Coming up, the Clipper's trade for Harden. Lots of football talk and some Italian movies. Oh, yeah. Next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast network. I put up a new Rewatchables on Monday night. We did The Omen. We did the OG Omen. We did the 1976 one. One of the creepiest movies ever made with some of the scariest scenes that have ever been in any of these movies. Me and Chris Ryan broke all of it down for you. What else happened in the Ringer universe? Oh, the Ringerverse crew. Everybody got together for the first time and they did a live show in L. A. On Monday night and even dressed up for Halloween, a couple of them. It was great to see everybody all together. Check out all of our basketball stuff on Ringer NBA, Mismatch, Rosillus pod, Ringer Gambling, Austin Rivers has his new podcast Off Guard. And then obviously our football stuff, all our culture stuff as well. And we're going to have a big announcement on this podcast on Thursday about an upcoming show you might not be expecting. Coming up on this pod, I'm going to talk about the Quippers trading for James Harden at the top and why I thought it was a huge mistake.

And then our old friend, Mike Lombardi, we're going to talk about the trade deadline in the NFL as well as what team that seemingly looks like their season is almost over might actually jump in the second half of the year. And then last but not least, we're going to talk Italian movies and Italian TV shows because why or not? This is a fun podcast. First, our friends from.

Pearl gym.

All right, I'm typing this on Tuesday before the Clipper's game. On Tuesday night, the Clipper's traded for James Harden late night. They tried to do this as late as possible at night when the most possible people were asleep because they were embarrassed by this trade, and they should be because they're the clippers. They haven't made the finals ever in the history of the franchise dating back to Buffalo in 1970, talking five and a half decades of bad luck, terrible injuries, mismanagement. We had the Donald Sterling piece of it. We had load management the last couple of years. They've had some of the worst playoff losses of the 21st century. And now they're training for a guy who's quit on his last three teams. So they decided, you know what? We'll do this in the middle of the night on the East Coast at least. So we'll take the least amount of slack. They're bidding against nobody. There's 30 teams in the League. One of them had James Harden. Twenty other teams were like, We're good. And the quipper said, You know what? We need this guy. We'll still be not nearly as good as Denver.

But if we do this, maybe we could lose in either round two or round three, maybe. I just feel like they don't have any draft picks left for the rest of the decade. So they basically traded three picks for James Harden. The worst one was a 2028 Unprotected First. Why do this now? Why do this for a team with no other offers? Why bid against yourself? And why not just wait? If you know you're trading basically two and a half picks plus all these expirings they had, why not wait? The League, I don't know if you've watched it the first week, The League is more talented and more loaded than it's ever been, probably in 30 years. And there's a really, really, really good chance that a couple of teams that thought they were going to be good are not going to be good. For instance, Memphis is on four. Is Memphis going to go 25 and 57? Probably not. But there's going to be a couple of teams that are just way worse than they expected. And guess what happens after Thanksgiving and in December and in January? Those teams panic. Guys become available.

What if Toronto is bad? What if they're like, You know what? We're going to see, Hack. This just isn't working for us. What if Chicago, who's already had two team meetings, I think, in three games, what if they decide to put Zach and Vena on the table? You just don't know. What you do know now is that there was only one team bidding for James Harden and the Clippers ended up with them anyway. The other thing, if you're giving up this much for one guy, I better know that I have a chance to actually win the title. And I just don't feel like they do. I went to the game Sunday Night. Kauai, he looks fine. He looks fine. Does he look like the Kauai from the mid-2010s? No. Does he look like the guy from 2019, Toronto? He does not. He looks like an older, playing himself back in the shape version of Kauai. And if that's your best player, that's just not going to be enough this year. The Celtics are too good. Denver is too good. Milwaukee has Ianes, a Daim. Phoenix has a ton of scoring. Golden State is going to be really good.

They're still not in the mix. So that was my first issue. The second one, who are you getting? Who are you getting in this trade? We're getting guys put on three teams. You're getting the most disappointing playoff star this century, literally this century. And there's no other person you can put in there. There's nobody who has even half of the qualifications from a playoff disappointment standpoint that this guy does. Zach Lo came on the Book of Basketball Podcast. I think in 2019, we did a James Harden podcast. And in that podcast, which was four years ago, called him the Carl Malona Guards. And I was immediately the most jealous I've ever been of a comparison. Since then, he had the 2020 bubble flameout. Then they had in 2022, the Miami series, which he sucked in. And then in 2023, the Celtic series. This guy, it's an all-time resume. And the Clippers who are just play of futility through and through for the entire franchise history were like, That's the guy. That's the guy that can take the lovable loser Clipper's over the top, James Harden. He slows you down. He needs the ball all the time.

The Clippers now have Paul George, who succeeds the most when he has the ball; Kylight Leonard, who has perennially succeededs at the most when he has the ball; Russell Westbrook, who loves to either have the ball or crash the boards. And now Harden, who needs the ball. See, four guys who need the ball. Then Norm Powell comes in, he needs the ball. Bones Highland comes in, he needs the ball. Are we playing with three balls now? No, we're going to still play with one. James Harden can't guard anybody. That seems relevant. He hasn't played defense in four years. There was an interesting... I've done two podcasts with Doc Rivers this year. One was right after the NBA Finals. And we talked about what happened with Harden in Philly. And Doc made this point that I thought was really interesting. I actually thought it'd be a bigger deal. He said, When Harden didn't make the All-Star team, he changed how he played. And so we started going for a stats a little bit more was the implication. He was really unselfish up until the All-Star break then he didn't make the team. And then it just got a little rocky after that.

The Sixers for the last three parts of the season, I think, were 46 and 19. So it's not like they were bad. But it was always a little tug of war with him after that. Because you want unselfish James Harden on a really good team. You want him just being like, I'll set everybody up. I'll actually play a little bit harder on defense. But we've only seen that guy intermittently. That's the guy he has to be on this Cooper's team. At this age, age 34, going into a contract extension or whatever the hell is going to happen this summer, you know Ballmer is going to extend him. He won't be able to help himself. I'm just dubious that he's going to be like, I'm just here to help us win. We've only seen him do that for little spurts. Probably the most heroic version of that was 2021 with the Nets when they had those injuries and he was playing hurt. But I actually really like the way he played that year. For the most part, it is James Harden. The results are always disappointing with him, and he's getting older. So congratulations on getting that.

Third question for me or third point, can you beat Denver or Boston with this team you have? I don't know if you watched Denver this year. They look amazing. This is the classic won a championship, kept the Nucleus together. They're better than ever. They have the best part in the world. It's not even close. He is just awesome night after night. Everything he does permeates with this team in all the best possible ways. And you just can't tell me that Kauai, Paul George, James Harden, PJ, Tucker, Zubach, they're not beating Denver. It's not happening. So if you're not beating Denver with the team you have, why are you making the trade in the first place? So they have Kauai, Paul George, Harden, Man, Terrence, Man, Norm Powell, Russ, Zubats, Plumley, and Tucker, I guess would be their nine. I really liked how Westbrook was playing for them. Now, again, you're not going to win the title if he's probably involved with your team. But now basically you're bringing Harden and you kill Westbrook now. He's coming off the bench. He's just not going to be the same. Now he's worried about how many minutes he's getting.

He's going to want the ball. You've killed that piece of it. So you've added Harden, but you've also probably killed the Westbrook part of your season. You're also not durable even before you got James Harden, who God only knows if he's going to be able to stay all right? Paul George's last four years, he missed 24 games, 18 games, 51 games, 26 games. Kauai's last six years, 73, 22, 15, 20, 82, and 30 games missed. You have four older stars passed at their primes. Paul George, 33, Kauai, 32. Harden, 34. Russell Westbrook, 35. Norm Powell, Young Legs at 30. All right, let's say this works. Let's say they actually all play really well together. What is in the history of the NBA? Have we seen a team with an older nucleus like this? And it is an old nucleus. Have we seen an older nucleus team actually win the title? Which I guess would be the point of this trade and all the other trades because they've traded all their first for an entire decade. Best comparison you might go to is the 2011 Mavs. Durk was 32, Marion was 32, Jason Taylor was 33, Jason Kidd was 37, and Tyson Chanler was 28.

I don't see Dirk Noitzky on this team, just for the record. I don't see 2011 Dirk Noitzky. I think Kauai, maybe a couple of surgeries ago, but not this version of Kauai who's been under the knife a few times. But that would be your best case scenario. That team also won with defense and they had one great score. This team is trying to win with offense and really no defense whatsoever. Good luck. Other teams, possibly like the 1978, Washington team, they had Elvin Hayes, 32, and Sunsell 31, and Bobby Daniels, 30. But that was in the '70s when those ages were old. They won the title. That was 45 years ago. The '95 Houston team had Hakeem and Clyde at age 32 each, but they were a little younger in different parts. But then if you're just looking at recent history of older teams that had just a nucleus of guys who were all, we could all agree, past their primes, past their peaks. The 2012 Celtics, I think, are a good example. They almost beat Miami, but when push came to shove, Miami just had players that were at better points of their careers.

2000s, Utah, right after they made the finals two years in a row and then that '99, 2000, 2001, the end of Malone in Stockton. They were in the mix, but they were just older. They weren't the same team. 2010, Phoenix, I think, is a really good cop for this. The last really great Nash season, the second to last really good Amari season. They're just at the tail end of the rope. In general, you don't want to be from an age range where this team is, where you don't have that one guy who you know we can count on for four straight playoff series. Maybe it's Paul George. He's also somebody who's had a lot of injuries. By the way, I don't know when he's going to have the ball in this team. Paul George is probably my favorite all around player in this team and might have the fourth usage rate per minute of all these dudes. Anyway. All right, right. Fourth point I wanted to make, the Clippers, owned by Steve Ballmer, nice guy, been on this podcast and spends money and assets like he's playing 2K. That's how he's treated this team really from the beginning.

So Ballmer's basically traded all of their picks in the 2020s. It's, I think, five unprotected first, three swaps, and then there's one where they get the lower version of something. They just don't have their own good pick except for 2030, which is seven years from now. They traded Shade Gildous Alexander. Kind of a big deal. He's one of the 10 best guys in the league now. He was in the Kauai trade. They didn't know he'd become this. But when you say they went all in, they went all in in ways that I don't know if any NBA team in the history of League is going all in. All the picks they gave up, trading SGA, trading when he actually had value. From a luxury tax standpoint, they paid 89 million combined in 2022 and 2021. They paid 140 million in luxury tax last year. This is on top of their salary cap. This year, they're on pace for at least 128. So just the last two years, they're close to 270 million for luxury tax last year and this year. This is a team that might not make it out of round one, for the record.

Then you have the playoff resume of last year they lost in round one. 2022, they missed the playoffs. 2021, they had a chance to make the finals and Kauai gets hurt again, and they lose in the Western Conference Finals. And then 2020, they lost in round two that were healthy and they choked against Denver. They choked away a 3-1 lead. Everyone, including me, has been saying, Well, they got to do something. They got the new arena coming. I don't know if this was the something. I think they feel like they need to do something because they have this new arena coming. But the problem is no one cares about the Clipper in Los Angeles. They haven't forever. It's a Lakers town. It's a Dodgers town. It's a US Severs, UCLA town. It's like a Wiff of Kings. There's a Wiff of Rams. They're in that Kings, Rams. But even then, they probably don't have the same diehard fans. So if you start with the COVID year, 2019, 20, the year they got Kauai and Paul George, they've had this self-imposed pressure to stand out against the Lakers, which is fool's gold, because they're the Lakers.

They're always going to win in L. A. It's the same thing the Nets did this in New York with competing against the Nicks. And even when they had Durant and Kyrie and they got hard in Brooklyn and seemed like a thing, people still cared more about the Knicks. You're just never going to win this. You can't beat 60, 70, 80 years of history. You can't beat generations of families that have had the ticket. You're just not winning that one. Now the Clippers feel like, Well, we're going to have this new awesome basketball arena. Maybe that'll work. Trying to remember when an arena became the number one drawing point for a team? Maybe the Cowboys, but the Cowboys were also the Cowboys, the most famous football team we have. You could argue they were better off instead of trading the rest of their assets for hard. And you could argue that they were better off maybe shopping Kauai and Paul George and packing in and trying to get into the luxury tax and do the whole thing. But they couldn't do that because Ballmer doesn't want to because he's got incredible amounts of money. And he's convinced himself that if he can put these four guys, all of whom are passed their prime on a team together, maybe they'll win the title.

Well, spoiler alert, it's not going to happen. Last thing, Clipper's With Harden is really peak Clipper. And as I've talked about many times, I've had season tickets as my 20th year. I wrote a piece for page two in 2009 called The Curse of the Clipper. And the point of that piece was, Blake Griffin was talking about, This is a new era. I don't care what happened in the past. And basically, like pooh-poohed any bad karma with the Clippers. And what happened? Blake Griffin hurt his knee that summer and didn't play his rookie year. And this was after I wrote the piece about, Oh, Blake, you got to be careful. You don't know what you're walking into here. This team has had a black cloud around it for the entire time it's existed. We thought it was Donald Sterling, was the black cloud. And yet when they finally got rid of him the next year, they had their worst playoff loss not only in Clipper's history, but it's probably the second worst playoff loss of this entire century behind the Spurs-Heatgame. It weirdly comes back to Harden because the worst of all those losses was game 6, 2015 against Houston.

Harden stinks in a must-win game. I mean, go figure. Goes to the bench. I'm at the game. He puts a towel over his head. The game is done. Clippers are up by 20 heading into the end of third quarter. And Josh Smith, Corey Brewer, Trevor Areza, they're basically just jacking up threes to keep Huston in it. And what happens? They start coming back. The crowd gets tight. Josh Smith makes a three. Corey Brewer makes a three. All of a sudden, they have energy. Now the towel is off Harden's head. They have the best comeback or one of the best comebacks in Rocket's history and the worst comeback loss in Quipper's history with Harden mostly watching from the bench. So he is this bystander to this horrible, horrible event for the Quipper's. And now they just traded for him. Now he's on their team. I don't agree with the trade. I don't think it will work. And I think James Harden has been telling us for the last 10-12 years who he is. I think Paul George and Kwai Leonard physically have been telling us where their bodies are, and I don't see any chance that they beat Denver in a playoff series.

You would have to have injuries in the Denver side for it to become realistic. So I need to say thumbs down from me on the James Harden trade from a quick perspective, quickly from affiliate perspective, they hit the reset button. They did the Ben Simmons. We got to get something for them. There were better deals on the table, in my opinion, I said at the time, Darryl Moore, the Sixth GM had this relationship with Harden. Harden becomes Moray's cryptonight in a lot of ways. Moray comes into the job and rises prominence because he uses analytics so well. And he's so shrewd with how to merge analytics with the ITEST stuff, but he's better at the analytics stuff. And then eventually, as he has the job longer and longer and he starts ignoring some red flags because he starts thinking, I know James Harden. That guy came through for me a bunch of times. I believe in James Harden. He ignores some quitting flags, brings them in, even though he's quit on two teams. What does James Harden do in Philly? Quits on a third team. Now he has Embiid and Maxxie and $100 million of expirings and a few tradable picks.

He can zig or zag, which I like. They have real flexibility now. And they said they were getting a star for Harden. Well, eventually they probably will, because as I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of unhappy teams in December, January. And what's going to happen is he's going to take half of these expiries, maybe even more. They got rid of the PJ Tucker contract, too, in that trade, which is huge for the quippers. But they'll be able to whoever it's going to be. It could be Pascal Ciacombe. Could they go a little lower and try to get somebody like Jeremy Grant? We'll see. Could it be Zach LaVine? I don't know how he fits with Tyrese Maxi, but they're going to roll the dice with him beat at Maxi and these expirings and the new Coach, nick Nurse, and then see what do we add in December, January. I like it. But this is still a bad run for Darryl. And it starts with the Rust CP trade in Houston, where they give up the picks. He leaves the Ben Simmons thing. He rolls the dice with Harden. That doesn't really work. Whatever happened last summer, where Harden ends up opting in and then throwing a tantrum.

And now he's basically stuck in Bid with Maxie, some role players, and a bunch of expiring contracts and Picks, and it's a work in progress. The thing is, I can't mess around with the Bid because he's about to hit his 30s, and you got the Nicks bat and their eyeshashes at him. It's not great. It's a better solution than where they were. And it's amazing that they convinced the Clippers to trade anything for Hardit when they were the only suitor. But that's where we are with them. But I think big picture, this trade to me is more about the clipper is just continuing to chase their own tail and continuing to see the upside of something versus the considerable downside because you have major injury potential with three of these guys. You have a potential chemistry situation with Westbrook, who, by the way, played with James Harden in Houston, and they finished one season together. We're like, We should both get out of here and get away from each other. So now they're back together. And I just don't see a world where we look back, let's say, where it's like in June, and I'm doing a podcast.

I'm like, You know what I was dead wrong at? I'll admit to feed on. The quipper is getting James Harden. I just never imagined it would work out this well and that they'd be in the finals. I just can't believe it. Boy, was I wrong? I won't be saying that because I won't be wrong. All right, we're going to take a break. Come back with Mike Lombardi. Jump into the NBA action with Fando, America's number one sportsbook. Right now, new customers get $150 in bonus bets with any winning five-dollar money line bet. Plus, all customers get three months of NBA League pass courtesy of Fando, when they place a five-dollar bet in the NBA. That way you can watch all the actions you bet on everything from point spreads to player props. I am going to have some parlay or same game parlay because we start the in-season tournament on Friday in the NBA. So I'm going to have at least one game on that. There's a couple of futures I like for this, though. For the in-season tournament winner, you can bet the Celtics a plus 9:50, or you can bet Denver at 12:1.

I think those are the two bets. I would bet them both because if you look at how they structure this, you basically have to win. There's six groups, and you have to win your group and move on. And the Celtics and Denver, I just like their groups. They're the two best teams in the League. This starts right now, so you're catching them when everybody's healthy. And Itry to just think that I would just bet those two as futures and you'll hit one of them. Best of all, you'll get paid your winnings instantly if you win. So don't miss your chance to get $150 bonus, plus three months of NBA League pass. Visit fando. Com/bs. Tip off the NBA season right. Fando, official partner of the NFL. You must be 21 plus and present in select states. $5 pre-game money line wager required. First online, real money wager only. $10 first prize required, bonus issued as non-contrable bonus, but set to expire seven days after receipt. Limit one pass per customer, restrictions, apply, see full terms at fando. Com/sportsbook. Nba League pass, local blackout restrictions, apply. All right, our friend Mike Lombardi is here. What a day to catch him?

In the middle of the night as you're asleep last night, the Sixers tried James Harden. We'll talk about that at the end. I want to talk football first because we also have the trade deadline. The big thing for me is that the Niners get Chase Young and Seattle gets Leonard Williams. And it feels like those teams beefed up and feel like they have a real chance to win the NFC. That's how I interpreted those trades. What do you think?

Well, I think this. I believe in the concept of strength builds strength. And the Niner's answer to every one of their problems is always at a defense alignment, which I agree completely too. All these teams get caught up in, Well, we got to add this. We got to add that. No, no, no. If you build strength on strength, you become stronger. And Chase Young, with their D-line coach in San Francisco, will be a different player. He has not been a good player, but there's just situations that make guys better. It happens in basketball all the time. A guy goes from one team to another team, and he's no longer the guy. He becomes the alternate player, and now he's a star, right? I think that's going to happen at Chase Young. Here's what I know about football. It goes back to when we played in the backyard. If you count the five Mississippi, everybody gets open. If you count the three Mississippi, nobody does. And when you have five good rushers like San Francisco has, that means everybody's one-on-one. Somebody's going to win quick. So I think what they did was great.

Wait, do you think they saw something in that Sensei game that made them go, We need another guy here?

Yeah, I think that's exactly how they look at everything. I think they see themselves as we have to win with our defensive line. They know they're not good enough in the secondary. You can throw the ball on them. The problem is you can't stay in there very long, you're going to get hit. And they don't really want to blitz, right? They want to rush five. They don't want to rush six, seven. They don't want to do that. They don't want to play zero covers like they did against Minnesota. So they got to create a way to get their one best rushers one on one. And this kid gives them another guy to go along with. All these first round picks, they got Kinlaw, they got Hardware, who they signed to a huge deal. Seattle will have a hard time blocking them. The Rams will have a hard time blocking them. So for me, this I love, Seattle, they got Jones, Dramont Jones from Denver, which was huge for them. It's the first time they really had a three technique. Now they get Leonard Williams, who's not a great rusher. He's gotten paid so much money that I'm not sure he was the same guy at one time, but on this team with Pete Carroll, I think you'll get the best version of Leonard Williams that you can get, and they need it.

That's where they're going to... They won a Super Bowl in '13. They had a chance in '14, and that was because of their defensive front.

Yeah. Well, do you think they made that trade? If Cleveland doesn't completely blow that Seattle game on Sunday? I'm still reeling from it. I'll never get over to PJ Walker throwing on third and three. It'll be 10 years from now of finally come to-.

There's so many of those games. I do Russo every Friday, and I got the giants, and I'm already counting on the win. I'm counting it as a win in the contest. I don't bet, but I take a lot of pride in that one, and they go and blow that lead. There's so many ways they could have gone with the ball there, but Seattle was the same thing. What don't you want to do? See, here's what's interesting, Bill. What don't you want to do in that situation? The Browns say, We don't want to turn the ball over. They throw it. The giants don't want to turn the ball over. But you did when you missed a field goal.

Yeah, in the rain.

You're seven years in the rain. Who the kid was not healthy and he missed a field goal similar to that. I would have lined up a... I know that sounds crazy. I would have lined up like a pun. I know that sounds crazy. I would have lined up like a pun and told my quarterback or the punner to just throw the ball to the back pile on out of bounds as high in the air as you can. Remember we played Baltimore in the conference game? The original round. And there was a little bit of time left in the game. And instead of punning, we threw the ball straight up in the air, and I think it got left. They had one play left for a hell, Mary, which they didn't get. But when you throw the ball high up in the air at each clock, the giants only ate four seconds on the field goal. You could have eaten eight seconds on a high throw, and the ball would have been moved seven yards of where it was.

Or just try to get it on fourth down. You've been running the ball well anyway. I wouldn't have tried the field goal because we had already seen a missed one. And the PJ Walker thing, I'm punting, make Gino Smith, who hadn't done anything for two hours, make him go 60 yards to try to get a field goal on me. My defense has been amazing. Instead, you get the goofy turnover. Anyway, I wonder, Seattle, who I like? I don't have them as a first tier team, but I do think they're the ninth, 10th, 11th. They're somewhere in that range. To me, the offensive line is the big thing that concerns me when I watch them. It doesn't seem like they can block the great defenses. They didn't solve that this week.

Well, the only way they're going to solve that is they get crossed and their other tackle back. They got to get their healthy. When you're signing Jason Peters, you know you're in trouble at 41 years old. You know you're in trouble. So if they get those two guys back, that'll help. And if they get Walker healthy, Walker is a big-time runner. But the one thing is, when you go through Gino's numbers, he's not as accurate as he was last year. He's not anywhere near the year he had last year. They got to get him to another level.

So Washington bailes on Chase Young and they bail on sweat. And it's a team that when you watch them, they're poorly coached. But what you got Riverboat Run. What are you going to expect? But they did have some talent. I did feel like they had something in identity. Like the enemy is a lunatic. He throws the ball way more often than he should. But they're big and physical, and they're just a weird team to play. And I think Itry with cousins out. Could they have snuck into a seven-seed? Maybe. And instead, they're sellers. You went through this because Josh Harris owned the Sixers. I'm wondering, is Process 2.0 now unfolding here?

I think it is. What a busy day for Josh Harris. He got the hard and trade then he makes these two deals. Here's what I think, knowing the way and I've studied Harris. I've lived this nightmare for years.

When you say you studied him, are you saying how Jim Garrison studied the JFK assassination?

Not to that level, but I followed every 76th trade to nauseam, and I think I know how they think. They think at a very analytical base. So last year they were the third best defense in terms of yards allowed. They were very good against the past. They gave up the least amount of first downs in the League last year. They were the best third down defense in football, and they were the eighth best red zone. So situationally, they were really good. So you say, okay, they got a chance. So this year, under Riverboat and under Jack Del Rio, they are nowhere near any of those. They are in the bottom third of every category. So they went from being really good to being really shitty. So I'm sure the conversation was, What do we care if we trade sweat? What do we care if we trade young? We suck anyway with them. They're not making us any good, so why are we hanging on to them? And I actually can't argue with the logic. It makes sense. And when somebody's stupid enough, and I can underscore the word stupid here, to give you a high second round pick for a player that is not under contract for the next year, don't stop and think about it.

Just say yes. Second round picks are like gold. They're four-year contracts at very economic value. So the player you pick at 17, 18 or 19 all the way through 32 might be the same player you get at 33. Had the Patriots not gotten Gonzales at 16, they would have picked Kenyan White at 16. They end up getting him in the second, right? So they got a first round player in the second round, but their first round was ending in there. So when you trade away two, you're trading away one of the best values in the world you could have. And to give it up for a guy that you don't have an extra year of a contract for, or you have to franchise and the agent has every right, you can't return that trade down if you're Washington.

You can't turn that- Well, this sounds like one of our favorite things when GMs go into job protection mode. So he does that Claypool trade last year, which is a disaster, and a trade that nobody really liked when it was happening. And then this time, what does he care? If they clean house at the end of the year, what does he care about the second round pick? He's not going to be able to make it anyway. But if sweat can come in and maybe they can show signs of progress as the season goes along, they've looked better the last couple of weeks than they did for the first month. So you could say.

All right. Okay. So like I tweeted today, okay, great. He gets a sack in week 17. They win the game, everybody celebrates. And now they've had their fifth win. Instead of having the fourth pick in the draft, they'll have the eighth pick in the draft. Now I know they have Carolina's picks, so that still counts. But seriously, is that what you really did that to get-.

No, we hate when this happens. When it's better for the executive than the franchise, it's never a good place to be. If you're the fan, if you're a Chicago fan, you got to be like, What are we doing? So now we can go six and eleven and not have a top five pick?

It made no sense to me whatsoever. How would you get him do it again? One of the things you have to do is you have this... This is like a chart. It's called the safety margin in any trade you make. So when you say to yourself, Okay, if I trade Harden for this, or if I trade the Sean Watson and the safety margin is if he sucks, what happens? We're screwed. If we trade for the Shawn Watson and guarantee his contract and he's half-good, we're screwed. If we trade for the Sean Watson and guarantee his contract and he's half good, we're screwed. If we trade for the Sean Watson and he gets hurt, we're screwed. If we trade for the Shawn Watson and he's great. We're good. So now you're looking at one in four scenario in the safety margin of the trade. You can't make that trade. There's no back door to get out of the deal.

I wish you had said this to Steve Ballmer. Hey, Steve. Steve, all of your guys are in their 30s or mid 30s. Two of them can't stay on the core, and the other guy just quit on his last three teams. So here's the percentage pie of this working out. I'd say it's about 12 %.

Right. And then where's our back door? How do we get out of this? How do we escape it? And that's the question. So if you're the bears, okay, if we trade for sweat and we don't sign them, we got to franchise them. We're screwed there. If we trade for sweat and give up a high too, we lose a really good value for an expensive player. That's not a smart tree. If you go through every safety margin of the deal, you say, okay, now if you're San Francisco and you've got a third round pick because Rand Carthan, who is an African-American, got hired by Tennessee and the League is giving away compensatory picks, you're saying, okay, I got a pick to play with. And if he goes and signs to a lucrative deal, I'll get a compensatory pick back anyway. So the safety margin for that deal is net effect. You go.

Ahead and make- And then Caterham, too, they'll spend this year because Purdy's on a-.

And they have nothing they're going to spend. They could actually franchise them next year and still get away with it. So these deals that no one looks at the deal, everybody looks at the deal from, if we don't make this deal, we're going to lose our jobs or we're going to get fired. But somebody's got to protect the franchise.

We know that's on How it goes. Think about the basketball teams, or it's like, Who's protecting the fans in this one? One move I really like today, and I had fantasies the last 24 hours that Minnesota might not watch any Mac Jones tape and just decide to trade for him without actually watching any of the film from 2023. They went for Dobbs who if you're going to do your QB rank, your QB tiers, he's probably a rich man's PJ Walker. He can at least move around. And he seems pretty smart. He can pick up offenses right away. He was famously like a 4.0 guy. And he at least keeps you around, right? I don't think he's bad. I don't think he's decent, but he's probably closer to decent than bad. And you have these two awesome receivers and you have Hawkinson. Who's the seventh seed in the NFC? We're going to talk about that later. It's still wide open. I feel like Dobbs at least keeps them hanging around, right?

When Dobbs had Connor, he was a better player. When they lost James Connor, Dobbs had too much pressure on him. And I think that's Minnesota's challenge. Minnesota's 31st in almost every statistical category I'm running. So they're going to have to... I agree. I was surprised they let Dobbs go because I thought he managed the game half decently. For the first couple of weeks, he didn't turn the ball over. Again, he had James Connor to run the ball and bail them out. I think Kevin O'Connor will do a good job with them. I mean, look, he's played better than Mac. I mean, let's be fair. He's played better than- No.

There's no question.

He's played better than Garapolo. Let's be fair. He's played better than Zach Wilson. Let's keep going. He's played better than Daniel Jones. Now, I know and Daniel Jones in that last game, when Daniel Jones played against a bad Arizona defense, he was good. But look-.

He's near where Minchu is, right? He can actually make some plays and have some drives. He'll have a bad throw every once in a while, do a dumb thing every once in a while, but at least you can score points with him, unlike some of these other guys.

I think they were 18th in the League and third down conversions. The 16th in the League and third down conversions to Cardinals, which tells you he's making plays. So that's at least he's under pressure. Whereas some of these teams, they can't... You know what? The Patriots were one for nine against Miami last week. The Raiders were one for nine against Detroit. That's a true tail sign of your quarterback. Can he make plays when there's pressure on him?

Well, I know it's hard for you to talk about the Raiders because you have some family working for the team.

But- It's hard.

-garapolo, last year they had Car who looked like a shot fighter. And you were talking about how when that eye line goes down, it's over for any of these guys. And ever since the first time I heard you say that 10 years ago, I always look for that. How fast are they getting rid of the ball? How little do they want to get hit? And just see my car revealed who he was last year. Now this year, same thing. If he's going against a crappy defense, he'll look fine. But if you start hitting him, it's done. Jimmy looks like... Jimmy's had a lot of injuries. He's had some surgeries. He's got some miles on him for somebody who hasn't started a lot of games. And he just doesn't look right. I thought he looked so much better four years ago than he did now. He's not that old. But I don't know how do you fix this one.

I don't know how you do it either. He rushed last... I mean, he didn't play well. He admitted it. So I'm not talking bad about the kid. I think to me, he's been hit too much. And when they get hit too much, it's not that they're scared to get hit. They react to the potential of getting hit. Right. So it's like a boxer. I think he's tough, but he had two high school throws last night that he didn't make. They're high school throats, right? And everybody's complaining about Devante Adams not getting the ball.

He was wide open for a bomb, and he overthrew him.

Yeah, two bombs. Two bombs. He was open for two bombs. And he's reacting. This happened to Kurt Warner in his career. When Kurt Warner left the Rams, he went to the giants. You remember him at the giants?

He was a disaster. Mid-2000s Kurt Warner. Yeah, he was the shot fighter. I don't know how... He must have prayed and got it back. I don't know how he did it.

I don't know how he did it either, because when he went to the giants, he was terrible. But he went to the Cardinals. He was a backup, and then he became a starter and he didn't have it anymore. I think that's where Jimmy is right now, is he's reacting to things. And then they hold the ball. They don't even get rid of it.

Well, remember what happened to our guy, Jake Delom. Oh, yeah. All of a sudden, he was shot fighter, and it was just turnovers. And that was it. It was done. Because when quarterbacks get... Sometimes they get washed up like Matt Ryan last year. He's just old. Your reflexes start to go, stuff like that. But then there's the other scenarios where the guy just gets a shit kicked out of them for too many seasons.

I mean, and look, that interception he throws in the first quarter? There's no reason to make that throw. But again, that's what happens to bad teams. All these teams we're talking about, they don't have a quarterback. That's really what's hard to overcome. And if you don't have one, what cracks me up is the jets. They act like they were happy they won that game. And we're going to talk about these three and five teams.

But was.

That really a good thing for the jets to win that game?

You mean the four and three jets?

Yeah. Is that really a good thing? Every jet fans text and tweeted to me like, You idiot, we're good. You gave up 200 yards to a team that refused to pass. Tommy DeVito is a shoe shine boy. He would have been like, Get your shine box, Tommy. Seriously, there's no way.

They.

Wouldn't have-.

What did they add to his name was Tommy DeVito. We sat and I talked about this on Sunday. It's incredible. His name is literally the Peshi character of Goodfellows.

It's your shine box. Seriously. I've been watching that Goddy Cates or whatever the hell it is, and I'm thinking, How dumb are these guys? They know they're getting taped and they're talking too. But anyway, they gained 200 yards against them running. Where are you going with that?

I said to Sal, the jets have four wins, and three of them are wins where the other team for the rest of the week goes, I can't believe we fucking lost that game for the next five days. Those are three of their four wins where the team shows up for the team meeting the next day and they're like, What happened? They just might go 10 and seven and have eight of those.

Yeah, and then they're going to lose in the first round. Exactly. Our defense is elite. We got this. It just blows my mind. Literally, you have a team that wouldn't stop the run. They didn't even try a nine-round. They didn't even let the kid throw a nine-round into the game.

But I.

Don't understand it, but that's what happens when you don't have a quarterback. You protect yourself and you don't want to show them out there. And there's so many teams that don't have it. That's why we go back to Josh Dobbs. At least he was functional. He really was early in the season.

I thought they might trade for another running back, too, because I think Addison has been a borderline revelation this season. Really fun to watch. He jumps off the TV. They're going to get Jefferson back soon. And especially on turf, they're just going to be fast. And I was wondering, there's like a hundred running backs in the League. But you watch these games and these guys come in and you're like, Oh, that guy's good. Like Charbonne and the Seahawks who probably gets eight to 10 carries a game. It's like, That guy is good. Jaylen Warren, who's barely plays for the Stealers, and whenever they run a play for him, it's Matt Canada just signalling, Hey, here's what we're going to do. He's going to get the ball and run this way. But he's good. But all around the League, I always feel like I felt like they needed another one. Let's take a quick break. I want to talk about a couple of teams that didn't do anything, and then we'll talk about the possible climbers. All right, coming back. So a couple of teams that didn't do anything. We talked about the Raiders earlier. Why not trade the Vonte Adams?

I don't understand that. Where you could have gotten at least your first back. There's some teams that I think would have... Honestly, the would have been an interesting team for him with all the caproom they have. We talk about adding to your strength that they just could have been like, How about this? Mcafrey, Adams, Ayouk, Debo, who seems to play eight games a year, and Kiddle. But there's five or six teams. Dallas could have used them maybe. But why do you think they kept them?

Well, I think this. I think most people in that situation don't think their team is as bad as the public thinks they are. If you put Josh Allen on the Raiders, what would they look like? Al Davies used to say this all the time. No, just put him on our team. If you took an average quarterback and put them on the Raiders team, what would they look like? Are they that bad? Are they that hard? Prabble. They're not an expansion team. They've won three games. They've got good receivers. They just can't get production from the quarterback. So I think their belief probably is whether they keep McDaniels and fire him or whatever they do is like, if we get somebody in here, we get a quarterback in here, we're to be able to be pretty good. And so why would we trade somebody who we need to be pretty good with and for pennies on the dollar? And look, everybody at this time of the year, they're shopping at Philene's basement. Everybody's trying to get them for cheap. The only team over paying are the bears. And Ryan Poles can only answer one call at a time, but they're the only team over paying two years in a row.

So everybody's trying to buy cheap. How he made two trades always on the cheap. He gets them on the cheap. He gets a team that's desperate, and it goes back to really it's like investing. Buffett never wanted to be in a position where he was forced to do something. And I think if you take that long view in building teams, you're probably better off. And for the fans, they're frustrated because we could use another player. But the fans don't realize if we had put this guy on our team at quarterback, we actually would be a good team. We're not going to say we're going to be a great team, but we would... We would be a better team. We'd have a future. See, the problem with the Raiders is why there's so much heat on the Raiders is because nobody can see the future. There's no future there. There's no player you could... Whereas Carolina is a disaster, but they think they can see the future. I like Bray Sean. Cj Strat, I can see the future. Even with Anthony Richards, I could see the future. Whereas with the Raiders, there's no future. There's just this pic out there that they hope was going to get to be a quarterback.

So then everybody's team gets marked down. I think one of the most overvalued teams in the League are Buffalo. I don't think Buffalo is a great team, but they have a great quarterback. If Matt Barkley was playing for Buffalo, what do you think their record's going to be?

They'd be the Patriots.

They'd be The Patriots. Same thing with everybody thinks the Patriots have no talent whatsoever. I think The Patriots need additions, don't get me wrong. But you put a quarterback on The Patriots, it's a different game.

I had a friend of mine heard by Sunday podcast where I was saying how the Pats were right in that Miami game for three quarters, and Mac just murdered them. He just single-handedly murdered them. And I was like, Our defense played well in that game. Did you watch it? And he's like, Oh. I'm like, Well, the Dolphins were basically at five yards of play. They got bailed out by a PI in the second quarter that kept the drive alive. I don't know, Belichick was going nuts for a half hour. But once the Dolphins hit Mac a couple of times, he just fell apart. And he was missing throws and he was holding the ball too long. And then he had one of the worst picks of all time. But I thought the Patts hung around, hung around, hung around. He's been so bad this year that I was hoping they would trade him or even just release him just to start over. But it seems like they're stuck with him. I don't understand why they haven't done anything.

I don't know who's defending. The tape doesn't lie, right? And what happened what Vickangio did is they brought that AGAP pressure into his face where it just now it's coming directly to him. And even though it might be blocked, he's still reacting to it. And so the interception he throws, he's one for nine on third down. He can't make a play unless it's there, unless it's on time.

Well, how about the fact that if Pop Douglas doesn't make that crazy tackle, which was a really nice play, that would have been Max's fourth pick six of the season. What's the record? Has anyone ever had seven in the season? I don't know why he.

Threw the ball. Why did he throw the ball? Why did he throw what he... He saw the corner sitting out there.

They had momentum. They're driving the ball. It's like at least get a field goal 14-10 half-time. Our defense is playing really well. But they're two and six and he's killed them.

The people would think they played better in the first game than they did. They played better in the second game. They couldn't run the ball. They had 76 yards rush. They give up the touchdown to Hill. They blow the... I mean.

What's his face? They blew on coverage, yeah.

Jackson, horrible way he played that. But they... I mean, I agree with you. Look, I know we're Patriot homers, but they're not a bad team. You put a good quarterback on that team. You put Doug Prescott on the Patriots. What do you think they look like?

Well, that leads us to our next segment. We're heading in a week nine, which is a wonderful time for the NFL because we used to have the 16 game season. So this is a direct split. And there was always second half of the season, somebody would go six and two or seven and one. Last year was the Lions and the Stealers made late runs. It always happens. It's usually one team from each conference. We're cheating a little because there's nine games left, but I think we're in the zone of not only climbers, but a couple of dropers. You mentioned Buffalo. Buffalo is five and three. I think everybody thinks, Oh, they're definitely in the playoffs. Well, Buffalo schedule the rest of the way at Cincinnati. Home Denver, who's been pretty frisky, home for the Jets who already beat them, on the road Philly, on the road KC, home Dallas at the Chargers, home to England at Miami. You could get to eight losses pretty quickly with that schedule, especially if they had one or two injuries. They traded for Rosule Douglas today to get cornerback help. But I think the dropers we could talk about later, the climbers, I asked you, look at all the three-win teams, two-win teams, or one-win teams?

Is there a team that jumps out to you as a possible 2022 Detroit?

The only one could be is the Chargers. And Herbert's second half have been a disaster, and their defense has been a disaster. Tennessee, the last three weeks have run the football effectively, and Levis gave them some, I don't want to kill Levis here, but I want to be put a bit in perspective. I mean, he made some plays.

Through a couple of days, deep balls.

That's right. And so the way they play games, they haven't scored over 30 points, I think, in 25 games or something. They scored 28 in his first start. So I would say the sleeper team to me... There's two sleeper teams for me, and they're both all three and four. Huston's the sleeper team.

I thought we were off their scent after that Carolina game. All right, make.

Your case. I think to me, this will be the key game. And this is the game that I think the team that they're playing is they're playing Baker, right? And this is going to be the game where we're going to see what direction Straud goes in, because there's always that initial start by a rookie, and then there's the reaction to the defense, and then there's the adjustment. And so I think we saw that last week. He threw for 140 yards against Carolina, who's not a great defense. So this week at home against Tampa with Todd Bulls, I think is going to be the interesting one. I think one of these two teams, I don't trust Tampa at all with Baker. Itry. I don't trust them at all.

So you can't count them. Neither do I. I'll give the schedule for the listeners. So they got Tampa Home at St. C. Probably need to split those, worst-case scenario. But then they're home for three: Arizona, Jacksonville, Denver, all at home. At the Jets, at Tennessee, home Cleveland, home Tennessee, and then at Indy to finish the season. I could see 10 wins is not unreasonable.

No, they play hard on defense. They're really good in the kicking game. You can't minimize them. They're good in the kicking game, and they give up yards on defense, but they turn the ball over. They have a chance. Tennessee has a chance, but I don't trust Leavis. I haven't seen enough of him. The team that you have to almost back in that case are the Chargers. But do you trust Daly? Do you trust him? No.

I don't trust him. Capital N-O, no, I don't trust him in the least. I think they could lose this week.

To the jets. They could lose to the jets, right? They could lose to the jets. I mean, we could get hurt again. Then we'll be at Evans stick, and we'll see how that goes, right? Right. And then for the... Denver has held Kansas City to 24 points in two games, which is for a team that gave up 70, that's impressive. The Raiders quarterbacking, you can't count on that. Indianapolis, they gave up 511 yards last week to Durkar and the Saints who want to check it down. Washington, to me, just put themselves on toast. The Rams, you can't trust the RAMs because once what's happened to the RAMs, they're like the boxer that has to win the fight in the first three rounds. If they don't, it's going to keep going the wrong direction. Because Stafford's hurt, he's going to continue to get hurt. Believe it or not, I actually think Denver, the way they've gotten them better as the year's gone on, now they're three and five. I don't know if they can win five games the next run, but if they play as well as they played the last couple of weeks, they beat Green Bay and Nell, but they ran the ball 40 times against Kansas City, which is remarkable, right?

Because Russell was, even though we threw three touchdown passes, he wasn't great in that game. He turned the ball over, he didn't make any plays. They're playing better defensively, which gives them some hope. They got to play the Raiders again. They got the Chargers. They could get some wins going.

So I had Denver circled as a possible. I'm glad you brought them up because I was looking at where... I got killed on them last week with the Tees. I had the Chiefs, and I was just like, Oh, Denver, whatever. I overrated the 70-20 game, which really is an outlier when you look at it because they've gotten, if you separate it into the first four games versus the second four games, they played pretty well since that 70-20 game.

And.

I thought I don't know how much to credit them because Casey turned the ball over five times. Their front returners is just dropping the ball on his own 10-yard line, shit like that. But it did seem like they had the Chiefs receivers covered. And they were like, NFL-Live did a good one of those Montages of all the times my homes was back and just looking around and moving and checking down to his fifth guy, and there's just nobody open. So when you think about the 70-20 game, they've at least fixed that. I know you're a huge Sean Payton guy. He wanted to run the ball. They signed all these old-line guys. He's turned Russ into at least like a game manager. Please don't kill us, Russ. Just keep the chains moving. I don't know. It's not unrealistic to me that they could go seven and two down the stretch.

No, I think if they can win some of the... I mean, look, they should be better off. They should have beat in Washington. They had a chance to beat the Raiders. They missed the field goal in the Raider game. I mean, they shouldn't be really where they are. They should be a little bit better. But let's talk about the homes for a second here.

Yeah.

Please. The my homes thing is interesting because when you break him down, he's in seven categories. He's at the lowest part of his career: touchdown percentage, interception percentage, success rate offensively, yards per completion, the lowest in his career, lowest and adjusted air yards, lowest yards passing per game, and his lowest QBR. Those are the staggering numbers. But then when you look at some of the other ones and you peel back the numbers, he's had his best on-target percentage of his career, 82.3. He's had his best bad throw percentage at 10.6. That's really good, 10.6. Like most quarterbacks are in 14.

So you're saying this could even be worse if Moh homes wasn't as great as he is?

His highest drop rate is 78. He's been hit. He's been hit 35 times in eight games. Last year, he was only hit 56. And now what's happening is teams are pressuring him at a higher rate than they've ever pressured him before because they're not scared. They're not scared of who's going to beat them. They double. Kelsey is not going to beat you vertically. He's going to beat you with all his moves. So it's interesting. He started 88 games in his career, Bill, and in those 88 games, he has three of his worst games this season, 87th ranked against them, but that's his 87th worst. The Jets game was his 84th, and the Detroit game was the 77th. And here's... I know you're a bit staggering about it, right? They've averaged. If you just take out the one game against the bears where they scored 40, they averaged 23. Last year they averaged 29. They're down to average in 20 points a game. They're not the same team that they were, and I think a lot of it, I'm surprised they didn't make a move at receiver, but their receivers don't scare anybody. I think it puts a lot.

And their offensive line isn't as good as it was last year.

I got a lot of things wrong before this season. But one of the things looks like I might not have gotten wrong is this team reminded me of that 06 Pat's team that braided had, the Roche Caldwell-Gibargapney season, where you can just pass the point and no return with your receivers. Now, he didn't have Kelsey that season and still threw for 4,000 yards. They still made the playoffs. But at some point, you got to have somebody who can get open on a third and eight other than Kelsey. And this doesn't seem like when they beat the Broncos 19-8, and then they lose to the Broncos 24-9. They scored 28 points against the Broncos in two games. I think this Dolphins Chiefs game, and it's unfortunately in Germany, and Sal and I always talk about this. I try not to bet the Germany or London games. I just think you just don't know. You don't know when they show up, the jet lag. It's too hard to figure out. But I think the Dolphins defenses, can pressure the Chiefs. And this is a great... If you're ever going to play the Chiefs, this would be the week.

You're in another country. They're coming off a terrible loss. They didn't do anything trade-wise. And I think the Dolphins can beat the Chiefs this week.

Yeah. And you got Jalom Ramsey back. You probably got Xavian Howard back. You went to Germany early. They left Monday. They're in Germany now. The Chiefs are leaving Thursday to go over there to catch up. So both teams really spend a lot of time planning on this. I think to me, the Miami defense is getting better. Their front's pretty good. Christian Wilkins and those Jaylen Philips' playing, Chubs' playing better, they're going to cause some problems to the Chiefs. And Vick's a really good coach. Vick will be able to take Kells. They're going to have to have somebody else beat them, right? And the question is, can they protect? The Miami offensive line, before you bet the game, the Miami offensive line is a mess right now. They lost a bunch of... They lost two lines in the Patriots game, and they don't really have everybody back, and against this chief defense, which deservingly gets a ton of credit. But when you look at them compared to last year, they're very similar. Last year they gave up 10.2 yards per pass. This year it's 10-1. They're better this year. They rush the pass here better. But I think a lot of it has to do with, look, they played Fields, they played Zach Wilson, they played Russell Wilson twice.

They played Herbert in a game where Herbert was good until the second half. If I think to me, don't move the ball if they can protect. I'm only nervous about Miami's offensive line. That's what keeps me from saying take Miami. If this gets the three, take Miami. I think it's two and a half now.

I'm not betting foreign soil games. The Chiefs look sloppy at me. Special teams was always a place that they had good camera, good punter. They always made shit happen. And this year it's.

Been pretty sloppy for them. Well, the salary cap takes a little bit of that into account, right? Yeah. Everybody cheats the salary capital in special teams. Let's be honest here. How did Kansas City win a Super Bowl last year? With special teams, the return by Sky Moore and the return by Cedarius Tony, in the Super Bowl, Tony and more in the championship game.

Couple more possible climbers, and I don't even feel good about these. But the giants are two and six and should be four and four, right? They should be four and four. They should have beaten the jets. And they should have- They should have beat Buffalo, right? So they're two and six, but really should be four and four. They're playing Vegas, Dallas, and Washington on the road, New England at home, by week, Green Bay at home, New Orleans, Philly, Rams, then Philly again. So the catch would be, well, they're playing Philly twice, though, and they can't go past eight wins. They can't- All right, so we'll cross them off. I agree with you. I wanted to.

Talk it out. I have them in my category. They should play for a draft tech. I think they're not going to do it, but they should play for a draft. To me, I have them as when I rank them, I think, look, they got to play. Now, they're not going to draft a quarterback because they still believe in Daniel Jones, but they should play for a draft because, look, they're not going to beat Philly, they're not going to beat Dallas. And so to me, if you're the seventh seed, it's almost like if I were the seventh seed in the NFC, I might want to decline it.

Right.

Their six, send somebody else.

It would be funny if they gave the teams the choice. You could either have the 10th pick in the draft or the seventh seed, see what they take. Yeah.

It's like all these people will say, Well, the Raiders, they inherited a playoff team. They won three games down the stretch. The Raiders haven't been to a conference championship game since two. They haven't have a history. So when you take over a team that's won, that's not really winning. The giants were in it last year, but that really worked. They got blown out by every good team they played. They're not going to beat anybody good. Actually, if they played the Rams, if they played the Rams in the Metalyans, what do you think the line would be?

Rams by three.

That's what I would think too, right? Yeah. And yet we're sitting here talking about the giants can make the playoffs.

I'm so proud of you. I remember the days when you didn't even understand what a line was and had to factor it. What does that mean? What is a tease? Now you're just rattling on the pitch. Now I.

Make my own lines, not.

Make my own lines. Now you got your Lombardi line. Green Bay Two and Six, who traded their cornerback today, and Jordan Love looks like he's- No chance. -maybe doesn't have it. Yeah, we're crossing them off. Bear's Two and Six. Schedule is pretty easy, but I just can't imagine Fields getting to eight wins. So they're a cross-off. Carolina 1 and 6? No chance. They've been pretty good at home, but.

I'm like, no chance to- I liked them this week. I took them on Russo because they had... They were good at home. That's the key. But that was an ugly game. And Frank Wright, every decision he makes is the wrong one.

Yeah. And then New England at two and six would be the only other one I would mention.

I think all those teams should play first to pick. If New England can get a quarterback with their team, they could turn the corner fairly quickly. I got to believe there's enough tape on Mac in the last two years you say, Wait a minute, this isn't getting any better.

Can Mylik Cunningham be worse than Mac? At least he could run around.

Yeah.

Well- No? Could he do like a... I don't know. Well, anyway, with the Pats, they're playing Washington this week at home. Washington just said, We don't care about the season anymore. They're playing Indie in Germany the next week, where the Pats are like the Elvis of Germany. They're by far the most popular team. They could be four and six in two weeks to get a by week. They're at the giants, Home Chargers, and then Pittsburgh, KC, Denver, Buffalo, and the jets are the last five. They have to go- They've gone through the hard part of the schedule.

They've.

Gone through the.

Hard part of the schedule. The schedule.

Is great. Yeah. So they'd have to go basically seven and two down the stretch.

This is the big game. They got to beat Washington and then. Look, Indy will be a hard get for them because Indy can move the... But Minshu, I mean, look, Minshu turns the ball over. That was another game that if you just studied what Dennis Allen did against Minshu in Philly when they played against each other, last year, Minceau, that was the game, Philly-Loss. Remember that was in Philly, Murray, Latymore had that PIC 6? You see that, those games carry over. Where I messed up this week was, I thought, remember when last year, Carolina went to Cincinnati. They got their doors blown off, right? They got killed. And I thought Steve Wilkes would have been able to figure out, okay, here's what they did to my defense, but this reverse happened. He didn't figure it out. So I misjudged that one. But to me, I think you got to always check those games where they've played against... The coordinators played against the game before, and Stikens played against Bill before, so they have a sense of it.

Well, your best one with that was the Schwartz-Shanhan thing.

Yeah.

Which there's just something about that matchup that's good for Schwartz, and it doesn't matter what team he has.

It doesn't matter.

I know I'm cheating here because they're four and four, but Atlanta is a possible climber would be my only other one.

I think Desmond Ridders got... Now look, he can't hold on to the ball. It's ridiculous. But he's actually thrown the ball really well. You know what sucks for them? It's their offensive line.

They got this shit- Which was supposed to be good.

Which is they paid every guy like a million. They paid every guy. They haven't been very good. He gets way... I was critical of him before the season. He's made some good throws. He just turns the ball over. It's not all his fault. Everybody in football thinks the answer is real. I'm sure it's in every sport, but everybody thinks the what's wrong with your team is one answer. When it's more than one answer, right? It's always more. Like, New England, yeah, it's Mac, but there's other prop, the line's got to get... There's other issues. So Atlanta, now they lose Grady Jarrett, that worried you because he's one of their better defensive alignment. And so they lose him to an ACL. But look, I think Atlanta, if they would stop using Al-Jir, I don't understand it. Two weeks ago before the Tampa game, Algear had 75 carries, average 3.2 a carry. Robinson had 80 carries. He averages 5.1. My six-year-old grandson could figure out to get the ball to Robinson. Give it to him.

Right. Well, one thing we should mention. I think New England would have been a possible climber, but they did lose Gonzala as a JuDon and country born, who I would say were three.

Top starters for them. And they're the trip rounds playing on a bad knee.

They're a cross-up too.

They're a beat-up team.

So basically, we've settled on Denver or the Chargers, one of those two, which is interesting because they still play each other twice. And maybe that's how it will play out if one of those two can sneak in there. Because I'm finally going to wave the white towel with Pittsburgh. It's the combination of the playcalling and the limitations at the QB position. And I was thinking there was some Tomlin' voodoo stuff going on. I think their defense is legitimately good. You just can't play like shit for two hours on offense every single week without it having to mean something after two months. So I.

Think I'm out. So if you take out, first of all, they give up over 4.6 yards to carry, which is very uncharacteristic of Pittsburgh. And they give up, excuse me, 4.5, and they give up 7.6 yards per pass play, and their 42 % on third down allow it. That's typically not good. Where they're really good is they force 16 fumbles, they've gotten eight. But here's the interesting stat. If you take away the 71-yard touchdown pass to the Raiders and the 72 to the Browns, you take those two plays out of their passing stats. Instead of averaging 10.3 yards per catch, they go down at ninth, they were under 10 per catch. They can't throw the football.

If you can't throw the ball- Don't they have 102 first downs, too?

Yeah, they can't throw the ball. They start the game against Jacksonville, punch, punch, punch, punch. And they plan from behind. Here's what's fascinating. Here's what I think we don't spend enough time studying is these teams that play from behind, they're behind 43 to 14 in the first quarter, and then they're minus 11 in the second quarter. So how do you get it back in the game when you're constantly behind. It's New England. New England has won two games this year they played from the front, right? And so they could run the ball and do with that.

It's the same thing here. Denver is probably like that too. Yeah, there's a bunch of... If we have the lead, we're looking pretty good. So if we said AFC play, we have teams. And I gave you KC, Baltimore, St. C, Jacksonville, Miami, and then the playoff odds would say probably Buffalo. And then you get into that Cleveland Chargers, Denver, Jets, Houston? Who do you like?

If Cleveland would have traded for Joshua Dobbs, I think they would have been better off.

They had him.

I know. They could have traded them back to him. I mean, why wouldn't they take him back? He's better than... They can't go with PJ Walker another week.

I still like Cleveland, even though PJ Walker is just a roller coaster ride for three hours. Plus the Stefanski piece too, where he just can't help himself. Twice a year, he's just going to be like, You know what? I'm going to blow the game for us. I haven't blown a game in a while.

I mean, look, their defense, I know they get a lot. They started the game slow against Seattle, but they finished it and they couldn't finish it off. The Cincinnati team, I was wrong on. They looked really good against San Francisco. And Burrow, when he plays like that, when he tilts the field, and you can't go against that. I still think Baltimore is the best bet in the AFC. I think Lamar, when he's on tune, like he does unique things, they're really good. I know they struggled. That was a misleading game. They didn't cover, but they should have covered that game.

I'm with you. I think the Super Bowl team comes out of the AFC North, and I would say Baltimore, Stacey. And I thought Stacey had the look last week, as you would say. All right, we're going to take a break, then I'm going to throw some weird shit at you. We are supported by NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube and YouTube TV. Don't change your team when you change your town. Get NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube and YouTube TV where it's easier than ever to keep up with all your favorite teams on Sunday afternoons. You can watch up to four preset games at once on my best friend, Multiview. And it's now available at a lower midseason price. We reached halfway point in the season, which is great because you can now get the midseason price for NFL Sunday Ticket starting at $174. And you can jump into the midseason storylines. For instance, is Baltimore the best team in the AFC? Is Cincinnati resurrecting themselves as a real Super Bowl contender? Who's going to win the NFC West with San Francisco and Seattle? Dallas versus Philly? What's going to happen on that one? Does anyone want to win the NFC South?

You can even follow my three fantasy teams that I have a chance to win all three of my fantasy titles, which if I did that, that would make up for the Pats not winning a playoff game in the 2020s. There's a lot of stuff going on. Thanks to NFL Sunday Ticket and YouTube, and YouTube. Not only for multi-view, but for sponsoring this segment. It truly is the best place to keep up with all your favorite teams out of market, Sunday afternoon games. And now again, you can watch up to half of the NFL for half the price. Get NFL Sunday ticket for only $174 when bundled with YouTube. Tw, where you get even more football. Sign up now at YouTube. Com/bs, terms, embarkos, device, and content restrictions apply. No cancelations. We're going to talk about Harden in a second. Where do you stand on Godfather Three? Is it rewatchable for you? Do you get sucked in? What's your relationship with it?

I think it's all about the casting. I think the casting was harm. And I don't mean it towards Coppola's daughter. I think everybody bitches about her. I don't think that's... Eli Wallak, I thought, was a disaster.

He's bad. George Hamilton is the couturee here.

George Hamilton, his tan doesn't belong in the movie. I think the casting was horrible, and I didn't think that they gave enough. They didn't have somebody that you endeared yourself to, like Clemenza or Tessio, or they didn't have any of those auxiliary characters that you liked. I didn't even like... I didn't like Sonny's son, like his illegitimate son. I didn't even like him. To me, I thought the casting and the portrayal of the illegitimate son were bad. If I were to rewrite it again, I would change the casting. I guess, to change. You can't have George Hamilton in a Dago movie, which is interesting, too. If you read anything on The Godfather, they wanted Italian actors playing Italian parts. That was the main thing they wanted.

And they go on- And somehow James Khan ended up in there.

Yeah. And they get Eli Wallet, who played Mr. Freeze on Batman, and they get goddamn George Hamilton. Where they come up with that?

So we did a rewatchables on it a few years ago. And I'm like, the Sofia Coppola thing, I mean, she's a disaster in that movie, but she was a late ad. She was the Josh Dobbs of the movie. She gets pulled in because Winona Ryder had to bow out at the last minute because of exhaustion. But we were saying recently that Marisa was right there. She's like two years before my cousin, Vinny, and just a rare miss from Coppola. I'm with you on some of the other stuff, but I think Pacino is so good in the movie. It's growing on me. You're watching it. It's just like he's on a five and 12 NFL team, but he's just carrying them- He's Josh Allen. -scene after scene. Yeah, he's Josh Allen. He's the deodorant of Godfather Three. He's just making everything smell better.

You know what I thought he was great in? I thought he was great in The Irishman, Pacino. I think his portrayal of Haifa was brilliant. I think his scenes with down in Florida when he's late, and I think the scene when he's eating ice cream and he gets in a fight with Tony Pro, I think those are rewatchable. Have you done a rewatchable on The Irishman yet?

We're due for it. We've done all three Godfathers. Really, we should be doing more Sopranos stuff because it just doesn't... I don't need to tell you.

This- Did you see they had a Halloween party at the Sopranos House the other day?

They did?

They had a whole... Kevin, he's on Twitter. He had a whole... They rented the house for the people that own it now, and they had this whole party. A lot of the cast members came over. It was incredible. I couldn't go up there. It was a Sunday, I had to work. But yeah, no, you should... The Rewatchable. I mean, if you just took The Sopranos by season and rewatched it-.

Yeah, or did the three signature episodes. We did in September, and I was making the case in the Italian Pop Culture Hall of Fame. I think it's there, and I don't think everybody realizes that it's there. But for me, it's there. For my family, it was there. It's there for you, too, right?

Without a doubt. I mean, it combines every element that you would grow up in the... That's what makes The Sopranos good, is because it combines every element of growing up Italian. The crushwords.

I don't want to say a crib from Bronx Tail, but it definitely, there's some diagram stuff with it. Yeah.

You got the element of stay away from those bad guys, but you can't... It's that Springsteen line that he wrote about. He says, If Paul's eyes were a window in a world so deadly and true, you couldn't stop me from looking, but you kept me from crawling through. That's what I think of when I think of the Bronx Tail.

I don't like where we are now with new Italian pop culture. It's The Three Godfathers, it's Sopranos, It's Bronx, Teo, it's Goodfellows, casino in there.

I would throw the Irishman in there, even though.

It's not true. All right, the Irishman, that's fair.

I can rewatch the Irishman anytime. I know it's not true. I know that's not how it came down, but I know that guy wants to take the credit for it. But watching Peshi in prison, drinking grape juice and playing Bocce Ball, it's one of the great scenes of all time. I could watch that all the time. Now, I'm not watching The Many Saints of Newark, ever. I will never go back to that.

Yeah, you were upset.

About that one. Very upset about that. He let me down on that.

I liked it when I saw it, and then as the days passed, I started picking a part of my brain, and then I was out. But I was just so happy to be in the David Chase world again. I really wanted it to be good. I saw Godfather through my stepdad, and even when we left, he was like, No, it was good. He was trying to talk himself into it, and then we realized it wasn't good.

It's a high school reunion. You want to like everybody that you liked in high school. And then after you get home and you sit around and you think about, I never really liked that guy. He was an asshole. I didn't like that. That's what it was. To me, the many saints in Newark were like a high school reunion. It was a bad one.

We made 600 TV shows last year. There were 600 scripted shows last year. How is nobody making a run at this Sopranos corner? I don't know. Why don't we have another mob show? What are we doing wrong?

I don't understand why. I keep thinking, why isn't there a show? I have a thing called Written Parlet. Why isn't there a show where you combine the Sopranos and entourage together into gambling? Oh, interesting. And the three elements of it, because if you talk to... The one thing I've.

Learned doing this- So a young up and coming bookie crew that's Italian and they're entourage- That's exactly right.

The cops are chasing. The cops are chasing. And what really gets interesting, if you listen to any of these guys, because when I go over to Borgata and do shows, these guys, they won't place their bets. They need runners because they move the number from the book. So if you read Billy Walter's book, he's got guys running for him all the time trying to move lines this way to get the number back the other way. So I think that to me, and people are fast, I don't understand why there's not that show.

I was watching The Godfather the other day because Pluto... Meanwhile, I own The Godfather, and I own it on digital. I own the DVDs. I have all these different ways to watch that, but Pluto has a Godfather channel right now. It's just Godfather all day. So you can go at any point. That's how I got to know that. That's why I got to know that. Godfather 3. Yeah. You just go and it's like, Oh, Colmenza is going to teach Michael how to make meat balls. Okay, I'll just stay here for 20 minutes.

I go to YouTube and watch the deleted seats.

Oh, there's some really good.

Deleted seats. Oh, there's some great...

So you know, Pluto just has commercials, but you just, anytime you just put it on, it's like.

Oh, we're here.

I got to go look that up. I've got to go look that up. I've got to go look that up. I was thinking, so my wife said, we've been together 25 years, and she's like, The entire time I've known you, the godfather would just go on. And I just like, How many times do you need to watch it? I was like, That's not the question. The question is, how many times can you watch it? That's right. And all the things you pull out each time is like, you can watch the 99th time and be like, Oh, I didn't realize that Pachino was doing this and this one. Or he's like, Oh, in The Louis restaurant. I didn't realize that when he frisked him, he grabbed his dick. I didn't see that that time. I never get tired of watching. I just don't.

When Ivan Reitman came to do the draft day in Cleveland, when I was in Cleveland, and I first met him, I said to him, he was telling me about everything he made from Animal House and all. I said, Ivan, the distinction you hold is you've made movies that you can't change the channel from.

Right.

That's a category unto itself. You're never changing stripes. I'm not changing stripes. I'm not changing animal. If it's on and I'm flipping, I'm watching. You're not changing some of the stuff that he makes. That, to me, is like you're not changing... You're not changing The Godfather. How many times have you watched Shawshank? Are you changing that? Of course, you're not changing that, right?

I think Sopranos is like that, too, because sometimes I still have cable and it's like, Oh, they're just randomly doing a Sopranos marathon. I'm like, All right, well, this is going to affect my weekend because I have to... Oh, they're doing season two? Okay.

Yeah. I'll just watch season three over... Now we're getting close to Thanksgiving, and that just puts me in season three mood where I want to watch season three, and I want to see Gloria come into the fold, and then she goes away and.

Then- Gloria was incredible.

The best. I don't know how she didn't win more awards for that role. I have no idea.

Well, you also get a lot of wisdom from The Sopranos. But you did more life lessons at a Bruce Springstane and The Sopranos than anybody.

What are you listen to, I would listen to this podcast called The Founders. And this guy, just all he does is read biographies, and he ends up talking to the people that he writes that he does the podcast on the biographies. It's incredible. And then he feels like he's watched. I've never watched King of Game of Thrones, but he's sitting there saying there's a thousand life lessons in Game of Thrones, and he's got a full notebook full of them. I've never watched it. I think I got to go back and try to watch it.

It's pretty good. I think for your purposes, it's definitely, I think it's one of the five best TV shows ever.

Yeah, I never watched it, so I had to get into it.

All right. Here's the big question. What Sopranos character was James Harden?

Oh, let's see. James Harden was quick and out.

I.

Would.

Say- Less than a season?

Yeah. I mean, he's pussy. He turned on us.

He's big pussy. Oh, interesting. But he was still on the yacht saying, we can work this out. We can work this out. I'm going to show up training camp in Cape.

He's pussy. I mean, seriously, we trusted him. He wanted to be with us. He's supposed to be one of our guys. Then he pretended he had a back surgery, didn't want to do this. And then he went to Puerto Rico. Where did he go? He's in Houston at a strip club.

Yeah, he likes strip clubs.

So to me, he's pussy. He had to go. We'll just kill him on the boat. I love pussy, but he's got to go.

He's got to go. And he leveraged Tony's, all the years they spent together and all the games they had won together basically, like Harden and Darryl Maury.

Yeah. And then he ran away from the fucking police when they raided the building. We don't run. I mean, Harden doesn't run. So why would you do? To me, he's pussy. And the thing it makes it so hard on is the fact that you knew he was a rat, but you didn't want to believe it. Pussy. When Vin came where they were right in front of the Raritan Boat Club, and they have that scene there where Tony's pissed off at Vin because he dragged them away from his kids. They were going fishing that day, and he tells them Pussies are rat. Let's just say Maury's Tony, because then when he tells them that's a rat, Tony says, No, I fucking love them. Well, that's the problem. Maury, you loved Harden. That was the biggest problem.

He didn't trust his shit detector because the love took over the shit detector.

Exactly.

That's why- Do you remember in game six when Big Pussy disappeared for the entire... Oh, no, that was James Harding. I'm getting confused. I can't- Yeah.

No. You know what bothers me the most about it all is- What? -when you do a trade, you're supposed to be objective. I don't know who they turned down for Simmons, but they could have got something cheaper and got-.

Well, we know they could have gotten Halbert.

Halbert?

Yeah. They could have gotten Halbert and Healed because Indiana offered them Sabonus for Simmons. They didn't want Sabonus because they're dead in bead. But then they traded Sabonus for Halbert and Healed, which makes me think it's pretty easy to surmise. They could have just done a three-way and ended up with Halbert and Healed.

And now they're probably trying to trade one of those picks that they just got for Healed.

So either you try to get lucky and you hope that some unhappy team in December just like, Fuck this. We don't want Pascal Siakam. And now all of a sudden you're trying to grab somebody like that, or you're on the fringes with Jeremy Grant, buddy Healed, people like that. But they're wasting another season because they're just not going to be as good as Boston or Denver from a talent standpoint. Their window was last year when Tatum is in a funky game six. And they were four minutes away from getting to a Miami series that they would have matched up pretty well with them.

Yeah. I mean, the window to me was when they traded for Butler, and then they trade. That was their window. And then they went ahead and went double down on Tobias, which was the biggest mistake they made. From the Tobias decision forward, they haven't made a good one since.

It's so funny that you got stuck with this Philly team that didn't believe in basically any of the things you believe in about team building, culture, all that stuff. And then Butler goes to Miami who does all the things that you believe in more than anything.

And they all hated Butler and Philly. Like all my buddies who worked for the team, they're not there anymore. They said, Oh, Butler's a jerk. Well, that's because he's a jerk because we have jerks on the team. He doesn't believe in these guys. When you were texting me the other night when he was running at the Milwaukee game, that sequence of... Actually, somebody put it online, that sequence of him- The touch pass? Oh, my God. No defensive effort whatsoever. They're never going to win.

Well, I wonder-.

Did you like the trade? Did you think it was a good deal?

I don't know who the clippers were bidding against. I thought it was amazing that they gave up as much as they did when they're the only suitor for the person. And now you have at least enough assets. You have all these expirings that you can at least be in the mix two months from now. Because you can package all those salaries together, I think, on New Year's Eve. And you have the extra picks and you can try to get the third star. Because the big thing is Max's gone to another level now and they've unleashed him. And that... There were signs of that last year, but I believe in Max. I think he's really talented. I do, too. So you get that third guy and somehow managed to keep Harris and Harris is your fourth guy, becomes more interesting.

Harris comes off the books. To me, Max is the living proof of what Parcells used to say all the time is we have progress stoppers. I know you've had Doc on and I've listened to Doc, but Doc only played Maxie because he had to. There was just almost forced. And sometimes being forced to play a guy is the only way to really get the guy. Because the coaches are so involved in trying to win the next game, they don't care about player development. They want to win. And yet if you're a coach of a young team or even an older team, say, there's two players on your roster that you have to get ready to help you in April. And if you don't, like Springer from Tennessee, that kid they drafted, if I were the GM of the Sixers, I would be all over, like Nurse, we're either by the end of February, he's either a good player or we blew the pick. Right. We got to get him ready to play. He shows too many good things to not get him ready. He can't sit on the bench and he can't be down with the 86ers.

He's got to play.

I think it's been such a fascinating NBA season from a roster-building standpoint because there's so much talent now that sometimes the addition by subtraction trades become the biggest trades. Like the Celtics, they traded smart and people are like, Oh, my God. The real people that watch Celtic games are like, He's definitely a slipblaster. There's no question. But more importantly, if he's gone, then Derrick White gets to step up, right? Because I think all of us were like, Derrick White's better. But the Smart, the shadow of Smart and White not playing Crunch Time. And now they flip it into a situation where they have White and Holiday. And White's like, I'm bold. And he was awesome in the Miami game on Friday. They almost had to trade Marcus Smart to pave the way for that to happen. I look at the Lakers now because I really like that Lakers team, but they have too many guys, right? Right. So now the Laker fans are mad at Reeves because he hasn't started out well. Russell's playing a lot. They have trouble playing Russell and Gabe Vincent together. They have Christian Wood and Jackson-Hays. Both those guys want to play.

Rui needs minutes, and there's just not enough minutes. So they're going to have to clearly do something. But it's just an interesting time for the League where I think a lot of GMs and owners like their rosters, but they almost have too much and too many assets.

In any business, if you allocate a half hour to a meeting, you end up getting less done. If you allocate 10 minutes to a meeting, you get way more done. And I think a lot of that is in team building, too. If you have too many guys, you can't develop everybody. You've got to say, okay, this is the job of the head coach and the GM, not the assistants, because the assistants can only see the next day. You've got to say, Okay, these are the two players we got to get ready. Everybody else, you do whatever you want. I learned this from Joe Gibbs. Joe Gibbs, when he was coaching with Washington, we had the stupid IR rules. And so what he would do is he would take guys that he knew were a year away and he put them on IR, and he would sign a veteran to replace that guy because he was on IR. But once that guy from IR was ready to go the next year, they didn't have the veteran. So there was always this constant building of the team, and I think that's what happens in basketball. That's why teams don't develop players because they don't know who to develop, they don't evaluate them correctly, and then they don't spend enough time on the development.

They want the guy to be a star like tomorrow. Like, Maxie, when you watched him play, it's revisionist history now, but they weren't giving him any minutes. It was hard to get him a minute. And then when they had to play him in the playoff game, it was like, Holy shit, this guy's really good.

Right. Steve Kerr, I've talked to him about this. Part of the problem of developing the young players and why I think some of the smarter teams now are drafting these older guys out of college because the guys are more ready. They don't have to develop them as much. He's just like, the schedule is too long and they don't have time to practice ever. So if you have somebody like Kaminga or James Wiseman, once the season starts, you're just trying to go from game to game. You're trying to manage your team, and you're just basically trying to survive the 82 games and all the load management stuff we have now, all these different obstacles just to get to the playoffs, you don't have time to develop James Wiseman.

So you got to develop them within the framework of your team. That's the hard part.

And you got to be able to- But if he doesn't fit your team, what do you do? Wiseman, they missed the pick. And then it's like, Well, we could spend a million hours on this, and it's not going to change the fact that he doesn't move in a basketball-Q sense like the other guys we have.

Right. So you got to get rid of him. That's the problem. When I work for the Raiders, we would always constantly... We wouldn't give up on a player. The coaches are practicing coaching, and the good leaders like, like Parcells, those guys, they say, Okay, I figured that guy out. He's a backup. We're getting rid of him. That guy has a chance to be a starter. We're going to keep him. I think that's the hard come. You got to make that decision because you don't want to develop a backup. We're not developing a guy to be a journeyman. We're developing a guy to be a star. We've got to figure out who... The hard part is to figure out who's good and who's great. They all look good, but who could be great? And a lot of that's the character that goes into it. And I think that's really where you've got to be, Walls-like she used to say this all the time. We've got to play guys in September. We might lose, but they'll be ready to play in December.

Right.

In the NBA with 82, you should be able to play. Springer should be playing 20 minutes in November. He's not... What is it?

Well, Doc went through this with Paul Reed, where it's like, just play Paul Reed 20 minutes a game. You're going to need him. He refused to play him.

Because Doc wanted to win regular season games, but that's the problem with coaching is the agendas are different. The personnel guys want to develop the player. The coach wants to win the game. Somehow you got to bring it together.

Okc's figured out at least how to rebuild, add, put young guys in position, succeed. Then Denver has done the best at anybody where Denver, not only did they win the title, they had all these young guys they like, and they just put them right in. And their young guys are basically their bench. And they're like, We trust you guys. We need you guys for two, seven minutes, spurts a half, and you're playing. We're not yanking you guys around. These are your minutes. This is how it's going to go. I think that seems the most of the Celtics are trying to know their bench. Their bench hasn't been good, but at least those guys know they're going to play.

But they're going to get better. If the mantra is we're going to get better, they'll be better and they will only be better in February. They're not going to be any worse. If the guy doesn't give a shit, you get rid of him, right? If he's not beating you halfway, you got to get rid of him. But they're going to get better. And if you coach them hard and they want to get better, they're going to get better. Like the Patriots have all those young offensive alignment. When you watch them against Philly, they suck. When you watched them against Miami, they're actually getting better now. They're getting better. Now, next year they'll be really good. They're too young to play now. They shouldn't be playing but they have no choice but to play because of the injuries. But that's how you develop players. The hard part is to get the owner to let you to develop the players and not get you fired.

Mike Lombardi. A pleasure, as always. Thank you. The podcast is called The GM shuffle if you want to hear, if you want to-.

Yeah, hear me bitch about the Sixers. Yeah, go ahead.

I'll see you in a few weeks.

Thank you. I appreciate it, Bill.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Mike Lombardi. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Sarudy as well. I will see you on this feed on Thursday.

I've never said I.

Don't have.

Feeling with them.

On the wayside.

I'm a bruiser.

I never said I don't have feeling.

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