The Chiefs Escape (Again), 2024 NFL Zags, and Million-Dollar Picks Return With Peter Schrager and Joe House
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Michael Keaton's breakout movie. You can watch it on Ringer Movies on our YouTube channel, the Ringer Movies channel. Speaking of the Ringer Podcast Network. So the Ringer NBA show, it's a little dormant right now at the NBA. We decided to get a little WNBA show going on, I think, Fridays. And we made him do it a little more than that. But Syrit Sohi's hosting it.

And, you know, we don't cover every sport. We look for either opportunities, the right host, the right talent, the right match, and

WNBA has just been incredible this season. The storylines have been great. The product's been really good. Anecdotally, I've been in a lot of conversations about it and just felt like we were missing out. So I think Sarah can really pull off a good pod for us. So listen to the first one on Friday and we will be doing it pretty regularly throughout the rest of the season on the Ringer NBA show. So there's that. And then if you missed it, we ran a trailer for Mr. McMahon.

the new docuseries that I'm involved with that's going to be on Netflix on September 25th. If you want to see the trailer, go to my Twitter feed, go to my Instagram, go to Netflix's Twitter feed or Instagram, and you can see it. We're really proud of it. So

That's that. Last piece of business is Sunday. Remember our old Ringer Wiseguys show? Well, now it's the Ringer Sunday pregame show and we're going to be running it. It's going to be on YouTube TV. Same time. It's going to be 11 o'clock. I'm actually going to be popping on the first couple of weeks, but it's going to be the usuals. Our East Coast Bias Guys, House and Raheem and JJ, Cousin Sal,

I'm going to be popping on for 20 minutes and we're just going to be talking about football, favorite bets, all kinds of stuff. So make sure you check that out. If you have, if you don't have YouTube TV, I got it within the last year and I'm mad. I didn't get it sooner than that. Cause it's really great. But, uh, you go to YouTube TV or YouTube because we're running all this stuff on, uh, on the ringer NFL channel. And, uh,

you can see our show. So there you go. All right, we're going to talk Chiefs, Ravens, and then a whole bunch of 2024 NFL subplots with Peter Schrager, who is in my house. I watched a game with him. We were together. And then after that, Joe House is joining for Million Dollar Picks, week one. Super excited. It's all next. First, our friends from ProJob. ♪♪

All right, we're taping this right after the Chiefs-Ravens game. Normally, Peter Schrager is on Good Morning Football in the mornings. He's on Good Morning Football in the mornings.

with a good night's sleep or maybe no sleep and some coffee and a chance to react. You're doing this podcast now. We're going right after, baby. Let's go. What a game. Chiefs 27, Ravens 20. It seemed like the Ravens not only covered the plus three, but we're going for two in week one. It was an incredible comeback, incredible revenge game, chance to win in Arrowhead or whatever it's called now. Yeah.

And then Kevin Durant, Brooklyn, Milwaukee style, foot on the line. Great call, great throwback. Game over! Do we feel robbed of the opportunity of not getting that two-point conversion? Or do you feel like that's just an amazing finish we'll always remember as the toe game? Like, if Likely's toe is a centimeter smaller, that is a different... Or do you feel like

what would have happened if they went for it and they just walked off and they won it? What a cool ending for Harbaugh. I feel a little bit robbed right now. We literally finished watching Bill two minutes ago on your couch. Well, the Ravens had a chance to steal the game. Yeah. It felt like the Chiefs

Pretty much gave the game away over and over again, but then we're still leading seven and then had multiple chances just to get one more first down. Couldn't do it. And it was a weirdly sloppy game. A lot of penalties. From the Chiefs. A lot of penalties. Hockley just threw another flag. Ravens offensive line looks super shaky. At first...

Right. And then at the end, it was just Lamar going back, waiting, scrambling, creating plays, doing all the stuff that we love when we talk about Lamar. But it comes down to the Chiefs. They look gassed. Chris Jones was on his knees. They have two timeouts left. I don't understand why you don't call timeouts.

to give your dudes a three-minute breather, they're all sitting on the field, basically, during these stoppages. You had the long stoppage when Likely goes down with the injury late, and you'd think, you were saying, at some point, call a timeout because they're so exhausted. They're obviously gassed, all the big guys. I disagreed. I said to you while we were watching it, Baltimore's got no timeouts. Lamar's out of a shotgun, looking over the sideline. They look like they were frenetic. You give a timeout, you give Todd Munkin a chance to give Lamar a play, but

Gosh, of all the plays we watched, and this is really fresh, the Marlon Humphrey blown coverage on the second worthy touchdown, which was a complete mental lapse. Not supposed to happen. That's one where he's looking off. He thinks he's got help with the safety. That's a freak play. That is something you practice a million times. There's some sort of circuits that cross. That's a huge chunk play. If they don't give that up, the Ravens are in control. The Ravens do have a shot. So,

Big mistake there, and then you think back. And then they almost steal it anyway. They almost won. Better win for the Chiefs or worse loss for the Ravens? Oh, I think that's a fine loss if you're the Ravens. You come out of that thing, you're like, oh. Your heads are held high. Yes, because the Chiefs came out humming, and they're like, we have three new offensive linemen, we have a brand new defensive coordinator, and we hung with the world champions in their building and could have stolen that at the end. So a bunch of legacies from this game.

Oh, we're doing the legacy stuff already. Yeah. Four minutes into week one, we're doing legacies. Let's go. Legacy number one for me is the Chiefs nailed their two draft picks. And not only that, but they somehow retool. I was on multiple Patriot fan threads where we're just like, we couldn't find guys for Brady for 20 years and the Chiefs in back-to-back years just get Rice to get worthy this year who looked like Tyreek 2.0.

They also get a left tackle who they highlighted during the game that the Patriots could have traded up this year and gotten. But they retooled, reloaded. They looked faster. They had that stat where it was like they only had four 20-yard-plus touchdowns last year. They had two tonight. And I guess my big takeaway from the game is the Chiefs were –

They won two straight Super Bowls. I didn't think they were very fun to watch last year, except for the Mahomes part. It was like a grind. It was like, just let's get it done. The Chiefs were fun tonight. Oh, weren't they? I'm back in on like, holy shit, the Chiefs are on. I'm watching. Which I didn't feel that way last year. No, and they grinded it out. And they showed those stats throughout the NBC broadcast that they were a middling offense all last year. And they couldn't really get out of their funk. And didn't seem...

They didn't have that swagger. No, they had it tonight. They had it tonight. Worthy's first play from first time he touches the ball is a reverse play. Pretty cool call touchdown. It's not just the past two years. That 2022 draft was Pacheco, McDuffie, Karloftis,

Right. Josh Williams, I think Creed Humphrey. And I think, yeah, Creed Humphrey. And that's like seven, like that's a credit to the front office, Brett Veach and those guys. And then, like you said, do you just give me a credit to the front office? Six minutes in, that was good. You're in mid season form already. I haven't slept in a couple of days. Um,

they find these guys, but like you and I looked at each other. It's the fourth quarter. There's two minutes and 30 seconds left and they're handing the ball off to Carson Steele. Second down. Yeah. Chiefs need one more first down, basically. First down, they get five. And you and I were like, all of a sudden, Carson Steele's in there. There's holes on this roster. Like, not that Carson Steele can't do it, but like,

Yes, there were moments where like, okay, interesting. Juju's getting the ball there. There are still holes on this roster. And Hollywood Brown will get back. Wait, but hold that thought though. You put Hollywood Brown out there today and that's probably 35 plus points. Maserati, Ferrari. Juju was covering the whole game. Yeah. Juju's not getting deep. Offense looked good. And early on, they were destroying that offensive line with that defensive pressure. But I found the ratings. That's the first half.

The Baltimore ran 36 plays and I think the chiefs had 20. Yeah. And usually when that, and then chiefs got the ball to start the second half. But usually when that happens, you see in the second half, the defense just gets gas, which happened anyway, but the chiefs were able to convert a couple of times, get some scores. That, yeah, that, that Bateman catch along the sideline. And then you're like, okay, I'll send this 10 seconds again. Yeah.

You're kind of rattled. You got up at 2.45 LA time today. We thought that Chiefs game was going to be 34-10 at one point. I made my Super Bowl prediction about 40 hours ago on live television. It is now midnight Eastern. I've got to be up in three, four hours. But I will tell you, I come out of that thing, and if I'm a Ravens fan, I feel pretty damn good. There was a lot of talk about

Their offensive line coach passed away. Three different offensive linemen who are not like seasoned guys. And they got likely looked amazing tonight. So like you have the pieces and Lamar was awesome. I was a little nervous when Lamar was running around. I know Tariko and those guys like he looks faster. Like over 17 weeks, I don't need to see Lamar getting cracked by Connor like he was. So that's worrisome to me, but he was great tonight. Lamar was fantastic. That's legacy number two for this game for me.

Lamar ends up 16 carries for 122, throws for 26 for 41 for 273. Great game. That, we need some sort of version for we're unleashing this Lamar tonight because we really want this game.

16 carries in a 17-week season. I'm not good at math, but that's a lot of carries. That's over 260. Probably not sustainable. Yeah, but the point is they're not going to be able to do that every week. So I want to know when you're not unleashing your, hey, we don't care if Lamar takes a ton of hits this game. We're going to have him run around and do his thing.

what's plan B for this team? I would guess it's Derrick Henry, but they're lying. I thought they were lying the first three quarters, especially like look pretty iffy. What they were doing was they were, they weren't running the ball too well. So they were getting this little dump off passes to justice Hill. Right. With the chiefs. Just didn't sit there adjusted for it. And then Derrick Henry did have a cold, big carries. We did that third down or you converted, or was it a fourth down? I'm delirious, but it was fourth and short. Yeah. And they went for it and he was stopped behind the line and his powers through, uh,

Yeah. The receiving options. By the way, that got the, for that, the two that got the Collinsworth doing the, that is 250 pounds of man. Like 4k. Let's look. Um,

Zay Flowers played well. Isaiah Likely played well. Derrick Henry, Ray LeBowell, just like their offense looked good to me. They could compete. So you're thinking the Ravens were a little bit better than you were maybe expecting in your head. Yes. I didn't think they were going to hang offensively with those guys. And I thought the Chiefs defense struggled all night corralling Lamar. Chris Jones was dominant early on. And then it felt like every time he got behind the line of scrimmage. See, I'm going the other way. I think they were lucky to be in that game because you go back.

The Chiefs ended up with 27 points anyway. But think like they had that one, that swing pass to Perrine where he was ready to run for a touchdown. Lamar missed him. They had that crazy play at the end of the first half with Lamar just threw it to the Ravens for no reason. Picks it off. They get a field goal to stop it. And we never got the right replay to explain why the pass was seven yards short and he doesn't do stuff like that. So he had that play. And then that last drive.

He missed a couple? He missed a couple. I'm saying Mahomes missed a couple. And then it was just three downs, you win the game. Second down, Carson steals the game. I would almost rather use a timeout than have Carson steal. Let's come up with our best play. Let's run the Tyreek play with Worthy. Let's do something. But for some reason, they were happy to give the Ravens the ball back. Through the pass, it got deflected by Simpson. Great play. Then Mahomes catches it. Which saves about...

whatever so it makes the Ravens use the last time out or I forget what happened it saved them time Ariza has a great punt he does yeah and I'm like alright they're on the 10 on the 10 with the and Lamar took him and he went and he missed Zay Flowers and he missed likely in the back of the end zone so to me those are two passes Lamar will usually make well the thing with Lamar we said this after the third quarter

'cause it was two hours of them telling us how amazing Lamar was and he's faster and he's angry and he had this game circled and this is a different kind of Lamar and he's competitive and look at him in the sidelines. And it was like, they have 10 points, let's settle down. But then fourth quarter, you know, he almost ended up with 17 points in the fourth quarter and poured it on,

I thought he was great tonight. He also missed Flowers wide open on that second to last play. - Had him. Had Likely in the play before. - Wide open. He does hit Likely, but Likely doesn't end up keeping it. I guess if you're a Ravens fan, you're excited that Likely, all the preseason hype, all the buzz, all the quotes about him, like watch out for this guy. And it was like he looked like he was Tony Gonzalez. - Yeah, did you feel like we didn't get enough Derrick Henry?

If you're a Ravens fan, this is all summer also. It's going to be thunder and lightning. And they did a couple of cool plays where it was like a fake handoff to Henry and then it was Lamar outside. But I don't leave that game thinking... I know he scored the early touchdown and he had that big conversion, but I don't leave that game thinking that Derrick Henry is the focus of that offense by any means. 13 for 46? Yeah. So what is the... Walk me through the morning talk show topics tomorrow. So we do the...

Did Lamar... Lamar was great, but he didn't get it done again. Did Lamar... Lamar came into this thing two and four in the playoffs and one and three versus the... Should we be worried Lamar can't win big games? Did Lamar silence any doubts? We'll do that one. Oh, that's a good one. That's like a little glass half full. Did he silence any doubts? Did Lamar silence any doubters for you last night? Did he silence the doubters? Yeah. The ambiguous. I'd say yes. I thought Lamar showed up and was...

Way better than we saw him in the playoffs last year. Counter? Yeah. Counter. Yeah.

not sustainable. Okay. He took too many hits. It's a good take. That's fucking crazy. This is an 18 week season and he took 10 flush hits in that game. He played that game and they coached that game as if it was a winning end and it was everything. And in a lot of ways, that was like a week 18. We need to make the playoffs. Psychologically. Like they probably felt that way. Like we have to win this game. Well, you saw the Harbaugh going for the two. It's like, fuck, we're not going to overtime. Fuck this.

That would be one topic. Second one, we would go 30 times, 40 times showing the angles on the likely thing and just kind of put that into historical context. This is like one of those games where we're always here to remember Isaiah likely. Well, what are some of the recent ones like that?

There was that one Dallas, what was that Dallas Cowboys game everybody got all excited about? Dallas Detroit last year? Dallas Detroit was one. The crazy with the offensive lineman declaring eligible? Yeah. At least this time the guy was out of bounds. There was no... No question with the rules.

I would say the other topic would be the Chiefs, their new weapons, obviously with, you know, Worthy coming out and what they did with a little bit with Piran, but Pacheco tonight was fantastic. Just grinding. And Mahomes was amazing. Mahomes was fantastic. He had a couple mistakes like we talked about. He missed Piran on that one through the interception, but like,

I took the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl. It sounds boring. I leave tonight thinking, yeah, Chiefs are winning the Super Bowl. That team right there in that building, that is a tough team to beat. And the Bravens gave them everything they could handle and they couldn't do it. Worthy Rice and Hollywood Brown.

It's fast. Might be the three, the best like top three receivers that he's had from a explosive standpoint. Yeah. He had Tariq and Hardman that one year. And I guess the third was like Byron Pringle. Right. He never had like three guys that all had 40 yard touchdown potential. I'll tell you a conversation I had with a source at Texas when they were all coming out. Cause it was him. It's AD Mitchell. It was his kid Whittington. They're all in the NFL. And,

I was like, you know, Worthy, obviously he's going to be fast before the combine. He's like, we're, he's going to be fast and everyone's going to look at his 40 time and immediately compare him to, you know, John Ross or whoever Darius Hayward Bay or whatever it is. He's like, but Worthy is a smart player too. And it's one of the smartest players. And like, you can give him the ball on a jet sweep. He knows where to go. He also runs the full route tree. So he goes 28th. The bills of the team that trades that I know it's early. It's one game in, but like, did he not look?

Like this guy was one of the most dynamic players in the NFL right out of the gates. He looked like Tyreek Hill out there tonight. It's so tough. And same thing with the left tackle, who was the best left tackle left. Looked solid. And somehow just give up one sack. People just love giving the chief stuff. So they only ran 48 plays. Baltimore ran 73 plays that game and lost. So if you're Baltimore, here's take number three. Okay. They're at Dallas next week.

Home for the Bills on a Sunday day. Not easy. At Cincy. Not easy. Is your sphincter starting to tighten if you're the Ravens? That's why they went with Lamar going 18 carries. We had to win this game. What a great different angle it is. We could beat the Cowboys. Well, and then on the flip side, if you're the Bengals, you have the Pats this week, right? That's a win. You have... You're already going to Bengals schedule. I love this. Chiefs.

the following week. That's a fun one. That's a tough one. Then you go Washington, then you're at Carolina. You could be three and one. You might have like a two game lead.

on the Ravens heading into the home game week five. One game into 256 games. I love this. Or my Steelers. Your Steelers. Going in. Maybe they win in Atlanta this week. Who knows? The Browns have the Cowboys, but you know, I never. So you come out of this thing saying tough loss for the Ravens. Well, you start out 0-1. Now I need to go. Now if I'm getting to 11 wins, I got to rip off 11 and five now. Yeah.

I just did that math in my head. That's why I make the big bucks. That's why I'm right here. I just, the 0-1 start is just brutal. I don't like it. It's tough. And I also don't like that my best player had a really good game and we lost. We lost. Chiefs did lose the first week last season. They figured it out. A lot of teams lose that. Yeah, I get it. I know. You get it.

What do you think of that French Open match that we were, or the US Open match that we were also talking about? The Buffalo Bills daughter won the semifinal. What was her name? Muchova? Muchova. She was, she collapsed. Thrown a racket? Yeah, it was a total collapse. All right. Any last legacies for this game? Just a fun, awesome way to start the season. The NFL can't script this any better. And like, we have a game tomorrow night too. It's crazy. This is like a cool way to start the year. I had a,

The new kickoff rule

Wasn't as dynamic as we had hoped. It felt like it was still violent. It was like, I thought we were trying to not have collisions. These guys were like crushing each other. What I heard on this new, maybe it's one game in, but everyone I spoke to was like, just wait till week one. No teams are showing anything in preseason. There's going to be crazy reverses and laterals and all sorts of wild bells and whistles that they're practicing on. We didn't see any of that tonight. We did not. The, uh,

The only other thing I have was the coach interviews. Can you explain the coach interview thing? We now have to have a disgruntled coach at the end of the first half who wants no part of talking to a TV person doing that interview. And you've had to do those from time to time. What's worse? Well, they used to be off camera. And then a couple of years ago, we started tinkering with it. The rules now are that every team has to offer up at least a head coach or

At least one of the other head coach, offensive corner, defense quarter, or special teams coach that has to speak on air. So those are the two head coaches. Melissa Stark got the two big guys, which is great. We're going to be talking to special teams coaches on the, on the broadcast. We're going to get offensive coordinators who don't do a lot of media. We're going to do defense. So we're going to see if we get anything out of these, but, uh,

I've only done one of them on air ever. And it was a viral moment. I had Mike McDaniel up in Buffalo and he was absolutely fantastic. His first year as a coach. And he was like grilling me about what I was wearing and he was fun and he was awesome. That was not Andy Reid tonight. That was not John Harbaugh tonight. No, they're like, yeah, we gotta, you know, we gotta, gotta butt down those turnovers and, uh, and just play our game. And if you're Melissa Stark, what else can you do? You know, it's not her fault. It's just, these coaches aren't going to give you that there. So I think the hope was to get some access, but yeah, I don't think we, uh, no,

No viral moments tonight. Yeah, you almost want to zag and be like, Andy, have you seen Taylor Swift today? It's dead. Just do something. Andy, how about this weather? John, your brother's back. What's Jim going to do? Like, yeah, something. How many times have you talked to your brother this week? Yeah. He's coaching a team too. Excuse me? Yeah. How do you feel about the US Open? Any thoughts about Tiafoe? Are you checking Machova, Fagula? Yeah.

We were locked into that. Well, great game. Great Chiefs cover. Favorites now want to know. Bill Simmons in real life now want to know. Didn't get to do it on Million Dollar Picks. We're doing Million Dollar Picks later with Joe House. You're coming back. Next segment, we are going to talk about a whole bunch of 2024 NFL season stuff right after this. How fun. Love it. Football is back and there's no better place to get in on the NFL action than FanDuel, America's number one sports book right now.

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Whatever. Eat some wings while you're doing it. It's awesome. Order takeout or delivery from Buffalo Wild Wings Go while you watch the games this football season. Enjoy your 10 free boneless wings and maybe enjoy some Nashville hot sauce while you're at it at participating locations for a limited time when you order in the Buffalo Wild Wings web or app. All right, we're back to the future. We're taping this part before the Chiefs-Ravens game. Sunny outside. Yeah, it's still sunny here in Los Angeles. You've been up, I think, for the last 72 hours. But we're going to talk...

We talked Chiefs, Ravens in the first segment. We're gonna talk about some of the other NFL stuff. You became infatuated with the Jets so much. I also became a little infatuated with them. I picked them to win the division. You went further.

I haven't as the one seat in the AFC this year. And I know there's a lot of Jets fans who listen to your podcast and they do this thing where like they cringe or like, don't even go there. We don't want to hear it. It's just don't even put that out there. And they've been so burned, so scarred. I spent a lot of time around the Jets this summer. And maybe it is just because I was in the building a few times and I went there for practice and I called a preseason game. And from top to bottom,

it will be very difficult for this roster not to be very good. I think Jets fans... So that's how I feel. People get mad. It's just so good. Yeah. Even without Redick yet. And God knows when he shows up. Out of sight, out of mind with him. And you'll appreciate that because I think a lot of people say, well, the Redick thing, that's hovering over them. It's not because he's never been there. They haven't sweat with him. Those guys don't even know him. You can't miss something you've never had. They never had him. He came for one day. And I don't know if that might get settled this weekend.

And if it does, like a lot of people don't know, Belichick was almost your good morning football co-host. He's going to be a sick show. Yeah. But then it didn't happen. You can't mourn it. Never knew him. So it never happened. You know, we went there, Kyle, Brent and I rewatchables legend. We went for a practice one morning, like early in training camp and the jets PR staff comes up to us and like, all right, you've got today. So us Gardner, Quinn and Williams, Quincy Williams,

and Solomon Thomas as the guests were giving you. And me and him were like, holy shit, that is awesome. And we're looking at the roster and we're like, they didn't give us Rodgers. They didn't give us Brees Hall. They didn't give us Garrett Wilson. Oh, they didn't give us any of the new offensive linemen. Tyron Smith, obviously, is going to be a Hall of Famer. They didn't give us CJ Mosley. We got the third tier guests and we were like, that's awesome. That is how loaded they are. They go so deep. And last year,

The Jets won seven games and the quarterbacks were Zach Wilson, who's the third string in Denver, Tim Boyle,

who I believe is out of football or on the practice squad with the Texans. He's here right now. Tim, come on in. Tim, come on in. And Trevor Simeon, who's out of football. They won seven games. They also used 21 offensive linemen and 13 different combinations and still won seven games because their defense was so good. And Garrett Wilson still had a good year and Brees still ran that ball the way he did. So they beefed up the offensive line and Rodgers, I get it, 41 coming off an Achilles. That's not ideal. I saw practice in person. He looks amazing.

I saw him. They were against Washington. He didn't do much there, but they go against the Giants. He absolutely tortures them. So it's like I can only go by what I see. I have a vibe. I understand that there's 13 years they've been to the playoffs. I understand there's curses galore.

They're too good on paper. You left out the coach. That's got to be one of the... Let's discuss, yeah. Hey, kids, Bob. I saw one of the sites had a power rank. He's the 32nd coach in football. How is he supposed to win with any of these? I mean, you could comment on... I will say this. This is the best situation he could possibly be in if Rodgers is back because then all he has to do is just worry about the defense, fist pumps on the sideline, handle the media...

And the offense, he's got... I mean, I was in three fantasy drafts the last three days. And Wilson and Brees Hall... Brees Hall was the number one, I think, highest-priced guy in all three leagues. Is that right? Wilson was, like, the fifth or sixth biggest receiver. These are, like, massive weapons. And they can block. And they've got a really good... Like, so...

The number two is Mike Williams. We didn't see him in training camp. He's going to be all right. Yeah. He's on track to play. Yeah. And guess what? That was Brees Hall last year. He didn't play all training camp. Everyone's like, where's Brees? Then he was great. Um, Alan Lazard. I know everyone rolls their eyes. They're like, all right, he sucked last year.

Alan Lazard was a big signing last year. Everyone's like, all right, they brought in Corley, this kid from Western Kentucky. They brought in Mike Williams. They're loaded. They're good. Alan Lazard had an amazing camp. And Rodgers, every time he spoke to the media and every time he spoke to us, went out of his way to be like, don't forget about Lazard. I spoke with Joe Douglas off the record, but I don't think he'd have a problem with me sharing this and say, maybe the best camp that anyone had this summer was Alan Lazard, who

People have forgotten and he might be their third or fourth wide receiver and oh, happens to be the best blocking wide receiver in football. So like their offense is loaded. Their defense was great last year. Michael Carter might be the best nickelback in football. Reed and Sauce are both lockdowns. Like I could do flips here. The only issue is you're like, all right, is this head coach going to outwit one of these top other coaches in a big spot? Is Nathaniel Hackett going to draw it up? Because we don't know if they can.

Both those guys have been on really good teams. From a talent standpoint. It's there. Loaded. They're loaded with everybody else. And that was what jumped out when I started doing my player rankings and all that stuff. And I was like, Jesus, the Jets are like the fourth highest team on my list. They had like 10 guys that made my list. No doubt. And they have these two rookie running backs. I don't know which one is going to be. Braylon Allen is the youngest player in football. Yeah. Running back out of Wisconsin. The kid is an absolute...

wrecking ball, bowling ball, and they hadn't even unleashed them. They played them in one preseason game, a little bit in the second game. They didn't play them in the third. And the other kid is this kid, Isaiah Davis, who was out of South Dakota State, who had what they call the Red Star. And in their scouting system,

You know, each scout is allowed to give one red star and across the board, they all gave the red star to him because he was like captain broke every record you could imagine at school. And they got him in the fifth round. So they drafted running backs in the fourth and fifth round that aren't even expected to be those guys that they're super excited about. So they're deep, they're loaded.

I can't believe you just went third string Jets running back. You're that passionate. Early in the pod. We went right there. But this Braylon Allen has a lot of fans around the league, and he slipped to the fourth round. The last point I would make, because the break glass in case of emergency last year was Zach Wilson, and it didn't work out.

The Giants really wanted to bring back Tyrod. The Giants offered Tyrod a lot of money. The Jets got Tyrod to come. So for the first time in Aaron Rodgers' time with the Jets, and he had guys who were veterans when he was younger, but he's not the camp counselor in that room.

Oh, interesting. Tyrod can handle like, you know, all right, let me do whatever. Tyrod's like, I was almost stabbed to death by the Chargers doctor. I've seen a lot of stuff. I played for the Giants. And you served by Tommy DeVito. Like I've seen it all. So like Tyrod and Rodgers together is a really cool dynamic where it's a 40 year old and 36 year old, I think. And it's like, Rodgers doesn't have to babysit. Like he doesn't have to come and like teach these guys movie references. It's like, all right, let's just go to work.

I don't know whether I'm older and whether I've just watched too many football seasons in a row, but there are some seasons where I just really feel like... Can you see it? Oh, this team reminds me of 50 other teams that have...

come through and they just check so many boxes. It's going to be hilarious when they go like six and 11, but it could very well happen from a talent standpoint, from the fact that they haven't been good in a while, that the division is kind of going the other way. I think they're getting some luck with what happened with Buffalo's defense. Yeah. I think there's a window happening with Miami. We lost a lot of guys too. They did. And they're starting out the season banged up. The pats are going to be disaster. That's two wins right there. I'd just be really surprised.

We did this wind spool. Have you ever seen that wind spool where they have the...

If you get the first pick, you get 20th and 26th. Yes. And if you get the second pick, you get 16th and 29th. I've seen it with four teams. It's really cool. So you pick three teams. Eight people, four teams. Yeah, okay. So this is similar. So I ended up with 10 and 12. Were the Jets there at 10? And the Jets were there at 10. And I was like, I can't believe the Jets are here at 10. Yeah. And that's who I took. And then Green Bay was there at 12. And I was like, I can't believe Green Bay is here at 12. Two great teams this year. Possible Super Bowl matchup. But yeah, it's...

The thing is, it's the Jets and everybody's been making that point. But it's not like the Jets have just been a dumpster fire for they're not the Lions where the Lions were like, oh, we made the playoffs.

The Jets have been in AFC title games. That's 13 years ago. 13 years ago. But I'm just saying they at least have had some positive stuff. Yeah, they beat Brady in a playoff game in Foxborough. Yeah. They beat Peyton Manning in Indy like recently with Rex. Every once in a while they resurface is my point. And where it's like, oh, the Jets are good. No doubt. And then they go away for 10 years. And like last year was different. Last year, the Hard Knocks thing was so real. You have, you know, Oz the Mentalist coming and being like, they're going to the Super Bowl and there's six episodes and

you know, Salah's doing the Tony Soprano drive in and it's like everyone was in and it happened. Well, when you're season three plays in that happens, you can't recover from that. And also like, you know, you've seen the rhythm of some of these football seasons from off season through the training camp.

You can get the bad juju or you get the good juju. It seems like they have that where the Niners are the opposite. And it's like, it's every one of them is explainable and you can be like, okay. And that, you know, ironically, these two teams are playing, but there's just a lot of stuff lining up with the Niners. I feel that way. Whereas the same, that veteran football fan history. I'm like, ah, I don't like the vibe. I feel that way about San Francisco where,

The end result, Ayuk's in town, Trent Williams is in town. Yeah, so you'd be like, oh, it's fine. They're all there. Oh, it's fine.

It was a long, arduous deal with IU that went back and forth. And, you know, publicly it was like, we've, you know, they've used media guys to take both sides of the story. It was ugly at one point. Then he comes back. It's like, all right, he's back. But is he? He's back and took the same offer that was there a month ago. But the fact that even gets out there and like, you know, Adam reported that Schefter and it's like, all right, that means that's pretty well known and like understood. And that he has no problem reporting that, that the offer was made a month ago, which is not great for anyone to hear because he missed all that time. The other team,

is the Cowboys. It's just, there's just bad juju around it. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they come out and they go like they did last year and they're, cause I was down on them last year, but McCarthy in his final year of a contract, Mike Zimmer, two years removed from football as a defensive coordinator. And,

it's you know the running the running backs are Rico Dowdle, Zeke Elliott and Dalvin Cook like these are real things the salary cap stuff the fact that Jake Ferguson's probably the second receiver no doubt the offensive line's worse they have to the front seven's probably either the same or worse they have to pay Dak and Parsons at some point so it's like everything's on hold and I don't know I look at that stuff and I don't it's like are you are you looking at analytics are you looking at film are you looking at sometimes I'm like you it's like

I'm the common sense guy. I'm the vibes guy. And it's like, that just doesn't look right. But the difference with us is I'm just on my couch or in front of my iPad or I'm listening to pods and I'm just kind of putting together some weird jigsaw puzzle in my head, right? You're actually going to these camps and they can present things a certain way to you

But you've been to enough of these in enough seasons that you can kind of sift through the bullshit or see what's real. Well, I can rarely identify when a team is shit. Because everyone's... When I come in there... Everyone's super happy. Everyone's amazing. The guy's in the best shape of his life and the PR guy's coming down and it's, oh my God, you should meet this third round rookie. He's unbelievable. Everyone's... But I can usually also...

identify the teams that seem like they're dialed in. And it's like, oh, they're in the mode. And Rodgers, like it was a beautiful thing watching Sauce Gardner and Garrett Wilson go at it one-on-one. Like those are the two best at what they do. And Rodgers is throwing the ball and say what you want. I don't think Jets fans even realize. And Mike Francesa did a thing with Chris Russo today and I actually listened to it. And it was actually, he makes a great point. And he's like, I don't think Jets fans even realize.

They don't know how good Rodgers is. They've seen him and we've all seen him. What he does on the routine, he's the most accurate passer that you could imagine. And he does it with such effortless throws and they're perfect. And I talked to these players, because I did the preseason game, talked to DJ Reed, who's the corner, and he's like, you're defending a receiver as well as you possibly can defend him.

And Rodgers puts it and it's literally can only be one inch and it's there and the receiver catches it. And then 20 yards later, it's a touchdown. Like he does things still that there's a very small group of quarterbacks in the history of the game ever done. So if you have them out there and you won seven games last year and you have an offensive line that had 20 different bodies, like I would think four to five wins with a third place schedule more than last year is doable. So that's 11, 12 wins.

That's where I landed as well. It's funny, you go to these things and it's like you're coming, like you came over to my house today. And everybody's gonna be pleasant when you go to somebody's house. But if you're there for a while and it's like, you know, later my wife's making dinner and she gets mad at me or she starts, she's like, Bill, can I talk to you for a second? You're like, oh shit, what's going on in this house?

That's kind of what those training camps are like, right? Everything is nice on the surface, but then you're kind of watching and you might see, you'll see a couple of things, right? The NFL network guys, we have this luxury where we're flown in. You're there for one day. You're in a polo shirt on a fold on a shoulder. We're talking to the coach. Everyone's laughing, smiling. The beat reporters are there all. Then they're like grinding it out. They see everything. So when we come in, it's, it's, it's a parachute in everyone's on their best behavior. Look how great this guy is. Look how great this guy is. But,

you can get the vibe and you talk to the other guys in the media and then I have enough sources at these teams where I say, hey, you guys look at it and they'll reveal and be like, well, if we can get out all right and we can get a couple wins in September, like, I think we'll be all right. But other than that, like, you know. Right, it's almost degrees of. Like they want to, oh, measure your,

Yeah, they're doing like the glass half full positivity. But not over the top because they're like... Well, you know, if we can block, I think we're going to be really good. It's like, you mean blocking the most important part of football? Absolutely. And then like the other guy who's super positive and bullish that I have to like check my governor on this thing is... Because he's always... Sean Payton's like...

over the moon about Bo Nix. And when we talk, he's like, dude, you have no idea. This guy is so dialed in. He's like a 30 year old. He's a captain already in his first season. He's like, I trust 95% of your info. That one. There's 5% where I'm like, Schrager just loves this guy. And Sean Payne could tell you anything. He'd be like, Bo Nix is Joe Montana. You'd be like, I'm in. He's like, yes. He's like, we're going to go undefeated. Yes, you will.

But Bo Nix is almost 25 years old and was in college for 100 years. 61 career games in college. 61. There's a case for... I stayed away from that Seattle game in Million Dollar Picks. Oh, I wouldn't go near that. I want to see Denver for one game. No doubt. Are they going to run the ball? Are they going to be moving him around? What are they going to do with him? And Sean had his press conference yesterday and he's like, I don't know how to prepare for them because Seattle...

new defense, new head coach, the defensive guy, an offensive coordinator who no one's ever seen, who came from the college game and grub. And he's like, I'm watching Baltimore tape because that's what he ran last year in Baltimore. But I also, the personnel that Seattle has is nothing like,

the Baltimore personnel. They don't have the Roquan Smith or Kyle Hampton. So Sean's at a loss. So that game is one that I would stay the hell away from. It's a complete stay away. I am excited for them. I bet they're over. I saw you did that. I find it hard to believe seven wins is inconceivable for that team. I would think so. Did you go to Jacksonville? Jacksonville? No, but I spoke to their guys a bunch and they're like, don't talk about us. They're very quietly confident.

I'm in on Jacksonville. I picked Jacksonville to win the AFC South. House and I, we have a whole Jacksonville thing later, a million dollar picks. I'm in on Jacksonville. That's a good zag because they kind of slept under the radar. Lawrence was injured. Slept under the radar? Did they just create a frisk? They also slipped under the radar. They also slept.

No, everyone's on Houston, including me. I picked Houston to win the Super Bowl. And it was one of those ideas I had when I was on Simmons Family Cape Week in the Cape. It crystallized. I was like, that's what I'm going to do. Well, you start thinking, you're like, I like them. Well, it's like, is CJ Stroud... Fuck it, let's go for it. Well, is CJ Stroud...

Not Mahomes, but Mahomes-ish. Look, he had as good a rookie season as a quarterback has ever had in the NFL. Yeah. So you're fair to say that. They also, they crush that draft. Great draft. They have a great coach. They have a lot of talent. They added Mixon, Diggs. They beefed up the D-line, beefed up the running backs. Hunter. But, and this is why, and it's not a negative, like, so last year, no one expected anything.

They were the hunters. They were not the hunted. I've heard you do this about all the terrible quarterbacks they played. All the terrible quarterbacks, but I would also say they played at 1 p.m. Eastern.

for all 17 regular season games. Now, I'm not saying they're going to be scared of prime time, but like, it's just, all right. And then they had a playoff game at home and they beat the Browns, which was an awesome performance on Saturday. Like it was great. And then they were up on the Ravens and lost. And it was like an amazing season. And D'Amico should have won coach of the year. And Stroud did win offensive rookie of the year and all that. And it was great. But then you get all these players and like, I just, they have a first place schedule this year. Yep.

they've got a fucking gauntlet. If you look at their schedule, it's not easy. If Jacksonville's good, which we think they are, and Indy's at least decent. I actually think Tennessee's going to be good too. I can't. I think Levis. I think Levis is going to get hurt. Really? Just two Reckless? That guy's a maniac. And they're putting him behind like the C minus D plus offensive line. I just feel like

Um, so I went off, I don't have Houston making the playoffs, which sounds crazy. It's not crazy that so many people are on them. We've seen the first year jump, second year fall back, third year jump again. Um, yeah, if I had to do it over again and I, and I'm not, I don't want to mulligan. No, no. I'll ride my pick. I went with it. Uh, I really wanted to zag against the chiefs and I thought Houston made a ton of sense, but the case is they have to get the one seed.

I think, to make the Super Bowl. It has to be like the road goes through Houston and the domes. Two games, let Mahomes in round two have some bloodbath game against somebody and just try to get lucky. Yeah, that's the case. But I like your Jets one seed. I think it's fun too. I'm jealous of it. And my story behind it that I did on Good Morning Football could either be, roll your eyes, but it's a real story that

I was in line for ice cream out in Sag Harbor this summer, like all the way in the eastern end of Long Island. And his dad comes up to me with three kids. The eldest is wearing a Mahomes jersey. The youngest is wearing a Lamar jersey. And the middle kid's not wearing any jersey. And the dad is like, oh, this kid's cursed. This kid, you know, in New York, like this guy, this poor kid, he's got the family curse. I'm like, I don't even know what you're talking about. Plus he's the middle kid. Yeah, he's the middle kid. He's got the family curse and I feel terrible for him. It's my dad's curse. I'm like, what the hell is he even talking about? And he's like,

he's the Jets fan and everyone's like, ha, ha, ha. And I'm like, you don't wear the jersey? And he's like, he won't wear the Rodgers jersey. He won't wear it because he wore it all summer last year. And he, you know, tore his Achilles four games and tore his Achilles. And I'm like, this is, and it's like, I talked to everyone in New York. It's like, that's, it's not this crazy story of superstition. Like that's the life they live. So there's this giant shadow that it's like, even a 10 year old kid is, is like living with that. So it's so hard for Jets fans to believe. And all I'm saying is,

If ever in my lifetime, if ever, and this goes back to Parcells and when they took the Broncos to the AFC Championship game to the wire, if ever there was a roster, and I know they haven't been there in 13 years, and if ever there was a season with the way it's working with the Dolphins, Bills, and Patriots, like you said, this is the year. This is the time. And Rodgers is not getting any younger. So now, but I don't know, Achilles injury. So I heard you do that story on the show. Yeah. You thought I was bullshitting or what?

No, my favorite part was the dad just seemed to have unlimited funds for Jets jerseys. He's buying so many. He's just not fanatics. They're just sending him emails. Yeah, the middle son has every jersey, but he will not wear the Rodgers one. But he's got like 16 other Jets jerseys. Just listing them. Yeah. Let's take a break. And then I want to talk about your biggest 2024 Zag.

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So your biggest zag of the 2024 season, mine, I'll give you mine first so you know. I have Pittsburgh in the playoffs. Love it. I think Pittsburgh's defense is the best unit of all the defenses in either conference. And that's Tomlin plus the defense plus Wilson just not turning the ball over ever. And they're just going to grind out these wins, including potentially week one in Atlanta. And I'm just, I'm in on the nobody believes in us with them. And I'm alone.

House is semi there, at least for week one with me, but I'm basically alone. And even Steelers fans are like, no, we're fucked, man. Our offensive line's in shambles. Russ sucks. We have one receiver. Like, that bad pick, you're wrong. So that's my zag. What's your number one zag? Seattle in the playoffs. See, I feel like you have people with you on that. Because I bet them to win the division, make the playoffs, and go over. You and I and a few others, but it is...

Okay. It's crickets out there for the Seattle NFC West? It is. Because the fact that like everyone looks at them and they're like, and there's a 37-year-old head coach and they don't really know what's on defense. That's how old he is? 37.

Mike McDonald? 37. Wow. Dude, his story's crazy. How many coaches are you older than? I know it's getting there now. You have a couple, right? McVeigh, McDonald. Yeah. McVeigh is still like 31 years old. McVeigh is still young. Um, there's another one that was, I think Callie, Brian Callahan in Tennessee. I'm older than him. How old is Tameko Ryans? Tameko Ryans were probably the same. No, I'm probably older because I remember when he was drafted. So yeah, I'm probably older. So it's getting there. 37. Wow. McDonald. 37. And his story is crazy. He was

a GA, which is a graduate assistant at Georgia in like 2013. Yeah. And like rose up really quickly and then was at the Michigan Wolverines when they were really good on defense a couple years ago, the Ravens.

bring him back because he was in Baltimore and then they bring him back and then he gets this thing. But like he's 37 and he hires this grub who they don't have a history who was Washington's offensive coordinator with Pennix and Polk and a dunes and McMillan and that awesome offense at Washington. And he's like, he didn't even know the guy. They didn't have any real relationship. And he's like, I'm going to get a college offensive coordinator and make him the NFL one here. And I just feel like there's no buzz about them at all. And

and my zag was putting them in the playoffs. But if you've got them winning the division, then I will tip my cap. I picked the Niners to win the division. I'm just saying, they were plus 650, I think, to win the NFC West. So I just sprinkled some on that. And then the other one, I have the Broncos making it, which I can't even give you a rhyme or reason. Man, I looked at that. I want to do that so badly. Isn't it fun? Isn't it fun when you make that pick, though? I looked at it forever. I just couldn't get past the schedule.

which I thought was a little harder than I wanted it to be for the fact that they weren't good last year. But they actually, what'd they go? Seven and eight, nine. Yeah. So they didn't even get a fourth place schedule. Remember they beat Buffalo. But the cap, those teams, and this is my fear with Buffalo too. And I had Bill's fans in my life where you just fucking hate Buffalo. And I was like, every year I wanted to pick Buffalo. I wanted to zag with them for the NFC all year. But then,

The combo of all the money that is just dead cap, but it's 61 million in dead cap. And then when Milano got hurt, I'm like, I'm out. I just, this is a too tall of a task. And you know, they lean into that. They love that. So I talked to those guys and they're like, I'm like, you know, digs a big loss, Gabe Davis. And they're like, okay. I'm like, what? Dalton Kincaid had like 90 catches last year. Well, the thing is they think, and like the digs thing, and I'm not trying to make news here, but like, it's one of those, it was time.

And it's like, he said that there's just like, like imagine just a cloud lifted and it's not because they don't like each other personally, but like for the quarterback, it's like, Oh my God, fine. All right. Now it's like, I get there wherever, do whatever. And they, they got long, but it's all right.

Diggs caught two balls in the AFC championship game. I think like eight targets, like something great. So it's like, let's see what else we have out there or AFC divisional round. And they've got the Shakir and they've got Keon Coleman. And I think they think they're going to be all right on offense there. I mean, the case against it is there. I hate relying on rookie receivers like that. I know.

as somebody who is a Pats fan. Jalen Polk's going to have 100 catches. Well, I'm actually excited for him. But as we had a Pats, there were so many guys with the Pats that we had to keep our fingers crossed and the guys just sucked.

And it really does seem, once you get to that 25 to 50 wide receiver range, it just feels like a coin flip. - Yeah, you're hoping. - You go back and look at the history and it's like, yeah, there's AJ Brown, but there's Nikhil Harry. - Totally. - And it just does this. - Totally. - So out of all those receivers, everybody loves everybody, but a couple of them are gonna be busts, like Leguette on the Panthers, Keon Coleman, Jalen Polk. - There were so many. Pearsall, of course, has the shootout. - Yeah, Pearsall, like two of those guys are gonna end up sucking. It's just the law of averages. - That's how it goes.

Wait, can we go back to Seattle? Yeah. I'm into Seattle. One of the things I liked about them, well, they actually have like a semblance of a home field advantage if they have a good team. But, you know, they have loaded position groups. Like their receivers, their one, two, three are up there. The Ohio State, like Jackson Smith, like they rave about this guy and he barely scratched the surface last year. They have, they had two first round picks last year and the first round pick they got

this year, who's really a lottery pick. Murphy's amazing. Yeah, he went 16, but he should have been top 10. No doubt. But so they're bringing in blue chippers finally. And I like Gino. I don't mind Gino. Gino's not going to lose you games. Like, I know that sounds like a backhanded compliment, but like, he's going to keep you in every game. And if your team doesn't make mistakes, you will win you games. Well, and then ever, I mean, Walker has been one of the biggest buzz guys of the year. I know everyone's in on him also, but I was early on it. Like the fantasy drafts were nuts. He was going in the forties. I wonder sometimes if like,

And it's not just me. I know on yours, I think it might've been Danny Kelly was also big on them too. Cause I listened to that podcast with the three of them, but like,

I, you know, I talked to Mike about it obviously in the summer and then someone made me aware of this, which was interesting. When he was at Michigan state, Kenneth Walker, he ran for two 91 and five touchdowns in an upset of Michigan and just tore them up. Oh, against Mike McDonald. Yeah. Defensive coordinator. So like, I know that's like, all right, what does that have to do with Seahawks versus 49ers? It does. It's just like,

McDonald had options. He interviewed, he could have taken, it's like, that was one of the cornerstones of this team. So they feel really strong about him. They like that Charbonnet as the other running back. He's a good backup. Good. The thing is, I don't know how to scout a left guard. Yeah. I wouldn't, I don't really know. There's linebacker stuff where I'm like, Oh, I'm sure that guy's awesome. I can tell that Fred Warner's awesome. There's other guys on the TV. I can't tell. But with running backs, I,

You can just kind of tell who has it. Yeah. You know, Lombardi and I always talk about that. We're always like, why doesn't that guy play more? Yeah. And Walker was one of those guys. When you watch the games, you're like, that guy seems awesome. Why don't they give him the ball? Breesaw's like that. I mean, some of the ones make sense. There's other ones like the guy in the Bengals, the backup. Oh, Chase Brown. He played at the end of the season really well. I like Chase Brown. Yeah. And there's a reason Joe Mixon. I took him in at least one of my drafts. But like there's certain guys where you're like, man,

I like McLaughlin on the Broncos. My other guy, and this is, it's late for fantasy, but I'm like a big Tajay Spears guy. He's Tennessee's number two. Again, Tennessee might not be that great, but total like change of pace guy out of Tulane. And like, they love him there. So like, that's the kind of guy where you're like, Oh, well, Tony Pollard's there. So he's not going to get carries. No, he will. Like he'll get carries. Can I ask you more juju questions? Yeah.

How are we feeling about the vibes in Cleveland? What's the word in the street? Yeah. It's weird, isn't it? And it's like, they could be the best team in the AFC. On paper, they're loaded. Deshaun Watson, I don't know. I honestly don't. And you hear that he looks good in practice. So they changed the offense. They changed the offensive coordinator. But Bill Callahan's not there anymore, who I thought was really important. He was the offensive line guy. And you have

Rabel is there. If Rabel comes in. I don't know what he's doing. I don't know what's Rabel's role. I don't know. How is he not hosting a show with Belichick? It could have been the seventh Belichick show. Could we talk about that for a second? Is Belichick here? Oh, Belichick's on our show. I mean, he's going to be doing news updates for Good Morning Football. Like, I'm not like, does he know the word no? Is he, what's going on? I think Belichick

He knows he's coaching in February. Yep. He's got it. And it's already, you think it's in the back pocket? The Belichick podcast should have been called the six month money grab. I mean, he's just like, do you have a check? Oh, I'm happy to talk, but I don't think he,

I'm watching this because I really want to see in week one. Because you got to do it 22 weeks for seven different outlets. I do it for like four and I got nothing left. But here's the thing. He's going to have to actually be critical and I don't know if he's going to do it. Yeah, especially if he's coming back. If he's coming back, because we've seen all kinds of versions of this with basketball and football. No doubt. Especially in basketball where the guys...

They do TV for a year, two years. They straddle it and they're nice. Yeah, and they just don't, they don't want to really say anything because they might coach again. That's why I loved having Doc on because Doc, Doc has, yeah, he has no self-edit button.

Pat Riley was really good way back when he did Studio. He was great. I don't remember him when he was in Studio. Yeah, it was before your time. But it's really rare. Was it like him and Peter Vesey and Bob Costas? Like, what was it? First year, I think it was just him and Costas. Okay. But he was really good. Yeah. And I want to see with Belichick when we come out of week one. See, like, I worked with Sean Payton for that one year, and that would be the perfect...

thing because Peyton knew he was coming back. He was a little careful. He was, but right out of the gate, he's like, I don't believe in Tua. And like, it made crazy news. And I'm like, I pulled him aside and I'm like, oh, that's going to be headlining. He's like, well, I don't. I'm like, yeah, but when you say it. And then he kind of learned his lesson, right? And he didn't hear that again, you know? Right. And I don't, Belichick out of the gates, how they're using him

I watched inside the NFL and it was like, all right, what is Baltimore KC? What's Baltimore going to do to win this game? He's like, well, you can't have Travis Kelsey go nine for 96 in the first half. And the three other guys who, bless them, whatever, but it's like Chris Long, Ryan Clark, and Oksana hanging on every word, watching him do film study. And I'm like, that is cool. But if you're doing seven different, is he going to be that guy on all these? And then McAfee, he's a little lighter. And we laugh about the Insta face and all that stuff. But I don't know what I necessarily want.

I know what I want. What do you want? Is him ripping to shit? I don't want the ripping. I want, if he's really going to be good at this, I want him to be like, all right, the Jaguars beat the Dolphins week one.

Let me tell you, I'm going to look at the tape, watch what they did against Tua because Tua, he's good at this, but he's bad at this. So when he's out there, you want to make him roll to his right. And like, explain to us like how he would coach against Tua. If he does that, he's going to be good. He was fantastic with McAfee at the draft because Drake may get spicked. He's like, look, this is a bad pass. I thought he was awesome. Yeah. And then there was another thing where he was critical of something like

So that gave me hope that he might be good at this. But I see seven different outlets and I'm like, well, are you giving underdog fantasy your fastball? Are you giving 33rd team your fastball? Or is it on the Manning cast? Or are you just going to be a comedian with all of them? Because now he's suddenly this like comedian that they all want to bring on and do jokes about. So, you know, so I'm with you. And Kyle Brandt made a great point today on the show. He's like,

Because we had to talk about like, oh, Bill Belichick's finally on social media and we all laugh and do other things. And Kyle's like, I kind of miss the Belichick that I knew for the last 25 years. That's like, I'm not going on social media and I'm not this warm and fuzzy guy. Right.

I'm the smartest football mind in the world. Let's tap into that. So maybe we're doing too much sports media, but like I'm fascinated. No, I, what this little sabbatical is like, cause I agree. I think it's coming back next year. Listen, this is one of the big stories that the two biggest sports media for football season. Him and Brady, right? Yeah. Will Brady be good? Will Belichick be good? It's funny that they're linked together again. Have you offered your, I mean, I'm sure Brian Curtis had an awesome article this week. Have you had your thoughts on Brady publicized yet? Like how you think it's going to go or no? Have you done any talking on it? Cause I,

I had a pretty cool experience where Fox flies us all out to this, uh, Terranea, this like nice spot in the Palace Verdes. They put any, Fox is great. They put anyone who like is on air or is a director or producer and they put us up and it's like an offsite and it's required and Strahan has to be there. And Aaron, you get to hang out with Carissa and Aaron, right? We do. Yeah. We hang with them. They're great. They're great. Shout out to those two. Love them. Um,

And it's like, it's, it's work, but it's also fun. You play golf, but you also do like these breakout sessions. And I'm at a dinner the first night and I see Brady, he's looming. He's like there. And there's people like, you know, he was at a table with maybe like Menifee and Howie Long. And at my table was Gronk and Edelman and Michael Vick and Charles Woodson. And Brady just kind of slides in and I'm like, all right. And he pulls me aside and he's like,

He's like, what's up, man? He's like, you know, I'm excited to work with you. And we've done production meetings with him. I've covered him. I don't have a relationship with him. You know, I know who he is. He's really cool. And then he's like, where can I get some cocaine around here? Oh, that would have been an amazing story. I'm not the guy. No, I'm kidding. Tell me your best Tampa Bay Bucks first sense story and maybe I'll find you some. And then Brady starts kind of like locking into me and going in on like, he's like, you cover the game every day on Good Morning Football. He's like,

what do you think about the current, you know, way that like the quarterbacks are sort of protected and like locked in. And he's like, I just think when I, and you've seen the clips where he talks about this stuff, but it's like, it was, it was on me to not get those receivers injured. And like, I would have to eat it sometimes and take a sack. And I would sometimes have to throw the ball away. And he's like, and I wouldn't run out of the pocket because I'd get my head taken off by Ed Reed or Ray Lewis. And he's like, and he's like,

really passionate and dialed in and locked in. And I'm like, oh shit. Like, and he's talking about, he's like, I watched film on Lamar. He's like, Lamar's amazing. He's like, but you know, if you notice like this, this was different back when I played. So,

The question is, is he going to be critical? Is he going to be, I think he's going to be so passionate and like has real thoughts that in real time, I think it's going to be refreshing. And I don't think we've seen that from one of these guys yet. I don't know how it's going to go this weekend, but like, I think that's even more fascinating than the game itself. Cowboys versus Browns. Like I want to hear Brady in between plays and Burkhart's been working with them and Richie Zients and Rich Russo, who are the producer and director. And they're like,

He wants to do the work. Like he's watching film. Like, I'm like, I don't know if that's what's the most necessary part, but like, he's at least colored in as prepared as anybody. So the roast made me think he might be pretty good at it because I was really surprised he did it and he really threw himself into it. But you know, one of the things I heard was that cause he he's, cause he's got that Raiders thing. He's not allowed to go to the pregame meetings. And I'm like,

He's like, well, he's not going to be able to do the meetings. That's going to hurt him. It's like, those meetings are fucking stupid. I get a lot out of the meetings because it's me and I go in there and I'm like, oh, this is a chance for me to have FaceTime with everybody. Yeah, but half the stuff you're hearing is, we love this guy. We're super excited about him. We love this guy. We love that guy. These meetings are horseshit. I've been in a million of them. Here's how they go because not everyone at home knows. Come in, you hand the coach the all 22 or the depth chart, the flip card. And some coaches will be like, all right, this guy's not...

playing he's injured and that's not public yet you'll find that out Sunday but yeah tell us because we have to prepare but somebody can find that out for Brady sure exactly and then

The analyst, which would be Brady or my crew, I used to work with Chris Spielman, who was really good at these. And then John Lynch, I worked with as well. And the analyst will usually lead those meetings and ask questions to the quarterback, the head coach and a defensive player. And, you know, the sideline reporter gets one or two questions and the play by play guy usually will get one or two as well. But it's usually led by the analyst in that crew.

You've got Tom Rinaldi, who's a great interviewer. You've got Aaron Andrews. You've got Kevin Burkhart. You've got three different people who are all fantastic at what they do. I think if Brady doesn't have a face-to-face with the Sean Watson, but those guys get whatever information they need to go into it, he's done the work. I almost don't necessarily need him in the meeting to...

talking to Deshaun Watson, one-on-one. A lot of that stuff is filler. Like, well, as we talked to him yesterday, he told us that, you know, he's really good. How about this? I'd vote for not talking to anybody. Yeah, just show up for the game and broadcast it. And be objective. I did a couple NBA games when I was at ESPN. I remember.

I remember one time we had a Lakers game and they weren't very good. And we talked to D'Antoni. He was the Laker coach. And what was, I never done an NBA one. Is it you're in person or? I actually really enjoyed it. They're amazing, dude. They were, they're so, they're so candid because they want to win you over.

But it's all stuff you can't really use where he's like, ah, this fucking guy, you know, like, all right, I can't use that. I don't know. It was fun to talk to him, but it didn't really color how I announced the game. No, but if you get a story. So like I told you that DJ Reed story about, you know, he's saying that Roger's like, that's a cool story. I don't care if I don't have that production meeting. But it's I think where you really get it because I'm convinced this happens with Roma where they tip them off like first quarter.

Well, you also... Just watch out for a trick play because we think they're susceptible. Friday's also usually red zone and special teams and you get to go to practice if you're not doing it virtually. You get to go to practice. I don't know if everyone's going to the practices those years, but like it might have all changed during COVID, but it used to be you get to go to practice so you'd see what they're doing in the red zone and then that would actually usually happen in the actual game. So you're actually getting practice. I guess... So...

I'm going to adjust my take. I'm sure it's worth it, but as a viewer, I'm always annoyed when they do that. We talked to them last night. We talked to them yesterday. We talked to them on Friday. It's like, just fucking give me the info. I don't care. I'm not taking notes. It's like when the people report

So-and-so signed an extension. His agent at so-and-so agency did the extension. I'm like, I don't fucking care who did the extension. Yeah. I barely care that there was an extension. Yeah. And I was going to find out there's an extension tomorrow at nine anyway. Oh, who? Like, is there a quiz where I get to guess what agents, what agents did it? But back to Brady though. Um,

I was going to say one more thing about him. I think he's going to be good. I do. I actually really do think he's going to be good. He was super like locked in with that conversation. And then the NFL comes to this thing as well because they have to go through the rules. And one of the NFL executives was there and was talking about the dynamic kickoff. And Brady was like, oh, oh, so like I've got thoughts on that too. And like he had like 20 minutes like with this NFL executive and it was all great. It's all about football, but like passionate.

And I don't know, I'm seeing social media and Brady's at, you know, the Michael Rubin stuff and he's doing the, he's doing the, the, the boat racing. And I'm like, is he, no, this dude is dialed in. So at the very least you're getting commitment. And I think he's going to be great. I have more of a question of if he's going to last the year. As in like, does he want to do it? No, I'm just never convinced that that guy's done playing.

Turn the fucking TikTok. Turn the TikTok camera on, Kyle. Let's go. We're in person. Turn the TikTok camera on. I think... It's 47, dude. I don't care. I don't care. I think he's still in shape. He is. I think he's always ready to go. And if anything happened to one of the quarterbacks in the top six teams, I'm just... I refuse to believe he's retired. This is my point. This is a fascinating take. I think he's done. I don't... It's not a take. I really, truly believe this. So...

Like, let's say... I'm not putting a team out there. No, no. I don't want to put bad juju. I'm just saying if it's a team that has a chance to win the Super Bowl and there's a heaven can wait situation where something happens, I think he would come back. Based on knowledge or just your gut here? I'm just saying I think he would come back. If you're that team... I think up until he turns 50 years old, I will always believe there's a chance he will come back because I think these guys are all wired the same way. Boxers...

you know, actors, rappers, these dudes that have really had like a cheap, great stuff. Once that switch gets turned off, the only way you stop doing it is if your body's not cooperating anymore. I feel like you literally can't do it. He looks great, dude. He's in shape. He looks great. Cause,

Because he got super skinny there for a little bit, but he's not super skinny anymore. I was with him about a month ago. He looked fantastic. Yeah, so anyway, I never believe that guys are done unless their body definitively tells them they're done. And you can't tell me if you put two glasses of

of maybe Jägermeister infused almond milk or whatever the fuck he'd be able to drink. You can't tell me. Like, hey, Tom, do you think you could be one of the seven best QBs right now without a training camp? I guarantee he thinks he could. Here's my counter and tell me if I'm too much of a TV Fox guy, whatever I'm employed by them.

Super Bowl year, he's calling the Super Bowl. Does he bail on that? Oh, I thought you were going to say, can he call the Super Bowl but play for one of the two teams? I'm trying to figure out. I guess he would have to have the headphones on the sidelines. I'm saying like,

I guess even if, I don't know, if he's eliminated, he could probably go back up. The odds of a QB on a top five team getting hurt in like November, December are pretty low, but it does happen. It happens. I'm just never, I'm just saying for the rest of the 2020s until he hits 50, I'm not counting on him coming back.

It's not a take. I genuinely believe this. It's not crazy. I don't think these guys can shut it off. I think Jordan would have kept playing if his knees died on him. He just couldn't play at the same level. He had all last year to come back and he had all this offseason to come back and he didn't come back. Why would he do it?

He's watching football. He's in the flow. It's Sunday's routine. My thought was, and this was last year, but now I'm convinced that he's all in and everything. But my thought was- I'm not saying he's not all in. No, no, no. I was saying my thought last year was- My point is a team is nine and one and their QB got hurt and he's staring at it and they call him. I know that he was ready to come back for that Niners last year. That was a true story. I'm not denying that. I am 100% positive that that happened.

And that was less than a year ago that he was like, hey, Shanann, if anything happens to Brock Purdy, I'm right here. That was nine months ago.

He would come back if it was the right team. Yeah. I'm not counting him out. By the way, Peyton Manning would play again if his fucking network networked. I also think these guys only retire when something's wrong. I think Peyton actually plays a role in this. I think Brady's the most competitive motherfucker there is. And the fact that Peyton for the last three years is winning Emmys and his heralded is the greatest thing to happen to sports media. I think Brady wants to be the best of that too. I think there's still a fire there also. Like, all right, I got the number one job at Fox. I'm calling the Superbowl. Let me show you what I can do now.

I kind of like that storyline of like, all right, here's a 10 minute clip of the Omaha musical. Okay. That's Peyton. I'm calling the Superbowl dude. And I wonder if there's a competitive fire between the two of them there. Look, he has it. He had it really good. He could just chill in Baker's Bay, Bahamas and play on the beach. And he doesn't need to be in Cleveland week one. He certainly doesn't need to be doing Green Bay, Chicago week 11. If it was a seven game run. You'd say, get out of the booth and get suited. I mean, can you imagine?

Could you imagine? Pick a team. I don't know. It's fun. It's a great. I'll say this. Out of all the great players that have retired, and this happened, I guess there was like, they always talked about John Havlicek in the Celtics. He retired after his 16th year in 1978. How old was he? And he was, I think like 36, 37. Okay. But everyone was like, he was in amazing shape. And he would play with the team every while for the next couple of years. And there was, when the team got really good again,

They were kind of like, yo, Hondo. Could you? At 41, could you? And he easily just could have come back and kept playing, but he was like, nah, I already retired. It was a different era. There was way less money at stake. Well, dude, I look at T.O. T.O. is 50-something right now, but we have him on the show. He's incredible, and he's like, I want to still play. Tyson. Tyson, same thing. He's got to fight. He's fighting. Has that happened yet? When is that?

The pole brother, right? I think that got pushed back again. But like T.O. comes on Good Morning Football. He's 50-something years old and he's in the most amazing shape. And he's like, I still want to play. And everyone makes a headline every time. He's like, I can still run a 4.5. I think when you hit a certain point of greatness... You never think you're done. You never think you're done unless your body... It's like I was one of the great blue guy pickup basketball players in the LA area. And it's just my body wouldn't cooperate anymore. And I knew it. And you just...

When your body gives out, I don't think Brady's body has given out. No. He was to the bitter end really good. So anyway, I don't know. It's a good topic. I think if we're going for what would make this like the greatest season ever, and it's like somehow Brady ends up on an NFC team with seven weeks to go playing Mahomes going for a three-peat.

That'd be insane. And then the world, I feel like an asteroid would just hit the earth. That's it. The world ends after that. Well, the world might end in November. And I don't know either way, but like, that's how that's going to go. So are you like, so, cause this, this happens like with the chiefs. Yeah.

You're like kind of an honorary chiefs. Like you're just kind of, you're kind of in, you're like adopting the crew. You went to Casey for comedy stuff. Yes. And they, I do this big slick event with them and I, you know, we auctioned off an incredible chief experience, which you're not from Kansas city. I'm not going to do with it. I have nothing to do. I was early on my homes. Yeah.

Casey fans love that I picked them early to win their first Super Bowl when they did it after the Mahomes second season, whatever it was. And then Paul Rudd's a Brooklyn guy. We became friendly and then he's like, why don't you come to this event? So now I'm at this Kansas City Royalty because I pick them to win and they win and I'm so bullish about it. So last year, they were the five seed and I'm like,

with a ton of arrogance and i was on your podcast doing the same thing and i'm like they're not losing to the bills i don't care if they're on the road like they're going to beat the bills and they did and i'm like they're not losing to the ravens and they barely beat the bills kansas city like of course they win kansas city fans and i we've we've hit it off but it's interesting the chiefs as an organization like i did this whole thing today predicting them to win i called it a chief's pete not a three pete it was great blah blah everyone's tweeting it chief's organization like

they're not that way. They wouldn't repost that. They wouldn't celebrate. They wouldn't be like a thumbs up Shrakes. That's not their thing. That goes to Clark Hunt. That goes to his father, Lamar. It's like their social media presence, as creative as their content people are, it's like they're not boastful. They are not that way. And it's almost like we're just going to take care of our stuff. And the win that

I talked to Andy and Spags about this the year afterwards, the win that they were so proud of their team. And Ted Cruz was the old PR guy, not the Texas Senator is PR guys. Now with the bears stories coming somewhere. I promise they, they had the Cincinnati Bengals game the year after they lost to the Bengals and it was burrow head. And then the mayor of Cincinnati came out and it was like talking and no one said anything from Casey. And then Casey wins and the locker room afterwards, uh,

They were so fired up because they wanted to talk so bad and they just didn't. And like the team was so proud. The organization was probably like not a single thing publicly. Mahomes, they were, they hated that Bengals team and they hated the fact that the Bengals were puffing their chest and thought they were going to go in. And that's very Patriots-esque. It was Mike Hilton, who's not Joe Burrow or Jamar Chase, but it was Mike Hilton running his mouth and like not a single Chiefs player.

The Pats, as it went on with the Pats, they started getting a little more feisty about that. Because I remember, who was the Steelers? Was it Ryan Clark? Who was the Steelers D-back? No, it wasn't Ryan Clark. It was somebody. Let's think. I'll get it. It was the Steelers D-back who talked shit about Brady. Really? And then Brady just targeted him and torched him. Was it in the dynasty? And talked all kinds of shit. One of the playoff games. Shit. 20 years of Pats history is playing together at this point. It was somebody, but they just.

They were like, and then Brady would like ran up to him after the touchdowns. Yeah. Brady really like when we got to 2010s, he loved that shit. Brady loved that. And that was his motivation. It's like, oh, someone else is picking against us. And you know, one thing with Mahomes, he sees and reads it all. I know that. He sees and reads it all. And the NFL Network does this top 100 list that is like. Oh, Tyreek being one?

Tyreek won. Lamar being rated ahead of him. He was number four on the list. Was that, the players did that though, right? the players vote on it. But that's the thing, players shouldn't vote on anything. You can't be mad. It was voted in November or December of last year and Tyreek was voted number one and Mahomes number four. Remember, they were the five seed in the AFC. But,

Trust me, when Mahomes was ranked third and Lamar was ranked one, that fired him up. And I know for a fact that Mahomes sees that he's number four on the NFL 100. Player voting is... They did this in the NBA. That's how the MVP used to be decided. Really? When? How does that change? Like in the 50s and 60s. Jordan's a disaster. That's it. And they finally were like, we got to fix this. It's like you just got agendas...

You got people voting against somebody who's a rival against their teammate. Having enough ex-players who've done it. They're like, you know, the people come in with the list. It's after practice. It's November. It's like, I just did the, and like, we hold it up. I guess if it's like, or they might not even know what the list is. They might think it's for like MVP for that year. That list though, head. If you have a list with Lamar over Mahomes, you almost have to set the list on fire. Yeah. And Lamar is really good. But come on, but come on.

I know. And that's what I say. And like, Mahomes is up here and we go here and then we got the rest of the quarterbacks. You want to put Tyreek on because defensive coordinators can't sleep at night and he's this unbelievable, fine. We put another quarterback over Mahomes, he sees that. Tyreek can't be one when his team traded him and then immediately won the next two Super Bowls. Yeah.

And I'm a Tyreek fan as well. I love Tyreek. This was fun. We'll have to keep doing this during the season. So in summary, Seattle, we both like. Denver, you kind of like. I'm sort of in just because of... Jets and Seattle seem to be... And Jacksonville. And Jacksonville. And then we're a little worried about San Francisco. I'm more worried about Cincy than most. Oh, Cincy. I didn't have them in the playoffs either. I just... What about Dallas? Where'd you come out on Dallas? Oh, I'm out. Thumbs down. What about South? South.

Well, Sal, he's not a reliable narrator. But is he high? Is he excited about it? He's high every year. You can't take his Dallas. And then Belichick and Brady as media mavens. We'll see. We'll know with Belichick after week one. After week one. You want Kirk Cousins to throw a pick and Belichick to come on inside the NFL and be like, he totally missed the coverage. I want him to be like, here's how the Steelers defense destroyed Kirk Cousins in week one. Here are the three things they did.

And now here's what Atlanta has to do because the Steelers did this, this, and this, all the work. So Atlanta now has to do this, this, and this. If he does that, he'll be great. Am I making a crazy stretch? I just, I mean, I pulled it out of my ass earlier. This, I really thought of it here and I think it's good now. Brady might be inspired to be just be better than Peyton Manning at broadcasting. Is that a crazy take? That's me. That's trying, man. You know, I think 10 years ago, I would have been more into it. I just feel like Brady won.

Yeah. It's like, he just, Manning's really good though. Manning's, Manning's been awesome with the media side. I'm just saying like the Brady versus Manning thing kind of is done now. Yeah. You don't think he's watching the Manning cast every Monday night and like, uh, Peyton's, he's really fucking good at this. I could be good too. I don't, I think Fox offered him a lot of money and really went after him and wanted him to do it. And that's fair. You know, he'll do it for a couple of years and then he'll own the Raiders or be part owner. Right.

Yeah. Whatever that is. I don't know how that's going to figure itself out, but the NFL obviously wouldn't love him to own a team and also be in production meetings. Good Morning Football is the show. You're still doing it? Still doing it. Doing it on some Zoom, flying LA every once in a while. Yeah, not Zoom. We're in a studio, Kyle and I, which is kind of tricky. We're in a studio in New York City together. Still Kyle and I in the flesh, but certain weeks I'll be out here. Well, not Zoom, but you're like on satellite. Satellite's the right word. Yeah, and now it's actually interesting and it's like a different...

to sports media. So from 8 to 10 Eastern, we're on NFL Network, then it re-airs three times. So we're on NFL Network like we always were, just all day, whatever, but it's only a two-hour show. Then we do a totally separate show for two hours afterwards for syndicated markets, 119 syndicated markets. We're on after Richard Bay and Judge Judy and Jenny Jones, whatever else is on, the Sherry Shepard show, and then it's Good Morning Football, and then on Roku. But I'm curious to see how it all plays out. But the thought is,

That this is a way that in the cable world, like the show can generate money as opposed to just with sinking subscribers on cable, like that these networks are just. You should turn that syndicated show into like what.

Kathy Lee and Hoda did where you're just drinking. Yeah. Just drink like wine and Bloody Marys. I'm down. Increasingly get crazy. Kyle and I are in the studio together in New York. And like, let's get crazy. Let's do it. And like, we feel like it's a really loose and like it's actually airing all over. So I don't know. And you texted me a picture of the Roku home screen. You're like, I like the Roku app. I'm like, I'm pro Roku. I like Roku. Yeah. I think Roku is a great app.

Roku, I'm in. I resisted for a while as always Apple TV, but I'm a Roku person now. I'm still a pay-for-cable guy. I do that too. You do? Yeah, we're about to watch Chiefs Ravens and we'll be watching it on Spectrum. Yeah, let's do it. Let's go. All right, I want to play for you real quick and then we're done.

Can you just give a little bit of a taste on the Netflix Vince McMahon thing? Because I saw the promo today and I know your listeners are freaking out. Oh, the trailer. Yeah. Yeah. It's September 25th. It's six episodes. And it's all at once. And you had access to him.

Yeah, we worked on it for four years. I don't want to give away too much, but it was... It's the first day of the NFL season and I got more texts about this series on Netflix. Bill Simmons doing a Vince McMahon piece on Netflix than I did anything about NFL today. We started working on it in 2021 and there were a lot of twists and turns. I don't want to hype it. I just...

It's gonna be hard to not watch the next one when you're watching the first one. It's one of those. - Alright, and they drop all at once. It's not the HBO one. - Drop all at once. You binge it out. - Let's go. - Yeah, let's go. Carve out the six hours. - I'm in. - I had somebody watch some screeners and they were like, "I'm just gonna watch one or two." - They did the whole thing. - So I texted him. I was like, "You're gonna watch at least four." So then he watched the first one and he's like, "Oh my God."

And he watched all six and seven hours, like didn't go out. So hopefully it'll be that for a lot of people. But we spent a lot of time working on it. So I love doing this in person, dude. Yeah. Good to see you. Thanks, Riggs. Thanks. Appreciate it. House, it's time for a special part of today's episode sponsored by NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV. A very good friend of ours. I love him. A friend that has made our lives really special in the 2020s.

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We just had the two channels and sometimes games would be blacked out and there would just be one game on and we would be like, what the hell? Why aren't there more games? Like think how far we've come since we were in college. It's just incredible. We've led a charmed life. We had Michael Jordan in our lives. We really have. We had LeBron James in our lives. Yeah, we've had great basketball players. We've had a Team USA resurgence. We've had...

Just incredible. I've won six Super Bowls. Tom Brady's in our lives. I won four World Series and two NBA titles just in the 2020s. And a Stanley Cup. You won a Stanley Cup. Like we've had a lot of good stuff. I've been to Washington and won a Stanley Cup. And a World Series. But one of the best rituals is NFL Sunday ticket. The ability on a Sunday to watch as many games as I want. To choose those games. Including some of the games that we might have a little extra interest in. If you get my drift.

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Million dollar picks, week one, as always, presented by FanDuel. Brought in my buddy Joe House as the conciliary this year. I like having people to bounce my bets off. The funny thing about this job, House,

I'll send you packing after three weeks if it's not working out. I don't care if we've been friends for 36 years. If it's not working, it's not working. I go where the green is for million dollar picks. Are you psyched? Are you ready to roll? How are you feeling? Well, you've sent me packing before, so it's not like anything that I wouldn't be used to. I'm pumped. I'm ready. I mean, we're coming off of a banner season last year. You know,

you know, on our weekly picks pool, what we do on ESPN. I did kind of dominate. I did finish, you know, like 40 games above 500 against the spread last year. So I'm ready to do my part here. And I had a big, big hot stretch on Million Dollar Picks last year after really hitting rock bottom.

And I looked in the mayor house and I said, you know, instead of blaming other people, blaming quarterbacks, coaches, bad lines, stupid, I got to look in the mirror. Maybe it's me. What can I do more? What's wrong with my process? And I had a really strong last 10 weeks in the playoffs. And one thing that we've noticed over the last few years is you and I tend to gravitate toward the same types of teams and bets that we like. So we're going to run through a whole of these. We're going to, a whole bunch of these. We're going to try to do

groups. And the first group is stay away. So these bets are not going to come up and feel free to stop me at any point of these, but these are just ones that I looked at. I didn't like it's too early. I want to see the team for a week. The line's fishy. Dallas, Cleveland,

I just want to watch both teams. I want to see what's up with Deshaun. Don't you feel the same? I know you like Cleveland a little bit, but I just don't want to bet on Deshaun in week one. So I did bet on Cleveland and Deshaun for week one, but it was early in the summer when Cleveland was getting points at home

Dallas was the favorite. That line has flipped and Cleveland is now favored by, I think, a full two points. So I like being on the right side of that. Well, you can hedge it the other way. I'm sure I'm sure we'll screw up the hedge. We always screw up the hedges. So I'm staying away from that. The pass rush against that that Dallas offensive line, which is the worst offensive line, I think, since Dak has been there. That's what I like. I like that Cleveland pass rush at home.

Colts-Texans. I love the Texans this year. This line is a suspicious two and a half, and I'm staying away. I feel like I have too much invested in the Texans. It's a revenge game for the Colts. Richardson's all over the map. I don't know what to make him. Stay away. Bears-Titans.

I want to watch both teams for a week. Do you have a sway on this one either way or no? I think the line is too high. I don't know why the Titans are getting four and a half. I would be fine if it was Chicago by three or two and a half. Yeah, it feels like it should be three and a half. Yeah, it feels stay-a-wish.

Bucks-Washington is a game you like. Washington's getting three and a half in Tampa, and you don't understand why the line is that high. I have some answers. Everything is new on the Washington side. I don't know what you're getting with the... We should mention Washington's your favorite team. The Washington defense, I want to see how bad it is for a week. Tampa's got a little nobody believes in us, where it's just they made the playoffs last year and everybody's kicked them in the curb.

It's a stay away from me. You like, you like DC just a little bit here, right? Tiny bit. I'm not gambling on that game. I too, I just want to watch it and enjoy it. I want to watch Jaden Daniels do his thing. I want to see, you know, some semblance of organization, some semblance of discipline, getting rid of all the dumb penalties and the dumb mistakes that I had to live with the last 20 years. Come on, Dan Quinn, let's go, baby. Well, you've done, and I've known you a long fucking time.

You've done something very interesting with this Washington team. Like we, we've been in fantasy drafts. You didn't want to go near Jaden Daniels. Um, you have a lot of eggs in the basket and you're shockingly optimistic for somebody who's, you, you've been very honest about Alex Saar, you know, like when the, when the wizards will take weird draft picks, you, you're just like immediately like, I don't trust this. But with Daniels, you've been very coy. I feel like you're way, way in on this and you just don't want to admit it.

Well, it's not the admit part. It's the superstition aspect of it. Like the last time that we had a quarterback with these credentials, a lot of similarities to a very exciting electric player who could do things with his legs. And honestly, Jaden Daniels throws the ball as a rookie better than RG3 could throw the ball.

as a rookie. So I'm, I'm very over the top for Jaden Daniels, but I want my optimism to be guarded because I, I, I need my guard up as a Washington fan. You know, it's, you've been hurt. That's what I've been hurt. True story. You've had some bad sports relationships. Oh, Vetchkin worked out. That was a win. He did. Congratulations. And he's got one thing. Yeah.

Uh, saints Panthers, that line's moving toward the Panthers. It's now three and a half. I think we all like the Panthers. I don't think anyone likes the saints, but that's now I'm staying the fuck away from that. Fine. Um, Seattle, Denver, we all love Seattle. I'm a tiny bit scared of Denver with this Bo Nix and Peyton and they feel like a live dog to me. A lot of people are in on Seattle, including me. I have them in multiple bets. That line's five and a half. It's in the Vegas zone.

Half of me wants to parlay Seattle and put them with another team, but I think I just want to watch that one. Do you have a feel either way?

For sure, I'll be looking for ways to play Seattle on the money line. Now you even give me more conviction. It's just Denver goes up 7-0 and Geno, I'm staying awake. The problem with Seattle is the offensive line. I'm all the way in on every other aspect of Seattle. That offensive line is a TBD to be determined. So let's see it. Let's see it first. And you talked on East Coast Bias about the Bo Nix rookie of the year odds and

Who knows? You know, everybody's just, Caleb is basically even odds for rookie of the year. Your guy's six to one. Harrison is getting drafted the highest I've ever seen a rookie get drafted in fantasy drafts. I was in three in the last three days. Bo Nix, who's like 25, who was in college for a hundred years, he's got Sean Payton. I want to watch that for a week. Now, this last one was the final cut for us for a million dollar picks. And it's a bet you like a lot. It's the Vikings and the Giants. It's,

it's a home game for the Giants. They are somehow underdogs. And I heard you say this on East Coast Bias, you like the Giants. I'm just telling you on Million Dollar Picks, we don't bet two terrible teams against each other. You can do that on your own time. You can do that on an East Coast Bias. But you were pretty compelled by the Giants. So what was it? Well, the case is basically Sam Darnold on the road. And, you know, there is this undercurrent of thought that Sam Darnold

with Shanahan was able to, you know, cause he was the backup in San Francisco was able to address some of the things that was holding him back. But he is a dreadful it under every kind of situation and scenario. So really it was just the idea of the, the best aspect of the giants is their ability to put pressure up front and Sam Darnold under duress. Um, even with all the weapons that he has, I,

I just like the idea that when it's basically a coin flip game and Giants at home, that was the reason for it. Giants feel like a halftime bet to me against bad teams where if they have a lead, then I kind of trust their defense and their pass rush maybe to bring the lead home. But I can't bet on Danny Dimes. And to me, it's a stay away. I don't blame you. It's a stay away. Okay.

Let's go to the bets we actually do like. So, million dollar picks. The format is this. We put a signed number. It's fake money. We use the FanDuel line. It is?

Well, as far as the people know, it's fake money. And when I've gotten into trouble, and I went back and I looked at some of the years, and especially in September, I get in trouble and I'm doing parlays, and just one team will screw up like two, three bets for me. So we're going to try to keep them more straight up this year. There is a really fun FanDuel wrinkle that we're going to get to for week one, where you can double your winnings on any Moneyline bet. Let's go. So

Any Moneyline bet, and it could be, that could be favored, that could be underdogs. You just get to double whatever you want on it. We're going to be exercising that one. Use their 100% Moneyline profit boost token. The games that we like.

So we'll start with a tease. This is the only tease we have. I thought we'd only do one tease or parlay. You just got through saying that the exotics are the reason that you got yourself in trouble. We're only one exotic. The reason I'm kicking it off is it's the Friday night game. It's this weird Brazil game. Great. But the Packers line, which is two and a half against the Eagles neutral field, which is weird because I think

Just about everybody likes the Packers more than the Eagles, including me, including you. So they're getting two and a half. You can tease that up to eight and a half on a six pointer. And that allows us to then take the Bengals.

who are minus eight, minus eight and a half. It's somewhere in between those. It's been bouncing around. Take the Bengals under three against the Patriots, a team that for some reason, people just won't accept that this Patriots team is going to be terrible, that they can't block, that they have the worst quarterback in the league. I have no idea if their coach can even be a mediocre coach, much less a not great one. Wait, wait, wait. Did you just say they have the worst quarterback in the league? You think Jacoby Brissett's the worst quarterback in the NFL? Who's worse than him?

I mean, did you watch Bryce Young last year? Would you rather have Bryce Young or Jacoby Brissett? Well, you're doing franchise building. Just for right now, this year. This year. You'd rather have Jacoby Brissett? I don't. What's the case for Bryce Young? What's the case for Jacoby Brissett? Do you know in the 2020s?

His career record is six and 10. This is for the decade. He's 18 and 30 for his career. And I, I think he's, you want to know Bryce Young's career record. Well, he's fine. He's in the conversation for worst quarterback. And then, and then their front four, which I think actually would have been good with Barmer and Judah. Both of those guys are gone and the Bengals chase is coming back. But that, have you noticed there's been some buzz on the Bengal side?

That line was down to seven and a half at one point. Now it's back at eight and a half. Right. So Packers plus eight and a half. Bengals minus two and a half is the first one I have circled. Talk me out of it.

I'm not going to. I think the Packers leg is especially compelling. I hate this game. I hate this game being in Brazil. The Eagles are losing a home game against somebody that they're going to be competing with for one of the top seeds in the NFC. I think it's bogus. And I don't know why the NFL chose Brazil. Like,

Not great stuff happening there really since the Olympics, but set aside the socio-political aspect of it. I didn't realize we were on cable news. Ten hours away. No, it's ridiculous. What are we doing? Come on. Don't take a check from anybody. That's what I said in last week's pod. I just feel like Saudi Arabia is in play or Abu Dhabi. No doubt. Goodell will take a check from literally anyone. I think you're right, but...

handicap wise, you and I are, are in agreement. I think the Eagles and the Packers are close. Um, and so getting, uh, any kind of points on the Packer side is positive to be the big unknowns for both teams are their defenses, both teams with new defensive coordinators and especially the secondaries because the, the,

Well, the Eagles, I would say is, yeah, the Eagles, I'm a little more worried about from a past secondary standpoint. It's weird. I could see a bunch of snares in this game and none of them are the Packers losing by double digits.

I can see them blowing out the Eagles and us being like, holy shit, the Eagles. Whoa, where's this going? And I can see a really close game. It feels like a one score game to me. Well, I do like I do like on the Eagle side, all of that offensive weapon read that they bring to the table. I love Saquon, you know, Saquon.

That's what you're calling them now? Saquon D's nuts. Yeah, that's right. Here we go, baby. Jesus. We graduated from college in 1992. What are you doing? All right. So T's Packers plus eight and a half Bengals minus two and a half. We are going to bold that one. Next one. Well, we're cheating because I know you love this as do I, but the Jaguars are Miami.

I've already violated one rule is that I didn't want to go overseas with any bets. And if we lose that Packers, if the Packers lose by like 20, I am done with overseas betting on million dollars picks. This is my little tester. Another one I don't love is betting on these games when it's potentially going to be super hot or humid in Florida or Carolina. I just, we've seen those games go sideways over and over again with that said.

A Jaguars team that I really like that I think is going to make the playoffs. A Miami team that I don't really like that I don't think is going to make the playoffs. And then you look at Miami, no Chubb, no Adel Beckham, left guards out, D-backs are banged up. Waddle and Tyreek have had the flag next to them all week, but they're playing.

And then there's this Jaguars redemption season, eight and three last year. And then just all shit broke loose. Amorens had all these injuries. And this just feels to me like a Jaguar. I like the money line too, but the plus three and a half is a gift. I want to grab the points. It's a full point inflated. And I think that's a function of how the Jaguars ended their season on that one and five point.

And, you know, just the speaking of weaponry, what what the Dolphins bring to the table. Here's the important thing on the observation you made about these early season Dolphins games and the advantage they have. They're playing another Florida team. Jacksonville's been practicing in it.

They're ready for it. You know, that, that, that corollary applies to just about every other team in the country, but not Jacksonville. So yeah, it's like Jacksonville and Carolina, maybe Miami would be the only teams that are like, Oh, I'm used to this weather. Yeah. What about, does your team count? Tampa, Tampa would be in there. My team is close. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but we're, we're even right now about eight or nine degrees behind Miami, um, at the moment. So,

It's gonna be hot and humid down there. - We've come to visit you many times in DC. There was one time Jacko and I came and it was still the hottest I've ever been. And I've been in Vegas and Arizona and all these different places. We tried to walk around and go see the Capitol. And we were like, honestly, I thought Jacko was gonna die. In fact, I think he might have. I think he died and was reincarnated. - 90% humidity.

But Jags, I just like the Jags more than Miami. And if you're backing them for the season as a possible 10-win team, this again, they have to win. In Miami, they lose this one. It was like, ah, we had some injuries. It's all right, wake up call, here we go. All right, so we're marking that one down. Next one, the Cardinals are in Buffalo. This line also seems a little too high. It bounced around. It got down to five and a half. Now it's back up to six and a half. There's cheap touchdown potential, which I love.

where they could be down 10, 11, 12. They get the last three minutes of the game touchdown. I think their offense is gonna be moving the ball the whole game. I like getting points, getting more than four points with a team that has a good offense. And I'm not sure what to make of this Bills team yet. This is probably my biggest regret of the over-under pod, taking Pittsburgh over Buffalo as my last playoff team. But I was so scared off by the Bills defense

And some of the uncertainty they have 60 million and dead cap space and, you know, them relying on rookie receivers and guys who were third receivers last year is like major third down weapons. Um,

I like the cards to hang around in this game. Where do you stand? Yeah, I'm in the same boat as you. And, you know, here we are starting off another season with this Buffalo defense with Matt Milano on the shelf. And you sit down just in if you want to put on some blinders and think about the impact of Milano on that defense, the splits between when he's on the field and off the field. You can get a very good perspective on it.

And so there's just a lot of question marks on the Buffalo defensive side. Well, their whole secondary is different. Right. Brand new secondary. Maybe it won't be that much worse, but it's a complete reboot. And from a pass rush standpoint, they're probably in the middle of the pack. You did it. Pass rush. You just did it. Pass rush. You did it.

Well, there's some good trend stuff out there to Kyler Murray getting six points or more. Eleven and five against the spread. Josh Allen, not great as a favorite. Josh Allen, when when favored by four points or more, eight, 16 and one, 25 times, 18 and one. So we just love the backdoor cover action for this. I mean, a nice backdoor week one. That's a great way to start it.

I like the cards weapons. They were popping up in all the fantasy drafts I did. Yeah. They must have had five guys had actual money spent on them. Trey McBride was probably the number three tight end in any draft I was in. So there's some good Arizona bets here, and I want to talk this out with you. We could just take the six and a half. We could also get super ambitious, take the money line plus 215,000.

and then add that FanDuel thing to it so it would actually be plus 430. That's on the table. There's a couple alt bets we could do. We could pull Arizona up to 11.5 on FanDuel, go with the over, bring that down to 42.5, and that's basically even money minus 103. We could take Arizona to plus 8.5, so it would basically have to be a two-score win for Buffalo, bring the over to 39.5, and that's even money.

So you could say, Arizona plus eight and a half, 40 points and up, we win. Or just take the six and a half.

Call it a day. My preference at this stage of the season. I mean, there will be and this is kind of a recent development. A bunch of unders. Unders will be the prevailing story here. You know, we are now in this era of quarterbacks sitting out the entire preseason. A whole bunch of teams have their quarter. So you'll see across the board. Now, the the counter to that.

is the new kickoff rule. And what impact will that have? You know, will it make scoring easier? See, I think it's going to make the scoring go up, don't you? It feels like the field position is going to shift up. That's why I like the over-shoot. How do you do that, measure that against kind of some of the other factors about early in the season? I think...

Arizona is going to try and run the ball. I think that's part of their strategy here. So I'm inclined to stay away from the total and just grab the points because they know they can't defend. They have the worst defense in the league personnel-wise. Gannon is not a big dummy. I actually was so impressed with Gannon last year. Me too. The Eagles fans badmouthed him forever and ever, and then he turned out to be a good coach. All right, so we'll stay on the plus six and a half. Okay. Yeah.

There's one more bet that I thought was fun. Arizona wins with the over of 49 and a half. So it's basically Arizona wins 27, 24, and that's almost five to one on Fando plus 474. So I like that one. Had that one marked down. Okay. Two more. Pittsburgh in Atlanta. Pittsburgh, this has been two and a half. Then it got to three. It was stated three for a while. And now Pittsburgh is plus three and a half.

in Atlanta. And I think there are five people that like Pittsburgh had to get into week one, just in general. And I'm definitely one of them. Craig Horlbeck, uh, my rewatchables producer hosted the fantasy football show. Even he's out. He's like our offensive lines and shambles. Uh, anyway, make the case for Pittsburgh and we'll see if we agree on this.

Well, it's very simple. The best head coach in the NFL over the last 20 years as an underdog is Mike Tomlin. And we're going into a situation where there are question marks, yes, on the Pittsburgh offensive side of the ball.

but there are question marks galore on both sides of Atlanta. Under what scenario is the Atlanta offense with the weapons that you see on paper ready for primetime? How will we know that Kirk Cousins is going to be able to come out and be effective in any way, shape or form? They're going up against a top five defense. Here's the thing about this game that to me just sets it up perfectly. The,

When I sit down and put side by side the units and compare the units, we're comparing units here, BS. The Pittsburgh defense is absolutely positively unequivocally so much superior to anything on the Atlanta side of the ball. So you're giving me Tomlin as a dog. You're giving me this Pittsburgh defense that is ready for battle.

And we're going up against a whole bunch of unknown. I mean, Atlanta has gotten the benefit of a lot of popsicle sucking this offseason. The prohibitive favorite to win the NFC South. Well, congratulations. It's time to play football. The Pittsburgh Steelers are coming to town. And Mike Tomlin has heard people bad mouth in the Steelers all summer long. Let's play the football.

The funny thing is I told House before, like, hey, we're going to do Guess the Lines. Let's make it seem like it's one of our phone calls. Don't get too excited. Pittsburgh's the nobody believes in us team. That's clear. Nobody believes in Pittsburgh. People have shit on them for the last three weeks to the point that they were one of my favorite picks for them to make the playoffs. One of my favorite zags. And even I had real doubt. I was like, oh, maybe I should take a Buffalo.

Um, there's an Arthur Smith revenge factor. Amazing. Pittsburgh offensive coordinator. I'm guessing he knows Atlanta really well. Couple of them. We should mention Jalen Warren's hurt. I think we'll be okay. We have Najee Harris. Um, you made the key point about Atlanta. So Cousins hasn't played in a year, right? Now you can say the same thing about Rogers, a guy that I really like, but Cousins actually got hurt. What? Five, six, seven weeks later in this season than, uh, yes. Then Rogers later.

Pitts is hurt, but supposedly playing. Congrats. I looked up the Atlanta, who are your receivers, not named Drake London. It's pretty rough. Like they kind of need a giant Darnell Mooney here. I've watched Darnell Mooney. I'm not sure that's happening. But you made the key point earlier. I think Pittsburgh's defense is the best in either conference. I think they have the number one defense. And I think this is a really tough spot for Atlanta. I think there's going to be Pittsburgh fans there.

I think that Pittsburgh defense, which has no injuries that I could find, is going to be fucking fired up. And Cousins is a 500 quarterback. That's who he's been his entire career, is a 500 quarterback. So I like this spot for the Steelers, D. Get a lead. Russ, no turnovers.

Maybe two deep shots to Pickens downfield. But other than that, just steer the car. That's all. That's all we're asking for. It's like Kamala right now. Just steer the car, Kamala. You don't have to give a five-hour podcast interview. Just steer the car. Steelers plus three and a half. I love it. There's some alt stuff.

You know, you could do Pitt Moneyline with the under 47.5, get over 2-1. You could do Pitt up to 4.5, under 51.5 even odds. But I just like the plus 3.5. I like that Moneyline and under combo. I think that's a pretty good one. Moneyline and under 47. I think that's pretty enticing. Well, speaking of quarterbacks coming back from McKillie's injuries, the Jets...

In San Francisco Monday night, that line has moved all over the place. I think it was at six at one point. It went down to four and a half. It went down to four. It went down to three and a half. Three and a half, yeah. Now it's bumped back up to four and a half because Ayuk's back, Trent Williams playing all of a sudden. I'm just in on the Jets. Especially like it's a healthy Jets team. And I think they can win the game outright. I think it's going to be a bloodbath. And there's so many stats that...

against the Niners this season, the Super Bowl hangover. The fact that they've had this window now that's now been a few years, right? They had unbelievable health luck last year with their best offensive players. McCaffrey's already limping around. We don't know where we're getting from him yet. Their rest schedule stuff is really bad. Their division's gonna be better.

And it's one team that I think is like kind of a dark horse, maybe even a miss the playoffs, but definitely in a, maybe not win the division. Everyone has in Pennsylvania versus a team that I think is going to win their division. And I like the jets and I wish I didn't because it feels like a sucker bet jets plus four and a half. What do you think?

So I'm scared of this game now. I had a lot stronger feeling about it when it seemed like Trent Williams wasn't going to play. But now, you know,

I like the Jets very much. I, on East Coast bias in our AFC East preview, couldn't believe that I was advocating for them to win the AFC East, but I believe that to be the right position. I just, against this San Francisco team that now feels like it might have a little bit of nobody believes in us. No, everyone's picking them to win the division. Well, the third best odds in the NFL. I don't think they qualify.

Okay. All right. I think it was more of a, we don't have IU, we don't have Trent Williams, but now it's like we have everybody. We're fine. Here we go. I just don't like that. That's what makes me nervous. Like we kind of know who they are. They're very good. First round pick got shot right before the season started. It's just like the stuff adds up where it's like, I don't like the

I know, but that's just Mojo stuff. I want to see the Jets. I want to see that Jets offense. When's the last time we saw like three great Jets drives? Let me see. So I'm in a stay-away mode now, like that number on four and a half, like prime Vegas zone. I just don't want to get involved. I like the case for the Jets. I like the Jets defense a ton. And I do think, I mean, we look like Purdy,

I don't know. We're not going to overdo what we saw in the preseason. I didn't love it, but it's the preseason. So I do think Shanahan's going to have some great scheming for that Jets defense. I do trust Shanahan much more than I trust Bobby Sala. Big shot, Bob.

Big shot, Bob. But I just wanted, I'm going to stay away from this one. Okay. Well, unfortunately you're on million dollar picks and we're not staying away. I feel like that line should be three. I feel like that line should be three and it's an extra point and a half and I'm taking it. Okay. That's where I bet mentally when I do better versus where I don't do as well.

If I'm just looking at the line and it just seems off like that, I really genuinely think it should be 49ers by three. I think they're even teams. No, I'm not going to argue with that. So we'll find out. Okay. Last one that we like. The Lions, three and a half over the Rams. And what's beautiful about this FanDuel double your winnings in any money line bet special is we can bet on this Lions minus 198 and double what we win. So the bet is...

The money line is minus 198. If you win, you win $100 back. We're doubling that. So now we're basically making this an even money bet on the Lions. And you know what? As the Colonel James once said, thank you, Eddie. Thank you, Eddie. Thank you, Eddie. Colonel James lock of the week. Thank you, FanDuel. We're doing the Colonel James lock of the week. All right. Thank you, Eddie. Thank you, Eddie, for helping us out.

Uh, we're going to take the lions minus one 98 that we don't have to deal with the hook. I do want to follow this year that cook though, that minus three and a half being afraid of that. All right, here's the pick where we argue about. Cause there was one more game I liked and you were violently against it and we'll probably not do it, but I love the chargers minus three over the Raiders and you love the Raiders over the chargers. So what's the Raiders case out of curiosity?

just their defensive line and the pressure that I expect them to be able to bring against a guy that hasn't played any preseason snaps because his foot was banged up and no, no, no, uh, noteworthy, uh,

weapons on offense, a bunch of no names. I don't like the idea of Herbert limited in any way, shape or form with Max Crosby running free. And he's going to be running free because they have Christian Wilkins now. And that to me is a scary proposition. If I thought the Chargers could try and establish the run, could run the ball, then I would say, okay, let's try and make the case here.

But these guys are going to pin their ears back and they're going to go after Justin Herbert and his beautiful flowing locks. And I'm worried. I'm worried for the Chargers. I'm worried for all the Jim Harbaugh enthusiasm. This week one might be a dose of cold water. I'm so excited that you called him Jim Harbaugh and not John. Yeah.

Because you've dropped about 10 Johns on East Coast. Like the Jim John Harbaugh thing, I think I'm bad with my pronunciations. You're way worse than I am. Well, I'm just going to call him Harbaugh and it doesn't matter. If we could say, it's Harbaugh will be right every time. Which one's older? Is Jim older? I feel like Jim's older. He looks older. So just call him old Jim and young John. Old Harbaugh and young Harbaugh. Old young, yeah. I completely disagree.

I think the fact that the Raiders beat them 63 to 21 in mid-December last year and got everybody's ass fired, and I just think, I think older Jim is walking around the locker room. He probably put the fucking box score up on the chalkboard and was like, hey, remember that? Remember that one? So here's what we're gonna do, because if we violently disagree,

That becomes a stay away. But we're going to call it the argue pick. We probably need a better name for the argue pick. We just can keep track of these. So our first one is Chargers minus three. This is going to be a separate bucket. There's no money. And we'll see how it goes when we violently disagree with each other. But here's what we do. Million dollar picks. Week one.

All lines from FanDuel Sportsbook. We're going to bet $200,000 on each. $200,000. That's the number. Let's go. Let's see how this goes. We're trying to keep it simple. For the most part, straight up bets, but we're going to allow ourselves one exotic. And then FanDuel is helping us out with the Thank You Eddie bet. First one, Jaguars plus three and a half in Miami. We're big in the Jaguars. We're not big on Miami. Trevor Lawrence, comeback season? Trevor Lawrence, comeback season. He's my only fantasy QB ever.

in the draft that I've had with my high school and college buddies since 1990, the Jim Grady, Rob Stone crew. Trevor Lawrence, that's it. That's how much I love Trevor Lawrence. Jaguars, plus three and a half, 200,000. Cards, plus six and a half against the Bills in Buffalo. We like the Cardinals offense to hang around. Some cheap touchdown, backdoor potential. The backdoor's always open, Joe House. Backdoor's always open. Cards, plus six and a half. We're gonna take Pittsburgh, the nobody believes in us,

Pittsburgh Steelers and the best unit, not only in this game, but maybe one of the best units in the league, Pittsburgh's defense, Mike Tom on King of the Underdogs, plus three and a half in Atlanta. We don't trust the Atlanta Falcons yet, plus 200,000 on that, the Jets.

The only one Joe House was a little, eh. But I think I'll talk you into this by Monday night. Jets plus four and a half against San Francisco. I just don't like San Francisco's offseason and all the drama. And I think the Jets are focused. This is to me, I like one team way more than the other team. Line should be three. It's four and a half. I'll take the points. Okay, two more. Fandel gave us the thank you Eddie special and said, any Moneyline bet, if you win, you double the win on the bet.

So we took the Lions minus 198 at home against the Rams. We don't have to worry about the points. Just go do your thing. You have all your games indoors this year. You should be the number one seed in the conference. This is a team that almost beat you in the playoffs. Do your thing, Detroit, right? This is it. Show us. What do you got?

What do you got? You know Trojan is a sponsor of East Coast Bias. Is that true? It's true, yes. I mean, I think it's very wise that you don't let me do the ad reads. Yeah. Or maybe not a sponsor, but they definitely do the ads on there. I might have had to send a couple emails about that. Don't let Joe Huston do the ad reads. But look, this is the way I feel about that Detroit pick. Yeah, we love the Lions. Lions minus 198, you double your win. So if you bet $200,000 on this, which we are, and we win...

Guess what? We're in the positive on the actual win. It works out to like 203,000. Last one. One exotic. A tease. Packers teased up to plus eight and a half in Brazil. We'll see how that goes. Team's not allowed to wear green. Team's not allowed to tweet. A lot of smog. Can't go out of hotel rooms all day. Yeah, it'll be fine. We think it's at least a close game. Packers plus eight and a half. And we're going to tease that with the Bengals.

minus, down to minus two and a half against my beloved New England Patriots. Am I too down on the Pats? I just want to say, for the record, it'll be the funniest thing of week one if the Patriots beat the Bengals. And I'm like back in. I just threw my classic 180. I'm like, I knew it. It'll ruin everybody's survivor pool. Yeah. I mean...

And look, that defense, I know they're down far more in Judon, but it was still, you know, you get Forbes back, right? Like, still pretty good defense.

It's going to be a disaster. Cincinnati likes to come out and play with their food. Week one, play with their food, Bengals. This year, Zach Taylor is like, maybe I should take the preseason a little more seriously. Had the people on pads, having people hit, played people in a preseason game. Packers plus 8.5, Bengals minus 2.5. Both have to cover putting $200,000 on that. And those are the Million Dollar Picks for week one.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Peter Schrager. Thanks to Joe House. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerruti, as always, for producing. Don't forget, you can watch all the clips from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. Don't forget, you can watch the trailer for Mr. McMahon, our Netflix documentary coming out September 25th. It is six parts, and you can watch that trailer on my Twitter feed, on my Instagram feed, on Netflix and stuff. So go check that out.

And don't forget about Ringer WNBA, which will be covered on the Ringer WNBA show, the Ringer WNBA show premiering on Friday. So check that one out as well. I will see you Sunday night with the Cuz reacting to the Sunday night schedule and guessing round two. I cannot wait. Have a great weekend. Football is back. I don't have a few years with you.

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