Coming up an action-pack Sunday here on the BS podcast, Cousin Sal. Next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast Network. I have a new rewatchable is coming for you on Monday. I hope it's a scary month. It's a little scary because I'm not feeling that great right now, but hopefully we are taping Hereditary tomorrow. You'll see sick Bill talking about one of the scariest movies of the last 15 years. Stay tuned for that. You can watch it on the Ringer Movies YouTube as well. You can watch all the clips and videos from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel, where last week I did five episodes. Holy shit. Five episodes, including four and a half hours of NBA Overrunners with Ursillo and House. We had a great time. The lines moved. We even did a super boost over the weekend. Okc, 55 plus wins. Cleveland, 45 plus wins. Phoenix, 45 plus wins. Fanduel Sportsbook boosted that up to plus 280. You can jump on that before Tuesday night's games. You could also go on the NBA page. There's a Simmons Future page where you get a nice little 30% profit boost for all of the futures heading into the season.

We have a really good track It's a secret, so you should listen to us. Anyway, hey, one Ringer note. Todd McShee has a new podcast launching for us on Tuesday. It's called The McShay Show. You've already been listening, I hope, on the Resilience podcast on Mondays. But The McShay Show will be launching on Tuesday. So subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcast. Cousin Sal is next. He's heartbroken. The Mets are out of the playoffs. But we get to make fun of the Jets, and we get to complain about the WMBA officiating. I can't wait.

Let's bring it, Pearl J.

We're live. Sunday night. Cousin Sal is here. I don't know what to walk us through. Block us through your state of mind right now. The Mets are done. They're out. One of your favorite baseball teams ever just tragically knocked out of Dodger Stadium tonight, and we lost our WMBA Finals bet. In a final second. That was so much. Could most generously be described as rigged, but we'll get to that later. How are you feeling about the Mets?

I don't even care if we get to that later or the Mets. But you're right. I mean, this was a lot of fun. This team was a lot of fun to root for. But I have to say, and you've been through this, October, baseball, it's going to be nice to not be scared to watch TV. You get nervous watching. I'll even say scared. And my kids are nervous and scared. It's like watching the Shining 12 of the last 14 nights and not knowing the ending any of the nights. And it sucks. But I think as a fan, and maybe you'll agree with this, the saving graces are we played a better team and our losses weren't close. So it wasn't like, God damn. Those two things make it a little less, a little more bearable. But I love this team. And I know people are like, well, you paid $700 million, but it's not exactly true. We had $80 million in dead payroll between Scherzer and Verlander and Huktu and Grimmis. They don't count on the count. Who did you pay for Huktu?

I forgot about that.

Yeah, Huktu was big throughout the first pitch. We won like 70 % of our games. But I don't know. They gave us some great moments, and I'm proud of some of them. I really am.

Just feels like there's been a lot of sad Sal this fall. I know. It's the year of sad Sal. It was like sign photo the year of George, we have the year of sad Sal. What could happen next?

I'll pick it I'll pick it back up. I'm excited. My Cowboys are very good after beating that juggernaut Stealers team. Now I have hope again.

The Cowboys had a buy week, so that was a positive. Yeah, right. Yeah, the Mets were overachievers. And when you're overachievers, you need to win a couple of dumb games during a series when you're playing somebody who's way better than you and you never won the dumb game. You just got killed in the losses. I felt like it was Yankees, Dodgers. I have a lot of Yankees thoughts. I'm happy to share them now to to cheer you up if you want.

Let's do it. Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely rooting against the Yankees. I have way more a-hole Yankee fan friends than I do Dodgers.

Well, I told you this off the podcast, but my dream was for the Yankees to make the World Series. I thought the higher the stakes, the longer the fall would be. Sure. Everything I thought might happen that I prayed would happen with the Yankee fans who haven't won a title in 15 years, who have bitched about Aaron Boon and Brian Cashman for the last five nonstop ad nauseam all the way through pretty much three-fourths of the way through the summer. Now the chest are puffed out again because you beat the guardians and the royals, and your chest are puffed out. You hit 230 Nine playoff games. Look out. Big bad Yankees are back. I can't wait for the Dodgers to just ram it right up their spinters. I can't wait. That'll be nice. I can't wait. I am such a Dodger fan. Between Muki and going against the Yankees, I can't fucking wait. I'm on a lot of cold medication, too, by the way. Wow.

I didn't know that. I can't wait. This is great.

Oh, Soda. What did that bet? He is in 15 pitches against some fucking pitcher I've never heard of. Okay, let's see it. Let's see if it gets some Dodgers.

I'm 100% cheered up.

I love it. Let's go.

I love it.

Let's go. The Yankees who haven't won jack shit in 15 years. They've won one title this century, and now their fans think they're again. And they're on brand at all times, and I fucking love it.

Good. We just need those.

Go, go, go, Dodgers. Look at you. And if it had been the Mets, I would have been like, go Mets. But it's actually better if they lose to the Dodgers.

Yeah. Well, that's the scary part, right? It's the worst thing of all sports if the Mets lose to the Yankees. So I didn't really want to risk that once I knew they were in there. But I have to root for my team, of course. But is this the first time? When was the last time any league got exactly the matchup they wanted? Was it Warriors, Cavs?

I don't even know if that was the matchup they wanted. I guess those were the players they wanted. But yeah, this never happens in hockey, right? Every year in hockey, we're like, Oh, man, can you imagine if it's McDavid against so-and-so? And it just never seems to happen. And then in baseball, it's happening. I don't remember what I just said the last five minutes, but if it was something negative about the Yankees, that's fine. Literally five of Aaron Boon is an absolute serial killer.

He's got to go.

He's murdering this team. Cashman's murder this team. How? And then the American League was awful. I mean, did you see that Royals team in the playoffs? There was a team that made the playoffs. Then you go to the guardians who their best pitcher was the closer who all of a sudden couldn't get anybody out for some reason.

Right. I love it. Yeah, it's all home runs, right? So they needed Soto, they needed Stanton, they needed They needed two of those three guys to produce, and they got that. It's right time. I don't know. Maybe they'll calm down with a few days off and stuff, but we have to root against the Yankees. I'm sorry.

Then this recency bias era we live in, it's like, Stanton, this is one of the best playoff Yankees ever. It's like, you guys haven't won a World Series. You guys won a million World Series. We can name 40 Yankee batters over the course of history who are more important to the Yankees franchise than Stanton.

Yeah, because he has 73 more playoff games than Yogi Berra because they were like three or five series to get to the World Series, and that was it.

There's been seven Gatorade celebrations because of this stupid sport that we've created where every five days, you get to celebrate again. Anyway, go Dodgers. Good luck to Muki Betz. I hope Ohtani. Wouldn't it be great if Ohtani pitch next round out of nowhere?

Oh, wow. Oh, he should at least pitch to the last batter.

And where did Luke Weaver come from? I'm in an American League Keeper League. Nobody had ever heard of that guy until three months ago. And now he just pitches every game now. He's throwing 130 miles an hour. The Yankees make me so mad. You know what I'm going to do after this podcast?

Go ahead.

I'm going to console myself with my four World Series DVDs from this century. Wow. Try to calm myself down. Yeah, four times.

No offense, but I'm going to watch the Metz documentary, Once Upon a Time in Queens. I know the Red Sox- You can watch that.

That was a million years ago.

There you go.

20th anniversary of a lot of good stuff that happened with the Red Sox-Yankees, too.

Oh, that's right.

When everything turned.

Cough Medicine Bill.

I love it. It's more than cough medicine, man. What? It might be straight drugs. I think I took that. You're cocaine?

Did you?

We'll save WMBA for right before parent corner because I have some thoughts on that, too. Heated thoughts. Yeah, sure. Nfl. So week seven, I needed a name for this because week seven is when you really can't fool people anymore. You are who you are. You've been scouted. If you have any holes, they're going to get picked. If you have any warts, they're going to be pulled. So I was thinking, I'm sure your wife has this. My wife has it, too. Those circle makeup mirrors where you can flip it and it magnifies. And if you flip it, you look at your face. You don't even understand what you're looking at. The pores are so crazy. You flip it around, you get this nice. This is make up mirror week, so this is the week. There's no hiding. You turn that light on, you're looking, and it's like, Yeah, that's a zit. Yeah, that's a mole right there. Yeah, that's an old age spot. Everybody who had those flaws, the make up mirror got shied of them this week, including- You were on fire.

The New York Jets. You're on fire today.

This is a good- When I'm on drugs, I'm always better.

This is the Nyquil Ninja coming at us tonight. I love it. No, you're right. The bad teams were terrible today. They were absolutely terrible. I think we saw the top of the line teams emerge. You know how I know this? Because I don't know, maybe I'm giving you a little bit of a hint here. If you look at the week eight lines, they look like real lines, Simmons. They're not like one and a half.

I noticed that when I was guessing.

Two and two, and shit like that. Anyway, we'll get into that.

Well, we had Tennessee lost by 24 to Buffalo, the Giants lost by 25 to Philadelphia, New Orleans on Thursday night lost by 23 to the Broncos, and Carolina lost 40 to 7 to Washington. And then my stupid team lost by 16 to the Jags. But it was like there was a little bit of a settling of now we really have a sense of who the bad teams are.

You did get excited. I don't know if you were loaded up on cold medicine this morning when the Pats scored the first countdown because you were- We're up to I know. You hit us with a little bit of a text barrage. I'm like, Oh, I hope this holds here.

Well, what happened was we came to London with 10 plays. Nine of them worked. Then they were like, Oh, shit. There's two and a half hours to go in the game. What do we do now? Should we hand off again to an eight-man front? Yeah, let's do it again. Maybe Antonio Gibson will break through this time. Makeup Maritime, the Jets. We've had a fall guy now two straight weeks or some magic elixir or something. They fired Salah. They traded for Devante Adams, even though it seemed like you could do whatever you want against their defense. Now the stealers really used and abused them tonight. Now, I guess the fall guy is going to be the kicker because you missed another one, Zerloin.

Yeah, he has another one. They just fired Jeff Albridge, the coach. They got rid of... No, they didn't. I would have believed that. Why not? Aaron says, That's it. That's it for you. You get one shot.

Two and five, but smart Devante Adams trade. He was just what they've needed. They managed to not crack 20 points again. Here's what they have for points this year, 19, 24, 24, 9, 17, 20, 15.

And is that less or the same as last year? Because coming into this week, it was exactly the same, I think, as 2023's offensive output.

Probably around the same output, right?

Yeah, that's it. It can't be more.

Yeah, they're bad. And the defense just isn't very good.

They're not very good. I'm done with them on primed time, too, even though I think we got two more.

Bad news. Two of the next four.

Two of the next four? Oh, they did it early in case he goes away or something. Oh, just God help us if they're flexed in week 14 or something. But they They're bad. I didn't understand that line at all. I made it a rat line. It was two and four at four and two. If you look at Fandel, the over and under for wins for the Jets was seven and a half. For the Stealers, it was eight and a half. I'm like, I'm staying away from this except for the Sal special. Jets first half, Stealers win the game, plus 8:50. Did that hit? God bless. It hit. Anybody who was on it. Oh, my God.

What is that? Four times now?

I think it's three. Three? Three, yeah. But eight to one each time. Oh, my God. Yeah, good. Good for the Jets. Smart team.

That line was super suspicious, and then it moved. By game time, it was basically two and a half on Fandil, Jets by two and a half. I just felt like I had to, just out of sheer respect for Mike Tomlin and just the whole infrastructure, I had to tease the Steelers to eight and a half. I teased the over down to 33.

I thought you teased them with the Mets. I was going to be upset.

No, I didn't do that. But it just seemed like we had a lot of disrespectful lines this week, and all of them came back to bite whoever. The lines was disrespectful. The Chiefs Mahomes as an underdog was just... I just can't believe that happened. But in this case, so I did that. And then you're watching the game and the Jets looked really good for about a half hour, a little like the Patriots. I'm thinking, Oh, man. Russ is like... He got booed. You probably were in Metz hell, but-I didn't hear audio. I think his third series, and he just looked bad and just terrible pass. He got booed. Collinsworth was stammering, and it just seemed like it was going to go super ugly, and then all of a sudden the game flipped.

Well, from what I saw and could gather, I had the game on also, but I wasn't listening. But he threw some good passes, but he threw what's more telling Knowing as his bad passes might fit this offense. That Eli Manning, underthrown, as long as it's one-on-one to pick-ins, he's going to maybe get it more than five times out of 10, and then you're all set. So kudos. And by the way, they spend a million and a half dollars on both these guys, like Fields and Wilson. I don't blame the coach for being like, All right, let's see what else we got here. Fields isn't exactly the franchise quarterback right away, even though they're four and two. So good job by them for now, right?

We talked about it last Sunday that we thought Fields, they won, but he was bad last week. I didn't think he was good against Dallas either. I wasn't surprised when they made this switch, but I'm so glad you brought up the deep ball offense. We've been talking about this the entire time you and I have been doing this podcast dating back to 2007, that if you don't really have a passing offense, just fucking chuck it downfield. And Pickens is among the best people to do that with. He's really good at slowing down, jumping in traffic, contested catches. I was texting our fantasy guys. I was like, this is my dream offense. I've been begging for everyone else dreams about the West Coast offense or four verticals. I'm like, I just want to see somebody chuck it down one the sidelines. Just like it's either an interference, it's a catch, it's incompletely, or there's what, a 10% chance it's picked, but then it's like a punt. There's no downside versus having somebody just go back to pass and third and eight gets tipped at the line, whatever. So Pickens is the perfect guy for it. I felt like he changed their name for that pass.

We have to figure out because- It's the Flacko. It's the Flacko. It's the Flacko. All right.

I thought Eli did it. I know you mentioned Eli, and Eli definitely did it, but Flacko, this was the Raven's offense in the 2010s because they were like, just go back and just fucking throw it.

I meant to write it down, but Collinsworth called it something much more diplomat. It was much more like- He was calling it Moonballs. Moonball, yeah. These Moonballs. But like a In a positive way, he was saying.

Yeah, Mike, it makes me think of Moonpie and Rollerball with James Kahn. It's a great movie. It's that futuristic violence, Mike. It's so good.

The Moonball offense. He's got boom, he's got Crescent moon, he's got wax and craze, he's got everything.

He might as well moon us, Mike. He might as well pull his pants out and moon us. That's what he's doing with his offense. Pick and seem way happier. I never really know whether to believe this or not, so I always try to read between the lines. But it was interesting, some of the feedback on the practice during the week, even Melissa Stark before the game. There's a real energy with this team. We were there two weeks ago in the field. The energy feels different And so maybe the fields thing was a little worse behind the scenes with people feeling like he could run the offense correctly. The other thing is their running backs are healthier than they were the last couple of weeks.

So the Stewards are five and two. Lauren's nice when he's healthy, they could trade off between those two.

So this is one of my big... I mean, pretty much all of my big ones before the year, except the freaking Jaguars. But Pittsburgh and Seattle, who's now in first place in the NFC West, I'm feeling good about my futures. Jets 2 and 5 at the Patriots next week. Home for Houston four days later on a Thursday night. That's a tough game because Houston's D-line, I think, is really good. At Arizona, week 10. Home Indy, week 11 on a Sunday night. So they're two and five. What's their record in four weeks? Would you go four and seven, five and six?

Four and seven would be... Five and six is while they're playing great ball and getting lucky, I would say. But four and seven is more likely. I mean, you can't say... The Patriots was their only... I don't know. They barely beat the Titans, and then they beat your team on a Thursday night. There's no real game on the schedule that they're definitely going to win, right?

Well, on the flip side, the kicker cost them week 4 and week 5. So you could talk yourself into whatever reality you want.

That's what I'm saying. Everything's close. You can't say, You're definitely winning this, definitely winning that.

I feel like I've watched an in order amount of Jets this season. I don't know what the stats are. Because they force it on us. Yeah, because they're on or they're in London or they're on night. It just feels like Rodgers is getting hit a lot. Now, he's just bleeding. It's like a boxer. It's like CM Punk or something. It's bleeding all over the place.

It's a Tarantino film every time he goes out there, for sure.

They don't feel like a playoff team to me, so. I don't think so either. I know we do this over and over and over again with the standings, but just Buffalo now has a three-game lead over them in the division. I would say, unless Alan gets hurt, lock them in. Pittsburgh and Baltimore in the north, there's three. Houston in the south, that's four. And then Chiefs. Then I just like the Chargers more than them. That's six. Now they're battling against the Broncos, the Colts, the Bengals. Maybe Miami, if two, it can come back in time. It's not doing... Maybe nine and eight gets the seven seed, that's their only path.

I don't think that can- That's what they have to hope for because like I said- They can go eight and three the rest of the way. They don't have it up yet, but Vandall had them at seven and a half before today's game. So they're like a solid seven-win team at this point going forward. I think they're going to have to up it by three to make the playoffs.

What's the funniest outcome? Because I have an idea.

Go ahead. Tell me yours. Let me see.

Roger is asking for a trade on McAfee's show on Tuesday. This just didn't work. This week already? It just didn't work. I look around, I see some other teams, and maybe there's a better place for me. I just think that would cause a riot.

I like that, too.

That could shut down Twitter right for the election, which we probably need.

Oh, Yeah, do it, Aaron. Come on. Do it, Aaron.

Just that, float it out. Float it out. Some teams out there, I see. Some holes of QB.

That or power forward for the Minnesota Lynx. He's decided he's moving.

He's changing. That's it? Oh, my God. Jets have the same... Actually, Miami has a half-game lead over the Jets, and it feels like they're one of the four or five most unwatchable teams in either conference. And they have a better record. They have a half-game lead on their... How is that possible?

Our friend JJ was watching their game. He's a big Dolphins fan, and screaming at the TV. I don't know what it is. I think he had more faith in Who's that idiot that comes in at the third string to boil? To boil. Then the other 15 of us sitting in the room watching. But yeah, that's on a fun team.

Is he still there? Is he just slumped on a chair? Did you leave him there?

What happened to him? He did. Oh, the Yankee enthusiasm turned on a dime. Real quick. Didn't take much.

So he had a lot of swagger because of the Indians were also in Siren. We're going to take a quick break for the podcast. Get ready to tackle the NFL action with Fanduel, America's number one sportsbook. Right now, you customers can bet $5 and make it 300 bonus bets if you win. Fanduel Sportsbook app gives you everything you need to place live bets on the NFL all in one place. Get a hunch in the middle of the game. Check out the latest stats. If you live, play by play and so much more on the same page where you place your bets, just visit fanduel. Com/bs. To join today, you'll get started with $300 bonus bets. If you win, you are first. Five dollar bet Never waste a hunch. Make every moment more with Fanduel, an official sportsbook partner of the NFL. You must be 21 plus and President Select States or 18 plus and President DC. First online real money wager only, $5 first deposit required. Bonus issue does not withdrawable bonus bets, which expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook. Fanduel. Com. Gambling problem call, 1-800. Gamble or visit rg-help.

Com. Before we get the Chiefs Niners off that Jets conversation, cross off teams? Seven weeks? Can we come up with seven right now?

I think we can. I don't want to go back on this, though, because we've been criticized about crossing teams off, often. We've been criticized about crossing teams off, often. We crossed them off.

Some people very close to us. The radical left, the left, the far right.

Was it the red states?

Who's criticizing it?

Remember the Swift boat people?

Oh, the Swift, damn.

No. So we crossed off the Giants and we brought them back. Let's just Keep teams crossed off.

What's the worst that's going to happen? How about this? We'll keep the Giants crossed off. We're right.

All right. I'm good.

Well, these three are crossed off. The W England, Carolina, and Cleveland. Panthers, Patriots. They're all one and six. They're done. And Carolina, Lombardi said this on my pod on Thursday, I think. And I actually think you might be right that this is the worst team in the decade now, this Carolina team. Really? They've gotten worse every week. They were down 37 nothing today, and they weren't even like, Maybe we should throw Bryce Young out there.

They didn't even do that. I was just going to say, you know it's bad when he's pretty much set to come back week eight after how bad he was. All right, so those three for sure.

I think Tennessee at one and five. I don't see a path for them. They're awful. They gave up 27 unanswered to Buffalo today.

That was my best bet, and people killed me. I did have some reluctance once they switched from Will Levis to Rudolf, and then Fandel went from eight and a half to nine. I'm like, All right, I'm not going to overthink this. Rudolf is a 59% passer. The bills will demolish them at home. Took a minute, but they did.

You were close for a second. All right, so there's four, two and five teams. I don't think the Jets are a cross-off yet.

Okay.

Vegas? They just lost... You know it's bad when it's like, Oh, no, Aiden O'Neill's hurt. Oh, no. What are we going to do? We don't have Aiden O'Neill. Port Minchou comes back, which is one of my favorite football scenarios every year when the guy gets bench then has to come back in a week later. Really tough. What's the marital equivalent of that? I'm moving out. I'm having an affair with my assistant. Then a week later, Hey, honey, I'm back.

I'm back. It didn't work out.

Yeah. Sorry. Hey, you didn't put my stuff in the attic yet, did you? Minchou is just back. By the way, he was just as terrible as he was before he got bench. Yeah.

They're fight. Well, I mean, the coach is hilarious. The only reason to watch them is the coach to watch him kick a field goal down seven or eight, whatever. Well, no. Let's hit this. But we can wait.

It's 20 to 12. There's Four minutes left, and it's fourth and goal from, I think, the four. Yeah. And first they get a false start, which is just like that. That's the last level. Like the Patriots absolutely would have a false start in that situation. The worst coach teams are always going to do something dumb in that spot. So now it's fourth and nine. They're up eight, and you still have to go for it because even if you don't get it, they're stuck inside the 10. Maybe you'll get a pass interference in the end zone. You're basically turning a one-touchdown game into a one-touch down game. There's no reason to do it. None that I can think of. No. Here, it brings the kicker in and kicks it.

At least line up to draw them off size and try to get five yards closer, and then you're definitely going for it. But you should be going for it anyway, because guess what? Look at the scoreboard. You have twelve points against the Rams defense. It's not your day. So you're not going to get down there three more times, two more times, another time. So, yeah, go for the touch down there. But anyone who had to spread. So I think you're right because they have five losses. They have the Chiefs twice.

Two and five. They're done.

They have the chargers and they're at the box, so they're going to have nine for sure.

They're one of the most poorly coached teams in the league, and they have bottom five quarterbacks. It's a pretty tough combo. I even like the Pat situation more because at least we can move the ball.

So that's six, right? Six teams?

Vegas, Giants, Two and Five, Tennessee, New England, Carolina, Cleveland. Then if we want to do a sixth, I can offer you the Two and Five Jags, the Two and Five Jets, Two and Four or the two and four rams. I wouldn't cross off any of those, I don't think. All right.

Yeah, we got some time. But out of those, I would say- Jags, I would probably be the most excited to cross off just because I'm not buying, just because you beat the One of the worst coach, least talented teams in the last couple of years.

I'm not going to, sorry, your party.

Yeah. If this was an NCAA field, they're the first buy. They're the first one coming in if we have to kick somebody out.

You think Doug got a window or is he In the aisle. Where is he?

Coach Middle Seat?

He's not Middle Seat Doug on the fight home. No.

You got to say Coach Middle Seat. That's half the joke. Coach, because he's a flying Coach, and he's Middle Seat, but he's also Coach.

Coach Middle Seat. Coach Middle Seat.

Yeah.

Okay. You like that more than middle seat, Doug?

I don't know. I think I do. Did you see what he did today?

Did you see what he did today?

Bag of peanuts. That's it. Nothing.

What did he do? I guarantee nobody noticed this. So they're up I forget. They're up maybe 13 or 15. It's a two-score game, and it's like fourth and two in the fourth quarter. Doug decides to go for it. If it's a field goal, he's up 18. Now, it's a three possession game with 10 minutes left, and we have no offensive line. And instead, Doug goes for it. For a reason, that remained like the game. We've lost the ability for coaches to just say, Hey, if I do this, now the game's over. People are like, now if we go for fourth and 2, maybe we... I don't even know what the rationale is. Anyway, we stuff them. Pats come down and they score. And Mayo, who needs a nickname, maybe he's middle seat Mayo. I don't even know what his nickname is. He's just awful. He's an awful coach, goes for two down nine, and we don't get it.

And that's it.

And the reason he had to go for two was because earlier in the game on a P-A-T, we jumped off sides, and then they went for two and got it, and they went up. So instead of being up 14, they're up 15. Because they got a yard closer. Yeah. So now we have to chase the P-A-T when we score and we don't get it, and we stay down nine, and we're done. Mayo had some just classic quotes after the game. The guy doesn't He doesn't move during the game. He does no coaching whatsoever. Poor planning. We have no strategy past the first half of the first quarter. We have multiple guys grumbling after the game. Kendrick Bourn's agent today after the game did this Instagram post Just congratulating Kendrick Bourn for his professionalism because they told him he was going to be a healthy scratch. Then somebody was sick and ended up playing last minute, caught a shutdown. Then he was talking shit about Polk, the rookie, and how he's got to get out of this mental state he's in. Polk is like, I'm fine. I just need to make some plays. This is just such a train wreck.

I can't believe this was Kraft's hand-picked guy, who, by the way, he hand-picked six years ago and openly talks about it. That guy was on Belichick's coaching staff.

Out of everything you just said, the thing that surprises me most is that Kendrick Bourne has an agent. But I'll believe you. But yeah, we were saying earlier, this is a bad year for Mayo. With the Will Levis and the coffee, and your coach, really.

It's just a rough year for Mayo all around. Yeah, there is. So we said health studies that came in.

It was down on the condiment rankings.

He gives this interview after, and he's like, We're just a soft team right now. We're a soft team. It's like, Boy, the coach, I bet the coach is going to really lay it to, Oh, wait, you're the coach. You're responsible for whether this team is soft or not. We don't have physical practices. Oh, I'm sorry. It was K. J. Osborne. Kyle reminded me. I got K. J. Osborne and Kendra Ford confused. Oh, he has an agent. Yes, that guy definitely. Kj Asborne. Is that less surprising that he is an agent?

It's exactly the same.

My bad. K. J. Osborne. I mixed up our anonymous receivers who are probably getting paid too much money. But we have a soft team, according to Gerard Mayo, who is the person in control of every practice.

Don't you immediately lose the locker room if you say you have a soft team?

I think he already lost it.

What's the rumblings like between the punter and the free safety? I got coaches. We're soft. Are we? I don't know. Maybe we are. It's his fault, no. It's his No.

They have terrible play calling. Who jumps off sides on a P-A-T? That's that side alone that you have no idea what we're doing. This guy, he's been just awful.

You're down to three and a half wins on Fandel.

And through shade to Bell Belchick this week, too, about like, Shaded him on the roster. It's like, you wouldn't have a career if it wasn't for Belichick. He was the guy who gave you a coaching chance. And you're budding up with Kraft. I'm just disgusted by the whole thing. All right, so we have six cross-up teams.

Well, hold on. Let me look at this real quick because you have three- No, we had six.

New England, Carolina, Cleveland, Tennessee, Vegas, Giants. Crossing them off. That's it. We can't bring them back. It's not like JJ changing his survivor pick every week.

Got you. Right. Yeah, you guys, wow, you have the lowest win total, three and a half.

Listen, before the season, as I repeatedly just picked Pats Under's and Alt Under's, and you were getting mad at me. They can't block. They're poorly coached, and they've had a bunch of defensive injuries already. The thing is, May is good. That's the thing.

He's legitimately good. You only have to root for him. Isn't it nice? You don't have to root for this team. All this other nonsense with the coach and everything's fun. He's going to be gone anyway. You have one player to root for, and that's nice. You can concentrate your efforts on Drake May. No interceptions today. I really like him.

He's super fun to watch. I thought he made The nerds will come out with all their advance where they break down the plays and give him the ratings. I guarantee his ratings are good in that game because he did a lot of good stuff and we can't block. And terrible drops in the first half. Chiefs' Niners Mahomes now moves to 12, one and one as an underdog. And I'm going to posit you with this question because that was the stat. That was the reason I picked the Chiefs. I'm not good. I almost swept a million dollar pick today. I lost the backers by a half point. It was four I just missed it. So is Mahomes 12, one-on-one as an underdog?

I think that's what it was. He was.

Or are the Chiefs 12, one-on-one during the Mahomes era, playing off the tweet that you did today, which I thought was a really good tweet about the defense?

Oh, the defense.

Yeah. Go ahead. Do your thing on this.

Well, it's just the most underrated unit, I think, of the decade. Spagnola, right? The Chiefs keep them in all these games, all the important games. You can blame it on the refs or whatever else. It's defense that has them there. And especially this year, you have, what does he have? Six touch downs, eight interceptions, Mahomes? He better not be tops for MVP. I know they're undefeated. I get it. But they're the reason he's in. What happened with him? He coached the Rams, he got fired, and then he was just like a... He just became the best defensive coordinator because nobody wanted to take a chance with him again. It's great. He's excellent.

He's a completely, I guess, an overpaid defensive coordinator/ Specialist, right? He's paid as a head coach or close to a head coach, but just wants to run the defense.

He's going to go in the- Plus 370.

I think there's a chance he could go in the Hall of Fame as a defensive coordinator.

Interesting. But overshadowed by Andy Reid all the time, right? All we heard about was his record off a buy. And Mahomes, like you just said, record as an underdog. You don't hear about Spagnola. That defense is excellent.

Really good. The defense is the reason they won the Super Bowl. They were four and five in the red zone today, which really helped. And then you mentioned Mahomes, 154 yards, zero touchdowns, two picks, had a rush TD. For the season, six touchdowns, eight picks. He is not top 1400 yards yet. I would say he's probably, as a fantasy quarterback, probably in the 20s. Oh, yeah. He's got to be like You be 22 or something like that. He did have two great plays today. One, he decked Mustafa, the safety for the countdown. I love that. He seems bigger this year. And then he's mastered the I'm going to run out of bounds. Oh, actually, I'm not. I'm cutting back in play, which feels like it's cheating.

Yeah, they should almost allow that extra step then because if you take a hit at them on the sidelines. But yeah, it really is. It's like, My father could kick your father's ass, so watch what I could do. Like, Oh, we got to let them get away with it. What are we going to do?

Well, it was one of the biggest things of the game. The other thing that happened today, did you see the movie Frost Nixon?

Oh, yeah, sure.

Really good, right? I mean, famous. One of the great interviews of all time. Famous interview, Immortalized, and a really good movie. We'll see what happens with braided Mahomes. I don't know if you saw that interview, but it was really the Frost Nixon of this decade. Yeah. Really some hard-hitting questions, some really in-depth answers. I was riveted. So good. Do you remember after the AFC title game? I came over and I said, Hey, man, I wish you luck. Yeah, I do remember that. Then they cut a wide shot of the stadium. Next question. Right, right, right. These interviews are so bad. Why do they have these? They spend a cajillion dollars with 17 cameras filming them, and it's the worst content you could have possibly have.

Yeah. And I don't like it. And by the way, I was about to compliment them. I was like, Well, Brady's gotten better. Whatever. He might not be your favorite, but we know what he is now, and he's in the flow of announcing. But then these interviews, first of all, interview Jack in my homes or the wife or something. Anything's going to be better. But the one thing I don't like that braided does is like, Oh, this guy was the bane of my existence. This guy, this coordinator was a bane of my... Andy needs a bane. I was like, this defense... You're the winningest position player of all time.

What are you talking a long time.

You never lost to anybody.

Yeah, you beat everybody.

Yeah. It's like Howard Stern asking, Oh, how much? Wow, you make $4 million a year? It's like, Shut up. You make $400 million. Shut up. We're not buying this.

This guy was the bait of my existence. I I would have had a 900 winning percentage. Not for this guy. That was just 899. He's getting a little better as a game counselor, but he also has a bunch of ticks now that he's got to get rid of. He always says, and again, What I was saying about the receiver, he's always bringing us back to something you said 10 minutes ago. He's like, just keep going. It's been great for Romo because I think it's been a really strong Romo year. Meanwhile, the Niners are not just our leaders for the year from hell. I think they've just about locked it down. It looked like he tore his ACL. It seems like they fear it, and we'll find out officially tomorrow.

Should we cross them off? Is that what you're getting at?

I know, but they're three and four. I know. 33 picks today on the KC-34, on the KC-31, and on the KC-5. There was a question, remember last I'd be like, Yeah, sure. Brock Purdy is doing well, but what would he be like with all these weapons? And it's like, Today we found out. Or did we find out? Because I still like Purdy. But that'll be the game people point to. This is what happens when you just have weapons. He sucks.

I blame myself, I think, because you and I have flip-floped on Shana and a lot. I know I've flipped on Purdy a lot. And three weeks ago, I was like, That's it. I'm done. He's really good. He's very, very good. Not even for a miss or irrelevant. He's very good at what he does. And then since I made that statement, I I don't know what is going on. But yeah, again, and we gave the Chief's defense credit, but what's left now for these 49er receivers? Is it just Kittle? They got the guy who got shot, Ricky Pearsle's in there. But without Samuel and without Iuk, it's definitely a different team.

The Year From Hell, if we're looking for signs for the Year From Hell, maybe a guy getting randomly shot during a robbery right before the season who was a first-run pick is probably about as good of a sign as you're going to get.

And that guy's back before Macafre. Yeah.

Somehow they're playing your stupid team next week on Sunday night.

That's why I needed them to win today.

If the Niners lose their three and five heading into the buy, after the buy at Tampa, home Seattle, at Green Bay at Buffalo. So they could potentially be three and five walking in that. What's your team's record? You're three and three?

Yeah.

Yeah. So one of those teams is not losing. You're not impressed? No. It feels high. I'm not crossing off the Niners as a playoff team, but I don't think they're even close to being one of the five best teams in the NFC. No. They've had too many injuries. I think the three best teams are in the NFC North now in the NFC, right? I think you're right. I would go Detroit, Minnesota, and Green Bay over any other team in the NFC.

Yeah. Maybe I'll feel differently tomorrow, but I have an irrational affection for the Bucks. But I don't know. Maybe they're on the outside looking in. But yeah, you're right. The Niners needed this. I know they had injuries and everything. But if this is not an FU game to the team that beat you in the Super Bowl on a questionable call at the end and everything else, when are they ever going to be in a team like this?

How about this? Who's your two seed in the NFC right now? Your choices are Washington, Tampa, or Seattle. Those are the three leading their divisions right now. I'll go Tampa.

I would go Tampa.

You would take Tampa?

Yeah. They really could be five and one.

It's a pretty big two seed because then you're playing the seven seed in round one, and then you're getting the winner of basically anyone underneath you in round two. It's not like a small thing to be the two seed. All right, more stuff that happened. By the way, that Chiefs' Niners game, I just think the Chiefs, almost, they've hit that point that the pats hit at some point, that the Colts hit near the end of the 2000s, where it almost doesn't matter who their skilled players are. Even Carson Steal was out there for getting big first downs. It just doesn't matter. A little bit, though. Their defense, their coach and their infrastructure, they just hang around and then they know they're going to win the game.

You know what I mean? But you don't think Mahomes is struggling more than he has been?

Yeah, but I'm saying they just hang around these games, then they win them, and you just know they're going to win. I never for a second doubted they were winning that game today. Right.

Yeah. They don't blow leads like that. We're dumb. We should always just take the Chiefs. I know they're going to get tripped up by someone's stupid, but the games you think it's going to happen just doesn't.

Well, didn't JJ go against them today? Who zagged against them? Jj. Was it JJ? Yeah.

Yeah. Wasn't it JJ? Yeah. Jj.

He's like, Juan Soto, 14 pitches.

Juan Soto, he didn't catch passes.

14 pitches, nodding after every pitch because he knew I can't wait. I can't wait for the Dodger fans to stick it to them.

So they got to lose, and Soto's got to leave the team. That's the best. We don't need to get back to baseball, but that would be just the best. Yeah.

Bangles beat the Browns. Deshawn got hurt. Looks like a torn Achilles. I wrote this down. I'm just going to read it to you. I can't even come up with the Deshawn take. It's in the running for the least fun start to finish sports story in this century that didn't involve a murder.

Are we sure it didn't involve a murder?

I don't know. Yeah, pretty sure.

Evidence is out.

Can you think of a less fun week to week sports story than Deshawn goes to Cleveland?

No, I get it.

It's too much. It is devoid of entertainment from start to finish. I always feel bad when an athlete gets injured today. But the fan base is like, Finally. It's just everything about... Jameis had an incredible two and a half minute monolog in the locker room after about the Sean, but it's just He's good for those.

Just awful. Yeah. Then I was surprised that he wasn't the number two guy. Dtr had to get hurt first, and Dorena Thompson-Robinson for Jameis to get it. Then I'm looking, I'm like, All right, maybe Stefansky finally, through injury, has the set up he wants. Probably not, but 21-14 against the bangles, they claw back in it.

The bangles had a hard time moving the ball in that game. Tee Higgins had... That was the first game where sometimes that would happen, bangles in previous years, where Tee Higgins feels like he's more important to the game than Chase does. That's when you know they're humming. They've also finally figured out that they got to keep Chase Brown on the field. That he's just got to get more touches. Would it shock me if that team made the playoffs? No. What are their fanDuel odds right now? Minus T20. You talk about the bangles. I'm going to look this up.

They're minus 124 to make the playoffs.

Oh, they're minus?

Yeah, so plus 102 for the no. Jesus. They're easy to figure out. A lot of these teams we talk about, we can't figure out. The teams with the good defenses, they can't really score against. What happened with the Giants the other night? Don't forget, they had a kick return for a countdown today. Otherwise, a pretty stagnant offense against the Browns. So who did they lay it on? They laid it on the Panthers, and that's it. I'm not sure. The Ravens and Ravens don't have a bottom three defense. Say what you will about it.

If you don't lay it on the Panthers, there's something wrong with you. We'll take one more break for the podcast. Okay. Lions, Vikings. Lions 31, Vikings 29. Another game where I didn't understand the line, and then it seemed like the Vikings were going to win. They had the ball. They had a chance to put the game away. Could not get the first down. They needed. Detroit gets the ball back. Goff makes a couple of plays. I thought Detroit was better in the game. In Minnesota, I almost stole it. But then you look at the stats after the game, and everything was pretty even. Yards were even, first downs, a lot of the stuff, it was a more even numbers game, but I didn't feel that way watching it. I thought Minnesota was lucky to be hanging around. And if they stole that game, it was like, Jesus, what do we have with this Vikings team? So anyway, I thought the right team won, but I thought it was weirdly a good loss for the Vikings, too.

Yeah, definitely. Because we're watching that game. I think of us at least thinks, all right, Sam Donald's slide has to start somewhere. Why not now? He really wasn't bad. He was like 22 for 27. He made some big throws. They got back in that game. It would have been a really bad loss for the Lions, and it would have just been like, all right, the Vikings are back to two years ago where they win every one score game. But Gough has been... You talk about MVPs. I'm trying to think of his number. So he was 18 for 18 against Seattle. He was 22 for 25 against Minnesota. His The numbers have been really good lately. What are his MVP odds? Because they're going to get a one seed.

So why wouldn't- MVP odds are plus 650. Mahomes is plus 370, which I'm guessing is just because there's so much action on him, they can't move it up too high. Lamar is 5 to 1. Allen's 5:1. Cj is plus 9:50. Jordan Love, who was not good today, was 13:01. Right.

Our cheat thing is that it's a top two seed, right? Lines get closer and closer to that one seed every week, I think.

I thought Goff was awesome today because they were coming after him. There were a couple of times when it seemed like old Jared Goff, when he was going back to pass, there were guys around him and I was like, Here's the Goff. He just doesn't throw those plays anymore. There was one throw he missed in the fourth to Raymond, the Holy Cross kid, where he was deep down the sidelines. For some reason, he just sailed it a little bit out of bounds. It would have been like a 70-year touch down, but For the most part, I thought he was really good. I got to be honest, I thought that game felt like an NFC title game. The bikes kept coming back. The crowd was great. Jefferson had a couple of really good moments. Aaron Jones, who wasn't supposed to play all week. Yeah, he was lightning fast. He was really, really good again. I thought that game felt like a playoff game, and Packers, Texans felt like a play. Both of those felt like round two or round three playoff games. I agree with you.

And not that it matters because he's probably not coming back. He's talking about Coming back for the Super Bowl. But I also think the lines would have put them away with one or two Aiden Hutchinson plays. If he was in that lineup, I was like, All right, this would have been a twelve-point game or something, midway through the fourth.

I'm sure they're going to trade for some pass rusher. These teams always magically find enough money, especially because the guys get paid game by game. So the closer you get to the middle of the season, it's a little cheaper to be able to add the person. But I'm sure they'll get something.

Max Crosby is probably one of them. I mean, all the parody accounts are more and more believable every week. So you have to think that he's on his way out.

What would they get for Max Crosby? That's got to be at least a first, right? First then something else. I would think. Yeah. Isn't he pricing him? I thought he just signed an extension.

I thought they get- I don't know anyone's deal.

Somebody on the Browns, maybe if the Browns are just like-They were talking about Miles Garrett throwing. Miles Garrett. Because on the Pats, they were talking about Uche, who's basically a third-down specialist guy. So then in the Packers game, which was a great back and forth. The packers win, somehow don't cover. Line was either two and a half or three. Packers win by two. The big story, I guess, is that a packers kicker came through. Brandon McManis, who landed on the packers on shaky terms, to say the least, but ended up there and finally made a kick for them. Their defense won the game. Stroud was pressured on 48% of his dropbacks. He threw for 86 yards. No Nico Collins. I think that might have killed the passing title for him. The Texas were running the ball, 25 for 115, but they had the game, Sal. It's inside the two-minute warning. They're down two, but they get a first down. Green Bay has all three timeouts. There was a way to finagle that, where it's like, Try to run the ball or quick passes, make them burn all the timeouts, maybe try to get as close as possible, maybe even get the first down.

They didn't really do it. And then they threw an incompletion on third down. So the packers got to save a time out, kick to go ahead by one. And it just felt like the packers were going to come back down. And I didn't even think Love was very good today, but I just felt like they were going to get a field goal in that one.

He was off a little. And if you look at the stat, I was with you. I had packers minus three. And it was so frustrating that it's going to come down to this one or two point extra point thing. And I'm looking at the Houston stats, like Tank Dell Diggs at one point in the fourth quarter, at seven yards combined. How are they still in this? What is going on here? But I think you hit on it early. This is a very good defensive team. They have the top two ranked safeties on PFF, one and two. So how do you throw? They're going to embarrass even the best quarterbacks. Stroud had 10 completions all day.

We thought going in that that had a chance to be the second most talented team in the NFC. And after We're watching football for seven weeks, I think they might be. But those three are definitely the three best teams. I don't know if Seattle, they have some injuries. We'll see what we have with them, what guys get back. Nobody in the NFC East, I think, is on the level of those guys. Then Tampa, just because of the way their offense has been moving the ball, I think you got to take them seriously, but I wouldn't put them on the level of those.

No, maybe not. But every packer fan would sign off on five and two after Love got hurt throwing out Hillmarr in Brazil. Oh, yeah.

That stupid Brazil field. I want to see the packers and the Texans in December because the Texans will have Nico Collins back. They're going to get some offensive line. They'll fix some of that. December? Yeah, two months from now.

Can that happen? What do you mean?

No, not them playing each other. I just want to see the two teams. All right.

Because- Like, wow, did they realign?

I think both of these teams in December are going to be built for playoff football, right? Especially if they get some guys back. Seattle beat Atlanta. I had this for a million dollar pics, too. I had Lombardi on Thursday. Both of us really like Seattle for some reason. It was just like, they're really going to lose four in a row. This is a pretty talented team. They had 6, 20 plus plays. If you like Seattle, when Walker's healthy, which he was today, and they can run the ball, and then they're just getting an explosive play every quarter, it's- This is the one you want to see.

This is the Seahawks team you want to see, right? Yeah. And the Falcon's team you want to see. Big chances. Just go away. No pass rush.

Cousins was under attack for a lot of the game. Gino, not quite an MVP candidate, but weirdly important for this season, I feel like. They throw all the time. I think he has 2,000 yards already. Does he really?

Yeah, I think he does. Is it That many? Wow.

He does not end up there in touch downs, but I think he's close.

Yeah, 1985.

He's right there.

Wow. Wow, that's good. Yeah, he threw some good balls. Like you said, everyone contributed. Noah Fant out of nowhere, just catching balls. They They need Walker healthy to go far, I think.

They need some offensive line stuff to happen. Then Atlanta, the NFC South falling apart.

That's good for you.

Good for us. That was our favorite under. They have 11 wins now through seven weeks with Tampa tomorrow. I feel like Atlanta could be one and six. Then I think the three teams today were minus 76. Three NFC South teams heading into this Tampa-Bull.

Between Thursday, yeah. You got Spencer Rattler and Andy Dalton, both the quarterback, two of them.

I don't think that division gets to 30 because Carolina, do they have one more win in them? They're going to go two and 15 or one and 16. Then New Orleans has lost five straight. Are they a 7-10 team, like 6-11?

They're in danger getting crossed off next week.

Yeah. So Tampa could maybe get to 10 or 11 wins, and then that leaves us with Atlanta. The 11 I don't see it. I don't see it. Tampa would have to go 13 and 4 for that division to get to 30.

Right. Yeah. You're not going to get 10 wins out of Carolina and New Orleans, I don't think.

The three shitty games today were Miami 16 to 10 over Indy. I'm sorry, Indy 16, 10 over Miami. Indy is now 4 and 3, and I have no idea how it happened. I have YouTube TV. You do, right? And the multi-view, and I have no idea how they're 4 and 3.

We're going for first place, all alone in first place, if they beat the Texans next week.

The Rams are 20 and 15. Nobody would start anyone on their offense. Other than maybe Williams. And then the Jags, 32 to 16 over the pats. And then we had some blowouts. I guess the only other thing that happened was Daniels got hurt immediately in the Carolina game. Which was one of the biggest fantasy murders of the right? Sure. That's it. You have no chance. If you haven't been in a guillotine leg, so long. See you later. Who do you have tomorrow night? Ravens Bucks and chargers Cards.

I have Bucks and I have the chargers, and I feel strong about them.

Really feel strong.

I think so. Yeah. I think the Bucks, I think this is a bad spot for Baltimore. I know they beat every NFC team, but I really think the Bucks... I mean, they have the worst past defense in the league, and I think Baker is going to go nuts. Baker is 15 I know.

That's crazy. I love the chargers, and I had a Ravens over adjusted parlay thingy that I like. For the game? I think the line is like a point too high. Yeah, it feels like a field goal game to me.

Yeah, the NFL doesn't let you get on a roll too much. The one thing we didn't talk about is the bet I didn't make, maybe you did, the Barkley stuff. Everyone was like, Oh, my God, he's definitely scoring. He's definitely going over 83 yards. I'm like, All right, calm There's 11 guys who are going to want to tackle him, too. This grudge doesn't only go one way. God, did he make me look stupid? And the Giants.

He scored, right?

I think he scored. Yeah, he scored at least one. Yeah, he scored one. He had 176 yards rushing.

We looked at that and the odds weren't good for a million dollar pick. I think we did a Hunter Henry one.

But it's also weird because it's like, Aha, I told you you should have signed me. It's like, Yeah, it would have been bad for everybody if you signed The Giants.

Let's do a little thing we like to call Guess the Lines.

Oh, I've heard about this.

Remember this thing? What's the record? 4, 2, 1, you're winning.

Yeah, look at that. You're winning 4, 2, 1.

There you go. Thursday night, Vikings ramps. Tough spot for the Vikes, man. That was a pretty hard-hitting playoff game, crazy, intense. Now, four days later, you got to just turn it back on. It's in LA. Are you going?

Kind of.

You're going or you're not going?

Not going to that. Am I going to this? I couldn't stand Dodger Stadium. I wanted to kill About it. Yeah. You lived there, too.

Did you see the parking for Dodger Stadium today?

How much was it? It was $60 when I went on Monday.

What was it today? They jacked it today. It was for any decent lot, it was 200 bucks. Wow. Yeah. For the best lot, it was like 500 bucks.

Wow. What an asshole world we live in. Yeah. God Almighty.

They're like 200 bucks or sit in traffic for 100 minutes after the game.

Yeah, it's true. They know they have you. They have you. You're going to leave early or are you going to spend two and a half hours in this parking lot?

With your eight-year-old kid who needs to pee and is super upset and ate too much sugar and is having a meltdown in the back seat.

Yeah.

Or $200, and you can get at least.

Avoid shady guys who are trying to sign knock off O'Tani T-shirts. That's right. I have nowhere to go, but thanks.

I have Vikings minus three against the Rams in LA.

We both get it, and we got it exactly right.

Oh, okay.

Did McVay? He might have played his cards right. He rested. He rested Nakuwa because he knew we had this Thursday coming, right? So he rested both those guys, and they should be back.

Cooper Cupp and Nakuwa. Trying to sneak it out. Smart move.

It worked.

It feels like a stay away game to me.

Sure. I mean, almost all of them are.

That guy, Verse on the Rams.

Yeah, that's my guy.

What were the defensive player odds for him? Didn't you recommend that?

I bet it.

It was high, right? It was like over. It was double digits. It was like 10 to one, 12 to 1, 14 to 1.

I have 100 to win, 950. Not plus 950.

Plus 950. Yeah. I think he's in the running. He was really good in the Raiders game today. Okay, Sunday Marquee. Controversial. We don't usually do it this way because this isn't the best game. I'm not even positive one of the quarterbacks is going to be playing in this game.

Baltimore Cleveland?

No, Washington, Chicago.

Yeah. What do you want to do with this? Because the line suggests pretty strongly one way or another if he's playing. I don't know if you want to throw this out or do you want to- What is out with the injury?

What do we know? Nothing?

Ribs and being evaluated tomorrow.

I think we throw it out.

Okay.

What would you have said? I would have guessed, assuming Daniels was playing. I would have guessed Washington by three.

That's exactly right. So it doesn't matter because that's what I had to. And it's Chicago, one and a half. So it seems like they don't think he's playing. But I didn't mind, Mary. I don't know. He was okay.

Was there a Jaden Daniels' won't get out of October bet?

Oh, no.

I don't know if there was. That was the big fair with him, right? I think we even talked. I mean, he's 140 pounds.

I know. He's got to cover those ribs with something. By the way, they flexed that game, didn't they? Wasn't that like a 1:00 PM kick-up? They flexed it to 4:00 PM last week. Oh, they did? Yeah. They might have moved your guys up. Jets Patriots was four, now it's back at one.

Maybe he should have done it earlier. Started at 7:00 in the morning. Watchable. Cincinnati home for Philadelphia. I have sincey by two and a half.

You got it exactly. What is it? I thought that was high. It's two and a half. I said one. Then why is three and four almost a field goal over four and two? It's just power ratings at this point.

Are they two and five or three and four?

Three and four. Yeah, three and four.

All the ranking stuff likes the bangles.

I think that's why. You talk I have two teams I don't trust that everyone wants to talk about in the play-off.

I promise I will not bet on this game. If you see this on a million dollar pics, you have to assume I'm now hooked on Codine with like, bike it in attached to it. I'm definitely on like, hardcore drugs at that point. All right. Well, that's what I'm like, Oh, sincey, the bangles, but it's two and a half. I'm like, Me too, I have a Codine IV. Here's the other one. Buffalo at Seattle. This is just a good game. This would have been the marquee game if it wasn't the two Ricky quarterbacks going against each other. I can't wait to watch this. I think I nailed this. Bills by one and a half at Seattle.

Yeah. If I think about it for 10, 15 seconds and I don't get it, I go to my favorite one a half. So we both said one and a half. It's three. Bills by three. Now, do me a favor. Will you do me a favor? If the bills go down like 10-nothing, will you and Hinch not text me? I told you the bills to win the division was a little sketchy. We made a parlay with the Bills, Houston, Kansas City, and Baltimore to all win the division. It's about even odds. You could still get it about even odds. The Bills, they're fine. They're going to take time. If they need to win their last five, they'll do that. They're great.

You know what I realized? Because I did my NBA Superboost this year, which I've hit the last two years around. I've also hit the last two NFL ones. I was like, what was the NFL Superboast we did this year? I forgot to do one because FanDuel had that Parlay Booster thing. We never actually did a Superboost.

Really?

I don't think we ever actually did one.

I just forgot. Token boosts and this and that.

Yeah, they were doing those Parlay tokens. They were throwing tokens at us. I think we would have done Detroit over. I think we would have done Green Bay over. Then I would have insisted on the Pats Under, although they don't love necessarily doing the unders with the parlay boost. But I think it would have been something like that. Let's ask if we could do that now.

We want to do a week eight Superboost token.Token.

To Supertooth boost.

Congratulations reward. Yeah.

I was really mad we didn't do that. Anyway. Let's take one more break, and then we'll do the rest of the Guest Alliance. Fairly Watchables. I got four Fairly Watchables, and I have six poopfectas. Oh, Oh, Sourdi reminds us we did do a Superboost.

What was it, Sourdi? What did we do?

Denver over with Seattle over.

Oh, no.

Was our Superboost.

Oh, that's going to be good.

We're going to hit that. Denver over was like, what wasn't it? Like six and a half wins?

Yeah.

Seattle's over was eight and a half wins. Yes, Denver was five and a half. Thanks, Sourdi. And then Seattle, I think it was eight and a half.

And Denver as Carolina this week. Oh, man, we're going to be so close right away.

Super boost, baby. Kings of the Superboost. I'm going to do my own voice doing the Superboost. You're so good at the Superboost. Oh, yeah, Cerruti says he bet it.

I got the Sudafed Superboost of the day.

It It's a special neck one with Codid Superboost. Four fairly watchables. Packers Jags, it's both watchable and will be a train wreck. Coach seat going against... With Feeling Good after beating Gerard Mayo and the New England Patriots. He's back, baby. Now he's playing the packers, the team of the really good defense. They're going to be home, and I think Green Bay is going to be favored by two and a half.

I said four. It's four and a half. I'm going to get that one.

Vegas zone.

Yeah, they've had enough for Jacksonville, I think. They know. Plus, this is a pretty good coach against a not so great traveling coach.

You see, he's got one win in the United States, right? Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. Okay. He's going to hang himself with a seat belt extender, but No, but they're good.

Maybe it's because these games are on early in the morning, and I know the pats were involved, and I was mad at how poorly coached we were. But they were showing the jags on the sidelines smiling, excited near the end that they wanted to... It made me upset. I was in my glasses on my cold medication. I'm like, Fuck you, Trevor Lawrence. I'm mad at him. How dare you laugh at the end of this game.

They're coming home.

Bucks Falcons. I know where you're going to bet this one. I already see this. What's your wise wager this year? You're like five and two, right?

Five and two, yeah.

I think I could see you grabbing the Bucks there. I might. It's in Tampa, and I'm going to say Bucks by two.

Do we split this? Yeah, I have three. It's two and a half.

Okay.

Can I tell you this is one of the... You know how I get depressed about... Forget about the Mets and the Cowboys and everything else. But this time, those different times of the year where, oh, no, football is almost over. This is the first week where teams have already played each other. So we saw the Bucs.

That makes you sad?

It does, yeah. Because it makes me think, oh, man, now everybody's going to start having played each other twice in their divisions. This was 36-30 a couple of weeks ago on that Thursday night, that crazy game that Cousins threw for 500.

Well, maybe if you start feeling sad, there'll also be happiness as the Dodgers are beating the hell out of the Yankees, and we can watch the Yankees lose, and you could be like, Well, we lost to the eventual World Series champions, which is always really comforting.

Yeah, second place, a true second place.

And not to put more pressure on the Dodgers, but nobody counts the 2020 title. I know you have a banner. I know you're excited about it, but it was a 60-game season. People are opting out. They're no fans. Like, come on. That was about as fake of a title as anyone's one. So time to win a real one, guys.

The bigger story was Turner jumping in the team photo right after, right? And he had COVID, no one was right out. Everyone was like, Oh, no. That was a bigger story than the non-parade.

I don't even remember who was in that play. Texans, Colts. It's in Houston. It's an AFC South battle. I don't know how much you saw Richardson today, but he Be nice.

I had him on. I had him on winning weekend.

He's not accurate. He's not accurate.

Very nice guy. Talked about Derry Queen for a while. Yeah.

I I'm sure he's a nice guy. His passes just go all over the place. The other thing that's interesting is they don't use him like the Cam Newton battering ram anymore because I think they're afraid he's going to get hurt. If you're not going to play him like to unleashish this maniac athlete, but now you have an inaccurate pocket passer, I'm not sure that's the best use of him.

Yeah, he was the one... I love the point now, which halftime of the 1 PM Eastern game, quarterbacks is doing. You could always find someone with 30 yards. I think he had 41 and a half. And that's probably why our friend JJ almost ran into traffic because they couldn't beat the Colts. But he ran for 56 yards. I mean, he was a leading rusher. I don't know. They didn't have to do much to beat the Stalphins today.

You know why JJ did run in the traffic? Why? Because we beat the guardians and we beat the royals. We're in the World Series.

Next time I run in the traffic, bro, it'll be the parade in Bronx, and I'll be on a float with Zodo.

He should have gone in traffic and asked if anyone on the street could name Four guardians. Can you name Four guardians?

And not of the galaxy. We're talking the baseball team.

Texans minus four over the Colts, I have.

I said four also. It's five and a half.

Okay.

And that also is a rematch from week one, 29, 27, Texans.

Yeah. Chiefs at Raiders. There's a little backstory. Didn't somebody in the Raiders talk shit about Mahomes for the season?

Oh, yeah. Who was that?

Some doofus on the defense.

It doesn't sound right.

That's what What's happening? You got to factor in with this line. The Chiefs could easily be up like nine with two minutes left, and pierce could be like, We'll take the field goal.

Oh, yeah.

Now we're down six.

Yeah, the pierce effect.

This It makes better in the newspaper. I have Chiefs by 7 in Vegas.

I said seven also. Ten. 10 is the number.

Oh, that's the first true shocker of the year.

That's a good one.

Ten in Vegas.

I think, well, there's a little payback, right? Because they beat them on Christmas, so they're not going to be overlooked.

Or Vegas isn't afraid of them because they beat them last year. That line seems too I went to this game three years ago. I'm going to talk myself into them now. I went to this game three years ago in Las Vegas.

Ton of red. Ton of red. So much red there. I don't know. I don't know what advantage the Raiders have. But you're right. There could be a piercing. Should we call that a ball piercing or something when you get screwed on the spread because a piercing kicks a field goal?

Do you think any of his coaches is like, Yo, Coach, we're still going to need a countdown, even if we kick this field goal and you're giving up all this field position. Maybe try to get a pass interference or something.

Coach, that's four minutes in the fourth quarter. You know that, right? That's not third quarter. That's a four.

Coach, it's the second half.

It's not preceding.

Coach, all right. It's three hours into the game, Coach.

Don't be soft. We're kicking a field goal.

We're cutting it at five. One stop. All that we have to do is go 90 yards to get a countdown instead of just going nine. Oh, man.

Ten points.

I was worried that at some point as I got older, that the coaching would get smarter and there would be less stuff to make fun of. It's just not true. Every week, dumb shit happens. Like, Doug Peterson could just go up by 18 with 10 minutes left. He's like, No, fourth of 2. Let's go.

Let's do this. I guarantee ex-coaches or maybe current coaches, who knows, listen to us, maybe. It's got to be some. And they must think We're assholes, but there's 50 bad decisions a day. And if we paid attention, there'd be 150. What gives? There's a whole aspect of a game that you and I can coach better than these guys, most of them.

My friend, Hersey, We were talking about quarterbacks, and he's around our age, and he's talking about the conundrum of Daniel Jones, where some Giants fans are like, Oh, Daniel Jones, he can do this, he can do that. He's like, I've been watching football my entire life since I was a little I've been watching quarterbacks week in, week out since the mid '70s. I feel like I know if a quarterback has it or not at this point. It's not one of those talk yourself into it, maybe. It's like you know or you don't know if a guy has it. It's like I have five decades of experience now watching the science for whether somebody has it or not, and he doesn't have it. I was like, it's a great way to put it. Because in some ways, we're getting slower and dumber as we get older. But in other ways, we've watched so much sports. You have the veteran experience of just putting our 10 million hours in watching games.

Like riding a bike. I see a pothole, I'm going to go to the left of it. What are you supposed to do? Now, there's some politics involved. Like Stefansky, I don't want to fully blame him for this situation because it just cannot be possible that he wants to start Watson and nobody else. Now, it doesn't matter.

The poop factor. Jets at Pats. The Jets somehow get to play the Pats twice in the first half of the season, one of the two worst teams in the week. I think this is Jets by six and a half.

Dirtbag. I said seven is six and a half. What is the score here?

That is a teaser.

You're up seven, six.

Could be a hard week of practices for the pats. Got to get tougher.

You think so? You might just remain soft.

Mayo just took over the team. He's got to make this team tough. Oh, no, he's been here the whole season.

Well, what was it? 24-3 on that Thursday night?

Yeah, but that was with Brissette. Right. May is good. They have something with May. Now it's like, how do you build around this asset? And do you have the right coach in the right front office to pick the people to put around a genuine asset.

And do all of your receivers have agents.

Because if they fuck this up, this is a catastrophe because this is so hard to find a quarterback who's actually good, a young quarterback who's actually talented and can move and has a good arm. They have the quarterback.

Who's the best new quarterback on a team that's not very good? And he's been there for three years.

Trevor Lawrence.

I guess so. That's It's like your worst case scenario. But they wanted the vision, though. Is there anyone hanging? They wanted the vision.

They were like nine and eight.

Even the chargers, I would say.

Herbert?

Yeah. I was thinking of him as the example, but…

Jake Mays good. Lions are home for the Titans, and I think this is what you were alluding to at the start of the podcast about how we have some old-school lions. At first, I instinctively put down like lions minus nine. I was like, Wait a second. They're going to jack this I went all the way to 13. I have lines by 13.

All right, I got you here. You went a little high. I said 11.5, it's 10.5. Oh.

Right? Let me see. Maybe they moved it.

10.5. That's too low. I mean- That's an automatic three-team 10-point teaser.

Well, I was going to say we should invite an old friend into our life, and there's another one we haven't hit yet, but I think we have two so far. I think you're thinking lions over Titans, and you're thinking chiefs over raiders.

I'm afraid of that Chiefs game. Oh, really? Yeah, I'm afraid of that one. I would probably do the Jets as the second one. Well, they're going to lose to the paths and go two and six. That they just lead the team.

It's so much fun running against them, though.

Yeah, we'll find two teams, but this is a free 10 points to use on a normal team. The Titans stink.

This is our Super Bet boost, 10-point totem pole boost.

Our 10-point nequilcoding boost. Dolphins home for the Cardinals. A truly awful game. Really bad.

Well, hold on, though. Is this the one? Because our buddy JJ was screaming about how two was coming back.

You think he's back for this?

I don't know.

Well, I'm going to pick Dolphins by one and a half over the Cardinals at home, regardless.

Targeting the case.

Whether it comes back or not.

I said two and a half. It's three.

No, maybe he's coming back. Are you beating me right now?

One, two, three. Eight, two. Yeah. Wow, I went on a run here. Fuck. What am I doing? Eight to 7:00? 8:00 to 7:00.

All right. Ravens at Cleveland. This is always fun. No, no, if you know this, Sal, but the Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens.

What? Was there a van?

Long time ago. Long time ago. Yeah. No, long time ago.

Was it in the middle of the night? At least they had a decency to do it during the day, right?

I have the Ravens by three and a half. I feel good about this one.

Wait a minute. This is your biggest swing and miss of the year.

Ravens at Cleveland?

The Baltimore Ravens.

At Cleveland? Yeah. I got Ravens three and a half.

What is it? It's nine and a half.

In Cleveland?

Yeah, in Cleveland, where they lose all their games, a team that hasn't gone over their point total all year.

That is by far my worst... What's wrong? Well, I told you I'm on drugs right now.

That's it. The drugs are killing me. I had nine.

Wait, that line is way too high. The Browns have a pretty good defense.

Do you watch the games today? I know, but they don't ever score. It's important in these games. They have a lot.

Plus, they have a whole week with their new... Just not having Watsons were at seven points.

Yeah, and it is a short week for the Ravens.

nick Chubb, my guy. I had nick Chubb. I have him on all my fantasy teams. You kept him? Each week, like a little baby bird, I gave him little seeds, and I poured water on his head, and I tried to grow him back to life on all my teams. Didn't wave him, just kept him on. Hogged the spot, just waiting for my guy, my favorite fantasy player. He's back. This will be the week. It's nick Chubb week next week.

He doesn't want to be back. We just crossed his team off.

No, he's back. He's doing it for the love of the game.

That line is way too high. They don't want to get killed on teasers, right? Because everyone's teasing everybody who plays the Browns. The bangles was easy, even though they covered the Browns. But bangles on a teaser is where to go.

I had a must win in our knockout league because I snuck out a win last week, but I had wide receivers. I'd Cup and DJ more weren't playing. So I was scrambling for waiver wire guys. And I started Jerry Judy, who they traded Amari Cooper. I'm like, All right, Judy. And he had no points halfway through the fourth quarter, and then he finally caught an 18-yarder. But I need to say, you'll be seeing Jerry in the waiver wire on Wednesday.

You're going to beat me. You're going to win two in a row here. You're a 71% favorite against me. You're up eight. You're a baker.

What's my win probability? Is that my win probability?

This is the one place I rely on it more than anything. Yeah. With these dumb fantasy games, I don't even look at the score. But yeah, 71 to 29, that's a win probability.

Chargers home for the Saints. Saints trying to lose six in a row. I have the Chargers favorite by three and a half.

Where is this game? Wow. Billy, boy. I said six, it's seven and a half.

All right, what is going on?

Well, I think you said it. You're on drugs.

Why are the Chargers It was favored by over a countdown against anybody? I like the Chargers, but they scored 20 points a game.

The Saints were so bad. You should have your- They 10 years off.

They've lost five in a row.

Taken off your phone if you like the Saints after that performance. That was so bad.

I'm falling apart. Well, I probably hit this next one because it's Broncos home for Carolina, a team that has to get at least nine points or higher against any team they play at. Broncos by nine and a half.

You are closer, but yeah, it's seven and a half. I said four and a half, so you get that. What's the three-team teaser? You don't trust Bo Nicks yet.

No, I don't.

You saw that overthrow-undertrow pass. You loved it. I think you tweeted about it.

It was terrific. I've never seen anything like it.

It's beautiful.

Then the two guys commiserated over it.

Yeah, it's They quit the team. They turned in their jerseys.

I thought he was pretty good in that game, though.

He really has flashes. Yeah, again, I don't know what that. That Saints team was just a mess, and Payton had that circled for years.

Sunday night. 49ers, Cowboys. Oh, Mike. This is why we do it, Mike.

Are you kidding me?

I thought, braided in the second half of that Niners game sounded like if Shanehan called up to the booth and said, Could you start next week? He was ready to do it. You think so? He was genuinely disappointed by Purdy.

Interesting. What could he do? Could he do all these things? Could he announce and own part of the Raiders and be a quarterback of the 49ers. What else could he do? Could he play the big dom role for a team also? How many could he play Silvio in a Sopranos remake? I would love that.

That'd be great.

braided at the bing. I hate this game. I hate it.

I have 49ers by two and a half.

Oh, wow. I thought you'd go higher and beat me. I said three and a half, and it's five and a half. Good luck.

That's too many points.

This is Who needs this more? The Niners, right?

I think your team needs every game. You're going to need 10 wins to make the play. It's both of them. I think both of them need it equally. You got to get to 10 wins.

Now it's a wild card battle for these two, probably.

And shit, if Chicago gets to play Mariota instead of Jaden Daniels, they could be five and two.

Yeah.

Chicago might get to 10 wins. I think 10 wins is the cutoff for the NFC.

It's going to frustrate me. I don't want to look at, but something tells me the bears haven't played the best of quarterbacks in their runs.

No, you're right. Monday night, speaking of not the best of quarterbacks, Stealers, home for the Giants. We didn't really talk about the Russell Sants that much, but he did get it going as the game went along. I have Stealers by six and a half at home against the Giants.

I said three and a I'm going to get it. It is four and a half. Wow, what a demolition. I'm going to have to drug you with the encoding every- Maybe you found the new secret.

Just infect me. That's it. Listen, those lines made no sense. Why wouldn't the Stealers be favored by seven of the Giants?

We're going to make some money. We're going to make some money this week. There are some glaring errors here.

And one of the errors is- The Stealers and the 10-point tease would be good because you could take them to plus five and a half.

Oh, yeah, you're right. That defense- It fits off for him, too, as a bonus.

Yeah, Rahim hates teasing it over the zero. It's like his least favorite thing, other than if you don't get a burner hotel room.

He's going to Vegas this week, too. Can I just tell you, I had a great time watching with the Ringer staff today. Yeah, let's hear about it. We did the pregame show, and then Spotify has this great... It's a movie theater. It's basically a theater, right? So you have a movie screen. A hundred seat theater. Right. You have a hundred seats, and our producer Jack had another 50-inch screen to the side of it. So now we have to figure out... Well, let me ask you, how would you do the games? We got that giant projection screen, and then we have a 50-inch one. Okay, yes. We got access to everything. How would you do it?

I hope you didn't put the Dolphins as one of the four games.

Well.

Because JJ, he bullied you into that?

The Dolphins were on the smaller TV, not on the big screen.

Because we had Lions, Vikings, Packers, Texans. Yeah, we had the four. And then it was all the other games. Seahawks Falcons was good. Seahawks Falcons, that was a good one. Yeah, and then the fourth one was dependent on whatever you cared about.

All right. Now, I love all these guys, but guess what most of them were screaming for on the big screen? What? The red zone and only the red zone. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, 50. I'm like, No, let's watch all the games. And I promise you'll know when a team is close to scoring by the yard line.

By watching all the games that went. Yeah.

They're like, Oh, we got to hear Scott Hans. I don't want to hear. I was like, Oh, my God. So I won the yard. I was going to go home. I was very upset, but I think we all had a good time.

So it was a generational thing.

The young players love the Red Zone. They love the Red Zone. I knew it, but I didn't think, given a... We can watch Casablanca on that thing. Yeah, Scott Hanson.

So how was it on the giant movie screen?

It was great. It's ridiculous. I recommend everyone come by next Sunday.

I want to do it again. It was fun. Nothing like downtown LA on a Sunday morning.

We had pizza. I'm on the Atkins, so I ordered a calzone. I dug out all the protein. It was beautiful.

You're on the Atkins again? Yeah, because I'm a fat piece of shit. When did that start? Because of the Metz?

I haven't had a carb since Monday. No, because here's what Melissa puts out the Candy Bowl for Halloween, October first, and I don't even like candy corn. I'm doing fist after a handful. I was like, I got to just not eat carbs until Thanksgiving. We'll see what happens. It's a long way.

Do you want to hear about the WMBA Finals?

Yeah, I didn't have it on the third screen, but it looked like a lot of poor play, but the officiating was just as bad.

Well, let me ask you, the final number was 25 to 8 free throw advantage for the Liberty. Does that seem a little high to you with both teams playing physical and driving in the basket? It seems a little out of whack. Home team. End of the game, Jones, who won finals MVP and should have because she was great the whole series.

Leslie Jones?

Oh, it's a different Jones. Jj. Jj, their center. The other JJ. Just bowled somebody over and they called It was a defensive foul. It was awful. The announcers didn't even know what to do. Collier comes the other way. They have the ball up to 26 seconds left, the links. If they score, the game is over.

We bet the links. We should tell people.

We have the links for the series 5-1. I also really like Collier, and I was really into it. Collier comes driving down, just misses a layup and gets hacked, and is immediately yelling at the refs. She doesn't yell at the refs. They won't replay it. No replays at all. Then it comes back to Brianna Stewart, who gets a ball, travels, and then crashes into somebody and throws a shot up. Minimal contact. This is a game where people are just mauling each other the whole game. Collier is getting just killed. They call it, they challenge because there wasn't a foul, and they're like, She wasn't in the correct guard in position. Two shots. All of a sudden, Stewy shooting two shots. They get it, goes to OT, and they foul Collier out. It was just like... No, she's so... It was like David Stern era WMBA shit. It's ridiculous. They won the Championship. They shot 30%. They missed every three. And what was Sabrina? She was one for 19, and they won the title.

The two best were... What was the five for 33 or something?

They were two for 23 from three, and they shot 30 %. And so the Lynx were bitching about officiating after, and they should have because it was outrageous. I thought the Lynx had a better team.

Unlike the NLCs, many of those games were close and exciting. I'll give them that.

It was great for the week. They should have had this game. This game should have been on a Monday night. It's the last day. They had to fuck up the schedule until the bitter end, and they decided to go on a Sunday night against Jet Stealers and Dodgers, Metz game 6. So stupid. Just like, go to Monday against NFL. I I guess there's two NFL games. Well, by the way, that Sunday afternoon slate would have been fine, too.

I mean, I know you're going against Chiefs Niners, but that was the only good game. Yeah. Well, I'm looking. Five for 42 from three. That should get your juices going for the NBA No, nothing else.

Well, I was thinking, I was like, this is the NBA playoffs. Nobody can make a shot. The coaching is terrible, and the officiating is completely one-sided. It was like, they've done it. They've come up with their own league.

It's a clone.

I will never understand for the life of me, Minnesota. Collier was 11 for 23. I will never understand for the life of me why they didn't put her at the top of the key and just have her beat people off the dribble. Every time they did that, she got to the basket, and they were posting her up so the Liberty could double her. I was like, What are you guys doing? Just clear her out for her. She goes by everybody. But I thought she was the best player in the series.

But she wasn't in proper guarding position. That's the problem.

Oh, my God. Well, the other thing Smith got hurt in game three because Jones bowed her over. Then same thing happened in game five when she came out for a while, but she was pretty banged up. I think if she was healthy, we win the bet. It was a great bet. We didn't hedge it at halftime.

Yeah, I know. We had the right one.

Another great non-hedge for us. There you go. Really good at WMBA season, though. And by the way, all do or die games are terrible. Go back and look at 2016 NBA Warriors, Cleveland. It's a fucking rock fight. 2010, Celtics-Lakers, rock fight. 2005, Spurs, Pistons, rock fight. Why is that? When you get to that level, it's a rock fight. Why is it? Because it's too tense. It's like too much pressure.

The teams know each other too well. It's like the baseball. Their arms are too taxed at this point. That's why his velocity is down four miles an hour from when it was Monday. Yeah, maybe. Is that it? I don't know.

I don't know. Too tense. Today's Parent Corner is brought to you by Workday. Get the whole band together with Workday, pair of finance and HR on one platform for an epic performance. With Workday AI at the core, you'll make confident decisions faster than ever, and you'll drive flawless business finance operations with an agile platform that constantly evolves to future proof your organization. Be a finance and HR Rockstar with Workday. Visit workday. Com to learn more. What do you got for us, though?

All right. I had the kids this weekend, and Harrison had a tournament Saturday, a baseball tournament. Because Melissa was away, she was in New York. She had a very serious day. She had to get drunk with our sister-in-law all weekend. She was off the grid. She wasn't here. Harrison has games on Saturday. Now I forgot. I told you where we were.

Where the hell was I? I thought it was in Ceno or somewhere.

No, no, no.

Oh, San Clemente.

San Clemente, yes.

Great place for a tournament. I like San Clemente. Really good.

It was nice. The weather's good and everything else. He's got a game at 6:00 PM and a game at 8:00 PM. So they're done at 10:15, and we're driving home, and it's going to be 11:30, and then I got to wake up for football and everything, London game and everything. I'm already a little tense about that. We get in the car, we get there. For the 6:00 game, he's got to be there at 5:00. We're in the car at 3:30. We get there, and he gets out, and he's like, Oh, no. It's like, I left my cleats at home. He's wearing Crocs. I said, What are you talking about? He's like, I my cleats at home. Now, for baseball, you could pretty much leave everything except your cleats. You could borrow the kid who's sitting on the bench's glove and his hat or something else. The cleats, they're no good. I was like, I don't know what to do here. The game set. And he's pitching. He's starting the game. I was like, All right, I'm going to drop you a practice, and I'm going to go find cleats. Hopefully, I could do this.

It's five o'clock on a Saturday. So you're googling, you're doing ways, you're doing Big Five and Dix and everything.

Exactly what I'm doing. Sporting goods in the area in San Clemente. And I come across Walmart, and I look at the website and they have cleats, they have kids cleats and everything. I'm like, All right, that's good. That's 1.5 miles away. I drive away from his practice. I go to Walmart. It's gigantic. And I'm looking and I'm looking, I'm looking. Finally, I asked someone for help and I'm like, hey, do you have a boys cleats? We don't sell cleats here. And I'm like, okay, what do I do? Do I yell? Did I scream at this guy? Do I throw a punt? What do I do? Or do I show him the website? I'm not sure what to do. Or do I just get the hell out of here and try to find them.

I like to complete this thing for a customer question. Exactly.

You fucking morons. We have a zillion shoes. Walmart. Everything else. They have shin guards, everything. They have Cheetos. No cleats. Yeah. So I just leave. I'm like, I was proud of myself for just leaving. And so now I have to go to the Big Five, six and a half miles away. So now I'm going to cut it close because I have to go there and back. I get there and I'm like, this little fucker, I'm going to get him the pinkest cleats that I could find. I'm going to get him his girl- Peach.

Yes, exactly.

It's going to be frilly, it'll be laces, everything. It's going to be laces. Everything. Oh, yeah. It's going to be bedazzled. Everything. They don't have it. They have one pair of cleats, and it's one size too big. I'm like, You just got to get it. I got to get it. It's size 6.

Buy an extra pair of socks. That's the dad's name. Second pair of socks to fill the cleats up.

You know what? I didn't even think about that. I might have just on it. I was like, I'm going to give it to him here. So he gets the size sevens. I bring them to him. I get there at like 5:56. The coach is going nuts because he might have to reshuffle the lineup. Can Harrison even pitch in Crocs? No way. He goes out there. He puts them on. They're big. He looks like a dope. He throws two innings to shut out all. He strikes out five kids. Wow. Now it's like, you see? Now you see? That's exactly what it was. He's like, you got the magic cleats. I was like, I am not ready to joke about this probably for three weeks. So let's revisit this sometime in November. But the big story, that was the end of the story. But it's like, I don't know what my parents would have done. I think they just would have been like, you're on your own.

I really do.

I don't know.

Your dad probably is like, sorry, you're not to pitch in Crox and you'll learn a valuable lesson.

Exactly.

As you let down your team.

You're going barefoot and you're walking home from San Clemente. That would be it.

All right. So I have some follow-up thoughts. First of all, a great idea for a small sports would be called You Fucked Up. It just sells cleats, T-shirts, cups.

I love it.

It sucks. It's like, Oh, thank God. There's a You Fucked Up three, three and a half miles away. I'm going to run over there.

Didn't you have a similar thing for spouses, we got your sunglasses or something. I forgot.

Sun glasses, purses, sun tan lotion.

Yeah, definitely.

Here's the other thing now. Listen, we've been friends for a long time. I don't mean to throw you into the bus, but it is the parents' job to have everything before we go.

Really? I guess I should have noticed that they're walking around in crocs.

Your son's not a rocket scientist yet. He's 10 years old. I remember leaving with Zoe because We had a somewhere thing where... I forget what she left behind, but it was always like, All right, do we have everything? Quets, Jersey, water bottle. We had the five things, and we would just go through the five things. Water bottles is a big She was Boris Gump. That's how we did it before we'd leave.

But they get mad. They get to talk about indignity.

They get mad when they're 14. Of course, I do. Yeah, 14, it becomes insulting. All right.

I'll follow up. Maybe you're right.

I should say I took my son to a lacrosse tournament this weekend, and it was black shorts. We're like, Do we have everything? And we go in the first game, and he's the only kid on his team wearing a black jersey with white shorts. After the game, I was like, Ben, where are the black shorts? He's like, Oh, yeah, we don't need those. I'm like, You definitely... You were the only kid with white shorts. I'm pretty sure you needed them. My parent corner, I took my son yesterday, and then my wife took over for the championship stuff today. But He had this tournament, and it was in Santa Barbara, a lacrosse tournament at the Polo Club. We have these tournaments, you're in baseball, soccer, whatever. They're It always sucks. You're always in some crappy part of some town. You're not near anything. It's just a bunch of fields. It's really hard to park. If there's food there, it's probably like one hot dog truck, or maybe there's somebody selling a couple of Gatorades. It's the lowest possible end of lucking out with food, drink, anything. Then if you have the big-ass tournaments, they might have something in the middle where it's like they'll sell T-shirts and jerseys, and then they'll have a Churro place.

This Polo place was fucking nice. They had cocktails. There was a bar. Really? They were making quesadillas. There's a quesadilla/taco bar, and they had a sandwich place, and there was a coffee and smoothies place. But there was a legitimate bar.

It's between games. Is anyone watching the games?

Well, because you have time to kill between the games, right? It's 20, it's outdoors. Between... He had a game, there was a 45-minute break, and I wanted to get some water, and I went over and I decided to get at the bar because they had sparking water. I wanted a sparking water. And these ladies that were there They're ordering fucking margaritas.

Oh, yeah.

And they're decked out. I'm like, This feels like the beginning of a Netflix rom-com. These parents meeting at some lacrosse tournament at the Polo But these parents are fucking having real cocktails, getting it on. Oh, yeah. At this lacrosse tournament. I was like, Wow, the California never disappoints.

I promise this isn't- They figured it out because you only have 45 minutes. But some of these Parents, if there's two hours between games, it's a slosh city.

That's one thing I'm pretty sure we don't need at sports tournaments are parents with a few drinks in them when there's kids in officials. They're jacked up enough. I'm pretty sure that's a bad idea, but I won't judge. Then the other thing, and I'm glad I'm here for this. These people that bring dogs to the tournaments. I don't know if this is on the agenda with Trump and Kamala for the election. I know there's a lot of things going on, a lot of positions.

Kamal has emailed me like 12 times today. She hasn't brought this up.

She hasn't brought this up? No. We should not have dogs at youth sports tournaments, period. Period. End of story. Do not bring your dog. Here's all the bad things that can happen with your dog. Your dog could just take a shit where all the parents are standing. You got that. You could have a yapping dog in a thing, and we have to listen to your dog bark the whole time. You could think your dog wants to just go and walk over and go see some kid who's allergic to dogs. So you have that thing. And then the big thing is just a dog fight on the sidelines. No dogs at sporting events. Just period. Let's get rid of this. What are we doing?

Especially drunk dogs. Leave your dog home. Yeah. I'm with it, and you're a dog guy, too. I have two dogs.

I love dogs. Guess why I don't want to see dogs? At an outdoor sports tournament. Leave them home.

It's too much.

Yeah, It's too much of a sac. This one guy, he had one of those big canvas things that you would take if you're going to the airport. He had three little dogs in there, and they're just barking at everybody else. It's like, Can I just watch the game without your three dogs barking in your little travel carrier?

There's no rule for that, huh? Usually, there's a sign that says you can't do this, but people don't care.

It's such a bad idea. Honestly, it's one of the worst ideas possible. So anyway. I'm with you. Yeah, my son, they won the championship. Oh, good. I posted the picture. There's this picture, and for some reason, he has no shirt on in the picture. So he's staying on brand at all times. It's all these kids with their uniforms. Black shorts or white. He's got his white shorts on. He's got a blue sun hat and no shirt. I'm like, All right. Ben Simmons on brand at all times.

Let me ask you something, because I'm not sure... I love you like a friend, too. I know you set me straight, but you posted, speaking of posts, Happy birthday, Murf. Not every day your dog turns four or something like that. Your dog is four years old. I don't know that you could do this after going off on national whatever day.

I'm not sure. I said, Happy birthday to Murf to my best friend Murf.

Yeah, it's fine. I get it, but you also want to- You do a birthday post? I just was against National Dog Day. You want to crusade against posting something for National Dogs Day, but when your dog turns four, you're like, Oh, I got to put something up there. Bur birthdays are fine.

Post-birthday. Bur birthdays are fine. Dog birthdays, yeah. What's your dog's name?

I don't even know what my dog's name is. It's Super Dave. It's Super Dave. All right. I guess when it turns four.

If you did a Super Dave post, I'd be like, Oh, that's great. Super Dave's 11 years old.

It might be 11.

I only birthday post, that's it.

For dogs and family members. That's it?

Yeah, my wife, she made him one of those dog, little dog cakes. Her and her mom made it, which are like, No, no, no. This isn't the bad. This is good for dogs. I'm like, There's just no way any cake is good for dogs. He's going to be shitting all over that, but he didn't shit. Yeah, he's really moved into his own.

Can I tell you a quick dog cake story? Please. Shit, Now I'm going to get the name wrong. No, I can't. What was it? Okay, so no. I went to a Simpson table read. Our friend Donik wrote on the Simpson, and it was the coolest thing. It was probably within three months of me moving out here. And it also happened to be their 100th episode, or was some milestone episode. So they had cake. And so everybody's eating cake. And I don't know why, but I didn't know that dogs aren't supposed to have cake. And so a dog comes up to me and I start feeding the dog chocolate cake. I think I'm I'm doing something nice. And this guy comes up and screams. He's like, what the fuck? What the fuck? Are you fucking kidding me? Are you feeding the dog cake? Are you stupid? Are you stupid? Are you trying to kill my dog? And I'm like, I'm sorry, guy. I had no idea. I didn't know it was a bad thing. I thought it looked hungry. It looked hungry. You see how stupid you sound right now? God, and he takes the dog, he walks away.

It was Hankozaria.

Is that true?

I swear to God, it was true. Asked our friend Tony and askedonic. That's my run in with Hankozaria. Hankesaria. He used all his voices, too, to dress me down.

How many years ago is this?

This was, I don't know, 24? I should have known. Yes, I was almost 30 years old. I should have probably known.

This was after he, when Pacino yelled at him.

Yeah, I think so.

She's got a great ass. All the way up.

He might have been channeling that. Anyway, happy birthday, Hank Azaria's dog. I'll post about it later.

Hank Azaria. Wow. Uprating our friend Sal. That's terrible.

What are you going to do?

Thanks again to Workday for sponsoring this segment. Be a finance and HR Rockstar with Workday. To learn more, visit workday. Com. If you've learned I think during this whole podcast, leave your dogs at home during a youth sports tournament.

Yeah, get drunk on churros and margaritas.

Come on. The margaritas are fine. We're not going to judge you, but don't bring your dog and pound the margaritas as you go. What do you have to plug?

Lots of stuff. Through the Ringer with Tate. It's delightful every week. Cousin Sal's winning weekend. I have Dwight Gooden on. I'm going to talk about the Mets. A little post-modem for the Mets. Good doctor. Yeah, Dr. K, one of my favorites. Ringer pregame show with the fellows every Sunday morning. And Against the Lods, the Degenerate Trifect and I are doing an 11-hour deep dive into who has the best shot at winning the NBA in-season tournament. So there you go.

Wow. What was your favorite NBA future of all your NBA futures?

I bet A bunch of yours and Rosillo's and Houses. Did I put that away now? I thought you guys have some teams to not make the playoffs. Oh, no, you have Underwins, and to not make the playoffs was plus 129, like New Orleans, I think I had. Yeah, Pelicans, no playoffs, plus 129. I think you guys like it. I got a lot on Phoenix over. You're sure about that one? Yeah, I feel good about that.

I mean, Durant could get hurt. That would be the way. But you could say that about anything. I feel good about where we landed. And we had that Clippers Under, which was 37 and a half because we were gambling that the Kauai news maybe wouldn't be great. And then now it seems like, I don't even know when he's coming back. You moved it, right? So that's down to 35.5. I think Kauai moved it, too. But yeah, some of them moved, I think, probably because people were probably looking at the same things. Cleveland went up. The Philly one, I think, has stayed pretty similar somewhere, but I feel like that one should probably start falling down at some point. And then right after we did that pod, Hartenstein broke his hand. I don't think that really budged.

You get all your money back.

No, I don't think that really budged the over-under, though. It was interesting. My favorite out of all of them is probably still the OKC one seed bet, even with the Hartenstein injury.

All right. You know what? I didn't hit that one.

I'm going to throw that in. I think it was plus 130 I don't know if it's up or down, but I think Phoenix. We said Phoenix and maybe Minnesota were the only ones that could get into the mid to high 50s.

Yeah. You'd be proud of me. I did a bunch. I did Sari for Rooking of the Year. Good. Welcome to the NBA Hole Club. I did. I know. I did a little. I did SGA, mostly for MVP, a little on Wemby, so bonus for rebounds, Luca for assists. I'll go over them with you later. I love it. I love it all.

I'm not allowed to bet the awards, so I wasn't That's right. Super focused on it, but I didn't realize the Rooky of the Year Awards, the Risa Shay was plus 750. I thought that was pretty good value for him because I think he's going to play. Really? I think the wrong guy? No, I just think Eady's plus 290, Sheppard was plus 850. I'm not sure he's going to get enough minutes. Then Castle at 10:00 is interesting if he actually gets playing time. Then Clingin at 20:00 to 1:00. Did you see him in the preseason the other night? He was interesting, too.

Well, that's the thing. There's only six guys that are definitely going to get enough minutes, right?

Barring injury from someone else. Risa Shay is going to play, and I think Atlanta is going to be pretty good. That's a good one. Anyway. All right, Cus, Good job by you.

Good job by you, buddy.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Cus and Sal. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Serruti. As always, don't forget new rewatchables, hopefully coming on Monday. I'm going to have a new podcast This for you either Tuesday or I won't see you again until Thursday. Not sure yet, but we'll see how it goes. Root for me. Root for my white cells, my T cells. What are the cells that help you not feel as sick? Root for those. I'll see you Tuesday or Thursday. Don't forget, you can watch this podcast that you just listened to. I don't know why you would. Maybe you want to double dip on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. See you later in the week. On a seat Must be 21 plus in President Select States for Kansas, an affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in President DC. Gambling problem? Call 100 Gambler or visit rg-help. Com. Call 188-789-7777 or visit ccpg. Org/chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp. Org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling helpline ma. Org, or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support, Massachusetts, or call 1877-8 Hope, NY, or text Hope, NY in New.