Coming up, I'm going to talk to my old boss. I have had a lot of old bosses. Well, he's probably the most famous old boss I've had Jimmy Kimmel. Plus million dollar pics, smoking hot, red hot. It's on next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast network as well as the Ringer Dotcom. And if you'd like to watch HBO's It's Action movie week on The Responsibles, we did First Blood on Monday and we did The Terminator on Wednesday.

And then even better, Terminator two coming on Monday. So, yeah, three of the best action movies of all time. I don't know what else I can do for you. January 20 21. Such a happy time. Such a happy week. I wonder what's coming up. My old boss, Jimmy Kimmel. And we're going to do millionaire picks with Peter Schrager, and I'm going to see if I can keep my hot streak. Going one of the roles of a hot streak is don't talk about her having a hot streak, but we'll see if I can keep it going.

First, Bridget.

All right, Jimmy Kimmel is here. We're taping this. It's a little after five thirty on Thursday, he just taped an episode of his show Jimmy Kimmel Live. I like getting him right after he tapes his TV show because he's a little groggy, he's punchy. It's not really concentrating on what he's saying. It's great.

You know, it's actually not true. I'm a little bit I feel like I've just gotten started when I'm done with the show, so I'm ready to go. It's like an appetizer. I just got Cousins s book sent to me, too. And it's very weird to get to see Sal on a book. First of all, in some real book, you know, it's one thing to hear about it, but to hold it is an entirely different thing.

I had the same experience I got yesterday. I started reading it. My wife came home from some little birthday thing she had and I just didn't want to. I was just just like, leave me alone. I read one hundred, ten pages. I knew most of the stories beforehand, but it was so fun to see him in print. And just in general, it's like hilarious. Sal wrote a book.

I know it's crazy, right? This life. I mean it's funny because we all tell stories about him all the time and it makes perfect sense that somebody who's who you tell stories about all the time would write a book about their life, especially he has a million characters in his life. So to harness all of them, it's a book I every like six weeks we have a couple of text threads that sausen and every six weeks he drops a gem and then I text you separately, like just a reminder, says the fucking funniest out of anyone.

He really is. Every six weeks he just lays smack that.

Yeah, I would say he he he presents a gem almost every day, just every six weeks. You declare him the funniest every six weeks.

I reminded it, I remember remembered. But yeah. I mean this book has like your family members are in it. It's funny we're promoting his book. He's not even but it's like your grandfather's in it. Your grandmother. Stories I didn't know about people in your family is it was fascinating.

My Aunt Chippy got him into gambling. She really did. She put the bug in his body and she would take him when he was a teenager to go to the bowling alley in Vegas and he he would take twenty dollars. You know, before we go on one of these trips, he was living in Long Island. Our parents would give us like I remember, I was in Brooklyn for three and a half weeks and my parents gave me thirty dollars for the whole.

And this was in the forties. Yeah, but Sal get like twenty or forty bucks and he took that twenty bucks and he fed it into a video poker machine and actually sat at that video poker machine. It smoked and saw one and I think just kept gambling from that moment on. You know, I was thinking as I was reading the book, why do people become why do people develop a sense of humor? Why do people become funny? Is it it's almost like an athletic gene, right.

Are you born funny or is it circumstances that make somebody funnier? Is it both? And I'm convinced it's mostly family related, especially as you get older and you realize people in your family are funny. Yeah. And once you cross that line and you had that with, like spouses in the book about when you guys all realize that and Chippy and Uncle Frank fighting was funny versus dramatic. And once you cross that line and it's like, oh, these are characters in a TV show that doesn't exist and then like like the ceiling comes off.

So I really do think it's it's pushed by the family more than anything.

I think you're totally right. I think there are some genetic something there. But of course, that ties back to the family, too. But I just also not only that, there are two people in our family. I have a very funny family. Almost everyone in my family is funny, you know, really, like almost every single person in the family would be the funniest person at their office. You know, right now what my grandfather was always the funniest.

His name was Salta. And then so was he from just a young from really since he was a little boy was the funniest. I remember specifically he broke a window with a baseball bat and his mother, his mother was like a child.

You remember we watched The Cosby Show and they said to always be honest, because he was pretending he hadn't done it and always be honest. And that's always the right thing to do. And he goes, all right, Theo did it.

Well, you have it with your son now because how old's your son now exactly? My son is three.

No, like three. My daughter's six. My son is three. He's the reincarnation of s he now just and he said, I sent you a picture of him. We could all probably be arrested for. But he now just if we're upset with him, if we scold him, he just drops his pants and his penis is out and we can't help but laugh and it just derails the whole thing like discipline right up the window.

And we try not to laugh. We know that it's bad to laugh. We know that in the long run it's probably not a good thing. But my wife is upset with him. He'll just look right in the eye and just pull out his penis.

And that is what I would do, I mean, in the old days.

So that was also the first person that I ever heard talk about how small his penis was.

When you're a teenager, everyone is like, oh, yeah, I got you know, everybody's bragging about the size of their penis.

Everyone's lying. Sal would always joke about how small his foot. And the first time I heard that after Sal was Howard Stern, I think I'd never heard it before.

You know, little boys, I remember I had I had my daughter. And then waiting to find out what the second kid was going to be, a girl or a boy and really, like, genuinely believing, well, if it's a second girl, that's great. I love having a daughter to be great. I'll be the data. Two girls would be fine. I'm so glad we had a boy. It's such a different experience. And we were texted about it the other day.

One of the things that's so funny about having a boy is when they hit that stage where they realize the only things that are funny and laugh are farting poops and dicks and balls. It's basically those four things. It's like it's like the Mount Rushmore of comedy. And once they realize that it's just a roller coaster ride from that point on, in my case, I never really got past that.

I never graduated beyond that.

Stayed right there. Yeah. And just to live it through vicariously through them. But now you're living through it now with your son using nudity as a weapon.

I had the same experience. My oldest daughter, Katie, who's twenty nine years old now and then my ex-wife got pregnant a couple of years later and she kept saying it was going to be a girl. So I figured she'd seen the sonogram or asked or something like that. And she's pretending that, she added. And so I became resigned to I thought it was going to be a girl, which was fine with me. I enjoyed I enjoyed my daughter and I was perfectly fine with it.

But I do remember when Kevin, my son was born, I was almost I was literally had to stop myself from jumping up and down, I would say, because it's like you have a buddy for life.

It's just like, oh, cool.

And you get to. Yeah. And you get to like buy all the toys you never had. Right. You know, go through all the Marvel movies again and the comics, you know, all of that stuff you get to do all over again. The Mad Men. Not that you don't watch girls. Sometimes you do, but not typically. And and that was yeah. It's it's nice to have one of each. It really is. Or two.

That's the thing too. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's own, it's its own journey with both that is so completely different.

And like our our agent who now we have the car manager because of whatever the fuck is going on with our manager, our manager, James Dixon, he had our girls.

And sometimes when we talk about the little boy stuff he's just left out, he doesn't know what we're talking about.

Yeah, but he has a cigarette, which in a way, those are same. So going back to school, you were trying to hire me for your show in 2001 and one of our twenty two and one of your selling points was Sal, who I didn't know. And you and I'm like, what's at the move with L.A., with my fiance and who are my friends going to bed. And you were like well. S going to be your best friend, and I'm like, why, how do I know that he's like, just trust me.

And then you flew me out for the weekend and it was a Friday. And Sal has like this piece of paper with all his bets he's going to make on whatever football college that week. And he's pacing around and he's got 17 tiss going. I'm like, oh, this guy is going to be my friend. I can tell. And almost 20 years later, we're still friends.

He used to you know, he would write on little scraps of paper and I guess to avoid being arrested was the idea because then tear them up into a million pieces and flushed down the toilet.

Right. It was weird. Like I mean, living with a guy who was basically committing multiple felonies every single day. And those days are behind us now because we have online gambling.

But it you know, it's a crime. He could have gone to prison. He's probably committed more crimes than anyone I know.

Well, when we were writing for your show that first year, that was it was this weird thing where you could bet on the wherever the offshore betting sites were. Right. There was this weird window. So we would write, you know, the show was on to like nine or five. And we would always have there would be that four hour kind of dead time from like four o'clock to eight o'clock, whatever, after you had most of the stuff you're putting into your like for a guest.

And we would go on these sites and sallied. Have, you know, we would have like 19 different things. And one time one of the sites posted the wrong line. So it was like, I don't know, Piston's, we're supposed to be favored by it and they accidentally put Piston's plus eight. So we put this huge bad on the Pistons plus eight, and then they switched the line to what it should be. So then we beat the other team plus eight.

We were all proud of ourselves. We had all but it was like it was like the impossible. But we could never lose this bet. Then they canceled the first bet because it was the wrong line. So now we're stuck with the other bet, with this huge thing on it, which, of course, lost. And we're so mad that we had to go to your show. And we're just like saying, well, yeah, that should have been in the book.

That's the thing. He has so many chapters that could have been in there that didn't even make the cut.

I know that's how it goes. You know, you're right. And then people start going, hey, you remember the time? You're like, oh, my God, yeah. How could I forget that? But that's, I guess, why you have the paperback, right? Yeah, that kind of stuff. That's true. He can add all that after. Well, anyway, that book's coming out. You can preorder right now.

It's out now. I mean, I have it, I don't know. But it's officially like you can, I think, buy in a bookstore that nobody can go to a bookstore, but you can be delivered to your house on Tuesday.

You can't lose them all cousins. So people don't know his last name is Iacono Iacolino. So there you go.

So for the last four years, actually the last five years, you had Trump as this character for your late night show.

It was the character you did really want to figure out all these different ways to mine comedy from him. And now he's gone. Now he is. Now he has limped off into the sunset. But then you you had one last really great one. You somehow got Billy Bush to do to do a book and video, which you kept secret. And I got to say, I was surprised he was in it. But at the same time, it was actually a really smart move for him to be in it.

But I thought it was really good.

I tell you the story behind the glass. Please do. Well, we came up with that bid and we were then looking for someone to play Billy Bush because we didn't imagine that Billy Bush would want to revisit that in his life. I mean, look, I think it was a smart thing to do, but it really didn't even occur to us that Billy Bush would consider doing that, seeing as how it was probably one of the top three most painful moments of his not just career, but since he was born.

Yeah, I would say top one.

He somebody from his show saw the casting breakdown, which we said we're looking for a Billy Bush look alike. And they're like, well, how about Billy Bush?

You said, what? Do you really do it?

And when we said, they said, yeah, he'll do it. And so we sent them the material. And I was like, I don't think he's going to do this. This is not you know, this is not this is not really his brand necessarily. And sure enough, he did it. And it was funny. I'm glad he did.

It was a good move by him. Yeah.

No, imagine how much that guy got punished for just standing there. Donald Trump said those things. You know, Donald Trump is the way guys talk about just getting the short end of the stick. That's about as bad as it gets. So Trump's gone. And now I mean, we can talk about what it was like five years to trump the second. But now you move into this new world where we have basically a normal president. Again, who's that?

Who's that going to be delivering comedy week to week? And now it's just a pandemic. And it's fun, it's not a lot of not a lot of comedy right now, is my point. Yeah, but you know how it is then the news. They only have a certain amount of news and they let on what what they put the biggest or most interesting or the most compelling stories on. And when Donald Trump isn't there, something else will be there.

I also am skeptical. I don't know, maybe I'm having some kind of weird like when you're released from captivity and that you can't like when you you're you're released from jail after 30 years, they find they match the DNA to somebody else and then they say, all right, you're out, go work at a restaurant. And you're like, all right. I'm not sure how I will do this exactly.

I'm skeptical. I feel like I don't feel like he's gone. I think that we're going to see less of him. Certainly, he's disappeared somewhat because of the social media ban. You know, he really I'm sure that's driving him nuts, but I don't think he's going to make it a week. And Margol Mar a Lago, I don't think he's going to be able to take this at all. I predict that within seven days time he's on the phone talking to Sean Hannity for two hours, he's going to owning into these shows.

He can't keep he can't sit there. I've been to monologue, by the way. I don't know if I ever told you that I had dinner at Mar a Lago like six years ago with Howard Stern, actually, because he lives near there. And we went there for dinner because he's like, you got to see this place. And this is not I mean, this place, you could not possibly exaggerate how comical it is. First of all, everyone, there is a hundred years old.

I mean, like when I was there, I was like, what is Trump?

Why would he want to be here? Like, it's like his grandparents. He's old to start with. His grandparents came to visit this place.

They're all like hunched over people who are eating soft food. And all over the place, there are pictures of Donald Trump. There are dozens and dozens, or at least there were when I was there. If you go to the men's room, it's just all pictures of Donald Trump and not just pictures like he'll have anything he'd have. Now he's got real magazine covers. He'd have fake like those fake magazine covers that you you know, when you go on vacation, you know, they put you on the cover of time or something.

Right? I have those hanging in on the walls there. He'd have like ratings articles about The Apprentice in which they finished Twelfth Framed, and that one was hanging right on the wall of the entrance, like just like things that I gosh, I mean, like you never hang on the wall of your house. We're hanging on display for all to see at this club. And it was just a bunch of really old people saying nothing and kind of doing nothing.

There was no music playing during dinner. It was just quiet and a terrible place. And now he lives in this terrible place. And I'm sure he's going to get plenty of people coming up doing he's got all his sycophants surrounding him, but he's going to get sick of that and he's going to need some action. And and he's we have not seen the last of him. I would bet any I've studied this man as much as I've studied anyone in my life.

Mean, I'm sad to say, is I feel like I know him very, very well, even though I don't know him very well. But I feel like he's predictable and I don't think it's over by any stretch of the imagination. I think it's like Tyson, like we thought Mike Tyson was done at one point, that he was retired, that he's fighting somebody else.

Razor, here he is. There he is. Twenty years later, still fighting, still doing stuff, still in the news and still around.

I wonder what bothers Trump more. Losing the presidency are losing his Twitter account.

That's got to drive him nuts to Twitter. Things got to be driving him into a frenzy because if he had it, he would be tweeting, what, a hundred times a day?

Two hundred. Oh, yeah. He's got no audience. I mean, he's like it really is like. It's crazy that what he must I mean, this is a total surprise, this part we didn't expect, we thought that he'd leave and he'd continue to be on TV all the time. He'd be tweeting all the time. Every thought would still be broadcast. And now he has no outlet at all. Or Melania I.

Well, that was one of the I learned a lot over the last week because some stuff trickled out because I think the AIDS all started talking. And one of them was how they they didn't sleep in the same bedroom. Did you see that thing?

Yeah, that's been known for a while. I didn't I didn't know that because they were like the Bidens will be sleeping in the same bedroom. Yeah, Mr. Trump slept in there. And Melanie and I over the other side, I was like, wow. Well, it's like the movie Dave.

You think about it even funnier because he likes to watch TV about himself all night and you probably can't sleep. Probably sick of hearing him complain about himself, all about how he's presented. So it does make sense. But I mean, really, what do you think? You think those two are lovey dovey? Probably not.

Probably not. A lot of probably not a lot of cuddling now, but yeah, there is a lot of a lot of weird revelations that came out. I keep coming back to I thought for sure he would have this whole media infrastructure ready to launch Trump TV, whatever is going to be called. I thought they were secretly working on it for the last six months. To me, it was going to be like press the button and we're off. And he'd and it's does it exist?

And who would have guessed that the guy who's totally unprepared for every situation would be unprepared?

That I have a theory on that, though.

I don't think he was able to do that, because the minute that that leaked and it would leak, of course, it would have seemed like he thought was going to lose.

No, I don't think that's even that. But yeah, no, I think it's part that's partly but also he would have made an immediate enemy of Fox News and the other right wing outlets would suddenly see him as a competitor rather than their non-stop content. So I think that that probably was one of the things that. Yeah, but he couldn't have believed he was going to win. Maybe he did. I don't know.

All I know is and I don't know if I've I've told you this and I can't really go into a ton of detail, but I know for a fact that he did not. I know for a fact. I know people presume it, but I know for a fact that he did not think he was going to win the first time against Hillary Clinton.

Oh, yeah, I totally believe that. Yeah. And no one thought it. And in fact, they didn't even have a photographer on hand after the election results came out. And if you look, you won't find any pictures of that night because he didn't want a photographer in there taking a picture of them when they lost. And and that's kind of interesting. And it makes you wonder if he if even, you know, this fairy tale that he's been spreading around, if even he believes it.

You know, I think it's possible that he does, but probably not likely.

Are you optimistic for the next four years for the country with the other division in the anger and all that stuff? Because you're kind of in the middle of it in the sense that you took a lot of shit from one side for a while, but also, like your show appeals to fifty states. And I think you're kind of the every band and a lot of ways.

So I'm lucky because I am able to get shit from both sides all the time. Really great for me.

You know what I am mostly concerned about like the next few months, really. I think that. The vaccine needs to be more available. It is it had Scott, that's I think that's going to take a lot of our attention right off the bat.

I don't think people are going to work together. But, you know, I also think that ultimately Americans are disinterested in politics. And I just don't know that we have the attention span to maintain this level of anger at each other. And, you know, I think we're going to probably at some point go back to hating each other's football teams.

I think the weirdest thing for me has. Ben, how has the concept of comedy has changed, you know, like even like I'm really curious to see what like Saturday Live does with Biden and Carmela, because, you know, I think I think when it was them versus the Trump empire, I think they were a little careful about not being too mean with Biden. But now he's the president for the next four years. You could argue you could do like a whole weekend at Bernie's for the next two years.

And just, you know, that's what they would have done in the 70s and 80s. Right. They would have turned into a character. They would have turned them into the super old guy who doesn't know where he is. Yeah. And it wouldn't have been who he is, but that would have been the parody of the 78 year old president. I wonder how they're going to handle it and just in general, how people are going to handle this stuff.

Ken, are we going to be allowed to make fun of the Biden presidency?

Yeah, I mean, you have to, but I do think it will be done in a in a cartoonish way. And the way you describe and if you think back like to the 70s and you think about like Chevy Chase, it wasn't even an impersonation. He just snapped.

President Ford, you just fall over the podium and fall down. And it was based on really nothing at all like it was based on nothing. Like as far as I know, Gerald Ford was like a pretty good athlete. Well, you know, it wasn't a clumsy man.

I think maybe there was one, you know, he felt coming out of a plane once. That's how it started.

Yeah. And then that just became like the thing and and people went with it. It's weird because it is how, you know, the way your your caricature is, how a lot of people think of you because people don't necessarily dig so deep when when it comes to politics and when it comes to other human beings. And and yeah, if everybody does the doddering old guy, that's who Joe Biden is going to be to a lot of people that you think, old guy, and you know, he is an old guy is he is old.

Could be 70 died. Yeah. The first impression that I remember them doing that, I actually felt like hurt. The person politically was when Carvey's to do the the George Bush, the dad, not not George W. Bush when you did thousand points of light and you just say it was it was almost too good. And I do feel like it kind of hurt Bush heading against Clinton because he picked on these like three things and did it so perfectly that it kind of changed how you saw Bush when he gave speeches you just saw, like the Dana Carvey thing.

I don't know if SNL has that kind of power anymore because I don't think the audience is is as big.

But whether it was it's funny, though, because it was so gentle. But, yeah, it was he but also President Bush at the time, I think played it very well. And he would have Dana Carvey come to every event, like, we don't have that kind of thing, and especially not when it comes to crossing party lines. You know, I mean, Alec Baldwin and Donald Trump are not doing any charity events together now.

Well, so what what happens to your going forward or how many two years left? Three years, potentially more. Who knows?

I have two years left. And in fact, the the twenty third, which I don't know, is that Wednesday or something is are we begin our 19th season of the show. That's the day the show premiered.

After it premiered on the twenty sixth. You might be right.

Yeah. I think I'm one of those days but it's the day Cousin Sal is on the show is the.

So we may go back into the past a little bit. Yeah. Because it's all for. Second segment or do you go top segment, you just trump the celeb them? No, no cousin sells a second guessed, yet he's even cousins are subject to publicists.

Well, he told the story in the book about when he almost got impaled by a nail when he was pillow fighting Bill Goldberg, which was a terrifying, terrifying night. Yeah, it was a terrible night, I mean, Goldburg, though, was pretty good humored, there were a couple of guys that were not who still had pillow fights with who were just like, yeah, I'm going to knock it off. I think Lennox Lewis was none too amused by Sellstrom, as I recall.

And also the most dangerous thing sounded on the show was staff update, where he would study coworkers. And this this is we thank God the statue of limitations is is passed, because if this went on today, where he would find out, like, who was sleeping together on staff and who hooked up once.

Yeah. And then he would read through a list of these things on the show.

And it was it would cause a just volcano for weeks afterwards that I would have to, like, settle down. And once everything was settled down, he'd come back up and do it again.

I can't tell you how terrifying it was here. First of all, was live television. And he would go on and he would. And it was almost like the gossip part of the show. And everyone who worked for the show was completely terrified, mortified that they were going to end up on this thing. And then, you know, there are some skeletons because it was a it was a show that tape from nine to ten. And then everybody would go in the green room after.

So stuff happened and I'm sat and I was just absorbing everything.

You know what the worst thing he did, which was also one of the best things he did. But the show was live.

And I don't know if you remember this, but we used to do something called Celebrity in a box, which was kind of a forerunner to the messenger, except for there was no singing. We just had a big cardboard box with little mouth hole cut out and we put the box out on the boulevard and the celebrity was in and it was basically twenty questions. You know, you had to guess who the celebrity was. And at the end of and it was supposed to run through the whole show and the guests would play along.

And it was a lot of our plan for the hour. And Sal would be out there with a microphone to hold the microphone up to the celebrity. And I asked one question at the very beginning of the monologue. And again, this was the live show supposed to take us through a whole hour of television content and shall revealed to it wasn't me because.

No, it was it was like superstar. No. And then the guy, like, took the box off and he was confused. And he's like, OK, it was like Lorenzo Lamas and it was over.

And I couldn't stop laughing because I knew that it just to screw me and know that's the whole rest of the show. This is a national television show. All our careers are on the line and he's just fucking with me.

It's kind of amazing of his live.

Looking back like how poorly that should have gone yet and did frequently, yeah, but but never in a way that actually caused something bad. How do you measure how do you measure success nowadays when it's like. The ratings, there's so much stuff, people watch it the next day or they'll just watch the clips or they're like my son who's seen probably every prank you've ever done at this point on YouTube but does not watch the show live. How do you even know that?

Because like you were winning the 18 to 49, which 15, 16 years ago we would have been throwing a parade on Hollywood Boulevard. But now it's like that's one piece. And then there's news and Twitter and like, I don't even understand it.

Well, it's funny. The old media is still focused on the Nielsen ratings, but they don't really mean anything anymore because now I mean, we've reached the point now where we put the show on YouTube before it even airs on television. So. Right. So it's just kind of silly to look at it like that because maybe you get like two million people watching the show at night. And then I wake up in the morning and another two million people have already watched the monologue.

And then sometimes they go on to get eight million, ten million views. And and and they're from all around the world, not just the United States. And so it's a totally different thing. It's interesting because now you can just look at a number. You can count how many viewers you've got, which is everything else is an estimate and not necessarily accurate. I think Nielsen's methodology is is really antiquated. It's like one person equals like twelve thousand viewers or something like that.

So I dunno, I always measure success by just like how I feel at the end of the show. And for me, I try to I want the show to be good from the beginning to the end. And if there's something in it that isn't good, I feel bummed out about the show afterwards. But yeah, it used to be in the old days where we were just kind of swinging wildly in the dark where, you know, we'd have like some weird home run once every two and a half weeks and we'd all be buoyed by that.

But it's nicer to just have a lot of doubles, you know, that's it. I'd rather be Tony Gwynn, the Dave Kingman, you know what I'm saying? It's weird.

That timeslot is one hundred times less essential than it used to be. And and we always joke about because sometimes well, there's this one Twitter account that's good retro news that I have bookmarked where they have. Yeah, it's great. And they'll have like TV ratings from nineteen seventy six and we'll just talk about like oh my God. Like 18 million people watched. Welcome Back Kotter. It's like more than the Super Bowl. Now you think like Carson back then probably had, you know, nine, 10 million people watching it on Monday night.

But but in a weird way, your show reaches more people now because of the digital thing where you can reach people and like, what, one hundred and fifty two hundred countries? Yeah.

It's every once in a while I get to see the breakdown and it's like I think about half of our views on YouTube are in the United States. Yeah, Canada is the second, but then it's really like crazy. And I have to say it's kind of exciting when you see, because I think I was a couple of weeks ago, I was looking at like like something I don't know, like sixty thousand people in Finland watched my monologue and I was like, well, that's kind of great.

I've never been to Finland. And I wonder if, like, people would know who I was in Finland, like, you know, it's just weird to think that people in Finland. But I guess it's kind of like the power of the United States that, you know, we maybe feel has been diminished. But at least from an entertainment standpoint, I mean, we are this hugely influential force in this country and late night television. You know, people love to talk about Johnny Carson in those days.

But, you know, if you have you add it all up. Our shows between CBS shows NBC and then you got The Daily Show and you've got Conan. And these shows like there are far more people watching television now than than there ever were back then. Yeah, it feels that way. I guess the difference would be when, like when we were growing up, we were all experiencing whatever the show was, either at the exact same time.

Yeah. Or you think if you missed it, you missed it. Yeah. Yeah. And then when the when the VHS is showed up and I think we got VHS is probably right around the same time in the early 80s, the ability to like tape Letterman and watch it the next morning and stuff like that was so crucial.

And the worst thing that would happen to me was if I tape it. But we had aluminum foil for an antenna on our television and and if it got out of whack, you'd get nothing but static. And that was just the biggest disappointment. You think you're going to see something you're looking forward to and you get just static. And and sometimes I just watch the static because you can kind of hear what they were saying. You know, it's so funny.

I used to have different tapes and I think you did some of this, too, or I would have liked the first like three or four Letterman anniversary tapes.

I have them right now. I probably get them there. They're in a box right there. And I'd make labels for them.

Oh, yeah, do the same thing. And it's like I can't lose these ever. Yeah. You know, be like, hey, what are you doing?

My house is on fire. What are the five things I'm grabbing. I would've been like I have to grab my best basketball cards, the Letterman tapes. And I wish somebody had told me like hey, did about twenty fifteen. They're all going to be in this thing called YouTube. It's fine. Don't don't sweat it. You're they're all coming back. Don't worry about it.

It is funny because I taped everyone and about year six I realized that they were each show was almost the same as the year passed because they just keep all the highlights from past years and add a couple that year. And it was it was almost like a rerun.

A lot of the times when Vince McMahon, Bob Costas one is still like the greatest hour and a half. Oh, that was that was the basis. And I remember specifically, Dave said to Vince McMahon, who was just a complete stooge, you know. Yeah.

Is that a rented tux? If it's big man. Yes, very, very sincerely. Everyone laughed at them.

And I remember being a kid and thinking like, oh, it must be world class.

You know, one of the things about you is you've you've become friends with, I think, every childhood here you've had. Right. Is there anyone, any box you haven't checked Letterman, you have a relationship, I have sex with Madonna, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards.

But I don't I would rule that out.

I wouldn't listen. I you know, I try not to bother these guys. The only guy, the only one who I really have, like, a ton of interaction with is Huey Lewis, I think, you know.

Well, you like actually like vacation with them and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. We stay at his house and we go fishing and stuff like that. But yeah, it's it's pretty great. I mean I, I met Martin Short also is another guy that I, I have a lot of communication with, but I just get nervous, you know.

You know, every once in a while I'll have some communication with Dave and I'm just terrified the whole time and and I'm afraid that I'm going to say something stupid or something or make him think less of me. And then if I hang up the phone, I'm relieved. And then there are a few friends from high school that I would call immediately and say, I just spoke to Dave like, no.

It seems like his post TV show Life has been a lot happier and probably more satisfying than what we heard about Carson post post his life where it seemed like he Carson was just a Balbo. He was like four divorces in. Yeah. And had like all kinds of lung issues and just didn't seem like it was a very happy, positive life. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you know, Johnny's the drink a lot and he smoked a lot, so that probably didn't help.

That's fun every once in a while. But yeah, not something you want to do on a nightly basis.

Different times before we go to the L.A. Sports Renaissance. I don't like it. I just want to tell you that.

But what. Dodgers, Lakers. You're my Clippers. They're not my Clippers. Stop it.

Oh, no, they're not your Clippers, are you?

How are you? Boston fan. Oh, my God, do you do not have season tickets for the Clippers? I do have season tickets. I like going to see live basketball, although it certainly hasn't happened for about a year. Don't you know what?

I'm going to leave this on. I'm going to leave this to your readers to dig up your your Clipper mania that you as you adopted them when you came out to Los Angeles. Please don't don't try.

What are you talking about? Clipper mania.

Again, I will leave this to the masses to settle. I've been very busy, man. I've got to try to figure out what Donald Trump is doing in his bedroom in Florida.

You know, you expected big things for the Clippers. And I always said to you, the Clippers, it doesn't mean they get used to the Clippers. It's not you can't get around being the Clippers. It's just it's like being George Costanza. It's just what it is.

And you told me you weren't me and you were correct. Do you have a farewell Tommy Lasorda story? Yes, I have 12 of them. OK, here we go.

Well, first of all, the greatest thing Tommy Lasorda has to say, and he'd say it over and over again is somebody said like, why did you play Mike Sochua instead of Steve Yeager in the World Series? Is it because he's Italian and not didn't playing because he's Italian? I played him because I'm Italian.

But you remember you probably remember that night Tom was on our show.

It was early in the run of the show. The show was live. Tommy was our second guest and I was pretty excited to have him on. And I carved out a big chunk of time from like ten minutes, which is unusual for a second guest. I wanted to give Tommy the respect and time that I felt he deserved. And then we talked for a while and it went well. And then after Tommy, there was a comedian on the show who had a lot of foul and unkind things to say about President Bush.

And Tommy was so pissed off, he was just spitting mad, so angry, like the kind of anger that we've seen in press conferences and we've heard about from his former players. After the show, they come to me and they go, and I'm sure this doesn't happen with any other hosts, but they, of course, came to me like Tommy's really upset. You need to go in there and talk to him.

And I went in and Tommy yelled at me and he's like, I was in the world, you know, he I mean, he just went on and on and on about how I did not give him enough time and how could I put that comedian on when I should have been talking to him. And he was yelling and cursing and it went on for like fifteen minutes. And then he took like a breath. And I was like, I'm so sorry, Tommy.

I really want you to have a good time. I feel really bad. And, you know, hopefully we can do this again. And then he start up again and the whole thing happened again. It was like the slowly I turn, Niagara Falls gets to the point where I and this is not an exaggeration or a joke or whenever I start, I went, oh, these motherfuckers, this is a prank. And I started looking around the room for where you guys had hidden the cameras.

And Tommy's going and I'm looking in like the planter and I'm looking around the shelf trying to find the camera, which was not they weren't that small at the time.

And I found no camera and I realized that it was not a prank.

He was just you were just in hell with Tommy Lasorda, just in a loop of hell.

And after that, I thought, well, that's it for Tommy Lasorda. I mean, he is really mad at me and he does not like me at all. Next time I saw him, he couldn't have been nicer. He was just like it was as I mean, it was as if it never happened. I mean, he hugged me. He you know, I had many experiences with him after that. And, you know, he was there will never be anybody like him again.

I mean, he was just funny. Every fucking bit of him was funny.

He cut guys while he was taking a shit look at his ankles and he called these guys up and told they were going down to the minors. I think maybe like he knew, like, that's I mean, like, if ever you want to leave, I guess that's the time Tommy shiting. Definitely. That's when you really want to get out of there. What do you think? What if somebody went on YouTube? And they wanted to find the greatest prank you've ever played on the show.

What would you tell them to go find? Is it the is it the mickey, the wax thing of you with a cousin Mickey or now that's not even the top Mickey prank? Actually, I mean, that one was great made for TV, but I took her on a journey of psychological torture a month ago. Oh, that was a good. Yeah, that was great. Which I which it's a long story.

But she bought a house from a woman and she was so grateful to this woman. She told this woman, any time you want to come back, if you want to have Christmas here, we'd love to have you. And this is my cousin Mickey, for real. She's like the nicest person in the world. And I made up a fake email address and I waited like five years and I stronger along. And yeah, that's worth looking up. It's on YouTube.

It's a prank on Cousin Mickey. It was last month.

But but by the way, that prank said as much about about you as it did about Cousin Mickey, that you took this morsel that she gave about inviting the person back to the house and you just put it in your back pocket. For years. You waited like fucking Michael Myers waiting to go back to Haddonfield. And then finally, at least it created e-mail address and started torturing her at the nicest person out there.

That's what I do. And the other one, the one that is one that I've been wanting to do since I was a child. And I really I remember and I swear to God I had this thought. I hope that one day I have enough money that I could do. This was when we repainted antipathies house, went to Las Vegas, painted her house orange and green, painted the shrubs, and she just went absolutely fucking berserk. And it is it is it is one of the great in fact, last night she got my mom called me this morning, last night.

And Chippy had a dream that I turned her car over in her driveway if and probably woke up thinking it was real.

She did. Yeah. And so that's the kind of psychological damage that I want to be remembered for. Well, check out those benki pranks, people listening. All right. So because it sounds book, it's available. And when is he going to be on your show?

You can't lose them all. He's on the show next week. I think next Wednesday is the day. OK, on as a guest. He's on regularly, but rarely is he sitting in the in the chair. And we will be back in studio next week, so I will have to deal with him in the chair. What does that mean back in studio? Well, I've been in my house for the last.

No, but I mean, but when you're doing it in a studio, like how many people are in the studio, it depends.

If the guests want to come in, we make sure they get tested and then they come in. There's no audience. It's just the crew. It's just me and the crew. Oh, all right.

Well, congrats on everything and congrats on getting through the last four years alive and intact.

Yeah, well, I fear it's not over, but we'll see, I guess. All right. Good to see. Thanks.

Good to see you, too. All right, molenaar pix, championship round edition, Peter Schrager is here from Good Morning Football and Fox coverage and more importantly, the good luck charm of million picks.

I don't know. This goes into the first sentence of your legacy. Now, you've come on three straight weeks. All we've done is win. Last week, we won one point five eight five million dollars. We're up now one point five million for the season in the playoffs. We are five now on our big playoff bets were seven and three against the spread. But all three teams that lost all won the game. So we had the team that just didn't cover.

We are up two point eight one two million dollars over the last three weeks.

It's not bad. It's great. And do you get the feeling that people who listen to this podcast with you or against you? Because I get so many texts from people who listen and they're like, you guys are in your all your bets. And if you guys I'm like, I don't make any money off this thing. But if you get the feeling that the listeners to this podcast, Bill Simmons, argued against them, not fixed.

Well, what we don't want is we don't want the mushes to join us this week so they can stay away. If you lose, they don't stay anyway.

I also I really liked round one and I really liked round two.

I think round three is is really, really hard and I'm not even sure I want to finish the year positive. We might go a little conservative this week. And before we talk about these games, let's go backwards. Yeah. Biggest surprise for you in round two. I've had five days to think about this. I think my biggest surprise was how close the Browns were to winning that game with or without Mahomes. The fact that we had that Higgins touchdown overturned just in general, they were really in that game and they were able to move the ball up and down the field and do some things.

And I don't know how to translate that moving forward this week to the bills. Have the chiefs like last week?

I'd be patient with it because I felt the same way and I felt like they were going to lose that game at the end. But then you think back into the first half, the chiefs are up nineteen to three, but Christmas to field goals and Mahomes was hobbled like that. Third and one option play. It's almost like they were tempting karma knowing how and why are you running the ball. So they they were cruising there for a while. And if Buckner makes those field goals, maybe it's not a game and then if Mahomes stays in, but they had their shot at the end.

And I know you and Cousin Sal had a big debate on it. We did it on our show, Me and Burlison. But that rule and everyone says change that rule, the touchback rule. It's the one rule everyone universally hates. I say absolutely not. The entire league is just rewarding offense. They know that rule, like everyone knows that rule. And I can tell you, Belichick coaches it very coaches it, that if you even try to extend, if anything, less than a two point conversion or fourth down, you can try to extend on that thing.

You get penalized internally like they don't want. So for Higgins to do that, it either tells me, A, he just got too excited and he went for it. B, they don't coach it as hard, or C, it's a failure from both sides. To me, that's, you know, the rule. It's the rule. And you've got to just use every bit of resistance not to outstretch that ball because time and time again, it has buntings in the Twitter.

People just love getting mad about stuff and yelling that things should be changed, not offering any alternatives. It's like change the real change. Real change it to what what what is he supposed to get the ball back at the one yard line because he fumbled it out of bounds and in the end zone, there's no alternative. It has to be a touchback for the other team. It's so stupid. Why are we arguing about this?

And then I made the case. I said, you know, I did this whole thing. And then I got a text from a head coach who the defensive coach. And he goes, well, why don't we just give the ball back to the offense? Every time there's an interception or every time there's a fumble recovery, just hand it back to the office. Right. Every time we do this, it's like, let's get the ball points. And score is literally the only rule that can benefit defense.

And I mean, you could say, for instance, it was dirty. That's fine. But like, it was a hell of a hit. He fumbled it. And that's that's what happens. That's the sport. It's going to rule forever. And you need to know the rules. So to me, that was my take. My big surprise, by the way, how about this?

Don't fumbled the ball in the end zone. Don't do it. Oh, yeah. The rule is if you fumble at the end zone, the other team gets the ball. So maybe don't do that anyway.

I'm sorry. Go ahead. My big surprise was the nightcap on Sunday, and I hate to be so negative, but I came on this podcast and last week I was like, I just don't know if the Saints have enough offensive firepower. The fact it's so it's so it's tough to do it because everyone want to do the sentimental goodbye to Drew Brees. They know what the Saints could not win with that quarterback in the second half. And that was my surprise, just how quickly he fell off a cliff.

And if if we're talking Bucs, Packers and a little bit, don't forget how bad Drew Brees was and how close that game was. And if Drew Brees makes one or two plays in the fourth quarter, that game goes differently. Drew Brees, I don't think he necessarily wants to put that game in his Hall of Fame reel by that same token.

Don't forget how close the Saints were, they're going over midfield when Cook gets stripped, you're right. And that's that's one of the reasons I have so much trouble at that game of Cook just holds on to the ball there. It's probably twenty three.

Thirteen. You would. And third and 11 on their own, 20 Brady and a 20 20 game with 14 minutes left in the fourth quarter throws a laser back shoulder to Tyler Johnson, who's got 12 catches on the year. And he makes maybe the all time greatest catch in Buccaneers history. And it doesn't complete. Those things happen in a game. I'm not holding it against the Buccaneers. If anything, it was great. But it's easy to see that final score.

That's easy to come away from that game and be like, wow, the Buccaneers are red hot and they're rolling. I actually thought Fournette ran the wrong way on that one running play. I felt like there was some mistakes on special teams. If Deonte Harris doesn't get injured, Drew Brees and that arm is what really kept that team from finding their way into the NFC championship game.

Cook being sloppy, Taysom Hill not being there, Harris getting hurt early. Brees hit the wall and you could see it. And just the way he carried himself the last few weeks clearly wasn't right. Then we find out after the game that Michael Thomas needs surgery on 17 different parts of his body. So that I thought that Michael Thomas thing was like, the guy's a malcontent. You know, this is the kind of stuff that happens when somebody is playing their selves at it.

And then you find out like, oh, he just wanted to be there for for Drew Brees and not only have one injury, he had three. So then you go back and you think about it and you go, wow. So they had a completely compromised Michael Thomas. They had a quarterback who couldn't throw the ball more than ten yards. They had trade cuts with basically as their best playmaker other than they had no there no special teams, no taken yet.

Had a chance to go up ten, you know, midway through the second half. So so that that's the hardest thing to figure out. This Bucks team, I didn't love how they played in either game, but I also think they had they were flying on the ball. They have so many different game breakers and you just stack up the game breakers compared to the Packers. They have better players. I don't know if that means they're going to win, but they definitely have more blue chippers.

I think the breakout player of the weekend was Devin White in a way that I don't remember a player making a national like hello to everybody. So he didn't play in the wild card around because of the covid stuff. But number forty five on the Buccaneers, for two years they have been telling me that this guy is the best linebacker in football. They're taking him fourth. Overall, the GM. Jason and I are friendly. He's calling me. I was like, when was the last time you saw a middle linebacker taking fourth overall this guy is that good?

Like they're so excited. And then he kind of was good. They made his rookie year. He had injuries with his knee. And then this year was really good. But those primetime games didn't have the game. Devin White went from being like a fun player for us on Twitter to talk about and for like football fans now being a national name. And it's a wrecking ball, the kind of guy that I think is going to be the biggest X factor if they win or lose on Sunday.

I research that Packers Bucs game a lot because I watched it this week.

Oh, did you? I was going to ask you about it because the Bucs killed the Packers. But then you go back, you look at it, Packers are up ten, nothing picked six. Another pick where the bucks get the ball in the two. Now it's fourteen ten and the game kind of unravels. And one of the things that it's super nerdy. I read one super nerdy football piece about it. I think it was on ESPN and they were saying how the Packers were trying to run side to side with Jones and with Dillon and the Bucs linebackers.

David and White was just so fast they couldn't do it. And the the smart guy was thinking in this game, they're going to be pounding through the tackles, kind of like what the Rams did with Akers. And I thought Akers was able to run the ball last week. I mean, that he certainly was the reason why they lost. So what else did you notice on the tape?

So there's a couple of really bad missed blocks by the running back. So Jamaal Williams number thirty completely whiffs on Lavonte David on one time. And that gets to Rodgers. Rodgers was under pressure the entire game. You're right there, up ten nothing. Rodgers does a whole celebration and everyone's like, oh, my God, Rodgers. He's doing the shimmy with his hips and everyone's oh, they're going to blow him out. The Bucs defense was relentless. And Todd Bowles just continue to send everybody and everybody.

And they really overpowered the Packers offensive line, but also their running backs into a way that I think you're going to see a lot of different chips and different formations to try to protect Rodgers, because when he has time, of course, but they were sending seven. I mean, they were sending Sean Murphy. Bunting came off on the outside at one time and got to Rodgers and he totally missed it. Re watching the game. He had Davante Adams and a lot of passes.

He didn't have the time to get it to him. So this game may be won or lost on whether Devin White and JP and and those guys are breathing down his neck in two seconds or if they can't get to him in three.

What about the left tackle who went out a couple of weeks ago? David, did you feel OK about the O-line without the left tackle or now?

So the guy who replaced him was a guy named Billy Turner. And it's no, we're talking the offensive line talk. Billy Turner has been in the league for a long time. Got to Green Bay, great dude. Like big personality. And like one of these really smart guys. He's from the city of Minneapolis. Came over to the Packers, and originally he was on guard. Then he was playing right tackle and now they're using him at left tackle and backyard's one hundred million dollar guy.

I have not seen a huge drop off with Turner. I really haven't. And it hasn't really shown up on film and it hasn't shown up with anyone talking to me about this team that wait a second there. Without Bakhtiyari, they have not missed him in a way that I think a lot of people expected they would.

Well, we might as well just keep talking about this game. The Packers are favored by three. The line seems like it's inching toward three and a half, but it's not quite there yet, the money line is basically minus one 20, minus one twenty five, depending where you look. They're the number two in weighted total DVOA 11 turnovers all season. I looked at their wins because they and the Packer fans, a lot of fans think I just don't like their team.

I like whoever is going to win me money, I could care less.

So I'm betting on you and me, too. I pick the Rams on national TV last week and let's just say, yeah, it wasn't it didn't go over too smoothly with some folks in Green Bay, but that's what I think.

You thought you were getting a little more from Aaron Donald than that game, though, right?

I underestimated his impact, I think, with that broken rib. Yeah, well, I was looking at the Packers schedule. So their last nine wins. Houston, Jacksonville, up to Besuki twice, Doug Peterson and Philly, Detroit, and whoever their coach was at the time.

So two teams that fired their coach right after and Houston fired their coach to Jacksonville, fired their coach Robiskie, twice. That's six months.

Carolina game was like pretty close. Tennessee, they beat logit was a good game and they came in in the snow.

Now, Tennessee is a terrible defense and they exploited it. And then the Rams in the playoffs, a game that, you know, was a seven point game and Goff was kind of doing the stuff I think McVeigh wanted to do, Goff certainly didn't kill them in that game.

Goff exceeded expectations tenfold in that game. I think he played as well as you could imagine, any quarterback with nine fingers to play.

Right. And that no cup all that stuff. There are three losses over that time. They got murdered by Tampa. They lost to Minnesota in a game or cook just beat them by itself. And then this is the game that I think could be the doppelganger game if you're going against Green Bay is they lose the Indian Otti Cup by three.

And India is kind of that where it's kind of a poor man's version of, I think what Tampa can do if Tampa plays well, which is make some plays on D, but more importantly, the run pass combo, what we saw from playoff that last week, some people like Warren Sharp thinks Tampa still to run heavy, but fundamentally if Tampa plays well. That's the kind of game it would be like the thirty one twenty eight, thirty one twenty four type game.

My point is Green Bay is a one seed and I think sometimes in our heads we overeat like, oh, they're the one seed. There were three teams that could have been the one seed until the last two weeks. Right. And I think they probably had the easiest schedule out of the out of the three. I don't feel like their traditional kick ass awesome one seed. I'm just looking at it from a Tampa standpoint, the fact that they win in New Orleans and they won the game and they came from behind, I think that means something.

I don't love the Tampa team. I think they're super sloppy, but I wouldn't want to play them in a playoff game, especially with the Brady piece of it and the aura that he brings to these games. I would be scared of as a Packers fan in this game, is my point. A couple of things.

First of all, you're spot on about the Packers, and they are the easiest strength of schedule in the entire league this year. Easy is when it was all said and done, the records against their opponents was easiest, which is something to be said. But I can't they can only drive the car, the keys that they're given, I'm not going to hold it against them. The thing with Tampa, and I've been saying this to you all these weeks and it started it started the bye week.

It came on after they lost to the chiefs and then when they came out and just absolutely annihilated the lions and they wanted to put up eighty on the Lions to make a statement on a random NFL Network Saturday game against, you know, no coach and seven different assistants who had never picked up a clipboard is that they've got this young team and there's like this really confident swagger. And then you match that with The Brady Factor. So their defensive backfield, which is a bunch of guys you might not have heard of before this year, and Sean Murphy Bunting and Jamal Dean and and the Carlton Davis, they call themselves the grave diggers.

And they're like this like a wild bunch of all young guys under the age of twenty five. And they are not scared of anyone or anything. And they tweet a lot and they Instagram a lot. And they got like it's, it's almost like reminds me of I don't know, like the bad boys pistons or something or like they don't know what they're going to play this game and you're going to have to deal with it. And they take a lot of risks.

They get beat, as you saw the Traken Smith play, like they were all over the place and they got caught up in coverage. They do get beat, but they're aggressive. They hit. And I can tell you they're not there's not going to be a fear factor of Aaron Rodgers, which I think is a huge deal. A lot of guys go into Lambeau, young player. Oh, my gosh, I'm covering Davante Adams. These guys, they don't know any better, they think.

And maybe they are they think they're up to the task to stop that, aren't they? Adams and Aaron Rodgers? I know that. I think it's beyond a lack of a fear factor. I think they're going to be relishing this. Let's go get this guy to meet this guy in October. Let's go beat him again. I'm with you like they have they have playmakers all over the place, which I think you need.

And they fly like Devin White runs like a four for 40. And then on the other side is David. And neither of these guys get any respect because for the last decade, you know, Tampa Bay is on the seventh Fox game or Tampa Bay is on the eighth game and they're playing at one o'clock and they're playing against the Jaguars and no one's watching. And Lavonte David for eight years has been maybe the best linebacker at his position. But you would never say that.

I've been looking at the stats and saying, well, PFV says this and there are a lot of tackles. This is finally their moment for so many of these guys that have been there and they're all kind of blossoming and flourishing together on defense. It's a cool deal. And then they've got these guys up front who are just like, so we didn't mention his name. But let's first say Sue, who has history with Rodgers and you know that Rodgers does not like Sue and Rodgers and Sue have had battles.

But like even this past year, they had a little something in that game. I watched it back Seus not not a fan of Rodgers by any means. There's no love lost there. J.P., who has beaten Aaron Rodgers in a playoff game in Lambeau, he's done that. But The X Factor might be that big son of a gun in the middle who has not played at all in the last two months, who might be dressing. And that's a bit of a no.

He's he's playing. They were saying today, yeah, it's Saturday. This is a major thing. That guy's really good.

All right. So he he might come in like Bill. I don't know if he might come in forty pounds over his playing weight. I have no idea. He's one of these huge guys, but he might be the best one stuffing defensive tackle in all of sports. And like, you just plop him in the middle. If you get 20 to 30 plays, you know, his injury, if he plays through it and he will, all expectations are and practicing.

It's a total game changer because now you can't just do the Aaron Jones up the middle. You can't just do that, AJ Dillon, and expect him to do it like Viravaidya will eat you alive. He's that big and he's that dominant or unstoppable front. And I think it's a huge X factor that might be on the injury report that people are talking about.

Well, so we just listed two things that might be in Tampa's favor. One is they actually might be able to stop the run because their linebackers are fast enough. They can stuff the middle. We already know they can get pressure on Rodgers because they did it. We saw them last week. I know Brees. You know, that was a pretty compromised version of Brees, but they were in him, in his face and around him, that whole game and.

I'm just I'm looking at this like. If I if I bet either way. How unhappy am I if that happens, right? And if you're watching this game, you're like, fuck, they can't block the Bucs shit, Aaron Jones can't find any space. And then it's like, all right, it's got to be Rodgers and Adams and it's got to be, you know, somebody else can open or whatever. I just it makes me nervous.

Here's the flip side. Yeah, the Bucs are sloppy.

Oh, my gosh, Samedi. They're just not efficient at all. They can't help themselves. They are not like a seventeen play eighty drive team. They're like feast or famine, big plays.

And they do some of the dumbest shit, like some of the third downs last week were absolutely idiotic.

And then again, one touch passes down 40 yards like you get that big run from Ronald Jones who's playing hurt, you get it and then you get the flag because of offensive lineman held and then you get the lead hits from Jensen. And you're like, I like the toughness. I like all that. I like big fella. Don't come barreling into a defender on third down. And so we get to hit like no need for that. And then Fournette, which everyone looks at the stats and it's like, oh, playoff.

Lenny, he had this great game. He was so clutch moments. He went the wrong way on a handoff from Brady at one point, which could have been a colossal turnover. Right. And, you know, there just there is a lot of a lot of wiggle room with the efficiency. They don't run like a Patriots Brady team. It's a little different. Doesn't feel like they're ever fully lock step right there.

And that's been the word on the street with the people that, you know, by proxy. You get to find out what Brady thinks about stuff. And I think that thing with him is like he knows how talented they are. But it's not an efficient team like that, like the best past teams he's been on. And and it's a frustrating team to be a quarterback because you just got there. They barely practice. He's still trying to find a rhythm with all these dudes.

And you can feel it. It's a choppy offense, the X Factor.

And I'm going to go into story mode a little bit. It's just how how how freakin happy he is right now. And he's on a different plane of happiness. And I know Patriots fans hear this and they might cringe, but like, it's a whole different deal. And I got a cool story this week. I didn't know until now, I guess, at the combine there, which is February. And it's not legal to start recording free agents until March when free agency starts with the combine the Buccaneers guys, we're all sitting together in a room and it's all the front office.

And it's Jason Light, the GM and its spy tech, who's their pro scout. And then it's got Mikey Greenberg, who does their salary cap. And they're all sitting there and they're like, is there a chance we can get Brady and Aaron in the room? And they're like, look, we're hearing all sorts of stuff. If there's a chance for Brady, what we have to do is make sure that we surround him with everything he could possibly want and make our pitch from already.

And they're looking at the roster and it's like Evans Godwyn, a young offensive line. And they go through the defense are like veterans who've been there with JP and Sue. They've got all these young players like no state taxes, warm weather, and they're looking at areas and they're like a coach who's going to let Brady do as he pleases. He's not going to bust his balls. And they kind of like, you know, and it sounds ridiculous, but they're like, if if we build it, he will come.

And they called it Operation Shoeless Joe. That was what they call really like. That is what we're going by. And their entire focus was on. Let's get the pitch in order. So when there was an ability to talk to him and talk to Danny, his agent, and kind of get into it, they laid it out there and they were kind of like Alex Guerrero, your guy who might have been persona non grata at points in New England.

Not only is he welcome to we're going to treat him like gold and it's going to be a red carpet. We're going to have the best schools for your kids, whatever you need, everything. It's all here. And it's sunshine and it's happiness. And he got there and there was choppy at first. But like, if you saw his face after the interview with Erin Andrews on Fox, like he's got a smile ear to ear. And I know he was always happy when he won in New England, but it feels like that happiness factor might be emanating around the entire team.

And it's kind of like now it's house money. We're not the the second second game in a row. We won on the road. Now we're going up to Lambeau. No one really is picking us like that stuff is real with that team.

Last week was turf this week, isn't it? Yeah, I do feel like they have a bunch of vets who understand the significance of this game in a good way. You know, Sue, has Sue even played in a Super Bowl?

I don't think it us what the Rams when they went a couple of years ago. Oh, that's right. You're at your home. But he hasn't won.

But the fact he's been there is a cool deal for that, you know.

Yeah. And then just a whole bunch of people on both sides of the ball, some young guys who probably are too young and dumb to realize what the moment is.

I think outside of Gronk, Ryan Jensen had started one game in the playoffs for the Ravens and then a B, of course, was in a playoff game in Fournette. But all summer long it was only Gronk and that one game from Jensen from the offense besides Brady, who had ever played in a playoff game. So they were all just like, all right. And now they're thrown into. The championship round. Well, one thing to keep in mind, and we'll get back to this when we actually do our picks.

So right now and Fanjul, it's taping this at 2:00 to 4:00 Pacific Time, Tampa's plus three, but their plus one or six, if you bet 100 dollars on it and they cover it, you cover the plus one or six. So the question for me is. As we as we know from the playoff manifesto and the playoff manifesto, there's no real rules that apply this week. I think these matchups are so these matchups are great. Yeah, there's no there's no weird shit going on.

This is just for good teams. Do I think the underdog has a chance to win? If you're taking the underdog, you have to feel like they have a chance to win. I feel like they have a chance to win. Could is this a three point game, could either team win? Yeah. And that's what I keep coming back to, is like I think Tampa has a chance to win and I'm getting three, I'm torn because a before the season I said Buccaneers chief was my Super Bowl pick and you, like, kind of hold on to that with like a stubbornness of like, if that was my pick, I want to be right.

And then we get to you and I doing this. You did the big bucks parlay back and we you talked me into it. Yeah. And it's like we're a game away. And then there's this factor, which we haven't even talked about them yet. He is so freaking dialed in right now on the other side of the ball. Rodgers might just it just might be he and Adams and it just might be to why would you ever bet against the guy as dialed in as he is, the the gap in talent between what what they saw last week and Drew Brees and what they're seeing this week.

And Aaron Rodgers cannot be underestimated. Rodgers is playing so well, he and the floor are so dialed in. And last week I tried to make this whole thing about Ramsay and Adams Ramsay. The first time they got Ramsay and man to man coverage was on that goal line play. They ran Adams one time in motion. They ran him another time in motion. They got Ramsay caught up. Rodgers don't even look at him. It was like a no look pass right from down there.

They speak the same language. They don't have any hiccups. You might be kicking yourself afterwards if you're like, oh, my God, Rodgers, he wasn't going to lose this game at home. Finally, in the NFC championship game with the way he's playing to pick against him would be ridiculous. He's the best player in the world right now.

A lot of people like the Packers would be the other thing to be afraid of, like Joe Houselights, the Packers.

That's always a bad sign. Whatever Joe has, like somebody, it's a bad one. But flip side, betting against Rodgers, it's like you're betting it's the greatest quarterback of all time, Tom Brady Crannis.

I think that same side. But it is one of those where either way you go, you're going to be mad at yourself if it's not going the right way. I wouldn't talk Bill's chiefs in a second and take a break. All right, Bill's chiefs, so the line is Casey by three and now it is getting close to three o'clock Pacific Time, as soon as Mahomes comes back, I assume this sign will go to Chiefs three and a half.

Right now, it's still three.

All right. So they think with Mahomes, it's not just a concussion. Well, that's the we saw the foot thing. Like he wasn't the same. And I was scared betting on them against the Browns, where it's like, oh, shit, Mahomes is on one leg. This is bad.

That's the whole thing that I'm not I'm not a neuro neurologist, whatever it's called. I don't do the concussion thing. And it's really like dangerous territory to start speculating on what's going on upstairs. From what I gather, I would be more concerned. I think he's going to play if you go through the protocol, which he is, and we have 48 hours or whatever, it is going to be cleared. And let's assume he does. He didn't look like himself the entire first half.

And he was he did that weird, like crow hop, like walk to the huddle every time the Mahomes walk where it's like he's it doesn't look comfortable. And even when he was running out into the tunnel after getting hit like that, I'm like, OK, slow down. They're saying it's his big toe on his left foot. And even if his he's cleared concussion protocol and even if he's cleared with his foot, like, that's going to be a nagging thing all game.

That gives me a little hesitation, just going and saying, well, I'm not going against the Chiefs member.

He had to throws where he had a guy wide open on the left and each one was Cam Newton line drive off the ground. And after the second one, Romo said his foot's bothering him. You that that's a throw he normally makes, like that's when you can't push off your foot, that's what happens. I don't think it's going to be better this week. So you have banged up Mahomes with the screwed up left foot. Who's not going to have the same mobility coming off concussion?

That makes me nervous. So he really does. I know I don't. And on top of that, going against a Buffalo team that I really like, that I was convinced going into the playoffs had a chance to to win the Super Bowl. And the thing with them didn't look great in round one. We talked about it. That was a lot of weird stuff going on there. The Colts played great. There was a weird field position shit.

And yet they pulled it out last week. I thought Allen missed a bunch of throws in the first half. I actually thought the plays they were calling ball must have been like, oh my God, we've come there.

Yeah, they were there and he just missed them. He didn't play well. It was windy, but their defense was way better. And it was a respectable you know, I feel like they were going to win that game regardless.

But they were the better team there. The better team. Yeah, but their offense was an explosive.

My question for you, does this team have a kickass offensive performance in them in January? Because I feel like it does. We haven't seen it and. Cleveland laid the breadcrumbs last week, they did Mahomes point, the foot is one thing Sammy Watkins hasn't played. They're hoping he's back. Clyde Edwards care has not played. They're hoping he's back in Bershad Breeland, who's their number one corner and who would be in charge of likely covering Stefon Diggs. He went out with an injury to last week.

So you're coming in with three big question marks. As for the bills, I'm spot on agreeing with you that all November and December, Josh Allen was doing things that were in the same conversation as Rodgers and Mahomes and absent a few passes that he had to Gabriel Davis along the sideline in that Colts win in that first half at the end or just insane passes that Davis was converting. We have not seen that Josh Allen performance and we have not seen the guy that was in the MVP conversation.

If he has to be that guy, which I think he will against Kansas City, can Josh Allen have an all time performance? And that offense put up 30, 40 points if they need to. That's the question, especially after last week where Daboll everyone was crushing him for it. I thought it took courage and I thought it was the right game plan. They were like, this is how we're going to win the game. We're going to pass the ball.

We can't run the ball. That's just not what we're going to do against Baltimore is what helps us most. So 19 of the first 20 plays or passing plays, that's what they are. And guess what? Earlier this season, there was two different games where they've all called eight straight runs. So it's not like you can't or doesn't. That's what it took. It's going to be an awesome game. I cannot wait for this game. And yet you're going to need to have an all time performance from that Bulls offense.

We haven't seen that the first two weeks.

Yeah, it's a little like the Bucks thing. They seem choppy in the same way, although they did have a ninety six year drive in in week one. I guess I feel better about it than Zach Moss because I feel like he made them more valuable. Singletary, who I like, but he's missing that little edge of that move, the chains kind of edge. He's like that one of those shifty whatever. But I wish they had like that pounder and they just don't have that anymore.

Did you did you I mean, they played in week six also. And that game is a complete outlier to both teams seasons. Yeah, that was a weird one. I would throw it out because I watched it back and it's caught Edwards. Hillary carried about thirty times for one hundred and sixty one yards and two touchdowns. The leading receiver for the chiefs was DeMarcus Robinson and the bills just Allen went fourteen of twenty eight for one hundred and twenty yards and, you know, just terrible, terrible.

And then I, you know, the bills from what they say and there's been a ton of media about it after that game, they kind of had that come to Jesus moment that we just got blown out by the Titans. We just got blown out by the Chiefs. What are we? And minus the Hail Mary, they have not lost a game since. So I would throw that game out out the window. I think them that they're kind of a not only a different team, but Allen seems to just be in a totally different place than it was that game.

I guess the question for me is, does this team have greatness in them? Because I felt like leaving the regular season. There were some real signs that this team was potentially special, even Week 17, when they're playing for nothing, it's Miami and they're just like, fuck it. And they just beat the shit out of Miami anyway. Put up their defense.

Yeah, their offense had some some weeks this year where they just completely like they demolished Seattle. Yeah.

You know, and 40 points on the Rams. So I look at the chiefs, I don't think the chiefs have very good defense, and I know I know we do this dance with them every year, and then when it really matters, they get stops in Cleveland.

Was that that was deceiving. What did they end up with? Seventeen point seventeen points.

But they were moving the ball and yeah, they they had their full blown out of the end zone.

Yeah. That.

I don't know, I just feel you can move the bottom and it seems like this is the, in a weird way, the easiest matchup for the bill's offense out of the three of Arrowhead. I get it. It's a later game. So it's going to be cold. But they're used to that. They're playing in Buffalo. But I like this matchup for them the most because I thought Cleveland laid the breadcrumbs last week. You can move the ball, you can have drives, you can complete third and fourth.

There's always guys open. What about the Joker? Who's how many fantasy teams is he let down over the last six years?

He shows us wide open, four to 30 yards wide open.

I know. So. And then the Diggs piece, who's going to cover Diggs and the Chiefs? Yeah.

So Breeland is the hope. And then they've got this rookie who I think I said it. I mean, outside of Chase Young, he might have been the best defensive rookie in this Ligeria Snead, who seems to make a big play number thirty eight every game. They're hoping that he can make some plays. Here's the deal with the Chiefs.

It all comes down to this. Because I'm on this show for three hours every day for five days a week, including the off season that we talk about the same teams and it ends up being the same cheese conversation. And now there's this narrative that they don't win by enough points. They the bills won eight different games by 10 points or more. The Chiefs didn't win any by 10 points or more this season. The Chiefs get lucky. They find a way at the end.

And at the end of the day, it's kind of like this. They are champions. They never lose these games and they find a way. And this last week they needed 13, 14. Chad Heny got them 13 yards. And then when everyone figured that they would call them offside or they would Pontarlier, do whatever, and he completes the pass. And then it's what they've done all season long to Tampa, to Miami to lay charges that week two against Herbert.

They beat you and then you're left thinking, if I just had a chance to get the ball back, we would have won. But they don't give you that chance. If this game is close, Mahomes always finds a way. What you're getting on with Buffalo is that they can pounce on them early and be up by 10 points and just give it no ability for this chiefs team to do what the chiefs always do.

What do we get from Clyde in this game? I don't know. He hasn't played in in many weeks. I think he's going to dress. And I mean, the chiefs have below average running backs.

I don't know. Has to set thirty one. Daryl Williams played well last week.

OK, he's he's average. He's not above average five.

Yeah.

And then you have Mahomes who hasn't practiced all week, coming off a concussion, which was a bad one. I mean, he was like he basically got clocked by Ernie Shaver's the way. He was like staggering around and then he's got the bump toe to it. Mahomes is healthy. I wouldn't go against the chiefs, but the fact that he's not and how much we've like the bills this whole time, I would feel like a fool if I didn't take the bills.

And you want me to take the chiefs. I do. All right. So make the case.

The case is that it's the champions who have lost one game in twenty five weeks with their quarterback and they're at home and they they've got all the juice, they've got what it takes. And they know that people are taking the bills and they're riding on that.

And you think there's a little nobody believes that us sir and nobody believes in us from a one seat that has lost one regular season game in twenty three weeks.

Yeah, it's only that now. But I do feel like this has been the week that everyone's doing flips for the bills mafia. And we talk about this week after week, it's easy to be intoxicated by the bills thing because of how fun it is and that fan base and what they've been through and just how wonderful their quarterback is and all stuff. And it's like you almost overlook what the chiefs have done over this time. It's not pretty and it's not what it used to be and it might not look.

But at the end of the day, they win these games and Andy hits the right and they figure it out. And if they lose, they lose. But, gosh, it took one freak loss from the Raiders. And that's the only time we've seen them lose since last year, like week seven. I don't know. The Chiefs, they find a way and they're at home. I think that's pretty good, even if Mahomes comes in not hundred percent.

There's one that there's one other piece here that we got to talk about and go, I'm just I'd like to prepare all the Bills fans. I'm going to go there. History. Yeah. The history piece, it's it is sitting there. Definitely was sitting there with the Browns last week. Right. When when the fucking Chad Heny scramble, followed by the whatever the fumble out of bounds, like the mojo kind of came out of the woodwork. And the Browns fans like.

Oh yeah. Where the Browns doesn't always happen. We've seen a lot of teams flip the narrative over the series, especially in this century. But I do think this still is the bills. And I still wonder, like it's been such an easy, nice ride, the fact that there's so much confidence with them as an underdog on the road going against the team, that's when twenty four of the last twenty five, that part makes me nervous with the bills plus three.

They have such a great fan base, they have such a fun team. And you know, the word out of that Buffalo building is that like it's a selfless, positive young team, like guys like Deon Dawkins who aren't household names are like incredible young men. And then you get the call Beasley factor and he's cool as shit. And then you've got Stefon Diggs and like, they're really likeable, they're really likeable. And they're like, you want to see this fan base that has been through so much, have this great moment.

Twenty seven years after the last one and AFC championship game getting their trip to the Super Bowl. So like your heartstrings and you know that fan base and you love that fan base, you want to see them. And even the Chiefs fans who I've spoken to are like, if we lose to them, like, at least it's then it's not the Patriots or the Steelers. Like we got our moment last year. Like, I almost feel like both fan bases are just such positive, like groups of people that want to see success for everyone.

I just at the end of the day, I don't think the history of Thurman Thomas and his helmet and Norwood come into play. But like there is there is a tiny bit there is this thing that, like the chiefs, don't forget what the chiefs are.

It's not like they're a 10 and six defending champion. They're a 14 and two defending champion who should be fifteen and one if they started their starters in week seventeen. I guess two things worry me at the bills, one is, do they have the type of team? That should be able to beat this chief's team, because I do think a component of that would be you got to run the ball and control the clock. I'm not sure they can run the ball.

I think last week, yeah, I don't think that's his game. I think we saw them last week. They're like, we're not gonna be able to run the ball. We just can't pass plays. And so if it's going to be a back and forth, they're throwing the ball. But that's great for the Chiefs. You'd think so. But the bill's defense. Troy Davis White and Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer, like Levi Wallace, they've got a good defense, so like they might be able to capitalize.

You saw what they did to the Ravens last week. It's going to I think last week I knew Ravens Bill's first team to 20 wins. Neither team made it to 20 this game. I think the first team with the thirty, that is the team that holds the other team under thirty five. And that's I think it is.

I think it's a what about what about Beasley? Because that's the other thing that worries me because he was so important for them. Yeah.

He was so important during the season and I think he's playing hurt. They're not talking about it but it's a little like the Michael Thomas thing.

And he is hurt because even in that wildcard round, he had to be physically lifted up every time he caught a ball and brought back to the huddle. But he was out there last week. He's practicing this week. Gabriel Davis didn't practice on Wednesday. I need to check the injury report. That would give me a little bit of concern. But for the most part, the thought is that Beasley is going to go and it's going to be that slot receiver.

Hmm. Well, here's how the bills went. Josh Allen has a great game. I know that's that's like the worst analysis of all time. But if he'd if he's not at least very good, I don't think they can win.

You've got your basketball pyramid for all time. Let's go. The NFL pyramid. Where's Josh Allen in that conversation now and then? Where's Josh Allen if he beats Mahomes in this game?

Well, I think the goal for him would be can these next two games vault him to the Mahomes Rodgers Wilson level where he's discussed on that level?

I don't think he's there yet because he's got to win a game like this. I agree.

And he hasn't thrown his team on his back and been the guy. They beat the Colts, but it didn't feel like that was the Josh Allen game. And then last week, it was all about Leslie Frazier's defense. Josh Allen needs to be excellent. And if you really believe in Josh and you think all the stuff that he did against the Steelers, which was amazing and against the Cardinals, which was great in a loss and against the forty Niners, and then, of course, the Patriots and then the Dolphins in the season, if you think that's the version you're getting, then you should bet with the bills and have no no feeling of regret.

If you think that he's still another year away from being at that level. Well, that's when you take the Chiefs coaching staff.

Siwash, Andy Andy was McDermott's mentor for many years in Philadelphia. There might be a little mind, you know, stuff at play there dabbles good. Leslie Frazier is really good to good coach to have special teams.

Seems pretty, and except for the bucker, the fact that for whatever's going on with them, with this dude can make it from 60, but I can make it you Tyler Bass is a rookie, but he hit something from like eight earlier this season.

I think that's a wash.

Pretty much, yeah. All right. All right. We're going to take a break, then we're going to go over the props and do our picks.

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So I don't really have anything for the bills game. It's all it's all Bill.

Kelsey one was Kelsey, one of the beautiful Kelsey. When we hit, we hit Kelsey and we hit our last glassmakers by a yard, I think. Yeah.

The one prop that I kind of like for the for the Bills game was Josh Allen rushing yards three and a half.

You like over under. I like the over because I do feel like he's going to have to use his legs in this game, especially if it's a back and forth and both team have the ball a bunch of times. I like it, you know what I mean. Like if you have three scrambles for 30 yards and then like that one other, like QB third and fourth draw for five and that gets me to thirty five.

He led them in rushing the first time they played. I told you it's not a good effort for him, but he ran the ball well and yeah with without Zach Moss you're going to get more a Josh Allen and the running game. So yeah I would say that is thirty three seems reasonable. A couple other ones, Rogers won at least one passing touchdown in each half is minus one of five. You still have to throw one TD in each half.

He has at least two touchdowns in his last eight playoff games. Rodgers three passing touchdowns, plus one 980. Rogers over under four pass completions is twenty four and a half, and the reason I mention this is I wonder if it's a little like the Patriots game playing against the Seahawks where it's just a lot of completions. Move the chains. Thirty three yard pass for your pass take with give voice.

Yeah, yeah. That's what I was doing last week against the Saints and Aikman is good on it. He was like, it's hard to be patient, but this is what they're giving you. Like just take a little screen pass to Fournette all the way downfield.

Rodgers thirty plus completions with the Packers. Winning is plus for sixty. Both things have to happen. Thirty plus is a lot, especially outdoors.

I see that happening. This is my favorite touchdown Parap.

Robert Trunnion scored the first touchdown, he loves to hone in on those one year, doesn't he? Godwyn scores the second touchdown. OK, so it has to be that sequence Tonnie and then Godman.

That's too funny and it's so specific a 100 to one.

Odds are there only has to be that combination.

I mean just do it for the fun of it. Yeah.

Yeah I think, I think I was actually a fan too, like sitting in a laboratory doing algorithms and like yes that is the. That's great.

And then Brady throws an interception. Minus one 18. I don't see that. I think if they lose one of the reasons they'll lose as he has a bad interception, because one of the good things about what they did last week was even though they were choppy and sloppy and I don't know if they did turn the ball over.

And I think he's going to go into this game. And I think both him and Rodgers, I'm not turning the ball over. And it might be one of those staring contest for the first turnover.

Somebody's going to turn the ball over. Yeah, I'm so torn on this game, dude, I'm sorry, I feel like I've just been lending you advice and thoughts and just chiming. I think it's really hard. It's so hard. And these are such good football games. I'm almost sad that it's almost over because it's that good. I've been talking about them all week. I love these two match ups.

I can't believe I'm going to probably go against the bills here. It's tough. OK, so you have the twenty seven to one. Prop already with the bucks, and I do, but I have that I'm having, so I have that that's its own thing. I'm not concerned with that. We're five and know and our big bets are to our Pexton and I know. Yes. And I want to keep the momentum going.

All right. Here we go. Our picks for the conference championship. Let's go.

We're up one point five million for the season and we're up two point eight one two million for the last three weeks. We've been doing really well. We'll see if it can go this week. First game. Packers minus three over the Bucs. There's some weird money line stuff with this unfeigned, although get the bucks a plus one or six if you take them, plus three, which I'm going to do for four hundred thousand dollars, we're going to take the bucks.

I'm going slightly against your advice, but money line. No, no, no. Bucks plus three is plus one zero six. OK, so if they win, 400 can win four hundred twenty four thousand dollars. Here's the thinking. I think it's a three point game. I think they have a chance to win. I think they have game breakers on both sides of the ball. And I think my my error of my margin error with that team is weirdly less than it is with the Packers wearing the Packers.

There's a scenario where they just shut down Aaron Jones. They overflow the offensive line. Rodgers has no time. He's playing from behind. And and I'm like, why do I take the Packers? They can't block anybody. I just feel safer with the bucks. I know, I know you don't agree. I don't agree. It's not my million dollars pics. I feel like you're saying we've we've been hot on this team, Brady, and you have such history.

And when it comes down to it, they played in week six and the Buccaneers defense destroyed that Packers offense. They've since lost Bakhtiyari. You can make a very, very good case. The X Factor is Rodgers being Zen like a robot in a different stratosphere, just laughing at the competition and just cruising right by the strength of schedule.

Not really there for the Packers fair Bucs defense flying around the ball last week. I am picking them plus three while acknowledging that of Jared Cook doesn't get strip they might have lost to a team that couldn't throw the ball more than ten yards plus three.

Our first pick I am getting you. If they win plus three is fun, you will be wearing a Devin White forty five Buccaneers jersey next week while we discuss, I will get you because that's the reason why they won't trust me.

Second pick. I have to do it, I'm going against the bills, we're taking the chiefs minus three. I was talking to you that way, but does it feel right in your stomach when you say that? I'm going to take the Chiefs minus three, and here's why I don't think this is the same team that I fell in love with in November and December. I don't think Beazley's right. I think they really miss Jack Moss. I don't like that they were so worried about running the ball against Baltimore last week that they basically were like, we have to throw it every down.

That's not a good sign. And I just think the chiefs it's this champions will we saw it last week. There's a confidence with them. There's a serenity to them. The game breakers. I don't want to go against Kelsey. I don't want to get go against Tirico. I don't want to go against possibly playing on an injured leg Mahomes. I don't want to go against a team. That's when twenty four of its last twenty five. And it's only a three point favorite at home against the Buffalo Bills.

The last four straight Super Bowls. I'm not doing that, so I'm backing off. I'm off the bandwagon, I'm on the fence, you said it all. Does it feel right now that you said it or do you? Because you think finally it feels right. You said it. You're at peace.

It feels right. If I was getting the bills team with the healthy Cole Beasley and Zach Moss, I feel like they could go toe to toe. This is too much on Josh alone in this game, who I really like. I didn't like the way I thought. I liked the way he played in round one. Did not like the way he played last week. And if he beats me, he beats me. All right, so the chiefs are minus one 18.

We're going to put three hundred K on the Chiefs, minus three. It's a minus 118. So we are risking three hundred and fifty four thousand to win. Three hundred on the Chiefs, minus three.

But we're also going to lose a little teaser interest. The. I would love to hear. We're doing a six and a half point tease. One hundred twenty thousand win. One hundred. On the chiefs, down two plus three and a half and the over to forty seven, so we're all in on the Chiefs winning a shootout. So it's a little hedge. So we have that three hundred and the minus three. But then also like a little extra on the teaser there, that adds up to the same money as the bucks and then.

Ten thousand dollars. On the following prop on Fandor, Robert Tongyeong and scores the first touchdown of the game and Chris Godwyn scores the second touchdown of the game, it has to happen in that sequence. One hundred to one odds we're doing that.

One is, you know why this bet is going to happen. Bill, do you know where Robert Tennen went to college?

Where. Indiana State University. Oh, there you go. It's in the stars, my friend. This is it. This is perfect. Let's take a mortgage, baby. Let's go.

And then we're doing one more Fandor prop. We're going to put twenty five K on Josh Allen over thirty three and a half years. Rushing, yes, yes, 30 yards rushing by, but again, we are up one point five eight five million dollars after round two and up one point five million for the season. Those are the million dollar picks for round three. Peter Schrager. This was tough. It's a really hard round, there's nothing to be ashamed of.

We had to scale it back three of the best famiglia in Tampa, but three of the best fan bases in sports and the Packers chiefs and of course, now the Bills. And then two of the best games you could ever ask for. This is what we do this for. I can't wait. And you're right, this was hard. We could have easily gone either way. But I am writing with you right now. We are riding together.

Let's go.

Well, if if I'm right on this, we're going to have a Chiefs book, Super Bowl. Which means lots of highlights for the Difford offsides penalty over the two weeks to ensure that Schrager say hi to Kyle and Burlison and Kay and everybody in the whole gang and and we'll see this weekend.

Thank you, sir. All right, that's it for the podcast this week. Don't forget about First Blood and the Terminator on the re watchable. We'll be back Sunday night with the cause. Don't forget about his new book. You Can't Lose Them All comes out on Tuesday.

You can preorder right now and it could show up in your mailbox.

Just show up then you have it. I'm in it. We talked about it with Kimmo. Go check it out. Can't lose my cousin. So I'll see you on Sunday a.