The A’s Leave Oakland, ESPN’s Latest Shocker, and Million-Dollar Picks With Logan Murdock, Bryan Curtis, and Joe House
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Um, coming up on this podcast, we're going to talk to Logan Murdoch about the last Oakland A's game in Oakland. We're going to talk to Brian Curtis to recap a pretty crazy day where ESPN laid off Zach Lowe. And what does this mean as we head into, uh, the end of 24 into 25 for ESPN, what it wants to be? It just kind of felt like a moment.

And obviously we worked with Zach and we love Zach, but it was more like, what does this mean for ESPN big picture? And then last but not least, we're going to talk to Joe House and do Million Dollar Picks with him and talk about why this might be a let's be careful week. So that's the podcast. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. ♪♪♪

All right, we're probably committing an HR violation here. I think this is the first time I've ever asked anyone on paternity leave or maternity leave to say, hey, come on, we got to do something here. But this is a momentous day. The Oakland A's last home game tonight. You wrote about it. It's happening right now. It's happening as we speak. As we speak. Yeah, we're taping this on an afternoon. You wrote about this for The Ringer. This is the last of the three Oakland teams.

to leave the city over the last five years. Oakland now will have no professional sports after this weekend. So I had to ask, how are you feeling? What's going on? I'm fine.

I'm feeling just a range of emotions. I'm sad. First and foremost, that my team is leaving. Um, this is probably the Raiders are probably the team that I have the most connection to, but the A's are a team that has always kind of been here. Whereas like the Raiders have always been, some has been defined by it's like nomadic history, you know, just going from Oakland to LA and the Vegas. Right. So, um,

you kind of expected the Raiders to leave at some point, but you never really expected the A's to leave. And it's, it's weird. I went to a, you referenced the piece that I did. I went to a game a few months ago and I, there was emotions coming out that I didn't feel. I didn't even know we're even there, you know, like it's, I don't think there's, I don't, the only other comparison to like a T it's like if the Mets left New York or something like that. Right. Like it's not this, the relationship with, um,

baseball in this region um is is pretty special right because you have the john you have two iconic franchises not even less than 10 miles from each other and the giants and the a's and you know they've it's not like a clippers lakers situation where one team is kind of irrelevant and another team is the cream of the crowd like no you had two teams that you had to draw battle lines with right like we're talking about the a's today but you know i can't

I can't wear a Niners. If I'm cold and it's freezing, I can't wear a Niners jacket. I can't do it. There's no way that that's even happening because it's just in my DNA to hate that team. And now there's no other team. There's not going to be any other teams to root for other than San Francisco teams or teams in San Francisco for this region. And that's really tough. You know, the East Bay had its own identity.

specifically Oakland had its own identity through these sports teams. And it's really hard to recreate that. I know we have like the Oakland ballers and, you know, like some semi-pro teams out here, but it's not going to be anything like the A's. It's not going to be anything like the Raiders, the Warriors too, even right. Like I covered that team. They were in Oakland when they won their one on their dynastic runner, most of it. And, you know, I feel a lot of range of emotions. I feel, I feel sad that my team's gone. I feel anger because of John Fisher and,

one of just bar none like the worst owner in sports right now i mean if you had to put like if you had to put a ranking for bottom tier owners he's he's right there um and he's he doesn't even there's nobody else in the finals it's the john fisher tier it's right there it's him playing against himself but like it's it's been really just gut-wrenching and he put out a letter like a couple days ago talking about just like how sorry he was and it was just a crock of shit bill

I mean, I don't know if you read it, but it was just basically like we tried to get a stadium built. He did everything in his power to, you know, screw over, you know, not even just like baseball fans, but like team employees. Right. And just like that.

there was a story that came out today in the San Francisco Chronicle about like he's stiffing benefits of the stadium workers at the Coliseum, right? Like he's just a terrible owner. And to see how this has played out with him is just gut-wrenching because, I mean, there's a lot of money in the Bay Area. I mean, you could just make one call to Joe Lake of an A's or here, right? And just to know that

it came down to somebody who never really put money into the team, never really put money into the organization for years, just took,

the took a check from the league from the what is it the TV money he just took the took the took the took the TV money from the league didn't reinvest into the team didn't reinvest into the organization the revenue share he just took revenue share checks this whole time and it's just really disappointing because a lot of money in the Bay Area there's a lot of prideful

fans on the East Bay that are not going to have a team, right? Like it's just or any sort of team. And the fact that the only teams that are available are represent San Francisco and like I love San Francisco. Got a lot of family in San Francisco. That's great. But that's their team. The Niners are their team.

The Giants are there. Right. People aren't switching over. They're not like, okay, now I'll be a Giants fan. It's not happening. Every time I go to my family's house in San Francisco or in Bayview, they're just talking shit about the Raiders. Like, you know, I'm not going to have that anymore. Right. Like my kid ain't going to have that. Like, that's really a thing right now. Like, I know my kid is going to be probably be a Giants fan and a Niners fan. There's nothing that I can do about it. No, you can't do stuff about that.

I did stuff with my kids. They just knew Lakers and Yankees were out and they can go fucking live somewhere else. Like, literally. There's your room. If you want to keep it, you will not be a Laker fan. So my kids knew. I sent a picture in the group chat of like my Raiders hat with

into like the family Murdoch group chat the other day. And I just got just torched. Like, why would you just put a loser organization onto your son at this stage? Right. And it's tough. Right. Because I can't say anything about it. But the A's are more gut wrenching because they're going to go to Vegas and like Vegas doesn't even want them. It's just tough all around. But he's following this Mark Davis blueprint of Mark Davis takes the Raiders, moves them to Vegas, gets the city to pay for like 40 percent of the stadium.

Increased the franchise of the stadium. Got in with football in a city that's growing as a sports city. But the thing is, the key difference is Vegas is one of the Raiders. You can't convince me that Vegas even wants the A's or baseball in general. Who's going to baseball in Vegas? And it's not even a dome stadium, right? Like, who's going to stay? Bill, I mean, I know you love baseball. Are you going to go watch A's Red Sox in the middle of July in Vegas? No.

Why would you do that? In a million years. I have some thoughts. So I grew up, the first Red Sox playoff series ever was over Oakland during that last stretch when Oakland had won the three World Series in a row and then we beat them in like the ALCS. But so there was that Raleigh Fingers, Charlie Finley, there was that era. There was that era where they had all the awesome starters with Mike Norris and all those guys. Then there was the Ricky era.

And that, you know, and that kind of bled in that those two kind of bled together. Then they had the Dave Stewart, Conseco, McGuire, where the, all of a sudden they seem like the most important team in baseball. Again, Ricky was also on that team too. Yeah. And then they had the, and then they had the money ball era where with Billy bean and it, where it seemed like they were just outwitting. Everybody ends up being a movie. I think what, what's so shocking to me about it is, and this is not a new lesson, but

How much power a bad owner can have? Like I saw this in LA with Sterling where not only is there a bad owner, not only is he ruining the culture, not only is he ruining fans, like wanting to even like the team,

but you can't get rid of them. They're like the tenant that just figures out how to use any, yeah, to use every loophole against the landlord to just never leave. It's like you read those stories on Apple news about this person rented out their back house to somebody. And seven years later, the person's still there and I'm paying rent. That's what somebody like John Fisher becomes. And it's the loophole professional sports has never figured out. Once you get a team,

You can't lose it basically unless you do something awful. So he didn't really do anything awful, but he was an awful owner. And how do you, how do you fix that? How do you stop it? You can't. And now you lose your team. Yeah. And it's like, it's, it's hard to even, that's a hard pill to swallow, right? Like, cause even,

I think about NBA, right? Like, I know Sterling got his team. They made him sell his. But, like, David Stern also, like, made the Maloofs in a roundabout way sell their team, right? And, like, after years of them saying they wouldn't. And there has been, like, a willingness from Major League Baseball of letting this happen in a way that's just really...

I don't want to say criminal because, you know, that's a different connotation, but it's terrible, right? Well, it almost seems like they were cool with maybe shoving baseball out of Oakland and pushing it toward another city. That's how I felt, not knowing anything.

Yeah. And then like, I mean, I know there's like connotations of, you know, where the stadium is and things like that. Right. In the city of Oakland. And, you know, the pandemic has really, really ravaged the city in terms of just homelessness and and also just stuff with local city government that is that is really gone going on right now. But I feel like that's been used as a scapegoat for a lot of teams. Right. Like there's not like a team that.

For most of its existence, at least in the last 30 years, the last long as I've been like sports teams have really just taken advantage of the fact that of Oakland's insecurity when it comes to wanting a professional team, the Raiders did it when they came back from Los Angeles and just taking all that public money that honestly just got paid back right after 30 years. And with all that interest being accumulated and you know, that's, it's, it's a, that's something that I was thinking about when I went to the last game was just

Yeah, I love these teams, but, you know, these teams have also taken advantage of citizens like me, right, where they're getting these free passes. And this is this is this is modern day sports where they're getting these free passes to take public money, where public money can probably be best served in a school district, which is Oakland doesn't have or didn't have a great school district when I was growing up. Right. And then it's taken away from city funds, taken away from stuff that it could.

that could really help the city in a lot of ways, right? You're not really investing from it. You're actually taking from it. And that's something that the Raiders did. That's something that the A's have done for the last few decades as well, right? Like on one hand, it's tough to lose a team that, you know, you kind of seep your identity into towards. But then on the other hand, it's like, well, you're not really investing in us. You're not investing in the citizens. You're not investing in the kids and the next generation in the way that you say you are. So it's a double-edged sword.

And that's sports in the modern day, right? Where you talk about private versus public funds and what gets used and what gets taken away. And it's, and then the other side of that, you know, which I dealt with was, you know, like our school district was, was, was bad. And, you know, I had to go to a different route, but I was,

I was a fortunate one that could, you know, my parents could scrape a little bit of money. We weren't well off by any means, scrape a little bit of money to go to private schools. But like, I'm the lucky one. You know, there was a lot of people that I grew up with didn't have that. And so it's a two edged sword where you talk about on the one hand,

And yeah, man, it's cool to have a team where you can take Bart and go to the East Bay or go to East Oakland and watch Derek Jeter, you know, go watch Kobe Bryant, go watch LeBron or go watch Peyton Manning. One of my favorite times ever was getting to see Peyton Manning on Monday Night Football and like 10 minutes from my house. Like that was crazy. But on the one hand, you have that. But on the other hand, like a lot of people are not getting city funds and not getting what they're supposed to be getting as citizens.

Well, you're talking about sports extortion where these people that own the teams who have money, who know all the loopholes and they threaten, well, if you don't do this, you know, you might, we might go, we might go somewhere else. And now you're taking funds that could go to all these good places and you're just helping pay for this arena that the people could probably pay for anyway. I think the fear of that and the reason the city's over and over again, we'll do that is what's happening in Oakland right now.

Oakland loses three teams, right? Plus COVID. And you think of where the city was 10 years ago when everybody was talking about Oakland's on the upswing, you know, all this good stuff's happening here. And then now all of a sudden there's no team.

And whether we want to admit this or not, so much of a city's identity can come from sports and from the heroes people have in the stadiums and the joint experiences. And once you pull that out, that's the reason like Oklahoma City, when there was even a little hint that they might lose the thunder, like they figured that shit out. The mayor said, no, we got this. That's happened in Kansas City too with the Chiefs, right? Like we're going to go to Kansas if you don't pay up for Arrowhead or pay up for, you know, stadium improvements, right? Right. And it works because...

There's always people to point to, right? You can point to the Seattle. They lost to Supersonics. They still don't have basketball. You can point to Hartford. Hartford had the Whalers. That was a great rival to the Bruins when I was growing up. And that was the only team they had. Yeah, Buffalo Braves is another one where you lose that team. And now at least Buffalo had the Bills. Hartford has nobody, right? They've never had a team. They've never been able to get one back. Seattle has other teams, but they've never been able to get basketball. And I guess with Oakland, yeah,

Now they're going to say, well, San Francisco's right there. You can go see. But I don't think that's how people are wired. You've been to Bay Area. That bridge, psychologically, it's 10 minutes or 10, 15 minutes away, but it's a whole world away. It's not as simple as we're going to get on a bridge. From where I live in the East Bay, it'll probably take an hour to get to a San Francisco game. And I can see San Francisco from where I live.

You know, and it's it's not that. And also, like you even talk about like just how much Oakland has been through over the last 10 years. Right. Like, yeah, it was popping in Oakland even during like you when you came for the Warriors run. It was on the up and up. But like also on the other side of that, a lot of my homies were pushed out. A lot of people that look like me were pushed out due to gentrification, you know, and like Oakland has been through a lot. And it's really hard to imagine what's next for this city. Forget a sports team.

I want to see what Oakland does as a city going forward because it's really been hit hard over the last few years. And I don't know. One thing that teams bring is spotlights to other things that are happening into what's going on in the region. And I wonder what Oakland is going to be without that spotlight of just...

good and bad, right? Like the spotlight of we need to do better, but also of like, you know, the good things that we are doing because Oakland has a stigma. You know, I think it's the greatest place on earth. I love being from here. I love, you know, living near here and love being around in Oakland. And, you know, you know, it is hard to, when you hear an out of towner, you know, say like, oh man, you from Oakland. Oh man, it's this, it's that. And then you, then it's like, what on one hand is like, what can you say? But also like,

It's a beautiful town. It's a beautiful place that has continued to be on the short end of the stick based on all the things that we're talking about. And I don't want it to have that stigma. That's going to be the hard part. Well, you know what's interesting about that? You made me think of how when I would go to Oakland, I would see the stadiums, right?

And even like during the Warriors run from the finals every year. Because right off the airport, you get on the freeway right there. You can see the stadiums. And it's like, man, that baseball stadium's in rough shape. Like sometimes you can see the sports buildings of cities and say, what? What's going on there? Why don't they have a new stadium? But it was almost like they were intentionally making the baseball stadium worse and worse. That was the one part I didn't understand with Fisher.

What was the point of making the baseball stadium like almost a health hazard? Like it was probably the most unsafe baseball stadium or football stadium or any stadium that anybody in the country had in the last 25 years. I didn't understand that game plan at all. It was some weird sabotage. It just felt like some weird sabotage, right? Because on the other hand, right, like if you were to pinpoint the perfect place to put a stadium in...

Northern California, that site is the perfect one. If you want to talk about public transportation, getting right there for BART, it's right next to the airport. But that goes to that, the reason why teams didn't want to be there and I'm including the Warriors and including the Raiders in this place because it's a, it's not,

I'm trying to say the right way to say this, but it's, it's, it's a lot of, it's a lot of black and Brown people. It's a lot of low income people. It's not a place where people think that they can sell against advertising or sell a, sell a stadium. Like, Hey, we could put it in middle of East Oakland. A lot of people with money are scared of that reality. That's why they kept doing the Howard terminal when there was a,

local residents were like, yo, you already have a stadium and a great stadium site. Why don't you just use that? They were trying to go toward Jack London. And build around it. That was the big thing, right? Because you went there and it was just basically the stadiums and that was it. And it was traffic in and out. But that's what I'm saying. These teams don't want to invest in these parts of the town. Instead, they want to invest in other places that really don't make as much sense. Because if you...

if you were going to go to howard terminal then you're messing with the ports and you're messing with a lot of other people that are black and brown right like you're messing with a lot of other things when you could do it right here and that's what i'm talking about the the double-edged sword because you're like man i want my team here but also they're not investing in us and that's something that like that's always been a been on the front of the minds of east bay people in oakland citizens general the flip side of that has been what's happened in england where they put

you know, SoFi, Bomber just built this awesome Clippers arena and you're seeing money trickle in there. Now, part of that is because it's the opportunity that was one of the only places to develop real estate, but it's also people trying to invest in that part of extended LA and trying to figure out, you know, could we have stuff down there? I would just say one thing about the Englewood, the Unglewood thing, man. I wish, uh, I wish that, uh, LA's public transportation was like

even a little bit better because it is hard as hell to get to the forum and so far. It's definitely not going to be easier too. We'll see how it goes with the Cooper games. But, you know, my thinking with that is maybe 10 years from now it'll be better. It's weird to me though because I always thought the thing that always struck me going to Warriors games was how convenient it was

off of the airports and i it just was a lot easier than maybe some of these other cities and why it's really hard to get the chase center like if you don't if you go at a certain time it's pretty hard like you know and whereas going to oracle it was it was like i don't know you stay at that one hotel downtown or if you stay in san francisco you take you know it's it's just an easier experience just to get around well do you think what if the warriors lost in that new arena

In your opinion, because I know you've been there a bunch and I, you know, everybody loved going to the Oakland games, although the 2000 version of that was so much better, but still was there was definitely an atmosphere that, you know, now, now it just feels very fancy.

It's very sanitized. I'm really glad I'm not coming back to the top of the year because I ain't trying to hear nobody from the Warriors get mad at me when I say this, but it's the truth. Taste Center is just a very plastic version of a modern-day stadium. There was a little bit of soul in that finals run, but you started to see the shift. I would say even back in the Oracle days from 18 and 19, you started to see the shift and just

there will be complaints from the lawyers like, yo, why isn't it as loud as it used to be? Why are people not like, why aren't they into the game? Right. And,

it's even more so now especially now they have those lower level suites i've never seen lower level suites i didn't even know what those were until i went to chase center they have those lower level suites where and you see it on tv when you come back from halftime and there's nobody in the lower bowl right because everybody's in the clubs they're in the jp morgan club they're in golden gate club and it's a lot it's a lot more techie now right like it's a it's a if

It's a big tech ethos. They're catering now to the Silicon Valley, the South Bay, as opposed to what made Oracle magical. And I get it, right? The Warriors want to make as much money as possible. This is one of the biggest windfalls in American history in the tech business, right? You want to feed off of that. But as a consequence, it can be dead easy.

If you go to a Tuesday game in January, it could be pretty dead at Chase Center. As opposed to Oracle. Wait until five years from now and it's like, and here he is, Brandon Podzemski. Oh, man. There's no Steph Curry anymore because he's in Charlotte with his dad. It's going to be louder at the Valkyries games than it is at the Warriors games in about three and a half years. I was going to ask you about that. I'm excited.

Wouldn't the big win would have been to put that team in the old Oracle? Yeah, but here's another thing. And try to juice it back up? I know why they couldn't, because they own the team and they're trying to get dates in there and the whole thing, but...

I like the fact that they were going to put it at Chase Center because those ladies deserve first class. No, I get it. I'm just saying. That could have been a good link, though, to the old era. So, you know, they're actually putting the practice facility. They redid the whole practice facility at the Oakland Marriott. So that's where the...

the ladies are going to be going to be practicing and they have like a state of the art thing. So they're, they're doing right by Oakland. Like the Warriors and the Valkyries are doing right by Oakland. That team's going to crush. What'd they get? It was a $50 million expansion fee. They've already probably tripled that. But thanks to the Caitlin era. And you know, Lake was trying to get Sabrina, stop playing. You already know that that's probably the first or second meeting to get Sabrina in like three years. Well, what's weird is I think with the way the salary cap works there, it's not like you can bowl over another team. You,

I could just... Well, there's another TV deal coming very soon for the W. So it's going to... Just to look and also like don't underestimate like if he really wants to make a splash with this, obviously, right? Like he wants... He doesn't want to be... He doesn't want to get into W to be a mediocre franchise. This could be his new thousand points of late.

Listen, the Warriors are going to like we all in about five years, the Warriors are probably going to suck. Right. So, I mean, if you have a if you have some sort of and here's if you have some sort of like championship ethos or something that Lake of Ken Lake of Ken like Pang has had on another thing that's interesting. And this is just this is something that you're going to enjoy because I know you love owner beef. And I'm not saying this is technically owner beef, but it is like owner like side eye.

Think about the dynamic between Mark Davis and Joe Lacob for the Aces versus the Valkyries, right? Oh, yeah. Joe Lacob has seen Mark Davis's work, right? Just being in the Bay Area this whole time. You can't tell me that he's not looking at, like, Mark Davis and the Aces like, I want to kick their ass. Like, just off of GP, right?

just there's there's going to be that there's going to be the joe lakob with uh joe sy out and with the liberty is going to be some owner beef wait just wait till the next generation of of uh w basketball it's just when as we get more money and more nba owners investing just keep a look out for that owner beef well think about so it was supposed to be them and portland were supposed to be the two teams last year for 50 million each then portland the guy backed out so it only ended up being the golden state team then a year passes

And then Toronto comes in for 125. So it's already, it's already two and a half times higher just in one season. And I mean that the shit, if Caitlin had been able to pull off that game yesterday and just got into a game three,

That would have been the biggest rating in the history of the league. But I think that I was waiting for Kaelin versus Diana Taurasi. That was what I wanted. That's what I was rooting for. But you know, I'll tell you, here's, here's how far the WNBA has come. I had a three team series parlay that I put real money on with the sun, the sun and the other two heavy favorites. I thought the sun were going to wipe out the fever.

Aren't you proud of me? I'm so proud of you because I've been locked in on the W as you know. Let's give it just for the listening audience as we're at the end of this. Let's go three minutes on the W real quick. I'm really intrigued by this Aces-Liberty matchup coming up.

I know that the Liberty are favored and I've heard it. I've seen Andrea Carter already picked the Liberty, but I'm fucked that there's a look in Asia's eyes. That is like 20, what? 2018 LeBron, except I think she's going to win it. Like, I think that's, there's a look in her eye where the team isn't as good as it should be. Chelsea Gray's already been injured, right? Like they, they've had some Kelsey plum is like dealt with some stuff, but Asia has been steady and she has a look in her eye and she all, and I think,

the Liberty are so soft. And I think that the aces are going to go through them. And I think that they're going to win another championship. I think it's one of those things that is destined.

I will say really good home buzz in those Liberty games. Like that's like a genuine atmosphere now. Dare I say tough place to win. Yeah. But hey, I've been to every time my every time I take my summer league quest to Vegas, I make sure that I go to an Aces game. I think it's I still think it's the best environment because there's there's it's Barclays is still an NBA arena and that like there's other stuff to do. There's nothing else to do in that Mandalay Bay.

Bay Arena except watch the game. And they are on top of you. It is popping. It is loud. And they have the Chicago Bulls, the 90s Bulls that they're watching. They get really into it. It's going to be fun. It's going to be fun. I bet on the links a month ago and I still feel good about it. The links are like legit good. They're really good and they have a great coach. Well, since you went on paternity leave, we launched a Ringer WNBA podcast. So when you come back,

You have a place to get off your takes with Syrit. I can't wait. With Syrit, I can't wait. Syrit, have me on the show. Yeah. This is my last show, though. Like, I'll see you guys at the top of the year. Yeah, yeah, no. We had to do this. This was the one thing. How's it going with the little homie? Little homie's doing good. He's a beast. He's eating us out of a house and home. I haven't gotten sleep. It's good to see somebody outside of this house for the first time in weeks. Welcome to Dad Club, by the way.

I'm here. I'm really here. As I told you, really, really enjoy those first 15 years because we literally don't see either of our kids anymore and they're not even 20 yet. So it goes fast. That's what I heard. I'm excited. I'm trying to get this Raiders propaganda. I'm done with the A's. I can't believe I'm wearing this hat right now, but I'm going to try to see if you'll be a Raiders fan. It's all I got is him being a Raiders fan. That's all I have. We'll see. We'll see.

All right, Logan Murdoch, we'll see you in 2025. Thanks for popping on. We appreciate it. Good to see your face. Good to see you too. Thanks, man. Thanks, Kyle.

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All right. Brian Curtis is here. You can hear him on the press box. He's the editor at large of the ringer. We've been working together since 2011. We have some conflicts of interest to disclose before we do this part of the podcast. Uh, Zach Lowe, who worked with us at Grantland, who, um, I think was the best all around basketball person who did this in the NBA was, uh, let go by ESPN today. It was a layoff. It was another ESPN laugh. And you know,

There's been a few of these. It's not like I've done a podcast every time and obviously I'm friends with Zach, but it just felt like there's a moment here with ESPN that I felt like we should hit and you agreed and we're just going to talk about it. So what was your reaction when you heard? The first reaction was, wait a second, you just renewed the NBA rights for two and a half billion dollars and then you laid off the best NBA writer in America in the same breath? That really happened?

like a week and change after the biggest NBA newsbreaker in America left the network. And, you know, that was the first reaction. And then the second reaction is something you and I've said over the years as we've seen these layoffs and people walk out the door of Bristol is if ESPN doesn't have room for Zach Lowe, who does ESPN have room for? And who do they want in the room? It's kind of the question, isn't it? It's clearly a strategy.

And they clearly value certain things. And I think, you know, everybody gets mad anytime something like this happens. And, you know, and I get it. But to me, it's more interesting what the strategy is.

and what they're thinking and where Zach fit into that. Because obviously, you know, and they had an issue with this 10 years ago when I was there. Like they didn't know how to monetize podcasts. They didn't know how to get real value from them. Zach's biggest value is as a writer and a podcaster and a steward of the game and also somebody who can go on TV and be good. But it seems like what they value now is people who can do TV hits first and foremost.

and hits that you can cut into 70 to 90 second videos that can go on their website or go on YouTube.

The better the headline is for those hits, that seems to be where the value is. And I'm not besmirching some of the people that do that stuff. I'm just saying that seems to be how they value it. It's either that or the giant names, which you've covered many times in ringer pieces, like getting the best possible people to cover a football game, right? Spending money in the high-end town. I'm sure they're going to bring back Stephen A. Smith.

But I think that's what they're becoming. I think what's so fascinating to me is that it's the opposite of where they were 10 years ago when they seemed to try to want to be everything but also really have, I guess for lack of a better word, a soul. I'm not sure what the soul is going to be if this is what your strategy is. So that's my big take.

First of all, we should congratulate Zach for inaugurating a whole new era of television where you would come on television in your sweats. Remember, he was doing that even before COVID. It would be a TV hit and everybody be in their suits and we'd see Zach from his apartment and be like, look at that. That guy looks slightly different than people I'm used to seeing on TV. Now that's what we all do on Zoom. So I completely agree with you. And I think the strategy is fascinating because

ESPN, like every other media company in America, is walking across this bridge from the world of cable television to the world of streaming and over the top. And they're making a decision who's coming over the bridge with us. Who do we want to be part of this new world? And they've picked a couple of big guys, the Stephen A's and the Pat McAfee's. They've picked a ton of sports rights, which they've done a good job signing up. But the interesting question to me is like, this all feels very TV oriented to me.

It feels like we're getting people to do these TV hits, even though we're kind of admitting we're not really a TV company anymore. You know, if Zach's value, if you're saying, well, we can't see the value of him as like a TV guy cutting up those 60 second clips that now dominate the website. But isn't there money to be made with a Zach Lowe NBA podcast? Like, isn't that? Apparently not.

If ESPN is selling it. I just, I just find that weird, but it's not, listen, it's not their business. You know, and you, what you've seen a lot of that from a lot of the stuff they've been doing the last five years is outsourcing stuff, right? Omaha is producing more and more shows for them. It's kind of insane. Why aren't you producing your own shows?

You know, why are you constantly like Connor left and his company does a bunch of 30 for thirties and produces the SPs for them. It's like, why aren't you guys doing this? So on the one hand, they're outsourcing a bunch of stuff. And on the, and then as concurrently, they seem like they're thrown away. At least the podcast piece of everything. They have podcasts. They have a bunch of them, but it doesn't seem like they care because if they cared, they would have kept Zach. So, um,

When you talk about this new world that they're entering, the world is sports rights and just enough people to seem like you're still the biggest. Is that what it is? It's totally flipped, hasn't it? Because remember old ESPN, they didn't really have the games you wanted to watch, but they had the people you wanted to listen to. And new ESPN now has all the games you want to watch. They have the Super Bowl in 2027. They have the NBA finals. They have all these huge packages, but they don't really have the people

that you want to hear her talk about the games a lot of the time. Still plenty of good people there. I don't want to write everybody off. By the way, how many times have we been playing that game, you and I, over the last 10 years where we say, you know what, at least ESPN has, and then we fill in the blank with somebody everybody likes. At least they still have Mina.

At least they still have Wickersham. And Zach was on that list before today. And that list is getting really, really small. But what, I mean, what's the point of having feature hardcore feature journalism at this point anymore? So you're going to dabble in that every once in a while, but not always have it. Or you're going to have some of it, or you're going to have a new version of it. That's another thing. I just, I, my point is I don't understand the strategy. I feel like I've always understood at least somewhat what they're doing.

And now it seems like their strategy is five different things happening at the same time because now they're on the gambling side too, right? So they got in super late on that, probably like four years too late. Doesn't seem like they're in on podcasts the same way. Seems like they're really in on the YouTube, TikTok, all that social stuff. And that seems to be the thing they point to when they talk about

success things. They also talk about how the ratings are up, but we all know the ratings are up because they started counting bar TVs and airport TVs and things like that. The ratings aren't actually up. It's just the way they count the ratings. It's more people. But I do wonder, like to me, to me, the next one is PTI. What happens with that show? Because we're, we're seeing a certain shift toward a certain type of content and it's

Where does PTI and two old guys that are beloved and, you know, institutions at the place who are one of a kind and the show is always the best when Will Bonacorn has her on it.

Where do those guys fit going forward? And this is the first time I wouldn't be surprised. They're just like, yeah, we got rid of Wilbon and Kornheiser. Two guys that were grandfathered in, no offense to Mike and Tony from another age of television. But to me, the whole daytime ESPN is a real question, right? Because in the cable TV universe, what did you do? You just turn on ESPN. And for a lot of it was just on all day. So that floated a certain kind of programming during the day. Is that going to exist when we get into streaming world?

At four in the afternoon, just when there's not a game on it, just I would want to put ESPN on to be the background noise. So I think you're right. Like that show doesn't fit in with what the Pataro regime vision of ESPN has been. But I also just think ESPN is probably just changing in a very, very fundamental way. And I don't know how much daytime ESPN there's going to be because that's really one of the only things left besides around the horn.

Well, what we haven't seen streaming sports stuff, just talking head stuff work for people like I will go to Peacock and watch this. I will go to Paramount. Watch the people aren't doing that. Oh, Max says that they don't. But people are in the habit. Maybe this is older people and maybe it's not people 25 and under of, oh, I'm just going to put ESPN on. And I wonder if maybe that's starting to fade, too. So it just feels like it's getting louder and more distinct.

But on the other hand, they're still taking swings. Like they're spending more money on the Manicast, right? Yeah. They took a bunch of swings with their NBA coverage. None of them worked. They went and they spent money on Doc Rivers. Like they doubled down on JJ. They were paying Woj as much money as anybody. But now you think like the last year, I mean, just NBA in general, the last year,

They lose Doc. They lose JJ. They lose their lead color analyst twice after firing Van Gundy, right? Woj is just gone. Now Zach Lowe's gone. It's just, it's kind of your brain spinning. And now I guess what we're going to get

And I like Stephen A. So this is not a slight at Stephen A. And I really think he's a good guy, but it feels like they're moving toward it's a Knicks playoff game. Here's Stephen A's entrance. And that's kind of what they think people want. And I don't think they're right.

No. How did that go over with Jason Kelsey during the Eagles game the other day? And people were just like, I don't want this. This is, this is too much. So hard. Yeah. It's, and I like Jason Kelsey, but I didn't like the way they use them. Then he stayed in the booth and it's all of a sudden Aikman's gone from a game that was really good. Cause as soon as somebody is in a booth, you have, you know, this, they have to interview him.

And Jason, nobody knows better than you that that tush push, you just have to like figure out ways to work the guy in. It's like, Buck and Hickman are the best announcing team we have. What are you guys doing? Can we talk about the center some more? This is great. Great content. Keep going with this. I want to come back to your idea about the soul of ESPN. Because I think that is like a really interesting question. Because when you write stuff like this or say stuff like this, ESPN will come back. Did you see the rights package we just signed?

Did you see how we got the entire SEC, the entire college football playoff? Man, they have lost so many things about ESPN that made it unique over the last decade and plus. I put a list together a couple of years ago when we did a piece about ESPN layoffs. One of the many stories I've read about it. Yeah, dude, when you just look at the list.

Simmons, Russillo, the Grantland gang. Okay, that's inside the house here. Michael and Jamel, Dan Levitard, Keith Olbermann, Wesley Morris, Matthew Berry, Mark Stein, Chad Ford. You want me to keep going? Chris Felica, Tom Rinaldi, Mike, did I say Tirico already? Adam Amin, Jason Benetti. I mean, like, Bomani, both Mike Goliks. Like, I could go on and on and on. Just think. Three Mike Goliks. I think there's four Mike Goliks. Many, many Mike Goliks.

Just think of how many people walked out the door. And again, your mileage may vary on some of those people. And I totally understand that. But it's like people have fewer entry points to get into ESPN, right? That was part of the cool thing about old ESPN. You could like this and not like this, but you'd still be in the ESPN mothership because you're like, I like Bill. I like Rosillo. I like this. I like Mike and Mike in the morning. This is my entry point. Those people are all gone. Right. Well, you know, what else was interesting about it is

It seems like there's a certain, granted Twitter is Twitter, but I did notice Zach was trending today, but it also said he was trending with Kendrick Perkins. And that was one of the interesting topics of this, right? Is that people were looking at this, like ESPN is choosing this Kendrick Perkins direction of their basketball coverage over the Zach Lowe direction.

I don't even know, I mean, look, there's a million reasons why something like this can happen. But I don't necessarily blame Kendrick for some of the stuff he says or the way he's trying to provoke people because they're telling him to do that. If you're being produced a certain way, if you're being incentivized a certain way,

and you're on TV and you want to gain more and more whatever power, you want to be on TV more, you want to make more money, you're going to do what the people are like, that was great. I loved what you said about how Jason Tatum isn't an alpha. Just stare in the camera and do that again for 90 seconds. And that's just the way this shit's going to go. So there's really like for the people that bitch about it, just don't watch. That's really the only way any of this stuff's going to change. If you don't like this direction, wherever we're going,

You don't have to watch it. I don't watch this stuff in the morning anymore. Do you? No. Are you watching their morning shows? So little. I mean, so little. And I only see the clips and then it's that 45 second clip you're talking about. Perk goes off on Jason Tatum. I'm like, okay. But look, it's not, you're right. It's not a one for one trade. You know, it's not like they say, okay, we can either pick Perk or we can pick Zach and only one of them can stay. I don't think it quite works like that. But it's not not that either. Because just like you said, they figured out what they want. Right.

right? Some of those people are good. Orlovsky, people like that. But like, we want that guy and give us 45 seconds, really good meaty seconds. And then we're going to put that on the website. That's going to be the new article for us. Other articles. Like right now there's a video perk. Nobody is scared of the Celtics with a picture of perk and Jason Tatum. It's like, what? Nobody's scared of the Celtics click. That's kind of where we're going now. And I don't know. It, it,

I maybe we're like the, the older people now who are nostalgic for some era that's just gone anyway. But I do feel like, especially when we were there 10 years ago, like they did, they didn't care about the big picture of some of this stuff. And now it seems like they intermittently care.

See, I don't feel like an old guy on this because like you and I being old guys be like, where's the original edition of the sports reporters? Where, when it had, when it had the guys from the Chicago tribute, that's what I wanted to say. We're talking about Zach freaking low, man. Yeah. If you want to reach young basketball fans, isn't that one of the ways to do it? Yeah. And also like somebody that was a real, a thought leader and inspiration to a whole generation of, of people and also a fucking awesome guy.

Right. Right. We, we worked with them. Like the guy gives a shit. He puts in his time. He doesn't, he's not a look at me, look at me. He's a really generous teammate. Um, he just does so many, there's just so many good things that come with working with that guy that if you don't appreciate that, that's, that's nuts. I just don't, I don't understand that. But you know, part of me wonders like the evil side of me wonders, um,

Do they do this knowing somebody else is going to pick them up and they're just off the hook? It's almost like when baseball teams leave, you know, their right field, they're unprotected on the waiver wire, knowing somebody might actually claim them.

Yeah. Timing of this is weird. He was the only guy that they didn't do. They laid off right before this whole end of the quarter thing. Nobody else was in it. They're back channeling and telling people, no, no, this is part of the RG three Sam Ponder thing. It is. Why don't, why didn't you do this two months ago then? Yeah. Right before the NBA season, he, he was on NBA today. He did a podcast with JJ Redick yesterday.

So what are you doing? It's funny to your point. Like I had somebody text me today. It's like, it's not a bad time to be an NBA media free agent right now, given what's happening with all the rights. You know, there are people out there in a year who might going to want people. I've heard that, but like, look at Amazon's NFL coverage. There's no reporter on that stuff. They just have ex players and a host. This is Albert, we're a racer, Bill. But you know what I mean? Like, it's not like there's going to be 40 jobs. It's not like they're going to have some

whole universe built around like reporting stuff. And I don't know, it's, I wish I could explain ESPN and I just can't. The gambling thing I think was, was the first sign that maybe they were just outright missing on stuff, you know? And, um, when you just have to keep doing this over and over again and rebooting who you are and what you're trying to be, now, now they've pinned themselves in a position with Steve and a, where they basically have to keep them. Oh,

Oh, absolutely. He can name his price. He's coming across the bridge. I mean, like I said, when we're talking about people who are going to be part of the new ESPN, Stephen A is part of it. Yeah, there has to be. But there's also like a little bit of a lawlessness that as somebody who was suspended for three weeks and suspended on Twitter a couple of times. Wait, what? I look back at some of the stuff I did. It wasn't one-tenth as bad as some of the stuff that people do now. Like Ryan Clark, like openly challenging them about his extension. Yeah.

I, I, I'm just there. I did. They have bosses. What's happening, but this is the thing, right? It's the players coach here at ESPN too, where the people we pick, we pick them and we kind of just let them do what they want. We're not worried about including if they want to have a sex tape on Instagram. That's fine. I'll look the other way in that one. Is it going to be a first take Tuesday? Okay, cool. Oh my God. Oh, uncle was getting it on.

It's just, I just don't understand it. Like who's in charge? What are you trying to do? Yeah. I mean, that's what, that's what I say. And again, like I said, every time I say these words and you know, we've had some moments here. I believe I had a column called ESPN's year from hell a little bit earlier in 2024. Look at the sign. Just sign the sports rights.

Just just resign the college got the whole college football playoff. I mean, that's what ESPN is now, right? It's the games you want to see. That's if you're looking for a strategy. The strategy is the games you want to see a handful of guys who host talk shows and we'll figure out the rest. Well, I wonder if it's almost like what happened with movies in the 2000s. They're like, let's just do franchises. Let's let's.

Instead of spending money on these 10 movies and hoping one of them hits, let's just go get a fucking DC Comics thing going and we'll make Lethal Weapon 7 and we'll just do some sequels and let's everybody turn our brains off and not try to make good stuff. Well, it is funny. The ESPN's version of that is sports rights. Like, hey, we have all the sports rights. It doesn't really matter who's announcing them except for football. And it doesn't really matter what the shows are around them because people are going to watch the games anyway and we're fine.

Yeah. I do. I do come back to like, you just spent so much money on the NBA. So in the NBA is one of your franchises. That's one of your Marvel franchises at ESPN. So don't you want the best people around it, even if they're not, you know, my brain, like surely you want other people around there. But they did. They just had the most rollercoastery, rocky franchise.

kind of behind the scenes year ever covering the league last year, right? Did it ultimately matter? People are still walking. They're like, Oh, I'm not watching game four tonight. There's too much, too much chaos at ESPN. Like people don't care. Like ultimately they could have like JJ's leaving and they're, they have woes reporting on it. And it's this whole basically internally created soap opera around the Laker job that they're just getting clicks out of. And it was annoying, but it didn't stop people from watching the finals. Yeah.

Now you're sounding like the ESPN management because you're going, oh, well, it doesn't matter. We're just, as long as we have the game. I'm just trying to figure out what they're thinking. Yeah. And I think that's what they're thinking. It's like, guess what? People are going to watch sports and the UFC deal is going to come up. We're going to redo that. And we're going to have UFC. We're going to have NBA and we have college football and we have WNBA now, which is growing big time, you know, and on and on and on. And we have sports all the time. And that's why people come. And we've done a million, uh,

research models on this and this is what people want. Where they missed was the ESPN bet because they just got in too late. They have no chance with that.

I completely agree. But you know what? This sucks because it's Zach and Zach's great. So it just sucks. You know, like it's not fun and it's not, it's not, again, I just, your soul just got to keep coming back to that word because you just look at ESPN like, I want to visit ESPN a little bit less today. It's not going to die. ESPN is not over. You know, there's no need to go in for the full think piece treatment here, but it just, it's a little worse today. Maybe a lot worse without him.

What do people say? Cause you talk to everybody and you know, you've been at the forefront of smartly writing about sports media and not, not going crazy and not getting caught into like, I have this scoop, but just trying to write big picture takes about where things are going and where things are leaning and where things are moving and what little trends are happening and trying to explain why this happened, incorporating the history of things. What, when people talk to you about ESPN, what, what are the, like the most common things they ask you?

Well, it's interesting because before, I think 10 years ago and certainly like 15 years ago, it felt like the ultimate destination. And especially became in the 2010s, the ultimate destination for sports writers, not just for people who wanted to be the next SportsCenter anchor, which was kind of a funny flip, right? ESPN became the worldwide leader in sports writing.

for a pretty long patch there. And you and I were both a part of that. You much, obviously much more than me. But you know, what's funny is when I talk to people now, very few of them say, talk about ESPN as a place they aspire to work at. And it's not that they think ESPN is bad. I just don't think they think that's attainable anymore. Right. They're just, they just don't see that as like a logical pathway. Because again, if you don't have room for Zach, do you have room for me? Yeah.

You know, it doesn't, it just doesn't compute. So I think for a certain type of person, it's just not even on the, on the bingo card anymore as a place they would work. The other piece of it, and we'll see if Shams is a part of this, whether they want to stay in the information business in the post Woj era. And I, some people in my life were like, Woj, maybe he knew he was getting laid off and they,

And they gave him a heads up and he got out. That's not what happened. I think he was genuinely, there's no conspiracy theory on Woosh. I think he was burned out and I think he just wanted to do the St. Bonnet thing, felt like he made enough money. But this information culture that they've created

where all that mattered was getting those scoops, which you and I never really understood. And I'll be interested to see if they break away from that or not. I think the big scoops matter, right? If you know somebody is getting traded, like a major player is getting traded. If you know a team's getting sold, if you know somebody is going to retire. But when it comes down to Isaac Okoro has signed a three-year $38 million extension negotiated by Brian Curtis of Curtis Agent Media. Yeah.

No, that's where you lose me. So I wonder, are they going to double down on this information error or maybe start shifting away from that too? My guess would be they'll start shifting away. Maybe. Can you think they can unhook themselves from the machine that they hook themselves up to with Woj and Schefter and Jeff Passan and everybody else? What's the upside of it? So the upside is you're not being embarrassed that other people are getting the scoops, right? But I mean, I'm not...

a shame to admit, like at the ringer, like we've never cared about that stuff because our, our theory was always, well, the stuff will come out and then we'll react to it. Right. We want to have the best. This happened. What do you think people, we don't really care if we have the people who are burning the phone lines, trying to break information. So I guess from ESPN standpoint, I know it was important to have Woj.

On the other hand, a lot of the stuff was his Twitter feed, which isn't on ESPN, and they're not really able to monetize in any way. Now, he can give them a heads up, stuff's coming. He can do like a Monday morning, I'm about to do this, nobody has it, get ready. For the most part, unless it's like a giant thing, I don't really see the...

I don't see the upside. I don't personally get it. What do you think? I never have. I mean, I've, I've never seen it other than what you mentioned, which is having the name of a rival media company on the bottom line where you have to credit them when they break something, which is obviously what drove them. Yeah. Agent Wojnarowski reports dot, dot, dot, which completely, you know, drove them bonkers when they had to do that. But I had, I had fantasy on press box last week and we were talking about this, having almost the same conversation. He's like, I don't get it. I mean,

Not only why do you necessarily want that? Why do you want somebody at that price point that you have to pay them to be the ultimate insight? Yeah. You know, even if it's Shams coming over, that's gonna be a lot of money. I mean, that's that's millions of dollars, right? Like that's that's what the price to get him is going to be. So you want to here's the time of the company when it's tight, when when you're trying to cut talent salaries. Do you want that much money just to have the pride of not having it on the bottom line?

Is that it? You know, because you're going to do. I think that's literally it. I don't think there's another reason. I mean, I think it's about if we're supposed to be the worldwide leader, how do we not have this stuff? But, you know, I think what happened to Woj's career the last 15 years is pretty informative, right? From 2010 to 2014.

he was a really fearless basketball journalist, right? He, he operated a lot like how Matt Bellamy is, is writing his Hollywood column now for puck. Like he was, he was really well sourced, but he also didn't play favorites and in favor trade, didn't do any of that stuff. And within 10 years, favorite trading was the business. And I think, I honestly feel like that was part of the reason he probably got out because I think in your DNA, if you want to be a reporter and you want to

be fearless to shift the other way where now everything is a favor trade. I don't know how you can do that for that long. It's funny. I talked to Sean about this the other day, but the amazing thing about insiders to me is also you can never say, I don't know. When something breaks or when there's something going on, you can never come on television and be like, I don't know the answer to the question. Right. We know as journalists, even if we think we have sources, there are times when you just don't know.

You really don't say there's a lot of times, a lot of times. Right. But you all there's this idea that not only do you have to like, I can't take my phone in the shower or whatever that thing you were laughing about the other day was, but you just can't say, I don't know, because then all the magic disappears. You're not the almighty insider anymore. What do you don't know? You don't know what's about to happen.

And to me, that's always just like, what? You know, just a strange existence for anybody to be in. Much less a journalist. Part of me is thinking like, if this does end,

There are some benefits, right? Like we could watch an NBA or NFL draft and not have every pick spoiled, right? We could have TV pregame shows where we don't have to like awkwardly shoehorn the insider to be like, I am hearing that Memphis is very interested in a center. And we could, I don't know, just talk about other stuff. But the big picture point,

We're heading in 25 with this new streaming only ESPN thing. And it just feels like this is like the Zach Lowe moment feels like something we'll remember where we're like, oh, remember ESPN was creeping this way and then they laid off Zach and then they went this way.

And I think I see that and it feels like you do too, which is why we want to do this segment. I do. It feels important, right? Even if, again, that whole list I just gave you of people that have walked out the door, for some reason, this one hits a little bit differently. It does. And maybe it is. Maybe it's the beginning of something. Maybe we'll look back when we look at ESPN 2030. Yeah.

where holograms are doing SportsCenter and the AI write-ups have gone way beyond what they're doing now, that this will be a moment. I totally can feel that. - Well, they have some good stuff going still. They still have all the rights, which is really the only thing that matters. They whiffed on ESPN Radio. It seems like they've whiffed on the podcast business. But the YouTube and the TikTok,

and the Snapchat and you name any sort of thing that has risen over the last 12 years, they're in there in the best possible ways. And maybe that's their business. And maybe people like us just don't see it. You know, they obviously see some sort of vision that's different than I think what, what we see.

Maybe we're the dinosaurs. Like I say, I feel like the old guy with you sometimes. I don't feel like the old guy right now. Defending Zach Lowe doesn't make me feel old. That makes me feel young, if anything. How about Skip Bayless, unemployed? That's got to make you feel old. Did I put his name on the list of people who walked out the door the last 10 years? No, that's another one. There's another one. Yeah. The end of the Skip Bayless career, now that's something. Oh, my God.

Oh, my first, my first guy when I was a kid, man, let me tell you.

That would have been a great eight episode podcast series that only like seven people would have loved. Like the, the, the rise, rise and whatever of Skip Bayless. But going into the, those Dallas Cowboys years. Oh my God. He wrote three Cowboys books in like five years. And I have all of them. And so do you. Really good. Yeah. They're actually really good books. They got kind of a bad rap. It was just that era where you could just get crazy inside access with the football team.

Or you didn't know how true some of the access was, but that's what made it fun to read. He told me one time when the Cowboys did their first Super Bowl in the Jerry Jimmy era, he had breakfast with Jerry Jones the day of the Super Bowl. Just think about that now at the hotel. Yeah, that happened. Are you worried about the Cowboys?

Hell yes. Are you kidding? I'm actually not worried. Resign. We're taping this before the Giants game. They might beat the Giants like 45 to 10 today. I'm the opposite of Cousin Sal where he's like having the flicker of hope. Keep the keep hope alive. I'm just resigned. I mean, I'm I'm I'm out. I just think it's done. I know.

I know. I still think there's like a, you know, a nine win slip into the playoff scenario, but that's about all I'm hopeful for. By the way, I had a nitpick. You and you and fantasy did your top campaign movies. Okay. On your pod. Dave is not a campaign movie. Dave's being an office movie. That's fucking cheating. There was no campaign in Dave. CC Sean fantasy.

Well, that's just that. That's just a lazy and B, he cheated, which is par for the course of that guy. He's going to try to win with however he does it. Dave, where's the campaign? And Dave, did I miss it? Was it a deleted scene? He's just in office. The fuck is he doing? Come on, fantasy. Curtis, good to see you. It's good to see you too, Bill.

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All right. We're taping this on a Thursday afternoon. We didn't want to wait for that stupid giants Cowboys game and do it after because that game's dumb. Who cares? Joe house is here. He has a quarterback. Jaden Daniels is in his life as a superstar.

In waiting. How's it so excited? You can't see on the, on the video. He's in a hotel room. He just rented a hotel room. What is it? Just massages every day. What's going on? You just rubbed. I just wanted to be close to, to offensive greatness. I had the offensive greatness of Jordan, Daniel, uh, Jaden, Jaden, Daniels in my life. I know his name. Uh,

I am on the campus of James Madison University at the moment because I wanted to be close to the former Holy Cross coach. What's his name? Bob Chesney. Bob Chesney. He dropped 70 on North Carolina last week. Yeah. Why do you bet on that? We've got nothing but offensive explosions surrounding us. And, you know, there were some offensive explosions in my living room Monday night. Let there be no doubt.

Yeah, what were the techs like? You haven't had a lot of, oh my God, you must be so happy football techs in the last 20 years. They're all of the same kind, which is not believing it, right? We had RG3, which was an incredible run in 2012, all the way up until Daniel Snyder died.

and his cheap ways put an end to RG3's career on that field. And then we did have a minute with Kirk Cousins. Kirk Cousins did take the Washington team to the playoffs in 2015. I went to the game against... Who can forget? Who can forget? Unbelievable. But there was a minute there. People are still talking about that.

This is a thing where like we got the right guy for the right situation at the right time. It happens so rarely in Washington. So it's wonderful. I actually had dinner with two Washington fans on, uh, on Tuesday night and they were just so excited, you know, cause it wasn't just a performance. There's been pieces about Daniels where the teammates, the way they're talking, you know, I love this stuff. This is like my, my jam, uh, the teammates being like, he's him, uh,

Like when we're following Jaden, this is the guy like when the when the guys on the team just start raving like that to reporters, you know, something good's happening. I mean, I'm getting the same chills that I had Monday night because I did spend, you know, hours with all of the breakdowns of that, you know, the whole Internet. Thank God it was the amazing convergence of events for that. And I'll stop in a second. It was a Monday night football game. The biggest.

stage and you know the Browns the Bills beat the crap out of the Jags so nobody was watching everybody flipped right over to Washington and that game was exciting because there was scoring on every goddamn possession and so you know the breakdown of the tape afterwards is like when you go slow and watch the decisions he's making when you go slow and watch the poise he's showing in the face of you know oncoming rushes

That's the stuff that, you know, put your hairs up properly. Well, one of the games we're looking at is, because we're going to do million dollar picks, and we did well last week, and we'll get to that. But Cards Washington. Cards are favored by minus three and a half in Arizona, and the Cardinals are a team that I've really liked. They're one and two, but both losses were like good losses. Like they really hung with Buffalo. They really hung with Detroit.

And this is the worst possible classic stereotypical bad spot for Washington. Coming off a late Monday night football game. Everyone's super excited about how they did. So they're riding high. Congratulations all week. Short week. Cross country.

And they have to play a team that has good offense. And guess what? Guess who doesn't have good defense? Washington. The stats are just awful. They're 32nd on third down. They're 30th on first down. 31st against the pass. 28th against the sacks. Like,

Yeah, if you have that kind of defense, you better score on every offensive possession. You better not punt because if you give the other team the ball, they're probably going to score. Right, and the Bengals, all they did wrong was just not score a touchdown every time they had the ball, which they almost did. Like literally one missed field goal, right? Yeah, it was a five-point game, but really it was, you know, they had one missed field goal on one of those possessions. Yeah, so...

No echo in this game, but McBride is questionable. But you guys were running the ball. Like Washington has the fifth best run offense right now. Seventh yards per play. Fifth on first down. Like good stuff was happening. The defense is bad, but you know, I'm looking at that one and I think we both like the over and especially if we adjust it and we're

Are you allowed to bet against Washington a million dollar picks? Because I'm going to offer you an Arizona money line over 43 and a half. And that's minus one on one on FanDuel. No, I think I'm a sober realist. Like for me, we've kind of got the validation for the whole year from the third game of the season. Like all I hope for with this Washington team is to hit the over of six and a half wins. That's the only thing that I really invested in. Yeah.

And so I'm like, fine. I bet on Tampa in week one. I don't think that there's anything wrong with trying to make money. The money's still green. What do you think about that over 43 and a half with the Arizona man? Yeah, I do like that because one of my favorite bets from that game is Washington over 23 and a half as its team total. So it's good. That same same bet system, right? Because you probably score 24 to win that.

I like this Cardinals team. I was really impressed. I said it on Sunday. I was really impressed by their two losses. I thought they...

They hung around. I don't think their defense is very good, and they'll probably give up points. I wanted to do the minus three and a half, but the cheap touchdown potential of the Commanders. Sure. The C-words. Yeah. The Commies. What are people calling them? The Commies? I don't know. No, nobody calls them the Commies. I don't want to say it. What do people call them? Washington? They call them the Commanders. He's not giving it up. They call them the Commanders. Doesn't Kevin Durant call them the Manders?

The Manders? I think he does. I think that's what Katie calls him. That's pretty good. I don't mind that. So, all right, that's one I had. I'm giving you a couple that I had flagged as maybes. I'm not going to talk you out of that. The only thing with that is, you know, uh,

Arizona, you expect them to score quickly, so that's why the over is the angle. But I don't want to mess with the 50 and a half. I like it down in the lower 40s. The 43 and a half is nice. 44 points is 24 to 20, and you're hitting it. Next one that I was on the fence with, and I think you like this more than me, but the Vikings at Green Bay, Vikings plus three.

And I think the reason this is a stay away for me is I see both sides on it, but I'll just the case for the bikes, which I think you and I both, that was kind of our blink test of like, ah, the bikes, the way they played the last couple of weeks. I mean, no three, no, but the last two weeks were just awesome. Awesome wins. Last week was an absolute ass kicking Houston. There's an Aaron Jones. Fuck you game. Yes. Possibly going back to Lambo. I'm circling. He's a bad MF-er.

There's the Jordan love coming back off of a knee injury that he's probably not a hundred percent on. And Brian Flores just puts in the shit out of them. And the Minnesota stats are nuts. They're first in sack. Second, the QB hits first, the QB hurries first to tackle losses. They're also the most confusing defense. When you're watching on TV, they're showing this, they're showing that this guy's up, this guy's hopping back and there's a lot going on. And my concern would be if I'm, if I'm back in green Bay, uh,

This is a lot for love to first game back. And then on the, and the other piece of that green baby, Tennessee and Indianapolis. Okay. Congratulations. I mean, both of those were with, with Malik Willis. And I will also, I want to countenance this possibility, uh,

It wouldn't shock me if Willis starts this game and plays the whole game. If they're doing the rope-a-dope with Love, right? Ooh, interesting. They want to make Flores try and prepare. And Flores has the experience, right? They played Green Bay twice. It's a division game, but two different styles of quarterbacking entirely. Two different types of threats. And so just adding that onto the Minnesota plate because I think it's a dead-even coaching matchup.

Yeah, it's good. I mean, these are probably two of the best four teams in the NFC. Green Bay's banged up. I didn't like that part. So here's the flip side. Sam Darnold on the road. There's a lot of Sam Darnold excitement right now. He started 3-0 in Carolina. This could be Sam Darnold's. Can everyone settle down on Sam Darnold game? Love killed Minnesota last year. He killed all this but shit. He's actually good at it against it if he's healthy.

And I think that's why this is ultimately a stay away for me because I remember having Minnesota in that game last year with Josh Dobbs and love just murdered them. And I can't get that out of my head. Sometimes, sometimes the right defense is just a nice matchup for QB. So something about like, could we talk ourselves into a Vikings tease? We can. Are there better tease options? We'll get to that. But Vikings plus three, I don't know that the line is,

Feels right. Ultimately, it might be a stay away for me. How about you? Yeah, I'm on the side of the Vikings, but I understand all of your hesitation and reservation. And the real determining factor for me is the Green Bay quarterback situation because they are either going to have a Jordan Love return, which is a tough situation, tough circumstance for all the reasons you just put there, or it's going to be Willis up against...

Brian Flores, who, you know, give him the time to properly prepare for it. That I know I don't like. I'm just, I'm going to raise my hands and congrats to Malik Willis. But that one I don't like because when you're watching that weird Packers offense they had the last two weeks, one of the things, and the teams they played just didn't have the personnel to do this, but just move everyone up and just attack the moment the ball snapped because everything is going to be kind of around the line of scrimmage. And I just,

I don't like their chances against Minnesota because that's what Minnesota does. And that's what they are. This, another thing with the Packers is I don't, I know this is a must win game for the Vikings, but it's really not like they could lose this and it's fine. You know, they have some injuries. It's, it is green day. It'd be three in one through four. I know it's the vision game, but they'll be like, we'll get it. Like, I know they want to win, but this isn't like, ah, whereas if you're the Packers and loves coming back,

You kind of need this one, you know? So anyway. Okay. They'd be two and two and they would have squandered their Minnesota home game. So not awesome. Next one. You have more Falcons Saints thoughts than I do. Falcons are now minus two and a half at home against the Saints. This feels like a sucker line to me where. Oh, why? So we're just off the Saints now because they couldn't block Jalen Carter. We're out.

Well, it wasn't just simply not blocking Jalen Carter. It was a blueprint of how to slow that offense down, a blueprint of how to take the runaway. And they lost their center in that game. I mean, Jalen Carter, part of that Jalen Carter success had to do with the injury to the Saints Pro Bowl center. The O-line is not the same. Right.

Guess who also lost two offensive linemen last week? The Falcons. True story. I know. They're both questionable at the moment. I don't know if they've been declared formally out. I just want to give...

props to Atlanta because they have impressed me. I mean, we were properly skeptical at the beginning of the season with them against Pittsburgh. We cashed that. That was a nice situation for us with Pittsburgh. Had them on the money line. And then what they showed against the Eagles and the Chiefs, like who has played that schedule

in the first three weeks. And they were right. They had two one-score losses, a one-score loss to the Steelers and a one-score loss to the Chiefs. The Steelers was a legit loss. No, for sure, for sure. Chiefs, they should have won. Yeah, well, it's pass interference in the end zone. Ball on the one, then you don't have to mess around with all the shenanigans, silliness of figuring out, you know, fourth down plays. But...

I just think Atlanta, having seen that Philadelphia blueprint, we haven't really seen the Atlanta defense with the new personnel in full force. So I just think it's a decent matchup for them. I like Atlanta laying the points. How about this? I hate myself if I bet either team and it's a stay away. What is the I'd hate myself either way game? Exactly.

Because you'd be like, oh, I'm going to take the Saints. And then Carr sucks again. You're like, oh, I hate myself. Like how I felt on Monday night with Trevor Lawrence, where it's just self-loathing. The self-loathing bet of the week. There are some self-loathing bets on this board. I don't think this one is it. But we don't have to bet it. I'm just telling you my preference. I like it. I got to say there's, and I'm with you. I'm leaning to where you're leaning. But I feel like there's too many injuries on both sides. That's fine. This division makes me nervous. Sure. How about this?

Maybe you're just better off never betting on a division matchup in the NFC South. Maybe that should be added to the gambling manifesto. Just stay away. We got to be careful. Your 30 wins is in trouble. Well, there's only going to be one win out of this one. Yes. True story. All right. So I'm leaning toward a stay away for that one. Fine. Fine. Fine. Leaning, I did say. So here's one I really need you to talk me out of before something bad happens. Maybe you won't be able to.

The Bears, who are 0-3, and are laying three points to the Rams. And I'm looking at this going, ah, kind of like the Bears. They're 32nd yards per play. They're 28th in QB hurries. They're 29th in sacks. But on the flip side, the Rams are 32nd in yards per play. They're 31st in QB hits, which is something the Chicago defense has at least shown that. They have no cup, no Nakua.

They're not top 14, basically in anything offensively, but passing yards. And I just wonder like there's, there's a world last week where they don't get that fake punt against the Niners and the Niners just beat them by 20. And we're like, Holy shit, the Ram season's over and they stole it. They snuck it out, but now they're going to Chicago. They're outdoors. The bears are only three, but the bears. No, the bears are one in two. They were throwing the ball. Huh? Oh,

That's right. They stole that game from Tennessee. Their defense won a game. Right. But that almost felt like a loss. I was in my head. I was counting on the loss because their offense was awful. Yeah, you're right. They're 1-2. But, um... So...

So you're going to talk me out of this. Please do. The bears are sticky poo poo. I mean, if you want to go get yourself in a, in a position where you have to count on coach Eber Flus, who will be returned to his rightful place as a defensive coordinator or assistant soon enough, that is right around the corner.

And Caleb Williams behind an offensive line, they improved their skill positions there in Chicago, but not the goddamn line. And that poor man continues to be at risk. And they can't do any of the things with their new toys on offense. They can't establish the run. That kid is running for his life on the pass. Now, here's the reason why. But did you see the stats when...

He wasn't under duress. He was actually really good. Like there were like great stats. If he just has three seconds, good stats. Get him the three seconds. Now, this is the defense that, you know, you might be able to do that. This Rams team. That's what I'm saying. The Rams. This is the defense. 31st and QB hits 32nd yards per play. So, yeah, it's a disaster of a secondary as well.

The Rams, you know, the Bears do have the best unit in the game. So if you want to make a bet on which team has the best unit, it's the Bears defense. And the Bears defense has won a football game already. They beat the Tennessee Titans. So that could be the roadmap, the blueprint. You're talking yourself into this now. I just don't want to have anything to do with it because then you have to look in the mirror and say to yourself, I laid points against Sean McVay and Matt Stafford with Matt Eber. Flusch the douche. I mean, you can't.

Who's going to do that? Like you can't. That's one. Floose the douche? What rhymes with floose? Well, here's one we're going to argue about. Oh, actually, no. Let's do this one. Let's get this out of the way. The Raiders are minus one and a half against the Browns. I feel like there's not a lot of chances in our life left to fade Deshaun Watson with a bad offensive line. The Cleveland offense is bottom three in...

Yards per play, QB hits, pass yards, sacks allowed, third down conversion. And I think unofficially most times a receiver has looked just bummed out and like they wanted this season to end and they wished it was week 18. But this Raiders team was dog shit last week. Got carved up by Andy Dalton, got called out by their coach after the game. I just don't know how that like this feels like a perfect matchup for the Raiders. They're home. It's only one and a half.

Like I, so I was leaning Raiders, but I, but this violates my don't bet on two shitty teams. So can we just,

I detest this game. I mean, like, we're not betting on Gardner Minshew these nuts. We're not doing that. Minshew these nuts? No way. Absolutely not. The Raiders can't run the ball. I'm not sure that the Antonio Pierce motivational tactic, you know, is necessarily going to work with everybody in that locker room. It feels like that locker room could be right on edge. That's a phenomenal game to stay away from.

I want to know in 2024, where let's be honest, people are a little more sensitive than maybe they were 30 years ago.

Just being blasted by your coach. Is that like a good strategy when your coach has done jack shit? Then this guy's just fucking gets the machine gun out and just I love it after everybody. We're in a moment now where you can get Devante Adams. There's like a solo camera on him for the entirety of games. We get these phenomenal shots of that poor guy sitting on the bench holding his head. Poor, poor Devante.

It was like, oh, get him out of there. You didn't realize the Gardner Minshew Aiden O'Connell combo might not have might not have been a good idea. Just realizing that now. All right. We'll stay away. Two bad teams. Blah. They do have a good defense. And, you know, if Max Crosby and Christian Wilkins go crazy, they could beat the crap out of the Browns. Max Crosby's not healthy and Miles Garrett isn't healthy. I don't know who's healthy. We're doing this on a Thursday. Let's stay. Great point. Great point. All right. Now it's time to really argue because I love the Lions this week.

And I think you like the Seahawks a little bit. And that line is now Lions by three and a half at home against Seattle, who is three and oh and doing really well this season. And it's a team that we've ridden a couple of times. I wish we rode them last week. That line is now, yeah, three and a half. So let me hear your case. Well, a couple of things. Walker is still not 100%.

They're two best guys in the D-line, including Murphy. They're an awesome rookie. Both of those guys are hurt, and if they play, they're playing hurt, but they both have leg injuries, so that sounds great. Seattle played Denver in New England and the Skyler Thompson Miami group, and they barely beat New England. And honestly, New England should have beaten them. And Denver hung around in Bo Nix's first game when he was absolutely terrible. He's been much better since.

The Lions, I still don't feel like have played an awesome game yet. We hit on them last week. Really? Well, just a lot of like, you see the pieces, but it's just they haven't. Right. It's a meal with a bunch of awesome things on the table, but it doesn't all make sense together. Hook and ladder in the first half. Right. I think this is the week it's, you know, a night game.

And it's the Seattle team that's playing with house money a little bit at three now. And you could talk yourself into, Oh, they'll be able to throw the ball. And, um, and Mike McDonald, don't give him a week to plan it. I just think the lines are way better. And this line, I don't understand why it's not like six. If the Seahawks aren't healthy on top of the fact that they can't block and the lines defensive line has been awesome.

So I just, I really liked the lions, but I think you're leaning a little Seahawksy, right? Well, and, and it all boils down to ultimately Jared golf, who this season, uh, if you look at, I have him right now in the, in the advanced stats, uh,

his PFF grade, he's 29th thus far this season. His EPA numbers, expected points per play stuff is horrendous. It has him in the company of Gardner Minshew and Jacoby Brissett and Bo Nix. That's where he is thus far this season. And

Maybe he's due for a good game. Well, here's the problem. They went up against a Tampa team that was missing its secondary. They went up against a Cardinals team that was supposed to be the worst defense in the NFL. And they started the season...

with the Rams, who was a defense in transition and we've seen that teams can score against the Rams. We watched what the Cardinals did to the Rams. Now the Rams defense, yes, has injuries and all the rest of it. But 20 points in the regular time game

against that Rams defense, 16 points against the injured Tampa defense, and then 20 points. All of the points for Detroit were in the first half. They didn't score in the second half, and that game swung on the inappropriately called back pick six that Jared Goff threw. The refs took that away. That game was close, close. I mean, Kata Murray threw a pick in the second half that kept...

the Cardinals from really making it dangerous, but I'm just not going to do the Lions. That's all.

counter detroit's run 151 plays in the last two weeks and it's actually like law of averages they should be scoring more points they shouldn't be doing dumb shit there's two bad golf passes there's a fourth down play where they ran a stupid play like they've kind of been dominating these games i'm the counter to the counter on the lions no rag now rag now is out you're all right yeah

Let's make this our argue game. We didn't have an argue game last week. Yeah, but when we bet on the argue game, well, I was going to throw this at you. Detroit first half, Detroit game, parlay plus 100. Okay. All right. So that I'm willing to do. That takes care of the cheap touchdown from the Seahawks at the end.

That we, they could just take the lead early that they'll Seahawks will be down 10. They'll all of a sudden lock it for 68 yards or DK Metcalf. And then it'll be lines up by three, sweating it out, but we'll have first half in the game and we're ready to go. They're at home. They should take a lead in the first half against fucking Seahawks.

Your point is right. This is an enormous step up for Seattle's defense after they got to play against Bo Nix and Jacoby Brissett and Skyler Thompson, right? So there's real offensive weapons on this Lions team. Those guys all suck. Bo Nix has been pretty good. No, he had a great game against Tampa. Guess what? We're about to talk to him right now because he's getting too many points against the Jets. The Jets are seven and a half point favorites at home against the Broncos. And I don't really understand it because...

Denver's defense has been pretty good. And I really feel like they put together a good game and a half. I said this, said this last week on million dollar picks. We were talking about, um, how Denver really looked good against Pittsburgh in the second half of that game. And then last week they just played great. They, they beat up Tampa. We, we probably should have taken the underdog money line on that because I think both of us like Denver. You like Denver. You like the giants, both of those hits.

So seven and a half just seems high because you can run on the jets. I think you move the ball on the jets in general. And even if this game's a double figures, I feel like they can get a cheap touchdown late. I also like they can throw certain on Garrett Wilson. Yep. That's the case for sure. And we get Sean Payton against big shot, Bob salad. Yeah.

The only reason this, so the look ahead was seven and a half. So then the numbers is consistent with what the look ahead is and nothing sort of changed over the course of the season. The problem is the situation for Denver, right? Second straight road game, rookie quarterback, the jets have their second consecutive home game. They have those, they played three games in 11 days. They got that Thursday night game. They kicked us. Now they got all the rest that they need and their home, uh,

preparing for, you know, a rookie quarterback. So we're going to see this, whether or not this just defense really can, can that they did perfectly fine against the one dimensional. Now you have to throw those injuries. Okay. Thursday night, the Pats go down by 10. They can't beat anybody. And it was just one of those games. I'm not, I'm no lessons learned from that one. Okay. Okay. That's fine. I mean, I agree with you seven and a half.

is crazy. And also like this is the season. Hello. The right five and a half points or more. The underdog now is 14 and two. The underdog is one 10 of those games outright 10 and six. The the dogs are in those circumstances. So

Anytime you see anything over five and a half, it's like better be careful because it's the way the season's been. It's a fun pick too. It's a fun one to root for. You have the cheap touchdown at the end potentially, but I think Bo Nix says, look, I thought he was really good last week.

in that Tampa game. And I know Tampa's secondary is a disaster and I get it, but he's really good in that game. It's going to be fun. The part of the thing that you're hearing out of New York is that Hackett and Rodgers really want to stick it to Peyton. They really want to stick it to Sean. This is because they didn't get the chance last year when they played. And so they're going to try and run it up. But I like Sean Peyton is kind of the smartest guy in the room. He would have put all those guys together. It's

It's kind of fun. I don't want to make a big investment in it because I could see a scenario under which the Jets... But we could also stay away. Yeah. That would be my inclination. But I like where you're going. The thing I don't like about it from a Denver side is if I'm going to beat the Jets, I'm going to pound the run

Right. And I'm just going to try to keep the ball and keep the ball away from Rodgers. But the Broncos haven't really run the ball that well. No. And as anyone knows, so has Javante Williams on their on their fantasy team. But all right. So maybe I'll I won't put that in bold, but I'm going to include that on the list. So then Eagles Bucks, where, you know, sadly, the Hurricanes hitting as we're taping this, but the

we just learned over the years, like those just become automatic stay aways. Those games. I actually like that matchup for the Eagles, but we don't even know if they're going to be playing that game. And I hope everybody's safe there, but I'm just, I think that's a cross off for us, right? Yeah. Let's stay away from it. There was injuries on both sides to create all kinds of uncertainty. Stay away. All right. So the big ones. So really the only ones we have so far cards, money line with the over 43 and a half Detroit first half game plus 100.

I'm going to take out the Broncos and then I'm going to throw you my favorite bet in one second, but we're going to take a break. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. It's football season. You can now get almost anything you need for game day delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a running back delivered, but you can get baby back ribs delivered. A field goal, that's a no, but a honey butter dinner roll. Oh yeah, that's a yes. A six pack of abs, definitely no. A six pack of seltzers, no.

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All right, coming back. My favorite bet of the week, and I hope you agree, is the Steelers in Indianapolis, minus one and a half. They've been incredibly good to us on million dollar picks week after week after week. Buckner's out for the Colts. There's gonna be a lot of Pittsburgh fans there. Indy's defense is just a flat out atrocity. They're 31st against the run, 28th on third down, 32nd on first downs allowed, 26,000 yards per play. Their offense isn't

much more awesome either. 27th on first down, 28th turnover, 24th pass, but most important, throw the stats out. Anthony Richardson's all over the place and he's going against the best defense in the league, Pittsburgh. First in red zone efficiency, first and third downs allowed, first and first down, second against the run, third and yards per play,

This is seventh and QB hits. This is the best defense in Lincoln. They're first in points. I mistakenly said 16 on Sunday night. It's 26 points allowed this year. I just think the defense wins the game single-handedly. I was trying to figure out ways to get fucked on this.

And it's really just Richardson doing those two long 55 yard bombs where it's like they have eight first downs, but somehow two touchdowns. So I'm just acknowledging that. But I think this is the game where they let fields cook a little bit. Let them throw in this crap Colts defense. I have no idea how the Colts won last week. I don't think they're good.

And I think the Steelers are really good. They kind of need this game. They need to go like seven and one in these first eight. I can't believe the line's only one and a half. I don't get it. So here are the cautions that I'll offer. In the first place, the Colts have an incredible offensive line thus far this season. They're first in the NFL in both pass and run blocking, according to PFF. Another thing, the Steelers defense. Yes. Awesome. But

Kirk Cousins in his first game off of the Achilles, completely immobile. Bo Nix in his second career start in the National Football League. Half of Justin Herbert,

full. I mean, and they knocked his ass out. Give them credit for that. They sent him the sideline. He was already, you know, immobile. And yeah, they, they, they, they completed the job. The other sort of aspect of caution is just historically Mike Tomlin, um, is much better in the dog spot as opposed to a favorite. He's the only 45% as a road favorite in his career against the spread 33, 40 and, and two. Um,

The reason that I think I'm inclined to join you on the Steelers is because I don't think that we've really seen Justin Fields yet. Like, I've long been in the camp of Fields. I had Fields on my fantasy team last year. And I will tell you, in our Keeper League, I gave serious thought to keeping him for $1 or whatever it is, plus the escalator. Hoping that he's going to play.

upcoming season, even though Russell Wilson had been declared the starter because the field's upside is

we haven't really scratched the surface. They really haven't done any design runs for him. And this could be the week, the pathway for the Colt to, to beat Pittsburgh is to try and give Pittsburgh a dose of its own medicine. Kind of like what we expected last week out of the charges, which is just try and run the ball, try and squeeze the life out of the game, try and play a game. That's only two hours and 45 minutes because we're just running, running, running Jonathan Taylor left Jonathan Taylor, right? But,

Fields to me is the wild card and at one and a half points. I mean, here's the thing that I also am willing to countenance. Steichen's good. I mean, he's he's good, but he also has some of the dumbest big plays of the game calls of anyone. Well, they trust Richardson. That's the problem. They trust Anthony Richardson.

This is a bad defense for him to play in his fourth start of the season. And I'm with you. Sixth start ever. I just, in his whole career, I really believe in the Steelers team. I think they're good. The question for me is, you know, if they, could this be the game where fields just sucks? Like he sucked a bunch of times against the bears. Sure. But against this Colts defense, why would this be the game that he falls apart? They can't do anything. I,

I love this version of the Steelers where it's apparent that they are treating every one of these early season games, early games on the schedule as absolute must wins. They have to get all these wins before they get to the portion of the schedule where they have all those division games and other super talented teams at the back half of their schedule. So here's the other thing. The pedal is down. Browns, the Browns are going to suck.

The Bengals are 0-3. The Ravens are playing the Bills and could be, you know, 1-3 after Sunday. And the Steelers could be 4-0. They could have a three-game lead in the AFC North. So, I don't know. They've been really good to us and I'm still in on them. Me too. Okay. Two more. Ravens-Bills. Okay. See, unfortunately, I heard East Coast bias today and I know where you're leaning on this, but I think we're seeing it the same way. Look,

Ravens minus two and a half against the Bills. Hmm. Why is that line lower? Why is that line a pick-em? Josh Allen just looks like he's the best player in the league. The Bills look great. They're going to be able to throw on the Ravens. They're getting a pass rush this year, which none of us expected. They figured out some sort of secondary thing. There's some Ewing theory with Stephon Diggs, even though they never won a title with him. The tease is just so tantalizing here.

This feels like a one score game to me, and I'm not positive who's going to win. There's that. If it's bills plus up all the way to plus eight and a half, Ravens could be in double digits. Well, we know what happens when they go up double digits to put the game on a platter for the other team.

The bills might be able to win and it allows us to tease with the next game we're going to talk about, but bills plus eight and a half. Does that make your nipples hard? I absolutely love it. It's not Jaden Daniels zipper zone quite, but it is, it's, it's, it's way up there. I absolutely adore the bills as a teaser leg this week. I think, um, you know, the, the,

The back door is extremely open with this Ravens team. It is a wide open back door situation. I'll just leave it at that. I really, I could take this much, much deeper, but I won't do it. You haven't had nearly enough drinks. I have not. Baltimore's defense, 28th and first downs, 32nd and pass.

It's all in the last 10 minutes of the fourth quarter. Yeah, because it's all when the other team realizes, like, why the fuck aren't we just passing every down? They can't stop anything. And something about Josh this year, and shout out to the Cubs. That was his Super Bowl pick. I thought it was...

I really battled on them back and forth and I ended up giving that AFC spot to the Jets because I really wanted to work the Jaguars into the playoffs. And I gave the Jaguars the Buffalo playoff spot. And I think I did pretty well with the future so far, but that was, I think, by far my biggest mistake. There was a case for the Bills. There was a case against the Bills. And the case against them was they have all this dead cap weight.

you know, Milano got hurt. Now Bernard got hurt during the season. Um, but none of it seems to matter because Alan's been that good and maybe he's just going to be this good the whole year. Right? Well, it, this is the game where it might matter, right? We might, I think we finally are going to see in Baltimore, a team that's going to try and take advantage of the injuries, the linebacking core, Tara Teron Johnson's compromise. So they'll run them all down their throats. They're going to, yes, they're going to scheme that way for sure. I've been really impressed by Buffalo's, uh,

pass rush and just their front in general every game it's jumped out they're von miller he's alive because two of you you the instinct is to throw away week two because two got hurt but by the time two got hurt that game was over like they dominated them for two hours so yeah yeah you know it's probably the second best team they're kind of the team that i thought houston was going to be to be honest all right so we'll put them in a teaser leg love it and

The Ravens hooked us up last week. No disrespect to them. Right. Thank you. Yeah. And they can win. And then they'll be two and two in the AFC North.

Well, the other teaser legs. So what's that going to be? Well, I have an idea. How about the fucking chiefs minus seven in LA against the chargers and the chargers we've written a couple of times. Yes. I have a bunch of future bets on them, but this is just, this is a throwaway game. They Herbert's probably not playing. I think it'd be crazy to play him. They're missing their two best tackles, Joe Alton and Slater. Both those guys are out.

James got suspended for their secondary. And then Bosa, like, go figure. He got hurt again. So they're missing not only five starters, but five of their best eight players, five of their best seven players. Right. And they're in a bye next week. And they've kind of overachieved anyway, right? They're two and one.

And they'll look at this and go, ah, you know what? Let's, let's just, let's get to the bye. We were probably not beating the chiefs anyway, two and two. Um, this is just a nightmare matchup, but I don't see a scenario where they hang is Taylor Heineke. You rooted for Taylor Heineke. He's gonna be running around LA and making plays and doing stuff like get the fuck out of here. Yeah, no chance. He's a, he's a, you know, six yards, uh,

behind the line of scrimmage in a cloud of dust. That's the Taylor Heineke experience. The only thing that I'll sort of urge as a caution is the lines moved a point in the direction away from the Chiefs. The Chiefs were minus eight at one point. I'm trying to figure out what has happened to pull this down to seven. I have your answer. I think people have been looking at the Chiefs defense and thinking it's a little house of cards-ish.

that there's a lot of when they play straight up defense, they're actually like a bottom eight defense when they're blitzing and doing stuff and basically using tricks to get pressure, they're better. So it's a lot of like trick stuff with them. I just don't think they're going to need a lot of tricks with the chargers. The chargers were having trouble moving the ball.

Last week, you know, with when all the when the tackles were playing. Yeah. Do you take out their run game and now you're you're making Heineke throw to like these subpar receivers? I guess maybe some of it, too, is the Chiefs run defense hasn't been awesome. But I mean, I would think that that if you were going to be skeptical of the Chiefs, it would be more on the offensive side of the ball. Totally. Yeah.

But then the other piece is the Chiefs are 3-0 and they're three plays away from being 0-3. True story. People look at that and it's like, man, that line's pretty high. Let's grab all those points. But

Chiefs historically haven't covered those big numbers. But look, we are in exotica. We are going to do a tease. We don't need all the points. Just grab it seven down to one. That's that's living life the right way and push Buffalo up to eight and a half against Baltimore in a one score game. Baltimore doesn't blow anybody out. They're definitely not blowing out the bills. I'm going to knock on wood right now. I don't want to talk it into existence, but that's how we do it. Well, here's the thing we missed on the tease last week.

All right. We didn't do one last week, but we lost the first two weeks and we have not hit a tease yet. And now because of these records of the five and a half and up favorites, like all the teases have been destroyed this season. They have been. It's going to be an overcorrection where now everyone's afraid to do the tease. It's like, come on. It's going to be the Chiefs against Easton Sticker, Taylor Heineke. They just have to win by one point. And the Bills to be in a one score game against the Ravens.

And plus it's your birthday. We're not going to lose it. It's your birthday week. Did Dave Chang make you some chatter for your birthday? No, he didn't. You better save that for when I come out. We can celebrate it together. I want some Chang chowder. You know what happened to me? I might have to have my dad on to talk about this. And this already happened to you.

I am a now out of the 18 to 54 TV demo. You know, when they talk about the coveted advertisers demo of 18 to 54. Right. I'm out. So what happened? They don't care about us anymore. The Chicago NBC shows. What happened to you?

When you hit 55. NCIS Indianapolis. You were like, oh, Chicago Fire and then a brand new Chicago PD. Is that going to happen to me? There's law and order still on us, you know. I'll be like, oh, homicides on Peacock. Bang on season seven of Homicide. What's going to happen to me? Am I still going to like White Lotus? Am I too old for White Lotus now? Is LL Cool J still doing that investigative show? That's the one.

Like there's that Fox surfing show. Am I not in the demo for that now? That new surfing show they have? I think that's awesome. Those waves are incredible. I could watch that for hours. I'm mesmerized by big waves. Does that make us the wrong demo? These TV people are so stupid. We all have nice TVs now. To have a show with the ocean in HD where there's big waves. Yeah, giant waves. And lifeguards. I'll sit and watch that. What took so long? What are these people doing? It used to be called Baywatch.

So one more thing. FanDuel is having, yeah, it used to be called Baywatch, which was an important show of our college days. Important, important. Some would say vital. So FanDuel has for a featured bet this week, an anytime TD score bet that if you hit, you get a 50% profit boost. So we're just going to add that to our bets. Plow into that.

Marvin Harrison, TD plus 100. Is that what we want to do? I kind of love it. I mean, all you need to do is look at how has the opposing team's best receiver done against the Washington secondary week by week. And it looks pretty effing good. Jamar Chase with 115 yards and two touchdowns. The league neighbors had an incredible game. Both Godwin and Evans had great games against. I mean, you just have to, you know, at some point you have to accept the free money.

All right. Is it time? It's million dollar picks time. So we're going with four bets this week and then the little Harrison thing. Okay. We built up a nice nest egg with the winnings from last week. Do you want to scale back at all and do like less than 200K a bet or you want to keep it at the 200K a bet? This does not to me feel like a big 200K bet kind of week. I mean, I think we're still learning. Scale back to 150? Yeah, there's a lot of injuries out there too.

All right, we'll scale back a little bit. The million dollar picks for week four. Last week we won $380,000 and it would have been way more except the Jaguars decided to pull our pants down.

I hate the Jaguars. Never again. Notice we didn't even talk about them when we did our million dollar pick. I was like, oh, the Jaguars seven against Houston. No, fuck you. Jaguars. We're done. We're done with you. Go to your room. Don't come out. You're grounded. We hate you. Uh, we are up for the season. $504,000 through three weeks. That's pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah, not bad. Uh, the million dollar picks for week four, the Steelers, uh,

who have been incredible. They've been our MVPs of million dollar picks. They have, undoubtedly. Even you're in now. They are laying minus one and a half in Indianapolis to Anthony Richardson, who is the trick-or-treat quarterback, maybe of our generation. Right now it's more trick-or-treat. It's a lot of tricks and occasionally some treats. And we are going into this fully well-knowing,

There might be one play, maybe two, where he just goes back and he throws it 60 yards and it's in perfect stride. We're betting on all the other plays. The plays you don't see on the red zone. The passes that sail over people's heads. The leading the league in interceptions. Yeah, we're betting on the turnovers and on an awesome, awesome, awesome Steelers D. And House, you're a little bullish on a Fields.

I do think he might get moved. Maybe so. Yeah. I'm stacking it up. All right. So we're going to put, we're lowering a little this week just because it's a week four perennially. 150,000 on the Steelers minus one and a half. That's our first one. Next one is a little parlay action. The Cardinals playing your Washington team.

And the over, which is over, it's like 49 and a half or 50, but we're going to bring that over down to 43 and a half in the cards money line. And we're going to parlay that. And it's minus one on one on FanDuel. Fine. And we're jumping on that. Just the cards need to win by one point and we need 44 points or more total. And these two offenses with no defense on either side. Let's go.

That's right. I'm not, I mean, I don't even feel disloyal going against Washington. You set it up perfectly, you know, coming off the, the, you're not winning the Superbowl this year. You just want an awesome Jaden Daniels year and don't get hurt. This is a don't get hurt. Jaden Daniels. Keep giving us joy. The Superbowl was winning in Cincinnati in the week three on Monday night football in front of a national offense audience. We've done it.

We've done it. Right. With Troy Aikman, super impressed with the throw in the corner as he just gets annihilated to McLaurin. Yeah. Okay. So we're putting 150K on that. And then because Fando has this little special, the 50% profit boost for any sort of touchdown score, we're going to go Marvin Harrison, anytime touchdown, which is plus 100%

And we're just going to throw 25 K on that for great shits and giggles. Yeah. Get the profit boost. Yeah. We like you, Marvin. All right. Next one, Detroit at home on a Monday night against the Seattle team. They can't block anyone that has defensive line issues that might not have Kenneth Walker.

And Detroit has not really played a good start to finish game. I think it's going to be this week. Detroit first half, Detroit game parlay. I talked you into this. You did. Even money, plus 100 on FanDuel. Fine, fine, fine. 150K on that. Just take a lead in the first half, Detroit, and take care of business. And you can fart around and Goff can throw his one stupid pick. And Ben Johnson can have his one terrible fourth down play that

Jameer Gibbs is running sideways doing a flip lateral pass and gets you can do all that but just win the game and take a lead in the first half so that's our third bet and then the last but not least we're going back we're doing a tease we're not listening to Raheem and everybody else who hates teases but no Raheem likes teases as long as we do it properly it's a special week

Because we have this gift of the Chiefs minus seven in LA with five of the best seven chargers out, including both of their tackles, their safety, who runs their secondary, their best sack guy and their quarterback, who's the star of their team. None of them are playing. We just need the Chiefs to win by one. We're taking that down from minus seven, minus one. By the way, there's probably going to be 45,000 Chiefs fans at that game. Just going to mention that.

We like the chargers, not the week. They have a bye week next week. Just right. Whatever. We don't care. We'll be two and two heading the bye week. Everyone will get healthy. We'll be fine. Chiefs minus one bills up to plus eight and a half in Baltimore. One score game. One score. You have to say who's going to win that game. I might be, uh, making the case on, uh,

the ringer pregame show Sunday morning for the Buffalo money line. I kind of like the bill on the money line. That's what's great about that line is I actually think it should probably be a pick them or maybe even bills minus one or somewhere in there. Um, but I think it's a one score game. So we're taking bills plus eight and a half.

And that is our tease. So four bets this week, plus a little Harrison. We're not, it doesn't add up to million dollar picks. It doesn't always have to. Sometimes we have to be smart. Scaling it back a tiny bit, 150,000 on the four bets, plus the little Harrison bet. And those are the million dollar picks for week four. And Joe House has a quarterback that we're kind of betting on in this game because we have that, we have the over in that game. So you can still root for him to do stuff and not feel bad about it. Believe me, I will. House, great to see you.

Thanks, BS. Happy birthday, buddy. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Brian Curtis and Joe House and especially Logan Murdoch. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerruti for producing as well. And I will see you on Sunday with Cousin Sal. We're doing it live, remember. And you can go to my YouTube channel and watch us do the podcast live on the Bill Simmons channel.

Don't forget Mr. McMahon on Netflix. It is available to be consumed all six episodes. So find some time over the weekend. Enjoy the weekend. I will see you on Sunday.

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