The 49ers in Shambles, a Possible RUSSurrection, NyQuil Bill, Yankee Hating, and Bad Parenting With Cousin Sal
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but we get to make fun of the jets and we get to complain about the WNBA officiating. I can't wait. Let's bring it. We're live Sunday night.

Cousin Sal is here. And I don't know what to walk us through. Walk us through your state of mind right now. The Mets are done. They're out. One of your favorite baseball teams ever.

Just tragically knocked out of Dodger Stadium tonight. And we lost our WNBA Finals bet. Oh, that was so much. In a Finals that could most generously be described as kind of rigged. But we'll get to that later. How do you feel about the Mets? I don't even care if we get to that later or the Mets. But you're right. I mean, this was a lot of fun. This team was a lot of fun to root for. But I have to say, and you've been through this, like, in October baseball, like...

It's going to be nice to not be scared to watch TV. You know, like you get nervous watching. I'll even say scared. And my kids are nervous and scared. It's like watching The Shining 12 of the last 14 nights and not knowing the ending any of the nights. And it sucked. But I think as a fan, and maybe you'll agree with this, like the saving graces are we played a better team.

and our losses weren't close. So it wasn't like, ah, damn, right? So those two things make it a little less, a little more bearable, but I love this team. And I know people are going to be like, well, you paid $700 million, but...

it's not exactly true. We had like 80 million in dead payroll between Scherzer and Verlander and, and Haktua and Grimace. Like they, you know, they don't count on the cap, but, uh, but I forgot about that. Yeah. Haktua was big throughout the first pitch. We won like 70% of our games, but,

I don't know. They gave us some great moments and I just, I'm proud of some of them. I really am. Just feels like there's been a lot of sad Sal this fall. I know. It's the year of sad Sal. It was like Seinfeld had the year of George. We have the year of sad Sal. What could happen next? I'll pick it back up. I'll pick it back up. I'm excited. My Cowboys are very good after beating that juggernaut Steelers team. Now I have hope again. Right. The Cowboys had a bye week. So that was a positive. Yeah. Right.

Yeah, the Mets were overachievers. And when you're overachievers, you need to win a couple of dumb games during a series when you're playing somebody who's way better than you and you never won the dumb game. You just got killed in the losses. I felt like it was Yankees, Dodgers,

I have a lot of Yankees thoughts. I'm happy to share them now to cheer you up if you want. Let's do it. Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely rooting against the Yankees. I have way more a-hole Yankee fan friends than I do Dodgers. Well, I told you this off the podcast, but my dream was for the Yankees to make the World Series. I thought the higher the stakes...

the longer the fall would be. And everything I thought might happen that I prayed would happen with the Yankee fans who haven't won a title in 15 years, who have bitched about Aaron Boone and Brian Cashman for the last five, nonstop ad nauseum, all the way through like pretty much three-fourths of the way through the summer. And now the chests are puffed out again. Yeah. Because you beat the Guardians and the Royals.

and your chests are puffed out. You hit 230 in nine playoff games. Oh, look out! Big bad Yankees are back! I can't wait for the Dodgers to just ram it right up their sphincters. I can't wait. I can't wait. I am such a Dodger fan. Between Mookie and going against the Yankees, I can't fucking wait. I'm on a lot of cold medication too, by the way. Wow. I didn't know that. I can't wait. This is great. Oh! Soto! What did that bat?

He is in 15 pitches against some fucking pitcher I've never heard of. Okay. Let's see it. Let's see it against the Dodgers. I'm 100% cheered up. I love it. Let's go. I love it. Let's go. The Yankees, who haven't won jack shit in 15 years, they've won one title this century, and now their fans think they're hot shit again. And they're on brand at all times, and I fucking love it. Good. Good. We just need those.

Go, go Dodgers. Look at you. And if it had been the Mets, I would have been like, go Mets. But it's actually better if they lose to the Dodgers. Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, that's the scary part, right? It's the worst thing of all sports if the Mets lose to the Yankees. So I didn't really want to risk that once I knew they were in there. But I have to root for my team, of course. But yeah, is this the first time? When was the last time any league got exactly the matchup they wanted? Was it Warriors- It's true. Warriors-Cavs?

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

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

I love it. Yeah, it's all home runs, right? So they needed Soto. They needed Stanton. They needed Judge. They needed two of those three guys to produce. And they got that. And it's right time. I don't know. Maybe they'll calm down with a few days off and stuff. But we have to root against the Yankees. I'm sorry. And then this recency bias era we live in, it's like Stanton.

this is one of the best playoff Yankees ever. It's like, you guys haven't won a world series. You guys won a million world series. I, we can name 40 Yankee batters over the course of history who are more important to the Yankees franchise than, than, uh, Stanton. Yeah. Cause he has like 73 more playoff games than Yogi Berra because they were like three or five series to get to the world. And that was it. So there's been seven Gatorade celebrations because of this stupid sport that we've created where every, every five days you get to celebrate again. Yeah.

Anyway, go Dodgers. Good luck to Mookie Betts. I hope Otani. Wouldn't it be great if Otani pitched next round out of nowhere? Oh, wow. Oh, he should at least pitch to the last batter.

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

Wow. Try to calm myself down. Yeah. Four times. No offense, but I'm going to watch the Mets documentary once upon a time in Queens. I know the Red Sox. You can watch that. That was a million years ago. There you go. 20th anniversary of a lot of good stuff that happened with the Red Sox Yankees too. Oh, that's right. When everything turned. Oh yeah. Cough medicine bill. I love it. Yeah. Oh, that's more than cough medicine, man. It might be straight drugs. I think I take fentanyl. Did you?

We'll save WNBA for right before parent corner. Cause I have some thoughts on that too. Heated. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. NFL. So week seven, I needed a name for this because week seven is when you really can't fool people anymore. You kind of are who you are. You've been scouted. If you have any holes, they're going to get picked. If you have any warts, they're going to be pulled. So I was thinking like, I'm sure your wife has this. My wife has it too. Those circle makeup bearers.

where you can flip it and it like magnifies. And if you flip it, you can, you look at your face. That's how you don't even understand what you're looking at. The pores are like so crazy. You flip it around, you get this nice,

This is makeup mirror week, Sal. This is the week there's no hiding. You turn that light on, you're looking, and it's like, yeah, that's a zit. Yeah, that's a mole right there. Yeah, that's an old age spot. Everybody who had those flaws, the makeup mirror got shied of them this week. You were on fire. You're on fire today. When I'm on drugs, I'm always better. This is the NyQuil ninja coming at us tonight. I love it. I love it. No, you're right. The bad teams...

were terrible today. They were absolutely terrible. And I think we saw the top of the line teams, you know, emerge. And you know how I know this because, I don't know, maybe I'm giving you a little bit of a hint here. If you look at the week eight lines, they look like real lines, Simmons. They're not like one and a half. I noticed that when I was guessing. Like that, you know, so anyway, we'll get into that. Well, we had Tennessee lost by 24 to Buffalo. Right. The Giants lost by 25 to Philadelphia. Yeah.

New Orleans on Thursday night lost by 23 to the Broncos and Carolina lost 40 to seven to Washington. And then my stupid team lost by 16 to the Jags. But it was like, there was a little bit of a,

of a settling of now we really have a sense of who the bad teams are. You did get excited. I don't know if you were loaded up on cold medicine this morning when the Pats scored the first touchdown because you were... We're up 10-0. I know. You hit us with a little bit of a text barrage. I'm like, oh, I hope this holds here. Well, what happened was we came to London with 10 plays.

Nine of them worked. And then they were like, oh shit, there's two and a half hours to go in the game. What do we do now? Should we hand off again to an eight man front? Yeah, let's do it again. Maybe Antonio Gibson will break through this time. Makeup Maritime, the Jets, who we've had a fall guy now two straight weeks or some sort of magic elixir or something. It was, they fired Salah.

They traded for Devontae Adams, even though it seemed like you could do whatever you want against their defense. And now the Steelers really kind of used and abused them tonight. And now I guess the fall guy's going to be the kicker because he missed another one, Zerline. Yeah, he has another one. They just fired Jeff Albridge, the coach. They got rid of him. No, they didn't. I would have believed that. Why not? Aaron says, that's it. That's it for you. You get one shot.

Two and five, but smart Devonta Adams trade. He was just what they've needed. They managed to not crack 20 points again. Here's what they have for points this year. 19, 24, 24, 9, 17, 20, 15. And is that less or the same as last year? Because coming into this week, it was exactly the same, I think, as 2023's offensive output. You're probably around the same output, right? Yeah, that's it. It can't be more. Yeah, their defense just isn't very good.

They're not very good. I'm, I'm done with them on prime time too, even though I think we got like two more news to the next four. Yeah. Two of the next four. Oh, they did it early. So that in case he goes away or something, Oh, just God help us. If they're flexed in like week 14 or something, but they, uh,

Yeah, they were, they're bad there. I didn't understand that line at all. I made it a rat line. It was two and four at four and two. If you look at Fandle, the over under for wins for the Jets was seven and a half for the Steelers. It was eight and a half. I'm like, I'm staying away from this except for the Sal special. Yeah. First half Steelers won the game plus eight 50. Did that hit? God bless. It hit anybody who was on it. Oh my God. What is that? Four times now? I think it's three, three. Yeah. But at eight to one each time, you know? So, uh, yeah, good. Good for the Jets.

Smart team. You know, that line was super suspicious and then it moved by game time. It was basically two and a half on Fandle Jets by two and a half.

I just felt like I had to just out of sheer respect for Mike Tomlin and just the whole infrastructure. I had to tease the Steelers to eight and a half with the, I teased the over down to 33. Oh, I thought you teased him with the Mets. I was going to be upset. No, I didn't do that, but it just seemed like we had a lot of disrespectful lines this week and all of them came back to bite whoever, right? The Lions was disrespectful. The Chiefs, Mahomes as an underdog was just, I just can't believe that happened. But, um,

In this case, so I did that. And then you're watching the game and the Jets looked really good for about a half hour, a little like the Patriots. And I'm thinking, oh man. And Russ is like getting, he got booed. You probably were in, in Mets hell, but I think his third series was,

And he just looked bad and just terrible pass. He got booed. Collinsworth was stammering. And it just seemed like it was going to go super ugly. And then all of a sudden the game flipped. Well, from what I saw and could gather, I had the game on also, but I wasn't listening, but...

He threw some good passes, but he threw what's more telling is his bad passes might fit this offense. That Eli Manning underthrown, as long as it's one-on-one to Pickens, he's going to maybe get it more than five times out of ten, and then you're all set. So kudos. And by the way, they spent a million and a half dollars on both these guys, like Fields and Wilson. I don't blame the coach for being like, all right, let's see what else we got here.

You know, like Fields isn't exactly the franchise quarterback right away, even though they're four and two. So good job by them for now, right? We talked about it last Sunday that we thought Fields, they won, but he was bad last week. I didn't think he was good against Dallas either. And I wasn't surprised when they made this switch, but I'm so glad you brought up the deep ball offense. Yeah. We've been talking about this the entire time. You and I have been doing this podcast dating back to 2007, that if you don't really have a passing offense, you're,

Just fucking chuck it downfield. And Pickens is among the best people to do that with. He's really good at like slowing down, jumping in traffic, contested catches. I was texting our fantasy guys. I was like, this is my dream offense. I've been, I've been begging for everyone else dreams about like the West coast offense or four verticals. I'm like, I just want to see somebody chuck it down one of the sidelines, uh,

Um, just like it's either an interference, it's a catch, it's incompletion, or there's what a 10% chance it's picked, but then it's like a punt.

There's kind of no downside versus like having somebody just go back to pass and third and eight gets tipped at the line, whatever. So Pickens is the perfect guy for it. And I felt like we have to figure out a name for that pass. We have to figure out. Flacco. Flacco perfected it. All right. I know you mentioned Eli and Eli definitely did it. But Flacco, this was the Ravens offense in the mid 2010s because they were like, ah, just go back and just fucking throw it.

I meant to write it down, but Collinsworth called it something much more diplomatic. It was much more like... He was calling it moon balls. Moon ball, yeah. Oh, these moon balls. Moon ball. In a positive way, he was saying. Yeah, Mike, it makes me think of Moon Pie and Rollerball with James Caan. That's a great movie. It's about futuristic violence, Mike. It's so good.

the moon ball offense. Russell's got a boom, but he's got Crescent Moon. He's got Waxing Crescent. He's got everything. Half Moon. He might as well Moon us, Mike. He might as well pull his pants down and Moon us. That's what he's doing with his offense. Pickens seem way happier. You know, I never really know whether to believe this or not, so I always try to read between the lines, but it was interesting some of the

Some of the feedback on the practice during the week, even Melissa Stark before the game, like there's a real energy with this team. We were there two weeks ago on the field. The energy feels different. So maybe the fields thing was a little worse behind the scenes with people feeling like he could run the offense correctly. They're also, I mean, the other thing is their running backs are healthier than they were the last couple of weeks. So the Steelers are five and two. Warren's nice when he's healthy. He could, yeah, they could trade off between those two.

So this is one of my big, I mean, pretty much all of my big ones before the year, except the, the fricking Jaguars, but Pittsburgh and Seattle, who's now in first place in the NFC West. I'm feeling good about my futures jets two and five at the Patriots next week, home for Houston four days later on a Thursday night. That's a tough game because Houston's D line I think is really good. Right. At Arizona week 10,

home Indy week 11 on a Sunday night. So they're two and five. What's their record in four weeks? Would you go four and seven, five and six? Four and seven would be, five and six is, wow, they're playing great ball and getting lucky, I would say. But four and seven is more likely. I mean, you can't say, the Patriots was their only

I don't know that they, they barely beat the Titans and then they beat your team on a Thursday night. Like there's no real game on the schedule that they're definitely going to win. Right. Well, on the flip side, the kicker cost them week four and week five. Yeah. So you could, right. Could talk yourself into whatever reality you want. That's what I'm saying. Everything's close. Like they're not, you can't say you're definitely winning this, definitely winning it, you know? So, yeah, I feel like I've watched an inordinate amount of jets this season.

And I don't know what the stats are. Yeah. Cause they're on or they're in London or they're on night. Um, it just feels like Rogers is getting hit a lot. And now like he's just bleeding. It's like a wrestler. It's like a CM Punk or something. Right. Right. Right. All over the place. It's a Tarantino film. Every time he goes out there for sure. They don't feel like a playoff team to me. So I don't think so. I know we do this over and over and over again with the standings, but

Just like Buffalo now has a three game lead over them in the division. So I would say, unless Allen gets hurt, lock them in Pittsburgh and Baltimore in the North. There's three Houston in the South. That's four. And then chiefs. And then I, I just like the chargers more than them had six. So now they're battling against the Broncos, the Colts, the Bengals, maybe Miami of two, it can come back in time, but.

So it's not, it's not due. Maybe nine and eight gets the seven seed. That's their only path. I don't think that's what they have to hope for because like I said, eight and three, the rest of the way, they don't have it up yet, but Vandal had him at seven and a half before, before today's game. So they're like a solid seven win team at this point going forward. I think they, they're going to have to up it by three to make the playoffs. What's the funniest outcome? Cause I have an idea.

Go ahead, tell me yours. Let me see. Roger's asking for a trade on McAfee's show on Tuesday. Saying this just didn't work. This just didn't work. You know, I look around, I see some other teams and maybe there's a better place for me. I just think that would cause a riot. I like that too. That could shut down Twitter right before the election, which we probably need. Oh yeah, yeah, do it Aaron. Come on. Do it Aaron. Just float it out. Float it out. Some teams out there I see. Some holes at QB.

That or power forward for the Minnesota Lynx. He's decided he's moving. He's changing. That's it? Yeah. Oh my God. Jets have the same... Actually, Miami has a half game lead over the Jets. And it feels like they're one of the four or five most unwatchable teams in the world.

In either conference. And they have a better record. They have a half game lead on there. How is that possible? Our friend JJ was watching their game. You know, he's a big Dolphins fan and screaming at the TV. Like, I think, I don't know what it is. He, he, I think he had more faith in, uh, who's that idiot that comes in at the third string to boil, to boil than the, the other 15 of us sitting in the room watching. But yeah. Yeah.

That's not a fun team to root for. Is he still there? Is he just slumped on a chair? Did you leave him there? What happened to him? He did. Oh, the Yankee enthusiasm turned on a dime real quick. Didn't take much. So he had a lot of swagger because of the Indians Royals win. Sorry. Yeah. We're going to take a quick break for the podcast.

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And for a limited time, you can get 10 free boneless wings from Buffalo Wild Wings. Go. When you spend $15 and use promo code, go boneless, which by the way, I'm a boneless guy. Sorry. I just love it.

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I think we can. I don't want to go back on this, though, because we've been criticized about crossing teams off. Who criticized us? We crossed them off. Like the radical left? The left? The right? The far right? Was it the red states? Who's criticized? Remember the swift boat people? Oh, yeah. No, no. So we crossed off the Giants and we brought them back. Let's just keep teams crossed off. What's the worst that's going to happen? How about this? We'll keep the Giants crossed off. We're right. All right. I'm good.

Well, these three are crossed off. New England, Carolina, and Cleveland. Panthers, Patriots. They're all one and six. They're done. And Carolina, Lombardi said this on my pod on Thursday, I think. And I actually think he might be right that this is the worst team in the decade now, this Carolina team. Really? They've gotten worse every week. They were down 37-0 today and they weren't even like, eh, maybe we should throw Bryce Young out there. They didn't even do that. I was just going to say, you know it's bad when he's...

Pretty much set to come back week eight after how bad he was. Yeah. So, all right. So those three for sure.

I think Tennessee at one in five. I don't see a path for them. They're awful. They gave up 27 unanswered to Buffalo today. That was my best bet. And people killed me. I did have some reluctance once they switched from Will Levis to Rudolph. And then Fandel went from eight and a half to nine. I'm like, all right, I'm not going to overthink this. Rudolph's a

59% passer, you know, the Bills will demolish them at home. Took a minute, but they did. Yeah, you were close for a second. All right, so there's four, two and five teams. I don't think the Jets are a cross off yet. Okay. Vegas, they just lost

You know, it's bad when it's like, Oh no, Aiden O'Connell's hurt. Oh no. What are we going to do? We don't have Aiden O'Connell. Poor Minshew comes back, which is one of my favorite football scenarios every year. When you, the guy gets benched and then has to come back in a week later. Right. Really tough. What's that? Like the marital equivalent of that? Like,

I'm moving out. I'm having an affair with my assistant. And then a week later, like, Hey honey, I'm back. I'm back. It didn't work out. Yeah. Yeah. That's it's sorry. Hey, yeah. You didn't, you didn't put my stuff in the attic yet. Did you? Uh, Minshew's just back. And by the way, he's, he was just as terrible as he was before he got bent. Yeah. They're fine. Well, I mean, the coach is hilarious. The only reason to watch them is that the coach to watch him kick a field goal down, you know, seven or

or eight, whatever. Well, no, let's hit this. But we can wait. It's 20 to 12. There's four minutes left and it's fourth and goal from, I think, the four. Yeah. And first they get a false start, which is just like that. That's the last level when you're like the Patriots absolutely would have a false start in that situation. The worst coach teams are always going to do something dumb in that spot. So now it's fourth and nine. They're up eight.

And you still have to go for it. Because even if you don't get it, they're stuck inside the tent. Maybe you'll get a pass interference in the end zone. You're basically turning a one touchdown game into a one touchdown game. There's no reason to do it. None that I can think of.

No. And then kicker and it kicks it at least line up to draw them off size and try to get five yards closer. And then you definitely go for it, but you should be going for it anyway, because guess what? Look at the scoreboard. You have 12 points against the Rams defense. You're it's not your day. So you're not going to get down there three more times, two more times, another time. So yeah, go for the touchdown there. But anyone who had the spread.

So I think you're right with the, cause they have five losses. They have the chiefs twice, two and five. They're they're done. They have the chargers and they're at the box. So they're going to have nine for sure. They're one of the most poorly coached teams in the league and they have bottom five quarterbacks. It's a pretty tough combo. I mean, I even like the Pat situation more cause at least we can move the ball. So that's six, right? Six teams, Vegas giants, two and five. Yep.

Tennessee, New England, Carolina, Cleveland. And then if we want to do a sixth, I can offer you the two and five Jags, the two and five Jets, two and four Miami or the two and four Rams. And I wouldn't,

cross off any of those I don't think all right yeah we got some time but out of those I would say Jags I would probably be the most excited to cross off just because I'm not buying just because you beat the one of the worst coach least talented teams right now the last couple years I'm not gonna sorry a party yeah if this was NCAA field they're the first first buy they're the first one coming in

If we have to kick somebody out. You think Doug got a window or is he in the aisle? Where is he? Coach middle seat. He's not middle seat Doug on the fight home. No, you got to say coach middle seat. That's half the joke coach because he's flying coach and he's middle seat. Yeah. But he's also coach. Coach middle seat. Coach middle seat. Yeah. Okay. No, but I got more than middle seat Doug.

I don't know. I think I do. Did you see what he did today? Bag of peanuts. That's it. Nothing. I guarantee nobody noticed this. So they're up... I forget. They're up maybe 13 or 15. It's a two-score game. And it's like fourth and two in the fourth quarter. And Doug decides to go for it. If it's a field goal, he's up 18. Now it's a three-possession game with 10 minutes left and we have no offensive line. And instead...

Doug goes for it for reasons that remain. Like the games, we've lost the ability for coaches to just say, Hey, if I do this now, the game's over. People right now, if we go from fourth and two, maybe we, I don't even know what the rationale is. Anyway, we stuff them. Pat's come down and they score and Mayo who needs a nickname. Maybe he's middle C Bay. I don't know. I don't even know what his nickname is. He's just awful. He's just an awful coach. Um, go, goes for two down nine and we don't get it.

Right. And that's it. And the reason you have to go for two was because earlier in the game on a PAT, we jumped off sides and then they went for two and got it and they went up. So instead of being up 14, they're up 15. Cause I got a yard closer. Yeah. So now we have to chase the PAT when we score and we don't get it and we stay down nine.

And, uh, and we're done. And Mayo had some just classic quotes after the game. The guy doesn't move during the game. He doesn't, there's no coaching whatsoever. Poorly put poor planning. We have no strategy past the first half of the first quarter. We have multiple guys grumbling after the game. Kendrick Boren's agent today.

after the game did this Instagram post, like congratulating Kendrick Bourne for his professionalism because they told him he was going to be healthy scratch. And then somebody was sick and he ended up playing last minute and caught a touchdown. Then he's talking shit about Polk, the rookie and how he's got to get out of this mental state he's in. And Polk's like, I'm fine. I just need to make some plays. Um,

This is just such a train wreck. I can't believe this was like Kraft's handpicked guy who, by the way, he handpicked like six years ago and openly talks about it. Yeah. I was on Belichick's coaching staff.

Out of everything you just said, the thing that surprises me most is that Kendrick Bourne has an agent, but I'll believe you. But yeah, it's, we were saying earlier, this is a bad year for Mayo with the Will Levis and the coffee and your coach really. It's just a rough year for Mayo all around. Yeah. So he said health studies that came in down on the condiment rankings. He's, he does gives us interview after and he's like, we're just a soft team right now. We're a soft team. It's like,

Boy, the coach, I bet the coach is going to really lay into it. Oh, wait, you're the coach. You're responsible for whether this team is soft or not. We don't have physical practices.

Oh, I'm sorry. It was KJ Osborne. Kyle reminded me. I got KJ Osborne and Kendrick. Oh, he has KJ Osborne. Is that less surprising that he is an agent? It's exactly the same. My bad. KJ Osborne. I mixed up our anonymous receivers who were probably getting paid too much money, but we have a soft team according to Gerard Mayo, who, who is the person in control of every practice.

Don't you immediately lose the locker room if you say you have a soft team? I think he already lost it. What's the rumblings like between the punter and the free safety? Like, yeah, Coach says we're soft. Are we? I don't know. Maybe we are. Stupid penalties. They have terrible play calling.

you know, who jumps off sides on a PAT? Like that's, that's side alone that you have no idea what we're doing. This guy, he's been just awful. You're down to three and a half wins on Fandle. And through shade to Belichick this week too, about like shaded him on the roster. It's like, you wouldn't have a career if it wasn't for Belichick. He was the guy who gave you coaching chance. And you're budding up with craft. I'm just disgusted by the whole thing. Um,

All right, so we have six cross-up teams. Well, let me... Hold on. Let me look at this real quick because you have three. No, no, we have six. New England, Carolina, Cleveland, Tennessee, Vegas, Giants. Crossing them off. That's it. And we can't bring them back. It's not like JJ changing his survivor pick every week. Gotcha. Right. Yeah, you guys... You guys...

Wow, you have the lowest win total. Three and a half. Listen, before the season, as I repeatedly just picked Pats, Unders, and Alt, Unders, and you were getting mad at me. They can't block. They're poorly coached. And they've had a bunch of defensive injuries already. The thing is, May is good.

And you know, that's the thing. Yeah. You only have to root for him. Isn't it nice? You don't have to root for this team. All this other nonsense with the coach and everything's fun. He's going to be gone anyway. You have one player to root for. And that's nice. You can, you can concentrate your efforts on Drake May.

No interceptions today. Right. Super fun to watch. I thought he made the, the nerds will come out with all of their like advanced where they break down the plays and given the ratings, I guarantee his ratings are good in that game. Cause he did a lot of good stuff and we can't block. Yeah. And drops, terrible drops in the first half chiefs diners. So my homes now moves to 12, one in one as an underdog. And I'm going to posit you with this question.

Because that was the stat. That was the reason I picked the Chiefs. I'm not kidding. I almost swept a million dollar picks today. I lost the Packers by a half point. It was 4-1. I just missed it. So, is Mahomes 12-1-1 as an underdog? I think that's what it was. He was. Or...

are the Chiefs 12-1-1 during the Mahomes era playing off the tweet that you did today, which I thought was a really good tweet about the defense. Go ahead, do your thing on this. Well, it's just the most underrated unit, I think, of the decade. Spagnola, right? Like the Chiefs keep them in all these games, all the important games. You can blame it on the refs or whatever else. It's the defense that has them there. And especially this year, you have, what is it,

What does he have? Six touchdowns, eight interceptions Mahomes. He better not be tops for MVP. I know they're undefeated. I get it. But they're the reason he's in this. What happened with him? He like he coached the Rams. He got fired. And then he was just like a like an, you know, he was he just became the best defensive coordinator because nobody wanted to take a chance with him again.

It's great. He's excellent. He's a completely, I guess, an overpaid defensive coordinator slash specialist, right? He's paid as a head coach or close to a head coach, but just wants to run the defense. And he's going to go in the... Plus 370. I think there's a chance he could go in the Hall of Fame as a defensive coordinator. Interesting. But overshadowed by Andy Reid all the time, right? All we heard about was his record off a bye and Mahomes, like you just said, record as an underdog. You don't hear about Spagnola. That defense is excellent.

Really good. The defense is the reason they won the Super Bowl. They were four and five in the red zone today, which really helped. And then you mentioned Mahomes, 154 yards, zero touchdowns, two picks, had a rush TD. For the season, six touchdowns, eight picks. He is not top 1,400 yards yet.

And I would say he's probably as a fantasy quarterback, probably in the twenties. Oh yeah. It's like, but gotta be like QB 22 or something like that. He did have a great, he had two great plays today. One, he decked Mustafa the safety for the touchdown. I love that. He seems bigger this year. And then he's mastered the, I'm going to run out of bounds. Oh, actually I'm not. I'm cutting back in play, which feels like a, like it's cheating.

Yeah. They should almost allow that extra step then, because if you, if you take a hit at them on the sidelines, but yeah, it really is. It's like, ah, my father could kick your father's ass. So, uh, watch, uh, watch what I could do, you know, like, oh, we got to let them get away with it. What are we going to do? You know? Well, it was one of the biggest, biggest things to the games. The other thing that happened today, do you see the movie Frost Nixon?

Oh, yeah. Sure. Really good, right? I mean, famous. One of the great interviews of all time. Famous interview. Immortalized in a really good movie. We'll see what happens with Brady Mahomes. I don't know if you saw that interview, but it was really the Frost Nixon of this decade. Yeah. Really some hard-hitting questions. Some really in-depth answers. Really, I was riveted. So good. Do you remember after the AFC title game and I came over and I said...

Hey, man, I wish you luck. Yeah, yeah, I do remember that. Then they cut to like a wide shot of the stadium. Next question. Right, right, right. These interviews are so bad. Why do they have these? They spend like a kajillion dollars with 17 cameras filming them. And it's the worst content you could possibly have. Yeah. And I don't like it's like... And by the way, I was about to compliment them. I was like, well, Brady's gotten better. Like, whatever. He might not be your favorite, but...

We know what he is now. And he's like, he's in the flow of announcing, you know, but then these interviews, first of all, interview Jackson Mahomes or, or the wife or something, anything's going to be better. But the one thing I don't like that Brady does is like, Oh, the, this guy was the bane of my existence.

This guy, this coordinator was a bane to buy. Andy Reid's a bane. I was like, what are you talking about? You never lost to anybody. Yeah, you beat everybody. Yeah. It's like Howard Stern asking, oh, how much you, wow, you make $4 million a year. It's like, shut up. You make 400 million. Shut up. Enough. We're not buying this. This guy was the bane of my existence. I would have had a 900 winning percentage if not for this guy. That was $899,000.

He's getting a little better as a game announcer, but he also has a bunch of ticks now that he's gotta get rid of. He always says like, and again, what I was saying about the receivers, he's always bringing us back to something you said 10 minutes ago. - What if you just tuned in? - Just keep going. It's been great for Romo, 'cause I think it's been a really strong Romo year. Meanwhile, the Niners are not just our leaders for the year from hell.

I think they've just about locked it down. Like, Ayuk looked like he tore his ACL. It seems like they fear it, and we'll find out officially tomorrow. Should we cross them off? Is that what you're getting at? No, but they're three and four. 33 picks today on the KC34, on the KC31, and on the KC5. And there was a question...

Remember last year, I'd be like, yeah, sure, Brock Purdy's doing well, but what would he be like with all these weapons? And it's like, today we found out. Or did we find out? Because I still like Purdy. But that'll be the game people point to. This is what happens when you just have weapons. He sucks. You know, I blame myself, I think, because you and I have flip-flopped on Shanahan a lot. And I know I've flipped on Purdy a lot. And like three weeks ago, I was like, that's it. I'm done. He's really good.

He's very, very good. Not even for a Mr. Irrelevant. He's very good at what he does. And then since I made that statement, I don't know what's going on. But yeah, again, and we gave the Chiefs defense credit, but what's left now for these 49er receivers? Is it just Kittle? They got the guy who got shot, Ricky Pearsall's in there. But without Samuel and without Iyuk, it's definitely a different team.

Yeah, the year from hell, if we're looking for signs for the year from hell, maybe a guy getting randomly shot during a robbery right before the season who was a first-round pick is probably about as good of a sign as you're going to get. And that guy's back before McCaffrey. Yeah, right. So somehow they're playing your stupid team next week on Sunday night. That's why I needed them to win today. And if the Niners lose their 3-5 heading into the bye, after the bye at Tampa, home Seattle, at Green Bay, at Buffalo,

So they could potentially be three and five walking in that. What's your team's record? You're three and three. Yeah. Yeah. So one of those things is not impressive. It feels high. So I'm not, I'm not crossing off the Niners as a playoff team.

But I don't think they're even close to being one of the five best teams in the NFC. No. They've had too many injuries. I think the three best teams are in the NFC North now in the NFC, right? I think you're right. I would go Detroit, Minnesota, and Green Bay over any other team in the NFC. Yeah. You know, maybe I'll feel differently tomorrow, but I have an irrational affection for the Bucs.

But I don't know. Maybe they're on the outside looking in. But yeah, you're right. The Niners needed this. I know they had injuries and everything. But if this is not an FU game to the team that beat you in the Super Bowl on a questionable call at the end and everything else, when are they ever going to beat a team like this? How about this? Who's your two seed in the NFC right now? Your choices are Washington, Tampa, or Seattle. Those are the three teams leading their divisions right now. Like we could...

I'll go Tampa. I would go Tampa. You'd take Tampa? Yeah. They really could be five and one. It's a pretty big two seed because then you're playing the seven seed in round one and then you're getting the winner of basically anyone underneath you in round two. So it's not like a small thing to be the two seed. All right, more stuff that happened. By the way, that Chiefs-Niners game, I just think the Chiefs, they've hit that point that the Pats hit

at some point that the Colts hit near the end of the 2000s where it almost like doesn't matter who those, who are their skill players are. Yeah. Like even Carson Steele was out there for getting big first downs. It just doesn't matter. And their defense, their coach and their infrastructure, like they just kind of hang around and then they, they know they're going to win the game. You know what I mean? But you don't think Mahomes is struggling is more than he has been? Yeah. But I'm saying like, they just hang around these games and then they win them.

And you just know they're going to win. I never for a second doubted they were winning that game today. Right. Yeah. They weren't going to, they don't blow leads like that. And yeah, that's, well, we're dumb. We're dumb. We should always just take the Chiefs. Like, I know they're going to get tripped up by someone stupid, but the games you think it's going to happen just doesn't. Well, didn't JJ go against them today? Who zagged against them? JJ. Yeah. Yeah. Wasn't it JJ? Yeah. JJ.

He's like Juan Soto, 14 pitches, 14 pitches nodding after every pitch. Cause he knew I can't wait. I can't wait for the Dodger fans to stick it to them. So they got to lose and Soto's got to leave the team. That's the best. I don't want it. We don't need to get back to baseball, but that would have just the best. Yeah. Bengals beat the Browns. Deshaun got hurt. It looks like a torn Achilles. So I wrote this down. I'm just going to read it to you. So

I can't even come up with the Deshaun take. It's in the running for the least fun start to finish sports story in this century that didn't involve a murder. Are we sure it didn't involve a murder? I don't know. Pretty sure. Evidence is out. Can you think of a less fun week to week sports story than Deshaun goes to Cleveland?

No, I get it. It's too much. It is devoid of entertainment from start to finish. And I felt bad. I always feel bad when an athlete gets injured today. But, you know, the fan base is like, finally. It's just everything about... Jameis had an incredible, like, two and a half minute monologue in the locker room after about Deshaun. But it's just...

He's good for those. Yeah. And then I was surprised that he wasn't the number two guy. DTR had to get hurt first and Dorian Thompson Robinson for Jameis to get it. And then I'm looking, I'm like, all right, maybe Stefanski finally through injury has the setup he wants. Probably not. But, you know, 21-14 against the Bengals, they clawed back in it. They actually, the Bengals had a hard time moving the ball in that game. Tee Higgins had...

That was the first game where sometimes that would happen to Bengals in previous years where T. Higgins feels like he's more important to the game than Chase does. And that's when you know they're humming. Right. And they've also finally figured out that they got to keep Chase Brown on the field. Yeah. Right. That he's just got to get more touches. So, you know, would that would it shock me if that team made the playoffs? No. What are their fan do odds right now?

Well, let me tell you. Yeah, minus T20. You talk about the Bengals. I'm going to look this up. They're minus 124 to make the playoffs. Oh, they're minus? Yeah, so plus 102 for the no. And they're kind of easy to figure out. You know, a lot of these teams we talk about, we can't figure out. The teams with the good defenses...

they can't really score against. Like what happened with the Giants the other night? Like, you know, don't forget they had a kick return for a touchdown today. Otherwise, a pretty stagnant offense against the Browns. So who did they lay it on? They laid it on the Panthers and that's it? I'm not sure. The Ravens don't have a bottom three defense. Say what you will about it. If you don't lay it on the Panthers, there's something wrong with you. We'll take one more break for the podcast.

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Okay. Lions, Vikings, Lions 31, Vikings 29. Another game where I didn't understand the line and then it seemed like the Vikings were going to win. They had the ball. They had a chance to put the game away. Could not get the first down they needed. Detroit gets the ball back.

Goff makes a couple plays. I thought Detroit was better in the game and Minnesota almost stole it. But then you look at the stats after the game and everything was pretty even. Yards were even, first downs, like a lot of the stuff, it was a more even numbers game, but I didn't feel that way watching. I thought Minnesota was lucky to be hanging around. And if they stole that game, it was like, Jesus, what do we have with this Vikings team? So anyway, I thought the right team won, but I thought it was weirdly a good loss for the Vikings too.

Yeah, definitely. Because we're watching that game. I think part of us at least thinks, all right, Sam Donald's slide has to start somewhere. Why not now? He really wasn't bad. He was like 22 for 27. He made some big throws. They got back in that game. It would have been a really bad loss for the Lions. And it would have just been like, all right, the Vikings are back to two years ago where they went every one score game. But, uh,

Goff has been, you talk about like MVPs. He really, I'm trying to think of his number. So he was 18 for 18 against Seattle. He was 22 for 25 against Minnesota. His numbers have been really good lately. What are his MVP odds? Because they're going to get a one seed. MVP odds are plus 650. Mahomes is plus 370, which I'm guessing is just because there's so much action on him. They can't move it up too high. Lamar is five to one. Allen's.

Five to one. CJ is plus 950. Jordan Love, who was not good today, was 13 to one. Right. So our thing, our cheat thing is that it's a top two seed, right? Lions get closer and closer to that one seed every week, I think.

thought golf was awesome today because they were coming after him. And there were a couple of times when it seemed like old Jared golf, when he was going back to pass, there were guys around him and I was like, here's the golf. He just doesn't throw those plays anymore. And, uh,

He had, there was one throw he missed in the fourth to, to Raymond, the Holy Cross kid. Right, right. Where he was deep down the sidelines. And for some reason he just kind of sailed it a little bit out of bounds and it would have been like a 70 yard touchdown. But for the most part, I thought, uh, I thought he was,

Really good. I gotta be honest. I thought that game felt like an NFC title game. The Vikes kept coming back. The crowd was great. Jefferson had a couple really good moments. Aaron Jones, who wasn't supposed to play all week. Yeah. He was really, really good again. Yeah. And

I thought that game felt like a playoff game and Packers Texans felt like a play it that both of those felt like round two or round three playoff games. I agree with you and not that it matters because he's probably not coming back. He's talking about coming back for the Super Bowl, but I also think the Lions would have put them away with one or two Aiden Hutchinson plays right? Yeah, if he was in that lineup, I was

up. I was like, all right, this would have been like a 12-point game or something going midway through the fourth. I'm sure they're going to trade for some pass rusher, right? These teams always magically find enough money, especially because the guys get paid game by game. So the closer you get to the middle of the season, it's a little cheaper to be able to add the person. But I'm sure they'll get something. Max Crosby is probably one of them. I mean, all the parity accounts are more and more believable every week. So you have to think that he's on his way out. Yeah.

What would they get for Max Crosby? That's got to be at least a first, right? First and something else. Yeah, yeah. Isn't he pricing that? I thought he just signed an extension. I don't know anyone's deal. Somebody on the Browns, maybe, if the Browns are just like... They're talking about Miles Garrett throwing. Yeah. Miles Garrett. That's, I mean...

Cause on the pats, they were talking about Ruche. It was like basically a third down specialist guy, but right. So then in the Packers game, which was a great back and forth, the Packers win somehow don't cover line was either two and a half or three Packers win by two. And, uh, the big story I guess is that a Packers kicker came through. Yeah. Brandon McManus who landed on the Packers on a shaky terms to say the least, but, uh,

But ended up there and finally made a kick for them. So their defense won the game. I mean, Stroud was pressured on 48% of his dropbacks. He threw for 86 yards. No Nico Collins. I think that might have killed the passing title for him. The Texans were running the ball. 25 for 115. But they had the game, Sal. It's inside the two-minute warning.

They're down two, but they get a first down. Green Bay has all three timeouts. And there was a way to finagle that, where it's like, try to run the ball or quick passes, make them burn all the timeouts, maybe try to get as close as possible, maybe even get the first down. They didn't really do it. And then they threw an incompletion on third down. So the Packers got to save a timeout, kick to go ahead by one.

And it just felt like the Packers were going to come back down. And I didn't think Love was very good today, but I just felt like they were going to get a field goal in that one. He was off a little. And if you look at the stat, I was with you. I had Packers minus three and like, it was so frustrating that it's going to come down to this one or two point extra point thing. And I'm looking at the Houston stats, like Tank Dell and Diggs at one point in the fourth quarter, I'd like seven yards combined. Like, how are they still in this? What is, what is going on here? But I think you hit on it early. This is a,

very, very good defensive team. They have the top two ranked safeties on PFF, like one and two. So how do you throw on? They're going to embarrass even the best quarterbacks. I mean, Stroud had 10 completions all day. Yeah. We thought going in that that had a chance to be the second most talented team in the NFC. And after watching football for seven weeks, I think they might be. But those three are definitely the three best teams. I don't know if Seattle, they have some injuries they're going to

You know, we'll see what we have with them when guys get back. Nobody in the NFC East, I think, is on the level of those guys. And then Tampa, just because of the way their offense has been moving the ball, I think you got to take them seriously, but I wouldn't put them

on the level of those maybe not but every Packer fan would sign off on five and two after Love got hurt throwing out Hillary in Brazil stupid Brazil field yeah I want to see the Packers and the Texans in December because the Texans will have Nico Collins back they're going to get some offensive line they'll fix some of that December yeah two months from now oh can that happen what do you mean

No, not them playing each other. I just want to see the two teams. Cause it's like, wow, did they realign? I think both of these teams are in December are going to be like kind of built for playoff football. Right. Especially if they get some guys back. So Seattle beat Atlanta. I had this for a million dollar picks too. I had Lombardi on Thursday and both of us really liked Seattle for some reason. It was just like, ah, they're really going to lose four in a row. Like this is a pretty talented team. They had six 20 plus plays.

And if you like Seattle, when Walker's healthy, which he was today, and they can run the ball, and then they're just getting an explosive play every quarter, it's...

Kind of where you want to see. This is a Seahawks team you want to see, right? And the Falcons. Big chances. Like just go away. Right. No pass rush. Right. Cousins was under attack for a lot of the game. And Gino, not quite an MVP candidate, but weirdly important for this season. I feel like they throw the throws the ball. They throw all the time. I think he has 2000 yards already. Does he really? Yeah, I think he does. Is it that many? Wow.

He's not up there in touchdowns, but I think he's close. Yeah, 1985. He's right there. Wow. Wow, that's good. Yeah, he threw some good balls. And like you said, everyone contributed. Noah Fant out of nowhere, just catching balls. And yeah, they need Walker healthy to go far, I think. They need some offensive line stuff to happen. So then Atlanta...

The NFC South falling apart. That's good for you. Good for us. That was our favorite. They have 11 wins now through seven weeks with Tampa tomorrow. I feel like Atlanta could be one in six. And then I think the three teams today were minus 76. Yeah. Three NFC South teams. Between Thursday. And you got Spencer Rattler and Andy Dalton. Yeah. Quarterback two of them. Yeah. I don't think that division gets to 30.

Because Carolina, do they have one more win in them? They're going to go 2-15 or 1-16. And then New Orleans has lost five straight. Are they a 7-10 team, like 6-11? They're in danger of getting crossed off next week. Yeah. Right? So Tampa could maybe get to 10 or 11 wins. And then that leaves us with Atlanta. Yeah.

Yeah, 11, 9. I don't see it. Like, Tampa would have to go like 13 and 4 for that division to get to 30. Right, yeah. Yeah, you're not going to get 10 wins out of Carolina and New Orleans, I don't think. The three shitty games today were Miami 16 to 10 over Indy. I'm sorry, Indy 16 to 10 over Miami. Indy is now 4 and 3, and I have no idea how it happened. And I have...

YouTube TV and the multi-view. And I have no idea how they're four and three. We're going for first place, all alone in first place if they beat the Texans next week. The Rams are 20 and 15. Nobody would start anyone on their offense. Right. And then other than maybe Williams. And then the Jags, 32 to 16 over the Pats. And then we had some blowouts. I guess the only other thing that happened was Daniels got hurt immediately and

Right. In the Carolina game. Which was one of the biggest fantasy murders of the year, right? Sure. That's it. You have no chance. If you haven't been in a guillotine league, so long. See you later. Who do you have tomorrow night? Ravens, Bucs, and Chargers cards. I have Bucs and I have the Chargers. And I feel strong about them.

Really feel strong. I think so. Yeah. I think the Bucs, I think this is a bad spot for Baltimore. I know they beat every NFC team, but I really think the Bucs, I mean, they have the worst pass defense in the league. And I think Baker's going to go nuts. Baker's 15 touchdowns. I know that's crazy. I love the Chargers. And I had a Ravens over adjusted parlay thing that I kind of like. I think the line's like a point too high. Yeah. It feels like a field goal game to me.

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

I think he scored. Yeah, he scored at least one. Yeah, he scored one. He had 176 yards rushing. We looked at that and the odds weren't good for million dollar picks. I think we did a Hunter Henry one. But it's like, it's also weird because it's like, aha, I told you you should have signed me. You know, it's like, yeah, you would have, it would have been bad for everybody if you signed the Giants. Yeah.

Let's do a little thing we like to call Guess the Lines. Oh, I've heard about this. Remember this thing? What's the record? 4-2-1, you're winning? Yeah, look at that. You're winning 4-2-1. Yeah, there you go. Thursday night, Vikings-Rams. Tough spot for the Vikes, man. That was like a pretty hard-hitting playoff game. Crazy, intense. Now, four days later, you've got to just turn it back on. Yeah.

It's in LA. Are you going? Kind of. You going or you're not going? Not going to that. Am I going to this? I couldn't stay in Dodger Stadium. I wanted to kill somebody. Yeah. You kind of live there too. Did you see the parking for Dodger Stadium today? How much was it? It was $60 when I went on Monday. What was it today? Oh, they jacked it today. It was like for any decent lot, it was 200 bucks. Wow. Yeah. And for the best lot, it was like 500 bucks.

Wow. What an asshole world we live in. Yeah. God almighty. Yeah. They're like 200 bucks or sit in traffic for a hundred minutes after the game. Yeah, it's true. They know they have you. They have you. You're going to leave early or you're going to spend two and a half hours in this parking lot.

With your eight-year-old kid who needs to pee and is super upset and ate too much sugar and is having a meltdown in the backseat. Yeah. Or $200 and you can get out. Avoid shady guys who are trying to sign knockoff Otani t-shirts. Thanks. I have nowhere to go, but thanks. I have Vikings minus three against the Rams in LA. We both get it and we got it exactly right. Oh, okay. Did McVay, he might've played his cards right.

Like he rested, he rested Nakua and cause he knew we had this Thursday coming. Right. So he rested both those guys and they should be back. Cooper Cup. Try to sneak it out. Smart move. And it worked. This feels like a stay away game to me. Sure. I mean, they're all, almost all of them are. That guy, uh,

That guy verse on the Rams. Yeah, that's my guy. What were the defensive player odds for him? Didn't you recommend that? I bet it. It was high, right? It was like over. It was double digits. It was like 10 to 1, 12 to 1, 14 to 1. I have 100 to win 950. Plus 950. Yeah. I think he's in the running. He was really good in the Raiders game today. Okay. Sunday marquee.

Controversial. We don't usually do it this way because this isn't the quote-unquote best game. And I'm not even positive one of the quarterbacks is going to be playing in this game. Baltimore Cleveland? No, Washington, Chicago. Yeah. So what do you want to do with this? Because the line suggests pretty strongly one way or another if he's playing. So I don't know if you want to throw this out or do you want to... What is out with the injury? What do we know? Nothing? Ribs and being evaluated tomorrow.

I think we throw it out. Okay. I would have guessed, assuming Daniels was playing, I would have guessed Washington by three. That's exactly right. So it doesn't matter because that's what I had too. And it's Chicago one and a half. So it seems like they don't think he's playing. But I didn't mind, Mary. I don't know. He was okay. Was there a Jaden Daniels won't get out of October bet? Oh, no. I don't know if there was. That was the big fair with him, right? I think we even talked. I mean, he's 140 pounds.

I know he's got to cover those ribs with something. By the way, they flexed that game, didn't they? Wasn't that like a 1 p.m. kickoff? They flexed it to 4 p.m. like last week. Oh, they did? Yeah. Now it's, yeah, they moved, they might've moved your guys up. Jets Patriots was four. Now it's back at one. They maybe should have done it earlier. Yeah. Started at seven in the morning. Watchable Cincinnati home for Philadelphia. I have Cincy by two and a half. You got it exactly.

What is it? I thought that was high. It's two and a half. I said one. And then why is three and four almost a field goal over four and two? It's just power ratings at this point. Are they two and five or three and four? Three and four. Yeah, three and four. All the ranking stuff likes the Bengals.

I mean, you talk about two teams I don't trust that everyone wants to talk about in the playoffs. Yeah, I promise I won't bet on this game. Yeah, if you see this on Million Dollar Picks, you have to assume I'm now hooked on codeine with like Vicodin attached to it. I'm definitely on like hardcore drugs at that point. All right, well, that's what I'm moving for. Oh, Cincy, the Bengals by two and a half. Maybe we'll have like a codeine IB. Here's the other one. Buffalo at Seattle.

This is just a good game. I, this, this would have been the marquee game if it wasn't the two rookie quarterbacks going against each other. I can't wait to watch this. I think I nailed this bills by one and a half at Seattle. Yeah. I mean, this is one, you know, if I think about it for 10, 15 seconds and I don't get it, I go to my favorite one and a half. So we both said one and a half. It's three bills by three. Wow. Now do me a favor. Will you do me a favor?

If the bills go down like 10, nothing, when you and Hench not text me, like I told you the bills to win the division was a little sketchy. Like we, we made a parlay with the bills, Houston, Kansas city, and Baltimore to all win the division. It's about even odds. You could still get it about even odds. The bill, they're fine. They're going to take time. If they need to win their last five, they'll do that. They're great. You know what I realized? Cause I did my NBA super boost this year.

which I've hit the last two years in a row. And I've also hit the last two NFL ones. And I was like, what was the NFL super boost we did this year? I forgot to do one because FanDuel had that parlay booster thing. We never actually did a super boost. Really? I don't think we ever actually did one.

I just forgot. They're giving so many names. Token boosts and this and that. Yeah, they were doing those parlay tokens at us. Yeah, yeah. And I think we would have done Detroit over. I think we would have done Green Bay over. Yeah. And then I would have insisted on the Pats under, although they don't love necessarily doing the unders with the parlay boost. But I think it would have been something like that. Let's ask if we could do that now. We want to do a week eight super boost token. Super token boost. Congratulations reward. Yeah.

Yeah, I was really mad we didn't do that. Anyway, let's take one more break and then we'll do the rest of the guest lines. This episode is brought to you by Uber Reserve. You know, it's a game changer for travel. Booking my ride in advance to the airport with Uber Reserve. Uber Reserve makes it easy to plan my whole trip. I just did this.

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Fairly watchables. I got four fairly watchables and I have six poop effectas. Oh, Cerruti reminds us, we did do a super boost. What was it, Cerruti? What did we do? Denver over with Seattle over. Oh no. Was our super boost. Oh, that's going to be good. We're going to hit that. Denver over was like, wasn't it like six and a half wins? Yeah. And Seattle's over was eight and a half wins. And yes, Denver was five and a half.

Thanks, Saruti. And then Seattle, I think, was eight and a half. And Denver is Carolina this week. Oh, man, we're going to be so close right away. Super boost, baby. Kings of the super boost. I'm going to do my own voice doing the super boost. Oh, you're so good at the super boost. Oh, yeah, Saruti says he bet it. I got the Sudafed super boost of the day. It's the special neck one with codeine super boost.

Four fairly watchables. Packers Jags. It's both watchable and will be a train wreck. Coach Middle Seat going against with feeling good after beating Gerard Mayo and the New England Patriots. He's back, baby. And now he's playing the Packers, the team with a really good defense. And they're going to be home. And I think Green Bay is going to be favored by two and a half.

I said four. It's four and a half. Oh, I'm going to get that one. Yeah, they've had enough for Jacksonville, I think. They know. Plus, this is a pretty good coach against a not so great traveling coach. You see, he's got one win in the United States, right? Yeah, that's true. Yeah, okay. He's going to hang himself with a seatbelt extender, but.

No, but they're good. Maybe it's because these games are on early in the morning and I know the Pats are involved and I was mad at how poorly coached we were. But they were showing the Jags on the sidelines, like smiling, excited near the end that they won. It made me upset. I was in my glasses on my cold medication. I'm like, fuck you, Trevor Lawrence. I'm mad at him. How dare you laugh at the end of this game? They're coming home.

Oh, Bucks Falcons. I know where you're going to bet this one. This, I already see this. What's your wise wager this year? You're like five and two, right? Five and two. Yeah. Yeah. I think I could see you grabbing the Bucks there. I might. It's in Tampa and I'm going to say Bucks by two. Um, do we split this? Yeah, I have three. It's two and a half.

Okay. Can I tell you, this is one of the, you know how I get depressed about, forget about the Mets and the Cowboys and everything else, but this time of year, those different times of the year where, oh no, football's almost over. This is the first week where teams have already played each other. So we saw the Bucs. That makes you sad? It does. Yeah. Cause it makes me think, oh man, now everybody's going to start having played each other twice in their divisions. This was 36-30 a couple of weeks ago on that Thursday night, that crazy game that Cousins threw for 500.

Well, maybe if you start feeling sad, there'll also be happiness as the Dodgers are beating the hell out of the Yankees and we can watch the Yankees lose. And you could be like, well, we lost to the eventual World Series champions, which is always really comforting. Yeah. Second place. A true second place. And not to put more pressure on the Dodgers, but nobody counts the 2020 title. Like I know you have a banner. I know you're excited about it, but it was the 60 game season. People are opting out. There are no fans. Like, come on. Mm-hmm.

That was about as fake of a title as anyone's won. So the biggest story was Turner jumping in the team photo right after, right? And he had COVID and everyone freaked out. Everyone's like, oh no. That was a bigger story than the non-parade. I don't even remember who was in that playoffs. Texans, Colts. It's in Houston. It's an AFC South battle.

I don't know how much you saw Richardson today, but he's not accurate. Very nice guy. Talked about Dairy Queen for a while. Yeah. I'm sure he's a nice guy. His passes just kind of go all over the place. And the other thing that's interesting is

They don't use him like the Cam Newton battering ram anymore because I think they're afraid he's going to get hurt. So if you're not going to play him, like unleash this maniac athlete, but now you have like kind of an inaccurate pocket passer. I'm not sure that's the best use of him.

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

You know why JJ did run into traffic? Why? Because we beat the Guardians and we beat the Royals. And we're in the World Series. Next time I run into traffic, bro, it'll be the parade in Bronx. And I'll be on a float with Soto. He should have gone into traffic and asked if anyone on the street could name four Guardians. Can you name four Guardians? And not of the Galaxy. We're talking the baseball team.

Texans minus four over the Colts I have. I said four also. It's five and a half. Okay. And that also is a rematch from week one, 29-27, Texans. Yeah. Chiefs at Raiders. There's a little backstory. Didn't somebody in the Raiders talk shit about Mahomes for the season? Oh, yeah. Who was that? Some doofus on the defense. Doesn't sound right. That's what happened. So you got to factor in with this line.

The Chiefs could easily be up like nine with two minutes left and Pierce could be like, we'll take the field goal. Oh yeah. Now we're down six. Yeah. The Pierce effect. This looks better in the newspaper. I have Chiefs by seven in Vegas. You know, I said seven also. 10. Whoa. 10 is the number. Oh, that's the first like true shocker of the year. That's a good one. 10 in Vegas.

I think, well, there's a little payback, right? Because this is, they beat them on Christmas, so they're not going to be overlooked. Or Vegas isn't afraid of them because they beat them last year. Right. That line seems too high. I went to this game three years ago. I'm going to talk myself into them now. Well, but I went to this game three years ago in Las Vegas. Ton of red. Ton of red.

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

Do you think any of his coaches are like, yo, coach, we're still going to need a touchdown if we kick this field goal. And you're giving up all this field position. Maybe try to get a pass interference or something. Coach, that's four minutes in the fourth quarter. You know that, right? That's not third quarter. That's a four. Coach, it's the second half. It's not preceded. Three hours into the game, coach.

Don't be soft. We're kicking a field goal. We're cutting it at five. One stop. And all that we have to do is go 90 yards to get a touchdown instead of just going nine. Oh, man. You know, I was worried that at some point as I got older...

that the coaching would get smarter and there would be less stuff to make fun of. And it's just not true. Every year, every week, dumb shit happens. Like Doug Peterson could just go up by 18 with 10 minutes left. He's like, nope, fourth and two, let's go. Let's do this. I guarantee ex-coaches or maybe current coaches, who knows, listen to us, maybe. There's got to be some.

And they must think we're assholes, but there's 50 bad decisions a day. And if we paid attention, there'd be 150. What gives? There's a whole aspect of a game that you and I can coach better than these guys. Most of them. My friend Hershey, we were talking about quarterbacks and he's around our age. And he's talking about the conundrum of Daniel Jones, where like some Giants fans are like, oh, Daniel Jones, he can do this. He can do that. And he's like,

I've been watching football my entire life since I was a little kid. I've been watching quarterbacks week in, week out since the mid-70s. I feel like I know if a quarterback has it or not at this point. It's not one of those talk yourself into it, maybe. It's like you kind of know or you don't know if a guy has it. And it's like I have five decades of experience now watching the signs for whether somebody has it or not. And he doesn't have it.

And I was like, it's a great way to put it. Yeah. Because in some ways we're getting slower and dumber as we get older. But in other ways, like we've watched so much sports, you kind of, you have the veteran experience of just putting our 10 million hours in watching games. Like riding a bike. I see a pothole, I'm going to go to the left of it. Yeah. I mean, just what are you supposed to do? Now there's some politics involved, like Stefanski, I don't want to fully blame him for this situation.

because it just cannot be possible that he wants to start Watson and nobody else. Now it doesn't matter. The poopfecta. Jets at Pats. So the Jets somehow get to play the Pats twice in the first half of the season. One of the two worst teams in the league. And I think this is Jets by six and a half. Oh, you dirtbag. I said seven is six and a half. No. What is the score here? That is a teaser. You're up seven, six.

Could be a hard week of practices for the Pats. Gotta get tougher. You think so? I mean, you might just remain soft. Mayo just took over the team. He's gotta make this team tough. Oh no, he's been here the whole season. Well, what was it? 24-3 on that Thursday night? Yeah, but that was with Brissette. Right, right, right. May's good. They have something with May. Now it's like, how do you build around this asset and do you have the right coach in the right front office? Yeah.

to pick the right people to put around a genuine asset. And do all of your receivers have agents? Because if they fuck this up, this is a catastrophe. Because this is so hard to find a quarterback who's actually good. A young quarterback who's actually talented and can move and has a good arm. They have the quarterback. Who's the best quarterback, new quarterback, on a team that's not very good and he's been there for three years? Trevor Lawrence. Yeah.

I guess so. That's like your worst case scenario, right? But they wanted the vision, though. Is there anyone hanging as like nine and eight? Even the Chargers, I would say. Herbert? Yeah. I was thinking of him as the example, but... Drake Mays is good.

Lions are home for the Titans. And I think this is what you were alluding to at the start of the podcast about how we have some old school lines. At first, I instinctively put down like Lions minus nine. I was like, wait a second, they're going to jack this up. And I just kept and I went all the way to 13. I have Lions by 13. All right. I get you here. You went a little high. I said 11 and a half. It's 10 and a half. Oh, right. Let me see. Maybe they moved it. 10 and a half. It's too low. It's too low.

I mean, that's an automatic.

automatic three team 10 point teaser. Well, I was going to say we should invite an old, an old friend into our life. And there's another one we haven't hit yet, but I think we have two, two so far. I think you're thinking lions over Titans and you're thinking chiefs over Ray. I'm afraid of that chiefs game. Oh really? Yeah. I'm afraid of that one. I would probably do the jets as, as the second one. Well, they're going to lose to the paths and go two and six.

They should just lead the team. It's so much fun rooting against them now. Yeah. All right. We'll find two teams. But this is a free 10 points to use on normal teams. Yeah. The Titans stink. This is our super bet boost. 10-point totem pole boost. Our 10-point Neuquil codeine boost. Dolphins home for the Cardinals. A truly awful game. Really bad.

Well, hold on, though. Is this the one? Because our buddy JJ was screaming about how two is coming back. You think he's back for this? I don't know. Well, I'm going to pick the Dolphins by one and a half over the Cardinals at home regardless. Whether he comes back or not. I said two and a half. It's three. No, maybe he's coming back. Are you beating me right now? Oh, dude. Eight. Yeah. Wow. I went on a run here. Fuck.

What am I doing? Eight to seven. Eight to seven. All right. Ravens at Cleveland. This is always fun. Don't know if you know this, Sal, but the Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens. What? Was there like a van? Don't tell me it was in the- Long time ago. Yeah. No, long time ago. Was it in the middle of the night? At least they had the decency to do it during the day, right? Yeah. I have the Ravens by three and a half. I feel good about this one. Wait a minute. This is your biggest swing and miss of the year. Ravens at Cleveland? Yeah.

The Baltimore Ravens. At Cleveland. I got Ravens three and a half. What is it? It's nine and a half. In Cleveland? Yeah. In Cleveland, where they lose all their games. A team that hasn't gone over their point total all year. That is, that's my, that's by far my worst. Well, I told you I'm on drugs right now. That's it. Yeah. The drugs are killing you. I had nine. Wait, that line's way too high. The Browns have a pretty good defense.

Do you watch the games today? I know, but they don't ever score. It's important in these games. Plus, they have a whole week with their new... I mean, just not having Watson's worth seven points. Yeah, and it is a short week for the Ravens. Nick Chubb, my guy...

Right. I had Nick Chubb. I have him on all my fantasy teams. You kept them? And each week, like a little baby bird. I just, I gave him little seeds and I poured water on his head and I tried to grow him back to life on all my teams. Didn't wave him. Just kept him on. Hogged the spot. Just waiting for my guy. My favorite fantasy player. He's back.

This will be the week. It's Nick Chubb week next week. He doesn't want to be back. We just crossed his team off. No, he's back. He's doing it for the love of the game. Yeah. I think there's, well, they don't want to get killed on teasers, right? Because everyone's teasing everybody who plays the Browns. Like the Bengals was easy, even though they covered the Browns. But Bengals on a teaser. I started, I

I had a must win in our knockout league because I snuck out a win last week, but I had wide receivers at cup and DJ more weren't playing. So I was scrambling for waiver wire guys. And I started Jerry Judy who didn't, you know, they traded Amari Cooper. I'm like, all right, Judy,

And he had no points like halfway through the fourth quarter. And then he finally caught like an 18 yarder. But I need to say, you'll, you'll be seeing Jerry on the waiver wire on a Wednesday night. You're going to beat me. You're going to win two in a row here. You're up. You're a 71% favorite against me. You're up eight. You're a Baker. What's my probability. Is that my wind probability? This is the one place I kind of rely on it more than anything. Yeah. Yeah.

With these dumb fantasy games, I don't even look at the score. But yeah, 71 to 29. That's a win probability. Chargers home for the Saints. Saints trying to lose six in a row. I have the Chargers favored by three and a half. Where is this game? Wow. Billy, boy. I said six. It's seven and a half. All right. What is going on? Well, I think you said it. You're on drugs. Why are the Chargers favored by over a touchdown against anybody? What?

I like the Chargers, but I mean, they scored 20 points a game. The Saints were so bad. Like you should have your handle taken off your phone if you like the Saints after that performance. That was so bad. I'm falling apart. Well, I probably hit this next one because it's Broncos home for Carolina, a team that has to get at least nine points or higher against any team they play at. Broncos by nine and a half.

You are closer, but yeah, it's seven and a half. I said four and a half. So you get that. So is that your, what's the three team teaser? You don't trust, you don't trust Bo Nix yet. No, I don't. You saw that overthrow, underthrow pass. You loved it. I think you tweeted about it. It was terrific. I've never seen anything like it. It's beautiful. Then the two guys like commiserated over it. Like, yeah, I just, yeah. They quit the team. They turned in their jerseys. I thought he was pretty good in that game though.

He really has flashes. Yeah, again, I don't know what that Saints team was just a mess. And Peyton had that circled for years. Sunday night, 49ers Cowboys. Oh, Mike. Oh, this is why we do it, Mike. Are you kidding me?

I thought Brady in the second half of that Niners game sounded like if Shanahan called up to the booth and said, could you start next week? He was ready to do it. He was like genuinely disappointed by Purdy. Yeah. Interesting. What could he do? So if he, could he, could he do all these things? Could he announce and own part of the Raiders and be quarterback of the 49ers? What else could he do? Could he play the big Dom role for a team also? Well,

How many different hats could you wear? Could you play Silvio in a Sopranos remake? I would love that. That'd be great. Brady at the Bing. I hate this game. I hate it. I have 49ers by two and a half. Oh, wow. I thought you'd go higher and beat me. I said three and a half and it's five and a half. Good luck. That's too many points.

This is kind of, who needs this more? The Niners, right? I mean, I think your team needs every game. You're going to need 10 wins to make the playoffs. Both of them. I think both of them need it equally. Got to get to 10 wins. Now it's a wild card battle for these two, probably. And shit, if Chicago gets to play Mariota instead of Jaden Daniels, they could be five and two. Yeah.

Like Chicago might get to 10 wins. I think 10 wins is the cutoff for the NFC. It's going to frustrate me. I don't want to look at, but I, and something tells me the bears haven't played the best of quarterbacks in their runs. You know, you're right. Monday night, speaking of not the best of quarterbacks, Steelers, uh, home for the giants. Yeah. And we didn't really talk about the Russell Sontz that much, but, uh, he, he did get it going as the game went along. I have Steelers by, uh,

six and a half at home against the Giants. I said three and a half, so I'm going to get it. It is four and a half. Wow, what a demolition. I'm going to have to drug you with the coding every Sunday night. Maybe you found the new secret. Just infect me. Yeah. Listen, those lines made no sense. Why wouldn't the Steelers be favored by seven? The Giants suck. The Giants are awful. We're going to make some money this week. There are some glaring errors here.

And one of the errors is... Well, the 10-point tease would be good because you could take them to plus five and a half. Oh, yeah. You're right. That defense... Raheem, too, is a bonus. Yeah. Raheem hates teasing it over the zero. It's like his least favorite thing other than if you don't get a burner hotel room. He's going to Vegas this week, too. Can I just tell you, I had a great time watching with the Ringer staff today. Yeah, let's hear about it. We did the pregame show and then Spotify has this great...

It's a movie theater. It's basically, it's a theater, right? So you have a movie theater screen, right? You have a hundred seats and they had a, and our producer Jack had another like 50 inch screen to the side of it. So now we have to figure out, well, let me ask you, let me figure, how would you do the games? We got that giant projection screen and then we have a 50 inch. Okay. Yes. Yeah. We got access to everything. So how would you do it? I hope you didn't put the dolphins as one of the four games. Well,

Because of JJ, he bullied you into that? The Dolphins were on the smaller TV, not on the big screen. Because we had Lions, Vikings, Packers, Texans. Yeah. And then it was kind of all the other games. Seahawks, Falcons was good. Oh, Seahawks, Falcons. That was a good one. Yeah. And then the fourth one was dependent on whatever you cared about. All right. Now, I love all these guys, but guess what most of them were screaming for on the big screen? What? The red zone and only the red zone.

And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm like, we got a giant, giant screen that we're never going to see the size of the screen again. We have to put a four box on that. And they're like, okay, we'll put a red zone on the 50. I'm like, no, let's watch all the games. And I promise you'll know when a team's close to scoring by the yard line. By watching all the games that went. Yeah. And they're like, oh, we got to hear Scott Hance. We got to, I don't want to hear. I was like, oh my God. So I won the, I was going to go home.

I was very upset, but I think we all had a good time. So it was a generational thing. The young bears loved the Red Zone. I knew it, but I didn't think like given a, you know, we can watch Casablanca on that thing. Yeah, yeah, Scott Hanson. So how was it on the giant movie screen? It was great.

It's ridiculous. I recommend everyone come by next Sunday. I want to do it again. It was fun. Nothing like downtown LA on a Sunday morning. We had pizza. I'm on the Atkins. So I ordered a calzone. I dug out all the protein. It was beautiful. You're on the Atkins again? Yeah.

Yeah, because I'm a fat piece of shit. Because of the Mets? I haven't had a carb since Monday. No, because here's what Melissa puts out the candy bowl for Halloween, October 1st. And I don't even like candy corn. I'm doing like fist after handful. And I was like, I got to just not eat carbs till Thanksgiving. So we'll see what happens. It's a long way. Do you want to hear about the WNBA finals? Yeah, I didn't have it on the third screen, but it looked like a lot of poor play. But the officiating was just as bad. Yeah.

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

The other JJ just bowled somebody over and they called, uh, they called the defensive foul. It was awful. Like the announcers, they know what to do. Collier comes the other way. They have the ball to up to 26 seconds left. The, the links, like if they score the games, we bet the links, we should tell them we have the links for the series five to one. And I, and I also really like Collier and I was really into it. And, uh, Collier comes driving down.

just misses a layup and gets hacked and is immediately yelling at the refs. And she doesn't yell at the refs. They won't replay it. No replays at all. Then it comes back down to Brianna Stewart who gets a ball travels and then kind of, kind of crashes into somebody and throws a shot up minimal contact. This is a game where people are just mauling each other the whole game. Collier is getting just killed. And, uh,

No, they, they call it, they challenge. Cause there wasn't a foul and they're like, well, she wasn't in the correct guarding position. Two shots. And all of a sudden Stewie shooting two shots. They get it goes to OT and they foul Collier out. And it was just like, it was like, it was like David Stern era WNBA shit. Yeah. It's ridiculous. They, they won the championship. They shot 30%. They missed every three.

And, and, uh, what was Sabrina? She was one for 19 and they won the title. The two best were, what were they? What was the like, uh, five for 33 or something? There were two for 23 from three and they shot 30%. And so the links were bitching about the officiating after and they should have, cause it was outrageous. Right. I thought the links had a better team.

Unlike the NLCS, many of those games were close and exciting. I'll give them that. It was great for the week. They should have had this game on a... This game should have been on a Monday night. And, you know, it's the last... They had to fuck up the schedule until the bitter end. And they decided to go on a Sunday night against Jet Steelers and Dodgers-Mets game six. Just like, go to Monday against...

against NFL. I guess there's two NFL games. Well, by the way, that Sunday afternoon slate would have been fine too. Well, I mean, I know you're going against Chiefs Niners, but that was the only good game. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I'm looking, you know, five for 42 from three, that should get you, that should get your juices going for the NBA playoffs. No, nothing else. Well, I was thinking, I was like, this is, this is the NBA playoffs. Nobody can make a shot. The coaching's terrible. And, uh, and the officiating is completely one-sided. It was like, they've really, they've done it. They've come up with their own league. It's a clone. I will never understand for the life of me, Minnesota Collier was 11 for 23.

I will never understand for the life of me why they didn't put her at the top of the key and just have her beat people off the dribble. Every time they did that, she got, she got to the basket and they were like posting her up. So the Liberty could double her. I was like, what are you guys doing? Just clear out for her. She goes by everybody. But I thought she was the best player in the series. And, uh, but she wasn't in proper guarding position. That's the problem. Oh my God. Well, the other thing is Smith got hurt in game three.

Because Jones bowled her over. And then same thing happened in game five when she came out for a while. But she was pretty banged up. I think if she was healthy, we'd win the bet. It was a great bet. We didn't hedge it at halftime. Yeah, I know. We had the right one. Another great non-hedge for us. But...

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

And the team's done each other too well. It's like the baseball, like their arms are too taxed at this point. That's why his velocity is down four miles an hour from when it was Monday. Yeah, maybe. Is that kind of it? I don't know. I don't know. Too tense.

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What do you got for us, though? All right. So I had the kids this weekend and Harrison had a tournament Saturday, a baseball tournament. And these are because Melissa was away. She was in New York. She had like very like a very serious that she had. She had to get drunk with our sister in law all weekend. So that was so she was off the grid. She wasn't there. And then so Harrison has games on Saturday and

Uh, and now I forgot. I told you where we were. Where the hell was I? I thought it was like Encino or somewhere. No, no, no, no. Oh, San Clemente. San Clemente. Yes. Great, great place for a tournament. I like San Clemente. Really good. It was nice. The weather's good and everything else. He's got a game at 6 p.m. and a game at 8 p.m.

So they're done at 10, 15 and we're driving home and it's going to be 1130. And then I got to wake up for football and everything, London game and everything. So I'm already a little tense about that. So we get in the car, we get there for the six o'clock game. He's got to be there at five. We're in the car at 330. We get there and he gets out and he's like, oh no. It's like, I left my cleats at home. He's wearing Crocs.

I said, what are you talking about? He's like, I left my cleats at home. Now for baseball, you could pretty much leave everything except your cleats. Like you could borrow the kid who's sitting on the bench's glove and his hat or something else. The cleats, they're no good. You know, they're not, you know. So I was like, I don't know what to do here. And he's pitching. He's starting the game.

I was like, all right, I'm going to drop you a practice and I'm going to go find cleats. Hopefully I could do this. So you're Googling, you're doing ways, you're doing big five and decks. Exactly what I'm doing. Sporting goods and in the area and San Clemente. And I come across Walmart and I look at the website and the cleats, they have kids cleats and everything. I'm like, all right, that's good. That's a 1.5 miles away. I drive away from his practice. I

I go to Walmart. It's gigantic. And I'm looking and I'm looking and I'm looking. Finally, I ask someone for help. And I'm like, hey, do you have a boys cleats? He's like, we don't sell cleats here. And I'm like, okay, what do I do? Do I yell? Did I scream at this guy? Do I throw a punt? What do I do? Or do I show him the website? I'm not sure what to do. Or do I just get the hell out of here and try to find him? I like the complete disdain for customer questions. Yeah, exactly. Cleats?

Fucking morons. You got some cleats here at Walmart. Everything else. They have shin guards. You got some Cheetos. Yeah. So I just leave. I'm like, I was proud of myself for just leaving. And so now I have to go to the Big Five six and a half miles away. So now I'm going to cut it close because I have to go there and back. I get there and I'm like this little fucker.

I'm going to get him the pinkest cleats that I can find. I'm going to get him these girl. Peach. Peach cleats. Yes, exactly. It's going to be frilly. Peach and aqua. Everything. Oh, yeah. It's going to be bedazzled. Everything. They don't have it. They have one pair of cleats and it's one size too big. And I'm like, we just got to get it. I got to get it. Buy an extra pair of socks. That's the dad's money. Second pair of socks to fill the cleats up.

I let him, I didn't, you know what? I didn't even think about that. Had I, I might've just passed on it. I was like, I just, I'm going to give it to him here. So he gets the size sevens. I bring them to him. I get there at like five 56. The coach is going nuts. Cause he might have to reshuffle the lineup. Can Harrison even pitch and Crocs? No way. He goes out there. He puts them on. They're big. He looks like a dope.

Uh, he throws two innings to shut out ball. He strikes out five kids. Wow. And now it's like, you see, now you see, that's exactly what it was. He's like, you got the magic. So I was like, I am not ready to joke about this probably for three weeks. So let's revisit this sometime in November. But the big story that that was the end of the story, but it's like, I don't know what my parents would have done. I think they just would have been like, you're on your own. I really do.

I don't know. Your dad probably is like, oh, sorry. You're going to have to pitch in Crocs and you'll learn a valuable lesson. Exactly. As you let down your team. You're going barefoot and you're walking home from San Clemente. That would be it. Yeah. All right. So I have some follow-up thoughts. First of all, a great idea for a small sports star would be called You Fucked Up. And just sells cleats, t-shirts, cups. I love it. Socks.

It's like, oh, thank God there's a you fucked up three miles away. I'm going to run over there. Didn't you have a similar thing for spouses? Like, we got your sunglasses or something. Sunglasses, purses, suntan lotion. Yeah, definitely.

Here's the other thing now. Listen, we've been friends for a long time. I don't mean to throw you under the bus, but it is the parent's job to have everything before we go. Really? I guess I should have noticed. Your kid's 10. Your son's not like a rocket scientist yet. He's 10 years old. I remember leaving with Zoe because we had a similar thing where, you know, so we would always, I forget what she left behind, but it was always like, all right, do we have everything? Queets, Jersey, Texas.

water bottle. We had like the five things and we would just go through the five things like she was Forrest Gump. And that's how we did it before we'd leave. But they get mad. They get to talk about indignity. They're like, yeah, dad. They get mad when they're like 14. Yeah, 14 it becomes insulting. Right. All right. I'll follow up. Maybe you're right. I should say I took my son to a lacrosse tournament this weekend and it was black shorts.

And we're like, do we have everything? And we go in the first game and he's the only kid on his team wearing a black jersey with white shorts. So after the game, I was like, Ben, where are the black shorts? And he's like, oh yeah, we don't need those. I'm like, you definitely, you were the only kid with white shorts. I'm pretty sure you needed them. My parent corner, I took my son yesterday and then my wife took over for the championship stuff today. But she had this tournament

And it was in the, it was in Santa Barbara lacrosse tournament at the polo club. So, you know, we have these tournaments, you're doing baseball, soccer, whatever they're there. Oh, it always sucks. You're always in some crappy part of, uh, of some town. You're not near anything. It's just a bunch of fields. It's really hard to park.

If there's food there, it's probably like one hot dog truck or maybe there's somebody selling like a couple Gatorades. It's the lowest possible end of lucking out with food, drink, anything. And then if you have like the big ass tournaments, they might have something in the middle where it's like they'll sell t-shirts and jerseys and they'll have like a churro place. And so this polo place was like fucking nice. They had like cocktails. Yeah.

There was like a bar. There was like, they're making quesadillas. They're making, there's like a quesadilla slash taco bar and they had like a sandwich place. And there was like a coffee and smoothies place, but there was like a legitimate bar. And it's between games. Is anyone watching the games? Well, cause you have like time to kill between the games, right? And it's 20, it's outdoors. So between like,

He had a game. There was like a 45 minute break and I wanted to get like some water and I went over and I decided to get at the bar. I got because they had sparkling water. I want a sparkling water. And these ladies that were there, they're ordering like fucking margaritas. Oh, yeah. And they're kind of decked out. I'm like, is this this feels like the beginning of like a Netflix rom-com, like these parents meeting at at at some lacrosse tournament at the polo place. But these these parents are fucking crazy.

Like having like real cocktails, like, like getting it on at this lacrosse tournament. I was like, wow, the California never disappoints. They figure it out because you only have 45 minutes, but some of these parents, if there's like two hours between games, it's a slosh city.

So that's one thing I'm pretty sure we don't need at sports tournaments are parents with a few drinks in them when there's kids in officials. They're jacked up enough. I'm pretty sure that's a bad idea, but I won't judge. Then the other thing, and this is, I'm glad I'm here for this. These people that bring dogs to the tournaments.

I don't know if this is on the agenda with Trump and Kamala for the election. I know there's a lot of things going on, a lot of positions. Kamala's emailed me like 12 times today. She hasn't brought this up. She hasn't brought this up yet. No, no. We should not have dogs at youth sports tournaments. Period. End of story. Do not bring your dog.

Here's all the bad things that can happen with your dog. Your dog could just take a shit where all the parents are standing, right? You got that. Um, your dog, you could have like a yapping dog and a thing, and we have to listen to your dog bark the whole time. You could think your dog wants to just go and walk over and, and go see some kid who's allergic to dogs. So you have that thing. And then the big thing is just the dog fight on the sidelines. Mm-hmm.

No dogs at sporting events. Just period. Let's get rid of this. What are we doing? Especially drunk dogs. Leave your dog home. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm with it and you're a dog guy too. I have two dogs. I love dogs. Guess what? I don't want to see dogs at an outdoor sports tournament. Leave them home. It's too much.

Yeah. This one guy had, he had like one of those like big canvas things that you put, like you would take if you're going to the airport and he had three little dogs in there and they're just barking at everybody else. And it's like, can I just watch the game without your three dogs barking in your little travel carrier? There's no rule for that, huh? Usually there's a sign that says you can't do this. It's such a bad idea. Like honestly, there's, it's one of the worst ideas possible. So anyway. I'm with you.

Yeah, my son, they won the championship. Oh, good. I posted the picture. There's this picture, and for some reason, he has no shirt on in the picture. So he's staying on brand at all times. Black shorts or white? The uniforms. He's got his white shorts on. He's got a blue sun hat and no shirt. And I'm like, all right. Ben Simmons on brand at all times. That's nice.

Let me ask you something because I'm not sure, you know, I love you like a friend too. I know you set me straight, but, um, you posted speaking to post happy birthday Murph. Um, not every day your dog turns four or something like that. Your dog is four years old. I don't know that you could do this after going off on like national whatever day. I'm not sure. I said, happy, happy birthday to Murph, to my best friend Murph. Yeah, it's fine.

I get it. You also want to, you want to crusade against posting something for national daughter's day. But when your dog turns four, you're like, oh, birthdays are fine. Post birthday. Birthdays are fine. Dog. What's your dog's name? I don't even know what my dog's name is. It's super Dave. It's super Dave. All right. If you did a super day post, I'd be like, oh, that's great. Super Dave's 11 years old. All right. It might be. I only birthday post. That's it.

For dogs and family members. That's it. Yeah. My wife, she made him like one of those dog, like little dog cakes. Her and her mom made it, which are like, no, no, it's bad. This isn't like the bad. This is like good for dogs. I'm like, there's just no way any cake is good for dogs. He's going to be shitting all over that. But he didn't shit. Yeah. He's really moved into his own. Can I tell you a quick dog cake story? Please. Um,

shit, now I'm going to get the name wrong. No, I can't. What was it? Okay. So no, I went to a Simpsons table read. Our friend Donnick wrote on the Simpsons. And it was the coolest thing. It was probably like within three months of me moving out here. And it also happened to be their 100th episode or some kind of milestone episode. So they had cake. And so everybody's eating cake. And I don't know why, but I didn't know that dogs aren't supposed to have cake.

And so a dog comes up to me and I start feeding the dog chocolate cake. I think I'm doing something nice. And this guy comes up and screams like, what the fuck? What is the fuck? Are you fucking kidding me? What are you feeding the dog cake? Are you stupid? Are you stupid? You trying to kill my dog? And I'm like, I'm sorry, I had no idea. I didn't know it was a bad thing. I thought I was it looked hungry. It looked hungry. You see, you know how stupid you sound right now? God, he takes the dog. He walks away. It was Hank's area.

Is that true? I swear to God, it was true. Asked our friend Tony and asked Donny. That's my run-in with Hank Azaria. And he used all his voices too to dress me down. How many years ago is this? This was, I don't know, 24? I

I should have known. Yes, I was almost 30 years old. I should have probably known. So this was after heat when Pacino yelled at him. Yeah, I think so. She's got a great ass. Go ahead, all the way up it. He might've been channeling that. Anyway, happy birthday, Hank Azaria's dog. I'll post about it later. Hank Azaria, wow. Upgrading our friend Sal. That's terrible.

What are you going to do? Thanks again to Workday for sponsoring this segment. Be a finance and HR rockstar with Workday. To learn more, visit Workday.com. And if you've learned anything during this whole podcast, leave your dogs at home during a youth sports tournament. Yeah, yeah. Get drunk on churros and margaritas. Come on. The margaritas are fine. We're not going to judge you, but don't bring your dog and pound the margaritas.

As you go, what do you have? What do you have to plug? Lots of stuff through the ringer with Tate. It's delightful every week. Cousin Sal's winning weekend. I have Dwight Gooden on. I'm going to talk about the Mets. Little, little post-mortem for the Mets. Yeah. Dr. K, one of my favorites.

Ringer pregame show with the fellas every Sunday morning and against the Lods. It's a general trifecta and I are doing an 11 hour deep dive into who has the best shot at winning the NBA in season tournament. So there you go. Wow. What was your favorite NBA future of all your NBA future? You know, I bet a bunch of yours and Rosillo's and houses that I put that away now. Ah, damn it.

I like, uh, I thought you guys have some teams to not make the playoffs. Yeah. And, um, Oh no, you have under wins and to there to not make the playoffs was like plus one 29, like, uh, new Orleans. I think I had, yeah. Pelicans, no playoffs plus one 29. I think you guys like it. And I rode your feet. I got a lot on Phoenix over. You're sure about that one. Yeah. I feel good about that. I mean, the rank could get hurt. That would be the way.

You know, but you could say that about anything. Yeah. I feel good about where we landed and we had that Clippers under. Right. Which was 37 and a half because we were kind of gambling that the Kawhi news maybe wouldn't be great. And then now it seems like, I mean, I don't even know when he's coming back. So that's down to like 35 and a half. Yeah. I think Kawhi moved it too, but yeah, we, some of them moved, I think probably because people were probably looking at the same things. Cleveland went up. The Philly one, I think has stayed pretty similar. Yeah.

But I feel like that one should probably start falling down at some point. And then right after we did that pod, Hartenstein broke his hand. Right. So I don't think that really budged. You get all your money back.

No, I don't think that really budged the over-under, though. It was interesting. But yeah, my favorite out of all of them is probably still the OKC one seed bet, even with the Hartenstein injury. All right. You know what? I didn't hit that one. I think it was plus 130. I don't know if it's up or down, but I think Phoenix. We said Phoenix and maybe Minnesota were the only ones that could get into the mid-to-high 50s. Yeah.

You'd be proud of me. I did a bunch. I did SAR for Rookie of the Year. Welcome to the NBA Hole Club. I know. I did SGA mostly for MVP, a little on Wemby, Sabonis for rebounds, Luca for assists. I'll go over them with you later. I love it. Love it all. I didn't even, I'm not allowed to bet the awards, so I wasn't super focused on it, but I didn't realize the Rookie of the Year awards, the research was plus 750. Mm-hmm.

I thought that was pretty good value for him. Cause I think he's going to play. No, I, I, I just think Edie's plus two 90. Shepard was plus eight 50. I'm not sure he's going to get enough minutes. And then castle at 10 to one is interesting if he actually gets playing time. But, uh, but I thought if, and then clinging at 20 to one, just see him in the preseason the other night, he was interesting too, but,

Well, that's the thing. There's only like six guys that are definitely going to get enough minutes, right? Barring injury from someone else. Risa Shea is going to play and I think Atlanta is going to be pretty good. So that's a good one. Anyway. All right, cuz. Good job by you. Good job by you, buddy. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Cousin Sal. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerruti. As always, don't forget new rewatchables hopefully coming on Monday. And I'm going to have a new podcast for you either Tuesday

Tuesday or I won't see you again until Thursday. Not sure yet, but we'll see how it goes. Root for me. Root for my white cells. My T cells. What are the cells that help you not feel sick? Root for those. So I'll see you Tuesday or Thursday. Don't forget, you can watch this podcast that you just listened to. I don't know why you would. Maybe you want to double dip on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. See you later in the week. ♪ On a seat there on a way sunset ♪

I don't have feelings with you.

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