The NFC Mega-North, New York’s Big Month, Middle-Seat Doug, and Guess the Lines With Cousin Sal
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Coming up, week six NFL in the books, guess the line, parent corner, a whole lot more. All next. It's the Bill Simmons podcast presented by FanDuel. Football is in full action. FanDuel's highest rated sports book is the best place to bet it all. We've been doing pretty well on million dollar picks this year. I love the first month of the season because you have to go into the season thinking, I

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We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I have new rewatchables coming for you on Monday. It's the Silence of the Lambs podcast we did for our live show in New York City last Monday. We're at the Music Box.

It was awesome. It was a really, really, really fun show. And we have some good wrinkles and some good material on that one. It's a really good podcast. So that's going to be on Monday. You can also watch it on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. You can watch all the videos and clips from this podcast on the Bill Simmons channel. And coming up, Cousin Sal and I are going to talk about all the NFL stuff that happened today, the day that started at 5.

6.30 Pacific time and just kept going with football for 14 hours. Although that was less than last week, the longest day in NFL history. But we're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk a little baseball playoffs, New York's great sports week, a little WNBA. We got a really juicy parent corner for you. It's all next. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. ♪♪

We're live Sunday night with a very depressed cousin, Sal. We're taping this. It was 8-18. So much promise for today. Big Cowboys game against the Lions. First Mets game in the NLCS. And now as we head toward midnight on the East Coast. I've seen that look before, Sal. I've seen that look on your face. If

If a tear comes down, it's because the ring light is just blinding. I have it on a weird setting, but don't for a second think that I'm crying or bawling. Should we cue a Blood Diamond? Should I get the music? That'll do it. That'll put me over. You talk and I'll find Blood Diamond in the theme song. Go ahead. I'll be biting the sheets. 55 to 9. Is that a beat? Is that a bad enough beating? That was a combined score between the Cowboys and Mets games today. The Dodgers scored...

as many as the Cowboys. But I don't know, man. You know, I was thinking before I jumped on the Zoom, how many years are we going to do this? Like, are we going to be like 85 and 86 years old and just be like, ah, hi, your team sucked tonight. All of them. Pathetic. I'm playing the Blood Diamond theme song. I don't remember this as the theme song. It's very sad. It's all very sad. The tears are rolling down Sal's face. Jesus. So, all right.

This was a Hall of Fame New York sports stretch. We had the Mets and the Yankees are both in the championship series. Has that happened less than five times? Four times? 2000? Was there another time that happened? Second time? Whatever. Giants home game Sunday night. Jets home game Monday night. Including a hole. They fired their coach. I was in New York City last week. It was all anyone was talking about. We had the New York Liberty in the finals. They won today.

And then we had just randomly a Knicks-Wolves preseason game

that they both played their starters for a bunch of the game. There was Dante DiVincenzo tension. He's yelling at the Knicks bench. He's yelling at Rick Brunson after the game. What a time for New York sports. Our guy, JJ, who is still reeling from the fact that he picked the game correctly tonight. Um, he's gotta be, he's got a New York sports pod. There's too many topics. I don't even know what you lead with. He's going to do 20 hours. Yeah. The Rangers and Islanders play as well. It's a, it's a New York bonanza, but, um,

I don't know what to be more depressed about the Mets or the, or the Cowboys here. I guess the Cowboys. Did you think the Mets were going to win today? And I mean, usually, you know, game one, it's a feel. Who knows? No, it's you don't want to win nine, nothing. And now the Dodgers, the one thing about the Dodgers, why I wanted to play them stupid instead of the Padres is we can get to their pitching. We can get to their middle relief. And now they've got three shutouts in a row. Yeah. So not, not promising at all, but.

55 to nine. The good thing about baseball is this is actually a seven game series. Right, right. Unlike these five gamers where you feel like you lose the first game and you're like climbing up a mountain after that. Cowboys Lions is in seven games. We don't have to, we don't have to see Campbell shit all over us again and again and again. We're going to get to your team later. I wanted to go through some of the highlights from today. I have highlights. I have a highlight section. I have a low light section. Okay. So the highlights, the favorites are back.

We finally had an NFL week that made sense. The favorites went 10 and three, um, six double digit wins and every old school tease and parlay covered today. We won. In other words, we won money, which makes it so that much more depressing. The square public bets win. Yeah. Unless you had the giants plus three and a half late then. But, uh, but yeah, so the week made a little more sense is my point.

It's good. It's good. I like that. I mean, it had to happen eventually, right? That where the good teams win. It was coming to a point where you were afraid to take an eliminator. Everyone was out in their eliminator pools. I think they're like, now that we eliminated everybody from those dumb pools, we could have some of the favorites. When the Eagles tried to lose, they did against the Browns. The Washington hung in there with the Ravens. I was actually more impressed with them than I was. I mean, we'll talk about all these games, I'm sure. But still, the favorites came through.

The Eagles had a team meeting and before the game, and they were like, look, the Browns offense can't score. If we're going to blow everybody's teas today, we've got to come up with some stuff on our own. They were like, the special teams was like, what if we get a kick blocked and give up a touchdown? Like, good idea. Let's do that. Uh, could we get a fumble touchdown for them or an internet? Now they couldn't. So anyway, 2016, the Browns offense was abominable, but it felt

It was kind of a boring day, but it felt like an old school football game. The fantasy scores were laid down. So we had that. Next highlight, the NFC North. Holy shit. Remember we did our futures before the year, and one of the futures we really liked was an exact order bet on FanDuel, which was six to one. And it was Detroit, Green Bay, Chicago, Minnesota, exact order, and it was plus 600. We're not out of that, by the way. What we weren't expecting was,

was that this would be, first of all, they have the top four point differential teams in the entire NFL. Bikes, plus 63. Lions, plus 60. Bears, plus 47. Packers, plus 41. So we got that. They're the first division with four four-win teams after six weeks since we had the new division starting in 2002.

And they have 17 wins already, total. So this division's a beast. If you had to bump one team to not make the playoffs, who would it be? Well, it's funny you said that about our bet. As me, you, and Hench, we have that bet, the top to bottom, first to fourth. Oh, House jumped on that too, I think. Oh, House. Yeah, yeah. House, I'm sorry. The four of us. Four of us. The Vikings, who we had for last...

Or a game and a half out of last. Right. Like they could go on a little run here and they played Detroit. And, you know, I don't think we all think they're as good as five and oh, or maybe even four and one. But I still have hope for that bet. I, I,

I watched the bear. I don't know. I had the Jaguars again. I'm an idiot. I'm a glutton. I'm an early morning glutton too. So what was the thought process? London, some of the offensive stats, like what else? How did you talk yourself into that one? Oh, I don't use thought process anymore. My bad. Yeah, no, no. Why would I use any thought process? Yeah, that was it. They own London. They have to go out there. Maybe I'm giving Peterson and Lawrence more credit.

I don't know why we should give Lawrence any credit anymore. It's just so hard for him to move up and down the field. Even when they were up 3-0, I was like, aha, I picked one right. It's not even 7 a.m. out in the West Coast. And just a blizzard of offense for Chicago. Yeah, House came in to visit. He's in L.A. now, and he came last night. He was doing your show this morning. And we were talking last night about the picks in that game. And he was really bullish on the Jags.

One of the reasons was rookie quarterbacks in London, I think, are 0-5. There's some stat. 0-5 against Spreads, something. He was the first rookie quarterback to win. Well, there's that. But how many of them were going against a completely dysfunctional team that afterwards the coach is like, we have no culture. So I don't know. Sometimes with these stats, there might have to be more context. Like this Jags team,

They rolled over the last hour of that game. They were like, get us the fuck out of here. Oh, wait, we have to play here again next week? Oh, my God. You could just see the life sinking from their body. Do you think the culture thing is so confusing? It's like, what, you're going to take the team to a museum in London somewhere in there? In Liverpool, what are you going to do? Like,

I don't, I, I, I think you, I think you send that guy back. I mean, my guy might have to go back too, but do you think like the business class ticket is figured into whether or not the owner should fire Peterson? It's like, oh shit. If I keep them, he could just fly back with the team. Otherwise I have to send a business class to the, whoever's not on the team, fly him in. And you know, that's, you know, that's,

18 grand. Was there a coach's union? You could send them back Coach Middle Seat, right? Sayonara. Coach Middle Seat. Bro, 33B. Enjoy. Is that his nickname? Coach Middle Seat? I like that. I was going to do this for the lowlights, but we better do it now. Peterson had amazing quotes after the game. I'm just going to read it because this is the verbatim quote.

We got to keep showing our players. We got to keep coaching. We're not, listen, there's another game coming, whether we like it or not. There's still, what have we played? Six games. We play a 17 game schedule. So we got a few more games left. So nobody's going to feel sorry for us. Nobody's going to say, okay, but we've got to change. I mean, I say we, it's all of us, coaches, players, everybody. We've got to change right now that culture.

Otherwise it just gets out of control. We're on a slippery slope or right on the cusp of that slope. But at some point we've got it. We just, we just, enough is enough and you got to have enough pride to figure out a way.

This would all be better if he wasn't the head coach. Right. If he was anyone else, if he was a beat writer for Jacksonville, it would be good. Or if he was the special teams coach. I was thinking, when you're the head coach, it's like you. Your family, a bunch of stuff happens, and you have a family meeting, and we're like, we have to change the culture right now. And they're like, you're the dad? You pay for everything? You own the house? I'm going to do that and see what kind of reaction I get. You should.

I want to see. Just start talking about culture and see what the kids say. I love the idea of, hey, Travis, Gabe, Coach Middle Seat would like to see you bring your playbook. He's going to draw the slippery slope he's talking about. I know it's confusing, but he's going to diagram it. Coach Middle Seat's got you. Lombardi's going to be so jealous. Lombardi's the king of coach nicknames. Coach Middle Seat's better. It's so perfect. Coach Middle Seat's great. Doug, 33B, it's a one-way ticket. Please don't come back.

I think they, uh, they, the other choice is you play the second game and just leave Doug there and there's no seat for him home. He's just got to find his way. Yeah. Do that. Do that. Back to the, uh, back to the NFC North. So we could have four playoff teams from this division. I know we always say that's impossible, but

We've seen it before where a division gets to 40, 41 games. The complicating factor would be the Lions because usually when that happens, the teams are all between like nine and 11 wins, something like that. But the Lions look like they might be, even with the Hutchinson injury today, they might be a 13 or 14 win team. So yeah, you couldn't get swept against any of the teams, right? You have to kind of go one-on-one against everybody. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. And then you'd have to, I mean, the NFC is probably the place to do it because I think that seventh spot is a nine win team. So yeah, there's a chance it's bears. You're so sad. This is like the, I hate, I was laughing about middle seat. Now I've gone back. Yeah. Middle seat. Now you're back in a funk again. Yeah. So here's the case with Chicago not to make the playoffs because they're four and two right now. They won that stupid game against Tennessee in week one. They lost the Houston, lost the ND.

They barely beat that, like beaten up shell of a Rams team, right? 24, 18. They held on to the end. They killed Carolina and they killed Jacksonville in the late. Now they have a buy. So they're at Washington, at Arizona home paths. That's probably five and three, but it, it, it,

Could also be, I'm sorry, six and three or five and four, somewhere in there. But their schedule gets really hard starting week 11. They have Green Bay, Minnesota, at Detroit, at San Fran, at Minnie, home Detroit, home Seattle, at Green Bay. That's eight straight weeks of hard games.

And I think they're the weak link because those last three weeks, Caleb's looked, we all have to agree, he's looked good. But Rams defense, Carolina defense, Jags defense, probably three of the five worst defenses in the league, maybe three of the worst four. So I don't know. My jury is still out. Now they have Washington in week eight who doesn't have a good defense either. And then Arizona who doesn't have a good defense. Then the Pats who gave up 41 points. So Caleb might really get some momentum here. Right.

but then it's going to get hard. I think Arizona and Washington are better than the bears, but watch the bears on both. And it's too close to the Sunday night game to see this number, but they're over on the wind total was eight and a half, right? The bears, the beginning of the year. Yeah. I think it's the same now, or do you think it's higher? I remember seeing that this summer and thinking it was the stupidest thing ever. But now we realize like the schedule for the first half of the season was easy, but we marked down before the year. We were like that.

that last stretch is pretty tough. So you think they're over under as higher now? Well, it can only be nine if it's any higher. Yeah. If it's any higher, but I think you keep it at eight and a half. I'm still, um, I'm confused on a lot of teams through six weeks. They're one of the teams that I'm confused on. Like the giants are another one that are they good or are they a bottom five team? Definitely not good. They scored seven points. Their coach was going for it on every fourth down. Cause yeah, they, they,

it takes them four plays to get 10 yards. Yeah, they should just forfeit any night game for sure. But I wonder if, I don't know. I don't know what I'm looking at sometimes. I was probably looking at the Mets. It's weird that the Packers have the worst point differential of the four because I feel probably second best about their ceiling, especially now that Watson's back. All right, next highlight. Nick Sirianni feels like he's back and by being back,

getting weird again. Yeah. Right. I felt like he was like sedated the first few weeks. Like he's like, ah, I almost got fired. I got to really like, you know, he's going home, talking to his wife or girlfriend. It's like, I got to scale it back.

I really want to keep my, I think I was pushing a little too far. I got to, I'm going to rein it back a little bit. And now he showed up this week. He shaved head, really tight haircut, not a complete bald shave, but a shave. He's barking at his own fans. He just had a different style. And by the way, they were just as disjointed as ever, but it feels like we've hit the breaking bad Sirianni point of the season. He's just going to start out.

acting aggro and weird and having weird press conferences, and I'm here for it. I didn't like sedated, neutered Sirianni. No, yeah, of course you want all these guys to be hot-headed lunatics, and when they fall flat on their faces, we could just laugh at them. But that team was not... I don't know. We were talking, is Jalen Hurts injured? He's not the same. None of these guys are the same. They barely put the Browns away. If Watson wasn't so...

crippled looking out there. He's so lumbering. Even when he takes the ball outside, I've not, I don't know. You talk about coaches like Stefanski and we touched on this last week. He's got to step up and say, Hey guys, this is not me. This is not me. And like if Spotify said to you, you're playing, you're going to put Creed in the background. You're going to put Creed in the back of every one of your podcasts. You're right. And you're like, what? And they're like, no, you're going to do it. And you're like,

And publicly you say, yes, this is my decision. It reflects poorly on you, right? Like Stefanski's got to say, this has nothing to do with me. They're making me start to shop. There's been better examples in real life, but we'll move on. It would be like if instead of doing the basketball overrunners with Priscilla at house next week, we just randomly did

Yeah. And I just didn't explain it. It was like, yeah, we're going to do NHL this year. I don't. Right. And you owned it. Yeah. Now it's, you know, this is what we care about now. I don't know what to make of the Eagles either, but your division's pretty bad. It could be nine and eight in your division taken. That's why I'd like the Giants. They lose today. I don't.

Their season's not over. I don't feel like you got killed today. I don't feel like your season's over. Nobody's season's over. 98's going to take that division. Only glimpse. I'm like, all right, maybe we're just a team that gets killed at home. Maybe like, hey, come to Jerry's World and watch us get demolished. It's fun. But there is a path for the Cowboys to win. We still have three NFC South games left.

And, you know, we have Cincinnati and we have some other, you know, I think we could beat the Giants again and split against those NFC East teams. And that gets us to nine, God forbid, 10. You know, you're banged up on defense. There's legitimate reasons, but you also got killed. You're also awful. Yeah. You also might not be good. Yeah. The fact that they haven't figured out the stadium piece where there's just blinding sunlight in the eyes of your receivers. Like, Tolbert...

Didn't catch a big pass today because he couldn't see the ball because the sun was blinding him. This is a stadium built in the last 15 years. It just didn't account for where the sun was coming around as the sun set in October. Nobody thought about that. Sun's so unpredictable. So unpredictable. You never know what side it is. It's in the same spot every year in mid-October, and they just didn't do it. Jerry tried to move the sun. He couldn't do it. Doesn't have that much power. Next highlight.

You mentioned Cleveland earlier in this Watson thing, which we talked about a bunch last week. A highlight today was they showed a graphic that they were 0 for their last 26 on third down. Yeah. And it seemed like a mistake or a typo, but it wasn't. They've had up to that point, 26 straight third down conversions, did not convert. It's impossible. You would think like out of 26, there's a couple third and one, third and twos, right? Yeah.

By accident, you're going to convert one of them. Couldn't you draw someone offside? Or pass interference? That would be like betting roulette 26 times and being wrong 26 times in a row or something. Yeah. You and I would figure out a way to convert. Yeah, we'd probably do that. But anyway, you know, concurrently, Baker Mayfield had another really fun game. He had three picks, but two of them were pretty goofy. I thought he was really good in that game. I went back.

So when they decided to go after Watson, they also had to dump Mayfield, remember? Sure. And they had to send him to Carolina. They got some conditional pickback, but they actually paid...

10 and a half million of Mayfield's deal that year to go play for Carolina. And then it didn't work out in Carolina. And he left, went to the Rams and eventually landed in Tampa. That part of it, if you just stop right there, makes it one of the top five worst deals. If you go into compensation and massages and everything else. Yeah, exactly. 10.5 billion, like not a small amount of money. Like that's, you know, that you could get

Probably a number two receiver, an edge rusher. You could get somebody almost as good as Hassan Redick year to year. You could get, you know, a left guard for 10 and a half million. Anyway, so they had that. You had all the allegations against Deshaun and the fact that he's a historically bad quarterback. And the fans are so bummed out now. It feels like there's going to be a revolt in Cleveland.

I don't know why anyone's holding on to this. This is really, really bad. We concluded that the front office just wants him to get hurt. Hurt or it's the most stubborn thing ever. It's like when our cousin gets super stubborn during an argument. We just kind of let him have it. That's the Watson thing. Oh, yeah. Middle seat. Jimmy in middle seat. Yeah. It'll be a lot. More highlights today.

Jake Mays first touchdown pass. Great moment. Most excited I've been in the room with Kyle watching a Pats game. Good. Me at least three years during that 11 week stretch when Mac Jones seemed like he was going to be good as a rookie. So that was what, three years ago. But even I don't remember being because it really seemed like it was going badly. You know, they had like they're they're on like their 19th offensive line and five games, six games.

And he was sailing past his beginning. He had a little dare in the headlights and it was like, oh my God, please don't let this be Zach Wilson. Like, just don't let this be, you know, and getting to the point where he's hitting somebody on a five yard pass. You're like, good job. Good. You know, we're like little kids at like a eight year old youth soccer game. And then near the end of the half, just uncorks a fucking beauty. Yeah.

Yeah. Hits his guy in stride for, I think it was like a 49-yard touchdown. And it was just, it was great. That's how you want the first one to look, right? Like the first, guy's first home run, you don't want it to hit the glove and go over the fence. You want an upper decker. That was a great in stride. Like you said, over the shoulder. It wasn't seven yards over the middle. Like, oh, did he get it? He got it. Yeah, he got in. Great, great throw.

He had a lot of really nice throws, like throws over the middle because he's got height too. So he can hit these guys over the middle. He had some good darts to the outside, had some really nice scrambles. It wasn't perfect. Like his, there's little stuff. Like I was saying to the people who are watching the game with today, like when, when Brady showed up and,

2001. One of the things that jumped out immediately was just how polished he was with play action and keeping the ball on his side and pretending to hit. Just all these little things. It was like, man, this guy's really sharp. And May's the opposite. He still seemed a little clumsy and awkward with some of this stuff, but the arm is there and the legs are there. He raced out of town. He raced out of sacks a couple times today. I would like to learn from you how it is to remain giddy after your team loses by 20.

Because I can't do it. But you can. That's great. Well, we need to be one of the three or four worst teams in the league. And clearly on pace. Not playing him last week really helped. Right against Miami. Now they're going to Jacksonville in London. That's a fun one. See what happens with that. They're awful, though. They're the worst team in the league. There's nobody worse than the Pats. Oh, come on. No, there's nobody worse than them. They have the worst team in the league.

We'll see next week. That is a battle. What's your immediate reaction when you hear he dated the same girl since he was 12? To me, loyalty. And if he's good, that means we have him for 20 years. Loyal guy. But he did that in his press conference. He showed up and he's like, these are my brothers. This is my girlfriend since seventh grade. You get me, you get these people too. And this is who I am.

Low guy. There's no loyalty in sports anymore. When you see pictures, it's just weird. That's all. But no, it's great. Like when they were 12? Yeah. Those pictures were floating around. Well, she was six. That's the problem. No, no, no. They were both 12. No. They were both 12. That's funny. Yeah. Listen, at least there was some hope. The stands were pretty full. People were into it. People were booing when they were like running on stupid third downs. But yeah.

It's unclear if we even have a mediocre coach. So we're going to find out with that. And every time, it's weird when you watch these different coaches, I've never seen him talk to anyone else on the sideline during the games. They just show him and it's like he's in like a phone booth over on the side just watching the game. It's just, there's some coaches that are like interactive with the people. You know, Belichick would go and walk around and talk to people. And Mayo's just kind of looking around. Yeah. And I don't know what he's looking at.

It's certainly not the defense because we're just getting destroyed. You know, we all have weird old friends who like, oh, come on, watch the game with us. Like, no, no, no. I have to watch alone. I can't be bothered. He could just be one of those. I can't say I've been impressed in the beginning of the Mayo era, but I did have the greatest coach of all time. And then the last highlight was Raven Seawords, which reminded me of the better B of B-ball fight.

where it was a really kind of fun battle to watch, but it also felt like it didn't hit its potential. It's a good call. There was another version of Ravens-Seawards where it was like, holy shit, that game was fucking awesome. But it just felt like once the Ravens got up 7-10, it just felt like they were in control of the game and Henry could do whatever he wanted. I think this was going in. I love the Ravens today. And it fell right on the number. I think by the time it kicked off, they were laying seven and they won by seven.

But this was a perfect spot for Washington to lose by 27. And you would have been like, okay, you know, this is just what happens to a young team like this. And they didn't. They fought. Is Jaden Daniels perfect on fourth down as a pro? Is he like 10 for 10 or something? The precision of his passes. Yeah. Everything's in the right spots.

I feel like he makes the right decision almost all the time, and then the passes are delivered correctly. You know what I mean? He's just really good. Good for them. Good for them for staying in there. And you can tell even the players on the other team, like Lamar was raving about him after the game. The guys he's going against all rave about him after the game. He clearly has it. I watched with House today who, I mean, he could barely keep his pants on. He gets so excited. He's excited? Yeah, he's out of his mind. One more highlight from this. So how many...

How many rushing yards do you think Derrick Henry has this year? I know this because I bet him to have the most rushing yards in October. All right, let me think about this. He has, yeah. Oh, Fandles got it all. Through six games, he has 865. Wow, you went high. What is it? 704. Oh, that's it? Yeah. 119 carries, 704 yards. And he's got?

eight touchdowns. He's good. I mean, when they have a lead, if they feel unstoppable now, the lead, it was the opposite of the way they used to feel, right? That's a difference, right? They don't, they don't close that game out last year at this time. No, no, no. Their past defense looked a little bit better. So those were the highlights. We're going to take a break for the podcast day here on YouTube, and then we're going to do the low lights.

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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. The lowlights Hutchinson, just awful bomber. I don't think he was the best defensive front four guy in the league, but he was in the conversation with,

Watt was probably one Parsons when he's healthy. And I think Hutchinson was probably third for me. Huge part of Detroit and and also an awful injury, which unfortunately they had the one replay. It was like, oh, no, but really tough. That was our first major season ender of the year. Right.

It was a bad injury. I mean, if you don't count McCaffrey, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, yeah, you could say he's third, but it was like number one in sacks. No one had as many sacks through like three games even and then four and just brings it every play, you know, and so and is double teamed a lot. And the thing that all these defensive ends go through. But yeah, they're going to miss him. That's a that's a bummer of an injury. Opens up the NFC a little bit.

because he's not coming back this year. Their defense was, I wouldn't say awesome. They look pretty good today, but your team's pretty one-dimensional. What? Take that. Don't say things you're going to regret. Last week looked a little shaky, but...

Really tough one. So I don't know. I think I had KC first and Detroit second heading into this week, and I still feel that way, but Detroit is a little weaker. And I think heading into this NFC North gauntlet when they start playing each other, their pass rush is in there. That's going to be a weak spot. Green Bay looks like

It worked out great for Green Bay, right? I'm not even saying this injury, but it didn't take them two or three weeks to adjust to the league and Jordan Love and whatever came back. That was, I don't know if you had Arizona or not, but I was like, Arizona's at least good for a backdoor cover. That's what they live for, right? Yeah. Not even, you know, they just, oh, Dobbs? Oh, he's not,

What happened? I thought he was suspended. No, he's back. He's catching touchdowns. And Jaden Reed's now all of a sudden a top seven receiver and they run the ball. They do it all. And Christian Watson was like, guys, I'm here to be on your bench in fantasy and make you really mad that you didn't start me. And then you're going to start me next week and I'm going to go out of the game in the first quarter. That's like Travis Etienne today. It's like, do I start him? Do I not start him? All right, fine. London game. I'll start him. Pulled hand me like two minutes in.

Fantasy's terrible. Some guys, fantasy's the worst. I actually have some fantasy stuff later. All right, another low light, the Dallas home blowout. So I think this is the fourth game. We talked about this. We're going to do this again? No, we're talking more. Go ahead. This is like four times in recent history where you were down 19 or more at halftime, like in the last calendar year. Yeah. Including a playoff game. That sounds right. Yep. Green Bay, Detroit, Baltimore. Who's the other terrible team, good team we lost to?

New Orleans? Uh, New Orleans. Who's not even good. They're 2-4 now. I know. They beat us, they crushed us, and they crushed the Panthers. We were, I came on the pod that night, I was like, is there some 1999 ribs? Stuff going on. And then four weeks later, Spencer Rattler, and they're giving up 100 points, and Olavi made it five minutes. Right. Another concussion for him. But yeah, it looks like, uh,

Yeah. I, I hate my team right now. And Jerry Jones was interviewed. Of course, can you believe he did an interview today? Um, I was shot. He said two things. He said, uh, it was like a minute and a half long. He said, uh, we have a buy coming up, but that's not enough time to write the ship. And then 10 seconds later he said, but we're going to figure it all out during the buy week.

Perfect. There's a lot of hope there. It's very similar to the solid thing though.

Where you just should have taken care of this eight, nine months ago. And then it's like, no, no, this year will be better. It just seems like it never works when teams do that. I'm a little jealous of Woody Johnson that he knows when to pull the trigger. Like I know it's like the Cowboys had a coach that was 20 and 36. He'd be gone too. But Woody Johnson's like, Hey, I'm old. This is ridiculous. I got to shake it up. I'm going to talk about the culture. And guess what? Cause I can do something about it.

Jerry Jones is like, I'm not old. I'm eternal. I'm a young 83. I've got 20, 30 years left. I think he believes it. No words to see here. Well, I didn't think your team was good to begin with. I thought you should have lost the Pittsburgh game last week. And Dak was just superb. And Pittsburgh lost a couple of pass rushers and blew a couple of chances to whatever. And Dallas snuck that one out. But I just...

I don't think Dallas is very good. I can't argue. I'm going to sit here and argue. They get bullied on both sides of the line of scrimmage. Some of it has to do with the injuries, but also some of it looks like they're just not prepared for these games or don't care. All the bad stuff. Play the Blood Diamond theme again. So if...

If they fired McCarthy tomorrow and brought in Belichick, what's your reaction? Oh, wow. I'm surprised. So, I mean, the question is, it is the bye week. Do you do it now or do you wait till you, there's plenty of opportunities because we have the 49ers, the Falcons, the Eagles, the Texans, and at commanders. He can go anytime in there, but do you do it now? I would be surprised, but I would, I would think it was a step in the right direction. Whereas last year, I wouldn't think so. Yeah.

You know what's funny about this? Nothing. I got to turn down Blood Diamond. They always say like, no, you can't do it in football. You can't bring somebody in. It's too hard. There's all these systems in place. It's got to be an interim coach. It's got to be somebody in the building. It's like, does it?

Because other option is just don't fire McCarthy and the team's just a mess. Or you just keep Robert Sala and your team's a mess. Or you keep Doug Peterson in London for another week. She's talking about the culture, which she's in charge of. Right. Like at some point, maybe anybody's better. Yeah. You know, in basketball, they'll bring in fucking anybody. They, you know, that Milwaukee brought in Doc Rivers out of nowhere last year. They were like, fuck it. But in football, they seem to be more hesitant because of the systems. But.

It just seems like you could bring somebody in who could oversee. I guess Indianapolis tried this with Jeff Saturday and it didn't work, but Jeff Saturday is also not a coach, but I still feel like

I find it hard to believe Belichick wouldn't be more of an asset the rest of the season than McCarthy. You know what I was hoping with Belichick? I was hoping, I'm like, all right, McCarthy, let's give him credit. They won 12 games a year for the last three years. That's pretty damn good. So he makes it to the playoffs and then they're terrible. For whatever reason, they're bad. Why don't teams do this more? Why couldn't we hire a Belichick as a consultant?

The Pats did this in 1996. They hired Belichick as a consultant with ourselves. So smart. Just for like four months. Yeah. Let's see your game plan. Okay, here's what I would do different. Every team should do this. It should be a mad scramble to hire the best just to come in and oversee and look like when Jimmy hosts the Oscars, he runs his jokes by Billy Crystal. Right.

Right? And guys who have done it before and done great at it. So that's the best I was hoping for McCarthy. Maybe they could do something like that. Now we're not even going to get to that. Counter. Cleveland did this with Mike Vrabel and I think you're seeing the results. Vrabel's like, I think you should stick with Deshaun. Probably just once. That was bad. I mean, it's backfired too. I think the Eagles brought in Fangio, right? For the defense. I like it. I don't know why, but why wouldn't you do it? These are all like multi-billion dollar businesses, right? Yeah, right. You pay Belichick like...

$2 million a year. Belichick is on eight shows and podcasts. I'm pretty sure he would take the paycheck. Pull him away in December and January. Yeah. So the Jags are a fiasco. We talked about them earlier as one of the lowlights, but they're one in five. There's a Trevor Lawrence conversation that we've had a couple of times, but I wanted to have a little more detail because he is now 21 and 35 for his career. The extension was scary, but then

Much like the Jags, we talked ourselves into the Jags and Trevor Lawrence before the season. I have bets on him for 4,000 yards. I had him in two fantasy leagues. They were 8-3 last year. There was this whole case. He was injured. Now he's healthy. They beefed up both sides of the ball. The AFC South, other than Houston, not good. And he's been worse. So I was like, all right, he's 21-35 in his career. It's 55 games.

How many guys have started at least 55 games, but one less than 25, right? Cause he, it's hard to look this stuff up. Well, it's a nine person list and here's that list. And it goes in order of 21 to 25 wins. Trevor Lawrence, Tim couch, David Carr, Josh McCown, Rick Myra, Daniel Jones, Blake Bortles, Charlie batch, and Josh Freeman.

Wow. The nine quarterbacks and the worst by you. Yeah. The worst one of all those was David Carr was 23 and 56. Josh McCown was 23 and 53, but that's a, just an awful list. I mean, I was shocked. I was like, is there anybody good on this list? Daniel Jones, kind of, sort of, they went nine and eight maybe. But all those guys were top three paid in as far as quarterbacks, right? At some point. Yeah. Well, teams, teams,

No, but some of those guys were paid because teams were kind of like, fuck, what do we do? All right, we'll pay him one more year. Like Bortles got paid, remember? Yeah. I think we're getting credit, though, for pumping the brakes on Trevor Lawrence, even though we may have picked him to win the division or the playoffs. You and I are getting credit? You and I are. Really? I saw some people like Simmons and Sauer in this. We're getting a little credit. It's a rare that we should take it. I'm going to recommend we take it. Wow. Blake Bortles.

started 73 games. He had 103 touchdowns and 75 picks. And Lawrence has started 55 is 64 touchdowns and 41 picks. Like when you see all these numbers, it's pretty alarming. And then when you watch the games, he just makes dumb plays at bad times. Like he had that awful, awful interception today at midfield, right? As the game was slipping away from them. Uh, the body language seems weird from a leadership standpoint. I don't, I just haven't seen it at all. And

Um, I really wonder take off as much as he used to, or when I remember the first two years, he does.

You feel like he does? Today he had a play where, no, I don't feel like he does. No, I know. He runs like three or four times. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, holy shit, this guy's fast. That's huge. It's, it's, it's, you know, I don't know. It's a little bait and switch. Like what happened to that? I know you want to extend your career because you're making so much money for every year you stay in the league. But if you can't, you can't stretch these first downs when you're the rest of your team has like 51 yards rushing. It's no good. Yeah.

It's really tough because they extended him. They probably could have just, you know, played a little, kind of did a little bit like what Dallas did with Dak and at least taken it through the season or could have franchise tagged them. But they extended him on the promise of what he could be over anything he'd actually done. And yet, as I said, both you and I fell for it too. Like we both thought he was going to have a pretty good year this year. And he's been. And you got Flacco right in that division to make everyone look stupid too. Right. Right.

Yeah, just Flacco, by the way, two touchdowns in eight straight games. Wow. Joe Flacco. He threw a bad ball today and I was shocked. Right. It's like, oh my God, Joe. Not Joe Flacco. Another low light from today. Calvin Ridley, eight targets, zero catches. I wonder what the record is for most targets not catching a ball. Eight's pretty high. Like, has anybody gotten over 10? Do you have him in, I have him on two fantasy games.

I stayed away. And I see that name. I'm like, wow, that's a pretty big name for him to be so far on my reserves. There's no, but there's no way I could put them in. Right. Well, I remember the Pats went after him and I think he chose Tennessee over the Pats. And one of the reasons was because he said there were taxes and there was something, you know, that was basically it. And then IU didn't want to come here because the Pats didn't have a quarterback.

But Ridley chose to go to Tennessee. He wasn't talking about the Levis tax? Because that's a bad tax. I don't know which candidate is going to enforce that, but he's actually fun to watch, Levis. So bad, that bad. One last low light from today, not to talk about your fantasy team, our fantasy team, our knockout league where I'm 0-5. I don't ever remember having a fantasy team that started out 0-5. It's pretty impossible.

And today I had a chance to win my first game. And it was looking great. And I was going against Ham's team that had Chase Brown. And Chase Brown right at the end of the game gets a touchdown. So now he's got this 13-point lead on me. Now I need 13 and a half points from Garrett Wilson to avoid going 0-6. And Sal, I got to change the culture with this fantasy team. Oh, is that what you're going to do? Yeah, I'm going to change the culture. I'm going to...

I'm going to wave some guys. I'm going to trade some guys. I just don't like the way the guys have responded. Some of it's on me, obviously, because I picked every guy in the team, but the culture of the team, I don't really like. Can you change your team name to Billy Middle Seat?

I probably could. Do it. So can I get 13 points from Garrett Wilson? 13 and a half? Can I do that? Yeah. I think, didn't he have like 11 catches or 12 catches last week? Yeah. He's back in sync, I think. So then the other fantasy thing in the guillotine league,

that somehow we've survived but uh we'd travis etn today who pulled us hammy i don't even think i hadn't even sat down rich eisen hadn't even made his first bad joke yet and i and and all of a sudden etn's on the sidelines so now we had chase brown in that league so it actually helped us so now i need like 14 points from brie saul but in this league touchdowns count for more

So I need it. I need jets scoring tomorrow from two guys who have murdered everybody all year against Buffalo. And I, I'm weirdly confident.

So this is the guillotine league. As long as you're not in last place, you survive. As long as you're not in last place. And you'll go, it's an 18 league team. Now there's 12 left. Now down to 12 after this. Yeah. And you... So you have Brees Hall, who is our first pick. Yeah. I think we had the second pick in the whole draft and he's done jack shit all year. And now he needs to save the day for us. I don't know if you deserve to...

with Brees Hall and Etienne as your running backs? I don't know. I think I've heard enough. Well, we picked up Etienne because Chase Brown had the red flag all week. Right, that's right. And then, anyway. All right, well, good luck. Yeah, the game seems the best. I love it. I bring this up to make the following point. Fantasy continues to find new ways to make me feel terrible about myself. 0-6 is like, we're in a league where our friend Brad...

who drank like 15 sodas while eating candy and then took eight running backs in an 18 team, 18 players. And he's beating me. He took eight running backs out of 18 guys. He's beating me. I'm the one that's 0-6 potentially.

By the way, the 0-6 thing is, 0-6 is special because you went out there and called people out for trading with 0-6 teams. So I have people asking me, like, is Bill untraded? He can't trade with him if he goes 0-6, right? I wouldn't trade if I'm 0-6. I would have traded last week because I feel like your 0-5...

In our league, you probably need to go seven and six and you can advance or whatever it is. Seven and seven might make it, but oh, and six and six. Okay. Yeah. Oh, and six. I would have to basically run the slate, right? I think eight and six. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's a, I'd have to go eight and over seven and one. My team sucks. Good. I made some mistakes. So give at the end on that team too. Enough with that. The end. Why do you keep, why do you have Walker? He's hurt my feelings. DJ more two points today.

Garrett Wilson. Dak Prescott, five points today. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I just saw that. Well, today I started Dak over Baker Mayfield and Caleb, so that went great. All right, AFC playoff picture really quick. KC's 5-0 and Houston's 5-1. Baltimore and Pittsburgh are 4-2. Buffalo and the Chargers are 3-2. Nobody else is over 500. They only have six over 500 teams. NFC, Minnesota's 5-0, Detroit's 4-1.

Five teams are 4-2. Philly's 3-2. So the NFC is just better this year, I guess, is the legacy of this season so far, right? Except for your division. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, the Ravens are good, right? Chiefs are good. Texans, we think, are good. The Bills, I still think, will be solid. I'm looking at these numbers, though, for Super Bowl, and I know we're going to give out 500 teams between now and Week 18. The Packers at 20-1 is interesting. I feel like they're in a groove. I think they're in a little bit of a groove.

Get them going. Young defense. Paul Hawking. They run the ball. Kind of do it all.

I was looking at the MVP where Mahomes is sitting there three to one, even though I would, would you say he's even having, this is probably the worst Mahomes series had. Yeah. It's like six touchdowns and six interceptions. Yeah. Yeah. It's not good. I just traded for him in our fantasy league or the keeper league, the Lamar. So it's about to get worse for him is what you're saying. Yeah, probably CJ Stroud plus five 53rd Purdy's 10 to one. Josh is 11 to one. Daniel's a 13 to one.

I personally think Stroud has been the MVP so far. Especially like he's never had three of those receivers for an entire game, I don't think. Now Nico's out for four games. Didn't really matter today. They went through the pats, but he's so good. We were like marveling at him today. There was a bunch, especially in the first half, there was a few times we just thought we had him or we were pressuring him or we're making him scramble. He's going to throw the ball away and then...

He's just really, really, really good. So you'd have my vote at plus 650. That's excellent. Or 550. I don't know if the odds are good enough to bet on that yet. For Purdy, 10 to 1, I'd probably like those odds the most. That's exactly what I was going to throw at you. I know we flip-flop. I'm done. I promise I'm done flip-flopping on Purdy. He's good. I like him. He's at least very good in that system. And 10 to 1 is a nice number. Is Mayfield at 22 to 1 insane to at least discuss? Mm-hmm.

He's so crazy. He seems foreign too. And his stats are nuts. Yeah. He plays like a maniac. I mean, he might throw for like 4,500 yards and 45 TDs this year. Right. Right. What place can he come in the NFC South and still win it? Well, I think he'd have to win the NFC South. Yeah. Right? And he'd have to be probably the two seed. Right. That's how he'd get it. Yeah. You can't win the NFC South at nine and eight and win it. Right.

offensive rookie of the year daniels is minus 190 right now and caleb's plus 155 and that feels like a two horse race my apologies to all the bow necks rookie of the year bets i think you can rip those up and he's such a weird i'm trying to figure him out and as i you know go go ducks but again fourth quarter he looks like a whole different quarterback he really is like

I was like, what the hell is going on here? He needs to be down 23 to feel himself. Yeah, he's zipping it and he's running 15 yards for first downs. I'm like, what? Where was this? Your kid is failing geometry and then he does some extra credit and mops up the class. Wait a minute, you have a C plus now? That's Bo Nix after his fourth quarter. 236 yards, whatever. He had 25 at half. Taking a break for the pod. Coming back with a little more on the week six.

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Just some notes I had from these games. Your team is minus 40 for the season now. Were you aware of this? I don't know. Mike, I'm going to kill you. We're not done talking about my team. I've just, I wrote that down. Yeah, well, they've gotten killed three times, so that'll do it. Steelers,

Took care of business against the Raiders and really could be 6-0 when you think back to that Dallas game and then the fact that they had the ball down three against Indianapolis and the snap hit Fields in the helmet. All of a sudden it was like second and 28. Fields was bad today. And you kind of had to watch the game. I'm sure there's going to be a way to spin it. No, no, he wasn't that bad. Fields was bad.

Fields was bad and it feels like he's getting worse by the week. And some of it is Pickens hasn't been really good either. And they don't really have a second receiver, but, um, he had just a horrible interception called back by this really dubious rough in the passer penalty that by the way, it was literally no different than Brian Burns and Burrow. Um, I just, I have no idea how they decide which one of those is versus isn't rough in the passer, but, uh,

I just thought he was bad. And I w I was wondering if they're just better off with Wilson, just being like a, like a C plus, uh,

What do you think he'll do different? You think he'll throw? Because the Wilson we saw last year, I'm with him to make the change. I'm like, what are they? They're giving these guys a million and a half each. So you might as well just put them in every three plays. Who cares until you get it right? But what do you actually think he'll do different? He'll throw downfield better because he probably won't run with it better than fields. So he'll just connect downfield. I felt like he checked down a lot with Denver.

My fear with Fields is just that it just feels he's feeling way more turnover-y the last couple games. And it just feels like balls are starting to hit his pass or hands are starting to hit his passes more. And I ended up betting on them today. I didn't have them for million dollar picks, but I was just super nervous every time he went back to pass. So I don't know what they do with that because they're four and two. Like, you know, they have a real chance to

either win the division or be a six or a seven seed. And I don't know. I think there's a little bit of an arrogance. I think it's much like aside from the Moss years, it's like when Belichick wouldn't get a receiver for your Brady. That's what Tomlin's doing. It's like, well, I'm going to win without a quarterback or without a big name quarterback. You watch. This will be on me. I think there's a similar thing. They like it. There's two moves. They could make a Devontae Adams play.

Which they're just, they only have one receiver really in the tight end. And Najee Harris was good today. But the other move would be if New Orleans decided they saw enough from Rattler that maybe Carr is available. And maybe you could talk yourself into Carr being a better version of Russell Wilson. You know?

That's all I can think of, though. There's not really any other. There's Jimmy Garoppolo types are out there, but it's nobody that's going to be. At least with Fields, you can do stuff with his legs, which they started to figure out as today's game when we're on with Vegas and some design scrambles and some QB draws and things like that. That's the difference, right? That's why he makes it up. He could throw for 145 in a winning effort somehow with a great defense, but he's got to run for almost 60. You don't get that from Carr. Yeah.

Who do you think has the bleakest quarterback situation right now? I will give you the Raiders, Tennessee, Miami, Denver, and Cleveland. Cleveland. Cleveland, right? Okay, so who's second? Who feels second worst about their QBs right now? I think Miami because you can't with a straight face say that two is going to come back and be two of last year, I guess, is the best two a year. Yeah. Right? I don't know. Who would you say second? Raiders. Raiders.

I mean, they're basically moving deck chairs in the Titanic. It's like, we took Minshew out. Here's O'Connell. It's like, oh, he's terrible too. And then two weeks later, it's like, Minshew's back. He knows the offense better. And they're just moving people around who are just bad. Those guys are both bad. They're not starting quarterbacks. I mean, I don't know. You want to say Carolina too? Or do we count Danny Dalton as a winner? I would take Dalton over.

Every Raiders, Tennessee, Miami, Denver, Cleveland, I would have Dalton over all of those guys, right? At least he can move the team down. I think you're right. I mean, even if the question is three years from now, it might still be Dalton better than O'Donnell or O'Connell. Yeah. I don't know. Also, like, best facial hair he's had, I think. Right. Really strong. Yeah. He's looking very Red Rockety.

Falcons beat the Panthers. We can skip that. Chargers beat the Broncos. Chargers, some good stuff from them today. They were, at one point, they were 11 for 15 on third down, first three quarters, I think. But their defense...

I think is good. I don't think it was just Bo Nix not looking great. And I actually think the Chargers might have a good defense. So I'm keeping an eye on them. We'll talk about it when we get to the guest lines. That was my best bet today. Yeah, you and I had that. Not a lot of people did. And because they, I normally don't like to buy early, but this team was so banged up and with Joe Allbat and everybody was like, you know, Herbert needs that ankle. And I'm like, I'm going to be so effing mad if this is a push with Denver scoring at the end. And then Peyton did the beautiful thing kicking that field goal with a minute left.

Giants tried it too, but that guy can't kick. So it didn't matter. But that was just a blessing. This is a passion point for me. Yeah. So Giants today, they're down 10. There's 56 seconds left. First down. And it's like the 28 yard line. And they hustled the field goal guy out. You need a touchdown or a field goal. You have to take three shots at the end zone from that spot.

It's 28 yards. Six, seven seconds. That's going to be 20 seconds total. Take three shots. It's like a great pseudo Hail Mary spot, right? See if you can get the touchdown. Kicking the field goal. Now you're just kind of hoping to get near that spot to try Hail Marys again. Why not try them there? Maybe you'll hit the first one. You have 50 seconds left. Teams, they never get it right.

I'm with you. I think the one thing you can't do is trot your guy out there for a 46 yarder who just missed a field goal, right? Like that's not a chip shot. Yeah. I know guys are nailing 57 yards, but your guy isn't. So at least get run one more play and get eight yards, you know, take six seconds off. So Eagles Browns forgot to mention the Blackjack Browns. We've talked about this every week, 16 today. So they're, they're, they're hands this year so far.

17, 18, 15, 16, 13, 16. This is an amazing streak. Every game they've played has been between 13 and 18 points scored. It's got to be close to some sort of weird record. That's just their range. By the way, there's a defensive... I could speak from experience. I had the Browns on their 16 and a half. And so when they got that

block kick return for a touchdown. I'm like, son of a bitch, this is the only way. Can Fandle please put up just offensive points? Can we bet an over-under on offensive points and not bullshit with kick returns and everything else? Oh, like actual points scored by the offense? I'll pay extra big. I knew they weren't scoring 16, but I had to sweat that out. Texans-Pats. So Mixon was back, and this was a Joe House point from a couple weeks ago that I'm stealing. Like,

The way they built this team, Nixon was a big part of it. Now they lost Nico Collins. He was going to be the deep threat part of it. But they wanted to be this power running team and you could see it today against the Pats. So I thought that was notable. Packers cards. You mentioned the cards earlier. I just think they're an official stay away for me now. I don't want any part of a game. I just...

I don't want to pretend I know what's going to happen with them. I don't think they know what's going to happen. They beat San Francisco by nine last week. They got murdered by Green Bay. I just think they're that team this year. They're the Costanza, Spotton, Dimes, Eating Onions team. That's the team this year. Just don't pretend you know anything that's going to happen with them because they don't know either.

I'm with you. But what happened? They played the chargers. It was exactly the same way. And, and, uh, I'd say so this week, Bucks beat the saints. Uh, somehow I had Tampa. I vowed not to bet on the NFC South and somehow at Tampa in a, in a bet today. And, uh,

But I hate that division. Good job by you. No, you know what? I wanted to stay away too, but I like them in the second half. I'm like, they're an underdog to win. They were down three going with a minute left in the first quarter. So the Colts won. They're three and three. Their next six games, home Miami next week. They could be four and three. At Houston, at Minnie. Home Buffalo. At the Jets. Home Detroit. So my guess is they win next week.

And it's like the Colts four and three with Richardson. And then I could see them losing the next five and going from four and three to four and eight. Cause I don't think that seems very good. I don't either. I'm rooting for him though. I want Flacco to bring every team in the playoffs. Mine being the last one in 2031. All right. Are you ready to, uh, you ready to do guest alliance? I think so. I got to win at something. Come on. How many, how many weeks in a row have I won? It's a lot. I think I only won the first and we tied. So you're up four, one, one.

So

Thursday night. This is really when sports goes a little haywire. When we have these baseball games that have these increasing importance. We have the Thursday night football. We have basketball about to start. Now WNBA finals, which I actually care about. I forgot to tell you this. Yeah.

We replaced Atlanta Carolina on one of the four TV screens with Liberty. Second half of Liberty links. It was quite, it was the most important moment they're saying ever for the WNBA. Some people say it was Caitlin Clark getting drafted. Others say it was when they replaced an NFL game on my TV on a Sunday. You were switching it over. Wow. I just switched it over. We watched the second half. Well, the Panthers Falcons had no right being a late afternoon game.

That was the case. It's like, why is this game a late... This game shouldn't be on now, so I don't feel bad. You know what else? No right being late after the WNBA finals. I know. Put it on Saturday and Monday, whatever. Come on. Well, there was... So they have all this... I did some digging. They had all this pre-done ABC stuff, but I think they know they have to fix this. Their counter to it, though, is that the counter program and the overlap isn't as big as...

You know, you would allegedly think if they had data supporting that, God bless them. But the point is, you want people like us who are just going to watch football if there's four good football games, even if we have money on the links. I went to game one of the WNBA. By the way, that was awesome. That game one. That was an awesome sporting event. I couldn't believe it.

It was so good. Their fans were great. The Liberty fans. Like, they're like really, literally great fans, like knowledgeable. They're calling out like illegal screens and like that, like real diehard fans. And there was great drama. There's good shot. The game was awesome, right? Yeah. There's a crazy call at the end. The skill of the players. I know, I know they were the best in the world really for the whatever, but the shot making and the skill that they have now is pretty nuts. The slashing kick.

It was really good. But I had a great time and then the Liberty won today. So now it's best of three, basically, but the next two are- We have the links. Come on, links. We- Get together. Game three is probably the hedge. You think so? I do. Because the fact that the Liberty were up by, I think, 15 plus in both games is a bad sign. I never like having the team that fell behind by 15 in each game in the first two games.

The hedge is one. Liberty's favored, you know, by three. In game three? Mm-hmm. Well, maybe we ride the links. Yeah. All right. I mean, that's opposite of a hedge, but yeah. Yeah. I'll go with that. Ride the links. Maybe we hedge game four. Hope they win game three. That's the move. I mean, the move was to hedge today with the Liberty, but the line wasn't good enough. All right. We're distracting everybody from Guest Alliance Thursday night.

Saints home for the Broncos. This was the Spencer Rattler-Bow next game everybody's been dying for really since the draft last April. What'd you think of Spencer Rattler, just out of curiosity? I was excited from the beginning, but like I said, I bet Tampa in the second half. I'm like, I don't know. But did you think he was competent? What was your take on it? Yeah, I thought he was fine. But they got some weird... They had good field position for much of that first half, right? There was some...

Baker turned it over a couple times. I think he had a block kick in there. So I was trying to be calm about it. I know it's exciting when a new quarterback steps up. I didn't think he had deer in the headlights. No. I thought he could move. And I actually thought he had pretty good moves when he was in the open field. He's not going in a slide. He was trying to juke people and get by people. His passes...

A little erratic, but somewhat smooth. I didn't think he was bad. I didn't. My takeaway was like, that guy's not a starter. Like, I didn't feel that way at all. I felt like he's probably a low-end starter. It was fine. Yeah. Can I just say something, though? I feel like, I don't know if you saw this past Thursday, but they were promoting this Denver-New Orleans game. And in the graphic, can you guess who was in the graphic? I know you said like Rattler and Nix, but. Alvin Kamara and Sean Payton? Very close.

Sean Payton and Cam Jordan. I love when they put the coach in there. Sean Payton and Cam Jordan. And Cam Jordan. The incomparable Cam Jordan. I mean, he's a great player, but I almost feel like they should give you a little money off if they're putting the coach in the graphic matching up the teams. I have Saints by three over the Broncos. Ooh, I had one and it's one and a half. That's stupid.

Chiefs at the 49ers is our Sunday marquee game. Definitely. I have the Chiefs favorite at the 49ers. Chiefs by one and a half. That's exactly what I had. But they have 49ers by one and a half. Oh. Make sure that that hasn't changed. Wow. I'm really surprised too. Wow.

Can you do that? Can you have Chiefs in the Super Bowl? Can you have Mahomes to win MVP for all the top of your odds boards, but then have the 49ers as a favorite three and three? I don't need to look this up. Mahomes is record when he's an underdog by between like one and four points is like 120 and two. Yeah. So I don't think there's been like a better, more fun bet over the years than that. Right.

I don't think there's any doubt that you're putting the Chiefs in a teaser and just waiting, just waiting to see who we could throw them in with. See, now John Ewing or, yeah, we like John Ewing. John Ewing's going to be like, I heard Bill say that Mahomes is, it actually, he's four and seven when he's between four points. It'll be a better than 120 and oh. But I'll feel stupid. Man, 49ers favored. That's a lot of respect for a three and three team that really could have lost to Seattle last week.

Well, this is the Super Bowl chip on the shoulder game, I guess. I guess that's the only way to do it. I like 49ers first half Chiefs game.

the bet that I've been clamoring for Fando. I, I, they wanted me to tweet out one today and I, I did the cousin South special for the Steelers. I thought we had it. Yeah. First half Steelers game. It was seven to one. I know there was, it was that one field scored and ruined it. Yeah. That'll hit a jerk. It was seven, six. I was like, this is perfect. They're doing by 20. I have it every week. Watchables. We have three. The first one's really good. Packers. Texans is a nice one. That's in green Bay.

I'm excited to watch it. Two teams that I like how they're playing. Two well-coached teams. Two teams with fun quarterbacks. Two teams that can occasionally look awesome running the ball. Two teams that occasionally look like they can have an awesome pass rush. And I have the Packers favored by two. That's what I had. It's two and a half. It's right there. Next one, Falcons home for the Seahawks. Seahawks started out three and three and a half.

Oh, another three and three. I got this exactly. Well, I did too, because this one seemed pretty obvious to me. I had the Falcons by two and a half against Seattle. Why was that obvious?

You did get it. You did get it exactly. It wasn't going to be three. Three is the one you say, oh, it's obvious. It's three. Well, two and a half is the new three. I guess so. Yeah. It's like there used to be three and then it started taking peptides and now it's dropped down to two and a half. Yeah. The peptides have changed everything. Everything's thinner. Last one is, I feel like I've watched a lot of Falcons this year, by the way. Yeah. And

Once a game, Kyle Pitts is wide open for like 40 yards. And then he's just, he's like a cat. You know, he just runs away and you don't ever see him again. Like, what happened to Kyle Pitts? I don't know. I think he's outside. He saw a mouse. And he's gone. But once a game, he's just wide open. Nobody near him. This could be, I know the records are fine, four and two against three and three, but this could be the ultimate stay away. I mean, good luck trying to figure out. Seattle's defense is really bad the last couple of weeks.

Yeah, something scary about betting on the Falcons is when they're favored. And I don't know what it is. Even today against the Panthers, which they ended up taking care of business. But even that game, like, oh, God, here they go. Yeah, they're going to win 21-20. Stupid Falcons game. Right. Last watchable is Lions at the Vikings. Now, some would say, why isn't this the Sunday marquee game? But 49ers Chiefs, that's a Super Bowl rematch. I mean, come on.

So Lions-Vikings, awesome game, classic game. It's in Minnesota and they're not going to be favored even though they're 5-0. It's going to be Lions by one and a half is my prediction. All right. I'm going to get this, even though I was off too. I said Lions by one. It's Vikings by one and a half. Whoa. All right. So you have your teaser. Go get it. Detroit, Kansas City, the road teams. I'm just betting the Lions straight up. I'll do respect to the great people of Minnesota, but

I just, I, the lines have not caught up with the lions yet. Three weeks in a row where even the game today, I don't know the three points was, how are they only three point favorites against Dallas without, you know, the injuries you guys have had. The fact that you can't run the ball and that you fall behind every other game.

Well, that's maybe the case against them. Like, does that screw up a team after they play a dreadful, just hideous asshole team like the Cowboys? Maybe they just can't when they, then the next game is on the road against Minnesota. Can't adjust.

Do you want to tape a hypothetical video? We'll just bank it in case McCarthy gets fired tomorrow and they hire Bill Belichick or somebody. Is it just me laughing? No, it's like, all right, this is a futuristic timestamp. We're dating that we're taping this 928 Pacific time Sunday. Sal, the Cowboys just fired Mike McCarthy. I can't believe it.

What's your reaction? Well, first of all, I had no idea Jerry Jones had died. I mean, you, I feel like you would, you would have led with that first. So Steven Jones stepped in there and hired an old man Belichick, but, uh, rest in peace, Jerry, we're going to do great things. Uh, coach Belichick, the greatest that ever was, is going to lead this, um, team to a Superbowl that you'll unfortunately not see because you're,

Clearly not around for this. It's an emotional time for me because I love Belichick and it's always fun to root against Dallas, but now Belichick's coaching the Cowboys and, uh, you know, I'm going to want them to do well. Love it. Throw in the ball. All right. Throw that Kyle, cut that out just in case. Fairly watchables. By the way, Brady said something during that Lions game.

No. He caught it. He said something that was like, Whoa. Um, he was raving about their offense and he had a quote and I heard it in real time. And then, uh, I think it became a little bit of a thing online. He likes their culture. That would have been, he was talking about the Jaguars culture is really envious of it. Now he's basically talking about their offense. He was like, I would love to be in charge of an offense like that. Hmm.

I still think Brady's sitting there for like San Francisco, the chiefs or the lions. If any of their quarterbacks got down, I think he's on the first plane. It's like, what about the Raiders deal done? No, no, forget it. Screw the Raiders. Like he's back. I, he posted a workout photo the other day. He's like in the greatest shape he's been in. It seems like, I just feel like he's in hibernation. He's like in a fire extinguisher case in case of emergency. Yeah.

Goat quarterback available. You think everything's a diversion? You might be right. Like the broadcasting, everything's like just a decoy to get, uh, I'm going to own this team. It's just a super weird thing to say. Like Aikman wouldn't say that. Right. Yeah.

Like a moon would be like, man, I would love to be in a charge of a team like that. It'd be like, he would never say that. Cause he's fucking retired. Brady said it in a way that it's clear. He hasn't like totally given up playing football yet. You don't say that unless you still want to, at least a PC, he wants to play football. Well, Romo called the God, the, um, commanders, the Redskins today. So I feel like he wants to play too. He definitely seems like he wants to go back. It was 2013. Yeah. Yeah. That's good.

I couldn't find that thing. All right, next. Fairly Watchables. Did you miss that there's a London game? I have it right here. Oh, okay. I didn't want to talk about Jags Pats coming out of the gate. I wanted to bury it in the middle of a Guest Alliance. Fairly Watchables because Drake May is now Fairly Watchable for the rest of my life. I'd bump it up, man. I'm actually excited to wake up for this one. All right, let's move it up to the Watchables then. Fine.

I mean, the best part would be if Lawrence sucked again and Mac Jones came in. Sure. And it was Mac Jones against Drake May. I don't know what I would do at eight in the morning Pacific time with my coffin. Might be earlier than that. Yeah. I have this in the Vegas zone. I have Jags minus five against the Patriots in London. You're going to steal this from me. I had three and a half. It is four and a half. Maybe you are the worst team. That's a high number for a bad favorite.

I'll tell you this, the, the Pat's culture on their sideline is going to make Doug Peterson feel better about his culture. It's like this. Anyone alive over there? What's going on? It's a culture clash. They start the game today. It's Drake Mays' first game. They announce it on a Tuesday for reasons that remain unclear, right? Let's remove all the mystery. Fans are fired up. Kyle showed up before 10 o'clock at my house for the first time, I think ever. And it's like, here we go. We get the ball.

Two awful runs into eight guys setting up the third and nine so he could sail it out of bounds because he's under pressure. It's like we had all week. Those were our three plays. Nothing. Could it come up with one special wrinkle for Drake May's first series? That's what we're going to do. It's just an abysmal. Yeah, it's like leading with the song that's off the new album that no one's heard. Right. Right. It's just like, come on. Throw it ahead. Nice cover. How about a play action rollout? How about somebody in motion, a quick pass, like something to just get him going?

Kyle, can we have Kyle come on for a second? I just want to write down. Give me a grade A through F, Kyle, for Drake May today. Oh, my wrong person asked. Really? Over the moon. Go ahead, Kyle. Kyle, you've had a few hours to think about it. I'm going to say A. I'm going to say A. If there's a learning curve, if there's a comparative, it's A compared to everything else we've had.

Yeah, especially when you think the rookie quarterbacks... Three touchdowns today. Yeah, he had like 10 really good throws. And the other thing was...

Think about the rookies the first week of the season. None of them look good, right? And Drake actually had some moments. Jaden Daniels lost by 17. Yeah, that's true. All right, so listen, I want this to happen. You don't even have to watch the Celtics the first three weeks. You got Drake May. This is fun. We're deep in the season, man. We're already having, are we sure Jalen Polk is good conversations? Like he's had some drops. I think he's got 24 targets and like nine catches. Yeah, the Pats are back, baby.

I love it. Bills Titans in Buffalo. It's either seven or seven and a half. And I'm going to say seven. Good. Bills by seven. Glad you said that. I said seven and a half. It's eight and a half. Oh, Jesus. Might be the biggest on the board. Might be. I don't want to say. Eagles at Giants. Somebody is going to be super unhappy with their bet coming out of this game would be my prediction. What do you mean? This might be a don't bet. This is a DMV. I'm declaring this a DMV.

Yeah. How do you feel good about yourself no matter how this goes? This is the Saquon Barkley revenge game. Right. I mean, that's all there is to it. You were waiting for him. The bus went open today, right? So to put the Browns money line bets to death. Eagles minus one and a half is my guess. I get this one too. It's Eagles minus three and a half. I said two and a half. That's fucking stupid. That's a dumb line. That's going to come down.

The Eagles aren't good. How many weeks in a row can we watch the Eagles not be good before we all agree that they're not good? Who's revenge is it, though? Who's angrier? Like if you were to move the line a half a point. Saquon and Giants, they'd have, yeah. I mean, the Giants only scored seven points today. All right, last one, Bengals-Browns. That is in Cleveland. Assuming Deshaun, yet again, at Bengals by three. Oh, wow. I'm going to win this week. I had five. It's four and a half. Ridiculous.

Do you think Cleveland was looking ahead to this game? No, you know what? I fucked that up because we noticed this today with that Eagles line. They're just adding two to three points to these teams because nobody wants to bet on Deshaun. It's not that nobody wants to bet on him. Nine and a half. You just read their point total for every game. And it's 13, 14, 15. But the Bengals should not be favored by four and a half on the road against anybody. They suck. They do.

So this line should be two and a half, and there's just two extra points because they're basically daring you to bet on Deshaun. But they 20 points suck. Browns are 14 points, you know? Yeah. It's right in there. Poopfecta, Colts-Dolphins, Indianapolis. The Dolphins just cannot be getting less than three and a half against anybody that's even mediocre. So I'm going to say Colts by three and a half. You get this exactly. It was four and a half, but went down to three and a half. I said two, so...

You got it. Not dead yet. Nope. Washington's home for the Panthers. It's got to be at least seven. So I'm just going to say Washington by seven. Shit. Here comes the, here's the comeback. I said six and a half. It's eight and a half. Let me add these up. That's a teaser. Two, three, four, five, six. With the way Washington's defense, I don't know if I trust them to hold the tease. They got to win that if they're for real. True. So what is it? It's the Ron Rivera. No, you got it. I said seven. It was eight and a half. What are the records?

What do we have? Oh, it's eight to six still, mate. Eight to six. So Washington has, Washington's four and two and they have Carolina this week, Chicago next week, at the Giants week nine. This is, they've got to come out of this stretch six and three, ideally seven and two, but six and three, I think. At the Giants might be like a pick them game. Like then they'll be favored on some of those others. This one for sure. Okay.

Rams Raiders in Los Angeles. Yeah. I don't know. Doesn't matter. Yeah. Do you want to predict the line, but then the line versus fight videos in the stands that start coming on Instagram that night? You're right. I'll do the line first. I have the Rams by two and a half over the Raiders. Okay, good. I said three and a half. It's four and a half. Everyone's down on those cornerbacks that you hate.

That's stupid. Is there Cup and Nakua next week though? Vegas zone. I don't know. I would think one of them might be healthy, right? After they had the bye, right?

All right. So four and a half. So how many Instagram fights of people fighting in the stands during this game? Like probably the same, right? Four and a half. Oh, more. It's got to be more in the stands or could it be outside the stadium too? Cause there's a bunch of stands concourse or parking lot over. Give me the over eight and a half. Yeah. And Fandle, you should put this up. Let's have some fun.

I don't know if Rosillo's talked about this on this podcast, but on his podcast, but this is a passion point of Rosillo with the, with these fight videos from the stands. He says every single time the guy who's higher up wins the fight. Yeah. Cause he's got leverage of like a foot. Right. And you can come down and the other guys looking up,

And it's just, you know, in boxing, you might be able to pull that off. But when the stairs are like that, the guy who's lower always loses. Almost always. There was one recently, I think it was a hockey fight and somebody pointed out like, what kind of loser do you have to be to, to you drop the fight to a 14 year old and while you were on higher ground. But yeah. I saw that one. Yeah. You got to grab the shirt just right. I think for it to work. Well, what do you do if you're lower?

That's what I mean. I think you got to grab the shirt and then uppercut. Yeah, yeah. You got to get them in there. Yeah. It's like, do you punch right in the balls? Because that's like your direct shot for the straight right. Yeah. You have the wife or girlfriend distract and then start biting his ear. That's the only way to do it.

The other one is when the person comes from the side, same row, and sometimes misses and then falls forward and then can get tagged from behind and then might hit his head with the chair. I would watch an hour-long breakdown of do's and don'ts for this.

I would love it too. And I'll go even further. I would like win probabilities attached during these fights to see who the hell I'm rooting for, who I should be rooting for. Listen, when I see the person lower versus the person higher, it's already 20% win probability if you're lower. It's gotta be. It's gotta be.

We took some shit for that, but I do want to make one clarification. Who took some shit? Well, people are like, oh yeah, but you guys are all for, you're okay if they put live lines on there. I was like, yeah, because that's a real thing. That's something you could do. Live lines are way different. That's a tool that you could use and make money or lose money or something. One probability does nothing for you.

I'm really trying to like the WNBA and, and, you know, appreciate the place that's in the links that have win probability. They do it a lot. They won game one and I was outraged. Yeah. It's like, Whoa, we were, we're down. And then 99%. And then we, and it was like, Oh, you mean when you hit a four pointer down three to take a lead with five seconds left, your win probability was pretty low. Yeah.

It's unlikely. Yeah. It was unlikely you're going to win at that point as people were leaving because they thought the Liberty had already won. I needed a stat for this. You know, you should have started a fight in the stands at the Lynx Liberty game. That would have been great. Only with people below. I don't go backwards. Yeah. It's got to be people looking down. That would have been tough because you were courtside probably, right? I think so. I was not courtside. Who am I? Tommy Alter? Come on. All right. Sunday night. Jets at Pittsburgh.

I don't know who wins this game, but it's going to be ugly. I don't think it's going to be very fun to watch. And I feel like whatever side I pick, I'm going to lose the bet. I might have to stay away. It was like the Giants game today. Even though I had a million dollar picks in real life, I was like, I'm staying away. I just know my feelings are going to hurt. The Steelers are an automatic stay away. You're not watching if you don't say it's a rat line. I'm going to say...

Oh, man. I'm going to say Steelers by one. That's what I said. It's one and a half. So you beat me. We could be done. We could be done with the picks too, yeah. But we could be done with these two teams in the night games, right? I feel like, I think the Jets have like three more. I don't need to see the Jets every freaking night game. Do you? I want to hear about Jeff Albrecht, how...

how beloved he is in the locker room. This guy, he has handshakes with... Mike, he's got handshakes with all 53 guys. I don't know how he remembers that many handshakes, Mike. He's shaking everybody's hand, Mike. Let's go to our next-gen stats, Mike, and see how many handshakes Jeff Ulbrich has. He's number two in PFF for handshakes with players.

Collinsworth had a good one today talking about Daniel Jones. I was thinking of you. What was it? I had the Mets on. He tours the ACL. Do you know how hard it is to rehab, Mike? Do you know how hard it is to rehab and come back? Do you know how hard that is? And he's out there running around. Did he let Mike answer? Does Mikey at least get to answer how hard it is? I think Mike just nods. What's the win probability for Daniel Jones in a night game? To rehab correctly? When he's rehabbing, yeah.

We have two Monday night games this week for reasons that remain unclear. Why are they doing that? This is, there's no way there's not a million things going on. You know what it is? It might be to shut people like you and I up because, well, here's another thing I don't realize why they do. I don't understand. There's only two buys, the bears and the Cowboys. So when there's four buys that knocks out a game for the 1 p.m. kickoff, maybe they're moving one of those. I mean, these certainly look like one, you know, one of them looks like, I don't know.

Ravens at Tampa is one of them, and that's a really good game. That's a good one. And I think the Ravens are favored by minus two and a half. You're going to get that. I said two, and it's four and a half. Wait, let me make sure you're not striking distance here. Four, five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Now I have ten, you have eight. Congratulations. You did it. Last one. Cardinals Chargers. Cardinals home, right? Yep. I have Cardinals by two. Okay.

Yeah, I had Cardinals by one and it's Chargers by one and a half. Oh. It's a little strange. I think the Chargers defense is good. Like legit good. Yeah. So there's that. Maybe Vegas. Yeah, Bosa plays. It's nice. It's kind of nice when they have pressure. So next week for the multi-view on YouTube TV.

Oh, yeah. You got to pick this. Well, I have to pick it, but it's the hardest week because seven Lions Vikings that in the early games, Lions Vikings, Seahawks, Falcons, Eagles, Giants, Texans, Packers, Titans, Bills. Those are five really good games. Plus, I'll be in a hangover after Jake May is his first win in London against Middle Seat, Middle Seat.

Middle seat, Doug, his last game before he's on NFL Network. Coach Middle Seat wants to see you in his office now. He's going to say goodbye. You can kick Tennessee Buffalo. He'll be with Colleen Wolfe and Gerald McCoy in two weeks. I'm here with Middle Seat. Doug has joined us. Middle Seat, do you want a club soda?

What, mixed nuts or roasted nuts? Okay. It'll see. Would you like a stale cheese plate? You don't have to. I don't think Tennessee Buffalo needs to be in there. I think that's a game for 40 minutes.

I listen, I think you're underestimating Will Levis. It's pretty fun twice a game when you, when you're looking at the Will Levis TV and his hands are on his helmet and the other team celebrating. So then they cut to coach Callahan. Who's just like, I don't know what we do. How fast can we trade for Deshaun Watson? It looks like.

That was Guest Alliance. Thanks again to Workday for sponsoring this segment. Be a finance and HR rockstar with Workday. To learn more, visit Workday.com. We're going to take a break for the pod and then do a parent corner quick. This episode is brought to you by SimpliSafe. Let's talk defense for a moment. Not the kind you see in the field. I'm talking about what you're doing to protect your home. I personally like to use SimpliSafe. They have my back 24-7, even more so right now with their new ActiveGuard

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All right. Parent corner, Sal. All right. What do you got? I have two. I'll be quick. Uh, first one, my son, Archie goes to Oregon. He was there for Oregon, Ohio state. He slept over cause game day was there. He slept over. Yeah. So they stacked them in there. So he got there at two in the morning and he had signs. He and his buddy had signs and, uh,

They didn't get on camera or anything, but they were there, you know, because it's important. You have to see an ex-Punter flex topless. So you've got to get, you've got to line up like three, 2.30, three in the morning. So that's what they did. So then they're exhausted for the game itself, but that place was really loud. Great win by Oregon over Ohio State. Rushes the field.

And my thing with rushing the field is I'm like, don't do it. If you're a 10 point underdog and you're playing a top five team, then you could do it basketball or football. That was always my rule. They were like a three and a half point on the dog. He rushed the field. He looked like he had the time of his life, but I feel like I'm a curmudgeon with that. Are you that way too? Or you like, do you have like a standard? You talk about a pass rush or the, or a rush rush? Yeah. Pass rush to field. Yeah. Yeah.

That was a pretty big game, man. How many times do two undefeated, two versus three? I'm for it when it's giant games like that. I think when it's like a little lower stakes, I'm not as good with it. You know why I think I'm against it? Because I watched your documentary, the Woodstock 99, right? And I was like, oh my God, what are these people doing now? I don't like crowds, but I'm also an old idiot. But anyway, so time of his life. I mean, was that the first time they beat a top two team?

It was huge. It was a huge win. Yeah. It's a big win. What was your other one? Second one. So I'm headed to Dodger Stadium tomorrow, right? And I'm bringing the kids. I'm taking them out of school. I know I'm going to get in trouble for saying that. And I'm like nervous. It's a day game.

My son, Jack, who dressed as Grimace, I don't know if you remember, I think I sent you the clip. Back in June, we went to Anaheim. They played the Angels. He dressed as Grimace. He was getting high fives. I did this parent corner before. It was the time of his life. He wants to do it again tomorrow. And I was like, listen,

this is different. And you know, he like sees Grimace on the seven train in New York getting mobbed and he see, you know, and like all the good stuff. And he remembers Anaheim. I was like, the angels were 20 games out and it was over a hundred degrees. I'm like, someone's going to punch you or spit on you or say something. And I'm going to be nervously watching. I'm going to have to say something back. And it's not good. And my wife was like, Oh, well let's bring the costume in the clear bag that I'm allowed to bring in. And he could just put it on the seat. I'm like,

No. And the seat is no good. We're not in a luxury box here. We're, you know, we have average seats. Like don't, I don't want to, you got to have my back here. You got to have your wife text Melissa and say, we can't, we can't have him. It's a playoff game. No gimmicks for playoff games. And they're on the road. It's not, it's not going to be well-received.

Also, like what happens if you don't have leverage in the fight in the stance? What if it's somebody from behind you heckling the Grimace costume? Grimace is very big. He could take care of himself. Well, if it's behind you, remember, grab the shirt, uppercut. Okay. Yeah.

All right. So you're saying. And then you have a grimace next to you, like finishing him off. So you're saying if we get the highest seats in the joint. You got to be last row. Nobody can be behind you. That's good. That seems like a win-win for everybody. All right. I'm anti-gimmick for an actual playoff game. Thank you. Okay. Anti-grimace, anti-gimmick. That's it. I'm going to have to tell him. I'm going to get in trouble. Yeah.

My parent corner, as usual, for the six straight week, I can't do any of the ones involving my son. You're going to have to go to the dark web for that one. So my mom, as you know, Sal, I'm half Italian. Sure. That's a joke. The Italians are different breeds. The closest pop culture has ever come to capturing it, which they captured fully, was the Sopranos. All the fucking weirdness with Italian families. Just all the guilt trips, all the fucking dark shit. It's all there.

So your mother has you killed. Your mother eventually puts a hit on you. I mean, she might, don't rule it out. She's still alive. Um, so house was coming this week and my mom loves house and house loves to eat. And I was like, you know, you haven't cooked in a while. House is coming like, you know, and Kyle and it's Drake Mays first game. Like if there was ever a week you were going to cook, this is it. So I didn't hear back. And then I texted later. I'm like, Hey, are you going to cook for us? And

She sent me a short text back. Well, you guilt trip me enough. So I guess I have to. So now we're immediately on that ground. So during the game today, she showed up with a bunch of food during the late games. Doorbell rang, brought in, didn't want to stay. She made ravioli, brajals, meatballs, big thing of rice pudding, put all of it in, brought some bread.

And it was really great. And then made a point again of how I guilt tripped her and how she spent two days making everything.

I don't know if I totally believed the two days, but that's fine. And it was all delicious. And Joe House ate a lot. And now he's like Bobby Bacala on the couch right now as we do this podcast. I don't know how much he ate. He couldn't even get up to say hi. He ate a ton. He's like, ton! But it was great. And the lesson, as always, is guilt trips work in Italian families. Yeah. Whether you're the son or the parent, right? Or the kid. Yeah. But she did on the way out, she's like,

You could come by and see me every once in a while. Keep in mind, I was gone. I was literally gone for eight days. It was in the East Coast for eight days. But somehow it's my fault that I call her a couple times. Visit your mom and you'll get brajol is the bottom line here. The guilt trips. I don't know. What other ethnicities have guilt trips? Yeah, Jewish. So you have both sides. My mother's Jewish. My father's Italian. And it is just a clash. It's a guilt trip around the world is what it is.

Crazy. Uh, here's my other parent corner. This is more of a husband corner. My, uh, my wife went to go see my daughter today and did a 7am flight. So I was like, all right, pack the night before, put everything outside our bedroom so that you don't wake up. I got to wake up earlier for this Jags, Pats, Jags, London game. Um, but if you do everything the night before you sneak out, you won't wake me up. And,

It'll, it'll, and she's like, no, no, that's why I'm not going to wake up. That'll be good. And, um, it must, it was five minutes in shape for 45. I'm wide awake. She's like, ah, where is it? Oh my God. And she's like, just swearing at herself in the bathroom because she misplaced something. So, uh, I've been up since four 45 this morning. Well, it's worse. The guilt trip or the, uh, the exclamations looking for a hairbrush. Well, does your wife do the, do the monologue?

The monologue to their self when they're frustrated? Yeah, from room to room. Guys don't do this. No, I don't think so. This is like a specifically more toward...

Maybe just our wives and other, but yeah, they, it's just this running monologue where they, I don't know who they're talking to. And we can't hear, you just hear muffled, like anguish arguing with no other person in the room. I feel like if I did that, she'd put me in an insane asylum, but yeah, she gets carte blanche. She gets to be able to do that. Oh my God. And now I can't find my keys. And it's like, this is a Netflix movie. You're the narrator of like, there's nobody else here. It's just me. Yeah.

I like it. So I don't know. There's got to be some reason for the monologue. Yeah. Like that. I think they want us to hear. Yeah. Sometimes they'll do this stuff like, well, I guess I, I guess I'll be the one who cleans up the kitchen again. And you'd be like, all right, that was directed at me. But then there's other times where they're not really talking to anybody. It's just like outer monologue. Yeah. But if you bring it up to them,

The probability of winning that argument is zero. Kyle hasn't had kids yet, but he did get married last year. Kyle, does your wife just have monologues with herself that you're not involved in? No, actually, this was kind of a moment. I think I might be the monologue guy. Really? You're the monologue guy. Interesting. So maybe it's one spouse in the couple is the monologuist. Yeah, you claimed your turf there as a monologuist?

Kyle did. Yeah. My wife, like just clearly the monologuist in our family. Yeah. So maybe rabbits and stuff though, too. So instead of people giving us feedback on when probability, this is what I want feedback. Right. Who's the, who's the monologuist in your relationship? Yeah. Cause there's always one.

It can't be two because then you just drive each other nuts all the time. And then maybe when you turn like 75, everyone becomes a monologuist. Is this why Brad didn't get married? Because he's just having a monologue with himself. He doesn't need another person in the room. A lot of personalities there. Brad, my wife, your wife, and Kyle. Those are our four examples so far. Brad has never caught a 7 a.m. or 7 p.m. flight. They're both too early.

Yeah, next time, the 7 a.m. flight's not happening. Anyway, that was Parent Corner. We've got to plug this week, Sal. Against All Odds. There we go. Come on, let's get some wins here. Let's make this exciting. But we have Against All Odds podcast and the Ringer podcast networked right here through the Ringer with Tate Frazier. The Ringer pregame show. I hit an SGP. Simmons, when the hell does that happen? Oh, my God. Yeah, that was fun. And on Cousin Sal's winning weekend, I'm interviewing Anthony Richardson.

Oh, interesting. It is interesting. Well, it's Tuesday and I mean, it airs Friday. So what do I say about his availability? It's a little it's a little tricky. Hmm. Maybe talk about the combine. Yeah.

Yeah. Are you ready for me to become an NBA hole again or no? No, no. Oh, you can do it already. You're already sending texts about what you put in on Fandle and stuff. OKC. And I was back in all this. It's all of a sudden it's really easy to just make some crazy bets. They have one seeds. All stuff will be talked about this week in the pod. All right. Love it. Sal, good luck with the Mets. Good job by you. Good job by you, buddy.

Thanks to Kyle Creighton for producing as always. Thanks to Steve Cerruti and Gahow as well. Don't forget you can subscribe to this YouTube feed and then you wouldn't be surprised when we pop on there. And I'll be back on this podcast on Tuesday. Bye, everybody.

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