chiefs. Cause I think that my homes, you know, they're going to make a decision about it, but in any event, Cincinnati with Usyk minus one Oh two. Great. Great. Great. All right. So we're putting a lot on music. Jesus. If these lose, this is on you and Chris Maddox. It's not on me. I, as I I'm on the record.

Usyk and Pereira in the UFC. I'm just betting them every time they decide to do combat until they lose.

I'm doing the blackjack. I'm stacking my bets on those two guys and it's been working for multiple years. Okay. Usyk hasn't lost ever and he's been so much fun to bet on. This would be the wipeout. Million dollar picks week 16. We are up 1.254 million dollars coming off a bad week where we learned some lessons. Looked in the mirror a couple of times.

Don't take bad offenses. Explain the anchor strategy to the audience. One more time. House old school, uh, Bill Simmons, cousin Sal, you find a team that you like on the money line and then you start building around them. We have two teams that we like on the money line this week, both Buffalo and green Bay. Uh, uh,

Huge money lines, minus $1,100 each. Massive. So you don't get a lot of value, but on Fandle you get some value. And then you start grabbing teams at lesser odds that you like, again, just on the money line and try and build up around even money or to a plus side and try and build up a little bit of bankroll for those last minute Christmas gifts, BS. Because I still got some shopping to do.

So we're using two anchors. The first one are the Buffalo Bills just to beat New England in New England and the Green Bay Packers just to beat the Saints. Two of the worst teams right now, though, the Pats are one of the four worst teams. Saints are one of the 10 worst teams. Putting those two money lines together with the Vikings, with their money lines. So the Vikings are minus three in Seattle and we're just going to, something about the minus three, we're just going to take the

Let's just take the money line on it. Take the money line. Sam Darnold's due to throw a pick. I mean, he's been looking outstanding. Yeah, they might win by one. We're just covered. Just win the game, Minnesota. So that's minus 104. No offense to Seattle. We still have a bunch of bets with them. Nice little hedge against our bets too, though. That's right. And then the other one is the Eagles money line, which if you put with the Bills and the Packers, the Eagles just to beat Washington, they're minus three and a half point favorites. You put those three together, minus 120.

So we're going to put 200K down on those two events. 200K each bet. Next one, the Ravens money line on Saturday against Pittsburgh. This will probably be a weird, ugly, strange game. The weather's going to be freezing cold. Bad weather. It's a Derrick Henry game. We don't like the Ravens minus six and a half. Just the money line. We're putting that with Alexander Usyk, who hasn't lost in his life.

As a parlay, plus 121. Excellent. Excellent. We're going to put 200K on that. Niners, plus 4.5, adjusted in Miami. We get to bet against Tua again. What's more fun than betting against Tua and the DJ, Mike McDaniel? It's great. Yeah. Niners adjusted, plus 4.5, with Usyk, is plus 141.

We'll put 150 on that. Put a little less. Fair. Fair enough. And then Bengals money line with Usyk. That's minus 102. Bengals just to beat the Browns and whoever the hell is on their team this week. No Nick Chubb. They're on their third quarterback.

I don't know if they're trying to tank. I do don't know. They had their first round pick. What do you want to put on that one? 200 or 100? 100 is enough. Let's not really bet on Cincinnati. Yeah, we'll do a little 100K just for fun because it's Sunday and there's no games. And it starts the momentum for Cincinnati to get to the playoffs. I mean, we'll know from the Denver outcome whether or not that's reasonable. Denver and the Chargers. The anchor strategy. You don't want to put Chiefs plus three and a half in this?

Chiefs plus three and a half. Oh, sick. Well, that I will. Yes. So that what's the number? Let's hear the number. All right. I just looked it up and we're doing this house. Chiefs adjusted to plus four and a half with Usyk to win.

Plus 112. That's 100K. Well, the only thing that, you know, gives us any challenge at all with that is Carson Wentz. If Carson Wentz ends up being, but the four and a half, that's Wentz protection. We'll call that Wentz protection. You know what's great about that house?

I kind of believe in that little redheaded former assassin, Carson Wentz, to be good for one game and to try to get himself like a three-year, $50 million contract as next year's Baker Mayfield with somebody. Yeah. No way. I'd actually be excited if he played. All right. That's our last one. Chiefs plus four and a half with 100K in that. Those are the million dollar picks for week 16. So you did a fairway rolling end of the year awards with, with,

With our guy, Nate. Yeah, the rollies. We had a handful of categories. We wanted to sum up the year. Our good buddy, Brendan Porath from the Shotgun Start podcast came on and we just ran through all of the big events. I mean, Bryson as the breakthrough performer. We call him the comeback.

because, you know, he's been on the outs. And look at Bryson, king of the golf world. Our Dirk Diggler stud of the year went to, I'm pretty sure it went to Xander Schauffele for winning two majors, right? I sure would hope so. He had that in him. And then we had the Hak Tua,

creator of the year. And we gave that to the Louisville police department because that was the viral moment in the golf world. Nobody knows who Scotty Scheffler is, including the Louisville police department, the dudes at the front door of the golf course, trying to drive in. They don't know who he is. That was the biggest moment in the entire world of golf. So yeah, we had a good time with the rollies. We got to get a trophy for it.

Did you give the hock to a, here's my Bitcoin. I'm going to take all your money. Your word or was that, that wasn't handed out? Well, there are some candidates for that for sure. Uh, in golf, but you know, we, we, that, that can make the list for next year. Well, how about the new live commissioner is the brother of somebody who

who was our favorite basketball player we ever played with at Holy Cross. So many great times with Sean O and every interaction I've had with Scott O'Neill. What a great dude. It's a great guy. We really, really loved playing with his brother. He's got to be retired at this point.

Who, Sean O? Yeah. There's no way he's still playing his mid-50s. It was so great to just see him and be like, oh, man, let's get on Sean's team. Let's get on Sean's team. Nice little bounce passes on the break. Great stuff. All right, House. Happy gambling. We will see you

I think next, yeah, we'll be, we'll be here next week for a million dollar picks. Fingers crossed. This episode is brought to you by NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV. It's December. It's the season of giving, but let's be honest, you deserve a gift too. And what better gift than NFL Sunday Ticket? All the bye weeks are done. You need multi-view. You need the four games at once, especially with the early games. You got all these playoff implications.

fantasy playoffs, whatever else you're doing to make the season more exciting. I always have the four games on the giant TV and then I try, I'm lucky enough to have a couple other TVs 'cause I do this for a living. I try to have six games going at once so I can see everything. But as we get later in the year and the games become even more meaningful, sometimes I'll get wacky. I'll just put one giant game on and then two smaller games on the TVs. Everyone's got their own thing.

You can skip the candles and the ugly sweaters this year. Gift yourself NFL Sunday ticket. Get the rest of the NFL regular season for only $49. What a deal. Sign up now at youtube.com slash BS. You can get the ringer gambling show as well. The Sunday ringer, uh, pregame, uh, device and content restrictions apply to multi-view local and national games on YouTube TV. NFL Sunday ticket for out of market games excludes digital only games. This episode is brought to you by better help.

It's nice to see all the different family traditions people do this time of year. You know what's become one of my new favorite traditions? My daughter comes home from college. We haven't seen her in LA where I live since the beginning of August. So when she comes home,

It feels like the conquering hero's back. I love it. However you plan to spend your time during the holiday season, I hope you guys are happy. But also, you should be feeling that way all year round. So make sure you bring yourself some comfort that'll never go away and try therapy. Therapy teaches us so many different skills and coping techniques like positive coping skills, how to relax, and it can help everyone, not just people who've experienced a major trauma. If you want to try it out for yourself, check out BetterHelp.

It's an easy, convenient way to get started, especially since everything is online. All you have to do is fill out a short questionnaire and then you'll be matched with a licensed therapist. It's that easy. Find comfort this December with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash Bill Simmons today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com.

slash Bill Simmons. All right, we're taping this. It is 2.30 Pacific time. Peter Schrager is in our New York Spotify ringer studios looking super snazzy. This is the most professional we've felt in a while. Really weird stretch of the schedule right now. We have two Saturday games with teams that are also all going to be playing

on Wednesday. Do you think the league will ever do anything like this again? Is this a one-time thing? I think they're hoping to do this every year. It's unprecedented in how it all worked out, Bill. So when they first thought of this Christmas Day extravaganza, they were like, we'll have two games and we'll give it to a high bidder. Netflix got involved, obviously, and gave a lot of money. And it was like, all right, we know we have a Wednesday game

game and they're going to be, you know, premier teams because Netflix is paying top dollar. But how do we account for player safety the best way we possibly can? Like, well, you can't play Sunday, then Wednesday. Let's make it Saturday, then Wednesday, which means now four of these teams in the AFC who just so happen to be four of the top seven teams are playing three games in 11 days in late December. Unheard of.

And the way it worked out, and we're recording this on Thursday, and it doesn't matter who wins tonight, but originally it was supposed to be Bengals versus Browns on Thursday night football. And Amazon has the ability to ask to flex out. And a month ago, they went to the league and said, can we flex out of Bengals-Browns? That's a terrible game. Can we get out of that? And the league said, there's no game to really put there. The only option would be Chargers-Broncos in LA, but we can't do it because of league bylaws.

The Broncos have already played one road Thursday night game. And one of the major rules was you will never play two Thursday night road games. So they go to Sean Payton and they say, look, you're going to say no, but we're going to present it to you. And Payton was like, fuck it. Put us on Thursday night. We want to be on primetime. We want to go into that building. I want to play them on a Thursday night. Now, the result of all that a month later is six of the top seven teams in the AFC.

are going to be playing two games on five days rest, and four of the top six teams in the AFC are going to be playing three games on 11 days rest. Meanwhile, there's a team up there in Western New York, the Buffalo Bills, who play the Patriots on a Sunday, the Jets on a Sunday, and the Patriots again on a Sunday, and already looking at that playoff run.

Well, and then you have, it works out for the Broncos because he's like, yeah, yeah, fuck it. Let's go. We'll go right in. And meanwhile, the charges are all banged up. Yeah. So you're giving them three less days to, uh, to heal, which I thought probably was an unintended consequence. Yeah. Over and over again. It just seems like everything's working out great for the bills. This is, this is, I don't know how they pulled it off.

But the KC, the whole Mahomes goes down. Then Netflix is worried about their Wednesday game. But then Mahomes, I heard Raheem say this on the rear gambling show today where Mahomes is like LeBron, where he gets these injuries and it seems like he's going to be out for six weeks and then he's fine two days later. He's just one of those guys. Yeah, I think he's going to play. I think he's going to play Saturday against Texans. Well, you know why we know he's going to play? Because the line moved six points. Did it really? All right. Yeah. That's been the word out of that place all week that Mahomes

the one seat is very important to them. They're not going to fake it and say, well, Mahomes is safety. Like they want that one seat and they want that week off. And I've spoken to multiple sources in that building that it, you know, if Pat says he can go, he's going to go. He has earned that from, from the coaching staff and they're not looking to protect him physically. I remember, uh,

a couple of years back in the divisional round against Trevor Lawrence, he bangs up the ankle. Everyone's worried. What's he going to do? What's he going to do? He, he doesn't finish the game, but then he does play against the Bengals in the AFC championship game. And he runs for that first down and he just hobbled through it, but he got through it. Uh,

I thought we might get a very Carson wins Christmas. I think the NFL and Netflix would not have been thrilled. I don't know if Beyonce and Mariah Carey and the rest would have enjoyed it. Bert Kreischer and Nate Bergazzi and the rest. I don't know. But in this case, it looks like you're getting Mahomes and you're going to get all the fixings with it. And it's going to be Chiefs versus Steelers with with Mahomes. And the stakes couldn't be higher because there's one other there's one other stake beyond the one seed and all that stuff. It's

Mahomes kind of lost his spot in line this season, you know, and he, and now he's turned into this. Well, when the playoffs come, he's going to turn it on. But I think from just from an entertainment standpoint and from, um,

Honestly, a ceiling standpoint, Allen and Lamar Jackson have just been better. Even Burrow has been more fun to watch. And Mahomes is just grinding these games out. It always looks like he has seven injuries and he's having one of those seasons you have when you're 37, but he's still in his twenties. And he's played, you know, a lot more games than probably some other quarterbacks the last few years. And the weapons have been in and out. The tackle situation has been dicey. I get it.

But it's just interesting. I just think Allen and Lamar have blown him out of the water during this regular season. But you also feel like we're going to get to the playoffs and Mahomes is probably going to yank it back. And I think that's why the number one seed is so important. Give us an advantage. Give us something over these teams. Remember, the Bills beat them head-to-head. So if they were to lose...

you know, two of the next three games, then they succumb and they have to go on the road and they don't want to do that. They want the one seed. They want the week off. They think it's important. The offensive line has been a disaster and they put DJ Humphries in there for one game. He lasted one game. And then Joe Tooney, a guard is playing left tackle for a team. That's the one seat in 13 and one. It's, it's pretty incredible. And, and, you know, the numbers weren't crazy sack wise, but he was under pressure the entire game last week against Cleveland. And you look at what Houston's bringing this weekend and,

And between Daniil Hunter and Will Anderson, they have the second most sacks in the NFL. That's in Christmas. You have this one on Saturday, and then on Christmas, you think TJ Watt's going to play. You assume Cam Hayward and all those guys are out there. He's going up against two of the best defensive front sevens in the league over the next two weeks. If they win both of those games, though, they get a bye, and they can rest week 18 and the next week during the wildcard round. So...

I did a thing on Sunday with Sal about the year Allen's having and how actually it's a bad sign for Buffalo Super Bowl hopes when you have these teams with the awesome quarterback having the MVP year combined with a defense that can't really stop anybody. The signs are bad. You went through the list, I heard. Yeah, I went through it just in general. But then this week, Aaron Schatz had a tweet. What's he got? About...

Basically, in the last 30 years, 11 teams went nine and five and then made the Super Bowl. And the reason he did it was because for DVOA, which has been an essential part of kind of studying falling football most of the century, the Ravens are nine and five. They're shoved aside a little bit right now, I think, especially as Buffalo's gotten the thing. But

11 out of 30 teams have made the Super Bowl and some good teams like 2016 Atlanta was nine and five. The 2002 Raiders, you know, on down the line, 2023 Casey last year. And I don't know the fact that they're number one in DVO way and not being talked about. They have this Pittsburgh game coming up this weekend.

Um, there's six and a half point favorites against Tomlin and the Steelers when Lamar has struggled against them, you know, for his whole career, basically. But I do wonder if they're starting to get a little sleepy. Like I was looking at their, uh,

their title odds, their AFC odds. And maybe they're the undervalued team because everyone's on Green Bay now in the AFC. I was a week late on that one. Maybe it's Baltimore in the AFC. What are your Baltimore thoughts? I love Baltimore this year. I think they got the perfect bye week. They needed it more than ever. They got it. They come out. They beat up on the Giants last week where Lamar throws five touchdowns and now they're getting healthy. And it's, look, the eight of nine

It's real. And, you know, the last Ravens quarterback to beat the Steelers was Snoop Huntley. And a lot of those games, yeah, and a lot of those games were decided by one score or less. And the Steelers just found a way at the end. Even the last time they played, you remember that Peyton Wilson interception on the sideline with Justice Hill? They still had a chance at the end with the two-point conversion, but there was so much confusion. Lamar afterwards is furious on the sideline. And it's like, all right, well, if you can't beat them in close games, like,

How do we have our faith in the Ravens? I think since that game, they have gotten healthier. And I think the bye week was important. What I think is going to be very interesting on Sunday, which, I mean, you're talking about the greatest sports viewing day if you're a football fan ever. Is this Saturday? I mean, it's right there smack dab in the middle, 4.30 Eastern. You got Brady and Burkhardt on the call. Justin Tucker is going to have to make a kick here.

And Justin Tucker is going to have to come through. And last week he made one and they had a lot of field goals and a lot of touchdowns and it was fine. But like Justin Tucker is going to have to make a kick or two in some inclement weather against the Steelers. And I think it's important that Justin Tucker gets right because that's how they play football. And especially against the Steelers team, it's always a one score game. Going against the guy who now has the Justin Tucker championship belt. He's got the belt. Chris Boswell headed for 200 fantasy points. Yeah, so...

Baltimore's first in offense, Pittsburgh's seventh in defense for DVOA. And yet Pittsburgh got their asses kicked by Philly last week. And I thought it was a more alarming game than a usual loss because they lost in ways that I wasn't

I just weren't on my bingo card. Like them just getting manhandled, them giving up a 22 play drive to basically finish the game. But if you're a Steelers fan, you look at it and you go, well, we got screwed on that penalty where there was clear video after of the guy. There's like punching our guy. Darnell Washington. Yeah. And then not they're driving down. It seems like they're going to maybe tie the game and Najee fumbles. And it's like, yeah, we're a little closer there than you thought.

I thought they got pushed around and manhandled and beaten up. And now they're heading into these next two games, Saturday, Wednesday. This just feels like this all flipped at the worst possible time. What are your Pittsburgh feelings? I think your instincts are right that they have dominated in the trenches and Russell has not made mistakes. And like in this game, Cooper Dajin has the fumble.

Hertz makes the early mistake. You're like, okay, here come the Steelers. And then they just couldn't close that gap. And then, like you said, in real time, it felt like two hours at the end of the game. It was just, and like, it was such a long drive that like Brady and Burkhardt are doing banter about Belichick during it. Right. Like they're stuck in college. Yeah. You snuck in like, like empty the bag. We have to find something to talk about because this game isn't in hand right now. That's worrisome if you're the Steelers, because their whole mantra has been

keep the game close. Russell will make a play at the end and we'll run the ball down your throats and we'll stop you on defense. And they couldn't do that against a more physical team in Philadelphia, but there is a mental edge here. Like Tomlin's coming into this thing. Like we've won eight of nine with we've won games with everyone from duck Hodges to Mason Rudolph to whoever, like we can beat the Ravens. We have no fear going into this building.

Yeah. Part of me wonders, and I've been riding them the whole time. Part of me wonders if they outkick their coverage a little bit this season, just in general, you look back at some of the games they won, some of the schedule stuff.

Their most impressive win was probably that first Baltimore game just for really pulling it out and seeming. But it just shouldn't matter this much that George Pickens is hurt. I like George Pickens. He's their biggest threat, though. I know, but it shouldn't be just an absolute deal breaker to be able to, you know, because then they're running the ball all the time, but they're running it for three yards a carry because everyone knows they have to run the ball. Let me like, because my thought is like, I wonder if this is.

a Lamar, oh, I can't beat Pittsburgh. No doubt. Here we go. And he looks great. Pittsburgh loses again. And it's like, holy shit, Pittsburgh's in a... I'm trying to think of whatever narrative comes out of that game. And that feels like a likely narrative to me. And then it's a quick turnaround because four days later, Lamar's got to go play the Texans. It's like this crazy round robin. But...

Kyle Brandt and I on Good Morning Football, we always talk about the most valuable player industrial industry complex. We made this thing, starting in week two, it's like, who's the MVP? Who's the MVP? And I put it to bed last week, maybe a little premature, and I was like,

Josh Allen's done. Like it's over. Like why are we even, let's not just do this for the sake of a segment and the amount of feedback I got from people around the league, not fans, everything being like, slow down. Lamar's got better numbers and Lamar's games are all showcase games over the next few weeks. So on Saturday when everyone's watching,

Lamar's gonna be able to have that showcase game. And then on Wednesday, on Christmas, when everybody's watching Christmas afternoon, Lamar can have that showcase game. And by the end of it, we're not gonna see Josh Allen on national television for the last month of the season. And you might say, well, who gives a shit about national TV? The people who vote are writers who are usually in press boxes and just looking at box scores afterwards. But on Christmas day and on a Saturday, they will be watching. And if enough hysteria gets going and Lamar can finish this thing out, it's gonna be a

It is not over yet. Lamar could steal this and get his third MVP. On Fandle right now, Allen's 9-1, basically. He's a 9-1 favorite. And Lamar is plus 650. And that feels out of whack to me because Lamar having an awesome game against Pittsburgh.

And then what you said, every, everything else he's doing is going to be like major games. Josh is going to be on like my top right multi-view for the Pats-Bills game. And that's about it. Like he's just going to be in witness protection. With that, with all that said, there is another scenario where Lamar sucks against the pit against Pittsburgh again. Pittsburgh wins 18 to 16 and Justin Tucker misses a couple of field goals. The whole thing. Speaking of awards, I wanted to ask you this. Yeah.

I hate when people do interviews and they say, I wanted to ask you this. I should just ask you. My bad. I'm still trying to get better at this. Forgive me. No, you'll get there. Coach of the year. Ooh. Do you know the favorite is? Have you looked at this? I haven't. I,

I would imagine, I'm going to give it to you, 12-2 Kevin O'Connell is probably the favorite right now. So he is. He's the only one with minus odds. He's minus 190. Dan Campbell dropped a little bit because his entire team got hurt, apparently, last fall. But hell of a locker room speech at an interview in 97-1 in Detroit. I guess the pregame speeches only go so far. Sean Payton, 6-1. Dan Quinn, 10-1. Tomlin, 15-1. McDermott, 30-1. And then you have to press the see rest of the bets link.

to go on FanDuel to go to Sean McDermott 30-1, Sirianni, Bowles. Where's Andy Reid? There's Andy Reid at 35-1. 13-1. Is this like a Belichick thing? He's not allowed to win? Yeah, he's done. He's three wins away from 300 wins in his career, and no one has even mentioned that. They're 13-1. All they do is win. How is he not the number two guy to be able to bet? I just don't understand that. He succumbed to any respect for any of that, and then we'll see him in January. It is...

it is, it is amazing how this award is given out. Usually it's a first year guy who gets his team into the playoffs and it's like a quick bump. And we've seen that from McVay and from Matt Nagy and from Stefanski. It could have been Harbaugh this year if they'd gone like 11-5 or 11-6. Brian Dable was that. This year, I think the O'Connell thing is happening because people are just like, they keep on winning. And if you look at their team, it's a bunch of castaways, whether it be

Darnold, Aaron Jones, Jonathan Grenard. Like you go right down the list. It's all guys who are with other teams last year, but yeah,

Let's not underestimate just what Andy Reid is doing. Their roster every week. We are underestimating it because he's the 10th best odds on Fandle right now. And apparently nobody's betting on him. Yeah. And what's going to be amazing, we're going to go through the coaching hires and Spags is not going to get a single look again. I'm just telling you like it is. No one's going to interview Matt Nagy and their GM is going to remain. And their number two GM is Mike Borgonzi. I think he's excellent.

He's excellent. I don't even know if he's going to get one of these GM jobs. So it's going to be like, all right, they do it again. And they're just going to bring everyone back next year. It's just fine, well-oiled machine and they don't get poached. It's incredible. You think like all the weapons they lost, the fact that they had the bullseye on them all year, all the close games they played that they had to pull out.

I think he would be my number two choice. I actually think what O'Connell's been doing on Minnesota, that team is so well coached and so well prepared. Salvaging Darnold and turning him into a guy that's now probably a $30 to $35 million a year guy in the open market. He's made it a real decision for them. And I would also say...

You know, I work on the Sunday kickoff show on Fox and like early on in the season, Michael Vick, my colleague, who's now the new head coach of Norfolk State, shout out to Norfolk State. Michael Vick was like, you know, Darnold's kind of like a game manager. And then he goes on this run where he threw five touchdowns in a game. He had to take them 90 yards outside in Chicago in overtime, did that.

Yeah. He also, you know, a few fourth quarter, like they need to drive through. Yeah. That's not game manager. That is okay. We're going to put the ball in Sam's hands and like, let's let him lead us the way. Interesting one this weekend in Seattle, I would think they would win. And then they finish up the season with the lions and the Packers. And that's where it's at. It's like, all right, everyone's waiting for that. And those are the two games to end the season. But if the Vikings went out, bill, they are the number one seat in the NFC. And that's incredible.

If the Vikings went out, regardless of what happens to anybody else? Yeah, they are the one seed. They would have all the tiebreakers. I mean, Detroit probably needs that one seed more than any team has needed a one seed in a while. I don't know how much it's going to help. I might be off Detroit right now. I don't know, man. Would you see that? Somebody had the graphic of all the people on IR by each team. Detroit had 22 guys. I have it here. Detroit had 22 guys.

Then the next team was the Browns at 18. Yeah. And the Dolphins and Giants at 15. So the Lions had basically, if you go to like the fifth most IR team, they have almost, you know, 60% more than like the fourth place. I've never seen anything like it. I don't even know. Like, I know you have some Lions connections. Do they even have an explanation for how they can have this many injuries? No, it's, it's, it's.

Do you look at the training staff and go, what are we, are we doing something wrong? I don't think so. I, you know, I remember the 20, 29ers had something like this where like just early on in the season, it was like Bosa's out and then Garoppolo's out. And like, but the crazy thing is they're still finding ways to put up points. Now the David Montgomery loss is real. That one sucks. Yeah.

Like Montgomery's very important to them. That was when I closed the door on my Lions one seed bet. It might be. They could basically do the Buffalo where they just outscore everybody. But now, but what really made them special was that Montgomery Gibbs combo. I know. It was a top three running back situation anyone had. Now they don't have it. I know. And,

We had... You're going to love this. We had Taylor Lautner on our show, Good Morning Football. Taylor Lautner of Twilight fame. Twilight saga. Who, by the way, is a great dude and loves the NFL. And he has a podcast with his wife who appropriately is also named Taylor. And they had Aiden Hutchinson on as their guest because he's a diehard Lions fan. And we're promoting it. And Hutchinson's like, if we make the Super Bowl, I'm back. If we make the Super Bowl, we're back. And that came out the same exact day as Dan Campbell's riveting radio interview. And it's like...

On paper, it makes no sense that this team that is down 22 guys, most of them on defense and are using third and fourth and fifth string players in key positions down the stretch should compete. And then you talk to anyone there and it's like, why can't we just be one of these teams of destiny? Why can't we be one of these magical teams? And who knows if you get to the Super Bowl somehow, you get Aiden Hutchinson back and suddenly you find yourself in New Orleans and you got a bunch of crazy Lions fans who haven't seen a world championship game since 57. Yeah.

The Pats had a year like that where Troy Brown was playing nickelback and it just felt like everything was going wrong the whole year and they still almost made the Super Bowl, but they had the Brady Belichick infrastructure. It's a little different.

Jared Goff, who's never won a Super Bowl, and Campbell, who's never, you know. But we've seen teams, the Colts had years where it just felt like their defense had passed the point of no return, and they were somehow in the AFC title game. Yeah. I'm not willing to rule them out, but I got to say the Montgomery thing

That was the one that made me go up. Because their defense sucked anyway. Like they were going to have to win. Like Buffalo's going to have to win. That Colts team. I think it was the 06 Colts team that won the Super Bowl. They had the worst defense in the league. And they'd given up like 250 yards to Ron Dane and Dominic Davis and the Houston Texans like the last week of the season. And then playoffs come and it's like, we need to win three games.

Can we string it together? And they did. And the home field always, always matters when you can get it. So if Detroit can find a way to just hold serve and maintain home field, if they went out, they're the number one seed. So I, you know, it's been lost though. I think if they're healthy, I really do think they win the Superbowl and they're the best team. I think starting the year for what, whatever their talent was in the situation and the guys at the points of the careers they're at, I think they had the best team.

And I think that's why it feels so wide open now because sometimes you just, remember there was that year, the year Brady got hurt, oh wait. Yeah. When all of a sudden we just ended up with that weird Pittsburgh, Arizona Super Bowl. It's like, what the fuck is this? Arizona came in with eight wins on the regular season and a run. Don't you feel like something weird like that could happen this year? I'm prepared for like any Super Bowl matchup, right? The NFC to me is so interesting. The AFC, you've got your powers and like they're all, the NFC like,

Would you be shocked if Baker Mayfield and the Buccaneers upset a team in the wildcard and they beat the Vikings at home? Yeah, because they just scored 37 on the road against whoever, of course. They scored 40 points on the number one defense, the Chargers, and put up 500 yards of offense and didn't punt. And you're like, oh wait, what the hell's going on in Tampa? They might be the team. So this could be that year. And the NFC, the Eagles could finish with 13 straight wins and yet...

I don't know. Like, does that feel like the Eagles are going to run away with the NFC? I don't feel that way. I think the Vikings and the Packers can give them a battle in the Lions too. So I'm excited for this year's playoffs. If you're just saying talent now for who's left, it seems like the Eagles have the most talent in either conference, just all sides of the ball. If you're just going to do a ranking of grading all the players.

And yet I don't even think the Eagles fans, even the Eagles fans have like their guard up with it. And there's always seems to be some weird stories popping out and chemistry stuff. And so part of me wonders, is that a red herring?

And then the other part of me wonders, like every time there's smoke like that, it never turns out well for the team. So I don't know what to think of them either. They would have to be the team that if gone to your head, you would pick, but I don't feel good about it. That 2017 Eagles team, they lose Wentz and I was the sideline reporter for Giants Eagles and like Spagnuolo was the quarterback and the coach of the Giants as an interim coach. And

Everyone was off the Eagles at that point. And then Foles comes in and I remember talking to Foles and Peterson and Brandon Graham and all those guys. And this is right before the dog masks. And it was like, the world is against us. They don't believe in us. We're the underdogs. And like that really, that really worked. Yeah.

can you still do it again? And now the thing is, you know, Jalen Hurts throws for a couple, you know, a hundred yards to two receivers and then comes up and he's like, is that what y'all wanted? And it's like, no, no, no, no. We didn't do this. The media didn't do this. Brandon Graham, your teammate went out on a radio interview and said that you guys weren't friends. Like we didn't do this. And then Sirianni and Clint Hurt are having this,

really like heated thing on the sidelines where Jalen Carter is laughing and it's like, no, guys, the cameras caught that. Like that happened. That was real. And it's like, the media is trying to pull us apart. So they find a way to galvanize there in Philly and I'm sure Sheil and whoever else you have on the Philly special can break it down far greater than I can. But like,

They feed off that tension, but there isn't a lot of joy in the Philly fan. So that's what's the noticeable thing is. They don't like it. It's always tense and stressed. It's not this fun ride. Yeah, even watching the Eagles, it doesn't seem like a team that's having the most unbelievable time ever together. No. I don't know. You notice different vibes from different teams. Maybe they'll come together. I wouldn't rule it out, but you did make me think of something.

Maybe it's like two weeks too early to figure this out. But who is the best candidate for the nobody believes in us team in the playoffs? Because that Eagles team is a great example that 2017 Wentz goes down. Everyone writes them off. Oh, they're done. And then they it's it's the it's the force that has been kind of the most dominant playoff for us year after year after year.

Is it Detroit? Does Detroit have the best nobody believes in us case? Yeah, I feel like everyone's fleeing that bandwagon. We don't even believe in them anymore. Yeah, I think everyone's fleeing that bandwagon and Dan Campbell's the perfect nobody believes in us coach. And like Chris Spielman's in that building. He's the perfect nobody believes in us guy. I feel like they'll feed off that and

And that is your team. And then I think if there's another one of them, like the other one that you would say is the Houston Texans who are going to easily win their division. They're going to play the Chiefs and the Ravens over the next two weeks. And they might, they might win two of those games, one of those games, and no one's going to pick them. And everyone's going to say, oh, whatever. The thing with them is they're the, no, no, fuck you. Nobody should believe in you guys, team. You guys are barely winning. I saw you losing the Jets on a Thursday night in person. No, it's your fault. You can't even score 20 points. You can't block.

I would say Casey last year was a good example of this, but they lost that Raiders game. If you were like, I'm out, I'm out. They're not going to do it again. It's done. I'm out. Aiden O'Connell beat him. I'm out. And, and, uh, and I thought they used that to their advantage. Yeah. The, uh, the Vikings are, the Vikings are a candidate, but like O'Connell doesn't have that like deal with him. Like, I feel like you need a coach who's going to really dig deep. Sirianni does that. Dan Campbell does that.

Like I've heard stories of Sirianni, like going really deep with film references and like showing movie clips. And I remember Dan Quinn, when he was back with Atlanta would call me on a Saturday night, just a bullshit before my Fox show. And I'd be like, give me something. And he's like, well, I show, I showed a, a sugar Shane Mosley fight last night because the situation was this. And I'm like, dude, like, like these guys, they go deep for like what can motivate them.

these like that's Campbell, that's Sirianni. Kevin O'Connell is more like, guys, we got this. We can do this one game at a time. Like there's none of that hate and none of that toxicity of like us against the world. It's more I believe in you, which works also. Yeah, because I think Pittsburgh is maybe yeah, the waiting room for this combo, especially if they like lost to Baltimore this week. But we're done. They're out. Fun run. I can't believe you won 10 games. You guys are out. Watts are out now.

And then Tomlin feeds off that. But yeah, I would say Detroit has to be the odds on favor for it. Maybe Tampa too with...

just not being considered at all. And Tampa's had some good wins. Their offense is excellent. Like they're over 400 points already, you know, and they dropped 40 in the chargers. And you think about it too. They, they lost their offensive coordinator from a year ago. He took the job in Carolina. Then Liam Cohen comes in and Liam's put up better numbers with Baker, which is incredible. And what's fun with this team is they lost four games in a row. Mike Evans was her, Chris Godwin was her and everyone wrote them off. Um,

but they just went ahead and just kept on winning. So now they're the hot team. You know who didn't write them off? Me and Sal, because they were in the, such a bad division. Nobody is allowed to be, even Carolina, you could barely write off. It was like, is seven wins going to be our champ in this division? What do you need in that NFC, AFC South? 30, you need less than 30 wins. What was the combined bet you guys did? Yeah, we're getting that. It was, it's under 30. We're getting that. The,

The, uh, the panics cousins thing was coming for a while. And I knew when they did that mile an hour stat for cousins, it was 36 miles an hour. It was just, you could, you could see it the way they called the game with the Raiders where they just weren't going to let him do anything. Is there any way to spin this? Like if like, let's say I'm Arthur blank.

How are you spinning this to me? That is it, is it like, Hey, look, this is why we had to invest in Pennix. Like these are assets. If you go one for two, it's a win. Like what, what do you say to Arthur blank at this point? Well, I think the first pat on the back goes to Kwesi Adolfo Mensah and Kevin O'Connell up in Minnesota who had a franchise quarterback and said, we're going to let him walk out the building. Something nobody does without a plan B. We're going to go to the draft and we're gonna pick up a free agent and

But I remember talking to Kevin. He's like, it's heartbreaking. We love, we love him, but we, he's 36 years old coming off an Achilles injury. Like we can't give him a hundred million dollars. The Falcons did. And your argument for the Falcons is like, all right, let's see what we get with, with cousins. I give them a little bit of credit.

and that they eventually did pull the plug because he's going to make $90 million guaranteed from the Atlanta Falcons for 14 weeks of football, and they're paying him that, and they're like, we're not going to just play you because we're paying him that. We're going to then go to the backup. But why didn't they do it before the Raiders game? Why not get him next to that Raider game? I don't understand that. I reported it on Fox a couple weeks ago because he looked horrible, Cousins, for three straight weeks. So the second week of it, they were playing the Chargers at home,

And I reported, I'm like, Pennix didn't take any first steps

first squad snaps this week. It was all scout team and they were just like, we're going with cousins. We're riding this out. It's almost too little too late. But this does open things up a little bit. Like Zach Robinson's a good offensive coach. I knew him when he was with McVay's staff in LA and he was the quarterback's coach. And he does all sorts of cool, like QB waggle outside the pocket stuff. And I know how excited he was when they drafted Penix because he's like, that's really cool. And down the line, when the time comes, like we'll do really neat stuff with him.

I think you're going to see an entirely different offense over the next three weeks and a lot of stuff with a quarterback that isn't a running quarterback by like Lamar or Daniels. But he can at least move. But he can move. Yeah. Kirk Cousins cannot move. He cannot move laterally. That game against the Raiders on Monday night, I mean, he scored a touchdown early and it was like, pump your chest, like told you guys, no, like he couldn't move. It was a crazy game to watch. And that was the fourth straight week he's done that. Yeah, it's weird because week one, he looked like that.

And then everybody took the Eagles in week two, which is now looking back. One of the weird results of the season, the game's over somehow. They don't. And then also Natalina has the bomb. Yeah. Atlanta comes flying back down the other way. And it's like, Kurt's back. And, uh, it turned out he wasn't back, but I look, we've seen teams get out of these giant, awful cap hit things. Russell Wilson, uh,

Denver, you know, takes a huge hit with him and they're somehow going to be like a 10 win team this year. So it's not, it's not awful. I'm to me more interested, like this makes the season more fun. Now that we get Penn X, you suddenly get this new guy with all these weapons. And it's like, what if this guy's good? This could be like, cause you know, I have a chance to maybe, maybe, uh, you know, it's

It's not a puncher's chance to maybe catch Tampa if Tampa has a dumb loss. Can I break a little news here while I'm live on the podcast with you? I just got a text. The Jets have completed...

interviewing Jim Nagy, who is the senior director of the Senior Bowl for their GM position. So they're interviewing a lot of guys. So I'm just interjecting with a text I got from a source. Is that kind of breaking news or like half-breaking news? It's news. Jets interview news? Yeah, they interview guys. Let's take a break. No, I want to talk about the Jets after that because there was a crazy article there. This episode is brought to you by Bank of America. Money decisions don't have to be either or. With Bank of America, they can be yes and no.

as in yes to grabbing the latest merch and building up your budget for next season's tickets. Our digital tools help you create the future you want and help you keep enjoying today too. Do more with the bank that asks, what would you like the power to do? Explore tips and more at bankofamerica.com slash yes and. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Life's always changing. One season you're trying to break personal records and the next you're just looking for a solid routine. Peloton.

It's here for all of it with workouts that flex to fit your schedule, whatever it looks like. You've got options from four-week strength programs to running, cycling, and everything in between. Peloton's got the tools to adapt to whatever goal you're chasing in this season of your life. And here's the real kicker.

With Peloton's all access membership, you can work out wherever you need to at home, on the bike, tread or row, or even on the go with the app. Take your favorite classes with you to the gym, on the road, wherever. So whatever you're aiming for that 5am club or squeezing in a late night session, Peloton is ready whenever you are.

Find your push. Find your power with Peloton at onepeloton.com. So big athletic article today about the Jets and the ownership and the Suns and EA ratings and Jerry Judy. This became an immediate, everybody texting everybody the same thing. It's on every NFL team's Reddit. It just became one of the stories of the year. A lot of anecdotal stuff that I think had been floating around, plus some new information. And guess what?

The TLDR was like, Hey, the jets are super dysfunctional, which we knew already. But I think what I didn't realize was how kind of medley Woody Johnson is. And people had always said when he was doing the ambassador thing, it was nice. Woody's out. But then when he came back, that's when it got a little, uh,

little crazy again. So in retrospect, like both of us were bullish on the jets. You were even more bullish than I was, but this team was so dysfunctional. It's not like we didn't know they were dysfunctional. So what made any of us think that this team was going to suddenly become functional? And is there any way out of this with this owner?

Yeah, that article dropped today. And it was like, I got, you know, a lot of you and a lot of that stuff. Like, I can't, I can't discredit a lot of it. That's in Diana's article with Mike Silver and Zach Rosenblatt. And like, look, when Woody took that UK ambassador job from President Trump in 2017, his sons, Brick and Jack were 11 and nine. And it's like, you know, 11 years old and nine years old, he goes away. Christopher Johnson, his younger brother takes over. And suddenly, like,

Like the Jets building, it was like, all right, they're leaders in social justice. And Christopher Johnson's giving Kelvin Beecham like an opportunity to speak on behalf of the team. And it was right through all of like this turbulent time in the NFL and the Jets were leaders in the space. And it was like, gosh, like everyone was pretty impressed with the Jets organization. And then they hire Sala, they hire Joe Douglas.

And then Woody comes back and his sons are suddenly, you know, of high school and college age. And then you go to these Jets games and you see the sons pregame and they're like on the sidelines and they look cool. Then they got the blazer on and they got the sunglasses on and they're walking the sidelines and it's like,

this is a freshman at Harvard and a kid in boarding school and their dad and mom own the New York Jets and they have all access to do, like, I don't spite the kids and I don't spite the owner, but what it is, it is true. Like these kids are around. And I actually, I feel like bad for, I feel bad for Brick, the older one, because everyone says he's actually a good kid. And it's like, he's getting lambasted in this article. The Madden thing.

I'm not going to discredit that things like Madden ratings could come in. I've spoken to sources. The Jerry Judy trade wasn't happening because the Cleveland Browns offered something better. And that's why it wasn't because his Madden rating wasn't what it was. But I will say, you know, I don't know if this will be breaking it, but like Joe Flacco was with the team two years ago.

And Flacco was a good veteran in the locker room for Zach Wilson. They go and they get Rogers. And like, the plan was let's get Rogers. And like, I could tell you that ownership was like, I don't know if we want to go that direction. Like, let's, let's, let's go with Rogers and let's go with Zach and let's figure out what else we do. Like, I don't want a big pay Joe. Then Joe Flacco goes on to win comeback player of the year. And you're like,

And like little things like that where I know the owners, it's true. Like I know that Woody was like sometimes in the draft, like will show displeasure if it's a pick he doesn't like. Like that is fact. I've heard that from ex-employees and that's a lot of this. There are a lot of ex-employees from the Jets right now. Which is always the most dangerous thing for a piece like this.

20 people who are like, fuck it, I don't like that guy. Here's two stories. What the fuck? I lost my job. The Jets went through a turbulent time in 2014, 2018, and now it's this year. And it's always when they get rid of a certain group in the front office. And then what do they have to lose? They'll tell stories, and a lot of it's probably their vantage point, and there's

half-truths and real truths, but at the end of the day, this ain't the Pittsburgh Steelers. This isn't the Kansas City Chiefs. There certainly is some fissures and issues with some of the ways things go down, but I think all they want to do is win. It's not like they're not giving the GM the green light to go get Aaron Rodgers or to go trade for Devontae Adams, but I can't discredit the article. Here's the thing, though.

And Wicker Sham and I talked about this last week because I genuinely think one of the reasons Belichick went to college was he was like, it's not the right franchise situation with the right kind of ownership. There's no meddling son of the owner, anybody kind of messing with me. I probably don't want to do it anyway. Right. So after I put that pot up, some different people reached out to me.

And a friend of mine was saying, you should do something on your pod about the difference between NBA owners and NFL owners. Okay. I would love to hear that. You know that world. I know the NFL world. He was just like the mindset. The Jets ownership thing, that's in a lot of buildings, dude. So that's the thing. He was saying like, what's different about NFL owners versus NBA owners? NFL owners, they own these big, giant, billion-dollar companies.

They're in a suite. They're detached from the fans. They get to do what they want. They'll put their son in charge here. They'll do whatever. But there's still a sense of detachment. Whereas NBA owners, they're in the crowd. They're with the game. They're kind of in the mix for... And the type of people that have been buying NBA teams aren't like these NFL, like just these super rich families passing down the team to different generations. The NBA, a lot of the owners they have are people that...

either came up with the money themselves because they were rich or, you know, they thought outside the box or they were some family that bought in or there's somebody like that Matt Ishbia who's like the self-made guy who's like, I know how to do everything. And it's like all over the place. And, but the point is like, there's so many of these jet situations in the NFL and I don't feel like there's the same in the NBA. There's different levels of owner incompetence in the NBA, but it's, it's somehow like,

a different lane than NFL incompetence. The Senate, like the jets have been like this for 15 years, right? Yeah. I mean, look, I think the NFL has a different structure with ownership. So an NBA, you can be a rich finance guy and you can buy a team with the NFL, a private equity can only now own up to 10% of a team. They only let six different private equity companies even play a role in that. That's brand new. And, and for the most part,

all of the owners are majority owners and it's been handed down family generation, generation, generation, like the bang or they bought it in the nineties or the eighties and got it at a certain price and they just have all the power. But like the Bengals ownership group, like I, that's their only, that that's their main income, right? Like that's their business. They own the Bengals. Uh, you look around and you go, uh, all the way, uh,

To like the Rams, like that's a new owner, right? So the Cronkies, like they obviously have a whole sorts of real estate stuff and they own all these different teams. But there are a lot of teams where,

The owners are families and it's handed down generation to generation. And like the Steelers are one of those teams. But over the years, Jimmy Haslam had a minority stake of the Steelers. Then he goes and buys the Browns. David Tepper had a minority stake of the Steelers. Then he goes and becomes the majority owner of the Panthers. You're not going to be a Johnny come lately in this circle and just be like, I got a lot of money. I want to buy an NFL team. That's not how it works. And like in New York, like Gary Vaynerchuk always says, I want to own the Jets. Like, and Gary Vee wants to own the Jets. I think in different,

Like that's a possibility, but the Jets, the Johnsons aren't selling this thing. Like they're just not. And they might give a minority piece to someone here at some point, but like they'll always be 51% owners. And that's for most of these teams and the minority piece for it, for these owners. Like if you were to be a minority owner and you know, this week we saw Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady are now minority owners of the Buffalo Bills.

All right. And Josie Altidore is a minority owner. And Lewis Hamilton's a minority owner. And Condoleezza Rice is a minority owner. And you can go all through. What is that? It's nothing other than I could say I own it. I can go to the dinner party. Season tickets. And I get season tickets and I got a spot. I go to a couple of meetings. Yeah, I go to a couple of board meetings and that's it. This was figured out in the NBA over the course of the last 20 years because these groups would buy tickets.

franchises, but really like one guy was in charge and you would have these people putting in real money and they're like, fuck, I don't, I'm not in charge of anything. What do I get? Other than saying I'm an owner and then someone being like, but you're not that guy. And he's like, yeah, no, no, no, but I am an owner. And there's enough people with egos. You always talk about the rich guy tables and it's like, there's so few people

of these teams available that to say I'm even a 0.1% owner is some cachet in a Washington, D.C. Beltway dinner. There's all these different minority owners of the commanders. That's social equity. It's something. Right. But they still... I think the newer owners that buy teams like that and have minority groups, they're strategically picked to bring...

one value thing to the whole equation that they kind of need where whoever it is whether it's forward-facing somebody who's really smart somebody who might know how to build a new arena um i i think when i look at some of the nba stuff um the the family that operates the most like an nfl team like the dysfunctional generation by generation nfl team that just

is the Lakers. Interesting. That's the team where the dad had the team really from the 70s on. He passed it down to his kids. They'll never get rid of it. They don't have the kind of crazy money to...

Basically, their money comes through the team. That's it, from the Lakers. But there's like 10 NFL teams that operate like the Lakers do. I think the Giants are like that, even though I know people speak highly of the Maras. The Giants have been one of the most dysfunctional franchises for over a decade now, and they don't seem like they have a plan. Obviously, the Tish is bought in as well, and that goes generations too. So now you have multiple generations of Tish's and Mara's, but I would say...

there's a big enough family there where those people do different things outside of football and have like, like the Arizona Cardinals, Michael Bidwell's business is the Arizona Cardinals. Like he was actually a lawyer by trade and his dad passed the team down and now his ownership is the Cardinals and the Spanos family. Like they all work there. There's a lot of them.

And I really like John Spanos and I've grown to become very friendly with Dean Spanos. But that's the family business now. So it's this billion dollar company, but it's being operated by families. It's a multi-billion dollar company. But then some of the people that have come in the last decade, ShotKon, Tepper. Tepper, Haslam. Haslam, and then the Washington. Josh Harris. Yeah. Yep.

which is like the new kind of modern owner where they're buying these franchises, but it's just part of a bigger portfolio for them. Right. It's not like Harris living or dying with the success of the team. Who is the NFL owner that was like sitting on the bench? Like Cuban was with the maps for ever. Right. Arthur blank. He owns the biggest companies in the world. And then he just shows up and I'll come down the sidelines. But,

Uh, it's just, it's funny how the stakes somehow seem lower for the football owners because just owning a team in this league that is like one of the best businesses in the world. You're going to make a profit. You're going to make a profit. I mean, the Jets raised season ticket prices this year. I mean, amidst all this, they, the PSL owners were given an email like, Hey, the tickets are being jacked up next year to fight season. I look, I,

And knowing that process, they're going to interview everybody for a GM job. And I would go in there and my advice to those GMs would be, you have to find a way to finesse the egos in the room of, of like, you know, obviously like what he's going to want to hear, like what your thoughts are, but you're going to also have to tell them straight up. Like I can also manage all of this because there is a next generation coming. Like his kids aren't going anywhere. Um,

one of them's a freshman in college the other one's in high school like they're only going to get older and and more power and more emboldened and it's like if that's a problem as a gm like you need to have the backbone to be able to say like i i can't have that around or i don't want that around and the same for the coaches like that's the truth of it so yeah the owners aren't going anywhere i i find it so naive for all these fans being like just show the team

Sell the team. They're 100% not selling the team. Even Snyder, who they were basically trying to set his franchise on fire and he wouldn't sell the team. What are some good examples of how it should work that aren't just like the Steelers passing a franchise down? Like, to me, it seems like the Cronkies with the Rams just realizing like,

Hey, we have a good front office and a great coach. Let's just trust these guys. That seems how it should work on paper. Yeah. So Stan Kroenke obviously owns it. His son, Josh, who plays a bigger role with the Nuggets and with Arsenal. Everybody likes him. Yeah. Josh is great. And he's in his forties and he's not look at me, not, you know, Hey, I'm in this. He's just, he's, he's there and he operates and he's very involved.

He's the positive upside of a legacy kid. I would say you'd point to him as like, that's a success story of a legacy kid. I would also say Chargers, John Spanos, who works in the front office, like he's also like, people see him out there and he like, isn't about look at me and very involved. But the Cronkies though, their front office is interesting. So you've got

those guys, then the president is a guy named Kevin Demoff, whose father Marvin was an NFL agent for many years. And Kevin's been there since St. Louis. And then under him, it's your GM, Les Snead, and this other guy, Tony Pastores, who kind of manages the Cronkies as well. And it's like, they're all swimming on the same thing upstream. And Demoff also is the president of the Avalanche and the Nuggets and the Rapids. And it's like, there's a lot of different

and it's all under this Cronky Sports banner. But Stan and Josh are never going to come in and tell Sean McVay, I don't like the play call. I can't say that's true for every owner around the league. Right. Yeah, it's funny. And that's something you can't control. It's, I own the team. I want to have my voice heard, you know? Yeah, because it seems like all of these guys have the sun shining

who, or in Jerry Jones's case, the daughter that everybody likes, Charlotte, who everybody thinks is good. But everyone has the sun for the most part. And then if you ask other people, I'm talking NBA, NFL, whatever, like, so what's the sun like? And it could go one of three ways. They could be like, oh, he's good. He's really good. Like, it's almost like surprising. Or they'll be like, you know, he's pretty sharp, I guess. Or he's Tommy Callahan. He's Tommy boy. Well, then there's the third one where it's like, what's the sun like? And they go,

"You know." And then you're like, "Oh, it must be a disaster." - Yeah. - This guy must be the absolute fucking worst. - Which is why I wanna give a pass to Woody's kids who got killed in this athletic article.

They're your son's age. They're my son's age. They're your son's age. What are you doing? You're telling the kids. Like I remember before the Super Bowl in Arizona, and I don't know if I should share it, but I will. We're walking around the field. It was a Fox Super Bowl, so I have all access. And I'm walking around with Michael Vick, Charles Woodson, and Sean Payton. And Goodell comes over and Jay-Z's there. And there's this conversation. And I like eek to the back because I know my place in these things. No one wants to see my day. So I'm like, and then like, you know, I see Woody's kids on the field and they're like taking photos with Jay-Z. And I'm like, I would do the same thing.

thing if I was a 17 year old kid at the Super Bowl and my dad owned the Jets and like, do you spite him for that? No, it's the job of everyone else to say, OK, we need to put up some walls here and see like what we're going to do. But where it gets dangerous is like the Jaguars, where Shotgun, who owns a bunch of stuff and is just got an incredible amount of money and they've spent money in the arena. Football team's a mess.

The son's kind of running the team, but he's also running a W full time and a soccer team and the soccer team. And if you're, if you're Belichick and even if that was a job that was, you thought, Oh, if I wait a month, maybe, maybe they'll just give me the car keys. It's like, what is that job? I have a weird ownership situation.

I'm in Jacksonville, Florida, and I have no idea if my quarterback will ever be good. And those will be my mid seventies. Like I, the more I think about it, like I actually really like that North Carolina job for him because college jobs these days, unless you're in a perfect NFL situation, like I think Carbot chargers, that's like a perfect situation. Totally. Right. Or the Broncos. They needed him and he wanted them Broncos. And he's in LA Broncos. Same thing. We need you Sean Payton. Here are the car keys.

And I just don't think that situation is there for anybody. Like if you're, if you're Vrabel now, and I think Vrabel is the best candidate of all these guys. If you're Vrabel, what's the situation where you're like, oh, oh, that's a no brainer. I got to do that. Is it even Cincinnati? I,

Look, I'm going back to Belichick. There could be two truths. I know Lombardi comes on your podcast and we love Mike and I've exchanged texts with him. There could be two truths that A, this was an amazing situation for Belichick to fall back on and B, he had no NFL. There was no NFL. And, but also,

to their self-awareness, there was no job that they wanted. So it was in both ways. But that's my question. What's the job this year? But if you're Vrabel, can you be out for two years? I don't know. I'm not talking about him. I'm talking about Vrabel. Yeah, I'm saying for Vrabel, can you wait two years and just say, well, I'm going to wait for a better opportunity? That's the problem. You're basically waiting for the Pat's job.

If you're waiting the next year, you're like, this Pat's thing is going to go badly. I'm just going to wait until it...

falls apart and you're walking into a situation where they didn't give you the decency of an interview last time around when you were well that's because the guy five years ago and they and they didn't even go through the process if you're variable well what the what you know and the story i got today that i think went out that greg bedard who i think is very plugged in so that you can get a variable mcdaniel's and like the whole band can go back to new england when everyone thought that was the crew going not variable but everyone thought mcdaniel's little patricia oh

Belichick hasn't hired any of those guys yet. Like, I think they got to work out contracts with those guys. So you might be able to get the band back together up in New England. I mean, would you want to go back there if you're able after they didn't even give you the look the first time? I don't think, I don't think it was a slap in the face that they didn't give him a look. I think the Mayo thing had been done for a couple of years. So that was one of my questions for you actually to do a little coach watch. Yeah. Because we have Jet Saints Bears open. Uh-huh. Watching the last three weeks of the season.

Peterson, I'm guessing that's a wrap in Jacksonville, right? Yes, I would think. So there's four spots. Dayball seems like he's coming back. And my guess is they'll give him one more year and then they'll...

hire new people for the front office and that's how that plays out. But maybe they won't hang. Oh, you think the G I think the GM is safe in New York. I think Joe Shane is safe. I think the GM is not safe. I don't, I don't know if he's a hundred percent safe. I would think if it's up to the mayors, they would love to just get the season over with and keep both of them. Um, but there have been, let's pencil that in. There have been planes above, you know, met life the last two home games saying, please end this misery fire mall. Like that's the one thing like

the Maris can't stand like when the fans are, you know, not in the building or it's an embarrassment. So it could, Joe judge was safe 14 weeks through the season two years ago. And then he ran a quarterback sneak with Jake from and lost it in his press conference. And it was like, we have to fire you. That's so that's where Dable's at right now. I think like you just can't melt down. That's a big talking point right now with the Pats fans. Cause if there's,

If you really are completely all out on Mayo. And I was 100% out. And then a couple of the players stuck up for him this week. So now I'm like, all right, I'll give it one more week. But Drake May stuck up for him. Dietrich West stuck up for him. But he's been just awful. And he talks, there's this meme of like...

Oh, Gerard Mayo. Yeah. He says something, you know, Gerard Mayo makes terrible decision, says something at press conference and then backs it and then, you know, back, walks it back, but sort of also puts a foot in his mouth. Like it's been. I think he said four times this, this year in the preseason where he said something that everybody's like, wait, what just happened? And then the next day he had to do the, to clarify something I said yesterday. Yeah. And I don't know how many more of those he gets. The Arizona game was alarming, but you know, they got Buffalo this week.

They got Buffalo in the last week, which might actually mean something for Buffalo. So to me, Mayo's on the coach watch list, even though I don't think Kraft will fire him after a year. I don't think they want to either. I think they would love to not admit a mistake. You know what I mean? And they would love to ride this thing out one more season. But the thing is, that's fine that they don't want to admit a mistake and maybe he deserves a second year. The difference is, Vrabel...

I just think Vrabel is a great coach. Like if that's going to cost you Vrabel, you're in the same situation like the Jets were in, but they could add Vrabel a year ago, probably. And they brought back Salah when it clearly wasn't going to work. Pierce on Vegas.

Interesting. I mean, look, I've been depending on how the next three games go. Like, I can't say I'm, I'm positive he's coming back. Same, but I also can't say I'm positive he's gone. I also think it was reported by Ian Rappaport this week. And I know it's, it's, it's accurate on the quarterback spot that Brady's like, not just going to be a silent owner and, you know, posing for photos, like Brady's going to have a voice in this and it's going to play a role. And so, um,

I know there's no like great connection, but they are former players. And obviously Brady and Pierce have a relationship from their playing days. But like, I think Brady plays a role in this as well. And they're going to value his opinion. All right. Here are the three I got to get your take on. And I'm watching this for the next three weeks. There's always a surprise. I can't believe they let go of that guy coach. Yeah. The nominees, Mike McDaniel in Miami. Yep. They just gave him a huge contract extension, but Steven Ross money's not an issue. So, okay, go on.

Shane Steichen in Indianapolis. Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco. Those would be my three. I'd be shocked if they were let go one day after the season, but I also wouldn't be shocked.

And then I guess maybe you could put Zach Taylor in there, but I actually think there's a chance the Bengals could make the playoffs. And also not to talk about finances in that kind of way, but like the Bengals are not ones. Yeah. They're not, they're not looking to pay two coaches at once. Right. When you, when you decide to have a team of like half rookies and undrafted free agents, maybe you don't want to pay two coaches. So McDaniel, Steichen, Shanahan rank in order of what would surprise you the most.

Shanahan would surprise me the most. I know it's a very, very dark year there in San Francisco. Knowing Jed very well, knowing John Lynch very well, knowing Kyle very well, they're trying to be upbeat. But this season started with the lockouts, which was sour as it was, and then their first round pick got shot.

And it was like, okay, that's a major adverse situation. Let's try to work through it. And then they proceeded to lose their running back right before the season. That was their offensive player of the year in the league. And then like, I don't want to be, you know, like you've had players have real tragedies in their life. Like Trent Williams lost a kid this, this, this season, like real dark stuff on top of all these injuries. And it's like, just get to the finish line. And I don't think Kyle Shanahan is going to pay the price for this year. It's one of those truly brutal injuries.

The official year from hell team. It's the official year from hell team. As bad as things have been in New York with the Jets, the Niners, that's real life stuff. And it has been so bad. And they're just trying to stay above it. When they beat the Bears in that game, there was like a...

feeling of like great relief and like just that we got to win. And I, and it last week was atrocious on Thursday night at home in front of their crowd, losing 12, six to the Rams. Like it's just get to the end. I don't think Kyle Shanahan, unless he has some major blow up with Jed, which I don't think is happening. Uh, Steichen and Ursa. I don't know enough. I know Ursa had it.

had his, was just absolutely sick to his stomach over Carson Wentz losing to the Jaguars in a week 17 game a couple years ago. And it's like, he's out. Like, get rid of him. But I don't know if that's the relationship with the coach here that he would make a rash decision, but disappointing season there. And then Mike McDaniel, they gave him a monster, monster extension before the season. But...

Steven Ross is one of the wealthiest owners in the league. And this thing has gone way off the rails and nothing would surprise me because that's the same same owner who fired Brian Flores when no one thought that was a possibility a couple of years ago. Yeah. And that goes back to what we were talking about earlier with these. These owners are just so different than the NBA owners. Steven Ross is like, ah, fuck.

Yeah. How many, how many coaches in my path? Fuck it. I don't care. And just, what does he care? He's got a kajillion dollars. Some of these guys are old. And that's a really, really attractive job as, as, as attractive a job as there is, is living in Miami and, and being the coach of the dolphins because you have an owner with endless money and you have a really nice place to live with no taxes. Like these hot coaches, like that's a really attractive place to go.

Yeah, I mean, that's for the Pats fans who have been horrified by how sloppy the Pats have been and the terrible strategy and just how awful they look. The thing that a lot of us have focused on is that Kraft's just in his 80s. And you don't have a ton of these seasons left, right? And you can't be like, yeah, let's see one more year. They're in such a unique situation with Drake May, like on a rookie contract where it's like the single best asset you could have in sports.

And they have a lot of work to do. And do you want to set that back a year? I don't know if you do. Yeah. And it's Jonathan plays a big role there. Like Jonathan Kraft plays a major role there. Another son of an owner. And I think they really, really...

The way that whole thing went down with Belichick at the end, I think they really wanted this year to work out in some way. And it hasn't absolutely gone terrible. Off the top of your head, how many teams have benched a quarterback this year? Benched or injury? Benched? Benched. Four. Ten. Okay. That's a lot. Cousins, Levis, Daniel Jones, Brissett, Fields, Jameis, Richardson, Flacco, back and forth.

Bryce Young, Minshew, and I'm counting that Hainer guy. Hainer, Rattler, somebody got benched in that. I don't know. There's benchings all over the place. That's one third of the league benched their quarterback this year. How are we getting worse? Not good. Not good. And yet you could say that at the top of the league with Burrow and Lamar and Allen, you

you've got some of the best quarterback play we've ever seen. There's such a gap between the great and the bad. And it's, it's you either have one or you don't. And that's just where we're at. Am I crazy to think Zach Wilson should have gotten one more chance with somebody to at least start a game? He had that whole year last year and stunk. Is he like 24? I don't know. He's the third string in Denver. How is Wentz not quarterbacking a team either? That's another one. I mean, there's been a lot of dialogue with the Chiefs where they're like,

Reed asking Mahomes, like, how is this guy a backup? He's so good. It's like, well, you got to look at that Indianapolis game. All right, next topic. The Calais Campbell release. We rarely see, so Miami is officially out of it. You rarely see, this happens in basketball right before the March 1st deadline.

You rarely see a guy get released by a team who could actually hop onto a playoff team and have a dramatic impact, but I feel like he could. He could. Have you heard anything on this? The last one was like, I think the Chiefs signed Terrell Suggs at the end of the season. He won a Super Bowl with them back in 2019, and it was like, Sizzles on our team. Let's go. Calais is like the ultimate ambassador of the league, Walter Payton Man of the Year, and I think he was done right here, and I think he will sign with

the Ravens likely, which is a team that I think he was... Oh, you think it's the Ravens? I think it's one of these teams. He played with the Ravens and was a beloved Baltimore Raven. What if it's the Bills? Could be the Bills.

Could be the Bills, but he'll go to a contender and he'll play a role and he'll make a big play in a big game. You know that. What if it's like the Packers? I'm just, I'm on pins and needles wondering where he goes. It's like the hardest asset to just stumble into in week 17 would be a guy in your defensive line who can push it. Defensive tackle. Yeah. And he's a great teammate.

I have no insight. I mean, Rosenhaus is his agent. I could probably get some info in a quick moment. But as of now, I would think Baltimore to me, always with Calais Campbell. That's where he was such a badass for them. If he actually wants to win a ring, go to the Chiefs. Go to the Chiefs. Just go to the Chiefs. Just be next to Chris Jones. Just bang some bodies around. Okay.

You watched Aaron Rodgers' entire Netflix doc? No, just the first two episodes. Did you watch any of it or no? I refuse to watch it. Okay, I know your team, Jimmy Kimmel and Cousin Sal, but you won't even watch it? It has nothing to do with... I would actually watch it to spite Jimmy. He's my friend. No, I just don't want to spend...

I don't want to spend, you know, valuable TV time with. But you're a filmmaker. I watched Rock Doc. I texted you. This is a good doc. I'm not trying to. My friend got the made it. Those guys are really good at what they do. I'm sure it's well done. I just don't want to hang out with Rogers for two hours. I would tell you this.

And I know we've had a lot of discourse on the player producing editorial control. Look, this isn't Ken Burns baseball. This isn't an objective look at this thing. It's Rogers' story. But the second episode, he goes on this ayahuasca trip with Jordan Poyer and Adrian Colbert and Poyer's mom. And it's like, it goes to places that I don't know exist. And it's interesting. The first episode...

It really is good football shit, man. Really? Yes, it is a football doc too. I am telling you. And you forget how close he was.

when he was with the Packers and all those games and Packers fans were saying like, no, no, we know. But like, you know, the Giants, they beat him when he was a 15 and one quarterback, 19 straight wins. He loses the Giants in the playoffs, the Falcons in the NFC championship game, all those 49ers losses, the Buccaneers a couple of years ago. But what was really interesting is that

you get into Rogers like, and he's always searching. He's like seeking for something that I almost feel just a lot of empathy and sympathy. Like he's a single guy in his forties right now. And he's like, I'm searching, I'm searching, I'm searching. And there's this whole, but he says he wins the Superbowl in 2011. And his whole life's goal was proving everyone wrong and proving all those division one schools wrong. And he mentions Purdue said like, you're just not athletic enough for Purdue. Um,

And he couldn't win a playoff game. And they show a clip of Mooch on NFL Network being like, until Rodgers wins a playoff game, he's not one of the elite guys. Wins the playoff game, wins Super Bowl, and he says he wakes up the morning after the Super Bowl and it didn't fill his cup. And he's like, what now? And that was 2011, and he's still searching. And I feel like...

That's a side of Rodgers I haven't seen. And there's no love lost amongst him and the family. And there's all this sort of stuff that you're like, dude, it's hard for me to really rationalize why you feel this hole in your life. But I don't know. He's pretty vulnerable in it. And I think the football shit is pretty good.

Jesus. You almost made me want to watch the first part. Enigma. It's only three episodes, too. It's not this seven episode. There's been a lot of bad sports docs. You know this. And a lot of them are like, this could have been a nice 60-minute piece that ran on the NBA TV network. I don't need to watch this. But I'm telling you, this one was well done. And you come away and you're like, pretty good football. And whether you like Rodgers or not, you're like, that's an interesting deep dive on a dude who gave you all access.

Well, so you're saying I should watch this over La Palma, the Norwegian disaster flick where everything's dubbed or series that's the number one TV series on Netflix right now? Is this the number one? I don't know. La Palma. I gotta see it. I like when you start watching those and then five minutes in, you realize their mouths aren't moving with the words. You're like, oh, now I get it. These people are Norwegian. I watched one based on like

like the the guys from the watch a couple years ago was like 1973 about like german dutchland and i'm like i'm gonna watch this show and i'm like i can't do it i tried like andy greenwald loved it what's the show do you know what i'm talking about it's like 72 in germany and it was like this show that ran on german television they're like the number one show i'm like all right i trust these guys i like chris ryan i like green and then i gave it like a minute i'm like i can't i tried the

Those guys love it. They love getting super weird with those. Ben and I were watching, we were both working at the kitchen table last night, watching Halloween 6 with Paul Rudd. Yeah, that's a classic movie. He's just going for it. The whole movie. Went for it. Just really, really, really into Michael Myers. It's just an incredible performance. The best part about that, Paul was on like, he was like doing like

Cider House Rules and like went from Clueless to doing just Broadway and all these things. And he like did that movie and he did a movie that was like filmed in Japan over the course of two weeks where he had to bleach his hair blonde. And he's like, those are my, those are my movies of like, all right, I'm going to go for it a little bit.

All right, we have to go because my computer is about to run out of batteries. It was fun. Schrager, great to see you as always. You're the man, dude. Thanks. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Peter Schrager. Thanks to Joe Haas and Big Waz. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerruti for producing as always. I'm going to be back on Sunday live.

with Cousin Sal. You'll be able to watch it on YouTube as we're doing it. It'll be on Spotify video afterwards as well. Enjoy the weekend. Enjoy the greatest sports day in a while on Saturday too. It should be super fun. Can't wait to talk about it Sunday. Have a good weekend.

Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in DC. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat.

in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York.