Coming up, basketball, football, movies, Christmas, the holidays. It's all next. We're also brought to you by The Ringer podcast network. I have new rewatchables coming on Sunday night. Not Monday night, Sunday night. It is my little Christmas gift to you as we head into Christmas Day. Kyle Brand is the co-host. You know what happens when Kyle Brand comes on. We do dopey but great action movies from the '80s and '90s. This one is no different. I'll give you a little time frame. It's early '90s for this one, but a classic. So that is happening on Sunday night. Then Monday night is when Sal and I are new guest lines. We're going to wait until after all the Christmas Day games, Ravens Niners, and we're going to come on Monday night and we're going to have a podcast for you that you'll be able to listen to late Christmas night or Tuesday morning. Don't forget to check out all of our awesome Ringer podcast. Don't forget to check out theringer. Com. Coming up on this podcast, Justin Termany, our buddy is going to come on to talk about the Thursday night NBA action, which just happened.

And what the hell is going on with The Pistons who have just lost 25 straight games? Are we talking about this enough? Feels like no. Then Kevin Wilde, my longtime friend, comes on to talk about Brock Purdy and great NFL takes from the year. And he helps me do some million dollar picks. And then last but not least, Sean fantasy talking about the movies that we need to know about and think about and go see as we head to holiday season. One of the ones he recommended, just a quick spoiler though, was The Iron Claw, which I mentioned that I was going to see after we taped it. And I did. I took my son. I really liked it. I give it a huge thumbs up. I wasn't totally happy with some of the Kerry Van Eric parts would be my one nitpick. I wanted a little more meat on that bone without spoil too much. But I thought Zach Efron was fantastic. I thought our guy, Holt, playing Fritz Van Eric was fantastic. And I thought it was totally worth seeing. So thumbs up. But we talked way more about that movie and some other 2023 movies as well.

At the end of this podcast that is action-packed, let's bring in Justin right now first our friends from ProJep.

All.

Right, tipping the top of the podcast here. 8:30 Pacific Time. Justin Termeney is on the East Coast. We knew something would happen tonight. We had two really good games. We had OKC and the Clippers. We had Lakers, Timberwolves. It seemed like possible, maybe even second round playoff previews. But we're going to lead with the Pathetic Pistons because those other two games are bused. Kauai didn't play. Lebron didn't play. Okc wins, Minnesota wins. We can talk about them later. The Pistons lose 25 straight. This is a number in 2023 that seems impossible with the amount of three-pointers everybody takes. Just three-point variance alone, it's almost like flipping a coin 25 times and getting heads 25 times seems as realistic to me. And yet they did it. And looking at the schedule, this might keep going. And nobody's talking about this, but we're talking about it now.

I don't see where it's going to end. And tonight was the place where it would have ended. I mean, I looked at it when I was on the show this afternoon. Bill Lowry-Markins is out, Jordan Clarkins is out, Keante George is out, Taylor Horton-Tucker is out. This team is playing a back to back. I think it was their fifth game in seven days. So it was the easy end to the streak. You don't win this one. I don't know where it ends. And now the pressure probably starts to build.

So they have home and home at Brooklyn, then home against Brooklyn are their next two. Then they play at Boston, home Toronto, at at Houston, at Utah, at Golden State, at Denver, at Sacramento. Basically, it's got to be one of these two Brooklyn games unless it would be the upset of the century, because the problem with this team, they're 30th in every three-point category. So it's not like they're not going to shoot 22 for 45 one night from three, which means they're going to have to beat you with talent and they don't have any talent, and they just get their asses kicked over and over again.

Yeah. Where are the wins coming from? Because the schedule has been relatively easy. I think it gets a lot harder as the season goes along. Think about some of the teams that they've lost you. So you lose to the Jazz, which is a skeleton crew tonight. You do that at home when they're well rested. Minnesota is well rested. Utah is not. You already lost to Portland at home where you blew a big lead. You lost by 19 points to Washington at home. So who's left? You're running out of bad teams because there's six or seven bad teams. There's three or four historically bad teams. Then there's 20 good teams. So if you're not beating the three or four bad teams at home, you're running out of wins and possibilities.

And even as this was going on and once this got into the 20s, I certainly didn't do a podcast segment about it, but it felt like it was a bigger story than maybe it should have been. I think one of the reasons it wasn't was because there's no smoking gun to point to here where you can say this is why they're in this mess. This is a team that picked first, fifth, fifth, and seventh the last four years. But there's a little bit of bad luck with some of those picks. There's no terrible trade. You can't point to one tipping point moment. It's just bad. And what's crazy is if you go through the Pistons just in general, so they made the Eastern Finals in '08 and they lost in the Celtics, and that was the end of the Rasheed, that whole crew that was done. 2009, they lost in round one. Since then, they've made the first round twice since 2009. Think how long that is. That's year one of Obama. They've made the first round twice. They lost both of those. What do you think their highest win total was for a season since 2009?

Oh, my God. Number of wins. What would you guess?

I'll go 500, so I'll go 41.

All right. Well, that was their second highest. That was in 2019. They won 44 games in 2016. They've lost 50-plus games eight times. This will be the ninth time this year. How many All-Stars do you think they've had since the '08-'09 season? Oh, boy.

Let's go two, three.

Iverson, Drummond made it twice. Blake Griffin in 2019. Do you think they've lost the most games of anyone in the League since the 2009, 2010 season. Is that a yes or no?

Think about this, because Philadelphia spent five years losing on purpose- Intentionally losing. -intentionally losing. And that's the concerning part about this team. Is there not intentionally losing? I'll I'll go with yes, I guess.

The answer is yes. They're the only team with 700 plus losses over that stretch. Sacramento is second, Minnesota is third, Orlando is fourth, and Charlotte's fifth. And the reason I mentioned this, Sacramento, they've turned it around. They have some hope. They made the playoffs last year. It's not as great this year, but at least they're above average. Minnesota, we watched them tonight. I think that team is a legitimate finals contender. Orlando feeling great. Yeah. Frans and Palo looking good, arrow pointing up. They got some moves to make. They might be a sneaky, four-seed possibly. And even you look at Charlotte, they have LaMelo and they have Brandon Miller. Those are, at least foundation pieces for something going forward. I look at the trade, and I talked about, Cade, would you trade him now and just try to do the complete rebuild? Is he a keeper? I guess Cade is the keeper on this team, and I'm not even positive he's a keeper.

Well, you mentioned all these picks. Think of the roster, and this might be the issue as well, is they didn't draft like, or they don't have anybody on the roster that grew up almost as a role player, came into the league thinking, I got to be a role player. Cade's the number one overall pick. Marvin Bagley is number two overall, James Wiseman's two overall, Jaden Ive's fifth overall, Asar Thompson's fifth overall, who I actually do really like to be a winning player. I like him. Killing and Hayes, seventh overall, Kevin Knox, ninth overall, Alec Berks, even a while back, 12th overall, Jaylen Durin, 13th overall. So I think that's nine guys that got selected within the lottery. They got nine lottery teams. Can you think of another team that's got nine lottery guys on their roster? And they're still this bad.

No. And they were shopping for failed lottery picks. They're a Costco walking down the aisle, grab, Oh, is that Marvin Bagley? We'll take him. Wiseman? We'll take him. I really like Thompson. This is the worst team for him to be on. There's no cohesion in this team at all. All the stuff that he does, the stuff that is going to work the better the team is. I still believe in him. If I had to do a keeper draft for this team, I might actually take him over Cade because Cade's got that big contract coming up. This is year three for him. You can start thinking about an extension before year four. This is the problem with the NBA right now. The Bulls are in the situation now with LaVine, where they're like, All right, here, take it. And you literally can't trade him now. So I don't know what the answer is with that. And then on top of it, they just spent $80 million in their coach, and he just lost 25 straight. And if it was year five for him, he'd be like, Oh, Monte is going to get fired. But he just started.

So I don't know what you do with that either.

You're not eating $78.5 million. You would think that you have to do something. And I know Troy Weaver signed that extension last offseason, I think that they said.

Oh, yeah, he earned it. Yeah, it's a great job by Troy.

So he's going to stay, unless they want to eat that money. Monte is going to stay. You think they trade somebody just to make a move, or he goes in like Wick, Ruzpec, last year, I think when Miami was up 3-0 and he started throwing chairs and screaming at the players like at least something that Tom Gordy has asked to do because you're embarrassing the team. And the concerning part is, like you said, it's been 15 years since their last playoff victory. And Bill, think about the other teams that have lost more in a row. So I think it's just the 2011 Cavaliers, the 2016 Sixers, the Sixers were losing on purpose, right? There was a reason behind that. The 2011 Cavaliers really didn't have time to pivot off of LeBron leaving because that came as a surprise. And they're like, Okay, where do we go from here? Detroit had all this time to build this thing. And Troy Weaver has been there for a pretty good amount of time, and there's still really no direction.

Tom Goars bought the team in September 2011 for $325 million during that stretch when there was just a bunch of teams available. And basically, everybody who bought an NBA team in the beginning in 2010, late 2000s got an awesome deal. He is the worst owner just from a success standpoint. This is now a 12-year run of abject failure, but never gets mentioned in the conversation for, Hey, who's the worst owner in sports? Just from a win-loss record, it's Tom Goars. I think you could put him even against the Cleveland Browns owners and people like that.

Maybe the one organization that's gone down since then in money. I don't know how much you could sell it for. I'm joking, obviously. But yeah, it's been that bad. And I don't know where it ends. And is Monte even going to make a million dollars per win? Are they going to get to 13 wins? That's what he's making.

Well, I mentioned this two weeks ago. When you have a bad team and then you overpay your coach, sometimes that's the worst thing you can do, because then he feels like he's invincible. And then the players are like, Well, I don't really like playing for this guy, but he's not going anywhere. But the problems are deeper, where they built this team. It's like a bunch of guards. They took lottery picks on Killinghays, Jaden Ive, and Kate Cunningham, three of the last four years, all of them seem like they need the ball to succeed. So just fundamentally, that doesn't work. Then they have all these big guys in a league where you need a lot of shooting. They traded Sadik Bay last year for Wiseman, even though they already had Jaylen Durin. It feels like they're putting together a fantasy team more than a real team. But when you go through all the weird thing, and this is why I think people haven't really talked about them that much because there's not a lot to say, you go year by year and you can kill them a little bit, but you can't go, Oh, my God, that's the stupidest thing.

Like in 2020, they took Killing Hayes 7 and Halberton went 12. Well, a lot of teams passed on Halbert and A.

B, a.

Lot of people like Killing Hayes. K-o-c, who I think has done a really good job in the draft for us, he thought that was possibly the best prospect in the draft. And obviously, in retrospect, Halberton was the pick. I really liked Halbert in that year. Twenty-one, they took Kate Cunningham the first pick in the draft. I was a Moby guy that year, but most people were Cunningham guys. Nobody was like, What are you guys doing? That was the consensus number one. And then in '22, when they took at five, nobody was going nuts about that. You could look from a roster construction angle, Shadon, Sharpling, Seven, Tyson, Daniels, when eight or nine and Sohan went right after that to the Spurs. And you could say, Well, why didn't they take a swing guy. I think if you're going to kill them on anything, it's probably that, thinking Ivy and Kate could play together because they can't. Yeah.

But even if you think back to that draft, and I remember I was there covering it, everybody thought that Jade and Ivy was going to go forth, right? And they killed Sacramento because Sacramento went with Keegan Murray, and that's turned out to be a really good pick because that kid's taken off right now. So he slipped and people thought he was a top four player. It was pretty clear that it was going to be Chat Palo and Jabari Smith as the front three. But then you thought, Hey, a little gap, it's Jayden, Ivy, then it's Keegan Murray. Sacramento was Keegan Murray. I wouldn't kill Detroit on that either. I actually liked Jaylen Durin. I think Jaylen Durin is going to be a really good player. You can't kill him for Kate because we all would have taken him number one or Moby, and then you can't kill him for a Sart, Thompson, who I think is going to be a good guy. So there's not individual years where you can go at them and say, This is a bad move. That's a bad move. It's just, I guess, the pieces that fit together. And that's the other thing, Bill, just like for a second, think back to the, I guess, 16 team that lost the 26 games in a row, which it looks like they're going to do right now.

Like Isth Smith, Jaleel Okaford, Nearlens Noel, Robert Covington, Hollis Thompson, those are the guys that had the most minutes for Philadelphia that year. You can tell why that team lost so many games in a row. I like this roster a lot better than that Philadelphia team or that Cavaliers team that lost 26 games in a row. Like the talent here, they shouldn't lose 25, 26 games in a row.

I agree with you. Bogdanovage missed a bunch of games, and he's their best shooter. But he's back now. You go back and you look at some of the trades they made. They traded Kenard and Bruce Brown in some seconds for Siddique Bay. They traded for Jeremy Grant from Denver, and then they paid them. They traded Christian Wooden a second for Isiah Stewart. These moves aren't bad. Getting Bagley and then paying them is probably a mistake because I'm not sure what world Marvin Bagley is, a $13 million a year guy. They traded Jeremy Grant, who I think has some value for a 25 bucks pick. That will be in the bottom of the draft. They signed Olinik. Then they traded them for Bogdanović. And then last year they held instead of trading him. And I think he would add value. They traded Bay for Wiseman. This summer, they used their cap space to trade for Joe Harris. You go individually, and it's like none of these moves are a catastrophe. But the team that they built, the roster and how it makes sense with each other, this is... I don't know if they should have lost 25 games in a row.

No.

But it's clearly the worst team in the League. Even the Wizards, you can watch The Wizards and there's going to be a night where Kuzma and Poole are feeling it, or they'll get the random Corey Kisbert game. I think it'd be really hard for that team to lose more than 12, 13 in a row. If you can't shoot, it's a little more realistic to me, right?

Yeah, especially, and Cade's taking a ton of shots, and he's been really inefficient. So that's another issue is like, you'retheir best player is... And I thought that still might be their best player at this point. He struggled here at the night, which is one of the reasons they lost. And that's probably the one move that I would criticize them out a little bit with is, by Donovic last year when he had a ton of value and might have been able to get two first round picks, I would have maybe parted with him last year, and I had said that throughout the entire process.

Yeah. You want to get worse, not tread water somewhere near the middle. And I think Bonavic had real value last year. I think his value right now. Yeah.

I mean, if you're going to lose 25 consecutive games, what's the point of having them on the roster? If you're going to win six games all year, what's the point of having them on the roster? Get somebody that's going to help you in the future. Because again, like Bogdanovich, as soon as he can get the heck out of there, he's going to get the heck out of there.

I threw this at Rosillo on Tuesday about the possibility, should they just trade Cade? Do you just do a full reboot? See what you got with Jayden Ivey. Maybe give him the car keys. I was thinking about the Spurs for Kate and they have a million picks. Is that even realistic? Because we don't see... We usually don't see in this day and age teams giving up on young point guards like that. I saw it with Halbert and the Kings, but that was pretty unique circumstance. They had a clear Fox Halbert, and they had to pick one of them. But for the most part, you don't really see it. But this is the NBA we grew up with. We watched in the 90s. We would watch these high lottery picks just get traded after a year and a half. I would think about it if I was them. I think it might be a change of scenery time for him because with the extension coming, you just can't extend somebody who can't win anything for you.

Yeah. You saw with Shauncey Billups, 50 games into his career, and he bounced around before he finally found himself. And if he did go to San Antonio, do you think Popovich would play him at Point guard or would he play him at.

Power 4? Oh, my God. I don't know if you saw the clip today of Sohan, Wendy Flashes for now, and he just ignores him and then drives in and does a turnaround airball. I mean, pop's one of those. This is one of the reasons I like listening to you, Eddie, when I'm driving around is you're not afraid to zag against the group think. And one of the group thinks is pop, Spurs, they're so great. It's like, Are we sure pop's still good? Are we sure there's confidence here at this point?

I've been saying that, and I fell into that as well. When it first happened, I'm like, Wow, he ended up in the right place. And everybody can say like- Yeah, did he? Yeah, exactly. Everybody if you say like, Oh, what do you think about When Binyama? The first words out of everybody's mouth is, Oh, he ended up in the right place. I'll tell you that. Are we sure? Because if anybody else was using him the way that Popovich has used him so far this season, we'd be criticizing him.

Right. And I wonder how Wmby and the people around him starting to feel halfway through the season. Because the frustrating thing about watching them is just like, get him the fucking ball. He's 7'5. He hasn't touched the ball for four minutes. What are we doing?

And then it's like we judged these guys right from the start. It matters if you win R rookie of the Year, which it doesn't look like he's going to do because that's probably going to go to chat. It matters if he has an 18-game losing streak on his resume, because Eddie and I were going through it, we're going like, All right, well, the longest losing streak for Magic was this. The longest losing streak for Bird was this, and Jordan and LeBron. If he wants to build up his resume, stuff like that matters in the long term. You look at all the guys that won R rookie of the Year, I think the only two all-time grades that didn't win R rookie of the Year, meaning my top seven guys of all time are Russell because he joined the Celtics midway through the season, but he won the championship. And then Magic, who won the Championship, but he didn't win R rookie of the Year, obviously, because he came in at the same time as Bird. And you're not giving this guy the opportunity to do that. And that's something that's important on the resume. And you're not going to get that because Apovitch is using them in all these weird, different ways.

And Chet has... I mean, it's so early. We're not even at the one-third point of the season. But we're hitting the checkmark where when you get third of the season, it's like, Hey, let's look around. What do we got here? Chet, really being a sturdy rookie of the year pick, I didn't think it would be this sturdy 25 games in. I thought Wendy would be in there, some mystery guy. But it's like it's Chet and it would be like, unanimous if we had to.

Vote now. But let's also be fair about this. If When Benyama was in Oklahoma City and Chet was in San Antonio, then I think When Benyama would be, because I still think When Benyama is the better player and the more talented player. You see the numbers. But he ended up in the perfect spot. And it goes back to like we see it with Rookies all the time. Lebron didn't end up in the perfect spot when he was drafted in Cleveland. Magic and Bird ended up in perfect spots. Russell ended up in a perfect spot. Duncan ended up in a perfect spot. When Benyama right now has it, and Shet has.

Most of the time, it's not a perfect spot. Do you think second-year guys should win rookie of the year?

I have all these different things where I won't give a second-year guy the most improved player because I think you're supposed to improve. If you want to argue that you should- Oh, that's good. Yeah, I get worked up over some of these stupid things. That's just another thing on the list that I don't allow myself to get worked up over. So I don't have an issue with it. I'll probably end up voting for Chad at the end of the year. I don't really factor that in. I think I probably voted maybe for Embiid if I had to vote back then when he was rookie, even though we missed, I think, his first two years.

He paid like- He paid like, yeah, and he paid like 31 games in that- 31 games.

So maybe I didn't because I'm a big stickler for the games played. You got to play a certain amount of games like 66, 67 games in order to get my vote. But I don't really have an issue with the second-year guy winning it.

Yeah, the bad team thing with the NBA right now. Detroit is two and 26. San Antonio is four and 23. But at least San Antonio feels like on the occasional night, they have a puncher's chance of maybe beating somebody, but they're still second-worst. Washington is four and 22, and they're going to probably start trading guys soon. That's about as bad of a bottom three as we've had, because then you go to Portland, seven and 19. They beat Phoenix last night. Portland looks sneaky, frisky for about 10 days here, and I think they're actually pretty fun to watch.

Yeah, I described Portland as regular bad. In the typical season, they'd be the worst team in the NBA when they beat Phoenix because I was ripping Phoenix for losing them, giving Eddie a hard time. But these other three teams are historically bad. Detroit clearly is historically bad, and then San Antonio and Washington are historically bad. Portland is just regular bad.

Charlotte 7 and 19, but that's a team that on the right neck and especially if Hayward is healthy. Then Memphis is the sixth worst team right there. They're 8 and 19. They've just won two in a row. And Jaws back. And I don't think they're going to make the playoffs, but they're certainly not a bottom six team with Jaw because Jaw is one of the 20 best guys in the League. And then you got Utah at 11 and 18. In Toronto at 11 and 16. That feels like they could go either way. Are they going to fire sale it with Aninoby? Are they going to string it along here a little bit more, see what they got? And then the Bulls at 13 and 17, who since LaVine went on the lineup have been playing really well. And I don't even really know what the trade is because my Laker fans are like, Oh, we're going to trade Russell and Rui and a pig for them. They'll say, Oh, I'm sure the Bulls are dying to get the Angela Russell. They're actually playing well. What do they want him for? Kobe White, they might have actually foundout.

These are on a great contract. I think they're going to have a lot of trouble trading LaVine.

So do I. I mean, Wage came out and said there was no market for them, and I agree with that. There is a market for the Martyr Rose, and there's probably a bigger market for Alex Carusel. I think those are the two guys that you covered on that team. But now does Chicago buy into this almost like Miami a couple of years ago, remember when they started out the season, I think, 10 and 31 in the first 41 games, then they went 31-10 the second half, and they're like, All right, we're going to give extensions to to White side. We're going to give one to Deion Waiters. And they got tricked a little bit. I mean, does Chicago buy into it and go, All right, well, now that we're playing a little bit better, let's keep these guys and not make a move. I don't think they should do that. I think it would be a mistake, especially with DeRosen because he's going to be a free agent, but maybe they do that at the deadline. I don't think they should. I think they should get rid of the guys.

I'm glad you brought up White side. Heat culture, which we always hear about. I respect the heat, but you also need some luck. And that Jimmy Butler summer, they had no cash base, but they needed some sucker to take Hassan White's contract off their books. And Portland was like, Here we are, and raised their hand and took them. And that's how they got Jimmy Butler. But they've had a couple of those. They had that year when they got Lamar wrote them because the agent screwed up Anthony Carter's contract and got voided. And all of a sudden, they got Lamar wrote them. They had the year where they got Karon Butler because he fell to 10 when he never should have fallen to 10. You need a little luck with some of this stuff, too. We're going to take a break and we're going to come back and you have something sticking in your crawl. As the weather gets cold, the NFL Offers stay hot on Fandle. Right now, new customers get $150 of bonus bets. In your first $5 money line bet wins, we are going to be covering a lot of great ideas in the Million dollar Picks segment.

I put a lot of research because it didn't do well last week. Did great the few weeks before, but last week was not good. So I'm coming back with a vengeance. And if you're thinking about joining Fandual, there's no better time to get on the action. Easy to use app, so many different ways to bet live, same game, Parlays. You can dive into the Parlay Hub. You can do cross sport bets. The best way to find popular or parlase is on Fandle. Go visit fandle. Com/bs and kick off the NFL season. Fandle, official partner of the NFL. You must be 21 plus in President of the United States. Five dollar pre-gain money line wage or required. First online real money wage or only to $10 first if it's required. Bonus issue is non-contrable bonus that expires seven days after receipt, C-terms at sportsbook. Fandle. Com. You had T-Maran on your show this week. Is he's done some weird media stuff this week. I'll say this. If I was Tim Morant's PR person, I maybe would have told him to lay low this week. I'm not sure of being defiant and making it seem like no lessons were learned at all.

And his guy wasn't being treated as fairly as other people in the same situation. I'm not sure that was the tact. Rosella and I both talked about this. I thought the suspension was too long. I thought 25 games was obscene. I didn't really agree with it because he didn't put anyone else in the danger. And he was just basically setting a bad example and acting erratically. I don't think that's a 25-game suspension, but it was definitely 15 somewhere in there. But the way his dad handled it made me think the suspension didn't work.

Yeah. So like you said, you were surprised. My producer goes, Hey, we got Tim Morant on the line. And I'm going, Wait, Tim Morant is going to talk to us.

Right now? You didn't know he was calling in?

No, we weren't. He's like, I got the number, we're going to try and get him on the air. So we got him on the air. But I didn't think he was going to follow through and actually do the interview because I'm thinking like, All right, somebody from the NBA probably said, Hey, tone it down. Let's not be public. Let's be quiet here for a little while. I'm thinking maybe somebody with the grizzlies ended up doing that. So it was a surprise to me that we get him on initially. And then as he starts talking, I couldn't believe the stuff that he was saying because, yeah, it gave me the same idea that you got from it is that there's no remorse there at all. Like, he's saying that he didn't do anything criminally wrong. We talked to him for about 15, 20 minutes, and he's like, He didn't do anything criminally wrong. What's the big deal? And then he kept saying, Well, other people have done worse, and he won't name the other guys, but he's like, Other faces of the league in the past have done worse. What he did wasn't that bad. And then one of the criticisms everybody's been giving Jaws like, All right, you got to change the inner circle, the people that you're hanging around.

So I asked him directly. I said, Is anything changed about his inner circle? And he said, Nope, inner circle is still the same. And then we got into like, Is he the face of the league? Can he be the face of the league? And he said, Well, he doesn't want to be the face of the League. That's for other people. He just wants to win games for the grizzlies. That's his only job. And it's like, well, one, it's not his only job. You've got to represent the League in an appropriate way. But two, you didn't do that job well this year because the reason that they are 7 and 19 or 8 and 19, whatever they are right now and going to miss the postseason is because he was messing around with the gun.

Right. He murdered their season. Unfortunately for everybody, when he came back, they were 6 and 19. And Chris Vernon and I were arguing about it because he's like, We can get back to 500 here, meaning the grizzlies. Jah is one of the best players in the league. This is doable. And I just thought this was completely undoable. Then they win that game, the big comeback game against New Orleans, and Jah is incredible. And he started thinking, I don't know how this plays out. Could they rip off a 20-5 stretch? Because now they have him and Triple J and Desmond-Bainback. The league seems too deep and too strong to do that. But I got to say, he didn't look like he missed the beat since he left. But the off-court stuff, the fact that he doesn't seem chastened at all by anything is concerning. It just is.

Yeah. I mean, you heard it with the father, and you can go back and listen to the interview on SiriusXM. But the other thing is you heard it almost right after the game was over, right? Where he does the.

Interview with you. I'm taking receipts. Yeah, and I'm taking receipts. I remember everything.

Exactly. And all right, what are these receipts on? Is it basketball related? Because the receipts, I think, are coming from people that want to help him or that are concerned that his career is going in the wrong direction. Everything critical I said, it wasn't about him as a player. I think he's a phenomenal player. I think he's a top 15 to 20 player in the sport. I love him as a player. It was all about like, Hey, if you don't get this rectified in the way that you're behaving off the court, then we're not going to get to see that player and you're not going to live up to your potential. So it was like criticism that was coming from a good place, and he's acting like it's coming from a bad place.

Yeah. I thought it was very kids club. The Zion stuff, and I include this podcast, was a little bit harsher because that's something we could see. It's like you're not in shape. And then we find out all this stuff with Zion this week about this contract that he has where there are all these different clauses in there and there's a possibility it might not even be guaranteed for the last three years if he doesn't hit certain weight and body fat limits. That's another one. And I just think we're nicer about this stuff than we used to be. If this was the mid-90s, I think the way this would be covered and discussed would be way more vicious. I think the behavior of the fans with the heckling and all that stuff would be way more vicious. I think the feeling I got with Jahd the last eight, nine months, whether it's people in the NBA community like us or fans or whoever, is everybody was just like, Hey, man, we all love watching you play. Can you get your shit together? But really, I didn't feel like there was a mean-spirited edge at all. So when he was like, I'm keeping receipts.

I'm like, I didn't hear anybody say anything really about him. Did you?

No, I didn't hear that. I'll be as harsh as anybody I think in the NBA media on a guy if I think that he deserves to be called out. And I didn't say anything that I felt was inappropriate. In fact, I think, to be honest with you, I feel like the attacks on Zion, now that Warren-hunted, but I think it's more mean-spirited towards Zion than I think it is towards Ja, like people saying about Zion, like you're fat, you eat too much, you're not in shape, like that stuff, I think. And I'm guilty of it as well. I throw out those jokes, but again, it's his job to stay in shape, so I think it's fair, and I don't think it's out of bounds. But I think the more mean-spirited stuff is probably directed at Zion, not necessarily Jah.

Well, we were mean-spirited about the Go Bear trade.

Yeah.

I stand by that. I thought they gave up way too much. When we headed into last summer, I thought it had a chance to be one of the worst trades of all time. It's clearly a lot better. The team has improved. He's fit in better. They've figured out how to manage him in town so far. Although the Philly game last night that went and beat just slaughtered them. On the one hand, I was really disappointed because I was like, this is going to be Minnesota's moment where they show like, hey, if you haven't beat or Yokeage, we have the type of team to shut those guys down. And it went the other way and beat towards them. But if you actually watched the game. The refs were just... Go Bear got 2,000, what? Two minutes, something like that? And it just was one of those games that it was immediately off with the way it was being official. And you can feel it like, Oh, it's going to be one of these games. Okay, I get it.

Yeah. And that can dictate a game. You get two early falls on a guy that's a key defender or a key player. It takes them right out of the game because they got to play differently. And you saw all the bigs because they are the best equipped to deal with them. Same thing with the is you got the two quick falls on Gobert, two quick falls on Towns, two quick falls on Nazreed. So your three guys that are going to be trying to impede Embiid are all in file trouble. Now that's a skill for Embiid to give them credit for being able to draw that and to make the referees blow the whistle on that. But yeah, you wanted to see that a little bit better in '51. You got to give Embiid credit because I had been one of those guys that's going, all right, he's not facing any good defenses. By the time he faces a good defense, this is going to be a big test. And he came through with flying collars. But with that said, even with that performance, now maybe it registers a little bit when you're filling out your ballot.

I think he's been the best defender in the sport this year, Gobert, and the difference, and I'm sick of hearing this thing, Well, once he gets to the postseason, he gets exposed. Yeah, the reason he was exposed, Bill, and I think we know this, is because he was surrounded by horrific defenders all over the floor in Utah. That's not the case in Minnesota, where you've got Anthony Edwards, who you've noted on your pod, when he wants to can defend with the best guys in the League. Jayda McDaniels, who I voted for second team all defense last year, he's fantastic. So now Go Bear, those weaknesses can't be exploited. So I think he fits in perfect there. And we had actually Tim Connolly on the show today, and he claims he didn't hear any of the criticism that guys like us were giving him. Oh, come on. Clearly, he did. But you got to now hear the apologies, I guess. Now, did he still give up too much? Yes, he gave up too much. But are you really going to get on this case in retrospect if they have the best defense this year, which is mostly because of Gobert, if they have the best record in the Western Conference, if it's the best Timberworth's team of all time for an organization that's been incompetent, and they make a run to the conference finals or the finals, can you really look at that and say it's a failure?

Maybe you can for the Lakers or the Celtics or Miami, a team that's continually had success. But if that's where they topped out after making a trade like that, but if they top out conference finals and it matches the best team in franchise history, I think you got to say the trade was worth it.

If you put Walker Kessler in Go Bear's spot and also gave them five first round picks, I'm curious to see how it plays out because Go Bear is a little further along than Kessler, but that would be the counter. One thing on embed, because I don't want to make it seem like we're skipping over a 51 pointer by him, because part of his job and part of what makes him great is he makes it really hard on the officials to initiate him. And he initiates contact. He's just good at it. The stuff he was doing in the fourth quarter, when he gets in grooves like that, we're old enough that we've seen some really great centers. There's some in there. There's hybrids of different scores. But I actually think he might be the best scoring center I've seen since Kareem in terms of just when he really want... If he wants to get 20 points in a quarter and he's feeling a little bit, he really can. He's got these different spots from the court that he's just like money with now. He's in shape. I've just been really impressed. And I thought, Yokeage, I mean, it might have been 10 or 11 days ago, we were saying the distance between Yokeage and the second best player in the week.

Yeah, it was the three weeks ago?

Yeah, it was about three weeks ago.

The.

Distance was the same as LeBron and the next best player.

And Beat is short in the distance.

No doubt about it. Now also, it's one of those hard and things where you got to see it in the postseason, because if you look at the postseason for Embi, all the numbers go down. Think about it. You said that he's the best scoring center maybe since Kareem. You know who's averaging more points than him in the postseason? Jokic, who everybody says is pass-hard, and Jokic is averaging more points than him in the postseason. So he's got to do it in the postseason. And one of the reasons I think, is end of the season, he's asked to play 44 hard minutes, whereas Jokic is capable of doing that. Embiid sometimes breaks down. But like you said, in regards to the scoring, what I would say, he doesn't score in the same way as the Shaq, but imagine making Shaq a 90 % free throw shooter, because that's basically what Embiid is right now. You could file Shaq, and Shaq is not going to make you pay for it. Like, Embiid, you follow me shooting 90 % basically on the season.

And the maxi piece, I think, is just the flow of the team is just better for him. It feels a little more chaotic, which is good for him. Last year's team was too deliberate. Yeah. And I don't think watching the team this year, just they feel a tiny bit more unpredictable. You texted me about the reason I brought the GoBear train other than the talk about Minnesota and a Bid was you think that we're at the point where two trades that happened in the last couple of years are worse than the GoBear trade now?

Yes. I think the Donovan-Mitchell trade is worse from the same team. Now, I always liked Gobert better than Mitchell even when they were in Utah. But think about it this way, Gobert actually wants to be there in Minnesota. Donovan Mitchell, from everything you hear, doesn't want to be there. The Cavs aren't winning, Minnesota is winning. And then I think what Gobert does is he covers up for the mistakes of... And correct me if you think I'm wrong in any of this. He covers up to the mistakes of Karl-Anthony Towns and the weaknesses. Karl-anthony Towns is not a great defender. Rudy Gobert is amongst the best in the sport and the history of the sport, so it equals out there a little bit, and they found a nice little way to play off each other. And then you look at Cleveland, and I know you were a big on Moby coming right out. Kevin Garnett, Kim Duncan comparisons. And defensively, yes, but has he developed offensively at all? Like has Navan Mitchell made him better offensively at all? And you tune into those games, they run no plays for him. He's actually taking less shots this year per game than he did in his rookie year.

And then Darius Garland's 22, Bill. Okay, he's 22. He makes an all-star team. His numbers are flying off the chart and you're thinking there's no way he's going to go but up. Now you're taking the ball out of his hands and you're giving it to and his numbers have been staunted. So two guys that you could build your organization around who I think are both studs in Garland and Mobly, those guys haven't gotten any better. And maybe they've gotten slightly worse when they should be developing.

I like to trade when they did it. Mobly has not progressed the way I thought. I'm not going to take the loss yet because it's year three and he's like 21, 22, and it seems like he was hurt this year. But if he's not going to shoot, then he's got to be a center if he's not going to have an outside shot.

Well, how much do you put that on Mitchell, though, in getting him involved? And the guy's taking 21 shots a game, which I think is the third or fourth most in the league. And I like Donovan Mitchell. I think he's a good score, but he should have taken two or three more shots than Jason Tudum or two or three more shots than Kevin Durant. I don't know if he should be taking 21 shots a game.

I agree with you. I've seen enough of the Garland-Mitchell combo to decide that I just would rather have Garland be the guy in that team. 100 %. And I'd rather turn Mitchell in a lesser score and some other pieces.

Exactly. So another score and some lesser pieces. Do you think that they can get now? So Danny Yange gets rid of Mitchell at the right time because we knew he wanted out, right? Yeah. Do you think that Kolby, Altman now in Cleveland can get what Danny Yange got from Mitchell originally? Even a player is good as Larry Marken. If he traded him, forget the picks, and there's a ton of picks involved. If you just made a straight-up trade, do you think that you could get a player as good as Larry Marken?

But we didn't know Larry Marken was- No, we didn't. -even close to be in discount dirt at that point. There's a lot of sex then, in that trade. And I think they lost, didn't they?

There was a Bajee, too? Yeah, a Bajee and all the picks that are coming their way. They're going to look a lot better if Mitchell ends up darting. And then the other trade is Dejante Murray. And I don't understand why nobody brings that up because they gave up a lot for Dejante Murray. They gave up first round picks. I got it written right here. 2023, 2025, 2027, a pick swap in 2026. So that's potentially four first round picks. And we kill the timber wolves. We're starting to get on the calves a little bit. Nobody says anything about Atlanta. Well, at least Cleveland had a modicom of success last year. Minnesota is playing really well right now. You traded all that stuff to team up to John De Murray with Trey Young. What have they done? They've been under 500 teams since they did that.

That's my biggest disappointment this year. I did pretty well in the over-under so far, but that was one of my overs. It was like 41 or 40-say it? I was like, over.

Yeah, same with me. I think you had that as a lock. I had Chris Snyder as my Coach of the Year, and I had that as a lock for the over. I think it was 42 and a half. I'm wrong. That's not going to happen.

I don't know what this means necessarily, but they had by far the worst record against the spread this year. Going to last night's game, there were six and 20 against the spread. And the reason I think that matters for NBA purposes is over and over, people are waiting for them to play better than... And it just was game to game. It was like, Oh, this will be the game. Oh, no. Now we should favor them by three again. And people are betting both sides of it. And just for 26 games, they were disappointing. And when you watch them, it's like they can't guard anybody. And Trey and Murray, like Doc was saying on the pod the other day that he just thinks they're too small of a combo.

I heard. And he doesn't guard anybody. Like, yeah, down the stretch, you're afraid of Trey Young. But we were texted about Derek White as well. And I know this is like, maybe it's viewed as a hot take, but that's a winning player. He's efficient offensively. He can defend anybody. He's one of the better defensive guards. And Trey Young doesn't guard anybody. It's like, all right, Derek White is a winning player. He's not going to give you the flashy numbers that Trey Young. I'd almost rather have him in a winning situation. I don't think Trey can be involved on a winning team if he's going to take a million shots, not shoot efficiently. I don't think guys necessarily love playing with him. He can't get along with head coaches Lloyd pierce, Nate McMillen, and who knows with Quinn Snyder? It doesn't seem to be a problem yet. There's a lot of issues with Trey Young if he's going to be your centerpiece.

That's another piece of the Popovich puzzle. They traded Derek White, and they didn't really get a shitload back.

That's a.

Guy everybody loves. And they just were like, Hey, take him.

I tweeted that out the other day. What did they get in return? Essentially nothing. Maybe a 2028-protected, I think, number.

One- It was top one-protected PIC and Romeo Langford and another first that they already used.

Yeah. And where is Langford right now? Where's the first that they used? I think it was Blake Wesley. They're not doing anything at the NBA level. So really, it's just based off this upcoming PIC that's a PIC swap that most likely, who knows? It probably doesn't even kick in. But yet, Derek White, that trade, it was brutal. Now, I criticized maybe that a little bit from the Celtics perspective, so I can't be a hypocrite. But like, Popovich is the one watching Derek White all the time. He's supposed to know how good he is.

I knew when they got him, I had a couple of people I trust in the league like, Oh, my God, you're going to love Derek White. I was like, Oh, that's a good sign. Like hearing that instead of the usual, like when the Red Sox would sign a free agent, my Dodge or fan friends would be like, Oh, my God, you're going to hate that guy.

We're not signing a free agent.. You're headed to the Dodge...

Oh, come on. We had no chance to get a Yelma. It was the all-time smoke and mirrors. They were never signing up. You asked me where white ranks in the hierarchy for the Celtics right now. It's weird because the two most indispensable players in the team are not the players people would think. The superpowers for the team are White and Porzing.

And Poizing? 100 %.

They can survive if one of Tatum or Brown is out for a game or even a week. They could survive if Drew is out. But White, you just feel it when White or Porzing is out. When Poizing is didn't play in that Golden State game, I was like, Oh, my God. Here we go. He's the superpower. I was telling somebody it was like what Iguodala was to the Warriors in the mid-2010s, he wasn't the best part of the team, but when he was out there, when he was healthy, the ceiling just went up. And it just felt like, Oh, my God, look at this group. That's what Poizingus does for them. And White's just been lights out on both ends. He has a case for best defensive guard in the League. He's at least in the running. Yeah. And offensively, this was what I was saying when they got rid of Marcus was I just want the ball to be in White's hands more. I think he, as a ball handle, distributor, pick and roll guy, he's a good shooter. The more the balls in his hands, the better they are. Their big issue right now is this end of the game stuff.

They've lost six games this year, and five of them were losses in the last two minutes. And three of them were just possessions that if they had just taken care of business, they win the game. And the only team that's blown them out so far is Orlando, and that was like 15. That game was closed in six minutes left in the fourth quarter. They haven't gotten a shit kicked out of them in a game yet.

Yeah, they get the shit kicked out of them in the last minute of a close game if they got to draw up a play, though. And that's the part I think you're referencing. And I don't know if you saw, I quote tweeted you the other day because you put out those two plays with Jaylen Brown, I think, the year ago in Philadelphia.

No, those are both from this year.

The Brown one and then the Tatum one. And no time out from Joe Mazula, but I'm watching, and what I quote tweeted your thing with was, Earlier in the day, did we not watch Taylor Jenkins in a similar situation? Rebound for Memphis, six seconds left. He calls the time out. He draws up and play for jaw. What does jaw do? Jaw doesn't take a 22-foot contested three in a tight game. He drives to the hoop. He tries to create contact. He finishes at the rim. Meanwhile, you got Jalen Brown earlier this year, no time out, dribbles the length of the floor, takes a three. You got Jason Tatum, Thai game. What are we shooting a three for? Drew Hollity hands the ball off him, takes a three, no time out. So yeah, that stuff drives you nuts.

And then it was the Charlotte game, Thai game, 30 seconds left. Porzingus flashes in the paint. Jaylen just shoots a contested three. And then the other one was the Minnesota game, which I put up there. And then there was another one against Indiana. Haliburton makes the four-point play, comes back down. We still got a minute, 10 left. And Tatum is like, I got to shoot a three, and takes the 28-footer over and over again. This team thinks a contested three is a good shot. What drives me nuts is in a Thai game, a three-pointer is not a good shot. Exactly. It's a 32-35 % shot, especially if the other team thinks... What teams don't want the Celtics to do? I'm going to tell you right now. They don't like when White is in a pick and roll and has the ball and has a screener who can shoot threes. They hate when Tatum has his back to the basket. I just always study how the defense reacts to this stuff. When Tatum has his back to the basket 15 feet away, the defense panics. They'll send a double at him right away because he can spin and go to the hoop.

He can shoot over whatever defender. They don't want him to do that. What they want him to do is take 28-foot contested threes, and they continue to do it. And I don't know what to say anymore.

Yeah, especially with the weight that Tatum has put on. He's big now, so that's what he should be doing, is posting up and doing that spin move. So I'm 100 % on board with you. And the thing that's frustrating to me is like, and I don't know if you heard the back and forth with Gary Washburn, and they've had it a couple of times in the Boston Glope, where he said, Hey, Golden State doesn't have a rim protector. Do you think you should have taken a couple more layups and driven to the hoop? And Missoula is like, No, I thought we got good looks. You missed 41 threes, 41. You had a 17-point lead. You're playing a team without a rim protector, and you're taking 58 threes. So that's the concerning part, is like they're being told that's the thing that the coach wants to do. And he said earlier in the year, I guess, according to Gary, that he wants to average 53s a night, which, Bill, is something like the Pistons could use to their advantage. They can't shoot an outside shot, but it's like if you don't have talent, take threes because that helps you stay in competition with teams that are better than you.

Correct? But if you're the more talented team, don't rely on threes.

I was arguing with a Celtic friend of mine. I was like, I don't understand why we didn't attack Curry. He had five fouls for an hour in the game. And my friend was like, Well, they did attack them. They almost got out of their offense because they're trying to get them in switches and stuff. And I'm like, Yeah, but they didn't attack them. They were shooting jump shot. They're getting switches on him, then shooting 22 footers over him. That's not making him defend you when you're driving in the basket. There's an IQ thing with this team at the end of games that is the biggest fear I have with them. I just don't-.

Talent-wise, they're the best. Talent-wise, I think they have the most talent in the NBA. The shot selection, the IQ, that's the concerning part for me.

100 %. And the coaching piece. I love Al Horford. I don't think Al Horford should play more than 30 minutes in a regular season game ever. And I think he played 40 in that Golden State game, but Joe kept him out there. He kept him out there. Golden State, every play now, they're trying to just get Horford on Curry. And what I don't understand, and I don't understand why the Celtics don't see this, is just go small. Horford doesn't have to be out there. Golden State didn't have a center. Just play Tate him at center. Go smaller, just have more shooting and bring in Pritchard. I don't care who it is, but Horford, it was the wrong match up for him. And once he lost his legs, I don't want to be the Celtic fan who's just complaining about this awesome team that's probably going to win 60 games. But I think this team is not reaching their potential as crazy as it sounds.

Well, and I'm not going to really get on Missoula's case. But what I will say that'll concern me, let's call him a League average coach, all right? We'll say he's League average. That's fair. Okay. Then you look at the two teams that probably scare you the most because I'm not scared. I'm sorry. And we talked about this last time about Milwaukee, and I know they're keeping up record-wise. I'm not scared of them. Their defense, not scared of them. Just because defensively, there's too many holes. The two teams that scare me the most, even though I killed their offseason and somehow they find Haime Haquaz, is Miami and Philadelphia. I think those are their two biggest hurdles right now. And they got the two of the three best coaches in the sports. Spulcher is the best, nick Nurse, Tyreke and the other two. And Missoula is going to have to match wits with them. And those two guys are legitimate top notch head coaches.

I'm not that concerned about Philly yet, but I do want to see what their trait is because I think they could beat Philly. They've had their number. Miami, I'm terrified of go to the other conference, Lakers, LeBron's IQ and the way he'll dissect them as the series goes along. That's terrifying. Yokeage, same thing. Yokeage will just use his fucking computer brain and figure out how to get them. And then the Minnesota matchup is a bad matchup for them because both of their wings can guard Tateem and Brown. And Tateem and Brown have a tendency of just ramming their heads against the wall when they can't get what they want versus like, maybe I'm not the match of this game and their size that they have. And unfortunately for the Celtics, they might see three of those four teams or two of those four. They could see Miami, but Denver, Lakers, Minnesota, and the West, those would be the three of the four likely candidates other than maybe... Okay, see, I'm out on Phoenix. Don't tell Eddie.

Yeah.

No, I won't. Keep it.

A secret. Well, I'll say Bill is out on them. But, Eddie, I'm not out on them. I'm in support of Phoenix because if I blame it on you, he's not going to yell at me.

Is he still in we good mode as he watches Nerkage throwing up?

This has been as willing to criticize as Eddie has been at any point.

What does he not like?

So he's just concerned about the... Now, he still thinks they're going to come around, but he is a little bit concerned about, I think, the offense because he thought it was going to be a lot better, and there's no excuse for them to be what? I think a middle of the road offensive team if you have Booker and Kevin Durant, you got to be better than that. And the other thing is, I don't know if you've looked at their schedule, they've played nobody. Can you even name a good win? The two teams they beat over 500, okay? The Knicks, MSG, what happened there? Booker needs a three at basically the buzzer to win that game. And then the other 500 team they beat was Minnesota, and they beat Minnesota at home on the second end of a back to back. They don't have one good win their entire season.

Well, nobody could have predicted Bradley Beale would miss some games, so that's not.

Their problem. No, nobody.

Yeah, you're right. Oh, wait. You're thinking everybody.

You mean everybody? I think you meant everybody, not nobody.

I mean, you get what you pay for, right? You're going to pay $50 million a year for a guy who plays 40-50 games a year, and that's probably how it's going to play out. The other thing is the body language doctor is not like what he's seen from them at all. I don't like anything I see from them on that front.

Even Durant, after the game the other day, finally admitted that he didn't say it directly, but he's like, We got to get into our offense sooner. Okay, well, what helps you get into your offense sooner? How about a point guard? A point guard? Like a traditional.

Point guard? Oh, wow. It turns that point guards matter, the position that has been at the center of the league since 1946?

Yeah. And they kept saying at the beginning of the year like, Oh, we don't need a true point guard. Devon, Bradley, or Split the time, it'll be fine. And so far, that has not been the case.

Anytime a team says we don't need the thing that has worked in basketball for the entire time it's existed, I'm suspicious. Same for the Spurs. So hand can be a point guard. Okay, great. Good luck with that.

Yeah, that's a little bit probably like stealth tanking.

Well, good luck with Eddie because I know he gets super grumpy. You can hear Justin with Eddie Johnson, 4:00 to 7:00, SiriusXM, what is it?

Siriusxm NBA radio, 4:00 to 7:00 Eastern time. I got to deal with Johnson. I got a nice little respite, though, because he's not working the day after Christmas. We got no show on Friday, so it's four days. I don't have to deal with that. Oh, that's great.

That meatball. Yeah. By the.

Way, we don't talk at all. And then you text us and you know what you do? You'll text us in a group text, and then we'll start fighting and you'll just sit back there and not respond. And then it's me and him going at each other. And then that lasts the entire week where we're going at each other. And he's like, Well, you said this to Bell. I'm like, Well, you said this to Bell. And it turns into a mess and you add a lot of stress to my life.

You guys are like a 1950s Irish-Catholic couple that doesn't talk. And then when it explodes, it just explodes for five days.

He.

Always.

Says he could be my father. And I'm like, Listen, my mother would have no interest in you. So you could not be my father.

Justin, good to see you. Thanks for staying up.

All right. Thanks, Bill. Thanks for having me.

All right. My friend Kevin Wilde is here. You could see him on First Things First on FS1. You could have seen him in my house a couple of weeks ago. We watched football. You just came over. You didn't give me any warning. You texted me an hour before the games.

I felt like I had to fly across country. I'm not like you're the best planner in the world either. When did you ask me to come on the pod 20 minutes ago. Hey, can you come on? So I was reciprocating your planning ability. I'm going to get off the plane and see if Bill's around. Also, I didn't know where you lived. I was like, Where do you live, by the way?

First of all, it was two hours and 20 minutes ago that I texted you. I just wanted to see you before the holidays.

Thank you.

You're on a show every day doing TV arguments about football stuff. We're almost at the end of the year. Instead of asking you who the MVP is, who has been the MVP for football arguing on TV where you need a seven-minute segment and you just need to throw some raw meat toward the camera? Is it Brock Purdy? It feels like Brock Purdy is the winner.

Is Brock Purdy... So is it? Brock Purdy is probably the answer because of the Gulf of opinions you can have. You can say, and I will listen to nick Wright, for example, say, Brock Purdy is not that good, and we'll push back on him. He's like, Oh, yeah? Then why don't you give him $50 million a year? I'd say, Wow, that's actually a cogent analysis. That's a great point. And then today we had Jerry Wright saying, You know what Brock Purdy reminds me of Joe Montana. And both are reasonable takes that I vacillate left and right between. So I would say that he's the MVP in the runner up in the TV topic MVP race is going to be the Dallas Cowboys, O and 3 on the... What are they? O and 3 on the road against teams over 500? One in three? Yeah. I'm going to get my stat wrong. O and 3 on the road against teams over 500. Are the cowboys actually good? So it's like a cousin of his. Are they actually good or are they just beaten up on tomato cans? Those are the two MVP. Coming in with the bronze of the topic MVP, personally, for me, it's like, What are the Patriots doing?

But that ran out of steam.

Not for me.

I still care. No, but don't you feel like nationally? I mean, maybe it's different for you. But I had to tell the producers. I'm like, You know what, guys? We probably shouldn't do The Patriots anymore. Oh, I know The Bronze. The Bronze medal is What's wrong with the Chiefs? What's wrong with the Chiefs? And nick is super fired up saying there's nothing wrong with the Chiefs because the defense is so good. I'm like, I get the defense is so good, but you guys used to have the best pizza place in the entire country. And now you're trying to sell me on how good the garlic knots are? The pizza has taken a step back. Don't tell me how good the defense is. At the same time, I think the Chiefs are going to win the Super Bowl. Those are the top three MVP candidates, Brock, Purdy, Zach, and are the Chiefs dropping too many balls? Which they are.

Well, after you laid that out to me, that even emboldened Purdy's campaign, because the best thing about him and the best thing about any sports topic like that is that somebody can go in any direction and they're not wrong. That's usually when you have the perfect sports topic, right? Because as you said, we have Stephen Ruiz in The Ringer who's just he does keepy rankings every week. And I love it. It's this rare 2023 where the person's like, I'm not wavering from this. I don't think it's that good. I don't care what the stats are. I don't care what he did last week. I'm going to be right in the end. A little like how I feel about hard in the Clipper's, actually. But with Purdy, on the flip side, people can't even figure out what comparison to use because I've heard the Joe Montana thing. People push that. But then there's a Drew breeze with better legs thing I've seen. Oh, I like that. Yeah. It's like if Drew breeze was more athletic. And then the other piece I like is that any time a reporter or a TV person needs a story or three minutes, they can just go to any niner and ask them why Brock Purdy is so underrated.

And they're all able to give these cogent monologs about how people don't understand how Brock Purdy is. It just keeps going and going.

You can go up to the 49ers and be like, Hey, you know what they're saying? Brock Purdy sucks. I'm like, What? Who said that? Here's what people don't realize. And then went on and said, Hey, Brock, who do you think the MVP is? And rather than saying, You know what, guys? I'm focused on the Ravens. He's like, Christian is probably the MVP. So then we have to spin this one as like, Wow, what leadership? Wouldn't the MVP say that his partner is the MVP? So he's Montana. He's Tom braided as well, obviously, late tract pick, a little bit of the system, but maybe evolving. He's also, and so Brock, Cody came in and took Tua's narrative, that Tua is trying to reclaim like, Oh, I'm only good because of this Mike McDaniel's system, which is actually a branch-off, shanehan system, and Tyreke is a Christopher McAfrey, the legendary offensive weapons. So he's also a little bit of, and then this one pops up too, because maybe just on my algorithm, because I just get Mac Jones trending all the time like, Oh, if you put Mac Jones in the Niner's offense, but do they have the same record?

Are they better? I'm like, Oh, man. And if you like Brock so much, why don't you trade Mac Jones for him? Straight up and give him 50 million, give him a long-term extension. I guess they don't like Brock.

There's a good Trevor Lawrence piece of that, too. If you flip Trevor Lawrence and Brock Purdy, what happens? From what we've seen from Trevor Lawrence for the last few years, who's had flashes and then he's been sloppy with the ball, you can go that route. There's two other good pieces on the bone of the Brock Purdy bone, now that you're talking about this, that I thought. One is that he's been so good this year, you can now go backwards and do the whole if Brock Purdy didn't get hurt, the Niners would have won the Super Bowl last year. And there's no way to argue about it because you're just in a vacuum of not knowing what the answer is. So you could just say that blindly. Then the other one, which I actually think is a good argument, is the draft is stupid. Why do we care so much about it? Where you can get just having Tray Lance, who they trade up for at number three, and then they get the quarterback of the future with the last pick in the draft. And it's just a fucking crapshoot.

Why? No, that's why I don't care about the Patriot tank and games. I don't know. And Matt Jones, Trevor Lawrence, Justin Field, Tray Lance, Zach Wielfen. Are we a hundred %? I guess Trevor Lawrence, we're a hundred % positive. He's good.

I don't know. 95 %. I don't know. 95? What is good? Is he ever going to be a top seven quarterback in the league? I don't know. Not positive.

I don't know.

I'd say it's more likely than unlikely, but I still feel like we have some questions with him.

Yeah. I mean, not generational. But the fact that that draft went one for five, well, I put, two for six is weird. I spent a lot of time on the draft boards watching stuff like that. Or maybe Mac Jones will be good. Maybe Mac Jones will move to a new system and be excellent. He's pretty good. He's going to be good.

It feels like it's 40 % now. It used to be 50 % with a quarterback pick. It's like, Oh, it's a coin flip. I don't even know if it's a coin flip anymore.

It's 40 %.

It feels like 35 % to 40 %. You look at the jets. I was talking to a jets fan because I was saying how I wanted the pass to get the first pick.

And.

The jets fan pointed out to me that they had the number two pick, I think, three years apart. And they went, Oh, for two with Sam, Donald and Zach Wilson. And they were like, We did that both of those years. We had to get the worst pick possible. It's a loaded quarterback draft. And then you're still at 35 %. I think for me, the difference is it's the best asset. Forget about the quarterback part, just getting the number one pick. That's an asset. I can trade back. I can pick up more picks. It's just better to have that pick versus I know there's not Andrew Locke this year, but I would still rather have the asset.

I don't know. I think Caleb Williams should be better than Andrew Locke.

I hope you're right. But that's another thing. Caleb Williams, I think, is we talked about the conversation foughter. He's been a good one because some people, they do that. I don't like what I've heard about him. There's been some red flags. It's like, Is there? Seems pretty fun. I love him.

He seems amazing. And Drake May, I got to start grinding more of Drake May take. But if you're telling me Drake May is the guy, I'm going to go with it. The other weird thing about quarterbacks is I wonder if we go back, look back on this year as in a whole quarter back. It's a quarter back league, right? And everyone's just like, You say that, and everyone nods their heads like, Yeah, of course. It used to be a running back league. And when I was growing up. Now it's a quarterback league. It's like, Really? Because Gairdner Minchu, who no one believed in, is going to bring the Colts to the playoffs because of Shane Cyken. And all of a sudden, Joe Flacko is good, Jake Browning is good. So we have these backup quarterbacks that are all of a sudden excellent. Is it just system? Is it wide receiver? But maybe we were overvaluing paying quarterbacks a quarter of your salary cap when Jake Browning can come in there and put up eye-popping numbers if he's got Jamar and T. Higgins there. His numbers are nut. It's one of my picks. But Jake Browning is...

When Joe Brookie was cooking, they were scoring 25 and a half points a game. Now, Jake Browning, they're scoring 26 points a game. Pastor rating, Joe Brookie, this would have been like, Joe Borough is back, 106.5, and Browning is at 109.3. So is just Browning just great all of a sudden? Or is Browning part of the system? I don't know. I guess we'll find out this weekend.

The only thing with Browning, I don't know if there's a way to make sense of any of this, but he did have a lot of... He had a big high school. I liked that. He was really good in one game in high school and was considered a blue chip guy. And then he went to Washington and he was sophomore year. He was in the Heisman running and then he got hurt. He was never really the same after he got hurt, but he started over 50 games for them. And one of the things I've heard people try to make the case, like if you're trying to figure out how to get sleepers from QB, it's the guys who have played a lot of games.

I like that.

This is basically the anti-mitch, Trabisci, Cori Laird. The big thing with Trabisci was he didn't play enough games. He didn't get enough experience. He only started one year. Same thing with Trey Lance. And you throw those guys out there and the football is so fast, they can't process it. It makes sense to me. Even after watching my son go through high school football, there's so much going on. If you're a quarterback and you don't have that reservoir of just all these games that you've been in and all these different defenses that have been thrown at you versus like if you... Jake Browning, I think he had like... I think it was like 55 college games, some crazy number. I was like, All right. And he's confident is the other thing. You need to be confident. I also feel like you got to be handsome most of the time. Not every time, but most of the time. The quarterback's got to be somebody you might be afraid would steal your girlfriend at some point. It's got to be the guy who grabs the car keys. He's got to have some charisma. Yes. But Browning seems like he has a lot of that.

Drew Lock threw that touchdown. And Drew Lock and Gino, they were fired up. I'm like, Oh, you guys have got a lot of sweat. And that's the reason why he just drove down the field on the Eagles. You, Drew Lock, would have felt like he was the guy. And his whole emotional press conference afterwards was really beautiful with the undercurrent of, For a while, I thought I wasn't the guy. It turns out I am the guy. It's like, Yeah, Julock. Good for you. Dancing on the sidelines in your Bronco's uniform. You are the guy. I like that.

There's not just pressure and running the offense and performing in front of 65,000 people post-TV, but the bigger pressure now, I think even more than the games, is your post-game locker room speech after the win because they put that stuff on Instagram. And it's my favorite content every week. Either the Coach gives the speech or the QB, and there's a camera right there on them. And there's 60 guys who just played a game and they're all standing around. And all of a sudden, they have to be Mel Gibson and Braveheart. It's a lot of pressure. You've got to come through. You got to be emotional and inspirational and you got to single out people. And is great at it. As secretly nerdy as he is, he gives great speeches.

What did Jalan Hartt say? He said, Rain, sleet or snow, the Eagles are ready to go. I was like, Yes, let's go. Your defense is not that good, and you've got to bug me. But dude, that is still hitting. That works.

What did you.

See, Pete Carroll? The Eagles are ready to go. I didn't click on it. I saw it as like, Pete Carroll is fired up. I was like, It's going to be a no-click for me, to.

Be honest with you. Can I give you the Clif notes on it?

I can imagine. That's why I didn't click, but go ahead.

He did this thing where first of all, he's all fired up. He's like, Do they win a game in the first quarter? The team goes, No. Do you win in the second quarter? He's like, No. And then he gets to the fourth. Do you win in the fourth quarter? And they go, Yeah. And they get my nuts and he started jumping around.

It was great. I like a little call and response. I like that. Are you surprised more coaches and quarterbacks haven't taken the Bella checking in approach of, I can only take Elth at this press conference. I'm not going to give you anything. Deal with it.

Belichick takes a lot of shit for it. And then once a year, he goes on TV and everybody goes, He did it again at the Army, Navy this year. He went on TV. Everyone went nuts. They're like, Wow, he's great. He could have a future in this. It's like, Yeah, he's intentionally not giving you anything in these press conferences, but he's good at TV. But then everybody forgets for eleven and a half months. And then they remember when he's in the Army-Navy game. But I think it's the way to go.

There's just no value. Just go up there. Tua was here today talking about the narrative around him and Tyreke and how he doesn't pay attention, but he also keeps receipts. And it was very honest and transparent and interesting and good father for talk shows because it had an element of him talking to friends. But if I was his publicist, I would say, Toa, we're out here cooking, man. Just go out up there and Bella check it. To be honest with you, 100 % focused on the Cowboys defense. Hey, Tua, a lot of people are saying you're no good without Tyree Kill, and it's right there on the tip of his tongue. He could say, Well, I completed 86 % of my passes without Ty re Kill last week. You could just say, Again, I'm really less concerned about Tyree Kill, more concerned about Micah Parshan. I'm just really locked in on the Cowboys. Thank you guys for coming. I'm going to go back and grind some Cowboys tape. Who would be mad at that? I know everybody can't do it. But if Belichick is the only coach doing it, it seems like there's a player that should do it.

I mean, Jaylen is close.

Jaylen is pretty close. I think he's intentionally boring, Jaylen Hertz. I think he's way more fun. I think he's probably the closest to Belichick.

Yes. And when he says the commitment thing last week, he's been coach-speak the entire time. And that was the first one he popped to send a message. And I think that resonated. But I think more people should be like, Bell, Jack.

My favorite is when the person is obviously unhappy but still has to give a quote. Mike Tomlin talking about George Pickens this week. He's like, Yeah, George is going to play. And he'she just has to talk at these vague things. When you can tell he's like, This motherfucker, I can't wait to trade this guy after the season.

I'll take him. I'll take him to the Patriots.

We'll take a break. And we got we got a lot of picks to do, including I have something off of what we're talking about tied into one of the games. So I'm trying to figure out million dollar picks. I'm going to put them at the end of this podcast, but we're going to go through some games. One game that ties into what we were just talking about with press conferences and giving away too much or too little, Ravens Niners, which the line starts at four and a half. People immediately bet it up to five and a half. And then we have to do the 24 cycle of The Ravens should be insulted by this.

They're just.

As good. Well, this is what I'm getting to. So they asked them, usually it's not until after the game when they do the Yeah, we saw the line. Nobody believed in us but the people in this locker room. Now we're fast forward into before the game that people are doing it. We're like, We're definitely insulted. Yeah, they said, How about it. They were like, Were you aware that you guys are big underdogs in this game? He's like, Oh, yeah, I made the team aware. It's like, You can't do that. Nobody believes in us before the game. You've got to wait. You just got to button it up. And I think they've screwed up, and I think it's a tactical mistake.

I think Lamar said he likes being an underdog, which everybody says, like Daq said it. He said it before the Buffalo game. They went up to Buffalo. They got blown out. And after the game, he's like, Usually, I like it. We need to embrace being an underdog more. I do enjoy it. Lamar's career is an underdog. Eight and four against the spread, 11 and 1, 18 touchdowns, four interception. So he does it and meant it. That's why I'm all about Ravens straight up over the four times. I know we're not doing it.

Straight up.

Oh, come on. Stop it.

That's ridiculous.

Bill, here's the thing. So obviously, we have our esteemed researcher, Josh, and there's a certain point that I've been believing in Kyle, Shannon, and Brock the whole year until I... And once I saw they're going to be healthy, that's actually not true. I didn't think they're going to be healthy. I thought they're going to get hurt. Once I realized they're going to be healthy, I'm like, Oh, I'll start believing them. So Josh gave me 1,000 statistics, and there's a certain point where I have to say, Oh, the Ravens are going to win this game. So Lamar against the NFC, if he was 10 and 1, I'd be like, wow, that's pretty good. 12 and 1, 14 and 1, 15 and 1. He's 19 and 1 against the NFC with the theory that if you don't get a chance to play him that often, what you see on film doesn't translate to boots on the ground. 19 and one against the NFC is just wild. It's wild. Then he's good as an underdog, and it's like, oh, what's the big flaw with the Ravens? They blow lead, which means they've been in every single game and probably could be undefeated.

Colts, Matt Gaye hits four 50-yard field goals. Okay, stealers, Pickett throws a bomb, 117 left, they had that game. And then the Browns, who they have a great defense, who scored 31 points on them, and they lost in the last second field goal. So I'm like, Oh. And then when you just watch Lamar and you watch Brock, if you have two good defenses, who's more likely to be able to just go off script against a great defense? Like, Oh, you know what? I couldn't have planned for that. Is it Brock, Purdy? Oh, didn't see that coming. How are we supposed to stop that? Brock, Purdy doing X. No, I think we should stop that. That's Lamar's. When it all breaks down, Lamar's like, Oh, yeah, I'm going to do this. And you guys had no answer for it. Straight up. Straight up.

Feels like a bit. Counter?

Go.

Can you name the three best Ravens wins this year?

The three best wins? Can I count the Rams win?

Sure.

I just liked it because it was a close game. They weren't rolling teams.

I like.

Blowing out the lions.

Lions 38-6. I'll give you the Rams win because that was a really good game, 37-31-OT. I just thought it was.

Close and it was rainy and messy. And that was also the first time we thought the Rams were great. Oh, not great, but they were.

Pretty good. And then probably the third one was at Cleveland 28-3, week 4. But I'm not positive that Sean played. No, Dorian, Thompson, Robinson played. See, my point is- But.

It's a defense. It's less than the offense if you're putting up 28 on that Brown's defense. That's what's interesting, not the three, but they're also a good defense.

Whereas the 49ers, they murdered the Stealers in week one. They murdered the Cowboys by 32.

They.

Murdered the Seahawks. They murdered the Eagles.

They announced they wanted revenge on the... They announced they wanted revenge for the Brock purdy injury that they deserve to go to the Super Bowl. And then they went to Philadelphia and did it.

Yes. And then Aaron Schatz said, DVOA through 14 games. The 2023 Niner's third ever since they've been tracking DVOA since 1980. Number one was the 07, Patz, near and dear to our hearts. Number two was the '91, Washington, Redskins. They won the Super Bowl. Number four was the Chicago Bears in 1985, one of the most famous teams ever. It's a pretty good list. And my analysis is, if you think the Niners are going to win the Super Bowl, you have to take them in this game because this is a we are the best team. We're healthy. We have the most weapons. We're the best on both sides of the ball. And this is a playoff game, and they're going to want to prove it. It's on Christmas Night. Super important. It's a statement game. And I think this team is great. I think when they're healthy and they have all their guys, I think they're great. I don't think the Ravens are great. Even that Jaguars game last week, the play of the game was Lamar, Duck to Sack, and then just chucked it up for grabs and the tight end quarter ball with two guys on them.

They lost Mitchell, who I thought was their only running back who had a little juice. So now it's going to be just like a lot of Gus Edwards and Melvin Gordon might play in this game.

I.

Don't know. I'd like the Ravens. I'd probably say they're the second best team, but I'm glad we disagree, though. Disagreements are healthy.

If the 49ers win this game, then I think you have to have them winning the Super Bowl. Which I do. Which is the World Pick? Okay. The Niners. Then it's like the more interesting... I also root for Storylines, obviously, and sometimes I hedge my pitch so I can get a good storyline out of it. But if The Ravens win, great. And it's the better storyline. Are the Niners beatable? If the Niners win, who's beating them? The chiefs win. You got to just rely on like mahogs magic. That's going to be your only fear and injuries, which is super boring, but you could also see them popping up.

We could also do the come back bills if they have another good next couple of weeks just because of the offense. Their offensive stats have gotten pretty good.

Yeah. I think McDermott is 16 and two in December or something insane, where they just start slow and then they figure out who they actually are and then can heat up. Can I give.

You one more Niners-Ravens nugget?

Yeah, go.

We can both be right at the same time. Lamar can cover, the Ravens can lose by three or four, and the Niners money line will still hit, which is where I think I'm going in this game. I think it's slightly too many points because everyone is so in on the Niners. If you look at the stats, I mentioned that DVOA stat. The Ravens are like 12th all time DVOA right now.

Okay. You're a nice guy.

But there's some teams in there like- I wouldn't have mentioned that. Yeah. But I mean, the Ravens, statistically, have been really good. So could this be a three-point game, four-point game? A couple of other ones. My favorite pick of this week that I'm trying to figure out what to do with, the are playing the Chargers. They're minus 12 and a half on the road. It's in L. A. It's in L. A.

How many points.

Well, but here's what we can do. A bet that has hit for us a bunch of times a million dollar picks is the first half game bet, where you bet the team to win the first half and the game as a parlay. They have to do both. Say with the Rams, let's say with the Niners, we've had some success with it. That together is minus 290, which now can be put with another moneyline game like somebody in the minus four to minus six range. And I don't see a world where the Chargers are leading at half time of this game with East and Stick. And who's the coach? I'm normally a new coach theory guy, but I think this Chargers team is like, Let's just get us to week 18. Let's get the hell out of here.

The new coach, I don't know if there's a history of new coach, new quarterback bounce. Does new coach bounce to those. Does New.

Coach Bounce work? If is the quarterback and you've just lost by 42 to the Raiders, I don't think so. I also feel like this is going to be a home game for Buffalo. This is like Christmas vacation trip for the Bills fans. So on top of the Bills fans anyway, I think there's going to be all Bills fans. What Chargers fan? It's a holiday weekend. There are no Chargers fans anyway who's like, Hey, want to go see the Chargers get killed by the Bills? Put your Thomas in Jersey on?

You're not worried about the Bills feeling like they actually did something last week. No, because- Like we're back, let down game across the country.

No, because it's a must win. I think you can win, but.

You can't barely.

They're a ninth seed right now. They have to win. Here's the scenario I was looking at. So how could the Bulls be the seventh seed after this weekend? Cleveland beats Houston, which is one of my picks. We'll get to that. Buffalo beats LA.

Yeah.

Pittsburgh would have to be Stacey. We can litigate that in a second. It doesn't matter what happens in Indiana, Indianapolis game. They could be 9 and 6, 8 and 7, but I have them beating Atlanta. And then Denver, New England, whatever happens in that, Denver would be eight and seven anyway. So if you have a scenario after this week, where it's Cleveland 10 and 5, Indianapolis is 9 and six, Buffalo is 9 and six, now they're the seven seed. And now we get to one of the most fun parts of the football season when people are ducking the two seed because they want to slip to the three seed or the four seed because they don't want to play the seven seed. I always enjoy that. But I just feel like Buffalo is going to come out of this weekend as the seven seed somehow.

I just don't like. You think they're going to win. I just don't like. So what are you going to bring the number down to? Oh, you're... Just money line. Just percent- You're doing just money like just-.

First half game. -leaving the points alone. Just lead by one point at half time, win the game. I don't care that you're in there.

That's a safe bet. That's totally fine.

They're missing a bunch of offensive line in the chargers: Herbert, Bosa, Mike Williams. Their defensive numbers are abysmal. And the Buffalo numbers, right now, they're first and first downs. They're first and third downs. They're 15 yards per play. They've actually put together... James Cook, it's been the revelation of the second half of the season.

Yep. I also don't know the new coach of the Chargers. I forgot his name. Giff Smith. Yes, Giff Smith. I also don't know if you're Giff Smith and you just watched that the Cowboys game. They're like, Hey, guys, you go into your defensive coordinator. Hey, are we prepared for Josh Allen to have seven completion and lose this game? Like, Ah. Yeah. So start figuring that out. What happens if they run the ball for 266 yards and Josh Allen just wants to throw the ball five times like he's playing The Patriots in a stifoon? I think he'll win, but it's an odd game. New Coach, Bounds does happen there.

So I had the Stealers initial and I took them off because I think this is irresponsible to bet on Stealers-Bengles. No Jabbar Chase for the Bengals. No Picket for Pittsburgh. I looked at the Mason-Rudolf stats.

Not bad.

They were less daunting than I remembered. He had won bad game when Garrett hit him with the helmet. He had threw four picks in that game. But other than that was pretty good. I was surprised.

Either Jake Browning... So here's Jake Browning during his three-game win streak. First completion percentage, first and passing yards for game with 320 almost. Second and yards for pass, third and pass rating, tied for third with 32 points a game. Do you think this guy is that good? Or is he going to have to come back to Earth with Nojimae Chase? And with all this cumult around the Steelers and George Pickens not blocking, are the Stealers still the Stealers? I actually think that will galvanize them. Guys, come on, division game. Let's go. So I've got to think that the Stealers win this one.

Oh, so you like the Stealers?

Because I do, too. Yes, I like the Stealers a lot.

Can I give you a couple more things here?

Can I.

Give you an editorial hedge? If the Stealers lose this one, man, what's going on with Tomlin? There's already a lot of Tomlin bubbling up. What's going on with Tomlin? Maybe he needs to change his scenery. Oh, you know what else needs to change his scenery? Bill Belichick. Maybe Bill Belchick go somewhere. Or maybe Robert Kraft puts a call into Mike Tom and say, Hey, you know what? We're used to playing for great winning franchises. Why don't you come over here? Matriots Way and the Stealers Way colliding. Oh, my goodness gracious. Trey. I don't think he wants to go to Pittsburgh. But Kraft can do... We should do anything in the world for Mike Conlin over Ben Johnson. God bless Ben Johnson. This is ridiculous.

I'd rather have- This is ridiculous.

-a proven track record.

Oh, look at those. Look at that wheel-rowdy design. It's so hard to be a coach. Every year they get excited about some play-caller. Incredible. Jameer Gives wheel-round.

If I was an offensive coordinator, I would just design the weirdest place possible. I don't even know we'd be any good. Like, Wow, that came a while. Look at that. He was out there with.

Seven guys.

It's an old flag football play, How do you defend it? And then you have to drive one crazy one. And then the oldest play you could find. But this one was, he found this one in the Library of Congress under a leather helmet. He found this play. Andy Reed dug this one up from 100 years ago.

Steelers beat them 16 to 10 a month ago. Pickett was playing, but 22 first downs to 10, 421 yards to 222, had the ball for minutes. They also have not lost four in a row since 2013.

I don't like that.

And they're getting points. They are plus two and a half in this game at home.

It. Yeah. All right. If the Bengles win, Jake Browning is a guy. But Jake Browning shouldn't be on the Bengles next year. Jake Browning should make some phone calls.

Can I say something that try not to have a stroke?

Here we go.

He reminds me a little 0-1, braided. Not Tom braided. Not Tom braided. The totality of Tom braided, but 0-1, braided. When 0-1, braided came in and they're like, Who's this guy? He does a lot of stuff well. It's pretty accurate. Man, he doesn't really make mistakes. Teammates really like him. And he just kept game managing and being accurate and just making chicken salad out of chicken shit for four months. And then they won the Super Bowl.

But we already have a number one franchise quarterback. He was the number.

One pick. What do we do with Joe Borough?

We just paid him the most amount of money in the League. What should we do?

I'm not saying he's going to be Tom braided, but the things I like about him, he's accurate. He's good at the slide of hand, the play action stuff. He just runs a good game. And his teammates like him. I think he's solid, but no chase.

You know what's good for Purdy? When someone's like, You know what? You're reminding me a little bit of Brooke Purdy as a compliment. Purdy is not yet to be compared to... That's Purdy's next step of stardom. You know what? You're a little Brooke Purdy-ish.

That's after he wins three Super Bulls. Next one I really like. I love the Browns in Houston this week. The line has moved up, but it's Browns minus two and a half right now. It doesn't look like they're going to have C. J. Strad. Their receivers are banged up. Tankell is out for the year. Nico Collins is hurt, probably not playing. So they're basically down one receiver there. And they're just banged up all over the place. Guys are playing hurt, potentially Will Anderson, Laramie Tunsel, Blake Cashman. And in general, I don't think they're that good.

And you believe in Joe Flacko?

I do. He's a little banged up, but I just think their defense will win this by itself. We've seen the Texans against the wrong defenses really struggle to move the ball. And CJ was pulling some shit out because he's him. But he's not going to be in this game. It's going to be case Keenem. And I do not like that matchup for the Texans.

I buy that a hundred %. Okay.

Next one I really like, Colts-Falcons. Colts plus two and a half in Atlanta. The Falcons did something that I can't remember really happening that often other than in the '80s when it happened way more often, where they had the starting quarterback, they benched the guy for the backup. Then after three games, they brought the starter back. But now they have benched him again. We've had three benchings this year with the quarterback. Now they're like, You know what? We took a longer look at Taylor Heineke, and maybe he is pretty good. I don't know if you could do that after you've already benched the guy.

I thought he was good. I thought he was good with Washington. Remember the Washington players were like, no, he's a guy. He's our quarterback. And then all of a sudden, he just wasn't good. So you like the Falcons in this game?

No, I like the Colts. The Falcons 28th and DVO. They just have a stink to them now, and it feels like this is going to be it for Arthur Smith. The owner didn't really back them. No. Their skill players have been pretty disappointing, considering they have three top 10 picks at all the important positions. And I just don't think they have it. So that was when I was looking at Bucks minus two and a half over the Jags. Probably without Trevor Lawrence was the other one.

Yeah, bake show. It's time to start believing in Baker again. It's like the revenge of the okay quarterback that you once wanted to believe in are all playing well.

Or maybe he was good and got hurt.

That's true. He played through injury. Played hurt. He shouldn't have played. He shouldn't have played. He shouldn't.

Have played. Lost his confidence? Yeah. And the team didn't seem like totally believed in him for whatever reason, but all the fans love them. I don't know. It's a believable comeback to me. I had the pedigrees, the first pick in the draft.

In.

This game, it's more of a bet against the Jags. I just don't like what I see with them. And their wide receiver crew has been decimated. They don't really seem like... They seem like you can push them around. They shoot themselves in the foot at the worst possible times. They're six and six on American soil. And I like this Tampa team. So that was what I was looking at.

The last six weeks, total yards, the defense, Lamar, 268, flacko, 310, Browning, 376, CJ did 351, Will Leavish, 162, touchdown, and Purdy, 296, three touchdowns. They've got two interceptions on 185 pass attempts from a researcher, Josh. That boo-fence is no good. And so it's going to be another great day for the Baker Show. Light them up. You're like, Baker is back, franchise quarterback. This could be the end of the, Hey, does Campa need to look for a quarterback? No, you got Baker. We were just trying to clear cap space this year. Baker brought you to the playoffs. You're going to have a home playoff game. Baker is your guy. You stumbled into a number one pick and he likes it. People like him.

Works. I follow a couple of NFL injury Twitter accounts to try to figure out what's going on, have some stuff bookmarked. A lot of buzz about the Bucks being the healthiest they've been all year. Really? Yeah. Finally, feeling like they're a little bit healthy again. And plus, Godwin got going again, which I was. So I like the Bucks. There's two more and then we'll go. They're related to each other. So if the Patts can get the number one pick, this is the week for the Panthers. They're home against Green Bay. They're four and a half point underdogs. Green Bay is the 29th defense and DVOA. They're pretty banged up on that end. They're also their receivers. Watson is not going to play again, it does look like. Jaden Reed, who was doing some really good stuff for him and was a fantasy pickup midseason, he is a bad foot, looks like he's out. So now we've moved into the Romeo Dobbs and a bunch of guys you've never heard of, receiver piece of it. And then the defense to Joe Barry, the fucking tail spin he's in. And then Carolina, could they just run the ball and play an ugly game?

And Bryce Young makes two plays. Could they be in this in the fourth quarter? I'm feeling like maybe.

Is this your head or your heart right now?

Well, that's why I'm talking to through because there's a Panthers money line, Broncos money line bet. The Panthers game is before the Path game. So the Path could go into their game and know that the Panthers have just won. And that's when Kraft, I think, he goes down into the locker room. He's like, yo.

Put Mac Jones in.

Can you platoon Mac Jones and Zappie every play?

Mac, air that thing out.

Mac, get ready.

I love Mac Jones, but gosh darn it, Mac, we're a mile high. Row that thing.

This is in play, though. Panther is possibly winning, and then the Pat's just having to take care of business and not beat the Broncos. But I'm scared of this Broncos game. I think they could beat the Broncos.

I do, too. But I also thought I'm delusional. So I went to the Chiefs game last week. I know it's an away game, so I can't say that the mood of the stadium will travel and affect the mood of the players. But there was just a lack of energy in the stadium, which was just... I don't know why I was surprised considering the pre... This is how silly I am. The last two games I went to.

Were.

Brady's Game Back, so Bucks, Patriots, and then the homes, Patriots. And I was telling my kids, I was like, You know, a lot less energy this game. I'll be honest with you guys when John Ready was back.

But it.

Just felt like a team that had, I don't know, it just didn't feel... We just didn't feel we felt like who we are, to be honest with you, we were a Parcellian. Wetell you. We felt like a team that's won three games. So I could see us. And Broncos are fighting to survive. So I assume we're going to lose.

And figure there's some Bronco fans there. Bad history with the Pats against the Broncos. The non-Brady history against the Broncos is not great. I remember going to a game with my buddy Jeff in the mid-90s, Broncos at Pats. And we sat down on the first drive, the guy sitting directly behind us did one of those like, Animal House pukes, where he just puked so much that it started to drip down to where our feet were by the second quarter. And I don't think I've ever been more bummed out. The pets got murdered. We had puke, just that dried puke water on our feet. And it was like, when I think about the pets pre-Brady, it's the moments like that. Just sitting in someone else's puke, watching your team lose by 30.

That's not great. I would have changed teeth, at least.

We couldn't. It was a sellout. I think we ended up watching a lot of the game from the Concourse because we were like, Oh, or we could go back to the puke. It was awesome.

I got to call the usher on that one. I could see the Broncos winning. I could also... I'm still waiting for some like Belichick Magic against Sean Payton. But you know the sad part when Andy Reed mercifully didn't score in the final drive? He's like.

Bellachect is great. We disagree. I think that was a little passive-aggressive move. Oh! Yeah. That was, Oh, man, I feel so bad for you. I'm going to give you the ball back. But it was really a fuck you. I take it personally.

You are 100 % right. And I didn't see that. I thought it was like a nice gesture and I felt bad, but it was actually a ticket to you.

You're right. In high school, we used to play Monopoly. Our friend Scott Carino, he would get this big lead. He would start laughing and he would offer people $100 to roll the for them because he was about to win. And he'd be like, Oh, my God, I got to take it. It's $100. But it was passive-aggressive and it was mean. And I think that's what Andy Reed was doing with that. He was offering us $100 to roll the dice.

That is so insulting. You better not have.

No, I didn't. I would get mad. I'd be like, Fuck you. We're playing again.

We're playing. God damn it.

So I think Pat's Broncos is a complete stay away because it all depends on what happens in that Panthers-Packers game. Plus, who knows? They could actually beat the Broncos. So I'm staying away from both. But I wanted to talk out whether there's a parlay potential. All right. So if you had to put Bill's first half Buffalo game minus 290 with any bet on the board as a parlay, who would you do? Who's your favorite bet? Is it the Bucks?

No, Cleveland. Cleveland, okay. What's the Cleveland line?

Cleveland is minus two and a half.

Yeah, that's easy. Yeah, that's easy. Flacko, no CJ. Yeah. That defense is wild. That defense is fantastic, and everyone knows it's fantastic, but it's historically great.

Yeah.

It's still underrated.

And you agree, Dolphins, Cowboys, and Stayaway?

Yeah, that could go anyway. That could go. Who knows? I could see Mike McDaniel finding some wrinkle in there, just like Sean McDermott did. Like, guess what? We're going to run up the score now, or we could go the other way.

You have four minutes to do one half-baked idea before we go. Okay. Here's your best one.

Shoot. Or do you just want 10 little ones?

You do what you want- Rapid fire. I think I have four minutes.

Rapid fire. Here we go. You tell me stop. Gingerbread, 365. I like gingerbread. I feel like it's underrated. Maybe I'd have a chance if you would just give it a chance. Not a full half-baked idea. Aluminum foil wrapping paper. My dad used to wrap things in aluminum foil. My mom used to make fun of them. All our presents had a certain metallic look until you try it once you're like, Wow, it just clings to whatever shape it takes. It's very easy and recyclable. Everyone should do it. You shouldn't be made fun of for doing it.

Wait, hold that one.

Okay.

That's really interesting. So you're saying you throw away the esthetics of, Oh, look, my holiday season wrapping paper under the tree. You just buy a giant thing of aluminum foil with Target, and you just wrap it and throw it under there, put maybe a couple of... Are you putting bows on there or not even bows?

Yeah. Oddly, my dad was great at making bows. Very strange quality for a contractor, but he could just make a great bow. So he would have aluminum foil, any shape present. Unless you're getting a book or a pair of shoes, these presents start to get tricky to wrap. Boom, grab yourself some aluminum foil. What do you got there? A strange-looking base in the shape of a bird? Bang, done. Aluminum foil and fast and it's eco-friendly. So maybe the aluminum foil, Reynolds wrap can have like throw some Christmas trees on there. You got silver, just draw it, put some red and green on there. We'll be good. Aluminum foil, wrapping paper.

I like it. That's a strong one.

But at Christmas movies. This was just an offshoot of diehard, the whole argument, which I'm not going to have that. Equalizer 4 at Christmas. Just saying and just putting it out there. Antoine, Fouquot, and Denzel, Equalizer 4 Christmas. And they're like, Hey, do you think Equalizer 4 is a Christmas movie? Yes, I do. That's why I was in the North Pole where there's some bad guys.

Hold on. Can I workshop that one with you for a second? Yeah, go. Denzel, tail end of his run, he's now a Santa in a mall. Love it.

The poster is Denzel in a Santa outfit with two kids sitting on his lap, but he's also holding a machine gun.

I mean, the poster needs work, I think that'd be, but I understand.

Well, no, it's like he's a Santa, but he's also going to have to go to work because terrorists are about to take over this mall. I don't know if we've had a terrorist mall movie yet. We've danced around it, but I don't know if we've had it.

No, but Denzel is always going somewhere exotic. I think it's like part of the deal for him to make the movie.

He's like, Now I got to go to Italy. So maybe it's a mall in Sweden.

It's a mall in Sweden or Italy?

He's got to go somewhere beautiful. Here, he did Italy. That's equalizing free. Then he went to Russia. It has to be probably cold for Santa.

Barcelona.

Yeah, that's nice.

All right, keep going. Give me more.

Cards. Probably getting too many of them right now. So I got two ideas for your Christmas card. I love the card. I'm probably getting too many. Either we divide up by your birth year, evens and odds, whatever. You have to send half of your cards go to July. So you get two bites of the card, apple. And then the post office, this is the last time anyone's getting mail. We're not getting mail. Christmas card is the only reason why I sent you a card, Open up, tactile, Happy Holidays. The big barrier to entry is stamps, stamp-free. Just give me a stamp re-free for Christmas cards or maybe July cards. Just anything you want to write, throw it in the mailbox, it'll get there, try to get letter writing back. Part of my little Tom Hanks on a typwriter type thing. I want to bring back letters, opening letters. I'm getting old, more tactile letter writing.

Flip off that idea. Now let me flip it a whiff. Did social media ruin holiday cards? Because most of the people I'm getting holiday card from, I'm probably following on Instagram or somewhere. So I've already... Part of the holiday car thing is I haven't seen Kevin Wilde's family in here. Oh, there they are. But I've seen your family because I follow you on Instagram. So it's not special. They know. So maybe it should just be either digital pictures or a special holiday Instagram account of all the people you're friends with that it just goes on some special, almost like Spotify-wrapped. It's like, here, we now have your 2023 holiday friends, and you just get emails with that.

There's something there.

I like the idea of opening. Are you at all into July fourth cards? Can I tell you on that?

I think it's a good idea to think about quarterly something where you split people into the groups. Not bad. It's like, not nothing. All right, last one.

Now, there was a point where Frank Sinatra put on a tuxedo and was about to walk out on stage at the stands. And he looked in the mirror and said, I look great. In fact, I look so great. I should wear a tuxedo most of the time, if not every day. And that's why he looks great all the time. Just a random Wednesday, Frank Sinatra is in a tuxedo. Took my dog for a walk, went through the neighborhood. There's no argument that the neighborhood looked better in two months. These lights look fantastic. We were just to decide as a nation. We are a nation of light. It looks beautiful. You can't tell me that it doesn't look... Maybe we'll get tired of it. We'll cross that bridge when we get there. Keep your lights up. Never take them down. Not great for light pollution. I get it. We also need someone on that.

But.

Lights 365.

Trees?

Indoor trees I can't.

Coast on. No, just Christmas trees year round, no? Too many bristles.

Yeah, but lights you're in on. Even with the electricity.

You know what? Yeah, we got to solve that. Put some engineers on that. But it's just so beautiful. I think it's worth it. Those are half-baked ideas for the close of 2023.

Kevin Wilde, happy holidays. It's great to see you, as always.

Thank you. Look forward to your card.

We're supported by NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube and YouTube TV, where it's easier than ever to follow the race to the playoffs. Right now, you can get the midseason price starting at $39 for the rest of the 23th season when bundled with the YouTube TV subscription. This is the most important stretch of the season. Traveling during the holidays is not fun. Kind of a drag. Dealing with long lines, flight delays, maybe some family gatherings you don't totally want to be in. You might be missing some of the most exciting matchups of the NFL season. Here's the great thing about YouTube TV. You get on your phone. You could be with your family. They won't even know that you have your phone on with Multiview with four games on as you're watching and monitoring everything that's happening. You put the reds on whatever you want, it's on there. Don't let holiday travel get in the way of your entertainment. Watch it. Wherever you are, wherever you're stuck with NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube and YouTube. Catch your favorite out-of-market NFL teams in the go and on your favorite mobile device like the iPad. Great place to watch YouTube.

Thanks to NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV and YouTube for sponsoring this segment. It truly is the best place to keep up with all your favorite teams out of market Sunday Games. And now again, watch the rest of the NFL season for a lower price. Nfl Sunday Ticket starting at $39 when bundled with a YouTube TV subscription, were where you get even more football. Here's what you got to do. You got to sign up at YouTube. Com/bs. Those are my initials. Youtube. Com/bs, lowest price on YouTube TV with base playing rest of 2023. Season terms and barbars apply. No cancelations. Million dollar picks week 16, holiday edition. Love the holidays. Hopefully, we have some nice million dollar picks coming down your chimney. We lost some last week. It's fine. We're still way up. Lost 1.036 million last week. Week. Still up 1.590 million for the year. Some bad luck last week. Had the Seahawks game pegged, but somehow didn't get the over. Had the bears, they lit all game. All of a sudden, it's a push. We're coming back this week. We mentioned some of these bets with Wild. So we're going to rip through them right now.

First one, Buffalo wins the first half. Buffalo wins the game. That is a parlay that you can have when they play the charges this weekend. It is minus 290 on Fandle. And we're going to parlay that with the Niner's money line. The Niner's minus five and a half scares me a little bit, but as we discussed with Wilds, anytime you talk about how nobody believes in you before the game, I'm out. You got to wait till after the game for that stuff, Ravens. I think the Niner's Healthy are the best team in the League. I think they're up here. Everybody else is here or lower. The Patriots are way down where my feet are. That parlay together, minus 104, we're going to put 300,000 on that. Buffalo first half, Buffalo game, Niner's money line parlay, all of them have to win. Next one, Browns at Houston. It doesn't look like CJ Stradd's playing. It doesn't look like they have pretty much all of their good receivers, except for Noah Brown, who basically was like a special teams guy for the Cowboys. The Browns defense wins this game on its own. I like there's a scenario here where if Cleveland wins and Indianapolis wins and Buffalo wins, those could be our five, six, and seven seats.

And that's what I'm going to be betting on this week because I love the Browns minus two and a half over the Texans. They take care of business. How are the Browns going to have 10 wins with four quarterbacks? What an amazing season for them. Houston admirable. Great job. Great job just even getting to the chance to be over 500 for the year. You're not a playoff team. I'm sorry. Browns minus two and a half, we're putting 300K in that. We're also putting 300K on Baker Mayfield and the Bucks playing a Jags team where Trevor Lawrence might play probably isn't going to play. Their receivers are banged up. They still don't have their left tackle. I think their defense is soft. I think they're a smoke and mares team. The Bucks are the healthiest they've been all year. And I believe in Baker Mayfield. I think they're going to win the NFC South. You saw the Saints lost tonight to the rams. I think they win this one. Bucks minus two and a half, put 300,000 on that. I think they can move the ball down the field. I'm in on Baker. Come back part of the year?

Maybe. Maybe. Stealers plus two and a half against the Bengals. Weys and I discussed this as well. This is a I can't help myself game. No, Jemar Chase for the Bengals. These two teams played like a month ago, and the Stealers whooped them, 16 to 10. And it was really one-sided. And it's in my head where I know Mason Rudolf is the quarterback. Go back to his 2019 game log. He has won bad game against the Browns. Other than that, pretty competent. I like some of the quotes I read from him this week. Basically, his teammates were like, Yeah, Mason comes every day, puts the time in. He's been waiting for another chance. I'm in. You have a chance with me, Mason Rudolf. Steelers, plus two and a half are putting 300,000 on this. I don't think the Stealers can lose four in a row. It hasn't happened since 2013. And this is a do or die kitchen sink game for them. This is it. They lose this game, they're out. They're done. I think they come through at home. Last but not least, Colts plus two and a half at Atlanta. Atlanta's changed quarterbacks for the third time.

They just keep going back and forth like it's a yo- yo. Colts are really good on offense. The Shane, Styke, and Minchu combo, if you went into the season thinking that would be one of the better QB Coach combos, you're lying. But they've been pretty good. They've been pretty successful. And Atlanta just looks like they're headed down the Arthur Smith is going to get fired trained. That is whatever railway that is, that's the railway they're on. Colts plus two and a half. We're putting 300,000 on that. And last but not least, I was going to take the Panthers money line because I actually think they can beat the Packers and they're like two to one underdogs to win at home. The Packers are all banged up. The Panthers have nothing to play for, and they don't have their first run pick. But I realized, is my heart telling me to do that because I want the Panthers to lose so the Patriots can potentially have the number one pick in the draft? I'm actually more worried about the Patriots plus seven against Denver, and I think they could cover that. I'm staying away from that.

I'm staying away from all Panthers, Patriot stuff. But you know where my heart is? And you know what I asked Santa for this weekend? It's for a Panthers win and a Patriots loss in the Patriots to have the number one pick in the draft. I don't ask for much. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Enjoy the weekend. Sean Fantasys here. He's been on this podcast a few times. We have done The Rewatchables many times together. You can hear him on The Big Picture as well. We've been working together. I think this is how many Christmases for us? Like our 12th Christmas?

Something like that? I think it's 12. Yeah, which is a lot, Bill. That's been a long time. You're sick of me yet?

Well, you've hated your life as a Jets fan the entire time I've known you. Can you just weigh in quickly on this Aaron Rogers? Why did you pretend you were coming back? Story that came a story this week, even though I was flagging it six weeks ago?

Yeah, sure. You've been right the whole time. I've had a full heel turn. I think he has destroyed the franchise even more. I thought it was ashes when he arrived, and now it's like embers of ashes. We are so screwed. It's crazy. He brought all of these goon losers to this team and they've just been absolutely pathetic and just miserable. Now, maybe it'll all turn around next year and they'll fix some things, but what a clown show. It's embarrassing.

Do you think they actually thought he was coming back?

I think that there were legitimately three games in the last six weeks that they, one, should have won and were the better team in. Two, if they had won, it at least would have been an interesting conversation to say, Can you put this 40-year-old guy behind one of the worst offensive lines in the league because you have a chance to actually make the playoffs after missing it for 12 consecutive seasons. It wouldn't have been impossible to me, and I know that you think that it was mostly because he's such an ecomaniac that he wanted to stay in the news and he was constantly trying to propel his myth as a great longevity football player. But I think the team is so desperate and the fanbase legitimately is so sad and hates this organization so much that they would have done anything they could to just have some positive news this year. But they lost games like that Falcons game where it's like, what do you do? How do you lose games to such inep teams and make no changes and let Nathaniel Hack and continue to call plays when he's clearly the worst playcaller in the NFL?

There's just stuff that is so obviously wrong with the team at a fundamental level that it ultimately didn't matter. We didn't even have to see Rogers make that decision.

The only case I've heard for that any of this might have been even somewhat legitimate is if whatever this new version of the Achilles surgery he got when people were saying maybe this is like the Tommy John surgery, when you could replace your elbow and come back and throw 100 miles an hour again. They were like, Maybe this is a revolutionary. And now we've cut the time for Achilles. Because there is a time in our lives when the ACL injury was like 18 months. Then all of a sudden, it was like, Peterson came back that year. It was like 10 months. I was like, Whoa, that was fast. He's back. Wow. But four months seems insane for really any type of injury like that. I'd be surprised if he was 100 % at Minicamp at the eight-month mark.

I completely agree with you. I don't really understand it. I think the conspiracy theory that's been floated is that it was a partial tear and not a full tear. I don't really even know what the difference is between a partial tear and a full tear. I'm not a doctor. But that if it is a partial tear, then its ability to heal would be different and he would be able to get back more quickly. I also think that there was Bob Fossy level choreography of showing us what he was able to do now. So when he did something cool, they would show it to us, but they never showed him looking a little gimpy out there. It seemed like the entire League and the networks were conspiring to make us think that he is Superman. But honestly, it doesn't matter now. We'll never see it. And you might have been right that we were never going to see it. It's hard to say.

Putting him behind a bad offensive line when he wasn't 100 %, they're like, Well, he's not 100 % yet. Well, I can't think of a worse position to play if you're not 100 %, where you have to cut, pivot, and duck out of the way. It's just nuts. I was talking to Wilds about this. I'm in this position where we're going to have a top three pick, a position you were in twice in the span of three years. And both times you grabbed the guy and then it turned out he wasn't the right guy with the second pick in the draft. Why do we spend so much time even thinking these guys are going to be the saviors when it's like a 35 % chance? You've had Sanchez, Zach Wilson, and Sam Darnell and went over three.

I mean, for the jets, it's a little different than The Patriots. The jets are just a miserable team that effectively have one truly great quarterback in their entire history. Right. And that was 50 years ago. So because of that, there's just this desperate March to get one. I listen to every draft podcast that we make at The Ringer. I follow this so closely and I care about it so much. Frankly, the jets are almost always picking in the top 10 that it's of interest to me. But the cubie thing is still a complete crapshoot. The CJ Straud thing this year is so crazy that he is so clearly one of the 10 best quarterbacks, maybe 15 best quarterbacks in the NFL in his rookie season. And Bryce Young looks like he may not make it to a second contract. It's just a very strange thing that I certainly can't wrap my head around. For you, this is the first time in how long? Even the Mac Jones pick, that was 15, right? It wasn't the same thing as when you're looking to spend capital. I'll tell you one thing to keep your eyes out for, though, because if you guys get it wrong, if you take a QB and get it wrong, think about this.

Next year, for the Jets to not employ Zach Wilson, they have to take a huge cap hit to cut him for his fourth season. So if you screw it up, it's like a $15 million charge just to not play a guy in his fourth season when you realize he's not the guy. So the stakes are pretty high on the pick.

Yeah, I must feel like if Belichick stays, he would trade back if he wasn't 100 % sure in the QB because he would look at it in his weird Belichick brain and be like, I can turn it into two first and a second and less money. One thing that.

Is Wait, who do you want? At this exact moment, you want Caleb? You want May?

So I haven't done all the research yet. I just want the highest possible pick with the most options.

Okay.

If we get the first pick, then who knows? Every year, there's some crazy team that's like, Here are all of our picks and take this, too. And that Bear's trade last year, which was nuts in retrospect with the Panthers. They just moved up gave them all the shit. And then they're like, Here, take DJ Moore, too. And they didn't know who they're going to take.

And didn't they do the same thing to take Trabiski, too, and the bears trade up to get to Trabiski and gave up a ton of capital?

Yeah, I think that one, they only moved up a spot. But yeah, they still gave up real assets. Movies are a lot safer to talk about because at least we have established directors. This year, we had a lot of pedigree. This is a pedigree year.

It was. I also know a lot.

More about- All of our big directors were working.

Yeah. Well, I know a lot more about movies than football, too. So it's better to talk to me about this. Yeah. I mean, I think that that was some runoff from the pandemic, right? A lot of these great, older masters, these guys were in their 70s and 80s got the chance to take some time on their projects. So Martin Scorsese and Ripley Scott and Michael Man and all these great filmmakers all put movies out this year. I don't think really any of them were the absolute best movie that they ever made, but a lot of them were really, really good. If I'm podcasting that well at 80, then I'm going to be feel fucking proud.

That would be pretty amazing if you still had a podcast at age 80.

If I do, I screwed up. I screwed up my life, honestly. It means I'm thrice divorced. I've got six mortgages. I've got nine kids.

What is a podcast 40 years from now? It's probably you and a virtual hologram sitting next to somebody doing AI director's commentary of the movie.

I'm going to have Ciar's corpse lined up next to me. We're going to have to revivify his corpse. I better not be podcasting at 80, that's for sure. But yes, it was a good year for older people, and it was a good year for filmmakers in their Prime, too. It was a really, really good movie year.

I asked you to come up with a gimmick. What's the gimmick?

I have a few for you, okay? One is here's five movies you need to see over the holiday season because there's a ton of new releases and it's a little confusing. I want to preface that by saying that in the last few years, what you might have said is here are the five movies you should stream with your family at home. But something has changed, thank God, which is that the studios don't stream their movies first anymore for the most part. They realized that putting movies in movie theaters, even if they don't make a ton of money in the theaters, creates a level of awareness that then helps it have this longer-term life that makes a longer tail for revenue, longer tail for discovery. So when you eventually see the movie on Max or Netflix or wherever you end up finding it, maybe you rent it from Apple or Amazon, that having that marketing spend to get the movie in movie theaters makes it feel more substantial, makes it more desirable. The movies that chart on Apple as the most popular movies of any given time are almost always entirely movies that opened in theaters first.

So you think it's like a credibility thing almost? Like, Oh, that movie was good enough to come out in a theater?

Exactly. Who knows how long that will last, but it is happening right now. There have been five big movies that have been released basically directly to streaming in the month of December. Those movies are May, December, Leave the World Behind, Maestro, the Chicken Run sequel, and Rebel Moon Part one, which is the new Zach Snyder movie. Do you know what all five of those movies have in common?

What?

They're all Netflix movies. Netflix is the only place that is like, We're still doing streaming. That is the primacy of our business. Everybody else realized it's better to go see movies in theaters or at least better for the business of movies to put them in theater. So that's exciting. There's some really good ones out right now. First one is really obvious. It's the most Bill Sean movie maybe ever, and that's the iron claw. It is in the dead center of our interests as movie fans because it's a period piece sports movie made by a visionary autore for A24. It is so great. Obviously, it's also very much a David Schumacher movie being a man from Texas. But it's about the Van Eric. He doesn't count.

Yeah, come on. He's literally the audience for this.

It's weirdly like Pulse sucked from his brain. They put his brain on screen. But yeah, it's about the Van Eric family who fans of wrestling will know is one of the most tragic family stories in pro wrestling history. It's written and directed by this guy, Sean Durkin, who made Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene, the cult thriller from the early 2010s. And I grew up on the East Coast like you, and I'm a little bit younger. So I didn't know very much about the Van Erics, aside from what I had read, really, in David's book. And Kerry Van Eric was familiar to some PWF fans, but he had, I want to say, five brothers, and many of them died tragically. And the story is almost too sad and absurd to be believed. And the movie is genuinely moving. It is the most sincere quality American sports movie in a decade, two decades. It's a really, really good film.

So I'm going to say at the very top of this podcast, I'm seeing this movie after we've talked about it because we're talking early afternoon. And I'm going to put my thoughts at the very top briefly. I don't want to spoil it for people. I have a history with the Van Eireks because when I was in high school, when I'd go back to visit my dad because I was going to high school in Connecticut, but I'd go back every other week and visit my dad. And I think it was one of the cable channels like Nesson used to show the Texas wrestling. So that was where I... And it was like, Oh, wait, there's other wrestling? It's not just Abu Dhabi. So I knew what was going on. And they had this feud against the Freebirds. That was amazing. I'm sure it's covered in the movie. It is. But it was the first time I'd ever seen any wrestling thing where they pulled off the gang against gang, wrestling few thing, which now has been ripped off for the last 40 years. And then those guys all just started dying. So that was my history.

But Kerry had this sad moment when he came back to Abu Dhab. He was missing his foot. Anyway, I can't believe they pulled it off because when I saw they were making it, I was like, Oh, that'll be terrible. That'll be a TV movie. And then you see it's 8/24, they get a real director. But then Zach Efron, it's The Revelation, right?

Just an amazing performance by him. I mean, he's never really done anything like this. He plays Kevin Van Eric, the surviving member of the family. And yeah, I mean, on the one hand, his whole body is like a special effect. The shape he has gotten himself into is almost bizarre. He looks like a giant sculpture, but he gives a really quiet, beautiful performance. And it's also littered with all the right guys. It's Harris Dickinson who was in Triangle of Sadness last year. It's Jeremy Allen White from The Bear is playing Kerry. It's Holt McCalney from Mind hunter and Fight Club, and he plays Fritz von Erick, the father from the family. I love that guy. He's awesome in the movie and Fritz is a fascinating character onto himself. It's really one of my favorite movies of the year.

Like I said- You're going best sports movies since Moneyball?

Gosh, I hadn't thought about what the context is, but it's up there. Yeah, I don't like it as much as Moneyball, which is like an all-time movie for me. But for these times, for these sad times with sports movies, it's really, really good. And also there's a world in which even if you're not a sports fan and even if you think pro wrestling is ridiculous, it's very easy to get connected to the movie because it's a family drama. It's a movie about brothers and their dad and their mom. So that's very, very good.

So you tweeted that you don't understand why it's getting more Oscar buzz.

Yeah, I think that pro wrestling is held against it in many ways by the Academy. The Academy is a little snobbish, and that pro wrestling is very snobbish. And pro wrestling is down market as much as you and I really like it and appreciate it. The movie does a good job, though, of explaining how pro wrestling works without being boring or pedantic. It does a really nice job of clarifying what does it mean to be... Why it's not quote-unquote, fake. There's more to it than that. So I think that that could be helpful. I just hope more people watch it. It's coming out late in the year. I think that's part of it. It's also coming out from a studio that has two other really big Oscar movies in A24. They got Zone of Interest and Past Lives, and they're pushing those movies. Who knows? Maybe if people love it and a lot of people go see it over the weekend, then it'll get more buzz.

All right. What's your second one?

You've already seen American fiction, but I feel like people should check this out. This is Core Jefferson's new movie. I know you talked to him at length on your show. Just a really smart... Kind of the flip side of the coin of The Iron Claw, a really good family drama that also shows this world of publishing and entertainment for black creative people that, frankly, we don't get to see that much or don't understand as well as we should. These two movies are interestingly paired. I thought it was really funny and features a pretty amazing Jeffrey Wright performance and has like... You mentioned Keith Davids in it. When you talk to Corde, Sterling K. Brown, Tracy Ellis Ross, everyone who crops up in the movie, you're like, Oh, I like that person. Every time they show up. I thought it was really good. I thought it was really impressive for a first-time filmmaker, too. Gordon never directed anything, and this is the first thing he did. So I thought that was really promising. Number three is a big one. It's Ferrari. It's your boy, Michael Maher, comes out on Christmas Day.

I'm nervous. I heard the special effects weren't that great.

Yeah. Are they as good as you want them to be? No, but I'm not really sure that it matters. That's not really what the movie is about. There's two big FX sequences that could be a little bit better. But if that's the prerelease hype, I think that's doing it a disservice because it's a classic Michael Madd movie. It's about a guy who is obsessed with his own success and anybody who gets in his way, he needs to push aside. If a woman is talking to him, he wants her to shut up so that he can keep succeeding and ignoring his family and going forward to win. It's Neil from Heat. It's Daniel De Lewis and the last of the Mohecans. It is the obsessive man's guide to car racing in the 1950s in the '50s and Adam driver, who you've been a little dubious of. I want to say I think he's phenomenal.

I don't think that's fair.

Okay. But you said he's not our great American male movie star, right?

I'd said he wasn't there for me yet, but I didn't cross it off.

Okay.

Do you think he's the best American movie star right now?

Male? Well, Ghostling made a big comeback with Barbie this year. If Ghostling really wanted it, if he was like, I am Robert Redford now, I think he could do it.

That's interesting. If he just went through the Redford IMDb and he's like, All right, this year I'm making my three days of The Condor.

Yeah. I'm doing a spy movie this year. I'm doing a romcom this year. If he's just like, Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, he would be the guy. Bradley Cooper, he's doing his thing, too. I'm not necessarily recommending Maestro in this segment, but it's an interesting movie that I liked. Ferrari, though, I think you'll dig it. Whether or not you buy 37-year-old Adam driver as a 57-year-old Italian man, your mileage may vary, sorry for the pun.

That part worries me. But as you know, I support all Michael Man movies, and we've even done Black Hat and the Rewatchables. Much to your chagrin.

Yeah, that movie is not good. I think it's his best movie since collateral, Ferrari.

Okay. Yeah. All right, what's number four?

I'm very, very excited to report back to you about the film Anyone But You, the new romantic comedy starring Sidney, Sweeney, and Glenn Pell.

It's.

Good. Well, I didn't say that. It's a movie that I think you should go see.

Of course, I'm going to go see it. I got to support the Queen.

Okay, here's what I didn't know about the movie. It's like an unofficial spiritual sequel to My Best Friends' Wedding. It's very inspired by My Best Friends' Wedding. It takes place in Australia, which I did not know when I sat down to watch it. It features a reunion between Dermot, Will Ronnie, and Rachel Griffiths, who plays Sidney Sweeney's.

Parents movie. They do the homage, but they also acknowledge it with some of the casting.

Yes, exactly. It's a clear homage to that tone of movie. Two young, sexy leads who in the story hate each other but are meant for each other. They find a way to meet cute and then they get separated and then they have to come back together again by way of a scheme. It's inspired by Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, like so many of those 90s movies. Glenn Powell is just like a locked and loaded A-movie star in my mind. He is as good as we've gotten in the Under-40 category for this a movie. Sidney Sweeney, I don't think, is great at saying words. I think that there's some challenges in her performance at times. This isn't exactly her tone. I thought she was pretty good in that movie, Reality, that came out earlier this year, which was a straight drama about Reality Winner. She produced this movie, Anyone But You. She looks beautiful. She's a magnetic on-screen presence. You can't take your eyes off her whenever she's there. That doesn't necessarily mean she's giving a great performance, but that doesn't matter. That's true of how many people in the last 100 years in movies where you're like, Maybe you're not the best actor, but I want to spend time with you.

I want to see you interacting with other good actors. I thought it was pretty solid. It's Will Glock who did EZA and Friends of Benefits. He knows how to make a movie like this. I thought it was definitely not bad. Kind of like B minus B. But honestly, if you're looking for something fun to go see with really hot people taking their clothes off non-stop on the beaches of Australia.

So it's like an R-rated rom-com?

It is. It is R-rated.

My.

Wife is excited about it because she likes Glenn Powell. I always feel like Glenn Powell, obviously when we talk about the COVID era, there's a slew of terrible things you have to mention before you get to Glenn Powell.

What place would you say he's in?

He's low on the list. There's a lot you have to go through. There's a lot of machinations. What? We lost so much. We lost so much and then way, way down the road you get to Glenn Powell. But Topcon getting delayed, I thought really hurt him and Miles Taylor because if you're just putting together your career like it's a chessboard, those were supposed to be the breakout movies for those two guys. And then it ended up happening what? Two and a half years after it was supposed to come out?

Yeah. I think they shot it in 2019.

Yeah. I just think both of those guys got really screwed by that. I don't even... It's like an NBA player. If Giannis was about to have his breakout year or something, and then it just couldn't happen for three more years. And then not that Miles and Glenn Powell are Giannis. But you know what I mean? It really delayed something.

We have in the NBA, right? This is exactly what happened to Blake Griffin and Edgett-Homegrid. They basically got hurt in their rookie seasons, right? And then they came back in their new rookie season and they were great. So to me, I don't think anyone but you is necessarily Glenn Powell's version of Blake Griffin's rookie season.

But he's one of the most... I'm glad we workshop to take together. But Glenn Powell is somebody that we've been with and been writing for since the early days of The Ringer, because he's in everybody wantsome, which will be on The Rewatchables at some point. But he's great in that movie. And we just werewere always like, All right, what's next? He was a what's next for that guy for years. And when we saw the top gun with him and Miles, we were like, Oh, this is great. This is perfect for these two. This will blow them up. And it did blow them up. It just took an extra two years.

Well, he's also the star of Set It Up, which is the only movie that's ever been made that is loosely based on Grantlin slash The Ringer. With that in mind, we're team Glenn Powell for life.

All right, what's number five?

Godzilla, minus one. Have you heard anything about this movie?

Just from you.

It's a new Japanese-produced Godzilla movie. There have been a bunch of Godzilla movies in the last eight or nine years in the US made by Warner Brothers and Legendary. This is Toho, the original home of Japan. And it's a pure post-World War II movie that happens to feature Godzilla in it. It's a sincere drama and also a movie where a giant monster, lizard, dinosaur steps on people. And it is like weirdly emotionally affecting and also rocks and features said, dragon monster, like firing rays out of his mouth. It was also apparently only made for $15 million, which really puts to shame a lot of the US blockbusters that came out this year, many of which were bad and forced me to have nervous breakdowns on the big picture. So I think if you're looking for a cool blockbuster, this is the one to go see.

Interesting. Well, it definitely feels like something shifted from the beginning of '23 to the end of 23 with some things reined its course. And now if we have a Paramount, Warner Brothers merger... By the way, has a merger ever worked in entertainment? Can you point me to the one where they're like, Man, thank God those two merged. It's been so much more amazing. It always seems like then it leads to a shitload of layoffs and a whole bunch of different terrible things and worse content.

I agree. I think it depends on how you look at it. Disney acquiring ESPN, that was pretty good. That was more of an acquisition than a merger.

Yeah, that's fair.

Would Warner Discovery... Are they acquiring Paramount? Who's bigger in this equation, I guess is the question. Who's leveling up on top of who would determine it? But yeah, there's always bad outcomes to acquisitions or to mergers rather. It could be really bad. I hope it's not. I hope it's good. But I have a trivia question for you that I think you might appreciate. This year was the first year that all three movies at the top of the worldwide box office were neither sequels nor remakes. So, Barbie, the Super Mario Brothers movie in Oppenheimer. Do you remember when the last time that happened was? Can you guess what year it was the last time that happened?

I would say it was not a 21st century year.

It was, but just barely.

Okay.

So it was 2001. That year, the top three movies at the box office were Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone, The First Lord of the Rings movie, and Monsters Inc. Now, of course, all three of those movies spawned sequels and even franchises in some respects. But this is what I really wanted to ask you. Well, when those three movies came out, it changed Hollywood forever. The next year, Spiderman came out and it was like we were off, like franchises defined movies for the next 20 years. Can you guess the last time the top three films at the box office failed to spawn a sequel, remake, or wider franchise of any kind? I'll give you a hint. We covered one of these movies on the Rewatchables this year.

Oh, so it's probably the 90s?

Nope, earlier.

Oh, it's the 80s? Yeah. Oh, shit. What was it?

1982. The top three.

Movies that.

Year were ET, Tootsie, and An Officer and a gentleman.

Wow.

So this used to be 1988. Until 2021, it was 1988. That's when Who Frame, Roger Rabbit, Rain Man, and Coming to America came out. But in 2021, Coming to America got a sequel.

We don't acknowledge the.

Sequel, though. I know. It's been 40 years since three movies came out the top of the box offices that didn't have a franchise after effect. So I don't know. It's a scary thing with movies in their future.

Well, we've covered all the reasons for it. A lot of it's drifting towards scripted and a lot of ideas that would have been really cool movies just end up being seven-episode somethings.

That's something I like about The Iron Claw is like, five years ago, this might have been a show. And I'm glad it's not a show. I'm glad it's a movie.

I feel that way about the offer, that Paramount show. I think that could have been a really good two-hour movie and really cool. I agree. Yeah. I think ultimately this movie will be considered to be a huge win. We got people going back to theaters. We had big directors. We had some organic, giant hits. And the Oscar is going to be really fun again.

Yeah. This is the first year in a long time that there are roughly 15 or 16 movies competing for Best Picture, and I'm a pretty big fan of 13 or 14 of them. There's not a movie where I'm like, Oh, this movie stinks, which is pretty exciting. Now, who knows? We could look up in a month when the Oscar nominations come out and I could look like an asshole because something terrible has been nominated. But even stuff on the fringes, like Air or Past Lives, those are really good movies that I really liked. So it's been a really good one. In 2024, I'm a little nervous about it. Well, little... I feel like they overloaded us this year a little bit.

When does this sequence happen where it's clear that Oppenheimer is the heavy favorite for best film? And then that turns it to, Of course, the men want to vote for Oppenheimer. And we have that whole fight. I want to stay as far away from it as possible.

I don't think it will be a Barbie versus Oppenheimer thing. I think it will ultimately be like, should we vote for the holdovers? Because it makes us feel better movie, which we've seen those kinds of races before. Where there's one movie that is this big, portentious, important film that tells us something about the nature of our character and the embittered future of America. Then there's a movie, they were like, That movie was nice, and I liked it. Remember when you predicted Coda to win Best Picture? It did win because people were like, I just want to feel nice.

Really? I can have that. That's the Johnny Mitchell song. Here's the Oscar.

Yeah, that could happen. That could definitely happen. I like the holdovers, so I'm not rooting against that in any way. We've got three months here for things to evolve.

I have some really disappointing movie takes for you, but I'm not going to give them to you yet.

Okay.

What are you going to get me? I'll save that for another segment. We don't need it now.

Maybe that would be a great segment for when I'm 80 doing my show, the 40 years later Oscars.

Yeah, I have some zags. I do worry about the group think that we had in 2023 with a lot of these movies.

What is the group think? Come on, you're holding back.

Don't hold back. I'm holding back. I'm saving it because I really want to, I think, feel like this is a whole other podcast. But I just think there's more group think than ever with movies now. And I think part of it is because the movie criticism has really gone sideways and we just don't have enough movie critics who are like, Fuck it. This is what I think. And Wesley is probably the last one who's really like, Fuck it. I don't care. This is what I thought. And it's just like we'll go 100 % all in and not couch anything. But I think there were some good Zags available this year that I just didn't see.

I think what happens for me is I just obviously care about the art form and the industry so much that I am actively rooting for things to be good.

I try to be in basketball. Yeah.

I try to not let that cloud my taste and what I'm interested in. But it's not fun, especially when I go see 150 movies a year in the theater. It's an insane number of movies. Then I stream another 150 more at home. I don't want to be wasting my time. I don't want to be sitting there with something I don't like. I don't revel in. I don't write so I don't write pans of movies. Sometimes it can be fun to write a pan. Wesley wrote an incredible pan of Saltburn a month ago, one of the greatest reviews of the year.

But it's not- Saltburn was terrible.

But is it fun on a pod once a week to get on? No. You know who sucks at basketball is Player X. We don't do that.

This was not a Sean Fennasy assault.

No, I'm defending myself, my optimism.

I'm saying- I'm saying- But it wasn't targeted at you. I just feel like we used to argue way more about movies. And just watching the dialog about Barbie was really interesting because John Carpenter came flying off the top rope with some crazy tape and people reacted like he was questioning whether or not 11-11 or something. It was just.

Fucking bonkers. Should he be institutionalized for saying that.

Out loud? Put that guy at a hall. That's why one of the reasons on Rewatchables, we have so much fun going back to see what people thought at the time versus how it evolved. I don't know. It does feel like there's a lane for somebody to zag pretty hard because we see it in sports. Everyone's zagging too hard in sports. And then in pop culture, I feel like there's not enough zagging. Like May, December, really had a good movie. I thought it was very well done and very well acted. I'm not sure I was happy afterwards that I spent the two hours on it.

Yeah, I think that's a really good example of what I think has been a good thing about this movie year. One, I don't think it's weird to be like, I'm not so sure about May, December. I think that's good and healthy to interrogate maybe why you didn't like it or what you didn't think worked about it.

It was more like a why. Why did we do this? Why did they make it this close to the Mary Kaye Letourno story, but not just call it the Mary Kaye Leturno story? What was the point? But I thought it was really interesting. I was glad I saw it, but I don't ultimately know if it's going to be nominated for best picture. That's what I'm like, Whoa, really?

Yeah. I have my own interpretation of the movie and why they made it and why the script was written. It's ultimately about this refraction of celebrity and the way that we vampire people's lives publicly and what happens when you go into the public eye and how you lose yourself in your life. I think the themes and the ideas in the movie are really rich. But Todd Haynes has a very distinct style. His actors always act in a particular way. Actually, we just got a sandwich together last week, and the guy who was ringing us up at the sandwich shop was like, Hey, I watched May, December. Didn't like it. That's a good thing. That's like, Amanda and I had a great conversation on the pod about this movie, Anatomy of a Fall. I don't know if you've seen that one. It's a French movie, but it's mostly in English. It's about a woman who's accused of killing her husband, and he falls from a great height at their home. The most of the movie is a courtroom drama. We both really liked the movie, but we had somewhat different points of view about what actually happened, why the choices were made to tell the story that way.

It was the most fun I had doing the show in a while because we were just really digging into the movie and there was a lot to debate. I think that there's a lot of room for that right now. I don't think there's as much room for, and I think some of what you pointed out is the reason why, for the Pauline Kale like, Hey, guys, I'm just going to toss this Grenade in the middle of the room take, where you're just.

Like- Maybe.

That's a good thing. It's fun to read where she'll just be writing and she'll be like, In this film, it appears that Jane Fonda never read the script and barely opened her eyes while giving a performance and you're like, Whoa, what? It'll be in a movie that everyone agrees today is incredible. There isn't a lot of that. There isn't a lot of aggressively going against the grain because you're a fearless writer or commentator. But I do think that there's a lot of debate with movies because it means that a lot of people are seeing movies, which that's the thing I'm most excited about.

Yeah, The Killer was the most interesting one for me because I knew some people who loved it and I knew some people who just thought it was boring but respected Fincher because he's technically probably one of the three best directors we have. So they were like, Anytime he makes anything, I'm watching it, I enjoy it. I see it. But it was like, Kind of boring.

Yeah, I think a lot of people felt that way, and I also understand that. But as a Fincher maniac, every single choice in the movie, I'm overreading. And I'm like, What? He did this because of this. He did this. And that's fun for me to think about the movie that way. But most people that I talk to who are not psychos were like, That was not even a real character. Who was that guy? Why did I spend an hour and.

A half with him? He liked the Smiths, so that was his personality. Right. Yeah, Kopelman unlocked it for me. That's why sometimes with these, I need to see it a couple of times. Koppelman said that was a story about a businessman, an American... Just the world of business and executing business. And if you look at it through that lens, it's a different movie. So I got to watch it again thinking about it that way.

That's a good reading.

I was always with Fincher. I respected the work. I just didn't really love hanging out with Fastbender for two hours. I guess it was my nit-pick.

I did. My Irish-German brother, I appreciated his work, me, him, and Tom Hagen. I know.

You missed his crank. He didn't get to unleash that thing in this one.

It's too bad. He's so gifted, too. A different a weapon in this movie. I like him a lot as an actor. I think with Fincher, he seems a little bit bored because he's like, I know how to do everything better than everybody else. But got to keep in mind, roughly 80 % of his movies when they first come out, people were like, Was that really so good? Then two years later, everyone's like, Oh, wait, that was the masterpiece of our time. I think that's going to happen with this one, too. I think that it's going to be 2025. It's going to be a bad movie year. Everybody's going to be like, Remember we ignored The Killer, which was made like a diamond? It was a perfectly cut object of filmmaking. But we'll see.

It has two incredible scenes in it.

Which one? The fight?

The fight scene. I thought the assassination scene was amazing.

Very cool.

Very funny, too. In the first 20 minutes, just all of it. And then it not happening and then just how it moves from there. I thought it was one of the best eight, nine-minute stretches of Fincher's career. But then there was other stuff that I was just like, Man, why did he do this?

Yeah, he's one of those filmmakers, too, where if you read more or watch YouTube videos about how he did certain things, you're like, Oh, he's just on another level. That whole image, that rear window image in the opening sequence that you're talking about is just all digitally created. That's not a set. That's not a real place. Like, each room and box was designed and created. So he's on another level.

All right. So you've done some recap stuff on the big picture, but there's more coming. And then everything heads toward the Oscars, which is your Super Bowl, because you're never going to have a Super Bowl as a Jets fan. Sean, fantasy. Happy holidays. It was great to see you.

Thanks, Bill.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Justin and Sean and Kevin Wilde. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Sarudy for producing, as always. Mary Christmas to everybody out there. Thanks for listening. Hope you have a great weekend. Stay safe. I will see you on this podcast on Monday and on The Rewatchables on Sunday night. Merry Christmas. On the wayside, I'd never want to say I don't have.

Few years with them.

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