Belichick Out In New England, Nick Saban Talk With Andy Staples, Aaron Schatz On Wild Card Weekend + Picks & Preview

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On today's part of my take, we have a packed, packed show. All of the coaches have been fired or retired, so we're going to talk about Bill Belichick, Pete Carroll.
We have Andy Staples on to talk about Nick Saban, who's going to get that job, his legacy, why he was the best college football coach of all time. We also have a great interview with Aaron Schatz, the inventor of DVOA.
We finally got to the bottom of what DVOA is, and he talked about the playoff picture, what teams he thinks are overperforming, underperforming, what units you should be looking out for, especially when you're betting this weekend. We're going to preview every game, and then we'll finish with Fyre Fest.
It is a great time to be alive as a sports podcaster. A lot to talk about.
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All right, back to part of my take. Okay, let's go.
Boy! Boy! Now in the street there is violence And there's lots of work to be done No place to hang out or wash in And then I can't blame all on the sun no. We're gonna rock down to Electric Avenue.

And then we'll take it higher.

Oh, we're gonna rock down to Electric Avenue.

It's part of my take.

This is about Barstool Sports.

It's higher.

Welcome to part of my take.

Today is Friday, January 12th.

And Bill Belichick has been fired. Pete Carroll has been fired.
Nick Saban has retired. There are a lot of really good coaches available out there.
A lot of really good coaches with not a lot to do. That was shocking.
The fact that it happened, bang, bang, bang, it was Pete Carroll. Last time we talked to you guys was on Wednesday, but Pete Carroll got fired on Wednesday morning.
Nick Saban retired Wednesday night.

Bill Belichick got fired on Thursday morning.

Just these things happen in threes.

Three of, well, Nick Saban's the best college coach of all time.

Yes.

Bill Belichick's the best NFL coach of all time.

Yes.

And Pete Carroll's probably a top 15 football coach of all time.

Maybe even top 10. I'd say maybe he's probably top 20 college coach of all time and top 20 nfl coach of all time he's best dual he's 14 all time in nfl wins he's got two national titles in college football yeah i would say if you like put it all together pete carroll has an argument for being a top 10 football coach of all time yeah and ron rivera fired that's mount rushmore of coaches right there I'll tell you what so Henry Hank was getting uh on us PFT because he thought that the fake news media ourselves Mike Florio as we've been reporting consistently all year as we were reporting consistently he was like well Black Monday happened and Bill Belichick still the coach of the New england patriots and he was kind of needling us like hey you guys are wrong i'm not gonna ask hank for an apology but i it wouldn't hurt to say you were right yeah just once no i was all i did was ask when it was gonna happen you guys didn't have an answer for me well we said thursday morning i think we don't know the predictions we said some point this week yeah i i gotta say when I woke up in the morning on Thursday mornings, I get up at 630 in the morning and I think he got fired at like 7 in the morning on Eastern Standard Time.
I saw it and then I just sat and looked at my phone waiting for Hank to wake up. Yeah.
I was like, he has to wake up. He has to wake up.
Yeah. What does Belichick do now? I was just asking Jake before we started taping the show, does he have to go for interviews? Do you bring Bill Belichick in and be like, so describe to me your coaching flaw.
What does Bill Belichick have to prove? Is it just like some owner calls him up and is like, hey, congrats, you've got the job if you want it. Yeah, some owner calls him up and is like, hey, Bill, we want to bring you in.
And he's like, all right, do I have full control? He's like, yep, you've got got full control or if he even has to go to an interview he just wears all six of his rings and they're like oh that's nice yeah bring your resume with you bill i'd like you to print out your cv and have it on our desk yeah but but the real story is henry yeah our dear henry well no we want people want to hear from you you don't remember a time when belichick wasn't your head coach no i don't uh i do not i was what i think eight years old when they won in 2001 so i don't remember anything before that i barely remember that season to be honest so it's it's very very sad my my childhood is over which is appropriate because i'm 30 um greatest coach of all time greatest run in sports history and it's over here's here's a fun stat i got from adam schefter um since the patriots hired belichick in 2000 the other 31 teams have used 162 head coaches in 224 total coaching stints that's crazy that's nuts it's i mean it's an insane run of excellence i actually hank can i feel a little bit better? Please. I actually think this was a good time for it to happen because he had this year that was bad, right? Last year, what did they finish? They finished like 8-9.
Last year was not great either. It wasn't great, but it was like a competitive-ish year.
If you had kept Bill Belichick and he had done one more really bad year, then the memories start to sour a little bit. Whereas now, yeah, there was four or five years after Tom Brady.
But I think those four or five years kind of wash away as the time goes by. And it's like we just remember the wins and the Super Bowls and the six Super Bowls.
So in a weird way, I think you should be happy because it could have gotten worse and then it would have been like, what is going on here? Yeah. Yeah.
That's fair. And yeah, you'll always remember the good times, the greatest times, greatest times I've ever had where, where, because of Bill Belichick, because of Tom Brady, because of the Patriots, I will always love him.
I'll always appreciate him. He's probably, you know, him and the Patriots organization in that run has probably ruined my perception of football.
People always get mad at me. Like, you don't know a ball, you know, the draft that's because of Bill Belichick and the Patriots always being in contention, always expecting excellence, always, you know, the season doesn't start till right now that's over.
I'm going to have to deal with a new coach, new GM. I'm going gonna have to actually start paying attention to the offseason stuff and and all that and it's i'm not looking forward to it i'm i've been trained to expect afc championship super bowl at the minimum right yeah and i'm not ready to you know go back to being a normal person you kind of ruined football for you in a way yeah just they were so good for so long that i now just have to like and it's also weird it's like uh it's like a stepmom situation like whoever comes in somewhere no it's like whoever whoever comes in like how you know are you ever really gonna love them well what if it's would you rather be jared mayo or mike vrabel i would like it to be a former player i i the vrabel one like i and i could be way off base here but i i I think Vrabel? I would like it to be a former player.
The Vrabel one, and I could be way off base here, but I think Vrabel is fun to say, and I love Vrabel. He's a great guest on the show.
The name is fun to say? No, it's fun to say we want Vrabel, and I was saying it today. I want Vrabel.
I don't know that he's as tight with the organization as people might think. They just put him in the Ring of Honor, though, a couple weeks ago.
And an inside source told me, that inside source being Will Compton, who was here in the office today, that maybe Rabel going back to New England for the Ring of Honor might have had the Titans be like, huh, maybe he just wants to go back there. That was a report that came out today.
Oh, okay, so Will just told me that. then he said hey big cat this is what i'm hearing yeah um yeah apparently when he went back there and he said so many glowing things about the patriots organization he was saying like this is don't take this for granted because not every place is like this he went back to tennessee and amy adam strunk was like why'd you say all that stuff yeah what's going on you like like me? And he's like, yeah, probably.
And who would blame him for that? So it feels like he's got the love. I would absolutely love Rabel.
Yeah. It feels like he's got the love for the Patriots.
So why wouldn't – would you rather him or Jared Mayo? Because there was – the argument could be made like there was a lot of smoke this year, a lot of smoke about the coaching staff and guys not getting along. Jared Mayo was part of that coaching staff i would rather be able recurring guest friend of the program he's proven it proven it yeah super bowl champion obviously mayo is too but i would i'd rather be able just proclivity to the show so okay good use of that word yeah good good use yeah proclivity it's funny that you said was it uh kind of yeah proximity is what you're looking for yeah proclivity yeah we we know what you meant yeah it's funny that you said.
Was it? Kind of. Yeah, proximity is what you're looking for.
Proclivity. We know what you meant.
Yeah. It's funny that you said, like, if he had stuck around another year, because that is the ultimate Belichick way, right? Right.
Fire a guy one year too soon rather than one year too late. And this year was bad.
But, again, I think that as long as you don't stack up, like, five, six bad years, the memory will fade away. And you'll just be like, oh, yeah, that Bailey Zappi year, that was weird.
And you won't even really remember it. How do you hire a GM? Interview them.
Like what? You talk to Ernie Corsi. He says he recommends Bill Pullian.
Bill Pullian then recommends one of his fail sons. That's going to be weird.
Boom, GM done. Getting, like, dealing with a new coach and new GM.

Well, if it's Vrabel, he might be the GM, too.

Really?

I don't know.

He wanted more control in Tennessee.

I don't know that they give him complete control.

I feel like Kraft is going to want a GM and a head coach to be separate right now.

Unless it's a guy like Mike Vrabel who he trusts, who's part of his family.

That's a different situation.

Do you think that Kraft is going to, like, Belichick, do you think Belichick is going to have a say in the new head coach? No. He's got fired.
What do you mean, Hank? You're in denial right now. Hold on.
He's no longer part of the organization. What? They said bye to him.
It's not like Nick Saban. Nick Saban will have a say in the, he probably gave them a list of names.
He's going to be in the office yeah because he retired bill belichick got fired he doesn't it was a mutual parting of ways but okay wait hold on like him and him and craft are close no but but okay it was like belichick probably wants mail wait because that but but it was a mutual parting of ways do you think bill belichick wants to go find a new job? Do you think Bill Belichick didn't want to stay where he's been and won six Super Bowls? Because I would imagine he probably wanted to stay. Yeah, of course.
Okay, all right. That was a dumb question.
I just thought him and Kraft are super, super close. Obviously, again, but they both know.
Belichick is aware of how bad things have gone, and he's like, yeah, it's probably time to mix it up. But you should go with Gerard Mayo.
He probably gave him a suggestion. I just don't know if Kraft would be like, yeah, I'm just going to take whatever you say.
What you're thinking of here, Hank, is like, Bill Belichick. I said, does he have a say? Oh, no, he does not have a say.
Belichick, the GM, was the worst part of Belichick, and now you want Belichick, the GM, to hire the next head coach. I'm not saying hiring him.
My question was, does he have a say? I don't think so. What are you going to say, Max? I think that there's a chance he did want to leave.
Really? I think that he might be at a point where he doesn't want to do a rebuilding coaching team, and he wants to go to a place that has guys. He doesn't want to fix his age?

Kraft said it was mutual.

Yeah.

I think there's a chance that he's like, I'm too old to go through a rebuild and get back

to winning Super Bowls.

I need to go to a place where I can win Super Bowls now.

I kind of like that.

And if he was like, if you keep Mayo and my son around, I'll go.

Hold on.

And it's mutual.

You think his son is staying around?

Hold on.

Wait. Back up for a sec.
I don't think so. I think it was all Belichick's out.
If that is true, Max, Bill Belichick will not get as much control anywhere else than what he had in New England. Well, I think regardless, they were taking away the GM.
Right, but he would always still have more control than the GM if they hired a GM because he's Bill Belichick. True.
That is his place. Six Super Bowls.
Maybe there's a world where he was like, I wanted to leave, but I feel like you wouldn't want to leave a place where you have the run of it. But I'm looking at it like, we'll get the rumors i i assume but like if the cowboys are on the table i think that there's a chance that but yeah like that could be a mutual parting of ways if he's talked to jerry jones and been like and was like i can take over this cowboys roster now right rather than go to the patriots but he wouldn't have any control yeah but i think that he might just be like I he may be willing to go to it give that up for it I could win now I I think he can probably see some silver linings to it but I don't think there's any possible chance that this was like nothing in life is totally mutual right no there's no way that like I yeah PFT is exactly right like I bet you Bill, you know, when he wakes up, he's like, you know what, this might not be a bad thing.
But there's, he wanted, and especially, like, he's a historian of the game. You don't think he wanted to break the record with the Patriots, a team that he made his entire career there.
Like, he definitely wanted to stay. Sure.
But there's some silver linings for him, especially if you're right, if he can go find a roster that's ready to go right now and win a shitload of games. Because he probably, there's a part of Bill Belichick is like, I kind of need to win another Super Bowl so that we're even on the Tom Brady one.
Yeah, it's the Brady effect. So there are a number of teams that are interested right now.
I'd just like to say on behalf of the commanders, I don't think I'm interested any longer in Bill Belichick because now that he doesn't have a team it's like portion do i really don't really want like he was way more attractive as a candidate when he had a job now it's like oh this unemployed guy wants to work for me so i'm more interested in other other people but what is shane's hit rate on photoshops you forced him to do i know i'm just saying like at the time there was a material change the material change was he. I don't want a fired coach.
I don't want a retread like Belichick. A washout? Yeah, a washout.
We'll circle back to that soon. Come on, it's the same six guys that keep getting hired in the NFL.
They never do anything good. I don't want Belichick.
You want more like a strong, silent type like Ron Rivera. Or Mike Vrabel, like a guy that you know he can coach.
Yeah. So when it comes to the teams that are looking at Belichick, I know that the Falcons are looking at him.
Yeah, which would be very funny, and I did put out my worst-case scenario because I do think that Belichick would go to the Falcons, the Bears would trade Justin Fields to him, and Belichick would win a Super Bowl with Justin Fields. It's a possibility.
They've got a good roster. Yeah.
The Chargers, that's another option for them. And then there's a mystery team that's still in the playoffs.
I love a good mystery team. And I have three candidates for the mystery team.
Okay. And two of them would be great for the show.
Yes. The Dallas Cowboys.
Yes. If Mike McCarthy loses in the first, or maybe even in the second game, if they get their ass kicked in the divisional round, I could see Jerry Jones being like, we've got to make a change chance we got to make a change belichick's out here and just having that for hank i would really i think that would take the sting out of it do you think do you think because it doesn't on paper make any sense because jerry jones that is it's his show like bill belichick doesn't seem like the type of guy who wants his owner doing radio hits talking about his coaching job every single week right that doesn't make sense do sense.
Do you think there's maybe a chance like Belichick and Jimmy Jones Johnson are friends? I think. Do you think maybe Jimmy Johnson was like, hey, you know what? Jerry Jones isn't that bad of a guy.
He's gotten better. I'm in the ring of honor.
He's gotten a lot better recently. So maybe he has a change of heart.
That one would be weird to me just because of the power. And Jerry Jones has shown it doesn't matter that it's Bill Belichick.
It's Jerry Jones team. Yeah.
And I think if it was the Cowboys, Belichick, you know, Jerry Jones has said publicly, like, I want to win another Super Bowl before I die. He's thinking about death all the time.
Right. Like any second Jerry Jones thinks he could die.
So he wants to get maybe a new head coach in there if Mike McCarthy can't get the job done. So that's option one.
Option two, which would be great for the show, is the Philadelphia Eagles.

Philadelphia Eagles. Max, if they fire Sirianni, I would love to see that.

I would love for you to get Hank's leader.

I would love that, Max.

Yeah.

I'm worried about the playoffs right now.

It's about winning on Monday night.

It's not a must-win.

Yeah, I thought you've already given up on the playoffs. Yeah, no, spoiler.
But if Bill Belichick came to the— Everything I've seen is that no one in Philadelphia wants Bill Belichick. Yeah, would you want it for football reasons? I actually would not want him on the command of football.
I want him strictly to troll Hank. I want him.
I've convinced myself for football reasons, yes, but I think that is fueled by Hank. Wait, wait, wait.
Hold on. Time out.
Time out. What do you mean you wouldn't want him for football? No, I want him for football reasons.
He's the best coach of all time. I want him for football reasons.
Yeah, and you already have a roster. That's kind of what I was saying.
He'll go find a fifth-round linebacker, like a Mike Vrabel, and just be like, oh, he's the best player now. When I was talking earlier, I was saying Cowboys, but I was really thinking Eagles.
Because I think if Bill Belichick had that roster, it would be a whole different ballgame. Yeah, honestly, if you went to a team like the Eagles or the Cowboys, it would make way more sense than going to the Commanders, which is a multi-year rebuild.
Right. It would be great for just entertainment in general.
And I think that the Eagles roster is getting older. The window is short.
Uh-oh. So it's like, I'm all right having an old coach who's going to come in and be like, we're going to win, and we're going to win right now.
While our window is still available, we're going to go win. So the third mystery team, I think, might be the Bucs.
Yeah, I agree. I think it could be the Bucs.
I agree. It might be the Belichick Bowl on Monday night.
Winner advances, loser gets the Belichick. Which would you rather, Max? Would you rather win this game, lose next round, or lose this game and get Belichick? I win.
I want to win. So you don't win.
Yeah, but if you're guaranteed to lose the next round, what's the point of winning this round? Yeah, the window's closing, dude. It's closing, dude.
Jalen Hurts might make too much money for Belichick. That might be a sticking issue.
The other one that would be very interesting but would never in a million years happen because Kevin Stefanski might win Coach of the Year, but just doing the full circle Browns. Get him and Saban back there? That would be hilarious like and he is just he is a historian of the game like he hates them what he got that's different owner yeah because they moved to Baltimore yeah yeah so Hank well they're they're their current owners a douchebag too but yeah yeah Jimmy Haslam yeah he defrauded like yeah tens of millions of dollars from truckers.
Hank, I want to get a little sentimental.

Is that okay?

Please.

What is your favorite Bill Belichick memory?

Where do you begin?

I mean.

Mine was when he didn't high five those kids at the Lions game.

Oh, yeah.

That was the best.

Mine was all the cheating.

Oh, wait. Are you going? Are you back to commanders PFT yeah okay yeah okay the Cincinnati press conference and just how that you know catapulted the season that was a Super Bowl winning season that was a great press conference great moment anytime he threw a challenge flag every press conference like that was you know I don't watch I still would watch the press conferences monday morning like periscope tune in bill belichick press conference like laugh out loud funny all the answers snap face the way he would play dumb and just not give anyone anything but he knew what he was doing he was doing it intentionally and then he would open up randomly about like ater.
You'd ask a question about punting and he talked for five minutes about formations and plays from the 1950s.

All the super bowls,

the PFU tweeted PFT,

the,

the taking the time off the clock against the jets.

Like just,

I would do the little travel.

Yeah.

That was when he would prove like his vast,

vastly superior knowledge of the game of football. Just, just for fun to it.
The dropkick Doug Flutie. Yep.
Just to do a dropkick because it was a cool moment in a football thing. There's a lot.
Yeah. When he would put Aaron Hernandez.
When he got mad. They poured the Gatorade ice bath on him and he got furiously mad.
Yeah. That was hilarious because his dad was right there.
I'm not bringing this up just to mention Hernandez, but that one season when they didn't really have any running backs, and he was like, I'm just going to turn my tight end into a running back, and it worked, and it was awesome. The Danny Woodhead years were incredible.
Also, when he did that time-traveling thing against the Jets, it was so funny because you got to see Belichick on one sideline, then Adam Gase on the other. And he bullied Adam Gase into draining 40 seconds off the clock.
And Adam Gase just sat there like a helpless puppy. Yep.
And the smirk that crept over Belichick's face on the sidelines was so priceless. Like, I know the rules more than anyone else in the world.
Yeah. Also, anytime it got cold.
Yeah. Like, when he would just bundle up and just look so miserable.
Yeah, I mean, the sadness of the last day and a half is like Saban, Belichick, Pete Carroll are all-time character fodder for when we watch football. Yeah.
Like they are. The three of them, you know their antics.
You know the style they have you can depend on them so yeah it's changed he was a fan of barstool his sons are you know

big fans of barstool met them a bunch of times over the year never got to meet bill but uh

like he probably knows who you are they were they were you know obviously part of a huge huge

bill belichick none of us are probably sitting here if it's not for bill belichick you could

make that argument easily but i would say maybe tom brady who you give more credit to

Thank you. Bill Belichick, none of us are probably sitting here if it's not for Bill Belichick.
You could make that argument easily. I would say maybe Tom Brady, who you give more credit to? Belichick.
Okay. Really? Players make plays.
Players make plays, but like 2001, that was Belichick. Yeah, I mean, it's true.
Barstool doesn't exist without Belichick and Brady in Brady yeah the J I mean obviously it's Brady too but I it's it's I don't I don't think it's one of the other it's not one of the other there's it's a chicken in the egg situation what if he goes to one of these rosters that are really good and again doesn't do well do you still say it's Belichick over Brady oh good question Maxwell that would that would probably change things I don't I don't if it's Belichick over Brady it's still close but I do think I I think it's it's both but I think the the Tom Brady prime years they lost two of those Super Bowls yeah they also won a bunch I know but I'm saying like 2001 you can you can you know obviously tom brady made that fourth quarter drive but it was like the defense that won that championship but then brady has one without him but no i know i know i'm just saying it's not like i don't i think it's if it's it's 51 49 whoever you want to call it it's it's not it's not a one or the other so you would say that bill belichick as batman is undefeated in super Bowls. Tom Brady as Batman.
No, no. I'm just saying people that want to say, oh, just because Brady won one, it's definitively Brady.
But when Brady was playing his best football, 18-0, like he was the MVP, they still lost to the Super Bowls. I don't know if that helps your argument, but I do agree.
It's the answer that no one wants to hear because in sports talk, everyone wants to be like, well, it's one or the other. You've got to pick a side.
I mean, you're right that it's both of them. They both need each other.
They both said that. Yeah.
You need the other. Brady's never Brady without Belichick.
Belichick's never Belichick without Brady. That's a fact.
So where do you want him to go, Hank? Dallas. Okay.
You would become so much more of a Cowboy. Oh, yeah.
I'd be a bigger cowboy. I, I said it,

I said it on the show as it happened with the bucks.

Like I'm rooting for the,

I'm rooting for the Patriots first bucks.

Second.

The only way I'm not rooting for the bucks is if they play the Patriots in the super bowl,

which obviously didn't happen,

but I was a huge bucks fan.

I'm a huge Tom Brady fan.

I was rooting for the bucks in every game that he played,

except for last year in Dallas.

Um,

but if he goes to Dallas,

I'm going to be the biggest Cowboys fan,

even bigger than I am now. Okay.
Well, it's going to be exciting to see where he goes because it'll be funny just seeing him in different colors. Yeah.
That alone will be just. Atlanta would suck.
It also, I have a feeling. He's just not an Atlanta guy.
He's not really a Dallas guy. I don't know if it's, this might not be what happens, but I have a feeling Belichick might lighten up a little with his new team.
Like he might just a little bit. He's still going to be Belichick.
If he goes to a warm weather place, he might lighten up just a little bit. If he goes to Philly, I don't think he will.
Yeah, probably not. Yeah, he'll probably get harder.
He's not going to Philly. I hope he goes to Philly now.
If he goes to Philly. I think the Chargers.
As of now, the Chargers. What would you do if he went to Philly? I would love it.
Man, Hank. I love it so Hank, you would be.
Everything I just said, I would not apply. What if he goes to Philly and you guys win Super Bowl? What if he goes to Philly and wins multiple scores? Max is happy.
And it's your fault. We would blame you for Max's happiness.
Yeah, no. You shouldn't have kicked him out.
No, but Philly fans are scumbags. They would not appreciate him.
They would treat him like a piece of shit. Like, it would not.
It would be. If he started winning football games.
Oh, man. It would be so great.
Like, just seeing all. For this show, Belichick to the Eagles.
And the Eagles starting hot. And then having, like, a tail off.
And Max starts blaming Belichick. And Hank starts blaming Max.
And it's just, sign me up. If at Chespeas.
You might have to do a spinoff PMT. Kettle corn.
We just do Max and Hank. If we're looking at Chespeas because Belichick loves that he coached Lawrence Taylor.
Yeah. He loves that he coached Tom Brady.
What's the one player out there on a team that might be available that could make a guy like Belichick be like, I want to coach that guy. It might a parsons or max crosby max crosby get bill to vegas yeah why not bosa tj watt tj that would be weird if you went to pittsburgh that would that would fit though i don't think that they would hire him in pittsburgh because bel, what, 70 years old? Like, Pittsburgh, they have to keep their – they're contractually obligated to keep their coach for at least 15 years.
Yeah. You can't really hire a 70-year-old.
I actually think – the more I think about it, the interview is probably just going to go, hey, Bill, we'd like for you to coach here. Are you going to bring your son with you? Will he do the licking thing? Yeah, is your son going to be working on the sidelines? Yeah.
Well, either way, I'm excited to see what happens, what transpires for both Hank, your Patriots, and where Belichick ends up. We should talk briefly about Pete Carroll.
Pete Carroll fired. I alluded to it on Sunday.
A lot of people online were like, that's crazy. But it felt like the Seahawks have, like, if you look at it,

they've kind of been the same team the last five years,

like a little bit of success, but also maybe underachieving most years.

Do we think – there was also a weird report that maybe it had something to do with them smoking cigars in the locker room after the Cardinals game. But that was actually because one of the players had had a baby and he had saved them.
But either way, Pete Carroll – that's not like Pete Carroll's a bad coach. He got fired.
It's just he's 72 and the Seahawks are like, we're kind of doing the same thing every year, even the last few Russell Wilson years, where it's like competitive-ish, maybe make make the playoffs but never really be a Super Bowl contender uh do you think Pete Carroll still wants to coach I don't think so so it sounds like he's going to remain maybe in in the Seahawks organization if he wants to as I don't know probably not GM but like advisor yeah consigliere yeah he's the hand of Paul Allen yeah yeah okay that makes, Pete Carroll, all-time coach. And if he won that, I think he would be a slam dunk top 10 football coach if he had won that Super Bowl.
They lost the Patriots. Yes.
Yeah. He was one handoff away.
Yeah. And he was, yeah, an incredible college coach, incredible NFL coach.
Also a guy that, like, I feel like he's at the top of the list of guys you'd want to play for. Yeah, he also ages in reverse.
So it wouldn't shock me if his hair turned darker after he got out of the game, a little bit more tan, looked another 10 years younger. Pete Carroll, he does not look as old as he is.
But then you look at, if you're a team like the Seahawks, you're probably not going to be great next year, maybe not great the year. It's going to be a process to get back to being an elite team.
They have a decent roster. That's the thing.
They don't want an older guy leading that rebuild. Right.
He also now can go spend more time with his twin. It's true.
Right. He's going to find him first.
Or he'll get to the bond with a 9-11 investigation. Yes.
One or the other. That's really what he's up to.
So we are going to talk about Nick Saban with Andy Staples. We have him on talking about Nick Saban, everything that's going on in Alabama, who's going to be coaching there next.
I had one thing that I forgot to bring up about Nick Saban, the stat that's crazy. Nick Saban, it's not just the national titles.
It's the fact that he literally never had a down year. He had one year in 2010 where he lost three games with Alabama besides obviously his first year so from 2008 to 2023 he had one single year that he lost three games that's crazy it's like in a college football with 18 year old kids to only have one year where you could be like oh that's down here and that also was the year that they lost to Cam Newton the Iron Bowl with that crazy comeback by Cam Newton so it like they didn't really – Saban always just beat everyone he was supposed to beat and then like once or twice every couple years there would be a team good enough to beat him.
Yeah, the best college football coach of all time. I want to play this call.
It's not even close. It happened today on the Paul Feinbaum show.
So Paul Feinbaum has the best callers in the business. They start talking about replacements for Nick Saban,

and they start tossing a few names out there.

Paul Feinbaum mentioned Dabo Swinney as being a name that could come to town.

This is Legend.

That's his name.

This is Legend from Alabama calling in, and his reaction is perfect. I'm pulling gasoline on myself and setting myself on fire on the 50-yard line.
You can guarantee it. If it's Dabo, Sweeney, I'm pulling my arm off and taking that contract fracture and I'm beating the hell out of myself.
No damn Dabo. Do you hear me, Greg? That's from the Alabama nation.
Get it right. You'll be judged on this one right here, brother.
You'll be judged on this one right here. Man, Paul, I don't know, brother.
I don't know. Y'all pray for me.
Pray for me. Help me, Jesus.
I like that he slipped into a little Hulk Hogan there, just dropping some brothers. Yeah, come on, brother Paul.
Come on, Paul. Pray for me, brother.
No damn Dabo. Break my own arm.
Beat myself in my beat myself in my own compound fracture Paul I mean yeah Dabo like we're gonna talk about with Staples but like he Dabo would be is he was the guy for a while that everyone thought would be at Alabama but he has not adapted at all yeah I'm interested to know what Saban does in retirement I kind of hope it's Tommy Reese enough people people. You think they'd promote from within? If there's enough, I mean, Dan Lanning, obviously saying he's staying.
If enough guys in that top three, four, and the buyout is not, you know, is the buyout too much? I don't know. Like, we'll see.
We'll see. That would be a nightmare scenario.
A lot of pressure. A lot of pressure.
Yeah, I would not want that if I'm Tommy Reese. A lot of pressure.
A lot of pressure. Okay, should we get into Super Wild Card Weekend? Super Wild Card Weekend.
I am so excited for these games. I'm so excited.
We have to, again, I have to remind everyone you have 13 football games left, and after this weekend it will be down to seven. So embrace it.
Enjoy it. There's like Saturday can't get here quick enough.
So, so excited. So let's just do it.
Let's talk about these games. We can maybe give some picks, thoughts.
You guys ready to dive in? Let's do it. All right.
Browns and Texans, first game, Saturday afternoon, which is the perfect spot for the Texans. Joe Flacco, he said – what was his quote where he's like, we're going to do something in the next five weeks that we'll remember for the rest of our lives? I think he said to his team.
Okay. A little presumptuous, but that's okay.
That sounds good. I mean, Joe Flacco.
I've been there. Yeah, we've said it said it before we know that the browns their defense is elite we know joe flacco was on the couch a month and a half ago but if there's one guy one guy in the world that can make you feel like hey maybe it's magical runs about to happen it's joe flacco yeah he's got a good record on the road in the playoffs yep seven and five uh flacco is is coming off the heels on Christmas Eve of dismantling the Texans defense.
Yep. So you can say, yeah, C.J.
Stroud didn't play in that matchup. He didn't play in that game.
Pretty big factor, but C.J. Stroud also doesn't play defense.
He was the Amari Cooper game. Yeah, it was the Amari Cooper game.
What do you have, 265 yards receiving? That's crazy. Something like that.
Which it also, you can make the argument that C.J. Stroud not playing that game might work in the Browns' favor in this game too because C.J.
hasn't seen that defense yet. Jim Schwartz is going to have some shit.
He's going to dial something up. He's going to have some shit.
It's going to be dialed up. Guys are going to pin their ears back.
Guys will be flying around out there. I'm trying to think of what other cliches I can do.
He's going to do some shit C.J. Stroud's never even dreamt of.
Yeah, he's going to put, I don't know if he's going to put him in hell because C.J. Str cj stroud seems like a good guy yeah but he's gonna put him in purgatory for a while he's gonna make him think and uh rookies don't really win that much in the playoffs so obviously brock purdy won last year in the playoffs before that you know the last rookie quarterback to win the playoffs it goes all the way back 11 years before that to russell wilson when he also beat another rookie quarterback rg3 in the playoffs, it's 17-35-1, a rookie quarterback against the spread, a rookie quarterback going up against a quarterback that's played in the playoffs.
And there's four of them this weekend. Yeah.
It's CJ Stroud, it's Tua, it's Mason Rudolph, it's Jordan Love. Yeah, so I think I like the Browns this weekend.
I think the defense is Super Bowl caliber. I would agree with you.
The thing that I keep thinking about the Texans, obviously, they've finished the season strong. Tank Dell injury was huge, but they've still won.
I think they finished, what, four and two, I believe? Yeah. Or yeah, four and two.
So they they finished strong but the teams they played in that stretch um Indy Tennessee Denver Arizona those teams uh are bottom third of the league in defense the Cleveland Browns are very very good defensively I think there's maybe a little like you might get into a point where it's like as great as C.J. Stroud's been this year, this is a different animal.
This is a different beast, and this is a team that's completely different than the teams that they've been beating down the stretch. One big question is Denzel Ward because he hurt himself in practice today.
Yes. So he hurt his knee in practice.
I saw a report that he was questionable for Saturday, and then Ian Rappaport came back and said that they think he's going to play. So I don't know if he's going to be 100%, but that would be pretty significant for the Browns' defense.
Yeah. The one thing about the Browns is they are battle-tested with injuries.
They've played pretty much every iteration of lineups this year on both offense and defense. Yeah.
They do next man up. Yeah.
I mean, it's like Denzel Ward's missed games. I mean, Miles Garrett didn't miss games, but he was hurt for a few games.
He's been hurt. Yeah, he's been hurt.
Like their offensive line has missed, you know, all types of games, like in terms of shuffling everyone around. Nick Chubb got injured like 10 years ago.
Yeah. So if there's one team that you can be like, all right, well, they could probably still bounce back from injuries, probably the Browns.
I'm very excited to see if the Browns happen to win two playoff games. What goes on with the Deshaun-Joe Flacco discourse? Are they going to be able to afford Joe Flacco? I would like to do the discourse right now.
Who would you rather have? Joe Flacco. I'm taking Flacco.
As a human. I'm taking Flacco.
Even better human being than a football player. Even better human being than Deshaun Watson as's as a human being deshaun watson way way better football player than human being correct way better insanely a large gap maybe the biggest ratio one of the biggest oj oj well not guilty yeah her name is also not guilty because it was vacated after yeah yeah yeah so we're in sharper darren better football player.
Way better football player. Much better.
The tight end. Nerd Nugget.
Oh, yeah. Murder guy.
Nerd Nugget. Yeah.
Well, that was the offensive lineman. Yeah, yeah.
But in today's game, I would say that Deshaun Watson has the biggest football to good guy ratio. Yes, I would agree.
Henry Ruggs. He's not in the league.
Aaron Rodgers. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, good point. How many grandmothers has he killed? Did you guys see that we got in a good luck off? Oh, with who? So Tony Diggs, who was a former co-worker of ours, who we love, who works on the Pat McAfee show.
Tone Diggs. Tone Diggs.
Well, his name's Tony. And he got in a good luck off with Clay Travis.
Oh, who won? I take the Pat McAfee show's side on this. Who won? I believe Clay did the last good luck, so Tony did.
Tony won. So Tony has the luck.
Yeah, yeah. He said, yeah, Tony started saying like, what was it? Good luck.
And then Clay Travis came back and was like, good luck with your show. And then Tony was like, no, you good luck.
Clay's like, no, good luck. I like that.
Yeah, good luck off. Has Clay tweeted good luck or well played more frequently? He said, you guys legit said he was done for the year yesterday.
Now he's suddenly back talking about Rodgers, which that wasn't the case. Like, I don't know why people started.
Rodgers, I think, stops doing the Pat McAfee show after the season's over. And he, like, comes on every now and then.
And then, like, a bunch of reporters were like, he got fired from the Pat McAfee show, which was very bizarre. And Klay took it and ran with that and was like, oh, man, this is like.

McAfee went woke.

Yeah, they fired Aaron Rodgers.

So then McAfee in a good heel move brought Aaron Rodgers on today.

Okay, I like that.

Also, it's very interesting to see everybody that covers sports media

that hates Aaron Rodgers do nothing but tune in to the Aaron Rodgers interviews

and transcribe every second.

Why are they giving this guy so much free attention? Meanwhile, they're literally tweeting out bar for bar everything that Aaron Rogers is saying. A lot of hand wringing.
Yeah. A lot of, what are we going to tell the children? Yeah.
Shut the fuck up. It's entertainment.
Shut up. We will get to the Jason Whitlock, Stephen A.
Smith in a little bit. You fat bastard.
You fat bastard. It's entertainment, guys.
So I kind of like the over in this game too okay good weather yes very good yeah um i do too actually you know like i like the browns i like the browns offense i like the texans offense browns defense obviously is is out of this world but i still think cj stroud is going to get his what you just said really bummed me out what because i love the dome overs, and I realize it's just because there's no weather. There's no weather, yeah, yeah.
Because it's such a contrast. Is NRG Stadium a dome? It's got a retractable roof, right? We're going roof closed.
Yeah, it's indoors. Okay.
No weather fact. You said one line, and it just like light bulb in my head.
Hey, you moron. Yeah.
If it's inside, it's over. I might have to take the outdoor overs just to prove a point.
I can lose money both indoors and outdoors. Outdoors, the weather's going to be crazy.
All right, so you have a nerd nugget for us, Jake? Yeah, for the playoffs, I actually researched one for each team. That's cool with you guys.
So we're doing two nerd nuggets? We're just going to do one for each game. No.
No, go ahead. Go.
Give us the two. For the Browns.
Since Joe Flacco has taken over as Browns quarterback, he has led Cleveland to a 4-1 record as a starter and became the first player in NFL history to record at least 250 passing yards and two touchdown passes in his first five games with the team. Yeah, because he's elite.
Yeah. He's motherfucking Joe Flacco.
That was a good nerd nugget because it was just Joe Flacco elite. Also, it is a retractable stadium in Houston.
It's going to be closed. And then for the Texans, the first team in NFL history to win their division with a rookie quarterback and a first-year head coach.
CJ Stroud, D'Amico Ryan's the fifth rookie QB and first-year head coach duo since the merger to make the playoffs. Do you guys know the last one? Rookie QB and first-year head coach duo since the merger to make the playoffs.
Do you guys know the last one?

Rookie QB and first-year head coach to make the playoffs.

There's been five total.

Rookie QB and rookie head coach to make the playoffs.

Andrew Luck and was it Pagano?

Chuck Pagano, yeah.

Rookie Chuck Pagano. That was good.
Chuck Pagano. Yeah, that was good.

Also, 09, Mark Sanchez and Rex Ryan.

And then 2-0-8, Matt Ryan and Mike Smith and Joe Flacco and John Harbaugh.

Mike Smith.

Yeah, I remember that guy.

Jesus.

He was like – Mike Smith was just create a coach on Madden.

Yeah, he looked like Phil Leotardo.

If Mike Smith walked by me on the street, I would never, never be able to pick him out. Yeah, he looked like Phil Leotardo.
If Mike Smith walked by me on the street, I would never never be able to pick him out. Yeah, he looks like an insurance salesman.
Mike Smith. And his name, too.
Yeah. It really is a creative coach.
Yeah. Okay, good nerd nuggets, Jake.
Alright, Saturday night. Dolphins at Chiefs.
By the way, tune into our stream. We got Nicky Smokes and Frank the Tank.
It should be something. We're going to stream Browns Texans as well.
We have Jeff D. Lowe coming and our great producer, Kevin Zuppi, who's a diehard Browns fan.
He's the one who, when Deshaun Watson went out for the year, I came in early and he was just on the phone with his dad and he was like, we're just never going to catch a break. He was about to cry.
He loves the Browns. And Jeff D.
Lowe is, everything is the apocalypse with Jeff D. is the apocalypse yeah yeah he's actually just like a cleaned up version of frank the tank yeah he just says instead of like biting his hat jeff will just say brutal game's over absolutely brutal yep it's classic browns this is like jeff they they just lost the coin flip and he'll do hashtag brutal so it should be great streaming great streaming uh okay dolphins.
Dolphins at Chiefs. Saturday night.
It's going to be cold. Very cold.
Dangerously cold, as a matter of fact. That's what the weather service said.
Oh, no children and dogs outside? Dangerously close. The latest forecast approaches a windchill of negative 30 degrees.
Whoa. Negative 30.
You shouldn't be outside. No one should be outside, but they're going to be like, you know what? Fuck that.
We're going to put 90,000 people outside at the same time. But I kind of like, you got to go to that game if you got a ticket, because that's a badge of honor game.
Negative 30 is so cold, it feels like you're vaping every time you breathe. Yeah.
Like every hit. Yeah, your nostrils, your nose hairs freeze up, everything.
So we've talked about the candy ass jerseys. Aaron Schatz by the way has some great info about everything uh the actual numbers about these games not just us guessing on whether it's indoors or outdoors and candy ass jerseys but the Dolphins uh as a franchise I believe I don't oh yeah under 50 degrees there are 15 and 42 straight up 2 and 19 straight up in the last 21 games as a franchise under 50 degrees and Tua in his coldest starts in the NFL or college 29 degrees he almost beat the Bills remember last year yep the snowball game oh I remember 36 yeah 36 degrees uh they got killed by the Bills in 2021.
37 degrees. They got killed by the Titans in 2022.
Tua does not play well in the cold. And those games are not negative 30-degree wind chill.
Correct. 37 degrees is warm.
No. I don't see Tua winning this game.
I want to wait and see. Do we know what jerseys they're going to be wearing that will make it that will make a direct impact on how i choose to bet this game so everything that i look at with the dolphins tells me that the dolphins are going to struggle a lot because even like like andrew van ginkl got hurt um i know that zavian howard and javon holland are both like game time but they they should play.
Jalen Waddell should play. But their defense, even last week, gave up 21 points and a punt return to the Bills.
But if you look at that game, the Bills had two red zone turnovers, a turnover at the 40, and they got stopped at the 1 going into halftime. The Bills, with 400-plus yards of offense, could have easily scored, you know, 35, 40 points in that game.
Yeah, the good news is I don't think the Chiefs are as good on offense as the Bills are. So that's, yeah.
But they might just do Pacheco. They might just say, this guy, the way that he runs, he looks like a cold-weather running back.
Let's just feed the guy. So all that, yeah, I agree with you, and that might be the game plan.
But then again, obviously Andy Reid. Yep.
Andy Reid. Andy Reid will have to fight himself.
Andy Reid. I just feel like five points is too many points, and I think that what's happening here, like if you told me gun in my head who's going to win this game, I'd say Chiefs, but what have the Chiefs done this season that show you that they can beat teams consistently by five points or more? Nothing.
Right. Nothing.
And we're're doing the flip switch and I don't know if the flip switch is there for the Chiefs this year I think it's going to be a lot of they're going to have to like if they're going to get back to the Super Bowl it's going to be like grinding it out field goal games like tough tough football games not blowing teams out like on some of their Super Bowl runs you remember that Texans game like I don't know I just I think five points is too many points counterpoint the weather I know I mean the the stats that you had for Tua um you can just watch Tua when he plays in the cold he looks very uncomfortable going on the road Arrowhead is like one of the top two or three hardest places to play in general in the NFL and I don't know know. I feel like the Chiefs, everyone's disrespecting them.

And for good reason this time.

They have not given us anything to believe in.

But I still think that the Chiefs in the playoffs with Andy Reid,

with Patrick Mahomes, they can be the Chiefs.

They can be the Chiefs.

They can take care of business against the Dolphins.

I think everyone's thinking that too,

and that's why I kind of like the Dolphins.

It's one of those situations where everything, when I look at this game, says Chiefs, and that makes me think Dolphins. Well, you're right.
I mean, the Chiefs have not been good. Right.
And again, I don't think the Dolphins are going to win this game. It wouldn't shock me if they did, but if I had to do percentages, like Dolphins probably win this game, I don't know 25 of the time but five points i just i don't know i think the dolphins either win or lose by 17 plus i could see that yeah i think they might be just like see i think they're gonna lose down three blowing the division or they might just have a chip on their shoulder that everyone's counted them out and win the game.
I think they're going to lose by three.

I think I'm going to take the Chiefs.

Okay.

Okay.

With Frank the Tank?

I'm not going to say anything.

I do have my prop of the year.

Super wild card prop of the year.

Travis Kelsey scored a touchdown.

It's plus money now.

Okay.

And the Dolphins are not guarding the tight end. And I do think that when you get to the playoffs, Patrick Mahomes will be like,

who can I trust?

Travis Kelsey is the guy I can trust. Is she going to be there? I don't know.
I don't assume so. I mean, we had this whole breakdown the other day.
Yeah. About the network.
Jake, do you know that box is another word for vagina? Yes. Okay.
All right. Going along with the joke.
I didn't know. I didn't know.
I didn't know. I didn't know.
I didn't know. Wait, what? I thought we were talking about sweets.
I was. Okay.
But you guys weren't. All right.
What do you mean us? I wasn't talking about a vagina. Yeah, you were.
I don't recall that at all. She will be there, though.
I would assume so. And she'll be bundled up in that warm, sweet.
Yep. While all the poppers, common folk, freeze their balls off.
Maybe a baked potato girl's going to be there. You remember her? The lady, I think it was at a Chiefs game a couple years ago.
She was eating a baked potato to keep herself warm. Yeah.
And she just brought one in as a hand warmer. If Taylor Swift cared about the people, she'd let everyone in her box.
If she really cared about the people, she'd take a couple extra flights on her private jet back and forth. Maybe get the degrees up globally so it's not that cold there.
But ask this what's the warmest place in that stadium it's going to be taylor's box yeah it's very cozy right so let everyone in the box i i almost said something and i didn't and i want credit for not saying what i was about to say what would you have said i'll text it to me i'll say it i was just gonna say i'm not gonna say it okay okay text it to hank make him say okay hank will you say it probably not do do the nerd nugget well yeah also i just had a fun name the burr nugget about the cold weather let's go back to the drawing board how many nuggets are we gonna do for the dolphins they've won okay i do like gucci man what's up i know who that is like what's oh okay uh for the dolphins they've won just one road playoff game since their 1972 undefeated season yes they had to go on the road in the postseason despite being undefeated they had a different format like a rotational home site thing uh but the good news for miami going into saturday night the dolphins are 3-0 all time in the playoffs against the Chiefs. Never lost the Chiefs in the playoffs.
For the Chiefs, Big Cat. That, Nerd Nuggets stinks.
Because it's all in the 70s and 90s. But it's facts.
It doesn't relate to this game whatsoever. But it's factually correct.
It is factually correct, but I like my Nerd Nuggets that maybe help me. You want right.
That's fair. That help the audience learn something that they don't know that could maybe win them money.
Well, yeah. Well, maybe they knew it and forgot it because it was what? We're not going to say it.
Hank, don't say it. Well, text me.
No, I texted Hank. He's not going to say it.
Hank, you text it to me. No.
At this point, I don't think we should say it. No, I don't want to say it, but I want to see it.
So, Hank, text it to me.

We'll bleep it.

No, no, just text it to me.

We'll bleep it.

I won't say it either.

No, we'll just keep it unsaid.

Meanwhile, for the Chiefs, quarterback Patrick Mahomes and tight end Travis Kelsey

have connected for 14 postseason touchdowns.

And guess what?

They need one more to tie Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski for 15,

which would be the most touchdown connections between a quarterback

and pass catcher in NFL postseason history. I like the guess what that you added in there.
It's my super wildcard prop of the year. Yeah.
So one more, they would tie Brady and Gronk for most ever in the playoffs. So when Hank's texting to you, he might just be changing.
So this is a classic game of telephone. Yeah, I don't think he, I think he's changing it.
Yeah. Why are your notifications silenced? You're off the clock.
No, I just don't want to get distracted during the show. He's texting me word by word.
Yeah, so he's just making it up. Okay.
As you know, I'll say it. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. I can't not say it.
He's so annoying. Fuck it.
Okay. Sunday.
Sunday. Sunday.
We have the Pittsburgh Steelers going to the Buffalo Bills. And no T.J.
Watt. No T.J.
Watt. They do have Herbig, who's pretty good.
But what I see happening in this game, it's a lot of points, right? Ten. Ten points now? All the way up to ten? Ten.
I would not be shocked if the Steelers covered the spread because that's too many points and it's going to be a weird game. It's also, yeah, classic Steelers voodoo.
Yeah, they might muck it up a little bit. I see a lot of plays where Herbig gets upfield because he likes to do that.
Him and TJ both like to do that. They like to rush hard off the edge, and they leave that little gap there on the end, and Josh is just going to eat that up.
I think that Josh is going to have a big day running.

So I think the Bills are going to win this game.

Not a crazy thing to say when they're 10-point favorites.

And I'm bullish about the Bills.

Stop the glazing.

I'm bullish about it.

Wait until you hear Aaron Schatz talk about Josh Allen.

People are going to be upset about that.

I'm bullish about the Bills because if you look back at last year

and that Bengals game and that playoff game and they got bullied absolutely bullied the Bills now do have a legitimate running game it's not just you know remember when the last couple years where we trick ourselves and be like oh the Bills have a running game because they ran it you know 50 55 yards like oh they can kind of do they have a running game this year yeah they Cook, who's been awesome. Josh Allen is a part of the running game.
And Leonard Fournette can be a bully in cold weather. Playoff Lenny.
Playoff Lenny. So I do feel differently about the Bills in a game like this where they're not going to get pushed around like they did last year.
I also – I agree with your take that, like, the Steelers can – there's something about the Steelers that, like, they'll just keep teams in a close game. And it's like a perfect matchup with the Bills who, when they're favorites by double digits, they keep teams in a close game.
Right, right. There've been a bunch of games this year where the Bills have played way worse teams than them and they somehow keep it close.
I think there's also just something about the Steelers helmets in January. Yeah.
In like December. It's football weather.
It's football weather and you see black and yellow and yellow, and you're not going to score more than 25 points. It's the anti-Dolphins.
Yeah. Yeah.
The Bills, the last seven times they've been double-digit favorites, they have lost against the spread. Okay.
That tracks. Yeah.
That's a nerd nugget that could maybe put people in the right direction. They do fuck around.

They fuck around.

There was a rumor that they might move the game to Cleveland.

Because of the snow?

Because of the lake.

The lake effect.

There's a lake in Cleveland.

There's a lake in Cleveland.

In fact, it's one of the things it's most known for.

It's actually the same lake.

If they did that, they'd have to do it on boats.

They have to move the game on boats.

They have to get the teams on a boat and go to Cleveland. And then travel across Lake Erie for it? Yes.
That'd be good. I hope that doesn't happen.
Why would they do that? I would just think in case it's dangerous conditions. But I also heard people say that it's a rumor, but apparently it's the emergency site for the game.
Fuck that. Yeah.
It's Buffalo. You can't do that for a playoff game.
The Bills fans will be... It doesn't matter.

There is no emergency situation for

Bills fans. Yeah.
Their life... They live

in an emergency. Right.
They'll be fine.

They know how to deal with this weather.

They're going to be so drunk. So drunk.
I hope

Fitzy's there with his shirt off. It will

be interesting because I do think the Steelers

can run the ball a little bit. And Najee

Harris... Fun fact from our friend Jersey

Jerry. Najee Harris in the last three years has more rushing yards than Christian McCaffrey how is that was an entire year oh but he's been telling everyone that's that okay yeah it's true he's yeah he's been walking around with that stat in his back pocket just dropping it on people it's most people don't really like he said it to me and immediately I, Chris McAfee missed an entire year.
Fuck. Yeah, so I like the Bills to win, obviously, but I don't think that they cover.
Yeah. I like the Steelers money line.
Whoa. You hate all our friends.
You hate our friends. You hate our futures.
You hate our futures. You hate our futures.
You got to be a dog that wins. Okay.
Why does it have to be the one that me and Big Cat have the biggest future on? All right. Sorry.
Why can't it be the Dolphins?

Cold.

Oh, true. I forgot about the cold.
Why can't it be the Packers? Because the Cowboys are at home. Yeah, but you won't be there to root on your Cowboys.
True. Because I'm going to be there next week.
Oh. Looking ahead.
Looking ahead. Saturday.
Right now it says current conditions for Sunday are 21 miles an hour wind. That's not that bad.
No, it's not bad. And snow.
I'm excited for that. We might have to bet the over if the snow is coming down and there's loose footing.
Yeah, there's a real. Guys running around.
Bring back Shady McCoy. Yeah.
Okay, what's your nerd nugget in this game? You kind of mentioned it, Big Cap, but Steelers running backs Najee Harris and Jalen Warren each rushed for 750 yards this season. They're the first Steelers running back duo to each rush for 750 or more in the same season since 2004.
Jerome Bettis, who also played for the Rams, and Deuce Daly. Oh, okay.
That's a good nerd nugget. I like that one.
Two big boys in that backfield. Good work, Jake.

Thanks.

And for the Bills, despite struggling down the stretch,

Bills wide receiver Stefan Diggs recorded a 100-plus reception season for the fourth year in a row,

making him only one of four players in NFL history to do that.

He also became the first player in Bills history

with four straight 1,000-yard seasons.

So Stefan Diggs obviously is still very good.

Yeah, he just didn't put up elite numbers down the stretch. Right, but there are some games where he just stinks.
Yeah. I don't know what's going on with that guy.
Him and Gabe Davis both. I think Gabe Davis, he's like full go, right? He's lined up in the backfield some plays too, Stefan.
Stefan Diggs just, I'll say it, he's got bad body language sometimes. Yeah, it's the mouthpiece.
Yeah, figure out the body language. I do think the Bills are very dangerous to go to the Super Bowl.
Glazing

alert. But yeah,

the fact that they get two home games

here if they beat the Steelers. Yeah.

This is a bad day for dads to

look at the screen and see you got

Stefan Diggs and Pickens

with the mouthpieces everywhere. This is a mouthpiece

matchup. Also, bonus one, these

two teams have met three times in the playoffs

and the winner of that game in the playoffs has gone to the Super Bowl. All pre- so i know it's not helping you but i still think that's cool okay okay uh packers or cowboys henry you're cowboys uh did you guys see jerry jones earlier this week classic jerry jones just making headlines to fuck up his own team he can't can't get out of his own the game against the Commanders, he said about Mike McCarthy's future, we'll see how each game goes in the playoffs.
Yeah. Always good to go game by game.
Well, it's because you know he's got Bill on the line. Yeah, and then he had to clean it up, and so he went back on air a couple days after, and he said, I was a little surprised, talking about the previous comments, I don't know how I could be any clearer, Coach McCarthy's under contract for next year, so that's not an issue.
For him, yeah. Yeah, okay, that definitely, okay.
Coaches don't get fired. Yeah, secondly, I couldn't be more pleased with what he's done and how he's coached.
I certainly have sat down here right in the middle of the playoffs and started talking to him. I certainly haven't sat down here right in the middle of the playoffs and started talking to him about a contract why would you do that and by the way he's the busiest cat in all of texas i just love that yeah it's a great line busiest cat in all of texas he uh he's well he's a cat just a fat tabby he's well within his rights to say like we're going to take mike mccarthy in the playoffs on a game by game basis yeah but that's exactly what you say it out loud yeah like great for morale yeah um hey mike better win this game otherwise you're fired it's a big game for mike too big game going up against the packers as the coach of the packers he's 2-0 Well, I think he's 2-0 in Dallas-Green Bay playoff games.
So the Packers won during the 2014 season. That was Tony Romo's final playoff game.
That was the Aaron Rodgers pass on the sideline? Was that the Des caught it? Oh, that was 2016. 2016.
2016, yeah. The one in Dallas was the Aaron Rodgers one of the best passes ever.

Yeah.

He contorted his body, and it was like a sidewinder pass.

That was the Mason Crossbar game.

Yes.

Where he had that kick that did funny business in there.

That pass was – look it up.

It's like that pass and the Eli Manning, Mario Manningham pass.

Yeah.

Incredible pass.

Best passes ever.

Dak is one in five against the spread in the playoffs.

Interesting. His one win being last year against the bucks okay against the spread uh i think i might make this a nuclear missile whale play on the over and the cow i don't know how the packers are going to stop the cowboys and i also don't really know how the cowboys are going to stop the Packers because Jordan Love's been that good.
Yeah, I mean, the answer is the Dallas defense is much better than the Green Bay defense. But Jordan Love has been playing great, and the Dallas defense, while good, they are kind of front runners.
They're good against bad teams at home. Right.
So I guess we're going to find out if the Packers are actually a bad team after this game's over. We also have my one stat from Sports Info Solutions every week.
Packers defense plays middle of the field coverage, so cover two, cover four, on 52% of their snaps, and Dak is highest in the league on target rate against that defense. Okay.
I think there's going to be a lot of points in this game. Would you say that it's too early in the playoffs for a team to do a gimmicky situation like a home whiteout? I think it might be too early.
They're using their whiteout. No.
The Cowboys are doing their whiteout this weekend. A whiteout? That's college basketball.
Yeah. That works when you're doing it for a student section.
You can't do it for an NFL team. Yeah.
I don't know if all the fans are going to get the memo. Oh, they'll all get the memo.
You think so?

They're crazy.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Jerry Jones probably has –

I wouldn't imagine if Jerry Jones has a hotline to everyone's phone in Dallas.

Hank, what color is your uniform that you wear?

To Cowboys games?

Yeah.

I've never been to a Cowboys game.

Oh, but I'm just saying –

Next week.

The one that you own.

I know you own a Cowboys jersey.

I have a Dak Prescott jersey.

What color is that one?

It's white.

Oh, good. Wow, that sucks because they probably won't do the whiteout next week.
Yeah, probably not. Do you have your jean shorts? own i know you own a cowboys i have a dak prescott jersey what color is that one it's white oh good

wow that sucks because they probably won't do the whiteout next week yeah probably not do you have

your jean shorts i don't have jean shorts i can probably get some by next week also shout out the

anonymous person who sent me uh the ravens purple camo oh nice pants those are the best i appreciate

that i just showed up in my office today they're the best pants in the world yeah cargo i just love

that every nfl team at one point had those pants they did it as like an experimental fashion drop

I love it. I just showed up in my office today.
They're the best pants in the world. Yeah, cargo.
I just love that every NFL team at one point had those pants. They did it as like an experimental fashion drop thing.
Yeah. And then the Ravens just bought the fuck out of them.
Yeah. And they're like, we're going to keep these around just for Baltimore.
Yes. Yes.
Yeah, I like this over a lot. I like this over a lot.
You guys want to ride with me? Yeah. Definitely.
That's a will play? Yeah. I like this over a lot.
What's it at right now? 50 and a half. That's what I'm going to bet it at.
I'm probably going to take the over on every game. Yeah, why not? Yeah.
Let's parlay him. Yeah, there you go.
Okay, nerd nugget for this game. Self-fact check.
That's caught it January of 2015. Mason crossbar January of 2017.
okay oh so it was the 2017 game in in dallas that he had to throw yeah january 2017 i want to look up the 34 31 uh packers they have scored at least 34 points against dallas in all four of their games at at&t stadium i know that's an erin rogers stat but that's the longest streak by any nfl team versus dallas at at&t with no team doing it more than twice in a row. Also, Green Bay is the only NFL team with four plus wins and no losses against Dallas at AT&T Stadium.
So that franchise has a lot of success here. So they've got four wins at AT&T Stadium.
Four plus, yeah. Four plus.
I don't know if it's four exactly, but they have not lost there. The Cowboys are going for their third playoff win at AT&T Stadium.
So this would just be dominance over the franchise as a whole. Yeah, I mean, only one of those is playoffs, but still.
Yep. And then for the Cowboys, do-do-do-do, nerd nugget of the week.
Nerd nugget of the super wild card weekend. Put this one on the wild meter.
In Dak Prescott's first career playoff start in 2016, he was in his first year as the starter against the Mike McCarthy led Packers team and Jordan Love's first career playoff start in 2024 he is in his first year as a starter against the Mike McCarthy led Cowboys team interesting okay yeah okay yeah Mike McCarthy going against the young guns yeah first career play watching Aaron Rodgers. Mike McCarthy on the sidelines.
He was going against his body, and he threw it, and it actually curved. We can all agree that Mike McCarthy is fired if he loses his game, right? Depends on how.
Well, okay. I think he is.
The problem is it depends on how, but when you're like Mike McCarthy loses a playoff game, the how is always just a terrible Mike McCarthy mistake. You can find a reason.
You can find something that he's done. Well, no, because if he loses by 15, 20 points, then he's fired because he got blown out.
If he loses by seven points, it's because he did some bird-brained activity on the sideline. Here's a way that Mike McCarthy could lose this game and not be fired.
First quarter, bang, bang, play on the sideline. Someone rolls up on Mike McCarthy, ACL and concussion, has to go to the hospital.
I shouldn't laugh at the thought of that. That would probably keep his job.
It's kind of funny. You can't fire a guy who's got an ACL and concussion in the hospital.
I was going to say if Dak gets hurt, that's another way you could probably keep his job. Yeah, you could probably keep his job that way.
But yeah, Mike McCarthy will do something dumb. If the Joe Paterno, I'd say maybe if Mike McCarthy either gets rolled up on the sideline like Joe Pa.
Shoot him like a horse. I was at that game.
Or if... Handed that at Joe Pa.
We knew. Or if before halftime he runs to the locker room because he has diarrhea like Joe Pa.
Yeah. I think either way would be an elegant way to save his job.
It's all flushed out.

Also, if they lose this game, the seven seed's never beaten the two since they added the seven seed three years ago. That's not that.
That's five, six games. Six games.
Yeah. But, like, I'm saying if they lose, that would be the first time.
Yeah. It will happen eventually.
Yep. Great uniform matchup in this game.
Classic. It's, I mean,boys cowboys niners packers niners that's the 90s yeah uh okay favorite game of the week i think we all can agree rams at lions sunday night hank has been correct in correcting us everyone's talking about staff going back to Detroit.
This is the Jared Goff revenge game. Yeah.
It has to be like that is, and I actually like that all the stories about Stafford because that makes the revenge game even better for Jared. Yeah, this is 100% Jared Goff revenge game.
Sean McVay tried to take some of the sting out of this because he knows that it's the Jared Goff revenge game. Right.
He admitted, he's like, yeah, there's a lot of things that i wish i could have done differently when i traded jared and let him know ahead of time he like deeply regrets how that went down i actually don't think he regrets it he just knows that this is the jerry goff revenge game and he's trying to like make nice with him in fact all the all the rams are trying to make nice with jerry goff because aaron donald texted him'm proud of you. Wow.
He told Jerry that he's proud of me. That's some patent on the head.
Yeah, that actually adds fuel to the fire. They're trying to kill him with kindness.
Yeah. Jerry, just don't respond to any of those texts.
They're trying to get at you. Did you guys see the bar in Detroit, Thomas McGee's, that is banning all Stafford jerseys? I love that move.
They released a statement saying, please refrain from trying to enter Thomas McGee's on game day with Lions Stafford jerseys. You'll be turned away at the door.
It's our first home game in 30 years. Use common sense.
I like it. That's sports fan.
It's a big-time common sense play. Wear anything but a Stafford jersey.
You cannot wear a Stafford jersey if you're a Detroit Lions fan on Sunday night.

The thing that makes me so nervous about this game is there's such an imbalance of upside and downside for each fan base, depending on winning or losing.

Like, if the Rams win, the Lions fans are going to be devastated.

It's going to be the most devastating thing that's happened to them at the end of a season that was great.

And Jim Harbaugh's probably going to leave the next day.

Maybe. But if the Rams win, how happy are Rams fans really going to be? What do you mean? Like, Rams fans, you just won a Super Bowl.
They don't have, like, a diehard, rabid fan base. There are Los Angeles Rams fans.
Yeah, yeah. No, I see what you're saying.
But, I mean, like, it's such an imbalance in terms of the potential heartbreak. And then if the Lions win, it's huge for that city.
It's huge for every fan. If the Rams lose, they're like, oh, fuck it.
We'll just go to the beach. Yeah.
Yeah, I see what you're saying. I agree.
I like the Lions in this game. You've been saying Rams all week.
And I've switched. Because sometimes when you think going with your gut, I said Rams all week,'m betting the Lions I'm gonna take the Lions just because I don't I don't want to make blood money off the Rams winning I will lose money gladly if the Lions lose but I want to make money with the Lions winning the also here's a fun little fact about the Rams uh we're gonna talk to Aaron Schatz about the special teams which, which I think will show up.
They'll have a blunder. They'll be like, oh, shit, that was bad.
The Rams are 1-6 against playoff teams this year. Their one win, the Cleveland Browns, Joe Flacco, I believe his first start when he went to L.A.
So, I don't know. They kind of kicked the shit out of the Cardinals and the Seahawks a bunch.
Went 4-0 against those guys. Went to overtime against the Ravens, though.
They did don't know. They, they kind of, they kind of kicked the shit out of like the Cardinals and the Seahawks a

bunch. Went four and O against those guys.

Went to overtime against the Ravens though.

They did go to overtime against Ravens and then punt return.

Yep. Then punt return.
Right. So yeah,

I think there is a little bit of the Ravens games like, Ooh, they can,

they can go toe to toe, but yeah, they, their, their wins,

their season was four, four wins.

What did they end up with? Nine wins, 10 wins. So four out of ten of their wins were against the Cardinals and the Seahawks.
Throwing the Commanders and Giants there. I don't know.
I think the Lions are better. I think the Lions are better.
I'm scared of the Lions' secondary. And Laporta's definitely not playing, right? So he took reps at practice today, and he said that he feels good.
If you saw the video of the injury, it looked bad.

His knee bent.

It bent outward to the side.

And everyone's saying there's no chance he can play on this.

Apparently, I don't know.

Maybe they might just be saying he took reps and feels good

just to make the Rams have to think that he's playing.

He says he's optimistic about playing according to Detroit Free Press.

Okay.

He's young. I think also the Lions, if they're smart, and Dan Campbell's a smart coach, I think they just run the ball down their throat.
They're probably going to run. Dan Campbell's probably going to go for it on a couple weird fourth downs.
I'm nervous. I'm very nervous.
I'm excited about this game, but insofar as that, it makes me feel alive how scared I am about this game. I think the Lions are going to do it.
I hope you're right. Hank, what do you think? Lions.
Yeah, I think the Lions are going to do it. And I do, like, you're right.
When the line came out on Sunday, I was like, ooh, Rams, three, three and a half. And for the first four days of the week, I was like, Rams, Rams, Rams.
And then I was like, wait, you're an idiot. Remember that you're an idiot.
Go against your gut. You felt so smart about the Rams.

Right.

If you ever, like everyone knows this, when they gamble,

if you put something in and you think it's a win, it's never a win.

Yeah.

And that's how I was feeling about the Rams.

So now I'm like, I'm all Lions.

There's no chance they wear the gray jerseys, right?

Oh, my God.

They can't do that.

That would make me bet the Rams.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah, that would be the biggest mistake they've ever made.

If you're the Lions, you wear the Blues.

You have to wear the Blues.

You can't go.

You cannot.

You cannot wear those ugly, ugly grays.

All right, Nerd Nugget.

For the Rams, we have some milestone watches.

Defensive tackle Aaron Donald needs one and a half sacks to pass Kevin Green

and become the franchise leader in sacks in the postseason.

Also, Cooper Cup needs five receptions to pass Marshall Falk and become the franchise leader in sacks in the postseason. Also, Cooper Cup needs five receptions to pass Marshall Falk

and become the franchise leader in postseason receptions.

Okay.

I find it interesting that Falk is the postseason leader in receptions.

Yeah.

He's really good on the Rams.

And for the Lions,

the first team in NFL history to have four different players produce 850-plus

scrimmage yards and 10-plus TDs in a season.

David Montgomery, Jameer Gibbs, Amon Ross St. Brown, Sam Laporta potty.
We need Sam Laporta to play. Yeah, I don't know if he is.
Yeah, we need him to play. Also, you guys see the moon thing? Got tagged in that a lot.
We have a waning gibbous? Yeah, the moon was a waxing crescent the last time the Lions won a playoff game. The moon on Sunday would be a waxing crescent.
Okay, good enough for me. All right, good enough for me.
I'm in. Great, love that.
Lions. All right, Monday Night Football, last game.
Eagles, Bucs. Let's do this Sunday.
Okay. Yeah.
Are you sure? Yeah, let's do it Sunday. We could do it Sunday.
Yeah, let's just do it Sunday. You sure? Yep.
We usually do a preview Monday Night Football on Sunday. Oh, you know what? True.
Actually, we never really do. Because there will be less games to talk about on Sunday.

We're running late.

I'll grant you the Monday just also because I would like to know

who's actually playing for the Eagles.

Yeah.

That actually does make sense.

Yep.

Okay.

Let's do a Sunday.

All right, let's get to it.

Can I just ask you a question, though?

Nope.

How do you feel about Jalen Hurts' finger? uh not great we'll talk about it on sunday follow-up question is it still not a must win we'll get to that on sunday okay okay all right well let's get to our interview uh we got andy staples talking nick saban and then we got aaron shatz talking nfl playoffs before my cheesesteak. Big news, we teamed up with Uber Eats to bring the flavor straight to your doorstep, craving that Philly perfection.
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Go and do it on Uber Eats now or PardonMyCheesesteak.com. Alright, here he is, Andy Staples.
Okay, we now welcome on one of our good, good friends. It is Andy Staples, the On3 Network.
We thought we had to have him on because Nick Saban has retired the GOAT. So, Andy, we want to talk about everything, including Nick Saban's legacy, what made him special, as well as who's going to take the job.
But let's start here. When you hear the news on Wednesday, what were the emotions? Was it shock? Was it, you know, sadness? Walk us through what your immediate like 20 minutes after we're thinking.
I was shocked because I thought watching him this season that he enjoyed it so much that it would kind of re-energize him because he'd'd been complaining about the changes in the sport and and not seem to be having as much fun and I realized Nick Saban didn't always look like he was having fun but you could kind of tell he liked this team so much he liked that it grew over the course of the year he liked that it wound up where it wound up winning the SEC beating Georgia and I thought okay this this will put him put him in the right frame of mind to keep going for this. Because I always thought Nick Saban always complained about any sort of rule changes up front.
But then behind the scenes, he was always working to turn those to his advantage. And I just kept thinking, oh, well, he's just figuring this out.
And so when the news comes down, I'm like, damn, that's it. It's really over.
And right and i always wonder like what would the celebration be in the rest of the sec when he finally retired because like think about how many coaches this guy got fired yeah it's crazy auburn's had five coaches right since he's been there yeah he would get guys fired and then he'd bring them in to work as an assistant for him yeah and then and then send them back out. Rehabilitate them like a refuge for an animal that you found out in the wilderness that got hit by a car.
Nurse it back to health and then release it into the wild. That was, Andy, when I was looking at all the stuff, and obviously there's some crazy stats out there.
Seven national titles, all these things. There was a stretch where he lost three games in a long stretch.
The single stat that wowed me the most is that Nick Saban ended his career 11-1 in SEC championship games. That's insane.
He just bullied an entire region of the country for the better half of two decades. I'll never forget the first one.
The first one he was in was LSU Tennessee in 2001. I was a Vols beat writer covering them for the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
They had just gone down to Florida in the game that had been moved because of 9-11. So it was the last game of the regular season.
Tennessee beats Florida, wins the East, and everybody in the state of Tennessee is making Rose Bowl reservations because the national title game was the Rose Bowl against Miami.

And every single person in the state of Tennessee,

they had beaten LSU earlier in the season.

And Saban had a plan for them, and he lost his starting quarterback,

and he still won the game anyway.

And that's when you knew, like, this dude is an absolute wizard.

And then he just kept going and kept going.

And so, yeah, the 08 Florida team was the only one that got him in the SEC champion. Here's another one.
Nick Saban's Alabama team spent, or no, Nick Saban himself, LSU and Alabama, 109 weeks at number one in the AP poll. I think that's more than any other program.
Yeah. That is crazy.
There's all sorts of crazy stats. Like he had more first-round draft picks than he had losses at Alabama.
Just crazy, crazy stuff. And he ended up, I think six of his losses at Alabama were in the first year.
So you can kind of like subtract those and then look at what his record was post his first year after he got everything installed there. And it's just crazy to see what he was able to do.
UL Monroe. UL Monroe got more publicity for beating Nick Saban in his first year.
Like that's the answer, the trivia question answer. Everyone's like, oh, yeah, Nick Saban, first year, lost to UL Monroe.
Yeah, so, dude, I mean, from the outside, we look at Nick Saban, and he always seems like a little bit surly on the sidelines. He's grumpy until, you know, he wins a national championship.
Then he smiles for about 30 seconds, and then he gets back to Cruton, right? Right. But inside his program, I know that his players love him.
So can you tell us from, like, a player perspective what type of guy Nick Saban was and why his players seem to love him so much? He's apparently a relentless shit-talker at practice. And they love that.
Like Terry on Arnold, who's one of the corners this year was on my show and he was explaining it to me. He's like, he's like Saban is going to needle you the entire time, especially if you're in the secondary.
And it's not like, you can't look at it. Like he is being mean to you.
Like if you give it back to him, he appreciates that, especially if you can play. And I know Mac Jones' NFL career has not gone the way they wanted it to, but when Mac was the scout team quarterback, Mac talked shit to Saban all the time, and Saban loved that.
That's awesome. I also love the Saban story.
I read a long article. I think he had hip surgery recently, so he might not

still do it, but he had the basketball games

that he would play with his entire staff.

And I loved it because it was

clearly the sign of his competitive nature. He wants

to see his other guys be competitive, but there was

the undertones of he might stack

the teams a little bit so that his team always won.

And he called all the fouls.

Yeah, and he called all the fouls.

I would imagine there was a lot of shit

talking in that as well, just being competitive

at all times. hundred percent and like i always say people say you know how does he coach and and you see these these ceo head coaches like and like bear bryant was up in a tower all the time nick saban was on the field and until recently he was throwing passes to the corners corners before practice.
And like Jeremy Pruitt used to always say, you know who the real DBs coach at Alabama is, it's Nick Saban. But he actually would act like the GA who worked for the DBs coach half the time.
And he was, he wanted to be, and I asked him about that. He wanted to be ground level because he's like, you can see the problems before they really surface on game day.
He's like, I don't want to be surprised by things, and that's why I stay so in it. Yeah, you mentioned Mac Jones.
It's got to be a really weird day for him, huh? Yeah. Well, then we're Bill O'Brien probably too, so I think he's all right with that.
It would be funny if they came out and they're like, I know Saban won seven titles, but we saw Mac Jones in the pros and he wasn't able to coach him to a point where he could be a multi-pro bowl team. Maybe Nick Saban retired out of shame.
He's like, I can't believe I gave Bill this guy. Mac Jones killed both of them.
Yeah, strange day for Mac Jones. But with Nick Saban, he was football.
He is football. He continues to be football.
I'm always curious to know what these kind of guys do when they retire. I don't know if he's going to be able to stay away from the game.
Maybe he's just going to change completely and go live on that lake in Georgia that every coach lives on and go fishing all day, take up golf. I don't know.
What do you think Saban's going to do in his personal day-to-day life? I have no idea. And this was part of the reason why i didn't think he was going to retire i actually asked kevin steel their defensive coordinator who had worked with him on multiple occasions i asked him this like a week and a half ago right before the rose bowl i said i said what the hell is he going to do all day and steel's like i i have no idea i have no clue he's you know he's got the mercedes dealerships yeah he's got that ferrari drive he can hang with miss terry, you know, they went to Italy last year.
Maybe they want to go see the world, but I can't imagine him without the structure of something that lasts from 7. AM to, to 11 PM every night.
Yeah. What is he going to do? I would love to see him on TV.
Like personally, if Lee Corso retires, put Nick Saban in that spot. Oh, that's idea.
Build game day around him. I would listen to anything he says.
Because if you've ever watched, they do a show, the Alabama coaches show after each game, and he breaks down one key play. One of the things, and there are many superpowers that Nick Saban had, but one of the things he was great at is making even the dumbest person understand these complex concepts.

Like he can explain quarters coverage to any person in the world in about 15 seconds.

Yeah.

Like he's just, he's a good teacher, period.

And so I would love to see him explaining things on College Kennedy.

Plus, he's funny as hell, low key.

Like he's very, it's a very dry sense of humor. Half the time you think he's being nasty, but most of the time he's actually joking.
I love that idea. The other idea I saw thrown out there, which would be genius, I think Belichick still wants to coach, but if Belichick and Saban created a consulting firm, they could just name their price.
They basically are the Deloitte or the McKenzie of coaches, and it's like teams just bring them in for a week to fix their problems don't you think they just dick cheney the whole thing though we found the perfect person and it's us yeah yeah we can handle this yeah it's bill o'brien yeah that's weird no idea and if you don't like bill uh josh mcdaniels is a reasonable replacement for him so i when i saw the news that that Saban retired and then 18 hours later Belichick's gone, I had the thought like these are probably the best NFL coach and the best college coach of all time and they leave their jobs within 18 hours of each other. That's got to be the biggest coincidence of all time or they want to team up and do something together yeah so i i honestly when the when the belichick news came out on thursday morning i was like did nick call him and say hey can you give me a day yeah yeah i wouldn't be shocked i i likened it to like a you know a couple in their 90s and the and you know the husband dies and the wife dies two hours later it It's like, wow, she died from heartbreak.
Would it be the craziest thing in the world to imagine a Nick Saban and Bill Belichick podcast? Oh my god. That would be amazing.
You're boxing us out. One of them starts dating Taylor Swift, Belichick.
We're fucked. We're fucked.
You don't think that Miss Terry would do numbers? I think that Miss Terry's got a lot of stands out there. Yeah, she would.
Oh, maybe Belichick Golden Bachelor. Yeah.
Belichick Golden Bachelor and just one of Miss Terry yelling at Nick. That's a one-day-a-week one-off.
Yeah. Because he will listen to everything she says.
I've done the radio show with him, and she sits right there in the front and he's looking at her like is it okay what i just said is that cool that's great i know he's not doing that with anybody else it's like ozzy osborne and sharon yeah the best was when miss terry did the video and was like can we not swear during uh uh the song you know where they sing it what between the third quarter and fourth quarter and everyone was I'm like yes terry like listen you get a lot like we love you but we're still gonna swear you know fuck tennessee and all that it's it's it's dixieland delight i mean it's a it's a song by a band called alabama about having sex in a truck in tennessee so yeah i mean it does really run the gamut yeah the people forget that it's just it's literally a song about tenn and they're singing it at alabama yeah i'm curious to know from your perspective if you were to take these three things and uh rank them in order of how they contributed to nick saban no longer being the coach at alabama it's him walking away uh one michigan winning the national championship two georgia becoming dominant with the exception obviously year's SEC championship game. And then three, the NIL era of college football, which one of those three, what, in what order would you put those? Well, I think that the NIL stuff would be number one out of that bunch.
And we'll see if there's, there's something more personal going on. I mean, that's for Nick Saban and company to say.

But I do know that was the NIL part

was something that bothered him.

And I always looked at it as a problem

maybe he couldn't solve

because there were certain things

that he figured out how to deal with.

When they changed the recruiting rules

over and over again

to stop whatever it is he was doing,

he would just adjust on the fly

and keep recruiting number one classes.

When the up-tempo offenses drove him nuts, he's like, do we really want this to be football? And he wasn't asking so much as warning and saying, basically, okay, if we want to do this, I'm going to take the best athletes in the world and do it with them and see how you like that. And so he did that.
But in this case with the NIL, like he cannot make more rich people in Alabama. Texas is coming into the SEC.
Oklahoma is coming into the SEC. They got to deal with LSU.
Tennessee is very well funded. Like you can't make more rich people to fund this thing, even though they care deeply about football in Alabama.
you're not going to have as many people as that care deeply about Texas and Texas A&M football because they just have more people yeah but I did see the stat that like the the calculations of what Nick Saban made for the University of Alabama it was like over a billion dollars because oh essentially in his time the out-of-state attendance you know enrollment at Alabama has Alabama has skyrocketed. The total enrollment has gone up by 20,000 people.
And then the tuition for out-of-state is triple. So they did the calculation.
It's like he's made over a billion dollars for the University of Alabama. Yeah, that was a good column.
Oh,, I wrote that. Oh you did? When he got his last

contract. Yeah, no, his hiring actually, and this is coincidental, coincided with the state reducing funding for the university.
And so they had to go get more out-of-state students and the football team success allowed them to get many, many more applications from out-of-state to take better quality out-of-state students. And yeah, I think I pegged it at $250 to $300 million a year to the university that he was worth extra.
Damn. Yeah, someone stole your column and put it in a tweet.
That's what I saw. Oh, that's fine.
All that hard work, but it's okay. That was for another company.
So it doesn't matter. Yeah, so all right so you you mentioned one thing that I've always admired by Nick Saban his ability to adapt like because I think that's really the story of Nick Saban the winning the championships with defense running the ball the Greg McElroy's no offense to him but like these quarterbacks that don't go on to be like incredible pros and then switching it where it's like that Alabama wide receiver room four years ago was would have been the best wide receiver room in the NFL at the time with the guys they had in the and Tua and even Mac Jones like what is it about Nick Saban that he was able to stay ahead of it while so many teams aren't able to to find that that's as I mentioned those superpowers so there's's two other ones that are very important.

One is that adaptability. The other is getting 18 to 22-year-olds to perform in a consistent manner over and over and over again.
But the adaptability piece, especially when you're talking about coaches that make this kind of money, that get gotted up like nobody's business. They're worshipped.
That would make anybody say, well, I'm right. I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing.
But he always was looking at what is somebody else doing that they might be doing better than me? What can I change to make myself ahead of the curve to make sure that I never fall behind? Because one thing he said to me, I asked him in 2017, I was in his office, I think it was the week before the Auburn game. And I know, how will you know when it's time? And he said, I will leave before I am content to watch it go down.
Like he did not want to have a sunset period like Bobby Bowden did at Florida state. He wanted to dominate till the end.
And so I just think he always was trying to stay one step ahead. And I remember I did the guest hosting on the radio show the Thursday before the Texas A&M game in 2012.
So that was when Johnny Manziel came. He predicted every single thing Johnny Manziel would do that day, basically predicted they would lose, that Alabama would lose.
It was 100% correct. But on the sidelines that day, he had linebackers who were 220-ish pounds, and they're looking out at the Alabama linebackers.
These are official visitors, high school kids. And they're looking out at the Alabama linebackers that day and going, huh, other than CJ Mosley, I don't really look like any of them.
Those guys are like 250 pounds. And the coaching staff is like, yeah, coach wants us to get smaller linebackers so we can deal with offenses like the one you're about to see.

So he was already planning on how to deal with that.

Yeah, that's an awesome story.

Yeah, it is.

In terms of Alabama's job opening right now, would you say that as far as jobs go,

is this a great top three job?

Is this the best job in the country?

Or given the limitations that you just said with NIL,

is it not, one, you're following in the footsteps of nick saban so that's going to be tough um and then combined with what they have to offer to recruits is it not that great of a job or is it still like yeah it's alabama football anybody should be interested it's still a really good job because it's a place where people care so deeply about football it's a place where people will pull in in the same direction. I think Saban showed them how to do this, that everybody who's a rich person who has influence at the university doesn't need to have influence over this.
If you just trust the coach, trust the AD, you can watch it work. Just give them the money and let them go.
That's something that Texas has been trying to fix and deal with. A&M is always trying to fix and deal with that.
I've always said Georgia's the best job. I guess it was like 2015 when I flipped Georgia to my number one best job.
I still think that's true. I think it's easier to recruit to Georgia.
Kirby's got the best job. He's showing why right now.
Ohio State's probably a better job because the way you dominate that state you've got tons of money tons of people Alabama is a little bit harder than those jobs and Nick Saban made it look easy but it's hard because not only do you not have as many really good players in the state of Alabama you also have to deal with Auburn and there are times when Auburn has a really good recruiting head coach. Gus Malzahn was fantastic at Auburn.
He just wasn't good enough to be better than Nick Saban. And that's the problem.
But Hugh Freeze is there now. Hugh Freeze is going to recruit like a madman.
He's going to get talent at Auburn. So whoever gets the job at Alabama is going to have to fight tooth and nail for every single good player that comes out of Alabama.
Yeah. So can we just toss some names at you? Yeah.
Yeah. Sure.
Sark. So that's OK.
This is a good question. Sark.
Does he have a better job at Texas because there's no Nick Saban in Alabama now? Right. Right.
It's a great point. Right.
He's actually made his job easier. Yeah.
I mean, I'm sure Kirby Smart was like the happiest person alive when Nick Saban retired. Yeah.
Cause I wonder about that. Like you could go to Alabama and yes, Nick Saban's infrastructure is all there.
You used to work there. So you're going to keep a lot of the stuff the same.
But the thing is the stuff that Nick Saban wanted that he couldn't solve for at Alabama you have at Texas right you know you have a good NIL setup and and all Sark has to do which is believe me much easier said than done is get everybody to pull in the same direction at Texas but it does feel like he's getting that yeah all right so what about Lane Kiffin I know that one is obviously talked about a lot. It seems like everything I've read,

Lane Kiffin would be a home run higher, but maybe the people at Alabama, there's a little division in terms of internally whether Lane Kiffin would be the right coach. Yeah, they worked with Lane.
I don't know if everybody who worked with Lane wants Lane to come back to Alabama. I also wonder if he's not in the perfect spot right now.
Right. Because Ole Miss, they're not expecting you to win national titles.

They don't really care how you do your job. Just go do it.
Get it done. Alabama, every little tiny thing you do at Alabama gets scrutinized.
This is the thing that back in the day, Dennis Franchione ran away from Alabama because he couldn't handle that. You are the biggest celebrity in the state.
You are more powerful than the governor.

And you have to be able to accept that part of it and accept the scrutiny that comes with it.

And does Lane want that?

I don't know.

I really think he's in a great place at Ole Miss for him.

That said, I think it would be a hell of a lot of fun if he was at Alabama.

Yeah, it would.

You have to take the call, right? Yeah. Oh, absolutely take the call.
Who else? All right, here's a big one. Okay.
Urban Meyer. He'd want it.
He'd want it. You know, all these other jobs that his name has popped up for, I don't think he would have wanted.
He would want this one. I just – would Urban Meyer be successful in today's college football is my question would he be able to deal with nil and players having agency we saw how badly it went when he's with the jaguars it's the same now in college football like you have to have the respect of your players and you can't tell them i'm going to send you on the next bus out of town yeah because they'll be like peace out i'm going to go to auburn or I'm going to go to Tennessee and I'm going to beat your ass.
So I don't think that that's necessarily the greatest fit for this era of college football. This has been 10 years ago.
I said, absolutely, he's going to kill people there. But I thought Dan Lanning would be a good fit, but he has said he's going to stay at Oregon.
So that one's out. I got another name.
Yeah, go ahead. You wrote your other name.
This name, I don't know if he'd want to leave the situation that he has because obviously it's been a resounding success year one, but D'Amico Ryans. Yeah, D'Amico Ryans is an Alabama grad.
I think you have to call him, but he just put the Texans in the playoffs. He's also never coached in college.
So that's the one where you're not sure how he would go. Because when I did a list of candidates, I threw Mike Vrabel on there and I threw Dan Quinn on there.
But both of them have coached in college. We've seen them as recruiters.
We know they're good recruiters. Now, you look at D'Amico Ryan's, you hear him talk.
I don't think D'Amico Ryans would have any problem recruiting. Hell, the recruits' moms are going, yes.
Can I look at you? My son's coming to play for you. Does that mean I get to look at you some more? Okay.
But no, I think you call, but he's in a really good – and I think anybody who's in the NFL right now doesn't want to deal with NIL, doesn't want to deal with the transfer portal. They get paid the same for less work.
Yeah, that makes sense. I had one more, and then I want to hear what you have to say just because it was very funny.
Pete Dammel, our guy NIT Stu caught this. Pete Dammel tweeted the buyouts for the coaches that could potentially be at Alabama, and then he edited the tweet and added James Franklin's name.
So James Franklin, clear his agent called Pete Damos like, hey, what about James Franklin? It was so funny. It was like Dan Lanning, Sark, Lane Kiffin.
And then you see you can look at the edited tweet and then James Franklin gets put in there. I'm not going to kill Pete on that because Pete is a hell of a reporter.
And I'll be honest, I've gotten those calls too from the agent like, hey, why isn't this guy on the list? They're like, oh, my bad, I just forgot. But the landing thing with the $20 million buyout, I think that Oregon had to do something to make sure they didn't lose their guy because they lost Willie Taggart after a year to Florida State.
They lost Cristobal to Miami. So I think they wanted to make sure he stayed.
But, you know, Kalen DeBoer, he's got a $12 million buyout. I think it's funny because I spent, you know, in Houston over the weekend, all these Washington people are asking me, do you think Kalen DeBoer might take Michigan if Harbaugh leaves? I'm like, I don't think you have to worry about that.
Like if Harbaugh leaves, I'm assuming they're promoting Sharon Moore, but now that the Seahawks job is open and the, and the Bama job is open, I'm like, Ooh, I don't know. Kalen DeBoer might, might consider those.
Um, he is, he is a phenomenal coach and, and been successful at every level. So I think he'd be great.
The other guy and the situation for this fan base, I hope this doesn't happen, but it makes a lot of sense is Mike Norvell at Florida State. Oh, that makes a lot of sense.
He's been recruiting in this area. Florida State has to recruit against Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Florida, LSU.
You're already in that world. You're just not in the same conference, and we learned what happens when you're not in the same conference when they went 13-0 and got left out in favor of one loss Alabama.
So if they call, if you're Mike Norvell, I think you have to listen to that call. Now look, the 12-team playoffs coming, that wouldn't have happened to Florida State state next year you can win at florida state you'll be able to compete but will you be able to compete for national titles year in year out i don't know at alabama we know you can okay i like that what about uh dabbo is dabbo getting a call obviously alabama guy yep uh i courtesy call maybe okay but you can't win at alabama if you don't use a transfer portal.
Right. I don't think Alabama would want Dabo because everything you said about Nick Saban, adaptability, Dabo has shown to not be that.
Yeah, and that's the thing. Unless Dabo comes in and says, I'm going to be a completely different coach than you've seen the last five years and I don't think that's Dabo.
I don't think that's in him. I just can't imagine it because look at what Nick Saban did in the transfer portal, and it wasn't a lot, but like Jamison Williams, when they needed a really good receiver, they went and got him.
And Tyler Steen, the tackle last year, they went and got him. I don't think that Dabo would be willing to – if he's not willing to do that now at Clemson, why would he be willing to do it at Alabama? This is probably not a good name for it, but I'm going to say it anyways.
Jimbo Fisher. Nope.
No, I, well, as adaptable as Nick Saban was, Jimbo was that stubborn. And I think that's, that's where they diverged.
I mean, if you think about it, Jimbo was, Jimbo is probably the best guy after the guy in college football history. He replaced Bobby Bowden, and three years later, he won a national title.
Now, a little bit different situation because Bobby had had some bad years before he left. But Jimbo in 2013 was at the forefront of the sport, and he's just not now.
And as great as he was and as great of a guest as he was last week,

like I just. was at the forefront of the sport, and he's just not now.
And as great as he was and as great of a guest as he was last week,

I just think maybe he's going to enjoy some of that buyout money and not worry about this right now.

I feel like the best guy after the guy for his own personal game

was Mel Tucker.

Will he get a call?

Will he get a call?

No.

Now, if Saban had still been there, I would think Mel Tucker was a prime candidate to be an analyst at Alabama right oh yeah rehab so yeah well I think I guess Kirby has to start taking those guys now because Mel worked with Kirby at Georgia so my guess is is the Nick said what Mike Loxley the Maryland coach called it the Nick Saban witness relocation program I think's got to take that over now. I think it's probably in the contract.
So who would be your guess if you had to guess right now? The weird thing is they did say Nick Saban. I saw a report that Nick Saban was like, we're going to have someone in the next 72 hours.
So they're going to move fast. But who would you guess right now? Well, as we're recording this on Thursday, I don't know if they're going to have – they might have a hire before this episode drops.
Yeah. So it could be fast.
So if I'm wrong, feel free to laugh at me here. I'm going to say Mike Norvell.
That is going to be my guess. That sounds mean, though.
It feels mean to even think about that. It does feel mean.
It does feel mean. I know Florida State fans will look at where I went to school and think that's why, but I'm just connecting dots here.
That's all I'm doing. But I could very well be wrong.
So everybody feel free to laugh if I got this wrong. But it does feel like when you hear Lanning's already out, this is moving pretty fast.
Yeah, I've got my best plane tracking guy on it. So I've got a plane tracking guy because it is plane tracking season.
I use him for college and NFL. He actually DM me yesterday morning and said, hey, I think Saban is retiring today based on these flights that are going from his hometown to Alabama.
So he had this earlier. So I've got my best guy on it.
I know that you have a long storied history dealing with plane trackers. They're the best.
Oh, it's unbelievable. So yeah, I feel like I knew about flight aware long before anybody else.
And I actually was the reason that the university of Florida blocked their tail number on flight aware when I was a beat writer. Uh, I had written a story about it after they hired urban Meyer, but the funniest part during that search.
So, uh, I was covering Florida for the Tampa the Tribune. Jeff Darlington was covering it for the Orlando Sentinel.
He's with ESPN now. He sees a flight going from Salt Lake City to Gainesville, Florida, which is a straight, like not normal.
They're not direct flights between those two places. And obviously Urban Meyer was at Utah.
So he goes to the airport and I call him because I knew it wasn't the hire wasn't going to be made we both find out you know it's not it and so i call him like what what was the plane he goes it was a liver someone's life is being saved well those are the best livers i would imagine would be in utah right yeah exactly exactly so some some florida man was getting a nice Utah liver, a nice fresh Utah liver. Yes.
All right, so I had one last question, Andy. This has been awesome.
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Roback..com the best in the business i know andy wears it all the time as well uh what is success for the new alabama head coach how much time does this person have because it is like it's a great job but it also comes with a lot of pressure so i could give the politically correct oh it's to be fine. They're going to be a little more realistic.
And, you know, you don't have to win a national title every year. Nah.
Nah, screw that. Paul, this dude better win every freaking game.
No, your job at Alabama is to win the national title every year. That is your job.
Yeah. Actually, Saban doing a podcast with Phyllis would be incredible, right? I believe she's passed, but that would have been amazing.
We could seance, yeah. Yeah, a Ouija board with all the greatest scholars.
So if the new guy doesn't win a national title in three years, maybe let's say goes to the playoff two out of those three years, wins an SEC championship, but no national title. Is it going to be like, is Alabama going to have patience knowing that yet patience is, is probably better in this situation than having to go back and keep finding new coaches, or are they going to lose it and be like, this is, no one can fill Saban's shoes.
The Alabama fan base will not be patient, but I think the administration given it, person is making reasonable progress toward national titles, if they're in the playoff, if they're winning playoff games, then the administration's probably going to be fine with that. But the fan base will be raising holy hell if they're not winning national titles in three years.
Tough job to fill. Very tough job.
Very tough job to fill. I remember when they did that that coaching search was it price that uh sports illustrated wrote that article about yeah go read that article if you haven't yet about the things that that price was was it a mark price it was no mike price he was the yeah he'd been at washington state and uh the the establishment in question is called arty's angels yeah it is in the uh in the pensacola so i'm not sure which side of the state line it's on.
I think it's on the Florida side of the Floribama line. It's one of those places where it's close to the state line, so you can easily escape the police if you have to.
Correct. Yes.
All right. Well, Andy, thank you so much as always.
This was awesome. We'll talk to you soon.
Thanks, guys. Thanks, Andy.
Andy Staples is brought to you by Chevy Silverado. The Chevy Silverado has commanding and unstoppable grit, legendary capability and dependability too.
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He's the Chief Analytics Officer of FTN Fantasy. You can find him at FTN Fantasy or at A Schatz NFL.
he created DVOA and we we want to talk about the playoffs, but we have to start here because PFT and I think we're huge football fans. We understand.
We're smart enough to understand that DVOA is smart and important. We have never understood what actually is DVOA.
So let's start there, Aaron. Okay.
DVOA measures the success of every play based on the down and distance, and then compares it to a league average baseline that's adjusted for situation and opponent. That's the short version.
Better than zero means good offense. Lower than zero means good defense.
And overall, it just measures your efficiency on a play-by-play basis.

Okay.

Better than zero means good offense.

So can you give me an example?

Like in the NFL this year, what is the best team in terms of offensive DVOA?

And what is the number that's associated with them?

So San Francisco was at about 32%.

Okay.

Okay.

It's actually one of the top 10 offenses of the last 40 years.

Whoa.

Okay.

Okay.

That's good to know.

And who was the worst team this year?

The worst offense was the New York Jets.

Oh, interesting.

Okay, so it's basically everything that we see is being confirmed by the numbers.

Right.

I mean, sometimes advanced metrics don't quite look like wins and losses, right?

A really good example this year is back after week 12, Buffalo was 6-6 and Philadelphia was 10-1. And yet we had Buffalo 5th and we had Philadelphia 9th, right? So sometimes advanced metrics will look a little bit different than the eye test because it felt like the Eagles were winning a lot of close games and the Bills were turning the ball over a lot.
But when you looked at the underlying metrics, the Bills looked like the better team. And that was borne out by the rest of the season.
Yeah. So when that happens and then you have the rest of the season, you have the Eagles fall off a cliff and the Bills finish out with wins to get the number two seed.
Are you just like fist pumping? You're like, yes, everything that I've created is true. Yeah, basically.
I like to be right. I mean, I think anybody who does this, any of us in the advanced metrics world, like we all like to be right.
We like to be proven right. I mean, we want games to be fun and interesting and players to make cool plays and everybody has a team they root for.
I'm a Patriots fan, but not a good year for us. So I was more rooting for my numbers than I was for the Patriots this year.
Yeah. So back to DVOA real quick.
When did you invent it? And can you just tell us the backstory of the invention of it and how you tinkered with it to fine tune it, to get it to a point where you're like, I trust these numbers and I trust what they're telling me? Yeah. 2002 is when I started doing it.
I started playing around with football analytics when nobody else was really doing it. I was inspired by a book called The Hidden Game of Football that came out in the 80s and then had a new edition in the 90s.
So I had the 90s edition. You can actually go and buy that book now.
They republished it. I wrote the foreword to the republication.
So that gave me the basic idea for success rate, which was to judge plays based on the down and distance. 45% of needed yards on first down, so like five yards, 60% on second down, 100% on third or fourth down.
And then I added to that by comparing players to average, because when I originally did it, I ended up with Mike Allstott as the best running back in the league. It's a good stat.
Yeah. You should have ended right there.
But the problem is Allstott. I mean, the reason why Allstott came out so good is because he always gets the ball in situations where success is more likely like third and one.
Right. So when I redid it by comparing to a baseline, I ended up with Priest Holmes as the best running running back in the league and that made more sense you screwed up you screwed up all you had it right with all stats made it perfect yeah that's that's a good stat yeah uh you what you what you accidentally did was you quantified grit have you ever have you ever tried to make a stat to quantify the unquantifiable no man what i say is uh intangibles are called intangibles because they are intangible.

I kind of agree, but I think that me and Big Cat could give you some parameters

for how to quantify grit, like the number of wins a team has in colder weather.

You have to wait cold weather games a little bit more.

You have to wait the percentage of roster breakdown,

what players they have from Pennsylvania pennsylvania and ohio on each team yep that sort of thing uh the number of players that play injured too yep uniform colors uniform colors are very important you need black yeah you can't have candy ass you can't have the dolphins like the dolphins they're they do bad on our grit metric. Right.
But what is DVOA plus? Ooh.

Oh, I'm not sure where you saw DVOA plus. You should make a DVOA plus.
Weighted DVOA. I have a thing called weighted DVOA.
Okay. Yeah.
Which is weighted towards more recent games, so it gives more strength to more recent games. But, yeah, we could add grit.
grit I mean my favorite coaches are the coaches like Dan Campbell who are both analytically sound and want to rip your kneecaps off yeah yeah yeah they have the combo the perfect combo all right so talking about DVOA this year and and like I said we want to talk about the playoff matchups but what is the one team that did not make the playoffs that you were like they were way better than people realize and what's the one team that's in the playoffs that you're like this is not the signs of a playoff team there wasn't really a team like that this year that didn't make the playoffs but was really good the closest is Jacksonville who finished 10th but they almost made the playoffs and they faded at the end. I mean, the chargers were a little higher than you might expect.
And the other way around, there weren't really any bad teams that made the playoffs. The lowest team in DVOA that made the playoffs was Tampa Bay at 18th.
So none of the teams that were 20th or below made the playoffs this year. It's actually kind of a weird year like that.
Usually there's like something like last year's Vikings and Giants, bad teams that make it anyway. And there are really good teams that don't make it because they don't have a good enough record.
And this year that didn't happen. Okay.
What about against the spread? I would like to harness the power of your brain for financial gain. If you look at the first round matchups, is there one where the spread doesn't really line up with what the numbers say? Yeah, the biggest one for me is Philadelphia and Tampa Bay.
I actually, in my projections, I have Tampa Bay very, very slightly favored. Oh, okay.
And I believe the line is Philadelphia by two and a half. Yeah, it is.
If you look at the weighted numbers, right, that give more weight to recent games, Tampa Bay is 15th. Philadelphia is 21st.
They've just completely fallen apart. And I mean, you know, it's not ridiculous to think Philadelphia can win.
But I mean, I think it's kind of a 50-50 shot. And so given the line, I would take Tampa, or I'd buy the extra half a point and take Tampa plus three.
So when you say weighted, this is accounting for the team you're playing, because if you're playing a bad team, you're obviously going to have more success. It counts for the game situation, I would assume, like a blowout, you throw out those fourth quarter.
I downweight plays in the fourth quarter and blowouts, yeah. But when I specifically talk about weighted DVOA, that means weighted towards the end of the season.
Okay. Okay, that's all right.
That makes sense. I'm an idiot.
You did say that. So in terms of these playoff teams, what are some red flags for certain teams? For example, I know the Rams special team is horrifically bad.
So what are other red flags that you see in your numbers that people maybe don't see or not expecting, good or bad? Like this team is playing way better than people think, or this team, this phase of the game, they are struggling and this is going to be a red flag for them come January. I mean, some of these are things that people know, like people know that the Packers defense has declined.
I think people know that the Texans can't run the ball. I think people know that the Chiefs are bad against the run.
That's a really interesting one because the Dolphins are third running the ball and the Chiefs are 27th against the run. And you think it's going to be so freezing cold, you're going to depend on the run.
Except the Dolphins don't, that's not a power running game. It's like a misdirection and speed running game.
So I don't know, is that really better in the cold? Right. I don't, you know, that's running.
Yeah, that's running. The Chiefs have definitely declined in the second half of the season.
I think everybody knows that about the offense, but their defense has declined a little bit too in the second half of the season. The Lions were number one in run defense.
Oh, which is like, wow, where did that come from? You don't think of them as having the personnel to be really good against the run. And Kyron Williams was really good for the Rams this year, so that's like a really good matchup this year.
I also have some numbers that break down players like with blitzes versus not blitzes. For example, Stroud, CJ Stroud is not as good if you blitz him, and the Browns' defense is insanely good when they blitz.
3.5 yards per play with a minus 45% DVOA when they blitz. So they should blitz Stroud.
Okay, what about the Browns' offense? It feels like Flacco's stepping in. You've seen a lot of the good Flacco.
He does have a couple of those interceptions where he'll just say, you know, fuck it and throw it downfield. Sometimes it works as almost kind of a punt.
So in Flacco's, in his example in particular, do you wait interceptions based on, you know, a 30-yard interception that might back a defense up as opposed to, you know, somebody undercutting like a curl route? Yeah. A good example is Josh Allen this year, right? Josh Allen had a lot of interceptions, but a lot of them were either on fourth down, right? Where if it's an incomplete and an interception are no different, or they were like deep interceptions.
And yeah, because what I do is I measure interceptions based on where the line of scrimmage is and where the ball went and what's the average return based on that right because if you throw an interception at the line of scrimmage those are more likely to be returned as a pick six than if you launch it downfield for 40 yards so yeah we weigh interceptions based on like how long they go okay so with the brown Browns, in their case, their defense, as you mentioned, incredible,

especially when they blitz. Their offense seems to be serviceable.
It seems to be doing enough. Is there a historical comparison to these Browns that could tell you that they have the ability to make the Super Bowl? Sure.
I mean, a good historical comparison would be the 2000 Ravens. Yeah.
Right? The 2000 Ravens defense is not as good in the regular season as people think it is. Once you adjust for who their opponents were that year, they were fantastic against the run, but they didn't have a lot of sacks.
But they had a serviceable offense and the defense got hot in the playoffs and played better than it had in the regular season and was like insane in the Super Bowl and they won it all. So, I mean, that would be a good comparison for this year's Browns.
Do you have, so like I know Ken Palm who does college basketball analytics, he always has like, here's a list of 10 teams that historically are able to win the title. It's never deviated from that.
Do you have a list of teams that they have to be this, this, and this in the three phases of the game, and we've never had a winner outside of that? Nah, because there have been some weird ones. In the last 20 years, one of the interesting things is I have DVOA going back to 1981.
The top teams from 81 to 2000 were more likely to win the Super Bowl than the top teams from 2001 till now. And you've had teams like the 2007 Giants and the 2011 Giants that if you tried

to create some sort of baseline and say, you have to be this tall to ride the Super Bowl,

they wouldn't be that tall, basically. So it's hard to say that.
Even the best teams in DVOA don't win the Super Bowl as often as you think they should. A lot of them lost in the divisional round, like the 87-49ers and the 2010 Patriots and the 2019 Ravens, who are a little bit of a cautionary tale for Ravens fans.
Yeah, that's interesting. You mentioned the Niners as being the best team in terms of offensive DVOA.
What is the best team in terms of defensive DVOA? We have Baltimore No. 1 at minus 23 and Cleveland No.
2 at minus 21. Okay.
So Baltimore, can you talk to us a little bit about Baltimore? Because it seems like their offense is different. It's much different from the 2019 team that you mentioned.
It's interesting because Lamar Jackson was more efficient as a passer in 2019, but film watchers will tell you that he's better as a passer this year. As far as progressing off his first read and not necessarily scrambling first first thing that he's a better passer this year.
Interesting. Yeah.
So, so the Ravens elite on defense, how is their offense? Their offense was fourth, but that includes the storm game with Tyler Huntley playing. If you, uh, before week 18, they were second.
Okay. All right.
So, and then now going back real quick to special teams, because I do, I'm always fascinated with it, especially in January playoff football, because it feels like a lot of people forget special teams. And then you see it in, in playoff football where it's like, here's a missed kick or here's, you know, even like the 49ers giants, uh, uh, NFC championship game where they fumbled a bunch of punts.
So who is the best and the worst special teams units going into these playoffs that we can be like, this is an edge that people aren't probably seeing. The best special teams unit this year was Philadelphia.
Ooh, okay. Although historically they were not as good as the best special teams unit usually is.
But Jake Elliott, the kicker is very good. And the worst by far, by far was the Rams.
The Rams were the sixth worst special teams unit in DVOA history, like really bad. Punting, punt coverage, and the field goal kicking.
I mean, they've changed field goal kickers like 137 times. Their special teams, like, it almost cost them against the Giants.
It absolutely cost them the game against the Ravens, right? Punt return and touchdown and overtime. Their special teams are terrible.
Yeah, and so would you say, like, this is, it would be a statistical anomaly if the Rams figured out a way to win this Super Bowl because in a four-game playoff, because they don't have a bye, at some point that's going to rear its ugly head. It's going to show up, and it's going to show up in a bad way.
Yeah, I would say it's likely that that will happen at some point along the way. Also, their defense is not good.
Their defense is like 22nd. So as great as their offense has been for the last few weeks, and it has been really good for the last few weeks, the defense is meh, and the special teams are terrible, and it's really hard to make it through four wins like that.
Yeah, so the Lions' run defense, you said, is number one, which that's very surprising to me to hear. Because, well, I know their defense is bad, but maybe their pass defense is just astronomically bad.
So what is their pass defense ranked? Their pass defense is 16th on the season, but it's 25th since week 10. Okay.
Gary Jacobs in particular just fell apart. Okay.
Okay. In terms of like an underrated individual player in these playoffs, somebody that might be you know household name superstar but is there

somebody that jumps out to you as being like hey statistically this guy's actually playing very very well right now uh oh that's tough um because a lot of the players that are coming to mind are guys that everybody knows i mean i think not everybody knows how good kyron will was this year. The Rams running back.
Yep.

I think people don't realize how good Levante David,

the linebacker from Tampa Bay still is.

We have a stat that we keep called defeats,

which is a cop.

Basically it means splash plays,

turnovers tackles for loss plays that prevent a third or fourth down conversion.

And David is like in the top five every year of his career. And this year he's like sixth or seventh, even though he's older.
Like he's still really, really good. That's a good one that people don't have come to mind.
Can we talk real quick now, full disclosure, we are big Josh Allen guys, friends with him. We get criticized a lot because people watch the game and he does have one or two interceptions, feels like a game where people are like, he stinks.
We don't think he stinks. What do your numbers say in terms of how Josh Allen is overall, taking into account that he will turn the ball over? Yeah, so I have a very interesting history with Josh Allen because the method that we used to project quarterbacks from college hated him.
And at my old site, we said some mean things about him when he was a prospect and said that he basically had a 2% chance to become good. And he did.
Yeah, really good. I love what you're able to do.
You're like, my numbers said this. Yeah, you didn't say I said it, and Rivers McCown wrote mean things about him in our book.
He won, man. He came out and was awesome.
He absolutely is awesome despite the interceptions. Like I said, the interceptions that Allen throws are, for the most part, not as bad because they tend to be downfield or on fourth down.
And we don't talk about the fact that he had the lowest sack rate of any quarterback this year, right? Those are negative plays, too, and he doesn't take a lot of sacks. So, like, he was in quarterback value.
I think we had him third this year in total quarterback value, including passing and running, or he may have been second. And unlike Brock Purdy, he's not helped by the scheme and the teammates in the same way.
There's this general sense that you plug anyone into San Francisco's offense and they wouldn't be as good as Purdy, but they'd be good. And that's not true of the Buffalo offense.
And so Allen does so much more of it on his own. It's a really interesting thing at the top of the league right now because you have this group of quarterbacks that are definitely helped along by scheme and talent.
Tua, Goff, Purdy. And then you have this group of guys who are like, really do it on their own.
Mahomes, Allen, Lamar Jackson, Dak Prescott. Oh, that's interesting.
So yeah, we're going to clip this and shove this in everyone's face next time Josh throws an interception because this is good to know because it does feel like those quarterbacks that can win in spite sometimes are the ones that are winning Super Bowls where it's like they can kind of carry everyone. It's not they're there, they're doing a good job, but if things start to fall apart, they fall apart pretty quickly as well.
Yeah, I mean, Diggs declined a little bit this year, and they had Kincaid, but you look at the receivers that he has. I don't think the receivers that he has are as good as the receivers that Lamar Jackson has in Baltimore when everybody's healthy.
Right. Yeah.
Right. He has Odell Beckham and he has Zay Flowers and he has Bateman.
And, you know, when Andrews is healthy and likely is pretty good. And, you know, Buffalo, he's got Kincaid and he's got Diggs, but Diggs declined a little bit this year.
And Shakir is, you know, has his talents, but like a great receiver and Gabe Davis is pretty mercurial so yeah yeah we always talk about flipping the switch which teams can like flip that switch in the playoffs and it feels like the Chiefs always get discussed in that conversation except for this year this year everyone has kind of written them off is there a historical example of a team that's able to just flip the switch, get from really bad to really good without, I'm not talking about adding like a key player or having a key player come back from injury at a time. Is there an example of a team just like turning it on in the playoffs? Yeah.
I mean, there are a lot of examples in history of teams that didn't have their best regular season in the year they won

a championship. A really good example is the 2012 Ravens.
The 2012 Ravens were better in the regular

season in the years before and after that year, but Flacco got hot and their defense played much

better in the playoffs than it had in the regular season. And they flipped the switch and they went

on a run and they won the whole thing. Yeah.
So it absolutely happens. Like as much as my numbers love the Ravens and 49ers ahead of everyone else, there's definitely a chance that one of these other teams does it, that they flip the switch and they just go on a four game run where they play really well and they win it all.
What's your favorite like statistical anomaly like that in terms of super past Superbowl winners where you're like, did you actually know that this Super Bowl winner, their defense was not elite, and they did flip the switch? I mean, I'm a Patriots fan, so my favorite not-as-good Super Bowl winner is the 2001 Patriots. That was very early in my football fandom days, and it was a wonderful experience.
They had never won before, and Boston hadn't won a title in anything in years, and that was fantastic. The team that

really stands out, though, is the 2008 Arizona Cardinals, even though they didn't win at all at

the end, because that team is the worst DVOA team to ever make the Super Bowl, in part because they

played a game in the snow in New England late in the season where they got killed by like 40 points. Like I always think of it as the game where the Patriots won by so much that I went out to shovel snow in the second half and didn't even watch it because the game was so one sided.
And yet Arizona bounced back and made it to the Super Bowl and nearly won the Super Bowl. It also is a game that probably made Kurt Warner hate outdoor football.
Yeah. He wants a dome everywhere and now it makes sense.
Yeah. Sure.
Okay, so this is all fascinating. You mentioned you do some draft stuff.
I know you probably aren't finished with everything, but right now, like Caleb Williams, Drake May, Jaden Daniels, what are your numbers saying in terms of success? Haven't done any of it yet. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for you.
I do know that the film people that I tend to trust are higher on Jaden Daniels than I think the rest of the public is right now. And I know that it matters that Michael Penix is older, right? Like the fact that he's, what has he played? Six years in college? Like that matters when you compare him to a guy who's got three or four years because the amount of development space that he has in the NFL is going to be less because he's coming into the league older.
Right. Okay.
Interesting. So what's the next stat up? What's the number that me and Big Cat should know and talk about so that we can feel smarter than everybody else? I mean, everything that NFL Next Gen Stats is doing is pretty awesome.
And I love Sam Schwartzstein and the Thursday night Amazon Prime Next Gen Stats broadcast. And the Big Data Bowl competition this year is about tackling and trying to measure tackling better than just number of tackles.
So there's going to be some really interesting stuff that comes out of that during the combine. The other stat I would say is Kevin Cole, who used to work for Pro Football Focus and now does his own thing called unexpected points on Substack, has a really cool plus minus metric that's based on like players.
It's complicated statistical analysis, but it allows him to compare the value of players at different positions to each other, including comparing offensive linemen to skill players when you're talking about offensive player of the year, which is very hard to do. So I would say to check out Kevin's blog, Unexpected Points, and his plus-minus stat.
That is a pretty awesome stat. I like the idea of that.
So we could actually end up in a world where we could put Trent Williams next to Patrick Mahomes and say, like, which is the better player? Yeah. Although, first of all, quarterbacks, just because they touch the ball on every play, quarterbacks will always come out as the most valuable players in the league.
And this year, Panay Sewell, he has Panay Sewell as the top offensive lineman, partly because Williams missed a couple of games.

Yeah.

Okay.

What about quarterback wins?

Actually, I'll adjust that question a little bit.

What about, can you talk about quarterback rating?

The quarterback rating system that we've all grown up with goes up to 158.3, I think, as the perfect game. Do they just invent that? Is there some guy that's just watching TV and he's like, that feels like 147 game? What goes into quarterback rating, and is it a valuable stat for anybody to pay attention to? Yeah, the problem with quarterback rating is that it is built to measure quarterbacks in the 1970s, not quarterbacks now.
And the game has changed. Quarterbacks have higher completion rates, lower yards per attempt.
They throw fewer interceptions. So the like numbers, the way the numbers work in quarterback rating, that's why when you look at lists of best quarterback rating ever, it's like Steve Young and then all modern quarterbacks, right? Because it's not designed to measure modern quarterbacks.
And on top of that, it doesn't include sacks and it doesn't include rushing and it's not adjusted for opponent. So there's a lot of reasons why other advanced stats are better to use than passer rating.
What's the's the the the best team to lose the super bowl i assume it would be the 18 and 1 patriots but oh yeah what's the second best team then just so we can give a ring to someone some fan base that that should have deserved one the second best team that lost the super bowl i i i know the second best team that didn't make it to the Super Bowl

is the 2010 Patriots, who lost to the Jets in the divisional round in the Wes Welker joked about Rex Ryan's foot fetish and got suspended for the first quarter game. I think that the best team in DVOA that lost the Super Bowl

is the 1983 Washington Redskins.

Oh, look at that.

There you go.

There we go.

There's another ring.

That's huge BFT.

I love it.

The team that lost to the Raiders,

but they were like really, really good during the regular season,

and that was a really surprising Super Bowl.

Yeah, I think Marcus Allen just ran through her face in that game.

Ridiculous, yeah.

Hunter S. Thompson wrote a whole thing about it.

It was painful.

What's the best team?

I think I know the answer to this, actually,

but what's the best team in terms of DVOA that has not even made the playoffs?

Going back to 1981, the best team that missed the playoffs

was the 2004 Buffalo Bills. Oh.
We thought it was going to be the Chargers where they were number one and number – I think they were number one in both. Where they were really good on offense and defense and their special teams cost it for them.
In part because I'm measuring special teams. The best teams that missed the playoffs are the 2004 Bills and then like a bunch of those Dick Vermeules years huh interesting that's interesting they were number one in defense and special teams that year they went into week 17 and all they had to do was beat the pittsburgh backups to make the playoffs and they couldn't do it they lost to tommy maddox and willie parker oh so what about the steelers this year the steelers i feel like they broke everybody's brain because they you know they were getting out gained and they were finding a way to win games somehow they had inconsistent quarterback play inconsistent offense just across the board in general but what do your stats tell you about uh the more recent version of the pittsburgh steelers are they a legit playoff team like do they deserve to be in this play in these playoffs yeah they do DVOA likes Pittsburgh more than other metrics do this year in part because the opponent adjustments they played a really really hard schedule of defenses in the first half when their offense sucked so bad so overall for the season they actually come out 15th on offense and then 6th on defense oh so they're definitely like in that that grouping with Cincinnati and Jacksonville missing the playoffs, but Houston and Green Bay making the playoffs.
They're definitely a legit playoff team. They're a legit 10-7.
It's not like they're 25th and snuck in somehow. They're going up against the Bills 9.5 point underdogs.
Is that about about right yeah with tj watt out i mean uh if you ask me who i would take in that game i would take stealers plus nine and a half it's hard to quite quantify just how much it means to lose tj watt but i do feel like because the bills are so inconsistent there's a reasonable chance that they're going to win but they're going to win you know they're going to make it closer than it needs to be right and that's a pretty big line but yeah when you take tj watt off the steelers and and the fact is pickett was a little bit better than rudolph huh once you would once you adjust for the schedule we've been saying that yeah we have the steelers are not quite as good yeah all right they were earlier in the year so this has been this has been fascinating aaron we really appreciate your. I have one last question.
It's a rowback question, R-H-O-B-A-C-K.com. Promo code TAKE, 20% off your first purchase, Q-Zips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts.
We're definitely going to have you back on because I could listen to these numbers and an explanation of the game all day. So my last question to you is we know the Ravens and the 49ers.
What are your numbers say as the team that the third team that's like, Hey, this team, people are maybe not talking about them because it is all Ravens 49ers right now. And we do that a lot with the one seed, but what is that third team? The number two teams in each conference are pretty clearly Buffalo and Dallas.
Okay. Well, that'd be not just the number two seeds, but the number two teams by both dvoa and weighted towards the end of the season dvoa um are definitely buffalo and dallas so if somebody's going to win this thing other than san francisco or baltimore it's probably going to be buffalo or dallas and there's a good chance that dallas breaks that ridiculous streak of not making it to conference championship games since 1995 or whatever yeah that would be quite the Super Bowl oh my god that would be incredible yeah I almost feel bad for Bill's fans in advance of that yeah that would be that would be tough to mentally get ready for that I talked to a Cowboys guy did a Cowboys podcast and they were talking about what would be the most emotionally satisfying path for the Cowboys.
And he was like, we want to go to the Super Bowl and play the Bills again. That's meaningful to Cowboys fans.
They want the Bills again. That's mean.
Yeah, that is. Like, what the heck? That's not satisfying.
You've already gotten your satisfaction. No, I mean, the satisfactory thing I would assume would be to beat the Ravens or to beat the – maybe the Chiefs beat Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl.

That's what I thought was to beat the Ravens because the Ravens were so good

this year, but he felt like it would be more meaningful because the history

that they have.

That's so mean.

That's chicken shit on Dallas' part.

Yeah, he just knows they'll win because just history tells us they'll win.

All right, well, Aaron, thank you so much.

We really appreciate it man uh everyone go

follow him a shats at nfl on twitter uh the ftn fantasy uh network so thanks so much we appreciate

it and it was it was great talking to you yeah man it was really great to do the show ftn fantasy

dot com slash dvoa that's where you find all my stuff and then like you said twitter and threads and all the social networking sites awesome thanks aaron aaron chats is brought to you by peloton you can forget the noise and pressure around fitness at new year's start in a way that works for you i didn't know that peloton was coming back as an advertiser this week i got back on the peloton two days ago i'm on a two-day streak getting back in the swing of things, back on the bike, starting the Buns of Anarchy rides again. Join the Biker Club, by the way, if you haven't already.
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Okay. Firefest of the week.
Before we do that, Stephen A. Smith versus Jason Whitlock was incredible.
Listen to me, you fat bastard. It was great.
Stephen A. Smith having to say that he had to call everyone in his life, his pastor.
Yeah. So before he went in on Jason Whitlock, he talked to his pastor, asked in advance for forgiveness for the rant he was about to do.
He talked to every female in his life and apologized in advance. He talked to his family, and then he just talked, yeah, he talked to God.
He's like, Lord, forgive me for what I'm about to do, but this fat pastor is just too fat. Yeah, incredible just went in on him and i jason

whitlock is like steven a smith didn't play college basketball or something i don't know yeah jason had a lot of things to say about steven a smith yeah so uh credit steven a smith for holding his tongue all these years and then just unloading oh he also he called like the espn executives and said yeah hey just so you know you pre-apologize i'm sorry for what I'm about to say, but man, it was a good podcast. Yeah, yeah.
Okay, Hank, Fyre Fest. Yeah, my Fyre Fest is that I am not going to Dallas this weekend.
Oh, no. I was invited.
You can. You guys gave me permission.
I looked at flights. They were expensive.
The weather's a little wonky. Also, the hotel factor.
You don't have anywhere to stay. I was worried about getting out and getting back.
Didn't want to miss too much work. It was a Sunday.
I always kind of said if it was a Saturday, I'd go. And then the fact that it, you know, it was a Sunday game kind of threw off my plans.
Yeah. You would never miss work.
No. And I'm doing dry January.
I'm locked in. I'm preparing for the standup.
I'm training and practicing my routine very hard. So I don't want to ruin that by going to Dallas, getting wasted, doing the whole thing.
It's going to be a blowout game anyway. What's the whole thing? Who's going to blow out who? The Cowboys are going to blow out the Packers.
Oh, okay. Cowboys are going to win next Saturday.
Backdoor cover? Be in Dallas. Now it's going to be cover to cover.
Next Saturday be in Dallas. That's the plan.
If the game is next Saturday. If the game, when the game is next Saturday.
Okay. Well, it's likely to be Sunday.
No. Okay.
Sorry. Sorry.
Sorry. Yeah.
All right. PFT.
We're rooting for you, Hank. Yeah.
For the Cowboys? No. For you personally.
Actually, yeah. I am rooting for the Cowboys this week.
Thank you. I'm not.
I'm 100% rooting for the Cowboys this week. My fire fest is pretty simple.
Blake has diarrhea. And so I haven't been sleeping much the last couple nights because in the middle of the night he'll just wake me up because he's whining.
And so I have to let him outside. And then I have to sit there.
And the worst part about it is it's very cold outside. So you let him out.
And then you have to keep checking on him. And he just gets in that stance.
You know, the poop diarrhea stance.

And he's already shit out everything that he can.

He's trying to shit out more.

But he's trying to shit out more and he won't come inside.

And so I have to just stand there in my pajamas out on the porch being like, come on, Blake,

you're not shit anymore.

There's nothing there.

But he's okay.

He's fine.

I'm so sorry that you didn't get to sleep through the night.

Yeah, I know.

It stinks.

Like, can you imagine waking up in the middle of the night because something that you take care of has to poop? It's the fucking worst. My son has a bathroom in his room, and he shares it with his brother, but he comes in at 3 in the morning every single night because he says he likes my bathroom more.
Yeah, it's probably better. But yeah, Blake is- He's like, I like your bathroom more.
My bathroom stinks, but he just he likes it you know what the crazy thing is is blake doesn't have diarrhea during the day you gotta just not like it sucks but you just gotta not feed your dog for a day not feed him for that's that's the only way it's rice and just don't give any food for a day yeah he's just gotten upset tommy and then it's just you hear the first whine and you're like, okay, I'm going to be up for the next hour. Yeah, that sucks.
Yeah, I feel bad for you. Yeah.
My Firefest, I'm not going to Clay Travis myself here because thankfully my daughter doesn't have this, but I forgot totally about lice. There's a lice outbreak here at school.
I completely forgot that lice exists. Yeah.
How come we haven't figured that out? I don't know. I got the email and I was like, wait, fuck.
Oh yeah that lice exists yeah how come we haven't figured that out i don't know i like i was i got the email i was like wait fuck oh yeah lice everybody had us so scared back in elementary school like don't share a hat with somebody don't put your don't put your uh uh backpack in a sandbox sand like lice can live in sand oh i didn't know that yeah so that was the big thing like if you put anything in a sandbox the lice can can jump around in there. What do you have to do if they get lice? Do you shave their heads? No, I think you just got to get the special soap.
Okay. Yeah, I think they have soap, but I just...
Did you guys remember lice existing? No, I forgot about lice. That's just another thing I got to worry about.
Lice. Yeah.
I had lice in kindergarten. Of course you did.
You did? You probably have lice right now, you sicko. I mean, you're the one who's going to bring lice to this office.
Oh, I'm going to start doing headbutts with everyone. I was thinking a lice outbreak at Barstool Sports would be very funny.
Oh, that would... I should actually go to my daughter's...
It would be very funny. I should go to her school and just start rubbing my head on every kid.
That'd be weird. That'd be good.
Yeah, yeah. You should do that.
That'd be weird. But yeah, lice exists.
I had no idea. I thought that was something we fixed.
Like chicken pox don't exist anymore. Yeah, they all get the shot.
Right. I have a scar above my eyebrow.
For what? Chicken pox. Oh.
Yeah, but we figured that one out. Yeah.
Polio doesn't exist anymore. Is there a lice vaccine? How the fuck do you haven't gotten rid of lice? I don't know.
Someone figure it out. Lice should not be a thing anymore.
Fuck lice. Someone's going to be like, well, the ecosystem or something.
Yeah, what do lice do? They're parasites. No, they do nothing.
How do they even start? Where do you get them from? I don't know. Where do they start? They just grow in little kids' hair? When a louse and another louse love each other very much, they make baby lice.
I'm going to do a little quick. That's where the term lousy comes from.
Lousy? Yeah, because an individual lice is a louse. And so if you say someone's lousy, it means you're dirty.
Lice. You're musty.
Lice are fucking gross pieces of shit. Yeah.
Fuck lice. We're an anti-lice podcast.
Lice are bedbugs. One's got to go.
Bedbugs. Bedbugs.
Bedbugs. Because lice are really, they are just like a little kid's problem.
Yeah. Bedbugs can- And I think it's a very easy solution.
I think you have to put that shampoo in like twice. Yeah.
Did you see that? There was somebody, I think they went viral on TikTok that went across Europe and they were just spreading bedbugs. Like a real life joker.
They would just check into hotels and then put bedbugs on the mattresses. I saw an outbreak in paris or something yeah yeah it's because this one person this one asshole jeez another good reason not to go to france i'm looking at lice right now they're gross fucking gross all right jake um so my fire fest is i'm going to be at a wedding during the dolphin game but i might not be because i might be stuck here because of the snowstorm.
Yeah. Welcome to Chicago.
It's either a canceled flight or watching the Dolphin game at a wedding. Yeah, I'm beginning to understand why people get fat.
It's just you don't go anywhere. Yeah, we got a week coming up that's going to suck.
In the wintertime, it's like you stay inside, you eat food, you drink beer. But we don't really have an excuse because we work in a gymnasium it's true it's like that is the one thing that like if we worked in our old office with the weather we're gonna have next week i would be very upset but i like when i get upset i'm like oh let me just shoot some threes monday high of negative one tuesday high of negative two yeah so shoot oh, let me just shoot some threes.
Monday, high of negative one. Tuesday, high of negative two.
Yeah. So shoot some threes.
Yeah. Just shoot some threes.
Okay. Good show, boys.
Tight show. Very tight.
Oh. Do we have enough time to talk about Eagles Bucks? Lottery ball.
That's on top. Three hours.
Forty. Eight.
Sevent Pug Come on Pug 43 43

By the way I was at the Blackhawks game

On Tuesday night and we had taped earlier

And I hope that the AWL's who I met

They're like

They guess the lottery ball

I was like tell all your friends 10

I hope they got money off that

We should start trading that early

Just a secret society where we just tell people

Yeah it's good

Love you guys. I'll be coming for your lover We let you see I won't say it So I'll be in some way So I'll be looking It's okay Say after me I still bet you can say it's on me Say after me I still bet you can say it's on me Take on me Take on me me on me I'll be good I'll be good Without you I'm a silhouette Take me on me Take me on me Take me Save me, love me Save me, love me Without you, love me Save me, love me Save me, love me on me Take my passion Take my passion Take my passion Take my passion Take my feet

I'm free

Without you